Stirring Up Apathy

You know, I felt like writing something profound today, but I just couldn't think of anything.  Not that I've written anything particularly profound in the past.  At least, I don't think that I have.  Unfortunately, it hasn't been a day conducive to creativity.  I found myself lapsing back into bad habits today, devoid of motivation I spent far too long in bed.  Consequently, I achieved very little, with most of my plans abandoned.  It doesn't help that my exercise regime - a fancy term for my daily walks - has been sidelined as the result of a recurrence of a pulled leg muscle.  Having pulled it a few weeks ago, I managed to persevere with the walks and thought that it had healed, but I had to pull up last week when it seemed to have returned.  Again, I continued walking on it, but yesterday it was so painful that I decided that there was no way I could walk any distance on it today.  I was also discouraged from trying to resolve a long-standing plumbing problem as it would have involved some protracted kneeling on the affected leg.  Hopefully, it will have improved by tomorrow and I can, at least, tackle that plumbing issue.  But I'm still disappointed that my default response to a set back was to retreat back to bed.  Clearly, I haven't rehabilitated myself from bad habits as sufficiently as I'd hoped.  

Then again, apathy seems to be endemic these days - nobody seems to have the energy or the will to do anything.  Doubtless it is down to the fact that we are currently in limbo, with a failing government stumbling toward an inevitable general election, its only objective, seemingly, being to postpone that election foe as long as possible in the vain hope that its poll standings will improve.  All it can do is react to events in the desperate hope it can capture the public mood and claw back some support.  Unfortunately, the only 'mood' it ever seems to notice is that of the extreme right.  The interesting thing is that while we might feel that we've finally hit a nadir, of sorts, with the state of the country, in truth, things haven't really changed that much in the past decade.  I recently finished reading Johnathan Coe's 2014 novel 'Number 11' and was struck by how the Britain he portrays seems quite familiar - a cabal of the super rich control, or rather are, the establishment and run the country entirely for their own benefit, facilitated by the Tory government.  Inequality increases daily, public services are deliberately run-down, people can't afford to heat their homes with many reliant on food banks while the rich get richer, aided by rampant tax avoidance while anything that can't be assigned a monetary value is discarded - we've been putting up with this for at least the last decade.  Why?  Have things like reality TV, a media obsession with 'celebrity' culture and social media really diverted people's attention from reality that much and for so long?  I really don't know, but there's no doubt that the right's grip on media ownership really hasn't helped.  That and, for much of the period, a weak political opposition that regularly played into their hands.  (Sorry Cult of Corbyn, but you and your man helped facilitate the parade of increasingly venal and inadequate Tory Prime Ministers we've had to endure).  Still, surely it can't last much longer, can it?