Shortsighted indulgences

September 30th

There is an old fable — The Ant and the Grasshopper — written about 2600 years ago by Aesop. And today I realized that it is not just a lovely and moralistic fable, but still cutting-edge social commentary relatable to our present age. And I have evidence to prove it.

I have first-hand evidence from a walk today in a shopping mall. Stores are packed, parking lots bring anger and honking melodrama in all squeezing in them in their gas guzzlers. Food courts are spilling out with hordes of people getting stuffed with addictive (but still junk) food.

I have anecdotal evidence from colleagues from work who over the last few weeks were “entertaining” groups of representatives of our clients. By entertaining, I mean taking them out to restaurants and bars. They all say the same thing — restaurants and bars are bursting in seams with patrons. Even on Monday afternoon.

And yet at the same time, we have global and local economies in a free fall with raging inflation and deepening energy woes, and upcoming costs. There is still war just around the corner from where I live, and national and nationalistic tensions are getting tenser everywhere I look. Prices of everything skyrocketed, and especially of things that ARE NOT staples needed just for normal living.

And that doesn't stop a sizable group of people in the society from bitching about it, and yet still paying it.

And I know that this can be explained in a very easy way. Everyone is looking for some relief and a moment of forgetting the problems at home, and around the world — even if it means being responsible for those problems getting worse by spending the money to fuel inflation. And there is common thinking that money in the pocket will be worth less tomorrow and be worthless in a couple of weeks/months. So why not spend it now and have some fun?

And that all comes back to personal responsibility, of which I had seen non today. I don't understand the idea of pretending that everything is still normal while everything is actually going to shit. It is better to face the bitter and unpleasant truth on our own terms than to suffer the indignity of waking up one day beyond the point of no return, where all that will be left are tears and suffering. And idiotic questions — “who could have foreseen that things will get so bad?”.