Coming to Terms with the Modern World

By which I mean, how are we supposed to make sense of and deal with the avalanche of information and news coming our way nowadays? And spare a thought for those in positions of responsibility who actually have to establish a "line" on the issue of the day and brave the "wrath" of the rest of us with our "instant" opinions

That's all rather abstract, so let's take an example which is in the news at the moment but which will no doubt be blown away very soon by something else: the Olympic Games.

This is in fact an incredibly complex question to get one's head around, and let's face it, most of us just don't have the time or interest to do so.

At great personal sacrifice, I've drawn up a short list of a few personal and subliminal "thoughts" on this subject:

• How many of us know or care where or what Tibet is?
• How many people are executed in China each year?
• Why are there so few people in the West prepared to defend China (whereas not so long ago another totalitarian state, the USSR, could count on the unconditional support of thousands if not millions of us)?
• What do we know about the Opium Wars? (As far as I can make out, we, the British, turned the China into a nation of drug addicts) in the 19th century.
• Now that China has so to speak arrived on the world scene, surely it cannot complain if it is now treated as a "grown up" and no longer as a developing child?
• Irrespective of what we think our governments should do about the Olympic Games, what attitude do WE intend to adopt?

It is this last question, I think, that shows how much we are all skating on very thin ice. Forcing governments to make a stand is commendable and necessary, no doubt, but it seems to me that it is in a way cowardly in the sense that it fails to put US face to face with our responsibilities. Wouldn't it be far more honest (and far more effective) to encourage US as individuals to boycott the Games? Just imagine the effect at all levels if the viewing figures plummeted to the depths!

And if few of us did in fact decide to boycott the Games in this way? Well, it would show that we don't really care very much about the question anyway. In which case we could perhaps get off our politicians back a bit?