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Faceboook and ministerial expenses - our common enemy

By Elsabe Smit

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Published: 13Jun2009
Word count: 942
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I have found a way to do exactly as I please and get away with it. It is so simple that I cannot believe I have never used it before.

All I have to do is point to someone who may be remotely associated with me, and say "They made me do it".

I have excellent examples of where this has worked. The first example is the parliamentary expenses system in the UK. Ministers who are entrusted with the welfare of people were caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Their claims for expenses range from a church donation for a Battle of Britain memorial service (attending the service was part of the job) to a floating duck pond (essential for impressing constituents) to a bath plug (that one is obvious) to an antique fireplace (returning to grassroots politics?), and the saga continues. So far seventeen government ministers have resigned as a result of the expenses saga.

Why did these politicians claim expenses for items that one could only shake one's head about? Because they could. Because they tried and got away with it. Because nobody was looking - or whoever was looking chose to turn a blind eye.

If those politicians were shop workers and they were repeatedly taking money from the cash register, would they have been able to apologise and pay some of the money back? Hardly likely. They would have been prosecuted and ended up with a criminal record. But these ministers blamed the nature of the expenses system for their actions. They never even considered their own moral compasses. Of course the public were justifiably outraged. Some of the ministers also appeared outraged and accused the press of blowing things out of proportion. Were they outraged because they were caught out, or because they realised to what extent they handed their personal control over to other people?

Then there was the volunteer charity worker who joined a charity so that she could help young people to get home on Saturday nights after they had been binge drinking. She felt so sorry for these children that she is making a career out of helping them because "it is not their fault". They turned eighteen years old and were legally allowed to go to the pub and get drunk, and they used the opportunity. Apparently these young people had no proper guidance on how to drink alcohol, and that is the motivation behind the charity. The issue is not that the young people had a choice and the opportunity to act responsibly. They are not expected to act responsibly in the first place, and that is why the charity exists - to take them home safely rather than to teach them about self-control.

And how about the people who had no idea how food got from their innocent hands to their greedy mouths? When they eventually figured out that they actually had control over both their hand and their mouths, they decided to sue the fast food providers for putting temptation in their way by providing fast food.

And of course there are the smokers who are suing the cigarette companies for making them get into their cars, drive to a shop, buy a pack of cigarettes with a death warning on it, and smoke the cigarettes one after the other. Is there some secret, hidden button that the cigarette companies and fast food providers install in people? Or do these people simply have no idea that they have brains to help them think and take responsibility for themselves?

The latest classic is a group of over a thousand students from the University of Sydney, Australia, that call themselves "I want to sue Facebook if I fail university". These students go to a library so that they can study. Then there is a voice from a computer that demands they switch it on and log in to Facebook. Once they have logged in, they have to check all their invitations, the latest gossip and photographs of people they hardly know. When that is done, the computer forces these poor students to play a game where they exchange poker chips for cigars, and then to update their movements for the next ten minutes with either cryptic or blatant messages depending on their level of intelligence. But this is not the computer's fault - the computer is simply a pawn in the hands of that mastermind called Facebook. And the poor students get worse and worse grades because they are the victims here.

No wonder we end up with governments that tell us what the ideal weight of our rubbish bins are and on what day of the week a Sunday roast is best served for recycling purposes. We hand our inner control over to anyone that can relieve us any decision making.

What is the solution to this? More medication for constipation, indigestion, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome and other stomach dis-eases. We forget that the centre of control is the solar plexus chakra. We are not aware of the extent to which our energy is drained out of our systems when we hand control over our lives and decisions to other people.

Now I am going to run down the street in high heels. I may slip and break a leg, but I will simply sue somebody for approving the layout of the town and building the road two hundred years ago. Oh, and I will sue the council for not putting up signs to say one should not run down a cobbled street in high heels. Hey, that is how the world works. It's not my fault.

Elsabe Smit is the author of the blog http://www.mypurpleblog.com , Spiritual interpretations of everyday life.

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