I’m finding it harder and harder to know where to even start talking about the world’s malaise, but I just want to touch on one area of our lives that has got markedly worse over the years and that’s accountability. It’s the one thing that has actually trickled down - and not in a good way - from the elite into our everyday lives so much so that I often feel that the basic covenants or foundations by which we live our lives are being decimated and we’re heading towards some form of Purge-like Reality TV that doesn’t last 12 hours, it becomes the norm. You might think that’s being kind of melodramatic, that we’re better than that, but when I think about the human cost of what happens next when politicians, corporations and industries are allowed to bypass fundamental accountabilities and that starts to creep into personal life accountability, I’m not so sure that it is melodramatic.
The base feeling I have with all of this is disappointment. That’s the base level and it soon elevates to anger and fear. I’m very conscious of how this all plays on my own mindset and how I have to keep that anger and fear in check.
I’m really interested in the link between accountability and disappointment. Do we have an aversion to accountability because we perceive there is too large a threat to us from not meeting those levels of accountability? And what are some of those threats - conflict, blame, judgement, disappointment?
Magdalena Stephens has written a brilliantly ferocious, raging EP with her band Cathari in which there is a lot of focus on her own disappointment. At life, at ex-friends and perhaps at herself. It’s called It Will Hurt the Entire Time You Are Alive and this record will make a difference to your life.