Twitteretter

The Connollys, a Northern Irish couple who won £115 million on the National Lottery, have been revealed to have donated more than half their winnings to charities and people in need, whilst spending little on themselves. This may be surprising to many, but it is not. A win such as this equips you with the financial security most of us miss nowadays and allows you to live your normal life without pressure, after maybe indulging a couple of expensive whims. Having done that, one soon realises that keeping the balance in the bank, voyeuristically staring at it, or even investing it to try to grow it, is an empty endeavour, and that money is best used where it makes the most difference and, in doing so, where it gives the most satisfaction to those giving it. The Connolly’s behaviour is normal, logical and intelligent. What is not normal is the behaviour and drive of incessantly accumulating millionaires and billionaires, who take a much needed resource from the system for no known purpose...

I must be honest, coronavirus has been a godsend for me, despite contracting it early on, in March, and being pretty sick for a while. Before, it, my average week involved ten hours of driving and four flights, on top of long work hours, to the detriment of environment, health, family life, personal fitness and spare time. Since the pandemic started, I stay at home most of the time, have replaced car with bike, airplanes with running shoes, airport food with home cooked meals and security queues with good literature. I’ve even found the time to dust off my Twitteretter project. It would be easy, in this circumstance, to ignore the plight of the great majority, the coronavirus losers, to rejoice at the new state of affairs and wish its prolongation. But what is being lost is real lives, and livelihoods, and my previous pains were, after all, my choice. This is a case in which we should all understand the stark choice between our own good and the common good and choose, wisely, the latte...

I am occasionally saddened, sometimes even shocked, by our (modern humans) general inability to empathise with those whose lot is worse than ours. This is a generalisation, unfair to some as they all are. Some people do empathise, and even do much more to help than the occasional, guilt assuaging direct debit. But, for the majority, empathy with the poorer is a very sporadic, even chimeric thought. I am not surprised by this. To empathise, you have to put yourself in the place of the other. And practice makes perfect. We have built an aspirational rather than compassionate society, in which our reveries are spent imagining how great it would be to be rich and famous. This is what we practice, and therefore, where our skills are at. And so, we create a strange aberration, upward empathy. We feel more, and identify more with, the pleasures of the wealthier than with the suffering of the poorer. In doing so, we give up action and solidarity in exchange for inane, voyeuristic window gazing...

My eye has been caught in the last few days by an initiative started in Spain to protect local bookshops. The idea is simple and can be extended to any other industries. It aims to address the short term cash problem that independent bookshops can have due to the fact that they are currently closed and therefore can’t generate revenues, whilst still needing to pay most of their bills, especially as government help is there theoretically in some cases, but can be harder or more complex to access than would be ideal. ‘Todos tus libros’, which means ‘All your books’ allows you to spend money now with your bookshop, which you can then redeem for any books later, once they are back open. This is a great idea. It seems obvious, like all great ideas. It could save many retailers (and other companies) during these difficult times, if they have the support of their communities. And consumers should really support it, unless we want to come back to a World of large chains and internet shopping ...