BP, Greeks, Democracy Struggling - Booing England Fans

So England underperform at the world cup and England's premier player shouts his frustration at the camera. England as the largest part of Britain is an immensely over crowded piece of productive farmland that struggles with some of the limitations of the most glorius system we have ever invented democracy.

Yet its key advantage over dictatorship, the creativity it is supposed to engender is being crushed slowly and inexorably by the deadly hand of criticism, the rule of the mob and the fear of failure. England failed for many reasons, but the most important beyond the moment of luck or genius which can relax a team was because they feared failure. This comes from the over exuberent media desperate to sell papers or garner listeners who exaggerate and incite the mass through incessant criticism. They have no incentive to calm the populace down or reason. Rather embarrassingly on radio five live, an English talk station, they were discussing the minutiae of the failure and personalities inbetween a competition around who could have the best mocking headline about the team and they ask why they failed. Look at yourselves media.

So a small population residing in Athens over two thousand years ago was probably the most creative pupulace of all time why? We can but guess at some of the factors but a society which demanded excellence, which we are losing sadly, a society with a well educated populace who were allowed to think freely and not fear the deadly incessant hand of negative criticism where we start from the premise that you are wrong and idiotic to think those thoughts, rather than the positive why are you right, i disagree with your synopisis for several reason. Let's dare to consider your ideas.

So a society where we fear risk, we fear failure, where the state slowly intrudes more on us as the populace show less and less interest politics we are crushing our last advantage on dictatorship our ability to be different, to try new things to stimulate creativity. We are slowly crushing ourselves.

So what of BP. The oil spill the dominates American TV screens that prevents Obama going overseas. Well mistakes have been made, perhaps BP has followed greater cost cutting than other companies, however, we should also look at ourselves before we overly criticise.

- We want oil and we like the ease of our life which comes from fossil fuels.

- Extreme events happen and we cannot predict them all or prepare for them all. Sadly shit happens we need to look at mistakes that were made, we need to understand what we can do better, but we also need to accept shit happens.

- We are intrinsically selfish. Americans do not consider the use of depleted uranium in Iraq or the thousands that died in Bhopal india, an explosion by an American owned company.

- Finally our elite can be unimpressive. In a society which does not cultivate risk and creativity we are given leaders who are political and broadly liked. The quality of their brain, of their ability to solive problems, to anticipate are secondary. So some of why BP is struggling is due to the complexity of the problem but some will be because the right people to solve it, who can think are not in the right roles.

In fearing failure the wrong people are often given jobs, the England team is booed and a piece of our civilisation begins to wilt and Chinese dominance looks ever more likely.