I am sure that we all remember a time when we believed that opportunities were available to all of us if we wanted to work hard and hone our knowledge and skills.
When I look at the world today I realise that those opportunities have been steadily eroded right before our very eyes. We have been guilty of sleepwalking into a society where opportunities are increasingly open only to a privileged few.
From a time when your local politician was a local person who wanted to do their best for their community, we have evolved into governments that consist of either political dynasties or of career politicians straight from university with no real knowledge of the people that they are supposed to be governing. Only today I watched a 40-year-old UK member of parliament who, with only one year’s experience as an MP is the minister in charge of the major migration crisis.
But it is not just politicians that have become an elite class. Gone are the real experts in our world to be replaced by influencers who are usually relatively young and are promoted by brands as a cheap way of marketing to the younger generation. These are the people that are called on by a media desperate to fill 24-hour news to tell us what to eat, where to go on holiday, what are the best exercise routines and so on.
If that were not enough, the celebrity class has also started to develop into a dynasty led career path. Sons and daughters are feted for walking down a catwalk or for frying bacon on a video as parents maintain the concept of ’keep it in the family.’
All of this has reduced the opportunities for young people, whether as politicians, real experts or the ability to enter the creative arts. It has also created a further disparity between these groups and the rest of us. Once we used to enjoy a plethora of events, but these too have been taken over by the celebrity classes. Nowadays everything from Wimbledon tennis to international matches, premiers and pop concerts are the free right of these groups.
Given the lack of real substance with these individuals, there is a need for a permanent feeding of their importance to the public. This has resulted in a rapid increase in exhibitions, awards ceremonies and so on for these people to parade themselves. These short-term effects of this sort of publicity require more opportunities for exposure.
But are these people and their PR agents really to blame or is it us? Until we start reading political manifestos and questioning them before voting, researching the background of these people that get freebies for telling us what to eat or where to go, or read all this stuff about what people wear at these events that we don’t get to go to, they will continue their relentless march to world domination.
Unless we stop feeding their egotistical march for celebrity power, we will remain like the animals on Animal Farm, gazing through the window and not able any longer to differentiate between the imposters and the real thing.
