Lost in the 21st Century
09/11/16

Today, Mr. Donald John Trump was voted in as the President of the United States of America.

This is upsetting for many reasons, most of which I’m sure we have all expressed at some point during the trial of the 2016 Presidential race, yes Mr. Trump is racist, yes Mr. Trump is misogynistic, yes Mr. Trump is extreme, we knew all that good stuff before he was voted in thus it is no longer relevant.

What is most disturbing about the results of the election is that it encapsulates what has been bubbling at the heart of the 21st century so far, only 16 years in, it really did not take long for us (the World) to completely lose the plot.
Like most of us, when Trump announced his candidacy I thought it was a joke, not haha funny but it definitely had a comical effect, and through the power of the media he won. It has become clear to me that we as a race love our intelligence being insulted, we are almost angry when we are presented with anything that would make us think too much or too deeply. It is now more imperative than ever that we step back and wake up, for years we’ve seen terrorism destroy lives, we’ve watched Politics marry Religion and together regulate hatred but we’ve allowed ourselves to be blinded by the 21st century distractions of pop culture and the never ending struggle for “success” (whatever that is today). Our TVs, radios, phones, tablets are saturated with information on who we are and who we ought to be, what we ought to be doing, how we ought to think and the constant nagging feeling of failure when we do not achieve those ‘#goals’.

Since the beginning of time world leaders have discovered that the most effective form of control is to instil fear and insecurity among the people you seek to control, this mechanism has become more powerful than ever with information being able to reach all 7.4 billion of us in seconds with just a single tweet or broadcast; the recent shockers of Brexit and Trump is the very illustration of how this control can make us do things we never imagined we could. How far will it go until we realize?

Though progression is not a bad thing, it is important that whilst we progress we continue to educate ourselves so that we are able to decipher what information we want to inhale and what we need to discard in order to stay awake. We cannot get lost in the glitz and glam of our new world, we should not allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the flashing lights.

I do not want to believe that our generation is a lost cause, but as a 25 year old in the 21st century it is sometimes difficult find your bearings, they say we should turn to Religion but I say we should turn to our Humanity, we need to realise that our responsibilities span beyond ourselves and our direct surroundings, we owe a responsibility to all humankind but as many of us are aware of this, little of us are prepared to do anything about it. There is strength in words that we cannot deny, the words of the Bible, the Quran, the Torah have shaped what we consider to be our history for centuries whether we believed in them or not. Let us now use our own words to shape our future, it does not matter who is President, Prime Minister, King or Queen, we are sovereign in shaping our destiny and legacy in this world.

I believe that our focus should not be to form unions within humanity but to promote unity. We are not Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Republican or Democratic, we are Human and democracy is our Humanity.

Remember, our Humanity does not lie in our flaws but is in our potential.

-J.O.A-