Strange Days
October 10th, 2008
Strange Days
image: ca11merick
The seminal album by the Doors was called Strange Days. The band took their name from Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, essential reading for the postwar generation who were left decidedly underwhelmed by the path that the world had trodden the previous few decades. They set out intending to ‘change’ things and we are too close to know just how history will view their attempts to reconfigure the world.
Strange days was something I thought this morning. My daughter has just completed her MA in Philosophy and Theology and is heading off for a conference in India in a few weeks. So she is getting her vaccinations and the process has left her, understandably, feeling a little bashed around. She asked me if I could take her into work this morning because she was on an early shift, 6.30 am.
It’s a beautiful morning here in England today, windy so the day broke with dramatic splashes of colour and dark clouds blowing across the sky. Driving into the city we spoke about Rabies, she’s having her Rabies vaccination today, the size of the Indian population and how it’s the world capital of Rabies at the moment. We discussed those diseases that have been virtually eliminated from the world, certainly the western world and healthcare in general.
Yesterday I was an advocate for someone in a protracted grievance with a healthcare trust. This involved sitting down around a table and hammering some knotty issues out with the chairman of the trust and some of his top ranking officers. The issues were resolved and I was caught by the building adjoining the one we met in - where we went for a post meeting debrief - which is a brand new state of the art cancer treatment facility. Hugely impressive, atrium, expansive architecture and built for purpose.
I dropped off my daughter, posted some mail from the night before and got a latte from Starbucks for the drive home. We have great radio here, I listened to Radio 4 which is a talk radio station and the discussion was about the financial crisis we are experiencing. Tokyo’s stock exchange has lost 25% of its value this week, Indonesia has suspended its stock market until things stabilise and there is shock that an essentially western crisis has affected the east so dramatically. Our world, or the one I live in, has become so incredibly sophisticated and complex.
One of the commentators in his voxpop said that traders in Japan have abandoned fundamentals and structures and are basically stampeding for the exits. Curious. Because it is at times like these, when reason heads out the door that strange things can and do happen. Fear is the great debilitator.
So I listened, drove, and sipped my latte as I went against the flow of the traffic and was reminded of the Doors album, Strange Days. Strange indeed, Horatio.