Thursday, December 24, 2009

The pathologisation of impossibility

It's a new concept I've come up with. Like it?

It arose out of a conversation I was having with Jim about the weather conditions, and travelling. I was reading in the paper about how, despite the snow, ice, and multitudinous closed roads, one third of Britain's cars are still expected to be travelling over the few days in the run up to Christmas. He'd been listening to a radio phone in, in which one caller was determined to set out from Edinburgh to Cornwall, with a four month old baby and a labrador puppy, and refused to be advised otherwise.

Jim reckoned that this was an expression of extreme consumerism; people feeling that they'd paid for their cars, roads, RAC membership etc, and demanding that they be able to use them.

I on the other hand suggested that it was part of a growing mindset in which we are all encouraged to believe that anything is possible, and if it isn't then there's something wrong, rather than just being a normal, natural state of affairs.

2 comments:

Simon said...

it's all the more significant because of the date, I suppose, but snow & ice are like storms, the sea & big rivers for me - that the natural world is bigger and more powerful than we will ever be - indeed ever should be. We have no rights to challenge nature - but it is an honour to experience it.

Mike said...

Wow you have achieved a Googlewhack - According to Google this is the only page on the internet containing the words pathologisation and nighties!!!

(Almost a second with pathologisation and knitwear, but theres one other out there!)

Merry Christmas
Mike