The Reason for Angry Old Men

With the rigours of work, a minimal social life, looking after house, car and body, I haven't posted here since Australia Day. For a person who loves English language, writing, and who is garrulous, it's totally out of character. So, here I am for an April ramble.


Now that I'm an old man (I prefer older) I know why people refer to "angry old men". Or more to the point, I know why older men get angry. It's because we've been around long enough to see the decay in society, the incompetence of governments, the disorder of organisations, and the absolute stupidity of our fellow human beings. Let me explain.

When one is 20 something our minds are filled with establishing our educational qualifications and careers; we hope that romance is in the air and everything around us is interesting, fresh and new.

Advance by 40 years and you've been there, done that. You know that:

1. despite what anyone says, there is no such thing as a perfectly functional organisation. No matter what spin anyone tries to put on it, Board members, the press, the Chief Executive Officer, you know that every organisation you have experienced has a shit load of dead wood; managers that couldn't organise sex in a brothel, and only performing at a part of its capacity. Yes, some are better than others, but at a fundamental level, most organisations stumble along
2. personal relationships, especially those of a romantic/intimate nature, are doomed to be difficult, heart-breaking and disappointing for you or others you know; there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. All you need do is look at domestic violence figures, divorce stats, and read the news
3. otherwise smart people get knocked over by substance abuse. You wonder why increasing numbers of supposedly sensible, intelligent people sniff cocaine, stick needles full of junk in their arms, or smoke cannabis
4. billions mindlessly allow religions to control their dress, reproduction, suppress half of their population because they aren't male, and brainwash their faithful followers with guilt and the fear of eternal damnation without a shred of evidence
5. having a non-discriminatory immigration policy sounds very up-market and "nice", but is totally disasterous for a Western, liberal society being threatened with muslim immigrants who won't integrate and who agitate to impose their way of life on the rest of us
6. governments never tackle the difficult issues, only those where they can score points and get re-elected into office
7. the Keynesian system of economics doesn't work and is partially responsible for the irresponsible use of our natural resources and damage to our environment

In the end you get angry and decide that you will never vote again because when you do, you always get a politician; you decide that you will never again tick a box that asks if you are "Aboriginal or Non Aboriginal" because you don't feel like being classified by race; you begin agitating to governments to ban muslim immigration, solve aboriginal alcohol abuse by banning them from drinking, and you try to show people how religion is the most divisive force on the planet responsible for most of humanity's misery.

Although the change in attitude from subservient compliance to stubborn resistance looks like "angry", it's really that we have matured and see the world in a different light.

In the end, every day is a beautiful day. We can hopefully, live our lives with a sense of achievement and fulfillment. Occasionally we should reflect on how extremely rare was the probability of our birth and be thankful that our spermatozoon led the pack.

Now that was a different post.

Robin

Australia Day 2010

Australia Day this year is a relatively quiet one for our family. Christina is on afternoon shift at the hospital and I'm home alone watching tennis and doing some tasks about the house, including monitoring some turkey legs getting cooked in our slow cooker.

Shortly I'm going over to our son, Dale's place for a beer (just one, since I'm driving) and to console him a bit as his car was set ablaze by some hoons recently and is a wipe off. What pleasure do these people get destroying someone's property?

My son's not a millionaire and, although the vehicle was insured, he'll not get back in cash what the utility value of it was.

On Saturday evening we have a late Australia Day celebration with friends which should compensate for the slowness of the actual day ... today.

My father was born on Australia Day and when I was a young fellow he told me we got a public holiday to celebrate it. For an hour or two, I'm sure I believed him. He would have been 92 today had he not died too early.

As the chorus our National Anthem states, "Advance Australia Fair."

Robin

Christmas Day 2009 at the Henrys'

Here we are, the four of us. Our son Dale, Robin (me), daughter Meredith, and wife Christina.

Apart from grandson Tory Muller, this is our whole family. Christina and I are orphans and I have no brothers or sisters. Christina has a brother.

We were enjoying one of our occasional family breakfasts when we all gather at my house and have a brunch (half way between breakfast and lunch). Usually it's pancakes, coffee, juice, fruit, and perhaps a cup of coffee. Sometimes we have bacon and eggs with tomatoes on toast, but as this was Christmas Day and we were heading to the Crowne Plaza Hotel for Christmas dinner, we had light pancakes with a bit of mixed fruit and as the morning progressed the girls had champagne and Dale and I had a YUPPIE beer called a Crownie.

At 11:40 we departed for the Crowne Plaza Hotel for our fabulous lunch of seafood, a variety of warm and cold meats, salad, vegetables and six or seven different types of sweet including cheese cake, my favourite.

We had a lovely day, didn't eat or drink too much and after lunch lazed about watching some videos before cranking up the barbecue again, this time to cook some tiger prawns that had been sent down from Darwin. We had a light dinner of salads, prawns, (shrimps to some of you) and cold meat and eventually fizzled out at 9 pm.

If you celebrated Christmas Day, we hope you had as nice a day as we did.

Robin