There are very few things that keep me awake at night, these days.
I manage to sleep even with the growing burden of obesity around us and the nonsensical insistence in our societal and political rhetoric that despite two-thirds of us being now affected in Australia (combined with overweightedness), it is still pushed as a problem born in individual laziness and ignorance. Blind to the broken system we inhabit.
Or the fact that climate change is real (yes, I said it, it is real) and playing out around us—yet the one remaining, vocal, pseudo-scientist who bangs on against its validity gets 50 percent of the airtime and the media attention.
That we build cities where healthy living is becoming harder and harder, but then wonder why we have a growing burden of heart disease and diabetes.
Despite the fact that we are pulling funding from preventative health in a time when many would argue we have an epidemic of preventable, costly, chronic disease.
I even sleep despite our near-obsession with “Americanising” our education and healthcare systems at the cost of marginal and misguided tax cuts, and when our reference point is an education system heavily backed by a philanthropy culture we do not have, or a healthcare system that costs double and delivers less.
Or the concerning fact that 20 percent of Australian households (that’s 1.73 million households) now hold less wealth that the seven richest people in our nation. And that this divide is widening. And that our politicians seem unconcerned.
I could go on, but I begin to sound like one of those old Muppet men characters.
What I can’t help but wonder about though, as the clock strikes two and the city outside sleeps. What keeps me awake at night. What really keeps me awake at night, is not actually these major challenges themselves, or that we largely created these challenges and therefore can fix them… Or the bigger question of where we are heading as a society. Or who we are becoming as a collective.
What really concerns me, is a general lack of concern itself.
Or vocal concern.