Is it my imagination?

Or are there more and more guilt-ridden faces on the streets of the 21st century? We live in comfort zones, but the cold edge of guilt bites through the warm clothes with which we have wrapped our consciences. We have built our comfort zones on pillars of silence in the face of injustice, yet, we may as well have built prison zones, to judge from the guilty faces on the streets of our century.

We may as well have built for ourselves a vast penitentiary...

Mea Culpa

And what might we be guilty of? Well, principally, crimes against ourselves. Vast hospital resources are given over to the relief of self-harmers. Wrist-slashers are not the principal self-harmers in our century. If we include the practitioners of poisoning by tobacco and excessive food, to mention just two, then suicide is the single biggest cause of preventable death in the world's comfort zones. Yet we have to die someday, and there are worse ways of going than through a food overdose. This is probably not our major source of guilt.

Perhaps that would be our crimes against future generations. Thanks to paper and cyber money, there's probably more debt in the world than real wealth to back it up. This is the most indebted generation in history. Countries, companies and peoples are hopelessly bankrupt in fiscal terms; but that is nothing, because we have also taken out colossal overdrafts on the Bank of Nature.

Unfortunately, that steelly-eyed banker does not do Deficit Budgeting. And his Writ of Bankruptcy won't give us a brand new Amazon to deforest, either. He is now calling in his loans, and future generations will bear the full brunt of the melting ice floes, burning forests and lonely planet. Yet, we'll be long gone before the UN begins to haemorrhage members to the underwater world of Atlantis, so this is probably not our major source of guilt either.

Which leaves our crimes against humanity. All the silent and complaisant, please join the mass murderers in the dock. No room for the world? Well then, we'll just make Earth one large dock. And if you haven't taken the hint already, you really should read about the nature of this penitentiary.

Welcome to my website.

Chuma Nwokolo, Jr.