Hello. I’m Kam Mistry. I’m not one for self-promotion, however, somewhat reluctantly, I’ve decided to put my head above the parapet (whatever one of those is) and start blogging. Why? Because I believe that we, by which I mean all of us, need to change our thinking…
Do we really know right from wrong?
We live in a world of right vs left rather than right vs wrong. People bang on about their rights, but few want to hear about their responsibilities. We talk about problems, but rarely make the effort to fix them – properly. Politics, dogma, short-termism, misplaced diplomacy, stupidity and populism often get in the way. Like most of us, I’m exposed to the usual public and media figures on TV and radio, and the predictable guff on social media. Most of the time you just hear opinion and critique – nothing constructive – and contributors are often called ‘commentators’, which pretty much says it all. Not very inspiring is it?
I’m more interested in actions rather than words (which is a little ironic for a guy whose background is communications) so I thought I’d have a go to see if I can make a difference. It’s probably futile but hey, I have a little time so I’ll give it a go.
Think I may give myself the moniker of the Fully Clothed Pessimist – the whole ‘Naked’ branding is a little trite isn’t it? (Damn, I shouldn’t have said that as some bugger will now go on and register that domain name so that I have to buy it off them for a fortune.) I’ll start work on my 2022 calendar with me wearing several layers shortly.
What’s better, optimism or pessimism?
I refer to pessimism, but what I really mean is constructive pessimism, or maybe even realism…although we’re starting to drift into optimism, so let’s stop there. Rather than just being optimistic, we need to make the effort to recognise problems and actually fix them rather than just talk about them. Whether that’s at home, work or for society, take this approach and you can then have optimism for a genuinely better, long term future.
So what am I going to cover/moan about? Well, I’ll look at ideas and things that can improve people’s lives, a look at how things are covered in the media and, inevitably, also look at Covid-19 issues. Oddly enough Covid is an interesting one – science has been the weapon to overcoming it. Whether it’s looking at measures to stop the spread, or to develop a vaccine, it’s a great example of fixing a very serious problem using science, facts, objectivity and logic. And we need more of that.
The start of 2021 has already shown that the world is pretty messed up. Not great – although on the flipside it does potentially provide me with material!
By the way, if you’re wondering why the blog is hosted on this website, it’s because the Shiffter is about cleaning up mess, literally. The blog extends it as a metaphor to look at cleaning up other messes in the world, and maybe we can prevent things going down the toilet…
Anyway, this was just an introduction and it’s time for me to shut up. I’ll put some more meat on the bones over the next few weeks.