Day 46 – Rapture

So. Some bloke in America decides that the world will be ending on Saturday night just past. He convinces thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands or more, that this will be the case and that they along with two hundred million other God fearing good folk will be raptured by God himself (I use ‘him’ as a figure of speech, it could of course be her!) into heaven for an afterlife so fulfilled with riches, the rest having to hang about on earth condemned to awaiting our fate.

Up until Tuesday last week the DA, Zille & Co, had us thinking, some even believing, that they are the political party of choice and this election will be their time, their spot in the history books of the future.

And as the week passed neither prophecy came to bear any fruit. None what so ever! No one I know was raptured, which is a pity really, because some really irritate me. Zille & Co got absolutely nowhere in real terms, ok they won a few more votes than before but in rapturous terms they’ve got a long way to go.

This now leads me back to my favorite topic, that of persevering stupidity. It is reported in today’s local paper that South African followers of the American bloke have holed themselves up in a hotel in Pretoria, all 80 of them have stayed there for about a week, expecting to take the elevator to heaven and check out on Saturday evening. At R700 a night per person they now face a bill of about R300k. And since they can’t now pay for it I anticipate a not very religious reception for them down at the local nick. It is said that many have dumped their jobs, sold their belongings, given thousands to the hotel staff and probably the car guards. And they’re still here. What makes this whole thing beyond belief? In 1994 this American bloke predicted exactly the same thing would happen. And obviously it didn’t. And he caught people then to. And documentaries have been made about that fuck up to.

Now, you would think that in this day of Google, instant messaging and Facebook it would be difficult for someone to convince you to suspend your belief in what is right and normal. It should be difficult. You would think. Wouldn’t you? But people still fall for it. And here is the controversial bit; people still believe that going to a street address on a Sunday makes them a good person. There are some that think that sinning for six days and asking for forgiveness on the seventh makes it all ok.

I’m not religious (really? I hear you say). But I believe in God, I believe in a higher all seeing being. I’m not a believer in Genesis and the whole 7 days thing but I can’t look at the beauty in the world around me and not acknowledge that someone, something designed this very complicated system. I can’t put aside my conscious because I know, or at least I think I know, that’s its part of the checks and balances in this complicated system. Simplistic I accept that, but that’s my view.

And with regards to politics. Although South Africa has shown other African despots that there is value in holding free elections we are no closer to better governance. All the vote has proved is that the great unwashed are scarred so deeply by the past that they are prepared to put up with piss poor service delivery over and over again across all regions. That they are so tormented by their lot in life that they will re elect the same idiots that last time promised them the good things and delivered very little. Until the future generations are educated and capable of having an independent opinion that is not race based, this country will not move on.

We have been blessed with relative peace so far. Long may it last. Our children deserve at least that.

Until tomorrow.