You can't put a price on a human life

Once in a while, something so absurd and ridiculous happens that makes you realise that we are, indeed, living in a mad, mad world. So it was when a news report the other evening featured a man of 27 who was worried about his pension. Yes, not 47 or 57, but a mere babe of 27 years. We tend these days to compare this recession to that of the 1980s. Well, I know little or nothing about economics - then again, I am not entirely convinced that economists do either - but one thing I can say for sure is that the only thing we knew in the '80s about the pension was that little old ladies with blue hair went to the post office every Friday to collect it. Even if we were so inclined - and thank God we were not - we would have had absolutely no idea how to go about calculating the eventual worth of a pension fund. No… the only thing we knew how to calculate was the cost of a disco plus a bag of chips and a burger come the weekend. Simple Minds for simple times. Perhaps we were living in a fool's paradise, but compared with today's wretchedness, it was, indeed, a paradise. Could it be that we have actually educated our children too well in all things academic and failed to give them a smidgen of wisdom? Methinks we verily have. We have taught them, through our words and actions, that the only things that matter are things, and now when the money is all gone, these poor impoverished souls genuinely believe that it is the end of the world. Unfortunately, for some, it is. Mental health is a most delicate subject, and I reluctantly accept the fact that mental illness is something that will inevitably plague mankind. However, it is bad enough to see a person sink to the depths of despair because of some genuinely terrible experience or a cruel roll of the genetic dice, but to think that a human being actually chooses to die because of a lack of money is an horrendous indictment of our society. What the hell are we doing? A documentary some time ago featured a man who told of his experience when the piece of ice he was standing on in the Artic suddenly broke away and drifted out to sea. The rescuers would not be able to reach him till morning, so he was facing a night of hunger and freezing temperatures. But the army managed to drop him some emergency supplies - a tent and some basic food. He said at that moment in time he was the richest man on Earth. People say we had nothing in the '80s…they're wrong. We had all we needed. One car generally did 10 or 12 of us but, back then, cars didn't go 0-60mph in whatever time they do now. Sometimes they didn't even go at all. No doubt, some may claim it is reckless and irresponsible not to be fiscally aware and plan for the future. But, if we sit down with a calculator and do a few sums, it would actually turn out that none of us should have made it this far, let alone be secure come retirement age. We all should have starved long ago, yet the opposite is true. We should get every calculator in the country, head up the Hill of Tara and have the mother of all bonfires. How has our society gone so far off track? What happened us all? It matters not - what does matter is that we stop believing that money is the be all and end all. Young children instinctively know this. My youngest child is somewhat orthographically bereft. In other words, the poor kid can't spell worth a damn. So walking her to school this morning, I thought it best to revise the spellings she would be tested on. Somehow, in my demented mind, I was convinced that if she didn't get them all correct, she would fail the Leaving Cert, not go to college and wind up sleeping in a cardboard box on some doorway off Grafton Street. Now this was a particularly gorgeous autumn morning - cold, crisp air, misty sunlight and dew on the grass. I nearly drove the child mad. Less of a damn she could not give about spellings, or the points system, or any other demonic creations of a world that has lost its soul. You see, she had become fascinated with a dead newt on the road and nothing was going to interrupt the rampant imaginings that accompanies such a discovery. "Mam, just be quiet, I'll be grand." And she will be grand. We all will - just as soon as we stop equating our net worth as human beings with our bank balance. Walking home from school today, I asked her: "Well, darling, how was your day? Did you get all your spellings right?" "Nah," she said, happily skipping along the road. That's my girl.