Today we are very busy, our lives are so full we tend to accept what people say without question. Very often what they have said is a half-truth or even a downright lie, but we don’t question it. These advertisements that keep reappearing on television are a case in point, in that they make broad statements of the efficacy of the product that is totally spurious. They make protestations about the necessity to keep germs away from toilet bowls. As far as I’m concerned the only time I ever touch a toilet bowl is when I’m cleaning it or carrying out a repair, normally I don’t touch it at all, or I sit on it and my buttocks touch the edges, so what is all the fuss about? They always bring children’s health into the equation as a sort of spur, when it is nothing more than a form of blackmail. They make statements like, ‘this is the only product which clears all the germs. A bucket of bleach would probably be an awful lot better. In other words, by not questioning we are taking for granted anything people like to tell us, and the problem is that we act on it.
By the same token, governments tend to take for granted what they say goes, and it generally does, but from time to time they have to have U turns, because the public has woken up. People like myself, a lot of them a lot more wise, draw attention to statements made by politicians that are woefully inaccurate, but as I said above, we are so busy we tend to take note, but not act. Certain members of families are taken for granted, Mum for certain, Dad as a general rule, and it is the children who are generally in focus. Being taken for granted, on a daily basis can be psychologically debilitating, where the subject begins to consider him or herself virtually worthless. I have seen this happen, and I believe that it is our responsibility within the family to see to it that it doesn’t happen.