| I Am An Individual |
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| Monday, 01 March 2010 | |
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Even if it were some form of useful representation, who is it useful to? Well to all sorts of companies. Those who target us with junk mail because of our age, or place we live, or having two cars. Those who target us for car, house and contents insurance because they know our date of renewal, as nothing is secret now. Those who ask us to fill in surveys, send us questionnaires, stop us in the street to ask our ‘views’ so their marketing can more fully give us what we want! Those who make TV programmes for target audiences – as Bruce Springsteen once sang, “There’s 57 channels and nothing on”.Local authorities and governments target spending and development on the basis of such surveys. Surveys that though statistically may be representative are not representative of our views. How long has it taken banks and building societies and the like to get around to putting £5 notes back in the cash machines? Why do some car parking machines still not take £2 coins? Why is it that short tubby men like me always have to have trousers taken up as the term short means ‘shorter than long’ and not short? Why can I not get a suit that is not black, grey or blue? (I was told it was what men wanted, I then asked what were the options men were offered!) We are told it is a consumer society; the customer is king/queen. But in fact, in the end we get what the industry, whichever it is, wants to give us, what it can make and sell in volume for the cheapest price. Politicians bemoan the passing of community. Well perhaps it’s because the ‘personal’ in our society seems to have been erased. Less local shops, less specialist shops, less individual town centres. All replaced by ‘what the public want.’ All our town centres, all our shopping arcades look the same. Yet in our villages and towns and suburbs there is a lot of community. Community support; community involvement; community concern. It’s just that often it is not noticed or listened to or paid heed of. It’s not in a survey. In Psalm 139 we read of a God who knows us as individuals, because he made us, from the very beginning. It is a God who knows where we are and wants to be with us, to be near us. That God loves each one of us so much that when we got lost and wandered off he sent his Son to come and find us, no matter what the cost. Each one of us can get lost, get distanced from God in our own way, and God will find us. For each of us there is a way back, a way home. I am a member of the public, I am me, I am not a number, I am an individual. Now altogether repeat after me “I AM AN INDIVIDUAL.” Of course you are – just don’t say it in a survey.
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