The Global Futility Index

As we South Africans gaze into our navels contemplating how unhappy we seem to be regarded by yet another pointless study/survey, we now appear to have one more thing to ponder - the country doesn't seem to be as peaceful as it was in the past. SA is ranked 127th on what's called a Global Peace Index, drawn up by some grouping called the Institute for Economics and (cue: drum roll) Peace. If the organisation is to be believed and taken seriously, the nation has dropped 29 places from 98 in 2007. Yet this same 'study' reckons regions such as the Middle East have shown improvements in 'levels of overall peacefulness'. By 'overall' I can only assume this refers to a general, gross and possibly naive glossing over of the facts and events of the past 2-years in a region gripped by immovable dictators, fundamentalist terrorisim and swept up into the now cliched Arab Spring. Certain areas of the Middle East, which have been paralysed into a catatonic state of upheaval for decades, remain exactly that, frozen into historical submission, arrested by violence and numbed into helplessness; to a pint where I doubt studies into peace would have any equal standing next to levels of fear and anxiety . You needn't think too hard of examples like Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, to counter the findings of an index which has for years claimed to 'gauge' peace. An ordinary Syrian, marooned in war-ravaged Homs, would have to summon up a guffaw out f his/her war-weary countenance if presented with the findings of this index and its claim that the very same region the study believes is now 'generally more peaceful' is the same one gripped by carnage on par with any conflict seen over the past decade. Should the GPI be declared null and void from the outset? Or should its authors simply be pinched back to reality? It makes for a morbidly amusing read, at the very least, along with the likes of a Global Happiness study. It could prompt some other haphazardly thrown together organisation to start working on the something like the Worldwide Nosepicking Index or a Global Coughing Study. I recall a research labelled the 'Look Alike Study' conducted among married couples to see if they start to resemble each other over time. Then there was the  Curvy Hips study which attempted to gauge the intelligence of women by their waist measurements. All 'scientific' researches, carried out to... well, I can only assume to give people in white coats some respite trying to find a cure for cancer. I propose the Global Futility Index, which can study, gauge, research and ponder the uselessness of studies which seem to mock intelligence and common sense; an index which could take into account how much time is wasted by navel-gazers and pretend-intellectuals who seem to have too much time on their hands and too little tolerance for reality.