What is with this medium, isn't it dead? And if it hasn't got us anywhere, isn't that where we're all going anyway?
I honestly find it bizarre that some people faithfully blog as if they started last month.
The Greatest Wealth is that of All the Species of Life on This Earth. Save it for Ever and Always.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
What can you make someone else do?
What bad can you stop someone from doing?
What good can you start someone doing?
When the bad is the destruction of Nature, its habitats, and its species, and good is the restraint of human greed, where is the pyramid scheme we need to stop the bad and to start the good?
If your words are the only thing you make, but they stop bad and start good, and multiply as quickly as yeast, then do not hide your words.
What good can you start someone doing?
When the bad is the destruction of Nature, its habitats, and its species, and good is the restraint of human greed, where is the pyramid scheme we need to stop the bad and to start the good?
If your words are the only thing you make, but they stop bad and start good, and multiply as quickly as yeast, then do not hide your words.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Paul Kingsnorth in his Uncivilisation of The Dark Mountain Project
What is this Dark Mountain Project that Paul Kingsnorth has escaped to? What are these Uncivilisation festivals that he goes to?
I can understand why he has rejected the 21st century rhetoric of environmentalism. Environmentalism focussed too heavily on climate change, and then built up a huge myth of sustainability economics, which was reduced by the usual Global Human Economic Machine to aim for nothing more than maintaining and increasing the standard of living to which individuals had become accustomed.
Climate change environmentalism destroyed the focus of environmentalism on protection of wildernesses, wild animals, plants. insects, birds, fish , trees, fungi and all living things, most of which were as yet unknown to scientists. Instead the Global Human Economic Machine just rolled on, its juggernaut bulldozing, weedkilling, genetically modifying, depleting and supplanting whatever wild habitats were left on sea and land. While forests burned in Indonesia, Borneo, the Amazon and the Congo, environmentalists got stuck on climate change economics, the counting of greenhouse gas emissions of industrial conglomerates and domestic pedestrians. Siberian forests were raped, Albertan wilderness was scraped clean for tar sands oil and the Australian outback was stripped for iron ore and every mineral that China, India and Brazil needed to become the equals of the USA and Europe. Oceans were sieved by industrial trawlers for their fish, and even as the ice melted at the Poles, the once pristine marine habitats there were claimed by commercial fisheries.
What use is environmentalism if it does not save Nature, let alone restore it? What use was environmentalism when it became like Inspector Clouseau, sent on a wild goose chase while the looters and thieves get away with the murder of Mother Nature?
So it was that while interest faded in Global Warming, even after it was renamed to Climate Change, Paul Kingsnorth was one of the first standard environmental journalists to notice that they were wasting their efforts while Global Ecocide thrived. He withdrew from the fight. He went to the Dark Mountain Project.
Compare this to George Monbiot, another standard environmentalist, whose every beep is based on Climate Change, greenhouse gases, and plain old-fashioned lefty socialism. The man never takes an interest in wilderness, or whales, pandas, or nearly extinct tigers, while he can rant endlessly about the superiority of nuclear power as an energy solution that is free of fossil fuels. Yesterday, he was so disappointed in the newsworthiness of record Arctic Ice sea melt this year, that he announced August 28 was the day the world went mad. That is just ridiculous, because everybody knows that humanity has been mad for years, decades, centuries and millenia. He just can't accept that climate change environmentalism has lost ALL public appeal.
So back to the question, what is Uncivlisation, the Dark Mountain Project, and Paul Kingsnorth's retreat? Its Manifesto explains that civilisation in itself destroys Nature, and Mankind becomes so comfortable with civilisation that it becomes blind to the vulnerability of both its civilisation and the ecosystem on which it depends. Logically, then, it become morally essential to create an alternative to civilisation. Note that there is care taken not to attempt to destroy civilisation, since without any alternative, it will destroy itself. This alternative to civilisation is uncivlisation, and it declares
Okay, Number 1 has probably been true many times in history. So meaningless drivel there.
Number 2 is about rejection of faith in civilization. Painfully obvious.
Number 3 reduces uncivilisation to the realm of story-telling. Why stop there? I can think of many people who can inspire many more ways of being uncivilised.
Number 4 is about creating their own world in stories. Is that all?
Number 5 explains that Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet, and this will be explored through ART. Why not just explore this through LIFE, and not just ART?
Number 6 celebrates writing and art, while ignoring everything else that they consume, i.e. that they cannot produce anything that they consume.
Number 7 Silly.
Number 8 Some message of hope for the sort of people who have to believe that the World is always coming to an End.
Sorry, this is the most rubbish set of 8 principles you could ever set down to lay a basis for Uncivilisation. I cannot understand why Paul Kingsnorth is wasting any time on this. It is the poorest form of escape and a very immoral method of creating Uncivilisation. These people should be running around naked and shitting in the street if they want to inject uncivilisation into the world. The Dark Mountain Project to me is nothing more than another Rubbish Landfill.
I can understand why he has rejected the 21st century rhetoric of environmentalism. Environmentalism focussed too heavily on climate change, and then built up a huge myth of sustainability economics, which was reduced by the usual Global Human Economic Machine to aim for nothing more than maintaining and increasing the standard of living to which individuals had become accustomed.
Climate change environmentalism destroyed the focus of environmentalism on protection of wildernesses, wild animals, plants. insects, birds, fish , trees, fungi and all living things, most of which were as yet unknown to scientists. Instead the Global Human Economic Machine just rolled on, its juggernaut bulldozing, weedkilling, genetically modifying, depleting and supplanting whatever wild habitats were left on sea and land. While forests burned in Indonesia, Borneo, the Amazon and the Congo, environmentalists got stuck on climate change economics, the counting of greenhouse gas emissions of industrial conglomerates and domestic pedestrians. Siberian forests were raped, Albertan wilderness was scraped clean for tar sands oil and the Australian outback was stripped for iron ore and every mineral that China, India and Brazil needed to become the equals of the USA and Europe. Oceans were sieved by industrial trawlers for their fish, and even as the ice melted at the Poles, the once pristine marine habitats there were claimed by commercial fisheries.
What use is environmentalism if it does not save Nature, let alone restore it? What use was environmentalism when it became like Inspector Clouseau, sent on a wild goose chase while the looters and thieves get away with the murder of Mother Nature?
So it was that while interest faded in Global Warming, even after it was renamed to Climate Change, Paul Kingsnorth was one of the first standard environmental journalists to notice that they were wasting their efforts while Global Ecocide thrived. He withdrew from the fight. He went to the Dark Mountain Project.
Compare this to George Monbiot, another standard environmentalist, whose every beep is based on Climate Change, greenhouse gases, and plain old-fashioned lefty socialism. The man never takes an interest in wilderness, or whales, pandas, or nearly extinct tigers, while he can rant endlessly about the superiority of nuclear power as an energy solution that is free of fossil fuels. Yesterday, he was so disappointed in the newsworthiness of record Arctic Ice sea melt this year, that he announced August 28 was the day the world went mad. That is just ridiculous, because everybody knows that humanity has been mad for years, decades, centuries and millenia. He just can't accept that climate change environmentalism has lost ALL public appeal.
So back to the question, what is Uncivlisation, the Dark Mountain Project, and Paul Kingsnorth's retreat? Its Manifesto explains that civilisation in itself destroys Nature, and Mankind becomes so comfortable with civilisation that it becomes blind to the vulnerability of both its civilisation and the ecosystem on which it depends. Logically, then, it become morally essential to create an alternative to civilisation. Note that there is care taken not to attempt to destroy civilisation, since without any alternative, it will destroy itself. This alternative to civilisation is uncivlisation, and it declares
the eight principles of uncivilisation
‘We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.’
- We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
- We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
- We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
- We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
- Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
- We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
- We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
- The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.
Okay, Number 1 has probably been true many times in history. So meaningless drivel there.
Number 2 is about rejection of faith in civilization. Painfully obvious.
Number 3 reduces uncivilisation to the realm of story-telling. Why stop there? I can think of many people who can inspire many more ways of being uncivilised.
Number 4 is about creating their own world in stories. Is that all?
Number 5 explains that Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet, and this will be explored through ART. Why not just explore this through LIFE, and not just ART?
Number 6 celebrates writing and art, while ignoring everything else that they consume, i.e. that they cannot produce anything that they consume.
Number 7 Silly.
Number 8 Some message of hope for the sort of people who have to believe that the World is always coming to an End.
Sorry, this is the most rubbish set of 8 principles you could ever set down to lay a basis for Uncivilisation. I cannot understand why Paul Kingsnorth is wasting any time on this. It is the poorest form of escape and a very immoral method of creating Uncivilisation. These people should be running around naked and shitting in the street if they want to inject uncivilisation into the world. The Dark Mountain Project to me is nothing more than another Rubbish Landfill.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Looking Back
I am here,
but he whom was me has gone
from all my memory
but for these pages.
Deep, deeper, deep down inside
the dim shadow of that spark hides.
A spark once warmed by spring and fuelled by summer,
languishes in this damp cool greyness.
I am not unhappy, but I am not on fire,
and the annual ritual of shining forth
is squeezed between two clouds,
one that rains words on this page
and the other that shies from big skies.
but he whom was me has gone
from all my memory
but for these pages.
Deep, deeper, deep down inside
the dim shadow of that spark hides.
A spark once warmed by spring and fuelled by summer,
languishes in this damp cool greyness.
I am not unhappy, but I am not on fire,
and the annual ritual of shining forth
is squeezed between two clouds,
one that rains words on this page
and the other that shies from big skies.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Paul Kingsnorth Warns You
Paul Kingsnorth wants to warn you about Neogreens who Could Destroy Nature in the name of the Environment. In case you are the sort of greenie or environmentalist who:
@paulkingsnorth I've done hard physical labour. That's why I hate it and am glad that so few others have to do it. Roll on mechanisation!
@paulkingsnorth What? You're serious? You're against mechanisation? Everything must be sweat of the brow? You actually mad or what?
@worstall But it can't have escaped even your attention that industrialisation has led directly to mass extinction and climate change.
- is stuck in the past, and/or
- is following the money, and/or
- was born yesterday, and/or
- doesn't know much.
This is Paul Kingsnorth's greatest article since I noticed him. It is timely. It is overdue. There are too many armchair and activist environmentalists whom are still bogged down in everybody else's Carbon Footprints. They had forgotten Nature, and while they lost sight of it, more of it was turned over to the bidding of Mankind.
What has made Paul a king's thorn in the backside of the Green world is that he believes it probably is too late to avert man-made climate change. I agree with his strategy - the strategy he calls "withdrawal". The juggernaut of the Global Human Economic Machine grows forever larger, whether or not it does so boldly or with the sinister silence of stealth technology. Withdrawal from trying to halt a juggernaut is just as effective as throwing pebbles at it, which is what most greenie environmentalists have been doing for years. Withdraw. Sing, laugh and play, and actively engage in the restoration of nature. It does not matter if economists (whom are torpid useless blobs incapable even of accountancy jobs) criticise Paul Kingsnorth as the leader of the Neopeasantry, as did Tim Worstall. These criticisms have moved onto Twitter, and the ridiculous argument is as follows:
It is bad enough that we have blogging, and television, and radio, and newspapers. The Global Human Economic Machine (GHEM) is now bogged down in piecemeal dialogues enabled by Twitter. When even Monty Don, bless his huge hands, has had to launch a digital entity to protect and enhance his public personality, the pervasiveness of instant yet time-wasting digital communications has to be considered total.
Because of the wetness and bad weather brought on by climate change, there have been few days this summer to hear the birds tweet, but the noise on Twitter has grown louder. There have been so few days suitable for insect flying, that bees and less popular insects are well below their usual numbers. When the sun has come out, so too have all of mankind, in its usual rush to show that it deserves to keep its job/contract, or to pander to the status system of suburban society. Yes, they have been mowing, strimming, hedge and bush cutting in every rare and precious moment when the weather was dry enough for bees to fly. I hate suburbanization. All the world will one day be a contiguous suburb, as barren as the one I know now. And all we have is Twitter to save us from a desert landscape worthy of a Jewish cemetery.
There is a contradiction of being a neo-Luddite. You have to embrace peasant technology such as scything, while maintaining excellence in GHEM high technology, whether it be in global communications, pharmacology, or genetic manipulation. It is obviously an uncomfortably broad spectrum of technology to master, but one where genius is essential. This is not anything that you will learn from the Olympics, now at the crowing and crowning peak of its medalling glorifications. Like the Roman peasants whom used to watch the gladiatorial games, a modern Olympic peasant does not understand his or her future, let alone the planet's future.
Because of the wetness and bad weather brought on by climate change, there have been few days this summer to hear the birds tweet, but the noise on Twitter has grown louder. There have been so few days suitable for insect flying, that bees and less popular insects are well below their usual numbers. When the sun has come out, so too have all of mankind, in its usual rush to show that it deserves to keep its job/contract, or to pander to the status system of suburban society. Yes, they have been mowing, strimming, hedge and bush cutting in every rare and precious moment when the weather was dry enough for bees to fly. I hate suburbanization. All the world will one day be a contiguous suburb, as barren as the one I know now. And all we have is Twitter to save us from a desert landscape worthy of a Jewish cemetery.
There is a contradiction of being a neo-Luddite. You have to embrace peasant technology such as scything, while maintaining excellence in GHEM high technology, whether it be in global communications, pharmacology, or genetic manipulation. It is obviously an uncomfortably broad spectrum of technology to master, but one where genius is essential. This is not anything that you will learn from the Olympics, now at the crowing and crowning peak of its medalling glorifications. Like the Roman peasants whom used to watch the gladiatorial games, a modern Olympic peasant does not understand his or her future, let alone the planet's future.
Friday, June 15, 2012
The economy between China and "The West"
I could also be writing about India, Brazil, and Russia, but each one of them is very different from the other, and China is bigger than any of the others.
Over the last 30 years, what has "The West" been exporting and importing? What has China been exporting and importing?
China gave up a lot of its best farm land to build factories and roads and airports and warehouses. China has become more dependent on the rest of the world for food. China imports more food than it did 30 years ago. China now has factories that make most of the consumer goods on which "The West" depends.
"The West" has been exporting much of this food to China. "The West" has exported its industry, (and the pollution that came out of the industry), to China.
You can see then, that the economy between China and the West has now reached the stage where even people in China are asking themselves, why are we doing this? Why are we polluting our best land, just to sell things to "the West", when now all we get back are Government bonds that are not even printed on paper? Now that we have got our electricity grid, our road network, our transport infrastructure, and all the basic tecnological know-how to go forward by ourselves, why should we get all the dirty work, while in "The West" all they do is grow cheap food for us to buy?
Isn't this why the Euro is collapsing? The Euro is in "The West", and is no better than the US dollar, especially since each one of its countries, Ireland, then Greece then Portugal and now Spain, has been struggling to roll over its government bonds. Even outside the Euro, the UK with its pound sterling is struggling to keep up the pretence at being worth lending money to. Today we have news that the UK trade deficit is still widening.
The only reason why the global economy has not collapsed yet is because the people who play with big sums of money cannot drag themselves out of the casino while they can still win money from all the little people. Meanwhile, everybody pretends that the little people need jobs, and governments and banks invent money to generate new ecomomic activity, even useless nonsense such as Facebook, just so that there are jobs to feed the little people. Surely socialism and communism, where little people were given handouts regardless of whether there were any useful jobs, deserves a look-in again compared with Facebookism.
How does China figure in all this? China is unique, because although it is not a democracy, it has the largest number of intelligent people whose interests are nonetheless protected by the state. Is China going to let this casino keep going, now that all its people can see themselves as the losers, and "The West" as the greedy winners?
It isn't politics. It is common sense. In the history of the World, we have never seen humanity come to this stage. We can only anticipate what happens next.
Over the last 30 years, what has "The West" been exporting and importing? What has China been exporting and importing?
China gave up a lot of its best farm land to build factories and roads and airports and warehouses. China has become more dependent on the rest of the world for food. China imports more food than it did 30 years ago. China now has factories that make most of the consumer goods on which "The West" depends.
"The West" has been exporting much of this food to China. "The West" has exported its industry, (and the pollution that came out of the industry), to China.
You can see then, that the economy between China and the West has now reached the stage where even people in China are asking themselves, why are we doing this? Why are we polluting our best land, just to sell things to "the West", when now all we get back are Government bonds that are not even printed on paper? Now that we have got our electricity grid, our road network, our transport infrastructure, and all the basic tecnological know-how to go forward by ourselves, why should we get all the dirty work, while in "The West" all they do is grow cheap food for us to buy?
Isn't this why the Euro is collapsing? The Euro is in "The West", and is no better than the US dollar, especially since each one of its countries, Ireland, then Greece then Portugal and now Spain, has been struggling to roll over its government bonds. Even outside the Euro, the UK with its pound sterling is struggling to keep up the pretence at being worth lending money to. Today we have news that the UK trade deficit is still widening.
The only reason why the global economy has not collapsed yet is because the people who play with big sums of money cannot drag themselves out of the casino while they can still win money from all the little people. Meanwhile, everybody pretends that the little people need jobs, and governments and banks invent money to generate new ecomomic activity, even useless nonsense such as Facebook, just so that there are jobs to feed the little people. Surely socialism and communism, where little people were given handouts regardless of whether there were any useful jobs, deserves a look-in again compared with Facebookism.
How does China figure in all this? China is unique, because although it is not a democracy, it has the largest number of intelligent people whose interests are nonetheless protected by the state. Is China going to let this casino keep going, now that all its people can see themselves as the losers, and "The West" as the greedy winners?
It isn't politics. It is common sense. In the history of the World, we have never seen humanity come to this stage. We can only anticipate what happens next.
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Genius and the Planet
A long time ago, when this blog was first started, it was given the name "Love and the City" as a means of countering the lovelessness of Western society that was then popularly described by the TV series "Sex and the City". Of course, Western civilization has been extremely loveless at times throughout its history, most recently during the First and Second World Wars, but even during the peaceful times of the late Twentieth Century, the wholesale indulgence in selfish pleasures was actively promoted for its measurable economic spending, until love had become a four-letter word less heard than the word f**k.
When this blog was renamed to its current "Love and the Planet", it reflected the attainment of economic globalization that was plundering vital resources all around the world, without any attention to protecting, caring and nurturing the planet. Love, in case you are one of the billions who do not understand, is about the action of "protecting, caring and nurturing". The primitive emotion that is normally assumed to be love is nothing but the urge to act in this way. The ability to love and the urge to love are two different things.
Now where are we, in 2012? The planet is not being loved much more than 7 years ago. Obsessed with monetary economic issues after the global financial crash of 2007/8, ordinary folk abandoned higher aspirations in a scramble to repair their financial foundations. This has meant that all things green and eco and environmental have slid into an abyss deep into the Marianas trench. Literally, considering that James Cameron, the director of the Avatar, dived down there back in March. Loving the planet has been a lonely, unrewarded, struggle during the past few years, and being alone in the cold and dark at the bottom of the ocean is exactly what it has been like.
Today the entire globe is obsessed with European disintegration, as if Word War 3 had already started and now consists of launching missiles of proper accounting and fiscal probity. Boring. This distraction from vital issues has furthered the destruction of natural environments and habitats in the developing countries, eg the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), by diverting capital investments out of Europe and into anywhere but Europe and the West.
There is no better time than to re-launch this blog as Genius and the Planet. Only genius can restore love to a world such as this has become. There is very little genius about, and it is drowned out by the mediocre minds of blundering wanderers.
When this blog was renamed to its current "Love and the Planet", it reflected the attainment of economic globalization that was plundering vital resources all around the world, without any attention to protecting, caring and nurturing the planet. Love, in case you are one of the billions who do not understand, is about the action of "protecting, caring and nurturing". The primitive emotion that is normally assumed to be love is nothing but the urge to act in this way. The ability to love and the urge to love are two different things.
Now where are we, in 2012? The planet is not being loved much more than 7 years ago. Obsessed with monetary economic issues after the global financial crash of 2007/8, ordinary folk abandoned higher aspirations in a scramble to repair their financial foundations. This has meant that all things green and eco and environmental have slid into an abyss deep into the Marianas trench. Literally, considering that James Cameron, the director of the Avatar, dived down there back in March. Loving the planet has been a lonely, unrewarded, struggle during the past few years, and being alone in the cold and dark at the bottom of the ocean is exactly what it has been like.
Today the entire globe is obsessed with European disintegration, as if Word War 3 had already started and now consists of launching missiles of proper accounting and fiscal probity. Boring. This distraction from vital issues has furthered the destruction of natural environments and habitats in the developing countries, eg the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), by diverting capital investments out of Europe and into anywhere but Europe and the West.
There is no better time than to re-launch this blog as Genius and the Planet. Only genius can restore love to a world such as this has become. There is very little genius about, and it is drowned out by the mediocre minds of blundering wanderers.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Another Dry Spring, Another Drought in Britain
So everyone knows there is a drought in the South-East of Britain. It gets more and more common, although this year they are expecting the worst one since 1976. A hose pipe ban will be coming in soon in most areas, and there is no sign of rain for a long time, which is very obvious if you study the surface pressure forecast maps. The low-pressure, wet weather systems that normally pass through Britain and the Netherlands at this time of year are whizzing over Iceland instead. This means the Arctic gets more warmth and rain, and the Arctic warming and melting is speeding up.
What gets me are the increasing frequency of dry spring seasons. The saying, April showers bring May flowers has so quickly become meaningless. Last year, March AND April were so horribly dry, that farms and people planting seeds in spring had to worry, worry, worry. Then May was full of rain. Seeing that the seasons are different, it still bothers me even though I understand what is happening. Memories of more normal seasons sit there, feeling uneasy when they are not reassured by what they see. In spring this matters the most, because spring is the season that we look forward to while surviving through the dull, dark, depressing, grey winters.
Nobody bangs on about climate change any more. Five years ago, they were shouting about climate disasters. Of course, you assume that when a disaster happens, it appears suddenly, say within a year or two. What we forget is that a disaster can take 30 years to gradually happen. Is it a disaster when it takes so long to unfold? For human beings, whom already have all the knowledge and power they need to control their environment and seize ever more land and sea to bring under their control, 30 years is not a disaster. We are in a disaster now, but the disaster is for other living things, not for human beings. Human beings are adapting, by stealing ever more of the planet from other living things. So the selfish humanists do not worry too much about climate change, if they have enough time to adapt things for human beings. This is sad, but true. When something is true, and all you can do is be sad, then you might as well write about it, for the benefit of posterity? Or you can have a funeral, in your mind, for all the living things that will lose out to human beings during their climate disaster.
What gets me are the increasing frequency of dry spring seasons. The saying, April showers bring May flowers has so quickly become meaningless. Last year, March AND April were so horribly dry, that farms and people planting seeds in spring had to worry, worry, worry. Then May was full of rain. Seeing that the seasons are different, it still bothers me even though I understand what is happening. Memories of more normal seasons sit there, feeling uneasy when they are not reassured by what they see. In spring this matters the most, because spring is the season that we look forward to while surviving through the dull, dark, depressing, grey winters.
Nobody bangs on about climate change any more. Five years ago, they were shouting about climate disasters. Of course, you assume that when a disaster happens, it appears suddenly, say within a year or two. What we forget is that a disaster can take 30 years to gradually happen. Is it a disaster when it takes so long to unfold? For human beings, whom already have all the knowledge and power they need to control their environment and seize ever more land and sea to bring under their control, 30 years is not a disaster. We are in a disaster now, but the disaster is for other living things, not for human beings. Human beings are adapting, by stealing ever more of the planet from other living things. So the selfish humanists do not worry too much about climate change, if they have enough time to adapt things for human beings. This is sad, but true. When something is true, and all you can do is be sad, then you might as well write about it, for the benefit of posterity? Or you can have a funeral, in your mind, for all the living things that will lose out to human beings during their climate disaster.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
All Copped Out
I sidemindedly found on Google an article that so wowed me that I have been inspired to return here.
All Copped Out's posting The Worst is Yet to Come so Bring it ON so amazed me over a week ago, that I have had to return to blogging.
Look at this ....
No jobs are being created (beyond churning) and the old attitudes pervade – we talk of education and training – but seriously go to your local job centre and look what turns up on their machines – take a serious look at how limited many jobs are, requiring few skills and a decent attitude to hygiene and punctuality. There is no structural analysis and yet there is scary talk about making sackings easier – scary not because some shirkers might get the push but because it reeks of indenture to ‘work correctness’. Most of us know to say we are hard workers, relish challenge and so on – but the reality is something else entirely – we’re waiting to win the lottery and escape.Is that utterly superb, or not? I have never seen anybody express this point of view so well that I am humbled. When you've spent the last decade learning the usefulness of humility, being humbled is not an unpleasant shock - it is a joyous surprise.
We have created non-job after non-job whilst degrading the rewards of real hard graft, instead of organising worthwhile work around vast improvements in technology and productivity. And we are about to ‘discover’ this as surely as any of the ‘economic bubbles’ that have been pricked from dotcon to ghost city building. This is being left out of ‘analysis’ and is what will eventually spill onto our streets. Our problem is efficiency in production and waste in neurosis all around it. My students are always visibly shocked by real work seen and heard in factory and mine visits – and look at what happens when the BBC takes our callow youth to do work in the far east. I feel I teach little more than how to idle in bureaucracies in my classrooms..Breathtaking. Why have so few people spoken out on this truth, you wonder? They are busy going along with the system, to keep collecting their salary, to protect their pension, to wait in hope that there is still a dream worth living for when they retire.
We are close now to the shock promised in the last days of my youth – that of computerised expert knowledge catching up with other embodied knowledge in production that has robots doing what was once skilled work. My lectures have long been obsolete, but ‘death by Powerpoint’ continues for now. Accountants continue even though software does a better job – the ‘reason’ in both cases is fraud and being able to sign off (pass) what our VCs or CEOs want. This is OK as long as ‘good times’ eventually roll but they look to have stopped. There is no real market for university graduates and the times in which the off-balance-sheet could be lost in a good year are catching up on us as the ‘holes’ brim over.Here is somebody whom also has seen the Global Human Economic Machine, but never gave it this name. Here is somebody whom independently has seen with their own eyes the world around them. The real world, not a world made up by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, or The Guardian, or The Mail, or even The Sun. Never again do I expect to see such a brilliant blog post, for the likelihood is I will live in disappointment. It is better to live in hope, and the best way to do that is to expect very little.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Going Viral
These young people today all have attention spans of 5 seconds and have eGadgets that make them send and read lots of messages that mean very little.
With all this twitter and facebook nonsense, going viral means that a particular info blob has spread through the web like a virus. This phrase annoys me now. Firstly, because it is getting old. Secondly, because it refers to viruses, and not any other type of life. Finally, because it disturbs me that in this world of buzzing nonsense communication, there are meaningless snippets that undeservedly get instant global distribution.
Going viral is never an accident. What goes viral is entirely determined by those whom know how to spread these things, like the gossipy old women that used to do the job before electronic communications.
With all this twitter and facebook nonsense, going viral means that a particular info blob has spread through the web like a virus. This phrase annoys me now. Firstly, because it is getting old. Secondly, because it refers to viruses, and not any other type of life. Finally, because it disturbs me that in this world of buzzing nonsense communication, there are meaningless snippets that undeservedly get instant global distribution.
Going viral is never an accident. What goes viral is entirely determined by those whom know how to spread these things, like the gossipy old women that used to do the job before electronic communications.
Monday, October 31, 2011
To think, perhaps to resolve
A blog is a blackboard
the world is your classroom
You are the teacher
And you are the main pupil.
There may be other pupils in the classroom.
And unless they put up their hand to ask a question,
Your teacher will never know what they don't know.
the world is your classroom
You are the teacher
And you are the main pupil.
There may be other pupils in the classroom.
And unless they put up their hand to ask a question,
Your teacher will never know what they don't know.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Luddites to the Rescue Against the Global Human Economic Machine
The BBC has a new documentary series, written and directed by Adam Curtis, called All watched over By Machines of Loving Grace/
This series is so brilliant, I feel sorry for people in the USA or anywhere else, whom haven't got to see it yet.
I was so amazed by the first film. The second film has made me realize that I am not the only person in the world protesting against the Global Human Economic Machine, and I am not the only Luddite.
Indeed, David Mitchell, the comedian, is making positive light of Luddite values, which considering that only 5 years ago, Luddites were scorned and laughed out of any discussion, is sensational.
I detect that the world is catching up with reality at last.I suspect that the Global Human Economic Machine will be broken up and sold for scrap metal. What will take its place? It is tempting to think that it would be just Local Human Economic Systems, but this cannot be the absolute case. More likely, various competing Local systems of various sizes will overlap and unpredictably grow and shrink depending on all sorts of factors. In the sense that they will overlap and depend on each other for some of their needs, there will still be a Global Human Economy, but it will be not one machine as it has become - it will be multi-cellular.
This series is so brilliant, I feel sorry for people in the USA or anywhere else, whom haven't got to see it yet.
I was so amazed by the first film. The second film has made me realize that I am not the only person in the world protesting against the Global Human Economic Machine, and I am not the only Luddite.
Indeed, David Mitchell, the comedian, is making positive light of Luddite values, which considering that only 5 years ago, Luddites were scorned and laughed out of any discussion, is sensational.
I detect that the world is catching up with reality at last.I suspect that the Global Human Economic Machine will be broken up and sold for scrap metal. What will take its place? It is tempting to think that it would be just Local Human Economic Systems, but this cannot be the absolute case. More likely, various competing Local systems of various sizes will overlap and unpredictably grow and shrink depending on all sorts of factors. In the sense that they will overlap and depend on each other for some of their needs, there will still be a Global Human Economy, but it will be not one machine as it has become - it will be multi-cellular.
What a horrible year
It seems like it's been such a horrible year, but on reflection, other years have been more truly horrible. Perhaps it seems so horrible because it was intended to be a good year, a much needed good year after so many not-so-good years. Instead of being good, it has been disappointing, with no pleasant surprises.
The weather. I am quite sick of people who think they have to tell you that the weather is not the climate. Whatever. After the coldest winter in over 30 years, (and believe me it was one of the earliest as well), the seasons skipped spring, so that March and April were the hottest and driest in Southern Britain on records. In Eastern England, the hot and dry weather continued all May, so that today they have finally officially announced a drought.
What is the point of living in a northern climate, one that is wet and dark and grey at the least all winter, to arrive into a year without SPRING? There have been a very precious few hours on the few occasional days where it felt like Spring in Britain. The birds and the bees and the bugs all seem to be struggling on, but have not displayed their usual order of appearance or abundance. Nor the weeds or the plant diseases.
Never mind that. It is nearly Mid-Summer, and I feel like I have been cheated of a whole year, because I have been denied a proper Spring. So my own cycle means nothing any more, and not surprisingly, the stinking cold I caught almost two weeks ago confirmed my misery.
All I would like is to have some happy time. The country has been so depressing - if anything, the so-called lefties and socialists have made things worse because of their inability to survive without the ghastly Labour governments that this country has. They seem to forget that the values of life that make them socialist depend on making joy, not misery, and sending jolts of love throughout all the life that they encounter. Because values do not need political parties, there are today Conservatives whom are better socialists than the Labour supporters whom moan and protest their lot.
See the irony in this? Here I am moaning and protesting at my lot, but I am not blaming the Government - I am blaming the people whom are blaming the government. That's too complicated for most people. I could be blaming the current Government, but they still haven't yet earned stern judgement... the last Government still hasn't paid for all the pain that they caused, in the name of staying in power. I still want to vomit at the thought of that horrible ex Prime Minister in the last Government. Not that the Labour Party has yet got a leader that will excuse all its previous sins.
Just think, if you were playing nations like puppets on strings, how important it would have been to have someone as stupid as Gordon Brown running the finances of Britain all those years, and what could have been better to cap it off than to have him as Prime Minister when it was time to change the rules of the game?
It's pointless being clever unless you can gain from it. The majority of people are stupid, and sadly I have placed my bets on them, so my misery is theirs. I only wish moral peace were sufficient consolation for a miserable year.
The weather. I am quite sick of people who think they have to tell you that the weather is not the climate. Whatever. After the coldest winter in over 30 years, (and believe me it was one of the earliest as well), the seasons skipped spring, so that March and April were the hottest and driest in Southern Britain on records. In Eastern England, the hot and dry weather continued all May, so that today they have finally officially announced a drought.
What is the point of living in a northern climate, one that is wet and dark and grey at the least all winter, to arrive into a year without SPRING? There have been a very precious few hours on the few occasional days where it felt like Spring in Britain. The birds and the bees and the bugs all seem to be struggling on, but have not displayed their usual order of appearance or abundance. Nor the weeds or the plant diseases.
Never mind that. It is nearly Mid-Summer, and I feel like I have been cheated of a whole year, because I have been denied a proper Spring. So my own cycle means nothing any more, and not surprisingly, the stinking cold I caught almost two weeks ago confirmed my misery.
All I would like is to have some happy time. The country has been so depressing - if anything, the so-called lefties and socialists have made things worse because of their inability to survive without the ghastly Labour governments that this country has. They seem to forget that the values of life that make them socialist depend on making joy, not misery, and sending jolts of love throughout all the life that they encounter. Because values do not need political parties, there are today Conservatives whom are better socialists than the Labour supporters whom moan and protest their lot.
See the irony in this? Here I am moaning and protesting at my lot, but I am not blaming the Government - I am blaming the people whom are blaming the government. That's too complicated for most people. I could be blaming the current Government, but they still haven't yet earned stern judgement... the last Government still hasn't paid for all the pain that they caused, in the name of staying in power. I still want to vomit at the thought of that horrible ex Prime Minister in the last Government. Not that the Labour Party has yet got a leader that will excuse all its previous sins.
Just think, if you were playing nations like puppets on strings, how important it would have been to have someone as stupid as Gordon Brown running the finances of Britain all those years, and what could have been better to cap it off than to have him as Prime Minister when it was time to change the rules of the game?
It's pointless being clever unless you can gain from it. The majority of people are stupid, and sadly I have placed my bets on them, so my misery is theirs. I only wish moral peace were sufficient consolation for a miserable year.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
My heart
My heart seeks the solace
of an oak wood.
Essex with its lands of history
Life held in the hands of her trees,
Calls to me from my deepest veins.
Why is here not good enough?
It is empty, cold and grey
The trees have little to say,
And I will not be of it.
Stubbornly as an ancient oak,
I will not be uprooted, or cut down
And so I would not be moved,
One way or another.
Leave me to love in my oak wood,
And take away if you must only my acorns.
I long for you, oh forests of Epping.
of an oak wood.
Essex with its lands of history
Life held in the hands of her trees,
Calls to me from my deepest veins.
Why is here not good enough?
It is empty, cold and grey
The trees have little to say,
And I will not be of it.
Stubbornly as an ancient oak,
I will not be uprooted, or cut down
And so I would not be moved,
One way or another.
Leave me to love in my oak wood,
And take away if you must only my acorns.
I long for you, oh forests of Epping.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
To be inspired by those about me
I wish for inspiration
From those about me
Not by seeking others electronically.
For what is localism, if not this?
Yet it is so much easier to look about me
and find weirdoes
and not those whom are inspirational.
As clouds block the sun, so this seems true.
From those about me
Not by seeking others electronically.
For what is localism, if not this?
Yet it is so much easier to look about me
and find weirdoes
and not those whom are inspirational.
As clouds block the sun, so this seems true.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
People who Fear Greens and Environmentalists
You are about to get one of my cutting analyses.
In the last few years, all we've heard about is the clash between, for example, climate change believers and climate change deniers. I've always thought that this clash was a complete waste of time.
So why am I turning my brain onto analysing this today? I have noticed in the general street population over the last few years something that has gone unmentioned. There are a lot of people who have developed a fear and even hatred of all people who express green and environmental sensibilities. Unbelievable? How can a bunch of hippies, day-dreamers, and sad little scientists be feared and hated? Why have the George Monbiot's been drawn into quarrelling endlessly with the Green-Haters?
Well whom does a drug addict fear and hate the most? Priests, imams, rabbis etc. Drug addicts fear them even more than they fear the police and judges.
So the drug we are talking about is resource (be it oil, habitat, coal, nuclear fuel, mining extraction) extravagance. Yes, RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE is the DRUG. The priests and the apostles have been the environmentalists and scientists and nature-lovers.
There has been inculcated down into the bottom levels of Western and Westernized (including Japan,China and India) economies THIS. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE IS YOUR RIGHT. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE IS YOUR PLEASURE. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE DEFINES YOUR STATUS. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN LOVE, WATER, AND FOOD.
The only group of people who challenge the addiction to Resource Extravagance have been environmentalists, nature-lovers and ecological scientists. Indeed, even many of these people have been guilty of using THE DRUG.
What amazes me is that this drug addiction has pervaded into society so deeply, that even twelve year old CHILDREN are expressing the fear of having their drug withdrawn. I suppose if you have children, you are not amazed at all, but as I don't have children, this horrible fact has only just hit home to me.
Drug addiction by one third of the planet's population, being fought by a only few of those more enlightened drug addicts.
This is the challenge of 2011. It is not dispelling ignorance of climate change or ecosystem issues. It is dealing with addiction.
In the last few years, all we've heard about is the clash between, for example, climate change believers and climate change deniers. I've always thought that this clash was a complete waste of time.
So why am I turning my brain onto analysing this today? I have noticed in the general street population over the last few years something that has gone unmentioned. There are a lot of people who have developed a fear and even hatred of all people who express green and environmental sensibilities. Unbelievable? How can a bunch of hippies, day-dreamers, and sad little scientists be feared and hated? Why have the George Monbiot's been drawn into quarrelling endlessly with the Green-Haters?
Well whom does a drug addict fear and hate the most? Priests, imams, rabbis etc. Drug addicts fear them even more than they fear the police and judges.
So the drug we are talking about is resource (be it oil, habitat, coal, nuclear fuel, mining extraction) extravagance. Yes, RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE is the DRUG. The priests and the apostles have been the environmentalists and scientists and nature-lovers.
There has been inculcated down into the bottom levels of Western and Westernized (including Japan,China and India) economies THIS. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE IS YOUR RIGHT. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE IS YOUR PLEASURE. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE DEFINES YOUR STATUS. RESOURCE EXTRAVAGANCE IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN LOVE, WATER, AND FOOD.
The only group of people who challenge the addiction to Resource Extravagance have been environmentalists, nature-lovers and ecological scientists. Indeed, even many of these people have been guilty of using THE DRUG.
What amazes me is that this drug addiction has pervaded into society so deeply, that even twelve year old CHILDREN are expressing the fear of having their drug withdrawn. I suppose if you have children, you are not amazed at all, but as I don't have children, this horrible fact has only just hit home to me.
Drug addiction by one third of the planet's population, being fought by a only few of those more enlightened drug addicts.
This is the challenge of 2011. It is not dispelling ignorance of climate change or ecosystem issues. It is dealing with addiction.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
What is a Chav, Part 2
Gosh, after the last post I can't stop. There is a volcano inside me ready to spew about the United Chavdom of Britain.
- a Chav is somebody whom gave up on religion one or more generations ago, yet has not replaced it with anything other than going shopping, seeing gigs and sports games, watching TV etc.
- a Chav is somebody whom doesn't understand atheism or religion in the evolution of Mankind, yet abides by the first and spurns the second.
- a Chav is somebody whom eats his or her way through the glut of food that is delivered to the Western Economies.
- a Chav is somebody whom starts doing things because of peer pressure, and will not stop doing these things until peer pressure stops them.
- a Chav is somebody whom cannot eat food that has not been wrapped in plastic and put on a supermarket shelf.
- a Chav is somebody whom will buy a can or plastic bottle of Coke or Someother Shit instead of drinking tap water or eating a cucumber or watermelon.
- a Chav is somebody whom thinks they are classy because they get their hair dressed, yet their brain is gungy and grimy with mud and rags.
- a Chav will happily pay £3.00 for a pint of crap tasteless lager, but refuse to pay £0.80 for a pint of fresh organic milk.
- a Chav will cover his front garden with concrete just so that he can park his or her car as close to his testicles or her vagina.
- a Chav will go to a fitness centre and work out to have big muscles and firm tits, but refuse to be seen using a spade for anything other than weaponry.
- a Chav will buy a newspaper and look at the pictures and read the words slowly, and then think that there is nothing else that he or she has to learn.
-
- a Chav is somebody whom gave up on religion one or more generations ago, yet has not replaced it with anything other than going shopping, seeing gigs and sports games, watching TV etc.
- a Chav is somebody whom doesn't understand atheism or religion in the evolution of Mankind, yet abides by the first and spurns the second.
- a Chav is somebody whom eats his or her way through the glut of food that is delivered to the Western Economies.
- a Chav is somebody whom starts doing things because of peer pressure, and will not stop doing these things until peer pressure stops them.
- a Chav is somebody whom cannot eat food that has not been wrapped in plastic and put on a supermarket shelf.
- a Chav is somebody whom will buy a can or plastic bottle of Coke or Someother Shit instead of drinking tap water or eating a cucumber or watermelon.
- a Chav is somebody whom thinks they are classy because they get their hair dressed, yet their brain is gungy and grimy with mud and rags.
- a Chav will happily pay £3.00 for a pint of crap tasteless lager, but refuse to pay £0.80 for a pint of fresh organic milk.
- a Chav will cover his front garden with concrete just so that he can park his or her car as close to his testicles or her vagina.
- a Chav will go to a fitness centre and work out to have big muscles and firm tits, but refuse to be seen using a spade for anything other than weaponry.
- a Chav will buy a newspaper and look at the pictures and read the words slowly, and then think that there is nothing else that he or she has to learn.
-
The Soup of British Chav
Look at them. Driving their cars in their bathrobes. Yes, those towelling robes that are also called dressing gowns. They wear them all day long, then venture out in the garden and then into their cars to run down to the shops to buy milk or fags.
Unbelievable? No, this is Britain today. I wonder what people in what used to be the British empire would think of this.
You see, the British Chav only really became widely described from 2003. Now in 2011, Chav culture is endemic and mainstream. What is a Chav? It was and still is, a person who has perverse notions of what is social aspiration. A Chav is somebody who would say "fuck" a lot, but seldom has good sex, let alone aspires to divine love-making. A Chav can come from any class, whereas the socialists think it is only used to label people of working-class descent.
A Chav believes that you are nobody unless you own lots of cars, and drive them as much as you can. A Chav does not know where his bread comes from - he or she drives to the Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Iceland or Co-Op supermarket and buys bread, but does not understand or care how the bread got there. A Chav admires sports celebrities, and dreams of being just like one. Chavs watch games and get excited and distraught about their successes and failures, but have not actually played any of those games for years. Indeed, the Chav has not walked more than 200 yards at any time in the last ten years, simply because the Chav has a CAR.
You see the Chavs driving in 4x4s, parking in the disabled bays at supermarkets, talking on their mobile phones while driving with one hand (this is ILLEGAL in Britain). Chavs throw away good, still-useable things as if they believe that more new things will arrive on a container ship from China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and India. Chavs moan about the price of petrol for their cars, and claim that they NEED their cars to go to work, but they NEVER think about (let alone try) moving closer to their job. Chavs throw their rubbish (sometimes toxic) on the roads, out of their cars, into their gardens, into the public parks and wilderness areas.
Why do I go on? I can't. They dominate in a democracy, and that is that. Chavdom has had its momentary attraction (which is sexual, because it pretends to be exclusive of love or care) to all walks of life, but its persistence in British culture is a pervasive vulgarity that cannot be disguised by a royal family's pomp and splendour, currently being hyped to North America and everywhere else because of the queen's grandson's dreary wedding.
Unbelievable? No, this is Britain today. I wonder what people in what used to be the British empire would think of this.
You see, the British Chav only really became widely described from 2003. Now in 2011, Chav culture is endemic and mainstream. What is a Chav? It was and still is, a person who has perverse notions of what is social aspiration. A Chav is somebody who would say "fuck" a lot, but seldom has good sex, let alone aspires to divine love-making. A Chav can come from any class, whereas the socialists think it is only used to label people of working-class descent.
A Chav believes that you are nobody unless you own lots of cars, and drive them as much as you can. A Chav does not know where his bread comes from - he or she drives to the Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Iceland or Co-Op supermarket and buys bread, but does not understand or care how the bread got there. A Chav admires sports celebrities, and dreams of being just like one. Chavs watch games and get excited and distraught about their successes and failures, but have not actually played any of those games for years. Indeed, the Chav has not walked more than 200 yards at any time in the last ten years, simply because the Chav has a CAR.
You see the Chavs driving in 4x4s, parking in the disabled bays at supermarkets, talking on their mobile phones while driving with one hand (this is ILLEGAL in Britain). Chavs throw away good, still-useable things as if they believe that more new things will arrive on a container ship from China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and India. Chavs moan about the price of petrol for their cars, and claim that they NEED their cars to go to work, but they NEVER think about (let alone try) moving closer to their job. Chavs throw their rubbish (sometimes toxic) on the roads, out of their cars, into their gardens, into the public parks and wilderness areas.
Why do I go on? I can't. They dominate in a democracy, and that is that. Chavdom has had its momentary attraction (which is sexual, because it pretends to be exclusive of love or care) to all walks of life, but its persistence in British culture is a pervasive vulgarity that cannot be disguised by a royal family's pomp and splendour, currently being hyped to North America and everywhere else because of the queen's grandson's dreary wedding.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Watching the Disillusionment of Loved Ones
There is something profoundly sad about watching the disillusionment of one that we love. The sadness is perhaps proof that we still love them. Disillusionment is nowadays called "Reality check", thanks to the Seventies hippie generation.
That we may have been partly responsible for sustaining their deluded state;
that we may have loved them because we wished to share their deluded state;
that we were unable to find for them a gentler let-down when the disillusionment finally came;
that we have to SHARE the let-down itself.
These are facts known to any intelligent mother, whom has had to grapple with the "Is there really a Santa Claus, Mum?" So Child would never have enjoyed the illusion that Santa Claus existed, but for Mum. Mum would never have loved the Child so much if they never believed what did not exist. Mum later tries to tell Child that Santa Claus does not exist, but cannot find an easy way. Mum feels pain when Child eventually discovers that Santa Claus does not exist, and both their whole frames of being are knocked down.
So it is sad. That's life. An endless string of illusions clutched, each followed by grasping at the harsh brutal truth. As I believe I have always tried to seek the truth, I feel particularly qualified to say that the truth is like the multiverse of universes. When you have uncovered one, so you find you are buried deep within another one that you yet do not understand. So too do I feel qualified to say that there is no pride to be gained, from understanding more universes than the next man.
Yet I want to be sad.
For spring here, faltering,
does not smell the same
As where I left.
I am homesick for a place that I lived in and loved for so long, but whose ruin I could no longer bear to watch.
Funny that, as if I hadn't seen most of it ruined, that I should have been so bothered. Perhaps disillusionment sometimes is the wrong diagnosis.
Perhaps realities change, and we are belittled by our powerlessness to halt the change.
So here in Britain, we wait for spring. There are daffodils out now, and crocuses, but none of the trees are springing into leaf. Nights are still cold, and nothing much is growing fast, even when we have a sunny warmish day.
Today is Budget Day. As if I care. All the farting economists in the world could be piled into a gas oven and it set alight, and I would not be any happier.
I call the world the Planet.
The Planet is too big for me to hold.
Its billions of people are too many for me to scold.
Its development is too much a horror for me to behold.
Thank God we die when we grow old.
That we may have been partly responsible for sustaining their deluded state;
that we may have loved them because we wished to share their deluded state;
that we were unable to find for them a gentler let-down when the disillusionment finally came;
that we have to SHARE the let-down itself.
These are facts known to any intelligent mother, whom has had to grapple with the "Is there really a Santa Claus, Mum?" So Child would never have enjoyed the illusion that Santa Claus existed, but for Mum. Mum would never have loved the Child so much if they never believed what did not exist. Mum later tries to tell Child that Santa Claus does not exist, but cannot find an easy way. Mum feels pain when Child eventually discovers that Santa Claus does not exist, and both their whole frames of being are knocked down.
So it is sad. That's life. An endless string of illusions clutched, each followed by grasping at the harsh brutal truth. As I believe I have always tried to seek the truth, I feel particularly qualified to say that the truth is like the multiverse of universes. When you have uncovered one, so you find you are buried deep within another one that you yet do not understand. So too do I feel qualified to say that there is no pride to be gained, from understanding more universes than the next man.
Yet I want to be sad.
For spring here, faltering,
does not smell the same
As where I left.
I am homesick for a place that I lived in and loved for so long, but whose ruin I could no longer bear to watch.
Funny that, as if I hadn't seen most of it ruined, that I should have been so bothered. Perhaps disillusionment sometimes is the wrong diagnosis.
Perhaps realities change, and we are belittled by our powerlessness to halt the change.
So here in Britain, we wait for spring. There are daffodils out now, and crocuses, but none of the trees are springing into leaf. Nights are still cold, and nothing much is growing fast, even when we have a sunny warmish day.
Today is Budget Day. As if I care. All the farting economists in the world could be piled into a gas oven and it set alight, and I would not be any happier.
I call the world the Planet.
The Planet is too big for me to hold.
Its billions of people are too many for me to scold.
Its development is too much a horror for me to behold.
Thank God we die when we grow old.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Questioning the Philosophy of Self-Doubt
A few days ago I questioned the Philosophy of Self-Belief. With the following conclusion ..
Well, to be fair, and to be rational, I must treat its opposite : the Philosophy of Self-Doubt.
{Why do we need to doubt ourselves?}
or {Why do we need to be doubted by others?}
=> Why do we Need to be Doubted?
(The symbol => is the mathematical one for "implies")
Why indeed. We all know people who only rise up to a task when everybody doubts that they can. It's the challenge of proving people wrong that gives them extra impetus.
For ourselves, when we doubt ourselves, and then we master our doubts and rise up to the challenge, we feel even better for ourselves, don't we?
But is this just playing games? If you have a task, why should it be necessary to play the following game...
I doubt myself.
I refuse to accept that I can't do it.
I shall prove myself right that I can do it, while proving myself wrong that I can't do it.
What a waste of energy all this game playing is. Like playing football instead of farming.
And there, in the last line, there is a big hint of more...
"I shall prove myself."
Self-Belief, Self-Doubt, Self-Proof.
Are these good games to play as motivations to do a task? There should be enough motivation from the need or desire to do a task, without having to throw in motivational games of Self-Belief, Self-Doubt, and Self-Proof. I am probably mistaken, but this is what I think the Methodists did. Get rid of the game-playing, and get on with the work, either because you need to do it, or because you WANT to do it.
I therefore suggest that it is a lie that we must believe in ourselves, or that we are helped by others whom believe in us. This lie is purely to sustain lies upon which our lives are built
Well, to be fair, and to be rational, I must treat its opposite : the Philosophy of Self-Doubt.
{Why do we need to doubt ourselves?}
or {Why do we need to be doubted by others?}
=> Why do we Need to be Doubted?
(The symbol => is the mathematical one for "implies")
Why indeed. We all know people who only rise up to a task when everybody doubts that they can. It's the challenge of proving people wrong that gives them extra impetus.
For ourselves, when we doubt ourselves, and then we master our doubts and rise up to the challenge, we feel even better for ourselves, don't we?
But is this just playing games? If you have a task, why should it be necessary to play the following game...
I doubt myself.
I refuse to accept that I can't do it.
I shall prove myself right that I can do it, while proving myself wrong that I can't do it.
What a waste of energy all this game playing is. Like playing football instead of farming.
And there, in the last line, there is a big hint of more...
"I shall prove myself."
Self-Belief, Self-Doubt, Self-Proof.
Are these good games to play as motivations to do a task? There should be enough motivation from the need or desire to do a task, without having to throw in motivational games of Self-Belief, Self-Doubt, and Self-Proof. I am probably mistaken, but this is what I think the Methodists did. Get rid of the game-playing, and get on with the work, either because you need to do it, or because you WANT to do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)