Compound Self Interest

When I was a child my helpers
(who were always bigger than me)
hid how they helped themselves
much more than they were helping me.

It took a long time after their help ended
for me to see that I was no better off,
than if they had abandoned me earlier.
It was a relief, and cause for grief,
for me recognise that their gain was my loss
when it wasoall over, and I was on my own.

When I experienced this compound self interest
I saw them as the poor trying to make being poor
better for the people around them, as if poverrty
was all their was to be had and it was best shared
to make it seem like a generosity made to be extended.

How poor do the poor have to be to choose
to not see other people as sheep fit to be fleeced?
All I know is that I should be to write selflessly.
For as much such as I write, what I hope that I lack
that sort of self that compounds it's own self interest.

Uncertainty Is Us

Many people reading this and following
the 'doom and gloom' newspaper headlines
which foretell of failed negotations prompting
the end of the world will remember the plot
of the black comedy, filmed in 1964 by Stanley Kubrick,
'Dr Strangelove (or how I learned to love the bomb)',
in which, by a series high level miscommunications
military planes that could not be contacted in flight
were carrying bombs that the isolated pilots rejoiced
in preparing to drop. The film ends with one of the pilots
in a fit of glee pushing himself towards insanity,
with their finger on the button to release the bombs.... 

That film was made over sixty years ago,
before several international agreements
of 'no first strike', that also set limits
on further increases in re-armaments
upheld the cold war detente
that kept the world far enough
from to the edge of fearing
world-wide disintegration.

With diplomacy now being
world leader shouting at world leader
each going through their national media,
uncertainty across the world is now the norm.

The World Wars Fought Through Books

One of the habits common to the many dictators
since Hitler dictated 'Mein Kampf' to Rudoph Hess,
when both shared a prison cell in 1923, is that those
who by sleight of hand enrich themselves, their friends,
and their clan whilst upending the democratic process,
is that they have to have a blueprint for why to take power,
something to inspire their populism, to start off with.

The great leader has to write and publish a book,
if not several, by which their followers can hang on
to the leader's every word. To keep up with the leader
for as long as he remains in his irrestistable ascent.

When the Christian Nationalist Victor Orban
was recently voted out of office I dared to ask 
'How many books has Victor Orban written?'
And lo! In 2021 his chief adviser, Balázs Orbán, 
wrote 'The Hungarian Way of Strategy', incuding 
Vicotr's conrtributions. Also here is one Victor's speeches.

I knew little about Hungarian politics, and less
about Hungarian book publishing, even in translation.
What surprised me was what happened in the 21st century
whicb  could not have happened in Nazi Germany,
the opposiiton to Victor Orban that rose through
the industry of writing and publishing books.

There commentaries on Orban's rise to power
and how it changed his view of how to govern,
manage the opposition, and use the platform
on the world stage that his presidency gave him
gave commentators of all political shades
ammunition against each him, and each other,
leaving Hungarians plenty to read and comment on.

If Victor Orban leaves his government office
and makes the tranfer of power clean and peaceable
I will admire him for that. But I reject that Christianity
is the same as Christian Nationalism. And I expect
that given how Orban is a lawyer who became wealthy
through his presidency, he knows he will be accused
of corruption whilst in office from the moment he leaves it.

The many books the oppsition to him have written
will bear witness to how he tipped the scales of justice
in his favour, when he thought he could not be watched. 

    

The Power Of Reading

I was in my early twenties when
I first had fantasies of being a monk,
little realising how much my family
made such a fantasy attractive
whilst cutting off the possibility
of any such idea of a life.

I read many books, much to my family
disapproval: they watched a lot of television,
where I preferred to consume music instead. 
Televison was controlled by the government,
and the provisions of  the family life I knew
bore all the echoes of life under the duress
of rationing, whilst with the music that I found,
the albums for sale in junk shops and woolworths,
there may well have been  and absence of thought
but I saw less sign of externally applied limitation.
.
It was through one of the books my family disliked
that I read about the three knots on the waist ropes 
that Franciscan monks tied their tunics with,
and about the simple elegance of understanding
of what each knot meant in relation to the vows
the monks took to a maintian a singular dedication.

In fhe days of cloth hankerchiefs
it was common to tie a knot in one corner
of the square to remind the owner of something
that was meant to be remembered, later. 

So it was with the three knots in a monks
waist ropes, the first was to remind the wearer
of their comitment to celibacy, the second
to remind the wearer of their promise to poverty
and the third know to remind the wearer
of their commitmen to humility through service.

As a summary reponce to the temptations
that the world offered how the reminder
was built into their clothing appealed to me.
The title of the book that explained all this
was, quite simply, 'Money Sex and Power'. 

The book remains in print, and has its place
in social media where it is still read today.
The author, Richard Foster, cut through
many unecessary arguments for the reader
with his logical explanations for how
presentations of money sex and power
can be simplified, to improve how life is understood.

Although Christian in intent,
atheists can adapt Foster's logic
to resist the pressure of certain
sales pitchs, when they want to.    

Photo Of The Day - The Jaguarandi (Herpailurus Yagouaroundi)

Jaguarandi (Herpaillurus yagouaroundi.
This species is highly adaptable, this low-slung feline
inhabits many different envronments, from southern North America
through to Central and South America. It is also known as the Otter Cat
for it's uncanny likeness to the otter. The Jaguarandi is a very vocal species
This cat thriteen distinct calls from purring to a whistling and chattering
It lives on a variety of prey including small mammals ranging from
armadillos, birds and even fish.

Photo: Deograndi, istock
Credit: American Museum of Natural History   

 

The Grace Of Slaves

Slavery is an ancient and evolving economic system,
that every empire in history has made itself great on.
Systems of slavery are about money, power, and markets
-how else were domestic slaves to be acquired and sold?
Nowadays slavery is perpetuated by theft of the person
through the already diminished civil liberties of those
about to become enslaved: The levels of domedtic slavery
are the measure of the inequality, within any given society.
In ancient times, with domestic slavery, the proximity of slave
to owner within the same dwelling made many masters
who thought well of themselves think well of thier servant,
whom they had to trust when the task was important enough.   

Industrial slavery, like the trade in slaves as commodities
from the sixteenth century onward by European countries
was spectacularly amoral in robbing the slaves of the names
their tribe gave them, as slavemasters sold them on.
By then slaves were a currency to be sold and bought
by the masters of the slave trade who set the calendar 
slaves lived by, and printed Bibles for mission societies
to give to the slaves who could read that made the slaves
even more submissive, because with what they read
what they did not know was that their Bible had been edited
to remove from it any section that made rebellion from slavery
part of human history. Finally slave owner were responcible
for making thier slaves have sex and breed to create more owned
human beings, whilst upholding the superiority of having a white skin
also having coercive sex with slaves which perpetuated the paradoxical position
of creating many children where the colour of their skin varied awayt from white,
thus multiplying between white people the shame and fear of misceganation.

All this and much more could be filed under the confusion St Paul
admitted to where in Romans he wrote 'I do not understand what I do/
For what I want to do I do not do/but [I do] what I hate I do',
where he was writing about sin, not about the hubris of slavery
or the history of sorely mistaken race relations, through which,
still we seek some enobling grace by which to live beyond conflict.

The War On Hope

I was not there when 'freedom of speech',
always an uncertain and incomplete ideal 
slowly became monetised, a licence to hate.
Where media balance went out the window.
And the most cohesive communities were built
on cycles of delusion and disappointment.

But here we are, in the latest war on hope,
hoping that whoever loses will be there
to start another war on hope, many wars later.