Blessed Are The Failures

in life, theirs is the will,
the inheritance if they live long enough,
to see beyond 'success' and survive
the short term visions of other people.

From The Past To The Present, And Into The Future

all for greater ease in building empires
through forever bleeding the life out of spirituality.

To Know Yourself Is To Question Labels

Only 'Out and proud' gay men and lesbians
declare that they 'knew their sexuality since birth'.
I don't how they be so certain,
particularly when they are in such a small minority.
My uncertainty is not from a lack of empathy
with their lives, though I loathe the word lifestyle.
No, my problem is how with their sense of self belief
comes a sense of predestination, a determinism
they have unknowingly stolen, not merely borrowed,
from fundamentalist Christianity,
and from that ancient arch-critic of all sexuality, St Paul.
I accept that we all need surety. But to defend ourselves
by stealing the most brittle and inflexible arguments
of our enemies is to reverse ourselves into the loneliest
and most ignorant of intellectual cul-de-sacs.
Who in their maturity would want to do that?

Power Will Corrupt

-the number of lies we accept from each other confirms this.
But because they are lies we don't know whether they multiply,
in the manner of compound interest, to be transformed into myth.
Or they simply add up until we forget what have said and lived out,
and we forget the people we wear out, whereupon we leave the scene
to burn somebody else out, somewhere else,
and  reinvent ourselves further exhaustion.

Listening vs Talking

When Robin Williams died I said nothing.
I had nothing to add to the miasma of media comment,
or the recycled quips and quotes that poured forth
for further recycling, until they lost all their value.
I will say here what I say when I hear news of 'peace talks',
the recognition of the need for which is battered proof of discord.
Whether the subject is communal disagreement
or personal depression everyone says 'We should talk more'.
But I say we should talk less, and learn to listen better.
Listening well rarely does anyone harm and improves life. 

Conflict Is Us

I was all of sixteen when for the only time ever
I asked a teacher of religious studies
about the conflict between Darwinism
and Creationism. Like you would expect
she gave an answer that I can't remember.
And for several quite solid reasons too-
the first and biggest of these was that at the time.
I wanted to be an aggressive youth, to be partisan.
Not that I knew words like that back then.
The second was that I had long been labelled
'a maladjusted child' and I therefore found
being actually listened to very difficult-
I had struggled hard against so many people
doing things for me, in my name without ever
taking the time to listen to who I was
or explain why what they did for themselves
was best for me too, that I was deaf whilst hearing.
Now, finally, I understand the hardest
and most mature reason why Darwinism
and Creationism create such dispute between them
-on differing time scales both advocate a history
where the winners vie to live out their victories
through the remains of those they have vanquished,
whilst shrinking from thinking how soon
their own bones and lives will argued over.

Modern Democracy Is A Form Of Asylum

and all the above are reasons for being accepted as insane enough to want to vote.

If Ever Anyone Thought

that Facebook brought out the least thoughtful
and empathic ideas in the minds of it's users
then maybe they should check out twitter. 

Phyrric Gestures

Is there such a thing as wise militarism?
I have pondered this a lot after hearing about
the wealthiest country in the world [the USA]
training the army of a dirt poor country [Iraq]
in how to use technologically advanced weapons,
weapons which then changed sides as said army
prove disloyal to their government, for being unpaid,
poorly trained and undisciplined.
Their retreat and disbursement
in the face of an admittedly ferocious enemy
is something we only hear about only distantly,
but repeatedly. As a vassal state to the USA
The UK's main response is a discreet military support,
and a well broadcast, but quite late, 'humanitarian aid'
which is sufficient to keep those caught in the conflict
alive, but also keep them far enough away from us
for them to not want to visit us and ask for refuge. 

How Unneccesary Is Our Pain?

Now science is said to know enough
about how human minds work
that pharmacalogical industries
sell us vast arrays of substances
under many names to positively alter our moods.
For all for all of us to take more of, more often.
There is nothing new in the principle of mood alteration. 
That great political orator, William Ewart Gladstone,
fortified himself with laudanum before he gave
important parliamentary speeches and saw it
as natural to him as his habit of going out at night
to befriend attractive young prostitutes,
to persuade them to ply a more virtuous trade.

But today's persuasions by governments
and corporations are different-yes the young
are particularly pursued for their maleability-
but now we are all rendered ever more flexible
and softer of mind  for the benefit of the corporations
who sell us drugs. So that we now appear to be happier
than ever to avoid the darker more internal verities of life.

In A World Of Finite Resources

It is rarely as win-win or well shared out as we'd like to think.

Letter To My Unborn Descendants

The life and times I was reared in were soft
compared with the10,000 years of human history
that ran before me. I lived in a country
where people were not forced to labour
to strive for money. But competition for paid work
induced mental illness in as many as were pushed into work,
and their reward for work was lifelong indebtedness.
Employers seemed to like this process,
though they rarely commented on stress vs reward
as a process, lest they be exposed as hypocrites.
Health treatment was free at the point of access
for many, which meant that probably the greatest number
had the best health for the longest period of time
that any nation state would ever know.
Driven by advertising, this became a license
to eat and drink foodstuffs that would make us ill,
and to become careless with alcohol and recreational drugs.
Worse was the record size of  medicinal drugs bill
-paid for by the state through taxes,
which many corporations avoided paying,
as tax law went prolix beyond measure in trying to be logical.
This combination made as much profit for the drugs companies
as it did for the vendors of unhealthy foods,
and made many wonder what tax was for in a peace time economy.

Billions of people saw fitness as fitness to breed,
with little forethought as to their preparedness
to parent a child to adulthood and then let go of it.
I saw many spread jealousy and unhappiness beyond measure
in their wantonness. I was 'gay', homosexual. For many years
I thought I was the only one of my type that I knew.
I was led to believe I was selfish for not breeding,
and everything I wanted was illegal for me. Later
I learned that there were many men who were like me,
including close relatives, and they/I made a secretive ugliness
out of their homosexuality. If I were truly like them
I would have been secretive about it too. After all
who, if they are vain, wants to know about their ugliness?
Or accept an ugly hubris thrust upon them? I was too modest.
For decades I shrank from the horrors that lived cheek by jowl
within me. I would never have learned to let go of  these horrors
except through the hindsight of a companionship
where daily, over decades, I struggled thousands of times
to find the kind word, thought and deed,
that would lead to more of the same tomorow.
Each time I struggled for the kind moment it cast it's light
on the darkness I had once lived in, as if back then it was all there was.

Do well in letting go of the ugliness in your own desires.

When The Unknown Makes Us Deaf

  and our deafness makes us condemnatory as well.

Optimum Distance For Clarity

When a relationship works well it will surprise us,
particularly as it changes. When in a lasting relationship
we will find that we have to think harder
where it leaves us afresh, when as two people
we find ourselves placed further or nearer
then previous, by circumstance.
The longer united the more than we have
to practice listening, listen harder than when we started.
And with more than two people involved with each other,
long term, the harder it becomes to listen consistently
and to keep thinking 'Forward.... '. 

'For Now We See Through A Glass Darkly.....

.......but  then we shall know, even as we are known.'.

Cold Callers Made Easy

How to stop telesales 
cold callers in their tracks-
when they ask you your name
-which they already know
but out of law and engagement
with you they still need you to confirm-
ask them 'Are you a selling something?'.
Naturally they will say 'No'.
Then before they can say anything more
follow their negative with
'Then I am not who you say that I am'.

When Language Dances

I have never heard or seen
a universal definition of 'common sense'.
Though many have tried many times
to get me see it with them, often with aggression.
I feel I hold few values I hold in common
with others though that may be my sense of time
and self perception. In spite of myself
I still aspire to the words of American philosopher,
William James;-

'Common sense and a sense of humour
are the same thing moving at different speeds.
Laughter is common sense dancing.'

How To Confuse A Contrarian

-offer them exactly what they want
on a plate with no pre-conditions.
The idea of having nothing to quibble over
will take them so much by surprise
that they won't know how to accept it. 

Comfort In Substances?

With the world wide sales in illegal highs
going through the roof
have we gone beyond all final proof
of the accountability of Capitalism?

Powerful opiates are now sold
as mood changers in themselves.
They are not symbols or substitutes
for said opiates, like religion, sport, or advertising,
where the point for those who managed the system
was always that they were symbols or imitations
of human moods which could always be further subordinated
to the power of money, and the imitation of a 'society'
rather the actuality of life-as-substances in themselves.

Or are sales of drugs contrary to worldwide law
merely proof that all written law is designed
to be weak when faced with strong enough appetite? 

The Oldest Cry...

and the phrase least listened to in all our lives, not least by ourselves.

Unknown Unknowns

Captain Mikey Irishman
of no fixed abode, Copenhagen
has taken it upon himself to care
for the corner of his local graveyard
devoted to those who died like he lives,
homeless. Such places of rest are a rarity,
though there is a campaign for more.
The authorities are at a loss to know
what do with his vocation
as he builds small shrines to the absent,
as much as they were at a loss
with residents of that corner
when they were alive.
Perhaps all he wants to be
is an example of thoughtfulness
for that which went unrecognised.   

A True Revolution

cannot be monetari$ed.
It will always resist arrest
and find further paths to follow.

'Compassion

for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character;
and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals
cannot be a good man'-Arthur Schopenhauer

Other Lists Are Available

but whilst it is there take what you need and pass it on.

Died In Inaction

Hemmed in by their own kind,
and orders that their elders and betters
dispatched from very far away,
100 years ago thousands of soldiers
from many countries started dying
in the trenches they were ordered to dig,
themselves, 'for their own protection'
from 'the other side' who were doing the same.
Would it have been better for them to die
for a more active cause, a better future
-even at the hands of their own side-
such as refusing outright to engage
with hollow patriotism, and hierarchies
who did not care how pointless they made life?

Old Shadows

Through depression we attempt
to prove ourselves needlessly guilty,
daily. Until we find our innocence.

Optimism vs Normality

'Only Those who attempt the absurd
will achieve the impossible'-M. C. Escher