Overwritten/Overruled

'Censorship is the sister of dictatorship'-Stephan Zweig

In This Age

of mass public skepticism, collective non-values,
and a small a 'atheism' for the millions to follow,
art is the confession that is without absolution.
The aspiration to redemption that cannot redeem.
The more personal a work it is to the author,
the more they are celebrated and emptied out
by the media in some hollowed public persona,
as they hollow out the society their work represents.

The Scent Of Change?

In Cuba men were to have a new choice
in how to present themselves to the ladies,
though they were not to have it for very long.
Were our own dear leaders, present and past,
offered the chance to have the public
re-scented in their image,
what new kind of spin
would we sharing in
by politicising our olfactory senses?

'Markets' and Marketing

are no more than us thinking
we have bent serendipity to our will.
The more willful we become
the more we delude ourselves.

So That Is Why The News Is So Confused

It makes one almost wish the old dictatorships
were as benign as our media told us they were
when our governments wanted them as allies.

On Family Life

When flesh is heir to flesh, and heir nothing more,
the result is always going to be war.

When Nation States

move like tectonic plates
against each other
it is clear that war's ahead.
Whether via arms or through money,
life is surely going to get cheaper.
The only doubt left is how long
such a choice was in coming.

My Next Book To Read

I will mark, read, and inwardly digest this valuable text.

Disability Awareness

Few people think of Alan Turing,
the inventor of the principles
by which modern computers work,
is having dyslexia.
He is much more famous
for the oppression of his sexuality
and his chosen means of ending it. 
Nonetheless it is true, and still no excuse
for the proliferation of poor spelling on-line.
Though I am sure, had he lived to see it,
he would have been gratified by spellcheck.

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

The picture is of a stained glass window by Laurence Whistler
in the the church of St Nicholas in the Dorset village of Moreton.
The title quote is by St Paul, from 1 Corinthians-chapter 13 vs 12.
 With thanks to here.  

The Outer Life

The constant hype of new electronic
communications devices is about....

1-trying to fix something that is broke,
human communication skills,
the wrong way by increasing the ways,
and the distance at which,
we miscommunicate with each other.

2-fixing something that is not broke,
the technology, by reinforcing status,
which is most constant communication
of fear and insecurity between people.

Beauty And Ruins

often go together very well in human perceptions.

Never more so than when they make the unsustainable life

seem to be so far away that it had nothing to do with us.
 With thanks to here.

Metaphorically Speaking

'a spade is just a spade',
but a word is a digging implement.

Mutuality

When in The Old Testament  it says
that 'A soft answer turneth away wrath',
the wrath that is turned away from
by said response is not just in the one
whose anger is causing another
to retreat from them,
but it is also in the person retreating
who struggles to react calmly,
whilst resisting anger from their past.

Lives, Damned Lives, and Percentages

If for you replace the word 'you' for 'we'
on the first line of this, then we never know 
 how those we live better than actually live.  

Thank You For Not Breeding

Thank you for trying to make your time and space yours,
in so far as the people around you let you be yourself.

Thank you for resisting the desire/acquire/expire
cycle of wants which all Western children go through.
You are probably unaware of how you went through
that particular cycle yourself when you went through it
because your parents acclimatised you to live like them.

Thank you for having more time to think and act
in causes that are altruistic in nature,
though the positive effect of your altruism
may be concerned with  far away interests,
and be a long time in coming to fruition.
Also the good may well not be irreversible in effect.

Thank you for restricting the advent of disease
and illness to yourself, for not breeding more humans
to be the targets for viruses and bugs,
they have more than enough targets at present
and still there is massive human over-breeding.

Thank you for thinking more about mental health.
Most parents don't plan how to raise a child,
and expect their society to plan for them.
Most plans that are hatched are for the gain of the few
and the inept maintenance of the many.
By your abstinence you may have reduced
mental anguish, jealousy in yourself and others,
and reduced the intentional inequality of poor planning.

If the above reasons for being thanked
make a person more spiritual, then fine,
but let thankfulness and application be the aim.

This Stealth Weapon

is the deadliest of them all, it disguises itself 
so well that even alarmists don't recognise it  
 in it's true form until it has overwhelmed them.  

Social Darwinism

does for nature what Calvinism did for Christian theology;
both apply an aggressive determinism to their field of study,
where they multiply the distance between an elite,
a self elect, who think they are 'the chosen'
-predestined to rule through some self given right
to slice and dice other people through superiority over others
-not least through literacy, numeracy and reason.
When really, whether the point is about belief in God
or simply accepting life itself, consciousness will vary.
Autonomy is relative between species and people,
and deeply linked through inter-dependence.
But beyond knowledge there is only life and death.

Stupidity vs Niavety

'The stupid nether forgive nor forget;

the naive forgive and forget;

the wise forgive but never forget'

-Thomas Szasz  from 'The second sin'

The Long Road Away From Myself

started when I was born,
and continued as I was raised
in a family whose order of reward
excluded me and give me no status.
Day by day I have been getting closer
to the home I never knew because of them,
making a virtue of my continued lack of status.

When I reach the grave I will have found it.

Quote Of The Day

And there is an awful lot of it about, nobody is immune.......

Forget The Pen vs The Sword

The truest source of creation, the uterus, was always older
and greater power than it let itself be seen as being,
which is why it is still subject to so much taboo
and fraught discussion. The gun is the cheapest means
 to destruction going and it was always going to be
 the object of the cheapest longest rejoicing.

So This Is What Rules The Planet

Because whatever rules us rules the planet.......

Smoking

will damage your health. With thanks to Vincent Van Gogh 

In The Age When Freedom

means the singular choice to carelessly multiply
in a disposable and amnesiac monoculture
I prefer to have some memory for the past,
and for my sexuality to be well off the Straight
but very much in The Narrow-
for that better tested depth of character.

In Old Age

and isolation, her diary
became her obituary
on her community.

Due To The Advanced Technology

of western societies
the markets for creating stress
at a distance
are looking healthier then ever.

A Good Question

deserves an even better answer.

Movement Is Life

Depression and anger are two ends
of the old snake of unforgiveness,
which whatever our material wealth-
or lack of it-we always keeps moving
between the one mood and the other
with the respite of occasional elations.
Whilst the rest that is longed for, peace,
is always way too late in coming.

From Bullet

to bulletin is a very short journey indeed.

Affection Seems Easiest In Transit

Human beings are simply poor at appreciating each other in mutual stillness.

The War Against Entropy

never ends because we don't know how to stop.
Each new day creates new battle fronts.
The more we try to defend,
the less of what we do is defendable with honour.
The final proof that we don't know ourselves
comes from us not knowing how little
of ourselves is actually worth saving.

Bondage Is Us

In their quieter times, between
slavishly tormenting sinners,
do the fallen angels in Hell
discuss how they fell
into re-enacting
The Stockholm Syndrome
with those they torture ?
Or are human punishments,
and the example of Hell,
mere examples of the will
to punish others reversing
the bondage of the self?

'Jekyll And Hyde' Explanations

of predatory male sexual behavior don't work for me.
I recognise there are many who kid themselves
that consent in sex is cheap, worth taking
more than bargaining over, then the self respect
of other peoples free will is a technicality,
something that it becomes their life's mission
to dodge their way past as part of a wider contrariness.
The more often this strange dodge happens
the easier the avoidance of consent becomes.
These secret sex acts become 'merely' a series
of small thefts of moments of intimacy and trust.
Moments which once gained they must forever
deny having taken-particularly to themselves.
Hence the repetitions of their actions.

The way the media use 'Jekyll and Hyde',
as a cliche for a deeply split nature
further shrinks us from explaining predatoryness,
as if the deeds done came from a dissociation
in depths unique to the offenders character,
beyond everyday comprehension. Dissociation
is actually part of the corporate media agenda.

The Jekyll and Hyde theory goes some way
to opening up old sexual taboos, as if with hindsight
we see how they they were general misrepresentations
of sexuality-as if through language society
always produces some faulty divide between sex
and anger which can only be fathomed by looking back.
Combine taboo with what we know now
about our fight/flight/freeze responses
and this might explain why so many victims
have such delayed reactions in reporting deeds
done against them when they were young.

But nothing absolves any of us
from digging deeper for a clarity that lasts
about the animus that destroys.