Absurdity Inc

Why do so many humans join clubs,
form parties, and create factions?
It can't just be the (limited) affirmation,
or mutuality in appreciation.

Nor can money be enough of a reason.

The more popular the cause is,
the poorer the explanation for it's appeal
and the less good in the world any club can do
whilst being accepted as the acme of virtue.

Life IsTime

measured by the processing of ideas
and materials, sometimes long after
the actions in which they were built.

Those who process will, themselves,
be processed by those who have yet to come.

The stiller the life then the richer the life,
because of the depth of the stillness,
the more the process seems complete.

Those who no longer reap nor sow,
nor are reaped nor sown any further
in all the cycles of life, live far better
than all the noisy and busy bodies
in the world dare believe.    

Clean Elites

When Lyndon B. Johnson said
of F.B.I. head, J. Edgar Hoover

'It's probably better to have him in the tent,
and pissing out, than outside of the tent pissing in',

Johnson was merely making sure
that Hoover's piss
landed anywhere except on him
or on his supporters.....
  

Every Society Has It's Own Diseases

And the wealthier the society
the more it's disease 
is gratification through ease
-making everything seem instant.

A secondary symptom
of this condition
is high levels of detachment.

Signs Of Greater Age (41)

1-reading with envy in today's music press
that tickets to see The Grateful Dead
in London forty five years ago, 1972,
cost a trifling £1 and wondering...
What happened the price of legendary live music?

2-Getting leaflets for stair lifts for the elderly
through your letter box, and wondering.
which of your friends could do with one most,
were they rich enough to be able to afford it.

3-Come the latest election preferring humour
over genuine news from the campaign trail.
There is a leavening with the laughter of recognition
that no serious politician can get anywhere near,
an acceptance of the absurdity of the human condition.   

Artificial Obedience

Intelligence is neither natural nor artificial,
and machines are only ever machines.

But as humans we form ranks and grades
with each other sufficient to create histories
-unreliable narratives of past words and deeds.

Always the few reduce the intelligence
of many by making the many repeat tasks
that stop thought, particularly the thought of refusal.

So even if such a thing as artificial intelligence
was real it is never as real as the artificial obedience,
and artifice of deference, that we build societies with.  

Double Vision

Benjamin Franklin is the person most credited
with the invention of bi-focal glasses,
the better to both see clearer at a distance
and read legal and social texts close up.

Was this his greatest gift to the presidents
who followed him? A way of losing the focus
in their political vision, from their prescription
needing renewal. This unclear view of society
was what enabled them to pursue legal arguments
with pin sharp logic with which to perpetuate
the inferior status of non-whites and immigrants.

The clearest vision was always for the few
and they were best expressed with economy,
the better to avoid the broader implications.

Those who read and wrote most
were The Few who owned everything,
particularly the deeds of the state
on which all ownership was based
which they read with the close part
of their bifocal lenses, whilst being blind
to the bigger world around them.

Im/maturity

Being asked to 'Put away childish things'
is no more about losing our playfulness
than it is about become utterly serious.

It is about a person being grown,
rather still growing, unknowing
what they have yet to grow into.... 

Irritated By Bitter Nothings

The popular press
has always had to pay for itself,
and has never done better
than goading the reader
to keep on reading for more irritation.

The more the reader reads
the more they pay more to read,
the better to make them more annoyed...

Thus the papers meet
their real reason for being-
raising revenue from advertising.

Given a choice of untruths
to amuse the populous with
the press have to care
about which lies to tell,
that they are not seen to irritate
whilst doing exactly that.

This is one of many examples
of the counter-intuitive logic
through which modern capital
keeps it's grip
amid our 'freedom of choice'.

Unexpected Warmth

Grace in life is a matter of the cut of your coat
being better and far more enduring
than you ever predicted it would be,
given the materials it was cut from.

Inter-species Communications

What dogs think about the humans
who care supposedly care for them
is 'What part of 'Woof!' don't they understand?'. 

Scientific Feminism

For the woman who understands science
a diamond will always be worth more
than then gentlemen who gives them to her.
The diamonds will be older and tougher
than the man who gave them, and will age,
and retain their monetary value, better too.

On War Memorials

the blood of the martyred
lives on in the names of the dead
from every war remembered in history.

And every zombie nation state
will draw new life from those names
when they are repeated out loud,
because the state always needs refreshment.

Orwellian Economics

When governments tell their voters
'It is official; the latest recession is over'
generally the polulus know to not trust them.

The only question to ask is 'How many folks
will openly admit they disbelieve the powers that be?',
knowing that the poor accept their relative poverty
and their acceptance remains the base of society,
and nobody knows how to be honest about money.

Cryptomnesia

is the state where we repeat
what we forgot that we knew
in thought, word and deed.
We reseed future our repetitions,
whilst thinking that none of us
have never been there before.

So to whoever is stuck in this state
enjoy your Groundhog Days,
today and every other day,
and still hope that real change
is not faith dressed up as vanity.   

Soil To Soul And Back

All flesh is grass,
which is to say the flesh
is not merely corruptible,
but is at it's most honest
when it turns to dust.

But all flesh is like the leaves and flowers
which grow from the dust of the ground,
regenerating the old soul
via a newer, still corruptible, soil.

Soul goes into soil
which goes into new life
in never ending cycles.

Let each day breathe its own life,
and draw out it's own resurrections.

Weak Magic?

We all know what weak magic is,
and how we all see it in in each other.
It is the script with which
we describe other peoples scriptures
when we disbelieve their beliefs.

But still, the most generous charity
comes from accepting difference.
We all know that our being accepted
connects with how we accept others,
which is also how to reduce our egos.

Foolishness, Folly, And Rarity

Too late many of us discover
that we are the fools
we thought that other people were
and have to mull over
how to limit our foolish nature.

That is when we see that our special gift
to ourselves was to obscure the light
by which we hoped to see,
becoming the source of our own folly.

Only the blind who are honest
about their darkness/blindness
can honestly claim their need for faith
-the better to regain an apt sense of humility.....

The Signs Of A Natural Life

that we consider 'normal' or accptable, are many.
The major signals being not just sentience,
but autonomy among your own kind
and with other species, via a currency
and a community with collective values.

If ever we found such a life
in some technology we'd made
how long would it be before
we actively recognized it?

I Am Unique

-I have no Unique Selling Point.
Everything that I have ever done
has been done better by others before,
and will be improved in again in future.

My honesty about how other people
do better is how I get the acceptance
that lets me live as well as I do.

Stuffocation

(noun) - the state of being where however much you have,
it is never enough. And what you have never gives you the sense of life
that might persuade you to get more from life by having less, in future. 

Who Follows Who?

I have long kept watch
on those who appear to act
as if they are in actual power.

The longer I watched
the more I wondered
at was the nature of the force
that kept them there?

Now I think I know
-the leader speak the lines
written for them by the popular press
-well behind the scenes,
The press then amplify
what the leader has said,
as though the leader
wrote their own lines
when many folk can guess
that they didn't,

For as long as consumers pay
for this back room spin operation
because they buy the products
that support the newspapers,
through advertising, then democracy
will continue the be engineered.

New Blog Ahoy

Recently I started a new project; a memoir.

Please find the summary
of every chapter, with links for same here,
from there you can slowly make your way
through what I have edited and finished,
and even what is partially edited, so far.

There will be more to come....  

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Before booking into a tax deductable clinic,
for his sex addiction a famous american actor
was asked by a court to account his frequent use
of (female) prostitutes. He had a choice...

His defense was rather legalistic
'I paid them to leave, not for any good
they do whilst they are in my company'.

Many a husband who found more life
in the pubs that they stayed in every day
than in the house they paid for
would say similar to that actor.

They would say of their children and wife
'Paying for the family and house
-which I owned outright-did not mean
that I wanted to own those things,
they simply had to be owned by somebody.
Nor did I see myself as investor in their lives,
in which shared no common values....   '.

News Bomb

Nobody should be taken aback at how fast
the mass media fills to the brim with humbug
to defend 'normality', after terrorists attack.

In fact the only surprise should be
just how easily humbug and hysteria
became normality in the first place.

Seeing Is Disbelieving

I have often heard the educated
that other people's educations
has wrung their brains clean of all thought,
But what they learnt in school
still did less than half the damage
that watching television does....

Triumphalists,

and absoultist leaders,
never get what they want
but make what they get
seem like the triumph
they win for those they lead.

The Idler's Manifesto

I will add to this 'live slowly, and accept having less, because you strive less than others do'....

Public Relations

is the profession of repackaging which cannot repackage itself.
 It will always be a sows ear presenting itself as silk purse
by helping others to do the same.