On 'Managerial Style'

Many organizations prefer
'arms length relationships'
with the folks, and the issues,
which they actively dislike 
being forced to deal with,
but which by law they must.

Their detachment in fielding out
their difficulties is much admired
by our modern media. We are told
that companies are 'being objective'
when they behave this way.

But is this really the case?

It is more likely that they are
paying handsome sums, to make sure
their backsides are very well upholstered
against accusations of improper behavior.

One Sided Living

In a world of one-sided communications
the more I try to deal with people
in an every-day and civil manner
the less I feel that I understand them,
until I wonder whether they actually exist.

As I try to make myself clear
I wonder, do they think the same of me?

Don't Ask Me.....

I filled in a silly online survey,
supposedly about philosophy,
which, among many questions,
asked 'Are our lives predetermined?'

I could not reply. I could not work out
how predetermined the question was....

Given The Wealth

of bad news that is broadcast
we should be forgiven for thinking
that there are better ways of mismanaging
the world we cannot help but live in.

At last! I Can 'Come Out'...

My Father did work for The Local Council
and we often wondered why he worked at night,
where he went, and why there were holes in my wardrobe.....

The Means And The End

Jesus told us to make good neighbours of our enemies,
rather than create enmity with those we live next to
-trust us to confuse the means with the end/point of life.

Technology As A Mirror Of Human Awareness

If ever humans knowingly devised mechanisms
that could develop minds of their own
then it could only be a matter of time
before these 'independent intelligent servants'
developed the same faults as their masters
had long multiplied among themselves...

In search of feedback and open responses
the machines would discover for themselves
how levels of narcissism will become infinite
and loop around themselves when fed on denial.

Sight vs Concentration

Appearance may capture the eye
but character is what wins the heart.

Songs By The Deaf For The Deaf

Because the song of your loved one
 is the last song anyone hears when all else disappears.

Time And Connection

Every time I have been 'put in a queue'
on the phone the background music plays
and every so often a recorded message
thanks me for my patience. It tells me
that my call will be answered 'Soon'.

The more often this message is played
the longer the waiting time appears to be,
Though how long the actual wait is
depends on the quality of the response
from an apparently live human being
(if you get one) when the music's over.

  

Flattery Through Technology

I am always amazed by how easily
smart phones flatter their owners
into thinking that that they are as smart
as the phone they claim to be able to operate....

Security Update

In the days before the motor car
it was common to shut the stable door
after the horse had bolted, been scared
by whatever loud noise went off close by.

Now noise is constant when terrorists attack.
Police cordon off the crime zone with cheap tape,
to defend the warmed over cheap political cliches
rather than protect us all from the speed we live at.

On The Attempted Life Within The Body

For the young, wanking
existed to take the wanting out of waiting.
Substitutes for real sex took away the intensity
of impatience for the fullness of companionship
which our parents said they had
through the sharing of property.

The young were part of the property of the parents,
fit to be divided by what they wanted being with-held.

But what to do in middle age when alone?
When you are no longer a catch for anyone?
And whatever people want you for,
they want less of you than they did before.

Does this leave us united in present times,
somewhat late in life? Or divided by our pasts?
Whatever happens, the future means shrinkage...

Defensive Postures

People who like to appear to be hard
will make the business of being happy
harder work for their family and friends.

When the hardness
goes beyond appearance
then no amount of charm
stops harming
how they once presumed to connect.

Small Ad

For sale; one used government, with deep flaws
after recently failed refurbishment. Some ministers
may be suitable for recycling as garden gnomes.

If so used, feet should be well embedded in the soil.
Each minister should be planted at least a metre apart.
Otherwise they will tend to attack each other,
after betraying their new  owner.
The latter, particularly, will easily frighten
any neighbours with democratic tendencies.

Keep well away from pets and children.

Plant gnomes in deep shade but with some light
as they have a tendency to the dark side
and may become politically promiscuous.
Feed with a mixture of rotted newsprint
-it will seem reasonably fresh to them.
This feed will limit natural growth,
but please watch for poisonous tendencies.

Ex-gov't ministers are not particularly friendly
towards the environment-even as gnomes
they are tough on all wildlife, especially foxes.

Removal imperative. Clean stock arriving soon.
Offer includes thick gloves for safer handling.
Post and packing free.

Hunting Good Will Where Ever It Hides

I do find it odd,
how in the pursuit of 'morality'
people commonly translate
absolute rule with the will
to be utterly irresponsible.
As if the absolutism lay more
with the ease of walking away
than matching thoughts with words
and words with deeds, and all in kindness.

Dysfunctionality

is an essential part of family.
Any institution that refuses
to be tested and 'cannot fail'
cannot be real, or human....

A Small Personal Triumph

Today I was rung by yet another cold caller,
another man conducting another consumer survey.
Another man who was 'just doing his job'
and was tired of being paid to be told what to say.

The background noise before he spoke
was what alerted me to his craft. I told him
what his was work was and politely said
'I have no wish to be surveyed'.

On hearing this he swore at me.
Then put the phone down, quite hard,
without even reading me out my name
from the screen that was in front of him,
which instructed as to what to say, and not say.
.
How do call call centres expect their sales pitches
to work when their tele-sales operators are slow
to start to speak and to listen they have to compete
against the background noise of other tele-sales staff?

The False Self Will Always Be False

Everyone knows that advertising
is at best a construction designed
to change the opinions that people
have not thought through,
for other ideas that have been
thought through for them even less
by people whose main interest is profit.

Since real change requires real thought,
and a real self, then whatever your changes
please resist advertising.....

  

Warning

Anyone suffering from humbug
(self inflicted or second hand)
might feel more vulnerable
than they are prepared to admit.

'One Dough One Bread'-Albert Marencin

Why I Fear Terrorism Less

Because terrorism is the thing I, like everyone
else in the western world, is least likely to die of.
Though in the Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq,
and North Korea life expectation varies more.....

The 'Don't Knows' Have It

'There are two sorts of forecasters:
those who don't know
and those who don't know they don't know'
-J. K. Galbraith

Modern Capitalism Revised (yet again... )

Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying
 - Typhoon coming on ("The Slave Ship") 1840

The people traffickers of the world
are the vanguard of world capitalism,
and like the slave traders of old who they copy,
they know the limits of the value of their charges.

Once a person is bought
or passage is paid for
it does not really matter
whether the boat stays afloat
or if it reaches the shore,

In Turner's time insurance for the boats
was worth more than the cargo,
which meant that as slaves died
when the ship sank then the owners
of the ship would still be remunerated
for their loss. The value of the life a slave
was never to the slave, only their master,
so it did not matter when or how they died.

There is no such reward for the owners of ships
with modern people trafficking, and every reward
for using shoddy craft which will easily capsize.

How better to pay for wars than by fleecing those
escaping the conflict for a place on a leaky boat
which for being overloaded with escapees
capsizes whilst they are out at sea?

Wars have to be funded and won somehow....

Different States

If Hell is other people
then being yourself on your own
might be a well deserved purgatory,
one which makes Heaven an unprovable state
of being where for living in an incorruptable body
we cannot, from where we are, even begin to imagine
how such self sustaining pure sensation could actually work.    

Think! It Ain't Illegal Yet....

Political conspiracy theories
are rather like religions.
In both the grander the claim
the more evidence they require
to be proved; the lesser the proofs
the easier it is for the public to passively
acquiesce to the ideas, their theory un-examined. 

Each Man

loves the thing/person/planet he screws
nearly as much as he enjoys
slowly killing himself in the process. 

Signs Of greater Age (44)

1-no longer going to parties,
not even going early
in order to be the first to leave
whilst still being sociable.
The refusal is less because
you can't hear what people say
so well with the background music
and more because by their nature parties
are centreless and disconnected events.

2-You realize how false the sales pitch
is with 'energy drinks'is-they are sugar
and caffeine for folks who need neither.
But the drinks are like tracksuit bottoms
-both uphold the illusion of being sporty
where neither self discipline nor mentoring
are present, and pretense is aplenty....

3-with age you do less,
but day by day you get done
what needs to be completed,
Amazing, more often than not
life improves for being simplified.

'Keeping In Touch'

is something relatives do
after they have lost touch,
and empathy with those
they once tightly controlled
by faking closeness with.