Reduced Individuality Through Suffering Is Rarely What It Seems

One of the troubling paradoxes of modern life
is that to illustrate modern suffering well enough
it has to be rendered as a brief and well told story
about an individual as presented by mass media.

By the time the story appears it is aided
by a Greek chorus of mildly stricken relatives.
then an over competitive media reduces the original story
to 'grieving relative hits out' and otherwise makes out
that the experience is atypical from the norm.

To varying degrees, suffering is the common experience.
And when the stories we tell so easily misrepresent us
the more honest path will be a silent misanthropy..... 

Where There Is Life

there is always both sloth and avarice,
but where the sloth can make greed
work so slowly as make greed open weakness,
then each vice cancels out the power of the other.
Not that either can be the source of  purposeful generosity. 

This My Future Employer

And my past employer too. When I tried to work
for money the good will was worth less then the wage
and neither supported me in  the way they said they would.

A Choice Of Absent Government

I was chatting with a friend recently,
and explained that I might be absent
from them for a while-the government
had some forms that it needed me to fill in,
and further, it might well want
to interview me at some length.

My friend replied 
'You do know the government is in chaos?'.
It was only later the same day that I realized
that I didn't know which arm of government he meant.
All government, national, regional, and local,
are presently in a state of prolonged semi-collapse
with no sign of a return to a sense of direction in sight.
.
The civil service are what has always held the country together.

Putting the 'Lib' Into 'Libertarian'

Because if we can never be offended
we can never overcome the same
and we will never learn anything new.

Probabilities

When a law is immoral
then breaking it will most likely
increase the level of immorality.

When a law is moral and logical
them the people meant to follow it
will still be immoral, at best
to less harmful effect than before.

No law, however easy it is to apply,
will ever have the effect
that it's writers seek for it to have,
in putting an internal logic to desire.

Uncivilised Entertainments

My present reading is 'How to Murder a Man'
not long ago I enjoyed 'Confessions of a Thug',
both very readable books about life as it was
in the nineteenth century in The British Empire.

The former is set in Ireland, the latter set in India,
at roughly the same time. Both portray the natives
as dishonest in ways that do not flatter the empire
or make it seem as if it were a wholesome thing.

In both books/countries the economy works well
for the few, and badly for the many locals,
who are forced to bend and break the law
to make wealth work a lot better.

Through charm, threat, incantation
and secret planning men (it is always men)
sought 'the good life' where it could be found,
when with laws like those that contended with
the best life was often being dead and in the ground.

In their pursuit they made sure
that many other people got there.

The Prewash

The most amusing and fulfilling commensality
comes when humans domesticate their animals,
as well as each other, by letting the former
clean up after every meal they make.

In serving themselves whilst serving 'their master'
a dogs actions in cleaning a plate can make redundant
the many thousands of words on the subject of sharing
that with a dog are always surplus to our needs.

A Good Heart

resists hollow words
and very slowly
makes few new friends
whilst seeming friendly
to the many who pass by.

A good heart learns
to keep false connections at bay,
without seeming to be aggressive.

A Choice Of Unwanted Messages

I find it odd, almost quaint if not funny,
how internet programmes that promise
to remove every advert from your browser
that might pop up, the one advert that remains
is the for the programme to get rid of adverts.  

Anti-Natalism Essay Ahoy

The more I have blogged,
the more I have used up my opinions,
and used up every fresh angle on a subject
which I might refresh myself and my readers with,
until I have come feel that every thought seems tired.

The agendas set by the media don't help.
All that anger and despair at events
that require something calmer
if anything positive and win-win
is to be wrung out of the future.

So for today please accept this link
to a long but succinct piece of writing
which is much better than anything
I am presently able to produce, here.  

The Peacetime Experience

1-Economic depressions come round once a decade,
this is as stable as any peacetime economy ever gets.

2-The unstable money rarely affects everyone
but is felt second hand by anyone who reads the news.

3-the unstable money usually hits those
with the least in the first place,
but the scary headlines are good
for frightening the rest by telling them
of experiences they can be glad
they never have to endure.

4-This makes an economically repressive
government seem attractive to many at the time.
Whoever poverty hurts hardest and most,
they are the scapegoat fit for purpose
who the voters believe should suffer.
If they are not strong enough to endure,
then by the time this is discovered
it will be too late to restore
long gone future fortunes.

Let future governments apologize for histories
they could not be possibly be responsible for.

Personal depressions will make up
a large part of the effects on the one in four
who live with mental health problems,
partly as a result of 'economic climate',
who at any one time the healthier
three in four will have to observe them.   

Poverty, Wealth And Quotations

John Berger (1926-2017) was more an art critic 
and social commentator than a political commentator.
Nonetheless the above comment holds true-
many of the the richest people in the world 
actively dislike meeting meeting poor people 
and believe that the air that the rich breathe
 is different to the air that the poor have to choke on.   

Outside And Inside

'Know thyself' is the command we follow
when we look after our outward appearance
by taking care even more about what gets inside of us.

Zen Of Breakfast...

'Sunny side up', naturally.....

Never Knowing

what the time is,
and never caring,

is as near as we get
to being as naked as animals,
and as welcoming of life,
with a natural body-clock,
as anyone could ever be. 

Parenting, The T-Shirt

It shrinks you to fit it, whatever size you are or you hoped to be.

Humility

I have never taken an IQ test.

I regard everyday life
in all it's complexities
as an intelligence test
that is enough for most folk.

What I have found most often
is that testing each other for empathy
would serve us a much much better. 

Another Loathsome Cliche

is 'I have mixed feelings about.....'
(add the subject here). Why so?

Because even as the phrase is about feelings
it always spoken in highly neutral tones.

Whoever uses it sends their audience
into instant and infinite boredom,
sufficient that when the speaker finishes
the audience can't remember what it was
that left the speaker so double minded.

Modern Communications

If all the mobile phones in the world
were arranged in the form of a tower,
and the words once spoken through them
turned into cement, the way the words
once cemented people to each other,
to bind the phones all together
we really would have an all new,
and digital, Tower of Babel.

Autumnal Thoughts

In Autumn in Southern France the figs ripen on the trees. 

In time they lose their plumpness and look like old men's testicles

Like old men's genitalia they lose their cover and ooze a bit.
 The more they ooze the better they taste.....

Telling Stories

is an ingrained habit for humans,
who clearly like to detain each other,
at length with expansive narratives.

The technology by which we do this
has vastly expanded our means of being entertained.

The problem is that as our stories get retold
many a story travels less well
than it's teller likes to think;
the less personal the means of conveyance
the tighter the script needs to be
to refresh it's audience properly.

But in our deathly self absorption
we continue to insist we are 'entertaining'
with repeats of old stories that have become cliche.

God save you all from my when I become bored with myself
-you will spot it before I do.....

A Year Of Disapointments

will last longer than any other type of year.
The number of dates on the calendar
will be as fixed as they ever have been,
but the events that punctuate it's length
make sure that our sense of time stretches
ultimately losing all it's 'give',
until it has nothing left to give but emptiness,
and an old ache that passes for a pulse.

The heart is a very strong muscle
which can withstand a lot of stress.

But as a physical repository of memory
it will only carry so much despair voluntarily.

Absence Of Mind Does Not Mean Absence Of Words

Billions of souls live on their own,
in spite of their attempts at living together.
At best each soul is an unreliable narrator,
an unreliable navigator,
which knows little of it's own unreliability,
much less everyone else's.

How unreliable they all are together
is the sum of human confidence
about human omniscience over nature.

More And Less

The more I understand 'politics'
the less I wish I understood it,
and instead I could find a distance
where what I can no longer avoid feels safer.

Satire helps, but in the end no distance
from The News ever seems safe enough.  

Cycles Of Liberty Will Vary

But any liberty won on the back of acts of aggression
 will always be limited for the victors by how defensive 
the terms of the peace can be made to seem against
 the losing side, whom they seek to keep at a distance. 

When Paid Employment Fails The Turing Test

Most people have heard of The Turing Test.

It is the proposition that where a machine
gives every impression of being human,
in so far as human beings can test it blind,
then they accept that what they are dealing with
has a consciousness, and is not merely mechanical.

But I have been aghast at so many of the humans
I have spoken with by phone who would fail the standards
set by the Turing test, because they spout scripts
from screens provided for them by employers,
and the money they get for what they spout
matters more to them than whether they are thought
to be robots, as they are attentively listened to, or not.

The net result is that I nearly every time
part way through an attempted conversation
I cease know how to respond as the ghost
of the script takes over their voice.

That is usually when for me feeling ashamed
to answer a robot, I find I don't how to answer.
That is when the robotic management intervene.....

The Ultimate Phobia?

'Islamophobia' and 'Homophobia'
are two terms among many
whose very trendiness
I struggle to comprehend.

But the oldest phobia comes
from cursing someone as 'stupid',
and making out that a bad deed or two
by them the sum of of the whole person.

There we act out our fear
of rational argument by ignoring
the vital differences between people
which multiply the sum of life.

To curse and do down the intelligence
of another is to reduce your own self
to brute insensitivity, and to increase
the other persons sense of burden
to make it carry your contempt.

Such contempt is a living death wish.

Most Sectarianism

is despots reducing their enemies
into well mislabeled groups
convenient for the despot,
much to the discomfort
of those impersonally labeled.

As the discomfort multiplies
many feel trapped in a political ghetto
made by others, one where fighting
makes leaving the ghetto harder,
and swearing at the media is proof
that they are not being heard.

For myself, and for everyone else,
I prefer my insanities to be more wholesome
-inequalities which because they are reduced
can be shared with less need for aggression.

The Work Ethic Never Stops....

Particularly not for those who are ill or disabled, 
or are otherwise of no service to employers
as millions of people know. 
It is what keeps on going around them...

The Mathematics Of Weak Morals

Personal charisma + Vast wealth + The pomp of office = Potential for corruption.