We Always Take From Others

what is more naturally theirs (particularly other species) than is natural to us.

Selective Screening

The media cliche about 'the family breakfast'
used to be the scene where middle class fathers
would 'head' the table by insisting 'his' family
be silent whilst he read his broadsheet newspaper.

These papers were as big as they were self important.
Whilst he held his up he could not seen,
which was offered as proof that he was reading.
Nobody knew what he was looking at,
but his hands conducted the silence of the children
whilst they hold the paper by it's edges.

Now we isolate ourselves with screens
of different sizes, from mobile phones to lap tops,
I-pads and the rest, all of which absorb more
of our attention than we choose to realize,
to diminishing effect. They are the new broadsheets.
We have to sit still to be attentive of them
and through them we screen out everybody
and everything, whilst they keep our fingers busy.

  

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.

The Bride Stripped Bare, Through Tradition

Regularly at night on the BBC World Service Radio
I hear woeful reports from small places I would not know of
if I could sleep. Recently I heard the phrase
'A Conservative Patriarchal Society' used about
one unhappy traditional third world society (there
are many choose from) where marriage is arranged
for the son by his family. The most common outcome
of this arrangement is that the son dislikes his wife,
because she was his family's choice, not his.
And if he had made a.choice of wife
then his family would be violently contrary
towards both of them. As it is the wife becomes a drudge
for the family, and comes to hate marriage
because it gives her no life and no exit from life.
The long term agenda for the family is to dismember
the dependent family unit in order to adopt the children.
The husband is already primed to dump his wife
through a separation that favours him. The choice
made  for the now ex-wife is to live alone in penury
as 'a used woman' in a 'shamed'  rural community
with other ex-wives. I have learned of many lose-lose
situations in life, and I try daily to keep my mind sharp
and maintain my studies of how and why people share
their unhappiness. But on hearing this account on the BBC
I was struck afresh by the evil genius of traditions
which renew themselves by multiplying malcontent,
and sharpening beyond belief the pointlessness
of perpetuating poverty in the name of property.