From Lent To Easter,

i.e. going from giving up some small things voluntarily
to giving everything involuntarily,
 can happen more rapidly than we like to think. 

When An Oscar Winning Film Raises More Questions Than It Settles

Recently I saw the film '12 years a slave' and I left disappointed at the end. I liked the restraint of the musical score. But the film was too clean, and a farm that seemed to have nearly no animals, dogs, cats, vermin or cattle, seemed improbable. And the teeth of the slaves were that bright that the film could have been sponsored by Colgate. Never mind that my friend said 'The script was 'stagey'', it was slavery as it would have been portrayed by Walt Disney, somewhat shorn of the actuality.

Filming historic injustice properly will always be difficult. This is why there are so many mediocre films about resisting or succumbing to Nazism. When the films are bad it is often because they are dressed and set according later, higher, peacetime standards of health and wealth than would be authentic to the time. Also the scripts do not tackle or reveal the moral weakness and dependencies inherent in The Nazi System. For instance the guards in the camps are often portrayed as blind to what they depend on, slave labour, and yet they are so close to it they know they need some basic good will from their captives to extract their labour from them, even as the guards they are meant to be so all knowing that they did not have any regard their prisoners. One of the films which proved the exception to this rule for me was the German film 'The Counterfeiters' where the guards were ordinary sadists going about their duty, with some of them proving the exception through small acts of kindness which seemed all the bigger in the circumstances. One of the more memorable scenes was a Christmas where the soldiers and guards danced with each other to music from a phonograph, and passed around minatures of alcohol. Scenes like that seemed to pull in to view the real life that was happening just off to the edge of the script/screen, which in the watching you were encouraged to believe was there but which needed some prompt to push it onto the screen.

Nearly nowhere in '12 years a slave' was the insecurity of the slave masters, or their moral lassitude, laid bare. The weaknesses of slave owners was with-held even between slave owners. The only ill effect of dependence in the slaves owners came mostly in portrayals of periodic drunkenness, which seemed to leave no long term mark on them, though the increased terror of the slaves when they saw their master drunk and ill tempered was telling. But the idea that the best slave owners remained sober the better to get the best from themselves and their slaves was notably absent. I was grateful when there were scenes that would enlighten an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where links were made between the wretched treatment of slaves and the abuse of alcohol. As a film about an iniquitous economic system it sort-of worked. I wish that the economics of mortgages slave owners took out on slaves, where slaves were sold on to other slave masters, to repay the mortgage, could have been explored more fully.

The glaring paradox of a white culture wedded to a literate and numerate protestant work ethic which was dependent on denying black slaves any similar reward and autonomy for their labour would have made a powerful story, and such ideas were possible but were commented on only in passing, from a slaves eye view, which mostly seemed to be frozen in horror. The portrayal of how slaves who revealed they could read and write, would be killed by their masters was telling-but by inference rather than something shown on screen. Slaves were meant to settle for an oral culture in they could neither write nor read, but through their labour they could be kept, and even the oral culture had it's limits in consistency, slave's names were changed as they were sold-to cut off any sense of being potentially freedmen, with full civil rights. To be named by a slave master made the individual their property to sell or keep. I very much appreciated that it took somebody who was kidnapped to know the difference between being a slave and a freed man, because it was clearly very difficult for a slave who was raised a slave since childhood to de-condition themselves from being merely kept labour.

If that was all a kidnapped slave could see, and they reported well on what they saw, then fine. Perhaps me asking slaves to speak for the insecurities of their masters, and the darkness of such a system, was asking too much. Yet I feel that such a script being filmed is now more possible, with '12 years a slave' breaking the taboo of talking about slavery as a live evil, and the film has put the big moral issue up on the big screen.

Self Education

The journey anyone takes
from being a young autodidact
-for whom, whatever their age
to learn is to feel more alive-
to asking themselves later in life
where they are on the autism scale
is truly an education in relationships.

King Solomon Was Not Wise

when he suggested that he bisect the child
to fairly meet the claims of both mothers.
He knew it would disturb them both,
which is hardly insight-or 'psychology'.
He was being contrary, and a bully.
And like most ordinary bullies
his power came from his gift
for the division and rule of others,
by exploiting their weak points
whilst being singularly himself
which, Jehovah like, he practised often.

Bilateral Disagreement

What is does it mean to 'combat normality'?

It has many definitions, but one of them
is resisting 'The Narcissism Of Minor Difference'.
Normality is the acceptable consensus of any given group of people.
Each group is unique in itself, according the materials it uses,
but as alike as every other group, given that every group
share more common values than they like to think.
The group-think of groups is so all absorbing
that the members of the group are blinded to how similar
 to each other they all are, within their group, and with every other group.
The smaller the difference the more members of each group makes a fetish
of that minor tic, claiming their individuality through it, whilst avoiding
the power for agreement that comes from respectful listening.

Thus combating normality is about keeping a distance,
apt for yourself-everyone's will vary-from all groups
and their norms. The better to know your commonality
through a vastly reduced sense of jealousy.  

Pulp Criminal

The worst is the death of the tree
 where there no intent of reading
what is printed on the paper
 made from it's pulp.  

My Mantra

'Thank you' and 'Please' were the first words I was taught.
As I learned them, I learnt then, and have found since,
that my family/my teachers valued these words more than I could know.
How much my outward appreciation covered the multitude of their fears
of sin and pride, which of necessity needed disguise went beyond recognition.
My Pleases' and 'Thank you's sealed my deference towards them,
which allowed them to see me as simple, and easily satisfied.
In an ingrate world such kowtowing was worth its weight in gold,
though since then it has been devalued.
Perhaps they needed cupboard love in aural form,
not that it helped me mature. But what to do
when giving to keep control was all they knew?
Now I use the verbal formalities
to give without expecting to receive, in order to teach others similar.