For The Poorest

of the world recycling
the remains other peoples
lives is their meat and bread.
The most durable futures
ensure there is more of life
to come for more people,
the durability of which
requires greater modesty
than we are ever prepared for.

The Measure Of Liberty

in any civil society is the vast space
between what we mildly abusively call
'the nanny state'-cars that beep to tell us
when to put our seat belts on, smoke alarms
that go off when the toaster burns the bread,
and other security devices that benefit their suppliers
more than their customers who are obliged to buy them
by insurance companies. These things are meant
to reassure us whilst taking money from us,
instead they diminish us, but leave us intact enough
to fear the thought police. The scary ones who watch us
when we don't know it, so our progress in forming ideas
is plotted far ahead of us by governments and others bent
on conditioning, who employ amoral agent provocateurs,
the better to head us off before we get near to making
the changes that would lessen our leaders' leadership.

The Self vs The Off The Shelf Life

Finally! I understand 'science fiction',
how as a genre, its themes neatly divide.
At one extreme it is about clean utopias
run by distant rulers through machines
in which the populous know their place,
because 1) society is one big machine.
2) The machinery that fixes human roles
also defines an inflexible and complex utilitarianism,
the warping of which provides any plot in these books.

Books in this mode adapt well to film franchises,
with pick 'n' mix pseudo-religious/mythical foundations
which perpetuate a lot of the conservative orthodoxies
of their day. Co-incidentally this makes the films
easy to explain, lends them a false air of 'being prophetic',
and finally with the the profit from product placement
and toy licensing comes the financial reaffirmation.

Given how cohesively the political, philosophical
and monetary are bound together, I can see how easily
this type of fiction can replace religions,
where the faith utterly fails to make reality just or fair.

At the other end there is the human and ethical dystopical-
where there is just as much technology, but human alienation
provides the plot material. This has made for some great
difficult books where the portrayal of discomfort is leavened
only by deepest shafts of black humour.
Very few films are made from these books-the subject
of the terror of a mind trapped inside a system adapts uneasily.
It fails all branches of politics, though it can illuminate insanity.
So, no franchise there then, though the odd radio play has worked.

These are the authors who's work has marked me most deeply,
George Orwell, William Burroughs, Will Self, Kurt Vonnegut III,
Margaret Atwood and J. G. Ballard-there are many others.
They have taught me more about myself vs life
than I could have prepared to learn before I read them.   

The Shoppers Rest

Airports have had multi-faith
spiritual rest rooms for many years,
and these rooms are in transitory places,
where their chances of being well used
are surely minimal. Why not have them
where the human traffic is at high volume,
near people homes, in the local supermarket?
There they would be the shoppers rest-
the one area in the aircraft hanger
sized buildings where Mammon measures all
and life is stressful. Add volunteer chaplains
to help calm shoppers and the rest rooms
could start to re-inspire faith in community.

True Silence Is Never Cliched

Thinking about it,
the truest freedom of speech
should be absolute freedom from cliche.
This is something we all  fall short of offering,
not least when silence-
or the stillness of listening-
might grace us far better
that our noise lets us realise.

The Maths Terrorists

Al-gebra wanted the calculate the democratic deficit.

 

 

Since The Word 'Love' Is So Overused

then a truer measure of our freedom in speech
is how much respect we can work into the words
we share, and hoard it when we talk to ourselves-
who reading this has never tried that? Or keeping a diary?
This respect would make it clear to those we know
that we do know them, and know them to be needy,
but they are in no way insufficient. We are there to help
see their needs met, so with us they can be themselves.