Stand up to Cancer.

Friday night’s program collecting for cancer was truly shocking. Having in the family a young dad with an aggressive haematoma and three friends already dead it’s close to home but in that reality the program’s overblown sadness, the pouting stiff upper lips and the dwelling on death and stolen opportunities isn’t present. It’s just human fragility, understanding and support. It was shocking because it reminded me of 1984. In the book there is a perpetual war with some far off enemy that we must be afraid of and protected from by Big Brother. Is cancer being framed as our ubiquitous enemy? The program could have been called, “You might as well give up now.”  Make a bucket list of futile pleasures and fade away. With 50% of us likely to get cancer according to the program, that’s ~ 35 million, what chance do you have? With roughly 200,000 hospital beds available that’s 150 per bed. In the face of this huge epidemic and an equally huge effort to find a cure I see very little work on what in our modern lifestyle causes it. Sure it’s not one single pathogen but doesn’t it call for an equally huge effort to find the causes rather than a cure? The program for all its appropriately expressed emotionality I found utterly distasteful, especially as I suspect living untruthfully an unfulfilled and stressed life has a lot to do with it. Might for example buying a DFS sofa to watch TV on rather than having a wild expressive dance and shouting how you truly feel put you on the waiting list? 

Hyper Normalisation Response.

It’s hard after watching HN to know what to do. Governments are beholden to the banks, corporations etc and they in turn are beholden to shareholders. Shareholders are the financial equivalent of a nameless factory fishing fleet dredging up the last morsel of marine life. Their portfolios are amoral and a-human numbers meaningless but for their size. The population at large in this scheme of things has no leverage. A metaphor might be a gigantic chocolate wheel where millions of hamsters drive its rotation fed with coco and milk. They eat a little and their little feet make chocolate to grow the wheel. On the outside hundreds of knives skim off the excess. This excess isn’t used it simply accumulates in huge vaults of chocolate bars. The hamsters daren’t stop for fear of going hungry. So back to what to do. It’s easy to blame the shareholders as chocolate skimming charlatans but what if they’re just a product of the wheel spinning too fast? What if the problem is caused by the hamsters, in the hope of a little extra food, are over pedalling? Is there a speed between zero and too fast that feeds the hamsters but doesn’t create excess? What if the hamsters slowed down? And what does this mean outside the metaphor? Being a war baby and growing up post war I naturally have minimal desires. It’s easy for me to make do and mend, to buy in charity shops, to maintain and make what I have last and wear extra cloths rather than have the wall-to-wall heating on. Buying is a rare delicacy for me. In bankers parlance I’m a ‘deadbeat’, a person they make no profit from. The film suggests the main ‘work’ of the population is to spend and be in debt because it’s these two areas where we create profit for shareholders. So what if we all adopted my post-war ethos? Adopted as a freeing fulfilling pleasure not a dour penny-pinching austerity. Other than the most poor we could cut our spending by 20% to 40% by ignoring the constant clamour of advertising dictating what we aught to need. This as I see it is the only lever left to us to cause change. By simply ignoring the demands put on us by the current system profits and share prices will drop, it will become a buyers market so prices will drop and we will begin to hold the money and the power that goes with it rather than bankers and shareholders. But will we or won’t we be able to resist the induced lure of a new kitchen, TV or payday loan? 

Hyper Normalisation Response.

It’s hard after watching HN to know what to do. Governments are beholden to the banks, corporations etc and they in turn are beholden to shareholders. Shareholders are the financial equivalent of a nameless factory fishing fleet dredging up the last morsel of marine life. Their portfolios are amoral and a-human numbers meaningless but for their size. The population at large in this scheme of things has no leverage. A metaphor might be a gigantic chocolate wheel where millions of hamsters drive its rotation fed with coco and milk. They eat a little and their little feet make chocolate to grow the wheel. On the outside hundreds of knives skim off the excess. This excess isn’t used it simply accumulates in huge vaults of chocolate bars. The hamsters daren’t stop for fear of going hungry. So back to what to do. It’s easy to blame the shareholders as chocolate skimming charlatans but what if they’re just a product of the wheel spinning too fast? What if the problem is caused by the hamsters, in the hope of a little extra food, are over pedalling? Is there a speed between zero and too fast that feeds the hamsters but doesn’t create excess? What if the hamsters slowed down? And what does this mean outside the metaphor? Being a war baby and growing up post war I naturally have minimal desires. It’s easy for me to make do and mend, to buy in charity shops, to maintain and make what I have last and wear extra cloths rather than have the wall-to-wall heating on. Buying is a rare delicacy for me. In bankers parlance I’m a ‘deadbeat’, a person they make no profit from. The film suggests the main ‘work’ of the population is to spend and be in debt because it’s these two areas where we create profit for shareholders. So what if we all adopted my post-war ethos? Adopted as a freeing fulfilling pleasure not a dour penny-pinching austerity. Other than the most poor we could cut our spending by 20% to 40% by ignoring the constant clamour of advertising dictating what we aught to need. This as I see it is the only lever left to us to cause change. By simply ignoring the demands put on us by the current system profits and share prices will drop, it will become a buyers market so prices will drop and we will begin to hold the money and the power that goes with it rather than bankers and shareholders. But will we or won’t we be able to resist the induced lure of a new kitchen, TV or payday loan? 

Hyper Normalisation Response.

It’s hard after watching HN to know what to do. Governments are beholden to the banks, corporations etc and they in turn are beholden to shareholders. Shareholders are the financial equivalent of a nameless factory fishing fleet dredging up the last morsel of marine life. Their portfolios are amoral and a-human numbers meaningless but for their size. The population at large in this scheme of things has no leverage. A metaphor might be a gigantic chocolate wheel where millions of hamsters drive its rotation fed with coco and milk. They eat a little and their little feet make chocolate to grow the wheel. On the outside hundreds of knives skim off the excess. This excess isn’t used it simply accumulates in huge vaults of chocolate bars. The hamsters daren’t stop for fear of going hungry. So back to what to do. It’s easy to blame the shareholders as chocolate skimming charlatans but what if they’re just a product of the wheel spinning too fast? What if the problem is caused by the hamsters, in the hope of a little extra food, are over pedalling? Is there a speed between zero and too fast that feeds the hamsters but doesn’t create excess? What if the hamsters slowed down? And what does this mean outside the metaphor? Being a war baby and growing up post war I naturally have minimal desires. It’s easy for me to make do and mend, to buy in charity shops, to maintain and make what I have last and wear extra cloths rather than have the wall-to-wall heating on. Buying is a rare delicacy for me. In bankers parlance I’m a ‘deadbeat’, a person they make no profit from. The film suggests the main ‘work’ of the population is to spend and be in debt because it’s these two areas where we create profit for shareholders. So what if we all adopted my post-war ethos? Adopted as a freeing fulfilling pleasure not a dour penny-pinching austerity. Other than the most poor we could cut our spending by 20% to 40% by ignoring the constant clamour of advertising dictating what we aught to need. This as I see it is the only lever left to us to cause change. By simply ignoring the demands put on us by the current system profits and share prices will drop, it will become a buyers market so prices will drop and we will begin to hold the money and the power that goes with it rather than bankers and shareholders. But will we or won’t we be able to resist the induced lure of a new kitchen, TV or payday loan? 

Hyper Normalisation Response.

It’s hard after watching HN to know what to do. Governments are beholden to the banks, corporations etc and they in turn are beholden to shareholders. Shareholders are the financial equivalent of a nameless factory fishing fleet dredging up the last morsel of marine life. Their portfolios are amoral and a-human numbers meaningless but for their size. The population at large in this scheme of things has no leverage. A metaphor might be a gigantic chocolate wheel where millions of hamsters drive its rotation fed with coco and milk. They eat a little and their little feet make chocolate to grow the wheel. On the outside hundreds of knives skim off the excess. This excess isn’t used it simply accumulates in huge vaults of chocolate bars. The hamsters daren’t stop for fear of going hungry. So back to what to do. It’s easy to blame the shareholders as chocolate skimming charlatans but what if they’re just a product of the wheel spinning too fast? What if the problem is caused by the hamster, in the hope of a little extra food, are over pedalling? Is there a speed between zero and too fast that feeds the hamsters but doesn’t create excess? What if the hamsters slowed down? And what does this mean outside the metaphor? Being a war baby and growing up post war I naturally have minimal desires. It’s easy for me to make do and mend, to buy in charity shops, to maintain and make what I have last and wear extra cloths rather than have the wall-to-wall heating on. Buying is a rare delicacy for me. In bankers parlance I’m a ‘deadbeat’, a person they make no profit from. The film suggests the main ‘work’ of the population is to spend and be in debt because it’s these two areas where we create profit for shareholders. So what if we all adopted my post-war ethos? Adopted as a freeing fulfilling pleasure not a dour penny-pinching austerity. Other than the most poor we could cut our spending by 20% to 40% by ignoring the constant clamour of advertising dictating what we aught to need. This as I see it is the only lever left to us to cause change. By simply ignoring the demands put on us by the current system profits and share prices will drop, it will become a buyers market so prices will drop and we will begin to hold the money and the power that goes with it rather than bankers and shareholders. But will we or won’t we be able to resist the induced lure of a new kitchen, TV or payday loan? 

Hyper Normalisation.

By constructing his narratives from a thousand historical clips Adam Curtis’s films always ring true. Hyper Normalisation follows the meta-realities leading to our current situation. Meta as in how the mind-constructions of its protagonists have created a wholly unnatural reality.

In 1975 the banks foreclosed on New York City. They refused to buy the bonds that funded its borrowing. Near collapse NYC agreed for the banks to run its finances, which meant from then on austerity would fund bank profits. This one transaction ruptured the collective agreement between government and its population. Both became puppets of the hidden hand of finance. Government would henceforth simply pretend to govern while the population had no redress over the hand they couldn’t see. The tale moves to the Middle East where Kissinger is duplicitous with Asad the elder who, taken for a fool, hates America. After terrorist bombings America blames Libya because Gaddafi has no Arab friends even though proof points to Asad who is friends with Iran. They vilify Gaddafi and apply sanctions. Gaddafi admits to crimes he hasn’t committed (Lockerby), gives up his WMDs, which he hasn’t got and is proclaimed heroic but then left to die in the Libyan revolution. Asad is emboldened, dies and is succeeded by Asad the younger. The Islamic world ferments. If  ‘inshalla’ (if God permits) is to be believed he really doesn’t like Arabic countries. Meanwhile back in the western world governments continue to pretend governance and the populous is subsumed in its own unrealities, both controlled into an unnatural reality imposed by what one can’t see and the other can’t admit to. Individuals bask in algorithms designed to reflect their every desire. If you’re pro Trump your searches will deliver affirmative articles, as will those selected for you if you’re anti Trump. Mesmerised by your own reflection you will never see past it in a process of ultimate fragmentation. Thus Brexit’s fractious 50/50 followed by a similar result in the US election. We have become stuck in an unreal stasis where the traditional levers of government, unions and even finance no longer work. But 350 words can’t do this film justice. Best watch it for yourself. 

Stop Lying.

I was brought up by my Methodist parents in the 50’s and 60’s to not lie. I’m grateful because the benefits have been many, but these days I feel out of place. All TV ads are lies of one sort or another, salesmen lie, journalist and the media lie, all arms of our governments lie. Persuasive language is even taught in schools as a necessary part of English. This pandemic of untruths and unrealities is causing an epidemic of stress, depression and demoralisation. Every denial of some underlying truth further separates us from reality, the reality that we instinctively know is there somewhere. But as many psychological experiments have proved one person in a group who have all been told to lie soon accommodates to that lie and accepts it with, “it doesn’t feel right but I guess I must be wrong.” Once accepted that person will add his/her own intellectual powers, like a node in a cognitive Internet, to justify it further. Many mores within finance, the media and government have grown to be so universally accepted in this way that any objections appear overtly pernicious and purposefully made to cause trouble. Branded as such they become righteously ostracised as conspiracy theorists or paranoid extremists. And all by the intelligent, diligent experts in the field. Maybe, just maybe we should thank Donald Trump for appearing at the head of this insidious pestilence. A narcissist so grand he believes he creates the truth by his own willpower alone. Can he show the rest of us the iniquity and ultimately the destruction caused by denying the reality we instinctively know? Will he enter 2017 as President or in prison for sexual abuse? 

9/11 Health & Safety.

The death of truth. Now having an elephant in the room seems insignificant when the twin towers are ever present as a reminder that lies and denial do work. Whoever one believes one can’t deny the incredible divergence of theories, evidence and conclusions around 9/11. Was it Islamic terrorists, Mossad, the Saudi state or the owner himself, or the CIA? Who is lying, expert pilots, structural engineers, demolition professionals or NIST? It not only left a gaping hole in the Pentagon it left a gaping rupture in truth itself. It’s not quite what it was before. But there is one undeniable truth we can all agree on; the twin towers and building 7 did fall down. And there’s no disagreement on the resulting repercussions, the US intervention in the Middle East, the billion dollar insurance payout to the owner etc. but there is one important repercussion that is strangely absent. So strangely absent it’s gone completely unnoticed. The buildings fell down but there is no prior evidence of steel skyscrapers falling down due to fire. Of course explanations have been supposedly found but. In all three but particularly building 7 a minor office fire in no more than 5% of the building caused the whole fifteen stories to collapse in less than 10 seconds. When millions of Americans work daily in similar buildings where are the health and safety repercussions of this massive ever-present danger? As far as I’m aware there have been none. In the US in particular one would expect an immediate safety investigation leading to wholesale changes to building regs and fire prevention in particular, but nothing. It’s as if the US zeitgeist knows, even if the government won’t admit it, that fire on 9/11 isn’t the convenient explanation it’s supposed to be. 

The Appeal of Nought.

It’s strange to think that nought or zero isn’t really a number. Numbering systems go back many thousands of years but as late as the seventh century the existence of zero was argued over. The Hindu-Arabic number system brought to Europe in the thirteenth century by Fibonacci had only the nine numerals 1 to 9 but used a placeholder symbol ‘o’ that as he excitedly put it, “any number may be written.” It’s thought the Olmecs in S America also used a placeholder symbol as early as 50BC and appears in the Mayan calendar, but neither considered it a number. To consider the enormity of this concept consider an empty table and being asked, “There are zero things on the table, what are they?” It’s of course absurd; there could be zero of anything on the table, apples, spaceships or people. In terms of counting quantity, which is why we invented numbers, zero is not an integer or even the smallest fraction of one. As a placeholder symbol it simply allows unlimited counting. The same can be said of negative numbers. “How many negative amounts of things on the table?” Once zero is conceived of negative numbers can also be conceived. What has been built using these concepts is not a quantitative counting system but the whole numerical edifice of mathematics, hugely useful and powerful but not in some basic sense counting. Yet today we count using zero and negative numbers as equally real as the Arabic numerals 1 to 9. We no longer differentiate between quantitative numbers and conceptual numbers. This is no small matter. It’s the difference between reality and illusion. I might even suggest ‘enough’ is a more quantitative number even though it’s not defined numerically. My question is how are we being misled by conceptual numbers? As a simple example we might buy a computer or a car on their impressive stats whilst having little use for the power they provide. A man may strive to acquire wealth a thousand times greater than he could ever spend or become fat from eating twice as much as his body needs. Increasingly our use of conceptual numbers has made numeracy emotive, and apparent quantities dictated by power. How can it be a financial wiz can acquire more in a minute than a bus driver in a year? Because he is at the heart of the economic power that dictates the value of numbers, conceptual numbers that have become real quantities. It’s impossible to argue against because the whole human race has now embedded in its counting system what was introduced as a conceptual placeholder symbol as a real numeral. Try for example this simple mathematical proof.

Let x = y. 
Then x² = xy. 
Take y² from both sides: 
x² - y² = xy - y² that can be written as

(x – y)(x + y) = y(x – y). 
Divide by (x - y) gives 
x + y = y. 
As x = y, this gives 
2 y = y. 
Thus 2=1 or 
1 = 0.

By dividing by (x – y), ie zero as x=y and zero is only a placeholder symbol one gets a spurious result. Such spurious results are our undoing.