Is Terrorism Working?

Terrorism is the use of violence and fear to coerce people towards religious or political goals. That’s clear enough and describes the bombers actions in Manchester exactly. But as well as the brutality there’s something fundamentally wrong in the logic of terrorism that I’d like any terrorist reading this to consider. Imagine putting a little petrol in a saucer and lighting it. There will be a quick burst of flame and nothing else will happen. It might even be frightening for a moment but it will never achieve any lasting power. Imagine a lion chasing a herd of wildebeest. It separates a weak one and terrifies it till it becomes a meal or escapes. The rest of the herd will in moments continue grazing. In Manchester one or two hundred were terrified and the rest of us 65 million were relieved we weren’t involved. So each act of terrorism produces 0.0001% terror and a 99.999% reaction of relief, plus a 100% angry reaction against whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. Maybe I’m missing something but are terrorist acts achieving what terrorists want? If you want something you try to figure out what actions to take to obtain it. That seems logical to me. You seem to want recognition for your faith and heroism but achieve worldwide condemnation even amongst those who share your faith. So what is your achievement even if you’re prepared to die to achieve it? It’s difficult to truly consider this question. We all make automatic assumptions that if faulty lead to what we don’t want that are hard to realise and admit to. We all, that’s everybody, find ways to justify our results rather than find our faulty assumptions and so make the same mistakes time and time again. You won’t like this but it’s easy to be a part of the small minority that know the truth against the vast majority that are misguided. Easy because in your isolation you can assume the truth and assume yourself as the brave courageous hero. Yet that vast majority you condemn are struggling with a far more complex truth that isn’t easy and thoughts of themselves that aren’t easy, and are in truth, however messy, unsure, confused and mixed up, the greater heroes. So is terrorism working? You decide. 

Client for Hire.

Another month and another Therapy Today arrives in the loo. Interesting reading but so difficult keeping up with the ever-expanding lists of acronyms and modalities especially when one has even forgotten what BACP stands for. Anyway I flick to the back third. It somehow reminds me of the gold rush. Prospectors, in this case therapists, humping and sifting through gravel to find nuggets whilst a host of peripheral industries attempt to fleece them. Initial training, ongoing training, training in new modalities, training in new niche areas, supervisors and rooms to rent. There are some ads for jobs but not many as it’s a struggle for services to pay minimum wage let alone for an advert. So my thoughts went to cat skinning. Bingo, clients. In the midst of all this plethora of training what is missing, clients. Most trainees train on other trainees. We take turns unburdening our insecurities etc amongst ourselves, which though useful is unlikely to provide complex issues seeing as we’re all comfortably off, well adjusted middle class types. Enter the Stiffmouse Client Agency. Now the key to making money is synergy, the bringing together of two elements that have a natural magnetism for each other. And who might have a synergy for the roll of client? Out of work actors. Other than Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman most actors are out of work, desperate for cash, hugely insecure and would salivate at the prospect of playing a middle-aged child molester with anger issues. I can smell the money coming in already. It’s a win, win and win situation. It’s like staffing a cleaning agency with OCD sufferers. In fact I’m beginning to think there could be many more opportunities marrying together desperate disparates. But for now I’ll just put an ad in the back of Therapy Today, “Write off today for our catalogue of teaching course clients showing photos, specialities and recent TV appearances. 

Please Deviate.

Eurovision first semi-final, Tuesday evening, Ukraine. Three smartly suited young men, the introducers, follow their scripts. It’s painful to watch. Old jokes, practiced reactions, false emotions, no belief, no honesty, all things awkward. The acts on the other hand had more authenticity and substance than usual suggesting a growing pan-European confidence in their audience. But the introducers were: Well sometimes things are so bad they become good again but they were so bad they went past good again back to bad again. They screamed, or at least I did, ‘there is a life to be lived here, don’t waste it in poor acting and hackneyed platitudes. Please deviate from your script and become real!’ But who am I to talk. I slunk into my own habitualities, dribble at the mouth with what I think might please, write a script to navigate my vicissitudes and let gayety and pleasure pass untouched. I wonder of the instances past where some meagre performance clamped shut such opportunities. Comfort is so easily done. I mean I’m not one for poking fingers up people’s noses, that sort of thing, but the simple uncluttered being of a bouncing mind. That for me is spirit and from that spiritual, the process of becoming uncluttered. Uncluttered by the tenets of the performing personality, the mundane manager, of intruding voices; the art of half listening, of taking note but never following. So the second semi’s Thursday and the final Saturday. Lets hope the auto-cue brakes. 

Cambridge Analytica.

It’s impossible to notice that if one buys or shows the slightest interest in possum catchers there will appear as if by magic ads for them on every page you visit. The internet knows you intimately not only for your desire to catch possums but your individual character traits, political views and intelligence. With this information on a huge database a whole populous can be categorised. Have you ‘liked’ a fracking protest, a Conservative leaning item, NHS cuts, immigration controls etc; all logged and searchable. Do you show no interest in politics or anything intellectually demanding but emotionally flit from starving cats to BMWs? All logged and noted. And are you ignorant of the implications of Brexit or in a swing seat? In seconds millions of voters can be searched for uninformed, emotionally driven, easily led, undecided targets in marginal seats. So why not create Facebook items aimed and delivered specifically at these people so you can win any referendum or election. Have you every seen an informed levelheaded Trump supporter? Without exception every one I’ve ever seen interviewed is not an ‘on balance’ supporter but a full-blown bigoted believer. Brexiteers had the same fervour. When 49% of the UK and US electorate thought the world had gone mad could there be a reason for it? Cambridge Analytica is a company, experts in the above, that worked for both the Trump and Leave campaigns. In the UK they allegedly worked for the Leave section of the Conservative party to subvert the alleged policy of the party as a whole. Who’da thought it was the Conservatives who secretly funded the analytics work that swayed the few percent in favour of Brexit! The 1975 referendum result to continue in the EU was 67% Yes and 32% No, so why the 20% swing in 2016? Has the EU (with us in it) really upset us so much? Sure we griped about Brussels but far less than about our own government, so even Leave supporters thought theirs was a protest vote and Remain thought it was a foregone conclusion. The odds at the time were 1/4 on for Remain and 3/1 Leave; that’s pretty long odds on a two horse race. Odds on Trump were 150/1 but shortened to 14/1 with Clinton evens. How can all the experts and all of us be so wrong? Surely only if there was something in play we didn’t know about; like the rest of the field having coal and concrete for breakfast. So we’re not talking a small influence here, it really is the size that can dictate the result of any democratic election. 

What Have We Become?

Last night’s French Presidential election debate apparently continued the theme of Brexit, the Trump election and our own upcoming General election. Macron and Le Pen spent two hours insulting each other, all negative emotion and no content. The electorate were disgusted with both performances. Theresa May, in a similar vein, has said nothing but her personal opinion that, ‘I will be a bigger bitch than Corbyn’, to which few would disagree, but the EU negotiators see her as simply a disagreeable, in-your-dreams, out-of-touch bitch with a much smaller stick than they have. Does she really believe riling our 27 ex-partners into snarling adversaries with little of a leg to stand on is a good negotiating ploy? Surely setting a spirit of friendly, intelligent, unwavering fairness will garner a better result. But current politics is zero-content emotionality and Corbyn’s calm, rational and genuine concern just doesn’t fit the mould. He’s clearly a powerless irrelevant nonce and evidence our definitions are turning on their heads. Vacuous assertions are powerful arguments, rational expertise is a boring irrelevance, power is callus-ness and caring is weakness. We have become the children of the worst parents on the estate. They ignore us, tell us nothing, live in their own world of belligerent beliefs, neglect our health and education and leave it to charity to feed us. They squander the family’s money on their own egos and then blame us for being a drain on their resources. And how do those children turn out? They become ill informed, unsure, unskilled, demoralised, unwell, depressed and stressed. They, we become moribund.