Time to Stop Laughing.

As Frankie Boyle reviewed 2017 and ushered in 2018 in his own acidic fashion his audience laughed at every vividly painted dystopian vision. It was as if a clown had taken over the rational of the circus, the audience chuckling as the knife thrower splits his assistants skull, the trapeze artists fail to grasp each other while booing in boredom the jugglers skills. Are we to meet Armageddon with a smile? Have we built an imposition on the earth too big to unravel? Well I suppose that is a form of joke. I mean too big to fail is one thing but too big to stop is far more scary. Already our million horsepower leviathan express, much like the Big Red Coca Cola illuminated juggernaut, is circumventing the world so fast it’s leaving many millions to struggle and starve beside its tracks. And of all the committees in its cab not one has a steering wheel. It’s not that we don’t know, top to bottom we know, it’s just, well all the pretty lights and it’s so red and handsome. So we stand, gawp and laugh like the Christmas crowds in wonder probably singing, “Oh we’re going to Dystopia”. I mean if one person had stood up in Frankie Boyle’s audience and shouted, “Well I’m not fucking laughing!” he’d probably have got stoned (as in stones) for ruining everybody’s evening. Maybe it’s fight or flight. Maybe an antelope with two sets of claws in its rump attached to a lion is, counter to our expectations, laughing at the thought of it and shouting to his friends in the herd, “Big bugger, this one. Anyone got a selfie stick?” and getting in response, “Nice on Steve. You keep larfing mate. Sorry can’t help, Gordon’s scratching his arse and I’m doing the Misses.” So here we are surrounded by a pride of misfortunes of, it has to be said, our own making and jolly well making the best of it. Well not exactly making the best of it, we’d have to stop laughing to do that. 

When Vladimir met Donald.

Shall ve tauk a work in the garden/ Really it’s cold out there?/ It will be refeshing/ So Vlad how are things?/ OK OK/ You got the election sewn up/ And you vun yours/ Happy guys you and me/ Vias/ So what you want to talk about?/ Donald it’s the election/ Jeez I got to hand it to you guys, you know how to do an election. I had to do all kinds of shit to win mine but of course you../ And I will win yes/ Sure/ You know why?/ You got it sewn up, tight as a../ But who seone it up?/ Well I guess../ You know we have oligarchs/ Yeh like me you mean/ Well er, yes oinyvay/ We rich guys got all the power right/ Oinyvay Donald, how you say, they not going to kill you/ What!/ They not make you an offer you can’t refuse. Great program by the vay/ Oh you watched that here/ Oh yes. How do you think we run the country, it’s like a handbook (laughter)/ Donald have you ever seen me smile lately? You have Ivanka/ You want Ivanka!?/ No/ I can arrange it/ No no/ To be honest Vlad she’s no fun anymore and well, between you and me being President isn’t either. It’s not dealing it’s politics/ No! But they voin’t kill you/ No but we’ve shot quit a few Presidents/ Really/ Really. You know I could deal with your oligarchs/ Really! You’re welcome to them/ No Donald what I voint, vot I really really voint/ Nice, I liked the Spi./ Pardon?/ No sorry/ Vot I really really voint is the Miami Dolphins. I want to live in Vlorida. I got the money. All that sun. Here is bloody snow and cold all the time/ Vlad I had no idea/ Vill you stop calling me that!/ Sorry, V,Vladimir I had no idea. You want me to../ Visa, passport the lot, I vont to be a USA citizen and own the Miami Dolphins. They wouldn’t dare kill me then/ Wow that’s strange. I like the cold. I don’t know why but the sun turns me this strange shade of orange, it must be genetic. So if I get you that can you get me your election? I’d throw in Ivanka?/ No thank you, but yes I think they might like you/ Of course you’d prefer they guys in Miami, sorry Vladimir/So do ve hab a diel?/ Deal. (Poor guy, should have bought the Patriots) (Poor guy, he won’t last a month)

A different take.

 In the referendum and these opinions (reference to Brexit artical and comments) there is a resolute 50/50 split, each side arguing their case economically and socially in a somewhat blinkered accusative fashion. In the British zeitgeist ‘head’ this is stress, an unresolvable all consuming problem. The result as in a single persons’ head is poor performance, bad decision making and a lack of vitality and vision for the future. The UK socially and governmentally seems to be unconsciously plotting its own decline. The Cameron referendum opened a fissure of neurosis in this ongoing process. We are no longer the country that started the industrial revolution or that ‘never had it so good’, they’re the reminiscences of a prise fighter, we must grasp the opportunities we now have, and in that sense we can and do lead the way. As our planets’ resources dwindle and human ingenuity and profligacy become destructive we have a new role to play because the world has a whole new set of needs. From John Lennon to David Attenborough we have a certain sensibility we don’t give credit to. Our future is not trade deals but a different economic; one that matches the changing times and that gives us pride in the world again. When Big Pharma is proving a pariah, Monsanto a carcinogen and petrol a planetary pollutant profit itself is becoming the bane of our unconscious. In or out this is our best trajectory, Brexit is just a side issue. 

Money’s End.

12^th November 2019, 11.15am. Global currency trading collapses causing a ninety two trillion dollar drop in world liquidity. 10.57am all major stock markets stop trading. 12.05pm banks begin to close their doors and you’re left with the cash in your pocket. After frantic conference calls there’s worldwide agreement to apply 11^th Nov 0.00am backup data to begin 0.00am 13^th Nov. With twelve hours to notify all major players the 13^th begins almost as if yesterday never happened but by midday the collapse began again with the same consequences and a similar response, but this time using the 4^th November data. This would give a week to figure out what was going on. Automated high speed and algorithmic trading was banned with currency trades to be no faster than one per second. This would slow the market. All went well until on the 19^th a collapse occurred again. They went back a month then two months but each time a collapse occurred. By then January 2020 had become September 2019. Computer systems were scrutinised along with every aspect of the financial market but there seemed nothing awry. In these one and two month periods everything went differently except they ended in a collapse. It was like they were just climbing a slippery slope only to slide back down again. A wider range of the brightest minds was brought in to identify the problem. Only when they built a computer model of the whole financial process did an answer become evident. It was called the ‘Kid/Toy’ syndrome. Give a kid a hammer and sooner or later he’ll flatten his finger with it. The combination of the professional financial mindset and the technology at its’ disposal will always cause a collapse. (like the 2010 ‘Flash Crash’ where the US lost one trillion dollars in 32 minutes) It was all just a matter of time. The question then arose, ‘How far back do we have to go before it doesn’t happen again?’ 

The Emancipation Con.

Hardly a day goes by without a victim of past inappropriate Weinsteinian activity coming forward exposing famous figures to the full wrath of our moral justice. There’s a sense of mass pride in our repugnance for these people as they fall under the righteous sword of public opinion. And quite rightly so. There can be no defence or excuse for their actions and it’s a fitting tribute to our current climate of newfound emancipation. Back then victims could only suffer in silence but now they are able to voice the harm caused. So far so appropriate. But there’s another side to this coin. Perpetrators and accusers aside back then there was a personal robustness in society. If it happened you dealt with it the best you could as just another of life’s shitty circumstances, and in the words of the cup we, “Drank tea and carried on.” Over the intervening years could it possibly be that robustness has dissolved into an angst-ridden fragility, a sort of personality disordered McCarthyism? Nowadays we all drink from the same inconsequential well of social media. We go viral over whatever goes viral as quickly as Kevin Spacey lost his career. One feels fear bound to agree because any defence would be vilified. I’ve just read that Janet Jackson’s career crashed after a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ during last year’s Super Bowl, a ludicrous disjunction of events caused by social whispering. Yes abuse of power is wrong but when society as a whole begins to act like a herd of spooked cattle the damage will be far greater. We will lose the ability to think autonomously and be guided by a communal irrationality; the death throws of decadence. We will make bad decisions and leave good actions undone. Be careful, not for what you wish for, but what you think is a good thing. 

A Feline Cliffhanger.

Time was me and Mothermouse as the dominant species fed the cats, plus the crows, pigeons, squirrels, hedgehogs and other small birds visiting our back garden. That was how it should be. Lately though by the looks of things the cats or rather one of them has taken on the role of sub feeder. It’s difficult to know which one exactly. Britney has the intelligence but not a maternal bone where Betty has the neurosis and a vestigial motivation to snuggle up with Dave and smell his bottom. Anyway one of them has taken to placing a small woollen toy with ears and eyes in a feeding bowl presumably in the hope of rearing it. Granted the bowl was always empty but then as a responsible parent one must always feed first in order to continue one’s caring responsibilities. Nevertheless there it was three or four times carefully placed in a bowl. Until, as is often the case, the maternal instinct failed in the face of a night time feed not going to plan. In the morning the said woollen toy was de-stranded on the dining room carpet like the remains of a jet plane hitting a hillside. Strands of orange wool all over the place in no particular order. End of cat toy number 1. A week went by. A grey material blob of a toy with arms and legs, god knows what it’s supposed to be, appeared in a bowl last Sunday. But this is made of sterner stuff, fabric sewn together in an unknown Indonesian factory by an unknown Indonesian factory worker brought into this world to make indefinable cat toys. What will be its fate? Will the maternal instinct win out? Or will the teeth and claws of Betty, we think it’s Betty, cause another infanticide? It’s a right cliff-hanger. 

Get Your Finger Out.

At the risk of repeating myself Therapy Today is the BACP monthly journal for therapists. BACP stands for British Acronym Creation Program. If you’re no good at redacting words to letters or reversing the process it’s a difficult read. It always reminds me of the gold rush where hard working diggers and sifters are fleeced of any profits by ancillary providers. In this case room renters, insurance brokers and course providers. With twenty pages of these to two of jobs it’s clear where the opportunities lie. Simply think up a new acronym and create a training course for it. As an off the cuff example; Integrative Trans-anything Co-anything Counselling. Maybe the difference is an ITCC course to twenty people can earn considerably more than providing counselling to one. And as the general public would far rather shell out for the latest Sky package as a route to happiness than contemplate self examination with a stranger a counsellor’s incomings are unlikely to cover their outgoings. But there’s a new hopeful helper born every minute, and there’s a mysterious kudos to counselling. According to some eminent therapist, Fritz Pearls or Rogers or someone, we aren’t very good at it, our understated British reserve not having the necessary cutting edge. A friend was accompanied by a Slovakian colleague on a visit to a depressed guy. Where Suzymouse went the positive encouragement route the Slovakian gently explained he had no friends, was lazy, didn’t go out and smelt, and was making no effort to change things. Though lacking in positivity at least it gave him something to think about. GYFFO counselling. I have just the course. 

Human Artificial Intelligence.

A Japanese woman demonstrated an AI robot that could easily pass an entrance exam to a top university. She wasn’t excited as you might expect but worried because she knew her robot had zero understanding of what it was doing. It simply looked words up in Wikipedia, statistically analysed related words and chose the highest probability answers. That’s basically what all AI does. Though it can analyse language a thousand times faster than a human it doesn’t ‘read’ its meaning it runs maths on the words as simply numerical values. Now I passed a similar exam and went to uni. I spent three years learning maths and physics and got a degree. So far so good. Then I went into industry and quickly learnt I didn’t know a thing. I had artificial intelligence. Luckily I had acquired experience and cunning elsewhere and quickly assimilated the two into useful real intelligence but many, often those who got good degrees, persisted with their version of AI and though they got good jobs they didn’t often move things forward. They only knew how to think inside the box. (think Rick Astley compared to Queen, Michael Jackson or the Beatles) The corollary of the above demonstration is that our current form of education is teaching kids to achieve what artificial intelligence can do a thousand times better, i.e. regurgitate facts and choose the right tick box. We’re teaching our kids to come a distant second to a laptop. Already algorithms and AI are being used to coerce us mere humans into doing their will, well the will of their owners, and it can’t be long before their owners are relying in them coerce themselves. For what it’s worth learn to think upside-down. Take a problem or a set of facts and turn them upside-down, throw them up in the air and see how they land like a snow globe. Put together unrelated facts, an unrelated use, a different material over and over till an answer appeals. AI can’t do that because it doesn’t understand. 

Remembering Tommy.

1969, I was twenty six sharing a flat with Sam Wanamaker’s daughter in Highgate, babysitting little sister Zoe and dating their Swiss au pair Anne Marie. And The Who released Tommy. Later at the famous London folk club, Les Cousins, the guy singing was wailing about his ex, Cherry, who was, well sitting next to me. Looking back it was verging on the exotic but at the time it was just life. And I listened to Tommy. And that line, “See me,    feel me,    touch me,    heal me” reverberated in my emotional space like the tingle of a feather touching my own deaf, dumb and blind kid. Not of course in the usual sense but somewhere I knew life was at arms length even though I was in the midst of it. I was immersed but not getting wet. I’ve recognised that distance time and time again from some fear, some impinging belief, some involving abstraction, always knowing a closer connection was possible. And listening to Tommy somehow summed this all up and gave a lift to the possibility, that is until some toe rag broke into my flat and stole it. This is The Who playing it live in Los Angeles in 1989, one amazing hour of musicianship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX0fOyoyOlE Art is always elusive and the narrative of Tommy is no exception. It’s confusing because to the deaf, dumb and blind their processes of understanding cannot reach it. It exists as a flavour, a taste, a blurred emotion, as conflicting images that in seeing resolve themselves, in hearing make sense without understanding. Much later in therapist training we tried to unravel the processes of damage, of help, of resolution and sure there are endless books on the subtle mechanics of it all but for me at least in the end it comes down to art and the reckless rock and roll energy of Tommy, “See me,    feel me,    touch me,    heal me”.

Artificial Progress.

It can’t have been lost on future entrepreneurs that with the advent of robots, AI etc the market for their new gizmos will be for ever diminishing because there’ll be fewer and fewer people employed and able to pay for them, and computers and robots have no need of products aimed at human beings only an adequate supply of electricity. Already a growing proportion of society is influencing the market to make cheaper and cheaper products because they can’t afford quality on account of being unemployed or on minimum wage. At times it seems our best efforts are aimed at designing ourselves out of the loop. No need for the butcher, baker and candlestick maker when you can buy six Mr Kipling apple pies for 80p made by the thousand in a massive machine a kilometre long with two operatives on a zero hours contract. When AI can design the machines, CAD can machine them, computers can control them and big data can find the one remaining person with enough money to buy one one begins to see the fault in the logic. It’s rather like the new self guided personal drone transporters that look a great idea when viewing the grid locked traffic from above but forward twenty years and the aerial chaos will be horrendous. And it’s the same with AI itself. Anyone who’s every used a computer will attest to the absolute and total arrogance of anything digital. Miss out a nondescript semicolon or forward slash and no amount of swearing and threats will cause it to change its mind. Turning the bloody things off and on again may work in binary but for humans it’s tantamount to a near death experience. So for any AI experts out there remember if you finally reach you goal of true human intelligence all you’ll achieve is, well true human intelligence and consider where that’s got us. And remember unintended consequences only occur when you’re operating at the level of a ten-year-old boy who thinks playing cricket in a greenhouse is a brilliant idea. It’s not a brilliant idea. 

Neoliberalism and Guns.

Just read a squillion words about Hayek and neoliberalism. I’ll simplify using firearms. Once guns were the province of kings and governments for use in wars. In the UK at least society at large didn’t have them, being too expensive or restricted by law, moral values and common sense concluding they were harmful to social well-being. Hayek argued that this arbitrary restriction was unnecessary in that every individual would of his own volition regulate the marketplace in firearms. When morality held sway his ideas were laughed at but as pseudo economics gained prominence moral values, being not numerically quantifiable, could be dismissed as mere opinion. The marketplace, as the product of all minds, would more perfectly reflect human activity and aspirations than any government. Thatcher and other political leaders commenced deregulation. The market place in firearms grew as people took advantage of their newfound freedom, the economy prospered and explosives manufacturers made healthy profits. People wishing to better themselves exchanged their handguns for automatic weapons and grenades and the wealthy for tanks and rocket launchers etc. Manufacturers promoted their use to settle neighbourly disputes and resolve differences of opinion. Comparethemarket.com showed tables of firepower, accuracy and speed. This economic boom created a new wealthy set that was armed to the teeth and unassailable. Even the government couldn’t control them. The poor soon found guns didn’t solve anything and reverted to moral values but were dismissed as irrelevant losers, though they still secretly hankered for a guided missile of their own. There ensued a great divide in wealth, firepower and morality.

Hayek’s grand plan had a basic fault. He failed to account for a variance in integrity. Some would approach the marketplace honourably and some with various amounts of self-interest and duplicity. The latter would gain sway due to their lack of honesty and distort the market towards the baser traits of human nature in effect forming a negative feedback loop. Good will would equate to failure. Given time an unregulated marketplace will inevitably support and empower the most morally corrupt. It will corrode human interactions and thus harm the common good. Who knows what will happen when I get my AK47 off ebay. 

Not Watching Phantasmagoria.

Just bumped into Jackson Oz an Americanzoologist, Abraham his Kenyan safari friend, a Los Angeles reporter, a quirky veterinary pathologist and a French intelligence agent in ‘Zoo’, a CBS drama about an army of genetically modified kids taking on animal powers, imagine teeth, claws and super senses, and attacking us generic humans. What will they do? I’ll never know, I turned it off. There seems a lot of this high quality phantasmagoria around, weeks of the stuff going direct to TV from Netflicks, Sky etc. I turned it off because it was virtually indistinguishable from news footage and factual documentaries. It began to worry me that my donkey brain might at some future moment conflate this ‘Zoo’ with a News at Ten report about Nigerian immigrants and conclude AlQuida are actually a genetically modified sub race created by Mosad to enlarge Israel to include North Africa, India and most of New York state. In other words I will begin to believe everything and nothing is or isn’t true. And in other other word lose all sense of what I know and either become malleable to the propaganda of the loudest voice or not trust my own senses to do anything about it even if I don’t believe it. Is Netflicks an arm of the KGB, is Donald Trump an Umpalumpa? See what I mean, you don’t really know do you? So I’m not going to watch any of it. I recon when the shit hits the fan they’ll need people like me who can still glimpse the real world. (and put up guttering)

E=mC2

E=mC²

It’s always, well not always but for many years now, struck me this should be one of a trio of equations. I think because it links energy, mass and velocity. Well not velocity exactly because its mix of time and distance as in miles per hour. In the equation C, the speed of light, appears a constant, a simple multiplying factor, but viewing time and distance, as variables like E and m the equation links energy, mass, time and distance, which is the constituent of space as space is measured by distance in all its three dimensions. Thus energy is not simply derived from mass times a constant but also from time and space. Are you with me so far? OK it’s easy to imagine from the equation more mass produces more energy but what if energy also relates to amounts of space and time? Or the converse space and time are variables related to energy? Like increasing pressure in a balloon (energy) increases the space inside it. Could our units of length only appear constant because we appear to be in a constant energy situation? In other words at the big bang, at super high energy, a meter might in our terms measure the smallest fraction of a millimetre and as energy disperses length and thus space increases. For example our unit of currency, a Pound, £, has been fixed for centuries but its value has decreased massively. We are so used to space being dimensional in terms of our fixed understanding and measurement of dimension it’s hard to imagine that space is a variable and doesn’t exist in something larger as a chair might exist in a room. It simply exists within the limits of itself much like the chair. Likewise time might in the larger scheme of things also be a variable. In both instances we’re fooled by our dimensional understanding of time and space from our own particular standpoint believing them to be constants. For example we believe time at the big bang was in the units as we perceive them. How can so much occur in a few milliseconds? But if time and space at that point were hugely different to our perception of them now and have continually changed in the intervening period how long ago was it and how big was it? Entropy suggest energy and matter degrade to a state of inert uniformity and recent science suggests a rise in dark matter which seems an inert sub-matter material. Maybe the conclusion of the whole process is a huge amount of time and energy spent creating a very large amount of totally empty space, somehow reminiscent of Donald Trump’s ego. 

Pride.

Funny how watching ‘Pride’, the film about lesbians and gays supporting the miners’ strike in the mid 80’s, boosts your metabolism. It’s like adding a dose of mycorrhizal fungi to your root system. It caused Mothermouse to reminisce a march where High Gate Girls School sang, “Maggy Thatcher walks on water; everybody knows that dog shit floats”, and happy days teaching in London. Much has changed since then. And before that watching the Passchendaele Ceremony that followed a similar if more dreadful change. But something has been laid to waste in those thirty years since the miners strike. Could it be Thatcher’s small town shopkeeper’s distorted grasp on the economics of happiness? ‘We don’t make anything here, we just make a profit.’ Or our ‘special relationship’ with America that, as experienced by various European psychologists and me personally, is a fear filled place, where underneath its confident exterior it’s a high wire act needing protection by guns, greed and a host of prudish insecurities. Or more lately by the all consuming binary connectivity of computers? It’s frightening when pointed out that all the connectivity industry demands of us to fuel its own profitability is our endless attention. It doesn’t care if it’s life enhancing only that we keep clicking. And as a result a reduction in skills and creativity, values replaced by sales, pleasure reduced to panic and intent dissipated in abstraction. It may be comfortably soporific but it’s not what the Tommys died for. They had Pride.

Death by Complexity.

I often think back to 2001 and Grandpa  Croucho finding his first tool. He loved that bone. Never happier than having a good whack he was. And Uncle Erectus inventing round, that was a game changer alright. Ah simpler days. And now we’ve got Screwfix. I mean there’s a lot to be said for being able to get a five kilogram hammer drill for under a hundred quid but do I do click and collect, drive there or have it delivered when I’m out? B&Q do a 5% off on Wednesdays for the over sixties though Wickes are cheaper and Homebase are nearer, but you can’t get out of there without buying a 3ft electric barbeque set that’ll go rusty before you’ve used it twice. It’s all got a bit more complicated. I mean how come my pensions guy turns up for his yearly chat about his football knees in an Audi when I’m still driving a Renault Scenic? And don’t talk to me about discounts. How come in a 50% sale with an extra 10% discount for being born on a Tuesday comes out the same price as what it was last week? By that reckoning my storm proof Everglaze windows would have originally cost the same as a moderately sized maisonette. So how about you supply all the walls and roof etc for free and I’ll provide the windows myself? And all this is nothing compared with high finance. How is it a space big enough for a PC conveniently placed 50 meters from some internet node costs  $1,000,000 pa to rent? Because you can make $2,000,000 pa profit from being a millisecond faster than the other guys. Some guy’s created a trading floor with a ‘bump in the road’ that introduces a 2 millisecond delay that does something, I forget what. So that’s really really complicated. Basically it’s smart people make the most money. Human evolution has come down to dealing with complexity. Remember the super long necked giraffe that could reach the tallest branches but died out because it kept falling over? Well OK probably not because I just made it up but it illustrates the point. Our capacity for creating the ever more complex might just make us all fall over. 

Brockup by Brassholes.

 BR the once noble acronym of British Rail has of late become the chosen prefix of the Union Jack and bovver boots of the EDL or “Britain First” as Pres.., sorry I can’t type it, as chubby hands Trump would put it. I’m amazed after Brexit it hasn’t spawned a wider use. “Oi brunt you brocksucker you can kiss my brass you brastard,” or “Our broverment are a load of bruckers and brankers are all brembezzlers.” Anyway this morning Bramber Brudd announced she would be looking at continuing the open door of EU brimmigration into the UK where such brimmigrants would benefit our economy. Hold on, didn’t Brexers vote leave to stop all that? Is there a picture emerging here? We, well they to be honest voted leave but leaving is proving to be the mother of all shit pies right. We want to continue with the customs union and free trade agreement and now we’re opening the door to the previous EU policy of free transfer of labour. And what did Teresa May keep repeating? “Brexit means Brexit.” Now why would she say such a thing? I mean who in their right mind would say “Potato means potato”? No what she was really saying was “Brexit means Remain.” We will negotiate a great deal for the UK that we will call Brexit but will actually take the form of remaining in the EU. Everyone’s happy, the stock market will leap up, we won’t need to pay alimony and Polish plumbers will persist in plying their profession. And what will we call it? Bremain. And best of all; you can bruck off chubby hands Trump.

The Epidemic of Porn.

Most people have a limited definition of porn, which is a shame. A recent FB post exposed the debilitating effects of pornography particularly on young teen males. Not the prudish ghost of Mary Whitehouse but the evidence of numerous scientific studies. But I’d like to claim it as a more universal phenomenon: The phenomenon of replacing real life with mind-only stimulation. By this definition we live in epidemic times and like sexual porn it can have a corrosive influence on many aspects of our lives. Advertising is porn, Facebook etc is porn, TV and smart phones churn out porn endlessly, even politics is porn in that it exists as mind-only political machinations rather than the real life experience of the rest of us. In the media, commerce, finance and governance porn corrodes the link between cognition and reality. What better example could there be of erectile dysfunction than our present government’s recent record? In the interests of science I Googled ‘Overcoming porn addiction’ (at the risk of being branded by internet algorithms and inundated by ads for all sort of new things) and got http://www.uncommonhelp.me/articles/overcome-porn-addiction/  Pretty useful advice for everything that falls within my expanded definition, and a perfect confirmation of my theory. All I’ve got to do now is convince the Conservative front bench they’re all wankers in need of a spell in rehab. 

The Internet’s Flooded.

It’s been raining since 6am necessitating me and Britney to remain in bed till 11. And now at 11.30 after 15 minutes of trying to get the little bar chart to lose its exclamation mark my pop3 server has not responded and do I want to wait? Obviously the internet has been flooded. I know this because it was the first answer that came to mind. Am I to be marooned on the desert island of my own vicinity? This realisation assumes biblical proportions. My aunty in Kurdistan, ebay’s amazing deals, Amazon’s quick deliveries, the stock levels of my local Screwfix, all unavailable to me. Ironically I very very slowly get an ad for Dryrod Damp Proofing Rods- 10 pack- £27.00 by Safeguard Europe Ltd. Well it’s a bit bloody late now, and no use to me seeing as our local DIY shop has probably never heard of them. The realisations keep flooding in. No Facebook to keep abreast of cat fails, no YouTube or Vivo vids, no Wikipedia to find scant knowledge of everything. And no internet banking, so as our local branches have closed that’s a five-hour walk to the town centre. I’m beginning to hyperventilate. But then in the midst of this gloom I begin to see a Disney silver lining lighting the sky from the east. Pictures of my old life back, people chatting in shops, promenading down sunny streets listening to brass bands or, feeling no implanted impulsive need for a wider television, having the time to learn piano. And as this glorious outcome reaches its crescendo emails begin to flood in again. It’s all been a dream. The internet is back on, hooray I’m saved! I’ve regained my foothold on that old familiar treadmill. So where was I. Ah yes, John Lewis have a new range of swan feather pillows from Indonesia, motorcycle boots that will protect your lower leg in the event of a crash providing a perfect transplant for some other unfortunate, Julian and Nigel are pictured drinking in Costa del Sol, elephants can hear a thunderstorm from 500 miles away, cats do make trajectory mistakes while dogs work on sympathy, and my bank is advertising it will give me back a small percentage of what it’s already taken if I shop at Waitrose. And now it’s 1.20pm, my arse is sore and I haven’t done a bloody thing. 

Free Money.

Apparently there have been numerous experiments giving away free money, a minimum weekly payment like an unearned wage with a surprisingly wide ranging of benefits. It seems a ridiculous idea yet we gave away free education and most people would agree it worked far better than our current fee-paying debt-incurring system. Giving free birthday presents is still seen as a great idea too. Even surfs and slaves were given their necessities for free after their long hours in the field but that’s stretching it a bit. But today we are paid a wage for work. It’s a tight merciless link, no work, no pay though our necessities remain. This engenders a feeling that we only have value in the work we do, and in turn that as a human being we don’t. This creates a fundamental juxtaposition between value and wealth so that individuals of wealth are valued more than those without. We even value ourselves in these terms thinking ourselves valueless if we lose it like the bankers in the great depression. This runs deep in our psychology. Sure we can value friends as people irrespective of wealth but only because we know them. All this sets up a chain of values. We value having expensive things because they are a product of our wealth. We value buying things, throwing things away and buying new ones all because we value ourselves on the work we do. We value ourselves on long hours, on our position even on the stress we undergo. And all this myriad of secondary self-valuations leads to a stressful inefficient and wasteful lifestyle. It’s most likely this is why experiments with ‘free money’ are so successful, and why in the long run they, counter intuitively, boost the economy, are less wasteful and promote happiness and human growth. It’s because we should value ourselves for the quality of ourselves as people not for the size of our wallet. It’s not centralised communism or greedy capitalism, it’s the natural way EVERYTHING ELSE works. Even in the jungle everything’s free.  

Male Fear.

Detectorists is a gentle drama about two metal detector guys, not the most spectacular hobby in the world, and tenderly exposes a barely conscious fear at the heart of masculinity. Two hundred years of industrialisation have somehow left us in no mans land, our allegiance split between family and employer, between some unholy pragmatism and a connection with the sublime. Our employee status has taken on the facile nature of a video game, enthralling but disconnected, yet in some hidden subconscious corner there’s a yearning to connect. This visceral conflict is our fear. OK we’re used to acceptable fears, bravado, rutting like stags in some financial competition or ski jumping and the like, but these only provoke stress that in itself evidences our deeper visceral conflict. Cricketers love the game but become depressed playing it; how can that be? Some like Trump are totally absorbed into their own video game have no need of air or the earth so long as they wins the next round but even they are driven by this same fear. But how can we admit to it, ‘to be or not to be’? Now there’s a question and yet another problem. Female kind has not been subject to this bread-winner conflict. They haven’t the same history of being conflicted in this respect and now appear the braver sex. We men have a fear we’re barely aware of that we can’t afford to accept that viscerally conflicts us AND we’re out-gunned by our women who have remained more connected. Of course they have a proclivity for blowing smoke up their own arse but that’s not the point here. What are WE going to do about it? What does ‘to be’ really mean? Obviously parlance has moved on since Shakespeare’s day but I suggest it might in todays speak be ‘fuck you’. When faced with monetary seduction, power plays even one’s own ego to refer to one’s inner sense of right and say ‘Fuck you, this is not a game.’ It’ll be hard at first; speaking your truth will feel unbelievably risky, well it is for me, but slowly a healing will occur. The boat may wobble but it won’t sink. The world needs men to reconnect with our own visceral honesty, to lose the fear we’ve been burdened with for two hundred years. It really doesn’t turn on the next deal, the next paycheck, the next win. It turns on the dance moves of your spirit.

In Defence of the Council.

It is necessary but hugely difficult to provide low rent social housing in such a wealthy area. Low wage workers are needed locally who can’t afford to travel far to work. There’s a huge lobby behind ‘green’ energy efficient buildings so cladding heat-leaking concrete buildings is a no-brainer. The lower cost cladding though more flammable has been used widely without catastrophic results. The tenants know far less about buildings and building regulations than our own in-house departments and external contractors. Their scare mongering is from a small number of electrical surges due to the water supply pumps but everything has passed the relevant regulations. Then the unforeseen happens. The original fire-safe building worked by each flat being a concrete walled fire-containing unit, a fire in one could not travel outside it, hence no need for a sprinkler system and the fire service instruction to stay put. They can only reach ten stories from the outside so they must gain access to the upper floors internally to deal with a fire there. Similarly though windows blow out in a single flat fire this would not normally breach the fire containment built into the building. But the cladding did. A fire in one flat popped the window and set fire to the cladding, which popped the window in the flat above and set fire to it, the next and the next: A terrible catastrophe that has caused huge anger at a rich uncaring landlord and sympathy for the poor perished tenants. One mistake caused by a change in building philosophy over time. Individually both are valid and safe, but mixed they’re not. There are occurrences that individually or collectively bring us to our senses and break some complacent dream. It’s never easy but it’s in the learning not emotion that we make progress. 

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. 

W.A.R.

W.A.R., the commonly used acronym for ‘We Are Right’ looks on the cards again. In this case Donald Trump is right and Kim Jong-un is right, China’s kinda right and Japan doesn’t want to be wrong. Possibly, after the fabulous documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pWTBJ9r3ns on Stuxnet’s success in unaccountably blowing up Iranian centrifuges, Donald has the power to make Jong-un’s missiles go off like prematurely released balloons, provided someone’s taken the trouble to tell him. It’s impossible to overstate the game changing consequences of Stuxnet, malware so sophisticated it can find its target software, manipulate it make a desired malfunction whilst making everything appear normal and, before the Israelis let the cat out of the bag, be completely un-attributable. That error converted Stuxnet from US covert brilliance into a worldwide case study in how to weaponise software. We might still think we’re right but now we’ll never know what pressing the button might do. And as everything other than the Donald is now under computer control it’s possible to weaponise anything against its user. That’s sixty years from an enthusiast’s box they couldn’t find a use for to a ubiquitous weapon. You’ve got to hand it to us: we’re pretty smart. But flawed. 

War like Water.

The speaker began. “When I was a kid I dammed streams in a field by my parents house. I was maybe five. The earth was sandy, you could build dams pretty quick and form little pools but as the level rose the sand gave way and whoosh. When one country decides to invade another they move troops to the border and in response the other country does the same. Rising pressure is contained by a damming resistance all ready for a fight. I noticed the bigger the dam the greater the flood when it broke, and it always broke in the end. If I didn’t build a dam the water just trickled on through. So now I’m thinking a fight is caused as much be resistance as it is aggression. It made me wonder, what if there was no resistance?” The audience buzzed with thoughts of capitulation. “What percentage of a population are in the army? Typically it’s around 0.4%. In the UK, population 65 million, there’s 120 thousand; that’s 0.2%. So if a country invaded a similar sized country in a fight they, being prepared, would have the advantage of slightly more armed troops but if they entered unopposed they would simply advance and disperse through the whole country. Each armed man would have to control around 300 people. In a foreign country and only trained to fight how would they fair? Could 30 thousand troops control London sustainably? In the countryside could one man control a village of 300 people, be supplied, not feel lonely, not succumb to going native? I’m suggesting the aggressor country fundamentally relies on the defending country to resist in order for them to win and take it over. If that country didn’t put up any resistance they would be so far stretched it would be impossible to have and sustain enough troops to run it. They would trickle on through like the water in my stream and dissipate all their efforts in a futile exercise.” A voice from the audience said it didn’t work in WWll. “That’s not strictly true. Every invaded country put up a fight of some kind, the resistance in France for example. That resistance allowed the Germans to retaliate brutally and subdue the population. They did form a government with the help of collaborators but again this caused a fracture in the population leading to resistance. Admittedly the 6 million German Jews put up no resistance and were slaughtered but a fair proportion of the 69 million German population was negative towards them so that situation is not representative of what I’m suggesting here. I’m suggesting that unopposed a 100 thousand troops would advance so quickly throughout a country it would be a logistical impossibility to supply them, and unopposed they would wonder what they were supposed to do and why they were doing it. They wouldn’t have the intent or
kudos of a conquering army. In time they would simply go home back to the town they knew and their loved ones. It would be like the hundreds of thousands of tourists that invade Greece every year. Sure it would be brave to allow this to happen but if I’m proved right it would be the end of territorial wars.” My friend turned and whispered with a smile, “The man’s crazy.”

Brexfix.

You know what a divorce is like. You have at best half of what you had before, conveniently forgetting it never was all yours in the first place, and lets face it no one is exactly feeling generous when it’s going down. Then there’s those soliciting people to pay, what are they called? Ah yes solicitors; what was I thinking. And alimony, which is something like paying for the right not to drive your own car. And then there’s friends. These osmotically divide into yours and hers. If as usually happens they are all her family and friends you’re left with Jim your drinking partner and Simon who you’ve never really liked anyway. And finally from experience the one who wanted the divorce in the first place often comes off worst. If the reason this unhappy turn of events was because you didn’t like the in-laws overstaying their welcome, even though they were terribly useful around the house, then you have Brexit in a nutshell. We will have to pay nearly £1,000 per man, woman and child in alimony, god knows what in legal fees, Europe will be mean to us and all our old friends are more friends with Europe than us. Theresa May is reduced to hold hands with Trump, drinking with Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, and is probably considering a middle-aged boys fun weekend in Prague with Kim Jong-un. We will all go into a morose decline eating takeaways and watching re-runs of Top Gear bleating, “eeh they could never replace Jeremy Clarkson” and spending our weekends, port in hand, sobbing over the condition of our 1973 Vauxhall Victor, still unable to admit “they don’t make ‘em like that nowadays” because they were shit in the first place. And, though we’d never admit it, be thinking Aunty Joan was, well preferable to Brenda in many ways and made the most amazing meat and potato pies. If only we could Fexit.

ET and Baldness.

As you know ET was hairless, at least the bits of him caught on film. Likewise NASA’s secret internet extraterrestrials. There are even ancient myths that the extraordinary evolution of the human race is in some way a result of extraterrestrial contact. Being staunchly working class I lean towards the baldness explanation. Imagine you are an ape, a monkey or Orangeman covered in hair happily picking nits from your other family members and popping them in your mouth for extra nutrition. You’re warm and good-looking according to the social norms of all the other hairy apes. And then one fateful day there’s an outbreak of alopecia. Bam! overnight you’re all hairless, not only cold you feel ashamed in glossy coated company. You develop a massive inferiority complex. In desperation you slink away and seek a fire to keep warm then figure out how to keep it going and eventually make it. This necessity becomes the mother of an inventive mind. Pretty soon you’re making tools and roller skates and stuff and finding a new use for the skins of all the animals you’ve eaten. After the initial shock this isn’t turning out too bad but you’re still holding a grudge against all those little shites who made fun of you. You progress. You begin to look down on all the animals that haven’t had that necessity thrust upon them and haven’t upgraded to your new outlook on life. You domesticate them, cage them but somewhere deep inside you wish you weren’t an outcast, you wish you could still be in your natural place. You evolve to solve every conceivable puzzle, find the answers to everything, but at every turn that inferiority complex bugs you. It’s summed up in the Eagles lyric, “Who will form the grand design, of what is yours and what is mine?”  I’m looking forward to the day we lose it. Oh and I may be wrong about the roller skates. 

Lime Plaster.

Did you know cement, gypsum plaster and acrylic paints cause damp in older houses? And that lime mortar and plaster, clay and linseed based paints solve a damp problem, and there’s no such thing as ‘rising damp’? My beliefs were re-written last night after a short read. Apparently the first lot create a barrier to moisture, which my poor understanding figured was a good thing, and the second lot are permeable. This permeability allows moisture to breath in and out of walls naturally whereas an impermeable barrier causes moisture to build up behind it. Being stuck there with no means of escape it causes damp. The expert who wrote the article was quite exercised by a whole industry created to ‘solve’ damp problems by these widely held misunderstandings. Excessive water ingress as with my current problem will cause damp but these are usually obvious structural faults often easily fixed. My father in law had three builders fail to overcome damp when it was obvious it was caused by a broken down pipe, a half hour job to fix, and their remedies, using concrete, gypsum plaster and an injection DPC might actually add to the problem. As I struggle to relate this to Donald Trump all I can come up with is that democracy must be allowed to breath and his administration shows all the signs of creating an impermeable layer and the US is getting damper by the week. 

DT Transcript.

Hello I’m Julie. Obviously I know your public persona but here you have a chance to be simply Donald. Is that OK? / nod / Does that possibility excite you? / Look they told me to come see you. They think you might .. / Go on / … / Well ‘they’re not here and I don’t change people. What do you, Donald, want to get from this? / Me? What do I want? Hell I’ve got all I want, money, beautiful wife and now I’m P.. / but behind all those acquisitions, what does that Donald want? Your internal dialogue if you will / Well all the things I’ve got. Julie I got all those things, I deserve them, and they loved me on Apprentice, I was like a king on that show and … / and now you are it’s all different / Right, exactly / Why do you think that is? / You know I’ve always been able to get people to do what I want, it’s a natural ability. Ever since I was a kid, my parents, my school. I got all the girls you know, I was real handsome back then, then starting out in business and all the way through to the Apprentice people did what I wanted. I wanted the Presidency, I got it / Do you see any pattern there? / Of course, it’s obvious / No a different pattern. If I may you’ve always started out with the power over people. Your parents because they wanted the best for you, girls because you were handsome, boys because you could beat them up, business partners because you had the money and the Apprentice because; well it’s in the script. And now you’re dealing with people you don’t have power over. Is that right? / What are you saying? / Well I’m asking you do you have any experience of dealing with people who you didn’t have some natural, some might say privileged advantage over? Imagine you meet a complete stranger and for some reason you have to spend a week with them in a log cabin somewhere. How would it go? / You mean a nobody, an average Jo / OK / I’d shmooze him and if he didn’t come round I’d kick the crap out of him / Lets say he’s a linebacker for the Patriots, a black Muslim and really intelligent and he really doesn’t like you / Seriously? / nod / I’d find what he’s afraid of, work on his him and sell him a condo / Good. So it’s all about manipulating him to get a result, is that right? OK so he has no fears and he tries to befriend you, he’s a nice guy / Where are you going with this? / Donald I guess I’m trying to see how you would react to a situation ordinary people would see as ‘normal’ / But Julie I’m not normal now am I? / And you say that with a sort of pride right? / Of course / You take pride in being abnormal / Just better / And that ‘better’, that disdain cuts you off from being normal? And now you’ve achieved the ultimate position, the ultimate power, you’re finding the lack of empathy you have for ‘normal’ is somehow causing you sadness. You’ve come to the end of the road you’ve chosen and there’s no satisfaction there. You’ve found your special gift, your feeling of superiority is in fact your Achilles heal / … / How does that feel? / Look I just came here so you’d tell me I’m fine / And are you? 

Trump the Marvellous.

I marvel at Trump. Notice how he says things twice. Every policy statement he made in his speech he said twice. It’s like once consciously out loud and once as an echo of his own internal dialogue. Somehow it becomes more convincing, not because it’s twice but because one feels in the repeat one’s hearing his real thoughts; it’s not just empty rhetoric. Then by defaming everyone important he shows he’s fearless and powerful, and as such he knows things we don’t. And then he openly shows all the tricks he’s pulled in his campaign. Somehow this honesty makes him even more believable. Like a magician who’s duped his audience with some slight of hand and explained it it deserves twice the applause. He appears thus frank, honest, fearless, powerful and knowing; what more could you want in your leader? On the other hand he employs cheap verbal tricks, he shoots off at the mouth without consideration, shows no honouring of others and just says what you want to hear without any thought of achieving it. He will simply retract it later when he’s got what he wants. If he’s written the book on manipulation he’s almost certainly manipulating me so he must be the worst leader one can imagine. Such is the American divide. One side must come to terms with their own gullibility, the other with their own vacuity. Since the fifties our watching of entertainment has increase from 2 hours per week to forty plus, an increase of 2,000%. It’s no wonder we view reality as entertainment. But in reality when we stop liking the program we can’t just lean forward and turn it off. 

Open Sensitive Receiver.

Last night, 11.45pm, I snuggled into bed and turned on my little radio. Three women are describing how sleep depravation is ruining their lies. That’s the equivalent of watching an episode Bear Grills before embarking on a weekend’s camping in the Lake District. I’m sure it’ll be fine, no really it will be, trust me, snakebites and frostbite are rare in Ambleside. So I turned off the radio and employed my trusty method of entering the wonderful kingdom of nod. In the dark with one’s eyes closed one might assume one sees perfect blackness. Not so, after acclimatising to the near black one begins to perceive ever-changing shades and shapes. They’re probably remnants of nondescript mental activity. Anyway I begin to watch avidly for something meaningful or at least recognisable as one might an avant-garde art house movie. As a sound track I focus on the sound of my breath. With complete focus conscious deliberations are purged as if by a conscientious cinema usher with a flashlight. The screen shifts, a swirl, a shape, they meld, merge, separate and reshape. Often I see a face then more faces melding one to another but no one I recognise. And so it goes on until I can only presume I enter the realm of Nodsville. Once whilst camping I saw a vivid picture of flames coming from a rectangle, so vivid and specific I got up and looked for a fire believing it a possible premonition. Nothing. I rejoined my friend Liz who explained she’d just stopped a young guy pouring firelighter fluid into the hot rectangular mouth of a giant wood burning stove and preventing a nasty accident. What I’d seen was Liz’s imaginary picture of what could have happened. Spooky but I digress. I guess it’s all an arty version of counting sheep. But I’m left with, ‘how did Liz’s startled imagination transmit itself into my technicolour image some 40 meters away, half asleep and behind a tent?’ Could the dim faces, scenes and brief movies be weaker signals from other people? After that vivid example I think so. That would mean we’re all mind connected, however dimly in the normal run of things. It doesn’t seem much use to be honest except to realise the conditions necessary for one to be an open sensitive receiver.