A Message to All our Dear Friends at this joyous Time of Year.

Time does fly when you’re enjoying yourself, I’m told. Well whoopee-do. It must be nice for some people tiptoeing through the tulips on a Cancun beach listening to Cold Play, whose progenies have become a successful wang distributor and Doctor of Philosophy at St Gertrude’s College Cambridge. Bully for them for good parenting. Ours struggle to reach average. One’s dyslexic, which is at least trendy, and the other smokes so much pot he can hardly remember his own name. One can’t spell bed and the other can’t get out of it. So what year have we had? Well ‘I’m a Celeb’ was a high point. The car keeps stalling, our broadband’s rubbish and Mothermouse feels neglected. And that’s after me buying her a shed, ungrateful cow. We did go on holiday but I backed the hire car into an Audi and it cost an arm and a leg. The four-sum with Jim and Brenda backfired. Apparently I should have told them first so Brenda got quite upset. I never liked them anyway. What a waste of oysters that was. My attempt at amateur dramatic back in April didn’t go much better. ‘Something to do to get out of the house, meet new friends’ she said. It was Pirates of Penzance and some woman laughed when I took along a CD of his greatest hits. Snotty bitch. And Mothermouse’s rash has come back, which is nothing; I repeat nothing to do with me. So that’s 2015, just another year of struggle for us nonentities. Much love and kisses and thanks for your missives, they’ve been so interesting. 

Thinking! What is it Good For!

So a recent scientific study has found that people who like pseudo profound quotes are less intelligent. All those Facebook one liners rubbished if, that is, you consider yourself intelligent. So what are you, dumb or a dreamer? I will term this reduced logic. One is presented with two linked alternatives, so if not one then the other. Maybe we’re being infected with binary thinking. Cameron’s recent speech for air strikes was a case in point. He created a series of binary alternatives each one containing one ‘oh my god I don’t want that!’ and the other ‘whatever it is Cameron wants you to choose.’ It’s probably taught in schools under persuasive writing. “Imagine children you are a government minister and you want your brother-in-law to get a fracking licence, how might you phrase a binary alternative?”  “Miss, miss, how about ‘do you want your children to freeze to death or allow fracking?’ “Very good Hilary B. See what he did children? He posed a binary alternative only one of which is acceptable.” Then of course there’s the exact opposite, a sort of diffusion of logic where everything is possible in the best of all possible worlds. That’s the domain of Facebook one-liners. ‘Everything you seek is seeking you. You have what it takes to get everything you desire.’ There’s a sort of momentary swirl of understanding that feels nice but is gone in the time it took to read it. They’re all probably true but one could read a hundred and be none the wiser. Which neatly leads on to conspiracy theorists where equally, one could read a hundred and be none the wiser. I get the feeling all the great thinkers of the past are turning in their graves at this demise of thinking. And I believe they have a point. Only gross universal non-thinking could lead to unhinging our climate, living unsustainably, fighting perpetually and generally striding out so energetically towards our own demise. So bear a thought for, well anything for god sake! 

The Elephant in the Room.

Watching the human zoo of ‘I’m a Celebrity …..’ I’m struck by one human cognitive activity that could be the root of all our problems. It’s only mentioned obliquely in therapy and even old wisdoms don’t tackle it head on. It’s self-justification. At first sight it doesn’t seem particularly pivotal or damaging, in fact it can seem a positive necessity in the cut and thrust of life but delineate it as a specific cognitive activity and for me a picture emerges. I hear much talk of ‘the self’, is it real or multiple, are there higher, lower, conscious, unconscious selfs etc? but little about the cognitive activity surrounding it. I hear about the axis of love and fear but little about the active driver that positions us along it. We seem to focus on entities rather than vectors and motive forces.
Firstly lets separate some realities. The real fear of an approaching tiger is necessary and valuable, and there is a reality to one’s fundamental being, as opposed to the cognitive construction we normally perceive as being. Our fundamental reality is of a ‘being’ in a ‘circumstance’ and these constructions are our attempt to ameliorate or justify the interaction between the two. I’m-a-Celeb’s many manipulations stress the participants relationships and in every reaction self-justification appears pivotal. “I am worthy of being me, of having that, my beliefs are true, my actions are warranted, I’m a good human being etc” and the general reaction is, “Well I am too so don’t belittle me with your assertions.” It rapidly becomes an escalating competition between self-justifications. Those well practiced bluster and dominate while others feel hurt and justify inwardly or turn to friends to justify mutually. Either way the cognitive activity of self-justification dominates. It’s easy to see how every human hierarchy is both a sponsor for and a structure of self-justification. This self-justification addresses neither the reality of the being nor the reality of its circumstance. Sepp Blatter is neither true to his being nor to FIFA. His self-justification only provides his self with the appearance of success and happiness. It’s like an oyster that, when ingesting a piece of grit, endlessly coats it with calcium carbonate to ease itself from the sore. It may become a lustrous pearl but the pearl is dead matter, made by the oyster but foreign to both it and its circumstance. (It’s no coincidence Lady C loves her pearls) And like the oyster it can become habitual to add layer upon layer to our self-justifications until they becomes a solid shiny pearl, our solid shiny self, at least in our own estimation. But I am neither the grit nor the pearl, I’m the oyster and oysters can live totally comfortably in their circumstance without a need for either. They, we, can live far more vividly without the myriad of stories of self that make up the layers of the pearl. I am not stories, I am being. But how difficult it is to trust that my individuality, my qualities, my character, behaviour, my very persona is in my being not my inventions of a self. If you would like to imagine writing on a blackboard all your stories of self, ‘I am strong or weak, I am easily hurt, I am caring and helpful, I am put upon, handsome, ugly etc ….’, every one. And when they’re all there in black and white rub them all out and look at the pristine blackboard, blank but far more substantial than those scratchings of chalk. Now you have no stories to defend or maintain. As a being in a circumstance you will respond from your being more freely and vividly. You will see and hear your circumstance more freely and vividly without the need to defend your (pearl) self and the huge amount of energy you used in self-justification will be free to use elsewhere.
Without really realising it I fell into this way many years ago and found the following results.
By not maintaining beliefs of who I am, my pearl as it were, I don’t feel the restraints of the aughts and shoulds that arise from my imagining a persona I need to live up to. I’m left only with my intents as a being to be the best I can be, and somehow work as defined from the aughts and shoulds has transmogrified into the playful endeavour of simply being. This is no less demanding just not as arduous. By not having a prescribed way of doing things I’m free to play with alternatives and to evaluate them free of constructs of right and wrong. And strangely rather than loosing an identity people respond to me lovingly as real, imaginative and competent, if somewhat eccentric.
By not maintaining beliefs of who I am I can, in circumstances were I might normally be expected to defend myself, find I have nothing to defend and as such I can hear and respond cleanly without defence. I can feel free to play with and assess my own and other opinions without fear or favour. I can accept another’s opinion without feeling hurt and disagree without feeling superior. This connects my being to my circumstance far more than having to maintain some self-position by self-justification. Of course this doesn’t stop me from being unbearably smug or cursing when I bang my head, I’m not perfect.
Lady C on the other hand has a pearl the size of a tennis ball. Her powers of self-justification are second to none. As a result the other celebs find her unbearable, either a manipulative friend or an infuriating enemy, a being trapped in a self and isolated from her circumstance. But that’s aging for you. With the passage of time we seem to either loose our sense of self or become trapped by it. So for me the cognitive act of self-justification is the elephant in the room. Will someone please open the very large door? That’s it the one at the end next to the aspidistra.

Paradise, Really?

A Facebook post from ‘Honor Diaries’ shows Saudi Sheik Yahya Al-Jana vehemently preaching the wonders of paradise that await Muslim men when they die ‘honourably.’ Synopsis: ‘Men go to heaven but women don’t because they’re all whores. In heaven every man has a hundred plus young virgins for sex every morning and Allah gives them extra staying power to do it.’ It’s all with the authority of the ‘word of god’ and frighteningly absurd. Who says women aren’t honourable enough to get in? If no women then where do all the virgins come from? Is not sex with a virgin the most unsatisfying? Wouldn’t it get boring by mid morning day one? If earthly women are whores are you not the son, brother and husband of a whore? How does that make you feel? I’m left thinking the whole tragedy of the Middle East, ISIS, Syria, hundreds of thousands dead and maimed and the migration crisis are all due to a catastrophic failure of Islamic male sex education. Imagine believing all women are either unattainable or a worthless whore. Where does that leave your natural sexual urges? Frustrated if you don’t and whoring if you do. But all this bedevilment will be alleviated in heaven with the illusion of perpetual virgins after your honourable death. It’s a vile nest of Catch 22s that produces frustrated, hate filled, gullible young men bent on (dis)honourable self-destruction. This one ridiculous masculine delusion has turned Islam from a force for good into a force for chaos, conflict and violence in the world. If you believe Sheik Yahya Al-Jana it’s likely your hundred virgins will be gullible misguided young men not women. How would you feel about that?

The City.

Darien was born in the city. Like everyone else he was extremely wealthy and had all that money could buy, but lately he hadn’t been visiting the machines. For one reason or another it had just slipped his mind. He’d probably just got used to it, and anyway the wall was some distance away. But things were very expensive and the money he had was running out. He would go tomorrow he thought. The wall that encircled the city was high and though it was rumoured there was a gate there was no reason anyone would use it when they had the machines. The machines, twenty in all, spaced evenly along the wall were the reason for the wealth. Set securely in the stonework of the wall these cash machines dispensed cash a little differently to normal. For every pound you inserted they dispensed five pounds. They were the reason for the wealth and why the city dwellers did very little work except of course for regular trips to the machines with whatever cash they had. Darien would go tomorrow. No one in the city questioned how the machines worked, why would they? He visited a coffee shop and asked for a latté. He drank the latté and asked for the bill. £5. I said it was expensive. He realised with horror that was exactly the amount he had left. He pleaded with the waitress to let him go to the machines but to no avail. With no money he couldn’t get more and without more he couldn’t get even more. He was stuffed. After trying everything he asked in desperation where the gate was. Maybe out there he could at least find some food. He found it grown over with brambles. No one had used it in years. He went outside the city. Outside there were many more people and all much poorer than anyone he’d ever known. And every day they worked. Darien asked them, “Don’t you have cash machines?” They of course said yes, that they were set in the stonework of the city wall. He asked, “So why do you need to work?” they laughed and explained that they worked to feed the machines, that every £5 they earned and put in the machine it would give them one pound to spend. Suddenly Darien realised how the machines in the city were able to do what they did. He set about working to make £5 and put it in the machine then went back to the gate, but it was locked from the inside.  

Shoreham Air Show Crash.

I watched footage of the Shoreham crash on the news, a massive fireball of aviation fuel engulfing a stretch of the A27 and its unfortunate motorists. The Hawker Hunter involved was a trans sonic fighter weighing 20,000 lbs with a single Rolls Royce Avon engine and a range of 2,000 miles.

A Boeing 737 by comparison weighs 70,000 lbs, has a similar range, two Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines and carries around three time the fuel load. In Shoreham the damage apart from the cars appears minimal given the impressive fireball that engulfed it all. Aviation fuel will burn like that but only for a relatively short time. And although it burns hot it doesn’t reach the temperature to melt steel. You can probably see where I’m going with this. The last time I saw a massive fireball of aviation fuel like that in Shoreham was on 9/11. Back then it engulfed several floors of Towers 1 and 2. I’ve just watched an old video of that and the burn lasted less than twenty seconds before it turned to black smoke. It’s funny how seeing such a catastrophic image obliterates all thoughts of physics. Could the massive steel structure of the towers really be brought down by twenty seconds of burning fuel? Most structural engineers, physicists etc (outside NIST) think not, but the public saw it with their own eyes. Try this at home; put a kebab skewer in the gas flame for twenty seconds. Did it melt, even bend, even get white hot? No, the melting point of steel is around 1510*C where the hottest a petrol fire gets is 1200*C. Thermite as used in controlled demolitions though burns at 2200*C. You do the maths.

Automated Football Results.

Our local pub runs a football competition throughout the season. Choose four teams from the four leagues then add up their league positions to get a total. To do this for seventy odd people so they know how they’re doing was an onerous task that took Chrismouse a couple of hours every week; that’s eighty hours over the season. Chrismouse needed a spreadsheet. Stiffmouse to the rescue! Well it seemed simple enough. After some evaluation it wasn’t. How do you get from data on a website to a list of people’s scores to post up in the pub? I started learning about Look-ups, Macros and how to write Visual Basic. Did all that and by week one I’d got it working and sent it to Chrismouse with considerable pride. Week two and it crumbled into dust. Got it working again, sent it off again and then dust again. And again. My file was acquiring so many suffixes of variants it ran to two paragraphs and Chrismouse was loosing confidence. Breakthrough. The BBC data was screwing things up. It was getting bigger and bigger as more matches were played. More learning, more rewriting of macros and bam it was conquered. By this point I couldn’t put it down so went for the ultimate, buttons. Yes you can put user buttons on spreadsheets, just click and they’ll do anything you want. So now all Chrismouse has to do is copy/paste data, press the appropriate button, repeat and press the Results button. It should take him around 80 seconds. That’s seventy-nine hours, six minutes, forty seconds saved every year, and I’m two weeks older.