Hyper Normalisation.

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

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

Stop Lying.

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

9/11 Health & Safety.

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

The Appeal of Nought.

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

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

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

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

Corbyn.

I suspect it’s simplistic to cast those violently opposed to Corbyn as a Blairite rump, and Corbyn himself as a wishie washie lefty. For me the key is Owen Smith. He’s been chosen for his ability to sling combative rhetoric at the party opposite like for like. I guess the theory is there’s no way a lamb can compete with the slaughterer but this Labour schism is far too heated to be about mere style, it has to be something far more visceral: survival. Avowed socialists want their party to be a viable opposition behind a fierce general, which Corbyn appears not to be. But what if Corbyn is a first shoot of a different spring? What if the old ways of our adversarial democracy have become archaic, decrepit and that cloistered highly politicised MPs are no longer good decision makers? Then again what if the messianic following of Corbyn might in itself destabilise our whole politics? Is the Westminster establishment too big to fail? Are we too blinded by animosity to see the reality behind it, that Corbyn has touched a visceral nerve of an un-represented decent honesty majority fast becoming another indigenous population being crushed by global neo-liberalism? Habituality is the cholesterol of the mind; it thickens the arteries of thinking. The more it takes hold the more the vital necessary action to renew health becomes frightening and inconceivable. This is the essence of Labour’s conflict, its first heart attack. It’s the survival of the social politic.

More of the Same.

I have just bought a garden shredder from Screwfix. I will now be inundated with adverts for them on Facebook, Amazon, ebay etc, and get emails from shredder manufacturers of their full range of shredders for all my requirements. Sophisticated algorithms and lucrative backdoor information sharing doesn’t really amount to much when I’ve either bought one or decided not to. It’d be far better to insert a five-year time delay for when this one’s worn out and I need a new one. And every click on Youtube elicits a sidebar of variations of what I’ve just chosen. Remember ‘Pop will Eat Itself’ from the eighties, a rare future glimpse of our present where everything is a re-hash of everything smeared into oblivion by electronic machines, where a pop career is fifteen minutes of fame? Eating one’s own excrement may seem like a jolly good perpetual motion idea but it’s hardly a healthy life style. It may be getting faster and busier but only, like a diet of salt and vinegar crisps, because it has minimal sustenance. My guess is when we get to iPhone17 with 3D graphics, everything you might ever want to know and its own friendly personality we’ll have forgotten what its primary use is. Music will be self-generated by trend analysis and we’ll all be buying garden shredders weekly. Don’t laugh, I’ve already bought three cordless electric drills. So there you have it, we’re all going to get more of the same, because it appears that’s what we want. 

Football Emotionally.

A player for Salford FC kicked a goal from near the centre line that won them the match causing huge emotion. When interviewed he said, “I could have done it a hundred times and missed but today it went in.” Equally there are a hundred small mistakes per match that cause supporters much negative emotion over a player’s ‘stupidity.’ Add to that dubious ref decisions and the result is a 90 minutes chaotic emotional journey that over a million fans pay for a ticket to every week. And basically the winners, like Salford FC, are just the ones with more lucky moments. Being brought up on motorcycle sports this emotional roller coaster passes me by. I enjoy football for the skill, bravery and physical fitness just as I would a race. So there seems something about the structure of football that plays out like a procedural crime drama with numerous unforeseen plot twists leading to a simple win or lose. The ones that went in are remembered and revered, the ones that just missed soon forgotten though the difference in skill is minimal. When the goal difference is rarely more than two, though highly skilful and athletic, it’s basically a game of chance hinging on a few throws of a dice. So it seems its appeal is the emotional ride hence the highs and lows of being a fan. One might describe it as a form of surrogate gambling. Nevertheless it’s the greatest of games.