Ranting Rand changes Land.

Though I’m heartened that the immorality of rich US Republicans can now be the subject of a BBC4/Open University documentary it doesn’t help redress the problem. The rich control the government, the government legislates and the legislation favours the rich. This state of affairs is the outcome of US economists and Republicans following the philosophies of Ayn Rand, a bourgeois Russian Jewess who had a hard time at the hands of the Bolshevik Revolution. Smarting from being caught in the middle (class) she travelled to America and found a vibrant ‘working’ country free of both an aristocracy and communism. She rationalised what she found into ‘Objectivism’ based on ‘rational self interest’ and the pursuit of one’s own happiness. Like Margaret Thatcher she was the daughter of a reasonably successful shopkeeper and this philosophy sits well with that working/middleclass life. One has enough resources to buy and sell and one’s profitability lays squarely on one’s own effort and nous. It must be tempting to see the whole of society as a broad spectrum of happy shopkeepers from Wal-Mart to street vendors in one long purchasing food chain. It’s as appealing as a summer’s day in the Hamptons, and to be fair America in 1925 was still full of opportunity. So how has it all gone wrong? In 1957 Rand wrote ‘Atlas Shrugged’, a fictional novel in which the creative energetic (rich) class of America, the Wal-Marts, literally shrugged off the weight of the poor and went to live in the mountains to create a prosperous free-market economy while the remaining poor went into terminal decline. Vitriol was heaped on this Enid Blyton tale but it sold 25 million copies and became the bible of the Republicans. I assume it was motivated by her transplanted hatred for the Russian Bolsheviks who ruined her middleclass life but in a strange corollary of fate it turned into a justification for America’s elite to see themselves as Tsarist. Greed is good, the poor are feckless etc. There are two flaws in Rand’s Objectivism. People aren’t rational in their pursuit of self-interest and not everyone is a shopkeeper. The poor can’t afford to buy stock and the rich can rig the market. So in 2012 America has pivoted on the writings of one immigrant into a close approximation of Tsarist Russia, and we all know what happened to them.

Greater than Jimmy.

Thanks to J and S Mice for my education re the critically damaged people of our society. They’re both miners dedicated to extricating the living bodies of women and children from crushing social pressure at a coalface where the pit props are being systematically stolen by the management. Where, if there’s a collapse, a problem is solved by the suffocating burial of thousands. Graphic enough? A huge percentage of presenting psychological problems of the young and not so young people can be traced to childhood sexual abuse. Jimmy Savill is not a gross unique example; he’s the tip of the unspoken norm. It stems from men in and subjugated by positions of power. Perhaps that was a bit too low key so in case you missed it, “SUBJUGATED BY.” As the three of us met on a Person Centres therapy course we subscribe to the individual having a visceral need for empathy and unconditional love, and functioning best when all the elements of our perception, beliefs and actions are congruent. Set these needs against what is supplied to a person who assumes a position of power, deference, distance, fear etc, it’s clear that the position leaves these primary needs unmet and subjugates the holder to ‘it’s’ requirements. Thus subjugated the holder will try to meet their needs as a human being in other ways. They must maintain their outward persona whilst also covertly attempt to satisfy their more visceral human needs. What better way than to use the power dynamic between adult and youngster and what better way to gain entry to the visceral than sexual intimacy? The dynamic of child sex abuse. The child of course reacts differently. He/she is introduced to sexual intimacy in the wolf’s clothing of a predatory being desperately trying to satisfy their own depletion from being subjugated, which the child has no way of understanding. This potent cocktail of sex, power and repression will play out in a thousand different ways. I’m tempted to say the sexual element in isolation is the least damaging but of course it’s not in isolation. Nevertheless the subjugation, neediness, repression and personal incongruity purveyed by one human being to another is for me the greater crime. And lest we heap all our vitriol on Jimmy Savill lets remember that subjugation, neediness, repression and personal incongruity are at play in all our power based interactions. And as the pit props are removed one by one by the powerful the whole edifice of our power based ant hill will collapse if we don’t recognise that power subjugates all its power holders into being less than the glorious human beings they were meant to be.

Seven Fruit Cakes & Life.

So an all day Saturday Playback Theatre rehearsal with seven variations on a fruit cake recipe. One of the joys of rehearsal is we have to provide our own stories to enact: In a performance we’d use stories from the audience. Mouse A tells of her holiday with her three-year-old son and eighty year old mother. Fraught with possibilities before they start Mouse A finds at the Luton check-in that her passport is still in Sheffield. She realises her only option is to return home with child, which in itself is an echo of the upcoming frustrations of the festive season almost upon us. Mother, the proud survivor of eighty Christmas dinners, a war and the commonwealth, is less daunted. She bristles to the front and demands that their party, part octogenarian part baby, be allowed on as ‘speedy boarders’ in the hope a hearty run up will overcome this minor diplomatic problem. The check in lady offers up a friendly paw for her to speak to. Mouse A confirms firmly, “We’re not speedy boarders mother, we’ll just have to go home, you get on the plane.” Baby, as babies do, responds personally to the emotion and begins to cry. Mother responding to the crushing realisation that Winston Churchill and several million others died in vane if English people can’t even leave their own country is incensed to the core and begins shouting, “I’m senile, I’m senile.” “No you’re not mother, just get on the plane.” “Well only if she lets me be a speedy boarder!” “Oh please let her be a speedy boarder!!” Mouse B then tells of a walking holiday with a friend who needed to pee often, a frequent curse of the small bladdered as Mouthermouse will attest. Unfortunately friend mouse’s mobile was in her back pocket and must have blipped out like a bar of soap from a firm grasp somewhere along their first day’s walk. At her insistence the second and third days walks were spent revisiting all the possible first day’s pee stop venues in the hope of finding it. To no avail. Mouse B explains this and other factors did not endear her to her slow walking, slightly stupid, overly demanding and cloyingly gushy companion. A few weeks later she gets a phone call. “I got my phone back! You were such lovely company how about a walking holiday in India next year?” Noooooooooooo!! So re-enacting these and other stories was the joyous five-hour traffic of our stage. Twas a fiine time.

The Cleaner.

Mothermouse decides we need a cleaner. But that’s not easy. First off we must not appear disgusting and second we must appear so franticly busy doing other things we just don’t have time. God forbid we should come across as lazy arses happily living in the Woodseats equivalent of a bush-tucker trial. This is made worse by not being able to find whatever is incubating flies in the kitchen. I can only assume some deceased cat present is lurking behind something, but luckily she didn’t find it. Anyway appearing frantically busy isn’t easy. It has to be something selfless, socially useful. Like origami won’t cut it unless it’s a three story hanging basket for charity. I mean there’s something deeply disgusting about appearing to live a dissolute Downton life style in a Sheffield suburban semi. So we power dress, which for us, seeing as it’s ten in the morning, means losing the dressing gowns asap. But preparations for her arrival began days before. Off to Sainsbury’s to purchase what cleaning products we should have if we actually did clean. Anxiety rises as we tackle a steep learning curve and do a frantic pre-clean the evening before her arrival. She arrives with a vacuum cleaner the size of a Russian tank and spurns our old mop as worn out and my new Vax steam cleaner as a homosexual’s knick-knack. “In my cauntree we owenly yuzeh sulphuric aceed and petrol driven apylances” she tells us; beads of Slovakian sweat dripping from her face. I can hear my unconscious translating this as, “The Inglis, they live like lazy pig dogs.” I feel my mouth opening to explain, via a hastily fashioned blatant lie, that, but for the depression caused by our heartfelt concerns over the plight of Mongolian orphans, we’d be as spit-spot as Mary Poppins. I calm down and rationalise that if it wasn’t for us dispensing our largess she and her three fatherless children would be out on the street, possibly in Mongolia, and that it’s only the laziness of the hapless rich that allows the industry of the less fortunate to bear fruit. I wash my own cup up and, feeling I’ve done my bit, decide to run out to Chatsworth to buy a piece of meat for the weekend.

Progress I don't Think.

Wow there’s so much going on these days. I mean not in politics etc, that’s the same old same old, but in the understanding of our condition as human organisms. Microbiology is proving even down to the cellular level we consist of nested spheres of perceptual interactive consciousness; that in a sense how we perceive our life is echoed in each cell of our body. The book, “Why people get ill” quotes numerous studies that show this empirically but now microbiology is adding the mechanical evidence. One might even say all illness is psychosomatic. Darren Brown recently proved in his TV program that allowing the unconscious to believe a cure was being given was sufficient for the organism as a whole to ‘cure’ itself. Information recently levered out of drug companies under the freedom of information act of unpublished trials shows the drug to rely almost totally on the placebo effect. But importantly this mind/body interaction is the domain of the unconscious, not the conscious mind; we can’t consciously ‘think’ ourselves better. Even the mind/body dichotomy itself may be a misnomer. It’s more likely the organism is completely integrated where the ‘mind’ extends through the autonomic and nervous systems right down to each and every cell. For sure our conscious mind, or to put it another way, the bit where our mind is aware of itself is puny compared with the complex functionality required for governing the whole organism. What we are conscious of is just the post-checking of what’s already in process against longer-term objectives. My unconscious ‘sticks the tennis racket there’ because consciously ‘I want to win the game.’ So becoming well has much to do with what we consciously aren’t aware of. Enter NLP and hypnosis, and the precision of Ericksonian language. The unconscious is very literal and present. It doesn’t comprehend the negative, the future/past, or fancy conceptual language. But now there appears to be an update on these that goes under prosaic title of ‘Muscle Testing.’ The therapist tests the muscle reaction of an outstretched arm to test the unconscious response to questions and suggestions; no trance state, nothing. There’s a convincing demonstration on You Tube. So imagine a future where your doctor tests your arm and offers a remedy to your unconscious and off you go healing yourself. No drugs, injections or anything; unless of course you have a broken arm.

Hail Helen the Swan.

Look away now if you don’t spend your Sat&Sun evenings watching, “I’m a Celeb on X Factor get me out of Match of the Day, Garry.” Well it appears God in the form of the GBP is hard at work. We’ve let Ella go which really pissed off the judges and proves Big G will always confound our expectations, and kept in Rylan in the hidden hope that if he wins he’ll actually explode with emotion, wail loud enough to usher in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and drown Essex in a flood of day-glow orange tears. And we’ve kept punishing Helen with Bush-tucker trials until she’s finally experienced the greatest joy of her life so far. She shunned words and hugs of encouragement, didn’t mention ‘doing her best’ and engaged grim determination for the first time ever, and won twelve stars! Mothermouse did a dance and we both shed a tear of joy with her and her camp-mates, who would finally eat a meal of wallaby elbows after days of her failures and their hungers. To witness someone re-writing their script of constant failure by a huge success is a profound delight. It proves Mothermouse’s quote that “reality always wins” over our puny programming. It’s why I still get a lump in my throat when I hear, “a swan? Me a swan?” So lets all sing together the hymn to self-actualisation. “I’m not such an ugly duckling with feathers all stubby and brown. In fact in the words of me as a bird, chlick, the best in town. Chlick the best, chlick chlick, the best, chlick chlick the best in town.” Feels good doesn’t it. Oh and Man U and Chelsea lost.

Bug free Screen Life.

Helen Flanagan intrigues me. (I’m a Celeb get me out of Here) She has a history of panic attacks and keeps failing the bush tucker trials. She ran out of yesterday’s trial before the release of the first mealworm. The GBP keep voting for her, the other celebs are going hungry and even the show crew are pissed their lavish preparations aren’t being used. She seems to be suffering from the other PTSD, Pre Traumatic Stress Disorder, a form of debilitating narcissism. It seems to me to come from the confluence of two factors. One, the modern idea “you must learn to love yourself first”, and two, the invention of electro-gadgets, phones, iPads, TVs and the like, that offer a semblance of life without the real experience of it. One learns unilateral omnipotence whilst at the same time acquiring no real world capabilities. Helen is very likeable but personality doesn’t cut it when you’re sandwiched between hungry people and their food supply. Her camp mates kindness, understanding and support go unnoticed because she’s already far kinder, understanding and supportive of herself and their challenges to her zero abilities are deemed ‘insensitive’. She is constantly “doing her best” but only for herself, not for her camp mates. Though delightful she doesn’t comprehend the systemic nature of the group. It’s a cocktail of beliefs that allow every man to be an island, which makes an enjoyable, fulfilling life impossible. It’s a dramatic example of being incapable of translating her knowing of the program ‘on screen’ into the reality of being there. “Sure I could beat David Hay in a fist fight, I’ve watched him on TV haven’t I”. My criticism is not of her but her beliefs. It’s not important because of her but for all the youngsters who feel they’ve found the key to life, the universe and everything when they’ve mastered the remote. Sorry but in real life the skill set for using electro-gadgets is insignificantly small.