Sunday 21 October 2012

Jimmy Savile and the Problem of Abuse


Oh what a to-do.  Poor old Jimmy will be turning in his grave.  Well he will be  - literally - when they get their way and exhume him and move him to an unmarked grave.  It is all very pathetic really.  Tragic!  And I probably don't mean tragic in the way the mainstream of our culture would like to think it is tragic.

For many years now I have had a problem with abuse.  The problem seems to be that most people don't know what is wrong with abuse.  I did ask a lady from the Children Services once and the backlash was frightening.

Esther Rantzen expressed the view that she was distressed at how "we" failed to recognise what was going on to the point of possibly colluding with Jimmy Savile.  It appears that the world at large may turn on Esther in a scapegoat kind of way.  Esther should continue her good work and should be 'included' in the conversation about abuse and not 'blamed' or 'excluded'.  However I do have one observation about Esther's presented position and it is this;  "We" missed the signs because "we" don't understand what is wrong with abuse.  I get no indication from Esther's work or comments that she really understands what is so wrong with abuse and I get very little hint that anyone really understands what is wrong with abuse.

The general public consensus seems to be sentimental.  The mainstream view seems to be that abuse is wrong because it is distressing for the victim.  It is the pain that the victim suffers that we dislike and deem "wrong".  It is that slightly empathetic simulation of what the victim is feeling that we can recognise as unpleasant and we would not like to experience.  It seems to follow that it is, therefore, "wrong".  But this is not what is most importantly 'wrong' with abuse.  The pain and discomfort are unpleasant and it is perfectly human and reasonable to regard the experience as undesirable and to respond to that empathetic feeling by questioning it but it is not the 'reason' abuse is so wrong.  There are lots of things that are unpleasant that we don't deem wrong 'because' they are unpleasant.  Having a bad tooth extracted might be one example.

What is so worryingly 'wrong' about abuse is that it damages the person.  And it damages them in a way that perpetrates the abuse.  It damages the person in such a way as to prevent them functioning as well as they were functioning before.  Although we all suffer some degree of abuse in our lives and as humans we are quite robust and cope with a lot of damage it is the damage that makes us perform less successfully and in some cases prevents us functioning creatively and constructively at all.  But there is worse to come...  It turns people into abusers.  So, in some way, the problem with abuse is it creates abusers.  Abused people cannot, by definition, respond accurately to their environment.  They are malfunctioning and this is detrimental not only to their individual well being, which is important enough, but also to the well being of the society, the culture, and ultimately to the evolution of this particular sentient life form in this weird old universe of ours.

It makes me so MAD!


That took me by surprise!  My sister turned up.  Now I have many sisters and some are easier to get along with than others.  An objective a view as is possible from a subjective position would suggest that the more damaged the individual the harder they are to get along with.  The irony of this is probably exposed in the fundamentals of Christianity - Love your enemies!  However I am subjective and I am in a very bad place - I am, in fact, quite injured.  This particular sister is normally okay but she does have a tendency to promote positive thinking.  I guess what I see is the same problem I have with religion in that they are so unconvinced of their own beliefs they actually require reassurance that they are right to bolster their failing conviction.  They are trying to maintain their own delusion that allows them to trample on other people where necessary to keep themselves feeling good.  It only happens when you abuse people so the evidence is clear that there is a lot of abuse about but hey - we knew that.  Anyway she starts with the "How are you?" gambit which is designed to make her feel good by being a caring person.  Why do I say that?  Because when I don't kowtow to her requirements and alleviate her of any guilt in my pain by lying and saying I am fine she feigns concern and asks for details but in no time at all she is invalidating my answers as if to prove that I am somehow inherently wrong.  She tells me, amongst other things, that she has discovered that the only person who can do anything about your life is you.  So she points out quite clearly that the only person who can make my life better is me.  I do point out that that is not true but she exclaims that it isn't up to other people - at this point it becomes a little hard to reproduce her insanity because when I stop to think about it it really doesn't make sense.  That is why I want a recording device.  But I do point out through gritted teeth that she might try pointing that out to the Jews.  At this point she complains that I always introduce these bigger pictures and she is not talking about the Jews.  So I suggest she tries telling it to the American Indians or the Witches or the victims of the Inquisition or the Industrial Revolution.  But I am apparently still wrong because she isn't talking about any of those.  At this point I had raised my voice but then she told me not to shout at her.  So I stopped.  Then she complained that I was sulking.  I left the room.

So now I have written a tiny piece to vent a miniscule part of what is profoundly upsetting me.  No one wants to read it.  It will sit in cyberspace floating around in a metaphorical, hypothetical, virtual void.  Ok so I indulge in a little surreal artistic literary creativity.  But it probably makes sense anyway.  My point is that this is like a molecule or a grain of sand - seemingly insignificant in its individual existence but the beach and the whole world are made up of bits like this.  I really am going to have to write the book.  But what I want to write about now is the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Friday 19 October 2012

Mebeverine in a Bag

So who is responsible for calling it Great Britain?  And does one put a question mark after a rhetorical question?  I went to the pharmacy today to pick up my prescription for Mebeverine.  Mebeverine is a gastric muscle relaxant and I take it to relax my gastric muscles.  I have what they term "Irritable Bowel Syndrome" but what is in fact too many years of profound distress and anxiety caused by an immersion in a toxic culture of abuse.  Specifically the worst of it has been the result of the most dreadful behaviour by one individual and their chronic psychotic and vindictive malicious behaviour.  But I digress.

Exhibit 'C'


This is a photo of what I was given by the pharmacist.  Admittedly they had hidden it inside a paper bag and so I didn't discover this until I got home.  I opened the paper bag expecting to find either a pharmaceutically branded box containing a medical preparation in the form of tablets or, perhaps in these austere times, a local pharmacy branded generic box for pharmaceutical concoctions.  But instead I found a plastic bag with the tablets stuffed inside.  I guess the pharmacist is covered legally by inserting the information leaflet but this is so disturbing I am almost lost for words.  Although I am not a frequent drug taker I suspect I would get more effort and respect from my local drug pusher than from this pharmacy.  Damn it they even manage to paint smiley faces on tabs of acid!

A plastic bag!  I do find it hard to believe.  It is one of those press seal bags you can buy in any supermarket for your sandwiches and to add insult to injury it wasn't even sealed.  It was just a load of drugs served up in a clear plastic bag.  That's it.  That is the state of the Health Services in this country.  It looks more like an exhibit in a court case.  "On examining the accused the officer found exhibit C stuffed up the rear orifice m'lud."

They used to advise against getting your drugs online but you will get better service from the perfectly legal online clinic at HealthExpress (where you can get legally prescribed Viagra) or from other remedial outlets like Holland & Barrett, Home Herbs or Healthy and Essential.  There is little more to say really except I am really pleased that that "fucking pleb" "Thrasher" Andrew Mitchell MP has had to resign.  Between Mebeverine in a bag and "Fucking Plebs" running the show I think this country is going to the dogs - except that I think dogs would run the country better.

Toast & Turbines

I woke up this morning with a number of strange ideas going on in my head.  One was about requesting an email newsletter from a company called con.com and another was spreading butter on half toasted grainy bread.  But behind all of that was this simmering volcano of anger about the abusive culture that I am experiencing.  The Post Office incident is the first port of call but it soon matches the Children Services issue and [my father] and [my x-wife] and the [local] High School and the hospital school and the dentists in this town and the Education Officer and it goes on.  Currently I am fuming about the Emperor's New Clothes.  People seem to have this delusion they wish to maintain and if I get anywhere near questioning it they will annihilate me.

This could so easily be interpreted or represented as paranoia but tell that to the Holocaust Jews or the "Witches" who were burnt at the stake.  Tell that to the victims of the Inquisition or the American Indians.

As I sit here and think of writing this up for the blog I realise that I don't have the impetus or the energy.  I don't have the conviction that it is worth anything.  I can hear people saying "Oh shut up and do something about it."  So then I picture myself not pursuing the complaint which is, in some sense, the attempt to change other people but rather doing something to fix my situation like paining pictures and selling them for money.  Then I realise two things.  The first is that it is what they want and the second is how it becomes impossible to do anything with so many outstanding problems to solve.  The first issue is difficult because on the surface it seems that the "reason" for not doing it is "because" it is what they want;  As if it is a child with ODD (this is slightly satirical because of course children don't "have" ODD - it is given to them by abusive adults).  But it is simplified as the reason for not doing it being because it is what they want on the basis that it is actually their agenda in the first place.  Within a cultural context I have been told to act in compliance with an abusive paradigm.  I have been well educated and am placed in a situation where I am supposed to work for a living.  If it were as simple as that I would be happily doing it.  I have had many jobs but by defending people from injustice I have progressively been marginalised, ostracised and ultimately deprived of a way of "earning a living".  Now I am told to knuckle down and get on with something that is within their agenda and which is either harmless to them or collusive with their nonsense and makes them a huge profit and maintains the paradigms of control and abuse.  So I am supposed to crawl away into a corner and neurotically paint little pictures which will earn me just enough to survive in poverty and pain.  It would be fine if I were starting out from 20 years old and fit and healthy but at my ripe old age and my now desperate state of ill health it is not a practical solution.  So it is seen as kowtowing to their abuse, hence not doing it because it is what they want.  The second issue is similarly complex and is understandable with a little explanation.  One of the ways we operate as humans is to categorize phenomena.  One aspect of this is to simplify handling information.  We split things into categories like work and home life;  Home life is split into leisure and house work;  Housework is split into shopping and cleaning;  Shopping is split into getting there and the shopping list etc.  We do this as a way of keeping our brains tidy and making it possible to function.  Failing that we live in a bizarre and  unmanageable mess.  I can't just "do something" because I can't decide what to do because there are too many unresolved problems vying for attention.  I need to clear up some of the outstanding mess.  That mess, unfortunately for me is caused by other malicious people.  Well they may not be intentionally malicious but there lies another philosophical issue.  What constitutes malicious?

This blog will just have to be the tired and frustrated, confused and disjointed ramblings of a lunatic/genius in pain until I get this resolved.  I have had four months of inactivity because I have been paralysed - nay, petrified - by the insatiable insanity that is our culture.  I will resolve the issues and I will solve the problems - but it is going to take a little while and it may seem arbitrary or disconnected or unfocused or completely off the point until I begin to make it coherent.