Tuesday 31 May 2016

RANTINGS OF A LUNATIC


Can I say that I am getting really pissed off at the shattering level of cognitive dissonance in our culture?  I shouldn't be surprised when I cast a broad view across the cultural landscape of our history and pay any attention to the utter bullshit emanating from what were imagined to be reasonably rational institutions and officialdom in general.  Endless assertions of justice for one party based on discriminatory utterances and prejudice toward another party.  From the authorities it is an endless barrage of the rich having the right to protect their stuff because the poor are scrounging scum.  Then there's what might be deemed the general opinions and views of sections of the poorer population like that ex-servicemen shouldn't be left homeless because they fought for Queen and country.  Currently their fighting is mostly an abhorrent evil being committed as lackeys for a pathologically psychopathic oligarchy.  On this scale of justice they are lucky to still be alive and not burning in the fires of hell.  But they are human, maybe misguided and betrayed, but human nonetheless.  On the basis of being human, not on any particular service, they should not be deprived of respect and a reasonable and dignified way to survive in this society.

What has got me somewhat distressed is the peculiar insanity over this issue of the man with the t-shirt.  Oddly I have even been accused of being anti-Semitic over this issue.  I really don't give a damn about Semitic or not Semitic, black, white or fucking purple, male, female, asexual, hermaphrodite, transgender or what the fuck people want to get all hot and bothered about.  One thing I know is I am evil.  I can wish people harm, I sometimes tread on spiders, I'm not always saintly and without blemish in my dealings with people - damn it, there are people I would burn to death in my imagination.  But I am good too.  I am emotional, friendly, excitable, creative, intelligent, thoughtful and there is much that one might call love within my repertoire.  I'm human.

So what is this problem with people constantly justifying their complaints about their personal treatment or their view of the world in terms of justifying it based on there not being anything wrong with themselves and often by basing it on prejudicial views of others?  Of course I recognise the symptoms of cognitive dissonance in me.  My anger at the moment may well be caused by an error in my current model of reality being questioned internally.  Of course every observation about the world out there is also an observation of me.  If it were so simple as inverting and/or transposing the view to simply acknowledge a definition of me there would not really be a problem.  Am I anti-Semitic?  I don't think so.  I have views on the French, the Chinese, the Jews, the Muslims, sailors, ballet dancers and any number of discernible groups or categories of humans.  There are positive and negative aspects in all those collections and the same applies to individuals including those with multiple personalities.  So why did it bother me that someone accused me of being anti-Semitic?

It turns out not to be because I am anti-Semitic but because the individual picked on a quote I referenced by David Cameron which referred to Jews.  The Jewish content (that is: DC's utterance) was entirely circumstantial and had nothing whatever to do with my point.  But for all that I said, he ignored the actual content and homed in (quite ridiculously) on the reference to Jews and deduced that I wanted to say Jews did 9/11.  This was so obviously ridiculous I had to ask myself what was upsetting me.  Then I got it.  He was ignoring my central communication and projecting his problem at me.  I would make a guess that he has a hang up about being anti-Semitic.

This particular projection of prejudice hasn't troubled me much but I was interested to notice the ripples of disturbance.  Now when I do the self reflection I realise it hurts me that I am both not heard (or seen or recognised or validated) and, even worse, misrepresented.  I clearly am hypersensitive to being reflected erroneously.  I have had this issue for a lot of my life with respect to being male.  It makes a kind of sense.  I am just a small, innocent, blond haired, blue eyed, inoffensive, very nice little boy (history).  Of course when I am talking to people as a 6 foot, slightly hairy, physically strong, male (who clearly in some cases stereotypically dominates) I don't understand why they have the reaction they do when I assert a point of view.  But it is simple prejudice.  They are, due to their upbringing and experience, already frightened of me (pre-judicially).  (Of course this is not always the case.  I am referring to the times when it is the case.)

And then I get it - I am prejudicial to other people.  I hasten to add not much (but I'm always open to other people's views) but I am.  Having been betrayed, on a level that clearly was significant to me, by both my parents I am actually wary when anyone expresses anything akin to love or friendship.  I actually don't trust people.  I don't think this can be resolved correctly by simply trusting people - that seems evidently stupid and quite an imposition on their freedom.  But there lies an interesting self reflection.  The big question for me is "Do I trust myself?"  The answer appears to me to be probably more than most but ultimately "No".  Hmm - Maybe that is something to work on.

Do I care if this world goes to hell in a hand basket?  Well yes, actually I do.  But I'm beginning to understand why.  I care because it is my world, it always was and always will be.  (That is not exclusive of all other people and every form of consciousness.)  I don't have to be in the same room or the same town as, say, my daughter, to actually care how she is.  I don't have to be in any particular place or time to care about the world which is, ultimately, me.  I care about this world and the people, animals, plants, rocks, et al.  But there is the bigger issue - do I trust it?  I think at the moment I have to leave that as an unknown.

Monday 30 May 2016

Whatever happened to free speech?

Paul Grange's offensive t-shirt

There is a man called Paul Grange who visited a local public house sporting a t-shirt with the words "HILLSBOROUGH Gods way of helping RENTOKILL". [article in Belfast Telegraph] This caused a twitter storm and gained much media attention.  What I am seeing on Facebook is a lot of derision and disgust.  What is a little disturbing is the demonization of the man.  But even that seems within the bounds of free expression.  What seems dubious is to harass and threaten the man.  Understandable; it is, after all, a pretty ignorant, cruel and very provocative attitude to advertise on your t-shirt.

What bothers me most is the way this issue is used as a distraction from the instigators of the root problem.  Our political system needs tearing down and that's where the focus of attention should be.  Allowing the vicious, oppressive, authoritarian elite to "bring to justice" one individual, one misguided, indoctrinated pawn of the system, as if that gives them some credibility should ring alarm bells in all right minded and right hearted people.  The whole Hillsborough affair was about the insidious, deceitful, manipulative, malevolent authoritarian hierarchy literally getting away with murder.

What did happen to free speech?  It seems the frightened sheep will bustle around the hideous punitive teacher, jeering and feigning indignation in an attempt to garnish favour, whilst teacher satisfies their bloodlust by making an example of the offender.  It's like Salome's proxy request for John the Baptist's head on a plate to satisfy some other unrelated guilt.

Of course I am courting controversy to raise this issue and to question and even condemn the extreme vilification and calls for punitive "justice" of Paul Grange.  The man has a right to express his opinion.  It seems the landlord dealt with the situation quite admirably.  He was polite and asked the man to leave the pub.

I find the hue and cry seriously disturbing.  One might hate the sentiment expressed on this guys shirt but he has a right to an opinion and no one has to vote for him.  Instead, it seems, people will gain relief at his condemnation by the authority of the law and will soon be voting for politicians who are the inception, the enactment, the manifestation of the crimes that were committed at Hillsborough.  But our political system is far far worse than Hillsborough.  Our government with all its corruption is currently in the act of stealing all the resources from the people of this country, literally subjugating and enslaving them, whilst entertaining themselves driving the world to a nuclear war which may well destroy the entirety of humanity.

I know it is complex and a little difficult to handle but this issue, being so prominent in the main stream media and in the consciousness of the population, is actually a hysterical act of victim blaming and a frightening distraction from the real evils afoot.  It is, maybe inadvertently, supporting the oppressors.  It is exactly what the oligarchs want, predict, need, and foster.

Why would anyone waste time on this guy?  In a local context if I saw him I would probably tell him what I thought of the sentiment.  He might head-butt me; he looks stronger and more energetic than me.  I might end up in the Accident and Emergency department of the local hospital waiting for five hours for an overworked underfunded medical service (deliberately deprived by the authorities now being called upon) to give me a stitch or two and a pain killer.

I have to give Paul Grange credit for feeling so oppressed himself that against significant social pressure and conditioning he makes such a deliberately provocative statement by way of asserting his own sense of pride and dignity.  He's daring anyone to criticise him.  Well they did and the shit hit the fan and that is reasonable.  But what really scares me the most is how this feeds into the social and cultural conditioning of this nation.  By vilifying this man to such an extreme and effectively calling on the authorities (the known warped and corrupt authorities) to act against him the people are acting out the same insanity as David Cameron can verbally make explicit on the world stage of the United Nations [Cameron's 2014 UN speech] when he said "We must be clear: to defeat the ideology of extremism we need to deal with all forms of extremism – not just violent extremism."  He went on to say "Of course there are some who will argue that this is not compatible with free speech and intellectual inquiry."  It is a very dangerous road to travel to try to silence people who are frustrated and do not accept the current consensus, the  official line, or simply don't hold the same pleasant views as yourself.  People need to express their views and if they take offensive and harmful action that is the time to intervene.

How do people call on the authority that for years vilified the Hillsborough fans to serve justice on one jerk that prints an offensive message on his t-shirt?  Those authorities are currently supporting the rape and pillage of this country by something far worse than a global Mafia style elite.  But they, in the guise of puppet politicians, will lie to you and you will vote for them.  At least Paul Grange had the guts to state his position.  But the politicians won't state their position because their intention is to sidle up to you and stab you in the back.

It is a philosophical minefield but I am currently still of the opinion that words should be met with words and not punitive action.  In my opinion the views expressed on Paul Grange's shirt are despicable and saying so should be enough.  If people want to get indignant and even hysterical and want action taken then I wish they would aim their anger up the fucking line at the hideous power structure that is destroying this country and the entire world.

Wednesday 25 May 2016

WHY SO TIRED?


Yesterday, at 4 in the afternoon, I became illegal.  I can't really comprehend what that is supposed to mean.  As far as I am concerned I am a person alive on this planet.  But other people have manufactured a construct which collectively designates me as illegal.  Does that render me dead but inconveniently breathing and moving?  The potential complexity of this problem consistently leads to short hand, rough and inaccurate descriptions and conclusions.  Am I a kind of Schrödinger's cat, stuck in a sealed box, awaiting someone else's observation of my state of being?

It won't be long before I am dead.  As with all things, that is a relative description.  For some butterflies that only live for a day I might seem to have an almost endless duration ahead of me.  In geological time scales my entire life is so short it seems all but insignificant anyway.  At about 60 years old it is almost certain that I have significantly less time alive in the future than I have had in the past, and in 10 or 20 years I will most probably be dead.  So it's reasonable to view my future duration as relatively short in terms of a general human life span.

There is often a tendency to separate personal issues from global issues.  This is partly due to the need or desire to separate interdependent issues for the practical purpose of understanding and dealing with situations.  Often this has a constructive and useful result.  But there are always those boundary conditions where the separation is erroneous and so misleading it causes destructive and detrimental results.  My perception of my current personal situation maps extremely well onto my perception of the larger global and historical human situation.

The world, for humans in general, appears to be in a catastrophic mess.  The same applies to my personal life.  Every interpretation I make of my life has an equal and corresponding interpretation in the wider world.  We do this all the time as human beings.  Newtonian science enables the building of machines and we see the similarities in our personal physical construction.  This leads to paradoxical issues like the free will versus determinism debate.  We then move on to information and processing rendering artificial intelligence and encounter the problematic issue of intelligence versus consciousness.

A simplified version of my situation is that there are six sibling who have an interest in the house I currently occupy following the death of the parents who owned it.  The other five all have houses to live in and a revenue stream which maintains a reasonable lifestyle.  I have no house and a revenue stream of £50 a week which is barely even survivable.  They want to throw me out and split the money six ways.  This will do me significant harm.  There is a way of ensuring all six share the available resources such that they all have somewhere to live, they all experience an improvement to their current situation, and no one suffers unduly.  But for some reason the other five cannot understand that or simply don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves.

I have been criticised for demonising them.  I actually have far more understanding of their difficulties in comprehending the situation than they are capable of giving me credit for.  It is not as simple as "they don't give a damn"; it is more a case of their not knowing how to give a damn.  And when they attempt to give a explanation for their actions it is actually a vain attempt to justify what they know are bad or erroneous actions (by their judgement - not mine).  Their rationalisations cannot stand up to any rational questioning hence their inability to understand what a discussion is.

Two of them have actually stated that their view is that they should sell this house and buy me a house and split the rest.  Why has that clear statement of their view not influenced their choice of action?  I know why (and it's complex); there is a part of them that thinks they would like to buy me a house.  But it also attempts to maintain a reflected image of themselves as nice people.  Another suggestion from them is that they use the resources to rent a property for 6 months for me (me includes my daughter and one of their sons which complicates the issue but I am ignoring that for simplicity in the explanation).  But it seems to be what the law describes as a "bad faith offer" because all attempts to clarify it were ignored leaving us unable to agree or disagree to what they claim was an offer.  Hence the situation gets more convoluted and destructive.

Much as I could, and do, attempt to understand what is going on in more accurate detail, there is an overview which is easier to grasp.  For whatever reason, justification or interpretation I am in a vulnerable position and they, from a position of advantage, are attacking me.  That seems to satisfactorily explain why I would reasonably say that what they are doing is obscene and unforgivable.  The fact that these consequences are cascading and impacting seriously negatively on my daughter also provokes in me incredible fury at the abuse.  The fact that one of my sisters discarded her sick son into this house and is now evicting him takes it all to an incomprehensible level of demonic evil.

None of them have any actual, or immediately obvious, need to do this.  So, I ask myself, why are they doing it?  With all of my experience, knowledge, compassion and insight I come up with a central and compelling explanation.  This is the result of the injustice they experienced at the hands of their parents.  They are trying (subconsciously) to evidence the abuse that was "inside" the family but not allowed to be communicated to the wider world.  They had to "smile" and appear to be everything good as determined by our culture.  It is a charade.  It is a falsehood.  It is, by definition, an evil.  It is an attempt to pretend the world is other than it is.  It is a world out of balance.

What these fucking brainless "Christians" cannot seem to comprehend is that the fucking magical mystery tour, as they perceive it, of their fucking God Almighty IS A REALITY.  It's not magical and it doesn't have to be a mystery.  They are so terrified by the imposed judgemental crap of the misdirected authoritarian projection that they are panicked into a compulsive dance of conformity in a desperate attempt to believe something that isn't true so that they are allowed to live another day.  That pisses me off so much there are no clean and tidy ways for me to express the utter self contradictory insanity of these pretentious hypocritical lost souls.

We are all one.  Everything they do to me they do to themselves.  This applies to all of us.  This is why the whole fucking world is in such a mess.  This is possibly why Christianity has probably perpetrated more death and destruction on this planet than any of the other Abrahamic religions and possibly more than ANY other identifiable group or cultural construction.  It's a GIANT FUCKING GUILT TRIP being projected onto the world.  They are trying to hide the evidence from their own brains that they killed their own fucking God.

Metaphors you numbskulls.  There is no "right hand of God", there is no "father's house of many rooms", there is no God or Devil, these are METAPHORES.  And the same patterns can be seen in their fractal nature at all levels of human experience.  What truly disturbs me is how I believe in God - the reality.  It is a metaphor of a truth that I believe in.  But that "God" can be found in all utterances of theology, mysticism, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, quantum physics and even in the depths of the science of software theory.  It's called truth and is what love is.  Every un-rectified transgression of truth creates dark ripples which eventually coalesce in some all pervasive hideous manifestation of evil.  What the fuck is wrong with these people?

And this is why I am getting tired of this life.

Thursday 19 May 2016

We Are Cowards Because We Kill Our Children.


[For the uninitiated the situation used for this philosophical muse is that I, my dependent daughter and dependent nephew are being evicted by my sisters from my now deceased parents' house.  We all have health issues and have no resources to move in the immediate future.]

A message I get from all my sisters is this: "We are trying to save you from harm."

That may sound a little odd and it is a gross simplification but essentially the sentimental expressions are always that they are trying to help.  One claims to offer 6 months' rent to help us escape but it is a bad faith offer and she refuses to discuss it.  One offers concern but says "the others don't agree so what can I do?"  One weeps as she suggests an escape route via a dysfunctional welfare system.  One attempts to help and when that fails blames me.  So what is this "threat" this "harm" they are trying to save me from?  It appears to me the only threat of harm is coming from them.

It is fundamentally the convoluted logic of the abuser.

When I look back across our childhood I see the emotional manipulation, the serious physical violence, the rage, the terror, the austere control and it is no mystery to me why they feel the way they do.  They are the unfortunate results of abuse.  They are the broken children; the lost souls.

Even my poor mother cried out "What else can they do?" and my father's tragic last words to me were that he didn't want us thrown out as if it were a fait accompli out of his hands.

It is the guilt of the abuser.  It is the denial of the evil that is in all of us.  Only when we can accept the fundamental evil potential within is there any possibility of a moral good.  With no freewill there is no morality.  Only when we oppose our own evil can we achieve what we perceive as good.  If we are so afeared of being judged evil that we cannot allow ourselves to see our own evil then how can we possibly oppose it?  How can we possibly choose to do good?  If we were simply good people it would be no credit to us to be good because there would be no other possibility.

When my daughter was born and I cut her umbilical cord and saw this tiny miracle of creation with all the potential a human can perceive I was profoundly committed to the role in which I simply found myself - her protector - her father.  I didn't so much decide as became.  Here was a new person.  A new person who will be whoever and whatever she becomes.  It is her life not mine.  It was clear to me I was experiencing something indescribably beautiful whilst setting out on a journey that would likely not be easy.  It has proven far harder than I could have imagined.  But I think and feel a lot, and it is clear to me that if I were starving and the only way to survive was to take her food I would rather die.  The instinct to survive is at the very limit of human endurance.  It is quite conceivable (and the evidence is clear) that at the final moment most of us would kill another human being to survive.  I do not have to attain that greatest of all love that I would rather die than harm anyone, but it is a conscious decision when it comes to my daughter.

I am looking after one of my sisters' sons.  She cast him off (into her parents' house) because she could not accept the sacrifice she might have to make to look after him.  She preferred to ride off into her perceived paradise on her motorbike to live a life of material luxury with her Neanderthal controlling abusive boyfriend on the island of Guernsey.  That might sound like a harsh description but whether I judge her actions to be good or bad is not the final judgement of her - I actually understand her pain and her difficulties.  But when she instigates harm against me, my daughter and her own son in an attempt to bury the evidence of her own guilt in her own mind I will not voluntarily accept to comply.  In other words I will not harm myself, my daughter or her son in some vain attempt to avoid the harm she threatens to perpetrate.  Her problem with her guilt is her problem not mine.  I can't possibly resolve it for her because it is not mine to resolve.

All of them ran away from their parents oppression without ever confronting it.  It would seem that it is set in stone now.  It seems impossible for them to say "no" to the oppressor that lives and breathes inside them.  Why am I so lucky?  Maybe I suffered less at the hands of my parents.  But I came to terms with my fundamental and chronic betrayal of myself some 15 years ago.  Although I have always watched the world with a certain detachment and held on to the me that is within, it is only 15 years since I realised I could say "no" to any demand that I do someone else's bidding under fear of any threat.  Sure, put a gun to my head and tell me to wipe the shit off your shoe and I will do it - but I will never carry out your crime to hide your guilt from yourself.

To my sisters I would say "Grow up and own your own decisions."  If you want to throw me Ele and Mike out onto the street to get your grubby hands on some dosh then own it and do it.  But you will never get my agreement that you are right.  I will never do it for you.  And your claims that you have no other choice, your offsetting the decision by pretending it was Mummy and Daddy that wanted it, or your claims that it is financially legal are all vacuous excuses to blame other people or circumstances for your rather pathetic greed.

The truth is not that you cannot say no to the parents, or no to the money, or no to your sibling, or no to the bank, or no to the law - the truth is you cannot say no to yourself; your own hideous controlling evil self.

Another interesting corollary for this linguistic expression of the dynamics of being conscious is: do you choose to love or are you forced by fear?  Is your God benign or an oppressor?  Are you free to make your own decisions or subjugated by the threats of others as you cling to them in your own minds?

I am still utterly shocked that all this started before the parents were even dead.  The marauders pounced the instant the oppressors became weak.  It still astounds me how rapidly they seized power, as they saw it, and attacked us with such vigour.  Is it possible that their fear is so great that their ravenous desperation to get their hands on the spoils was irresistibly compulsive to the point of being psychotic?  Was it events that controlled them beyond their own ability to resist?  My much pondered conclusion is yes; they are out of control.  I cannot believe that any human could turn on their family and indeed their own child simply for material wealth.  But then I sit up and cast my weary eye across the horizon of human behaviour and history and I sadly conclude that it is all too often the case.  It is literal when I say "We sacrifice real life by complying with social contracts of oppression for our own sense of security."  We really do kill our children because we are cowards - or perhaps more accurately - we are cowards because we kill our children.