Thoughts

I have a test this week in Ethics, which is a poor excuse for a module, if you ask me ( it only lasted 4 weeks). We’re spoon-fed half-baked theories we must accept as moral because it is the PC thing to do and then we have to answer stupid questions to show how well we can play the PC game.

It’s a heavy week in terms of assignments and tests, but I still found the time to read a whole little book last night... No... Not a classic, I’m afraid, but a cheap, laughable romance that inspired the True Blood series on TV.
See, reading it was alright. The writing world has this unique capacity for boundless limits in terms of shock-value, dissent, mainstream or ideals. It’s a funny, quite violent and lusty kind of cheap series, but it is in no way as gross or perverted as it presents itself on screen, because the written word gives you some kind of control over the images that are created in your mind - which a TV or cinema screen does not.
The only scar I’m left with is the familiar, exacerbated daydreaming state in which I slip for a few days following a read. I can then move on to the next read.


There can be no question as to the effect 2D depiction of events has on the human mind and its psychological workings. Perhaps I should call it the psycho-pathological effects of modern leisure.

The power of the screen is immense and under-estimated only because we are used to its effects on us already and can no longer distinguish the potent influence it yields.

There is at least one universal truth in this world and it is that governments, just like the majority of westernized people, do not give you anything for free. Ever. Yet, here they are encouraging you to get a better quality picture for your TV. They’ll put the price down on that commodity just so the poorest can afford HD at some point soon, so they can have better viewing. At the same time, the price of bread has shot up to three times what it was a mere couple of years ago. At the same time, the bread we buy is no longer the quality it used to be, and there is simply no way of knowing truly what it is made of. And that’s only bread, here, as an example.

Our fridge at home is pretty much empty most of the time, not because we can’t afford to buy food, but because we simply have no clue what to eat anymore. On Sunday, right after I’d popped by a friend's house to retrieve my notebook, I went shopping at Morrison’s and felt like buying some fish. The choice was dire so I settled for some salmon steak. It looked nice enough under the plastic cover, pink and healthy, just as any piece of salmon would. It definitely looked the part, whatever it really was.


I mean, I’m sure it used to be a ‘real’ salmon, but what the poor piece of fish won’t tell you even if it lived, is that it comes from intensive farming and was filled with hormones from the start, without forgetting the random toxins and chemicals added to the mix. Once the fish was cooked, I cut up tiny pieces for my cat to eat. He barely touched it, my fish-lover cat.
He had started to go crazy smelling the fish cooking in the oven, though, and was impatiently pestering us for food. Imagine my puzzled look when I finally gave him what he wanted only to watch him sniff the stuff and walk away. If a cat could ever sneer a snort, I guess that’s what mine would have done.


Can a cat be naturally more astute when it comes to survival instincts? I ate my share, but he certainly did not.

Of course, the horrendous ‘beauty’ in this is that eating the garbage we actually pay to have is unlikely to kill you on the spot. Of course it won’t. It might not even show any side effects.
The thing is... Even if our bodies really worked just as well as recycling bins, I would have hoped that we, humans, had more esteem for our kind. Apparently, we don’t.


I guess I’ll say it myself: “The European Union is kind of sinister.”
Tim had said that in passing and we barely brushed the significance of that gut feeling. Yet, what is the EU but one piece of a bigger jigsaw? It’s a nanny state hiding behind the safety blanket of human rights . The ‘nanny’ is more likely to turn out to be a previously convicted rapist masquerading as a social worker to be close to its victim. We are, by the way, the children of the state, whatever age we might be. We don’t own or know ourselves, or aren’t supposed to; we don’t know what’s good for us; we don’t know the difference between right and wrong; we couldn’t survive on our own. The state ‘knows’ all those things for us best. What makes up the state? Men just as fallible as the poor sod next door, except those in power have connections and money to become untouchable.

Here lies the dilemma: man needs society to an extent. Society becomes crucial to pass on knowledge and harbour development, and without some form of society, even a simple group of people, mankind would most likely wither to a pulp. It is equally detrimental, if not homicidal, to imprison man under the thumb of corrupted chiefs.

I’m worried, yet at the same time I’m not. How could that be? Well, we’ve been there before, we’ve faced that kind of crossroads before, truly. I know what can’t be stopped: the slow rise of a tiny portion of people who will become the power’s best pest. Rebels whose weapons comprise a pen, a brush or a voice. For every rebel killed, another rises in his place, as surely as the sun sets down to be born again the next day. In that sense, truth seekers have already won the battle on the bigger scale. In the end, who needs superheroes when we have the mind?

I don’t know how or when we got to the stage where we surrendered our lives to be ruled and governed by corporations, but the fact remains that we have. It’s hard to picture it in our heads, and it’s even harder to picture the gross significance of that fact. First, how does one picture in his mind what bears no face? In some countries, like England, a company becomes an individual entity before law, just like a Jane Doe or John Smith, yet the company is no single person but a conglomeration of so many people running it that it becomes a faceless entity in reality.
A company, however, is to the corporation what the chihuahua is to the German Shepherd or rottweiler. These faceless entities are what now rules the world. For every ‘famous’ face or brand, there is a corporation behind. Fact.