Snowing Down to Reality

It’s a picture perfect of winter outside... The sky has cleared up a bit since yesterday - that’s the one good thing about this island: clouds drift away as swiftly as they appear - and the wintry sun is a dim golden glow on the snow.

The naked trees have a thin layer of whiteness spread along their twisted limbs and the evergreen shrubs are half-immersed in a blanket of snow. Birds are fluttering from roofs to treetops, wings black against the sun that seems to set low forever in this winter time. And when I pop my head out the open window, a gush of icy air greets me, full of mordant freshness that tickles the skin. It looks and smells just like winter indeed.


The news are full of snow stories, of course, and the media even managed to come up with a new expression: Frozen Britain. I’m really starting to think they have that one person sitting in some office, somewhere, hired and paid for the sole purpose of coming up with such catchy expressions. It’s probably the case. Why not? Everything these days is delegated to the maximum and every task imaginable has been split in smaller ones so that no one person ever does anything on their own anymore.

Apparently, division of labour speeds up the supply of any sort of goods and greatly increases it. The great downside of this, and to me it is a huge one, is that we end up with people who are unable to do one COMPLETE thing themselves. They can do part of a thing, but someone else is now forever needed to complete that thing. I don’t see how that makes us stronger or more evolved in the detail.

On the whole, we do look evolved because the masses end up making a complete thing, but what doesn’t fit is the fact that in the detail, each individual is maimed: not one person can actually do a damn thing. It bothers me no end. It makes me feel as though I was handicapped from the start. Maybe that’s exactly it. That division only served to nurture consumerism, and the price to pay was that it handicapped us as individuals. We don’t know anything completely, we only know bits of things.

Even if you gathered all the bits that you know, it wouldn’t even come close to knowing ONE thing completely. Therefore knowing a lot of different parts does not equals to knowing the whole. We are handicapped. Our minds are like a limp foot. We ‘know’ a lot of various little things, perhaps one little technique in the detail, but we remain ignorant of the whole. Our knowledge becomes even more limited and so does our perception, if not our reality itself. We feel more knowledgeable because we seem to know so many little things, but we are really more ignorant than ever before.


The proof is, again, in the pudding. Not only are we growing dependent on complex, faceless structures from ‘above’, but we don’t even realise it. How could we? The only way to realise that is when those structures collapse, and suddenly we have to rely on ourselves, and... Surprise! Most people couldn’t save their lives even if they tried. They wouldn’t even know where to start. In that sense, I feel like we’ve been turned into mindless chicken, except our type of chickens live in 'luxury' homes rather than inside a wooden den.

Take away the landscape detail, and all that’s left are chickens.

I was watching a heart wrenching documentary on TV earlier on the state of dementia care homes in Britain... These poor people being treated like bothersome objects by staff that couldn’t care less, or so disheartened and bored that they no longer cared to show the pensioners any trace - not one ounce - of compassion, let alone to treat them with dignity... So many ancient faces, their faces withered by the years, crackled like the finest pages of parchment... left to rot in solitude and complete apathy. One very, very old man who could no longer walk grabbed the journalist’s hand and begged in a weak, rasped voice: “please, please...”

“Please what?” asked the journalist in the softest tone.

“Please... Help us.”

As I said, heart wrenching.


So that’s what awaits the masses, eh? Now that the fabric of society is being dissolved to nothingness, now that children grow up to kick their aging parents out in the cold, now that parents kick their young out of the nest before the time is right, now that every person is out for themselves, for profit, in the vacuum that is the pursuit of so-called happiness... We are conditioned not just to live to work, we are destined to end our days in ‘adequate’ facilities stripped naked of any remnant of dignity.

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.

The nihilist society

Things have to get worse before they get better... It’s hard to see how much worse things can get on all levels. We’ve got to the stage where we no longer have any idea what it is we put in our mouth, but we carry on mindlessly courtesy of adaptation and, well, conditioning.

Take my case, for instance. I was born when supermarket giants were already the norm, just as banks, credit cards and the media were. I never stopped to wonder about the voices that came out from the radio or television sat in mum’s living room because I was born and grew up surrounded by these machines from the start. I took them for granted, as a normal occurrence of life. It’s hard to question what seems to always have been there. It’s even harder when the general consensus dictates that it is a good thing.

Isn’t it a shock to the system when you suddenly learn that what you always took for granted and safe turns out to be reckless and life-threatening, maybe to the point of being in fact evil? At this point, I no longer long for an escape into a fantasy world - it almost feels as though I’ve begun to drown in some dystopia. As Cara would have thought: “Of all the fantasies I’d longed to escape into, this one was not one of them.”

Everything is distorted, twisted according to some agenda, and though it appears almost impossible to spell out exactly what is going on, one thing emerges clear as a diluted, mid-summer blue sky: all that is done is done for profit.

Science is no longer a potential wonder for mankind, it is a weapon. You read of genetic manipulations under the guise of ‘human interest’. Where does one draw the line? The scary thing is that a majority in power, and even within scientific circles, don’t believe that any line should be drawn - ever. Why draw a line, they would smirk, when all a line does is limit you. So you hear of mice being grown a human ear on their backs and the justification for such gross barbary is simple: to further scientific and medical advances in the hope of 'saving' more human lives.


In one corner, you have pro-life folks storming against individuals who choose to abort their foetus or embryo. In another corner, you have a bunch of scientists planning to use embryos for experiments. Science has become another blanket word and anything goes under its guise. To live. To survive. To remain in this world for as long as possible. That excuse is enough to carry out the most perverse of actions.

Sure, on an individual level, one could not be blamed for wanting to live or survive... It is part of an instinct as old as the Earth itself - that of survival. But... No, we are not supposed to live forever, and no, we are not supposed to get our own way every time, and no we are not supposed to justify the means for an end. In every trauma, every terrible event or set of circumstances that befall us, there is something for the person to learn from - to grow. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, almost destructive at times, but it is the only way to grow as human beings.

Childhood is about learning boundaries, hence the constant breaching of such boundaries. Adults are meant to guide and teach, and make sure whatever boundary is breached, it isn’t one that is too horrendous or destructive. The aim would be that through the experiment of breaching boundaries and learning from early, basic experiences, one would reach the adult stage of life with at least a rough idea of which boundaries need to be respected. The rest of existence is spent refining such notions. In other words, we then spend the rest of our lives getting to understand better the ethical and moral side of existence as human beings with the unique ability to think and reason. Well, that’s what ought to be the case. Instead, we see adult life being squandered in futility where materiality and greed become the only purpose for mankind.

In the end, capitalism and consumerism are direct tenets of a nihilist society.
Greed leads to corruption; consumerism leads to want, which leads to greed, which eventually leads to corruption. Here is the pattern that defines what we call a capitalistic society. Profit becomes the beating heart of the system and under its umbrella greed, corruption, consumerism and wants are like arteries departing from it.

There is no such thing as a selfish trait or gene, it is a nurtured, grossly distorted consequence from all the above through conditioning and the need to adapt to survive.
Profit and its pulsing arteries such as greed, consumerism and corruption lead nowhere but to a nihilist conclusion. The process by which it destroys itself is akin to a cancer eating at a body from within. Everything else slowly withers and perishes until only the umbrella and its departing arteries remain, and when that happens, all else is destroyed, and even the umbrella begins to dissolve to nothingness to give way for chaos.

There Is No Truth Out There...

... Only convenient versions of it.



Can anything we say or write fit with such verbs as ‘to be’? To be, is, was, will be... The verb alludes to certainties or facts. I am me, I am a girl, I am a person, I am a grown-up... The sky is blue, the clouds are white, the house is big, the dog is barking, the cat is jumping, the weather is foul, etc... I wonder if all these shouldn’t in fact be replaced by a verb that would reflect our limited perception of reality.

Am I, or do I actually only seem to be?

It seems that I is me, and it seems that I is a girl, because of what the majority would say, what they all came to agree on as a crowd - or majority. The sky seems blue, because my eyes tell me that it resembles most the colour we all can see and agree to call ‘blue’. The grass seems green for the same reason, yet a horse could tell you it is red if it could talk (and that's according to the latest scientific research).

There are no certainties, only man-made agreements based on what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste and generally sense or experience in common as a species.
We know that senses are misleading. We smell a certain scent with our limited ability to smell, and a dog would smell something different because his sense of smell is so much more developed. We see the bricks that made up the house, but if our vision was stronger to a certain point, we wouldn’t see the bricks as such, we would see the particles and atoms that make up those bricks that make up that house. Reality would then look quite different at least in appearance.

I wonder where we are heading as a society. It frightens me no end, not because I just happen to see the worst in all technological advances, but because there is not enough time spent on dwelling on consequences. We move on according to our findings, and in that sense we cease to be the masters of our advances. We lose ourselves in a race against time, in a race that has no defined finishing line. Where do you stop, then? And would stopping ever matter, or only the pursuit of knowing more about the world and its neighbour? And can you really understand the world if you haven’t spent the time to know yourself?

Could you say that a ball is a ball if you had never seen one before? What if one explained to you that a ball in round and red or blue and that it bounces when you throw it? Would you then know what a ball is? Well, would you?

If you knew that a ball is round and red or blue and that it bounces when you throw it, you would be able to distinguish such an objects among others. You could point a finger at it and say “ball!”, but would you know what it is, or what it is for intrinsically? Chances are that even if you fail to understand what it is actually meant to do, you would give it your own purpose in mind. You might decide that it is an object to play with, to throw against a wall and play. You could also decide that it is a present from God fallen from the sky. Or a pretty ornament. Its purpose becomes a man-made concept, and it seems that beyond that silly example, most things around us are given the same treatment more or less.

It matters not that meaning eludes us, for we can always give our own meaning to everything.

In a world full of man-made beliefs, I ask one how it can ever be possible to find true meaning.
Are we doomed to only experience reality according to what people agree to perceive as reality, or is there a way beyond that?

Of course, the ball example is flawed in the sense that man invented such an object with some pre-defined purpose in mind. In a way, the guy who created that ball must have wanted to create it so he could play football with it, for instance. But then, if that purpose in mind isn’t explained to others, how are others supposed to know what that ball’s purpose is? They will either remain perplexed, or they will grant it a whole new meaning, hence purpose.

If we look at the advances in sciences, even, we see that men are now more capable than ever to understand the mechanics of a great deal of things that appeared a mystery to us not so long ago.


Whereas one might have once thought that the heart was merely an organ holding all the romantic feelings of the person, we now know that it is one of the main organs necessary to survival, that it acts like a pump to make the blood flow and all that. In that sense, sciences have managed to go beyond imaginary or limited means of understanding. They can tell you that the purpose of the heart is to act as a pump, for instance, and they could now tell you the purpose of various things with quite a lot of certainty.

What disturbs me is the illusionist base on which everything, absolutely everything, rests. We perceive reality in a limited way, in so far as we perceive it as a species and agree together on that vision or perception. What makes sense as purpose in our minds only happens to fit in with our perception. It might well be that the heart’s true purpose is quite different in truth, but we can only perceive a certain purpose for it according to our own limited perception of reality.

I am such a product of my own society, aren’t I? I look for true meaning and reality because I happen to be immersed in more illusions than ever. Removed too far from nature, one might begin a journey back to simplicity, only for the mind to find a remnant of a sound base on which to grow understanding away from too many false assumptions and mistaken conclusions.
In that sense, I am reluctant to put too much faith on granted knowledge, the one that allows a person to skip steps to understand only a certain portion of knowledge.

For instance, in my case, knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun is not true knowledge, it is granted knowledge. I do not know all the theories, calculations or means to get to that ‘fact’. I am merely told that it is so. Because it is a ‘fact’ most will agree on, it must be true, and therefore I ‘know’ that the Earth revolves around the sun. I keep in mind the historical factor that the person who one day told the world that ‘truth’ or discovery was put to death because back then people weren’t ready to accept that the Earth wasn’t in fact at the centre of the universe, or that it wasn’t flat. This mere historical event shows the crucial role social agreement plays in the way we shape our reality.

If anything, granted knowledge is to me nothing more than a risky potential shortcut to mistake. I would rather take the risk of wasting time doubting what is actually true as part of granted knowledge, than assume without truly knowing.

It matters not that in the end I should know very little, because as I wrote it before, I hope that what I do come to understand will at least be as close to true knowledge as humanly possible.
In an ideal world, there would be no mere scientists, there would only be philosophers who happen to be scientists.

There is no truth out there, only convenient versions of it.

Glimpses

I haven't written anything for a while, now. Sometimes I feel like thoughts in my head just keep repeating themselves over and over again and I don't see the point in rehashing the same old things. It doesn't make those thoughts any less relevant or perhaps even true, but it shows me that I lack answers, and still more questions in my head arise. It's tiring at times.

So I had a random read at my old writings, and I found this entry in one of my diaries which brought quite a few strange memories back to the fore, somehow. It happened sometime this year, between March and April.

"Last night was very strange and made me feel as though we were suddenly back a century or two in time, in the slums and glum of poverty in the dark entrails of London. Scenes from Dickens’ books kept popping in my mind... To give but an idea of the scene that played out before my eyes. Mum had just come back from a long day at work, and she had quickly prepared her dinner, a bowl of soup and some chicken, when the landlord finally came. He knocked on the door and we barely had time to clean the mess around us.

I hid the cat’s food away from sight, but the rest was as it stood: cluttered and messy because there is simply no room. I was still in my old pajama pants and wore that huge canary jumper (which I wear today, and almost every day because I get so freaking cold in here), my hair held back in a loose ponytail. He came into the room, wearing a black suit, and stood there like a lemon, really, for an awkward moment, not even daring much of a glance around him. He had a folder in his hands that contained the ‘contract’ and direct debit form, and asked for the rent, which is when it all kicked off with mum, of course.

She began to tell him how much money we spend on the electric just to keep the room warm... About 5 quid a day. She told him that it had now been 2 months we hadn’t been able to use the shower, let alone any hot water at all. He opened his eyes wide in fake surprise, muttering that we should have told him, even though we had. He said something like ‘English people always live in cold rooms anyway” in such a dismissive tone that mum just hit back with a “I’m not English so I don’t live like that”.

At some point mum began crying, saying something about living like pigs. I had to bite my lip not to laugh, really, because I knew she was playing with him. Dealing with ruthless, cold and heartless people who only live for profit on the back of more vulnerable people teaches you to play along just enough to survive. You can’t get angry at these people -not in their faces- and you can’t tell them the truth about their abject ways. You show them that you’re as vulnerable and weak as they like to think you are. The truth is that if you let out what you actually have a right to say - the truth of the matter- they would kick you out in the cold in a heartbeat. And then what? What do you do then?

As soon as mum started crying, the landlord seemed to lose his footing slightly.
“M’am, m’am, please, don’t cry,” he mumbled, taking a step forward and bumping into the things scattered in this tiny room, not knowing where to place himself. He looked at me and I simply shrugged, rolling my eyes in desperation. So he suddenly told us we could use the bathroom upstairs where the prostitute used to live - she moved out last week, you see- because there would be hot water there, and we wouldn’t have to pay for it. He says “come Aliska, come, I’ll show you, it’s a nice shower.” So I follow him upstairs, still in those dirty white and pink pants and bright yellow jumper, and I almost want to laugh at my appearance. I wonder for a second when it was exactly that we fell so low, and already we have stepped into the prostitute’s old little room. In a corner there is a shower room but when the landlord tries to turn on the light it doesn’t work, so he must show me the hot water in semi-darkness. I feel the warmth of the gushing water on my hand and I nod as he keeps saying “you see, you see, hot water! Ah, you see, it’s nice, it’s hot, you can shower now.”
I glance at the floor and see the streaks of grease and black dirt all over it and he sees it, too. He mumbles an excuse as to the dirty state of that wonderful shower, saying it will clean itself when we actually use it. I bite my tongue again not to express my disgust at him. I almost want to ask him if he would shower in that filth, but what’s the point when you already know the answer?...

We go back downstairs and mum hands him about half the rent money, and though he seems very hesitant and asks several times for the full amount, we promise to give him the rest as soon as we earn it. He leaves us at last and we are left hating the fact that we are now well and truly stuck in that shit hole. Yes, to move out we would need enough money for a deposit and first month rent, but we have barely enough to pay for this dump.

There are people out there who have known at some point in their lives what poverty was all about. Losing everything or rising from nothingness... One day it might well be that I won’t be poor anymore, or that I won’t have to be poor to follow my beliefs against corruption. I would never want to forget. I could never forget or pretend that these things never happened. They happened, one after the other, each worse than the previous, like a vicious circle. These are horrible times, they really are. They make you question if you are still human, or a poor excuse for a human life. They make you question the people out there feeding and building their wealth on people like us. They make you question the core of human existence, societies themselves and their ruthless order.

Poor people have to exist in order for the rich to be. If you want something, then something else has to give. If you already had a taste of getting what you want, then you might feel sad at the account of some poor sod’s struggles, but you will no longer be able to let go of your wants. That is corruption of the mind. Because of this, and because of the natural envy that grows in most people’s inner hearts, there must always be poor people to grant a wealthy status to a few.

I could die tomorrow and be safe in the knowledge that I lived a very human life in the end. I experienced a wide spectrum of what being human on this Earth really means. I pushed, and pushed against the boundaries of my own mind to try and make sense of what my eyes showed me. It started out like so many others out there, more or less shielded from pure reality thanks to the power of my imagination that fed constantly on a plethora of illusions, but in the end I had to face glimpses of our reality as it stands before us, far removed from any cushioning veil of delusions.

If I try, these days, to remember how it was like back home, when I was still so young and blissfully unaware of the realities of life... It feels like home, a bittersweet wave of wistful remembrance growing hazier as time goes by. It feels like another life, perhaps just a dream I once had."

Over the last few months, I realized that there were things, even the silliest things, about society that I liked. This seems to have re-enforced the belief I have in humanity as a whole. Sure, a majority will always be corrupt to an extent and easily swayed, but there are others out there trying more than I could ever try. The ‘doers’ of this world aren’t all bad. Some have ideals close to mine, but in reality they are not free to change everything at once.

The truth about the human condition is that unless you can take into account every single factor that makes us, you couldn’t get to a perfected solution. Reason or logic is what readily sets us apart from all other creatures in the world, but it represents only aspect of human nature.
Conveniently focusing on only a few aspects of human nature, such as throwing logic as the core vector in an attempt to get to a perfected society - as though logic itself had the power to make everything right- is doomed to be narrow-minded and flawed.

Logic is what we make of it, which is why most people who do possess a high degree of logic, will willingly throw it away or use it to further their corruption.

Anger and deception

Dawn is a special time of the day, its fiery veil hanging at the feet of the world to be slowly lifted across the skies by the invisible hand of time. As light prevails over darkness, so does the clarity of thoughts in the mind, but just as dawn is replaced by daylight, that clarity of the mind soon fades into blindness again.

The mighty sky

A fire crack

Bellowing cry

Of passing crows

Over the track

And the blue skies

Field of sorrows

And blooming tears

Along the sighs

Of winds and piers

Lost in a mist...

we live in such an illusion-based reality that it has become almost impossible to get back to the source of anything at all. I, myself, was born in the midst of a society completely immersed in make-belief and lies concealed under big words that inspire nothing but confidence and idealism. We yearn for big ideals such as freedom and justice and equality, and children will spend most of their time growing up in schools drilling ideal definitions into their skulls.

Those children become adults faced with the biggest sham there ever was: while such big words are held high like flags waving in the wind, the reality of how society works is based solely on how good a lier you will prove, how deep your pockets are, and on who you know, of course. Such blatant hypocrisy I suspect is inherent to human nature, always trying to step over nature and prove ourselves more worthy than the rest- more intelligent. Well if intelligence was based on consistency and logical behaviour then we would score quite low.

What I do come to realise is that in the great scheme of things man has barely begun to move away from a very primitive animal bound by its instincts. We’re not human yet, as many seem to believe and define it, we’re still in the process of becoming humans. There is still a long way to go until we finally shed away the remnants of feral behaviour poorly disguised under fancy materialism and a technology that can only be a reflection of our true potential as humans.

One day perhaps we will achieve the full state of human being, but until then we are in limbo. No longer complete animals, not yet liberated from our feral instincts.

Then again, what do I know? I only know as much as my limited perception of reality allows me. I look at the millions of other lives around and I struggle to imagine them as three dimentional people who actually are as alive as I am with lives of their own, doing other things at the same time as I am writing this. The whole concept of never being sure that everything around you is as real as you think you are is quite disturbing at times.

What if only a few were in fact real and the rest part of some simulation? No, that would be crazy. I can’t think of a reason good enough to grant myself the priviledge to be real over billions of others who would in fact be an illusion. That brings me to the conclusion that we are all very real, only stuck in a limited state of perception of our reality. Added to that is the padded version we are born into these days where illusions overwhelm our senses from every corner.

Television, movies, the internet, the telephone and all its gadgets... Big corporations and massive companies that have taken over our main means of survival, who feed us, cloth us, entertain us no end... We do not really become adults anymore, not in the independent, autonomous way. Parents let go of their grown-up offsprings only for society to take over and continue the chaperoning process, concealing its control under the illusion of choices in life when really there are so many choices flooding our heads that we end up unable to make any proper decision.

Ensuring that all basic needs are met and making sure that you are aware that others are worse off all the while dangling the promise that your life could get so much better in front of your nose gives way to apathy to change things. Because ‘it ain’t so bad, really’... Place a few rich kids who seem to have it all, fairy tale stories from rags to riches and you can feed the masses hopes that it could happen to them, too. Just like that singer who now earns millions, or that movie star, or that model who just happened to be spotted while shopping in Primark or something. Yes, YES! This could happen to you, too! believe! You must believe that it could happen to you, that what you see really is what it is.

Please.

By the way, who actually believes, still, in that whole ‘credit crunch’ business? I certainly don’t. Funny how the term just appeared the very day the so-called crisis started, as though whoever came up with it from higher up the social ladder knew it would be the perfect term to stick into people’s minds like the latest trend and whatnot. Now, of course, you hear that term everywhere, as one would talk about the weather, and whenever something is wrong, well, let’s all put it under the handy umbrella ‘credit crunch’ provides so conveniantly.

The whole environment worldwide ‘concern’ is another excuse to put shades on what the problems really are and at the same time it ensures that most people are busy worrying about what isn’t the issue. They’ll be too busy recycling their left-over brussels sprouts while driving two or three cars to think in depth about what could really be going on under their noses.

Oh, and while the ‘intelligencia’ and the ‘rich’ keep busy flying solo in their privet jets all the while buying land in third world countries to spend even less money on food and commodity production - though we’ll still be paying more and more for it-, don’t forget to cut down on your plastic bag consumption cos’ that’s really bad for the environment.

I just wish I could somehow have a bird’s eye view of the whole mess, of our world as a whole, so it would make sense, instead of being limited with my own tiny perspective. I can tell that things are not what they say they are and I can only offer ideas as to what is really going on...and that’s very, very frustrating.

Too much

       I know nothing because the society I live in, more than at any other given time, is based on illusions- tv, cinema, the internet... How can I not be from a generation of eternal doubters? How can I not question what is imposed as truth when deep down I do not know how we got here? Every single thing we know is reliable as far as the source on which your knowledge is based is. 

How can you not question it? How can you just accept it? Do you believe everything your neighbour tells you? Do you take everything your friend- made of flesh and blood- says as the ultimate truth? Of course you don’t. Part of you wonders if what they tell you is the honest truth. Now put yourself in my shoes. All I know is from someone else’s mouth or words. I learn from a screen or from so many un-human mediums that I am bound to reject it until I can safely enough find out for myself. These days it is impossible. We’ve removed ourselves too much from basics. To seek truth one doesn’t need to complicate the settings. One could find as much sitting under a tree. 

We are being brainwashed the easiest way there ever was: by drowning us in constant waves of information and noise. We’re still humans at the end of the day, not computers. We can only truly process one piece of info at a time. They know that. You didn’t, but now you do. Start doubting for pit’s sake.

I have always known, somehow, by instinct, and that is why it is so hard for me to find the right words. I feel the truth but cannot explain it. It’s much akin to trying to express that moment of fleeting joy- how would you go about it? There is only so many words or adjectives one can use. All our languages are flawed- of course they are. they limit us. They reflect our self-imposed limitations.

Searching for your true self, the real you behind all pretence and social conditioning is like peeling away sore skin, and then layers of flesh until you hit the bone. And then it hurts, and everything goes dark in your mind- you become little more than a lost child in the midst of a storm and there is no one there to hold your hand anymore. 

Every time you laugh, every time you utter a word, is it really you? Have you even asked yourself, do you even know what I’m talking about? Go on, take a step in front of that mirror and only stare at the eyes. What do you see? What do you see, really? Can you be certain it is you? And if it is, are you sure it is the one that should be? Or are you simply staring at a broken version of who should have been?

Perfection does exist, it’s everything this world isn’t. It’s everything away from the easy way. I think I saw a glimpse inside of me but the truth is that perfection is too damn hard to sustain. 

On individuality

I was watching the X factor last night, the most pointless singing talent competition there could ever be. I couldn’t help watching, of course. It makes you cringe and laugh. But it also allows me to question myself more, so it can't just be a thoughtless indulgence on my part.

What annoyed me most was the way most of the candidates seem to think that fame and success would define them as persons. Take woman X, whose reason for coming on the show was ‘to give her kids a better life and achieve something in her life so they would look up to her with pride’. Such a statement is so devoid of any logic and so contradictory or blind in itself that I won’t even bother explaining why. If people can’t see how flawed her reasoning is then...They probably won’t be able to understand even if I took the time to explain in stages. It would thus make more sense to carry on with my point.

As I watched television it made me realise that it is all really about a need for individuality, a sense of actually existing, being better, more important than anyone else. Most people want to stand out from the masses by any means necessary and they adopt a misguided belief that fame, above all else, will achieve that aim. We all have a purpose in mind, the difference is that most people’s aim is flawed from the start. This might be explained by low IQ or lack of logical reasoning. This in fact I suspect is the reason why it is so easy to manipulate the masses. Give them a false sense of worth that you identify as being their craving and they will lose themselves at once. Nowadays this technique has been so greatly facilitated by the illusions projected through the lens of the media that it is almost despicable. You could lure almost about anyone with the promise of fame and/or money. People think they crave those two things when really all they want is to feel a sense of individuality.

 Therefore the likelihood is that as of at least today I can assume that most societies as they stand do not permit such a thing as individuality. And now I realise that it is the constant promise of granting individuality which has permitted our current form of political system - capitalism- to take over societies or control the masses. Of course, as I can see it now, this looks more like a carrot and stick game than a reality. And still a majority do not possess the logic or are unwilling to use it to challenge the biggest delusion of our times.

More often than not we let our instincts or wants dictate our behaviour when we should be ruling with our brains. If everyone just followed their head then we could boast about being the superior species. Until then all we are, really, is a bunch of fancy monkeys with delusions of grandeur.

We find creatures using basic tools most facinating and sometimes it seems even extraordinary. With the brains we have all the technology we come up with through the ages is little more than equivalent to the chimpanzee learning to use a stick as a feeding tool. Therefore being able to create or invent fancy things can’t be the determining factor in proving that we, humans, are superior to any other species or that we’re any more special in any way. Our capacities are merely proportional to our biological constitution. I read it before somewhere and I now agree that what can make us special and superior to any other creature is our ability to find true meaning behind everything around us and the very things we create or do. Not just any meaning, though, but true meaning. Reasoning. Logics. Striving to shed away the mechanics of instincts and wants to act as logically and independently as humanly possible.

A flawed power system?

Some people are allowed to get richer but the poor sod working his ass off to be able to afford life remains stuck on the same level of poverty- with a few pennies thrown at him here and there to keep him quiet. That’s a good way to ensure the rich stay rich or get even richer while the rest either slave away their skills or stay as poor as society intended them to be. Fact.

 Do I blame people who live off benefits? Nope. I actually understand how people could be so sick of slaving away for barely more money than the state would grant them anyway. Every payslip is taxed and the state gets billions out of them, yet it is always in deficit. Wars, which the states themselves decided to trigger in the first place, didn’t help either. 

 Where does all the money go? Official budgets tell you the bulk, or where it’s supposed to be going. Let’s say I believe that for lack of contrary evidence. What my mind cannot grasp is why politicians need to be paid so much when, according to human nature so easily darkened by temptation and greed- corruption- they should be the ones avoiding excess at all costs.

 By wanting to become a politician or a leader of the people you should be able to embrace such a requirment: living with just enough to be comfortable based on a medium of your own society. As such, someone like Brown should be living in some flat with just enough rooms to catter for his family. No cars, only public transports. I’d understand the need for tighter security around him, maybe. A leader is useless in all his preaching unless he walks the walk. I’d be tempted to say he should be getting about the same as people on benefits but then we might well end up with a depressed leader so let’s say he’d have enough money for proper food and a few treats a week - as in a meal out or a few pub rounds- and if he needed to go on holiday or anything more of a luxury then he would have to save up, my dear. 

Not a lot of people would be tempted to get to power anymore and that way those who still want to are actually the ones we need- the right people for the job instead of greedy opportunists who don’t give a damn about people, only their fattening wallets.

Anyway, this is what I think should be but probably never will be.

Harsh facts

Once upon a time white people thought that the whole world belong to them and was waiting for them to conquer it. Everything else, every other culture was beneath them and so it was that people with different skin colours were turned into slaves or regarded more as obscene creatures than human beings. It was the awakening age, minutes away from our time today, before technology gave us a false sense of security and power over nature. 

You would be forgiven for thinking that our time, the age of apotheosis as I like to think it, has come to learn from mistakes of the past and that the white man regards his fellow black, indian or chinese companion as equal. That he is trying, at least. Through the lens of the media and society as a whole, it would seem that things have changed for the better or working toward a new world based on acceptance. It would be forgetting the white man in power. The puppet master. He wants us to believe a lot of things and everything he lets you see is always what he wishes you to see- not what you ought to see. When something is too good to be true it usually is and the same goes with the notion of truth. If something is too obvious or taken for granted then one must stop and think carefully, try and see beyond the veil of words and pretence.

Unless this is done as we live through our time we will remain blind. I don’t understand why or how we got to this, all I know is that far from reaching acceptance, we are pushing everybody against one another. A subtle, pernicious poison runs through the many veins of societies and I have doubts whether it can be stopped now. This is why our time is the apotheosis age, where all the loose ends finally come together.

Anyway, I went for a walk through the park on the way back and soaked up some of the sun. A vain attempt at cheering myself up. I felt the weight of solitude on me as though the tabby skies had suddenly collapsed and I waited for them to swallow me whole. But they wouldn’t.

 

On religion and a theorem of thoughts

I cannot rely on the idea of a God for it would always be stained by conditioned beliefs. Even if there really was a God then we would know nothing about it or what it truly entails. The concept is so far removed from our reach that it is pointless to try and comprehend something so hypothetically infinite and grand when we can’t even comprehend our own selves.

Proportions, probabilities and the laws of physics, the three Ps that made the world. If one could get to the roots of all three and from the source work their way up to the results then many answers would be unveiled. But to get to the source, ah! Many scientists got close enough, yet not quite. They were also blinded, just like the rest of the world, by seductive answers or discoveries, mistaking science, which is a tool to knowledge, for knowledge itself. They also care very little about the fact that what can be done shouldn’t necessarily be done. But what do I know? Demanding ethics is probably too much to ask and always has been. However, using the word has always seemed so pretty and fluffy for a majority. Let’s face it, notions and values are devoid of deep understanding and what they are to most of us are mere blanket words, empty shells of a word that sounds like something right yet we just don’t know why they sound so pretty to the ear or the eye. That in itself is enough to make them what they are to us today: empty words filled with ideals.

Note that I could never deny the existence of something higher; I mean, why not? It’s just nothing to do with the way we’ve pictured it so far. More importantly, I’m not about to try and find out as it would go completely against my theory that unless I can truly comprehend my self in outward circles (starting from my own self, perception, reality, substance...working my way from that base and moving up to the next level which would probably be my immediate surroundings; “thy neighbour” and so on) until I eventually get to the top through logical reasoning and true understanding, enlightenment. 

Of course, the likelihood of ever getting to that all-understanding awareness is tiny if not impossible in a lifetime but then to me it only means that we just aren’t meant to dwell on bigger questions until we can find ways to work our way up. Perhaps a chain of philosophies through times is the key so that the answer can eventually be found along the spectrum of time. Why bother with my theory? Because to me it seems the only way to minimise error and avoid ending up with even more supositions. Just like algebra or quantitative methods problems, if you start off from a flawed base then the proportion of error only keeps growing as you carry on trying to resolve the problem- perhaps I should say the margin for error? It is a fundamental mathematical reality.

When anger meets the mind

I want to belong to no country, I wish to have no nationality or homeland. The world is my oyster and with it comes a sense that there are no borders, no frontier or boundary that could ever be imposed on me and my mind.

God is money, didn’t you know? If there really was one out there he was buried a long time ago. You can find god in every purse, every transaction you make, in every note or coin you play with in your hands. That’s such a conveniant tailored-made deity, really. No need to think too much about it, everything is written on the label, or should I say value? Thanks to the money god we can even put a price on abstract notions and human beings can also be purchased in more ways than one. Of course, I am bound to take the view of a pauper, I must necessarily be biased on the subject. I can see the in-betweeners, those who get on with it all, the middle class family always adapting to the current. There’s no blame to be placed on them but I could not feel sorry for them for even when they stop to think they rarely let thoughts or conscience dictate their actions. Denial or charity is their outlet. 

Of course I am generalising. I’m only human and I can’t find the strength to go deeper than appearances on that matter, not yet anyway. There is a forgotten voice in limbo, lingering on throughout the ages which the world is forced to ignore if it is to carry on the way it does now. That voice is the sacrifice believed to be necessary. That voice comprises everything you can’t adknowledge within yourself when your mind realises how wrong things are.

We’re all so isolated in our own little life that it often takes a disaster to wake us up from that dull, self-centered torpor. Even disasters nowadays aren’t strong enough to get through most people who have been utterly desensitized. You only realise how much society has been mechanised and rendered faceless in a way, when even small issues force you to take action that requires interaction with society. Everything is now a business of some sort, from the so-called religious establishments to the schools and the state. Everything must bring profit and be viable or it will be thrown away. Even charities are a business: to be worthy of their time and pity you must meet a certain degree of helplessness or get lost.

We don’t live to enjoy life. We live under the rule of money whereby ‘hapiness’ and enjoyment are dependent on how much you have in the bank, regardless of what you are as a person. Whether you’re a monster or a saint it is the amount of money you have that defines you. Thus even individuals have been rendered faceless. 

Make-believe and reality as we see fit

I’ve written it before, I shall write it once more: money is the poison to men’s heart, which in turn will wither to a dead pulp. It will be the cause of destruction all around and for what? For a fistful of dollars. The so-called God, the one a lot of people believe in, is given false sweet names and a nicely tailored fairytale when it is but a mere reflection of their greed. God as we ‘know’ it is an ever adaptable, ever-changing excuse to worship what sounds shameful to the ear: bling-bling, money, shiny pretty things. We don’t have a God as the men of religion proclaim, it’s all a sham. What you believe in is a very intricate propaganda machine meant to control people. If there was a God somewhere, we wouldn’t have the first idea what or who it is. We simply could not comprehend even a glimpse of such a higher subject. The rest is part of a man-made fabrication. Delusions....

I was thinking about the French Revolution the other day. It was such a strong statement, a step towards the ideal of equality. “Liberte, Fraternite, egality.”

Chopping the aristocracy’s head off was a sublime symbol of revolt among the people but the rest that ensued soon became a farce. Perhaps it was planned as a farce from the start. If you think about it...Are we really free today? It sure feels like we have more freedom than we had a century ago...Or have we? I’m tempted to think that only the settings and ways of exploiting people have changed. Why? 

The ideals of the French Revolution were grand, the direction taken flawed from the start. The idealist goal was to give power to the people but it was done so carelessly and without enough thorough reasoning that in the end people chopped the royalty’s head off only to give power back to the Bourgeoisie on a silver plate. The people never got that power, they only think they did, but that again was an illusion. The only difference between aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie is that the former’s glory and power were given from birth while the latter’s stem from the new plague: money. So the surroundings, the settings have, indeed, changed, but not the problems themselves. They only morphed from one issue to another variant of it. We merely replaced crownies with more corrupted people, only the new ones had less money perhaps to start with. We were taken for a ride by the ‘bourgeoisie’. 

We never change the core of human problems, we keep interchanging players and unless the corrupt ones can be weeded out there will never be a better society, something that actually stands a chance to be fairer than ever before. 

On writing and other things

The story to tell comes first and is all about inspiration, imagination and ideas. You have to find something to write about first, don’t you? Once you get an idea that stage is over and it would almost seem as the most trivial part of writing a story. However the truth is that it is one of the most volatile stages and one can spend years waiting for that idea to dawn on them. I should know. Once you get past that stage comes the physical side of things: the process of actually writing the story. It’s the most enjoyable part as long as you don’t get stuck at some point for whatever reason.

That’s when you escape into that other world and you get to know your characters as you shape them along the way. Sometimes they surprise you in the way they grow and they end up quite different than you intended. You just never know for sure. And then there’s the re-writing stage, filling the gaps, mending the holes, adding, editing... I don’t like it much, to be honest. It confuses me more than anything but the fact that you have to really think about every little thing means that what you change will be more thoughtful and hopefully better than before. So, really, writing is very much like painting. You can be rather liberal in the way you apply the paint on that canvas, using as much paint as you wish and splatter generous amounts of what will serve as a base, but once you’re done with the foundations the painting process becomes more and more intricate and precise until the final touch which requires a steady hand.

 I’m not that far from that last stage, although I’m aware of the style issue. I try to keep in mind the sound advise of showing rather than telling per se... I shouldn’t write that one is angry when I can avoid it, but use gesture or facial expressions or actions to show that one is angry...It is easier said than done, for me anyway. And then I need to stop taking my ‘reader’ for a dumbass...That is to say I keep explaning things in too much detail, as though whoever might ever read my story wouldn’t have the brains to understand... I think such difficulties stem from the fact that I’m my own editor and therefore I find it very hard to be objective enough to spot the errors. But then I don’t have the luxury of friends and I have noone I could ask to read the story... And it’s quite a brick to read, I can tell you. So... If I do ever manage to finish it completely whatever mistakes or clumsiness there are left should be judged with a hint of clemency since I would have had no second opinion whatsoever. That is also why I can never be sure that what I’m writing isn’t utter rubbish. But hey, I don’t seem able not to write so...

Mum said that once your mind is free, once you can truly think for yourself and analyse what is being said or shown then you find peace of mind no matter what happens. If she is able to see beyond the shams and illusions of our reality, especially through the medium of society, then it would explain why all the setbacks in her life have become a well of strength from which she draws even more stamina to keep going...

I’m not that courageous. I need to strike a balance between a free mind, one that has freed itself from comforting yet deluded beliefs and preconceptions, and my social self, the one that has been so brainwashed and conditioned that it seems intent to clash with my thoughts all the time. I’m a coward. I was going to say a mental coward but that would be the wrong choice of words here. It’s simply that one part of me longs for truth and understanding of myself and what is around that self, but the other half isn’t strong enough to deal with what such truth, the undiluted version of it, entails for the rest of your life when you can no longer ignore the harsh fact that there is only you, a biological entity born to die and what you do in-between is up to you- and the sudden understanding that the only true entities that can give you credit or adknowledge your work, even your basic existence, are the people around you, all the members of your species... I suppose it gives me a lesser pleasure to know that there is no higher meaning to what I write than the expression of a passion, perhaps a talent I have. The only ones who can give it a deeper sense or importance are mere mortals who may well choose to ignore it. I suppose what I’m trying to say, albeit clumsily, is that now I can see that there is no higher power, no mysteriously powerful God watching over me and that everything I do or do not do for that matter is up to me only. We are lucky in so far as we have the faculty to think logically and therefore we can give to existence the meaning or purpose we wish to give it and in that we should strive to find solace. I want my life to be more fruitful than it would be biologically. I don’t want to simply reproduce, find love, get a house in the suburbs etc... I want to write and understand as many things as I humanly can. 

The only strive one can rely on- and that is, to me, the most disapointing side of the affair- is that other people will aknowledge your work, for one single individual needs the input of others in order to instill meaning into whatever one does. If I were the only human being on Earth, for instance, what strive would there be for me to write anything at all? The need to write stems from the hope that you will be able to share your work or discovery with others, I should think. When I was still blind enough I used to ignore that fact and imagined that somehow I was at least writing for some higher entity or that the latter was tilting me in such direction. That was a deluded belief- a safe idea that kept me from confronting the basic truth of it all: everything has meaning in so far as there is another person to share it with. And then you look around and you realise that most people aren’t that bothered by what you have to say or want to show them. Who could blame them? I’d react the same way in their shoes unless what one has to show or say is in fact truly mind-blowing. The idea of religion was greatly appealing for it meant that you could overlook that harsh fact of life and remain in the comfort zone of conveniant beliefs. Now there’s only me and my choice of what I’ll do of that biological miracle that is my very existence. It is also at the core of human discord.