So who hates Noel Edmunds? Of course you do, he's a quite unbelievably irritating little fuck, (and he murdered Clive Anderson ) It is a true testament then, to the format of his new show, Deal Or No Deal, that I find myself compelled to regular viewing.

The simplicity of the idea is great and allows for a practically endless number unique games all with some guaranteed degree of tension. I find it impossible not to look at the game mathematically and so what really fascinates me about it are the weird and wonderful little belief systems the participants build up.

It’s easy to get a bit carried away with the whole scientific view and scoff at the rituals and techniques employed. Doing this actually denies the very logical reasoning I felt so smug about in the first place however.

The point is that it makes no difference what order the contestant chooses to open the boxes in, so going through a whole theatrical rigmarole is actually just as valid an effective as picking the numbers out of a hat.

Now regular readers will be familiar with my views on organised religion.(1) Simply put, religious people are psychopaths. This isn’t meant as an insult, or even necessarily as a criticism, it’s just that my understanding of the word psychopath is that it describes a person who is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.

To be fair I don’t think we actually have a choice about doing this kind of thing, it seems to be inherently in our nature. This said, it’s not really a tenable position to state that such systems are all bad is it? To paraphrase the scandalous yet blatantly obvious smack message in Trainspotting, there must be some upside to religion otherwise why would people do it?

Domestic chores are rubbish. I mean can I understand people wanting things clean and tidy, but who actually wants to do the cleaning and tidying itself? Now, uncharacteristically perhaps, let’s present a couple of extreme opposites.

Both a strict, regimented, military routine and sticking on some loud music and dancing about like a fool can have the exact same effect on domestic chores. The chores need doing, it’s a practical necessity to maintain your standard of life, but by losing yourself inside some structured system you can make the housework less of a chore, (crap pun definitely intended, and I don‘t care! )

The reason I chose the to go with two there, instead of my habitually irrational obsession with three, was simply to demonstrate that the system itself really doesn’t matter, it’s what it does for you that counts. I’ve just realised that anyone with kids probably knows exactly what I’m talking about. This just the whole, ‘make a game of it’ thing when you want them to do something they don’t want to isn’t it?

Anyway, living together in peace and harmony, forgiving, tolerating and co-operating are all practical necessities to maintain a the highest quality of life we’re capable of. Right now we’re not meeting those necessities so the vast majority of us live lives that fall obscenely short of the standards we, as a race, are capable of providing for ourselves.

Why aren’t we meeting them? Because it’s fucking hard! Doing the right thing and building a better world may well be noble and exciting but it’s also a whole lot of hard graft. Why not, then , use structured systems to make the journey feel a little less bumpy?

So religions are brilliant ideas right? Well no, despite the reasoning above I haven’t shifted positions on that one. Although I’ll admit there’s nothing wrong with these systems in principle, there is a very real danger associated with their employment.

Now I’ve been exploring this concept recently and have found it a bit tricky so you’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely crystal. Perhaps a metaphor would be the best way to start:

Some great leader leads a people to greatness and, on his deathbed, writes a simple paragraph that will guide the masses through an uncertain future. Skip forward a century or two and the people are worshipping the shapes of the marks upon the paper having forgotten what they actually mean.

In the same way that the book is not important, it’s the thought held within it that is precious; belief systems themselves are empty and meaningless, it is only their practical impact that gives them any value. A good friend of mine is convinced, and I agree, that all the conventions of the major religions, such as not eating pork for example, stem from 100% practical origins.

I often find myself at work amidst the most frustratingly ludicrous arguments, Both sides are speaking English but because they each have subtly different definitions of the words their using they dance round in semantic circles until the vein in my head pops and I kill all three of us. (That hasn’t actually happened yet but one day I’m telling you...)

It doesn’t matter! Oh for fucks sake how little it matters!

The value of a religion has nothing to do with how snazzy the accepted dress is or how effective the breathing techniques to get you high(2) are. The only measure is the behaviour of the faithful towards each other and the rest of us.

Having got this far I was struck by how different some belief systems appeared when looked at in this way. Sun worship was the example I came to first, the archetype of a ‘primitive’ and ‘naive’ belief system. I managed to shrug off society’s conditioning for a moment and look at this this thing from a new angle, ie. no longer down my nose.

What you have is a system centred around one thing that every single human being on the planet can instantly relate to, something that neither geography, history or any other high school department can divide or overcome.

Now thanks to the wonders of modern science we have skyscrapers and SUVs and 20 million TV channels. We have also managed to study and classify our environment in an ordered fashion so as to finally understand how it all works.

It turns out that energy just moves about and changes form, like through food chains or weather systems. Apart from a some negligible heat and motion from our still molten core, there we have only one source of energy: Sol, our sun.

Now worshipping the sun, I suspect, could also make it much easier to see yourself as a deeply connected part of the ecosystem and make it easier to understand that neglecting or actively wrecking the natural world is the same as hurting yourself.

As you might expect there’s a third side to this post. Beyond the pitfall of mistaking your belief system for reality lies a much deeper drop. Once you have a group of people locked into a routine the eggs of their beliefs are packed neatly into one tight little basket.

Suddenly it becomes very easy for some unscrupulous and/or arrogant bastard, (and there’s always at least one,) to turn the whole thing into a social control mechanism, a power structure with them sat at the top, getting fat in a dress and a silly fucking hat.(3) People can’t do this to you if your belief system is purely your own.

Ever since I read “Island” by Aldous Huxley, which I highly recommend by the way, I’ve been working on the blueprints for a new society, not perfect, just loads better. There are, literally, an infinite number of factors to consider within such a task so I’ve been taking my time and just considering things as they come to me.

Kicking some virtual ass on the XBOX earlier I was thinking about this post and about my slightly ambitious, Huxley inspired project when I had a sudden and sickening flash. One of the cornerstones I’m currently still moulding is a culture of reasoned understanding. This would basically involved people being furnished with the skills to communicate, evaluate and appreciate ideas.

When things need to be done they are agreed upon because all parties concerned understand the overall impact and share commonly agreed goals. People work harder, with more enthusiasm and passion because they believe in and are happy with what they doing. What If I could just work out a way to do that, I thought, some system by which that could be made the norm there’d be nothing we couldn’t achieve.

The flash, both sudden and sickening, was that if such a system could be created it could probably be abused. The scary thing is that were that to happen there could be no resistance, the people would not realise they were being manipulated and would happily carry out the will of the damn elite.(4)

Oppenheimer, the scientist whose work was used to build the first atomic bombs, ended up wishing he’d never looked down a microscope and I reckon I’d probably curse the day I picked up a pen if an idea I wrote led to endless slavery for the human race, that’d be fair.

It’s all alright though, all I need to do is think in some safeguards here and there. And that the point really isn’t it? The systems through which we live our lives are ours to design, redesign and implement as we see fit.

Some people think god, a being with an apparent presence but no physical form, created man in his own image, an identical looking being but with a solid physical form. Sounds to me like someone needs to explain the concept of what I would call a ‘mirror’ to these guys.

footnotes

(1) note the word organised, I think it’s in the interests of our entire race that individuals explore themselves in a ‘spiritual’ manner, whatever that may mean for them; I am convinced that it is far easier to do this without blindly submitting to what is basically nothing more than social control mechanism,

(2) all religions have these, mantras and hymns baby, they fuck you up! basically they’re just ways of getting you to breath out more than you breath which changes the amount of CO2 in your blood and gets you high, today’s church/mosque/synagogue/temple is yesteryear’s crack den, nice huh?

(3) my silly hats observation: for some reason that I have yet to fully grasp, the whole of human military and religious and political history seems to revolve around silly hats, and in particular which are worn by whom,

(4) there’s always an elite and elitism is at the heart of pretty much everything bad in the world, we will never be free to realise our potential while elites exist,

Well, it's been a while. Apologies for my recent absence but going back to work after my week off has been a bit of a grind and, to be honest, the last thing I want to do after a day at the office is sit down n front of a computer.

That said however, I have also discovered that blogging has withdrawal symptoms and found myself itching to get back on here as it turns out the urge to vent is a powerful one. Been feeling pretty low recently, my course of free counselling has come to an end and I'm waiting to get on another one somewhere else.

The mixture of tedium and frustration that is my public sector job doesn't particularly compliment my depression so I've taken up regular exercise and St John's Wort to try and keep a grip. Frustration is perhaps the key word in all of this really, in particular the frustration of ignored.

I didn't strike today, though it does sound like something I'd do. Of the two sides of the argument being presented, ie. the unions vs the government, I certainly side with the unions. For those who insist on parroting 'the money has to come from somewhere' and actually believe that an increase in council tax is the only way top fund public sector pensions here's three other ways, just off the top of my head:

scrap trident - there's a few billion there,

get the hell out of Iraq - a few more,

make the rich pay their fucking taxes - eg. the amount one UK media mogul's accountants managed to get him out of paying in one year was more than the total amount paid out in benefits by the state,

The point here is how we prioritise, what's more important? We have the money to fund these people's pensions, we're just spending it on other stuff, this clearly implies that this other stuff is more important than the people who keep the fabric of our society together.

So I should have joined the union and been out on strike today. Well, as a colleague pointed out to me today, there's a down side. The trade unions are a massive source of funding to the Labour Party and so paying subs to the unions is contributing some of my hard earned, well, earned wages to a party I won't even tick a box for.

So maybe I will strike next time, I just won't join the union. The picture I'm trying to paint here is that I find myself alone, again. None of the representative parties involved in this situation represent me, or rather, my opinions.

Sitting on the bus on the way home today, I was staring blankly and trying to escape the Wizard when a thought occurred. It's funny how these things just drop into your head from out of nowhere, and I wasn't even stoned, well, no more than usual anyway.

I suddenly realised what I'm scared of, I mean what I'm really scared of. From my experiences in life so far I've developed a multitude of ideas, some sit, nicely finished, while others grow and evolve. The thought that sent a chill down my spine was that I would live out my life and die without seeing those ideas passed on or realised.

The frustration of feeling ignored and misunderstood by those around me, not to mention society at large, can feel pretty crushing and, some years ago now, I drew something not unlike this to express just such a sentiment:

Now this is all pretty bleak, a lot of teenage angst bullshit some might say, but it's not the end. I'd love to see some of my ideas realised, especially the big ones I haven't quite worked out yet, but I'm ok with the fact that I probably won't get to rebuild the world in my own image, and that's probably for the best.

The reason I'm ok with this is because of what I'm doing right now.

Writing.

I realised that my ideas don't have to be made flesh. If I could just record them in some public fashion, put them out there into the shared consciousness, they'd inspire and merge with other great ideas I'd never of thought of.

So it turns out that, for me, writing isn't just a hobby, or a dream job, it's self preservation. But hang on, it's all very well getting the ideas out of my head, recording them for posterity, this doesn't necessarily stop me being ignored. Where's the communication I so desperately crave?

I've always found it hard to shake the feeling of that sketch above because it felt right, it was my gut reaction to my life. Through my counselling(1) and places like this or Elephant Books(2) I come to see that the sketch is accurate, just not complete. It should be more like this:

There are a lot of people out here with me, in fact I'm tempted to say that, globally, most people are outside the inside, I just couldn't be arsed to draw them all. The fact is that although it's chilly out here in the cold light of day, at least we see what's really going down and that rosy glow, as tempting as it looks, is actually a prison.

I've encountered a few things recently that have given me hope and made me feel good about the world: Elephant Books of course; the Leeds Film Festival & the Hyde Park Picture House; a voluntary glass collection and recycling scheme and the wonderful services offered by the Burley Lodge Centre.

One obvious common denominator here is that all these set ups revolve around small groups of people who have chosen to do something they care about and think is important for it's own sake rather than to make money. People out there are doing things for themselves, leave the politics and the politicians in the bubble, we don't need them, we can run our society ourselves because we are our society!

Now my depression isn't the easiest thing for me to write about but a big part of this kind of problem comes from the social stigma attached to such conditions. Some months ago my most excellent friend ABEunlimited tipped me off about a publishing company that specialises in literature related to mental health issues, (endless thanks for that one )

The idea seems to be to drive a wedge into the mainstream, to get people talking about and recognising mental health and to start some motion towards the lifting of that stigma. I've now actually signed a contract with these guys and am now in the process of producing a collection of short stories for publication.

Obviously I'm chuffed to have made some progress, finally, with my fledgling literary career, but I'm especially pleased that it's through something like this. I'm down, but I'm not out and there's definitely hope to cling to.

footnotes

(1) the counselling I received at the Burley Lodge Centre, for free, was brilliant; I highly recommend that anyone in the Hyde Park area who thinks they may be suffering from depression should visit their GP and ask about being referred, (though I think you can just contact them direct if you'd rather,) anyway the short and the skinny of it is: THEY ROCK, GIVE THEM MONEY.

(2) take a look http://underthecheapseats.blog.co.uk and hit the ELEPHANT BOOKS tag,

Coming to the end of a week's holiday from work. I've done a few odd jobs, some exercise and a bit of writing. My girlfriend and I went to Chester Zoo today and I've a whole list of things to take care of tomorrow.

This strategy of filling my time was supposed to serve a variety of purposes, making the week feel longer, making me feel like I've done something with it, but most of all it's to take my mind off having to go back to work on Monday.

Anyway, just a brief note on something I was reminded of watching Question Time last night. In light of the recent and controversial passing of Blair's education bill there was some discussion about schools and tactics for improving them.

Now the traditional Conservative views represented were criticised because, in the critics opinion, their approach would not lead to an equal standard of education for all. The government's recent bill is supposed to address this issue and the ruck within the Labour Party seems to have been over the bills ability to do this.

An audience member on Question Time pointed out that while the government's plans may well help failing schools in inner cities, it is not geared to solve the problems facing rural and suburban schools. The first thing that popped into my mind was a concept I encountered somewhere a few years ago which, while subtle, is vitally important to our supposed common goal of building a better society.

Being equal is different to being the same.

Our political system is monolithically centralised and it is in keeping with the mindset of such a system to try and solve nation wide problems with a blanket cure-all. Any attempt to suggest that one group of people should be treated differently to another immediately results in rabid, glassy eyed hysteria, it's not fair!

It's as if so many politicians and other suits have talked freedom and equality up for their own ends so much that the words have become the names of god, to be accepted, heard, but never questioned or invoked.

It might seem like a tricky concept at first, treating people differently while maintaining equality, but actually we do this every day. The idea that the less you earn the less tax you pay makes sense, and more importantly seems fair, to most people. Why can't we extend this thinking to other areas?

We insist, for example, on judging schools side by side with a simple tally of exam results. Doing this assumes that the schools are on a level playing field, that every pupil has the exact same opportunities and support, leaving the school's performance as the only defining factor.

Equality is vital to our society, and though we've come on leaps and bounds over the last century or two we're still a long way short of the real thing. If we really want it and if it's really as important and as ultimately beneficial as we're told it is, then we have to do three things:

recognise that our society is still far from equal,

be prepared to put some effort in and think about what equality really means,

It's a lot of effort but I reckon it's probably better than the alternative in the long run, and hell, if we share the effort out it's not that much per person, how to do that fairly though, hmmm...

So just what the hell is going on in Jericho today? first the US & UK personnel responsible for over seeing security arrangements at Palestinian prisons sneak off without telling anyone. Then, literally minutes later, the Israelis are 'forced' to mount an armed assault on a prison compound in order to snatch one particular guy.

Palestinians throughout the occupied territories were outraged by the situation and the sickeningly familiar spiral of protest, violence and kidnappings ensued. They are a hot headed lot aren't they? Well no, actually, no more than the rest of us.

Let's just think this through for a second. Imagine the UK decided it wasn't happy about the penal situation of a US citizen in a US jail and hence decided to snatch them back. Then the Canadian border patrols unexpectedly take the day off, without telling their US counterparts. UK forces launch an armed incursion on US soil, knocking down walls, stripping and killing US citizens.

So how long before the bombs start falling on London? Yes the Palestinians are fucked off, and so they should be. The only Palestinian people we see expressing their anger, however, are those that choose to do it in the most dramatic ways. We associate bloodthirsty overreaction with Palestinians, and Arab peoples generally, because that's all we see on TV.

Now this is no great revelation, the issue of demonising Islam and Arabic people has received a lot of attention over the last few years. What's worth remembering however, is that this phenomenon is not restricted to these particular groups.

My first reaction to the unfolding situation was disappointment and irritation towards Israel but I don't assume to be an expert on the daily problems they face. With this in mind I listened carefully to the responses I heard from Israeli government representatives on BBCN24 today but found nothing above the usual domestic standard of irrelevant political bullshit.

Now tensions in this part of the world only seem to be mounting and the recent diplomatic ruck with Iran has brought some pretty old school anti-semitism(1) back into the mainstream spotlight. With such dark vibes floating about more and more people are finding they have to walk on eggshells for fear of being branded a racist or a fascist.

Ken Livingston is a recent case in point, while in Austria they're locking up people for the thought crime of holocaust denial. I remember hearing the longer excerpt of the Livingston recording when the story first broke. The guy made a perfectly valid point, and one which I certainly agree with.

Now being a seemingly nice bloke I think he would have probably chosen a different metaphor had he known the reporter was Jewish, (but the fact that he didn't just showed that he had no intention of causing offence.) The point he was making, which the media conveniently didn't mention, was that some reporters behave in an unnecessarily anti-social way and then hide behind their 'bosses orders' to justify it.

Anyway I'd better get to the point before the less patient among you brand me a closet nazi and start organising a lynch mob. There is a lot of hatred in the world and it causes a lot of pain. There are, undeniably, people who would claim to hate 'Jews' for example, but who exactly is it that these people despise?

I once saw documentary made by a young Jewish guy who was trying to get himself added to an internet list of 'the Jews who run Hollywood' or something similar. It was a really well put together piece consisting mainly of interviews with a wide array of Jewish people.

One of those interviews that really stuck in my mind was with a group of people in a New York deli. Another young Jewish guy pointed that the world only sees two kinds of Jews: 'dead Jews and killer Jews.' They're either children being slaughtered in the holocaust or out slaughtering Palestinian children in tanks.

If I were the kind of person who didn't read and took what I saw on TV at face value this is all I would have left from which to form an opinion of 'Jews':

your basic potted history of the holocaust, I've been to Anne Frank's house but I've never seen Schindler's List,

seeing representatives of Jewish people, the Israeli army or some community group, fighting petty, dirty battles that cause a great deal of unnecessary suffering for everyone, including other Jews,
Now as it is I only have to think of the suited twats who represent me to the rest of the world to know that you simply can't judge a whole group of people by their leaders. This last influence is a key problem however, in that there are a lot of people causing a lot of pain under the flag of Judaism.

If I were Jewish I would be fucking livid with Israel, not simply for their military actions but more for doing them in the name of my religion. Let's not forget, Israel doesn't claim to be a Jewish country in the same way that Iran is an Islamic country, they're the Jewish state.

Defining themselves in this way ties the actions of a democratic government, as vulnerable to failure as any other, to every single member of a global religion. This is, it seems to me, the fundamental flaw in having church, state and race so inherently intertwined.

The anger we so often see aimed at Jews, or Muslims and Arabs, is actually directed at the commonly held images of these peoples. The fact is that whether you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim or sane, and no matter where you live, we're the victims of our own elites.

There are small, loud and aggressive facets of reach of our cultures and so often, because the rest of us let them by the way, they end up running the show and speaking for all of us. If we're to have any hope at all of resolving some of these conflicts we simply cannot afford to lose sight of the most basic truth:

Forget the flags and the speeches and the bloodstains for a second, the average person in the street, anywhere on the planet, wants to be safe, healthy and free. Strangers across the globe or the enemy next door, they're going to get angry and scared at just the same things as you because, get this, THEY ARE YOU!

Despite a truly monumental effort throughout the history of mankind to convince us otherwise, we are all still boringly similar. So next you think, 'god damn they piss me off', just take a moment to think about who they really are, picture them in your mind's eye. Who d'you see?

footnote

(1) I used to work with a Jordanian who got really pissed off with the phrase anti-semitism, Semites are people from a particular region, she told me, and technically includes people besides Jews,

So my mate and I got down into town on Thursday night only to find that the Monster Magnet gig had been cancelled. I was a bit miffed but, to be honest, I was feeling pretty down and knackered anyway and the walk there and back did something to lift my mood.

Last night however, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance was not cancelled and I had the pleasure of two intense and thought provoking hours of cinema. One way in which I'm desperately trying to balance out the stagnation I feel from being back in full time work is to use some of my dull gotten gains to access various forms of art, mainly so that I can feel like there's at least some reason to being here.

For those who don't know, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance is an earlier work from 'Korean ultra-violence' director Park chan Wook, whose more recent and well known works include the amazing Oldboy. The set up for Sympathy is, at heart, pretty simple.

We're all familiar with tales of tragedy and retribution so it's easy to picture the man who's lost everything, good and honest until a string of undeserved horrors leave revenge as his sole reason to live. The righteous anger of the wronged and the returning of terrible sins to their senders.

Well in this vaguely defined genre the underserved horrors come thick and fast, piling up sickeningly with no punches pulled and no limits to the emotional and physical pain passed round. Apart from the more extreme incline of the downward spiral there are two other things that make this film stand apart from the vast crowd of traditional stories of vengeance.

Firstly, there are two men, both inadvertently robbed and wronged by each other. Their own personal descents into hell coil round one another until finally meeting. Instead of a single great wave of self righteous retribution we see two that finally crash over one another.

Both have lost everything, both have been driven to the edge, but who is the good guy and who's the bad? This leads us straight into the second, and perhaps slightly surprising unique aspect of the piece. My understanding of the 'ultra-violence' tag is not that the films are excessively violent but rather that the violence is gritty, low key and realistic.

Both hours are littered with acts of horrendous violence, cruelty and tragedy and yet, afterwards, it's hard to pick out just who the 'evil doers' are. At almost every turn those perpetrating the pain are clearly motivated by familiar and even noble feelings and guilt and even reluctance are common vibes among those dishing out the punishment.

In this way I found the emotional violence to be as 'ultra', ie. realistic, as the physical. Who's the Mr Vengeance of the title? It could be any one of the insanely violent characters, all of whom provoke and deserve the audience's Sympathy.

I left the cinema with that profound feeling of having engaged in an act of communication. A concept, ie. that people are people, that everyone hurts and is hurt and that, ultimately, retribution can only lead to an endless downward spiral that never finds satisfaction, had been communicated to me in a unique and amazing way.

Personally, I live to be challenged and inspired in this way and find such experiences to be life affirming. Walking out of the cinema however, I found myself behind a couple of couples of students:

"That was disgusting!"
"What was the point of that?"
"I can't believe we paid to see that shit!"
"I felt like asking for my money back!"
"Why would anybody want to make a film like that?"

Now I attach no claims to my opinion, it's only as valid as anyone else's, but I couldn't help feel a bit sorry for those guys who, it seemed so clearly to me, had missed the point by a long way. Now this taps into a recurrent theme regarding much of the culture that interests me, namely that unpleasant experiences can be rewarding too.

What concerned me more was these guys were clearly in the process of receiving a university education and yet none of them could engage with a film on more than the most shallow and immediate of levels. Stopping for cash on the way to the Monster Magnet gig that never was, I got stuck behind another student who couldn't work the cash machine.

I'm currently reading, 'Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone?' by Frank Furedi which, as the title suggests, explores the nature of the intellectual but also the oft reported trend of 'dumbing down'. Personally I find the guy's tone a little irritating but the overall ideas he's pitching seem valid to me and I'm finding myself challenged and inspired so I can't bitch too much.

One issue mentioned is the decline, in the west, of manual work. There is a strange kind of implied assumption in our society that manual work is somehow inferior to its mental equivalent. Followed through, this assumption clearly suggests that the move from manual to non-manual, or intellectual work, must be a good thing overall, ie. a higher skilled, more intelligent workforce etc.

Where this falls down of course is the basic premise that work not requiring physical labour is automatically intellectual. I've received a couple of minor reprimands at work recently for using my initiative. It's not my place to think, I've been told in no uncertain terms, it's my job to do, end of, simple as.

Those who know me will appreciate how much that grinds but, swallowing back the bile and smiling, I realised that my boss was absolutely right. That is my job. There's a system in place wherein certain people make certain decisions, if one person starts overriding those decisions the whole system breaks down.

This is a pretty common system structure which certainly has some strengths. One downside, however, was illustrated unpleasantly well to me a few days later. One of the reasons I was employed by this particular Leeds Housing ALMO was to develop new spreadsheets to increase the efficiency of the team.

One spreadsheet in particular that I've designed and developed has grown into a bit of a monster as more and more is required of it. Another part of my brief however, was to ensure that the rest of the team understood and could use the systems I devise. To this end I've created extensive help files with simple short paragraphs and plenty of illustrations and examples.

Now I was off sick again one day last week, officially food poisoning this time but, to be honest, my depression's been getting on top of me a bit recently, hence the lack of postage. Anyway, upon my return my boss mentioned how glad she was to have me back as she had needed to use the spreadsheet but had no idea how to go about it.

I mentioned the help files I'd created but was told that, 'no-one's going to bother reading that'. It was at this point that I realised that I am actually a working part of the spreadsheet I have created. I am the interface between the spreadsheet and the rest of the team, just another part of the machine.

Reading Furedi's book I realised that, according to his definitions anyway, not only is the kind of non-manual work that I and many of my peers do day to day not intellectual, it is in fact the complete opposite. In the book one common trait of intellectualism is a 'universalism' in thought.

Basically this refers to the more abstract nature of intellectual thought, that it is not contained within strict boundaries or contexts, but stretches out into any and every direction it wishes, or rather, feels it needs to. Clearly the utterly specific nature of thought required to be a simple interface is the antithesis of this.

Just as labourers carrying raw materials into some mechanical beast are merely parts of the machinery, so are the millions of people sat behind desks. Our hands may be clean but that doesn't mean we're getting our brains dirty.

A good friend of mine refers to call centres as 'modern day mills', which I would say hits the nail right on the head, though of course what really I mean is, it fills in the paperwork to book a workman to come and hit the nail for me.

Now it's tempting I guess, to tell me to quit my bitching. At the end of the day stuff needs to get done and if this system gets it done then surely it's good enough. What's the big deal about intellectualism anyway? What gives it any more validity than other ways of living and working?

Well what sent a minor shiver down my spine when reading about the whole 'universalism' bit was this: the kind of conceptual communication I experienced at the cinema is an example of a universal language. Transcending written and spoken language, culture and geography, ideas and so called 'higher thinking' are on a par with hunger and sexual desire in that they are common and potentially uniting facets of humanity.

Most organised religions and political or economic systems are designed to work best when adopted by everyone. Converting the world to the 'right way' is usually the utopian drive behind all three, but intellectualism is quite different.

Arising spontaneously throughout time and across continents, thinking is something we don't need to be converted to, it's already in all of us. Now social constraints have always tried to limit the opportunity to think to small elites. It's worth noting that this reflects more on the systems we've developed to live together than the nature of human thought and, in particular, that none of these systems ever manage to fully take possession of intellectualism.

The defining factor of our evolution has surely, so far, been the development of this ability and it is my belief that, far from being just another way of being like any other, some kind of lifestyle choice, intellectualism is in fact the next step up the evolutionary ladder.

Somehow we've got ourselves into a society that doesn't just encourage apathy but that actually punishes initiative and independent thought. We're going nowhere like this folks, we need to get thinking, all of us.

Unfortunately the only way to make that happen is to totally transform our current social systems which is no mean feat. Some may even say it's impossible, but, yet again, they'd be making the fatal mistake of underestimating the potential of the human thinking machine.

Before I get into this post I should probably mention that I'm in a pretty foul mood already today, not least thanks to the trippy nightmare I bolted awake from about an hour ago. It’s not particularly relevant but I feel like venting it so here goes:

So I’m walking along the so very familiar roads just outside, approaching my cosy little home when, turning onto my street, I suddenly become aware of a struggle about half way down the road. Two policemen, unmistakeable despite their uniforms being more gaudy and their hats much bigger than usual, are struggling with a scruffy young man.

He’s screaming and writhing, clearly terrified for his life, as the two leering enforcers attempt to bundle him into the boot of a battered old blue Ford. My instinctive reaction is to reach for the notebook and pen in my coat. Crossing to the opposite side of the street as I approach the convulsing know of bodies, I scribble the date, time and location while trying to get a glimpse of the reg plate and the officers numbers.

Then, in a heartbeat, the guy’s in the boot and they’re looking at me, still leering, and I’m running back up the street. Round the corner, past the shop and before I know it I’m clattering down some stairs. Turns out, wherever or whenever this is supposed to be, that ethnic minorities have been driven into underground ghettoes and it’s among a subterranean community of black people where I’m now desperately looking for friends and sanctuary.

As long as the people down here keep to themselves the authorities above leave them alone but I know harbouring a wanted man such as myself will not be tolerated. For some reason the entrance to the ghetto bares a striking resemblance to my grandparents house, noble wood panelling, open fireplaces and beautiful old furniture despite being an underground hovel.

I crash through a room that doesn’t belong in my grandparent’s house, where people are queuing for food. My heart’s in my mouth and I can hear the coppers barging their way through just a few rooms behind me. I have to find my friend, the leader of this community, I need time.

I realise at this point that there is no chance of evading the uniforms but that escape is not what I’m looking for. I need time. Bursting into a tiny cube of a room, obviously carved deep into the living rock, I find a small wooden table and my friend. He knows what I need.

I sit at the table, scribbling a detailed statement of what I have seen. I can hear my friend stalling them just beyond the door, my script becomes a wild series of desperate loops and my hand begins to complain as I record every last detail of injustice I have seen. Every fibre of my being is screaming at me that my only chance of survival is through these notes.

Then, in a flash, everything changes. The same room, the same situation, but suddenly I’m watching myself be dragged away, out through a second door that leads back to the surface, by the thick armed fancy dress thugs.

My own face, twisted in terror, mouthing something, is frozen amid a few seconds of absolute confusion. Then the face is gone and I realise what’s happening. I am now the leader of the underground community, the man who stalled the pigs at the door so that my friend could record the vital truth.

Reaching below the table, I feel for the sheet of paper and retrieve it. My eyes dart over the jumbled characters, and then I’m on my knees. There is more than just an account of scruffy young man being put in the boot of a car in these notes, much more. From somewhere an image has entered my mind, an image I know to be true.

My wife, her rich dark skin perfect and beautiful despite the subhuman conditions in which we are forced to live, holds me while I am racked with sobs. When they drove us down here, at the start when we tried to resist, many people disappeared, just like the lad in the car. We never knew just what happened, but now I do. There were camps, huge processing plants, wherein our people, and all the others no longer desired, were systematically exterminated.

The grief I feel is overwhelming but, as I let it run through me, I know there is something else. Running much deeper is a streak of anger that tells me once I get off my knees today I will never kneel again. Finally, even beyond this, in the fuzzy out reaches of my mind, there is an echo of something else.

I am not the man with the notebook in the street, I am not the leader of the underground ghetto, they are but vessels. I am the knowledge, the idea, the feeling. They can torture and kill body after body but they cannot destroy me.

So there you go, intense huh? I guess I could waste a whole lot of time wondering what this dream tells me about me, but I’d much rather focus on the infinitely more interesting inspirations behind it. Reading yesterday’s paper this post, which I still haven’t quite started, began to form in my mind and I’m pretty sure that that seed flourished more graphically last night than I could ever manage here.

Still, let’s try anyway shall we? Front page of The Guardian yesterday carried a story about claims that record labels have been keeping the price of downloaded music artificially high. The photo on the same cover recounted the fact that Selfridges in London is among several stores soon to house police cells on site for shop lifters and credit card fraudsters.

Now I’ve had arguments with people in the past about just how ethical it is to download music for free, or ‘steal’ it as some would describe the process. My own position starts from a belief that material wealth is meaningless, so i find it hard to get outraged about such ‘theft’.

On a more practical level however, I’ve always said that the record companies cause piracy in the first place by charging far more than their products are worth, thereby excluding large numbers of people. ‘Investment in future music,’ the suits squeal, but this is clearly bullshit. How much has the average price of a CD gone up over the last few years?

Does anyone actually believe that the sound engineers, session musicians and even the title artists have received a corresponding increase in income? Do me a favour, the money these guys makes goes to their shareholders, anything else is an afterthought and while this is the case these huge companies don’t have a leg to stand on.

I just take this story about the fixing of download prices as proof of my theory. They’re just inherently greedy in all circumstances and, to be fair, what else can they be? They are a product of a system, the capitalist system, which is driven by profit alone. That is the game to which our society is geared so perhaps we can’t blame them too much for being players.

Another concern about this system comes from the idea of large stores having police cells. Sure it’s billed as being a measure to help the police right now, but I see a high potential for trouble with this ahead. How about this: Stores can already detain people they catch shoplifting while the police arrive, they usually keep them in an office or designated room.

Now what with lower numbers of police and an increase in ‘bigger’ crime concerns, such as terrorism, we’ve already seen the start of outsourcing lower level crime. PCSOs were invented mainly to deal with anti-social behaviour and other such small scale local crime that the police simply don’t have the resources to tackle.

Is it really that much of a leap to think that, in the interests of the police maximising the potential of what resources they have, stores will eventually be able to use these cells themselves. At first it may still be just until the police can arrive to actually arrest the ‘criminal’. How long, however, before we see the introduction of ‘fixed penalty’ sentencing. Just like the idea that coppers can march people to cash machines to take out standardised fines, why shouldn’t the high street monopolies be able to imprison someone for a predetermined amount of time if they are caught shoplifting?

Finally there’re the supermarkets. A very good friend of mine pointed something out that scared the shit out of me and I think I’ve written about it before. Supermarkets have long since started gaining the monopoly on food supply in some areas, driving small independent retailers out of business with by using ‘loss leaders’(1).

Visit any supermarket today and you’ll notice that they’re not content to stop at food. Books, newspapers and magazines for example are one area into which these behemoths are now moving. Now if a retailer decides it is not happy with a particularly controversial magazine cover for example, they can decide not to sell it, fair enough. If that retailer however, holds a local monopoly over magazine distribution then it is actually, in effect, censoring the free press in that area.

The most worrying aspect about these last two points is what appears to be a common trend, namely a persistent move away from mass self governance and towards systems over which the public at large has no control. It seems clear to me that politics is increasingly ineffectual as anything but a huge red herring to distract us from where there power increasingly lies.

Capitalism is simply not compatible with freedom or democracy and each one of these oh so rational and reasonable little steps takes us that little bit closer towards living in my dream. While I found that dream disturbing in the extreme, (the emotions felt utterly real and incredibly intense,) there was also a dark and bitter determination that gave cause for hope in the long run. The situation was bleak but not insurmountable.

Well that’s all well good, but wouldn’t it be better if we just avoided the situation all together?

footnote

(1) ‘loss leaders’: basically supermarkets have so much financial capital behind them that they can afford to sell their top few hundred products at a loss, thereby undercutting their competitors. They do this partly to give the illusion that they’re products are cheap, but mainly just to get people into the stores. They know full well that once you’re in there they can get you to buy plenty of other, full price things.

Overall, if you actually sit down and look at it, supermarket shopping is more expensive and the products are of lower quality, and this is what we’re selling our freedom for!

Still well into the wizard, he's been getting me to and from work the last few days as well. Had a pretty stressful day today, not helped by the fact that the office heating and windows combined much like an oven and a greenhouse meaning dull aching heads and forgetfulness all round.

Fell asleep watching TV on the sofa earlier so thought I'd just write a quick post and tumble into bed. Recently I mentioned this report that's been published about the state of our democracy etc. I suggested that the biggest problem, which was also being completely ignored, was that the three main parties are too few and too similar. Simple as.

I don't feel this post necessarily contradicts these comments though some might when I spoil the end and reveal the gist: we don't actually have a clue about the political systems we allow to run our lives.

A couple of examples: One of the many insights I gained from reading Orwell's 'Homage To Catalonia' was my own blind acceptance of an utter myth, namely the position of Communism on the political spectrum.(1)

The Cold War was surely one political situation that reached the masses, with it's super simple blue vs red, cap vs com, us vs them layout. It's an established fact to us all the Communism represents the extreme left end of the political spectrum, the anti democratic extremists of their day.

The only thing is that that's bullshit. Despite years of hysterical propaganda, Communism isn't actually that far left of our own beloved, and inherently fascist, capitalist system. At one point Orwell describes Communism as 'right wing socialism' and, when you think about it, it clearly is.

While Communism may espouse similar noble ethical arguments of fairness and justice, it's methodology it unmistakeably fascist, ie. brutally authoritarian. What's my point? Be patient damn you.

Even longer ago I added the Lib Dems to our League Of Swine because I felt cheated that they weren't the party I had thought them to be. Today's announcement that Mengis Campbell is the new leader of the party has only compounded this feeling of resentment.

What these things have in common for me is not simply that in both cases a lot of people got the wrong end of the stick about these political movements, but rather that they were supposed to.

I often write and talk about furnishing people with thinking skills and political knowledge on a par with literacy and numeracy. While I stand by this to leave it as a single course of action is to blame all our problem on our own ignorance. This would be fine if it were simply a case of us not understanding, but as it is we are actually being actively deceived.

That's it for now, I'm knackered. I've got the George A Romero all-nighter at the Hyde Park Picture House tomorrow too so I'm off for some kip.

footnote

(1) have to say I don't feel the whole 'left-to-right spectrum' is actually a very accurate construct but it's valid here as we're considering popular opinion,