view from the cheap seats

I hate my life.

I know that's not a great or cheery opener, it doesn't create the comfy ambience of other blogs, but I spend all day pretending to be 'fine' and this is my space so fuck it, I hate my life. That bitter mantra has been throbbing away in my head today, just needed to get it out there, now on to the post.

You know the score, three things, here's the first:

One thing that really stuck in my head from university, as opposed to the countless things that fell straight back out again, was an interesting little fact about cosmic rays. For those not up to speed with today's astrophysics, shame on you! , cosmic rays are vastly small particles that shower the Earth all the time.

Nobody really knows what they are or where they come from yet, but their so small and unassuming that they pass through us and most other things on Earth all the time. Now when you close your eyes what do you see?

Nothing is the easy answer, but take your time. There's black, maybe a hint of red, maybe a specks and a hint of movement. We all know this is simply light passing through the blood vessels in your eyelids right? Well no actually, it's not just that.

Those little specks you'll sometimes see scrambling about in their only-half-there fashion are actually your retina registering cosmic rays that are passing through your head. Now as great an advocate as I am of exploring your own mind and inner self etc, I do believe that we have evolved an inherent link to the physical around us.

This means that often the best way to look in is to look out at something random and look for patterns. The shapes you make in your mind's eye out of clouds or TV static have nothing to do with rain or bad reception. In a way you're actually pouring your mind out onto a canvas of chaos and watching the results.

So, could it be that ONE factor, (among many,) that contributes to what we dream/day dream/imagine could be the flow of cosmic rays running through our heads. In effect we're unconsciously using weird alien particles that have travelled vast interstellar distances to visualise ourselves.

How crazy does that sound? I quite like it myself, it gives me a feeling of being somehow connected on a very deep level with more than just our planet but with the universe as a whole. I should probably move on here lest I be overcome by the urge to go hug a tree.

Secondly, another recurrent theme in Philip K Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle', which I read recently and mentioned yesterday, was the Eastern Oracle known as 'I Ching'. I really don't know much about this at all and would appreciate the benefit of anyone else's superior knowledge.

It seems to me though that it's a good example of the religious/spiritual habit of externalising the inner self in a very similar way to that described above. The I Ching seems to depend on the outcome of set random events, such as tossing sticks or coins in the air, and then translating the results via an ancient text to produce, for want of a better word, a 'fortune'.

Just like horoscopes etc, these fortunes can nearly always be interpreted to fit whatever situation you're in, but does that necessarily make them worthless? Well, as an atheist, you'd think I'd see prayer as pretty pointless but a thought occurred to me recently, as this post fermented into the heady cocktail it is today, that changed my mind.

Talking to god, it seems to me, is a good way to look at yourself from another perspective. You're explaining yourself to this invisible all knowing thing and then feeling around for some kind of response. This strikes me as a pretty good way of getting your conscious and unconscious selves to communicate.

Anyway, the point is that we do this externalising thing naturally without realising and we've even developed the habit into a wide array ritualised practices. Now on the one dry and sensible hand, thinking about this is such a removed and analytical manner does serve to suggest a great and wonderful bond between ourselves and everything around us, ie. that our minds are not simply in our heads but surround us as well.

On the other slightly manic and clammy hand it does rather strip away the magic. There is something amazing, something indescribable about this when it really works. Thirdly and finally here's my most recent experience of this age old headfuck.

Last night I watched the BBC's Ocean Odyssey which recreated the life of an 80 year old sperm whale washed on a New Zealand beach. It was a very well made, gripping and informative piece of television but I found myself far more interested in the descriptions of the underwater geography than by the wildlife.

Being a BIG HP Lovecraft fan the very bottom of the Atlantic holds a special place in my mind. In the weirdly beautiful world of HPL the great land mass Pangea (how do you spell that?) was broken in two in order to drop a particularly malignant creature, Cthulu, and the dreadful city around him to the bottom of a great abyss.

Unable to kill C'thulu some super archaic and benevolent beings found that dumping an entire ocean on top of him was the only way to imprison him and thereby protect the rest of the universe. I swear to all your gods it's far more compelling and far less geeky than it sounds when actually read from source, but anyway.

I'm watching these computer generated landscapes slide about on the TV and we come to these volcanic outlets on the seabed. The release of various minerals over time leads to the formation of grand and twisting spires that create what look unsettlingly like weird alien cities at the bottom of the sea.

So already I'm drawing parallels as I watch, but not getting too excited yet. Now in the books Cthulu himself is never actually seen but representations of him, and those he has infected, all bare one physical trait in common, a chaotic mass of pale writhing tentacles.

We get to an area called the abyssal plain, right at the bottom, and there's nothing here, quite literally. Nothing can exist in this vast barren expanse, it is one area of the sea that is actually utterly devoid of life, but only at certain times of the year.

It turns out that there is a single species of animal that comes to this place to mate. They have one massive orgy then die and other things come to eat them, so it goes. What quite literally made me gasp and, I'll be honest, start to freak out a little bit, was that these creatures are eels.

Down at the bottom of where there is nothing but darkness and the unimaginable pressure of an entire ocean crushing down, there form great writhing masses of eels. So broad and tightly knit are these 'mating balls' that they take on the appearance of a single, silently seething creature.

The parallels are painfully obvious, as is that familiar explanation of coincidence. What really blew my mind though was this. Compare someone who had never really thought about what was at the bottom of the sea and someone whose mind had been subjected to the delightful, and entirely fictional horrors of HLP.

The first would probably assume, and quite rightly given the limited evidence they have, that there's no light, no food, in fact fuck all down there. It's just an endless seabed with nothing on it. The fantastical notions of daemons as old of the universe dwelling in ruined alien metropolises could clearly be dismissed as lunacy. And yet, finally getting to the point, whose mental picture would actually be closest to the truth?

The concept of imagination and deep thought somehow holding more reality than everyday practical experience just sang out to me from the TV screen. Given what I've written above I would have to assume that this says more about me than HPL or the BBC.

So what does it say? Not sure I want to open that box right now but feel free to draw your own conclusions, (remembering of course that they'll all be skewed by your own self lensing... crazy yet? )

Still knackered, still pissed off, but determined to produce at least one mid week post so here we go in the form of another minor addition to a previous idea. I've written before about the occasional pearls of wisdom that can be found within the vicious and ugly oysters of religion. (How's THAT for a mental picture? )

Just finished Philip K Dick's, 'The Man in the High Castle'. Yet again I was blown away by yet another work of genius. Casting a lay eye over my 'books read' list you'll notice I've been on a bit of a PKD kick recently.

There are VERY few authors whom I can continually read in this fashion, but PKD is an exception. Sci-fi is too hideously limiting and misleading a label for his work, in fact, fuck this post, go read some PKD right now! Anything I've got to say he's probably already written, and better too.

Back? Good isn't he? Anyway, one aspect of 'The Man in the High Castle' deals with a contrast between eastern and western cultures. At one point the concepts of Original Sin and Reincarnation are briefly compared. the parallel aspect of these two, historically isolated ideas, is that both portray life as inevitably painful.

Both doctrines teach that, once born, there is no escaping suffering and that, in fact, some degree of misery is inherent to life itself. Of course both go on to explain why this must be the case in their own, what I would consider delusional, way.

Now I have it in my head that some philosopher, (I want to say a German one though I'm not sure why, help me out here if you know who this was,) once declared that 'life without pain has no meaning'. I'd noted this seemingly recurrent theme but only recently put it together with some pop (read as spurious) science I saw on BBCN24.

Apparently scientists have discovered (or decided, often the same thing,) that a major factor in our evolution was that anxiety is hardwired into our brains. A compulsion to worry about things in our lives is what drove us to change them and subsequently develop.

Now tying these three together, religion, (what I believe to be) non-religious abstract thought and science we find those cryptically aforementioned pearls. As human beings we're at our best when in trouble. Having evolved to adapt we, ultimately, thrive in flux and chaos.

Now, looking around us, here in the bloated and affluent west, many of life's challenges have been met and dismissed. Most of us, (ie. those considered 'real' people by society,) can live in physical safety and comfort with an uninterrupted and easily accessible food supply. In fact, as a culture, we've put an immense amount of effort into satisfying every single urge we can think of with convenience and luxury.

How many of us, however, feel somehow unfulfilled by these advances. Guiltily perhaps, how many of us harbour a secret ache, an irritating feeling that despite the wealth of riches all around us, something else is missing. Could it be that an easy life is not necessarily a happy one?

So where does this leave the idea of happiness as an achievable ideal? Looks pretty grim doesn't it? Are we all just destined to be torn between progressive misery or stagnant peace? Well, luckily for me and my tired, tired brain, I can fall back on something else I've written about in the past to offer some kind of response to this question.

It would appear that we, as a race, need to be challenged, faced with difficulty and hardship in order to make the best and most satisfying use of our individual potentials. The nature of such challenges however are where we find ourselves with some degree of control.

Challenges, difficulties and hardships do not have to be misery making. I've written before that I feel the way to get the most out of society is to create systems that allow people to pursue careers in things they enjoy and/or (usually and) are good at.

We need to be frustrated, we need to struggle and to yearn but, if given the choice of specifics, these experiences can actually be some of the most wonderful in our lives and, more importantly, might just be able to lead us to REAL happiness.

I don't believe we're inherently bad from birth: I don't believe we're falling blindly through a cyclical procession of lives; I don't believe that suffering is the only route to meaning and I'm certainly not convinced that human evolution can be explained by the tardy appearance of executive stress balls.

What I do believe is that we are thoroughly amazing creatures; that if we understand our nature and apply that understanding to our lives we can achieve amazing things, that achieving such amazing things is indeed a route to happiness. Above all these however I believe that we are just not built to tread water, especially not in the name of someone else's wet dream. In short it comes down to this:

we are people, not slaves

Another week of working, eating and sleeping. I have to get on top of this or I'm never going to get out of this game. Got an email from some lit magazine the other day saying they're considering publishing one of my shorts. Unfortunately I haven't actually managed to motivate myself to do anything about it until today.

You'd think, given that getting published is my way out of mainstream life forever, I'd be a little more enthused but somehow I can't find it in myself. Thinking about it recently I realised just how many of my peers are 'paying their dues', ie. working jobs they hate until they can escape to do their own thing. None of them actually want to take part in the mainstream economy or society.

And who can blame them? I mean, look around you.

Now some might say that this is the height of selfishness and demonstrates an abject lack of social responsibility but I, quite obviously, would disagree. This point would only be valid if the soul crushingly tedious jobs we work to pay the bills were actually necessary to humanity.

They're not though. The jobs most of us work are necessary only to keep a few rich white guys in cars and cigars. Beyond this, the deeper injustice to all that is instinctively felt is the waste of potential. Are the needs of society really best met by herding people into call centres for example, wherein individuals have no opportunity to make use of whatever talents and passions they have?

If your aim is to actually raise the average standard of living in your society, rather than simply to make money, then it's in everyone's interests that people's work be something they care about and are interested in. Let's face it, work you enjoy isn't really work. How often would you be late for work if you were doing something you loved? The constant struggle to maximise employee output disappears.

Anyway, now I've got that off my chest, there are forces beyond capitalism holding us all in this mess. I've written before about what I've recently decided to call 'mental literacy', ie. basic critical thinking skills. In the past I compared our current situation re: these skills to literacy and numeracy in our recent past.

A small elite hold a monopoly over these skills and use this to maintain their own positions of power and comfort. The 'masses' are deemed incapable of such skills and, even among the masses themselves, there is a general feeling that people don't really need mental literacy. Well, as a society, we overcame this situation before to insist that, almost, everyone be able to at least read, write and do a bit of maths.

I've been pleased with this metaphor in the past, surprised in fact at how closely it seemed to fit with my idea of mental literacy and the current situation surrounding it. Well, as usual, turns out I just needed to let it stew at the back of my brain for a while to develop into something much bigger.

Bought The Independent yesterday, as I do on occasion, over The Guardian in order to get a holiday Spanish CD. I've been telling myself to learn Spanish for years and I thought this might be an easy way to get started.

Now something that's long fascinated me is the idea that there are foreign words that have no direct translation, ie. concepts for which we do not have a name. If I were to finally learn Spanish or any other second language, I thought, would I then be able to think in that language and subsequently think things I had been unable to before? And this is the crux of it people, staring us right in the face all along.

We need language to think

In order to store, juggle and compare concepts those concepts need labels, otherwise you'd always have to consider everything in its entirety. Imagine having to use the dictionary definition of a word instead of the word itself for every single word. We'd never get anywhere, the simplest thought process or sentence would unravel into endless explanations.

Now, if you'll indulge me, I'll bring in another thought I recently had. Again this is something that I left to bubble away in my subconscious some time ago. It's a broad and sweeping statement, usually unwise when considering the English language, and is inspired at least in part from some entirely unrelated mathematical thinking.

No two words mean exactly the same thing.

Now there are plenty of words that can interchanged in certain situations. Hell, I do it all the time when I'm writing to avoid repetition, I hate repetition, repetition sucks. (Is that funny? I'm not sure, still feeling rough from last night's escapist intoxication.)

Despite this however no two words, I am convinced, mean exactly the same thing. Explaining the subtle differences between definitions of similar words are can sometimes provide a linguistic challenge in of itself. You try to pin down clearly and directly the difference between 'look' and 'see' for example, it's not as easy as it seems.

Of course it seems easy because these words, and the differences between them, do not come from dictionaries or universities, but from our everyday gut instincts. We feel, in an instinctive and wordless way, that looking and seeing are two different things and we give these nebulous concepts different labels accordingly.

So here we are, two separate points now, as always, to be drawn together with a third. If it's not broke don't fix it, right?

Understanding the subtleties of words is to understand the subtleties of the concepts they describe. Putting this together I realised, how many arguments have you had or heard where the main rub is that the two sides are simply not comprehending what the other is actually saying?

So often the conflicting points are not actually mutually exclusive, ie. both sides are right, but the temptation to fall back into rock banging conflict is just too great. My point here is that language skills are an inherent part of the mental literacy described above and this is what led me to the final revelation of the piece.

Far from being a surprisingly accurate metaphor, our relatively recent drive to bring literacy and numeracy to all was in fact just an earlier step in the same process. This is why it fit so well, it a part of the same journey. The step towards mass mental literacy is a natural progression from mass physical literacy.

Of course when I talk about this I am usually reminded that a significant problem stands between our society and this next great leap. Basically it is not in the interests of those in power that everyone be furnished with the skills of mental literacy. In fact their power is pretty much dependent on this not happening.

Now that may seem pretty overwhelming but before we throw in the towel let's look back. Around the same time that only priests and occasional nobles could read the church happened to be a vast power base in the world. Having a monopoly over the word of god will do that for you.

Over time of course people became able to read their own holy book and, subsequently, come to their own conclusions about what their mighty bearded deity was all about. There will have been a time however, when it would have been inconceivable that the church could be reduced from ultimate global power to a waning middle class pastime. But it happened.

Progress benefits all but the rich.

There are a handful of people in our world intent on holding us still, on keeping humanity in a static cycle of consumption because they've found a way to turn such a situation into personal power and luxury. Ultimately however, they may as well try to hold back the tide.

Mental literacy will arrive my friends, not in our lifetimes but one day the revolution will come and society will be changed forever. It's a bleak and bitter hope in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, but the trick is to remember that the games we devise and surround ourselves with, religion, politics, economics etc, are but fleeting fancies.

There is something else deeper within us that is forever.

I knew it would happen, I fucking knew it. This last week I have finally dropped into the pitiful existence I knew would come from going back to working a day job. By the end of each day I've been so utterly physically and emotionally knackered that I just piss the few evening hours away in a stupor before getting up the next morning to do it all over again.

The job has taken me over, I've barely read, and haven't written, a thing all week and it's messing me up. Friday night slipped by, empty and sour, before I spent Saturday morning with my Grandma. Her Alzheimer's is just a little bit worse each time I go and, to be honest, it's painful to see.

Got in from that yesterday and felt something building, a kind of sickly, nervous tension. It took a while but I eventually recognise this as an impending panic attack. Butterflies, unable to stay still, breathing won't slow down etc.

Anyway, I held off a full blown attack but could only manage to hold myself in that 'impending' limbo by forcing myself to watch mindnumbing TV until sleep finally came. Haven't felt this bad for a while and not reading/writing is definitely a factor. Today, finally, I feel up to trying to remedy that and what better subject to explore than my favourite number, 3.

3 can be a bitch...

Work's been particularly for me tough recently and the reasons for this can be spilt into three loose categories. Firstly there's where this job fits into my life, ie. it's supposed to be a temp day job. I'm there for the wage and get nothing else from it all.

Recently however I had to take a day off to go to the dentists and have my assessment for counselling at MIND. In order to make this time up I've been taking twenty minute lunches and staying late every day. So this job that is supposed to be a mindless but necessary source of cash is actually taking everything I've got.

Then there's the carrot. There's a chance that, "maybe in a couple of months," my council department will be getting an information officer. Now this job involves a lot of the stats and monitoring I'm currently responsible for but instead of arranging work and speaking to tenants I'd have to write copy for council newsletters and websites.

Not only would this be closer to what I really want to be doing, and thereby possibly more bearable, but it's a shedload more money as well. The problem is that this job may never actually materialise and I can see myself, if I'm not careful, sitting in that damn office waiting for a chance to escape while my life passes me by.

The second string to this particularly unpleasant bow is the actual practical nature of the job. Frustrated at every turn, the only thing worse than being forced to do a shitty job is being forced to do it badly. The combination of woefully ignorant managers; ludicrously unreliable and frustrating IT systems and a sudden, massive upsurge in workload has made this job the most stressful work I've ever done.

The third and final part of this is me, or rather the current state of my mental health. I had my assessment at MIND to get on a course of counselling but I now have to wait, 'a little while' (?) until they find someone who can fit me in.

The first lot of counselling I had, at the excellent Burley Lodge Centre, had a significant effect on me and I felt I was taking the first steps to dealing with my problems, ie. recognising them. Now though, that course having finished, I find myself in this limbo where I've stopped ignoring things but am suddenly without the support and advice I apparently need to face them.

The short and the skinny of this is that I'm not in the best frame of mind to be dealing with a lot of stress at work. Now when I came out of 'Sympathy For Mr Vengeance'(1) I heard people criticising it as a bad film because watching it had been an unpleasant experience. For me however the value lies in how powerful the work is, not whether the vibe is positive or negative.

In the same way I find trying to look at things in threes, rather than twos, can be a very powerful tool. The better view of things this may give however, isn't necessarily a nice one.

...but 2 is always worse

Been a bit concerned recently by the recent flapping about regarding the European Bill of Human Rights. One argument I heard on BBCN24, from someone who was in favour of ditching our commitment the bill, made it clear to me that there is a great deal of ignorance surrounding the nature of this, now infamous piece of legislation.

The argument ran that we should only be obliged to uphold the rights detailed in the bill under certain circumstances or for people from certain 'good' countries. Now I have to admit I did shout at the TV at this point, human rights, HUMAN.

The whole point of these rights are that they are the birthright of every human being alive. Regardless of who you are, where you're from or, most importantly, what you have done, your DNA entitles you to these rights. Simple as, end of.

To suggest that human rights should only be afforded to certain people of your choosing is to say that those you do not choose are in someway less human than those you do. Hmmm, classifying people into superior and inferior groups and treating them accordingly, these are the seeds of genocide people. Regardless of good intentions or so called practical necessities, this is nothing more than thinly veiled elitism and elitism invariably leads to suffering.

Now the main reason I've given in the past for considering things in threes rather than twos, (or any even number,) is to avoid polarisation. The current 'debate' of human rights vs national security is an absolutely textbook example.

This so called debate can yield nothing, absolutely nothing, because it is so ludicrously limited that it will never encompass the causes of the problems on both sides. When we let issues, especially issues as important as these, be boiled down to us vs them, one basic idea vs another, we are screwed.

It is insane to consider human rights and national security as isolated, let alone opposing, issues. Society just doesn't work like this. It is fair to say that, in fact, that violations of human rights are a significant contributing factor to many of the current threats to our nation's security.

If we at least tried to ensure that the rights in this ill understood bill were upheld globally, ie. if we made the quality of life of the human race our priority, many of the just grievances that give rise to security threats would not arise in the first place.

The biggest threat to our national security are suicidally blinkered arguments like these. We're being distracted from the real problems and subsequently any hope of finding their resolution. This is why three is better than two, if you set up your debate in a minimum three way split it's just so much more difficult to fall into this trap.

sometimes 3 can look like 2

One good thing did come out of my almost-panic attack, which I can still feel lurking on the edge of my consciousness, and that was a revelation. I honestly believe that the very reason for our existence is to experience moments like these, that golden spark when an idea just appears in your head.

I was thinking about what the panic attack was, trying to pull apart its nature. I realised that the best way I could describe the feeling in my case was as a disconnect between mind and body. While my mind is numb and exhausted, my body is experiencing abject terror.

All the physical symptoms of intense fear are present but without the accompanying sensory input and mental quickening. Mentally there is just confusion and concern, frustration and sadness. A distinct separation, two independent parts of me.

Only that's not the whole picture.

Recently I had the pleasure of hosting here a wonderful debate on the nature of consciousness during which the idea of a soul came up. Now I felt secure in my position that no such thing exists but was irritated by my inability to provide an explanation for the instinctive feeling that it does.

At the time I simply stated that I felt the feelings of consciousness, and of having some non physical part to us, came from our inability to fully comprehend our own complexity. I suggested that these were illusions, necessary tools for life until we evolve to a point where we can dig who and what we really are.

Well, thinking about panic attacks took me to other similar feelings, times when the physicality of a situation overwhelms reasoned thought. The physical reflex to something unexpected or the loss of conscious control reached at sexual climax were the two examples I could think of.

It was at this point that I noticed a flaw in my thinking. Splitting mind and flesh tends to take the form of brain from frame but this is wrong. Our bodies do not perform those instinctive physical actions on their own, it's that archaic lump of grey matter atop our spinal columns that drives them.

We have, in effect, two brains. The brain stem, the bit we share with the rest of the animals, is the bit that tells our hearts to beat, tells to us fuck and eat, gets us angry or makes us run fast when we have to. The great swollen lobes taking up most of our domed craniums are the reason machines, the bits we think with.

The great and golden flash which made me, just for a second, glad to be alive, was that this instinctive perception of a soul, of ourselves as being non-physical within physical, is actually how we perceive our two brains. When you think you're detecting the non-physical, the soul, what you're actually perceiving is the contrast between the older and newer parts of your brain.

Great, a solid new point to air in that age old debate, but where does the three come in? Isn't this a pretty clear case of two? Well no, because there's something else. There's the old brain, and the new brain, but there's also what they form together.

Without the frontal brain bulge we'd still be beasts, but without the brain stem we simply couldn't survive. 1 + 1 only equals 2 because the 1's are identical. In this case the total is more than just the sum of its parts. There are both the new and the old brains to explore and understand but there is also the person this combination creates.

The point of the habit of three is to force us to take a step back, to look at just one more angle before throwing ourselves in. As low as I am right now, and as painfully dull as life is, it's ideas like these that keep me alive. Maybe one day I can dedicate myself to their pursuit full time and finally get the hell out of this dirty, deadly game we call everyday life.

footnote

(1) a fantastic Korean film from the same director and 'ultra violence' genre as the better known 'Oldboy',

Watched a very powerful piece of television last night, namely Channel 4's 'bradford riots'. The most unsettling thing about the program, particularly during the violent scenes, was the realistic atmosphere. The events of the day leading up to the riots, as portrayed here anyway, were sickening and outrageous. For this reason it was important to keep in mind that this was a dramatization with, by it's very nature, a very narrow scope on the events it portrayed.

Anyway the program raised a whole array of issues but one in particular stuck in my mind. Watching a bit of news today I heard that the BNP had doubled the number of council seats the held, and taken a seat here in Leeds apparently. This just tied in too nicely with the issue I'd been pondering and so lo, a post was born.

One of the things I like about where I live is the wide variety of people living around me. Not too long ago I got to know one of my neighbours, a sound and interesting bloke who had, once upon a time, served as a police officer.

Disillusioned with the force he had left after a few years and, through various protest activities said he'd almost spent as much time in police stations on the wrong side of the law as he had in his professional capacity.

We had a friendly little debate about whether or not 'smashing nazis' was a good idea, ie. taking to the streets for potentially violent confrontation. In short, he was a vet of the scene and believed it was a just thing to do while I was opposed. Neither of us changed the other's views but I think we understood each other's positions a little better.

As this post started to fall together in my knackered yet relentless brain, it seemed only natural to split what appeared to be one question into three distinct parts: smashing nazis,

a) is it right?

b) is it necessary?

c) does it work?

These are some pretty sticky questions, especially at the moment, but fuck it, what's the point of having a vast communication tool like the internet if we're not going to ask awkward questions?

a) It takes thinking time and mental effort to justify, but I'm still sat firmly in the pacifist corner here. Violence perpetuates itself, regardless of intent or circumstance, violence begets violence, simple as. In my eyes smashing is wrong, nazi or otherwise.

This is rather the point however, like all principles and ethics, these are PERSONAL OPINIONS. There is quite simply no such thing as a universal scale of right and wrong. The closest we can get to this is majority consensus, but the ideas of those who disagree cannot be considered any less valid.

In the end it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong.

b) The main thing I took away from that C4 doc was an argument in favour that I hadn't thought of before. The Bradford situation was presented thus: not only were the police not apprehending the fascists but they were stopping the asian youths from protecting watch other and their community.

Now as I mentioned above the accuracy of the program can be questioned but the abstract point is valid. IF a state is unable or unwilling to protect a community can the members of that community really be expected to just sit back and take whatever they get?

You are legally entitled to take someone's life if they are about to take yours. This concept is instilled in our legal system, that while you must obey the law you are not obliged to do so at the expense of your own life or personal safety.

So I guess I have to conceded that if your home and loved ones are under threat and the police won't defend you then you have to defend yourself. Of course the exact nature of what people should do once they're out on the streets is a whole big thing in of itself.

The thing is, can I reconcile this with my answer to the first question? Well, as it happens, I think I can...

c) ...because the point is THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO. The circumstances under which someone is forced to make such a decision should never be allowed to come about. My main problem with the idea of nazi smashing is that I just don't see how it can work.

I agree that we can't do nothing and that we must stand up to those who would seek to derail our attempts at civilised society. I just don't believe in this myth that if we kick the National Front's arse enough times they'll stop being fascists.

In the end people are not only entitled to believe whatever they like but they just WILL, it's what we do. So in the long run what purpose does nazi smashing really serve other than to give lefties an opportunity of some guilt free satisfaction for all that repressed bloodlust, (at least the fascists are up front about it!)

It seems to me the 'threat' posed by these people comes in two very distinct forms. There are those who really do believe in vicious ideologies and live to hate. I believe that these are by far the minority and that, as with all political movements, the majority of people 'on that side' are there for other reasons.

Whether it's alienated youths finding somewhere to belong or any other disenfranchised part of society finding hope in scapegoats and easy answers, these people 's views are inspired by being pissed off at the world in which they have to live.

In the past I've written about capitalism and stated my belief that such systems simply cannot be broken down head on. Instead they can simply be subverted, turn away from them and make your own way. In much the same way I propose that the only solution to the problem of popular political extremism is to build a society in which they have no place.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN EXCLUSION.

This means solve the problems they exploit, take away their sources of power by allowing ALL people to enjoy the benefits of living in a multicultural society. In a society where people feel valued and represented, respected and involved the only things the extremists (be they political, religious or financial) have left to talk about is the very heart of their belief.

All those noble middle class anti nazis looking down their noses at the 'ignorant' working classes, albeit with patronising sympathy, should remember that most people don't vote, act or even think according to political ideals, it's a luxury they can't afford. Do we really believe that if the people of Germany after WWI had had employment etc that they would have elected Hitler on a purely 'Kill the Jews' ticket? Bullshit.

It very tempting and oh so easy to demonise these fascist nutters and dump the blame for as many of society's problems on them as possible. Let's be honest though, they're just people choosing to restrict their own outlook on life, opting to miss out on lots of wonderful stuff.

WE are the problem. WE non nazis are the majority, WE have the power to shape our society and WE are not doing a good enough job. It may be a great rush to fight in the street, especially for a noble cause, but the only things that's going to make any difference is putting bricks on top of one another, not throwing them about.

Had a day off on Tuesday to keep a couple of appointments. First off was my assessment for another counselling program. That was ok, now I just have to wait until they've a space for me. Have to admit I'm really missing the counselling I was receiving at the Burley Lodge Centre at the moment. I'd built up a good relationship with my counsellor there and I miss that too.

Just have to keep hanging on I guess. So after that I went down into the city for a dentists appointment. She's a bit rough and it was a painfully unpleasant experience but it's taking me so long to find an NHS dentist I think I'll make do.

Anyway, on the way into town something happened that I wanted to write about. Walking along I was thinking about the household shopping I needed to do while in town. In particular I was trying to think where I would spend the change in my pocket and what I would put on the plastic.

Engrossed in comparing the prices of items on my mental list to the cash in my pocket it wasn't until I came to cross a road that I looked up and saw a homeless guy ahead of me. He didn't seem in too bad a state but he looked pretty young and very miserable. I stopped for a brief chat before giving him all the cash I had.

Now I've never really got any kind of feel good kick out doing things like this. It can hardly be considered generous for us to share a bit of cash, food and/or banter with someone who has to live outside simply because we can't be arsed to make a better society. It's not generous at all, in fact it is the very least we can do.

In fact, looking back at it, I got far more out of that transaction than he did. As I walked away I didn't feel any self righteous ego buzz but I did suddenly feel free. Suddenly the whole question of where to spend that cash had disappeared. I felt lighter, freer and walked on with my head up, taking in the world about me.

Thinking about it this is not the first of my experiences with homeless people that had proved inspirational. I remember leaving a Pizza Hut a few years ago with the last few slices of a truly gargantuan pizza in a doggy bag.

I was about as full as I had ever been, I mean I was in physical pain, but I was determined to take those slices home and eat them, after I'd paid for them. I actually walked past the homeless guy at first before being struck by a thunderbolt.

Here I am, literally full to bursting, and I'm clinging to this food when there's someone right here who could be starving. The look of grave distrust left his eyes once he opened the bag to find that, 'fucking hell, there's really some food in here'.

Funnily enough although the idea of leaving the food I'd paid for at the restaurant really got my back up, just giving it away in the street felt absolutely fine. Again I felt released from a compulsion that was making me its bitch.

I guess what I'm trying to get to, in my own lazy, rambling fashion, is that the things we want to own end up owning us. The more money we get the more things there are to think about buying, there's no such thing as enough. The more food we get the fatter we get, there's no such thing as enough. The more comfortable we get the more lazy we get, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS ENOUGH.

Even though it's contrary to everything we've been taught and everything that surrounds us in modern society today, giving stuff away for free can be an amazingly liberating experience. If nothing else then the simple thrill of doing something so apparently ridiculous and outside society should be motivation enough to give it a go.

It's not just about liberating yourself either. There are plenty of things you can do that are free that can help lighten other people's loads. Since I've started work at my current day job there've been a couple of occasions where I've stopped to help people.

One lady's car broke down so I gave her a push, another very elderly and frail lady was struggling to get her wheelie bins in in the rain so I did it for her. For some reason that I just can't comprehend they were both mortified that they found themselves unable to offer me and monetary recompense for my efforts.

Again, it's not about being a 'good' person or a 'kind' person, it's just about being a person. Whether we like it or not, the main strength we've evolved is to communicate and co-operate, we're here to help one another out guys, that's it.

Now since I started working I've tried to put the money I'm earning to some kind of decent use. I've joined Amnesty International, CND and group called 'conscience'(1) who are campaigning to give people more choice over how their taxes are spent, (see their link on the useful links list ). Overall however, money and material ultimately just get in the way of our aforementioned purpose and subsequently cause us problems.

In all my limited experience with homeless people the one thing I've found they appreciate more than anything, more than money and more than food, is just to be recognised as a human being. From what I can tell surviving on the streets is just as much about will power and determination as it is about finding food and shelter. A bit of eye contact, a bit of respect, they don't cost you a thing but they can give someone else a vital lift.

Of course society couldn't function without money, it's integral to our whole way of life, it's just the way things are, nothing will ever change that, ever, alright? Just accept it, believe damn you, believe! Well I don't. The only thing that keeps us locked into this system is our belief that there are no alternatives.

Life should be free and so should we.

footnote

(1) conscience: apparently 10% of all the tax we pay goes towards the military, this means that regardless of your beliefs regarding war and violence, you're funding it on a grand scale. conscience refer to this as a form of financial conscription, an analogy that I rather like, and are campaigning to allow people to opt out of paying to kill people if they don't want to.

Another visit from GK and another heavy weekend. My head is all over the place today, having to fill it with sudoku, rolling doom riffs and blog ideas to keep it from banging. I'm also supposed to be putting the house back together before my girlfriend gets home but I just wanted to get this one down before it slipped my dazed and aching mind.

Last week I watched Channel 4's Dispatches, 'Undercover Copper' doc and, while I didn't think they did enough to put their findings in perspective, it still made for thought provoking television. A wide swathe of issues were touched upon, including a reported change in the culture of policing.

Personally it seemed pretty obvious to me why there are more and more coppers seemingly just in the job for the power trip and an occasional ruck rather than out of any form of altruism. this surely stems from a problem faced by at least the last two governments, namely a decline in the overall number of police officers in the force.

The way our leaders have sought to solve this is to 'sell' policing to young people (men) as an viscerally exciting career that carries automatic kudos. Anyway, the thing that really stuck in my head and got me thinking was issue of the targets set by the Home Office.

As dramatic as it may sound and regardless of intent, a major consequence of target driven performance monitoring, (ie. get this many of these in this amount of time or else, bitch!) has been to fundamentally undermine the rule of law in this country.

When a copper is faced with a situation it used to be the case that they would use their discretion, responding to each individual situation appropriately. Now one criticism sometimes levelled at the police, and the military, is that they follow orders blindly. It's the first step along a spectrum to your full blown concentration camp guard.

In the case of the police however, they rules they blindly enforce are the laws of a democratic country, ie. the rules that we, the electorate, have supposedly brought into being. So for all the bad things that can be said about the police, at least when their using their discretion they are applying an understanding of both the letter and the spirit of the law.

Now however, when a copper is faced with a situation wherein he could justifiably arrest someone it is in their interest, and that of their station and subsequently of the local public, that they make that arrest. Even though in the long run giving someone a criminal record rather than a warning might actually end up costing society more, the Home Office policy comes first.

And this is the point, policies like these are not voted on in the same way, or even at all, as actual laws. Government policy is increasingly replacing the rule of law, seemingly because the core principles of our laws don't let the government do what they feel they need to.

At the same time as, and perhaps partly because, more and more people, both the frustrated and the apathetic, are turning their backs on politics, what power the electorate does have is being diluted. The only way to stop this slide, as I see it, is a major rethink of the whole system.

A big part of this problem comes from the way in which we have allowed our society to become compartmentalised. Voters are almost completely insulated from most of the consequences of the votes they cast, the media being the only bridge across this.

Could this be why kneejerk seems to be the only flavour legislation comes in anymore? The voters don't have a clue what's really going on, they only know what the media tells them. The demands they place upon their leaders are subsequently for the wrong things but, relying utterly on popularity as they do, the leaders have no choice but to give the people what they want. Of course this only makes things worse and the negative feedback loop spirals on, down into the dark.

The great success of our current system stems from its reliance on our seemingly innate laziness. We don't elect people to represent our ideas and concerns, we choose people to run things for us and this leads to a whole shitload of problems such as those outlined above.

Although I think most of us can agree that politicians are, to a one, bastards of the highest order, we have to own up to our share of the responsibility here. The only way out of this is to relocate the power to where it belongs, on the streets, in peoples homes and communities. Unfortunately this will mean that we'll have to actually start doing things for ourselves.

It might seem like a mammoth task but it's vital to keep a sense of perspective here. Our society, our rules and hierarchies are all nothing but illusions. They only mean anything because most people agree that they do. Despite appearances, the nuts and bolts of our nation, all the rules, traditions and mannerisms that define us are actually not physical but in our heads.

This is where we need to make the change, win the battle with yourself and the war is halfway won. There is a great and secret show going on all about us, a great myth twisted through time and turned to an endless string of ambitious wills.

The show is ours my friends, yours and mine, and it's just waiting for us to take control.