view from the cheap seats

Before I begin I should probably warn you that I'm about to use you for my own personal gain.

Basically I'm trying to vent this stuff to make myself feel better.

Maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe you'll think I'm a whiney bitch, in the end it's my blog so tough shit.

Perspective is a fascinating concept.

I'm a great advocate of thinking and I've spent a great deal of my life so far doing just that, even at the expense of everything else.

One of the benefits of thinking about everything is that it can give you perspective. The more you understand something you understand how it fits in with everything else.

Understanding something's nature, (eg. how big it really is,) AND it's context, (eg. how far away it is,) gives you perspective.

What's the value of this? Well it enables you to respond to situations as they truly are rather than as they appear to be and so allows you change the world about you.

Or at least that's the idea.

Of course what can happen is you gain the perspective but find yourself just as powerless to change anything. Bridges burnt there's no blissful ignorance for you, just painful awareness and frustration.

The courses of counselling I've completed over the last year or so have enabled me to gain perspective on my depression. I can see it from the outside now and have a better understanding of how it works.

This power born of thought, however, doesn't allow me to simply dodge or switch off those feelings. Over the past few days a combination of things has crept up on me until I've found myself in the state I am now.

I've been incredibly stressed at work this week, covering two full time jobs is really kicking my arse.

I've been working longer hours than usual, including my trip to Milton Keynes on Tuesday.

I've spent today with my Grandma, whose dementia is significantly worse than that the last time I saw her.

My domestic situation is still not brilliant.

As a result of all these things I've been eating REALLY badly and not sleeping much either.

Getting home today I could feel it starting and over the course of the last few hours I've watched it build.

It's so weird to see this happening to me, to observe my own mood and experience my own emotions in this not-quite-detached fashion.

Paradoxically the big D makes me isolated and removed from the world on one hand while heightening my physical senses unbearably on the other.

I notice my sense of touch particularly is cranked up. I'm suddenly very aware of how fabrics feel against my skin, of how hard and sharp objects are. Everything feels somehow dirty and uncomfortable, especially my own body.

My tolerance of sound plunges way down as I lose the ability to filter out chatter. Almost everything seems spiky and garish, the TV seems to scratch against my eardrums while my own voice turns my stomach.

Exactly the right music is about the only thing I can stand and I should mention it's also one of a very short list of things that can have any positive impact on my mood at all. This is because I can actually let it fill my mind, ie. occupy my attention so thoroughly that I pay less attention to how utterly shitty I feel.

Then there's the hole in my chest.

It's something I described very dramatically ad nauseum in some of the bad poetry I wrote as teenager: the feeling of there being a vacuum about the size of a melon right in the centre of my chest between my lungs.

I guess it is a peculiar sensation but it's so familiar to me by now I can't think of it as such. It feels like my chest is being dragged in on itself, no pain, just a kind of relentless tightening.

This ties in neatly with the perpetual state of panic that slowly takes a firm grip of me.

Thankfully this has only ever overwhelmed and developed into a full blown panic attack a couple of times, ever, but it regularly makes its presence felt to a less dramatic extent.

It's as if my body can feel that depression spreading through it and all the self preservation instincts start to kick in. Glands start working and hormones appear, screaming at me to do something, fight or flight just get out of this right now!

But of course there's nothing to fight and nowhere to run.

Instead the heart races, the stomach clenches, the breath quickens, the teeth grind, and nothing changes.

I find it difficult to stay still and harder to sleep, yet feel as tired as I ever have in my life.

Everything I hear and read, all messages, adverts etc from society around me make me feel sick.

Making small talk with someone turns my stomach as well and both of these thngs make me want to scream.

Sometimes it's a struggle not to just scream and thrash, and I have to constantly watch out for the random fits of tears that are always waiting to burst in when they get an opportunity.

Everything is hopeless and nothing is worth the effort. I have no desire whatsoever to kill myself, far too much effort for one thing, but the relief and release of death is appealing.

An HP Lovecraft short is the only place I've ever found the word nepenthe, but I believe it refers to the soothing nature of the void, the peace of non existence, not to mention serving quite nicely here.

Of course Mary helps a bit. Her smoky kiss takes the edge off the panic and gives me an appetite, something that disappears completely once this monkey gets on my back.

Without the munchies I just slip down and down the blood sugar cycle: not eating because I feel shit and feeling shit because I’m not eating.

Mary can hold my hand and mop my brow but she can’t make me ‘better’. There are no magic cures, no quick fixes, this is just the way things are, it’s a part of who I am.

Of course I’m not actually helpless and there are several things I can do to make these spells of hideous shitness less intense and less frequent. Healthy living, resolving problems at work and home, basically giving my body what it needs to deal with it and taking away what keeps my mind from dealing with it.

Like I said at the start, this is all about venting, about losing myself so deeply in analysing the thing that I forget about actually experiencing it.

Now I have no use for anyone’s pity, and this isn’t a cry for help, but externalising the thing does seem to loosen it’s grip.

There’s only one aspect of this that’s stranger than the fact that I’m watching and writing about this happening to me like some independent observer while it’s happening to me.

That’s the fact that, come sometime in the near future, maybe later tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe a little longer, all this heavy, heavy shit will slip away again.

It never goes completely, that’d be like losing a limb, instead it perpetually echoes, murmuring along in the background like a static hiss under music.

Once it drops back down to that level however, I won’t be able to imagine how I feel right now. This emotional state will become a distant land that I know I’ve visited but can’t really picture.

Of course I can always look at my souvenirs. Some of them are carved in my arms, their not so good, but others are written on paper and I’m pretty happy with a lot of them.

You know what? I feel a little better. Still shaky, but calmer than I did half an hour ago. If you’ve actually read this then thanks, you’ve followed me on a brief but valuable journey and I appreciate your time.

It’s about this point in these kinds of posts that I start feeling guilty and self indulgent so I think I’ll kick this in the head now.

Don’t worry though, I’ll get back more the usual politics, philosophy & weirdness next time. Plus I’m seeing about a million films over the next few weeks so there’ll be plenty to bang on about there.

Before I begin I should probably warn you that I'm about to use you for my own personal gain.

Basically I'm trying to vent this stuff to make myself feel better.

Maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe you'll think I'm a whiney bitch, in the end it's my blog so tough shit.

Perspective is a fascinating concept.

I'm a great advocate of thinking and I've spent a great deal of my life so far doing just that, even at the expense of everything else.

One of the benefits of thinking about everything is that it can give you perspective. The more you understand something you understand how it fits in with everything else.

Understanding something's nature, (eg. how big it really is,) AND it's context, (eg. how far away it is,) gives you perspective.

What's the value of this? Well it enables you to respond to situations as they truly are rather than as they appear to be and so allows you change the world about you.

Or at least that's the idea.

Of course what can happen is you gain the perspective but find yourself just as powerless to change anything. Bridges burnt there's no blissful ignorance for you, just painful awareness and frustration.

The courses of counselling I've completed over the last year or so have enabled me to gain perspective on my depression. I can see it from the outside now and have a better understanding of how it works.

This power born of thought, however, doesn't allow me to simply dodge or switch off those feelings. Over the past few days a combination of things has crept up on me until I've found myself in the state I am now.

I've been incredibly stressed at work this week, covering two full time jobs is really kicking my arse.

I've been working longer hours than usual, including my trip to Milton Keynes on Tuesday.

I've spent today with my Grandma, whose dementia is significantly worse than that the last time I saw her.

My domestic situation is still not brilliant.

As a result of all these things I've been eating REALLY badly and not sleeping much either.

Getting home today I could feel it starting and over the course of the last few hours I've watched it build.

It's so weird to see this happening to me, to observe my own mood and experience my own emotions in this not-quite-detached fashion.

Paradoxically the big D makes me isolated and removed from the world on one hand while heightening my physical senses unbearably on the other.

I notice my sense of touch particularly is cranked up. I'm suddenly very aware of how fabrics feel against my skin, of how hard and sharp objects are. Everything feels somehow dirty and uncomfortable, especially my own body.

My tolerance of sound plunges way down as I lose the ability to filter out chatter. Almost everything seems spiky and garish, the TV seems to scratch against my eardrums while my own voice turns my stomach.

Exactly the right music is about the only thing I can stand and I should mention it's also one of a very short list of things that can have any positive impact on my mood at all. This is because I can actually let it fill my mind, ie. occupy my attention so thoroughly that I pay less attention to how utterly shitty I feel.

Then there's the hole in my chest.

It's something I described very dramatically ad nauseum in some of the bad poetry I wrote as teenager: the feeling of there being a vacuum about the size of a melon right in the centre of my chest between my lungs.

I guess it is a peculiar sensation but it's so familiar to me by now I can't think of it as such. It feels like my chest is being dragged in on itself, no pain, just a kind of relentless tightening.

This ties in neatly with the perpetual state of panic that slowly takes a firm grip of me.

Thankfully this has only ever overwhelmed and developed into a full blown panic attack a couple of times, ever, but it regularly makes its presence felt to a less dramatic extent.

It's as if my body can feel that depression spreading through it and all the self preservation instincts start to kick in. Glands start working and hormones appear, screaming at me to do something, fight or flight just get out of this right now!

But of course there's nothing to fight and nowhere to run.

Instead the heart races, the stomach clenches, the breath quickens, the teeth grind, and nothing changes.

I find it difficult to stay still and harder to sleep, yet feel as tired as I ever have in my life.

Everything I hear and read, all messages, adverts etc from society around me make me feel sick.

Making small talk with someone turns my stomach as well and both of these thngs make me want to scream.

Sometimes it's a struggle not to just scream and thrash, and I have to constantly watch out for the random fits of tears that are always waiting to burst in when they get an opportunity.

Everything is hopeless and nothing is worth the effort. I have no desire whatsoever to kill myself, far too much effort for one thing, but the relief and release of death is appealing.

An HP Lovecraft short is the only place I've ever found the word nepenthe, but I believe it refers to the soothing nature of the void, the peace of non existence, not to mention serving quite nicely here.

Of course Mary helps a bit. Her smoky kiss takes the edge off the panic and gives me an appetite, something that disappears completely once this monkey gets on my back.

Without the munchies I just slip down and down the blood sugar cycle: not eating because I feel shit and feeling shit because I’m not eating.

Mary can hold my hand and mop my brow but she can’t make me ‘better’. There are no magic cures, no quick fixes, this is just the way things are, it’s a part of who I am.

Of course I’m not actually helpless and there are several things I can do to make these spells of hideous shitness less intense and less frequent. Healthy living, resolving problems at work and home, basically giving my body what it needs to deal with it and taking away what keeps my mind from dealing with it.

Like I said at the start, this is all about venting, about losing myself so deeply in analysing the thing that I forget about actually experiencing it.

Now I have no use for anyone’s pity, and this isn’t a cry for help, but externalising the thing does seem to loosen it’s grip.

There’s only one aspect of this that’s stranger than the fact that I’m watching and writing about this happening to me like some independent observer while it’s happening to me.

That’s the fact that, come sometime in the near future, maybe later tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe a little longer, all this heavy, heavy shit will slip away again.

It never goes completely, that’d be like losing a limb, instead it perpetually echoes, murmuring along in the background like a static hiss under music.

Once it drops back down to that level however, I won’t be able to imagine how I feel right now. This emotional state will become a distant land that I know I’ve visited but can’t really picture.

Of course I can always look at my souvenirs. Some of them are carved in my arms, their not so good, but others are written on paper and I’m pretty happy with a lot of them.

You know what? I feel a little better. Still shaky, but calmer than I did half an hour ago. If you’ve actually read this then thanks, you’ve followed me on a brief but valuable journey and I appreciate your time.

It’s about this point in these kinds of posts that I start feeling guilty and self indulgent so I think I’ll this in the head now.

Don’t worry though, I’ll get back more the usual politics, philosophy & weirdness next time. Plus I’m seeing about a million films over the next few weeks so there’ll be plenty to bang on about there.

Knackered, again. Still actually.

Went to Milton Keynes yesterday, (the whole place feels like an out of town retail park!) for some IT training. The training was ok and my mate from head office drove us down so the journey was a laugh too. Still, my day started at 6:30am and I didn't get home until 8:30pm so as I say, I'm knackered.

Anyway, I know this is a bit late but my reaction to the whole Tory-tax-cut-leak thing just won't go away so here it is. The media seemed to have smelled blood and so crowded in to feed on what they presented as an embarrassingly public self-contradiction for Cameron's New Tories.

I didn't buy this however, in fact I think it was quite the opposite., ie. a cleverly calculated, intentional move. There are several ways in which the leak actually benefits the New Tories and I'm going to consider, oh I don't know, let's see, yep, three of them.

First, the fact that the new Tories appear to have slipped up by allowing the report to be released 'accidentally' a day early may at first seem to suggest incompetence and therefore be a negative thing.

Actually though I think it counters one of the heaviest stigmas the New Tories carry, namely the image of being untrustworthy bastards.

The mild negligence demonstrated here brings with it the impression that these guys aren't actually capable of conning people, ie. they have to be more trustworthy because if they're not they're guaranteed to be found out.

A little tenuous? Perhaps, but I wouldn't underestimate the determine of the New Tories to smooth the edges off their old, spiky image.

Secondly the very nature of the leak allows the New Tories to deliver two mutually exclusive messages simultaneously. On one hand the very mention of the tax cuts suggested are vital reassurance for the New Tories' oldschool, grass roots fascists.

At the same time however, it allows the New Tory leadership to publicly reject the proposals thereby wining them points with the essential centrist Tories and wavering fence sitters.

Talk about doublespeak!

The third, and by far the most significant way in which the leak benefits the New Tories is that it makes them look like a reasonable centrist party.

By unofficially introducing some oldschool right wing economics as a point of reference they make their policies seem less right wing by contrast.

The centre ground is the holy land of British politics, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment, so if you’re, by definition, a right wing party how do you get yourself there without losing your existing support?

Easy, fuck moving yourself, just redefine the centre ground so it’s under your feet!

Gives a new meaning to the idea of ‘taking the centre’ doesn’t it?

Now I’ve said of conspiracy theories in the past that I don’t generally buy into them as they tend to give people in authority too much credit and perpetuate the myth that guys in suits have some kind of mystical superiority.

I don’t feel this particular rule of thumb applies here however, because for as frustratingly cack as elected representatives are by definition, the one thing they can do is play the fucking game, (ie. play us.)

So now why is it that the centre is so important? Well, shocking as may be, we do not live in a democracy, at least not a democracy as we traditionally understand it.

Well, during the last general election I saw an interview with a senior guy from MORI, the polling company. He described how, in reality, there’s actually a select group of between 100,000 - 200,000 people who have decided every election there’s ever been.

It seems there are three basic groups of voters:

those who don’t vote, (both the apathetic and the disillusioned,)

those who always vote the same way, (the oldschool diehards you see at the party conferences,)

those who vote for their own practical interests rather than principals,

This last group are the select few whom every political party we have would happily turn itself inside out to win favour with.

The majority of this select group live in, I believe, very similar socioeconomic circumstances, ie. the middle class.

That’s why ‘green taxes’ are being used as a selling point. These taxes, for all the good they may or may not do the environment, are far more punitive to the poor, (of whom there are far more,) as the represent a much greater percentage of their income.

Despite harming more people than they benefit however, green taxes appear to be the underpinning of the New Tories’ tax plans.

Does any of this seem familiar? Does the fact that I’ve been calling the Conservatives New Tories all the way through this give you a clue as to where I’m going with this?

The current shift, the softening of the New Tories is a 100% mirror image of the journey the Labour Party underwent to gain power and all the issues outlined above applied just as readily there too.

And so to the point.

What this post describes is the one of the most fundamental flaws in our political system.

Let’s forget for a moment that it’s still an elitist system of all the power being concentrate dint he hands of a few, just like the feudal and religious systems we are so quick to mock.

Let’s instead focus on what’s supposed to happen and compare it the scene outlined above.

Political parties are groups of like minded people. If you agree with their views you vote for them, if you don’t, you don’t.

This selection process then yields a parliament that is representative of the nations beliefs and runs our country accordingly.

If anyone out there believes this is what happens then I would LOVE to hear from you. Explain it to me guys because I really cannot see it.

What I see are groups of professional politicians, people who’ve never done anything else, people whose business is that of political power.

These people spend their time trying to sell their party as being whatever product they think a tiny minority of people might want to buy.

That minority, as it turns out, are likely to be driven by the pursuit of material wealth and subsequently heavily influenced by big business.

This in turn means that our ‘great leaders’ are in fact dancing to the tune of those few companies that own most of everything, albeit by proxy via the voter.

What results is a lack of any long term cohesion and so an inability to tackle problems larger than a certain scale.

Some things require long term consistent investments of time, effort and money, public services for example. Clearly, if the system is as suggested here, it simply cannot meet these needs of the nation.

Now, in just a couple of weeks the nation will be enjoying one of our favourite national holidays, namely the celebration of a horrifically savage public execution. (1)

We burned the man to death because he tried to blow the Houses of Parliament and all the motherfuckers therein into the stratosphere. In retrospect that may have been a little ungrateful.

footnote

(1) I’m not a grumpy old man, honest! I love bonfire night, always have done, I just thin it’s worth baring in mind what it’s all about.

Thank fuck.

Been aching for the weekend to arrive and finally here it is. Two short, short days of waking up before it's back to walking sleep of day work. The meeting I was minuting this afternoon felt like it would go on forever and hey, maybe it did, maybe I'm just dreaming this while first the pad, then the pen and finally I slump to the meeting room floor.

Either way I want to put an idea I've been pondering out there in the hope of finding some new angles on it. Some time ago we had a lengthy little debate on here about the nature of consciousness which really helped me focus my thoughts on the matter.

I'm fairly happy and quite excited by my current position:

there is no life or death, as traditionally understood,
there is no soul or 'consciousness',
there is just matter / energy in a myriad combinations,
once a system reaches a certain degree of complexity it begins to display characteristics of what we would call consciousness,
our brains are, by far, the most complex thing known to exist,
consciousness is an illusion,

There're a few bits of padding to add here. Firstly I don't see consciousness or life being illusions as a bad thing, I don't think it detracts from the value of either, it's just beneficial to recognise them for what they are in order to make better use of them.

Secondly, my high school Maths teacher told us a lot of random things(1) one of which was to point out the similarity between planets orbiting stars and electrons orbiting nuclei. That's always stuck in my head and when considering this theory of complexity the following occurred, most likely inspired by my early mathematical education:

Throughout the universe complexity ALWAYS seems to be heavily concentrated in one place. By volume the universe is pretty much completely empty, matter / energy is concentrated into structured clumps.

Any measure of complexity applied to our own bodies would be overwhelmed by the dense concentration in our brains, even despite the complex nature of our nervous or circulatory systems for example.

And yes, in the lowly atom pretty much the entire mass is concentrated at the very centre.

Finally, another angle on complex of systems behaving as individuals that has long been a vague interest of mine has been 'crowd behaviour',

eg. large crowds of people, traffic systems, animal swarms and even weather systems,

And of course the peculiar behaviour of various political, religious and economic movements often forms the content of these posts.

So the challenge that immediately presents itself when exploring this idea is to somehow define the level of complexity at which signs of consciousness begin to manifest. This instantly raises the question of how to measure complexity.

Well you won't be surprised to hear that so far I've got three separate bits of information to this end. they are:

First, an even earlier debate on here considered the nature of a fourth spatial dimension and it was during this particular journey of thought that I arrived upon a piece of info both potentially significant and useless at the same time.

Basically i was thinking about equidistant points. The relationship between the number of spatial dimensions in which you're working, D, and the number of equidistant points you can have, x, is as follows:

D = x - 1

So in 2D, ie. on a piece of paper, you can only draw a maximum of three points that are all the same distance from one another.

In 3D it's four, so imagine you could place marbles in mid air and make them float perfectly still. No matter where you put them you could arrange no more than four marbles to be the same distance away from one another.

But what's the significance of equidistant points? Well I was thinking of systems as being a whole bunch of units, people, cells, points, each of which has an effect on all the others.

When considering points the fact that they're all identical gives no reason for the connections between them to vary either, hence in this particular thought experiment, they're all the same length.

This brings me to the second isolated piece of trivia. I began to think further about the connections and their relationship with the points. The connections ARE the system really so their behaviour is more important if anything. How many of them would there be in any given situation for example.

Well if there are x points and they're all connected to every point then that's (x^2).
But they're not connected to themselves so need to knock of one connection for each point, (x^2) - x
And each connection has been counted twice, ie once from the point at each end, ((x^2) - x)/2

So tidying this up a little, the number of connections, y, between a number of points, x, is:

y = (x(x- 1)) / 2

I was hoping this may provide the basis for some method of measuring complexity but after this initial burst I found myself quickly stumped once more. The fact the x - 1 crops up in both the equations above seems mildly significant but I'm not yet sure why.

The only other thing I've been able to think of is that apparently all animals have a limit, proportional to the physical size of their brains, as to how many other of their kin they can form relationships with.

Apparently humans are top of the tree with 150. You can handle knowing 150 people well but beyond that, apparently, the brain just can't handle it properly.

Is this number then the maximum point beyond which we can only perceive a group of individuals as a single entity?

So there you have it. That's where I'm currently at. Ideas? Observations? Suggestions? Help me out, we might just unlock the secret of life, then maybe we can all finally stop stressing about all the bullshit and just kick back together.

It's worth the mental strain I'm convinced, but a strain it most certainly is. That's the thing about complexity...

footnote

(1) even though he was a hardcore, oldschool motherfucker I loved this guy,
he once gave a lad a chance to get out of detention by betting him he couldn't hold his arms out straight with textbooks on either hand until the end of the lesson,
he also told us never to drive through the desert in a Volkswagon, why? because they used to have air cooled engines so there would be no water in the engine to drink if you get stuck, brilliant!

I'm knackered.

Maybe it's the shortening of the days but I am just out of it at the moment. On the upside however the Leeds International film festival kicks off in a couple of weeks, (02-12/10/06) and I am VERY excited about that.

I've got passes for everything and am aiming to see about three dozen films in total so expect a LOT of film reviews, watch this space.

Anyway, let's get right to the heart of this thing: Muslim women wearing full veils, the exercising of an inalienable right or a 'mark of separation'? Perhaps both, here's three angles I've considered anyway.

Firstly there're the practicalities of the workplace.

Would anyone out there argue that wheelchair bound people should be employed as fire fighters? I don't imagine that anyone would, though I'd love to hear it.

Is this discrimination? No. Wheelchair bound people can't be fire fighters for the same reason I can't, none of us are physically capable of doing the job.

When that job involves saving kids from burning to death we, as a society, are quite happy to prioritise the rights of one over another.

It's a thin and risky line to tread, but I think you see where I'm going with this. If a covered face prevents a job being done to the desired standard then you can't have that job and cover your face, regardless of the reason.

The difficulty here comes from defining exactly how much of a barrier a veil would be to a job. From the fantasies of our consumer culture to our most hallowed legal and political traditions, seeing someone's face is a big deal in the west.

Of course there is a case to be made here for integration. If kids in schools were taught by women in veils then they'd get used to veils and the whole issue would be phased out in time.

The counter of course, is that our professionals tell us that kids, especially younger kids, need to see your face to benefit from western methods of teaching.

Now I really hate the lines that being drawn during this 'debate'. Blair tends to evoke a pretty strong gag response in me anyway these days but when he was talking about this I wanted to attack the TV.

He kept banging on about THE Muslim community on the one hand and US in OUR communities on the other. Does anyone actually believe that there is a community in this country of ANY religious denomination?

Do we think that all the Jews or Hindus in the UK know each other and borrow cups of sugar? Of course the Christians don't but that's because they're the majority, they're normal.

The craziness being banded about, and accepted!, about this is sickening.

With the rabid caveat firmly in place and snarling I'll finish off the point I started above.

Integration is a two way thing. Would a woman in a Muslim, Middle Eastern country who refused to cover her head for religious reasons be allowed to teach small children? There has to be give and take.

If a Muslim wishes to wear a veil she is absolutely free to do so and she shouldn't suffer any harassment or unfair treatment because of that. At the same time however, she can't receive any special consideration for it.

This brings us neatly to the second perspective on this, namely: choice.

The media have told us that the wearing of the veil is a cause for disagreement within the Islamic faith as well as without. The significance of this is that the veil is seen as more of a choice than if it were a faith wide norm.

I think this is a pretty weak point. All religious practice is a choice, even if someone's got a gun to your head they only make you go through the motions. Belief is always optional and the deeply held religious belief being argued for in this case is no different.

The significance of the veil being a choice relates to the nature of society's responsibility to the individual. Society has a responsibility to ensure that all individuals are free to live as they please. Society has no such duty however, to make life easy for you.

My concern here is the idea that an act based on a religious faith is somehow different to the same act inspired by anything else. While it may be different for the faithful, it's the same to the rest of us.

The deep conviction a religious person feels may be the most ultimately powerful thing in the universe for them but it is also invisible to the wider world.

If such conviction drives you to make a restrictive lifestyle choice then isn't that just what it costs to lead what you would consider a good life?

As long as society provides you with the basics: sustenance, safety and opportunity, why should it makes changes for you at the expense of others?

Of course this all started when jack Straw commented that he had, in the past, asked Muslim women attending his surgery to remove their veils when discussing their concerns with him.

I have to declare my ignorance as to the exact nature of the rules pertaining as to where and when the veil must be worn, but then I'm not sure there are any definitive rules.

I believe that being in the presence of men is one such condition however. What I'm not sure of is whether a Muslim women could remove her veil for, say, a male doctor to examine her face.

If this were allowed I presume it would due to the professional nature of the doctors role and subsequently wonder how different this is from discussing concerns with your MP, ie. another private consultation conducted on a purely professional basis.

As frustrating as I find the persistent stains of bigotry that tarnish our society, (I heard the word Paki used in the office the other day, haven't heard that for a long time,) I'm equally irritated by people refusing to take responsibility for their own actions.

God says I have to is not a universal get out of jail free card. If it's your belief it's also your responsibility to make it work with the world around you.

This leads us along another seamless transition into the third and final viewpoint.

I'll reiterate my admission of ignorance re: Islamic law, but I believe the whole women-covering-up thing stems from the idea that if men are tempted with the sight of flesh they will commit rape.

Looking at the practice in the fashion reveals it to actually be an idea based on wider and noble motives.

Regardless of what you may think of that particular solution, the idea seems to create a society in which there is no room for violence, a calm society based on thought rather than action.

Suddenly this religion, painted as being so weirdly exotic, can be seen to be headed for exactly the same distant point on the horizon as our own secular society.

The problem is that our society has it's own moral and physical infrastructure in place with the aim of eliminating rape.

We have a legal system and law enforcement authorities to limit the activities of and hopefully deter rapists but we also have complex and unspoken 'norms', standards of acceptable behaviour enforced by peer pressure.

Neither system works perfectly, sickeningly women still get raped all over the world, the question is, is society big enough for these two thoroughly different methods to coexist?

Now as an avid opponent of both organised religion and political democracy I feel I can be objective here in way that many cannot.

In short I'd have to put my money on the secular democracy. For all the deep and dangerous flaws I see, your average man on the street still has more input under such a system than he does under the elitism of organised religion, (ANY organised religion.)

That's the measure, for me, because maximising society's potential lies, for, in getting as many people involved as possible.

Now there's a guy from my very own string-o-beads, (that's Leeds by the way,) currently awaiting execution in Pakistan. He's been cleared of murder in a legal court but then subsequently condemned to death by a religious court.

For all the lamenting / celebrating, (depending on your point of view,) over the reported decline of religion, there's still one hell of a scrap going on as to who wears the trousers.

It's not US, the white Christian British, vs THEM the suspiciously dark Muslims, as Blair seems eager to suggest, but rather it's Politics vs Religion.

The suits and the clerics are hissing at one another to see who gets to tell us all what to do, (when we all know money is everyone's real boss.)

With regards the immediate issue of the veil, it seems to me that if everyone calms the fuck down then a case by case process of trial and error should develop the skills to find an amicable range of solutions.

On a wider scale the clear solution is for to stop listening to guys in suits and guys in dresses, to stop buying stuff and actually make some decisions and take some action for ourselves.

Back down to the smallest scale, ie. the individual, I'm off downstairs to have nice big smoke. Now that seems to break everyone's rules, suits and skirts alike, but it doesn't break mine and it doesn't hurt anyone so you can all fuck right off.

"Well the days seem too long, but the time just slips away,
Do you think, I belong? Well I don't care anyway."

"Clearlight"
Nebula

Can't get that particular lyric out of my head at the moment. Days at my desk seem to telescope out and yet the weeks are just flitting past me. Getting heat from my boss to try harder, because other people won't, and it's hard to stay in that chair.

Usually manage to drag myself out of bed and into work without thinking about anything much but today was such a grind. Counter intuitive as it may seem I suspect my sudden difficulty in motivating myself is due to running out of weed.

I usually still feel stoned in a morning and that makes it easier not to think too hard about what I'm doing. Enforced sobriety has kicked things into sharp relief and forced me to look elsewhere for distraction.

A bath and some sleep are my choice for now, but first a brief jaunt into global politics will serve to blind me to the monkey on back for a few minutes more.

So North Korea are now officially a nuclear power and the suits on TV say it like we should be shitting in our pants yet I find myself unmoved by the revelation.

Now i suspect I have this in common with the majority but, as I'll expand upon in a moment, I'm pretty sure it's for different reasons.

The reason for my own nonplussedness, (there's a Scrabble winner for you,) can be illustrated by the following question:

would you rather be shot twice in the face, or three times?

Doesn't really matter does it? The fact that there are any nuclear weapons kicking about at all is enough to shit me up, a few more don't really change anything.

Oh but it's the hands there in the straight set say, get bent I say.

So a weird little bloke who's inexplicably adored by many of his own people and whose dad was in charge before him has got the bomb, am I talking about North Korea or the US?

The point is it doesn't matter.

Can the squares really claim to trust the most militarily aggressive country on the planet, (and the only country to ever actually use nuclear weapons don't forget,) more than some Korean nutter who appears to be wearing my old RE teacher's specs?

I'm already scared thanks, I'm maxed out as far as global nuclear death is concerned, you can't really get any more ultimate can you.

What's really concerning are the other reasons for today's story not causing great ripples: nobody gives a shit.

I wasn't there so I don't know, but I get the impression that during the cold war there were two actual sides to the nuclear debate.

There were the loony left, crazy hippy types, (like me,) who put forth the ludicrous notion that perhaps it might be a good idea not to slaughter one another en mass and scorch the skies and there were the suits, the straights, making their case of mutual deterrence etc.

What do we have now, there's still the loonies like me with CND cards in their wallets but where's the other side of the argument? Where are the rabid guys in ties too tight, with big red faces and flecked spittle?

How is it that if there's no-one fighting the corner for nuclear armament that we're still in the nuclear arms race?

It's because we, as a society, appear to have just accepted and forgotten about our nuclear weapons, like an unexploded bomb at the bottom of the garden that, after time, just becomes a conversation piece at dinner parties.

Anyway, hear that? That's the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down and an invitation extended. Can anyone out there, produce even a halfway decent case in favour of nuclear weapons? Is there anyone out there who actively supports their existence, or is it Nixon's 'silent majority' all over again?

I'm serious, come on, bring it. Let's forget for a moment that the whole fifteen minute response time is bullshit for three good reasons:

we don't have the codes for our own nukes, (in event of holocaust ring W and ask nicely,)

our nukes aren't aimed at anything anymore, (some quick maths will be required there,)

they're approaching their use by date, (ie,. they might not even work anymore, that's your taxes in action peeps,)

Let's forget all that, now somebody tell me, what the fuck are they there for?

Hell, maybe you're shy so why not just ask your mates, think about in those quiet moments alone like sitting on the loo.

If nobody actively wants them, if the only people with any real interest in them are those who don't want them, why do we, a democratic society, still have them?

Why is big GB having to look hard by committing to replace the Trident system in order to become PM?

Why are we still spending crazy money on them?

I've said it before and it's no less true today, there's either one hell of a conspiracy or everything's just arse over tit mental.

Either way, one more bullet in the gun pointed at the head of the world won't keep me from sleeping tonight, but then I'm so knackered I'm not sure a nuclear war itself could do that!

...it makes an ass of you and me, or so the saying goes.

Had a little experience the other night that got me thinking about unseen assumptions, then I read something totally unrelated in Adbusters that provided a second angle and remembered a recent political discussion that gave me a third and lo, a post is a born.

One of the things I love about Adbusters is the selection of letters they choose to print, ie. they often include as many complaints as they do compliments.

One such complaint in the most recent issue was strangely similar to the tirade I received in the street a few weeks back.

In response to a piece considering the plight of the Palestinian people, the letter writer trotted out the same old same old: basically arguing the Palestinians deserve what they get in every way other than actually saying it outright.

The letter levelled scathing criticism at various parties including, and this was what caught my eye, Jewish people who agree or even sympathise with the vibe of the Adbusters piece.

The letter gave me the impression that the writer was also Jewish and I found it amusing more than anything else that what they were really saying, consciously or not, was that nobody could be right or a proper Jew unless they were just like them.

Their whole argument seemed to be based on one key assumption, that their way of life and subsequent views were utterly right and true above all else.

Now it seems to me that this kind of assumption is unseen, by the assumer, because they see it as something else, religious faith for example.

These assumptions hide in plain sight, masquerading as something solid and true. They are incredibly useful and comforting and so although they can be challenged they can also be very difficult to overcome.

I came across the exact opposite kind of assumption on way to the 24h garage the other night. Driven out into the damp darkness by the munch, I was wandering down the street, daydreaming as usual, when something caught my eye.

Before I could raise my eyes to look properly I knew I was looking for a person, a figure walking ahead of me.

In the dark and the rain I couldn't make them out and after a few steps more I realised I was looking at a bush poking through a fence, a little further on however and there was a person making their way through the shadows.

What I realised here was that our eyes really don't work the way we think they do. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that we tend to think of our eyes as working in the following way:

the light goes through the lens of the eye, hits the retina and the optic nerve puts an image in front of our brain that we then look at, as if we're sat inside our own skulls with another tiny pair of eyes, looking at a screen,

What we're doing here is not answering the question of how do we see, but rather we're just putting it off. There's more to this process than just presenting the purely physical appearance of the situation.

My eyes saw something, a particular shape or form of movement that my brain immediately related to the concept of a figure. It was after this that I actually started considering what lines and colours were what.

In this instance the assumption was ultimately shown to be correct but it made me think of all the times it hasn't been.

How many times have you, just for a single instant, mistaken a coat on a hook for a person? Your brain leaps to the assumption until you have chance to take in what's really there.

These assumptions are unseen because we're not generally aware of them and even when we are there's nothing we can do about them.

Of course these assumptions have incredible value. Better to occasionally jump at the sight of an anorak than to not get out of the way when somebody's trying to kill you.

As often happens when we're two thirds of the way through, it appears that we could draw a line between these first two points. man made vs biologically driven assumptions, good vs bad, us vs them.

And so again we demonstrate the point of doing things in threes, nothing is so simple.

The third, (of many,) type of assumption that occurred to me was illustrated through a discussion I had with my good, good friend GeordieKeith.

We were talking about terrorism and I was citing Northern Ireland as proof that crushing terrorist groups by force can't be done and that success can only come about by moving the argument into the political arena.

Playing devil's advocate, GK pointed out that entering into discussions, and subsequently compromising, with terrorists could be seen as rewarding violent protest and thereby actually encourage terrorism.

This is a fundamental tenet of many right wing politicians beliefs but it is flawed by, that's right, an assumption.

The assumption being made here is that the terrorists have a choice between changing their society peacefully or through violence.

Of course they have a choice whether to be violent or not, but if no peaceful methods of change are available then not being violent means accepting whatever injustices you are taking issue with.

When these injustices are the denial of basic freedoms then doing nothing is simply not an option.

Now this may sound suspiciously like I'm advocating the use of force here, but such suspicions are based not he assumption that there are not other ways.

Back to my old friend of intelligent pacifism.

If you truly wish to see a world without violence then it's not enough to simply refuse to enter into violence yourself, the conditions that create violence must be tackled as well.

These assumptions are incredibly dangerous. Again people aren't generally aware that they're making them, once they are aware however their pride is about the only thing that can stand in the way of overcoming them.

The problem here is people just repeating what they hear without thinking it through, assuming that because it sounds convincing on the face of it, it must be well founded.

There's no religious fervour or biological imperative to blame here, just laziness I'm afraid. Overcoming these assumptions has nothing to do with how many books you read or watching the news or knowing the names and job titles of gits in suits.

All that's required is to think about what's being said, think about how it fits in with the rest of the world, does it make sense to you?

They're important people for the sole reason that they say they are and we believe them, just because they sound slick doesn't mean their judgement is any better than yours.

Assumptions, they're everywhere once you start looking.

They can be dangerous but have value too, (I always seem to end up saying this regardless of the issue at hand, what does that mean?) the important thing is to be aware of them I guess because, whatever we do, it looks like you and me will never avoid being made an ass of.

So who saw that stuff about the US Jesus Camps on TV?

To some they're an essential act of self preservation to save both the kids' souls and the world at large from the spectre of global evil.

To others they're centres for brainwashing the next generation of Americans into a creed of needless yet endless religious warfare and, I might add, shit scary for it.

Now things like these seem to produce a fairly uniform reflex response among the secular, myself included. Basically we screw up our faces and wonder how anyone can get sucked into such mentalness.

Belief, both blind and absolute that what you're doing is the will of an invisible, omnipotent being rather than just a lot of noise. It just seems so irritatingly irrational, this faith, so backward and counter productive that we begin to resent the tolerance pride ourselves on.

Nope, we're sensible thanks very much. We believe in what we can prove, we trust reason and logic, we can see that faith just leads to madness and the bloodshed innocents.

Paradoxically however by rejecting religious faith in this way we are in fact falling into the very heart of the scam that organised religion has been playing with sickening success for millennia.

Religion has been by far the most effective technique of social control, (overall so far anyway,) by convincing people that they have a monopoly on spirituality. Could it be then, that the faith that seems to ludicrous when displayed as above can take other forms?

When I was diagnosed with depression I had two options, meds and / or counselling. Feeling strongly averse to the idea of meds, (I'm not a big fan of legal drugs,) counselling was my only option.

Having regularly poured my mind out onto paper for as long as I can remember I didn't really see how this slightly different method of release could help but I couldn't find any real reasons no to give it a try.

My grandfather's death was one of the issues I addressed during my first course of counselling and though I put it off at first. my counsellor at the time did convince me to really talk about it eventually.

Although I could not see how telling her the things I'd been saying to myself for so long would make the slightest difference to how I felt I found that, thanks to the relationship we had built up, I believed her when I she said it would.

This faith, (ie. belief without proof,) allowed me to relate all the feelings I had, and I mean all of them, even the deepest and darkest, the ones I really didn't want to look at.

Don't ask me how, but it did make a difference. I haven't forgotten my grandfather, and his death still saddens me greatly, but through this process I made my peace with it.

I don't understand it, but it works and I was rewarded for my faith.

Maybe my faith here wasn't in what my counsellor said, ie. something non physical, but rather in my counsellor herself.

This being the case I guess it could be argued that faith in another person is fundamentally different from faith in an unseen intelligence.

Can we draw a line then, between faith in things we can see and faith in things we can't?

Are we actually secure in our smugness, safe in the knowledge that we really are different from them?

I don't think so.

The third and final angle on faith here is well illustrated by something I was discussing last night at a reunion of the bookshop used to work, (easy guys you all rock by the way.)

At one point during the course of the evening we were discussing the birth of human culture, ie. the transition from hunter gatherers to farmers.

A significant factor in this switch, for me anyway, was the shift from relying on the purely physical and immediate to feed yourself and your kids, to trusting long term forward planning and abstract thought.

In the past I've suggested that both sides of this split are still present today and manifests themselves as the classic left / right political split, ie. belief in understanding vs belief in action.

Regardless of political alignment however, don't we all have faith in invisible, all conquering ideas? Democracy, technology, the endless potential of mankind, we each belief in and worship our own gods so, in the end, how different are we to those babbling nut jobs we mentioned at the start?

We're not, is the simple answer and, again, to believe that we are is actually just to reinforce their delusion. They see themselves as being special and different because of their particular flavour of faith.

Obviously it's uncomfortable for us to feel akin to followers of carnage and domination but sparing ourselves such discomfort serves only to strengthen their hand.

I was writing about drugs the other day, (the good kind,) and likening them, and something else I can't remember and am too lazy to look up, to fire. The same analogy can be applied here.

Fire can be incredibly destructive but we don't sit cold in the dark eating raw meat do we? No, we learn how to use it for the best.

Faith can be infinitely more destructive than mere combustion, but also has equivalent potential for positive use.

So I say keep the leap and don't let the psychos put you off.