Like A Disney Movie

So the other day I was talking to someone about relationships, and people staying in relationships that are bad for them, and the mentality of it. I've even done a blog on the topic right here, and a blog on a semi-related topic right here.

As we were talking it occured to me that, throughout my childhood and my teenage years, very few of the relationships I was presented with in the media I consumed were what I, in later life, would consider to be a healthy one.

That is, perhaps, because such things aren't exciting. They aren't what we all thirst to read about or see or hear about - but then, perhaps our idea of a fairytale romance is informed by the fairytales we were subjected to.

We all love a good Disney movie, right?

Well here's the shit - we grew up with princesses and princes and love's true kiss, none of which prepares you for, you know, relationships. They are profligate with shitty messages about love and trust. A quote that I borrowed from Stephen Colbert a few years ago:

“So, Disney, I demand that you drop this two mommies plot & go back to delivering wholesome messages. Like teaching our children that they can be a princess if they let a man make out with them while drugged, or that there's nothing wrong with bestiality if a candle says it’s OK.”

Change yourself and you will have value because a man will want you, says The Little Mermaid and Cinderella. Relationships are something that happen to you rather than something you do, says Sleeping Beauty. They want you, and that's enough, says Snow White. Any level of deception is acceptable once they see the REAL you, says Aladdin. Stay in your lane and accept what you have, says Wreck-It Ralph. You can change them to make them into something you want, says Beauty and the Beast.

Disney isn't the only culprit, of course. The very notion of True Love, of the kind of love that you know full well happens to you and that you can't resist and that you should pursue at all costs et cetera - that notion is implanted into us real young, and is...well...dangerous.

Imagine you are taught from a very early age that needing to urinate is what a healthy relationship is, and nothing deviates from this reinforced teaching. (It's ridiculous, I know - but it's meant to be.)

I will state at this point that I am probably very biased. I'm socially a little malformed, and have had social anxiety for a long-ass time. So perhaps my word shouldn't be taken as academically sound - but then this blog is all opinion anyway, just sometimes backed with statistics.

So if we are raised in a world in which love is a thing that scares you rather than comforts you, and something that you can't ever give up on no matter how bad it is for you, and something that you MUST pursue in every aspect of your life, and that a life without love isn't worth living...well...

...okay, does anyone actually believe this is true? Like, really?

Is anyone going to truly claim that the best relationships they have in their lives aren't about comfort and trust and knowing each other and being able to exist in each other's company for basically years without going crazy? That they are based on mindless devotion and anxiety?

My mother once told me that before you can go out with someone, before someone can be your girlfriend, they have to be your friend. I scoffed at this. Film and television teach us that you fall in love with someone you meet out of the blue and charm and woo and then they love you and this is symbolised with a kiss which is obviously the desired result.

It took me a long time to realise what she meant. That to have a sexual and romantic relationship with someone that I can't be friends with is...well it's idiotic. If I can't hang out with someone and just be okay with them, how am I meant to be their other half? If we can't goof around with each other and laugh at dumb stuff, then...how complete and happy will our relationship really be?

It's easy to believe that relationships that are objectively harmful are the right way to do things, because all through our lives they always have been. We dismiss feeling like we are being mistreated because "shrug, well, that's the way love goes". We have all heard the story of "we're from the era when you fixed things rather than threw them out". That is held up as a virtue while we ignore the fact that domestic abuse was absolutely rife, and the notion of leaving that relationship was stigmatised to the point that you'd take the beating rather than the sidelong looks.

It does not have to be like this. It never had to be. We can change - and we can change the media that teaches people.

Steven Universe is something I come back to time and again. It has very healthy examples of relationships working, and examples of people resolving problems in a safe, smart way. It's just the tip of what needs to be an iceberg, though.

Creators - put healthy relationships in your books. Let them be friends first. Let people not be obsessed. Let people recognise that Romeo & Juliet is actually harmful, that infatuation is a form of obsession which is also harmful. Let people recognise that loving someone is an ongoing friendship, not a cycle of abuse.

Because my fairytale romance isn't a fairytale. It's a friendship. Just more.

Life Tips

For this blog I wanted to do something a little different, and offer up some tips that help me through life.

Some of them will be quite specific. Some of them will be vague. Some will be pertaining primarily to me, but you know, they may well help someone else in my absence...

I was going to call this Life Hacks but I hate that term with a passion.

So without further ado:

• Don't be an asshole. You know when you're being an asshole so don't pretend you don't.
• If you have curiosity about a subject, go look into it. It's easy and fun.
• Some lessons take more than one exposure to sink in. Give it time.
• You are worth more than you think you are, and you deserve happiness, no matter what you think.
• Seasonings are your friend. Find five or six that you like, then put that shit on everything.
• Learn how to take compliments. Yes it is awkward, but the person giving it probably means it. Perhaps reply with a compliment of your own? Or simple thanks! No need to not be humble.
• Everything in moderation - even moderation. Let go of the reins once in a while.
• You are not contractually obligated to keep anyone in your life. Aside from your spouse, and even that can be anulled.
• Recognise and minimise your flaws. Likewise, recognise and hone your talents. They don't define you, but they are important.
• Always   I   readlovebetweenyouthe alllines.
• You can't prevent your very first thought in any given situation. You CAN reason it out, challenge it, correct it, before you act on it - and that's the real measure of morality.
• There's no shame in liking something popular. There's no shame in disliking something popular.
• Don't hate on yourself for not getting literally everything done that you think you should have. You got up, and you tried. That's a victory.
• Trust your instincts - but logic-sweep them too. Thinking before acting is what separates us from cavemen.
• Think about all the things you enjoy in your life. Picture your life without them, one at a time. When you find the one that makes you angry to imagine missing - throw yourself into it without fear.
• Watch, read or listen to something once a week that you haven't heard of before. Expand those horizons.
• Some people will raise you up whenever you feel low. Some people will tell you the truth when a lie would hurt less. Keep both close to you.
• Other people are going to think badly of you if they want to, regardless of what you do. The people that matter don't mind - the people that mind don't matter.
• Learn yourself. Know yourself. Understand the battles you can fight and win, and avoid those you can't.
• Do what you can with what you have.
• See the doctor. If the idea of seeing your doctor makes you uncomfortable, get a new doctor.
• Love isn't the feeling of weird fear-excitement you get when you look at someone. Love is the feeling of happiness you feel whenever you think of them.
• Always leave a decent layover between transport changes. Use that time to eat something, or just take a breath of non-train air.

I hope these tips help you in some tiny way, at least once, in the next month.

If not, well, hell, I tried.

1 of 7 - Take Our Own Medicine

(This is the first of an attempt to write a blog post a day for an entire week! What am I, a masochist!?)

Most people are absolutely overflowing with good advice, aren't they?

We've all lived lives. We've been in situations that aren't great or ideal. We've dealt with scenarios that test us, that lead to suffering (or joy), and we've learned lessons from them. We're filled with knowledge on how to survive the modern world, and it's advice we should hand out to those that need it.

Like I could probably tell you a few good ways to eat on a budget, or ways to get the most out of a stay in a hotel. Other people I know can give you killer tips on contouring your face or cooking a full roast dinner or refitting an entire BMW engine.

When it comes to personal advice however - on relationships, on doubts, on regrets, on living life - why are we so bad at taking our own advice?

We know we shouldn't do the thing. When others do the thing, we tell them - hey, maybe not do the thing. If someone does the thing in a movie, we laugh. How could they be so dumb as to do the thing? I'd NEVER do the thing.

Then...we do the thing.

But! But it's different for us, isn't it? Different circumstances, because...

And there it is. The excuse. The complexity.

When we look at someone else's life - either by the medium of their telling us or through our own observation - we don't see everything. We see a snapshot, a slice. What seems so obvious to us as we look at their lives is in actual fact not as easy as one would assume, which is what we find when it comes to applying our advice to own situation.

The thing is... sometimes we use those complexities as excuses.

It's HARD to cut certain things or people out of one's life. I know this. Even if we kind of suspect they are bad for us - hell, even if we 100% know objectively they are AWFUL for us - it's hard to drop the hammer forever. That's before we consider any further issues; we're still friends with this person's second cousin, that would be awkward. How am I going to attend all those fun crack house parties if I don't smoke crack any more?

...but here's the thing...we get so used to making those excuses that we end up just letting the situation continue, long after we would actually step in and act on our friend's behalf if they were in the same situation.

It's easier to suffer than it is to watch suffering. Like I know this for a fact. I've seen other people struggling with similar problems to me and it hurts. How often have we said we'd take someone else's suffering if we could? Because we can deal with it, we know we can. We're strong. We can take on the world, even if we hate watching our friends do the same.

Even if our friends hate watching us do the same. To the point that they give us advice. That they urge us to listen. That they tell us that they know it is hard but...

That's the point. It IS hard. We all have to do hard things in our lives. Even if we know it is for our own good, that doesn't make it any easier - nor any less necessary. It just requires a shift of thinking. We start with the baseline of: It is hard so I will find ways to cope with not doing it.

Really, it is in our best interest to shift to: It is going to be hard but I must do it and so I will find ways to cope with the result.

Let's start taking our own advice, people. Toxicity is profligate in our lives and in the world around us - but we don't have to suffer all of it. Do better for ourselves before we tell others what they should be doing.

Everyone being happier, healthier and more secure is never a bad thing.

Is Truth Beauty? Is Beauty Truth?

Share If You Think They Are Beautiful.

We've seen plenty of this on various social media, right? Someone that mainstream media does not portray as being stereotypically attractive, being declared as brave and beautiful and held up as some kind of champion.

See, here's the problem with that.

A significant percentage of the world's businesses are predicated around insecurity. They feed on it, are made wealthy from it. I've previously asserted that insecurity is central to human psychology, and advertisers know it. The entire beauty industry thrives on people doubting their own appearance...

...and attaching inherent value to it.

Now we all want to look good, right? But look back at that sentence. WHY do we all want to look good? What about "looking good" is important to us? It's how it makes us feel and how others may see us. It's about confidence, feeling good. Looking good correlates to both.

Why?

Because we have inherent value attached to beauty, the concept of beauty, aesthetic attractiveness.

You ever see the covers of those magazines that shame celebrities for not looking great, and celebrate other celebrities for looking great? In between every full-page splash of the most ugly possible picture of someone having an off day, there's adverts for skin care cream, weight loss solutions, hair treatments.

(Blogger's Note: I'm not saying that using products is inherently bad. It isn't. I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. What I am trying to do is to challenge the basis of why we do these things. Why Act 1 makes us feel better and Act 2 makes us feel worse and why Act 3 is even socially acceptable. If it works and it doesn't harm anyone, you do you. It's all good. I'm just poking at society and saying HMM loudly.)

If we attach inherent value to beauty, we attach inherent negative value to ugly - and also to not-beauty, the two of which are entirely different things.

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Gary Oldman plays Dracula. And he is, in the same movie, both beautiful and ugly.

See? ...but the thing is, in the second picture, he is definitely ugly, right?

But there's no middle ground. He occupies a space of extremes. A space that 99% of human beings simply don't inhabit. (Though most draculas do.)

Our urge to reassure people that they are beautiful when they have doubts is an urge to tell people that they have value even if something or someone else they perceive is more beautiful than they are. We've built an entire language association between beauty and value that is really harmful to the self-image of...well, shit, most of us.

What we need to do is decouple value from beauty. Yes, beauty is nice to look at, but it is NOT the be all and end all. Instead of sharing because we think they are beautiful, let's share because we like them. Let's share because they're fucking human beings too, and they deserve respect, even if they don't fit in with the ridiculous standards of beauty that we have been drip-fed since we've first been capable of looking at a screen or a page.

Perhaps I am somewhat embittered on this topic because I don't see myself as being beautiful. I feel that needs to be aired just to incite some degree of transparency on the topic. But you know what, I don't even care. I wear sloppy shirts and old jeans and tacky sneakers and my glasses are beat up, but it's me. You know what? I have value even if I'm not on the front of Cosmo.

We ALL have value. What we DO with our lives, who we ARE, is so SO much more important than the combination of genetics and external influence that contorts our physiology into a shape that we all recognise as a face.

I'm not a model but I'm a person, and if I had to pick only one - person every time.

Share If You Think They Are People.

Fear And Its Fallout

Technically speaking, phobias are anxiety disorders, and I suffer from two quite common examples.

The first (and worst) is arachnophobia. If a spider is over a certain size I can't deal with it rationally. I do my best, but I'm left with my heart in my mouth and sweating like a carrot stick in a raw food clinic. If the thing is big enough then I can't sleep until after it is dealt with, and even then, it will take hours before I can normalise again.

A recent and infamous example was a year or so ago, when a creature henceforth known as the Cataclysm Spider descended from the chimney and brutally attacked four of us while we were watching Pulp Fiction. Everyone in the room saw it before I did, and reacted with understandable alarm; but when I caught sight of it, my body put me in the kitchen before my brain could actually inform me of what was going on. Housemates braver than I had to execute the beast, and probably levelled up a couple times in doing so. We watched the rest of Pulp Fiction to calm down after.

My arachnophobia is entirely informed by my mother. I never had an experience that made me afraid of spiders - I've been afraid of them all my life, probably due to her reactions to them when I was young. Which is a shame, because I find them absolutely fascinating and (horribly) beautiful creatures.

The second is coulrophobia - which is a phobia of clowns, and I react to them in a similar (if less neurotic) fashion to spiders: exterminate. Spiders don't get to live if they come into the house. Neither do clowns. I can't deal with them. Hate them. It's less severe - if I had to pick five minutes in a room with a tarantula or six hours with a clown I'd pick the clown - but fuck don't ever make me choose. I hate clowns. Hate them.

The hatred of clowns is one that onset later in life - probably thanks to endless horror movies, Stephen King's It (the book), and depression that makes any false happiness sinister and not to be trusted. It's a phobia I can control a lot easier, as a result. It's less firmly embedded in my psyche. Relatively superficial in comparison.

Where am I going with this? Well...

Everyone knows a homophobe. Everyone knows a transphobe. Everyone knows an islamophobe. Either they are just a bit ignorant and chat shit without thinking, or they are properly, like truly, in hate with their chosen demographic.

Morgan Freeman didn't actually say this:

...but I'm sure everyone has seen a picture of him with these words attached to it, circulated around facebook or similar.

Fear is a keyed response. It is something that can be tempered, trained and reduced, but it exists beyond the conscious mind. It is very hard to control true fear. It's te bit of us that kept us safe from predators and hazards back before we had the capacity to actually think about why they were a threat.

Our instincts, however, are not our best selves.

Irrational thoughts and attitudes inform poor decisions. Going off one's gut, without giving a moment's pause to the correctness of our action, or whether or not the deep intrinsic insecurities and anxieties that make us human have influenced our decision - well, that's how really dumb mistakes are made.

We are afraid of things we don't understand. That is human. That is part of the basic insecurity that is indelibly part of our mental heritage. That which we understand is safe. People stay in situations that are objectively toxic because - well, it's the devil we know.

Let's be real though. Even the devil we know is still the devil.

When I moved off the island for the first time, I moved to Bradford to study Law in college. I went from a place that was, let's face it, a little insular...to a place chock full of interesting new cultures, languages, races and faces. For the first week I was totally knocked off my perch. I had no idea.

You know what though? I adapted, because I refused to let my fear of that which was unknown to me inform the rest of my life. I stopped being intimidated by people talking languages I didn't understand and religious practices I didn't share, but the first few times I encountered them, that fear was real - because it was unknown to me.

I often hold that it isn't how we feel that defines us; it is what we do with that feeling, how we react to it, and how we deal with it.

Thus I contend that a homophobe is someone that feels an initial urge of anxiety when encountering homosexuality. That's sometimes hard to control. That in itself is fear. What you do with that fear... well, that is the difference between being a person and being an asshole.

This is the difference. If you run into a guy and he introduces you to his husband - you can't stop your initial response. What you CAN do is realise that your response is an anxiety trigger and you aren't obliged to act on it, and that the proper way to deal with the situation is to remember that this couple that scares you are still human beings that haven't actually done anything wrong.

When I see a clown my initial response is fight-or-flight, with an 80% fight bias. I get angry. What do I do? I don't punch the poor bastard in the facepaint, because underneath the facepaint, the poor bastard is a person just like me. Whatever my initial instictive response to that facepaint, it doesn't justify me being an asshole.

In my opinion, we use the words homophobe, transphobe, islamophobe - we use them to indicate something more than just the phobia. That person has felt an instinct and acted on it with hatred or ignorance or a mixture of both. The fear isn't a choice, but their response of abuse and vitriol is.

I think we need to stop using -phobia to describe someone who is a bigot. A phobia is a fear, an anxiety disorder. Choosing to be an asshole is choosing to be an asshole. Phobics suffer - assholes decide to make other people suffer. The language has to change. They're not victims. They are agressors.

As time goes on and the populace as a whole becomes less and less insular and more and more educated, those who practice hate will dig in. They have to, because the general human drift is to defeat hatred - mostly by the hard work of the few. Attitudes do change, over time, as new generations are raised in environments that make the old attitudes of the past unacceptable.


To the assholes in question, I say this:

I understand your fear. I understand why things scare you. I understand that these things are different to that which you know and are comfortable with. I know full well how hard it is to leave that comfort zone.

Try it though. Just for once. Stop giving into that toxic hostility you are so used to. Just for a little while. You'd be amazed how easy life can be, if you just stop being such a prick.

It's so easy to hate. I should know - I hate a lot of things. It's very very easy; but then the easy way isn't always the best way. Everything can be better for everyone, if haters cease hating. Or at least fucking hate something that NEEDS hating - like if you're gonna look down on people who claim benefits, then at least have an equivalent disdain for the six British companies that didn't pay any tax in 2014. They made £30 billion for fuck's sake.

Just think for a while. Just think. Feel - Think - Act. In that order.

You never know. You might even like it.

What Doesn't Kill Me

Fair warning, folks; what follows deals with mental health issues - specifically my own. Yet more specifically, depression, anxiety, and suicide. If these things upset you, or if they make you uncomfortable - either due to their nature or their relevance in my life - then I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

Here would be a good start. It's pretty awesome.

Everyone still reading...we okay? We okay to get real serious?

Okay, now...

For full disclosure: when I was in college at age 18, way back in 2001, I tried to kill myself.

It didn't take, obviously. Partway through the process I ruined a couple of perfectly good towels and called an ambulance.

There's a few reasons I did this. None of them were good enough. None of them are justifications. At the time, though - at the time they were all that mattered. That's how it always seems, when you're at that point. Nothing else is visible. Your world becomes a very dark tunnel.

It took a long time to recover. Not physically - now I have two very fine scars that are basically invisible unless you know what to look for. Mentally. I had suffered from significant anxiety problems beforehand, and they only got worse; for years, I pretty much sequestered myself away in my room, only emerging briefly every now and then. To compliment this, for as long as I knew how to assess myself and my feelings, I have suffered from depression.

The accepted wisdom is that if you think of committing suicide, then you really ought to get help immediately. I confide in you, dear reader, that this would be impossible for me; because however briefly, ever since I did it once, I have thought about it regularly.

Does this affect how I live my life day-to-day? Well no, not especially. Nowhere near as much as my physical health (which long-time readers will know is pretty fucked, and not just because I'm fat). It's just a thing, that pops up in the back of my skull every now and then. For me it's as much a part of life as that urge to slap someone for being rude, or to shout at someone for doing something stupid, or to buy something I clearly can't really afford just because it looks neat.

Human beings are animals, and animals have urges. One way in which we can be better people is to not give in to the urges we feel. The urge to immediately strike back when wronged, or to hurt others when we are hurt, or to pursue a brief insubstantial high in exchange for a long-term low. I'm not saying that the life of an ascetic is a good one - but as I often say, moderation in all things (including moderation).

If you look at life this way...then the call to end it, no matter how soft, is another harmful urge to be controlled. We all face shadows and darkness, and we all have mechanisms to cope with it. Some mechanisms are better than others - harmful in and of their own right - but the important thing is that we don't give in.

Here's where I could spout any number of insipid platitudes that I've seen all across social media, but honestly - that's not very me, is it? That's not very me at all.

In truth the reason it is important is simply because life is here to be lived. There's no purpose outside of that which we give ourselves - and my purpose is to keep going. Happiness happens. I have felt it, I have seen it, and I believe in it. Happiness makes it worthwhile. Some days are easy, and some days are hard - but I never regret surviving the day I almost didn't.

Between then and now I have grown so much. I've seen so much of the good (and bad) side of life. I've met people that have changed me, almost always for the better. I've seen things, read things, heard things that have made every day worth it. I've seen my favourite bands play live, I've seen the sun rise over mountains and the stars over a desert. The days that have seemed the worst have ended up containing moments of utter joy, crystalline and near-perfect, embedded in the shit of mediocrity.

It's hard to remember that. A lot of the time. I only see it right now because I am making the deliberate and concerted effort; that doesn't mean it isn't there, always there, waiting in between the shadows.

All of this was prompted because a friend of mine posted something the other night; a picture that stated simply, "I am glad that you survived".

I'm glad I survived, too.

Not Born To Pay Bills

It is sometimes a hard thing to deal with depression as a vaguely nihilistic person.

You see a lot of motivational posts all over social media. A lot of these posts talk about purpose, meaning, so on, so forth.

It's great that people can find things like that helpful or soothing or actually motivational, you know? It's nice that the things can actually prove to be useful to folks, because everyone copes differently and everyone needs a different way forwards.

For me, all the motivational stuff makes me feel a little nauseous.

Like...I am sure some of them (if not most, if not all) are made by people who don't necessarily need the motivation they provide. They always strike me as hollow platitudes. Like there is something inherently mindlessly optimistic about it all, like someone that's never lost a limb telling me how it will feel, or someone who isn't drowning smiling calmly and telling me that it'll be okay, just picture the oxygen entering my lungs.

More than that, though - more than that is the notion that there's something beyond, and if only I believe in it, then it'll give me the strength to do the next thing. Which I can't do. Because if the recovery is built on the belief in something that can't be proven, then there's nothing to keep it all from falling down when you have that moment of doubt. All that can hold it together is your belief, your unshakeable belief...

...and you are better off devoting that to yourself.

"You were not born to just pay bills and die," one of them says. That's true. In truth? You weren't born for anything at all. You were born because of point A leading to point B, and the cell separation at point C, and the birth at point D. You're not here FOR anything. You're here BECAUSE you were conceived.

My function is to keep going. I wasn't put here with a purpose. Happiness is the one thing that should be pursued without question - though not at the cost of other people's. What else is there? All life demands is sufferance. We owe it to ourselves to make that as easy on us as possible.

Something my dad used to say, when he was very, very sick. "All I want is a peaceful life." I think that is what all people want, in a way. More than to be wildly succesful, more than to be vastly wealthy or permanently entertaining; we want to be able to breathe, to take time and to have that time to ourselves.

We spend a significant proportion of our lives doing things to try and achieve that peace. The average citizen of the UK works 1,677 hours a year. We go through school, we try and normalise, we go through everything that is expected of us just so we can get to a point where we have warmth and shelter and a lack of hunger. Then we have to keep it up - we run on the spot to keep that place. We put ourselves through daily experiences that lead to heart conditions and buildups of stress just so we have somewhere to go and sit and not be stressful anymore.

That's the life we have, the cards we are dealt. All we can do is try and change it to something better, and find our peace and our happiness as best we are able.

That's something to believe in.

Wide And Prejudiced

It is my belief and experience that every single person on this earth holds at least one prejudice.

More than one, usually - and that does not mean to say that everyone is a little bit racist (regardless of what the song tells you) or anything to that extent. More I am stating, with a degree of certainty, that everyone has at least one belief that is prejudicial, that is not borne out by evidence, but that is part of them and hard to even recognisea s a prejudice - let alone combat.

I am just as guilty of this as anyone else. I have several prejudices. The one I am going to be looking at, though, is my prejudice against the wealthy.

I think this is part of my raising as much as anything else. I was brought up during the time when Margaret Thatcher had her way with the economy, and when the divide between the rich and the poor just kept growing. My parents were both hard-working people, and both needed jobs. I saw very little of them; my dad in my early childhood, my mother in my tween-teen years.

I was always told by the wider world that being rich was the cure to all ills, and that everyone should shoot for that goal. Sure, there was the odd object lesson about money not buying you happiness; but each example of that was outshone by other examples, of how one needed to shoot for that new promotion, get that job, earn the respect of your peers. That was the prevailing culture.

At school, being poor was a thing to be looked down upon. It earned the derision of your peers. Despite the fact that we were children and couldn't earn our own money, we couldn't admit that we couldn't afford something. To do so was unthinkable. Rather than just say that our parents couldn't (or wouldn't) buy us the new trainers or the new game or whatever, we used to make up excuses as to why we didn't want them.

I once stood up for a friend of mine who was called some pretty fucked up names because they got school dinners paid for by the school.

It's very easy to have an unhealthy relationship with money. You may be looked down upon for it on a personal level, but hey - in business, you work for an organisation that has signed a contract stating it must try to make as much money as possible. That's corporate charter. Money, and the lust and reliance for it, is an immense evil that causes untold problems worldwide every day - and yet holds the world's economy together, in the optimistic hope that everyone's greed will somehow create a balance in which the market fixes everything.

We're told that what is good for the very rich is good for everyone. Usually we're told this by people who are fairly wealthy themselves, and this isn't an accident. We were told that trickle-down economics would benefit everyone, which it simply doesn't - the only thing that tends to trickle down is the burden of debt.

All this probably contributes to the way I feel about the wealthy. It's not a healthy thing to feel, but I feel it. I try not to let it effect how I live my life, but boy that is hard sometimes.

I feel that if one does have prejudice, it doesn't make you a bad person unless you act on it. If you try and fix it, or put it behind you and try and treat people decently regardless of your gut instinct, then it makes you a better person. If I help up someone who is my friend, isn't it more worthy of respect if I help up someone who is my enemy? We're all in possession of instinct - we defeat it every day with logic. That's what makes us better.

I have to acknowledge that how I feel is irrational. There are wealthy people who are good, both objectively and subjectively - and likewise, those who are poor can be bad. Income and resource does not dictate morality.

Still. I know it is there - but I'd rather know it is there so I can do something about it, rather than be unaware that I'm viewing the world through a flawed lens.

Solutions

This blog directly relates to the last one.

Having thought about it, I think there is definitely a solution to the terrorist problem. Also to a lot of other problems. This is where it gets a little...esoteric.

The reason why the solution won't be applied isn't due to over-complication. It's the opposite. The solutions are too simple. They're also somewhat counter to human nature, which is not to be confused with humanity.

(If you need a definition as to why they're different: humanity the hand that helps you up, where human nature is the other hand that goes through your wallet at the same time.)

My solution is three steps, and step one is a constant one for me:

REDUCE POVERTY.

Poverty causes, and is a catalyst for, so many other issues that it is impossible to argue that a global reduction of poverty (even a small one) would be a bad thing. It isn't just about having money, or even the things that money can buy you. It's about security.

I'm not saying that the current Capitalist world-model is a good one, and it certainly isn't the best one. My problems with that would fill a couple of blogs in and of themselves. Fact of the matter is, though - if agenda continues to be set by those with plenty of money, and the infrastructure of society is fueled by such money, then people having more of it increases equality in a very lateral fashion.

Extremism breeds in environments of stress and tension. Intolerance thrives in such environments, though it is far easier to spread to more comfortable locales. If the environments that people live in are made better, if lives are improved, then there's less hostility to go around.

You'll notice I am not distinguishing between areas of the world when I talk about this. That's because extremism and intolerance can exist in any country, and feeds the extremism and intolerance of those it antagonises, creating a feedback loop of backlash. "Violence begets violence," Dr Martin Luther King Jr. told us, and he was right.

The second step in our solution is actually aided by the first one:

INCREASE EDUCATION.

While a decrease of poverty should naturally lead to better education as a natural process, a concerted effort to educate people better would be invaluable.

I don't necessarily just mean book learning here. Being able to parrot long words or knowing how to say basketball in Spanish or memorising sulphuric acid's chemical make-up. All these things are good, but knowing is not understanding, and understanding is key.

I was taught a lot of very useful things as I grew up and in my early adult years, but there was a lot more I had to pick up myself, and yet more that I haven't worked out yet. I was taught something about religion, and something about history, and the tiniest amount of economics - but nothing about politics, nothing about mental health, very little about how to be okay with my own company and how to avoid being drawn into the bad crowds I was told constantly to avoid.

It's hard. I know it's hard. The fact is, though - this is 2015. I am sure there must be some way in which we can teach without brutalising, traumatising or dehumanising. There must be.

With a wider base of knowledge and understanding, not only of ourselves but others, then it is far harder for the kind of thinking that allows for terrorism and its associated backlash to take root. Not impossible, but far harder.

Again. I do not distinguish on nationality or locale here. This is universal.

As step two was helped by step one, step three benefits from both:

BE LESS SHITTY TO EACH OTHER.

I've talked about this before. A while ago, but still.

To take a step away from my socially responsible language, we are shitty to each other all the time. We're shitty to each other in a lot of ways - some passive, some active. Some people's shittiness is more effective than others - they have more pull, more to gain, more to lose.

Direct shittiness is thankfully relatively rare, but still exists. Being abusive for whatever reason or over whatever perceived slight. Wishing harm and death on people, and trying to make that happen. This kind of shitty is hard to stop without changing the way people think and feel (see steps one and two), but it can be done.

It is large-scale indirect shittiness, however, that causes the real damage.

Here's some of that indirect shittiness: if a UK arms manufacturer sells something to someone and they default on the repayment, the loss is underwritten by UKEF, a government-funded export credit agency. That means, it comes out of our taxes. Effectively that means that if Gun Company A wants to sell guns to Warlords 1, 2 and 3, they don't have to care about whether or not they will actually get paid. If Warlords 2 and 3 default, then we, you and I, pay to cover their debts.

There was talk about stopping this back in 2012. But then there was talk of stopping this back in 2000 as well, so...

How is this indirect shittiness? Well think about it. Using funds provided you by the taxpayer to allow the arms industry to flog hardware around the world with little worry of being shafted? How many of those sales that have been shored up with our money have put weapons in the hands of the people we happily call terrorists? Literally not caring enough about where the guns end up, as long as we just keep selling them, even to people who can't pay.

That happened in a different market, recently. It happened with houses. In the US. In 2007. It caused the financial crisis that we are currently existing in right now. The crisis that makes it all the more bitter that what little money we have is still being used to hedge the bets of munitions firms.

More indirect shittiness: most policy decisions we have made to do with the Middle East. Starting from year zero. Hell, imperialism as a whole and the superiority complex we have as a result has done us literally NO favours, ever. Some of that I would argue is direct shittiness, but the attitude we have now is formed on centuries of action that we had little to do with but still carry with us. Again it is the powers that be that dabble with this shittiness, drawing the lines of demarcation in Palestine, handing out support here, handing down financial punishments there. Governments use other countries like sandboxes, and then wonder why the citizens of those countries get all pissed off.

That may sound like I'm sympathising with terrorists. Understand this: I hate what they did, but that doesn't mean I can't draw a line of causality from why. Do I agree with them? No. Do I agree with what our governments have done? No. They're not mutually exclusive.

Yet more indirect shittiness can be found in the media. It sells papers to be extreme, to have eye-catching headlines, to appeal to the controversial in society. Fanning the flames of intimidation and tension leads to viewers which leads to more Good Things, and because they don't care about the irresponsibility of their actions and who may suffer as a consequence, they continue to be shitty to other human beings.

And more indirect shittiness...well, that falls at the feet of normal folks like you and I.

See, the things described above - they are huge acts of dismissive callousness. But that callousness has to come from somewhere; and if we allow for small cruelties, large ones soon follow.

Society in general looks like it rewards kindness and compassion. It doesn't. That's the message that is put out, but the reality is that it rewards inversion, huddling down against the cold alone and letting everyone else cope for themselves. As small groups and families and communities we stand together, but any further than that - nothing.

If we cared more, if we reached out more, then there'd be less anger and hatred and loneliness and fear in this world. All of the soil that extremism grows in - here and abroad - would be lessened. Lessen the soil, lessen the crop; and the returns would only increase.

The thing of it is...it all sounds so wishy-washy and hard to achieve because...well...we all know people aren't like that. Nobody believes in the things that would reduce poverty, because that means redistribution of wealth, or adjustment of current living conditions. No one wants that. Fuck those worse off than me, I don't want to be worse off. Refugees? Charity starts at home. Charity? I've got enough to worry about.

It's an austerity mindset, an enclosed and fearful mindset. It is people unwilling to help the whole because the one is more important. It's a mindset that we are born into, live in, die in. As I said earlier, it is what society wants of us.

In the end, we have made a very uncomfortable bed. We've done a lot in the past that is coming back to bite us in the present and will continue to bite us in the future; and the only way out of it is to stop making the same stupid mistakes we keep making, fix the holes in the cieling we keep ignoring, and actually do something for our fellow people.

The crying shame is that the only time the sympathy comes out is when people die. That's what it takes: the corpses of innocents.

There's our solutions. There they are. Simple concepts, achievable concepts, if only people would DO THEM.

But they won't.

Not until it's far too late.

The Question Is Why

A lot of bad shit has happened to the world in the past week.

A lot of innocent people have been killed, their only crime - being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those places have been reasonably diverse. One occupies the majority of the media attention, of course, because...hell, in the Lebanon, people get blown up and shot all the time. It's monstrous and cruel and so very regular that nobody bats an eyelid. Like acceptance by mass numeral.

It is as tragic as it always is to see innocent people die. It's never right, for whatever reason. It's an awful injustice and it just shouldn't ever happen...but it does.

What really bothers me...what truly works my nerves...is not knowing why.

Why would these people choose to do what they do? Everyone has a theory. Some of those theories are perhaps based more on personal bias than actual fact. What chain of causality led to those people pulling the triggers, flicking the switches? What decision-making process took them from step 1 to the awful final step?

What caused those decisions to be made the way they were? Not "because X said so" or "because they were angry", but what led to that? What caused all of this to happen? If these acts of atrocity are the symptoms of a sickness, what is the sickness itself?

I only phrase it like that, because it's all too easy to treat the symptom, not the sickness. A comparable situation - in theory, if not in actual tragedy - is the spread of Malaria. To constantly try and patch the holes, to rush around curing each outbreak and instance - that is burning a lot of energy hacking at branches, when the roots of the problem remain out of reach. To stop the mosquitoes that spread the Malaria, to find a way to prevent them from spreading it, to get people out of areas where it spreads from...that's a cure.

I wish I knew why. I dearly wish I knew why. That way I could make sense of it and see a solution.

I can't. That is what keeps me up at night.

I suspect that there's many theoretical root-causes. Societal reasons on the macro-scale, which can be tackled with big, difficult decisions, the kind that make people say "yeah but that wouldn't work really would it" not because they won't work but because making people believe it will work is harder than just letting it all keep happening.

I just don't know.

I wish I did.

The Way You Look Tonight

So on Tuesday a friend-and-work-colleague and I were talking about formal and professional dress.

One thing about where I work is that most of us folk that do the guts of the work can wear pretty much what we want. I mean as long as it isn't stoopid. If I turned up with nine-inch platforms and a four-foot mohawk then some questions may be asked, but probably from a safety perspective rather than a fashion one.

The thing is, we're there to work on computers for eight and a half hours a day. Very vew of us speak to clients, or even see them. We aren't sales or account management - and the folks who ARE tend to dress in a sufficiently impressive fashion when necessary.

It got me to thinking, as we were talking about it.

I don't often comment on how people look or how they dress, especially uninvited. When asked I try and be honest, but I have to open with the fact that I'm not a fashion expert, I'm not an aesthete, and I don't know how a lot of the unwritten rules work

There's a few reasons for this.  One of the main ones is that it's none of my business.

There's very few circumstances in which how someone dresses is my business. On 99% of days, 100% of people shouldn't have to care what I think of what they're wearing. They shouldn't have to dress for me, and honestly, I'd rather people wore what made them happy and comfortable than anything else. It's like I feel that maybe, passing comment is me tacitly implying that they've fulfilled (or failed to fulfill) my expectations, expectations that they were duty-bound to consider for some ridiculous reason.

I don't understand the entire business-formal thing. I don't get it, and wearing shirts and ties makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable. Like, I know that it is how people are expected to dress, it is what you are meant to do, but...why? ...like why is that the uniform? And why would people who do, say, what I do be expected to wear button-down shirts and nice ties? Is it a mindset thing? Like school uniform? Will it make me type better? ...I just...don't understand.

Sure, a suit makes anyone look great if it is cut right - but I'm not at work to look good. I'm at work to quality control. I have work duties and none of those work duties involve being a stylish thirty-something.

I recently posted on Twitter a realisation that I came to; I am, essentially, always going to be a background character from Daria. In how I dress, how I act, how I live - it is pretty much who I am. I'm also very much okay with that, in all honesty. I like wearing faded metal band shirts and jeans and sneaks. What does that say about me? Probably that I'm not very corporate-minded. Maybe a point in my life will come where I decide to wear polo necks and slacks for the rest of my days - but I doubt it.

There's probably something wrong with that, but I can't outline it, and will probably act with a degree of incredulity if actually told the reason. Even if it makes sense. Is that meant to happen before or after the mid-life crisis? Am I IN my mid-life crisis? If I had the money would I be buying a Ferrari?

Maybe I just skipped every normal stage of my life between early teens and early forties. Maybe I'm still trying to be a teenager, except with sticking to responsibilities and having reasonable life expectations.

All I know is that if you look good, I will probably keep it to myself - unless I think you REALLY need to know.

It Is By Will Alone (On Insecurity pt4)

This is the forth, and final, part of a series of blog posts on insecurity. Each one has had a different theme.

I read a fair amount of Nietzsche.

...no, wait, come back!

Okay okay. I HAVE read a fair amount of Nietzsche, and that's led me to some interesting thoughts about us as a people and how we do things.

So I agree with his thinking in terms of the "will to power" - the constant drive to succeed, achieve, and control one's environment. To put one's self in a position of power if at all possible. That's basic human behavior. You can see it as greed, but that's a gross oversimplification.

I think the reason why we want this, at a very base level - driven instinctively by that urge to control and command - is because we're insecure.

Yep, I've been banging on about it for the past three weeks - it is time to draw a conclusion.

We, at our core, are insecure. It is part of being sentient, of having an ego, of having consciousness. Our fear of failure is tied to our drive for success. When what you want is so deeply ingrained in you that it governs you, then surely the urge to have it is paralleled by an equal and opposite fear of NOT having it.

Doesn't that make a degree of sense? The urge to survive as a constant leads us to make that survival a stable thing, a given thing rather than a continuous struggle. We want that safety net, that security - we're afraid of the alternative, because the alternative is not surviving at all. We're afraid of it, avoid it in the same way as we instinctively avoid fire, dangerous situations and awful things.

Now a great many people will probably claim that this really doesn't apply to them. "But John," you will cry, hauling yourself out of the plastic bathtub filled with Tesco own brand whipped cream. "I'm not afraid, or insecure! Everything you have said is just an attempt to validate your own anxiety!"

Perhaps, but I also call bullshit.

There is a disorder called Urbach-Wiethe disease; it is a genetic disorder, and it damages two small almond-sized bits of your brain - and when that happens, you can't feel fear any more. Unless that happens, boy howdy, you feel fear. It's what you do with it, that counts.

We've all heard the saying - feel the fear and do it anyway. It's true. There's no bravery without fear. Everyone feels it and it is something that we need to admit to and acknowledge - ignoring our weaknesses and our flaws is a really good way to lose a hundred battles. (That's a Sun Tzu joke.)

We seek to make our lives better, to make our lives more secure, because we fear that lack of security. It's what we do, what we spend most of our time doing. We need to take control of our environment because we're afraid of what would happen if it controlled us.

Some of the worst situations people can be in involve loss of control and loss of agency. The most stressful situations are those out of our control, where we have to watch the disaster happen right in front of us. Knowing you can't change it. That is the real nightmare. Life taken out of one's hands, and placed at the whim of causality.

As long as we have power - as long as we have control over our lives - we can minimise our exposure to the things we are insecure about. We can reduce contact with toxic individuals, lower the chance of mishaps, ensure that our day-to-day lives pass by with as little fear as possible. In the modern world that often comes down to money; the power-money dynamic is well-documented in this day and age. The two are often conflated.

Hate the awkwardness of public transport? You won't ever have to worry about it if you get a car. Nervous about going to the gym because you don't like how your body looks (but want to go to the gym anyway because you don't like how your body looks)? Buy your own gym equipment, or find a gym with such open hours that you can go when no-one else is there.

This is the urge Nietzsche speaks of. To achieve and excel, and thus secure one's existence. Outrun your demons by feeding your angels. I've spoken before about how one's needs in life change as one's income or standing alters, right here. It's true. The end argument is that all we really want is to have agency over our lives - which is not only something we should want and strive for, but something that we should help everyone achieve.

Which is why we're so pissed off that the Tory government wants to get rid of the Human Rights Act, and if you're not pissed off, then you haven't been paying attention...but I digress.

Insecurity, then. It's the devil we run from, the constant whip against our backs. Sometimes we control it, negate it, nullify and minimise it - and sometimes it guides us. Sometimes it's a little of both. Sometimes it is one but we think it is the other.

It is the root of a great many evils. It leads to racism and greed and who knows what else. I could probably draw a line of causality between most crimes that occur on a daily basis, and a base insecurity that led to it happening.

It haunts us, this fear, this gnawing anxiety. It hides itself in other drives and motives. It poisons otherwise noble intentions, adds inflection to sentences and stills voices that would otherwise speak out.

It costs lives.

Insecurity. The burden of sentience, of creativity, of imagination.

If it were a dragon, we'd be well-served to slay it.

Learned Behavior (On Insecurity pt3)

This is the third part of a series of blog posts on insecurity. Each one will have a different theme.

As anyone who is anyone will be able to tell you - in Bowling For Soup's opinion, High School Never Ends.

How right are they?

I'm sure everyone I know either believes, or has been told, that school is the best days of one's life. Certain parts of it are awesome, sure - not paying bills is a wonderful thing, or worrying about work. Certainly things were easier on that side of the scale.

Mentally though? Emotionally, spiritually? Well, I suppose I can only speak for myself - but high school was never an environment in which I did remarkably well. The actual learning, the academics, that was just fine. People skills, though? Not being basically completely mental? Yeah, that fell down on me pretty hard.

I was in high school between 13 and 18. That school now deals with kids that are 11-18. This period in someone's life is...well...let's just say chemically difficult. You are pretty much at the mercy of a lot of hormones, a lot of brain chemistry, and a lot of alterations in one's physiology. That in itself is a difficult environment to exist in.

Then we add the tribal mentality that seems to exist. There's us and them - lots of different thems, sometimes a couple of different uses. It's our first taste of semi-adult sociology, and we come into this environment loaded with brains like chemical bombs.

The culture of school, of education, of being the age one is and doing the things one does at that age - it becomes something of a power struggle. Everyone has authority over a schoolkid. The teachers, other parents, other adults; and at a time when self-doubt is enforced upon you by simple virtue of hormonal shift, that lack of control and agency can lead to some pretty harmful mental states. One grasps for power and control wherever they can. Sure, that teacher there has the authority to make you do things and you have to listen - so obviously, if you find a way to "get one over" on that teacher, to express some form of dominance or control, then...well, you're hard pressed not to take it.

That goes double for other kids - because if you push a teacher, or try and bully an adult, there are repercussions. Try it with your peers, though? You will almost certainly get away with it. As evidenced by the fact that bullying is still pretty much widespread to endemic proportions even today, in this enlightened age.

It's a truism oft repeated by the victims of bullying that those doing it only do it because they're insecure. That's probably right. They feel like they aren't in control of their environment, so they strive to take control over part of it - their victim. Power is a stimulant. Once you've had a little of it, you want more, and sometimes you want it more than you want to be a good person.

We've all heard that school is the best years of our lives - have we not also all heard that kids are cruel? Or witnessed that cruelty? They can be assholes - to each other even more so than outsiders. Trust me, I was one, and even though I spend most of my time keeping my head down and avoiding being targeted, I did my fair shair of asshole things.

The thing is, I look at some of the behaviour people demonstrate long after high school, and a lot of it hasn't actually changed that much.

Why would it, in fairness? Sure, we grow up - our tastes change - we pick up responsibilities and learn how to cope with them, we learn hard lessons and have life experiences both good and bad. Our mentality has already been shaped, though; and unshaping it is hard work, sometimes harder than people are willing to work toward.

Xenophobia is a high school behaviour, which develops even earlier than that - as social structures get formed they decide that some things are okay and some things aren't, and anything different or weird is a very obvious target. That can last - that can stick around, especially if unchallenged. Likewise, the power politics of the playground; alphas beating their chests, social climbers belittling others, unspoken rules being set and those who don't follow them being mocked. Now what I've just described could happen anywhere at any age after middle school. Admit it: you've been in places like that, or at least heard of them.

We were all in a state of constant insecurity once. We learned some lessons that hurt a hell of a lot, and we picked up some habits that don't help us very much in adult life. It's hard to break a habit. Trust me, I know.

If only we could recognise it in ourselves and do something constructive about it...maybe we'd all be a little happier.

Choices And Repercussions (On Insecurity pt2)

This is the second part of a series of blog posts on insecurity. Each one will have a different theme.

We've all made big decisions - changed our lives in various different ways. Signed up for a gym and actually attended it, took up a hobby and seen it through, started a relationship, bought a house, bought a car.

Have we not ever justified that decision post facto? I know I have. It's natural, isn't it? Put down a significant proportion of a couple paychecks and you feel the need to salve your conscience - after all, that was a lot of money to spend on a laptop, even if it was totally worth it.

Insecurity rears its ugly head - but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, if we never second-guessed ourselves, we'd be very creepy people, wouldn't we? Just imagine that. It would be...

...inhuman.

Sometimes, though - don't we make those decisions because we're insecure?

It's an old joke - the midlife crisis, the guy in his early forties buying a new Ferrari. Of course he's insecure. Classic trope. There's a lot more associated with it, but you can see where I am coming from: insecurity leads to a big decision.

What happens when we buy the Ferrari but we're still insecure?

At the root of it, that moment of disquiet, that core doubt that comes from being a person with sentience isn't something that can easily be stoppered up. It seems to come and go as it sees fit, no matter what we do. Even after we hop into the F40 and take it for a burn down the Military Road, that hole is still there, right in our gut, and we don't quite grasp why.

We can't have made the wrong decision, could we? That's why we're IN this car. That's why we're AT this gym. That's why we BOUGHT this house. Surely, we made the right decision. That's why we vocalise about it. It was the right idea, and other people agree with us. Must have been. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else, I must hasten to add.

So when we see people who didn't make that decision, who seem to be doing just fine...wouldn't it be natural for us to try and explain away why? Why would THEY not need the Ferrari but we would? The insecurity that we tried to salve with the object becomes insecurity attached to the object and how we relate to it.

I think this is what leads to people knocking on others for their life choices - at times. We all know that bullying derives from insecurity, and - honestly - making people feel crappy or alienating them deliberately because they didn't make the same choice as you...that is actually another form of bullying. It's not always seen that way though. Here comes that socially acceptable card again.

Just another facet of how sometimes, striving to fill that void in one's life can be harmful to yourself and others. A little self-awareness can go a long way.