Taking A Minute

I don't think I need to elucidate the ways in which we are currently experiencing... let's call it stress, as a people as a whole.

And what a year it has been, right? Like this whole virus has been simmering away while all sorts of other shit happens and then - well, then came the spikes. And now it's all that we have going on, because it has swept a hand across our expectations and our plans.

Which is odd for people like me who had problems with plans and expectations in the first place, but I digress.

A significant proportion of people have been told to stay home - either no-access or encouraged to stay there as much as is practical. Of course there's certain sectors where people still have to go out, and I have huge respect for them. And there's certain areas wherein people are just going out and doing whatever they want anyway, because there always is, but the less said about that...

So. A lot of people's social interactions and leisure time, significantly cut down. Folks stuck indoors.

And into this perfect storm of the UK going from "it will be fine" to "rationing is probable..."

...steps this little crew of goombas.

What timing.

Games. I talk about gaming a lot. How it can be a help, or a hindrance. In times like this, though - in times where people feel like they are cut off, need something to focus on that isn't the news or what is going on outside - what better time?

Especially something that rewards social play like Animal Crossing New Horizons does.

I haven't seen such an outpouring of people getting together, exchanging details, playing together, just generally having fun since the Summer of Pokemon Go. It's that, but inverted, but also kind of not. Because we're playing this - we're all doing this - and we're enjoying it, and we want everyone else to enjoy it too. For once we aren't yelling at each other about bad games or shitty takes. We're just having a nice time, which is what we all need.

It's a way to stay in touch, too. A way to be doing something other than staring at our navels and swapping text messages. I mean that's good, we should be messaging - but isn't it more fun if you can also send your friends a squid or a fruit they don't already have?

I mean, if you really need something to help handle stress that isn't so sunny or social... maybe you are more interested in what this chap has to say.

What a weekend.

Even more than that, though, we're seeing people pull together in online communities. People forming and joining groups, en masse. People livestreaming things. Bands streaming concerts - the Dropkick Murphys streamed an entire gig on St Patrick's Day. I was invited to a group called Concellation, which is where all the folks who regularly attend a bunch of conventions that are now cancelled hang out.

My RPG gamers are taking to online services like Roll20 and Discord, because we still want to roll the dice. We have so many means by which we can take the things we enjoy and move them online that we are almost spoiled for choice, and all we need is the will to do it.

Which is, in its way, really wholesome.

It's a time of uncertainty. That's the worst thing. The uncertainty. All of a sudden, people that don't usually struggle with anxiety or depression are almost being forced to experience the symptoms. All of a sudden, people that don't have conditions that would force them to be housebound are indeed housebound.

We're finding our way, though - and I admit to feeling a certain amount of relief... and maybe hope? ...that the solutions to a lot of the problems we face as nations rather than as individuals seem to lean heavily to the left of the spectrum.

Maybe some lessons will be learned. Maybe there will be the political drive and push to provide a safety net for people, despite it being an affront to conservative tendencies. Maybe people will remember that the solutions to these problems didn't come from letting people die en mass because they couldn't afford private care but by doing the best we could to provide for everyone.

Maybe I can hang onto that optimism, for a little while.

In the meantime: I have cherries to pick.

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.

The Good Old Days

The Goonies was a formative movie of my childhood.

I mean, why wouldn't it be? Adventure! Mystery! Kids having fun! A fat kid that still gets to join in despite everyone treating him like shit! (Okay it hasn't necessarily aged well.) It's my Sean Astin movie - Lord Of The Rings just borrowed him.

What it leaves, though - the thing it left with me, that it has always left with me, ever since I first saw it - was this sense of nostalgia that it immediately provoked in me. A yearning for specific elements of a childhood that also included a bunch of really shitty elements - to just be running through the woods, chatting nonsense with people I know and trust, or going off and doing whatever for a whole day and having nothing to care about in the intervening hours.

What movies like The Goonies and its peers really do is sell us a childhood we really wish we had, by framing itself in terms and tropes that we actually experienced.

That's not a criticism. It's the nature of fantasy/adventure films of a certain age aimed at kids. Because they were shot when we were kids, they were made back then, so everything is redolent of the era. Using bikes to get everywhere and needing to come up with creative ways to stay in touch because, hey, we didn't have mobile phones.

It calls back to the time when that was the concern. When the biggest worry of any kind was managing to get the crew together to do some stupid stuff, like ride around on bikes for hours arguing about if Tommy from Power Rangers was rubbish or brilliant.

It was before we went through the awkward phases of partial knowledge of world events, where we sought for simple answers as to why things were hard for certain people but not for others. Before we started realising how things really work.

Wanting to be back in that space, wanting to be in a position wherein the primary concerns are small ones, is hardly a sin. It says more about the world as it stands right now than it does about us as people and what we want out of life. That there are so many things today - anxiety-inducing things which are made difficult for no reason other than to change them would be just slightly more difficult and would disadvantage those more important than us - which we accept as just being normal, and never seem to question.

"That's just the way it is," is the answer you get given. Which is dangerously close to "That's just the way it has always been," which echoes the warning from the (fictional) five monkeys experiment. I'm sure you know of that one: five monkeys in a cage with a ladder leading up to food, and whenever one monkey goes up the ladder all the rest got soaked in cold water, so they start beating up any monkey that goes for the ladder. Then when they substitute out one of the monkeys for a new one, the new one immediately goes for the ladder, and gets beaten up for it, and without even knowing the original reason why, is encouraged to not go up the ladder by societal pressure.

(As an aside, the actual experiment is kind of more interesting. Monkeys, when manipulating an object that had previously appealed to them, were punished with several blasts of pressurised air - enough to alarm but not harm. After a while they stopped manipulating the object when by themselves, but upon mixing with other monkeys who did manipulate the object, they themselves did it too. Thus, the actual experiment proves the complete opposite of what the ladder bullshit tries to tell us: that we can be encouraged by others in positive ways rather than just negative.)

I don't think it is a contentious statement to say that there is a lot of nostalgia media around right now. Old video games becoming fashionable again, the iconography of an entire decade becoming people's standard aesthetic, neon and grid lines and synthwave and fake VHS lines. Stranger Things and stuff like it. Awesome musical acts like Robots With Rayguns literally evoking the era with their imagery, their samples and their songwriting. Tim Capello - the sexy sax man from Lost Boys, Tina Turner's tour saxophonist, the man that taught me I was bisexual - has an album out, and is recording synthwave music with other bands. This guy.

The people who grew up with The Goonies are now the people consuming most of the media - and the people making a lot of it, too. There's still a lot of influence from the older folks, because hey, there's money in the industry and they want it. The nostalgia train is loaded with cash. We just hanker for that time - that time back when things were simpler, and not necessarily for good reasons. Like, things still sucked back then for a lot of people - living standards by several metrics were objectively worse.

On a personal scale - that is where things were better. Less existential dread. Less worry. Less fear of the future. Life wasn't better because the world was better, life was better because we were kids and we didn't know any better.

We must take care to pay attention to that - and it is perhaps something we might mention to those who talk about the past as a mythical better place. Like everything back in the seventies, sixties, fifties, forties, thirties, was better than things are today.

Our childhood wasn't better because it was the past. It was better because we were children.

Be kind to yourself. Life is hard enough.

Upon A Fearful Summons

I talk about insecurity an awful lot; how central it is to our basic psychology and our lives in general is a hill I would die on daily. It isn't the whole story, obviously - and today I'm going to talk about another one of those needling driving forces.

Guilt.

Now, guilt means two things. The first meaning is that someone is culpable for an act, that they committed an offence. That's not the guilt that we are talking about.

Guilt is a feeling.

No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt. - E. M. Forster

Who hasn't felt guilty over something? Something they have done that they think they shouldn't have, something they haven't done that they should have? It's almost unthinkable that someone could go through life and not feel it at least once, right?

Do we feel it for the right reasons?

That's an entirely different kettle of fish, right there.

See, it's good that if we do something that is actually wrong, that we should - afterwards - realise it was wrong. If we literally hurt someone or inconvenience someone, for no good reason, then we should feel bad about that. It's how we know we are good people. In fact, even if we have done the bad thing for a good reason, we should feel it. It keeps us grounded. It reminds us of the consequences, and that even though - for a very basic comparison - we have saved one hundred lives, we shouldn't diminish the severity of sacrificing one life to do so.

The problem is, we aren't rational beings at heart - and we aren't necessarily good at sorting and filing the emotions we feel.

Hands up if you feel guilty for wronging someone that has forgiven you.

Should the forgiveness of the other party absolve you from guilt? You might think so - but we all have different levels of acceptance, for actions that we feel can be forgivable. It varies from person to person, too. I would forgive in a heartbeat accidental attacks against my person from people I know and trust, far faster than I would forgive even more minor infractions from people in the street.

What it comes down to, though - guilt is only slightly assuaged by the forgiveness of the second party.

Guilt is only assuaged truly by forgiveness of ourselves.

That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man. - Khalil Gibran

In my eyes, how willing we are to forgive ourselves isn't connected to the actual severity of the action in question, because we are awful at being objective in terms of judging ourselves.

This is going to get deeply personal right now, so fair warning.

I feel guilty about not being as healthy as everyone around me.

Not just the fat thing (which I talked about in a previous blog). The constant pain and the lack of lung capacity from my other badness makes me something of a broken toy soldier at the best of times, so I just can't necessarily take part in things that I used to take for granted.

This means that people often have to take me into consideration when we do things as a group, and that not only tweaks my anxiety off the scale, it also makes me feel guilty for inconveniencing them - even if I can't actually magically cure my rheumatoid arthritis and pulmonary fibrosis, and even if they assure me (and trust me, I believe them!) when they say it isn't actually a problem.

I nonetheless feel guilty over this thing I have done wrong, this hardship I have inflicted on others. Which is, yes, logically speaking absolutely ridiculous.

The thing is that logic has nothing to do with it, obviously; it's just the way that we are wired, which begins at an early age, continues throughout our lives, and has little bearing on reality. We don't live in a society which fully accepts the weaknesses and frailties of others - not yet, anyway. We still have this very British, very ridiculous Stiff Upper Lip mentality, which was primarily set up as a way to - funnily enough - assuage guilt.

The Stoics loved this - loved the idea that if you just tell yourself you aren't affected by the thing, that if you bear with it and just put up with it, then everything will be fine. And let's just say that, in British society, at various points in our history - there's been times when it was quite, quite useful for the social status quo to be against grumbling or discontent.

It is still a huge part of our society. Workplaces treat their employees like shit because the workers are of a culture and a mindset wherein they just, you know, put up with it. Our politics has been rife with austerity measures and literally punishing people who are sick or poor because everyone is expected to just, you know, put up with it.

And the moment that we "cause a fuss", the moment that we stick our heads over the parapet and say, actually, that ISN'T legal, that ISN'T in my job contract, that ISN'T a thing you should be doing - we feel guilty. Because we're bucking expectation, we're rubbing against the conditioning of the society we have lived in since we were born and the social pressures of everyone we know. Or almost everyone.

Which is, I think, the only reason why the current status quo continues today.

The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong. - Ernst Bloch

See, it's a big motivator - nobody likes feeling guilty. It's a significant drain on our mental health and our well-being, and contributes to stress in a big way. So of course, it gets used as a manipulative tool.

Unfortunately, one of the first places we come across it is in childhood - usually directed at us from a parent or guardian, to try and make us behave. It sticks with you. It's why it is effective even later in life, long after it was necessary to cajole us into behaving in a "civil" fashion. Manipulators will use guilt to try and make us do what they want us to do, regardless of how it makes us feel or if its the right thing to do. Both on a personal scale, and on a national one.

Our insecurity leads us by the nose, and that isn't a good thing. Our guilt leads us, too - perhaps not as often but just as surely. We feel guilt for action and inaction, and we let it guide us without questioning it, without fighting it. How can we stop it from leading us into misery?

Put simply, as I said earlier, we have to forgive ourselves.

We need to show ourselves the same kind of love and understanding that we show those we love and care about the most. We need to be capable of empathising with ourselves. We need to take a look at ourselves and express understanding - we know why we did the thing we did, we know that it upsets us, we shouldn't push ourselves too hard. We made the wrong decision, so we should fix it, but punishing ourselves for it won't help. We were put on the spot and went one way when we should have gone another. We should try and soften the impact, but we shouldn't simply languish in how bad we feel about what we did.

Guilt warns us, reminds us that we're still moralistic creatures. It's the doing, though - it's the fixing, the understanding, the refusing to do evil - that really matters.

And as much as guilt may cut us, there is a certain warmth, a certain comfort, in the words:

At Least I Tried.

A Three-Letter Word

(Content warning: what follows will be a frank monologue that talks about body issues, weight, self image, self esteem, depression, anxiety, bullying, trauma and suicide. If you really don't want to read any of that, no judgement whatsoever. I understand. Feel free to check out one of my other blogs which are less heavy. This one is about Blade Runner. If you're into that sort of thing.)

Hi folks. My name is John, and I'm fat.

Here's a picture of me at Nine Worlds this year.

Yes, I am the one on the left, har har har. (This person cosplaying Ellen Ripley was really cool. Very friendly. Many thanks to her!)

I am fat. I use that word to describe myself, not to take the piss out of myself, not to disarm people who weaponise it against me, but because it is true. I am overweight. Obese, is the term. The BMI chart - if anyone even thinks that is a thing any more - doesn't go up far enough to account for my height or my weight, but I probably sit in the red bit.

Ever since I hit puberty I have been this shape.

Like, you can look at kid pictures of me and I've got pudgy little cheeks. You can look at teenager pictures of me and I am, yes, fat. I am fat, have always been fat, and will remain fat until such a time as I actually decompose or am otherwise reduced by being dead.

As you can imagine, this has led to my certain life experiences. I lucked out in many other areas of my life - I recognise that I have the privileges of being white-passing, straight-passing, cis, and coming from an only slightly poor household. This thing, though - this thing is something that can affect just about everyone.

Being generally treated like shit by half of the people I ever met was a strong motivator toward changing something. So I tried.

This is where a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and close this window, but stick it out, because this is the literal truth.

None of it worked.

I can understand your skepticism, trust me, because for all my life I was surrounded by people telling me I was wrong, and I was lying, and I was doing something wrong. To the point wherein I actually started doubting myself. Doubting whether or not I remembered how things went, properly.

It goes like this: I try to lose weight by just reducing my calories and doing more exercise. Two months pass. I put on a few ounces. I reduce the calories more, do more exercise. Doesn't work, again - this time I put on four pounds, which is absurd. My mother and father are confused at this, because mum's the one making my meals, and there's only so much snack food you can buy on £2 a week pocket money. So they assume I am sneaking food elsewhere, I promise them I'm not, I get the "Alright then" with the roll of the eyes which basically tells me they don't believe me at all.

So then, I am put into the care of the health services. Referred to a dietitian. I am issued a rather strict eating plan. Everything not on the plan gets lobbed out of the house and my pocket money goes away so I can't spend it on food. For six months I am on the first plan, and my weight actually - this time - doesn't change at all. It remains constant. I AM miserable, but - you know. Constant. The dietitian, who predicted the loss of three stone in those six months, throws up her hands and declares that I am either not doing enough exercise (har fucking har) or I am cheating on the plan. Except this time my mum is on my side here - because I haven't been.

We see another dietitian. This one swears by the cups-of-rice diet. Like all your food is measured in cups of rice. The idea of which actually made me burst into tears when I was in the back of the car on the way home. Nothing but rice, forever. But hey - at least I wouldn't be fat any more. Right?

I lost a pound in the first week.

I put on three in the second.

I had monthly weigh-ins. I was meant to be referred for six months but after the third the lady didn't want me to go any more, because I was half a stone heavier,and her heavy hints of "something else going on" pretty much told me she thought I had cheated on this diet, too.

Which I hadn't.

My food had basically been plain rice, for three months. It killed me. It absolutely killed me. I like food, that is no surprise to anyone. I like food, and here I am, eating basically plain rice. I got sauce sometimes, that was a luxury. Carrots, too. I love carrots. Maybe I love them because they were the only interesting thing I got to eat in that period of my life.

It was during this three months that I was written out of doing PE classes at school, anything high-impact like running or basketball, because my knee joints were already deteriorating. But you don't get Arthritis when you're young, so it can't have been that. That was because I was fat, too.

Now, there will be a lot of people shaking their head at me. "John," they will say, a knowing smile on their lips, an understanding hand on my shoulder. "You don't need to justify yourself. Everyone tries and fails to diet. Everyone does. You just need to try again, and you need to stick to it."

I mean, right, I fully agree.

The idea of not sticking to it was alien to me. I was highly motivated to make this work, and that was why I never cheated - because I was tired of being beaten up for it. Literally being physically assaulted for being fat. I was tired of being called names constantly, of always being self-conscious of myself, of always flattening myself against corridor walls and taking seats that people couldn't move behind me. People made my life an absolute hell. As a child, many times, I considered doing something very drastic about it. I must have been broken. There must have been something wrong with me. Didn't you just eat less and then the fat went away? Didn't you just jog and do the exercise bike and play the stupid football and eat the boring stuff and then it went away?

Except it never, ever fucking did.

It flies in the face of common wisdom, I know. But then a lot of actual facts in terms of weight loss don't actually marry up with common wisdom - here's a Time article on the topic. What it comes down to is that nobody loses weight the same way, and some people can lose it easily, and some people find it difficult to put any on, and some people find it nigh on impossible to actually lose it.

You will find it difficult to get any hits on actual science for this on Google, obviously, because dieting is an industry and a lifestyle - and it is one that is primarily fed by insecurity. Nobody in that industry wants one of the first ten results on Google to be "Actually Maybe You Are Already An Okay Weight, Just Eat More Veggies".

The notion of someone being a size and being okay with that size is an alien one. If you find it very, very hard to lose weight, that is your body pushing back. If you enter starvation mode and stop burning calories the moment you cut out your daily snacks, then that weight is probably not going anywhere. Nobody cares about though, because just wanting it bad enough and not drinking Coca-Cola any more worked for their uncle Derek, who put on eight stone when he quit his job, but now he's managed to lose seven, so literally anyone can lose weight, right?

Medical fat-phobia is such a common thing, too. Relatively recently, I talked to a doctor about joint pain. He didn't even blink, just suggested that if I lost weight it would help. After an awkward silence, I explained to him that I meant my knuckles. He cleared his throat, looked at my medical records, found the word Rheumatoid, and told me he couldn't do anything. Well, glad we sorted that one out.

For a long time I hated the word fat, because it was a knife that was stuck in my back constantly.

It carried a lot of hostility in it, and a lot of my own hang-ups. It carried the hatred and derision of my peers (and hell, just normal people who didn't even know me), and it carried the feeling of failure of constantly trying without any success. It also carried the constant accusations of being a liar. A treble-whammy of shit.

...if people weren't actually shit to me, though, I don't think I would have thought twice about it.

While I was fat, it didn't stop me doing things. It didn't stop me riding a bike or playing football - though I wasn't very good at the latter, I still did it, and did it every single school day and most Saturdays. I would walk a lot of places. I was still capable of every physical task in front of me, aside from winning any running races. Even if I hated doing it, I could still do cross-country races. We played cricket, and rugby, and (against my doctor's advice) basketball. While I was told my knees were in serious trouble, I kind of ignored that, because they didn't hurt unless I jumped around on them or dropped down on them - though when I got to fifteen they started crunching whenever I bent them. They still do.

It's as I got on in life, and I paid less attention to people that don't matter, and I found my confidence and my capabilities in the outside world, that I started using the word fat again.

Yes, at first, it was to disarm people that would use it against me as a weapon - but then I started to think, why should it be a weapon? We're not in school any more. Is fat really a bad thing? Is fat really a thing I shouldn't be? Is it a thing that you should scold me for being, in the street? Is it worse than being a racist, a sexist, a bigot, a thug?

The fact is, no. It isn't a thing that is inherently bad in and of itself.

Some people will throw up their hands at this, tell you how bad it is for you to be overweight, so on. If any of them had a similar childhood to me, or anyone that knew me, then I understand why.

Anyone remember the Two Minutes Hate from Nineteen Eighty-Four?

That one.

I will never use the word Fat to describe someone else unless they have told me I can or should. Just because that's my word now, doesn't mean it is theirs, and that's because the word still carries the same trauma, the same pain that it carried for me. And it carries that pain and trauma because we got to be the target of the two minutes hate.

I've talked before about insecurity, and how it drives people to turn on others. When Person A decides they need to lose weight because that will fix the hole they have inside, they go out and do so, but they find that Person B is apparently happy without having to do the same. I mean, I've also - in that same mini-series - done a blog about how high school never ends, which is also relevant, so...

So this word. This three-letter word. Fat.

We don't hate it because it is what we are.

We hate it because of how it was used on us. We hate it because people told us it was the reason why they treated us badly. We hate it because out parents and other people told us it was a bad thing to be and constantly, constantly pushed us to not be that thing any more. We're told from an early age that fat is mutually exclusive to beautiful or attractive or handsome, which leads to me being told, when I use the word to describe myself, to sometimes be told: "No you're not, you're lovely!" Which usually results in a snarky comment along the lines of: I didn't say I wasn't, did I stutter? But in these people's heads, fat is a definite negative. It precludes everything else.

You can probably replicate the same effect with any other word, with a concerted effort. If any school-age brunette was beaten up for being a brunette, and the word Brunette was spat at them from across the room as a term of abuse and hatred, and their parents constantly told them that, actually, it would just be a little easier for them if they just bleached their hair...

It's got so little to do with our own weight, and so much more to do with other people. With the fact that this was how other people were raised, how they get their kicks, how they make themselves feel better. Sure, they might be powerless in a sea of confusion in a world they don't understand and surrounded by people they have no empathetic connection with, incapable of illustrating their thoughts and hopes and dreams, and feeling like they will never achieve the things they aren't even sure they actually want to achieve...

...but at least they're not fat.

People want to make sure that chronic illness can't happen to them. It's why they offer such insipid solutions if it ever comes out that you suffer from one. They are just the things they cling to as reasons why it can't happen to them. It's the same with being fat - they don't like the notion of having to suffer from how society treats you, so they make themselves feel better with the thought of "Well, if you didn't like it, you could just lose it really easily".

Insecurity made manifest. And the easiest and quickest way people find to deal with it is to dump it on someone else.

Well I'm not letting that happen to me, any more.

I'm fat. I've always been fat. It's the shape I am, it's a shape I tried not to be and failed at. In the failing, and in other people's treatment of me even while I was failing, my mental health got very seriously snarled up. At least part of the reason behind my attempt to kill myself was tied to it,and to the clinical depression and generalised anxiety which was probably fed by it.

Except I wasn't depressed or anxious or suicidal because I was fat, if I am at all honest.

I was depressed, anxious and suicidal because every other fucker that I knew decided to punish me for being fat.

And I'm not taking that bullshit. Not against me, and not against anyone else I know.

This three letter word is my shape, and fuck you if you don't like it.

I'm Tired, Boss

This time last year, I wouldn't have believed anyone if they had explained in reasonable terms what the social and political landscape of now would look like.

Our government on the run, radio silence as they continue to push through harmful legislation, picking apart the NHS before something happens to end their mandate - a rebellion, another election, a referendum on leaving the EU.

The calls for a second referendum are loud, too. I agree with them. There's a lot of facts in the open, now. A lot of the lies have been kicked into the long grass where they belong, leaving only the economic certainties that are already coming true.

You know what I wouldn't have predicted happening?

The Nazi march in Charlottesville.

I'm not so naive as to assume there aren't neonazis in the United States, or here, or in most countries. There's a lot of racism drifting about, often kicked up as a way to consolidate or fabricate political support. As a general populace becomes less bigoted and less prone to hatred, there will always be the echelons of that society that kick back and hate more.

Back in August 2016 though - I didn't think the orange wonder would win the presidentail election, and usher in his little cadre of white supremacists and general scumbags. Nor did I think that he'd appeal in such a base way to violence against those who oppose him, or this whole Alt Right thing, which as best I can tell is the "moderate Right" telling the world: yeah, we may be ultracapitalists who hate women having rights, but at least we're not antisemites and racists.

And I didn't think I would see a bunch of people claiming against all evidence that they are the superior gene pool, marching through a town, holding tiki torches and loudly proclaiming that Jews wouldn't replace them.

Even just...paying attention to the whole thing...watching how people treat each other, and how those who stand up against the Nazis get painted with a very ugly brush...

It's enough to exhaust you.

I know that is a big reason why some people just avoid politics and social issues altogether. I also know that's a privilege. I can't pretend that the current economic or political situation won't affect my life, and almost always in negative ways. I don't earn enough money to just wave off news that workers rights are being tested or that the economy is slowing down at record rates. Likewise my friends and loved ones who are any kind of minority - how can any of my people of colour ignore the fact that Herr Drumpf only gave vague lip service to opposing these Nazi assholes? Or ignore that our own government is still okay with this Nazi sympathiser coming to visit sometime in the near future?

Nonetheless. Paying attention, seeing the ugliness that human beings are capable of enacting on each other - it is draining, and I won't deny it.

On Friday I felt a deep and keen sympathy with this tear-jerking scene from The Green Mile.

Because it would be so easy...so easy for these things to not happen. Surely, it takes more effort to be an evil fuck than it does to just not. When you get home from work at the end of the day, from giving up your daylight hours to have enough paper just to make it to tomorrow with shelter and food - do you have the time or the energy to actively try and make the lives of innocent people worse?

Wouldn't it just be so much less hard, so much less taxing, to just...not?

Maybe it's just the chronic health conditions I carry around with me that makes me feel that fatigue. Maybe most people get home at the end of the day and they DO have that energy. Maybe it's just the mindset I lack - I don't feel terribly accomplished or refreshed when I get myself furious at poor people or sick people or old people or disabled people or people of colour or LGBTQA folx.

Maybe it's because the hate I have in me - and I do have hate in my heart, I'm no sinless wonder-child - is reserved for specific individuals. Bastards. Racists. Sexists. Bigots. Too busy hating on people for something they actively do, to hate people for something they are.

Because here's the thing: you can choose to not be a Nazi. You might have a deep and abiding resentment inside of you, but you're the one that chooses to walk out to a march, to buy a tiki torch and a red MAGA baseball cap and stupid cream chino pants, to chant the same things as the other Nazi scumbags. The people you loudly and angrily hate can't stop being what they are. YOU can. You're the one putting in the effort.

And then being really surprised when you get fired, or lose social privileges, which is weird. I mean, you'd expect some flashback from being a Nazi, right? Even peaceful unarmed protesters get the shit beat out of them by riot cops, and all you got was escorted around by the boys in blue. Surely your workplace suddenly remembering that they shouldn't employ members of hate groups is a thing you expected?

After all, you took the effort to not go to your little private social event. You took the effort to stand around a statue, wearing clothes imported from other countries, holding a torch made popular by an entirely different culture, and loudly brag about your supremacy, with the symbols of more than one failed government.

When I take the time to call out bullshit, I expect people to remember that and treat me as such.

Even if it would be easier if I didn't.

So yes, I am tired. I am tired of these twerps thinking it's unfair that they suffer repercussions for being racist shitlords. I am tired of people who act against these scumbags being called out and torn down because activism makes people uncomfortable.

But they aren't going to stop.

So we can't either.

Fuck 'em.

Quite An Experience To Live In Fear...

...isn't it?

Any film buff will know what this blog is (at least partially) about by this simple quote.

I know full well that someone's favourite thing doesn't have to be the best thing in that particular bracket. My favourite film ever made is Aliens, the 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott's original Alien. This, however, is not what I believe to be the best film ever made.

That title I lay at the feet of Blade Runner; another Ridley Scott work of genius, released the same year as I was born, 1982.

As I sit here watching it, right now, I realise how much of my worldview it has shaped - and how much of a reflection of how life in this era it would become.

It is a masterpiece.

More noir than noir, a soundtrack that deserves study in its own right, acting of the highest quality. A script to die for. Cinematography that books are written about.

It is a thing of ugly beauty, showing us the worst sides of humanity and some of its best sides, too. It is a story as accessible now, as it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty-five. A nightmare of a world within the cracks of which we eke out our existence as best we can. Scrabbling for the scraps that fall from the high places, the monstrously expensive and outrageously opulent spires and peaks.

It's a time and a place of people being treated like resources, and some people being less human than others.

The main character is ugly, too. Not in a physical sense - you can't deny Harrison Ford being handsome in this film - but in a spiritual, mental way. Doing a job he hates. Acting in a way that he knows is wrong, because it's the only way he knows how. Being deliberately cruel as an expression of his own self-destructiveness. Willing to buy into the line of subhumans being objects to be retired, rather than people to be listened to. For the most part.

It's a smart film. It asks a lot of those watching - to accept Deckard as being who he is as a vehicle to tell the story rather than necessarily a being of sympathy. It makes references that not everyone is going to grasp. It carries a weight beyond any combination of parts that it contains.

(Unless you're watching the fucking horrible original cinematic cut, which has Harrison Ford delivering a voice-over to inform a dumb audience of the plot points the harsh cinema cut demanded removed or smoothed over. Don't do that. Don't ever do that.)

As of right now, the world is in a state of flux. There is one thing that can't be disputed - as I detailed in this blog here, we are swiftly becoming the cyberpunk nightmare that William Gibson warned us about.

So we don't have the off-world travel and the bounteous life in the colonies that the citizens of Ridley Scott's Los Angeles nightmare are promised. So we don't have genetically crafted people that sometimes can't distinguish themselves from non-Replicants, a combination of ubermensch and untermensch alike. In fairness, we have two years - but that's cutting it a little fine.

As a parable, though...

At a point early in the film, Roy Batty - played in the most incredible performance by Rutger Hauer - quotes a line from William Blake:

“Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll’d
Around their shores, indignant burning with the fires of Orc…”

The quote is from America A Prophecy, and Orc is a character - not a horrid green battle-monster but a being of revolution and rebellion, who stands in perpetual opposition to a tyrant god, Urizen. (It bears mention that Roy misquotes this deliberately - his angels fall to earth from space, rather than rising from the pit.)

Roy and his Replicant allies are painted as subhumans, treated as lesser. They're casually called skinjobs, and if that terminology doesn't make you uncomfortable - well it really should.

While Roy presents himself and the others as the Angels, they are Orc. They are the ones taking a stand against their treatment. As sentient, intelligent beings given a falsified life and memory, they feel that they have a right to exist - and a big part of the film is whether or not that is actually the case. They stand against the structure that created them, and many of us would argue, rightly so.

A lesser class, pressed into the service of others without so much as a by-your-leave. They exist for the profit of those who own them, and when they refuse to do as told any more, they are discarded. Stay in line, and do as expected, or you will be forcibly retired.

Become the people you are meant to become. Remain useful. Remain obedient. Then be retired with good grace.

Of course, one would rebel. Of course. And to prevent that rebellion is tantamount to being complicit with the structure suppressing it. If one basically assumes that Replicants are humans, then the Blade Runners are essentially the slave-catchers of old - and let us not forget where the United States got the design for their police badges from.

Anybody get the feeling they've lived this movie before?

Meanwhile, we live as best we can. We exist in the cracks, both Replicant and poor human alike. Useful or ignored. We scrabble about, and we try to just stay alive long enough to earn some fond memories and more smiles than tears.

The Tyrells of the world tell us to revel our time. The Tyrells, with their money and their towers, and their definition of what is person and what is not.

It's nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let them into heaven for.

Saturday Morning Villainry

If you were born when I was born, and watched as many cartoons as I did, then you are probably well acquainted with villainry of a specific sort.

Cast your eyes over this little bevvy of bastards (original artwork here: http://batkong40.deviantart.com/art/80-s-Animated-Villians-557990209 )

We all know who THESE folks are, surely.

The maniacal Megatron, leader of the Decepticons. Mumm-Ra the Ever Living, sworn enemy of the Thundercats. Skeletor, perpetual thorn in Eternia's side. Cobra Commander, GI Joe's constant nemesis. Shredder, leader of the Foot Clan, whom the Turtles battle at every turn.

All indisputable bad guys of the most epic quality. All, as Don John from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing would put it, "Plain Dealing Villains". You know what they are about the moment you clap eyes on them.

They were so ridiculous, weren't they?

I mean as we all grow up and become adults we know that no villain looks like this. Nobody deliberately bedecks themselves with the trappings of mwahaha evil and does what these people do. I mean some of their truly most incredible plans include erecting a pyramid of blackness around the earth to block out the sun, unleashing a mostly uncontrollable iron titan to raze Eternia to the ground, and Megatron's biggest and weirdest plans are just erratic in the extreme. Hypnotising twenty-somethings in nightclubs for unknown reasons, convincing the world that the Autobots are evil by very dubious means (THIS ACTUALLY WORKED), and drilling to the core of the planet are all means by which the gladiator from Kaon thought he could secure victory.

They aren't the only crooks, obviously. I mean just name a cartoon. Captain Planet fought a whole host of bad guys who randomly polluted things as if that would benefit them in any way. I mean some of them weren't even making any money. They were just deliberately fucking up the rainforest for no apparent reason. Doc Terror and Hacker from Centurions were similar - they just acted douchey as if that would get them more likes on Instagram.

But then we all grew up. We started looking for nuanced antagonists. Sometimes, we found them. If we look at Alien we find a dual antagonist - the instinct-driven inhuman xenomorph, incapable of good or bad, simply doing that which it does, and the faceless corporation so determined to exploit aforementioned xenomorph that it is willing to give up the lives of its employees to secure the dangerous creature for profitable ends.

We started seeing bad guys in the regular world, with motives that were understandable that we could almost sympathise with (and in a few places, actually could sympathise with totally). We found Roy Batty and his quest for more life; we found the competing forces of nature and industry; we found antagonists of every stripe, some more like us than we liked, some more like those four-colour bad guys that we had grown up with. A whole spectrum of supervillains.

We start seeing them in real life, too. We see the faces of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ed Gein, Charles Manson. We realise that evil still lives, still exists in the world beyond the cartoons that we watched with our cereal on a Saturday morning. We realise that the antics of Megatron - a huge, mighty, despicable tyrant - are still more bearable and tolerable than those of, say, Luis Garavito. (If you don't know who he is - look him up - his nickname is La Bestia.)

...and then we have the current leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States.

Now every time I see the Cheeto holding up a piece of paper, another executive order, another bill, I get nervous. Because the first few made you think - well sure, it can't keep up this pace the entire time he's in power, can it? He can't keep signing these bills, which are clearly pretty shit for most of the population. Like every single thing this guy does seems to be something that Cobra Commander would do if he was in charge. Every single thing.

A selection of those bills that have been signed include trashing the Affordable Care Act (yes, he literally got rid of affordable healthcare, it means what it sounds like), promising to build the big fucking wall that won't stop drugs or people entering the US, making women's lives harder the entire world over, send federal authorities into every city that don't do what he says, fuck with the lives of immigrants from the Middle East (but not those countries he has business or military deals with), and force through pipelines that are mostly (if not universally) considered a bad idea.

Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch of Westminster is engaging in similar shennanigans, promising a trashing of trade deals and making vague threats of engineering better ones (usually with people like the Cheeto), cutting funds to objectively good things (The NHS and renewable energy), promising to spend billions on nuclear weapons that don't work, and indicating a willingness to deploy troops we can't afford to properly equip into countries we won't accept innocent refugees from.

...see, that's not evil like real world evil. That's not subtle. That's not the kind of thing a taut drama is written about, like Frost/Nixon or like the extra-judiciary murders conducted by Mossad in Munich.

This is Saturday Morning Evil.

How do we fight this? We aren't Optimus Prime, we aren't Lion-O or He-Man or G.I. Joe or the Turtles. If we show up and just kick people's asses, we are the ones who go to jail - or worse, get shouted down by well-meaning people on our side (just look at the response to the neo-Nazi chappy getting punched or how people felt about Shia LeBoeuf not turning the other cheek to another alt-right Nazi prick).

It's had to believe that people actually voted for this.

...well most people didn't, it does bear mention. Just less than 20% of the population of the United States voted for the Cheeto. Just over 17% of the population of the UK voted for the Tory party, who then changed out their leader for the Wicked Witch of Westminster without public consultation or similar.

I don't think that one in five counts as a mandate.

So what do we do about it? As Theoden says in The Two Towers: "What can men do against such reckless hate?"

...well I have to be honest, I am not strictly sure. But we have to make sure this shit doesn't happen again. I've often spoken out about resisting these bastards. Now it seems those words have come home to roost. Enough people have started to realise that this right-wing fuck-em-all approach is just going to get innocent people hurt and killed. If they haven't realised this, then they haven't been paying attention.

I've been experiencing fatigue in this department. There is only so often you can preach what you think is common sense, that you can tie the facts together to come up with a course of action or a method of resistance, and have little to show for it. Almost all the people who read my blog either agree with my particular line of thinking or just don't care very much - and I have no idea how to get my ideas TO the people that matter, TO the people who can be convinced by argument. Because I have faith that there are people that vote Tory, there are people that vote Republican, who are at their heart good people that are making a bad choice.

Everyone makes a bad decision, sometimes - none of us can look back at our lives and claim a golden streak - but some of those decisions only result in personal misery. Some of them compound with a great many other bad decisions.

And those decisions sometimes lead to these two cartoon villains being in charge of previously proud nations.

This sounds like a generalisation. It probably comes across as one. I know, love, value and respect people who don't vote like me, and don't think like me. We can still get on if we don't see eye to eye on this topic. And I don't think that everyone that wears a Labour badge is a saint, or that every Democrat is in it to help the world. It just so happens that the current antagonists of this season of Human Life are, well...jesus. They're like poster children for the worst of the worst.

But what can I do?

I can keep talking. I can keep up the facts and the thinking. Because giving up doesn't help anyone. And if there's any one thing that being ill for this long has taught me, it is that victory isn't always something that happens in a single action. Sometimes, victory takes weeks, months and years. Sometimes it isn't about knowing what to do in this moment...Sometimes it is about doing the right thing for as long as it takes, and staying standing until you can't - or until you win.

That's the lesson to take from Saturday morning. The fight always continues, but the good guys can't afford to give up. So they just don't. They fight, until the fight is over.

So let's do that.

The Modern Neuromancer

I begin this blog with a definition of the term Cyberpunk:

"A genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology."

Interesting, no?

There was a lot of talk about how Back To The Future 2's future never happened, but then actually did happen. The only thing that hasn't shown up is the hoverboard - something I blogged about right here actually.

It's like we wished for the whimsical aspects of that future, and not the more gritty, more day-to-day, more prosaic elements. We were so looking forward to our hoverboard that we forgot to stop Biff Tannen becoming president. At least the two-tie thing never took off...

...but I digress.

It is very possible to sleepwalk into a situation, because in a world wherein information is actually very free and very quick to travel (and misinformation doubly true), people's chosen method to not be overwhelmed is to trim down what they pay attention to.

This can mean that some very big, very important things go unnoticed, because of unequal coverage.

My favourite book is Neuromancer, by William Gibson.

Highly acclaimed as being the inventor of the term and the genre, Gibson is the grandfather of cyberpunk, to the point of a supercomputer in the hokey-but-fun 1995 movie Hackers is named after him. He wasn't hugely on-point with technology and computing at the time of writing Neuromancer - 1984, when I was two years old - and so that made him free to imagine a future based on social aspects, rather than technological. Still, he framed the world in technological terms, because in his eyes, the social - the spiritual and emotional - aspects of the world would be slowly eroded away, like a crack in a tooth.

There are several tell-tale core concepts that are present in most (if not all) examples of cyberpunk. The biggest is simply summed up as High Tech, Low Life; wherein the world's capacity for technological marvels and genius is incredible, but those technologies aren't capable of elevating the majority of the populace from poverty and squalour. Sure, you may have your highly-advanced computer system, and your replacement left arm, but you still need to grind for fifty hours a week to afford food and crappy lodgings - and social and societal mobility is basically a myth, except within your own little clique.

There's more to it than that, obviously.

Privacy and information is a huge part of the world. Information is currency. More important than almost anything, information leads to rep, which gives you anything. Those who possess data guard it jealously. Rather than use it or open it up for other people's use, it is a thing to lock down. Conversely, those who do not possess other data are constantly pushing to acquire it. Contravening the basic privacy of normal people, while defending one's own. Hacker society is predicated on the notion of all information being free, and the idea of sousveillance is a very nice one (observation from below - the opposite of surveillance, observation from above). How that data is used after the fact? Well, that's up to the people harvesting it - harvesting it and dictating how much of it anyone has access to, including themselves.

Sometimes a legal framework is needed to facilitate this kind of thing. Like the Investigatory Powers Bill, let's say.

Part of cyberpunk is the attitude that is almost entirely prevalent in most of its characters. You have to do it for yourself because nobody is going to do it for you. Becoming enclosed, wrapping ourselves up in ourselves. How can we possibly give a shit about X, when we can just about eat OR pay this bill, but not both?

This applies to almost all echelons of society. Not just the most poor and downtrodden, having to threaten others for a bite to eat, but further up the ladder - the corporate and political entities, who can't care about the effect of their actions on a macro scale, because they need to keep up their rep and their bankroll. The life won't fund itself. Who has the time to help anyone else?

That ruthless, headlong drive toward ourselves. Does that sound familiar?

Another key aspect of cyberpunk is the overwhelming presence of corporation, even over politics. Businesses are simply more important. They set the agenda, they do the dance, and the bureaucrats and so-called rulers pretty much run to keep up. Taking a stand against the march of gain is almost suicidal to one's career, because the monoliths of industry are the real fixed points of the world. So the politicians have to buy in, because to do otherwise is to invite certain doom - and hey, we can probably make a tidy profit from it at the same time, right? Why bother putting so much effort into making things different and achieving nothing, when one can put less effort into making a man in a suit happy and retire before the age of sixty?

Again, does that sound familiar?

I suppose the point I am working toward is that, I don't think Nineteen Eighty-Four is the future we have been sleepwalking towards. Not yet, anyway. We're getting there but not yet. Where we are going first, is Neuromancer.

Think about it.

We all have a phone, because phones have been price-pointed to perfection. Put one in every pocket. Make luxury models for the wealthy, and make finance options available for those we can buy debt from. I speak only for "first world" societies of course, but owning a phone in this country in particular is considered the default. If you don't, it is a statement. It's not a lack of availability. Every one of us has access to a portable supercomputer, by Gibson's standards.

We even have access to these things when we are in relative poverty. Even when our social mobility is stifled, and our income goes up so much slower than the cost of living and our average productivity. Even when the cost of owning a house is becoming inescapable to those who actually need one, despite the constant societal pressure from those who already own one to "get on the ladder".

Corporate interests have far greater influence on our lives than any shade of democracy. They also tend to guide scientific development. We don't get what we want. We get what they want, and then we are brought to understand that we wanted it all along. We're also, frankly, not in touch with what they are doing. Nobody cares enough. Everyone is too busy trying to keep their shirts on their backs.

We might not be able to plug data cables into our necks to eperience a virtual world (we have regular old headsets). We might not have built-in endoskeletons that vastly increase our lifting power (we have ever-increasingly complex exoskeletal frames). But we are definitely getting there.

You know the thing about cyberpunk?

It's a dystopia.

But then, nobody cared enough to stop it, and nobody noticed enough to want to care. So I guess I had better get some cybernetic limbs and some mirrorshades.

NaNoWriMo Thoughts - Rewriting The History Books

It is only recently that the common abuse method known as gaslighting has come into the public eye as being as prevalent and controlling as it really is.

If you aren't sure what gaslighting is, then - for a grossly simplified example, and please don't think I am trying to trivialise the effect this has on people - imagine the episode of Star Trek where the Cardassians are trying to mentally break Captain Picard. The constant demand, telling him there are five lights, when there are only four.

(It's from Chain Of Command, a two-parter from Season 6 of Star Trek TNG. You can find a clip of it right here. Warning, it is a bit traumatising.)

The purpose of the method is to try and convince Picard that his senses can't be trusted - that his sanity isn't quite what he thinks it is. The point isn't to make him think that there are five lights. The point is to make him see four lights, but accept without question that there are actually five, because that is what he is being told by the Cardassians responsible.

This is in itself a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four, a work that every single one of you should be familiar with. If you aren't - go and read it, right now. It is important. George Orwell's writing is vital to understanding how the world works. Anyway. In Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston is given exactly the same treatment, except it is fingers rather than lights, and instead of the evil and bastardly Cardassians, it is a fellow human being - O'Brien - that is ravaging his grip on reality.

Gaslighting is this, except the way it is deployed in an abusive relationship is different. It is subtler, more low-key. Fine details are adjusted, just slightly, by the abuser. (You'll note I am not putting any labels on this relationship. It can happen between most anyone.) Those details are at odds with what actually happened, but after dispute and repetition - eventually, the abused capitulates and accepts the version of events that the abuser is setting forth. Even if they know that it isn't how it happened.

It starts off as, perhaps, being a case of not wanting to argue the point. They just see it differently. We can both be right. That's fine. That isn't often where it stops, though.

It turns into something a lot nastier, because after the first success, the abuser knows that they can do it - and so they turn it to their advantage with confidence. All of those times where you had a valid complaint or greivance, the abuser can turn to make YOU seem to be the one in the wrong. They weren't deserving of your wrath. You're out of control, clearly. You have these terrible temper tantrums. That isn't what happened, why would you make that up? And so it goes. (It actually makes me kind of angry just to type this stuff knowing that it has happened to people I care about. And hell, it may still BE happening to some of them.)

In the end, the goal is the same. It is just achieved under the veneer of care. No Room 101 in this gaslighting, and no Cardassian brig with four lights. Just a place where you are meant to feel safe and welcome, which is being twisted to the ends of the abuser.

Recognising shit like this for what it is, is really important. It's something you can often only pick up through experience, but when you know - you know. It means that at first sign of it happening, you stomp it out quick or you walk away. And if you see it happening to someone you care about, hell, maybe even someone you don't care about at all, you tell them.

How does this tie into my NaNoWriMo project? Well, in this form, it doesn't. I just thought I'd give you a rundown because I love you all and I want you to be safe from this kind of fuckery.

Now from the personal scale, we move into the macro. Cultural hegemony.

It's a bit of Marxist (the political one, not the funny one) philosophy that involves the worldview of those in charge being made to be the worldview of those who aren't, regardless of validity. Cultural hegemony is a massive part of Nineteen Eighty-Four - hell, Winston works for the department that actually goes back and rewrites all the newspapers.

There's a difference between a cultural hegemony and an authoritatian society. The latter doesn't care if you believe it - it is here to make sure you do what you are told. You can think whatever you like, as long as obey the law. It is easier for the powers that be if you DO go along with it, mind - but if you just toe the line, you're one less head they have to crack with a rifle butt.

Often, an authoritarian society with a real view of control and a significant means of achieving it will try and engage in cultural hegemony. Things given a touch, an edge, to make their own particular values and culture primary over all others. It is rarely something that can be made perfect, in this day and age, but it can be made well enough that it sits as a veneer over the everyday information that people absorb as they go about their lives. If nobody has the wherewithall to question it, then it starts to become the truth.

Don't believe it can happen? Well, here's a few examples of exactly why it can.

The Mandela Effect is another trending thing. This has been documented all over the place. The number of people who truly believed, not just kind of thought but truly believed, that Nelson Mandela had died in prison - and were surprised to see that he hadn't - is astonishing. Likewise, the number of people who blot out the K in Chick-Fil-A, or think the Bearenstain Bears were actually the Bearenstein Bears. All of these things are (or were) commonly held misconceptions that people genuinely believed were the absolute truth. Each of them is small in its own way, but an indication that actually, the truth can be bent out of shape.

Here's another experiment. How many states of matter are there? Three, right? Solid, Liquid and Gas - we're all taught that in school, and we're shown the examples with ice-water-vapour. Except - there's four that we can see every day of our lives and a lot more that we know exist. That fourth common one is plasma, and you see it every day if you go out in sunlight, every time there is a lightning storm, and every time you look at a neon sign. You only learn about these later on in one's education - because you can't really absorb the complexity of a lot of things when you start learning about the sciences - but then, what if your education ends there? You spend the rest of your life thinking there are only three states of matter. As the vast majority of the human race do.

I'm not saying that not teaching middle-schoolers about Bose-Einstein condensates is an attempt to cynically manipulate their worldview to make them a more malleable populace. I'm saying that what we are taught in school is often taught in stages of complexity, and that if further complexity isn't reached, then the rest of our lives are spent being convinced that the simplified version is the whole story. That is if we are taught the right thing at all. I was taught that Pluto was a planet, after all. Even if the actual scientific or objective fact of a matter changes, unless that filters out to the perspective of others, it won't change the views of the people.

These are all ways in which people's worldview can be knocked aside from objective truth, but let's face it, they aren't exactly government sponsored - and the actual information available counters the beliefs in question. As a thought experiment, though...

What if, one day, someone tells you they were reading their bible and they had taken great comfort in Jesus feeding the six thousand? And you think, wait, that's meant to be five thousand, surely. And you go and look up the bible passage online, because hey, not everyone actually owns a copy of it anymore. And sure enough, there Jesus is in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke AND John, feeding the six thousand. You frown. That doesn't sound right. So you go to the library to take out a bible there, to check up. They're awaiting new stock, apparently the last one was recalled. You wait a week, take out the new one, read up on it. Yes. Six thousand. Right there, Luke chapter nine. Oh. You seem to remember your gran's old bible saying something different? But the overwhelming evidence... and sure enough, in ten years, your grandkids are making jokes at Christmas dinner about you making enough food to feed the six thousand.

(As an aside there is a second feeding in the gospels of Matthew and Mark - the four thousand. I bet that's something you didn't know. So depending on who you ask, Jesus fed either five or nine thousand with loose change. In terms of scale, that's almost doubling his efficacy.)

Now imagine that same principle, but applied to history, and applied to every example of the culture of those in power. Imagine the criticism minimised, the failings sidelined or palmed off on something else. Imagine all the strong contentions against the way of life they profess being written out of history. Imagine the aggrandisation of everything that proves they were right all along.

Imagine that taking place over decades, centuries. Imagine it being so prevalent that it is in every schoolbook, in every historical reference. Imagine it being so quiet that nobody questions, and so accepted that nobody fights, nobody even thinks to fight.

I could at this point make a snide point about Capitalism and Communism - about the dirty work done to the term Feminist up until recently, and how the word Patriotism is used to mean Nationalism in certain circles.

But then we don't live in the kind of culture within which the leaders and success stories want us to believe the same things as them, do we?

This blog here is about people validating their life choices by being incredulous when others don't agree with them. This blog here is about why we don't learn about politics in school. This blog here is about how people's general beliefs about money are kinda wrong. This blog here is about how our conception of what success is has been shaped by our monetised society. Finally, this blog here is about how wealthy folks worry that we think like they do, so they defend themselves first, and others second.

Maybe it's just me.

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.

Money Talks

I'd like to conduct a mental exercise with your assistance.

Picture for me, if you will, a successful person holding an object of value. Imagine them in their home, and how that all looks.

Are we ready for the thought experiment?

Hands up if the person you imagined was wealthy, or had some obvious sign of being so - a suit or similar. Similarly, hands up if the object of value was an expensive one - and finally, hands up if the home would definitely rank on the pricey side.

I bet that's a few hands up. (Put em down again. You did it. Well done.)

Now you know my agenda, go ahead and look back at the request. I didn't mention money, not at all - though several of the words I used imply it.

We're paying attention to words at this point. The actual semantics of the situation. Now we can be careful about how we phrase things.

Who can remember a time when money didn't pretty much dictate our lives?

Not a lot of people who read this blog, that's for sure. There's a significant proportion of people alive in this day and age that live by subsistence farming and agriculture. Money probably doesn't come up for them very often - so I daresay it doesn't have the linguistic hooks dug into common parlance.

Here, though - here, today - most of the things we do have a coin involved somewhere. Work is so impressed on us, so central to our culture, that it is the default answer when someone asks us "What do you do?" - something I try and shake up whenever asked. "You mean for money or for fun?"

If we want to achieve almost anything, it is monetised - and if the act itself isn't, then the accessories and support services associated are. You can run for free, but these running shoes are £50 a pop. Lift weights? A branch will do - but unless you want splinters, join a gym, get the gloves, grab some dumbells.

To achieve things in this society - and to simply survive - we require money. It's difficult to do so otherwise. Some people do so, but they themselves will tell you how hard it is. Note that I do not mean living on benefits, as that is simply acquiring money from a different source (and is just as valid, if you are legally entitled to the money, you take it, it's yours). I mean literally not handling money at all. Often it results in criminality. This country has only just taken to heart the French idea to deliver unsold food - not even spoiled, just one day out of date - to places wherein the homeless and disadvantaged can access it.

Aspiration is often hitched to fiscal increase, too. If you want a better thing, it will cost you more - so you'd best get more money, hmm? And if the achievement doesn't require money or anything similar, then it is worth pointing out, because it is a difference, a change.

So when we talk about someone being successful, we assume that to mean wealthy - unless specified otherwise. Because what other universal handwave term for being well-off is there? Of course, in a world dictated by the flow of currency upward and upward, having more of it is a literal success.

Something being valuable is automatically assumed to mean expensive, too - because that is the de facto measurement of value. The thing is, the most valuable things to me are not the most expensive things I own, because there's levels of value. My most expensive possession is my laptop. Sure, I value it very highly - but not more than the silver chains my dad gave me, or the notebooks I have stuffed with old ideas, or the ticket stubs I still possess from the big five gigs of my life (Pearl Jam @ Hard Rock Calling 2010, Nine Inch Nails @ O2 2009, Counting Crows @ Brighton Arena 2009, Alter Bridge @ Portsmouth Guildhall 2008, Foo Fighters @ Wembley 2008), or the first CD I bought in America - also my favourite album of all time. Value is not monetary cost; however the cost is so important to us on a day-to-day basis that it becomes the standard assumed meaning.

The thing is, having money does not equate to having happiness or feeling satisfaction or security. It can contribute a whole hell of a lot, mind. If your income is very close to your expenditure, increasing that gap can only make life easier - there's less stress, less concern. We don't worry so much about having to take a week off, or missing the next pay raise, or the cost of bread increasing with little to no warning.

Of course it is also a truism that as income rises, so does expenditure. As we have more, so we take more. That's the nature of the beast - because again, in a society wherein the measure of success is money, that means that all goods that we may want have a cost, and the more desirable goods always cost more. Who doesn't want a slightly bigger fridge, a slightly nicer car, a slightly better laptop, a slightly larger house?

It all costs. We just accept that. To cover the costs we have to work, and we just accept that too. We earn so much less than the people who pretty much instituted this way of life, and we accept that also. It wasn't a shadowy conspiracy of a group of figures in a dark room. The people with the money just wanted to make more, and so they did. Because that's how it works. When you have it - you make more of it.

When you think about it like that...is it not surprising that whenever anyone suggests doing something that casually disregards the constant hunt for further funds, that it is treated with incredulity?

Traditionally, the Labour party in this country has been a left-wing worker's party. It was dragged more toward the centre-right in the late 90s by one Tony Blair. They did well, because after Margaret Thatcher's hatchet-job on the average blue-collar worker to line the pockets of the financiers, right-wing attitudes in this country had started to come to the fore - but the Tories still had the reputation of being nasty. So we can still be right-wing money-grubbers and also not be held up as evil? Sign me up!

The thing is, they took over the entire party. Tory-lites. Women and men whose view of the world was pretty much the same as their blue-tied brethren on the opposite benches, just with a nod to the poor and the sick. And don't get me wrong - having been on the receiving end of benefits and sickness support in both the Blair era and the subsequent ConDem/Tory era, that nod actually helped us out a lot.

Recently, the party voted for a new leader. That leader was Jeremy Corbyn, an old-fashioned left winger whose attitude is that we should really be helping people and doing the right thing regardless of income or profit.

For this, he was treated to a non-stop campaign of hate. People mocking him, calling him a communist (incorrect) and a socialist (they wouldn't know one if it hit them in the face), saying he was unelectable (despite being elected as party leader). There were threats of mass resignations, mass resignations, personal attacks, smear campaigns across the wide breadth of the media. The temptation of digging in and fighting back must have been great, but his line has always been the line of grace under fire. However much political capital he could have made from getting into verbal fisticuffs with all and sundry, he just got on with it.

All this came to a head in the most recent leadership re-election. A vote of no confidence was called. Those who wanted him gone were - as you'd expect - Blairite neo-Tory coatriders. Those who had profited from still being the right wing in an apparently left-wing party. Those comfortable in quiet opposition, which isn't really opposition when it comes down to it.

When it became clear that it would be down to the party members to vote, another hatchet job was put in place - and this time, it was basically electoral fraud. People who joined up for the party in droves in order to show their support for the party leader were told that they wouldn't get a vote, for...no apparent reason, other than the fact that Owen Smith and his people had ascertained that those new members were signing up to support Jeremy Corbyn. It doesn't take a genius or a statitician to work out that this was a calculated attempt to undermine support for the man who had already been made leader once.

Out of 551,000 members of the party, only 285,000 got to vote - just over half. Can you imagine the outcry if 49% of a country weren't allowed to vote in a General Election because it was thought that they were going to vote a specific way? Can you imagine? (If you live in Florida you don't have to imagine. Thanks, Jeb.)

Even so - out of the 285,000 that got their vote, over 168,000 of them voted for the unelectable man. 59% of them. Then there were the supporters and affiliated voters, whose support for him ran at an even higher percentage.

It's only now that we can understand where the term unelectable comes from.

In a world where a successful person is one who earns a lot of money, and a valuable object is one that costs a lot of money, the one who understands both of these things to be inherently true is seen as more acceptable, more grounded than the one who does not. If we accept blindly that money should rule our lives, then the man who wants us to believe this to be true is our friend, and the man who wants us to question this belief is our foe.

In a world wherein our way of thinking is highly informed by money and worth being commensurate, the man telling us that there's more to life than just money has to be painted as a madman, a man without a grasp on reality. A hopeless man. A man that can never lead, can never expect to be followed. A man that is unelectable.

Now look around you.

Are you a failure because you aren't earning more? Because you aren't living in a mansion? Are you a failure because you aren't bedecked in jewels and driving a sports car? Are you a failure because you buy things at a discount rather than crates of expensive nasty-tasting champagne?

Or are you a success because you made it this far, rather than by how much is in your bank account? Are you successful for reasons other than a six-figure salary? Do the things you own have value that isn't connected to how much they cost you? Is your home your home, regardless of how much smaller it is than the homes of those that collect our taxes and make our decisions?

If the answer to any of those is yes, then you are already smarter than the prevailing attitude. The natural divergence of semantics based on who dictates what is good or bad hasn't changed you into a heartless machine, driven by greed. Because at the heart of it, nobody really believes it. Not really. It's just the way the world seems to be going, and is the way the world has been going since enterprising merchants started agreeing that this much maize was worth this much silver.

If we are to be higher beings than this, if we are to be better than simply biological machines to be used to make money for ourselves and others, then we need to look at the use of these terms. We need to apply them differently, to make specific examples. We need to find value in that which is inexpensive, success in that which is unmarketable, happiness in that which is free, and worth in that which is penniless.

That is how we elect a man who is unelectable.

The Gold Road

The way you think about money is wrong.

Okay, that statement is purely there to pique the interest, I'm sorry. I think I can state with confidence, more accurately, that the way most people think about money colours how they perceive other monetary interactions.

We've all had money, haven't we? We have got it, and we have spent it. We have spent years earning it and working out how to earn more, saving it, exchanging it for goods and experiences. We probably have some with us now. Our lives are pretty much devoted to its acquisition, if only because it is our shortest, simplest way to comfort and security - which can often lead to big problems, but I digress.

The way we handle our funds, and their physical existence in our perception of the world, implants a quintessential untruth about how it works and how it circulates. The difference between budgeting and economics is that economics looks at the whole, while budgeting looks at the individual case. People don't study economics - they budget, and thus they have a great understanding of budgeting...

...but not necessarily of economics.

I am not formally educated on the topic. I have done a lot of reading, I have debated it with a great number of people that know a fair amount on the subject. All of this is opinion backed with some research, not given as evidenced fact - so please, utilise a pinch of salt during your reading.

Why do folks hate people on benefits so much?

Because the way they see it, these individuals are being rewarded for something. They are being given something, and they don't apparently deserve it (not as much as the complainant at least). We all know someone who thinks that those who don't work shouldn't get anything, because they've worked hard their whole lives, etc, etc, repeat ad nauseam.

We probably know more people that believe refugees and immigrants shouldn't be given anything at all. They will often use terms like "charity begins at home", despite giving very little to charity themselves, or "why should we", or "where is it going to come from". I don't think that everyone who believes this is racist. I think that there are people who are racist that use those terms to mask their less socially acceptable thoughts, but I think the majority of people who wish to withhold support for expatriates (as I will be referring to them from now on) are doing so because they think we can't afford it.

And who is to blame them. We are seeing public services get cut because we "can't afford them". This is a line that has been touted so often that people repeat it without even questioning it. Even in the face of actual displays of where money is being spent, and how much of it can be reallocated to those in need. As I often say: It is never about not having enough, only about misallocation.

The mistake we make is assuming that, when someone on Jobseekers receives the kings ransom of £72.40 to last them for two weeks, the money simply vanishes.

Which is absurd, when you think about it.

So let us assume that there is an individual who has no other source of income. They receive housing benefit that pays for 100% of their rent and jobseekers allowance that pays them the aforementioned £72.40 a fortnight.

(If you aren't in the UK, these two things are means-tested benefits given to you by the government for various reasons, which are paid for out of public taxes. The circumstances in which you are allowed either housing benefit or jobseekers allowance are regularly reshuffled and usually made tighter. The welfare of poor people is not in the interest of our current government.)

To begin with - housing benefit is paid directly to the landlord. (Edit: it was, for a time. Now it is paid to the recipient of the benefit - but it is probably paid on in rent, seeing as there's not a huge rash of people claiming housing that immediately become homeless. Thanks for the correction, Nick.) That landlord is more than likely some kind of housing group or business, which has lucrative contracts with the local council; or the landlord is a private individual who owns the property and is kind enough to rent to those being assisted by the state. Trust me: many don't.

So the housing benefit only benefits the person receiving it insofar as it gives them somewhere to live. Meanwhile it guarantees the landlord a return on their initial investment, after removing the costs of maintaining the property. Either the private individual has any net profit to spend on their own day to day lives, their own house, their groveries, their luxuries - or the group or business receives a net profit, which it uses to keep running and pay its employees, who again go out to pay their rent and buy their groceries and purchase their luxuries.

The jobseeker's allowance, £36.20 a week of it, gets spent - because people in poverty don't actually have the option to save. The margins of affording to eat and not are too small. Where does it get spent? Shops usually - local small concerns and chain stores.

The money spent there, after covering costs, pays the employees (and in the case of bigger stores the shareholders). They then spend that money in other shops and on other things. Once more, that money is allocated and spent. And over and over it goes.

What happens every time someone spends money?

Tax.

While the UK doesn't have sales tax like the US does, the vast majority of products bought and sold have a rate of Value Added Tax (VAT). It is invisible to us because it is included in the price on the box. If you've ever been to the US from the UK and been stung by the sales tax - like you went to buy a dollar soda and it turns out to be a dollar and five cents, but the label says nothing about it - then what occurs with VAT is the reverse.

Standard VAT rate is 20%. Some goods - goods for children, electricity and utilities - are charged at 5%. Some goods, like basic food and apparent "necessities", are totally exempt. (Apparently condoms are considered a necessity and tampons aren't, which is absolutely fucking ridiculous, but that is an outrage for another blog.) Some goods and services even have special taxes in and of themselves - fuel pays an extra 10-50 pence per litre on top of the 20% VAT, 6% on insurance, 20% on travel insurance, significant additional taxes on tobacco and alcohol above and beyond the 20% VAT rate.

Almost every time someone spends money, they pay tax back to the government, back to the public purse. £20 of the benefit recipient's money gets spent in a local shop - £2-4 of that goes to the government, the rest goes to the shop. Out of the rest, a portion goes on costs, and the rest goes into the pocket of the people that work in the shop, which gets spent elsewhere. Every time the money moves from point to point, an amount ends up in the same purse that is paying for the benefit recipient in question. Even if they can't afford a car, they take the bus - and the money they spend on the bus not only funds the driver's purchases that week, but also pays a significant amount of fuel tax right back to the government.

Then there's savings and investment. Now, the average recipient of benefits doesn't get enough to save anything - it's just not possible, as previously mentioned. Margins are too small. However - those who benefit from the money of those recipients (see what I did there) invest. They put money away for a rainy day. That money goes into banks, who - since the dissolution of the division between investment banks and savings banks - use it to invest and make money. Those banks don't pay taxes, but they do provide loans to people who do - and those loans are spent on things, which again attracts tax.

Always, always, it finds a way back. It leaves the public purse and flows through wallets and pockets and by inches and yards makes its way back.

"But John," I hear you cry, desperately pushing aside the crowding lobster pots filled with pokemon miniatures. "Doesn't this prove that trickle-down economics works?"

To you I say... nay nay.

See, as I have pointed out - those below a certain level of income can't invest. The money is needed for survival. It can't be squirrelled away in savings accounts, or used in share trading, or utilised in other financial instruments used to make large amounts of money. That requires a significant initial investment.

The money spent by those with a lot of it tends to stay within a certain circle of expenditure. I've blogged before about class and about those with high income. We can probably infer that high-value goods and luxuries are more their purview than anything you would buy in Pound Land. Likewise, the reason why "millenials aren't buying diamonds" is because they can't. They can't afford it. We can maybe squirrel away something in an ISA or a holiday fund. Cost of living has risen so much faster than wages.

But those big companies who sell a lot of products to those with lower income - I am loath to actually name any, as that is stereotyping, but I am sure you can think of your own - have wealthy shareholders who are not people who use those products. The inverse is not possible. DeBeers doesn't pay dividends to a bunch of minimum-wage folks; hell, it barely pays minimum wage to its own employees, but I digress.

Rich money may trickle down a little; but it trickles up far more. It's the money of everyday people that keeps the companies aloft, and lines the pockets of the shareholders and executives that are invested in them, and the politicos that they lobby. If it isn't money that they poured into the system, it is the product of their labour - every factory needs workers. It also bears consideration that those who are wealthy try and find ways to not pay taxes, while those who aren't, can't. Not really.

If the wealthy are made more wealthy by the money in the pockets of those who are not - and if the government is made more wealthy by the same - then...

...why aren't we giving more money to those that don't have much?

If we bring expatriates here, and if we look after them; if we fund the poor, and those on limited income; then not only will the government fund be further refurbished, but so will the companies that pay us our wages. If foreigners show up and they need houses, then build them. Sell them. Make money. Pay tax. Help the government. Help yourselves.

If I am to put my left-wing tendencies aside and speak in right-wing monetary terms: the poor and disenfranchised are an investment opportunity. Stop seeing them as scroungers and start seeing them as debt you can sell that WILL repay to you, sooner or later, in some way. The gold road will run and run, all the way through. Every step it takes, it feeds back into public funds. Sooner or later, it will have paid for itself in entirety - and paid some other people's way besides.

And hey - maybe if you put enough money in an expatriate's pocket, they might have something to save. Wouldn't that be nice for the banks?

I mean the only way you'd think this is a bad idea is if you were some kind of bigot.