Wednesday, 21 October 2009
The figure of Justice on the top of the Law Courts, Harare, Zimbabwe
Musings on why we write this crap
People are very strange. They take themselves so seriously. Crikey, one has only to look in the mirror to how stupid that is as a concept. Particularly for those guys among you who don't take their socks off to have sex and those women (go on it's all of you at some time) who walk out of the girl's room with their skirt tucked into their panties or pant in private to picture of they ugliest guys on earth that are film stars and male models.
Overactive egos
People are very sensitive to what they think others think because it makes them look at their reflections that second time when their primary self-confidence takes a real nose-dive. Why do you think Angie Rolie Polie and her mate Brad live in separate mansions? They're both afraid that they might see each other for the pretentious prats they are because in real life they can't act for shit!
Oedipal fixations
Why does Madonna want to marry Jesus (she keeps saying she doesn't)? Well, it keeps her in the news now she has depopulated the under three population of Africa and the authorities are getting edgy about it. It looks good as a headline, and it conveys her sacrilegious image in the imagined incestuous relationship. Shocking, which is just the effect she wants! And bound to get the bible-thumpers' heresy meters off the scale. She also knows that she depends on a large population of people, who should know better in my opinion, to buy her discs. And she knows too that these buyers have the attention span of fruit flies and if she is not out of the papers she will be forgotten and come-backs are expensive events to organise. Goodness knows, the press has said some things that could well be proved to be libelous, however, she seems to leave them alone. Why? Well, she is a supremely confident being. But, if the press did one thing that might hamper her sales and image she would be on them like a ton of African baby crap and the lawyers would be rubbing their hands with glee. She and the press get on, at the moment, like a house on fire. Let's wait until she get's nearer her sell-by date and see what happens. I dare say she fumes in private to the photos in the press intended to taunt her and remind her of the precarious relationship she has in such a Devil's pact. You know, those photos where she has no make-up or is in her rags shopping. But she probably comforts herself that perhaps the fans will too be comforted by the fact that she really is quite plain and ordinary in real life.
We hate everybody as we sit in our underwear before the PC
Politicians, like lawyers are the Devil's excrement. But that is because they are special. They go into politics to serve their nations don't they! Power and money do not come into it do they! Look at the Communist countries and the way their people are all equal and happy; all barefooted and all thinking they live in paradise. The politicians of course know otherwise.
Western politicians seem to have come late to the fact that democracy is their number one enemy. To the urns voters! Democracy forever! The people have voted....damn them! That is why in Britain we have an increasing surveillance society. And we put up with it, instead of getting out into the streets and jumping up and down, because the majority have been desensitised to politics and are all under the influence of the new opiate of the people, the reality TV show.
We love freedom of speech and ideas
We have no written constitution or Bill of Rights (yet) we have been vaguely promised a Bill but of course have no idea whether they are serious about it, particularly when they see what that actually implies.
Our personal freedoms have been the subject of an unspoken contract between the people and the Government - a very British contract. A stable one too as long as the Government keeps its hands off the military who still swear allegiance to our Monarch, so hopefully we may still be saved. I say hopefully, because there is no guarantee this state of affairs will continue since Government is increasingly poking its nose into the Judiciary and it wouldn't surprise me to see them try it with the Military. Politicians of all colours have shown themselves to be untrustworthy at the most basic level, that of their expenses. At a higher level the current Government got in on what turned out to be a manifest lie that a referendum would be held on Europe. They took our soldiers to war in Iraq based on lies and against the very Institution, The UN (not free of criticism itself), that was set up to prevent such things happening. They keep many in fear, not only of the threat of terrorism but of the threat of losing their jobs, the threat of swine flu, other diseases etc. They try to tell us what is good for us and what is bad for us and try to legislate away our freedom of choice.
We want to influence the world
Whereas our biological evolution is too slow to cope with the environments, physical, political and intellectual in which we live, modern human adaptation is fueled by ideas that are put into action, energy is expended in doing this. The problem here is that in biological evolution only the best adapted survive, nature has no motives and no chosen direction except forwards and the driving force of variability is quite random as far as we can tell. If ideas drive the world today, how do we decide which ones are the best ones? Well, basically our politicians put them before us according to their beliefs and philosophies and we vote for them, at least in the West.
So every time we vote we are actually voting for someone to carry out an experiment on US, you and me and the kids, and one of which the outcome is not going to be known or felt perhaps for generations to come. All the politicians can say is this is what we want to do or what has to be done to get X with no guarantees that they will succeed just empty promises. If Doctors did this on a regular basis except in extreme cases, they would be struck off. Politicians do it by manipulation of words and exaggeration of threats og what will happen if such an experiment is not carried out.
Life's a bitch and then we die
There are no certainties in the world apart from the fact we shall all die and rot. That is governed by incontrovertible laws of physics. Anything that happens between now and then is just due to events that happen very often at random.
Such important experiments and their methods should not go without questioning and that is where the God of Democracy shows its other face. That after, having been voted in, Governments have more or less carte-blanche to do as they please. Plebicit is a pain in the ass for Governments who like to give the impression that they are all for it. Anyone who has participated in a referendum will see how the questions are posed in the most convoluted fashion so that it is never clear whether if you vote yes, you have not actually voted no. Yet in countries like Switzerland where referendums are regularly held the people seem happy because they feel in control.
Because we are right and the masses are too stupid to see unless we spell it out
The French Mathematician and philosopher Condorcet showed mathematically that the people, the masses, know better than the elected few. There is one caveat to this and that is that the masses should be in full possession of the facts and also understand them. In the real world this is not the case and the theory goes to the dogs but isn't unnoticed by politicians who do their level best to fuck up the eduction of the masses and provide good education for the chosen few who can afford it. In the case of democracies the masses are anaesthetised to the point of apathy so they will not revolt and in dictatorships they are persuaded by violence towards all opposition.
We are control freaks
Just because we vote does not mean that we are in control! Just because "a scientist says" or some other figure of imagined superhuman knowledge says, does not mean that we have to accept without question.They aren't anything special and there is always another point of view, particularly in science.
Because they are out to get us
Party political systems too in general are, like democracy, a compromise. The underlying assumption is that one of a few world views is the right one to take. Strangely, I find myself agreeing with Tony Blair, who said somewhere that that ideology does not bring solutions, but doing the right thing. But what the right thing may be is open to question and we should all question it after taking a serious look at the facts and arguments.The moment an argument is met not by argument, but personal slight against the person(s) putting it we know that something is wrong. Today, those who argue against the proponents of so-called Global Warming are called "climate change deniers", on a par in the accusers eyes with "Holocaust deniers".
Look out they are coming after you!
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Be prepared!
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"The satirist satirised has the ire of a harem of women alone on their anniversary" (53rd Canto l.432).
"*And, remember O sons of Kh'ush, that the condom will break on the night your loved one has forgotten to take her pill which is the night before the day the apothecaries a closed for holidays. That is the Holy Law of Murrh' fi"(Epistle 4a l.3001)
(* the beauty of the poetry of ancient Khu'sh poetry is the fact that each line starts with a conjunction)
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