The Lion and The Statue

A brave young man and a lion were discussing the relative strength of men and lions in general.  The young man boasted that he and his fellows were stronger than lions by reason of their greater intelligence.  "Come now with me," he cried, "and I will soon prove that I am right."  So he took the lion into the town square and showed him a statue of Hercules overcoming the lion by brute force.  "That is all very well," said the Lion, "but it proves nothing, for it was a man who made the statue."

Lightning Never Strikes Twice

....Bullshit, it almost always does....  Well OK, not in the literal sense, but when we say "Lightening never strikes twice" we're not actually talking about lightning are we.

Life is shit, life is unfair, winning is 50% effort and 50% luck.  We bolster ourselves up with a whole lot of philosophical, philanthropic rubbish to make the thought of facing each new day easier, but its just a load of shit.  Call me a pessimist, a cynic, I don't even care, I consider myself a realist.  I tell myself all those crappy lies too, before I'm even aware, those things are just falling out of my mouth.  Why do we do it to ourselves?  We create illusions based on ridiculous ideals, that are not based in reality - we fight against logic to do so.  No wonder so many kids leaving home and going into the real world find themselves on Prozac or swinging from a rope shortly after.

I have been "off desk" recently because I have been going through some minor crises, some of them inner, some of them outer, none of which I am going to get into, except to write about the thoughts they provoked.

What is it all about? This madness that has become our life on earth... I want truth, i really want to know about it. What really goes on, in the diseased underbelly of our world. An idealist lurks within me, a naive child who believes in the tooth fairy, Santa and 'right', among a few other fairy tales. But in my heart I know that justice, truth and 'right' does not exist, not in this world, this world of dualities, ironies borne, not of fate, but of iron will.

We are in the midst of a new age. the "Every man for himself" age. Fuck the weak and infirm, fuck the ground we walk on, fuck everyone in the world who is not "ME". We burn everything we touch, we have the Midas touch of shit. Everything we touch turns to dust, and before the last spec hits the ground, we are off to the next thing to turn to dust. Where is the honour in any of it?  King of all species, top of the food chain, but the legacy is just embarrassing....

Pretty soon a zoo will be a sad collection of moth eaten stuffed animals and a wealth of information on microfiche. The Japs will have synthesised their whale meat for the purpose of scientific study. They will probably use soy, there isn't a damn thing they haven't made out of that shit, so they will probably use that. Have you tried out the new soy underwear? Or was that bamboo? Fuck I really cant keep up...

When was the last time any of these fuckers had a decent crap, like a really good long shit. One of those transcendent experiences that make you really think, like your brain can actually breathe all of a sudden. If a high school drop out, delinquent chef can figure it out..... I seriously wonder if they are all on meth-amphetamines. I would compare it to something, but nothing quite compares.

I don't think people talk about it enough, the actual state of it it. I want to scream about it, how wrong it all is. But people just sit around, accepting it all, docile as fuck. I do too, its something I dislike about myself, but it takes a huge amount of guts to stand up and say what you think - risk falling off the white picket fence into the vastly unpopular paddock of truth. It starts the moment you are born, the sheep mentality, the acceptance of bull crap as gospel. Rather strange for a highly intelligent species, especially given our proudly ignorant air of superiority over it all.

I kind of relate to the reckless abandon of crazy people. They are clearly nuts, but you have to respect the honesty. No matter how misguided they may be, they 100% believe in it and aren't afraid to tell anyone who will listen. Its excellent, I'm jealous.

I boycott the news and all other sponsored media. It's all utter jism. I wont pay to watch people wanking in public....it's just gross. It's just one big massive stroke fest. Who can we afford to piss off the least? The danger of being offside with someone important far outweighs the risky business of integrity and truth. Welcome to age of censorship folks! Lies are the exquisite couture of politicians and powerful stakeholders. Let those who will be deceived, be deceived!!!
 

They give us too much to think about, its like mass hypnosis. Its hard to keep the reality alive amidst all of the plastic rubbish we are force fed. 95% of the world is dying through poverty and starvation, the other 5% are dying from diseases of affluence and gluttony. Go figure? They just couldn't fucking help themselves. The only other animal that I am aware off that will eat themselves to death are goldfish... goldfish and the odd corgi. What does that tell you? It tells me that there is a distinct possibility that I'm living in a goldfish bowl. We ARE goldfish. I mean we swim around like them, not really aware that we live in a bowl that is shielded from the actual real world. Except goldfish eat whatever floats on top, sadly we are bottom feeders.....  Apparently goldfish have a 20 second memory, I'm not going to argue about that, but we aren't so different.  How many times have we fucked up, and not learned?  Shameful....

It's not all bad, we got to see Mel Gibson killed a few times on the silver screen. We had Ghandi, and Bob Dylan, the Antichrist never came.... or did he/she/it? Maybe there was more than one?

There is one chain of thought that proposes that the Antichrist has merely been recycled throughout history, kind of like our booze bottles except its not at the crack of dawn every Monday, more like once every generation. I wonder if each president or prime minister was our turn of the Antichrist.

 Over stimulation is the new weapon against the people. We (Westerners) are perplexedly overwhelmed by life, and yet all of our needs are met. We are not being slain by machetes and we happily eat ourselves to death. I just don't get it? There are whole industries borne of our innate inability to cope with life; drugs, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, self help. We indulge in every new age charlatan pedalling happiness, youth, popularity, stimulation. We have simply developed the handicap of needing far too much attention. If we were babies, we would be dropped off at the nearest Romanian orphanage for chewing our mothers breast off.

I'm right up there with the best of them, I want everything! And what would I do when I had everything I ever desired? Want more of course. Not one of us is innocent, we are being conditioned to consume more and more. Chew it up and spit it out, and at the heart of nearly every thought is "and how does this affect me?"... well who actually gives a fuck, I sure as hell don't... I'm far too busy being worried about myself.

A Challenge =)

The Cell

"As the Jews were being transported on the trains towards certain death in the camps, I noticed how easily they would turn on each other.  The few that suspected their fate should have spoken less about it, the rest of them did not want to know." - SS Officer

How did the Nazis manage to get people to work until they dropped and to walk calmly to their deaths instead of fighting until the last? They gave the illusion of the smallest HOPE of survival. That slim chance was enough to stop 6 million people fighting back as one.  Because when the human spirit gives way to the reality of no hope, there is nothing more to live for and you may as well stop breathing then and there. 

So how do humans who face little hope get around this small conundrum.  Compartmentalisation, or more commonly known as disassociation, having the ability to "switch off".  We all do this to a certain degree without even realising it.  The kids are fighting, the phone is ringing, the doorbell goes - we can focus and prioritise our attention and effectively block out the information that is superfluous to us at the time.  When we are faced with a danger situation that requires our fight or flight mechanism to kick in, our adrenals pump into action and we respond accordingly.  But what happens when we cant act, the danger overpowers us, we cant protect ourselves, all hope is gone.  We compartmentalise that information away from us so we don't have to feel under threat anymore.  Is this a biological reflex as well?

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - Wordsworth

Sociopaths will argue that it is not a bad thing, that there is an upside.  Psychological studies have shown that sociopaths are very good at prioritising and focusing, which enables the criminal types to commit horrific crimes and go home for dinner with the family as if nothing has happened.  In our day to day lives how often have we driven past the car crash and half an hour later forgotten the whole thing, run over a hedgehog "oh well it can't be helped" and off we go.  While letting our children watch violent media, we should ask ourselves if we would be so happy about it if it was actually happening in our living room.

"As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery." - Martin Luther King



The human mind is an amazing tool, to be able to switch itself off in order to protect us mentally.  Torture victims and victims of child abuse say they can even block the physical pain by going into a state of removal a trance, or "happy place".  Women in childbirth often have amnesiac experiences around the later stages of labour and birth - self protection.

The mind is its own place, and in itself,
can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven