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

When In Rome...

"If our subconscious were attractive, we wouldn't have to bury it deep down within our selves"




The Ancient Roman civilisation dates back to approximately 1000 BC.  During the reign of power wielded by Rome - over an ever increasing territory including most of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean - they gained a reputation for being a highly organised military and political empire, not well known for acts of kindness and mercy.

The Romans had a strict social hierarchy. The patricians or nobles were born into affluence, status, and influence, it has even been proven that the Romans committed incest in order to maintain pure aristocratic bloodlines.  Marriage was hereby a calculated act, influenced by politics and material wealth.  Roman society was dictated by the machinations of personal gain and power or influence over the masses.  They grew their empire by conquest, by enslaving and absorbing the adjacent or opposing peoples as they expanded.

The Roman military was comprised mostly of citizens who served to recompense a "debt" to society for the use of land.  While they were usually paid a stipend, citizens had little choice over participation, had to supply their own weapons and horses, and desertion would usually result in the death penalty.

Children had little or no value within Roman culture and were shown minimal affection.  Unwanted children were often sold into slavery, or children were treated as household slaves until they were old enough to be married off.  Even then, a son could not legally own property or hold influence while his father still survived.

For Romans violence and cruelty was simply an accepted part of life.  The fact that they were a highly successful empire begs the question of whether this lack of empathy is a required part of human success.  The Roman empire did fall eventually, but up until then they made huge leaps forward in technology, science and philosophy.  Is it the human emotions and resulting empathy that hold us back?

The arena, the mainstay of Roman entertainment and society, was institutionalised and extreme violence for pleasure.  The noxii (criminal class, or disgraced slaves), and those condemned to die had to fight publicly for the right to live or die, often heavily disadvantaged and outnumbered.  In one day of gladiatorial events 8-10 blood matches would be held, the resulting arena being splattered with the blood of those who's crimes ranged from petty theft to heresy.  The crowd drunk on violence, would cheer for the life or death of the condemned, the descision often being made on a whim by the highest ranking official present.  The eventual and protracted execution was celebrated with cheers and laughter.   This practice (public execution) has been carried on throughout history, still bloodthirsty, but thankfully less drawn out than watching men be ripped apart by wild beasts (damnati ad bestias).

Roman orgies were often serviced by women, young men and children who had no choice in participation, violence and rape seen as the obligations of servitude.  Roman politics were often dominated by assassinations and cold hearted maneuvering.  Obligations to familial ties and loyalty were seen as a sign of weakness and sentimentality would often bring about ones downfall.  A sociopathic society in all its glory.

Throughout history violent and yet successful regime's and empires have all shared bloodthirsty origins.  Is this how we have succeeded and become the most prolific species on earth?  We exist in duality, we have propensity for great acts of humanity, but are also capable of indescribable acts of cruelty en masse - as individuals and as a group.

Are we in denial about our true nature?  Can we really abolish war and suffering without denying some important part of our innate being?  Is it our ability to ignore this "dark" side of ourselves that makes these acts possible?  If we cannot express this "darkness" through our prescribed culture and society, do we then express it in private? Is it the desire to repress our true nature that has led to the rise in crimes of extreme violence against each other that benefit no one but the self?

"A tear dries quickly when it is shed for the troubles of others." - Cicero

Everyday Pathogens

Yin and Yang: another perspective

Sooooo, is there good and bad? Right and wrong? Black and white?

No.....There isn't.  It's not real.

We "are" what we believe, and our beliefs about that dictate our perception of the world.  Very few people will admit to bad or wrong behaviour, so I can only assume that most people want to do good and right, or that quite a few people are very good liars.  This "good vs evil" thing has plagued us from the very beginning of time.  How many people actually say "I set out to do evil!"?  Some people make the unfortunate connection that sociopaths are evil and conniving, best you not turn your back on them, or more woe for you.  That is not entirely true.

Imagine life as a piece of string.....One end being right/good/happiness, the other being wrong/bad/sadness.....Who would exist at that bad end of the string?  No one by choice...  The fact is, life is not a piece of string.  We all exist in grey areas, defined by parameters that are not decided by us.  According to the law, I can't park my car on a certain piece of ground unless I am granted permission?  So I park my car on this certain piece of ground without permission.  Am I evil?  No I am not evil...  By the same token, if a man steals to serve his hungry family, is he evil?  I don't believe so. 

As a species, we have become confused.  The unnecessary has made us behave strangely.  If all we had to worry about was our basic survival, this other rubbish would cease to matter, and then we may begin to understand the importance of being - less the importance of a punitive existence.

I can name a few who I suspect were truly evil, without regard, Marque Du Sade, Hitler, Stalin, Joseph Mengele, and Caesar - they became famous for their atrocities.  Serial killers, cold blooded sadists.   All of them most likely sociopaths/psychopaths.  However not all cursed (or blessed) with this personality type end up this way.  I call it a personality type, because this is how I see it.  It's not just another word for being "mean", it's like introversion, extroversion, dyslexia, mild autism, tourettes, left brained, right brained....  Its about wiring.

What creates a monster, a truly evil person, a "bad seed".  Science, X + Y = Z.  Genes + upbringing = the person.  I have to laugh at the sociopaths who wax lyrical about the joys of being "mean".  They attempt to bridge a huge gap between "good" and "bad" with a mere personality type.  Cruelty can be a side affect of sociopathy, the nurture aspect plays a major role in this equation.  It is not a given, in fact a sociopath with a brilliant upbringing would be no more likely to be cruel than any other person.  Of course the odds are stacked against them (us...I cant decide).

Good and bad...Who defined this anyway, was it God?  Religion plays its part in all of this, religion tells us that we can have a better future (or afterlife), if we make a sacrifice, of the present, that we may never be in the present, to comit a sin, or be "evil"...ever....  Then it also begs of us to say, that we can commit ourselves tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that.  We cannot predict, nor can we count on the future, the future is just in the mind, it is a dream, it is not a part of reality until it becomes tomorrow - isn't that a hell of a lot to give up?  The religious myth is one of self punishment - paying penance before the crime we will repent later - that we may banish all evil from our lives, at a mere cost, more self punishment.  Is this not masochistic?  Sadism, directed inwards?  So how is evil directed inward, any less "evil" than evil directed outward?  Even without religion, we are capable of terrible crimes against the self, if we talked to our progeny the way we talked to ourselves, we would all have a string of homicidal psychopaths in our wake.  Are we nasty by nature? And if we cant find a way to express this openly, do we take it out on ourselves?  All the while protesting that we are intrinsically good?  This seems like very odd behaviour - I wonder what comment Freud would make, or Darwin, or Nietzsche.


Good or bad...I'm sitting on the fence, I hope I don't get pushed off....on to the wrong side.

Killing Roosters - the Real Test

My breathing is steady but my heart is still racing, I feel strangely calm.  Looking down at my hands, I see there are still some feathers attached.   Something is wrong here...I....do not.....kill.....

But I did.

So, you stupid MF rooster, you got the better of me, a few too many early mornings for my liking, lack of sleep will do that to you.  Now another pea brained feathered freak has taken your place, so is it CSI for the chicken coup tomorrow morning also?  I think its my neighbour who needs to be dealt with first, the one who's rooster thinks he lives at my house, subsequently impregnating all my eggs, leaving me inundated with baby chickens (most of which turned out to be fecking fricking roosters).  So if I can throttle a rooster, punching a full grown man in the face shouldn't be a problem...... right?

Should I feel bad? Cos I don't.  The biggest thing I've killed other than a blowfly was a bird, on my windscreen.  I felt bad because birds are pretty and un-annoying.  This was different, that rooster needed to go.

I can still feel the warmth of him on my fingers.  It was too easy, he never understood that I was the reaper, until it was too late.  I grabbed him by the tail, I hesitated, not sure....but then thought fuck it, I'm over your crowing, you miserable little testosterone filled sleep destroyer.  His neck was too easy to break, grab, pull twist.  Someone must have told me that once.....

And his protege still crows, can I do it again?