Big Brother Society

The era of reality TV has many critics claiming the word “reality” is far too loosely attributed to those shows. Big Brother is undoubtedly the King of reality TV. Blogs like Weekly Gripe claim without contest, that shows like Big Brother do not reflect any sense of reality at all, and ends the piece with “I think Television should rethink what is reality and what’s not.” I’d disagree wholeheartedly with that statement.

Ultimately, Big Brother is pointless and has no social benefit whatsoever. And so Big Brother is a perfect example of reality. The notion that a group of people are thrown together, forced to backstab each other in the hope that they will get ahead. Only one person can win the money, the rest are forgotten, greater social needs are ignored. The enemy of those people, is “Big Brother“, the government of the house. The contestants change themselves to what they think the public expect them to be. Similarly, we as good little workers speak like our employers expect us to speak, we question nothing, we dress as we are expected to dress in order to appeal to this abstract concept of “looking professional”. We are never ourselves when it comes to the incessant chase for money and reward. That, if the Neoliberal conception of human nature is to be believed, is reality at it’s finest. That fear of government, that selfish grab at money, is reality. Big Brother, is the perfect example of 21st Century reality. The World, financial markets, workplaces, are hundreds of thousands upon millions of little Big Brother type shows acting themselves out under the guise of “reality“. The selfishness and the greed institutionalised in shows like Big Brother, is a solid reflection of the institutionalised culture of greed and individualism that the Western World has been forced to adhere to under the manipulated language of “freedom” and “human nature“.

Contestants on Big Brother are not free. And it isn’t just the Government of the reality show that restricts their freedom. The carrot dangling at the end of the show; the money. The promise of “more”. The promise of “more” is a far bigger restriction on human freedom, than Government could ever be. Business is by it’s very nature; totalitarian. This promise of “more” is what drives people in a Neoliberalist system of economics. It assumes that human nature is inherently self interested, totally individual and greedy. I WANT AN IPHONE!!! Why? for what reason? You’ll only want a newer model in a year or two. Pointless, manipulative greed. It dismisses any notion that human nature, whilst having the potential to be self interested and greedy, also has the capacity to be loving, and giving, and needing support, and sensitive, and helpful, and every other trait that appears completely at odds with individualist selfishness. Collective responsibility is deemed “communist” at worst, and so ignored. An individual is a commodity in a Neoliberalist World. Unless you have a mind for business, or are the son of a rich couple, you’re deemed a commodity, to be bought and sold, and if you cannot produce the skills that the Market at this time demands, you’re useless, and worthless, and should not be given any support whatsoever. Collective responsibility for an individuals misgivings are being slowly eroded. The idea being that if everyone is responsible for themselves and themselves only, we will be forced to work hard enough to survive without any help or assistance whatsoever.

Neoliberalism places Government as the antagonist, at odds with human freedom because they take your money from you and redistribute it to the poor. It amazes me that it is only government that is seen as the antagonist. The place that I work at, gave us a worker’s manual. It stated that we must be “clean shaven or have a full beard, ‘designer stubble’ is not acceptable“, so businessmen think they have the right to tell me how my face should look. They then told us we should “have at least one bath or shower a day“. Why is that any of their business? And why aren’t those advocates of “freedom” up in arms about business tyranny and totalitarian principles that they are built on?

Their argument seems to be “if you don’t like it, go elsewhere“. Forgetting the fact that I, like most people, can’t afford to be out of work looking for a new job, If I were to go elsewhere, that new place would have the very same kind of limitations; it’s universal. Business, by it’s very nature, is totalitarian. And yet, Neoliberalism tells me that this is the ultimate in human freedom; being able to tell those people below you who make YOU the money that funds YOUR luxurious lifestyle, how to dress and how many times to wash. It then demands that I respect a person like my boss, despite the fact that I utterly despise him. What is the incentive for me to respect a man who pays me the very minimum allowed by law, whilst he himself drives home in a nice big luxurious car, financed by the staff who work for him, the very same staff whose names he hasn’t got the time to learn? He is a child of the Thatcher generation, and so assumes employee respect and subservience is his God given right. It isn’t.

The paradox of Neoliberalism, is that the ideology exists like a set of scales. For those at the top to keep rising, those at the bottom must keep falling. There is no way out of it. Neoliberalism then suggests that those who have rised, deserve even further praise, admiration and reward, whilst the inevitable pile of those who have failed, deserve nothing but a life of misery. It’s the reason stores like Primark insist on using cheap, exploitable labour. Profits become far more important that people, and no one stands up to complain, millions shop in Primark every year. Purely because the notion that human nature is greedy, offers people a justification for giving money to pretty Fascist organisations. And so whilst some may call it “freedom“, I simply call it “insecurity“. Suddenly values, morals, and humanity are fleeting, abstract thoughts that matter very little because everyone has been forced to be self interested and greedy, looking out for number one first. We’ve been given no choice. The freedom they gave us (Thatcher and Reagan) was “either be greedy, or be insecure, hungry, cold, and useless“. Human nature is not simply greedy, it is merely the case that greed is obviously amplified, when the system we live in offers endless rewards to such greed. When love, and compassion are not rewarded, and in some cases, punished, why would humanity exhibit such qualities above greed? Why is incentive offered to place the exchange of goods and capital, ahead of social injustice?
That isn’t freedom.

Within the Big Brother house, the choice is “be entertaining, controversial, and backstab everyone, or fail miserably“.

Neoliberalism also brings with it a terrible amount of institutionalised racism. Schools in poor black areas cannot readily afford new equipment, or top class teachers, or new text books because they simply lack funding, and so class division and lack of social mobility is perpetuated for another generation. Neoliberalist supporters fail to admit this flaw in their miserable ideology, and instead choose to blame the lack of ability, or work ethic, or discipline within poor black communities themselves as opposed to horrendous social injustice caused by their awful system. The USA healthcare system, that rich white folks do not want to see changed, is a supreme case of Neoliberal institutionalised racism at it’s worst. According to a study by University of Dayton, areas of predominantly uninsured minorities are subject to higher rates of “environmental toxins, including lead and asbestos“, the workers of the minority areas also “disproportionately work in jobs with higher physical and psycho-social health risks (i.e., migrant farm workers, fast food workers, garment industry workers). Minority communities are frequently the targets of institutions promoting unhealthy products, such as alcohol and tobacco. ” If it wasn’t for some form of social conscience exhibited by Government over the years, those minorities would doubtless become a Neoliberal dream, full of sweatshops and exploitation of the worst variety. Government needs to go further, and intervene in social misfortunes, where the Market simply perpetuates the problem.

Democratic values are seemingly undermined by the ideology of privatised-everything, cloaked by the narrow focus of “the market“.
Socialism, to me, is not simply an economic challenge to Capitalism. It is not simply a solution to inequality through the common ownership of production; it is a set of values, that start at the premise that people are far more important than private profit. The idea that you cater to the needs of civilisation first, and once that aim has been realised, you cater to the wants of civilisation. I do not believe in forcing people into jobs they hate purely so economists can say “look, isn’t the unemployment rate amazing”. For every well paid mining job the Thatcher government destroyed, another three McDonalds and Starbucks jobs were created, and was used as a sign of improving times. The Confederation of British Industry, the beacon of Neoliberalism, once suggested cutting University degrees down to what the economy needs. If it needs more Maths graduates, then they suggested emphasis should be put on Maths, and degrees such as Philosophy should be scraped. Where is the freedom in that? What if I want to study Philosophy? Freedom only appears to work, when haggered old grey haired right wingers decide it’s possible. Which speaks to another area of society’s Big Brother complex. Neoliberalism tends to want to press home the notion that markets should be left to their own devices, free from government interference. Yet, when markets fail, government interference is demanded by the markets. The banking crises was a magnificent example of the failure of Neoliberalism, and Socialism having to bail it out, to keep it going. The Capitalist structure, was crumbling, and Socialism had to bail it out. In the Big Brother house, contestants appear to hate their in-house Government, yet appeal to it rather hypocritically for help and advice, whenever they seem to be crumbling themselves. The American high tech industry has only survived as it is today, because of Pentagon subsidies over the years. Without those subsidies, America would not be the immense power it is today.

Big Brother is simply a reflection of the Neoliberalist society that has been forced onto the World over the past twenty five years. Thatcher’s generation forced Neoliberal principles onto my generation, and we don’t want it. You can keep it. And take Big Brother with you.

Part II: Haiti

Haiti suffered one of the worst humanitarian disasters in living memory when the earthquake struck just outside of Port-au-Prince in mid-January. The Haitian Government estimates that over 220,000 people are believed to have been killed. Since that day, the reports from the media have turned from one of sympathy with the families of the victims and the survivors of the quake, to reports of widespread violence, looting, murder, and general National meltdown. Violence was widespread far before the Earthquake. The past two decades of Haitian history have been wiped from media memory. Is it really the Earthquake that has caused certain pockets of violence to spread? Is the violence in Haiti really as widespread and damaging as the media like to report? No, to both of those questions.

As quoted on medialens and as written originally by John Pilger:
“When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pjamas, for next to nothing.“

That isn’t where America’s involvement in Haiti ends. In 1991 the President of Haiti, Aristide, was forced from power by a military coup. Members of the Haitian secret service, which had been set up and continuously funded by the CIA, had been involved. After the coup, military officer Raoul Cedras took control of Haiti. His human rights record, was appalling. The Haitian Constitution says that after a coup, the Supreme Court Justice is to take command of the Country until an election can be called. And so technically, Joseph Nérette was provisional president of Haiti (Although Cedras held the real power) until an election was called. The election was set for December 1991; The USA demanded it to be cancelled.

After the coup against Aristide, a man named Emmanuel Constant created a group known as “Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haïti“. This group, was a death squad. It rounded up all Aristide supporters, and massacred them. Thousands upon thousands were killed by the group.

In 1993, President Clinton vowed to restore democracy to Haiti, and topple the military regime in Haiti. A noble cause. In 1994, Aristide was put back in control of Haiti, to finish his term. All the time, the USA was condemning Constant’s group as “thugs”, which they were. However, Constant fled Haiti after 1994, and settled in the USA. He was arrested in America and stood to be deported to Haiti to stand trial for his involvement in a massacre. In 1995, he threatened in public to divulge secrets about the CIA’s involvement in early-90s Haiti, and the juxtaposition between US public policy of peacekeeping and their private policy of making sure the leader of the country did nothing to attempt to destabilise the US’s interests in the Haitian economy. If kids aren’t going to make baseballs in horrendous working conditions for the benefit of Americans who blindly think their version of Capitalism is superior, who will?

It later transpired that Constant was on CIA payroll, even after the CIA discovered he’d been involved in the murder of a Supreme Court Justice, and many other Aristide supporters. The man who killed the Justice (Marcel Morissaint) has known CIA links, and was freed from jail under CIA guidance before he could stand trial, after he told a reporter that he was under CIA control at the time. In fact, the CIA had been the body that had set up Constant’s “group of thugs” in the first place. Many of their operatives were on the CIA payroll, and even after Aristide was restored to power, the CIA funded quite evil acts of violence against any supporters of left wing revolution. Left wing groups within Haiti were non-violently gaining support for a program of social reform; better healthcare, a minimum wage, and better schooling….. along with the end of child labour. America clearly didn’t like those ideas.
The CIA therefore funded the creation of a group known as Service d’Intelligence National within Haiti. The group is responsible for the deaths of up to 50,000 people between 1980 and 1994. Constant worked for SIN. Constant also alleged that the night of the 1991 coup involved a briefing from CIA members, who were in the Country at the time.

In October 1995, after years of referring to Constant’s group as “thugs” and “terrorists“, and after Constant threatened to reveal secret deals with the CIA, he was given quite a lovely platform at a press conference surrounded by US Armed Guards. The equivilent of giving the same protection and respect to Osama Bin Laden. It seems a little bit unreal. When asked about why the US just changed it’s mind, and what caused the US to change it’s mind, embassy spokesman said “Life is bizarre, isn’t it? Things change all the time”. In other words “If we don’t treat him well, the World will know just how utterly shit we are.“

After the revelations came out about CIA involvement, the reporter who broke the story was denied any further access to Constant by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. No reason was given.

In 1996, a group called The Centre for Constitutional Rights obtained recently declassified documents proving that the US Government knew of how brutal Constant’s group was, knew of the rapes, knew of the torture, knew of the killings, and yet, continued to fund it. The US was both insisting on restoring democracy, and making sure democracy couldn’t be restored whilst a potential left wing “threat” loomed. America needs baseballs, afterall.

On restoring Aristide to power, the US insisted that he drop his radical program for social reform as a prerequisite for returning to power.

Haiti is not the victim of a humanitarian crises, by the power of God alone. The Earthquake was the nail in the coffin. Haiti has been the victim of Western superpowers for centuries. In the early 19th Century, when Haiti gained independence and stopped trading slaves, the French demanded that Haiti pay for the loss of slaves, with a huge debt imposed on the Country. They didn’t have an infrastructure, or an economic structure, and yet they were forced to pay a debt. Human imposed poverty. More recently, Reagan proposed the Caribbean Basin Initiative (another word for Nafta) which effectively meant that Haitian governments should not invest in schools and hospitals, just leave it to the market, which meant unbelievable exploitation. Markets had to be far more open, which meant the resources of Haitian falling into American hands. Tariffs had to be lowered on imports, to allow the US to flood the Haitian market, leaving Haitian people no choice but to become the minions of an American corporation. Hence Disney’s exploitation in the region. Slavery hadn’t ended, it had just been cloaked in a vale of this new “wondrous” ideal of neoliberalism. Human imposed poverty. But hey, America is still the “land of the free, on the back of someone elses forced labour WOOO!”

Haiti is largely agricultural. They rely heavily on farming. They invested heavily in pig farming. It was all that was keeping 80% of the population who were peasants, out of extreme poverty. The US claimed that in order to save the population from Swine Fever, the entire pig population had to be wiped out. The US promised to send replacements and compensation. They wiped out the pig population, and sent nothing.
Haiti also relied on their sugar industry. It was a great local industry, around which communities were starting to become self sufficient. Then, the sugar industry was privatised, most of the mills were closed, and now they have to rely on imports of Dominican Republic for their sugar needs, which, they can’t afford. Why can’t the government invest in the Haiti? Because America doesn’t like it. It’s Socialism apparently.

Whenever social unrests and violence pops up across Latin America, the first place the World should look, is toward the USA.

So is the violence in Haiti purely the result of an horrific natural disaster? Is violence written into the genes of the Haitians? No. It has been forced on them, over Centuries of being treated like worthless slaves. And as is always the case with Latin America, who is to blame? The USA. But their baseball retail industry is thriving. So we just have to ignore the exploitation involved. The term “terrorism” becomes harder to define everyday.

Isn’t Capitalism wonderful.

Capitalist restrictions on freedom part I

The tenuous link between Capitalism and “freedom” grows ever more thin recently. The rather beleaguered past two decades of Haitian history; Haitian Capitalism; Haitian Freedom and American sponsored terrorism in Haiti will be commented upon in the next few days on this blog. But first, more locally, I feel the need to comment on the reasons why Capitalism and Freedom are seemingly more juxtapositioned than ever before.

Whatever you felt about the proposed strike action of BA staff over the Christmas break, your opinion is irrelevant. The right to strike lies at the very heart of human freedom. If I feel my labour, that I rent out, is being abused, I have the right to withdraw that labour. Collectively, labour is the reason the guys at the top are able to drive home in their rather expensive penis extensions. Clearly, I subscribe to Marx and Keynes theories of Surplus value). And so if the guys who create that surplus value are being mistreated, and when 12,500 Union members working for BA are balloted, 92% of them vote to strike, then they should strike. When 92% of those balloted believe something is fundamentally wrong with the way the company is ran, then they have a collective right to strike. Surely the vote is the very basis of democracy? Why shouldn’t democracy be extended to work places? I’d suggest it’s purely because democracy, in it’s true sense, would threaten a certain class of person.

Whatever you may think of the chaos the strike could cause (although the suggestion that a potential strike could cause chaos only works to strengthen the workers claim, that they’re very very valuable to the greedy bastards running the firm), it is not your decision, it is not my decision, it is a basic human freedom to withdraw labour. The High Court decided otherwise, it found in favour of British Airways. The High Court basically told BA Staff that they either carry on working, or they quit. The High Court indirectly decided that life is about acquiescing to the demands made by “management class” regardless of how outlandish they may be; an unquestioning, keep-quiet mentality, if we do not like it, we don’t have the right to complain. Who decided that this disastrously neoliberalist, anti-democratic, rather Fascist mentality was how I should view life? The High Court, since it’s conception, has been the “official” law machine for big business; or as one of my favourite bands The Enemy put it “Hello we’re the generation, we do what we’re told by the Corporations, hello”. Does Capitalism precede freedom and democracy?

Today, the managers at Millford Haven Port managed to get the High Court to agree to an injunction, banning strike action by it’s workers, after workers unanimously voted for strike action in order to raise awareness of their campaign to reform the companies pension policy. The High Court is becoming a dangerous entity, it would seem. The balance is tipping further and further in favour of business. Surely, workers ARE the business. At what stage of social evolution did an abstract concept of “business” gain more rights than its workforce?

Why doesn’t the High Court employ the same logic when big business vows to cause chaos in local communities? Why do Corporations get away with acting against the interests of the public as a whole? Lloyds Group, which is 43% taxpayer owned is set to reach the 16000 job losses mark recently. Why? Because Lloyds was greedy, and thought it’d get a cheap deal by buying HBOS. What it got in fact, were a mountain of debts. Whilst cutting jobs, Lloyds then employed Andy Hornby on….. £720,000 a year as a consultant. If you don’t know Andy Hornby, he is the man who plunged HBOS into a mountain of debt and is partly responsible for the banking crises. And yet, Lloyds re-employed him (this is around the time Hornby refused to give back £2.2mn pension package he took, when he left HBOS having destroyed it) after taking over HBOS.

The sad thing is, whilst 16000 job losses has a huge impact on local communities, and whilst the heads of Lloyds Group live in obnoxious luxury; we the taxpayers own 43%. Why isn’t the Government stepping in on our behalf and saying “yeah, you’re not going to be pulling this kind of shit any longer, neoliberalism is dead“. More to the point of the blog, why isn’t the High Court having a say on this? They seem to spend most of their time attacking Unions.

The High Court late last year favoured the Banks in their quest to be legally allowed to charge extortionate penalty fees for unplanned overdrafts. Whilst banking has always confused me anyway (If I deposit £2,000,000….. i’ll get a substantial amount of interest…. despite the fact that I don’t need it. If I go 1p overdrawn, because i’m poor, and need to live, they charge me £15 a day, until I pay it back… confusing!), it confuses me even more that whilst the average consumer who goes a few pence overdrawn can be charged huge amounts of penalty fees, a bank itself can go £10.8bn overdrawn, bring the entire economy to a grinding halt, force mass job losses, home repossessions, see the suicide rate double in less than two years, and yet still be allowed to leave with a lovely big pension pot, a bonus package, and a free ride out the Country.

Perhaps Capitalism isn’t as great as it’s been made out to be. Perhaps it’s fundamentally geared toward honouring fucking awful people.

Big business is the cancer of the planet. It’s advocates now seem to propagate both sides of Parliament, and the Courts. How wonderful. It began with the Thatcherite revolution giving away key institutions that govern our lives (water, electricty etc) to private hands; unelected hands, answerable only to their shareholders. How is that, in any way democratic?

It seems that if you wear a suit, and own a lovely big car, your freedom is far more important than anyone elses.

Portrait of England

When I was 4, my family drove to the south coast of England for a traditional British holiday. I buried my favourite Thomas The Tank Engine toy (Percy) on the beach at Weymouth, and the next year we went back to the same place. I tried to find Percy, thinking it’d have stayed where i’d buried it. I searched for hours. I completely ignored the World around me, as if it didn’t exist, in the hope that my concentration may lead me to find it. I never did find it. I do wonder where that toy is now. I wonder if it’s at the bottom of the sea somewhere? I miss Percy!

My portrait of England, is the great British seaside holiday experienced as a child……

A sign on the motorway for “The South“. A traffic jam on the M5 in the rain. A fleeting moment of frustration when the slow lane is moving faster than your lane. The moment of joy when you see the sea. Only to find out it’s a river. A stop off at a motorway service station without realising that everything you want to buy for the rest of the car journey is going to cost your parents more than the worth of their house. The moment you finally do really see the sea and you hear the seagulls. The drive up to the gates of the caravan park. The wait whilst your mum or dad collect the keys to the caravan from reception. The sound of kids playing in the pool. The moment you step through the caravan door with the awful furniture and the rock solid beds, but still you’re magnificently happy. The pointless act of looking through all the wooden cabinets in the caravan living room as if you expect something of supreme importance to be in there. There’s nothing in there. Actually, there’s one glass. There’s nothing else. Certainly not my Thomas The Tank Engine toy. The camp site entertainment team of 20-somethings who can sing and can dance but are held back by their over aged head-of-entertainment team leader who should have quit this game twenty five years ago but still insists on introducing (“Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only….“) himself. Production of Grease tonight. Entertainers from Birmingham and Stoke putting on 1950s style American accents. You don’t understand why that is. But don’t worry, twenty years later, you still don’t understand. Back to the caravan. Go to bed. Wake up the next morning to the sound of seagulls landing on the roof of your caravan. Or if you’re mischievous like I was….. throw bread onto the roof of your neighbours caravan and watch the entire population of England’s seagulls land thunderously onto their caravan. Laugh at their misfortune. Revel in your evil genius. Leave the caravan for a beach day. It’s not even hot. It’s cloudy. But you’re on holiday. Beach day it is. Take sun cream and sun block. Just in case. Coincidentally, find that sun cream fourteen years later in a draw back at home, unopened. Dad thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to leave the caravan wearing shorts, and white socks with sandals. Walk or drive down to the beach. Get out the car. Mum with a bag and an horrendously uncomfortable straw mat for sunbathing on. Walk on. See the sea. Stop suddenly. Excitement time. Mouth wide open…… you’ve heard the mellifluous sound of the amusement arcade. The grab-a-teddy machine that drops Zippy JUST before the hole, every time! Everyone else’s kid seems to have a Zippy. Why don’t you have a Zippy. Well perhaps when you’re 22, you’ll win a Zippy….

Storm off in a huff. Notice the fish and chip stand. No longer in a huff. Want chips to take to the beach. Dad buys chips. But now you don’t want chips. You’ve seen ice cream. You want ice cream. With raspberry sauce. But you have chips now. Hmmm predicament. Luckily a seagull is on hand to make the decision for you. Lose your chips to the birds. Cry. Dad buys you an ice cream out of pity. Score! Down to the beach. More families claiming their spot on the beach, than there are grains of sand. Set up the wind screen. Dad tries to knock it into place with a rock. It doesn’t look very sturdy. One gust of wind. Wind screen falls down. Dad gets annoyed. Finally puts it up right. Bury Percy. TO THE SEA! It’s freezing. Seriously, why bother? You could literally freeze to death. Back at home, if your mum or dad asked you to stand or swim in water that appears to be colder than your freezer, you’d call childline and report abuse. Back to the beach. See the Punch of Judy tent. Judy says something. Punch slaps her. Kids laugh. Never has the glorification of domestic violence been such fun to watch. See men carrying surf boards. There’s more chance of a wave striking your bathroom sink than on a beach in Devon, what the hell do they think they’re going to be doing? See donkeys. Demand a ride on one of them. They look miserable. But fuck it, you have no concept of animal abuse yet, so go for it! Woman sunbathing topless over there. Ew. Boobs. Off the beach. Starting to get too cold. Mum grabs your feet in a towel to wipe off the water and sand. She doesn’t realise it hurts like hell to rub them dry of sand! Back in the car. Your shoes seem to be full of sand. Empty them at the back of dads car. He wont know. Back to the caravan. Eat at the club house. Watch the kids talent show. Thank the heavens you’re not competing. You have time now to take the piss out of the contestants. Girl tries to sing over the rainbow. Try to contain your laughter. She comes joint first with the only other contestant. You think it’s rigged. You’re only six years old and you’re convinced there’s a conspiracy. A contest without a winner? They planned this in advance. You just know it. The announcer is the Lee Harvey Oswald of South England. You eat your dinner. Go back to the caravan. Sleep time. Wake up, watch with excitement the weather forecast, say “it’s sunny back home”, dad goes to the caravan park mini-market to buy a paper. Finish breakfast. Time to do it all again. Zoo maybe? Water park? Saturday comes quickly. Time to drive home. Sleep in the car. Wake. See the miserable buildings of the smokey dilapidated city that you live in. See your house. Boo. School soon. Not for Percy. Lucky bastard.

Tea Bagging

Somewhere between 1500 and 1600, an unknown Author penned The Voynich Manuscript. It has over 250 pages, is incredibly detailed, and has many illustrations to accompany the writing. The one problem is, no one knows what it says. Its language, its place of origin, as well as its author, are completely unknown. Top cryptographers spanning the last century have been unable to decipher the manuscript. It remains one of Humanities great secrets. It is not a coded manuscript, because the writing flows beautifully, like elegant prose, which suggests the author knew what he/she was writing, as it was written. A mysteriously unknown language, that perhaps, we’ll never know.

That being said, the Voynich Manuscript is not even half as baffling as the current American “Tea Party” movement. Essentially, what the tea party movement is, for those of you who are unaware, is a group of redneck protesters who think they know how to run a Country far more impressively than the current administration. What is striking though, is that most of the tea party brigade themselves, don’t know what they’re angry about….

According to cbs, 44% of the Tea Party movement, believes that their taxes have gone up under Obama. Which, they haven’t. Somewhere along the line, these mad tea party people have decided that tax cuts, equals Socialism. Which, is doesn’t. So what do they want?

They want liberty for all!!!! – unless you happen to disagree with them. Or you’re gay. Or a left winger. Or you can’t afford healthcare. Or you’ve had an abortion. Or you’re from Mexico.

They are, for all intents and purposes, Neo-Cons. Which means, they are Reaganite Republicans. They seem to have an issue with the idea of universal Healthcare (We in the UK have universal healthcare – mainly because we still care for our sick and injured – and our standard of health is ranked 18th in the World by the World Health Organisation, whilst America is ranked 36th. The USA also spends more than the UK on healthcare, and has a higher infant mortality rate, and a lower life expectancy than the UK…. but still, they insist Socialised healthcare is bad…….. although socialised policing, fire protection, and road building, they don’t seem to have a problem with) They are also, very undemocratic by nature.

The Tea Party Website, has the following to say…
“ Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.“
All Right Winged proposals. Why do these people assume that the entire Country wants to live in a Right Winged Nation? They may as well just say “We want a Constitutional amendment banning any political party unless they’re Republicans and very Right Winged…. oh and the gays aren’t allowed to marry either, they’re all icky and stuff… oh and God is real“. Not everyone puts all their faith in a free market system.
Constitutionally limited Government is also an interesting point. Why is this being raised now? Why not under Reagan? Reagan increased the number of Federal Executive Employees by 0.10% during his two terms in Office. In fact, he was the only President to increase the number of Federal Executive Employees, from the era of Kennedy, to Obama. The guy who shrunk Government the most, since the 1960s…was Bill Clinton. A Democrat. The number of Federal Employees is at its lowest, in over 70 years. So where is this huge scary socialist government?

Fiscal Responsibility? Were these Republican homophobic racist redneck idiots Tea Party attendees asleep over the past eight years? Record deficits under Bush. Where was the complaining then? Why aren’t they complaining about the amount of money being spent on defence? I’d guess it’s because the Right Wing says it’s acceptable to spend tax payers money bombing Nations and torturing on the basis of a lie…….. but if that money was being offered to help sick people get treatment, they take to the streets to complain.
And how ironic it is that fiscal responsibility, includes paying Sarah Palin, the laughing stock of America, £100,000 to read notes off the palm of her hand live on TV. Very responsible. Palin went on TV, to announce that Republicans had defeated Democrats “3-0″ in elections in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Virginia recently. “3-0″ she proudly exclaimed. Clearly the lady who can see Putin from her house in Alaska chose to ignore Bill Owens win in New York, the first time a Democrat had won that district in over 140 years recently. Or John Garamendi’s California 10th Congressional District win. Or Terry Mills’ winning Kentucky’s 24th State House district. 3-3 so far. Scott Murphy wins in New York. 4-3 Democrats. But then, do we really expect more from a woman who made numerous complaints about Obama using a teleprompter, whilst she herself had notes written on her hand to prompt her throughout the night? Perhaps if George Bush had used a teleprompter once or twice, he wouldn’t have single handedly turned the GOP into a party of the mentally disabled.

“A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty.“
Why are they posing subjective opinion, as objective reality? There are millions upon millions of us who would disagree with the statement they make there. Millions of Americans would disagree. How democratic is it, to suggest these people should be shut out of Political America?

“The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible.”
No they didn’t. American Capitalism put huge limitations on Corporations. Limitations that no longer exist today. If Obama were to suggest reintroducing these limitations, Well, Glenn Becks head might explode in a fountain of “OMGZ COMMUNIZM IS HERE!!!!!!!!!” rage. Corporate charters had fixed periods of time to operate. If Corporations were thought to cause harm to the public good, they’d have their licence revoked. Corporations had to obey certain operational duties that fulfilled their charter pledges. If they failed to, they’d have their licence revoked. Owners of Corporations could not own stock in other Corporations, because they were only allowed to be in business in order to fulfill the role they had been set up to fulfill, and nothing more. They were not allowed to interfere with elections, or influence public policy in any way. In fact, incorporation was only available to those who wished to set up a company that would benefit the public, rather than for mere profit. Corporations could not make any long term decisions, without the agreement of legislators.
These rules were employed across State governments, and because the founders feared another East India Company emerging, they were always very suspicious of unchecked free markets. So no, the founders did not believe that personal and economic freedom are indivisible.
In fact, early America, the colonies, was a very egalitarian, community based, supportive economy.

The Tea Party movement takes the Founders sentiments out of context. It would be easy for me to start a Socialist movement and claim the Founders were Socialist, given their apparent adversity toward the power and wealth of Corporations. But it’d also be naive of me. The truth is, opinion among the founders was deeply divided. Capitalism was still a very young idea. Socialism, was a very young idea. They had no evidence as to which system is better….. neither do we, now. They could only work with what they knew at the time. And what they knew at the time, can not, in any such way, apply to what we know today.

James Madison, arguing in Federalist Papers Number 10, stated that a strong central government was needed to protect citizens against controlling, partisan, extreme factions. Madison says:
“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
No one is suggesting that the Tea Party brigade are not entitled to their opinion. They are. Regardless of how abhorrent I find their views, they are entitled to them. But, to suggest that the USA was built on their views, is strictly not true. It’s a manipulation of the American sense of Patriotism. Madison warned against these people.

I don’t want to be the one who suggests racism has a part to play in this, but right from the word go, the far Right had decided Obama was the worst President in history. They wanted his birth certificate, they called him a muslim, they said he was a terrorist sympathiser, They said he was indoctrinating kids when he spoke at their school. They said he hated the white race. And now, they’re attacking him, because he bailed out a failed Capitalist system.
The Tea Party brigade is not fighting for American values. The Tea Party brigade is fighting for insurance companies, who are without a doubt directly responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people who simply couldn’t afford to pay their health insurance needs.

The irony of the situation is that whilst these idiots have such distrust in Government and such trust in the free markets; the free markets have allowed a situation to arise in which Government is effectively fun by big business. The Republicans attempting to tell people what it is to be a “Patriot” in terms of political and economical opinions, is so horrendously manipulative, but vaguely familiar. One recalls the Republicans during the early months of the Iraq War making everyone aware that if you didn’t support the War, you weren’t a Patriot. Fox News referred to Anti-war demonstrations in 2003, as those of the “loony left“, yet referred to the tea party demonstrations of 2009, as “true Patriots”. It’s despicable. But then, that’s the nature of the right wing.

I have no idea why anyone takes the far right seriously; they shouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors. And whilst they are certainly less understandable than the Voynich Manuscript, the Republican supporting rednecks who are still ridiculously bitter than they aren’t in a position of power any more, should DEFINITELY be allowed to keep their signs…………..

Everything is God

Having spent the past two blog entries trying to explain why I do not subscribe to a God of organised religion, I thought i’d now make an argument for why I’m not an atheist in the sense that I cannot accept, unequivocally that a God does not or has never existed, on a philosophical level.

As explained in previous blogs, I reject Christianity on the basis that it attempts to explain the unexplainable. It has hijacked the idea of God for it’s own power and wealth needs. (Why would a God use a commandment up telling me to not worship false idols, instead of telling me, say, not to sexually abuse children? Is God jealous, or was it just a design on power by a few people three-four thousand years ago? I’m going to go with the latter) Christianity attempts to use simple language and human knowledge to justify something that is beyond simple language and human knowledge. It then attempts to set out rules and laws that run contrary to many of my own principles. For example, I reject being told that I must “love thy neighbour“. Love and acceptance cannot be willed or forced. Neither can belief in a God of Organised religion. I reject Catholicism because the very reason it is as powerful as it is, has nothing to do with it being ordained by the power of God, and everything to do with the largely ignored evils and atrocities it has committed over the past two thousand years. I reject Protestantism for much the same reason.
Christianity tends to contradict itself by suggesting on the one hand that by revealing certain “laws” set out by God, that the nature of God is therefore knowable by human kind. Yet, the God of Christianity is one of complete perfection whom transcends human understanding, which by definition, means he is unknowable in every way.

But rejecting Organised Religion in no way implies a rejection of the principle of God in its entirety.

The Benedictine Monk, Anselm, both impresses me and infuriates me. He infuriates me because he suggested that belief preceded reasoning, which is a cop-out for me. It can also be quite a dangerous idea. Reasoning should always precede belief when it comes to such important ideas that belong to such a powerful organisation like the Catholic Church. Belief without reasoning is at the very heart of the problems Catholicism has endured over the Centuries. The largely illiterate populations of European States during the 16th Century were content with belief without reasoning, and the 16th Century happened to be rife with religious war and struggle.
“Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.” Anselm’s idea of “belief” in the eleventh century was a far cry from our understanding. For Anselm, belief means to resign oneself completely to the obedience of God, and with that obedience will come understanding. This, at first glance, sounds quite loose and unreasoned. But on a deeper level, Anselm is clearly referring to a state of meditation. Meditation is used across the World, spanning Continents and cultures, religions and races. Even Atheists meditate, it helps us gain a better understanding of ourselves and our issues. So, perhaps Anselm is loosely suggesting that to know oneself, is to know God, and since we are all interconnected by matter, by time, by space, by emotional response, by language, therefore to know oneself is to know everything, to know the eternal, and so by definition, everything is God.

Anselm also impresses me with his ontological argument of perfection. Anselm suggests that we all have an understanding of “good” and of “beauty” and of “perfect”. Those understandings, we use to base compare everything in life to. To Anselm, the very height of “good” or “perfect” is God. There must be a perfect perfection. Perfection must have an end point by it’s very nature, and that perfection, is therefore called God, because there is nothing greater than perfection. Anselm argued that to imagine the perfect Good is one thing, but for it to exist in reality would be greater than it existing purely in his mind, therefore, God must exist. It’s a convincing argument. But then, does God also become the perfect imperfection? The perfect evil? And also, surely the greatest creator, would be one that could create the universe, but not actually exist himself? That would be the ultimate perfection. Me painting a great work of art would be amazing, but me not existing, and yet managing to create a great work of art, would be better. And so by that logic, God doesn’t exist. Right?

I would argue that we are debating the idea of God in very much the wrong way. We are trying to prove the existence of a Being much like ourselves; who can consciously communicate and direct from the comfort of his cloud in the sky. That he can listen to prayer and intervene in the World. I think that’s wrong. I blame Organised Religion for that.
I think the idea of God needs to change. To have created a universe out of nothing suggests a creator that we give human attributes too. But, creating out of nothing, means that “nothing” is separate from God, and so that puts humanity at a great distance from God. We are not a part of God, God is not a part of us. Just as if we create a clock, we cannot suddenly become a part of that clock, and direct that clock to be whatever we so wish. But even if a God did create the universe ex nihilo, then, we must ask, who created the creator? If we take the Organised Religion route, we must say that before existence there must have a been non-existence. Which means God must have jumped into existence, at the moment of creation, unless he existed in non-existence, and if he did indeed exist in non-existence (a state in which nothing exists) then by definition, he didn’t exist. So, in order to change from a state of non-existence into a state of existence, something must have started his existence, which means there is something greater than the creator of everything, because something created the creator primarily. Still with me?

But, going with Anselm’s theory, the greatest perfection, in my rather skewed subjective analysis of the situation, would be a Being that could exist when existence itself does not exist. Does this prove the existence of God? No, but it is a far better argument than the one given by most Christians….. “God exists, because the Bible says so”.

What if the universe had no beginning? What if the big bang was simply one in an endless line of big bangs? What if there was no Aristotelian Prime Mover, because there was no need for a Prime Mover? We slowly come to the conclusion, that existence itself is bound together. We are all part of the same conclusion. Matter, energy, time, wisdom, and space, are all interconnected. Which, I think Thomas Aquinas was suggesting, when he noted that God is the immutable, God is the perfection, and God is the infinite. He wasn’t suggesting there is a man in the sky who has all the makings that we traditionally associate with a God of Organised Religion. When he spoke of the nature of Jesus, he wasn’t suggesting that a God one day decided to put his son on Earth. He was suggesting that the “son of God” was simply the result of the hard and desperate times. Humanity created Jesus. In the same way that every generation has a person stand up against the natural order; that person would not have the same influence if the natural order was perfectly acceptable. Therefore, Jesus was simply a man who stood up against the accepted Roman order. The son of God, simply means, the son of everything. It was inevitable, for Aquinas, that eventually a man would want to fight back against Roman powers. Aquinas, the great Philosophy of Christian tradition, was suggesting that because everything is interconnected to everything else, therefore everything is God.

Slavery of the mind

Carrying on from yesterdays blog on Evolution, I thought i’d use this blog to attempt to verbalise my rather ineffable understanding of life.
I do not believe in any organised religion. That much is plainly obvious. However, some of my favourite philosophers throughout history, are the Christian philosophers over time. St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, to name a few. “Thinking Christians” as I like to call them. I find that the religion that has come to dominate the Western World – Christianity – has been rather oppressive and dangerous throughout it’s history. I understand that for the individual, spirituality can be an uplifting and comforting experience, which I advocate fully. I cannot though, understand why something that happens to have billions of subscribers, is considered “respectable” simply because it has billions of subscribers. People tend to blindly believe, without question. I find it somewhat arrogant. On a philosophical level, I cannot accept Organised Religion, and here is why…..

Humanity is limited to our very narrow understanding of the Universe. We can never overcome that narrow perspective, because the reason Humanity is limited is not due to an easily corrected ignorance, but instead down to what Descartes in his First Meditation noted as our senses. To see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is all we have. How arrogant of Humanity to think that whatever exists to those five sense is all that exists. We seem to put “God” into the category of the five senses. We give him human characteristics; love, wrath, expectation. All human concepts. How arrogant of us.

What if there is more? And if there is more, we cannot possibly comprehend it, because we are far too limited, and yet Organised Religion believes that the entire nature of life and the Universe, can be explained, in a 2000 year old book; a book that doesn’t actually mention Evolution or dinosaurs (you’d think it would). We are enslaving our own minds by the very nature of Organised Religion. When in actuality, the man who happens to know the Bible by heart, is no more knowledgeable than the man who calls himself Atheist. Both rather dogmatic systems of belief, mean nothing, we are all Agnostic.

It is not just extra sensory limits that hamper our understanding of “everything“, it also extends to our five sense. Closer to home.
A man who I see walking through Leicester City Centre every so often, sits on the bench in the middle of the City Centre, and often talks to himself about how he’s the king of England. Sometimes, he has a trumpet. People stare at him, as if he’s mad. How could a sane commoner actually believe that he’s the King of England? He must be mad right? He is Camus’ Outsider, is he not?
As Descartes points out, whilst we presume to accept everything that our senses perceive as real, to be real, we are daily deceived by our senses. We fall asleep, we dream, and whilst we dream, we believe everything our senses are telling us to be real. If during our dream, we see Elvis riding on the back of a donkey, in Ancient Rome, our dream counterpart does not think “I must be dreaming“, we simply accept it as truth. In fact, there have been times when I’ve woken up from a dream, and it has taken a few seconds for me to realise it was just a dream. For those few seconds, am I considered mad?

So what is to say that we are not dreaming now? Or at the very least, that our senses are not deceiving us in some awful way? Why do we trust our senses when we are “awake“? How do you know for certain that you’re not dreaming right this second? What is the difference between us sleeping and dreaming, and the man in the street calling himself the King, other than the fact that one of us has our eyes closed? Surely there is no real difference? We are both being deceived by our rather devious senses. We are both “mad” at different times. And so with that being said, how can one presume to know anything? To claim to understand the nature of God, and the Universe is to claim an arrogance and a level of knowing far beyond that of Humanity in general. To attempt to understand anything whatsoever in life, we must question everything; every belief, every tradition, every custom, every level of authority, everything anybody has ever told you.

Language plays a gigantic role in limiting human knowledge and experience. Language reflects just how constrained humanity is. We cannot adequately explain feelings, especially given just how personal emotions truly are. I cannot describe the beauty of love, because the beauty of love to me is simply a feeling, whose very aura is deeply ineffable. In the same way that I cannot explain the colour blue. And so language constrains us. Given the obvious constrains of language, how are we to use such a limited medium of communication in order to describe the infinite? It is simply not possible. And yet we arrogantly attempt it; Organised Religion.

Your perceptions and the impressions that your senses give you are yours only. Your experiences and your subsequent system of values and morals, are yours only. If I were to call myself Christian, my system of values would strongly contradict those of Christianity. I have, for example, no problem or issue with homosexuality, gay marriage, gay adoption, or even abortion. No amount of threatening me with a rather bleak and conservative bigoted God is going to change my system of values. And anyway, if God truly is perfect, and “knows all“, he knew before I was born, that I’d have a system of values, due to the experiences my family have had and my natural surroundings that I had no control over, and that seem to contradict everything that the God of Christianity stands for.

The Fact of Evolution

I’m shocked at how many people think that the word “theory” in the “theory of evolution” means somehow, that the entire process of evolutionary biology; arguably the cornerstone of biology and medicine, is in still just an “idea“.

A fact is a collection of infallible data. A theory is a way to explain how that data came into being, and why it came into being.

That being said, let’s take the theory of gravity as a prime example of fact and theory blending together.
Contrary to popular belief, Newton did not come up with the very first theory of Gravity. Aristotle believed and theorised that gravity (which is a fact) existed because the elements (Earth, Water, Air and Fire) needed a way to return to their natural place. Fire shot upwards because it was light. Air was the lightest so was already floating around. Water was next. Earth last, because it was the heaviest. The theory being therefore, that the heavier the element, the faster it would fall. The force pulling it, was gravity. Aristotle’s fifth element was the “ether”, which included the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. These were held into place by the prime-mover (or what we now refer to, as God), according to Aristotle.
That theory held a lot of weight, for a very long time. Galileo proved the Earth was not the centre of the Universe, and everything changed. The idea of the Law of Falling Bodies kept to Aristotle’s basic premise that an invisible force exists, that exerts a pull. But it included the notion of speed, velocity, however it disregarded air resistance, and the affects of gravity outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Until Newton came around.
Eventually, Einstein’s general theory of relativity rendered Newton’s theory of gravity obsolete and gave us a new updated theory, which is the theory behind our understanding of gravitation today. Einstein’s general theory of relativity, is so complex, and so confusing, that I only really understand it’s very fundamental arguments. Beyond those fundamental arguments, the little man in my brain says “erm….okay…what?“

The point is, theory keeps updating, it is like the philosophy behind the fact. It asks why, and how. Once a hypothesis has been proven, it needs a reason, otherwise the hypothesis is rendered useless. It is the opposite of religion. Organised religion sets a theory, and then tries to find a fact, which it fails miserably every time to achieve.
Evolution is the fact. Darwin’s idea of Natural Selection is the currently accepted theory behind evolution. Although, I’d suggest Ronald Fisher’s Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, and contributions to the subject by William Hamilton among others, are just as important. To dismiss the entire study as a mere “idea” or “hypothesis” is just ridiculously ignorant, and quite shameful.

Modern biology rests on the fact that the diversity of life on this planet; the reason we have different coloured eyes and hair; the reason certain species can survive in the most inhospitable environments, is because a process of natural selection over millions of years has quite menacingly destroyed any life form that just wasn’t able to cope.

During Industrial Revolution London, lightly coloured moths were unable to hide. They stood out. And so birds would easily catch and eat them. Darker coloured moths found it far easier to escape being bird food, because they could blend into their surroundings. Over time, the population of light coloured moths decreased tremendously. The population of dark moths increased. Natural selection at work. The life forms suited to change, survive. The rest, don’t. Either that, or God REALLY hates lightly coloured moths. They probably flicker in his curtains at night, when he’s trying to sleep. I hate when that happens. I’d kill them all too, if I could.

The problem lies in the fact that whilst short term effects of natural selection can be measured over time (selective breeding in plants and animals for example, along with the evolutionary regressive notion of inbreeding depression and Genetic mutations like non-disjunction leading to Downs Syndrome also…); long term evolutionary effects cannot be observed. We aren’t likely to see the next stage in human evolution, happen over night. It happens over millions of years. Kids aren’t going to suddenly grow faster legs, to deal with the fact that police cars are getting faster since the 70s. It doesn’t work like that. Which apparently, means, to Christians (who ironically, demand unconditional proof) that it isn’t happening at all.

Of course, to those of us who also quite enjoy the study of Philosophy, the remnants of reading Descartes lead us to the conclusion that nothing can be 100% truthful. Life itself, cannot be 100% truthful. Sartre argues endlessly in Being and Nothingness, that beyond our very limited understanding of the World around us, we can never fully know anything 100%. And so to the relativists among us, evolution can never be 100% proven, but by that logic, neither can the existence of you and I.

The causes of evolution, are contentious issues. It is a matter of philosophical debate almost. One could even attempt to bring God into the situation, and could not be proved either correct or incorrect. But the statement that every species on the planet today has descended with adaptations, through history, from a common ancestor, is as much of a fact as is the force that is currently making sure you don’t float off into space. It would seem that to convince people that evolution is the fact and natural selection the theory, takes more effort than I first imagined. So, this blog is the last i’ll say on the subject.