The Abstraction

Around the year of Muhammad’s birth, the Arabians within the central penninsula were actively resisting the Byzantines and the Persians, and in fact organised religion and empire in general. They did not however, escape the pull and the “meaning” that comes with abstract concepts invented by humanity, plaguing the West at the time. The Arabians instead practiced the concept of “Muruwwah”. This idea stressed the importance of courage and patience, endurance and honour. It kept the tribes going. It was a concept that penetrated every aspect of their lives. They were taught that society would fall apart without it. And yet, when logic prevails, Muruwwah doesn’t actually exist. It’s a subjective man made concept.

Man has always confined itself to abstractions. The problem with abstractions, and in particular abstract philosophies and concepts, is that whilst they attempt to provide dogmatic objectivity, they are by nature, massively subjective.

Humans have always placed an unattainable goal ahead of us, a goal that throughout our lives sucks up our hopes, our desires, our dreams, our human decency, like a sponge. The concept of Heaven, which is largely derived from the concept of an eternal World of Plato and other Greeks, tells us that this life is going to be a bit of a disappointment, but your dreams are going to come true in Heaven. Heaven acts as a sponge for positivity whilst the World we live in is a reflection of negativity. There is no Capitalism in heaven. There is no poverty in heaven. There is no climate change in heaven. And yet, the majority of us do not care to see our fantasy of a Heavenly World reflected on Earth. Why is that? Heaven is a man made fantasy ideal, and yet we place it in a box labelled “other“.

The Nation State is a product of colonialism. The Europeans carved up Africa into Nation States as a way of control. We could control the labour force, we could control slavery, we could control information, we could control the movement of capital. Nation borders are meaningless. They always have been. They are meaningless, because they exist in the collective mind of humanity only. The Nation State did not exist before humanity, it did not exist for the majority of the time humanity has been on the planet, it will not exist after humanity, and it does not exist to anything else other than humanity. And so therefore, it is meaningless, because it doesn’t exist. Like organised religion, the Nation State was used as a method of control by humanity over humanity.

As Capitalism took hold, Nation States no longer had the control over labour, slavery and capital that they once had. Nation States are entirely at odds with Capitalism. In fact, Nation States only really work when an economy is entirely protectionist, and Empires exist. Nation States were never about race, or identity, or culture, or anything of the sort. They have always been about control. Control previously lay at the feet of the Monarch. The State, was the Monarchy. Man and State were the same thing.
Israeli historian Martin Van Creveld says:

“What made the state unique was that it replaced the ruler with an abstract, anonymous, mechanism.”

Nationalism by logic then, is less than 500 years old. Racism grew with colonialism, and whilst the cancer of racism has largely been destroyed, remnants still remain and people are still quite unapologetically racist, with no actual reasons for their racism. Nationalism is an “other”. It is something we think is larger than ourselves, it is largely pathological because before human beings, and after human beings, England will not exist. A land mass that we once inhabited will exist. But England, and it’s abstractions that work simply to disassociate ourselves with the rest of humanity in the same way as Christianity and Islam and America and Pakistan and sexuality does.

Corporations today have more rules, more regulations, more limits on information, labour and capital than any Nation has. Corporations and their laws are just as abstract and nonsensical as Nation States. Corporations are the modern day Nation States. You all look a certain way, talk a certain way, waste your life trying to obtain this subjective and abstract concept of “success”. We are now governed by Capitalism or a form thereof. It tells us if we work hard enough, we can achieve anything we wish. But that simply isn’t true. Capitalism is the dome that we are living under, and it’s promise of ‘everything’ is in the same box as Heaven…. “other”. It is religion.

Catholicism, Protestantism, Capitalism, Democracy, Fascism, Communism, Materialism; they are do not exist. They are ideals that soak up hopes and dreams and say “YOU CAN HAVE THEM IF YOU……. work hard enough/are white/keep buying shit you don’t need/own nothing because the State owns it for your benefit………. but eventually you’ll be the perfect happiness.” They are the “other“. The concept of Heaven is very similar. The concept of Plato’s eternal realm is very similar. Abstractions that don’t actually exist in anything other than man’s mind, are used to control man. The men who create these concepts have created them for the purpose of control. Feudalism was a system of control. Capitalism is not much different. There are still Lords who suck up the majority of the wealth at the behest of the many. The U.S Constitution protects a certain class of person. The USSR protected a certain class of person. Whether or not it was designed with that specific goal in mind is debatable, but perhaps subconsciously a certain class of people always assume they are best placed to rule.

The Catholic Church was set up to spread the word of Jesus, yet ended up being perhaps one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet. In the 16th Century, instead of helping the poor that Christianity swears to do, the Catholic Church took money off of the poor, to finance St Peters. They found ridiculous ways to justify the selling of indulgences because the abstract concept they were attempting to spread, which they had inevitably corrupted, demanded obedience, even though the entire doctrine was based on conjecture, dodgy history and man made abstractions.

Catholicism created a culture of idol worship with the creation of Saints. We in the modern era have took that idol worship that the Bible strictly forbids, and our new idols are National pride, pop stars, sports stars, TV presenters, authors. They are also in the realm of “other“. Their public success is largely fatuous, worthless, and offers very little in the sense of the progress of humanity, but they’re worshipped as idols. We salute a flag that we invented, We wear the clothes that the stars wear, we recite their words, we want our bodies to look like theirs, we concentrate far too much energy on being like them, than being like ourselves. Why is that? Is that natural? Perhaps so. Humans have always created an abstraction that we place above ourselves, perhaps because we cannot cope with the notion that we as a species are the height of intelligence. And yet, we are. We created God. We created Nations. We created all other abstractions, the very same abstractions that today hold us all back and group us together into ridiculous categories.

To break away from these abstractions, and concentrate on reality, is in a sense Anarchism. Libertarianism evolves from the idea that we must break away from abstractions, and whilst I think Libertarianism goes too far to the right, I understand it’s principles. But then Anarchism itself, is dogmatic, and an abstraction……and…………… ARGGGH!!!! I don’t know how to end this blog.

The G20: Excuse my pessimism.

I wish i’d have travelled down to London today for the G20 marches.
In Seattle ten years ago, riots broke out ahead of a World Trade meeting. The people marching on that day were marching for a fairer economic system, an end to poverty and care for the environmental issues. Ten years on, those same issues are fresh in the minds of the protesters. It stands to reason then, that we have the most incompetent politicians possible. It’s the reason i’m not a big fan of Democracy. So my ideal G20 meeting, would end up with…..

The end of the idea that a CEO earning 300 times more than his workers is “fair”. Because it isn’t. That CEO is not working 300 times harder. He’s taking the wealth created by his workers, and “redistributing” it to himself. It’s so overly wrong.

The end to the idea that higher taxes means less freedom. If it takes higher taxation on the rich, to lift people out of poverty, to feed children, to feed the World. Then go for it. If my pay check means I can’t afford a couple new Xbox games this month, because it’s going to feeding the poor, i’m all for it.

The end to tax havens. Let’s give developing Nations what they need and are fundamentally owed, by tax dodging criminals in expensive suits.

The end of Fox News telling me that capping the salaries of Bank CEOs who took bail out money is going to do more harm than good because those CEOs will just go elsewhere, to banks that offer better uncapped salaries and so places like AIG lose out further. No they don’t. That’s utter nonsense. Firstly, if you have to “pay bonuses” to get the best people, and those best people then destroy the World economic system because their interest in short term profit at the expense of borrowers; they aren’t the “best people”. And secondly, if those better placed banks decide they want to hire the Sir Fred Goodwin’s of the World, the men who destroyed their banks, at a higher salary; then good luck to them, it’ll be the death of them.

Tough penalties for companies who are found to be exploiting the people of poorer nations. Primark for example. Who just seem to be allowed to get away with it. Coca Cola, who poison the much needed water supplies of poor villages for extra profit.

Tough decisions on Climate Change. Huge investment in alternative energy to gradually pull us away from dependency on shrinking oil supplies. A real new Green, low carbon economic deal.

Instead of further bank bailouts, i’d like to see the Government do something for the people. Perhaps pay the mortgage debts of all those who took out sub prime. The banks therefore get the money back that they lent out, and the customer now has a higher share of disposable income to pump through to the rest of the economy.

Those CEOs who are directly responsible for the collapse of the system, should face a jail sentence. If a single mum “plays” the tax system to help her feed her family can face jail, then there is no reason that Sir Fred Goodwin shouldn’t face jail. In fact, there’s more reason.

Occupation, like America in Iraq, or Israel in Gaza, needs to be expressed as a disease of the 20th Century, that isn’t welcome in the 21st Century. Let’s stop the growing concern that resource wars might become common place in the future. Peace should be on the agenda.

Let’s join people together. We’re all in this mess together. So let’s not look at this crises in terms of “our nation against their nation” because it isn’t. A global new deal is needed. Call it a “New World Order” if you want to, but a deal is needed that brings nations together, and benefits everyone, not just the wealthy West.

An end to private campaign funds for democratic elections. Let’s make politicians agree that they are accountable to the people, and to the progress of the World. Not to business. Campaigns should be paid for out of public funds. Nationalised. Because of all public projects, this is the most important.

Put me in charge of the World.

Of course none of that will happen. It’ll just be 20 leaders, coming to no agreement, and we’ll soon be back to business as usual. Tax havens will still exist; African children will still be seen as less important than an American’s right to suck up as much wealth as possible for that new yacht he quite likes the look of; America and Russia will still be utterly suspicious of each other to the detriment of the rest of the World; occupation will still be “necessary” to secure new oil supplies; and of course there will be talk about how climate change is essential but not as essential as masturbating the ego and “freedom” of big business.

Excuse my pessimism.

Written off as trash…

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash.” – John Berger

There is a Conservative concensus that says a Liberal is merely out to steal from those who work the hardest, to subsidise the laziness of those who don’t.

When a person is starving to death, and we have the food to feed that person, nothing else matters. Business does not matter. Men in suits at the Wharf in London do not matter. Money does not matter. Debate does not matter. Profit does not matter. Religion does not matter. Keeping that person fed and alive is what matters.

The moral vacuum that is poverty is not a question of free markets or economics. It should never be that question. The fact remains for me, and for many like me, that if we can take a portion of a rich mans wealth, to feed a starving child, there is no moral out come superior to doing just that. It is not stealing. There is merely no term in the English language, that can describe it, other than completely necessary.

If it upsets you that you might be a few pounds or dollars short this month, or this year, then perhaps you should take a moment to look at the the Unicef stats published in 2005, that say the USA has a Child poverty rate of over 20%. How wrong the Free Marketeers really are, when they say that wealth creation is the single most important aspect of ending poverty becomes evident when you look at these figures. And it isn’t because people are lazy. It’s because those in poverty are stuck in a cycle that cannot be broken.
The UK, under the Labour government, pledged to cut child poverty. Since 1997, the Child Poverty rate in the UK has dropped significantly, due to ‘Socialist’ acts like The Minimum Wage and Education Maintenance Allowance, but is still one of the higest in developed nations. 15.4% of the child population in 2005 in the UK was in Poverty. This was much much higher during the Conservative Government who continually preached the moral virtues of the free market.

The U.S has an above 20% rate of Child Povert. According to United Nations University, 2% of the the population of the adult World, owns more than 50% of the wealth. The riches 10% of the population, owns more than 80% of the wealth of the World. Is this truly the fairest way to distribute Wealth across the World, as Free marketeers would have me believe? Does it not make sense to give some of that to those who cannot afford to live, first before massive profit is allowed to take place?
Again, if it upsets you that you might be taxed a bit harder, to pay for a better life for those who need it the most, perhaps you should be questioning exactly what date in history, compassion was lost.

“Solving the world AIDS crisis will require something that governments, international lending institutions and multinational companies often lack: compassion and the ability to see beyond profit. ” – Tamara Straus

We cannot possibly emphasise the mistreatment of the word ‘Freedom’ in the debate about Poverty. ‘Freedom’ is the most misleading word in recent history. ‘Freedom’ has come to mean the right to profit at the expense of others, as in the case of the Pharmaceutical company ‘Pfizer’, who when hearing about the news that Cholera had broken out across Kano in 1996, decided to use the children suffering, as drug testers for their new Cholera drugs, even though the parents of those children were never informed that the drugs had not been tested. The results were devastating. The same drug, was never tested in America. They waited until a developing Nation was in trouble.
‘Freedom’ has also come to mean ‘America’. Iraq was accused of hating the freedom of America, by George Bush in 2002, and ever since. Perhaps he was referring to the Freedom of Defence contractors, who netted a hefty $647bn in 2007 and 2008, because he surely cannot be referring to the plight of the 655,000 innocent dead Iraqis that the Washington Post reported, back in 2006. Not to mention the families of those 655,000 whose lives are now destroyed. ‘Freedom’ is a very ugly word.

A Nation should not be judged ‘developed’ on the richest in society. A Nation should be judged by how many people it has forgotten and left to rot.

Pro-Capitalism defenders seem to be unable to understand that when a system they claim to be a World Wide success, has left 90% of the population of the adult World with less than 20% of the Wealth of the World to distribute between them, the system has not worked, it hasn’t even slightly worked. It’s a disgustingly huge failure of catastrophic proportion.

Conservatism, tells us that it’s just the way the World works. That you cannot feed the World by giving money. That there is little we can do about it. We’ve almost come to accept it. Even I, who has a deep passion for ending poverty, cannot fully comprehend the evil of Poverty, whilst i’m sitting comfortably in my chair sipping a glass of orange juice. It seems a World away, and so not as important as perhaps it should be. It doesn’t figure highly in most peoples assumption, often flawed assumption, of what is important. Why should we accept that it’s the way the World works? Why shouldn’t there be those who wish to change it for the better?

If I were in control of the economy, I would add a company charity tax to expensive products. So for example, a brand new Yacht, which costs for example £400,000, would have an extra £100,000 added to it, which would subsequently be put into a Poverty Fund. New £1000 HDTVs would suddenly cost an extra £500. If you have this great wealth, and you feel robbed whenever the government takes a few extra pounds off of you, you will be charged extra for such great luxury, a brand new luxury goods tax, for the most expensive of luxury goods.

In 1994, the picture you see on the right, won the Pulitzer prize. It was taken by a Photographer named Kevin Carter. After taking the photo of a child crawling, unable to stand, to a UN Food Camp over 1km away whilst a vulture waits for the child to die, Carter walked away. He did not help the child. A few months later, Carter committed suicide. His suicide note read…. “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…“. This is the reality of a policy geared toward making the rich richer, whilst the poor are reduced to rats in the street. It can never be right to let it happen, under the moral assumption that it is much more unfair to see a businessman lose a little bit of his million dollar fortune to help those who need it most.

Morally, I cannot accept the position that it is much fairer to allow a CEO who already owns two yahts and a holiday home in Spain to gain more, than it is to take a portion of his wealth and give it to those who will die without it. There is something fundamentally wrong with Humanity and our sense of compassion, when it is widely accepted that the rich have the right to profit more, whilst the poor only have the right to an undignified, horrible death.

The less we care

There appear to be a growing number of WordPress blogs sporting this tshirt design. “Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy tshirt.” As a Socialist, this instantly grabbed my attention.

Communism has killed no one. Communism, like Capitalism, has never been achieved. Different degrees of Socialism have been achieved, but never the extreme of either wing. Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, or Castro’s Cuba are all Totalitarian Dictatorships. Marx talked of a Classless, Stateless system as true Communism. Anything short of this is not Communism. When the Right Wing uses Communism to suggest responsibility for millions of innocent lives lost, they take the blame away from the crazed dictators like Stalin and Mao, and into the hands of an ideology that never existed in the first place.

But if they insist on suggesting that Communism is responsible for millions of deaths, using their very logic, let’s examine the alternative, Capitalism.

Millions die every year in parts of Africa, because parts of Africa don’t have natural resources that the Americans can use as a reason to invade and free the country.

AIDs and other disease victims throughout the third world who are denied access to the much needed treatments and drugs, because the Pharmaceutical companies might lose a bit of money.

Every victim of the Iraq war. Including British and American soldiers.

In fact, every victim of a war waged by America against any nation that isn’t Democratic or isn’t allowing McDonalds to set up shop, since the 1950s.

The miners and the child chimney sweeps of the Industrial Revolution.

The local tribes who were displaced so that Coca Cola and other such companies can use the Water supply, which they then contaminate, causing untold dreadful mutations and deaths.

The wiping out of the left wing of Chile, under Pinochet, supported by America and Britain.

Opposition to Organised Crime backed candidates for Political positions in “liberated” Eastern Bloc nations, who happen to have connections to the US and UK intelligence quarters. Proving that justice and politics is just as much a commodity as the rest of the World.

Famine and extreme poverty victims. We can afford to feed all of these people. But it isn’t profitable, so we don’t. Inexcusable.

Anti-Communist waged wars.

The people who die in fuel poverty every year because E-on and British Gas quite like the idea of giving their bosses huge bonuses.

The forgotten people of the poor undeveloped nations, who are used for profit and then slung out into the mud the moment they aren’t valuable any more.

Over the next century, millions more, due to the frenzied, animal like chase for natural resources, slowly killing the planet. The very essence of an unplanned economy.

It is easy for me to blame all those deaths, on Capitalism. But that isn’t intelligent. Much like blaming Communism itself for millions of deaths, isn’t a well thought out logical argument. Capitalism did not cause the deaths of the people mentioned above. Terrible regimes, and failures of Government caused those deaths. In much the same way as Communism is not responsible for the extreme amount of deaths under the dictatorship of Stalin. In much the same way that Islam is not responsible for 9/11.

There is no justifiable way to explain away the deaths of those under Dictatorships using the cover of “Communism” such as the deaths of….
20 million in the Soviet Union, 65 million in the People’s Republic of China, 1 million in Vietnam, 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe, 150,000 in Latin America, 1.7 million in Africa and 1.5 million in Afghanistan. However, us Left Wingers, can freely and happily denounce the Right Wing propaganda attempts to suggest that the ideology of Communism itself is responsible for those deaths, because it isn’t, any more so than Capitalism is responsible in some part, to the billions of deaths since the early 1900s throughout the World.

Only today, The Observer ran a story about Primark using a range of products from a producer who use illegal immigrants paid at just under half the minimum wage. The workers, who naturally come to the West for a better life, for a better chance for their families, are used for cheap labour (£3 an hour they’re paid, not a living wage) for 12 hours a day, for seven days a week. We all know Primark exploits. We all know the only reason clothes are disturbingly cheap in Primark is because poverty stricken men, women and children throughout the third World are exploited every hour of every day. And the majority of us don’t care. The less we think about it, the less we care. The less we care, the more ignorant, oblivious, greedy and self important we become. This is the result of the Capitalist way of thinking.

Long Live Socialism.

I want I want I want

I want to be a writer, paid to lay my mind out with a sea of words that make you put the book to one side, and think about what was just said, relating it to your own inner most thoughts in the same way that Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg have done for me. Like Keats, I want my “name writ in water”.

I want to be a Photographer who’s photos make you realise that a split second in time, the essence of a moment forever passed has been captured forever, for the World to see.

I want to be a Philosopher trying to make sense of the World, abandoning all of my untrustworthy, lugubrious pre-conceptions about life and reforming them on my own, with nothing taught by anyone else, like a modern day Descartes.

I want to be a Politican, dedicated to helping those less fortunate, the down and outs, the people who do not succumb to the fetish for money, the ones who want to live but feel abandoned by a flawed system. The ones who need that little bit of support, who do not have it in them to be bank managers, but are still people.

I want to be a journalist, bringing the World into the small homes of a hungry-for-news British public. A decent journalist, not the type who will destroy lives just to bag a story on Britney Spears and earn a fortune in the process.

I want to be a charity worker in Africa, who notices that it isn’t just a case of “teaching a man to fish and he’ll learn to feed his family over time”, that these people need direct help now. Who, even if he helps one person live a better life, knows it’s worth it, much more so than slaving in an office in Leicester every day for no good reason.

I want to be a musician, who’s songs inspire a generation. A Dylan of the new fast World, who creates a legacy, whose canvas is silence to be painted on by sound.

I want to be a Premiership footballer, who fights to bring Leicester back into the Premiership and has Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United, not to mention Barcelona and Real Madrid all fighting to buy me.

I want everything and nothing. I want to be free to live a different life every so often, never getting too comfortable for too long. I want to go from girl to girl, and never get bored, until I find that one person who keeps the excitement alive and tames me. I want the poetic life that lies dormant within everyone, ready to explode like a star that cannot possibly hold itself in the same place a second longer. I want to find my sense of spirit and make peace with it, after chasing it for so long.