This Essay is Depressing

Reading this essay will not brighten your day.  It will not sooth away any anxious feeling or lull you off into a gentle nights sleep.  This essay is depressing, which, by the way, is a feeling that seems to be avoided at all costs in our numbed out, drugged up society, where only happy thoughts are shared lest one become a doomsayer or a mood killer.

Instead, this essay is an attempt to express the deep, deep despair I feel whenever I poke my head out of my privileged reality bubble and take a peek at the rest of the world.  When I really observe what’s going on I see a world in a dire state and although comparatively ‘safe’ in terms of wars etc. I still see a world war being waged against the minds of our species and an equally terrifying war waged against the very being that sustains us – our planet.

For example, the great barrier reef is almost dead from going through what is termed  as ‘bleaching’, a phenomenon triggered by rising sea temperatures that even the most avid eco-warrior couldn’t stand between (unless they got get their hands on a very large piece of ice).  Journalists in the US are being arrested for filming protests, and then charged with conspiracy and having their footage confiscated (search: North Dakota pipeline protests).   The pharmaceutical industry is using the public as a very lucrative science experiment causing thousands of deaths a year (note: Always ask for the Number Needed to Treat statistic whenever offered a drug.  This number will tell you how many people the drug will actually work for.  For example to NNT for statins is 300.  This means that only 1 out of 300 people will benefit from the drug.)  Our own politicians in the UK paste promises in giant letters on the sides of buses and still get away with going back on those promises after the vote (in this case I am referring to the Vote Leave campaign implying that £350 million a week would go to the NHS if we left the EU).  And Donald fucking Trump has actual a chance of being the president of the United States of America.

What state must the minds of the people be in to let and even encourage all this to happen?

One hypothesis could be that society, like most living things, has a sleep cycle. There seems to be a trend of periods of awareness followed by periods of unconsciousness.  For example, the late 60’s awakening was followed by the self-centred early 70’s which was then followed by the awakened punk era of the late 70’s and then followed by the unconscious power hungry yuppies, which was then followed by the grunge movement to be followed by the banality of the X Factor.  Our last awakening seemed to peak around 2008 when many people were wide awake to the totalitarian footwork of the established power structures (business, banks etc.)  This period of awakening most likely began with the shock of September the 11^th in 2001, when an illegal war was waged against middle eastern countries almost instantaneously before any evidence could really be established, with morning arrived around 2005 when books such as The New Pearl Harbour started filtering down to the masses and the internet was beginning to establish itself as the font of all knowledge.  By 2008 there seemed to be a mass of motivated, ‘awake’ and active participants in the movement against big business and totalitarian surveillance.  ‘Wake up!’ seemed to be the mantra of the decade and terms such as ‘sheeple’ entered into my peer group’s vocabulary.

Yet, since then, a lulling seems to have descended.  I no longer discuss the outrageous abuses against human kind and this planet with my friends, except for posting occasional half-hearted and impotent posts on Facebook.  Discussing these matters now seems like a violation of other peoples happy place, an infringement of their right to be in ignorant bliss.

But why could this be?

Perhaps, as with all abusive relationships, there comes a point when the truth is simply too painful to continue to acknowledge and denial kicks in.  And please don’t fool yourself.  Whether Illuminaté, aliens from outer space or bog standard, run of the mill human beings, we are very much being subjected to an abusive relationship.   However, unlike a personal relationship, we don’t have the option to leave (no other planets are currently hospitable).  We can run and we can hide but eventually the abuse will catch up with us because it is our very foundations, the living planet itself that is taking the brunt of this abuse.

It is entirely depressing.

I feel compelled to end this essay on a positive note, or to dismiss my feelings as ‘just one of those days’.  For my own wellbeing I will regain my positive (denial?)  attitude tomorrow.  But for today I want to look at the great big steaming pile of shit that is our current society and breath it in, and breath it in hard because without us all taking a good lung full of the crap around us we many never find the motivation to extend ourselves and stop these abusive arseholes in their tracks.

                                      

“Observation is a dying art.”

― Stanley Kubrick

14th of April 2016

...Another major world event in 2008 was the financial crisis in the US, which led to a world wide recession that parts of Europe are still recovering from.

Bascially, what I can gather from the long and detailed Wikipedia entry, is that private banks in the US decided that it would be a good idea to hand out mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, meaning that the loans could be repaid.  Then on top of that people panicked and started saving or paying off debts instead of buying things so other people began to lose their income - known as 'The Paradox of Thrift'.

In fact, you could sum up the whole Wikipedia entry as 'they fucked it'.

Personally, all I know is that I lost a huge amount of money that year which was invested in low risk shares.  When my financial advisor who helped me invest my mums money told me the news tears came to my eyes - it was that bad.

Now, we are still left with a huge gap between wages and house prices.  The average house price in London is £450,000. The AVERAGE!  There really can't be that many lawyers, or investment bankers around to buy up all those houses. 

A crash has got to happen soon.

Maybe it will be next year...

13th April 2016

...2008 was not only a significant year for me.  It was also a significant year for the world.  Huge world events happened that year that make me wonder whether the Mayans were a bit off on their dates and in fact 2008 was the real portal of change into the new age. 

One of these huge world events was the inauguration of Barack Obama, which was celebrated world-wide to be a huge leap of progress. 
However, after the disaster of the Bush Administration I was highly skeptical of the American Government and was pretty sure that other shadowy figures were in charge of the proceedings rather than the faces we saw on TV.  When Obama came in to power I didn't suddenly change my mind unlike a lot of social-activists in my circle.  In fact, if I was a criminal Mastermind Leader of the World I would most likely choose a seemly progressive president to lead the most despotic and controlling country in the western world.  The fact that his name was also uncannily close to Osama Bin Laden also tickled my conspiracy bone no end. 

The enthusiasm for Obama, it seemed, was ironically based upon the colour of his skin, even though, culturally, he was estranged from his black father and grew up in a white privileged family (he went to a private prep school then to Harvard university), America was applauded for finally overcoming its deep rooted racism.  Now if Michele Obama had become president - hers is a real 'working class black girl does good' story - that would have been a different matter.

However, skepticism aside, looking back, its undeniable that the choice of president - whether by the public or by private interests - was a clear indication that change was afoot.  In fact his whole campaign was about 'being the change'.  Things seemed to be shifting in the right direction and grass root efforts were finally being encouraged. 

That conspiracy bone still tickles me however.

When the young people of society are teetering on the cliff edge of revolution could a new elite tactic be to give us what we want in the form of political leaders?
For example, is it a coincidence that as civil unrest has been rising - especially in the UK after last years election results- socialist lefty saviours have appeared on both sides of the pond? 
I would argue that offering the public a 'socialist-saviour' figure such as Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Grant is a safe valve where the political system, so important to the elite interests, remains while giving the angry mobs some hope of change.

It also divert attention away from important questions like: what the hell is politics anyway?  And who decided that a political system is the best way to run a country or a community in the first place.
At the moment, our 'political system' seems like a giant Eton Boys club where very immature human beings, who have been sheltered from most material hardships (although I'm sure growing up in their world is full of emotional hardships and traumas), are then left with the decision making for an entire country. 
Right now it doesn't seem to be working and all the Corbyns in the world may not change that.


N.B.  If the very real possibility of Donald Trump becoming president of the US doesn't indicate the end of the world then I don't know what does...

Note:

... Sadly this blog reflects a trend that seems to rear its ugly head a lot in my life. 
I start something with heaps of enthusiasm, posting everyday in this case, until slowly my interest wavers and I turn my attention to the next new and exciting thing. 
John Taylor Gatto would most likely blame the education system for teaching me not to see anything through - after all the bell will go any minute and I'll move from a geography to maths class, so don't get too involved or interested - or perhaps its a touch a ADD brought on by a desperate search for happiness in the next best thing and being dazzled by Netflix and Facebook. 
Or perhaps its a chronic fear of finishing anything because it means I'll be liable for any criticism that comes my way.  Or most likely, its pure laziness mixed with a bit of exhaustion from working 47 hour weeks in a high stress environment.

Either way, it doesn't matter now. Lets continue with the story....

4th of March 2016

... Over the 8 months that Culture Jammers R Us ran we would meet in a variety of interesting places such as ancient back rooms above anarchist bookshops, old Victorian pubs or dilapidated but charming squats (although once we did meet in a wine bar just to mix it up).  These meeting places were my first introduction to the squat movement which, although I'd been vaguely aware of during my teenage years, I'd never really been a part of.  Even with my social activist activity I still felt like a bit of an outsider, worried that others might think my fairly well groomed appearance would make me look like an undercover police woman.  But what really made me an outsider was the lack of any knowledge of the squatters struggle that had been waging under my nose for the last 700 years. 

It seems that whenever someone discovers an idea, or perhaps a continent, they often believe that the real action begins when they arrive.  With all the stories, myths and films about a lone warrior coming to save the day, this is perhaps understandable.  However, as my permaculture teacher often lamented, students would often arrive on the permaculture site and start projects completely from scratch even if someone else had made a start before them.  They came with the belief that with their arrival had come the beginning of the project, even though the project had been started, either by a another person or mother nature herself.

I have to admit that there was a touch of this in my mind when I first came across the social activist movement.  I'd just come from a fairly commercial, mainstream reality tunnel and wasn't really aware of the continuing social activist movement that, despite popular belief, did not end in the 1960's.  Instead I believed that the problem was only just manifesting itself, when in fact this 'awakening' had been happening for decades, if not centuries.  The squat movement, for example, starting with the Diggers in the 1300's and we could take 'social activism' back further if we consider the Celtics battle with imperial Rome..


The most astounding squat I visited in 2008 was the multi-million pound mansion by Hyde Park.  The squat was open to 'the public' for a day of lectures and performances as part of a open-university style event that intended to educate the masses for free.  As well as some great speakers and musicians I mostly remember that the building was magnificent maze of crumbling ceilings, 7ft high windows and decadent plaster friezes.  At one point I found myself just standing with my head about a foot away from one of the walls marvelling at the 100 year old flakes of gold leaf that were still clinging on to the wood work.  This place was a step back into history in the best way.  Instead of shiny polished relics that could have been made yesterday every inch of the place oozed age.

The squaters in this case were a group of artists called Da! Collective.  Squatting a semi in Barnet is one thing but these guys had crossed an invisible line and squatted a £6 Million property.  They made the news and eventually, after one glorious month, were served an eviction notice.

I wonder if the fear of untouched mansions being mobbed by the rabble had anything to do with squatting becoming criminalised in 2012?...

27th of February 2016

...  Although it's dirty and usually full of other strange human beings unnatural close to one another, the London Underground is one of my favourite places to be. 
It's not just that we are travelling through a magical maze of underground tunnels that tickles my fancy, but there is also something quite homely about a tube train and I often like to think of it as some kind of public sitting room.

It is also the place where I usually feel most rebellious.

I don't know if it's because there is such a strict social code of conduct (don't look at anyone and don't smile or show any kind of emotion) or if it's to do with a kind of paradoxical sense of feeling at home and feeling anonymous at the same time, but I often find myself wanting to do things on underground trains like bop my head or dance to the music I'm listening to, or write subversive messages in free newspapers then leave them on the train for someone else to pick up, or smile and wave to people on the platform as we pull away on the train.

Recently however, my most rebellious behaviour has been sitting on the train without any distractions.

Usually, when I take the underground my immediate response is to either take out my phone and play a game, read a book or compulsively reading the adverts above the seats.  (I'm not interested in downloading the latest bollocks we're all meant to be believing in so I decline to pick up the free newspapers unless I want to write said subversive messages.)  However, I've made an interesting observation that's made me stop doing this. 

A friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook recently about how the brain seems to decide that bedtime is the best time to dissect the meaning of life, write essays or come up with political solutions to the worlds problems.  I liked this post and added that I too suffered from this problem as well.  It then occurred to me that if people are making memes about this issue then must be a common problem and I wondered whether this was an age old problem or a new one.  Then I remembered that lots of friends seemed to be suffering from insomnia at the moment and were reporting about this relentless thinking at night. 
The idea suddenly popped into my head that perhaps the brain needs to process information and it is only getting a chance to do this at night - when we;ve stopped distracting ourselves.

We are now in a position where we can constantly be distracted and entertained.  Out little computers mean that any spare moment that the brain could have to digest information and, more importantly - problem solve, is now being used up either to gain more information or being distracted with games or 'socialising'.

Our brain just doesn't get a chance to really have a good think.  'I think all the time' I hear you say, but I would argue that there is a profound difference in the endless chatter of the mind to really contemplating and problem solving.

For example, one evening my brain, at about 11pm when I had a 6am start, decided that this was a great time to start to wonder about the differences between intelligence, wisdom and knowledge.  It was an interesting question but not something I wanted to think about right there and then so I promised my brain that we would think about it tomorrow on the train.  This seemed to keep it happy and I fell asleep. 

The next day as I sat down on the tube, instead of pulling out my book, I began to think.  What is intelligence? What is the difference between intelligence and wisdom?  What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom and information?  As I deconstructed all these words and concepts my brain got its daily fix of digesting and both of us felt full and satisfied.  That night I managed to fall asleep almost instantly.

Whether there is a group of evil people rubbing their hands together in glee, or it's just a result of a primitive species dealing with new and shiny technological advances, unless you're involved in an academic pursuit, we spend a lot of time collecting information but don't seem to spend much time any more really thinking...

24th of February 2016

... This caught my eye on the tube today.  I actually stopped and laughed out loud as the thought in my head was 'ha the robot dinosaurs are doing their best to put us off going back to the forest'.  I hovered and thought about taking a picture for posterity but then remembered I'd find it online easy peasy, which, as you can see, I did.

My following thought as I wandered down the platform was that, rather than influence any adults, it would more likely effect the younger generations perception of 'the forest', especially those who haven't had much contact with them.  Perhaps every generation since we left the forests have had this kind of propaganda (my generation had The Blair Witch Project) to remind them just how safe and cozy we all are in our giant cement/cardboard boxes.

I thought that most people won't even see the film and all they will see are these scary posters telling them that forests are full of scary hands that will drag you down, down into the soil and that that is all that matters and we're subliminally having negative notions implanted into our brain by the system!

Then I though I was thinking too deeply about it and it's most likely just a shit film playing on our natural fear of wild places the make a quick buck.

It a shame though.  These kind of ideas along with stupid docu-soaps about groups of people being left to fend for themselves in the woods only to end up eating cold worms and mud, play into Mother Cultures industrilised narrative very well - Go back to sleep, don't worry, progress lies with the robot dinosaurs, you'd never survive without us....

22nd of February 2016

... I almost forgot...

The biggest thing to come out of the late 2000s truth movement was the fact that our society was, and still is, built on debt.
Of course, this knowledge is centuries old.  Since the first bankers reared their ugly heads and offered us tokens in exchange for our gold or loaned out riches they didn't have people have been trying to warn us - especially the 18th century founding fathers of America.
The difference now is that we have the internet.  Ideas can spread like wild fire and we have the ability to put two and two together, and watch informative You Tube videos until our eyes crust over.  No wonder certain people want to put controls on it.

One cold night in March 2008 I headed to a lecture hall in central London to listen to a guy talk about Money as Debt.  In Zeitgeist, The Movie part three talks exclusively about the federal reserve system and how it is owned by a private company, rather than any national governmental body.  Apparently our whole economic system is based on debt so that a very few amount of people (that pesky 1%) can make money from the interest, even in the UK.  Rumour has it that these private banks actually bought the UK about two hundred years ago after the Napoleonic wars, so this is a pretty big deal.

When we pay our taxes what we're actually paying off is our national debt, which, in the UK very recently reached 1 trillion. 

After watching a complicated film that explained the situation we were asked to form groups to discuss the issue further.  Put off by small discussion groups I decided to pipe up and suggested that perhaps it would be better to stick to a whole group discussion as there were only about 30 or 40 of us.  A woman behind me agreed and so began a great discussion, not only on the issue at hand but also a discussion about all of the confusion and mystery that had exposed itself in the last few years.  It felt great to be surrounded by a room full of people who were on the same mission to discover and expose the 'truth'.  I can see now why divide and conquer is so vital to keep us small and unsure.  When one finds oneself in a group of people who are all thinking and asking the same questions it is truly a powerful experience.

After the discussion I hung around afterwards to hand out some Culture Jammers R Us cards and ended up talking with three other people about what had happened that evening.  The person who sticks out in my mind the most was a guy in his late 60's who described himself as a sovereign state.  In fact he was so sovereign that he defied social convention by doing huge fart while we were all talking.  No one commented; that's how powerful his sovereign state was.

I find it interesting that no one seems to talk very much about the banking system any more.  There were a few grumbles about the Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK being bailed out, but apart from that we seem to have shifted our attention back to the theatre of politics rather than the shadows standing in the wings whispering instructions. 

A few years ago a great little animation came out that explained the money system very well.  If you've got a spare half an hour it's worth a watch...

21st of February 2016

...One thing that stands out on my 'subvert' is the profound sense of fear.

'Waking up' and realising that there were sinister forces at work, that may or may not be some kind of reptile based shape-shifting alien, was understandably disturbing.  Believing that governments, the very people we elect to keep us safe, could allow or even orchestrate full blown terrorist attacks was absolutely terrifying. 

Yet... as a good friend pointed out after watching a screening of Zeitgeist: "This is still fear mongering propaganda - it's just for a different cause."  She was right.  Why does Zeitgeist have a series of flashing images showing traumatic things such as war and dead people at the start of their film?  Haven't they read Naomi Kleins 'The Shock Doctrine' that explains traumatic images numb the brain to critical thinking and so are useful to show if you want an audience to take information in unguarded?

Is there ever a reason to use shock inducing traumatic images even if it is for the higher good? 

It certainly makes people pay attention - we're hard wired to pay attention to anything that's trying to kill us - but if it also cuts off the critical thinking part of our brain then surely we're not really progressing - just replacing one set of beliefs with another?


At this point cracks started appearing in my unshakable belief that what I was being told was the entire truth, and that perhaps the conspiracy movement was just another way to keep the masses in a state of fear and impotence.

There are some conspiracies, in the true sense of the word, that I still regard as very likely.

I'm suspicious, for example, when a government feels the need to publish an 'official' account of an event that reads like a trashy novel.  It makes me wonder what they are actually trying to convince us of (the other time the US published an 'official account' was when JFK was shot). 
I'd see some sense in it if, after decades of rumours and accusations, the government officials got fed up and decided that it was time to tell their side of the story, but it came out just 3 years later, reading - did I mention - like a trashy novel and claiming to provide 'a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks'.   I don't want to get all Derrida on these people but I couldn't provide a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding my breakfast, let alone a complex and large scale attack on two buildings by foreign agencies.  Did I mention that it reads like a trashy novel?

At the time, in 2008, I was certain.  Now, in 2016, I'm unsure.  Yet, conspiracy is not a dirty word for me.  I wouldn't put it past the power hungry mob in charge of world politics and economics to see the deaths of a few thousand people as expendable units in the march of progress...

20th of February 2016

...One of the culture jamming ideas I had was to replace underground advertising with my own 'subverts'.  The pieces of cardboard proved to be easily removed and one quiet afternoon I broke social convention, stood up and took out an advert to use as a size template and took it home.

Below is a picture of my subvert - a two page plea for the people of London to wake up and smell the conspiracy.  I still have it at home because sadly, or gratefully, I didn't complete this idea. 

Reading this again I admire my passion and the second page especially still rings true, I do ultimately believe in the power of humanity to rise above our oppressors and find some balance and inner peace worthy of our spirits.  

However, I did cringe a little as well.  I'm not saying that anything I said is not true.  The fact that we walk around with personal recording devices (AKA smartphones) monitoring everything from our snapchat updates to the way we sleep, or that money is slowly being phased out and replaced with easy-to-use contactless cards, is proof that although we haven't had chips inserted into our brains we simply carry them around in our pockets instead.*

The part about entire continents needing to rise up is also not so far off the mark either.  To submit a petition to the European Commission one needs a committee of 7 people from 7 different countries, gain a million signatures, with each country needing to reach their own quota of signatures, within a year and then create a plausible legal case.  Oh and that's only if they deem it appropriate to grace their desks in the first place.  Although I prefer the UK in the EU (that human rights court does come in handy) these hoops are a mammoth ask for most mortals to even consider.

The part where I say that we are all constantly being entertained to stop us from actually thinking is also spot on.  Nowadays however, instead of mass media doing this job we self-distract, taking any spare moment to compulsively flick through our phones or read a shitty free newspaper.

The part that made me cringe was my certainty.  The older I get the less certain I become.  Living in a post-modern era - where everyone's opinion is valid - I would hesitate to present this information so bluntly.  Nowadays I'd offer hypothesis', and muse over possibilities.  Is this a good thing though?  Ultimately nothing is certain yet, as Alan Watts puts it when discussing philosophy:


"In all my writing and lecturing I exaggerate. Because if I don’t exaggerate no one will listen.  Because all philosophers who take a moderate tone of voice and say 'on the one hand this and on the one hand that, and after all we should realise that all points of view should be taken into consideration', one reveres them for their calmness and their fair-mindedness but after you’ve listened to it all have they stimulated you? Have they given you a new idea? No.  Therefore to teach philosophy in any way you have to make outrageous statements but with the warning to your listeners that you’re only doing this for effect, to get a point across, to provoke thought.”
Alan Watts, Time in the Future Lecture, 

*Its interesting that the government gave up on bringing in ID cards.  Was this around the same time that smartphones came on the market?...

3rd of February 2016

...sometimes, after a long day at work, when I'm sitting on the tube, staring at my own scary looking reflection in the blacked out window, I wonder if that pale faced, red lipped creature was me...

31st of January 2016

... A fox saved my life tonight.  Yes, that's right; A fox... saved my life. 

To be precises, a fox pissing on a bollard saved my life. Thank goodness for pissing.

I feel that I can share this with you all by now because if you've come this far in the blog you've either a) decided I'm bonkers, but entertaining enough to ignore that fact or b) you also indulge the idea that reality is far more bizarre and mysterious than we're all led to believe.

So how exactly did a fox pissing on a bollard save my life? Well I'll tell you...

I was on my way home from work.  I'd been doing the late shift and it was about 10.15pm when I left my workplace and headed home on my ancient mountain bike.  I'd forgotten my High Vis jacket which left me pondering on the fact that I really should wear a helmet sometimes as well... especially when strange dream creatures were predicting my impending doom.  Anyway.  As I rounded a corner I saw a fox up ahead.  It's not a strange sight at this time of night in London but what caught my attention was that it stopped, cocked up a leg, and pissed on a bollard like a dog.  As I came closer to the wild dog fox I noticed that it wasn't bothered by a couple of human beings a few feet away from it either.  Struck by the tameness of this fox I stopped in my tracks and looked at it for about 4 - 5 seconds hoping its easy going temperament would let me have a closer look at this usually shy creature.  It stopped as well, eyed me up, then headed off into a bush.
I carried on my journey not giving it a second thought until a yellow transit van speed from a junction in front of me without stopping to look, exactly where I would have been if I'd been 4 - 5 seconds quicker.

When things like this happen in life you have two choices.  You can either dismiss it as coincidence and unrelated, or you can add a sprinkle of magic to your short existence and believe that something somewhere wanted you to live a bit longer and sent a surprisingly tame and healthy looking fox to save you...

29th of January 2016

...It's been a few days since I've been able to post due to my recent re-entry into the world of full time employment.
I have to say, I've been pretty lucky over the last 10 years when it comes to working for 'the man'.  When Mum died she left me a decent amount of money, so any motivation to get up at silly o clock suddenly evaporated and I became a lady of leisure.  In fact, looking back I wonder if this is the reason why I got into activism in the first place.  I actually had the time to think about it.  Now, all my time is soaked up by the daily slog.  I don't have enough time to sleep let alone consider the questions of a socialist system where sharing resources can be balanced with the rights of the individual on a local and international scale.
I haven't got time to scratch my arse let alone implement alternative forms of currency or pop round to an elderly neighbours house for a cup of tea. .

Is this part of the conspiracy perhaps?  Keep them busy and don't give them time to think or organise?
Why do we work 5 days a week?  I could do my hours in 4 days or even 3 if I did two 15 hour days - which is often done in my line of work.

Instead, I spend my time either getting up for work, traveling to work, working or recovering from work and then squeezing in some sleep when I can.

To be fair, as a support worker my day is probably more demanding that the average office job.  In my job I am a basically a badly paid personal assistant, entertainment manager, cook, nurse, housekeeper, hairdresser, stylist, masseuse, errand girl, accountant, security guard and life coach, not to mention all the other things related to bowel movements and the like.
Don't get me wrong.  I love my job.  And on occasions I actually look forward to going to work.  However, the private care industry is notorious for its bad pay compared to other less necessary vocations - such as politics for example.

At a sensory activity the other day we were asked to go round the circle and tell everyone what made us happy and what made us laugh.  When it was his turn one of the support workers dryly replied that his pay check made him happy, and how much he got paid made him laugh.

But why aren't we marching on Downing Street demanding better pay I hear you ask?  The reason... we are caring people.  Who would take so and so to their appointments or give them their medication if we all went on strike.  Who would be there when so and so has an epileptic seizure or needs their hand held when they are feeling sad?  It's a double bind.  We're paid a terrible rate because we don't complain and we don't complain because we're support workers - i.e. nice people.
I've also wondered if its related to the fact that its a female heavy industry.  If it were the men who were in charge of bum wiping we might be getting a bit more than minimum wage.

It seems that the nicer you are in this society the less you are rewarded.
However, rape an entire country of their oil and precious stones or sell deadly weapons of torture to dodgy countries and you're laughing...

19th of January 2016

... the chalk action was also a lot of fun.  The idea was to write our messages to the world on pavements in very public places.  Our first choice was Trafalgar square, right outside the National Gallery and so on one sunny afternoon we headed down with a box of chalk and a list of slogans.

We kicked it off by asking a question: What do you think of society? and then drew empty thought bubbles for people to fill in. 

We of course started with a few of our own.  I can remember writing something about education and schooling and of course about my favourite topic - surveillance.

At first people were shy and stood at a distance, waiting and watching to see what was going to happen.  But soon, as one or two people were coaxed into expressing their opinion, person after person started to come up write their own thoughts down. 

Nowadays, with rights and left wing politics pitted against each other, creating emotional polarities, I wonder if some kind of chalk war would have ensued.  But back then, public opinion was less divided and most of us were wary of being watched constantly and aware of the illusion of freedom that the system was doing its best to convince us was real.

Yes, we had a few penises and some people just wrote their names.  But the overall sense was one of freedom, a freedom to express oneself in a public space, in an anonymos and safe way without getting into too much trouble.

We chose chalk especially for this reason. Chalk can wash off, its a dig at the establishment without given them an excuse. Spray painting the pavement outside the National Gallery would have created a very different response. 

Community Support Officers did come and circle our activity fairly early on.  However, they didn't seem too bothered and kept their distance.  Eventually, the security guards were the ones to move us on.  Trafalgar Square, as turns out, isn't public space at all and is in fact owned by private landlords. We found the same response at Leicester Square  We were trespassing and had to leave.  It seems the Queen doesn't like chalkers on her property.

I don't remember any of us putting up much of a fight.  By that time a 5 square metre space of pavement was covered in the thoughts of Londoners and tourists alike.  Our mission had been accomplished.  

Incidentally, tourists are another reason why public displays of resistance are important.  I remember going to China just before the Olympics and being told that every month on the 11th was national cue  day.  Usually the Chinese culture isn't too bothered about cuing - a sacred cow on our own shores here in the UK - but due to the belief that the rest of the world were bothered the Chinese government were worried about losing face and had these national days to train their citizens.  They were also discouraging spitting and I'm sure telling everyone to look happy and as un-oppressed as possible as well. 

When we hide our civil disobedience away from the rest of the world - and only express this on the internet - we do the rest of the human race a disservice.  Showing our discontent in such public, touristy places shows solidarity with the rest of humanity.  It tells people that they are not alone in their own countries and that, although we have it pretty good here, our government and systems are also seriously flawed and people here realise that this is the case.

Drawing on a pavement with a bit of chalk is hardly going to bring down civilisation - but what we hoped it would do would give those of us questioning the status quo in what ever part of the world they grew up in had a sense of support in a world that does its best to isolate and divide us...

17th of January 2016

.... Back to 2008...

The post it note campaign was certainly a lot of fun.  We jumped from station to station sticking 'There are too many cameras' by every cctv camera we saw, and lining tube train windows with excerpts of Nineteen Eighty Four.  The correlation between the book and our modern times is well worn these days but back then it felt like a truly radical move.  This was also the time before Facebook became our most shared public space. 

Since then we do all our radical thinking in safe little circles of online friends who we know already agree with us.  One of my problems with online activism is that you have to know it exists before you can find it.  Street activism on the other hand presents new ideas to people who may not have thought about those things before.

Although hardly paradigm changing, my hope was that the post it note action would wake the people of London up so that they could see the invisible bars that kept us enslaved by comfort and consumerism and begin a revolution.

Nowadays, I've given up this idea of waking other people up.  At some point I realised - people DO know - there is no way they cannot. But for what ever reason, through their beliefs, their investment in the system or simply fear, they are not interested in looking outside of the giant cardboard box.  Some people just can't stand to be wrong.  Its too painful to have invested ones entire life to something that is designed to serve a system designed to exploit you and then to admit that you never really were in charge of your own life. 
Instead of waking people up, now I use my energy to mostly find 'The Others'.

In this day and age its easy to find what Neil Kramer calls 'The Others'. An online search will find you a multitude of people who agree with your point of view- whatever that may be.  But what is harder is to find evidence of alternative thinking in the 'real world'.  Even though the internet is part of our world I can't help but feel it still has a separate existence from the rest of social discourse.  Things that are said on the internet, perhaps not surprisingly, have a transient, impermanence feeling about them and tend to merge into the unending mass of information. Nothing is significant because everything is significant.  Yet, when we see information in solid for, through posters, or newspapers, it has a deeper sense of real, of being solid, that makes it more profound.

Some people revel in the 'freedom' the internet gives us to communicate with lots of people at the same time from the comfort of their own homes.  However, for me, there is nothing like meeting up face to face with fellow thinkers, poets and activists and sharing energy and breath with real people...

15th January 2016

We interrupt this recollection to take a moment to recognise the deaths of two very special people this week in 2016. 

On Monday we lost David Bowie to cancer, aged 69.  Then on Thursday we lost Alan Rickman, also  to cancer, also aged 69. 

I've written a piece on my feelings about this shift in reality orginally published here:

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/01/my-ode-to-bowie-and-rickman-theyve-left-behind-something-precious/

I guess I’ve reached that age where my childhood heroes start to shuffle, one by one, off this mortal coil and head off into the infinite unknown universe.

Even so, losing two great British talents in one week is all a bit too much.

I always feel strange when a famous person dies, especially iconic people like David Bowie and Alan Rickman. I feel a grief that doesn’t quite feel justified; after all I didn’t know these people at all. But still, they both made profound marks on my life and when I heard of their deaths I felt a tug in my heart and, when I was finally alone after a day at work, I did allow myself a little sob or two.

When I grieve for them I guess I’m grieving for all the people I’ve lost in my life, but I think I’m also grieving for the very special part of human life they represented.

David Bowie, for example, represented a part of human life that is no longer shown in mainstream media, not in an authentic way anyway.
In our modern culture we are very good at pretending we are unique and different, but really, we’ve come to an age where the media moguls give us what they think we want - what we already know – rather than anything truly new. (They even use algorithms and data analysis to plan what programmes they will release based on what is already popular.)
Bowie, on the contrary, represented raw creativity; unguarded and unpolished realness, being whatever he felt he needed to be in his own personal evolution, regardless of what people already liked. Bowie himself was an artwork. Not in the contrived ways that Lady Ga Ga or Miley Cyrus attempt to emulate, but in the sense of a true artist – in the sense that he didn’t give a flying shit what you thought. In comparison, our modern day boundary pushers and pop stars seem like attention seeking toddlers.

Alan Rickman also represented something precious – he represented ultimate dry, sarcastic, cut throat wit.
He cut through nonsense with a word or a look like no one else and gave off an air of unending fed-up-ness that represented something truly British. Of course, whereas Bowie was an artist, Rickman was an actor and so we only knew him through the characters he was cast as. Even so, he played that part so well it’s not hard to believe that that wit lived in him as well.

As these cultural icons leave us it feels like we are left with a vacant space. Where are the truly avant-garde in our mainstream culture now? We’ve sleep-walked into a culture of safe mundane niceness that tries to be everything to everybody. We took our icons for granted, thinking they’d always be there. Now, when we seem only to value people who fit in, who are ‘nice’ to each other or who express their individuality in a markedly unthreatening way, we’ve silenced real evolutionary – and scary – creativity. Even Ga Ga and Cyrus stay this side of outrageous – just outrageous enough to be noticed but not outrageous enough to really shake the foundations of our perception of normal or to really give the establishment the willies. Mainstreaming pornography and covering yourself in bacon is hardly a threat.

Although I speak of despair, there may be hope.

Now that Bowie and Rickman have left us in their earthly forms they leave a space perhaps for a new generation to fill. That kinetic energy of creativity and pure bloody mindedness is now released into the ether for you and I to collect up like scattered coins.

When great people die they leave behind something absolutely precious. They remind us of how important their presence was and that they represented something to be valued and to never be forgotten.

12th January 2016

Here is a collection of some of the posters we put up around the underground and in London in general in 2008:

9th of January 2016

.. Over the course of 'Culture Jammers R Us' we did several culture jamming actions.  The two that stand out most were post-it jamming the underground and chalking Trafalgar Square.

The post-it action was simple.  Create hundreds of small post-it sized pieces of paper with our messages to the world; messages that would 'wake' people up and shake them out of the hypnosis of everyday life.  A4 pages from the books 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' and 'Nineteen Eighty Four' were also printed and stuck on the inside of carriage windows and doors. 

The excerpt from Amusing Ourselves to Death was the beginning of chapter 11 called 'The Huxleyan Warning' and explained the two ways that culture can be diminished; either through a prison like culture of fear - as described by Orwell, or a burlesque culture of trivialisation as described by Huxley in 'A Brave New World'.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman writes:

"What Huxley teaches us in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice.  We watch him, by ours.  There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture death is a clear possibility."

Written in the 1970's Postman goes on to write about America's love affair with television.  I remember a gentleman in a suit reading this between underground stops and pointing out that television was loosing its popularity.
However, it is easy to see how our new love affair has transferred to the internet.  Facebook feeds are full of meaningless, trivial data, constantly refreshed with more meaningless trivial data until one can't remember what pointless click-bate article they read just 10 minutes ago - this happens to me anyway.*

When Postman talks about 'spiritual devastation' I don't think he means to refer to any religious context.  Instead, perhaps Postman is talking about the spirit in each of us, the human spirit or the sense of aliveness that we have a small children.  To have our spirit devastated is to become numb to the sense that we are living, creative and powerful beings.  It is to have our mind numbed to the point where it is just too much effort to think outside of the parametres we've been indoctrinated in to.  Dazzled by the headlights of the media we are kept occupied with the puppet shows of celebrity and politics. While at the same time, advertising keeps our minds firmly occupied on the problem of ourselves.  There's no time to think about philosophy or alternative currency systems when one can't stop wondering about the fine lines appearing on ones forehead and just what to do about them...



*I was a late arrival to the Facebook party.  I saw it as a tool to monitor and gather our personal information and thoughts and I didn't want any part of it.  As Postman would agree, Big Brother doesn't need to watch if we are coerced into telling him all our secrets.  I finally gave in in 2013 when I started a real world philosophy group and have been an addict ever since.

7th January 2016

... A few other faces turned up that Thursday evening, although now I can't remember who they were.  We had lots of people drop in and out of the group.  Some came to meetings, some came to actions but the core team was me, Steve and 'Nigel'....

6th of January 2016

... I remember very clearly the first CCTV camera that appeared on our high street back in 1997.  It was the size of a breeze block perched on top a 20ft pole as thick as a basket ball. I was 15 years old at the time and remember playing hide and seek with the camera while waiting for a bus. It was a novelty and a curiosity as the watching camera turn in my direction while I hid in a shop front and then popped out again.

It was only a few years later when I read Nineteen Eighty Four that the curiosity turned to creepiness.

Like all new technologies and policies that infringe on our civil liberties there was a movement against cameras and I was on the front line.  I hated cameras.  I felt scorn whenever I walked down a high street or entered a shop.  I'd poke my tongue out and make funny faces or put two fingers up.  I felt invaded.  (Still now, I will sometimes make a point of looking straight at a camera, just to break the weird unsaid social taboo that says we're meant to pretend they are not there.) 
Public space had suddenly become a place where your every movement was recorded. God forbid if you wanted to do anything out of the ordinary, like dance or sing or stop suddenly in the middle of the pavement for a moment of profound thought, or pick your nose, or pull your nickers out of your bum unless you wanted to attract the attention of those ever recording cameras - not that I would have done these things when other people were around anyway. But sometimes, on late night walks home from the pub and no one is around, it would be nice to be able to reenact the singing in the rain dance without having it recorded and stored on some security database for the rest of eternity.

I have always wondered about the conseqences of knowing that one is constantly being filmed and what it does to ones choices.  Firstly, does the way I walk or the way I interact change? Do I become more self-conscious? Did the self-obsessed culture of selfies come from a need to control the sense of always being watched - by always watching oneself? What does it do to my stress and anxiety levels?

And what is the effect of cameras on our moral lives? If I am no longer faced with the choice whether to steal something or not - due to the camera being pointed in my face and effctively taking away that choice - does some kind of moral muscle atrophy? If a camera is not around am I more likely to take the opportunity to steal believing that if i can't get caught then its morally ok?

Its funny how we've all become used to being watched. There is a constant knowing that they are always there - remembered when one needs a wee behind a car or a quick snog in a shop doorway - but we seem to get on with our lives regardless.

They were meant to keep us safer (that ole line) but do they really? Women still get assalted, people still get shot, terrorist still plant bombs, even under the ever present gaze.   Recently a building a work for, which is covered in CCTV, was broken into and even though the assailant was caught on camera we still couldn't prosecute because we couldn't see their face.  We could only watch helplessly as the recording showed this person racking up £2000 worth of damage.

Rather than a crime solving tool they just seem to be a warning - be good, your being watched! 
Its almost like the religious control programs that used God as the all seeing eye of morality have been mutated by the secular world into these little all seeing mechanical eyes of The Government...