... 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...
Sunday, 31 January 2016
Friday, 29 January 2016
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...
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...
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
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...
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...
Sunday, 17 January 2016
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...
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...
Friday, 15 January 2016
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 January 2016
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:
Saturday, 9 January 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
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'....
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
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...
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...
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
5th of January 2016
...The first member to arrive on that rainly Thursday evening was a guy called Steve. Steve was an artist in his late twenties who had recently discovered screen printing and political street art. In 2008 street art was still a fairly new concept. Banky, for example, was still the mysterious figure who peppered the streets of London and Bristol with subversive artworks and then disappeared into the night.
(N.B. A key player in the cultural 'awakening' Banksy was soon absorbed by the establishment by making him 'a famous artist' and throwing a ton of money at him.
The system has certain immune responses to renegade souls - it either demonises, ridicules, or - as in Banksy's case - absorbs the renegade and makes them a part of the spectacle. Warren Ellis puts it best in his phenomenal - and slightly prophetical - graphic novel 'Transmetropolitan'. In Transmetropolitan the protagonist, Spider Jerusalem - a rouge columnist reporting on the fucked up and twisted society where children watch the 'sex muppets', people are half human, half implant and sleezy robotic politicians coerce a population hooked up on synthetic drugs and pornography - is the sole voice of the people. In volume 6 of Transmetropolitian the system does to Spidey what it did to Banksy - it turns him into a celebrity; a cartoon character; it makes him safe.) (See image).
Steve sat down and proceeded to show me his large collection of artwork that he'd brought along in his large black artwork case. I wasn't quite expecting this, although I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting. You see, instead of organising this revolutionary group of bandits on some secret forum hidden in the backstreets of the internet, I'd used a fairly mainstream website called 'Meetup.com' and very openly presented the group to the general public.
The person to arrive next was a older man called Nigel. I can't actually remember his real name but Nigel will do, he certainly looked like a Nigel. Nigel was a white middle aged man in his early to mid fifties, a bit weedy and who turned out to be a computer programmer - for The Government.
Now, as you can imagine - after watching countless you tube videos about sinister forces controlling the world - I was already expecting some kind of infiltration, some kind of secret agent spy who would be taking down all my details and planning my own convenient disappearance at a later date, so when Nigel turned up my paranoia sprang into action. In Hindsight however, it is very unlikely that The Government would send an uncover agent to my little unknown group, let alone give him a cover story that told me that he actually worked for the government. (The Met Police would have been a more likely suspect as they have not been adverse to infiltrating groups so thoroughly in the past that they'd have long term romantic 'relationships' with activists.)
Either way, my 25 year old self was extremely suspicious of this little speckled old man who always made a special effort to be at every meeting and thought that there was nothing wrong with CCTV...
(N.B. A key player in the cultural 'awakening' Banksy was soon absorbed by the establishment by making him 'a famous artist' and throwing a ton of money at him.
The system has certain immune responses to renegade souls - it either demonises, ridicules, or - as in Banksy's case - absorbs the renegade and makes them a part of the spectacle. Warren Ellis puts it best in his phenomenal - and slightly prophetical - graphic novel 'Transmetropolitan'. In Transmetropolitan the protagonist, Spider Jerusalem - a rouge columnist reporting on the fucked up and twisted society where children watch the 'sex muppets', people are half human, half implant and sleezy robotic politicians coerce a population hooked up on synthetic drugs and pornography - is the sole voice of the people. In volume 6 of Transmetropolitian the system does to Spidey what it did to Banksy - it turns him into a celebrity; a cartoon character; it makes him safe.) (See image).
Steve sat down and proceeded to show me his large collection of artwork that he'd brought along in his large black artwork case. I wasn't quite expecting this, although I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting. You see, instead of organising this revolutionary group of bandits on some secret forum hidden in the backstreets of the internet, I'd used a fairly mainstream website called 'Meetup.com' and very openly presented the group to the general public.
The person to arrive next was a older man called Nigel. I can't actually remember his real name but Nigel will do, he certainly looked like a Nigel. Nigel was a white middle aged man in his early to mid fifties, a bit weedy and who turned out to be a computer programmer - for The Government.
Now, as you can imagine - after watching countless you tube videos about sinister forces controlling the world - I was already expecting some kind of infiltration, some kind of secret agent spy who would be taking down all my details and planning my own convenient disappearance at a later date, so when Nigel turned up my paranoia sprang into action. In Hindsight however, it is very unlikely that The Government would send an uncover agent to my little unknown group, let alone give him a cover story that told me that he actually worked for the government. (The Met Police would have been a more likely suspect as they have not been adverse to infiltrating groups so thoroughly in the past that they'd have long term romantic 'relationships' with activists.)
Either way, my 25 year old self was extremely suspicious of this little speckled old man who always made a special effort to be at every meeting and thought that there was nothing wrong with CCTV...
Monday, 4 January 2016
4th of January 2016
... Culture Jammers R Us had their first meeting on a wet Thurday evening at a pub in Kings Cross. Dragging my best-friend along for moral support we sat in the booth and waited for our first members to arrive....
Sunday, 3 January 2016
3rd of January 2016
... Leaving Scotland, I headed back down south to London, my home town.
My mission was to start a social activist group called 'Culture Jammers 'R' Us', based on the action of Culture Jamming - the process of interrupting the mainstream cultural flow of ideas (AKA the consumer trance) - by using art, performance and the cultures own evil tool of advertising to jolt people out of the consumer routine.
A few years before The Dream, before my light awakening, I'd begun the process of a dark awakening. A dark awakening is when you realise that not everyone in power has your best interests at heart and some may even go out of their way to harm you. If you stay stuck in a dark awakening it can lead to paranoia and crippling fear of super-powered Freemasons or Illuminati hoards hiding around every corner. However, I do believe it is a vital stage to go through, a stage of questioning that cracks open the assumed power of authority which we are led to believe is infallible through our years of state schooling.
My own dark awakening began when I wrote to my MP for the first time on a matter concerning my Student Loan. As a student at the beginning of the 21st century I was one of the first young people who were asked to pay for their own education through a loan rather than a grant. Luckily for me, I came from a single parent family, and so was offered the full loan and had my tuition fees paid for. Even so, I left university with £12,500 of debt, perhaps starting me off on the right foot in a credit/consumer society. With promises of low interest rates and an eternity to pay it off it wasn't too much of a bother.
However, when I started working I discovered that I was being charged £30 interest a month, but that I was also only covering half of that interest with my automated monthly payments from my pay check. Of course, I could have added more to my monthly payments but I was 21 - and paying off my eternal student loan wasn't a priority, and anyway, I had a £1500 overdraft to pay back, that the bank so kindly offered my 18 year old self as I stepped into adulthood. I did care about the fact that this interest rate had not been properly explained to me and so I did what any good law abiding citizen would do - I wrote to my MP.
When I received a two page response basically saying 'this is how it is and we actually don't give a shit' I was shocked and dismayed that the person who was meant to be representing me seemed more interested in representing the student loans company. Naively, I had truly believed that politicians wanted the best for me and that any problem I had would be met with useful suggestions or help. My reality took a huge blow when I realised this wasn't the case.
This realisation happened to coincided with the beginning of the truth movement. Films such as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 were pricking my age groups interest and after reading The New Pearl Harbour by David Ray Griffin I fell deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of uncertainty and 'conspiracy'. As this was the time before the internet had really taken off as our sole point of reference I'd pour through subversive magazines, such as Ad Busters, and great books like Gerry Mander's 'The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television' or 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neil Postman.
By the time I came back to London in 2008 I was neck deep in 'conspiracy theories' and very aware of how much we were slipping into a surveillance society and being bombarded with suggestive propaganda on a daily bases. This was the time when Zeitgeist The Movie was being shown in little dingy cinemas down back streets. It was the time of the great awakening and I wanted to do my part...
My mission was to start a social activist group called 'Culture Jammers 'R' Us', based on the action of Culture Jamming - the process of interrupting the mainstream cultural flow of ideas (AKA the consumer trance) - by using art, performance and the cultures own evil tool of advertising to jolt people out of the consumer routine.
A few years before The Dream, before my light awakening, I'd begun the process of a dark awakening. A dark awakening is when you realise that not everyone in power has your best interests at heart and some may even go out of their way to harm you. If you stay stuck in a dark awakening it can lead to paranoia and crippling fear of super-powered Freemasons or Illuminati hoards hiding around every corner. However, I do believe it is a vital stage to go through, a stage of questioning that cracks open the assumed power of authority which we are led to believe is infallible through our years of state schooling.
My own dark awakening began when I wrote to my MP for the first time on a matter concerning my Student Loan. As a student at the beginning of the 21st century I was one of the first young people who were asked to pay for their own education through a loan rather than a grant. Luckily for me, I came from a single parent family, and so was offered the full loan and had my tuition fees paid for. Even so, I left university with £12,500 of debt, perhaps starting me off on the right foot in a credit/consumer society. With promises of low interest rates and an eternity to pay it off it wasn't too much of a bother.
However, when I started working I discovered that I was being charged £30 interest a month, but that I was also only covering half of that interest with my automated monthly payments from my pay check. Of course, I could have added more to my monthly payments but I was 21 - and paying off my eternal student loan wasn't a priority, and anyway, I had a £1500 overdraft to pay back, that the bank so kindly offered my 18 year old self as I stepped into adulthood. I did care about the fact that this interest rate had not been properly explained to me and so I did what any good law abiding citizen would do - I wrote to my MP.
When I received a two page response basically saying 'this is how it is and we actually don't give a shit' I was shocked and dismayed that the person who was meant to be representing me seemed more interested in representing the student loans company. Naively, I had truly believed that politicians wanted the best for me and that any problem I had would be met with useful suggestions or help. My reality took a huge blow when I realised this wasn't the case.
This realisation happened to coincided with the beginning of the truth movement. Films such as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 were pricking my age groups interest and after reading The New Pearl Harbour by David Ray Griffin I fell deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of uncertainty and 'conspiracy'. As this was the time before the internet had really taken off as our sole point of reference I'd pour through subversive magazines, such as Ad Busters, and great books like Gerry Mander's 'The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television' or 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neil Postman.
By the time I came back to London in 2008 I was neck deep in 'conspiracy theories' and very aware of how much we were slipping into a surveillance society and being bombarded with suggestive propaganda on a daily bases. This was the time when Zeitgeist The Movie was being shown in little dingy cinemas down back streets. It was the time of the great awakening and I wanted to do my part...
Saturday, 2 January 2016
2nd of January 2016
... I was 25 when I had this dream.
A year before I'd lost my mum to pancreatic cancer, a short illness that had given her 6 months to say goodbye to everybody and everything, and was at the beginning of what the philosopher Neil Kramer would call a 'light awakening'. After my mum passed away, perhaps looking for some deeper meaning to all the chaos, I began noticing coincidences with numbers and objects. I'd read books and then would come across similar ideas or names that very same day or i'd go and order Chinese food and get a ticket number with my very specific lucky number on it (157) and marvel at all the people who had come and bought chinese before me and the series of choices I'd made that day that had led me to the take away at that precise moment. For the first time in my life I began to question reality. Perhaps there was more to reality than the mechanical model I'd been educated to believe.
Unsure of what these coincidences meant I began to look into esoteric teachings and specifically energy medicine. Coincidentally (or not), this was about the same time when things such as The Secret were becoming popular and quantum mechanics was being used to point out the profound mystery of things we thought we're concrete and certain.
So, when I had this dream, its significance was far more profound than it would have been 2 or 3 years earlier in my life. Maybe it really was a prophetic message? When your perception of reality comes into question anything is possible.
In August 2007 I went to Scotland to volunteer as an assistant teacher in a secondary school. I was thinking of being a teacher but at the same time I had also been reading books by an ex-teacher called John Taylor Gatto who eloquently pointed out the serious flaws in our education system and how it was actually making us less intelligent (one of his books is called 'Dumbing Us Down'). When I arrived at the school I was dismayed to see that what he said was true. It was my first experience of systematic failure that was almost impossible to tackle as an individual. Any freedom I gave the kids in my classes, e.g. leaving their coats on, chewing gum, or doing things that actually interested them, created a ripple affect of problems as the children were then faced with the rigidity in other classrooms.
After 4 months I decided that my energy was better put elsewhere and before I solidified into a systemic cog and, got 'teacher face', I left.
I just couldn't get this dream out of my mind. If we only have 10 years left then I better do something about it.
A year before I'd lost my mum to pancreatic cancer, a short illness that had given her 6 months to say goodbye to everybody and everything, and was at the beginning of what the philosopher Neil Kramer would call a 'light awakening'. After my mum passed away, perhaps looking for some deeper meaning to all the chaos, I began noticing coincidences with numbers and objects. I'd read books and then would come across similar ideas or names that very same day or i'd go and order Chinese food and get a ticket number with my very specific lucky number on it (157) and marvel at all the people who had come and bought chinese before me and the series of choices I'd made that day that had led me to the take away at that precise moment. For the first time in my life I began to question reality. Perhaps there was more to reality than the mechanical model I'd been educated to believe.
Unsure of what these coincidences meant I began to look into esoteric teachings and specifically energy medicine. Coincidentally (or not), this was about the same time when things such as The Secret were becoming popular and quantum mechanics was being used to point out the profound mystery of things we thought we're concrete and certain.
So, when I had this dream, its significance was far more profound than it would have been 2 or 3 years earlier in my life. Maybe it really was a prophetic message? When your perception of reality comes into question anything is possible.
In August 2007 I went to Scotland to volunteer as an assistant teacher in a secondary school. I was thinking of being a teacher but at the same time I had also been reading books by an ex-teacher called John Taylor Gatto who eloquently pointed out the serious flaws in our education system and how it was actually making us less intelligent (one of his books is called 'Dumbing Us Down'). When I arrived at the school I was dismayed to see that what he said was true. It was my first experience of systematic failure that was almost impossible to tackle as an individual. Any freedom I gave the kids in my classes, e.g. leaving their coats on, chewing gum, or doing things that actually interested them, created a ripple affect of problems as the children were then faced with the rigidity in other classrooms.
After 4 months I decided that my energy was better put elsewhere and before I solidified into a systemic cog and, got 'teacher face', I left.
I just couldn't get this dream out of my mind. If we only have 10 years left then I better do something about it.
Friday, 1 January 2016
1st of January 2016
Happy New Everybody!
It could well be our last, or at least mine anyway.
You see, in July 2007 I had a dream that told me the world was going to end in ten years, and that I wouldn't survive.
Now that we're almost there, and the world seems to be spinning further into political and climatic chaos, I have to admit that I'm beginning to get a bit twitchy and wonder if it might actually, really and truly, have been a message from some other worldly force.
Before you think I'm a complete and utter nutter, the reason I hold this dream in such high regard is because it was followed by a coincidence, one those magical occurrings that give things a significance beyond the mundane and make you question what reality really is. That probably isn't making me sound any saner to most people but I'll continue anyway.
The dream started with me sitting in a twilit room on a sofa in a loft and beside me was a large china doll looking straight ahead. I turned away from it and when I looked back the scary looking doll was looking straight back at me. However, instead of being scared I felt intensely curious and asked how it had managed to move. Without a response to my question we began to fly and it told me its end of world prophecy and that it was going to show me the future that I would miss.
It took me to a clearing in a forest and in the clearing were two giant robot dinosaurs guarding a cardboard box the size of a block of flats with the front panel missing. Inside the box I could see a group of humans in loin cloths huddled in a corner with chain on their feet. Suddenly, the humans escaped from the box and ran into their natural home, the forest. They were free at last from the robot dinosaurs. However, the china doll explained, the humans couldn't survive in the forest because without the robot dinosaurs they couldn't communicate with their families and had to return to the cardboard prison.
In the dream this future seems so horrific that I was glad that i wouldn't survive and woke up with a start.
That very same morning I spoke to my closest friend and told her about this weird dream I'd had about the end of the world. When I had finished she stunned me by telling me that she'd also had a dream that night about a pale faced creature with red lips that had told her really important things, a creature that matched the description of this white faced, red lipped china doll...
It could well be our last, or at least mine anyway.
You see, in July 2007 I had a dream that told me the world was going to end in ten years, and that I wouldn't survive.
Now that we're almost there, and the world seems to be spinning further into political and climatic chaos, I have to admit that I'm beginning to get a bit twitchy and wonder if it might actually, really and truly, have been a message from some other worldly force.
Before you think I'm a complete and utter nutter, the reason I hold this dream in such high regard is because it was followed by a coincidence, one those magical occurrings that give things a significance beyond the mundane and make you question what reality really is. That probably isn't making me sound any saner to most people but I'll continue anyway.
The dream started with me sitting in a twilit room on a sofa in a loft and beside me was a large china doll looking straight ahead. I turned away from it and when I looked back the scary looking doll was looking straight back at me. However, instead of being scared I felt intensely curious and asked how it had managed to move. Without a response to my question we began to fly and it told me its end of world prophecy and that it was going to show me the future that I would miss.
It took me to a clearing in a forest and in the clearing were two giant robot dinosaurs guarding a cardboard box the size of a block of flats with the front panel missing. Inside the box I could see a group of humans in loin cloths huddled in a corner with chain on their feet. Suddenly, the humans escaped from the box and ran into their natural home, the forest. They were free at last from the robot dinosaurs. However, the china doll explained, the humans couldn't survive in the forest because without the robot dinosaurs they couldn't communicate with their families and had to return to the cardboard prison.
In the dream this future seems so horrific that I was glad that i wouldn't survive and woke up with a start.
That very same morning I spoke to my closest friend and told her about this weird dream I'd had about the end of the world. When I had finished she stunned me by telling me that she'd also had a dream that night about a pale faced creature with red lips that had told her really important things, a creature that matched the description of this white faced, red lipped china doll...
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