Suffocating in a Fog of Wrongness.

For some time now I’ve been wilting under the growing yet foggy sense that there’s something very wrong with the world and the human condition. It seems to be getting worse, and this morning there were two photographs on the BBC News page: one of Greta Thunberg after she’d been turned away from the Gaza carnage, and another of Ben-Gvir. Greta looked sad; Butcher Ben was smiling and looked happy. Their juxtaposition lifted the fog just a little.

Even the purportedly peaceful USA is having its crises. A worldwide poll was conducted recently in which people from twenty five (I think) countries were asked whether they had a positive or negative view of other countries and their leaders. The USA got a seriously negative score, and so did Trump. Trump’s negative score was even higher than Putin’s. Hey, ho. There goes America’s ‘soft power’ down the drain. As for sending the marines into California to quell the left wing ‘scum’ fomenting trouble, that raises its own issue. Has nobody noticed that Trump will stop at nothing to crush left wing protests, but when right wing protesters violently storm Capitol Hill he cheers them and waves them forwards? Hey, ho again. There goes democracy.

And this is being played out against the background of a world more and more geared to serve the greed of the bankers, the billionaire entrepreneurs, and the corporate world in general. Seems to me that capitalism is doing its best to destroy itself through its own greed, as Marx predicted it eventually would. If and when that happens, the very root of how human society functions will have to undergo radical change, and it won’t be comfortable.

That’s if WWIII doesn’t happen first. The west is gearing up to increase its percentage of GDP spent on arms production because someone in the know has forecast that Russia will attack a NATO country some time in the next four years. He might be wrong, of course. He might be giving vent to some partisan agenda of one sort or another. We really can’t tell in this post-truth age, can we?

Anti the Anti.

I gather one of Mr Netanyahu’s so-called reasons for disallowing Greta Thunberg entry to Gaza is that she is anti-Semitic. Is she? I couldn’t honestly claim to know because I don’t know the woman personally. I’ve never had the impression that she was prejudiced against Jews, I’ve never heard her say anything to give rise to such a suspicion, and from what I’ve seen of her she doesn’t seem the type. So where is the evidence? I’m interested.

But herein lies an example of the wider problem. The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has become so misused and overused in the past few years that it has become effectively meaningless. Maybe Mr Netanyahu has generated a self-motivated and self-interested definition of his own, quite separate from any appeal to logic which normally accompanies a universal expression. Or maybe not. I can’t know that either.

But I also have to say this: It has been evident for a long time that Mr N is a dark-hearted individual and I see little point in trying to manufacture any defence against the charge of genocide levelled at him by the ICC and most fair minded people around the world. What I’m only now coming strongly to suspect is that he is also of low intelligence. That surprises me and makes me wonder why he’s there.

Doctors and Nurses.

No, this isn’t about shenanigans in the playground. It’s about real doctors, real nurses, and their relative merits.

We think of doctors as superior to nurses, don’t we? Their training takes longer; they get paid more; they’re the bosses while the nurses assist. It’s an acceptable and inevitable view, but I’m not so sure that it’s wholly reasonable.

When all’s said and done, doctors are fundamentally mechanics whose tools are the stethoscope and scalpel rather than the spanner and screwdriver. They’re highly trained and highly skilled, certainly. They need to know the function and interrelation of every aspect of the physical body. But ‘physical’ is the operative word. They don’t need a good bedside manner, however laudable one might be. I seem to recall Gregory House once saying something to the effect that the business of doctoring is not about curing conditions, but about solving puzzles. He didn’t have much of a bedside manner, did he, for all his genius. And I’ve had personal experience of other doctors who didn’t have much of a bedside manner either.

Nurses, on the other hand, are the care givers. They’re more highly trained technically than they used to be, although not to the level of doctors, obviously. But they still need to understand how people – as opposed to merely the constructions we call bodies – function. This is a vital skill which nurses need but doctors don’t. A good nurse needs an innate understanding of psychology while the good doctor gets on with solving the puzzle and mending the broken bits.

And that’s why I think they should be regarded as equal partners.

Remember that student nurse I mentioned on this blog back in 2018 – a young Pakistani girl called Sabs? She was around twenty years old and not yet fully qualified, but as she went off duty at 7pm she turned to the ward full of elderly men and said ‘goodnight boys.’ I’ll lay odds that she’s now a very valuable nurse. And we hadn’t seen a doctor for hours.

Educating the Non-English.

Since the garden has been constantly challenging me to keep up with its growth imperative for the past few weeks, the inside of my house has been largely ignored. In consequence, this afternoon I gave my full attention to the bathroom which was looking a bit grotty.

Now, there’s an interesting word which might be unknown to non-native English speakers. It’s an English colloquialism freely used by people of all classes, and means dirty, dishevelled, or sometimes as a derogatory opinion. And there are few, if any, situations where it might be inappropriate. The matter of my unkempt bathroom is a typical example, or it might be used to describe a coffee mug which hasn’t been washed for the last two or three months of daily use (which used to be a habit of mine when I worked in an office. The women used to tut at me and insist on correcting the issue.) Then again, a person of even moderately elevated class might address a peasant like me as ‘you grotty little man.’ It has been known.

So now I’m wondering whether the Chinese have a pictogram approximating to the word ‘grotty.’ I expect they probably do.

The word ‘tatty’ is similar, but is used to describe things which are not only unkempt, but generally cheap and of low quality. (Unless you happen to be from the north of England where ‘tatty’ is a noun synonymous with potato.)

Have you got that?

The Reaction Formula.

Yesterday was one of those days which start off badly shortly after you’ve climbed out of bed. Something goes wrong, and then things continue to go wrong with disturbing regularity right up to bedtime sixteen hours later. The whole day is one long progression of malfunctions, outright breakdowns, and various forms of mishap.

Initial reaction to this is mild irritation. That gives way to the second stage which is serious annoyance. The third stage is the point at which you turn your eyes skyward, searching for any god which might be peeking over the top of Mount Olympus so you can demand to know what the hell is going on today. And then, just as you’re dropping off to sleep, the mind settles and you regard the whole things as an Interesting Phenomenon.

Pity we can’t skip the first three stages, isn’t it?

The Reducing Valve.

I want to commend this YouTube video to anybody interested in the relationship between the brain and consciousness. I found it very compelling because it explained – if right – a problem I’ve had throughout the second half of my life. Make of it what you will.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOdk1rb5mZc&t=604s 

Blogger won't allow me to upload the thumbnails of YouTube videos any longer. Just another example of the modern techno world becoming more fascist. I'm uploading this in the hope that the URL will act as s hyperlink. If not, copy and paste.

Reaching the Peak.

I’m always a little sad when we reach the end of May. May is the last month in the year during which the days continue to grow longer for the whole of its span. And then along comes June which brings us to the summer solstice. The days begin to grow shorter again and the sun begins its gradual descent en route to the dark days of winter.

And it’s usually the month when the swallows first appear to thrill us with their aerial acrobatics. And the kiddies dance around the maypole to the sound of an Irish jig on the school playing field. And the wild birds feed their young ones with great energy and diligence. And things of – usually beneficent – great consequence often happen in May. (Although not this year, and there’s only three hours of May left.)

And the wheel turns. And nothing is meant to last beyond its allotted span.

The young are generally unaware of this, even though the knowledge must be hiding somewhere, waiting for the right time time to spring the ambush.

(The priestess - remember her? - was an exception of course. She felt the knowledge from an early age. It's why she was one third hedonist, one third philosopher, and one third explorer. Unlike hedonism and philosophy, exploration has no limits. If I remember the novel Sidhartha correctly, there would appear to be a direct parallel between me and the eponymous hero in the matter of the priestess. If so, all I have to do now is work with the ferryman until it's time for the crossing. Maybe I should read the book again.)

*  *  *

I’ve decided that when I die I want be greeted on the other side by a pack of friendly wolves, come to guide me to wherever I’m supposed to go. They are, after all, the ultimate dog.

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I found a picture of mine, published as a postcard, in the 'classic postcards' section of eBay. It was priced at £5.99. Fancy that. (And that was the second, incidentally, both taken in the English Lake District.) Mel thinks I'm going to be famous after I'm dead. I won't care as long as I have wolves for company.

Swamped.

Over the past two years the pageview count on this blog has been massively higher than it ever was during the previous thirteen. The month of May has already exceeded the all time record, and what’s odd is that in the earlier years it attracted many comments from mostly regular readers; now it gets next to none.

I’ve often wondered whether bot activity could be responsible, but it doesn’t fit because there’s no regularity of pattern and the visits are made by a wide variety of browsers and operating systems. And the individual posts are all listed on the stats page. It appears that a lot of people from disparate parts of the world – most notably Singapore, the USA, Brazil, Vietnam, and Mexico – are spending a good deal of time reading my old blog posts.

So the question is: who are they and why are they doing it? Is my blog performing some kind of function in various parts of the world? If so, I’d love to know what it is.

Bird News:

The blue tits in the nest box behind the kitchen fledged yesterday just as the weather turned cooler and damp. And also yesterday, I saw the first baby robin on the bird table. What’s concerning me is that some of the adult birds are now in full moult, and today we had the first proper rain for several months – several hours of it. This was good to see because the land was becoming dangerously dry, but if the birds don’t have their proper quota of water-repellent feathers, how will they cope with the cold nights? Being chilled is a major hazard for birds.

And I’m reminded of how easily we take the good things for granted. On nearly every day for the past three months it would have been appropriate to say to a passing stranger: ‘Good morning. Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ because nearly every day was. And yet I never heard anybody say it. But when I went out this evening to replenish the bird table, the remains of the day had a distinct ‘glooming down in wet and weariness’ feeling about it. I hurried back to the house, grumbling inwardly. It appears I don’t deserve to live in California even if I wanted to.

Trump's Tablets.

I see Trump is now directing his fire at America’s Ivy League universities. He says they’re not doing enough to prevent pro-Palestinian protests and are not supportive of his brand of American conservatism. Well now, what can they be thinking? And so the dear old US of A takes one more faltering step down the slippery slope to fascism.

American Conservatism According to Trump:

1. You will stand with hand on heart to recite the Oath of Allegiance every day.

2. You will repeat: ‘God bless America, land of the free where all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’ every time you see my face or hear my name. (Although he won’t realise that Voltaire was joking.)

3 You will revere the insanely rich as demi-gods, for they are the descendants of the Founding Fathers and represent the spirit of America.

4. You will do as you are told at all times by men of wealth who wear the badge of status conferred by me.

5. Women will be treated as objects of play to suit your pleasure, for that is their purpose in life. You will only take them seriously if they are young, pretty, and reading from an autocue words written by me or which have my approbation.

6. You will have no truck with dictionaries. However I define ‘terrorism’ or ‘anti-Semitism’ shall be the new truth.

7. You will develop the habit of somnambulance at all times and remain quiet except to roar angrily at my enemies.

I didn’t make this up, you know. This is what I’ve heard Americans with brains say about America.

Hypocrites or Specimens?

Two items on the BBC News website caught my attention this morning. The first was the shooting of the Jewish couple in Washington DC, and the second was the ‘meeting’ between Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office. What most caught my eye were the words attributed to Netanyahu regarding the first incident, and those of Trump in the course of the second. The level of gross hypocrisy was staggering even by the sad standards of senior politicians generally, and I wondered yet again why, since there are so many good people on this planet, we allow our sacred space to be so hideously polluted by men such as these.

(Although I think it likely that conspiracy theories will soon start circulating around the murder off the Jewish couple.)

My first thought on entering Sainsbury’s to do my grocery shop yesterday was for the people of Gaza, especially the children who haven’t yet been slaughtered by Netanyahu.

*  *  *

You know, I was watching a magpie pecking at something on a fallen tree branch this morning, and as I wondered what was attracting its attention I had a deep inner sensation that I’m no longer connected to this world. If only I could hold on to that feeling, maybe I could start being merely observant of the dark creatures instead of being angered by them. Seems I have a way to go yet.