17th March and All That.

Notwithstanding my lamentable lack of literary enthusiasm at the moment, it would be remiss of me not to mention that today is 17^th March. It matters to me, you see, and not because it happens to coincide with the feast day of a certain ancient Irish cleric. It matters to me because it’s the birthday of somebody else.

It sends my mind wandering casually back to a day nearly two decades ago, and the sight of a comely maiden walking her little dog along a little lane near her house. On the surface she was unprepossessing – rat’s nest hair, plain dress representing no sort of style, and a total lack of paint on lips, eyes, or anywhere else. And yet she was compelling in a way I found difficult to rationalise. Eventually she became the Queen Regnant of my consciousness and has remained so ever since.

And so today I wanted – as I do every 17^th March – to send her a birthday greeting. I can’t do so because I undertook nine years ago to remain silent unless approached, and approached I never am. (And I regard undertakings to be sacrosanct.) Yet send them I do, silently through the ether from what has become a somewhat impoverished consciousness, in the hope that it will be received at some deeper level. It carries with it my regret that I never explained to her that there was never any hint of the libidinous about my interest. I simply ached for her presence, that was all.

*  *  *

And an almost totally unconnected little curio: I discovered only last night that St Patrick’s Day was treated in Ireland until relatively recently – some time in the 1970s if I heard correctly – as a religious observance requiring pubs to remain closed. It appears that the message never made it to New York. Maybe the telegram rests still in what remains of the post box on the Titanic.

(I’m doing deconstructed communication again. I wonder why. Just be thankful I didn’t make the intended post on Trump’s latest attempt to convince the world of his inadequacy. It’s the one thing he’s very good at.)

Doubting Even a Reset.

I’ve had so many posts running through my head recently but lacked the will to type them up. There is, however, one subject that keeps prodding me insistently, so I’ll make it mercifully brief:

Let’s face it, Iran desperately needs a regime change. Not for the sake of America or Israel, or the rest of the world come to that, but for the sake of the Iranian people. They suffered when Iran was a monarchy, and they've continued to suffer ever since. Let’s also face the fact that the USA, Israel, and Russia are also desperately in need regime change, in that case mainly for the sake of the world in general.

That’s the start of the issue. It goes on from there, but I won’t presume on anyone’s patience by wading through individual factors, presumptions, and considerations. The final line in the argument is simple enough: the human genome is defective and needs excising from the human animal. From time immemorial humanity has allowed itself to be ruled by those with the will and determination to achieve power, wealth and (dare I say it?) greatness on the blood and suffering of the innocent.

And so getting rid of the likes of Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and the Ayatollah won’t cut the ice. It will take a global nuclear war or environmental catastrophe on a scale greater than the Younger Dryas to do that. Or maybe even that won't do. There are those who believe – with some evidence that is not unconvincing – that it has happened before, and yet still the angels continue to be ruled by chimpanzees utterly lacking any ethical or humanitarian dimension.

So where do I go from here? I haven’t a clue.

Understanding Donald.

I saw this morning that Trump referred to Keir Starmer's intransigence with the statement ‘we’re not dealing with Winston Churchill here.’

Well now, have you noticed that whenever anybody disagrees with Donald Trump or declines to toe the Trumpian line, his immediate response is always to hurl a cheap insult at them and imply, at the very least, that they’re ‘losers’?

I should think the psychologists must love studying him. I’m not a psychologist, but I suspect I’m not too far from the truth in suspecting that he’s a prime case of arrested development as a result of defective potty training.

Meeting Mrs Lopsided.

I spent five minutes this morning renewing my fond acquaintance with a lovely lady collie dog in Mill Lane who I haven’t seen for several weeks. And then an elderly woman came walking uncertainly down the path holding a new-looking smart phone which appeared to be troubling her. She told me it wasn’t actually hers, and then said ‘A man keeps telling me the time. I don’t know why.’

For those unfamiliar with the appellation, Mrs Lopsided is the delightfully dotty MC of the 1955 Ealing comedy, The Ladykillers. It’s in the top half dozen of my favourite films. If the French have M Hulot, we have Mrs Wilberforce (AKA 'Mrs Lopsided'.)

Notes on the Iran Thing.

Last night I felt moved to write quite a long post about yesterday’s big event, but I ended up doing other things instead and today I’ve lost interest, so I’ll just offer a couple of brief notes instead.

As usual I’m intrigued to know what was buzzing around among the cobwebs in Trump’s head, and the best I could come up with went something like: ‘I know what I’ll do. I’ll send a bunch of brave American boys and some fine, expensive American ships to go shoot fish in a barrel. Then everybody will know how important I am and will stop laughing at me. They might even stop asking how close I was to Jeffrey Epstein and his kinky lifestyle.’

I doubt that too many people will mourn the loss of the tyrant Khameni, not even in Iran, but let’s not forget that there are tyrants on both sides. While considering this fact I imagined a comparable scenario. Let’s suppose the boys of the Chicago police department – fine, upstanding specimens to a man, no doubt – were complicit with Al Capone in the planning and prosecution of the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. It sounded about right.

I wonder whether Trump will be landed with one humdinger of a fatwa. (No fake blood this time – allegedly.)  But maybe not. I wonder whether fatwas can only be declared for blasphemy, not merely having a congenital dislike of Muslims, killing a head of state, and showing scant regard for what Donald likes to call ‘shithole countries.’ Must look it up.

I knew some Iranians once. They were all honest, honourable, and humorous men. I even had a fight with one of them which was entirely my fault, but he was the one who apologised. Nice guys. And maybe it’s worth bearing in mind that Persia is generally recognised as having been the cradle of civilisation, lacking only candyfloss and Disney to add gravitas. Does that count for anything? I don’t know.

Signing off now.

Overheard on the Grapevine of Imagination.

‘Caleb.’

‘Yes, Martha.’

‘Why do we Americans let them Russian and Chinese commies have nuclear weapons?’

‘Well now, they’re a bit too big for us to stop ’em. And besides, it establishes balance, ya see. If both sides have the same nuclear weapons, then neither side can start a war ’cos then they’d be blowed to kingdom come their selves. It’s a good system. It’s even got a name. It’s called Mutually Assured Destruction – keeps the world safe.’

‘Oh, ah see. So what about where them A-rab folks live?

‘Ya mean the Middle East?’

‘S’pose so. They don’t got nuclear weapons, do they? Only the white folks in Israel got ’em. Why aint there no balance there?’

‘Erm… it’s complicated, hun. But ya see, them A-rabs, they’re brown people and they aint responsible. They ain’t smart like we are. They’d be throwin’ ’em about like fire crackers on the 4^th July.’

‘That so?’

‘Yup.’

‘Shucks.’

The Good, the Bad, and the Disturbing.

The Good

Mother Nature is being even more precocious than usual this year. The snowdrops have been more numerous than ever, and now we’re seeing primroses, crocuses, hyacinths, daffodils, celandines, and even blossom on the blackthorn trees. And both the bluebells and wild garlic plants are more numerous and more advanced than is usual for February. Even the birds are behaving as though they think it’s April, and are starting to prepare for the production of this year’s next generation.

I was left feeling frustrated and annoyed last night when an arranged phone call from the pharmacist at the GP surgery failed to materialise. I called the surgery today expecting there to be some friction, but there wasn’t. The woman I spoke to was calm and apologetic, explaining that the problem had been due to a combination of sickness and the failure of modern technology to deal effectively with the requirements of modern times. This has become the way of things now, of course, and a new appointment was easily made. And all was well that ended well.

The Bad

I read this morning that Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, says his technology firm Block is laying off almost half its workforce because artificial intelligence (AI) "fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company." So is this stage 2 in a trend which began in the nineties when the banks were laying off up to 5,000 people a week as the internet removed the need for bank staff and even whole branches? Where is this going, I ask.

We in the west live in a world almost wholly dependant on consumption. Consumption is the bedrock of capitalism and the driver of economic growth, and economic growth is the tenuous means by which society as we know it hangs together. So I wonder what will happen when there is so much unemployment and concomitant poverty that the base of the capitalist system begins to diminish rather than grow.

Will the practice of wage slavery be replaced by a harsher and more transparent form of the same thing? Will there be riots on the streets and the imposition of marshal law? And is this the real reason behind (allegedly) the billionaires buying up properties and converting them into bunkers. Some assume it’s intended as protection from post nuclear excesses after WWIII, but maybe they’re intended as a shield to protect them from angry mobs who have finally woken up to the realisation of who has been causing the damage over the past century or two.

And how will that change the world order? Will the once-powerful USA be reduced to an archipelago of third world states? Will Russia and China become the new overlords, while Africa, South America, and probably Europe will be forced to bow the knee? Karl Marx was a highly intelligent man, however much Americans have been brainwashed into considering him no more than a ‘dirty commie.’ And Karl Marx did say that capitalism will one day destroy itself through its own greed. Can’t you see it beginning to happen?

The Disturbing

Earlier today I watched a collection of shuffle dance routines on YouTube (only because they were set to Lady Gaga’s Fine Romance, you understand. It’s one of my favourite pop songs.) I really shouldn’t, you know. I shouldn’t. While the spirit felt renewed, the flesh felt weaker than ever when faced with imagined prospects now become deader than a dodo’s granddad.

Emily and Me.

Firstly, I should say that I haven’t yet got back into the swim of blogging. But I want to say this because I consider it important.

Around sixteen years ago I was badly stricken by a severe case of the Brontë bug, especially with regard to Emily and her only novel Wuthering Heights. I made a number of notes covering significant dates, and also copied out some of Emily’s poetry. I came to believe that I understood Emily and her novel better than the countless creators of cinematic and other spin-offs ever did, and I wrote an essay on the subject which can be found at the other site. I particularly noted that many critics and academics accused dear Em of having had a ‘death wish’, which I didn’t entirely disagree with in general, but with which I deeply disagreed with regard to the reason for, and detail of, that wish. And I have to admit that I paid scant attention to the poetry, mostly because much of it went over my head.

Since then I’ve been consumed by metaphysical enquiry and have learned a lot about the more rarefied angles promoted by philosophical thought both ancient and modern. It was why I made yesterday’s post about modern science being seemingly on a converging path with ancient mysticism. And here’s the rub:

Tonight I had reason to go back to my Brontë notes, and while thus engaged I read Emily’s poetry again. Suddenly I understood it, and was highly surprised by just how spiritually sophisticated she was. This is quite remarkable when you consider that she was the fifth of six children born to a small town clergyman early in the nineteenth century, and who wanted nothing more than to write, tramp the lonely moors, and keep house. (Which is mostly all I want to do.) And she had great difficulty fitting in with societal expectations and connecting with the vast majority of people.

So have I finally met my match, my other half even, among the timeless enormity of the human throng? It’s widely conjectured by mainstream science that time is an illusion, and one of the favoured assertions is the concept of the ‘block theory.’ This promotes the idea that every fact of existence from the past to the future is permanently and immutably in place. (Although relating the theory to the future provides a possible stumbling bloc.)

It’s a fascinating idea, isn’t it? Fanciful maybe, but I still like it.

Science vs Spirituality

I watched a YouTube video last night which I found to be a most complete and yet simply expressed argument for why science and spirituality should not be in opposition. It’s here and it’s highly recommended viewing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGDj1uPNQp8

It occurs to me to suggest that it makes sense for science and religion to be in opposition because religions tend to be mostly about power, control, rules, and restrictions – in other words somewhat akin to cults, although adherents are conditioned not to think of them that way – and less about the wider, deeper, and freer pursuit of spirituality.

I’ll leave the rest to the video for anyone who wants to listen. It's quite short.

Epstein: Sowing a Small Seed.

No, I’m not back yet (see previous post), but there’s something I feel the need to say now because now’s the right time. It concerns the lamentable case of Jeffrey Epstein.

What Jeffrey Epstein and his cohorts did was deplorable in the extreme, but it wasn’t exceptional. It’s been going on for thousands of years for one purpose or another, to feed perverted predilection or to promote the pursuit of power and influence or both. It’s one of the darker sides of human nature and has always found its most extensive expression among the world’s elite. And it will continue to go on as long as power and wealth continue to be the yardsticks by which a person’s value, importance, and even personal qualities continue to be judged. (I recall Trump saying during his first run at election something like ‘my wealth is what will make me a good President.’ That should have been a red flag, but it obviously wasn’t seen that way.)

The human race needs a radical reset in terms of its perceptions and priorities so that we judge our fellows by wholesome personal qualities, good values, and ethical profiles. We most certainly shouldn’t be judging them favourably by how much property they own, how much influence they have, and how many $100 dollar bills they use to light their cigars. I’m not claiming that all rich people are bad because it obviously wouldn’t be true, but I do countenance caution when judging those who brag about their wealth.

This could have been a much longer post, but I’m going to leave it at that. I just felt the need to cast one small seed to the ground, however infertile I know that ground to be.