Another man's reality

Subject: FW: Another man's reality.

As the young British born mujaheddin fighter who was drawn to the cause of fighting with IS because of what he saw as the immorality and decadence in the West and his corollary by contrasting this with a story of martyrdom and salvation after death through what he had read and understood in the Koran. He swopped  the reality of this life for a promise after death.

The power of religious teaching has seen people give up their secular lives for a life within the church, to engage in anything from a monastic life, an evangelising priest in Africa to the vicar with a withering congregation in a run down inner city diocese. The power of the word of god strikes people in many ways and the fervour of their conviction  which usually stays with them throughout their entire life. Faith is and remains a benign gift and, apart from the annoying surety of their belief which they naturally want to impart to all their friend, they provide a welcome bedrock of common decency within society at large.
Between the person bent on Jihad and the Evensong worshipping clergy there seems an unbridgeable gulf but considering that belief comes largely from a common source, the Abrahamic interpretation of the creation and gods definition of what he expected of people, it's a wonder that the religious ferment has provided such disparity. The patriarchal domination inherent in the Koran and the Old Testament has many echo's and yet the Muslim faith, unlike the Jewish seems to have this call to arms as a root belief and which when  coupled with their concept of martyrdom as a way into heaven makes them almost impossible bedfellows, not only for the Jewish community but for all of us.

The communal unity that the Muslim faith holds, involving a strong congregational praying routine and a dress code which rivals even Eton for exclusivity, then in our western, socially fragmented society where individualism is lorded over family, is it any wonder that the calling to a brotherhood in a distant land, even one in the sky seems so appealing.

Ideological mistrust on a national scale

Subject: FW: Ideological mistrust on a nation scale.

Is it just my sceptical mind but why have non of the bombs directed at a host of Democratic big wigs not gone off. I think the last count was 8 explosive devices sent to people like the Clinton's and Obama, the actor De Niro and Donald Trumps pain in the neck the media network CNN. Nothing has exploded and one begins to worry, was this a serious attack or just fake news to exploited the run up to the mid term election
With the elections just a week away is this some electoral jiggery pokery by the Democrats to stir the pot or was it a Republican shot across the bows to remind everyone what the stakes are in this divisive country.

Listening to the electorate in a democrat state and then in a republican state is to hear the effect of political prejudice writ large. There is no give and take only a sense of deep vitriol. An unwillingness to listen to the other side on any issue and it is an example of the power of the media to drive people into a state of total intolerance. There was always pockets of political bigotry. States who had a tradition of being resolutely Democratic or Republican tend to produce as if by osmosis generations of similar voting patterns but today's intolerance seems to boarder on hatred in a way in the past it didn't. People rubbed shoulders with each other and differed as to the cause of this and that but saw in their environmental commonality much to agree on. Today fed a diet of false news about the other side it's made them the number one enemy. There is no room for rational discussion since the other side is painted in such lurid colours. It's like the McCarthy Era where the witch hunt against people accused of being communist drove many people to inform with stories which carried little or no truth but it was enough to ruin careers and lives with a population brought to a fever pitch  by Joseph McCarthy the Republican Senator for Wisconsin who's television denouncement were the 1950s equivalent of Jeremy Kyle with one difference. Kyle's targets are societies impoverished underbelly whilst McCarthy went after the rich and famous. The point is that the media trashed many innocent people by setting the agenda for what people thought.
The inability to see past what they have been brainwashed into believing is a phenomenon which then and now is extremely powerful and equally dangerous.

Time on your hands

Subject: FW: Time on your hands.

The morning was damp and I had time to spare. I had called in to see the doctor at our local hospital where the doctors practice I use has rooms. One of the most annoying impediments when you need to see a doctor these days is the mandatory phone call between 8am and 8.30 to speak to the doctors receptionist to make an appointment. It's such a short window of opportunity to make this telephone connection as everyone is also forced into the lottery of a free line. Luckily the practice I subscribe to have a walk in clinic where, on arrival you take a ticket and wait until your number is called. It can be quite a wait so its sensible after securing your place in the queue, to get an estimated time when you can expect to be called in  which allows you to tootle off and do other things in the meantime.
Having done a bit of shopping and bought a news paper I thought a spot of breakfast would not be amiss and so I walked into a very pleasant cafe which we always refer to as Andrews cafe since before he left to go on his travels, the shop was empty and he showed interest in having a go at opening a cafe based on healthy food and good coffee.

Anyway I pushed open the door to be met by a babble of sound. The place was full of women talking, two to the dozen in high pitched voices, excited to be rid of the children and nothing more to do until they pick them up again about 3.00. These are not the single mothers holding down three jobs, the Audi's parked outside belied that, they were not stressed to get to the next meeting or even home to put the food on, they were part of that securely married cohort who's life is prescribed sitting around with mates passing the time away. They are part of that middle class who's function is to keep their figures in shape and sparkle when James brings business colleges around for dinner.
With Andrew in mind I'm not sure how profitable the cafe were since I didn't see any refills to the solitary cup in front of them and there was certainly no food consumed. Perhaps I made up, eating my scrambled egg, one sausage, and one piece of bacon on toast. I was in and out before anyone else's moved.

Women in the infantry

Subject: FW: Women in the infantry.

Today's news is of women being encouraged to enlist in the ranks of the front line infantry and also into the ranks of the commando regiments.
Is my regret at what I see as yet another example of Politically Correct madness simply  part of an ageist prejudice seeing this last bastion of male exclusivity trashed, as we are forced to rush helter-skelter towards the goal of gender equality, or is it based on something more rational.
The feminists are confident that this alignment of gender roles is nothing more than natural justice, a levelling of the playing field but to my mind it comes down to a question which is always asked, are women the same in every respect as men. If the answer is yes then there is no argument and let the girls roll their sleeves up and face the combat but if you believe as I do that women differ in so many ways from men and that it is only the force of the feminist argument about equality which pushes them into arguing that we are all the same.
 Even amongst the same gender the attributes, both physical and mental between men differ greatly and whilst there is a presumption that you can make a soldier out of any man it simply isn't true. Temperament, physical strength, emotional factors make up the variable to such an extent that when you add factors governing gender into the mix then whilst one should never discount the fact that there may be a tiny minority who fit the mental profile to put themselves in the front line and be expected to kill in hand to hand combat the sheer lack of strength puts a woman at a disadvantage. This fundamental disadvantage can play havoc with a team in combat where great reliance is made on what your fellow troopie.
There is a reason in sport where men do not compete directly with women because women would be disadvantaged and would never win where strength and physical endurance were require. Rugby, football, athletics, the list is endless where women can not compete with men. Mentally strong (they are probably stronger than a man) but in terms of sheer 'grunt' they don't come close.
The army is all about 'grunt', and unless the standards are lowered to accommodate the weakness then in fitness and endurance they will be behind the men. If more is expected of the man, then this will be a bone of contention in the force so the standards will have to be reduced for men as well. To introduce a fighting force which is not competitive into the field of combat should never be allowed to happen and to this end I feel this example of an ideological dream should remain just that.

The new untouchables

Subject: FW: The new untouchable

As the world view becomes more analytical and statistics are used to find a norm or a mean position to represent mankind, what happens to those who fall outside the statistical profile. As computers crunch the numbers and the individual becomes part of an algorithm which has no way of distinguishing him or her from what the mathematically deduced profile produces, where is the 'you and I' in all this.
"Big Brother" used to play down the peculiarities of the individual for a society manipulated by the committee for the sake of the committees definition of what was good for us. The old fashioned values such as a personal evaluation based on ethical assumptions of the way people should act is set aside for the 'mind speak' of what others know is best for us.
This lack of feeling that we have collaborated to the collective view, set out in our newspapers and media utterances by the political elite especially so if we opposed the route taken by those who represent us, then more and more the individual becomes sidelined and irrelevant.
As Artificial Intelligence makes more and more decisions based on the mathematical modelling which is the soul of the AI project then that intangible, the conflict between ethical morality and the cash becomes blurred.
This morning the mist cleared. No individual was to blame for the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the Crown Prince moved smoothly amongst his sycophants, people who smell the money and are not put off by questions of ethical morality. It was business as usual, and all so predictable.

In the opulence of the hotel, the very hotel where the Crown Prince had locked up all his opposition a year ago, this intolerant  tyrant who's reach lies even into the diplomatic fabric of countries outside his own had the effrontery to pose himself in front of the cameras shaking hands with the son of the man he had had murdered two weeks before. So strong is the fear of reprisal against this narcissist that the strained look of terror on the young man's face as he shook hands with his fathers murderer said it all. As businessmen got down to glad-handing the camel traders, elevated by the black gold beneath their feet, into people of importance and who's largesse the balance sheets of London and Wall Street will reflect when the market opens this morning we witnessed the final irrelevance of the individual on this global stage.

Death in all its form is death

Subject: Death in all its form is death.

What is the point of losing jobs and profits for the sake of protesting about the death of a relatively unknown journalist. People all over the globe are being killed as I write, it's the way of the world and it seems hypocritical that we choose the one and ignore the others.
Of course we are children of the media and when the media is mocked by an assassination of its own the news wires are hot with condemnation and we who are plugged into the news flow for our daily diet of human drama, we react as programmed.

Death on the streets of Alexander Township or the streets of Aleppo are so commonplace that apart from a police report or a body count no one bothers. We define ourselves by the way we react to tragedy but in itself how we define tragedy describes us more fully. It used to be the case where death in a foreign country was a foreign affair and nothing for us to worry about, but the internet has made a mockery of what foreign means these days and as the smart phone becomes the tool by which all events are now brought to us and is itself in the hands of half the worlds population, it means that we are sated with news.
Our attitude to these foreign events has to take into account our understanding of the society we are looking at. People who die are categorised by their ethnicity, religion and their social standing. Death is closer to the poor and we often take the death of a poor peasant with a pinch of salt whilst the death of a celebrity, a mover and shaker, is strung up for all to see.
Our inability to make the connection between a Saudi Arabian Journalist and the people starving in Yemen says more about us than we would care to reveal.

A life outside the froth of entertainment

Subject: A life outside the froth of entertainment.

I always thought that people who went to university were intellectually superior, that their education would give them a better grasp of life and the way things work.
Obviously the specific subject studied apart, one would think that mixing with intelligent people in the university campus and developing new ways to think about subject matter would produce a mind which was able to turn its attention to any subject and hone it down to the bone and define it in such a way that a non educated person could never do.
The classical world dreamt of peopling the state and by the state it meant its government , with intellectuals who, having attained the tools of logic could dissect any problem and like a mechanic striping and rebuilding an engine would make it better than the original. Without knowledge the motor mechanic or the plumber, the baker and candlestick maker would be unable to fulfil the roles they usually do. But somehow with the intellectual there seems a lethargy after attaining the skill, to go on using it.
Is the intellect something so ethereal that having read the tombs and written our answers on the exam paper we forget it all and become immersed in the ordinary, the common place, the nonintellectual spontaneity of real life with its mundane everyday event. Does the intellectual become blunted by actual s the actual lack of control, the actual improbability of finding and improving solutions to every day living.
Men and women carry around in their heads so much personal experience, so much collaborating wisdom that you would have thought they would be bursting to speak out and have opinions about what is going on around them. 

But no we seem to dumb down on purpose, only the trivia of a football result or last nights exhibition of flesh on the television can excite a comment or any sort of passion.
The real conundrums of our world are like those areas of the mind which we deliberately avoid, where to spend time thinking and debating would somehow taint our concept of having a good time, which we must not sully at any cost.  Using our innate intelligence to discuss and come up with ideas perhaps even solutions for a life, outside the froth of entertainment would be no bad thing.

The Grapes of Wrath - in a modern context

ubject: The Gapes of Wrath - in a modern context.

The airwaves are aflame with wrath towards the passenger of a Ryan Airline plane who verbally abused a woman in her 70s for not moving out of his way quickly enough.
Not being there one is left with an impression that the anger from the man was unreasonable and one has to question, why did he flip. Was it a 'hate crime' as many suggest, one of hatred toward a black person, purely because of the colour of their skin or was it anger due to other factors such as bad news, maybe financial, maybe matrimonial which caused him to spew out his frustration. No one was assaulted other than verbally but listening to the commentators and the spokespeople of various culturally sensitive groups one would think the Columbine School shooting had taken place. Shrill condemnation would underscore any description of it, a shrillness that is becoming all too recognisable as an alternative to a proper debate or an attempt to get to the bottom of this.
I know people in Bradford, Rotherham, Huddersfield who would feel that, if it were hate crime then the authorities have played their part in driving a wedge between all people.

 Adjem Choudary has just been released back into society. He carries with him a much greater venom than the guy in row 23 but our liberal principles get in the way of chucking Choudary out of the country because his following is so wide and entrenched.
A video of the police trying to cuff a young black man and his subsequent flight was caught on camera with the mostly black bystanders cheering him as he sped away, clearly a case of "them and us".
Prejudice is everywhere. The sound of a foreign language inflames those out of work poorly educated local white men who blame the foreigner for taking their jobs.

The ghettoisation of people of colour and the gang culture which grows from this separation and self identification of cultural disparity has only accentuated a them and us mentality.

If we had understood the roots of our current despair back then in the 1940/50s would we have done anything different, I doubt it since money was involved and rather than spend money to train our own young as well as spending on mechanisation, no it was easier to import from abroad.
So when we rush to condemn, pause a little and be a little less holy. Consider first the causes of acute discontent and whilst trying to remedy the situation give all parties an equal airing.

The Cry

Subject: The Cry.

I wonder if The Cry, a drama currently shown on BBC television hasn't been written with an eye to the real life drama of the missing child Madeleine the daughter of Mr and Mrs McCann the Scottish couple who's child went missing in 2007.

The publicity and the circumstances of that case brought attention on the child's parents, even accusing them of being complicit in her disappearance.
The plot of The Cry is different but one has this interplay of law enforcement, the press and the emotionally constrained parents who pursued, through the media, a relentless pursuit  to find information about the whereabouts of Madeleine. The real life drama was never far from our screen, the emotionally strong controlled mother and the equally controlled father seemed emblematic of a middle class professional couple who's training in the  rigour of medicine made their precise practical appearances on our screens seem closer to Jane Austin than to a pair of modern day grieving parents.
The Cry depicts a psychologically controlling man with his frail fawn like young bride who's lack of experience in coping with the trauma of a crying baby leads us to believe that she unintentionally mixes up an adult dose of medicine with the babies dose and the baby dies. To protect his wife who is to all intents and purposes is now guilty of manslaughter, he bury's the baby and sets in motion the story that the baby has been stolen out of their car.
The plot is unfurling as I write and we don't know what twists and turns this psychological drama will take but some how I am reminded of the psychological pressure on the McCanns which they chose to put themselves through which at the time made me at least think, there was more in this than meets the eye. And so it is, in "The Cry",  the deep controlling forces of personality which makes one consider the paucity of rational faith in mankind when people embark on a trail of self preservation.

American football

Subject: American football.

Perhaps it's the impoverishment of the BBC or yet again, the impulse to appeal to minority interests. I'm talking about the broadcasting of that strange game, American Football. If ever a game were designed to allow maximum time to show adverts, to maximise on the money, this is the game. The game, so different to the frenetic pace of American Basketball, is a stop start game with speciality players leaving the field of play after completing their speciality and the continual shuffling around the field into set positions by the 'beef', those padded 18 stone plus blockers who's only aim is to block the opposing equally large 'beef'. The game it seems is contrived to make an event happen out of relatively static  programmed play. It's a bit like a game of penalties or the penalty shoot out in a game of football. The instinctive fluidity of a football game grinds to a halt at full time with only the set piece of the penalty taker and the goalie in play whilst the team looks on.

The broadcaster struggles to fill the time. Off field interviews, whilst the game plods along, with guests seems to have no effect on on our cognisance of the game. If we are watching the players or somewhere else, it seems to make no difference. Of course the BBC has a special problem, it doesn't have commercial adverts to fill the gaps in play and instead we have a studio full of loud ex players talking in an overbearing American accent in a language of tactics which is totally foreign to the uninitiated. 

The game continues with the group-gaggle, heavily protected players discuss strategy or what covers for strategy, bouncing their torsos off each other like mountain goats in the rutting season. Settling in the squat position they glare at the opposition a metre or two away ready to move that distance to hold their line whilst the ball is scooped backwards to the halfback who throws the ball forward to the wing who catches it to sprint towards the opponents line. And that it. That's the summation of the play. It's repeated time and time again, ad nauseam. It's like a director of a film set instructing the cast to move here and there for another shoot with the only problem that the shoot is the same each time. 

Only the skill of the commentator to inject life into this ever so slow manufactured drama of practised moves invites us to believe that this isn't all a subterfuge and that the important thing is 'the break' to allow the TV advert to drill down into our already befuddled brain.

Trying to unravel the answer

Subject: Trying to unravel the answer.

Should we stop castigating Donald Trump and start to reserve our disdain for the more traditional diplomat and politician schooled in the black art of subterfuge and obverscatIon. Should we acknowledge that no matter how uncomfortable it leaves us we are better knowing the truth. Of course it's Donald Trumps truth but since he has all the leavers of power, his truth counts.
As we become schooled in receiving our information from so many varied sources, some of them from behind enemy lines so to speak, it strikes me that of the many truths we receive from so many sources, in fact is there are as many truths as there are tellings. Each  man or woman's truth is down to their individuals experience.
Truth in human terms is so multifaceted, maybe there is no such thing, only the individual prejudice brought on by what we actually observe and the interpretation that cultural training makes of what we understand on seeing something.

If Donald Trumps truth is skewed by his ego and money is it any worse than a Vatican official who's truth is skewed by the need for his sense of collegiate reasoning. All our truths are tainted by the way we view the world. If I am a crown prince and one of my people openly critiques me, does not the pressure of tradition lead me to revenge myself on behalf of my office.
The complexity of an attempt to have one set of rules and one set of values is that we have to twist ourselves into such a convoluted mental shape to conform, that the resultant distortion makes a mockery of who we really are.
Should for instance my truth follow a religious direction and if so which one. Should my truth be effected by the teachings of a cultural civilisation which is 3000 years old, or one with just over 300 on the clock.
The truth we seek is often bound up in circumstance, upbringing and gender. Perhaps there are no hard truths, not even in physics where new discoveries lead science to continually modify its concept of scientific truth.
Truth is a compromise, it's an effort to find solutions by having a code, a set of rules which allows us to come to terms with our specific idea of right and wrong, good and bad. When we demand the truth we better understand the question and especially the person we are addressing, before we try to unravel the answer.

Counting our blessings

Subject: Counting our blessings.

How we take our domesticity and living standards for granted. Watching the trauma etched on the faces of the people fleeing Guatemala to find work in Mexico and the US, it is hard, as I settle down to an evening meal knowing that after a comfortable nights sleep another similar day will come, to imagine the anxiety and stress, particularly for parents with small children, to find food and shelter for tonight. The torment of belonging to a failed state which offers no safety blanket to its poor, of knowing that the countries around are in a similar, perilously poor economic state and that the magnet to the north, the American economy has closed its doors.

How does a mother or a father provide under conditions like this. They have walked distances people which we in this country could not imagine if faced to trail their merger goods and belongs with hungry children sitting on their shoulder or trailing behind crying.
The world is in chaos through global enablement as people set their face against their own and go seek a better life. The towns of Northern Africa are full of migrants bolstered by story's of plenty in Europe. No longer isolated in their villages prepared to continue with the traditions of their parents they seek a better life elsewhere.
My head will touch the pillow tonight and soon I will be fast asleep. The fridge in the kitchen is full, my wallet has the potential to take me anywhere in some comfort, the door bars strangers and keeps me safe. How far removed I am from the people of Guatemala, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, to name a few. How the chance of birth make paupers or rich men out of us all.
How stupid we are to squabble over the slights that we imagine we see in others and how very stupid not, 'each night' to count our blessings.

Perhaps there is hope for us yet

Subject: Perhaps there is hope for us yet.

Just been watching the women's world climbing championship held in Germany.
The climbing wall is an artificial construct with different hand and foot holds placed up this overhanging route. There are carabiner clips to clip the rope onto to support the climber if and when they bail off.
The women are all young, long limbed lightweights who's strength is clearly prodigious as they swing up from hold to hold, all their weight carried on the arms with the extra strain purchased through the legs which seek to balance the torso as the climber moves upward from left and right searching for finger and toe holds For what is this ultimate stretch of the human frame defying gravity and performing what appears to be the impossible. The muscular strength and the tension in the arms is palpable as they inch further towards the top of the climb. Lactic acid builds up under the strain as they hang their body weight on a single finger swinging in the breeze like monkeys in a tree.

The concentration is etched in their faces with the most difficult move right at the top. Only two girls have made it this far, the world champion from Slovakia and her young challenger from Austria. Hanging by one arm from a sloping hold they have to launch themselves on aching, tired arms across a gap to the final hold, and if wasn't enough they also have to compete against against the clock.
The teenager won, often the bridesmaid, this time she beat the champion to the roar of a partisan crowd.
The competition is sanitised by being indoors and safety conscious. These climbers are probably more at home on the vertical face of an alpine pillar, soloing the assent with no protection other than their own fierce confidence in their ability to succeed.
This is the rare world of ultra climber who's mindset is so different to the ordinary person that they might belong to different planets. It's all in the mind they say and particularly so in this aspect of the old perennial, 'risk and exposure', something no ordinary person would ever contemplate but so refreshingly at variance with our risk assessed, health and safety, litigious culture.  Perhaps there is hope for us yet.

Wielding justice fairly

Subject: Wielding justice fairly.

There is a Law Commission report doing the rounds suggesting that misandry as well as misogamy be considered hate crimes and that an added category, that of crimes against the elderly be also included to the growing list of legal specialisation.
The argument is that whilst crimes against an individual who naturally also subscribe to being part of a group, then the group thing amplifies the crime in some way and therefore the sentence should be more onerous. Hating the group becomes worse than hatingthe individual. Of course it is often an individual who sparks off the dislike of the group. It's one of mankind's weaknesses to tar everyone with the same brush and emotional prejudice is just as bad as any other prejudice.
The question is, why this should be since the crime is virtually always against the individual for a whole range of reasons and to add the gender or the age of the victim seems at best arbitrary.
Perhaps a better way to even the playing field would be to open the determination up to the 'weak and the strong'. This would be truly reformative since the gender and the age of a person although easy to hang a label on (perhaps not so  in this age of trans gender) is far too wide and out of focus to fit the rigour demanded of justice.

The problem of crime is that it is often based on an assumption of weakness.  The perpetrator assumes they are strong enough to commit the crime and get away with it and the victim assumes the crime is effected on them because they are in a weakened position and are helpless. 

Crime, be it stealing or assault has to have a component to it that one party is left feeling aggrieved, (which is often as much an assumption of their own weakness) or that the potential reward leads to the belief that they will get away with it.
Our courts are full of the powerful taking their vengeance on the weaker sections of society. The justice system rewards the QC who can browbeat the person standing in the dock and the efficacy of the QC is bought by the powerful because power means money.
Women are not always physically the weaker than men and men are not always stronger. Surely the danger in attaching so much weight to a group dynamic, which in itself is full of discrepancies, one loses sight of the main aim, to wield  justice fairly

Preserving the undefinable

Subject: Preserving the undefinable.

It seems a hard road to travel, to have to analyse, through a rigorous procedure of logic testing, what you are to say about any subject, by testing its logical premise with a series of questions to verify a specific truth. The truth of a statement, according to logic can be investigated by asking supplementary questions to ensure that the question your asking is valid in terms of the subject. Too often we engage in waffle and obfuscate the truth by deliberately sowing doubt and disguising our apparent search for truth by using carefully contrived verbal gymnastics to move the debate away from the truth we are supposed to be searching for.
One man's truth is another man's inconvenience and yet the purity of a truth obtained by logic and logical reasoning sets the matter out of reach of those perusing untruth.
Logic is the act of 'reasoning' according to strict rules of validity, its the use of deductive structures to define the validity of an argument. Validity then is the corner stone of the logical argument.
if a thing or statement about a thing is contingent (dependent on circumstance) then it is not based on logic, which by its nature is not contingent. The use of informal logic, 'critical thinking' is not as rigorous as formal logic but if, academically one has the time to study the proof of each statement we then establish a totemic relationship as evidenced in Buddhist reasoning.

The strain on us, as individuals to weigh up each and all our statement of what we call fact is enormous. Many of our pet beliefs come tumbling down on the high alter of logic and our world comfort, made up of belief and counter belief is torn apart by the stricture of logical reasoning. Perhaps the uncontaminated mind of a small child harbours the flowering of uncontested truth which is a marvellous asset and subscribes to the co-opting of young boys into Buddhist monasteries to train them to think logically all the time.
Sadly for us poor sinners the thought of discarding so many erroneous beliefs over which we have spent many hours refining and debating is too enormous to even contemplate. Instead we walk on a sea of partial truth, happily engaging in a battle to preserve the undefinable.

An unknown outcome

Subject: An unknown outcome.

Watching and listening to the Somali born mayor of Sheffield one was drawn to the conclusion that the representation of a city through the election of a mayor has taken yet another turn to redefine what we understand as being British. His demeanour, his dress, his language was far removed from my image of a sober leader of the society I wish to live in.
The world is changing fast. My ability to go along with these changes, as if change is inevitable and inevitably a good thing is being strained to breaking point.
To some extent our concepts and what we expect from life changes from generation to generation. This has been particularly  true over the last 50 years when you add to the learning curve different cultures, introduced artificially by massive inward migration through the black art of political expediency all within a minuscule time frame.
So when I see a black man, dressed in a yellow golf cap (worn back to front) and a bright Miami style shirt representing Sheffield a sober Yorkshire town my mind disengages from the symbol which formed my upbringing. My upbringing was fundamental to my general set of beliefs. What I saw and observed 'back then' were the building blocks for my opinions in later life, opinions which are now being challenged as prejudicial and it seems sad that the current opinions seem hell bent on stigmatising me for not wishing to go along with this modern way of 'melding' whole clearly definable congregations into one.
Diversity seems to be the latest catch word and by diversity they mean something else. Diversity in its modern setting means recognising that we are all one, a sort of oxymoron in that recognising it we immediately banish it since if we follow the recognition of diversity we should applaud it for its acceptance of difference.  That doesn't mean we don't respect diversity but we acknowledge it and find ways to live alongside people and cultures who are fundamentally different to ourselves. This of course goes both ways and the older I get one begins to sense that the accommodation is starting to flow one way.
Programs seem designed to reeducate us into culturally blind, traditionally blind people who's past counts for nothing. Who's emotional and empirical knowledge base can be discarded simple because of the new fashion, a fashion I might add that has not yet been tested and who's outcome is unknown.

Twitter, a recipe for conflict

Subject: Twitter, a recipe for conflict.

The rise of Twitter as a debating chamber has soured and debased the concept of a debate. A debate is the assembly of facts and figures to oppose a point of view. It is not a slanging match where the very mention of something propels someone else into vitriolic rage.
Our society has been damaged by the rise of extremism both left and right since either way, left and right the ideology takes over and the common ground of compromise is difficult if not impossible. One doesn't have to be a fence sitting centralist to have the view that the other viewpoint has merit. Our views on anything are but distortions of fact since emotions play such an important part in our thought process. The right and wrong relies on ones overall view of society and the people who make up your specific segment of society.
It's one of the strains in any society that people coming into a society usually bring their own views views founded on their own life experience. When the gap in the life experience is wide then the assumptions you usually make, the give and take you offer in conversation can sometimes be difficult. This usually doesn't happen on the street where we are all engrossed in more or less the same things. The cost of this, the lack of that, whether Arsenal are a better side than Spurs. It's only when the spokes-person of a  group who's life experience is different, puts forward an argument based on that experience do we become disengaged. We accept that their experience is different and we also sympathise if the result brings hardship but the very fact that we have little or no reference points and have encapsulated their condition as a group thing, then we have disassociated our self from many of the solutions.
Group think, be it 'white', 'black', 'fat', 'thin', 'functional', 'dysfunctional', the list goes on and there is a tendency for disharmony to grow if only because we don't relate to each other.
Twitter gives a voice to this pent up rage and people start to hurl insults back and forth. It reveals a cancer in the body politique of society which, having been dissuaded by Mrs Thatcher of the importance of what society means, we are left with literally no cohesion, only a set of conflicting interests.