A funny old world

Subject: A funny old world

The word "false" is well and truly in vogue right now. Fake news is the current media speculation with information being beamed 24/7 aimed at distorting actual facts, what ever that may mean. Facts are hard to pin down at the best of times and in the murky world of politics, almost impossible.
The question of who is doing the beaming and who is at the receiving end of the beam, has its usual culprits, Russia being one. the actuality of what we call facts, controlled as we are by a self serving political system, telling the truth, is just plain difficult.

 Mrs May bangs the lecture, Mr Putin gives his icy stare and the Russian public lap it up, inthralled to the will of an inflexible ringmaster.

With the poisoning of the ex Russian spy the spotlight has also turned on RT the external media service of the Russian State. People here have been getting very huffy over the opportunity for the Russian State to portray the West in a poor light and therefore use the channel as a propaganda tool to undermine Western democracies. This along with the claims that the Russians interfered with the democratic process which enabled Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Presidential Election. Cyber Space and the use of targeted media messages which were used to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of gullible voters has in some quarters been proved and therefore the claims against RT have gained traction.
My own experience of using RT as an alternative to the domestic news programs is always with a measure of scepticism just as is the news one gets through Fox News or the local variant, Sky. Even the BBCs editorial staff will pick and choose as which media story to broadcast.
There are always some 'unpalatable truths' as one knows, or believe you know (accepting the version of truth you are happiest with)  but it is useful to see the alternative view displayed since one has to acknowledge, from ones own experience,  there is always an alternative viewpoint.
The more we listen to both sides of any argument the clearer will be our own ability to understand any situation but in the end you are faced with the sad fact that you can't do anything about it anyway.
On a completely different tack but also inclusive of the word "fake".
I was listening to a program in which women were encouraged to phone in and describe the the procedures they had gone through to enhance their features. Botox, breast enhancement, lip injections, eyelid injections, and this includes the normal cosmetics such as false eyelashes, eyeliner lipstick, and the powders to enhance or hide a woman's normal complexion. The list goes on and one has to wonder what is the reality of a woman who has to undergo all this, each morning before she ventures out into the real world. Is their world so full of "wishes" that facts are blown away. Is the necessity to deceive themselves healthy. Does the time spent, (never mind the money) not leave them open to the claim that they spend this inordinate amount of time and money only to decry men when they get wolf whistles from the guys. Can their be any sense in being beholden to how they appear to the opposite sex only to decry that sex when it responds.
It really is becoming a funny old world.

Time passes

Subject: Time passes.

The concept of an ethical progression from childhood into old age and tying that progression into our sense of being isolated in infancy (the mothers love is taken for granted) with 'individual self awareness' which progresses as we grow into and through the other phases of our lives. Are there characteristics where narcissistic tendencies are more prevalent as we seek to set our own seal of who we are on those around us. The game of finding a mate is specifically a torturous time of assessment, of fitting ones own cultured idea of oneself into an amalgam of another's likes and dislikes. We contrive to possess the gilded cloak of attractiveness, (like the birds strutting  around the female, puffing ourselves up) with what we conceive is what the other party desires and ultimately we often make a fool of ourselves.
Move on a few years and we learn that the deceit is revealed and one begins years of often painfully accommodation trying to find sufficient common ground, to begin again with a more honest assembly of facts.
The years advance, the accommodation begins to loose its poignancy and is replaced sometimes with anger at missed opportunities for real personal growth but in the end there is a quietus, a resolve that life is what it is and that our character played such a large part in its success or failure.

An apple a day

Subject: An apple a day.

In the biblical representation of Creation, Adam and Eve were created equal to live in the garden of Paradise. God the creator had but a single rule, not to eat fruit from the tree of life
But Satan, in the form of a snake tempted Eve to eat the fruit and thereupon Eve tempted Adam to also eat the fruit and so both were cast out from paradise.
Do we take it from this story that women are seductresses and men the seduced. Do we comprehend that the beauty of women is in their seductive nature and the weakness of men is in their inability to cope with this ongoing seduction. Is Harvey Weinstein the monster he is made out to be or merely someone unable to detach himself from the saga of the Creation.
I doubt any of you will answer this thorny fundamental question. When God created man and woman his design lead to an unpalatable conclusion. Take away the confusion of cultural modelling with norms so wide as to barely represent in any but the most fundamental way one cultural practice from another. We of course subscribe to only one format which is representative of an evolved western set of norms.
Are we not dealing with what we see in the rest of the Primate kingdom, a desire to keep the species going at all costs and, if it takes the wiles of Eve to lure Adam away from the easy life, so be it.

Tattooing an old tradition

Subject: Tattooing an old tradition.

I'm watching the World Indoor Championships held in Birmingham. My issue tonight is the use of tattoos amongst the female runners and women in general.
Why do these women find it necessary to do what I would say is 'disfigure' themselves by permanently adorning their bodies with all kinds of motifs, like the savages of the past.
Are we becoming more and more socially retrograde in our desire to follow a fashion. Is the fashion of tattooing our bodies not something rather barbaric and perhaps belonging to the 'lower classes. The seaman returning from many months in foreign ports had, as an emblem of his trade, an anchor emblazoned on his forearm. The need to encourage your girlfriend in believing your commitment to her by having her name tattooed somewhere but always running the risk of being embarrassed if you replaced her later down the line.
It used to be the domain of men, particularly traveling men but never women.
Today, as in much of our modern society, the girls say "anything you can do we can do  also" and the number of women, who for some reason seek to display such artificiality is increasing exponentially.
One of the women settling down onto the blocks had, amongst other things an image of a hand gun on her inner arm, something a gangster from the Favelas would have been proud of.
It's always supposed that civilisation is an upward trajectory but I wonder as the modern woman seem condemned to mimic a very old tradition.

Virtual reality

Subject: Virtual reality 

As programmers and computer scientists push out the boundary of what a computer can be used for and as the computer therefore becomes more and more an indispensable tool, there also lurks in the background the ability to do more. Doing more has its dangers since it also takes us into competences that push us further away from the reality of who we are. That link in our mortality and the boundaries it imposes is important.
The drug LSD was promoted in the 1960s as an escape route into another world a psychedelic world of vivid experiences not possible to the man or woman going about their ordinary lives. The ordinariness of everyday life had to be emblazoned by new exciting experiences which, much like the use of alcohol was an escape from life's dreary reality. The price to pay was the return journey and the acceptance, in some cases that "hell on earth" had to be faced.
The claim that 'Visual Reality' extends the minds ability to journey further, to see around corners and experience the inexperenced pleasures of a trip into the exciting  hallucinatory world of our mind has at its root a deep question. Do we as human beings benefit from the highs gained by escaping our reality. Do we gain from visiting a place so remotely individualistic, since it is our personal journey and no one else's, only to be dragged back when we put our apparatus away.
I was never tempted to take LSD although living in and around the Cross in Sydney one had friends who were always tripping. I never wanted to be out of control although I must admit to being close to it through alcohol on more than one occasion. To me alcohol was a journey without an end result, one went in for one beer and usually only had one or two beers and only occasionally the atmosphere and camaraderie drew one in to having more than was good for you with the inevitable result. The journey was not preordained and occasionally  the result was a confusion as to who you were and what was appropriate.
The word appropriate is of course a loaded word, appropriate to who and why. Behind the word lies the assumption for us all to get on and function as a society where there are rules of engagement. There is an assumption that we have to collaborate in some sort of way, that we have to forgo our independence to do what ever we want and remember to behave like animals in a pen. For this we describe ourselves as being civilised.
Virtual Reality is in essence the rejection of civilised behaviour, not in the sense that we become belligerent or necessarily dangerous to others but, I would suggest, we become dangerous to ourselves as we probe further and further into the chemistry which makes up the mind.  Without the countervailing force of 'real life' reality which curbs our actions and makes us the social person we are, we exclude everyone and run the danger of becoming narcissistic with all its feelings of exaggerated self importance.

The Government have a duty of care

Subject: The Government have a duty of care.

"The Government have a duty of care". How often do we hear this mantra and how often do individuals take advantage of it.
Do people who are grossly overweight through their own lifestyle decisions bear any responsibility and presumably a proportional cost of treatment under the National Health motto, "free at the point of need", or should they get the same treatment as someone who fits the spectra of being 'normal'.
It's the same with alcohol should a person who drinks like a fish (a misnomer since I don't think fish drink) and has to go into hospital for an operation on an organ wasted by alcohol.
Smoking another no no when it comes to health but there seems no prohibition on a heavy smoker receiving lung surgery.
Free at the point of need was a slogan to rid ourselves as a nation where, before the war healthcare was rationed, not by self indulgence but by the class you were born into.
With the NHS nearly grinding to a halt because of the pressures of massive immigration, (not withstanding that many of the people who staff the NHS are from abroad) and the longevity of people living well beyond the age when they were expected to die, plus the increase in the cost of drugs which are horrendously expensive as they become more and more tailored to specific diseases, undiscovered when the NHS was first promulgated.
The word "free" has an unsettling effect since it encourages use whilst hiding the fact that nothing is free. Its part of the human condition to properly evaluate our need when presented with a bill. No bill, no evaluation.
Of course the genuinely poor and needy should be covered but with the caveat that if their lifestyle is contributing to their need for treatment then it's only fair to ask them to contribute by at least modifying their lifestyle. The better off you are, a small premium should be charged to cover some of the cost whilst the wealthy usually have private medical aid which largely covers them.
The question of paying for medical treatment is not an ogreish suggestion, it's not a case of hitting people when they are at their most vulnerable, it's a question of balancing the books.
The image of self responsibility has to re-emerge in our society which has got used to blaming everything on 'someone else' and rarely holding up their hands to say "fair cop gov"

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

Subject: "Better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all".

It is of course pure nostalgia, that parachute which music provides taking you back to a time when you were a different person, stimulated as you were by music and of course the opposite sex. The fixation that girls brought to our lives made most other things pale into insignificance. The tug of war which went on between ones male friends and the comfort we gained form the uncomplicated friendship of ones mates and the quagmire of the emotional depth-charges which lay in ones path when one fell for a girl and entered her world of self absorption. 

The music,  Peter Paul and Mary, Tim Buckley, Joan Baez  targets us right back to those emotionally turbulent years when we thought the experience would never end and we were immortal. The vocal story telling the sound of a acoustic guitar driving us out of our complacency, out of our greasy, noisy jobs, out of our Monday blues and the grey sky's  which signified the mood of a teenager. 

Where did all that testosterone go, all those nights of anticipated glory mixed all too frequently with the disappointment of rejection. The highs and the lows are remembered through the songs which idealised our passion and signposted our failure. 

The rockstars stamping their way around the stage snarling into the microphone to screaming thousands of youngsters like ourselves seemed to epitomise the gulf between what we wanted and what was available. Those songs still have the power to unlock the emotional ambiguity of our youth. The unrequited love, the hopelessness of being rejected far out weighed the successes since these successes only led to an eventual rejection. We were as guilty in the function of an attained desire, once attained, the attention went elsewhere. That human failing of not  recognising when you had found something special only to cast around for an illusion.

The Beatle song  "If I fell in love with you" rang through my head in Sydney after coming unstuck and if I were to hear it today I would remember the miserable incomprehension of those weeks until something else turned up.

It's lucky we have this ability to succumb to nostalgia since in old age the fire of passion has been truly quenched.

 "The bitch is back" (Elton John) is the setting for Sun City. Rod Stewart's "Baby Jane" harks back to the USA. I remember attending a black tie hotel extravaganza and being captivated by the songs "Born Free" and "Yesterday" sung by Mat Monrow, aided and abetted as I was by a beautiful lass from down under. I can still remember the sense of place and moment as if it were yesterday.

We are lucky if, as Oscar Wilde wrote, " it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all".