Another shiny car

Subject: Another shiny car.

I suppose one finds that one of  the biggest divides in humans is the divide in their political views. One might think that religious ideas would be close but somehow religious controversy is sidestepped in that the major religions ultimately worship the same god and that that starting point somehow assuages the complicated differences each religion has. Politics doesn't have the benefit of a god of course or a set of stricture to defend, instead, overall it's an exercise in judgement as to the human condition and what we should, or could do if we have a mind to, to improve everyone's living experience.
Right wing or left wing, the extreme ends of the political debate are both lost in 'ideological premise' and being ideological it's virtually impossible to find common ground. The right wing conservative relies mainly on 'the Market' to find solutions for any economic disparity or in many instances is quite happy that these disparities exist believing they are the 'natural order of things'. The left wing Socialist believes that the disparity should be counteracted in some way, primarily by government intervention.
It basically comes down to a humanitarian issue "am I my brother keeper" or am I an individual who must fare for himself and not worry about the inequality I see all around.
Much of the way we think is the product of our upbringing and our economic surroundings when we were born. Our political mind depends often on the way our fathers thought about politics (politics, back then was mostly a gender biased thing) ones fathers  opinion was the one openly voiced in the home and at work. Things have changed now but when I was growing up men were largely the bread winners and mixing in a workforce, the discussions and disagreements were most likely to be influenced by the actual prosperity a family had gained and ones thinking developed either decrying the current economic system or Happy with the status quo you defended it.
Of course politics is much more than purely self interest it's a philosophical judgement on how you view your fellow man and woman. The issue of taxes, for instance is seen as either an 'imposition' or a 'contribution'. It functions relative to ones social awareness and the wish to provide revenues to protect the poor and physically disadvantaged. The winners are clear in that having an amount of ones earning taken identifies  you as having prospered to some extent through work providing opportunities denied to the poor and disadvantaged. If the wider context of our material wellbeing were properly analysed the contribution of taxes would be seen as a tithe much as the Muslim Zakat, (estimated to be the price of one meal) is a religious responsibility to the Muslim community at large. The neo-liberal concept of laissez-faire capitalism (every man and woman for themselves) has distorted our views on humanity writ large, as we willingly abandoned our fellow man for another shiny car.

Exploring the alternatives

Subject: Exploring the alternatives

It goes almost without saying these days that we are in the throes of the ubiquitous headline and our attention span is about as long as we take to read that headline.
The sheer volume of information flowing around about our fellow citizens across the world is burdened by the editorial importance the narrative has when directed by an organisation to sift  through the stories based on the editors opinion or prejudice as to what and how we should be informed.
Reading an historical perspective of Ancient Commerce and the importance it had on the growth of ideas and the upsurge of many engineering masterpieces' which formed the bedrock of a number of major cities, the like of which it took a thousand years and more to bear upon what we know and produced here in the West. 

Communication flowing out of and between those areas now  known as the cradle of civilisation, The Fertile Crescent. Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient India and Ancient China was the essence of what made the area prosper and I can't think of a better reason to turn to the media channels such as Al Jazeera in Doha or TRT in Turkey to gain insight into the region.
Of course today we see only turmoil in Iran, Syria, Iraq, despotic governance in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and also in India and China. The birth of religion in these areas has born little fruit when it comes to its fundamental tenant of 'brotherly love' and the inter factional wars which identifies these countries where the 'Silk Road', all those millennia ago, developed a civilised method of expressing the importance of becoming civilised.
Today programs produced and broadcast by Al Jazeera and TRT, the regional media seem to have a blend of the early Reithonian  ideal where news was presented and discussed as the actual news acted out across the globe without the need of a talk over presenter who's job it seems is to make themselves the centre piece of the newscast. I am always alarmed at the way the BBC in particular  seem to want to dumb down the news with a display of folksy camaraderie between the the male and female presenters. Somehow the news gets lost in the showbiz, and and we the viewer have difficulty in defining reality television from what is real.

Davos

Subject: Davos 

The great and the wealthy, the decision makers and the money men and women are once again descending on the Alpine resort of Davos, not to take part in the skiing  but to discus and communicate their vision of the world especially as it concerns finance.
It's not a meeting we are invited to although we are the fodder or grist to the mill of their deliberations. We are the quiet mob outside the castle wall, noisy but impotent, aware that a party is going on without us and that we should have a voice but the bouncers stand firm, ensuring entrance is by invitation only. Of course it has always been so. Never privy to the boardroom machinations, or the smoke filled rooms where the minds of the occupants are, as one, to see we don't gate crash the party.
This year our needs are a greater threat to the movers and shakers than usual. The repeated cries of climatic devastation have become swollen with the video footage of out of control wildfires in Australia, the annual shrinking of glaciers and the wholesale diminution of the  frozen wastes of Antarctica. It's no longer the case where the doomsayers could be described as unhinged scientists or hair-suited propagandists and the sight of Greta Thunberg fighting back tears of frustration as she lambasted the United Nations, whilst Donald Trump smirked in the background  is still with us as a reminder of how impotent we are when it comes to measuring our worth against the wealth of the Trumps, Jamie Diamond and their colleagues at Davos.
The needs of the planet versus the need to make money out of the status quo is at the heart of this years meeting. No more kicking the can down the road but a realisation that business as usual can't continue if we are to halt global warming with its dreadful implications for millions of people living on what is becoming a fragile planet.
One of the marvels of the our investigation of how we evolved is the importance of the right mix of chemistry and an atmosphere which allowed us to do so.  The atmosphere is under threat and with it, so are we, as we continue to pour out pollutants which contaminate  the fragile balance of the constituent parts which make up the protective shield that has allowed life to prosper here on this planet. We are a freak of nature. Nowhere else in the multiplicity of universes as far as we know has this eye watering evolution  of life forms been allowed to prosper, develop and replicate to the extent to what we see today. The freakiness of this balance of atmosphere and the constituents which provide an environment in which we can survive is truly amazing. Statisticians may calculate the probability of another Mother Earth in the billions of stars and untold trillions  of planets, all held together by the gravitational dance which stretches as far as our imagination can grasp, billions of light years in terms of distance but which uniquely seems to have ear marked us out as special.
Could this apparently unique laboratory of chance be earmarked, through mankind's  greed and shortsighted myopia, for extinction focused as we are on the Market and the Financial forces which drive it. Forces which seem as powerful in our self centred motivational universe when weighed by a man's  wallet. It  simply illustrates the blind, craven appetite exhibited by the investment banks such as Goldman Sacs, or the balance sheet driven COs such as Jamie Diamond, or Richard Fuld,
Are we totally in the throes of a system, capitalism where the financial comparison is the only value system we have.

Life outside the goldfish bowl

Subject: Life outside the goldfish bowl 

What we do for love. Looking at the stunned look on Prince Harry's face in this mornings press one can see someone asking 'has this happened to me'. A few months ago he was the pin up boy of the Royals the slightly roguish looking supporter of men disabled serving our country in our armed forces. An airman himself he had shown the 'common touch' in devoting time for a cause no one could quibble with. He was the face of the Invictus Games and a strong advocate that we should do more to protect our soldiers when they return from the battle field. He contrasted with William in temperament, William the carefully groomed heir to the throne had married the archetypal princess, tall and willowy who's poise and grace in front of the camera, is legend, much like the Queen when young. 

It's hard to equate Megan with Kate, perhaps the temperament, itself a part of upbringing and the difference between ourselves and our cousins the Americans. The subtle versus the brash, the power instigated more in what isn't said versus the equality bandwagon.
What ever the reason, in a much earlier blog I drew parallels with Mrs Simpsons marriage to King Edward the VIII which forced his abdication, not  having the noblesse oblige aspect to their psychological make up women in America demand a voice around the table and are far less inclined to withdraw to the drawing room when the cigars come out. Megan has had her cross to bear in the tempestuous relationship with her father and at the time of the engagement her sister was very critical of her. She is what we often admire in our daughters, a woman who has a vision of her worth and will move heaven and earth to get to where she wants to be. In a daughter or a son we love to see a groundbreaker, a successful person, not exclusively in so far as making money is concerned but in their willingness to lay down their own ground rules and a commitment to follow it.
Megan the actress or Megan the beautiful young woman are combination which is such a powerful aphrodisiac (Cleopatra comes to mind) for a young man brought up in a hot-house of the prerogative and deferential obsequious. Is it any wonder he was swept off his feet by this strong minded woman, just as Mrs Simpson did to the king in the 1930s.
You can't blame her for being attractive to Harry and 'mother nature' being the arbiter in such matters, his compulsiveness, much like his mother Diana, produced the drama which is the result of the press freedom to tell a story's built on innuendo and tittle tattle which, it appears the couple don't want to plague them as it plagued his mother Diana.
Does the fault lie in the press and their undoubted interference with mean handed stories or is it the Palace and it's clearly out of date view of itself. Should the Palace not be more like the Dutch Royal Family, more in touch with its citizens, less an edifice waiting to be knocked off its perch.
Harry stripped of his title and all that went with it must now look into the future with some trepidation, not having been groomed for anything but being a Royal he is ill equipped to do a job but I suppose the Rolodex will come in useful.
His love is genuine and will see him through but he must now be reflecting on what life is like outside the goldfish bowl.

Living the good life

Subject: Living the good life.

"Thump" that's the sound of hitting reality as we return home from the delux accommodation of our holiday home in Wales. From the gosh what a super place, look at the kitchen, and marvel at the bedrooms, to the reality of the way we live on the other side of the railway track. Take the work area of the kitchen work tops. I had measured up the cupboards in the fantasy of transporting my kitchen into something along the lines of what we had there even if only to find ways of storing things away out of sight when not in use. The reality is that in calculating the work top space alone I would say we have about an eighth of the space and in fact everything is roughly scaled back by the same proportions. The size of the bedrooms and bathrooms each on suite has in our house to be rescaled to one bathroom for all the bedrooms in a house of 'just about making it'. Underfloor heating is replaced with hot water bottles to supplement the central heating as we replace the heat which has drained out over the week of our absence.

The sheer clutter of our living as we surround ourselves with things is a far cry from the spartan utility of a holiday home where having limited yourself with the actual things you need, not the stuff you've bought over the years which mostly are superfluous and makes one realise how much we accumulate. This lack of clutter is the main cause of the shock between where we stayed and home but the moment you try to throw things out that nagging, niggling voice in your head says "no, I might need it".
Closing the door on a house returned to its pristine condition 'made a condition of the let', my memories will play havoc with me as I struggle to shift things around at home seizing any space to place the things you bought when on holiday, little realising that your home was already full.
It's only a passing reflection, soon we will settle back into our normality, the occurrence of an earnings gap which has become steadily wider over the decades. We have to keep things in proportion and remember the gaps below us, from the destitute and homeless sleeping in shop doorways last night, to the houses who's occupants have to choose between the heating or putting food in their mouth. The families which fill each nook and cranny with children and a trail of unpaid bills and the ongoing fear of being evicted are another level as are the overcrowded homes with rebellious teenagers distraught by their own impotence to leave the nest and make a life of their own. Up and down the land the demographic dictates the level of expectancy, some have none whilst for others their expectancy is limitless and they find the palaces which are available in the Sunday Times Property Magazine, a snippet over three million.
Each wakes up in the morning and anticipates a new day. Some busy with making more, some contemplating what they don't have and others what they can never imagine to have. Perhaps as with most things it's in our imagination that we allow ourselves to play tricks with ourselves, indulging in a dose of how the other side lives and whilst unsettling we all have to come to terms with reality and I can't wait till next years extravaganza is revealed. 

Departing

Subject: Departing.

It's the day of departure. Departing is always an emotional moment. It's a separation of of family brought together with much optimism in a time scale which offered enough to craft so much. As usual we squandered most of the time, as if time isn't the most precious thing we have. The walks we didn't do, the restaurants we didn't try but most of all, the conversations we never engaged in are now all in the past, irretrievable, wasted.
Perhaps it's inevitable that when you change your routine the new territory in which you travel will be misused as you struggle to adjust to the sound of voices and directions which are not yours. This discovery of the need for flexibility is easier if you have a preempted  direction, dictated by the future such as the care of a baby or reuniting with a partner and the collegiate environment in which much of what is in this blog is sorted out. Unfurling events which give your mind a perspective focus on issues, not the darker place of reminiscence.
Words taken out of context, rows which were unnecessary but predictable, driven by  the priorities and patterns of life as they clash with the generations. The desperation to have a voice in the debate when your opinion has become partly redundant brought on  by changed perspective. Perspective you are expected to apply but ones in conflict with those you have carried around for most of your life. A new world in which you tussle to be heard still less understood. People have your best interests at heart feel they know best and from their perspective they do, but it's not always your perspective.  As you get older your values, the things you rightly or wrongly cherish as being the factors which have dictated your actions throughout your life suddenly become out of date  as new trends, new ways of thinking percolate the conversation. As you sit and hear the debate you see how isolated you have become by the 'surety' of youth and it's often unfounded optimism that it is always right.
And yet we still wish to be a part of the discussion. We want to be heard and struggle against the default position, withdrawing into ourselves, preserving our status quo.
How do we insist without,insisting. How do we keep our end of the emotional bargain without succumbing to ridicule.

The end of the holiday

Subject: The end of the holiday.

All too soon the time is fast approaching for us to repack our suitcases into the car for the journey home, back to our relative but different normality. As I described it it's been a gathering of the clan, a clan which is different each year, some of us growing older and more infirmed.  Some with the rigour of a new baby to watch over 24/7 and for Andrew, a return to a far different surrounding as he swaps continents and returns to a very different life in India.
Families all over the world these days are faced with the same problem, the world being the oyster the pearls which grow do so under different conditions and the cohesion when living in the same street, or an adjacent town is lost as we are left contemplating a further period of separation.
The rooms will be tidied the rubbish of a week thrown out, a final saunter around the town  and we will be off, this time the optimism of arrival only a few days ago is now tinged with regret.
Gathered together we made a healthy but divergent group. Having grown in the interim  into different roles we test our understanding of what is happening, the old getting older, the birth of a delicate needy baby re-emphasising  the cycle of life and the genetic continuity and amongst all this, the voice of sagacity, a philosophical proposition which maps out a path for a more harmonious life through the understanding of Buddhism.
The family glue which relied on the conformity of our past experience is, in someways weakening, in some ways strengthening the bond between us but where as before the family nucleus gained its strength from the necessity to get on and interact under one roof, now the roofs are split and each generation is generating its own energy shifting the tectonic plates, a little further apart. The importance of renewing that family glue is ever more important since distance erodes the bond which came into being such a long time ago. The ability to communicate and laugh together is made easier through the video links but as with all such artificial creations it's what is said and done off screen that matters. The worries which the young have for their parents as they see them lose much of the strength and the mental agility and made them reliable. The tensions which a new born child fosters on the new parents, the tiredness and apprehension as the child is put under the spotlight each day as the phenomenon of a growing baby unfurls is out of sight to the rest of the family and generally unspoken.  The common sense of an older generation is supplanted by new and more relevant information and becomes a difficult bridge to negotiate.
The world of intense social and philosophical interpretation widens the old sureties, sureties  based on assumptions which were never tested but which are now part of an ongoing  dialog of debate. Barely questioned ideas are given a thorough reexamination using the centuries old debating skills and one is hard pressed not to undergo the total ignominy of having  to cast out ones own sureties.
Clearly it's a rich organic mix which is departing, soon to go it's own way. It's not a tame organic mix or a set of woolly assumptions but a work in progress and when we are all once again settled 'back home' we might look back wiser on the circumstances of our now widely differing lives.
The glue is still firmly in place as we sometimes squirm to modify our interrelationship  but  nature, and life carry us indubitably onwards to our different destination, et fruit semper, et est vita.