Redefining ourselves

How do we as human beings evaluate the effect others have on us, their proximity, their influence in terms of the daily interaction we have with them, the imposition of a qualifying effect on what we do and what we think.
Growing up we are constrained by our parents. Up to a certain stage we are oblivious of this since they, the parents, are our world and we have not formed any sense of our own independence. During our teenage years we sometimes overcompensate our own importance and clash continually with those who, up to now, have been the conduit through which we exist.

Moving away from home is our first attempt at self reliance and usually we stay closely in touch with our parents because they represent the strength of our childhood experience. 
Eventually if we are lucky we find the companionship of another and move in with that person under the same roof which eventually can lead to the start of ones own family and so the cycle repeats its self.
A common factor is the need to share our space with someone else.
The comfort we derive in sharing a flat with a friend or taking on a lodger is of a different magnitude to falling in love and committing ones self to a whole different ball game.
The intricacy of establishing a relationship in which the "significant other" is always in the loop and in essence a contributor to all your emotional and physical life, is an enormous step.
Few achieve a full and proper union. Some play around the edges by creating fields of interest which, whilst not excluding the other make it likely that for a few hours (other than time at work) a space is created and one can re-engage with ones old self.
The question of why and if this space is necessary and, more importantly, if this space becomes permanent through divorce or death, can one revert to being single ?
The insecurity that lies within many people can find solace in the companionship which a long relationship brings. It can be an important prop, often un-noticed and unappreciated but, like a foundation in a building, 'when called into question', can cause the structure to collapse.
The bond which is created when people live together (often subliminally) drives our everyday action and, through repetition, we become its slave. Like the slaves released from a lifetime of servitude they can not throw off, in a day, the sense of subservience which can remain often to the end.
Is it the tie of emotional love, or is it the many years of comfortable confinement which, like a prisoner, once released, finds it hard to exist on his own. The space and,most of all the silence is hard to cope with.
Relearning the confidence of ones youth is virtually impossible, the resilience and audacity are missing. The hunter is tamed and the essential "drive" is sublimated to a distant memory.
Of course once the genie is out of the bottle and a realignment with ones past self, especially if it is over many decades is fraught with problems.
The person you have become is shot through with conformity and self justification, these being the only armour one had to protect the 'original version' of who you think you are, from the "idealised individual", someone else had tried to fashion.
How to undo the the smooth exterior of so many contests and find the 'context' which got you through so many scrapes and near death experiences, when the only value you now have is the figure at the bottom of the insurance policy.

A cautionary tale.

I was thinking, as I began that slow drowsy descent into sleep, of the South African sunset, the rich colour as the fiery orb settled into the Indian Ocean and night rapidly descended.

The sounds of an African night, the cicadas, unseen but busy, the bullfrogs deeply resonant in the still warm air. The distant sound of an animal kill with its final scream and, if close to the shore line, the rhythmic crash of waves beating to a distant interminable drum. 


The night was always a time for caution a time to be weary, a time to check the locks and put the dog out. Night time is always instinctively a time when we feel at our most vulnerable. 
The dark holds potential danger, it provides natural cover for those who would do us harm and, in the politically ravaged society which is today's South Africa, harm is all around.
People turn to their beds their ears sensitive to the unusual, ready to respond, ready to press the alarm !! A nation in trauma which gets on with the business of living amidst the dying, unconsciously stressed with memories of a very different lifestyle not too long ago. We live in hope and deny the statistics, trapped in our past we become partially schizophrenic inhibiting a world of our own creation whilst reality is fraught with the unknown.
On waking there is the beautiful transformation of a new day. The air is cool and clear as the sun returns to bless the land, peeping above the horizon lighting the hazy clouds and transforming the earth, from the fear of the unseen to optimism as the world around is revealed once again and we still a part of it.
A busy day ahead the car nestles into the traffic and one is again confirmed of being a part of a rational system where we engage and trade our skills with others, talking of deals and projects and of the future ! Man,s inbuilt optimism competes against pessimism, offsetting the blight of depression, a scourge very prevalent within western secular society.
As the car wends its way home in the falling light the niggle of apprehension returns and the protective mind padlocks our reward for living in such a physically beautiful country which crass human stupidity has ruined for everyone.

Ever more wealthy, ever more powerful

It strikes me repeatedly these days how we are in the grip of a massive fraud.
Wealth,economic growth, full employment, ultra low inflation and a populous that is nearly schizophrenic with the constant adjustment it has to make, on an annual basis, regarding its own economic security.
People have long since given up on the concept of value and rather consider a purchase, any purchase as therapy to prove they are still functioning within the distortion we describe as society. We worship at the alter of the shopping mall where retail therapy is the solution to jangled nerves and a frayed conscience. We fully understand the consequences of buying in a rag trade where prices have little or no relationship to the cost of manufacture. We happily load our Supermarket trolley with milk that is offered at below the cost the farmer has to pay to fill his pail and, as a consequence we become part of a bankruptcy and sometimes a suicide !!
We know all that and yet we fixate on the glamour of the footballers and their wives who, focused on Gucci are to be seen parading across the magazines like some idiosyncratic adolescent out on the town with Daddy's credit card. Knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Our world is corrupt from top to bottom. The legal profession offers platitudes about the importance of a secure legal framework for society which is attainable and affordable to everyone but see laws which, if broken by the ordinary man in the street would mean a jail sentence but for the wealthy are broken with impunity because they are protected.
The taxation rules and regulations that pertain to ordinary people are flaunted by the the massive globalised companies which no one, not even the national government can effect.
Learning that 1% of the worlds population hold the key to 50% of the worlds wealth, is
unprecedented as we listen to the media doomsayers decrying the left wing take over of the government in Greece.
We are told that only the 'conservative financial establishment', with their political masters and the 'Market' (corruption writ large) with its Short selling, its Leverage, its Futures, and its Arbitrage, not to mention Derivatives can save the day, but save it for whom?
Only they can save us from unemployment, rapidly dwindling money in our pockets and a debt mountain that our children and their children will still be paying for 50 years from now.
This new wealth (sic) has mystically been created by a slight of hand.
The banks through their own corrupt practices began to loose confidence in their own 'contrived' value and so, to prevent them from going under "our" Governments printed trillions of dollars, pounds and soon to be euro's (a massive rearrangement in world wide asset manipulation benefiting the 1%) so the money could be handed back to the Banks to revalue their balance sheet with money borrowed from the very people they are trying to fleece.
We wait in vain for the intended industrial reinvestment initiated through the banks re-lending us the money we gave them !!!
 

These Establishment figures, which in the case of Greece are touted as the only "safe pair of hands", are in contrast to the 'socially concerned' new government led by Alexis Tsipras, who almost universally is decried by the Worlds Establishment for saying "enough is enough". 
German led austerity has crippled his country, as it is doing in Spain and Ireland. Austerity will also deface this country but of course, it's austerity for the "underbelly" whilst the 1% grow ever more wealthy and ever more powerful.

Rational for going to war

One is struck by the potential repercussion arising in Greece, possibly in Spain, perhaps in Ireland as the conservative force the repression of the respective social structures in each country by the use of austerity and austerity alone for adjusting their respective balance sheets.
Syriza the Opposition Party in Greece seems set to win and become the new government in Greece. Their opposition to the German led austerity measures have been in force for five years and have led to massive deprivation within Greek society particularly amongst the poor.
The European Union led by Germany, is a bureaucratic system which is controlled by an unelected section of European society which smacks at old fashioned Feudalism, where everything was owned by a few and people were in hock to a small powerful oligarchy.
To overcome this "democracy" evolved to bring in the 'general populous' who were invited to vote and so effect their individual prospect. 

The global economy now over-rides the democratic principle, we have allowed an elite to brow-beat us with the principle of economic destruction if we don't coalesce in their grand scheme. One wonders if the wheels fell off the economic machine, prescribed by the Washington Consensus, whether the poor of this continent would be all that worse off. It's highly unlikely that the industrialists and the investors would take their toys home if the people voted for a dose of good old fashioned socialism again, socialism, a political view which puts the population at large back where it belongs, at the head of the agenda. 
But what about growth will be the cry from Davos. Growth, growth, the dreaded growth. Growth at any cost particularly the human cost since the concept of a 'trickle down economy' is well and truly shot to pieces as the top one percent (measured in thousands of people ) own fifty percent of the wealth whilst the other fifty percent is spread amongst the billions of us, the fall guys who are expendable.
In theory our vote is worth as much as anyone's vote. The multimillionaire carries no more clout than me into the ballot box. That vote is supposed to represent me and others, as to the type of representative government me chose to govern us. As we become poorer and have to rely on food banks and the seductive credit which subverts us essentially into being life long debtors, of having to sell their time and labour to who ever, irrespective of the individual strain on the fabric of family and inherently, society.
If we were to kick the habit bred into us of the short term, consumptive lifestyle and begin to construct our earning/spending function on other values such as the importance of having time to evaluate our passage through time and through the world at large, perhaps we would bring the economy back into "perspective", a perspective not seen from the boardroom but from a human perspective. 

From the human perspective

One is struck by the potential repercussion arising in Greece, possibly in Spain, perhaps in Ireland as the conservative force the repression of the respective social structures in each country by the use of austerity and austerity alone for adjusting their respective balance sheets.
Syriza the Opposition Party in Greece seems set to win and become the new government in Greece. Their opposition to the German led austerity measures have been in force for five years and have led to massive depravation within Greek society particularly amongst the poor.
The European Union led by Germany, is a bureaucratic system which is controlled by an unelected section of European society which smacks at old fashioned Feudalism, where everything was owned by a few and people were in hock to a small powerful oligarchy.
To overcome this "democracy" evolved to bring in the 'general populous' who were invited to vote and so effect their individual prospect.
The global economy now over-rides the democratic principle, we have allowed an elite to brow-beat us with the principle of economic destruction if we don't coalesce in their grand scheme. One wonders if the wheels fell off the economic machine, prescribed by the Washington Consensus, whether the poor of this continent would be all that worse off. It's highly unlikely that the industrialists and the investors would take their toys home if the people voted for a dose of good old fashioned socialism again, socialism, a political view which puts the population at large back where it belongs, at the head of the agenda.
But what about growth will be the cry from Davos. Growth, growth, the dreaded growth. Growth at any cost particularly the human cost since the concept of a 'trickle down economy' is well and truly shot to pieces as the top one percent (measured in thousands of people ) own fifty percent of the wealth whilst the other fifty percent is spread amongst the billions of us, the fall guys who are expendable.
In theory our vote is worth as much as anyone's vote. The multimillionaire carries no more clout than me into the ballot box. That vote is supposed to represent me and others, as to the type of representative government me chose to govern us. As we become poorer and have to rely on food banks and the seductive credit which subverts us essentially into being life long debtors, of having to sell their time and labour to who ever, irrespective of the individual strain on the fabric of family and inherently, society.
If we were to kick the habit bred into us of the short term, consumptive lifestyle and begin to construct our earning/spending function on other values such as the importance of having time to evaluate our passage through time and through the world at large, perhaps we would bring the economy back into "perspective", a perspective not seen from the boardroom but from a human perspective. 

Music on tap

 

I am listening to Ravels Bolero through my new Sonos toy. The music with its ratter-tat-tat snare drum background, the various instruments coming in, one after the other, repeating a haunting musical refrain. Slowly the volume increases, the sound swells until, as if in crisis, the shrill and dramatic cry from the strings plunges the whole orchestra into a torment, like an agonised animal in its last dying throes leaving a final crescendo of sound followed by an equally dramatic void when the music stops.
Jack Johnson's easy strolling lyrics, Maria Callas glissading up and down the scales with perfect pitch and sublime control, music on tap as never before.
One of the first records I chose was Enrico Caruso singing an aria from Puccini. The recording was old and you could hear on the track the scratches of the steel needles which were used in those days. It was the self same record I have upstairs, a vinyl 78 one of many, a precious memory of my Mother and Father and the music we played when I was young.
With a catalogue of thousands there isn't a song or piece that isn't available. 
Fore-instance I have just switched, between paragraphs, to Bluesology played by the fabulous Modern Jazz Quartet, how easy was that ? 

I remember going to the St George's Hall in Bradford to sit enraptured as those jazz giants performed on stage. Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie all our American heroes in the flesh and only a 'trolley bus' ride away !!
Now at the tap of a computer key the sound floods out from the speaker. Missing of course is the excitement of sitting 10 rows back and being carried along with the enthusiasm of the ones fellow acolytes but then you can not have everything and anyway a glass of wine at the elbow and not having to queue in the wet draughty street for the last bus home has something to recommend it.

The Holocaust

 

This weeks debate on BQ was "is the Holocaust still relevant".
This is a subject that many people shy away from because it is so emotive and has remained so because of the ability of the main group, the Jews who were persecuted, to gain media attention and remind us of the terrible things which happened under the Nazi's.
In so far as the parallel attempt to exterminate other groups of people, the Homosexuals, the Disabled, the Gypsy's, the Slav's, do not quite fit the memorial memory we have on behalf of the Jews and the special place Jewish people claim to have.
This is not to deny the terrible trauma but an attempt to gain perspective.
Of course to hear the description of the mechanised murder, to hear the description of walking skeletons in Belsen, substantiated by the horrific pictures taken when the concentration camps were liberated. Of the so called 'scientific experimentation' and the empty eyed horror in the eyes of the subject as the ice bath reduced the body temperature below what a human can withstand
Was this a different, a greater sense of depravity ?
There are always sadists on hand to carry out the act. People who turned the screw on the rack during the Spanish Inquisition. People who would 'draw and quarter' in this country during the Middle Ages. Mentally disturbed people who relish inflicting pain.
The people gathered to debate the matter were largely Jewish and perhaps it was a measure of the Establishments sensitivity not to line up the 'usual people' who would try to deny the Jewish case. Not, I must add, to project 'Holocaust Denial', but to ask why the Jewish diaspora insist that their loss, their disfigurement as a group, their place in the history is special when the Hutu genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsi or Pol Pots massacres. Mao Zedong purges killing millions, Stalin's totalitarian murder on an even more massive scale. The question is "why should the Holocaust be special" ?
 
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