The gift of your birth right

The gift of birth right

Have you ever stopped to consider what it would be like to be a Syrian, or a black person born in the Congo, a rural Chinese or someone living in the Yemen right now. The gift we were given to be born in the UK, or a white person in Africa, an Aussie or Kiwi, that chance to be born to parents who themselves had the gift  through their birth place never to experience anything other than an opportunity to better themselves and certainly an expectation that they would die in their bed of natural causes.
We are the privileged few who carry the supposition that life is something we can enjoy and shape to suite to our special needs. We take for granted that the rule of law will protect us and that work will be sufficiently plentiful and that we will never go hungry. This set of affairs was not something we had any hand in, our childhood assumed that things would be as they are and that life was a civilising experience.

Three quarters of the people who are living today have no such claim to the optimism we have, for them time and living standards stand still and they have to work very hard just to maintain what little they have. Is it any wonder the exodus from the Middle East and Africa is so powerful, is it any wonder the trail of people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala through Mexico trying to get into the USA frightens the Americans into at last understanding that modern day communications is a two edged sword and the passivity of ignorant people is now replaced by a rapacious desire to have some of the lifestyle themselves.
This human transference from an impoverished continent to the wealthy environment on an adjacent land mass was always bound to happen when the information revolution made the world more transparent. What took thousands of years of gradual migration and assimilation is now in the hands of a few unscrupulous traffickers who's sense of moral equivalence is virtually zero. As the flow of people continues or grows the balance of probability will be that where ever you are born in a hundred years from now the life chances will be similar for most people and only the rich will seek to protect their special position by inhabiting tropical islands around which a no go zone will prevent any encroachment from the unwashed masses they used to know as their fellow countrymen.

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson


Perhaps tonight in the British Parliament the true potential calamity of Brexit was revealed when Boris Johnson stood up to speak for the first time in many days on the matter of Mrs Mays Brexit plan which she wishes, after parliament has voted, to take to Europe for approval. Now there are many critics of her plan which seems to edge us back toward a position that the Europeans will be content with but without our having any negotiating say in matters which will concern the way we do business or the political rules which govern our ability to make changes. Being neither fish nor fowl, neither in nor out but still with all the financial commitments to the European budget, we will be far worse off than when we were in the Union proper.

Boris along with his cronies such as,David Davis, and Jacob Rees-Mogg who, along with Nigel Farage were the catalyst for wanting to break away from the European Union. Having been accused of designing a picture of life outside the EU which was totally false but sold to the electorate, with the willing aid of the media and with such conviction that a majority of Brits went along with what they said.
In political life as in so many other aspects of celebrity a cult formed around Boris Johnson which troubled me. His reign as the Mayor of London I thought revealed a man who seemed to play a part but a part which seemed to have little substance. His whole demeanour was clownish and with a supercilious smile always lingering around his face he failed time and again to answer questions about the job he was doing as mayor and would rather bluster as a prefect when caught out by the headmaster, not me sir. Somehow people began to talk him up as a future prime minister and when on returning to mainline politics in Westminster, Mrs May promoted him to Foreign Secretary I felt he made the country a laughing stock amongst the worlds nations.
Eventually he was sacked over his position regarding Brexit and tonight I watched a man who performed like a figure out of Gilbert and Sullivan, a lampoon character who's only merit was that we could laugh at him. But of course unlike the musical this is not entertainment but a deadly serious matter as far as the lively hood of so many people are concerned. For the first time his fellow conservative politicians began to barrack him as he stood waffling with little or no lucidity and apparently no alternative plan other than the hope that the EU Commission would back down once they had seen how serious we are in demanding another way. I felt he looked a lonely, a partly demented figure with his shelf of notes in hand turning this way and that as members, from all sides of the House, demanding that he respond to their ill concealed derision.

Just an illusion

    

Is there a limit to our ability to conceptualise things. Is our brain a limiting factor in our understanding things. Are we reaching a mental plateau where the maths and the use of AI to computate things is rapidly reaching a stage were we can not visualise the actual outcome which the tools we use for analysis point to.
Distances and time refer to our 'observable' universe which is limited by the time light takes to bring back information. This time horizon limits us from seeing what's beyond and in effect puts a limit on what we can know. The mathematical computation aided by super cooled computers and using esoteric materials to transmit the computations within the computer and allows us to calculate, for instance the human genome and the aberrations which are the precursor of disease and malfunction within our bodies. But how do we disentangle the mind with its thoughts tide to the result of our environment and other emotional factors which ebb and flow from nano second to nano second.
If the computer predicts something outside our ability to comprehend, does mean it doesn't exist or that it's outside are realm of understanding.
It's a moment in our human evolution when our brains have perhaps at last reached that point where we become what we rather scathingly infer of the ape, that they and we are of limited intelligence.
Perhaps "Artificial Intelligence" will takeover and decipher the indecipherable but as control always lies with the most intelligent will we have seconded our role to machines.
We are already at a stage where the mathematical hypothesis can't be tested and we have to substitute weird anomalies such as multiple or parallel universes to explain the mathematical findings. If our world is but a corner of the actual physical world and we don't have minds that can convey answers because our experience is dimensionally limited, then the prime we set for ourselves, with the importance we place on ourselves, is just an illusion.

keeping a clear head

When the dark nights draw in across Europe different countries, or more to the point the people living in those countries resort to the bottle. 

The Russians are famous for their vodka the Germans for their snaps, and the Scandinavians it's whisky that's the cushion to get them through the dark nights.
Of course, this pretty much a 'generational' thing since now a days the choice of the under 50s seeking artificial solace is the drug market. From the poppy to the cannabis plant, nature allows substances which swing the mind off its natural orbit, arguably to make the present more palatable. The Chinese with their opium and the many tribal communities who chew leaves such as Khat to seek mild euphoria have been doing so whilst we 'westerners' were running around in animal skins.
Today's chemist has concocted a devils mix of hallucinatory drugs to bend the mind and temporally change the personality. LSD was famous in the 60s but unpredictable, triggering all kinds of images, many of them horrifically distorting to the point of driving the person temporally insane. Spice, another drug of choice amongst the young, also has the unfortunate tendency to lead the user into degrees of paranoia, seeming to elevate the psych of the user into believe in the users infallibility.
The question of a person finding the need to release themselves from the reality of their actual condition and risk a journey "to where they know no of" speaks volumes of so many who are at odds with who they are and what they are doing in this life. We know that there is so much confusion in the short term nature of everything,  from the job to emotional commitments, nothing seems for the long haul and, in this ever changing environment is it any wonder that the values which were once part and parcel of life's special signature ingredient such as bearing responsibility are now in such short supply.
Is there any solution as we globalise the means of production to maximise the profits for a few. Is there anyway back, to place the human being at the centre of our thoughts and not the dollar. In many countries the human being man or woman are in over abundance as child birth seems the only two fingered response to the authorise and their control over us. I suppose the Chinese got closest with their one male child policy in the 60/70s and the tinkering at the edges in Germany in the 30s to produce a blond, blue eyed aryan super race. Humans, as a species seem to swing from one extreme to the other mixing their ideologically proffered humanitarianism, religious and non religious to those sections of the race profile they seem comfortable with whilst trying to eliminate the rest. Is it any wonder that, as the world shrinks, increasing our knowledge through better communication, then the prejudice is raised rather than lowered because of the wide cultural gaps between us all. Our so called free will and our ingenuity at creating self centred bubbles, 'our way, is the only way', makes the break up of 'our way' all the more traumatic, especially if we see solidarity in the way other cultures seem to find a collective way of staying together (mostly through religious ritual) in the way they live their lives. 

So let's raise a glass to "the others" but remember the personal optic seen, after having emptied the glass is different from those who keep a clear head, at all times.

The glory of dance

The world of show biz is alive and well.
 I don't usually tune in to "Strictly Come Dancing"  the format wore me down with too much manufactured hype and the inevitable screaming from the audience but tonight instead of switching off I thought I would see how the show was progressing. In essence it's about couples performing the standard dance steps. The quickstep, the waltz, the foxtrot, the samba, and the jive, all dances which people of my age growing up could perform to varying degrees of success. Our Saturday nights  in the 50s were often a trip into the Mecca Ballroom where the dance bands, even the greats like Joe Loss would captivate us with swing and fixed tempo music drawing us onto the dance floor as if we had been hypnotised into believing we were from stage and screen. It was the era of the Hollywood Musical with extravagant casts and extravagant stories to tell. The slick choreography and the perfect timing of the dancers was mystical to watch and in our own way, with a girl who could dance we tried to execute those moves which the professional dancers made. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were the epitome of the  suave, stepping it out couple gliding the stage with their grace and timing, and Gene Kelly the muscular song and dance performer with his ratter tat choreography much remembered for his routine, "Singing in the Rain".

Austerity and taste has seen the demise of the large stage cinema musicals such as Oklahoma and Severn Brides for Seven Brothers but the marvellous musicality of The Phantom of the Opera and Cats brought to the stage a kaleidoscope of music song and dance which will be remembered for a long time, especially those who were lucky enough to be around when the shows first opened.
Strictly Come Dancing has, in its way and on a small stage become part of the show biz phenomena. The format of a professional ballroom dancer teaching an amateur dancer to dance a quickstep or a waltz, all within a week with the added difficulty of a complex choreographed story line to perform in front of millions watching on the box has become one of the top attractions for Saturday night viewing. The beautiful long legged women and their lean athletic male partners swaying to the beat of a well known dance piece has become a top draw card and watching tonight one could see why. To near perfection the dance couples seem to pull it off.  Faultless steps are but only one part of the display, it's the outrageously difficult sequences that link the story line set to music which the dancers seem to bring to our screen week in and week out. These are not professional dancers with all the physicality that years of training can bring. One member of the duo, be it the man or the woman is not to all intents and purposes a dancer and one marvels at how on earth, in a week they can be so practised to make us all at home be in awe at their skill and deportment and make me at least, turn on the old tunes and cast aside the years to lose myself, as of then in the glory of dance.

Is it the fault of the social scientist

Listening to 702 (South African radio) this morning took my mind back to the days I lived in Johannesburg. Gillooly's  Interchange and Corlett Drive were chocker block with traffic as people struggled to get into work. 
The temperature was 25 degrees rising to 29, with showers forecast for late afternoon.

 The bell had rung at St Johns and the smartly dressed, well disciplined pupils were filing into class as the Moms and Dads turned their Mercs and Audi's  around from the school gate to descend from the Houghton Ridge down into Houghton  proper, streets lined with vibrant blue/purple flowered Jacaranda trees and huge gated properties, the lazy swish of sprinklers and gardeners already busy with the weeds, madam on her second cup of coffee planning for lunch in Rosebank.
Time stands still as the announcer sets the scene, a scene I was party to all those years ago. The ease of life for the fortunate has cast them in aspic as their days unfold to a formula which is both exclusive and pampered, just as it was 30 years ago. To those who now live in countries scattered across the globe it was a miracle that they once were lucky enough to have experienced it at all. The life and the weather, the disposable income and the sense of ownership and entitlement were all constituent parts of a bubble that had to burst but which, whilst in place was immensely satisfying.
In their new countries Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., Canada and the USA all seems a little more plebeian, a little more pressurised working as we do amongst the other ants who also struggle to survive but we at least remember the modern work space and the camaraderie  that the colour of our skin afforded us. The sense that work was a minor inconvenience before returning home, to dive in the pool and light the braai.
Sitting under Brexit leadened sky's, the early morning sunshine and the sense that individually we had some importance, that our decisions counted seems so far away.
We are of course living in a much more complex society, a society which prides itself in being as close to a chameleon as possible. No Black and White simplicity but a range of conflicting hues and bewildering ethnicity. Continually discovering new modes of analysis to describe the on going enlargement of the human condition, mental and physical each prescribed as a legal entity and each with an accompanying set of rights.
Was it a dream or was it the reality of a simpler time when 'might was right' and we had the presumption of innocence on our side because the social scientist had yet to spread their wings.

Leave the question open

If you were to ask, "what is the meaning of this life on earth". I suppose you would get as many answers as the people you asked. If the person was religious it would be to serve god by following as closely as you could his word from the bible. If you were agnostic or an atheist you would be less formal, more open to be representative of the many factors which make us as diverse as we are.
Of course the meaning we attach to life is dependent on our age, our health, our maturity, our economic position, so many factors that when we ask the question it clearly has no one answer. And yet life I s so precious and it's remarkable that we don't step back and at least consider our time on earth and the use we make of it.
We are usually frivolous with our time if the time is not directed by others, people we might work for or who have the power to make us do things which we normally wouldn't.
Should we be hedonistic and only do the things we ourselves want to do or should we throw ourselves into working for others and merging ourselves and our time by standing on a street corner rattling a tin. It's said 'the good we do others is repaid many times over' and therefore the more we expose our-self to say charity fundraising, then the intrinsic return should run deep.
Many people though would find spending their hours in this way a waste of "their" time and would rather be out playing sport or watching sport, weaving baskets or painting landscapes. The time spent thus has its rewards in the contentment people receive but is this contentment not simply not another way of avoiding the question, of how to spend the time we have.
If we were as conscious from the start of the total package available it would probably make most people paranoid, imagine having to account for your time, useful time and less than useful time but of course, we haven't defined what useful means yet.
If your eye is on the rewards of heaven then you have an unfair advantage over the person who sees his time on earth as finite. If you are spending your time searching for answers and practising what you believe is a correct way to live life productively, gaining an insight into the profundity of death and the life cycle, then right up until the last second you are immersed in a question which only you will know the answer to, the second after.
Given that most people hardly ever think about the meaning of life, then their immersion in the stimulus of drugs, sex and rock and roll is not only predictable but worthy. At least their nirvana is here on earth and not a complex belief of an after life. At least, when they shrivel away with kidney failure they can pinpoint to their dilemma even before they go.
"The hope that passes all understanding" might turn out to be a mental aberration dreamt up as a cry for redemption, but a redemption from this life. It's the only one we are likely to know and seems a poor return for two thousand years of civilisation.