There is a fantastic sense of ennui to be savoured in the days following Christmas. A great spiritual malaise haunts all things, as if they had lived the previous year only that they might experience the 25th of December. Nothing quite knows how to occupy itself, nor how best to prepare for an impending year of drudgery once again.
Christmas also brings with it the imponderable joy of consuming vast amounts of animal flesh - a habit I abjured a year or so ago, and one which I do not intend to reinstate. The only shame I have of my vegetarianism is that I did not commit to it earlier. This said, the practice of eating corpses lost its charm for me a very long time ago, but I was not in control of my diet until I went to university. The sole benefit of university, as far as I can perceive - the ability to eat as one wishes! Vegetarianism in my parents' house is seen as some regrettable idiosyncrasy, or a meaningless act of defiance. But then, these are probably viable criticisms of much of my behaviour.
I have been considering this post for a few days now, and whether it is at all fitting in a friendly blog to assail the habits of others. Experience has revealed that I nurse an almost physical pain at the recognition that I have deliberately been unkind to another, and a blog post such as this can be interpreted as nothing other than deliberate. Yet I do not think I am attacking people, rather people's habits, and people's habits are often thrust upon them by necessity, or ignorance, or fear. Therefore I cannot intimate that a tenant of a habit is necessarily characterised by it, nor that they should receive praise or punishment for it. The virtue of the idea itself is all that can be assessed, and it is man's task to take up virtuous habits as he descries them. I can say no more than this - I am assessing ideas. If we were to live in a world in which we feared offending others at all times, little would be said, for every argument is multifaceted, and there are a lot of people in this world, each of whom any opinion may offend. Moreover, the problem with this unremitting intolerance to the possibility of offence is that it affords the timid and the unthinking the greatest power. We should not wish to live in a world in which it is possible for someone without a cogent argument to overwhelm somebody with one.
I was watching River Cottage yesterday - a fantastic programme about a man so middle-class that he felt the need to flee to the countryside, in ostensible renunciation of his privilege. I do like Hugh, but it must be rather more simple to adopt the righteous indignation of the eco warrior when one has been to Eton and Oxford, and boasts a double-barrelled name. It is as if he has said, 'OK, I lived the first 20 years of my life in the upper echelons of this corrupt system; but, now that I have nothing more to sap from it, I'm quite happy to live the life of a peasant.' How charming. The whole show is undercut with the sense that he is exorcising some grim eidolons from his soul.
Anyway, this is all ancillary. What irked me was the way in which animals were treated, and the bizarre attitudes evinced herein. First, I am watching in near catalepsy as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fills his cow's trough with some mixture or other, describing the high quality of the oats and how this is great for the cow, and then proceeds to turn to the camera and say, 'It will make you taste great, too.' There seemed to me in the tone, the angle, the setting, something so cunning, so self-serving, so cruel in the whole thing.
We have this warped conviction that we are in some way being kind to animals by feeding them some Waitrose provender before they're disparted into their constituent viscera (which, by the way, many people seem to refuse to eat, as if innards are somehow more vital, more life-giving to an animal than mere flesh. In this I believe we see an instinctive reluctance to destroy life). This renewed image of the kind farmer has only served to entrench our bloodthirsty tendencies. Yet there is, despite what many may insist, no humane way to kill a creature against its own will. This is a necessarily inhumane enterprise. Indeed, applied to humans, we term it murder. It should not matter that a murderer fed his victim a diet of Terry's Chocolate Oranges and expensive falafel before ending his victim's life - this does nothing to palliate the absolute nature of the offence. Death is irrevocable, and should be met with a commensurate unwillingness to impose it.
And of course there is an absolute ocean of hypocrisy to be addressed here. If I were to feed a friend's dog with some expensive tin of dog food, it would be quite unacceptable if I were to append the phrase, 'This will make you taste delicious.' In fact, it would be so bizarre, so alien to human practice that it would be quite comedic. Yet the horrors we commission against farm animals would be national news stories if committed with such scale and brutality on household pets. It would seem to us to be the most barbaric, medieval, depraved operation in recent history. But who can give a reason as to why a cat's life should be elevated beyond a cow's? This is the arrangement we endorse - we live in a world in which billions of animals live their lives in bondage and are slaughtered for our own gain, whilst simultaneously organisations such as the RSPCA are horrified if a dog is left in a bin. Of course the reason behind this outrage at crimes committed against household pets is that household pets are useful to us whilst alive, and farm animals are useful to use whilst dead. Our morality is clouded by our foul interests - our bloodthirsty mandibles, snapping at everything in their path. For example, a woman in the aforementioned episode of River Cottage tasted a rabbit stew. She was then asked, 'Are you put off by the fact that this was a fluffy bunny?' and she replied with, 'Maybe if it was a fluffy bunny, but this was wild.' Then it is quite fine to kill a rabbit which we would not have seen, but quite perverse to kill a rabbit from whose appearance we gain some enjoyment. Am I losing my grasp on reality? Can this be a world in which death is meted out on the basis of its recipient's degree of fluffiness? Surely death cannot be a matter we can treat with such idiocy. What a foul morality we advocate!
Why must man sire a path of brambles where he treads? Man will destroy whatever he can, until precisely the point at which his own safety is endangered. All beneath this point is despoiled with utter levity. You won't see Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrestling an alligator for his pan-fried croc-nuggets. You will, however, see him packaging defenceless animals and sending them to various slaughterhouses with no real trouble. I wither at the absolute greed which infects all of mankind's actions. I'm sure I've mentioned it before - it is our philosophy of expedience! All things appear far more unobjectionable when they are the easiest means to an end from man's blasted perspective, if not overall. I think it is undeniable that far more people would renounce meat if it was an active decision to engage in its consumption, rather than to forgo it. This is to say, people generally nurture the habits their parents inculcate in them, and most people today are brought up to eat rotting cadavers. If it were possible for us to make a reasoned decision upon birth, for ourselves, who would choose to unnecessarily maim and wound for their own pleasure? Only the most devout sadist could bring himself to such a resolution. And I believe the word 'unnecessarily' is of overriding importance here. It does not make one a sadist to eat meat out of necessity - the fact that another creature perished in one's nourishment would be a cause for grief, but who here can judge one creature's life as more important than another's? Who could assuredly wear the mantle of Minos, and then who might do it gladly? Yet to sap life, to debauch beauty, to have the hubris to place one's own pleasure above the lives of others, all when this need not be the case - this is malice.
Then we do not have the divine equipment necessary to judge life, and it is mere arrogance to assert that we do, but what can be derived is that, if one cannot value one life against another, it must be preferable for both lives to continue if it is at all possible. We live in a country in which this is absolutely an accessible outcome - it is merely man's self-service and disregard for life which blights the endeavour. However, mankind believes it can judge the value of a life, through prices. Then in valuing each animal with an arbitrary number, one values none at all. By ascribing a cipher of pure dust to a creature's entire being, one destroys the being immediately. If we were sincere, we might admit that we know this to be true; it is common to express disapproval at the combination of sex and money, for example. It is somehow as if love itself has been destroyed, and we cannot bear the thought. Similarly, to be asked to ascribe a monetary value to one's friends and family would be absolutely unthinkable! In such a moment of judgement, the judged becomes the price, and nothing more.
Furthermore, think of the 'alien invasion' genre of films. The marauding aliens are invariably portrayed as wicked and consumptive - yet what do they commit which man does not commit daily and without remorse? The enslavement and eventual destruction of what we perceive to be inferior species, the destruction of all environments outside our own, the inexorable pursuit of economic gain above all else. Man's gross egotism deems all of this quite fine. It is only when it is committed against man that it becomes immoral! Who can stay sane in a world in which this kind of morality is ascendant? It even bears a personal importance - it suggests that, were each of our own lives to become convenient for man to destroy, it would immediately become moral to do so. Actions need only be inconvenient to man to become immoral actions, and convenient to man to become moral actions. The critic may think this is an exaggeration, but who can give a situation in which this is not the case? Think of the recent badger culls - previously, badgers were protected by law! Indeed, still are! Yet the moment it becomes convenient, economically in this case, the law is disregarded, and it suddenly becomes quite fine to kill badgers with abandon. Yet, to me, life is an absolute, and its destruction should not be countenanced with such indifference. The idea that money can reduce something sacred to vermin is a cause for lament. What avarice!
People say to me of my vegetarianism, 'Oh I couldn't do that, it would be really difficult,' as if I had made the decision that it is more convenient to refuse to eat meat in a meat-eating world. This is the power of this philosophy of expedience - it is entrenched in all minds. The point is that morals should be independent of practicality. Of course, we have precisely the obverse situation in today's barren world, economics sentencing the weak and the capital-deprived to death. The dollar is the judge, lashing its callous outcomes on the very weakest. Animals, lacking the ability to enslave themselves through work as we do, are forced to an even more regrettable end - slaughter. Yet, as with human matters, those with money can always choose to help those without, however economically inconvenient it may be. What is fundamentally right and just, and not what is convenient, should determine morality.
Then why must human life be buttressed by death? What rational person wishes to become a necropolis, a void of life? It seems that life in this world is a parody of itself, intent on the extirpation of other life - it is some kind of antitype against its own being, bent on its own elimination. In such a world, all is hostile. All is negation. Who desires a place in such an arrangement, when they need not do so?
Friday, 3 January 2014
Sunday, 22 December 2013
The Hypocrisy of Benevolence
I don't seem to be able to write anything of much use at the moment - or at least I have no inclination towards such an endeavour in my present state. A general torpidity of spirit debars all action. Even eating is tedious, though it is 8pm and I have finally surrendered to the tyrant of appetite, betraying a day of asceticism, sliding a solitary bean burger into the oven mere minutes ago. A fantastic disc of protein, how charming! What nutriment!
But this is all achingly demoralising - I can usually tap this blasted keyboard at a fair pace, stamping my seal of bollocks onto all things at a steady canter. Presently, however, each clack of brittle plastic is an internal triage, a torment of indecision.
What I can do, and I will have it known that I can do it quite well, is copy and paste something I have written before. I should explain what it is, and so I think I will explain what it is. It is an essay on poverty I wrote for the 'New Statesman and the Webb Memorial Trust Essay Competition'. It was shortlisted, bringing with it the prospect of a shiny reception in Parliament, with important people and important trousers. Trousers mere mortals' buttocks cannot hope to animate.
I immediately decided not to attend. I cannot stand celebratory events - there is something unremittingly bathetic about them, being wet farts in event form - but I will often attend. What is worse is the brand of artificial, meaningless event this invitation to Parliament was perpetuating.
Yet I still went! Reason cannibalised its fellow Instinct, and led me to a thoroughly unreasoned decision. It seemed that, if I won the £1000 prize, or even the £500 runner-up prize, the expense of a suit and travel to London would be more than amortised. What hubris! This is like justifying the consumption of a sandwich because one might become hungry in the near future.
The event, unsurprisingly, followed precisely the progression of all events in my life, and I imagine in world history, which preceded it. There was an initial pang of excitement, agitation, novelty as we rolled through security (barrels of gunpowder rudely seized from us) and into the bowels of this stone leviathan. There was a sense of power to be savoured as security people, on seeing our invitation, did not arrest us on the spot. The thought of a strip search could not be further from their minds (though this may be owing to my ridiculous state of dress).
Making awkward ingress into the venue of the event was just that - awkward. Strange people proffered glistering libations from great platters, and exquisite viands exploded from all directions, tending towards the digestive systems of those in attendance. Here I was, a youthful wight being inducted into some debauched, Hellenic symposium! Grapes falling into my mouth wherever I moved! Breastfed by the Virgin Mary herself!
A preponderance of important trousers was indeed found - but important jackets too! And shirts! I had never seen so much importance in all my life! There is a terrible hostility in the construct of the suit - it being almost an emulation of medieval armour, rendered in flimsy fabric for the purposes of minimal encumbrance. I imagine there is a feeling of security to be experienced when one dons a suit of armour - indeed, it would be odd if this were not the case - yet is this not what the suit hopes to achieve? Everyone must certainly, if only subconsciously, acknowledge the absolute nonsense of the entire pretense; the idea that some strips of cotton sanctify their host and his morality is of course ridiculous. And yet, all wear suits, contented that they are fitting in, fulfilling that hideous precept propounded by only the most insipid individuals. 'Just fit in and don't make a fuss', I am frequently told, more often than not by two despairing parents, but is this not a call for the renunciation of the human spirit? I am quite serious. Homogenisation is the most pernicious force in the universe. All who slip under its thrall perish immediately - their existences become supererogatory. I will have no such fate for myself. This grim world is bleak enough without the shred of beauty all have access to - the personality. Nothing fascinates me more than a unique individual, but nothing vacates my mind more than a dull character, a common spirit. I must state, I do not believe that this common dullness of character is due to the universal blandness of humanity, rather it is individuals who are either too timid to seize haecceity for themselves, or it is society which tears it from them, in an act of utter spite. The idea that man might be debarred from unleashing his true character is the force which necessitates liberty - today we talk of liberty as having the freedom to subsist, or to be a part of an inherently malignant society. Well, fuck that! Liberty is the personal autonomy requisite for the perfection of the human spirit!
What an odd tangent. The path of my narrative hit some sort of impasse, ricocheting wildly at an oblique angle. I believe I was expatiating on the profusion of digestive fodder at this place - so antithetical to my solitary bean burger! There is nothing wrong with an abundance of food and drink, indeed this seems preferable. What does seem to me to be quite incredible, however, is such plenitude and wealth at an event devoted to the discussion of the topic of poverty.
It occurred to me, before the day had even arrived, that this was all impossibly absurd. Were there to be cash prizes, and wine, and exquisite morsels dispensed as if with some sort of neurosis, when there are half a million people in this country using food banks? Would £1500 of cash prizes be best spent on some, and I hate to pass judgement here, middle class kids with attractive CVs? There seemed to be something so symptomatic of the entire system, so microcosmic, in this tiny event. There is a tendency today to pontificate endlessly on matters, when of course this does nothing for material circumstances. These ridiculous discussions on poverty and food banks somehow tend to the financial reward of journalists and politicians. Yet what is there to discuss? In a civilised society, there should be no need for food banks whatever. That this is a real problem causes me hideous agony. The agony of comfortability, perhaps! The agony of hypocrisy, the agony of the weak. I am oddly rather glad I did not win anything at this blasted event; I considered such a possibility before I attended. What would I do? I certainly couldn't keep the money. £1000 to write a few words on how this country allocates money so unfairly? I would be mad! In many ways I regret taking part at all, for it reveals at least the yearning for such a poisoned chalice to be bound to my conscience.
Money is nonsense, its discussion should be banned! If we allocated all wealth equally, and held solemn silence on the matter thence, this world would be a more beaming place. I feel as if my hand has been forced in a world in which such an outcome is undesirable for ruling elites - I spend my life talking of money, that we might no longer talk of money! And politics too - I have no interest in politics whatever, but I cannot retain silence in the face of rampant malice!
I feel a strange urge to scrub myself of attendance of this fucking event - but this is this problem! I criticise the whole phenomenon, and recognised its blight before the event took place, and yet I still attended! I talk of individualism, and I am as obedient as the others. What am I to do? This world is so strewn with antinomy and strife, I scarcely know what to believe or how to act! This world is a stage for great discord between ideas, held by men who cannot prove their verity. And what if one forges the perfect template for this world? It shall be ignored, and cannot be verified besides! Then take my essay - it's worthless!
The Webbs and William Beveridge believed that “full employment” was a prerequisite for removing poverty. Is this true today – and, if so, how would you achieve it?
There is perhaps no better time to talk about unemployment and poverty. These are two of the great elephants in the room, occasionally gestured towards but rarely apprehended with any true vigour. Before I do so myself, I must begin by stating that I think there is the kernel of something pernicious embedded in the question I am about to answer. Unemployment is, contrary to what unemployment figures would have one believe, not simply a number which needs to be reduced to nothing. 'Full employment' is a fairly abstract concept which really means very little in isolation. Very little, that is, unless the quality of work is also taken into account. The question posed seems to intimate that work's virtue lies in its toilsome nature, not in its ability to bring some prosperity to a worker's immediate circumstances. Full employment itself is not something to be pursued as an ultimate paragon of welfare; there is nothing virtuous in toil for toil's sake, indeed this seems to me to be a fairly sadistic notion.
For this very reason, the flat figure of the unemployment rate fails to sincerely indicate the scale of the unemployment problem we have. Many workers have had to receive pay cuts, all workers doubtless face a more mercenary and perfunctory interview process with the tide of spare labour threatening to drown them at all times, and a huge number of workers will have had to accept part-time positions instead of their previous full-time positions. None of this is so much as hinted at by the unemployment figure. There is something cold and sterile about this monolithic, solemn number which is supposed to tell us a great deal about the economy. The thing it sadly overlooks is the workers it ostensibly represents. I don't believe there is any sense in mindlessly striving for full employment if the employment itself exploits workers.
This said, I do believe the chief benefit of work should be explored here. Work provides a wage, the sum of which can be used to bolster one's material circumstances. I think this is quite unobjectionable. Does it therefore follow that we should work as much as possible, or that full employment is a prerequisite to the eradication of poverty? I don't think so.
There is, at present, a rather large stigma attached to the prospect of unemployment. We all remember how, as the recession reared its ugly head half a decade ago, there was, quite rightly, universal obloquy waiting for the extravagant bankers who had successfully uprooted the world economy. What I find quite incredible, however, is how this condemnation has been transferred, by the power of a scaremongering press and a wicked sect of politicians looking for scapegoats, to the unemployed – the very people lost in the fallout of all this mess. It is they who are destroying the economy; it is they who are living the good life. I think we have been drip-fed this quixotic imagery of the life of the unemployed to such an extent that is has formed into one colossal, delusory edifice in the public mind, some sort of black stalagmite in the common consciousness, a giant receipt spike onto which all resentment can be hurled in a time of frustration.
In the public mind, the unemployed wake in the morning, ring for room service, then after a full cranial massage languidly jab a red button, following which they are lowered, in a Wallace and Gromit fashion, into the breakfast chamber beneath. William Morris wallpaper clings to every wall, notes scribbled on it from periods of acute paper shortage. A winsome eunuch polishes hunting rifles in a corner, preparing them for a day of action. Japanned furniture is littered grandly round the room with a perfect diffusion, and the stench of expensive oak bores its way to the entrant's brain.
Outside, the clack of gardeners' shears floats lazily across from the Elizabethan knot garden. A gilded palanquin has been laboriously transported from the servants' quarters and is waiting for its eximious charge. A fittingly gilded bottom is winched into place by scrabbling personnel, and all prepare for a jolly good day of shooting.
Firstly, the problem here is that the victims of these shameless and, worse still, boring attacks lack any real voice. They necessarily lack positions in the media, they necessarily lack a workers' union. I have always believed that scurrilous attacks on another's virtue are perfectly fine when the victim is rich and powerful, and indeed they are necessary when this is the case. The reproach shackled to the banking 'community' (admittedly an odd term to ascribe to such savagery) was necessary for political and moral reasons. What I cannot countenance, and what makes me heave with despair, is the execration lashed against the poor. It seems to me to be an obvious code of conduct in politics, and indeed in general, that one should never assail those whose power and wealth pales in comparison to one's own. It is therefore indicative of the brutal desperation of economic crises that not just the few, but the majority, should stoop to such depths. The worm of asperity, aided by a truculent press, begins to burrow into the everyday person, warping a desire for betterment into a need to find a repository for blame, and a repository which cannot object, at that. I think people have tired of attacking politicians and bankers; there is respectively an evasiveness and an indifference which mars the whole endeavour. What is far more suggestive of progress is to agree – falsely – that the unemployed are wicked. They live for nothing but to see the economy collapse. They refrain from work for their snooty aloofness and unwillingness to enter into society.
Then we may continue with this idiotic witch hunt, turning to our fellow disenfranchised and railing against their blight, or we may shear the manacles of grim condemnation and attack the underlying problems instead. Are people unemployed because they enjoy living in hunger, coldness and inactivity? This is the first question any reasoning individual must ask. Or – and this is a wild concept – is it because we are still in the gelid clasps of what is the most enduring recession of recent history? It is because the government, morally immune under the jovial flag of austerity, decided to ridicule the unemployed, rather than create any jobs for them.
Then we must break the immense stigma attached to unemployment. Stigma may encourage people to find jobs, though I doubt even this, but what it certainly does is divert responsibility from politicians and bankers. These are the people who should feel the weight of public frustration, not the powerless unemployed. To attack the weak is a shameful offense, and it does nothing practical either. Perhaps the unemployment bashers, so ready to broach their barbed tongues, could agree to devote more of their income to taxes, which can be used for improving the quality and quantity of jobs. Instead we have a situation where those who earn in excess of £150,000 per year are receiving tax cuts – a harrowing reality. This is typical of the government's approach to this recession – let the rich get richer and let the poor stay unemployed. Whether it be through an undersold Royal Mail, undersold banks, coercing the unemployed to work for free, the conspicuity with which this is all done makes it almost beyond the reach of satire. Injustice is meted out with such ferocity today that the onlooker doubts his vision, or doubts his instinctive views on what is right and what is wrong. To break the stigma against the unemployed is important in reducing poverty because to blame the poor is the abnegation of responsibility for all else; poverty can never be deracinated when its victims are seen as complicit in their plight.
Yet equality is what will eradicate poverty. To gaze on the privations of one's coevals with utter disgust should be a natural rather than a minority response. An implacable agony at the immiseration of others would be enough to end hunger overnight. Simply, we do not need a greater work ethic, or more working hours – we need compassion. There is enough pie for all to be weeping blueberry juice, but at present the average person is cheated of his 'fair share', to quote the government. A fair share for the majority today is to work for little – or no – pay, whilst financial vultures tear public holdings asunder – Royal Mail, NHS contracts, banks, all racked like Prometheus on the altar of the stock exchange. A fair share today is to work for little return because toil itself is somehow virtuous. Today people are so inebriated by this solemn word – 'austerity', bellowed like thunder across a desert valley – that they look on their chains and somehow think them fair. Poverty is not engendered by laziness, much though the government loves to brandish such platitudes, but by a deeply warped perception of fairness which has been forced down the public gullet like some oozing bolus.
Inequality must be extinguished like the virus it is. 60% of wealth in this country is owned by 20% of people (inequalitybriefing.org). I scarcely need to support this fact with an argument – it is almost too abhorrent for words to cling to. This of course means that 80% of people own 40% of wealth – the subject of poverty is almost ludicrous to discuss before this gross injustice has been tempered. How might we look on a system which allocates the majority of wealth to a minority, and then look with dull censure when people cannot afford to eat? What is to be expected? The system is in dire need of change. The system is not idiosyncratic – it is sociopathic. It rewards the few for the toil of the many. This is the worst kind of barbarism a civilised society subjects itself to, and to support it either indicates ignorance or untrammelled malevolence.
But there is another potential solution, as proposed by Richard Buckminster Fuller, although it too is founded in the banishment of inequality. The quote is quite brilliant and so I must give it in full: 'We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.'
On first reading this, you may have thought, 'What tosh!' but why? We are so constrained by this inexorable capitalist system that the mere thought of dissent is deemed immediately nonsensical. Machinery is growing in its capabilities at a tremendous rate – why not publicly own all machinery, produce things for everyone, do as Buckminster Fuller suggests and let real people work fewer hours? I do not know if work will ever be eliminated, but it can be reduced, and must be if mankind is to gain even an approximation of freedom. I concede, work in the short-term confers on its bearer the freedom to survive. Yet this is the problem! We live on a quotidian basis, snatching income from day to day, and we do not see the long-term shackles. It is only when we are free enough to work fewer hours that poverty can be interred.
Then what do we say to our children? 'Spend your life in the workplace, my child, this is the path to freedom'? Such a sentiment invokes the casuistry I discussed earlier. There is the hint that work is always good, regardless of its conditions. To me, work and freedom are diametric opposites on an abstract level. I am reminded of George Bush's reply to a divorced mother of three: 'You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.' Yes – in the short-term a huge amount of work can allay the ills of poverty, but it is incumbent on a humane society to redesign the system, that this needn't ever happen. That somebody works three jobs to survive is nothing to celebrate – it is cause for insufferable anguish. I say again, an individual who looks on such a system without utter contempt is either ignorant or maleficent. At present, poverty is a function of the system, not a terrible aberration in its progression. In the long-term, the destruction of poverty will only occur through a great lurch in the direction of our economic system. It has often been said that charity conceals and perpetuates underlying injustices, and I think the same is true of work. Full employment may be necessary to eradicate poverty in the short-term, but in the long-term this can only bring servility and mere subsistence.
Then the fact that work has burrowed into our conception of freedom is an abject tragedy. We have trudged far enough with this millstone round our necks. We have been shown a world in which, like Sisyphus, we heave a colossal weight with our every move, with no progress derived therefrom. The rich, by some obscure divine right sublimated in the concept of money, look on at the mute proletariat with incredulity, as the latter moves the former's load without protestation. This inequality inevitably leads to poverty. Yet there is a whole tract of stones out there, and a legion of indifferent machines willing to move them. It is never too late to break the chain!
But this is all achingly demoralising - I can usually tap this blasted keyboard at a fair pace, stamping my seal of bollocks onto all things at a steady canter. Presently, however, each clack of brittle plastic is an internal triage, a torment of indecision.
What I can do, and I will have it known that I can do it quite well, is copy and paste something I have written before. I should explain what it is, and so I think I will explain what it is. It is an essay on poverty I wrote for the 'New Statesman and the Webb Memorial Trust Essay Competition'. It was shortlisted, bringing with it the prospect of a shiny reception in Parliament, with important people and important trousers. Trousers mere mortals' buttocks cannot hope to animate.
I immediately decided not to attend. I cannot stand celebratory events - there is something unremittingly bathetic about them, being wet farts in event form - but I will often attend. What is worse is the brand of artificial, meaningless event this invitation to Parliament was perpetuating.
Yet I still went! Reason cannibalised its fellow Instinct, and led me to a thoroughly unreasoned decision. It seemed that, if I won the £1000 prize, or even the £500 runner-up prize, the expense of a suit and travel to London would be more than amortised. What hubris! This is like justifying the consumption of a sandwich because one might become hungry in the near future.
The event, unsurprisingly, followed precisely the progression of all events in my life, and I imagine in world history, which preceded it. There was an initial pang of excitement, agitation, novelty as we rolled through security (barrels of gunpowder rudely seized from us) and into the bowels of this stone leviathan. There was a sense of power to be savoured as security people, on seeing our invitation, did not arrest us on the spot. The thought of a strip search could not be further from their minds (though this may be owing to my ridiculous state of dress).
Making awkward ingress into the venue of the event was just that - awkward. Strange people proffered glistering libations from great platters, and exquisite viands exploded from all directions, tending towards the digestive systems of those in attendance. Here I was, a youthful wight being inducted into some debauched, Hellenic symposium! Grapes falling into my mouth wherever I moved! Breastfed by the Virgin Mary herself!
A preponderance of important trousers was indeed found - but important jackets too! And shirts! I had never seen so much importance in all my life! There is a terrible hostility in the construct of the suit - it being almost an emulation of medieval armour, rendered in flimsy fabric for the purposes of minimal encumbrance. I imagine there is a feeling of security to be experienced when one dons a suit of armour - indeed, it would be odd if this were not the case - yet is this not what the suit hopes to achieve? Everyone must certainly, if only subconsciously, acknowledge the absolute nonsense of the entire pretense; the idea that some strips of cotton sanctify their host and his morality is of course ridiculous. And yet, all wear suits, contented that they are fitting in, fulfilling that hideous precept propounded by only the most insipid individuals. 'Just fit in and don't make a fuss', I am frequently told, more often than not by two despairing parents, but is this not a call for the renunciation of the human spirit? I am quite serious. Homogenisation is the most pernicious force in the universe. All who slip under its thrall perish immediately - their existences become supererogatory. I will have no such fate for myself. This grim world is bleak enough without the shred of beauty all have access to - the personality. Nothing fascinates me more than a unique individual, but nothing vacates my mind more than a dull character, a common spirit. I must state, I do not believe that this common dullness of character is due to the universal blandness of humanity, rather it is individuals who are either too timid to seize haecceity for themselves, or it is society which tears it from them, in an act of utter spite. The idea that man might be debarred from unleashing his true character is the force which necessitates liberty - today we talk of liberty as having the freedom to subsist, or to be a part of an inherently malignant society. Well, fuck that! Liberty is the personal autonomy requisite for the perfection of the human spirit!
What an odd tangent. The path of my narrative hit some sort of impasse, ricocheting wildly at an oblique angle. I believe I was expatiating on the profusion of digestive fodder at this place - so antithetical to my solitary bean burger! There is nothing wrong with an abundance of food and drink, indeed this seems preferable. What does seem to me to be quite incredible, however, is such plenitude and wealth at an event devoted to the discussion of the topic of poverty.
It occurred to me, before the day had even arrived, that this was all impossibly absurd. Were there to be cash prizes, and wine, and exquisite morsels dispensed as if with some sort of neurosis, when there are half a million people in this country using food banks? Would £1500 of cash prizes be best spent on some, and I hate to pass judgement here, middle class kids with attractive CVs? There seemed to be something so symptomatic of the entire system, so microcosmic, in this tiny event. There is a tendency today to pontificate endlessly on matters, when of course this does nothing for material circumstances. These ridiculous discussions on poverty and food banks somehow tend to the financial reward of journalists and politicians. Yet what is there to discuss? In a civilised society, there should be no need for food banks whatever. That this is a real problem causes me hideous agony. The agony of comfortability, perhaps! The agony of hypocrisy, the agony of the weak. I am oddly rather glad I did not win anything at this blasted event; I considered such a possibility before I attended. What would I do? I certainly couldn't keep the money. £1000 to write a few words on how this country allocates money so unfairly? I would be mad! In many ways I regret taking part at all, for it reveals at least the yearning for such a poisoned chalice to be bound to my conscience.
Money is nonsense, its discussion should be banned! If we allocated all wealth equally, and held solemn silence on the matter thence, this world would be a more beaming place. I feel as if my hand has been forced in a world in which such an outcome is undesirable for ruling elites - I spend my life talking of money, that we might no longer talk of money! And politics too - I have no interest in politics whatever, but I cannot retain silence in the face of rampant malice!
I feel a strange urge to scrub myself of attendance of this fucking event - but this is this problem! I criticise the whole phenomenon, and recognised its blight before the event took place, and yet I still attended! I talk of individualism, and I am as obedient as the others. What am I to do? This world is so strewn with antinomy and strife, I scarcely know what to believe or how to act! This world is a stage for great discord between ideas, held by men who cannot prove their verity. And what if one forges the perfect template for this world? It shall be ignored, and cannot be verified besides! Then take my essay - it's worthless!
*
The Webbs and William Beveridge believed that “full employment” was a prerequisite for removing poverty. Is this true today – and, if so, how would you achieve it?
There is perhaps no better time to talk about unemployment and poverty. These are two of the great elephants in the room, occasionally gestured towards but rarely apprehended with any true vigour. Before I do so myself, I must begin by stating that I think there is the kernel of something pernicious embedded in the question I am about to answer. Unemployment is, contrary to what unemployment figures would have one believe, not simply a number which needs to be reduced to nothing. 'Full employment' is a fairly abstract concept which really means very little in isolation. Very little, that is, unless the quality of work is also taken into account. The question posed seems to intimate that work's virtue lies in its toilsome nature, not in its ability to bring some prosperity to a worker's immediate circumstances. Full employment itself is not something to be pursued as an ultimate paragon of welfare; there is nothing virtuous in toil for toil's sake, indeed this seems to me to be a fairly sadistic notion.
For this very reason, the flat figure of the unemployment rate fails to sincerely indicate the scale of the unemployment problem we have. Many workers have had to receive pay cuts, all workers doubtless face a more mercenary and perfunctory interview process with the tide of spare labour threatening to drown them at all times, and a huge number of workers will have had to accept part-time positions instead of their previous full-time positions. None of this is so much as hinted at by the unemployment figure. There is something cold and sterile about this monolithic, solemn number which is supposed to tell us a great deal about the economy. The thing it sadly overlooks is the workers it ostensibly represents. I don't believe there is any sense in mindlessly striving for full employment if the employment itself exploits workers.
This said, I do believe the chief benefit of work should be explored here. Work provides a wage, the sum of which can be used to bolster one's material circumstances. I think this is quite unobjectionable. Does it therefore follow that we should work as much as possible, or that full employment is a prerequisite to the eradication of poverty? I don't think so.
There is, at present, a rather large stigma attached to the prospect of unemployment. We all remember how, as the recession reared its ugly head half a decade ago, there was, quite rightly, universal obloquy waiting for the extravagant bankers who had successfully uprooted the world economy. What I find quite incredible, however, is how this condemnation has been transferred, by the power of a scaremongering press and a wicked sect of politicians looking for scapegoats, to the unemployed – the very people lost in the fallout of all this mess. It is they who are destroying the economy; it is they who are living the good life. I think we have been drip-fed this quixotic imagery of the life of the unemployed to such an extent that is has formed into one colossal, delusory edifice in the public mind, some sort of black stalagmite in the common consciousness, a giant receipt spike onto which all resentment can be hurled in a time of frustration.
In the public mind, the unemployed wake in the morning, ring for room service, then after a full cranial massage languidly jab a red button, following which they are lowered, in a Wallace and Gromit fashion, into the breakfast chamber beneath. William Morris wallpaper clings to every wall, notes scribbled on it from periods of acute paper shortage. A winsome eunuch polishes hunting rifles in a corner, preparing them for a day of action. Japanned furniture is littered grandly round the room with a perfect diffusion, and the stench of expensive oak bores its way to the entrant's brain.
Outside, the clack of gardeners' shears floats lazily across from the Elizabethan knot garden. A gilded palanquin has been laboriously transported from the servants' quarters and is waiting for its eximious charge. A fittingly gilded bottom is winched into place by scrabbling personnel, and all prepare for a jolly good day of shooting.
Firstly, the problem here is that the victims of these shameless and, worse still, boring attacks lack any real voice. They necessarily lack positions in the media, they necessarily lack a workers' union. I have always believed that scurrilous attacks on another's virtue are perfectly fine when the victim is rich and powerful, and indeed they are necessary when this is the case. The reproach shackled to the banking 'community' (admittedly an odd term to ascribe to such savagery) was necessary for political and moral reasons. What I cannot countenance, and what makes me heave with despair, is the execration lashed against the poor. It seems to me to be an obvious code of conduct in politics, and indeed in general, that one should never assail those whose power and wealth pales in comparison to one's own. It is therefore indicative of the brutal desperation of economic crises that not just the few, but the majority, should stoop to such depths. The worm of asperity, aided by a truculent press, begins to burrow into the everyday person, warping a desire for betterment into a need to find a repository for blame, and a repository which cannot object, at that. I think people have tired of attacking politicians and bankers; there is respectively an evasiveness and an indifference which mars the whole endeavour. What is far more suggestive of progress is to agree – falsely – that the unemployed are wicked. They live for nothing but to see the economy collapse. They refrain from work for their snooty aloofness and unwillingness to enter into society.
Then we may continue with this idiotic witch hunt, turning to our fellow disenfranchised and railing against their blight, or we may shear the manacles of grim condemnation and attack the underlying problems instead. Are people unemployed because they enjoy living in hunger, coldness and inactivity? This is the first question any reasoning individual must ask. Or – and this is a wild concept – is it because we are still in the gelid clasps of what is the most enduring recession of recent history? It is because the government, morally immune under the jovial flag of austerity, decided to ridicule the unemployed, rather than create any jobs for them.
Then we must break the immense stigma attached to unemployment. Stigma may encourage people to find jobs, though I doubt even this, but what it certainly does is divert responsibility from politicians and bankers. These are the people who should feel the weight of public frustration, not the powerless unemployed. To attack the weak is a shameful offense, and it does nothing practical either. Perhaps the unemployment bashers, so ready to broach their barbed tongues, could agree to devote more of their income to taxes, which can be used for improving the quality and quantity of jobs. Instead we have a situation where those who earn in excess of £150,000 per year are receiving tax cuts – a harrowing reality. This is typical of the government's approach to this recession – let the rich get richer and let the poor stay unemployed. Whether it be through an undersold Royal Mail, undersold banks, coercing the unemployed to work for free, the conspicuity with which this is all done makes it almost beyond the reach of satire. Injustice is meted out with such ferocity today that the onlooker doubts his vision, or doubts his instinctive views on what is right and what is wrong. To break the stigma against the unemployed is important in reducing poverty because to blame the poor is the abnegation of responsibility for all else; poverty can never be deracinated when its victims are seen as complicit in their plight.
Yet equality is what will eradicate poverty. To gaze on the privations of one's coevals with utter disgust should be a natural rather than a minority response. An implacable agony at the immiseration of others would be enough to end hunger overnight. Simply, we do not need a greater work ethic, or more working hours – we need compassion. There is enough pie for all to be weeping blueberry juice, but at present the average person is cheated of his 'fair share', to quote the government. A fair share for the majority today is to work for little – or no – pay, whilst financial vultures tear public holdings asunder – Royal Mail, NHS contracts, banks, all racked like Prometheus on the altar of the stock exchange. A fair share today is to work for little return because toil itself is somehow virtuous. Today people are so inebriated by this solemn word – 'austerity', bellowed like thunder across a desert valley – that they look on their chains and somehow think them fair. Poverty is not engendered by laziness, much though the government loves to brandish such platitudes, but by a deeply warped perception of fairness which has been forced down the public gullet like some oozing bolus.
Inequality must be extinguished like the virus it is. 60% of wealth in this country is owned by 20% of people (inequalitybriefing.org). I scarcely need to support this fact with an argument – it is almost too abhorrent for words to cling to. This of course means that 80% of people own 40% of wealth – the subject of poverty is almost ludicrous to discuss before this gross injustice has been tempered. How might we look on a system which allocates the majority of wealth to a minority, and then look with dull censure when people cannot afford to eat? What is to be expected? The system is in dire need of change. The system is not idiosyncratic – it is sociopathic. It rewards the few for the toil of the many. This is the worst kind of barbarism a civilised society subjects itself to, and to support it either indicates ignorance or untrammelled malevolence.
But there is another potential solution, as proposed by Richard Buckminster Fuller, although it too is founded in the banishment of inequality. The quote is quite brilliant and so I must give it in full: 'We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.'
On first reading this, you may have thought, 'What tosh!' but why? We are so constrained by this inexorable capitalist system that the mere thought of dissent is deemed immediately nonsensical. Machinery is growing in its capabilities at a tremendous rate – why not publicly own all machinery, produce things for everyone, do as Buckminster Fuller suggests and let real people work fewer hours? I do not know if work will ever be eliminated, but it can be reduced, and must be if mankind is to gain even an approximation of freedom. I concede, work in the short-term confers on its bearer the freedom to survive. Yet this is the problem! We live on a quotidian basis, snatching income from day to day, and we do not see the long-term shackles. It is only when we are free enough to work fewer hours that poverty can be interred.
Then what do we say to our children? 'Spend your life in the workplace, my child, this is the path to freedom'? Such a sentiment invokes the casuistry I discussed earlier. There is the hint that work is always good, regardless of its conditions. To me, work and freedom are diametric opposites on an abstract level. I am reminded of George Bush's reply to a divorced mother of three: 'You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.' Yes – in the short-term a huge amount of work can allay the ills of poverty, but it is incumbent on a humane society to redesign the system, that this needn't ever happen. That somebody works three jobs to survive is nothing to celebrate – it is cause for insufferable anguish. I say again, an individual who looks on such a system without utter contempt is either ignorant or maleficent. At present, poverty is a function of the system, not a terrible aberration in its progression. In the long-term, the destruction of poverty will only occur through a great lurch in the direction of our economic system. It has often been said that charity conceals and perpetuates underlying injustices, and I think the same is true of work. Full employment may be necessary to eradicate poverty in the short-term, but in the long-term this can only bring servility and mere subsistence.
Then the fact that work has burrowed into our conception of freedom is an abject tragedy. We have trudged far enough with this millstone round our necks. We have been shown a world in which, like Sisyphus, we heave a colossal weight with our every move, with no progress derived therefrom. The rich, by some obscure divine right sublimated in the concept of money, look on at the mute proletariat with incredulity, as the latter moves the former's load without protestation. This inequality inevitably leads to poverty. Yet there is a whole tract of stones out there, and a legion of indifferent machines willing to move them. It is never too late to break the chain!
Sunday, 8 December 2013
On Didactic Despotism
I write this piece in the hope that I might preserve the soul, or what remains of it. Wherever I look there are fetters; whatever I touch is embosomed in a socket. This may be the most bizarre blog post I have yet written, but the mania in its construction is necessary and, besides, microcosmic.
I have suspected it for some time – but now I know it to be true! This damnable university bears one sole intendment – the destruction of the soul, the destruction of the individual. Its pestilent maws snap and grind, that rebellion might be crushed, and the soul might be truncated. Legion thoughtless forms are racked on some Ixionian instrument, wheedled with promises of future toil and debt and freedom! Freedom through enslavement! Freedom through abnegation!
Today it is enough to moil under agony to be free. Freedom is to have enough money to tend another's chains. I cannot retain my sanity in such a world! Is madness knowledge? How has the rebellious spirit become mental unhingement? Who threw the pall of lunacy over thought?
I am reminded of The Dream by Byron, and the following extract:
And is this not utter truth? Who has experienced any meaningful epiphany in joy? Is joy not the placation of the mind? This explains a great deal in a world in which sadness is considered derangement. We must feign happiness at all times, and therein lies the problem of man's modern stultification. No progress has ever been made by an individual who is satisfied with the world. But more than this, far more – the soul cannot ever be perfected when its host is unwilling to admit its imperfections.
I sit in a lecture, and words are extruded betwixt the lecturers mandibles and lashed against the beholder. All is grey, all is artificial. Every sentence is a torment of bone. There is a real, physical pain attendant on each syllable, as if black barbs had riven the flesh. With each PowerPoint slide I feel an assault on the soul, and I check the lecturer's grim features for sadistic smirks which might affirm such a fear. Starchy, bloated faces are placed all around the room, perfectly indifferent to the world, yet awaiting the lecturer's next word with utter anxiety. There is the real possibility that the lecture might spontaneously conclude, the spell would be broken, and all the faces would collapse where they float, receding into the bland furniture.
I must take a moment to assay the absolute toxicity of such a mode of learning. One is told too frequently how university is different from school – university is where one might think for oneself. However, I have seen no evidence to confirm such an assertion. The above description of the university system, and certainly the university in which I am trapped, may seem histrionic, but I assure you, dear reader, it makes only a tiny assault on the vast edifice of evil to be found here.
Then university is a place for individual growth and discovery – let us consider this statement. First, they begin the 'experience' by assigning each student their very own student number, by which one will be referred in all sorts of official communication. Hereby, one is shown one's place as a mere number in a colossal machine. This is the root from which all dehumanisation blooms.
More than this, and in addition to countless measures designed to punish individualism, one observes a bizarre trend in this supposed 'learning'. Namely, one is absolutely not to have an opinion on any matter. One is to read others' views, absorb them and then contrast them so as to create an overview of the given topic (and this is regarding humanities subjects – sciences do not even afford this luxury). One is not assessed on the strength of one's own words, but on that of others, and how well one has sewn them together. Of course, this can be a useful skill, and is one which I use often, but the homogeneity of thought, and the humbling of the individual, promoted by such a tendency is clear. Any critique must be based on the findings of some contrary source, all censure must be filtered through another's viewpoint, reliant on the chance occurrence that someone has said previously what one wishes to say now. It is difficult to describe quite how inimical this is, but the impression is broadly as follows: One must not be so impetuous as to think one's own view is important, one must obey the established authorities on truth. Simply, it breeds timidity in the expression of opinion. Such a system cannot stimulate freedom of thought, rather it stimulates the desire for oppression I will discuss later. I have met more vacuous people at university than I could care to mention – one must remember that these are people who have followed the government's prescribed course of living for their entire spans. A preponderance of programmed robots is to be expected here.
A break is announced after the first hour. I get up, snatching my possessions with criminal ease, and run to the great palisades in the far corner, vaulting through with the energy of Satan's irruption into Eden. There are more doors ahead, and I speed up, lest they be locked before me.
'Freedom!' my mind seems to cry, as I am vomited out into linear greyness and stretching uniformity. I do feel as if I am mad at this point. Does nobody see chains? Crushed souls trudge before me, great shackles clawing the dirt where they rove.
I have suspected it for some time – but now I know it to be true! This damnable university bears one sole intendment – the destruction of the soul, the destruction of the individual. Its pestilent maws snap and grind, that rebellion might be crushed, and the soul might be truncated. Legion thoughtless forms are racked on some Ixionian instrument, wheedled with promises of future toil and debt and freedom! Freedom through enslavement! Freedom through abnegation!
Today it is enough to moil under agony to be free. Freedom is to have enough money to tend another's chains. I cannot retain my sanity in such a world! Is madness knowledge? How has the rebellious spirit become mental unhingement? Who threw the pall of lunacy over thought?
I am reminded of The Dream by Byron, and the following extract:
her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!
And is this not utter truth? Who has experienced any meaningful epiphany in joy? Is joy not the placation of the mind? This explains a great deal in a world in which sadness is considered derangement. We must feign happiness at all times, and therein lies the problem of man's modern stultification. No progress has ever been made by an individual who is satisfied with the world. But more than this, far more – the soul cannot ever be perfected when its host is unwilling to admit its imperfections.
I sit in a lecture, and words are extruded betwixt the lecturers mandibles and lashed against the beholder. All is grey, all is artificial. Every sentence is a torment of bone. There is a real, physical pain attendant on each syllable, as if black barbs had riven the flesh. With each PowerPoint slide I feel an assault on the soul, and I check the lecturer's grim features for sadistic smirks which might affirm such a fear. Starchy, bloated faces are placed all around the room, perfectly indifferent to the world, yet awaiting the lecturer's next word with utter anxiety. There is the real possibility that the lecture might spontaneously conclude, the spell would be broken, and all the faces would collapse where they float, receding into the bland furniture.
I must take a moment to assay the absolute toxicity of such a mode of learning. One is told too frequently how university is different from school – university is where one might think for oneself. However, I have seen no evidence to confirm such an assertion. The above description of the university system, and certainly the university in which I am trapped, may seem histrionic, but I assure you, dear reader, it makes only a tiny assault on the vast edifice of evil to be found here.
Then university is a place for individual growth and discovery – let us consider this statement. First, they begin the 'experience' by assigning each student their very own student number, by which one will be referred in all sorts of official communication. Hereby, one is shown one's place as a mere number in a colossal machine. This is the root from which all dehumanisation blooms.
More than this, and in addition to countless measures designed to punish individualism, one observes a bizarre trend in this supposed 'learning'. Namely, one is absolutely not to have an opinion on any matter. One is to read others' views, absorb them and then contrast them so as to create an overview of the given topic (and this is regarding humanities subjects – sciences do not even afford this luxury). One is not assessed on the strength of one's own words, but on that of others, and how well one has sewn them together. Of course, this can be a useful skill, and is one which I use often, but the homogeneity of thought, and the humbling of the individual, promoted by such a tendency is clear. Any critique must be based on the findings of some contrary source, all censure must be filtered through another's viewpoint, reliant on the chance occurrence that someone has said previously what one wishes to say now. It is difficult to describe quite how inimical this is, but the impression is broadly as follows: One must not be so impetuous as to think one's own view is important, one must obey the established authorities on truth. Simply, it breeds timidity in the expression of opinion. Such a system cannot stimulate freedom of thought, rather it stimulates the desire for oppression I will discuss later. I have met more vacuous people at university than I could care to mention – one must remember that these are people who have followed the government's prescribed course of living for their entire spans. A preponderance of programmed robots is to be expected here.
A break is announced after the first hour. I get up, snatching my possessions with criminal ease, and run to the great palisades in the far corner, vaulting through with the energy of Satan's irruption into Eden. There are more doors ahead, and I speed up, lest they be locked before me.
'Freedom!' my mind seems to cry, as I am vomited out into linear greyness and stretching uniformity. I do feel as if I am mad at this point. Does nobody see chains? Crushed souls trudge before me, great shackles clawing the dirt where they rove.
I run to the lake or, to exercise a reluctant pedantry, the artificial lake nearby. I don't know quite why I do this, but I do it in absence of all premeditation. The thing is positioned such that the admirer of this body of water must simultaneously gaze on the buildings from which a retreat was just made – there is no escape. This whole place has been constructed as a colossal panopticon, with some industrial chimney disgorging its poisonous fumes in the centre of the wasteland. I feel like the goat in the maths problem – tied to a post, and drawn irresistibly by each movement to its dull cynosure.
I walk to a bench, wincing as the wind's brumal pangs shiver through my form. I am seated for mere moments before realising that the ducks, strewn around me like empty crisp wrappers, feel none of the woe to which I am so unnecessarily subjected. They ensconce themselves in the grass like rattlesnakes, preening their grand coats and watching. Yet how is it that these ducks, alien to the wonders of civilisation, precluded from inherited knowledge, banished from the gates of progress, are more free from fetters than I can ever hope to be? How is it that thousands of years of civilisation allows me to say that I am less free than a duck? These birds have no obligations, no exams, no places to be, and yet there is no discernible disorder among their ranks.
Civilisation, on the other hand, has spent thousands of years creating abstract boundaries and rules, such that now the personality is worthless, and the soul, once delicate and glistering, is altogether disregarded. I do not say that a return to the pure innocence of the ducks is required – this is probably impossible and, besides, such a state may be less beautiful than that of man at the summit of his potential. Yet it is only a system of benignity which will affirm this. In this damnable university I see all the vices to which civilisation has heretofore aspired, and still aspires!
And, for this reason, I do not pin the dread accusation of wickedness on university alone – it itself is in thrall to a far larger system, and must be seen as such if its malice is to be fully neutralised. All proscriptions on freedom must be seen as functions of the system which allows them, and not as regrettable anomalies. Only if we attach such importance to the upheaval of our blasted mode of living can we ever hope to apprehend even a modicum of freedom.
Rousseau saw the nocuous effects of our warped civilisation, and the neglect of the soul with all the distractions of wealth and toil. He writes, in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:
I walk to a bench, wincing as the wind's brumal pangs shiver through my form. I am seated for mere moments before realising that the ducks, strewn around me like empty crisp wrappers, feel none of the woe to which I am so unnecessarily subjected. They ensconce themselves in the grass like rattlesnakes, preening their grand coats and watching. Yet how is it that these ducks, alien to the wonders of civilisation, precluded from inherited knowledge, banished from the gates of progress, are more free from fetters than I can ever hope to be? How is it that thousands of years of civilisation allows me to say that I am less free than a duck? These birds have no obligations, no exams, no places to be, and yet there is no discernible disorder among their ranks.
Civilisation, on the other hand, has spent thousands of years creating abstract boundaries and rules, such that now the personality is worthless, and the soul, once delicate and glistering, is altogether disregarded. I do not say that a return to the pure innocence of the ducks is required – this is probably impossible and, besides, such a state may be less beautiful than that of man at the summit of his potential. Yet it is only a system of benignity which will affirm this. In this damnable university I see all the vices to which civilisation has heretofore aspired, and still aspires!
And, for this reason, I do not pin the dread accusation of wickedness on university alone – it itself is in thrall to a far larger system, and must be seen as such if its malice is to be fully neutralised. All proscriptions on freedom must be seen as functions of the system which allows them, and not as regrettable anomalies. Only if we attach such importance to the upheaval of our blasted mode of living can we ever hope to apprehend even a modicum of freedom.
Rousseau saw the nocuous effects of our warped civilisation, and the neglect of the soul with all the distractions of wealth and toil. He writes, in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:
O virtue! Sublime science of simple souls, are so many troubles and trappings necessary for one to know you? Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy.
What price the elevation of the soul when we have money, this fantastic paper! Venality rendered in a convenient form! What price personality when all is fit for sale and purchase? What price one's short span when it might be Balkanised and put to commercial use? Thousands of years of supposed progress – for what! I am more in chains, by virtue of this human form, perhaps than anything which has ever stirred on this grey sphere. But even beyond Rousseau's purview, we see today an even more pernicious form of civilisation. Slavery, as traditionally conceived, never required a worship of one's chains – yet this is what is expected of me! This makes the impossible movement from physical enslavement to mental enslavement – and here such an expectation must be laid to rest!
We must adore this mercenary system, we must be grateful we are not more comprehensively desolated. Yet this modern slavery, by its assault on our passions, by its demands of more than physical supplication, leaves no space for further desolation. Winston in 1984 is free as long as he clings to his shred of rebellion, this worm of defiance in his mind. He plans to be shot by some guard and, as the bullet was released, live only in that insurrection. Hereby he would be free. Yet today we must love the system, we must discard this scrap of rebellion. We are Winston once he has declared his undying love for Big Brother, and this is the absolute core to which all slavery aspires – a willing slavery! A slavery of the mind! Only in this can the onlooker find true despair.
We must adore this mercenary system, we must be grateful we are not more comprehensively desolated. Yet this modern slavery, by its assault on our passions, by its demands of more than physical supplication, leaves no space for further desolation. Winston in 1984 is free as long as he clings to his shred of rebellion, this worm of defiance in his mind. He plans to be shot by some guard and, as the bullet was released, live only in that insurrection. Hereby he would be free. Yet today we must love the system, we must discard this scrap of rebellion. We are Winston once he has declared his undying love for Big Brother, and this is the absolute core to which all slavery aspires – a willing slavery! A slavery of the mind! Only in this can the onlooker find true despair.
This sadism, this need for enslavement on the part of the masses, is seen in the very construction of the labour market. Nobody is much bothered by the fact that today we must entreat others to affix our chains – in this we see perfect slavery. When I read in a job application form: 'Why do you want to work for this company?' why might I not reasonably write, 'Fuck you, I need the money'? The very purpose of a wage is to compensate the worker for the aching drudgery of toil. To ask the worker his reasons for willing his own enslavement is a misunderstanding of the wage system. Nay, deeper than this, it is indicative of the wickedness of our current economic system. Today we must be fawning and servile, furnishing our prospective overlords with reasons why they might be so kind as to immure us in the workplace. We must apply for jobs, wear ridiculous suits, deign to the idiocy of the corporate tempest of bureaucracy and other such needless nonsense. Of course this occurs because today we see work as a universal duty, not a detestable material necessity. Do you notice we see unemployment as the thing to be eliminated, and not employment – humanity is absolutely desirous of its bonds; a neurotic dread of freedom hangs in every heart. The soul under such a regime is desecrated beyond hope. We talk of the failure of our education system – I can scarcely think of a system which might inculcate so much servility!
I do not say that work itself is the desolation of the soul, but in its current configuration – whereby one must weep at the beauty of one's bonds, and smile at one's oppressor – it is. To regain the shred of freedom necessary to individual thought and the flourishing of the soul, it behoves the individual to disembarrass himself of these metaphysical shackles of approval. Nothing can be beautiful if this rebellion is absent. We must stop looking on things as unalterable, 'the way the world works', and instead seize change for ourselves. To admit that something is wicked but impossible to change is a gross dereliction of duty. I will have no more of the cheapened concept of liberty we cherish!
Sunday, 24 November 2013
People are Abominable
I am in a particularly virulent mood. I cannot look on a human aspect without an absolute, boiling disgust quivering across my form. I barely know how to equate this with my political tendencies - it is a fairly conservative view, to declare that men are inherently wicked and do not deserve trust. More than this, that they must be governed with perspicacity, lest they gain sufficient freedom to bring their baleful nature to its black denouement.
Yet this is not how I view man. I have immense belief in man's potential, and do not think mankind wicked by nature. What I do think is that man has been led from the path of virtue by a wicked system, a system designed to breed competition and greed. I have always despised competition; games such as chess are invariably toxic to my mood - one either loses and feels inadequate, or wins and feels guilty. This is precisely why arrogance is such an abhorrent trait. To say that one is great at something is a relative statement, implying the inferiority of one's coevals. Any truly virtuous person would never brandish such a statement to begin with. It is only the wicked who see competition as so important, and see the diminution of another's confidence as perfectly acceptable. This is also why the value of British understatement is, well, understated. There is something caring in the way one might wish to inflate another's confidence, whilst also feigning utter uninterest in one's own deficiencies.
All sports to me are disgusting. The idea of a team churns my stomach like some industrial vat. What I do enjoy are video games, particularly when there is no winner and no loser. To win or to lose is such a bizarre, yet brutal, notion. Absolutes are best avoided.
One idea I have always found odd is that of nationalism. The idea is that one must be proud of one's nation, for what reason we do not know, but pride we must nurture. First, I detest unjustified emotion - it is the most hollow parody of care imaginable. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, praise is relative, and to bruit one's own abilities is to soil another's. There is to me something supercilious in this absolute desire to be the best, to win, to defeat others. This is a sadistic notion. In nationalism we see the sublimation of the malice in competition.
Furthermore, nationalism has no rational basis, as far as my senses can perceive. Comedy often reveals hidden inconsistencies in the absurdity of its comparisons - George Carlin said of nationalism that:
I think this is the key. National pride reduces the individual to a triviality. It is the abnegation of the responsibility we all bear - to be kind to others, and to be virtuous. 'Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own.' Why am I to be proud of the sixty million others who happen to fall into some arbitrary, geographical boundaries? Pride should be something that is earned by the display of immense virtue, not by geographical proximity. This reduces achievement itself. There is something grudging and spiteful in nationalism. Think of the Olympics. 'This person won a gold medal!' 'They're not British. Not interested.' This kind of petty, spiteful idiocy is so entrenched that its deracination is probably impossible. More than this, to contradict its progression is considered tremendously infra dig.
That most sanguine of philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote of nationalism that:
I think there is truth in this too. Then nationalism is a solace for those who do not wish to perfect the soul, who do not wish to improve humanity. It is a lazy path to contentment, vicariously sapping others' abilities. It is parasitical. The irony in nationalism is that it is the abjuration of responsibilities which would be a legitimate source for pride, which really would improve people's lives. To say one is proud that this country produced The Beatles is not as beneficial as to say one wishes to achieve something similar. In fact, to claim the achievements of The Beatles as one's own does precisely the converse - it eliminates the need to achieve this for oneself. I scarcely need to add that I find this negation in nationalism quite deleterious.
That was a fairly lengthy excursion into a fairly unrelated topic. I had not even considered nationalism as I sat down to write this, my mind being absorbed in more quotidian nonsense. However, what I intended to lament was perhaps more important, perhaps more lodged in the gullet of modern civilisation. It is that all can be reduced to greed. Invoke any single action anyone has ever taken, and now consider what personal motives they had. As an example, I am writing this blog with the vague hope it might improve my idiosyncratic writing style. Additionally, this is probably CV-fodder for the future. If this happened to be a blog with more than 2 readers per calendar month, I might also be accused of having commercial ambitions.
Perhaps some self-service is not wicked, but this is not the point I wish to make. The point I wish to make is that it is perfectly easy to look on the world and see only grim rapacity. This sphere becomes a stage for Plutus and his multifarious guises. All becomes hostile, and nobody cares for another. I do try to resist this conviction's reification in my mind, but I fear it to be true. Even love is a biological impulse, with self-service convolving round its entire being. Then, if this is true, what is the world but a desolate landscape of hostility? People care for others insofar as it might cause benefits to redound on themselves. You may notice this has engendered a kind of systemic paranoia in my mind. I cannot look without shivering despair on a world in which all emotion is expedient. Broadly speaking, all interaction you experience with others, dear reader, will fall under one of two gross categories. First, there are those who interact with you out of friendship or familial relation. These people gain some degree of satisfaction from the traits you offer. Second, there are those who are paid to care about you. This is altogether more invidious. Yet both are self-serving.
I do not know what I mean to conclude from all this. Self-serving must be tolerated if one is to remain sane in society. Yet when one marks its presence, it becomes impossible to regard the world as anything other than alien, atomic and strewn with malevolent robots who respect one only when one nourishes them.
'This is all very righteous, are you suggesting you are not greedy and self-serving?' I hear you snarl. Of course I do not suggest that I am free from mankind's horrific bonds, and this is what makes such truths doubly degrading. I, supposedly free, observe iniquity in my contemporaries and shudder as I realise those same iniquities are buried in my core too. Then I consider the immense reconfiguration everything would have to undergo to rectify this, and I am seized by dejection.
Some wanker is hammering on something upstairs, and I really do wish they would fuck in an offward direction. I will remember to exact my revenge in blog post form. Anyway, congratulations if you made it this far, I scarcely did.
Yet this is not how I view man. I have immense belief in man's potential, and do not think mankind wicked by nature. What I do think is that man has been led from the path of virtue by a wicked system, a system designed to breed competition and greed. I have always despised competition; games such as chess are invariably toxic to my mood - one either loses and feels inadequate, or wins and feels guilty. This is precisely why arrogance is such an abhorrent trait. To say that one is great at something is a relative statement, implying the inferiority of one's coevals. Any truly virtuous person would never brandish such a statement to begin with. It is only the wicked who see competition as so important, and see the diminution of another's confidence as perfectly acceptable. This is also why the value of British understatement is, well, understated. There is something caring in the way one might wish to inflate another's confidence, whilst also feigning utter uninterest in one's own deficiencies.
All sports to me are disgusting. The idea of a team churns my stomach like some industrial vat. What I do enjoy are video games, particularly when there is no winner and no loser. To win or to lose is such a bizarre, yet brutal, notion. Absolutes are best avoided.
One idea I have always found odd is that of nationalism. The idea is that one must be proud of one's nation, for what reason we do not know, but pride we must nurture. First, I detest unjustified emotion - it is the most hollow parody of care imaginable. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, praise is relative, and to bruit one's own abilities is to soil another's. There is to me something supercilious in this absolute desire to be the best, to win, to defeat others. This is a sadistic notion. In nationalism we see the sublimation of the malice in competition.
Furthermore, nationalism has no rational basis, as far as my senses can perceive. Comedy often reveals hidden inconsistencies in the absurdity of its comparisons - George Carlin said of nationalism that:
I could never understand ethnic or national pride. Because to me, pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill, it’s a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn’t say “I’m proud to be 5’11”. I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer.” So why the fuck would you be proud to be Irish, or proud to be Italian, or American or anything?
I think this is the key. National pride reduces the individual to a triviality. It is the abnegation of the responsibility we all bear - to be kind to others, and to be virtuous. 'Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own.' Why am I to be proud of the sixty million others who happen to fall into some arbitrary, geographical boundaries? Pride should be something that is earned by the display of immense virtue, not by geographical proximity. This reduces achievement itself. There is something grudging and spiteful in nationalism. Think of the Olympics. 'This person won a gold medal!' 'They're not British. Not interested.' This kind of petty, spiteful idiocy is so entrenched that its deracination is probably impossible. More than this, to contradict its progression is considered tremendously infra dig.
That most sanguine of philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote of nationalism that:
The cheapest form of pride however is national pride. For it betrays in the one thus afflicted the lack of individual qualities of which he could be proud, while he would not otherwise reach for what he shares with so many millions. He who possesses significant personal merits will rather recognise the defects of his own nation, as he has them constantly before his eyes, most clearly. But that poor beggar who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, latches onto the last means of being proud, the nation to which he belongs. Thus he recovers and is now in gratitude ready to defend with hands and feet all errors and follies which are its own.
I think there is truth in this too. Then nationalism is a solace for those who do not wish to perfect the soul, who do not wish to improve humanity. It is a lazy path to contentment, vicariously sapping others' abilities. It is parasitical. The irony in nationalism is that it is the abjuration of responsibilities which would be a legitimate source for pride, which really would improve people's lives. To say one is proud that this country produced The Beatles is not as beneficial as to say one wishes to achieve something similar. In fact, to claim the achievements of The Beatles as one's own does precisely the converse - it eliminates the need to achieve this for oneself. I scarcely need to add that I find this negation in nationalism quite deleterious.
That was a fairly lengthy excursion into a fairly unrelated topic. I had not even considered nationalism as I sat down to write this, my mind being absorbed in more quotidian nonsense. However, what I intended to lament was perhaps more important, perhaps more lodged in the gullet of modern civilisation. It is that all can be reduced to greed. Invoke any single action anyone has ever taken, and now consider what personal motives they had. As an example, I am writing this blog with the vague hope it might improve my idiosyncratic writing style. Additionally, this is probably CV-fodder for the future. If this happened to be a blog with more than 2 readers per calendar month, I might also be accused of having commercial ambitions.
Perhaps some self-service is not wicked, but this is not the point I wish to make. The point I wish to make is that it is perfectly easy to look on the world and see only grim rapacity. This sphere becomes a stage for Plutus and his multifarious guises. All becomes hostile, and nobody cares for another. I do try to resist this conviction's reification in my mind, but I fear it to be true. Even love is a biological impulse, with self-service convolving round its entire being. Then, if this is true, what is the world but a desolate landscape of hostility? People care for others insofar as it might cause benefits to redound on themselves. You may notice this has engendered a kind of systemic paranoia in my mind. I cannot look without shivering despair on a world in which all emotion is expedient. Broadly speaking, all interaction you experience with others, dear reader, will fall under one of two gross categories. First, there are those who interact with you out of friendship or familial relation. These people gain some degree of satisfaction from the traits you offer. Second, there are those who are paid to care about you. This is altogether more invidious. Yet both are self-serving.
I do not know what I mean to conclude from all this. Self-serving must be tolerated if one is to remain sane in society. Yet when one marks its presence, it becomes impossible to regard the world as anything other than alien, atomic and strewn with malevolent robots who respect one only when one nourishes them.
'This is all very righteous, are you suggesting you are not greedy and self-serving?' I hear you snarl. Of course I do not suggest that I am free from mankind's horrific bonds, and this is what makes such truths doubly degrading. I, supposedly free, observe iniquity in my contemporaries and shudder as I realise those same iniquities are buried in my core too. Then I consider the immense reconfiguration everything would have to undergo to rectify this, and I am seized by dejection.
Some wanker is hammering on something upstairs, and I really do wish they would fuck in an offward direction. I will remember to exact my revenge in blog post form. Anyway, congratulations if you made it this far, I scarcely did.
Sunday, 17 November 2013
There's Not a Joy the World Can Give by Lord Byron
There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.
Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own;
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears.
Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest,
'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret wreath -
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath.
Oh, could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.
Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own;
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears.
Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest,
'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret wreath -
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath.
Oh, could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
I've been perched above the keyboard for some time, like a kind of domesticated vulture which has been told to write minutes for a business meeting. 'Where the fuck do I begin with this?' it would think in its vulturine tongue, claws lacerating the cheap plastic keys. The Tower of Babel would rise between it and the screen, precluding all expression on this decidedly English keyboard. For how might a vulture express itself if it cannot command a language common with its recipients? Indeed, how might it express itself if it cannot command a language common with its own heart? Words, for all their power, are blunt instruments, representing only vaguely what one might wish to say at any given point. It takes an incredible manipulator of these blunt objects to make something at all incisive. I can't make anything except rock soup at the moment. What I can do is read poems other people have written and hope that they approximate my thoughts. Then I post them on my moaning, anile blog and scavenge from the corpses. In this respect, the vulture is awakened to one of the secrets of life; I think it is important to learn from the lives of dusty, dead people. For one thing, they are usually far more interesting than shiny, non-dead people, who largely seem to lurch through life with their massive, cruciferous skulls filled with quotidian wank. 'Bread,' they say, 'need bread so don't die,' heaving their unwilling cadaver to the local supermarket (a word which warrants neither the root 'super' nor 'market'). All people seem to strive to perfect is the somatic, the material, the pointless. This is the capitalist delusion. But no more talk of capitalism here!
What can I say of this poem? It describes my thoughts at present. In fact, I have always suspected that all people live the double life presented in stanza four, but I of course cannot be certain. It's perfectly possible to be affable and kind when one is flayed inside. Indeed it is not just possible but predictable. Look at people as you walk in public - there is usually something degraded in their aspects, some kernel of woe. I cannot stand this delirious notion that everybody is oh so happy. Of course this cannot be true, but what is so maddening is that people portray themselves as such. Anybody who is truly happy is ignorant to the black truth of the world.
This is why I begrudge animals their passivity, their galvanic responses to all of life's stimuli. By dispensing with this nonsense of rationality, they live in the present. More than this - they can only live in the present. There is nothing to suggest that an earwig has a conception of its mortality, or its ageing, or its evanescence. We live in the past, the present and the future, and thereby do not live at all. The blank walls of infinity which compass our brief spans somehow suffocate what we do have until we have nothing at all. Man treats himself so seriously - I sit here typing at a keyboard, a colossal shrew in a rotating chair. The vulture I discussed earlier, perhaps. What kind of perverse world is this? I'm sat in a library with solemn faces, Easter Island moai, strewn round me at indeterminate points, tapping plastic nodules on a plastic oblong. Their craggy features peer down on the buttons, to make sure order is maintained in the World of the Keys. This is our significance. We are a strange sect of button-tappers, bedizened in the most gaudy, modern clothing imaginable. Our god is Solemnity and our purpose is self-denial to the end. I do hope I'm not going mad. Yet there is something utterly bizarre in this entire experience. The concept of a library is the most ordered, artificial, sterile conceit. What is there here but dullness and waiting? Really, these people look as if they have been exhumed out of formaldehyde. 'The mortal coldness of the soul' descended on these people in the womb, I fear. Conceived in the freezer aisle, perhaps. People are dull and this is all. We should all be either screaming or laughing. Instead, we sit, composed like dead things, propped up with brittle bones through, in many cases, regrettable items of clothing. This is humanity today - domesticated and dull. I cannot bring myself to be excited at humankind - it really does tire me. Yet, like a hopeful fool, I return to it, arms wider, only to be rebuffed with improved vitality. I do wonder sometimes if it is I that is dull, and all the world is riotously interesting.
I don't know what happened in that last paragraph. I feel as if my brain has wept characters onto a page. I didn't even particularly discuss the poem. This is the first time I've ever composed a blog post in a library, and my misanthropic tendencies have made a grand appearance. Yet this is how I feel.
This is why I begrudge animals their passivity, their galvanic responses to all of life's stimuli. By dispensing with this nonsense of rationality, they live in the present. More than this - they can only live in the present. There is nothing to suggest that an earwig has a conception of its mortality, or its ageing, or its evanescence. We live in the past, the present and the future, and thereby do not live at all. The blank walls of infinity which compass our brief spans somehow suffocate what we do have until we have nothing at all. Man treats himself so seriously - I sit here typing at a keyboard, a colossal shrew in a rotating chair. The vulture I discussed earlier, perhaps. What kind of perverse world is this? I'm sat in a library with solemn faces, Easter Island moai, strewn round me at indeterminate points, tapping plastic nodules on a plastic oblong. Their craggy features peer down on the buttons, to make sure order is maintained in the World of the Keys. This is our significance. We are a strange sect of button-tappers, bedizened in the most gaudy, modern clothing imaginable. Our god is Solemnity and our purpose is self-denial to the end. I do hope I'm not going mad. Yet there is something utterly bizarre in this entire experience. The concept of a library is the most ordered, artificial, sterile conceit. What is there here but dullness and waiting? Really, these people look as if they have been exhumed out of formaldehyde. 'The mortal coldness of the soul' descended on these people in the womb, I fear. Conceived in the freezer aisle, perhaps. People are dull and this is all. We should all be either screaming or laughing. Instead, we sit, composed like dead things, propped up with brittle bones through, in many cases, regrettable items of clothing. This is humanity today - domesticated and dull. I cannot bring myself to be excited at humankind - it really does tire me. Yet, like a hopeful fool, I return to it, arms wider, only to be rebuffed with improved vitality. I do wonder sometimes if it is I that is dull, and all the world is riotously interesting.
I don't know what happened in that last paragraph. I feel as if my brain has wept characters onto a page. I didn't even particularly discuss the poem. This is the first time I've ever composed a blog post in a library, and my misanthropic tendencies have made a grand appearance. Yet this is how I feel.
Saturday, 16 November 2013
They Can Take My Sunrise, but They'll Never Take My Insanity
I think there is something quite steadying about the sunrise. There is a brief, primeval moment every morning when all things are silent and the world itself seems to be an aching parody of its own construction. For a moment, all else is subjugated under its umber majesty. All wickedness and greed is illuminated for the day. There is something deeply important in all this, but it is difficult to entirely apprehend. I think perhaps it is that this sunrise could be anybody's - Homer's, Virgil's, Shakespeare's; there is, in something so decidedly non-human, a humanism and connection with all mankind. It is the only time I am truly hopeful. Something both so fleeting and universal seems too profound to ignore. There is the brief misapprehension in the beholder of this mute spectacle that everything is possible and all is life. All nature is sublimated in some benign warmth, as if everything has been designed to be looked upon only in the morning.
Besides all this, the sunrise itself is rather beautiful. Clouds huddle around the horizon, billowing like torrents of whipped cream. A flamelike glow begins to imbue the air itself with divinity, and presages the arrival of the protagonist in this ignored play. The clouds commingle with the flames, that they might subdue their grandeur, and a colossal elemental fugue holds sway over all things for mere minutes. Groundlings are irradiated with grace as the two abstracts coil round one another in monstrous counterpoint. Neither faction wins, but why should one? This is, after all, a grossly human concept. There is something beautiful in the indifference of nature - man's indifference, on the other hand, is not indifference at all, rather a languid mask on hostility or emotional ignorance.
Then, like an ethereal monarch addressing a mumbling crowd, the sun rears up and all is serene. Some unearthly ataraxy extinguishes all rebellion. A brief few minutes follow, where the sun makes its address, and all things make sense. The world, the obdurate world filled with so much misery, is heaved together in one reluctant lurch, and sits in harmony for a while, until its dull components find an excuse to slip out of the nearest exit and go back to their toil. The sun is pulled from its bed, as with an impossible vacuum, and time resumes.
I enjoy all of this. Presently, however, I feel like I might weep. There is some dreadful machinery gnashing away at galvanised steel, screaming imprecations with its industrial larynx. I find nothing beautiful here, but more than this there is some kind of idiotic, human ignorance towards this grand spectacle unravelling behind it - it is the indifference I mentioned earlier. Worse still than this, the human indifference in the pursuit of money - building grotesque crypts for monetary gain - has blocked my view of the sunrise. All near me is grey, reconstituted sludge: Lovecraftian horrors frozen into place by chemicals. This was almost intolerable, but I still had the sunrise to look on. I had a view, above a car park, of fields rolling into the distance, sealed at the edges with grand hills. There was some vicarious freedom in this. I used to be able to observe the sunrise, imbibe its stillness, forget the quotidian, demotic nonsense man buries himself in. It was only for a short moment, but it was enough. Now it is as if the economic system itself is resolved to destroy me. I'm locked in a grey quadrangle, and I feel like screaming with the machinery which made it happen.
The only time I might observe the sun is at midday, when it has reached a far more punitive stature, searing its victims with infernal beams. The day has begun, people are moving around, and I am not interested in this state at all.
There is something wholly transcendent about the sunrise, which I now must cease to observe. People might laugh at ancient civilisations who worshipped the sun as some incredible demiurge which brought prosperity, but I think this is preferable by far to what we have today. Besides, if we actually looked on the sunrise, we might come to a similar conclusion. But no - we are far too busy for such trivialities! Money must be made! This is the most delirious notion man has yet created, an endless hurricane of prosperity which will make us happy, won't it? We may mock belief, but all we believe in today is money. The desk is the prayer mat and the central bank is the pulpit. We're baptised in an illusion of wealth, that we might gain a taste for it. Then crowd the earth with dull buildings, nothing else is important. For me the occlusion of the sunrise has been the occlusion of the soul.
Besides all this, the sunrise itself is rather beautiful. Clouds huddle around the horizon, billowing like torrents of whipped cream. A flamelike glow begins to imbue the air itself with divinity, and presages the arrival of the protagonist in this ignored play. The clouds commingle with the flames, that they might subdue their grandeur, and a colossal elemental fugue holds sway over all things for mere minutes. Groundlings are irradiated with grace as the two abstracts coil round one another in monstrous counterpoint. Neither faction wins, but why should one? This is, after all, a grossly human concept. There is something beautiful in the indifference of nature - man's indifference, on the other hand, is not indifference at all, rather a languid mask on hostility or emotional ignorance.
Then, like an ethereal monarch addressing a mumbling crowd, the sun rears up and all is serene. Some unearthly ataraxy extinguishes all rebellion. A brief few minutes follow, where the sun makes its address, and all things make sense. The world, the obdurate world filled with so much misery, is heaved together in one reluctant lurch, and sits in harmony for a while, until its dull components find an excuse to slip out of the nearest exit and go back to their toil. The sun is pulled from its bed, as with an impossible vacuum, and time resumes.
I enjoy all of this. Presently, however, I feel like I might weep. There is some dreadful machinery gnashing away at galvanised steel, screaming imprecations with its industrial larynx. I find nothing beautiful here, but more than this there is some kind of idiotic, human ignorance towards this grand spectacle unravelling behind it - it is the indifference I mentioned earlier. Worse still than this, the human indifference in the pursuit of money - building grotesque crypts for monetary gain - has blocked my view of the sunrise. All near me is grey, reconstituted sludge: Lovecraftian horrors frozen into place by chemicals. This was almost intolerable, but I still had the sunrise to look on. I had a view, above a car park, of fields rolling into the distance, sealed at the edges with grand hills. There was some vicarious freedom in this. I used to be able to observe the sunrise, imbibe its stillness, forget the quotidian, demotic nonsense man buries himself in. It was only for a short moment, but it was enough. Now it is as if the economic system itself is resolved to destroy me. I'm locked in a grey quadrangle, and I feel like screaming with the machinery which made it happen.
The only time I might observe the sun is at midday, when it has reached a far more punitive stature, searing its victims with infernal beams. The day has begun, people are moving around, and I am not interested in this state at all.
There is something wholly transcendent about the sunrise, which I now must cease to observe. People might laugh at ancient civilisations who worshipped the sun as some incredible demiurge which brought prosperity, but I think this is preferable by far to what we have today. Besides, if we actually looked on the sunrise, we might come to a similar conclusion. But no - we are far too busy for such trivialities! Money must be made! This is the most delirious notion man has yet created, an endless hurricane of prosperity which will make us happy, won't it? We may mock belief, but all we believe in today is money. The desk is the prayer mat and the central bank is the pulpit. We're baptised in an illusion of wealth, that we might gain a taste for it. Then crowd the earth with dull buildings, nothing else is important. For me the occlusion of the sunrise has been the occlusion of the soul.
Sunday, 10 November 2013
The Religiosity of Economics
It's Sunday as I type this. Foul machines churn away outside my window with a disgusting arrogation. There is the insistence that everyone should listen to this grinding, whirring field of dissonance at all times. There is, in the brazenness with which this crap is presented to me, the firm insistence that capitalism is the moral superior in this world.
Some wretched building is being constructed. I can only assume it is incomplete, as it resembles some Eastern European abandoned tenement. The thing is hideous. All buildings are now built with cost as the limiting factor. Nothing beautiful is built. Think of all the economically inadvisable buildings religion has brought us. Now do the same for capitalism. I think what I am saying is that capitalism doesn't even have the self-respect religion has. There is no joy in capitalism, no effort is made beyond that which is absolutely necessary, and there is no charm in anything built under its black pennons. The grey edifice I mention is being built like a kids' puzzle, massive ashen ramparts sealed into place with inert sludge. Even bricks are too indulgent for this beast.
As a child there was always a terrible fear for me that my Kinder Surprise might in fact be a wicked surprise - the charge within might simply be a solid lump of plastic, a one-piece toy. This, to the curious, growing mind, is of no use at all. They could just as easily have printed a plastic middle finger for me to play with. The same may soon be true of buildings - lowered into place by a huge crane and opened immediately.
I think what I'm aiming to illustrate is that the anodyne, banal efficiency of capitalism is sapping the joy from everything. Nothing can be done anymore to amaze or subjugate the senses. I do seriously believe that the quality of literature has been inversely proportional to the scale of capitalism over the years. All is done for money now - in my opinion the last true repository for matchless art was the Romantic Era, but the Romantic artist is absolutely incompatible with the modern age. The concept of the individual as key in the construction of art is nonsense nowadays, for the only things that will be written are those which please the masses. Do not mistake my meaning - many of the Romantics were wildly successful, but society has changed since that time. A kind of apathy permeates everything at present, a dull philosophy of expedience holds sway in the construction of all things. Marx writes of the economic base determining the superstructure, and he is of course correct to do so. I used to think the idea fanciful, a grand conclusion tailored to his argument, but of course this is true. If the study of economics has taught me one thing, it is that economics is utterly corrosive, and necessarily corrupts all thought. And all things in this sphere are reduced to a horrendous self-interest, the concept of rationality barely supporting that of kindness. Labour is a factor of production in the same way as land or machinery, a homogenised input. This is as humbling as religion, in fact it is more so. Religion at least values each person as beautiful and divine, if in subjection to a higher being. Capitalism keeps the subjection and disposes with the exaltation. This is servility. This is the distillation of the religious impulse. This is the desolation of the soul.
Then, is being shackled to economic facts, impelled to construct hideous buildings of a Sunday, any better than being forced to attend church on a Sunday? I think it is worse. Even the church cannot quash rebellion in the mind, yet capitalism requires far more interaction. To undermine religion it is enough to simply stop believing; one might stop believing in capitalism but it will not wither away. One must pretend to love the machine, one must pretend to praise one's chains. And there can be no sedition when one's physical movements contradict one's thoughts. Soon the worm of resistance is crushed. And not just crushed, but inverted on its host. How much pretending can one take part in before one is believing?
Some wretched building is being constructed. I can only assume it is incomplete, as it resembles some Eastern European abandoned tenement. The thing is hideous. All buildings are now built with cost as the limiting factor. Nothing beautiful is built. Think of all the economically inadvisable buildings religion has brought us. Now do the same for capitalism. I think what I am saying is that capitalism doesn't even have the self-respect religion has. There is no joy in capitalism, no effort is made beyond that which is absolutely necessary, and there is no charm in anything built under its black pennons. The grey edifice I mention is being built like a kids' puzzle, massive ashen ramparts sealed into place with inert sludge. Even bricks are too indulgent for this beast.
As a child there was always a terrible fear for me that my Kinder Surprise might in fact be a wicked surprise - the charge within might simply be a solid lump of plastic, a one-piece toy. This, to the curious, growing mind, is of no use at all. They could just as easily have printed a plastic middle finger for me to play with. The same may soon be true of buildings - lowered into place by a huge crane and opened immediately.
I think what I'm aiming to illustrate is that the anodyne, banal efficiency of capitalism is sapping the joy from everything. Nothing can be done anymore to amaze or subjugate the senses. I do seriously believe that the quality of literature has been inversely proportional to the scale of capitalism over the years. All is done for money now - in my opinion the last true repository for matchless art was the Romantic Era, but the Romantic artist is absolutely incompatible with the modern age. The concept of the individual as key in the construction of art is nonsense nowadays, for the only things that will be written are those which please the masses. Do not mistake my meaning - many of the Romantics were wildly successful, but society has changed since that time. A kind of apathy permeates everything at present, a dull philosophy of expedience holds sway in the construction of all things. Marx writes of the economic base determining the superstructure, and he is of course correct to do so. I used to think the idea fanciful, a grand conclusion tailored to his argument, but of course this is true. If the study of economics has taught me one thing, it is that economics is utterly corrosive, and necessarily corrupts all thought. And all things in this sphere are reduced to a horrendous self-interest, the concept of rationality barely supporting that of kindness. Labour is a factor of production in the same way as land or machinery, a homogenised input. This is as humbling as religion, in fact it is more so. Religion at least values each person as beautiful and divine, if in subjection to a higher being. Capitalism keeps the subjection and disposes with the exaltation. This is servility. This is the distillation of the religious impulse. This is the desolation of the soul.
Then, is being shackled to economic facts, impelled to construct hideous buildings of a Sunday, any better than being forced to attend church on a Sunday? I think it is worse. Even the church cannot quash rebellion in the mind, yet capitalism requires far more interaction. To undermine religion it is enough to simply stop believing; one might stop believing in capitalism but it will not wither away. One must pretend to love the machine, one must pretend to praise one's chains. And there can be no sedition when one's physical movements contradict one's thoughts. Soon the worm of resistance is crushed. And not just crushed, but inverted on its host. How much pretending can one take part in before one is believing?
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