If your best friend is correct and you are indeed crazy how would you ever know? An especially difficult question, particularly if your 'craziness' consistently provides the answer. The point being made is quite simple in that the more insane you might be, the less likely you are to recognise your insanity. Therefore what happens when the majority of people within a society become too insane to recognise their insanity? If you think this an extreme improbability, google some pics of the Nuremberg Rallies, in Germany of the late thirties, or recall how a society sanctioned the mass extermination of millions of fellow human beings, or recall the tale of weapons of mass destruction, that filled a hundred thousand body-bags. Economies have collapsed, wars have been fought and countless books have been written on the hysteria of the masses; so much so that we might soon recognise that 'mass-hysteria' is not an isolated occurrence, but rather an ongoing and evolving phenomenon. What are the hysteria's, what are the madness's of today? The madness to which we all, (to a greater or lesser degree) believe to be the coordinates of our normality, our sanity?
This evening on my news feed the three top stories were:
1) Brother of Gerry Adams, convicted for raping his daughter over several years when she was a child.
2) Garda's Anonymity not to be preserved in respect of his Child Pornography conviction.
3)Two men arrested in connection with the abduction and rape of two children (Ages 6 and 9yrs) in Athlone.
Irish society is in melt down, grown men are raping little children and more, and we remain too insane to recognise that these perversions are not 'isolated incidents', but are the product of a society that has lost its way, of a society that has become insane.
Given the state of the world, of politics, the mass media and society at large, it might not be entirely unreasonable to suggest that those of us who declare their sanity with the confidence of a zealot, are perhaps least likely to hold a monopoly upon that illusive substance. Conversely, those who are aware of their insanity, of their individual contribution to the collective (and entirely self evident) insanity of our species, are amongst the least insane of all of us.
In this sense, if we are to save ourselves from ourselves (we ourselves are the greatest threat to ourselves) then we have no choice; we must seek the council of the insane. That is not to say that we should have institutionalised mental patients running the state (despite the possibility of a better job being done), rather it is to state categorically that the correct solutions to our public and private malaise will initially and invariably be perceived as 'madness'. That the real solutions to our unhappiness are to be found amongst those ideas that we have already or might readily dismiss as crazy. In this modern world of horrors of untruths and bizarre contradictions if we are to think, we must first pause and think again.
We must look to the radical and the revolutionary if we are to revolutionise our society, we must hope that deep down, beyond the 'Fakebook-self', beyond the materialism and the superficial existences we have meticulously created for ourselves, that we might retain some of that capacity that distinguishes us from all other creatures; our intellect, our rationality, our capacity for independent thought, and above all our honesty in a world that rewards only the inverse. We must see beyond the market-forces that everyday try with renewed success to suppress those qualities. We must re-visit and analyse those 'solutions' that at first appeared to us to be insane, or ridiculous, and when something sounds crazy we must stop and think carefully, for the insanity may not be in what is heard but rather who is listening.
We might recall that Christ was an iconoclast, a revolutionary, and he was not crucified because his views were in keeping with the majority, with the media and the established doctrines of the day , but rather were the opposite. His teachings were against the law, against the establishment, they were the ravings of a madman. As were those of Gautama, Pearse, Socrates, Einstein, Marx and Freud.
Personally, as disturbing as the plethora of child abuse, (undoubtedly greatly influenced by the extreme nature of pornography that is readily available on the Internet under the guise of 'free speech'), was the news that 91 Elephants were found dead in a national park in Zimbabwe this week. The elephants were killed by poachers who spread cyanide crystals about a watering hole, where Elephants (and countless other animals) would go to drink. The poachers followed the poisoned elephants and hacked off their tusks as soon as the animals were too weak to defend themselves. The tusked lumps of keratin (the same substance of hair and toe-nails) are doubtless destined for the Chinese market where idiot-millionaires treat their erectile dysfunction with ground up tusk or rhino horn.
Not only did the elephants die but countless animals that fed upon their poisoned carcasses, and countless more who drank from the waterhole that had been laced with the seed of human materialism. We don't like to consider the fact that the money that pays the poachers and empowers the idiot millionaires, comes from our purchase of cheap Chinese product; most of which we rapidly dispose of and have no real need for in the first place. Our products are made cheaply in those countries where human rights, minimum-wage and environmental protection have no meaning. We live in our democracies with our human-rights and environmental protection, whilst the third world does our dirty-work, our poaching and pollution. We are all party to theses crimes, we confirm our guilt with each cent we spend. The unhappiness and psychological dysfunction that defines the perversity of child abuse is a product of a society that is equally sick. An unpalatable truth that is rarely encountered on the mind-wash of modern media.
A cardinal ingredient to the qualification of insanity is a greater or lesser measure of delusion, of belief in that which a majority cannot see or recognise to be true. How many people actually realize that the 'self' on 'Fakebook' is not real? That the self in the suit heading to the office, or the professional self dispensing advice with confidence and self assurance, is not really the self?
How many of us know or are even willing to entertain the notion that the majority of us amount to little more than what Holden Caulfield referred to in Catcher in the Rye as..Phonies! Look about at your friends and family and ask yourself how many real people do you see, (do as Michael Jackson advises and start with 'the man in the mirror). For each and all of us (myself included) the space between our real and our portrayed self (our public and private Gar) is always trying to expand. The greater the distance between the two, the greater is our unhappiness and our dissatisfaction with life.
That the world is crazy, that it is governed by a collection of governments driven by economic self interest and guided by a philosophy that is derived from the God of the markets, is self-evident. The state of our environment, the collapse of morality, the demise of those species who share the earth with us, global poverty and the squalor and depravity that defines the lives of the great majority of our race, all speak of an unsavoury 'real' that we are increasingly blind to.
The intellectuals, the thinkers and philosophers who might afford an antidote, are everywhere under siege, purged from society with an effectiveness as brutal as the Nazi purge of a Jewish Ghetto. The very capacity for freedom of thought, or intellectual analysis is threatened and brutalised by a mass media concerned with moronic-millionaires, Kardashians, supermodels, materialism, sex, and super-idiocy. Never before has mankind been in such desperate need of a revolution or a Superman.
President: What I do now, I do for the sake of the people of Earth. But there is one man on this planet who will NEVER kneel before you.
General Zod: Who is this imbecile? Where is he?
President: I wish I knew.
http://youtu.be/jUORL-bvwA0
Our Uberman must also go inside the crystal chamber and reverse the process so that all on the outside are stripped of the superpower of consumption and consequent destruction. To impoverish and enrich equally, or perhaps more realistically to attach our wealth and consumption to its consequence, and cultivate the intellect needed to spend and consume responsibly, that is the task for our Supermen, for Nietzsche's philosopher of the future.
We might ask (if we cared enough), and the future will certainly ask: Were we stupid? Or were we insane, that we should have sanctioned or remained oblivious to the real cost of our 'freedoms' our wealth and our consumption. That our priorities were up our arses, that the greater became our power, the greater our potential for good...... the greater is our desire for more and more. That we had the technology to do so much good and yet our legacy should be one of destruction and misery?
A plea of insanity would necessitate that we remained blissfully ignorant of the consequence of our consumption, ignorant of what we were making of the earth and of our fellow man? The mass media is doing its utmost to preserve this plea, in the ongoing promotion of mental retardation (Yes Lord Sugar) and the depression (or more correctly suppression) of the human intellect or our diminishing capacity for independent thought and analysis.
This subtle campaign has not yet been entirely successful. Here and there a few men and women retain the capacity for independent thought, beyond the reaches of globalisation and the relentless stupefaction of the masses. These lepers are called philosophers, they have yet to be rounded up and concentrated in a camp. They endure the worse fate of being ignored by the media and labelled as insane by the masses. In Ireland RTE (the national brainwashing agency) exercises an explicit ban on intellectual dialogue. Its presenters representative of the worst and most intellectually redundant elements of mass psychology, each groundhog day they contaminate and erode our fading capacity for reason. Ironically through the imposition of the Television Licence Fee upon every household, we are in the privileged position of paying for our abuse. Our academics and intellectuals are vilified, our educated youth are pushed to emigrate and our best universities close their arts and Philosophy departments and plummet in the International rankings.
The few who remain awake, who have not as yet succumbed to the doctrine of the markets that virus of idiocy that is sweeping through our species with the virulence of a pandemic; can find a place to hide and speak only within the infinite anonymity of the web and the Internet and on occasion through books and film or the Arts. In reality their continued existence is a threat to us all, to our consumptive philosophy. For as long as the capacity for independent thinking remains alive we may not have recourse to a plea of insanity, if ever we are called to account for the great mess we have made and continue to make of this world with each cent and each plastic bottle. We can tolerate the truth in small doses, like Chili on a Pizza, we want our philosophy in snippets on a Sunday, or in Pulp and comedy from a Zizek or a Chomsky.
Man's stupidity is a more realistic diagnosis than that of his insanity, yet it is one that we remain too stupid to recognise. Indeed that is the irony of stupidity in that it immediately deprives one of the ability to recognise it's presence, thus making it the most advanced and most dangerous of all of our pathologies.
Friday, 4 October 2013
Friday, 6 September 2013
The Hate Rules
In the context of our modern liberal values hatred is a feeling we are not generally permitted to bring to the surface or express. Hatred is of a class of its own, when it accompanies a criminal act the crime becomes a hate-crime. Generally lady-justice is unconcerned as to the emotional nature of a crime; we do not as yet have; 'happy', 'sad' or 'disinterested' crimes. There are no 'crimes of boredom' or ennui, that would equally reflect the emotion of the perpetrator. Indeed if the crime involves a relationship, a love triangle, or jealousy, it may be pitched into the basket of a 'crime of passion'; however hatred (perhaps in light of our collective repugnance for it) has the privilege of enjoying a uniquely defining status.
In spite of our ostensible aversion, there are certain things that we are encouraged to hate, such as 'hate itself'. We are also permitted to hate relatively benign and ephemeral things, things of little significance, like; broccoli, hemorrhoids or the weather.
We are not permitted to hate things that are protected under the umbrella of our modern liberal values; we cannot hate certain people like; Jews, homosexuals, differing ethnicities, nor can we hate other countries or religions. We are not permitted to hate God, despite the fact that he/she may have made a complete mess of things. Nor are we permitted to hate humanity, despite the fact that relative to all other species ours represents the most cancerous influence upon the entire ecology of our planet.
We can eat animals but (with the exception of those who thrive in our company; vermin, cockroaches, crows, gulls and those that feed on our detritus) we are not permitted to hate them especially those that are cuddly and remind us of ourselves in some way or another.
Plants apparently have no feelings, and as in the case of broccoli, we can hate them unreservedly, perhaps with the exception of the rain-forests, which we must all respect and cherish.
When an American, Egyptian or Israeli, or Syrian Government need to legitimize killing, they too will make use of the 'hate rules' and will invariably point out to us that the victims are, (or were): 'terrorists', 'fundamentalists', 'anti-democracy protestors' or members of Al Qaeda. All of whom in accordance with our current hate-rules, are deserving of hatred and extermination.
Regardless of the hate rules I can find no other word that more suitable expresses my opinion of RTE, (our national broadcasting agency) and mainstream media in general. I buy Irish newspapers only to light my fire. I listen to RTE strictly by accident, and with the same stoic reluctance that I consume second-hand smoke when in the company of those who apply poison to their lungs as well as their ears.
When I try to adhere to the hate rules and reconcile my pacifism with my hatred of RTE, I imagine a fantastic fate for that bastion of predictability and mirror for the mindlessness of the masses. I dream for example, of the spontaneous emergence of a giant sink-hole, (as does happen in more tectonic climes) beneath its headquarters in Donnybrook, and the entire physical structure of our national intellectual lavatory, being swallowed whole, ...deep into the bowels of mother earth, (late at night with no injuries or casualties, an elderly dog or a budgie perhaps.) Now that would be lovely, and for a week or precious month, the airways and the brains of my countrymen and women would no longer be contaminated by the groundhog-day of paralysed intellect and by that uniquely Irish form of retarded analysis that everyday flows from that cornucopia of predictability.
Were I an American my hatred would probably extend to Fox and CNN, to SKY and the mass media. My hatred is both generous and ecumenical, it extends to all those media institutions who reflect back to the consumer, an abstracted and palatable form of their own stupidity and incapacity for independent analysis. The brainwash that is invariably referred to by the dictatorship of our day as: "the news".
I have no doubt that in Germany and elsewhere during the 1940's there were those few who hated the Nazi's, who hated the hatred of the Nazi's and their cruelty to their fellow human beings (I am an optimist as well as a pacifist). Of course at that time (as in our time), there were specific Hate Rules to which the majority were expected to comply. What we tend to forget is that the single greatest pathology at work in the 1940's, was the same erosion of the capacity for independent thought. "Propaganda is only recognised in retrospect, and today's news of this and that and of 'weapons of mass destruction', 'gassings' and so on, is tomorrows propaganda.
In Ireland as in America the same media personalities that promoted and promulgated the ideals of the 'sub-prime' and those of the 'Boom'; are the same individuals who are at the helm today, remorselessly and relentlessly promoting the accepted notions of today. The same notions that will effect the consequence of tomorrow.
Our thinking remains eerily unchanged and we yearn for a return to the same 'growth' and economic conditions that precipitated the collapse. The majority of plebs believed them then, and majority believe them now; it is hard not to be a hater of the majority. Personally my love and hate for humanity are maintained in an equilibrium that is at times difficult to maintain, especially after sex, or Thai Green Curry, or when I watch the sunrise, or see children smile, or when I am compelled to listen to the mind-wash of modern media.
Perhaps Mr Murdock or the Directors of CNN or RTE should be hung drawn and quartered for the disease of mass ignorance which they are guilty of spreading with all the virulence of modern technology?
Yet we must evolve beyond our fetish for scape-goats. There is no conspiracy, no invisible Hitler, no Dr Mabuse or Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, directing the propaganda and controlling the minds of the masses. There is no 'neo-liberal agenda', no 'blue-print for armegeddon'. There is only the Market and we ourselves. All of these things, and most of our evils arise out of relations between the two, between our consumption and our idiocy.
RTE like CNN seek an audience of the majority for that is how profits are maximised. As such the majority are fed what they want to hear, which is entirely different to the truth of what they need to hear. Pat Kenny is not an evil man, he is simply a small minded unintelligent man, one who reflects back to the masses their own small mindedness and un-intelligence. There can be no other types of presenters at RTE they are hued from the same stone. The institution is governed by the majority that is the market; this is our new totality and these are its new dictators.
'Freedom of the Press' is a modern euphemism to for it's enslavement to the markets. This enslavement of the media is proving more destructive than any historical suppression of free speech; fascist, communist, dictator or otherwise. Arguably the single most essential ingredient to a functional democracy is a true freedom of the press. This loss has meant that our Democracy has been entirely undermined and turned to a cancer upon the earth, one that has lost the restraining influence of a truly free and independent media. A media that has become subservient to the dictatorship of profits and the market.
Even the worst dictator in history preserved the capacity for compassion, for justice. Hitler was at least a vegetarian, who loved his dogs and, unlike Churchill , was conscious of the need to respect his health. The markets on the other hand, lack the potential for justice or compassion, they see only profit,opportunity and economic growth. Hitler put them into ovens and gas chambers, the market kills many more through starvation, depravity and war; it undermines the very basis of of our ecological survival. Hitler was an angel in comparison.
At the behest of Nazi authorities, with the persuasion of the media, and through the 'acting out' of an anti Semitic sentiment that was entirely European (and not specific to Germany), Germans engineered the holocaust and attempted to exterminate an entire culture of human beings by mass incineration or gassing. We are too familiar with the horror, and yet the mention of it does not tend to bore us. The currency of that barbarism is perhaps of an infinite concentration so grotesque, that it is unlikely ever to become passe or dilute. Those atrocities have perhaps come to refine our view of political evil, to the extent that we are blind the holocaust of the plastic bottle and genocide of 'democracy' that are unfolding before our eyes and ears.
It is perhaps because our present social experiment involves a romance with technology that the genocide of the Holocaust remains of such intrigue. That the mass destruction of fellow humans was effected in a most scientific manner with an application of available technology and efficiencies not far removed from the efficiency and science which a budget airline might apply to the task of herding humans about the planet.
In spite of our ostensible aversion, there are certain things that we are encouraged to hate, such as 'hate itself'. We are also permitted to hate relatively benign and ephemeral things, things of little significance, like; broccoli, hemorrhoids or the weather.
We are not permitted to hate things that are protected under the umbrella of our modern liberal values; we cannot hate certain people like; Jews, homosexuals, differing ethnicities, nor can we hate other countries or religions. We are not permitted to hate God, despite the fact that he/she may have made a complete mess of things. Nor are we permitted to hate humanity, despite the fact that relative to all other species ours represents the most cancerous influence upon the entire ecology of our planet.
We can eat animals but (with the exception of those who thrive in our company; vermin, cockroaches, crows, gulls and those that feed on our detritus) we are not permitted to hate them especially those that are cuddly and remind us of ourselves in some way or another.
Plants apparently have no feelings, and as in the case of broccoli, we can hate them unreservedly, perhaps with the exception of the rain-forests, which we must all respect and cherish.
When an American, Egyptian or Israeli, or Syrian Government need to legitimize killing, they too will make use of the 'hate rules' and will invariably point out to us that the victims are, (or were): 'terrorists', 'fundamentalists', 'anti-democracy protestors' or members of Al Qaeda. All of whom in accordance with our current hate-rules, are deserving of hatred and extermination.
Regardless of the hate rules I can find no other word that more suitable expresses my opinion of RTE, (our national broadcasting agency) and mainstream media in general. I buy Irish newspapers only to light my fire. I listen to RTE strictly by accident, and with the same stoic reluctance that I consume second-hand smoke when in the company of those who apply poison to their lungs as well as their ears.
When I try to adhere to the hate rules and reconcile my pacifism with my hatred of RTE, I imagine a fantastic fate for that bastion of predictability and mirror for the mindlessness of the masses. I dream for example, of the spontaneous emergence of a giant sink-hole, (as does happen in more tectonic climes) beneath its headquarters in Donnybrook, and the entire physical structure of our national intellectual lavatory, being swallowed whole, ...deep into the bowels of mother earth, (late at night with no injuries or casualties, an elderly dog or a budgie perhaps.) Now that would be lovely, and for a week or precious month, the airways and the brains of my countrymen and women would no longer be contaminated by the groundhog-day of paralysed intellect and by that uniquely Irish form of retarded analysis that everyday flows from that cornucopia of predictability.
Were I an American my hatred would probably extend to Fox and CNN, to SKY and the mass media. My hatred is both generous and ecumenical, it extends to all those media institutions who reflect back to the consumer, an abstracted and palatable form of their own stupidity and incapacity for independent analysis. The brainwash that is invariably referred to by the dictatorship of our day as: "the news".
I have no doubt that in Germany and elsewhere during the 1940's there were those few who hated the Nazi's, who hated the hatred of the Nazi's and their cruelty to their fellow human beings (I am an optimist as well as a pacifist). Of course at that time (as in our time), there were specific Hate Rules to which the majority were expected to comply. What we tend to forget is that the single greatest pathology at work in the 1940's, was the same erosion of the capacity for independent thought. "Propaganda is only recognised in retrospect, and today's news of this and that and of 'weapons of mass destruction', 'gassings' and so on, is tomorrows propaganda.
In Ireland as in America the same media personalities that promoted and promulgated the ideals of the 'sub-prime' and those of the 'Boom'; are the same individuals who are at the helm today, remorselessly and relentlessly promoting the accepted notions of today. The same notions that will effect the consequence of tomorrow.
Our thinking remains eerily unchanged and we yearn for a return to the same 'growth' and economic conditions that precipitated the collapse. The majority of plebs believed them then, and majority believe them now; it is hard not to be a hater of the majority. Personally my love and hate for humanity are maintained in an equilibrium that is at times difficult to maintain, especially after sex, or Thai Green Curry, or when I watch the sunrise, or see children smile, or when I am compelled to listen to the mind-wash of modern media.
Perhaps Mr Murdock or the Directors of CNN or RTE should be hung drawn and quartered for the disease of mass ignorance which they are guilty of spreading with all the virulence of modern technology?
Yet we must evolve beyond our fetish for scape-goats. There is no conspiracy, no invisible Hitler, no Dr Mabuse or Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, directing the propaganda and controlling the minds of the masses. There is no 'neo-liberal agenda', no 'blue-print for armegeddon'. There is only the Market and we ourselves. All of these things, and most of our evils arise out of relations between the two, between our consumption and our idiocy.
RTE like CNN seek an audience of the majority for that is how profits are maximised. As such the majority are fed what they want to hear, which is entirely different to the truth of what they need to hear. Pat Kenny is not an evil man, he is simply a small minded unintelligent man, one who reflects back to the masses their own small mindedness and un-intelligence. There can be no other types of presenters at RTE they are hued from the same stone. The institution is governed by the majority that is the market; this is our new totality and these are its new dictators.
'Freedom of the Press' is a modern euphemism to for it's enslavement to the markets. This enslavement of the media is proving more destructive than any historical suppression of free speech; fascist, communist, dictator or otherwise. Arguably the single most essential ingredient to a functional democracy is a true freedom of the press. This loss has meant that our Democracy has been entirely undermined and turned to a cancer upon the earth, one that has lost the restraining influence of a truly free and independent media. A media that has become subservient to the dictatorship of profits and the market.
Even the worst dictator in history preserved the capacity for compassion, for justice. Hitler was at least a vegetarian, who loved his dogs and, unlike Churchill , was conscious of the need to respect his health. The markets on the other hand, lack the potential for justice or compassion, they see only profit,opportunity and economic growth. Hitler put them into ovens and gas chambers, the market kills many more through starvation, depravity and war; it undermines the very basis of of our ecological survival. Hitler was an angel in comparison.
At the behest of Nazi authorities, with the persuasion of the media, and through the 'acting out' of an anti Semitic sentiment that was entirely European (and not specific to Germany), Germans engineered the holocaust and attempted to exterminate an entire culture of human beings by mass incineration or gassing. We are too familiar with the horror, and yet the mention of it does not tend to bore us. The currency of that barbarism is perhaps of an infinite concentration so grotesque, that it is unlikely ever to become passe or dilute. Those atrocities have perhaps come to refine our view of political evil, to the extent that we are blind the holocaust of the plastic bottle and genocide of 'democracy' that are unfolding before our eyes and ears.
It is perhaps because our present social experiment involves a romance with technology that the genocide of the Holocaust remains of such intrigue. That the mass destruction of fellow humans was effected in a most scientific manner with an application of available technology and efficiencies not far removed from the efficiency and science which a budget airline might apply to the task of herding humans about the planet.
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Dear Mr Assad
Dear Mr Assad
I am a card carrying member of the Pacifist Society of Ireland and as such I have no particular axe to grind in the conflict between yourself and your opponents. I see and hear that Mr Cameron and Mr Obama are considering "serious action" against you and your colleagues if you have been using chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction in your civil war.
I understand that the situation is particularly grave and everyone is locked into an endgame of sorts, one that must play itself out to the usual brutal conclusion. Your opponents want to take control of the government by fair means or foul, and you want to hold onto to power (somewhat understandably) by similar means. You have no choice but to hold onto to power, because you know that if and when you loose it, you may end up being dragged naked through the streets of Damascus having been bludgeoned to death, like Mr Kadafi. Or you may pen-ultimately be ferreted out from a dugout and formally executed like Saddam.
You have no choice but to hang in there to the bitter end. Unfortunately for you, the West has decided to approve the rebels application for recognition of their activities as a 'Democratic Struggle' and once their application was successful, your regime effectively reached its sell-by date. Your number is up as they say, the writing is on the wall, perhaps the same wall that was written on at the start of your troubles?
The only available option is a trip to the plastic surgeon, or an application for asylum in one of those countries that have yet to be entirely disciplined by the West. Of course this cannot happen because you would have to bring your auld pals, and cronies with you, and judging by your longevity thus far, there must be a right gang of them.
From what I understand yourself and your pals are members of a particular Muslim sect and this particular sect has control over the military and much of the wealth in your country. The other Muslim sects have been financially and politically marginalized over the years through the selective giving of; favors, titles, fancy jobs contracts, and the usual stuff that goes on in politics. Now you are in an awful mess because you have sown the time-honored seeds of revolution that leaders have been planting since before the queer wan in France told all the punters to go and eat cake.
Them that doesn't have, want to get a hold of the goodies from them that does have. In the middle east once this racket starts, the 'have-nots' invariably declare that they want a share of the goodies in the name of 'democracy'. And once the big 'D' is wheeled out, and the application for a "Democratic Struggle" is approved by the powers that be, well to make a short twist of it: yourself and your pals are doomed.
We in the west have a moral obligation to lend money and weapons and soldiers to anyone who might be fighting in an approved democratic struggle. Even if they couldn't give a hoot about democracy and just want to get a hold of the money and power that leaders like yourself have been holding onto for so many years and dishing out to your pals, and them that bows in the same direction or believes that Mary was a virgin, or whatever it is that distinguishes between your sect and them that has no money.
Once the new crowd get in they will want to dish the goodies out to their pals who do be bowing in the same direction or cracking their eggs open on the big end and so on. Its been the same since time began and will be the same for as long as them that have not, want to get a hold of the goodies from them that have. Yer man Marx tried to make everyone equal, and sure enough, he only made things worse. Human's it would seem are as yet too stupid to live up to either Communism or Democracy materialism and greed always gets in the way.
The main reason I am writing to you is about this ghastly business of you gassing your own people with chemical weapons. You may or may not be guilty of this I know nothing of these things. However I do know that you are a physician as I am myself, and although doctors have been guilty of rather horrific things in the past, and although medical training is no guarantee of compassion or humanity; I feel that on the balance of things it makes these allegations slightly less credible than if you were a full time General, or a Banker, or had appeared on the balcony firing a shotgun into the air like Saddam before he had his deserts. If appearance and previous employment history are anything to go by then you might well be a nice fellow altogether? There are some lovely pictures of yourself and your family on Wikipedia, and apart from the hairstyles and the get-up, yis look like nice people, who would open the door to a stranger or drop a few bob in the plate of a Sunday.
What makes me most suspicious about these allegations is the fact that they seem to be part of a formula that has worked in the past, a preamble to American led air strikes and invasion by the back door. Just as the "weapons of mass destruction" myth was created in order to brainwash the plebs and invade Iraq without UN approval.
You are not on good terms with the Israeli's and rumour has it that you have been supplying arms to Palestinian "terrorists". One would think that a chap like yourself with all that education, would have had a bit more sense, and been able to recognise that the Israeli's call the shots with American foreign policy. Geographically, and metaphorically your country is behind the Palestinians and for that reason alone your cards have been marked for quite some time. Had you developed nuclear weapons in time you might be safe but without them you represent a military push-over, and your inevitable demise will represent a major source of happiness, stability and longevity to Israel, not to mention NATO control of the entire fertile crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately for you, most of the oil rich Arabs are busy gorging themselves on oil revenues and have been rendered obese, diabetic, and blind to the overthrow of their, culture, religion and political landscape. Tis a pity that you cannot see the bigger picture and the 'blue-print' for the middle East, as it becomes increasingly obvious with each American led invasion.
Your pal Mr Putin and the Chinaman will continue to do what the Americans repeatedly do for their biggest arms customer, and pull out the veto-card at any hint of United Nations sanction. As a result the UN is confined to it's familiar form of a paralysed-duck whenever the goodies of a resource rich Middle Eastern nation are about to be carved up and dished out to friends and relations, in accordance with the overall plan for the Middle East.
Without the UN, the formal international court of appeal has effectively been transferred from the Hague, to CNN, Sky, Fox News, and the BBC, or more correctly the multinationals and big business who sponsor politics, make the jobs, and pay the piper's advertising revenues. All that remains is for the west to do is to drum up enough brainwashed support against your regime, to justify the transition from covert to overt military intervention. Once this happens, you and your cronies can effectively kiss your collective arses goodbye.
I didn't read the application myself, however as soon as your opponents applied for recognition of their rebellion as a 'Democratic Struggle' your days were effectively numbered. As such the carnage and mayhem that are both prelude and sequel to your inevitable departure, are merely perfunctory matters, as are the innumerable innocents who are to pay the collaterally damaged price for the transition to 'freedom' .
How it all works (FYI) is rather simple. The rebels appeal to the west for recognition of their struggle as a 'democratic struggle', and deserving of military and financial support. They agree tacitly and formally to eventually pay for the overthrow of the present government in; lump sum, fee simple and by installments after the fact etc: They fill in the requisite application forms and petitions, show their credentials at the gate, and make the necessary promises of payments in natural resource, raw materials and development or post-liberation re-building contracts etc etc.
Western authorities and backing industrialists will then consider the application on the following basis.
1) Does the country in question have nuclear power and weapons of significance? If the answer is yes, refer to the UN. Does the country in question have enough; gold,oil,uranium, gas, coal, natural resource, strategic position etc., that will make western intervention economically and politically worthwhile? If the answer here is is yes proceed to question number 2. If the answer is no refer to the UN.
2) Do the rebels themselves have a snowball's chance in hell of toppling the existing regime? If not, how much will it cost (in terms of money and body-bags filled with Tennessee farm boys) And how much risk is involved in covertly stirring up the requisite amount of sedition and political instability that might make revolution practicable?
3) Are the rebels willing to call their new regime a "democratic" regime, and thereby permit western multi- nationals to enter the country and 'purchase' at low-cost the nation's natural resource which can then be exported, refined and manufactured into product after the 'revolution'?
4) Can the new government be relied upon to pay NATO back in hard cash, national resource, contracts etc., for its "liberation"?
5) Will the new regime agree to buy weapons of mass destruction and furnish it's future; army, air-force, and navy, solely from western 'democratic' suppliers vis NATO member states?
In general depending upon the answers to the above questions the rebels application for 'Democratic Struggle' may or may not be approved. Once approved however....the rest as they say is History. When the Americans invaded Iraq the process was entirely the same.
You see Mr Assad your biggest mistake was probably aligning yourself with the Russians rather than the Americans (although you were probably aware that the Russians were and are busy transforming themselves into another version of America, but the transformation will prove too late for you) You made the mistake of purchasing your military hardware from Russia and China, and you did this because you were not fond of America's relationship with Israel. As such you made the mistake of letting ideology get in the way of good business sense. Had you been purchasing your military hardware from America, like the Saudi's or the Israeli's you would be safe as houses and the rebels in your country would be considered in the same vein as Palestinian 'terrorists'.
You see, relatively poorer countries like my own little island nation, export; cattle, potatoes and American made Viagra tablets. That's how we make our shillins. But these kinds of exports are in the haypenny place when it comes to military contracts for jets, tanks bombs bullets, warships and submarines.
The auld rules of the market place are universal and you can only sell a thing when there is a want for it. In the west there isn't a want for half of the things that we buy and sell. However when that is the case you have to create a want or a market, that's what advertising is for.
In the same respect there is no point in the Americans and the British making bombers and tanks and machine-guns and the like, and there being no market. These products need a war if they are to be consumed. That is what war is for, and Syria has the privilege of being the next biggest market opportunity since Saddam appeared on the balcony waving a shot gun in the air. War as they say is not just good for business but essential to it. I recall reading that during the Iraq war the American stock exchange made some of it's its greatest jumps and leaps in the history of that fine establishment.
One thing you might be overlooking is the fact that when NATO liberated Kuwait and invaded Iraq, the Kuwaitis had to pay for that liberation. In essence the Americans secured the greatest arms deal in modern history, as every bullet, bomb, rocket, roll of jacks-paper on one of them Aircraft-carriers, is still being paid for. The bill was delivered on to the Kuwaitis, who have passed much of it on to the Iraqis who are busy paying it back in crude, with interest of course. Not to mention when the new government was installed, all the various contracts to rebuild oil wells, gas stations infrastructure, factories and hospitals and the like have been, dished out to what Bush called 'the coalition of the willing'.
For those countries that are engaged in the very expensive business of making weapons of mass destruction, new and growing markets are essential to national economic prosperity and even stability. As such the sales reps have figured out that the best form of military sales is 'retrospective-sales' of the 'liberation' kind. War first, and bills later. It is a much easier process altogether, gets rid of the old-stock that is about to go off, and cuts out all the haggling over prices. And of course after the fact, when the Country in question has bee duly liberated the contract for military hardwarwe goes to the liberators. As the people at Brother, Xerox and Cannon know only too well, its not just about the sale of the printer, the real money is in the refills.
In my estimation the crowd that gets in after you will be no different to yourself. As soon as they get in they will be dishing out the goodies to their friends and relations and to those who bow in the same direction, crack their eggs open at the big end, or whatever are the features that distinguish their sect from yours. However their wont be as much of a share to go to their friends and relations as a big dollop of your nations resource will have to be given over to the west, who will pay them pennies and then turn that natural resource into product.
This disproportionate 'sharing' will undoubtedly be mitigated by the fact that we westerners, with our insatiable multinationals and insatiable appetite for product are far better at digging up resource than non democratic countries such as yours. And although you will be paid pennies for your natural resource we will dig it up faster than you could have ever dreamed possible, and as such the new regime will have plenty of pennies to share with their family and friends.
Personally I see no difference between yourself Mr Obama or Mr Cameron, Mr Putin, Mr Bush or Marie Antoinette. To my mind yis are all singing from the same hymn-sheet. However in the interests of equality and in the hope of staving off the inevitable carnage and mass destruction for a little longer, I would suggest that when you choose to murder and exterminate your opponents, that you follow established precedent and call your victims "Terrorists", or card carrying members of "Al Qaeda" (whoever they are when they are at home?). If you wish to have a share of the moral high ground then you might include the prefix "suspected" in your descriptions, this however remains entirely as an optional extra.
Yours etc
Myself and the brother.
I am a card carrying member of the Pacifist Society of Ireland and as such I have no particular axe to grind in the conflict between yourself and your opponents. I see and hear that Mr Cameron and Mr Obama are considering "serious action" against you and your colleagues if you have been using chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction in your civil war.
I understand that the situation is particularly grave and everyone is locked into an endgame of sorts, one that must play itself out to the usual brutal conclusion. Your opponents want to take control of the government by fair means or foul, and you want to hold onto to power (somewhat understandably) by similar means. You have no choice but to hold onto to power, because you know that if and when you loose it, you may end up being dragged naked through the streets of Damascus having been bludgeoned to death, like Mr Kadafi. Or you may pen-ultimately be ferreted out from a dugout and formally executed like Saddam.
You have no choice but to hang in there to the bitter end. Unfortunately for you, the West has decided to approve the rebels application for recognition of their activities as a 'Democratic Struggle' and once their application was successful, your regime effectively reached its sell-by date. Your number is up as they say, the writing is on the wall, perhaps the same wall that was written on at the start of your troubles?
The only available option is a trip to the plastic surgeon, or an application for asylum in one of those countries that have yet to be entirely disciplined by the West. Of course this cannot happen because you would have to bring your auld pals, and cronies with you, and judging by your longevity thus far, there must be a right gang of them.
From what I understand yourself and your pals are members of a particular Muslim sect and this particular sect has control over the military and much of the wealth in your country. The other Muslim sects have been financially and politically marginalized over the years through the selective giving of; favors, titles, fancy jobs contracts, and the usual stuff that goes on in politics. Now you are in an awful mess because you have sown the time-honored seeds of revolution that leaders have been planting since before the queer wan in France told all the punters to go and eat cake.
Them that doesn't have, want to get a hold of the goodies from them that does have. In the middle east once this racket starts, the 'have-nots' invariably declare that they want a share of the goodies in the name of 'democracy'. And once the big 'D' is wheeled out, and the application for a "Democratic Struggle" is approved by the powers that be, well to make a short twist of it: yourself and your pals are doomed.
We in the west have a moral obligation to lend money and weapons and soldiers to anyone who might be fighting in an approved democratic struggle. Even if they couldn't give a hoot about democracy and just want to get a hold of the money and power that leaders like yourself have been holding onto for so many years and dishing out to your pals, and them that bows in the same direction or believes that Mary was a virgin, or whatever it is that distinguishes between your sect and them that has no money.
Once the new crowd get in they will want to dish the goodies out to their pals who do be bowing in the same direction or cracking their eggs open on the big end and so on. Its been the same since time began and will be the same for as long as them that have not, want to get a hold of the goodies from them that have. Yer man Marx tried to make everyone equal, and sure enough, he only made things worse. Human's it would seem are as yet too stupid to live up to either Communism or Democracy materialism and greed always gets in the way.
The main reason I am writing to you is about this ghastly business of you gassing your own people with chemical weapons. You may or may not be guilty of this I know nothing of these things. However I do know that you are a physician as I am myself, and although doctors have been guilty of rather horrific things in the past, and although medical training is no guarantee of compassion or humanity; I feel that on the balance of things it makes these allegations slightly less credible than if you were a full time General, or a Banker, or had appeared on the balcony firing a shotgun into the air like Saddam before he had his deserts. If appearance and previous employment history are anything to go by then you might well be a nice fellow altogether? There are some lovely pictures of yourself and your family on Wikipedia, and apart from the hairstyles and the get-up, yis look like nice people, who would open the door to a stranger or drop a few bob in the plate of a Sunday.
What makes me most suspicious about these allegations is the fact that they seem to be part of a formula that has worked in the past, a preamble to American led air strikes and invasion by the back door. Just as the "weapons of mass destruction" myth was created in order to brainwash the plebs and invade Iraq without UN approval.
You are not on good terms with the Israeli's and rumour has it that you have been supplying arms to Palestinian "terrorists". One would think that a chap like yourself with all that education, would have had a bit more sense, and been able to recognise that the Israeli's call the shots with American foreign policy. Geographically, and metaphorically your country is behind the Palestinians and for that reason alone your cards have been marked for quite some time. Had you developed nuclear weapons in time you might be safe but without them you represent a military push-over, and your inevitable demise will represent a major source of happiness, stability and longevity to Israel, not to mention NATO control of the entire fertile crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately for you, most of the oil rich Arabs are busy gorging themselves on oil revenues and have been rendered obese, diabetic, and blind to the overthrow of their, culture, religion and political landscape. Tis a pity that you cannot see the bigger picture and the 'blue-print' for the middle East, as it becomes increasingly obvious with each American led invasion.
Your pal Mr Putin and the Chinaman will continue to do what the Americans repeatedly do for their biggest arms customer, and pull out the veto-card at any hint of United Nations sanction. As a result the UN is confined to it's familiar form of a paralysed-duck whenever the goodies of a resource rich Middle Eastern nation are about to be carved up and dished out to friends and relations, in accordance with the overall plan for the Middle East.
Without the UN, the formal international court of appeal has effectively been transferred from the Hague, to CNN, Sky, Fox News, and the BBC, or more correctly the multinationals and big business who sponsor politics, make the jobs, and pay the piper's advertising revenues. All that remains is for the west to do is to drum up enough brainwashed support against your regime, to justify the transition from covert to overt military intervention. Once this happens, you and your cronies can effectively kiss your collective arses goodbye.
I didn't read the application myself, however as soon as your opponents applied for recognition of their rebellion as a 'Democratic Struggle' your days were effectively numbered. As such the carnage and mayhem that are both prelude and sequel to your inevitable departure, are merely perfunctory matters, as are the innumerable innocents who are to pay the collaterally damaged price for the transition to 'freedom' .
How it all works (FYI) is rather simple. The rebels appeal to the west for recognition of their struggle as a 'democratic struggle', and deserving of military and financial support. They agree tacitly and formally to eventually pay for the overthrow of the present government in; lump sum, fee simple and by installments after the fact etc: They fill in the requisite application forms and petitions, show their credentials at the gate, and make the necessary promises of payments in natural resource, raw materials and development or post-liberation re-building contracts etc etc.
Western authorities and backing industrialists will then consider the application on the following basis.
1) Does the country in question have nuclear power and weapons of significance? If the answer is yes, refer to the UN. Does the country in question have enough; gold,oil,uranium, gas, coal, natural resource, strategic position etc., that will make western intervention economically and politically worthwhile? If the answer here is is yes proceed to question number 2. If the answer is no refer to the UN.
2) Do the rebels themselves have a snowball's chance in hell of toppling the existing regime? If not, how much will it cost (in terms of money and body-bags filled with Tennessee farm boys) And how much risk is involved in covertly stirring up the requisite amount of sedition and political instability that might make revolution practicable?
3) Are the rebels willing to call their new regime a "democratic" regime, and thereby permit western multi- nationals to enter the country and 'purchase' at low-cost the nation's natural resource which can then be exported, refined and manufactured into product after the 'revolution'?
4) Can the new government be relied upon to pay NATO back in hard cash, national resource, contracts etc., for its "liberation"?
5) Will the new regime agree to buy weapons of mass destruction and furnish it's future; army, air-force, and navy, solely from western 'democratic' suppliers vis NATO member states?
In general depending upon the answers to the above questions the rebels application for 'Democratic Struggle' may or may not be approved. Once approved however....the rest as they say is History. When the Americans invaded Iraq the process was entirely the same.
You see Mr Assad your biggest mistake was probably aligning yourself with the Russians rather than the Americans (although you were probably aware that the Russians were and are busy transforming themselves into another version of America, but the transformation will prove too late for you) You made the mistake of purchasing your military hardware from Russia and China, and you did this because you were not fond of America's relationship with Israel. As such you made the mistake of letting ideology get in the way of good business sense. Had you been purchasing your military hardware from America, like the Saudi's or the Israeli's you would be safe as houses and the rebels in your country would be considered in the same vein as Palestinian 'terrorists'.
You see, relatively poorer countries like my own little island nation, export; cattle, potatoes and American made Viagra tablets. That's how we make our shillins. But these kinds of exports are in the haypenny place when it comes to military contracts for jets, tanks bombs bullets, warships and submarines.
The auld rules of the market place are universal and you can only sell a thing when there is a want for it. In the west there isn't a want for half of the things that we buy and sell. However when that is the case you have to create a want or a market, that's what advertising is for.
In the same respect there is no point in the Americans and the British making bombers and tanks and machine-guns and the like, and there being no market. These products need a war if they are to be consumed. That is what war is for, and Syria has the privilege of being the next biggest market opportunity since Saddam appeared on the balcony waving a shot gun in the air. War as they say is not just good for business but essential to it. I recall reading that during the Iraq war the American stock exchange made some of it's its greatest jumps and leaps in the history of that fine establishment.
One thing you might be overlooking is the fact that when NATO liberated Kuwait and invaded Iraq, the Kuwaitis had to pay for that liberation. In essence the Americans secured the greatest arms deal in modern history, as every bullet, bomb, rocket, roll of jacks-paper on one of them Aircraft-carriers, is still being paid for. The bill was delivered on to the Kuwaitis, who have passed much of it on to the Iraqis who are busy paying it back in crude, with interest of course. Not to mention when the new government was installed, all the various contracts to rebuild oil wells, gas stations infrastructure, factories and hospitals and the like have been, dished out to what Bush called 'the coalition of the willing'.
For those countries that are engaged in the very expensive business of making weapons of mass destruction, new and growing markets are essential to national economic prosperity and even stability. As such the sales reps have figured out that the best form of military sales is 'retrospective-sales' of the 'liberation' kind. War first, and bills later. It is a much easier process altogether, gets rid of the old-stock that is about to go off, and cuts out all the haggling over prices. And of course after the fact, when the Country in question has bee duly liberated the contract for military hardwarwe goes to the liberators. As the people at Brother, Xerox and Cannon know only too well, its not just about the sale of the printer, the real money is in the refills.
In my estimation the crowd that gets in after you will be no different to yourself. As soon as they get in they will be dishing out the goodies to their friends and relations and to those who bow in the same direction, crack their eggs open at the big end, or whatever are the features that distinguish their sect from yours. However their wont be as much of a share to go to their friends and relations as a big dollop of your nations resource will have to be given over to the west, who will pay them pennies and then turn that natural resource into product.
This disproportionate 'sharing' will undoubtedly be mitigated by the fact that we westerners, with our insatiable multinationals and insatiable appetite for product are far better at digging up resource than non democratic countries such as yours. And although you will be paid pennies for your natural resource we will dig it up faster than you could have ever dreamed possible, and as such the new regime will have plenty of pennies to share with their family and friends.
Personally I see no difference between yourself Mr Obama or Mr Cameron, Mr Putin, Mr Bush or Marie Antoinette. To my mind yis are all singing from the same hymn-sheet. However in the interests of equality and in the hope of staving off the inevitable carnage and mass destruction for a little longer, I would suggest that when you choose to murder and exterminate your opponents, that you follow established precedent and call your victims "Terrorists", or card carrying members of "Al Qaeda" (whoever they are when they are at home?). If you wish to have a share of the moral high ground then you might include the prefix "suspected" in your descriptions, this however remains entirely as an optional extra.
Yours etc
Myself and the brother.
Thursday, 15 August 2013
The American Hero.
I recall watching a comedy sketch some years ago wherein the wife comes home to find Himself in the hay with another woman. When she enters the bedroom, the other woman jumps from the bed, hurries into her clothes and flees the scene. Meantime the wife is distraught and she begins crying with the usual; 'how could you?' and the 'where did it all go wrong?' palaver. Her husband arises from the bed and rather casually dresses himself, completely blanking his wife's questions and tears, as though she wasn't in the room. He finishes dressing, makes up the bed, and retires down-stairs where he takes up a familiar post on his arm chair and begins to read the paper, as though nothing of any significance had just occurred.
Herself follows him down-stairs and into the sitting room, she spends a few moments staring at him in shock and confusion, to which he continues to quietly read his paper. Shaken and upset she goes into the kitchen where she puts on an apron and some gloves and starts to prepare the dinner, her anger and tears melting into confusion. Some moments later he comes into the kitchen and asks her how was her day at work, entirely oblivious to the preceding trauma. She replies with some typical response and the sketch ends with the pair sitting down to dinner as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Undoubtedly my description does not do this somewhat mesogonisitic sketch much justice, however the humorous point being made is that reality, past, present or future, is what you make it, or in some cases what you insist it to be.
The American Philosopher Noam Chomsky has suggested that moral bankruptcy is so blatant in the administration of American politics that the institution does not bother to conceal the contradictions anymore; Invading Iraq without UN approval, the fantasy of weapons of mass destruction, control over the material resource of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and in time Syria, failing to sign up to Kyoto and in its dealings with Israel, and Industrial lobbyists. All of it puts one in mind of the ostensibly faithful and yet entirely deceitful husband who has just left the arms of a harlot.
We westerners choose not to see the lust for oil, destructive consumption, and brute materialism that have undermined the noble ideals behind American Democracy, we are as willfully deluded as the cuckold wife.
Undoubtedly America itself has come to believe the hero-myth that has been relentlessly and universally promulgated by Hollywood for the past six decades. Just like; John Wayne, Mr Ingalls, Mr Walton, Mr Cosby, Sly Stalone etc etc, America can do no moral wrong. Wrongness in a truly moral sense is as impossible for America as it is for it's Big Screen personifications. It is as inconceivable that Mr Ingalls could be capable of true immorality, as it is inconceivable that the American administration is capable of true moral transgression, of lying or being deceitful.
As in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, if we are to witness Mr Ingalls engaging in an immoral act this would be met with the immediate assumption that either Ingalls is being controlled by an external force or influence, or (if he is acting independently and within his faculties), that he is acting for the greater good, the good of his family, the good of his community, and the Christian God. These are the coordinates within which his character (and that of America) are defined, and all of these come before Ingall's own desires for himself. As such his immorality can never manifest as a true immorality, and we willingly accommodate his 'immoral' behaviour with a temporary shift in our own moral boundaries.
In other words we the audience, with our knowledge and beliefs as to the character of 'The American Hero', we are willing to shift our moral standards in order to accommodate his 'breech', because we know or believe that he is acting for the greater good, because he himself, or the American hero is the personification of moral goodness. We merely wait with some nervous anticipation, for Hollywood to provide the necessary justification for Mr Ingall's temporary transgression, the justification that will set our minds at ease and return reality to its normal more familiar coordinates.
After years of unwitting media programming we ourselves have come to wholeheartedly believe our 'American Hero' to be an important determinant of our contemporary reality construct. America has saved the world innumerable times already on the big screen. It continues to do so; in different spaceships, with different antidotes, and different faces behind the mask of the hero. America has saved us from; Aliens, Plagues,Dictators, Terrorists, Genocidal Maniacs, asteroids, saboteurs, assassins of the president, global-warming, global-cooling and global annihilation from an ever expanding myriad of potential sources. In short America has saved us and itself from every imaginable danger, other than the most imminent and prescient danger of itself. Indeed, having saved us a thousand times already, the majority of us are readily willing to hold his/her hand as our indefatigable hero leads us towards the abyss of ecological and social collapse.
When America invades Iraq, destroys global ecology, or follows the dictates of Israel, we know and believe that it commits these moral transgressions for the 'greater good' and as such it requires no justification, no forgiveness and no further delusion.
With catastrophe upon the horizon the world has no choice; if it is to save itself it must unmask the American Hero and look further down the path to see where that hero is bringing us. The opposite will be achieved and the Hero Myth is only deepened by acts of violence against America. We must encourage revolution within America, we must encourage the American Hero to take off his own mask and see the truth of what he has become.
Herself follows him down-stairs and into the sitting room, she spends a few moments staring at him in shock and confusion, to which he continues to quietly read his paper. Shaken and upset she goes into the kitchen where she puts on an apron and some gloves and starts to prepare the dinner, her anger and tears melting into confusion. Some moments later he comes into the kitchen and asks her how was her day at work, entirely oblivious to the preceding trauma. She replies with some typical response and the sketch ends with the pair sitting down to dinner as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Undoubtedly my description does not do this somewhat mesogonisitic sketch much justice, however the humorous point being made is that reality, past, present or future, is what you make it, or in some cases what you insist it to be.
The American Philosopher Noam Chomsky has suggested that moral bankruptcy is so blatant in the administration of American politics that the institution does not bother to conceal the contradictions anymore; Invading Iraq without UN approval, the fantasy of weapons of mass destruction, control over the material resource of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and in time Syria, failing to sign up to Kyoto and in its dealings with Israel, and Industrial lobbyists. All of it puts one in mind of the ostensibly faithful and yet entirely deceitful husband who has just left the arms of a harlot.
We westerners choose not to see the lust for oil, destructive consumption, and brute materialism that have undermined the noble ideals behind American Democracy, we are as willfully deluded as the cuckold wife.
Undoubtedly America itself has come to believe the hero-myth that has been relentlessly and universally promulgated by Hollywood for the past six decades. Just like; John Wayne, Mr Ingalls, Mr Walton, Mr Cosby, Sly Stalone etc etc, America can do no moral wrong. Wrongness in a truly moral sense is as impossible for America as it is for it's Big Screen personifications. It is as inconceivable that Mr Ingalls could be capable of true immorality, as it is inconceivable that the American administration is capable of true moral transgression, of lying or being deceitful.
As in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, if we are to witness Mr Ingalls engaging in an immoral act this would be met with the immediate assumption that either Ingalls is being controlled by an external force or influence, or (if he is acting independently and within his faculties), that he is acting for the greater good, the good of his family, the good of his community, and the Christian God. These are the coordinates within which his character (and that of America) are defined, and all of these come before Ingall's own desires for himself. As such his immorality can never manifest as a true immorality, and we willingly accommodate his 'immoral' behaviour with a temporary shift in our own moral boundaries.
In other words we the audience, with our knowledge and beliefs as to the character of 'The American Hero', we are willing to shift our moral standards in order to accommodate his 'breech', because we know or believe that he is acting for the greater good, because he himself, or the American hero is the personification of moral goodness. We merely wait with some nervous anticipation, for Hollywood to provide the necessary justification for Mr Ingall's temporary transgression, the justification that will set our minds at ease and return reality to its normal more familiar coordinates.
After years of unwitting media programming we ourselves have come to wholeheartedly believe our 'American Hero' to be an important determinant of our contemporary reality construct. America has saved the world innumerable times already on the big screen. It continues to do so; in different spaceships, with different antidotes, and different faces behind the mask of the hero. America has saved us from; Aliens, Plagues,Dictators, Terrorists, Genocidal Maniacs, asteroids, saboteurs, assassins of the president, global-warming, global-cooling and global annihilation from an ever expanding myriad of potential sources. In short America has saved us and itself from every imaginable danger, other than the most imminent and prescient danger of itself. Indeed, having saved us a thousand times already, the majority of us are readily willing to hold his/her hand as our indefatigable hero leads us towards the abyss of ecological and social collapse.
When America invades Iraq, destroys global ecology, or follows the dictates of Israel, we know and believe that it commits these moral transgressions for the 'greater good' and as such it requires no justification, no forgiveness and no further delusion.
With catastrophe upon the horizon the world has no choice; if it is to save itself it must unmask the American Hero and look further down the path to see where that hero is bringing us. The opposite will be achieved and the Hero Myth is only deepened by acts of violence against America. We must encourage revolution within America, we must encourage the American Hero to take off his own mask and see the truth of what he has become.
Thursday, 8 August 2013
An Astronomy of the Real
An Astronomy of the Real.
Astromers get their kicks from looking at the stars. I prefer to direct my gaze in the opposite direction and look at reality, it is as interesting, and there are far more discoveries to be made there. When we look even further, beyond the immediacy of reality, on into the past, we see strange customs, behaviors and beliefs, strange dress and attire. Yet we must temper our laughter with the reminder that the future will find us as ridiculous as we find the past, perhaps even more so.
It is easy to point to the immense catastrophe that is the Irish health service, to its inequality, ineptitude, and its dysfunctional marriage of socialism and extreme capitalism. Every day there is reference to waiting lists, costs and inequality. One day we may grow tired of the same old analysis and finger pointing? Having worked in New Zealand for four years in a general practice training scheme, it is very easy to imagine how it could be so much better; and yet having had some experience in the Gambia in West Africa it is even easier to imagine how things could be much worse.
It is an interesting thing to watch a patient pass into the tube of an MRI scanner, or watch the fiber-optic image of an endoscope pass along someones bowel. One cannot help but wonder if human beings are so intelligent, if we can organize our intelligence so that it can thrombolyse and stent; how is it that the relatively simple task of governance, should remain so remote? Of course once the question is asked, the fun begins because everybody has an answer, and the answer usually coincides with a personal agenda. Yet it is those who have no personal agenda whom are best suited to provide a truthful unbiased answer. However without an agenda, without something to gain, what is the point in raising ones head above the parapet? Clearly (and indeed from personal experience) in the world of Irish medicine ones voiced opinions can mean the difference between a place on a general practice training scheme in Dublin, or perhaps having to take ones family to New Zealand.
A recent article in this paper highlighted the fact that doctors on training schemes felt 'under pressure' from their superiors to provide 'very positive feedback' on the forms used to evaluate their training. In Irish medicine a crucial ingredient to 'getting ahead', is towing the line and keeping your mouth shut. Much to the annoyance of the establishment however, there are always a few who are simply interested in 'getting by', rather than getting ahead. It is these people who are deemed to be dangerous, the 'loose cannons' to be silenced or simply ignored.
The question remains, how is it that we physicians of the modern world can describe the pathogenesis of a prion, and yet remain oblivious to the pathology that undermines our health service and our politics?
When I returned from New Zealand in 2009, I registered with the medical council and paid my yearly subscription. Three months later I was sent another bill for another registration fee, when I called to complain, I was informed that a medical council year runs from July to June, and despite the fact that I had just paid them in March, another registration fee was due in June! What could I do? Only pay this council of doctors who prey on doctors. According to an article in the IMT (May 16th2012) the medical council pays 820k per annum in rent for its comfy offices at Kingram House and; “More than €60,000 was paid to staff by way of a bonus payment in 2010, among its 49 employees.”
Recently membership of a CME group has become mandatory for all GP's. The ICGP charges some 270 for membership to its CME scheme, it also bills the HSE for teaching, and allows drug companies to also pay for and sponsor each of the mandatory 'meetings'.. which usually involve a random speaker speaking on a general subject from the generality of medicine. It is absolutely impossible to garner what is gained from the entire process, other than maintaining an overdraft somewhere at the ICGP. The mercenary philosophy at the heart of the ICGP has reached dizzying heights in recent months with the announcement that the ICGP is to “open the membership door” to GP's who are practicing in Ireland but have no formal training in General practice. According to the college website the application fee for these 'back door' entrants is the modest sum of 7000.00 (no there aren’t any extra zeros!) Bear in mind college membership translates into a GMS list and as such the cost may not be as high as its seems. Of course when we read between the lines its 'Ireland for sale' and business as usual.
When I were a lad and was studying medicine at the RCSI, I was (and remain) utterly amazed how that noble institution can charge its majority of non-national medical students in the region of 50k per anum in fees. Three years of that training is conducted primarily at Beaumont hospital, where Paddy is not only the charitable guinea-pig but he pays the bills; from the toilet paper to the canulas, and the wages of the NCHD's who (out of the generosity of their hearts and the memory of their own inadequate training), provide the most valued 'training” for those who can afford a place at the registered Charity that is the RCSI.
From its private medical schools in Bahrain, to its new high end private nursing home in Drumcondra and its city centre property portfolio RSCI must be one of the most successful charities in the western world, (Vincent de Paul and the Samaritans should be taking a gold leaf from the golden book)
History will undoubtedly laugh at the ironies of Irish medicine, ironies that are clearly underpinned by a single defining philosophy. It is this same market ideology that defines the political modus-operandi of the state. Ironically we are very very clever at maintaining the singular stupidity which underpins most of our medical and our political woes.
Recently a patient of mine told me that she bought a barbeque that was guaranteed for 25yrs, we both laughed when she reminded me that she is 73 yrs old, and the barbeque will likely be under warranty when she is dead and gone. In a sense our problems are not unrelated to the fact that we have perhaps lost sight of our mortality? Few of us like to be reminded that we will not out live the plastic bag in which we have carried our groceries home, and yet it is groceries and the materials we leave behind that defines much of our daily living. Perhaps a more lasting legacy would be a shift in our way of thinking? Perhaps instead of being governed by 'the markets' we might dispense with them and define a new philosophy, one that is compatible with something more than our consuming ourselves to extinction.
Recently my wife and I attended a talk by the English philosopher Alain de Botton at Liberty Hall as part of the Dublin writer's festival. De Botton mentioned Joyce and how lucky we Irish are in terms of our cultural heritage. I wanted to put my hand up at the end of the talk and ask Alain which did he think would be more likely to be found on a Dublin coffee table; a copy of Ulysses, or a dog-eared copy of the Argos catalog?
We are indentured to the ideology of the markets, it is a primitive ideology that defines the institutions of health and politics. Unless we change that ideology and put a different bible on the coffee table, we shall remain as impotent as Bloom the astronomer, looking a skirt and shooting off at the stars.
Dont rock the boat!
Don't rock the boat!
We are led to believe and indeed most are of the opinion that there are significant problems with the establishment of modern medicine as it exists today. In general terms there are two kinds of medicine in Ireland; community and hospital medicine, and each area has its own assortment of 'problems'. There is no shortage of solutions, and the usual form of a solution is the one that might afford the greatest benefit to the individual or group proposing the solution. The present Governments solution is from the old formula of the free pint, and the carrot of free GP care is repeatedly dangled in front of the public nose. What both the problems and the solutions lack is the ability to look at the Health Service from an entirely objective vantage, and to be prepared to accept that we ourselves public and professionals are as much a part of the problem as the entity at the end of the pointed finger.
In respect of General Practice a significant portion of the 'blame' for our grossly inadequate system of community medicine lies fairly and squarely with the body responsible for training General Practitioners. As Bertrand Russell states of philosophy, the same can be said of a College or institution, in that 'the highest compliment one can pay to a philosophy is to be brutally and objectively critical of it', yet criticism of Irish institutions is rarely met with introspection and usually met with consequence for those making the criticism. In many respects Ireland has never evolved out of its status as a colony, we remain a subject people in need of masters and the Institution, be it the Banks, Medicine or the Legal profession remain our masters. We wouldn't have it any other way.
At present there exists two medical systems in Ireland; community and hospital medicine, and most of the problems within one system are a consequence of the problems in the other. Waiting lists for procedures, overcrowded casualties, ill-affordability and lack of services in the community, are all related by the simple reality that there is no clear distinction between hospital and community medicine. The dogs on the street are aware that an enormous portion of the 'treatment' that occurs in the hospital could easily be conducted in the community; here we are all in agreement. Where the conflict and antagonism begins is when we attempt to discern why this should be so, and how it might be remedied.
Realistically we will never be capable of implementing community or hospital services unless we can arrive at a satisfactory answer to this question. I assert that the answer is twofold; GP's do not manage community medicine properly because in the first instance they are not trained or confident enough to do so, and secondly because they have not the time, are not inclined or incentivised to do so.
In the first instance the lack of training is the fault of the ICGP, the Medical Council, and the Medical Colleges, and the second part of the problem is the fault of; the State, the patients and the GP's themselves.
The Colleges.
After medical school and a one year internship at the hospital, What to you have to do to be a GP in Ireland? The answer quite surprisingly is Nothing! Any medical graduate on the General Register can hang a plaque on the wall and practice as a Private GP. He or she can work in the out of hours service (largely staffed by non specialist trained GP's), he or she can provide locum cover, or be employed at any GP practice in the state. Indeed were it not for the army of non specialist trained 'GP's working in the Irish system, community medicine would very likely collapse.
So what is the point or the purpose of specialist GP training in Ireland? In a fundamental and practical sense the only purpose of specialist training in Ireland is that a GP might be eligible for a 'medical card list' whenever such lists rarely become available. Non specialist GP's can see and treat medical card patients anywhere and at any time throughout the state, however to obtain formal 'ownership' of a list of such patients one must be a trained GP. It's an entirely Irish solution to an Irish problem, that has everything to do with money and nothing to do with medicine.
The actual end purpose of specialist training and the specialist register in the Context of General Practice exists solely to control who can access the lucrative medical card system. It is a means of reducing the numbers amongst whom the cream-pie must be divided. Once again it is reasonable to reiterate that the only difference between a member of the Irish College and a non-member is the ability to own a list of medical card patients. In practical medical terms both are fully licensed to practice in the exact same manner and see exactly the same patients. The difference is one of ownership, possession, contracts and quite simply, money.
In practical terms if the end result of General Practice training amounts to little more than entitlement to the lion's share of the community health budget, we should not be surprised to discover that General Practice training in Ireland is entirely lacking, and to a great extent irrelevant to the actual practice of community medicine. For example a significant majority of presentations in General practice have a psychological or psycho-social component, whilst General Practice training in Ireland includes merely the 'option' of a six month psychiatric post. Dermatology waiting lists in Ireland (mostly in the hope of a simple biopsy) are quite possibly the longest on the planet, and not surprisingly one could complete formal general practice training in Ireland without ever once having picked up a scalpel.
Many Irish GP's simply “do not suture” and GP's who work at the out of hours service in Dublin are specifically asked not to suture. Not because of hygiene or the usual palaver about infection control, but rather so as “not to set a precedent” . Undoubtedly most of the GP Members at the out of hours service are also Members of the ICGP and yet, how one could maintain ones membership of a college, fulfil the various requirements for continued education, and still remain unable or unwilling to close a simple flesh wound, is beyond incredulous, and speaks volumes in respect of our health service.
The disparity between training and the actual practice of Community Medicine is not only a product of the non-clinical and entirely financial endpoint of the process, but is highlighted by the fact that so many General Practitioners provide an exemplary level of care to their patients (including suturing) without any formal training in General Practice.
Unless General practice training becomes focused upon the task of producing community practitioners capable and competent in the provision of relevant community health services, we will continue to burden the hospital with that which could easily be managed in the community.
The Patient
Not being eligible for a Medical Card list, my practice is entirely private. I have in excess of 1500 patients and at most I see between 5-10 patients per day (from whom I extort the relatively modest fee of €50 a visit). I have worked for many years at practices with a significantly smaller number of medical card patients and yet I would see 20-30 medical card patients per day.
We don't like to talk about this reality because we are not fond of truths in Irish medicine, however the simple reality is that medical card holders present more often to the GP simply because the service is entirely and completely free, and when something has no price it has no value. Therefore if much of the practice time is spent entertaining frivolous free-consultations, there is little time to actually treat people. This reality is complicated by the fact that many practices are entirely dependent upon their Medical Card incomes, and as such will scarcely rock the boat upon which they sit, regardless of the fact that it might be full of holes and sinking fast.
How community medicine will cope, or whether it will survive the Minister's promise to turn every patient in the country into a medical card patient is beyond comprehension, but in traditional Irish style, it sounds great, and is a clever evolution of the Haughey (Ha Ha) era...'vote for me and I'll buy you a pint' or in this case “free” GP's visits.
The state
The state is probably the most significant contributor to the problems of Irish medicine, however this reality is at once complicated by the fact that the state is a product of we the people, of vested interests such as the medical establishment, the HSE, and of the gullibility of the people to swallow empty promises and accept quangos and bureaucracy as the end result of those same promises.
Unfortunately the state lacks the courage to draw an appropriate distinction between; the nursing home, the hospital and General Practice, and as such it allows the most expensive component of the trio... (the hospitals) to function in the capacity of providing care on all three levels. Not only are the hospitals incapable of doing this, but they must also expend stretched resource upon the education of fee paying medical students. Incidentally the fees being paid by almost a thousand medical students at Beaumont hospital are in excess of 35,000 per anum, all of which is paid to the registered charity that is the RCSI.
In short the State presides over a medical system where General Practice does not fulfil the needs of the community, the hospital cannot supply hospital services, and the state will notprovide a distinction between the two.
The GP's
No problems here, we are all perfect?
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Sick Medicine
The hypocritical oath.
Tom is a 40yr old office worker, he and his wife Kate are the kind of soft spoken, gentle, introspective people who make General Practice a meaningful place to work. Three weeks ago Tom came to see me complaining of a tingling sensation down his left arm with occasional stiffness in the wrist. The immediate suspicion of carpal tunnel syndrome was somewhat borne out during the exam and Tom was referred for physio and given a short course of anti-inflammatories. Tom saw the physiotherapist for two sessions during the week.. however matters came to a head during the following weekend when Tom noticed that his speech was becoming a little slurred.
There are few occasions in my career when I feel compelled to ask myself whether medicine was the right choice for me. No doubt many in the College and the Council would concur. Today was one such day, one where I not only question myself as a member of the Medical Profession, but also as a citizen of Ireland.
Tom is a 40yr old office worker, he and his wife Kate are the kind of soft spoken, gentle, introspective people who make General Practice a meaningful place to work. Three weeks ago Tom came to see me complaining of a tingling sensation down his left arm with occasional stiffness in the wrist. The immediate suspicion of carpal tunnel syndrome was somewhat borne out during the exam and Tom was referred for physio and given a short course of anti-inflammatories. Tom saw the physiotherapist for two sessions during the week.. however matters came to a head during the following weekend when Tom noticed that his speech was becoming a little slurred.
Of an anxious disposition Tom presented to a nearby 'Swift' clinic, and after being examined he was informed that he may have had a “slight stroke” he was advised to go to A/e and given a letter. Whilst driving himself to A/E his nervous disposition evolved into anxiety proper and with Olympian self control he endured the six and a half hour wait in Beaumont casualty, to have a blood test, be examined and ultimately reassured that it was unlikely that he was having a stroke and allowed to drive himself home.
On Monday Tom presented to my practice once again, with an unexplained and unresolved slurring of speech and persistent neurological symptoms in the arm. Fortunately Tom has VHI, this was unfortunately of no use at the Swift clinic, but we will come to the financial costs in a moment. I referred Tom to a Neurologist at a private Dublin hospital. The following week Tom went to see the neurologist, who organised an MRI scan and after examining Tom recommended that he have some bloods done “there and then”. Tom was asked to pay 350 euros for his 20-30 minute consultation with the Doctor. He was then informed that his blood tests would be an additional 300 euros. When informed the receptionist that the cost was 'a bit too much' and that he would rather have them done at his GP's he was informed that one of the tests was a 'special test', that could not be done at the GP's. When he asked if he could have just the 'special' test done and have the remainder at his GP's, he was informed that this might be possible? But that he would have to 'go through the public system to get the remainder his results ' and that this would greatly complicate things. Tom acquiesced and left the rooms of the neurologist after paying out some 650.00 euros for a 30minute consultation and some bloods. Although it is pure here say upon Tom's part he described his encounter with his consultant as being very formal and not at all friendly.. of course we only have Tom's word for that.
This was on Tuesday morning, on Thursday he had his MRI scan. On Friday Tom's wife called to say that Tom was quite unwell, and that she was very distressed and worried on his behalf. It is important to reiterate here that Tom and his wife have been my patients for quite some time that they are very nice people, who don't complain and don't present to the Doctor's unless there is something wrong, and have a resolute faith in the medical profession. I advise Kate to bring Tom to my surgery.
Once again this time on a Friday evening at 5pm Tom and Kate are in my office. On this occasion Kate is in tears, Tom has a hard time holding back his own tears, and I myself am emotionally shaken by the presentation. Tom has an envelope with his MRI films inside, he is pale upset, clearly hasn't been eating, drinking enough or sleeping well since he saw the Neurologist. After I examine him he asks me to look at his MRI scan which I do, whilst warning him that I am neither a radiologist nor a neurologist.
I do the decent thing and lie, I say that I can see nothing wrong with the MRI scan but that we will have to wait on the formal report and in the meantime we should try to deal with the other 'elephant in the room' which is our collective anxiety. I ring the private hospital on the off chance that the MRI might have been reported but of course the world of private medicine has gone home for the weekend.
I give Tom the only remaining tool in my arsenal of impotence in the form of a letter to A/E should his speech become worse over the weekend. I also give him my mobile number my refusal to take a consultation fee has the apparent effect of deepening Tom's anxiety, for which I give him a short term script for some anxiety pills.
Now for the Bills: First presentation to me €50, two visits to the physio €80, visit to VHI €125, return visit to me €30, visit to the consultant €650. Grand total €925 euros. Tom has been out of work for three weeks, if we count the cost of his medication and the fees I have waived Tom's symptoms have cost him almost one thousand euros. He must return to the Neurologist next week and was reassured before he departed that his next consultation would not be as expensive! This will undoubtedly bring the grand total to some 1200 euros of which he is entitled to a 60 euro refund from his VHI.
Tom and his wife will spend the weekend worrying, awaiting the diagnosis which they most fear; a cancer a brain tumour, multiple sclerosis. The professionals, like myself who have treated Tom will sleep quite soundly this weekend, oblivious to the pain Tom and Kate will endure, oblivious to their fears and the financial burden that has been placed upon them. This is modern medicine in Ireland, this is the predatory nature of the relation between the 'system' and decent, hard working good natured people.
It is a good thing that the Hippocratic oath has been dispensed with, else we might add cynicism to the growing vices of our profession.
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Crapitalism at The Irish College of General Practice
Its actually a word crapitalism. Def:
"Use of political favor, force, or position to benefit a for-profit business, but calling it "free-market". Similar to "mercantilism"
This morning I had an email from the ICGP informing that there is a significant delay in processing the MICGP-AR applications due to the apparently unexpected large volume of applications.
For those who don't know Minister Reilly is busy working on the finishing touches to "Free" GP Care for everyone in the Audience. Effectively turning all patients into medical card patients.
Only those on the Specialist Register can see medical card patients, therefore the pressure is now on all GP's on the General Register to transfer to the oxymoronic Specialist Register for Generalist Practice.
The Medical Council refer all such applications to the ICGP and Membership of the ICGP is the gateway to the Specialist Register.
So the ICGP have come up with the MICGP-AR (Alternative Route)which would be more appropriately called the MICGP-PR. This is the back-door to College Membership for mugs like myself and a thousand others who trained abroad. The Fee for the MICGP-PR (MCQ and viva) is €7000.00 Euro, and guess what... The college is overwhelmed with applications.
Hurry Hurry. Bigger than Harvey Normans Sale!
GMS contracts €7000.00 For a limited time only. If you dont buy one .. You may be out of a job real soon!
What a great little country!
"Use of political favor, force, or position to benefit a for-profit business, but calling it "free-market". Similar to "mercantilism"
This morning I had an email from the ICGP informing that there is a significant delay in processing the MICGP-AR applications due to the apparently unexpected large volume of applications.
For those who don't know Minister Reilly is busy working on the finishing touches to "Free" GP Care for everyone in the Audience. Effectively turning all patients into medical card patients.
Only those on the Specialist Register can see medical card patients, therefore the pressure is now on all GP's on the General Register to transfer to the oxymoronic Specialist Register for Generalist Practice.
The Medical Council refer all such applications to the ICGP and Membership of the ICGP is the gateway to the Specialist Register.
So the ICGP have come up with the MICGP-AR (Alternative Route)which would be more appropriately called the MICGP-PR. This is the back-door to College Membership for mugs like myself and a thousand others who trained abroad. The Fee for the MICGP-PR (MCQ and viva) is €7000.00 Euro, and guess what... The college is overwhelmed with applications.
Hurry Hurry. Bigger than Harvey Normans Sale!
GMS contracts €7000.00 For a limited time only. If you dont buy one .. You may be out of a job real soon!
What a great little country!
Saturday, 27 July 2013
The Green Disease
If one was to assert in words or rhyme
that the greens are the cause of ecology's decline
The birds and the bees, the leaves on the trees
would undoubtedly declare one to be out of ones mind
Some months ago when I was a member of the Green party, I recall a meeting (one of many) with Trevor, a man whom I admire more than I dislike. Although he is not the leader of the Green Party, Trevor is undoubtedly the crown-less regent of the Irish Greens. He maintains a hold over the minds and the hearts of most green party members. Most within the Environmentally conscious community can readily recall how he quixotically resigned his ministerial post in the last government following allegations that he had interfered with due process. It emerged (or was leaked to the paparazzi) that in his capacity as a Minister he had written to the Gardai in support of one of his constituents who was involved in a criminal matter.
Sargent is undoubtedly a man of high moral character, chances are it was the media who were interfering in a good process, and that the then Minister's motives were morally sound, if not politically misguided. One cannot help but have an admiration for someone who might act with their conscience rather than the usual squint being focused on a political career. A cynic might declare however that Sargent is more intelligent than he is moral, and that he was simply waiting for the first opportunity to end his own involvement in the illicit affair with the political prostitute that was once Fianna Fail. That he wisely wished to get his trousers on and flee the crime scene before the inevitable pounding of an angry reality upon the bedroom doors of Lenister House.
A voting public might also recall how Trevor resigned the leadership of the party when the Greens went into government with Fianna Fail; keeping his word that he would 'never lead the Party into Government with Fianna Fail. Sargent is either of impeccable moral character, or he is a shrewd and clever politician, who is not only capable of smelling rats, but of being the first to join them in jumping ship when the sea water starts to rush in. Forever the optimist, I am inclined towards the former conclusion but am ever wary of the latter.
These days Trevor is noticeably absent from the top table at most Green gatherings. Although unwilling to lead the Greens into government with Fianna Fail, he has apparently chosen to join most of his former Ministerial cohort and quietly live out their lump sums in political obscurity. Unlike the bevy of bankers and Fianna Fail ministers who have chosen to float from stormy Irish political waters into the calmer climes of a Mediterranean yacht or villa, Sargent has taken the good counsel of Voltaire and has chosen to 'tend his garden'. To focus on his horticultural skills, gardening-publications, and the good work that flows from the National Ecology Centre at Sonnairte.
If there is any suspicion to be levelled at Sargent it arises from the fact that he has chosen to take a back seat and to watch as his party and the Green movement in Ireland slowly disintegrate and disappear from the political landscape. His gardening and scribbling, calls to mind that familiar phrase of Moore, about the triumph of evil when good men choose to do nothing. When the Party is in dire need of leadership that has some moral and ethical foundation, Trevor is pruning apple trees.
If there is a lack of support for Sargent or the Greens in general, it is because the same political failures sit at top table and continue to preside over; the ongoing destruction of Irish ecology and our worsening global ecological crisis. Seeking votes for the Greens with the same personalities at the helm, is akin to asking people to deposit their savings in Anglo with Seany Fitz as the CEO. The Green Party's response to these unfolding tragedy's is not with contrition or introspection, neither do they give voice to the anger and despair felt by most of the ecologically aware members of Irish society; but rather with a closing of ranks and the same failed leadership at the helm of a rapidly sinking ship.
The on going consequence of this closing of ranks, this protection of the old school and old guard, of pensioned ministers and former MEP's; is the loss of many members of real calibre, and a million potential voters, who are not blind to the lack of accountability. Sadly we witness the impotent fracturing of the Green voice into small ineffectual environmental factions. These small voiceless groups are scattered about the country, left to fight; Governments, Multinational Corporations, and vested interests, in doomed contests to; save our bogs, protect our beleaguered ecology from the horrors of fraking, of small and large scale pollution and the destruction of habitat, heritage and species. In the midst of our recession, with the ongoing hunger for 'jobs at any price', the environment is now easy prey, it has no chaperon, no voice and little if any hope.
In conversation at this particular meeting, in recognition of the loss of many party members Trevor stated that: "the Green Party is bigger than individual personalities", and I persisted in my membership of the party because I believed him.
I am however, a realist and a pragmatist, I have always believed that the way forward is principally composed of the shortest distance between two points. If I am guilty of romance it is in the love I have for great men and women who have passed, who have never known me, but have left an indelible mark upon the landscape of western culture, upon the landscape of science and literature, and upon the landscape of my own immortal soul, (what ever that is when its at home).
I have a romantic love for my heroes, for; Joyce, Beckett, Freud, Marks, Tolstoy Dostoevsky, Nietzsche Kafka and others, and despite Nietzsche's understandable scorn for nationalism, I have a love for my country, and hence for Padraig Pearse whom I believe to have been a Christian, an Uberman, a saviour of the scant physical and cultural remnants of our Gaelic, Celtic, and pre-Christian philosophical heritage.
In a practical sense I believe that these things are important, they are important because humanity has lost its way. Humanity has set itself upon a consumptive and materialist path that leads towards catastrophe and mass extinctions. A path that has the horrific side effect of rendering us more and more stupid as we proceed further down its yellow bricked paving. In a practical sense whatever one thinks of Pearse, of the rebellion of 1916, or of nationalism in general; the ideals that Pearse put to the fore of his particular struggle, were and remain the antithesis of capitalism and materialism. They are the antithesis of what Ireland has made of her independence.
In essence my romance, my love for intelligent men and women, my love for Ireland, is contained within the rather pragmatic belief that within these things, within Joyce's Ulysses, within the environmental and cultural ideals that spurned Pearse to his execution; within the alternate world of of the Irish language, within the good counsel of Emerson and Thoreau, and buried within the archaeology of what separates pre-Christian philosophy from the capitalism of modern Catholicism; there can be found the seeds of hope, the seeds of a salvation not just Ireland, but for the human race in its entirety.
What stands in the way, what bars us from seeing here, is ignorance and small mindedness, the intellectual contraction that accompanies globalisation. The stupefaction of the masses (Yes Lord Sugar!) and the increased materialism that accompanies this contraction in our intelligence. That is not to say that the more materialistic one is the more stupid one is (although the point might be argued) from my own perspective I am of the conviction that the more materialistic one is in ones thinking, the less intelligent one is, the less philosophical one is, and as such the more stupid one is in ones behaviours.
We behave stupidly when we are ignorant of an alternative. We must be kept in ignorance if we are to continue to be good consumers (that is the job of RTE) and consumption is at the heart of environmental destruction. This ignorance of the alternatives that lie buried within our rich environmental, cultural and intellectual heritage, is the same entity that Joyce referred to as 'GPI' (General Paralysis of the Insane). Ironically, this ignorance is not blissful, but is instead the cardinal ingredient to unhappiness meaningless and superfluous consumption.
When the Greens were in government, the present party leader was the then Minister for Energy. At a Green convention in Wexford this year, the director of the documentary Pipe Down, which follows the Shell to Sea campaign, the sale of our Natural Gas reserves to Shell, and the struggle of locals against the miles of pipeline that are to traverse their lands. Rather than help arriving from the Green Party, it was the then Minister for Energy and present party leader who signed the eviction orders, turned the blind eye and did the bidding of Fianna Fail.
I am afraid that I have come to differ with Tervor's analysis, and must conclude that the Green Party is no bigger than a few personalities. That the party is presently dominated by an old guard of familiar faces who have moulded it into their own corporation, an entity that is primarily concerned about their careers, their pensions and continued aspirations for a political future.
And yet in terms of ethical policy and environmental ideals, the Green Party is perhaps the closest to the hearts and minds of a majority of decent Irish people. There is (I believe), an ideological continuity that joins a pre-Christian and Celtic respect for nature, with the ideals of Pearse, and the core ideals of green politics. The question the Green party must ask itself is, not how to get new members, but rather, how it has effectively alienated so many? That the 'Emerald Isle' should not be Green in politics is a rich and telling irony.
It is a tragedy that at a time when the environment appears to be haemorrhaging like never before, when the abuses perpetrated upon the Irish and the global ecological landscape are approaching the level of genocide, that this should be the time when the Green party should be upon the brink of extinction? At the Party's Ard Fheis in Galway recently it was reported that the party may soon have to surrender its head office on Suffolk street.
There are many who might feel that this tragedy is simply 'bad luck' or 'bad planning'. I on the other hand believe that it is a collapse that is condoned by party leadership, by their lacking the honesty to declare that mistakes were made and by exercising some of the same accountability that the Greens have always pleaded for when on the opposition benches.
I suspect this type of accountability will not be forthcoming, and that the Captains have decided that the ship must go down with both passengers and crew.
In it's present form, were the green party to be operating in the opposite direction, were its ideals and mandate to be the 'destruction of Ireland's ecology' rather than its preservation, it could only be accused of doing a fine job. At present it's, absence from the political arena, its impotence and the loss of any cohesive environmental movement, translate into two equally unsavoury possibilities. Either the party exists only to serve the personal interests of those at the helm, or it exists to facilitate the ongoing and destruction of environment and the very ideals upon which both it and the state were founded.
that the greens are the cause of ecology's decline
The birds and the bees, the leaves on the trees
would undoubtedly declare one to be out of ones mind
Some months ago when I was a member of the Green party, I recall a meeting (one of many) with Trevor, a man whom I admire more than I dislike. Although he is not the leader of the Green Party, Trevor is undoubtedly the crown-less regent of the Irish Greens. He maintains a hold over the minds and the hearts of most green party members. Most within the Environmentally conscious community can readily recall how he quixotically resigned his ministerial post in the last government following allegations that he had interfered with due process. It emerged (or was leaked to the paparazzi) that in his capacity as a Minister he had written to the Gardai in support of one of his constituents who was involved in a criminal matter.
Sargent is undoubtedly a man of high moral character, chances are it was the media who were interfering in a good process, and that the then Minister's motives were morally sound, if not politically misguided. One cannot help but have an admiration for someone who might act with their conscience rather than the usual squint being focused on a political career. A cynic might declare however that Sargent is more intelligent than he is moral, and that he was simply waiting for the first opportunity to end his own involvement in the illicit affair with the political prostitute that was once Fianna Fail. That he wisely wished to get his trousers on and flee the crime scene before the inevitable pounding of an angry reality upon the bedroom doors of Lenister House.
A voting public might also recall how Trevor resigned the leadership of the party when the Greens went into government with Fianna Fail; keeping his word that he would 'never lead the Party into Government with Fianna Fail. Sargent is either of impeccable moral character, or he is a shrewd and clever politician, who is not only capable of smelling rats, but of being the first to join them in jumping ship when the sea water starts to rush in. Forever the optimist, I am inclined towards the former conclusion but am ever wary of the latter.
These days Trevor is noticeably absent from the top table at most Green gatherings. Although unwilling to lead the Greens into government with Fianna Fail, he has apparently chosen to join most of his former Ministerial cohort and quietly live out their lump sums in political obscurity. Unlike the bevy of bankers and Fianna Fail ministers who have chosen to float from stormy Irish political waters into the calmer climes of a Mediterranean yacht or villa, Sargent has taken the good counsel of Voltaire and has chosen to 'tend his garden'. To focus on his horticultural skills, gardening-publications, and the good work that flows from the National Ecology Centre at Sonnairte.
If there is any suspicion to be levelled at Sargent it arises from the fact that he has chosen to take a back seat and to watch as his party and the Green movement in Ireland slowly disintegrate and disappear from the political landscape. His gardening and scribbling, calls to mind that familiar phrase of Moore, about the triumph of evil when good men choose to do nothing. When the Party is in dire need of leadership that has some moral and ethical foundation, Trevor is pruning apple trees.
If there is a lack of support for Sargent or the Greens in general, it is because the same political failures sit at top table and continue to preside over; the ongoing destruction of Irish ecology and our worsening global ecological crisis. Seeking votes for the Greens with the same personalities at the helm, is akin to asking people to deposit their savings in Anglo with Seany Fitz as the CEO. The Green Party's response to these unfolding tragedy's is not with contrition or introspection, neither do they give voice to the anger and despair felt by most of the ecologically aware members of Irish society; but rather with a closing of ranks and the same failed leadership at the helm of a rapidly sinking ship.
The on going consequence of this closing of ranks, this protection of the old school and old guard, of pensioned ministers and former MEP's; is the loss of many members of real calibre, and a million potential voters, who are not blind to the lack of accountability. Sadly we witness the impotent fracturing of the Green voice into small ineffectual environmental factions. These small voiceless groups are scattered about the country, left to fight; Governments, Multinational Corporations, and vested interests, in doomed contests to; save our bogs, protect our beleaguered ecology from the horrors of fraking, of small and large scale pollution and the destruction of habitat, heritage and species. In the midst of our recession, with the ongoing hunger for 'jobs at any price', the environment is now easy prey, it has no chaperon, no voice and little if any hope.
In conversation at this particular meeting, in recognition of the loss of many party members Trevor stated that: "the Green Party is bigger than individual personalities", and I persisted in my membership of the party because I believed him.
I am however, a realist and a pragmatist, I have always believed that the way forward is principally composed of the shortest distance between two points. If I am guilty of romance it is in the love I have for great men and women who have passed, who have never known me, but have left an indelible mark upon the landscape of western culture, upon the landscape of science and literature, and upon the landscape of my own immortal soul, (what ever that is when its at home).
I have a romantic love for my heroes, for; Joyce, Beckett, Freud, Marks, Tolstoy Dostoevsky, Nietzsche Kafka and others, and despite Nietzsche's understandable scorn for nationalism, I have a love for my country, and hence for Padraig Pearse whom I believe to have been a Christian, an Uberman, a saviour of the scant physical and cultural remnants of our Gaelic, Celtic, and pre-Christian philosophical heritage.
In a practical sense I believe that these things are important, they are important because humanity has lost its way. Humanity has set itself upon a consumptive and materialist path that leads towards catastrophe and mass extinctions. A path that has the horrific side effect of rendering us more and more stupid as we proceed further down its yellow bricked paving. In a practical sense whatever one thinks of Pearse, of the rebellion of 1916, or of nationalism in general; the ideals that Pearse put to the fore of his particular struggle, were and remain the antithesis of capitalism and materialism. They are the antithesis of what Ireland has made of her independence.
In essence my romance, my love for intelligent men and women, my love for Ireland, is contained within the rather pragmatic belief that within these things, within Joyce's Ulysses, within the environmental and cultural ideals that spurned Pearse to his execution; within the alternate world of of the Irish language, within the good counsel of Emerson and Thoreau, and buried within the archaeology of what separates pre-Christian philosophy from the capitalism of modern Catholicism; there can be found the seeds of hope, the seeds of a salvation not just Ireland, but for the human race in its entirety.
What stands in the way, what bars us from seeing here, is ignorance and small mindedness, the intellectual contraction that accompanies globalisation. The stupefaction of the masses (Yes Lord Sugar!) and the increased materialism that accompanies this contraction in our intelligence. That is not to say that the more materialistic one is the more stupid one is (although the point might be argued) from my own perspective I am of the conviction that the more materialistic one is in ones thinking, the less intelligent one is, the less philosophical one is, and as such the more stupid one is in ones behaviours.
We behave stupidly when we are ignorant of an alternative. We must be kept in ignorance if we are to continue to be good consumers (that is the job of RTE) and consumption is at the heart of environmental destruction. This ignorance of the alternatives that lie buried within our rich environmental, cultural and intellectual heritage, is the same entity that Joyce referred to as 'GPI' (General Paralysis of the Insane). Ironically, this ignorance is not blissful, but is instead the cardinal ingredient to unhappiness meaningless and superfluous consumption.
When the Greens were in government, the present party leader was the then Minister for Energy. At a Green convention in Wexford this year, the director of the documentary Pipe Down, which follows the Shell to Sea campaign, the sale of our Natural Gas reserves to Shell, and the struggle of locals against the miles of pipeline that are to traverse their lands. Rather than help arriving from the Green Party, it was the then Minister for Energy and present party leader who signed the eviction orders, turned the blind eye and did the bidding of Fianna Fail.
I am afraid that I have come to differ with Tervor's analysis, and must conclude that the Green Party is no bigger than a few personalities. That the party is presently dominated by an old guard of familiar faces who have moulded it into their own corporation, an entity that is primarily concerned about their careers, their pensions and continued aspirations for a political future.
And yet in terms of ethical policy and environmental ideals, the Green Party is perhaps the closest to the hearts and minds of a majority of decent Irish people. There is (I believe), an ideological continuity that joins a pre-Christian and Celtic respect for nature, with the ideals of Pearse, and the core ideals of green politics. The question the Green party must ask itself is, not how to get new members, but rather, how it has effectively alienated so many? That the 'Emerald Isle' should not be Green in politics is a rich and telling irony.
It is a tragedy that at a time when the environment appears to be haemorrhaging like never before, when the abuses perpetrated upon the Irish and the global ecological landscape are approaching the level of genocide, that this should be the time when the Green party should be upon the brink of extinction? At the Party's Ard Fheis in Galway recently it was reported that the party may soon have to surrender its head office on Suffolk street.
There are many who might feel that this tragedy is simply 'bad luck' or 'bad planning'. I on the other hand believe that it is a collapse that is condoned by party leadership, by their lacking the honesty to declare that mistakes were made and by exercising some of the same accountability that the Greens have always pleaded for when on the opposition benches.
I suspect this type of accountability will not be forthcoming, and that the Captains have decided that the ship must go down with both passengers and crew.
In it's present form, were the green party to be operating in the opposite direction, were its ideals and mandate to be the 'destruction of Ireland's ecology' rather than its preservation, it could only be accused of doing a fine job. At present it's, absence from the political arena, its impotence and the loss of any cohesive environmental movement, translate into two equally unsavoury possibilities. Either the party exists only to serve the personal interests of those at the helm, or it exists to facilitate the ongoing and destruction of environment and the very ideals upon which both it and the state were founded.
Monday, 15 July 2013
The Divine Afflatus
There is perhaps no better way of
describing our modern era other than the manner in which it was described to me by
my former professor of anatomy in the elevator at the RCSI in Dublin.
'We are living', the portly, jocular and yet somewhat stern countenance of Professor Monkhouse declared, 'in an intellectual dark age'. It is a phrase I am constantly reminded of
as the evidence for this astute
observation becomes more poignant with each passing year.
Nietzsche called for thinkers who might see beyond the horizon of 'good and evil' for 'philosophers of the future'. The American philosopher Emerson called for a 'poet of the future'. That future brought Emerson, Hemingway, further afield it gifted the Europeans with; Joyce, Beckett, Thomas Mann, the French existentialists and so on. That same future answered Nietzsche's prayers with Freud. It is doubtless that Emerson would have immersed himself within Joyce's love of the moment. His minute and precise dissection of, a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, and his rendering of the apparently banal into the truly sublime, is a clear answer to Emerson's call for us to transcend the myopia of convention and marvel at the infinity that we are a part of.
In Ellmann's definitive biography of Joyce he describes a scene where Joyce and his brother were on a platform at a train station. The pair observe in a passing moment, a woman hurriedly crossing the tracks. Joyce remarks at how that occurrence would take on an entirely different significance, if the woman had been unfortunate enough to have been struck by an approaching train. Each second; before during and immediately after the incident would become invested with a detail that is generally forgotten as soon as it is perceived because that moment lacks a significance for us.
That they cannot luxuriate in these notions of a future, of a 'next generation' to ignite that torch and carry on this crusade.
Ecology population growth, and the expansion of the human herd, bring a new imperative and altered form to this 'future', one that the past did not and could not have imagined. Humanity may well be compelled to listen to the voice of catastrophe. The same catastrophes we meticulously construct, our monuments and temples to the 'old ways'; all may well be lain to waste by the approaching storm.
Nietzsche called for thinkers who might see beyond the horizon of 'good and evil' for 'philosophers of the future'. The American philosopher Emerson called for a 'poet of the future'. That future brought Emerson, Hemingway, further afield it gifted the Europeans with; Joyce, Beckett, Thomas Mann, the French existentialists and so on. That same future answered Nietzsche's prayers with Freud. It is doubtless that Emerson would have immersed himself within Joyce's love of the moment. His minute and precise dissection of, a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, and his rendering of the apparently banal into the truly sublime, is a clear answer to Emerson's call for us to transcend the myopia of convention and marvel at the infinity that we are a part of.
In Ellmann's definitive biography of Joyce he describes a scene where Joyce and his brother were on a platform at a train station. The pair observe in a passing moment, a woman hurriedly crossing the tracks. Joyce remarks at how that occurrence would take on an entirely different significance, if the woman had been unfortunate enough to have been struck by an approaching train. Each second; before during and immediately after the incident would become invested with a detail that is generally forgotten as soon as it is perceived because that moment lacks a significance for us.
It has taken me more than a single day
to read Ulysses and each time I approach the novel I discover more
and more; ever new veins of intellectual treasure within it's single
day. Doubtless this will be my experience each time I return to the
text for as long as I live. Indeed if Emerson's Christian sentiments were to
survive Bloom' masturbating in the park and defecating with relish
and consummate pleasure, I am sure he would have greatly appreciated Joyce's controlled explosion of a moment into it's constituent infinities. Within this magnificent
rendering of the common place, of the pedestrian perambulations
of one 'El Bloomo', we encounter the clarion call of the
Transcendentalist (whoever he is when he's at home). We hear the words
of Thoreau and the grave admonishments of centuries of Greek
philosophy. For an Irishman to 'know thyself', one could just as easily begin by looking in the cracked looking glass of our humble servant Joyce.
There is of course, for both Thoreau and Emerson, little difference between the lump of compressed carbon one wears upon ones finger and the equally beautiful if not more useful lump that one tosses upon the fire. Joyce was assuredly a capitalist, he enjoyed money and was always short of it, yet neither his wealth nor his legacy were of the material, rather they are of that same substance that Emerson often refers to as 'Soul'.
There is of course, for both Thoreau and Emerson, little difference between the lump of compressed carbon one wears upon ones finger and the equally beautiful if not more useful lump that one tosses upon the fire. Joyce was assuredly a capitalist, he enjoyed money and was always short of it, yet neither his wealth nor his legacy were of the material, rather they are of that same substance that Emerson often refers to as 'Soul'.
The world, unfortunately is not ready
for Emerson, for Thoreau for Nietzsche. It was not then, it is not
now, and one wonders if it ever will be? This is perhaps why philosophy must appeal to the future, for an
audience, for delegates and devotees, for the revolutions that might
evolve our civilisation towards the practical application of intelligence.
However, where is this future that is so welded to our receding horizons? This veritable Eldorado, where each age of thinking men and women do send their prayers? As far as I am concerned this appeal to the future is entirely misdirected. For sure the future will undoubtedly iterate and reiterate the ideals of a Nietzsche and an Emerson. This stream of consciousness will inevitably find it's Zeitgeist, it's voice as the vision of an era is reborn in it's new skin. This inexhaustible seam of precious metal will be dragged to the surface in new and more sophisticated vessels. The old truths,of the old masters will say the same things, but in a language and attire that are more familiar to its age. Where once there was God, the philosopher of the future will substitute Infinity. Where once there was 'soul' the scientist will substitute life. In place of the mysteries of the universe we shall diet on quantum mechanics, astrophysics, ultimately the same points the same philosophies are being iterated and reiterated over and over again.
However, where is this future that is so welded to our receding horizons? This veritable Eldorado, where each age of thinking men and women do send their prayers? As far as I am concerned this appeal to the future is entirely misdirected. For sure the future will undoubtedly iterate and reiterate the ideals of a Nietzsche and an Emerson. This stream of consciousness will inevitably find it's Zeitgeist, it's voice as the vision of an era is reborn in it's new skin. This inexhaustible seam of precious metal will be dragged to the surface in new and more sophisticated vessels. The old truths,of the old masters will say the same things, but in a language and attire that are more familiar to its age. Where once there was God, the philosopher of the future will substitute Infinity. Where once there was 'soul' the scientist will substitute life. In place of the mysteries of the universe we shall diet on quantum mechanics, astrophysics, ultimately the same points the same philosophies are being iterated and reiterated over and over again.
The philosopher of today must always
look to the future because today he has been the first to climb over
that old fence, to escape that old mire. Because he does so alone, because he is, he was, and he must be the iconoclast, the father of revolution he goes to that place alone, and there he must anticipate he future. The purity of the metal he has brought up from
the mine-shaft is inversely proportional to his following. He can only
look to the future for its refinement, for its iteration it's capital investment into an ephemeral truth. How far a nation is from an evolution of its intellect is reflected in the reverence it affords to the philosopher and the poet.
And yet what is brutally distinct this time round, what is entirely different for today's philosophers and poets of the future, is this:
And yet what is brutally distinct this time round, what is entirely different for today's philosophers and poets of the future, is this:
That they cannot luxuriate in these notions of a future, of a 'next generation' to ignite that torch and carry on this crusade.
Ecology population growth, and the expansion of the human herd, bring a new imperative and altered form to this 'future', one that the past did not and could not have imagined. Humanity may well be compelled to listen to the voice of catastrophe. The same catastrophes we meticulously construct, our monuments and temples to the 'old ways'; all may well be lain to waste by the approaching storm.
Should there be a recovery from the disasters we are building, and
doubtless there will be in some form. That same future will laugh
loudly at our ignorance and our 'old ways' just as we deride the ignorance of the past.
Today we have our Pharaohs and our crusades, today we put our fellows
into ovens and gas chambers, today we remain as faithful to the ideals of
the past, we are ignorant of the deluge approaches from the future.
Where to begin with the idiocies and
ignorance's that simultaneously blind and define our age? With medicine perhaps? This enormous
farce that we perpetrate upon ourselves. Indeed, the only thing that
modern medicine preserves is the ignorance necessary to keep itself
alive.
Consider this: which would you rather, illness and happiness, or health and unhappiness? Most of the sensibly sentient would undoubtedly choose the former. Yet what are we saying here other than iterating the reality that illness is entirely mitigated, cured and dispelled by happiness.
How can one label another as relatively sick or unwell if indeed he is happier than ourselves? We are led to believe that healthy people are happy, or at least that they have good reason to be; yet it is the inverse that is entirely and unequivocally true, that happy people are healthy.
Indeed there is little point to being healthy if one is unhappy. Many many billions of dollars are wasted upon the ridiculous attempt of trying to make unhappy people healthy, whilst leaving them chained to the same conditions that causes them to be miserable. Suicide, self destruction quick or slow, this is the primary pathology of our age. Unhappy people invariably engage themselves in the process of 'health-destruction' and all medicine is purely palliative.
It remains a poignant testimony to both the intellectual paralysis of our age, and the abject failure of modern medicine, that unhappiness (in the western world) is the leading cause of premature death. Of course it is not recognised as 'unhappiness' but is referred to by the euphemism of 'life-style'
When are we going to get it into out thick heads that people damage their health because they dislike themselves, and they dislike themselves because they are anxious and unhappy. Whether by design or accident medicine has not taken ownership of the concept of happiness. This ideal once belonged to religion and its forfeit was a consequence of not adhering to this or that particular dogma. Without legal ownership of the ideal of happiness human medicine is simply veterinary. Cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity, all are manifest forms of abuse perpetrated by the self upon the self as a consequence of unhappiness.
Consider this: which would you rather, illness and happiness, or health and unhappiness? Most of the sensibly sentient would undoubtedly choose the former. Yet what are we saying here other than iterating the reality that illness is entirely mitigated, cured and dispelled by happiness.
How can one label another as relatively sick or unwell if indeed he is happier than ourselves? We are led to believe that healthy people are happy, or at least that they have good reason to be; yet it is the inverse that is entirely and unequivocally true, that happy people are healthy.
Indeed there is little point to being healthy if one is unhappy. Many many billions of dollars are wasted upon the ridiculous attempt of trying to make unhappy people healthy, whilst leaving them chained to the same conditions that causes them to be miserable. Suicide, self destruction quick or slow, this is the primary pathology of our age. Unhappy people invariably engage themselves in the process of 'health-destruction' and all medicine is purely palliative.
It remains a poignant testimony to both the intellectual paralysis of our age, and the abject failure of modern medicine, that unhappiness (in the western world) is the leading cause of premature death. Of course it is not recognised as 'unhappiness' but is referred to by the euphemism of 'life-style'
When are we going to get it into out thick heads that people damage their health because they dislike themselves, and they dislike themselves because they are anxious and unhappy. Whether by design or accident medicine has not taken ownership of the concept of happiness. This ideal once belonged to religion and its forfeit was a consequence of not adhering to this or that particular dogma. Without legal ownership of the ideal of happiness human medicine is simply veterinary. Cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity, all are manifest forms of abuse perpetrated by the self upon the self as a consequence of unhappiness.
Happy people are happy enough that they
do not need drugs to make them happy. One of the crucial ingredients
to happiness is freedom. However with freedom comes the implicit
obligation to apply that freedom towards happiness. America loves
it's freedom, and yet it does not know what to do with that freedom, it has yet to evolve this capacity and remains shackled to 'ownership' and the material. In the
land of the free, the free enslave themselves to a greater degree than
anywhere else on earth. They enslave themselves to food, to drugs to
the herd, to idiotic notions of success in the eyes of others.
Freedom is wasted to the degree that the world would be a better place if America were instead a nation of slaves, united in labour towards some common purpose, some husbandry of the land or industry. And yet, enslaved as they are Americans unlike the Europeans and the Asians, possess the freedom to think independently. This remains a crucial distinction. Even in the fading twilight of American industry, they will undoubtedly be the first to imagine a freedom beyond those liberties they have enslaved themselves to. Given enough time, enough rainforest, enough oxygen, America might yet evolve a 'new cowboy', a new hero, and a new crusade; one that leads towards a freedom that is free of the old 'freedoms'.
Freedom is wasted to the degree that the world would be a better place if America were instead a nation of slaves, united in labour towards some common purpose, some husbandry of the land or industry. And yet, enslaved as they are Americans unlike the Europeans and the Asians, possess the freedom to think independently. This remains a crucial distinction. Even in the fading twilight of American industry, they will undoubtedly be the first to imagine a freedom beyond those liberties they have enslaved themselves to. Given enough time, enough rainforest, enough oxygen, America might yet evolve a 'new cowboy', a new hero, and a new crusade; one that leads towards a freedom that is free of the old 'freedoms'.
Freedom from dependence, freedom from
addiction and most importantly freed from ignorance. Socrates was perhaps the first old fool to remind us that the wisest
man is the man who can recognise his own foolishness. Intelligent
people are happy, they are as happy as the fool who is ignorant of his ignorance, yet the happiness of the intellectual is relatively free of disease, is relatively immune to dependence. The intelligent man is identified by his capacity to
honestly recognise and remediate his ignorance, and by the
capacity for independent thought. To think independently one must be free.
The moment one becomes capable of
thinking independently is the moment one obtains the potential for
happiness. Independent thinkers make no aesthetic and ultimately no
material distinction between gold and brass, the one is hard the other
soft; both are equally brilliant when polished and viewed in the
light. Those who can think independently garner as much pleasure (if
not more) from the blackbird as from an evening at the opera. Those
who can think independently will walk with Bloom rest with Thoreau, shout with Neitzsche and iterate in word and deed, the wise counsel of
Emerson and the rest.
Saturday, 6 July 2013
The Last Days of Finn Mac Cumhal (Chapter 2)
THIS NOVEL HAS BEEN MOVED TO ITS OWN BLOG: http://www.dyingireland.blogspot.com
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