Archive for category People
Story telling
As a kid (four or five, I can’t remember clearly enough, although I can remember exactly where I was standing and what I was thinking about) I can clearly recall wondering whether it was necessary to hold onto the reasoning behind a conclusion, or whether is was only the conclusion that matters.
I foolishly decided only the conclusion matters, whereas (as there is no truth, only debate and argument) only the reasoning is really significant.
I think, in a nutshell, that I will tell my kids that “you must always be able to tell a story”. Telling a story is the best way to remember something, and the best way to make the reasoning/context accessible to other people.
I will begin doing this myself.
Nicht Geschimpft ist Lob Genug
“Not being told off is enough encouragement”. It’s a local (Schwab) expression, and explains very clearly both the ridiculously high expectations people have, their seemingly negative attitude where expecting a “thank you” really is too much, but also the isolation and fear that most people seem to live under, with their very close and trusted friends being the only real social contact. The laws here are so detailed, penetrative, and literally enforced, that it is impossible not to be doing something wrong. I always get the feeling that people are suspicious of one another in case they might get reported.
Feelings
You live your feelings, not the outside world.
Learn to do what you feel like, by trying things out.
First impressions of San Francisco
The major shift seems to be the incredible social diversity of people, and the areas in which they live.
This diversity must inevitably give rise to Individualism, as there is no denying just how fundamentally different the individuals you come into daily contact with are – the racial and social origins are so different. However, this is not just a selfish individualism as it is often painted in Europe.
Contrary to my expectations, this invidivualism seems to have fostered a quite incredible culture of tolerance – which become absolutely indispensible if such different people are to live together peacefully.
It is mind-expanding in the truest sense. Almost every individual that I have met so far is a unique blend of races. It is as if conversation takes you to a new country – countries of one which can probably only exist here. It reveals and forces you, as an individual, to question the predjudices which otherwise make communication impossible.
I have found that within these few short days, my initial inability to connect with people has forced me to re-evaluate my behaviour in profoud ways.
- Imposing your feelings blinds you from understanding others. The power to select parallel universes may belong to us all, but being blind to the feelings of others places us in a lonely universe.
- Intelligence without arrogance.
- To protect, without aggression or intimidation.
- Self-defense by yielding rather than striking.
- Connecting with others is all about compassion – with how they feel the world and the congnitive consequences that follow.
- Most people care nothing about each other unless something has been given to them, or taken away from them.
- It is incredibly important to speak and act gently, and to stay calm (to not let the mind jump around or get too excited).
- To be the boss without throwing your weight around
- To be humble without acting as a subordinate or inferior
- The potential for englightenment lies within us all, we must simply learn to avoid the traps set by our childhoods – internalised before we knew better.
There are other very obvious paradoxes – there is very little advertising, and almost no dominance of the brands we take forgranted (e.g. Coke). We are more American than the San Franciscans it seems.
There is also clearly a weaker consideration than in europe for how infrastructure can serve the public good.
I also have a feeling that the “inaliable right to happiness” in some quarters causes those whose suffering may compromise individual happiness to be utterly ignored or suppressed. This country may be most optimally suited for people who know what they want and have the money to take it.
The http://www.howweird.org festival was also exactly right.
Facebook and its links to the CIA/Darpa
Given that secret police have always functioned precisely through watching, analysing, and making available the friendships and associations of social networks alongside individual psychological profiling, this certainly wouldn’t be a surprise :
Couch Surfing
The new way to travel in community 
What do you say?
What do you say to an old lady, a grandmother, a once successful business woman,
when she lies awake at night, with nothing to wait for but the next day?
with nothing to wait for but the utter lonleiness?
with the fear of knowing that her own mind is disintegrating under Alzheimers?
with the pain of arthritic bones,
trapped in a zimmerframe which moves a meter a minute.
She cries as she wishes for death, and cannot understand why it does not come.
She longs for suicide, but is not sure that it is what her God wants,
but she does not understand why he lets her suffer.
At the same time, her last true friend,
older than her and still as sprightly and alert as a teenager,
is powerless to help, but does comment that,
“if other people were committing suicide in their old age, I would also feel obliged to”.
What do you say, to combat the pain and terror and lonliness?
What do you say when you believe that these three things are the fundamental ingredients of life as we know it.
I know of no balm.
I would love to spin her a fiction, that a glorious afterlife awaits her,
but to believe that, we must all be mad.
The truth of nuclear fission
When governments look for the quick way out of their energy crises and turn to Nuclear, it does well to think of the Chernobyl disaster.
Governments across the world have tried to prevent the true magnitude and consequences of the disaster from being known.
- Over 20,000 people died, and over 200,000 are disabled as a consequence of radiation exposure.
- It brought the USSR to its knees. A larger disaster was only averted by deploying 500,000 people to tackle the blaze, at the cost of 18 Billion dollars (in 1986). If it had happened in the UK or France, what then?
- An area 30km in radius around the plant will remain uninhabitable for the next 250,000 years.
The consequences of failure must be recognised. Please take time to watch this incredibly brave documentary, about the incredibly brave people who battled to regain control over this terrible stupidity.
Obama, the beginning
Well, what a start. Ordering the gulags and secret torture centers to be closed. Ordering government departments to respond to Freedom of Information requests in a spirit that acknowledges they are public servants.
Under Bush the government was transformed into a tool to further the interests of an elite, through secrecy, intimidation, and brute force. It felt hopeless and inevitable, but Obama is just beginning to show how critical and powerful the position of President is. He is the most visible man on the planet, and simply by stating that he will not accept these abuses of process and morality, is able to give courage and support to all those who are like-minded in every nook and cranny of society.
I though he promised too much, I could not believe he might be capable of delivery. I have to confess, however, the man is doing things the right way. There is no time for patience, he is getting right down to cleaning out the Aegean stables!
Go Obama!