We have been traveling a bit this summer and although I had hoped for some kind of inner change for the better or from some meaningful human encounters, I had to put that aside and be grateful for the nice trip and weather, for the surroundings and the smooth trip. The rest is just a bowlful of questions.
Is is me or the others feeling blocked and unsettled? Is it a real state of the mind and soul or just an induced state that separates us from the happiness at hand?
Seems like many people have the same concerns, the same yearning for a more accomplished life, for something hard to define, rather defined by its not being there. Yet instead of uniting them, this interior agitation is separating them. It is hard to trust another human being, it is hard to count on something to be there constantly - this permanent quest makes everybody opportunistic in many ways. Some will change for the money, some for a social position, some are still trying painfully to find themselves and will be different from period to period, as they go through different stages, like Picasso with his paintings.
The clearest image I found was in the case of some people who complained of poverty and lack of horizon, seemed to be very economical in their household and yet spoke of having a monthly income that amazed me: it was big. Simple people, not many social expenses, living in the countryside. I cannot understand why the revenue cannot provide a happier life in such cases - what is missing? Maybe I am prejudiced. I assume that for the down to earth - ier people having a functional material security would be enough or I am assuming that if my life would have the material problem solved then I would get rid of many sleepless nights. Yet I have an organic issue that is the most difficult to solve in our times, and that got me an obstinacy against the superficial ways that would not tackle this: I want to do something I love, something that makes me happy and forget about the hours passing by and integrate this in my family life, whilst not being materially challenged.
Why this isn't yet an option remains another question. Years spent in the wrong schools, which taught me nothing about life, wrong thinking patterns, wrong moments... some of the available explanations send me in an endless loop. I also have a fixation with authenticity and it still seems weird to me to hear about some weird jobs where one does not produce, does not shine towards the world, but rather intermediates, speculates on people's wishes or even creates needs of wishes to be solved by him or her. It's like money are meant to go from where they are to other pockets only based on motives of fashion, whim, ego or treating oneself, rather that based on serious, sustainable reasons. It's like, no, I will not buy a wooden box made by hand which hold in it a precious effort of being unique and putting some soul into the work, but I will buy that colored plastic box that is so in this summer... Why on earth do we have to keep thinking like this? And the sister of the plastic box is the propagandistic ecological wooden box with an exorbitant cost, which is also bought not for the utility or for the personality of its maker, but for the ideas which it represents. Ideas which, I am sorry to say, are speculated by many in the ecological field, like any other ideas ever. Like people who do not make themselves the products, but add some color on some mass made Chinese boxes, or exploit some poor underpaid peasants whose village offers them no other workplace besides the little wood shop of Mr. Natural. Then the owner of the business goes on and uses the money in his fashionable life which comprises in many cases also plastic boxes...
It's like people have gotten used to being cheated, lobbied, targeted by publicity and propaganda that they expect this whenever doing something. The small and quiet shop in the corner that does not fight to attract customers, but just has good merchandise is not visited by almost anyone in our days. We are mass thinking even in the alternative or so called alternative actions.
So unhappy people with no horizon and money in the bank are not initiating any measure for the better, they just stay and wait for someone to take their money. For a bad cause of a good cause. But I still say this is a step back for the human nature. Instead of the basic needs, we now have basic needs plus being in with the trend. And those who make the trends are always unclear, and ultimately most of the trends are made having means of profit behind. And footballers and dancers and singers are admired like gods, while those who find it hard to lie and label themselves in an attractive way and play the complicated games of our society are pushed into oblivion. A good soul, a natural rough talent value nothing, instead a shiny exterior, a clever trick and lots of work make everything. Sometimes even without the work, but that element is not to brag about, because it is not good for the public image... The public are the masses who have to believe, to buy and to go on with their tedious duties, so they are presented idols who somehow worked their way to glory or idols who embody all the secret sins in every person: lazy, talking dirty, overeating, hating their enemies and worse.
So again why? Why can we realize things as they are, many of us, yet we are incapable of doing anything else but act some behaviors that are mass imprinted? Isn't it freaky, for example, that in an industrial small city for example, everyone who is the same age, say 60, had a similar life trajectory - got hired by the factory at say 19, then got laid off at 30 something, worked to some other nearby factory etc? We are beings, not cattle.It is impossible that in a lifespan such a city had not produced a musician, a painter, a farmer, a writer, a traveler, a philanthropist... only that what they were meant to be was lost in the mass idea: these people are going to work in this factory, some plain workers, some engineers...
Now the mass behavior is dividing people in a dangerous way. Those who are apparently happy or without a worry in the world consume huge amounts of everything and practically throw their money away, as if one moment of savings would lose them the statue of stress free and rich; those who do not like their lives with every pore of their skin are grumpy and desperate - some of them unfortunately wish to get into the first category, some have joined the underdogs groups available in order to be unhappy in a group. And the media throws to them subject after subject on which they should and would hate each other, to keep them occupied.
Who will change the world for the better then? Not a new generation of fanatics, on any chosen subject... Not the people afraid to disagree with their group who guarantees them some social position and revenues, for fear of incertitudes and falling down the social ladders. Not those who forcibly take for granted that we should be all thinking alike...
Are we just rerunning the 70's? The freedom generation produced in their children an antagonistic reaction and generation of suits wishing order and discipline. not the solution either - that what?
The regulating factor of society have unfortunately sold out: churches kindly approving in their notorious members stealing and behaving in a way that cannot serve as example, communities who are still friendly towards the local politician who ruined their livelihoods, writers and philosophers who had to write appealing to the public or else nobody deals their books. One way or another selling out is also a trend... followed by an elaborate personal cover up in order to be happier with what we have become. And a herd of personal trainers to help us with that (talking about made-up professions who produce what? an artificial conscience silencing?).
Can't anyone remember that a functional society has to have and respect rules meant for the well being of a average imaginary person, a person who can be naive and still survive, who can be without work for a while and still survive, who can refuse to make managerial, financial, ecological and administrative major choices because it is not his profession to do so and still wake up tomorrow and have a safe medium to live in? With a reasonable space for the particulars individuals, upwards or downwards from this middle point, but concentrated on this safe space, this middle space where one could live peacefully.
Why do we have to have emotional and aggressive societies, advantageous for the rich, or only for the poor (although I think this was only an utopia), for those who are incessantly forced to choose in order to justify their existence? Why do I have to chose in a store because toxic foods are also there, near healthy ones? Why am I expected to intervene in the jobs of the too many state and people representatives even though they are paid to take care of a society and I am not?
Why do I always find that I have to be for or against something or else... while in the everyday life one also has to be an economist, a cook, a cleaning person, an IT person, a repairman, a constructor, a parent, an educator and so many other things because we are all specialized in everything and in nothing, all are so expensive and the time is insufficient?
This overestimated hands on intervention of normal people in leading their own societal organism is a false solution, or rather just a diversion. For such a solution we need first to be educated in smaller groups while growing up. Pushing such an attitude now it's like you are pumping up someone to believe that he can be a football scorer and a goalkeeper in the same time. How can this be? It's like a mental illness, only the patient is our society.
Why can't I pick up the pieces of my own life? Who is supposed to see clear what is right and wrong in what I am doing or not doing.
I am afraid the answer lies somewhere in the region of the heart, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is an organ that had shut in itself inside our superficial chests and from which we have, beside its physical functions, only vague memories...
Feel, such a hard thing to do...
Wednesday 18 September 2013
Saturday 25 May 2013
Houses
Throughout our lives we usually have more than one house. Some we grow up in, some we spend holidays in, some are ours, temporary of for more than just a little time. Some we adopt in the secret of our souls just because we can feel them speaking to us and for some we may be longing our entire lives...
A house exists outside our physical person as well as inside, and sometimes from the inner house, carried in our soul, a sort of spiritual distortion of reality emanates outwardly. This happens for most people with their childhood house. I grew up in a partially moldy house, who forced all the members of the family to reunite in one room for the winter period. Tall ceilings, wooden doors and windows. Ice flowers on the windowpane in freezing weather, a mushy black stuff in the lower margins of the window in wet weather. The house sometimes scared me when it was squeaking from its floors, sometimes warned me of all that was missing in its human inhabitants when it was almost echoing under the pale electric light in the evenings. It felt a big too big, yet it had peaceful corners, and its own smells. In times of not so much happiness it allowed a kind of retracting into those corners, into the neutrality of its brick-wall entity that was re-comforting. I sometimes blamed a certain kind of aloofness in my own life on the out-of-time character of this house. It was, at that time, trending flats... studios, one bedroom, two bedrooms, whatever. Sharing a block of flats with a bunch of characters that tended to enter their neighbors' life... I wanted us to have a flat. finally we got one, we moved, and a bit of me remained there. It was never the same. I still wonder the rooms of my childhood house in my dreams. I think it is mostly because with houses we almost never get closure, we are not able to visit them later and acknowledge how they "betrayed" us now, and have grown to love other inhabitants...
I have sometimes established a link, known just by me and the house, with completely foreign buildings, with old flats that seemed out of place in the large buildings with many steps they were in, with some nice marbled staircase, wide and flooded by sun rays... some other houses just wink to me when I pass them on the street.
But it remains yet to be done the feeling of having a home, as if something in my soul refuses to settle to a new building, or maybe it isn't the right time for this... the nostalgia of the childhood house is still present, despite all odds.
There are also houses that I've considered obnoxious or boring, and then there are all the hideous productions of uninspired modern design which have no voice of their own, no corners to hide in for a relaxing lecture, no significant windows to frame the outside world as viewed from a house. And the long dreamed for meeting of a city house with the nature around it, of a city house with a garden... maybe an illusion of well being and comfort, with the illusion of a little cat and a few flower beds. Sometimes I can hardly tell if I am just kidding myself or my intuition still works and if what I feel would be nice really would be so...
We have dwellings and houses in our soul, empty or furnished, windowed or closed. We have people that feel like houses, in a positive way, if we are lucky. Are we a house, a home for others?
And when in my dreams I walk through the rooms of my old houses or of my grandparents' houses, am I there or are they just shadows in my soul?
A house exists outside our physical person as well as inside, and sometimes from the inner house, carried in our soul, a sort of spiritual distortion of reality emanates outwardly. This happens for most people with their childhood house. I grew up in a partially moldy house, who forced all the members of the family to reunite in one room for the winter period. Tall ceilings, wooden doors and windows. Ice flowers on the windowpane in freezing weather, a mushy black stuff in the lower margins of the window in wet weather. The house sometimes scared me when it was squeaking from its floors, sometimes warned me of all that was missing in its human inhabitants when it was almost echoing under the pale electric light in the evenings. It felt a big too big, yet it had peaceful corners, and its own smells. In times of not so much happiness it allowed a kind of retracting into those corners, into the neutrality of its brick-wall entity that was re-comforting. I sometimes blamed a certain kind of aloofness in my own life on the out-of-time character of this house. It was, at that time, trending flats... studios, one bedroom, two bedrooms, whatever. Sharing a block of flats with a bunch of characters that tended to enter their neighbors' life... I wanted us to have a flat. finally we got one, we moved, and a bit of me remained there. It was never the same. I still wonder the rooms of my childhood house in my dreams. I think it is mostly because with houses we almost never get closure, we are not able to visit them later and acknowledge how they "betrayed" us now, and have grown to love other inhabitants...
I have sometimes established a link, known just by me and the house, with completely foreign buildings, with old flats that seemed out of place in the large buildings with many steps they were in, with some nice marbled staircase, wide and flooded by sun rays... some other houses just wink to me when I pass them on the street.
But it remains yet to be done the feeling of having a home, as if something in my soul refuses to settle to a new building, or maybe it isn't the right time for this... the nostalgia of the childhood house is still present, despite all odds.
There are also houses that I've considered obnoxious or boring, and then there are all the hideous productions of uninspired modern design which have no voice of their own, no corners to hide in for a relaxing lecture, no significant windows to frame the outside world as viewed from a house. And the long dreamed for meeting of a city house with the nature around it, of a city house with a garden... maybe an illusion of well being and comfort, with the illusion of a little cat and a few flower beds. Sometimes I can hardly tell if I am just kidding myself or my intuition still works and if what I feel would be nice really would be so...
We have dwellings and houses in our soul, empty or furnished, windowed or closed. We have people that feel like houses, in a positive way, if we are lucky. Are we a house, a home for others?
And when in my dreams I walk through the rooms of my old houses or of my grandparents' houses, am I there or are they just shadows in my soul?
Monday 20 May 2013
Layers
I have reached a point where, although I may deduct there are more layers in my personality and spirit than I have had the opportunity to see so far, I estimate, out of fixed factors such as mathematics, probabilistic ans sociology, that those other layers, yet undeveloped and unsolicited (and I am talking here about positive may-have-beens) will probably remain dormant forever.
We are complex beings, yet we have after all a fixed (once it belongs to the past), one way path through this life. Whatever our dreams might be, the reality we have chosen (aware or not of our choices) pins us down year after year and offers no possibility of ever drawing a line and judging for ourselves how far have we strayed from what we could have been. We can never see our alternative paths followed, for comparison and we can never see ourselves and our ripples in the greater picture, made of the people we have met and affected in one way or another.
It is nostalgic and pensive though to get even a vague glimpse of what there is unawakened in us, of what echoes some other circumstances of life can produce inside the big human temple each of us is. it is like feeling in the dark a bouquet of possibilities, but without... strength (?) ... luck (?) we can never make be what it might be... we cannot feel on the real, authentic track with our life.
The limitations make sure of that, of the "not"-s in one's life. There are many: outer limitations (first the thoughts of them made me create this new post), and inner limitations - the trickiest. For if we may shake ourselves of the false ideas surrounding us socially, we have layer upon layer of delusion on the inside, and many breakthroughs and shedding of a layer prove to be just another new crust, as unsatisfactory as the other.
Even this feeling of unaccomplished, of wasting the time with struggling to grow up, defend oneself from tough situations, with the many mundane activities that seem to go nowhere can be ambiguous: is it a spiritual or mental exhaustion or is it for real a grasp of the difference between what it is and what it could or should be somebody's life?
I will choose the second option, at least for the purpose of this post, based on the same ambivalence I used to have with how things taste. Nothing from the foods I ate as a grown-up tasted objectively great (meaning that here I am not taking into consideration how food tasted after a long time of not eating), and discussing this with others who felt the same I met the theory that the phenomena is due to the changes that distinguish an adult taste buds from a child's. I kind of resigned myself to believe this, until, one day, I traveled in an area new to me and I found the good old tastes in some of the foods there (mind you, moderately expensive foods). My taste buds were OK, yet the food had gradually changed over the years and it basically became slop. Yet the generally accepted belief was that the grownups loose their capacity of enjoying such a basic element of life because ... they became adults. It is easier this way, presenting the fact as a truism would generate no consequences, only limited nostalgia. No panic about where is this world heading, and why generation after generation we feel like we are loosing something instead of gaining...
To get to my initial meaning of layers that I had in mind - it was that of social layers. These, regardless of politics and regime, are pretty well sedimented, and usually those who treat societies as machineries need to be able to count on their sedimentation. Meaning that a person born middle class (if this still exists, although in some countries is considered almost extinguished), it will most likely remain middle class, even if the benefits of this statute will vary over the span of its lifetime. Because it is brought up to think middle class, and the only elevator upwards would be the educational system, which stopped being free long time ago. There are always exceptions, but the way we respond to the medium while being children is so deeply in the core of our personality that we may choose to be different, yet underneath that is the emergency way of thinking and being - the one we developed in.
There are times in history when the societal layers open up "for ventilation", and for a brief period of time people can go up or down, and create a change of life for them (on the outer side) and for their offspring (this time also on the inside). I have seen such "successful" people, unhappy at the core, because they were transplanted in a completely strange medium to the one they have grown up in, yet forcing themselves to look adapted and natural, in order to support this leap for their children. The jump, I think, can be easier when it is a group jump, and those who were once in similar conditions now share the new place in society and also their feeling of eternally being disparaged. Probably that is why some of the simplest types tend to gather their extended family around in such situations, sometimes with negative effects, like for example creating groups of influence, and isles of friends and family that clog the circulation in the new area of work or living they are in. Many of the unpleasant ordinary people that have found themselves thrown into money and functions after living a simple childhood are not mean people to start with - they just don't cope with changing the "layers". Some adapt better their exterior appearance and habits, by copying what they perceive around them in the new surroundings. Some not. Usually when large groups change layers by a twist of history the effects are disastrous, like in the communism experiment. Yet I would rather consider that the communism was a conducted experiment, based on some ideas applied in a very debatable manner, yet ideas, shifted around in order to offer decoys from the feeling of panic generated by the ordinary people who had changed the societal layer.
Take a couple of these historical moments, and one can see how the world is like a huge selector of people. random or not, these changes, these "mix and spread" type moments, leave their marks for the future. What were my many ancestors doing during the world wars? Were they peasants, merchants, soldiers, were they migrating from a land to another? How was their layering, inside and out?
I am not inclined towards genetic determinism, not even social determinism, though it might seem so. I am merely considering what chance does an individual have during its own lifetime of becoming "himself", provided he has first to overcome a disadvantageous role in life? I think there exist waisted spirits or souls just because society is not curious about the "newcomers", but rather obstinately occupied with preserving a pretty inequitable status quo. When some have too much and they got it all figured out for their offspring, for generations, others have nothing and others waist their lives struggling in between, and the bridges between the societal layers have been blown off or reduced to the abilities of being slick and pretense in order to make believe, clearly we are over the top going downhill as mankind, or someone is foolish enough to play God here on Earth.
Those who have should not be obsessed with how dangerous it is to relinquish some of their money and power in order to ensure a common ground of well being for the entire bottom layer, and in order to open up some permanent channels in between all the classes. History will repeat itself otherwise, and with unpleasant hiccups would mix and spread again. Or maybe this is being prevented by false pressure valves - that is also possible. But even so, gradually we will be out of great minds and great souls. Already many who are at the top smell like "plastic", are fake and boring. Many of the remaining thinkers are bored and dry, or tend to resemble walking computers. Keeping the lid tightly closed produces this infusion of non-quality and boredom. Fear is the base of this status quo enforced on society, the fear of those who are not happy being where they shouldn't be, yet they would rather feel lavishly secure than try to discover their real place in life and leave their post to maybe another, whose destiny is to be there.
Of course I am biased. I think with my personal brain, therefore subjective. I witnessed a societal upheaval during my life, real or apparent, i tend to say both, in different percentages, but I could not change my layer... not the right age. I was just a spectator, and then the valve closed, and maybe I did not wanted to accept how stuck I am for years and years. Stuck in my way of thinking, in my limited schooling which waisted years of my life during which the best results were redundant, because nobody followed through; stuck in my ideas, in my impressions about myself, in my hopes. then later in my dreams who faded away and became poorer and poorer. I can't help functioning in a certain way with my mind and soul, but this way is of very little use in the layer I am in.
Or maybe I geographically kid myself, once more, and I am just lonely, in a niche somewhere, where the only advantage was that look towards some things, rather than being immersed in the same things with no time to look or think too much.
Oh well, it is spring once again, and the sun is still free, and the vast and useless information on the Internet creates the empty sensation of community with the world - like a fool's gold...
We are complex beings, yet we have after all a fixed (once it belongs to the past), one way path through this life. Whatever our dreams might be, the reality we have chosen (aware or not of our choices) pins us down year after year and offers no possibility of ever drawing a line and judging for ourselves how far have we strayed from what we could have been. We can never see our alternative paths followed, for comparison and we can never see ourselves and our ripples in the greater picture, made of the people we have met and affected in one way or another.
It is nostalgic and pensive though to get even a vague glimpse of what there is unawakened in us, of what echoes some other circumstances of life can produce inside the big human temple each of us is. it is like feeling in the dark a bouquet of possibilities, but without... strength (?) ... luck (?) we can never make be what it might be... we cannot feel on the real, authentic track with our life.
The limitations make sure of that, of the "not"-s in one's life. There are many: outer limitations (first the thoughts of them made me create this new post), and inner limitations - the trickiest. For if we may shake ourselves of the false ideas surrounding us socially, we have layer upon layer of delusion on the inside, and many breakthroughs and shedding of a layer prove to be just another new crust, as unsatisfactory as the other.
Even this feeling of unaccomplished, of wasting the time with struggling to grow up, defend oneself from tough situations, with the many mundane activities that seem to go nowhere can be ambiguous: is it a spiritual or mental exhaustion or is it for real a grasp of the difference between what it is and what it could or should be somebody's life?
I will choose the second option, at least for the purpose of this post, based on the same ambivalence I used to have with how things taste. Nothing from the foods I ate as a grown-up tasted objectively great (meaning that here I am not taking into consideration how food tasted after a long time of not eating), and discussing this with others who felt the same I met the theory that the phenomena is due to the changes that distinguish an adult taste buds from a child's. I kind of resigned myself to believe this, until, one day, I traveled in an area new to me and I found the good old tastes in some of the foods there (mind you, moderately expensive foods). My taste buds were OK, yet the food had gradually changed over the years and it basically became slop. Yet the generally accepted belief was that the grownups loose their capacity of enjoying such a basic element of life because ... they became adults. It is easier this way, presenting the fact as a truism would generate no consequences, only limited nostalgia. No panic about where is this world heading, and why generation after generation we feel like we are loosing something instead of gaining...
To get to my initial meaning of layers that I had in mind - it was that of social layers. These, regardless of politics and regime, are pretty well sedimented, and usually those who treat societies as machineries need to be able to count on their sedimentation. Meaning that a person born middle class (if this still exists, although in some countries is considered almost extinguished), it will most likely remain middle class, even if the benefits of this statute will vary over the span of its lifetime. Because it is brought up to think middle class, and the only elevator upwards would be the educational system, which stopped being free long time ago. There are always exceptions, but the way we respond to the medium while being children is so deeply in the core of our personality that we may choose to be different, yet underneath that is the emergency way of thinking and being - the one we developed in.
There are times in history when the societal layers open up "for ventilation", and for a brief period of time people can go up or down, and create a change of life for them (on the outer side) and for their offspring (this time also on the inside). I have seen such "successful" people, unhappy at the core, because they were transplanted in a completely strange medium to the one they have grown up in, yet forcing themselves to look adapted and natural, in order to support this leap for their children. The jump, I think, can be easier when it is a group jump, and those who were once in similar conditions now share the new place in society and also their feeling of eternally being disparaged. Probably that is why some of the simplest types tend to gather their extended family around in such situations, sometimes with negative effects, like for example creating groups of influence, and isles of friends and family that clog the circulation in the new area of work or living they are in. Many of the unpleasant ordinary people that have found themselves thrown into money and functions after living a simple childhood are not mean people to start with - they just don't cope with changing the "layers". Some adapt better their exterior appearance and habits, by copying what they perceive around them in the new surroundings. Some not. Usually when large groups change layers by a twist of history the effects are disastrous, like in the communism experiment. Yet I would rather consider that the communism was a conducted experiment, based on some ideas applied in a very debatable manner, yet ideas, shifted around in order to offer decoys from the feeling of panic generated by the ordinary people who had changed the societal layer.
Take a couple of these historical moments, and one can see how the world is like a huge selector of people. random or not, these changes, these "mix and spread" type moments, leave their marks for the future. What were my many ancestors doing during the world wars? Were they peasants, merchants, soldiers, were they migrating from a land to another? How was their layering, inside and out?
I am not inclined towards genetic determinism, not even social determinism, though it might seem so. I am merely considering what chance does an individual have during its own lifetime of becoming "himself", provided he has first to overcome a disadvantageous role in life? I think there exist waisted spirits or souls just because society is not curious about the "newcomers", but rather obstinately occupied with preserving a pretty inequitable status quo. When some have too much and they got it all figured out for their offspring, for generations, others have nothing and others waist their lives struggling in between, and the bridges between the societal layers have been blown off or reduced to the abilities of being slick and pretense in order to make believe, clearly we are over the top going downhill as mankind, or someone is foolish enough to play God here on Earth.
Those who have should not be obsessed with how dangerous it is to relinquish some of their money and power in order to ensure a common ground of well being for the entire bottom layer, and in order to open up some permanent channels in between all the classes. History will repeat itself otherwise, and with unpleasant hiccups would mix and spread again. Or maybe this is being prevented by false pressure valves - that is also possible. But even so, gradually we will be out of great minds and great souls. Already many who are at the top smell like "plastic", are fake and boring. Many of the remaining thinkers are bored and dry, or tend to resemble walking computers. Keeping the lid tightly closed produces this infusion of non-quality and boredom. Fear is the base of this status quo enforced on society, the fear of those who are not happy being where they shouldn't be, yet they would rather feel lavishly secure than try to discover their real place in life and leave their post to maybe another, whose destiny is to be there.
Of course I am biased. I think with my personal brain, therefore subjective. I witnessed a societal upheaval during my life, real or apparent, i tend to say both, in different percentages, but I could not change my layer... not the right age. I was just a spectator, and then the valve closed, and maybe I did not wanted to accept how stuck I am for years and years. Stuck in my way of thinking, in my limited schooling which waisted years of my life during which the best results were redundant, because nobody followed through; stuck in my ideas, in my impressions about myself, in my hopes. then later in my dreams who faded away and became poorer and poorer. I can't help functioning in a certain way with my mind and soul, but this way is of very little use in the layer I am in.
Or maybe I geographically kid myself, once more, and I am just lonely, in a niche somewhere, where the only advantage was that look towards some things, rather than being immersed in the same things with no time to look or think too much.
Oh well, it is spring once again, and the sun is still free, and the vast and useless information on the Internet creates the empty sensation of community with the world - like a fool's gold...
Monday 15 April 2013
Spring - question mark
The spring is late this year. But nature has no clocks ticking - just the inner mechanisms reacting to the right temperature and humidity. It has started its blooming and sprouting and flowering regardless of the delay. Sometimes one can't even feel the smell of flowers because of the air pressure or some other factor, yet the flowers are here and they go by their rules... they do not analyze or wait for permission, they are not hip or trend or whatever. Nature tries to keep the flows of life as they should be...
Some put animals higher than people, and find comfort in nature while rejecting the humans. Not the most balanced option, as both parties have their place on Earth. Both can be constructive and destructive, both suffer or thrive and both meet on the same grounds. One might say that only the perpetual dynamic matters, the movement forward, creating energy, like in a battery system... others might say that it is not the end that count, but the journey. Maybe it is both: the way the journey looks determines how will the result look like. The entire nature, humans included, start by being in a way and end up by transforming throughout the journey... the future is creating itself every moment.
Where is the thread that must be followed in this ambiguous travel, then? It does not come from the outside, rather from the inside, answering an outside call. Like the flowers blooming according to the weather, not to the calendar, people feel the mysterious movements of the world around them.
Yet the ambiance is noisy and noisier: all the different types of "should" and "shouldn't" - s, all the recipes for moral, ethics, success and feeling well, all the voices through all the means of communication are outsiders pushing into the special relationship each and every person should have with its own surroundings.
I find it hard to listen to the inner sounds and movements of all events, in fact harder and harder, since the thoughts that arise from such perceptions are blocked by the clichés rooted in the mind of an adult. You think of well being and bang! - a sum of recipes are provided by the memory that in fact have no real meaning since they are not self-produced. There is such thing as too much information, taking away the chance of discovering by yourself a way, a thought, a mystery of life. And in the huge amount of information available on almost every question of life - slippery are the slopes of deceiving the human psyche.
Being original is almost impossible - connected to the Internet of not. One can come with a new idea in isolation and yet find out later that it has already been produced elsewhere in the world. Some say that it is no wonder since all the humans are connected through an invisible field and so on. But if all has already been discovered, why do so many problems linger in the world? And the conspiracy theory might be a prompted answer, yet we are not living at the bottom of a bucket and I would rather think that all cannot be suppressed, controlled and planned. life must be greater that this.
The only logical answer that I choose to believe is that not all have been discovered, that there is still need and place for originality, by this meaning more than just a new mix of all that has already been: information, data, symbols, legends, etc. This vicious circle of encoding a view over the world that humans have been practicing in order to keep some dry info has grown far out of proportions and is shadowing the reality. We are mistaking some notes on the Universe passed on from generation to generation for the truth and even though the things are not working well, some are stubborn to keep this illusion.
People structured in this way are dogmatics, regardless of them being religious or scientific. They forget, or choose to forget, that the more one "reads", accumulates info fed to him, the less he really knows, and having worked so hard at accumulating and encoding, they want to keep the stakes high and not allow others who haven't followed this path to have a say. As history is longer and longer, soon the average human life won't be enough for such a person to go through all the study needed... it seems a pointless way. Of course, to help on this approach on knowledge, probably such scholars would have someday (if they don't already) computer chips in their heads to speed up the accumulating process, or pass the task to the quantic computer.
If spring would have to take the time of going through all the information related to all the other springs, maybe we would not even have any spring at all.
Nature does not keep museums or databases as such, it transforms and passes on only the viable and compressed things that are useful for life. No use crying over spilled milk - nostalgia is rather human. This does not praise destruction or nihilism - yet the dinosaurs are gone and the humans did not campaign for their rights, continents have disappeared a no "Save the continents" association has made any waves. The preoccupation for lost things is ultimately egocentric, and it motivates itself through the guilt of humans for singlehandedly destroying nature for profit. For the humans go over the necessary limits, this is right. Yet, they keep on doing the same mistakes while putting up the protest mechanism for what has been lost and for what is still being destroyed. How could we call this duplicity? Good and evil? Destroyers and saviors? Well, not really. We can see what the destroyers are destroying, but what ARE the so called saviors saving? They say that the aim is a change in the way we are thinking, yet the solutions proposed are self-sabotaging: the world need a compromise in the question of how humans affect the environment. Yet, all it gets is a bunch of new clichés and actions plans and portfolios, like a theatrical play with a very intricate script that covers a lack of real solutions. So, the human nature pushes forward and transforms its surroundings in a similar way to nature, the only difference being the produce. What are we striving to produce? the nature is adapting and tends to produce a permanent basis for itself to exist. Volcanoes erupt, lava cools down and is fertile, and then a new vegetation appears...
Societies grow, thrive, then disappear, humans expand and collapse their existence, then it all starts again. Are we talking cycles?
A positive answer generates at least sadness in humans, with their quest for immortality. Who would peacefully accept the idea of cycle, of life turning into dust all the progress for the humans to start over again? A more humble human society that the one walking on this earth now... People who have lived happier lives and could accept the idea of such a big change. But we are taught to make sacrifices over sacrifices, or accept that happiness is an unattainable goal in the view of a future bliss. Some even had the clever idea of moving this bliss beyond the earthly existence. And this creates a thirst, an immense expectation, written in the minds and souls of millions of people. Nobody thinking like this would embrace the idea of cycles.
Maybe it is a hoax. Some have more and some have less, and to validate this lack of balance, those who have more complain and look busy and those who have less are taught to believe in all kinds of unverifiable ideas. Yet no one can have an equal and identical life. Each should find happiness in discovering its particular place and goal. Like in nature, some plants are made for heights, some for waters, some for sunny spots and some for shade. or rather have adapted themselves for these conditions long time ago, and they require over ages the same conditions. Well, they also keep on adapting... Maybe it is cycles, and after the lava cools the plants whose seeds have resisted will start all over again.
Yet, humans are more than plants. Some have discovered that if their will is strong enough it can push ideas into reality and change all around them. Good and bad. I wonder if one could estimate which prevails...
And here the natural rules are sped up and superseded. If, for the base set of rules, nature could be seen as a guide, for the new set of rules where should we look to? Have humans gone too far in unmapped territory? or the maps exist and known only by some?
Don't know. At eye level, we (still) have nature and seasons. We have a delayed Spring, and a limited span of years in an average human lifetime. I would say modern humans are rather unhappy or moderately content with their lives. Like long forgotten memories we dream unclear dreams of better times, of friendlier and easier lives. There is no going back, yet there should be a reunion of modern science and society with old fashioned simpler happiness. honest, not pretend.
We have the ability to forget what is not useful, to create and be original if our minds are not hackled and stressed all the time. Each of us stands completely alone in his pains and thoughts and destiny, yet we are connected to the others through the outside manifestations of out presence and through the energy of our mind. We affect the others through ripple-like effects, but we need to decide in our solitude and honesty how to navigate this world of circles. And when we are stuck... I would like to thing that it is part of the natural ways and not the effect of the will of others who have Godlike delusions.
Some put animals higher than people, and find comfort in nature while rejecting the humans. Not the most balanced option, as both parties have their place on Earth. Both can be constructive and destructive, both suffer or thrive and both meet on the same grounds. One might say that only the perpetual dynamic matters, the movement forward, creating energy, like in a battery system... others might say that it is not the end that count, but the journey. Maybe it is both: the way the journey looks determines how will the result look like. The entire nature, humans included, start by being in a way and end up by transforming throughout the journey... the future is creating itself every moment.
Where is the thread that must be followed in this ambiguous travel, then? It does not come from the outside, rather from the inside, answering an outside call. Like the flowers blooming according to the weather, not to the calendar, people feel the mysterious movements of the world around them.
Yet the ambiance is noisy and noisier: all the different types of "should" and "shouldn't" - s, all the recipes for moral, ethics, success and feeling well, all the voices through all the means of communication are outsiders pushing into the special relationship each and every person should have with its own surroundings.
I find it hard to listen to the inner sounds and movements of all events, in fact harder and harder, since the thoughts that arise from such perceptions are blocked by the clichés rooted in the mind of an adult. You think of well being and bang! - a sum of recipes are provided by the memory that in fact have no real meaning since they are not self-produced. There is such thing as too much information, taking away the chance of discovering by yourself a way, a thought, a mystery of life. And in the huge amount of information available on almost every question of life - slippery are the slopes of deceiving the human psyche.
Being original is almost impossible - connected to the Internet of not. One can come with a new idea in isolation and yet find out later that it has already been produced elsewhere in the world. Some say that it is no wonder since all the humans are connected through an invisible field and so on. But if all has already been discovered, why do so many problems linger in the world? And the conspiracy theory might be a prompted answer, yet we are not living at the bottom of a bucket and I would rather think that all cannot be suppressed, controlled and planned. life must be greater that this.
The only logical answer that I choose to believe is that not all have been discovered, that there is still need and place for originality, by this meaning more than just a new mix of all that has already been: information, data, symbols, legends, etc. This vicious circle of encoding a view over the world that humans have been practicing in order to keep some dry info has grown far out of proportions and is shadowing the reality. We are mistaking some notes on the Universe passed on from generation to generation for the truth and even though the things are not working well, some are stubborn to keep this illusion.
People structured in this way are dogmatics, regardless of them being religious or scientific. They forget, or choose to forget, that the more one "reads", accumulates info fed to him, the less he really knows, and having worked so hard at accumulating and encoding, they want to keep the stakes high and not allow others who haven't followed this path to have a say. As history is longer and longer, soon the average human life won't be enough for such a person to go through all the study needed... it seems a pointless way. Of course, to help on this approach on knowledge, probably such scholars would have someday (if they don't already) computer chips in their heads to speed up the accumulating process, or pass the task to the quantic computer.
If spring would have to take the time of going through all the information related to all the other springs, maybe we would not even have any spring at all.
Nature does not keep museums or databases as such, it transforms and passes on only the viable and compressed things that are useful for life. No use crying over spilled milk - nostalgia is rather human. This does not praise destruction or nihilism - yet the dinosaurs are gone and the humans did not campaign for their rights, continents have disappeared a no "Save the continents" association has made any waves. The preoccupation for lost things is ultimately egocentric, and it motivates itself through the guilt of humans for singlehandedly destroying nature for profit. For the humans go over the necessary limits, this is right. Yet, they keep on doing the same mistakes while putting up the protest mechanism for what has been lost and for what is still being destroyed. How could we call this duplicity? Good and evil? Destroyers and saviors? Well, not really. We can see what the destroyers are destroying, but what ARE the so called saviors saving? They say that the aim is a change in the way we are thinking, yet the solutions proposed are self-sabotaging: the world need a compromise in the question of how humans affect the environment. Yet, all it gets is a bunch of new clichés and actions plans and portfolios, like a theatrical play with a very intricate script that covers a lack of real solutions. So, the human nature pushes forward and transforms its surroundings in a similar way to nature, the only difference being the produce. What are we striving to produce? the nature is adapting and tends to produce a permanent basis for itself to exist. Volcanoes erupt, lava cools down and is fertile, and then a new vegetation appears...
Societies grow, thrive, then disappear, humans expand and collapse their existence, then it all starts again. Are we talking cycles?
A positive answer generates at least sadness in humans, with their quest for immortality. Who would peacefully accept the idea of cycle, of life turning into dust all the progress for the humans to start over again? A more humble human society that the one walking on this earth now... People who have lived happier lives and could accept the idea of such a big change. But we are taught to make sacrifices over sacrifices, or accept that happiness is an unattainable goal in the view of a future bliss. Some even had the clever idea of moving this bliss beyond the earthly existence. And this creates a thirst, an immense expectation, written in the minds and souls of millions of people. Nobody thinking like this would embrace the idea of cycles.
Maybe it is a hoax. Some have more and some have less, and to validate this lack of balance, those who have more complain and look busy and those who have less are taught to believe in all kinds of unverifiable ideas. Yet no one can have an equal and identical life. Each should find happiness in discovering its particular place and goal. Like in nature, some plants are made for heights, some for waters, some for sunny spots and some for shade. or rather have adapted themselves for these conditions long time ago, and they require over ages the same conditions. Well, they also keep on adapting... Maybe it is cycles, and after the lava cools the plants whose seeds have resisted will start all over again.
Yet, humans are more than plants. Some have discovered that if their will is strong enough it can push ideas into reality and change all around them. Good and bad. I wonder if one could estimate which prevails...
And here the natural rules are sped up and superseded. If, for the base set of rules, nature could be seen as a guide, for the new set of rules where should we look to? Have humans gone too far in unmapped territory? or the maps exist and known only by some?
Don't know. At eye level, we (still) have nature and seasons. We have a delayed Spring, and a limited span of years in an average human lifetime. I would say modern humans are rather unhappy or moderately content with their lives. Like long forgotten memories we dream unclear dreams of better times, of friendlier and easier lives. There is no going back, yet there should be a reunion of modern science and society with old fashioned simpler happiness. honest, not pretend.
We have the ability to forget what is not useful, to create and be original if our minds are not hackled and stressed all the time. Each of us stands completely alone in his pains and thoughts and destiny, yet we are connected to the others through the outside manifestations of out presence and through the energy of our mind. We affect the others through ripple-like effects, but we need to decide in our solitude and honesty how to navigate this world of circles. And when we are stuck... I would like to thing that it is part of the natural ways and not the effect of the will of others who have Godlike delusions.
Thursday 4 April 2013
Trending: greed
Greed has many faces. The way I see it here, it pushes the modern society in all its corners towards a future that has no shape yet, a dangerous future maybe, created by the ever changing present, bursting into future as a chemical compound still reacting would reverberate in new shapes.
Source: an ordinary TV show, like many others" Mary, Queen of Shops. Youtube, I tube, we all tube and can easily get an idea about what this type of shows is about. It's about forming the opinions of the masses, shaping a way of thinking, ultimately shaping a form of human being. a mean one.
The "trend" arguments are revolving in a vicious circle: someone claims that he/she knows what is "up", "trendy", "in fashion", "popular" and states whatever stupidity with such a fanatic conviction that in fact it actually creates what he/she claims already exists. It is just another borrowed term from the real people to the manipulative system. Whether for rating, money or other more obscure reasons, the main stakes nowadays, the core of the power in social terms is the skill of manipulating.
So this basically older and not so beautiful lady, expert in shaping and branding fashion stores, comes "to the rescue" of small business, and deploys a real flood of management terms, interpersonal psychology and loss of old style common sense. Her motto "what I don't know isn't worth knowing" - she uses this arrogant expression for some of her experts, too... How does she transform the small boutiques? By bowing to the masses of young shoppers, to the celebrities and their looks (which in fact are carefully chosen - they are paid to wear various items, or they get free stuff if they subtly or not so subtly promote them), to the wacky fashion shows collections... and by raising the prices of the sold items in almost every case. Changing names, shops decorum, prices... throwing away loads of clothes that are not in fashion and do not sell well at the moment.
OK, how about the production of the new "praised" items? Are they made in Bangladesh of China by some third world slaves? Eh, why bother...
What about the materials - cotton or other natural fibers, or just the old pain in the ass unhealthy plastic? How do the clothes feel? What are the clothes we associate with memories, that we care for? Meh, who cares...
Not a word about how clothes should be infused with our unique personality, about buying wisely, about the existence of more that one category of shoppers. For this woman and this show, only the carefree youngsters with lots of money on their hands or their older corespondents matter... The fashion is given by anonymous sources, yet pinned upon this crowd of potential buyers ...
How about giving us a break with the ultra skinny figures and the unisex aspect of the people promoted nowadays in this forced culture? We are not aliens. Yet.
Normal people should come in various shapes - not pathologically obese (probably the effect of altered metabolisms, altered by pollution in water, air and food), and have differentiated faces and looks. Nobody should look like a clone of other users of the same cosmetic shop, for example...
And, to come back to the title - the greed! To pray on the peoples' weaknesses, preferences and dreams in order to get the money out of their pockets. To consider them stupid animals which deserve to be cheated and pushed around into actually wanting to pay more than less on an item, because cheap is dubious after being brainwashed that only expensive means quality. To get them to pay for the brand, for the magic keyword that some publicity shithead produces to mesmerize the crowd... To eliminate the more human competitors and keep the big money only with those who apply the same policy...
In society terms, it is almost impossible to go back to less once one has induced more. Progress is addictive. only ad hoc situations or those who shake the people from its hypnosis can stop the movement forward.
So, what the heck are we moving forward too with all this greed? Weirdly enough, playing it low and saving this and that seems to be a weird attitude. Money attracts money, abundance is the same. Living in a minimalist style - when it is not fake - when the loads of people are going the other way makes a person feel weird and lonely. Like it or not, the movement is too big and rapid in a direction that comprises greed, unhealthy materials, using more and more natural resources...
The only compass - probably covered with dust, figuratively speaking- for most of us is an intrinsic common sense. Why change this while still good? Why have 2 or 3 cars when one is enough? Why adopt the ideas of others, be them on TV, in the newspapers or on the city walls?
If these are not motivated from the inside, we are just caught in the dance of greed, mainstream, consumerism, boredom...
Yes, we are bored. The main products ruling this world are now "geek products", reality-compensating products As cruel as it was for them, geeks (although the term is somehow limited) didn't have much of a social life in recent history - hence staying inside, dreaming alternate realities, creating them later through movies, computing, books... OK so far, but from here to dragging the entire world into staring at some screens relentlessly, because the outside world is becoming more and more polluted, ugly, deserted and "not cool"... that is not OK.
The race for the modern industrialization and for progress almost always reaches a point where it goes wrong, where a useful invention is simply topped with some useless features in order to "sell" and "keep it going"... and in the process the earth is drained of its beauty and resources. The once normal people feel alienated in this weird universe where most of us don't even understand what we are doing, using machines through an users' interface as much as we are allowed to, without really understanding how these machines work. the bigger this gap, the more not normal and insane it is... Practically many have become stupid moving among notions and machines completely strange to them.
For the humans is horrible - we need to understand, to interact with the others and with the nature and planet. We need to feel in control and happy because our thinking structure - typical, classical, call it however you want - is being engaged in useful actions and thoughts. Why not be needed and appreciated for a clever everyday idea, for a kind heart, for a sense of humor? Why be useful only in terms of skills, money, trends and progress?
Why no greed equals no good life? Even the self help tones of books, the spiritual healing teachings (at least the ones who fill all the libraries' shelves) teach people to be greedy and selfish: find YOUR way, spoil YOURself, change YOUR life, be the kindest, say the most prayers, save YOURself when the world would end... Why, may I ask? Again with the competition and the race, with the improvement and the progress...
I will not enter into maybe another topic, but something is fishy here, considering how much the mainstream ideas share in their core with the supposedly their opponent philosophies. The same "hook" techniques, the same "sell-buy-convince" vibe...
Stop with the greed, or at least assume it for what it is, and stop pretending that other things are motivating various actions, when its slithering shape can be easily guessed underneath the so called reasons
Source: an ordinary TV show, like many others" Mary, Queen of Shops. Youtube, I tube, we all tube and can easily get an idea about what this type of shows is about. It's about forming the opinions of the masses, shaping a way of thinking, ultimately shaping a form of human being. a mean one.
The "trend" arguments are revolving in a vicious circle: someone claims that he/she knows what is "up", "trendy", "in fashion", "popular" and states whatever stupidity with such a fanatic conviction that in fact it actually creates what he/she claims already exists. It is just another borrowed term from the real people to the manipulative system. Whether for rating, money or other more obscure reasons, the main stakes nowadays, the core of the power in social terms is the skill of manipulating.
So this basically older and not so beautiful lady, expert in shaping and branding fashion stores, comes "to the rescue" of small business, and deploys a real flood of management terms, interpersonal psychology and loss of old style common sense. Her motto "what I don't know isn't worth knowing" - she uses this arrogant expression for some of her experts, too... How does she transform the small boutiques? By bowing to the masses of young shoppers, to the celebrities and their looks (which in fact are carefully chosen - they are paid to wear various items, or they get free stuff if they subtly or not so subtly promote them), to the wacky fashion shows collections... and by raising the prices of the sold items in almost every case. Changing names, shops decorum, prices... throwing away loads of clothes that are not in fashion and do not sell well at the moment.
OK, how about the production of the new "praised" items? Are they made in Bangladesh of China by some third world slaves? Eh, why bother...
What about the materials - cotton or other natural fibers, or just the old pain in the ass unhealthy plastic? How do the clothes feel? What are the clothes we associate with memories, that we care for? Meh, who cares...
Not a word about how clothes should be infused with our unique personality, about buying wisely, about the existence of more that one category of shoppers. For this woman and this show, only the carefree youngsters with lots of money on their hands or their older corespondents matter... The fashion is given by anonymous sources, yet pinned upon this crowd of potential buyers ...
How about giving us a break with the ultra skinny figures and the unisex aspect of the people promoted nowadays in this forced culture? We are not aliens. Yet.
Normal people should come in various shapes - not pathologically obese (probably the effect of altered metabolisms, altered by pollution in water, air and food), and have differentiated faces and looks. Nobody should look like a clone of other users of the same cosmetic shop, for example...
And, to come back to the title - the greed! To pray on the peoples' weaknesses, preferences and dreams in order to get the money out of their pockets. To consider them stupid animals which deserve to be cheated and pushed around into actually wanting to pay more than less on an item, because cheap is dubious after being brainwashed that only expensive means quality. To get them to pay for the brand, for the magic keyword that some publicity shithead produces to mesmerize the crowd... To eliminate the more human competitors and keep the big money only with those who apply the same policy...
In society terms, it is almost impossible to go back to less once one has induced more. Progress is addictive. only ad hoc situations or those who shake the people from its hypnosis can stop the movement forward.
So, what the heck are we moving forward too with all this greed? Weirdly enough, playing it low and saving this and that seems to be a weird attitude. Money attracts money, abundance is the same. Living in a minimalist style - when it is not fake - when the loads of people are going the other way makes a person feel weird and lonely. Like it or not, the movement is too big and rapid in a direction that comprises greed, unhealthy materials, using more and more natural resources...
The only compass - probably covered with dust, figuratively speaking- for most of us is an intrinsic common sense. Why change this while still good? Why have 2 or 3 cars when one is enough? Why adopt the ideas of others, be them on TV, in the newspapers or on the city walls?
If these are not motivated from the inside, we are just caught in the dance of greed, mainstream, consumerism, boredom...
Yes, we are bored. The main products ruling this world are now "geek products", reality-compensating products As cruel as it was for them, geeks (although the term is somehow limited) didn't have much of a social life in recent history - hence staying inside, dreaming alternate realities, creating them later through movies, computing, books... OK so far, but from here to dragging the entire world into staring at some screens relentlessly, because the outside world is becoming more and more polluted, ugly, deserted and "not cool"... that is not OK.
The race for the modern industrialization and for progress almost always reaches a point where it goes wrong, where a useful invention is simply topped with some useless features in order to "sell" and "keep it going"... and in the process the earth is drained of its beauty and resources. The once normal people feel alienated in this weird universe where most of us don't even understand what we are doing, using machines through an users' interface as much as we are allowed to, without really understanding how these machines work. the bigger this gap, the more not normal and insane it is... Practically many have become stupid moving among notions and machines completely strange to them.
For the humans is horrible - we need to understand, to interact with the others and with the nature and planet. We need to feel in control and happy because our thinking structure - typical, classical, call it however you want - is being engaged in useful actions and thoughts. Why not be needed and appreciated for a clever everyday idea, for a kind heart, for a sense of humor? Why be useful only in terms of skills, money, trends and progress?
Why no greed equals no good life? Even the self help tones of books, the spiritual healing teachings (at least the ones who fill all the libraries' shelves) teach people to be greedy and selfish: find YOUR way, spoil YOURself, change YOUR life, be the kindest, say the most prayers, save YOURself when the world would end... Why, may I ask? Again with the competition and the race, with the improvement and the progress...
I will not enter into maybe another topic, but something is fishy here, considering how much the mainstream ideas share in their core with the supposedly their opponent philosophies. The same "hook" techniques, the same "sell-buy-convince" vibe...
Stop with the greed, or at least assume it for what it is, and stop pretending that other things are motivating various actions, when its slithering shape can be easily guessed underneath the so called reasons
Tuesday 12 March 2013
New Tricks, Life on Mars and other cozy mysteries
These are some mystery series that manage to be interesting, not very gross and keep an underlining story throughout their episodes, whilst adding some humor or rather satire to the action:
New Tricks
full episode NT
(interesting plots, nice strong characters, catchy theme song)
Death in Paradise
full episode DiP
(nice setting, humorous character, intelligent intuitive policing methods)
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
edited episode
(similar to DiP, beautiful exotic setting, picturesque cases and an overall humane view over the life situations presented)
Rosemary and Thyme
episode of RT
(British setting, a darker shade of the cases presented, but the "older women detective" touch)
as for
Life on Mars, a bit different altogether, the USA version is different in the end, and I like that best (well, I have only seen bits and bobs from the English series, anyway). The travel in time trick gives a whole lot of liberty in showing the old policing style in bright modern images and the supplementary mystery tied to the personal life of the central character is awesome:
trailer Life on Mars USA
Mention for Murder in Suburbia, in the same category. Unlike Midsomer Murders, which got gruesomer by each new season.
New Tricks
full episode NT
(interesting plots, nice strong characters, catchy theme song)
Death in Paradise
full episode DiP
(nice setting, humorous character, intelligent intuitive policing methods)
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
edited episode
(similar to DiP, beautiful exotic setting, picturesque cases and an overall humane view over the life situations presented)
Rosemary and Thyme
episode of RT
(British setting, a darker shade of the cases presented, but the "older women detective" touch)
as for
Life on Mars, a bit different altogether, the USA version is different in the end, and I like that best (well, I have only seen bits and bobs from the English series, anyway). The travel in time trick gives a whole lot of liberty in showing the old policing style in bright modern images and the supplementary mystery tied to the personal life of the central character is awesome:
trailer Life on Mars USA
Mention for Murder in Suburbia, in the same category. Unlike Midsomer Murders, which got gruesomer by each new season.
Friday 8 March 2013
A day from the 80s - naive essay
The spring brought a lot of excitement, a kind of flutter in the air. Less clothes to carry around, new shoes, the flowers...
The first urban flowers I remember were the Forsythias
http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&handle=NodWag&number=27
Not the most spectacular, but when in out park the bushes turned yellow, it was spring for sure. We always brought back three small flowered branches- and always talked about how it was not allowed to take flowers from the park... yet the flowered branches lighted up the room and the winter had to leave the house.
Spring cleaning meant that is warm enough to take the carpets out and wash the thick window drapes - they would dry and catch the fresh air of the outside in between their fibers. March was tricky and it could always turn a bit colder, so we hunted down the best day for spring cleaning and changed the atmosphere in the house.
The parks were the main attraction. From one day to another the leaves would push through their buds and the flowers would fill the trees. They competed with one another to flower, yet they lasted longer that today, once blossomed...
The sky was clear, and the next destination was the farmers' market. Green onions, red radishes, lettuce and spinach... the market was wet and noisy and brought the smells of the earth into the city. I did not particularly like some of the edible spring signs, but there could be no discussion about it... Even more exotic salads like the ones made from baby daffodil leaves were on the table. Then the new spring potatoes, boiled, salted, prepared with butter and dill. Then the new tomatoes, heavenly with the salted shepherds' cheese, if there was any left from the winter.
The fruits were more like the beginning of the summer.
The sweet smell of linden flowers was the month of May.
The long walks in the warm sun, the feeling of being new altogether, like the entire nature.
The afternoons were not so happy, they reminded us of the winter, still a bit too close. In the house, the rooms were almost in the dark, yet it was light enough for eating... it was a bit cold too, compared with getting out in the sun during the day. the room had an echo.
The ladybugs and another red and black bugs invaded the paths in the park.
It was spring and no one was in a hurry - not even nature.
The first urban flowers I remember were the Forsythias
http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&handle=NodWag&number=27
Not the most spectacular, but when in out park the bushes turned yellow, it was spring for sure. We always brought back three small flowered branches- and always talked about how it was not allowed to take flowers from the park... yet the flowered branches lighted up the room and the winter had to leave the house.
Spring cleaning meant that is warm enough to take the carpets out and wash the thick window drapes - they would dry and catch the fresh air of the outside in between their fibers. March was tricky and it could always turn a bit colder, so we hunted down the best day for spring cleaning and changed the atmosphere in the house.
The parks were the main attraction. From one day to another the leaves would push through their buds and the flowers would fill the trees. They competed with one another to flower, yet they lasted longer that today, once blossomed...
The sky was clear, and the next destination was the farmers' market. Green onions, red radishes, lettuce and spinach... the market was wet and noisy and brought the smells of the earth into the city. I did not particularly like some of the edible spring signs, but there could be no discussion about it... Even more exotic salads like the ones made from baby daffodil leaves were on the table. Then the new spring potatoes, boiled, salted, prepared with butter and dill. Then the new tomatoes, heavenly with the salted shepherds' cheese, if there was any left from the winter.
The fruits were more like the beginning of the summer.
The sweet smell of linden flowers was the month of May.
The long walks in the warm sun, the feeling of being new altogether, like the entire nature.
The afternoons were not so happy, they reminded us of the winter, still a bit too close. In the house, the rooms were almost in the dark, yet it was light enough for eating... it was a bit cold too, compared with getting out in the sun during the day. the room had an echo.
The ladybugs and another red and black bugs invaded the paths in the park.
It was spring and no one was in a hurry - not even nature.
Wednesday 6 March 2013
Work
Via the same site quoted in my last post : "hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do" (Oscar Wilde).
I would say these words are witty. I would also add that I used to know and still do know quite a few persons to whom these apply.
Moreover, I would extend this nugget of truth to a present truth: after decades of brainwashing people into the idea that work is a must, a natural requirement and a duty, even if it turns out not to be the right work for a person, not the activity sprung out of his or her talent, we now live in a society that for the masses is made by workaholics and creates workaholics.
Maybe the link is a simple psychological step: an empty life pushes a person towards an unhealthy addiction for work, after which, by a mean, robotic effect, the standards of time spent working are set by this type of persons, thus leading to empty lives for those who would not have had such alienations.
What do I mainly remember about my working parents? That usually they were... not there. Time went by, and they were working and working, until my feelings of something missing turned into indifference. And it was the same for many of my friends.
Why are some hating so much what makes people better? Spending time with one's family, getting bored sometimes, celebrating through the year, taking a walk in the park, slowing down the hectic crazy rhythms of today's life...
It is a huge lie that people should be extremely busy while working because there is no alternative. There are professions which require a presence per time duration, indeed. one cannot do his job and then go home because he fulfilled his duty for that day, even if he managed to be very skilled and did what one had to do quickly - in some jobs. In these positions the full days of work should be compensated by free days, by alternating with a job partner.
But most of the jobs, the huge mass of the less qualified jobs, presume tasks that can be completed quicker by certain individuals. An average worker would do the standard amount of work in X hours. but if one does it in X minus t, why not let him go home for the day, if the job is well done?
Because it would create a precedent in flexibility and freedom. I read somewhere that the Nordic countries are actually trying such different approaches to work. But such news are unpopular, they are barely seen in the spotlight, they might give ideas to the people so hardly forged by the evil twins: socialism and capitalism.
Better make fixed amount of work per fixed number of hours, and if someone is managing to get everything done quicker, keep him at work to get bored and to use his time in vain, or (the modern management idea) throw some more work at him, taking advantage of vague contract provisions and of the power position the employer is in in such "crisis" times...
Thus the personal life is turned into dust permanently, the classes are kept separated by falsely created privileges (the mere worker is glued to his post so many hours, while the manager is mobile, yet has to account - officially- for his whereabouts). The rich dad can, if he makes a mentality effort - spend more time with his kids, the poor dad barely has quality time to spend with them. The firm has to consume electricity and space to cover for all the exaggerated task-time work dynamics.
Some, giving more freedom to their employees, give them work to do wherever, if the activity permits: at home, in the park and so on. Not supplementary work, just work. As long as you deliver on time, you can choose where you function better. Reciprocal advantage. You use your home electricity to power the computer, but you can watch your kids playing in yard in the same time.
Caring for people and growing intelligent future generations apparently is labeled as a luxury. Not many states are bothering to try human approaches to work. Most just apply the street rules and push around some paperwork to pretend they are supporting the human rights. And the "human rights" package, actually mocked enough in the modern society aka counting in the bigger more developed states and being just a prop in the less powerful ones, should be a minimum, not something for granted, never to be surpassed...
Why bother to even talk about state policy - some think. A new decoy is trendy nowadays, the idea that the state is expected to do nothing because the citizens have taken it upon themselves to manage their problems, individually or in smaller communities. I would say it is a nice idea for a theory, yet a very transparent excuse for the faults of the state and those who are "milking" the state's budget remains... and the purpose is to make it seem like it is the wish of the people.
Who knows, soon the people will be convinced it is their idea, considering that this mantra of "managing ourselves" is repeated with the same dedication with which the socialist and corporatist ideas were repeated, straight into the minds of everyone.
Work should be healthy, in equilibrium with free time, and with family time. For family time is not quite free time, it is a separate type of work, forging the future through the new generations. And free time gives adults energy for both.
The best work scheme turns talent and skill into activity and rewards efficiency instead of punishing it, on all levels. An unskilled worker can come up with a new solution as much as a boss, each in his own way, and each good thing should be rewarded. And the option of taking free time should be right there, available as a reward.
Where do the ideas of "one is normal to hate his work" or "one has to suffer professionally if he if he has a family" come from? Why are they so viral? Why nowadays it is non important if someone is a drunk or an immoral person, but it is a problem if one has family obligations, in the sense that many jobs are fit with "socially free" persons rather than parents or grandparents?
Maybe the legal frame tells a different story, but when one feels ashamed to ask for some time off work because one's kids require it, while others are proud to take free time to go to the concerts or to go shopping or cure drunken headaches, the position of society over the private life via the work regime seems to tell in fact quite another thing, scripted by the people who really have nothing to do at home or in the middle of their families.
I would say these words are witty. I would also add that I used to know and still do know quite a few persons to whom these apply.
Moreover, I would extend this nugget of truth to a present truth: after decades of brainwashing people into the idea that work is a must, a natural requirement and a duty, even if it turns out not to be the right work for a person, not the activity sprung out of his or her talent, we now live in a society that for the masses is made by workaholics and creates workaholics.
Maybe the link is a simple psychological step: an empty life pushes a person towards an unhealthy addiction for work, after which, by a mean, robotic effect, the standards of time spent working are set by this type of persons, thus leading to empty lives for those who would not have had such alienations.
What do I mainly remember about my working parents? That usually they were... not there. Time went by, and they were working and working, until my feelings of something missing turned into indifference. And it was the same for many of my friends.
Why are some hating so much what makes people better? Spending time with one's family, getting bored sometimes, celebrating through the year, taking a walk in the park, slowing down the hectic crazy rhythms of today's life...
It is a huge lie that people should be extremely busy while working because there is no alternative. There are professions which require a presence per time duration, indeed. one cannot do his job and then go home because he fulfilled his duty for that day, even if he managed to be very skilled and did what one had to do quickly - in some jobs. In these positions the full days of work should be compensated by free days, by alternating with a job partner.
But most of the jobs, the huge mass of the less qualified jobs, presume tasks that can be completed quicker by certain individuals. An average worker would do the standard amount of work in X hours. but if one does it in X minus t, why not let him go home for the day, if the job is well done?
Because it would create a precedent in flexibility and freedom. I read somewhere that the Nordic countries are actually trying such different approaches to work. But such news are unpopular, they are barely seen in the spotlight, they might give ideas to the people so hardly forged by the evil twins: socialism and capitalism.
Better make fixed amount of work per fixed number of hours, and if someone is managing to get everything done quicker, keep him at work to get bored and to use his time in vain, or (the modern management idea) throw some more work at him, taking advantage of vague contract provisions and of the power position the employer is in in such "crisis" times...
Thus the personal life is turned into dust permanently, the classes are kept separated by falsely created privileges (the mere worker is glued to his post so many hours, while the manager is mobile, yet has to account - officially- for his whereabouts). The rich dad can, if he makes a mentality effort - spend more time with his kids, the poor dad barely has quality time to spend with them. The firm has to consume electricity and space to cover for all the exaggerated task-time work dynamics.
Some, giving more freedom to their employees, give them work to do wherever, if the activity permits: at home, in the park and so on. Not supplementary work, just work. As long as you deliver on time, you can choose where you function better. Reciprocal advantage. You use your home electricity to power the computer, but you can watch your kids playing in yard in the same time.
Caring for people and growing intelligent future generations apparently is labeled as a luxury. Not many states are bothering to try human approaches to work. Most just apply the street rules and push around some paperwork to pretend they are supporting the human rights. And the "human rights" package, actually mocked enough in the modern society aka counting in the bigger more developed states and being just a prop in the less powerful ones, should be a minimum, not something for granted, never to be surpassed...
Why bother to even talk about state policy - some think. A new decoy is trendy nowadays, the idea that the state is expected to do nothing because the citizens have taken it upon themselves to manage their problems, individually or in smaller communities. I would say it is a nice idea for a theory, yet a very transparent excuse for the faults of the state and those who are "milking" the state's budget remains... and the purpose is to make it seem like it is the wish of the people.
Who knows, soon the people will be convinced it is their idea, considering that this mantra of "managing ourselves" is repeated with the same dedication with which the socialist and corporatist ideas were repeated, straight into the minds of everyone.
Work should be healthy, in equilibrium with free time, and with family time. For family time is not quite free time, it is a separate type of work, forging the future through the new generations. And free time gives adults energy for both.
The best work scheme turns talent and skill into activity and rewards efficiency instead of punishing it, on all levels. An unskilled worker can come up with a new solution as much as a boss, each in his own way, and each good thing should be rewarded. And the option of taking free time should be right there, available as a reward.
Where do the ideas of "one is normal to hate his work" or "one has to suffer professionally if he if he has a family" come from? Why are they so viral? Why nowadays it is non important if someone is a drunk or an immoral person, but it is a problem if one has family obligations, in the sense that many jobs are fit with "socially free" persons rather than parents or grandparents?
Maybe the legal frame tells a different story, but when one feels ashamed to ask for some time off work because one's kids require it, while others are proud to take free time to go to the concerts or to go shopping or cure drunken headaches, the position of society over the private life via the work regime seems to tell in fact quite another thing, scripted by the people who really have nothing to do at home or in the middle of their families.
Monday 4 March 2013
Could have...
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/44516026387/i-could-have-done-something-with-my-time-today
This is not a positive site, starting with the title. There is a long line of advice stating that one must run away from negativity, renounce pessimist friends and toss the lost-in-translation-feeling-sites, movies or music. I partially agree with this.
But then, what if, when we return to reality, to the daily chores and urban or rural life around us, the feeling that strikes back is exactly the feeling of a site like this?
It is a vicious circle: go to reality to get a feeling that makes one turn to the virtual reality that after a while throws one back into reality looking for happiness and getting a feeling that...
Where in this circle of things have many of us lost the genuine sentiment that we are living a life, our life, as it was meant to be?
I think blaming the digital world is a fake blame, since many years I did not have a computer, and yet I used to feel year after year how people grow apart from each other ant the outdoors landscapes become uglier and more like an enemy of well being than a friend.
Of course, there are the other type of people, who do not actually care much for the outside: they base their perception on their inner world, be it for the good or the bad. They seem not to notice how the cities have grown and became uglier, how the people are more distant, how friendly plant species have retreated from the urban zone or even the rural spaces... they are mostly driven by what they think or what they are fooling themselves to think. And the most important means of protection for them is to stop whomever is stating the obvious, the nostalgic truth...
The freedom of expression is punished lately when it is a non-happy non-self help expression. Maybe it is not very obvious sometimes, maybe it is not a phenomenon spread all around. But if some feel like being happy is not a fake-able thing, that it must be genuine... that their current state is of nostalgia, of being lost in an unfriendly surrounding, must others ban them for such a feeling?
I wonder.
This is not a positive site, starting with the title. There is a long line of advice stating that one must run away from negativity, renounce pessimist friends and toss the lost-in-translation-feeling-sites, movies or music. I partially agree with this.
But then, what if, when we return to reality, to the daily chores and urban or rural life around us, the feeling that strikes back is exactly the feeling of a site like this?
It is a vicious circle: go to reality to get a feeling that makes one turn to the virtual reality that after a while throws one back into reality looking for happiness and getting a feeling that...
Where in this circle of things have many of us lost the genuine sentiment that we are living a life, our life, as it was meant to be?
I think blaming the digital world is a fake blame, since many years I did not have a computer, and yet I used to feel year after year how people grow apart from each other ant the outdoors landscapes become uglier and more like an enemy of well being than a friend.
Of course, there are the other type of people, who do not actually care much for the outside: they base their perception on their inner world, be it for the good or the bad. They seem not to notice how the cities have grown and became uglier, how the people are more distant, how friendly plant species have retreated from the urban zone or even the rural spaces... they are mostly driven by what they think or what they are fooling themselves to think. And the most important means of protection for them is to stop whomever is stating the obvious, the nostalgic truth...
The freedom of expression is punished lately when it is a non-happy non-self help expression. Maybe it is not very obvious sometimes, maybe it is not a phenomenon spread all around. But if some feel like being happy is not a fake-able thing, that it must be genuine... that their current state is of nostalgia, of being lost in an unfriendly surrounding, must others ban them for such a feeling?
I wonder.
Sunday 17 February 2013
The parallel history
History is taught without being in accordance with the cultural and philosophical trends of the last century and more. If it weren't, then it would enclose the relativity dimension. Not all things seemingly universally agreed upon become true. The older events were recorded by the winners, not always (or never?) accurately. The newer events are not even clear they are completely accurately reported throughout the world from their moment of existence, and so on.
In an absurd attempt of connecting the dots (from the point of view of classic history), one could sum up the humanity's history in a few huge, power driven and weird lines. A long relay race has been ravaging the earth, having for participants the great conquerors, power-driven nations, very harsh, very masculine dwellers: Mesopotamia, then Egypt, the Greeks (or more like the conquering-of-the-world-obsessed Alexander the Great), the very creepy Romans, then the Asian, Arabic and Northern conquerors, the Empires to be who took over from the Ex-Roman Empire and its conquerors: Spanish, English, Russian... their new partners and descendants the Americans... whatever "great" power could the history teacher name, it shared a common point with a similar predecessor power or its philosophy, it claimed a continuance. All "civilization bringers", all gatherers of treasures, abstract treasures like jewels or gold (which cannot be eaten), all having slaves, all inventors of various abstract things, pushing forward the limits and the cruelties of the human race.
This long line can arouse all sorts of questions, thousands of "why?"-s and "what for?"-s. And we are not even beginning to follow the same old trend in the modern and contemporary history. Maybe the unified answer would be stupid or amazing. We would never know because the history was invented and is still being taught as a set of fixed facts, chosen to be presented in a certain way and repeated until they infuse the collective mind of the people as such. not really a matter of questioning and being curious. Although, in time, some different facts have pushed through the official set of historical landmarks. The truth has a certain way of being imperishable. It's just that the human life is short and a generation cannot wait forever to understand the real "why"-s and "what for"-s and "who"-s in its history...
The meaning is a bit more than the truth.It implies the ability of synthesizing the truth, once it is at one's disposal. The humans are driven towards the meaning. But without the important lines of the truth, it all gets lost into irrelevant directions and into a sea of not so meaningful facts. Of course, all is important in the life of this great organism called humanity. But not in its big picture. The repetitive pattern are a way of underlining some important parts. But it gives us no clue in the direction of good or bad. Is the obsession for symbols, or for gold good, truthful for the humans, or not? Are those artificial elements? Clearly we can't eat symbols or gold, they do not serve to the simple needs of the creatures we are. Is there a "but" here, or not?
In an absurd attempt of connecting the dots (from the point of view of classic history), one could sum up the humanity's history in a few huge, power driven and weird lines. A long relay race has been ravaging the earth, having for participants the great conquerors, power-driven nations, very harsh, very masculine dwellers: Mesopotamia, then Egypt, the Greeks (or more like the conquering-of-the-world-obsessed Alexander the Great), the very creepy Romans, then the Asian, Arabic and Northern conquerors, the Empires to be who took over from the Ex-Roman Empire and its conquerors: Spanish, English, Russian... their new partners and descendants the Americans... whatever "great" power could the history teacher name, it shared a common point with a similar predecessor power or its philosophy, it claimed a continuance. All "civilization bringers", all gatherers of treasures, abstract treasures like jewels or gold (which cannot be eaten), all having slaves, all inventors of various abstract things, pushing forward the limits and the cruelties of the human race.
This long line can arouse all sorts of questions, thousands of "why?"-s and "what for?"-s. And we are not even beginning to follow the same old trend in the modern and contemporary history. Maybe the unified answer would be stupid or amazing. We would never know because the history was invented and is still being taught as a set of fixed facts, chosen to be presented in a certain way and repeated until they infuse the collective mind of the people as such. not really a matter of questioning and being curious. Although, in time, some different facts have pushed through the official set of historical landmarks. The truth has a certain way of being imperishable. It's just that the human life is short and a generation cannot wait forever to understand the real "why"-s and "what for"-s and "who"-s in its history...
The meaning is a bit more than the truth.It implies the ability of synthesizing the truth, once it is at one's disposal. The humans are driven towards the meaning. But without the important lines of the truth, it all gets lost into irrelevant directions and into a sea of not so meaningful facts. Of course, all is important in the life of this great organism called humanity. But not in its big picture. The repetitive pattern are a way of underlining some important parts. But it gives us no clue in the direction of good or bad. Is the obsession for symbols, or for gold good, truthful for the humans, or not? Are those artificial elements? Clearly we can't eat symbols or gold, they do not serve to the simple needs of the creatures we are. Is there a "but" here, or not?
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