Another species?

I’ve sometimes been feeling lately like I’m a different species from this sapient race I keep reading about and hearing about that, faced with an oncoming cliff edge, rather than trying to apply the brakes or even swerve, have elected to accelerate. I’ve still only heard one remotely sensible reasonable explanation for voting to leave the EU, and with the election of President Fucktrumpet over the water, it just seems that we are absolutely determined to burn our world down around us.

While some people have been celebrating these things, other people have been trying to make excuses for them and still others have been watching them unfold with a horrified look on their faces. We’ve heard lots of people giving their own opinions on who is to blame. Jonathan Pie thinks the left are at fault. Others blame the voting public (and the non-voting public). Yet more blame media bias. Something to me seems obvious – this clusterfuck has been brought on by a combination of all these things and more.

It’s true when you tell a pro-lifer they’re stupid and full of shit they tend not to want to debate you. It’s true if you call someone worried about unchecked immigration a racist prick it is unlikely to change their mind, or even make them stop to think. It’s true we need to engage with people who think differently. The problem is I’m not sure evidence and facts really work as well as they once did. Lies are told blatantly and repeatedly by the press and the powerful, but they don’t seem to care because by the time it is inescapable, they’re already on to the next lie.

But. While the best thing for the press in all its current forms would be to piss off up its own wretched arse, it is only partly to blame. Farage, Trump, Murdoch and co are only partly to blame. You can’t have a proper democracy without an informed and engaged populace. It is undeniable that some people are wilfully ignorant and purposefully deaf to attempts to engage. People that can be presented with hard evidence of climate change and claim that it’s just a Chinese hoax and that burning more coal is obviously the answer (seriously, America, what were you thinking?) It is every person’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of all sides of the debate, to at least make an effort to see the other side. To be open to the possibility that just because you’ve always voted one way, it doesn’t mean the current incarnation of your party has your best interests at heart. If you ensure your only source of news is the Daily Mail or the Guardian because they fit best with your worldview, then you are part of the fucking problem. Stop being part of the fucking problem and get yourself a balanced view of the world from multiple sources that aren’t just interested in reporting events through their own distorted ideological prism.

It isn’t really a case of left and right – few politicians have turned out to be quite so Tory as the warmongering, bank deregulating Blair and Brown show, and Hilary Clinton was so far up Wall Street’s arse she probably couldn’t smell her own rank hypocrisy. If you want a genuine change, this is not what you vote for. Of course, the change that President Fartfeathers represents is entirely the wrong sort, and, given the choice, I’d take the more of the same that Clinton would have been and the minimum wage that Nu-Labour introduced over the legacy of needless austerity we’ve been living with recently any day.

I know it doesn’t do you any good to spent lots of time stressed and anxious about what you can’t change, but this year it has been particularly hard, and I can’t really see things improving much any time soon. Maybe I can find a way to move to a little town overlooking a mountain lake or something. Maybe the people who are more like the species of human I remember are all hiding out there.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Pixies: Caribou: “This human form, where I was born, I now repent.”

Why is blue blue?

Emily, who is currently 6, is very inquisitive about the world. Like many kids her age, she asks many, many questions of her parents. Some of them are funny, some are cute, some are difficult to answer. She recently asked one that was particularly tricky – in her words: “Why does green have to be green and blue have to be blue?”

Well. How do you even start to answer that so a 6-year-old will understand it? How do you talk about the visible spectrum of light and wavelengths? How do you approach the idea that what you see as blue or green may not be what someone else sees – she’s too young to watch The Matrix, after all. I’m not even sure I know the answer. Needless to say, when we tried to answer her she looked at us, uncomprehending, and the longer we talked, the more her look became glazed.

When it had become inescapable that we were failing to answer her question, I asked her if we’d just confused her. She nodded. I then asked her what she thought the answer was. “God decided.” Of course. I might have known. Emily and her big sister Katie are still at that age where ‘god did it’ is an easy go-to answer for something they don’t yet understand.

They’re not alone – as a species we’ve been doing it for thousands of years. It’s a part of us I don’t think we’ll ever truly lose, no matter how much horseshit I consider it to be. I think that’s the case because we’ll never know everything – some things I think will always be a mystery to us. And as long as there’s something we don’t know, there will be something for folks to point at and say ‘god did it’ as if the very fact that we don’t yet know something is somehow proof of god’s existence. Even though, to quote the excellent Tim Minchin, “Every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not magic.” Every riddle we unravel reveals two more behind it.

This is the way religion has insinuated its way into the lives of men, women and children for generations; it seems like an easy answer for people who want to know how the world works. The way to overcome it is to learn more, to know more. This is why I always try to answer my kids’ questions, and never discourage them from asking them, even though sometimes you really want them to just shut the hell up and give you 5 minutes to think; even though I have the tiniest bit of sympathy for the parent referred to in Neko Case’s Nearly Midnight, Honolulu. Katie is already questioning the logistics of Father Christmas making it all the way around the world in one night, and I don’t think the stock answer of ‘it’s Christmas magic’ will work for much longer. This unquenchable curiosity will, I hope, one day dislodge from their mind this acceptance that ‘god decided’ everything they don’t understand and they start looking for a better answer.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:
Neko Case: Nearly Midnight, Honolulu: “You’ll hear yourself complain, but don’t you ever shut up please kid have your say.”

Operation Don’t Die - Update.

We went and bought a bike. Now there’s even less of an excuse for being in the lazy unfit state I’m in. Not only that, it was bought under a ‘Cycle to Work’ scheme. Dammit.

Still, being fitter is a good thing, right? The sore arse bone I get from the saddle will fade in time, right? The cramps I get in the legs will ease up the more I do it, right? I gotta say, even when I actually did regular exercise it never became anything other than awful.

But, if I want to be less blubbersome (and I do), I need to persevere with it. I do prefer the swimming to the cycling, but if I’m relying on the bike to get to and from work then it will be unavoidable, and not just something I have to find the time to fit in like the swimming was.

I was always cursed with bikes growing up; I’d only have to look at it and it would get a flat tire, but so far, so good, and we’ll see how much difference cycling to and from work makes.

Laters.

On the pursuit of wealth.

The best things in life may be free, but everything else, up to and including the second best things in life, costs a bloody fortune. And if it doesn’t, you can bet that some bugger somewhere is trying to figure out a way to make it. It’s going to be hard to make it sound like I’m not just coming from a place of jealousy, but I really don’t mind that people and companies make ludicrous sums of money. Good luck to ‘em, if it makes them happy.

I do mind when the deliberate actions they take impact directly on people who are not rich just to protect their already-ridiculous-and-still-increasing profit margins. Governments inflicting austerity measures on people, with the loss of amenities all across the country while resolutely failing to try to collect masses and masses of unpaid corporation tax, while also trying to convince people you should manage a country’s economy the same way you manage a household budget. A press that relentlessly bullshits its readers and focuses on stirring anger and hate against others who have the fucking cheek to, wait for it, be born or have parents that were born on the other side of a line on a fucking map, because it sells more papers. Companies that aggressively market milk formula in a third world country as an alternative to breastfeeding, leading to the deaths of a significant number of babies due to the unclean water the formula is made up with and other issues (hi Nestlé! Fuck you Nestlé!). Businessmen who will bully and cheat smaller businesses out of money owed just because they can (an example of such a person being the fucktard who is the current Republican Presidential candidate). We’ve got to the point now that the effects of climate change are beginning to be unavoidable, and yet there is still a huge push to deny it is even happening (I’m actually impressed Brian Cox didn’t deck this fucking prick) amongst our elected leaders everywhere, and even the ones who admit it’s happening seem pretty powerless to do a damn thing about it. The opportunities and the progress we’re going to lose over the coming decades because of this deliberate cuntery is heart breaking.

All because being really ridiculously rich or turning over stupidly high profits isn’t enough. They’ve got to be even richer, make even more, pushing our species and our planet’s ability to support us to the brink in the process. I don’t regret having children, but I regret the desolate future I’ve brought them in to. The so-called 'American Dream' is no longer a romantic ideal (if it ever was). It is simply economic wealth at the expense of everything else, and it is poisonous, and has infected many developed and developing countries all over the world, to the detriment of all.

How can this be changed? What can be done? This is the kicker. Everyone thinks you need money, and it is reinforced everywhere. And because that’s what everyone thinks, it means you kind of do need the money. You need money to make headway against it. Even if you’re content, like me, to do the best you can on a smaller scale and live by your own set of values ("Do the good you see in front of you" to once again quote Pratchett), you still need it. Even two working people on, for the area, not terrible salaries, can’t afford a place to live. You could see the confusion in the face of the mortgage advisor when we explained we’re not interested in a Shared Ownership on a newly built shoebox in the middle of a number of other identical shoeboxes, with the intention of climbing the property ladder, but we just want to find a place to settle, comfy enough to set up a home and not move on every few years. We can afford it – over a decade without a single missed rent payment is proof of that, but saving a monster deposit? That we cannot do. So we’re stuck, with a choice between staying put and continuing to rent or moving into the Shared Ownership shoebox. Renting it is, then.

Who decided that living life this way was a good idea? Because it smells like bullshit to me.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Hives – Without the Money: “Without the money, there’s nothing you can do.”

Split personality disorder or just like everybody else?

I’m a fan of social media in general. I’m aware of both the positives and negatives; how it’s generally only as good as the people using it are (remember Microsoft’s A.I. personality Tay that Twitter managed to turn into a genocide-supporting, incest-promoting Trump and Hitler supporter?). And I know you should be careful what you say (perhaps I should practise what I preach more…) but generally I think the positive experiences I’ve had outweigh the just-want-to-bang-my-head-against-a-wall-until-there’s-blood moments.

The problem, as is so often the case, is people. Millions and millions of profiles with only limited clues for sorting through the gems, the funny and smart eccentrics and the complete wastes of skin. You need to remember that people usually put a highly censored version of themselves on display on social media. They’ll post pictures of the fabulously healthy-yet-delicious food they eat, or the awesome time they have with their kids. They’ll share videos of that time they para-sailed over the pyramids or base jumped from the Sydney Opera House. They’ll paint you a picture of a fantastic life filled to overflowing with momentous achievements and bucket list experiences. They won’t share the culinary fusion experiments that turn out looking like cat sick on a plate, or the days the kids drive them to the very edge of sanity. Then push them off. They won’t tell you about those times they just sat on the settee eating chocolate ice cream for tea while watching repeats of Inspector Morse because they can’t be arsed to reach for the remote to see what else is on. If you’re not careful you can start to feel like you’ve been left behind to rot behind your phone/laptop while the rest of the world is having all the fun.

I can change the way I feel about myself several times in a day. Sometimes I’m alright, sometimes I’m physically repulsive. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one in this world that can see the way things should be and everyone else is unforgivably stupid, sometimes I feel as dumb as a bag of hammers in the face of the blinding intellect of others. Sometimes I’m the coolest parent there’s ever been, sometimes I should never have been allowed to have kids. The truth is probably somewhere between these two extremes.

The way even the most ordinary of people portray themselves on social media can sometimes make it feel as though I’m the only one who swings back and forth this way, pivoting between self-doubt and self-confidence. But I’m not. At least, I don’t think I am. I think most people have the same issue. I think the trick is to remember often enough that you lie between the extremes; we all have grace, and we are all clumsy. We’re all intelligent, but with a simple change of subject we can all become clueless. We all have days when we can’t stand our stupid faces, and we all have days when we don’t scrub up too badly. This can be where social media can be harmful, where your own negative opinions of yourself can be reinforced by the face other people present to the world. We should all do ourselves a favour if this starts to happen and just unplug. Take a break. The world won’t end.

New occasional feature: ending with a song relating to the post:

Libertines – Gunga Din: “The mirror’s fucking ugly and I’m sick and tired of looking at him.”

So what happens next?

We voted to leave, and there’s nothing we can do about that now. My own opinion is that this was a very bad decision, and it is infecting many of my waking thoughts. I’m frightened that the already depressing future we were heading for has been made exponentially worse. The Government has fractured and the end result will be a significant shift to the right from what was already a fairly right wing position. People are still turning away from Labour in droves. If Parliament get cold feet and fail to enact the will of the people, irrespective of how mind-bogglingly bad I believe that decision to be, there is another party ready to fill in the gap. It isn’t outside the realms of my worst nightmare that come the next general election UKIP will be the second party. How about the first? Unlikely, sure, but we’ve spent years now underestimating them. Prime Minister Farage. How does that sound? Zero policies, but certainly willing to press the article 50 button. Plus, it does appear that none of the main parties have much in the way of policies at the moment. Except perhaps the SNP, who quite understandably want to get the fuck out of there. Perhaps nobody really expected it to happen. Not even those voting for it. But.

First thing. It did happen. There is no do-over. Maybe, if the 17 million people who voted to leave sign that utterly pointless petition, there might be something to it. If you wanted to remain but didn’t vote, then you are a fucking idiot. If you voted to leave without any idea of what the implications might be and now regret it, then you are a fucking idiot.

Second, I don’t believe for a moment that everyone voting to leave is a racist old person or irretrievably stupid. Many of them undoubtedly are, which is why the only people cheering for this result are other extreme right wing groups throughout Europe, the lying scum-fingering press, and Donald Trump. Oh, and Farage of course. The continued weakening of the pound into recession was expected. The sharp rise in racist attacks was expected, as the aforementioned irretrievably stupid now feel their idiocy has legitimacy. However. Remain voters who are now tarring all leave voters with the same brush don’t seem to see the irony in doing the exact thing they voted against. Intelligent and informed people I know, respect and love voted to leave, and I won’t accept for a second that they did that because they wanted to see violent attacks rise and our fragile economic footing shaken again. I have better taste in friends and loved ones than that.

I too recognise that the EU is bloated, corrupt and inefficient. What I don’t see is how extricating ourselves from it is in any way going to improve things for anyone. Imperfect as it was, it alone could enforce measures that may still mitigate some of the very worst effects of climate change. It alone could take steps to restrict the power of corporations to abuse the rights of people. It alone can help you if your Government is treating you unfairly. It alone can share intelligence between all of its members to combat terrorism. It alone can provide you with a choice of other countries for you or your children to live, work, love and retire in.

I don’t think remain voters should have to ‘get over it’ – we are distraught over the loss of our place in the world and all that came with it and we have every right to be distressed and angry. Five days on, I’m still depressed and anxious, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. But what we don’t want to do is do what too many of those in the north of England and in Wales did – express that anger in a way that makes things worse. Decades of neglect from both Labour and Tory governments has left a lot of people from these regions ready to lash out. Unfortunately, they’ve lashed out in a way that will, almost certainly, make things worse for them. Don’t do the same thing by lashing out at them. Unlike when the millionaire politicians declare it, we really are all in it together, and we’ll have to find a way to reconcile the difference in opinion and try to make the best of it.

What I fear is that we’ve effectively pulled the plug out of the bottom of the EU bath and over the course of the coming decades too many of the things we take for granted are going to dissolve before our very eyes. But I’ve been wrong before. Many times. I hope with every fibre of my being that I’m wrong here, too.

What I intend to do is continue to live life in peace with a smile on my face for all of my neighbours, regardless of who they are or how they vote. Engage with each other, don’t simply shout your own point of view at everyone else and assume you’re the one in the right. That’s what being a citizen of England, Europe or the world means. It means taking responsibility for your own education and your own opinions and trying to change your corner of the world for the better. We’re Britain for crying out loud. We wrote the Magna Carta, over 500 years before those Americans and their imperfect Constitution. We wrote the European Convention on Human Rights to ensure that never again could a country in Europe alter its laws to make genocide legal. We sit at the very heart of protecting human rights. We will not allow our country to slide into degenerate lunacy, where acts of violence against innocent people who happen to be unlike us are not only tolerated, but encouraged. We’re better than that, and for as long as I have breath, I will never give that ideal up. And neither will, I’m sure, the majority of people who voted to leave. She’ll be right. Eventually. Hopefully.

“The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”.

‘What is alcohol?’ is the Final Jeopardy answer to the above in case you’ve never seen The Simpsons. I sometimes think I shouldn’t drink, because it stops my brain from working properly. I’m not exactly what you’d call a big time drinker, but I do drink, and I do occasionally drink too much.

When I say stupid things that make me look either like a complete dick or a drooling idiot, it’s usually because I’m drinking. If I post something dumb on social media or offend someone, it’s usually because I’m drinking. When I do stupid things at work, it’s usually because I was drinking the night before. I’m not saying I’m particularly smart, but I’m not exactly a moron either (somewhere in between the two usually). But when I’m drinking, I usually start to slide down the scale towards the ‘moron’ end.

It’s not always the case, however. There was the time I’d been drinking and joined some friends online in a game, shouting ‘What’s up bitches!’ by way of introduction and proceeded to kill twice as many Locust as everyone else, or the times when drinking gives me the little boost I need to be able to talk to good-looking strangers on a night out or to forget that objectively I’m quite unattractive or that I really, really, can’t dance for shit. Believe it or not, there are also those who have suggested I’m quite funny when I’ve been drinking as well. Whether that says more about them or me, I’ll leave to you to judge.

Since I am now bearded as well as balding there has been a few times when it seems assumptions have been made that I could be quite intimidating if I had a mind to be, appearing that I could go from mild-mannered to full-on nutter on a dime. As I am, frankly, about as tough as jelly this could lead to dire consequences if I allow myself to believe, even a little, in those assumptions when I’m drinking.

So should I stop drinking so I don’t make myself look like more of an idiot than I am? I have considered it, and I’m not going to do that. The truth is, I like to drink. I like tasting wines and ciders, and I could sip all variations of Jack Daniels all night long. So, I figure that the more unfortunate side effects of drinking are simply part and parcel of me, and anyone who knows me has long since accepted that sometimes I say weird or stupid things. And if you don’t know me? Consider it part of the charm.