New Year, Etc....

I wonder if the thing is not so much to renew yourself, through resolutions, or by some arbitrary action to appear to be changing - but to recognise yourself anew. By which I mean, see what it was that had been holding you back, and see what you were before that happened.

Very few of us can look back at ourselves with honesty. For one thing, we genuinely forget what we were like. Through the difficult patch, we come, as through all kinds of memory, to see ourselves as perfect before. This "memory cheats" thing must be some kind of survival device.

You are what you are: you will probably not succeed in changing that significantly, unless something happens to you - shocks you, in some way. But how do you know that what you think you are is what you are? In the muddle, the wave of relationships, the power games they need, the way that they grow around you like your most comfortable clothes, in all this, it is hardly a surprise that you look in the mirror and you don't quite see yourself, but instead see yourself looking a certain way (good or bad) "in that". Your perception is coloured by something that is not, in fact, you.

So what are you, then? How do you recover or recognise what it is that you are and what you can do with it?

I think this is where New Year's Resolutions come in, and the psychology of hope- especially the kind of vicarious hope that we have seen lately. But these are more likely to represent what we want to be, not what we are.

To be honest, I have no idea. I look for the answer in words, in alcohol, in staring at the mirror, even in -yuk- work (which is usually the way of blocking self off altogether): but no answers are forthcoming.

Is it possible, after all, that it is very difficult to know how to recognise yourself? Or is it me?

Let's Not Be Adult (About It)

Really: why bother. Let us be childish and stupid, be immature and freakish, be twats and wankers. The cause of authoritarianism has the scientists and the rationalists own the death-cults. Why not just be bloody silly, prance about in fields like idiots, read Graham Hancock, think of fairy-circles and machine-elves; open the Bible at a random page; why not look to the heavens and see things you cannot justify or repeat, why not see beauty and be staggered; why not just delight, consciously, in life, and its compromises, its failures, the very fact that you think things are wrong; the very fact that you know you are not perfect, even fallen. In the fact that evil derives its power from the existence of good.

Couple of twats (good & evil that is).

Why not take an innocent joy, that does not involve killing other humans, in the fact of existence, this most bizarre of coincidences, this pathetic excuse for rationality? Why not just be, when all around us are desperate to cast their shadows over our lives, and make their laws to govern our lives and deaths? The rationalists are gathering for laws, pouring over sub-clauses, desperate to enact sunsets: they want to control.

Why not just be? Well, because it hurts. Probably.

Let them come up with some justification as to why we should be allowed to live. You know how they love their justifications. They might be logical. Or they might just be pragmatic.

Because, sooner or later, they will do it...then they will see the reverse...and their austere logical or ideological purity will not allow anything else.

And it will be the end.

And it will have been prepared for.*


Yet there'll be this appeal, that we kept through our lives.**


*Well what the hell did you expect??? I am ENGLISH. Sentimentality is woven into my soul. It is the handmaiden of alcohol.

**See above.

You know, I am convinced those two, bloody sentimentality and alcohol, are having an affair...couple of tarts. Dressed up to the nines, flirting like they're anyone's. Cheap tu'penny ha'penny whores.

Change p 42

People often want change because they are full of hate: they loathe what exists, so they want to replace it with what has never existed, on the basis of some damnfool theory, or on the basis precisely that it has never existed and they wish it to. People sometimes want change because they loathe the idea that the world does not encompass their worldview, and they want it encoded in all legal apparatus that they think x and that to not think x is downright offensive, indeed, an incitement to hatred. Which brings us back to our starting point. People think that because x is offensive to y, that the law ought to be changed for z too, and that anyone else who happens to exist, or yet to be created, out of a whim or whatever, must conform to it also because to be offensive to y is an offence, whereas to be offensive to t is alright. I love this idea: x does not affirm my worldview hence you, y, or whoever you are, need to bear this in mind whenever you make any kind of statement that may or may not be taken as public. If only we all had access to this: I'd make disapproval of Doctor Who an incitement to hatred on the basis that if someone said it in my earshot I'd deck the fucker. And be immune from prosection, because the twat "q" had incited me. What a cool legal principle. What I also love about thought-crime legislation is that opposition to it is, de facto, hatred, so just not agreeing with the law might end you with chokey. Indeed, stating any kind of opposition to anything a liberal doesn't like is in itself a vile act of provocation and hate. I _so_ wish I was in government, I'd ban everything just for a laugh. Plus I'd just one day say "well a has been the case for thousands of years, so now I'm abolishing it as any kind of principle and replacing it with b for no better reason than that this shows my power plus it makes me look good with people who matter". That would be ace. And even better, if I could then say "well the peer-reviewed science shows that anyone who disagrees with me is a fuckwitted twat".


I also love the idea of "peer review". As things stand, my peers think I am a) as clever as fuck; b)a twat; c)lazy; d) an arse, e) an idiot and f) a lunatic. Which of these peer reviews do we take as "truth"? (c Pontius Pilate) Well, b), c) and e), at a guess. But then again the writer of b) is a cunt; of c) an idiot who I haven't seen for years and of e) a dickhead who once didn't like the fact that I wowed the women more than him. The writer of a) is currently in prison. How cool is that: you self-select a group who agree with your assumptions, then you say that they agree with you hence you are right. What a fantastic example of recursion. Having said that, the writer of b) is an expert in twats, so it is inappropriate to disagree with him, even though I don't think I am a twat. Also the writer of e) is a linguist who knows the detailed etymology of the word "dickhead" and has written several treatises on why I am one. However, I _am not_ and so the sub-thesis fails, however well the peer review process appears to work. So not quite so self-selected, but still bloody incestuous, the bunch of arseholes.

But then, no bastard would vote for me in the first place, so I'd be fucked. Oh wait, I might be able to ban everything under some European law or other so I might not need to worry about those twat voters. Everything must be banned. We are all untrustworthy so we must start from the premise that we need to redouble our efforts to win the trust of our government (c Brecht); and therefore we must prove identities, prove suitabilities, prove the lack of murderous, sexually deviant intentions. We must prove. We must prove. We must improve.

Which brings us, once again to our starting point: I hate the government. I'm sure there's a law against that.

Change, Pt II

I've just gone and done it, changed the blog. For a couple of days it was immutable and perfect, in the sense of being unchanged or not requiring change, now it is mutating again. Nothing ever stays the same, except for damnfool controlling governments.

I thought I'd pick up on one or two things my wonderful commenters have said but I wanted to write a new post because I wanted to blah and meander and stuff about it.

Regardless of whether any of my atoms from 1981 (say) are extant today (unlikely), I am a continuous being, of some coherence. If I am physically, objectively (ie as an object) something else, something different, the memories and the personality and the construction are the same. I am like a cathedral (though a crap one, with really rubbish stained glass and a wonky spire) with its stones replaced one by one. Same design, same object: actually the analogy breaks down a little because such cathedral is only the same space as the one which saw (say) the murder of a saint, or the crowing of monarchs. But I am the same person and I feel twinges when I hear the music of my childhood (like now -I've put Tears for Fears back on!) because of what I experienced then. Because I am I, despite being something, or some-things, else. My coherence is both a consequence of change, a process of becoming, and a state of order that has obtained despite all the possible breakings-down or victories of entropy that could have happened in the last 31 years.

Things sometimes only need to change because people in power want them to: to demonstrate their power, or their competence (funny how competence so often seems, especially in management to be defined by one's willingness change stuff); things sometimes change because they don't want you to get too comfortable. Also things change because of entropy. Bastard tendency to equilibrium. I wonder if the ethic of Logopolis is visiting itself upon our society (more power would simply speed the collapse). More money, more energy, more determination, more "vision" - more fuck ups, more laws, more enforcement, more atomisation.

As I pointed out before, entropy is winning its battle over my hair, if not my muscles, which, owing to substantial gym use, are now loci of construction, design and order. Design in the sense that I am ordering them out of flesh through my use of weights. I suppose you could argue that entropy is increasing anyway but until I "buy the farm" then I remain a source of order, even increasing order. Yes it's change, but it's also change to stay the same. To increase the order in response to decay to maintain a single existence.

fake consultant wrote apropos of my last post:

change happens, like it or not.

Yes. I did kind of deny that, but only for effect. I don't _really_ believe it. I _do_ think people use that fact in order to change stuff for their own purposes, and to destabilise and dislocate others.

CBI wrote:

In fact, the child who saw those streets WASN'T you...

You've changed.


Yes, frightening isn't it. On the other hand I still exist. Kind of. TD doesn't of course. I liked your post CBI about the identity of yourself and of Crushed. I wonder how much if at all TD has changed me, or my style of writing, or my thinking. Or how much those things have changed TD. Not much probably. I think TD, for all of his drunken sweary bloggertarianism is really still the same as me, because he will always back away from a fight. His mouth is bigger than it should be, really.

Change

Funny old thing, change.

It's a good song by Tears for Fears (there aren't any bad ones); although my mis-hearing of the lyrics inadvertently make it more interesting than it actually is. I thought the refrain was "you can't change", which gives it a refreshing negativist spin, but it's actually "you can change" (zzzzz). Also I thought they had been incredibly clever and written "and something on your mind/became a part of you" whereas it only says "became a point of view" - much less intruiging.


I'm not saying change is impossible or bad but I think that the progressive view that it is always a good thing should be challenged: as if progressives themselves didn't object to change anyway, wanting the clock to remain at 1974 in perpetuity. Change is primarily the means by which rulers, especially the progressive type, keep people on their toes: you prevent anyone becoming too familiar or comfortable with the law/ethics/their local street/the price of a pint - you keep them dependent on you to help them navigate the morass of increasing difference. When the means of running your life keep updating themselves you never feel as though you truly know what's going on. When the buildings of your childhood, the streets and yes, even the trees are gone, it's like a part of you has already been consigned to the grave -what made you no longer exists, some of you is hanging by a thread from the scarce reel of memory. Then doubt seeps in; disagreement and forgetting and anyone could tell you anything about your own past. So you shrug and try not to think too much about the destruction of your own history. No-one's history can keep useless buildings up of course: I mention it not for public policy reasons but rather to suggest that a shifting built environment is not always good for psychic health. I know I risk sounding like an ignorant mix of Oliver Sacks and some twat in a tent with a ouija board but we are part of where we are as much as we are discrete entities. Melting away the ground we walk on creates problems for every opportunity it brings.

I am a mere 31: yet I feel very, very old sometimes. Many of the places I once knew no longer exist: I cannot buy my favourite music in shops and the space in shops for my favourite books is now small as to say, effectively, "we don't want your sort here, so fuck off". So many laws are different from even 10 years ago that things I used to enjoy (an occasional cigar over a few jars in the local, say) are illegal. I literally do not understand quite a lot of what the children I teach say.

And my bald patch is absolutely fucking massive. Jeeezus.

I remember reading a lot in the 90s and you still see it today in some lefty novels (Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman springs to mind) about the "true" motivations of the opponents of change: that they were in power, they were the establishment, they were privileged, they were always wrong. But of course reformers of all kinds want to change the stuff they don't like and preserve the stuff they do in amber. No-one actually likes the idea of change. Ask Ken Livingstone if he wants change in London right now. I'm sure he'll say "Yes, but only through keeping things the same - ie me in power."


Hey ho. Time for a change, eh? Oh how I laughed.