Not for the faint hearted

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:37:27 +0100

Uncharacteristic outburst of anger

Wed, 6 May 2009 13:41:56 +0100

I generally consider myself to be a calm person. I don’t tend to do ‘rage’ but a whole series of things seem to have combined to send me over the edge recently.

Hazel Blears is partly responsible for my decent into a world of venom, her and all the other literally mindless members of the cabinet whose attention is now placed firmly in self-preservation mode regardless of the long term consequences for this country.

I don’t expect much of politics to be honest. If you are an MP with personal ambition in one of the three main political parties you have by definition given up on the idea that political beliefs can evolve. You have tied your colours to one mast and are now forced to spend all of your time writhing around within reach of it under the glare of the media, even if your conscience is screaming at you to selflessly dash yourself on the rocks. Unless your beliefs are more important to you than you’re own career prospects, of course, but lets not flatter ourselves to think we live in that kind of democracy.

But it’s not just politicians that are driving me insane. Next up come the ‘bankers’ and the apparent surprise emanating from the public that these people are driven by personal greed! The fact that they have all run off with the nation’s wealth, leaving an entire generation of Britons to flail about in a depressive mire, should not really be that much of a surprise. That’s what bankers are supposed to do. That’s the whole point of letting a market define it’s own rules. A certain type of person, devoid of what most of us would consider morals, makes as much money as possible from a giant pyramid scheme as quickly as they can before getting out just as the giant casino they were ‘working’ within collapses completely. The more money they make in this way the more likely they are to get knighted. The Government will always step in and bail out these people because these bankers are not playing with their own money, they are toying with the nation’s perceived wealth. Now it appears that by having pensions and getting ourselves into debt and generally living beyond our means over the past fifteen years we’ve done the collective equivalent of replying to an email from a man in Nigeria who wants to deposit some vast sum in our bank account no questions asked. Now we’re left to moan about the fact that that same man has just buried a pickaxe in our collective head while laughing hysterically at our unbridled stupidity.

These bankers are selfish uncaring bastards, yes, but that’s what they’re supposed to be. It’s our own fault. It was by allowing them to be utterly self-serving and to trounce all over the idea that we need to live in a community rather than Britain PLC that would apparently allow us all to become so much richer. Err, well that’s what they said, but now we can see that for the heap of shit that is was. They seem to be richer while we now have the largest national debt since records began. This ingenious bit of spin is called the ‘trickle down effect’ and it allows selfish people to make huge fist-fulls of cash conscience free - they tell themselves that it is precisely their selfishness that allows the rest of us mere mortals to afford Sky TV. It’s for OUR benefit that these people should be allowed to accrue vast financial wealth and crap all over this country. Because they throw us their loose change in the form of taxes that then allows us to build new hospitals. (Oh no, thanks to PFI those are on the nation’s credit card too..) We really don’t know how lucky we are though and we mustn’t scare these people off by making them pay more tax, because then they might decide to set themselves up in another countries financial system and that would inevitably lead to our financial system and our economy collapsing completely! Err, it already has hasn’t it? We should pay their airfare to get out of here asap.

If only we were living in a JG Ballard novel, then a ‘terrorist’ organisation would have sprung up by now, intent on justice by torturing and finally assassinating all these greedy banking bastards and the politicians that let them get away with it for so long, but of course we are all far too civilised to let anything like that happen.

The thing that irritates me most about all this though is the fact that the ‘experts’ given so much airtime, screen time, and column inches while everyone was happy ‘making money’, not to mention the politicians who lapped up this corporate ideology and pulled any remaining teeth from the mouth of the FSA - who let’s not forget didn’t see this coming and presided over what we now know to be a totally discredited system - are now the people we’re turning to to solve the crisis! They have some nerve, don’t you think? The MP’s in the House of Commons and the people in every boardroom of every bank and corporate structure that believed in the ‘free market’ and the mantra of constant economic growth should have resigned on mass out of shame. We need a forest fire in the halls of the measurable world before we can sort out this mess once and for all. But no. All those to blame are still in power and now have the nerve to give us advice on what we should do next! It’s like coming home to find your house on fire and asking the man standing sheepishly next to it, with a can of petrol in one hand and a box of matches in the other, if he’s got any ideas how to put out the raging inferno that he set alight.

I’m also rather pissed off with the board of my beloved Southampton FC for destroying the football club I’ve supported for nearly three decades because of their total lack of financial judgement.

But the thing that has really knocked me over, pulling away the last straw rug from under me if you will, is the recent discovery that my brain will never allow me to truly be as happy as it tells me is possible because, existentially speaking, my brain has an idea of perfection that real life can never live up to on account of real life being real. My brain, however, can make up what it likes and then tease me with the impossibility of what my life could ‘be’ every waking moment. Causing me to be whipped and battered by the impossibility of an image of happiness or perfection that I now know I will never reach, because this image only resides in my head. This knowledge leaves me feeling slightly hollow. Like the anticlimax when Arthur Dent arrives back in time towards the end of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. All of a sudden there doesn’t seem to be much to aim for.

Having said that I am happy, I do feel happiness, but it is here, under my nose, not somewhere exotic or far away. That should be re-assuring, and in some ways it is, but it allows no possibility of etheral escape. There are no ifs and buts. There are no luxurious unknowns. Even with all this madness going on it seems the only real happiness that’s truly available is what’s right here, right now.

Splendours and Miseries of the Brain by Semir Zeki is available from amazon

Hmm

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:01:09 +0100

I had a dream the other night.

I was floating in a dark and endless void (hmm, this is cheerful...) and there I met a man with a large red beard. He began talking to me in a way that suggested we had met before but I didn’t remember him and I was, well, rather scared.

We had a long conversation, most of which I can’t remember, but my idea of what we talked about was very clear in my mind when I woke up. We were discussing essentially what I had learned in each of my many lives (yes, I know...) but the crux of the questioning was whether or not I’d worked it out yet. Whether I’d had enough of all the heart ache and joy, success and disaster, love and despair of so many, many lives.

And, rather amazingly, I did have an answer. I know, it rather surprised me when I said it. Perhaps I read it somewhere else and my subconscious lobbed it out of my memory while I wasn’t paying attention. But anyway, because it’s late I thought I’d put it up here. It’s only ten words.

The answer was;

‘Heaven is the place where you are allowed to die.’

The man in the red beard smiled and nodded. And then I woke up.

There you go. My answer perhaps, rather than anyone else’s. Or just meaningless gibberish. But it seemed an interesting answer to me. All this rushing around trying to elongate our lives. The infrastructure of denial that’s become concocted to keep us all working and consuming. It’s as though, in a sandstorm of brand names and commuter trains, we’ve forgotten that we’re all going to die.

(Incidentally I don’t mean we know it’s going to happen but have chosen to get on with life because to dwell on death is so sad and terrifying, now hand me another pint of Stella, let’s go for a Big Mac and then go home and watch Pop Idol etc...) I mean we have actually forgotten, except for those dark moments on our own at night, that one day we are actually going to die.

I think the problem with the world might be that we all live as though we’re going to live forever. We’re putting off the big questions and concentrating on the news, or the Olympics, instead of the reality. That we are very small and we live on a rock orbiting a fireball in a seemingly endless empty space. The thought of what is beyond that space is quite frightening. Beyond that is even more unsettling. And so on and so on.

I’m beginning to think that our problems stem from the fact that we live with the concept of immortality in our heads. It’s quite hard to discuss this stuff though, unless you want to hang out with people taking acid. At least in my experience.

Can you imagine anyone asking such questions in the House of Commons for example? “Would the honorable member inform the house of his thoughts on how the threat of the eternal void is effecting the population of this great land? What steps is he going to take to help my constituents come to terms with the concept of life and death in a world that seems intent on stuffing the most important questions of existence under the carpet?” They’d be heckled and be told to ‘join the real world’, which would be supremely ironic.

Then it struck me that politicians are always described by the papers that support them as ‘fiercely intelligent’. You’ve got David ‘Two Brains’ Willetts for example. But when was the last time you heard a politician, businessman or anyone in public life for that matter, described as ‘incredibly wise’?

What happened to wisdom exactly? We get a lot about intelligence. School league tables, scholarships, fast tracks, graduate training schemes... But what about the attributes that will bring a happy life? Is anyone interested in those things?

All these statesmen, businessmen, actors and entrepreneurs wanting to carve out a legacy so they will be remembered forever. All, coincidentally, millionaires or on their way to becoming one.

Our leaders seek immortality and financial wealth. Any kind of success could be seen as an attempt to seek immortality.

But perhaps one of the greatest privileges of life is, actually, the ability to die. Or at least accept it. Think about it. Share it. The simple acceptance that we will all be forgotten.

I think this lack of perspective and thought about death might account for so may people’s reluctance to actually live. I mean really live, and not just exist in a kind of half experience where you’re only marginally more frightened of dying than living.

Hmm.

Part time Britain (part 2)

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:27:17 +0000

My first email about the dream of Britain turning it’s back on full time work was not from a cynic, but a kindred spirit called Liz.

Hi Dan,

I hope you don't mind me emailing you. I've just starting reading your book 'I Fought the Law' and am finding it much more interesting than I thought I would - as you say in the introduction, the book you eventually wrote was much scarier but also more interesting than your original idea of just breaking daft laws. But reading your book led me on to find your website and read your blog, and your recent idea of part time Britain.

I just wanted to write to you then to say that this is exactly what me and my husband have been trying to achieve and finding exactly the same bemused responses as you described. I cannot see what the problem is with the idea, it seems obviously sensible to me, particularly for parents as then each parent gets to taste the benefits of both staying at home bonding with children and going out in adult company. So far, all we've managed is for my husband to work full-time, but at least at a job which has reasonable hours so that he's home to eat tea with us all every day as well as working from home one day a week, while I stay with the children and try to do some freelance writing and some flexible home-based work with them hanging off my computer chair and screaming in my ear. There just aren't very many part-time jobs in my husband's industry at the level he wants to work at.

Anyway, we'll continue working towards this goal and I'll continue reading your blog and hoping you find a solution to this problem which will work for us too!

Best wishes,

Liz Pilley

Sadly I haven’t actually thought about this idea much since writing the first entry. That’s the trouble with blogs. The best ones are written by people who should be doing something else, like working for example, but my work isn’t something I want to bunk off from. In fact I don’t really ‘work’ at all - although I do earn money - and perhaps therein lies the answer.

As Liz points out, most people’s reaction to the idea of only working part time is one of bafflement. When you think about it this is hardly surprising.

From the age of four we are brainwashed into thinking that we should spend five days a week from the hours of 9 to 5 doing something we’d rather not do in a place that, given the choice, we’d rather not be. By the time we escape this full time education system twelve years later it’s perhaps unsurprising if we no longer have the imagination required to live without such a regimented structure. When prisoners come out of prison they complain that they’ve become ‘institutionalised’ and so it is with work and school (or pre-work as Idler Ed Tom Hodgkinson refers to it).

The first step to rid yourself of an addiction to full time work, is therefore not a financial one, as most people would expect, but a psychological one. You have to rid yourself of the mindset of the Protestant work ethic. The ethic of meaningless toil you were subjected to in school. The ethic that you’ve grown up with that told you any job is better than no job. That hard work, no matter how pointless and devoid of meaning it may be, is better than being unemployed. It is certainly true that if a job is worth doing it’s worth doing well, the problem is that so few jobs are worth doing, so there simply is no point in doing them at all.

As to the financial question of how you can afford to only work part time the answer is to work out how much money you need to live on and find the most time efficient way of making that money. This is preferable to the common way of living where you work five days a week and spend the extra money you earn on pointless crap you don’t actually need.

I’ve written along these lines before in a piece for the Idler called ‘The Seven Steps to the Idle Life’, which you will find printed in the back of I Fought The Law and in the article section of this website.

As to how we make Britain go part time, Liz. I think the argument most ‘captains of Industry’ and ‘politicians’ would throw at me is the detrimental impact a part time economy would have on the British economy, and how that would impact on public services. So I’ll start reading up on that and, when I’ve got some good arguments, I’ll let you know.

dan@idler.co.uk

Could the UK go part time?

Fri, 4 Jan 2008 14:40:46 +0000

I have a dream.
In it everyone in Britain works part-time instead of full-time.
In this wonderfully sedate future full-time work has been denounced for making us sub-human. It has been discovered, by lackadaisical scientists, that full-time work is actually to blame for all of life’s problems.

At first, in the late 20th and early 21st century, ‘Full Time Work’ was found guilty of creating great stress, unhappiness, and for preventing us spending enough time with our kids (and the inevitable social problems that follow such bad parenting). ‘Full Time Work’ was also found to be responsible for human beings getting into far too much debt as they bought endless crap on the high street every Saturday hoping this would help free themselves from their misery, as promised by the blanket advertising they were subjected to from their favourite, and most revered, celebrities.

Once the flood gates on full time work were opened (in this peaceful future) everyone began to recognise the elephant in the room and soon lots of other studies began to find that ‘Full Time Work’ was the cause of all our other major troubles too. It even appeared that people who were busy working longer and longer hours soon found themselves too pre-occupied with their work to keep tabs on what their elected representatives were up to (and a raft of unjust, repressive, nannying and interfering legislation began to appear).

Full-time work was also found to deliver a particularly bad deal for women, who largely (though not exclusively) really wanted to work part time once they’d had children so they could get an equal amount of time with their kids as they did working. And thus would be able to maintain social lives, self-respect through their chosen career, reduce loneliness and, at the same time, alter the child’s father’s perception of old fashioned roles in the home. In order for a mother to work part time then the father would have to as well, and thus he would began to appreciate the value of taking care of the home and having a more realistic view of childcare.

This shift in male attitudes allowed men to realise that a life split between a rewarding job to earn money and raising their children was not weedy in some way but actually very enjoyable. They soon found that they enjoyed hanging out with their kids and when they had got a tiny bit sick of them it was time for them to go to their two and a half week job instead. Being a better father turned out to give them a real spring in their step as they looked forward to a different kind of daily challenge when the two and a half day working week began.

The revolution against full time work soon followed and everyone in Britain lived happily ever after.

Or so I dreamt.

Sadly, when I mentioned this idea of a new part-time economy on the Daily Politics with Andrew Neil a few years ago, the politicians and presenters present laughed heartily at my idea, reasoning such a way of life was absurd. One (Norman Baker the Lib Dem MP) even claimed it had already been tried in the 70s and didn’t work.

Well, in the course of this blog, I’m going to try and work out if it could work and what would happen if it did. It is a huge and absurdly ridiculous undertaking but what the hell. My son starts nursery in a few weeks and I’m going to have another two hours a day to fill so I should be able to manage it.

What I really need are cynics to explain to me why it couldn’t possibly work so I can take the argument from there.

dan@idler.co.uk