Good and Evil, Good and Bad

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Are you good or good? Bad or evil? Nietzsche may just have the answer. For this piece I will focus on the first essay in his On the Genealogy of Morality (GM) entitled ”Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad”. The crux of this is the debate surrounding the power play between two types of morality, that of the master or warrior noble, and that of the slave or ‘herd’. It is important too to understand what he means when discussing genealogy and I will begin there.

He refers to the ‘English psychologists’; such as Hobbes, Hume and his one time friend the German Paul Rée, who Nietzsche groups with them, and criticises for their utilitarian linear understanding of the term. Genealogy for Nietzsche was not about legitimising people, institutions or traditions; it is not something that could be used to lend credibility to our present structures and ideals. There is no origin story and certainly not one relating to a small group of people hanging out and moralising in Palestine two thousand years ago. Genealogy is about a series of varying events from different places with different process’ converging, influencing and evolving again with others later. Even if there were an origin it likely wouldn’t be one we would approve of with our sense of compassionate Judeo-Christian morals, more one involving violence, coercion and subjugation. Ironically three things littered throughout the history of Christianity. A linear understanding of morality in the sense of it’s genealogy merely highlights the Christian influence upon the history of Europe in the last two thousand years. Nietzsche’s aim is to delegitimise the Judeo-Christian manipulation of this term and the credibility it grants them.

We exist now in a time of the slave morality, our moral code has been created by the weak, by the herd, and it has been created out of a resentful hateful impotence towards that of the warriors. What is meant by that is that in the past, say pre-history, so pre-Christian history, those with power were the warriors. They held on to their power through their strength and subsequently dictated what should be deemed morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The warrior or noble of this time valued strength, courage and glory, and classed these as ‘good’ values to achieve. For them anything other was deemed ‘bad’ in contrast to merely not being them and their ‘good’; the common man, the unhealthy, the weak.

The priests were also part of the nobility but without the political power of the warrior noble. They had the expectations of the nobility and subsequently believed a certain type of life had value above all others. They desired the wealth and especially the political power of this life but were weak comparable to the warriors, it was impossible to achieve their desires through the same means. Despite this impotence they maintained a ‘will to power’, they maintained a commitment to their desired life. This refusal to accept their impotence, while also recognising it’s existence led to deep envy and hatred within the priestly caste and from this they developed ressentiment. Their ressentiment was a “repressed vengefulness” (GM 1 : 7), an inability to exorcise and a suppression of their envy and hatred. They resented their impotence and the shame that came with it. According to Nietzsche this ressentiment became creative and from that gave birth to the slave morality. They constructed a positive value in what the warriors deemed ‘bad’. While the priests may have proclaimed love and compassion, their morals were created out of hatred, envy and resentment.

“Priests make the most evil enemies…Because they are the most powerless. Out of this powerlessness their hate swells” (GM 1 : 7).

The priests changed our understanding of morality, they changed what it was to be ‘good’ and more importantly what it was to be now ‘evil’. The very values held by the warriors, the affirmation of their own self-worth, importantly what maintained their position in society yet repressed or constricted others, became ‘evil’. The priests ‘good’ was the antithesis of the warriors ‘good’. The worshipping of meekness and the weak became a way of demonising the values of the warriors and as a way of circumventing and empowering themselves. The priest doesn’t need strength to achieve power, instead the priest merely convinces others that power itself is unworthy. The ‘evil’ warrior wants power while the priest merely wants neighbourly love, they created value in political equality. The issue for the priest though is that their ressentiment has not disappeared, they may condemn the nobles but they both still desire the same “victory, spoil and seduction” (GM 1 : 8). The difference being that the warrior nobles acted out of this positive affirmation for themselves, while the priests acted reactively out of impotent hatred and rejection of others.

The society based upon this slave morality may in a sense empower us, the herd, but it doesn’t exists in our best interests. It valorises the qualities which would be the inverse of what made the warrior’s powerful and ‘good’, we now exist in a world which commends this new ‘good’. We are commended for passivity, for meekness, for submissiveness, and in Nietzsche’s eyes, ultimately for mediocrity. We have created and exist in what has become a mediocre society full of mediocre people. The man of ressentiment created a world which feared the outsider, or anything different, it is a world born as a counter to the warrior’s ‘good’ and as such is a reactive world. The slave morality has created a culture in which everything exists within a mediocre rulebook of flawed moralities. They are flawed because they’re born out of this reactive hatred and because they valorise weakness and mediocrity. The reactive man of ressentiment lacks the introspective thought to realise their own self-worth and break free of this mediocrity. While this mediocrity may suit the herd it also suppresses anyone who may try to rise above and out of it, keeping all in this substandard mediocrity. An inevitable acceptance of this leads to a belief in the pointlessness of life and an embrace of nihilism.

Nietzsche held onto the classical realist position that moralities exist because they are in the interests of whichever group pushes them. Those in power will push self-interested morals and language that conserves the hierarchy and their position within it, in that sense compassion and equality can be viewed as fundamental tenets of the morals of those without power. The slave morality in this case can be viewed as just another way of creating the conditions best suited to the empowerment of the herd, or at least the priests through the herd.

Words such as ‘noble’, ‘aristocratic’ or ‘high-minded’ were conceptually linked with and synonymous with the warrior’s ‘good’, and ‘common’, ‘plebeian’ or ‘low’ with ‘bad’. In ancient Greek words for ‘real’ and ‘genuine’ evolved into meaning ‘noble’, and contrastingly ‘dark’ and ‘black’ would be used to describe dangers or untrustworthiness, as well as the dark skinned common man in the field who the blond white Aryan conqueror displaced. There was a steady manipulation of language to create an ingrained perspective of the value of the nobility and it’s position as the ‘good’ in society. In time the priests merely did the same. They associated ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ with ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The resultant connection of pureness with abstinence and restraint, the very values that also came with the impotence of powerlessness that the priests and slaves had in abundance.

Nietzsche believes there are types of people, in a sense that we’re born this way. He uses the bird of prey and lamb analogy to explain this. The bird of prey kills the lamb not because it is ‘evil’ but because it is a natural action. This is a sign of the strength of the bird and weakness of the lamb. The lamb though believes the bird of prey could not kill if it wanted and that it’s action is a choice, a belief that “the strong man is free to be weak and the bird of prey to be a lamb” as Nietzsche put it in Beyond Good and Evil. However he believed the bird of prey is not separate from it’s action, nor free to kill or not kill. The naturalness of it’s ability to kill the lamb is what makes the bird a bird of prey yet it is the lambs ressentiment which makes it believe it is a choice. The bird of prey becomes ‘evil’ for existing as it does and the lamb ‘good’ for the same reason. The slave morality lauds those who do not kill or hurt, and in turn praises those powerless to do so regardless. The priests turn their impotence into a positive and demonise the strengths of others.

This is an overview of the first essay in GM more than any type of critique. The intention is to give a general understanding as opposed to swaying the reader towards any particular interpretation.

The Boss

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You can’t study philosophy without dipping your toes into a little morality, or shall we say moralaki. Likely it’ll end up being a lot of morality but the Greek diminutive will make easing in a little less intense. Perhaps ‘The Boss‘ is not the ideal title either; sticking with the Greek theme the boss of western philosophy would likely be Plato or his invention Socrates were a poll ever conducted, and even from a contemporary stance it may not be the man in the picture either, but while reading him now it feels there could only ever be one god of philosophy and it must be Nietzsche. Yet to describe him as such would suggest totally missing the point of his ideas, and while Übermensch – a higher person – would make more sense he never saw himself as one of his own creations, which leaves us with some kind of depressed and insane rock star. Let’s just say he’s a big deal around these parts. So module two, Nietzsche and more precisely his Genealogy of Morality.

It’s early days and I’m just getting my head around some of his concepts. Seemingly he’s not a massive fan of Judeo-Christian morality. It gives power to the slave morality by putting a flawed value on weak concepts likes meekness. He believed this type of morality had a detrimental effect upon the advancement of the the higher person as it thwarted the development of human excellence. Too much focus was put on uplifting the weak herd at the expense of the potential of the higher person. In a sense the need to live by the rules of a morality which pushed empathy, selflessness and equality risked the higher person not fulfilling their potential, as they were forced to reign in their natural instincts. Think of some people who we class as great people, innovative genius’ perhaps, and without a doubt there will be an aspect of them and their single minded drive that falls foul of our sense of the good. Nietzsche’s point is seemingly that we shouldn’t force them to live by our own moral code, this universal moral code of good and evil, because people are quite clearly not universally the same. On the surface it is pretty clear to see why people dislike his non-egalitarian beliefs but it’s not a stretch to say there is an argument to be had for it. How much will become clear as I go through the module.

The influence of the great thinkers throughout history can only really become clear when you see which ideals of theirs have become commonplace within our general thinking. How many times have people reassuringly told themselves or others that if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, well Nietzsche came up with that. He believed in the importance of the journey, especially if it involved a little suffering, and undoubtable saw little value in just being given the answer without having to work on it. Much of his life revolved around suffering, at the age of four he watched his Lutheran pastor father die from a devastating brain disease, and it was in these moments of suffering throughout his life he did much of his best work. It can’t be a coincidence that considering his own experience he believed moralities that held suffering to be a bad thing, to be so deeply flawed. Suffering for Nietzsche was a good and he put it to the test enough times.

He said without doubt his work would be misused in the future and seemingly the Nazi’s proved him right. They had a little help from his sister who edited and published some of his notebooks after his death to make him look as equally anti-Semitic and nationalistic as she was. While she may have been an old lady at the time she was a total Adolf fan-girl and he was more than happy to warp Nietzsche’s words to justify some Aryan master race bullshit. The truth was that Nietzsche hated nationalism as much as religion, yet spent the first half of the twentieth century mis-represented as a Nazi. Yet that’s the issue, as I said earlier he is very much open to interpretation to the point one esteemed Nietzsche expert will say he was anti-Semitic and other that he wasn’t. Who am I to know really after a few papers and a couple of podcasts.

Nietzsche spent the last eleven years of his life completely insane and died in 1900. In the late 1880’s just before being committed he wrote much of his best work. He wrote ferociously at this point almost as if he knew what was coming and just wanted to get his words and ideas out before it was too late. It isn’t a stretch to suggest there is a fine line between genius and crazy and seemingly Nietzsche lost that battle. He seems interesting though and while I have already made far more notes that this little introductory ramble would suggest, I look forward to attempting to really form an opinion on him as right now I’m likely just to be repeating the words of others if I try to make sense of the man. I’ll come back next time with something a little more detailed and philosophical, or at least an attempt at such.

The Emotions

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The emotions eh, who’d have them. Well most people actually. The suffering and torment of cognitive and physiological reactions that make no sense to us what so ever. More learned people than I am believe similar to me and equally more learned people think differently to me. When something makes little sense trying to form your own argument while being aware of such varied and different ideas simply makes the head spin further. Yet this is philosophy, finding a (temporary) point when you think you get it and being able to bask in your own glorious comprehension gives the self doubt it’s own value and makes it all worth it. And doubt I did, and momentarily bask a little too but only a little of course.

The module is now complete and while there was a lack of posts in here on my progress, or as a means to achieve progress, it feels right before moving on to the next module to cover a little of what I think I learnt. I won’t necessarily give an overview of the Philosophy of Emotions as that is too much of a task and there is not enough space or I suspect appetite for it, mine mainly, but will go over the question I answered for the assignment.

‘Being horrified by the events of the Rwandan genocide or Jewish holocaust justifies you in believing that those events were horrendous atrocities.’ Discuss.

Seems pretty straightforward I hear you say but what if you were to reframe the question using kittens instead as the object. It doesn’t seem quite so justified then, they’re only kittens and kittens are cute, genocide is quite clearly not. Ultimately the question is one of whether our emotions can justify our beliefs. For better or worse I argued not. They may influence our beliefs and help us to understand our beliefs, or help us understand whether our beliefs need deeper contemplation, but they’re on the whole too unreliable to justify what we believe about something. We form our beliefs, I argued, through a continually evolving conscious and unconscious process of reflection. Arguably this would be a form of conditioning, but it also comes down to experience and knowledge amongst other things. As our emotional intelligence and maturity increases, if it does, then we can trust our emotions more. Paradoxically, and this is a new thought, the more they were to increase surely the less likely we would be to trust our emotions as we became more aware of their unreliability and the importance of reasoned reflection. Our ability to use reason is important, and while our reasoning may be flawed for whatever reason it is still integral for the formation of our beliefs. Ultimately I believe kittens to be adorable and genocide horrendous because having learnt about them, what they are as conceptual objects, as well as the conceptual attributes of adorability and horrific, my reasoning relates each object with their corresponding attributing value.

There’s likely more but seeing as I’m not emotionally strong enough to torture myself by reading though my rushed and muddled assignment, whatever other points I made have seemingly drifted off into the ether. Having taken an eternity to get my head around the topic, there wasn’t a great deal of time to complete the essay and while I haven’t got the mark back yet, I’m not one for thinking and telling everyone I’ve done poorly while getting a good result. The most frustrating thing, although it’s also a real positive, is that I know I can do better and don’t believe I did myself justice. We use this and make sure we do better the next time but at the very least appreciate the fact it wasn’t as an unconquerable field of philosophic thought as it felt. In a perverse kind of way, I think I actually kind of enjoyed it in the end. Or at the very least had some kind of an emotional reaction that helped me form such a belief, or perhaps I will after a little more reflection.

What then is an emotion?

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It turns out that emotions are not straight forward things. Perhaps instinctively we imagine them to be such things as anger, sadness, happiness, fear, joy et al. And it turns out likely that would be an acceptable initial if somewhat abstract understanding. Acceptable that is until you discover there is always a beyond the obvious.

For the eighteenth and early nineteenth century empiricists like Hume and Locke, the mind was a single field of thought and feeling, fully conscious and transparent to itself. This mind was made up of visual, auditory, and tactile impressions, and distinct ideas which were the product of these impressions. Or as Hume put it, “like players in a theatre who successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations”. These early ideas were later dismissed. The suggestion emotions were just these pure and simple things floating around waiting to come together before dissipating again was deemed flawed. It missed the point that emotions are not stand alone boxable feelings but unique and unrepeatable; the mind, the body, the moment are never twice the same. A unique amalgamation of everything if you wish.

From the late nineteenth century a philosophising psychologist called William James decided, and incidentally this is apparently still a respected idea in the psychology world, a statement that needs checking and confirming beyond one verbal source, that emotions were the result of bodily physiological sensations. What this means is that were we to see a bear in a forest, our body would react, for example our legs might go weak and our hearts beat wildly, and this would trigger the emotion of fear within us. While undoubtedly reactions on a physical level play a role in emotions, to claim those bodily feelings create the emotions doesn’t hold up when challenged with the fact our legs feel weak and our heart beat increases when we go for a run. In that circumstance the feeling of fear is generally not the emotion people feel. The fact physically you feel the same feelings when you experience love, fear and exercise explains why this stance in itself is not widely held in contemporary thought.

From here we move into more accepted ideas of emotions, the main two being judgements and perceptions. They state that we see the bear, make an evaluative judgement of the situation, feel the emotion and have a suitable physical response, or that after seeing the bear we have an emotional and physical response based upon how we perceive the situation to be. This being philosophy neither are fool proof. If we were to be standing behind guard rails looking over the edge of a cliff we may still feel fear despite the fact we have made the rational judgement that we are not in danger of falling over. We have a contradictory emotional response to how we have assessed the situation. This argument could be used for fear of household British spiders too. It is important to mention though that evaluative judgements are ever forming and not just made in the moment. Proponents in the perceptual model would suggest we feel fear as we look over the precipice because we can perceive the inherent danger, an argument which frankly holds up a lot better. Unlike the judgemental model which deals with the rational and irrational, the perceptual approach is arational. When they have to explain non-human animal and infant human emotions both struggle to justify their positions as neither beasts nor babies have the required language to make evaluative judgements nor, and this is very debatable, the cognitive abilities to have an instinctive perceptual reaction. This point definitely needs further investigation though.

Two thoughts that came up after todays seminar were whether we can have an unconscious emotion, for example feelings of pain in the neck or ache in the head are symptoms of the emotion of stress, yet we may be completely unaware we’re stressed or anxious about anything. Are we unconscious in that moment of the emotion or just unaware of it from a cognitive perspective. Is this emotion a physical feeling only. If we’re unaware of this emotion then it stands to say we’re not consciously aware of it and so unconscious of it, yet unconscious seems like too strong a word.

The second thought was whether perception is just an evaluation or judgement made at an earlier time. Do we perceive danger in the bear because long ago we made the judgement that bears are dangerous. We may make the judgement in the moment that the bear on the other side of the valley could do us harm but likely won’t and so we’re in little to no danger, yet we still feel the emotion of fear. We arguably perceive the possibility of danger, the danger we judged bears can inflict when we learnt bears as dangerous. My dog would likely also feel this danger but it’s doubtable a baby would, and arguably neither would a puppy.

This is as far as week one has really got. There was also mention of something called the Common Sense Theory which is that you see the bear, something cognitive happens, you feel the suitable emotion and have a bodily physiological reaction. Unfortunately in philosophy common sense seems to infer not suitably complicated and therefore deeply flawed so this theory only ever seems to be granted a couple of sentences at most. There has been a bit regarding recalcitrant emotions, which are emotions that conflict with judgements and likely perceptions but these will be the focus of the material in weeks two and three. Their existence was touched upon but just to bring an awareness to something that appears to sow difficulties in all the theories. This will become clear. As will hopefully a further and clearer understanding of what is very much a base and slightly confused understanding of the few concepts so far. Seemingly the philosophy of emotions is yet to find a generally held coherent argument. Arguably there’s something in all the perspectives and undoubtedly emotions consist of a combination of sensations, experiences, perceptions and judgements. Perhaps the truth simply lies in some as yet undiscovered or unmeasurable perspective and understanding. As yet of course.

The Snake Pit of Certainties

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It appears that time when an audience is required for some personal thing this author is going through has returned. That may have appeared an unnecessarily formed sentence but that is because this author is finally, after a five year hiatus, undertaking the second and final year of his Philosophy MA with The Open University. When previously completing my one year of daily writings an audience was required for inspiration, my ego and to ensure standards never slipped to the point of producing nothing. Now it’s about having a space to publicly mull over and attempt to express with the written word my understanding, or more concisely misunderstanding, of whatever is currently hiding behind the wall of confusion and ignorance in front of me.

In the previous writings there were times I attempted to write about philosophy and it felt evident it was far harder than writing about some inane thing I was getting up to or having a rant about corrupt politicians. I need you to help me become better at what I’m trying to do. As I said I am using you.

Our new journey will start with the philosophy of emotions, moving on to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Foucault and Arendt’s take on Power, finally politics and morality in the sense of Dirty Hands, before finishing on whatever my dissertation will be. Trust me when I say that is some great subject matter and I hope I am capable of persuading you of this. How often anything will be published is open, it won’t be daily like previously.

Judging by the introductory day I just attended you may be experiencing far more of my misunderstandings than observations, yet I will start with the observation that attempting to understand Nietzsche is like diving into a snake pit of your own eternal ever evolving misunderstanding. It turns out we know nothing for sure, although not nothing in the sense of totality as there are no absolute certainties, what I think, and we need to be careful there with both the ‘I’ and the ‘think’, is like that snake pit and ever evolving. Rolls eyes. What fun we’re going to have.

Goodbye

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It turns out to be harder ending something than it does starting or sustaining it. We can fall into things and then rely on habitual behaviours to sustain them but finding a suitable way of calling time appears to be the real challenge. This day was always coming. The end was inevitable despite the odd temptation. The hard part is not about struggling to let go or fearing what comes next, it’s about being able to walk away from something despite it being such a big part of your life, and on the whole a positive part. Throw in the ego which somehow wants to go out with style and any suitable last piece becomes impossible. This is not my first draft. I have had more drafts today, or attempts, than I’ve had second drafts in the entire year. But call an end we must for all this must end one day.

It’s the self-congratulatory indulgent nature of this last piece I’m struggling with. I’m pleased with myself for going a whole year, writing a piece every single day. It’s not that I didn’t think myself capable but I’m only human. Granted there was the post mountain rave piece I only managed a few sentences, the day I wrote a piece but didn’t publish and the day in the first month I published a piece I had written as a back up a few days earlier. I never said I was perfect but there are no judges, nobody except myself to say I passed or failed. I may have involved others, but like most things on social media I was using you for my own ends. The Strava Wanker of the blog writing world. So I pat myself on the back, fuck it I deserve it, and carry on.

This was a fun experiment. It was exhausting and it has been a hectic year. Some pieces I really enjoyed and was pleased with and others descended into little more than journal entries. But it has been a whole year and that is plenty of time for it to morph into a mouthpiece for whatever I’m thinking or feeling, both positive and negative as the days unfolded. What now then, what comes in it’s place. Something must always come in its place. It is important to know when to finish things, and in this case the natural conclusion comes from the planned conclusion. I’ll accept I’m quite a sentimental person and will miss my daily jaunt into writing. I enjoyed creating the habit even though it wasn’t always easy. But now this habit must morph into something new. Time will give the answers and you may hear from me again, just with different intentions and not on here. For now though, thank you for sharing this with me.

On a final note I would like to wish a happy birthday to the man I call father. Sixty-nine years young today.

Scotland’s Narrative

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It is not an understatement to suggest that something narrative changing happened yesterday. In fact minus the hyperbole, that is exactly what happened. Being Scottish my association with national team sports has for a long time now been a familiar one. On the rare occasion we’re not being outclassed by some developing nation with a population of Glasgow and a budget of Dundee, we manage to rediscover the heroic fires of William Wallace, shock the biggest teams to find ourselves on the cusp of victory before a moment of inexplicable ill-fortune results in us falling at the last hurdle. Yes we’ll call it ill-fortune. We are Scotland and we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It is an understanding built up through experience. We have James McFadden’s screamer in Paris followed by defeat to Georgia. We have William Wallace. We have 1707. We are the master’s of glorious failure, it seems a fatalistic inevitability.

Last night though we changed the narrative. Despite conceding a last minute equaliser against Serbia we somehow did the most un-Scottish of things by holding on and winning on penalties. We may have only qualified for a tournament but for us it was like we had won it, we had won qualification. After twenty-three years of false promise, this was a victory. Winning in a penalty shootout was dramatic too, this is actually becoming a very Scottish thing as we’re now two for two. We’ll be playing the English at the tournament and in the perfect world we would just scrap the game and have a shootout instead. Being Scottish though I’ll resist looking forward to that game with too much excitement. We may have changed the narrative yesterday but mental conditioning goes deep.

This will be our first tournament since the World Cup in 1998. I remember it too, I’ll never forget Tom Boyd’s own goal against the Brazilians when we were playing so well. I’ll also never forget, or forgive, Gary McAllister for that penalty miss two years earlier. Football can be harsh, supporters harsher, let’s hope tournament football can be a little less so for us for once. All of my national footballing memories in between have been qualifiers. The majority painful. I’m not going to pretend I watched them all either, I’m not dedicated enough to watch us draw in Moldova or lose in Lithuania. Now though twenty-three years after the last time, my summer will be taken up with supporting one team and not just whoever’s playing the English. It’s time to leave Moldova behind, learn the words to the second verse of the national anthem and look forward to tournament football. What a rare pleasure it’s going to be, cautious pleasure of course.

The Sweetest Of Nihilists

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Not long now. This is my third last piece and I’m becoming acutely aware of making the most of what’s left. I love starting things and while I certainly don’t finish everything, I do also enjoy that rounded feeling of completion. There are times I overplay the ceremonial nature of the last night, or the last time, or the last whatever and have learnt over the years it is slightly unnecessary. Sometimes you just have to get on with things, be the stone cold killer who calls time. Let’s see how I do on Saturday then, stone cold or the more familiar sentimental killer. Enough of that though, save it for another time.

Now then, to make the most of what’s left – stares blankly at the white wall in front, searching for something in what is ultimately nothing – but really does it matter. Does it change anything if this piece is nonsense and doesn’t discuss something deep and meaningful, virtuous or god forbid political. I’ve given up on politics, well on here at least. I enjoy it but it can end but being a judgemental one sided screaming match and nobody needs that in their lives. I said goodbye with Trump, the British stuff is so entangled in it’s own bullshit it’ll never end. Which leaves me with a few things but all I have is this blank wall. As I said though, it doesn’t really matter. Without doubt their is a nihilist within me and I let him out from time to time. Rational and irrational go to war over who can push the nihilist back in his box, the box of pointless nothing. The stone cold serial killer as nihilist? No, I miss the point of my own nihilism. And there’s always a point.

It’s my birthday today. I don’t know how I feel about that. One year older. It doesn’t really bother me in an excitable way but there will always be a bit that enjoys it. I can understand why people stop being fussed about celebrating them as they get older though. For some it’s a denial of their own decay yet sometimes you just don’t give a shit. There can be a lot of bravado involved at times like this, and we all love a bit of attention and fussing as the dog enjoys their belly rubbed, but really it is just another day. Yet it isn’t, it’s a day that reminds you that despite almost impossible odds, that after over four billion years of the earths existence, everything in that time fell into place and your consciousness, whatever the hell that is, became real. Perhaps it was always real and will always be, but whatever it is, the odds against us are staggering and we’re still here to be aware of it. We’re still here despite everything. And with that we continue to defy the odds. That’s probably worth celebrating. Marvel at the beauty of life not the self-absorbed indulgence of decay. Get back in thy box sweet nihilist.

Normal Is Another World

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It was just recently the one year anniversary of the massacre of three Mormon women and six of their children in Mexico. Their cars ambushed in the hills near their home at La Mora close to the US border. Caught up in local Cartel violence; the exact reasons and culprits are still unknown. They will likely never get real answers. It was a brutal event which understandably brought international attention and shock and just for a second it opened up a community to the eyes of the world.

With over seven billion people on earth there are over seven billion different ways of being raised to understand life and the world around. Mormons can be ridiculed for it, but they offer an example of another way of life. With my experience of growing up, understanding how people like these Mormons live their lives is not always easy. To begin with we view them through the narrow prism of our own conditioning and view their actions as if they thought as we do. But why would they, having grown up in a Mormon community in the north of Mexico, their experience in the large part is beyond my comprehension. Saying that having Anglo-European origins, they likely won’t be as far removed as we might first think.

I look at the women and struggle to understand how they could be happy with a husband who also has other wives. The young women growing up and ultimately being prepared for a life of baby making. The two women discussed in the BBC article have over one hundred children and grandchildren in total. That is simply remarkable. Or at least it’s remarkable for someone who comes from a country which will likely start to experience falling birth rates in the near future. The understanding of these women also comes from the experience of women with a very different attitude to sharing their men.

This isn’t to say all cultures are right in all their own ways and we need to respect people in their cultural sensitivities. If a culture is abusive of someone within it, then that is still wrong. It’s being able to identify the grey areas between what is abuse and what is simply misinterpretation because of your own cultural understanding of the world. There are plenty of examples throughout history which suggest we have at times got it very wrong. I look at the huge group of children in the pictures and think what a lovely childhood they must have growing up together, it’s just a shame it’s tinged with God and all that that entails. Many run away from Mormonism or don’t continue it’s practises, but someone growing up in that world will likely have a different perspective of God’s influence and all their brothers and sisters. Normal is always normal in our own eyes.

We can be critical too of people to don’t reject these worlds they grew up in. Unable to understand why they don’t walk away from what seems so obvious. With such sentiment all we do is miss the irony that we are unable to walk away from the more detrimental and destructive aspects of our own societies and ways of life. There are many and we vary in levels of obliviousness towards them. I can imagine a Mormon from this rural community finding all sorts of faults with the behaviour of the average city dwelling northern European.

This all simply comes from imagining growing up not as me but as a kid in this community. What a completely different understanding of the world, or of home they must have. Then imagine someone from Asia or Africa, or even southern Europe. It’s just important to remember sometimes that what we think isn’t necessarily the only way of thinking. How we experience a moment is not the only way of experiencing it. Normal is not always normal in others eyes after all.

Short Story Telling

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The Open University are celebrating National Novel Writing Month or #NaNoWriMo as is peoples want. They are running a daily flash fiction competition for the next eight days. Well seven as they started yesterday. You are provided with a photograph of something lockdown or Covid related and given a maximum of fifty words to write a story. It turns out to be quite challenging but that is as much down to the word limit as the fact writing stories are in general.

That is yesterdays photo and story. The photo at the top is todays so they’re going with some atmospheric and powerful black and white thing clearly. This is my entry for today. I think the end is a bit weak but I get lazy staring at something for too long and decided just to go with it. It’s all just practise anyway. Maybe not all of it but a large enough amount for it to be a thing.

“We call this one The Six Ages of Lockdown. You can see the evolution from oblivious to acceptance, and all the mischievous boredom in between”

“They look so lifelike, you’ve really captured something authentic”

“Yes, we’re very pleased with this installation”

“It’s as if the sculptor actually lived it.”

Having posted it in the comments section I’m now aware, and it’s been fifteen minutes now, that nobody has liked it. Every other has at least one, some several and there’s even the odd laughing emoji. Nobody likes to admit to these kinds of insecurities but it is enjoyable observing them in myself. We’re all human after all and we all just want a little confirmation that we’re doing something right or well. Arenas like Facebook simply feed this. Can it be seen as being part of the fallible human ideal I like to believe in I wonder. Potentially but perhaps it’s our response to our insecurities which can be looked on as the fallible part. Surely our insecurities are just some animal survival mechanism checking we did the right thing and aren’t about to get eaten. I doubt I’m going to get eaten. It’s the pit of hissing critical snakes, or even worse, the silent version which says nothing at all I’m more worried about.

The link in the hashtag at the top takes you to the actual celebration of writing month but you can enter on the Open Universities Facebook page if you too want to attempt being a short short short story teller too. I’ll see you there tomorrow, likes or no likes.