Historical Revisionism

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Revisionism in history is nothing new. From the dawn of record keeping people have been telling the stories of the past and re-telling them with their own unique take. From the days of the oral tradition with the traveling bards to the father of western historians Herodotus, we have simply had to take what was recording. In modern times we are able to revise this history, and this is not to say that history was never changed in the past, but with the development of technology in the last few hundred years the stories of the past have been recorded with an increased frequency. Prior to this events could be recorded and the re-recorded depending on the necessities of whoever the new status quo was within society. In modern times exactly the same happens but with the advent of first the printing press and then it’s contemporary equivalent the internet, the ability to hide events from the populace has grown increasingly difficult. The existence of a compliant media propaganda machine and an education system selective in it’s teachings still do much of the work of creating an ignorant populace but with technology evolving at ever faster rates it will be interesting to see what course establishment counter measures take.

China is an example of one way of dealing with the spread of information with certain sites blocked, disruptive opinions deleted and a general hardline approach to the spread of information. In the west we have the alternative approach, allow people access to information but discredit it as crackpot, hide it away from search engines and ultimately take a more distracting approach. It is hard to imagine which one will turn out the more successful. History has shown us you can’t keep people oppressed indefinitely but also they’ll eventually stop being distracted by the magic trick. Do they both then add certain aspect of each others approach, well only time will tell.

The point of this though was not to get into a piece on internet freedoms, but instead write about the manipulation and revisionism of certain characters within our own history. I previously wrote a piece on the myth of the barefoot doctor Li Shizhen, an example of China’s revisionism, and we have done the same with figures from our own past like Winston Churchill; responsible for leading the country against the Nazi’s on one hand and directly responsible for the death of three million people in the Bengal famine with the other. Can you guess which part of his life we are taught in school?

Today I listened to a very interesting podcast on Emmeline Pankhurst. It is undeniable that she was responsible for one of the greatest social changes in this country since the industrial revolution. Through her direct action, determination and network of followers women received the vote, some of the things they pulled off during the struggle were incredible and I’m in awe. However what is not always taught is that she was a classist. Throughout this struggle she wasn’t actually fighting for universal suffrage as is taught about her in modern times. Her intentions were never to get working class women the vote as she believed they were better being led by those above them in society. Arguably she was only ever fighting to get the vote for women of her social standing and above. She actively fought against the spread of communism which was in those days more about the emancipation of the workers than the spread of Soviet authoritarianism. When she moved to Canada in later life she then fought against ‘non-white immigration’ before returning to Britain, joining the Conservative Party and standing for them as an MP much to the horror of her daughters.

That is not to say her achievements are unworthy and she did some great things which should be recorded and educated but it is important not to ignore the less savoury, or the parts which don’t fit the idealised narrative. With technology and the spread of information, as well as misinformation only increasing, it may just be time to redevelop a little trust back between society and those directing it. If not we can only envisage the inevitable suffragette style movement to follow. People are fallible, get over it.

Work Life Balance Bullshit

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I was discussing with a friend / taking the piss out of the concept of the work life balance today. He owns his own company which means either there is no such thing as a work life balance or that he has created one he has to be comfortable with. I remember doing a training session for a new teaching job a few years ago in Athens and we had to do a one hour session on the importance of finding a work life balance. It is fair to say it was mocked widely as we went through it and this became clear why when the job seemed to take up six of the seven in my week shortly after, with very little reward. Now my mate works six out of seven days and this is normal for him but for me it was a travesty of existence. I had been used to working whenever I needed to and I would do it in a way that consisted of giving up on life for a month or two before giving up on work for the following six. I have worked on christmas tree farms, at language camps, picking fruit and so on. All pretty exhausting jobs but ones which as long as you’re willing to just work intensely allow you to save a little before finding somewhere interesting to enjoy life.

These days I have started to look beyond that despite it’s obvious benefits and am willing to find something I enjoy and which I would be happy to spend more time doing over the course of the year but far less intensely while doing it. People often don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re not working but I always enjoy my own company. I realised recently that my problem, if you want to look at it negatively, is that I treat life like a series of hobbies, let’s just say I’ve put far more value on life than work over the years. But that is me, not somebody else and it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. The chef who goes into his restaurant on his day off so he can experiment and cook something for the pleasure is potentially finding the balance that suits him. My six months of pleasure were great but I always hated the extreme nature of dropping everything and disappearing into work mode somewhere random. There was a balance but it also felt like living two extremes.

Clearly there is no formula you can teach someone and people have to find their own way. We must also recognise the futility of it when we’re working six days a week in jobs we dislike but need, especially when our manages then proceed to lecture us on the importance of finding balance. There is something almost perverse about capitalism heartless joy in that respect but everyone at every level needs to hit their figures. That is the reality of the work life balance. The man at the bottom works so the guy at the top can enjoy his life. Two very different types of figures. I wonder how long that can last. In the meantime it does make disappearing away into the forest sound rather appealing.

Exhaustion

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They say variety is the spice of life. Well they say something is the spice of life but I’m exhausted and exactly what it is doesn’t feel overly important right now. If that is accurate I guess the assumption must be that variety makes life interesting, and keeps you coming back for more, gives you energy and enthusiasm one could say. Variety in the sense of exhaustion, as exhaustion is just another part of life is it not, would suggest that different types of exhaustion make the act or sense of exhaustion interesting and worth repeating, eliciting enthusiasm even. Does exhaustion give you energy in that case? It is said that the more you do; the more you do, and that is not accidental repetition. When people exercise for the first time they may be able to run for five minutes before suffering for a few days and forcing seven minutes out of themselves the next time. Eventually they’re running thirty minutes every day and find themselves more energised throughout the day as a whole. Arguably they’re doing more but feeling less exhaustion, and with it exercise becomes some sort of a paradox.

The point to all this is that today I have experienced some variety in my exhaustive state. I returned from Sheffield last night, slept three hours and went and delivered bread. Let’s just say I was pretty tired by the end but somehow I felt that past tired feeling in which you can’t seem to stop and won’t until you collapse. After about another three hours sleep I went to my kickboxing class and worked hard. Today I sparred with the coach as numbers were odd and while clearly he holds back, he’s still too fast for me and got me with a good uppercut at one point. I was pretty tired during the class because I was working hard and it can be an exhausting sport when you do put the effort in. When I got back to the car I felt pretty happy with myself, post exercise dopamine release or something like that, but I felt energised and could have done more.

I am looking forward to my bed but it is important not to allow exhaustion to stop us from doing things. We are far more capable of finding energy when we have to than what we convince ourselves as we flop onto the sofa and watch a film. When we listen to the idle monster, or the inner bitch as I’ve heard it said, in our mind we do less, and feel like doing less the next time. It’s a vicious spiral, the opposite to the runner improving time and regularity each day. It can be hard but once we train our minds to quit whinging, embrace the new routine and just do it, it is remarkable how quickly it can be easy to do anything which in the past you would convince yourself you were too tired for. The body and mind are incredible things, individually and together, perhaps it may be time to stop wasting them and start making the most of the remarkable things we’re capable of as a species.

Blog Dilemmas

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It is important in life to always want to improve or make progress. That doesn’t mean we should lack contentment with what we have or desire more but accept that we live in an impermanent world and with everything constantly changing we mustn’t sit still and stagnate. I say that in regards to this blog. I am happy just writing one piece a day and while the quality varies from articles I’m pleased with to ones I know are rushed or half arsed, the standard at present is satisfactory in the fact that I’m aware this is a work in progress and an experiment in writing as much as anything else. The last two days have been tough as I’ve been down in Sheffield, working and being exhausted. Even now, I have just got home and while it feels like time for bed I have to write this. What is important is that in some ways it’s easy, the habit has been formed now that to make it feel completely natural to sit down here and write up a piece. So much of our existence revolves around conditioned habits and it is satisfying to realise this is a healthy and productive habit I have managed to foster in myself.

How then does that develop from here? To write more than once a day misses the point, now I have the habit, it has to be about improving the output. The habit has to be maintained and that is partly because the experiment itself was to write one piece a day but also because after nearly three months I’m not convinced the habit is deep enough to survive too much of a change yet. I was thinking earlier how excited I am to complete this year and be able to write less frequently but to a higher standard. It was a long drive back and I came to the conclusion that the ideal would be to write one, possibly two pieces a week, of about one thousand one hundred words and to take the time to make them of real quality. Writing a successful blog is a challenging endeavour, they can be successful because you choose to write about something you know will be popular or marketable, generic dare I say. This blog will struggle because I lack cohesion when choosing topics and because they are daily they lack a standard required to really be happy with. To write one decent piece a week would allow for more thought to go into it.

However this could just be me convincing myself of some literary grass being greener idea. Maybe it will be exactly the same, the same sometimes standard but less frequently. We always love to convince ourselves that we can’t improve the situation exactly like it is, that we just need to do this or that and everything will then be perfect. It’s the same with life and happiness…if only we made that one change in our life…job, girlfriend, new toy…happiness would be right around the corner. It allows us to not have to improve the present set of circumstances but dream of some hypothetical future. A hypothetical future blog then will never be exactly as the fantasy desires it. This current incarnation is real, perhaps it would be worth starting on that.

Meditations

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Today the plan is just to add a few mini ideas as I have them, if I have time and if i have them.

Sheffield definitely has an interesting alternative / hipster vibe to it. I wonder how long before it sells out to the developers. That depends on the council, are they small timers or do they have vision for a vibrant appealing city. People don’t want to move to cities which are just a series of flats and a generic commercial city centre, they want culture and interesting things to do. If you build it people will come. If you lack ideas and take the money they won’t.

There’s a video online of a fox and a badger playing and helping each other. It’s apparently an example of mutualistic arrangement. They will work together to hunt prey, if it goes underground the badger will get it and above ground the fox. They refer to birds living off rhinos by cleaning them, small fish on bigger ones too but I’m not convinced by it. The rhino is hardly going to shoo off the little bird or the big fish neither. These are two predators playing and working together, that is cooperation, they have created a cohesive relationship and bond. We underestimate how much other animals can think or connect with each other but that is only to our detriment. Just imagine though, what if all these cartoons, such as the Fantastic Mr Fox were actually real, we just witnessed two mates hanging out. Don’t be too quick to dismiss any possibility, we can never be one hundred percent sure something like that is not true. Perhaps we need to rediscover our imagination.

My back hurts standing up for so long. Sometimes I feel old.

I fancy a pint.

We just lost in the rugby. There’s nothing worse than losing to England. I blame the English government. Bastards.

I find the question “Do you take cash?” remarkable. I’m so out of touch with the modern generation.

Drunk people are much less fun when you’re not one of them.

I’m not young anymore…but I’m not old either. It’s a good age to be.

Hipsters aren’t quite as cool as they think they are.

People have very clammy hands.

Tap Garden At Peddler Night Market

Hamar Williams

Saw my first grown man on one of those scooters made famous by Google today. I’m embracing market stall life at Peddler Night Market in Sheffield helping out a mate at his juice market stall. Let’s call this some free advertising for his tasty, healthy fresh homemade soda juices and punch, all non-alcoholic. Tap Garden it’s called and you can find him on all good social media…Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #tapgarden #tapgardendrinks

It’s a pretty cool place, one of these old brick warehouses that can be found partly abandoned and partly reinvigorated by wealthy alternative hipsters. I realised after about five minutes that I should have worn my Dr Marten boots like everyone else, certainly feel I missed a trick by yet again being the only person in the building wearing Crocs. One day they will fulfil their destiny and find their rightful place as the only footwear of choice. Until then though I can continue to feel superior as the only Crocs related enlightened being in the place.

Apparently Sheffield is quite a cool city. Lots of students, cheap cost of living, a once vibrant city that didn’t lose its population to Manchester or London now become vibrant in a new way. They call it the Bristol of the north apparently. Bristol without southerners, it sounds perfect. It also has a canal running through it because of all the industry in the past. It actually appeals massively and I’m filing the place away in the ‘possibilities at a later date’ section of the storage unit in my mind. It seems to be the constant issue in life of finding the perfect way to exist. Be in a cool place with interesting people, beautiful, not too busy or crowded, close to nature, relaxed, close to the sea, etc. Sheffield doesn’t have all these thing so it is not perfect but then let’s be honest perfect doesn’t exist. It seems to be about finding some kind of contentment in life whatever that means. I’m sure it will make an appearance one day if I look hard enough, or stop looking at all. I’m sure the answer is somewhere, probably inside of me they say.

Anyway that’s all for today, it feels like a short piece but so be it. Today and tomorrow will be busy days so I doubt you’ll get much more than this again tomorrow but that magic 400 words of wisdom mark can’t be hit everyday. If I know anyone in Sheffield then pop down, come say hello…drink some juice at Tap Garden…the only place for fresh juice made with real ingredients and love.

Another Political Pervert

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Another day another pervert ousted in politics. Pervert may be a little strong but you shouldn’t try and seduce sixteen year olds when you’re twenty-two let alone when you’re forty-two. Maybe it is because they’re in the public eye so much and that they work in such a sneaky corrupt industry but politicians seem to get caught out in so many sex scandals. I must also commend Boris, or should I say Dominic Cummings, and Rupert Murdoch for such a perfectly executed political assassination. The night before Derek Mackay, the Scottish finance minister, is about to release the budget proposed by the Scottish Government, one already delayed because of shenanigans between the Scottish Parliament and Westminster, the Scottish Sun release their exclusive about him contacting a schoolboy who he thought was “cute” over a six month period. They’ve done him, they’ve taken him out. No matter what moral beliefs you hold on this it is undeniably a work of art. They have sat on this story and waited for the most opportune moment to release it. A future leader of the SNP apparently. Not anymore.

If anything though it does highlight the lack of neutrality in the press and the influence of people like Rupert Murdoch within our political system. This piece though is not going to be about one of my favourite topics; that of a perennially corrupt media. It is more just about being an acknowledgement of what they’ve done and despite the fact I dislike these people immensely it is important to be able to tip your hat to them when you can see how well they’ve played something. Saying that I also don’t have much time for any forty-two year old who harasses school children so morally this one is all over the place.

Politicians are a remarkable people though and it shows the lure of power that despite the obvious dangers to a free and happy life so many get involved in that murky world. These next five years are going to be incredibly interesting for the objective observers, and a mix of great and terrifying for everyone else. For every person who is horrified that Boris is ripping up a centuries old rulebook of tradition there will be another delighted about it. Change needs to happen and with current events in Britain, as well as around the world, this is clearer now more than ever. People are angry and when emotive responses like that are your main driver you are also easy to manipulate. The fear then is that while everything needs a good shake-up, when it’s this mob doing the shaking we perhaps should be a little concerned. And not only that, but while we can tip our hats to their work, never forget that this and worse is exactly what they’re capable of.

Li Shizhen & Political Medicine

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Specific dates from the past are always hard to verify and quite often when recording somebody’s date of birth they are either inaccurate or a year or period of years is given. It was finally decided in the 1960s during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution that Li Shizhen was born on the Third of July 1518. Up until this period he had been a relatively little known historical figure but with the rise of Communist China his status was elevated to one of national hero. His most famous and greatest achievement was to compile his Compendium of Materia Medica which was a scientific book based upon Chinese herbology. It took him twenty seven years and while he completed it prior to his death in 1593, it was not published until afterwards by his remaining children. It received varying amounts of attention upon release but nothing comparative to it’s fame post politicising. There are no known images of his true likeness and all have been created during the last half century in China. Films have been made about him, books have been written about him and the myth of the barefoot doctor going from village to village curing the people has been born.

Many of the cures he wrote about form the basis of what is now known as traditional Chinese Medicine. There are many examples of herbology being incredibly effective at helping people lead a long and healthy life. More traditional based remedies quite often look holistically at the body comparative to modern medicines which go straight to the pain. Both of these approaches have their benefits and this isn’t to specifically bash traditional or modern medicines. For every corrupt pharmaceutical rep pushing drugs which will never actually cure anyone but merely create dependence, you have traditional practitioners pushing shark fin soup and rhino horn. Rhino horn ground down will not make you strong and virulent. Shark fin soup will not do whatever medicinal benefits it’s proponents suggest it will. Shark fin soup was popularised and made fashionable during the Ming dynasty by the Tianqi Emperor who ruled from 1620 to 1627 who had it served at royal banquets. It first appeared in Li Shizhen’s Compendium of Materia Medica.

Beautiful animals like tigers, rhinos and sharks are partly being pushed to the edge of extinction by the popularity of dishes containing them in modern day China. This is not an article damning the field entirely as there are proven benefits from some treatments, some being absorbed into more modern medicinal approaches. What it is though is a piece highlighting the utter absurdity that endangered animals are being massacred because of the ideological myths creating by a regime looking to maintain it’s grip on power. He is the barefoot doctor, the man of the people, the Chinese hero. People in China are not just eating powdered horn and fin soup because they believe it to do something, this is state sanctioned conditioning. There are no extra erections on show, merely the remains of prostrate butchered animals.

An Obsessive Future Fly-By

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A quick look back through the decades will bring up the most fascinating future predictions about the present. A quick look online gives a scary amount of reasonably accurate predictions. These predictions are never exactly spot on of course but the ideas are usually in the right area. The man flying with use of mechanic wings is the jetpack, bubble cars that we don’t need to manually operate are self-drive cars and the ‘correspondence cinema‘ is like a clunky version of Skype. We seem a long way from having our own helicopters, we haven’t mastered telepathy or transportation, machines have still not liberated the workforce, we haven’t made it to Mars in person, not everyone is vegetarian and we’ve certainly not invented time travel. Curiously Nikola Tesla predicted that by now we would have given up stimulants such as tea, coffee and tobacco because of their harmful affects on the human body. You try telling that to the advertising executives and watch them laugh in your face. 2020 is quite often the year many of these predictions were made for, just realise you’re right now living in someone else’s future that they could never possibly have imagined.

Predicting must be fun though. It’s a job which you can’t fail at as long as you make predictions far enough beyond what you imagine will be your lifetime. These end-of-the-world cult leaders could probably learn something from that as their predicted date comes and goes. It is not just the crazy fanatics and the futurists of the past that make predictions though, it is you, me and everyone else on a daily basis. It never seems quite clear why we seem so determined to prophesise prospective future events but we seem to have made such a past time of it that it can often take up a fairly unequal proportion of out time. It is possible that we are living such miserable lives that it is this looking ahead that gives us hope of a brighter future, or we live with our heads in the clouds to the point that we forget that we are unable to actually live in these fantasy worlds we create.

The reality from these past predictions is clearly that while you may be able to imagine something similar to what may happen, at no point will it be possible to accurately predict events to come. Nothing ever works out as you imagine. We forget to live in the actual moment to the point that were the future to happen exactly as we predicted we probably wouldn’t even notice anyway as we would already have moved on to the another future. Failing that we get so obsessed with how we want the future to unfold and become so attached to the image in our heads that we are inevitably disappointed with whatever outcome actually happens. We waste so much time, life passes us by with all this predicting. Then one day you’re old but you never noticed as you were never really there to see it happen.

Isle Of Dogs

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There comes a time when one must ask themselves whether Wes Anderson’s style of directing has had it’s day. It is arguably an inevitability when anyone with any unique style of art becomes popular. People are amazed at what is genuinely great cinema, they enjoy the films, eagerly eat up the new ones in which the style used is refined until perfection before groaning over the now repetitious nature of anything subsequently put out. So far Wes Anderson hasn’t been groaned at, or at least I haven’t heard the groans. However being aware that you’re now becoming familiar with a style and aware of there even being the possibility that people may tire of it is potentially the early warning signs of a forthcoming spiral of stagnation. What directors need to do then when these early signs start to appear is freshen it up; create something new, do something different.

Wes Anderson is no stranger to animated films, he has in the past been responsible for a telling of The Fantastic Mr Fox story which I very much enjoyed as did I his latest attempt; Isle Of Dogs. I enjoyed both and refuse to give a preference to either. Like everything the latest attempt is slightly more refined but thankfully it felt anything but tired. Isle Of Dogs tells the story of a boy attempting to rescue his dog from an island prison, which is also a rubbish dump island, after his evil Uncle, who is also the Mayor of the fictional Megasaki, outlaws dogs being in town after an outbreak of dog flu. Mayor Kobayashi is the head of the Kobayashi clan who have been fighting dogs for thousands of years as a result of their kinship with cats. The story also mirrors an ancient myth of a boy who disavows mankind to rescue dogkind in their hour of need.

I won’t go into much else that goes on in the story so as not to give anything away. Rest assured Wes Anderson has managed to bring in his regular crew of actors to do the voices; Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bryan Cranston, Ed Norton and Scarlett Johansson to name but a few. The fact he seemingly manages to get the same people to work on his films time and time again suggests that either he’s got some fiendish contracts or he’s quite enjoyable to work with. Having watched the latest I would suggest the latter.

While I am aware I haven’t really told you much about the story or many other details beyond that, fans of Wes Anderson who haven’t seen Isle Of Dogs yet will regardless of how I try and sell it, and those who haven’t seen his films will never get a true picture with my clumsy attempt at descriptive writing anyway. If you have never seen a Wes Anderson film before probably don’t start on his animated ones, I was introduced to The Darjeeling Express first and whether it was because it was something new or because I watched it first in India it will always have a soft spot in my heart. Arguably I like all his films and it is rare I would imagine for a director to have that kind of genuine success rate. We will all get bored of him one day but in the meantime I am more than happy to continue enjoying what he produces. Watch Isle Of Dogs, it’s an intelligent, unique film.