Tag: death

The Evil Youth Rise Again

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“Will somebody please think of the children” said a fictional cartoon character exposing my age. They’re at it again but not with such positive intentions. We could focus on the school children who seem to be getting forced back to school. Fear from some as their children go back, ready to not just bring their homework back with them and joy from others ready for a little peace and quiet once more. As usual the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. That’s assuming there is a middle between those two ideas of course. The latest youth that people seem to be thinking about though are not necessarily the kids but those a bit older than them. Today and yesterday it appears the stories started to be pushed by the media that the youth in society are not the most likely to spread the virus. The most likely means they’re ultimately responsible now for every future death and can be used as a scapegoat by anyone from old people on Facebook groups to government ministers attempting to distract from their own ineptitude.

It is easy for the general populace to find someone else to blame. If you’re old you can blame the young and if you’re young you can blame the old. It allows you not to feel responsible for the spread of something that not one particular demographic in society can be blamed for. You may have flash points like in a gym, a bar or a school, but that doesn’t make all eighteen to twenty-five year old’s irresponsible and responsible. This is just another moment in the passing the blame on game of distraction. But then I am just as responsible as anyone else for spreading this virus, I am careful in someways and less so in others, just like everyone, or most people at least. Saying that what I really want to do, and I’m trying to do it without just blaming everyone else while criticising someone for blaming someone else; is blame the government for their ineptitude and constant inability to lead us through what probably is a no win situation, and a mainstream media whipping up fear with one hand and a calming hand over an inept government with the other.

What I dislike is not our inability to do the right thing. It is difficult if not impossible to be doing the right thing during a moment in which all advice is changing daily and all we’re doing is witnessing scientific research in real time. There are no conclusive answers when everything is at the hypothesis stage. What is wrong is how we are using this to our benefits. I include myself because I have used it as a stick to bash a corrupt government. The government though have used it to strengthen their own position and sell off even more of the NHS, give contracts to their mates and threaten the implementation of draconian laws. Opposition parties eventually made it political but in an equally corrupt way and the mainstream media have been scaring and misleading us all just to sell more papers and to continue propping up their people in power. And now it’s the young who are to blame. We’ve found a new group to vilify. Again. A new group to use as the sleight of hand distraction. It’s amazing what people will allow themselves to do in the name of self-interest.

BR#8 – One For The Road

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I still refer to these as book reviews when if we’re all honest they’re probably something else. What they actually are I’ll leave to the annuls of history to decide but in the meantime and for the sake of form they’ll continue to be book reviews. I am reviewing plays seemingly more regularly than books too, although a play is still arguably a book, but with One For The Road by Harold Pinter being a one act play, only sixteen pages long, it’s more of a pamphlet than anything else. It’s so short in fact that when I finished reading it I decided to read it again, just because, well, why not.

One For The Road is set in what I assume is some kind of headquarters of the secret police under a totalitarian regime. The man in charge refers to patriots so you can imagine nationalism plays a role but he refers to god more often which makes me believe this is some Christian fundamentalist regime on par with Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid’s Tale. That probably just exposes my ignorance of a better relatable example and a sign of my being lazy. It also ignores the general complicity of the Church in right wing totalitarian states in our history so it could just be a simple case of something along those lines.

The story revolves around what can be classed as interviews between someone of importance, potentially the head of the secret police, and individually the three members of a family taken in for interrogation. The father / husband, wife / mother and their son. The man is beaten and while he challenges his interrogator slightly he generally remains silent and passive. It is likely they have all been arrested because of his political activity. The woman talks more, although there are more direct questions and it is revealed she is being repeatedly raped. Her father is also revealed to be a national hero, a heroic soldier who fought and died in some war that presumably led to the establishment of this state. While the boy who is only seven we discover spat at and kicked the arresting soldiers when they came to his house. At the end he is referred to in the past tense. The interrogator is constantly pouring himself drinks and suggesting it’s one for the road but the implications are more that this will be one for the road before they are released. This of course doesn’t come and there is something chilling in this psychological torture too. That is basically the story, which I’ve now given away but in such a crude manner I’ve not gone near to doing it justice.

I know very little about Harold Pinter beyond his name. I did study Drama for my A-Levels at school but like everything was left incredibly unimpressed by any teachings provided, although my lack of effort and involvement mustn’t be discounted. It is only now as I get older that I start to understand that these things can actually be enjoyable. It is short and I would be curious how and in what circumstances the play would be performed. There are a lot of pauses so potentially they would make better use of them than I did but it was a good introduction to his work. I look forward to reading some more, maybe even a full length one next time. He certainly appears to be someone I could get into.

The Evolution Of The Elders

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Apparently one in five girls born now can expect to live to the age of one hundred. They will see the twenty-second century. For someone born in the twentieth century that is something I struggle to comprehend without my mind going all sci-fiction. Imagining it will be similar to what was expected in the year two thousand by those in the sixties is probably the easiest way to give you an idea. I could now go into wandering through the realms of possibilities but will resist the temptation. This is more about an ageing population.

We already have ageing populations in many parts of the world. If memory serves me then I think a populace needs two point one children born per couple for the population to maintain an average age capable of working, paying taxes and keeping society going. The idea of per couple sounds like a strange one considering relationships don’t quite work in that traditional way anymore but those statistics were perhaps created when it was more relevant. An ageing population is seen as a sign that in the long term a country will have serious problems but I wonder if this isn’t the wrong way to look at things.

The three phase life that has been the cornerstone of how people lived in the last hundred years is starting to look like a part of the past. The three phases are childhood education, working life and retirement. Childhood education is something that seems to be stretching into our twenties now. People seem less inclined to finish education and settle down into adult life instead waiting until they get into their thirties. Work life is no longer about working for one company your whole career or even one field the entire time. It is now far more common to jump from company to company as well as being possible to change careers in some cases multiple times. These two parts are I believe pretty obvious, people know this because they are living this. I am sharing no groundbreaking ideas.

What is worth addressing though is retirement and the role of people in society as they age. If populations are getting older, one thread that goes around is that the elderly are a drain on society. Does that miss possibilities though? We can’t afford to pay their pensions is a common one. The retirement age in the UK has gone up in the last few years and I imagine if we carry on like this and I make it that far it will have gone up a few more times before I become eligible. Modern medicine, improved diets and understanding of healthy living will keep people alive longer but we need to think about their quality of life. What this doesn’t mean though is improve their quality of life and flog them in the workplace until they – we – drop.

If people have worked for forty or fifty years, they may not physically be capable anymore but they offer something people of younger generations don’t have. There once was a time when communities looked to the elders for understanding and wisdom. They weren’t always viewed as a drain who should be put in nursing homes to wait for death. If we are going to have ageing populations, and people living longer who are unable to work and who after forty years have earnt the right not to, we need to find ways of including these people in a way in which they’re not viewed as a burden. To do this we need to stop viewing peoples worth and value through economic eyes and instead through community based compassionate ones. People of all ages have something to offer. The young can learn from the old just as the old can gain vitality and life from the young. We can see the differing values but first we must learn how. Maybe if we had less old people and more elders we may see a way how.

A Tangent Of Change

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As I struggle to think about anything to write today, scrolling through Facebook and the news channels for inspiration I am left with the feeling the world is falling apart. We seem to have moved on from the virus pretty quick to the virus of racism. Prior to that of course we moved on from the virus of power and corruption in the form of Brexit. I wonder what we’ll move on to next, a second wave of infections perhaps? I know someone who drives a lorry and apparently the word going around is to prepare for a second lockdown in November, this is what they’ve been told and apparently lorry drivers know stuff so I should believe this. I have seen memes online suggesting this is the worst year ever and what terrible things are going to come next. It might be the worst year ever but that is simply because typical issues which many in poorer parts of the world have to deal with year after year are finally landing on our doorsteps. Face to face with the uncertainty of catching a virus, a hidden bullet we can’t see. Deaths we are impotent from preventing. Is this the new-normal the politicians were talking about.

The unknown is scary. We are scared of the dark because we don’t know what is there, all is unknown. We fear change because we don’t know what it is or what it could entail. We are quick to want to conserve our current way of life if we view it from the standpoint that it works for us and has got us this far. Why change it. Clearly something out there is not working though because we still have violent systemic racism, we still have ideological approaches to saving lives in a pandemic, we still have people manipulating a population for their own personal benefit and greed. So it’s time for society to take that collective step into the unknown and as one step out of that bubble we live in. We don’t know what is going to land on our safe little doorsteps next. We’ve flirted with working together throughout this virus which means we’ve shown we are capable of it. Much of what we’ve heard has been feel good propaganda but we’ve all seen people at some point at least thinking about others before themselves. Some change might need a few generations of social reeducation which sounds ominous, but some we’re clearly capable of. Maybe there is hope for deconstructing the state, decentralising decision making and creating the opportunity for people to achieve self-determination, autonomy and respect. Maybe that’s just me going off on a hopeful tangent but then that is all today seems to be, what life has now become.

BR#Seven – Waves

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It was only a few days ago that I wrote about the last graphic novel I had read and it appears the theme has very quickly continued. The same night I finished Red Rosa, while looking at others books I stumbled upon a story called Waves about a couple struggling to conceive a baby before losing it when they finally do. It seemed liked an interesting concept for something that is ultimately a comic. It’s a very short novel. I thought I would have a quick look at it before going to work, but had read it before I’d even finished my coffee. It is eighty six pages but this is a graphic novel so that doesn’t really mean anything. Like plays I enjoy the satisfaction of not taking weeks to read something. There is certainly an importance to committing time and effort to a good book of prose but I am prone to getting distracted by other books and wishing I could get stuck into them. I love reading but it can still take discipline. To read this whole story then in twenty minutes was probably a little too quick but then that’s not the point. Time should never be a denominator for appreciation with a book in any form, or at least the appreciation of whether it was worth it.

Waves deals with the trauma of losing a baby and the author at the end explains that the story was based upon her own experiences. Whenever you discover something is based on real events it adds another layer of appreciation for what you have just read. She explained that writing the story was in itself part of the therapy required to process the trauma. She is ordinarily an author of children’s books and this was her first attempt at the graphic novel. I imagine there will be an element of short text and pictures in her children’s books too though. It’s a powerful introduction to the genre to say the least and knowing the emotional importance of what you’re reading, knowing this is someones personal journey; adds an immeasurable value. I have read three graphic novels now and all three seem to be based in different ways around women and femininity. This is entirely accidental but also a theme which I suspect may continue in some form and quite revealing to see that graphic novels are not just story books revolving around superheroes. There’s certainly a lot to be said for language and art being combined as one. When the story and the book itself has an emotive quality it’s not something to be scoffed at.

Instinctively Morbid Curiosity

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Two ambulances just raced past my window. If this were a busy city and not a seaside village, and if it had been just one ambulance and not two, I would have thought nothing of it. Two ambulances racing passed in a slightly out of the way spot raises the curiosity alarm. Are they heading towards the beach? If so you’d imagine there would be a coastguard follow close behind, but maybe the coastguard is already there. Perhaps there’s been a crash on the road, even though there are small and slow roads around here idiots still treat it like there’re in a rally that only they know about. I’m sure there are endless possibilities and I should stop this bizarrely morbid curiosity i’ve got going on. We’re strange though human beings, we do want to know. We want to know what has happened. We want to jump in our cars and follow them. We want to drive by and slow down under the pretence of driving carefully and respectfully passed the incident even though we forget the road and don’t once take our eyes off the scene. I drove passed a fresh accident in Portugal once, the body of a once living, talking and breathing human being was just lying there beside the road in the rain with a white sheet over it. I won’t forget that scene, it also makes me slightly less tempted to drive slowly passed any other accidents. But I still will because I’m curious and human.

I suspect it is probably related to some survival instinct within us. The same thing that leads us to search out for the bad news instead of the good. We want to know what the danger is. Perhaps those two ambulances just raced off to an incident which I should know about because knowing about it will in some way help me to stay safe. Perhaps it’s part of some snowballing incident which I must see so I know to get out of it’s way. Most likely not but something instinctive within me wants to know and there is always a rational explanation we can use if we want to take the fun out of anything. It is far more satisfying to imagine we’re somehow uniquely curious beings, alone with our Sherlock Holmes levels of observation, understanding and discovery. But we’re probably not. We’re just scared animals wanting to know if what we just saw may in any way lead to something that could hurt us, or something that we could learn from so to prevent ourselves one day hurting ourselves in the same situation. Having broken it down slightly it does make me feel silly for wanting to jump in my car and follow them. Let’s be honest it’s pretty ludicrous behaviour. It’s so unfortunate that my instincts are therefore irrational. But irrational keeps us alive then. Or maybe not. I’m sure I can probably work out a rational argument to disprove that either way.

BR#5 – Frankenstein

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From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.

A Ramble On Death

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I was watching a video this morning on Facebook, on what I can’t remember; a telling indictment of the zombie social media turns us into. I do remember at one point some footage came on of men in the First World War. It was coloured footage which I always find really fascinating because it makes old film real and relatable in a way black and white can’t be. The Great War was from a time past and those involved have all died now. I haven’t checked it but I seriously doubt there is anyone left. You know you’re looking at dead people, they’re younger than I am now, but there time has been and now they’re dead.

I’m not obsessed with death, it doesn’t fascinate me in some morbid way and I once used to dismiss it in that way people do when they’re young and like to pretend they don’t give a shit about anything. That doesn’t mean either that I’m about to tell you all I’m scared of death but I am trying to understand it. I am trying to understand it because it plays a huge part in our behaviours as a species. We’re aware consciously of our own existence and as a result our own deaths too. Are we alone in this awareness? One day all this is just not going to be there.

This idea of nothingness is hard to comprehend. Imagine you go to sleep and that feeling of deep sleep is what you will be experiencing for eternity, except you don’t experience deep sleep consciously, arguably we don’t even exist in those moments. How then can we imagine not existing. We try to imagine something we have little empirical understanding of and it’s impossible. This is almost scarier than death itself, which kind of isn’t scary at all.

These soldiers were living in their time. This is the thought that inspired me to start this ramble on death. Why do we fear getting old and dying. These people, that was there time and they lived it, they got old and were replaced by other people living their experience of time. This is my time now and I need to live it because one day I will have to let it go and I want to do it with a smile on my face, content. Not content that I lived life to the max or whatever slogan you can come up with, but just content in the knowledge that now my time is up and it’s time for others to take over. There are plenty out there who are like that and plenty who can’t let go. It’s fear ultimately. Fear of stepping into an unknown time in life, closer to the ultimate unknown. I’m just curious, if I’m lucky to live that long of course. And also, in a way, if we’re to understand death do we first need to understand life? Certainly there’s an order to these thing and maybe with some kind of understanding comes a form of acceptance. It’s especially interesting because, in a way, there are no answers and what’s more powerful than that.

The Pickaxe Of Liberty

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Go on admit it you’re all desperate for a holiday. But then maybe you feel like you’re having one already. As I am still working I’m very envious of everybody sitting around, reading, studying and exercising. There is every chance I’m simply envious of the idea that this is what people are doing because while everyone may be taking photos of themselves doing these things, or videos of themselves being creative and inspiring, there’s also a good chance they’re currently lying on the sofa watching something on Netflix about tigers. Sorry that was two weeks ago, I’m so behind the times I wonder what the current obsession is. Are people getting bored though. Are those still sober dreaming of going back to their jobs because they’ve realised they’re not carpenters, painters or musicians and that actually they don’t really enjoy reading books as much as they thought and told everyone they would. I’ve admitted already I’m envious but I am also aware that I have spent large chunks of my life travelling and doing all these fun things but in random places. I’m well practised at not getting bored. Having spent time in the countryside I’m also well practised at not seeing people for a couple of weeks. So I’m envious but also aware that I’ve experienced a few lockdowns already in my life.

It is though arguably a social experiment that will define this period of history. I’m not trying to trivialise this very serious situation but that doesn’t make it anything other than a future treasure trove of theories for researchers. I’m not a researcher, but I enjoy observing, and I’m already really looking forward to seeing what conclusions the researchers come to. I’m not an optimist in the traditional sense, I’m no Pangloss and this is certainly not the best of all possible worlds. I don’t believe in the idea of being constantly positive and happy because it is balance we need in life. However, there is always a possibility to find something positive in any situation no matter how bad, and while it doesn’t have to outweigh the bad, there is no reason for us not to enjoy and embrace it’s existence. Who knows maybe we will even use it as a pickaxe to help us climb out of our hole. For this reason we will find something to celebrate in all of everything that is going on. Researchers will discover some terrible results, the media will fill us with dread and fear, while politicians will continue to chip away at the last scraps of our self-determination. They will also discover incredibly positive results, there will be happy stories told and, actually maybe I’m pushing it a little far by including the latter group.

In a way though none of this will mean anything, not really. We may enjoy discovering these moments of positivity but unless they exist in our immediate realm they’re more than likely to just pass on through. What will leave us with any lasting sense of light though will be what we can see in our own lives, in our immediate situations. What little events are happening right now that could snowball into something resembling that pickaxe. What are we experiencing that if we manage to step back from for a second we can recognise as bringing some kind of benefit to our lives. As I said it doesn’t have to outweigh the other stuff going on, but even if it is just one percent of everything going on in your life it is infinitely more important than the other ninety-nine. It’s there. It’s always there if you manage to look.

Creativity Takes Root

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I’m really enjoying all the creativity people are coming up with while in isolation. I just watched the most remarkable video of a man in a leotard dancing in his garden. Without the virus that moment would never have happened. I was tagged in a live music show this evening, which I only discovered afterwards unfortunately but enjoyed listening to it after the event. Another friend shared her sisters morning fitness class as she is a personal trainer which will give people some much needed exercise and hopefully some new habits. People have already started to put works of art up.

It is early days and people may still be in the excitable fun stage of isolating but for now they seem to be doing all the right things. In time lets see how it goes as they start to suffer from seclusion but the videos coming out of Italy show that even after weeks and an horrendous situation they are still on their balconies singing. There was a video of someone playing Bella Ciao with a saxophone from their balcony which raised a smile. People are worried, scared, bored and in some cases alone but they have found the drive to produce, to share, to inspire.

There is something about being human that shows how well we can adapt to circumstances when we need to. We may be a bunch of soft snowflakes and tough right wingers who both seem to take offence in equal measure but when it comes down to it we seem capable of getting on and surviving when we have to. It is early days potentially and we’re expecting another couple of months of this, fatalistically just waiting…maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow though…but even with that hanging over our heads we find the spirit just to carry on. People shouldn’t be out and about of course but it’s amazing that those who are seem to be smiling and laughing with each other. The initial shock has passed and we’re just getting on with it.

If it’s possible to remain objective within all of this then it would be incredible just to sit and observe how people’s mood as a collective has changed and evolved until now and will do over these next few months. But I’m not objective let’s be honest, I am viewing this through my very own eyes mixed with and confused by a certain combination of fear, bravery, bravado and ignorance that keeps me getting out of bed in the morning and through the day; being happy when I’m happy and sad when I’m sad. Crisis brings people together but it also reminds us while we may have our differences, our base instinct, feelings and emotions are all pretty similar. Carry on people, stay indoors if you can and keep on performing. Keep us all sane and keep us smiling.