Tag: Full Moon

Dare To Dream Naysayer

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Here is something to amuse you on this cold November morning while you suffer from your Full Moon Halloween induced hangover. It turns out there is such a thing as linesman watch. That probably makes no sense to you, and for those who don’t know, a linesman is the person who runs along the touchline in either football, rugby or such thing and indicates whether the ball is out. Bizarrely it turns out one has become a celebrity for all the right reason recently, or at least the amusing reasons. Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle decided to replace human operated cameras with AI ones but it backfired when the AI system mistook the linesman’s bald head for the football. Only in Scotland.

While AI may stoke the fear of Terminator in you we discover the more amusing realities of a technology evidently still in it’s infancy. It is clear though how much technology is going to affect the way we work and the jobs we have. I’m no luddite, although I am cautious, but I do believe technology has the potential to set us free. It’s not work that’ll do this, it’s quite the opposite. Mass employment is not the answer but neither is capitalism’s quest for infinite profit. It offers up the possibility that we will likely in the next ten years either have to create an entire new sector of work, likely more than one, or find a way to allow people to work less and yet keep this standard of living.

It’s not impossible for people for work four or five hours a day, sharing what jobs remain. It would mean the entire redrawing of society as it would be impossible for people to continue to hoard the wealth. It would likely mean the unthinkable that things would need to be shared at little, less profits would have to be made. Maybe the concept of a profit driven society would be replaced with a people centre one. Perhaps I’m some kind of utopian idealist dreamer but we need dreams to make anything previously thought impossible possible. Throughout history the previously impossible has been made possible. Humans have proved in the past they are capable of compassion, they don’t only want to screw each over. No extreme one way or another is either desirable or realistic but perhaps a redrawing of the balance is about due. We are very capable. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise, it’s likely not in their benefit or they simply have no imagination. Let’s start imagining.

A Habitual Moon

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It’s a full moon today so energy will be high. How fun that it’s also Halloween. How sad that everyone will be stuck inside in front of Zoom screens. Apparently one aspect of a full moon, or at least the affect upon us, is that we revert to our strongest habits. You won’t be able to prove that in a lab so I imagine it’ll be down to some empirical research of sorts to understand that. With us viewing the world and experiences through a presupposed narrative, I assume that empirically our understanding will be deeply flawed. A leap of faith, well it may just be necessary. Regardless I do enjoy trying to understand habits, they seem rather powerful after all.

I’m reading a book at the moment on fear and not in a typical challenge you fears kind of way but more learn to love and see the positives of fear. I’m only a quarter of the way through so I haven’t fully grasped it but there does appear to be some legitimacy in what he says. It’s called Fearvana by Akshay Nanavati if you’re curious. I won’t go into what Fearvana is exactly, mainly because I’ve not read enough that I’ll likely do it a disservice. What made me think about it though was that he mentions something about synapses in our brains which we have developed over a long time. Connections between neural pathways or something like that. Anyway these are the animalistic responses we have to situations, the habitual response we have learnt to make.

It’s another way of looking at how we behave but it’s interesting to think of it that way when observing how we behave and respond, and this can be to anything. Instead of just thinking about how this is habit, looking behind it at the science seems to help understand how malleable our behaviour is. If it’s just connections in our brain which have formed, it also means they can reform. Without saying certain things can be good or bad, we definitely have more and less desirable habits which we decide upon personally. It’s very liberating to realise what they actually are and with the brick wall coming down it also makes them surmountable.

So this full moon, observe yourself. What is it that seems to have been building up this last week especially. How do you find yourself responding to it. Do you recognise anything familiar in your behaviour, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. Can you detach yourself from it and see it for what it is. Just that first try will do. Just observe. Don’t judge and don’t box yourself. Step back. Step back from it all.