rational – Observations and Misunderstandings

The Sweetest Of Nihilists

12/11/2020 Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

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.

Instinctively Morbid Curiosity

31/05/2020 Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

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.

An Assassinated Character

09/12/201909/12/2019 Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

One of the scourges of decent political debate in modern times is the cult of the personality. It goes without saying that this has always been a part of politics, players of the game have been getting embroiled in character assassinations probably since the days of feudalism. It seems however, or at least I’ve heard it said by many people and possibly partially been influenced by this myself, that this form of political delegitimising has been on the rise in recent years. This came to mind today when listening to a podcast of a talk with Brian Eno and Yiannis Varoufakis. While I’ve never heard of Brian Eno before, who incidentally has the best full name I’ve heard this week – Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno – Yiannis Varoufakis is for me certainly much more well known. He took on the EU while in his position as Greek Finance Minister, is a fervent critic of the EU although he believes in remaining in so as to tackle it from the inside and is easily and perhaps crudely described as a left wing rockstar economist. I don’t know everything he has to say but there are arguments he makes that appeal to me. My issue then is that people don’t like him not always for his politics but his character.

It is too easy to go into simply disliking someone. There have been many times I have heard people talking about an idea but found myself rejecting them because either I found them annoying or for some unconscious conditioned reaction to how they dress or their accent. It is ignorant and will make a good piece in itself at a later date, but that is for then. Varoufakis when in his position as minister took all his money out of Greece and put it in foreign bank accounts. I don’t think it was him, but the government, and I think it was after he quit his position, introduced laws to stop Greek people doing this. Some preempted this to varying levels of success but I remember chatting with a Greek at the time who disliked Varoufakis because he believed he had told people not to remove their money to safeguard what was left of the Greek economy but removed his own as he knew it was pretty much doomed anyway. Research would be required to confirm the validity of this.

The question though is whether you are capable of putting aside the supposed unpleasant act and therefore issue with his character and still listen to his ideas for what they are, or dismiss his ideas because either you can’t trust him or simply believe him to be sneakily self-preserving and hypocritical. This relates in a huge way to the current election. Boris Johnson is a lying racist scoundrel who cannot be trusted and Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semitic marxist who wants to drag us back to the Stone Age. The point is not whether either are true or not but that people seem willing to still vote for them for their policies while others refuse to vote for them because of their perceived characters. That is of course oversimplifying an incredibly complicated and nuanced situation but fundamentally this is how the parties and media seem to be trying to play it.

It is really challenging to actually listen to someones words and put everything else aside despite your unconscious biases, especially to believe in what they say after they have proved themselves untrustworthy. An extreme would be Hitler and vegetarians but that isn’t worth going into. Both arguments can be rationalised with varying degrees of success, so must we look to the emotional side of the debate? Or it perhaps comes down to your belief in realpolitik. Whatever it is it seems an enormous challenge to actually see the words for what they really are. Certainly though if we all found a way to learn how to we may just manage to drag politics from the gutter it seems to have found itself in, and who knows in the process ourselves too.