Tag: the unknown

Scuba Diving

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Thirteen years ago when I was but a twenty-one year old child, in a fit of decisive madness I did my PADI Open Water scuba diving course. This was during a six week trip through Thailand with a friend on the island of Koh Tao. It was good fun but despite getting the certificate the truth is we were probably too drunk when not doing the diving to have the mental capacity to remember anything. What I took from it though was that I was far happier below the surface of the water than I am on top of it. There is a vulnerability perhaps that disappears when you have a tank of air but more so you can see around you and the unknown becomes slightly less so.

There are still dangers, a rather aggressive and territorial triggerfish threateningly swam between my friends legs and when the instructor pointed this out, much to his consternation us idiots thought he was suggesting we go take a look at the lovely fishy. A few years later when I lived in Ibiza my boss was also a dive instructor and he took me out on a refresher dive. I enjoyed diving generally but having spent a majority of the last ten years as a barefoot traveller climbing in supermarket bins for food, diving has simply been cost prohibitive. Today though, for the first time in ten years I’m going diving.

…nine hours later…

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that was fun but I enjoyed it. Sometimes endured it but on the whole enjoyed it. I still struggle a little with equalising and getting my buoyancy right was a continual losing battle but it’s just something that needs a little practise. Ultimately with diving it’s one of those things that you can get better at but the secret is that if or when something happens you just need to avoid panicking. Admittedly making all these statements in four metres of water is one thing and thirty metres deep as you suddenly realise you’ve got a problem with your air and you stuck inside the wreck of some Spanish galleon would be an entirely different thing.

I don’t totally get off on diving but that’s partly because I’m still not very good at it and I do struggle to enjoy the sensation of salt water in my nose and mouth. Being Scottish I always like to believe sea water is to be appreciated from something I can stand on, and not the seabed. Saying that you do feel good after you’ve spent a bit of time in it and the longer around it, the more you want to get in. I imagine living beside the sea for a year and swimming everyday would have a dramatic affect on your outlook in that sense. Anyway, it appears I went and agreed to do my Advanced Open Water this coming week before I return to Scotland so I must have got something out of today.

A Tangent Of Change

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

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.

The Comfort Blanket Of Conspiracy

Hamar Williams2 Comments

Conspiracy theories are such a comfort. I was chatting with my Mum the other day and telling her how there is something about this whole Coronavirus pandemic that just makes me feel suspicious, there’s something not right and I can’t work out what it is. This unease could be attributed to numerous things but I have been putting it down to the fact that certain things just don’t make sense. I mentioned previously how we’re not looking at the whole picture in relation to statistics. The extraordinary numbers of deaths attributed to vehicles, alcohol, smoking and suicides which occur on a daily basis dwarf this virus yet they’re barely discussed with anything near the urgency we’re currently experiencing in the national dialogue. I also have a healthy distrust of my government, any government come to think of it, and the mainstream media which I have mentioned previously as well as implied regularly. With this in mind it is easy to see how I may be inclined to believe some of the ideas going around online about the real cause or nature of this pandemic. What dawned on me mid conversation though was that perhaps I couldn’t find something credible to pin this distrust upon because actually this virus has no underlying manipulator, it just exists, and it’s existence is uncontrollable.

So let me explain how that last point relates to the first. Conspiracy theories are a comfort because they make sense of events that ordinarily would bring uncontrolled confusion and danger to our lives. What I mean by that is that if we believe there are puppetmasters controlling the spread of this virus or controlling the media manipulation of a non-existent virus, we can find an entity that we know such as government, the deep state, the Chinese, et al and blame them. We may still be powerless, let’s be honest, but at the very least we know our enemy and once we know something it immediately becomes less scary. Ultimately the unknown plays an enormous part in most of if not all our fears, we are scared of what we don’t know because it could be dangerous, it is an instinctive animalistic response. If this virus is not being manipulated by someone it is uncontrollable, that makes it unknown and this version of the reality we create is far more fearful than the comforting one of deep state manipulation.

It is probably important to mention that I dislike the term conspiracy theory because it is used in a derogatory way to belittle an idea which runs contrary to the official story. I use it in this piece for the sake of understanding. It is as dangerous to dismiss all conspiracy theories as it is to accept all of them, or to accept all official theories. That should be obvious though. It should be obvious too that there are some official versions of events which are clearly untrue; think the assassination of JFK or the ludicrous attempts to pass off the hole filled story of the World Trade Centre attacks. There are also though the utterly bizarre such as that we live on a flat Earth or are ruled by a race of reptilian overlords. This last one is interesting because it is a perfect example of finding order within the disorder of existence; all these bad things that happen in this world are down to a race of evil reptiles, not because human beings are a complex irrational species capable of the unexpected and unacceptable.

This isn’t of course to say those with access to power are not going to take full advantage of this virus at any opportunity. We’ve already seen governments push through draconian security and spying legislation, rich party donors are lining their pockets all under the guise of saving lives, the wealthy traders are watching in glee as the economy crashes waiting for their opportunity pick at the carcass of once viable businesses. It is comforting to think all of this is controlled though because that is what we can understand. If it is controlled it is less likely to indiscriminately hurt us or our loved ones and it will have an end point. It is vitally important to indulge in a healthy amount of scepticism but at some point it may be worth throwing off the security blanket of conspiracies and seeing the world for the disorganised, irrational and unknown place it is. As is life.