A Seasonal Message

Over my lifetime I have come, to my surprise, notice that our abilities to make judgements with regards of other people is shockingly bad. When reading Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, a book about a generous man whom people loved and cherished as long as he doted on them but when he hits hard times turn their backs and mocked him, I thought this message is simple and obvious and not worth the X amount of pages which Shakespeare uses (as he usually does) to make some point which could be made in less than half of the pages used. However, even though it is so obvious, scornfully obvious, it seems that we, and I, do not learn from this obviousness.

In times of hardship, is seems that, those that one may expect most to stand by them desert them and those one may least expect become one’s rallying cry. Usually the people who stand the firmest are the most surprising as they are those whom one may have spent the least time engaging with (probably why, as they say, people like you until they get to know you!).

Too many people live in their own dogmatic worlds. You ask them to do something, they offer a counter, you explain how you want it done and then they ignore you and go, ‘ah, I did it the way I thought best forgetting you didn’t want it like that, I don’t wish to redo it so is it ok?’ meaning one, usually, acquiesces. This lack of attention to others is why tragedies can happen- Nazism, Trumpism, Brexit, Taylor Swift etc but what is it that makes people, the people you may least expect, want to stand by you?

Maya Angelou once wrote ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ and this, I feel (tee hee), is the key. Ultimately what one does in this blink of an eye which we call life (John Mellencamp (not worth looking up) said ‘Life is short, even in its longest days’) does not matter, in a thousand years we’ll all be forgotten, dust in the wind and, as the great Achilles found, there is no glory in death and yet this doesn’t matter. Some of the great philosophers were wealthy men who could dedicate their lives to their work, others not so wealthy who lived off ‘the kindness of strangers’ and yet others such as Aesop was a slave and yet one can argue that the fables of Aesop are as profound as any written by men of leisure, if not more so, and it does not matter that he was a slave and Plato was an aristocrat for what matters is the how the work makes you feel, not the person who wrote its position in life but rather their position in your heart.

On a personal note I would like to thank you (singular?) for your continued readership of my little dusty corner on the shelf. Would I do this even if no one read? Probably, I have over a year’s worth discarded as a more exciting butterfly drifted across my limited attention span, but that anyone finds the time to read these words means the world to me, so thank you and I’ll leave you with the words of the only person to ever deserve the prefix Dr

Be who you are and say what you feel,
Because those who mind don’t matter
And those who matter don’t mind
(Dr Suess)

 

Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Day Off Work/New Year/Etc to you all!

‘till next time

 

thegreaterfool2016@yahoo.com

 

 

 

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

 

 

Seeing Star Wars for the first time creates a love affair. Star Wars was the perfect story (princes, wizards, Buddhist monks with energy swords, good and evil clearly defined (the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black) and good coming out victorious). Star Wars was then expanded into the expanded universe of films, novels, toys and so forth all of which had to fit into the expanded universe timeline (if someone died in a novel they couldn’t be alive (without an explanation) in a later novel etc). Star Wars was an obsession for not just the creator but also by the fans. The novels often top the New York Times Bestsellers list and there is a massive industry in the audiobooks which span from the very beginning of the Jedi/Sith to beyond the death of Luke Skywalker. A series of novels came out about the children of Han and Leia and Luke which led up to a final series which was to explain the fate of the last of Han and Leia’s children (one died a hero and the other became a Sith Lord) and then…Disney happened.

 

In buying the rights to Star Wars for $4 billion, Disney set about dismantling the legacy of the force. Scrapping not only the last series about the children but also the entire expanded universe. If it happened outside of the films then it didn’t happen, not only that but the taking of storylines from the novels and pretending that they were new and original. The script that George Lucas had written for episodes VII-IX were rejected for having too much continuation from the previous 6 episodes (huh?) and then a new script was written which was, essentially, a greatest hits package (remember that bit in that film that was good? Let’s put that in! and that bit from that different film…). Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) panned Episode VII- The Force Induces Comas and also the forthcoming Episode VIII- The Empire Cashes In (but hopefully, for my sake, not The Last Straw) saying that he signed up before it was sold to Disney and thinking that Harrison Ford would never say yes so that would be his get out clause (Harrison Ford said yes and then got the ending he wanted from the original series- the death of Han Solo) later saying that, for Disney it is not about quality but about money before realising he was on camera!

 

Star Wars is being rebranded as being dark and gritty (Rogue One was the first time I’ve watched Star Wars and felt bored and I’ve seen the Ewok Adventure films!) and in doing so is losing the aspects of Star Wars which makes so very special- its heart and soul. Without heart and soul Star Wars is just another shoot-em-up in space (Starship Troopers anyone?) and maybe, one day Disney will find, to quote Bob Dylan

 

All the money you made

Will never buy back your soul        

 

Unlikely

 

‘till next time

 

Afternote: having seen the new film (on opening day) I can confirm it was even worse

What Women Want

 

I don’t know if you know this song, but it’s a new song (I’m Your Man). It’s a song that is a response to a question that has been perplexing men for 5 or 6,000 years. That is the question: “What does a woman want?”. I really was taken by this question, and I devoted twenty years of research to discovering what a woman wants and finally I didn’t find out what a woman wants and I abandoned the question. It is with a certain sense of vindication now that I see that women are asking the question “What does a woman want?”. I feel now we are truly in the same boat. None of us knows what a woman wants. I myself have decided to abandon the inquiry.’

 

Leonard Cohen

 

For many years, decades, centuries, probably not more given how women have historically been thought of. Even ‘progressive’ societies like Sparta, famed for their treatment of women, were not very progressive, the question has been asked. What do women want? And, dear friends, I am here to answer this for you and to then raise a more serious question.

The astronomer Carl Sagan said that there are billions upon billions of stars in the universe. There are, like stars, billions of women in the world (at least three billion) and women know this, they are not stupid, but what they want is someone who can make them believe, not falsely, that they are the brightest, most wonderful star in the universe, if only to that one person. In this it would be easy to think about illusions and wilful disbelief however, we all are (unfortunately) emotion beings which are driven by forces beyond our understanding. Whether emotion is real or, as I hypothesis, a bi-product is irrelevant for even if it is a bi-product, it still comes from something deeper than we can know and, what is more, this thing, for lack of a better word, is real therefore if a man makes a woman believe that she is indeed the brightest star then this will be true, even if only for one man within billions upon billions of other men. What more can one want?

 

The problem is that girls and boys are brought up to value the superficial, to not yearn for something real but to compromise. Browse social media and you will see girls of all ages in various states of undress presenting themselves literally saying ‘please follow me’ (aka validate me) and those that follow them are usually the most disturbingly creepy people you could meet not on a subway. In the UK if a 14-year-old asks for contraceptives and the doctor thinks there is a genuine reason for them then they can be prescribed without parental knowledge. I can’t say for sure but I can assume that the boys involved are generally older than 14 (and running for congress in America, Mr Moore) and yet the girls, it seems, are being told that what matters is not how brightly they twinkle in who they are but rather whether or not older men wish to engage in sexual intercourse with them. Japanese culture is surreal as you have bands such as AKB48 who are pop stars and sing little songs and appear on tv in that sickly ‘what is wrong with them?’ sweetness yet are displayed around the world in various states of undress. The dichotomy of bouncing on stage in a pink frilly dress and singing about doing homework and then staring up into the camera in underwear is wholly disturbing but just goes to illustrate the problem. The girls want to be girls and to develop naturally but are educated that to be desired is the highest echelon of being and the only way to be desired is sexually and if they are desired/loved/admired/respected for being who they are and not on sexual grounds then they are not equipped to deal with this as they have never been taught to respect who they are and how to be respected for being who they are. The real question is: how can girls be made to feel/know that all that truly matters is who they are and not how they look?

 

So, to reiterate my point there are billions upon billions of stars in the universe and what women truly want is to be someone’s brightest star not in a form of worship but rather as the gateway to a healthy, loving, equal relationship built upon who people are and not an illusion of how they think they should be.

 

 

‘till next time

Weltschmerz And Children’s Literature

 

 

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. – Franz Kafka

 

 

Children’s literature is a wonderful paradox. It is delightful tales told of adult issues. The Grimm’s tales and Anderson’s, for example, were exceptionally dark yet the child reading the story accepts the darkness as part of the story and is carried away by the fantasy. This is a great credit to the child’s mind and gives a glimpse of the inherent genius of the said mind.

 

Children’s literature often takes one or more big themes from life and considers them through a different prism. Peter Pan is the tale of children who don’t want to go to bed as they do not want to lose the magic of childhood by getting a day older and so are taken away to a land in which there is only one villain, a grownup who hates the children for their eternal youth whilst he himself is constantly pursued (either in actuality or in his mind) by time which wishes to devour him (portrayed by a crocodile which has already bitten off his hand (with his watch) causing the hand to be replace by a functional (somehow) cold metal hook. The symbolism being that he is aware of time and time has already changed him with its first bite. Plato wrote ‘He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden’, imagine Hook as a child. Ugh).

 

Alice tells the tale of a little girl who finds the conventions of the real world absurd and so goes into a wonderland in which the characters exist only as possibilities. There is no should or shan’t but only what if and why not. Alice traverses the world and finds that these characters live in fear- fear that their what ifs and why nots will be replaced with shoulds and shan’ts. The world is utterly absurd and yet more real than the real world.

 

The German writer John Paul Richter coined the phrase weltschmerz. Weltschmerz is the feeling of depression which arises when comparing an ideal world to the actual world and this, surely, is what makes great children’s literature great. The authors look at the world and see a world in which the what ifs and why nots have been replaced by shoulds and shan’ts. Thus they create a world which abides by their ideals, a world which is fantastical to adults but completely plausible to children.

 

As one grows older, as with Susan in Narnia, one finds less need for ‘stories’ as real life sets in with duties and conventions. The what ifs and why nots become replaced by shoulds and shan’ts yet deep down one knows that this is not the real world, as the world should be, and those brave enough let themselves fall back into the world of whimsy and magic and are reborn in the real world.

 

In the Velveteen Rabbit the rabbit asks the old skin horse how one becomes real. The skin horse replies that first one must be really loved but that to become real hurts and by the time one becomes real one’s fur has rubbed off and one is blind and so forth but none of these things matter for to be really loved is to be real and is to live in a world of what ifs and why nots.

 

‘till next time