Familiarity Breeds Contempt

 

I was browsing YouTube, as one does, and saw a new interview with Seth Myers interviewing John Oliver. For those who do not know both are (different types of but none the less) late night Talk Show hosts. So, a Talk Show host was being interviewed by a Talk Show host about his Talk Show… this is the world in which we live.

 

The description showed that interview was on an interesting subject which I previously knew about from Oliver’s own show. Mike Pence, who is famously homophobic (among other things), has a new book out about his bunny rabbit Marlon Bundo. John Oliver’s new book was about a rabbit called Marlon Bundo who falls in love with another boy rabbit and gets married. As far as political spats go this is very amusing and the audiobook version (voiced by Jim Parsons (Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory) and others) is delightful. However, the bigger issue is, why is a host interviewing another host?

 

Regular readers will know of my distain for names, celebrities, news-anchors mouthing off into the cameras etc. and yet it still happens. Oliver’s Marlon Bundo book has knocked James Comey’s pre-ordered memoir off the top of the best-sellers list. Remember Comey? The guy who came out just before an election and announced that he was going to re-open an investigation which had been satisfactorily concluded into a candidate and not announce that there was already an investigation into the other candidate. Comey destroyed, in this action, the credibility of the FBI and his credentials to be head of. However, since his spat with Trump, people are flocking to read his book as they read Hillary’s ‘why me’? book.  But this is not surprising. The top selling books on lists are by established authors, celebrities and people lauded as the ‘new so and so’. I read one lauded as the new Dostoyevsky and other than length of the book it was nothing like (and I can’t even recall the name of the book or author). The Oprah Book Club may be as dangerous to literature as bird flu is to chickens.

 

This isn’t just relegated to politics. One turns on the BBC radio and it is the same comedians on different shows. Some funny, most not. Same with TV and films. Old films get ‘rebooted’ (aka made more violent and/or grittier) and in football the same mangers get the same jobs whilst former players all become pundits despite their lack of journalistic training and integrity. All these happen due to the name of the individual. And…nothing changes. It all stays the same. Same books, same TV, same politics (how else can you explain Boris Johnson?).

 

Recently we have seen a slight change. 1/3^rd of children now draw scientists as women (50 years ago it was 100% male), children are marching on Washington saying lives mean more than money, guns, ego etc. and yet they are being met by the same names and same voices and as Leonard Cohen said

 

Give me back the Berlin wall

Give me Stalin and St Paul

Give me Christ

Or give me Hiroshima

Destroy another foetus now

We don’t like children anyhow

I’ve seen the future, baby:

It is murder

 

People often say that life would be boring if everyone was the same. Usually these are the people who perpetrate the hegemony without realising it. They also claim that ‘variety is the spice of life’ and I’m sure a black person in 1950’s America would agree that ‘just because my skin pigmentation is slightly different I have the exciting and very real possibility of being lynched! Yippee!’, yippee indeed. Unless new voices come in and real change can take place it will remain the same until the end of time.

 

Wouldn’t life be boring if everyone was the same?

 

It is.

 

‘till next time

 

 

The Burden Of Proof

 

One thing I have noticed is a discrepancy in the notion of ‘evidence’. If two people hypothesise about something (no one really knows anything) if they both agree then there is no need for evidence but if one agrees and one disagrees then there needs to be proof provided. More often than not it is the one who believes which has to prove what they say, such is the so-called sceptical nature of the world, more on which later.

 

One issue which really seems to rile people up is the notion of (a) God(s). Whilst those who believe are lambasted by those who do not neither can provide evidence for what they claim, and neither feels the need to. The irony is that only a ‘God-like-being’ could have perfect knowledge meaning that to say that there isn’t, without doubt, is to elevate one to something which one does not believe in and thusly prove that they do not exist themselves (what?).  

 

The world prides itself on its scepticism and yet people willingly, even thoughtlessly, subscribe to notions such as law, politics and markets. In his books, Michael Lewis has shown that the stock markets are absurd and run purely on faith, the belief in notions such as money and value. The recent cryptocurrency fad (yes, fad) is good evidence of this. This stuff with no apparent value being given value, not actual value but supposed value. Given as how most of our transactions and interactions are online anyway, one can see why it is embraced even though there is no evidence of any real value. And when it crashes (which it will) people will know why and dismiss it as being not real. It is so unreal that companies even advertise how they will ‘pump’ the market (inflate value) for a set period of time after informing their investors to buy/sell in this time, guaranteeing a profit. This is what is known as insider trading but as it is not real? Who cares, except those whose very real lives are changed by the illusions they buy into.

 

And yet, to do anything, one must have a certain degree of suspension of belief. One must make the assumptions that a) we exist, b) the universe has secrets, c) that we have the tools to unwrap the secrets (i.e. the mind) and d) we have the tools to understand and explain the secrets (i.e. language). Without these beliefs and presubscribed values, nothing would be really possible and yet, instead of understanding that we all have to make such leaps of blind faith, one still assumes that they know the truth and that everyone else must prove to them that their viewpoint is just as valid. This is called conceit and as many people I have met have said to me when I am on one of my endless spiels about this or that ‘get over it’.

 

‘till next time  

The Symphony Of Logos And Eros

 

 

A few years ago, I started a book of poetry which was to be translated into German (why not?). With the 2008 market realities hitting, my Greek translator and to be agent pulled out for obvious reasons and the book lay unwritten. The most interesting thing about the project was the title which I had given it ‘The Symphony Of Logos And Eros’ (looks better in German) using the Platonic meaning of logos to be logic. The book was to explore the conflict between one’s rational self and love the greatest of all irrationalities. To dispel the prominent notion that ‘love is blind’ I would like to say that love is not blind, rather it sees all in perfect vision and the cracks and flaws which come later are there and are seen but rather are accepted as part of the whole. It would be fairer to say that love is accepting.

 

Years later my thoughts developed further, no longer primarily concerned with love and logic in terms of girl/boy ‘intrigues’ but into the more abstract realms of the Divine. In this Logos became the Spinozian God which created everything but has no personal interaction and Eros the notion of the personal God to whom one prays for help on an intimate level.

 

Logically the notion that a higher power (God, mathematics, nothingness or whatever semantic palate you wish to choose) created everything and then sat back and said this is what I created, with its own laws (Newtonian, Einsteinian etcetera etcetera), and I will let these laws take place after all what is an individual life in comparison with the eternity which I am, myself? For us life is long/short depending on our perspective (and each day) but in a hundred years or so we will be gone and (probably) forgotten so what is a single life in the grand scheme of things?

 

Yet, personal experience has been interpreted, by me, to suggest that there is some form of higher power which intercedes on my personal behalf, not by making the world run for my whims but rather on the level of personal wellbeing. Indeed, my discovery (or being discovered by) this personal God at the age of 15/16 made me turn my back on churches and embark upon a personal quest into myself to find the source of this ‘voice’. However, logic would dictate that this ‘voice’ was not some external entity or ‘soul’ but rather what the Freudians would call ‘the unconscious mind’ something of me which is more me than me.

 

Here I find myself caught in the conflict between the emotional and the rational. Why would a God care about me individually? Likewise, as Christians I have met have told me and theologians have written, why would a God not care about my individual wellbeing for what is billions and trillions of individual people to the entity which created not only them but everything?!

 

I have no answers to this and, whilst I find the language of likes of Kierkegaard and St Augustine simpering and the language of Spinoza and Einstein more palatable, it remains that one of the greatest battles which one undertakes is not external (per se) but rather within one’s self and maybe the answers will come (if indeed answers are still sought) when one gives up the battle and lets the symphony of logos and eros wash over one’s self.

 

‘till next time

Sanitisation Of History

 

Sometime between 1717 and 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote an indescribably beautiful piece of music colloquially known as Air On The G-String. In 1920 a garment was first brought to the public attention in theatre (and the like) and was given the name the G-String. Nowadays if one searches records of music played on public accessed radio stations or the backs of CDS etc one will see that Bach’s masterpiece is now known as Air given the other connotations. Whilst Mozart liked to stir up mischief with pieces of music such as Leck mich im Arsch which literally translates as Lick My Arse or figuratively as Kiss My Arse, Bach’s achingly beautiful piece of music can no longer be known by its name given associations with a garment.

The expatriate English American late-night host John Oliver recently was talking about the state of Europe. For those who do not know, for the last 10 years or so much of Europe has been held up by Germany.  However, Oliver pointed out, and showed a clip of a German saying to back up his point, that given recent history no one wants Germany to lead Europe. This is ridiculous for two (and more) reasons. 1) Germany already are and 2) with the US openly becoming more ‘America First’ so much so that after the last G7 summit Mrs Merkle said that Europe must take ‘our fate’ into its own hands, Europe needs a strong leader and as Germany are currently the strongest country with the strongest leader they should naturally take an important role. Yet, even given the current economic and global climate, people, such as Oliver who is English when it suits him and American when it suits him, are bringing up the world wars which ended 73 years ago. Although 73 years is not that long a time, given the arch of time, in human terms it is a lifetime with at least three generations being born since. Yes, one can argue that Germany in control of Europe does smack of Imperialism but, to return to Oliver, Oliver is a dual citizen (I assume given his on camera comments)  of England and America, two countries which have a bloody colonial past. However, the sins of England have been brushed under the carpet and sanitised to ‘do you know the story of Tea? We went to India and killed lots of people, destroyed their culture and made them our puppets, but Tea is rather nice, eh what?’

 

The controversy in the US about the statues of Civil War generals, which had nothing to do with the statues, are clear indicators of how the past is being cherry picked, as George Orwell said ‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past’, to only show the sanitized version of history, unless it is about the big, bad Germans!

 

And this is not to say that things should be how they were when one was young for obviously the world has changed since then and the ideals and practices of the past may or may not be applicable now. Yes, you can learn from them but you have to adapt to the modern world.

 

History should be preserved as it is in all its glory and shame and we should learn from it and move on for ‘the times they are a-changin’’ and if we do not have the faith that the kids of today and tomorrow can separate historical fact from the prejudices of their elders then no matter how much we know, history will repeat ‘that tired story of betrayal and revenge’ (Leonard Cohen) and not only the tragedy but also the beauty of the past will be lost.

 

‘till next time