sexiest woman room

What's a bloke to do? Here I am with a desktop overflowing with unfinished pieces - 'World Death Organisation', 'Satanism and the Self', 'Bonuses for the Most Expensive Fuckwits in History', 'The Daily Global Fear and Desire Index' etc. etc. - and all of them knocked back.


I knocked them back because... who gives a shit? Or to put it another way, we're at the town meeting, called because a thirty metre tsunami is due in an hour, and a voice pipes up asking what the council's going to do about the cracks in the footpath that the tremor caused. And the guy's got a point: the cracks are so bad that you could fall and break your hip. But in the face of the tsunami... who gives a shit?

Actually that's just our little world. Truth is, back in the real world everyone is rolling their eyes, catcalling, and otherwise laughing their heads off. Broken footpaths, the collapsed bus shelter, and what-about-the-insurance, is all they want to talk about - and who is this dickhead blathering about a tsunami? What tsunami? Doesn't he watch the news that guy? Sheesh! If there was a tsunami, they'd tell us. The worst is over - they said so on the news!


Yeah well, we'll leave them to it. We're having a whole other conversation, and there, between 30m waves; and bits and pieces of broken infrastructure, one of them is a topic worth discussing and the other is a mere series of clues pointing to it. Can you dig it?

---

Still, a little nagging voice says that maybe it won't be so. What with the death cult following the Fabian creed of gradualism, perhaps there won't be a tsunami at all - just more run-of-the-mill rollers wearing away, wearing away. Dig it - it's the condemned man keeping his fingers crossed that he won't go before the firing squad and will instead be sentenced to hard sodomy for the term of his natural life. "Oh thank God, it's only daily rape." Whew!

But really, as if the death cult would be so rigidly doctrinaire. If gradualism suits, they'll use it. And if a world war is what's required, then dandy, cue the fire bombing. Or whatever! - they're nothing if not versatile. As if the people who control our education, media, and government are going to leave any bases uncovered or otherwise resile from anything because, well, "That's just going too far..." Besides, there's just too much now and it's there for anyone with an ounce of curiosity to see.


Just to be precise, I figure we're in for an unholy trinity - Economic Collapse: 426 trillion imaginary dollars. Never mind the 'recovery' - is everyone familiar with a 'head and shoulders' curve? Okay, so we're at the shoulder and now comes the long drop, all the way down. Cue the, um... 'Great Recession' is it? Ha ha ha. I guess that's like a Great Depression but with more hype. And more deaths - six million in the US alone last time around. Global Pandemic: A fake virus treated with a vaccine that's no such thing. Will this be the greatest act of mass murder in history? Sure, why not? The CFR/Bilderberger mob has already declared that five billion dead would be just dandy. World War: Iraq, Afghanistan, even the coming smashing of Iran - all sideshows. The big game? Russia v Nato. And are Ladbrokes offering odds on Israel nuking someone? If evens is the best you can get, it'd be worth laying a hundred bucks on.

Any one of these would qualify as an event of unparalleled wickedness. And we're going to get three! Yay - fans of history, rejoice! And sure enough we, who ordinarily prefer history at a bit of a remove, ask the question - What's to be done?

---

Well, we must oppose it! Fight Fight Fight! Well... there will be fighting and no mistake. We'll meet the enemy and he'll be us - the streets will run with blood and the death cult (looking down from their corporate boxes) will roar with laughter. Who said there's East and there's West and never the twain shall meet? He didn't own an Armalite obviously. East/West - North/South - Muslim/Christian - white/coloured - rich/poor - military/civilian - It's time to do the us-and-them cha-cha, and all to a rat-a-tat beat. Buddha was bullshit and his so-called "middle way" nothing more than an excuse for Hegelians to smash two opposites together. Bring on the Revolution! And cue the impossible voice-over guy - "This revolution has been proudly brought to you by International Banking."


If people want to pile in on that, good luck to them. I'm sure the death cult won't have seen them coming. Meanwhile where I live, in this cardboard cut-out town, in a cardboard cut-out state, in a cardboard cut-out country - with Rupert Murdoch in charge of the paper, scissors, and Perkin's paste - ain't nothin' gonna happen. Between the bang and the whimper (with no third option), it'll be "A whimper for me please. And how much is that? Ten trillion dollars? Um... okay, just one then, and not so big thanks." What nice manners we have, even for our rapists.

---

"Hey nobody, what's that in the title, about Les and Pascal having a bet or something?" Oh yes, I do thank that imagined fellow for reminding me. It seems that in setting the mood in the first couple of paras, I've done my usual trick and written a thousand words already. But rather than quit and come back, I'll just plough on.


I have Les pegged as today's Hunter S. All he lacks is an editor to sort out his possessives, contractions, and plurals, ha ha. Sorry Les! (He also lacks Thompson's uncannily accurate descriptions of the paedophocracy, which until Jeff Wells laid them out, I'd always taken as a variety of metaphor. Those stories about Thompson? Well, if Operation Mockingbird and Laurel Canyon got funky together, and the result was a natural child, what would that offspring look like?)

The above is not me dropping any dark hints about Les. I have as good an ear for falsity as anyone, and I've yet to hear Les strike a false note. There are real people in this world and Les is one of them. Or to put it another way - I wouldn't bother discussing Les if I thought he was bullshit, or insubstantial, or any other epithet. I come here not to bury Les, but to praise him (backhanded, of course...)

---

That being said, let's carry on - the point of the exercise here is merely a continuation of me turning Les' discussions of the coming tsunami in deus ex machina terms around in my head and wondering at them from different angles. And that's when Renaissance man, Blaise Pascal, stuck his tuppence in. Primarily Pascal was a mathematician who, amongst other things, built one of the world's first calculating machines, invented the science of hydraulics (and the syringe specifically), and was otherwise the founder of the modern theory of probability.


As if that wasn't enough, he was also a religious philosopher who spent the whole latter half of his life cloistered in the Jansenist convent of Port Royal. Cloistered or no, he never forgot the libertine friends he'd made during his 'worldly period', and with them in mind (and as you might expect from a mathematical expert in probabilities) Pascal sought to appeal to their scepticism by way of a simple bet with what's now known as Pascal's Wager. Here's Encyclopaedia Brittanica -

Pascal assumed, in disagreement with Thomas Aquinas but in agreement with much modern thinking, that divine existence can neither be proved nor disproved; and he reasoned that if one decides to believe in God and to act on this basis, one gains eternal life if right but loses little if wrong, whereas if one decides not to believe, one gains little if right but may lose eternal life if wrong. In these circumstances, he concluded, the rational course is to believe.

It's hard to believe I know, but I'm not the only fellow who turns things around and comes at them from different angles. Brittanica again -

The argument has been criticized theologically for presupposing an unacceptable image of God as rewarding such calculating worship and also on the philosophical ground that it is too permissive in that it could justify belief in the claims, however fantastic, of any person or group who threatened nonbelievers with damnation or other dangerous consequences.

Good point. But you've got to love this - "...it could justify belief in the claims, however fantastic, of any person or group who threatened nonbelievers with damnation or other dangerous consequences." Ha ha ha, that sounds like every religion ever invented doesn't it? It certainly sounds like the Christian church.


Unsurprisingly, with Pascal effectively an adherent of a Jewish sect (er... that would be Christianity), the whole discussion is one of what's-in-it-for-me, driven by the twin carrot-and-stick prospects of the fear of damnation versus the promise of a glorious eternity. And me, I have to ask the question: What sort of insecure God is this?

If a fellow was an incarnation of Francis of Assisi (say), leading a life of perfect virtue devoted to the well-being of all living things, would Pascal's God get angry with him if he didn't know who He was? Absolutely! The Christian God (besides being a slavish adherent to the old bullshit maxim of 'ignorance of the law is no excuse') is a jealous one who visits the iniquity of the father upon his children to the fourth generation merely for failing to acknowledge him. Jesus Christ! As if a God who's every kind of 'omni' wouldn't be above such petty concerns? Where's the serenity?


Bugger it. Why don't we turn Pascal's wager on its head - and plug it into Les' deus ex machina while we're at it? And so: given that Les' manifestations of supernature are not insecure and do not demand we tip our hat every time we sneeze; given that a shit-storm tsunami to end all shit-storm tsunamis is definitely coming, and if anything was ever going to warrant a deus ex machina response, this is it; given the rightness of Epictetus' discussions of 'what is in our power' (thanx Kikx), with stopping a tsunami not being one of them; and not forgetting yours truly being a Buddhist of his own description, attempting to embody the right end of the continuum (at the top of the page), we arrive at the following 'thus' -

Supernature or no, if one sheds fear and desire, and acts with reverence for all things as if they were possessed of supernature, if right, one gains all that might be hoped for, but loses little if wrong, whereas if one embraces fear and desire, and effectively reveres the self, if right, one gains little beyond the ephemeral, but if wrong... "Hey, the ocean's just gone out. Let's go down and look."

Man: I don't know - Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of global despotism.

(JARRING CHORD - The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez-Rothschild of the City of London enters, flanked by two junior cardinals, Cardinal Biggles and Cardinal Fang.)

Ximinez-Rothschild: NOBODY expects a global despotism! Our chief weapon is monetary policy...monetary policy and the bloc-media...the bloc-media and monetary policy.... Our two weapons are the bloc-media and monetary policy...and corruption via satanism and paedophilia.... Our *three* weapons are the bloc-media, monetary policy, and corruption via satanism and paedophilia...and a centuries spanning gradualism.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as the bloc-media, monetary policy.... I'll come in again. (Exit and exeunt)


Does that make metaphoric sense? Well it does if you're standing on a balcony having a cig and trying to put together a sensible picture of what we're up against in terms of the death cult. Reducing a thing to senselessness ought not to be dismissed out of hand. Honestly, if a thing is senseless to begin with why not treat it that way?

For mine the essence of Python's senselessness was captured in one obscure sketch called 'Climbing the North face of Uxbridge Road' in which mountaineers with pitons, carabiners, and ropes laboriously traversed the footpath next to Uxbridge Road. For some reason this is mad, and yet doing the same thing on the side of a mountain isn't. Perhaps that was the beauty of Python - to make obvious the absurdity of all those things that we're otherwise required to discuss as if they were sensible.

No wonder there's nothing like Monty Python anymore. Now all comedy seems to be Jewish farce. Jewish farce has no point to make apart from the fact that everything can be reduced to smut. We're all Beavis and Butthead now. To hell with actually listening to anything anyone says or what it might mean. Instead we sit there blankly, our mental antennae attuned and waiting for the arrival of a smutty word - 'He said 'Bartok', heh heh heh heh....'


Interestingly, Python is actually undergoing a resurgence at the moment at the hands of Eric Idle (the least and shallowest of all the Pythons) who has reduced The Holy Grail to that most vacuous of art forms, the Broadway musical. Thus Idle becomes feted and wealthy, and the intellectual and philosophical heart of Python, Terry Jones, remains the most obscure of all his fellows. Sure, of course.

Otherwise Monty Python (with Spike Milligan's Goons as my intro) made me the fellow I am today. It taught me that arcane and otherwise intimidating topics could belong to anyone and that one might view them however one wished. There was no topic that couldn't be stripped down, turned inside out, and if necessary smashed over the head with a stout bit of reductio ad absurdum. Or to put it another way, they were the mortal enemies of 'this-is-how-you-must-think'.


When I was at university my best friend joined the army. To cheer him up whilst he was in the nightmarish world of basic training I sent him a letter (remember them?). What with both of us being silly Python fans, on the back of the envelope I put down the sender as 'Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra'. He quickly wrote back asking that I not do that again as the mail was always handed out by a corporal who never missed a trick in saying something shitty about the sender. This in an effort to humiliate and demean the recruits you understand. Have we all seen Full Metal Jacket? Okay, like that. Sure enough 'Nelson Riddle' qualified as a perfect red flag, "Does he blow your horn does he? Do you blow his? Are you a couple of fags?". Happily my friend succeeded where I would have failed and gave the right answer - "No, corporal".

Perhaps that's the military in a nutshell - Python bad, Beavis and Butthead good. God forbid anyone in the military should know the meaning of reductio ad absurdum. How would we ever get a war on if people could think for themselves and come to the conclusion that it was bullshit at its heart? Hmm... thinking about it, the military is essentially a soft form of trauma based mind-control à la Brice Taylor (Susan Ford). Those who've been through military training might want to scoff but only because they haven't read Ford's book. Compared to what she went through, military training is like Club Med.

But the principles remain the same. We are not to think: we are to blink and do. The only variations to the theme are in the intensity. From MKUltra to the military and from there to the civvy world, it all comes under the heading of mind control with the dial merely being turned from hard, to medium, to soft.


Speaking of going off to war, may I take a moment to plant a boot up the date of the Briton of the Century, Winston Churchill? Said Winston, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." The sideways logic here is that it would be poor of a fellow to view them as inveterate liars just because they lie all the time about every goddamn thing. Says they, 'We possess the truth and we only lie out of the necessity of protecting this truth, do you see?'

Ha ha ha, you have to admit it's bloody clever isn't it? But the truth is that the noble war that necessitated these lies was bullshit from the get-go. In 1938, Churchill was in debt up to his eyeballs and was only saved from having to sell the family estate Chartwell by a Jewish South African gold mining millionaire, Sir Henry Skrakosch. What's Yiddish for 'quid pro quo'? And Germany's arch crime at the time of Judea's declaration of war against them in 1933 was to have wrested control of German monetary policy from the hands of the Rothschilds et al. And the yiddish for 'cui bono'?

Churchill's 'finest hour' was bullshit, just like every other bullshit war. The ends justified the means, but only for a tiny handful of liars - weren't nothing in it for the rest of us. Let's tweak another quote: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much paid by so many to so few". Sure.

Since then little has changed. The wars are smaller but there's more of them and they pretty much approach 'all the time, forever' in their frequency. With never a pause the new world order's noble truth, flanked by its bodyguard of lies, marches on. That 'truth' (world peace is it?) is every bit as false an end as the means used to arrive at it. As if anything good can come from enslavement by fake money, corruption by satanistic paedophilia, and an unrelenting deluge of media black lies? Honestly. The new world order will be exactly as fucked as the old world order with the only difference being the size of the pyramid underneath those who view themselves as the worthy pointy bit at the top. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.


Under that timeless rubric, I don't know that it matters who the boss is exactly. Up until now I've been flailing about in some mad variety of death cult whodunnit. Ha! Dig it - it's Poirot trying to figure out who stabbed the victim on the Orient Express. Gosh, there seems to be evidence pointing at everyone! Sure enough, the saucy Belgian figured out that it was everyone. Hmm... if you think about it, Murder On The Orient Express is a brilliant metaphor for how the death cult works. Its only point of departure from the real world is that the authorities who went on to arrest the assorted culprits on the train would have been in on the act as well.

Back to Python now, I have a sketch in mind. Or is it too unfunny? Perhaps I should do it as one of those 'flash mob' art event thingies? Anyway, imagine a bunch of people, dozens strong, all in suits robbing a bank (perhaps wearing bowler hats, just to add a python-esque touch). Or are they bank robbers? Perhaps they're the bankers themselves? For us as mug punters cowering in fear it's hard to tell the difference. Either way, each of these suits holds a pair of shotguns, one wired to the throat of a confrere and the other waved about at us. Of course each has a shotgun wired to their own throat. They scream demands, variously fearful and angry, "Hand over your money or everyone dies! We don't want to do this but we have no choice! But if everyone does as we say, we'll all be fine!"

Where's our clever Belgian? "I say Poirot, any idea who the culprit is?"

Mind you, I'm not too sure about the aforementioned fear and anger. Maybe it would exist at first, as each participant finds a shotgun at their head, but eventually they'd each become just another exhausted thousand-yard-stare killer like everyone else in the perverse shotgun-wired rat's nest: the whole tangled mass relentlessly moving forward to wherever the fuck it is they're going, and none of them even sure why anymore.


And now for that timeless chestnut - what's to be done? As Aangirfan so sensibly pointed out, really it's always been this way. And who can argue? It's not as if the fear-driven, anti-buddha death cult ruling us are imaginative or original. It's all been done before. Hell we all did it ourselves when we were two, and our sense of ourselves expanded to gargantuan proportions, but happily we grew out of it. Along those lines of all-been-done-before, why don't we view the death cult as dinosaurs? They might have made sense when the means to cast off the old predator-and-prey model didn't exist, but that was then and this is now: with modern mass communications such as they are, and the world an interconnected global village, a new paradigm based on compassion and common sense (ie. selflessness rather than selfishness) is actually possible. Don't scoff - if the insane effort that has gone into enslaving us in this global despotism had instead been spent urging us towards the other end of the continuum (at the top of the page), we'd be there already.

But forget all that, it doesn't make any difference since it's always been this way. And the future may be better or it may be worse, but it doesn't make any difference since it's always been this way. This is the Buddha's 'here and now'. The immutable truth of here and now is that the only option for each of us is (and always has been), to embody the world we wish to live in. There's no point waiting - waiting for some event, or cause, or charismatic saviour. I'm not saying that this thing or person isn't coming, just that it shouldn't-doesn't-won't make any difference. Not if you're being that embodiment, that is. Subsequently, there's no point being fearful, angry, or dismayed (nor in losing one's sense of humour, ha ha) because who wants to live in that world? Not me.

Meanwhile the world is the world and we observe and try to make sense of it. Perhaps we'll never be giants like Darwin or the Buddha, each with their own unified field theory of human behaviour. But that's okay, we merely declare ourselves 'midget' giants. And as such, we reach for the stars, as the giants do, but find our fingers are no closer than anyone else's, were they to try. Never mind, at least we tried and at least we get the gag. Unlike that thick-as-pigshit death cult. They don't get any gag apart from from those that involve a Beavis and Butthead variety of idiot sniggering. Regardless, we whose hearts are true (well, as true as we can make 'em), and whose quills are sharp (licked with the tongue in our cheek), will carry on helpfully pointing out the senselessness of whatever the fuck it is they're on about.

Oh look, it's a picture of me, or a caricature at any rate. My friend Ledge did this in celebration of my mad Cossack beard. But never mind the beard, it's gone now and who cares?


It's the expression on my face that's interesting. Look at that furrowed brow. Ledge drew this just after he and I had come back from a cafe in Mullimbimby (aren't Australian place names great?) where I'd met an Englishman keen to impress upon me the wickedness of Jewish people. He'd given me a bunch of articles to read, all of which extolled the virtues of racial purity. Sure enough, I'm the wrong fellow for this and I threw his stuff out, and then Ledge and I sparked up and spent the rest of the afternoon inventing mad worlds and laughing our heads off. We like a laugh, Ledge and I.

But never mind the ageing stoners, right there in the picture is the battle for my face. As I slowly approach fifty and the wrinkles get deeper, it seems it's a race of who-gets-there-first between the crow's feet I have from smiling, and the Billy Joel-esque furrow I get from frowning. And I'm wondering if the frown isn't winning.

Lately over at Su's place I've been struck, or a chord has been, by Su's, um, I don't know, having had enough of it all? Would I be wrong in imagining that what Su describes in this piece, followed by this (as a bookend of sorts) are variations of what we're all going through? Spending every day reading of the stepped-in-blood activities of the death cult PTB really does do your head in. 'Basta!' as the Italians say, 'Enough! I get it already.' Honestly, don't these self-impressed fuckers ever get sick of it? Their relentless revelling in filth and degradation, and all to keep themselves in Savile Row suits, super yachts, and rape victims. God help me - I'm sick of them, and I'm sick of their shit.

And my face tells me daily. The muscles through my jaw, temples, and forehead ache from the perpetual tension. I've mentioned before I have bad teeth. But they usedn't to be. They used to be the best teeth money could buy until I ground them down. And now every morning I wake up with an exhausted face.

And lately I've realised that the tension is there during the waking hours too. And whilst the answer is as simple as relaxing my muscles, this is easier said than done. I relax my jaw and within seconds I find it's back to its default 'jut' mode. It's like pushing water uphill, a Sisyphean battle.

Funnily enough, martial arts is, amongst other things, the mastery of relaxation. It took me years to understand even the basics of how to relax my limbs, and the variety of internal tension required for a good stance. And just lately the words of one of the instructors came back to me - 'Your face should have a slight smile on it'. I didn't think about it at the time since I was too busy with my hips, thighs, back and shoulders, but it's a thing worth keeping in mind. If anyone wants to know what the smile should look like exactly, just check a Theravadan statue of the Buddha.


With this in mind I remembered a documentary I saw about a Japanese Buddhist sect, wherein the practitioners would ritualistically laugh together. The priest declared that happiness makes you laugh and laughing makes you happy. And sure they looked like a pack of weirdos, but that's beside the point. The nerve pathways transmitting electrical signals from the brain to the muscles aren't a one-way street. The stimulus that drives the response can likewise be driven by that response. It's a bit like how sexual arousal will dilate the pupils, but dilated pupils will cause sexual arousal. This is why romantic dinners are candle-lit, and if you want to get laid, you don't go to McDonalds. Well, that and a thousand other reasons, ha ha.

But to hell with McDonalds, I've been smiling. And it's spooky how happy I feel. What starts out feeling slightly false, takes on a life of its own. Within seconds the smile ceases to be false and I feel good. And whilst this isn't about to instantly undo years of muscle memory and the tension it brings, it's easily better than me thinking 'relax' and then forgetting again one second later.

---

Sure enough, weltschmerz wouldn't be weltschmerz if one could knock it on the head merely by smiling. But it's a good start. A trip of a thousand miles starts with a single step. What with having had to relocate my internet venue to the next town over, all manner of things, of paths to be travelled, have revealed themselves to me. Down the road from the library is a yoga/meditation centre. In the other direction is an art supply shop. And as soon as I can find a camera store, I'll get back into photography.

I'm not about to abandon writing. It's far too much fun, and besides, I like reading my own stuff, ha ha. But that doesn't mean I have to spend all day head down in the laptop buried in misery. Not forgetting that anyone suffering from weltschmerz, overcome with dismay and despair, is doing precisely what they're meant to. The death cult laughs in derision. Yeah well, they can go fuck themselves. I refuse to behave as they expect.

I'll look at the world with my eyes open. I'll acknowledge the wickedness that exists. And then I'll respond in the manner of my own choosing. To hell with letting the world eat me alive. Rather, I'm going to view the world as my oyster, and then let's see who eats whom, ha!

Does the Queen go to the cinema? Fat chance! She's the Queen for chrissake. And when you're the Queen you know people, which is to say you have flunkies who know people, and they arrange for whatever film it is that tickles your fancy to be delivered to your palace for a private screening. Same same for presidents, popes, and any number of the rich and powerful. If you were given to such things, you could divide the world into two groups: those who go to the cinema or otherwise wait for the DVD; and those who have private screenings. Hmm... if you could develop a bio-weapon that killed only the latter group, you'd really be on to something wouldn't you? God save the Queen though! She's lovely!


Mind you, the people who wield true power in this world, ie. those who own the Reserve Banks, could go to the cinema if they wanted to. It's not as if they'd be recognised is it? Which is the whole idea, sure enough. When people start using words like 'lamp-posts' and 'dangling from', it pays to have no one know who you are, what you look like, or where you live. Assassination is only ever for figureheads and flunkies. The rain falls in many directions, but never 'up', if you know what I mean. Otherwise if you want to view their deliberate anonymity as an acknowledgement of their own wickedness, go right ahead.

So. Even though those in the twelve families could go to the cinema unrecognised, I doubt that they would. The price of hubristic self-adoration would require that you never mix with the hoi polloi. God forbid the self-impressed viewing others as human. But still, I don't doubt that those above us would listen to music, read books, and watch movies. Certainly they would have watched The Matrix. All of those arcane references, in jokes, and messages of homage are there for them. When someone says a film 'works on so many levels' they don't know the half of it. Those in the twelve families have their own level.


Speaking of levels, I wonder if our kings of hubris saw Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle? Probably not. I suspect that they wouldn't have cared for it, what with its message that regardless of how powerful one is, there is always someone who can best you, and invariably from a direction least expected. In some ways, it's the anti-Matrix.

But never mind that, I'll bet the Rothschilds et al would have watched the Matrix and been only too chuffed to see themselves as the omniscient, omnipotent godhead with the rest of humanity deluded, powerless, and flailing about in their own filth. But that's the problem with hubris - it renders one susceptible to arrant flattery.

Whatever they tell themselves, or let themselves be told, the rulers of this world are nothing more than writ-large versions of those who worship their five senses, their stomachs, and their cocks and cunts. And as ugly as those last two words are, whatever utility they serve, they serve for those who rule also. Or to put it another way, these people shit, and their shit stinks. They're just anti-Buddhas and there's nothing special about that. In fact, it's the most obvious and prosaic choice anyone could make. And to be the greatest anti-Buddha is to render oneself the Lord of the Obvious. If the word 'sublime' is in their vocabulary it's only because they don't get it.


Regardless of The Matrix's assertion otherwise, the fact is that these lords of usury have not seen the turn of an age. They don't know what the Mayans knew. Oh alright, they've probably read up and know as much as anyone. But what's that worth exactly? Do we imagine that in any clash between the wisdom of true ancients and the usurers' self regard that the latter wouldn't trump the former? If they possess the wisdom of the Mayans in any way it's only because they stole it and beat it into some idiotic shape that served their own purposes.

The Matrix is better viewed in the context of Hollywood and the money men who funded it. Never mind the obvious bilking of cash from the gob-smacked masses - the subtext serves to flatter the powerful, and to fill the un-gob-smacked (that's us) with dismay. But both of them are worthless propositions that don't deserve our attention.

To hell with its message of the godhead's timeless omniscience and control - an age turns now and this will be a new gig for our jumped-up moneylenders. And frankly their desperation is apparent. Every day sees the lies getting ever more numerous and ever more pathetic. The number of people who get it is perpetually rising.

Clearly the families are approaching their 'crash or crash through' moment. And it's perfectly unsurprising that there are elaborately constructed elements of our culture (ahem, that would be films like The Matrix) that ignore the first half of this one-or-t'other choice. Sure enough. It stands to reason that their plans for world domination would necessarily have everyone convinced of the caper's inevitability. If we're convinced that it was always going to happen, then it probably will. God forbid that we, or even they, acknowledge that the whole thing coming a cropper is as likely as any other result. More so, if you think about it.

Okay so I'm in Les Visible territory here. Les asserts that a supernatural response is building up a head of steam and that a colossal arse-kicking is coming. He might be right. I expect that many of Les' readers don't actually believe in the supernatural. But that's only because they never thought about it. Let's just substitute the word 'supernature' for 'supernatural'. Anyone who's read James Gleick's Chaos Theory, or is otherwise familiar with it, (regardless of what kind of nihilist they are, ahem) would have to admit that with chaos theory we're in some spooky territory. It could fairly be described as the ghost in the machine.


Chaos theory's truth is that the universe is infinite. Beneath atomic structure lays infinite levels of ever decreasing 'smallness'. And above what we perceive of the universe is a flipside infinity of 'hugeness'. There is no end to this and it cannot be comprehended. Except by the Buddha, ha ha. (There! I knew I'd get him in somehow!)

This the 'above' and 'below'. And whatever terms you use to describe them it really doesn't matter. Between a god reaching down, and a butterfly making a thunderstorm, it's all the same thing - from the tiniest to the largest and back again. Who knows where things start and end? The butterfly for instance is only an approximation. It's not actually the start of anything. In a universe of infinite 'crinkliness' running in both directions, the butterfly is merely an image we can comprehend. It's just one point on the 'strange attractor'. The trail that led to the butterfly is infinitely long. Nothing started with it and clearly nothing ends there either.

And the same is true of the thunderstorm. That too is just another photo that our brains will understand. If you like, you could throw out the butterfly and instead start with the thunderstorm as the small thing that led to a far greater event of destruction or salvation. Sure enough, there's no knowing which. If you understand chaos theory you are only the tiniest step away from acknowledging Shiva as destroyer and creator. Call it whatever you like. Of view it as a concept - who cares. They're just different words to describe the same thing.


It's entirely unsurprisingly that chaos theory doesn't get a lot of press. Whilst it confirms everything told to us by the assorted priesthoods (of religion and money both), it also renders those same people as superfluous. It declares that any claims they make about possessing the truth are bullshit. The universe is infinite and unknowable. Anyone who declares that they have the ultimate answer is a liar. There can be no truth declared apart from the Buddha's bullet-proof dictum that the only certainty is change.

And below this is the undeniable fact that we, as humans, are not separate from the universe. We are one tiny part of the whole. To imagine, as anti-Buddhas do, that one is special, or above, or other, to that-which-is-not-oneself is patently false. Regardless of whatever blink-of-the-eye events have occurred before, the position is not tenable.

---

Um, okay, what? What are we meant to do with all this? Okay, maybe I can distil it into point form like some kind of powerpoint demonstration.

- Of course those who worship themselves would sell us their hype to make themselves appear invincible and to otherwise fill us with dismay.

- Hype is hype and they can stick it up their arse. There's no point listening to their lies unless it's to more closely study pathology.

- Fear is to be rejected. It serves no purpose and is otherwise a delusion.

- Microcosmic historical examples might be repeated but ultimately cannot define the macro. Indeed macros cannot truly be understood, never mind predicted.

- As ambition more nearly approaches the god-like, 'butterfly' frequency increases as does the likelihood that the outcome of crash or crash through will be crash. Not forgetting that the bigger they come the harder they fall

- Lying self-obsessed motherfuckers have nothing to offer. Between, 'the only certainty is change' and, the 'truth' of the self-serving, the latter is on a hiding to nothing.

- The Buddha, who cast off fear and desire and became one with the universe, was not unhappy. And between him, and those who'd have us live lives of fear and desire, I'll take the little Asian guy.

It was only just recently that I became familiar with Jacques Fresco. And yes, I know that Les Visible pointed us all at him way back when, but what with me using an internet cafe wherein heavy downloads are a frowned upon no-no, I was unable to view the movie links he provided. But a lovely fellow who sits out the back of the cafe with me, gave me Zeitgeist Addendum straight from his hard drive. Finally I catch up.


And there it all was. The beauty of technology as a means of freeing us of want. With limitless energy providing limitless food, shelter, clothing, and transport, whole fields of unproductive un-endeavour would disappear. Without want, we'd see the end of crime and it's concomitant allopathic responses by way of the police, judiciary, and prisons. We'd have no need of the military. With money being unnecessary so would the industries dealing with it - banking, insurance, the stock market, all gone. Advertising too! Hurray! I'll bring the beers.

Sure enough, I'm down with all of the above. But as is my wont, I just had to pick at this thing. It occurred to me that it was less a case of, 'Here are the problems and now what is the answer?' than it was, 'Here is the answer and what problems may we solve with it?' The answer is technology sure enough. And clearly technology can solve many, many problems. And in doing so will, more or less, address the big picture. But it looks to me that the big picture view we have here has been assembled from lots of little pictures. Dig it, it's like a David Hockney photo montage.


But like a Hockney snapshot, what with the gaps in the pictures, the smooth flow of my mental eye stuttered. For mine, what Fresco's picture lacked was a coherency, a unifying overall philosophy. It seemed not to have anything to tie it together. I wondered about Fresco's world. If something were to pop up, some blemish on the perfection of it all, I had the impression that the response would be, 'What technology is there to throw at this?'

Hmm... maybe that'll work. Or maybe not. I'm thinking 'not'.

---

There are only two 'philosophers' (not the right word, but never mind) that I consider to be bullet-proof in their entirety. They are Charles Darwin and the Buddha. Me putting words in Darwin's mouth - food and protection from the elements are not the fundamental human drive. They are merely responses to what is the fundamental drive - the need to pass on one's genes. Or to put this more simply, any entity that exists must (wittingly or unwittingly, it really doesn't matter) seek to continue its existence. This is ipso-facto territory. Any entity that lacks this drive will cease to be an entity. Any entity that exists will have it. That's all there is to it.


The simple truth of existentialism - 'why am I here?' - is that there isn't one. Not beyond, 'a thing is'. The flipside of this is, 'a thing that isn't isn't'. Bloody genius, me. I've just done away with the whole field of existentialism. A fig for Descartes!

But forget such abstractions. Let's just view them as a basis for understanding the far more visceral phrase 'the sex drive'. Believe it or not, this 'drive' is existential in nature, not that that ever occurs to us. What does occur is something like 'Phwooar, look at that arse! You could bounce twenty cent coins off that!' Or is that just me? Anyway, every thirty seconds folks - you, me, the lot of us - a thought like this jolts our brain.

Believe it or not, such thoughts (by way of what drives them) are more fundamental in terms of the human condition than the basic needs of food and shelter. Sure, we need food and shelter to survive but we need to survive because of our 'without-it-we-wouldn't-be-here-to-begin-with' sex drive.

Back to Darwin now. Darwin says that there are various means of dealing with how to get it on with members of the opposite sex. Nature presents more variations on this theme than there are stars in the sky. Mates are chosen because they are: fat and sleek; good at fighting; have shiny feathers; sing well; dance well; build a better home; have superior artistic taste; on and on. Funny how humans barely differ from animals, birds, and fish isn't it? That's one of the beauties of Darwin. He says that anyone who thinks they're special is fooling themselves.


But that's only half the picture. All of the above responses are appeals by those hoping to be selected to those who'll be selecting. Those who select are after quality. For those being selected, quality is neither here nor there. They're after quantity. There's no point condemning this. Like any creature with a sex drive is going to stop with one partner. Honestly. Any creature that gets laid might be shagged out momentarily, but the sex drive doesn't take long to reassert. It only has one message and it says, 'Get Rooting!' Nor should any women out there feel smug. Nature is replete with examples of species which appear to be monogamous but are actually no such thing. Philandering abounds, females included.

So what was my point exactly? The point is that food and shelter cannot be divorced from our fundamental Darwinian sex drive. Even with all things provided for us we will still seek to find better partners and more of them. And we will do this by differentiating ourselves from our neighbours. Whoever has the biggest house, the best clothes, the shiniest car will get laid more often. Getting circular now - this need to one-up our neighbours must exist because we exist. And whatever Jacques Fresco promises us, it won't put a dent in it.

---

What a load of crap! We all know perfectly well that people who have nothing but generosity of spirit can get laid too. What about that huh?


I thank that imagined individual for segueing me into the Buddha. The Buddha acknowledges all that Darwin says, with his dictum 'life is suffering'. And suffering of course is desire. Of course, the Buddha doesn't dwell solely on the desire to get laid like Darwin does. He goes beyond Darwin to view things in terms of the 'self'. So what's the difference?

Hopefully I've done enough fleshing out above to save us yet more circuitousness and thus allow me to declare that there isn't one. Darwin's addressing of the necessity of 'being' and Buddha's view of the self as desire, are (if you cock your head and squint) the same thing. Our existence predicates the furthering of our existence and this necessarily places the self front-and-centre, first-and-foremost, the thing without which we are nothing.

The Buddha goes very very far in these thoughts. Too far for this discussion. Let's just stick to the Buddha as an answer to Darwin's imperatives. The Buddha has no beef with Darwin. He acknowledges the self but says that to view it as a thing separate to that-which-is-not-the-self is a mistake. Selflessness is not so much a rejection of yourself, ahem, but rather a means of viewing yourself in context.


Side note - Anyone who imagines a selfless person as being some idiot giving all their food to others and starving to death as a result, is being silly. Not only would this break Darwin's dictum but would also be a statement of separation of the self against that-not-the-self which is contrary to everything Buddha is on about. And yes, I can imagine a situation where such things would occur and still be described as 'right', but we shouldn't confuse extreme anomalies with the truth of the whole. In statistics, such extremities on the bell curve are discarded (2.1 standard deviations, blah blah, blah) and quite right too. Anomalies do not speak of a system but of its tolerances, a whole separate subject.

Anyway, with this selflessness as a lens, or a mindset, or a guiding principle perhaps, all of Darwin's dictums can be fulfilled. The world will function just fine. We'll all be fed, clothed, and sheltered and yes, even laid. Whilst it's no perfect 'Just one quick spray and it's gone!' antidote to Darwin's inevitable need to get laid more often, nor is it about anything else.

---

So hopefully you should have that mess of pottage above sitting in your head as a coherent perfect thought. Yes? Excellent. Now you understand the hole in Jacques Fresco's model of providing all that we need. He's got the cart before the horse. I don't know if anyone has ever actually tried to do this but I expect that with enough fiddling, it could be made to work. But not very well and not for very long. Likewise, Fresco's wish to sate our desires is one way of quenching the fires but not a very good one. The truth is desires cannot be sated. Like the TV show said - the nature of monkey is irrepressible. Subsequently any resemblance between Fresco's envisioned world and selflessness is merely a well-meaning coincidence.


Even viewed in solely practical terms the whole thing will be doomed to fail. In spite us of having all things in abundance, if the nature of the self is left unaddressed, those of a monstrous ego (pyschopaths if you prefer) will inevitably sacrifice all on the altar of their own regard. And frankly there seems to be nothing in Fresco's model to stop them.

In the big dreamy picture that is Jacques Fresco's brave new world, something big is lacking. There seems to be no coherent sense of 'This is who we are'. Or in negative terms, there is no 'When all else fails see rule 1'. Me, I reckon a continuum of selflessness provides a sense of 'who we are', a 'rule 1'. It does so as a stripped-down go-cart, a bare-bones lean-machine, a wonder tool good for any eventuality. It cannot be slurred or impeached since it favours none. It's as right as a thing can be.

Even if Fresco's plans were fully realised, it would eventually fail and we'd be back to where we started. On the other hand, if we could explode some kind of gigantic world-affecting Buddha-bomb and fill everyone's head with the truth of selflessness, the world that would result would pretty much resemble Fresco's vision anyway. And have a basis to it that made sense.


Brilliant! This and a thousand other mad dreams of a Buddhist dictator. What are the odds on Fresco's dreams seeing reality? Given that it threatens to replace insanely powerful and greedy institutions, who would rather fight to the death than let it live, it would have to be the bookie's dream. A buck will get you a million. Selflessness on the other hand is a personal trip. You can do it all on your own, and no maglev trains required.

It's embarrassing I know, but I have never taken a trip. Of the psychotropic variety, that is. Everyone I know has done so, but somehow I missed out. I have no great philosophical objection to it all. Quite the opposite - so many people have told me that I really must do it that I've put the word out that if anyone comes across a goldtop mushie, pop it in some honey and give me a hoy. One day...

And yes, thank you, no need for anyone to pile in and tell me of the wickedness of this. I get it. A cousin of mine went out on a Friday night once and disappeared for three days. Finally he turned up in a casualty ward, naked, cut to pieces, and barking like a dog. No one knows quite what happened to him but it's assumed he took a trip. A bad one, obviously. Sure enough, he got better but he's now on a daily regimen of anti-schizophrenic drugs and will be for the rest of his life. That LSD (an industrial strength chemical concoction) is bad, in no way condemns the natural hallucinogens which ancient peoples have been taking under the guidance of elders for millennia. Natural v chemical. Tradition v the latest thing. Wisdom v no idea.


These dichotomies aside, if only my cousin had had someone like the father of a Swedish friend of mine. His father was an original hippy and had been there and done that, and he told his son that no one should take a trip until they're at least forty. It was his opinion that any earlier than this was dangerous, what with a young mind not quite having settled down into a solid variety of 'this-is-who-I-am', if you can dig it. For this original hippy, even thirty was too young.

I expect those of you reading, and who are in their forties, will get the concept. Me, I'm so glad I'm in my forties. Sure I miss the thoughtless physical health of my youth - the endless energy, the instant healing, the indestructibility, etc. But between that and me having a handle on who I am, I'll take the latter. And when I heard the Swedish hippy's advice it struck a chord. I got it. Had I heard it when I was thirty, say, I suspect I would have been too nebulous a concept for me. I may or may not have followed the advice depending on whether someone else said something different. "Nah! That's bullshit!" - "Um is it? Okay."

Being young is about not knowing what to think. As it was, my friend's Dad's advice was no do-or-die for me, what with already being past forty, and never having taken a trip anyway. But all that aside, the kernel within that advice is a thing worth rolling around in one's head and wondering at.

---

Along these lines, let's jump - to the word 'break', as in break, broke, broken. This can mean various things. In the context of 'The photocopier is broken', it could mean something as simple as a fuse being blown. No biggie, let's just call the repairman. But for that part of human existence that preceded photocopiers (and other diabolical machines), when a thing was broken it was necessarily in pieces. Think clay pots. You break a thing, and it becomes useless.

Funnily enough, with humans it's the other way around. You break them and suddenly they become really very useful. Perhaps the most useful thing there is. What sort of 'broken' is this? Think horses. A human can be broken just like a horse can be broken, same same. Which is to say, we break their will. (Now there's a word for you. What is one's 'will' in this sense? Hmm... 'the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action'. Not bad. But might we not call this 'knowing who one is'?)


When we break a horse, we break its will and it is no longer what it was. It is no longer its own master but instead is subject to us. What we broke was its definition of itself. And so it is with a human who is broken. A broken man, whether by someone else's hand, or mere circumstance (ie. 'After his son died he was a broken man'), loses his spark, his impetus, his definition of himself. And when one man breaks another it is invariably so he might subject that man to his own will. The man is redefined - servant to the fellow who broke him.

It's not just this being broken that humans and horses have in common. Were they to be released from their fealty each could recover their sense of themselves. A horse that escapes it's corral will turn wild again, which is to say rediscover itself as a horse. 'I am a horse! I run about! I root mares! I do whatever the fuck I like!' (Um, apologies for this being very 'male'. Certainly I could make it all non-sexist but the clunky syntax required would make it flow like a bucket of wet sand. Between flow, and catering to the rigidities of non-sexism, I choose the former. Words are one thing, and deeds are another. Oh wait, have I broken the flow here? D'oh!)

Where was I? Oh yes, breaking a man. It strikes me that this has been a constant throughout history - men breaking men in order to subject them to their will. Hmm... there's an book angle for you. "Men as Beasts - The History of Breaking the Human Will". Howard Zinn eat your heart out.

Anyway thank God we've left all that behind - master/servant - all that rubbish. Now we have freedom. Ha ha ha ha - as if! The motherfuckers of this world (psychopaths, whatever) have never quit. In much the same way that horses have been replaced by horsepower, breaking a man's will has likewise scientifically progressed to hitherto unimaginable heights. Which is to say, 'depths'.

For black-hearted secret organisations like the CIA et al, keen to have the world subject to their will, this ability to truly break a man, to make him act against his most deeply held principles, constitutes a variety of holy grail - Mind Control. If one could control a fellow's mind, who needs super powers? Bugger kryptonite - between being able to weaken Superman, and turning him into your biddable asset, it's a no-brainer. Or to put it another way - why would you shoot a horse when you could ride it instead?

---

And then there's MPD/DID. The acronym stands for Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder - the former is the old term and the latter the new one apparently. This is that old chestnut of fiction wherein two or more personae ('alters') exist within one mind. Think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, albeit with Hyde as an alter appearing merely by having his name called. In searching for a non-cinema metaphor, MPD/DID is to the breaking of the human will, what the Reserve Bank system is to your local loanshark.

And in much the same way that Reserve Banking's private ownership doesn't exist in the media, MPD/DID is similarly misrepresented as the fantastical stuff of fiction, not to be taken seriously. However, having read the account of witness X1 (amongst myriad others) from the Dutroux scandal, I now have MPD/DID down as non-fiction. Besides this, if you plug it into Dave McGowan's Programmed To Kill, and the battle between Recovered Memory Syndrome and the CIA's False Memory Syndrome, a 'what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here' picture starts to sharpen into something possessed of shape, colour, and form.

It seems we're permitted to know about MKultra and its assorted drug and hypnotism experiments. But perhaps this was merely a side-show to the true three ring circus of Operation Monarch. According to Ron Patton this involved Josef Mengele. We all roll our eyes - bloody Josef Mengele! More Boys From Brazil fiction! Yeah, maybe, maybe not.


Given that American practitioners of the black arts wholeheartedly embraced the personnel of Japan's Unit 731 (and their experiments in biological warfare), the default position would have to be 'why wouldn't they?'. That the Germans pursued Mind Kontrolle like the Americans pursued mind control is beyond plausible. That they did this in concentration camps with the prisoners as experimental subjects, likewise. It's precisely what the Japanese did with 731. And Mengele? Why not? Every other goddamn thing about the Holocaust has been misrepresented, why not him too? It's perfectly possible that the various stories of him in Brazil were complete fiction. The Boys From Brazil certainly was.

What if we were to call MKultra a search for a drug induced shortcut to MPD/DID? And it seems the shortcut, by way of LSD, failed. LSD, in breaking the link between reality and fantasy, seems only to produce less than useful casualties like my cousin. No problems, if LSD doesn't provide the answer, move on. And since it's not addictive and thus unlikely to produce the staggering profits of smack, coke, and meth, then it isn't really worth pursuing. If there's any proof to be found in one's own microcosm, I have encountered all three of above and yet never bumped into LSD. The experiment is over and it no longer suits the motherfuckers to have it out there.

So they chucked in MKultra. But there's no way they chucked in the search for mind control. For motherfuckers, this holy grail will never lose its appeal. Best to stick with the tried and true - smashing the psyche of the young. Certainly that one can take a child, brutalise them, and turn them into killers is old hat. Evidence of it is everywhere, from Sparta of yore, to China's Cultural Revolution, right through to the Congo of today.


But we are white men. As if we couldn't come up with something better than Africa's blank-eyed child killers. Even Henry Lee Lucas and his grand guignol slaughterfests, whilst serving a definite purpose, leave a lot to be desired. Really, MPD/DID is the go. To be able to take a mind and fracture it into discrete entities each capable of different things answers the brief pretty well. And yeah yeah, suffering beyond comprehension, a mind smashed to pieces, with only a shell remaining - like motherfuckers give a shit.

And so we arrive at X1, and all those like her. She survived and with help is attempting to reconstruct herself. You'd have to wish her luck in her endeavours to find peace of mind. There but for the grace of God etc. etc. But I suspect she's in a minority of those MPD/DID victims who escaped their snuff film fate. Who knows how many went on to inflict their own misery upon others?

---

Did anyone read Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy? The magic of Earthsea pivoted on everything having a secret name. This name was always guarded since possession of this knowledge gave one power over whomever it was. When I read this book, way back when, I greeted this concept with a shrug. Nice idea, but as best I could tell it seemed to have no great connection to anything. Not anymore. Now I really wonder at it. It's a precise description of the mechanism by which an MPD/DID slave is controlled. Curious. Never mind a shrug, now I shake my head. Did Ursula LeGuin just fluke this?

---

In amongst this sordid trip through MPD/DID, the thought occurred to me (since I'm that sort of fellow) 'What if it was me being subjected to this?'. Would I cope? Or succumb? If someone wanted to split my mind, would they succeed? Could I hold on to my will, my sense of myself?

In turning this thought around, the phrase 'know thyself' popped into my head. It's an oldie but a goodie that I'd never taken beyond face value. Like LeGuin's secret names, I'd merely shrugged - know thyself - um, okay, sure, why not? But under the light of MPD/DID, 'know thyself' now seems fraught with meaning. Madly, I wonder if it might not originally have been a warning from an ancient sage familiar with some antediluvian version of mind control. Hmm... an unlikely prospect. And besides, surely the MPD/DID variety of smashing-of-the-will must necessarily be restricted to a tiny number of people. Statistically individuals like X1 couldn't comprise more than a tiny fraction of one percent of the population.

Not so fast! Perhaps this isn't an either/or proposition? Perhaps it's another continuum? What if people like X1 were merely the furthest extreme on a bell curve? (So extreme, that in much the same way that statisticians reject such extreme anomalies under the 2.3 standard deviations rule, we too do likewise and reject it as a subject too far. We really just don't want to go there). Back to this continuum now, isn't our sense of know-thyself under a daily assault? In fact, couldn't we describe everything we're on about here - from Adbusters' simple sense of dislocation, through to the Protocols plans of destruction for everything 'not them' - as an assault on our ability to know-thyself? What is the media (Hollywood, games, advertising - all the same thing) apart from a machine that does precisely this? Isn't it our sense of know-thyself suffering death by a thousand cuts?

And then there's who the media is aimed at. It ain't me, that's for sure. One doesn't have to spend very long immersed in the media before realising it's almost entirely directed at the young. As with MPD/DID, when assaulting know-thyself it pays to start young. Otherwise, not so long ago there was no such thing as 'youth culture'. A single generation ago people would have understood each of these words separately but to connect them would have had them scratching their heads. Ha! Now that I think about it, 'youth culture' is a perfect oxymoron. With culture being a thing that develops slowly over countless generations, how could 'youth' and 'culture' possibly be put together in any sensible fashion? Honestly?


Regardless, the media relentlessly beats young people about the head with perverse ideas of who they should imagine themselves to be. A lot of it is connected with turning them into hell-bent consumers, sure enough. So what's up with the media's relentless sexualisation? What does this have to do with consumerism? Whether eight year olds are wearing g-strings or granny pants, the money would flow regardless. So what are our kids being made into? And why?

And whilst this is a long way from what was done to X1, it's still the same road with everyone being shepherded towards the same destination, with know-thyself receding ever further into the distance.

Between our venerable Swedish hippy urging his son to wait until he's forty, and the CIA handing out vast quantities of LSD; between parents hoping for a 'normal' family and the media's mad deification and sexualisation of children; and between peace, love, and understanding, and the endless inculcation of us-and-them with death to towelheads - could we not define all of these as a struggle to hold on to know-thyself?

Am I the only person to ask some variation of the question, 'Is this my country?', or better still, "Who are we?'. I don't think so.

Whilst it's early days for yours truly with this line of thought (with much work to be done), could we describe Siddhartha Gautama's ascension to Buddha-dom as him arriving at a complete state of know-thyself? For mine, it's inescapable that the ultimate truth of know-thyself is that we are one with the universe. The black opposite of this, desired by those who would break us/break our will, is that we each become our own universe. Thus we become individual, self-obsessed molecules bouncing off each other in a state of complete chaos. We lack all coherency - in both meanings of the word. It's a smashing of our 'one-ness'. Whether this one-ness is within our own heads, à la X1, or collectively, as in our sense of community, I'll posit that it's all the same thing.

I have no idea if that Swedish hippy dad quite knew what he was doing when he passed on his advice to his son. And never mind the specificity of it as being about psychotropic drugs. That's a useful thing to know, sure. But above that, his words and the wisdom that underlies them are pure gold, perhaps the only thing worth knowing. Thyself. Within this lies everything. If one could pass on one single thing to one's child, says I, this is it.

I look after my father who has cancer, amongst various other things. His physical ailments are one thing, him losing his mind is another. My life has officially become a tough gig. I wondered if this madness might not be a metaphor? The speed of his descent into incoherency has been something to behold. Same-same, the world. Or is that too simplistic? And really, the world was always thus. Even the 'good war' was bullshit. Certainly every war he ever fought in was - white people v coloured people, hip hip hooray. But then I wonder, with my eyes adjusted to the glare of new stark relief, if he wasn't always mad then too.


Perhaps his madness isn't a metaphor so much as simple cause and effect. As we sit and watch the SBS news (the only thing we watch on the TV that isn't sport, sport, and more sport) and I explain the enormity of the endless lies we're told, everything he took as certainty crumbles beneath him. All of it, everything, even Pearl Harbour was bullshit for chrissakes. If everything you knew was false, why not abandon reason and behave like an infant? Mad in a sane world, or sane in a mad world. Who can tell the difference?

Or perhaps this smashing of understandings has nothing to do with anything. His mad watching of Fox Sport's fifteen minute recycles forty times a day is only a small step from his previous never-miss-a-game. It's just that back then he knew what he was watching. He now longer knows now. I've ceased asking him who's playing or what the score is. He has no idea. And I'm now given to thinking that the sneaky wilfulness in what he does, and doesn't do, remembers, and doesn't remember, is just a red herring. Alzheimers does that.

But courses are being plotted here and the curves match too well for me to ignore them. Parabolic accelerations match and multiple end-points are all nearing simultaneous arrival. The timing is spooky. I know what the end point of Alzheimers is. My maternal grandmother had it. She ended up a gibbering vegetable who would spit out anything that wasn't chocolate custard. My father is nearing this point and then he'll die. I won't describe the world-as-we-know-it doing similar things. You all get it, I'm sure.

But then there's us too. We the sane in the mad world, the mad in the sane, whatever. Our arc is accelerating too and as the madness and lies reach new dizzying heights, the clearer we become. And then what? We all die? What sort of crummy metaphor is that?


I admit I'm muddying things here, but how about this - We've been travelling through a mad labyrinth, with every step taking us further into absurdity. It's been dream-like hasn't it? Our disillusion (I use this word with great care) has brought us lucidity, but not to the point where we can control anything. All it's done is made the absurdity clearer. And whilst the endpoint is sharpening it's still fuzzy. But the end of the tunnel is in sight. Forget Tricky Dick's bullshit analogy. There was no light then, and there's no light now. What we see is the darkness at the end of the tunnel. And how we all fear this thing! The nightmare isn't over - just its prelude. God help us all.

-

Going sideways momentarily, did anyone see a piece linked by WRH that pivoted on a poker game metaphor? It caught my eye because I briefly mentioned poker myself in the last piece. The writer compared poker to capitalism. A poker game can only continue whilst some of the players still have chips. But if one of the players takes all the chips, the game is over. He asked, how will capitalism continue? Ha ha ha ha. Is this a difficult question? I thought the answer was obvious - it won't continue. The poker game was not the end in itself, merely the means to it. The end was to render everyone penniless, put them in debt, and make them slaves. The guy whose game it was, will own them. He no longer needs the game. Medieval slavery is way more fun than capitalism poker.


Now the losers need merely stagger out of the smoke-filled room, and into the alley filled with garbage and the stink of urine. Where did the hookers go? And the free drinks? Iggy Pop's I want to be your dog kicks in as the penniless losers crash through the door and vomit. And as they're doubled up, a pitiless thug tells them their future, 'We own you.'

-

And so we will all arrive. And me. And my father. Arrival, Departure, it's hard to tell the difference. Same helvetica signage, same blue/green decor, same announcements over the loudspeakers, 'Attention. Passengers. Departing. Arriving. Please. Proceed.' Either way, we'll all leave where we are and be somewhere else.


That's that darkness at the end of the tunnel. I don't know that struggling to stay in the labyrinth will serve any purpose. Like the writer above who sounded like he was going to miss the poker he'd spent his whole life playing. Boo hoo. Sure, we don't know precisely what the darkness is. Conrad's horror, maybe? But let's not be so clever. Let's be simpletons. The darkness is the night. Shifting cloud cover aside, the stars are still in the firmament, as beautiful as ever. Certainly the self-proclaimed gods would have this moonless dark last forever. They are without doubt creatures of the night. Perversity's natural element was always darkness. But this eternity they dream of is a fool's errand. The only certainty is change. No night lasts forever. Paraphrasing Hemingway, the sun always rises.

Me, I am prepared. I have shed nearly everything. I quit whatever this bullshit game was years ago. The only thing I have not shed is my father. Buddha left his wife and kids you know. Happily they were in a palace, so no biggie. But what if Siddhartha Gautama and his family had been living on the footpath with him as their only hope? Would he have gone on to become Buddha? Who knows? He didn't have to answer this question. Nor do I need to. And I ain't Buddha, ha ha. But me as Buddha wannabe aside, my father will die soon enough. His deterioration is quite rapid now.

When this happens my last tether will be gone. I will become a 'slippery little sucker'. It's alright for me, sure. Many of you reading this have children. Me, I have no kids. This breaks my heart, sure, but it's a blessing too. But then again, having kids is both of these things as well. Kids was the first objection I heard against my plans of having my friends and I quit the city and make a collective farm. The precise words were - 'We have kids in school'. Sure. I still think pulling them out and taking them to the country was a good idea. Kids are tougher than you think. Some of these kids are my nieces and nephews. Not literally, but I love them just the same and they break my heart regardless. But I'm not their parent, and far be it from me to say what's best for them. All I can do is speak for myself.


And me, I'm going to step into the dark, into that fresh unknown. I already barely exist in this labyrinth. The only piece of paper with my name on it is my passport. In this bullshit white man's world I'm an impossibility. I'm only here for, and because of, my father. His name is on lots of pieces of paper and he enables me to live in this fashion. (For the record, I qualify for a carer's pension. God knows how many people have told me I should take it. I tell them that I don't need it. There's nothing I want to buy and I don't wish to jump through government hoops or otherwise be controlled. This is a bit of a conversation stopper.) Anyway I wondered if having my food and shelter provided by my father was parasitic of me. But this was driven by me wondering what I would do without it. Sure enough, if I want to live in this white man's land, not being ensnared in the web of money, bills, taxes, debt, and enslavement is impossible. Living under a bridge and trawling the garbage is your only option.

This was the darkness at the end of my particular tunnel. Or so I imagined. But lately an answer has presented itself. And it's so fucking obvious. The answer is to quit the white man's world. I shall step out of the labyrinth into a place of my own choosing. To the north of me here, not far away, are 25,000 islands. I have friends who've lived there and plan to go back. They tell me it's do-able and I'm the man to do it. They tell me it's possible to live there for pennies. It's not dangerous, or scary, or any other thing the bullshit media would have us believe. In these places, the end of the world will be met with a shrug. The rain will still fall. The fruit will still grow. And the kids will still run around laughing their heads off. Anyone untethered can do this.

And yeah, I get the double meaning. Yoroshiku.