Playing with Fear

Fear is a natural instrinct that we have developed over the millennia to protect ourselves from predators in the wild. To be afraid of the unknown is the most natural reaction, it keeps you and yours away from harm and ensures the propagation of the species, any species. With human beings and our “higher” intelligence fear is also linked to knowledge and a wider awareness.  So what happens when you are the top predator and the only thing you have to fear is yourself and your own? The answer to that is simple, look around, this is what happens. We fear sharks, tornadoes, floods and other such acts of God because they are known to cause harm and devastation. But we also fear more abstract things that we have little knowledge of.

Fear is no longer just an instinct that protects us, it is now a tool used by people, predominantly politicians and people in influential positions, to control society. Society is no longer build on the simple rule of survival of the fittest, we do not live in an agrarian economy so food is not just out there in the garden or in the field. Today our lived are built on abstract concepts which are retained and controlled within plastic and metal boxes with 1 & 0s quietly ticking away creating value out of thin air.  Our education system is so advanced that it ensures a build in ignorance of socioeconomic structures that keep us subdued and fearful enough to be perfectly controllable. Deep down we know something isn’t quite right and every now and again that feeling is brought out of us by a dissident voice out in the wilderness that reminds us we are not a herd of sheep, and then the fear mongers do their job and we are behind our desks again working quietly away making money for the super-rich and super powerful. 

 

Fear is everywhere these days, we turn on the TV and the news covers violence, economic disaster, political instability, job cuts, social unrest mainly caused by poor political decision. We are too afraid to show people who we are because we may be judged if we are slightly different. Since when is it ok for an individual to be afraid to be themselves? And this fear is no longer spreading just through regular TV and newspapers, we now have new and ingenious ways of picking on the different, the weak and the unusually natured. Social media shows humanity in its’ two most extreme forms. We cannot control social media, we cannot fully censor it – although we try – it moves too quickly for us to be able to protect ourselves and our children from the trolls on the internet waiting to exploit our fears for their own personal gain and entertainment. At the same time social media allows us to see the astronomical capacity humanity has for empathy. It connects us in a way that has never been possible, it makes the feared unknown accessible through a protective filter and that in turn lets us learn and therefore fear less.

The point I guess to this impressive rant is that people play with our fear, they use it against us but at the end of the day you are always and forever in control of your own life and if you think otherwise then you are wrong. Do not ever allow fear to stop you in your tracks. Risks are a part of life and the fear of failure, pain and the unknown can be paralyzing, but only if you let them. Life regardless of the hardships, the heartache and the general messiness is beautiful and should not be wasted. Go ahead play chicken with your fear! Bet you you’d win!  

I want to leave you with this beautiful video because I think it perfectly shows the beauty of being human, the grace, elegance and boundless eloquence we are capable of: Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter..."

A failure to Inspire

I recently wrote a book review on GoodReads.com  reviewing  “The Diamond Age” by Neil Stephenson. I had to edit out a lot of what the review said because it was not relevant to the story. Having to censor myself didn't leave the best taste in my mouth and therefore I wanted to share the cut out part on here.  I also was reminded of it last night while watching a scene from “Good Will Hunting”, so I have dug up the original review and polished it a bit to a more coherent rambling.  

My issue today is education, not just in our schools but at home. Our failure to inspire young people through knowledge is devastating. In his book Stephenson touches on a social illness that I have been observing for quite a while. This illness is the cloning nature of our education system.  Every year, hundreds  of thousands of students are spit out by higher education institutions in this country having been imbued with almost no real knowledge. They have learned the ins and outs of their fields through the opinions of others, and like their fellows before them there were rarely - if ever - think on their own. From my own experience at university any statement I made had to be backed up by a quote or reference to show that it was valid. While I agree that making (un)educated guesses based on feelings or points of view may not be in the best interest of academic vigour surely being told that no thought of yours is really acceptable unless it has already been thought up by someone else is not a good way to build confidence and nurture curiosity. It is not the fault of the students, from an early age we drip feed our children information of all types, socialising them into the public sphere, teaching them what is right and wrong – never giving them the tools to decide and evaluate the good or bad of a situation on their own. 

This is the illness that runs deep through our society's core. Our children believe in things because we have taught them to, but they do not know why they believe in them.  If I am not able to explain why I believe (in) something do I truly believe it? I have no understanding of it, because if I understood it I would be able to explain it and would therefore be in a better position to believe it or not. This blind trust that what we are told is true is derived from social indoctrination. It has stifled our creativity and made society – in the west at least – complacent. We now largely lack critical thinking, we unquestioningly lap up what we are told and reproduce it on a greater and greater scale.

Many people try and blame technology for our problems. They blame computer games for the violence, telephones for communication issues, social media for devastating the confidence of youngsters and promoting promiscuous and “unsocial” behaviour.  All of that is not a failure of technology, it is all a failure of society. We are too shallow and vain to be able to use the great discoveries in a constructive manner –and by the way I will be the first one to put my hand up and say that I waste my time on the internet looking and stupid things, but I can also list under my hobbies “reading Wikipedia entries and following the reference links”. As a professional nerd I also correct Wikipedia entries .

Now social structures exist for a reason, I am known to use Roger Griffin’s terminology - although probably not in the way he means it - and call those structures  the “sacred canopy” – a protective layer of social norms, traditions and religious practices that provide a community be it of local or national size with rules by which they can exist in a comfortable and (re)productive way. Social change comes about either when the sacred canopy is forcefully removed through violent means or is eroded through the alienation of its members from the community. Today in the 21^st century both are occurring all around the world simultaneously. Young people – of which I am still one for now – find ourselves unable to find an identity because there is no stable community from which we can derive it. As social creatures we identify ourselves through languages, and language comes from our community/nation. When the language that we use is conflicting or simply not delivered we can suffer an identity crisis.

One way of combating this is through equipping our children with skills to use knowledge to (re)construct the sacred canopy, improve it even. So far we have failed, and I think it is because we have forgotten to nurture, we have tried to give equality to all and have therefore made everyone equally socially inept by distorting some natural roles within human structure and behaviour. While we have self awareness and higher intelligence than any other mammal, we also don't tend to develop the tendencies of a sociopath because we are brought up by our mothers (and more often these days fathers too) in a nurturing way. Unfortunately that has been eroded by the socio-economic need for both parents to work like horses just to make sure their children can eat. In turn the children lack the upbringing that would come naturally in a less materialistic system. We are now vain, self absorbed, selfish, greedy and cruel, but we are only those things because the social sphere we thrive in promotes that kind of language and defines us so.

I have endless faith in human nature, the empathy we are capable of displaying in our darkest moments borders on the divine. Unless we teach our children how to be empathic, be kind, be thoughtful, be useful, we will fail and self-destruct through our own ignorance.  Education is not just being able to recite poetry, regurgitate hundred year old theory, and answer a few mathematical problems. Education is about looking at what humanity already knows, questioning it and testing it to see if it is still valid, God knows we have disproved our own theories before!  Education is knowing who you are, having confidence in that, and using it to promote and improve others and their abilities and well as your own. This is not something that people are born with, this is something that is nurtured first at home and then if you are lucky at school and in the community.  

When you have children send them to school, let them learn history and the rest of it, but also challenge them, make them do things that may scare them, ask them questions, argue, disprove and improve their points of view, but most importantly allow them to change your point of view because age doesn't always mean wisdom. Sometimes young eyes see clearer.

Mind the Gap

I live in Oxford so I would not blame you if you thought that poverty is not something as obvious in one of the most affluent cities in the United Kingdom. But it is here more than ever that I feel the Gap between the rich and poor, and it is here more than any other place in the world that I have been to that this massive discrepancy leaves a rotten taste in your mouth.  Among the streets of this ancient city walk the children of millionaires and billionaires, sharing the walkway with rich Asian tourists and future oligarchs, as well as countless regular folk that go about their regular business. The streets of Oxford are clean, and contain a 1000 years of history. Intelligent men and women rush about, and at night during ball season the city is awash with colour and glamour. 

Yet Oxford with its walls of blond stone hides a deep secret. Amongst its thick walls and on its cute cobbled streets in front of the shiny windows of expensive boutiques sit huddled under damp duvets the homeless. A class of individual that we rarely acknowledge, who’s hand we shrug off when they extend it our way asking if we can spare some change. We look down upon this person who has hit rock bottom and is digging even further down. We excuse our own callousness with thoughts such as “they are a druggy or an alcoholic”. More often than not we are not wrong, some are people with deep social problems of drug and alcohol abuse, but some are just people that have lost control of their lives.

 As you all may know I am Bulgarian, and my country is hands down the poorest one in the EU. Beggars are everywhere, they have quite literally become part of the scenery in my mother land and people don't just ignore them, they actively loath them. They look at them with spite and unveiled hatred as these men, women and children walk, hobble, craw, and drag themselves over to ask for change and help. Many are part of gangs that use and abuse young children and women for profit through begging. But not all of these people are corrupt and trying to steal our hard earned money. We have one of the highest percentages of pensioners that are literally starving and freezing to death and who are forced to go out and beg.  It will not be an uncommon site to have a little old lady, doubled over by age and 50 years of serving the old socialist state, who’s pension is so miserable that she is selling packet of tissues at a bus stop in the desperate hope that she will be able to buy a loaf of bread with her earnings. The response to her is nothing, total oblivion to her existence. Her goods will only be sold to those in desperate need of a tissue and only at that time will her existence be acknowledges by anyone, for the briefest of moments and with total lack of empathy or emotion. A coin or two will be thrown at her, she wont see a smile, and may by some miracle hear a mumbled thank you. After some number this type cold encounter her desperate state of affairs will soon come to a miserable and undignified end, which  will be recorded in a death register somewhere, she will not be missed, her life will be forgotten. Does this all sound bleak to you? A bit dark for a Friday night isn't it?

This darkness is a place where countless number of people live in every day. We don’t just ignore them, we label them with names such as drug addicts and alcoholics, and God knows what else. Partly because some – never all – are such things, but that is never all that they are. Partly to hide our own feeling of guilt for being better of. We actively hate these people, we judge them for the choices they have made in life without knowing what those choices really were. We never ask ourselves, what if they weren't given a choice? What if they were born in a family that wasn't caring, were abused by people that should have protected them, were failed by their teachers who were too busy meeting government targets to notice the systematic destruction of this persons. What if they were in this place begging and homeless because it was the smaller of two evils?  Who are we to judge without the knowledge of who they were and are?!

The saddest part is that giving this person a pound or two will have no effect on their destitution, and is likely to only help sustain any drug or alcohol abuse that is holding them there. The solution is one that requires the empathy of an entire nation, a deep change in society that steps away from shallow consumerism, instant gratification and short term planning.  A change to a society that celebrates and supports both the individual and the community they live in. That supports family values  by allowing mom and dad to spend a bit less time in the office and a bit more time with their children. That objectifies both men and women less. Where school isn't all about the next test but is about teaching young people to communicate, gives them confidence and self worth, as well as skills that are vocational –  boiling an egg and washing a dish is a good start if some of the young people I know are anything to go by!

I know I am preaching, but I am not really asking much, all I would like is next time you walk past a homeless person, even if you don't want to give them money, give them a thought and if you want a smile and a “sorry”. Especially now in winter, because you are going home to warm bed and a cup of tea, they are sleeping on a step in negative Celsius temperatures. Kindness goes a long way and doesn't cost you anything.


If you want to help lower homelessness please get involved here: http://www.crisis.org.uk/

Good Night     

My family, my Heroes

I haven’t written one of these in a while, I could make excuses but the simple truth is that I couldn't finish a single post. Politics is all the same lies and manipulation, human rights are trampled regardless of how indignant I might feel about it, and life keeps ticking over with people focusing on their own stuff and trying to feel their way blindly through a maze of social protocols and expectations that would take the rest of my life to analyse and work on, so those stay as work in progress. With the holidays coming up though I have been thinking of my family a lot, I live 1646 miles or 2648 kilometers away from them (according to google), that is a 26h drive or a 3h flight, I see them twice a year for a week if I am lucky. This is my opportunity to share with the world why my family is amazing, why I am so lucky to have them, and how they have made me who I am today.

I am going to start with my Grandma or nana, her name is Nadejda (meaning Hope), she is 79 and one of the toughest people I know, she makes the best cakes in the world. Ever since I can remember my nana has been teaching me to cook, knit, crochet, and how to be stubborn. She has taught me the importance of always having something in case you have guests and to always treat your guests like kings. She has passed on to me her love for food and for spoiling people rotten with it. Despite her short temper and peppery tongue I love her dearly and there is nothing like walking through the door straight into her arms.

THAT Smile that we all love!

My Brother Alex, wow where do I begin. He was the sweetest most lovely little boy, always smiling, always drawing or building things. He has these big brown eyes that are so kind, but sparkle with such humour and combined with his cheeky smile people must instantly fall in love with him. He has the biggest heart, and is the most selfless man I know. If a friend of his ever needs anything Alex will give it to him, not lend, not let them borrow but give.

He has the BEST sense of humour in a human being, he tells jokes with such flare and perfect timing, being ever so slightly sarcastic and ironic in his delivery. He loves nature in an honest way.

My Brother Alex

I have not been the greatest sister, for most of his life I haven’t really been there because I live so far away, or if we were in the same place because I was too young, self absorbed and stupid to realise what a great friend I had right there next to me. Despite all the bad sister stuff that I have done - which he rightfully teases me about - I know that he always has my back and that is I was ever in need he would be there for me.

Finally my beautiful mom, Bibbi, my best friend and my soul mate.

She is a bookaholic, and its where I get my love for the written word from, she reads EVERYTHING, the day my mom stops ready is the day my world will crumble or the day we stop publishing books. She is a geek too! She reads all the techno pages and knows more about the technological trends that most young people I know, she has been reading e-books for well over 10 years so the Amazon’s Kindle wasn’t the revolutionary bit of kit in her eyes that some of us see it as. Another thing my mom has given me is my love for blankets and pyjamas! There is nothing better than being curled in on the sofa in my jimjams with my mom two books a blanket and when I was little hot chocolate, now that i am grown up its beer or wine but it serves the same purpose, reading and cuddling is thirsty work people!   

Me and my mom at my graduation 2009She is my brother’s and my biggest fan, but as our mom she has little choice in the matter. She has given me the confidence to pursue my dreams, to get up when I all I want to do is lay down. She has so much strength and beauty in her and she doesn’t even know it. Her faith in me has remained unshaken even through my most stupid decisions, and in my darkest hour she is the light that leads me back to life. She has taught me that honesty is the only way, she has always reminded me to be empathetic to other people’s problems, to be polite, considerate, and open to the difference in people. She calls me on all my bullsh*t and reminds me to look after myself. Her love has always been around me to keep me safe.  

My dear family, thank you for being who you are, for your love and your support! And to anyone that has bothered to read this far, go tell your family how much you love them, I promise you it will be the best thing you did this week!

The Arrogance of the British Media - A reflection of Western Society

Malala Yousafzai - Victim of the Taliban because she dares to speak up

I was watching the news this evening, and  a particular 
item caught my eye. It is regarding the attack on a 14 year old Pakistani girl called Malala Yousafzai. The girl was shot and badly injured by the Taliban in her village in the valley Swat because she campaigned for the right of girls in to go to school. While this story is horrific in its own right it is not what made an impression on me. Sadly stories of children being the victims of adult wars has become a common news item. What I noticed was the interview done by Cathy Newman of Channel 4 news with former Pakistani High Commissioner for the UK Dr. Maliha Lodhi. In this interview and the report before the interview Channel 4 through the catalyst that is Cathy Newman made a statement that Pakistan is failing in its attempts of getting rid of the Taliban. The suggestion being that the Pakistani government and Military are unable and/or unwilling to get rid of the Taliban threat that “lurks” around the edges of Pakistani society. This struck me as incredibly arrogant and short sighted for reasons that I am about to list, but before I launch into that I would like to point out that I have absolutely nothing against Cathy Newman or her work as a journalist, in fact she along with everyone involved t Channel 4 News are my favourite news team. After all during my time at Brookes Jon Snow was my Chancellor, but to get back to my issue with the statements upon Pakistan’s inability to rid themselves of the Taliban plague.

First and foremost Pakistan is a large country with exceptionally complicated politics, history and geography, containing countless ethnic and religious groups and subgroups. The difficult terrain combined with the complicated allegiances and political instability that such diversity creates produces a perfect petri dish for the growth and multiplication of Taliban terrorists as well as a countless number of place for them to hide and operate out of. The rules of engagement with organisations like the Taliban are not based on conventional warfare, even to my untrained eye it becomes obvious that the Taliban operate a strike and retreat tactics, hiding amongst the population and exploiting every opportunity to cause the maximum amount of damage. No government in the world would be able to fully eradicate such a threat while the fundamental belief that fuels it exists.

My second objection is to the implication that the West is doing a better job when in fact Britain and America have done no better in eliminating the Taliban threat from Afghanistan, and worse they have only fueled and spread that threat further into Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and and Africa. If we are so much better at policing, and our armies are so much better at doing their job why is it that we are incapable of even maintaining decent patrols around our own military basis in these countries and we are losing more and more army personnel every day to suicide bombers and roadside bombs?  What right does it give us to judge a government such as Pakistan when we have achieved nothing but the fueling of hate in our feeble attempts to eradicate terrorism. 

Finally, if the Western world has such superiority on policing and crime management why is it that countries such as Spain and Ireland continue to live in fear and suffer from their own home grown terrorist threats? Do we not on a daily basis turn on our TVs, open our news websites [no one reads papers any more] and see nothing but murder, rape, mayhem and devastation within our own societies. How dare we assume that because we are richer we are more successful in anything? The only thing the West has any true success in is the continued and malicious exploitation of the weaker nations in the world for our own advancement.  


I would like to finish on the following point, one that I have made several times to several people this week.The news, especially the news do not reflect ordinary everyday life, they document and report on extraordinary occurrences that stand out because of their usually shocking and violent nature. Furthermore broadcasters such as Channel 4 gain popularity and success because of the sensationalization of the stories they portray through their news services; they do not give us facts, they give us a point of view on an event that has taken place based on the political leaning of the producers and owners of the TV station. While it is entertaining to watch Jon Snow tell the Prime Minister off over his old person’s railcard, it is wrong and morally questionable to gauge the success or failure of a nation’s infrastructure, be it political, educational, police or otherwise on a single occurrence, or even on a chain of occurrences. I am not saying that Pakistan has a perfect police force and that this was a freak accident on the contrary they have a long way to go, but it is not up to us to judge their success or failures, it is up to the Pakistani citizens and voters. Attacks of this sort happen daily in Pakistan, people die at a frightening rate, yet somehow we only hear about this one case because the girl was already extremely popular due to her courage and ambition.

My thoughts go out to her in the hope that she will recover quickly and be able to return to her family and ambitions. My thoughts also go out to the countless number of ignorant fools who believe they are better than her country men just because they were born in the West and are “protected” by our police force.  

Value

Everything in this world is for sale. The very substances that keep us alive are no longer just basic necessities for survival, they are commodities; to be traded, speculated upon and priced depending on the going rate of the market. Yet no one stops to truly question that. We complain that the value is too high that we cannot afford to expend that much on something, we call it unfair, yet we do not stop to consider the system that is at the centre of any of this.

I have spent a huge amount of time over the last 5-6 months thinking of value. I have just finished my dissertation which attempts at an analysis of a Conservation Convention in rhetoric and practice and the one thing that I always came across was that for something to be considered worth conserving it had to have a value. Not just any value as well, a monetary value. The politicians needed to be able to calculate how much saving a particular plant or animal would costs them. The NGOs also worked on a monetary basis, for them the tiger, the panda the rainforest were priceless therefore the little bit of money that they were asking of you was nothing in comparison to the pricelessness of the subject of their rescue.

So what is value? How do we measure it? I honestly do not know, the Oxford Dictionary defines value as:

• 1 [mass noun] the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something:your support is of great value
• the material or monetary worth of something:prints seldom rise in value[count noun]:equipment is included up to a total value of £500
• the worth of something compared to the price paid or asked for it:at £12.50 the book is good value[count noun]: North American: the wine represents a good value for $17.95#

That is all great but how do we decide that something is of importance and that the value we have awarded it is not too high or low? Value is a social concept, an idea, it does not exist outside the socio-economic and cultural boundaries of society, a dog does not understands the idea of value. In non-human nature the closest we can get to value is the amount of energy and nutrients that are required to grow and perhaps the amount of entropy that produces. Therefore the fact that my popping corn has gone from 86p to £1.32 in the space of 6 months has nothing to do with the amount of water, or sun or soil that has gone into growing that corn. It has everything to do however with the economic system that has grown that corn for my consumption. It has everything to do with growing oil prices, which make harvesting, production and transportation costs higher, growing costs of fertilisers as the potash and other nitrogen based fertilisers used for the growth of many grains soars due to depleting reserves and the growing difficulty of extracting them from deeper into the ground.

In fact I am sure that anyone that does any food shopping has noticed their bills increasing at a rapid rate. Now usually logic dictates that if the price has gone up that is because supply cannot meet demand, the commodity in question is in shortage and therefore the price has gone up; Here are some ‘values’ however that shows that this is not true:  the UK alone throws out 6.7 million tons of food a year. That is 6.7 million tons of surplus food, in a world full of over 1 billion starving people and another billion seriously malnourished.  6.7 million tons of food in a nation of 60 million, a nation with a growing obesity crisis AND growing unemployment AND shrinking salaries. That 6.7 million tons is a unit of value which can measure the amount of gluttony, ignorance, self-indulgence and apathy necessary to throw away 6.7m tons of food. We obviously do not know the value of food beyond the price tag at the supermarket. 

This world where value is a social construct we value the wrong things. The media has spent countless tons of paper and ink on printing pictures of famous people going about their day, walking their dogs, buying stuff, walking down red carpets promoting useless faff created for our entertainment consumption. We value our celebrities. There is the new iPhone 5 which by the way is just a thinner taller iPhone 4s that trendy image obsessed fuckwits will buy in its millions further lining the pocket of one of the most hypocritical companies out there. We value our fashion image. 

Before you accuse me of hypocrisy however here is what I value. I have a Samsung Galaxy SII, an HP mini, a Kindle, and a Nintendo DS; I shop at waitrose and read the Environment section of the Guardian [the rest of that hippy paper annoys the hell out of me]. I am fully aware that I am a self righteous liberal dushbag. The thing is while I love my gadgets I know I essentially don’t need them. They are luxuries that I enjoy, however all but my phone have been generous gifts, what I value is not the items themselves but the people that gave them to me. My wonderful friends whom I love dearly and without whom I would have no value at all. I value the moments of beauty and joy that I am able to save with my phone’s camera. I value the free voice conversations with my family who are 2000km away that I can only have because of my laptop, I value the vast library that I can put in my pocket and carry everywhere because of my Kindle. So to all your out there value is what you make of it, don’t value the wrong things.