Wednesday 27 January 2010

Communication Gone South

Experiences part 3

I was texting a friend I've known for years a couple of days ago. I asked him how his trip to a Royal Navy vessel for some work had gone, basically attempting to see if he had enjoyed the day trip.

The reply was: Have a look at FB photos then ask the question.

So in a huff and fed up with social networking and how it consumes everybody. I realised it has turned into some information source, what we call "A Commons Source", therefore the information can be inaccurate because anybody can adjust it, neither is it backed up by evidence.

I wrote back a text: "Digital Age. One day no one will talk because everyone will be all seeing all knowing through fb. There will never be pleasantries in the future because our technology psychologists will have put our thoughts typed and in images on our foreheads all to see what were thinking. This is not 1984 but 2024." and signed off with some sarcastic comment about how I will look at the photos at some point.

The basic point is, I like to find out from you, not from some third party that you may have uploaded your life on to. I would like to know what your doing, I would like to talk to you. But I do not expect to have to follow your every move to then ask a question that may not need to be asked.

By asking a question of how some is or if they had a good day, I am trying to be nice and trying to make some concious effort to be a good friend. To make an connection with the person. To suggest our lives have been consumed by social networking sites is probably an understatement.

In future, I can research and get in depth knowledge from places like facebook, but I have no knowing if it is real, or just as good or bad as the photos and comments suggest. Whilst many people will find looking at photos a thing of the past or something done with the grandparents, why are we still taking them? Because we like to remember. They are good to show people, but not everyone wants to see every photo you own, and no one should be expected to know everything about you. Otherwise life will get very boring very quickly and communnication between people will degrade. Technology is not always the best way forward. Some of the things from years gone by do just as good a job as new modern technology does. We should attempt to mingle and enjoy each others company not hide away fearing for another human being talking to us.

The truth is harboured and reassured in the human body by direct contact and conversation with a person. There is nothing worse than feeling alone; to not have anybody to hold on to at all. Although some may argue otherwise: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q3gjq
John Ronson On Being Alone

We can assess our own impression of some one through conversation. Social networking and instant chat do not necessarily help our language skills or gain an impression of some one because we value not just the words, but the voice and the facial expressions. So next time you make direct contact with someone in person be happy to see them.

Friday 22 January 2010

Thinking Allowed (Thinking Aloud)


Apple Forests, South Kazakstan


Saint Michaels Tower, Glastonbury

Thursday 21 January 2010

Humanity

I no longer feel human. I don't like what we do, I see terrible news of hunger and famine, disease, wars, devastation, crime and oppression. We are as a species horrible. We have forgotten our past, we do not communicate or operate equally, we always just want more, more money and power. Whatever your religion or no religion, you need to return to the ideals of earthliness. This world will end, mark my words a bigger issue is at stake and whilst you fight over land and cause great pain on fellow humans for your own personal wants, this planet is being damaged.

How humans have influenced and still influence the environment have been found. Therefore some big concerning questions over how as a species we will survive in to the future need to be asked.

We eat too much of the planets food resources, we burn too much in fossil fuels, we pollute the environment in too many ways. In the end all we have done is set this planet into a down turn that may not recover unless we stop doing what we do everyday. This planet needs to act by its natural processes not by a humanly induced one.

I don't believe in economics driving and influencing everything. I understand sometimes there is a limit to how much some things should cost, but at what point should money making be so right we can damage our planet. At what point should self indulgence of cash, land or heritage out weigh what this planet deserves.

The Malthusian Approach.
Basically it describes the point at which we need to start reducing the numbers of people in order for us as a species to carry on living without destroying the planet.
Many have noted how the numbers of cows reduced and cars reduced would reduce our pollution. However, with 6.3Bn people and rising on this planet, should we not be making a move towards a controlled decline?

Quite frankly, we cant just stop having children, and any child policy has been shown to be bad for society, most notably in China with the one child policy. But, as we are all connected together and we are no longer hunter-gatherers living for the land, but using gadgets and building complex designs, we do not want to go backwards in evolution. Therefore the only way may well be to have a managed global reduction in the human population. One which allows us to reduce our pollution and make the human species sustainable without destroying our planet.

Otherwise we will out grow this planet, it cant keep food levels up today let alone in the next decade, we have taken the majority of any fossil fuel and no one is truly moving the renewable sector- it has many issues surrounding is capabilities to produce electricity and it has issues that affect other key habitats we must conserve and allow to adapt naturally. Our pollution must be controlled, we must reduce our energy needs, our food demands, our expulsion of pollution by:
recycling better, reduce non-renewable goods used, reduce our food demands, reduce the human species numbers to a sustainable level thereby return to loving our habitat.

Our planet is very delicate, the human species is very delicate, one day it will all be gone. Lets start by walking and cycling instead of driving. Live without the need for economics to drive us. Money is nothing, we should all be working together for the greater good. This planet is everything.

Take a good look at yourself, your going to be dead by 85 most likely. Unless your living in an exceptionally 'good' part of the world. Stop fighting, stop being greedy and look at the greater consequence of your little indulgence, for each time a little difference occurs, if everybody makes a little change to what they do a big result appears. Think about the bigger picture, love the planet. Its going to be here longer than you are. It needs to survive for longer, and if it doesn't if we keep going on as we are the human race will turn on itself and no one will be able to enjoy this planet for all it holds. For humanity will crush itself. If it hasn't already started in some places.

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Living in a Movie

Experiences Part 2

I was talking about experiences the other day and then last night I heard this on the radio and remembered I had mentioned the same series a few weeks back called "Jon Ronson On ...".

This week is: John Ronson On Living in a Movie
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pxng6

I found this quite a worry when listening to it, for I can understand what its like to have to live a world of treachery, lies and deceit at every corner, wondering who is your friend and friends enemies.

This particular episode goes into not just how people have lives which may seem to be only found in a movie, but the consequences of living those lives which always seem so good to us who watch them...

"I want your Fantasy"

Its a scary claim in many respects, so many people would like to be living the life of that portrayed in a movie. Many are action packed or romantic in genre, but others see a light in a most different of corners.

Have we all been sucked in to believing we are all living in the world of fiction... so many TV and film characters, especially those of the undercover police officer type (without wanting to stereotype) are portrayed as living on the edge, close to a thrill, brilliant at there job and working against the flow of the majority.

For example, if you read any of the Ian Rankin Rebus series, we learn of the music, drink and nightmares that travel through Rebus's mind as each crime is committed. As if the ghosts of the past are there to catch him, there to distil fear and upset him. A thought that is only in his mind, but still we can see the pain, and the after effects of all the things in his life's past.

Another example would be that of Proof of Life, when a man is kidnapped in a fictitious South American country called Bogotá, the family strive for his freedom. Meanwhile we see the process of what it takes to release a hostage from captivity.

With these two examples in mind, how long does it take before:
1. You start feeling your living a life portrayed in a book or film
2. You feel like the portrayed in a book or film
3. Begin the route towards schizophrenia or paranoid schizophrenia

The final thing to think about is the impacts this makes not just on your own life and well being, but that of those around you. How do you cope with such things? If you were really living the life of James Bond, would it really be as glamorous as that seen?

Sunday 17 January 2010

Experiences

Everybody has experiences. Good, bad and dreadful. Many make us happy others sad, some we wish to forget for both of those reasons. But, for whatever happens at the end of the day these things that change our lives change our own choices and personality in the most delicate ways. Some experiences change us forever, some change us very gradually and, unwittingly we realise that we have changed. Who we were ten years ago is nothing like what we are today.

But what we should always try to do is make sure we keep going. All we have to do is keep plugging at it and we will get there. This term has not even started and it is already fraught with necessities and worries. However, some what of the heavy mood swings of recent weeks I can say in some respects I'm getting back on track. I'm grateful for all those who stick by me, they know who they are, a few in Oxford, Epsom and Kent.

Given that so many things seem to be providing so much grief in different ways. I can only say a few things really:
1. Always abide by the rules
2. Music grips the soul
3. Never be afraid to speak the mind
4. Even if unbelievable painful, the past is one thing the future is another. Live for the day

Given my belongings are spread across the UK in various different lofts. I always find room to notice two particular things:
1. I have a quotes from all sorts of places, those are important and need to live by are within Survival, Bushcraft and a few more from Geography.
2. Which brings me to the second point, always be prepared some how for all eventualities.

Finally, just a word, I've been sitting here writing this whilst listening to The Division Bell (Pink Floyd), now before anyone says oh not more of that. It has a soothing capacity that is always capable of healing the wounds.

Therefore may I pronounce that whatever the experience might be, there is always light at the end of the tunnel and eventually however long it may take, we will always achieve what were looking for, always bounce back and get back to what we enjoy most.

This term is going to go very fast and lots of things are going to happen. Therefore, lets use it its full.

"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"

Whether this is true or not its something to consider. Suddenly the spirits are with us and we should consider not letting them down, we will find our way. Whether Christian or Buddhist, Pagan or Druid let us all believe in the future.

Monday 4 January 2010

Photography and Echoes

Photography and Echoes...

Please spend this week thinking about these two items.
I will be back to comment on these two subjects.
In the mean time have a look at all the photos around and find out what you think they mean to you, and what they mean in the context I have put them on to the blog.

Echoes is a forth coming idea, I want you think about what echoes are, how they relate to us, what feelings they give you. I also want you to think about them in terms of music how would you portray them in music, how have they been portrayed in music.

Have a think.

Saturday 2 January 2010

2010


A new year has come upon us all and now we should be thinking forward to what we would like to achieve in the next 365 days. Many people I know will have made themselves a new years resolution, and will try to keep to it. Some will slowly fail at this and re-issue it for lent later in the year. others will hold fast and make there resolution work and succeed.

Now I was never one for resolutions, mainly because I could never make them stick for more than two weeks. Or the idea I had was never going to work because it required some greater authority to help me- and I don't mean God.

Alas I was lying there in bed wide awake having seen the new year in and realised by resolution(s) are the same as the past three or four years.

1. Remain positive,
2. Be motivated
3. Do more exercise and feel alive
4. Make time for friends and family to bond better

This all sounds feasable doesn't it. I promise you that in two weeks time, I will be just as depressive as before, lack the motivation I had as a teenager and feel down right ready to forget all and plan my death. For the sake of this planet and my wanting urge to live in a bushcraft style way (adjusted for modern age) I see no fit for purpose. Still I will plod on through the year, finally complete my Masters course and hopefully (or more to the point I will have and need) a job.

What is the point you might ask in doing this resolution? I just want to feel alive. As the saying goes, "whats the point in living if you don't feel alive" (The World Is Not Enough).

And the point of quitting... its easier to live in hell.

Now away with the fairies, we better get on with some work or January will not be an easy ride to complete those essays.

Fair play. Workaholic, I'm not. But I do like it occasionally. Unfortunately like everything else in my past, it comes and goes with time. I do not have that same urge to learn, it seems to be getting harder to learn. And it seems to be harder to keep people happy, so I just work, keep myself amused by work and whatever nonsense I find when I have spare time, and hope that it doesn't leave me for good. This is because at the end of the day however hard the work is, however annoying I find it at the time, it always brings me back, I always want to go back, yet its slowly kicking me out.

It's time I opened the Whiskey and found the bottle was useless. It's time I got a grip and stopped feeling like the insect in my family who always put me down and made them respect me for who I am. It's time I found a person to believe in, look up to and say I could be like them in ten years time. Unfortunately, I have found that believing in some adult, famous TV actor, teacher, lecturer has never worked... and the family, has no body in it who are happy, everyone is just dam right miserable.

So there is always a lot to contend with. One day I'll prove to everyone how good I am. But until that day, I am forever at the bottom of the heap, I used to be the first one to help, the last one out making sure everything was done, I'd take care of everything help everywhere and anywhere, I was just capable of doing whatever was asked of me. Now I'm one whose been forgotten because the jobs I used to do for everyone have been taken away from me and I am just a redundant extra person who no one really gives a monkey's about. I'm expected to climb the ladder on my own...

When you're in a hole and you try to climb out its hard. with no one to help, you need your own skills, a perfected level of survival to just keep going, a way to deal with people who bully and take the mick, know how to handle banking, shop attendants, managers, colleagues, class mates, friends, family. I have no more motivation to care- which is why its on my resolution list- I need to care, I do care, but no one sees me for who I am. There is nothing left, I just have to keep plodding on and hope I finally break free from it all.

I want to Break Free from:
1. Put downs by family and friends
2. Controlled aspects to life. (E.g. Freedom is wanted, see 3 related)
3. Not being given the time to do my social things (Cycling and Tennis- although work takes a lot from this, I have little spare time)
4. The feeling of needing somebody with me all the time. I am me, and I can do this on my own...nobody comes to my rescue, so I should learn to rescue myself, stop being lonely and just get on with life...except I'm the idiot these days.

According to my grandparents it turns out my cousins got the brains, wit and self believing attitude. Clever, brainy, forward thinking, luck I got the remains. (Given they do have some minor psychological issues like ADHD and dyslexia. So I am still the idiot child in the family. Why do I bother.

Is 2010 just going to be a repeat of the last year and a half? Who knows. I'll see what happens.