Major Tom! Move to Mars!

I don't often get New Scientist any more, although when I was a student I was pretty fond of it. I don't know exactly what put me off it, I do enjoy hearing about current discoveries and theories and despite the occasional derision of snobby educated friends of mine (it's too "pop" science, as if writing something people can understand is somehow a crime) I find it to be well written and informative.
Yesterday I though I'd forgo the usual depressing paper (does nothing good *ever* happen anymore?) and get a New Scientist instead.

First page editorial was gloomy predictions about social collapse. Next page, first boxout - "Will the Tsunami hit?" with a picture of Hong kong. Across the page, endangered species are all gonna die (picture of colombus monkey looking decidedly edgy) and another box out "Sentence of DEATH" about people who have been in prison dying early (no shit Sherlock). Turn the page again and the next thing is a four page article about noise pollution and how they suspect it makes you ill and is killing people.

I was halfway through the articles section of the damn magazine before I found anything that wasn't a portent of doom. I had to go outside just to check that the sun was still shining and the sky was still blue, and there were no Tsunami or Asteroids or Giant Mutant Beavers (GMBs) poised to destroy life as we know it. I though science periodicals were supposed to show me what hope we have for the future, the exciting and cutting edge of human development, not confirm that I should be looking to move to Mars. It seems to me that everything is doom and gloom. Everywhere you look, turn on a TV, open a paper, search on the Internet, we are alternately being told the world is ending! Evil is near! Followed by Buy! Buy! Buy! Only a limited time!

I think we can take it as read that the world will one day end. I think we can take it as proven that the world is warming and we need to do something, that people are dying of poverty and we need to act. Why can't we be given hope instead of fear? Get those Limey Fruit Market Worshipping Capitalist Pig-Dogs (LFMWCPDs)on the case- instead of selling us Laptops and MP3 players and cruises to Egypt get them to sell us carbon neutral cars and fucking sailing boats and bicycling holidays in Wales. Get the fuckers that made Crazy Frog on the case - if they can make that such a success then making Green and Fair-trade stuff should be falling off a log!

Then afterwards we can set the GMBs on the LFMWCPDs and sell tickets!

Assholes!

Don't look down.

Due to the nature of the universe there will be no strike today. There will be no more clemency for your foibles. Tomorrow will be something to regret, not to look forward to and a promise will remain just that: promise without realisation. You have passed reason. Unseen forces rule your life and if you have problems accepting *that* then my current suggestion is look to the law. The law of coincidences. It will exist if you believe in it enough. There is hope, hope in patience and patience through time. So I hope you have the time, because it is coming. Not just cataclysmically, not intruding on your meal at six with carbombs and crashes and mudslides and the death of children. No, not yet. It comes creeping in as fast as it dares, chipping away at your complacency and leaving you with a gnawing hint of dread, with disease in the farms and epidemics round the corner. With changes in the weather, with flood and wind and rain. But don't worry. Don't worry at all. You have the means to wash it all from your mind, the drug is in your hand, in the shops, in your breakfast cereal, on the couch with Anne and Nick, in banner adds and for sale at Amazon. It walks you to the shops and blazes from the sides of buses, takes you on holidays to Greece and opens Tapas bars for you to take loved ones too, so you can forget together. If it won't go, if you're getting sleepless and careworn, if you stop subscribing, well that's ok too. Because it's covered. We don't want you to do anything! Just come to our rock concert, watch on TV, drop a few coins in the tin, get a badge, get a bracelet, buy the t-shirt, buy the life. Recycle that life and turn the TV off standby, but keep the holiday and the car because hey, being free is important. Get high but don't look down guys, don't let anyone *bring* you down guys, those fuckers will kill you. Change the world? Sure you can! Support me and I'll change it *for you*! Keep living that life, keep consuming. You're a shark, you're a killer. If you stop moving, you're dead. It might look like I'm sneering at you, that's just a cold. I have it all worked out. Trust me. No, don't ask why. You won't like the answer.

Don't call me Scarface....

I’m an anarchist. A proto-socialist feminist pro-libertarian animal lover with leanings towards the anti-establishment and anarchical sympathies.

Or so I would have you believe. I could also say I was a Marxist neo-neo-socialist revolutionary fluffmonkey with massive identity problems. Or I could just say I was…..me.

I have a problem with these kind of labels. A huge problem.

I’m still of an age that I can remember my adolescence quite vividly, and at that age boxes and categories were a comfort. I was trying to make sense of the world and of all the confusing, conflicting information and people I was meeting. (how can people be pro-abortion but anti-death sentence? How can people say they hate inequality yet support a free market society that creates that very thing? How can you like football and rugby?) On the threshold between the simplicity of childhood and the utter chaos of adulthood meant that having some handle on all these conflicting concepts is irresistible - feminist, socialist, racist, communist, Libertarian, radical, punk, gay, all these wonderful tribal labels to stick on people so I didn’t have to think too much. Now I’m reaching a place in my life where I now want to take everything back out of the box into which it was carelessly shoved more than a decade ago and really understand it. I can now handle contradictions and I understand now that what people say, and what they really believe are often two very different things.

Now there are some things you just are. The accident of my birth made me Scottish, other people are Jewish, others Royal. These are not so much labels as descriptions, cultural or racial features that you cannot really choose to be, any more than I can decide to be a member of the royal family (god forbid). But describing myself as a Socialist is just an expression of opinion, a considered viewpoint that differs in many different ways from other "Socialists" and there is the rub.

You see when you take something you feel, for example "women are equal to men and should be treated as such" and slap a name on it, in this case feminism, you create a monster. It is immediately defined from one position so that some people are Feminists, while others are not, even if they had the same thought in the first place.

It works both ways too. You can masquerade under the banner of feminism, pay lip service to it's tenets, ponce about making dodgy statements, or in extreme cases porn, to "liberate" women. By exploiting them. Those that question just "don't get it".

Porn is a good example of what I'm talking about: as it becomes more mainstream we hear more and more people describe it as "empowering" for the women. They are the object of desire and this gives them this power, apparently. Erm, HELLO? They are the object of desire. Object.

You want to tell me that is good for women? Then I'll tell you what. Go make it regulated, only employ people who are screened to be psychologically capable of handling (even enjoying) having sex for public titilation, put no pressure on the performers to do anything they aren't into, there are strong storylines and the performers are not treated like exhibits of meat even when they are not working and above all else you make it equal, then I'll agree with you.

No more faceless men with Exocet missiles between their legs and ridiculous howling and yelping from moistened fuckpuppets. No more "gangbangz in da hood" and "Candy slut bangs the Detroit Dixies". Give them names, faces, motivations, emotion. Make them people. I digress.

It is a sad feature of our nature, regardless of society or standing, that we look at the differences first and to a certain extent define ourselves by them. The crazy thing is we are driven to conform too, peer pressure is the one largest influence on your whole life. You want to be cool and out there but also accepted and looked upon favourably. You want to be a player in the gang. Deep down you want to be "us" not "them", and where there isn't a "them" eventually you'll make one. Feminism might bring like-mided people together, but they will eventually divide up like bacteria into ever multiplying factions.

Philosopy sits inside belief inside Philosophy, like Russian dolls. You aren't just a feminist, you can be a traditional one or a neo-feminist one! Bra-burner! Ladette! My side! Your side! It isn't long before we have divided up a concept and totally lost sight of the original feeling under all the infighting and squabbling over the definition. Who has walked the true path? Who has "sold out"?

Who is coming up with all of this? Good lord! Since the beginning of society our species have been locked in this idiocy. I can just see stone age people gathered round the giant boulder they have all just dragged tens of kilometres, one set shouting "Shrine to the gods!" and the others shouting "Tomb for our ancestors!" and brandishing weapons. And of course when the shrine guys win, we all know they will just start arguing amongst themselves about which god the shrine is for, while in the confusion a smaller group of them quietly drag it further away and describe to the village this great idea they have had for a calendar.

True story.