Knowing Everything

Omniscience is given to so few,
none as far as I know-except in myth and fable.
But in so far as it is thought to exist
it seems to create more anger than sorrow.
When ignorance of unknown unknowns-
things which could not be known before they are revealed-
leads us so astray then a reflective calm would be the best response.
But for us humans that would be far is too costly course to follow.

The Dignity Of labour Vs The Comfort Of Ownership

Victorian society disputed long and hard about the worthy and unworthy poor.
Worth was supposed to be based on work. But however hard many worked
they were no more or less than sustainable loss-leaders to themselves
and cannon fodder for the gain of their employers, landlords and others
who owned the fixed assets which everyone was dependent upon.
These workers were the ones most worth any relief on offer,
but not for themselves. More for how helping them supported the owners
of the assets that everyone, the poor most of all, were dependent upon.
Thus poor relief was actually respite for the rich who were dependent on the poor, for their labour.

The unworthy poor were those who's loss-leader lives
were led solely for the profit of shadowy middle men,
land based pirates, who left the poor weak,
and insufficiently deferential to wealth to have any value in 'respected' society.

When The Currency Is Life

Some beggars are more ambitious than others.

Cancer Sells Newspapers

It would be churlish of me to think ill of those
who have fought and won against their cancers.
They have reason to thank a costly health service
and several legal tax avoiding multi-national drug corporations.
So I will be glad for the support that they have been given.
Glad too that they have 'come out' about outliving the disease
that threatened their life. But their victory is cheapened
by a media that solely quotes cancer sufferers declared fit
by the incompetents, heartlessly employed at far more
than the net value of their work, who's job is to declare
incapacitated benefits claimants newly fit for employment.
It is as if survivors of said illness were the only people
fit to be quoted when there are many other conditions
that prove a barrier to acceptance by the employers
who think only in terms of  'the survival of the fittest'.

Perhaps the press think cancer is truly 'middle class',
and like them it is the only socially acceptable disease.

Most Dirt,

like most beauty,
is only surface deep.

Our Home Is Not Yet A Tomb

But if everyone sins this much is true

-until we both die I’ll still have you.

Hell or no, we will rest from guilt,

when sleep would be best.

I will not worry about our grave,

if it should be cold or move.

When we go we'll go together.

Until then your home is next to me,

your eyes closed in our bed,

where our afterlife is near-

we dream about each other.

Prestbytairianism Explained

any of the above could make them jolly
 and hopeful for this life, rather the hereafter,
and possibly equal but different in virtue as well.
 But the ease for mistaking fear for faith is everywhere.

Sloth Incorporated

Here at the Centre For Doing Less
we are experiencing a new record for reduced activity.
Our sloth rates are through the roof.
We are so happy in our relative inactivity
that it is as much as we can do to remember
to bless the Minister for Unemployment
who declared on radio that the firm
that announces people fit for work
has declared that it has to retire,
hurt and disabled, through over activity.
.

My Positive And Empathic Approach

to Anti-Natalism was deciding against bringing children into the world.
It blossomed when fresh from the loss I freely admitted to the remainder
of my family that I grieved more over losing Oscar,
the dog I joyfully loved and cared for-for a mere four years-
than ever I had felt the pain at the loss of any of my relatives.

The Cup Of Conflict

is given to be shared with everyone.
For some the cup is full to overflowing.
Stale and tired as the contents are,
they spill and keep on rippling
through the lives of those with less.
The conflict refreshes itself best
on those who wish is to be still.
Those in relative ease have the time to ponder
-is their cup half full? Or half empty?
For as much as we try to drain the cup,
and try to leave life better for others
we find conflict calmly refreshes itself, daily.

Down At The Dog And Bear

Latte Coffee

is the order of the day.

The Unending Half Life Of Hypocrisy

Christianity in decline, both in depth of faith and numbers.
Whatever their fevered prayers and hopes
every reform seems to hasten the churches' journey
to becoming like the world they hoped to transform.
Thus ending the hope of Heaven consuming the planet.
You would think that they recognised
they were in a hole and knew to stop digging.
But decline is only right when through logic,
science, and debit financing we have departed
from the history of martyrdom as the means
restoring the world. I think it was Tertulian,
but I can't find the source, who said
'Watching people in hell [and not being there]
is Heaven itself''. Whoever wrote it did so
after seeing a few too many Christians become
a lion's lunch in a Roman circus. Since when
did torture begat anyone truth?
Any respite there used to be in the phrase
has shrunk in the wash of mis-recorded histories.

And still the urge to gloat hides inside every invitation to humility.

Signs Of Greater Age (25)

1-Needing help from your partner
to wrestle duvets into their covers,
far more often than there is
any mutual wrestling with lust.

2-Finding high finance to be the new rock 'n' roll:
Where once you were excited by the charts
and which musical rebel could sell the most
whist remaining rebellious, maturity produces
an affection for news and speech based radio.
Every day it gives a financial weather report
on rises and falls in the stock exchange
with an earnestness that suggests it really matters.

The Impossible Conundrum

Modern charity is built on surplus means
where in the giving the gift is often overvalued
by the giver. How then does giving fit with humility?

A Nietzschean Romance

For that Objectivist touch in your life,
 where other people are to blame for all mis-comunication.

The Inertia Of Consensus

and the consensus for inertia
leads me to think that if ever
progress existed we won't know
what it was for us being
so preoccupied with denying
that life was different in the past.

To My Valentine (2)

You are the ace of my heart because you make
 the viscera of life so positively engaging.

To My Valentine

May we be together forever,
 even in the nothingness of the grave. 

The Medal Shaped Biscuit

for supporting the migrant labour who built the stadia, 

and everything else in The Olympic Village, by cadging their food 

the way the workers had to beg from their employers for their wages

before being kicked out of the country, unpaid, 

goes to the many brave dogs of Sochi who still try to stay there.
 Long after the event is over and the status games presently
played out by international politics are exhausted the dogs
will find easy refuge in the deserted buildings.

This Is What We Are Taught To Vote For

And before we could vote for it, we accepted it anyway. With thanks to here. 

Creative Disgust

Altered States

of the type where we expect universal acceptance
regardless of the inconsistency with which give it.

Mis-managing

human free will is very difficult-
it takes a life times'  practice,
if not many more, to get it right.

The Wisdom Of Thomas Szasz

'There is no psychology ; there is only biography and autobiography.'

'Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.'

'Permissiveness is the principle of treating children
as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure
they never reach that stage.'

'When a person cannot laugh at himself,
it is time for other people to laugh at him.'

'Two wrongs don't make a right,
but they make a good excuse.'

'The proverb warns 'You should not bite
the hand that feeds you' but maybe you should
if that hand is stopping you feeding yourself.'

For more about Mr Szasz click here.

Theology vs Science

Long before the conundrum of Schrodinger's cat
was devised, in 1935, Christians have speculated
through faith on where Jesus is in his resurrection life,
and where they might be in future in theirs,
by how their prayers appeared to be answered.

Affirmative Negativity

Saying 'No' to life is all very well,
a fine ethical choice for anti-natalists
who strive for a belief in self control,
for themselves first, then as an example
of a wider sense of choice for others.
But such an affirmation of choice
is very different to saying 'Yes' to death,
because for everyone death is a state
of absence that does not invite any response,
only the final loss of choice to respond to.
What value the voluntary absence of voice
when in life we don't know how to be silent?

Watch Out For Mass Extermination

See the pin fall out as the human brain expands-
 to become all-consuming. Watch how human ingenuity
reshapes an evolution that might have been natural
into the sixth extinction.

Our Mortal Uncoiling

is what gives us life.
The more we uncoil
the more life we have
to look back on,
and the more our life
seems unavoidable
in the looking back
when we thought
there were choices.

A Lack Of Application

I am not afraid of gainful employment,
death, or heterosexuality, as they are
apparently benignly pushed toward me
by those who presume to know me better
than I know myself.
It is more that I don't want to be there
when others insist I apply
for these things in their name,
as they take my consent as a given.

Hi....

for that more open perspective.

Peaceful Extinctions

of species has never actually happened.
Death it is always forced by aggressive
adaptations by other species,
or by severe changes in the weather.
The nearest we have to a peaceful passing
is to be unconscious at our departure.
But here are some fun new charity ideas
we might support to limit human growth
-under the anti-natalist/pro nature umbrella.

1-voluntary mass sterilisations of humans,
with low carbon but genuine rewards
for the sterilised that are less material
than the present day capitalist prizes.
This might inhibit both capitalism
and thoughtless and easy breeding.

2-weapons manufacturers should be
encouraged in create ethical weapons
of war that will limit destruction to man,
rather than poison the battle field,
and the wider environment he occupies,
 as he engages in his wider war with the world.
.
3-restrict advertising, manufacturing
and other mass appeals to human vanity
so that the basics of life, like simple
fresh vegetables, are held in better esteem.

Binary Hopelessness

With it's debit financing
and corporate dreams
dictated by advertising
capitalism infantalizes
-that is the point of it.

None of us live as simply
as our needs say we should,
nor do we give as we could
-according to our gifts.
Communism only works
with non-human species.

So what does that leave us?

We Are What We Eat

I read a recently written blog on
that oldest of subjects-how absolute
is free will when suffering has relative,
and often relatively little, value?
An anonymous respondent to the piece
described themselves as 'a meat robot'.
I took the phrase to refer to their diet
rather more than their fleshly nature.
If every creature that is fleshly
is a robot then 'meat robot' is a tautology.
I would have been better saying less.
But I replied "You could be a vegan robot,
a vegetarian robot, a pescatarian robot,
a McDonalds robot, or even a bulimic
and/or an anorexic robot, very useful
for expressing contempt for the self
and McDonalds and other outlets
for fast food-fast in, faster out!
Finally you could be a complex
omnivore robot where if you are
thoughtful you would give names
to the percentage of vegetables
to meat to other foods you eat".
Where words give us variety of meaning
they give us choice. A robot with a choice
is less of an automaton than we think, ourselves included.