Category Archives: Uncategorized

Personal growth and the rise to the top…

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Life is for living – for drinking deep from the well of experience. That is why many of us believe that wild places are so special; they take us out of our narrow protected bubble and open up something deeper, more eternal.

A fulfilled life is a difficult thing to measure. Very soon we start to use nebulous words like ‘well being’, ‘happiness’ and ‘satisfaction’.

We may also have to acknowledge that life is a process – a journey. Some would call this journey a process of ‘maturity’, others would say ‘enlightenment’, others still would call it ‘personal growth’. All these ideas contain the idea that life, in all its joy and difficulties, should embrace transformation; movement from one state of being to another. Standing still is unlikely to be healthy and ultimately it will likely prove impossible.

For a while, many of us (particularly men) come to believe that a fulfilled life is one characterised by success. And because we are competitive creatures there has to be some means of measuring this success so we are always heading for the next achievement, the next conquest, the next acquisition.

I was reminded of this again today listening to a radio discussion about psychopathy with Jon Ronson, author of this book–

The word ‘psychopath’ is one of the most overused and emotive terms employed by the media in relation to mental illness, but Ronson’s book goes far beyond the stereotype. He qualified to use the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and became, by his own admission, something of an obsessive Psychopath spotter.

Whatever you believe about the usefulness of labels like this, the fascination with the sort of people who can commit such acts of appalling cruelty apparently guilt free is almost universal. All the more sobering then is the statistic that roughly 1% of people can be regarded as psychopathic.

Rather than getting stuck with all the high profile serial killers and despots, Ronson’s interest takes us more towards the very place of madness at the heart of our society. At the same time as vilifying psychopaths as not-human ‘others’, he argues that there is something psychopathic about our society, and that many parts of our society actually reward psychopathic tendencies.

Consider this – one of the two ‘factors’ in Hare’s checklist–

Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”

It is easy to see how an individual with these kind of characteristics could succeed in much of society. It is impossible not to start thinking of people we know, bosses we have had.

I went to hear psychologist Oliver James speak at Greenbelt Festival last year (you can download the talk here.) One of the things I remembered him saying was that in all his dealings with the rich and powerful, including several Prime Ministers, he had yet to meet many who he would regard as psychologically healthy.

However, Ronson goes further than this and suggests that the very institutions of our society can become psychopathic. Banks that loan what they know can never be repaid, therefore condemning people to financial indebtedness for the rest of their lives. Health systems that thrive on the sickness of the population. The creation of all sorts of addictions to gadgets and shiny product in order to ensure profit.

It is almost as if the process of becoming – whether we understand this as a spiritual, psychological or simply biological development – has been replaced by a process of conquest, where success at almost any cost is the only thing that matters.

But success is fickle. The journey to the top is often followed by the journey back down again.

Back to this maturity/enlightenment/personal growth thing. Most of us come to a point when we realise that success is rarely a route to any kind of lasting happiness (even if this is a legitimate aim for any of us.) A life that cuts us off from the social animal that we humans are and replaces this with narrow acquisition is a kind of madness – all the more so for the fact that it is a collective madness.

So for those of us who are climbing to the top, may we succeed. May our enterprises go from strength to strength. But may we also remember that success without ethical responsibility and without the mess of all that humanity may indeed still be success, but it may also be the cause of our own destruction – both individually and collectively.

The Wayseer Manifesto…

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I watched this today (courtesy of the Emergent Village ‘minimergent’)

This from their website

All over the world there are Wayseers who struggle, who hide their gifts, because they don’t realize what they are. We are here to find Wayseers throughout the world and let them know how important they are to humanity. We are here to turn Wayseers on to their rare aptitude for leading transformation.

When the Wayseers of the world are awakened to their true calling on this planet, a massive shift in the human condition will occur.  Wayseers are the change agents of humanity – the innovators, the healers, the visionaries, the spiritual leaders, the entrepreneurs, the ones who are here to lead humanity into alignment with the Way.

I think I like it. Or at least some of it

I like the idea of the need for agitators, damaged malcontents who will not be defined by their limitations. The passion for something better, something other, something more creative and beautiful.

What I am not so sure about is the degree to which we exalt the ‘event’ over the ‘ordinary’, and the idea that we can all be ‘extra ordinary’ if we believe strongly enough.

And perhaps the ‘out there’ charismatic presentation is just a bit too God channel to sit easily with most of we Brits. The handsome bloke who comes and tells us that we are part of the special 10%. And he has product to shift.

There is also this strange feeling of activism as an end in itself – divorced from dogma, or from ideology, or cause. We want transformation, but we do not define what we are transforming to- this will work itself out if we follow ‘the way’. ‘The way’ is enough- the ‘calling’ we all carry. As I think of this, it seems to me to reflect a real shift in society – even a shift in me.

Society is less interested in what you believe, more in what lights you up. And just about anything goes man, what ever turns you on. And right now, we all need to be turned on to something new- the old stuff is over, bring on the next…

But I too feel the pull of this thing called ‘the way’. It seems to me that the Kingdom of God (as I would call it) is located within and without the followers of any one religion. Jesus broke all those barriers for ever. The way is enough- the calling to follow, to journey with love in an uncertain direction.

It seems to me that the Kingdom of God beats like a pulse in all of those things associated with ‘the way’ listed above.

Perhaps I should take up skateboarding.

The myth of equality…

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Just had an interesting discussion with my daughter. Emily is 16, lovely, intelligent, part of a middle class nuclear family, surrounded by good friends and enjoys a situation of safety and security. She lives in a quiet, relatively crime free part of the UK, one of the richest countries in the world.

In many ways, you could say that she has won the life lottery.

This would be unfair of course-life has this way of challenging all of us in some ways- she is having to learn to cope with dyslexia, and to develop her own individual self confidence, which is difficult enough for any of us.

But what this highlights to me is the issue of equality. Equality of opportunity is the watch word for our current political elite. Borrowed perhaps from the American dream, we cling to the idea that in a vibrant market driven capitalist economy, our measure of success is determined by our ability, more or less.

I suppose in many ways I stand as some kind of evidence of this- the child of a single parent, brought up by the welfare state, educated to degree level, now more or less middle class. However…

There is a devastating critique of this idea by Deborah Orr in today’s Guardian. Here are a few extracts-

The idea is that as long as there is “equality of opportunity”, then a highly competitive economic system that naturally sorts people into “winners and losers” – let’s call it a meritocracy – is perfectly reasonable. But the rhetoric is laughably fallacious. In a system that divides people into winners and losers, you can’t have “equality of opportunity”. The children of the winners will, broadly, always have the advantage. The children of the losers will, broadly, always have the disadvantage, theinability, if you will.

Welfare dependency is not a cause of society’s problems, but a consequence of them. Sadly, it is in the febrile interest of all mainstream politicians to continue pretending that it’s the other way round. The belief that you can transform society by prodding at welfare is similar to the belief that you can untangle knots by pushing at the ends of string.

What might this mean for those of us who are about to hand over our responsibilities to Emily’s generation? Will we saddle them with the same addictions to capitalist excesses? Or will we (and in turn they) find a different way untie the knots?

It is difficult to know where to begin on the macro scale- back to earlier discussions about the Grand Correction. But it is perfectly possible (if extremely challenging) to begin on the individual scale…

Some of this might be about an attitudinal shift, away from blaming the victims of our system-

Humans are not born equal, and individual vulnerabilities are not always easy to identify or to repair. Those who are stronger need to look after those who are weaker. It is precisely because humans are not good at doing this – it’s not in our aggressive, predatory natures – that so many people shrug at their inability to clothe, feed and house themselves. At the very least, this failure of the able should be recognised, rather than dressed up as a failure of the unable. Until it is, it’s hard to see how a better future can be imagined, let alone planned for.

But my greater hope is in Emily, and the desire for us to yet live together in a way that is less concerned with protecting what we have as we seek to gain more, and more concerned with sharing and supporting others, and living our lives in connection.

If anyone can do it, she can.

Living without electricity…

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We are increasingly utterly dependent on what comes to us through cables. I know this to be a fact, as I have spent most of today coping with the consequences of what happens when the cables stop delivering.

Since the big storm on Tuesday, parts of Argyll have had no electricity. Other parts have had an intermittent supply. It has  taken a whole army of blokes spending three days and nights in the hills and forests tracing fallen lines, disentangling them from trees, reinstating the masts that were blown down and the transformers that burnt out.

The consequences of this are obvious- or at least is seems so at first. The lights will go off. And the TV- oh, and the computer of course.

But then you start to remember other things- the telephone system, even if the supply that keeps the line is live, probably will not work as your telephone will require power, as we expect it to do lots of things other than just being a telephone. You will get cold as the heating system will be controlled and pumped by electricity.

Slowly you start to realise that everything is controlled by computers. And computers are great, but get very sulky if you remove their supply of amps. They are very greedy for amps. So (as we found out) trying to set up an emergency kitchen, as the gas supply was still working, was futile as all the appliances need electricity too- even the gas hob, which shuts itself down without the extractor hood working.

I also heard that the phone lines on Bute stopped working as the emergency generator was kept behind a door controlled by- electricity. Oops.

Then, the longer the electricity is off, the more serious things start to get. You can not buy food, as no one pays with money any more- we all pay by computer. Also, all the chilled food in the supermarket goes off immediately.

Finally, there is the fact that even the care that we provide to many people is dependent on technology. Increasingly we care for our frail elderly by computer. It is cheaper. We use door alarms, pressure mats, intercom systems, and all sorts of other sensors and switches.

The effect of this on our communities has been interesting- in some it brought out the best. Neighbours who went the extra mile, supermarkets who opened their doors, people sharing warm firesides and warm soup. But then there were those who would ring the council and demand to know why we had not visited them or someone else to make things OK in some way- as if we had endless resources, and perfect knowledge.

The lessons for us as individuals are sobering- the weather seems to be changing here, and we can probably expect more of the same. Simplify your life from some of the gadgets. Keep some candles and cans in the cupboards. Make a note who which of your neighbours might need a bit of extra help, and knock on the door to have a conversation (you remember those- from before Facebook and MSN.)

And in cases of extremis, decide which one is going to get eaten first.

The bottle in the roots…

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The other day I walked past some of the many trees  blown over at the weekend, including this one-

As the tree fell, it pulled up some of it’s roots as if in a last clawing attempt to stay upright, and in doing so, it kicked up some soil.

As I walked by, I saw a glint in the soil, and so I stooped and pulled out this bottle-

This little bottle is a window into lots of different stories.

First of all, we know that the fallen tree has to have been planted after 1917 (as the bottle has that date on the bottom.)

Next, the logos on the bottle are a glimpse into the refreshments of another generation. “J A Reid, Chemist, Reid’s Lily Springs, Pure as a Lily, 500 feet deep, Helensburgh.”

Around 1883 J.R.Reid set up as a chemist and aerated water manufacturer with a shop and factory at different addresses on Clyde Street, and several years later he moved manufacture to the Lily Springs in James Street. This was later owned by the well known Garvie lemonade firm, closing in 1957 because of alleged contamination of the water and moving to Milngavie until they closed that factory around 1985.

(From here.)

This is what our parents parents parents were drinking on their picnics. Carbonated, sweetened spring water of questionable purity.

This is what caught me- at some point, around 100 years ago, someone opened up this rather posh looking bottle during a wee holiday trip ‘doon the watter’. They were more adventurous than most, as they were not drawn in by the fleshpots of Dunoon– which during this period was a bit like Blackpool- cinemas, theatres,  ice cream parlours and all sorts of amusements. They chose a trip along the coast of the Holy Loch.

Perhaps they were cyclists slaking their thirst.

Or perhaps part of a family group settling down on the grassy shore line whilst the kids played in the water.

We will never know.

Storm damage…

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We were hit with a massive storm in the early hours of the morning – strange as there was no real prediction of the severity of this one. But we woke early to the howl of it. The window was slightly open in the bathroom and this was enough to blow the plants from the shelf. It also blew our front door open, as I had not put the bolt across.

We had quite a bit of damage outside-

William’s shed was physically moved by the force of it, and the roofing felt is in Kansas.

My workshop had roofing ripped away too.

One of our trees now lies in the neighbours garden.

We have lost a TV aerial and the satellite dish.

And, most strangely a surf board/body board appeared in our garden.

No sign of the surfer yet.

New Year, 2012…

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It is here.

As ever the speed of it all comes as a surprise.

Last night, we had a house full of friends and sang and played music for hours. This morning my fingers are almost too sore to type! At some point we had three guitars, bouzouki, piano, violin and bodhran. I have not enjoyed music as much for ages.

I was relatively early to bed- Michaela came up around 4.00.

As further evidence for the advancement of years, last night our kids were all busy in new and different ways (even though they were all part of joint celebrations too.) Emily had a ‘Launch Pad‘ for Christmas, and so we set up the study so she could do some mixing/dancing.

William and his friends practised for their own performance of a song.

Later we all sat and played cards.

It was simply lovely to spend time with these wonderful young people, with all their talents and potential.

So to old friends and new friends and still to become friends everywhere- may the year be one of blessing…

I took no photos at all last night- here are a few of Williams;

Thatcher and the tools of war…

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One of the things that appalled us most about the Thatcher years back in the 80’s, was her support for some of the most despotic regimes in the world.

Everything was polarised then- communist/socialist/liberal (bad.) Fascist/dictatorship/ (OK- as long as they were not communist.)

The Pinochet government ‘disappeared’ thousands of Chillean citizens- but Thatcher was a staunch ally.

Today, at the 30 year unveiling of official secrets, we found out lots more about arms dealing with Iraq and Iran. We sold Iran a load of Chieftain tanks. About 100 of these were captured by the Iraqis during their dreadful war against Iran. Back when Saddam was a good dictator.

What the cabinet papers reveal today is the extent of the sophistry that the then British Cabinet indulged in to get around the arms embargo- selling all sorts of arms and equipment to Iraq.

But most staggeringly of all, they allowed Vickers, who made the Chieftain tanks, to repair, modify and re-gun them to be used against Iran. We were literally arming both sides.

When the Blair government eventually took over from the Tories, one of the things I was most excited by was Robin Cook’s idea of an Ethical Foreign Policy– including a new refusal to sell arms to despotic regimes.

However, this policy was soon in tatters during a row over the sale of Hawk Jets to Indonesia, who used them to bomb and machine gun the citizens of East Timor. This was the beginning of the great disallusionment for many of us in the possibility of a new kind of politics under Blair- which went all the way onwards towards the second Iraq war.

The issue for all of we Brits is the role that arms manufacture still plays in our economy.

We are the second biggest exporter of weapons, after the USA- 20% of the worlds armourments are made here.

The manufacture of arms is intrinsically bound up in this thing that some loosely call the ‘ military industrial complex’, and others simply call capitalism.

If swords are ever to become ploughshares, then we should listen to the stories from Thatchers cabinet- and to the subsequent ones from Blair’s cabinet.

 

The Pied Piper revisited (part 1)…

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I enjoyed listening to this on boxing day.

It was a retelling of the weird old story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. As legends go, it is one of the strangest- you can feel in it the depths of some kind of tragedy that was the origin of the myth.

The story originates sometime in the 1300’s in Lower Saxony, Germany. This from the Wikipedia entry-

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained glass window placed in the Church of Hamelin c. 1300. The window was described in several accounts between the 14th century and the 17th century. It was destroyed in 1660. Based on the surviving descriptions, a modern reconstruction of the window has been created by Hans Dobbertin (historian). It features the colorful figure of the Pied Piper and several figures of children dressed in white.

This window is generally considered to have been created in memory of a tragic historical event for the town. Also, Hamelin town records start with this event. The earliest written record is from the town chronicles in an entry from 1384 which states:

It is 100 years since our children left.

What dreadful events were being described no-one knows. A mass drowning in a river? Plague? Mass emigration to avoid famine? Lured away be a pagan sect into the dark forest?

Whatever the origin, at some point, the legend began to be told in the form we receive today- a magical figure on which we can project all sorts of fears- the Pied Piper who leads children on some terrible dance of death. All except one, who lives a life of regret that he could not have disappeared with his friends to the whatever land they travelled to.

Anyway- as I listened to this, it appeared to me to carry a current resonance, and I started to write.

Here is the first part of my re-telling of the legend of the Pied Piper. A bit of fun for the new year…

The was a time when the city prospered.

Ships flooded the dockyards with spice and sandalwood from the far reach of the arm of Empire.

Old men were cushioned by safe investments and young men were well oiled cogs in an industrial machine whose engines never stopped. After lives spent accumulating, some sought to leave a legacy in stone- museums, galleries and monuments to their own magnificence.

And on the fat of it all we feasted. Even as others far away slaved in chains and died young in the service of our comfort.

We had so much that what we had started to mean nothing. We filled our dustbins and our landfill sites with food we could not eat and clothes of last years colour. Meanwhile we wanted more more more. More gadgets. More cars. Bigger houses. Faster food.

Soon not even the rubbish dumps could contain all that we threw away.

Then there came a time when it all started to go wrong.

Rats.

Everywhere, rats.

They were in the warehouses, in the store rooms and scurrying under the tables of all the restaurants.

They were under the floorboards and in the kitchen cupboards. They stripped bare the sofas then started on the insulated cables.

In the attempt to get rid of all these rats, no effort was spared. Men in clean overalls poisoned, trapped, shot and burned them in their thousands. But it seemed to make no difference- if anything their numbers increased.

In desperation, the mayor of the city offered a prize. “Let it be known across the world” he said “that anyone who can rid us of this vermin that has invaded our city will be handsomely rewarded. They shall receive a prize of £10 million pounds.”

So from all over the country they came. Then from all over the world.

Scientists with genetic theories and chemical potions and tiny cameras on the end of flexible rods.

Commercial pest control companies with an army of men and women prepared to go further than ever before- into the slimiest sewer and the darkest cellar. They dug and shot and stabbed and burned in every corner of the city.

Religious nuts who cried to us all to ‘Repent’ so that God would have mercy on the sinners of the City and take back the plague from the unrighteous. So that he would let his people go.

Mad inventors employed light beams and sound waves and all sorts of machines that whirred and clicked and rattled.

All failed to make any appreciable difference on the number of rats. At night, the noise they made kept us all awake- the scurrying and the scratching. The passage of a million claws in and round and over.

As their numbers grew they were bolder in their hunger. They no longer stayed hidden in the dark places- they were in the corners of rooms, watching, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

There were stories of faces bitten whist people lay abed, and children running screaming for protection.

Everything was affected- schools closed, hospitals were under siege. Factories were clogged with fur and the flesh of the rats and places of business were eaten full of holes. The dockyard cranes rusted on their rails from under use- no captain wanted to take on this kind of cargo.

The stories spread like wildfire- they were twittered and blogged and gossiped in the bars and pubs. Anger grew- something must be done. The fat cats in the town hall did not have to live like this- they had protection. Rather than spending money on fancy cars and big salaries- they ought to be looking after the citizens.

Some fed these stories into megaphones of their own particular cause and began to stir up violence. Windows in the town hall were smashed and slogans written on walls.

The rioting began.

The response from the authorities was predictable- first police in riot gear, later the army. Finally, when the numbers on the streets seemed almost as numerous as the rats, the tanks were called in to stem this new vermin from smashing and looting and burning.

It was all falling apart.

Eaten from within.

To be continued…

Modern fairy tales…

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…stories are always important. Even in an age of communication overload.

In fact, perhaps they are even more important now- the ones that mean something that is. The ones that are not manufactured- squeezed through the entertainment machine, shrink wrapped. We can recognise all the big-brother-X-Factor-Britain’s-got-talent stuff for what it is- mindless twaddle to inoculate our Saturday nights. But then along comes Susan Boyle, and we all scramble to share the story.

Our stories say so much about who we are, who we wish we might become, and what we value along the way. I suppose this was always true- the stories collected by Hans Christian Anderson were the same. They come to define us- they unite us in a common understanding of the world.

There is a way of understanding stories as underlying narratives that shape our culture and our humanity. So we are who we are because of the story that we were born into, and we find ourselves acting as characters within this story. The degree to which any of us change this narrative according to our own choices is a matter for debate.

But enough of all this, time to tell a story. It is ‘true’- in the sense that it is based on something true, but not in the sense that it is absolutely accurate. That is not the purpose of stories. Neither are they meant to steal from the people who are contained within them. The characters in this story are free-

There was a school in a small town near where I live. It was an ordinary school, full of an ordinary mix of young people learning how to be old people. It was full of chatter and laughter and the bubbling of stewing humanity.

For some, the place was a stage on which they acted, reciting lines with growing confidence.

For others, it was a dark forest full of dangers. Each corridor a mass of thorns. The school yard belonged to wild animals hunting in packs.

And in this ordinary school, the teachers, with the best of intentions, decided to hold a talent show. Notices were posted, names gathered, egos bristled and the stage was prepared for great things.

So it was that on the appointed day, the show began. The recreation hall was full, and although most kids learn cynicism and scorn much more readily than algebra, it was a welcome break from the classroom and so there was an excited buzz in the air.

Violins screeched. Chanters howled. Dancers of a variety of shapes and sizes danced. Some had far too much confidence for their levels of ability, some were entirely the other way round. All had this in common- they were backed by their supportive group- they represented their ‘tribe’. They each represented a constituency.

Apart from one.

She was not well known, and not understood at all. She managed to always be at the edge of things, unnoticed.     Her school work was always completed, and averagely correct. Her school uniform was standard, if never stylish. Her hair was pump-water straight, and she wore heavy glasses as if to complete a disguise.

So it was, when she stood at the edge of the stage, there was a gasp, then some giggles. Unkindness is such common currency.

A perspiring deputy head teacher, also looking strangely bemused, stepped up to the microphone. “Ahem…” he said “Please put your hands together for Alice Smith, who is going to sing ‘Take me home country roads‘.”

The sniggering grew louder. Like the release of a gas valve, the whispers spread. What was she going to sing? Did she not know any decent songs? Who does she think she is anyway? Look at those shoes/that hair/the state of her.

But the teacher was not done “Alice has asked me to say that this song was the favourite song of her late father (ahem) who sadly (ahem) passed away a few weeks ago.”

The whispers ceased and silence opened like a cave as someone cued a crackly backing track.

I would like to tell you that Alice sang like a cross between an angel and a rock star, but this was not so. Her voice wavered in an out of the sound mix as her shaking hand moved the microphone around. She was for the most part in tune, but sang with a thin reedy voice.

Somewhere into the first chorus, her throat closed itself off into a sob. She tried to keep going, but the words came out in bursts and gasps, until she could sing no more. The backing track played on, and the hall was frozen mid breath.

Then in the middle of the audience, a girl stood up and started to sing.

Another girl joined her- then a boy. Then another and another. Eventually the whole room was full of children singing ‘Take me home, country roads, to the place where I belong, West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home, country roads…’ The saccharine sweetness of the words took on Shakespearean grandeur.

Something happened in that room. Many were openly weeping.

And God smiled a wide smile.