E Readers

People now read books, newspapers and magazines electronically. The natural logical progression will be that one day a tech hungry, novelty craving, human race will make the printing press obsolete. When that happens, given that any current data storage is evolvable and transferable to the next generation of software, history will be constantly, literally rewritten. A Ministry of truth* working 24/7 to constantly change the past and present An electronic Hansard? * see 1984, G.Orwell

Racism

The belief that a human may be of more value, dependent on their ethnic origin is a total misunderstanding of the nature of existence. To begin with, any value judgement of a person is utterly flawed due to it's subjectivity, and secondly the current Anthropological paradigm that all human life emigrated from north west Africa reduces racism to nothing more than a personality disorder.

Religion

"My Country is the world - My religion, to do good" - Thomas Paine. My personal religion is........actually let's define religion. For me it is a personal guide that exists other than my impulsive mind, which I refer to when I need to make a decision on how to behave. It is also something I use, much like a book or bible when I leisurely think/ponder the non immediate, broader issues of life, e.g. politics, ethics, realtionships. Freudians might call this a super-ego. Christians would call it the word of God. The most powerful, enduring, motivational concept in religion is that of accountability and answering to a higher power/God/Creator. I personally answer to the most powerful of all judges and the one from which there is no dodging, no escaping, no abstract expiation: myself. My judgement comes from my memories, the feelings I carry as a result of past behaviour and experience, what I feel is right. In a book that I read, a zen Buddhist said that we are already enlightened, we know the truth, we know the answers, all we have to do is wake up. This feels right to me. If you have to learn good behaviour from text, you might forget certain parts, and so.....are you not able to act correctly toward other people? In fact, that's all there is, that's ALL we have to know....how to act correctly toward others. A handy simple tool that I now employ instinctively(as I have been using it for so long now) is behaving in response to seeing each situation from the context of human existence. That is, never forgetting that I am an organism on a planet in space and therefore seeing the extent of the problem in measurement to our true predicament. so, for example;......I get the insatiable urge to steal from another person, or to make a hurtful comment about their body or to judge their job etc etc. I then am able to see clearly that this person is in the same predicament that I am. Born into consciousness on this planet with a physical form and subject to the inherent unfairness of life. So....can I still go ahead and make everything harder for them and choose not to see their position and story as clearly as I see my own????? Much like existentialism, I believe that we are alone in an indifferent universe. Therefore.....and this is the most powerful part of my religion, we must metaphorically (or literally) huddle together as one against the massive black coldness that we are a tiny part of. If we are all in the same boat then we are all equal and can only find meaning in meaningless in being on the same team. Value Judgement of one-another is pretty impossible and unhelpful. Obviously we have to make sure we don't veer into ennui or apathy as I have done many times. Pointlessness does not mean there's no point in doing anything, it means we are free to find our own point. For some it is joining the Red Cross, for others it is collecting teapots. Everyone and everything is unimportant, therefore everyone and everything is important.

Politics #1

A political rant against a backdrop of global corporations encouraged to make billions of pounds of PROFIT while human suffering is still out of control. People in charge of us fighting imperialist wars with the human and financial cost involved. High ranking Politicians/political scientists/civil servants who are public school educated unable or unwilling to find diplomatic solution to conflict. Why do we vote our politicians in and out??????? So if a person does not have a deep knowledge of political history including dates, personnel, who did what to whom etc, then can someone hold a political opinion or philosophy?

Well my personal strategy is that I err on the side of compassion and human rights/welfare.

When it comes to present day politics, I pronounced myself a political agnostic some years ago. 

After the general election of 2005, I decided to pay close attention to the politics reported to us and whether the Labour party was still the safest bet to look after the people of the UK.

I took the Independent and Guardian newspapers regularly and watched/listened to as many political programmes as I could bear, including the Today programme, Newsnight etc etc.  After approx 2 years of this I realised that during broadcast debates or press interviews, very little, if any, clear truthful information was supplied by any politician and certainly their personal opinions could not be elicited.

A great Labour politician, criticised by his own party as well as being ridiculed by others for openly disagreeing with party policy said that to be a politician, one has to choose the party that most closely represented your personal politics, and that obviously this wasn't perfect but it was the best we could have
(Tony Benn) This type of honesty in politicians is rare. In a Leaders debate just prior to the 2005 election, Tony Blair, rather brusquely refused to answer an audience members question on whether his family recycled!!!

During live debate, it is possible to accurately predict the arbitary, choreographed points that each politician/Civil servant would make, as well as the fact that they would not agree on anything.

The journalist allows them to not answer anything straightforwardly or honestly, or even anything at all. Even interviewers who are supposedly hard on politicians (Paxman, Humphreys) give the illusion of integrity without actually getting any further than anyone else. Most shockingly, ALL debates I heard/watched/read, consisted of ALL parties stating that what the other had said was untrue.  The bald fact then, that one of them (an elected, highly trusted, powerful political figure) was lying.

How was I to make an informed decision on who to vote for?

Do I rely on my family history of voting left wing?  It feels safest to vote for the party of the Welfare State, Unions, National Health Service etc etc, but what if those humanist ideals are ever subverted by an unethical and dishonest meglomaniac?  Will I just arbitarily vote them/keep them in???

Politics has to change.

I'm sure if I worked within Westminster/Whitehall/The Media, I would have enough of a grasp of political machinery, protocol and the intrinsic lying that underpins all of politics to form a sort of opinion, and then by second guessing, allowing for dishonesty and educated theorising on a roughly interpreted political situation, Imay get somewhere close to a fuzzy idea of what is really going on.

But I don't.

Maybe, the only option open to those that this situation concerns is not voting.  However this would only bring about change if it were done by most people. It's not as if there would be a revolution that would inconvenience too many of us, the world bank demands stability in the great financial countries of the world which in turn gives rise to a heavy handed policing in a 'government army' style of control. I feel sur that 'special measures' are available to be actioned if any electoral anomaly should occur, say...an extremely low 'undemocratic' turnout or the gaining of power by an extremist party. This means then that the country will continue to function and we will all be safe, but that the world's media and watching citizens will be expecting an acknowledgement that the current system does not represent us