Mr Benn's Breakdown

Mr Benn walked down Festive Road. A crushing weight on his shoulders. A dark menacing creature hovering above him. He walked past the children playing on bikes and scooters, flying kites at ridiculously low altitudes, skipping and laughing. Jollity all around, whilst the normally happy tune that accompanied him in his head sounded as if it had been reworked in Minor keys with occasional discordant eruptions.

Was any of this real? He struggled to remember where he'd been. He knew where he was going - the sanctuary of his living room. The door shut firmly on Festive Road, curtains drawn. Hell in private is the best he could aspire to at this moment. That's where he was going.

But where had he been? Flashes of images appeared to him, seemingly synchronised with the discordant eruptions in the music in his head. The music - usually jolly and bouncy - was fast becoming a nightmarish cacophony. Images of a hideous old man, strangely attired, offering him a selection of costumes. Yes! He remembered.The Shopkeeper!

The Shopkeeper was behind this.

He got to his door and fumbled for his keys becoming desperate as the keys refused to enter the lock. They seemed to big for the lock. They were to big for the lock! Much too big. These keys were huge keys the size of his hand, on a rusty old chain.

These were the wrong keys.

He found the right keys in the pocket of his now crumpled and vomit sodden trousers and tried them in the door.

These keys fitted.

He opened the door, almost dived into the hallway, slammed the door shut behind him and leant against it breathing heavily.

The cacophony had stopped.

Sweet silence.

Mr Benn looked at the enormous keys attached to a rusty chain around his waist. A feeling of nausea rose within him for the second time this afternoon.

Mr Benn vomited onto the swiss cheese plant .

Holding the giant keys in his sticky puke-coated hands he watched pieces of what he ate drip from the leaves of the plant. It was at this point that he realised that they were keys to the buried treasure chest on Pirate Island.

But that's all he could recall.

These keys, a souvenir of his adventures.

On the floor of his hallway, in grey half light, Mr Benn sobbed into his swiss cheese plant.               

The advantages of being a fussy eater

A single fish (fish 17) gazed up at the canopy of dead fish above and thought,

"I'm glad I don't like algae."

Change Ladders

Left my job today and start (hopefully) a new one in a couple of weeks.

I'm going to be earning less - about as much as I was earning 6 or 7 years ago.

But I'm no longer on the ladder.

I never meant to get on it. But at a point about 10 years ago I found myself on it. And realised I'd been on it for a while without realising it. Once you're on it, it's hard to get off, even once you've realised your on it. It seems like the only way to travel.

Along the narrow track of a ladder - failure to go upwards is a lack of ambition and going downwards is failure.

But it's staying on the ladder that represents a lack of ambition.

I've jumped off - and am traversing in any direction - 'up' and 'down' seem much less relevant. They are just two directions among many others. I now travel in, at least, 3D!

I think it's more ambitious. 

Things I don't care about today

I don't care about:

• Adele not having enough time to do her speech
• That boxer and that other ex boxer having a fight
• Footballers not shaking hands with other footballers
• David Cameron
• Gay marriages
• The Sunday Sun
• London fashion week

Beyond Pond

SO, I over heard this conversation between two fish the other day........

Fish 1: Hey how's it flowin', Scaley?
Fish 2: Ahh you know.....the usual.  I was just wondering how this all works.
Fish 1: How what all works?
Fish 2:  You know - all this....... Everything.
Fish 1: This all works as it works.
Fish 2: Yeh but do you never wonder what is beyond pond?
Fish1: Beyond Pond?
Fish 2: Beyond Pond!
Fish 1: Nothing is beyond Pond.....Pond is everything. everything is Pond.
Fish 2: Is it?
Fish1: Ahhh I know. You've been talking to weirdy boy
Fish 2: Fin, yes I've been talking to him.
Fish1: Ever since the big beak made him disappear and then appear again at the other end of Pond, he's gone a bit mental
Fish 2: That was a Heron and he was taken outside of Pond to another dimension . He says he sees that there is more than Pond and that Pond is just one of many things in a bigger system and that we're all part of the system and we only see Pond.
Fish 1: So you've been wondering about......[raises eyes up] up there?
Fish2: Well you say "up there" but why is it up? I have no wonderings about what's 'down' do I? Down is just hard muddy, weedy. You can bounce off "down". But up is a mystery.
Fish 1: Listen don't worry about all that crap - that Fin, he's gone soft in the gills - Pond is all. The world is Pond. Disappearing and then reappearing must do something to your head. Ignore him he's a weirdo.
Fish 3: Hi can I join in.
Fish 1: No, Fuck Off!
Fish 3: Oh [Fucks off]
Fish 2: Bit rude... but you have a point he has kind of lost himself. I say something, like 'there's some nice algae over there better eat it quick' and he keeps telling me it's all based on wrong assumptions and........
Fish 1: Where? What Algae? Did you eat it all? Show me the Algae!
Fish 3: Hi can I join in?
Fish 2: You already asked that.
Fish 3: Did I? What was the answer?
Fish 1: No
Fish 2: So yeh Fin is getting like all those arty farty Trouts with their Trout Theatre, Trout Library, Trout Art galleries, Trout Concerts, Trou..
Fish 1: Alright get the picture..Trout civilisation, basically. They do a good rock fest though - Troutstival. Man, last year I was so off my face when...
Fish 2: Oscar Wilde said "The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists."
Fish3: He never said that. Or should I say he did but only through a character in The Picture of Dorian Gray, but he didn't say it as his own op..
Fish 1: Will you FUCK OFF!
Fish 3: Oh [ Fucks Off]
Fish 2: He was saying that poets and artists are more interesting and fun people if they are bad artists and poets because good ones lose all their personality in their work. He says and that inferior poets are fascinating. They live poetry they cannot write whereas good poets write the poetry that they dare not realise.     
Fish 1: Yeh? Anyway....where's that Algae?
Fish 2: Over there - oh no -look. Fin is eating it all!
Fish1 and 2: OY LEAVE THAT ALGAE!
Fish 1: GO AND EAT SOME WRONG ASSUMPTIONS YOU SLIPPERY BASTARD!


Fish.

I just don't get them.

          

Coffee making halted by milk clogged nozzle - it must be the Buddha!

I've been worshipping my coffee maker. It's a Dualit Expressiv.

Then it broke. A blockage in the steam stick bit (technical term) caused a pressure build up resulting in a small plastic tube being forcefully evicted from the small metal tube which carried the steam to the steam stick bit.

It went "KAPOOSH!" And then water started pouring out of the bottom of it.

The system broke down - it had a negative feedback loop - and contained no repairing or compensating feedback loops. It's a simple system operated by a much more complex system within an even more complex system. Yes the last two systems mentioned are me and the universe (and all the subsystems in between - if you like).

So the Dualit Expressiv killed itself  to some degree - but only after I had created the conditions for it's suicide. I had failed to maintain it - you're supposed to clean the steam stick thing regularly, and flush the whole system through. I didn't do this due to my own psychological system - itself reliant on biological and chemical systems and of course all the systems that brought me into being and create life on earth, the existence of this solar system in this....blah blah blah. So in a sense I killed it, and in another sense it was a conspiracy of all the interactions and relationships between all the systems in the universe. In that little machine sat the power of the universe.

Of course that steam stick bit was not conscious of the effect of it's clogging up. It does not know it blew up my coffee machine. I can't blame it.

We don't have a blame culture in my kitchen!   

But are we all just unconscious nodes in a network? Humanity generally disagrees. We can't bear to be that! We're special! We are aware of our consciousness and have the ability to self reflect. We even create cyber worlds in which some of these nodes can ramble on about consciousness.

                                             But what are we conscious of?

Being conscious within the system - having consciousness of how things work within it - is not being conscious of the fact that we are actually in a system, that our consciousness may just be a system ,mechanism - to keep the nodes doing what the system needs to do.

What is the purpose of the system?  

The purpose of the system is what it does.

So for example the purpose of the capitalist system is to create massive divisions between people (nodes). Rich and Poor. Luxury and poverty. And  also to use up the planetary system's resources as soon as possible. Capitalists and politicians and normal average nodes all disagree.

Well that is what it does. It is either the purpose or it's not working! One of the two! 

Anyway my system (me) does have trouble interacting with technological systems. I have a trepidation in my transactions with things technological or mechanical. I do not hate the technology. I just haven't got my mental model - part of psychological, neurological system - working as part of the flow-through between me and the machine.

Robert Pirsig in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'  said that the "flight from and hatred of technology is self defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead resides quite comfortably in the circuits of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself." 

I think the coffee machine which is made to be a Dualit Expressiv - is made to express a dualistic understanding of the world. Just like us.
That is:

I and the World,
                         Spiritual/Physical;
                                                     Human/God
                                                                           Ideal /Material
                                                                                                   Subject/Object etc etc.

It is the way we've seen the world particularly in the West - through Descartes and Newton and others. It structures and fashions our perception. It's part of the perception filter thing I was talking about in my last post.  

Maybe my coffee maker got so freaked out by the sudden realisation of the complexity of everything and the collapse of its world-view as understood through cartesian dualism. And "KAPOOSH!"  - actually it was more "KAPOOSHshshshshshshsh".

It became conscious of itself in relation to it's position in a system much bigger than the coffee maker. It had been a fish in a pond unaware of it's postion in the pond because it's universe was the pond. Suddenly being plucked out of the pond by a Heron and seeing the pond - very briefly, before being swallowed - from the outside, probably unable to make sense of what it sees, rather than thinking, "oh now I get it!", just thought

"Aggghhhhhggaggahhhahgggghhgghhhh!!" 

How my Dualit Expressiv gained this awareness without the aid of a Heron, I don't know.

Maybe it was just clogged with dried up milk!   








   

   

Old cheese and world health - The destructive force of creation and the creative force of destruction

Old cheese and world health - The destructive force of creation and the creative force of destruction 

So the old cheese from the last post had effects. Destructive and creative.

The forces of destruction and those of creation are the Ying and Yang of Taoism, the opposing forces of the dialectic in Marx's Historical Materialism.

It is how systems operate.

Other than the old chestnut of the need for something to be destroyed in order to create space for something else, destruction and creation are part of the fundamental force. Reality isn't about things -it's about the relationship between things.

Things are born, they have growth life, decay life and death. Everything is this!

Things come into being and grow and decay and die. Every movement 'of a finger' (thanks Keith) sparks a set of processes affecting other parts of the system. 

Most creation is without intention. In fact even creation with intention isn't really caused by the intention. The intention itself is caused by something else - or some things else.  

The Universe.
                   The Galaxies.
                                        The Solar Systems.
                                                                      The Planetary system.

                                                                                                           The Ecosystems.

The physical, chemical, biological, sociological, psychological and multitudinous other systems - all caused and causing at the same time.  Causation is complex.

All things come into being (brought into being), and die having touched and affected other things.

And in relationships with other things, setting off processes, sparking formations of systems.

Without the relationships, sustained by the systems, things that come into being would immediately die - at the exact point of birth. So cannot be considered to exist. And so could not have birth or death. And so I cannot speak of it.

Destruction is an essential element in this.

And yet we - I'm thinking less cosmically now - and so when I say "we" I refer to people (humans) rather than everything and every relationship between every thing that we know of or has been conceived (by humans)  - we people, in "today's society", have a bit of a downer on destruction in general. I don't mean a downer on just wars, and acts of violence ( I think it's ok to have a downer on wars and acts of violence - call me old fashioned...) There is a negative connotation to the word. It is seen as a bad thing. Creation is good, destruction is bad.

But every act of creation requires an act of destruction. Writing this is destructive and creative.

Sketching people on trains is an act of wanton destruction.

A blank sheet of paper, pure and perfect, is destroyed by physically scarring it with graphite. The life of the blank sheet is destroyed. It's blank sheetedness, with the cool deliberation of a psychopath, brought an end.

Potential gone.
Potential achieved.

Destroyed by creation.