Remember Alias from my previous blogs?
Alias goes shopping for a pair of size 8 or 9 shoes, depending on the shape and style. To his disappointment all size 8 and 9’s, being the most common sizes, have sold out. He speaks to the Manager as to why the manufacturer doesn’t produce more of these two sizes as they are the most popular, he’s told this would be discriminatory against people with smaller/larger feet. Baffled he leaves the store and passes a gourmet deli he once frequented, sadly it has been forced to close inspite of running a booming business, selling high quality cheese, fish and smallgoods. The owner retired and sold the business, the new owner replaced all the quality products with cheap low-grade ones, ending up bankrupt within six months. By now, Alias had found a small supermarket that sells the same high- quality goods he cherished, the demand for the goods is immense. However, the goods are frequently ‘out of stock’, sometimes for a week or more. When Alias enquired, a staff member explained “the owner has a monthly budget for buying stock and not a supply and demand basis”. Bewildered, Alias finished his grocery shopping and went home to fry a couple of free range, imported eggs. He noticed the toast bread he bought in good faith was gluten free and spiced with aniseed. Trying to drown his sorrows with ‘caffeine free’ coffee, a fact he had overlooked in the shop, he also noticed the milk he bought was lactose free, strawberry and chilli flavoured almond milk. The same day, Alias received an email asking for a review on the almond milk he had bought. It wasn’t a request for his opinion, just a rating from zero to ten. Trying to give it a zero, it came up as an error by the automated system. Alias, who would rather have drunk warm beer than fusion-cuisine milk, was confused. He sat down to read the newspaper, in preference to watching the on-line news because print doesn’t allow for pop ups. Adding to his confusion there was news about a campaign for a more inclusive society, led by a member of an exclusive club in alliance with an exclusive religious cult. Trying to clear his mind before his upcoming dental appointment, Alias turned on the TV, only to be warned of yet another ‘Mother of all Storms’ and he pondered; ‘Storms seem to have a lot of mothers’. Alerted, he called his mother- in law, who was very conscious of her hair style and advised her not to venture outside until the storm had passed. Seeking tranquillity, he switched the channel and watched some ‘formula one’ racing. Later, on the way to the dentist, he noticed the freeway he was driving on resembled a formula one racetrack, people driving erratically, weaving, and suddenly crossing up to four lanes at high speed without indicating. He wondered whether they valued life at all. Alias made it to the dentist safely, was reassured of his good dental health, but not discharged before being lectured for the 98th time, on how to brush his teeth. Back home he turned the heater on high and downed a large scotch, for it was freezing cold in fact, the fifth exceptionally cold year in a row. Surfing the internet for answers, Alias found that climate experts predicted the dawn of a new ice age as an adverse effect of global warming. Gradually, confusion became too mild a word to describe Alias’ altered, distorted state of mind. Assured, he concluded that it was caused by disorganised and/or unrealistic people.
Alias 2070 – Continued from ‘Alias 2050’ posted November 2020
Alias has decided to embark on yet another time travel adventure. Since everything significant and spectacular happened in 2050, he thought it best to let things settle and make 2070 his destination. He bumps into his old friend ‘Alas’, who had made the same decision. Alas is an on-line con-artist who follows in the footsteps of his father, a bank robber, who was made redundant when the cashless economy kicked in. Together, after a night on the booze in a robot operated pub, Alias and Alas embark on a fact-finding mission exploring their new world, which appears to be plodding along in crime and corruption much the same as the old one. Nothing much has changed in the USA and Russia. Both are still ruled by the financial elite. China is now a flourishing democracy following a turbulent era of regime changes. All its surviving ‘wolf warrior diplomats’ are now working as shepherds! The Tory party in Britain has been replaced with the Islamic party. In Germany, the MDU (Muslim Domination Union) has taken over the ruling position of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and North and South Korea are happily united. A vast middle class has emerged globally, but sadly, human life is still the cheapest and most dispensable commodity in various regions. Alias and Alas are delighted and thankful for the new universal super vaccine ‘Astrapfizamodernica’, pandemics are now a thing of the past. On the other hand, and to Alas’ financial demise, the most valuable crypto currency, toilet paper, has crashed and become worthless; ‘good for nothing’, except for wiping people’s backsides.
Loosing Touch
Sometimes we lose touch with friends or relatives, but no matter where on the planet they may dwell with modern technology this is easily fixed. Politicians and their parties are increasingly growing out of touch with the people. They appear to live in a world of a self-righteous academia focused on financial status, but are incapable of understanding the most basic concepts of human requirements for survival, or the prosperity of the nation. Very simply, when the health department is starved of funding, ambulances ramping at the emergency wards or being turned away, people are dying of a preventable disease because the government is busy trying to produce favourable economical figures for the next budget and doesn’t want to fund a vaccine, we can say they have ‘lost the plot’ and are unfit to govern.
When, according to the Finance Minister, wage stagnation is a deliberate design feature of the government’s economic architecture while MP’s grant themselves a substantial pay rise circa half the amount of a low income earner’s wage, the same day these low income workers have their penalty rates cut and the Prime Minister talks about abolishing the minimum wage and taxing pensioners, they have lost touch with all morality and decency. This is social distancing to the extreme. When the Treasurer is telling people to get good, well-paying jobs, which are in fact non-existent and that pensioners shouldn’t drive cars so they can survive on a meagre pension, they have not only lost touch, but are totally removed from the real world. In short, Personal ambition, the little sister of ‘corporate greed’ takes priority over the ‘greater good’.
A Federal Treasurer once declared: “the aging population is an economic time bomb for the national economy. Is this all we have become? No heart, no soul, just an undesirable financial burden. Aren’t double dipping young politicians an economic time bomb? Fifty years of hard work and paying taxes accounts for absolutely nothing to arrogant MP’s who have lost touch with everything that matters.
The foundations of democracy are under attack. Corporate crooks’ political donations are buying votes and whole elections in the best rotting democracies money can buy. Shadowed by their underpaid workers, their sins are often white-washed through some tax free or tax deductable daughter company posing as a charity, thus elevating those crooks to Messianic status for gullible people. In its core, a democracy has a government by the people, of the people and for the people; ‘keep dreaming’. Perhaps I am wrong to dream. In reality, the people do rule. They are noisy, ‘out of touch’ minority groups, imposters and fake, self- proclaimed authorities, acting as a ‘political correctness police’.
Conflict Resolution
The best conflict resolution is prevention i.e. before being offended by a remark ask yourself is this an over-reaction on a simple comment where no offence is intended. Do not appease troublemakers, authoritarian people, or rogue regimes. Appeasement only makes them feel empowered to become more aggravated and violent, thus it instigates conflict. Do not surrender when you are acting or fighting in defence. Surrender will not resolve the conflict but allow the aggressors to ‘cut you up slowly’. Some conflicts, such as the ones in the Middle East will never be resolved, so long as profit driven foreign interference exists. Profitable, in this context, may be financial, lifestyle focused or political. Mysteriously, whenever the president of some superpower is running for re-election or some dictator is trying to re-assert his/her diminishing leader status, there usually seems to be a threat of war in the Middle East, the south China sea, or elsewhere, uniting their country under the banner of security, based on comfort in ‘the familiar’. This is traditionally backed up with some form of provocation, the likes of a missile launch or an incursion into another’s territory, making it appear more real. War profiteers may also be so-called ‘peace activist’ campaigners, the likes of the humble high school or university drop-out intellectual, ‘NGO angels’, or failed presidential candidates, all who have found a second calling for a comfortable taxpayer and charity funded expat lifestyle!
I wonder why NGO’s generally target free democratic countries, criticising their leadership’s mistakes and failures, while lacking the courage to protest against rouge regimes and their ruthless despotic leaders who, in violent breach of international law, commit genocide and other horrendous atrocities. Locking back at the 1970’s, when Western European anti-government campaigners and terrorist gangs such as the ‘Red Army Faction’ were financed by East Germany to try and destabilise the democratic West, it makes me think; are today’s rogue regimes supporting the often radical and biased ‘peace and human rights activists’, in an effort to create division and conflict in the free world, thus paving the road for their imperialistic ambitions?
David and Goliath
In the wake of my previous blog, I ponder: Hmmm, China is running and domineering a self-devised, world-wide belt and trade road infrastructure initiative claiming it would be a win-win for all parties involved. Hitler devised the Autobahn initiative as an infrastructure project in preparation of a high-speed military assault on neighbouring countries whilst signing non-aggression treaties with them, all of which he broke. The CCP Government is now beating its chest, threatening and belittling Australia for cancelling its involvement in the belt and road project, calling the move a ‘suicidal attack’. My mind visualizes ‘Goliath the Giant’ performing the same sort of ‘Monkey Dance’, just before he was killed by little David. Can you see a picture emerge?
World of Empires
Lacking self-confidence, people often endeavour to build empires and they spend the rest of their lives defending them by keeping their gates shut whilst indulging in self-praise, trying to silence any challenge. ‘Closed shops’ (workplace empires) are plentiful, where bad organisational and behavioural habits are guarded with passion. This phenomena appears in all sorts of fraternities, cultural institutions such as sports and the arts, various action groups and in exclusive clubs, where rank & title are misused to the point of emperor status. The most deranged of them all would have to be those who form gangs or cults, criminal or terrorist, including state terrorist, empires. The purpose of an empire is to conquer, rule and exploit. This is an ambition born of mental weakness, suffered by those who cannot even conquer their own mind. The desire to rule signifies fear and insecurity. Imperialistic establishments operate like a virus. They return in various forms of disguise, from the socially intimidating, via economically oppressing, to militaristically violent and are led by fake angels posing as saviours and heroes. Imperialistic dictators often meet a miserable demise, as in the case of Caesar, Hitler, Saddam Hussain, Bin Laden, Gaddafi and others. Yet today we have people following in these tyrants’ footsteps, approaching their ‘D-Day’.
On a non-violent plain, we’ve seen emperors suffer a slow psychological death in complacency, accompanied by progressive incompetence, unaware their empire is crumbling around them.
Dictators habitually grant themselves extraordinary rights and powers out of fear of exposure, because they are unfit to govern under democratic and moral law. It doesn’t require much skill, courage or knowledge to seize power in deceiving the masses. Therefore, dictatorship and imperialism are a form of weakness and incompetence.
The wise conceal their capacity to strike. Only the weak and powerless feel the need to impress or threaten with displays of force, hence a dictator’s military parade signifies nothing more than a teenage monkey dance, in short, it is pure bluff.
What a wonderful World
Surfing the news for highlights today I pondered. No word from Donald Trump; he’s probably gone golfing. Covid-19 has drifted into the background, didn’t even deserve a mention. North Korea seems to have faded into insignificance. Nothing new from China, just the usual incompetent bullying and threatening. Reality TV actors’ scandals have been exposed trying to make the shows look more real. The ‘ex royals’ Harry and Meghan telling Oprah what the media, who pays them, wants to hear. That’s it. If this is the worst, most breaking news, we indeed live in a wonderful world.
Deliver the Goods
Cut the bullshit. Talk is cheap, to fulfil a promise is what counts. It seems most politicians have never progressed from their bragging teenage years when the buck stopped with the rhetoric. The Roman emperors provided the people with bread and circuses trying to win their support. Our contemporary politicians withdraw the bread to help pay for more circuses whilst failing to deliver the goods. Pay your debts and don’t excuse crime. Excuses lead to impunity. Impunity creates repeat offenders, from the humble petty thief all the way to the political tyrant. If you genuinely want to do something, e.g.travel, study or join a club, don’t waste your time talking about it. Unless you actually commit to it you are not genuine.
If you run a shop, keep your shelves well stocked. If you run a restaurant, have what’s on the menu, if you are unable to do so, take it off the menu. If you work in the trades, turn up on time and finish the job. Forget the fancy ads and surveys. Most of all, be fair to the customer, your employees and yourself. The written word is powerful, though it only has value once materialised. A teacher or an author who doesn’t do as he/she preaches is an imposter. Philosophy in itself is useless – it only has value once implemented and cultivated.
“Use words only when necessary” (St. Francis of Assisi).
Endangered Species
Remember the Mad max movies, ‘Water world’, or ‘The day after’ portraying various post apocalyptical scenarios?
All this has now come to pass, although in a different version. We humans, live in a physically mostly intact world, but we have to a substantial extent, lost sanity, common sense, morality, and our natural thought process and communication skills, such as the ability to reason.
An army of Orwellian style ‘Big Brothers’ are trying hard to control every aspect of our lives, spoon-feeding fabricated truths to their unassuming subjects. Self-thought and knowledge are the enemy. Face to face conversations are increasingly discouraged and substituted by apparatus, for this is the only method of communication the electronic surveillance agencies cannot remotely monitor.
As the last few generations of self-thinkers, approach extinction, we watch helplessly as endangered species like ‘sober thought’, ‘paid’ authors and artists of any kind vanish from the social spectrum. Not to forget responsibility, the most outsourced and endangered virtue. Let me add ‘Mental toughness’ which is not valued or cultivated any more. People are easily upset or offended. Literature is edited by ‘Sensitivity Readers’. Self-victimisation is rife and encouraged.
Conscience, the moral sense of right and wrong, bears the power to work miracles when cultivated with integrity. It deserves to be removed from the endangered species list and nurtured with priority, by our guardians and educational authorities, thus enhancing the worth of the ‘New Normal’.
An Altar Boy
Circa late 1960’s, in a Catholic town, in a predominately Catholic state of Catholic southern Germany, what does a good Catholic boy do? He joins the ranks of the ‘Altar Boys’, so there I was, a halo growing ‘Saint seedling’. Living in a non-secular society our state school curriculum included grooming in catholic rituals, text, song, and protocol. Altar boy training offered a blend of fun and struggle, the latter, referring to some Latin prayers we were supposed to learn but gave up trying. As we all knelt around the altar, the priest in the centre praying the ‘Confiteor’, we just used to mumble in pretence, except at the point of the chest beating “Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa”, when the volume increased tenfold, then dropped back to a mumbling in pianissimo for the remainder of the prayer. ‘Fortune favours the volunteers’ was the motto of a group of us altar boys who always put our hands up when the priest came to school asking for assistance at weddings or funerals. First of all, this meant a few hours off school. Then, at funerals we had the privilege of riding in the priest’s car, waving to all the other people who had to walk from the church to the cemetery. We felt like celebrities. Traditionally, the family of the deceased would make a donation to the priest and the altar boys. Naturally, this had made our day as we went back to school, each of us carrying the monetary value of approx. six ice creams in their pockets. Weddings, being a happy event, paid double that. The altar boys’ job was a busy one. Besides the decorative task of standing in line, hands folded in prayer and looking important, there were various other tasks to complete, such as passing the collection box around, carrying the offerings to the altar or lighting and extinguishing all the candles. At the ‘Corpus Christi’ procession we carried heavy crosses and banners for two hours. At high masses and funerals, one of us had to swing the incense pot from side to side, engulfed in drowsing fragrant smoke. On one occasion, at a funeral, I baffled the priest and the congregation during the ‘dust to dust’ ritual, when I took three un-balanced steps backwards to avoid falling into the grave. I just wasn’t ready to turn back into dust.
For initiation, any self-respecting altar boy was expected to taste the mass wine without getting caught at least once during his career. Getting dressed for mass was an ordeal. Finding a fitting size and colour match of the three-piece outfit (skirt, shirt, and collar) seemed to lie beyond the power of prayer. Oversize skirts were rolled up to create a makeshift belt which would often loosen during mass and begin to slide down, leaving the audience wondering why we kept scratching our hips. Nobody is perfect including altar boys, so we committed our fair share of bloopers. In preparation for mass, we were divided into two groups, each one delegated to sit at the right or left side of the altar. One Sunday, halfway through the service, it dawned on me that I had placed myself on the wrong flank. Taking this minor mistake more seriously than it actually was, I suddenly decided to cross to the other side, right in front of the priest who paused his sermon staring at me, amidst giggles from the congregation and my fellow altar boys. Considering that politicians sometimes cross the floor in parliament, I found my act was harmless, even though I was the talk of the town that day. The Parish rewarded us for our efforts with annual excursions to places like Switzerland, as well as a Christmas party, where we were served a meal, shown a ‘colour movie’, and sent home with a book. The genres were tailored by the parish counsel to match the recipient’s presumed interests, such as science, sport, or art. Mysteriously, I always scored the adventure novels. During the Christmas and Easter period, the Church was an altar boy’s second home. We confessed sins we didn’t commit, just to be seen visiting the confessional, to be able to serve at mass. One Christmas, harbouring a freshly purified soul as usual, I was rostered on for midnight mass. This was no easy feat, for it went on for two and a half hours, most of which we would spend standing, holding a stand-up candle in a glass bowl, about the height of my chin. Entertained by our angelic church choir, who’s only handicap was that they didn’t know when to call it a day, my head sank forward. Next thing I remember is waking up to a smouldering smell, still standing upright. One ‘Ave Maria’ by Schubert and an ‘Ave Verum’ by Mozart later the smell had gone, leaving me to think I had imagined it. Once I reached home exhausted, my mother asked what happened to my fringe and eyebrows!
On this note I like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and please, beware of candles.