Confession of Addiction

This year began the 3rd decade of my life. I'm really holding out for the third time lucky to kick in. Today is also the day I quit weed, hopefully breaking free from my habitual use of it. So i suppose i'm also not waiting for luck at all, but trying to be strong enough to exert some life changing willpower over my mistakes, to bring me back to who i am. 

It's been an off and on cycle since I started back when i was 15. I fell in with what I thought was a good crowd of friends, people who treated me fairly and didn’t mock me too much (or at least more than I could bear). It was all I'd ever hoped to get in school; Just a few kids I could knock around with, talk about books, play games and spend the weekends at each other's homes taking turns to share our PC or consoles. It went well for a time,Playing halo until the early hours of the morning and spending our lunch breaks listening to harry potter audiobooks. But then someone got the idea to try weed.

I remember when it first got brought up; we were playing cards on a lunch table in the dartmouth block. It was quite an open corridor, central for lunch time traffic and I remember being paranoid the discussion would be overheard. I was the odd one out, the one who wouldn't just agree with the hierarchy of the group. See it was John that suggested it, and John was the rugby team captain from a rough village. Not the sort of fellow used to people saying no to him, but I did, I argued it. It didn’t last long. I waited a week or so, hoping that the notion would fizzle out, but it seemed everyone but me was determined to break bad and try a drug. So began a fortnight of peer pressure and subtle manipulation to get me in on the idea. 

I remember crying on my bed, staring at the design of the ceiling paper, convinced that I would lose my only friends if I didn't say yes to this. The peer pressure crippled me, and social anxiety wracked me for days. 

Now, I come from a single parent household, and so the lads knew the best opportunity would be a weekend at mine. Half the parent means half the risk. We would Have a seemingly innocuous gaming session playing halo and then when my mum headed to bed, we would roll up and try cannabis for the first time.

The decision was made. I would compromise my values of sobriety and clean lungs. Now when I commit to something, I give it my all. So when the question arose, who would roll it up i said i would. We would wrap the paper around a pencil at first. Gently topping up the joint from the top down. It was messy but it worked. As such I instantly became respected and indispensable to the group. 

I don't want to regale stories of being stoned, of how strange it was to feel your toes tingle. Or how funny youtube became. Most people know what it's like to have a joint. Before long we were pooling our pocket money and standing out waiting on “dealers time”. I remember arguments about who paid the most, because I was poorer than the others and $10 was much harder to come by for me. There were arguments about who was ‘smoking it right’ and wasting it. My friends conduct while at my house became at times utterly disrespectful and i remember at one time outright demanding one of them leave.
I don’t look back on those times as fond childhood memories, and whilst at the time it was fun, the cost to my life and myself has been too great to measure.

Smoking weed was the first time I compromised myself to become something I wasn't to fit in, and how I began sleepwalking through my own life, casting shade on who I was as an individual.
I can’t honestly say i wouldn’t have ended up trying drugs later in life, i am open minded and inquisitive and rarely take a rule or a law at face value - i prefer to construct my own moral coding and decide if the law or restriction has merit. I would argue to this day that the legalisation and further research of all illicit substances would benefit humanity. However one thing is clear to me- i would not have smoked at such a young age. 

If i take an honest look at my family history, its pretty clear alcoholism runs rife through it, buty more so the ‘addictive gene’. I don't know why but as a kid I saw patterns in people's behaviour very easily and could tell that certain people were chained into some bad habits. Perhaps that's how I allowed myself the leeway to continue using cannabis in spite of me knowing it's bad for me. At the time I only really thought about how bad smoking was for the lungs. I never paused for a second to consider the mental health ramifications. The lethargy, the apathy, the temper, the ‘dumbness’ that kicks in when your short term memory is no longer reliable. Its a waste of a human to use it every day, and those that do seem to suffer the same things I did in different measures and to different severities. 

One of my issues is I'm far too clever by half, and so even with me being a zombie can pass as a half decent person. I held jobs, I got my bills paid. But I also lost jobs, and spent my money stupidly. I was brought up with a pretty poor example of how to handle your money, and I knew how damaging it was from an early age (again, much too young). I Was smart enough to know what to avoid. I have always said that i was given more examples of what NOT to do, and things to AVOID in life than i was given a nurturing example. This was in part down to being positioned against the only healthy parental figure i had, my father, by a venomous grandmother and vindictive mother. Divorces hurt. The other parts were poor role models through my mother's string of boyfriends, and the traumatic experiences that brings. 

Deep inside myself, was a knowing, an understanding of the things I must avoid in order to escape the same traps my mother, and her side of the family had fallen into.  Weed clouded that part of me, and eroded my will to commit to being a better version of myself.

I was also unable to study in higher education, after spending my teenage years hearing about how smart i was, and having people ask me what i want to do with myself out of a genuine intrigue into my intellect, i was starved of any challenge that might have further honed my mind. Instead i kept my habitual use of cannabis and worked as a laborer for my uncle- following the EXACT same life path of my bullies and the ne'er-do-wells of my area with one heart wrenching caveat- I wasn't getting a qualification, i wasn't attending a vocational college. So even the kids who had no options outside of manual labour - were a step above me on their career paths.
I was discouraged from 6th form by both my family “what are you doing there” and the bullies, having fabricated accusations of racism by an 11 year old, so that his cousins - 3 of them- would jump me after school. To this day I have a recurring back injury from that assault. No justice was served on either side of that. The police botched the arrest and ended up pepper spraying a disabled autistic kid so charges were dropped. I never got a penny from them to replace the bicycle they destroyed. And I was never helped by my family to get into more productive avenues of education. I was being punished for my sins. At 16 and 17 through to my early 20’s i was an outcast in my family. Happy to point the finger at the mistake I'd made as a 15 year old. Happy to condemn me to the addict within me - that i had inherited from them all both in genetics and in behavioural examples. I was left to go it alone. No olive branches, no safety net. Just a reminder of how much i had fucked up, because it conveniently distracted them from how poor a road i had been set on.
I might add that outside of a divorced home, I also lost my grandmother to terminal cancer, followed shortly by my grandfather's rapid decline, all of which preceded the slow and rapid decline of my mother's health leading to ANOTHER diagnosis of terminal cancer.
As such they had their own crosses to bear, and a wayward teenager never made it high on their list of problems, instead the victim mentality that justified their addictive behaviours further sunk its claws in to justify their attitudes that I was inflicting upon them- that this was my problem.

Now i do acknowledge my part in this, dont get me wrong i am aware of how acutely stupid it was, and how poorly i conducted myself as a result of my habitual cannabis use. I have beaten myself up enough over it, and have done everything I can to repair that damage. Sadly it's too late to reclaim some things. I'm trying to move forward with a healthy glance back at the steps I took, and the influences that set me on that road. But in reflection: The years between birth and 23 were filled with constant trauma and stress for me. This is not even MENTIONING the fact that im 6ft 9, and the consequences of bullying and the pains of being so tall.

The previous paragraph serves as examples of what kept me down, of why it wasn't easy to stop, and how slippery the slope of drug use became. I saw friends taking stronger stuff. Thankfully I kept myself out of those situations knowing the harmful nature of peer pressure. I didn't want those things normalised, I tried to be a voice of reason only to be laughed at and mocked for having a stick up my ass. Cocaine and ‘pills’ in general were man made chemicals - at least weed grew from soil. I could trust that about it. I suppose i managed to keep myself somewhat on the straight and narrow, given how many examples of stronger substances ruining lives i’ve seen. Things could have been MUCH MUCH worse. 

I’m not sure where to go from here, unsure as to what to say next. I wanted to write an open letter to myself and anyone who would read it as catharsis about my addiction and ultimately my defeat of it.

I think it's worth mentioning how many times i’ve quit it. Sometimes I would simply run out of money, other times my tolerance would get so high and it was costing too much money, other times I would snap into realisations of its dangers and move away from it. Sometimes i even realised that some of the mental health issues i struggled with were it’s fault and would try and purge myself of its influence. But time and again i would forget those realisations and the difficulties of life would lead me back to it. The sweet numbness that makes you forget your suffering - all the while making life harder for you and guaranteeing you will suffer more.

It was a difficult task to separate the Depression, the anxiety, the mania, the ADHD, the sneaking suspicion that I'm high functioning autistic. (All i mean by that is you wouldn't be able to tell). I didnt know what i was born with, what developed because of my childhood, and what I did to myself through using cannabis. But as i got older, one thing became clearer. I dont think like everyone else, I think faster than everyone else, and I care about things other people dont.
I'm not ‘normal’ And my baseline of sobriety is a VERY difficult place to exist without a proper support network. I’ve got to function, ive got to hold down a job. I cant stop when im having days of hypersensitivity. I cant not go into work when my mania has kept me awake until 4 in the morning. I have to pretend like I'm normal, and weed was a way of making my mind quieter and making that task seem surmountable.

I’m free of it now, and after a brief hiccup due to covid and the insanity that being at home all day and loosing my job, i’ve managed to kick the addiction in the teeth. I’ve never felt SURE i will never touch it again. I suppose thats because i’ve never vowed to never smoke it again in any meaningful way before. But this time its been promised, sworn, with explicit words that are etched into the fabric of who i am.
My coping mechanisms are this, the writing, the open hearted pouring of my self into words.
Music- learning bass, and Lifting - getting stronger. They all help keep me stable and enable me to wrestle the demons of mental instability and ‘not being like everyone else’.

Thanks for making it this far, if you did. If you feel addicted to ANYTHING, in ANY way and would like some help. I’m here for you, perhaps in an unqualified way, but also perhaps, in the most qualified way. I know what its like.

Go with peace.

Panic Demic

PANIC-DEMIC

The global climate at the moment is one of private fear and public ineptitude.
We sit in our homes, worried about the future of our loved ones, our livelihoods, our homes, Incomes and Assets all stand to be collateral in this Virus's path. 

Whilst a great majority of adult humans are happy with a sentiment of “Don’t politicise this, can we leave it alone, its bad enough as it is” I am abjectly opposed to this. NOW is the time to evaluate our governments, our policies, our institutions. THIS is the time to evaluate how well our democracies and our corporate personhood service our humanities, our sociology, our anthropology; When they are ALL so at risk. When the slightest oversight, or neglect, or indifference can swing actual lives in the balance.
When Crisis hits our shores our responses to them are great tools to display where our loyalties lie. Be it war, disease, famine; It's the responses at large from the government, and to an arguably larger measure, the corporations that provide our capitalist fundamentals a market in which to operate. When the time is nigh, and the fate of humanity is being affected on a planet-wide issue, are we all really going to not think about it because its stressful to stay at home and watch netflix? Is putting up with your children on a full time basis so hard as to scupper your ability to disseminate information and think rationally?

Moreover, Is a two party system puppet-show really enough political diversity to keep competition honest, fair and serving the people its electorate are DUTY bound to serve?

Vitriolic, perhaps, but poignant nonetheless. As Privileged members of a first world society, we owe it to every starving, uneducated, diseased, below-the-breadline human caught up in suffering. We should be upstanding on an international level, and hold our societies up to a higher standard than capitalistic profiteering and ignoring social policy until it takes a GLOBAL PANDEMIC to rectify something which has been inevitable since we discovered the ‘germ’ and understood how they propagate.

Let's all take a quick look at how this Social Isolation has affected the world:

- Working from home has been suggested, encouraged, and enacted by the VAST majority of companies. It has become financially viable to allow their employees that freedom, in order for them to not lose out on profitability in these uncertain times.

- People are panicked, afraid that the systems that supply us, the infrastructure that keeps us safe, is looking like its inadequate, and so people have panic bought PPE, the necessities, and its left the elderly out on a dangerous limb. 

-Government response has been varied globally, ranging from disastrous, to over the top. 

There is no precedent, there is “seemingly” no way to prepare for this (we will get into that later*) 

-Privilege is suddenly drawn into question, louder than ever. Got food in the cupboard you realise you aren't ever going to eat, even when an emergency has your food supplies this low. Can't buy pasta, but you STILL aren't going to crack open that tin of chickpeas, no matter how bad things get, we can still trawl the supermarkets and find SOMETHING nicer that that ill-fated tin of lentils. 

-Privilege is highlighted globally, look at places like China, and India- With denser populations, lower standards of education per capita and more lax health and safety practices. Self isolation is not an option for quite a large part of the world right now. Its a scary consequence of inequality (and in my opinion a modern consequence of old-world colonialism, and the global disparity of wealth and quality of life- This is another issue we will get into later, and cover at great length)

-The elderly are put at risk, but old age as a state of being, is being shown to not be as important as we would hope. A suggestion of herd immunity, putting those as young as 45+ on a “sacrifice for our economies sake” - this is a chopping block that makes any politician ready to make a cut seem like the devil himself. Sure our grandparents had a good innings, but are you really ready to sacrifice their lives to the gods of capitalism?

-The importance of infrastructure operators has become clear. Amazon warehouse workers, couriers, fast food operators, gas station employees, supermarket shelf-stackers, hospitality suddenly seems like the greatest luxury, coffee, ice cream, trips to the arts. All impossible now, and yet first on the list of things to do when this is all over. Suddenly, without them, the world seems inoperable. Yet the world over, they go underpaid, unappreciated, treated like shit by the consumer and the fruits of their labour, the sweat from their brow; ALL filtered to the top of the ladder, to sit top heavy with all the gain, profit and success sitting in the pockets of a few. A few who are happy to keep marginalised the working class- that is the state of being for MOST of the modern world, MOST of your peers. THE VAST MAJORITY OF HUMANITY; Workers.

WORKING FROM WHERE YOU WORK BEST.

A home office was never a bad idea, if it can be done, then why not let it be done?
Reduction of traffic certainly makes the school run easier, but it also has the added benefit of reducing an individual's carbon footprint. If companies were happier to recruit people to work from their studies, their living rooms, or even their laptop via coffee shop wouldn’t they have a wider pool of people to get talent from? That pool could include people with disabilities, raging far a wide, who struggle getting to and from an office. It could help those with social difficulties, physical obstacles needn’t be overcome. This is the age of the internet, most of us are blessed enough with an internet connection that has the world at our fingertips. Computing power has never been easier and as cheap to come by, so why not let people tackle their workloads from their OWN workstation.

Now of COURSE not every industry can be transitioned so easily, and some never will be able to. Childcare, healthcare and other public services still require a physicality to their work, but administration, data entry. Hell even customer service could be offered from a mobile phone. There are countries out there that have broken experimental ground, trialing various forms of work from home; From visit the office once a week to touch base, to a complete office style setup on a desk at the workers domicile.
The results have been astounding, and capitalists with their million strong workforces wouldn't want you to realise the reality:

PRODUCTIVITY IS INCREASED, RESIGNATIONS DECLINE, WORKED HOURS INCREASE.

It almost makes the mind boggle in disbelief. We are after all an indoctrinated generation or three that have had capitalism, and its propaganda spoon fed to us like sugar from our very inception. School teaches us to be career minded, parents set examples of hard work and professional development. The media sells us our hearts desires at every turn, and for those who can't afford it, it trains the mind and heart to want what it cant have. Our dreams can only be bought, and the money can only be earnt through a ‘real’ job. One with benefits, holiday pay, and a company car (with tax deductible mileage).

Instead paint this picture for yourself:

Your company knows that you are more productive when you are happy. They ask only for a 4 day work week, but offer a ‘market average salary’ So you aren't getting paid any less for being part time. You are an early riser, and after all the kids need organising for school. If you don't do it, who will? You get the kids dressed, fed and ready for school. By this point you’ve already read your work inbox, the weekends emails weren’t left unattended, because you clocked in two hours, helping out with an organisational disaster that HAD to be addressed immediately. Hey you don't care, your company respects your time, so you appreciate them enough to have worked on one of your three days off. Only a couple of hours after all, don't need much focused attention to be productive. Thankfully, even though is a monday, your Inbox looks free from the accumulated stress that gathers over a weekend without attention.
You take the kids to school for 9. Traffic isnt too bad and you get home for 9:30, but you clocked in at 7am on the toilet reading your emails. No one checks every minute of your attendance, they check every moment of your work. They care about targets, customer satisfaction, service standards and product delivery. You dont have to stand in line for a 9-5 shifts to get that done, after all you have a flair for what you do since you found the freedom of this new employer.
Kids dropped off, the smell of brewing coffee in the air as you put on your good shirt for the skype conference call. Standard monday protocol, speak with supervisors, receive weekly targets, expectations of labour from you.
Monday was easy, Wednesday was harder. Your kid caught a cold, and is feeling self pitying. So you’ve got an articulate 7 year old asking you questions while you work. Not to worry, get him tucked in on the couch in front of the T.V and move to the desk in the study (you set it up when you got the job, intending to spend 9-5 there every day, but have yet to put your laptop back on the desk from when you got up for a glass of wine three weeks ago while doing a late night number crunch) Kids being looked after by its parent, you are still at work. WIN-WIN right, aside from the periodic distraction. No worse than that leaving party/ birthday cake/ person in the office you cannot STAND, but would never be rude to for the sake of your professionalism. Lets be honest, i can’t be the only one here who found that offices operate on highschool policy. Gossip, cliques and demands of tucking your shirt in, and putting a tie on by your superiors.
We don't need any of the above to be productive at a given task, and their absences actually keep you on task. 

Not to even touch on the idea of people with social difficulties, like anxiety, that can cripple ‘office integration’ How many people are out there, miserable in their job. Not feeling included, appreciated or even recognised as being a hard worker…..all because they don't have the self confidence to join people on a works night out loosely veiled as a team building exercise

Now not everyone can work from home, so let's throw another hypothetical out there, that can benefit everyone. Universal basic income. Hell lets even try the 4 day working week.
I can’t touch on those issues in this document, as they open the rabbit hole of “military spending vs social care budgets” and they involve numbers that, quite frankly, scare the living shit out of me. Your government does not care about you, it does not provide for you, it concedes that you are a life and deserve to not starve or die of disease, but that's about as far as most government policies go with regard to caring about you as an individual. That's why the need to care for one another rests with us, in community and society.

NO PAPER TO WIPE IT AWAY

The market just collapsed. Not the big one run by legalised criminals on wall ST, but the markets round the corner from your house. The people who run shops, the corporations that run supermarkets. Now they cant get products on their shelves as fast as some people want to hoard them. If we use my GCSE level business Diploma (I got a double B grade, so i atleast comprehend what i studied) We can break down whats happened here:

-Market demand shifted due to socio-economic stimulus
-Retailers stock was purchased with higher demand, reflecting that stimulus (Covid panic)

- Retailers were unable to restock in accordance to demand

-Demand does not shift, Retailers missing out on sales

-Product manufacturers rush to meet orders, but productions is too fined tuned to adjust quickly

-Manufacturers take back orders

-Retailers cannot restock

-MEDIA INCREASES PANIC, DEMANDS SURGES FOR A SECOND WAVE

-Customers attend markets with empty shelves, go to next market with a more fearful demeanour

-Pasta, Toilet paper, Hand sanitiser, MEDICAL PPE surge in rarity.

-Scarcity increases value

NOW THIS NEXT BIT HASN'T HAPPENED YET, BUT IT IS LIKELY UNDERWAY RIGHT NOW:

-Manufacturers ramp up production, and spend capital to do so be it in new machines or staff overtime

-Manufacturer increase price to reflect capital spent on production levels 

-Markets increase retail prices to cover cost of higher purchase price

-Customer cannot believe that they are paying a $1 Extra for toilet paper

-MEDIA RUNS OUTRAGE PIECES 

-Fear, demand, outrage surge.

Now what does capitalism, and its free markets offer us right now? I didn’t panic buy pasta, and now i cant eat pasta. No biggie, first world problem. I didn’t panic buy TP, and now im worried when i run out i might not actually be able to find any. Again, no biggie first world problem (albeit one that sorta nudges us back toward 3rd world issues- not being able to cleanly and safely handle faecal matter) But still, we carry on. Medical equipment has been distributed poorly, and now the public are using something incorrectly, and medical staff are -without exaggeration or melorama- catching a disease and DYING. Ok this ones pretty bad, if our healthcare professionals are dying of what people bring into the hospital, the hospital is unsafe and theres no safe place left when it comes to disease. Thats a BIG problem, a REALLY big one, and its a problem that developed nations eradicated in 1847 when Ignaz Semmelweis proposed hand sanitation (washing) before surgery. This pandemic has our eldery worried, our doctors dying and our whole nation indoors waiting for the all clear. 

WHO IS TO BLAME

In the admittedly scant research i have done for this document, trawling the internet for articles on universal income, 4 day working weeks, and the impact of working from home jobs, I realised that many of its purported downsides harm the market, not us. I do not know you, but i’d wager that you wake up 5/7th’s of your days to do something that makes you a WAGE while you see the PROFIT go to someone else. I’d wager you sit in traffic, for at least 30 mins.  I’d wager you don't have enough time for yourself, or your family.
I do not know you, but i know you are not a capitalistic system. I know you are not a profit margin. I know you are not a portfolio. I know you are not a board of investors.

You are a goddamned human being. You deserve better. I know that because ‘better’ has been in the hands of humanity for centuries. Certain governments are doing things differently, not that your newspaper would let you in on that secret, they would much rather you sit in a dark room listening to a fella called Dave tell you they are all controlled by Jews, or lizard men. FEAR THE NEW WORLD ORDER!!
Or, draw your blinds and let the sunlight in. While you are at it, draw back the ideas of nationalism and borders you are so comfortable with. Look to examples set by other nations, other nations that are forgotten about and ignored whilst their currency strengthens and their citizens get happier. To be clear, i'm talking about Finalnds Female cabinet. Im talking about some of the experiments of universal basic income. Im talking about socialist healthcare (like england used to have) But what im really talking about here, SHOULD be a founding principle for any nation founded by humanity.

THE STRENGTH AND THE ABUNDANCE CREATED WITHIN, BENEFITS ALL WITHIN A SOCIETY.

When it comes to who's to blame for this catastrophe's death toll, is a hard answer to give. Im going to take a crack at it. Its US.

We let the media go unaccounted, free from fact check and without consequence of lies for centuries.

We let our politics be handed over to the next man, to our MP (who we dont write or call, or even know the name of) We never even KNEW about local council meetings, let alone show up to them and give the voice of the people a seat in the room.

We let our political parties forget us, and in-fight like rival private school boys at a rowing event.
We let the people who have power and influence in our society be those who already have power and influence.

We let the rich get richer, and the poor get marginalised and oppressed.

We let the wealth float to the top.

In reality, its the media's fault for letting the citizens be entertained instead of informed. Its the media's fault for parading puppet shows to us dressed as political debate, and its our fault for believing it and not fighting it hard enough. 

DONT BUY NEWSPAPERS, NOT EVEN FOR TOILETROLL 

This virus stopped the world in its tracks, and we can see which governments have got their pants down. The U.K is mid-way through a decade long plan to leave a regulating body of politics (the EU) to make the rules up as it goes along (like it always used to before that bloody EU showed up and spoilt the fun) So that they can maintain and attract business as a tax-dodging haven for corporations, all the while butchering one of the greatest global achievements of socialist policy: The NHS. They take those chopped up bits and sell them to American pharma companies so the stiff upper lips can be as stinking rich as the Wall streeters across the pond. I might be delusional, misguided or just have done one too many drugs, but that's how these roses smell to me. Complete horseshit. 

The NHS cannot handle this, it could not handle it on a good day. As we stay at home to flatten a curve that will be sharp enough to cut regardless, let's just remember the austerity, the budget cuts, the lack of pay rises. Lets not forget the privatisation of the Railways, the Royal Mail and lets not pretend we aren't watching THE EXACT SAME THING happen again. 

The death toll in England is in a word Unacceptable. We should not accept this was inevitable because we are in a global crisis. Not every country acted the same, not every country went heavy handed, not every country was fair to its citizens. From suggestions of ‘herd immunity’ in one place to welding peoples doors in another, this has made governments show their true colours. 

These colours are the shades that illustrate our leaders when they have NO CHOICE but to wake up, and serve their populace. Scott Morrison tried to ignore the bushfires while he holidayed. With covid, he has a different fire under his arse. No shock to see people are slightly more impressed with him now he's in public every day, on stage giving us updates. Lets talk about leaders who matter, and who saved human lives. Hearts still beating in chests. Kids who still have grandparents.

New Zealand's response was Life saving. As was Germanies. Take a look at what their governments DID while others DID NOT, and ask yourself the next time this happens (and it will) do you want to hear about how Jeremy corbyn will introduce 3d printers to each hospital, and upload a database of blueprints for things like ventilators. Do you want to hear about bernie sanders and how much better Joe Biden will be to defeat trump, or do you want to kick the fucking circus out of the halls of democracy so that the people can adress their real concerns. Global disaster management. Disease control, Disaster response, Flood alleviation. Every government has to plan for emergency, but theres a big problem:

CAPITALISM WONT PAY FOR IT

If we take a cursory look at market dynamics, it doesn't take a genius to see that buying lots of things ‘in case of emergency’ and putting them in a glass frame doesn't really make anyone much money. Its a one off purchase of specialist equipment and once its done, all that's left to do is pay staff to ‘be ready’ and pay rent for a property to act as a warehouse for your vials of vaccine, or food rations, or sandbags and humvees.
The incentive is only as strong as the public's demand for care.

How much should you care? How much do you care about your grandparents? Is it ok for them to be told they may die, because our economy is too important to collapse.
How much should you care? How much do you care about your job? Is it ok for your boss to go out of business because the property mogul that leases the property to him still demands rent, even though the government has ordered him to cease trading?
How much should you care? How much do you care for paying your taxes, whilst billionaires ignore yearly tax bills large enough to fund HOSPITALS and SCHOOLS single handedly, All the while asking for handouts of -our- (yes its OUR tax money) to pay their employees (thats you, and those like you) because they cant dip into their pockets from their private islands and mega yachts (Not a joke, go read Sir R. Bransons wiki page).

This world is slipping into Amorality for the sake of profit, and has near as dammit hit the truest depths of it. We are there now, where human life is a cost for the maintenance of the economy. 

We are there now, as people are being exposed to a quite deadly virus and HAVING to continue work. Doctors, nurses and supermarket employees, what an odd list of heros to save our almost destroyed lifestyles.

Be under no illusions, the centre for disease control, the WHO and other learned professionals with experience in this sort of thing have been speaking to politicians, or trying to, for years, since the turn of this century a global pandemic has been regularly in the news cycle. Sars, Swine flu, Bird flu. Did we all forget this happens? Were we all so complacent to imagine we wouldn't be hit, wouldn't be at risk?

If i were a government employee, and part of my job was to listen to a professional talk to me about risk management, i’d show up to the meeting at the very least. That is a decency some of our world leaders don't find important. So whilst The government Ignores, and Capitalists couldn't care less, lets take up our job we've neglected for so long; Lets become politically aware again. Lets make sure the next time a virus mutates and becomes a global issue, that we don't have to put a list of people on a list not important enough to save. Lets speak to our governments and put across that we are in need of better healthcare. Let us Occupy Wallstreet again, Let us occupy banks, let us occupy the markets with the notion we will not let billionaires dodge tax, its their ONE duty to the rest of humanity. Once tax is paid they can go do whatever they like on their islands and yachts and holiday homes in the french alps. (not that they can be trusted).

You think this is hard?

Some countries don't educate their people as well as yours does. Some peoples governments are tyrannical and oppressive. Some people dont know what the hell a germ or virus is, let alone understand it well enough to imagine it. You might run out of toilet paper, but you are one of the blessed few who has plumbing to at least take the shit away when you are finished with it. You are able to purchase food whenever you want. You might not be able to go on holiday, you might have even lost some money to a travel company, but you can go out and buy food. Might not be pasta, might not be the ‘good bread’ but you will not know true hunger. You are likely in a home with a T.V, Electricity and running water. In your bubble of unappreciated splendor you are the wealthiest of kings to some people right now. 

I listened to the screams of the Wukong apartment blocks at night, as the crying masses wept for their dying loved ones, welded shut into their homes like a prison.

I watched the men in the streets of Mumbai be whipped across the back with broom handles, from police on speeding motorcycles, with enough force to fracture vertebra. 

African police had returned to a 3metre long whip, an implement banned in 1989, to corral people into their homes like cattle.
It is easy to sit here and write about that it is wrong, it is not easy to provide a solution to pandemic disease and novel viruses. But it is also quite easy to PREPARE for things, and to come together internationally and help one another to have plans in place. It does however remain hard for humans to learn from our past it seems. 

When did we decide we were done with the struggle?

Nothing in life is free, thats the mantra of the century. Nothing is given that isn't fought for was its more medieval counterpart. Protest and revolution seems to have stopped in the english speaking world, and im not sure why because whilst our evil isn’t as tyrannical as, say, an african warlord, or as oppressive as the Chinese version of communism, it is truer it in evil. It is purer. Well educated, presumably self and socially aware individuals are, on a daily basis, making decisions that line their pockets, sabotage democracy and endanger lives. To me, that is true evil. To know that your actions are wrong, and to do them anyway, especially at the expense of others. The warlords and the communists and the tyrannical and the oppressors may believe their way is right, that there is no other way to unify and control their people to keep them in line. Perhaps the ruling class believe that of you too. Perhaps low wages, council budget cuts, declining standards of education, privatisation and subsequent cost increase of national institutions ARE the only way to keep you in line. Perhaps if you were TOO happy, you would find the energy to become aware of the lies, the deceit and the infighting that is most of our shared political climate.

Now we see, that the heroes of capitalism are no heroes of ours. When humanity needs help, they ask for it too. When workers lose jobs, those heros join the queue with their hands out, unironically taking bonuses and reporting profits, paying no taxes. The wealthy are your enemy, not to be fought or combated, but to be allowed to live in peace while they die out. Lets not let people become millionaires anymore, lets make salary caps, lets make sure that we can ALL benefit from the progress humanity has made.

When all this is over, and we claw our way back to what we pretend is normal with a global depression, can we at least pretend for just one day that we care that its all gone wrong?

This has been hard to write, and i have to finish here before i start trying to rally troops to incite a riot. Rest well on an evening, find peace if you still can, because true chaos is coming for you and if you don't fight with it, it’ll become normal again. We are all going to need our strength.

Love in the modern world.

If i get too far into this topic, i wont get out. So allow me to brush over a few concepts to get the ball rolling.

Christian marriage + Information age = Error

Cultural norms on sexuality + politics = Error

Parentally passed on ideals of expectations of love = ERROR!!!

And that's the gist of it.

In short i think people need to craft love in their hearts, using benchmarks notched onto the worktable from hard won passions, adventures into other people and the understanding that love is a lesson to be learnt, not a feeling to be had.

the idea of civil partnership is nothing more than a gesture to me, so are legal pre-nupts. Its about decency. If someone wants to steal someone's heart AND their money, we should make sure marriage and divorce prevents that. THATS what we are really denying homosexual relationships. We aren't denying their love by not campaigning their love, we are denying that we are too immature as a culture to stop letting it bother us.

Gay marriage isn't the only issue, a biggie for me is our parents ideas of love.

I wont go into the shit that's been done and said in the name of 'love' but i will tell you i wont repeat those behaviours when i come to father a child. How in gods name can a positive, powerful woman understand love properly when all the other women around them want to find a 'nice guy' to 'settle down with' and 'put bunz in teh ovenz'. How can a man show the love in his heart when his father is unsure of how to express that men are capable of it. How can society provide an example of love for an abandoned generation of children Bourne from broken homes and a divided world? The answer for me is this;

Show them how to build it.

Personally im working very hard and having lots of love for a lot of people, and i've come to the realisation that some people don't reciprocate. Why should i waste my hearts energy generation love for someone who wont notice it? Thats why my social circle is small. Thats why alot of my family fight over my time for them. Its hard, VERY hard to find out who wants it, when to give it and exactly how much is the right amount. My only advice to the intrepid adventurer on the quest for love it to get some hardware with an accomplished blacksmith, and do that before you even set off.

Love is hard to wield, and requires training.

You cannot spill blood where it dwells, the heart is its home.

It is for these reasons fighting is the abhorrent plague of the heart, and those who do it gain nothing more than my pity.

My friends and MJ

I'd like this blog to turn into a forum for people, and that will only work if its directed towards people i want responses from. Its in this spirit i give a nod to my friend over at:

http://ladyvonbeck.tumblr.com/

I'd like to talk about what wants to be heard, as humans we all need to relate and im pretty good at relating through concepts. Here's the one she requested;

Marijuana

For me, its big. Not just as something to do, but as a demonstration of how warped cultural perspectives are at this time. You don't have to go to far into American history to see a somewhat hippo critical version of history certainly NOT repeating itself. It being ILLEGAL to NOT grow it happened. It being made illegal because of political standpoints on work ethics HAPPENED.

A quick glance at European variances in policy shows at least mild uncertainty on how to feel about the whole bloody thing. Ye gods, there is even an entire religious faith based on its use. They have their own prophet and everything! Haili King Selassie!

Its from the rasta perspective id like to continue this post. The concept of Cannabis being a medicine, the healing of the nation (I BET! yah neva kno) is an interesting one for me. I think its because of how i perceive the drug works. Give this idea some respect and lets not tail off with the stereotypical effects of it. Munchies. Paranoia etc. They are true, and valid and do factor into my opinions on cannabis, but i think the drug itself has more to offer people than say, alcohol. I dont drink to think, but i do smoke to think. Why? its simple. When im high i feel a shift, and uplifting of my perspective. I think of things on a bigger scheme. I go from a cog in the microcosm to a mote or highly relaxed dust floating in the spectrum of the macrocosm.
This shift in perception is fundamentally why its called getting 'high'.

I think rastas use this function of THC to 'over' rather than understand the universe.

Their culture is a belief that god bestowed mankind with a medicine upon the grave of their venerated liberator, king and prophet. pretty profound no? and despite the fact i view the idea of Selassie being a god-given man as little more than superstition i must give credence to the stance that cannabis as a drug helps its users with psychological stress. Its only because its so fucking expensive because of its illegality that people harmfully smoke and inhale it rather than eating it. And via ingestion research has indicated health benefits to its consumption nor for recreation, but as a supplement to the diet. Much like a vitamin. Vital, Ital healing. Likewise as a treatment for pain, cancer symptoms and tumor growth. but lets be quiet about that because its not about to be agreed upon.

Hippos.

Its funny to me, to a degree of hilarity, that cannabis is notorious for fucking with short term recall. Its funny because its major benefit is in how it fucks with hippos, Or rather the hippo-campus.

Thats the part of your brain that deals with synch of the hemispheres of your brain, and ironically memory recall. Specifically vividness of recall.

THC has demonstrated the cataclysmal properties required to promote cell growth within the hippo-campus region of the brain. WOW!

What this means to me, is that to put it the way Bill hicks did ;

'Dope doesn't make you lazy, it makes you realise all that SHIT isn't worth doing'

If it changes the emphasis you put on the world, and the context under which you remember it you are BOUND to be a different person. The question is;

Is that change good?

My answer is yes, I have long hair because i don't see any reason to cut it short according to fashion, logically it costs more to do that. I eat all the time because im 6ft 10 and burn so many calories sitting and THINKING that being awake for me burns through fuel. I sit around in my flat chilling out because i don't understand why people go out, Booze, shopping, cars and class doesn't appeal to me, and i only go out for things i find fruitful.

I don't do any of those thing because i'm a lazy stoner. But i do accredit being a stoner to shaping me into the kinda person who doesn't abide bullshit. In this world baby, that's all the healing i need.