Helping the 3rd World!

A continual myth which seems to exist amongst the West is that we can help the 3rd World by development.

Firstly there is no real 3rd world that needs helping.

Secondly the history of the problem reveals the solution. Taxation of Land.

The same process has lead to the world in which the economically developed world lives so it is relevant to us also.

Since the beginning of time tribal lands were fought for and inherited by various means. The problems began when landlords began to tax. The ragument in the West was that the landlords would protect the people from invading people. However the contract was a little one sided because the farmers probably didn't care who ruled them, it is only the ruler who need to be protected!

So to raise taxes people need to produce profit. Once land is viewed as a source of income and profit the lives of the people who have used the land for their livelihoods becomes a secondary issue. In UK Sheep farming became the profitable land use during the beginning of the industrial revolution and so people were displaced off their lands. Losing their means of living and losing the ability to pay taxes they were forced to take up jobs for the industrialists. This massive movement of people into industrial production is what created poverty in the UK.

Now we have exported that poverty to the 3rd World we look rich in the West but it is at the cost of the industrialising world. Hence the reason it needs to develop so that we can export our working class.

Once upon a time of course there was no "poverty". For 10,000 years people in Africa and Asia have lived in what they would have called "normal" conditions. They knew how to manage local crops and the land and that was their life. It was only when land owners began to tax that they ran into problems and lost their ways of life to become dependent upon the economic system. That was the beginning of poverty.

So the answer might be to develop, but its the long way and only really gets them back to square one. The only people to really benefit are the Western economies. The easier and simpler way is to let them remember their traditional ways of life and let them return to that.

After all we all know for sure the material richness and economic development don't make us happy, so why do we spend so much time trying to do these things? and worse enforcing them on others?

Seduction? & the myth of Sex

What a myth this is! I have realised that sexual desire is ubiquitous amongst humans. Socially it is the male who is required to make the advances, but while the female may feign non-interest really her desires are the same. Perseverance by any male will result in copulation simply because the female require sex as readily as food. The only reason a female will reject sex is if she is already satisfied, in exactly the same way that we will not eat at a restaurant. So the only task for a male is to ensure that he offers better sex than the next male. This is actually incredibly simple and obvious but for some reason the culture, at least the Anglo-American culture seems to reject this simple truth.

The female world is equally confused by this as the male world, primarily because the female is expected to reject the advances of the male even while she would like what is offered. This ironic nature of female sexuality is necessary i would imagine otherwise the male cannot perform his sexual role as the initiator and conquerer. Certainly I have taken women at their first word and it results in disbelief and confusion!

What I have been suprised by however is that there is no woman I have met who is after anything but sex. I suppose the problem revolves around the fact that women need to wait upon men for their sexual fulfillment because they take the passive role, while the man is at liberty to initiate sex whenever he so requires. This enables the man to take charge of his sexual behaviour and so the male can chose to be celibate. This seems much rarer for women. especially also because women primarily view their role as beautiful, desirable and the mothers of children.

So in reality the socialisation of sexuality has created a rather complex skin to what, underneath, is incredibly simple and just basic appetite which all humans share. The word "love" should banned because it is a misleading lie. It is simply the ego speaking about the object of its desire "MY love", "MY partner" etc etc

And upon seeing all this for the simple and quite uninspiring world that it is it makes it very much simpler to leave this intrique behind. There is no holy-of-holies :-) to sexuality, no hidden realms and undiscovered bliss that is worth fighting so hard for. Sexual satisfaction, intense orgasm, extreme sexual horniness and desire is more likely to open doors that it can't close rather than lead to profound states of mind and satisfaction. Any more than drug use can solve our lifes questions and problems. It would be interesting if anyone who knows otherwise would respond to this, but in my limited experience and the people I have spoken to this does seem to be the truth.

Love n Death

Just talk a walk to the local cemetry to look at the muntjack deer. Male with 2 hinds and a nother 2 hinds seen. Also got to thinking again about this issue of death, separation, reproduction, sex and love. They are all connected but can't quite see clearly.

To be separated from someone requires 2 things. First that u have known the person and second that they are gone. The more u have known them the more the separation. Death of course is the greatest separation because the person is completely dissolved - it is existential as opposed to just obscurity between existing persons.

Now why is it that we form relationships with people? If we lived forever would we not naturally know everyone at some stage? If we were not separated already from people why the need to close that gap? We have not lived for ever, and we will not live forever so we gradually form bonds as time progresses and we gradually lose them just the same.

Friendship and love is born directly out the fact that mortality is in our very bones. We are separate from other people, and we know ultimately that they will be gone so we form bonds to try and stop that deep down inevitability.

Biologically it is the same. Sex is born from the process of reproduction, and that born from the process of death. Why have more kids if we lived forever? So the union between man and woman is born directly from the intrinsic fact that man and woman, humans in both sexual forms, are mortal and need to replace themselves after death.

Given all this I am beginning to see th irony in mourning the death of lovers especially but also friends. We becae lovers because we sort to cheat death by reproducing. We became friends because we tried to overcome the separation and finitude of our existence.

So it follows that for everything we do in the realm of relationship it is built upon its complete opposite - the dissolution of relationship, ultimately death. That Death walks among us is plainly evident wih every smile and handshake.

Now this is the bit I can't see. There was a stuffed animal in the bin at the cemetry. Such a poignant reminded of the brutality of death, that it cares for absolutely nothing and noone. I can feel nothing but hate for death. For death we are all our loved stuffed animals ripped from our beds and thrown unceremoniously into the rain. Really i don't hate often but for Death it is unsurmountable.

Yet I am trying to argue here that without Death, my sworn enemy, I would have no friends and no lovers at all! Indeed the world would crash together in a mass of immortal beings in all places and all times.

So the coming of spring, as it is now, and the blossoming of flowers heralding the marriage of the trees (my first poem written April 1997 and beginning a whole lot of stuff since!) the fragrances and colours, is all down to the hand of death challenging mortal trees to seek immortality.

So there is something else i see now! Death can only do what it does on a canvas of time which is unstoppable. Time and Death (rather than Being and Time ;-) ) are dancing entwined for every step that Death takes, Time will step over to the next moment and make a place for all those things that survived or were created anew. Or is it that Death is like a mould that spreads through all things, but growth is also like a mould that spreads through all things.

And between them Death and Time make Change which is the nature of all things because it brings them metamorphosing both growing and dying toward their complete dissolution.

So I have misunderstood the hand of Death and how I have it to thank for everything that I have rejoiced in before and which I now sadly miss. Indeed I knew this from the day I met my muse, I even wrote about it that first sleepless night, that our inevitable separation was the only thing on my mind now that I had met her. Indeed i understood but was afraid. More obviously I should have embraced our being together when it was together, and ebmraced our being apart when we were apart.

This is the nature of ignorance and attachment, and I have learned :-)

Some truths n sex

Well if i'm brutally honest there is no suprise that i have become confused!

If I ask my friends why they are married they say to a piece that they want companionship. Yet we had plenty of companionship down the pub, holidaying, looking 4 girls etc.

The completely obvious thing they get from a wife is sex. And now i realise that for all the complications this is the basic drive. The higher world is a million miles away in a completely different place. This is not love it is sex. If anyone ever asks why we want a girl, a lover, a wife it is for sex. Nothing wrong in that but its the truth and for some reason we hide behind other explanations. And if we want to know why we marry one girl and not another it is because they give us better sex and make us feel better, and the same works in reverse. It is not about love at all and it is a terrible mistake to think it is.

If someone does not make us feel sexually satisfied then we wont want a relationship with them - quite regardless of love or anything else and that has been my mistake to treat women as spiritual equals when obviously the reason for choosing them was sex.

There is more to say about the dynamics of sex here but no more about love. Again the cross roads are as perpendicular as ever ... do we seek sex or love however are the two clear sign posts... clearer today than ever before.

Betty Blue and the beginning

Yesterday did some more archaeology to find out how i got to this position.

It all began in March 1994. I read Karl Jungs "Man and his Symbols" in the local library. Later that week i saw Betty Blue on TV and it left this lasting impression that haunted me for about 2 weeks or more afterwards.

The film is so beautiful, the colours, and especially Betty herself she is enigmatic and it got me thinking. In the film she kick starts Zorg's writing career by awakening the novel that he has stored under his bed. The film of course was a book originally. So what book is this that we enigmatically never find out? Well of course it is the book Betty Blue about the process of awakening that is portrayed by the wild force of nature Betty. It is a film about itself and at the end after she has died and been absorbed into the story itself (which carriers her name) he is left sitting at a desk and is asked, are you writing? And he replies, no I am thinking. And from that we realise that he has told the story all the way upto the moment in which he is then portrayed. The film arrives at a moment of incredibly profound self reflection as it tries to portray even more profoundly than with the icon of Betty the processes that have given arise to it. At that moment Betty is a real entity alive within the world - the creative process itself. For Betty read Anima figure from Karl Jung.

And so my project began, and I have forgotten how it began, to awaken that force within myself. To find my own Betty. And I suppose I did but for me Betty was truer to her character in my film for she was only that - the awakening of a literary and spiritual force within myself - and now I realise that maybe the biological and the real was as important for now it has gone, unlike Zorg I am not left with the awoken spiritual force as much as the loss of what was real. My muse always said she was the Realist and i always knew i was the Idealist i think i should have listened to her more.

Love, Marriage & Sex

OK just a note but here are the 3 quite different entities.

Romantic Love evolves from belief in a unique and special self. Brought to its zenith during the bourgeois period along with the Romantics. Ownership and the glorification of individuals on the one hand matched by the great struggles to achieve union with equally unique and special partners. The cult of celebrity today replacing the days of heros, no suprise that celebrities are expected to find "love" with each other. There are 2 partners because the structure of consciousness places entities as objects of the subject. A "love partner" is the objective reflection of the subjects own belief in their uniqueness. I am king and you are queen.

Sex is the biological component. It involves all the emotions and feelings, the sensuality and joy at being with a member of the appropriate sex. There is selection here on a biological level, some partners being more chemically and gentically suitable. It strives for sex and pleasure in sex. It is not especially selective and is automatic if no restraint is applied. Obviously its goal - unknown to the protagonists is reproduction. There 2 sexes are a reflection of the evolutionary advantage of genetic mixing. By recombining genetic combinations in sex a much greater diversity is created for selection to work upon and so speeds up the evolutionary process so that organisms are more robust in th face of environmental variation. There are not 3 sexes because the increased problem of finding a mate would ofset the advantage of mixing.

Marriage is the social component. It provides a closed system of financial inheritance. It provides a limited system for spread of sexual disease. It reinforces the responsibilities of parents for their children. It encourages the conscious dynamics over the biological dynamics. Married couples are encouraged to limit their awareness to their partner only

Love again... Now given these understandings it is clear how a reproductive union should work. It is actually quite boring and nothing like the celestial dramas of romantic fiction, or the fiction i have involved myself with. A sexual union is born of sexual desire which has its culmination most likely in childbirth - unless restraint or incapacity intervene. It is mediated through marriage which provides the stable social bond. The proper love to be reflected then is between 2 quite ordinary people who do not idolise one another or view one another as particularly special, who simply agree to respect one another for the duration of the mutually satisfying encounter of reproduction, and who understand the pleasure that they give one another and are happy to offer that to their partner unconditionally.

Holy Matrimony. So what the place of God? In a world of self interest it is remarkable that humans do not end up fighting in a Hobbsian way. Indeed at times of social collapse they do as in civil wars. It seems that practically the only thing that keeps people from each others throats are the extraordinarily complex systems of allegiance and selfish compromise that divide peoples energies between a miilion factions and attitudes. The human world is indeed divided and it is that division that slows human endevour to almost a stand point - see the slow process of enriching Africa. So to with a sexual union. If the partners are in it for their own interests then it is simply a freak of coincidence that they are together at all. As soon as they start fighting the bond will break. The stabalising influence of marriage is that the bond or contract is viewed as more important than the selfish interests of the parts. This is the power of Law, that we have no choice but to submit to that greater force. This is the stabalising force of God, the ultimate force, below which we have no right to anything that is not given. So there is Holy Matrimony a force greater than anything i said above, a contract in the eyes of the most powerful, that will maintain respect and duty within a partnership even after the emotions, thoughts and body have withered. This is truely beautiful and a hark back to the Romantic idea that people are made for one another. However here it is by the grace of God that we are together, and not because I have found my perfect match.

My Lesson - no longer a romantic

Ego is the key to my passion.

The source of the desire to find ones other half - that partner who is as special as the moon is to the sun - is the wish to find the proof of ones own uniqueness.

That there are two sexes, that sexual relations is a partnership is an extraordinary coincidence.

But we know that we are just one in the crowd and that challenges our belief in uniqueness, yet we ignore that lesson, continue to think that our life is special amongst all the lives and we project this into the crowd to find that Other who is as special as we are. Our soul mate, our unique partner of destiny.

So why do we hold so tight to this belief in uniqueness - that belief that my beloved is unique that I am unique? Is it not because we dread the empty space that opens up in our life when we see that really we are just as accident of creation? What does my life mean, why are I here, what am I to do with this existence, how can i fill these days which i have been given but which seem completely arbitrary? That our death really means nothing and we wish to have people who will miss us and make that death important.

It seems such a waste to have no reason or meaning to it all. It makes me think that I am worthless, unvalued, irrelevant and so i run into the belief that I am something and seek those who will mutually support that dream.

And if she is beautiful, if she is really beautiful, if she can satisfy my deepest sexual desires, then my efforts to befriend her to make her special seem sugar coated, that I am being rewarded in every direction. I have a love to prove my worth, and a lover to prove my worth and I am satisfied within the walls of that illusion.

So i took a slightly different approach. I didn't want the sexual satisfaction - that was too obvious and cheap. I wanted to prove in a most profound way that I was special that my love was not a selfish love but a respect for someone who was truely different and valuable. And in idolising her and pushing her onto a pedistal I could then bask in the glory of being special myself. The ultimate proof that my existence was unique, real and special. But then I fell upon the petard of my repressed sexual desire, the lie that I did not fancy her and wanted her more than her existence came back to haunt me, and then i was robbed of her physical existence all together.

So while the arts are a true expression of the heart, too often they are filled with the existential dread of people seeking meaning and immortality through public expression, subjects and events to fill the void, too often a display case for the urgent passion to be unique and special and to prove that to the world. The craving to find solid ground upon which to build ones life. I think worst of the ballet Onegin.

So now to find that space between the sun and moon where they belong as partners in a cosmos of limitless diversity and beauty and to which neither has their own unique claim.