Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Durham Light Infantry

"Are there any regiments that are more... effeminate than others?... What I really wanted was a regiment where I can be really quiet and have more time to myself to work with fabrics and creating new concepts in interior design."

So speaks Eric Idle, trying to get recruited into the army in this old Monty Python clip:



I've just been watching a Panorama report on the amount of British soldiers going AWOL. I sometimes wonder if the whole concept of the army, in this litiginous day and age, is not completely anachronistic. The Panorama programme was focusing on how issues of mental health in soldiers (post-traumatic stress disorder, mainly) are ignored or not taken seriously. I've seen this kind of report before. There is a fundamental contradiction here. On the one hand the army absolutely requires killing machines. On the other, in this day and age, they have to be seen to care about their 'employees'. And yet, none of the reports I have seen address this fundamental question - how is a job in which people are required to kill other people even tenable? It seems that it is impossible to acknowledge that the values of army life are simply not what are publicly touted as modern values. And yet, truly to take on those values would surely mean the end of the army.

Labels: Monty Python, the army

The Equivalent of a Tree

When I go for walks, I spend a lot of time just looking at trees. I think if I were a painter, I would like nothing more than to paint trees.

We're used to telling trees apart (when we do) by their leaves and their blossoms. However, the patterns of their branches are also wonderfully distinctive, especially when viewed from below. It occurred to me, the other day, when I took these photographs, that I would like to write a novel that is the equivalent of a tree. Surely the perfection to which art aspires con have no better visual representation than this. How can their be such a sense of symmetry and pattern withing such a sense of organic chaos? What are these zig-zags and endless lightning ramifications attempting to express? They have expressed unconsciously and in a way that transcends expression.

Economists and Psychopaths

I have, for a very long time, maintained that scientific models of human behaviour that treat humans as machines are a simplistic and destructive projection on the part of scientists. Such models have been particularly prominent since the work of Francis Crick and his colleagues in discovering DNA. My own view has been that the metaphor of a computer is simply that - a metaphor. The computer itself is a human invention, in other words, an offspring of the human mind. It is something contained within the human mind, and yet scientists have reversed this to advocate the idea that everything is contained within the metaphor of the computer. The metaphor becomes literal. People begin to emulate this simplified version of human life, to turn themselves into computers to fit there own projection.

All of this I find to be quite vile and sinister. However, I know very well that if I express such views, I am merely a lay person speaking out of his own intuition. I am very grateful, therefore, when someone else can put in the time and join up the dots for me. Such a person is Adam Curtis, with his new documentary series The Trap - What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?. If you have a chance to watch this documentary, I very much recommend it. I don't have the time to give a digest of it here, I'm afraid. However, I will leave you with the thought with which the second part of this documentary ended:

It has been found that the only people who really fit the simplified mathematical model of self-interested rational behaviour at all times are economists and psychopaths.

Tagged

I have been tagged by Melissa. The rules of this tag game are as follows:

Pick up the book you're reading, turn to page 123, post 5th paragraph, title and author.

Then tag 5 more people.

So, without further ado:

It soon became apparent that while Mou-lau was able to keep the men from coming upstairs, he was unable to prevail on them to leave. With the two sedan chairs ready, I ordered my servant, who was very handy with his fists, to go down first and clear a way for us. Hsiu-feng took Tsui-ku and followed him, while I took Hsi-erh and brought up the rear. We rushed downstairs all at once and, with the help of my servant, Hsiu-feng and Tsui-ku escaped by the door. One of the men downstairs grabbed hold of Hsi-erh as we ran past, but I kicked at his arm so that he let go of her. Hsi-erh ran out, with me following behind her. My servant stayed by the door to keep them from chasing after us.

Not really the most interesting paragraph in the book, unfortunately. Actually, this kind of thing makes me realise how unutterably boring I find what is apparently the staple of entertainment - action. Oh well. The book is: Six Records of a Floating Life, by Shen Fu.

I'll tag some people later, and probably list them on this post.

Nothing is Real

I just settled down to eat my breakfast and noticed that the main headline on the latest issue of New Scientist is as follows:

REALITY IS AN ILLUSION. Why we are blind to the quantum truth.

Yes. Let the message be proclaimed on the front of every newspaper. Let the true exploration of imagination and human potential begin! Is the world catching up with me at last?

I suppose I'll have to read the article inside to find out. It might be quite different to what I expect. But I can't read it yet, as it's not my subscription, and I'm too polite to tear off the plastic-wrap.

Anyway, it's not really a question of the world catching up with me. But regular readers of this blog and my stories will know that I have long questioned the whole idea of 'reality', which is based on a blind faith in materialism. The most recent discussion of that on this blog, I think, was here in the comments section. I might come back to this discussion at some point, after my life has settled down a bit. I'm currently horrendously busy.

The idea of the world being an illusion is truly ancient. Maya, lila, samsara... there are many names for it. But materialism has built its empire in the world and subjugated native intuitions, like the British Empire colonising people 'for their own good'.

Changing the subject, here's my favourite YouTube clip at the moment:

Why don't they make comedy like that anymore? I mean, comedy with actual wit. Once more I sigh. The world is full of crashing bores, and I must be one, etcetera...