Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

But I'm still getting educated but I've got to write it down and it won't be forgotten

It must have been on Question Time, and I can't remember the precise context now, although it was probably something to do with ASBOs. One of the panel that week was Benjamin Zephaniah, and, with reference to bad behaviour amongst young people, he said something like the following (I'm afraid this is from memory, so I'm bound to be paraphrasing): "What can you do when young people resort to violence? You cannot tell them to look up to their elders and betters for examples. If they look to politicians for their examples all they see is that every time politicians have a dispute, they go to war." I thought this was possibly one of the best things I've ever heard said on Question Time.



It doesn't really matter if I write this blog or not, in the sense that nothing really matters, but today I have been given cause to think about my approach to writing here. I happened to look up the statistics for my blog, how many visitors I get, where from, how regularly and so on, and I was quite surprised. I am curious about this sort of thing, but I'm not obsessed. Honest! This is the first time I've actually looked this stuff up (hence the surprise). I'd always assumed, despite my relatively high ranking in the My Opera blog tables, that I have about a dozen readers and get maybe half a dozen hits a day or less. Not that I'd even thought about it that concretely, but my general sense was something along those lines. I won't give figures here. Or shall I? Would that be vulgar? I can't remember the exact figures, anyway. They're not that high, but they are much higher than I imagined. It's funny, writing a blog like this is a bit like giving a speech from behind a one-way mirror to an audience you can't see. Occasionally there comes a voice over the PA from someone in the invisible auditorium. It's quite eerie in a way.

Anyway, I just mention this because now that I know there are actually people out there who are kind of listening (and I assume that's what repeat visits indicate) I feel a little bit shaken up and that maybe I should be slightly more responsible, and less of an arsehole. I don't know, maybe that's a bit of a tall order. In any case, I do feel inclined now to make the most of this blog and the free publishing opportunity it provides me. So far - you've probably noticed - I've treated this as a place to toss off - in a slapdash way - whatever I happen to be thinking at a certain moment. I'm not even sure I can promise an improvement in quality, since I certainly am inclined to privilege my pen-and-paper fiction. We'll see. Anyway, I still have some more of that pen-and-paper writing to do this evening, so I'll try to keep this short.

Before I go, here are a few more things I happened to be thinking about. First of all, despite not being particularly able to respond with alacrity to the request made by Ashley Tisdale here, I have to say that, more often than not I do consider myself to be materially wealthy. To put that in perspective without being vulgar and mentioning figures, I don't own a car, or a house, or have a mortgage, I hardly ever buy new clothes (they're usually donated to me by well-wishers) or new CDs or go to the cinema, and I don't have annual holidays abroad etcetera, etcetera. But I do find that, as I said, most of the time, I basically feel materially wealthy. I don't know why that should be when plenty of people with more money than myself don't feel wealthy, but it does interest me. There are some ways in which I feel a lack of money, largely to do with issues of travel and time, but I have to adapt to those limitations. However, I have an inkling that the way I feel on this score is really pretty natural. I drink green tea in very attractive Japanese ceramic tea bowls. I sit in front of the fire and read Bruno Schulz or Graham Greene. I occasionally watch a DVD, such as I Walked With a Zombie, and I can post my thoughts to an audience of literally quite a lot of people, whenever I want (depending only on those time issues, really) here. Oh yes, and I can go for walks and take pictures of trees. Sometimes I even buy sun-dried tomatoes. So, what is this if not a life of luxury? I'm sure it sounds funny, because I'm sure I always do sound funny, but I mean it.

I mentioned a while back that I'm reading The Great Turning by David C. Korten. There are some interesting figures within:

More than 1.2 billion people now struggle to survive on less than $1 a day. Some 2.8 billion, nearly half the world's population, survive on less than $2 per day.

I'd like here to contrast some of this writing with what I consider to be academically influenced bad writing. In the comments section of a previous post I accused Albert Camus of this affliction, but having had a quick look at some of his essays online, I find them disappointingly well-written, and must go elsewhere to find my specimen of useless wank... No, I've just seen the time. I still have miles to go before I sleep, so must bring this post to a conclusion, I'm afraid. Please find below the sample of David Korten's text that I was going to compare favourably with with some piece of obfuscatory nonsense (maybe later):

Had the benefits of the sixfold increase in global economic output acheived since 1950 been equitably shared among the world's people, poverty would now be history, democracy would be secure, and war would be but a distant memory. Driven by the imperatives of dominator power, however, the institutions of Empire allocated more than 80 per-cent of the benefit of this extraordinary growth to the most fortunate 20 percent of the world's people.

Labels: Benjamin Zephaniah, David Korten, Terence McKenna