Democracy Doesn't Need Protecting

There's There's something about the kind of rhetoric in the headline below which has been getting my goat more and more over the past months, but especially during this particular period of Covidual convalescence. I prefer my goat to be left well and truly alone.🐐

"Democracy is under threat and we need to 'protect' it".

Things that are threatened, that have value, ought to be given resources so that they can fortify and strengthen themselves and therefore are then able to fend for themselves. A sense of having autonomy works wonders for one's sense of taking responsibility.

Instead, help strengthen an entity's own immune response to those externalities that pose a threat, rather than waste time and effort trying to fight off the never-ending influx of baddies on its behalf.

From what I've seen, people who have delegated themselves to be the newly established 'protectors' on behalf of someone else, always end up asking them some form of payback sooner or later, because this 'protection' you're getting from me isn't free you know! and it's this ongoing 'protection' which prevents the thing under threat from growing stronger.

Capitalist societies are constantly legitmising the idea of the necessity of heroes. Capitalists love heroes, because heroes don't demand to be paid in order to do what they think is right, and capitalists love it when people do the right thing and don't demand to be paid for doing it. about the kind of rhetoric in the headline below which has been getting my goat more and more over the past months, but especially during this particular period of Covidual convalescence. I prefer my goat to be left well and truly alone.🐐

"Democracy is under threat and we need to 'protect' it".

Things that are threatened, that have value, ought to be given resources so that they can fortify and strengthen themselves and therefore are then able to fend for themselves. A sense of having autonomy works wonders for one's sense of taking responsibility.

Instead, help strengthen an entity's own immune response to those externalities that pose a threat, rather than waste time and effort trying to fight off the never-ending influx of baddies on its behalf.

From what I've seen, people who have delegated themselves to be the newly established 'protectors' on behalf of someone else, always end up asking them some form of payback sooner or later, because this 'protection' you're getting from me isn't free you know! and it's this ongoing 'protection' which prevents the thing under threat from growing stronger.

Capitalist societies are constantly legitmising the idea of the necessity of heroes. Capitalists love heroes, because heroes don't demand to be paid in order to do what they think is right, and capitalists love it when people do the right thing and don't demand to be paid for doing it.

Imagine Our Own Future Before Power Imagines One For Us

I feel like precisely because imagining the future which comes after this seems impossible, is the reason why we have to start imagining it. 

Otherwise the future we end up getting to live in we will have had no part in creating, and there are enough politicians and leaders of all kinds out there only too happy to design a future for everyone else to live in if it means they get to write the rules.

As difficult as it may seem, I feel like now is the perfect time for people to try and imagine what they want to happen after this, and seek out others who also share the same hopeful sentiment. Living in a future in which everyone has had a hand in making, no matter how small it may seem, is a really important thing in terms of having a sense of joint ownership about something everyone helped to build.

And that desire to seek out others who think and feel similarly to the way you are right now will be essential in order to galvanise people together into a cohesive whole, able to work as one. Because the only other option or road that springs easily to mind right now is one which leads to despair and total submission to the external forces that usher, steer and coerce us into doing what it thinks is best, if we choose not to do anything at all and remain stagnant.

That does sound proper dystopian, and even a bit hysterical when read in one go, but if you would have told me 2 months ago that very soon I would find myself staying in my house for 5 weeks straight in a bid to help save people's lives, then I would have mentioned that you didn't have to watch the entirety of Black Mirror in one sitting. 

But here we are! 

The truth of what's happening sounds just as wild as fiction right now, which is exactly why the way the story continues is so up for grabs. Everyone has writers block because the true extent of the reality we're in still remains unknown. Which is precisely why imagining a future that personally gives you hope is so necessary.

Don't conserve what little you have during lockdown. Generate more.

When you're low on energy, low on morale, low on self-belief, just low in general....it might seem like the best strategy is to conserve what few resources you have left for those parts of yourself you think are the most important or valuable. 

But you only have to look at how the The Conservatives operate to realise why replicating their mistakes and applying austerity to our own bodies will never leave us feeling better.

You have to invest your resources into things which are real and here, now. Not promises of what you'll get in the future. You have to invest your resources in things which are natural but also feed everything else, making the pursuit of dreams and ambitions possible to begin with. Investing in the living environment around us in order to help it make more of itself to nourish others.

CAPITALISM IS SOCIALISM (you just take shit for free instead)

"You can't give poor people stuff for free. They don't deserve it! They ought to work for it honestly like we do!" - said the whinging Capitalist, conveniently oblivious to the fact that his business was only able to get itself off the ground by scraping the cream off his workers wages, under the necessary guise of reinvestment.

Capitalism literally IS getting stuff for free, and using what you get for free to generate even more stuff for free - but you have to do it with charm and grace, otherwise it just looks like straight up theft. And looking like a thief is much worse than actually being a thief these days.

I think what the ruling class mean is that rather than poor people being given stuff for free, they ought to follow their master's example and just TAKE IT!

But then when I tried to take a £3 T-shirt off the rack at Primark they banged me up in a cell for the night and made it even harder for me to function in this world once I got out. Go figure...

Is Trump an unwitting pawn being played by the universe?

I wonder if Trump is nothing more than his name, nature's trump card, played in order to create the common ground humans have needed to exist for so long in order to finally unite? A pawn being moved in the cosmic game of chess he knows nothing of. The swansong of an archaic form of power clinging to cruelties it tells itself are former glories. Forced now to finally show its hand and go all in/out in its last stand.

It is possible for him to be the one poison capable of destroying the system that gave birth to him. Through the shameless and unapologetic use of his unjust freedoms, making visible and flaunting before all the way in which the previously unseen ways power could dominate and control its people at will, choosing instead to convert every act made into a symbolic currency that feeds his haemorrhaging ego and, he hopes, will carry him through to calmer waters on the other side.

He has chosen to become the unadulterated embodiment of what the capitalist system will allow to be created, but is making the fatal error of disclosing to the world exactly how and why he is doing it. As the truth about his agenda is evermore unveiled, by Trump himself, the ambiguity which he once could utilise to garner the support of those in a decisive limbo begins to evaporate, before finally only the hardcore, absolute disciples who have already made their decision to follow him to the bitter end no matter what transpires remain.

Having to ingest such a distilled concentration of power which has at last decided to abandon all fears about its appearance and intentions being judged I feel will lead to many people within Trump's camp to soon become violently sick. Vomiting up all that they have tried to stomach for so long in a desperate attempt to purge themselves.

In this way Trump helps to accelerate the formation of a global common ground through his demonstration to the world that man's power ought to be respected precisely because it has become so powerful, and therefore should be prioritized over our planet's ability to keep sustaining life. A delusion which we must snap out of finding so comically absurd and resist the urge to scoff at the manner in which we are entering potential oblivion.

I saw a man, who I later found out was homeless, embodying everything I despise about Capitalism's ability to thrive

I'm not at all au fait with how the world of busking works, but to me this is just plain wrong!

I was walking through Liverpool city centre, late again for an important appointment, and came across a humble looking busker standing noble and upright in the middle of the shopping precinct facing straight ahead, delivering his own takes on classic rock ballads over semi-professional backing tracks. Foreigner's 'I Want to Know What Love Is' was done justice by him and I was left utterly convinced he truly did want to know.

The man's outfit and demeanour however was disappointingly drab and uninspiring, and so no passersby had stopped to watch him, but his voice was electrifying and reverberated through Liverpool 1 with real majesty! Powerful. So much depth and feeling! I was moved, but didn't cry. 20 metres further on though, a guy who looked like he lived locally, wearing a suit in a colour which hurt my eyes and needed dry cleaning at least twice, was convincingly mouthing the words of the rock ballad man's powerful renditions into a cheap plastic microphone I refused to believe had ever worked.

The local looking man possessed an effortless charisma and compelling presence which was spellbinding scousers and tourists left, right and centre - hypnotizing them into believing that it was he who was performing hit after anthemic hit! The nerve of this pretender! This shameless thief was casually siphoning the honest rock ballad man's soul in broad daylight mere metres away from him, gladly accepting any loose change children thrust towards his money hat by their shy parents would chuck in. The poor rock ballad man could do nothing but soldier on through his set list, trying his best to appear indifferent to the mime artist's plunderous charms just an underarm throw to his right away.

Sickening.

Why are we in such a rush to get humanity lived, over and done with?

The Accelerationists of this world seem to want it to spin so fast that it hums. Anyone that doesn't have a firm grip on the way things are going to be from now on will be flung off in due course. This is no time for laggards and toe dippers. Those who develop a mental illness in response to the incessant reconfiguration of their environment shall be steered towards machines that will teach them how to cope. The daily pursuit of hyper-optimizing our capacity for work will give us meaning and keep us moving forward. Those struggling to keep pace with the system unaided are encouraged to automate part of their function or take the necessary cognitive enhancers to help bring their level of operation up to speed. All time will be purposeful and accounted for. 
Free time is wasted time.

Protest Banners or Advertisements for One's Creativity

I wonder if a million people marching in the capital, all holding the same banners while protesting would send more of a message of solidarity and unity to the establishment than the multitude of individual messages that at times can seem like personal advertisements for one's own creative genius.

What message does having the same slogan on every banner send to a government? After reading an Adam Curtis article where he talked about how in the US when people began to protest at the news of Donald Trump's presidency, they were holding banners saying "NOT MY PRESIDENT". Similarly in the UK, when we protested against our part in the invasion of Iraq the slogan on ready-made banners and placards read  "NOT IN MY NAME". Curtis noticed how in the West, even when we are protesting, the individualism that drives capitalism is ever-present.

Curtis' example isn't exactly analogous to the observation I made above, but looking at recent trends in protests in the UK and US I do see some parallels. Many of the banners I saw were able to marry creativity and humour with a powerful message and really hit home, while others seemed more preoccupied with wanting to incorporate a popular phrase or saying at the expense of articulating the reason why they were protesting.