Greta Thunberg - Perhaps it will befall the person with autism to do what is necessary to save us all

It strikes me as significant the fact that today's youth climate change strike taking place in over 100 countries was conceived and driven forward to this point by a person with autism. It's significant that it took a person with a so-called disability to display the necessary level of single-mindedness to act for the benefit of all, which I'm hoping serves to empower others to have the courage to act upon their own deep convictions despite perhaps feeling they are the only ones willing to do so.

Over the past 15 months that I've been working with adults with severe autism, many of their traits I've come to see as evolutionary strengths I've wanted to instill in myself - one of which being the importance of always remaining faithful to what really matters most - ignoring the distraction of the chitter-chatter and inconsequential small talk of others and pursuing that which leads to a feeling of true contentedness.

Every single person with autism has been uniquely configured, and so it's almost impossible to make any generalisations about what makes them tick, but from the 8 residents I've been fortunate to work with, every single one simply has no interest in comparing themselves to others. Every single one of them has no issue expressing how they feel at any moment in time regardless of how it may appear to onlookers. And in the increasingly ambiguous and confusing reality we inexorably create for ourselves, it's been massively stabilising to find myself each day in an environment surrounded by people whose actions and intentions I can believe 100% - because when you live in a sea of uncertainties that tosses you around mercilessly, you need an anchor to help keep you steadfast throughout it all.

Choosing to use emojis to react to emotional stories we see in our news feeds because we find it difficult to articulate ourselves as we would like, is degrading our ability to communicate effectively, which in turn is affecting our mental health and sense of personal autonomy

If you happen to read something in your news feed which leaves you feeling angry or upset and are compelled to say something in the comments, but then worry about saying it right or upsetting someone, or people misunderstanding what you mean and then attacking you - don't trade all of the anxiety in wanting to speak your truth for a convenient emoji instead - because soon enough you'll have forgotten how it feels to articulate your grievances through words to any satisfying degree at all - and the next time your emotions are stirred by injustices taking place in the world it will be even more difficult to muster the confidence to say what you really want to say, making it more likely you will choose the easy way out once more - taking the entirety of your feelings and emotions in that moment and replacing them with 1 of only 6 possible options - I agree - I love - I'm amazed - I hate - I'm sad - I'm angry

We're much more complex than emojis allow us to express, and deep down we know it. It seems as though the continued denial and inaction to improve our capacity to describe our reality is becoming yet another increasing source of frustration for us. And if a backlash to the inherent lack of precision of emojis does eventually become a source of collective distress, I would not be surprised at all if companies like Facebook responded to the outcry by introducing yet more refined emojis capable of allowing us to 'articulate' ourselves with greater 'nuance'.  

Not being able to express our sentiments exactly how we experience them, or not feeling free enough to talk openly about sensitive topics that may require us to be generous and kind to each other - isn't good for our collective mental health going forward. The system itself in which we communicate (Facebook) encourages us to be less nuanced in our thoughts through the crude alternative of emojis.  

Emojis are to language what McDonald's is to food. They never fully satisfy, but they do at the time.  

We can only be as expressive as the tools that we use will allow, and being able to crystallise in words precisely how we feel at a certain point in time truly is one of the best ways to externalise and then look squarely at, whatever it is that might be troubling or exciting us inside.

So down with emojis and alphabets FTW!!! :D :D :D  

I'm troubled by the culture of fear I see growing around me, when I look at my friends and read their concerns over consequences of them expressing themselves honestly online. I worry about the long-term conditioning and self-limiting effects this will have on them. From what I can see, a lot more people are choosing to self-censor in order to minimise the chances of anxiety inducing responses from others, and for some, even the idea of getting into a debate online these days is leading some to become filled with anxiety. If having a debate online in front of an audience feels like a battle, then the ability to articulate yourself as you would like surely is a great weapon to have in your arsenal.  

Reflecting on this last point a little further it seems as though one of the precursory factors which causes people to avoid engaging in online discussions stems precisely from them perceiving online debates as battles. If you use war analogies and metaphors as the lenses to help you make sense of discussions then you've already admitted to yourself that conflict of some sort is to be expected. But if you choose to see discussions as group problem solving exercises, where everyone present is a free participant able to contribute an idea or (just as important) counter an idea in order for the collective train of thought to eventually arrive at the truth, then it may help us see others more favourably and with less preconceived judgments.

A Dream

So, it's a very old dream, which has stayed with me for some time now, and it has gotten a bit rusty as I've never really tried to explore it properly or take time to articulate it through words before. There's no preamble or intro, just straight into the crucial scene, although I guess there is a bit of suspense to a degree.

I'm 9, possibly younger.... hmmm.... this is quite difficult - accessing the dream as fully as I'd like.... I'm trying to recollect the bedroom I had at the time to evoke more than just the dream, if possible.... If it was in Ashley Street then my bedroom had a very strange vibe to it. Very cold, musty and dark, and I think that may have facilitated the nightmares as a kid which prompted mum to get a priest around to exorcise my demons! I do remember flashes of waking up in the middle of the night, scared and screaming out for either mum or dad, it didn't bother me which one came. And they'd have to climb in bed with me and stay there for a while. They were probably very uncomfortable too, perched awkwardly in my single bed until I fell asleep again.


I'd found myself standing in a big white enamel bath, dressed in the brown robes of a monk. They were weighty robes, made from hard-wearing material but I don't remember them irritating my skin. I was stood in the lower half, towards the plug hole and I could see a huge crocodile facing me at the opposite end - a very well fed and meaty fucker! - aware of my presence, but in no way in a rush to hurry over. He began sauntering towards me, his scaly belly rubbing against the enamel floor, which produced unpleasant abrasive vibrations I could feel in my feet at the other end. There was a sense of inevitability brewing. Like my demise had already been determined and I was to just here to watch it play out in this dream.


As soon as I caught wind of this design I began to panic, immediately trying to call upon some dormant mystical power within that could get me out of there, or materialise a weapon with which I could kill the croc. But I remember the sinking feeling knowing that neither of these options would be available to me. I wouldn't be able to draw upon any external source to aid my escape. I was powerless, and the cause of my end was a lot closer now, steadily advancing at the same ominous pace - the vibrations underfoot and atonal sounds of the croc's scraping belly really jarring my insides. The crocodile seemed content for me to take as much time as I needed to exhaust all possible escape plans, because it knew all were futile.

By this point I was balancing tentatively on the grating in the middle of the plughole as attempts to climb up the sides all resulted in my sliding gently back down towards it.

Then a realisation about what I should do came to me. What I was most afraid of was not being rendered dead, but the indignity of dying in this way - excruciating pain and my desperate screams for help reverberating in a cold sterile chamber as the crunching and popping of my bones in the crocodile's jaws violated my ears with a quality which was beyond intimately vivid. No fucking way can I let this happen! So I detached my mind from my body. Disconnected the two somehow. It was only when I needed to that I knew how to. I relinquished my body to the crocodile while I remained present as spirit, conscious of what was taking place around me, but not physically connected. Uncoupled from all pain. I could hear the grunting and wheezing as the crocodile devoured my flesh wrapped in bloodied robes - but the flesh nor the robes belonged to me anymore. The crocodile was just eating something, and I was free to go.

Google's AlphaZero Has Made Watching A Chess Game Feel Like Going To The Opera

As the  Chess World Championship in London 2018 proved so conclusively, when you have everything to lose, humans more often than not will play things safe and not dare to dare. In the weeks since winning and retaining the World Championship, the highest rated player of all time, Magnus Carlsen, has admitted that his frustration in not being able to play to his potential for some time now has led him to admit he's not sure he will be defending his title again in 2020; a complaint you will not be hearing from a digital chess playing entity anytime soon, at least not in present iterations.

"When you reach a certain level, there is too much at stake to really let loose," (Magnus Carlsen)

At the top flight now, very rarely will players commit themselves fully to ideas which balance on a knife edge, walking the fine line between foolish hubris or artistic genius.

For this chess fan it has now become an obvious fact that watching the ideas produced by AlphaZero and Leela, neural network chess playing entities that feel no pressure, feel no embarrassment in losing and take no pleasure from playing perfectly when they do, has undoubtedly had the effect of injecting chess with a level of drama reminiscent of the Romantic period, where dynamic flourishes would render the chessboard a scene from a ballet rather than the grinding battle of attrition found in a military campaign.

Watching Grandmaster Daniel King become giddy like a child, declaring "This is unbelievable chess!", as he witnesses yet another move which for him, in the words of the wise sage Vizzini, was moments ago literally 'Inconceivable', heralds I think a rebirth of chess and further reaffirms the significance of this new age of dynamic playing that has begun. Humans, it seems, are accepting their role now as keen and content spectators, appreciators of games and other pursuits played by players who play games the way they ought be played.

AlphaZero has come to share the good news, that material means nothing when you have superior space and piece activity. Dynamism is back. Chess has become Art again in the truest sense of the word. And this is what the chess world has desperately needed to hear for some time now.

John Barnes, and what to do about Systemic Racism in the UK

I'm really glad John Barnes has always been a bit of a motormouth, able to squeeze a large amount of words into a short space of time. So it was nice to see him on national TV, outlining the scale of systemic racism reach in the UK with unapologetic conviction, neither hurried to respond nor unnecessarily provoked by loaded questions.

You can paint a damning picture of how bad things are in this country all you like though, and we can all agree how terrible the state of things might be, but I still feel like the conversation we really need to get in motion is the one about how society goes about being proactive tackling racism without it's method to do so creating new problems or inflaming existing ones.

John talks about the need to "change the perception of the average black person in the street". The man's not asking for much is he?!! Who would or could even achieve that exactly? Who's responsibility is it to change the perception of the average black person in the street? And if the answer is everyone's, then do we focus on the aspects that are best suited to the strengths we possess individually or the privileges we get as members of the various groups and collectives we belong to? But beyond the assignment of responsibility, who's sat there, revved up on standby thinking to themselves "I'm proper up for changing the perception of the average black person in the street, me!"?

Some people will argue that simply changing the way something appears changes nothing fundamentally. A change of perception in this instance being nothing more than a veneer laid over the festering wound of racism that will soon rot itself if it fails to contain the problem it hopes to mask. Intentionally changing the way something is perceived in the hope that any immediate positive results become contagious and spread throughout the system sounds a lot like putting faith in a placebo. Bit risky though. Sometimes putting on a brave face can help you to convince yourself that you are actually brave, and after a week of wearing the mask and getting on with life you might find it quite difficult to recall how feeling scared felt 7 days ago; perhaps because repeatedly seeing the mask whenever you looked in the mirror normalised the act of seeing yourself brave. But this strategy at a national level could go all over the show, and placebos don't tend to work well against established pathological conditions.

Others still will insist that black people are represented fairly and accurately in society. The way they are portrayed is the way they actually are, and should they wish to see a change in how others see them, the responsibility is squarely on black people themselves to make it happen. To achieve such a feat at the national level no doubt would require extensive use of social media to transmit a warmer, more convivial perception of the average black person. Pleasant. Affable. This fairer perspective would eventually win the hearts of all haters and baiters from Lands End to John O'Groats.

But it's impossible (in 2018 at least) to have total control over your public perception once you exist in the minds of others, which is why the domain of public perception is more like a battleground where a royal rumble of characterisations of you fight it out to gain ground and assert their influence. If the media aren't fond of you, don't be surprised to see them using apache helicopters to airlift in weapons to supply the characterisation of you which will do you the most harm, before scuttling off quietly back to base, leaving you to fight to save your true identity from being mauled to death by impostors.

So if I'm understanding John Barnes fully, what black people need is a way to counter balance the endless tide of subtly demeaning narratives circulating around us, designed by those in power to ensure that for black people the clouds are the limit, and never the sky. Black people need their own means of perception production pumping out stories able to convince them that striving to go beyond is never a futile pursuit, it is always worthwhile. What black people need is a black Rupert Murdoch! Hahaha!!! Sorry, got carried away there!

The only idea I could come up with that could remotely help John was if I changed my name to 'The Average Black Person in the Street' and then won Countdown or learned advanced music theory and then wrote an amazing symphony or award-winning play, people might say to each other "Hey, the average black person in the street is very smart isn't he!" or "The average black person in the street has a real flair for clarinet arrangements don't you think?". Whatever I was able to excel at, people would tell their friends about and so inadvertently, over time, I would be subconsciously reinforcing a perception of the average black person in the street being highly intelligent and capable, which is already the case, but more people could know about it. Deffo worth a punt if all else fails!

Dont Allow Others To Determine Your Mental Health

With today being world mental health day (Oct 10th), I'm reminded by how much of a colossal struggle just finding the right path towards a healthy mind can be.

School can be an absolutely brutal place. Witnessing the naive and often unjust ways alpha girls and boys would exercise their power on the more vulnerable kids in the playground was a constant reminder that school was first and foremost a place you had to survive in order to then learn.

As the only black kid throughout junior school, and one of perhaps three in secondary, it was important for me not to become fixated upon how I differed from other kids, and instead, look for the things we had in common and could enjoy together. I figured that having friends in various different playground cliques meant there should be less chance of me being seen as an outsider who couldn't fit in, and so kids should have less of a reason to find beef with me.

The more I was accepted into peer groups, the more it confirmed that I was similar to them after all, which led to a sense of belonging and safety, a feeling that seemed important to have in order to get the most out of being in a learning environment. Acceptance from fellow pupils became a source of validation and self-esteem, which in turn led to having more confidence and a general contentedness.

As I grew older and my sense of who I was became more defined, problems started arising. Particular groups I wanted be a part of, and thought had things in common with, wouldn't allow me to join and often gave no reason why. The decision to yay or nay my requests resting in the hands of the more domineering kids in the group for whom passing judgement in this way was fun, but for those unfairly condemned it could be a soul crushing experience.

There was an obvious flaw in the soundness of my high school survival strategy. Was it wise for my sense of well-being and self-worth to be at the mercy and whims of the other kids? My mental health felt like a commodity on the stock market whose value rose and fell with each acceptance or rejection, reinforcing a hunch the world was just this indifferent and cold arena that rewarded the strong and dominant with the most freedoms.

Why should membership to desirable peer groups have such a powerful impact on my mental health?

I remember being 18, standing awkwardly in the garden of my friend's parents one bonfire evening. One of 10 blokes who, without any prior conferring, had assembled into a perfect man circle on the lawn; the work colleagues of my friend's dad, plus myself. I was shooting the breeze with real men of the world. We were getting to know each other through the mutual exchange of our vast life experience as we flaunted our checked shirts, held cans of Fosters to our chests like they were trophies, occasionally glancing behind to scoff at the poor excuse for a fire while we shooed away any giddy child that asked us to play with them.

By donning the correct costume, performing the appropriate gestures I'd seen other blokes perform, as well as regurgitating stock answers to most of the common ice-breaking questions a bloke will ask another fellow bloke he doesn't yet know, I could tell I was on the verge of entering blokedom proper, and was a hair's breadth away from assuming my position as a functioning member of the privileged patriarchy.

After about half an hour or so of trying to assimilate with these learned elders, I noticed there was one main bloke who did the majority of the speaking, and was the default focal point if you didn't know what to do with yourself; like stand properly, or hold your can of beer with a convincing level of manliness. Despite his irritating braggadocio, he was a welcome diversion that deflected group attention away from my poor quality man acting. Occasionally he would look over to another bloke, who I concluded was his deputy, for those moments when he needed his more audacious claims backing up.

An hour had past, the Fosters was flowing and I'd gained the ability to hear things beyond the cacophony of anxieties in my head. I felt at ease. I could focus on the actual content of what us guys were sharing with each other, and could think about how I'd be able to shoehorn myself into the conversation. So I listened eagerly for an opening in order that I could make my mark.

What I heard was a series of banal accomplishments, mainly home improvement based, presented to the group as though they were scientific breakthroughs. Disdain was being flung at nearly everyone and everything, designed it seemed, to exemplify their own strengths. Their incompetent work colleagues, their illogical and irrational wives they couldn't understand and regretted marrying, their children who were unaware of what good music was, the idiotic tactics the manager of the football team they supported would use. The weather. Modern life. Vegetarians. It just went on and on... The best I could manage was a couple double-entendres and an innuendo that brought a ripple of chuckles, but it felt completely contrived. I was being a fraud, ticking boxes to gain status. I did consider the possibility that everything they were saying was valid, but for some reason I didn't feel like I was in the presence of 9 Nobel laureates.

At a certain point during the exchange I felt a bit off. Waves of disenchantment about what the hell I was doing and what being a man actually involved began swirling around inside. Then one of the guys began regaling us all with the time he heroically got out of his car to give a lollipop man a piece of his mind for walking into the road too abruptly...

"Nah, this is shit!" I said out loud, fetched my bike and rode home.

Seeing yourself as a Sieve

The benefits of being a sieve

For some, a pause in their journey can offer a rare moment of quiet contemplation, a chance to plan an alternative route toward their destination or an opportunity to get off the ride altogether.

Other things can provide benefit by not being stopped.

Like a sieve which is having water poured into it from above, I let things pass through me. Whatever it is. I don’t hold onto anything because I can’t. I’m a sieve. It’s not something I’m capable of. It’s not my purpose.

That’s not to say that everything is in one ear and out the other. There’ll always be some sort of residue or trace left behind, however temporary, along the surface of the sieve where the water hit it, and that is where I came into contact with an experience head on, looking straight at it as it touched me before carrying on its way through.

I try not to hold onto any powerful experience or emotion running through me, whether it be beautiful, terrifying, hopeful, sad etc. Of course I try to feel it fully in the moment, and savour it in real-time, not file it away to be unpacked and perused over another day. I try to be 100% present. Right here. Right now. 

Looking long-term, I’d rather focus on what kind of residual mozaic will be left upon my soul after being touched by so many different hues of experience, and having some sort of overall shape or form in mind today as I go forward. A life-time piece of internal art which many people hope to only complete when they know they are experiencing their final hours, comfortable and wanting for nothing, surrounded by all the people that love them.

Seeing myself as a sieve I think was a strategy I had to adopt because I feel things too much. I needed a way to carry on feeling the essence of things but not have to block out those things that were too painful or too beautiful for me to contain. 

Holding onto things, even amazing things, trying to preserve them inside me forever always becomes too much, and something eventually gives way because I’m not allowing whatever it is, to carry on its way. And so the concentration inside increases as I harbour the experience/emotion against its will, and at some point  it will become toxic to me.