Racism Induced By Hearing BLACK LIVES MATTER Too Many Times

Gulp!! I prefer to get an mpression of what the world outside is really like by taking a look myself. It's not a good idea or very healthy to have your mind chock full of other people's opinions, speculations and bold assumptions if you're only going for a quick walk around the block.

Increasingly there's a sense for me that people who don't really feel part of the fabric of their immediate community, and rely upon social media and other outletd to help inform their perceptions and views on the general mateyness of humankind - there's a very definite feeling that the world we see on the news and the world experienced walking down the street are completely one and the same now. Joining the dots and making causal connections between the two worlds is just a done thing now. And so the rage you feel rise almost immediately now at having to hear yet another activist, rich celebrity or bank advert proclaim BLACK LIVES MATTER for the fiftieth fucking time today, and it's not even fucking 6pm!!! I mean, really??? FFS!!! Shut the fuck up about BLACK LIVES FUCKING MATTER already will you! You're making me feel like I want to be racist to you just to shut you up....

That kind of simmering anger has been all over show in recent weeks and I'm not a big fan of speaking on behalf of other people I don't know. Could be many different reasons, and the fact that our waking lives already involve arduous daily missions just to ensure ensure our mental selves make it too - forced each morning to ignore, avoid or navigate routes around the pressures, distractions, temptations and humiliations shat onto us from by marketing, advertising and PR machines always busy rethinking more effective carrots for us to increase the yield....

We're not to blame for a lot of the bad feelings we end up taking responsibility and then making ourselves feel guilty for. Having said that, if this is your pressure cooker we're all living in and you are the one turning up the heat then I'm sorry, but you are a full on sadistic knobhead!😂

I've just remembered why I started this status update and maybe I should have mentioned it early. It's just an example of what I was talking about and how the social climate with regards to sensitive topics can change rapidly. Just a few photos.

A couple of weeks back I wrote about a bike I went for in the local woods and my initial concerns even before leaving the house as the murder of George Floyd was all that was on TV at that time. I had a few concerns riding my bike in the woods early in the morning because I'm big and black and just about everyone else in my village is white. Plus I enjoy taking pictures of trees and sunlight and shadows and nature in general, and if a tree looks particularly nice I might stand still and look at it for 20 minutes straight because it's worth it.

Anyway, by the end of my bike ride tears of affirmation were making it hard for me to ride home safely. When I got in I posted the story, with a huge tree pic, in a facebook group for lovers of Britain's Ancient Trees. The group isn't political at all usually, and functions as a kind of sanctuary for those wanting to temporally escape the harshness of reality, but the admins allowed my story and members really liked it more than anything I've ever posted. It was nice being able to resonate with strangers like that, especially considering how charged the world outside of the group was at the time. Some of the messages people were sending really moved me, but as I need at 2 hours just to reply to one person, replying to everyone was never going to happen so I didn't bother starting.

And then just last week, maybe it was one of the admins, I'm not sure, posted a link which may have alluded to or mentioned BLM somehow, I don't know. All I know is that when I popped my head in it was like a brawl in the saloon in Blazing Saddles. The type where you just punch the nearest person standing next to you if you don't have an enemy.

Absolutely brutal it was! Longstanding members announcing their permanent departure from the group like they did it every day. I turn my back upon this veritable treasure trove of glorious oaks, majestic beeches and much more besides! You are all dead to me because I read the letters BLM for a third time in this group. The tranquility of this once idyllic sanctuary has forever been soiled by the insipid skidmarks of reality.

Then the admins pulled the shutters down on the place after someone suggested having a cyber-riot. I'm gonna go and check if it's back online now..

Is it me, or is looting like the black man's Achilles heel?

Is it me or is looting like the black man's Achilles heel? Looting for black people is like landing on a snake in a game of Snakes and Ladders, only this snake has left them on a square which is 5 squares before the starting square! 

I'm being a bit crude here just to help me think out loud so don't be alarmed, but as soon as footage of a bunch of black guys robbing microwaves and XBox 360s from Argos starts doing the rounds on social media and the news, then no matter how cruel or unjust or plain wrong the initial incident was which sparked the outpouring of collective shock, anger and then solidarity, which by now had resonated sympathetic onlookers worldwide - it had all been for nothing, because some black youths were caught on camera making off with some white goods.

Don't get me wrong, taking anything which isn't yours is always wrong but it would be great if that also included black lives.

It's almost like the continued sight of watching goods being stolen from a shop hurts more than seeing black people's lives being stolen every day, despite the latter being physically more difficult to experience.

Once good quality footage of looting exists and is in the hands of the ruling party, ruling power, ruling ruler - it gets circulated relentlessly to blunt the fury and dilute down the spirits of those who had become incensed and inflamed watching George Floyd's life end like hadn't meant a thing. 

Once protests become violent and start attracting arsehole vandals, thieves and opportunists happy to hijack any cause to get some free shit, the zeal in moderate folk begins to wane, and the desire to see justice be done this time round (because it may be the last chance we get), gets downgraded in priority on today's 'to-do' list, until the flame that was burning so brightly for a brief moment is extinguished once again.

Apologies if this is upsetting you by the way, but you know what I'm like! 😁

But on a positive note, proportionally in mainstream news I don't see as many instances circulating whereby black protesters with integrity, staying true to why they are on the streets protesting, form barricades to prevent stores from being looted. Maybe if more videos of this kind were transmitted then it might encourage others to follow suit, because it's the kind of thing most people can agree is a good thing to see.

The protesters who are out risking their lives each day, who possess the integrity not be swayed away, but stay focused upon the cause for which they are fighting, for me, are next level human beings, whose courage I'm hoping can help reignite hope within people who might be feeling disillusioned, conflicted or just numb by all of the chaos happening in the world right now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/gtziuh/a_group_of_people_forming_a_human_barricade_and/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Peace in America is inevitable

One of the things I liked most about working on the phones at call centres in the customer service dept, was the feeling I'd get at a certain stage of a call with a caller on the other end going ballistic. A feeling that a happy ending to the call was inevitable. 

You build up a thick skin working in call centres, but the solidarity and comradery with fellow workers enables you to endure the daily lughole batterings and keeps you feeling like a human being and not some cog or tool or device being utilised by a system.

Many times my first call of the day would be the customer running on peak anger who needed to inject it directly into the intended target while it was still fresh. 

But that kind of pure anger is a rare and special vintage that doesn't last very long if it has to fuel itself. So I'd just listen to the customer and shut the hell up until I was certain they'd said everything that needed saying before responding. 

Most calls felt like small counselling sessions which had a distinctive shape with similar themes. Customers would often wish to inflict their anguish and frustrations for the company on me personally. Instead of the company I was working on behalf of being inept and completely incompetent, I was the one personally responsible for their workmen soiling their shagpile rug after mending the boiler. It was my fault the double glazed windows fitted the week before had started leaking this morning. 

Then, when they'd finally ran out of ammo, and could see that my initial intention to try and help them with their issue hadn't changed, the apologies would come because they had made things personal.

"Sorry. I know it's not your fault...".

The conservation is reset, and you both start again but with the same shared goal this time. The volume of both voices remaining the same, as neither wishes to speak over the other. A natural rhythm to the exchange develops as you both climb aboard the same train of thought, setting off to see how far you can get to your destination. The journey becoming more valuable than the need to arrive.

But it all started with relinquishing control of the narrative and just listening. Not trying to assert control from the get-go out of fear of things escalating:

"Right, before you tell me anything, this is how things are going to go..."

There's a sense of bad inevitability about what is happening now in America. Trump's pride and pathological necessity to assert cliched depictions of inflexible strength lifted from the bygone eras his idols live in, is a trait I fear is so hardwired in him, that there will be the to-ing and fro-ing of sides constantly upping the ante, until everyone involved goes all in and a new peace comes only because the will to fight on has been totally spent.