Jesus Would. Would you?

“What would Jesus do?” says the sign at the foot of the steps to St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I’m not sure that this is quite right. I think the organisers of the demonstration ought to be bolder than this and say, “We know what Jesus would do”.

Now I appreciate that Jesus is not here, and in writing such a statement they would be making assumptions as to what he might have done rather than knowing for sure, but sometimes we just have to trust ourselves.

Jesus, I believe, would be wholly supportive of this demonstration outside this incredible building that is such an iconic monument within the City of Plenty.

So perhaps the sign ought to say “Given the context of Jesus’ life, we strongly believe that he would be with us demonstrating against injustice and greed” – not very succinct I know, but probably more honest.

For I do believe that Jesus would have been out there, saying what he needed to say, giving people cause for consideration and making them stand up and discuss the diabolical nature of the social and economic injustice of organised capitalism around the world. And I don’t think I am alone in thinking that Jesus would have been there either. Dr. Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St. Paul’s has resigned today as he is very concerned about the possibility of violence occurring in the name of ‘protecting’ the church building.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Fraser

http://twitter.com/#!/giles_fraser

The Rev. Giles must be congratulated. He’s a good man. He is an honest man and he is living by and with his principles. He may have taken the cloth but it is clear he has not been smothered by it.

There is another sign outside St. Paul’s which states, “Insisting on socialism is to insist to be human” – Abdullah Ocalan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan

I know that this is an exceptionally controversial statement but I am not sure that you can be a Christian, living by and with the ethics of Jesus’ words and deeds, and not be a socialist. I think that what Jesus had to say was very much in line with socialism, humanism and a general notion of equity.

When I was younger, I attended church regularly. I was exceptionally fortunate that there was a large group of young people who attended and we had a regular discussion about some contemporary and historical issues with a Christian interpretation – Was it right for Eric Liddell to refuse to run for his country on the Sabbath? Was it right that people should be tested for HIV without their permission? What should we do about the situation in Ethiopia when we can see children dying in front of our eyes?

I was astounded, I repeat, astounded by the responses from some of my peers. Their comments, egotistical and irresponsible in nature, seemed to have no place in my interpretation as to what Christianity was all about.

Jesus was far from selfish.

As a younger person, I was a little in love with Jesus – well the Robert Powell version anyway.

Oh those eyes! I’ve always been a sucker for eyes, and in the Franco Zeffirelli mini-series version of his life, Jesus had the most piercing blue eyes which even at that young age struck me as somewhat peculiar. Surely, being born in the Middle East, Jesus was more likely to have deep brown eyes.

But I digress.

“Jesus of Nazareth” was a brilliant spectacle of a drama irrespective of your belief in Christianity. It was spell-binding with an impressive cast of excellent actors. There are, however, some scenes that still stick in my mind and one of them is indeed the scene where Jesus enters into the Temple and overturns the tables in disgust at what they greedy powerful ones have done to this place of holiness.

Robert Powell managed to capture the anger and revulsion that Jesus must have felt. Sometimes, injustice and avarice is so contemptible that even people as good as Jesus can find their emotions overtake them in destructiveness.

“Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer’ and you have turned it into a den of thieves!””

Matthew 21 v12-14

Jesus was livid that this holy place of worth could be used to line the pockets of the greedy. He was appalled that this place, where there should be nothing but peace, could be used to house those who thought only of themselves in what they sold to others for inflated prices beyond the reasonable.

Jesus wanted them out of there so that he could pray and think and eventually provide some miraculous offerings to the people who were following him to be healed in body, mind and soul.

This was my Jesus, or my Robert Powell, whatever the case may be. This was my Jesus. He was with me, fighting injustice, demonstrating against the greedy, the selfish and the thoughtless, for even at a very young age I could not cope with unfairness and injustice.

Oh yes, it is very much my belief that Jesus would definitely have felt more at home on the steps of this cathedral supporting those who were actively demonstrating against the greed of the 1% than turn his back and find his gilded throne within.

At the beginning of this year, I had the pleasure of taking my sister and niece around London for the day. Having shopped around, we found ourselves at the gates of St. Paul’s. I hadn’t been in there for years so was quite looking forward to walking around. Only when we got there, it was too late to get a ticket to go in, and thank goodness for that because they wanted £14 per person to get into the place, and that is before additional costs of climbing up to the dome or entering into the crypt.

I am sorry but I cannot possibly condone this sort of payment to enter into a place of worship.

Did they carefully choose to ignore that quoted passage from the bible?

And now they are using the same monetary excuses to try and move the protestors away from their steps; that they are losing money – important money that they will allegedly put to good use - due to the fact that the cathedral has had to be closed for health and safety reasons and the possible obstruction that this makeshift camp is causing.

Before I went down there today, I had little sympathy with this move from the Ecclesiastics but having now visited the site, it is even more apparent that this is vindictive and petty on behalf of the church.

The camp is relatively small. Admittedly, there are the culture vultures like myself swarming around the place, taking photos, reading the signs – some of us giving our support in our presence, but there is no way that this peaceful temporary home of canvas is any way causing a major obstacle to either getting in or out of the cathedral.

The cathedral should be open. It should be free too in my opinion. It belongs to us, the nation. It is a church – a big one yes, but there is no way that Jesus would condone payment to walk through the oaken doors of any place of worship.

It should be open because this is precisely the place where people should be free to demonstrate. The church is supposed to be a sanctuary. Why should this not extend to those who feel they need protection from the establishments that they are so vehemently protesting about? Shouldn’t they be able to turn to the church in such circumstances?

The protestors did not want to park themselves in the small area outside St. Paul’s. Ideally they would have plonked themselves in the middle of Threadneedle Street, or outside the Stock Exchange to really demonstrate their disgust at the corporate prostitution in our midst. But they sensibly decided that there was no way on earth that they would be allowed to stay there (so how did the American version of the protest manage to stay put in Wall Street?).

They decided that they would be sensible and set up camp in Paternoster Square but even that was not feasible according to the Bobbies on the beat in the City. So they turned to the church in request, and they were granted permission by the Rev. Giles, who could sympathise with their cause.

Perhaps they might invite the Dale Farm residents along too.

So what are the protestors trying to do?
According to their initial statement it is this.

“Occupy LSX

Initial statement – dated 16^th October 2011

At today’s assembly of over 500 people on the steps of St. Paul’s #occuplylsx collectively agree the initial statement below.

Please note, like all forms of direct democracy, the statement will always be work in progress.

·         The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; this is where we work towards them.

·         We are of all ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, generations, sexualities, disabilities and faiths. We stand together with occupations all over the world.

·         We refuse to pay for the banks’ crisis.

·         We do not accept the cuts as either necessary or inevitable. We demand an end to global tax injustice and our democracy representing corporations instead of the people.

·         We want regulators to be genuinely independent of the industries they regulate

·         We support the strike on the 30^th November and the student action on the 9^th November, and actions to defend our health services, welfare, education and employment, and to stop wars and arms dealing.

·         We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits of the rich.

·         We stand in solidarity with the global oppressed and we call for an end to the actions of our government and others in causing this oppression.

·         This is what democracy looks like. COME AND JOIN US.

And come I shall, and come I have.
What intelligent person could refuse?

These are the very causes that I hold dear to my heart and the causes that I have always held dear. Right now, in 2011, they are more prevalent than ever. We are in a situation caused by the greed of people who do not even have the sensibilities, the nerve or the graciousness to hold their hands up and be accountable for their misplaced and misjudged actions. The bankers have done wrong and they have somehow managed to persuade themselves that they are blameless and it is the rest of us who have made some grave mistake in expectation of rational and reasoned behaviour.

Capitalist greed stinks. Injustice is intolerable. Every single bone in my body, every instinct, every thought and imagination cries out against the unfairness in society. This economic dysfunction with a ratio that defies belief merely accentuates my feelings about what is fair and right in so many walks of life.

Our government has got it wrong, economically. I am not an economist. I do not profess to understand it at all but the cuts are going to dramatically affect hundreds and thousands of people. There is no point, no financial point, in stopping all preventative measures to help those less fortunate in society. All that is created is a mess for future generations but in the days of me, me, me, who cares about what has to be picked up later in the century?
We are sitting on a time-bomb of multiple destructiveness with no sustainability, no intelligent thought and a future generation who have had their intuition, thoughtfulness and imagination stifled.

Fee-paying schooling, undemocratic systems, private health care, thoughtless individuals, uncaring organisations, pandering fools – they all need to go, and come the revolution they shall.

There are good people out there at St. Paul’s. There are people who are concerned for others as much as for themselves, if not more. There are people who are prepared to put their freedom and comfort on the line to create a voice, a democratic voice of reason and thoughtfulness.

This all smacks of a very clear path to Enlightenment, referring back to my previous blog, for the greater good of all will truly help you along your own Way, according to Zen.

We all need to find inner strength and light but collectively we can probably do it quicker, ensuring that the greatest talents of the individual form the maximum potential of the conjoined.

There was the most amazing peacefulness, purpose and serenity down at St. Paul’s today.

There are a few places that I have visited in my life where I have been overwhelmed by a presence that is not of this world. It is indescribable, but there is a presence that one cannot possibly explain.

I have felt it in overgrown woods, on islands lost to the why’s and wherefore’s of the living world, but this was rather different.

Today, I found a serenity, and yes a spirituality, in a place that I did not expect – on the pavement outside a massive cathedral that is completely familiar to me.

Bizarrely, that is not where I ever expected to find it.

As I sat on the steps of St. Paul’s this afternoon, I felt quite at peace.

There was all this turmoil going on in the world, and a hell of a lot of doom judging by the apocalyptic messages from the posters around the place, and yet, I felt confident that change can and will come.

Perhaps this Age of Aquarius really is upon us, and I for one, am going to kick it off on the 11^th November 2011, by doing something in stillness and preparing for the prospect of World Change.

Yes, I may be a dreamer but I am looking forward to the approach of 2012, not as an end to the world, but an end to the world as we know it, as we have created since the European Age of Reason.

I’m ready, and I just hope that those I love and care about, as well as those who I do not yet know, are ready too.

Now, if only there was a political party that represented my views and opinions in such a mirrored way that I could sign up and join them. If only there was a spiritual movement that didn’t fill me with unspiritual thoughts.

Perhaps it is time to just invent oneself and hope that the synergy will happen in time, somewhere along the Way.

I’m ready. Are you?

Gove and his Building Fund

Is it any wonder that people are put off politics when they have to try and decipher through the playground nitpickings of its leading characters?

He kicked me first, but she bit me first, but he called me a name first but she gave me a funny stare!

Politicians – this is what you sound like. You are so egotistical and determined that you are right that you forget to look at the facts in front of you. Playing tit for tat games with statistics is bad. Playing tit for tat with statistics when it is affecting the state of our education and thus dramatically affecting our children and young people is just plain abhorrent.

Mr. Gove today stated that his party was providing more capital spend over the next four years than New Labour had provided over eight years. So there! And, he added, he was doing that even though there was a 60% drop in funding.

Now as I have stated before, I ain’t too good at numbers. So when Mr. Gove says that in four years he is going to spend £15.8bn compared with Labour’s £20bn over eight years, then even a numerically challenged person like me can see that there is a shortfall of £4.2 bn.

Is that right or do I need to go back to class?

Obviously, there is the issue that if they then spend an additional amount of money subsequent to that should they get re-elected, then there is every possibility that they will indeed match the figure that New Labour spent. However, as it stands, that is not the case. They have not spent the money, and meanwhile, there are overcrowded schools and dilapidated buildings throughout the country that are not fit for purpose, let alone being creative environments in which our children should be allowed to learn.

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-goves-schoolboy-error-on-funding-for-school-buildings/8312

The fact that Gove looks like an overgrown school child who has just returned to class from a playground tiff makes the whole of this political ball-play even more amusing, if only it weren’t for the fact that once more, the poorest in our society are taking the blame, the suffering and the neglect.

Having read the article with the link above, there is only one real statistic of note within all this tittle-tattle, and it is this. In 2014/5 the capital budget for education will be about the same level as 2002/3 in real terms. Added to this, there is the fact that the Department of Education’s capital spending decrease is far more significant than other governmental departments, and Mr. Gove cannot talk his way out of that one.

It is as it is.

It is at it is and there is still a huge programme of school structural redevelopment to take place.

Just because there were different phases of the Building Schools for the Future initiative, whereby some schools were selected to be prioritised, did not mean that other schools not in Round One, Two, Three or Four were fit for purpose.

All it meant was that their needs were not quite as dire as the needs of those who went forward in Phase One.

Of course, that is before we even get onto the issue of Academies, and I am not sure where all the funding came from for some of the spanking new schools that rose from the proverbial ashes.

Well actually I do.

However, I do know that these institutions managed to spring up pretty quickly when both governments were trying to sell the Academies policy to voters and parents alike, irrespective of whether this was the right thing for the children involved.

Capital spending on school buildings has been atrocious for many years. The audacity of the Conservative party to stand there and announce how generous they are being is stupefying when it is clear that the demise of many a school’s physical structure was largely due to the gross lack of funding between – let’s say 1979 and 1997.

And New Labour should not be patting themselves on the back too strongly. Their policy on education with its disregard for the holistic and progressive view of education misplaced far too much money on initiative after initiative in the holy mantra of raising standards. They didn’t rush immediately to address the buildings or the wider purpose of education.

In the eighties and henceforth, important buildings that represented the development of education were left to rot; from the School’s Board buildings of the 1880s to the modern flat roofed 60s style.

The school where I taught managed to get some local authority funding in 1983 in order to build a new school hall but the incompetence within the design left a huge void of unused space below this spanking new room. The cold that came from below on many a wintry day meant that you could not possibly do physical activity in there or hold an assembly without putting loads of floor mats down – which would probably not be allowed now due to health and safety regulations.

And talking of which, this design built a set of stairs that were so steep and dangerous, it was a miracle that no child ever fell down them and cracked their head open.

But no amount of money poured into the school hall development was going to compensate for the rest of the building, which remained a Victorian masterpiece of draft-ridden rooms and ceilings that bulged worryingly.

We survived. We did our best but this building was not fit for the purpose and style of teaching that we chose to adopt.

This particular school was not in Phase One, Two or Three of the Building Schools for the Future. It remains as it is with a few alterations; plugging the gap or possibly sticking a finger in the dyke waiting for the water to eventually break the bank.

According to the catastrophic financial forecast from Mr. Gove, with or without his inflated suggestions of expenditure, this school will remain, in essence untouched since its construction nearly 130 years ago.

There are such wonderful examples around the country of schools that are fit for purpose and have been built specifically to consider the needs of the 21^st century child and the type of pedagogy that we know is the most appropriate for their needs.

It is just a crying shame that all schools cannot be rebuilt in this way, by thoughtful architects and teachers working together, to create the type of environment that is particularly conducive to learning, both inside and outside the actual building.

Our children deserve more and the politicians should keep their immature and ill-thought mouths shut until they have worked out how to stop bickering and get on with doing something to support the development of quality education in the 21^st Century.

What is Enlightenment?

What is enlightenment?

Without looking it up on the internet, what does it really mean to you? What do you conjure up in your mind when you see or hear the word “enlightenment”?

It is a strange word and is clearly open to interpretation. Enlightenment – seeing the light? Having total understanding? Finally realising a true way for yourself? Knowing that there is a true way for others that may or may not relate at some point to your own? Being me? Being completely intelligent? Using all your compassion and capabilities to do good for others? Be empathetic, emotionally intelligent? To embrace emptiness? To understand one’s true self?

What is it all about?

“Chop that wood
Carry water
What’s the sound of one hand clapping.
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is.”

What is all this talk of chopping wood and carrying water? What has that got to do with being true to oneself or having a complete understanding of life? What is there to understand about collecting water in a bucket?

And how can you possibly hear clapping when there is only one hand? Isn’t it just a riddle to which there is no solution?

In the West, we had a period of time known as the Age of Enlightenment – or the Age of Reason.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html

Michel de Montaigne asked the question, “what do I know?” and was sensible enough to realise that he could not possibly know anywhere near as much as some academics would think they knew because he did not have the experiences of life in other parts of the world, where there might even be a different type of knowledge.

We often hear the phrase “intelligent life” and ask ourselves if there is another planet that could, in time, communicate with us intelligently as capable life forms. Montaigne probably felt the same way about the people of distant continents. At the time, they may as well have been aliens or Martians from the big, red planet. In realising this, he realised his knowledge was limited and conformist, to an extent, through circumstance.

In the 18^th century, people believed that reason would bring about the type of changes to society that they thought were needed; i.e. the advancement of knowledge for societal reformation. Huge developments in technology, thinking, rejuvenation of the arts; all of this took place. The world was not standing still. It was evolving into a different form but at the heart of it was the development of knowledge and reason to try and make the world a better place.

 “Every second, every minute
It keeps changing to something different
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It says it’s non attachment
Non attachment. Non attachment."

Let’s not confuse the discussion by bringing non-attachment in at this point. It is hard enough to decipher the meaning of enlightenment, and yet, non-attachment is core to that.

So, what is this about enlightenment and reason? According to the development of the Enlightenment period, it was all about reason. We can reason, therefore we become aware, therefore we can develop new things and see the light – ergo we have achieved enlightenment.

But in many ways, this is similar to the inaccurate thinking about the word ‘intelligence’.

People have, for many years, equated intelligence to thinking, to reason, to understanding and have not begun to grapple with the complexities of this phenomenon.

Is the baby not intelligent to cry for food? Am I not intelligent if I want to help the suffering for no ‘reason’ other than a sympathetic feeling towards them? Is it stupid of me to sit on a hill, looking out to an open sea and feel more at one with myself and my ‘learning’ than any amount of time spent head-first in a book on quantum physics?

Am I really going to discover myself and the wider world through reason alone?

“I’m in the here and now, and I’m meditating
And still I’m suffering but that’s my problem
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
 Wake up”

Some may indeed be beginning to wake up, and we should be thankful for that.

It comes as no surprise to find Matthew Taylor from the RSA talking about a need for a new stage of Enlightenment, for he was one of those who ‘reasoned’ with the former Prime Minister Blair. He supported the New Labour mantra of “Education, education, education” with a very clear purpose to develop further reason, raising standards and enabling our young people to be knowledgeable and full of facts. He supported the idea that learning to read and write would come about most effectively by programming children to learn phonemes rather than use their imagination to create a story from their own mind. He believed, like Blair, that this reasoning, this knowledge would somehow magically lift the impoverished out of intellectual decline and therefore reduce all social inequalities at the drop of a CVC word or an intelligent use of the sort of vocabulary that Will Self

often plops into articles just to remind us he is more intellectual than the rest of the country.

However, according to this clip, I think he is beginning to see a glimmer of light, though seems a world away from what I would deem to be real enlightenment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=related

Taylor explains that the age of Enlightenment helped to shape the “collective consciousness of modern people” with shared values, norms and lifestyles. His question now is that is this same consciousness and collective values correct for the 21^st century?

He states that the there have powerful insights into human nature over the last thirty years that should make us rethink. He uses words and phrases such as “moral critique of individualism” where we should all consider the distinction between need and appetite as the drivers for our behaviour.

He suggests that we need wider levels of empathy to the point that he declares that the education mantra is important but that “fostering empathic capacity” is equally integral to a change in society and by default, a greater enlightenment.

He says that we should seriously consider substantive and ethical questions and that there should be a reassertion of ethical humanism. He concludes with the notion that we cannot advance without ethical reasoning, explaining that we need to know who are we, who we need to be, who we aspire to be.

This is the ethics of the 21^st century and this is what we can collectively achieve, according to Taylor, who captures this all as the new Enlightenment.

And of course to some extent he is right.

If we are ever to become fully enlightened, we really do need to have a collective and individual ethical basis. We need to be empathetic and to act with that empathy for the good of ourselves and others. When we see or feel injustice, we have to reason against it.

But enlightenment has to be more than mere reason.

We have to feel, think, imagine, act and also chop wood and carry water when the time is right to do so. We need to embrace everything in order to be. We need to learn well beyond our age of schooling. We need to intuit and be allowed to do so. We need to understand the strength of our body, mind and soul. We need to appreciate and use our passions. We need to have time to stop and feel rather than constantly bombarding our spirit with thought, all because we have been led to believe that we can only get to the ‘right’ answer through reason.

And as important as need, we must have the desire to do these things.

 “Enlightenment says the world is nothing
Nothing but a dream, everything’s an illusion
And nothing is real”

So what is real?

Who knows?

My first introduction to philosophy was from a teacher, spouting off about George Berkeley and his notion that material substances only existed because we thought they did. Without the thought, without the idea that a chair was a chair – it wasn’t. It didn’t exist without our thought.

Who knows what is real? Who needs to know what is real unless you are completely dedicated to reason but the world cannot possibly be compartmentalised in this way, and perhaps that is one element of enlightenment that many in the West have yet to see.

There are so many vitals in our lives that are unquantifiable and un-reasonable.

Who can truly measure contentment yet we need and want it in our lives?

How is compassion valued?

What of patience as a virtue? We’ve all heard the phrase but how many of us actually understand it and its place in our world.

Isn’t honesty and truthfulness as or more important than reason?

Isn’t there something about what Montaigne said in that we cannot possibly be enlightened until we realise that there are essential parts of our lives that we cannot possibly rationalise, and possibly never know.

“Good or bad baby
You can change it anyway you want
You can rearrange it
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
Chop that wood
And carry water
What’s the sound of one hand clapping
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is.”

Good or bad? Black or white? Hot or cold? Yin or Yang.

Where there’s a will, there’s a Way.

The enlightened don’t see black and white. They may see black, they may see white. They may see various shades of grey in between. What they do not do is insist that black is always black or that what they saw as black in one moment of their lives will always be black.

With every certainty in life there is uncertainty.

The enlightened do not dismiss reason but they appreciate that there is possibly more than this that should influence, shape and change us.

Change does not have to be huge but it does have to be.

The enlightened know that we cannot stagnate in an ever evolving world.

“All around baby, you can see
You’re making your own reality. Every day because
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”

Enlightenment is the ultimate reality but the ultimate reality for me may be very different from your own ultimate reality. There is uniqueness in life and there is collectiveness.

We need both, and the serenity and beauty of life can certainly be enhanced by the understanding, acceptance and reasoning of shared values.

But ultimately, enlightenment is your own, and is all embracing.

I wish that they wouldn’t call it the Age of Enlightenment because for me, it is only a fraction of what enlightenment actually is. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the thoughtfulness of enlightenment from the other side of the world. It is a mere parody by comparison.

 “One more time
 Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s up to you
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s up to you everyday
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s always up to you
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”

I don’t know what it is either. But at least I have my eyes, ears, heart, mind and soul open ready to learn, ready to reason and not to reason.

My enlightenment is somewhere out there as long as I travel the pathway.

But at the heart of it is living as well as I can for myself and others as I can, with clear pitfalls along the way and no excuses for my insufferable hopelessness, only a willingness to keep going, to keep looking and to keep trying to go beyond the rational and the reasoned.

The mind is greater than the cerebral, the soul more constant than the ephemeral, the body more able than the mere physical.

It's up to you, it's up to me but it is certainly something that everyone should be considering - beyond reason.

....................................................................................................

 Further thoughts on enlightenment..........

"Late one night a female Zen adept was carrying water in an old wooden bucket when she happened to glance across the surface of the water and saw the reflection of the moon. As she walked the bucket began to come apart and the bottom of the pail broke through, with the water suddenly disappearing into the soil beneath her feet and the moon's reflection disappearing along with it. In that instant the young woman realized that the moon she had been looking at was just a reflection of the real thing...just as her whole life had been. She turned to look at the moon in all it's silent glory, her mind was ripe, and that was it...Enlightenment."

CHIYONO-- NO MOON, NO WATER

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."

W. Somerset Maugham

And special thanks to Van Morrison for making me think.

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Enlightenment-lyrics-Van-Morrison/FFA2D8D1A2BC211D48256A34000DC302

....................................................................

And finally,

'We’re enlightened in our delusion. We’re deluded in our enlightenment. And then there’s delusion beyond delusion'. 

Dogen Zenji:

Justice in Death

I’m not very good with death. Who is? It is a tricky subject for anyone to contend with, and it is something that we are all going to have to face in life be it our own demise or the passing of a loved one.

Death hurts, or rather the feelings associated with death. Grief is epic. It is all-consuming. It lingers for years, rearing its ugly head in the most unforeseen of moments. The finality of life is alarming, which is why we should all try and live with compassion and consideration for all.

Life indeed is too short.

Can you remember your first encounter with death? Perhaps it was the death of a grandparent or a favourite pet? Some people argue that it is a good idea for children to have pets because it prepares them for death. It helps them to nurture their ability to care as well, but it is also an allegedly decent way of getting children used to the fact that every living thing will eventually die.

My first encounter with death was not that of a pet, though I do remember our third hamster dying on 4^th May 1979. My father said that the little mite had the right idea to pop his clogs on the day that Thatcher came to power.

My first encounter with death was earlier than that though.

It was a Saturday afternoon in January. We were having a big family do, possibly for my father’s birthday. All the men and some of the boys had gone to a football match and the women, girls and younger children were watching a film of sorts.

The telephone rang and my stoical mother answered the phone. It was my cousin, and she was explaining that my uncle had died, having had a massive heart attack in the post office that morning.

I was about seven years old and my four year old cousin, who really did not understand what was happening, marched into the lounge having overheard my mother recounting the news to her sister, and declared without an ounce of emotion that Alfred was dead.

My sister and I shot out into the kitchen in floods of tears to be greeted by my mother who was carefully trying to suppress her anger that we had found out so abruptly.

Uncle Alfred; a strange man who was so strict and harsh with his own children, yet was the most gentle of characters when it came to myself and my siblings.

It was Alfred who we always stayed with when we came to London, and because I associated him with London and London sites and sights, I was bizarrely perturbed that he died in the post office. I had assumed that he was at the Post Office Tower, and had visions of him falling to the ground on the top of this building rather than the reality of him dying at his local post office branch.

I still look up at it nowadays and think of him and my warped mind when confronted with death.

Death happens to us throughout our lives, even if we do not have immediate family that lose their lives. Death is ever-present in the news. Barely does a day pass when there is not some mention of death in the news. We have almost become oblivious to those initial feelings because of its omnipresent status. We watch fallen victims on dusty roads with a disconnection – almost forgetting that these are human beings with families and a life now exhausted.

Another childhood memory I have is of going downstairs early one morning. Everyone else was asleep but the newspaper boy had already done his rounds and the Guardian was sitting on the floor.

I picked it up and read the front page.

A man had been killed, murdered in Texas, USA. He had been sitting in a chair, and some anonymous person had switched a button that sent an electric shock right through this man as he was strapped and bound, unable to escape his state-planned fate.

I read the entire article with horror. How could anyone kill another person, knowingly? How could you live with yourself knowing that there was a possibility that the button that you pressed, in conjunction with others, could have been the fatal one; that you were responsible for the death of another human being?

I just didn’t get it, and it frightened me.

Nobody told me to detest capital punishment. Nobody had even discussed it with me. It was that article, read by the innocent child that formulated my view about state-managed death and I have never veered away from the abhorrence throughout my life.

There are some vile people in this world, and there are times when I have felt extremely passionate about particular people who have monstrously dismissed their basic humanity to murder one, two, thousands or millions of people.

There are other people who may not have physically pressed a button or fired a shot who have plenty of blood on their hands for the hopelessness that they instilled in others to the point that these human beings took their own lives out of despair.

Anybody who has watched films or read books such as “Schindler’s List” or “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” can hardly feel anything other than utter disgust at the waste of life and the appalling, almost inconceivable horror of what happened in those gas chambers established by the Nazis.

Surely the perpetrators of such policies deserved to die in the most horrible of circumstances considering what they had done to so many?

And yet, I still find it difficult to contemplate the thought of anyone’s death, or another person being responsible for the death of another.

Perhaps I might feel differently if someone murdered somebody close to me. I don’t know but I am still not convinced that I could cope with the responsibility of another person’s death, and I am not sure I would want “an eye for an eye”. What would be the point? It wouldn’t bring back the loved one.

There are some brutal people in the world both living and dead.

This year, we have seen the murder of Osama bin Laden – yes, an evil man who was responsible for the death of thousands. And today, we have seen Muammar Gaddafi murdered in his home town as troops loyal to the new regime in Libya finally found the dictator and dragged him out of his hideaway. They shot him in the leg so that he could not get away and then, on the way to hospital, the blurred picture seems to be suggesting that there was open fire and he was killed.

Was it an execution? Was it planned this way? Who knows?

The fact was the man died, and there are an abundance of questions that will never be asked and responses never given because with his demise went a whole lot of knowledge about what this bastard did to fellow countrymen and attacks on foreigners too.

Now, there is the possibility that we will never know.

What sort of justice is that to the people of Lockerbie, to the families of all those thousands found in unmarked graves in the middle of Tripoli, to the people who have fought against this dictator and lost their lives? Who is going to tell them what happened?

Are they really going to feel better knowing that this man has died? If they really wanted justice, then surely this man should have been locked up for the rest of his days, suffering the indignity of a fallen leader, having no books to read, no comforts of his Bedouin tents, no people to talk to.

There are other means of getting revenge that some may argue are less humane than a bullet in the head, but at least there would not be another human being with blood on their hands, responsible for the death of another.

I know that there are many who would disagree. I had this argument years ago with friends at college. On a trip down to London in a rackety old mini-bus we talked about this very subject.

I was shocked that friends who were either socialist or communist did not agree with my stance on capital punishment, when it came to the truly evil of the world. I couldn’t understand how they could see justice in another killing, especially when the brutal one had not been given an opportunity to explain themselves in front of a court of law, to the family of their victims for their atrocities.

I have no love for these people, obviously. It is evident that Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Ladan were all absolutely responsible for the deaths of many, many people but there is still a niggle within me that squirms slightly at the thought of their execution. Saddam had a trial and he did not reveal anything significant about his state-run murders, so one could argue that there is no point in having his day in court. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been killed in the course of his capture but do the Iraqis now feel so much better because of his death? Perhaps they do, I don’t know.

And will the Libyans in two years time, potentially still in a state of political fluctuation, remain happy that Gaddafi was killed when they have no concrete understanding of what the dictator did and who he did it to?

There are other evil people still alive who I would like to see brought to justice. Robert Mugabe is often quoted as the man that most people would like to see dead, and yes, I would concur. He has brought about violence and suffering to millions but I would like to see him die in another way, not through the intervention of international forces that seek him out like a fox. I want to see him suffering for what his has done, and maybe that is more vindictive.

Anyway, there is no chance of international intervention – there’s no oil in his country.

There are plenty of evil people around who could do with a long stretch of silence to contemplate what they have done to society, be it through the murder of innocents or the greediness of their grubby little lives. As Gaddafi died there were people throughout the world fighting their own peaceful fight against the tyranny of capitalism that is also responsible for death and misery.

Nobody outside St. Paul’s cathedral is brandishing a gun. Nobody in Wall Street, who has been camping out night after night in the fight for democratic economics, is out to kill a human being, just a warped philosophy.

There are peaceful means and there is justice that can occur without any more bloodshed.

The young girl who sat on the hall mat, reading the newspaper all those years ago, is still within me.

I am not convinced that murder and death of any sort provides meaningful justice or revenge.

There are plenty of people that I would like to slap or spit at but I could not be responsible for the death of another and I am not sure how any intelligent, thoughtful person could.

I know that many could not possibly agree with me, and I accept that my opinions might be somewhat bizarre considering the extent of evil from these dictators.

All I know is that yesterday, once more, I didn’t feel a sense of victory. I just felt a little uncomfortable – as I suspect most do with death, if they stopped and considered it in detail.

One in Ten

“I am a one in ten

Even though I don’t exist

Nobody knows me

But I’m always there

A statistical reminder

Of a world that doesn’t care”

So went the song of the 80s to remind anyone who needed reminding that Thatcher didn’t have a soul, couldn’t care less how many people were unemployed and was resolutely committed to destroying the manufacturing industry of a nation that had very little in natural resources to fall back on.

Oh, and what natural resources we did have, she sold off, shut down and buggered up.

It was a very unpleasant time. It destroyed families, society and individuals as they fell into the hopelessness of redundancy, with an unhealthy dose of self-doubt and unworthiness.

Multiply that by three million and one can barely cope with imagining or indeed knowing just how many people were affected by this heartless policy of inconsideration.

Enter Mr. Cameron, always ready to make excuses and apportion blame to his immediate predecessors, glibly dismissing the matriarchal figure of his party and her role in the demise of all that was once valued and respected in life.

Who are these people who have such lack of concern for their fellow human being? How do they really sleep at night knowing how much suffering they are causing to other people with their ill-conceived and thoughtless policies? There’s a simple answer to that. They don’t consider the proletariat as their fellow human beings. The workers are a different species.

So our leader stood there in parliament today and happily dismissed Mr Miliband’s grave concerns about the growing unemployment figures. Cameron called them “disappointing”.

Disappointing? 80,000 more people out of work in the last financial quarter, and that does not count the people like my good self who are an unrecorded part of the statistics having lost their job but not signed up to any package of financial pittance that the government can offer.

Disappointing – that there are now more women looking for work, partly through redundancy and partly because their partners have lost their jobs thus forcing them to reconsider any care responsibilities for children or aging parents in the need for an input of money into the family coffers.

Disappointing Mr. Cameron.

Yes, it is disappointing. And a lot more besides.

But there is more.

There are now one million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are without a job; a statistic that was last at this horrific peak in 1992.

Now this is interesting.

The students who have recently left university were the first children who took the compulsory SATs in Key Stage One. At the age of seven, these children were tested in English, Maths, Science, Design and Technology, Geography and History. They were all graded as to whether they are working towards a level or whether they were accomplished enough to be given the label of being a “Level Two”.

Yes, I remember it well; how they had to study two dimensional black and white photos of irons through the ages instead of looking at the history of their own lives or being encouraged to talk to older family members about their experiences of childhood. I remember how they had to create an imaginary island rather than getting out to the local park to design a redevelopment of the play area that they could submit as a suggestion to the local authority. I remember how they had to make cards with flappy bits that fulfilled the marking criteria rather than being able to design something that reflected their interest and demonstrated their own sense of creativity and personality.

These children were given criteria, assessments, labels and targets, and swallowed them whole.

These children were told that if they worked hard and achieved Level 2, they could continue to progress to Level 4 or even Level 5 by the time that they left primary school.

These children were convinced that they should continue in their quest for attainment and collect a ludicrous amount of GCSEs.

These children were then indoctrinated into thinking that the only thing to do with these mass of qualifications was to study for A-Levels and then get themselves off to University.

These children were told that there really was no alternative. If they were ever going to get anywhere in life, they had to go and get themselves a degree. The job market was going to be competitive and without such a qualification they would be consigned to the scrapheap.

Enter the aforementioned scrapheap, where so many of these ex-students are sleeping, awaiting their chance to shine with their certificates of attainment.

Only there aren’t any jobs because someone didn’t do the homework. There are no jobs for these aspirational young people who were told that they could own the earth if they went onto higher education.

But, I hear you say, there are jobs. There are plenty of jobs if they actually want to work.

Well, this is not true in the main but there are certainly some jobs out there.

Today, on the radio, there was a factory owner talking about his inability to recruit. He owned a shoe and boot business where a certain amount of flair and creativity was required, according to him, to make these quality garments. He was offering training and a job for life, with potential career progression for those who showed a particular interest and loyalty to the organisation.

He had been on local radio to try and recruit and had had an open day session at the factory with fifteen ‘candidates’ coming to have a look around and see if this was a place where they would like to work. The pay was reasonable if not earth shattering. There was security. There was potential.

So how many did he recruit?

None.

Not one of these people wanted the job that this man was offering, and why? Because they all had degrees and felt that working on a factory floor was beneath them.

Somewhere along the line there was an implicit value judgment surreptitiously planted in their heads that this sort of work; manual, creative, manufacturing work was not something that a graduate ought to be even considering.

These young people had a degree and with that, according to them, brought an entitlement not to do menial jobs.

You cannot blame them. They had been sold the dream which turned into a nightmare because someone had not done the mathematics. There was never going to be enough jobs for every graduate - well not the type of jobs where their chosen degree was going to be an employable asset.

They were sold a dud! And the heartless or the cynic might even suggest that the insistence in keeping these young people in education prevented the unemployment figures then of resembling the heady and heartless peak that they do today.

It is, however, even worse.

Values are important in any society and any functioning collection of people. Once all these children and young people were sold this story of degrees and qualifications and success and attainment they, like the prostitutes who sold them this myth, started to believe, by default, that certain things were of more value in and to society than others.

Having a degree was of higher value than having a practical qualification in building or plumbing or roofing. Having a degree was more important than being a shopkeeper or a road sweeper, when we all know that we need to have food from the shops and our roads maintained.

What we also need and what industry and businesses nationwide are also crying out for is young people who are confident, who have self-worth, who know how to communicate, who are capable of thinking on their own, who show leadership, creativity, inspiration, who are literate and numerate. Employers want young people to shine in a way that shows they are human; that they have qualities, personality, an ability to empathise, an ability to work together, collaborating. They want people who show initiative, who can think outside the box.

And some of these poor young people have nothing to offer other than a shiny certificate with a 2:1 emblazoned on its matt finish declaring their ability to pass exams on the Media Influences of the 21^st century.

I am not suggesting that all young graduates who are unemployed are devoid of some of the qualities mentioned above but what I am saying is that there has been a values statement in saying that their degree was indeed the ‘be all and end all’ and that none of these other vital skills and attributes were ever going to be as important as that shiny certificate. Furthermore, there was also the implicit suggestion that those who did not have that shiny certificate could not have those attributes either.

The trades were and are so belittled that it is allegedly incomprehensible to have an intelligent, confident, communicative plumber, for instance. Happily I know plenty, one of which has recently done some work for me; who left school at sixteen and has worked for the same organisation for the last ten years, one that is at least employed but struggling to get money together for monthly rental let alone the £30,000 he needs for a down payment for buying a house.

We have sold them all a dud. We have not supported them. We have led them to believe in the value of ‘education’ without ever enabling them to learn according to their needs and their desires. We have created a process of teaching rather than an avenue for learning, and in doing so we have disabled them and indoctrinated them into thinking that there was only one course to follow.

For those who could not or chose not to follow the higher education route, well they were dismissed as being thick or second class in some way, even if they had the ability and the wherewithal to follow an academic journey had they wanted to.

We have stuck labels on young people and now disregarded them whatever label they chose.

I was talking to my child yesterday about what he might want to study for A-Level. Philosophy was his response, and drama. He definitely wanted to do drama.

I paused. I started to say that perhaps he ought to keep his options open and do English too.

And then I stopped.

For the greatest accolade to my parenting would be for him to choose exactly what he wants to do, irrespective of the pressure that he might have to go for pure academic subjects as he is a candidate for top grades.

Whatever he chooses to do, will it really matter? At this rate a degree will be worthless whatever the subject matter. Therefore he should follow his dream and just do what amuses him and what enthuses him beyond all manner of supposed cogent planning.

And if he chose to be a builder or an electrician – would that make him less of the human being that he is? Apparently the answer to that is yes, and it bloody well shouldn’t be.

We have to enable young people to fulfil their human potential as the first ‘criteria’. If that happens to comply with the greater needs of society, then all for the better. However, if we create an environment where those with a mass of qualifications suffer from superiority complexes to the point that they cannot bring themselves to do any job, then we have created an unworkable and irresolvable situation. What we have done is place total value on work rather than living.

And I am not convinced, from the comfort of my redundancy, that this is the right way.

Another short anecdote – My son was asking my mother about what was the greatest punishment that her parents inflicted on her.

She told him the story of how she was caught out by her mother. She had been reading in bed by torchlight well beyond the hour when she was told to switch her lights out. The punishment for this disobedience was a fortnight without books. She could read books to do with her studies but no reading for pleasure. She said it was the longest fortnight of her childhood.

Ask a teenager how much time they get for reading these days and you will get a sorry response. Ask them what they have had time to read other than the ubiquitous “Of Mice and Men” and they will tell you that they are not encouraged to read for pleasure. They have to abide to the curriculum. Ask them if they have heard of any other Steinbeck books and they will look at you blankly. “It’s not on the list”.

My mother was right to be upset for that fortnight. The trouble today is that through the influence of those who aspire to see education as a factory of facts has ensured that my mother’s fortnight has stretched into a four year period or more.

And still we have these horrendous unemployment figures.

No jobs, no learning, no ability to be creative. Lots of misplaced values judgment.

I wonder what might have happened to these young people if we had thrown the 2D irons up in the air. I wonder what would have happened if we had spent days in the park learning about their lives instead of adhering to the curriculum.

I wonder what would have happened to these young people if they hadn’t been sold the wrong dream.

Shine On October Moon

There is something deliciously exhilarating about being completely impulsive. It makes one realise that there is still life in an old girl and that there is a world out there waiting to be witnessed; photographed and written about, if only you JFDI!

Midnight and the household were about to go to bed. It had been an abnormally sunny and hot day; a surprising word to use for the 1^st October, but hot is certainly the only one that could be used for this incredible day. Earlier, there were people walking the streets in shorts and t-shirts, and why shouldn’t they in temperatures of 29 degrees? There was no wind present. It was almost stifling. Fancy saying that in Britain on the first day of an autumnal month!

I felt like escaping.

And so I did.

My friends were taking part in the Shine Walk, raising money for cancer sufferers – in this particular case for two dear friends who are currently enduring treatment and pain from this debilitating and ultimately terminal illness. They were also walking in memory of all the people lost to their friends and family.

So it seemed an appropriate thing to do – to go and meet them and break their walk in the darkened morning by giving them a little company, and to let them know that they were being thought about.

I asked my family members if they would like to come and support my friends, but it was nearly midnight and they didn’t really fancy the trip around London at that time of night. I really must emphasise the joys of spontaneity to them.

I grabbed a bottle of water, got in the car and headed towards Greenwich. The streets of this little enclave of the capital were still relatively full as I parked my car in the road that leads to the Trafalgar, and as I emerged from my vehicle I could already see a line of mainly women, walking towards to old buildings that are now part of the University, with their black t-shirts emblazoned with the “Shine” emblem, adorned with various extras like glow sticks, pink tutus and face paints.

A few late night drinkers applauded them on their way, and a handful of people were sitting at the side of the road, with drinks and other refreshments waiting for their friends to emerge from the crowd to give them an encouraging boost of support.

As for me, I wandered along Trafalgar Road, quietly minding my own business and looking down the linear pathway to see hundreds of people reminding us that there are actually still people in this world who give a damn.

After about half an hour of walking towards the Blackwall Tunnel approach road, I met up with my friends and they were so delighted that I had gone to the alleged trouble of popping out to see them. We walked along the road, passing their two miles completed poster and then I left them to wander into the old nautical buildings area for their first official refreshment stop.

It was nearly one o’clock. What was I to do?

I wasn’t ready to go home so I drove up to Tower Bridge and parked the car in familiar surroundings next to the railway arches by the London Mission.

Was I insane? Was it appropriate for a woman with an expensive camera around her neck to be walking the streets alone at this time of night? We are led to believe that this is probably not the most sensible thing to do, particularly in a place with such a dodgy reputation, but this used to be “my manor” and I didn’t feel particularly perturbed.

It really shouldn’t be a problem and whilst I would not advocate risky behaviour, I honestly felt total calm and a sense that this should be a perfectly acceptable and safe thing to do.

I walked up to the river, took a few photos from Tower Bridge and then headed down towards City Hall where the walkers were beginning to amass for their refreshments. The walk was in two sections. The first walkers set off in the middle of the evening – these were the ones doing the marathon distance, but walking. My friends had opted for the half marathon distance and the turning point was through Potter’s Fields.

And although the majority of human traffic was relative to the money raising, there were still plenty of other people taking full advantage of the balmy night, wandering or even sitting in the park to reflect on the city in front of them.

Mad folk dancing through the water sprinklers, groups of American visitors with their friends who lived locally, two people cuddling up together, legs gathered by the knee, folding into one another, and the odd singleton with a can in hand not looking as though they had anywhere particular to go.

I returned to the car and headed towards Bermondsey, where I phoned my friends who were approaching. I decided that I would leave the car there and walk back to Tower Bridge with them, just for a brief while and they soon made the distance from Surrey Quay station to the next one.

We had a good chat about the world, about friends, about what they have been doing in the month or so since I saw them and by the time we got to the river, we talked quietly about our friends who were riddled with the big C, reflecting together as we looked across the river.

I spoke to S last week. Her most recent visit to the consultant had been a mixed bag of news; no new spread, but the mass of cells in her lungs were no longer responding to the particular type of chemotherapy she had been on. She needed to start a new and more sinister form of treatment this Monday.

C said that it had completely wiped her out this week. She had been totally incapacitated, such was the strength of the dosage she had received. We know that the chemo is not going to remove the little bastards but it could diminish them, thus prolonging her life by a small amount.

Of course, we all hope for the miracle.

It could happen.

Our other friend has returned to work, not because she is fit enough to do so but because she has been unable to work for a year and has no money left. No insurance, no nothing, so she is trying to do a couple of days a week. Unfortunately, she has had an excruciating pain in her neck that meant two days back at school and she was ready for a week off. I spoke to her last week too. Her resilience and determination is impressive. Why do we use such words for people who are coping with this illness? Because there is nothing else to do; either you are resilient or you let the disease overwhelm you. There is no other choice, I suppose but I am still in awe of people who live with this disease, knowing that it is destroying the workings of your body, knowing that sooner rather than later, it’s going to get you.

We all know that we are going to die but living with its immediacy is something quite different. Stoicism seems the wrong word sometimes.

We walked a little more quietly after that, and then I said my goodbyes at the station, returned to my car and made my way back through the streets.

London was still awake. London is always awake. Shops open, restocking a big independent supermarket in the middle of Peckham; boxes galore, a whole family seemed to be working together to get the shop ready for the morning business, but the morning was already alive. Business never shuts.

More people walking through the streets, more drinking, more sloping against the shuttered and graffiti laden shop fronts, smoking, eating, not really going anywhere; just being.

And still it was 18 degrees.

And meanwhile, the many walkers traipse their steps back towards the Millennium Dome; their final destination once their walk is completed.

It is good to witness camaraderie. It is good to see people enjoying one another. It is good to see values being so blatantly demonstrated.
But to think how many people were out there, knowing that each of them had their story of one, two, three, more people who had been lost.

I wandered back to suburbia. Curtains closed, lights off, lifeless.

This part of the city closes its eyes, shuts its ears and the silence endures uncomfortably. 

...........................................

Next year, I think I will do the walk. Why didn't I get organised to do it this year? Why is everything next year, later, maybe, hopefully?

But at least there is a next year.

A real huge well done to those who did the walk tonight/this morning.

If nothing else, it makes us all a little better for doing something together.