what if

What if none of us is responsible for anything? What if we are like children in an arcade, holding onto the steering wheel of the driving game, aware that no money has been put in and yet holding the steering wheel and turning it back and forth anyway, pretending we are driving? What if we do not own our lives and the directions they have taken and continue to take? What if, instead, we are thrown into and through our lives, like leaves on a breeze, able to have no more control over our direction and experiences than to adjust our attitude to what is taking place and the sense we make of it - as a man falling from a cliff may cry out, or clutch to the rocks beyond his reach, or notice that he is flying and be aware of the cool wind on his face, and the cry of the gulls above?

The wealthy in our society believe that their wealth is an achievement of theirs, the reward for a series of choices and activities that they have undertaken throughout their lives. As an inevitable corollary of this, they believe that those with less material possessions or financial income are in that position because of their activities and choices, and by implication that as a result those people are less able, intelligent, diligent or responsible. Similarly, those for whom life is defined by constant, gnawing shortage - of money, of affection, of family or property or a sense of security - believe that their lives are a failing of theirs, the punishment for choices and activities that they have failed to make, or made wrongly throughout their lives, with the resultant self-criticism, anger and lack of self-confidence that is its equally inevitable corollary.

But what if no-one - not wealthy people, nor those in prison, nor hedge-fund managers, nor homosexuals, nor liberals, nor murderers, nor the Prime Minister, nor pensioners in state care homes, nor children, nor Olympic sportsmen, nor paedophiles, nor schoolteachers, nor priests, nor florid psychotics nor my cats are really responsible for what has happened in their lives? What if it were to emerge that all the decisions we believe we and other people make, all the choices that we so tenderly hold to be at the heart of our 'freedom' in fact take place in a part of the brain that is entirely unconscious? What if every choice you have ever made turned out to have been made when you were, in effect asleep or elsewhere? What if it should emerge that what you actually do is to attempt to claim these choices as your own at the point at which you discover that they have been made after the fact - saying your are a genius if the choice or behaviour you have just noticed yourself engaging in turns out to have a pleasant or positive outcome, and a fool if the outcome turns out to be unpleasant or negative?

Brain-scanning during the decision-making process - where the pattern of brain functioning can be mapped in real-time in an MRI scanner while a subject is selecting between options - appears to suggest that this scenario is actually the case. It appears that when we are asked why we have made a certain decision, we answer by creating a rationale for a decision that was actually made in our non-conscious minds - that we attempt to account for ourselves in the same way we attempt to account for everything else, by creating a rationalisation that appears to explain what has taken place. In the same way that we might say 'I suppose the reason he didn't leave his car unlocked was because he was scared it would be stolen in this area', we should say 'I suppose the reason i resigned from that job was because i was bored with doing all that paperwork'. The truth is we resigned before any thought had taken place.

There is a strong case then, for viewing life in this way, where society comprises of a collection of lucky and unlucky people, all thrown into their lives and having no option but to undergo the lives they find themselves experiencing - some days seeming to 'achieve' things, some days appearing to have 'made mistakes', some days loved, some vilified - but in fact spectating, with only their awareness of the experience of living something they can truly lay claim to.

What are the implications of this for our day-to-day lives? What if the rapist and the internationally successful singer-songwriter have simply found themselves in their respective positions in society, and neither has any responsibility or agency over the course of their lives other than for the attitude they are taking to what seems too be happening? What are the implications for the criminal justice system, for our relationships, for our political life? What if we were to cease using the different positions we find ourselves thrown into as justifications for congratulating and punishing eachother and ourselves? What if those who find they are parents stopped pitying those who find they are childless couples, and those who find they are policemen tempered their anger toward those who find themselves to be criminals, if those who find they are poor ceased blaming themselves or those who find they are rich, or if those who discover they have passed an examination tempered their pride, or those who have discovered that their house has been burgled tempered their rage?

What if we are all in fact the same, that this 'thrown-ness' is something that links all of us, and that the misunderstanding of this has created all the walls we have built between eachother and between ourselves and the world that is around us and within us?

So, Matt and I shared a fiercely untidy home together for three years. I remember he would cook delicious meals more slowly than I had previously known was possible - on one occasion it was 2.30am before he flourished in from the kitchen holding the plates aloft like trophies with that infectious, silly grin plastered on his face. I remember him in the garden during some drinks party we were at, with seven kids all simultaneously riding on his back (he was, to anyone with the eyes to see it, a dragon). And I remember looking out the window about an hour later to see him STILL carrying seven children - all screaming with the giggles - around the garden, on his back. Playing. Playing the computer game 'Civilisation' with such fascination that I once came home from work to find him sitting at my computer with his trousers round his ankles, smoking furiously with his face an inch from the screen. He explained that, hearing me coming in, he had lunged toward the bed to put his trousers on so that I wouldn't know he had not moved from his chair all day, but that when they were half on, he had been attacked by the Chinese, and was going to lose his capital city if he did not muster a defence. Matt was the kindest, warmest most honourable man I have ever known. He took care of everyone around him all the time. He took care of me. One day I received an email from him, while I was at work. It was a huge photo of Nansi's smiling face and under it he had written ":0)". Over the next year he seemed less concerned with Civ2, and happier, and calmer until he was simply shining; with that love that shined so bright you could see it from outside on the pavement of Matt, Nansi and Abigail's little flat off Green Lanes. Bless you Matty. And my love to everyone who loved you. xxx Paddy

.....so, Christ, this country! I spent Monday walking round a winter wonderland Hackney with happy children making their first snowmen of this lifetime and jaded urbanites greeting eachother like old men in country lanes, everyone's face a default smile between specific expressions. A day in Narnia, with no work, no buses, no school, no sound of combustion engines - a heavy blanket of silence everywhere. For one day the city was the country and everyone had a day off that routine death that we all call life. Then, that evening I turned on the news (never a wise decision) to hear Londoners being egged on by nasty, self-serving reporters to complain about the lack of road gritting and the outrage of children not being made to walk to school through blizzards. Someone said that living in London was like living in the third world. Someone else said that closing the schools was 'sending the wrong message to children' as it implied a lack of determination and ambition on the part of the adult world. What wank. London WAS like the third world for one day on Monday, though in one sense only. People were brought together in (minor) adversity, and suddenly, momentarily, became responsible for themselves for one day. The complainers - that tiny minority of infantilised whiners who seem to have been handed a charter by the media recently - never complain on behalf of others. They complain because they have been forced to spend a day playing snowballs with their children, or because they have lost a little money, because their little ears have been shocked to hear someone cursing on television or because they have been forced to learn that cars are dangerous tanks, or that on occasion - despite the efforts of the Government - even those with comfortable incomes are forced to experience momentary inconvenience. There is a proportion of the British population who essentially demand that the government parent them - providing them with a child-friendly, child-safe society which will protect them from pain, inconvenience, fear, shock or adulthood. And they say they are claiming it on behalf of their children, when in truth it is themselves they are speaking for. The snow-closed schools is a classic example. The kids want to slide on street-ice and sledge and throw snowballs. They want to graze their knees on the ice. They need to. And they will remember doing so for the rest of their lives, as we do. A snowy day is a revelation. It is only certain adults in this country that want the government to provide compulsory knee-pads for the entire population. Hurry, apocalypse. We need you. We are becoming fat, needy, incompetent children.

Marion Baskerville

1912-2008

so my grandmother died. she said only two phrases by the end of her life, 'kiss marion' and 'darling' - and occasionally this amazing, shining smile.

she used to cook me and my twin sister plaice and chips, and get pork crackling from the butcher for me, because she knew it was my favourite thing in the world. she chased my mum round the garden with a tie-stretcher when she was young. she was tiny and cheeky and incredibly resiliant. survived both the Wars, working in marks and sparks all her life. her identical twin sister knew something was wrong last night via the air. friday nights always glow a little special for me, freedom-time, because it was fridays when we went to Nan's house for a night and basked in her warmth and jokes and non-negotiable, infinite generosity.

infarct dementia gently dissolved her down to some sort of essence i think.

there is a beautiful poem by tony harrison called 'songs and love' about a group of elderly ladies he lived with for a while in a hospice, all of whom had progressive dementia.

songs and love were the only two things that his friends in the home retained until the end. it is as if they are written in every cell of the cortex of our brains, so that no matter what disappears they remain untouched and intact - they are in your breathing and your saliva and your walking. As long as you are alive they are here. And in unnumbered ways afterwards.

kiss marion

darling

.....so, I am not too bad. winter has been hard, and work has presented a lot of challenges, but I feel the first whisper of spring in my blood, and my love is coming back. I had some luck, and managed to claim a £1,200 rebate from my money, which means I have paid off some of the loan that was weighing me. The only reason that debt was important to me, is that I have come to see that london, or MY london, is not always very positive or welcoming place for me, and that it can push down my creativity, and my warmth, and money matters because whatever change I am going make next, and it is time for one, needs escape vouchers..... but I am learning a lot at work, about how to manage people and working with clients has been inspiring, and I have been taking loads of photos and have been offered a place in a gallery show here in london so might be able to sell some which would be VERY exciting for me, so its all good. And it has been so sunny and warm in the days, with sharp frosts at night and beautiful sunsets, and I have found lakes and parks and forests around london that I never knew were there.

...so I am quite taken with the idea at the moment that every step forward is a step backward, and every added convenience creates the phenomenon of inconvenience in ever increasing amounts for us. I saw a piece on Newsnight the other evening in which the case was being put for the removal of traffic lights altogether from junctions in the UK. The idea has been piloted in Sweden where it works very well. Essentially instead of traffic lights and yellow boxes and road markings, the rules are simple: Only go when your route is clear, and pedestrians have right-of-way over all vehicles. The idea is that people being drivers are just like people being pedestrians, and fully able to avoid bumping into eachother and letting other vehicles pass if it is not safe to do anything else. The bigger idea, and one that I am keen on at present, is that external control infantilises us, in that it removes our motivation to internalise discipline and caution and patience, and take and own responsibility for our own choices and actions. If there is no traffic light ahead of me, I will not speed up in an attempt to get to it before it turns red; if there is no mechanical controlling device at a junction, I will slow down for it, and scan the other roads leading into the junction cautiously before I pull out. And if I do not, I may be killed. Remove risk, and you remove the host of skills, psychological developments and behaviours that are generated in order to mount an effective response to the existence of those risks. I can keep my child 100% safe if I lock him or her in their bedroom for the first 20 years of their lives, but the day they leave - or break out - their vulnerability, naivety and weakness will do for them within 24 hours. Similarly, it is slowly emerging that our attempt to minimise risk and maximise safety though pumping our foods full of artificially added vitamins and dietary supplements, and generating media campaigns warning against the dangers of fats or salt etc is having the exactly opposite effect on our dietary health than intended. We die later than we used to, but almost always from a diet-related illness - heart problems, cancers, diabetes - while obesity is becoming a norm. Another example: as I was playing my Xbox the other day, I noticed that the design of the game requires that I wait and watch a 20 second film sequence before I can begin to play each time. I noticed that I was incredibly frustrated and angry at having to wait each time. Then I remembered the 15 minute wait to upload programs via a magnetic tape recorder on my ZX81 on the early eighties. I realised that I minded the 20 seconds in 2008 much more than the 15 minutes in 1984. The added convenience of things taking less time seems to come with the hidden price of increased expectation and impatience, such that, as the things get more 'convenient', I find myself experiencing the frustration and anger of inconvenience much more often and intensely. Then I thought of the children my friend Zuni and I had walked with in Ladakh in the Himalayas, whose walk home from school every evening took them an hour. Not one of them complained about the length of time it took to get home every night - that particular frustration was simply not a part of their lives. My journey home in London takes me about 20 minutes, and - unless I remember to meditate - is a constant experience of frustration and impatience, as I know it is for most other road users. Stay stationary for 20 seconds after a traffic light has changed to green in London and see what happens, if you doubt me. So. Half the journey time, double the anger and frustration. What is 'convenient' about that? Less and less is demanded of us every year, and with it our ability to rise to challenges continues to erode, and our expectations of 100% safety and 100% convenience rise up, and torture us. People in London are more scared of crime in 2008 than they were 20 years ago, while, as a result of the surveillance culture, cameras on every street, DNA testing on arrest, mobile phone tracking and internet monitoring, crime rates have fallen sharply in the same time. More fear, less crime. And the criterion which effects whether we have more or less policing and surveillance is not the crime rate, but the levels of fear of crime, as this is a democracy and thus people's perceptions are far more significant and instrumental in effecting change than facts. So lets extend the graph in order to make a guess at what the future will be like. As crime continues to decrease, thus becoming a phenomenon that people are less and less accustomed to encountering, fear of it will continue to increase. We will continue to be informed of every single interesting or frightening crime that takes place via our all-pervading media no matter how far from our own homes and lives they are,, and will therefore continue to demand more and more protection against it. Pretty much the rarest crime at present is terrorism. Which of you have been a victim of it? How often is the crime committed in this country compared to, say, 30 years ago? How many hands would you need to count the incidents on your fingers? So, slowly, the protections will close in around us - iris scans, ID cards, cameras, road markings, road bumps, traffic lights, email monitoring, centralised databases, data-sharing between the world's secret services, and as the net closes in our fear of the things it is there to protect us against will increase. I do not posit anything sinister on the part of our governments as this future is built; they are simply doing what we want, attempting to address our growing, inexplicable fear and anger. We will continue to increase the percentage of our lives spent sitting in front of electronic entertainment devices, as will our children, and thus our craving for entertainment will continue to grow unabated, as are bodies grow fatter and less and less serviceable for physical activity. We will strive ever harder in our schools to make the information that it is imperative that our children learn 'entertaining' for them, as education increasingly finds that it has to compete with entertainment-dedicated industries, and continue to shake our heads in concern that our children do not seem to be engaged or interested in any activities that do not derive from or move toward the media. Our frustration and anger that all our needs are not met immediately will spiral. Take a Londoner to India and expect them to wait an hour and a half for a meal in a restaurant, and watch them. Eventually, as inevitably happens in human societies, someone cynical will find themselves sitting atop this new society and decide to misuse the people in some distinctly non-democratic way. What will happen? What has often happened historically when some despot begins to commit atrocities against the people? Rebellion? Revolution? How will this express itself? Will it be in the form of rioting? Or armed struggle? The people will be too fat and scared. The mechanisms which have been put in place to prevent anti-social behaviour, crime and terrorism are the same mechanisms which will be more then capable of suppressing rebellion. In fact, if one wished to permanently prevent a society rising and overthrowing its leaders and ruling class, they are exactly the mechanisms which one would seek to put in place. We are fat, unhappy, frightened, frustrated, addicted to entertainment, poorly educated, physically weak, increasingly isolated from eachother, dying in ever rising numbers as a result of the diet we are fed, infantilised by the mechanisms of control that we have demanded surround us, alienated from the our own subsistence, distanced from the natural environments that created us and more vulnerable to being misused and enslaved by the powerful few than at any time in human history. So. Lets look at banning traffic lights.

. ..so my friend nikstikcrouch just just facebooked to invite me to Guatemala for Christmas. She is living in a tiny village on the side of a volcanic lake looking brown and peaceful and holding dogs and monkey's hands. My hold on my life here is so tenuous and light nowadays. I had to actually look at the flights to remind myself that an additional two thousand pounds of debt was not my best strategic move forward at the moment. But this life and this city and even perhaps this country are so so far from how my spirit cries I need to be living. There is a distinct shortage of monkeys and volcanos. Note to self: increase monkey and volcano quotient in life. .

. So, smoking like a bitch. Full of grand plans and sucking as many of the little beauties down as I can before I reluctantly side with the angels again - and watch myself filling-out like a seal, like Jay Leno - so having to join a gym too, and run on machines while watching the 6 o'clock news through headphones. So undergoing a motivation holiday. London has been Autumn, and the leaves in Epping forest - looking, after an uncharacteristically wet summer (which as you know is saying something), like New England. There's some pics in my album. London has been hard too, in the ways that it truly is hard. A US comedian on telly tonight, on hearing that recent psychology research has shown that people who look you steadily in the eye and smile are perceived as being 8 times as attractive as if they do not, commented 'except in London, where everyone will think you are a 'loony' to huge recognition laughter and applause from the audience. Its sometimes hard when you move through a world of feelings and their expression all day - as I do at work, to then live somewhere in which the opposite is an agreed behavioural norm. So a bit chilly sometimes. I must EARN. And i must work. And the beautiful leaves give way to a peculiarly urban winter here, as the foliage hides and softens the city. But finding a bona fide forest just 15 minutes from my house mitigates it significantly, as forests sing with beauty all year round. I had no idea it was so near, till I looked on google satellite to see where the nearest, biggest area of wild land was, and saw it stretching for miles just to the north of me. Its sort of cultural in London that you tend to look inwards toward the centre, so I had missed it. Hooray! I have a forest! .