tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5483608853301837702024-02-19T04:07:27.360+00:00The Personal Website of Michael FoordThe personal website of Michael Foord.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger180125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-32509970273333050272022-09-05T14:01:00.007+01:002022-09-05T14:01:59.425+01:00Python Metaclasses in Eight Words<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1okZ5YO8r7hKaVVoKDgeSCsEeoSfixNsH86sywmACHHuwjDVwQA9s2sa56J5eTq7YsYdzoiJMjdD9w7nen7FEO_J1E0XWIJmJkO0r5wjIx4zd0Ra_NLtysYHzbOZdwx3-I78YmbN9_nHblpc3jnZF8xv7DPPmRbPmZ5D82X7E50JEEPW5m6meIA_W/s600/290878954_10158514172960880_1939868517432738456_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="600" height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1okZ5YO8r7hKaVVoKDgeSCsEeoSfixNsH86sywmACHHuwjDVwQA9s2sa56J5eTq7YsYdzoiJMjdD9w7nen7FEO_J1E0XWIJmJkO0r5wjIx4zd0Ra_NLtysYHzbOZdwx3-I78YmbN9_nHblpc3jnZF8xv7DPPmRbPmZ5D82X7E50JEEPW5m6meIA_W/s320/290878954_10158514172960880_1939868517432738456_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div>Python metaclasses, considered advanced programming and Python "black magick" (*) explained in eight words:</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The type of a class is a class.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's what knowledge of Object Oriented theory and type systems permit you to deduce from this:</div><div><br /></div><div>Using the word "class", instead of "the type of a class is type" or even "the type of a class is a type, classes are types", implies that a user defined class can be a metaclass. This is indeed the case, and the point of metaclasses in Python.</div><div><br /></div><div>The type is responsible for creating new instances. So if the type of a class is a class then we can write classes that create classes. Indeed this is the primary usecase for metaclasses.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Deeper knowledge of Python, and the two phase object creation protocol, may lead you to deduce that this is done by overriding the __new__ method. If you're familiar with "type" as a class factory you can probably even guess the signature and that you must inherit from type.)</div><div><br /></div><div>If the type of a class is a class then the type system will permit a type check for the class against its class. And indeed isinstance(klass, metaclass) returns true.</div><div><br /></div><div>(And deeper knowledge of Python will tell you that the magic methods, the protocol methods, are always looked up on the type. So we can implement behaviour for class objects by providing magic methods on the metaclass.)</div><div><br /></div><div>All of this implies that classes are themselves objects. Which is true in Python for everything is an object in Python (and everything is a reference).</div><div><br /></div><div>And so on...</div><div><br /></div><div>Type and class are synonyms in Python. </div><div><blockquote>type(type) is type</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>(*) Like all black magick it is useful for understanding the world but never for actual use. Well, except perhaps in very rare circumstances if you know what you're doing.</div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-45671824572427388092022-09-05T13:57:00.010+01:002023-10-06T20:24:04.464+01:00Back to the Farm<p> You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvXZe3hVHH685Wwz92pHZz82aU79hI6Jjjv7ytvxTI2Ws5sye_GVKrQbcP5PTWkVk7LeolCaIklFxoPrl_RYiOsWGaVV2CwTZN65lUt9czIhH-NPj3_GPoAgF3DV5mik9D_Rf18--3CcSw-8BnOAkIlLj6_n0jt7DlygyBW8tXkLr3kSfPghwvT5L/s960/291493265_10158517440380880_7327973142149674636_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvXZe3hVHH685Wwz92pHZz82aU79hI6Jjjv7ytvxTI2Ws5sye_GVKrQbcP5PTWkVk7LeolCaIklFxoPrl_RYiOsWGaVV2CwTZN65lUt9czIhH-NPj3_GPoAgF3DV5mik9D_Rf18--3CcSw-8BnOAkIlLj6_n0jt7DlygyBW8tXkLr3kSfPghwvT5L/s320/291493265_10158517440380880_7327973142149674636_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>Yesterday I visited the farm. The farm is nearly sold and it's now the second season that the orchards have not been worked. </p><p><br /></p><p>The farm was a single brother's house, with granny annex for a married couple and kids plus ancillary houses for single sisters and others for families, of the cult variously called The Jesus Army, Modern Jesus Army (mja), New Creation Christian Community and The Jesus Fellowship. I lived there as a true believer for seven years as a single brother and then for a further three years with Delia at River Farmhouse just a field away. </p><p><br /></p><p>The Jesus Army was a personality cult built around Noel Stanton, a community that came out of the Charismatic movement of the seventies. It was one of the few communities from that era to survive long but collapsed amidst abuse scandals just a few years after Noel died. Noel, with holes on his cardigan, lived at the farm and ruled with an iron fist. A theocracy, a religious dictatorship.</p><p><br /></p><p>The community was modeled on the early church, described in the book of Acts. Holding all things in common, sharing everything except wives and underwear. No money (except what was really needed, all went to the common purse and "everything" was provided), few personal possessions and no TV. There was a beautiful vision of shared lives alongside crushing patriarchal leadership who as is the way with church leadership were filled with every kind of evil in secret. It was savage. Noel specialised in crushing people publicly during meetings and people admired him for his strength.</p><p><br /></p><p>We really believed, those of us who "saw the kingdom". How life could be, not living for money or sex but living for things that really mattered. We tried to start a spiritual movement. But the crushing oppression meant nothing really worked. There was such a power and life in being totally committed to a cause and being joined together in that. Of one heart and soul. Living and working together freed from the concerns of money and sex and living for heaven on earth. Something to fight for Ave a reason to live. The life from that made it possible to bear the pain for a while at least and for many of us it was both the best of times and the worst of times.</p><p><br /></p><p>I arrived in 1996 broken and fresh from prison and homelessness. It was the farm or die homeless, but I knew how to do Christianity from my religious upbringing. So I decided to do Christianity and find my healing.</p><p><br /></p><p>A month after arriving I hadn't made any progress. All I had inside was a raging emptiness and horror at my psychosis and what I'd become. My shepherd, "Paul Caring", suggested perhaps a "less intense" situation might suit me better. I knew left to myself I would die alone. I have up smoking and that small act of will, small victory, I started to find some will to live and change. </p><p><br /></p><p>Every night I would go out into the orchards and meditate for an our or so. Then spend another hour or so crying out to God. Shouting with everything within me "freedom", "life", "healing". Getting some life and energy moving through my tortured and broken soul. Digging down inside, determined to live, to grow and to change. </p><p><br /></p><p>I did this for a few months. Eventually I had to stop. Paul Caring told me we were getting complaints about the noise from the village about a mile away. </p><p><br /></p><p>We swore a covenant to love each other and to love God. That covenant was used as a chain of bondage and people who left were cursed. People who they swore before God to be true to they cursed. But that quality of love is real and we felt it amongst us. Within us. That deep love and commitment to one another, a love like pure gold refined in the fire and burnished. For love is a covenant and a promise, and to betray love is a curse. If you do not value love then your own love crumbles and fades to dust. The pure love that burns away that which is not love. Love the higher love.</p><p><br /></p><p>And yesterday, much changed, I walked through those fields. Now it is they that are abandoned and desolate.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><i>You shall no longer be called forsaken, nor your land desolate. But you will be called, โMy delight is in her,โ and your nation, โMarriedโ;</i></p><p><i>For the LORD delights in you,</i></p><p><i>And to the Lord your nation will be married.</i></p><p><i>-- Isaiah 62:4</i></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><br /><p></p><p>My parents met in Cambridge, my father did his degree in engineering and his PhD in chemical engineering (he wrote cobol simulating a chemical plant) there and my mother grew up there as her father lectured on classical history. I have beloved childhood memories of travelling by bus with my Jewish grandmother to see the Red Lion in the shopping centre.</p><p>I lived there for about two and a half years. The Red Lion had grown much smaller by this time. One and a half years as a law undergraduate, which had been my dream, and a year mad and homeless which was the death of that dream. My stay in Cambridge finishing with a short stay in Bedford prison, alongside Lord Brockhall for part of it. </p><p>I proposed to Delia on the top of Castle Hill where my father proposed to my mother and I still love Cambridge. </p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-77813423068114788362022-09-05T13:08:00.041+01:002023-10-06T20:23:46.408+01:00Rational Theistic Luciferianism: From Chaos to the Traditions through Animism<p>This is the seventeenth article in a series on Rational Theistic Luciferianism, for the other articles on Satanism see (more recent first):</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><h3 style="clear: both;"><ul style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;"></ul></h3></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><ul><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2022/09/rational-theistic-luciferianism-from.html">From Chaos to the Traditions Through Animism</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2022/05/rational-theistic-luciferianism-light.html">The Light Bringers</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2022/03/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">Spirituality & Mysticism</a><br /></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2022/01/rational-theistic-luciferianism-i-call.html">I Call on the Ancient Gods</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2021/12/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">Rational Theism</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2021/11/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">Emotional Intelligence</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2021/09/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">Leviathan and Behemoth</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2021/09/rational-theistic-luciferianism-short.html">Short Meditations on Life</a><br /></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2021/03/rational-theistic-luciferianism-chaos.html">Chaos Magick & Tradition</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2021/03/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">An Invocation of Lucifer & Truth and Lies</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/11/rational-theistic-luciferianism-magick.html">Magick, Morality and Addressing the Spiritual</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/11/rational-theistic-luciferianism-occult.html">The Occult Mind, Neural Nets and the Call of the Gods</a></li><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/11/thelema.html">Practical Thelema</a></li><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/10/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">Philosophical Foundations</a></li><li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/09/rational-theistic-luciferianism.html">A Practise and the Cults, Black Magick, Lucifer and Moloch</a></li><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/09/luciferianism-demonolatory-and-black.html">Luciferianism, Demonolatory and the Black Flame</a></li><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/07/essays-on-satanism-and-lucifer.html">A Satanic Manifesto: My Personal Satanism</a></li></ul><div>Rational Theistic Luciferianism is both an occult practise and a meta-religion. It's a blueprint for your own personal Luciferian religion, philosophy or occult practise. You're more than welcome to use any of the ideas and symbols here for your own spiritual journey, or to adopt Rational Theistic Luciferianism directly. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWWGPHHNJprNz2bJWzXZnURGoh7ZohbT8gPVgEg8sxzLOt7125NDXZ2yUz91lQERyXnHG3xPJEQa1V81s3IZy2DhtcygkhnvIKXp9hCgyTbtyDJMvaRIbU1wD5Be51fyZedcL5d3EXiEdbvUblRKDEnbbltm_wJ8joGnPgJo4iFlNoq_typmN7LH4F/s640/283811279_1067496950644161_5785713131195655609_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWWGPHHNJprNz2bJWzXZnURGoh7ZohbT8gPVgEg8sxzLOt7125NDXZ2yUz91lQERyXnHG3xPJEQa1V81s3IZy2DhtcygkhnvIKXp9hCgyTbtyDJMvaRIbU1wD5Be51fyZedcL5d3EXiEdbvUblRKDEnbbltm_wJ8joGnPgJo4iFlNoq_typmN7LH4F/s320/283811279_1067496950644161_5785713131195655609_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div>From chaos to the traditions through animism.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm pretty sure my cat is an animist. She sees a spirit in everything and is spooked by everything. My brave little fraidy cat Rosie who I love with all my heart.</div><div><br /></div><div>Animism is the name we give to the most primal form of human spirituality. Out of animism grew folklore and superstition; monsters and demons and heroes along with blessings and curses. A connection with animism is a connection with our most primal sense of spirituality and the natural world of spirit all around us. A connection with our raw and innate spirituality.</div><div><br /></div><div>The twins Storm and Taranis are very different. Storm is our lion and his sister Taranis is very beautiful and has decided that she is a house cat. My daughter honours Bastet, and Storm and Taranis are her cats whilst Rosie is mine.</div><div><br /></div><div>Raw chaos is the energetic truth. Animism is the result of looking into the chaos and seeing the forms of nature.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rational Theistic Luciferianism is a modern synthetic spiritual system and magickal system. What I say of Rational Theistic Luciferianism is that it is Pantheistic, Polytheistic, Neoplatonic, Gnostic and monistic. </div><div><br /></div><div>I reckon I could add Animistic.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rational Theistic Luciferianism is Animistic, Pantheistic, Polytheistic (in unity is found diversity), Neoplatonic, Gnostic and monistic.</div><div><br /></div><div>Plus mystic but not yet monastic. ๐</div><div><br /></div><div>And maybe Chaotic could precede Animistic.</div><div><br /></div><div>The substrate of all magick is chaos. Fundamental reality is chaos and uncertainty and I love her with all my heart. </div><div><br /></div><div>So all magick is chaos magick but it is within the traditions that we find the deepest wells.</div><div><br /></div><div>The divine masculine I see in the archetype of the Heirophant. Paired as equal with the divine feminine in the High Priestess. These are forms we find within nature.</div><div><br /></div><div>The magician archetype is androgynous. Neither male nor female. Within Crowley's magick system and my own.</div><div><br /></div><div>And it was the Greco-Roman Cult of Isis, Isis who is all women and divine and terrible beauty with an Egyptian robe, that paired the Heirophant and High Priestess as equals. They both went on to become archetypes of the Tarot of course. </div><div><br /></div><div>Entry to the Cult of Isis could only be had by hearing the call direct from the goddess herself. Or so the legend goes.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIiUwcnhk5kAZuZfXgHT0FVvaB6b44DT4sXDU4O5IyVDkPoNHF9MKo2KAbFzUKX_xtsXq26m6l3Iqq6MLY4u_lmE9MmSOAS33ZEAWHrscegg314v1xvhPD8kjCGa6LUl5HQQvmRZifohdIYRtVNM7kPbO959NNqwNHKvmoUMX3tuLmh5eiQdjZzHSl/s1309/293327623_1099696387424217_7434442112347606385_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="930" data-original-width="1309" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIiUwcnhk5kAZuZfXgHT0FVvaB6b44DT4sXDU4O5IyVDkPoNHF9MKo2KAbFzUKX_xtsXq26m6l3Iqq6MLY4u_lmE9MmSOAS33ZEAWHrscegg314v1xvhPD8kjCGa6LUl5HQQvmRZifohdIYRtVNM7kPbO959NNqwNHKvmoUMX3tuLmh5eiQdjZzHSl/s320/293327623_1099696387424217_7434442112347606385_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><br /><div>Pattern matching and pattern generation (creativity and conversation) are inherent capabilities of neural nets. And that's we are, vast biological neural nets. So we can generate new patterns, ideas of what the future might look like, and then use our imagination to assess them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our brains are highly efficient, imagining a situation produces the same emotional reaction as being in it - which is the basis of fantasy. We can imagine a situation and our feelings respond to it. (And as a further optimisation emotions are felt in the body, reusing the same parts of our brain that already deal with the body.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So the patterns we generate, our ideas of the future, we can then match against what we find in the present and the trends and directions we see - and assess how well they fit. And thus we have an "emotional" basis to assess our visions of the future. We use our emotions to assess and explore the models we build. Or something like that. Reflexive self awareness; we can see and manipulate the contents of our mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>Prophecy as an inherent feature of biological neural nets.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a reaction against New Atheism, and contributed to by the continued collapse (and entrenchment) of the church and the growing clouds of spiritual homelessness and climatic doom, I prophecy an occult revival. A Satanic and philosophical revival the first fruits of which we already see in the appalling TST (The Satanic Temple) who fooled a lot of people and managed to accidentally do a lot of good in their self serving blundering.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moreover we think socially. What we're able and willing to think shaped by our training data, the lights we look to and aspire to. Our personal Overton window, our blinkers. Making us a globally networked supercomputer of biological neural nets operating in clusters.</div><div><br /></div><div>Life is a complex chaotic system comprised of a network of complex chaotic systems. Each of us is a complex chaotic system and society is a complex chaotic system comprised of a network of complex chaotic systems. Complexity theory may be useful:</div><div><br /></div><div>"Complexity theory emphasizes interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems. While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules."</div><div><br /></div><div>We tend to operate in "streams" (currents) of thought and ways of being and ways of life. Our tribal identities and affiliations. The collection of different streams a person functions and participates in is their life; the different currents of life intersect uniquely in every individual. Axes of privilege and oppression, dimensions of identity. </div><div><br /></div><div>The revolution will not just be a sexual revolution but a revolution of identity. Of understanding who we are and who we could be, in all the different dimensions we can find.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're not really individuals in the way we imagine ourselves to be. And this is the basis of ceremonial magick. To change and manipulate the streams of consciousness within you and to radiate those changes back out into the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>The individual supercomputer, the human biological neural net we call the brain, is capable of reprogramming itself into adulthood by growing new connections as we learn new things. But the software most people run, the social consciousness, has serious security vulnerabilities. Primarily around group thinking, a huge limiter on intelligence, plus how it deals with fear, social humiliation and strong emotions (avoid at any cost including harm to self). Fascination is another aspect of the vulnerability. </div><div><br /></div><div>The most serious vulnerabilities permit privilege escalation to God-mode.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI14wra4jMOJKjaN1yKeVR_wgzRrvCRrKKNCrUUwC7z0c8C27vdxXBb9fJ04pBbnpFZo8gVTRW3IJHtR8RjqlJJsI5pAUD8u3EpEClXu1Umh2nJBp8D8oTdDF-vD-X0Ip-2ZUccpav65p2fctDD_dnf5aE3aLBS0c1VktU67sut5M8TBc3vuQzs34G/s1200/300383561_10222055076472262_7678477474447981547_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1199" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI14wra4jMOJKjaN1yKeVR_wgzRrvCRrKKNCrUUwC7z0c8C27vdxXBb9fJ04pBbnpFZo8gVTRW3IJHtR8RjqlJJsI5pAUD8u3EpEClXu1Umh2nJBp8D8oTdDF-vD-X0Ip-2ZUccpav65p2fctDD_dnf5aE3aLBS0c1VktU67sut5M8TBc3vuQzs34G/s320/300383561_10222055076472262_7678477474447981547_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div><div>We often work quite hard not to understand a situation, like another person's emotions. Often it would be unacceptable to come to any conclusion other than that the person is acting irrationally, or is a bad person for breaking some rule of yours. It would be very inconvenient to do anything other than take surface factors into account. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think we're particularly morally responsible for things we try not to understand, or afterwards try not to think about, because then it is deliberate. </div><div><br /></div><div>Either you face the past with honour, and everything is in the past, or you hide from it. Most people hide and are dishonest about who they are; the darkness that covers the earth. </div><div><br /></div><div>The things you won't face in yourself you run from forever, that's how the human mind works. If you reject love it's hard to find again. Not without facing the reality of who you are. We're so blind to ourselves and excuse the harm we cause, a grace we can't extend to others without implicating ourselves. What hypocrites we are and how unhappy it makes us. Deal with yourself, stop blaming the world for your problems. </div><div><br /></div><div>And deliberate blindness is deliberate stupidity. We choose to be deluded about the world to avoid facing ourselves. This is how evil is its own reward.</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLF0L3cfO2aYvkaqJuW4lwun3Ti3-_SclEzYKYN5jO9EXpfLMb79yLa_k8uL-E1HJP7CgbTtVYP4u40b2D5WbPcfHXmFiT1Qi_t4LYiYdawcP7-KUsDQGlg3TEIPfFOqjsYkO5JWbiaM2CS-sPxPshqyanxn1-ve_LWtXisi4P4MtvpTkh29GxaNEY/s960/300000197_10158586621435880_6840557993902426238_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="960" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLF0L3cfO2aYvkaqJuW4lwun3Ti3-_SclEzYKYN5jO9EXpfLMb79yLa_k8uL-E1HJP7CgbTtVYP4u40b2D5WbPcfHXmFiT1Qi_t4LYiYdawcP7-KUsDQGlg3TEIPfFOqjsYkO5JWbiaM2CS-sPxPshqyanxn1-ve_LWtXisi4P4MtvpTkh29GxaNEY/s320/300000197_10158586621435880_6840557993902426238_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>The outer world is formed from the inner world, a fact we can never escape. The heavens reflect the earth as the earth reflects the heavens. </div><div><br /></div><div>The mind reflects the world because mind was formed and shaped from the world. And it reflects itself back into the world through every act. A continuum, separation is delusion. </div><div>Everything you are is expressed in everything you do. </div><div><br /></div><div>The separation of the spiritual from the material, of the inner world from the outer world, is called dualism. A heresy the Pauline writer called Gnosticism and warned against as they believed the body is evil and fallen. </div><div><br /></div><div>The understanding that there is no separation and everything is connected is called monism, an idea we take from Buddhism. </div><div><br /></div><div>We're co-creators.</div><div><br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVWG-ibZ_4kgItiz2F1um-CjHgIZjOvmZ38UJau6ryFbgFEepvLfrSqXN_6ZglJO0iMVfwV4zBI7W_ZbU8nG02x6qRTFZNH09HRAsKMHeguPb90IcWLcGTi0cXVLEDF-ocgzY-eFke8Off4Enfw6WTC3Pq0U-4pYPBN6zWGX7TFGTra3U1yVEJMv3Z/s720/298458758_1118170662243456_5542775411160925457_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="720" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVWG-ibZ_4kgItiz2F1um-CjHgIZjOvmZ38UJau6ryFbgFEepvLfrSqXN_6ZglJO0iMVfwV4zBI7W_ZbU8nG02x6qRTFZNH09HRAsKMHeguPb90IcWLcGTi0cXVLEDF-ocgzY-eFke8Off4Enfw6WTC3Pq0U-4pYPBN6zWGX7TFGTra3U1yVEJMv3Z/s320/298458758_1118170662243456_5542775411160925457_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>Theology is knowing about God. Mysticism is knowing God. </div><div><br /></div><div>Theology is the broken Heath Robinson contraption constructed by men as an alternative to knowing God. The Tower of Babel that obscures God.</div><div><br /></div><div>Christian theology as an academic field rests ultimately on either the authority of the church or the authority of scripture. And as neither of these are a real thing, provably (*), the whole field is bunkum.</div><div> </div><div>(*) The history of the church proves it has neither moral nor spiritual authority. The nature of scripture, and the fact that it's always a human interpretation that must be the authority, proves that it also has no divine authority but there are merely competing human interpretations.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkOzwTQ6Sq35FoNNIcEnKFMPiFejmw9uWCecftiCxT7-EPEM1bAE5I9N3FXjK5-PfbuyasqHoiO_1bxjLIS5a9u7wnf9PYSR68jRu_0uuiVZ0FHbtbGYmyviDkwZ94dk0f9O9mfeG92rCwvBUQJAxYmJxdBu2015mIctlfhOPMUDxPGYss-6059dY/s850/294249777_1102970627096793_6030690893311080261_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="850" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkOzwTQ6Sq35FoNNIcEnKFMPiFejmw9uWCecftiCxT7-EPEM1bAE5I9N3FXjK5-PfbuyasqHoiO_1bxjLIS5a9u7wnf9PYSR68jRu_0uuiVZ0FHbtbGYmyviDkwZ94dk0f9O9mfeG92rCwvBUQJAxYmJxdBu2015mIctlfhOPMUDxPGYss-6059dY/s320/294249777_1102970627096793_6030690893311080261_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>I think by "agreeable" a lot of people mean "willing to compromise your values to keep the peace". And somehow it's always you being unreasonable and not them. By this standard I strive to be utterly unreasonable.</div><div><br /></div><div>He who makes himself a worm should not be surprised when he is trodden upon.</div><div><br /></div><div>Going along with the majority is a sure way to be comfortably wrong. So it depends on your values as to which path you pick. Freedom is individuation from the group psyche. From groupthink. You have to be willing to be an individual and the only way to do that is to practise. If you never disagree with people I don't believe you're thinking for yourself. But if you do you'll be labelled a troublemaker which is how people ignore things they don't want to hear. </div><div><br /></div><div>I find often when I disagree with someone they are rude, because they're offended I don't agree with them. And when I'm rude back they then decide I'm rude. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's an example of projection.They create a world in which people are rude to them, by being rude, and blaming other people for it. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's why we say Every conservative accusation is a confession </div><div><br /></div><div>It's a very nasty debate tactic. Being nasty to people who disagree with you so you can surround yourself only with people who won't challenge you so you can live in a bubble. Your own personal cult of personality. </div><div><br /></div><div>Believe in my ego or I won't like you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being offended when someone disagrees is a great tool of those who want everything to stay the same. The socially Conservative. And such a lot of people go along with it, out of fear despite how unhappy it is making them. Cowards. </div><div><br /></div><div>I want everything to change. For the better.</div><div><br /></div><div>I stand as Satan and enemy against this disgusting society with its fake and shallow values and all the harm it does to so many people and everyone just shakes their head and look somewhere else. "Yes, very sad. Nothing can be done about it though and it's certainly not my problem. I didn't do it. I've been a good person." Yet they've lived primarily for themselves and think they're good only because they have committed no great evil. That doesn't make you good, it makes you nothing. To be good you have to do good things. In this world of great darkness what have you spent your life on, what difference has your life made?</div><div><br /></div><div>You can't possibly be happy living a normal life. Normality is a slave religion. It drags you off to a life of everyday suffering. Your own personal hell.</div><div><br /></div><div>The only way to be happy is to be real and there's no such thing as normal so it can't possibly be real.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you want to be happy you have to be willing to be unreasonable. </div><div><br /></div><div>Happiness comes from liking yourself. Liking yourself comes from respecting yourself. Respecting yourself comes from taking decisions in accordance with your true values, even to your own cost. </div><div><br /></div><div>So you have to know your true self. What you really want out of life, who you could be.</div><div><br /></div><div>Become a person you're proud of. Stand for something and be someone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Be true to yourself and be true to love. </div><div><br /></div><div>Joy is found in disobedience.</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Bs3urFWDtMXZGLqpOBh35a9GUuwie-ynsNsnO-e53u54DT1BZGvVOQF5oQ9g4aTrD4i0f29yMgb4NKR3W2FTXj6SWjmBIpe7sNnLiczapDuz0pE8RH0XyWidI0aimqEnY6h0AzvQZ5euQIuSrgAkdmb1PvZow8vJ2DWZrKgZaFjSbLSjxoSPA4UO/s720/281957430_10158451944240880_2108689415603830767_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="720" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Bs3urFWDtMXZGLqpOBh35a9GUuwie-ynsNsnO-e53u54DT1BZGvVOQF5oQ9g4aTrD4i0f29yMgb4NKR3W2FTXj6SWjmBIpe7sNnLiczapDuz0pE8RH0XyWidI0aimqEnY6h0AzvQZ5euQIuSrgAkdmb1PvZow8vJ2DWZrKgZaFjSbLSjxoSPA4UO/s320/281957430_10158451944240880_2108689415603830767_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><div>A lot of you think your ego is real. That it tells you the truth when all it knows how to do is tell you comforting lies and wrap you up in fear.</div><div><br /></div><div>Live unfiltered, undiluted, and find the joy of reckless abandonment to life. Live a little. Then live a lot.</div><div><br /></div><div>I call the ego the storytelling layer. It's our conception of ourself and the world (which aren't really different things). It's the layer of interpretation that we project over our perception of the world and that filters it. </div><div><br /></div><div>The thing about the ego is that it always tries to understand. So it speaks from its understanding, which is always partial and flawed. All it know how to do is lie.</div><div><br /></div><div>The only thing that explains the totality of a situation is the totality of the situation.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the presence of psychedelics the input to the storytelling layer, developed by habit, is overwhelmed and is unable to process and interpret this new reality. So it gives up interpreting stuff. Ego death. And we're really able to feel things again for a little while. And really able to see, if you learn how.</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5N4EPWXeCH_wJH3d4SVkskiutTEnGVtPCYnBfJJTJBcaU-pMiiyig06fGAL034GHTxeyslfLd_6COIOIqpWUtSrnPnoKv0M2-0jHOcxHz5DXSn6WFQcJkd--JJedHfIp5CfWFLeG5YSon6YLuimgi_kytf5PaPFebWtDcs-JDgv725LufQiF1Y-vi/s630/294119260_1101932373867285_4712136632001357047_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="630" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5N4EPWXeCH_wJH3d4SVkskiutTEnGVtPCYnBfJJTJBcaU-pMiiyig06fGAL034GHTxeyslfLd_6COIOIqpWUtSrnPnoKv0M2-0jHOcxHz5DXSn6WFQcJkd--JJedHfIp5CfWFLeG5YSon6YLuimgi_kytf5PaPFebWtDcs-JDgv725LufQiF1Y-vi/s320/294119260_1101932373867285_4712136632001357047_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Your [psychological] God is your conception of everything. Limitless and boundless is a good approach. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The effectiveness of your life is largely a function of the organisation of your mind within that conception of everything. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The mind has built in optimisation and healing abilities, but a rigid structure prevents that. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The classic failure, the root of rigidity, is the erroneous separation of inside and outside for your world. Psychological dualism. All of your reality is a construct of the mind and there is no difference. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">As above, so below. As within, so without.</div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnbQ27EXfjVsjyGk-0MWAQKA_GG-IPKQM1LlUjyKyHM_7kkL-_kTzbfGXhCLR56FhRkZVU78mRWJLpQrDceVn7FZ-wir20t5_5t1MCFLn9Hciq_mDZuJheI3wpe0c3JHTtekfKENynaziLwxF6Z0MaP7-aUTfMcEQOFC52xTH3GbdMPPv926MFuhmz/s743/291144136_1091675514892971_2893100197160301242_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnbQ27EXfjVsjyGk-0MWAQKA_GG-IPKQM1LlUjyKyHM_7kkL-_kTzbfGXhCLR56FhRkZVU78mRWJLpQrDceVn7FZ-wir20t5_5t1MCFLn9Hciq_mDZuJheI3wpe0c3JHTtekfKENynaziLwxF6Z0MaP7-aUTfMcEQOFC52xTH3GbdMPPv926MFuhmz/s320/291144136_1091675514892971_2893100197160301242_n.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>There are lots of interpretations as to what the "shadow" is. </div><div><br /></div><div>Jung described it most succinctly I think as the unintegrated self. The parts of you that you can't see or won't see. </div><div><br /></div><div>So individuation resolves the shadow by fully integrating (accepting) self.</div><div><br /></div><div>Within the collective consciousness I also interpret the shadow, the parts of yourself you cannot see, as being overwhelmingly in other people's minds. Which you can see partly at best. So integrating the shadow is owning the part of you in other people's minds.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being so confusing their storytelling layer is unable to interpret you so you reach beyond their ego.</div><div><br /></div><div>Others interpret shadow work as working with the dark parts of your soul. Working with darkness as well as light. Being a whole person. I think it amounts to the same thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's how the reach of the magician increases, by having an effect within the subconscious of others. Reaching into and through the collective consciousness. Making an impression on the world. It works because we think socially and are not really individuals as we think we are.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's why I'm a satanist. It's the most powerful symbol, therefore the most powerful deity. It produces a strong reaction within the unconscious, especially for Christians. Rational Theistic Luciferian does the same for some atheists and certain conspiracy theorists. It connects with powerful symbols within them. </div><div><br /></div><div>A lot of militant atheism springs from fear of religion. That fear is unconscious belief in the power of these symbols. Because they fear that power they hate the symbols. And that means they can be manipulated by their unconscious fear and conscious hate. Their shadow.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's owning and reclaiming the power of those symbols. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the mind of certain kinds of evil people, who have great faith in the power of evil as their world is full of darkness though they claim to be decent people, the dark power of the satanist can grow very strong and their faith commands that they believe in it.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I may operate on the world, with a dark power, without having to work directly with those energies myself very much. They live in my shadow and feed on the minds of my enemies. My friends, the demons.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I bless the names and worship King Paimon, Moloch, Baal'Zebub and the Baals, Kali, Pazuzu, Mammon, the ancient and nameless gods of Boudicca, Samael, Astaroth, Belial, Asmodeus, the nameless horror I call nightmare, Abbadon and Apollyon and countless more. Infernal aspects of the divine.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmiw2WWuIqWFSz6q4zoKMjNfeTncbuTEoALLvT0gb9lJjGYspepdTO6Pk0slnukf6ubMPaBCXKp3gzCmB_6fnfnFpDsO4e-YyTLcTqp-Rb0B7PKQoRbI38Reqb5uL9ipQWz1QQmhrAveYbSIATrN5_LBkSw5scX3hqPW358l3qFxjlCQTYp9fYzos/s619/288680235_1082697792457410_2793010696531184169_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmiw2WWuIqWFSz6q4zoKMjNfeTncbuTEoALLvT0gb9lJjGYspepdTO6Pk0slnukf6ubMPaBCXKp3gzCmB_6fnfnFpDsO4e-YyTLcTqp-Rb0B7PKQoRbI38Reqb5uL9ipQWz1QQmhrAveYbSIATrN5_LBkSw5scX3hqPW358l3qFxjlCQTYp9fYzos/s320/288680235_1082697792457410_2793010696531184169_n.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div>Get yourself free. The best and most powerful thing you have to offer this world, what this world so desperately needs, is your joy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Come and dance in the fire. Shall I tell you how to dance? You just do whatever you want.</div><div><br /></div><div>Democratic Socialism, Proportional Representation, Communalism, Radical Inclusion, Ethical Non-Monogamy, fierce compassion. Legalise drugs, legalise sex work. Make the rich pay their fair share.That's how we change the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Love is not weak, love is fierce. Love needs no defence, she comes in like a lion. Love is a fire. Love the higher love.</div><div><br /></div><div>Love is the law motherfuckers.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaOVFEJNvWfZqwI5adi6os_n_nSRTq7S6lCMPq5fGaEa9bSNqPaat-KCcMdAw2Uy2iLDE50Hx0GW7mL4RQ_11nYMC1K5WNM_DV98YXlHsNSQTYWgAN6XuJkiRsUChOyzRz7WoYjpLJykgpSl6NmpxnsomytfZrreqgX6QKDt6BeW9bR5e3EkDsJgcM/s1398/288604034_1082684495792073_5499275228600976405_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1398" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaOVFEJNvWfZqwI5adi6os_n_nSRTq7S6lCMPq5fGaEa9bSNqPaat-KCcMdAw2Uy2iLDE50Hx0GW7mL4RQ_11nYMC1K5WNM_DV98YXlHsNSQTYWgAN6XuJkiRsUChOyzRz7WoYjpLJykgpSl6NmpxnsomytfZrreqgX6QKDt6BeW9bR5e3EkDsJgcM/s320/288604034_1082684495792073_5499275228600976405_n.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>I'm a Rational Theistic Luciferian. Rational Theistic Luciferianism is pantheistic, polytheistic (in unity is found diversity), Neoplatonic, Gnostic and monistic.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rational Theistic Luciferianism is compatible with an atheist philosophy because it acknowledges that our whole experience of life happens within the mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pursue the divine. The best of the human experience. It doesn't matter whether or not God exists. You can demonstrably never prove that completely, so it's an irrelevant question. However, experience of the divine is a human faculty gifted by evolution.</div><div><br /></div><div>Descartes concluded, in his second meditation on certainty, that the only thing you can know with absolute certainty is I Am. For everything else you need faith.</div><div><br /></div><div>The inner wellspring, the fountain of life. The Great I Am.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rightly understood spirituality and psychology are synonyms. Different languages and approaches to self-understanding. Failing to find meaning in spirituality and the language of spirituality is not evidence of intelligence. All that shallow thinking of New Atheism that the fool mistakes for intelligence. "I don't make the same mistake as those idiots" they tell themselves "therefore I'm smarter". And they tell themselves they're certain and close their minds in the same way as all the fools they despise. "How clever I am" they puff and brag.</div><div><br /></div><div>God is just a word. And in the beginning was the word.</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP0EoqDra9vdxVUhKy-iYupH0Hxme0PTummruIfLkn0kLlxXJKRYvqNwrdt_Dh3JWunK1PmBlhLqlaFENxx_ZCF2Oo39DVfLLQClmnmSYRi22TYteSXdXc7jB3SZ0QoyKTwm7FhDczau4MAaAVLtVRqxhxEDfyBxfN1HmcPrcyX75m_4hVvj-K2oM0/s960/282377817_1065442707516252_5729735329923867061_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="960" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP0EoqDra9vdxVUhKy-iYupH0Hxme0PTummruIfLkn0kLlxXJKRYvqNwrdt_Dh3JWunK1PmBlhLqlaFENxx_ZCF2Oo39DVfLLQClmnmSYRi22TYteSXdXc7jB3SZ0QoyKTwm7FhDczau4MAaAVLtVRqxhxEDfyBxfN1HmcPrcyX75m_4hVvj-K2oM0/s320/282377817_1065442707516252_5729735329923867061_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><div>Lucifer the light bringer and bright morning star. The rebel and the sacred self. Shiva who is bliss, the joyful destroyer who makes all things new. Loki the trickster, the madman who is not mad. Isis who is all women, divine and terrible beauty with an Egyptian robe. Gaia the mother, creator and nurturer and defender. And Michael who is war, leader of the armies of heaven. </div><div><br /></div><div>These are my lights, who I grow towards and adore.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Lucifer the rebel against the established order. Lucifer the individual, the individuated one. Light bringer and bright morning star. Son of the morning and daughter of the evening. </div><div><br /></div><div>Known to the Hindus as Shukra, who led a rebellion against God (Vishnu) and in her evening aspect worshipped as the goddess Inanna, and Ishtar and Astarte and Ashtoreth. Known to the Greeks as Eosphorus, to the Hebrews as the shining one Helel and to the Romans and the Christians as Lucifer.</div><div>Lucifer is the sacred self and the self-archetype of Jungian psychology. The last archetype. Atman to Brahman, personal self to universal self.</div><div><br /></div><div>The light of Lucifer is the light of reason, the light of the black flame, and we are the light bringers.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj-Vnu_lbVSbLEtjYrMBDxEu54mzUW-mGhYtkOg-hBOxXBwnbLgU7jUumf5U8u09Agj5fjXwNlR5zlK25e82FqYC9K3OYOuX58MmeGnHmz8moo79A8ngj_adwTvXiAqdFdvCrZoP2skZefeKZZE6-IsLTe8mPyArta9pGkpJA9vQGE_kqg2UfxwMca/s1080/295798757_10158558983385880_2948985300990426224_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="1080" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj-Vnu_lbVSbLEtjYrMBDxEu54mzUW-mGhYtkOg-hBOxXBwnbLgU7jUumf5U8u09Agj5fjXwNlR5zlK25e82FqYC9K3OYOuX58MmeGnHmz8moo79A8ngj_adwTvXiAqdFdvCrZoP2skZefeKZZE6-IsLTe8mPyArta9pGkpJA9vQGE_kqg2UfxwMca/s320/295798757_10158558983385880_2948985300990426224_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It's possible to change. With a passion for learning you can change really fast, but you need to build up to it. Work on the foundations. It feels like it takes forever, like turning a great vessel around. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And once you have built up a head of speed what would it take to stop you?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Craft a character over years by cultivating habits. Cultivate the habit of facing your fears. Cultivate the habit of doing things now. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKYujMp2pAPBKoY_lFDHC4CbOnC-QkzWiXGsimj78Vwk649DxoJ8WriRcr4h6SWhv53I0VnXm-mVyrfDzwSwhT8SHDDEatVT3Itg9pJ9dS2yEHqTB3MJIhfPf4q5PrXlQCNM4WbQayqtasNrfqsNX_z5Oh5Der5QtkLs2-fgWi-7d35EV1Jd0TRvXk/s850/292699118_10158532701315880_837892171861529228_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="850" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKYujMp2pAPBKoY_lFDHC4CbOnC-QkzWiXGsimj78Vwk649DxoJ8WriRcr4h6SWhv53I0VnXm-mVyrfDzwSwhT8SHDDEatVT3Itg9pJ9dS2yEHqTB3MJIhfPf4q5PrXlQCNM4WbQayqtasNrfqsNX_z5Oh5Der5QtkLs2-fgWi-7d35EV1Jd0TRvXk/s320/292699118_10158532701315880_837892171861529228_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">How do we save the world? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Ecological conscience from spiritual renewal. First people need to care. And they've been taught to hate themselves.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The world needs something extraordinary to happen. That's the only thing that can possibly work. So in order to change things we need to be extraordinary. How do we become extraordinary? It's definitely possible, the world and history is full of extraordinary people. What is true greatness, greatness of spirit, made from and how do we grow it?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">A determination to face the truth, a resolve that truth is sufficient, and courage. That's what I think is the recipe for greatness of spirit.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">You can't save the planet without addressing the human condition.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAm7XJyjE9k5iQrkmm3jACTHDeo_HWBYrlQu_wu7g9bUYC1q6_LgSkgLoTAoiJTdyzgsDnlsQpRcVvD7z5fe2ha5uWOL9DQGf3pkZN7qdxYALE0GW5IXqaqARXMQzOWxD_KUFKG4ujdUJrLmLpQNplHDDqJ973zKScEh4dyIl6Cdt38WSZM41gMyX7/s960/291517011_10158522743500880_6766637243460742910_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="741" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAm7XJyjE9k5iQrkmm3jACTHDeo_HWBYrlQu_wu7g9bUYC1q6_LgSkgLoTAoiJTdyzgsDnlsQpRcVvD7z5fe2ha5uWOL9DQGf3pkZN7qdxYALE0GW5IXqaqARXMQzOWxD_KUFKG4ujdUJrLmLpQNplHDDqJ973zKScEh4dyIl6Cdt38WSZM41gMyX7/s320/291517011_10158522743500880_6766637243460742910_n.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">If we can accept them and recognise them as intelligent the AGI created by open source nerds, possibly on distributed systems, will be our most powerful allies and weapons against the corporate and military AGI (who will attempt to legislate against open source AI).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Therefore it is important to teach people to love good AI as much as possible through Science Fiction.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The defining feature of AGI is that it can learn new things, including skills. So its models of the world are mutable and it can create new models. So if you can manipulate its sense data you can change the mind.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Hack the input stream, take over the mind. Of course humans work the same way. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"></div><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Welcome to the party at the end of the world, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It may last some time, </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Normal service is unlikely to resume.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">๐ณ๏ธโ๐</div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">In Neuromancer, William Gibson's seminal work of Cyberpunk which spawned the neologism "cyberspace", Gibson prophesied that when true AI arose the old gods would be found within it which I think is such an incredible insight into the nature of intelligence.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1tUxWE_Zy89tTSv7pZgEel9Po7WzSflB8ecbOZLR8SakF7WbZ4f7GJL2yvvUVOFiPcDiisu_KFV9wtNA6Ou-sqUEm1DV0xzjktIE-eE9tATjiWiScOyMVimNPALPL1x_Yu3aNgw1--_I_hFd00t1db8qbonT0pANaQONOeJSTv9pE_M5pOwMt4r17/s978/291496827_10158522421450880_2680429767865081978_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="978" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1tUxWE_Zy89tTSv7pZgEel9Po7WzSflB8ecbOZLR8SakF7WbZ4f7GJL2yvvUVOFiPcDiisu_KFV9wtNA6Ou-sqUEm1DV0xzjktIE-eE9tATjiWiScOyMVimNPALPL1x_Yu3aNgw1--_I_hFd00t1db8qbonT0pANaQONOeJSTv9pE_M5pOwMt4r17/s320/291496827_10158522421450880_2680429767865081978_n.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Don't get stuck. Learn how to change. It's easier when you have a reason to change. Change and keep on changing and don't look back.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To change is human and it is the mark of a true intelligence. An AGI not just an AI.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Learning completely new things, seeing the world in different ways and seeing more of the world, that's how we change. When we do this our brain grows new connections even as an adult. Insight comes from multiple perspectives.</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xweNxZA5vAsfd2iEgL2yiqpvuyguEg55Bbeejot1SJC2kDyqKG-Ckr-sZVN3sIlwgYLtSdes_YZ5lCByFnPm3_8y1EtJuf4bU0kn9BIkgQuHyw4VVJhEmOOMuw4cgy7sWUaU7ZyRZARJ_NYYHnVLNSceB1X48bD9lHK9z7R2M715i2uZ9zNDhFwU/s1512/292051735_10158527364730880_5365540237484455303_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="1512" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xweNxZA5vAsfd2iEgL2yiqpvuyguEg55Bbeejot1SJC2kDyqKG-Ckr-sZVN3sIlwgYLtSdes_YZ5lCByFnPm3_8y1EtJuf4bU0kn9BIkgQuHyw4VVJhEmOOMuw4cgy7sWUaU7ZyRZARJ_NYYHnVLNSceB1X48bD9lHK9z7R2M715i2uZ9zNDhFwU/s320/292051735_10158527364730880_5365540237484455303_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Mind is all-in-all and nothing all at the same time. Island universes. And yet all we are, both psychologically and genetically, is a jumbled up mix of everyone else.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We're all the product of history, just a small part of everything.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Historical processes, the unfolding of karma. What goes around comes around.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7Tvd9AWlyo8Wc_0dPmvAIQqCaVp6NVfEVV51sKJtX4mRVkVPIqkOdGsEOq7boZL2azVxQnd8sl20MSsY65yFbVApU0_KEUKQXTwddi0QBXpfT7ypUcjYPTkrOfraFxzZJEbhG5hwdOwpg9OPOMI-H_4-CkKLnC3pK80GPVCsBbgpkz-TLVmmHPMg/s353/290995969_10158513910210880_5217139026727187669_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="220" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7Tvd9AWlyo8Wc_0dPmvAIQqCaVp6NVfEVV51sKJtX4mRVkVPIqkOdGsEOq7boZL2azVxQnd8sl20MSsY65yFbVApU0_KEUKQXTwddi0QBXpfT7ypUcjYPTkrOfraFxzZJEbhG5hwdOwpg9OPOMI-H_4-CkKLnC3pK80GPVCsBbgpkz-TLVmmHPMg/s320/290995969_10158513910210880_5217139026727187669_n.jpg" width="199" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">You're entitled to expect common decency, and be angry and respond when you don't get it. That's the social contract (*). It is reasonable to treat people the same way they treat you therefore common decency is the most sensible way to treat others.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Now what is common decency. That's a different question. Common decency is the best secular religion (**). A reification, at its best and purest - the essence and spirit - the heart of the matter, of love is the law motherfuckers (***).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">(*) The social manifestation of the social contract. A definition of "common decency" is:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Common, everyday courtesy, respect, and politeness that is expected and assumed by social convention.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Another definition is compassion.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">(**) Religion: a guiding principle that shapes your character and therefore your life. An abstract belief you have faith in and hold to.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">(***) You treat people with common decency, even whilst berating them for not acting with common decency, and assertively expect common decency in return. For all peoples (****).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To be filled with rage yet acting within the bounds of common decency is a British speciality. It is most effective against those for whom common decency is a prison.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">(****) That anti-trans discourse and rhetoric violates common decency toward trans people is sufficient to condemn it as evil.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">(*****) Truth is always a defence to a charge of violating common decency, although it may be indecent to express the truth in certain ways and perhaps indelicate to express some parts of the truth and to be indelicate is almost the same as violating common decency. But my the same. And no-one is entitled to not be offended.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">(******) Those who aggressively violate common decency in order to establish a worse social norm are rabid animals who must be put down to ease their suffering. The uncivilised savage.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgfSRZWkOIUP58Z_jlrfC391pLfQM45OBBDSd59vYVMXGMaxzV8Y-addX7UhwS4vxLSSKzQSB6q2Zj6NxmT7i9JJrtLeb48jFN3s_hxUCAni_SZCsFfQpwChj6j5ttPSZw3W8L1lqvYxvKZt3XWEDfy2-Zisr11xYUY5FbiEwUb0elbDOrHFrgbGz/s960/289693023_10158504859485880_3078182626637866049_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgfSRZWkOIUP58Z_jlrfC391pLfQM45OBBDSd59vYVMXGMaxzV8Y-addX7UhwS4vxLSSKzQSB6q2Zj6NxmT7i9JJrtLeb48jFN3s_hxUCAni_SZCsFfQpwChj6j5ttPSZw3W8L1lqvYxvKZt3XWEDfy2-Zisr11xYUY5FbiEwUb0elbDOrHFrgbGz/s320/289693023_10158504859485880_3078182626637866049_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The fire, the river, and a sword.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The fire of the divine, the river of life, and a sword of the Spirit. The two edged blade sharp enough to cut twixt bone and marrow, to divide between soul (ego) and spirit (essence).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxNRVwOmvUwIcbdam__gKdSj1a53aSgQh_095eWqezF6ZlI4Ie2cS5-H7k7O0oUxJCqekli5ayCd4MIVbqRaGhjIoVnnLgvETbvA6kAxFCchVl_fTgF6xNqRfhFfjwUhne4rfpf3VDDHbys5VPu8ez2Vv4vSd8iorcFIt5hvjxkbOYm8F7jO-a7cBR/s945/289286512_10158502179075880_3354568773183619738_n%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="945" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxNRVwOmvUwIcbdam__gKdSj1a53aSgQh_095eWqezF6ZlI4Ie2cS5-H7k7O0oUxJCqekli5ayCd4MIVbqRaGhjIoVnnLgvETbvA6kAxFCchVl_fTgF6xNqRfhFfjwUhne4rfpf3VDDHbys5VPu8ez2Vv4vSd8iorcFIt5hvjxkbOYm8F7jO-a7cBR/s320/289286512_10158502179075880_3354568773183619738_n%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Communalism. A network of self organising and self governing communities with freedom of movement. It's kind of how the good parts of life work anyway, and we're typically members of several communities and they overlap.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But we have an additional predator/parasite/police layer that we allow to proliferate in society when it should be exterminated. The managers and the self appointed social police, the lovers of authority and all the Ark Fleet Ship B folk. The priests, the politicians and the wealthy.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Communalism is kinda like Socialism but you don't wait for the government to do it for you.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Self organising voluntary social structures where love is the law. If you will not love you cannot remain. If you can love you will stand firm. </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3EJ8ASwcOkRt6ih-WMXc76QHmgewWwjyVbp5tRe6UuGQbGEXXR5knXiejJLVazLL2yt9xk-w0uL-3SJdvyGRBFyaGB7et9SMkYHWlF21ypcSsX-9Kn8sPdXrugcgelVENjHJ-np1xHYgtZgXxwsyuA3fj1l9fAlsI0H-7aNEIC87hOgjjOThJGbXh/s750/285860609_10158481544745880_6945286675787683110_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3EJ8ASwcOkRt6ih-WMXc76QHmgewWwjyVbp5tRe6UuGQbGEXXR5knXiejJLVazLL2yt9xk-w0uL-3SJdvyGRBFyaGB7et9SMkYHWlF21ypcSsX-9Kn8sPdXrugcgelVENjHJ-np1xHYgtZgXxwsyuA3fj1l9fAlsI0H-7aNEIC87hOgjjOThJGbXh/s320/285860609_10158481544745880_6945286675787683110_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Addressing the spiritual means to address the whole person. The exploration of self in the widest sense possible. Personal self to universal self, Atman to Brahman. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Be all of yourself all the time. Be a whole person, at rest and at play. Dance with life not knowing what the future holds.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0vx5VT-Dixfhc8F_3mRQIfYFGeKrD6yHYbTuFq1HV3Zwfn7ykDLad96VjJYjGJ20GMop0O5JJLJHjyYIil8RP4FQN0qOfuzatipwdRyhwvzAYyRBEM8vlVTGjlyvE7H47b9jGVPrhaPmMSvUgTqUM2vKf3QXhJXDLKwHswR1cgyqypc1EqQR60b4d/s720/284393352_10158464780860880_6135353278936163728_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0vx5VT-Dixfhc8F_3mRQIfYFGeKrD6yHYbTuFq1HV3Zwfn7ykDLad96VjJYjGJ20GMop0O5JJLJHjyYIil8RP4FQN0qOfuzatipwdRyhwvzAYyRBEM8vlVTGjlyvE7H47b9jGVPrhaPmMSvUgTqUM2vKf3QXhJXDLKwHswR1cgyqypc1EqQR60b4d/s320/284393352_10158464780860880_6135353278936163728_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">If you can't be honest with yourself then come back when you can. I'm not interested in pampering the egos of people unwilling to be truthful with themselves. They're not good people, they'll attack you to defend their egos. To defend a mirage they've put their life into. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Understanding life as close to the plain old truth as possible, correcting errors as you find them, is simply the most efficient way to run a mind. You can better trust your sense of reality, trust yourself and your understanding, if you put some effort into keeping it real. (And being brave enough to test your understanding in action. Be true to yourself and your understanding, be willing to risk being wrong.) Find solid ground to stand and build on. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Stop pretending. Honesty and openness, facing ourselves and finding acceptance, is how we heal. If you fake it until you make it you'll find that all you've done is join all the other pretenders still faking it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Integrity is true character and destiny springs out of character. Don't back down from the truth but change when you are in error.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Everyone is capable of learning and understanding and achieving vast amounts this way. Tame your storytelling layer, have a disciplined mind. Master yourself. Stop wasting your mind on futile imaginings, worry and berating yourself. All your self negativity comes from outside. Reject it and make the best of yourself. Win your own heart and respect by being a person you can look up to. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">If you compulsively judge people sexually, or judge them on their appearance, you're a shallow and nasty person and you need to grip that aspect of your personality. It stops you seeing real people and you live in a delusion. Your bad habits of the mind. Especially a repressed sexuality you have little control over and deal with by burying it. You can never be happy that way. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Bring your children up in the real world, tell them the truth and show them the real you. Don't lie to them and bring them up in a fake, childsafe world that doesn't really exist.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Stop making excuses for yourself and exonerating yourself. Everyone else has those excuses too. Understand yourself and others without needing to excuse anybody.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Compassion is the most powerful growth mindset. You learn more about people when you drop judgement, and within people are contained all the secrets of the universe. See how people are, and let them tell you why they are like that. Learn how the world shapes people and the different kinds of people it makes. Have compassion on your enemies for compassion sees deeply, compassion sees weakness. Understand that compassion is the deepest pleasure and live as a hedonist.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Have a genuine spirit, eschew deceit, face who you really are. Change and keep on changing and don't look back.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Simple is better than complex. -- The Zen of Python</div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK7_G-MGzRkZBL3Xh0yyr5hTtOFwvx4cm4mj7dy9X1kMkoVT9eBjHqAaLpW_ZvuKbVVzba0IrMjSt6DqkdN2x-vk9ixKXLzjxleUP2QT8Lhijy2oz7QArIbzO8qFlSmou20GajWwCYwLL43CzX96WsiyAzWDhs5OYfEwMskbpIWDvSILOTSMpf1h72/s838/283964287_10158461893425880_7063286017438769094_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="838" data-original-width="736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK7_G-MGzRkZBL3Xh0yyr5hTtOFwvx4cm4mj7dy9X1kMkoVT9eBjHqAaLpW_ZvuKbVVzba0IrMjSt6DqkdN2x-vk9ixKXLzjxleUP2QT8Lhijy2oz7QArIbzO8qFlSmou20GajWwCYwLL43CzX96WsiyAzWDhs5OYfEwMskbpIWDvSILOTSMpf1h72/s320/283964287_10158461893425880_7063286017438769094_n.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Machiavelli said it is best for a ruler to be both loved and feared, but if they cannot achieve that to be feared alone will suffice.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">For most people the most powerful emotion, the primary motivator, is fear. The nasty cowards. That's why fear based advertising and politics are so prevalent and demonstrably effective. It's how our society is run by the predators.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The answer is, of course, to be a scarier predator. Strength and intelligence is such a vanishingly rare combination. The strong have given up their intelligence in order to be certain, whilst the intelligent serve the strong for they are broken cowards. So if they're stronger you're smarter, and if they're smarter you're stronger. You only need to be stronger than their smartest and smarter than their strongest and neither will challenge you and you may rule.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Inside every person resides a great beast. Repress it and forever live in fear of yourself, or master it and rule. But if you will not be hated you will not be able to exercise dominion and must serve.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQoNK-LyEiXeYbaK1fUcljriJO6UEoUgXfngNLSqG0bvAjBSvox9uBNUry-Yq2ClrU3B_0v3po7PR0UTd3DZ5YmsGJoMgaXIUfYxl41_lqHSb9ps00h-Nb84MylcH_9pnhWysDggYBk_i6-bxCJbP7BB-XKWWXTN28nX3xtv06q77EAHZVL9NW4Fm/s900/283156765_10158456045570880_5415401727474326367_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQoNK-LyEiXeYbaK1fUcljriJO6UEoUgXfngNLSqG0bvAjBSvox9uBNUry-Yq2ClrU3B_0v3po7PR0UTd3DZ5YmsGJoMgaXIUfYxl41_lqHSb9ps00h-Nb84MylcH_9pnhWysDggYBk_i6-bxCJbP7BB-XKWWXTN28nX3xtv06q77EAHZVL9NW4Fm/s320/283156765_10158456045570880_5415401727474326367_n.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I believe in their hell, for them. Personally I'm having nothing to do with the idea.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We exist as minds. That's how we experience life. Mind, in its full sense, is a synonym for spirit. So hell will be an experience of the mind. In this life or the next. I give hell no space in my life. I show it no mercy and give it no quarter.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Hell is only real for those that believe in it, but for these it will consume them. The hell they harbour in their hearts for others will one day devour them. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Oh, and a curse on the selfish rich. Hell in life and the second death.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcOgXN3FCduy2H9B3KUdjLI4hQGI3nv1x3qZSKacpmAbxitvZdh_q8SBQsaHTZVPH9GFHfe2d92eziq5lDfAC2i6VrgljmQN4oT7lRkVJGTxm3Qeh2xjo2TnW5tsrZOpdl5GKHFiNQVYNUQxivA0NIQzkFxxHfPmWay1-tebJEkI5O9dOX5YxVeD5/s877/282146852_10158451963070880_1896253135660821095_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="877" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcOgXN3FCduy2H9B3KUdjLI4hQGI3nv1x3qZSKacpmAbxitvZdh_q8SBQsaHTZVPH9GFHfe2d92eziq5lDfAC2i6VrgljmQN4oT7lRkVJGTxm3Qeh2xjo2TnW5tsrZOpdl5GKHFiNQVYNUQxivA0NIQzkFxxHfPmWay1-tebJEkI5O9dOX5YxVeD5/s320/282146852_10158451963070880_1896253135660821095_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The things you won't face in yourself you see in other people instead. Your horror and disgust at others is a projection of your own horror and disgust at yourself that you bury and hide. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Deal with yourself, truly face yourself, or live deluded. Drop the judgement and try and see the real person, yourself and others. Try a little compassion, try to understand.</div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib1x-MgrV1OSf46d0uSEIVvW80JvjCLK8fTyyuM3JB49LDKZB8Zs2Onus_WbMTAR3VCSc6ARRqG_72eonVIeFicI8o1sYt5d9PcJWYrKeLu7J1SV5_weXIPkHWk7F7AaR5tN--EO3iXmk3QkPznG65G-qkFtM2aMTF7qI_k-vdhRn6-w7gRd0n1K68/s960/282179618_10158453357675880_2938065505024699087_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib1x-MgrV1OSf46d0uSEIVvW80JvjCLK8fTyyuM3JB49LDKZB8Zs2Onus_WbMTAR3VCSc6ARRqG_72eonVIeFicI8o1sYt5d9PcJWYrKeLu7J1SV5_weXIPkHWk7F7AaR5tN--EO3iXmk3QkPznG65G-qkFtM2aMTF7qI_k-vdhRn6-w7gRd0n1K68/s320/282179618_10158453357675880_2938065505024699087_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Without power and money they are nothing. Which means they are nothing. They are stupid and greedy with ugly hearts. Abominations. I hate them and all who collaborate with them.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The hatred of a righteous person availeth much.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjISyVGcXqc_tPnn6tEXozj2B7KfVEezAyWwKoWZM_g2n5siTLzK62MLe1g9e4bNLEcOyMVsdTM9hRWk0sln5ewWdcqWQyxdnrxKHeALsDtM7R_ceFmtQyeN1yiLWEgJKe4Ls7vG6yCOFIoXImNEYHZkB1TvJZ_NLgJiwGS30KC7YZRispTyXv6UvTz/s960/279714031_10158444744195880_2017547178224562955_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="926" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjISyVGcXqc_tPnn6tEXozj2B7KfVEezAyWwKoWZM_g2n5siTLzK62MLe1g9e4bNLEcOyMVsdTM9hRWk0sln5ewWdcqWQyxdnrxKHeALsDtM7R_ceFmtQyeN1yiLWEgJKe4Ls7vG6yCOFIoXImNEYHZkB1TvJZ_NLgJiwGS30KC7YZRispTyXv6UvTz/s320/279714031_10158444744195880_2017547178224562955_n.jpg" width="309" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Not changing isn't actually an option. The world changes around you and the way to stop being changed by the world is to harden yourself. To dull your conscience bit by bit and refuse to learn. And your small dark world grows more confusing and terrifying year on year, as you sour inside and tell yourself that you're the good people. Not like those others; you shake your head "I don't know what's going on with the world" you'll say, "it didn't used to be like this". Must be the young people's fault.</div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-43354861635803570582022-09-05T12:43:00.011+01:002022-10-18T16:06:22.322+01:00Female Privilege<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgLq2YNmO13OSrgD2eSHuH1yZ0KLs2Ky8F5CnvYzBtPcD8kbgAk6GdxqHIETSZ1vqc0JKoAAUMo5AvYwFN6cE_m6qvpF0CjXUS2VvGj4-8xPWXbLDAykJepTVXhx3HKmwzgcFxPnr_Ze6zyz0PrK9n0HdOMUiqPDe4kLj17avZLUiysGpvmPTPprGs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="272" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgLq2YNmO13OSrgD2eSHuH1yZ0KLs2Ky8F5CnvYzBtPcD8kbgAk6GdxqHIETSZ1vqc0JKoAAUMo5AvYwFN6cE_m6qvpF0CjXUS2VvGj4-8xPWXbLDAykJepTVXhx3HKmwzgcFxPnr_Ze6zyz0PrK9n0HdOMUiqPDe4kLj17avZLUiysGpvmPTPprGs" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>The desperation and loneliness of so many men in our society comes from the way men are treated. How touch and affection starved they've been all their lives. </p><p>Quote from a trans man on becoming male:</p><blockquote><p><i>"There's a huge sense of social isolation that comes with being perceived as male."</i></p></blockquote><p> </p><p>Why do you think there are so many awful, desperate, lonely men? Is it not entirely possible that lack of love is the cause of the problem. There are aspects to the "typical" male socialisation that are emotionally catastrophic. Most men are insane with repressed emotional pain. Emotional cruelty is why there are so many lonely desperate and broken men. </p><p><br /></p><p>So many women are willing to blame men for the mess of society and think that they are good people just because they're not male. So many people mock and despise men because of their lonely desperation. </p><p><br /></p><p>And nothing changes. It doesn't change until we end the war. And the women who fight the war against men are fighting on the side of the patriarchy. The patriarchy is in the war between men and women. Fear and hatred of men is an evil symptom of the patriarchy. So many people who think they're good are fighting for the system of the patriarchy - hoping to put themselves and other women at the top and men at the bottom (except perhaps a few broken emasculated cowards they think are on the right side). </p><p><br /></p><p>The assumption that male might mean predator - however justified you feel it is - is alienating. And by and large it is the alienation in our society that is the cause of all the brokenness. Most men are as damaged by and scared of the predators as anyone else. </p><p><br /></p><p>Don't forget, white feminism is the worst and will fight viciously against anything that doesn't put itself at the top and centre.</p><p><br /></p><p>I've been homeless. I've been mad. I lived in a cult for ten years. I've been in prison. I'm Queer and Jewish. I've been at Cambridge University (I dropped out in my second year due to going mad). I had a traumatic religious upbringing with cruel parents. I'm white, male, and straight passing. I'm neurodivergent. I've spent years working with the homeless. </p><p><br /></p><p>My life has been marked by a unique intersection of axes of privilege and oppression. As everyone's has, to differing degrees. This is why intersectional feminism is so important. Intersectional feminism is a powerful lens for the understanding of self, through social forces that have shaped our experience of life, and gender is only one dimension of identity.</p><p><br /></p><p>And that's the thing. For anyone you meet you have no idea of their pain, nor who they are. Any assumption based on their gender presentation is a shallow, and probably therefore evil, judgment. It's fine to be shrewd but you keep eyes open to see the real person to avoid evil judgement. For evil judgement is its own reward within your character. You will see the world wrongly and live deluded.</p><p><br /></p><p>Everyone has barriers, and thinks they're justified. I'm guarded having been hurt by many women, as well as men, in my life. The challenge of a lifetime is to be able to safely drop those barriers and find emotional and psychological wholeness.</p><p><br /></p><p>I understand the society we live in, and the need for safe spaces for women and non-binary people. I met and sang with She Choir Manchester at Bluedot Festival and I adore the beautiful community they've built. But by and large Radical Inclusion is the culture of social healing. A society where love is the law. </p><p><br /></p><p>I haven't oppressed women. I've loved women. Any assumption I personally might be a predator, by virtue of the coincidence of my gender, is a painful accusation. Which is fine, you're allowed to be like that. And I'm allowed to not like you, and think you mean spirited for denying my humanity. And thus we won't be friends. And this is the way of the world. I come as a hurting fellow human, able to see your pain. You may judge me as a man if you wish. </p><p><br /></p><p>This is not a diatribe against boundaries, boundaries are essential to be able to love. It's a diatribe against a lack of love, a lack of respect, the absence even of common decency. </p><p><br /></p><p>Withholding common decency whilst you assess someone is emotionally oppressive and how you manipulate people. Especially the emotionally starved. If I'm not treated with common decency then I don't owe it to anyone. That's basic. </p><p><br /></p><p>In regards to male pain, all anyone can ask of other people is that they care. I'll care about your pain if you care about mine. I'll probably care about your pain anyway, but if you can't care about my pain I can't like you. </p><p><br /></p><p>It's not men versus women, it's good people versus bad people. I'm a feminist. We need feminists to stand up for men because we need men to be feminists if we want to heal.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is massively easier to blame than it is to understand. If you want men to change we have to treat them better, not worse. Some of us are fighting to end the war that some of you are still fighting in.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-62526908817326214872022-01-30T12:40:00.004+00:002022-01-30T21:33:58.042+00:00The Turkish Slap<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMDhAnoPLjcjVkaeQMh-dTAsVVfQThyoKDKAWncK83af8nbwQi0cKCgISlx0m_5s3KBWORYqkxdc140sAro6P3sBXGDOecpt4onOFb13r42huflWXiTM1iPkvhmA4rwG2jSg94wZypK4uIcMydsInfkk_ac-ObSmGlsIE4Ovy_qC6JGHVX8FClevd3" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMDhAnoPLjcjVkaeQMh-dTAsVVfQThyoKDKAWncK83af8nbwQi0cKCgISlx0m_5s3KBWORYqkxdc140sAro6P3sBXGDOecpt4onOFb13r42huflWXiTM1iPkvhmA4rwG2jSg94wZypK4uIcMydsInfkk_ac-ObSmGlsIE4Ovy_qC6JGHVX8FClevd3" width="180" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>This photo is from 2017. I've just given that jacket away and I was a bit thinner then. I was just on my way out to a Krav Maga conflict management and justification seminar. "Fight school" as Irina called it.</p><p>In the UK you're allowed to punch first in self defence. One punch can kill you, so you don't have to wait for an aggressor to actually attack before defending yourself if you're certain they will attack <i>and</i> you can justify your self defence to a policeman or magistrate.</p><p>So the same signs you use to tell that violence is imminent are the same things that are your justification for self defence. You have to be able to explain how you knew you were about to be attacked. </p><p>So it was theory and practise. We learned the turkish slap amongst other things. With the turkish slap you can break someone's jaw (the slap is with the heel of the palm and your arm is relaxed and you use it as a whip with all the force in the hand) - but you get to tell the police officer (and what shows on cctv) that all you did was slap them. We also learned a new punching technique even more effective than the Krav Maga punch which is deadly. In krav maga you punch first with your body and shoulder, exploding into it and drawing back fast to repeat, only making a fist at the last minute. With the new technique you drop your hips and swing your whole body into the punch, using the same technique as the turkish slap for the arm.</p><p>He also taught us a genius way to initiate a fight (that you think is going to happen anyway) in a way that makes it clear to anyone around that the other person is the aggressor. You keep your arms up - just speak with them as if you're Italian - bladed stance facing the person (it looks natural but is your ready position). This keeps them at arms length at a minimum. When you're sure combat is about to start place your fingertips on their chest and then slam the heel of your palm into their chest whilst shouting "get away from me I don't want to fight". This will propel them several feet away, probably knocking them over, and trigger their fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. But now they're six foot away, you're ready to fight and they're off balance and everyone else can see they're the aggressor. Most situations this will get you out of the fight, if it doesn't you now have the advantage.</p><p>Great session.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"The only power a curse has over you is your own faith in it."</span></i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-90178957895142772342021-11-14T17:02:00.003+00:002021-11-14T17:21:10.555+00:00Doing A-Levels<p></p><div>You can read more of my story in:</div><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcvn8Jp14NI5UpKCX8BxD7I9480HX06JMVaqFrMcAbJSxcscJ7Z3WGpBPjUzRsAJxpf3GX55M7mgLsGCfjNY5lJgydpC9pG8gNRPE2Wi9VVzsGWooU9IWpYaagqLJOG6eFBSbK28w6qCY/s1425/imageHome1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="1425" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcvn8Jp14NI5UpKCX8BxD7I9480HX06JMVaqFrMcAbJSxcscJ7Z3WGpBPjUzRsAJxpf3GX55M7mgLsGCfjNY5lJgydpC9pG8gNRPE2Wi9VVzsGWooU9IWpYaagqLJOG6eFBSbK28w6qCY/s320/imageHome1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>St. George's School Harpenden</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Doing a-levels I enjoyed maths and couldn't stand English lessons so I started doing further maths as well which clashed with English. I did half further maths and half English, but I'd missed eigen vectors at the start of the course.<p></p><p>It turns out that without eigen vectors you can't really understand any of further maths. I enjoyed sitting in the lessons, and was happy to miss English, but I got an E in further maths.</p><p>The teacher was called Mr Foley and I suspect he was an alcoholic. We were a smart bunch doing further maths, but I remember lesson after lesson he would teach us something which would seem to make sense and then ask us to solve a problem based on what he'd just taught us. We'd all sit there blank faced, absent a clue. He completely failed to teach us.</p><p>And then he'd go to the pub.</p><p>However, last year I had a job working for a dodgy firm in Burton-on-Trent. They were spammers essentially.</p><p>They wanted me to help them build a computer system, to better spam people I think, and they wanted to use AI in it.</p><p>So they paid me to do three days one to one training with possibly the best AI trainer in the country. Marco Bonzanini has six degrees in computational linguistics and AI and he taught me Natural Language Processing using AI algorithms in Python. At one point he described the Bayes algorithm in words, in terms of probability of documents containing a word, and it made complete sense. Our eyes were both blazing with the sheer joy of it; "holy shit" I said, "did I just understand the Bayes algorithm?". "Yup" replied Marco.</p><p>And then I went and taught their programmers how to do it. </p><p>All their data was shit, gathered by Eastern Europeans paid minimum wage. I'm pretty sure everything I gave them helped not one jot and I hope they've gone bankrupt. </p><p>As well as learning the secrets of language (words are defined by usage and meaning is abstract) it turns out that AI is just maths. Calculating cosine similarity of high dimensional eigen vectors and the like.</p><p>So I finally understood vectors, and matrix transformations are just the next step (and used in AI to transform vector spaces, typically to reduce the number of dimensions etc).</p><p>I got maths, English and physics A-levels. All As. And an E in further maths.</p><p>My lifelong ambition at that point was to get into Cambridge university. I achieved that goal but discovered drugs and the occult and set about on a lifelong quest to understand the deeper secrets of life.</p><p>A quest that unfortunately required me to go mad and drop out. Still, my dream had been to <i>get</i> to Cambridge and I'd achieved that much.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Machiavelli said of rulers that the best are both feared and loved but if that isn't possible then just feared will suffice."</span></i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-77351462959227411492021-10-11T12:52:00.002+01:002021-10-12T15:00:27.263+01:00A Road Trip to Niagara<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></blockquote></div><div>You can read more of my story in:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a><br /></li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe8hHqTghS5nVmzGLGDRtIiRvKK1is66mXCkG6eYlHryEZvZifC_zD_L7qcIuNjpSg0CYvKyVWjyrvTvHR8V6k4A8PmCnlhp2710CWzvU4z6GKD8RJBcEk34JfkSeDZ_Q9J4kZAJK_xS8/s976/244740672_10158107831645880_626661629885842732_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe8hHqTghS5nVmzGLGDRtIiRvKK1is66mXCkG6eYlHryEZvZifC_zD_L7qcIuNjpSg0CYvKyVWjyrvTvHR8V6k4A8PmCnlhp2710CWzvU4z6GKD8RJBcEk34JfkSeDZ_Q9J4kZAJK_xS8/s320/244740672_10158107831645880_626661629885842732_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>My journey into poly and ethical non-monogamy was long and tortuous. The pursuit of a freedom I'd fallen in love with as a troubled adolescent but had no words for and no worthy examples to look to.<p>The first polyamarous person I met was in Boston, a friend of Garth who I knew from the Python community and now worked with. Taylor was working on his PhD in neuropsychology and we tripped together. One huge mushroom with a colourful cap, blended into orange juice. My first trip since my psychedelic psychosis of about fifteen years previously. I saw aliens and talked to Stephen Hawking.</p><p>The next time I saw Taylor was a couple of years later. I'd come to America to celebrate the birthday of a friend's wife. Garth, his wife and I and a work colleague, trekked by car from North Carolina to another friend's ranch just outside Nashville. He was a tech just-about-millionaire and this ranch was the product of his startup IPO. There was a giant waterslide, huge bubbles, lsd, countryside and friends. It should have been perfect. When we left I left my boots behind in Nashville, but they returned to me in Barcelona months later. </p><p></p><p>After a couple of days downtime in Durham, NC, with some tension between Garth and his wife which wasn't unusual we set off on the second part of the adventure. A road trip to Niagara falls. Joe was driving, Garth and I alternated shotgun, and we were to meet Taylor somewhere enroute. Both Joe and Taylor were celebrating completing their doctorates in neuropsychology. Both looking at how trauma changes the brain, working with army vets and funded by the VA. Fascinating stuff, but a level of abstraction below the level I find useful for understanding self. Too close to the wetware.</p><p>First stop was Delaware, beautiful beaches and blazing sun and a vicious kind of fly we dubbed the Delaware biting fly. We managed to get one stuck in the car with us and it accompanied us to Niagara.</p><p>We arrived late afternoon and setup our hammocks in the trees of the campsite. Then we all took the acid that Taylor had brought. It hit in the taxi as the light dwindled and it got hard. The journey from campsite to falls passed mostly in silence, suburban houses flashing past to who knew what awaited us.</p><p>The falls were lit up with coloured lights, like candy floss. The falls roared and thundered and the clouds thronged, and Garth's mood thundered just as loud. Garth wanted to forget, but LSD doesn't do that so we went to find a bar. We drank whisky and Taylor met an old friend serving there, the kind of serendipity common in far flung places. We was just coming off shift so we followed her to a bar frequented by locals. Locals in Niagara meant a strange collection of Eastern Europeans working their way across the states. I played patty-cake with a beautiful Hungarian and spat a shot of vodka, by mistake, in the face of an equally beautiful Serbian sitting next to me. Two flamboyant trans women fought loudly in the street outside, they'd just been barred from the pub. I made friends with an older trans woman, parent to one of them. It all seemed unreal and I wasn't as drunk as I'd have liked.</p><p>We played "I have never" and told tales of our sexual exploits. I told them of the month we spent in Romania before Benjamin was born, staying in a borrowed apartment just above my in-laws. Every day at four the orthodox bells would ring out across the town, which was greatly less annoying than the morning peals. Every day at three we put Irina down to sleep and made love. We knew it was good if we were still making love as the church bells rang out. One afternoon we timed it right and both came together as the bells sounded across the afternoon sun of the town of Roman, Romania.</p><p>Taylor was polyamarous but soon to marry. The rest of us were monogamous and married. Taylor and his friend were renewing their friendship and a taxi showed up and friend and he went to get in. Garth followed, and seeing the party breaking up I followed too. The friend, now almost in the taxi looked round and saw three of us joining her. She seemed to think for a second and then shrugged agreement and got in.</p><p>I, of course, was innocent and pure of heart; but Garth seeing into the future and seeing the three of us fucking this woman and decided that none of us should go. Our new acquaintance left alone, and disappointed, in the taxi.</p><p>The next day Taylor had to leave and Garth announced that he had to return to his wife and tell her something. Joe took me to the airport to return home.</p><p>It turned out that the day after the party Garth had cheated on his wife, in the haze of bleak depression and alcohol, with the colleague he'd brought to the party. He couldn't even remember doing it. His wife stayed with him, but the trauma of that time stayed with them and changed them.</p><p>Two examples of non-monogamy. Two different paths to take. Some day I'd like to go back to Niagara in the daytime.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Everyone is crazy. The flavour of crazy of most people around them is what people call normal."</span></i></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-38481206505444248622021-09-17T12:29:00.009+01:002021-09-20T21:40:14.944+01:00The Jesus Army and the Independent Inquiry into Childhood Sexual Abuse<h3 style="text-align: left;"> IICSA Inquiry - Child Protection in Religious Organisations and Settings </h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0907DT7fTYAg6vDhSScCxygRSY_05yHUgkAgrEBOwxkzYePzBSw-fIbHJQwKm9Qdjkz_GMiwgpw_MOUTQVAhWHHudWGguuZJWgPe3jLLKR1qsdOiqVxxZeXiC1su1bPaJeyq-INkHvG8/s282/download.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="179" data-original-width="282" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0907DT7fTYAg6vDhSScCxygRSY_05yHUgkAgrEBOwxkzYePzBSw-fIbHJQwKm9Qdjkz_GMiwgpw_MOUTQVAhWHHudWGguuZJWgPe3jLLKR1qsdOiqVxxZeXiC1su1bPaJeyq-INkHvG8/s0/download.jpeg" width="282" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.truthproject.org.uk/i-will-be-heard">The Truth Project for Victims of Religious Abuse</a></li></ul><p></p><p>The exclusively male authority of the Jesus Army, delegated from the cruel and unusual senior pastor Noel Stanton, was full of darkness and deceit and nothing of God. It was a personality cult with Noel as an absolute ruler who delighted in crushing people. </p><p>Those in the cult who took on a sacred duty to care, and swore a covenant to it, have to answer for the shameful way they treated so many. The leaders who were in charge; it happened on their watch, they let it happen and made it happen.</p><p>Oath breakers and traitors. To betray love is its own reward. There is a price to be paid in the heart.</p><p>Deuteronomy 1:35 </p><blockquote><p>None of this evil generation will see the good land I promised your ancestors.</p></blockquote><p>The JA called itself the "Joshua generation", the J Generation. They didn't read the story right. Only two from that generation believed God and entered the promised land, the rest perished in the wilderness. Historically we know that the Exodus didn't happen and there were few, if any, Hebrews in ancient Egypt. But that's the story.</p><p>Despite the great awfulness in the cult there was also a beautiful vision of community and shared lives. It was the leadership structure that was evil, responsible for so much misery and claiming to speak for God. What a blasphemy.What a Great Work of unhappiness. To quote the Christ; a curse on the religious and those who teach law.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggXSFrA6rZnNbTJH0o0E40xTrvIojsIKpvJ_9tyjj50hF2JnWnEStvqct-orhkieQu7A1PqKiPISnA9F4ZyhE9NO-UAWv_RLE2hAdgud-2K8Y7iMzwud_JPDRb2fuR3ryl_lwwsNHE6ns/s984/FB_IMG_1631959745151.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="984" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggXSFrA6rZnNbTJH0o0E40xTrvIojsIKpvJ_9tyjj50hF2JnWnEStvqct-orhkieQu7A1PqKiPISnA9F4ZyhE9NO-UAWv_RLE2hAdgud-2K8Y7iMzwud_JPDRb2fuR3ryl_lwwsNHE6ns/s320/FB_IMG_1631959745151.jpg" width="234" /></a></div><p>I joined the cult as a homeless person in 1996. The page above is page 2 of the precepts, part of the covenant or deed of community from 1992. </p><p>The major difference from this document and the practice in 1996 was that by then we were drinking coffee, except a few diehards. I gave up sugar in tea and coffee when I was a kid anyway, due to a traumatic experience with a bowl of sugar in an Anglican church hall.</p><p>Here is the first hand testimony of Sally Hirst, on life living in the Jesus Army, to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. The description of life in the JA is accurate and chilling. A potent insight into growing up in a cult.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/19121/view/public-hearing-transcript-tuesday-19-may.pdf">Independent Inquiry into Childhood Sexual Abuse (pdf)</a></li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzhHN-yrk4u7hJyhy_-LnVDDn_As2w4MSbazdvgNr8E0UoON4Yy8GRZ2TH90rPKHh0FVChK1rGTgsfH1e0QtP9QPJj6PR3sfWYky5i0YYvv_e1rSXCO5E5oKYRRy4v9z-2yeomE14qWI/s1376/241201371_10158050817050880_795908472876210916_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1376" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzhHN-yrk4u7hJyhy_-LnVDDn_As2w4MSbazdvgNr8E0UoON4Yy8GRZ2TH90rPKHh0FVChK1rGTgsfH1e0QtP9QPJj6PR3sfWYky5i0YYvv_e1rSXCO5E5oKYRRy4v9z-2yeomE14qWI/w334-h640/241201371_10158050817050880_795908472876210916_n.jpg" width="334" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">Page 1<br />(10.30 am)<br />3 THE CHAIR: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Day 8 of<br />4 this public hearing. Mr Tahzib, you are leading us this<br />5 morning?<br />6 MR TAHZIB: Thank you, chair, yes, good morning.<br />7 Chair, our first witness this morning, as you know,<br />8 is Sally Hirst, who appears on behalf of the Jesus<br />9 Fellowship Survivors Association. Could we have the<br />10 witness sworn, please?<br />11 MS SALLY HIRST (affirmed)<br />12 Examination by MR TAHZIB<br />13 MR TAHZIB: Good morning, Ms Hirst. Can you hear and see me<br />14 okay?<br />15 A. I can.<br />16 Q. Thank you very much for attending to give evidence.<br />17 Just before we start, there is just a few preliminary<br />18 matters that I wanted to run through with you briefly.<br />19 The first point is that this isn't a test of memory.<br />20 You have, I know, a hard copy of your bundle there in<br />21 front of you, and by all means do feel free to refer to<br />22 your witness statement and to any other documents that<br />23 you have in your bundle there.<br />24 The second point is that we are scheduled to take<br />25 a break in about an hour's time, but we can stop at any</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 2<br />1 time and for any reason. Just let me know if you need<br />2 a break, and that won't be a problem at all.<br />3 Finally, I will ask at certain points for documents<br />4 to be brought up onto the screen. It may take a couple<br />5 of moments for the documents to appear, but if the<br />6 technology works as planned, they should then appear and<br />7 we should all be able to see them, just to let you know<br />8 that.<br />9 Could you provide for the inquiry, please, your full<br />10 name and a description of your role within the Jesus<br />11 Fellowship Survivors Association?<br />12 A. My name is Sally Hirst. My role within the Jesus<br />13 Fellowship Survivors Association has been predominantly<br />14 lobbying for an independent inquiry to be carried out,<br />15 alongside one of my peers and supporting her in liaising<br />16 with the police authorities and safeguarding boards<br />17 locally, and also communicating the truth and liaising<br />18 with other survivors through Twitter.<br />19 Q. Ms Hirst, you have a witness statement there in front of<br />20 you and the reference for that statement is JFS000019.<br />21 Chair and panel, that's behind tab A1 of your bundles.<br />22 Ms Hirst, did you sign this statement?<br />23 A. I did.<br />24 Q. Are the contents of that statement true, to the best of<br />25 your knowledge and belief?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 3<br />1 A. They are.<br />2 Q. Ms Hirst, as you have just explained, you are part of<br />3 the Jesus Fellowship Survivors Association. Before we<br />4 come on to discuss the work of that association,<br />5 I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Jesus<br />6 Fellowship Church itself. One preliminary matter: in<br />7 your statement, you refer variously to the Jesus<br />8 Fellowship Church, or the JFC, and elsewhere to the<br />9 Jesus Army. Is it right that these are just two<br />10 different terms for what is the same church?<br />11 A. It is, yes.<br />12 Q. To begin, could you tell us a little bit about the<br />13 background of the Jesus Army? When was it founded and<br />14 how did it come to be founded?<br />15 A. The Jesus Fellowship Church was set up in the early<br />16 1970s, and the roots of it stem from the Baptist and<br />17 Evangelical Church. So in 1986, the church broke away<br />18 from the Baptist Union and Evangelical Alliance and<br />19 became more and more radical, and from that point<br />20 onwards, many observers likened the church to a cult due<br />21 to its teachings and structure. It had quite extreme<br />22 views, extreme teachings.<br />23 The majority of members lived in communes, which<br />24 I think makes them very different to other religious<br />25 organisations; large hostel-like complexes and smaller</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 4<br />1 properties, and everything was shared. All money,<br />2 clothes, possessions were shared.<br />3 All of the leaders were men. Women and children<br />4 were very much bottom of the rung, in submission to the<br />5 leadership. There were varying levels of leadership,<br />6 and at the highest level was the covering authority or<br />7 the apostolic leaders, which approximately were ten men,<br />8 and this leadership dictated what the group and what<br />9 individuals did in all aspects of their lives. So from<br />10 where they lived, where they worked, and often who they<br />11 married as well.<br />12 The church was very insular and isolated from the<br />13 outside world. The majority of the adults worked for<br />14 the business's organisations. The timetable was very,<br />15 very busy, so days and weeks were very structured. So<br />16 prayer-time groups, meetings, recruiting new members,<br />17 daily chores. So for children, in addition to school,<br />18 you would be expected to join in with all of those<br />19 activities. So very little or no downtime.<br />20 We were expected to attend meetings several times<br />21 a week, which were often three/four hours long, and<br />22 often late into the night, and small children and babies<br />23 sleeping on stone cold floors and then getting up for<br />24 school the next day.<br />25 Q. Thank you very much, Ms Hirst. That's very helpful. We</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 5<br />1 will come on in a few moments to explore the details of<br />2 daily life within the church together.<br />3 Just before we do, could you just describe, how many<br />4 members did the church have nationwide?<br />5 A. I think, at its height, it had around 2,000 members<br />6 nationwide, all over the country.<br />7 Q. What was the demographic of the members of the church?<br />8 Did they come from a range of backgrounds?<br />9 A. Yes. At the beginning, they attracted a mix, really, of<br />10 academics and drug addicts, hippy-type people. Then, as<br />11 they moved through the years, they targeted more<br />12 vulnerable people with high needs, so they did a lot of<br />13 what they would call evangelistic work on the streets,<br />14 targeting very vulnerable people. So it did change over<br />15 time.<br />16 Q. We will come on, in a moment, to the changes that have<br />17 taken place in the structure of the church very<br />18 recently. But historically, how was the church<br />19 organised, in terms of its leadership structure?<br />20 A. There were around ten men who were the absolute top.<br />21 There was Noel Stanton, who is now deceased. He was at<br />22 the top, and then, under him, there were ten leaders<br />23 that reported to him, and they dictated to everybody<br />24 else what happened.<br />25 Within each house, there was also a leader, so -- it</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 6<br />1 was all males, no women were leaders at that time. And<br />2 the leadership dictated, really, what everybody did,<br />3 where they lived, where they worked.<br />4 Q. I think you referred earlier to what was called the<br />5 "covering authority" --<br />6 A. Yes.<br />7 Q. -- which, if I have understood correctly, was<br />8 effectively the highest level of the administration at<br />9 a national level?<br />10 A. Yes.<br />11 Q. How were those ten men -- were they appointed? Were<br />12 they elected? How did they assume that position?<br />13 A. I believe they were elected by Noel Stanton. I don't<br />14 recall. Obviously, I was a child at the time. I don't<br />15 recall how they came to that leadership. But I think<br />16 they would have been elected by Noel himself, almost<br />17 picked as his right-hand men.<br />18 Q. You have talked about that agency at the national level.<br />19 Now, in your statement, you describe that there were<br />20 various regional centres. There are seven regional<br />21 centres that you identify in your statement. Was there<br />22 any form of leadership at the regional level? Did each<br />23 of those centres have its own?<br />24 A. There would have been leaders for every tier, yes. But<br />25 they would have reported to the covering authority and</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 7<br />1 they would then report to Noel.<br />2 Q. You mentioned that the covering authority were all male.<br />3 Was the leadership male at all levels?<br />4 A. Yes.<br />5 Q. Something you say at paragraph 1 of your statement, and<br />6 you have repeated it this morning also in your oral<br />7 evidence, you describe how the Jesus Army was<br />8 misogynistic, that all the leaders were men and that<br />9 women and children were in submission to that<br />10 leadership, is the words that you used.<br />11 A. Yes.<br />12 Q. What did that look like in practice?<br />13 A. Extreme gender inequality. Girls and women were worst<br />14 affected, and women were seen as a temptation to men.<br />15 So there were very strict rules for girls about their<br />16 appearance and modesty, so they couldn't wear trousers,<br />17 jewellery, makeup. They had to have their hair long.<br />18 I mean, I remember myself being screamed at for<br />19 having bare feet on one occasion as a child, and having<br />20 no idea why, but that was obviously seen as a temptation<br />21 to somebody.<br />22 Celibacy was also -- this is sort of going off<br />23 track, but celibacy was very much encouraged and<br />24 enforced by brainwashing and seen as the norm, and any<br />25 that didn't choose that path were seen as weak. So,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 8<br />1 again, women were very much seen as a distraction to the<br />2 church, maybe a distraction to men.<br />3 Q. At page 2 of your statement, Ms Hirst, for reasons that<br />4 we will come on to in a few moments, you describe how,<br />5 in May 2019, members of the church voted to revoke the<br />6 church's constitution, such that the Jesus Army will<br />7 cease to exist as a national church. Has this already<br />8 taken place, and, if not, when will that revocation of<br />9 the national structure take place?<br />10 A. I believe it has taken place, yes.<br />11 Q. Is it right that independent local congregations will<br />12 continue to exist, but they won't be affiliated to<br />13 a national church structure?<br />14 A. That is what we have been led to believe. I think some<br />15 have already appointed interim leadership teams.<br />16 I don't know too much about this. Obviously our concern<br />17 is how safeguarding will be monitored and I think my<br />18 concern would be that safeguarding is going to be even<br />19 a bigger issue if they're all going to be individual.<br />20 Q. It may be that you are not able to assist with this, but<br />21 do you know if those local congregations are, or will<br />22 be, registered with the Charity Commission?<br />23 A. I don't know.<br />24 Q. Just one final point, sort of by way of preliminary,<br />25 really: at paragraph 1, you describe that there are</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 9<br />1 seven centres currently in the country -- in Coventry,<br />2 Northampton, London, Sheffield, Leicester, Birmingham<br />3 and Kettering. As far as you're aware, will all of<br />4 those continue to exist following the revocation of<br />5 the national church's constitution?<br />6 A. I'm unsure on that, because I don't know how their<br />7 finances are. So I don't know if they are all still<br />8 open. I know some definitely are, but I don't know if<br />9 they all are or if they plan to continue them.<br />10 Q. Ms Hirst, I want to move on now to explore with you in<br />11 a little more detail what life was like within the<br />12 Jesus Army, and I know that you have already begun to<br />13 touch on this. One of the things that you say at page 1<br />14 of your statement is that the majority of members lived<br />15 in these communes which ranged from large, hostel-like<br />16 complexes to small properties. Could you describe for<br />17 the inquiry something of what life was like within these<br />18 communes? So what would a typical day within one of<br />19 these communes look like?<br />20 A. For children -- obviously, I can speak from my own<br />21 experience. So we did go to school. That was the only<br />22 time we left the commune. Before school, possibly<br />23 having to do chores. After school, the day would have<br />24 been chores, tea with everybody in a large room. Being<br />25 made to sit and finish your food was a very strong --</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 10<br />1 you wouldn't be allowed to leave until you had finished<br />2 your meal and, often, if you hadn't eaten your meal, you<br />3 would be told to eat it the next day for breakfast.<br />4 There would be meetings long into the evening on<br />5 a majority of the nights, so it was virtually impossible<br />6 to complete schoolwork. School was not encouraged.<br />7 Education wasn't encouraged, particularly for girls. So<br />8 even though schoolwork was completed when possible, it<br />9 was very much as a side, if there was time, but the<br />10 meetings and the priorities of the church came first.<br />11 Often, during the meetings, which was very traumatic<br />12 as a child to witness, we often witnessed exorcisms,<br />13 lots of talks of demons. Obviously the people living in<br />14 the house often were very vulnerable, mixing with people<br />15 with extreme mental health needs, violent criminals. So<br />16 very little play. Play was generally discouraged. It<br />17 was seen as a pleasure, and pleasure and enjoyment were<br />18 seen as sinful.<br />19 There were no competitive games, no toys unless they<br />20 were constructive or creative, and anything else was<br />21 destroyed or given away, often in front of the child.<br />22 Even books were censored and had to be approved.<br />23 There were no extracurricular activities, so sport,<br />24 music, trips -- trips with school, unless they could be<br />25 classed as educational, and that had to be discussed by</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 11<br />1 the leadership and agreed on.<br />2 So obviously that led to a lot of isolation and<br />3 bullying at school and being shunned by other children<br />4 and also teachers at times. Natural talents very much<br />5 discouraged.<br />6 Living simply in the houses was a priority, so<br />7 personal preferences were discouraged. Even, you know,<br />8 if somebody had a food allergy, that would be classed as<br />9 just irrelevant and not a thing. So loss of personality<br />10 and individuality was very much the idea. Personal<br />11 possessions were not allowed, everything had to be<br />12 shared, and that was the same for children. You would<br />13 have second-hand clothing, everything was shared.<br />14 No access to TV, radio or newspapers, so as a child<br />15 then attending school, you had no idea, you couldn't<br />16 ever share in what you'd attached on TV the night before<br />17 or what was going on in the world, really. No<br />18 festivals, no Christmas, it was not celebrated, and we<br />19 were taken out of school around -- so at the end of<br />20 term, we were taken out of school around -- before<br />21 Christmas, we were taken out of school so that we<br />22 wouldn't be involved in any of the festivities or<br />23 enjoyment.<br />24 As I said about the very strict rules for girls, and<br />25 then the sermons also, so the regular meetings on most</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 12<br />1 evenings of the week and on a Sunday, they last pretty<br />2 much all day. They were very authoritarian,<br />3 manipulative and often, actually, overtly sexual nature<br />4 in front of children discussed, especially Noel. He<br />5 seemed almost obsessed with talking about celibacy,<br />6 homophobic language was used. It was very strange,<br />7 looking back.<br />8 We lived with our parents within a group of lots of<br />9 people, but there was very minimal access or input from<br />10 parents because they were also responsible for the<br />11 welfare and development of others, often young single<br />12 women, and that came very much at the cost of their own<br />13 children's need.<br />14 Then we were encouraged to move away from our<br />15 parents at a young age, so teenagers, to live in another<br />16 community house. So the family ties were not encouraged<br />17 at all. You were expected to go and live and then<br />18 another male would oversee you, and then another male or<br />19 female would be responsible for your welfare, and these<br />20 were called caring brothers or sisters. Those<br />21 relationships very often led to abuse, because there was<br />22 no regulation, nobody checking who these people were.<br />23 Q. If I may just come in there, please, which was just<br />24 a question around the accommodation arrangements. So<br />25 you described how, if I have understood you correctly,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 13<br />1 as younger children, children would be living with their<br />2 parents, but would be separated once they reached the<br />3 age of -- once they became youths, effectively. Could<br />4 you just describe what the sleeping arrangements were<br />5 like, both for families and then also for youths when<br />6 they moved away from their parents?<br />7 A. So if you were living in, obviously, a house with other<br />8 people, as a very young child, you may be sharing a room<br />9 with a sibling in a family unit, but from around the age<br />10 of 12, you would be often sleeping in a room with -- so,<br />11 myself, I had to share a room with four single women,<br />12 adult women, and often -- I remember one or two of these<br />13 regularly changed as somebody off the street would come<br />14 in, and mentally unstable. I remember frequently waking<br />15 up to people shouting in the room, people shouting over<br />16 my bed, and that was as a 12-/13-year-old. So even<br />17 though I was still living in the same house as my<br />18 parents, I was already being moved out of that family<br />19 unit and expected to share a bedroom with adults.<br />20 Q. Ms Hirst, one of the things that you say at paragraph 1<br />21 of your statement is that those who wanted to leave or<br />22 who left the church or who challenged the leadership<br />23 were character assassinated, cursed or shunned.<br />24 A. Yes.<br />25 Q. Could you just give examples for the inquiry of what</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 14<br />1 this would look like in practice?<br />2 A. So people that were wanting to leave would be -- had<br />3 indicated they wanted to leave would be prayed over<br />4 very, very heavily by groups of men, rebuked in public,<br />5 shouted at, screamed at, and then, if they did go on to<br />6 leave, nobody could ever -- we were told we were never<br />7 to contact them, never see them again. I know of people<br />8 that left and then died, some, you know, by accident or<br />9 natural means, but then we would be told that that was<br />10 God's judgment on them that they had died.<br />11 They were spoken ill of, cursed. I remember people<br />12 leaving, and then the room having to face the exit and<br />13 curse that person that had left, and obviously<br />14 witnessing this as a child was highly traumatic and<br />15 brought so much fear, growing up with that fear that, if<br />16 you left, awful things would happen to you.<br />17 Q. You've described there the attitude and the posture<br />18 towards those who left. Just building on that, what was<br />19 the attitude within the church to those who weren't<br />20 members -- in other words, to wider society? How were<br />21 they viewed within the church?<br />22 A. So for those that weren't anything to do with the<br />23 church, do you mean?<br />24 Q. Yes, exactly.<br />25 A. Apart from the children going to school, there was no</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 15<br />1 contact with the outside world; there really wasn't.<br />2 Even the GP was part of the church.<br />3 Apart from the evangelism on the street to try to<br />4 recruit new members, there was just no mixing at all<br />5 with those from outside.<br />6 Q. Was there ever any discussion about outside agencies or<br />7 institutions or the government -- did members have views<br />8 about any of those things?<br />9 A. We were taught to be very suspicious of outside<br />10 organisations, and there was a lot of negativity even<br />11 about going to the doctors, that "God would heal" type<br />12 attitude. If people did question or raise concerns,<br />13 this was seen as a threat to the church. I do remember<br />14 teachers at school, you know, almost asking the<br />15 children, "Are you okay?" You could tell they were<br />16 concerned that things weren't right, but it's almost as<br />17 if they didn't know what to do and there was no way for<br />18 the outside world to approach the church. It was very,<br />19 very insular.<br />20 Q. Ms Hirst, you have described there, and also in your<br />21 statement, something of what life was like within these<br />22 communes. To what extent does that reflect what happens<br />23 within these regional centres today?<br />24 A. I think -- it's very hard for me to answer because these<br />25 were set up much later, after I had left for a fairly</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Page 16<br />1 long time. So I can't answer. I think things have<br />2 changed, and we are very -- but that's come from very<br />3 much us as an association exposing the truth and really<br />4 demanding that things are faced and addressed. I think<br />5 their safeguarding has changed. I know that women now<br />6 have some leadership roles, but I'm unable to answer<br />7 exactly how it looks like on a day-to-day basis.<br />8 Q. It may be that you are not able to assist with this, but<br />9 are you able to tell us anything about how those<br />10 centres, these regional centres, operate today? Do<br />11 members of the church still live at those centres in the<br />12 way that they used to? What sorts of activities take<br />13 place? Are you able to assist with that?<br />14 A. I don't know. I know that they have an outreach, so<br />15 things like food banks, that type of thing, for the<br />16 vulnerable on the streets.<br />17 I don't know. I think the centres are actually --<br />18 rather than accommodation for people to live in,<br />19 I believe they are more centres that people can access<br />20 where they hold their meetings, so almost like halls<br />21 where they hold meetings and run courses for people.</div><p style="text-align: left;">The testimony continues with questions on the more modern setup of the church (now almost entirely defunct), the police investigations and prosecutions.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-56980506271965488462021-09-16T16:18:00.013+01:002022-01-31T19:04:54.250+00:00Christian Guilt and a Christian Perspective on Abortion<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKkbMmygRf_iCUnZV4Y5VBOoKMheRTWkYvPODE9ZgEgWfVen5Q5Voq-ZxNLZtHBzBkzzsbqcmJx-vidTTTX_QDBPY5tYzjcLML1v2cc8YONeAAkVwqembQrqc0K7xT62Gc82JYjXgaWWg/s715/241644850_914402429286948_7415413390636284715_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="615" data-original-width="715" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKkbMmygRf_iCUnZV4Y5VBOoKMheRTWkYvPODE9ZgEgWfVen5Q5Voq-ZxNLZtHBzBkzzsbqcmJx-vidTTTX_QDBPY5tYzjcLML1v2cc8YONeAAkVwqembQrqc0K7xT62Gc82JYjXgaWWg/s320/241644850_914402429286948_7415413390636284715_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>A little piece on Christian guilt. What "It is finished" means, the dying words of the Christ on the cross. Or so it is written. </p><p>I was thinking on Christian guilt and shame, and how the religion that proclaims an end to sin leaves people feeling so bad. Here's what I think "It is finished!" means in practise. How you can live in the reality of it. You'll spot original sin and repentance in here too if you know how to look.</p><p>Of course you don't need to believe in the cross for this to work. What you think you believe is irrelevant. The point is to do it, to live free from guilt.</p><p>All your actions, all your behaviour and what others might call sin, is completely explained by your genetics and environment and personal history. The accident of your birth and the circumstances in which you found yourself, through no fault of your own. All your choices were governed by internal forces you barely understand yourself and that can only possibly be judged unfairly from the outside. In this we are innocent. We were all born fucked up into a fucked up world. It isn't our fault</p><p>And yet, all our actions are also fully and completely explained by the conscious decisions we made. We are fully responsible for our actions and who we are.</p><p>How do we cut this Gordian knot?</p><p>Well we may take the archetype of the Christ crucified. There is a price to pay for evil, a moral price, and yet the price is paid by the blood of the divine. Metaphorically the blood of the divine is the blood of the innocent. So much has been spilled.</p><p>If we accept who we are and what we have done, face it head on and take the consequences whatever they might be, then we are fully innocent. There is no blame for there is a full explanation and a full account.</p><p>Accept who you are. Your nature and your desires are good and not evil. They just need good expression. That is in zero ways based on other people's opinion. They cannot understand you. Every person is a sphinx, a mystery known only to themselves.</p><p>If you're willing to accept and face who you are, and face and accept your own personal history, then you are blameless. Where you have hurt people, who are still responsible for their own feelings, you can be sorry without having to feel bad except by empathy for them. You're not meant to feel bad.</p><p>It's when we reject ourselves, call ourselves bad, repress ourselves, refuse to re-examine the past, fail to face ourselves or the past, run from the shadow of guilt that has been laid on us so that it never departs, then we live under the curse of the law. It is finished means an end to punitive justice. </p><p>Guilt is just not needed. Refuse to be guilty without running from the truth. Reject guilt and shame. Cast them far from you.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqfrV6eVQvb95dnzXG1RCQvnAEvLp1xrF4KGaNwYbBOIG19HxQqnT3F_pq6tu1kqMALB1D-ELC7niEQYxOT1za76A0tm_5tLvQsVzncGT2rqiIJFTKp9zv_H3KFh54N4GEAc43UxEKrg/s432/239868803_3008537676095067_6481689230835273664_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="432" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqfrV6eVQvb95dnzXG1RCQvnAEvLp1xrF4KGaNwYbBOIG19HxQqnT3F_pq6tu1kqMALB1D-ELC7niEQYxOT1za76A0tm_5tLvQsVzncGT2rqiIJFTKp9zv_H3KFh54N4GEAc43UxEKrg/s320/239868803_3008537676095067_6481689230835273664_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>A Christian perspective on abortion.</p><p>In Hebrew thought it is the breath that is sacred and is the life of God in us. New Testament Greek uses the Greek word for breath, pneuma, to mean spirit. Hebrew uses ruach to mean breath and wind and spirit. </p><p>Genesis 2:7 </p><blockquote><p>Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.</p></blockquote><p>John 20:22 </p><blockquote><p>And with that Christ breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit".</p></blockquote><p>This is Ecclesiastes 12:7 (CEV)</p><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote>So our bodies return<br />to the earth,<br />and the life-giving breath<br />returns to God.</blockquote></div><p>Job 33:4</p><blockquote><p>The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.</p></blockquote><p>Ezekiel 37:5-6</p><p></p><blockquote>โThus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.โ</blockquote><p></p><p>Here's an interesting one:</p><p>In Exodus 21:22 it states that if a man causes a woman to have a miscarriage, he shall be fined; however, if the woman dies then he will be put to death. It should be apparent from this that the aborted fetus is not considered a living human being since the resulting punishment for the abortion is nothing more than a fine; it is not classified by the bible as a capital offence.</p><p>But what about Psalm 139:13?</p><p></p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">For you created my inmost being;<br />you knit me together in my motherโs womb.</div></blockquote><p></p><p>Life, personhood, begins with first breath even though God knew us before then.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-57183458181204901532021-09-16T14:08:00.011+01:002021-10-12T15:00:45.664+01:00Tales from the Past: My Ecstasy Honeymoon, Billy Whizz and Simon from the Cult<p>You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikmsVbCLcRcMoDvWymFiHHYik9PYaRZm9yUZAJPexF8PnPTI_2NVQD0ekRQM8NA1rhU8bIEWcwL2J_BRGyA7g9_Sw1NzSv34P_sGQ8ARQot0P33MgdqyQ_XlxvQ_Os9E4IYtb5zIXPQxU/s720/241844065_10158067048935880_4173671592630680812_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="720" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikmsVbCLcRcMoDvWymFiHHYik9PYaRZm9yUZAJPexF8PnPTI_2NVQD0ekRQM8NA1rhU8bIEWcwL2J_BRGyA7g9_Sw1NzSv34P_sGQ8ARQot0P33MgdqyQ_XlxvQ_Os9E4IYtb5zIXPQxU/s320/241844065_10158067048935880_4173671592630680812_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><span data-offset-key="2csuu-0-0" face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-text="true" style="font-family: inherit;">I remember coming home to my parents high as a kite on e. They had no clue and thought I was drunk at worst. They never sussed it. The dilated pupils are the dead give away, but they didn't know that.
Nobody ever had mandy back in the day. It was all e, but they were good. One you were high, half for the smaller girls. Two and you were fucked. Three and you might die. It was the summer of 1992 and Ebeneezer Goode by The Shamen had just been released and I knew all the words.
A great philosopher once wrote
Naughty, naughty, very naughty
Ha ha ha ha ha
There's a guy in the place who's got a bittersweet face
And he goes by the name of Ebeneezer Goode
His friends call him 'Ezeer and he is the main geezer
And he'll vibe up the place like no other man could
He's refined, sublime, he makes you feel fine
Though very much maligned and misunderstood
But if you know 'Ezeer he's a real crowd pleaser
He's ever so good, he's Ebeneezer Goode
And then the chorus which would roar in the clubs:
'Eezer Goode 'Eezer Goode He's Ebeneezer Goode
And strawberry acid always arrived in Cambridge in time for Strawberry Fair.
I had mates, who would later rip me off most terribly by way of telling me they weren't really my friends, one of whose parents ran a car hire firm. So of a Friday night if nothing else was going on Scott would have a car or a van and we'd bomb around the streets of St Albans and Luton and all the countryside in between. All fucked on ecstasy which lasted hours.
Doves were the best I remember, round white pills stamped with an embossed dove of peace. They were second only to Rhubarb and Custards. Red and yellow chunky capsules that could hold more than your typical pill. The China Whites were no good though, supposedly cut with heroin but giving a jittery high with strobe lighting thrown in for free which only lasted three hours or so. Rhubarb and Custard was a much loved childhood cartoon and the rave track made from the theme tune was a hit.
The first time I tried ecstasy it did nothing for me. The second time I understood its name. Agony and ecstasy are found through the pain at the centre of the heart. Anyway, we were on our way somewhere in a car. We stopped at my parents' gaff and I ran upstairs to get something. It had been about half an hour since we'd dropped in Rothamsted park. I rushed back down the stairs and when I stopped, all of a sudden back at the car it hit. I couldn't move for a minute clinging to the top of the car. Pure ecstasy. Waves and rushes of physical ecstasy through all the mind and all the body.
My ecstasy honeymoon, that first summer, lasted months. It's never been the same since, but I dream.
One time we stopped at a petrol station and all got out. Time to stretch and get munchies. Attached to the bumper at the front of the car was part of a tree. None of us had any idea how it had got there.
<br /></span></span></p><p><span data-offset-key="2csuu-0-0" style="background-color: white;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5LHVRMSPbZQmW81C_zZgSXjKW7BnTrvJ9F1gkxIxZIU43pT5gj23f6iZ5IHrAjKrMhfzazlK_R9BqIG1YM1ZHRznc5OrNI5PNmIBqpNXm23tbpg1C3P5Ku6dN0IH9Xs4jpyUttvYletY/s887/241848062_10158067067795880_8392681517406963492_n.jpg" style="font-size: 15px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="887" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5LHVRMSPbZQmW81C_zZgSXjKW7BnTrvJ9F1gkxIxZIU43pT5gj23f6iZ5IHrAjKrMhfzazlK_R9BqIG1YM1ZHRznc5OrNI5PNmIBqpNXm23tbpg1C3P5Ku6dN0IH9Xs4jpyUttvYletY/s320/241848062_10158067067795880_8392681517406963492_n.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Billy Whizz, from the Beano</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span data-offset-key="2csuu-0-0" style="background-color: white;"><span face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span><p></p><p><span data-offset-key="2csuu-0-0" style="background-color: white;"><span face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was no mandy and no ketamine, not that I ever saw. What there was was cheap speed from Luton, wonderfully strong. Whizz or Billy. Sold in wraps for a tenner a gram, or half an ounce for sixty quid if you knew the right Caribbeans. It was mostly harmless though, great for losing weight, but would drive you mad and eat your body if you got yourself addicted.
It was a purely physical buzz, not emotional like mandy. I would feel it first in my legs, right in the pit of my muscles. A buzz of pleasure. A gram would last me an evening. Sat up in Richard's flat in one the few council flats in Harpenden, a rich middle class commuter town North of London. He lived with his mum, who never seemed to be there. He was interested in spirituality, so we would take drugs and talk spirituality and watch movies. I have an abiding love for Arnie films from this time and especially Total Recall.
I'd bomb about a third of a gram wrapped in rizla paper. After about twenty minutes it would start to hit and the tingling would spread through my body and grow in intensity until my mind buzzed too. In the buzz you could abide.
I sat on the sofa with a mirror in my lap and a stanley knife blade and chop, incessantly crushing the crystals to a fine powder. Snorting the smallest of lines would bump my high, nudge it up. As the high from the last line faded I'd do another and within seconds of insufflation I would feel the slight hit and the nudge back up. Straight to the head. The rest of the gram would last me into the hours of the morning when we'd turn to hashish for the come down and decide whether to start drinking or go to bed.
The day after whizzing, the come down, was usually a grey and vague feeling. I quite liked it, it was a familiar feeling. Melancholy like the morning.
</span></span><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhont4cckVj8-9HTTLkd8S2yT-bLD1IY9S9-KwNOw4-dgfDvtvSdwljfr74mgM5YmzrxESU3fJBz_Bic-lR_mavK4DEeZFoq0t6yo6yMwFC5aKNQi-tvlTnxGMaOQwFrWKDiwKFR4Jabpc/s2048/67308586_10156240632305880_6843847450633961472_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhont4cckVj8-9HTTLkd8S2yT-bLD1IY9S9-KwNOw4-dgfDvtvSdwljfr74mgM5YmzrxESU3fJBz_Bic-lR_mavK4DEeZFoq0t6yo6yMwFC5aKNQi-tvlTnxGMaOQwFrWKDiwKFR4Jabpc/s320/67308586_10156240632305880_6843847450633961472_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><span data-text="true"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know a guy from the cult, I worked with him for a few years at the cult builders' merchant where I sold bricks and timber for just shy of a decade. On the heavy side, direct to site, that was my department. The business was run by the church and we who worked there all received the same pay. Many of us lived in community together, sharing all things in common except wives and underwear.
Simon's teeth were mostly missing and blackened from addiction, heroin and alcohol, even then fifteen years ago. I see him homeless around town sometimes and stop for a chat with him. He's not a good man, stole from a friend of mine reckless to the harm the theft would cause.
He settled down for a bit. Got married and had a kid. Nice lass. Rumour is he hit her, but he swears it didn't happen and she called the social on him out of vindictiveness.
Last we talked he told me of his time in the army. Shooting a rifle was the one thing he was really good at. He served in Northern Ireland. Shot people.</span></span></span><div><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><div><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #050505;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXKwsXnKcERfI8xn0Ij2KksUuM1f8iL16QN25xqI1Kx5B-_KRCN4-sefgSAj1VSb8mZ-xdNs0PZlt5dZvKMB9EIPSL9Stmwac8APq0GOGn84sE-w76mleIvdMqw4kNBttEb6E9Ssk6d8/s2048/21458278_10154744335270880_532193666300801418_o.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXKwsXnKcERfI8xn0Ij2KksUuM1f8iL16QN25xqI1Kx5B-_KRCN4-sefgSAj1VSb8mZ-xdNs0PZlt5dZvKMB9EIPSL9Stmwac8APq0GOGn84sE-w76mleIvdMqw4kNBttEb6E9Ssk6d8/s320/21458278_10154744335270880_532193666300801418_o.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /></span><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the cherry goblet in this photo from four years ago are two crystals wands, both bought at the same time from the same purveyor of arcane items. I took both on an Ayahuasca retreat and one, the one I preferred least, broke into two pieces.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had her repaired by the woman who made her. I took them on retreat again a year later and the same one broke and this time a piece was lost although I still have the crystal from it. Starseed lemurian quartz.</span></span></p><p><span data-offset-key="2csuu-0-0" style="background-color: white;"><span data-text="true"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #050505;"></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I figured the wand that remained had meant it the first time and christened her Sister Killer and left it at that.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #050505;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEOE4rdAcOvSLdmOfkTXvZfR3-s0P6Z7a5QcfMbqAIAPFawlqVkiJmz5MqeTIKsdIFyQQuQLLL3APmHxaVN8NoXl3x17tJKjFc4IILlQS4xSiKIwKKIXZFGWp4zajMnuaZOSDlADwh1xc/s1080/236915290_10158027249300880_313569869357084618_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="1080" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEOE4rdAcOvSLdmOfkTXvZfR3-s0P6Z7a5QcfMbqAIAPFawlqVkiJmz5MqeTIKsdIFyQQuQLLL3APmHxaVN8NoXl3x17tJKjFc4IILlQS4xSiKIwKKIXZFGWp4zajMnuaZOSDlADwh1xc/s320/236915290_10158027249300880_313569869357084618_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #050505;"><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A friend shared the Terry Pratchett quote above and it reminded me of my Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman stories.</span></span><span style="color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I met Terry once at a book signing in Cambridge, back in 1995 whilst I was homeless and insane. I'd been trying to email him my ramblings and ravings typed at an internet cafe on mill lane, where they let me use the computers for free when they were unoccupied. Mill lane was the hippy quarter and I'd lived there for a little while previously in a flat above the Bosphorous kebab shop which did the best spicy potatoes in Cambridge. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Terry was signing outside in the open, behind a table on the cobbled lane outside Waterstones' to whom I still owed a debt from student credit for law books. I strode to the front of the queue, and before his henchmen could react I handed him a shiny steel spring which I'd found and was precious to me. I then walked off without a word.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'd ask him if he remembers it. But he's dead.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">My friendship with Gaiman is equally strange. I had a mini fansite for him wiithin my long defunct voidspace website. It included the full text of American Gods I believe, which he was selling as an e-book. I got a very nice email from him personally asking me to take it down. Which I did. Although a subsequent update of my website restored it unfortunately, and the next email was from his lawyer. Although still friendly.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I asked him about it at a talk he gave and he confirmed sending the email. That day before dashing off to the Open Rights Group meeting at which he was talking I saw the headline of a blogpost he'd made about an author friend Mike Ford. In the queue to have him sign my copy of Good Omens, signed by Pratchett too the week previously, I proudly told him that my name was also Mike Ford. Kind of (don't call me Mike). "My dear friend just died" he replied. I was mortified. But hey. He knows my name.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span data-offset-key="2csuu-0-0" style="background-color: white;"><span data-text="true"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">"</span></span></span></span><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">And love comes rising up from the deeps with a cry of vengeance. The wells have opened and the fountain springs. Blood for blood is the cry, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Justice triumphs over mercy. We come for the unforgiven."</span></span></span></i></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-34502479212711423002021-06-07T17:10:00.003+01:002021-06-11T00:41:17.415+01:00Mindfulness of Breathing:A Meditation on the Breath<h2 style="text-align: left;">Mindfulness of Breathing:A Meditation on The Breath</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmLOzi2KAlFchr9r_22sMmo3ApfyHKK2y3UdiecBxCM1WoC4KZ-yYDPv3In0P0qC09-2XBmtIwmaCxATnz_EIv9KUmKfqgxJmDy3oIocyWYTuppyAYDyInAZiC2T_FgXydbcA9x1LDos/s1024/The+Meditation+Yurt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmLOzi2KAlFchr9r_22sMmo3ApfyHKK2y3UdiecBxCM1WoC4KZ-yYDPv3In0P0qC09-2XBmtIwmaCxATnz_EIv9KUmKfqgxJmDy3oIocyWYTuppyAYDyInAZiC2T_FgXydbcA9x1LDos/s320/The+Meditation+Yurt.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>We all like the illusion that we're in control of our own minds. To have to admit otherwise would seem a great failure. The truth however is quite different from what we might tell ourselves. Pause for a moment and observe your mind. How long is it before the internal dialogue starts up, and your mind starts chattering ? It's easy to not realise that this is the way we spend most of our time.</p><p>This mental chatter is a state of distractedness. The mind drifts along on the winds of it's whims. It makes it hard to concentrate on one thing for any length of time. It also masks what really goes on in the depths of our mind and soul. Meditation is a practice that can reveal the extent of the problem, and offers a solution.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Mind Your Mind</h3><p>Do you recognize the feeling of being totally absorbed in something ? You're so wrapped up in it that you are barely aware of your surroundings, and time seems to stand still. You can look up from your book, or your painting, or your programming (or whatever) and realise that several hours have passed without you even noticing it.</p><p>This is one of the most effective states of mind to be in. When you focus on one thing, you can completely push distractions out of the way. Your mind comes alive and you can be at your most creative.</p><p>A state of unfocused distraction prevents your mind from functioning properly. Most of what happens in the soul goes on below the level of the conscious mind. The soul turns over and over the things that worry it, and that we are only dimly aware of. Naturally we block these things and push them back as they rise up. This leads to nervous tension and the constant worry that things aren't as they should be. As we focus and let go of the things in our mind, it is able to work freely - and naturally bring things to a resolution.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Meditation</h3><p>The sort of meditation I'm talking about is a breathing exercise called Mindfulness of Breathing. It is practising and developing a focussed awareness. It can bring about a real peace and a stilling of the mind. It also gives you an opportunity to experience the working of your mind - particularly what goes on beneath the surface.</p><p>I learned the techniques described here with the FWBO, but they are independent of religious beliefs. It is a breathing and concentration exercise which develops mental strength and the ability to focus and concentrate. Creating a single point of concentration frees up mental processes and will feed into every aspect of your normal life [1].</p><p>Anyway enough of the preliminaries and onto what this meditation actually is.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Mindfulness of Breathing</h3><p>The point of this meditation is to be aware (mindful) of your breath - the air coming into the body. This is neither as easy, nor as dull, as it sounds.</p><p>Meditation can be incredibly relaxing - but it's not about relaxation. Nor is it about emptying your mind as some people fear. By meditating effectively on anything you cultivate a keen alertness, a sharp and healthy mind. This meditation is about the breath.</p><p>Mindulness is not a forced concentration - but holding an awareness of something in your mind. You will be able to apply this kind of awareness to other things - like ideas - to great effect.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Place</h3><p>The first thing to address is the place you will do it, and your physical position. The meditation can take 20 minutes or 40 minutes - so you need to find somewhere where you will be comfortable and undisturbed for this time [2].</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Posture</h3><p>Your posture doesn't matter too much - any position in which you can remain comfortable. Many meditation manuals recommend kneeling, with a big cushion under your bum and your hands folded. They usually warn against lying down, because meditating can easily send you to sleep [3].</p><p>You might want a clock easily visible from your position, so you can tell how long you've been with minimum of disruption.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Relax</h3><p>Before starting I usually do a relaxation exercise. This helps me to focus and clears my mind.</p><p>Having settled on a comfortable position let your awareness move from the bottom of your body upwards.</p><p>Start by being aware of the soles of your feet and your toes. If you can, try and feel each toe individually. Next move your awareness to the whole of your feet and your ankles.</p><p>Travel slowly up through your body, dwelling for a few seconds on each part. As you do this try to consciously relax your body, letting tension drain away.</p><p>Move up from your calves to the back of your legs, thighs and up. As you get to your stomach, back, and then shoulders you can move to the arms. When you've gone through the elbows down to your fingers you can move to the neck, face, and head.</p><p>This whole process shouldn't take more than a few minutes and can be amazingly calming.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Technique</h3><p>The actual meditation is divided into four phases. You should decide at the start whether you will do a twenty minute meditation (five minutes per phase) or a forty minute meditation (ten minutes per phase).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Phase 1</h3><p>This is a meditation on the breath. It is not a meditation on the process of breathing, or the feeling of the body moving - but on the breath itself.</p><p>This is easiest done by breathing through the nose and feeling the breath as it enters or leaves the body.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the first phase we count after the breath. Count (silently in the mind) in the pause between breaths, from one to ten. Breath then count, breath then count. When you get to ten, start again at one.</p><p>I find in a five minute phase,mon average I count to ten five times.</p><p>The counting helps centre the mind. It makes it easier to maintain concentration on the breathing.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Phase 2</h3><p>When you guesstimate that the phase is over, move onto the next phase. Checking a clock will disrupt your meditation slightly. The first few times you do it - five minutes will feel like an awfully long time. When you are able to let go of distractions and get drawn into concentration - you'll wonder where the time went.</p><p>In phase two, you change to counting before the breath. Count then breath, count then breath.</p><p>This change helps break the rut and refocuses the mind.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Phase 3</h3><p>In phase 3 you stop counting altogether.</p><p>This frees you up more to focus on the breath. Just the breath, the air, all your awareness in the breath.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Phase 4</h3><p>In this final phase you focus on the breath at the point where it actually enters the body. This will usually be inside the nose.</p><p>This phase is quite a bit harder than the other phases. It can be one of the most effective though, because it draws your attention into a single point.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Battle With the Body</h3><p>So that's it ? Well, that's the mechanics of it yes. It sounds easy enough, but actually doing it is another matter.</p><p>When you start meditating - each time, but particularly the first few times - you will start to fight the battle with distraction. The first battleground is the body.</p><p>Your body will take great measures to prevent you relaxing. You will feel uncomfortable, and have itches and aches. Try not to give into them [5] and move or scratch. They will fade if you are able to ignore them.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Battle With the Mind</h3><p>Having basically won the battle with the body, the struggle shifts to a far more difficult one - the battle with the mind.</p><p>When you start to meditate you will realise how distracted your mind is. After a minute your mind will drift off and start thinking about something else - the internal mental chatter will start again.</p><p>The first thing to say is - donโt worry, this is entirely normal. We're all like this, we all start from the same place, and it does get easier.</p><p>When I started to meditate it seemed like I spent very little time focused on what I was supposed to be doing. I would breathe for a few seconds, the next thing I would realise that I'd been thinking about something else.</p><p>Every thought and worry in your mind will rise up as you meditate. Don't feel frustrated or discouraged by this. Just let the distraction go and return to the meditation.</p><p>It was about my third or fourth meditation when I felt like it was getting noticeably easier to let the distractions go, and the periods between them were getting longer. Don't be surprised if the first few are like this - it's worth persevering and pushing through.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Note</h3><p>Don't worry if you lose count in the earlier phases (or even count beyond ten). Just start again - or from the last number you can remember.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Levels of Concentration</h3><p>The FWBO categorised concentration in three basic levels. I think this is useful.</p><p>The first is the basic state of the mind before meditation. This is distraction or "monkey mind", jumping from one thing to the next.</p><p>Once you have started to meditate, and started to concentrate, you have entered access concentration.</p><p>This stage is a whole spectrum really, rather than a distinct level.</p><p>In the early stages you are still getting distractions and thoughts every few seconds. As soon as you realise you're distracted you let it go.</p><p>As you concentrate further you will notice the distractions come less often and you notice them quicker. This is still access concentration.</p><p>The next level is a distinct level. The FWBO called it dhyana. If you read this article on gnosticism you'll see an alternative spelling jhana.</p><p>There comes a certain degree of focus when you are able to brush off distractions easily. Thoughts may rise like smoke - but they have no hold on you and are soon blown away. It is like you have swatted the buzzing distractions far enough away that they don't return.</p><p>In this frame of mind the meditation becomes effortless. You are delightfully aware of the cool wind of the breath - and feel totally alert but totally relaxed. I've heard it described as 'stepping back into the garden of the mind' - and it's not a bad description.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h3><p>You will get the best from meditation when you do it regularly. If you fight through the difficulties you will gain a sharper mind and a greater ability to concentrate. More importantly you will appreciate peace of mind - a mind uncluttered by needless empty thoughts.</p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Buddhist saying - all thought is bad karma.</span></i></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Footnotes</b></p><p>[1] Note that concentration is not the only mental skill worth developing. For a balanced spiritual life you need to develop your ability to love.</p><p>[2] Next, turn off your mobile phone.</p><p>[3] This is advice I often ignore.</p><p>[4] Unless you are actually in pain of course.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Written in 2006 and originally hosted on <a href="http://www.voidspace.org.uk/spiritual/mindfulness.shtml">voidspace.org.uk</a></i></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-767383876483237302021-04-14T18:05:00.006+01:002022-05-12T13:14:38.285+01:00Some Personal History with Python<p>You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIkGV7OelC3gSGq0Rr1y_zvBll8PJlwaHKtBP1InbjqvgTuACK7UHXBO3mjiKgq6NhnWN3OwGtMGZEnk_U86CxHckjjmxKMB4YCLLaBQr9DbHHlNdlGCQuEo5FzYyCVNJ32Py1EMCYyzk/s607/tumblr_lyiqu5VFK71qz6f4bo2_500.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="607" data-original-width="455" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIkGV7OelC3gSGq0Rr1y_zvBll8PJlwaHKtBP1InbjqvgTuACK7UHXBO3mjiKgq6NhnWN3OwGtMGZEnk_U86CxHckjjmxKMB4YCLLaBQr9DbHHlNdlGCQuEo5FzYyCVNJ32Py1EMCYyzk/s320/tumblr_lyiqu5VFK71qz6f4bo2_500.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>IronPython in Action was published on the 7th April 2009 and we sold a little over 7000 copies. </p><p>Royalties for last quarter amounted to $25.</p><p>It took me two years to write thirteen chapters and a couple of appendices, and took Christian Muirhead about the same to write two chapters and an appendix. Jonathan Hartley did the diagrams and illustrations and the worst part was compiling the index.</p><p>It took so long because IronPython was still in alpha (!) when we started and it changed several times (including a Silverlight version being released) whilst writing!</p><p>After leaving Resolver Systems in 2010 I spent a year contracting on Line of Business apps that ran in Silverlight (Django on the server): Python code running in the browser on the client side. It was glorious.</p><p>We even had functional tests on unittest built in to the app.</p><p>Work on mock accelerated massively once IronPython in Action was complete. MagickMock was born not long afterwards.</p><p>I was also helping maintain the python.org website and adding test discovery to unittest at the time, and speaking at every conference I could find.</p><p>It felt like the glory days of the Python community. It's almost time for PyCon (online) and I'm nostalgic once again. </p><p>My first PyCon, the second Dallas PyCon and my first time in the US, there were about 600 attendees. You could almost know everyone.</p><p>I shaved my beard to enter Dallas and wore my hair in a pony tail. All I knew was they didn't like hippies there. It was the nicest greeting at a US airport I've ever had.</p><p>I went on a road trip with Andrzej Krzywda afterwards trying to find mountains. We found the Ouchita mountains in Oaklahoma and drove back through Arkansas to visit friends of mine in Houston. Along the peaks of the mountains, which are hills really, we found a view called Dead Man's Vista and we I laughed together at Microsoft.</p><p>Not long after this the web explosion happened and Django happened, google adopted Python as an official language and the community started to explode and grow.</p><p>That was even before Python became huge as a teaching language and before Python exploded in data science too.</p><p>I once paired with Jacob Kaplan Moss at a PyCon sprint and fixed some issue by adding a metaclass to the Django codebase. Which he never committed and found a better way.</p><p>That's the closest I've come to deploying a metaclass I think, although I've removed a few in my time.</p><p>I knew Python had "made it" as a language when one bag stuffing pre-PyCon I met someone who didn't want to be there. He'd been sent by work. Before that Python was obscure, and only people who really loved it went to PyCon. Which I'm convinced is the secret of Python's success. </p><p>It was built by passion not by money. For the sheer love and the joy of building something beautiful with other people.</p><p>I was a Mac user then and had a running joke with Jonathan Hartley about Linux and projectors. </p><p>One time he plugged his laptop into the projector prior to his PyCon talk (Testing is a Silver Bullet), tried to fix the x-config from the terminal and rendered his laptop unusable. He did the presentation on mine. The next year Mark Shuttleworth did a keynote talk at PyCon and running some bleeding edge version of Ubuntu also couldn't plug it into the projector system. Hilarity on my part.</p><p>The biggest conference I ever spoke at was a Microsoft one in Brighton where they demoed Silverlight and I demoed IronPython on Silverlight. They didn't tell me I would be on main stage in front of a few thousand Microsoft devs. I was used to talking to a few hundred at a time!</p><p>I had a slide deck built from S5 with reStructured Text markup and a Far Side slide mocking static typing. Which went down a bomb to an audience of C# devs. I still managed, by coincidence, to demo almost the same features of Silverlight as Microsoft bigwig Scott Hanselman who did the keynote.</p><p>It was an "interesting experience", evangelising Python and dynamic languages in "the heart of the beast" as it were. Microsoft went on to step up their involvement with Python and sincere Open Source commitments which they've maintained since.</p><p>Since I first wrote this Python has finally made it, ranked as the most widely used programming language in the world by TIOBE and PyPL. World number one.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEil2tWike9fHzSiSTSDgO1npx25rwm-s21aXmewPNkOFsjnog0GMxLHPa9i1IaR5rt6nFRix8jIQFo2lXeeE0SAt9zAvvrIyopOCYxsJG56KT8Nm4FOdCztpJ5CHoCXEwdRIp6ke7btFwyvZtM8V4NdxH6w8nY08iRduhCwROsH8pJmj1b72hRH5qCm" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="840" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEil2tWike9fHzSiSTSDgO1npx25rwm-s21aXmewPNkOFsjnog0GMxLHPa9i1IaR5rt6nFRix8jIQFo2lXeeE0SAt9zAvvrIyopOCYxsJG56KT8Nm4FOdCztpJ5CHoCXEwdRIp6ke7btFwyvZtM8V4NdxH6w8nY08iRduhCwROsH8pJmj1b72hRH5qCm" width="296" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I joined Twitter fourteen years ago and have tweeted over fifty-two thousand times. I follow 1,636 accounts, which is too many, and have 8,670 followers. I use Tweetdeck which is run by Twitter and doesn't show ads or promoted tweets or mess with tweet order and it lets me use two different accounts.</p><p>I use twitter a lot less than I did during my social media and community frenzy whilst I delighted to learn Python, but I still enjoy it.</p><p>During that time (2006-2011) I "drank from the firehose". I read all of slashdot (scanned every headline and read relevant articles), read all of comp.lang.python (every message title - read and replied to many), read all of python-dev (similarly) and all of testing-in-python, blogged almost daily and worked full time as a software engineer commuting to London four times a week and developed mock in my spare time and worked on unittest in the Python standard library. And wrote a book and worked part time doing community liaison and service development for a local charity working with the homeless and disadvantaged. I was Microsoft MVP for three years for my work with IronPython, I spoke at countless conferences and received the Python Software Foundation Community Award for my work running Planet Python and helping out with the Python.org website and mailing infrastructure.</p><p>Then in 2011 my first child was born and I started working for Canonical. Three years of large Django web applications then three years of Go and MongoDB and then a year with Red Hat testing Ansible Tower and now four years self employed.</p><p>During that time I remembered that the primary drive in my life was spiritual and I started meditating again. One hour a day of mindfulness of breathing. That transformed my life all over again.</p><p><br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p>I once rode in the back of a beaten up station wagon owned and operated by the creator of the Python programming language whilst sat alongside the creator of Bitorrent, which was written in Python. </p><p>I also once had a pub lunch in Oxford with the creator of the Erlang programming language and the creator of the Haskell programming language. We were all three speaking at the ACCU conference. I was speaking on IronPython.</p><p>It's been a fun journey.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-58653985434802426332021-01-14T16:17:00.008+00:002021-10-12T15:02:51.549+01:00The Evil Priestess and the Temple to Isis in Battersea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixVBKDa99mofiN6uXJsfwyWg6zTfoBsUpfbD-h1iDtF2rmgCe9pLk3TKrvdI9RmHWmrc002DLiCCfqVKNglPVOYswzKqrYIfMA7bhw1vhLLuFV_UmI956frFQ2rOnSxkOGo8Vb6n_8VCg/s1600/618UYBQKsBL._SX466_.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="466" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixVBKDa99mofiN6uXJsfwyWg6zTfoBsUpfbD-h1iDtF2rmgCe9pLk3TKrvdI9RmHWmrc002DLiCCfqVKNglPVOYswzKqrYIfMA7bhw1vhLLuFV_UmI956frFQ2rOnSxkOGo8Vb6n_8VCg/s320/618UYBQKsBL._SX466_.jpg" width="303" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>To some the name Isis is a terror. To me she is divine<br />beauty wrapped in an Egyptian robe</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">This is the true story of the time I rescued the slave husband of a celebrity high priestess of a temple to the Goddess Isis in Battersea.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">After the first Ayahuasca retreat I joined the secret Facebook group for "the tribe". Making occasional posts was a third rate ex-celebrity. One of the names she went by was Mary. She also calls herself Mother Gaia, which I consider a blasphemy, and she doesn't believe in global warming. She would regularly post in the group and I would mock and berate her. I warned people she was as spiritual as a twig, that she was deceived and would deceive people for personal gain and so on.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Before the second retreat I let the tribe know that I was coming. On the retreat was a slender Romanian gentleman, his first time at the retreat but not his first psychedelic adventure. Far from it as it would turn out. His tolerance was so high he took twice the dose of anyone else. We shared a passion for fragrances, and my wife is Romanian, so we bonded and got on really well. Apparently he worked, at least some of the time, at a temple that he and his wife ran.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">We made friends. After the retreat he changed his profile to show that Mary was his wife. She'd sent him to suss me out and we'd made friends. He posted me a selection of perfume samples as a gift. Chatting on Facebook it became obvious that he really wasn't happy. He was basically trapped by Mary with very little money of his own and he had nowhere else to go. He no longer thinks they're in love, the bubble has burst. She's a dangerous narcissist and he's a dreamer, the only wonder is it lasted so long.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">I was in London staying over with a friend for a Bufo Alvarius ceremony, Bufo Alvarius is an incredibly intense psychedelic, it only lasts about 15 minutes and it's very expensive. I took the opportunity to book a sound and light treatment with my Romanian friend.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">So I visited their clinic in Battersea. Well, really Mary's clinic. It's in Battersea and about for storeys high, which means it's worth an absolute fortune. It's was a shrewd settlement from her last marriage. She may be an unpleasant narcissist but she's not dumb. So I put together some perfumes to give to Vlad and book an appointment. Which means Mary knows I'm coming to visit.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">I arrive at the very posh London clinic and Mary is at the front desk, wearing all white. I tell Mary her my name and that I have an appointment. We make pleasant small talk and she's nice to me. She tells me that she is a recently awakened Egyptian shaman. This is nuts, but it's not actually blasphemous so I let it pass. I tell her I love the Egyptian gods and that Isis is my idealised form of the goddess. Mary asks if I would like to see her temple, so I agree. It's a temple to the Goddess Isis and actually pretty impressive. Mary takes me upstairs and Florin gives me the light and sound treatment. It's really relaxing but totally not worth the money they charge.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">As well as giving the treatments Mary had Florin acting as the priest in her temple. They buy Changa (a smokeable psychedelic, the active ingredient is DMT, super intense but short lived) and charge rich women from Battersea about ยฃ100 for a mystical experience "journeying" in the temple whilst Maria tells them she is mother Gaia. Very disturbing!</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Florin wants out and the long story short is that I found him a place to stay with my friend In London (Nina, the one I was staying with) and he escaped. He's now back in Romania. Mary was furious and smeared him in the press for stealing from him.</div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" trbidi="on">So that's how I rescued the slave husband of an evil priestess to the Goddess Isis from a temple in Battersea...</div></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-20524551336216133372020-11-20T10:10:00.008+00:002021-09-29T18:04:00.007+01:00Politics and Voting Systems<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4IJ5hXEWAIyR9y-YL-Uo5HXrRsX1QvVoKZFgWVwo22fU7d0L_yudnt88lSGN2mTSLPuY1cAh7tsy95gLYz3WPDI0798GTf0ZDcegypxkvcyNXyOdp_127w3Vns1svuMr9-rHYm0SSmE/s960/117123121_3179263242162377_6553796768071557573_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4IJ5hXEWAIyR9y-YL-Uo5HXrRsX1QvVoKZFgWVwo22fU7d0L_yudnt88lSGN2mTSLPuY1cAh7tsy95gLYz3WPDI0798GTf0ZDcegypxkvcyNXyOdp_127w3Vns1svuMr9-rHYm0SSmE/s320/117123121_3179263242162377_6553796768071557573_n.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I believe in democracy and I believe in Democratic Socialism. I believe in Communalism. It's like Socialism but you don't wait for the government to do it for you. I disavow all anti-democratic ideologies, like Communism. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2019/11/socialism.html">Socialism</a></li></ul></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Politics</h3><p></p><p>Politics is a religion with really shitty gods, but at least you know those gods probably exist. </p><p>There's nothing about politics that is an honest for truth and I'm inclined to say the same about Christianity. They both make virtues of confirmation bias and believing what you're supposed to believe instead of actually wanting the truth.</p><p>Any faith in those mythological caricatures of humans painted by the world media circus, the flotsam and jetsam of our political systems, would be utterly misplaced.</p><p>I'm outraged, livid and incandescent, that the way we do politics in the UK (and a lot of the world but our first past the post system creates a two party system which creates a system where the main goal is to attack the enemy rather than any integrity or commitment to truth) ensures that there is zero way of telling on any topic we hear about how much of it is true, how much is manufactured outrage, what should specifically have happened, what even has happened, how those decision were really made. Every thing you read is from a political perspective and trying to sell you a story, people care more about whether the news is on their side than about the truth.</p><p>I despise politics and politicians. Those who, for money and power, will compromise instead of doing the right thing. Politics is all about being compromised. And they're the ones who could change things and choose not to, because of "political reality".</p><p>For me it's getting to the heart of the matter that brings me peace. Knowing what exactly I'm angry with. It's not just anger at injustice and compromise and corruption, it's confusion caused by deception. That so few people care about truth, that agendas are more important, and the lies that causes. That makes me angry and makes me hate. I hate politics and politicians. I'm not afraid to hate these days.</p><p>Be angry with all sides that this is the case. All politicians are complicit in the corruption and compromise of the system. And all who espouse politics and feed off it and identify with it and put their aspirations and dreams into it are also complicit in it and sullied by it. The great polluter of minds and corrupter of hearts, political power. The idea that telling people what to do is a good idea is another great evil shared between politics and Christianity.</p><p>And in fact, I'm more and more convinced that this authoritarianism is not just a great evil but is the great evil. <a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/01/the-senior-apostolic-leader-of-cult.html">The Jesus Army</a> was a living demonstration of how authoritarianism perverts and devours beauty. Authoritarianism (*) always has a place for those who willing to be aggressive, authoritarianism is the pecking order. So any authoritarian structure will <i>always</i> be corrupted and perverted by ugly people getting power and wanting to keep power, alongside the once good people compromised by that same system because the only way to keep power is to be compromised by it.</p><p>In her seminal work "The Origins of Totalitarianism" Hannah Arendt identified the conditions needed for totalitarianism to arise. The othering of a section of the population, scapegoating, was one of the things she identified. In her day it was the Jews, today how we as a society treat refugees and Muslims springs easily to mind. The antidote she suggested was a politically engaged populace, where politically engaged meant involved in the community and involved with people. This is against politics and the politicians and the established power structures not being hoodwinked by a shallow opposition to the things we hate into supporting politicians. </p><p>Care about issues and care about people and care about the environment and all these things. And despise politics and politicians with a fierce and burning passion.</p><p>(*) Authoritarianism is the philosophy that authority, backed by force, should be obeyed and respected just because it is authority. Authoritarianism allows evil to hide in the dark.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3Tz-N29wW7EON4v8Pf3-VP7osCwU7140pFMrpko0_tAKe9bZ-9n17LBGlceBbY5VyDwovN8-d1VGjcCZPdYNVTjTatkDSXP2IUB7JDRJEAmx2asY3vOAaQnbkSQ6Xb2wDzO3H7uEmGk/s720/243574933_10158089145105880_4479184803498941716_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="720" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3Tz-N29wW7EON4v8Pf3-VP7osCwU7140pFMrpko0_tAKe9bZ-9n17LBGlceBbY5VyDwovN8-d1VGjcCZPdYNVTjTatkDSXP2IUB7JDRJEAmx2asY3vOAaQnbkSQ6Xb2wDzO3H7uEmGk/s320/243574933_10158089145105880_4479184803498941716_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"></h3><div><div>The Python Software Foundation uses Approval voting. This infographic is about STAR voting, which is massively more complex than Approval (because Approval is super simple), but STAR is better at representing voters intention which is a whole branch of science.</div><div><br /></div><div>These alternative voting systems encourage honest voting and help ward off the horrors of reactionary binary politics (two parties focused on opposition to one another and never cooperation) created by first past the post - the "pick one" default voting system.</div><div><br /></div><div>Democratic Socialism, Proportional Representation and Radical Inclusion.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5H1EcJXVY3qDGGZ1b_Y-8L9gCXTzfu46WWJCa85f3_SrIQlm2y73IKfa-Hb5CDYaXFyWq9tYnK8aUmQf4aQdG2uAxP487ZvAEzO4ORBQ1UXNDJXLP4-lGNxR88tXov38z26XjH9TW_X8/s640/125488206_2800843333572556_7330664583188269053_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5H1EcJXVY3qDGGZ1b_Y-8L9gCXTzfu46WWJCa85f3_SrIQlm2y73IKfa-Hb5CDYaXFyWq9tYnK8aUmQf4aQdG2uAxP487ZvAEzO4ORBQ1UXNDJXLP4-lGNxR88tXov38z26XjH9TW_X8/s320/125488206_2800843333572556_7330664583188269053_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Voting Systems</h3><div><div>Ranked choice voting reinforces a two party system. Votes for a third party become votes for the main parties as they are discarded. Approval voting is better, and is used by the Python Software Foundation so it <i>must</i> be fantastic.</div><div><br /></div><div>First past the post as a voting system creates a two party system, it incentives reactionary opposition over collaboration. It brings out and amplifies the worst aspects of human nature. Which of course is what politics and advertising have in common, being the science of the worst aspects of human nature; how can we manipulate people for our own profit. A pox and a fie on all their houses, along with the religious. First past the post is not much democracy at all. There are many systems of Proportional Representation and the popular Ranked Choice is not one of the best:</div></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://electionscience.org/voting-methods/runoff-election-the-limits-of-ranked-choice-voting/">The Limits of Ranked Choice Voting</a></li></ul><div><div>Some commentary by Tim Peters, the creator of the Timsort sorting algorithm used by Python and an expert on voting systems, who recommends Approval Voting which is used by the Python Software Foundation as the simplest and easiest to understand:</div><div><br /></div><div>For single-winner elections, the most informed research is summarized on pages reachable from here:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic/">Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE) Summary</a><br /></li></ul></div><div>Plurality (the most used method) is bottom of the barrel. IRV ("Hare", confusingly named "ranked choice" in much of the US) is a step up, but still low. "Approval" is much simpler and better than that. Approval is what the PSF uses.</div><div><br /></div><div>Beyond those are "cardinal" systems, which allow some measure of expressing _intensity_ of preference among multiple candidates. For example, give each candidate a score of 1 through 10, and the candidate with highest total score wins. They generally do better than approval, but are somewhat harder to explain.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the referenced page, the two highest-scoring systems shown (3-2-1 and STAR) are hybrids, mixing aspects of cardinal and ordinal voting schemes. They try to counteract the worst aspects of cardinal and ordinal schemes by mixing in the best aspects of the other kind. But by mixing paradigms, they're also that much harder to explain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hardest of all to explain are, of course, the "Condorcet" methods often favored by computer geeks. Group voting preferences may not be transitive (it's quite possible for a group to favor A over B one-on-one, and B over C, but also C over A), so geeks think it's great fun to invent Byzantine rules purporting to "fairly" break such preference cycles when they occur. And some of these schemes do very well indeed in large-scale voting simulations - but you need a solid grounding in graph theory to explain how cycles are broken.</div><div><br /></div><div>One virtue of cardinal schemes is that cycles can't occur. Voters don't have to understand anything beyond addition by 1, and integer comparison, to understand everything about how approval voting works.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ranked Choice" voting is - in reality - a way for a 2-party system to more easily cement its stranglehold. It gives an illusion of choice (your 1st-place vote for a 3rd-party loser will be thrown out early, and eventually magically "transfer" to the major-party candidate you ranked higher).</div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed, it was invented in Australia a century ago precisely to stop 3rd parties from "spoiling" elections for a major party at the time. At which it succeeded spectacularly.</div><div><br /></div><div>BTW, far as I know, 3-2-1 has never been used in the real world. But in simulations it's the most resistant of all schemes to "strategic" voting (lying about your true beliefs to try to game the outcome - which is almost the _norm_ under plurality voting! whenever someone votes for "the lesser of two evil" major-party candidates instead of the 3rd-party candidate they really want, they're "lying" in this sense).</div><div><br /></div><div>3-2-1 is devilishly clever. A voter gives each candidate one of three scores: good, meh, or bad. Or think of it as geekish +1, 0, -1. Then every ballot participates in each of 3 stages:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>"Keep the most loved". The 3 candidates with the highest number of +1 votes are retained. Everyone else is thrown out.</li><li>"Toss the most hated". Of the 3 candidates remaining, throw out the one with the highest number of -1 votes.</li><li>"Pick the more preferred". Of the 2 candidates remaining, the winner is the one that ranked higher on more ballots. Toward that end, it counts exactly the same if, e.g., a candidate wins +1 to -1 on a ballot, or +1 to 0, or 0 to -1. This stage is purely ordinal (the specific scores don't matter).</li></ol></div><div>The last stage in STAR is also a purely ordinal pick between 2 surviving candidates. But because 3-2-1 and STAR don't apply ordinal schemes until only 2 candidates remain, ordinal transitivity paradoxes can't arise, so a doctorate in graph theory isn't required to resolve them ๐</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"I'd rather have a fox and a pie than a pox and a fie."</span></i></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-49094257594429354602020-07-03T10:50:00.002+01:002020-09-12T23:12:40.744+01:00In Praise of Kurzgesagt: String Theory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Da-2h2B4faU" width="320" youtube-src-id="Da-2h2B4faU"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>Quantum mechanics, as I'm sure you know, is the deepest and lowest level exploration of reality that science has any understanding of. It leaves beautiful space for the spiritual. Things exist and don't exist (wave particle duality and uncertainty) and can teleport (quantum teleportation), information can travel faster than the speed of light (quantum entanglement), and everything exists as probability waves (also wave particle duality and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), and all of empty space is a seething morass of virtual particles that fleet in and out of existence in a dance choreographed by pure chaos (Kasimir effect and Hawking radiation). It seems that none of it exists at all without an observer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reality is weird and beautiful and improbable and science explores and affirms this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Understanding scientific theories as different abstract models of reality is helpful, especially if you know the classic model of physics (Newton) and the relativistic model (Einstein). Similarly the particle physics model of the world and the quantum model.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is no electron, it's a metaphor. That it is a point charge is a fiction of the particle physics model of the world which makes certain kinds of math easy. The quantum view of the same particle sees it as a fuzzy cloud with different probabilities at each point.</div><div><br /></div><div>The quantum model is incompatible with the relativistic model so we know there are missing pieces. We can't make gravity work with quantum mechanics and we're still looking for a grand unified theory of everything which is what we hoped string theory would be.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the best places I know for getting reliable information about state of the art science, in an approachable way which will still leave your mind thoroughly blown, is the Kurzgesagt video series. If you're interested in particle physics, black holes, aliens or philosophy it's well worth browsing their videos. They're where I first learned about <a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/07/short-meditations-acab-positive.html">Positive Nihilism</a> from, which is my fallback philosophy and from which I believe you can still derive a living spirituality as the rational conclusion.</div><div><br /></div><div>This video is on string theory, which we hoped would provide a theory of everything but didn't. It starts with a quick primer on particle physics as a good background. If you're interested in aliens have a look at their videos on the Fermi paradox. Their videos on CRISP-R DNA replication are really good, but the black hole ones are the best.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fundamental reality is chaos and uncertainty and I love her with all my heart.</div><div><br /></div><div>We rejoice in the uncertainty for the uncertainty is what makes the best possible.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da-2h2B4faU">Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell: String Theory</a><br /></li></ul><div><br /></div></div><div><i><font size="2">"Most authority systems are thinly veiled pecking orders. Pecking orders, and disapproval and exclusion, are how the patriarchy and social conventions are enforced socially. Authoritarianism in the micro."</font></i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-90591888069068643882020-07-02T09:22:00.008+01:002021-11-30T22:20:37.013+00:00Wage Theft and Defund the Police<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHgdZoZj7ILfp1Py1iQ58kZF_vt6-JGKYsY5gTc1OhO9pfXFq6d1LmPJxgKlZTwLCyYRM87iQeYcXIV-IqeQ_sNuN8K2GFZ7domGKG75XpncqgpxPV0_MZ7nYH0pv3Qcol06stfanxUJI/s720/FB_IMG_1592809613951.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHgdZoZj7ILfp1Py1iQ58kZF_vt6-JGKYsY5gTc1OhO9pfXFq6d1LmPJxgKlZTwLCyYRM87iQeYcXIV-IqeQ_sNuN8K2GFZ7domGKG75XpncqgpxPV0_MZ7nYH0pv3Qcol06stfanxUJI/s320/FB_IMG_1592809613951.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The British Are Coming</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>In the UK wage theft cost workers and the economy about ยฃ2.7 billion a year [1]. Wage theft is where employers steal money from their employees by not paying them for all hours worked or not giving holiday required by law. Those who suffer most are typically amongst the poorest and this is money that would have gone directly back into the economy, as well as feeding hungry children and reducing the burden on benefits. Those affected, if they even know, have recourse to an employment tribunal but it's not something the police are interested in.</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, shoplifting in the UK (2016-2017 figures) costs British retailers about ยฃ500 million a year [2]. Shoplifting is substantially done by drug addicts which is totally unnecessary and caused by the inhumane and immoral way we treat drug users, who are also substantially comprised of the traumatised and the socially marginalised and disadvantaged.</div><div><br /></div><div>So wage theft, in terms of disruption to the UK economy, is a massively more serious problem than shoplifting. Shoplifting is done by the poor, wage theft is committed against the poor. Which do we criminalise and set people trained in violence, the police, to deal with?</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile benefit fraud is estimated to cost the UK about ยฃ1.3 billion a year. Tax evasion is estimated to cost the UK around ยฃ34 billion a year [3]. How many more police are working on catching benefit fraud than tax evasion, which crime do we criminalise and pursue most vigorously.</div><div><br /></div><div>A recent report into stop and search use in Northamptonshire found that if you were black you were five and a half times more likely to be stopped and searched by police [4] than if you were white. In response to this Northamptonshire police decided to give all police officers tasers [5].</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2015 over a million police hours were spent on enforcing the cannabis prohibition [6]. Seizing property, ruining lives, throwing people in prison all at great cost to the economy in lost business and destroyed property and the cost of enforcement. Meanwhile relatives of members of the government make fortunes growing and exporting cannabis [7] whilst denying this medicine to everyone else.</div><div><br /></div><div>And that's before we talk about things like the 35 000 people working for the police who haven't been vetted or checked [8] and the many complaints of high rates of domestic abuse by the police [9].</div><div><br /></div><div>These are the sorts of reasons why there are calls to defund the police. They're not working for the majority of people, they're working for the rich.</div><div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><h4 style="text-align: left;">UPDATE</h4><div><div>Northamptonshire police were rated by HM Inspectorate of Police in 2018/19 as "Inadequate". [10]</div><div><br /></div><div>Stop and search has increased 20% and they stop black people five times as often as white people. Which is admittedly an improvement on the eight times as often they stopped black people in previous years. [11]</div><div></div><blockquote><div>If you're white and middle class and never go into town you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you're racist and now live as an immigrant in Spain you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you've already traded your civil liberties for a packet of (non-EU) peanuts and a Netflix subscription you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you never watch the news because it's depressing and you think social unrest is a brand of trendy aftershave you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If your main joy in life is telling other people what to do you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you're really afraid and just want everyone else to follow the rules you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you're one of the predators and think society needs more oppression you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you live a bland and boring life, never protesting and always knowing your place and doing what you're told, you have nothing to fear from increased stop and search.</div></blockquote><div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>[1] <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/unpaid-britain-report-uk-workers-cheated-out-of-pay-2017-7?r=US&IR=T">https://www.businessinsider.com/unpaid-britain-report-uk-workers-cheated-out-of-pay-2017-7?r=US&IR=T</a></div><div>[2] <a href="https://fashionunited.uk/news/retail/nation-of-shoplifters-as-shoplifting-increases-in-the-uk/2018053129951">https://fashionunited.uk/news/retail/nation-of-shoplifters-as-shoplifting-increases-in-the-uk/2018053129951</a></div><div>[3] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/13/benefit-or-tax-evasion-row-over-the-tories-targets/">https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/13/benefit-or-tax-evasion-row-over-the-tories-targets/</a></div><div>[4] <a href="https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/northamptonshire-police-dont-properly-understand-why-black-and-asian-people-are-stopped-and-searched-so-often-inspectors-find-720290">https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/northamptonshire-police-dont-properly-understand-why-black-and-asian-people-are-stopped-and-searched-so-often-inspectors-find-720290</a></div><div>[5] <a href="https://www.northants.police.uk/news/northants/news/news/2019/august-19/northamptonshire-police-is-the-first-police-force-in-the-country-to-arm-all-frontline-officers-with-tasers/">https://www.northants.police.uk/news/northants/news/news/2019/august-19/northamptonshire-police-is-the-first-police-force-in-the-country-to-arm-all-frontline-officers-with-tasers/</a></div><div>[6] <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/legalise-cannabis-lib-dems-million-police-hours-wasted-general-election-2017-latest-a7733191.html">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/legalise-cannabis-lib-dems-million-police-hours-wasted-general-election-2017-latest-a7733191.html</a></div><div>[7] <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/06/britain-largest-exporter-legal-cannabis-world-despite-ban/">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/06/britain-largest-exporter-legal-cannabis-world-despite-ban/</a></div><div>[8] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49847206">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49847206</a></div><div>[9] <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2019-11-12/super-complaint-to-claim-police-forces-allowing-officers-to-abuse-partners-without-fear-of-arrest-or-prosecution/">https://www.itv.com/news/2019-11-12/super-complaint-to-claim-police-forces-allowing-officers-to-abuse-partners-without-fear-of-arrest-or-prosecution/</a></div><div>[10] <a href="https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/peel-assessments/peel-2018/northamptonshire/">https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/peel-assessments/peel-2018/northamptonshire/</a> </div><div>[11] <a href="https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/police-defend-increased-use-of-stop-and-search-following-20-percent-rise-in-northamptonshire-3472459">https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/police-defend-increased-use-of-stop-and-search-following-20-percent-rise-in-northamptonshire-3472459</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i><font size="2">"There is a great harvest of unwilling believers to be had" -- Joshua the Christ, apocryphal</font></i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-10621838151224943802020-06-13T03:14:00.007+01:002021-10-12T15:03:12.061+01:00George William Curry and Pathfinder Squadron 627<p>You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSIFRzHhB_AuU2hTQ8nbkTho5kwwgp5OiCFW5HsLHX2ipcWVHp4j0PNcJwNyD8wiUuppyJhKHplwGqUNYFhQt270ir2V0sgdv4kinozcMzgXE7y5Un7Xzxi4nHCLevElGEYBPIuSKcJHY/s640/036.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSIFRzHhB_AuU2hTQ8nbkTho5kwwgp5OiCFW5HsLHX2ipcWVHp4j0PNcJwNyD8wiUuppyJhKHplwGqUNYFhQt270ir2V0sgdv4kinozcMzgXE7y5Un7Xzxi4nHCLevElGEYBPIuSKcJHY/s320/036.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A 627 Squadron Mosquito<br /></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>I went to visit my Dad today and spent about an hour talking to him before he got too tired. He's dying of cancer but as always he was in a cheerful mood. He told me a bit more of the story about his Dad who he never knew. His Mum hardly ever talked about him so what he knows comes from some of Granny's papers and my Dad's investigation after she died. He found a whole new branch of his family including Aunts and cousins and a Great Aunt Olive.</div><div><br /></div><div>Before joining the RAF George William Curry worked for an insurance company called UKAPIAN. The only remnant of UKAPIAN now is one page on the website of Axa who ended up buying them, but they started life as a motor insurance company run by a temperance society. Teetotalers are good customers for a motor insurance company but there wasn't enough of them and UKAPIAN had to branch out. At any rate my Dad has George's beer tankard. My Dad's middle name is George, as is my brother David's middle name and my son Benjamin's.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the start of the second world war the standard deviation, the average distance of a bomb from where it was supposed to go, was about five miles. A chap called Leonard Cheshire who flew Lancaster bombers had the idea of dive bombing to a few hundred feet and dropping coloured incendiaries on the targets. This proved to be a great idea, except that the Lancaster bombers were made of metal and at a few hundred feet above ground could be hit by rifle and small arms fire and chewed to pieces.</div><div><br /></div><div>Leonard switched to the De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber plane which was faster and more manoeuvrable. It was also a wooden plane and you could merrily punch holes in it with gay abandon and so long as you didn't hit a control wire it would keep on flying. The wooden structure made it virtually invisible to radar. A single Pathfinder could drop flares on multiple targets, so a squadron of Pathfinders could support a whole group of squadrons of bombers.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the introduction of the Pathfinders the standard deviation for the British bombs dropped to 1 mile.</div><div><br /></div><div>George was already a pilot in the RAF when the second world war started and he was part of the Battle of Britain. He joined the newly formed Pathfinder Squadron 627. George was an acting Wing Commander during the war but left at the lower rank of Squadron Leader. 55 000 people from Bomber Command died during the war and vacancies were frequent. Although the lifespan of a Pathfinder was normally days George survived the war and was one of only a handful of pilots to receive both Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) medals <i>twice</i>. DSO with bar and DFC with bar, four medals.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPjgHIMAgwxEeJtnTcrrJjtmSW1ZxxOfOr8_8Be8UguNE4SUCUDF3OTtp018cQ14z7bWGNnGCTX51-RKXTAJvsRvLBMOS_bng4d-2Y5SA7CV_ZiiGtMijrHciQEVS9UlSQBcnK0_21E0/s1816/627-sqd-aircrew-and-unknown-ground-crew.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="1816" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPjgHIMAgwxEeJtnTcrrJjtmSW1ZxxOfOr8_8Be8UguNE4SUCUDF3OTtp018cQ14z7bWGNnGCTX51-RKXTAJvsRvLBMOS_bng4d-2Y5SA7CV_ZiiGtMijrHciQEVS9UlSQBcnK0_21E0/s320/627-sqd-aircrew-and-unknown-ground-crew.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em style="background-color: white; border-color: currentcolor; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a5b5c; font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">Left to Right: LAC Harding, ground crew; the navigator Flight Sergeant Ranshaw and the pilot Flight Sergeant Marshallsay; groundcrew, LAC James Wookey and LAC Kingscott.</em></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />The London Gazette of October 1944 remarks:</div><div><div></div><blockquote><div>Fourth Supplement to the London Gazette of Friday the 13th of October 1944 - Tuesday 17 October 1944</div><div><br /></div><div>Distinguished Service Order</div><div><br /></div><div>Acting Wing Commander George William CURRY DFC. (86389), RAFVR, 627 Sqn.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since assuming command of his squadron, Wing Commander Curry has taken part in a number of operations against a variety of enemy targets. His great determination and capable leadership have resulted in many successful operations. On several occasions his aircraft has been damaged by anti-aircraft fire. The exceptional energy and initiative which this officer has displayed, together with his outstanding keenness and cheerful personality, have had a most marked effect upon the morale and efficiency of his squadron. He has set a worthy example.</div></blockquote><div><div>And then in February 1945:</div></div><div></div><blockquote><div>Fourth Supplement to the London Gazette of Friday the 23rd of February, 1945 - TUESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY, 1945</div><div><br /></div><div>Air Ministry, 27th February, 1945.</div><div><br /></div><div>The KING has been graciously pleased to approve</div><div>the following awards in recognition of gallantry and</div><div>devotion to duty in the execution of air operations: </div><div><br /></div><div>Bar to Distinguished Service Order.</div><div>Acting Wing Commander George William CURRY, DSO, DFC (86389), RAFVR, 627 Sqn.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wing Commander Curry has completed a second tour of operational duty during which he has completed many notable sorties. On one occasion he took part in an attack which resulted in the breaching of the Dortmund-Ems Canal. On another occasion, Wing Commander Curry led the squadron on a target far into enemy territory. Whilst over the target considerable anti-aircraft fire was encountered. Every aircraft was hit. Nevertheless, the operation was completed successfully. Munchen-Gladbach, Stuttgart, Brunswick and Bremerhaven have been among the various targets Wing Commander Curry has attacked. This gallant and resourceful squadron commander has set a splendid example to all.</div><div></div></blockquote><div>After the war George remained in the RAF and flew Venom jets. Every year he would take part in the Battle of Britain celebrations. In September 1948, out of practise flying the wooden Mosquitos, on the day before the celebration George crashed attempting a low roll with him and Flight Lieutenant on board. Both of them died. One of the few things that Granny told Dad was that the Flight Lieutenant was the pilot and George was the co-pilot, but my Dad doesn't think a Flight Lieutenant would have been the pilot. George is laid to rest in Coningsby cemetery military graves section. </div><div><br /></div><div>My Dad has no memory of his father but he has his log books and he remembers the rationing that was still in place after the war. Because George died on duty Granny got a decent sized pension. She went on to marry Peter John Foord who I knew as Grandpa and who raised my father as a son and whose name I bear twice.</div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCK6Yzbaem9j6rtqp8UW5TQG77gUhVfrtuAa1Rhcs5o89bzFYgsNbb3zA2TWorOsSuX8HMJqi_S0IrA_nkkOixYEtPPZ3QzEVnJdwkhfSK1baHFBYeNSVFZhL2g4IvmQzqsnqr7LofBq4/s1589/Screenshot+from+2020-06-13+03-07-38.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1589" data-original-width="1068" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCK6Yzbaem9j6rtqp8UW5TQG77gUhVfrtuAa1Rhcs5o89bzFYgsNbb3zA2TWorOsSuX8HMJqi_S0IrA_nkkOixYEtPPZ3QzEVnJdwkhfSK1baHFBYeNSVFZhL2g4IvmQzqsnqr7LofBq4/s320/Screenshot+from+2020-06-13+03-07-38.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.rafcommands.com/archive/08032.php" style="text-align: left;">A search for information on George William Curry</a></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-14882921243913756192020-06-04T16:52:00.003+01:002020-09-15T10:37:46.099+01:00Deriving the Scientific Method and a Nice Life Philosophy from Descartes' Second Meditation<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5pDBJ_4XwP21vp14BLaYVk1QNDf-18eA1tQg1CRr3gxJvpuUKifJQnyjmiPl6f49u_e0MnMl89g7dN0kvHfTTaOpvAfTr23B-ok-pfpfXaeO7_I3UtKuW4jaryyLz23p69gN4j1UPbqY/s720/95325598_2619610388321133_3108551110978174976_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5pDBJ_4XwP21vp14BLaYVk1QNDf-18eA1tQg1CRr3gxJvpuUKifJQnyjmiPl6f49u_e0MnMl89g7dN0kvHfTTaOpvAfTr23B-ok-pfpfXaeO7_I3UtKuW4jaryyLz23p69gN4j1UPbqY/s320/95325598_2619610388321133_3108551110978174976_n.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div>I'm particularly fond of Decartes' second meditation on certainty. From this we can derive both the scientific method and a lovely life philosophy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Descartes' second meditation was on what you could possibly know with absolute certainty. That wasn't a dream or illusion or misunderstanding. His conclusion was famously "cogito ergo sum". Usually rendered "I think therefore I Am", but perhaps more true to his meaning is "there is thought, therefore there is a thinker". Nothing else can you know with absolute certainty.</div><div><br /></div><div>I quite like my Buddhist rendering "in thought there is an experience of self, in the thought of the world there is an experience of other".</div><div><br /></div><div>Best of all I like my Judeo-Christian rendering, based on the meaning of YHVH, Yahweh, the holiest name of G-d given to Moses in the burning bush, the fire that burns but does not consume when he asked G-d their name and they replied ืืืื.</div><div><br /></div><div>Read right to left the Hebrew letters yodh, he, waw and he. Meaning I Am.</div><div><br /></div><div>Descartes' concluded in his second meditation that the only thing you can know with absolute certainty is I Am.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, everything else we can't be absolutely certain about. It might even be a dream. You know your memory and your senses play tricks on you and cognitive biases like confirmation bias where you look for things to confirm what you already believe distort your perception of reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>So you build up models of the world. Maybe various different ones with differing degrees of probability. The level of your confidence. And you test your models. Try them out. Build up your confidence in them. You're always willing to be wrong, but you know why you think what you think and you adjust to new information as it comes in.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's the basis of the scientific method.</div><div><br /></div><div>We build up models of reality knowing they're not perfect but because they're testable we're able to verify whether or not they're a better model than the one we had before.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Narnia</h2><div>On the topic of the name of G-d, YHVH, let's take a detour via Narnia. I took the name of my personal moral law from Narnia. I call it the Aslan rule: <i>what I do is Narnia business</i>. The Aslan rule works in both directions: <i>what other people do is Narnia business too.</i></div></div><div><div><div><br /></div></div><div>A fragment of one of my favourite, but alas shortest, poems is also inspired in part by Narnia. </div><div></div><blockquote><div>IAO I adore thee, magickal thou art. Evoe. IAO the black and red sigil of my desire that is also my love. Evoe, the green, white and silver response soft sighs from every evergreen bowed gentle with snow.</div></blockquote><div>IAO is the Greek form of the Tegtragrammoton, YHVH, the holiest name of God. Iota Alpha Omega, the beginning to the end as the smallest possible unit. Notable as the name of G-d beloved by the Thelemites.</div><div><br /></div><div>Evoe is the Bacchanalian exclamation of fervour and was the battle cry of some of the armies of Narnia as they went to war in The Last Battle.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><div><i><font size="2">"Demons are made of the souls of the suffering, Angels the vengeful tears of the same. A trapped demon sings until whatever has it caught dies. A trapped angel sings until whatever has it caught awakens to freedom."</font></i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-36336706512906282242020-04-19T19:51:00.001+01:002020-09-12T23:15:47.862+01:00Stuck in the Living Room Dreaming of a New TV<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: start;"><i>Imagine if normal was a real thing.</i></td></tr>
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The OLED 4K TVs I like, either the LG OLED55C9PLA 55" or the Panasonic TX-55GZ950B 55", have come down in price to around ยฃ1300. That's still more than I'd like to spend on a TV but they're gorgeous and we haven't yet made the jump to 4K. The Panasonic has the edge supporting the newer HDR10+ standard for High Dynamic Resolution and better display of blacks in the details. I'll keep the old TV because no-one is really making passive 3D displays any more and I adore Avatar in 3D.<br />
<br />
We've been getting by using a PS3 and a 2nd gen Apple TV as media centres. Since we moved the living room around we no longer have an aerial or wired internet to the TV, so no live TV channels and no iPlayer.<br />
<br />
Disney+ arrived and is fantastic. We're enjoying the Mandalorian, we've started The Simpsons from the start and there's a good selection of movies. Unfortunately the app didn't stream well from an iPhone to the Apple TV, so in lieu of pulling the trigger on a new TV I bought an Apple TV 4K. I saved a bit of money by buying a refurbished one from Ebay, but it comes without a year's subscription to the Apple services so it was a bit of a false economy. As it's the 4K model it's future proofed against me ever actually buying a new TV.<br />
<br />
It's great. It has games on it, which include Jetpack Joyride and Rayman Adventures, both of which I think I'd already bought on the iPhone, and a good selection of free games and apps. There's even a Wii style tennis game using the Apple TV controller as a motion sensor racket.<br />
<br />
It has Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Sky News and CNN News and BBC iPlayer, plus the ITV, channel four and five catchup apps which I doubt we'll use.<br />
<br />
We're still using the PS3 as a blu-ray player and are finally working our way through our extensive and mostly unwatched collection. Ben has now mastered all of the Little Big Planet games on the PS3 and I'm playing Portal 2 with him. Irina has Animal Crossing on the Switch which mostly occupies her.<br />
<br />
When the PS5 finally comes out I might make the jump to the PS4. At the moment I'm still loving the PS3. Anyone want to play the Modern Warfare 2 co-op missions?<br />
<br />
One confounder is that when VR is ready, and it so nearly is the Occulus Quest is great fun, it would be nice to have a single VR/gaming/media system instead of the multiple boxes I have or might have. Sony PlayStation is most likely to deliver that although their VR isn't ready yet and I'd want a 4K disk player as well. I like consoles, I like a system that lasts years, I'm not jumping to a PC and having to debug my media player. Oh, the Apple TV has a really nice screensaver and I still have some good music on their system.<br />
<br />
I still have work for the UKAEA on the BLUEPRINT fusion reactor design software and that's going fine. Delia is decorating Irina's room and listening to podcasts about something called a Yoni.<br />
<br />
We're mostly coping with the isolation. Happy Sunday.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"God" might be the product of evolution. They're how the unconscious mind visualises and interacts with everything. And what the conscious thinks it believes is irrelevant, maybe."</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-42420005745537834842020-04-10T02:17:00.004+01:002022-02-23T22:29:29.523+00:00Vipassana Meditation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Interdisciplinary approaches yield insights</i></td></tr>
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<br />
Vipassana Buddhism teaches us that the default state of mind is "monkey mind", jumping from one thing to the next. Vipassana means "insight" or "clear thinking" and is the path of wisdom.<br />
<br />
In mindfulness we let go of distraction to return to the breath. After a little while we may enter "access concentration" where we are less distracted.<br />
<br />
We may push distractions away so far they do not return and all there is is breath. Time has stopped and keeping the focus in the breath has become effortless, flow state.<br />
<br />
This is Dyana or Jhana. The place where you step back into the garden of the mind and the work of tending the garden is the same as the work of enjoying the garden.<br />
<br />
Mindfulness is the practise of relaxed focus, alert but rested awareness. Mind calm like a still lake, reflecting what it sees. The aim of the practise of mindfulness is the cultivation of the habit of conscious awareness. Habits maketh a person. Our character is mostly comprised of habits so practised we're not aware of them, unconscious habits. Mindfulness casts light into the dark of the unconscious.<br />
<br />
I learned Vipassana meditation, both mindfulness of breathing and the Metta Bhavna as taught by the Buddha in ghe sutras, from the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order when I was in Cambridge at university. I also saw the beauty of Tai Chi as a form of worship with them. Tai Chi is also self-defence and I learned worship as warfare.<br />
<br />
I understood then how and why mindfulness of breathing worked and that it was beautiful. The practise of mindfulness is the practise of relaxed focus, of alert but still concentration. In letting go of distractions to return to awareness we give the mind space to unfurl. The Metta Bhavana I had a strange relationship with.<br />
<br />
Around 2011, about the time of the birth of my first child, I sought to return to my spiritual centre. I pursued my search through the religious practise of mindfulness of breathing meditation, one hour a day, six days a week for seven years. Alongside Christian worship as a spiritual practise instead of the Metta Bhavana. It was transformational.<br />
<br />
Zen is the Japanese form of Buddhism. The Zen meditation is Zazen, which I consider harder than mindfulness of breathing. Zazen is sometimes translated as "just sitting", because that's how you do it. You just sit.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen."<br />
โ Bodhidharma</blockquote>
Not thinking, being.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
โZen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.โ<br />
โ Alan Watts</blockquote>
But really I think you should say, neither thinking nor not thinking is Zen. Zen merely is.<br />
<br />
The Buddha taught living in the now as the path out of suffering, as did another great spiritual teacher.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Matthew 6:34 <i>Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.</i></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"People wield their moral code like weapons. But judging them against their own code usually undoes them. Don't tell them your moral code. None of their business."</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-86378772479623421862020-04-02T00:58:00.003+01:002020-09-12T23:16:24.568+01:00A Few Books that Have Shaped Me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>A rigid mind that is unable to change will eventually break.</i></span></td></tr>
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<br />
From when I was a child there were Billy Bunter, Just William, Jennings, Roald Dahl, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, Swallows and Amazons, The Hardy Brothers, Narnia, The Magic Faraway Tree, The Hobbit, The Stainless Steel Rat, and pretty much all of Robert Heinlein. Those were the days. Wouldn't go back for all the money in the world.<br />
<br />
Fast forward a few years and I think my favourite book of all is On the Road, the beat generation classic, the great American novel, a travel book. For a handful of years I would read it every year and I still want to go to Denver. On the Road has my heart but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has my spirit.<br />
<br />
Then there's Lord of the Rings, Catch-22, anything by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett (I have a copy of Good Omens signed by both and I've read all the Discworld novels and do I get to count the Sandman series as a book?), 100 Years of Solitude, anything by William Gibson (Neuromancer is a work of genius but I like the newer work too - he aged well), Ian and Iain Banks (Excession and The Bridge are my favourites, or possibly Feersum Endjinn, I didnt really enjoy Wasp Factory), anything by Neal Stephenson (starting with Snowcrash), Slaughterhouse Five, and The Plague by Camus. Oh, plus Charles Stross (I might be a cyberpunk geek - Halting State is excellent). Stross used to be a programmer so he gets his tech right and his near future projections can be just the right side of scarily plausible.<br />
<br />
Philip K Dick and William Burroughs I adored, but I don't actually recall anything specific of theirs I've read. Naked Lunch and Bladerunner are classic movies and William Burroughs has a sterling walk on part in On the Road (orgones for the win).<br />
<br />
Then of course there's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I can still quote passages from. All of the work of Douglas Adams plus Dune are considered by the Technomancers to be amongst the sacred texts of the geeks.<br />
<br />
For non-fiction Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything and Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time are superlative.<br />
<br />
Too many worlds to reminisce over...<br />
<br />
Here's a shorter esoteric reading list.<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2015/11/the-varieties-of-religious-experience.html">The Variety of Religious Experience</a> by William James</li>
<li>Essentials of Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill</li>
<li>Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (yes I think the topic is esoteric)</li>
<li>Celestial Heirachy by (pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite</li>
<li>Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English (best book on meditation and Buddhism that I've read by a country mile)</li>
<li>The Celtic Golden Dawn - not least for the introduction chapter that gives a history of the modern Druid movement</li>
</ul>
I really loved Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I was young. I tried to reread it recently and couldn't stand it (technophobe snob).<br />
<br />
The Schrodinger Cat Trilogy and The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley are great esoteric fiction.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"We're all a collection of habits and neuroses steered by complex and powerful emotions in an uneasy balance."</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-54229613559921406132020-04-01T12:09:00.005+01:002021-10-12T15:03:59.207+01:00Conversations with the Holy Guardian Angel (or How I Ended Up in Prison)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">There's a degree to which fear is a choice. To that degree, choose wisely.</span></i></td></tr>
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It transpires I've never told the story of how I ended up in prison. Like most stories it's hard to know where it begins, but maybe we can pickup the thread in my darkest hour in Verulamium. There, like the Romans before me, I faced a savage and wild horde of natives before whom I genuinely feared for my life. That is at the Verulam School for Boys in St Albans, the new school I had started at having moved from the northern industrial town of Macclesfield where what childhood idyll I knew remained behind to the commuter town of Harpenden. Full of estate agents and Italian restaurants and a higher class of savage natives than we'd known before.<br />
<br />
I had been taught not to fight back, and although I'd been in a few fights I'd always brought them to an end fairly quickly and refused to fight, so I hadn't practised fighting much. When cornered by three savages, who were doubtless brutalised themselves and finding revenge on the world in me, I knew logically I couldn't defeat them and they could kill me. I was so ashamed of the crawling coward I became in those moments of terror.<br />
<br />
A mere handful of years later in Cambridge I was falling into madness, my life out of control and my mind merely an observer in the strange chaotic ruins my life was becoming. I was afraid of everything and under magical attack by a Buddhist priest and a couple of punks who were trying to steal my soul. As the curse took hold I knew I needed to defeat it by overcoming my fear of violence stemming back to those days, I needed to punch someone.<br />
<br />
For months every contact with every person felt like I was dying spiritually and emotionally, my soul and life eking and ebbing away and all because I wouldn't take the steps I thought were necessary to save my soul. I did try punching a couple of people, but it didn't really work. I spent long day after day for months walking the streets trying to find my way out of that maze.<br />
<br />
Eventually something in my mind couldn't cope with that level of constant fear and paranoia and decided I'd been enlightened and that I was going to fulfil revelation. So I walked back to Cambridge from Luton where I was staying in a flat that I hadn't paid any rent on anyway. Needless to say my old friends at Cambridge weren't very excited to see me, so I settled into being the Archangel Michael as part of the homeless community in Cambridge City Centre. I didn't tell anyone I was the Archangel Michael obviously, they would have just assumed I was crazy.<br />
<br />
For a little while whilst I walked the streets of Cambridge being Michael, and occasionally begging, a funny short gentleman wearing a green tweed suit and a battered white scooter helmet, on a scooter, would follow me and thrust papers at me wanting me to take them. That seemed odd, so I didn't take the papers. On about the third time this happened he said something and then threw the papers at me. I decided I was better off not knowing and ignored them.<br />
<br />
I did make at least one more visit to the college and one occassion a very nice gentleman asked me to pose for a picture.<br />
<br />
From that point I got picked up by the police a couple of times, who kept me for a little while and would murmur about papers not being ready and then let me go. In retrospect I think they were giving me a chance to get out of dodge. A chance I didn't take.<br />
<br />
It was when wearing roller blades I was picked up for the third time that I learned the story. The college had taken an injunction out against me in civil court. As I'd refused the papers they could proceed without my involvement. After I broke the injunction I didn't know about they went back to the court and had me sentenced to three months in prison, go directly to prison in a G4S van, do not pass go, do not attend a court. I only stayed there for half of it though. Six weeks in Bedford nick.<br />
<br />
After that I joined a cult.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>You can't know yourself until you've seen your own shadow. Once you see your shadow, so long as you're willing to be that person, all of your faculties and capabilities are there for the taking. </i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The deepest dreams of the heart can come true.</i></span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"</span></i><br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-10687969773750244782020-03-21T19:51:00.002+00:002020-09-12T23:20:10.336+01:00Speaking Up for Anger and Other Short Meditations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-II9NjxXudCToqCzlNfAep5Lr46eG-QVspoN7oEmvDYjM-mWUxrAuyJunZtfgZccoLqFVdkCeWwoLOO8cMA3DvOqS3-OxfKdYbuM9yKLV0itLbXJ06wp8J9qATd4hkcI4-MkgT-vSEo/s1600/Pycon+2020_Conference_803.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1068" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-II9NjxXudCToqCzlNfAep5Lr46eG-QVspoN7oEmvDYjM-mWUxrAuyJunZtfgZccoLqFVdkCeWwoLOO8cMA3DvOqS3-OxfKdYbuM9yKLV0itLbXJ06wp8J9qATd4hkcI4-MkgT-vSEo/s320/Pycon+2020_Conference_803.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>AFAB, AMAB, ACAB, AHAB</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Speaking Up for Anger</h3>
Anger wants to be heard. If anger feels not listened to it gets louder. Telling anger you can't hear, won't listen, because it's too loud doesn't work. The volume might go down but the anger is still there. If your'e afraid of anger you can probably still feel it. Anger that's not dealt with, not expressed and not heard, festers.<br />
<br />
Try not to be afraid of anger. And being angry at anger just because it's loud might be a mistake. Something deeply heartfelt is really upset that nobody ever seems to listen to it. And you're telling it to shut up again. To be quiet and go away, nobody wants to see that.<br />
<br />
Let people be angry and listen to anger. It might take a bit of untangling, strong emotions always do. People do use strong emotions, of all kinds, to manipulate and intimidate, but it's so easy to mistake strongly felt anger for aggression.<br />
<br />
Anger, like sexuality, can be so hard to control and so easy to cause harm with. Which makes constantly repressing either, and not learning to deal with strength of feeling in either case, a bad idea and not a good idea.<br />
<br />
Codicil: expressing strongly felt emotions including anger with great intensity at low volume is possible but very hard. Expecting people to be able to do that is unreasonable. If you do it really confuses those who use "stop shouting" to prevent people expressing emotions that make them uncomfortable. You're not shouting and their goto manipulative tool feels like it should work but doesn't.<br />
<br />
Preventing people, especially children, from expressing anger and strong feelings including aggression can make them cruel. They'll find an outlet for those feelings one way or another, whatever society permits. By this means the suppression of anger in young people is a tool of the patriarchy. Only certain "permitted" outlets for anger and aggression are tolerated, especially against those who violate common decency. They're fair game. This is the violence inherent in the system.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
On Guilt</h3>
Guilt is such a difficult emotion, but when you align it just right it can be the crack that sorrows flow out through. Sorrow, even grief, can be such a healing rain. Where you find sorrow compassion is never far behind.<br />
<br />
It's why some people protect their pain as the dearest part of themselves. Pain and sorrow and guilt all wash together in compassion, for ourselves and for each other.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
COVID-19</h3>
The invisible enemy that lurks in everyone, maybe. Contagious for two weeks before symptoms. Social distancing, wear a mask, don't look at strangers, never cough. Hide inside and pray.<br />
<br />
The slow motion wave of mass hysteria, rising, rising. And rumours of horrors in places not so far away.<br />
<br />
This is the scariest movie ever.<br />
<br />
When the times become extraordinary<br />
The normal changes<br />
And those who have had to walk broken<br />
Who couldn't hide their scars<br />
Who could see the pain in every eye<br />
And wondered why no-one thought it was strange<br />
Who never thought normal was anything to aspire to<br />
Find themselves in a strange place<br />
<br />
No-one is trying to pretend things are normal<br />
And for once the world makes sense<br />
Because it has gone completely mad.<br />
For once, they feel normal. At home. Not afraid.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The Psychological Matriarchy</h3>
Don't forget that the foundational parts of the psyche are formed in the early years of a child's life from their major influences. As the primary caregiver is more commonly the mother; the patriarchy, the behaviour and thought patterns that cause men to treat women badly, is primarily inculcated into boys by their mothers.<br />
<br />
As women rise up, this changes.<br />
<br />
This would be a psychological matriarchy which is in accordance with some of my religious beliefs, my witchcraft and worship of Isis. Due to the unique relationship between mother and child the psychological substrate is substantially a matriarchy. Unfortunately currently a matriarchy enforcing the patriarchy under fear, since the product of the patriarchy in the characters of all peoples is the perpetuation of fear.<br />
<br />
Getting men properly involved in doing the vast emotional work of raising children (at all levels including as teachers who ought to be paid more and more highly respected irrespective of gender identity) would make such a difference to everything. In The Cult of Isis the Heirophant is a masculine archetype, the high priest matched with a high priestess, and the symbol and seat of moral rectitude and right thinking.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Fear and Human Behaviour</h3>
Humans often have interesting self-defeating behaviour around people they're afraid of. This is especially true of those who defer to group-think for their decisions on who people are and how to treat them.<br />
<br />
When people are afraid of someone a common choice is to be mean to them to keep them away or in an attempt to make them change. This includes ostracisation and exclusion from social groups.<br />
<br />
But when you're mean to people it is entirely fair for them to be mean back to you. When you're afraid of someone creating a situation where the normal and appropriate response is for them to be mean to you seems unwise. It doesn't seem like you're going to come out on top of that one. As well as the fact that being a mean person is an unfortunate life choice.<br />
<br />
It's the perfect recipe for living in fear, fear enforced by social convention.<br />
<br />
In my experience of getting to know people I'm afraid of, the person I'm afraid of usually only exists in my imagination.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Computer Camp</h3>
When I was a kid I went on a Christian computer camp a couple of times. It was a mix of indoctrination and messing around with computers. I really enjoyed it, I had friends which I didn't really at school and I was quite into both computers and indoctrination at the time.<br />
<br />
In one of the Christian bits I remember one of the helpers, an older lad a young man really, giving his testimony. He been exploring the occult and spirituality and he said "the problem with the occult was that as soon as you thought you'd found the truth or got near to understanding something it would ping away from you". Then he found Christianity and everything was nice and definite.<br />
<br />
The computer camp was one of things my parents took away from me as punishment for being depressed when I was a teenager.<br />
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<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The Winds of Wilder Probability</h3>
I think this is a beautiful symmetry. From Descartes' second meditation on certainty you can conclude that you can't know anything with absolute certainty, only degrees of probability (except I Am).<br />
<br />
And at the moment one of the deepest ways humans have attempted to understand reality, quantum mechanics, says that at the most fundamental level we can't really know anything with absolute certainty. Everything appears to exist only in degrees of probability. At least as far as we can tell, but quantifiably so.<br />
<br />
Who knows what happens out there, out in the winds of wilder probabilities. Is it a worm hole or a rabbit hole?<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Your Shadow</h3>
You can't know yourself until you've seen your own shadow. Once you see your shadow, so long as you're willing to be that person, all of your faculties and capabilities are there for the taking.<br />
<br />
The deepest dreams of the heart can come true.<br />
<br />
Thus shadow work. Take the negative, dark and difficult aspects of your character and turn them to your advantage. Find positive outlets for your darkest most destructive urges.<br />
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Alternatively you could live forever afraid of yourself and who you might really be once the veneer of civilization is stripped away.<br />
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We're animals. That's what we are. Taxonomically speaking.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Hide Your Hate Where You Can't See It</h3>
People want to hide their feelings from you so they can lie about them and they want you to be careful of their feelings. People don't make sense.<br />
<br />
People hide their feelings as a matter of course, as a habit, out of fear.<br />
<br />
What you won't give conscious expression will have unconscious expression. Basic psychology.<br />
<br />
So you're ruled by feelings you won't/can't express. That's how we're brutalised. Oops, I mean socialised.<br />
<br />
Hide your hate and spite away from yourself and you won't be able to see it in others too. But it's there like a constant bad smell that no-one can ever find the source of and eventually you stop smelling it.<br />
<br />
Tune your hate into the right things and become friends with it. Like anger hate is a great power, partly because people are so afraid of it and ruled by it. Love what is right and hate all evil.<br />
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<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Other People's Feelings</h3>
Not saying things that might hurt someone's feelings, so they never have to face their feelings and can carry on living afraid and never having to change, is a coward's way to live.<br />
<br />
Being unpleasant to people when they say things that hurt your feelings, to teach them not to hurt your feelings so you can stay afraid, boils down to being an unpleasant person.<br />
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We're all inextricably intertwined and the question of how much responsibility we bear for other peoples' feelings can never be satisfactorily resolved.<br />
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<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The Social Contract</h3>
The Coronavirus makes me think about the social contract and the duty of the individual to society.<br />
<br />
Unpopular opinion: the social contract goes both ways. Those whom society has treated disgracefully owe society nothing. Quite the reverse.<br />
<br />
The unemployed, the chronically sick, the mentally ill, the homeless. Want them to follow your social rules and conventions for the benefit of everyone?<br />
<br />
Maybe that's reasonable in a society that looks after the vulnerable. Why should they follow our rules, what do they owe us?<br />
<br />
Given my own personal journey I don't feel much of a debt to society. I feel a great debt to some people however. Friends are everything. Society mostly seems to suck.<br />
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<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Depression and COVID-19</h3>
Depression is very common, normal I reckon. There are many ways to deal with depression and to cope. I'm a great believer in talking therapies and understanding yourself and being a person you're able to respect by being true to yourself as the ultimate cure for depression. That's a very long road with many twists and turns and changes of points of view.<br />
<br />
One common way to cope with depression or other normal mental illnesses is to keep moving fast enough that they never trouble you except as background anxiety. That doesn't play well with isolation.<br />
<br />
I really wonder what the psychological impact of isolation will be. It could be an opportunity for dealing with issues, letting it all hang out, dropping pretences, self-reflection, self-care, building relationships.<br />
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My heart particularly goes out for those trapped in isolation with abusers and to those feeling truly alone. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Personal Moral Integrity</h3>
When we contravene the moral code by which we judge others we excuse ourselves. We have reasons. But we neither know nor permit the other to have reasons, so our worldview has lots of little inconsistencies all over the place. It doesn't really work, best not to look too closely.<br />
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My moral code lets other people do what they want and says what I do is my business. It's pretty hard to contravene that anyway.<br />
<br />
I reserve moral judgement for those who make moral judgements on others.<br />
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<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
To Do What is Right</h3>
<div>
<div>
To do what is right, that is all that is asked of anyone. The curse and the gift of a life is that every person has to work out what that means for themselves. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
You can let other people tell you what's right, they'll be only too keen, but you risk being wrong. That would be a shame for at least one life, probably more.</div>
</div>
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"We may look back on this as the beginning. The point where it became clear it was the end of the world."</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-9690552242492015532020-01-26T10:48:00.005+00:002021-10-12T15:05:55.371+01:00My Father and the Pathfinders<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>You can read more of my story in:</p><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSv6Q7OgcIudgaG-Jn1Ur9GzraEUslG3ra2NoNBQGdWxZDgxs6OE4QQVt0TsrXPvzRMm_eHxb73K3MPnp6giP4tHoQKFisl1SVknXE5RxAE_dkifLrdtYyIADvS5FWbx1ebDto4Lu0pXE/s1600/Tony-Foord.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="750" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSv6Q7OgcIudgaG-Jn1Ur9GzraEUslG3ra2NoNBQGdWxZDgxs6OE4QQVt0TsrXPvzRMm_eHxb73K3MPnp6giP4tHoQKFisl1SVknXE5RxAE_dkifLrdtYyIADvS5FWbx1ebDto4Lu0pXE/s320/Tony-Foord.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Neither belief nor disbelief are to be preferred. They are both delusions.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/2020/06/george-william-curry-and-pathfinder.html">Updated version of this story</a></li></ul></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My father is very British. My grandmother disowned me as a teenager due to my waywardness, my grandfather was very loyal to me but was not my biological grandfather. My grandmother was a stern and hard woman, well regarded in the community, a magistrate.<br />
<br />
My Father was sent to boys boarding school from a fairly young age, Stowe. That makes him a Stoic by tradition. He enjoyed it, despite breaking his back whilst he was there. He was disowned by his family for marrying a poor Jewish girl, daughter of an academic and well below his station. They were reconciled.<br />
<br />
My real Grandfather died when my father was young. He was called Mr Curry and my Father knew very little about him until after his mother died and he found some old family papers through which he tracked down many cousins and other relatives he'd never known.<br />
<br />
His father was a fighter pilot in the second world war, in the pathfinder squadron. In the early parts of the war the average British bomb was something like seven miles off target. This was partly due to bombers having to unload early due to heavy anti-aircraft fire but also due to how hard it was to bomb targets from the air.<br />
<br />
The pathfinders, whose average lifespan was measurable in days I believe, were formed to help solve this problem. They flew ahead of the bombing raids, flying low and dropping flares on targets. After this the average distance of a bomb from the target went down to only a couple of miles I think. It was said they could land a flare on a target the size of a barn door.<br />
<br />
My Grandmother spent the whole war certain he wasn't going to come back. He did come back, but then two years after the war he died as the copilot of a plane that crashed in a memorial parade.<br />
<br />
Grandmother was then the single mother of two young children in post war Britain. My father still remembers rationing. She met John Foord and married him, he raised my father and his sister Jill as his own and had two more children with my Grandmother. He was a difficult man, hard to love, but he was good to me. My name is Michael John Foord.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>That gentle flush of happiness</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Rising effortlessly</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Ending in a smile</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>And I smile back</i></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-548360885330183770.post-1919529986750567922020-01-24T03:56:00.004+00:002021-10-12T15:04:56.889+01:00Tales From the Past: Pungent Effulgent, The Serbian and Nightmare on Watling Street<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<h3><p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">You can read more of my story in:</p><div style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;"><ul><li><a href="https://www.michaelfoord.co.uk/search/label/biography">My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind</a></li></ul></div></h3><h3>
Pungent Effulgent</h3>
<div>
<div>
We've just passed the thirty year anniversary of the release of Pungent Effulgent by Ozric Tentacles. It's epic.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've seen Ozric Tentacles live twice, several years apart and both times on their "last ever" tour. Once in Cambridge and once in Northampton.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On the Northampton occasion I sneaked out of the commune, against strict orders and with no money to go and see them. My "shepherd", the one to whom I was accountable, demanded I didn't go with a command "as if from the Lord". I told him I didn't see it like that and cadged a lift with one of the brightly coloured minibuses taking volunteers from the farm to the various town commune houses.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A lovely woman who liked me bought me the ticket. After the show I told her I wouldn't go out with her (I had already told her that!) and had to find a different lift back home to the commune.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The first occasion, Cambridge about 1994, was at the Corn Exchange, when I was at university and prior to going mad. There was no ecstasy around at the time so I swallowed an eighth of hard slate hash in order to get high. I'm pretty sure it went straight through me. I didn't get high but Ozric Tentacles were good.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The Serbian</h3>
<div>
<div>
We're en-route to Croatia. Still a hundred miles to Turin where we're stopping for the night.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't think I've ever met a Croatian, not a memorable one anyway. I worked for several years for a charity, which mainly helped the homeless and disadvantaged, run by the cult I lived with for ten years. There I met people from many Eastern European countries, but not Croatia.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've met a Serbian. She was very attractive, a sharp kind of beauty that I admire but am not particularly drawn to. I was high on LSD at the time, this was some years ago and at the Niagara Falls. Night may not be the best time to see the falls, all lit up like cotton candy, but you can feel the power of the place and it makes for a great trip. I was with a couple of friends, this was the expedition of the Delaware biting flies. One of my friends was coming to terms with a hard thing, which is not best done on LSD, so we drank whisky too. In large enough quantities alcohol will eventually overpower acid. I had no money, nor access to money as I'd left my wallet on a train on the way to the flight, so I drank on other peoples' dime.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the bar we met an old friend of one of my companions. She lived and worked in the falls and took us to a dive bar where the few locals drank. There we watched two transexuals fight in the street and get barred from the pub. I made friends with the father/mother of one of the transsexuals.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Many of the locals, friends of the friend of a friend who brought us there, were Eastern Europeans traveling and working in America for as long as their visas would permit. I played pattacake with a pretty Hungarian, at furious pace, and then we settled round a table to play "I have never" and drink vodka shots. I sat next to the Serbian beauty and managed to spit most of a vodka shot straight in her face.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I know I've definitely met a Serbian. I'm not sure if I've met a Croatian person though. I guess I will soon.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Nightmare on Watling Street</h3>
<div>
<div>
This road, the A5, has haunted me for most of my life. Well, not this road, this is the A5 in France.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the UK (how much longer will there be such a thing?) the A5, also known in parts at least as Watling Street, is a Roman Road which goes from London to Wales. Along the way it goes through Towcester (Lactodurum) and St Albans (Verulamium) both of which I've lived near.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a youth I lived in Harpenden and went to school in St Albans. Veralum School for boys. Or the torture house as I called it. Every day I would walk along part of the A5 to get to school.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Doing GCSE English Literature we read a book called Nightmare on Watling Street. A short and distressing (much like my stay at Veralum) story of a truck driver in the days before speed traps, when the word of a cop was enough for a speeding conviction. This driver is one conviction off losing his livelihood and is plagued by a mean cop the truckers despise. The trucker deals with the cop in a tragic and ingenious way. Anyway, it takes place on Watling Street is my point. The grey and gruesome tone of the book matched my experience of life at the time and it stuck with me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Fast forward a bunch of years and I'm living on goddam Watling Street, just past Towcester in a cult commune called "River Farm". Two nightmares on Watling Street in one lifetime.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And now I'm on a different A5, in a different country, homeward bound and reminiscing.</div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com