Part of my motive for getting involved in the smallholding was to understand, and gain some experience of, the process in which animals are reared and processed to produce the steak or joint in the butchers. With this in mind, we recently took the pigs to slaughter at a local abattoir.

I wasn’t really sure how emotional this was going to be, since I had been seeing the pigs almost daily for months, watching them grow from little piglets to full grown porkers. The abattoir we used didn’t slaughter them on arrival, as many do, but bedded them down overnight and killed them the next day, in theory making the process less stressful for the pigs but also meaning we didn’t actually get to see the kill ourselves. When we came to pick up the carcasses the next day it was certainly a strange experience; to think these now skinned lifeless halves of pig were running around in their pen just a few days before. The abattoir had left the heads attached which made the transition much more acute, once the heads are off they look much more like giant joints of meat than dead pigs. From an emotional perspective, I didn’t really feel much. I didn’t feel guilt at having killed these animals, I always knew that they were there for meat, and I knew that they had lived a full and comfortable, if short, life. It is strange now to look at their pen now as it becomes overgrown, but soon there will be new piglets, and so goes the circle of life.

The butchery was a much more practical and physical activity, I would never have imagined there was so much hard work involved in cutting up a pig. It was interesting to learn all the cuts and processes involved, I certainly gained a better understanding of the way in which different parts of the animal are used and the ingenious ways to preserve the meat long term - absolutely vital for the smallholder using the hog to feed his family. Compared to most of my skills which relate to academic knowledge and technology, it’s good to get a chance to try something much more ancient and close to nature, butchery must be one of the oldest skills developed by humans.

We also killed a group of the cockerels as we had some new hens arriving and wanted to cut down on any potential fighting in the run. Unlike with the pigs, the whole process was done ourselves, there was no abattoir to handle the dirty work. We have a special device for breaking their necks which is blunt, and so breaks the spine without cutting through the flesh. The first thing I learnt was that breaking a neck is a fair bit harder than expected. These were full grown birds, maybe six months old, as opposed to standard shop birds which are killed at 10-12 weeks old. This means they were pretty strong, and it took our whole weight on the lever to break the neck. When a chicken dies, it flaps around for a good minute or two (like a headless chicken) as all the muscles in the body spasm. This was a new and somewhat alarming experience for me, I had never killed anything bigger than a spider and to have an animal that is technically dead writhing around in your hand is certainly bizarre. Once these death throws had finished however, I found it quite easy to view the chicken as a carcass, a future meal, rather than a now dead bird. The change felt less profound with the chicken, as opposed to the pig, since a chicken is a pretty simple creature, whilst a pig is more like a dog or a horse, they are surprising intelligent. Of course, there is still the utterly fundamental transition between life and death in each case.

After the chickens had been killed, we had to pluck and gut them - something else which was done by the abattoir for the pigs. This was also quite bizarre, ripping the feathers from the skin, thinking about how these hard feathery things had grown from flesh/tissue which in turn had grown from little grey pellets and bits of corn. Growth is such a remarkable thing. After the plucking came the gutting, which was certainly the most unpleasant part of the process. Food in the supermarket is so clean and sterile, I think it’s important to see that an animal is a being with hearts, lungs, kidneys, just like us, even if it means getting your hands dirty.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to learn these new skills. I’ve been reading a great deal about food production processes recently and it’s fantastic to gain some real first hand knowledge and experience, not to mention some meat that tastes fantastic from well looked after animals.

Autumn is here.

The next candidate I would like to consider as part of my Modern Cathedrals series (Part 1 here) is the stadium.

Stadiums are amongst the largest, most open and community-centred buildings of our time. A stadium is one of the few buildings where tens of thousands of people can come together for a single purpose, or to view a single event.

Barack Obama’s recent address at the DNC presents a good allegory through which we can explore the religious aspects of the stadium. Here we have thousands of people coming together in ‘worship’ of a captivating figure; by observing some of the members of the audience and their emotional response to his speech, we see that this was certainly a borderline religious event in and of itself. The choice of a Hellenic themed stage and twilight timing only served to strengthen the ethereal nature of the experience. In our allegory we have Obama acting as both the God figure and the head of the church (the papal authority perhaps). That is, people have come to see him, but they have also come to receive a message, a political/ideological message that they can apply to their own selves and actions and also spread to others. We can see the vote as a parallel of belief, and the grass roots campaigner represents the evangelical nature of the lay christian, at least from a short term perspective. Just to round out the metaphor, the media and campaign team can act as the clergy, although there are of course key differences relating to vested interests and their structure is far from hierarchical.

Such a speech is a rare event, seldom does politics draw the masses in quite the way Obama has done. More generally, stadiums form the stage for sporting events. Club football stadiums especially, seem to be tightly analogous to cathedrals; a building where the local community can come together to worship, in a sense.

I came up with a few explanations for why people are drawn to stadiums to watch sport. Most obviously, people attend in pursuit of a feeling of unity, to be a part of an immense mutual desire to see a team win. Not only does this support the team and the team brand, but it provides a sense of warmth and belonging to the individual supporter. We can see this sense of unity not only through the almost militaristic use of team colours, slogans etc, but through the way a supporter tends to align themselves with one particular club whilst directing animosity towards all overs. This is seen more clearly from a national perspective, and represents a (usually) violence free manifestation of a more general national pride. In the past we would have had a war to relieve some of this national fervour, but now we can express it through international sporting events. The sense of unity in a stadium of people united together is tangible. There’s nothing quite like being with thousands of other people all cheering for the same thing to ignite passion and loyalty (as religious and political organisations well know).

We see a similar idea in churches and cathedrals, a community united towards a common goal of spreading the gospel and glorifying God; here again both the individual and the church (team) benefits and animosity is often directed towards unbelievers. The brand of the team is perhaps the most important ideological figure in the stadium; the team members come and go, but the idea of a club remains. This runs parallel to the gospel message, although ’the team’ is much more vague and fails to promise any sort of divine reward or effect the more general thoughts and actions of the supporter. Interestingly, many churchgoers I know seem to be primarily interested in the benefits of being part of the church community, rather than religion itself. Perhaps in our present day current-life rewards and concerns are often worth more than the eternal ones, even within Christianity.

Stadiums can also compete with the spiritual-architectural power of a cathedral. Take, for example, the Chinese bird’s nest stadium for the Olympics. Not only is it an immense physical construction, but it is positively soaking in ideological significance. A united China, a powerful competent nation, a celebration of sport and unity, a political statement; all these are valid depending on your point of view. Club stadiums flaunt the wealth and prestige of the team, the bigger the stadium the greater the club, the stronger the community (or, more cynically, the richer the chairman). Cathedrals were made magnificent with the clear aim of bringing glory to God, stadiums on the other hand are much more diverse in their ideological aims.

Stadiums provide a location for communal celebration, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that sport fans already outnumber religious people worldwide. Hence the stadium seems to be where at least a portion of our new religious pursuits lie.

Here’s a wallpaper I made from a photo taken at an abandoned theme park at the top of a hill in San Sebastian (click for full size).

I love abandoned places like this. The park was opened in 1909 or thereabouts, and there are plaques commemorating the monarch coming to visit, but now it’s almost totally closed down, slowly rotting at the top of this mountain. The atmosphere is tangible, the boarded up rides and stalls hinting at the thriving tourist destination the place once was. There’s even a barely-running hotel still there, although it didn’t look like it would be around for too much longer.

Visiting the park felt like a peek behind the scenes, a little window into a past era, just a glimpse, before the place is bulldozed and replaced with some new contemporary tourist centre, as it undoubtedly will be due to its prime location. It’s like looking round a derelict 19th century factory in the east end of London. It’s an opportunity to glimpse a place where so many people spent their lives, such a weight of memories, before it’s all flattened and redeveloped. I find the sense of history and departed life so powerful in these places.

I’ve been to places before where theme parks have been left abandoned because they are falling into the sea; it’s strange to see a place falling into the past, falling victim to erosion from the progression of time. The whole rest of the town is a bustling tourist centre, but this place at the top of the hill seems to have been forgotten, to have fallen off the map. I imagine that redevelopment plans are already well on their way…

Recently I came across the idea of the competent man, which partly sums up the direction in which I am currently heading. In the wikipedia article the author Robert Heinlein summarises the idea as follows:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.“

This idea follows from the specialisation vs wide-knowledge debate that I have briefly written about in the past. I’ve gradually decided over the past few years that I want to move in the wide-knowledge direction. It means I pass up the possibility of going far in academia, but I never had a great desire to follow that path anyway and I think the wide-knowledge direction will be ultimately more wholesome and beneficial. University was largely a time of specialisation in intellectual activities, particularly mathematics. In contrast, over the past few months I have really been trying to get some new practical experiences with the aim of obtaining knowledge, and more importantly, experience in a range of new areas. I see university as the ’solve equations’, ‘analyze a new problem’ and ‘plan an invasion’ part of Heinlein’s description, but that leaves an awful lot of things left to learn. The smallholding has taught me how to ‘butcher a hog’ and ‘pitch manure’ and a whole host of other physical things.

I think my list would have many more things than Heinlein’s (I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be complete), ‘bring up a child’ and ‘be content in himself’ are the two that most readily some to mind. I don’t think I could ever produce any sort of exhaustive list, and of course that is part of the point. The Competent Man needs to move as he himself changes and as the world around him changes, it could be argued that the most important train of the Competent Man is that he is always growing, always moving forward. That’s my plan.

All over Europe, and much of the rest of the world, there are vast majestic cathedrals dedicated to God. Now that, as society at least, we have pretty much lost God, where are the new cathedrals? Who are they dedicated to? I’ve had a few ideas for potential candidates and I’m going to run a little series exploring each of them:

The Mall (Shopping Centres)

If the religion of our time is ‘Consumerism’, then would that not make shopping centres our new cathedrals? They certainly seem to be the most widespread buildings where people come together to “worship” (or at least support the prevailing ideology). Products have replaced the holy spirit and cooperations form the new clergy. I see socioeconomic status as the ‘presence of God’ or ‘Heaven’, the big difference being that all the fruits of Consumerism are instant and here in this life, whilst heaven is a future reward.

The Christian clergy, for much of it’s instituationalised reign, controlled the Truth by being literate in a world of general illiteracy. This allowed it to get across it’s own message without having to worry too much about the common parishoner questioning what it was saying. Consumerism has had to take a different approach, preaching a much more abstract and subconscious message that is open to widespread criticism, but which has still managed to be stunningly successful. What constitutes authentic Consumerism is shaped and controlled through commercial power, capital and education to a certain extent (marketing men are educated in the manipulation of markets and individuals).

Art, often in the form of stained glass windows, is common in cathedrals and helped the illiterate surf to learn and understand bible stories, enabling them to advance in the religion or obtain guidance on how to live via the Poor Man’s Bible. With Consumerism, the stories have spread from the cathedral and now permeate all media, but their purpose remains broadly the same. The key emotional incentive drawing people to the cathedral has changed from one of fear (of hell) to one of potential rewards (a better life), but the other sides of the coin (Heaven and, for example, fear of crime) are still important. Advertisements have become the parables of our age, and PR departments are the new disciples.

It’s unfortunate that even with the vast wealth that Consumerism commands, it has been unable to build anything even remotely as majestic as a middle-age cathedral. Ultimately the mall is a building designed for utility; a blank canvas for where individual companies can display their own short term architecture and art. It’s difficult to imagine people travelling to look at our shopping centres in hundreds of years time. If they do it will likely be from a ‘look at this stunning squandering of the Earth’s resources’ viewpoint.

Who are we worshipping here? Ourselves? That’s what the individualistic nature of Consumerism would suggest. But perhaps that’s really an illusion, perhaps we are worshiping the characters in the stories, the people in the adverts. Or are we worshipping fate and fortune? The act of purchasing could represent a prayer to Fortune, as if to say ‘I’ve bought this, now bring me what I want like you promised - to be happy and successful (or whatever) like the people in the adverts’. If this is true, then Consumerism seems to revolve around the same core idea of Christianity and many other religions: action (or worship) yields rewards.

So how does the shopping centre fare as the new cathedral? It certainly has the physical presence, but its message and purpose is obscure when compared to the direct concrete ideology of Christianity, even if it has been arguably more successful. I’ll look at some more potential candidates over the coming weeks.

I find I notice clouds much more in photographs than I do in real life…

As well as helping out on the smallholding, I have decided to keep a couple of chickens of my own in the back garden. The most satisfying outcome of this decision so far has been the construction of their run. I employed the help of a carpenter friend and we managed to create a pretty fantastic chicken house, working from a vague plan mixed with our own ideas we had as we went along. I really enjoyed the physicality of getting bits of wood, cutting them up, screwing them together and seeing a new construct come into being. The process was a lot more complex than I had initially imagined, and there were plenty of times when we had to take a step back and think again about what we are doing because some unanticipated problem had cropped up. I’m used to solving mathematical problems, but these 3D problems involving materials and their limitations pushed my mind into new areas, areas requiring much more intuitive spacial knowledge and experience. I learnt alot about using timber, if I had to make the same thing again I’m sure I could do it less than half the time, but I’m also sure that new problems would crop up.

This dabble in the world of construction made me marvel at the immense constructs mankind has managed to create. If we had trouble getting the angles right on a few bits of wood, it’s unbelievable that people are able to make skyscrapers almost a kilometre high. Even looking at classical architecture, roman buildings for example, is amazing. They didn’t have computers, electronic tools or even much mathematics to help them but they managed to construct giant magnificent buildings that are still standing now.

From a different perspective, I was conscious of the environmental impact of our construction. We were only using a few planks of pine, but working with the materials and understanding their carpentry-related properties made me appreciate that we were actually using living matter taken from the environment around us. When you are in a house, or a bigger building, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the construction materials have at some point been harvested or dug out of the earth. When thinking about environmental impact we focus so much on energy use that sometimes we lose sight of this most fundamental of relationships between ourselves and the land around us. I guess they all tie together though, since fossil fuels are extracted from the earth, and they were once animals and plants…

Having completed the run, christened ‘chickenopolis’, it’s fantastic to be able to look out of the window and see the physical outcome of my labour, it certrainly makes a satisfying change from intellectual work.

I’ve been helping a friend out on his smallholding for the past few months; feeding the animals, mucking out, doing manual labour, that sort of stuff. I’m not really sure what my motives were for getting involved, but in retrospect I wanted to get into some skill based, anti-intellectual activities after studying for so long. When I am working, working with my hands or my body, I’m not really thinking, part of my mind is focusing on the task at hand but most of it is just spinning around in this subconscious messy state. I get the same feeling when I’m exercising or cycling. It’s as though my mind isn’t quite big enough to focus on the task at hand and simultaneously sustain a line of thought, so it just cobbles together a load of random thoughts instead.

It’s partly liberating, to not really be thinking about anything, but also frustrating. I’ve got into the habit of feeling like I am wasting time if I am not doing something intellectually productive, whether that’s reading, writing, meditating, thinking or whatever. I feel as though I am being unproductive when my brain is vegetating. I’m trying to get out of this mindset and get a bit more space in my head, but I’m also hoping that leaving my thoughts to their own devices for a while will help my brain organise itself and that when I get back to ‘thinking properly’ my head will be clearer than it was before. I also get frustrated with the erratic mess of all these half-thoughts whirling round in my head, It makes me wish I could meditate properly and obtain some peace and tranquility to balance out the chaos.

Regardless, it’s a interesting new experience, and I’m enjoying learning some physical skills. It’s fantastic to feel the effects of working in my muscles and bones.

I’m thinking about making the site more picture based, perhaps with some pictures tied into posts. Most of them will be my own work, like this below which was taken on the north coast of Spain (with a little photoshop adjustment).

Well, I’ve been away from the site for a long time, but now I am back. I don’t really have any notion of where I want to take TheSimulacra now, so I’m hoping that things will evolve naturally and eventually I will discover some sort of new direction, but I have no idea how long that will take.

Plenty has happened in my life this year, so I thought i would outline some key things to provide some sort of background to my writing. I have finished university and now have a math degree, which brought to a close my three years of university and, for now at least, my formal education. I didn’t really want to jump straight into work, so over the summer I have been trying to think about where I want to go in life and trying to find some new sources of inspiration. I’ve been helping a friend out on his smallholding, we have pigs, chickens, goats… which has made a fantastic change from the intellectual life I’ve had for the last few years. I’ve also been spending time with friends before they go off on new adventures in the autumn.

Having had the background goal of obtaining my degree for most of my life up to this point, I am now in a transition phase. I have no idea where I want to go next, and I’m not really comfortable where I am, so I’m hoping that by writing some more here I’ll be able to get some thoughts and ideas into shape and hopefully carve out a new direction.

Thanks for sticking with me over my long hibernation, I don’t know how often I’ll be posting now, but I’m planning on establishing some sort of regular rhythm.

I’m going to take a break from the blog for the next few months. I don’t feel in the right place for writing at the moment, and I know the coming months are going to be really hectic, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a break and think about what I want The Simulacra to be and where I want to take it next. I might post something now and then, but I probably wont be writing regularly again until the summer. The best way to know if I’ve written anything is to subscribe to the feed (If you don’t know what that is, you can learn about feeds here). Thanks for reading; I’ll be back soon…

Over the past few months I’ve been spending a lot of time in the library, so I thought I’d write a post about the nature of ‘the library’ and what it means to me. My somewhat rose tinted view of libraries looks a bit like this, constructed through the libraries I have read about in Discworld books and Borges’ Library of Babel, which is described as follows:

When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon [shelf]. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future.

A place which differs somewhat from my university library.

Still, as I sit there daydreaming I’m thinking of how many of the great thinkers whom I have taken ideas from would have spent years surrounded by similar bookshelves hacking away at the questions of the universe. Being surrounded by such vast amounts of knowledge and history instills ideals of intellectual mastery and progression in me,  but also makes me realise that even if I was to devote my life purely to learning from this day forth I’d barely even get through a shelf or two.

It humbles me as an individual; were I to write a book it would be but a drop in ocean amongst the billions of words contained on the sprawling shelves. Here in the library is the most important history of the human race, the ideas of mankind put to print and presented in their insurmountable glory; so much material yet infinitely lacking when compared with what has never been documented. Our efforts to record and explain the cosmos, the human experience, so neatly contained within a building. There’s a long way to go.

I love the power of the cold on my face. All my thoughts can’t bring me warmth, all my barriers to the outside fail when confronted with the needs of my body.

I don’t handle the cold well, my frame isn’t designed for extremes. In fact, both my flesh and my mind are always less resilient than I imagine. I need peace and quiet and calm to write, hence the lack of updates; more than that I need vast amounts of time to think and organise my thoughts, something I’ve not had for months now. But that’s ok. I’m finding it exciting to be constantly unsure of where I am and where I’m going; I’m finding value in places I hadn’t expected, I’m skating on the waters where I used to swim. Maybe I’ll have a chance to organise my intentions when I’m home for Christmas; hedonism takes many forms, as I am discovering…

So much for structure, if anything I’ve gone the other way.

More words soon. 

I’m taking a break from writing for a few weeks, back soon.

I’m growing into the idea that a good death is not so much a death where I have chosen the time and place, but where I have some level of control over the event. I used to believe the best way to die was in the setting of my making, my choosing; not necessarily suicide, but where it’s me that pulls the trigger (metaphorically, or even literally).

For example I used to fear drowning, or death-by-flames, and I am obviously still not exactly joyful about the idea of dying in these ways, not least because of the physical pain involved. However I no longer fear the isolation and ‘inhumanity’ of this type of death. My previous ‘death of choice’ would be the jump from a cliff or the envelopment in a fireworks factory explosion.

Clarification: When I talk about control over the event I am meaning mental control more than physical control (although this can play a part). To be able to stand there and think ‘I am ready to die, I accept death’, that is the good death. To have a constant awareness that death is real, death will come, and death is likely the second most important event in your life.

However it happens, don’t fear the reaper; ‘Fear is the mind killer’ as F. Herbert would say.

From Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a (brilliant and witty) story about a man who turns into a woman, this bit is set around 1750:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us. For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlando’s skirt, he had an awning stretched for her immediately, pressed her to take another slice of beef, and invited her to go ashore with him in the long–boat. These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts, instead of flowing, been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we are paid compliments, it behoves us to make some return. Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man’s humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman’s skirts, and his braided coat a woman’s satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. So, having now worn skirts for a considerable time, a certain change was visible in Orlando, which is to be found, even in her face. If we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of Orlando as a woman we shall see that though both are undoubtedly one and the same person, there are certain changes. The man has his hand free to seize his sword, the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same.

In our image-centred society, clothes are a big deal. A good percentage of the high street seems to be clothes shops, or at least shops whose core product is clothing. Why do we spend so much money on clothing? What makes us buy the particular style of clothes we choose to wear?

I’ve always gone for the fairly straight edge bland clothing look, mainly because I don’t have the guts (or funds) to walk around in a pinstripe suit with slacks, a bowler hat and a cane, which is my ultimate aim, but also just out of laziness and my dislike of shopping-centre shopping. I do think clothing choice says a lot about the wearer, but I’m far more concerned about the post-image stages of human interaction than immediate appearances, so I try not over-emphasise clothing and presentation. I think one of my future ‘projects’ will be to experiment with some different clothing ideas to see how they affect social intercourse.

Although it is a sweeping generalization, I find that within social groups (most obviously when we are young) people want to dress like others, they want to be “in fashion” (in the loosest sense of the phrase), but at the same time nobody wants to be caught wearing exactly the same clothes as somebody else (with a few exceptions). Clothing is a fairly unique product in this sense, that a person wants to look the same and fit in with everyone else, but also wants to be individual and stand out at the same time. Clothes differ from other products, such as an iPod, because everyone has (more or less) exactly the same iPod, and that’s what counts - pure single product ownership. This is why we end up with lots of clothes shops, selling pretty much the same thing, with slight but important differences.

Clothing choice enables us to have a sense of belonging, but also a sense of individuality and uniqueness at the same time; security and freedom; acquiescence, apathy and (in some cases) a platform for communication. All of which are rather fundamental aspects of our lives - aspects which can be expressed and cultivated through our purchases.

[Picture from qube. Check out Rachael King's post on the same subject.]

Recently I have been feeling a real urgency in my soul, as if now is the time to really get going, the time for change and real unparalleled progress. To a certain extent I always have this feeling around this time of the year as I’m beginning a new university year, a chance to start afresh all over again and really pour myself into the tasks ahead before fatigue and the mundane flow back into me. I’ve written recently about growing in the aesthetic and reconstructing of my aims and ideals, which has happened to me before, but now there’s an urgency and excitement about it that I have not felt before; I imagine it has something to do with the fact this is my last year (probably) at University, my last chance to do things here.

My life is a constant cycle of procrastination, there are so many opportunities all around me for growth and progression, yet I still manage to spend most of my day doing very little. Part of me is ashamed at my lack of energy and application; part of me, to a certain extent at least, believes indolence is necessary and helpful, that the time spent doing ‘nothing’ gives me the space I need to process and subconsciously take hold of the thoughts, feelings and ideas conceived when I am doing ’something’. For example, I probably sleep too much, time that could be spent acquiring knowledge, but sleep helps me sort out the knowledge I have gained during the day meaning I don’t end up getting swamped in an ever deepening pool of information.

In the past I have always reasoned that I need this space, but now I am feeling that this is more an excuse for inactivity than a healthy viewpoint, I start to abuse the balance and become less active as a result. I’ve found that one of the best ways to regain the balance is to have structure; over the summer I often haven’t had commitments during the day which has enabled me to sleep in late, and nap in the afternoon - I justify this by reasoning that I will stay up late and get things done - but then I just head to bed at the normal time. Without structure I fall into a rhythm of lethargy and inaction, it takes far more discipline to get things done when you have no time constraints or set points in your day. I’m hoping now that I am back at university I’ll be able to establish a rhythm of action through the increased structure of the week.

I’ve been reading some ‘life pointers’ from different websites and organisation recently, and many of them seem to contain this recurring idea of structure, control and action, especially that of structuring your day around reflection and introspection, often they just provide a kick up the backside for people to start doing something with their day other than sitting in front of the TV. For example, meditation CDs present a form of structure, to meditate for half an hour a day is a set time of intense introspection and hence intense progress, a time out to think about who you are and what you are doing, a process from which often comes action. Christians grow when they spend alot of time reading scriptures and in spiritual meditation, which is often acheived through structured study. Children have set daily routines to grow and learn discipline; even material-secularism gives us structure though the prevalent ideas of customisation and products to fill every need, the ideal advertisement-presented life involves gym, television, friday night socialisng, ipod on the tube, picking the kids up from school, yearly summer holidays…

As usual, it’s about balance: structure and space.

I wrote a little while ago about how I felt I was maturing in the aesthetic, this growth is coming to a head now, everything around me has taken on a slightly different colour, a slightly different façade. For example, over the summer I have developed a broader range of things which I see as valuable, and have learnt to really look around me and feel the beauty and power contained in normal every-day things; a previously boring walk though my local estate has become a wealth of beauty, history and expanded fiction. I find myself making up stories about the places and people I see, thinking about the history and future of the standard-yet-unique things all around me. As I walk to the shop I’m seeing families and imagining their lives, how they ended up living on this street, where they are going next, how their children will grow up and what sort of world they will inherit.

I’m seeing geometry where I previously saw just buildings, I’m seeing photography where I previously saw just streetlamps to light my way home, I’m seeing waves and oceans in the approaching rainclouds… In some ways this growth has made me more distanced from ‘reality’, I can feel further from the faces that walk past me, more detached from the cultural and political forces pressing upon me, distant from the motives I once had; but in other ways I am closer and more enveloped in what is going on around me than I have ever been, I feel close, involved in a near timeless sense with the omnipresent movement and flow constantly giving birth to life, beauty and death. It’s not as if I’ve found god, or found Gaia, it’s a change within myself rather than a change to the world around me, maybe even the cleansing of another set of doors of perception.

I found this fantastic picture when browsing a stock photography site a little while ago:

I don’t know whether the artist intended to write ‘looser’ or ‘loser’, but I like to imagine he or she spelt it that way on purpose, rather than it just being poor spelling (although this is entirely possible, the graffiti is from Lisbon, Portugal).

I have started dropping it into conversation now and then, if you say it fast enough people don’t catch the last word and it’s interesting to see the different responses you get, whether they interpret it as loser or looser; perhaps when it is ambiguous people are likely to hear the phrase which fits with the philosophy they believe, the christian hears loser, the ardent agnostic hears looser.

At different times in my life, or even from day to day, you could place me into either interpretation. Mostly I believe that you can be more ‘free’ without inflexible dogma, but I also believe in ‘cosmic-objective’ moral truth (as in good and evil are more than bio-evolutionary products); I believe in truth, but my idea of the nature of truth is flexible and constantly being knocked down and rebuilt. A good way to look at it could be “Without a truth you are the loser”, even if that truth is “there is no truth”; the place not to be is that of not caring or not thinking about truth.

As time goes on I find myself less attached to truths I once held dear, especially those of a political or philosophical nature; as I learn more I realise just how limited my knowledge is, I am infinitely ignorant. I have become less eager to subscribe to any ideology or movement or to place myself on the political compass because I don’t want to commit without enough information, but I will never possess enough information. This give me more freedom to criticise and to move between ideas, but also means that I have less constructive ideals of my own to share.