My days as a hypocrite

A few years ago someone I knew died. I went to the funeral service, saw his son his widow noted their grief, saw the unconvincing displays of those few over enthusiastic mourners that are present at most well attended funerals, puzzled at the unspoken animosity that saw his widow exclude his terminally ill mother from the chief mourners and delivered my softly spoken platitudes. I tried hard not to appear too sincere, I hated the man, not an unreasonable hatred either, he was totally despicable. His other 'son' -- adopted when he married his wife, delivered a genuinely tearful eulogy that would have moved me had it been for a worthy man, instead it made want to laugh. Today I think I would laugh, if I were to attend the funeral at all. My hypocrisy at the time was motivated by concerns that no longer apply, the person who's feelings I cared for died a year or so later.

I have occasionally encountered  his widow even though I avoid her, but I haven't done so for a while, I think the avoidance has become mutual. Which I'm glad about because, I don't have any affection for either her or her family. I don't like expressing my hatred to those it's directed at, I'm one of those people who're scrupulously polite to people they hate and quarrelsome with those they have affection for. I'm sure some would see that has hypocrisy too but I'm not attempting to deceive, it's just the way I deal with things. This way of expressing hostility does have implications for intimate relationships, women most often mistake a taciturn demeanour for gullibility. It's quite astonishing how, emboldened by this error, their deceit will descend to a level of credulity that would trouble a toddler, It's probably obvious by now that I'm single. Don't get me wrong there, I'm not a crazy misogynist who spurns women as perfidious harpies, I'm just realistic enough to understand that people lie -- quite a lot it seems and that, being male, intimate relations tend to centre around women. I think respect is more important for women where intimacy is concerned, if they think you're gullible respect is impossible and once it's gone there's no motive to temper deceit with any credibility. That's how relationships end, a spiral of mutual disdain, she despises me for my gullibility, I despise her as a hypocrite and liar.

My aversion to hypocricy probably stems from personal history, from an early age, people close to me have liberally exercised their deceit around me. I'm not blameless either, I acquiesced to their lies for my own personal convenience even though I justify it as concern for those I cared for. One regret I have is that I did not express my hatred for one individual more honestly, not with words mind you, with actions. I should have slit his throat while he sat eating supper at the table, now that would have been a good funeral but I think would have been unable to attend, being unavoidably detained elsewhere. Strangely my other chief regret concerns my reluctance to embrace hypocrisy rather than the regret of not expressing myself with honest vigour.

The conversation began innocuously enough even if the question was somewhat incongruous, "What's your religion?" Mina asked me.

"Roman Catholic," I replied, "what about you?"

"Muslim"

"What -- you're a terrorist?" I asked with a feigned ignorance, this was years before 9/11 so although it was still  mischievous it was not quite as fatal as would be today.

"No, we're not all the same," Mina's reply left me with my jaw on the floor, I half expected her to burst into tearful indignation. Instead she didn't bat an eye, just replied with the same tone she'd started the conversation, that impressed me. I continued to feign ignorance and Mina patiently proceeded to needlessly enlighten me. Something about the way she spoke and held my attention destroyed the irreverence I'd expressed earlier and I started to feel justifiably ashamed. That shame probably explains the diligence with which I answered her next questions, "Would you convert?"

"Er wha... er no, I don't think I would," If her first question had been incongruous then second was like a train crashing through the wall of building fifty miles from the nearest railway.

She acknowledged my answer with an impassive nod then asked, "Could you tell me why you wouldn't consider converting?"

At first I tried to use the historical reason, you know, the reason why they'd been killing each other across the water, which, to her credit, she seemed to have a good grasp of. She wasn't convinced though, neither was I, so I continued with the real reason. "Conviction," I said, "I don't believe in it, the bible, I think it's rubbish..." I tried my best to explain the significance of religion, how it's a badge for most people and while I'll submit to a label I was born with, I couldn't convert to anything because it would be the rankest hypocrisy.

"Yes, I understand," she nodded and the conversation ended.

I'm a bit thick I suppose and the significance of the conversation was lost on me, it wasn't until a friend who'd witnessed some of it came to me later and offered some clues to what had just gone on. Even then he was a bit vague so it didn't really sink in till some time later.

The worse kind of regret is the kind you feel for something you did or didn't do in the past but know that today, even with all the knowledge you've acquired since, you know you'd do the same thing. It's that way for me with Mina incident, she's the only girl I think of at night when I'm alone all these years later, yet I still wouldn't do the lie for her.

Atheism

As you might suspect of got a certain sympathy for atheistic thought although don't I count myself as an atheist. There's a question that's bothering me though, atheists, how the fuck they get so whiney? I saw a guy who made it clear that he considered himself oppressed for his lack of faith. I don't see it myself, it's as though atheism has become like one of those foreign countries, not intrinsically flawed it's just that you don't  want to go there because people inhabiting it are such arse-holes?

Football - the problem

You know when you take an unreasonable dislike to a public personality? Well it's that way with me with John Terry, it's a dislike that was founded for no particular rational reasons but stoked by apocrypha and rumour, circulated amongst football enthusiasts, surrounding his personal conduct off the pitch . So why does his persecution by the media, the law and the game's governing body bother me, after all I hate the guy. Well it comes down to principles, you know those things you have to defend even if doing so contradicts you own personal interests. There's no getting away from it really, if they can nail someone to the wall to make an example of them  then they can do the same to you. These affronts to civil liberty are invariably accompanied by calculated invocation of moral panic to quell any disquiet amongst reasonable people. Anyone daring to point out the irrational or unreasonable nature of the accusations gets immediately tarred with some label, you know: racist, paedo, communist, practitioner of witchcraft, same old story, same culprits.

Terry's predicament is similar in some ways to that of Glenn Hoddle, the unloved and deeply useless one-time England manager. Hoddle was ambushed by an unscrupulous journo who recycled material from Hoddle's known but relatively unpublicised barmy notions on reincarnation. The journalist claimed several damaging quotes regarding disabled people from an interview with Hoddle, ostensibly recorded shorthand, all mechanical recording devices being conveniently absent. Even though the journalist's claims were barely credible, especially amongst anyone with awareness of the habits of media professionals and robustly denied by Hoddle, the media circus embraced the story with a furious glee, lustfully relishing the opportunity to impale a personality on the rusty spike of Political Correctness. The comparison isn't perfect though because Terry actually is guilty of behaving unpleasantly, while Hoddle was more a victim of circumstance and perfidious journalism. It's just that behaving in an unpleasant manner is not a good reason to exercise your personal hatred or deluded sense of self righteousness by assaulting another person's personal liberty.

I've been to Salem, venue for the proverbial witch hunts and it's was interesting to see how the notoriety of that episode is celebrated locally more than vilified. I suppose revenue from the tourist trade might explain that but I can't help the niggling suspicion that as a culture we've regressed. The Salem trials quickly drew condemnation and horror at such hysteria and irrational behaviour. Of course we don't string people up by the neck, just ruin their careers and lives but no such moderating influences are to be witnessed in the contemporary equivalent of a witch hunt, not from folk of any influence at least, fear of having the finger of accusation pointed at you sees to that.

It's also interesting to compare Terry's treatment to that of Diane Abbott, I'm not sure I could say with any confidence from his outburst that Terry held any racist convictions. With Abbot's though, any reasonable person could safely assume her to be a committed racist but the difference in the manner in which they've been treated by authority contrasts as sharply as chalk on a blackboard. Which illustrates the principle that it's not what you say or do that counts, it's who you are and what status you hold. A beggar will be held to account for standing in plain sight a prince can get away with murder, is this where I mention Teddy Kennedy?

The Olympic games - the problem

I'm not that fond of the Olympics, I don't take my distaste for the games too far as I will watch some contests that hold interest for me. My problem with games revolves around two related issues and is mostly associated with athletics. The first is the way politics and prestige have both taken their toll on the game's integrity as a contest, one of the latest examples of which is the exclusion of the Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou. See it's not enough to be excellent, you have to submit, to what? well that's irrelevant really, it's just whichever doctrine the bureaucrats foist on you at the time and no half hearted acquiescence will do either, you have to signal your endorsement with enthusiasm. Historically this was more of a problem associated with the recognised totalitarian regimes, you know the ones, the various flavours of Germany, the Soviets, et cetera. Then there's the numerous boycotts organised under various causes, you're racist, you've invaded Afganistan, you don't put vinegar on your chips.  All these are sponsored by state governments, which incidentally the various national Olympic committees are supposed to autonomous from according the Olympic charter.

The second reason is the nature of athletic contests, they're called The Olympic Games for a reason, they were conceived at a time when sport was supposed to fun. In fact the very monica sport has only been applied this to kind of activity recently to add gravity, previously it had been reserved for hunting, shooting and fishing. The problem with athletics is they're raw, the rules are perfunctory: wait for the gun, don't trip anyone up, run fast, that's about it really. So all things being equal, the guy who wins is going to be the naturally gifted athlete who's lucky on the day. All well and good when it's a game, just some fun enjoyed by amateurs but it's not a game anymore is it? It's about prestige and power conducted through proxies who've spent their lives dedicated to the goal of winning, who've had their bodies enhanced through rigorous diets, drugs and medical procedure. These people, at least the successful ones, rarely have a life outside their athletic ambitions. Sure they select suitable raw material to feed the sausage machine but these days winners are made not born. And this is where the points are related, winning has become too important to be left to natural talent, you have to have the right winner, the right look, the right complexion, the right views.

It's not absolute of course, talent will win through against the greatest challenge to frustrate people who'd have it all their own way. It's just that you don't find many such examples in the Olympics, there're not many real people's champions like: Alex Higgins, John McEnroe, George Best. The best example of an Olympian who was a people's champion, that I can think of, was Eddie the Eagle and what did they do? they changed the rules to exclude him.

Politics part 1 -- The me manifesto

I find it difficult to segue my political views into the conventional left/right spectrum and I've got serous reservations about the usefulness of that paradigm. It's obvious to me that the labels left and right are applied relatively and are dependant upon the context within which people express their political views and I don't see that view is seriously contestable. Yes I know that a lot of folk align themselves with collective entities, usually political institutions that seek to identify themselves as either left or right but that's by no means the majority and those who do, seem to me to be motivated more by a desire to seek out collective assurance than by personal conviction. Which is  why the most ardent and vociferous of political proponents tend to be young and naive, that's where the failings of older and smarter people, you know the ones who should know better are most apparent. I can forgive youngsters for being naive, I'm not so charitable with the dried up cynics who deceive them and exploit their youthful exuberance.

I hesitate to describe myself as a libertarian, not because I'm  shying away from the now greatly diminished stigma that is attached to that label but I do see a certain necessity in the collective principle. It's quite a limited necessity in my view though, I usually express it by referencing Pharaoh's dream. Yes that's right, I'm citing The Old Testament, the part where Joseph deciphers a dream about the seven fat and seven thin cows and interprets it as a portent of famine, as a result a policy of grain storage is implemented. Of course you can't store grain unless you overproduce it and luckily for us in the developed world, most of our leaders have retained some inkling of that wisdom seeing the necessity of deferring the commercial imperatives of the market place within the context of agriculture. Which is why we don't have a famine every decade, unfortunately without adequate restraint and discipline such an arrangement is open to abuse and corruption, which is why we suffer the appalling insanity of The Common Agricultural Policy.

So I'm not left or right or libertarian, what else aren't I or can I describe my political views in positive terms? How about Nazi or Fascist, well I do occasionally fantasize about sending certain folk a on one way trip to Lower Silesia, accompanied by their families and loved ones. I picture myself waving a hanky at them as the cattle trucks pull out of the railway siding: "Goodbye Mr. Cameron, goodbye Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle. Ta ta Germaine enjoy the view, you should find a bucket in the corner if nature calls." As a general rule though I can't take those labels seriously and if I'm participating in a discussion where they're used outside their historical context I usually leave the room. I say usually because those terms although hackneyed are not totally redundant, for instance it can be useful to draw comparisons between the post 97 Super-Consumer era and the cronyistic policies of Italian fascism but such comparisons pass somewhat stratospherically over the heads of most who use those terms. So think of me of a kind of secular nihilist, if you've got a political doctrine -- I don't believe it. Doctrine is the product of collective reasoning, the  political entities resulting from such are organs of aggregated self interest which inspire that very reasoning, a nauseating merry-go-round of convenient self justification. Is this where I mention Feminism and Political Correctness?

Comming soon in: Politics part 2 Submission to collective will and how it relates to personal responsibility

Titus Morry

Titus Morry dug this hole

Better money than the dole

He lived his life as a mole

Just another greasy prole

Worked so hard keep to his wife

Never thought of his own life

Married to perpetual strife

Till he took that serrated knife

The final row in the kitchen

Here's a tool to stop that bitchin

Another hole lined with lichen

Wonder when she'll stop that twitchin

Tried to take the kids away

Found a way to make her pay

She'll never see another day

Whatever will the neighbours say?

Now's the time to call Police

Equivocate like Myrlin Rees

Wonders -- should I call my niece?

Who knew murder could be such bliss?

Oh dear that's a nasty Rhyme

Never could spare that much time

For a poem too sublime

Please forgive this heinous crime

Titus Morry lies so deftly

Life's so hard since she left me

I just thank god for young Daphne

Eyes his niece with breasts so hefty

The Stunt Poem

Warning this post uses language that may be offensive to some

My encounters with notoriety are brief and tenuous amongst them I number the promulgation of the phrase, spitting feathers, in relation to a fit of ineffectual anger another is the authorship of what I call, The Stunt Poem. Both these cause me a certain amount of amusement when I encounter them. it's something of a surprise to me that, spitting feathers, has worked it's way into respectable parlance seeing as the imagery evoked seems rather obvious. It was coined in reference to a senior colleague prone to panic and scapegoating those around him and it references an implied homosexual relationship with a junior staff member, feathers -- spitting -- geddit now? The Stunt Poem arouses amusement for a more subtle reason, I can't help recall the reaction of the first woman I recited it to. First lets show the original text of the poem then I'll explain:

Oh what a jolly stunt
to lick around your girlfriend's cunt
if you make her moan and cry
she'll suck your knob if she's not shy

Her response causes amusement because it was so naive and illustrated the enormous disparity between our perceptual models of the world. She said something along the lines of, "Using vulgar languages isn't funny, it would be better if you substituted a different rhyme." Er yes, I'm a Benny Hill fan too but that's not quite the effect I was looking for.

Incidentally a guy called Terry, who was vociferous lefty, piped up with another amusing response, he complained it, "Didn't scan!" amongst other pretentious claims.

"Oh really" I responded, "Terry, what does that mean exactly? You know --'scan' what does that mean when someone  says a poem doesn't scan." He went a red colour and tried to bullshit his way out of that one as was his habit when he found himself out of his depth --which was a frequently.