All this talk about society, existence, life and living and I’ve gone and forgotten about myself

HAR. HAR. WE SUCK.

"It all keeps adding up,
I think I'm cracking up,
Am I just paranoid?
Am I just stoned?"

-Green Day

At the end of this series, I can’t help but to feel pretty sorry and rather pessimistic about the current state of affairs of the ‘civilised’ Western world and just civilization in general. People are angry, the news media is ravenous, we’re tiny and stupid, and I’m losing my mind. I think a nice way to round off the series is to satisfy my ego and to simply ramble incoherently about topics which seem to have something to do with me on a slightly more personal level. Do not worry weary reader, I shall attempt to make this interesting… errrr I shall try my best anyway.

What I say may sound poignantly melodramatic, like an attention deficient teenager crying out for help, praying or hoping for intervention. So instead, let’s hang on to that hope, it is an excellent abstract. Oh the cruel, cold, cankerous irony. I wrote about depression being sold to us sheep… and in the process went and created my own pit of despair. At least mine is home-made, it has that personal feel to it. I don’t need to buy mine from Sky News, The Sun or CNN. In this way, am I a hypocrite? Or is that a bit extreme? Perhaps not knowing the answer to that question adds to the confusing depression. If I knew that I had spiralled out of control and lost it, then at least I could find some solace in the fact that I knew I was a depressed hypocrite. Not knowing is a terrible thing, we always want to know, even if it is just the illusion of ‘knowing’. “NO DO NOT TELL ME IT’S A LIE. I WAS HAPPY THE WAY IT WAS!” . Ignorance really can be bliss at times - clichés are clichés for a reason.

It is hard to actually be sure of anything anymore. All of life’s prior notions and perspectives are slowly being exterminated. The Dalek of age is patrolling the labyrinth of life and exterminating any childhood notion it can find. What is there left to cling to? Nothing is forever. Everything in life is transient, including life itself.

We can be certain that death and taxes are going to pounce on us sooner or later (thank ye Benjamin Franklin), and it makes you think. We know not when it will be our time. Death is an equal opportunities man, he doesn’t discriminate. Neither does the tax man for that matter, at the end of the day he just wants your money. Do I fear death? I do not know. I think I fear that I simply do not know what death holds for me (or anybody else now that I mention it). It will come sooner or later, and that will be that. I won’t be able to stop it and neither will Barack Obama. For shame.

In the short stay on Hotel Earth we start off with the hopeful ‘we’ll get the good stuff to your room once it arrives here’ treatment, only to find that it never comes. Yes, dreams rarely come true. The world isn’t the magical place that it was as a child. You learn there are responsibilities that come with growing up. All of your childhood dreams are dashed, spat upon, stomped, set alight and thrown off the edge of a cliff onto sharp rocks below. You realise that growing up is not such a big deal and that you were better off as a child, You learn that the grass is always greener on the other side somehow, simply because it is the other side. It probably is no better than where you already are, but you like to think that it is better over there. Hope is a wonderful thing - such a happy feeling that is borne of sadness, rising from the smouldering ashes of misery like a phoenix. We need to settle with what we have, and be grateful that we at least have that. That’s another thing which just adds to my chronic confusion. I’m here rambling about my madness and my so called ‘depression’ (which is really just a dramatisation of ‘pissed off with life’- I’m a moody hypochondriac) when there are people out there who have lost everything, their families, their livelihood and pretty anything else that made life worth living. My qualms with the world are mainly philosophical… theirs are as hard as stone.

Over the course of this piece of writing I have alleviated my depression somewhat by putting my troubles into perspective. The greater picture says it all. War torn lives, natural disasters, political injustices, dictatorships, genocides, domestic violence, animal cruelty and disease are out there, in whatever abundance or rarity and they are personifying the struggle of life. Here’s me with a stubbed toe and a formerly runny nose. Woe is me (!).

However, it isn’t all bad. I keep mentioning Hope. Hope is a wonderful thing. Faith can also be pretty decent; it seems to work for me. It doesn’t need to be faith in God or anything. We humans have an innate instinct to have faith in something, an innate feeling to believe. It’s there in all of us, genetically hardwired into our being. It is a cold, lonely existence when you have nothing to believe in, nothing to hold on to in the turmoil of the struggle for existence. If you can’t find your purpose, you might as well create your own.

Captain Nitrogen out.

The Age of Paranoia

Irony, Cynicism, Scepticism and Mortal Fear

“Forced conversation
Hidden agenda
You think we're stupid, how dare you
The rug has not been pulled
Over our eyes you fool
We can see right through”

-Billy Talent

Breaking news, ‘Trust’ is declared Endangered by the IUCN. Well, obviously that isn’t a real headline, but it could well be. We live in the age of paranoia. Trust is growing scarce; the world seems like a minefield, or the realm of the Hydra. The same old culprits are to blame, newspapers, news channels, an ever more daring and idiotic minority and just an aura of fear.

Parents are frightened of paedophiles at every corner, so much so that parents are too terrified to let their children past their front gardens. If it’s not paedophiles, its murderous rapists from hell, or gun toting gangs from the planet Gat. Well, that’s what BBC news said, with specific reference to abducting murderers. They presented some ominous facts about previous murders and how parents deemed that the outside world was no longer safe for the play of children or something to that effect. When it comes to a tragic story the news will inevitably want to milk it for all it is worth, every penny counts after all. They’ll plaster the headline with words like ‘CHILD’, ‘DEATH’, ‘UNSAFE’ and ’LETHAL BIZZLE’, all words that strike fear into the hearts of the average 20th or 21st century parent. If this truly was the case, every other adult who wasn’t a parent to the child would be out on the streets with the sole intention to abduct and kill your child. Political correctness is out of control, what with its absurd commandments; “Thou shalt not photograph thine babe in the school production or in the playground”. All parents can not be trusted? Taking a picture of the school production will cause them to run home and become aroused? Verily this is disturbed thinking of the most moronic degree. It would be more helpful for the doctor to supply you with a complementary child coffin at birth, for when they get beset upon by the great wide world outside. Indeed, there are villains out there, but that’s nothing a bit of neighbourhood vigilance can’t solve. We’re all so caught up with the terrors of the world that we have lost all faith in each other. Nobody is implying that you become bosom buddies with all of the inhabitants of your street, but some general awareness of each others existence goes a long way. Rather, it is ‘Every family for themselves – screw you, get out of my way you paedophile family, and stop looking at my child’.

But aside from the Political Correctness circus and the prominent Murderer Community of Britain (do they have a union?), we simply CANNOT forget about the omnipresent danger of terrorism in the civilised world! Cave/Mud Hut dwellers from the Middle East have suddenly mastered chemical engineering and are producing bombs by the truck load to blow up our Great Island! God Save the Queen! God save me! God save my democracy! God save Big Brother! Let us analyse this threat. People are worried about terrorists around every corner… there are advertising campaigns warning us about loiterers who are most likely terrorists and the news bleats about how fifteen would be terrorists were foiled before they blew up the world. Sounds like something out of a George Orwell novel to me. I know there are extremists in Britain and they probably shouldn’t be here, but as a result of these bearded maniacs the entire country is gripped in fear and worried that the island might sink under the waves. Apparently, people are worried about going into shopping centres. We shouldn’t write off the threat, but surely this is a step too far? People are still scared of planes and ‘try to spot the terrorists’? This is paranoia over the edge. The horrific events of September the 11th have ingrained in our mind that planes and terrorists were made for each other. News flash, how many flights have there been in the UK and US alone over the past decade, and how many of these were hijacked by terrorists? Now express that as a percentage and perhaps you’ll see a glimmer of the probability of the bearded bloke next to you being a terrorist… I don’t see how the beard suddenly transforms you into a suspect. Surely, this is a common stereotype that these ‘ultra-smart’ terrorists must have cottoned on to? This being the case, the terrorist would have adapted his strategy (by the concept of the evolutionary arms race), and would have gotten rid of the beard, to blend in with the majority.

In this world over-run by terrorists, paedophiles and abducting murderers, I wonder how anybody is still alive. Though I do admit, there may be some irony in the way I have presented the above piece, riddled with cynicism and fraught with scepticism. Perhaps I am just assuming the polar opposite argument to the media driven army that votes, and in doing so I’m not doing myself any favours, but the purpose of the piece isn’t to render everybody into a calm, happy-go-lucky, docile mood. The point being expressed is not one of ‘Do not worry, there is no danger, everything is just fine’, but the general view can’t be ‘Omnipresent danger, consuming us, frozen in fear’. The real world must be treated with rationality and we must just have faith in the fact that committing any of these heinous acts is easier said than done. With so many variables, it’s very easy to get caught out. The aim of these ‘Terrorists’ is to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy (being us). Being scared to go to shopping centres or constantly looking out for terrorists is only an expression of fear and is a sign of submission to the terrorists aim. They will have won. The aim of the terrorist is to strike fear, then to spread discord and enmity amongst people who normally get along, and pick apart the structure of our society. If the terrorists really were going to open hell on our door steps, believe me, we wouldn’t even be safe in our homes. Nations such as North Korea and Iran are reportedly prepared to sell weapons of mass destruction… for any hope of salvation, evolve into a cockroach or build a bunker or follow an option that is somewhat more practical – take a lesson from the Prophet Lot from the ancient scriptures and run – Run. Just run. Run and don’t look back.