Monday 25th February-Lobby of Brent Council Budget Meeting,with CSFHC,suporting Brent Fight back
This means i won't be able to attend the Platypus reading group discussing Lenin's"What Is To Be Done?"
Tuesday 26th February-evening meeting cancelled.this is unfortunate as it means trying to be in 2 places at once now on Wednesday evening!
Wednesday 27th February-5.30pm Camden United For Benefits Justice organising meeting,which seems to have been postponed from the previous evening!in my opinion a very important meeting.this presents me with a conundrum,as i also have another pre-arranged and equally but differently important meeting.
6.30pm SWAN Workshops and Papers Group.I pushed for the meeting tonight to avoid a clash with other meetings.That worked then did'nt it?
Thursday 28th February- Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group Public Meeting,Central London
Preston Park School Consultation about school expansion/extension
-i don't jest when i say"decisions,decisions?"
Friday 1st March-i hope to be off to Manchester to see friends and attend a conference......
Saturday 2nd March
d1(250213)
Monday 25 February 2013
LOST.......again
i have had certain notions,that seem to float about like seeds on the wind,for most of my life,or at least amongst the times and memories i can recall.
One of these is the notion of being Lost.
It gives me a multi acronym,that i might come back to later.
It crystallised into something more material when i needed an email address and then a nom de plume.The specific form of my email address emerged from my determination to use the primary word that described how i felt not just in that moment,but indeed most of the time.i was determined not to be reduced to a number,unless it was very clearly obvious that i had chosen it.After keying inthe same word multiple times"the system"seemed to relent after 4 times.
That was several years agao now.In the meantime,i've found that my chosen identity gets some attention because its distinctive,although it seems to worry some people that i seem to have such a negative or forlorn orientation to the world,and that somehow they want me to be found.Not everyone's anxieties are allayed by my explanation....
That everyone is lost,there are no maps,for life itself except for those we make up as we go along,and that the difference might be-between you and i,whoever you are,is that i know i am lost.Indeed,i go a step further and consider that mostly,whatever,"the world"thinks it has to offer has little or no attraction.Yes,the world is facsinating and dangerously beautiful but i don't hav eto buy into it,and i try not to.
i have learned to be content with my discontent,and i think i understand at least in part my strong,sometimes overwhelming sense of alienation.
As if i needed reminding,i do get almost daily reminders of being lost and alienated.Not least in having such difficulty accessing my own blog!(and whilst i'm at it,the feedback mechanism to report such problems does not work either!)
One of these is the notion of being Lost.
It gives me a multi acronym,that i might come back to later.
It crystallised into something more material when i needed an email address and then a nom de plume.The specific form of my email address emerged from my determination to use the primary word that described how i felt not just in that moment,but indeed most of the time.i was determined not to be reduced to a number,unless it was very clearly obvious that i had chosen it.After keying inthe same word multiple times"the system"seemed to relent after 4 times.
That was several years agao now.In the meantime,i've found that my chosen identity gets some attention because its distinctive,although it seems to worry some people that i seem to have such a negative or forlorn orientation to the world,and that somehow they want me to be found.Not everyone's anxieties are allayed by my explanation....
That everyone is lost,there are no maps,for life itself except for those we make up as we go along,and that the difference might be-between you and i,whoever you are,is that i know i am lost.Indeed,i go a step further and consider that mostly,whatever,"the world"thinks it has to offer has little or no attraction.Yes,the world is facsinating and dangerously beautiful but i don't hav eto buy into it,and i try not to.
i have learned to be content with my discontent,and i think i understand at least in part my strong,sometimes overwhelming sense of alienation.
As if i needed reminding,i do get almost daily reminders of being lost and alienated.Not least in having such difficulty accessing my own blog!(and whilst i'm at it,the feedback mechanism to report such problems does not work either!)
Thursday 14 February 2013
valentine's or warm fuzzies?
st.valentine's,as i have written before has been reduced to yet another sales opportunity.it sells a twee saccharine version of love and affection,in which human emotion is reduced to product and commodity.just as coin and paper and cheque and other forms of money are not the thing itself but an alienated and abstract representation of it,which in turn banalises human work and creativity into something transferable and exchangeable,perhaps human affection is headed the same way.that"token"-the card,the flowers,the chocolates....are not the thing itself,although i suppose as human beings we do still manage to squeeze something of the reality in there somewhere.one of the things marriage services remnd us of is that affection and love have deeper and more difficult aspects including"in sickness and in health"-through the difficulties as well as the bad time,although i still think a lot of it is distorted and alienated in the culture,the society we live in.for me,for example it"pushes"our feelings into"boxes"that do not neccessarilly fit,and it isolates those feelings,so that in many respects we become a bulwark against the world.for too many this hides violence and abuse which goes well beyond "in sickness and in health"
i have also written about a more muscular notion of love promoted i believe by Valentinus,who may or may not have been abstracted into valentines day.that was initially in the context of human affection being expressed within a wider community.however,that community would not look like today's society,nor would it neccessarilly look like the visions of some socialists for the future,as in the writings of Alexandra Kollontai.that too,is another story i might tell another time.
meantime,i will end this piece with another account of "warm fuzzies".there are a variety of tellings of this story.my version is remembered and abreviated from an account introduced to me by my friend Robert O.,told to me then in the context of a(radical)mental health conference.
imagine,then a society of human like creatures,possibly not unlike hobbits born with or carrying something like a backpack attached.each time they meet another creature they reach into the back pack and give their friend a warm fuzzy.....until someone spreads the idea that maybe the warm fuzzies are in short supply.that"idea"spreads the notion of scarcity,and each creature becomes more circumspect in its giving.....there are all kinds of negative possibilities here....but in time,i would guess quite quickly,eache time a creature reaches into their bags they pass on something that turns from warm fuzzy into a cold prickly.
.....and that's enough said really.it seems to me to be a metaphor for what happens in the world we live in.except the warm fuzzy turns not just into a cold prickly but has very real implications for the others in the transactions...the love becomes more conditional,and more and more qualified,restricted,limited.....we give less and we give less freely.
yet all kinds of things tell me it need not be this way.i am not pessimistic about this.human beings have changed things over time,often very radically indeed.what we make,we can make again,and remake.and whilst,i do not have a"silver linings"approach to life,i do believe that because life is paradoxical and contradictory and dialectical,that often our actions and our beliefs contain the seeds of something new,and often those new things are something approaching the opposite of what was before,and if not then they are a synthesis of the contradictions.
as i write,we are indeed living in"interesting"if not difficult times.as some of us meet to talk,organise,dissent,resist,struggle,make changes-whilst we mostly do not command the whole process,other things occur in the process of the tasks we set ourselves.and one of the dimensions in those dynamics is the potential to change,and perhaps radically the social relations and relationships we have with one another.
that is so for me.at least in some of the things,the activities i engage in now,i find myself less in formalised routine in which too much,too many of my interactions are formally proscribed and limited so that what might be presented as fomal care or concern,might be backed by a less than substantial human contact,backed nly by the good will and capacity of the individuals involved.i find myself more frequently in relationships which although they might occur in the context of human distress and may be embattled,those involved and engaged,are i like to hope,more open to each other,more welcoming of each others talents,creativity,and yes falibilities and frailties,perhaps the essences of our humanity.i am not utopian about this.the wider socio-economic system creeps into everything,and yet for now-the moment is indeterminate-we have the potential for something different.without being trite,the possibility that strangers are simply friends we have not met yet,might be an increasing posibility.
reflecting as i am,on what i am engaged in now,the very limits that might impose themselves make thesemoments even more precious,and present the importance of refecting on them in order to remember and value them.i also realise that looking back on my life so far,i have had a rich experience of this so far,though perhaps i did not know it at the time.
for me,i think in the last year of so the months are littered with such experiences.some of them were almost literally moments,some are ongoing.looking further back,there have been lean times,when retreating into family and close friendships has been a bulwark against the worst of the darkness.but then that too makes the richness of other moments all the richer too.that i guess is one of the paradoxes of human life.i'm glad however,that i have a lot fo those positive experiences.and i share them more now at least as memory and stories told,not to boast but in the hope that others will realise of their own experience that what we each take as ordinary and possibly banal,in the process of seeking what we see as greater goals,gives us experience which is richer than i/we think.
life itself,like revolution is process not event.and the means are probably just as important as the ends.the means have meaning and value in itself.
i have also written about a more muscular notion of love promoted i believe by Valentinus,who may or may not have been abstracted into valentines day.that was initially in the context of human affection being expressed within a wider community.however,that community would not look like today's society,nor would it neccessarilly look like the visions of some socialists for the future,as in the writings of Alexandra Kollontai.that too,is another story i might tell another time.
meantime,i will end this piece with another account of "warm fuzzies".there are a variety of tellings of this story.my version is remembered and abreviated from an account introduced to me by my friend Robert O.,told to me then in the context of a(radical)mental health conference.
imagine,then a society of human like creatures,possibly not unlike hobbits born with or carrying something like a backpack attached.each time they meet another creature they reach into the back pack and give their friend a warm fuzzy.....until someone spreads the idea that maybe the warm fuzzies are in short supply.that"idea"spreads the notion of scarcity,and each creature becomes more circumspect in its giving.....there are all kinds of negative possibilities here....but in time,i would guess quite quickly,eache time a creature reaches into their bags they pass on something that turns from warm fuzzy into a cold prickly.
.....and that's enough said really.it seems to me to be a metaphor for what happens in the world we live in.except the warm fuzzy turns not just into a cold prickly but has very real implications for the others in the transactions...the love becomes more conditional,and more and more qualified,restricted,limited.....we give less and we give less freely.
yet all kinds of things tell me it need not be this way.i am not pessimistic about this.human beings have changed things over time,often very radically indeed.what we make,we can make again,and remake.and whilst,i do not have a"silver linings"approach to life,i do believe that because life is paradoxical and contradictory and dialectical,that often our actions and our beliefs contain the seeds of something new,and often those new things are something approaching the opposite of what was before,and if not then they are a synthesis of the contradictions.
as i write,we are indeed living in"interesting"if not difficult times.as some of us meet to talk,organise,dissent,resist,struggle,make changes-whilst we mostly do not command the whole process,other things occur in the process of the tasks we set ourselves.and one of the dimensions in those dynamics is the potential to change,and perhaps radically the social relations and relationships we have with one another.
that is so for me.at least in some of the things,the activities i engage in now,i find myself less in formalised routine in which too much,too many of my interactions are formally proscribed and limited so that what might be presented as fomal care or concern,might be backed by a less than substantial human contact,backed nly by the good will and capacity of the individuals involved.i find myself more frequently in relationships which although they might occur in the context of human distress and may be embattled,those involved and engaged,are i like to hope,more open to each other,more welcoming of each others talents,creativity,and yes falibilities and frailties,perhaps the essences of our humanity.i am not utopian about this.the wider socio-economic system creeps into everything,and yet for now-the moment is indeterminate-we have the potential for something different.without being trite,the possibility that strangers are simply friends we have not met yet,might be an increasing posibility.
reflecting as i am,on what i am engaged in now,the very limits that might impose themselves make thesemoments even more precious,and present the importance of refecting on them in order to remember and value them.i also realise that looking back on my life so far,i have had a rich experience of this so far,though perhaps i did not know it at the time.
for me,i think in the last year of so the months are littered with such experiences.some of them were almost literally moments,some are ongoing.looking further back,there have been lean times,when retreating into family and close friendships has been a bulwark against the worst of the darkness.but then that too makes the richness of other moments all the richer too.that i guess is one of the paradoxes of human life.i'm glad however,that i have a lot fo those positive experiences.and i share them more now at least as memory and stories told,not to boast but in the hope that others will realise of their own experience that what we each take as ordinary and possibly banal,in the process of seeking what we see as greater goals,gives us experience which is richer than i/we think.
life itself,like revolution is process not event.and the means are probably just as important as the ends.the means have meaning and value in itself.
Wednesday 13 February 2013
biography?
i don't really want to write an autobigraphy.that seems far too self centred and egocentrc.besides which i am,or try to be as thoroug-going in my view that we are social beings as possible.
and then i have to start somewhere.one place would be at the start of my own own self consciousness except that hangs on memory.so i will start a little with background and then refer to my earliest memory...
the background.i am the eldest son of a solidly working class mother who had been brought up in a district of east london herself the only daughter of a railway worker,nominally a member of a railworkers union and a working mother who was mostlya prfessional cook all her working life.my mum was 13 at the start of the second world war,refused to leave the london of the blitz and married my father in 1948.my father was the 3rd of 4 siblings in an essentially downwardly mobile upper working class family.my grandfather ran what must have been a small specialist stationary company that must have existed for some time,but which became both increasingly a general stationer but increasingly irrelevant to the development of that trade.that business was taken over by my uncle who continued to earn enough of a living from it until its closure with his retirement,for him to maintain my grandmothers household.
i was born in on australia day in january 1954,which was always of significance to my father,as he was fond of the country he had been demobilised into at the end of world war II.arriving on the wrong side of australia in 1946 he then walked and hitchhiked to see family on the other side of the country and eventually returned to britain.
in 1948 he married my mother,much to my paternal grandmothers dissapproval who did not attend their wedding.
unsurprisingly i have no recollection of my 1st 3years,as most of us dont.all the evidence is that most people start recalling at about 3 years old.the precocious few start early at around 2 years old.
i still tell stories about earlier events but i think those are recollections of my mothers stories about my early childhood and not my own.i think my 1st genuine memory is of sitting on the living room floor behind furniture in my mothers cousins house,playing with a large model aeroplane,when my dad visited me.i guess he will have told me of the birth of my sibling.i dont recall much else in detail for some time.i do however have general recollection of playing in the garden particularly with certain toys and also of a wider range of games in the house.
.......to be continued...
and then i have to start somewhere.one place would be at the start of my own own self consciousness except that hangs on memory.so i will start a little with background and then refer to my earliest memory...
the background.i am the eldest son of a solidly working class mother who had been brought up in a district of east london herself the only daughter of a railway worker,nominally a member of a railworkers union and a working mother who was mostlya prfessional cook all her working life.my mum was 13 at the start of the second world war,refused to leave the london of the blitz and married my father in 1948.my father was the 3rd of 4 siblings in an essentially downwardly mobile upper working class family.my grandfather ran what must have been a small specialist stationary company that must have existed for some time,but which became both increasingly a general stationer but increasingly irrelevant to the development of that trade.that business was taken over by my uncle who continued to earn enough of a living from it until its closure with his retirement,for him to maintain my grandmothers household.
i was born in on australia day in january 1954,which was always of significance to my father,as he was fond of the country he had been demobilised into at the end of world war II.arriving on the wrong side of australia in 1946 he then walked and hitchhiked to see family on the other side of the country and eventually returned to britain.
in 1948 he married my mother,much to my paternal grandmothers dissapproval who did not attend their wedding.
unsurprisingly i have no recollection of my 1st 3years,as most of us dont.all the evidence is that most people start recalling at about 3 years old.the precocious few start early at around 2 years old.
i still tell stories about earlier events but i think those are recollections of my mothers stories about my early childhood and not my own.i think my 1st genuine memory is of sitting on the living room floor behind furniture in my mothers cousins house,playing with a large model aeroplane,when my dad visited me.i guess he will have told me of the birth of my sibling.i dont recall much else in detail for some time.i do however have general recollection of playing in the garden particularly with certain toys and also of a wider range of games in the house.
.......to be continued...
will the real Valentinus please stand up
i said i had a very alternative,different vision of 14th february
i think it should be Valentinus day.the saint accolade does not particularly matter,not least because the notion of sainthood has shifted spectacularly over the centuries-and that too is another story.
Valentinus was a Gnostic teacher and leader during the early"christan centuries",when christianity would itself have been one of the larger and more successful religions,with the trappings,paricularly of"church"or state or"political power.it was disparate and linked where possible,though not all parts would have been aware of all others.it had neither unity nor disunity.and there was a diversity of"currents"and"traditions".unlike islam,christianity did not have a single founder or author and it was may centuries before the bible was both established and agreed in its content.to this day the content is not entirely settled.so latter day christians who ask sternly"why did they not read the bible?"icould be asking at least an ahistorical question.for many centuries,any group of believers may have had radically different ideas about what constituted holy writ.im not even sure they would have reverenced it in the same peculiar way that some fundamentalists do.
Valentinus nevertheless became leader of many gnostics-christians who believed in finding the path through knowledge which is closer to wisdom than knowledge through books.it would have includede reading,but referred directly to mystical/spiritual experience,which was both shared and individual.
gnostic churches did not have time to "crystallise"in the same way that more literalist christianity did.they were some of many threads,who tended to be"outmanoevred"when christianity "hotted up".i am not going to claim that gnostics were either correct al the time or perfect or better.in the end too many/most gnostics were eradicated.
at least some of the communities would have stressed that they were communities of love,and their "love"would have been more muscular(though i dont mean more aggressive)than the twee images of st.valentines days.it would have meant a vibrant commitment to making communities which held together based on largely democratic and in some ways more egalitarian practice-goods in the eraly centuries would have been held in common.even later in the 11th century,people may have had greater or lesser resources and status,but they would have been treated more simply and equally.all social groups mixed.so that when the populations of albi and beziers were massacred in the 12th century crusade against them,the local aristocracy invited the survivors by the 1,000s into their towns and domains,without differentation.this would however have stretched resources especially when those communities themselves came under seige
gnosticism remains because it is the underground current that feeds the springs and rivers that rise above this into the world,as gnostic or otherwise.
more orthodox dominant strands took over and dominated.rome established a pattern of sainthood,and one of those was st valentine who may or may both have been based on several people.it is possible that st.valentine is a creation which may be an amalgam including a stripped down version of Valentinus,left with a twee goodness and minus his muscular,organised gnosticism that i like to hope placed love and then gnosis at the centre of it all.
this IS part of my gnosis.
and in asocial context it taught me...."a society that does not have LOVE,has law!"
i can only add that we also seem to live in a society in which those who make that LAW,do not obey it but eagerly invent even more to impose of the rest of us.and that LAW is not even about justice but about making it very clear indeed that PROFIT rules all and that LOVE and care is rendered.
gnostics like me do need need a hell elsewhere-we are living in it now,and where appearances are not always the truth.and that little is reliable.we probably only have each other in this material world and our best step forward is helping each other to make the best of it we can....and it could be a lot better than this,though MATERIAL and PERFECT may not go together well.
some of us,then hope that we can go home.......
i think it should be Valentinus day.the saint accolade does not particularly matter,not least because the notion of sainthood has shifted spectacularly over the centuries-and that too is another story.
Valentinus was a Gnostic teacher and leader during the early"christan centuries",when christianity would itself have been one of the larger and more successful religions,with the trappings,paricularly of"church"or state or"political power.it was disparate and linked where possible,though not all parts would have been aware of all others.it had neither unity nor disunity.and there was a diversity of"currents"and"traditions".unlike islam,christianity did not have a single founder or author and it was may centuries before the bible was both established and agreed in its content.to this day the content is not entirely settled.so latter day christians who ask sternly"why did they not read the bible?"icould be asking at least an ahistorical question.for many centuries,any group of believers may have had radically different ideas about what constituted holy writ.im not even sure they would have reverenced it in the same peculiar way that some fundamentalists do.
Valentinus nevertheless became leader of many gnostics-christians who believed in finding the path through knowledge which is closer to wisdom than knowledge through books.it would have includede reading,but referred directly to mystical/spiritual experience,which was both shared and individual.
gnostic churches did not have time to "crystallise"in the same way that more literalist christianity did.they were some of many threads,who tended to be"outmanoevred"when christianity "hotted up".i am not going to claim that gnostics were either correct al the time or perfect or better.in the end too many/most gnostics were eradicated.
at least some of the communities would have stressed that they were communities of love,and their "love"would have been more muscular(though i dont mean more aggressive)than the twee images of st.valentines days.it would have meant a vibrant commitment to making communities which held together based on largely democratic and in some ways more egalitarian practice-goods in the eraly centuries would have been held in common.even later in the 11th century,people may have had greater or lesser resources and status,but they would have been treated more simply and equally.all social groups mixed.so that when the populations of albi and beziers were massacred in the 12th century crusade against them,the local aristocracy invited the survivors by the 1,000s into their towns and domains,without differentation.this would however have stretched resources especially when those communities themselves came under seige
gnosticism remains because it is the underground current that feeds the springs and rivers that rise above this into the world,as gnostic or otherwise.
more orthodox dominant strands took over and dominated.rome established a pattern of sainthood,and one of those was st valentine who may or may both have been based on several people.it is possible that st.valentine is a creation which may be an amalgam including a stripped down version of Valentinus,left with a twee goodness and minus his muscular,organised gnosticism that i like to hope placed love and then gnosis at the centre of it all.
this IS part of my gnosis.
and in asocial context it taught me...."a society that does not have LOVE,has law!"
i can only add that we also seem to live in a society in which those who make that LAW,do not obey it but eagerly invent even more to impose of the rest of us.and that LAW is not even about justice but about making it very clear indeed that PROFIT rules all and that LOVE and care is rendered.
gnostics like me do need need a hell elsewhere-we are living in it now,and where appearances are not always the truth.and that little is reliable.we probably only have each other in this material world and our best step forward is helping each other to make the best of it we can....and it could be a lot better than this,though MATERIAL and PERFECT may not go together well.
some of us,then hope that we can go home.......
It's cold outside-but the heat is on
for most of my working life i was a social worker,or in broadly social work related activity.
i always knew that it was at best"tinkering at the edge"of social change or providing"sticking plasters"over individual and family experience of social problems or private distress,but at least i worked in "the welfare state"or in related activity that sought to improve that"state" and condition.i felt that whilst it was nearly always the case that THIS person,over THAT person got some attention,and perhaps their needs met,that it was better than nothing and that i could not stand by and"wait for the revolution"that i still work and yearn for.
always i hope circumspect about it,and not boastful-aware that many people experience social work negatively,i nevertheless took some modest pride in"getting my hands dirty"in the mess of not just human misery but in the contradictions of seeking to give that help in acontext in which the primary directives of the economic,political and social system are directed elsewhere.if nothing else i hope iwas the human and humane face of "the system",who if nothing else could explain and tell the truth,and who would stand with those people even if i could not help them change very much of anything.i could also help point out to others that there is mostly a very thin line between the life experience of someone in trouble or distress,and"us",the rest of us,and that some of what the rest of "us"do,provides "us"with some illusory distancing that is NOT the reality.
it was not just a matter of my christian duty,and my social responsibility as a revolutionary socialist,but that i seemed to be living out my destiny.there is little if anything that is extraordinary or unusual abot me.i don't think im special or talented-but that if i had to work,i wanted to do something that migt have some meaning,some value and most of all might make a difference,however small to someone.at one point the choice seemed to be to train to be a social worker or to be a priest,and i guess in the end i chose or felt"called"to act,to do.....
that"career"is now over,having been medically retired for something just over a year,following about a year earlier of being long term sick.i hope i continue to"act"and to do in the world.perhaps now less able than before i can reflect and turn experience into some kind of value.
but i do notice more some negatives.one of course is the burgeoning austerity,crisis and cuts.without meaning to sound like i am feeling sorry for myself-i cannot help sometimes,indeed increasingly frequently finding myself thinking"i was not a social worker,for 40+years to see this.....happenning!".yet it confirms my thought,to reverse a common probation saying,that i am now a"gamekeeper turned poacher"-not that i have turned to criminality,but that i now challenge more openly and fully the ideaological hegemony of the state and the law,which"it"thinks it has,and demanding that we live by a different,better set of values that is genuine,as well as being genuinely even handed.i want to see law replaced by lore and then better still by love,for to quote a cathar/gnostic saying"a society that does not have love,has law".
today i heard one more detail that makes things a little bleaker and sharper,but still not insurmountable by any means.senior management in a certain probation trust(they used to be called services)has banned tarde union posters from the walls,concerned about the negative impresion this might give the ministry of justice,and despite claims that this same management supported the robust campaign to defend probation as a public service.the union is now advising its members to represent themselves as trade union members rather than as employees of that trust.at the same time it will consider what part it now plays in promoting the new projects of that trust to the public and others.at one level this is"small beer"but at another it is significant,especially amongst a staff group who are so committed to notions of public service and others welfare,which is not reucible to a simplistic notion of"false consciousness"-socialism after all starts with the word social.i would add that whilst it is freezing cold outside as i write,it is also"heating up"out there.whilst not perhaps traditionally the toughest or bluntest of trades unions,it is to this(my)unions credit that in every battle over the last 3 years,to my knowledge over jobs,it has won,at least in retaining posts.the employer and the state is however unrelenting in its efforts to dismantle public service,which makes this a war of attrition in which to couner the tricks and lies of the employer it will eventually need to become more inventive,more militant,more colectively conscious in away that goes beyond the obvious and not somobvious limits of professionalism and trades union consciousness.
but i admit some of my humble pride is now replaced with alienation and rage,as i watch and rage and act as the safety net is dismantled not just of its material resources but of its humanistic values.there used i feel to be an acceptance that we all need a "safety net".now we are back to dscussion about whether recipients of anything are worthy,or deserving.indeed it is worse than than because it is apparent that those judegments now mean that virtually no-one is deserving,we are all stereotyped and cast out,guilty of nothing more than being the persons behind the labour that make virtually everything in our societies,and transform nearly everything else in our environments through our various activities(our understanding of our world transforms it from its pristine state.
i have also realised sinec my retirement that whist i had some inkling,i did not fully appreciate quite how transformed and oppressive to myself and others the work i did had become.i do not mean that it is a"lost cause"though we may be approaching that state more closely,but that it has certainly become harder.i have to hope and to work for new generations of younger workers to continue to carry the torch for human need,at least in this aspect,whilst recognising that after 40 years,in which the last few had become more banalised and driven by other values,ncreasingly alien to and in contradiction to my own,were bound to take their toll.
in my case,apart from physical ill health i developed chronic clinical depression.whilst i was never in the"anti-psychiatry"school of approach to mental illness,one of its powerful insights is that "madness"can be the only rational response to an increasingly irrational context-even where that "state"claims itself to be rational.those anti-psychiatrists pointed out that the number of soldiers and pilots "going mad"during the vietnam war was more a reflection on the society,which could be seen as mad,than on those people who became mad.whilst this is a beautiful insight,it is for me inadequate as theory,better explained by"mental illness IS illness",but to stick with the point-it seems to me that the insight still has validity in itself,and that in a culture which has moved from some kind of centreing on human need to performance targets etc. which place the public image of the agency itself and its functionality centre stage,then madness should not in its various forms be a surprising outcome.and i have,over recent years heard another insight that i believe also has great value.the insight that"depression is anger turned inwards"makes sense to me-that i now think over recent years as i personally felt more pinned down and constrained in what i could either think or do,then there was i think a senses in which my rage that"something is seriously wrong"leaked into myself,assisted i believe by the way in which employment/labour now is increasingly managed,particularly in more people than product centred activities,and in which those"human resources"are increasingly problematised in efforts to reduce us,human beings to machine parts and units of labour.
the hope is and remains,even in difficult times that we human beings also remain animate and self conscious.despiet teh pressures on us that alienate,individuate,atomise and isolate we are social beings created and confirmed by each other.we can share our reflections and collectively from the diversity of our experience and who we are put together a view and understanding of the world that enable s us to change it.for after all although apologists for the current order present it as immutable,unchallengeable and unchangeable it is indeed subject to change.just as it was built like this,whilst it might have logic,and laws of its own,once made y human beings can be changed by human beingsusing effort,will and understanding.what we next make will of course not be made in circumstances of our choice but those in which we find ourselves.this places limits on our ability to"blueprint"although our ability to create,plan and imagine are powerful tools.whilst what we get might not be perfect,it can hardly be worse than things as they are for most people most of the time,amongst the 7 billion of us.there is no guarantee of success but we can try to ensure that what we do in our efforts to build something has value in itself.so that if we stumble and fall,we have learned a valued shared experience for the next time.
i hope we will try to build a society,a world we we share and which we make through our colective self activity.that does not just make the future important it makes everything we do together in getting there,or trying to get there rich with meaning,significance and potential!
about
i always knew that it was at best"tinkering at the edge"of social change or providing"sticking plasters"over individual and family experience of social problems or private distress,but at least i worked in "the welfare state"or in related activity that sought to improve that"state" and condition.i felt that whilst it was nearly always the case that THIS person,over THAT person got some attention,and perhaps their needs met,that it was better than nothing and that i could not stand by and"wait for the revolution"that i still work and yearn for.
always i hope circumspect about it,and not boastful-aware that many people experience social work negatively,i nevertheless took some modest pride in"getting my hands dirty"in the mess of not just human misery but in the contradictions of seeking to give that help in acontext in which the primary directives of the economic,political and social system are directed elsewhere.if nothing else i hope iwas the human and humane face of "the system",who if nothing else could explain and tell the truth,and who would stand with those people even if i could not help them change very much of anything.i could also help point out to others that there is mostly a very thin line between the life experience of someone in trouble or distress,and"us",the rest of us,and that some of what the rest of "us"do,provides "us"with some illusory distancing that is NOT the reality.
it was not just a matter of my christian duty,and my social responsibility as a revolutionary socialist,but that i seemed to be living out my destiny.there is little if anything that is extraordinary or unusual abot me.i don't think im special or talented-but that if i had to work,i wanted to do something that migt have some meaning,some value and most of all might make a difference,however small to someone.at one point the choice seemed to be to train to be a social worker or to be a priest,and i guess in the end i chose or felt"called"to act,to do.....
that"career"is now over,having been medically retired for something just over a year,following about a year earlier of being long term sick.i hope i continue to"act"and to do in the world.perhaps now less able than before i can reflect and turn experience into some kind of value.
but i do notice more some negatives.one of course is the burgeoning austerity,crisis and cuts.without meaning to sound like i am feeling sorry for myself-i cannot help sometimes,indeed increasingly frequently finding myself thinking"i was not a social worker,for 40+years to see this.....happenning!".yet it confirms my thought,to reverse a common probation saying,that i am now a"gamekeeper turned poacher"-not that i have turned to criminality,but that i now challenge more openly and fully the ideaological hegemony of the state and the law,which"it"thinks it has,and demanding that we live by a different,better set of values that is genuine,as well as being genuinely even handed.i want to see law replaced by lore and then better still by love,for to quote a cathar/gnostic saying"a society that does not have love,has law".
today i heard one more detail that makes things a little bleaker and sharper,but still not insurmountable by any means.senior management in a certain probation trust(they used to be called services)has banned tarde union posters from the walls,concerned about the negative impresion this might give the ministry of justice,and despite claims that this same management supported the robust campaign to defend probation as a public service.the union is now advising its members to represent themselves as trade union members rather than as employees of that trust.at the same time it will consider what part it now plays in promoting the new projects of that trust to the public and others.at one level this is"small beer"but at another it is significant,especially amongst a staff group who are so committed to notions of public service and others welfare,which is not reucible to a simplistic notion of"false consciousness"-socialism after all starts with the word social.i would add that whilst it is freezing cold outside as i write,it is also"heating up"out there.whilst not perhaps traditionally the toughest or bluntest of trades unions,it is to this(my)unions credit that in every battle over the last 3 years,to my knowledge over jobs,it has won,at least in retaining posts.the employer and the state is however unrelenting in its efforts to dismantle public service,which makes this a war of attrition in which to couner the tricks and lies of the employer it will eventually need to become more inventive,more militant,more colectively conscious in away that goes beyond the obvious and not somobvious limits of professionalism and trades union consciousness.
but i admit some of my humble pride is now replaced with alienation and rage,as i watch and rage and act as the safety net is dismantled not just of its material resources but of its humanistic values.there used i feel to be an acceptance that we all need a "safety net".now we are back to dscussion about whether recipients of anything are worthy,or deserving.indeed it is worse than than because it is apparent that those judegments now mean that virtually no-one is deserving,we are all stereotyped and cast out,guilty of nothing more than being the persons behind the labour that make virtually everything in our societies,and transform nearly everything else in our environments through our various activities(our understanding of our world transforms it from its pristine state.
i have also realised sinec my retirement that whist i had some inkling,i did not fully appreciate quite how transformed and oppressive to myself and others the work i did had become.i do not mean that it is a"lost cause"though we may be approaching that state more closely,but that it has certainly become harder.i have to hope and to work for new generations of younger workers to continue to carry the torch for human need,at least in this aspect,whilst recognising that after 40 years,in which the last few had become more banalised and driven by other values,ncreasingly alien to and in contradiction to my own,were bound to take their toll.
in my case,apart from physical ill health i developed chronic clinical depression.whilst i was never in the"anti-psychiatry"school of approach to mental illness,one of its powerful insights is that "madness"can be the only rational response to an increasingly irrational context-even where that "state"claims itself to be rational.those anti-psychiatrists pointed out that the number of soldiers and pilots "going mad"during the vietnam war was more a reflection on the society,which could be seen as mad,than on those people who became mad.whilst this is a beautiful insight,it is for me inadequate as theory,better explained by"mental illness IS illness",but to stick with the point-it seems to me that the insight still has validity in itself,and that in a culture which has moved from some kind of centreing on human need to performance targets etc. which place the public image of the agency itself and its functionality centre stage,then madness should not in its various forms be a surprising outcome.and i have,over recent years heard another insight that i believe also has great value.the insight that"depression is anger turned inwards"makes sense to me-that i now think over recent years as i personally felt more pinned down and constrained in what i could either think or do,then there was i think a senses in which my rage that"something is seriously wrong"leaked into myself,assisted i believe by the way in which employment/labour now is increasingly managed,particularly in more people than product centred activities,and in which those"human resources"are increasingly problematised in efforts to reduce us,human beings to machine parts and units of labour.
the hope is and remains,even in difficult times that we human beings also remain animate and self conscious.despiet teh pressures on us that alienate,individuate,atomise and isolate we are social beings created and confirmed by each other.we can share our reflections and collectively from the diversity of our experience and who we are put together a view and understanding of the world that enable s us to change it.for after all although apologists for the current order present it as immutable,unchallengeable and unchangeable it is indeed subject to change.just as it was built like this,whilst it might have logic,and laws of its own,once made y human beings can be changed by human beingsusing effort,will and understanding.what we next make will of course not be made in circumstances of our choice but those in which we find ourselves.this places limits on our ability to"blueprint"although our ability to create,plan and imagine are powerful tools.whilst what we get might not be perfect,it can hardly be worse than things as they are for most people most of the time,amongst the 7 billion of us.there is no guarantee of success but we can try to ensure that what we do in our efforts to build something has value in itself.so that if we stumble and fall,we have learned a valued shared experience for the next time.
i hope we will try to build a society,a world we we share and which we make through our colective self activity.that does not just make the future important it makes everything we do together in getting there,or trying to get there rich with meaning,significance and potential!
about
Friday 8 February 2013
St.Valentine's Day
I talk about love quite a lot.That still feels like a somewhat odd experience as a man,especially as at 59 i still feel terminally shy.I don't want to be misunderstood when i talk about this sort of issue,for its serious and has what i can only call a gossamer quality,although i believe it is very real.
I can of course,hide behind or cover myself with my professional training and concerns,but it still feels odd for a man to talk about love.i feel it is still the case that too many of us men are socialised in this society to lose the connection with our own feelings quite young.This leads us,but does not excuse us from "dumping on" and using "our wome"as our excuse for our own inadequacies but which are never admitted to be inadequacies but simply downgraded in a hierarchy of our behaviours.
Which is precisely why i will continue to talk about love as an attemt to change that way of being.
But at the risk of contradictoring myself,i am not a romantic.I'm afraid i reject that twee notion of love in which love is spoken of too easily and it seems to consist of sugary images of what love might be about.
For me,the height of this is Valentine's day,which it seems to me is reduced to a commercial excuse in which some,predominantly young people exchange cards,which seem to become bigger and more sugary decorative but increasingly meaningless.The exchange is vaguely supposed to be anonymous.
I find it sickening and i don't think this response is reducible as a shy and probably ugly boy/youth. It just represents all the worst aspects of love for me which reduce it vaguries without meaning,significance or consequence.It certainly had negative consequences for me as someone usually outside the"charmed circle".Soul mates might be meaningful for others but it never did mean much for me,except abstract and empty.
Indeed i have,i think,a very alternative vision of both how it is and how it might be.
But that is another story
I can of course,hide behind or cover myself with my professional training and concerns,but it still feels odd for a man to talk about love.i feel it is still the case that too many of us men are socialised in this society to lose the connection with our own feelings quite young.This leads us,but does not excuse us from "dumping on" and using "our wome"as our excuse for our own inadequacies but which are never admitted to be inadequacies but simply downgraded in a hierarchy of our behaviours.
Which is precisely why i will continue to talk about love as an attemt to change that way of being.
But at the risk of contradictoring myself,i am not a romantic.I'm afraid i reject that twee notion of love in which love is spoken of too easily and it seems to consist of sugary images of what love might be about.
For me,the height of this is Valentine's day,which it seems to me is reduced to a commercial excuse in which some,predominantly young people exchange cards,which seem to become bigger and more sugary decorative but increasingly meaningless.The exchange is vaguely supposed to be anonymous.
I find it sickening and i don't think this response is reducible as a shy and probably ugly boy/youth. It just represents all the worst aspects of love for me which reduce it vaguries without meaning,significance or consequence.It certainly had negative consequences for me as someone usually outside the"charmed circle".Soul mates might be meaningful for others but it never did mean much for me,except abstract and empty.
Indeed i have,i think,a very alternative vision of both how it is and how it might be.
But that is another story
Thursday 7 February 2013
the grand plan-part1
starting points-
well im here.thinkng aloud,on a work in progress.
some of it is very much making things up as i go along.some may well come out as a kind of stream of consciousnees.
so even this is not going to be at this stage some all encompassing overarching description of it all.im very much learning as i go along,so the writing will reflect that.
the key for me is communicating myself,communicating with myself and with others out there.ive always been interested in writing but also in its mechanics and the experimental aspects of it.
the conventions of spelling and grammar
english is a language with a very definite history,and a very particular history.i know other languages have their own histories too,but english does seem to have particular dynamism,power,flexibilty.in saying that i have no wish to offend others or to"lord it over them".english is amongst other things a language of imperialism,in the past and perhaps in the present.apart from the ways its difficult or impossible to avod,i do not intend to personalise that imperialist thread.
part of that history also includes diversity of formats,spelling,grammar and a lot else.i suppose that one of the impacts of dictionaries was regularisation and order although it is a language that has never been domesticated.
it is full to this day of all kinds of inconsistencies.i dont claim that i either am or will be consistent in how or what i write.that depends on development and mood at the very least.i tend to write in lower case.this is because i seek a simplicity and speed.but also to express a humility in the representation of the words and of my own attitudes.i recognise there is at least one paradox in that,not least in that there is some arrogance in believing anyone might take any notice of me or what i have to say.lower case reminds me that i am only one,one of many,one of many voices.i am not concerned with competition,either to be heard over other voices nor particularly that this is best because it is marketable or saleable because it is best.the key for me is communication.that will include the problems in doing that.
well im here.thinkng aloud,on a work in progress.
some of it is very much making things up as i go along.some may well come out as a kind of stream of consciousnees.
so even this is not going to be at this stage some all encompassing overarching description of it all.im very much learning as i go along,so the writing will reflect that.
the key for me is communicating myself,communicating with myself and with others out there.ive always been interested in writing but also in its mechanics and the experimental aspects of it.
the conventions of spelling and grammar
english is a language with a very definite history,and a very particular history.i know other languages have their own histories too,but english does seem to have particular dynamism,power,flexibilty.in saying that i have no wish to offend others or to"lord it over them".english is amongst other things a language of imperialism,in the past and perhaps in the present.apart from the ways its difficult or impossible to avod,i do not intend to personalise that imperialist thread.
part of that history also includes diversity of formats,spelling,grammar and a lot else.i suppose that one of the impacts of dictionaries was regularisation and order although it is a language that has never been domesticated.
it is full to this day of all kinds of inconsistencies.i dont claim that i either am or will be consistent in how or what i write.that depends on development and mood at the very least.i tend to write in lower case.this is because i seek a simplicity and speed.but also to express a humility in the representation of the words and of my own attitudes.i recognise there is at least one paradox in that,not least in that there is some arrogance in believing anyone might take any notice of me or what i have to say.lower case reminds me that i am only one,one of many,one of many voices.i am not concerned with competition,either to be heard over other voices nor particularly that this is best because it is marketable or saleable because it is best.the key for me is communication.that will include the problems in doing that.
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