All teenage boys are teenage mutant ninja turtles

politcally incorrect common sense

The hardest thing about having a kid is realising that nature is sexist

Selecting for sociopaths

I feel I’ve written all this repeatedly and I know I have in one way or another, but for me this is a mantra that gives me clarity and everytime I repeat it to myself, feel like I’m going one step beyond in understanding the world.

If you asked me what my favourite book is, I would probably think about a few books that touched me, but would be quick to reply, it’s the Grapes of Wrath. It stands out for me for how analytically, Steinbeck describes the processes at work in the very beginning of the reign of capitalism in contrast to the previous social and value system of close knit social bonds and cooperation. In doing so, he is not writing a political piece, but something much more difficult, he exhausts analysis by presenting every possible point of view through his characters and incorporating incredible storytelling, encompassing a deep consideration for his readers as well. Interestingly, it also deals with the patriarchy and how women tend to take over at the hardest of times when men become devastated and passive. It is not empathetic necessarily, as it is realism, but it appeals to a deep humanitarian sense we all share in telling us what it is this process has forced us to loose. Something beautiful reiterating naturally with human nature and nature itself was being amputated violently. It tells us about the uprooting of sustainabile societies being dismemebered in a very organised way by a state thirsty for control of not only natural, but also human resources.

Looking at the forces at work since the Great Depression with the free market decadence peaking with the election of Trump and the embodiement of the inhumane face of capitalism and lacking ideology, a lot of us have wondered where humanity is heading. Trump doesn’t embody conservative ideology or even fascism, he’s a PR caricature, a product of advertisement and social chaos. That social decline is what was probably underestimated, since he is not the only leader we’ve seen in recent years, who’s a sociopath. Left and especially right, the compulsive liar, the ruthless opportunist who will use any means necessary to reach his aims, the people pleaser, who is so obviously damaged, but not everyone seems to notice or mind, has been in the rise more and more, not just in countries known for their coruption, but also in democracies with strong social institutions.

Essentially, if you look at the syptoms of sociopaths, they do remind you a lot of the current value system in any political and corporate arenas. Lack of empathy, manipulativeness, deceitfulness, hostility, irresponsibility are just a few common symptoms that as a society we have come to be less and less critical of in the past century. Sensitivity and honesty in the other end of the spectrum are nowadays seen as flaws. Recently, during a job interview, my career choices, were characterised as “romantic” by the interviewer, elaborating further that I don’t seem to be pragmatic, in that they clearly demonstrate a profound appreciation for the natural environment. The way I saw it, all I had pretty much stated was that I had background in biodiversity consevation and went on to describe my experience. I suppose a “pragmatic” person would have studied business or finance, even though that’s not what the position was.

The market asks more and more of people to mind their own business, to renounce their social responsibility and act on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. Many of my most compassionate and socially engaged friends are the hardest hit by the especially swift shift in values of the last decade and in contrast some of my most competitive friends, often people with very problematic personal lives, have been doing amazingly in the worklace. Not only are people with sociopath tendancies being favoured, but they are encouraged to wipe out anyone standing in their way by a system with no substantial regard for social cohesion, just the empty husk of political correctness. We are essentially selecting for sociopaths and in doing so, we are feeding them with the lies we would like to be told, by getting people to memorise from their school years the handbook of political correctness. Political correctness doesn’t give you analytical tools, or a philosophy to develop off of, all it gives you is an easily digestable set of lines to memorise so you can justify your actions, it’s like a self-help set of rules for sociopaths who sometimes need to lie their way out of trouble. And to make it easier, these rules have been fed into our education systems in a pavlov’s dog manner, so that everytime anyone hears certain sentences they will salivate, thus substituting original thought, feeling, the wisedom and instictive sensibilities our relationship with nature would have provided us with.

I also have a creeping suspicion that all those raging sociopaths get one type or other of opioids, as was discovered about hitler, but that may or may not not be true and doesn’t really change much of what we currently have.

The end is near

Every waking moment I feel the end creeping closer

It’s not an end to surrender to or a heroic end

it’s like an end to Kafka’s trial, to WWII, or to John Lennon’s life, it’s like when Kim Deal left the Pixies

It’s a sunken heart with every literal or mental visit to current affairs

Everything that stood between humanity and the black hole of self-loathing subsiding with every act of government violence

It’s a time when an old man sucks the milk from a young childless woman’s breast

and all the time the best thing you got to watch on Netflix is Attenborough’s witness statement about the world’s diminished wilderness

The covid19 was nature’s live art performance letting us know how misled we’ve been

The cloudy minds of our leaders and managers are not just a result of poor education, it’s also an acknowledgement of defeat

However, when capitalism tricked everyone into a system of monopoly, for the first time in history, the mechanisms for shifting power were altogether disbanded

So now a shift in values and power has to come from power itself and power can’t really do that, it lacks imagination and drive

Even Greta comes from the world’s most politically neutral country

I think in the past year humanity has spent more time thinking about the end than planning for the future

When I think about carefree times in 2020 the first place my mind goes to is lying on a mat smiling at Kassandra from ‘yoga with Kassandra’

You know maybe one good thing that came out of all this is that boring people stopped feeling interesting as a result of vactioning to new places and that led to less emissions and maybe triggered more involvement locally

Maybe people can use this opportunity to notice the only people who still travel to their cities, the refugees and immigrants