Birds, Thatcher and the end of the world, it must be Friday

It really pissed down yesterday. after saying it was  very dry year we had, part from the snow, the gods decided to give us all the rain in April in the one go. I don't know if that is a good idea. And it was still 4 deg C.

Really tired yesterday but still went for a talk about birds last nite, because i wanted to support a friend. It made me think of two things as he spoke: firstly, although i do love birds, honestly i am SO GLAD that i don't have to deal with them on a regular basis under the circumstances i had to any longer. To be honest, i wasn't really dealing with them in the way i thought i should - so it was well and truly time to move on. The second thing was - god it's a weird ol world the world of birds. It used to be sooo important and now it's kinda a thing which happens in a small quiet corner of the world - where the average age of the person who is interested in it seems to be about 73.

I had a friend who used to go on and on and on about the shenanigans after i had left and after a while i just felt like saying, honestly i don't give a toss anymore. Please, can you not talk about this any longer? I am soooo BORED. If it isn't great then just leave. Of course one could say they had no where to go to, having become some sort of specialist bird person with apparently nothing else to offer anyone in life. Being a sanguine type i go, you are more than the birds. You are wonderfully talented, gifted, clever, and still YOUNG.... However, of course there is no telling the melancholics that the glass is half full. You just go, yes yes i know dear. Life is terrible is it not. And then we die.

I really liked that picture i saw of time. Not a linear progression but this time wimey wibbly ball of stuff - which is a quote from Dr Who, of course. When i saw it illustrated though i thought - wow, i understand this. Time is a conglomeration of things which have happened. Which happens. Will happen. I really understand this. For me, it was very liberating, the way discovering feminism is liberating. You know that the present interpretaion of things is wrong but   can't quite find the thing you think is more accurate. And then you discover something someone has already through of, a langauage, an image and you go - YES! that is EXACTLY HOW I FEEL!!! That is exactly how it is! And you step out of the old paradigm, the one which is effectively a collective delusion and into the one which is a better expression of what life is. A more ethical, accurate one anyway.

It is honestly depressing this nonsense about Thatcher. How can ANYONE say anything good about this woman? Apart from she was a human being? I detested her even as a teenager in Singapore and i had very little to do with her then. Her and Reagan who so admired Lee Kuan Yew, whose world view was one of slavish adherance to economics, screw everyone else as long as the figures add up. It was from people like Thatcher that i learnt that just because the numbers said so, it didn't mean you or they were right. It was because of Thatcher and her bunch that, at the age of 19, i learnt about Gross National Happiness because there just HAD to be a better way. She sold arms to Indonesia to repress East Timor, she cosied up to the Saudi Regime, she was friends with Pinochet. I mean seriously crazy bad outta the way madness which you must make a effort for. It wasn't the kind of hey, i'll close one eye here and let you get on with it. Nope. Active crazy badness.

How do people sleep at night going - ah yes, i know i had to kill a few children today, but you know what, my sums say it all makes sense. It's ok. In the long run you have to make compromises along the way cos you know - you just have to. It would have helped if someone had given Thatcher the picture of time as it is, not a linear progression of certainty and told her, people will be dancing on your grave you silly person if you continue doing this. You will live a cold, unloved, unappreciated old age, a pathetic shadow of your former self, with the world desperately trying to forget you as it limps on, trying to recover from the injuries inflicted upon it. Do you think it would have made a difference?

The world today stands at a precipce - entirely unstable, food is being bet on by investors like it is some commodity, the environment which supports us is being even more heavily plundered and looted to the point of bankruptcy, we are sitting on a powder keg in East Asia.. Thinking back the world today is far more unstable than it was when i was 24 - and it began there - in the 80s. The mother of the neo Con.

I was helping to do some pasting of art and i was chatting to a friend as i did this, and i was saying, what has education become, really. In the school, we educate to eventually create children who can become adults who can think for themselves. It is the ONLY WAY the world can continue, if we create new things - new thoughts, new possibilities, new ways to seeing things. Creating a rich bed from which strong plants will grow. Where children see themselves as part of a community, where they CARE. Where they are taught the consequences of their actions. Where they know to good is better than to do evil. We can try - we can only do our best - but we can TRY.

However, most education in general is the diametric opposite of what is going on. Most schools are about getting children to become docile regurgitators. Let us not beat about the bush with it. They are trained to become compliant employees who are dependent on some sort of artificial system to tell them they are good or bad. As a result, at the most basic level people have very little sense of whether they are acting correctly or incorrectly. They will act in the manner which they have been told they need to act.

This is how we have ended up with all the system failures which we have, because a few greedy, selfish, idiotic bastards have been able to beat the living crap out of most people and get them to do their bidding by bullying them into obedience. Because people have been educated into behaving like cattle since a young age, we have allowed them to do this. And they get away with it, until they come up against the laws of natural physics which go - um, actually this is not a good idea, it is not even possible. It is not ethical, moral nor even realistic. Will someone press the reset button? No one? OK, we can have climate change instead. Have it your way.

Man i AM tired. Will be sooo looking forward to the weekend to recharge.