Thoughts After Sickness (Part 1)
I have been fairly ill recently, and consequently things for the past month have slowed right down for me; and I have had time to rest up and think without pressures. I am now on the mend, and I have a few things to say – some of them about my previous written work and my attitude showing in some of it; some about the content and conclusions of that work and the question of their validity or otherwise.
Since I began writing a blog regularly about 2 years ago my views have coalesced and fitted together more and more as I have been proceeding. I believe my faith in Christ is stronger now and that I now have more and better evidence to back its increased strength. I believe my views on our Western societies and their economic systems have come together over time and in general hold up very well.
I do think at times I have shown a fervour, a single-mindedness, and at times a harshness of condemnation, especially now and then about people en masse; and that I could have been a little less blunt and scathing about ordinary people; been more kind and understanding; yet still have stuck to my guns that their lives and their allotted time are in large part being hijacked and squandered for them by the economic system in which they are immersed and that the marketplace is being assisted in this exercise by the political systems of governments and their authorities which are always roundly supporting this economic system.
The question of where to place the responsibility for this surreptitious coup has been centred upon what the Victorians knew as ‘The Undeserving’ and The Deserving’ amongst us; those who are aware of and under few illusions about how things are being run and about how they are set up to produce the results which ensue – these are those who are The Deserving of condemnation, particularly when these are people who are happy to condone and to acquiesce in and to promote and to procure from such setups and arrangements.
Then there are The Undeserving of condemnation who are those more ordinary people who are relative innocents when it comes to them being aware of the setup and the administration of our social and political and economic institutions by those who for the most part overwhelmingly comprise The Deserving of condemnation.
Generally it is the case that ordinary and averagely schooled people are involved in and bound up with, almost without having any critical faculty at work in them, to these systems; they may have individual grumbles and pet hates about what goes on; but almost always these are contingent and individual bugbears, and often one of them will contradict another, and others will transpire to be not real problems but hearsay or else maybe blinded by prejudice. Ordinary people tend to relate much if not most of what goes on in their daily lives to their own selves, and to their own situations and environments; such people rarely generalise with discretion and they do not build constructs of ideas aiming to be self-consistent and analytic assessments of what is going on in their, and other people’s, lives, or in their nation or in the world.
Again ordinary people will express some ideas on these topics but usually their arseanl consists of second-hand ideas got from a pretty low and gutter tabloid press, which panders to their prejudices and pet hates etc; and even creates Aunt Sallys and Hate Figures for their readers’ enjoyment and for them to let off steam at.
We here in Britain have a whole showbusiness industry of comic standups who do political and social satire. These comics appear on weekly shows galore onTV and also tour the country at live venues propagating their digs at the establishment and the politicians, at celebrities and at sportspersons, anyone in the public eye is fair game. These satirists depend on this establishment and on the famous and well-known class of person for their bread and butter; and for their subversive and dependent brand of comedy. Were things run well and above board here in UK these comics would be without materials and without a show and without those fawning audiences who misguidedly see them as maverick heroes and heroines.
These comics represent one way in which intolerance of the political and social systems are tolerated and celebrated and turned around into entertainment and into cash by the very systems they depend on and earn their bread and reputations by, and which they aim to disintegrate. This is typical Capitalism. That absorbs its antagonists; and which carries the seeds of its own destruction. The audiences and comics enjoy their typical chummy mutual gratulations whilst Rome meanwhile goes on burning.
These satirist comics and their audiences are a group of higher level somewhat educated persons who yet still partake in the ordinary persons’ commonplace street hearsay and wayward prejudices, but at a stage removed from grimy Tabloid persuasives and at a stage wherein comics/audiences believe they are in fact ‘wised up’ and so ‘know the ropes’ concerning what goes on and how things are in the world; but yet in some regards these comics and audiences still belong with The Undeserving of censure and condemnation; the innocents, those who fail to appreciate and realise fully the predatory nature and ruthless behaviour of the manipulators, the Simon Cowells and the Alan Sugars, who comprise The Deserving of condemnation.
The audiences of such comics belong with the innocents because they do not see the depths of destruction, they do not do the thinking to its end logic, to see that havoc their pastimes entertainments are wreaking and fragmenting even moreso our societies.
I don’t like condescending pity – I prefer harsh and bitter anger to it. Nonetheless those whom one might say are not aware, are often not aware because their hearts will not believe such things of their common shared humanity; the deeds the ruthless get up to casually and daily. Their hearts are ‘in the right place’ but their hearts do not know very well for what reasons they are ‘in the right place’. These people are then open moreso to manipulation and to receiving without due discrimination the directives and intents of those who would steer them and would arouse their wraths or else raise their sympathies on hand-picked issues of these manipulators’ choice.
This all sounds pretty high and mighty in me, I know. That I should claim to know this and that I should consider myself so prescient and perspicacious about others and about life in general. I can only say in reply what I write is based on my experience and on my long-considered judgement on these affairs. This is my present conclusion and view of things.
As a view of things it is overarched and tempered by my Christian Faith – I might add that I believe that it is my very Christian Faith which has enabled me to see things from the perspective I see from. It has provided me, becausee it provides me with a cosmology as it were, with a vantage point which is able to take into its grasp all time and give me ultimate direction and purpose for my life and for all existence. I believe heartily in Jesus, Jesus who proclaims a higher life than that of only getting and spending; than that of contingent escapisms and ad hoc entertainments and safe delusions. You may think me an incorrigible snob and a prig; but I do earnestly believe this is The Truth – and it is so even when men and women in general do not realise that they are dependent on God for all things and in every way.
To be continued...
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