I tracked the COVID outbreak for some time as I tracked, with others, the idiocies surrounding the Russo-Western conflict as it developed up until Position Reserved suspended itself in 2018. I doubt if there will be much immediate comment from now on on world or national affairs because these are adequately covered by me on Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn (see below). The general theme was a personal alienation from our species en masse, apparently a true ship of fools. This is my quasi-autistic side of which I have become increasingly proud. Like Cassandra, I had the unfortunate ability to see the darkness coming (it may already have come without us noticing because we shut the curtains early) yet be unable to persuade anyone else of its imminence.
The paradox struck me that while our species appeared to be a ship of fools, most of my fellow ship mates were in fact intelligent, thoughtful, humane, often quite simply kind, and as puzzled as I was by the way we were hurtling like the unfairly proverbialised lemmings towards any cliff present. The bulk of ordinary humanity seemed to have their heads screwed on properly - the idiots were the ones in power. With emotional insecurities blown into waves of hysteria by the media for which I have developed the deepest distaste (they are the dangerous winds blowing our ship of course), it appeared that we passengers on our many ships were at the mercy of demented captains, officers who obeyed every whim of the madmen and crews who had no choice lest they be keel-hauled for their temerity in suggesting that, perhaps, we might all be better off if we headed for port or at least took a route that did not have us riding those waves on to the rocks.
Similes take us only so far. The correct and reasoned analysis is that liberal democracy is a fraud and has been for some time. Nobody dare say this any more than anyone could say that there was no God in 1660. Yes, we can elect our exploiters and the fools and, yes, we have the rule of law (often made by those same exploiters and fools) but we are, in truth, impotent, screaming into the wind. Our noise only adds to the storm. Of course, we have been persuaded that our world represents a less dangerous fraud than some more severe ideological frauds (which we insistently misrepresent as we go into denial about our own failures) but we should wonder whether that is good enough. It would be nice to think that a bit of activism might change all this fraudulent nonsense but, sadly, replacing one set of fools with another is only a fake progress. Facing our own impotence in the face of the uncaring universe and of the mis-organisation of our species into 'society' is probably the only way of maintaining one's own integrity even if it risks one's sanity.
But that does not mean one cannot have an opinion, only that one's opinion is likely to be futile if one is outside the tiny group of people who hold power in society - as much today as amongst the serfs of the Middle Ages or the industrial workers of Engels' Manchester. Would Spartacus have been anything more than another Emperor if his revolt had succeeded? Our opinions remain valid nevertheless as acts of tiny defiance - chances, during our small insignificant (to Power) lives, to show that, at least intellectually, it really is better to die on your feet than live on your corporate, media-influenced and socialised knees.And, sometimes, in history, the taste of revolt, though doomed to change little of substance in the relations between men and masters, can be delicious. For brief moments, Milton's Satan becomes Lucifer the Light-Bringer and overturns the prevailing order simply because he can. And, then, dear reader, momentarily, we come to life after years in the dust and ashes of order, conformity and obeisance.
And so this Blog will have rare (when I can shake off my indolence) bursts of 'opinion' - analyses of our species, of the darkness and the light, proposals perhaps of the Swiftian kind and simple observations on how life might be lived better under the cosh of late liberal capitalism, only the latest of many interations of human ineptitude in organising itself for its own survival and happiness, a system of desperate scrabblings by desperate people that cannot house its young, trains rather than educates, provides health by box-ticking, cannot control its security apparats or its borders, leaves swathes of humanity in desperate loneliness and poverty and thinks posturing rhetoric is a replacement for decisive action. D__n them, I say, d__n the incompetent masters who rule by lies, manipulation and secrecy.
There are also likely to be significant gaps between postings yet some may appear very soon after each other. The randomness is appropriate for someone who, quite honestly, writes only for himself, for a small circle of friends and that extremely rare person who might just 'get' what I am saying out there in the desert we call culture. And I may also write about strange and personal things ... dogs, how to live longer, life in a provincial backwater, whatever! Intelligent comments are certainly welcome. Silence is assumed to be the default position of most readers.
For updated old book reviews and rare podcast reviews, see https://timpendryfictionreviews.blogspot.com and https://timpendrybookreviews.blogspot.com For all book reviews (still being added to), see https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1016626 - there are some 1,000+ at the time of writing with only revisions and more effective reorganisation of early ones appearing in the two new blogs.
Film reviews were only of the best films seen in
recent years and appeared on my Facebook Profile alongside
quite rare Exhibition and Podcast Reviews. Cinema is, in fact, my first love but I
only have time to write on books. I have Tarantino's attitude to the Art ... it is an Art and not Reality. No more reviews will appear from now on because I have decided that the mad sacrality of cinema requires silence and films will now only be discussed in person.
For examples of me wading into the seas of public trivia like a twenty-first century Flying Dutchman, see https://twitter.com/TimPendry I tend to block people who stick silly little flags on their Profiles.
The Facebook Profile is at https://www.facebook.com/tim.pendry
but I make it quite hard for people to get through and become one of
the Elect. There is, however, plenty of material that is public domain. The huge number of Groups I used to run have now dwindled but
I am happy to direct people to the remaining lively ones.
The LinkedIn Profile is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpendry but this will only be interesting to anyone who wants very short near-daily updates on the global economic and political situation. LinkedIn is otherwise an intellectual desert filled with desperate corporate platitudes.
