This blog is inspired by (and thus dedicated to) a friend of mine. I'm not going to name her because that would be embarrassing but she's a Pagan of the Wiccan style and a hard-working young woman in the caring professions who is utterly devoted to her children.
She has, though, come in for some criticism for her use of certain narcotics and sex-magick in her magickal and religious practice. I love her to bits - most people do -but there's a small and vociferous minority who find her and her methods and philosophies offensive because they are "Left-Hand Path".
Disclaimer: Any non-Pagan or non-occultist reading this is likely to find it a wee bit confusing. Sorry! If you do need anything translating please ask.
Left-Hand Path
What do we mean when we talk about the Left- and Right-Hand Paths of magick? As a simple Pagan boy back in the '80s, who had read his share of Dennis Wheatley novels as a kid, the answer was pretty straightforward - good and evil! A Left-Hand Path magician would hurt and use people for their own ends. They would command demons, perform sacrifices and cause destruction. Proper sensationalist stuff.
Many people still believe this and judge accordingly. Certain activities, though, are classed as Left-Hand Path, regardless of whether they are destructive or harmful, and then condemned outright.
It can be argued, because words change their meanings over time, that a word or term means what people believe it to mean at any particular moment. A look at the history of the word "nice" is quite revealing in this regard. Equally a look at the origins of Left- and Right-Hand Paths is very enlightening.
The terms originate in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra and were first applied to Western Occultism by the famous Mme. Blavatsky back in the late 19th Century.
To give a general gist: Right-Hand practices can be considered the slow and safe way to Divinity - prayer, meditation, strict adherence to moral codes with the aim of (in Christian terms) "sitting at the right hand of God".
Left-Hand practices go direct - they are the methods which, occasionally dangerously, speed things up. The ingestion of certain mind-altering substances and sexual magickal acts are commonly used. They use real-world rather than symbolic methods and, most importantly, consider the practitioner to be potentially God themselves. A good description I've read describes the difference thus: ". . . the Great Rite performed symbolically using chalice and athame is a right-hand ritual. When the High Priest and High Priestess perform the Union by actually having sex, it is a left-hand ritual."
Magick
When we perform a Magickal act we're are looking at the multiverse in a different way from normal. We have to. We have to consider that there is an unseen force which we can be aware of and manipulate. During our normal lives this force is usually not noticed and we have to tune in in order to become aware of it.
Crowley defined Magick as causing changes in accordance with will, (such as the healing of an injury or the removal of an obstacle) but that's only a small part of the whole thing. What we are really changing using Magickal practices is ourselves. We change our awareness. We change it temporarily during a circle in order to be deliberately aware of the force we're tuning into and manipulating. In changing our awareness and perception of the multiverse we change ourselves into creatures with a wider perception.
And what is this force into which we tune? Mana, chi, the Holy Spirit, the "force", the True Will? By whatever name it's known it is our direct link to divinity, to Heaven, Samadhi, Yoga, enlightenment. By widening our perceptions we become more godlike, and the more we do it the more divine we become. The modern Pagan does this in very old-fashioned ways, such as invocation - which makes one divine by identification with the divine.
SEX!
How do you feel when sexually aroused? Do you feel "normal"? No, neither do I.
Sex is a great way of altering our awareness of the universe. The best method for most people appears to be loving sex with an absolutely equal partner - you open up yourselves and each other together. During orgasm the human being has an experience like no other and when two people do that together they join in a manner not possible by any other method. They literally know, for a moment, how it feels to be divine.
Yet, this is not the only way. The alteration of awareness via sexual methods can be done solo or even in large groups, via orgasm or the suppression of orgasm, or even via the various "kinks" which work so well for some people. Frankly from my own point of view, as long as everybody's happy doing what they're doing then whatever floats your boat is great. Go for it!
From a Western magickal perspective there is also another sexual road to divinity, to tuning in - the afterglow.
Here's a note to all men who get up, give it a wipe and then ring for a taxi - you're an idiot!
Awareness during afterglow whilst cuddling your partner/partners/simply enjoying it, is exactly the same as the awareness deliberately attempted during a circle. During afterglow we are automatically tuned-in, no longer a small, separate creature and instinctively aware of what Buddhists spend years of meditation trying to achieve.
DRUGS!
I'm not going to suggest here that people should use illegal and possibly dangerous substances. In fact, for legal reasons I'd like to declare this section on drugs entirely theoretical. Don't try this at home kiddies!
Okay, that's that out of the way!
I have a very limited experience of narcotics, so I'm happy to listen to experts on the subject. One of those experts is William Burroughs who considered opiates to be bad, and frankly he should know. So I'll say right now, stay away from opiates. Opiates include heroin, cocaine, opium, "smack" and so on.
There are certain other substances, however, which appear to have rather positive effects, both in the long and short terms. They also appear to have almost no addictive effects. These are the hallucinogens.
As I've said over and over already, magick is about changing yourself by means of changing your awareness, which is what hallucinogens do. Some people call them entheogens, which is lovely Greek(ish) word -literally within-god-create! They make you like a god inside.
In my own experience I have tried only one entheogen (unless you count kava-kava which was a bit pants), the psilocybe semilanceata or Liberty Cap/magic mushroom. In all honesty, it was great! It altered my perceptions so that I could see with ease all that I imagined and allowed me to look at the world in a completely different manner. Should I try it again I shall do so in a deliberately ritualised environment to heighten the experience yet further and to tune in even deeper.
This is exactly what shamans have been doing across the whole world for the whole of human existence! In other words, altering one's awareness has been magickal practice forever and the use of a substance to aid that change is one common, nay normal, method.
I'm not sure about marijuana simply because I don't like it. Personally I find it a vile substance and can't see the appeal. Different strokes for different folks!
There is one drug I would definitely not recommend - tobacco. Having spent most of my adult life addicted to the bloody stuff, and only having broken that addiction about 5 years ago I can honestly say that there is absolutely no good in tobacco whatsoever.
There is one mind-altering substance which is commonly used by millions on a regular basis. So commonly, in fact, that few consider it a drug at all. It's even used by people who disapprove of "drugs". It's legal, it's relatively cheap and it's incredibly dangerous. You've probably worked out by now that I'm talking about alcohol.
I deliberately use alcohol for what I consider its intended purpose - to get drunk. I'm not an habitual drinker (although there's always a danger of that) and so don't drink except for the effect. If I don't want to get drunk, I simply don't drink! To me this is a form of worship. A night drinking and dancing is my Bacchanale and I dedicate it to Dionysos as soon as I step through the door.
Paganism.
One of the wonderful things about Paganism is its immediacy. You don't need a priest to talk to the gods for you, you can do it yourself. You don't separate your worship to a specific day, your life becomes worship through the alteration of your awareness. You can even join with a spirit or deity so that they can speak through you and the two become one.
These are precisely the aims of the so-called Left-Hand Path!
By that definition, the whole of Paganism is Left-Hand Path, but does that mean that Paganism is also evil?
Bloody stupid question! Of course it doesn't!
It's about time we got rid of such simplistic definitions as Left- and Right-Hand Path. They don't help anybody. The vast majority of us use methods which combine elements of both definitions and therefore make a mockery of the whole concept. We're human beings and, as such, simple black/white categorisations are inadequate, belittling and frankly, bollocks!
If someone uses sexual magick to harm another person then they're not Left-Hand Path. They're bastards!
Similarly, if someone uses sexual magick to heal another person they're not Right-Hand Path, or Left- either. They're sexual healers, and probably an amazing shag too!
We need to get beyond petty moralisations and over-simplified definitions and open ourselves up to a whole multiverse of infinite possibilities. We are potential gods, and whatever methods we use to achieve that realisation for ourselves are the "good" ones.
An it harm none, do what you will.
Love,
Seán
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Showing posts with label will. Show all posts
Showing posts with label will. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Buy Nothing!
Today I'm using the blog to promote something which I think is worthwhile and important - Buy Nothing Day, which is this coming Saturday (29th November - Happy Birthday, Pixie!)
But before that, have a look at this video:
(Hope this works, I've never posted a video before)
Better yet, don't just watch it, steal it from me and spread it around. It's from a website called Bonfire of the Brands. Go check them out. I found it on The Idler, check that out too!
I'm not going to plug Buy Nothing Day for it's anti-capitalist, anti-work ethic. Nor am I looking at it from the environmental perspective. Other people have already done that far better than me. There's a list of them on the right under the heading Kick-Arse Politics.
What I'm proposing is that we use Buy Nothing Day as a way of proving to ourselves and the world of high-brand media marketing that we can and will take control of our own lives.
Advertising
I've nothing against advertising as a thing in itself. In order to get your message across you've got to tell people about it. There are even ads on this blog, and I wouldn't dream of suggesting that anyone abuse the system by clicking them on and then off again! But we are surrounded by it and saturated by it and we barely ever realise just how much we are being controlled.
I understand that it's fairly normal for marketing to be taught as a subject in American schools. I'm impressed, if it's true, and I would like to suggest that we all make a study of marketing and branding techniques. (In fact, I'm using one right now by emboldening the words, Buy Nothing Day every time they appear.)
Why? - So we can become good marketers? No! - So we can defend ourselves against them.
Here are some examples:
Catch 'em young: A recent study in Chicago showed that pre-school children believed things tasted better when they came wrapped in the McDonalds label. That's anything at all - carrots, milk, apples, anything. That's pre-schoolers, 3-5 year olds. That's the power of branding!
Repetition: the vast majority of advertising works on the simple process of repetition. If you tell someone something often enough, they will believe you!
Make it emotive: Nike don't sell shoes, they don't even sell sports shoes. They sell dreams! Watch a Nike ad someday (if you don't feel too dirty). They won't tell you how good their shoes are, how long they will last or the wonderful stuff of which they are made. They show you what you dream of being - a sporting hero. Buy Nike shoes and YOU will score that goal, live in that house, drive that car, shag that appalling mindless bimbo with the bleached hair and tits like halves of grapefruits.
Space creation: Supermarkets are full of psychological tricks and controls. The newest in my local one is a Christmas Santa-and-his-Elves floor painting. It's bright, cartoonish and kids want to play on it for hours. Funnily enough it's right down the aisle of Christmas chocolates.
Smells: Supermarkets do this as well. Bread is a real biggie. Who doesn't love the smell of newly-baked bread? And doesn't it set off your saliva glands and make you feel hungry. Oh to hell with it, let's get an extra loaf. In fact I feel really good now, let's splurge on something else!
AAARGH!
I could go on with this for an awful lot longer - there are psychological tricks around every corner in every shopping centre, every time you turn on the telly, listen to the radio or look at Yahoo/Google/MySpace/Blogger. Please feel free to seek them out. We could create a new hobby - fnord spotting.
The question I'm asking is this: When we go out into the civilised world to buy (say) apples, whose will are we doing? Are we buying them because we want to or because the marketer says we should? And if we do how do we know our choice of apples is our choice?
How much more does this question apply to a pair of Ugg boots, an iPod, or a Renault Laguna?
Buy Nothing!
Buy Nothing Day is a way of - at least temporarily - taking control of our lives and our rampant bloody consumerism. My dad honestly believes that we buy ten times more stuff than we did when he was 25 (about 40 years ago). He may be right.
I read a lovely saying the other day;
The only things which like permanent growth are corporations, goverments and tumours. Damn right!
Our consumerism went too far 50 years ago and it's still getting worse, primarily because we're being influenced by very clever, very evil people who want us to buy stuff. Buying stuff we don't want or need is good for the economy.
Fuck the economy.
Consumerism is directly responsible for all of the environmental disasters we're going through right now. It is destructive to the planet and, worse, destructive to the human soul.
Do your will. Not mine, not the government's, and certainly not McDonalds'!
Just make sure it really is yours, and I'll try to do the same.
Love,
Seán
But before that, have a look at this video:
(Hope this works, I've never posted a video before)
Better yet, don't just watch it, steal it from me and spread it around. It's from a website called Bonfire of the Brands. Go check them out. I found it on The Idler, check that out too!
I'm not going to plug Buy Nothing Day for it's anti-capitalist, anti-work ethic. Nor am I looking at it from the environmental perspective. Other people have already done that far better than me. There's a list of them on the right under the heading Kick-Arse Politics.
What I'm proposing is that we use Buy Nothing Day as a way of proving to ourselves and the world of high-brand media marketing that we can and will take control of our own lives.
Advertising
I've nothing against advertising as a thing in itself. In order to get your message across you've got to tell people about it. There are even ads on this blog, and I wouldn't dream of suggesting that anyone abuse the system by clicking them on and then off again! But we are surrounded by it and saturated by it and we barely ever realise just how much we are being controlled.
I understand that it's fairly normal for marketing to be taught as a subject in American schools. I'm impressed, if it's true, and I would like to suggest that we all make a study of marketing and branding techniques. (In fact, I'm using one right now by emboldening the words, Buy Nothing Day every time they appear.)
Why? - So we can become good marketers? No! - So we can defend ourselves against them.
Here are some examples:
Catch 'em young: A recent study in Chicago showed that pre-school children believed things tasted better when they came wrapped in the McDonalds label. That's anything at all - carrots, milk, apples, anything. That's pre-schoolers, 3-5 year olds. That's the power of branding!
Repetition: the vast majority of advertising works on the simple process of repetition. If you tell someone something often enough, they will believe you!
Make it emotive: Nike don't sell shoes, they don't even sell sports shoes. They sell dreams! Watch a Nike ad someday (if you don't feel too dirty). They won't tell you how good their shoes are, how long they will last or the wonderful stuff of which they are made. They show you what you dream of being - a sporting hero. Buy Nike shoes and YOU will score that goal, live in that house, drive that car, shag that appalling mindless bimbo with the bleached hair and tits like halves of grapefruits.
Space creation: Supermarkets are full of psychological tricks and controls. The newest in my local one is a Christmas Santa-and-his-Elves floor painting. It's bright, cartoonish and kids want to play on it for hours. Funnily enough it's right down the aisle of Christmas chocolates.
Smells: Supermarkets do this as well. Bread is a real biggie. Who doesn't love the smell of newly-baked bread? And doesn't it set off your saliva glands and make you feel hungry. Oh to hell with it, let's get an extra loaf. In fact I feel really good now, let's splurge on something else!
AAARGH!
I could go on with this for an awful lot longer - there are psychological tricks around every corner in every shopping centre, every time you turn on the telly, listen to the radio or look at Yahoo/Google/MySpace/Blogger. Please feel free to seek them out. We could create a new hobby - fnord spotting.
The question I'm asking is this: When we go out into the civilised world to buy (say) apples, whose will are we doing? Are we buying them because we want to or because the marketer says we should? And if we do how do we know our choice of apples is our choice?
How much more does this question apply to a pair of Ugg boots, an iPod, or a Renault Laguna?
Buy Nothing!
Buy Nothing Day is a way of - at least temporarily - taking control of our lives and our rampant bloody consumerism. My dad honestly believes that we buy ten times more stuff than we did when he was 25 (about 40 years ago). He may be right.
I read a lovely saying the other day;
The only things which like permanent growth are corporations, goverments and tumours. Damn right!
Our consumerism went too far 50 years ago and it's still getting worse, primarily because we're being influenced by very clever, very evil people who want us to buy stuff. Buying stuff we don't want or need is good for the economy.
Fuck the economy.
Consumerism is directly responsible for all of the environmental disasters we're going through right now. It is destructive to the planet and, worse, destructive to the human soul.
Do your will. Not mine, not the government's, and certainly not McDonalds'!
Just make sure it really is yours, and I'll try to do the same.
Love,
Seán
Thursday, 6 November 2008
A Touchy Subject
Please excuse the title, it's a pun worthy of a hairdresser's shop I admit but, for some reason, the best I could come up with.
Back in September I wrote a piece called Temple Tarts, and towards the end I suggested ways in which we could improve our attitudes to sex as a society. One of these was to promote nudism and the other to be more open to touch. The response from a couple of friends on Facebook was especially interesting.
Right or Wrong?
One of those friends has an uncle who was a schoolteacher who was falsely accused of child molestation. The case was proven to be total bullshit and thrown out of court, but not until after his life had been ruined. Many people who didn't know either him or his accusers were willing to believe entirely without proof and acted like vigilantes.
In yet another fit of synchronicity, I'm also working in a film at the moment about an innocent man who is accused of the inappropriate touching of a child. It ruins his life too.
Also, back in the early '90s a friend of mine was accused of child abuse. Again it was wrong and proven to be so, but many people believed it. In his case it was because he was male and a known Pagan. Most Pagans over 30 will have some recollection of the Rochdale and Orkney debacles and this was in their wake.
I have no answers here. I still believe that to touch a person who doesn't want you to, sexually or otherwise, is wrong but that the world will be a far better place if we allow more people to touch us. We really need to be open to intimacy and less distant from each other.
At the same time there is this amazing and ludicrous paranoia that anyone (or any man particularly) who is affectionate to a child is doing something sinister.
It's strange: When I was small teachers were distant, dominant dragons. You weren't supposed to like them, you were supposed to obey them. Now my children (aged 7 and 9) often hug their teachers or dinnertime staff. To my mind this is better. There is still some discipline, but the teachers are considered more as human beings in their own right.
Obviously this will happen less and less as they get older and develop personal space, but at the moment it's good and gives the children a sense of security.
In The Beginning
Not long ago I used to think that the primary human sense was sight. I got that one wrong!
Sight is exceptionally important to us. It's how we interact with the world, it's our advanced warning system, it's how we recognise each other. But it's not our first sense.
The first experiences of a newborn baby come through the skin during birth and the moments immediately after. The child doesn't see mum, she feels mum. She feels warmth and comfort.
Our skin is the largest sense-organ we have and we can't turn it off, like we can shut our eyes, and through it we experience everything around us. In other words we need to touch and be touched to fully experience the world as a whole and not just each other.
So why this paranoia over something we need so much? I think it's down to sex.
Touchy, Feely
To touch someone in certain ways is highly intimate and pleasurable, and to be touched like that is much the same. The point of crossover comes in the use of an unwilling person to acquire that pleasure. No longer loving or sexual it becomes a matter of power and dominance.
This is what makes it wrong, the imposition of one's will upon another without their consent. It is, in the words of Granny Weatherwax, "Treating people as things".
Such acts, quite rightly, upset and disgust people. But that's not the problem here. The problem comes in the willingness to believe the worst immediately.
Sex is a natural obsession. Once we've got ourselves sorted out with food and shelter our minds tend to turn that way. Advertisers know this - sex sells, and the manipulation of sexuality for profit is an amazingly effective way of making money. Newspapers know this very well.
Sensationalism feeds the human hunger for stimulation. We are incredibly intelligent beings, we've had to be to survive, but when it's no longer needed for survival that thirst for information can easily be perverted to sell magazines. It's just a more modern form of gossip.
Put the two together and what have you got? You've got a willingness to believe in the most unrealistic nonsense if it's novel enough. Sad but true and I don't think there's a cure. Misquoting William de Worde this time, "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on". This is no consolation to my friend's uncle, I know, but it appears to be what happens.
What Do We Do Now?
Well, one thing we shouldn't do is worry too much. The sensationalist newspapers notwithstanding, our society is not populated by rampant child-abusing maniacs. Sexual crimes are very rare in comparison with other crimes, and other crimes are going down.
Here's a link to the official figures.
What we need to do is be affectionate with our friends and loving with our children. We need to do our own will, in other words that which we truly believe to be right, rather than to have our wills controlled by the media.
It's the hundred-monkey syndrome again. If enough people behave in a certain way (eg. considering what the truth might be before believing in the guilt of an innocent schoolteacher), eventually the behaviour of the whole society will change.
We can make our society a better place by starting with ourselves.
Love,
Seán
Back in September I wrote a piece called Temple Tarts, and towards the end I suggested ways in which we could improve our attitudes to sex as a society. One of these was to promote nudism and the other to be more open to touch. The response from a couple of friends on Facebook was especially interesting.
Right or Wrong?
One of those friends has an uncle who was a schoolteacher who was falsely accused of child molestation. The case was proven to be total bullshit and thrown out of court, but not until after his life had been ruined. Many people who didn't know either him or his accusers were willing to believe entirely without proof and acted like vigilantes.
In yet another fit of synchronicity, I'm also working in a film at the moment about an innocent man who is accused of the inappropriate touching of a child. It ruins his life too.
Also, back in the early '90s a friend of mine was accused of child abuse. Again it was wrong and proven to be so, but many people believed it. In his case it was because he was male and a known Pagan. Most Pagans over 30 will have some recollection of the Rochdale and Orkney debacles and this was in their wake.
I have no answers here. I still believe that to touch a person who doesn't want you to, sexually or otherwise, is wrong but that the world will be a far better place if we allow more people to touch us. We really need to be open to intimacy and less distant from each other.
At the same time there is this amazing and ludicrous paranoia that anyone (or any man particularly) who is affectionate to a child is doing something sinister.
It's strange: When I was small teachers were distant, dominant dragons. You weren't supposed to like them, you were supposed to obey them. Now my children (aged 7 and 9) often hug their teachers or dinnertime staff. To my mind this is better. There is still some discipline, but the teachers are considered more as human beings in their own right.
Obviously this will happen less and less as they get older and develop personal space, but at the moment it's good and gives the children a sense of security.
In The Beginning
Not long ago I used to think that the primary human sense was sight. I got that one wrong!
Sight is exceptionally important to us. It's how we interact with the world, it's our advanced warning system, it's how we recognise each other. But it's not our first sense.
The first experiences of a newborn baby come through the skin during birth and the moments immediately after. The child doesn't see mum, she feels mum. She feels warmth and comfort.
Our skin is the largest sense-organ we have and we can't turn it off, like we can shut our eyes, and through it we experience everything around us. In other words we need to touch and be touched to fully experience the world as a whole and not just each other.
So why this paranoia over something we need so much? I think it's down to sex.
Touchy, Feely
To touch someone in certain ways is highly intimate and pleasurable, and to be touched like that is much the same. The point of crossover comes in the use of an unwilling person to acquire that pleasure. No longer loving or sexual it becomes a matter of power and dominance.
This is what makes it wrong, the imposition of one's will upon another without their consent. It is, in the words of Granny Weatherwax, "Treating people as things".
Such acts, quite rightly, upset and disgust people. But that's not the problem here. The problem comes in the willingness to believe the worst immediately.
Sex is a natural obsession. Once we've got ourselves sorted out with food and shelter our minds tend to turn that way. Advertisers know this - sex sells, and the manipulation of sexuality for profit is an amazingly effective way of making money. Newspapers know this very well.
Sensationalism feeds the human hunger for stimulation. We are incredibly intelligent beings, we've had to be to survive, but when it's no longer needed for survival that thirst for information can easily be perverted to sell magazines. It's just a more modern form of gossip.
Put the two together and what have you got? You've got a willingness to believe in the most unrealistic nonsense if it's novel enough. Sad but true and I don't think there's a cure. Misquoting William de Worde this time, "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on". This is no consolation to my friend's uncle, I know, but it appears to be what happens.
What Do We Do Now?
Well, one thing we shouldn't do is worry too much. The sensationalist newspapers notwithstanding, our society is not populated by rampant child-abusing maniacs. Sexual crimes are very rare in comparison with other crimes, and other crimes are going down.
Here's a link to the official figures.
What we need to do is be affectionate with our friends and loving with our children. We need to do our own will, in other words that which we truly believe to be right, rather than to have our wills controlled by the media.
It's the hundred-monkey syndrome again. If enough people behave in a certain way (eg. considering what the truth might be before believing in the guilt of an innocent schoolteacher), eventually the behaviour of the whole society will change.
We can make our society a better place by starting with ourselves.
Love,
Seán
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Surveillance Culture
I've recently read an interesting article by Nick Rosen about ways to attempt to live "off the grid" or, in other words, how to to avoid being spied on in everything we do.
Here's the link to said article:
Living Off The Grid
Who's Watching You?
It would appear that we Brits are the most paranoid, surveillance-obsessed people in Europe. As well as the fact that we can all be traced every time we use the internet (like I'm doing now, and so are you!) or use our mobile phones (which are GPS trackers), we have more CCTV cameras on our streets than any other country excepting the U.S.A.
Here's a nice quote:
Four years ago there were an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the exact figure is unknown as there is no central registration system – but there are probably nearer 6 million cameras now. There are up to ten on every bus and dozens at every station, so avoid London Transport if you want to evade the cameras. Most CCTV runs from speed cameras, which are less prevalent in the countryside. Maps of them are available on car websites
Here's the link to said article:
Living Off The Grid
Who's Watching You?
It would appear that we Brits are the most paranoid, surveillance-obsessed people in Europe. As well as the fact that we can all be traced every time we use the internet (like I'm doing now, and so are you!) or use our mobile phones (which are GPS trackers), we have more CCTV cameras on our streets than any other country excepting the U.S.A.
Here's a nice quote:
Four years ago there were an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the exact figure is unknown as there is no central registration system – but there are probably nearer 6 million cameras now. There are up to ten on every bus and dozens at every station, so avoid London Transport if you want to evade the cameras. Most CCTV runs from speed cameras, which are less prevalent in the countryside. Maps of them are available on car websites
Note that figure: 6 million cameras. That's roughly one camera for every ten people in the country. That's a lot of cameras, and yet so many of us want to get on telly - including me!
There's also a total lack of legal registration dealing with these cameras except one simple rule - the height. You can put up a camera and legally point it just about anywhere you like as long as it's 8 feet or more above the ground so nobody can bang their head on it.
The way we pay our bills is recorded and so is the stuff we buy with our debit cards, our credit cards, our store loyalty cards. Such figures, particularly the ones from store loyalty cards are sold to marketers in order to sell us more stuff. Social networking sites are notorious for doing this sort of thing. Facebook has by far the worst reputation.
- Suggestions in order to live off the grid include:
Wearing brimmed hats in public (because cameras are above head height)
Tinting your car windows
Using an infra-red light to illuminate your registration plate at night
Swap store loyalty cards with friends
Swap cards for cash
Use the Freecycle Networks
Email via companies that send messages through a "data cloud" (such as Xerobank)
Living in such a way that the use of public utilities is minimized or removed altogether, such as buying a houseboat.
These are pretty good ideas when you find a lack of privacy a problem. My problem is whether or not all these security measures fulfill their specified purpose which is to protect us all from crime.
Let's have a look and see what we can find
In an article published here the police admit that CCTV has had almost no effect on street crime.
Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe
According to this really useful website the country with the least public surveillance in Europe is Greece. Greece has annually about 31 assaults per 10,000 people, we have 745! Similarly the UK gets about 157 robberies per 10,000 people, Greece has about 8. Even with mucked-about and massaged figures the discrepancy is obvious.
What To Do?
Frankly all this extra security is proving pretty pointless, but because people are paranoid and (despite the evidence) think more laws and security measures mean less crime it isn't going to go away. So what can we do about it?
One way is to attempt to live off the grid, which is difficult but possibly not such a bad idea. There is an alternative, though, inspired by those wonderful people, M@ and holly from HUMANWINE in their song Big Brother. The chorus, very simply put goes:
Big brother is watching. Let him watch!
I've forgotten where the reference is but there's some more inspiration from one of my favourite American heroes, Justin Boland (see the links to Brainsturbator, Skilluminati and Hump Jones). The point he's made goes something like this: If we are under constant surveillance which we cannot but accept then we need to turn that to our own advantage. Our lives are no longer private because we are being watched and the way to take control of that is to make one's life a performance.
We could try to escape our spy-on-you culture but we're fighting a losing battle, so instead (as in Tai Chi and Akido) we use the enemy's strength against him. We make the surveillance cameras see what we want them to by performing for them. This has it's occult element also in being an exercise in consistent self-awareness.
In other words AN IT HARM NONE DO WHAT YOU WILL. Do what you believe is absolutely the right thing to do, because to do otherwise would be to become less that yourself, and if the cameras are watching - let 'em.
What more can we do other than our true will, regardless of who's watching? The question now (with the greatest sympathy for those who live under totalitarian regimes like China and the US) is are we brave enough?
Love,
Seán
Thursday, 3 April 2008
I'm a Film Star (sort of)!
Believe it or not!
Okay, I'm not really a film star, although I could pretend to be Johnny Depp's slightly chubby brother. I have been in a film, though. It was called Poppy Shakespeare, and was on Channel 4 on Monday night (31st March). It'll probably be on one of the digital channels again fairly soon.
I'll apologise here to my chums outside Britain who won't have the vaguest idea what I'm waffling on about.
Stardom
It's very wierd watching a film you've taken part in. When I watch a film normally I naturally suspend disbelief like any good TV-weaned automaton. The actual filming process doesn't matter to me and I treat the goings-on as if they are reality, albeit in a temporary and limited sense.
When you know the process it's very different. Firstly I was watching the film past the main characters to see myself and my friends who were playing the background parts. Secondly I remembered what happened in the actual filming and how completely different it was from what appeared on screen. Obviously that difference is down to the amazing skills of the crew and director, but it does give one a type of double vision.
I watched Harvey eat a little bit of banana in one scene. The important thing to know is that any scene is shot from several angles, each angle several times over. I timed one scene - 3 minutes (a longish one) - it took half a day to film. The whole scene is, therefore, repeated by the actors over and over and over again. The more people doing or saying something the more camera angles there are; the more camera angles there are the more the scene is repeated. Harvey ate a bite of banana in one scene: in reality he ate at least six bananas, very slowly, over a five-hour period.
Frankly, I feel ill for him.
Bunny
There are other things too. I know that the guy in the bunny costume is really a red-haired Scot, that the cameraman is called Zack and that my trousers were held up with safety pins. I know that all the cigarettes were herbal, but still absolutely vile, and that the director pinched a lollipop from one scene potentially cocking-up the continuity if anyone noticed.
Yet, despite all this insider knowledge I still found it all believable. Not just the film itself, but also during the making of it - it's that double vision thing again.
Acting
I make no claims whatsoever to being a great actor, but I like to think it's something I have a kind of raw talent for. I was cast as an unnamed mental patient in the film, and was told to be nervous and twitchy, subject to shocks; so I was.
In doing so, though, it became a temporary reality. When I heard "Action!" I was Mr Twitch, when I heard "Cut!", I was Seán again. It was less a pretending and more a momentary becoming - double vision again - and it struck me that what I've been doing is very much akin to Shamanism.
Shaman
I like the frog as a symbol of the Shaman. Frogs live in two worlds equally and neither entirely, they are a bridge between them. They need both worlds to survive.
The Shaman does the same thing. S/he ("He" from now on) moves between worlds equally, bringing the qualities of one to the benefit of the other. He has a double vision that sees the reality and necessity of both worlds at the same time.
The Shaman also does something else: he acts. To truly understand the creatures and people around him he becomes them in a temporary way. One of the ways a Shaman will honour his totem creature or animal allies is by dancing them, in other words becoming them temporarily.
I'm sure that many will simply pretend at first, but as I found, pretending with conviction turns into becoming.
Jazz
I'm back to the old Jazz cliché, Fake it 'til you make it again. If I can become a mad person in a temporary and controlled manner, what else could I, or anybody, be and for how long?
Can a human being become exactly that which they choose to be temporarily and then revert to some base state?
Can that be made permanent so that the new state becomes the base state?
I believe in Fake it 'til you make it because I know it works. What I'm finding fascinating is that should the Shaman/Actor be able to change the base state of their being then the base state must, necessarily, be impermanent. In other words, there is no true person except what (and if!) that person chooses for themselves.
Find your true will?
Love,
Seán
Okay, I'm not really a film star, although I could pretend to be Johnny Depp's slightly chubby brother. I have been in a film, though. It was called Poppy Shakespeare, and was on Channel 4 on Monday night (31st March). It'll probably be on one of the digital channels again fairly soon.
I'll apologise here to my chums outside Britain who won't have the vaguest idea what I'm waffling on about.
Stardom
It's very wierd watching a film you've taken part in. When I watch a film normally I naturally suspend disbelief like any good TV-weaned automaton. The actual filming process doesn't matter to me and I treat the goings-on as if they are reality, albeit in a temporary and limited sense.
When you know the process it's very different. Firstly I was watching the film past the main characters to see myself and my friends who were playing the background parts. Secondly I remembered what happened in the actual filming and how completely different it was from what appeared on screen. Obviously that difference is down to the amazing skills of the crew and director, but it does give one a type of double vision.
I watched Harvey eat a little bit of banana in one scene. The important thing to know is that any scene is shot from several angles, each angle several times over. I timed one scene - 3 minutes (a longish one) - it took half a day to film. The whole scene is, therefore, repeated by the actors over and over and over again. The more people doing or saying something the more camera angles there are; the more camera angles there are the more the scene is repeated. Harvey ate a bite of banana in one scene: in reality he ate at least six bananas, very slowly, over a five-hour period.
Frankly, I feel ill for him.
Bunny
There are other things too. I know that the guy in the bunny costume is really a red-haired Scot, that the cameraman is called Zack and that my trousers were held up with safety pins. I know that all the cigarettes were herbal, but still absolutely vile, and that the director pinched a lollipop from one scene potentially cocking-up the continuity if anyone noticed.
Yet, despite all this insider knowledge I still found it all believable. Not just the film itself, but also during the making of it - it's that double vision thing again.
Acting
I make no claims whatsoever to being a great actor, but I like to think it's something I have a kind of raw talent for. I was cast as an unnamed mental patient in the film, and was told to be nervous and twitchy, subject to shocks; so I was.
In doing so, though, it became a temporary reality. When I heard "Action!" I was Mr Twitch, when I heard "Cut!", I was Seán again. It was less a pretending and more a momentary becoming - double vision again - and it struck me that what I've been doing is very much akin to Shamanism.
Shaman
I like the frog as a symbol of the Shaman. Frogs live in two worlds equally and neither entirely, they are a bridge between them. They need both worlds to survive.
The Shaman does the same thing. S/he ("He" from now on) moves between worlds equally, bringing the qualities of one to the benefit of the other. He has a double vision that sees the reality and necessity of both worlds at the same time.
The Shaman also does something else: he acts. To truly understand the creatures and people around him he becomes them in a temporary way. One of the ways a Shaman will honour his totem creature or animal allies is by dancing them, in other words becoming them temporarily.
I'm sure that many will simply pretend at first, but as I found, pretending with conviction turns into becoming.
Jazz
I'm back to the old Jazz cliché, Fake it 'til you make it again. If I can become a mad person in a temporary and controlled manner, what else could I, or anybody, be and for how long?
Can a human being become exactly that which they choose to be temporarily and then revert to some base state?
Can that be made permanent so that the new state becomes the base state?
I believe in Fake it 'til you make it because I know it works. What I'm finding fascinating is that should the Shaman/Actor be able to change the base state of their being then the base state must, necessarily, be impermanent. In other words, there is no true person except what (and if!) that person chooses for themselves.
Find your true will?
Love,
Seán
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Who Me?
In my last post I made a statement which I think might need a little working on:
". . . I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made."
It seems a pretty glib thing to say at first, but what does it actually mean? I know what I have been made because I am very much the sum of the last 40-odd years of experiences, learning and buggering things up. Everything I have done and everything I have had done to me has resulted so far in the person typing this.
Me
Physically I am the results of two sets of DNA, which has blessed me with wavy hair, bad eyesight and the family nose, and a lot of physical experiences which have had a variety of effects ranging from trained thigh muscles to permanent scars. In other words, I'm just like any other person on average. But this is just the physical side and - even though I believe that a person is not a body or a mind or a soul/spirit but an inter-related, ever-changing combination of all the above - I'm going to discount the body as not who I am.
What I'm getting at here is a question that has plagued religious and spiritual thinkers and philosophers since forever - If I am thinking, who is the I that is doing the thinking. If I am a combination of the primal me and everything else that has made me, who is that primal me and how do I find him? In fact is he a "he"? Maybe he's a "she", an "it" or even a "they"!
Paganism
As a good Pagan boy I try to live by a deceptively complicated guideline known as the Wiccan Rede. I'm not a Wiccan, but then again I'm not really an anything specific - pigeonholes are restrictive and get on my nerves - but the Wiccan Rede is useful. It goes:
"An it harm none, do what you will"
This is open to interpretation, as are all rules and guidelines. My own works something like this: using the proviso that as little unnecessary harm of any kind is caused to everyone and everything around you, including yourself, then do your own will
"Doing your will" is a very Thelemic bit of jargon and not one I like much because it conjures images of some complete and total deadlegs from whom I would prefer to be disassociated. The trouble is that I'm not sure I can think of a better one. As James Curcio has said, Will is synonymous with Identity, but Identity in action. To do your will is to be yourself just as hard as you can manage. This takes us full circle back to the original question: who is the me that I must be to be who I am?
Circles.
So far this article is going round in ever-decreasing circles and will soon disappear in a puff of smoke up it's own arsehole. Before it does, perhaps it's time to look in a different direction.
Pope Tim Leary and Saint RAW the Optimistic, both following others and being followed in their turn, have shown that we can change how we are made. Using various techniques we can alter our socializations, our behaviours, our attitudes and our habits - and we can do it ourselves. Brainwashing techniques have shown that even the most deeply entrenched beliefs can be reversed, and advertising and propaganda show us that new beliefs and attitudes can be injected into the human mind with very little difficulty. How many people with dogs even noticed the smell before the Shake & Vac lady danced backwards across her living room?
When one wants to alter oneself in the ways suggested by Wilson and Leary there is usually an aim in mind, even if it's only to become more open-minded. The aim of finding the True Will is in stripping away the layers of social conditioning and beliefs until all that's left is the pure primal self. This isn't really changing oneself, which is like changing one's mental "clothes" - it is more like stripping completely naked. (Good grief, I'm on nudity again! It's becoming an obsession.)
A Radical Thought
The concepts of primal Self or true Will imply a certain belief - that there is such a thing. It's the assumption that the human being has a single, eternal and unchanging central core which has become known as the Soul. What if this isn't true?
I'm not proposing that we are all soulless automata or that there is no spiritual dimension at all to the human being, only that it's not a separate and eternal thing. If the human soul is as capable of change, growth and deliberate alteration as the mind and body are then how much more wonderful it surely is. It means that I am not some abstract thing distant and separate from my mind and body, but a soul/mind/body gestalt where all the bits blend to become indistinguishable at the edges. It implies that when my body dies and changes its state by becoming part of the soil fertilizing a tree whose buds feed a bird, then so do my mind and soul in their own ways.
It also implies that all creatures must be like this and therefore, by a process of extension, so must groupings of creatures - like families, societies and forests. I am part of my family and a separate individual at the same time; my children are part me, part their mother and individuals in their own right at the same time. Could there be, therefore, a family soul which joins us and is within us in the same way that we form a gestalt as individuals all together under one group concept? If there is it is made of the combined souls and DNA of the parents within the children, but the parents' souls are made of their parent's souls ad infinitum. Extend this far enough and you end up with a universal physical/intelligence/spiritual gestalt which covers and includes everything that exists/does not exist, has/has not existed and will/will not exist - ever!
Big thought!
Have I answered my question, though? Probably not, except to say that I think I'm getting there. Not only can the true I be found, I can decide what I ought to be. I think!
Love,
Seán
". . . I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made."
It seems a pretty glib thing to say at first, but what does it actually mean? I know what I have been made because I am very much the sum of the last 40-odd years of experiences, learning and buggering things up. Everything I have done and everything I have had done to me has resulted so far in the person typing this.
Me
Physically I am the results of two sets of DNA, which has blessed me with wavy hair, bad eyesight and the family nose, and a lot of physical experiences which have had a variety of effects ranging from trained thigh muscles to permanent scars. In other words, I'm just like any other person on average. But this is just the physical side and - even though I believe that a person is not a body or a mind or a soul/spirit but an inter-related, ever-changing combination of all the above - I'm going to discount the body as not who I am.
What I'm getting at here is a question that has plagued religious and spiritual thinkers and philosophers since forever - If I am thinking, who is the I that is doing the thinking. If I am a combination of the primal me and everything else that has made me, who is that primal me and how do I find him? In fact is he a "he"? Maybe he's a "she", an "it" or even a "they"!
Paganism
As a good Pagan boy I try to live by a deceptively complicated guideline known as the Wiccan Rede. I'm not a Wiccan, but then again I'm not really an anything specific - pigeonholes are restrictive and get on my nerves - but the Wiccan Rede is useful. It goes:
"An it harm none, do what you will"
This is open to interpretation, as are all rules and guidelines. My own works something like this: using the proviso that as little unnecessary harm of any kind is caused to everyone and everything around you, including yourself, then do your own will
"Doing your will" is a very Thelemic bit of jargon and not one I like much because it conjures images of some complete and total deadlegs from whom I would prefer to be disassociated. The trouble is that I'm not sure I can think of a better one. As James Curcio has said, Will is synonymous with Identity, but Identity in action. To do your will is to be yourself just as hard as you can manage. This takes us full circle back to the original question: who is the me that I must be to be who I am?
Circles.
So far this article is going round in ever-decreasing circles and will soon disappear in a puff of smoke up it's own arsehole. Before it does, perhaps it's time to look in a different direction.
Pope Tim Leary and Saint RAW the Optimistic, both following others and being followed in their turn, have shown that we can change how we are made. Using various techniques we can alter our socializations, our behaviours, our attitudes and our habits - and we can do it ourselves. Brainwashing techniques have shown that even the most deeply entrenched beliefs can be reversed, and advertising and propaganda show us that new beliefs and attitudes can be injected into the human mind with very little difficulty. How many people with dogs even noticed the smell before the Shake & Vac lady danced backwards across her living room?
When one wants to alter oneself in the ways suggested by Wilson and Leary there is usually an aim in mind, even if it's only to become more open-minded. The aim of finding the True Will is in stripping away the layers of social conditioning and beliefs until all that's left is the pure primal self. This isn't really changing oneself, which is like changing one's mental "clothes" - it is more like stripping completely naked. (Good grief, I'm on nudity again! It's becoming an obsession.)
A Radical Thought
The concepts of primal Self or true Will imply a certain belief - that there is such a thing. It's the assumption that the human being has a single, eternal and unchanging central core which has become known as the Soul. What if this isn't true?
I'm not proposing that we are all soulless automata or that there is no spiritual dimension at all to the human being, only that it's not a separate and eternal thing. If the human soul is as capable of change, growth and deliberate alteration as the mind and body are then how much more wonderful it surely is. It means that I am not some abstract thing distant and separate from my mind and body, but a soul/mind/body gestalt where all the bits blend to become indistinguishable at the edges. It implies that when my body dies and changes its state by becoming part of the soil fertilizing a tree whose buds feed a bird, then so do my mind and soul in their own ways.
It also implies that all creatures must be like this and therefore, by a process of extension, so must groupings of creatures - like families, societies and forests. I am part of my family and a separate individual at the same time; my children are part me, part their mother and individuals in their own right at the same time. Could there be, therefore, a family soul which joins us and is within us in the same way that we form a gestalt as individuals all together under one group concept? If there is it is made of the combined souls and DNA of the parents within the children, but the parents' souls are made of their parent's souls ad infinitum. Extend this far enough and you end up with a universal physical/intelligence/spiritual gestalt which covers and includes everything that exists/does not exist, has/has not existed and will/will not exist - ever!
Big thought!
Have I answered my question, though? Probably not, except to say that I think I'm getting there. Not only can the true I be found, I can decide what I ought to be. I think!
Love,
Seán
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