There is Nothing Necessary About The Human Being

Earlier this week I wrote a blog about what I called "human exceptionalism". I could also have referred to "speciesism", it later occurred to me. The term would have done equally well for the phenomenon I was talking about. But it occurs to me that I can go further in my thinking than I did in that earlier blog, a blog which asked why we find it relatively easy to denominate some beings as lesser beings than ourselves and then commit atrocities upon them. The direction that we can go further in is that one which asks us to address human beings as a species in themselves. We can do this whilst at the same       time recognizing that our species, the human being, is just one of millions that this planet has produced, the vast majority of which have been and gone again, vanished from the planet that once gave them birth. Indeed, a wide spectrum view of life on Earth, if not elsewhere in the universe, seems to suggest that life forms in general have their time and then they vanish, a cosmic version of Andy Warhol's "famous for fifteen minutes".

Outside of the pride and ego of the human consciousness there is no reason to think that we, the humans, will be any different. But due to the way we have developed, and the higher brain functions that have come along with it, we can imagine other futures, ones in which the humans survive. Indeed, some imagine futures in which the humans become the first creatures to leave this planet and colonise others, heading out into the vastness of space. As time passes by there will certainly be an increasing urgency to do that and a scenario somewhat like the plot for the film Interstellar may arise. This is because space, that still, quiet, unchanging void, is actually none of these things. Things are changing in space all the time, constantly. Its moving. Its just that this change occurs over such unimaginably long periods of time that our tiny species, that lives for a few decades, never really lives long enough to notice the difference. One of the changes that will have occurred in what we would call the far future is that our sun will have grown in luminosity to such an extent that the heat it gives off will terminally threaten our existence. 

And this is what the universe is like. Its a dangerous, changing, chaotic place. From a universal perspective what are human beings but just another form of life? What are you and I but just individual examples of this "just another form of life"? You and I are as an individual ant is to us. Or a worm. Or a slug. There is, from this perspective, nothing special or remarkable about us. There's no reason to want to treat the humans differently to the worms or the slugs. We can be sure that the rest of the universe, in all its physical processes, will not spare us over them either. It would also be quite easy to imagine that other forms of life on other planets would not share our high regard for ourselves as well. Indeed, from an alien perspective we might not even be the dominant form of life on our own planet because who knows what they might see with their eyes? Perhaps, for them, the insects are king. Or the rats. My point is that our vision is uniquely human-shaped. We are prepped and primed by our human form of life to value and prefer human things and to weigh things to human advantage. But no other form of life is.

Imagine, for a moment, that humans had never come to pass. This is a live scenario because the fact that humans did come to pass is not to say that they had to. Evolution is a blind process and has no purpose. Neither is any divine figure guiding it. So our species did not have to be. It is contingent. It just happened because it could, because earlier versions of us survived that became us. And, who knows, some contingent event may yet wipe us out in one fell swoop. If that happened who in this universe of ours would miss us? No one would. Our planet wouldn't. The universe wouldn't. Both would just carry on. We are not necessary to everything else that exists in order to give it some meaning and purpose. Indeed, as far as we know, meaning and purpose are things unique to our species. When a dog sees a ball we do not imagine it asks itself what a ball means even though the dog may link the ball with play through memory. We do not think that the cat that sits purring in front of the fire is asking itself about its purpose in life as it purrs. We as humans have a tendency to think about things by analogy to ourselves. This is perhaps understandable. But it can also be somewhat arrogant and its certainly wrong-headed.

There are those among us who like to accentuate the progress our species makes. Five hundred years ago, however, there were very powerful bodies who thought that our planet was the centre of the universe, then thought of as God's creation, a place he made for human beings, his finest achievement and pinnacle of his creation. But our growing capabilities shattered such notions and now we know we are but a pinprick in a vast void. We are not in the centre of anything. Indeed, there is nothing special or remarkable about us or our solar system. We just are, one of billions like us, lost in the anonymity of it all. And yet the notion that we are somehow different, special, persists. Perhaps we may regard this as but the ego necessary to survive. It can be imagined that if you thought of yourself as nothing special and had a kind of species-based lack of self-esteem that this would be to the detriment of our primary evolutionary purpose which is to exist long enough to multiply. And maybe this is so. But does this mandate the ideas of some who see us as future lords of the universe and, worse, lords of our planet right now? On what basis is a human being lord of anything? 

So what I have a problem with here is a speciesist egocentrism that we humans possess. I want to see we humans as but another animal, something as contingent as bees, sharks and those horrible crawly things that come out from under rocks. We had as much to do with our existence as they did. We are largely as powerless in the face of an uncaring universe as they are. We live and die (so far) as they do. In short, we share very much in common with all other living things on planet Earth. But I don't think we have the required humility that that should entail. And that becomes a problem when you start to regard the planet that birthed you as your own species' bank of resources such as we clearly do. Of course, there is little, at this point, to stop us. "Nature is red in tooth and claw", "survival of the fittest", "might is right" and all other such vulgar notions spring to mind and do so because there is a grain of truth in them. But we can, perhaps, turn the argument of those who think humans are special and different back on them. For if this is so then maybe, just maybe, we have a responsibility to use our specialness, our special powers over and above those the rest of this planet's inhabitants have, for good.

It is not impossible to imagine that our increasing technological knowledge will bequeath us ways to extend our lives. We even have members of our species, the Transhumanists and Futurists of which I have spoken earlier in the year on this blog, who are actively looking at how technology may both extend and transform our lives. But, if this is so, then surely some of these technologies will be useful for the rest of our world. It would be a very solipsistic vision of the future if it did not. We, as humans, have always, up until now, been biological beings that lived in a biological world. This presents problems to be sure (disease and decay being just two pressing ones) but it also constitutes the only situation of life we have ever known. We appreciate the fact of sun and rain on our skin, the feel of the wind, walking across a grassy field, interaction with other animal species, and these sensations engender feelings and emotions and constitute part of what it feels like to be a human being. Any future iteration of the human consciousness, whether that be as some kind of robot or even as a computer program, must account for this if we are to retain any link to our past human development. So I would argue that the human future is not just about preserving a personal human identity, or even a collection of personal human identities. It is about preserving our world in all its biological variety. 

Another way to say this is that as we destroy our world we destroy ourselves, piece by piece, tree by tree, hedgerow by hedgerow, field by field, river by river, sea by sea. Of course, things change over time. But changes have consequences and there is all the difference in the world between things that happen and things you cause, perhaps by not thinking it through or even not thinking at all. We recognize the difference in human thought between an accident, something unforeseen and something done as a deliberate act of vandalism. My argument here is that we, as a species, have some humility, recognize our contingency and how bound up we are with the planet that gave us life and even now sustains us, and use the advantage our evolution has given us to make the world better for everything that lives here. Because, in the end, helping others is really just helping yourself. Its a recognition that you are truly not an island, you're part of a bio-system, a circle of life, a community of life. A life without everything else this planet holds would not be a human life at all because we do not and have never existed in isolation. 

We may think we can throw off such notions and that our ingenuity can prosper us even whilst everything else is sacrificed or fails to survive. Should that happen then it may yet be, as some say, that the "human beings" were only a phase and the post-humans, beings who once were us, take our place instead. If that did happen it would be yet another demonstration that the universe doesn't need us and that all things must pass.

Empty Advertising

The following is genuine promotional copy for a product made by the company Music Computing, an American maker of musical computer instruments based in Austin, Texas. It can be found on their website right now.

The Game is Over. In the past the music industry was a game and products like the StudioBLADE were game changers, but nowadays things have gotten to be serious. If you are a professional music producer, you’ve got every 12 year old kid coming at you armed with a cheap laptop trying to take you down. Your skills and experiences can only defend against that for so long. Super-instruments like the StudioBLADE will give you that extra edge when it really matters. When others can’t run big plugins because their computers aren’t powerful enough or having to continuously bounce tracks down from MIDI to audio so their computers don’t lock up, you can continue to work the way you want, without restraints to dominate. Competition is fierce, why would you go into battle with a handicap? The new StudioBLADE 5, the ultimate weapon for the Music Industry.

What strikes me at first is how ridiculously over the top this is. I wonder who wrote this and who they think they are aiming their product at? The "Studioblade" is essentially a Frankenstein instrument that is a computer, sound card, midi controller, touchscreen and conventional musical keyboard all housed in their own custom housing to look like a keyboard. It also comes with some preloaded software and is meant to be an all-in-one music-making solution.

I notice, at first, how capitalist and military the language is here. Music is an "industry". Others are trying to "take you down". (Yes, even 12 year olds with a laptop!) Music is a matter of competition. You must "defend" yourself. So, of course, what you really need to do is buy something! This is because you are going "into battle" so you obviously need bigger and better weaponry. The Studioblade is "the ultimate weapon". Is it just me that doesn't know whether to laugh at the mindless stupidity of this language or weep at the thorough-going nihilism of it?

What picture of music and music-making is given here? If you make music yourself is it one you recognize? This is a company selling things and presumably they want to sell as many as possible. But to who? Who is attracted to something when language like this is used? I can only imagine it is people who put their Studioblade next to their gun cabinet who are seeking to kill every other musician! But the language of capitalism is equally as prevalent. I had never been aware until reading this advertising that music was a matter of "competition" at all. Much less did I realize that I needed "the ultimate weapon" to win such a competition. Presumably, since even 12 year olds are coming to "take me down," the idea is that I take them down too? To do this I utilize weapons to... to what? To incapacitate them? How does one do that with music exactly? Where does the metaphor lead? Why does having any instrument or device at all lead to me having a "weapon" that could achieve such a thing?

This advertising is stupid and I find it hard to imagine advertising that could be worse. Maybe it is playing to some culture that I am not aware of. The company are based in Texas, after all. But from my British and European context this just seems mind-numblingly banal. If I were aiming to write a parody of all the things I think about music and instruments and what I think they are about I would write something like this. As a musician who has considered instruments like the Studioblade before I find this advertisement actually insults me and my intelligence.  I find out now that music is all about size and power and weaponry. But it isn't. Its about limitations and inspiration and ingenuity. You don't need "the ultimate weapon". You never did. And those 12 year olds? Don't worry about them. Or anyone else. Music is not a competition. Even if it was, the equipment you had wouldn't gain you any advantage. Your originality would. So don't listen to Music Computing and their poverty of thinking. You may or may not need their Studioblade. You certainly don't need their mindset. You're hopefully much, much better than that.

Thoughts of an Invisible Man

Another fuse blown. In my head. Another cull of Twitter "followers". I read somewhere yesterday that social media has warped our language. We have accounts with thousands of "friends". But are these "friends"? What then is a friend if you can have thousands of them you've never met? Its more hot air, empty and meaningless.

But I'm not here to discuss that. Borne in on me of late is that this moment, this one, right now, is special. It happens once, never to be repeated. Shouldn't you cherish something like that? It would be a shame to waste it like a Donald Trump of time who, with his braggadocio, wastes moments like dollars because he feels he has so many. Look at me! LOOK AT ME!

No. Time is precious. Short, even. I don't have much. I don't know when the clock stops. Forever. 

My music plays. New music. Music only I have heard. Three more albums. Unpublished. Maybe unpublishable. My music isn't for you. It really isn't. Its my therapy. My crutch. An empty "purpose". The only one I can find. Besides finding words to write. And yet I still feel like a cog in a machine. The things I always didn't want to feel. The reason I hate "employment" and cannot work for companies. The ultimate debasement of the human soul. To feel as if you are a cog. 

The music drones on. Vague. Featureless. Distorted. Alien. Is it a musical autobiography? A cry for help? Sadness that must leak out? The soundtrack to my internal monologue.

I told you it wasn't for you.

I'm reading Camus. He is trying to explain to me, TO ME, why the absurd mandates that I revolt. He is making a good fist of it but I'm not really buying. Sentences, phrases, get jotted down. I understand and agree with the premise ("life is absurd, living is absurdity") but the conclusion seems like just another evasion. He says that no one can follow logic to its conclusion because they only ever follow it until its takes them where they don't want to go. Well, Camus, hoist by your own petard old son! Look in the mirror. Behold the man invoking slippery logic! You're like Kierkegaard but without the Christianity!

On I go. Reading. Listening to the music. 

My life.

The Real Terror: God!

We hear a lot in the world today about terror. There is terror in the newspapers, terror on the news channels, terror when leaders speak, terror warnings if you travel anywhere in public. Terror, terror, TERROR! I'm suffering a bit from terror overload. Apparently, I am meant to live my life ever vigilant that, at any moment, some person may decide to make his or her bid for eternal glory by killing me. Well, its unlikely to be me because I hardly ever go out and I doubt I live anywhere that a terrorist has ever seen on a map. But that selfish point aside, you get the picture. If you live in London, Paris or New York it might feel a bit closer to home. Terrorists are hardly ever likely to strike in Buttfuck, Arizona (which is not a real place).

Yesterday I was minding my own business and just sitting thinking. It occurred to me how many of these blogs I write are tinged with my own existentialist, nihilist beliefs and these inevitably seep into the narrative. My mind built on the thought and I considered a meaningless world without purpose that ends in a nothingness of death. I then pondered that for many people this comes across as a dour and hopeless creed that takes all the joy out of life and maybe even strikes fear into the hearts of some, those who need meaning in their lives in order to go on living. There are people who this vision of life actually frightens. But I am not one of them. For me the idea that life is basically purposeless, we are here for no reason at all except it just happened and that we die and that's the end are, perversely, things that strengthen me and bring me some comfort in the void that we call our existence. 

But then I considered another side of the story, the religious one. I am not a stranger to religion. Like many, I was a victim of my parents' good intentions as a boy. My mum tried to get me to go to Sunday School. I found it boring but they had cakes and the stories were kind of interesting  - for a 9 or 10 year old boy at any rate. And did I mention they had cakes? Later in life I went to university and there I studied the Bible in an academic way. (I should point out that my university was set up by atheists who banned the teaching of religion when they set it up in the 19th century). I was very good at studying the Bible - linguistically, historically, as literature and ideologically and I am no stranger at all to its ideas. Indeed, I have letters after my name which I don't really like to talk about and am now somewhat embarrassed by. I studied The Historical Jesus as part of my doctorate.

So I know a bit about the Bible and this guy Jesus. Jesus, we are told, was thought of as The Son of God. There is some debate as to whether he ever said this of himself though and references are very sketchy. It is thought to be more something others said of him. Jesus is often painted as a peaceful fellow who loved the little children and healed sick people. But even his own followers report that he said things like "I have not come to bring peace but a sword" (that's in Matthew's Gospel if you care to look) and that doesn't sound very peaceful to me. This same guy is reported to have gone to the Temple and tipped up tables and caused a hassle. Imagine what would happen if someone did that today in our world of security cameras and armed guards. But apparently it was all for some great religious reason and so, you know, its OK. By the way, Jesus is also regarded as one of Islam's highest prophets. And he was put to death by the Romans as a (possibly religious) criminal.

You have to question this guy's "dad" though. God seems to do a lot of killing and smiting. Perhaps that's why many of his followers do the same thing? If you read the Old Testament (which is what the Christians call a collection of books they stole from Judaism because they claim its really their story and not Judaism's) you find that this guy God (I assume its a guy) loves wiping people out. Usually its Egyptians or Hittites or Assyrians or Midianites or people like that. Arabs basically. If you were an Arab reading the Bible for the first time I would think you'd find this God a bit anti. He certainly doesn't seem to much like people like you. So, coming back to Jesus meek and mild, you have to worry about a kid who has a dad like that.

We move forward to the modern world. We find that hundreds of millions of people now believe in Jesus as if he were a god himself! (Although its not quite clear how this works. Christians have something called the Trinity but it makes no sense and no one has ever adequately explained it.) There's another religion called Islam and they believe in a god too. I'm not sure if its the same one or not. Now many of the people who believe in these gods (or maybe just one god) are quite tame. They are people like my mum who has believed in god for 35 years but basically knows nothing about her religion or its beliefs and doctrine and can barely explain what or why she believes anything at all in the first place. Ask her about the Bible and you get the blank stare of someone who has barely read it for herself much less understood it. I'm quite willing to believe that pretty much anyone who says they "believe in god" in first world countries is much like her. They hold a largely inconsequential belief they can barely explain, probably for reasons of imagined metaphysical comfort.

But if only it were that simple. Because the problem with believing in an almighty super being is that it sets up a context for everything you do. Why do ISIS killers brag and laugh on camera as they chop off heads? Its because they think Allah awaits them in glorious paradise. And the beauty of their belief is that should some bomb drop from the sky and spread them across the desert in pieces they will never know any different. The reason for this is that they hold a belief that can't be defeated. You can't prove a religious belief wrong. Why do white, Christian Republicans all across the USA shoot guns at New York Times editorials advocating gun control (I saw this on Twitter on Saturday night) and talk about "the land of the free", a land they think is protected by Jesus' dad? Why do people ask you to pray to their god to help them kill their enemies when their enemies might be doing the same thing and even to the same god? You see, it doesn't matter to these believers, militant or passive, that a lot of what they say and/or do doesn't make sense and can't be explained. They have a belief and it sets up a context. The details, well, "god moves in mysterious ways" just about covers how they go about explaining it. Which is to say they don't explain it. They excuse it, ignore it and obfuscate about it. Because much of what they believe doesn't make any sense. It was never meant to be explainable because it was always meant to be unquestioned.

So, you see, for me the terror is that there is a god or that people would think there was one. If there is a god right now who made everything and everyone then he is responsible for the life I've led. He's responsible for the mental trauma and illness I've lived through decades of. He could have stopped it. Or maybe even created a human being that didn't have the defects in his brain that I probably do. He could have stopped children being kidnapped, women being raped and innocents being captured and slaughtered. He could have stopped slow, painful diseases and people starving in cardboard boxes in the middle of winter. But he didn't. So that means we have a god who is OK with suffering. 

Some Christians have a neat little discussion that covers this that they call "the problem of evil" or "the problem of suffering" but I don't really think that covers what I'm discussing here. The problem, if there was one, would be why all these gods (or god) happily allow or even cause pain, suffering and death. All the believers agree their gods are powerful enough to stop it. But none of them can explain why they don't. Pardon me if I find the idea here that gods are much cleverer than us and their ways are beyond me more than a little insulting. To my mind, if there are all-powerful super beings in charge of things then the only explanation for why they allow or cause pain and death is because they want to. And that makes them malicious not gracious.

So that is why, to me, it is not that life is meaningless and without purpose that is the terror. I find nothing to fear in the fact that things happen at random and are largely beyond our control. There is, if I may say so, a kind of poetry to that. Bad things happen but not for any real reason. Its just that they can and so sometimes they do. But if you make someone in charge of all that it changes everything. Then someone can stop it, change it, make it better. Or at least different. But they don't. They just watch on never correcting or challenging anyone, never stopping people from committing atrocities of pain, suffering and death. I find it hard to believe that any being like that could be moral, or just or a lover of peace and harmony - or even almighty or powerful. And its because this god or gods does nothing that people kill other people, innocent people, that people decide they need to start wars or claim territory or declare flesh and blood people, in most other respects just like them, as their enemies. Believing in this theistic, putrid, undemonstrable, undefeatable belief, in the existence of some almighty super being, now becomes the line that you need to decide which side you stand on.

And believing in it is what I would truly call terror.


PS Why do believers in almighty super beings always seem to think that their almighty super being of choice needs them to stand up for him? Is not being an almighty super being enough?

Ten Sunday Thoughts

1. The greatest enemy to you learning something Is what you think you already know.


2. Imagine if everyone Tomorrow went out and made a new friend, someone who was NOT like them. Would that change things?


3. What did you do yeSterday that made a difference?


4. If its so easy for Us to see what is wrong with the world why does no one ever fix it?


5. What is more imPortant, people or things?


6. If people gave up believing in gods and spirits how much more would they achieve realizing that iTs in human hands to make things better?


7. If you were a Prime Minister or a President cOuld you give the order to kill people?


8. There are millions of people on Earth who don't understand what You are talking about.


9. Everything that lives alsO dies.


10. Why would anyone ever have thoUght it was OK to have slaves.... or kill people for some imagined deficiency of race, creed, colour or orientation? 

Who Are You?

It is a fact of life that we don't see problems or issues with something until some event or insight allows us to see things from a different point of view, not the one we hold, not the one we regard as "normal". So it was that yesterday I found myself reading Albert Camus' short novel, The Stranger. The Stranger is an existentialist story about a character called Mersault. Mersault is in almost every respect an unspectacular and ordinary man living in French Algeria (much as Camus himself did). He has a mother (who has just died when the story begins), a job and lives in a room in a building that also allows him to mix with others and notice their habits. He is neither an idealist nor particularly active in any other sense. He is just a guy living his life, an everyman.

But Mersault is also the "stranger" of the book's title. He is this stranger because, from the existential point of view of the book, Mersault is a man who simply refuses to pretend. He is honest, so most others would say, to a fault. If someone is addressing him or talking to him and he has no thought or response he simply says nothing back, leaving an ugly silence. When thinking how to act in public he doesn't generally bother thinking how to act in public. He just unreflectively does what he wants - unlike pretty much everyone else who has been socialized into public expectations. At his mother's funeral he never cries and sits by the coffin drinking coffee and smoking. He leaves as soon as possible after giving the impression of little remorse and having imparted the fact that he doesn't even know her age. When he gets a girlfriend she asks him to marry her and he agrees but concedes to her that he'd marry any girl he liked in the same way. 

So Mersault is a man who absolutely refuses to pretend. It is not that he is doing it for effect but that he himself refuses the pretense that is living as a social being. He ignores expectations whether they be to do with funerals, business or personal relationships. He doesn't really care for social consequences in any sphere of life. He speaks and acts a bald, unfettered truth as if this should have no further, social implications. Mersault is a man literally out of phase with the world around him. He is in it but not of it. Its every day concerns and its ways make no impact on him except to irritate or bore him. He comes across as a lackadaisical individual whose own world is a completely different set of signs, symbols and significances. For this Camus calls him "the stranger" since, to everyone else who is "normal", he seems passing strange. Its also worth pointing out that in the course of the story all this comes to be used against Mersault so being strange is not without dire consequences.

It is, of course, Mersault's own strangeness that shines the light back on to the rest of society for in Mersault's character we see its opposite, the socialized character that society expects, in sharper relief. As Hannah Arendt saw it, writing about the book in 1946, "the stranger is an average man who simply refuses to submit to the serious-mindedness of society, he refuses to live as any of his allotted functions." And its this last point which starts to tweak my ever sensitive nipples in regards to the subject of personal identity, my subject for today. 

We all are assigned a number of functions by society. I'm male so that could be son, father, brother, co-worker, citizen, British, English speaker, etc., etc. There are a number that apply to each of us and maybe you can think of roles which would apply to you. But these are socialized roles and each one of them has expectations attached because in each of them we can think of stereotypical ways in which each of them should be acted out in various situations. Yet if we read The Stranger we find that Mersault is oblivious to people's views about him or expectations for him. Indeed, it seems as if he never even cares to consider the question. It is because of this that Arendt can go on to write in her review that "Because he does not pretend, he is a stranger whom no one understands... he refuses to play the game, he is isolated from his fellow men to the point of incomprehensibility." One insight that the story gives us is that in public or with others you really shouldn't say what you really think - for this will have social consequences. And so the existentialist novel is starting to weave its particular concerns into the fabric of story. Its asking "Must you be dishonest and inauthentic to be a person in society?" There can be no doubt that you must. But is this a good thing?

And so I find myself asking "Who am I?" And, to be honest, I wish that more people would ask it of themselves too. There is a great strand of philosophy extending right back to Socrates with his "The unexamined life is not worth living" that encourages if not demands that people know themselves better. ("Know thyself" is, itself, a ubiquitous Greek maxim that has been attributed to many.) The great Friedrich Nietzsche has a strand of his philosophy that is about "becom(ing) what you are" but you cannot do this unless you know what it is you are. Well, that's not quite correct. Its truer to say that you cannot become what you are unless you drop all the pretense and expectations that others exert upon you and begin to live authentically as yourself. To do this is not without its price though because you can be sure that others will not do the same. You will then appear, once more, as Mersault did to his fellow Algerians, strange, different, aloof, a bit of an oddball. But it is the testimony of Mersault that all you can do is be yourself. So why do so many play at being like others and fitting in? What is thereby gained?

And its with this that we come to the meat. The conclusion of The Stranger seems to pose a dilemma. Already in the book it has been hinted that choices in life, the path we take through its shadowy corridors, maybe doesn't make that much difference. I write notes as I read, things I need to remember or important points that I'm gleaning from the text. I had already written midway through the novel "Recurring theme: this option or that one, it makes no difference." With the ending of the novel I think this is made more explicit. The Stranger poses all readers a challenge. It asks them to consider life as going from Point A, your birth, to Point B, your death. These are the only fixed points. It then challenges you to answer the question: What does it really matter how you get from Point A to Point B? And, I think, it asks you to consider that question primarily from the position of Point B.

And we can make this quite extreme. Think of yourself as anything and taking ANY possible path from Point A to Point B. Living life as a criminal, a thief, a cheat, a murderer, a philanderer, a pimp, a confidence trickster. How about a terrorist or a pedophile? I am not saying these are good things to be or urging any choices here. I'm trying to be extreme in order to make Camus' question in The Stranger more pointed. People are many things in life and have many experiences. They make many choices. A number of them most would call immoral or even evil. Many religious people would hope and believe that their god punishes such things. Failing that, the State may punish people for certain life choices. Mersault himself is sentenced to death in The Stranger for shooting an Arab and its from his cell that the question is framed. The point is not the details of the life you lead. The point is what difference does it really make how you get from Point A to Point B?

It seems to me that, in this way, Camus offers the question "Everything you are, everything you do, leads up to nothing, Point B. So what matters the route?" Indeed, in the story Mersault starts to understand why his dead mother now seemingly took a close male friend near to her death. Mersault imagines that seeing the door to life closing and the door to oblivion opening, she felt a new freedom. Mersault, in his cell, says that "for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe". This, it seems to me, is death as the release, death as the escape from life. This is death as freedom and life as always a somewhat constricting prison.

And so my question to you, my readers, is this: Who are you? Who are you really? Are you a person who fits in, or someone who is going to be you regardless of those around you? And what difference do you think it makes how you get from Point A to Point B?





PS On this occasion I have need for a postscript. For when I read the story of Mersault I felt like I was reading an alternative biography of my own life. I am, myself, a stranger and much of Mersault's characterization could equally apply to me. I don't fit in socially and very often don't try. I'd be the worst employee in the world and am, no doubt, a terrible son and brother. I have been in the past a boyfriend and felt very much the way Mersault does towards his girlfriend in the story, Marie. Indeed, I recall telling my last girlfriend, when she stupidly asked, that the girlfriend before her was the most beautiful girlfriend I had ever had. This, of course, was not the answer she expected nor the answer that people would expect me to give. But I straightforwardly told her what I regarded as the truth. Shouldn't that be enough? No, for in a social world there are expectations and, reading this story, I feel the weight of them, and my own strangeness, all the more.

Show Someone You Love Them This Xmas: Give Them An Expensive Technological Device!

I want you to rank the following things in the order of importance that you would give them, the least important at the bottom and the most important at the top. Forget about practical considerations and judge them as things in themselves as far as you can.

Money
Food
Someone to love who also loves you
A friend
A 2 week vacation to any destination of your choice

I'm going to go out on a limb here and take a bet with myself that virtually no one put "money" at the top of the list. I say this because, judged in isolation, I think people, freed from their own ideologies and the ideological influences of society, become more intimate with each other and more minded to their own personal well-being. So I'm expecting (and hoping, to be honest) that you put "someone to love who also loves you" or maybe "a friend" at the top of your own personal list. But you were and are free to choose to order that list as you like and you must justify your order to yourself alone, if you can.

My title today, and the subject of this blog, are somewhat sarcastically approached. The subject, in broad terms, is money. More tightly conceived, it is to shake readers from normality in relation to economics. It is to shine a light into a few dark corners to show that the way the world works financially is not a given but a choice. When some get rich and some are poor somewhere down the line that was a choice and one that we, in some small measure, consented to. Immediately as I wrote this line the Boston Tea Party comes to mind. This was, famously, an incident concerned with American colonists not wanting to pay British taxes. And so they dumped all the taxed tea into Boston harbour. Essentially, it was a financial dispute. The aggrieved colonists felt that they no longer owed money to the British Government and so they refused to pay. Eventually this led to the American Revolution (which, it sometimes seems, some Americans are still fighting today).

I used to live in Germany and, for part of that time of my life, I lived in Berlin. Berlin is quite a fascinating city and often quite a liberated and liberating one. It is a hotbed of ideas, musical and often political. It seemed to me, as one coming from often apathetic England, that many more people in Berlin were engaged with society and everything was much more social in its arrangement. Politics there, to my mind, was much more about every day people and their thinking than it was about a few self-appointed people discussing or deciding things in a detached way. This is probably because in Berlin the people in general, the polis from which we get politics in the first place, might be asked in a referendum what should be done. It seems a form of democracy in which more people are involved and to my mind that can only be good. If democracy is going to be used then it should be as direct and as little beholden to power bases as possible.

But I digress. My point in mentioning the political background of Berlin is that one day whilst there, on a balmy summer's day, I was handed a leaflet in the street. It was from one of Germany's smaller political parties, the Pirate Party. (For reference, Berlin is covered in political and other kinds of statements. You see them all over lampposts and basically anywhere public you can stick something. Its like everywhere is a public noticeboard.) This party is somewhat counter-cultural, especially in relation to the two main parties of Germany who largely follow Western capitalist models of society. The leaflet was about a proposal that the Government should pay every adult of working age €10,000 per year (with no obligation at all on those receiving the money). With this €10,000, to be thought of as a subsistence grant, pretty much every adult should be able to feed and clothe themselves for a year. Of course, this amount wouldn't cover luxuries. You could not live the life of the rich and famous on this. But it would mean that people, in general, should find themselves able to feed and clothe themselves. The proposal was that if you thought you needed, or even if you just wanted, more money than this then, of course, you were still free to have a job or make money by some commercial enterprise such as having a business. With this you could drive your big car or pay for your expensive holiday or whatever else your heart desires.

Now put the details of how it might or could work to one side. I wonder if anyone reading this has an immediate ideological problem with people "being given money for nothing"? Because, as always with me, its not so much the "what" as the "why" that I care about. And so I wonder if I have any readers who struggle with or flat out disapprove of the idea that people should get money just for being alive to help them stay that way? It wouldn't really surprise me if I did because we live in a Western society deeply infected with individualism and the idea that you get what you have through the sweat of your brow. (In past blogs I have argued that this mentality was historically encouraged by rich people who needed poor people to work for them.) So the idea that Government, an evil concept in the mind of American colonialists and extreme individualists alike, might just take it upon itself to make sure that people don't starve by just giving them money seems somewhat completely unfair. After all, that's someone else's money the Government is giving away, right? Maybe you even think its yours.

Such a scenario is to cut right to the heart of the politics of money. Some people would put it at the top of the list I presented in opening this blog. Some people in our actual world have dollar signs in their eyes and their lives are dedicated to making as much money as possible. They see in dollars happiness, freedom and every pleasure of life. Most people in our society, either actively or passively, are capitalists. The guiding principle of capitalism is that a free, open market decides the price of things. But have you ever noticed how many capitalists, especially the successful ones, don't like the market to be either free or open? Have you noticed how companies try to become monopolies so that they can leverage the market in their favour? Have you noticed how sometimes cartels get formed so that prices can be rigged? Have you noticed how, in financial markets, bankers and others cheat the system to make vast sums of money - for themselves? Have you noticed how business gets together with politicians to set the rules of society in the favour of their bank accounts? I remember how a man now putting himself about as a philanthropist, Bill Gates, in the late 90s throttled and killed a plucky little web browser called Netscape (which later morphed into Firefox I believe) because he wanted his new Internet Explorer to be the way that everybody connected to the Internet. In Europe the EU eventually ruled Microsoft's practice of bundling IE with Windows illegal and Microsoft were thereafter forced to offer a choice of numerous browsers to users when they installed Windows for the first time.

That is a fairly trivial example of how powerful businessmen try, even when they already have a dominant position, to get even more power and even more money. There is, of course, an endless list of much worse ones. As I said above, my example Bill Gates today likes to present himself as a humanitarian and a philanthropist. He sprays around billions of dollars like it was so much confetti and I guess we are all meant to think what a great guy he is giving away his billions. These are caring capitalists, right? In the last few days Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has stated he will do the same thing. He aims to give away 99% of his $45 billion fortune in Facebook shares.... leaving him, his wife and their new baby with a mere $450 million to live on. What a great guy, right? And, by the way, Mark thanks you for allowing him to set up a company which sells your lives and information to the highest bidder where they are doing god knows what with it. Mark is profoundly grateful we live in a society where this can be bought and sold. His no doubt fabulous house and large swimming pool are entirely down to the fact you uploaded your holiday snaps to Facebook and tagged all the people in them. You might say that Facebook is an enabler company to a capitalist society in general in that it collates people and their likes and dislikes so that commercial entities can profit from them. And, oh, isn't it fun?! (It needs to be fun so that dummies, I mean people, will take part.)

Needless to say, these billionaires do not impress me and I find it hard to understand what I, and people like me, have in common with a billionaire. I imagine that if I had $45 billion dollars or something closer to $79 billion like Gates then it would be the work of a moment to me as well to give billions away. After all, who needs even $5 million dollars in the whole of their life? I would guess that most people get by, somehow, on far less and barely earn a couple of millions in their entire working lives. So giving away your billions leaving the odd few hundred million for yourself is no big deal. Its no hardship. We should not imagine that these people are really giving anything up because, for them, it is trivial. Its like you casting loose change at a guy in a cardboard box on the street. If it was going to bite or really affect your pocket then you wouldn't be doing it and you can bet they wouldn't be either. So let's call it what it is: public relations budget. Those with extreme wealth have long been aware that those with much less or even nothing look longingly at them and quietly seethe. And so they see the value in good public relations. "I gave all this away" is a great line to reel off at a party of the well heeled in society or at a news conference for public consumption. Yes, I'm that cynical. More importantly, so are they.

For I say don't look at the figures and don't be bamboozled by the big numbers. That's what is there to blind your eyes. The amount of money is the wow factor that neatly takes your attention away from what matters. What matters is that the world isn't changed. People are still poor. People still die. People will still let the poor starve and the not very rich suffer with medical conditions because they can't pay for them. People still live under bridges, in boxes and sleep on park benches. The fact is that even if we had ten times as many Bill Gates's and Mark Zuckerbergs the world would still be the same. The solution is not pieces of paper with numbers on. A very rich capitalist or even 100 very rich capitalists are not going to turn the world into a paradise. What they are going to do is keep it a world where there are a few exorbitantly rich people and lots and lots of poorer people. The odd few billions here and there, whilst welcome, not least to those getting great PR from helping a few poor and sick people, is welcome if I'm not to be overly churlish. But you need to look past this to the bigger picture. 

And so you need to ask what role you play in the great capitalist dream (or is it a nightmare) that is our world. Many people this Xmas will get technological devices as presents made by Chinese people made to work 16 or 18 hours a day and housed in great warehouses so that they are right by where they work. Every year some commit suicide due to the working conditions. Are you happy with that? Or is it a case of "out of sight, out of mind"? How many of the every day, trivial but very real abuses that capitalist business practices inflict upon ordinary people are you aware of? Do you know how supermarkets work to drive down prices so that when you go to the store things appear very cheap? Are you aware of the environmental affects of having stuff jetted and transported around the globe so that you can have the thing you want that you have seen blanket advertised? My point is that we all play a part and we all have a responsibility. The ones who make the money and who suck on the capitalist teat need a great deal of regular Joes and Joannas from which to get rich and fat and so they need to tie most of us in to their capitalist dream. But let's be clear: not everyone is meant to benefit equally from the dream. Capitalism doesn't work if EVERYONE is a millionaire.

The world doesn't have to be this way. Sometimes, I think this is the most important thought in the world.