Thursday 15 September 2016

MORE UP THAN DOWN


                                   MORE UP THAN DOWN

 

In a not unusual spasm of chronic digressmentalitis, probably triggered by all the uptossers’ up words tossed up in a recent blog-up titled ‘Writing for Fun’, I must mention that I won’t be up or down for anything unless I cook-up some comestibles in the kitchen – a place in which I am not widely known to write-up blog-ups in between meet-ups, coffee-ups, tea-ups, sneeze-ups and knees-ups.

Due to rampant uptosserty, drink-ups are ubiquitously preferred to drink-downs, which is yet another example of all the up stuff being way up in common parlance compared to the down stuff, and therefore ridiculously disproportionate.  But are these well tossed up, and not so well tossed down words really necessary?  I think, and it’s only a flexible thought, not a hardened religious belief, atheistic mindset or an exercise in pedantic semantics, that humans could well do well without stupidly abusing the innocent up word.  Do humans dream in up words? 

More importantly, where’s the awareness when awake?

I feel more aware of what is within and what is without when only using up and down words that relate to physical reality.  Even so, with as much conscientious consciousness that I can muster, I sometimes hear myself inadvertently uttering some of those unnecessary up and down utterances in the moment I utter them.

Next up.  Does a fry-up taste any better than a fry-down?  In the absence of a deep down fat frying basket, the hot inflammable oil and fat goes both up and down in a frying pan and the pan-fried food eventually goes up to the mouth, but these are fleeting moments.  99% of the fry-up is down in the pan and goes down on the plate and then down the throat – unless there’s a fire going up in the kitchen, which of course goes down when doused by firemen who are always up for it. 

Besides, the rungs on a fireman’s ladder often go up and down – whereas a firewoman’s greasy pole only goes down.

Neverthelessormore, a fry-up is only one example of the multitudinous variety of ups and downs in life which may not be efficacious for recovering bungee jumpers. 

According to the law of earthly gravity, we say “what goes up must come down”, including the male erection.  But in the weightlessness of outer space where anything can go in any direction propelled only by the soft power of a silent fart, this common phrase is not true.  Well, perhaps only a few male astronauts can testify to that, plus a few truth seeking scientists with powerful space probing telescopes. 

Moreover, according to human notions about up North and down South – when you are having a summer barbecue party at the North Pole, the smoke rising from cooking freshly found well preserved frozen Arctic explorers’ spare ribs, goes up into space.  Therefore, at a similar summer party at the South Pole, the barbecue smoke should go down into space.  But no.  Humans always want their smoke to go up, even when it’s going down into the earth’s atmosphere from the South Pole.

Furthermoreover, in the Vatican Palace of Catholic power, somewhat on the side of the planet, the Pope’s macabre election smoke always goes up – never sideways, or heaven forbid – down.

What is true as far as the truth be known, is that nature designed humans to live (down) on the ground – not (up) in outer space.  And yet humans condition each other and themselves to become addicted to up words in desperate denial of down words.

What is so good about up and so bad about down?  Does it matter whether we go up to the pub or down to the pub?  Why not just go to the pub without any ups or downs, even if the journey is over hill and dale or a level minefield in which we could be blown up and then have to come down.  Not much upside in that scenario, unless you happen to sell artificial limbs. 

Some say the answer lies in the soil, but deep furrow philosophical farmers who are up for digging down for it, still haven’t found it.  Perhaps the answer lies in the shallow top soil of the human mind’s over-imaginative imagination that imagines going up to heaven or down into hell after death.  But this polarised decision of deservedness depends on the difference between an assumed number of life-long fuck-ups and fuck-downs being assessed on a self-indulgent guilt trip imposed on innocent people by judgemental religious evangelists down and up the anus of history.

If there were such destinations as heaven and hell after death, there would be only a smally few up there and a littly few down there.  Billions of other humans just live and die with the ups and downs of life as nature intended, whether or not they are brainwashed by man-made religious notions of heaven up and hell down.  But I suspect that all the up word stuff is still a determined denial of the down stuff of death.

It seems that we puny humans with delusions of grandeur are nevertheless driven by existential anxiety to amplify the ups and attenuate the downs, despite millions of tons of human excrement going down the drains every day.  The rest of nature doesn’t give a shit about what’s up or down.  So perhaps we humans have more to learn from nature about how to achieve a central balancing still point between the dynamic extremes of up and down – both of which can cause mental and physical sickness.  However, we don’t have to take it lying down when we’re so good at taking it standing up.

If up and down are two sides of the same coin, then in the desperate desire for up all the time, half the value of the coin is lost down the drain of that desire. 

To be up all the time is not sustainable, nor is being down all the time sustainable.  Hence, extended ignorant emphasis on the way up sooner or later causes trouble and strife on the way down – except for defunct satellite space junk, stuck in perpetual orbit round and round the planet without going up or down. 

Upside down is a welcome reversal of the normative emphasis on downside up.  Up needs down, and down needs up.  So why the ridiculous addiction to the up word at the expense of the balancing benefits of the down word?  Answer – it’s a mad human world. 

A fuck-up is meant to mean a mistake has been made – a dire downer even with the up word on the end.  But a fuck up and down, over and under and in and out is what nature intended for human happiness and the continuation of the species.  Maybe the weird way we use words to communicate is not always as good as a physical fuck.  So why not “shut the fuck up” as the they say.

Finally then, in the wise words of the great Greek philosopher Testicules – “After all is said and said, skirts must go up and trousers must come down.”

 

 

 

Friday 9 September 2016

WELL BEING


WELL BEING

 

            “And all will be well” – as the theity say.  Well, they’ve been saying that for at least 2,000 years.  So when will all be well? 

            Isn’t 2,000 years or more a long enough time for all to be well in?  Surely by now in the 21st century, we should all be well and being the magnificent manifestation of wellness that previous preachers were willing us humans to be.  Those headstrong toothsayers used five short-letter words to seduce the sheople of the past and future generations into gullible sucking on a patronising prediction.  But as with the weather forecast and the end of the world, it has not come to pass.  Why not? 

            Well, I think it’s time to take a more than literal look at this ancient phrase and perhaps benefit from a bit of 2016 hindsightical adjustmentation. 

            First of all, “all” is all too encompassing and pretentiously magnanimous.  The theity should have known that humans, and their various gods on high do not distribute fair shares of the world’s wellness, and said – “some will be well.” 

            Secondly, “will” or “shall” is didactic and pompous in its denial of the blood and guts of nature’s life force.  They should have said – “some might be well.” 

            Thirdly, even “some” seems all too willfully generous.  They should have said – “few will be well.”  So now the phrase should read – “And few might be well.”

            To some, if not many, this re-writing is not so re-assuring as the delusional hopefulness of the original phrase.  Sheople prefer the comfort blanket of hopefulness rather than hopelessness.  But neither hopeful nor hopeless are necessary – they are just two indulgent extremes, not dissimilar to heaven and hell – just two of the amazing tricks performed by the human monkey mind.  Nor is there a so-called third or middle way, which would only be the other old trick of a restricted choice of three.

            Others say that reality rules, but what is reality?  At present there are 7 billion different human perceptions of reality without a ruling majority.  So if Darwinian reality is the survival of the fittest, then all cannot be well. 

It’s only a miniscule minority who will be well, well, at least well off the scale of a fair share of the planet’s resources.  Willfully wealthy humans do not need crazy phrases and wishful thinking in order to plunder the planet and predate on millions of their far from wealthy fellow humans, who are not so well endowed with wellfulness. 

            Evangelical human notions and words about wellness for all are by definition man-made, and are less than a tinker’s cuss left languishing in the omnipotent forces of nature and the solar system which sustain all life on earth.

            What is commonly called the natural world in which humans play a rather un-natural part, does not comfort itself with words such as “all will be well.”  Even though a well trained parrot could say those words, I doubt whether anyone has heard the phrase trotted out by a horse, a hedgehog, a fish, an ant, an elephant, a garden vegetable or a mountain stream – no matter how much anthropomorphic sentimental entertainment is available via TV commercials and YouTube. 

            Given the way the man-made world stumbles from one crisis to the next, it is not pessimistic to suggest that too many major and minor human endeavours, including Nuclear Bombs and Power Stations, the European Union, Diesel Fuel and Plastic Bags (but not some sink plungers, sheds, bicycles and builders’ wheelbarrows) cause more problems than they are meant to solve.  And if we accept the popular PC stupid excuse of ‘unintended consequences’, then all will never be well. 

            The consequential consequences of any action, be they intended or unintended, already exist in that action.  So-called 1st world humans seem to prefer suffering from an endless series of self-inflicted non-improvements and unnecessary actions that are supposed to be better than before.  Where’s the wise hindsight and foresight?

            Perhaps the unintended consequences are the price we pay for so-called progress.  This can be a high price to pay, which we kindly call ‘two steps forward and one step back’, or ‘humans are their own worst enemy’.  Or less kindly, ignorant arrogant greedy stupid humans being hell-bent on destructive consumption, rather than being well-bent on being well with the energy of natural creativity. 

            As far as we humans know, all the other creatures on the planet are not intentionally or unintentionally killing their own kind (except perhaps a few spiders, piranhas and meerkats) and they don’t destroy their habitat for survival, re-production and well being.  They instinctively do what they do and don’t leave a filthy toxic mess when they’ve done it.  They don’t rape, pillage and plunder the planet’s natural resources and they don’t consume more than they need.  However, they are the victims of mighty human predators. 

            Also for thousands of years, extremely vicious predators in small groups of power-crazed male political and religious leaders have incited and conscripted their fellow countrymen to carry out the mass murder of millions of other human beings.

            Today, after two 20th century world wars, these barbaric killing sprees continue to be enjoyed by presidents, prime ministers, dictators, deranged despots and brain damaged little boys in long trousers with their deadly hand-held penis extensions, just for the sake of a political ideology or die-hard sophistrifical religious delusions about ruling the world.

            Is all that the all will be well as promised by the ancient rhetoricalators?

            Come off it, you super-egotistical old clerical egg-heads pickled in mystical vinegar.  Nothing in the world will be well, unless humans become aware of already being well enough for well being – the consequences of which might result in some sort of all being wellness.

            When the hopelessness of the hopefulness of “all will be well” is accepted, then in the fullness of time, if not more soonly than the end of eternity, or before the sun swallows the planet, the all and everything on earth might be well.  In the meantime, the grandiose religiosserty of the ancient phrase will not work.  

What may well work, is when humans wake up to being awake, and therefore aware of being much more than brain-stained victims chafing in the chains of parental, educational, cultural, religious, political, commercial, emotional, social and self-induced conditioning.  The human mind’s innate consciousness can re-train the brain’s electro-chemical transmitters, signals and neuro pathways towards making fresh synaptical connections.  This could be the most efficacious use of what is called free will. 

In other words, a progressively interactive process between mind and brain for fully functioning well being.  Changing the mind can change the brain, and in reciprocal motion the brain can change the mind.

A few new neuro scientists and a few more old and new Buddhist monks have shown that awareness of the adaptability of the mind interacting with the plasticity of the brain can be developed into experiencing well being – even that elusive transitory state called happiness.  This natural practical process of sorting the clarity from the clutter is also constantly available to millions, if not billions, of ordinary people who don’t have wall-mounted framed diplomas for Brainery or Buddhary.

Mindfulness is at present a fashionable faddish introduction to the beneficial power of conscious awareness – a simple derivation of Buddhist meditation, namely full sensory cognition of what is, rather than what is not. 

Without a magic wand Made in Utopia, or a global catastrophe, it is realistic to suggest that the well being of all life on earth in the 21st century depends on healthy human brains functioning well with healthy minds (still in somewhat short supply) and definitely not on wildly willful wishy-washy worthless words about a fantasy wellderland for all, in an unknown future. 

For all we don’t know about the unknown, it could well be that all is being well right now according to what might be nature’s grand plan.  And although man is at present the ‘top dirty dog’ on the planet, it is too vainglorious to believe that man’s ignorance, greed, stupidity and suffering is all his own work.  It could well be exactly what nature intended for human evolution – albeit perceived as a painful snail’s pace in human hurry time.

Moreover, despite the most amazing advances in scientific knowledge, no-one actually knows what the power of nature and universal energy intends for the evolution of all life on earth, whether or not human words will it to be well.

            So in daring to assume that all is well enough in our puny little lives at this time in the evolutionary process, let’s at least dismiss the god-botherers’ evangelical interfering with nature and universal energy by using delusional rancid phrases, and just enjoy our innate innocence, playfulness, curiosity, wonder and well being, which could also easily be what nature intended.

 

            “And all will be well” – said the holy man.

            “When?” – said the wise man.