Bryan Islip's Blog, page 27
December 31, 2012
Fiscal cliff no
Fiscal cliff no: wake-up time yes. Happy new year.
Money is the only common denominator between all nations, races, tribes and nations. It has been so since someone thought up the jolly wheeze of your reward (take) in return for making and giving me something I want.
The problem arises now because you and me and all of us, individuals and whole nations, have become besotted by the idea of taking reward for making, doing and giving nothing. Our leadership has protected, indeed has encouraged this over far too long a time. The mechanics of workless income really don't make any difference: an inheritance, a pension, a State benefit, a corporate dividend, a win on a racehorse or an investment in a company or the price of a house. Sorry folks; all of the aforementioned are your (and my) monetary rewards for doing precisely nothing of any practical use.
Money has been a good servant but, unearned, has become a poor and dangerous master. We are about to find out just how dangerous. All the hurt and all of our tears will help us not at all. Change and change alone must happen very soon, however frightening, however painful.
We absolutely can reformulate the ways in which we live on this planet, the home that we have maligned in the name of money to the point of destruction. Amongst other less important things we can re-define the role of money, of give and take. Think about it; Mankind is the only life-form on Earth - so far as we know - that has developed a capacity to adapt and to change at will. We must use it now or this planet will finally rid itself of this unhappily restless us. It will then breathe a deep sigh of relief and bring on the next dominant species.
They can and probably will cobble up some kind of a so-called 'deal' later today in the USA. Although the politicians will claim to have saved the world that new deal will make no difference. It's just a matter of time. So far as I know money cannot buy time and it certainly cannot be manufactuired by Man. Therefore it should be used. Leadership of the quality of Jesus Christ or Mohammed will surely be need for that. Possible? Of course.
I sincerely wish for and hope that you, personally, have a happy and genuinely rewarding 2013.
Money is the only common denominator between all nations, races, tribes and nations. It has been so since someone thought up the jolly wheeze of your reward (take) in return for making and giving me something I want.
The problem arises now because you and me and all of us, individuals and whole nations, have become besotted by the idea of taking reward for making, doing and giving nothing. Our leadership has protected, indeed has encouraged this over far too long a time. The mechanics of workless income really don't make any difference: an inheritance, a pension, a State benefit, a corporate dividend, a win on a racehorse or an investment in a company or the price of a house. Sorry folks; all of the aforementioned are your (and my) monetary rewards for doing precisely nothing of any practical use.
Money has been a good servant but, unearned, has become a poor and dangerous master. We are about to find out just how dangerous. All the hurt and all of our tears will help us not at all. Change and change alone must happen very soon, however frightening, however painful.
We absolutely can reformulate the ways in which we live on this planet, the home that we have maligned in the name of money to the point of destruction. Amongst other less important things we can re-define the role of money, of give and take. Think about it; Mankind is the only life-form on Earth - so far as we know - that has developed a capacity to adapt and to change at will. We must use it now or this planet will finally rid itself of this unhappily restless us. It will then breathe a deep sigh of relief and bring on the next dominant species.
They can and probably will cobble up some kind of a so-called 'deal' later today in the USA. Although the politicians will claim to have saved the world that new deal will make no difference. It's just a matter of time. So far as I know money cannot buy time and it certainly cannot be manufactuired by Man. Therefore it should be used. Leadership of the quality of Jesus Christ or Mohammed will surely be need for that. Possible? Of course.
I sincerely wish for and hope that you, personally, have a happy and genuinely rewarding 2013.
December 26, 2012
p.s. to A Letter for Christmas 2112
I've been quite surprised by the interest in my blog of 23 December, the one entitled: 'A Letter for Christmas 2112'. I don't really know why I'm so surprised, for we're all interested in futures. One e-mailed response needs, I think, a follow up. Question raised; ' In this brave new 2112 world of yours, what kind of government?'
My answer: NO government - or more accurately, compact communities and each individual within each of them will be self-controlled by communal and individual choice. The Laws will have long been laid down, accepted and set in stone (literally). There will only the ten of them, for the Stature Books will have been discarded in their entirety. No need, therefore, for any further 'government'. Physical control by so-called defence or police forces or aberrant behaviour (criminality as we know it) will be a thing of the past. It will have been voluntarily eradicated within a couple of generations after the great plague ran its seven seasons course leaving space and resource enough for all and a balanced, contented, resourceful and stable human population linked together only by The New Net.
And, 'What about energy?' asked my correspondent. My answer: energy requirement per head will be a fraction of today's because the life style of the remaining three billion people will not need it. For instance they will have neither a need nor a compulsion nor much of a wish to travel on land between their home communitiy and other communities. Our currently so-wasteful air transport will simply have been consigned to history; be a thing of the past. As says the song: "We (shall) have all the time in the world". Sea travel will be wind powered. Such energy as is required will all be supplied through the harnessing of the natural movement of wind, and tide and by the sun. We will long have ceased altogether to use up the earth's irreplacable reserves of carbon fuels.
The more I think about it, my correspondent (and Aldous Huxley) was right; this will indeed be a brave new world. (Although somewhat the opposite of Huxley's) For more about how we will have arrived there and what we will be doing there read my novel Going with Gabriel.
My answer: NO government - or more accurately, compact communities and each individual within each of them will be self-controlled by communal and individual choice. The Laws will have long been laid down, accepted and set in stone (literally). There will only the ten of them, for the Stature Books will have been discarded in their entirety. No need, therefore, for any further 'government'. Physical control by so-called defence or police forces or aberrant behaviour (criminality as we know it) will be a thing of the past. It will have been voluntarily eradicated within a couple of generations after the great plague ran its seven seasons course leaving space and resource enough for all and a balanced, contented, resourceful and stable human population linked together only by The New Net.
And, 'What about energy?' asked my correspondent. My answer: energy requirement per head will be a fraction of today's because the life style of the remaining three billion people will not need it. For instance they will have neither a need nor a compulsion nor much of a wish to travel on land between their home communitiy and other communities. Our currently so-wasteful air transport will simply have been consigned to history; be a thing of the past. As says the song: "We (shall) have all the time in the world". Sea travel will be wind powered. Such energy as is required will all be supplied through the harnessing of the natural movement of wind, and tide and by the sun. We will long have ceased altogether to use up the earth's irreplacable reserves of carbon fuels.
The more I think about it, my correspondent (and Aldous Huxley) was right; this will indeed be a brave new world. (Although somewhat the opposite of Huxley's) For more about how we will have arrived there and what we will be doing there read my novel Going with Gabriel.
December 24, 2012
Lochan with rhodedendrons etc
Here's my latest painting - (still wet) oil on canvas size 700 x 700 cms. It's another version of the little lochan called (in English) 'The lochan of the thin cow" which lies just by the roadside to the north of Poolewe. I'm planning to offer it to a local gallery for sale at. Title: Lochan with rhodedendrons, waterlilies and silver birch.
December 23, 2012
A letter for Christmas 2112
I read a tiny little piece in The Guardian on-line this morning ...
"For as long as Tim Thorpe can remember, he has known about the "12.12.12" letter. When he was a boy in the 1970s, his family would talk about his great-great-grandfather's ambitious message to
people "belonging to me" 100 years into the future and, eventually,
Thorpe received his own photocopy of the handwritten letter. The power
of Guy Wood's message from beyond the grave, written on 12 December
1912, continues to fascinate his descendants, and for some, such as
Thorpe, it sparked an interest in history that has shaped their lives
and careers."
Unfortunately the letter itself is not published but some of its content makes for fascinating reading. Much of it has proven to be quite accurate. Of course we all have our ideas about what lies ahead for our descendants but few will bother to write them down, probably because we all know well that nobody takes much / any notice. No one after all is a prophet in his own time - never mind his own country.
Nevertheless this is my own letter. Tomorow is Christmas Eve, 2012. I would like it to be read by my descendants on Christmas Eve 2112 ...
My dear gene inheritor, 2112
These are turbulent times for humanity and for this planet. Nevertheless there has to be hope, and there must be belief. I believe ...
The great plague will reduce the population from the unsustainable nine billions it is expected to reach in 2017-20 (from the current seven billions) to a steady three billions. Because only the most capable will have survived to breed on, the human race will be physically, intellectually and emotionally much superior to that of today.
Aided by advanced cyber communications that will have removed much of the need to travel, communities will be smaller but much stronger, more self-contained in terms of food and drink, clothing, dwelling and health. They will be less promiscuous, self-governed, self-policed, self-entertained and self-defended through biological deterrents. And self-regulated in numbers according to territorial supply potential.
The Second Coming, just after the peak of the plague, will have revealed the fallacy of agnosticism and will have resulted in a new, unilateral, all embracing spirituality together with a universal appreciation of its links to the human arts. Science as we know it today will have faded almost out of existence once people had come to understand how miniscule and how irrelevant was the possibility of Mankind's understanding and 'control' of, and within, all things.
The financial collapse of the early twenty first century will have lead to much increased violence under the names of terrorism and / or warfare and / or criminality. But this will diminish and fade away almost completely once the plague and corresponding population crash have left the survivors with more than enough of a resource for each and every one. Consumerism as we know it today will have died a natural death alongside its secular twin - that of money and the media.
Paradise regained? Read my novel Going with Gabriel (ISBN 978-0-9555193-1-4)
"For as long as Tim Thorpe can remember, he has known about the "12.12.12" letter. When he was a boy in the 1970s, his family would talk about his great-great-grandfather's ambitious message to
people "belonging to me" 100 years into the future and, eventually,
Thorpe received his own photocopy of the handwritten letter. The power
of Guy Wood's message from beyond the grave, written on 12 December
1912, continues to fascinate his descendants, and for some, such as
Thorpe, it sparked an interest in history that has shaped their lives
and careers."
Unfortunately the letter itself is not published but some of its content makes for fascinating reading. Much of it has proven to be quite accurate. Of course we all have our ideas about what lies ahead for our descendants but few will bother to write them down, probably because we all know well that nobody takes much / any notice. No one after all is a prophet in his own time - never mind his own country.
Nevertheless this is my own letter. Tomorow is Christmas Eve, 2012. I would like it to be read by my descendants on Christmas Eve 2112 ...
My dear gene inheritor, 2112
These are turbulent times for humanity and for this planet. Nevertheless there has to be hope, and there must be belief. I believe ...
The great plague will reduce the population from the unsustainable nine billions it is expected to reach in 2017-20 (from the current seven billions) to a steady three billions. Because only the most capable will have survived to breed on, the human race will be physically, intellectually and emotionally much superior to that of today.
Aided by advanced cyber communications that will have removed much of the need to travel, communities will be smaller but much stronger, more self-contained in terms of food and drink, clothing, dwelling and health. They will be less promiscuous, self-governed, self-policed, self-entertained and self-defended through biological deterrents. And self-regulated in numbers according to territorial supply potential.
The Second Coming, just after the peak of the plague, will have revealed the fallacy of agnosticism and will have resulted in a new, unilateral, all embracing spirituality together with a universal appreciation of its links to the human arts. Science as we know it today will have faded almost out of existence once people had come to understand how miniscule and how irrelevant was the possibility of Mankind's understanding and 'control' of, and within, all things.
The financial collapse of the early twenty first century will have lead to much increased violence under the names of terrorism and / or warfare and / or criminality. But this will diminish and fade away almost completely once the plague and corresponding population crash have left the survivors with more than enough of a resource for each and every one. Consumerism as we know it today will have died a natural death alongside its secular twin - that of money and the media.
Paradise regained? Read my novel Going with Gabriel (ISBN 978-0-9555193-1-4)
December 19, 2012
Nymphoma
Here's an extract of my yesterday blog, outlining our year 2012 ... 'downside for us both, overwhelmingly the diagnosis of Dee's nymphoma preceded by ...'
Now, Dee is mostly bed-bound with her LYMPHOMA , as many who read this will know, and she (we) find precious little reason for levity, but when she picked this up on her little Notepad it induced a worryingly massive attack of the giggles.
Of course it was either a typo or some subliminal mutation deep within the brain of an old man who, so far as he can recall, has never met a lady suffering the nympho condition ... well, on the other hand there was once that lady in Belfast ... (I heard about)
.
Now, Dee is mostly bed-bound with her LYMPHOMA , as many who read this will know, and she (we) find precious little reason for levity, but when she picked this up on her little Notepad it induced a worryingly massive attack of the giggles.
Of course it was either a typo or some subliminal mutation deep within the brain of an old man who, so far as he can recall, has never met a lady suffering the nympho condition ... well, on the other hand there was once that lady in Belfast ... (I heard about)
.
December 18, 2012
Seeing Christmas
What a year has been, for us, this 2012. For me, a novel three parts written month by month on line, a conversion from pastel painting to many new oils on canvas, a brand new beard and a lot less weight: for Dee, so many new friends and such high compliments with her B&B, sadly now in suspension, probably permanent. Downside for us both, overwhelmingly the diagnosis of Dee's nymphoma preceded by the death of Wynne, her old Mum.
To be brutally honest the world seems to be no less turbulent now than a year ago. People keep on killing and damaging each other, in uniform or not. And there's the unsettling sound audible to us all of tectonic shifts in the financial and political under-structure of our society.
And yet I can look out of my window right now to watch the tides rolling in twice daily, as they have since long before the first foot of Man trod heavy on this planet. I see the stars by night and I see all around me the paradise with which we were all endowed. The one that so many of us, (all of us en masse), so often will persist in despoiling with such scant respect for what has gone before, with such scant regard for those and for what will come after us.
A Christmas message
It’s Christmas!
Come step in
From the cold
To share our hearth;
Relax; and
calmly
Sit yourself a
bit
By fire’s glow
Sip slowly
Something
warming
Talk old times
And now times
Or rest content
To say nothing:
Just quiet smile
Along with us
Awhile.
Christmastide’s
A time for
Kind thoughts
Kindly meant
For you and
yours
To wish you well
Of health,
wealth
But most in
times
When things
don’t
Seem to rhyme.
Our message
Simply is;
Take care;
Come in*, for
You are welcome
Here.
* to this blog! Or to our home if you live in this quiet corner of the northwest Highlands of Scotland.
Bryan Islip
December 96 / 2012
December 16, 2012
Suffer little children
Yesterday's atrocity in the USA is of course occupying all the headlines. But whether it's one, twenty seven or two hundred and seventy little children and their teachers who fall to the assassin's bullet the question is always "Why?" Everyone is asking everyone, "Why". Trouble is, some questions have no answer that's acceptable to a civilised society.
No, it's nothing to do with the proliferation of guns and their ammunition. There have been at least three comparable incidents in the UK in recent times and very, very few in the UK have access to guns. In Shakespeare's London no sword of more than three feet in length was legal. Visitors with weapons longer than that had them broken in half at the city gates. Did that stop the bloody street fighting ? Not on your life (or anyone's in 1590's London Town!).
It's more to do with the massive proliferation of mental illness, I think, and the disinclination of Western society to lock up all those so afflicted, out of harm's way (harm to others as well as to themselves).
It is a sad fact that the more populations increase the more aberrrant, one to another, has and will become our behaviour. Their are not so many steps from simple, over-crowded rudeness to extreme violence person to person, so often via the small screen with video games, fifty shades type pornography and a general lack of moral direction amidst our I want / must have materialism.
Answers? I think I know them. I think you too too, at heart. We all must. But I for one am not ashamed to confess my fear of giving voice to them, here or anywhere. Enough to say we are in dire need of a basic re-shaping of society away from the slow cancers of media, money, science and population growth. And away from our so degraded forms of democratic governments. Towards - what?
Two thousand years ago Socrates had the answers. We should start to understand them, begin to to re-learn how to live with each other and with our host planet, comfortably alongside all of its wonders.
No, it's nothing to do with the proliferation of guns and their ammunition. There have been at least three comparable incidents in the UK in recent times and very, very few in the UK have access to guns. In Shakespeare's London no sword of more than three feet in length was legal. Visitors with weapons longer than that had them broken in half at the city gates. Did that stop the bloody street fighting ? Not on your life (or anyone's in 1590's London Town!).
It's more to do with the massive proliferation of mental illness, I think, and the disinclination of Western society to lock up all those so afflicted, out of harm's way (harm to others as well as to themselves).
It is a sad fact that the more populations increase the more aberrrant, one to another, has and will become our behaviour. Their are not so many steps from simple, over-crowded rudeness to extreme violence person to person, so often via the small screen with video games, fifty shades type pornography and a general lack of moral direction amidst our I want / must have materialism.
Answers? I think I know them. I think you too too, at heart. We all must. But I for one am not ashamed to confess my fear of giving voice to them, here or anywhere. Enough to say we are in dire need of a basic re-shaping of society away from the slow cancers of media, money, science and population growth. And away from our so degraded forms of democratic governments. Towards - what?
Two thousand years ago Socrates had the answers. We should start to understand them, begin to to re-learn how to live with each other and with our host planet, comfortably alongside all of its wonders.
December 14, 2012
Life before this one
'What on earth', asked a youngster of my acquaintance, 'Did you ever actually do in your spare time back then, before TV?'
'Radio, I said, 'Dick Barton Special Agent, Forces Favourites etc.' And we read books, did jigsaw puzzles, talked to each other.'
'Ah, how boring was that', responded my young friend.'What about before radio, then?'
I explained that even I was not that old, but ...
It's the year 1780. 21 year old Robert Burns and his brother Gilbert have, with others, founded the Tarbolton Batchelors Club. They are to meet every fourth Monday to ...
debate
a topic
choose
a Chairman
choose
a subject for the next meeting
drink
to the members and their mistresses
There was an elaborate set of rules, the last of which
reads like The Bard's personal handiwork...
‘Every man proper for
a member of this Society, must have a frank, honest, open heart, (be) above
anything dirty or mean; and must be a professed lover of one or more of the
female sex. No haughty, self-conceited person, who looks upon himself as
superior to the rest of the club, and especially no mean-spirited, worldly
mortal, whose only will is to heap up money, shall upon any pretence whatsoever
be admitted. In short, the proper person for this society is, a cheerful,
honest-hearted lad; who, if he has a friend that is true, and a mistress that
is kind, and as much wealth as genteelly to make both ends meet - is just as
happy as this world can make him.’
Subjects debated include …
‘Whether we derive more happiness from
Love or Friendship?’
‘Whether the savage, or the peasant
of a civilised country, is in the most happy situation.’
‘Should a farmer without prospects
marry a rich girl with neither beauty nor conversation or ‘one every way
agreeable in person, conversation and behaviour but without any fortune.’
Sounds like a lot of fun and a better way to spend an evening than gyrating to drug fuelled bong bong disco music in a 2012 Club or hanging out with no particular place to go or gazing at the small screen for no particular reason? What think you?
December 12, 2012
Is anybody listening?
"These days are of great and widespread spiritual inefficiency and uncertainty ... multitudes are spiritually homeless. Not only are they churchless; they are adrift ... we have heard in the present day the prophets of materialism loudly proclaiming the failure of their own systems ... yes indeed the irreligious concepts of life are bound to go bankrupt, for it is easier to build a castle in the air than to construct a society without a spititual dimension."
Are you listening, Mr Cameron ... anybody? Me? You?
These are extracts from a speech c.1938 delivered in the Hollywood Bowl to 60,000 people by Albert Orsborn, General of the Salvation Army, one of its finest writers and orators. Albert Orsborn was my maternal grandfather.
Are you listening, Mr Cameron ... anybody? Me? You?
These are extracts from a speech c.1938 delivered in the Hollywood Bowl to 60,000 people by Albert Orsborn, General of the Salvation Army, one of its finest writers and orators. Albert Orsborn was my maternal grandfather.
December 11, 2012
Remembering Robert Burns
This evening we of the Wester-Ross Burns Club meet in Tony's house. Maybe a dozen of us or so. I'm hoping to hear from Dee at Raigmore hospital this morning to the effect that she can come home. I will then drive across for her, but it's very unlikely she will be able to attend the meeting. Real R&R is pretty well mandatory at her current stage of chemotherapy.
At the meeting all in attendance will do, say or sing something Burnsian. Will be good fun. My own contribution will be based around Robert and Gilbert Burns' Tarbolton Bachelors' Club. More on that later, perhaps. Dee has conceived something. She hasn't told me what, so I'll probably be giving it to one of the ladies at the meeting to deliver on her behalf.
Fast forward to January 25th 2013, our Wester Ross Burns Club Burns Supper: I have been awarded the honour of delivering 'The Immortal Memory'. Not bad for a Britisher originating hundreds of miles to the south of Alloway! Question: do I attempt the accent? Answer, not on your life! Question: do I wear the tartan and, if so, kilt or trews and or ... Answer, don't know yet.
Anyway I've been thinking of why and how we all remember our Scottish 'ploughman poet' - or indeed how and why we remember those very few from history, down all the generations. This is an extract from the final pages of my novel More Deaths Than One I think it relates. I may in some way bring it into my Immortal Memory address on January 25th ... in the novel it is 2001, just after the Twin Towers ...
Thomas forced the
camel Osira'ah to her knees, re-mounted her. She bore him aloft and he turned
her head towards the east, towards Saeed in the encampment and then, after
that, to the causeway across to Bahrain.
As he rode, swaying easily in the saddle, he thought of what evil may have happened
in America
and he thought of Mubarak, his saviour twice, that third and the most innocent
of his fathers.
He thought also
about the hardness and the kindness of his second father who now lay dying but
who had dealt in the delivery of death all through his life and he remembered as
well his first father, his real father who had been dead all of these years but
who had caused and had willed the death of others. So many deaths.
Riding the night
sands he remembered his first father's poem, the one he'd received at his
school after his first father had been killed, the one he had for ever
afterwards carried with him, the one called 'The Fourth-light.' It told of the
lights that burn within all human beings: the first-light which is that of God
and the Universe and the second-light which is a person's world and their
country and their race and the third one which is their family and the love of
their family. And as he rode on, he thought about the fourth-light, the one
that, his first father claimed, is switched on by the Almighty within each man
and each woman when each one is born, the one that will lighten the way for
that person and, perhaps, if it is strong enough, to a greater or a lesser
extent for others also. Thomas Thornton remembered that his first father had
written that this fourth-light cannot be put out whilst its owner lives except
by a man's own attempt to change or falsify that which he actually is, and that
should he do so, a life without this fourth-light is a life without any meaning.
But
in the normal course, his father's poem had gone on to tell him, the
fourth-light will not naturally fade until its person dies and after that the
fading can last for a matter of hours or for a thousand or thousands of years;
and sometimes, if only very rarely, this light will shine with such truth and
such strength that it will not be extinguishable for so long as the foot of Man
shall walk upon the face of his mother Earth.
'By their Works shall they be known' ... we remember them for all time for that which they did; they themselves being of very small importance. 'Celebrity' is but a media profiting modernism, hollow and shallow.
