Diogenes:

ADissimulation

Thursday

I cut my hair funny today. Just because I could. Grandma did her usual tutting
routine at the randomly cut style, a mixture of bald patches andproudsprigsof
light brown hair, butthen,surprisingly,shesaiditlookedbetterthanbefore.Yet
that was only about four months of growth without cutting it. She doesnt like
longhair.Shethinksmenwithlonghairlookuntidy.

Ive always had short hair except from maybe two time periods where I let it
grow as long as I could bear it. I like the idea of long hair. Those big pony tails
impress me. They make me think of swashbuckling pirates of yore whose lives
were full of adventures. I imagine their livesweresofullofstuffthattheynever
wasted time thinking. Their lives were a blur of doing, raiding for treasure one
day and running from monsters the next. Haha, my pirates seem to have
segwayed into a Conan the Barbarian adventure. Still, long, lustrous, thick hair
inaponytail...

The problem, of course,isthattogettothatkindofhairyouneedtogothrough

any numberofstagestogettoit.Andthatmaytakeacoupleofyearsormoreif
you start off with a crew cut. This means lots of fiddly intermediate stages at
which you will be tempted so many times to get out theclippersandrelievethe
torment. One of the times I waslettingitgrowIgotsoannoyedbytheconstant
hair twiddlingIseemedtohavestarteddoing.Myfingerswerealmostconstantly
aching. When you think of long hair, never having had it of course, you dont
realise youll be constantly fiddling with it. WhenIshaveditalloffagainIdonly
got to the stage of having the weediest, most pathetic little pony tail you ever
did see. It was more like a pigs tail. In the end I shaved my head againjustto
relieve the embarrassment of all the looks I was getting with Porky Pigs tail
stickingoutofthebackofmyhead.

But, still, I do like the idea of something long and flowing down the back of my
head. Hair is too troublesome to wait for so a bandana seems like a good
substitute. And bandanas look quite cool as well, dont they? Ha, look at me
wanting to look cool! Im the most uncool person in existence. Get a grip on
yourself Frederick! Have you forgotten that you gave up being a sociable
member of the human race some time ago now? Whatdoescoolmattertoyou?
I walk the line between a semiprincipled disdain of the views of others and a
despair of ever being anything butawalkingembarrassment.ThatsEnglishness
for you. Englishness is the constant desire to be on the pedestal of recognition
but also the constant awareness that, should you ever actuallymakeit,therest
of your countrymenwillhappilyknockyouofftheperchagain.Dontgettoobig
foryourbootsisEnglandsmotto.

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Which brings me back to thebandana.IcouldneverhavewornitinEngland.Id
have been ripped to shreds. Every time I went out I would have been openly
laughed at and probably jeered at by passersby. Do you know that once I was
out walking in shorts on a slightly chilly day and some teenage lad shouted
something acrosstheroadatme.BecauseIwaswearingshorts!TheEnglishlike
to knock you off your pedestal. Know your place.Allthatoldbollocks.Itsinbred
from birth with yourmothersmilk.Youretaughttotakethepissoutofothersif
you get the slightest inkling that they have ideas above their station. Some
people say its a kind of inbuilt hardiness, a preparation for life so yougetused
to a rough time of it. But Im not buying that. Its basic meanspiritedness. So
dontgimmethatoldflannel.

When I wore it for the first time here in Berlin I wasexpectingthesamekindof

reaction to be honest. But it didnt happen. I walked all the way to
Alexanderplatz and back and I can barely think of asinglepersonwholookedat
me in that judging way my own people do. It felt like such a weight off my
shoulders after too many years of wondering what total strangers will make of
me as if they have the right to have an opinion. To actually be somewhere
where people just accept that you look acertainwayisabitofarevelation,you
know? Just one tiny thing removed from thedailyrucksackofstressImustload
ontomybackafterwakingup.Everylittlebitremovedcounts.

Saturday

I spent all day just scrolling and scrolling through Tumblr, people watching.
Yesterday I just slept. I felt bad. Tumblr seems to have collected together allof
the worlds narcissists.Ithinkthatswhattheyuniversallyarewhatevertheyare
posting. Pretty much every post screams Notice me. It wasnt until I started
going to Tumblr that I realized quite how manyyoungwomenseeshowingtheir
bodies as a means of stable income. Of course, they have to keep begging
people to pay them for it. Even the really goodlooking ones seem to get little
traction. Its just high numbers of followers wanting anything they can get for
free. Its not like anyone should have to pay for nakedness in this day and age.
Pornography, like music, has been made ubiquitous. So sorry nice lady but I
havenouseforyourprivateSnapchatoryourcustomvideos.

It must be akindofpurgatorybeingoneofthosegirls.Manyofthemarefrankly
stunning. Yet here they are basically grubbing for money, led to believe (or
lettingthemselvesbelieve)thatapairoftitsandanicearsewillbetheirfortune.
I cannot imagine the stresses they must be under. The mountain ofguystelling
them they look fantastic. The naive morons who actually believe the girls care
for them. The ones who try it on, get rejected and then turn nasty. The private
questions they must be asked. Constantly having to police the boundary
between what they want to give away, what costs money and whats totally off
limits. Theres one I follow and she speaks of living off an overdraft! Shes
gorgeous.

I like to watch her behaviour. Shes called Kate. Shes six feettallwithsapphire
eyes, long legs and a peach of a behind. Shes obviously quite posh too. She
givesawayenoughaboutherselfinherdailycommentstoworkthatout.There

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isnt a part of her I havent seen and that's without paying a penny. I force
myself to keep distance. You wont catch me getting involved and not only
because I know this is all an act on her part. Thats what all these girls are
doing. Theyre playing at being nice and polite and friendly when all they really
want is money for looking. Of course, the men are pretending too. They are
pretending to be detached observers sizing up a product. But what they really
want is free, privileged access and their dicks up her arse. Like I said, its all
narcissism. The girls want you to notice them. The guys want to be noticed by
them.

Sunday

I went to Aller Eck for some drinks and saw Maruschka in the street. I looked
down when shenoticedmeandstayedonmysideoftheroadsoshedidnthave
to walk past me. She was wearing some shorts and a vest top that made her
boobs stick out. IhaventbeenabletogetthepictureoutofmyheadsinceIgot
back. There was no sign of her boyfriend so maybe he has not come up this
weekend.

Monday

Im beset by aches and pains today. There is no reason for them. They are
merely the unconscious pinpricks of my soul, my enduring remembrances thatI
am a physical being made of flesh and blood. And whats the point of being
physical if there are no physical consequences to it, no feelings to experience
and endure? One of the people I follow on Tumblr has posted a lot of paintings
by Gerhard Richter. Some are abstract and others are paint smeared over
photographs. I wonder what the point of them is? And then I stop myself short
andchastisemyselfinternally.Asifapainterwouldneedareasontopaint!

I look at the paintings back and forth and I start to wonder about abstract
things. It strikes me that every revealing is also an obscuring. I wonder if
Richters point in his paint smearing over photographs was to obscure them, to
make the point that even if he hadnt wiped paint over them you still wouldnt
see because even the photograph itself reveals and obscures at the same time.
Every revealing is also and obscuring. Revealing and obscuring are the same
thing. To see isalsonottosee.Wearenotomniscient.Andsowehavetopicka
view. We cant pick all the views. We cant take all the sides. Youtieyourselfto
the mast of one view and then must sail that particular ship even until it runs
aground.

But even knowing this its hard not towishthatyoucouldseewhatisbehindthe

paint that Richter has added to the photographs. Its like you accept an
intellectual point but in practice ignore it. We are not pure mind. We donotlive
in accordance with even our ownthoughtsandbeliefs.Wearecreaturesofhabit
schooled to live a certain way by ourpractices.Idgoasfarastosaythatifyou
dont habitually do something then do you even really believe it? Believing is
doing.Andwhatyoudoyoucertainlybelieve.

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One of the abstract paintings was quite broad lines of colour. The picture was
abstract and so, I suppose, there wasnt meant to be anything definite there.
What this did was make you notice the colours like abstract music would make
you notice the sounds. Its merelyashiftofattentionbutonethat,whenthereis
some form there, you dont tend to notice. This tells me that concentration is
targeted and not generalized or comprehensive. You have to direct your
attention to things. I expect this ishowsomemanipulativecrooksmanagetogo
unnoticed. They use misdirection to direct attention and then carry out their
nefarious activities unseen. A classic case of using the particularities of the
human being against its better interests. It is so hard to see and hear properly.
You have to know what you want to see andhearandthendoitonpurpose.No
wondersomanygoaroundinadaze.Thisdazeiscallednotbothering.

Tuesday

Maruschka has locked her Twitter. Now I cant follow her anymore. Theres still
her Instagram and Facebook. I wish she posted more on Facebook. She seems
tohavestoppedormadeitallprivate.

Wednesday

Kate was on Tumblr answering questions tonight. I ask myself why Ive takena
special interest in her and the answer is immediately obvious. So obvious, in
fact, that I berate myself for 0.012 seconds for even asking the question.
Because she replies, of course. Thats always the hook that people like her are
getting themselves caught up on. Their chosen path requires the interest of
other people for it to work. Indeed, that chosen path is all about making
themselves noticed. Perhaps they accept that some percentage of these people
will be troublesomeorannoyingorcreepyandperhapstheydont.Thatsnotmy
problem. Personally, I find the shadows much more appealing. Never be out in
plainsightunlesstheresadamngoodreasonforit.

Most of the questions Kate gets are from anons, people so shallow that they
arentevenpreparedtoputtheirfakeTumblridentitiestotheirtriflingquestions.
I, in contrast,usedmynamefromthestart.(Obviouslynotmyrealone!Whatis
the Internet for if not to hide?) I want her to know who it is, to go and look at
my Tumblr and judge me because of it. And because of what I ask her, of
course. Yes Kate, form an opinion about me. Think you have me in a box like
everybody else does. Everybody else who, in truth, knows as little about me as
you will. Its all shadow play of course. Thats why I do it. The thrill of play and
counterplay. Not knowing how far you can push. Probing to see what response
you get.IhavegreathopesthatKatewillbefuntoplaywith.Thespiderandthe
fly.

I have been asking her seemingly innocuous and random questions. Nothing at
all about her sex life or sexual tastes. Thats extremely vulgar. And besides,
there are loads of morons who can ask her that for me anyway. If you want to
get anywhere, and I mean reallyanywhere,thenyouneedtobecomeafamiliar,
a habit, a part of the furniture. She has to accept your presence. Its like
befriending a wild animal. Go over and attempt to cuddleitonfirstmeetingand

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you will both alienate yourself from it, making the task harder, and maybe
receive a bite or scratch for your trouble if you even survive the encounter. But
sit outside of its personal space somewhere in view over and over so it gets
comfortable with you and you can become a habit over a period of time. The
guard comes down. Slowly, maybe.Butspeedisntimportant.Becomingfamiliar
is. Because as that guard comes down so they will automatically reveal more
andnotevenrealisewhattheyaredoing.JustlikewithMaruschka.

I met Maruschka on Twitter. She was curating some rotation curation account
that week that I had started to follow. A random conversation led to a
passionate, if all too brief, relationship. And thats because I played it cool. I
cultivated her over that week and by the end of it it was her who was eager to
talk to me. At that point the gamechanges.Thenyoucultivatethedesire.AndI
did with her. I still remember our first Skype chat on the camera. She was
playing with her hair and rolling aroundonhersofa,allgigglyandembarrassed.
Her desperate need to be fuckedandpaidattentioncouldnthavebeenclearerif
she had held up a big sign saying Come here and ravish me! Up until that
conversation I was playing it cagey. But when I saw her body language on the
screen I knew I was going to have her. And that greenlit me for manipulating
hersexualdesire.Ithelpedthatshefoundmyvoiceverysexy.Andsoonenough
I had her playing with her wonderful 38DDs on camera. That reminds me,Istill
havethescreenshotsItookofthatsomewhere.

Thursday

Ah,Tyrone,yousillyfatbastard.

Friday

Grandma is in a bad mood. This happens semiregularly and when it does its
best to just disappear. This is annoying for a man like me who is more than
happy alone in his own personal space. Of course, I could just stay there and
hope Grandma doesnt pierce the calm with her mood. But thats always a
gamble. When Grandma has one of her moodsnothingyoucansayordowillbe
right.Soitsbesttojustevacuatethearea.Youcouldlockorbarricadethedoor,
of course, but if she tries to come in there will be the mother of all arguments
about you blocking access to a room in her place. And you dont want an
argument now do you Frederick? You want to just let the time pass with you
unnoticed.

SoItakeawalk.

Saturday

I wake up and decide to have a little chat using one of my various personas.
They are all women because what is the point of talking to strangers on the
Internet if you cant convince them youre someone youre not? Of course, you
could go on Facebook and talk to people about some neutral topic like current

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events or politics or James Bond but that is dull. And life is much more exciting
whensomethingisatstake.

Over the last maybe 6 years Ive probably used 10or12differentidentitiesall

female. God alone knows how many men I have spokentointhattimeandhow
many orgasms Im responsible for. Occasionally, Ive spoken to peoplewhosaid
that they were women too. But, of course, they werent. Everyone on the
Internet is a man. And thats especially true of the women. And I should know.
But not everyone is as skillful verbally or asmanipulativeasIam.Mostofthose
women who have tried to talk to me were so obviously not. And it helps to
demonstrate that if you start off believing that all the women are menandthen
challenging them (in your head, not actually) to convince you. Inevitably they
dont because theycant.Someofthemarelaughablybadatconvincingyouand
I can only imagine they must think everyone is as dumb as theyare.Andthats
justinsultingtomyintelligence.

What these fakers do is they forget the first rule of the Internet. That is Dont
believe anything that you cannot personally verify to your own satisfaction. Of
course, thisruleisntalwaysnecessary.Youmayjustwantsomestrangertotalk
to about sexy things so youcangetoff.Ifyourenottoochoosysuchpeopleare
easy to find. You might not care who that is so longaswhotheysaytheyareis
not easily disproved and the lie is done well enough to achieve the desired
result. Ive met afairfewpeoplelikethisandgotoffmanytimesinacompletely
satisfactory way. Not everyone cares who is at the other end provided they can
perform a function. But, of course, most men on the Internet are looking for
something they think is a real woman so they can indulge their pathetic
fantasies that she is gorgeous and she might want to fuck them. These are the
guysIgoafter.

IgoafterthembecauseitsfuntotryandconvincethemImsomeoneImnot.It
hones my skills of deception, misinformation and misdirection. Imagine getting
someone to believe you are a different gender and have a different life. Its not
easy. But it does turn you into a fabulous liar. It informs you that half of the
trick of telling a huge lie is having the guts to say it in the first place. In fact,
sometimes I challenge myself to see how big of a lie I can get someone to
believe. But you have to play it cool. It shouldnt be totally stupid. There are
many ways to spot a fake if youre of amindtoandoneoftheeasiesttospotis
the person who claims to have done anything and everything no matter how
outrageous. Im sure there are people of incredible and extensive sexual
experience in the world but what are the chances they just happen to be online
and want to tell you all about it? You have to play the odds and extraordinary
claimsrequireextraordinaryevidence.Or,rather,theyshould!

Part of the trick in this game is to get inside the other persons head and think
like them so you can see what it is they really want. Then, slowly but with a
purpose, you can become their fantasy. Some want youtobeontheyoungside
(in facttheappetiteforunderagesexseemsdisturbinglyhighinmyexperience).
Some want a married person so they canfantasizeabouthavingsomeoneelses
wife. Some want a teacher fantasy (although that one gets corny very fast and
youll get very annoyed that the duller conversation partners cant get past
calling you Miss) and others a secretary. Iveworkedoutbiographiesforeachof

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the people I pretend to play because its essential you have a backstory worked
out. It savesyoumakingupcontradictorystuffonthehoofandtyingyourselfup
in knots and will seem more natural in conversation. I admit, though, it is
sometimes fun if something goes wrong and you have to be dexterous verbally
to get out of it. Then you just challenge them to disbelieve you. If and when
they back down you know that, emotionally, they are in a place where they
simplyWANTtobelieveyou.Thenyouknowtheyareripeformanipulation.

Occasionally it crosses my mind that this skill must be somehow usable for
enriching myself. At the very least the conversations and anything they send
within them could be used for blackmail. But I steer clear of such thoughts
because thenyougodownapathwhereyoustarttolosecontrol.Andanysmart
person should always be aware that there is an x factor always at work in any
kind of life and that xfactorisrandomevents.Ofcourse,youcannotknowwhat
these things mightbeorwhentheywillstrike.Butyoushouldbewiseenoughto
know they always happen. You might think you are quick on your feet and so
can deal with them. But life has a habit of throwing some fast, curved balls. Its
bestnottogetintoodeeporgettooinvolvedevenwhereyouvedoneextensive
work on people and could probably get money from them. Theres this one guy
Ive been talking to for over three years now. HebelievesIlooklikeMaruschka.
I mean, really,truly,utterlybelievesit.Hethinkssheshisgoodfriend.Inactual
fact I think hed leave his wife for her. If she wasnt me. He is sointhepalmof
myhandIcouldgethimtodoanything.

Its scary how seemingly gullible some people can people. But the thing to
remember here is that everyone is thatgulliblebecauseitsallaboutcontext.No
one always has their guard up and, for many, there isnt much of a guard to
begin with. They forget my rule of the Internet andtheyacceptyourjabberand
your easily proffered photo ofaprettywomanandtheytakeitforreal.Andthey
do that often even whilst joking that there are so many fakers online. Yes,
there are and youre talking to one you schmuck. And a good one who never
chooses an identity where he cannot collect a wide variety of photos to use in
emergency situations as proof that hes who he says he is. Some guys think
themselves smart with their send me a pic of you now requests. WellIcando
that and I can do it in such a way as the photo I send changes the subject to
how hardyourdickisbecauseonceyourethinkingwithyourdickyoullbemuch
more suggestible. Familiarity breeds attachment and then, over time, your
human psychology and your emotions will become attached to the idea Im real
and genuine. Youll stop questioning and simply accept. Its a skill to guide
conversationsandIhaveitinspades.

I admit that some of the identities I pretend to be are past girlfriends but,from
my perspective, they are obvious choices. I have lots of pictures of them and I
know something about them. And it gets me off to imagine other guys want
them so its a way to have sexual fantasies about people I know but in a
relatively safe way that doesnt require their input. Maruschka knows I do this
(but obviously not using her identity!) because when we lived together she saw
me pretending to be an exgirlfriend online herself. She didnt seem to care
much, probably because she hated the exgirlfriend concerned because she
didnt feel as pretty as she thought she was. But she did warn me at that time
that if she ever found herself online like that then she would take me to court

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and get me put in jail. What she didnt know is that, even then, I was already
pretending to be her and sending out pictures of her online. You feel most alive
whenclosesttotheedgeoftheprecipice.

Sunday

The lack of authenticity in some (most?) people is often staggering. Watching

You Tube I was surfing from one video to another and I came across an
interview with Charlie Brooker about the show Black Mirror. It seems to be one
of these interview/press conference type things where he is bigginguphisshow
with a couple offacelesswonderswhonodoubtworkbehindthescenes.Hetells
some story about taking an Uber, a company that Ive never found a single
person to have a good thing to say about. Given Brookers often leftleaning
rhetoric it would also lead me to think that, were he talking about Uber, he
would find their method of doing business unacceptable and exploitative and
basically everything bad about the modern face of capitalism. And yet he still
takesthem?

This story is merely an illustration but you can see where Im going with it. It
seems to me to be infinitely repeatable that we have these people speakingout
about bad things in the world. But it doesnt stop these same people still
carrying on regardless. The idea that what you say might, if acted upon, be in
some way impinging upon the progress of your own life or inconvenience your
lifestyle seems to speak against acting upon it.Andsotheworldispopulatedby
hypocrites. If you think this company or that one is bad then dont use it.Dont
give it your patronage. The cost of your hypocrisy is my refusal to take you
seriously ever again. The problem is we live in a world like this. Peoples beliefs
and actionsdonttieup.Theysayonethinganddotheopposite.Insuchaworld
anythingisokandallthingshavetheirexcusestohand.

I mean, look at environmentalists. Have you noticed how none of them live in
grass houses, eating foodcultivatedbytheirownfairhandsinplotsintheirback
gardens? Instead, they drive 4x4s, holidayabroad,watchTV,eatpackagedfood
from supermarkets, turn up the central heating when its cold and populate the
world with their kids, those great users of the worlds precious resources.
Wanting to save the planet doesnt seem quite so important to them when you
putitlikethat.AndIaskmyselfwhyyoushouldexpectmetotakewhatyousay
is your agenda so seriously when you seemingly live a lifestyle which is actively
contributing to changing the planet for the worse much more so than someone
like me who does none of these things. So much of life is empty rhetoric. So
muchattheheartofmanypeopleisanempty,contentlessvoid.

Saturday

I couldnt get his blood off of my shoes so I had to burn them. Better safethan
sorry.

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Monday

I was in the supermarket and Maruschka was there. I dont think shesawme.I
watched her from the frozen food area, my skin turning to goose flesh with the
cold as I watched her choosingpacketsofbiscuitsandsomecakes.Shemustbe
having guests because she wouldnt buy those just for herself. Someone gave
me a look of disapproval because they wanted to get into the refrigerated
cabinet I was standing too close to. Fucking tosser. There are ways todealwith
people and ways to deal with people. He had chosen a way which made an
automatic enemy of a total stranger, a pointless thing to do in an uncertain
world. If he has an accident now and is close to death and is relying on me to
save him then hes just given me a reason to walk by on theotherside.Andhe
didntneedto.HecouldhavejustsaidExcusemeandgoneonhisway.Fool.

Tuesday

The story of the rat. Once upon a time there was a school caretaker and there
was a rat. One day the caretaker got a phone call in his office as he waseating
the last of his sandwiches. It was the school secretary. She had been told that
there was a rat that had been seen running around outside. In order to spare
any patrons from possible harm or injury could the caretaker please find and
take care of the rat. This irked the caretaker somewhat because this could be a
fruitless task if, as he thought, hemightsearchforagesandfindnothing.Andit
would be even worse if he found the rat. But, nevertheless, he was a man of
duty and so he headed for the door of his office and collected his stiffbristled
broomwhichwasnestlinginthecornerandwentonhisway.

The grounds around the building were mostly asphalted over but there were a
number of outbuildings that any selfrespecting rat would likely find very
salubrious surroundings. So the caretaker got out his bunch of keys and made
plenty of noise about checking in the buildings. Any nervous rat would be likely
to make a run for it if out in the open and any more sneaky than this would
likely go and find somewhere well out of the way to hide. Much better for both
thecaretakerandtheratthattheynotmeet.

Unfortunately, on this day it was fated that the caretaker and the rat would
meet. As the caretaker checkedinthenewlyemptiedbinsthereinthebottomof
one of the big,industrialsizedcontainerswastherat.Hewasabigone,thesize
of a chihuahua and as soon as he saw the caretaker he did two things: he
jumped and he squealed. The squealing was a terrible noise, the sound
something would make if it knew that the next 2 minutes would decide its life.
But the jumping was worse. The bins were almost 5 feet high but this rat was
only a couple of inches away from reaching the top. It seemed to the caretaker
as if every leap the rat made was a desperate attempt to sink ratty fangs into
his soft throat. The rat was jumping for its life because it knew what was
coming.

The caretaker lifted the brush and got ready to strike,hopingtotimethatstrike

with the moment the rat would once more land on the bottom of the bin and
prepare for another leap. Thud! The caretaker smashed down his stiffbristled

9
brush. But he had missed. The rat squealed a deathly squeal and leaped for his
life again. The caretaker leaned backoutofrangeofthedesperateratandityet
again almost reached the top of the bin with its insane jumping. He got ready
with the brush again. Thud! But he hadmissedagain.Hefelttenseandhotby
this time and he was aware that he was shaking. He knew that if itmanagedto
leap clear the rat could do anything. Bite him, run up his trouser leg, anything.
He smashed down the brush again to the sound of that hellish squealing. He
missed again. This went on for about twoorthreeminutesbutitseemedlikean
age. He knew he had to kill it now. There was no way out. He had revealed his
murderousintent.

Again and again the caretaker smashed down his brush to deal the
incapacitating blow. Then, finally,hecaughttheratonitslowerhalf,stunningit.
He did not hesitate. He smashed the brush down again and again three or four
times until the rats entrails lay as a gory decoration beside its now warm but
deceased carcass. The rat was dead. The caretaker was bathed in sweat and
shaking. He felt relieved. Phew! Thank god that was over. Hehadmadehisfirst
properkillofanotherlivingcreature.Fliesandwaspsandspidersdontcount.

Wednesday

We snuggled on the bed in what is very probably themosttrulytendermoment

of my entire life. It doesnt have a lot of competition for that spot. I have had
intimate moments, passionate moments, intense moments and even one or
two loving moments. But tender moments is a very, very exclusive category. I
dont exactly remember how we came to be lying on her bed. It was in thefirst
few weeks of me meeting her so I suppose whereelsewouldwebe?ButIrecall
that we were dressed so therewasnothingvulgaraboutit.Forsomereasonshe
was kneeling and my head was resting on her lap. Ibegantosob.Dontaskme
why. I dont know why. Andthen,instinctivelyIguess,shejustcradledme.She
didnt say anything or ask inappropriate questions of a sobbing man. She just
cradledmeuntilIstopped.

I recall that afterthatwecuddledandkissed.TheItsalrightkindofkisses,the

kind you want when you just want to be held because it makes you feel that
youre not alone. What no one who ever reads this will understand or even be
able to comprehend is how rare and alien that feeling is to me. Did I not have
this one single example to fall back on from my own untrustworthy memory I
would swear that such a thing did not exist. Why do I remember this event?
Because its the only fucking time its ever happened to me! And that gets you a
lot of credit my dear. But for most of my days I have instinctively felt alone.
Indeed, Ive gone out of my way to let myself know that Imalone.Topreferit.
Alone is at least clear cut, less messy, less complicated. No one to please or
consider but you. Sure,theresnotendernessatallinalone.Butyouwerenever
goingtogettoomuchofthatanywaynowwereyouFrederick?Itdoesntexist.

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Thursday

The rabbit gets fucked. What, proper fucked? Yes Tommy. Before zee Germans
getthere.

Friday

Oh Kate. You are so stupidly dumb as a rock. Not only do you live on an
overdraftbyyourownadmission,notonlydoyouthinkyoucanmakeyourliving
begging random social media users to pay you money to see you nude,butyou
utter the most inane, empty statements. You have old posts where you talk
about everybody who goes to your blog being the sweetest. And then
numerous others where youcomplainthatpeoplerepostyourpics(allthetime!)
having stripped away your selfpublicity captions first. You really do need your
faceslappinguntilthetruthofyourtotalstupidityisreadilyapparenttoyou.You
barely seem to be awake as you float through life. You are just riding mood
swings as far as I can tell. And if that can be seen from Tumblr posts then how
transparentasapersonmustyoube?

I think one of the reasons I like Kate, and why I followed her blog and keep
going back to it, is that, to be honest, she is just so totally inept at what she
does. Ok, she is a tall, slim, young woman and a very nicelookingone.Butshe
didnt do anything to be that. Thanks mom and dad for the genetics. She takes
pictures of herself naked. Well so do lotsofothers.ButIdontgetanyfeelingof
intense sexuality from her. Theres no animal magnetism knocking around. She
feels very generic. There are those girls out there who are perfect, absolute
beauties. But that doesnt make them sexy. They are too perfect. Sexy isnt
perfect. Sexy is having character. Sexy is cute, unavoidable imperfections. Im
not sure Kate hasanycharacter.Shedoesntreallyhaveanymovesorinvention
either.Heresmyassandmytits.Paymemoney.

It occurs to me now that Kate isnt really very sexy. Sheisanakedwomanthat

raises akindofPavlovsdogresponseinheterosexualmen.ButIthinkshecould
be made to be. But youd need to take her out of her comfort zone. Right now
she is playing a game called Get naked andshowbodypartsandmenwillsend
me money. Id be surprised if she was a very strong enthusiast for what she
does. Much more likely, I think, is that shefindsshowinghercoochmucheasier
than the drudgery that most other human morons put themselves through to
survive. Kate strikes me as exactly the sort of person who wants to take the
easy path in life. Why should she work for a boss doing an annoying task for
little money? She can just be showing strangers between her legs instead.
Probablynomoremoneybutyoucanstayinbedallday.

I bought Kate the top ten items on her wishlist today. Including the polaroid
camera she had been begging for on her blog for two weeks. Now, Kate, start
feeling grateful. Because thats the game youre in now. By the time Im done
youre going to have gone way beyond grateful and deep into dependent.
Youre going to start coming to me directly and asking for things you want.
Then, just like Maruschka rolling on her sofa on Skype, youll be right where I
wantyou.

11
Saturday

Remember Buster Douglas? Buster Douglas was for most of his life a nobody, a
journeyman professional boxer justmakinghisway.Butonedayhegotselected
to fight force of nature, Mike Tyson, who for three years had terrorized and
intimidated opponents in what were often completely onesided bouts. Tyson,
who at this point was undefeated, was an animal in the ring. It took courage or
stupidity to even face off against him. When it came to being Buster Douglass
turn to fight Tyson most casinos would not even take bets on the fight, so
obvious did the outcome seem to be. The one casinothatdid,TheMirageinLas
Vegas,madeDouglas42/1against.Nowayhewins.

Buster Douglaswonandforthenext8monthsand2weekshewasHeavyweight
Champion of The World. And that's why you should remember Buster Douglas.
What can happen, will happen. If you can throw a punch then you have that
chance.

Sunday

Anything that can be thought of must certainly be a fiction, so wrote Nietzsche.

How can my selfunderstanding, my telling of the paths and conduits ofmylife,
be any less so? It is no privileged account to be sure. Its merely my own as it
occurs to me at apointintime.ButIamlyingtoyouandIdohavemyreasons.
How could I not? And how could you not read me with your own needs to be
satisfied?Wearenoneofushereblankslates.

Monday

The record shows I took the blows and did it my way. And isnt that all that
one can ask for in life? Its easy to be negative. My autobiography gives some
examples of where I am certainly that. Buthowaboutbitingback?Therecanbe
no more perfect life but than that you took holdofyourcircumstancesandlived
the life you wanted to live considering the circumstances you had. I dontmean
this in some secular, economic sense. I dont mean it in the shallow terms of
capitalist society either. I mean that you followed your own beliefs and
motivations through. Authenticity to yourself, thats surely what counts when
you have to look yourselfinthemirror?Onyourdeathbedwhatcomfortwouldit
be that you had achieved material possessions or a life enviabletoothersinthe
world? Id much rather lie there thinking I had been true to myself. You may
occasionally need to justify yourself to others. But you will need to justify
yourselftoyourselfeveryday.

So I really dont honestly think that I have any duty to justify myself to anyone
else. Oh, of course, it may be that this is sometimes expedient. Sometimes, it
may even be due to power and authority taking me in hand. But its all a joke,
isnt it? A game? I return to a perpetualthoughtofminerightnow:mylifeisan
Augenblick and my death will be forever. What do I care what you think about
me? If you honestly wanted a genuine assessment from the horses mouth, I
could give youone.ItwouldntbeprettybecauseIknowthethingsIhavedone.

12
But Im not a very convinced bad person. When I do wrong its because Im
bored, because I canorbecauseIthoughtitclevertodoso.Ioftenregretbad
things Ive done. My heart isnt in it. I just want to be left alone really andlive
andletliveseemstobethebestpolicyforthat.

Thursday

Bewaretheluresofknowing

Imagine, if you will, 100 country mansions. In these country mansions are 100
rooms.

Every room in these country mansions is alibraryandeachoneofthemansions

has 100 of them. Inthisgreatspaceyouspendyourlifestoringupallthethings
you learn, all your knowledge collected together. But what you don't have, in
this fable, isanyinklingastowhatanyofitmeans.What,then,Iaskyou,isthe
point of all this collected knowledge? Have you not simply spent your life
collecting useless facts? Is it not just so much jumble? Is knowing an end in
itself?

We switch focus. Consider the biblical tale of Eden, a place of innocence and
freedom from the burden of knowing. But its carefree inhabitants lose their
innocence and become burdened with knowledge. And now, as knowers, they
are burdened with what to do about what they know. Theircrime,ifcrimethere
was, was in wanting to know too much and our intrepid gatherers ofknowledge
and eaters of fruit did not realize the consequences of knowing. Human beings
have a need to act when they know. And this knowing will lead to actingand,if
they do not have other necessary qualities, their knowing will lead to bad and
negatively consequential actions. Perhaps now we understand why the biblical
innocencewastobepreferred?

There is a traditional dichotomy between knowledge and wisdom. Some people

(and, indeed, communities) prefer one over the other and there are various
intellectual and/or religious shrines to both in various places. Some people
venerate knowing, and the need to know, above all else. (Examples could be
those who wear scientism heavy on their brow or certain essentialist and
foundationalist philosophers.) And I take issue withthis.Forknowingisnot,and
cannot,beanendinitself.

There is,ofcourse,noendtoknowing.Wecannotimaginethattherewouldever
be an end to all the facts. But the situation is more dire than simply letting a
drive to know have its head. (I ask myself here what the outcome of letting a
drive to eat have itsheadwouldresultinbywayofanalogy.)Thereiswhatwe
may call a crisis of knowledge and a crisis of knowing in that knowing is
simply not enough. Knowing, of course, does not realizethisitselfbecauseinits
knowing it does not have the wisdom to know that knowing is not enough. (In
the same way, Reason often doesn't realize that reason is not very reasonable,
rationality doesnt realize that it is not very rational, etc., ad infinitum.) And its
not a case of the amount of knowing but of what simply knowing is able to
achieve. A collection of facts, as I hope my parables illustrate, is actually a

13
prettyuseless(butalsoburdensome)thing.Knowing,byitself,isintheendboth
impotent and potentially dangerous. Other things, perhaps we may describe
them collectively as wisdom, are needed to enable us to appropriately dealwith
thethingsweknow.Icanimmediatelythinkof3strandshere:

1.Youneedtoknowwhatknowledgemeans(thequestionofmeaning).

2.Youneedtoknowhowtoappropriatelyusetheknowledge(experience).

3.Youneedtoknowhowthingsfittogether,orcanfittogether(understanding).

An issue with knowledge will always be that the knowing and the collecting of
knowledge will never be enough. Knowledge leads inevitably to action and
people almost always feeltheneedtodosomethingaboutthethingstheyknow.
And its precisely here where knowing, by itself, is impotent because knowledge
does not tell you what to do with it. Its not part of the package but, instead, a
separate skill and not one anyone is forced to have regardlessofhowmanyof
their 100 houses with 100 libraries is full of knowledge.Thesecondissueisthat
that need to do something about the knowing is experienced as aburdenfor,in
reality, people do not simply store what they know in libraries. Thisleadstothe
spectre of doing the wrong thing or using the knowledge badly. Knowledge is
dynamite,itsadangerousthingwithconsequences.

In the light of these twin issues (and the at least three other separate
requirements I mentioned above) it seems to me that wisdom dictates we can
know too much. The drive to knowledge, if given its head, is a bad thing with a
negative impact. It produces more data than a person (or community) can
handle. The appropriateresponseistocurbthedrivetoknowand,instead,have
a sober and reflective innocence. Without the extra tools that wisdom provides
knowledge becomes but a blunt instrument of possible selfharm. What those
who wrote the story of Eden saw was the dangers of an inappropriate lust for
knowledge, a lust which raised up knowledge and knowing aboveitsstationand
made it the god at whose temple we all now had to worship. In those
circumstances, knowledge and knowing were always goingtobecapriciousgods
who abused their power and destroyed us by virtue of attenuating our all too
corruptible egos. In the end, the moral of the story ofEdenisboththatyoucan
know too much and that knowing is not without burdensome consequences. It's
amessageweneedtohearagainandagain.

Friday

Maruschkas goddamned fucking boyfriend was just in the street. He must be

staying over this weekend which means no going outside for 72 hours for me.
You better believe that I do not need to see them together. But you better also
believe that I often fantasize about them having sex. This revolts me a little. I
amsickandwierd.

14
Saturday

Thepainiswhatstayswithyou.

Sunday

It was around 8PM when the key turned in the door. I stood behind its thick,
wooden solidity and kept back, waiting for my optimum moment to pounce. I
had to make sure they were both inside. I trusted my friend to do his part and
follow swiftly from behind themaswehadplannedovermanyweekssinceIhad
first met him. Elka lived on the third floor and so I had heard them coming,
talking animatedly with each other up the stairs. I still recognised her voice,
even after over two years. As the key turned I momentarily became selfaware
and a buzz of adrenaline rushed over me. I felt myselfsoakedwiththesweatof
expectantexcitation.Thiswasit.Iwasabouttogothroughthelookingglass.

Both inside, Elkas boyfriend, who I had only seen before in a few pictures
posted on Twitter, turned to close the door. I jumped out from behind it and
pushed him away. My friend was right there and came through the door in a
blur, snatching the keys from thelock.ItrippedElkasboyfriendtothefloorand
he fell with a bang to his head in the still dark hallway. There were a couple of
cries in the kerfuffle but the door was now being locked by my friend. No one
had yet popped their head out of other front doors to see what was happening.
Good. This is a real gun, I said, waving it at them. If you still want to be
boyfriend and girlfriend in the morning then you will do everything I say.
Matthew, is that you? said Elka through the gloom. Yes, its me, I replied.
Get in the living room both of you. Now! My friend held a six inch bladeinhis
handandstrodeforwardpurposefully,pushingthemdownthedarkcorridor.

Whats this all about? Why are you here? said Elka. Do everything I say, I
replied. Is there somethingyouwant?askedherboyfriend.You!Youwillkeep
quiet! I said to him in a voice that meant Im serious. I have a gunandIve
just takencaptives.ImoverthelineheresodontthinkthatImnotpreparedto
use it. Inside my mind was racing. But I was also scared, scared because
everyone knows that real life doesnt turn out how it was in your head. The
contingency of existence intervenesandthenextthingyouknowisthattheplan
has gone tits up. Elka! Sit on the sofa! You! In that chair! I pointed the gun
dismissively at a chair beside the sofa and my friend pushed the boyfriend into
it, ostentatiously showing him thesixinchblade.Heseamlesslypulledhandcuffs
fromhisbackpocketandhandcuffedtheboyfriendsarmsbehindthebackofthe
chair. A thick plastic cable tie was applied to his ankles and a ball gag to his
mouth.Anothercabletiewasputoverhisheadandleftloosearoundhisneck.

IturnedtofaceElkaandsaidIthinkwerereadytobegin.

15
Monday

Im bored and have stayed up far too late, distracted by Maruschka and
Romeo. I was looking through old documents. I found this remnant of a once
beguncommentaryonEcclesiastesIstartedwriting.WhatasillysodIam...

CompositionofQohelethsonofDavid,kinginJerusalem.( 1:1)

The head verse of the book is meant to suggestthefigureofKingSolomon,son

of King David. Solomon was regarded asawisefigureinJudaiccirclesandthere
are other books which also claim his authorship amongst Jewish literature (not
least the Wisdom of Solomon). The ascription is most likely false but the book
attemptstogiveitscontenttheweightandsignificanceofsuchanassociation.

Sheer futility, Qoheleth says. Sheer futility: everything is futile! What profit can
we show for all our toil, toiling under the sun? A generation goes, a generation
comes, yet the earth stands firm forever.Thesunrises,thesunsetsthentoits
place it speeds and there it rises. Southward goes the wind, then turns to the
north it turns and turns again then back to its circling goes the wind. Into the
sea go all the rivers, and yet the sea is never filled, and still to their goal the
riversgo.

All things are wearisome. No one can say that eyes have not had enough of
seeing,earstheirfillofhearing.

What was, will be again, what has been done, will be done again, and there is
nothingnewunderthesun.

Take anything which people acclaim as being new it existed in the centuries
preceding us. No memory remains of the past, and soitwillbeforthecenturies
tocometheywillnotberememberedbytheirancestors.( 1:211)

And so the book begins properwithitsthemelaidoutquiteboldly:EVERYTHING

IS FUTILE! Quite often in lifethisistakenasthethoughtofnaiveanddepressed
teenage boys and thus thoroughly (and all too simply) dismissed. But this
statement is here being made in a major book of a world religion (or two if you
also include Christianity which would controversially come to claim all things
Judaism as related to itself). So this is not something that wecanbrushasideif
we wish to take the considered thoughts of our fellowhumanbeingsseriously.I
find it intriguing in the extreme that such astatementshouldbefoundinsucha
place. Ecclesiastes is one of those Jewish books regarded in its traditions as a
part of the gathered earthly wisdom. So what is the wisdom in saying
EVERYTHINGISFUTILE?

A translation of the word here rendered futileissometimesthewordabsurd.

This is not absurd in the sense of funny. Its absurd in the sense of inscrutable
without end something which literally makes no sense and so becomes a
futile pursuit. The idea here is of things ungraspable no matter howmuchyou
try or how strong your grip is. The Hebrew word at therootofallthisisHebel
in English transliteration, a word which suggests aninsubstantialfog.Lifeisfog.

16
Everything is fog. And you cant grasp fog because it will always slip through
yourfingers.Itsinsubstantial.Thereneverwasanythingtograsp.

The thought is unpacked furtherbeyondtheboldstatement.Thereaderisasked

directly What profit can we show for all our toil, toiling under the sun? The
book is thus addressed toeveryoneandisaskingaboutlifegenerally.Thisisnot
some dusty tome for a few clerics or academics. The book addresses you and
asks you for your answer to the question. It seems to me that this is very
important. Everyone needs his orherownanswertothisquestion.Whatareyou
working for? What do you get from it? What of ultimate value and worth
remains? Qoheleth or I or some treasured mind or someone elsecannotanswer
for you. You need your own answer to this question. And, in the end, having
your own answer that you feel resonating in your heart is the only one that will
satisfyanyway.

After this we get a series of examples which, to my mind, basically concentrate

on an appreciation of time. Time goes on and on forever in its inscrutable,
absurd, futile and foggy way. We cannot discern or divine its meaning or
purpose. We make no sense of it. All things pass as itrollsalongonitswayand
we become tiny and insignificant and forgotten. Suns rise and fall, rivers run,
winds turn. But then a slap in the face: allthingsarewearisome!Ourwriterhas
seen and heard enough, overcome by the deluge of time he, and us with him,
have become lost in. Time is a void and in it we are as nothing, lost as the
universegoesaboutitsinterminablebusiness.

This isagreatcontextforushumanbeings,creatureswhoconstantlyneedtobe
snapped outofourselfregarding,egoisticandexceptionalistfocusonourselves.
I am sure that each succeeding generation of human beings sees itself as
reaching out into the universe, attemptingtobegods.Certainly,forsomethisis
true today. We arefallibleandtrappedinfutility,asQohelethclaims,andyetwe
have visions of eternity. There are those of us who want to extend human life
indefinitely. Others want to reach out to the stars and colonise other worlds.
This, for me, is a case of Qoheleths nothing new under the sun. For it is not
new that human beings seek to grasp the ungraspable. Ofcourse,itmaynotbe
that those so mindedagreewithQohelethandhisassessmentofeverything.But
then this is meant to be a piece of wisdom and its not always the case that the
most knowledgeable are the most wise. We each take from the store of human
wisdomasweareableto.

So am I saying that our technological advances and the associated knowledge

and learning that come with these things are futiletoo?Fromthecontextofthis
section of Ecclesiastes, yes I am. The view espoused here is that everything
together as a whole in the end makes no sense. This is surely true. And no
amount of gizmos, gadgets and technological achievement can or will change
that. Living an interminably long time, far beyond whats currently possible,
wouldnotremovethequestionWhatsthepointoflife?anymorethanlivingfor
the 70 or 80 years we hope to live now. Unless your shallow answer is that the
point of life is to live as much ofitasyoucancalculatedintermsofnumberof
years. One day the universe itself will die fromheatdeathandtherewillbeno
escaping that and so the shallow desire for extra years gives no satisfying
answertome.Itsjustonemoregraspwhichgrabsonlyatmorefog.

17
There is a final focus in this opening gambit of the book which lays out itsmain
concerns. This istheissueofmemory.Qohelethisconcernedtodescribeaworld
in which nothing changes, nothing is new. This, in a way,isaverymodernview
of the world and the universe. The universe, it can be said at a fundamental
level, is merely the history of differing forms of energy. (This is a level far
beyond most humans who see the world as being a story of human beings.
Arrogant, stupid and wrong.) All that is is energy or there because of how this
energy has been used or interacted with other forms of it. So nothing is new.
The universeisjustenergydoingitsthinguntilitgetssocoldthatallmeaningful
activityceases.

Qoheleth sees this as aproblem.Anditsaproblemofmeaningasmostthingsin

this book are. This is why clever people with their science and technology or
their philosophies based on knowing things are somewhat impotent here. For
meaning is not a subject which requires a PhD or science degrees.Thequestion
of meaning is a human question that addresses each one of us regardless of
earthly status or egotistical qualifications. I myself regard the question of
meaning as the fundamental human question of life. Put simply, we are thrown
into the world and from that point on each one of us has to wrestle with
questions of what things mean and what everything means. These questions,
andourabilityorinabilitytofindsatisfyinganswers,willshapeourlives.

In this situation it is somewhat grievous for Qoheleth that nothing is

remembered. Things are forgotten. Even today with our vastly increased
archiving capabilities all the fine details fallthroughtheholesinthesievethatis
our ability to collect and preserve things. We may be able to save some things
and a few facts. But we no longer know what things felt like. Memory is more
than being able to reconstruct an event or tell a story just as understanding
things is more than being able to measure or recreate them which is what
science basically does. Its to know what it was like to be there, how things felt.
And that will not be remembered. Aspeoplepassawaysotheirabilitytoexplain
and express dies with them. We are just left with relics, a very incomplete and
insufficient record of past times. We fall inevitably into times void. This is the
way it is, Qoheleth plainly states. All things must pass. Time is a treadmill and
we must take our allotted steps along it before being shot off the back to be
forgotten.Isthisafrustratingthingorsomethingtobematurelyaccepted?

Tuesday

Yourenotmuchgoodtomealive,areyou,Turkish?

Wednesday

Kate has had a marathon answering session on Tumblr. She gets some stupid
questions but they all help in revealing her character. She has a nice line in
sarcasm for fending off penisbrained morons. She also writes that she is going
back to being a camgirlagainsothatsnewopportunitiestowatchandobserve.
Who knows what clues she will leave in shot? Being at home she will feel safe
and comfortable and that can lead to dropping your guard. For instance, today

18
she was asked where she lived. Now, ofcourse,shecouldhavebeenlyingwhen
she said south but not that south but she doesnt strike me as a terribly
convincing liar. She has that moral thing going on where she wants to see
herself as basically a good person and so, all other considerations aside, she
playsitstraight.Andonceyouknowthatyoucanstarttoextrapolate.

An example is a spat she just had with some anonymous guy who called her
babe. Kate went off on him a little then explained that she hates being called
babe and bb and hun which, in her line of work, she gets all the time.
Indeed, many of the questions she answers are laced with such cheap and fake
terms of intimacy andendearment.Kateseemsdeterminedtobrushtheseoffas
annoying, immediately shattering the misplaced notions of the guys messaging
her. Some girls in her position would just take what comes, soak it all up and
play along. They give every impression of ignoring it by just accepting anything
and everything you say. They overcompensate the other way in their
acceptance of everything, nomatterhowoutlandish.ButKateisntlikethat.She
doesntlikeitandshesaysso.Thissaysalotabouther.

On the personal front we had a small exchange over her behind. She says she
wants to grow it. I asked her whatshemeansbythatanditseemsshemeans
tone and firm it up. She says I always ask strange questions which means she
now recognizes who I am and recognizes Im not just one of thosewhowantsa
free look and a wank. Kate is quite a particular woman. She clearly has
standards andboundariesasisshowninherchosenlineofwork.Shesnotado
anything for attentionkindofgirl.ShesathisiswhatImpreparedtodokind
of girl.Thisandnofurther,thatis.Thatsalsobornoutinathrowawaycomment
she made yesterday about souldestroying jobs which she said you should
leave ifyoucan.Thisseemstobereferencetoapastemploymentofherswhich
she clearly got out ofbeforeshedecidedherbodywasherfortune.Sheseemsa
person who would very much rather not be beholden to anyone else and shes
preparedtotakesomepaintoachievethat.

She was just asked how much money it would take to fuck her. One million
pounds was her throwaway answer. It means shes not for sale, of course.The
problem for Kate is that she is. She thinks its only on her terms. But well see
about that. When money is on the table that makes everything negotiable. I
wonderwhatpricesheputsonextricatingherselffromfeelinggrateful?

Wednesday

Sordid:AnOutline

Main male character is a guy down on his luck and unimpressed with life (a
fictionalised version of me). He spendshistimeonlinefillinghislifewithfictional
charactersandgettinginvolvedwithothersinawaythathedoesnotandcannot
away from the Internet. Basically this revolves around building sexual fantasies
by pretending to be women which men then want to get with. He plays them
along for the thrill of carrying the story and making them believe it. He gets
good at it. But its also ascenariowithinherentboundariesthatcanonlyevergo
so far. So hes caught in the trap of only ever being able to do so much with it

19
andtryingtokeeptheplatesspinningaslongashecan.Basicallythisisthevoid
ofhislifethathefillswiththefakeinterestoftheonlineworld.

This character has a back story of loss, bad circumstances and missed chances.
The character isagoodguywhodoesbadthings.Hestillhasfeelingsforhislast
girlfriend, the onewhomadehimvownevertobewithawomanagainwhenshe
changedhermindandrejectedhim.Hefollowsheronlinebutberateshimselffor
it. He wishes he was able to forge his own path but has long since realised he
doesnt much care for himself or for his life and helooksforotherstocomeinto
it and give it spice and purpose.Heisareactivepersonnotaninstigativeonein
most things. He is in a lot of respects countercultural and and individualist. He
thinks he has seen through the shallow conventionalism of the world. He is
independent but in the sense that he has always had a strong sense of whathe
wantstodoandwhathedoesnt.Heisstubbornaboutthis.

This character is called Adam. Adam is pretending to be a teacher called Jenny

one day when he meets Nathan, a 23 year old guy in a hotel room. Nathan is
quite open and sends dick pics. Adam finds this quite arousing and is already
building a fantasy about it inside his head. Hes not gay, you understand, its
fantasy. Adam plays the fantasy well and chats to Nathan a number of further
times. They develop a friendly relationship and Adam sends a few teasing pics
himself but due to the nature of the fantasy (teacher) he never sends anything
that could be identified (nofaceorjewellry).Thepicsareofhisexgirlfriendand
he imagines the guys want her when he sends them. One day Nathan reveals
that he has just started a relationship with a new girl and they chat about it.
Nathan sends a pic of the girl and its his exgirlfriend, the same girl whose pics
Adamhasbeenusinginhisfantasy!

This ignites Adam and he becomes drawn into following his ex through Nathan.
He tries to play interested yet without seeming interested. Hes lucky because
Nathan seems to trust him and is happy tosharethings,treatingAdam(whohe
thinks is Jenny) as a kind of confidant. Adam speaks of his interest in
threesomes and moots the fantasy of Jenny and Nathanandhisgirlfriend(Ella).
Nathan plays along and seems aroused by the idea. Meanwhile all thishasbeen
too much for Adam. He attempts to contact Ella directly and pretends to be a
secret admirer. Of course he knows that she is a quite conventional and loyal
person and so is not into multiple lovers or other interests when she considers
she has a boyfriend. But he takes a chance. To his surprise she bites and
Adam is drawn into an altogethermoreintenseversionofthegamehehasbeen
playing for years now but one in which the rules, and the stakes, have been
exponentiallyraised

Adam eventually reveals himself to Ella and she is predictably appalled. She
threatens to have him arrested and excoriates him. Then she rejects himagain.
Adam is devastated and this turns to anger. The usually introverted, overly fair
and in many respects submissive man snaps. Using one of his other characters,
a male, he makes contact with two other guys and they plot to capture Ella.
They go to her house to find her and Nathan together. They tortureNathanand
rape Ella. Adam then kills the 2 guys and the book ends with him assumedly
goingtokillhimself.

20
This is a novel about the fictional lives we lead, the desires we have, the
compromises we make, the whatever it takes pragmatism that trumps strict
morality, the manipulations that constitute life, the tragedy and passion of
existence. All characters should be shown to be duplicitous not just Adam. This
should also be true of Nathan (who is really a 41 year old marriedbusinessman
fucking Ella on the side) and even Ella herself who lies to Adam about herself
and her situation.Thestoryshouldbemorallyambiguousnotpushingreadersto
like or dislike any one character. The world should be shown to be about split
seconddecisionsandotherwisethoroughlycompromised.

Friday

It was in casually glancing at my Twitter profile yesterday that I saw that a

friendwasenjoyingthefactthatsomewhereitwasapparently"monkeyday".He
posted a number of pictures ofmonkeysandIjoinedinpostingthefirstmonkey
thing that came into my head which was the song "I Wanna Be Like You"
performed by the character King Louie and his monkey cohorts from Disney's
animated film The Jungle Book. Those of a certain age will be familiar with this
film I'm sure. Things were all very fun and pleasant until he then tweeted later
about humans making monkeys perform for their entertainment and why
couldn't we just enjoy them as monkeys? I sent a message back and then he
sent a picture of a monkey restrained and strapped to a harness of some sort,
clearly a monkey being used in some kind of manmade experiment. He said
something along the lines of "And this is what we do when wedon'tmakethem
performforus".

I must admit that I am writing this about 7 hours after I first looked at the
picture he sent, and having done a number of completely different things in
between, but the image, and my immediate thoughts about it, are still whizzing
around my mind. This is why I am writing this before Igotosleepandnotlater
when I wake up. This is because my immediate feelings were disgust at the
selfregarding arrogance of my own species. The tweet I had sent back to him
before he sent the picture of the experiment monkey back referenced what I
called "human exceptionalism" and that is whats onmymindrightnow.Iadmit
that I had never really thought about animal experimentation before now and
certainly never writtenaboutit.I'mnotevenreallygoingtodothisnowbecause
my thoughts, inmymind,areactuallyaboutjustonespecies:humanbeings.Its
about our thinking, our responsibility and a little bit about freedom and power.
Sowhetheryouarefororagainstanimalexperimentsdoesntreallymatter.

The traditional rationale behind animal experiments, as I understand itandasit

has been relayed to me throughout my life, is that the scientists who do these
things need living subjects as close to us ourselves to make these experiments
useful to them. But, of course, they need to do this without actually using
human beings because, of course, using human beings as lab rats would be
unconscionable. We do not believe that human beings are suitable subjects for
experimentation. So, immediately, what we see here is an example of what is
sometimes referred to as human exceptionalism. Human exceptionalism is the
belief that human beings are a different category of beings to every other kind
on Earth. Some may think this is developmentally so and others may think this

21
is in kind, i.e. we are a completely new and, so far, unique kind of being on
Earth. It would follow that these people find us special due to our higher
functioning brains, developed communications skills, our level of consciousness
andourabilitiestothinkandfeel,etc.

Put in a simpler way it might be argued that we don't usehumanbeingsastest

subjects because we can imaginewhatitmightfeelliketobetestedonsincewe
all share almost everything in common with the possible test subjects. There is
also the lurking spectre that if wecantestonsomepeoplethenwhynotothers?
Why not you or I? Why not criminals or people with reduced mental capacities?
How about the dying or the terminally ill? There are in fact some experiments
and tests which are carried out on willing human volunteers, for example by
drug companies. But these are not those which involve being strappedtothings
or being cut into pieces or what, if it were a human, we would call being
tortured. We do not torture humans as an experiment (notopenlyanyway!)but
apparently it is ok to torture monkeys and other kinds of animal life. This is a
choicewehavemadeandnotalwayswiththedefenceofmedicalsciencetoback
us up since cosmetics were and maybe still are tested by being sprayed and
used on animals. My point here is not so muchthecrueltyinvolved,althoughas
a subject that would be enough, butthehumanexceptionalistthinkinghere.We
couldn'tdothistobeingslikeusbutwecouldtobeingsn
otlikeus.

But I see a problem with the logic and a couple of warnings from history. Back
when people held slaves, for example in the American South, one of the
rationales was that Black people were not human as white people were.Mostof
us maybeawareofthestruggleforBlackcivilrightsthatstillgoesontodayasa
legacy of that thinking. And then there is the Nazis. They also had an order of
beings and Jews were lesser beings than Aryans in their creed. On the basis of
these judgments such people were able to enslave, torture, rape and kill many
millions of people between them. We see a parallel here with the animal
experimentation and the pattern is clear: designate a being a lesser being to
yourself and then you will find it easy to treat them worse than you would wish
thoseyouconsiderlikeyoutobetreated.

This is in some places still prevalentinregardtosomeinourownspecies,much

more so and with less complaint in regard to animals like monkeys. As I write,
for example, I am reminded of the situation in IndonesiaandMalaysiawhereoil
palms are being grown in vast numbers as a cash crop and forests are being
burned down to make way for more oil palm trees. This is a crop being grown
because of human requirements but I have seen pictures of the Orang Utans
burned alive as the workers rush to clear the forests so that the palms can be
planted. This, as I understand it, isnotbeingdoneinanythinglikeasustainable
way. It is just a slash and burn operation to get as much palm oil as quickly as
possible. The message seems to be that if humans need something then it
doesn't matter what other life has tosuffer.Thedeathsofapes,higherprimates
much like us, doesn't seem to be any bar to the comfort humans might derive
frompalmoil.Orthemoney.

So let's consider this from another angle. Imagine some alien race comes over
the horizon one day and lands on Earth. They snatch a few thousand of the
humans having observed us from afar. They notice that we are quite happy to

22
experiment on our fellow Earth dwellers and seem ok with the idea. We regard
Earth asours,theyobserve,andactlikerulersbecausewehavethepowertodo
so. But they want to know a lot more about us and maybe find out what ofthis
planet is dangerous and what not. Ormaybetheywanttotakesomeofusaway
with them so they can go to some farawayplaceanduseusashumancanaries
in a cage. If something is dangeroustheywon'tneedtoworrybecausethedead
or tortured human will warn them before any of their species gets hurt. Would
we humans be ok with this? Would we, perhaps, recognize some law such as
"might is right" and meekly accept our fate as the new guinea pigs of the
expanded universe in which we are no longer the top species? You canbetyour
life we wouldn't. Not a single one of us would. Wewouldfightwitheverybreath
tobreakfreeofwhatwewouldrightlyregardasatortuoustyranny.

So, my question is simple: how is what we do to monkeys and other fellow

animals any different to that at all? Wouldn'ttheanimalsfightbacktothedeath
iftheycouldtoo?

If I may be permitted toanswermyownquestionIwouldsaythattheansweris

clear and simple: it isn't any different. We torture and experiment and test on
animals simply becausewecan.Ourmightmakesitright.Thereisnoargument,
moral or ethical, which would justify it save the belief that we are superior to
them andsomaketheright.WeareusingtheNaziandslaveowners'reasoning.
By the fact that we use our undoubted higher brain functions to exploit our
animal neighbors it seems to me that this superiority maynotbeasclearcutas
we first thought. I am not a human exceptionalist and I am not one for exactly
the reasons I have just given. We are ourselves animals. Maybeweare"better"
animals, ones with richer and more developed skill sets that give us superiority
in our environment but we are still animals. We are together on this planet all
living things. We are, we know, not the only animals that feel. And this is not
some hippy or spiritual nonsense here. I think this way because I genuinely
cannot seeanargumenttothecounter.Thatandmyinstinctisthattheinnocent
should not be exploited. And that seems to me to be true regardless ofspecies.
That was my immediate thought when I saw the picture my contact sent me of
the monkey strapped tosomemetalapparatus.Itwasaninnocent.Itmakesme
wonder, when we do these kinds of things, what kind of creature we humans
actuallyare.Andtheanswersarenotatallgood.

Saturday

MaruschkahasunlockedherTwitterbutshehasntpostedmuchsinceshelocked
it. Most of her tweets are dull, hipster bullshit that amuses late20sorearly30s
educated Germans who like tothinkthattheyaregood,caring,liberal,educated
human beings. Thats really the only sortofpersonwhousesTwitterinGerman.
Generally speaking. Its all based on in jokes and an assumed common
viewpoint. It makes me sick really. Its why we could never have been. Im far
too authentic a person to stand for any of that fake,pretentiouscrap.Ihaveno
interest in actingoutarolebecauseconventionorthesocialgroupingdictatesit.
I have no desire to be seen to be holding the right views on things. You hold
the views you hold, hopefully in a way you can explain andrhetoricallysupport.
You look the world in the face and say what you see. Maruschkahashadavery

23
comfortable, safe upbringing. She comes right from the heart of the wealthy,
willneverhavetoworryaboutathing middle classes. When we were together
I tried to see her as an individual who could do what she wanted, led astray
about her by her own poetic expressions of freedom and Fernweh as the
Germans call it. But its hard to see someone asanindividualwithagencywhen,
in reality, they are merely a cipher for a whole shooting match of cliches and
conventions. Maruschka lies to herself about who she is and really, contrary to
her romantic gotitfromathousandpoemsandstories selfimage, wantstobe
asuccessful,modern,idealcitizen.Wellfuckthat.

Sunday

Dyoulikedags?

Monday

What is it with some women, the radical feminist type? I wake up this morning
as a write and I see an associated topic pop up in an article in The Guardian
newspaper and so its pretty much set that I should write aboutit.BeforeIstart
I write some comments under the story I have seen on the Guardian website...
and 10 minutes later their Nazi moderators have wiped out a couple of the four
comments I've quite legitimately made.(Intheendtheyerased3ofthe4.)One
had said that the writer of the article, feminist owner of the "Everyday Sexism"
website, Laura Bates, doesn't live in the real world but in the "hellish feminist
one" in her head. Deleted. Not sure which rule of the Guardian community that
breaks but if past form is anything to go by its none of them. Its been
ideologically expunged.Fortunately,hereinmyprivatethoughtsthereisapolicy
of free speech and so even views I don't like can be left in the nonexistent
commentssection.

My subject today is the idea of consent. This is, by the way, a subject that the
aforementioned Guardian loves to write about... but only ever from onepointof
view. Its almost as if they haveanorthodoxyaboutitthatnospeakerisallowed
to breach. Well, views are like assholes: everybody's got one and so here you
won't get their orthodoxy. Instead youwill,perhaps,getadiscussionthat'salot
more nuanced and realistic than the sterile, idealistic and completely unrealistic
one that they peddle in their dogmatically arranged newspaper that's written
from the point of view of educated middle class gals whohavenothingbetterto
do than fixate on the fact that they would organize the world differently. (Who
wouldn't?)

So what is "consent"? Consent is when you indicate to someone that something

they are doing is OK and they can carry on. How is this done? In triplicate and
signed in blood? With a big resounding "YES!" every 5seconds?Byholdingupa
sign with "YES!" in big letters? None of these ways seem particularly... realistic
and its really realism and genuine situations that I want to talk about. My point
readingmuchofthediscussionaboutthissubject,tingedwith(ifnotoverrunby)
feminist influence as it is, is that the scenarios these other people paint are not
realistic at all. Certainly not to my own experience of life. They seem both

24
idealistic and fantastical andunfairlyextricatedfromthecomplexitiesofreallife.
In the real world of my experience (and, I must assume, not just mine) things
are much more hesitant and lacking in deliberation (read: innocent) than some
would admit.Forsomepeopleeverysexualencounterisaboutapredator(male)
and a prey (female) in which the former is out to cynically drag from the latter
whatever it is he wants. I refute thissuggestionwhilstacknowledgingthatthere
will always be shitty people in the world. We should not judge the situation by
theirmeasure.

I admit I'm writing this now because I'm sick of reading feminist articles on it
which portray anyone with a penis as a predator. They don't usually stop there.
They paint men as people who think consent is "If I want it then you should be
OK with it". This is an ideological position. I think that muchoffeministthought
is ideology as afewworstcasescenariosinformthewholefantasyoftheirideas,
particularly in matters of sexual conduct. I don't like the idea that by their
measure I am some kind of rapist who should feel guilty. I don't feel I need to
justify myself to them, people who have set themselves up in judgment with
their dodgy views and opinions based on nonsense thinking. But I do feel that I
should say why they are wrong and I am right. Basically, its because I'm much
morerealisticthantheyare.

So let's consider consent more in detail and, I apologize, but theonlywayIcan

do this is by referring to my ownexperience.Iamtoldthatifyouengageinany
kind of sexual touching and the other personisunabletoconsent(becausethey
are, for example, asleep or drunk) then this is a sexual assault. I have myself
sexuallytouchedpeoplewhoweredrunkandasleep.CanitbethatIamtheonly
one who has? No, because I've been touched thesamewaybywomen.Consent
was not sought or gained either way.Isthiswrong?Isitacrime?Shouldpeople
be being prosecuted? Some would give an unequivocal affirmative answer. In
some countries they tell me this is already illegal. But I think they would be
criminalizing millions of innocent acts of affection if they did.Allthoseexamples
I just referenced occurred in ongoing relationships. Of course, viewed
atomistically, they can be set up as actsofsexuallustthattooksomeone'sright
to consentfromthem.Butthat'snottheappropriatewaytoviewthem.(Noone,
ever, in my personal experience of sex has ever complained or felt violated by
this "nonconsensual" touching. But you can always say they just didn't tellme,
I agree. You'd need to explain why they gave no indication anything was wrong
though and why they continued their relationship with me if you took that
route.)

In proper relationships affection is goingbackandforthallthetimeand,Ithink,

in a relationship a certain kind of understanding is set up. People can indicate
their consent to things in many ways (one of which might be just letting it
happen) and the more you know a person the more ways that can be, ways
others can't even see. I would also say that with a relationship also comes a
certain level of, yes, I'm going to say it, assumption. This will be why in all
relationships I've had women come up to me and just kiss me. Its assumed its
ok. That's assumed. There was no "algorithm of consent" here and there never
will be. Now if I go up toawomaninabarandsqueezeherassthereisnolevel
of expectation there. Indeed, she has a right to expect that she might beasked
first if you are considering doing that at all. You are strangers. But in a

25
relationship this is not so and a certain bond has formed between you. The
context is different. I would expect that in the time you have known each other
you have started to form boundaries and to know what is expected or allowed
and what is not. Context is what counts. And so is trust. If you squeezetheass
of a woman you do not know she hasnoideaifitsasimpleassault,ajokegone
horribly wrong or the prelude to a full on sex attack. She has a right to be
disturbed. In a relationship that scenario is different. It is about the bounds of
acceptabilityinbothcases.Butincompletelydifferentcontexts.

There is another point to raise here and that is to ask who is to decide if
something wrong has happened? There are no shortage of people putting
themselves forwardshereand,asInotedearlier,thisevenincludesthecourtsin
some countries. Some seem to want a very moralistic and frankly unworkable
approach here, an algorithmic, black and white, yes or no approach. Different
forms and standards of consent are mentioned including socalled "informed
consent", "Yes means yes" or "No means no". There are subtle differences here
but, at base, its still the same situation: is what is being done acceptable to all
participants? My view is that only the people concerned can decide if something
has invaded their sense of self or their own personal dignity. The waters are
considerably muddied,inmyview,whenoutsideinfluencestrytotellpeoplethat
what Mr X did to them wassexualassaultorrape.Ihavehadsexwithapartner
who was so drunk after a party one night that I had to carry her up the drive,
into the house, undress her and put her in bed. Drunken fumblings occurred.
I've related this story before in public spaces online (under cover of anonymity)
and been calledarapist.ButamI?Thegirlconcerneddoesnotthinksoandwas
aware of it from the next morning when it transpired she couldn't remember it
happening. Does she feel violated? Not when she has spoken to me about it
which is all I can go on. Doesn't she get to decide if something unacceptable
happenedtoherornot?

Why would she think nothing was wrong and there was no big scandal to worry
about in which her consent had been riddenoverroughshod?Ithinkitsbecause
she recognizes she was in a trusting relationship with thepersonconcernedand
that nothing occurred which broke any boundaries. And so it becomes
noncontroversial. Now, as I said earlier, this will not always be the case and if
you don't know someone or know them only slightly then the context is
completely changed. But it can also be constantly changing. If that woman at
the bar chats with me, shares drinks, dances and kisses me the context is
changed many would say. Maybe if I touch her ass now she feels differently
about it. Butweneedtorecognize,Ithink,thatcontextisamassivelyimportant
factor, one decided by the participants in the main. Of course, it will always be
the case thatifsomeonesaysstoporthatsomethingwasnotcoolthenattitudes
and actions shouldchangeaccordingly.Butmypointisthatintherealworldthis
is sometimes a retrospective thing. And that's OK because in the real world
doing something a bit off doesnotalwaysleadtoglobalmeltdown...andneither
should it. In the minds ofsomeeverytimeanonconsensualsexualactoccursit
is the end of the world worthy of raising a mob to publicly execute the
perpetrator. Furthermore,itsasif,forsome,whathasgonebeforedoesn'tcount
and every sex act must be examined in splendid isolation against some
noncontextualized table of right and wrong acts. But of course they do that

26
because that helps their ideological point of view. Its also a falsification of
humanlifethough.

A lot of consent issues and consent talk has arisen because of college incidents
in the USA. I have no personal experience of this scenario but have read of
many accounts online in my endless trawling. There have beenfamouscasesas
well, including cases in which alleged sexual assaults and rapes have occurred
which subsequently turned out to be of questionable veracity or
straightforwardly made up. I don't want to suggest here that this is anyone's
normal practice just like I don't want to suggest that menarehabitualrapists.I
think neither case is true and that the world containsbothrapistsandliars.Ido
think, though, that one factor about consent is that it is normally
contemporaneous. But this is not an easy thing for either side in the consent
debates to accept. In my previously mentioned case consent was granted after
the fact when my exgirlfriend realized what had happened that drunken night.
But consent, in idealcircumstances,wouldalwaysbecontemporaneous,Iagree.
And thatwouldbemyidealtoo.Theproblemcomeswhenyoudosomethingyou
later regret and, yes, I admit that thatcanhappen.Imyselfhavedonethis.But
you can't take away consent after the fact for something that at the time you
said nothing about. Responsibility lies at all times with all parties to stop things
they don't consent to or don't feel is being consented to. Speak now or forever
hold your peace and that includes those who don't feelthatwhattheyaredoing
is being welcomed. But some almost seem to be suggesting that if you later
change your mind about something that you can just retrospectively withdraw
consent and this cannot be right. This is unjust. You have to acceptyoumade
amistakeandmoveonfromitinthatcase.

At the end of the day, my point here is to say that relationships are never a
matter of black and white, of unbreakable rules or of algorithms of right and
wrong because people aren't and morality isn't. People negotiate, inrealtime,
what is acceptable and not acceptable for them. And I think "negotiate" is the
right word to use. What people want may change sometimes even in two
closely related moments. You can be against a certain thing your whole life and
then suddenly in a moment allow it to happen. I know of personal examples.
There is for everything a first time. This isn't to be an apologist for anything. It
is, I hope, to be in tune with real human life. And, besides, I'm not arguing for
anything here. I'm saying ifyouwanttodiscussconsentthenatleaststartoffin
a world that can be recognized as realistic. People starting from ideological
principles will always falsify the facts and moralize the results in their favour by
means of extracting thingsfromtheirreallifesituations.Ialsoacknowledgethat
in the real world bad things happen and people go too far. Of course they do.
This is how people sometimes learn that what they tried is wrong. Sometimes
this will be serious enough to be criminal althoughwewoulddistinguish,Ihope,
between an unsolicited kiss and a prolonged rape. Any approach to this hoping
to be seenasrealisticmustadmitthat.Butnoteverynonconsensualadvanceis
a crime and nor should it be treatedasone.Sexualityisanuancedandintimate
business. Humanity must always leave room for mistakes otherwise it falsifies
whathumanbeingsactuallyareattheircore:flawedcreatures.

I think we need to realize that nothing is a given here. Sometimes people only
know what's allowed by innocently, hesitatingly, trying it. And people, too, only

27
know if they find something acceptable when its been done to them because its
only then that they know how, in that moment, they feel about it. So "consent"
is not some kind of quasijudicial process that needs to be signed off
affirmatively and always in advance according to some contextless algorithm of
right and wrong. Human interaction isn't like that. Its much more ambiguous
and nebulous than that. It is possible to proceed this wayinallgoodconscience
and some innocence. At least I hope it is. Because the alternative is a cynical
world of suspicion that destroys the human soul and human relations. Some
seemingly want that because their view of the male gender couldn't be any
lower. I think we need to resist such thinking because its bothmorehonestand
more realistic whilst also not ignoring that bad things happen and we should
always protect innocent people from bad things. The thing is, you don't do that
by demonizing a whole gender. Perhaps a little understanding here might go a
longway.

Tuesday

Last night I experienced the dread and horror of my Internet not working. Ifelt
bereft, cut off from everything and everyone I know. It made me realize that
everything Ifocusoninlife,daytoday,isthroughthisscreen.Thatismyworld.
All this stuff outside, thats there but its nothing to do with me. Its 5% of my
existenceandonlineislike95%.ThankgoditworkedagainwhenIwokeup!

Wednesday

I got my bike out and went to cycle around Tempelhofer Feld. A bit of the old
exercise is good to clear the cobwebs away. Plus the change of scenery and
focus promotes thinking which isneverabadthing.Andthefieldisagoodplace
to watch people, think about them and engage in fantasies too. I doacoupleof
slow circuits and then pick up the pace, ever competitive and wanting to record
my time like some10yearoldwhohasntyetrealizednoneofthisstuffmatters.
As I come down the back straight my lungs are burning. One lap is six
kilometers. I sprint until my legs are the definition of agony and then stop
pedaling. I roll around the top bend, free wheeling.Icompleteanothercircuitat
a slow pace and when I get back to the top by the Oderstrae entrance Ifinda
spotonthegrasstowatchpeople.

After a while Im bored. Its not a very warm day and there arent manywomen
around. I decide to go to the supermarket on the corner of Herrfurthplatz
because I need to get some bits. Milk, bread rolls, cottage cheese and a bar of
Milka fruit and nut chocolate I allow myself sees me heading towards a
reasonable queue for what is really a corner shop and Maruschka is in front of
me. She turns around and a look of recognition turns into a watery smile.
Hello, she says. Hello Maruschka, I offer in return. How are you? She tells
me that she is not too bad in a matteroffact voice that is very
IsupposeIhavetotalktoyoubecausewereinthequeuetogether. I tell her
Im glad shes ok and then notice some paint on her right forearm. Whats
that? I ask, knowing very well that its paint. Imdoingupmyapartment,she
offersbywayofexplanation.

28
It doesnt take me long to process my four items once Maruschka hasgoneand
said goodbye. I look up through the window as she leaves the store and so I
figure shell be going home along Weisestrae assheturnsrightoutthedoor.It
only takes me a couple of minutes to surreptitiously catchuptoher.Sodoyou
need any help? I ask her. You know I only live next door. No, its ok, she
ventures, noncommittally. But then she follows it up with But that old shoe
cupboard I keep inthehallstillhasitsdoorshangingoffandIdreallyliketoget
everything straight by the time this decorating is done. Hasnt Mr Lover Lover
done it for you, I retort with a mix of sarcasm and bitterness I immediately
regret. He has other things on his mind when he comes round, Maruschka
says, rather too deliberately. Well if you want metobringmytoolsroundIcan
fix it for you again, I say. It wont be the first time Ive fixed it for you, I
continue, referring back to a time before she was even my girlfriend when Id
fixed it on my first visit to her place many moons ago. OK, she said, simply.
But no funny business. Dont go getting ideas. We arrive at my front door,
which is one before hers and I say Ill be around onFridayeveningifthatsOK.
ShesaysitisandIsaygoodbye.

Thursday

We live in tense times and some media outlets are happy to play on this fact.
The news is full of danger and fear because danger andfeargetsviewers,clicks
and traffic just like tits do. We also live at a time in which it has never been
easier to disseminate our thoughts and beliefs. Many of us read something or
hear something and then immediately tweet a response or make a Facebook
comment about it. But we also live in an age in which various agencies are
making a note of all this becausetheyareroutinelysavingitandstoringitaway
somewhere. A record of your thoughts at various times and places likely exists
somewhere, especially if, like me, you're British. This amounts to a database of
thought and, if you consider those monitoring it,theymightbeconsideredtobe
thought police. It all gets very 1984 in ahurry.Forwhoknowswhatwillhappen
in the future and how some future person who is charged with watching this
database might act when they read your comment from some years ago in
relation to a new event in the future? No oneknows.Wearesimplytoldtotrust
thoseinpower,quitenaively.

It may be that you are a person who likes to voice their opinions. Perhaps you
have a strong views on things. Perhaps you don't agree with the way the world
is and you want it to change and you say so. Maybe you campaign for things.
Do we as people value these things? Is free speech, and free thought which
must go with it, something we value? I would tend to suggest thatifpeopleare
now going to the lengths of recording the great mass of Internet
communications then these are dangerous times. Of course, some will utter the
great lie "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear." But, of
course, this is a slippery statement at best for no one knows what needs to be
hidden or what is not allowed until some authority, retrospectively, decidesthat
you have saidsomethingbeyondthepailandyoufindyourselfarrested,wearing
an orange boiler suit and listening to Justin Bieber tracks onrepeatfor13years
in a varietyofstresspositionsatanunknownblackopslocation.Sothequestion
ariseswhatislegitimatethoughtandwhatisextremism?

29
I'm pretty sure that no one knows where that line is and equally sure that
different people will have different opinions on where they think itis.Butisthat
enough? Why should anyone's thought or speech be constrained by someone
else or some Authority, selfappointed or not? Imagine if our minds could be
read. Youcanbetthatsomeinauthoritywouldbewantingtherighttoreadeach
of our minds at all times if they could. Our science fiction writers have already
written stories in which people try to stop crime before it happens. But crime is
one thing, unacceptable or "extremist" thoughts areanother.Forwhilstwehave
public statutes that determine what is and is not a criminal activitythereareno
such things for thoughts. And besides, its not even as if its accurate to say we
are in charge of our thoughts so policing them would hardly be just.Peoplefind
it hard enough to police their own thoughts they are thought to be responsible
for!

Friday0808Uhr

Its a funny thing all these thoughts Im having. I'd rather write something that
comes from the heartratherthanwriteanyoldshitjusttowritesomething.But,
yousee,nowI'vegivenmysecretaway.Ionlywritefromtheheartaboutthings
that naturally flow from me. I don't write to order because I can't really do it.
But if I truly feel a subject, well,thenstuffjustflowsoutallbyitselfandIreally
don't need to do much but check the spelling at the end. (And I hate finding a
mistake later. It makes me think there mustbesomethingwrongwithmethatI
didntspotit.)

Today I will write about something a bit weird. My title is Stop Making Sense.
"Making sense" is a human practice whereby some things, things we are
interested in, are put into relations with other things until such point as we are
satisfied. What determines whether we might besatisfiedabouttherelationswe
have put things into will be our culture, history, beliefs, social setting, values,
etc. We might sometimes call this practice "getting things right" because, of
course, for everybody "making sense" and "getting things right" are thought to
be connected even when we do those things to produce different results.Only
a few scientistic philosophers and the uninquisitively naive think that "making
sense" is about REALLY getting things right. Or that such a thing as "really
gettingthingsright"evenexists.

My title comes from a concert film by the band Talking Heads. Its a brilliant
concert film and, like all creative things, you should experience it for yourself
because being creative is one of the best and most uplifting things humans do.
Its also regarded as one of the best concert films of all time. And its on You
Tube. It doesn't matter if you don't like the songs. Watch it anyway. You might
start tolikethesongs.Becausethethingaboutlikingthingsisnoneofitisfixed.
You might hatesomethingfor25yearsandthen,nexttimeyouwatchorhearit,
a switch might click somewhere deepinsideyourbrain.Nowwhatyoudidn'tlike
for 25 years you now have asmallthingfor.Bynextweekyou'vechanged.Now
you do like it. What didn't make sense before now does. Ididsomethingsimilar
with pizza. I hated pizza for years. Decades even. Then, one day,someonesaid
to me "Do you want a pizza?" and I said "Yes, cheese and tomato please" and

30
I've found pizza uncontroversial ever since. Well, if its plain. Or the Hawaii one.
Noneofthatreallymakesanysense.Butitsatruestory.

Have you ever noticed that how things change,hownothingstaysthesame?I

have and I find it both wonderful and fascinating at the same time. It means
that even if you set out in life determined to be the same, believing the same
things and having the same values (and some people do!), you are going to
slowly but surely start slipping out of time, becoming less and less relevantand
making less and less sense. "Why?" you ask. Because even if you stand still
everything else around you is moving, gradually shifting and changing. And if
everything else is moving well then you are moving too relative to everything
else. This doesn't mean you can't stand still. It means that evenwhilststanding
still you are moving. If you reply that it doesn'tfeellikeyouaremovingIwould
reply that you are traveling through space at 67,000 miles an hour. And it
doesn'tfeellikeyouaredoingthateither.

Stop Making Sense, the concert film, came into my head because when I just
woke up the song "Psycho Killer" popped into my head and that is the song
which opens the film. I'm not a particular fan of Talking Heads.Theyare,tome
at least, just some 80s band and themembersofthebandseemalittlesmarter
than the average musical bears. I could imagine the band being described as
"Art Rock" where the word "art" denominates some manner of creativity and
insight on their part which separates them out from many other musical acts
who either just make stuff up or perform along withmusic.Thereisadifference
and I could go into snobbish detail about it if you really want me to, weaving a
web of prejudice and artifice that tells you why I think these people are artists
and theseotherpeoplearehacks.Andwhythesepeoplewholistentothisbunch
of people are intelligent people and this othergroupofpeoplearelazy,feckless,
consumers who are listening to the equivalent of McDonalds, polluting their
minds through their ears every time they listen. But you probably don't wantto
readthat.Notthatyoureevergoingtoreadthat.Itsprivate.

But let's imagine that I did that anyway. I would, on my terms, be "making
sense" because everything I told you would be something I intimately believed
and could give detailed reasons for. This is what "making sense"is.ButtoyouI
would have gone off on to a boring rant or tedious monologue in which I
displayed all my prejudices in all their technicolor viscerality. And, what's more,
to you this might not make any "sense" atall.Itmightbeabsolutebullshitfrom
your point of view, nothing but the views of an elitist or a pretentious person,
someone with a big mouth who needs to shut up and realize that others don't
want to hear his opinions at all. Making sense is, after all, about getting things
"reallyright"andnotm ereopinions.

And now we get to the jump at fucking long last. I've rambled on for six
paragraphs (which I think is enough) but now I have to, as if by magic, get to
the point, as it were, and make this preamble lead up to something worth
writing this many words over. I mean, I'm sure I haven'twrittenthismuchonly
to lead myself nowhere. So I imagine the expectation is that I'll say something
worthwhile. And, you see, that's my problem because I didn't really have much
to say today when I started writing because no subjectcametome.Ijustwoke

31
up and heard "Psycho Killer" in my head and here we are almost seven
paragraphslater.Doesanyofthismakeanyfuckingsense?Ijustdon'tknow.

There's just one thing that bothers me before I give up and call it a day and
hopeforthebest.(ImgoingroundtoMaruschkaslater!)WhydidTalkingHeads
call their film "Stop Making Sense"? Why would you want to do that?Howcould
you stop doing that? It only makes sense to me if "making sense" is thought of
in a particular way, maybe along the lines of some academic definition of what
making sense is, if "making sense" is a particular kind of academic activity
analogous to "getting things right" in which you worryaboutwhatyouthinkyou
know. If that is so then I can see why they used the title. This is because
"getting things right" is not what anybody does. Its a category mistake. People
just put things into relationship with each other until they "make sense" for
them. "Making sense" is a kind of award we givetothingsthatwehaveputinto
a relationship we think fits. And we have the whole world around us to tell usif
we are going wrong. So IseeTalkingHeadsasadvocatingalifestrategyintheir
title something akin to "Stop worrying about whats real and think more about
life" or as saying "Making sense in the academic way is not all that life's about.
Stop doingthatandsimplyputthingsintorelationshipsthatwork,thattheworld
allowsyouto"whilstlisteningtotheirmusic.

I'dapproveifthat'swhattheydid.ButIcouldbewrong.Q
uestcequecest?

Friday1438Uhr

You may or may notbeawarethatthereisalotofpornographyontheInternet.

I read one statistic just now (which may or may not be true) that 80% of all
pictures on the Internet are ofnakedwomen.Thatsalotofpussy.Thefactthat
anyone might be inclined to believe this figure is an indicator of its pervasive
presence online in any case. Pornography is, to my mind, one of those things
thatisnottalkedaboutinpolitesociety.Forsomeitisamoralissueandyouwill
hearlotsoftalkaboutsextrafficking,peopleforcedintoit,etc.Idon'tknowhow
much, if any, of this is true and I'm sure some of it must be, particularly in
countries with less social protections. But I'm equally sure some of it isn't true
since those usually complaining inthiswayoftenhaveamoralagendaregarding
sex in any case. Sex workers in general (which is a broader and somewhat
different category to those who do porngraphy) are more vocal these days and
you can even talk to some on social media or other siteswhereyoucanholdan
account. These (theonesIvetalkedto)arenotwomenbeingforcedtolivealife
they don't want to by scuzzy pimpsinsomecaricaturedway.Itsalifetheyhave
chosen because they can get more money from it than from cleaning floors or
stacking shelves. Its a comment on our society that this is their best option but
its notsomuchacommentabouttheminmymind.Lifecanbeatoughbusiness
and you have to make tough choices. Showing your pussy to strangers is a
choicesomethinktheyhave.

In any case, (and coming back to porn specifically) it is for theviewertodecide

what they watch and if it breaches any ethics they may have. I imagine that if
you findtheethicsofhowitismadetobeaproblemthenyouwon'tbewatching
it in any case. However, even these types of people should admit that people

32
have sexual desires and others are happy to fulfill them. If they do so as freely
and noncoercively as possible then no onehasanycauseforcomplaint.And,of
course, pornography that is obviously exploitative(duetoitscontentorbecause
it was done withoutconsentasinrevengeporn)willoftenbeillegalandsothere
are built in penalties forgettinginvolvedinthisanyway.(Yeah,Iknowthemass
of unwashed viewers maintain such things by being an audience for it but what
are you going to do? You cant police everyone intheworld24/7.)But,anyway,
someone has to be using the legal kind of porn that was madewiththeconsent
of the participants if there is that much of it in general and so that's why I'm
writingaboutitnow.ThatandI'mnotamemberofpolitesocietyanyway.

Everyone knows what pornography is. Its pictures or videos of people having
sex. Often its pictures or video of people having sex very badly in ridiculously
fake scenarios and if you watch enough of it this may begin to annoy you.
Pornography suffers from a lot of things (lack of reality being just an obvious
one) and if you watch too much of it or it becomes a habit then it will change
you as a person. Spending a day watching pornography will leave you like an
empty husk of a person by the end of the day because as you get sucked (add
knowing laugh here) into its world its values will start to shape you. People will
become objects of sexual pleasure and seem moremechanicalandtheremerely
to perform functions. Your world narrows and all the colours bleed away.
Everything becomes grayscale.Pornisafantasyandyouneedtorememberthat
in every possible way. Taking it for any kind of reality is the worst mistake you
can make. Dont believe me? Get back to me after a day of watching it when
your hand is cramped and your genitals are raw. Ive been there. That is the
worstkindofemptiness.

For me, however, since I'm neither a prude nor a puritan, the most interesting
thing about these sites is the fact that you can join up and talk to other users.
And this opens up a whole new world becausenowyoucaninteractwithothers.
This isn't the kind of interaction where bored women sit in front of a camera
tryingtorelieveyouoftokensinreturnforwhichtheywillperformsexactsupon
themselves. I genuinely marvel at these women not for what they do but for
what they put up with. Most users of these services want somethingfornothing
but the girls are not doing it for nothing and so a cat and mouse game ensues
between the two parties. The girls need to get some money out of it whilst the
watchersjustsurfuntiltheyfindsomeonetheycanwatchwithoutpaying.Maybe
they try to persuade the girl but if she has any experience atallshe'snotgoing
for it and you watch her embarrassedly having to tell some guy for the
hundredth time its notforfree.Itmustbeacharacterbuildingjob.Thepatience
required alone to perform in that way must bestaggering.Onthefacesofsome
of the performers the boredom is writ large. Is there anything more pathetic
thanwatchingsomeoneperforma nytaskmerelyformoney?

But I digress. When joining a porn site you should, of course, not use your real
details. That would be noob mistake number one if you did. It would also open
youuptoblackmailsosecrecyandalittleclevernessisrequiredunlessyouwant
everyone knowing your business. Imagine being recognised by a neighbourora
friend! And so the game becomes that everyone is pretending to be someone
else. But,ofcourse,sincemostpornsiteusersaremen(especiallytheoneswho
saytheyarent)thenthefewwomenthataretherearegoingtobekeptbusy.In

33
truth they are swamped with attention. (I know this from the several fake
personas I have used over the years.) This is probably why so many men sign
up to pornsitesandpretendtobewomenfortheattention.Inevitablythemen
on the sites will want to meet the women and that's where thefunistobehad.
Some male users are savvy enough to realise that this is all a game and they
play it so. Others are either too unimaginative or too straightforward and they
spoiltheopportunityforfantasy(whichisawhatapornsitereallyisafantasy)
by insisting that the realworldinterveneduringyourstay.Notmuchfunistobe
had with these types unless you really are a person who wants to meet and
you fit their criteria. But that would require something in shortsupplyonaporn
site:honesty.

Why do I mention all this? Well because over the years I've found porn sites
very instructive forteachingmeaboutpeople,speakingassomeonewholikesto
observe. I've developed some very interesting relationships with peoplethrough
such places. And, sometimes, a bit of the real person sneaks through and you
get an insight. Of course, most people are there just to add a little sparkle to
their otherwise dull lives. Many people are seemingly on porn sites all day
possibly because its the only mildly exciting thing that ever happens to them. A
kind of camaraderie can develop between regular attenders and not everyoneis
actually a boorish prick out to satisfy his base urges. You start to recognise the
various types of people. The talker (very good, you can have long chats with
them), the unimaginative (they just want hardcore porn and then to leave),the
fake (pretending to be a woman or to have a bigger penis than they really do),
the inarticulate (could be fun but they are just uselesswithwords),thecammer
(just wants to see a woman naked on camera and isn't interested in anything
else)alltheseandmorecanbefound.

The most interesting scenario is when you find someone to talk toandthenyou
have the ear of a stranger for as long as you can both stay. Then these places
can become part confessional, part place to relaxandletoffsteam.Ifyoufinda
person of a high enough IQ (not always the case) you can actually have quite
thoughtprovoking discussions with someone who hasthehonestyofastranger,
the honesty which has no reason to lie to you and no relationship with you to
worry about unlike the people you know have. Let's not forget that people who
go to porn sites are actually real peopletoosomewhereoutthereintheworld.
Besides a tendency in some to reduce the performers to stereotype bimbos and
studs with not much in the brain department there can also be a tendency to
reduce porn siteuserstounthinkingmoronstoo.Butthetruthisthatallkindsof
people use porn sites because all kinds of people have sexual desires. The trick
is to find the right ones. Yes, you will have to clear your way through a lot of
crap first, but there are a few diamonds intherough.Recentlysomeoneusinga
site I frequent died and a thread was started in the forum which filled up with
heartfelt testimonials to what a nice guy the deceased had been, someone who
always had a cheery hello and had even sometimes offered helpful advice. And
that's not what you expect to find on a site dedicated to people making money
frommakingotherpeoplehaveorgasms.

So what have we learned? We've learned that there is a lot of porn and a lot of
people watchit.We'velearnedthatsomeofitmayhavedubiousprovenancebut
that each watcher has his or her own moral compass to guide them and the

34
ability to use it. We've learned that porn sites are used by people who are not
who they say they are. We've learned that with a little work you might find
people worth talking to because, at the end oftheday,itsalljustpeople.That's
maybe a little of teaching Grandma how to suckeggsandtheresnorealmoney
shot. But that's my point.Sexisanormalpartofhumanlife.Noneedtomakea
bigdealaboutit.

Friday1951Uhr

I stash a screwdriver in my pocket,acrossheadofmediumsizethatIknowwill

fit the screws of the shoe cupboard at Maruschkas place, as I go out the door.
Grandma is in the living room in silence and she says nothing, the door pushed
to. Not that I was looking for her to.IdomyownthingandImhappytolether
do hers in return. I close the door behind me and descend down four flights of
stairs slightly faster than normal. Im going to Maruschkas for the first time in
three years. Three years. Three years. Can you tell Im a little excited? Im so
excited that as I emerge into the courtyard at the bottom of the stairs I realize
Imhummingatune.P sychoKiller.F
afafa.Fafafafafa.

All is quiet in the courtyard. No one is emptying their bins, stowingorremoving

bikes from the bike racks or in the main corridor out into the street that I can
see across the way. So, instead of going out of the front door, I jump up onto
the six foot wall that divides my courtyard from Maruschkas. (Our buildings
form two halves of one giant square block.) No one there either. I hop up onto
the wall and drop down on her side. That has saved me ringing the bell. She
lives on the groundfloorofthehinterhofandsoInipinsidetheopendoortothe
rear building and give her door a gentle knock. She must have been in the
kitchen opposite the front door because she hears it, although it now seems, in
retrospect, as if it wasnt a very loud knock, and the sound of the key turning
thelockisheard.Weseeeachotheracrosstheportalandswapnervoushellos.

The smell of paint immediately fills my nostrils even though Maruschka has
sensibly opened all her windowstoallowaflowofairtorelievetheapartmentof
overpowering fumes. She is in old clothes, a baggy faded T shirt and some
unappealing baggy shorts. Shes wearing a bra, as Iwouldexpect.Maruschkais
not the kind of woman to go braless. Old trainers and no socks complete her
outfit. I assume she must be wearing panties. Well I suppose I can at least see
her legs. Maruschka is tall for a woman, almost six feet tall in any kind of
footwear and over it in heels. She comes across as bigboned. Inearlierlifeshe
was definitively fat and the evidence still hangs aroundhermidriffinacoupleof
folds of skin. But nothing excessive, you understand. You wouldnt call her fat
now. She is less chubby these days, sensuously Rubenesque,butstilloneofthe
first women you would notice entering a room. Shes curvy, but the rolling
curves of a real woman rather than the impossibly sculpted ones of a
photoshoppedmodel(andtheyallare,Imreliablyinformed).

She offers me a drink like thesocialized,wellmanneredhostessthatsheis,and

I accept a Sprite. I nod a thank you but we dont speak until Maruschka says
Well you know where it is. Im painting in the livingroom.Andthenshewalks
back down the hallandintosaidroomattheend.Iheartheclimbingofaladder

35
and think about the ass Ive just seen walking away from me. I am overcome
with a desire to sneak up behind her on the ladder, take down her shorts and
lick between her pert cheeks. Pert is a poetic description of them. I actually
remember beingabitdisappointedthefirsttimeIsawherbehind.ItwaswhenI
first met her and we fucked in her bed. Naked, she got up after an hour or two
to go and relieve herself. I still remember her slightly flat and undefined arse
walking awayfromme.Andthesenseofdisappointment.Iamjoltedbacktothe
presentmomentandrealizeIhaveanerection.

Is your boyfriend not here this week? I ask, not remotely interested in the
answer. He will be here tomorrow, drifts back down the hall. I take out my
screwdriver and fiddlewithit.Implayingfortimealready,tryingtodragoutmy
moments in the presence of M. I realize Im subconsciously asking myself how
long I might get away withstayingandIstartthinkingofotherthingsIcoulddo
as excuses to stay longer. Fixing the doors on the shoe cupboard is only a
twenty minute job. Its just screws that need reseating and making tight,
nothing timeconsuming or complicated. She probably doesnt know that but
even she will realize eventually that its not rocket science. My thoughts wander
and I imagine her big, soft white breasts under the baggy T shirt. I thinkofher
stripping off after Im gone and getting into the shower, the one where, three
years earlier, she had soaped up my cock until I reached climax. I imagine her
soaping herself all over and looking towards me standing by the door with a
totally flirtatious grin on her face. I remind myself to masturbatetothepictures
IhaveofherintheshowerwhenIgohome.

Have you started yet? drifts like a phantom down the hall. Yes, just taking a
look now, I reply, lying. This verbal warning gets me on my feet and I walk,
very slowly, into the hallway just afewfeetaway.Itsclearthat,internally,Iam
determinedtodragmyfeetasslowlyashumanlypossibleonthisjob.Anditwas
always that way with Maruschka. There were always two conversations taking
place with her. There wastheexternalone,theoneyoucouldobserve,andthen
there was my internal one which I didnt remotely control. So much of my
relationship with her was plagued by conversations I was having with myself,
questionsthatIwasaskingmyself.ThefirsttimewefuckeditwaslikeIwasand
wasnt there. My body was doing what was expectedwhilstmymindwassaying
What am I doinghere?Ifeltinadaze,likeIwasdoingsomethinginmysleep.
Then there were the times I was alone because she was out and I would ask
myself how much I was prepared to change myself to be with and have her. It
turned out that I wasnt prepared to change at all. But it also didnt matter
because it turned out she wasnt prepared to give me a chance to change
anyway.

Suddenly, Im a little angry. I feel the hurt again of what I see as Maruschkas
lies. She had told me in those first days of online contact that shewantedtobe
led astray. I took her quite literally but, fool that I am, I hadnt seen that, for
her, this was just a highly romantic, poetic and literary notion. She wanted Mr
Darcy to sweep heroffherfeet.Shewantedtofeelromanticallyengagedandbe
like some couple in a sentimental romance novel. We talked of meeting on
exquisite bridges across rivers and exploring a hundred different European
medieval towns together. We exchanged thoughts and ideas whilst entangled in
dreamy glances at each other, all soft focus and roses. We were a living love

36
poem and we were writing new stanzas in mutual appreciation every day.Butit
was all a lie. Maruschka was just dreaming out loud and I was dumb enough to
believe it. The truth is while I wanted to live a solitary life by my, our, rules, a
modern Bonnie and Clyde againsttherest,shejustwantedaMrConventionalto
complete her vision of a successful, middle class lifeinmodernsociety.Shewas
thesweetestdeceptionIhaveeverknown.

My anger spurs me to activity for a moment and I kneel down in front of the
shoe cupboard. The doors hang pathetically, wedged in place. The hinges are
small and weak. Any kind of use is likely to bend them or pull the tiny screws
from their moorings. I need to find some bigger screws but Maruschka is to
home improvement what FraukePetryistopeacefulracerelations:notremotely
acquainted with it. I go to the drawer in the kitchen where Maruschka used to
throw all the things that dont belong anywhere else and hope that a rummage
will reveal something I can make aworkablebodgewith.Inote,inpassing,that
my feelings forMaruschkameanthattheleastIcanacceptfrommyvisittonight
is the internal pleasure I will get from knowing I did a good job. Because I
always played her straight. I didnt over promise and under deliver. I was more
honest with her than I have ever been with anyone else. I put myself in her
hands and I made sure she knew Id play by her rules. And then she used that
against me saying she didnt want that! Ill never know why. Ill never know if
she woke uponedayandjustchangedhermind,whetheritwassomethingIdid
or what the precise circumstances were. I was so fucking tame whenshesaidit
wasover.AwaveofselfloathingenvelopesmeasIrummage.

I find two screws that are bigger than the ones IhaveandthatisthebestIcan
do. I realize I will have to work a fix as bestasIcanwiththemeagreresources
to hand. Im not going to leave and go home and see if I can find more and
better screws there. That will mean leaving this place and I so dont want to do
that. I feel home. Ill have to remove the tiny hinges and reattach them in
different places. That gives the best chance of a workable fix. I go back to the
shoe cupboard and put my plan into effect. Im mostly done when Maruschka
asks me to come and hold the ladder and make myself useful. Its a request
Im eager to carry out. I almost run the few metersdownthehallintotheliving
room which is bedecked with clear plastic sheeting over all the furniture,
including the creamcoloured sofa where we used to fuck and where, once, she
took selfies of us kissing.Ohgod,Imaproperfuckinglapdog,arentI?Rollthe
fuckoverFrederickandmaybeyoullhaveyourbellytickled.

But such thoughtsfadeoncemyfaceisinchesawayfromMaruschkasbehindon

the ladder. HerlegslooksilkysmoothandIwanttostrokethem.Iimaginewhat
I would see if I pulled her shorts down now, an imaginary view compiled from
several pictures I still have (which I told Maruschka I had deleted) and a
hundred failing memories. I think of the cleft between her chubby butt cheeks
and imagine my tongue in it. It doesnt even matter to me if its dirty, which it
sometimes used to be. I have aflashbacktothetimeshestraddledmyfaceand
went down on me, sixty nine style, and what presented itself to me was her
shitty arsecrack.Ilickeditoffandspatitouthopingthatshewastooconsumed
with lust for my cock to notice the spitting. Maybe she was just too polite to let
on she had noticed the spitting. I was certainly too polite to tell her that she
initiated sex without having wiped her behind properly. I alwaysmadesurethat

37
I did. In fact, I bought wet toilet paper especially to make sure I was never
caught out with that embarrassment.Imakeamentalnotethatshedoesnotdo
thesame.

Im on top of her on the sofa whichisacacophonyofcrinkledplasticsheeting.I

dont speak. I force myself on her, kissing her passionately. Shes not wearing
any lipstick, which is usual for her, but if she was it would be smudgingallover
her chin and upper lip now. Mine too. My erection is grinding into her hungrily,
passionately, a threeyearlongenforcedstayinthedesertrefreshingitselfinthe
well of hergroin.IgraspatherTshirtandpullitup.Sheisntwearingabraand
I devour her full breasts. The nipples stand up, pink and proud. Maruschka
doesnt speak but allows the ravishment to continue. I spit in her face and she
smiles a broad smile. Her legs open and her shorts have disappeared. My cock
easesintoherlikeaspoonslowlyforcingitswayintoasteamedapplepudding.I
get up onto my knees and lift her ankles up, forcing her legs wide open. I shag
thearseoffher.

Jolted back to reality, Im still holding the ladder. Such vivid fantasies. I can
taste her and her smell is all around me. Its the smell of home, of being with
her, of living a life Idontlive,ofstrangeness,othernessanddifference.Well,to
meitis.Ikeepmyselftomyselfandthatiswhythissliceofwhattomanywould
be normality is like something out of a book. Its a dream,afantasy,anillusion.
Its the romantic bit of romantic comedy. I dont belonghere,snuggledinthis
comforting, warm bath towel of a life. Life is struggle, remember? Im suddenly
aware that life without struggle would seem empty. Imagine actually being
loved. It occurs to methatIwouldhaveto.Istandthereholdingaladderaware
that love is a strangertome.Hardshipismyonlyfriend,thekindinwhichevery
day is a trial of endurance. Ive become so used to it that it is my normal, my
way of life. How could I have given that away and exchanged itforMaruschkas
warmbathtowellife?IshaketheladderandMaruschkafallsoff.

Have you ever done something in life just to see what happens next? I do it all
the time.Imdoingitnow.IveshakenMaruschkaofftheladderandshesfalling
down. She might hit the back of the sofa and end up on the floor. Thats the
noisy option. Or she might fall the other way and land on the plastic covered
sofa. Thats my hope. But, either way, isnt it really exciting, vital, to wonder
what she is going to say and how she is going to react? I FEEL SO FUCKING
ALIVERIGHTNOW!Myerectionishardinmybriefsanditfeelsgood!Thisislife,
life lived in the moment. No knowledge is relevant here. Its a constantly
unfolding series of events with no past and no future. Its purechaosandletme
tell you baby thats a huge leveller. Now its all about how you can handle an
everchanging situation. I dont even know what Im going to do next or what
Im going to say. Im temporarily relieved from everything I think I know.Ima
bird.ImflyingandthehurricanewindsaregoingtohitanyminuteNOW!

Maruschka lets go an involuntary scream and collapses in a flurry of limbs, first

onto the back of the sofa and then down onto the cushions. Im on top of her,
straddling her, in a moment, my hand pressed across her mouth. Shut up! I
say to her. Shut up. Shut up. Shutup!Shutup?Shutup.Iwantthefirstword
before the torrent of abuse comes my way. Put a leash on her Turkish, before
she gets bitten. Im very aware that Im only making things worse atthispoint.

38
Its bad enough that I cant explain why Ive pushed her off the ladder. So
pinning her on the sofa and covering her mouth with my hand isnt the best
followup.ButImonautopilotnow.

She bites my hand and I viciously slap her across the face. Thats for the
fucking punch in the eye, I say with the conviction of someone who has a long
held grudge. That grudge was to do with Doris, her one time friend, who I had
flirted with online after Maruschka had told me it was over (but we still lived
together for a while. Dont ask). She had no call on me anymore so I fooled
around with her friend. She had no right to be jealous. She ditched me,
remember? But then I lied to Maruschka. I went to see Doris, just to see what
would happen next, but I didnt tell Maruschka. She asked where I had been all
afternoon and I mumbled something about Tiergarten. Trouble is, Doris was a
grass who didnt want to fall out with Maruschka and so she phoned her upand
told her Id been there. Cue Maruschka walkinginonmelyingonthebedwhere
she blindsides me, swinging her right hand into my left eye socket. It hurt. The
shock made it five times worse than the actual blow. Call this the long overdue
paybackforanindignitysufferedinsilence.

Her violence that day had always sat uneasily with me. Imagine that I, a fully
grown man, walk in on her andsmashmyhandintohereyesocket.Whatpolice
department isnt going to arrest me? What feminist action group arent going to
label me the face of misogynist violence? What newspaper wont reportmeasa
vile representative of the human race? If I hit her, Im scum. But if she hitsme
in equally unjustifiablecircumstances?TheresnoequalityherebecauseIcannot
win. The world will be full of apologists for her and full of accusers for me.
Whichever way round things happen. Whichever role we take. And thats just a
fucking injustice. People want equality. But they want equality their way. They
want their kind of equality. It doesnt matter that we are basically the same
height and not far off the same weight. Maruschka is a woman. I am a man.
Fuck equality. There is none. Everyone merely argues for their own partiality.If
oneslapacrossthefacecanexpressallthisinoneactionthenminejustdid.

Maruschka starts crying and that catches me off guard. If Im not careful this is
going to manipulate me into feeling sorry forher.SoIreachintomypocketand
pull outthescrewdriverandslamitpointfirstintoherchest85timesasfastand
hard as I can. Maruschka doesnt die from the perfectly precise puncture
wounds. She drowns, inch by inch, in her own blood as it leaks into her
perforated lungs. She knows she is dying. I can feel her panic response
trembling throughout my body. I use my weight to hold herdownuntilthefight
drains awayfromherandthetwitchingstops.Iliehereontopofherforanother
13 minutes. Im not scared. There is no panic. There isnt really any feeling or
consciousness of anything. Its just a solemn, empty silence. I am in those 13
minutes just existing and there is nothing else in the known universe but my
knowledgethatIexist.Aneternalmoment.

But that moment inevitably ends and other thoughts rush in. I am immediately
aware of mydesiretoavoidanypunishmentforMaruschkasdeath.OK,OK,you
say its murder but lets not bandy words. Anyway, its manslaughter because I
didnt come here tonight intending to pepper Maruschkas upper body with
puncture wounds now did I? Read what I write more closely. None of this

39
matters though because it is now about what people will believenotwhatIwith
unerring certainty know. Old lover jealous of new boyfriend finds a pretext to
visit his old girlfriend alone and then brutally slays her. Guilty! Next case. New
boyfriend! God dammit! When did she say hewascoming?Tomorrow?Ihaveto
get this cleaned up and disposed of tonight, preferably without anyone seeing
me either come in here or go out. This place needs to be cleaned or otherwise
contaminated. And there is the matter of a 178 centimeter, 80 kilo body to get
rid of. I could barely pick her upwhenshewasalive.Itwillbeevenworsewhen
shesdead.Atleastallthisplastichascoveredthefurnitureandthefloor...

Youre always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently, the
best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And
when youve got your six pieces youve got to get rid of them because its no
goodleavingtheminthedeepfreezerforyourmumtodiscover,nowisit?

Saturday0413Uhr

I have done all I can do and now we will see how good a job I did. I am not
worried. I have done all I can do. If I had the last 8hoursoveragaineveryday
for the rest ofmylifeIcouldntdomorethanIhavesoIsimplyshouldntworry.
Because it achieves nothing and changes nothing. I have done all I can do. Of
course, the police will come to question me. SomeonewilltellthemIusedtobe
her boyfriend. That will bump me up the persons of interest list. Murders are
most often committed by people known to the deceased. And often very well
known. So I cant escape being sought out and questioned. I live next door to
her, after all. Ill just say I was here the whole time. Prove otherwise Herr
Polizei. And now I need my daily sanctuary. Sleep. I wish I was always asleep.
People who are asleep have no problems and, even better, no awareness of
anythingelseeither.Theyreasleep.Ihopethissleepneverends.

Saturday1146Uhr

There isaknockatthedoor.Nopointmeexpectinganyoneelsetoanswerit.No
one else ever does. And I dont usually either but this timeIhavethecriminals
desiretoknowlurkingwithinme.Youknow,likewhenarsonistssetfiretothings
then have a magnetic need to watch it burn? Thats how it works in the movies
anyway. So whilst my internal voice wants to ignore the knocking until it goes
away mycuriositywantstoknowwhoitis.Mycuriositywins.ItsMrLoverLover.
Have I seen Maruschka or has she said anything to me about going away? I
explain to Romeo that I havent seen Maruschka since Wednesday when I
bumped into her in the corner store. We walked back home together notsaying
very much. Maruschka doesnt share her plans with me anymore and hasnt for
over three years. We nod at each other in the street. Inoticethatthereispaint
on Casanovas shoes. Whats going on with the shoes, man? I inquire. Julio
Iglesias informsmethatinopeningthedoortoMaruschkasapartment(hehasa
key?!) he has unwittingly tipped two pots of paint all over the hallway and into
the kitchen. Oh, that is unfortunate that I left them there waiting behind the
front door. Would be a shame if he has made a right mess.Soundslikeitmight
be a devil to clean up. Maruschka should have warned him. George Hamilton

40
tells me that he doesnt know where Maruschka is. She isnt at home, doesnt
answer her phone and hasnt left any message or said anything about going
anywhere. Sorry man, I know nothing. Your knocking just woke me up. I hope
youfindher.Not.

Tuesday

Kate sometimes reveals herself to be a very shallow woman. Shes entered

herself in a poll. Rising Star for some kind of nude blog award or something.
So cue the multiple posts begging for votes. To merelywantpopularity.Areyou
so shallow Kate? I begin to think that maybe I expect too much of Kate. She is
just anotherdumbprettygirlwhowantsaconstantstreamofYouregorgeous!
sent herway.Withsomecurrencyattachedifyouplease.Occasionally,herposts
betray that perhaps she feels ignored or overlooked in life or her upbringing.
Theres a definite undercurrent of insecurity there. She complains when people
ask her boyfriend things but not her, as if she is not present in the room. She
gets annoyed if people disrespect other girls on Tumblr and treat them like
pieces of meat and things to do as they are told. I suspect sheisawomanwith
very fragile selfconfidence and I think she could be easily dominated face to
face. So long as you stroke herhairandtellheryouloveheraswell.Itwouldnt
surprise me to find out she has suffered abuse. She exhibits all the signs. Now
she is pimping her Instagram account. All she wants is 1000 followers. Before
zeeGermansgetthere.

Thursday

There is a poster on the main noticeboard of our building: Missing: Maruschka

Berger blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. I check our mailbox and there is a
leaflet with the same information printed on it. I fold it neatly and put it in my
pocket as Im beingobservedbyneighbors.ItwouldntbeveryseemlyifIthrew
it in the nearby bin, now would it? I must avoid extreme or unconventional
actions at all costs. I must be the Mr Dull and Boring, the Mr Never Speaks To
Anyone, all the people in thisblockthinkIam.ThatwayifHerrPolizeieverasks
any of these morons if they haveseenmeandhowIwasactingtheywillmatter
offactlyreplythatIseemedcompletelynormalandnotinanywaydifferent.

None of these people know anything about me anyway. Ive never even said so
much as a hello to most of them. They are just known faces I occasionally
ignore on the way past. Those who have walked past me more than once know
what to expectanddontbotherevensmilinginmydirectionorsayingHalloor
Tag anymore. When I first lived in Germany I found it really weird thatanyof
them did. My English upbringing taught me that you should never ever talk to
strangers. Not even to say hello or good day. Talking to someone youdidnt
know was suspicious. It meant you were a weirdo or a nonce. So coming to a
place whereyouwouldofferagreetingtoeverypasserbyorpersonyoumetwas
just straight up different. At first, I really enjoyed it. It taught me that
everywhere didnt have to be suspicious and unfriendly like the England of my
upbringing. I lived in a place where people wouldactuallygreeteachother.But,
later on, it suited my purpose morejusttobreezethroughlifenotnoticingother

41
people. If someone unknown said Hallo or Tag Id just grunt and nod. I live
in a building full of strangers now. And life is much easier that way. Less
entangled.

Friday

The news, I see, is full of "green" things. Earnest journalists, commenters and
commentators are telling us about "green" things. We must do this, that or the
other or we are headingfordisaster.Variouspeoplecriticizethoseinchargeand
tell us how bad they are (usually along party political lines) and each side
cheerleads for their political allies. If anyone pops up who doesn't have the
appropriate "green" credentials they are denounced as psychopathic,
sociopathic, elite, in the pay of energy barons, shills or something worse.
Because being "green" is the thing to be, right? EspeciallyinDeutschlandwhere
theyhatenuclearpower.A tomkraft?NeinDanke.

I must admit to some skepticism of "green" types. This is not to say I doubt
climate change. I don't find that I have any real reason to do that. It is only to
admit that things we do are part of a greater whole and this seems completely
logical to me. To have a cause is tohaveaneffect.Stuffaffectsotherstuff.This
is surely a basic tenetofanyhumanunderstandingorgraspofexistence.SoI'm
not a "climate change denier" as some people are. My interests are much more
large scale than this. It is fair to say that I often find myself being critical of
Greens though. This isn't because I position myself on the oppositesidetotheir
concerns.Onthecontrary,Idon'treallystandonanysideintheactualdebate.I
standtothesideobserving.Ooh,Iliketowatch.

One thing I see from my handy vantage point is how both sides conceive of
humanity. One view to take here is that people are venalandselfserving.They
are short term creatures who look after themselves, taking what resourcesthey
can to do this. Thisviewmightbesaidtobetheonethathasputusinwhatever
ecological situation we might now be said to be in.Ontheotherhand,thereare
those who think that human beings have a "better nature" and that if only we
would find ours and be bothfairertoallandmorelongterminourthinkingthen
ourecologicalproblemsmightbesolved.

I can't but find the second view entirely sentimental. Yes, its true that human
beings can be altruistic. Its true that human beings are social and can work
together. But I'm not sure at all that this means human beings are, of their
nature, long term thinkers who always have the welfare of everyone in mind.
Quitetheopposite,infact.Inotethatevenenvironmentalistshavebigcars,nice
houses, take foreign holidays and like to buy their food in supermarkets. Is this
because they are thinking about the needs of everyone and being fairer to all?
Are they not, like the terrible people they talk about, wanting to live a nice,
comfortable, modern, capitalist lifestyle? Don't they accept the prevailing
economic and political ideologies just the same as most other people, including
the polluters they want to convince otherwise? Aren't they beneficiaries of the
industrialisation of the West that gives them the privileged lifestyles they live in
incomparisontomanyothersindifferentpartsoftheworld?

42
So, yes, I see a lot of hypocrisy in "green" people. I question their credentials
and how "green" they actually are. I question what it is they think our world is
supposed to be and I question what they themselves are doing as an example.
Writing a comment under a George Monbiot piece inTheGuardianandrecycling
their newspapers is, to my mind, not really a significant lead even if it salves
their conscience and convinces them theyareonthesideofgood.GeorgeCarlin
once had a piece in his act about environmentalists and how all they really
wanted was to make the world "safe for their Volvos". Once again, he was
getting under the skin of their apparent hypocrisy. But what Carlin and I
apparently share is a belief that human beings are not these great altruistic
beings who care for everyone all the time. Its hard to care for everyone if you
are living day to day and struggle to keep fed, clothed and warm. Life is a bit
more primordial than this, isnt it? Too many people have bought the idea of
civilisationandbeenblindedbyit.

Some, of course, blame the politicians. They see a great nexus of political and
economicintereststhataresettoprofitrightnowfromthingsthoughtdisastrous
for the human ecological future. This is probably very true. If you don't think
something is ever going to affect you then why would you worry about it? I
admit that I havenochildrenand,atmyage,amunlikelytoeverhaveanynow.
So what do I have to worry about the future for? This is a "selfish" attitudeyou
may say. So what if it is? My life is right now quite bad and I don't see that
many people who really care about what happenstomerightnow.SowhyamI
expected to care about future humans and what kind of airtheybreatheorhow
much the coastline may have been altered by rising sea levels? Some of us are
already living a nightmare and need no future apocalypse to worry about. The
fact that many "environmentalists" are comfortable middleclassfolk(something
Carlincorrectlypickedon)whohavenoideaaboutthesufferingrightundertheir
noses does their future orientated disaster scenarios no credit. The world is a
crockofshitrightnowformany.

Of course, it might be pointed out that there have been "green" politicians for
quite a while now. Many countries may have a Green Party whose entire
existence is to promote a green agenda and green politics. But howmanyvotes
do such parties actually garner? In the UK or the USA the answerisanegligible
amount. Some countries, like Germany, have a larger presence but still notone
anywhere near power. So one question I have is if green policies are meant to
be so popular or for our own good then why do actual, realpeoplerarelyifever
vote for them? My answer refers back to the earlier definition of humanbeings:
we're selfserving. We lookafternumberoneandthinkofourselves.Yes,maybe
we can see some green arguments and nod in their favour but if it actually
makes me poorer, affects my comfort or impacts my own life such that I must
changethenwesuddenlybecomemoreresistant.

To many people I probably seem like a defeatist. I take on board another point
Carlin made in his act that way over 90% ofanythingthateverlivedonEarthis
already extinct. I take on board that lots of species of life on Earth go extinct
EVERY DAY. Extinction is the Earth's normal business. Death is the inevitable
consequence of life. These seem the somewhat spiritual and ethereal
underpinnings of the universe we live in to me. I also find it hard to seehuman
beingsasinanywayspecialordifferenttoanyotherformoflife.Iftheyallwent

43
away then why won't we too? I don't share the view of some that we are so
ingenious that we will outwit all the universe'sresourcesintryingtoexpungeus
from existence. In short, I believe that life is granted merely on the condition
that it doesn't last verylongandistakenawayagain,asortofcosmicversionof
Warhol's"famousfor15minutes".Icouldneverbeahumanexceptionalist.

So my story here may be a little depressing to some but I can only relate the
world I see and the things that recommend themselves to me as the person I
am. I take it that people will continue to profit at the expense of others in this
world, maybe at the expense of our species. What else did you think was going
to happen? Nature is red in tooth and claw and to struggle is to survive. Ithink
its a fatal error to sentimentalize life. All you achieve by doing that is doom it.
Conflict and hardship are the crucibles of continued existence and you have to
fight for the kind of life that you want to see. But then maybe it was always
already doomed. I tend to think it was and that the joke is on those who think
wecansaveourselves.

Saturday

The now sadly deceased philosopher, Richard Rorty, wrote a paper in the
midnineties addressing issues of moral philosophy. It was titled Justice as
Larger Loyalty and you can find it online if you really wantto.Ifyoureallywant
to and are happy to read something couched in the language ofthephilosopher
who uses terms and andassumesknowledgeofthephilosophicaltraditionofthe
West, that is. What Im writing here is not going to be a vulgarized version of
that article but merely uses it as a startingpointformyownthoughtsonmoral,
ethicalandmaybelegalissuesandcertainideasthatseemtounderpinthem.

So at the beginning of Justice as Larger Loyalty Rorty begins by posing some

moral dilemmas. He suggests that most of us would help a relative if they were
in trouble with the police, even if we thought that they might be guilty of a
crime. He argues that we would be very much more likely to assist a neighbor
than a stranger. He suggests that, were the nuclear apocalypsetooccurandwe
had enough foodforacoupleofweekstosurvive,wemightputtheneedsofour
own immediate family over those ofourfoodlessneighborswhopleadwithusto
let them into our basement to sharewhatwehaveleft.Inshort,Rortysetsupa
couple of sliding scales that help us determine who we might regard we have
loyaltytoandwhen.Theseare:

1.Howmuchweregardourselvesasidentifyingwiththepeopleconcerned.
2.Howmuchitwillaffectustodoso.

So what this means, to give a practical example, is that we might be happy to

share our food with people if wehavenoproblemsgettingmoreofitorwehave
enough and some to spare. But if we live in atimeoffaminewewouldbemuch
less likely to share at all since to do so directly affects our own ability to be
adequately fed. It also means, to attenuate the first point, that we might be
much more likely to share that food with people we see regularly in our street
than strangers who just arrived from whoknowswhere.Butmaybethereisalso
athirdpoint:

44
3.Howneedytheotherpeopleare.

I'm sure many peoplemightconsiderthatanotherimportantfactoristhekindof

help the person might need and how desperate for that help they are. To stick
with food: if that person is just some guy in the park who you consider really
just lives the samekindoflifeasyouthenyoumayconsiderhisrequestforfood
as superfluous. He basically just wants a free meal. But if thatsamepersonisa
starving refugee who hasn't eaten for days and is obviously in distress then
manyofusmightthinkthatchangesthesituation.

So you can see in these few brief examples some underlying factors start to
emerge. It seems that when considering moral questions that maybe there are
some criteria just under the surface, maybe unexamined, which are operative.
We consider it right and moral to help people, to put it crudely, the more we
identify with people. We consider that those we don't identify with are NOT or
LESS worthy of our assistance or consideration. Some people wouldmoreeasily
help a white person than a black one. Some would more easily help a Christian
than a Muslim. Some would more easily help a woman than a man. Youcanlay
down these preferencesanywayyoulikebutunderneathitallbecomesamatter
of identity, what people think they have in common with some people as
opposed to others. And this identity will determine who gets helped and who
doesn't.

The problem comes when this identitybased system starts to spread its wings.
What happens if morality is based on identity? Or ethics? Orlaw?Itisonething
to say you share your fries at McDonalds based on how you identify with the
person asking if they can have some. It is entirely another to make legal
judgments based on how you identify with a defendant or to despatch common
law justice or make everyday decisions based on your identification with those
concerned. If you were a member of the KKK and you routinely drove your car
through puddles in the road every time you drove past a black person (but not
white ones) based on your identification with a person's skin colour or if you
were a radical feminist in a position of power and you routinely gave favours to
your feminist colleagues but never to a man is this a legitimate thing to do?
Does who you identify with have any moral basis or right to adjudicate in such
matters? In any case, it can be seen that who we identify with radically affects
theworldwelivein.AndthismakestheworldweliveinOURresponsibility.

I have written before that people have much more in common with each other
than the things that divide us. This remains true, to my mind, in nearly every
case that you could mention. But this is not to suggest that the differences are
regarded as trivial. It also remains true that every live thought or belief that
someone has is a real determining factor to those people that hold them. A
feminist cannot stop being a feminist and a KKK member cannot stop holding
beliefs that KKK members have at least not while they remain one. But my
point isthatthoseofuswhoareneitherofthesethingsstillhavetointeractwith
the kinds of people who are and they with us. And how are we going to do
that? I have already tried to show, following Rorty's lead, that there are sliding
scalesinoperationhere,thatthecircumstancesactiveatthetimeattenuatehow
our decision process works even if we hold fairly hardline rules of identification

45
with others in our heads. Anyone can be prey to a moment of sympathy in a
crisisorhaveamomentofclarityinwhichtheirusualrulesdonotapply.

The key, for me, is to try and find ways to broaden those groups ofpeoplewith
whom we identify. (Imagine how it might reconfigure arguments all over the
Internet if we did!) Some might say this should be easy. We are, after all, all
people, all human beings, all the same species. We all have some basic
understanding of the needs, thoughts, hopes and dreams of others. We know
what it is like to lack, to feel pain, to be sad, to need help. I wish it was that
easy but apparently it isn't.Peoplehavehadtheannoyingtendencytosubdivide
their loyalties down in increasing layers of intimacy the nearer you get to them
in a continuum from enemy or stranger all the way down to close family (which
can begeneticormetaphorical).Irememberwhen,intheUK,thePrimeMinister
had started a bombing campaign in Syriawhich,hesaid(inawaythatwouldbe
funny if itdidn'tinvolvebodies)wouldmaketheUKsafer.ButthePrimeMinister
cannot decide who the bombs kill. He cannot say that innocents won't die.
Indeed, it seems acknowledged on all sides that when nations bomb other
nations innocent people always die. The PrimeMinisteratthattimewasafamily
man with a wife and children. So why can't he identify with thefamiliesinSyria
where his bombers might kill them? Might it be the case that thePrimeMinister
feels he identifies more with British people he claims to be protecting than the
swarthy foreigners who might, accidentally or uncaringly, die as a result of his
actions? (It should be noted here that earlier in the same year David Cameron
had referred to refugees fleeing the area and making their way to Britain as a
"swarm".Swarmisusuallyatermreservedforinsects.)

We are notallPrimeMinistersorPresidentsbutwedoall,together,makeupthe
population of the world. We do, all, have those we identify with and those we
don't and so we do, all, together, make up the world community and, together,
shape how relations between each other take place. I haveoftenobservedhow,
if you take abroadviewofhumanhistory,ithasbeenakindofeverwideningof
perspective and sympathy for an ever widening circle of people. We now have
panregional and even global bodies for things where once,manymillenniaago,
we were just small groups of kin huddled around fires or in caves. Even the
people in the next valley werestrangers.Todayweknowthatforsomethingsto
happen we need to morally identify with those we may never have even met or
have no understanding of if we are to solve a problem that affects us all. There
was, for example, the global climate conference that happened in Paris. Its
global because the weather will affect everyone and so we need to have some
identity with people who live on tiny Pacific islands or on the coastline thatmay
radically change in the coming decades just as much as those who live way
inland or on mountains who will not be affected by possible rising sea levels.
That means caring about Florida too which, if we arent careful, will soon be
knownasTheUnderseaKingdomofFlorida.

So the challenge here is to question who you morally identify with and why. Its
to ask yourself who you regard yourselfaslikeandwho,inyourmind,isworthy
of your respect. Try and see if you can even find ways that you are like those
with whom you have some issue. Because the truth is even those you despise
often have the same needs and concerns as you do and "moral identity" is
merely a case of recontextualising the differences as against the many

46
similarities. Is the fact that people have different views and beliefs adequate
reason to disassociate yourself from them or refuse to identify with them? And
this is nothing to do with any type of rationality. Often people base difference
and division on what theyseeastheirrationalityorstupidityoftheirchosenfoe.
But even enemies share common principles, beliefs, desires and hopes. It is a
matter of attenuating the conversation or the relationship to that point where
common ground is reached and then orientating yourself to this common
ground. People do not have to be divided and even with your worst enemy you
willfindtherearepointsofagreement.Whatisneededisthewilltofindthem.

Peoplearedumb.

Sunday

To watch the films of Argentinianborn, French resident Gaspar No is to step

into a harsh world of violence, physicality and emptiness. Whether you are
forced to watchthebrutalanalrapeofMonicaBellucciinIrrversible(forseveral
minutes) or the disembodied drifting that is the signature of perhaps his best
film, Enter The Void, (in which watching the film is to enter your own void) you
cannot escape the feeling that we live in aworldatonceinfuriatinglyemptyand
unsatisfying on the one hand and inescapably sensory on the other. No's films
are all about feeling and spirituality mixed up with an inescapable corporeality.
Only those that canfeel(becausetheyhavebodies)canhurtorloveorbeprone
to violent states of emotion. But, in the end, none of this seems quite enough.
There isabigholeatthecentreofeverything.Nomatterhowmuchyoufeelitis
never enough. IthinkthisiswhyIlieinbedwatchingEnterTheVoidsomuchat
the moment. Its not a film you watchforthestory.Itsjustanexperience.Itsto
experience.Itstheexistentialinfilm.

James Pritchett, in the introduction to his book The Music of John Cage,
describes a problem with the receptionofthegreatAmericanmusician'swork.A
number of scholars and others writing about Cage have a problem describing
him as a composer. For them Cage was more of a musicianphilosopher or a
thinker who did music sometimes. The problem, as Pritchett describes it, isthat
after 1951 Cage explicitly started down a path of using chance operationsinhis
composing. Primarily, he used the Chinese text the IChingforthispurpose.But
this has had an effect on how people received Cage thereafter, once he hadleft
more traditional compositional methods behind him and headed out into ways
that were determined to remove the influence of a composer from the work. As
Pritchett describes in his introduction, how can one criticize a work that was
based on chance and not judicious choice? Whatdoesonesayaboutapiecelike
Cage's 4'33", a piece that was meant to highlight the ambient background
sounds rather than the deliberations of composers and musicians? Cage has
fuckedoverthecritics.Hehasturnedmusicintoexperience.Hisoryours.

In the film The Matrix we are introduced to the character Morpheus played by
Laurence Fishburne. Morpheus is also the name of the Greek god of dreams. In
The Matrix Morpheus gives a number of speeches one of which is to Neo about
the nature of reality. "What is reality?" he straightforwardly asks Neo with a
sense that this is a question Neo, an everyman, has never asked of himself

47
before. In thecourseofunfoldingtheplotofthefilm,inwhichhumanbeingsare
enslaved by machines and neurally fed a reality that acts as a grand
misdirection, Morpheus talks of this as "a blind for your eyes" in a speech to
Neo.

What I've just given isthreenodesonthenetworkofmythinking,threewaysin

whichhumanculturehasimpactedmeasanindividualandmademethink.They
are all, in their own ways, related to the subject of life, reality, existence,
meaning, truth, call it what you will for it goes by many names and there are
many doors that lead to it. Its very likely that there are others that could be
named as well. But the question is when you find these doors where do they
lead? What insights do you get? More importantly, what eyes are you seeing
with? The aforementioned film Enter The Void is relevant here as thewholefilm
is seen from the perspective of one character in the film, first through his eyes
when he is aliveandthenfrombehindhimwhenheisdeadashisspiritwanders
through his past life. Perspective is important for we do not all see the same
thing.Weknowthis.Orweshould.

Important in what you seeisthenetworkofthoughtsandfeelingsyouhavethat

is called your mind. It is unique and individual to you. If there were a million
clones of you none of them would be you because the thoughts and feelings of
the million clones would each be unique. Each would be a different person and
live a different life. The longer they lived the more they would diverge. This
means that knowing your own mind becomes a journey of inner self discovery.
And just because you are you this does not mean you automatically know all
there is to know about you. In some senses you only know about you whatyou
want you to know. We lie. We lie to others. We alsolietoourselves.Butthere's
another problem. Youarenotomniscient.Therefore,whatyou"know"aboutyou
can be contradicted. Someone else who is not you may say something true
about you that you don't agree with because you, from your perspective, can't
see it. (I did this to Maruschka a lot. She hated it.) To be you is not to be the
only source of valid knowledge about you. To be human is not to be the only
validsourceofknowledgeaboutanything.

All that said, you can only go on believing what convinces you, what fits in asa
node in the network of thoughts and feelings that is your mind. Things can't be
forced to fit in there. You can't hold a belief that you don't actually believe no
matter how much youmayactuallywantto.Youcanlietoyourselfbutthenthat
is an illfitting thought just waiting to be rooted outonedayinsomemomentof
selfawareness or the comment of someone else who is not you and has no
reason to share your desire to lie to you. All futurethoughtsyouwillhavecome
from this network and all newbeliefsyouwillholdmustfitin,insomeway,with
the things you believe right now. In that new configuration beliefsyounowhold
may have light shone on them which make them now seem old or outdated or
just simply wrong. You may then decide to give these beliefs up. This, as I
understandit,ishowmindswork.

I have a lot of time to think. Some may say I have too much time to think.But
since I have that time due to a confusing conglomeration of bad life choices,
physical conditions and straightforward random chance, I have taken the
opportunity to think.ButasIthink,progressinginsomekindofspiralinmyown

48
mind, I come habitually round to the subject of life and its meaning oncemore.
Lately the thought has been pressing in on me, sometimes at night as I fall
asleep or then again in reading about today's latest Internet outrage, that none
of this stuff that exists actually matters very much. We go throughlifeworrying
and concerned about any number of things which we designate with varying
degrees of importance. But, actually, is ANY of it important? Does ANY of it
matter? Do you matter? DoImatter?Ofcourse,ifyouthinksomeorallofthese
thingsdothenyouneedareasonwhy.

My questions are, first of all, and to contradict Internet outrage manufacturer,

Richard Dawkins, to show that MEANING trumps TRUTH. Furthermore, meaning
is more important than truth, the latter being an unattainable concept in an
ultimate sense. The fact that people like Dawkins say they have a "passion for
truth" is to show that actually truth as something with ultimate value means
something to them. People are beings that must have things mean for them.
This is fundamental as psychotherapist Viktor Frankl rightly said. Truth, then, is
a value in this meaning system. And what apparatus do we use through which
this meaning system operates? That network of feelings and beliefs I was just
talking about. The human being, I constantly marvel, is a very complex being
with lots of things working together to constitute us as we are. As beings who
have developed higher thinking we must think. As beings with a value and
meaning system we must ascribe value and meaning to things. To not do so or
tolosethisabilityistobecomeadamagedhuman.

All this is to take the scenic route to getting to my point here. It is to bring us
back to the cultural proddings I started with. It is to ask what links the empty
corporeality of No, the random music of Cage and the pseudophilosophical
musings of a fictional character in a science fiction film. What links themforme
is a feeling I can't shake, a presence I can sense ontheedgesofmyawareness
but instinctively recoil from looking at fully. This is that life doesn't matter. I
don't matter. You don't matter. The details of life, how we lived and died, don't
matter. Humanslovestoriesandneedthemtoexplaintothemselveswherethey
came from and why they are here. We orientate ourselves to the world by
stories much more than by facts. Indeed, a fact by itself is nothing unless you
embed it into a narrative. Andwetellourselvesstoriesofwhythingsmatterand
how they come to matter. We build ourselves the security of making sense of
things for the entirely reasonable reason of being able to live at all. But what if
thosestoriesarealljustsomuchflimflam,aloadofoldflannel?

Let me be clear aboutwhatI'mthinkingandfeelingrightnow.AsIgobackover

my life (all too often but that's another story) I ask myself several "What if?"
type questions. I dissect my past and point out to myself the missteps I took
(many) and imagine several other hypothetical lives I could have lived. I'm not
sure any of them end up being better. I've not yet figured outalifeofeaseand
riches in a paradise (even if thatwereaworthwhilegoalwhichitprobablyisn't).
But all this thinking leads me to conclude that freedom, in this existence, is
merely another name for constraint. In this life we are not free or, at least, we
are not free without also being constrained. We are always stuck in the grip of
them both. We cannot be free without being constrained or constrained without
having some measure of freedom. But let's not get sidetracked for this is my
storyofwhynothing,notleastthedetailsofanyone'slife,reallymatters.

49
My thinking, of course, is based in certain truths that hold meaning for me.
These include that death is the end and that the whole universe is the proper
context for what happens within existence the socalled "all that is". Against
these two gigantic backgrounds things that are to each of us very personal and
prominent become, inevitably, much less so. Against those backgrounds does it
really matter what car you drive, what job you have, who you spend your time
with, where you go, what country you comefrom,howbigyourCDcollectionis,
how much money you've got, whether you spend your life happy or sad, if you
live to be 19 or 99? Does it? Why does it? To reassert my two backgrounds,
death wipesoutanythingyoueverare,wereorcouldbeandtheuniverse,which
itself will one day die, as a context for you leaves you less prominent within it
thanamicrobeonyourfingeristoyou.

I can give you no final answers. No one can. "Is" has been, as some
philosophers know, the most difficult word to explain (not least in its
ramifications) in all of human language. For to posit an "is" is to predicate, to
say that something exists or is the case. But humans find it terribly hard tosay
that anything is or why. Humans can't even really prove that they themselves
exist because we know that, logically, it could all be a trick or a deception of
which we arenotaware.Weliveasifourlivesarerealandourchoicesofimport
in the grand scheme of things. But is this just a blind for our eyes, a necessary
deception so that we don't just lie in a corner until we die?Isitourwaytofight
off the time and chance that Cage embraced musically due to a different vision
ofourworld?

As I'm currently thinking, what changes of importance iflyinginthecorneruntil

we die was all we did do? My life is a metaphorical lying in thecornerandoften
anactualone.

Its important for me not just to accept a dominant narrative uncritically and so
even if the questions are ultimately unanswered or unanswerable, I find myself
having to ask them in order to stay honest to my own view of myself and the
world.

Hereendeththelesson.

Monday

Kate hasmentionedherboyfriendsTumblrunderoneofherpicturesbecausehe
was lurking in the background. I go to it and there are pictures of him on it.
What a disappointing man.TothinkthathehasKate.Galling.Mostoftherestof
it is nihilistic fashion pictures of cars or motorbikes or models, a life based in
artificialstyle.Itmakesmefeelalittlesickinmymouthtolookatit.

Tuesday

Its just over a week ago that I last wrote something. For most of the time
between then and now I havebeendoingnothingatallexceptstruggling.Pretty
much straightafterIwrotethatlastpostIcamedownwithavirulentcaseofthe

50
flu and this became complicated by an eye infection which affected both my
swollen eyes but the right one much more than the left one. Its not muchofan
exaggeration to say that I neither slept nor saw very much for three days and
three nights. There was certainly no way that I could have sat in front of a
screen, as I am now, this time last week. The merest suggestion of light stung
my eyes and made them weep uncontrollably. Even now itstruetosaytheyare
not fullyrecoveredandI'mgoingthroughaneyebathingroutineeverydayinan
attempt to relieve my eyes of any discomfort and make them fit for purpose
onceagain.Ifeartheyarepermanentlydamaged.

I once knew a blind man. His name was Erich and he was the father of an
exgirlfriendofmine.HewasaGermanchildattheendoftheSecondWorldWar
and lived in East Germany. The advancingSovietforcesgaveoutboobytrapped
pens to the populace as they advanced on Berlin and my exgirlfriend's father
got one. He was 7 years old when the booby trap exploded in his face, blinding
him for the rest of his life. Despite the fact that by the time I met Erich he had
been blind for 60 years he was, I think I can say, the most joyful man I have
ever met. He had livedaveryfulllifeinwhichhehadhelpedbringsixdaughters
into the world and had had a career as a masseur at the local hospital and on
the fitness and medical staff of the local football team. And his blindness didn't
stop him cheating at cards either! When I'd firstmethimI'dexpectedhimtobe
a little dour, perhaps grumpy or resentful, because of the circumstances of his
life. How wrong I was. He was a man full of jokes who listened for hour after
hour to books on his reading machine and always got involved in the (many)
socialoccasionsthathislargefamilynecessitated.

Back before my weeklong concentration on sight I had been writing about

spiritualmatters.Oratleastphilosophicalones.Peopleofaspiritualcastofmind
often have a focus on seeingtoo.Thisisnotusuallyamatteroftheeyesthough
as many of a spiritual cast of mind exhort usthatweneedtoseeinotherways.
For many of these people things that we can physically see are illusions that
need to be seen through. I admit to often finding this not confusing but
incoherent. In the end, such claims are claimsforpeopletoseethingsasothers
do because then, it is thought, certain actions and attitudes will be mandated.
The "seeing" being recommended here is a matter of spiritual consequences.
Hence how, sometimes, the spirituallyminded speak of"secretknowledge".The
world our eyes can see, wonderful as it is, is not enough for some people and
other things need to be"seen"instead.ForthewritertotheHebrewsintheNew
Testament, for example, "faith" is recommended in order to give hope and
assurance about things that eyes cannot see. In a world in which, it is said,
"seeing isbelieving,"spiritualpeoplewilloftenarguethatnotseeingisbelieving.
On the contrary, believing is seeing. And not only the spirituallyminded would
agreewiththatpointofview.

Of course, here "seeing" is being used metaphorically for its not actual seeing
that these spiritual people are extolling the virtues of. Often this seeing is a
matter of other things, perhaps praying or discipline or some kind of faith.Here
what is being asked for is tohaveacertainperspectiveonthings.ButIfindthat
this, quite often, is a request to put on certain blinkers. Suchclaims,whenthey
are made, are claims about what is important in life. The request is that what
some other person or group of people finds important youshouldfindimportant

51
too. It should be obvious that this isn't really a matter of seeing though. You
may very well see the things that other people point out to you. But its not the
seeing them that is importantitswhatmeaningyougivetothethingsyousee.
Of course, the meaning and value you give to things will also create the world
that you see at all. There are many visual tricks that are done that fool the
human mind when they are looked at. Our minds come preprepared to see
certain things and in certain ways. This is why tricks like the neverending
staircase work or why we see faces in things. Our honed and evolutionary
thoughts and beliefs shape our world and shape what we can see. Nothing is
given to us in all its nakedness without attachments and contexts, speaking for
itself. The question "What do you see?" isasmuchthequestion"Whathaveyou
cometobelieve?"orWhohaveyoucometobe?

In this realization, the world of our senses, the world we see and the world of
spirit, that those with spiritual interests say exists as well, come together.
Believing and seeing are very closely intertwined. Indeed, so intertwined are
they that are I think not of two actions here but one indivisible one.Youcannot
see without a belief and neither can youbelievewithoutseeingsomething.They
are mutually reinforcing synonymous actions. Perhaps this is why philosophers,
scientists, religionists and the spiritual have been trying to persuade us for
centuries to see things a certain way. Our believingseeing has consequences.
For none of these people does the idea exist that seeing things a certain way
shouldnotmakeadifference.Forareligionist,apprehendingsomespiritualtruth
is a matter ofconsequenceandaction.Itisnolesssoforthescientist.Butthere
are other matters in play here too. As I've written before, ocular metaphors for
knowledge are deceptive in themselves. They tend towards the suggestion that
there is, in the end, a reality to see, that we will, in some sense, see things as
they really are.Theproblemhereisthatifyouaregoingtorelyonmetaphorsof
vision you will always be liabletobeingtricked.Forsightisfallible.Youwillthen
fall into talk of illusions and perspective. How will youeverbeabletoguarantee
that, in your worldofsight,youarereallyseeingwhatyousayyouareseeingat
all?Skepticismwillbeyourconstantenemy.

I had an insight as I lay on my bed recovering over the weekend. I considered

my own life, much of which I would consider to have been wasted, (others
familiar with it, and there are an amazingly small number ofsuchpeople,would
consideritwastedevenmoreso)andIbecamealittledepressed.ButIlaythere
in the quiet (a blessing I am trying to rediscover, the blessing of silence) and
thought on. I considered all the things one could do with life. I considered how
millions of people find worth inwork(Idon't).IconsideredallthepeopleIcould
be helping, the good deeds I could be doing, the sights I could be seeing, the
experiences I could be having. I considered the values people have and what
people consider a good use of time and a bad, wasteful use of time. I asked
myself whatdifferenceitmatteredinlifeifIwastedmytimeoruseditforthings
people wouldconsidergood.AndthenIcametoaconclusion.Myconclusionwas
that we are all just using up time until there is no more time left for us to use
up.Therestisjustdetails.

I put my hand in my trouser pocket andpulloutthescrunchedupleafletIdput

there days before. Missing: Maruschka Berger blah blah blah. Blah blah blah
blah.

52
Wednesday

"It is legitimate and necessary towonder,"writesAlbertCamusintheprefaceto

an English translation of hisTheMythofSisyphus,"whetherlifehasameaning".
"Therefore," he continues, "it islegitimatetomeettheproblemofsuicidefaceto
face". In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus is concerned with the problem of The
Absurd, The Absurd Man and Absurdity. In most existential enquiries Camus
notes that the discussionsarehad,theargumentsaremadeandabsurdityisthe
conclusion. Camus, however, does not want to do that. He wants to assume
absurdity from the outset and then find a way to deal with it. The book is an
extended essay of around 80 pages in which, having discussed The Absurd a
little, he thengoesontospeakaboutitthroughinteractionswithculture,history
and literary figures ending up with the Sisyphus of Greek legend, that manwho
was condemned by the gods to roll a stone up a hillonlyforittorollbackdown
under the force of its own weight. He then had to roll it back up. Forever. This
rockisametaphorforT heAbsurd,ourhumancondition.

Idonotintendtodescribethebookanyfurtherthanthisbriefoutlinereally.Itis
easily available for free online for those who feel the need to read it. What
interests me is the arguments Camus makes within it and where he suggests
they lead. More importantly, I am interested in what this leads me to think and
where it leads me. Camus'basicproblematicisthis:lifeisaperformanceandan
absurd one at that. This is because "in a universe suddenly divested of illusions
and lights, Man feels an alien, a stranger." Absurdity is someone's feeling of
divorce between themselves and the world or between themselves and life.
Camus sees in life a struggle,aconflict,aconfrontationbetweenthehumanand
the world and the absurd is what this produces. The absurd is, therefore, an
essential component of human life, part ofaneternaltrianglethatmakesupour
conscious existence: human + world = absurd. Take any one of themawayand
thereisnotrulyh
umanexperienceofexistenceanymore.

But what has this to do with suicide?Well,deathisoneofthewaystosolvethis

puzzle of human experience that is the absurd. Camus is determined to show,
logically, that the absurd does not lead to the conclusion we must die to solve
this tortuous riddle. However, there is no foregone conclusion here. Camus
realizes, correctly, that you cannot cheat the hangman. When he writes that
"Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the
fundamental question of philosophy" he is deadly serious. It amounts to saying
that that fundamentalquestionis"Whyareanyofusalive?"This,tomymind,is
a fair question, especially when so many just assume that weshouldbewithout
any evidence of thought about it. Somanyjustassumethatlife(seemingly,any
life) is better than death no matter howhopelesslydull,miserableorpoortheirs
might be. And there are a LOT of miserable motherfuckers around. We live in a
world where 800,000 mostly first world people choose to voluntarily check out
everyyear.Thisisn'tatrivialquestionorafakescenario.

Camus accepts the absurd as a proposition just asthespeakingcharacterinthe

biblical book Ecclesiastes did when he said "All is futile". His issue is whether,
even within the bounds of nihilism, "it is possible to find the means to proceed
beyond nihilism". He wants "to live and to create, in the very midst of the
desert". Suicide, he suggests, is a confession, a confession that life is notworth

53
the trouble. He wants to argue that it is. But he realizes that you cannot just
blandly assert it for he realizes that the fact of the absurd is a genuine foe. He
has many memorable phrases for everyday life that speak of the absurd,things
such as "the gestures commanded by existence", our "ridiculous" habit, the
"ordered delirium" and "this hell of thepresent".Hesayswehave"alifewithout
consolation" which means that, essentially, we live for nothing. There's nothing
to gain and nothing to be gained. The speaker in Ecclesiastes would nod in
agreement. So would any of the women minding the till in Lidl or Aldi on
Hermannstrae with their dead eyes and see throughgreetings.Ifanything,the
Aldionesmoreso.

An aspect of this is our boundedness in time. We are beings in time. To mark

time with an age or a date is to situate yourself on a curve that you know you
must travel to the end. We think of a future and we hope to populate it with
things. These are our reasons to live. However, we should probablyberejecting
this for to acknowledge that curve is to embrace death, the death we never
speak of. Time is the certainty that we will decay and die. Only something
outside time could beeternal.Andtheabsurdisaproductofanexistencebound
up with time, with decay and with death. In time, all things die. Thus, we are
beings owned by time. As Camus writes, "There is God ortime...Thisworldhas
a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those
worries." Camus also notes that you cannot be surprised enough at how
everyone lives their life as if no one is going to die. It is the subject no one
wants to discuss and the one fact that is true of us all from the moment of our
births.Howappropriatethatweareborncryingandindistress.

We need to discuss the absurd in a bit more detail before moving to Camus'
solution and why I think he is wrong. One important aspect here is that Camus
links the absurd withmeaning.Thisistheveryheartofthematterforitisalack
of meaning (asabsurdistsandnihilistsseeit)thatistheproblem.Ifmydailylife
is a performance that adds up to nothing then why carry on? It is absurd that
any meaning we can find fades, is forgotten, is arguable or that people can
choosenottocareaboutit.Itisabsurdthatmeaningisalocalphenomenonthat
does not stand, that needs to be made over and over again, that must be
searched for. Camus speaks of the "illusory meaning" with which we clothe
things. This is absurd, the recognition and acceptance of the fact that all
meaning is an illusion, a product of life, a matter of artifice. When you
instinctively see or feel the artifice at that moment you are changed. At that
point there is a putting aside of the familiarity you have become used to, a
realization of what is once more become foreign. Our habits of thought become
once more empty. The Absurd is living in this world of made meaning that has
become strange, a recognition that life is, thus, a mechanical pantomime. The
Absurd is a life with a deficit of meaning or, as Camus phrases it, "lucid reason
notingitslimits".

We can see this in some strange factors about how we live. We have a Latin
phrase, "In vino, veritas". In wine, truth. But we can rephrase this: In
drunkenness, truth in soberness, obfuscation. This little saying highlights that
we need to have our live, active sensibilities deactivated by alcohol before we
speak and act in an unfiltered waywithwhatwemightcallthenakedtruth.This
amounts to saying that regular life is guarded, knowing, selfprotective,

54
obfuscatory, manufactured. Perhaps this is why ancient mystics needed to
invoke intoxication before revealing the truth of their gods?Itrevealsthatlifeis
not a simple thing with clear meanings and unquestioned truths. No, these
things are made andcanbeusedasweapons,oneagainstanother,inagameof
skill and chance rather than wherenamingthetruthorgivingthemeaningwins.
Is this not absurd? It reveals that, in "fact" one is never more fictional, one is
never creating more than when one swears theyarerevealingsometruthnotof
their making, one is never lying more than when theysweartheyaretellingthe
truth. Paying things the complement of meaning beyond the human is the
ultimategambit.Andtheultimateactoffakery.

And then there is the moral/ethical sphere. Camus argues that"Thecertaintyof

a god giving meaning to life far surpasses inattractivenesstheabilitytobehave
badly with impunity." I agree with him. If there were someway,orsomebeing,
who could set straight once and for all what everything means and why then I
think it would be universally popular. Compared to that possibility the mere
ability to do what you like and get away with it is as nothing. It is meaningless
and insipid. Worse, it is boring. Camus notes a feature of the absurdisthatitis
not a liberator, it binds instead. The absurdity of life is not a mandate or
authorization or excuse to do whatever you want or cause havoc because
"everything is meaningless". Indeed, the absurd does not authorize actions.
Instead, it condemns you to them and it makes remorse pointless. Life in the
absurd is, as Camus says, like this: "there may be responsible persons, but
there are no guilty ones." The absurdity of life,itslackofmeaning,itsmadeup,
convenient, earthshaped, forourpurposes, truth, is not an authorizing
authority, a reason to do whatyouwant.Absurdityisacondition,anaffliction,a
limitation. It makes all ways equal. All ways lead to the same nothingness. All
consequences become to be beside the point. This means, in the end, that all
moralsandethicsbecomeempty.

But enough of the absurd and some of its ramifications for life. What is the
solution that Camus finds? You would, of course, be right if you assumed that
Camus believes that the absurd doesnotmandatedeath.Iwouldsay"Ofcourse
he does" but as he takes the question seriously he does not deserve that. First,
we must do away with two ways out from absurdity that Camus wants to close
off. Thesearetheaforementioneddeathandalso"hope".Camusclosestheseoff
effectively by insisting that the The Absurd is real. ItiskeytoCamus'argument
that absurdity be seen as a condition of life. This kills hope because now you
cannot outlast any felt absurdity. Your life will always beabsurd.Butitdoesnot
mandate death either. You may feel fully in your bones, your heart, your mind,
your every waking moment, that your life is lived under the weight of all this
absurdity but neveratanypointdoesthislogicallymeanyoushoulddie.Youwill
needtofindanotherreasonforthat.

Camus goes through a list of some other thinkers who have reckoned with
absurdity and tried to avoid it, figures such as Kierkegaard and Karl Jaspers,
both theists, who, in their own ways, tried to make of absurdity, something
indefinable, ineffable and allencompassing, some kind of divine principle. But it
is all too easy to make of something that you cannot understand or escape a
god. This is an avoidance strategy and not an answer to the problem. Camus
argues that the absurd neither mandates death nor finds an answer in any

55
avoiding or coping strategy. We are left, still, with the fact of the absurd and
with the recognition of it. It stands before us and confronts us. Man is still left
with hisstruggle,"aconstantconfrontationbetweenManandhisownobscurity".
Death would be just an extreme avoiding strategy in which you avoid it by
refusing totakepart.ForCamus,thisisadefeat,albeitoneyouareneveraware
ofoncethelifehaspassedfromyourbody.

Camus' own solution is revolt. Revolt is "the certainty of a crushingfatewithout

the resignation to accompany it." Camus recommends looking the absurd in the
face and laughing at it. "We must imagine Sisyphus happy" is howhecloseshis
book. But we must imagine him so in his full acknowledgement and lucid
apprehension of the absurd. In that respect, Sisyphus must give his all in the
tortuous task of rolling the stone, which remains a torture, but do it in a happy
defiance. "The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and
deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which he maintains
constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousnessandinthat
daytoday revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance." It is right
to say that the absurd is life without meaning but, as Camus rightly sees, life
does not require meaning to be lived. "It now becomes clear, on the contrary,
that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a
particular fate, is accepting it fully." So Camuswantsusnottotrytoescapeour
fated absurdity but to accept it fully but under revolt. "Living is keeping the
absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it." ForCamusalifeis
absurd, aperformance,apantomime.Ourwork,nolessthanthatofSisyphus,is
meaningless, an endless, fruitless, task. But, he casually notes, "Everything
considered,adeterminedsoulwillmanage."

So Camus argues that we can effectively win at the game of absurd life by
laughing in the face of our fated torture. "There is no fate that cannot be
surmounted by scorn." But I simply disagree. I see neither a win nor any
surmounting. If this is what "victory" looks like then it is of the hollowest kind.
"But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged," writes Camus. No, they
don't. If I admit that a rock is crushing me I am not, thereby, suddenly
uncrushed. Acknowledgement is no victory,defiantorotherwise.Yourspiritmay
remain unbroken but you might still be in very dire straits. AsIseeit,Camusis
engaging in another form of escape, trying to make a negative, absurdity, into
some kind of positive. As I see it, absurdity laughs at his solution to the puzzle
and at his need to find a solution aswellastheimpotenceofhisresult.Onecan
imagine Sisyphus happy. I agree withCamusthere.Butonecannotimaginehim
free.

So what is my conclusion? I agree with Camus that absurditydoesnotmandate

death. I did not always think this way and for a number of yearsIfeltsurethat
death was the only answer. Having read Camus' essay I have now changed my
position. Absurdity does not mandate death. Death would be a kind of final
escape but one in which no taste of victory ever touches your lips. In fact, I
imagine it would be a harrowing and distressing end as you feel the absurdity
ripping life from you, the only life you could ever have but one that was a
struggle in its every moment. There is nosatisfactioninthat.So,asIseeit,the
absurd does not mandate death. But there is something that the absurd does
mandate: the absurd mandates that you suffer. This suffering is to experience

56
human life. As Nietzsche said, "To liveistosuffer...".Camuscallsforrevoltasa
response to the absurd but in doing so he tries another avoidance move, to try
and make the absurdity work for him. But it can't and it won't. Absurdity is the
condition of your life, the experience and consciousness of living, not the
condition for finding some meaning in it. Funny, then, that the rest of that
Nietzsche quote I just used is "... to survive is to find some meaning in the
suffering."

My answer is much simpler than this. I acknowledge that walking this path will
entail finding some personal meaning to the journey you take but, as both
CamusandNietzscheknowinothermoments,themeaningyoufindisyoursand
yours alone, for that moment of your journey. Part of living in absurdity is that
you are fated to make and find meaning overandoveragain.Youareforcedto.
And you will. The answer is not revolt although, as strategies go, this isn't the
worst. Its much simpler. Don't die. Don't escape. Don't make of the struggle of
existence anything noble or majestic or honorable or heroic and dignified.
(Camus is prone to this.) JUST SUFFER. Just bear your pain, your confusion,
your emptiness, all the way to the end. Without hope. Without nobility or
majesty or honor or dignity or thinkingyouaresomekindofhero.Thisandonly
this is to be logical to the end as Camus said he wanted tobeatthestartofhis
book. If the choice is to die, to avoidortolivethenwemustchoosetolive.And
to live is to suffer in the full knowledge there is no hopebutthatyoumustwalk
totheendofyourjourney.Everypainfulstep.

Friday

Since I wrote about Camus, reading it back, I'm now more inclined to accept
Camus' point. Defiance or revolt isallyoudohave.IcanseewhyIwrotewhatI
originally wrote at the end and, in my own way, I thinkitwasmerelygivingthe
answer that Camus did.Iwassayingtotakethebeatingevenwhenyoucouldin
theory escape it. Camus says, similarly, roll the rock with a smile even though
you could sit down and be miserable instead. Allchoiceswillbeabsurdandthey
all lead to the same pointless place. To do nothing or something is the same.
Therefore, acceptyourfatebutwithaspiritofacceptanceand,asCamusputsit,
revolt. Why? Because toliveinabsurdityyoustillneedamotive.Andrebellionis
that motive. To live is to live free in mind if in no other way atall.Mygoalisto
dieowningwhoIamandwithamindthatisfree,amindinrevolt.

Saturday

And then I came toaconclusion.Myconclusionwasthatwearealljustusingup

timeuntilthereisnomoretimeleftforustouseup.Therestisjustdetails.

Now I want to talk a bitaboutthedetailsbecause,ofcourse,Ican'tjustleaveit

there.Icouldhavejustleftitthereatthetimethough.Andthat'swhyIdid.Any
reader was left with my conclusion and the chance to think about it,toconsider
if what they had just read had been written by a deluded fool, a lazy person,
someone horribly misguided or something else. Perhaps in taking the chance to
do that such a reader asked themselves what their own conclusion was? Such

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are the desires I hold inmyheart.Butthatconclusionalsoneedsunpackingand
discussingalittlebitandthatiswhatthisentryisabout.

My conclusion was somewhat pragmatic and an attempt to deliberately see

things differently but still truly. I get this from more famous heroes of mine,
people like Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, William James and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Each, in their own way, try to approach common issues or matters of public
discussion and speak of them truly but differently, outside of the common
conventions on such things. I find this incredibly useful. Rorty, forexample,has
focused in a number of his written works on the need to changethekindoftalk
we have about subjects.Insodoing,hesaid,wechangehowweunderstandthe
things themselves. Ludwig Wittgenstein, I think,reachedcompatibleconclusions
when he wroteaboutlanguageandhowitworkstoestablishwhathumanbeings
count as making sense of something. We are, uniquely on this planet in its
development, linguistic beings and so language anditsusemattersgreatly.This
was brought home to me as a second year undergraduate when I took a
"religious language" course. What it taught me was that religious language is
largely empty and devoid of substance, a constant trail of metaphors and
analogies that never actually gets to grips with anything. (Of course, what this
discoverymeansisalwaysopentoquestion.)

But back to my conclusion. I wonder whether you accepted it as fair and

reasonable? I cannot believe that everyone did. Surely it must be true that
there are readers of mine who don't accept such a generalized conclusion?
Surely there are people who believe there are better and worse ways to spend
your time, that there are things people should be doing, that certain ways to
"use up time" are wasteful and even make those doing them culpable for
something? I'm convinced there will be people who think that way. My question
to them, though, is why do you think that way? Of course, I too am one of the
people who thinks that there are better andworsewaystospendyourtime.But
I don't think human beings have ever collated a once for all binding list of what
these things are. Human beings, in general, have believed in freedom of
thought, speech and action and often defended these things. This means,
amongst other things, that we accept people can do what they like within the
law orsolongasitdoesn'tinterferewiththefreedomsofothers.Sotheproblem
becomes that our beliefs conflict with each other. Its only when the belief that
people shouldbefreetochoosewhattheydoandthebeliefthattherearebetter
and worse things to do are made to interact with one another that we have a
newdecisiontomaketoaskourselveshowweshouldfigurethisout.

My conclusion, of course, was meant to leave open the possibilitythat,actually,

it really doesn't matter how you spend your time at all. Its just time and its
going to get spent even if you sit on your ass and let the world go on around
you. The clock is always ticking and time is always being spent. Again, I will
have readers who find this immoral for I will have readers who buy into the
conventionthatpeopleareresponsibleforthetimetheyhave.Butresponsibleto
who exactly? Responsible to the court of public opinion? Responsible to those
who know you? Perhapsitisthoughtthisissomehowagenerallyacceptedbelief
and so, just because of this, its puts some onus on everyone to "go with the
flow" and accept beliefs that are generally held? But does that sound like
freedomtoyou?Itseemstomebyfarthemostsanecoursetoacceptthatthere

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is nothing bindingpeopletoacceptgenerallyheldbeliefsorpopularconventions.
We just have to acceptthatfreehumanbeingscanspendtheirtimeexactlyhow
they like. Even if we consider it badly spent or wasted (whatever sense these
notions might have). It remains true that everyone has beliefs and can offer
judgments on things that happen. The problem is there isnowaytobindothers
tothemexceptforce.Andmostpeoplewouldregardforceasoutofbounds.

So what my conclusion was, at least in part, was a challenge to human

convention. It was asking "What does it matter how our time is spent?" It was
saying that we allgettothetimewhenthere'snomoretimeforustospendand
suggested that all paths lead to the same destination. It was asking, in that
case, what difference the route makes. These are questions for readers to
consideralthoughIimagineeachreaderhasanswerspoppingintotheirheadsas
they read. But I feel the need at this point to raise my owncolorsonthisissue.
I'm not a teacher of any kind but just a guy sharing his thoughts. I accept the
idea that the route from point A to point B in life is not soimportant.I'venever
worried about where the wind blows this particular ship. I used to. But then I
had the insight that you get to the same port at the end of the voyage anyway
and soIbecamelesscaughtupinthedetails.Life,Ithink,givesuslotsofstress
based on conventional thought and so it seems to me therapeutic to cast as
much of it off as possible by reweaving the thoughts I've beenbroughtupwith
into new, more fruitful and less stressful things. This insight is one of those
things.

One needs to think of the consequences of such thinking though. What does it
mean to say that we are all just spending time? I thinkitsuggeststheideathat
what matters, in that case, is how you are spending the present moment.
Nothing I'm saying in my conclusion takes anything away regarding the
decisions of life or its moral dimension. To say we are just spending time does
not make you a monster. It recasts the context but leaves you as exactly the
same person with the same decisions, beliefs and problems as you had before.
Except now, maybe, you are less concerned or worried that your time is being
wasted. It isn't. Your time isn't being wasted if, in this moment right now, you
find some pleasure or purpose or meaning in it. And that, I think, is what my
conclusion leads to: a focus on the present moment. It asks us to consider the
now and to not judge by artificial and conventional means. You could always be
helping the homeless or sick. But you aren't. Should you judge yourself
negatively for that? I say no. You are not responsible for all the world's
problems. You are responsible for you, if even only for your own comfort or
satisfaction.

But there is a problem with this for to change the context, as I have done with
my redescription of the human situation, istochangeeverything.Iwasmusing
on a recent walk as to why so many people (and I used to be one) engage in
spiritual or religious thought. I couldn'tescapethenotionthatitwasbecause,in
adeepseatedandoftenunacknowledgedway,peoplearefightingoffafoe.That
foe is despair, despair that this world of our experience might actually be all
there is. This is, somehow, for many people not enough. This passing world of
our acquaintance seems to have no meaning and to go nowhere and this is
something that is psychologically overwhelming for many people. And so new,
unseen realms are created in which the meaning we seek and require can be

59
found. These places, furthermore, become the places that guaranteeandsupply
our highest goods, things like truth, knowledge and morality. It speaks
powerfully to the human need for these things that wewillgotosuchlengthsin
an attempt toanchorthemintheworldofbeing.I'mremindedonceagainofthe
university module in Religious Language that I took. There was a lot of talk
about"mythology"duringit.

I think we see a lot of mythology today and not just in religious or spiritual
places. The American Dream is no less a myth. Capitalism,withitsdreamofa
forever progress, is a myth. Communism, and the idea that everyone can be
equal, is a myth too. Myths, in order to be so powerful, have to create worlds
and they do this by creating a whole vocabulary to nurture and support
themselves. Once inside a particular myth the language used sustains and
supports the believers, nourishing them with key terms and meanings. Itshows
just how important meaning is to human beings. We will literally go to theends
of the earth to find it like Sinbad looking for some secret treasure. No wonder,
then, that my bald and featureless description of our time on earth might be
disdained by some. To say that we are all just spending time until there is no
time to spend is to accept that there is no overarching meaning to find and to
seek toavoidthemeaningmakingbutultimatelyselfcreatedmythologies.Many
people have wanted to find paradise and they were more than happy to build it
themselves if it meant they could say therewasone.Butwhydidtheyneedone
inthefirstplace?Isthisnotenough?

So, if anything, I'm saying thatparadiseisyoureverypresentmomentandyour

chance to maximize your experience of life within it. Paradise is not a place nor
even a time for it is within you waiting for you to find it in any place and time.
So this means that we will never build a Utopia. But it also means that Utopia
can be experienced anytime we find ourselves able to exist fully in the moment
and abandon ourselves to its radical lack of meaning, accepting the emptiness
that we exist in without fright or fear. Its for this reason that, increasingly, I'm
trying to burn off the conventionality that human beings have wrapped
themselvesupinasdefensesagainstthefearthatnothinginourexperiencewas
made to last and that we are just vulnerable, weak, physical beings. It wasn't
madetolastandwearethosebeings.Andthat'swhatwehavetoaccept.

Allthingsmustpass.

Wednesday

So I'm walking along the grey streets of Neuklln, a place some might mistake
for Istanbul, for the umpteenth time and I'm dragging my feet. I have nowhere
to rushtoandnothingornoonetorushfor.I'maimlesslyamblingalongandmy
mind is doing the same thing. My mind jumps from eventtoeventfromthelast
few weeks, the people I've talked to online (the only people I talk to, in other
words), the things I've read or watched. I start to relate this back to my now
overtquestforanunderstandingofallthingshuman.

The first thing thatsticksandmakesmethink"Ineedtowriteaboutthat"isthis

ever morepartisanworldofours.Thesedaysitseemstobemoreimportantthat

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you are part of a certain culture, wear a certain brand of training shoes or
identify with a particular sports or film icon than that you are a human being.
Read or watch any debate anywhere and what counts is what side you are on
not the fact that you are, by almost every measure, the same as everyone else
in the debate. And yet somehow your views on any narrowly defined topic are
more defining of who you are than everything else about you. We have divided
andmicromanagedourselvesintoneverendingcliquesandcreatedanynumber
of identities which wearedeterminedtodefendtothedeath,comewhatmay.It
does not matter that I am a human being and so are you. Being amerehuman
being does not seem to count anymore (unless its "humans or animals" or
"humans or nature"). No, what counts is that I am this identity that I have
createdoutofthinairandthatyouarenot.

I don't really know when shared humanity stopped mattering but I mourn its
loss. Instead, now, depending on who I talk to, I will be too liberal, too
conservative, too white, not white enough, too atheist, toospiritual,tooprothis
and too against that... and on and on and on. If I were King none of this would
be the case. Everyone would be strictly denominated "HUMAN BEING" and that
would be enough. And would that be so bad? Would I have broken some
unbreakable taboo by helping someone who strongly does not selfidentify with
me? Would they make themselves as nothing by seeing someone else as a
person just like them with needs and wants and drives and hopes and dreams?
Does it matteriftheseareforthesamethingsornot?Arepeoplejustbundlesof
beliefs and nothing more? Do agendas trump beating hearts and brains with
firing synapses? Is it somehow sacred that we must rigidly order ourselves
according to those who agree with us, delineating each other automatically as
insiders or outsiders? What dumb creatures we are to act this way. It often
seems that many of us only ever talk to "people like us" and despise everyone
else,aforcedsolipsismofthewillfullyandselfservinglydumb.

Its my intuition thatnotmanyofusspendanytimethinkingaboutourhumanity

and what it might mean. And that's a great shame for our survival certainly
relies on the cooperation of much more than "people like us". A population that
does not set aside time to think can be convinced of a great many things
because it has neither the defenses nor the habits of thought to think about
things when they are put to them. For example... there is a myth abroad that
some people spread. This myth says that human beings, deep down (and you
might have to goprettyfardown),arereallyveryaltruisticbeings.Thesepeople
say that it is really our true human nature to help each other and look out for
each other. Now if someone tells you this what I suggest you do is tell them
politely but firmly (in a waythatleavestheminnodoubtthatyouareconvinced
otherwise) that this idea is false. They might come backatyouwithstudiesand
mumbojumbo.Butitsfalse.Andhere'swhy.

Ofcourseitistruethatpeoplecananddolookoutforeachother.Altruisticacts,
in which the perpetrator doesn't think of the profit or loss for themselves at all,
are perfectly possible and, I'm sure, happen myriad times every day. Some
people are more altruistic than others and even become known for it. Mother
Theresa is a popular and well known example there. There are millions more
unknown ones. But is it true to say that because people can do good that they
therefore are good? It is right to say that because you can do something then

61
you are that something? I don't think so. People can equally do very badthings
and sometimes the same people can give good from one hand and horror from
theother.Andthisisbecausedoingisn
otbeing.

It is just as dumb to say that we are base andselfservingasitistosayweare

altruistic, of course. These are all possibilities for each one of us but we are
neither. The state of nature, I believe, is to put the possibilities into our hands
but to leave the actualities to how things work out in the moment. Every "bad
person" has done good andevery"goodperson"hasdonebad.Isthereanyway
to make anaccountingofthesethings?Idon'treallythinksoandI'mdubiousas
to why you would bother. Spiritual or secular "good human being"badgesseem
pretty meaningless to me. Much moreimportant,tomymind,iswhetherhuman
beingsarehelpedandrespectedordisdainedandignored.

Of course, I hope you will agree with me that all we human beingsarebasically
the same (at least, in isolation we are). Out there in the world things get more
complicated though by politics and cultural and sociological factors. Some are
born to families who have nothing and some spend their lives sipping
champagne on yachts from cradle to grave. Some find themselves born into
culturally privileged circles and some find themselves with an extra burden or
two on their backs. The world, as anyone with a brain cell knows, is not fair. Is
it, I wonder, a goal of human beings to make it fair? Should it be? Or is this a
naive, utopian agenda? To go a step further, is one person's utopian agenda
some other person's naked grab for power? It is, for example, (rightly or
wrongly) often said of feminists that what they actually want is not equality but
simplytobeinchargeinstead.

For myself, I go back to this belief that once you strip everything away there's
no difference between you, me, our neighbors, their neighbors, their relatives,
my relatives and every stranger you might evermeet.We'realljustsorryassed
sacks of shit who found ourselves dropped off on planet Earthforawhile.Enjoy
the food and don't go onthegrass.Stripusnakedandstandusallinafieldand
the petty differences are gone. We're just flesh, blood, bone. But that's not the
reality most of us see. Instead we see the need tobeateachother'sthroats,to
foster enmity, to beagainstsomeandforothers.Buttherewearejustfleshand
blood and bone and yetacoupleofbillionofusaregoingtolivewithnothingfor
all of our lives. Many of the rest of us will struggle to keep up with the Joneses
so that we can fit in and be like everyone else. How's that for an inspiring life
agenda? A very few (in numerical terms) at the top are never going to know a
day's suffering and get the best a human being can currently get. And they are
going to own most of everything too. So you tell me how is it that a few
thousandpeoplecankeepBILLIONSlivingthisway?

There's enough to go around for everyone. That much seems clear. But we
human beings haven't shared everything out fairly. This world (and this really,
truly baffles me every time I think about it) has put various PRINCIPLES above
human lives. If you have no food you might very well starve because our
economic principles tell us that if you can't earn money you die. Howaboutyou
are sick? If you can'tbuydrugsortreatmentthenyoulivewithit(assumingyou
don't die of it). At what point did we humans decide that principles were more
important than people? At what point did one kind of human life become more

62
important than another? Maybe I'm losing it here but this just strikes me as
inhuman and insane. Someone is genuinely hungry? FEED THEM! Someone is
sick?MAKETHEMBETTER.Whyareweworryingaboutmoneyoverarealhuman
life? Of course,therearethosewhowilltellyouthatsomewheresomeonehasto
pay for things. But do they? Imagine you wake up tomorrow and money as a
reality and as a concept no longer exists. And, what's more, you no longer
require any to do anything. You just do it. Everyone just carries on tomorrow
doing whattheydidtodayexceptmoneyisnownolongerapartoftheequation.
There are a few teething troubles I'll admit but not really anything more than
that. The truth is we don't need money but it serves the purposes of some to
keep it around. The human species is the species that is always fucking overits
own. These days there are those who want to ban actual cash and make
everything purely electronic. Then we won't even control our own assets
anymore.Morefuckingoverourownkind.

My own naive plea here is simply for empathy. I divine the problem as the fact
that not enough of us give a fuck about enough of the rest of us. As I wrote of
the Nazis one time, once you make others nothing like you then you can do
anything to them. Ditto the white man and the indigenous North Americans. I
can't change the world but we could together just by caring for more than
"people like us". In many ways its the simplest message of all. But also the
hardesttorealize.We'reobsessedwithourseeminglyirreconcilabledifferences.

Thursday

The telephone rings. Its the police. Am I Mr Blah Blah? Yes. Can I come to the
police station for an interview? Yes. Can I come today? Well, I dont reallywant
to. To be honest youre cutting into my masturbation time and Kate is busy
answering more moronic questions from pathetic wankers who want to get into
her knickers. Added to that, Im pretending to be one woman on Skype right
now and another woman on another website. So Im a bit tied up at the
moment. Can you not have some understanding of my circumstances? 1530
Uhr?Yes,thatwillbefine.Wiederhren.

Friday

I bet you thought theremightnotbeanentrytoday,right?Perhapsyouthought

Herr Polizei would have detained me for an extended stay? Think again! I told
them I was home all night and the lasttimeIsawherwasontheWednesdayat
the corner store and then walking back. They seem to have accepted my story.
In truth, it seems to me they have to prove I was in Maruschkas apartment on
the Friday to make anything stick and then there is the little matter of finding
her dead to say she was killed. Well, they havent found her and no one seems
abletosayIwasthere.Sothatstwopointsinmyfavour.

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Saturday

The fortuitous juxtaposition of two Tumblr posts. Above, one details various
incidents in which women were attacked, injured or even killed for rejecting a
mans advances. The point is that women can have physical consequences from
contradicting a mans wishes even where these are unwelcome or forced upon
them. Below, a suggestive picture of a nude malebearingthelegendHearinga
man moan because of you isthesexiestthingever.Thepointhereseemstobe
that the ultimate goal of heterosexual women should betheabilitytosharelove
with a man. Both seem to have been posted by women although this is the
Internetsowhoknows?Notthatthisisreallyrelevant.

Its not relevant because, in the second case, this is just one of a flood of posts
on Tumblr which are almost totally shot through with desperation to be loved.
Tumblr, in this sense, is like a selffulfilling prophecyofhurtandloneliness.Itis
full of narcissistic people who think that they deserve to be loved and that, if
they are not, something has gone terribly wrong with the world. This makes
them egotistical too in their view of their world significance. In none of this is
there ever the sense thatlifeisaboutselfconfidence,havinggoalsordreamsor
a thought through path you have chosen to walk. Life becomes a sort of
victimhood in which if you are not in a romantic relationship then you are lost
andifyouhaveitthenyouaresafe.Itsaonedimensionalviewoftheworld.

Tumblr is not shy in pointing up the opposite case either. But here women are
victims too, victims of males and particularly the male drive for power and
dominance. I dont want to get into the whole Feminism thingatthispointbutI
think its wrapped up in both examples here. In the case of male on female
violence its a very graphic and powerfulpoint.Whenawomanisinjuredoreven
killed for refusing a mans advances we can, without equivocation, sayitisboth
bad and wrong. The trouble is that is all Tumblr says. It all very whiny. Its like
the people on Twitter who all want you to sign petitions. What are petitions
going to solve? WhatareTumblrpostsgoingtosolve?Nexttimesomewomanis
being called out by a man or having her hair pulled at the bus stop or being
slapped in the street or punched inthegutareyougoingtoaskpeopletosigna
petition about it? AreyougoingtomakeaTumblrpostdecryingviolenceagainst
women? Or are you going to get your hands dirty and put your own ass on the
line? I have some previous here for when I was much younger I came upon a
man and woman arguing in the street. It occurred tomeImighthavetostepin
and do something. I stoodaroundwatchingincaseIwasneeded.Fortunately,it
all seemed to calm down after about a minute. But if it hadntIwouldhavehad
toact.Butwouldyou?

And that is what this is about: action. People today seem to think that making
some dumb post somewhere is enough. They think that they support some
cause because theyarevocalaboutit.TheoldsayingActionsspeaklouderthan
words still holds true. In fact, in the end,actionsaretheonlythingsthatspeak
at all. What really works to change things is when people become aware that
they will be physically opposed if they do something. And that means being
prepared to count the cost. It means measuring your commitment to a cause
against their commitment to a course of action. Most committed wins and the
world is full of cowards. Imagine if slavery had been opposed by a band of

64
Tumblrusing Tweeters making posts here, there and everywhere. People of
colour everywhere would still be in chains. It took an actual war to initiate
change in the USA. I dont think that too many Tweeters and Tumblr account
holders have the commitment to commit to that. A pity for them that change
does not come by Tumblr posts and tweets. But it doesnt. And it never, ever
will.Nowondertheycallitslacktivism.

And yet I cant help thinking, in a way I cantproperlyexpress,thatsomehowit

is my second example that is the real problem here, the kind of thinking which
idealizes romantic love and creates post after post making it the sole aim of
existence. This is before we get to the endless literary quotes in which flowery
people use flowery words to knit a tapestry of schmaltzy sentimentality. It isall
a fantasy and its a fantasy some people, too many people, becomebamboozled
by. They take it for real. Thereisinthesepostsaterribleidealismandafixation
withaffection.Itsaneedtobeconstantlymasturbated,metaphoricallyspeaking.
ItsaworldinwhichIamthefocusofattentionandthatfocusisconstantandfor
my pleasure. This seems to me to be a total unreality. This wouldnt be healthy
or realistic even if it could ever be true. Masturbation has its uses but its not
meant to be a permanent state of existence. Tumblr tries to make it so as a
million million people post from the void of their own empty heart. They are all
wankers in some respect. They all just want to be noticed and pleasured. They
all live, or want to live, in an equally unrealistic world which is all about them
feelingcomplete.Headsup,morons.Thatworlddoesntexist.

Sunday

My bbw persona, Jenny, is a very popular girl on a quite well known porn site.
Considering the pictures I use to illustrate her and draw in unsuspecting
followers are from a reasonably well known US pornstar of the chubby
persuasion, Im amazed my deception has remained undiscovered for so long.
She has over 2700 fans after a year on the site. I hardly ever even sign in on
this account either but every time I do another 40 or 50 men want me to add
them. I cut down thechanceofdiscoverybyonlyacceptingBritishpeopleasher
friends. If Id added everyone who requested friendship shed be nearer 5000
fans by now forwhatisacompletelyfictitiouscharacter.Iliketokeepthedeceit
going, to see how long I can get away with it. She is, by far, the most popular
characterIveyetcreated.

There are a few things to do if you want to pretend to be someone else

convincingly online. Number one is havesomepicturesofwhoyousayyouare
and the more the better. They should be in different scenarios too such as
supposedly normal people would have as well as the obvious filthy ones. Next
you have to alter these pictures so that a Google search wont lead the
inquisitive, untrustworthy searcher straight back to who they are really of. At
minimum here you should reverse the pictures but that wontalwaysbeenough
as someone suspicious enough can just reverse them back. So you should
reverse and tilt them about ten degrees. There are freely available apps or
programs that will dothisforyou.Thiswilldefeatprettymuchallsearches.Only
if the person is actually recognized will you need to worry about being

65
discoverednow.Butpleasedoremembertocheckforwatermarksoranytextin
yourpictureswhichwillalerttheobservanttothemhavingbeenreversed!

So now the picturesyouareusingcannotbefoundyoucanusethemtocreatea

character. And the great thing here is the more people buy it the more other
people will be likely to buyittoo.Crowdsbegetmorecrowds,right?Mystrategy
plays on the natureofallgreatlies:thatpeopleWANTtobelievethem.Themen
adding Jenny want to believe she is genuine and would be interested in them.
They want to be able to dream of what they could do with her. All I really have
to do is come across as a remotely real person with a real life and its plausible
enough to be believed. The pictures I use and theinterestIgeneratewilldothe
rest for me. A few judicious conversations here and there will convince some
men even more and then they will happily spread the untruth that Jenny is real
thus doing my work for me. Ive done this many times over many years and
often with the pictures of people I knew. But I get a bit more worried there as
discovery could have consequences. But then the thrill of knowing they are real
adds its own zest to proceedings. Life is most vibrantly lived only when
somethingisatstake.

At this point you may be questioning the morality of all this. But why? If you
hold to the view No harm, no foul thenwhereistheharm?AndImeanactual,
realharmherenotimaginedharmorpotentialharm.Realharm.Mypersonas,in
the main, are never revealed as false so no one feels hard done by. The people
behind the pictures who I pretend to be have never, to my knowledge, ever
realized. The men who I lie to are more than likely lying in return and almost
certainly expect disappointment. Yes, it may very well be a cesspit of lies and
deceit for the mutual satisfaction ofasmanyparticipantsaspossiblebutIwould
deny that any obvious harm resultsfromitoutsideoftheobviousselfharmthat
comes from wanting to take part in the first place. We are all our own worst
enemies. Its just another example of the compromiseddealspeoplemakeinlife
every single day in order to get by. Tut all you want but someone you know is
almostcertainlydoingittoo.

You meet all kinds of peoplechattingonpornsitesandyoucanlearnallkindsof

things. If only I were a bad person, and I dont think I am (who does?), Icould
probably have become very rich from the manipulation and exploitation
opportunities. Some people will do a lot for a chance at a big, round arse anda
pair of 40F breasts. Some are very willing to prove just howgenuinetheyare.I
have a folder full of people exposing themselves, often to more danger and
blackmail than they realize, were I more nefarious. Ive been offered money,
gifts, phone numbers, credit card numbers and much besides from people
looking for sex with a supposedly voluptuousstranger.Itsamazinghowsomeof
them will talk to you for years on the promise of something they must realize
they are never going to have. For some, even the opportunity to talk seems
enough. I could denigrate these people as sad specimens of humanity. But why
do that? Why look down on people? Look in the mirror first. Examine your own
life, actions, speech, motives. Who really has clean hands? Who really isnt just
another empty void looking for someone tomakeitmeansomethingforanhour
ortwo?

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Thursday

We stop on a path in Hasenheide and turn to face each other. We have been
holding hands for the past twenty minutes. In my confused state I cant
remember who initiated that, whether it was me trying to take thingsupalevel
or her, coyly requesting. I assume that it must havebeenme.Thatsthesortof
thing I would do. Since Id first met Maruschka face to face some forty five
minutes ago we have walked, not too quickly, through the district of Kreuzberg
from the Brandenburger Tor, across Potsdamer Platz and down Stresemann
Strae. We cross the Landwehrkanal by Hallesches Tor and cross Kreuzberg,
entering Hasenheide across from Sdstern. We walk past a group of black men
in the park whom Maruschka informs me are drug dealers. They sometimes try
to sell her stuff or hit on her. But not today. Shes with me. I wish she hadnt
told me about the drug dealers because now Im preparing to defend
Maruschkas honour. But we get past them and walk on through Hasenheide.
Nowwerefacingeachotherandareabouttokissfortheveryfirsttime.

This will be themostimportantkissIevergive.Yes,probablyever.Thiskisswill

determine if any fires get lit somewhere deep and personal inside Maruschka.It
will determineif,whenwemakeittoherapartmentinSchillerkiez,Iamtogoto
bed with her or be an unwanted and very uncomfortable guest for the next five
days. I dont know what to do, what kind of kiss to give. Should it be prim and
proper, polite? Hell no! If she thinks Im kissing her formally like shes some
unwelcome aunt or exflame, just to be polite, then Im doomed. Should I use
tongue? Maybe not at first. If I kiss her like that she might think Im overly
forward (and Im really not!). I think probably best is to start off slow, let it
develop and if she isgoingwithitthenintroducesometongue.Weareofsimilar
height as we face each other and so kissing does not require any special
contortions. We embrace, press our lips firmly together and engage in a deep,
passionatekiss.

As we pull our lips apart, time stands still. Was that good enough? Did I make
the rightimpression?Doesshehatemenow?DidItastenice?Toolatenow.The
deed is done and you have been judged.Mymemoryhasbecomeconfusedover
time. Because it was now that Maruschka held out her hand as an invitation for
the first time. It was now that we held hands and carried on walking through
Hasenheide, a smile so wide on my face that I thought I might burst. My kiss
had not doomed me forever. My kiss had been acceptable! The ice had finally
been broken after that walk through Kreuzberg during which there wereseveral
awkward silences punctuating a conversation Ive now totally forgotten. What
was said wasnt so important though, I guess. What was important was that I
was now with this woman who lived over 1000 kilometers away from me and
whomIdonlyknownforjustoverthreeweeks.

We cross Columbiadamm and skirt past the entrance of Sonnenbad Neuklln,

turning right to go along the eastern edge of Tempelhofer Feld. Once there,
Maruschka suggests we lie on thegrassawhile.Itsneitherwarmnorcoldaswe
lie down and immediately,asifweareoppositemagneticpoles,wearepulledto
turn and face each other. I look into her eyes and soon we are kissing again,
long, deep kisses like two thirsty travellers emerging from the desert who need
gulps of water. We drink deeply of each other for, clearly, we both have great

67
thirst. The nervousness of the first kiss is gone, ten minutes behind us on our
journey now. So we kiss more freely and we stare at each other in between,
really seeing each other for the first time. In just a few weeks time we will
romantically walk around this park infadingsummersunlight,acouplewholove
each other but must part, neither willing totryandmakethechangesneededin
themselves to be together. But for now we are just two souls who want to
physically experience love and psychologically feel wanted. At this point in time
ourneedisexactlythesameandwecansatisfythatneedineachother.

We dont stay kissing on the grass for long amongst the parks many visitors
who are enjoyingthisgreenpearltothesouthofBerlinscentre.Inthedistance,
the TV Tower rises in Berlins Mitte as we make for the Oderstrae exit to the
park to make our way towards Allerstrae and Maruschkas apartment. Walking
through her front door, the passage to the hinterhof in whichshelivesandthen
upthestairsislikebeinggivenatouraroundastatelyhomeforme.Forthisisa
specialplaceandIamaprivilegedvisitor.Finally,wereachthegreydoorbehind
which Maruschka lives. She opens it and we walk in. It opens onto a narrow
corridor. In truth, Maruschkas apartment is not that big. And she has a very
great possessiveness about personal space. Before coming outtoBerlinshehad
warned me that I might be banished if she felt intruded upon. But I am not
thinking about that now. I walk to the end of the corridor with her and into the
living roomwhereIdepositmybag.Isitonthewhitesofa.ThisisthesofaIhad
seen her rolling around on a couple of weeks before with a fuck me hard look
on her face. Maruschka retraces her steps and visits the bathroom which is
located midway between the front door and the living room. I look around the
roominawe.

Right now I am feeling a little bemused. This is all wonderful but feels at least
50% dreamlike. The experience is justwashingovermewhilst,simultaneously,
my inner monologue is doing overtime. Maruschka comes back and at first sits
nexttomebutthenwantstoliedownwithme.Wefidgetonthesofaasweboth
try to fit on next to each other without one of us falling off. She gets the edge
and so I hold her tight. No chance of me letting go of her! You can be sure of
that. She holds up her phone and takes selfies of us. I look terrible in them,
unshaven, a dopey, whatthefuckishappening? look on my face. Not smiling.
She, by contrast, is totally beaming. She looks utterly beautiful and thats not
something I would always say about her. But right now she is ravishing. She
kisses my cheek and takes a selfie of that too. It occurs to me that she is
probably acclimatizing herself tomypresenceandIguessIneededthattoo.But
webothknowwhatmusthappennext.

Maruschkas bedroom is completely white, virginal. She is not a tidy personand

several weeks of clothes are piled in, on and all over a basket beside her bed.
Her furniture is simple and functional as are her decorations. This is not a
bedroom that is regularly visited by anyone except Maruschka alone and she
feels no needtomakeitseemespeciallyromantic.Itsabedroomforsleepingin.
There is no dildo, vibrator or anal lube here. It may even be that Im the first
man to fuckherinthisroom.Good.Ilikethat.Likemanymen,Iexistinaworld
in which my sexual partners are virgins without sexual history previous to me.
Any stories to the contrary are merely fictions that are emotionally blocked out.
But Im not thinking about any past,fictionaloractual,rightnowatall.Weboth

68
know what has to happen. We both know what we need and, contrary to any
protestations Maruschka may make to the contrary, she did need it. And I did
too.

The lovemaking is functional and mechanical. We would fuck each other much
more meaningfully and passionately inthefollowingmonthsandshewouldeven
called me a fantastic lover a few weeks laterwhenIgaveherthebestorgasm
of her life. But right then we were two strangers meeting for the first time. I
have no idea what was going through her head. Mine was constantly asking
What am I doing here? the entire time. I cannot remember howlongwedidit
for that first time. I cant remember if I even had an orgasm. I probably didnt
but pretended to.IthinkIonlyevercameinsidehertwice(somethingshehated
and didnt understand). I just remember lying there beside her wondering what
was happening. We cuddled and I enjoyed the feel of her large, naked breasts
against me. I didnt feel consumed with lust for her. I just felt disconnected.
Perhaps the reality of the last three and a half weeks was now catching up to
me. Perhaps I needed time to lie there, processing what was happening. I felt
nothing.AndthatfeltwrongbutIcouldntchangeit.

I would have changed it if I could have because I did want to be deeply in love
with this woman. And I thinkshewantedtobeinlovewithmetoo.Butthatwas
exactly the problem. We wanted to be in love but we werent actually. We
probably never were and we never gaveeachotherenoughtimetobe.Wewere
just two impossibly illmatched and needy romantics, two people with definite
ideas about life that were never going to be compatible. I find it hard to have
regrets or wish past events away. I think that actuality, the stream of what
happens in real life, has a kind of sacredness about it. What happens, happens.
But I find myself torn about Maruschka. I treasure my memories of her. But I
sometimes wish Id never known she existed.Iwishmymemorycouldbewiped
but know it never will be. SonowImustsufferaforeverMaruschkawholivesin
my nostalgic memories. She does not deserve that. She deserves to be free of
me.And,perhaps,Ideservetobefreeofhertoo.Perhaps.

Saturday

Kate is seeming rather friendly and flirty today. Ive taken the initiative and
messaged her on Tumblr and, to my utter amazement, she has replied. It all
started when I asked her if she was posh totty. She laughed and replied that
this was not even remotely the case. This makes her all the more intriguing
because the profile I was building of her from all her little giveaways was
suggesting that she was. So she is remaining the one thing all human beings
should strive to be: interesting. Of course, not many are. Ive lost count of the
number of dull people one can easily ignore in life. It is the norm. But,
occasionally, you meet someone able to hold yourattention.Andsuchrightnow
isKate.

Of course, this doesnt blind me to her flaws. She is utterly a product of our
shallow, consumerist world. She wants attention and dollars. And probably in
that order. Sometimes when she opens her mouth it spoilsthefantasyIhavein
my head of her. At those points I wish she would just shut up andpostanother

69
picture. She pretends to be feisty and may actually have a little fight in her
(good!) but I remain unconvinced. She is brittle and weak. Given the chance,
she could easily be broken, beaten down into a narcissistic mush rolling around
in her own selfpity. In some moodsthismightevenbeanenjoyablethingtodo
but, being the marginally compassionate human being that I am, (or is it just
lazy?)itsnotsomethingImlookingtodo.

Right now Im going to take advantage of her good mood and talkativeness to
pump her for information, freely given or extracted by manipulation and
deduction, and to begin to put her in my debt. I let her know that Im the man
who has recently been buying her numerous items on her Amazon Wishlist. I
make sure that shes aware I was the man who bought her the camerashehad
especially requested as well as the knobbled dildo. I tell herImlookingforward
to my signed pictures and her used panties in return and ask if she might not
include the lipstick imprint of her kiss on the photos as well. She says that of
course she will do that and is very grateful. I ask her if there is anything else I
can get her and she mentions some sets of underwear near thetopofherlist.I
ask her to hold on and then tell her it has been done. She is effusive in her
thanks and I brush them off which, in retrospect was a bit of a giveaway to my
ulterior motives. I should have been more gracious. Not that she will notice. A
pairofnewknickersmakeshergoSquee!

Saturday

Mary loved to travel. It was a gift that had been given her by her rich lawyer
parents as they took her on exotic holidays all around the world during her
childhood. It was with great excitement that now as a young woman of only 22
she could spread her wings for herself and find new places to go on her own.
She had developed a love for EasternEuropeandespeciallyforTurkey,gateway
to Asia. Istanbul was the city she wanted to visit, charmed by the mystery of
minarets and the Bosphorus. Being still a student, Mary was not flush withcash
so she made plans to couchsurfwhilstinTurkey,anideashehadgotfromsome
hipster friendsatuni.(Couchsurfingiswherebenevolentpeopleoffertheircouch
for you to sleep on as you visit their country.) She went on a recommended
website and picked outasmallhousetostayinthathadbeenmadeavailableby
a middleaged couple with professional jobs. The couch looked decent enough
anditsatisfiedhermiddleclasssensibilities.Andsoitwasthatinthefadinglight
of an evening sun four weeks later she made her way up a short path to ablue
frontdoorinaquietersuburbofIstanbul.

A swarthy, unshavenandsomewhatoverweightTurkansweredthedoor.Hewas
of average height and he was bare chested. Baggy shorts hung in a misshapen
mess below his oversize gut. He muttered something in Turkish which Mary, for
all her love of languages, did not understand. "I'm Mary," she said,
"Couchsurfing?" she offered, quizzically. "Oh, I see, I see," said the man in
heavily accented English. "Come, come. You welcome, you welcome!" Mary
wondered if he always repeated everything he said twice. He turned and
marched away. Mary noted his back lightly covered with fine dark hair as he
walked away from her. She picked up her bag, stepped inside and closed the
door behind her. Themanhadquicklyrecededdownthehallandshethoughthe

70
must have gone off to the left at the end. She hurried along and took the last
turn to the left which led her into a dimly lit room. Because there was so little
light she had trouble making out the fine detailsoftheroombutshedidseethe
man sitting on a tatty leather couch, which looked like a poorer version of the
oneshehadseenonline.

"Mary,yousit?Yousit?"Themanpattedthecouchbesidehimandbeckonedher
to come into the room. She was tired from over a day of travel that had begun
with an early start and the invitation was enough to remind her of this and she
suddenly felt in need of a rest. She quickly walked towards the man and set
down her bag on the floor and sat beside him, leaving a polite gap between
them. "I am Emre and this is my humble home. You are welcome, you are
welcome," said the man. "Its very nice to meet you," replied Mary, with all the
genuine courtesy that those in polite families are taught from their birth. "You
must be thirsty. You want drink I think?" said Emre, and he quicklygotupfrom
couch and danced across to a cabinet from which he plucked two glasses and a
bottle. Mary was soon being handed a glass of raki. "Thank you," she said, and
took a sip. Emre looked at her and his eyes lingered on her full form. Mary was
22 and five feet ten inches tallinbarefeet.Herbreastswerefull38DDsandshe
had bright hazel eyes and a crop of short brown hair, freshly styled. Her pretty
face was framed by new glasses that she had just been prescribed and shewas
still getting used to wearing them. Her long legs and contoured lower thighs
werevisiblethankstothetrekkingshortsshehadputonthatdaytotravel.

The uncomfortable pause was broken as Emre reached for the bottle and
immediately topped up Mary's glass. "It's good, no? You like it I think!" Emre
encouraged her to drink more and Mary politely concurred, tipping back the
glass. Emre immediately topped it up again. Mary gave a polite smile then
interjected "Is your wife here too?" "My wife?" said Emre, puzzled."Oh,no.She
is not here. We are separate now. Its just you and me here," said Emre. "But
your couchsurfing page said a couple lived here," Mary continued. "Yes, Iknow.
I am sorry. I am sorry," said Emre, looking at her. "It is an old page from last
year. I do not change it yet. Its alright. Its alright." Emre topped up the glass
yet again even though there was barely a sip taken from it.Hegaveabigsmile
which revealed teeth in various states of health. Mary smiled back, ever the
polite one. Emre moved a little closer on the sofa. "So you sleep here tonight,
no?" said Emre, leaning in, watching the glass for the slightest chance to top it
up, yet again. "Yes, and tomorrow too, I hope," replied Mary. "Tomorrow I will
have a look around Istanbul and then I will move on," she continued. "That is
good,thatisgood,"saidEmre.Theglasswasfilledtothebrimoncemore.

"Youareverysexygirl,"saidEmre,ashefinallysetdownthebottleofraki."You
must have boyfriend, no?" "Well, actually, no, not at the moment," said Mary.
"What? I don't believe it!" replied Emre. "Its not possible! All the boys must be
loving you. You have very nice figure." Mary felt herself blushing profusely and
was glad of the now almost nonexistent light. There was merely a faint haze
that a window at the far end of the room was desperately trying to hold on to
which allowed for silhouettes and outlines but not much more. "No, I'm afraid
not," Mary confirmed. "But you like sex I think!" Emre laughed abigbellylaugh
and knocked back his glass of raki before setting the glass down. Mary took a
polite sip of her's, neither confirming nor denying his assertion. She felt a little

71
uncomfortable and her tiredness was being exaggerated bythealcohol."Doyou
think it would be possible for me to sleep now?" she inquired. "I've had quite a
long day." "Sure, sure" came the reply. "If you want wash or pissthebathroom
is the room overthereacrossthehall,"Emresaid,standingup."Andifyouneed
me just shout. I come running!" EmreletoutanotherloudlaughandMarycould
seeitmakinghimshakeinthenonexistentlight.

He handed her blankets andpillowsandthenheshutthedoorandsheheardhis

footsteps disappear. Down the hall a door shut. She lounged back on the sofa,
suddenly overcome with the urge tojustsleep.Shemicrodozedfortenminutes
and woke with a start feeling a little strange as if something wasn't quite right.
"I need to get to bed," she thought to herself, and began to remove her light
blue blouse with frilly cuffs that clung to her smooth white upper arms. She
undid her frilly white bra and her full breasts were released. She cupped them
and wiped the sweat from beneath them. A brief wave of sexual excitement
rushed over her giving her an innocent thrill. It was enough to perk up her full
nipples. All was quiet in the house. She felt a longing and so she sat there
cupping and squeezing her breasts, enjoying the innocent pleasure it gave her.
She remembered that she had packed a dildo and she mused over whether she
could stave off the tiredness long enough to take the pleasure from it. She
decided she could and quickly found it. She removed her shorts and pulled her
whitelaceknickerstooneside.Andthenshebegantoteaseherpussy.

The tip of the dildo brushed against her clitoris and tantalized it until she felt
wetness oozing from her. She pushed it inside her and trembled atthepleasure
of being filled. A gasp of pleasure, surely not enough to be heard in the rest of
the house, escaped. A long, drawn out "Ahhhhh" followed and the dildo
disappeared deep inside her. She began to plunge it enthusiastically with her
right hand, her left hand cupping her left breast, squeezing and teasing it. Her
pussy creamed up nicely and made the dildo slick and wet, a testament to her
growing excitement. She was enjoying the fun of these stolen moments in the
dark, Turkish night. Then she heard a sound somewhere in the room, fast and
rhythmic. It sounded like a man masturbating. She stopped dildoingherselfand
listened."Don'tstop,"saidEmrefromadarkcorneroftheroom.

"What the fuck? When did you come back in here?" gasped Mary, her hands
trying to maintain her privacy. "When you were dozing," replied anunrepentant
Emre. "I wanted to look at you. You have very big tits and a hot, sexy pussy. I
want to fuck you," he continued. He approached her and his thick, stubby
Turkish cock was erect before him. "I give you choice," he said. "Suck my cock
now or you must leave." "Leave? Where can I go now?" she shot back at him.
"Nowhere," said Emre, convinced he had made his point. He stood in front of
Mary and his pointing cock was an invitationtodoashesaid."Letmesuckyour
beautiful tits," he said, leaning forward. He pushed Mary back onto the couch
and his unshaven face was pushed between her pendulous breasts. He sucked
them feverishly, paying especial attention to the big, hard nipples. "You are hot
slut! Yes! Yes!" he said and then he pushed her down on herbackandgaveher
titsafewheftyslaps."Iwantyounow!"

He hoisted his Turkish bulk ontopofher,hisstubbyTurkishcockfindingitsway

between her moist and sensitive flaps. His back arched instinctively and he

72
started fucking her enthusiastically. She moaned, half in protest and half in
pleasure, as his dick penetrated her sacred hole.Shewastiredandtherakithat
Emre had been very careful to top up in the glass was now taking effect. She
didn't bother to struggle and, instead, let the fat Turkish pervert take his
enjoyment of her. He was poundingherasmuchashecouldandhecalledhera
white slut and spat full in her face. Then, removing his now wet dick from her
warm hole, he stood up in front of the sofa and grabbed her legsbytheankles.
Pulling her ass towards the edge of the sofa, he put her anklesonhisshoulders
and his dick probed between her peachy ass cheeks. She looked at him with a
mixture of surprise and fear. No, surely he wasn't going for the asshole?Buthe
was. He spat on her again, his spittle flecking her big tits with moisture and his
dick eased into her behind, helped along by the cum she had leaked down
betweenhercreamywhitethighs.

Having ploughed her rear for a few minutes Emre wanted to cum. He eased his
cock out and told Mary to kneel before him. "You really earning my couch now,
bitch. You want tostaythenightnowyouswallowme!"Shefloppedforwardand
knelt before him and the stubby Turkish cock, now slick with all kinds of
lubrication, was thrust towards her mouth. As she began to suck gently he
suddenly grabbed her head with both hands and fucked her mouth forcefully. "I
want cum!" he said. Mary instinctively grabbed the back of Emre's legs,
steadying herself as she took the face fucking. Suddenly, her head was jerked
back and Emre's right hand slapped her fullontheleftsideofherface."Suckit,
bitch!" he said. Hiscockwasthrustbackinandshesuckedasenthusiasticallyas
she could. "Yes! Yes! Keep going. I cum! I cum!"AndMary'smouthwasflooded
with Turkish delight. She coughed and choked. Some spilled out down her chin.
Emre took his cock and wiped it all overherface."Igocleanupnow,filthyslut.
Seeyouinmorning!"

Sunday

Let me introduce you to a remarkable man called Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a
20th Century Viennese psychologist who founded a form of therapy called
Logotherapy, a form of existential analysis which was called by some the "Third
Viennese School of Psychotherapy" after those of Freud and Adler. Frankl was
also Jewish at a time when it was not a good idea to be Jewish in Austria. His
burgeoning career was curtailed with the Anschluss between Germany and
Austria in 1938 and he was disbarred from treating Aryan patients by the Nazis
and restricted to working in one hospital in Vienna, the only one Jews were still
allowed into. Already in the 1930s he had gained experienceworkingwithmany
women who had socalled suicidal tendencies. In 1942 he was sent to a
concentration camp and he would remain in them (including Auschwitz and a
subcamp of Dachau) until liberated by the Americans in1945.Hewasassigned
to various medical facilities were he tried to help fellow inmates with their
mental health and helped set up suicide watches. His mother, brother and wife,
whom he had only married in 1941, would not survive the war and were
murdered by the Nazis in various camps. All in all, only a sister of his survived
WorldWar2asshehademigratedtoAustralia.

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As a result of his experiences, Frankl wrote a book called Nevertheless,SayYes
To Life: A Psychologist Experiences The Concentration Camp (originally in
German, but translated into English as Man's Will to Meaning). Thisbook,which
became popular, selling millions of copies, detailed some of his experiences in
the camps but, more importantly, his psychological ideas.Franklbelievedthatit
was important for the human being to find meaning in all forms of life and all
possible forms of existence. He identified lack of meaning as the paramount
existential and psychological stressinhumans.Itismybelief,inlinewiththatof
Frankl, that we all have what he terms a will to meaning. Shortcircuiting his
psychological explanation of this phenomenon in the extreme, Frankl believes
that we all need a why in our lives, much as, in another context, Friedrich
Nietzsche did too. When this is missing, according to Frankl, we manifest
disorder, when present then things all hang together. For Frankl this was
primarily an existential discovery, something he learnt whilst enduring the
horrors of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Subsequently, he
verified this discovery and put it to psychotherapeutic use throughout a
successful career after the war in psychology via his psychological theory,
Logotherapy.

Logotherapy is a meaningcentered psychotherapy. The name comes from

Frankls appropriation of the Greek word Logos (which isthewordJohn'sGospel
uses of Jesus when it opens by saying "In the beginning wastheWord"."Word"
there translates "Logos") which he translates as meaning and the therapy, in
hisownwords,

focusesonthemeaningofhumanexistenceaswellasonmanssearchforsuch
ameaning.AccordingtoLogotherapy,thisstrivingtofindameaninginoneslife
istheprimarymotivationalforceinMan.

This meaning, for Frankl, is unique and specific in that it must and can be
fulfilled by the human subject alone only then does it achieve a significance
which will satisfy a person's own will to meaning. Frankl disagrees with other
psychologists who contend that meanings and values are "nothing but defense
mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations" (i.e. Freud). Frankl argued
that he would not be willing to live merely for the sake of his "defense
mechanisms", nor would he be ready to die merely for the sake of his "reaction
formations". Man, Frankl suggested, is able to live,andeventodie,forthesake
of his ideals and values though. And so Frankl put meaning at the heart of the
human psychology. In my own various wanderings this is a place I hadcometo
as well and so it was interesting to read Frankl'sworkforthefirsttimesome15
yearsago.

Frankl argues that the meaning oflifediffersfrompersontoperson,fromdayto

day and fromhourtohour.Whatmatters,therefore,isnotthemeaningoflifein
general but rather the specific meaning of a persons life atagivenmoment.To
put the question in general terms would becomparabletothequestionposedto
a chess champion: "Tell me,Master,whatisthebestmoveintheworld?"Butas
Frankl said, there simply is nosuchthingasthebestorevenagoodmoveapart
from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of ones
opponent. Frankl thought that the same holds for human existence. One should
not search for an abstract meaning of life because, to quote him, "everyones

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task is as unique as istheirspecificopportunitytoimplementit".Psychologically
speaking, Frankl believed that the human subject thrives in a situation of
tension, a tension which finds its release (and maybe even its resolution and
purpose) in being directed towards a worthwhilegoal.Thistensionisinherent
in the human being and meaning is found in striving and struggling at the
call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled. You might want to seethisin
terms of a human being's future. Each of us want a future populated with
significant events, things whichholdsomemeaningandpurposeforus,afeeling
that life is for somethingorgoingsomewhere.Whenthisislackingpsychological
problemsbeginandwecanfallpreytoemptinessandaformofnihilism.

For Frankl, echoing some thoughts of philosophical and literary existentialists,

although he was never affiliated with any of them, all this is set against an
existential background of contingency and choice. Frankl believed that at the
beginning of human history humanity lost some of the basic animal instincts in
which an animals behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such
security, like Paradise, is closed to humanity forever humanity has to make
choices that other, less developed animals will never have to make. But this
transitoriness of our existence, as he calls it, does not leadstraighttonihilism
for Frankl. What it does do is constitute our responsibleness for everything
hinges upon our realizingtheessentiallytransitorypossibilitiesoflife.InFrankl's
psychology the human subject constantly makes their choice concerning the
mass of present potentialities andwhichofthesewillbecondemnedtononbeing
and which will be actualized. The question then is which choice will be made an
actuality once and forever, an immortal "footprint in the sands of time" that
makes it part of our identity and psychology? At any moment, the human
subject must decide, for better or for worse, whatwillbethemonumentoftheir
existence,whattheywillstandfor.

To this effect, Frankl pronounces that having been is the surest kind of being
and he promotes responsibleness, as many others tagged "existentialist" do.
But since each situation in life represents a challenge to the human being and
presents a problem for them to solve, the question of the meaning of life may
actually be reversedaccordingtoFrankl.Ultimately,thehumanbeingshouldnot
ask what the meaning of life is, but rather must recognize that it is they
themselves who are asked. In a word, each person is questioned by life and
only that person can answer to life by answering for their own life to life you
can only respond by being responsible for yours. Thus, Frankl's Logotherapy
sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence. Thus, we have a
psychology of will to meaning that finds itself nurtured by taking responsibility,
in which the human subject is inevitably addressed by the world and in which
they must gobeyondthemselvestofindfulfillmentandpurpose.Itisthiskindof
thinking that I find suggestive and which has chimed with my own lifelong
search for meaning and purpose. Ironic, then, that "the meaning of life" might
actuallybeamatterof"yourmeaningoflife"ormakingthingsmeanatall.

It is worth noting that for Frankl everything comes down totakingresponsibility

for yourself once more. In covering a number of existential topics in my recent
entries we have seen this idea crop up over and over again, the idea that the
only way to live an authentic life with any sense of purpose is to become
responsible for it. We saw, for example, when discussing "authenticity" that the

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bad faith which just lets things happen was not an option if we wanted to live
lives true to ourselves. It is surely easy to see how Frankl would absolutely
agree with that assessment even though he was a psychologist concerned with
real people's actual mental health rather than a writer or philosopher. And so it
seems to me that this idea of taking responsibility seems to have the
recommendation of crossdisciplinary assent. I have formaybethelast20years
myself flirted with writing a book about "meaning" but I have never felt that I
had either the patience, the time or the wit to get a handle on, what seems to
me to be, such a massive subject. Of course, the idea of a "meaning of life" is
naive and unworkable. It ignores people's specificity as Franklsaid.Buttheidea
of "our meaning", or "meaning for us", is very persuasive and is something I'm
still trying to figure out and formulate. How that works has always fascinated
me. Because I have always been searching for mine. Reading Frankl hashelped
me to seethatthatisnotcrazy.Indeed,itmightevenbeessentialtomymental
health!

Franklwrites:

Iconsideritadangerousmisconceptionofmentalhygienetoassumethatwhat
Manneedsinthefirstplaceisequilibrium,or,asitiscalledinbiology,
homeostasis,i.e.,atensionlessstate.WhatManneedsisnotatensionlessstate
butratherthestrivingandstrugglingforaworthwhilegoal,afreelychosentask.
Whatheneedsisnotthedischargeoftensionatanycostbutthecallofa
potentialmeaningwaitingtobefulfilledbyhim.

So, one should not search for an abstract meaningoflife.Oneshouldsearchfor
their specific one,answeringthisneedforacreativetensioninhumanexistence.
Life, Frankl seems to concede, is a state of struggle, a struggle for meaning
waiting to be fulfilled. I, for myself, can see aspects of the absurd here for to
seek the meaning isnottofinditandwealreadyknowthatahumanlifeisnota
record of unbroken success in one's goals in any case. Frankl nevergoesasfar,
in his theory of takingresponsibilityforyourlifethisway,assayingwhoorwhat
you should be responsible to (it could be society, your own conscience or other
things) but he does find in this idea of responsibility a way to put the meaning
he finds necessary for a healthy human life back into the heart of a human
being. It is also worth notingthatFrankldoesnotmakeallthisaboutsomeone's
own private drama in their head either. Frankl does not believe that a healthy
human being can be such aclosedsystem.Itisininteractionwiththeworldand
in projecting beyond oneself that one becomes actualized as an individual. For
Frankl, meaning is found by doing, by experiencing andbytheattitudewecarry
withus,throughwhateverexperiencesweencounter.

Frankl knew, from bitter personal experience, from seeing those in the camps
being led to their deaths, from being around those who wanted to die most
fervently themselves to spare them the intolerable burden of making sense of
unending atrocity, the very depths which it is possible for a human soul to sink
into. He must have many times feared that his own life was about to be forfeit
and had to bearthepainofknowingnearlyeveryoneofhisclosestrelativeshad
been murdered. So he knew more than anyone that life is suffering. He spent a
life and a career trying to counsel and assist people with theirs. So it seems to

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me important when he writes in Man's Will to Meaning that "suffering ceases to
be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning". Ithinkthishitsthenailrighton
the head. Frankl knew that life is transitory and uncertain and that this can
become a psychological and not just a philosophical issue. He knew that life is
finite and our freedom is restricted. But he also knew that we have a possibility
to become who we are, another theme of Nietzsche's. In his own way, Frankl is
speaking about the responsibility and authenticity that I have written about
before. He issayingthattobeahealthyhumanbeingistobeactiveinyourown
interest and that the only real way to be is to have been you at all. So the
questionweallfaceis"Areyou,you?"

"Nevertheless, say yes to life!" said Frankl. Is this not an echo of Camus'
"revolt"?

Monday

"Why has the advent of nihilism become necessary?" writes Friedrich Nietzsche
in the preface he prepared for a book he never finished writing, The Will to
Power:AttemptAtARevaluationofAllValues.Heanswershisownquestion:

Becausethevalueswehavehadhithertothusdrawtheirfinalconsequence
becausenihilismrepresentstheultimatelogicalconclusionofourgreatvalues
andidealsbecausewemustexperiencenihilismbeforewecanfindoutwhat
valuethese"values"reallyhad.


I feel empty, devoid of purpose, meaning,reason.TheInternet,reflectionofthe
worst humanity has to offer, is oppressive to look at today. I see through
everything.Itsinsubstantialflimsinessisrevealed.Nihilism.Nietzscheis,without
doubt, the most thoughtprovoking person I have ever come into contact with,
albeit that it is through his written works. Nietzsche is an enigma, a prodigy, a
prophet of the future and, in his own words, a hammer. You will be able to tell
that I amafan.ThisisprimarilybecausewhenIreadhisworksforthefirsttime
it was like suddenly finding someone who understands what you've been
thinking and feeling all this time when no one else did. That moment is
simultaneously a confirmation that you are not mad and the recognitionthat,at
last, there is someone you cancommunicatewithwhodoesn'tgiveyoubackthe
blank stare which signifies they have no idea what you are talking about.
Nietzsche, like WittgensteinandHeidegger,isoneofthosethoughtfulindividuals
who forces you to read him slowly for it is very likely that every sentence you
read will generate 3 or 4 thoughts and soitwilltakeyouanhourtoreadevena
paragraph. Not good if you are needing to read him for anexaminthemorning
butajoyifyouhaveallthetimeintheworld.AndwhatexactlydoIhavetodo?

I want to discuss Nietzsche's pathological diagnosis upon life itself, nihilism, for
which his philosophy is to be an attempt at a cure. Nihilism is a slippery word
with numerous meanings. It is easy to conflate them or misunderstand and so
loseyourselfinatangledweb.Forexample,Nietzschehimselfdiagnosesnihilism
in thevaluesofsocietyandinthehistoricaldirectionsocietyhastaken...andyet

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he is himselfoftenaccusedbyothersofbeing"anihilist".Thisisonlysobecause
two different uses of the term are being used. When people accuse Nietzsche
himself of being a nihilist they usually mean that he is espousing or
recommending the idea (with which they do not agree) thatlifehasnomeaning
which is properly a kind of existential nihilism. This is not nihilism as Nietzsche
himself often discusses it and it is not the sense of the term in the way that he
used it in the preface from which I quoted. I am now going to try and explain
what Nietzsche means by nihilism there, why he thought that nihilism was
sickness that needed curing and why some others might accuse him of being
thatthinghediagnosedintheworldatlarge.

Nietzsche does himself define nihilism as he uses the term in the written notes
that he keptfortheprojectofrevaluingallvaluesthathenevergottocomplete.
He describes nihilism as "the radical repudiation of value, meaning and
desirability" and answers his own question "What does nihilism mean?" withthe
answer "That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking:
'why?' finds no answer." This might be seen to be related to the existential
nihilism which others accuse him of but its a little bit more complicated than
that. Nietzsche concentrates on values which up until his time, as he traces
using what has come to be called his "genealogical" method, had been based in
the Christian moral view of the world. It can be seen that this view is anchored
and guaranteed, ultimately, by the Christian god and this sets up all kinds of
notions about reality and truth and knowledge. In short, this positsthatthereis
a way things are. When Nietzschetalksabout"morality"astheproblemitisthis
thinkingthatthereisawaythingsarethatisinhissights.

As can be seen, however, in the second quote I just used where Nietzsche
defines nihilism himself, Nietzsche is not buying this. We see it clearly when he
says that "The aim is lacking". What does this mean? Nietzsche saysitloudand
clear in another of his books when he declares the death of god: "God is dead
and we have killed him". For Nietzsche, nihilism is a historical process, awayof
living, that way of living which is under the auspices of some outside worldthat
is conceptually guaranteed because it is believed that there is a way thingsare.
Thisworldisamatterofoverarchingexplanationsforeverything(suchasGodor
"the real world" or Objectivity or Truth) and of goals or aims or unities or
"being". Nietzsche argues that these things are inimical to the world we live in.
They are false.Theydonotexist.Theyaredead.Andsotheycanonlyinevitably
lead to nothing. They are nihilistic. For Nietzsche there is only a world of
becoming, a world that we comprehend having lived it, backwards (so
Kierkegaard). This world is always our own and lived only ever from the inside
and without an outside. There is a German word for the English word
"existence". That wordis"dasein".ItisobsessedoverbyMartinHeideggerinhis
seminal book Being and Time but Nietzsche sometimes usesittoo."Dasein"isa
conflation of two German words, "da" which means "there" and "sein" which
means "being". "Dasein", which we translate as "existence," literally means
"being there". This term is a perfect way of understanding how Nietzsche
understands life and existence: it is a matter of a process you take part in and
notanobjectyoucanobservefromoutside.

So for Nietzsche for existence to have an external goal or for there to be any
kind of totality which arbitrates things is nihilistic because these things do not

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exist AND because they are external to the process of life which is all there is.
For him, then, both theideaofhavingsuchagoalandtheprocessoffollowingit
are nihilistic and, more than that, actually do real work in bringing nihilism
about. He says elsewhere that in doingthisitislikeputtingyourshouldertothe
plough yourself in order to sow more and more nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is
only a world of change and difference (that world which American philosopher
Richard Rorty calledoneof"timeandchance")withnoimaginaryarbitratingreal
world to escapeinto.Nietzschesaysthatourvalues,theverythingswehave,as
a society,takentoourhearts,arethethingswhichhavecausedthisandmakeit
inevitable. God is dead but we are still held in the sway of and acting out a
theisticmoralityof"thereal".

In theprefacetohisbookthatIbeganbyquotingfromhedescribesthetomeas
a "gospel ofthefuture"because,havingseenwherewehavecomefromandthe
things we hold to our hearts,hebelievesthatitcannotbeanyotherway.Godis
dead. And bythathemeansnotjusttheChristiangodhewasprimarilyreferring
to but any other "god" that sets out to escape the world of time and chance,
change and difference, which is all there is. That could be something like a
scientific, materialist world of "objective truth" in modern parlance. For
Nietzsche, this is just another nihilistic projecttotryandescapetheonlykindof
life we have. For Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins and The Archbishop of Canterbury
are essentially doing the same thing. One holds God the ultimate guaranteeing
value and the other gives Truth the same compliment. Both are following the
same nihilistic project, both think there is a real world thatarbitrates.Nietzsche
diagnoses in both a moralistic impulse: there must be a truth,theremustbean
absoluterightandwrong.

Nietzsche himself is not blind to the reasons for this and why this form of life
came to be. One of his great skills, later built on by French academic, Michel
Foucault, was in building intellectual histories of how various phenomena came
to be, mining the past for reasons for the way we have become. Nietzsche
himself combines philosophical, psychological, historical and cultural interests
and loves biological metaphor. He is, as he has been called, truly a philosopher
of life. He writes that this moral interpretation of the world which leads to a
nihilistic end was a means of preservation that prevented human beings from
despising themselves in their lowly state and from despairing of knowledge,
something we often see today when objective realists enter debate with those
whohaveeschewedthisposition.Theyliterallyfearforhumanityifthingscannot
be in some way externally guaranteed. Nietzsche simply says they cannot and
that this objective observer view of life is simply false. Nietzsche thinks thatlife
and existence are revealed only to situated participants, not to external
observers, and with that we lose any rights to overarching theories, external
truthsandnihilisticfictions.ForNietzsche:

Thisistheantinomy:Insofaraswebelieveinmoralitywepasssentenceon
existence....

Atbottom,Manhaslostthefaithinhisownvaluewhennoinfinitelyvaluable
wholeworksthroughhimi.e.,heconceivedsuchawholeinordertobeableto
believeinhisownvalue....

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 Existencehasnogoaloraimanycomprehensiveunityinthepluralityofevents
islacking:thecharacterofexistenceisnot"true",isfalse...

thecategories"aim,""unity,""being"whichweusedtoprojectsomevalueinto
theworldwepulloutagainandsotheworldlooksvalueless.


IcansumallthisupnobetterthanNietzschedoeshimself:

Finalconclusion:Allthevaluesbymeansofwhichwehavetriedsofartorender
theworldestimableforourselvesandwhichthenprovedinapplicableand
thereforedevaluatedtheworldallthesevaluesare,psychologicallyconsidered,
theresultsofcertainperspectivesofutility,designedtomaintainandincrease
humanconstructsofdominationandtheyhavebeenfalselyprojectedintothe
essenceofthings.WhatwefindhereisstillthehyperbolicnaivetyofMan:
positinghimselfasthemeaningandmeasureofthevalueofthings.


All this is to say that, for Nietzsche, life as we live it, as we experience it from
inside, inoursituation,fromourdasein,istheonlymeasure.Whatweneedisto
use this to measure value and not the external fictions that are explicable in
terms of their contingency but are now, as God, pronounced dead. This life of
becoming becomes a matter of doingnotseeing.Wedonotneedmoreobserver
metaphors or "theories" whichcomesfromtheGreekverb"theoria"tosee.For
Nietzsche, values are our conditions of life, our possibilities and opportunities.
They are specific tousinoursituationandareofnouseforothersoringeneral.
So for Nietzsche to have a goal of life, to posit unities or totalities, toimaginea
"way things are," is to be nihilistic and toembracenihilismwithagreathugand
welcome it and place it at the centre of your world like a black hole. Not only
does he see that as a sickness, he finds it illusory and selfdeceptive. On the
other hand, that nihilism which is there, the lackofthesethings,therelianceon
self and your own form of life which is all you have, is not to be denied for
decay, destruction and waste are a natural part of the limitedness of biological
life we see all around us. They are every bit as much a part oftheprocessasis
bloomingorgrowing.Negationcannotitselfbenegatedandnorshoulditbe.

"The time has come when we have to pay for having been Christians for two
thousand years", writes Nietzsche. He does not just mean in the theological
sense. He does mean that wherever you put something else that is outside of
yourself in God's place then you are still, in some sense, a Christian and, for
him,thatisanihilisticsicknessuntodeath.

In cosmic terms each of us really only livesamoment,ourmoment,ourdasein.

So all we are really ever asked todoinlifeiswitness,behonest,testify.Noone
is asking us for an observer's point of view or a truth from outside about the
totality of it all. There is no one who could. Indeed, as Nietzsche shows, these
are nihilistic fictions and impossibilities, things that merely serve a felt human
purpose. In the end, we are justaskedtobehonesttoourownformoflife,true
to ourselves. We are to affirm the moment that ourlifeis.Wearetocreatethat
liberating testimony that breaks free of the fictions that bind life, a constant

80
overcoming of the nihilism that Nietzsche diagnoses.Thiswillchangeeverything
for, as Nietzsche saw, in order to get rid of the stench of this nihilism we must
reevaluate all values, change the conditions of life itself. But if we are to break
freeofthepathologicallifethatNietzschediagnosesthenw emust.

Tuesday

Howevermanyyearsyoulive,enjoythemall,
butremember,thedaysofdarknesswillbemany:
futilityawaitsyouattheend.

Wednesday

Have you ever done anything just because you could, just to see what happens
next?

I want to talk about the "trickster" figure that iscommontothemyth,literature

and culture of many societies throughout history. We all know of some of these
figures. In North American indigenous cultures the figures of Raven or Coyote
come to mind. From Norse mythology we have Loki. From Japanese mythology
there is Susanoo. The West African peoples have the spider trickster, Anansi.
In the bible Satan functions in a book like Job as god's divinely sanctioned
trickster whose job it is to make men stumble. Homer wrote The Odyssey and
gave us the trickster Odysseus. But its not just in history that tricksters exist.
We can make ourowntoo.DoctorWhoisatrickster.SoisBugsBunny.TheBBC
version of Sherlock Holmes is a trickster too. These are new myths and new
storieswhicharewovenfromthetapestryoflife.

So what exactly is atrickster?Thisisasubjectofdiscussionforthosewhostudy

literature and myth. An influential book on the subject I didnt quite read
(Mythical Trickster Figures by Hynes and Doty) narrowed it down to six
identifiable features, a number of which it is highly likely trickster figures will
have.Itsworthourwhiletohaveaquicklookoverthese.

1. Trickster figures are fundamentally ambiguous and anomalous characters.

They are amoral and do not recognise boundaries of taste and decency or of
right and wrong.Ifyoureadstoriesoftricksterfiguresyouwillfindthattheyare
capable of conventionally abhorrent acts all in the name of their fun. (Today I
read of a trickster who tricked bears into eating their own children.) Tricksters
are rule breakers and boundary ignorers. They do not see themselves as within
any society bound by conventions nor do they recognise conventional
expectations. Indeed, they will often go out of their way to cause offence. They
arethosewhopeeinthepooljustbecausetheycan.Soundfamiliar?

2. Tricksters are deceivers and game players. Tricksters love to fool people,
often with elaborate tricks, and often the result of this is that they are made
fools of themselves. But they don't care. Tricksters know that they are not
omnipotent. Often they will set things in trainthattheydonotcontrolanditwill
run away from them with disastrous results for anyone in proximity to the

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events. Butthetrickster,eventhoughtheylooklikeafool,willjustlaughandgo
ontothenexttrick.

3. Tricksters are shapeshifters. Often this isthoughtofphysically.Forexample,

Loki appearsasmaleandfemaleinNorsemythsandevengivesbirthtoahorse,
the eightlegged Sleipnir! I also think of this in metaphorical terms as well
though. Tricksters are tricky and cautious in presenting themselves so thatthey
can appear to be many things, often at once to different people in the same
situation.Theyaremastersofdisguiseandgreatactors.Soundfamiliar?

4. Tricksters are "situationinverters". What this means is that they will take a
conventional situation or some piece of conventional wisdom and turn it
completely on its head. This aspect to their nature is not only due to their
impishness but also to a possible social function that they see themselves
playing. Tricksters are the embodiment of chaos and they want to show that no
rule is absolute and that, in fact, all rules are made up,meretoolsonlyasgood
astheiruses.

5. Tricksters are messengers and imitators of the gods. Often tricksters have
been seen as quasigods. Even though I am a very strict atheist (more than
saying there is no god I maintain, at least argumentatively, that gods are
impossible) it is easy to see in reading trickster tales how semidivine powers
are often ascribed to these figures. More important to me here is that tricksters
can be seenashavingsomethingpertinenttosayaboutlifeinthegrandscheme
of things as we might imagine gods would. They are figures which force us to
ask "How can they exist?" and "Why are they like this?". This, inturn,forcesus
to asklargerquestionsaboutlifeitselfmuchaswhenterriblethingshappenthey
forceustolookatabiggerpicture.

6. Tricksters engage in sacred and lewd bricoleur. "Bricoleur" is a French word

which means "to make things up" in the sense of what we British call
"doityourself" or "DIY" and trickstersareabsolutemastersatmakingthingsup
or entering a situation and immediately fabricating something from what is
immediately to hand. Often tricksters will do this sexually or with sacredthings.
In mythology there are lots of tales of phalluses and scatological humour. We
read tales oftricksterswhodressasnunsinordertoenterthenunneryandthen
proceed to have sex with all the nuns. We also hear of tales of tricksters with
huge penises who, through their own tricks coming back on them, have them
made much smaller.TheGermantrickster,TillEulenspiegel,usedtolovetotrick
people into touching shit or to outrage the population by baring his backside to
them.

In addition to these sixpointsfromthebookIreferredtothereisafurtherpoint

or two to make here. Trickstersarethosewhorelyontheirclevernessandthis
is often a cleverness specifically with words or speech. They are expert
manipulators. They have guile and cunning. Words are often their tools. The
Joker, Jack Sparrow and Bart Simpson are modern fictional tricksters which
demonstrate this. Its once again worth pointing out that tricksters are not
"heroes" in any traditional sense. Their status is just another example of how
ambiguous they are asfiguresinthemselves.Forexample,theMarvelantihero,

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Deadpool. They say and do often just what comes into their head at the time
andfollowwhereverfatetakesthem.

And now its dawned on me that a trickster is exactly what I am. Now I don't
bare my arse in the town square and I have no desire to trick my way into a
nunnery and, if you'll forgive my impishness, my penis is already smallenough.
But am I morally ambiguous? Yes. Do I like to trick and deceive people just for
amusement's sake? Yes. Do I like to appear as different things to different
people? Yes. Do I like to turn things on their head? Absolutely. Do I have
something to say about the way the world is and its ultimate (to me) lack of
consequence? Of course! Do I make things up and overstep the bounds oftaste
and decency? All too often. So I am a trickster. But I didn't choose to be one.
ItsjustthewayI'mmadeandthepathI'vewalked.

Of course, unlike many of the trickster tales, I serve no social function (as, for
example, clowns and jesters did). Often cultures will tell tales to explain how
they got where they are or how things come to be a certain way.Therearelots
of Native American tales like this. "How the deer got his horns" andthatkindof
thing. It is notable that ancient cultures the world over seem to have hadthese
figures. I like to think that in them we see something remaining of a more
primeval way of looking at the world. It is not tightly ordered and conventional
as we see it now with rules and expectations for every social situation. In the
trickster we see a world that is more immediate, spontaneous and chaotic, a
world in which what happens next is a wonderthat'sjustaroundthecornerora
disaster we cannot avoid. We also see but a river of events, a tidal wave of
ideas, which come, have their consequences and then go. There's no great plan
for the trickster or their world. Things just happen. This world is often insane,
without meaning and beyond the conventional mind's ability to understand. But
in that the trickster is showing that the world cannot be reduced either to how
we might want it to be or to how we might think that it is. The trickster breaks
everyboundaryhecanfindandworriesaboutpickingupthepieceslater.

So I am not unhappy that I am a trickster. It seems to bemyfate.IfIbelieved

in fate. Indeed, the trickster seems to model a world that my own experience
validates anyway. And I'm more than aware that I have been the butt (and the
victim) of my trickster jokes many, many times over just as much as anyone
else. After all, Im the dumb schmuck whose life exists online and who has let
everyfriendheeverhadslipthroughhisfingers.

Thursday

InthebeginningGodcreatedtheHeavensandtheEarth.

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself not just sporadically, an
individual here in one way, an individual there in another way but in its
entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps
transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by
realizingnewpossibilitiesofandforhishumannature.

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The first quotation above is the opening verse of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh,
that which Christians call The Old Testament. Below it is aquotationfromJulian
Huxley, brother of Aldous, which transhumanist and Oxford philosopher, Nick
Bostrom, refers to as the first occurrence of the word transhumanism that he
is aware of. Here we can see that transhumanism is about transcendence of
humanbeingsaboveandbeyondtheircurrentpossibilities.

Transhumanism today is an ongoing movement largely made up of tech savvy,

often highly educated people. It is, as transhumanist NickBostromputsitinthe
opening to his Transhumanist FAQ, a way of thinking about the future that is
based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not
represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase.
Transhumanists in general (and here I must say that I have focused on the
writings of Bostrom who has been an engaged and prominenttranshumanistfor
many years) talk about being able to "acquire new capacities" or of "expanding
the boundaries of our existence". They want "to search for a way around every
obstacle and limitation to human life and happiness" or engage in
"revolutionizingthehumancondition".

In general what we see when reading transhumanist literature are vocabularies

of improvement andperfectionthroughtechnology.Butthesearealwayslocated
within various points of view based invaluationsofthings.Perfectionasanideal
always lies within some configuration of what that perfection is supposed to be.
So to judge that humans, as they are, are notperfect(astranshumanistsmust)
is to have some idea of what a perfecthumanwouldbelike.But,implicitinthat
very same project,isanoverlookingofwhatmakeshumanbeingswhattheyare
as they are now. It overlooks what we can achieve and experience as we are
now. So, as a starting point, transhumanism seems a very materialistviewpoint
that imagines that physical perfection and freedom from disease and biological
discomforts would make everything better. This, it seems to me, is almost
humanitydenyingornegatingsincewejustarebiologicalbeings.ButImgetting
alittleaheadofmyself.

Transhumanists focus on a number of technologies that they see as improving

the human lot. Archetypally, these usually include molecular nanotechnology
(which can build andcreateatthemolecularlevel),superintelligence(afocuson
creating minds with capacities and abilities far beyond our own), virtual reality
(the creation of places we take as and operateinasreal),cryonics(thefreezing
of biological bodies until such point as future technological advances make
reanimationaworthwhileprocess),uploading(whereahumanmindisabletobe
transferred to a suitableartificialhost)andthesingularity(asupposedpointin
future timeatwhichtechnologicaladvanceincreasesexponentially,changingour
world forever). Needless to say, more populist conceptions of things such as
roboticsandAI(artificialintelligence)fitsquarelyintotheseinterestsaswell.

It is fair to say that a good deal of the transhumanist project is speculative in

nature. This is not rare where science is concerned nor is itabadthinginitself.
As an example, let me discuss uploading. Uploading, as I have said, is talk of
"transferring" a human mind to a more computerlike environment. This
computer may be static or in some kind of robotic body. The concept itself
involvesanumberofassumptions.Ishalllistsomeofthemforyounow.

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1. That a brain is like computer hardware and that a mind could run on a
reconstructed, computerized, physical framework, maybe one exactly modeled
on one made of biotissue (a brain). This itself assumes that minds run on
brainswhichisamaterialistassumptionnotsharedbyeveryone.

2.Thatthemindisessentiallydata.

3. That if you put this data somewhere else it will perform in thesamewayand
that,ineffect,youcouldmakethemindportableandthatallyouneedtodois
recreatetheapparentphysicalconditionsofitsoriginalexistence.

4. It ignores the idea that people are biological and overlooks that this might
playanysignificantpartinthecreationormaintenanceofthemind.(Thebodyis
seenasabiologicalmachineratherthanassomethingdifferentinkind.)

5. It assumes that if you transfer the data of the mind that you would simply
reconstructthepersonelsewhere,includingtheirthoughts,memoriesand
personality.Thisisimportantwhenconsideringidentityissues.

All of these assumptions are at theveryleastcontroversialaswellasbeingvery

mathematical and materialist thoughts. Much here is not yet proven and, as
such, is merely indicative of the hopes and dreams of technologicalist and
transhumanistthinkers.

Transhumanists are sometimes called by other names. One such name is

futurists. Perhaps the most famous futurist in the world is currently Ray
Kurzweil. Hehasactivelyandregularlyspokenabouthisdesiretolivepotentially
forever, not least in a number of popular books such as The Age of Spiritual
Machines, The SingularityisNearandHowToCreateAMind.Asagreatinventor
he is now consciously working towards the singularity, that time when
technological advance becomes exponential. He, like other futurists and
transhumanists, sees our human future as a scientific and technologicalone.He
daily takes a huge amount of vitamins and pills in an effort to stay healthy and
live as long as possible so that he may live to see the technological future he
hopesfor.

In order to lay out a pathway for this type of thinking transhumanists need to
set out a case. They do this in what strikes me as a quasireligious way. They
speak of all diseases beingcuredandalifeofpeaceandplentyashumanbeings
are released from the shackles of their biological prisons, subjecttodiseaseand
decay as we are. An eschatological zeal can be discernedbeneaththePRspeak.
"The first ultraintelligent machineisthelastinventionthatManneedevermake"
saysI.J.Good.AddedtosomeotherthoughtssuchasaKurzweilianvisionof"the
singularity" or Vernor Vinge's statement that "Within thirty years, we will have
the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the
human era will be ended" what you get, in varying degrees, is a kind of
transhumanisteschatology.

This is but one way in which their particular "faith" can be said to mirror more
explicitly religious ones. (Personally, when Ireadoftranshumanistvisionsofthe
future all I can think of is the paradisiacal illustrations that grace the magazine

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of the Jehovahs Witnesses, The Watchtower.) The transhumanist narrative
seems to be that we are in some sense lost or imperfect and in need of a
perfecting moment or event. We must be cleansed of imperfections and saved,
not by the blood of Christ or the sacrifice of the impure, but by the thoughts of
intelligent men and their inventions. Our weak and vulnerable human,biological
forms are looked on by transhumanists as our metaphorical state of sin from
which we need redeeming. Transhumanist David Pearce, for example, speaksof
"paradise engineering" where "sentient beings would be redesigned to enable
everybody to experience of unprecedented levels of wellbeing". Is this not a
visionofsalvation?

So transhumanists are technoutopians, religionists for the current age. They

worship a god, science and technology, and they seek to find from it salvation
from the world of ourhuman,biologicalexperience.Butlikeallgods,maybethis
one is also false? So it seems to me that this aspect of transhumanism is very
much like a religionist's immature need for salvation. But neither knowledge,
progress, utility, power nor plenty are the keytoeitheragoodlifeorhappiness.
If abundance brought you happiness every rich person would be perpetually
ecstatic. And yetweknowthatsomeveryrichpeoplekillthemselveseveryyear.
Whats more, it is arguable that a good life and happiness are philosophically
naive aims that are beside the point in any case. Could itbethattranshumanist
impulses reveal not a human problem but an individual problem in certain
people,acertainlackofmaturityandcomingtotermswithbeinghumanitself?

For what is being human? The issue here is not that there is some human
essence that transhumanism could redeem (or destroy). The issue is that, if
anything, the human condition, socalled, is a condition at all or a set of
conditions. In that sense there are a set of things that make human beings
human. One of these is surely that they are biological and that, as a natural,
physical consequence of this, they can suffer biological harm and are subject to
biological limitations. (I need to think but Ive been running and Im hot. This
feeling of hotness interrupts my ability to think, etc, etc.) This, in turn, leads to
more philosophical concepts that are a consequence of our physical make up.
These concepts would be things such as temporality, contingency and finitude.
Every human being to date has been born with a knowledge that they are
vulnerable and that they will certainly die. Every human has a perception of
time, one that can change yet without actually changing time at all. If you take
such things away do you have a human being anymore? (In the sense of a
member of the species human beings and in the sense of a human form of
life.)

Transhumanists try tocountersuggestionslikethisbyspeakingofaposthuman

dignity (posthuman is the most common term used for what a technologically
enhanced or reconfigured human would be). But it is not a matter of being
biased against the posthumans either. Were such beings ever brought to life
there is no question that they would have their own dignity and morality, etc.
But thisisnottheissue.Theissueisthathumanitychangedinitsconditionsand
contextsisnothumanityanymore.

To transcend humanity or goposthumanityistonolongerbehuman.Wewould

move from an inappropriate human exceptionalism, that much of science and

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popular thought has followed, to an inappropriate transhuman exceptionalism.
What transhumanists advocate, in the end, is that human beings be seen as
caterpillars that, with a push in the right direction, might actually become
butterflies. My point here is the simple onethatbutterfliesaren'tcaterpillars.To
change theformoflifeistochangewhatitmeanstobehumanandthemeaning
of human processes and forms of life (life cycle, sex, eating, communication,
relationships,etc.).

In many respects I see transhumanists as those who wanttotryandoutrunthe

universe. The Transhumanist Declaration, a handy summary of transhumanist
interests, speaks of overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary
suffering, and our confinement to planetEarthinitsfirstarticle.Thevisionisof
our species beating the universe at the game of life. We were scheduled for
termination, one by one, and eventual deletion as a species by a cold universe
that makes things but only ever for a time. But, aha! We clever humans are
going to science and technology our way out of the fix. As long as there is a
universetoliveintranshumanistsplantobearoundtoliveinit.

It can be observed of this mentality, whether it be generally fair to

transhumanistsorapartialparody,thatwearedealingherewithpeoplewhoput
knowledge over wisdom. Knowledgecentred people always want to know and
they always want more. Theirs is an endless, narcissistic program centred on
their egotistical desire for more. Yet the pathway to disaster is paved withgood
intentions. The danger is what Bill Joy called KMD (knowledgeenabled mass
destruction) in his famous paper "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us". Indeed, it
may almost rise to a principle that increased knowledge leads to increased
danger and that this is a human flaw. As Joy again notes, "My personal
experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities." And
underestimate the problems. We get puffed up with knowledge but don't have
thewisdomtocorrectlycontextualizeit.

For such people knowledge and truth are held up as absolute goods. But
deciding that our human form isnt good enough and that our biological
vulnerabilities are more than we should be expected tolivewitharenotmatters
of either knowledge or truth.Theyarevaluations.Thinkingaboutthesethingsin
the round is more about wisdom or morality than facts or truths. The mentality
"Truth at any price" is not a good. It is destruction. It is anarchy. Morality
dictates there must be limits to knowing.Wecannotallowanarchytoreignifwe
want to survive. These are things we cannotaffordtogetwrongevenonce.And
this brings us to the major area of concern regarding transhumanism and its
goals:t heproblemofcontrol.

We, asaspecies,canalreadybombpeoplefrombunkerslikeplayingacomputer
game. We already live in a world in which military hardware is inadequately
distributed and power, backed up by military means, is a human goal. Now
imagine that you could send nanobots (tiny, programmable, selfreplicating
machines) halfwayaroundtheworldtodestroyyourenemies(military,business,
political) at the cellular level. Or, if that doesntgrabyou,imagineyourenemies
could do it to you. The problem here is not the idealistic thinking of
transhumanists who say they want to make life better but that the technology
would not be something they could control either in itself or in its applications.

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History teaches that if people can then they will. Imagine a dictator with a
Superintelligence and an upgraded physical form with a SuperArmy of
SuperSoldiers. It is a daunting prospect. Imagine a world where a super
intelligent AI is created and switched on. It then proceeds to try and wipe out
the biological beingsthatmadeitwiththeadvantagesitsSuperintelligencegives
it so that it can act and react much faster than we can. (This last one has
alreadybeenimaginedmanytimes,notleastinTheTerminatorandTheMatrix.)

If we are going to think of futuretechnologiesandfuturesocietiesthenweneed

to think about future consequences but before the fact. And this is a very
difficult thing to do. Machine societies are not human societies. So why would
they have human morals or values? Why wouldamindtransferredtoamachine
think like a mindthatabiologicalhumanhas?Justbecauseweassumeitwould?
Are you prepared to take that chance? Again, science fiction furnishes us witha
possible scenario inTheBorgfromtheStarTrekuniverse. TheBorgarecyborgs,
man machines, that travel the universeseekingtoaddanyandalltechnologyto
their collectivesothattheycanbecomebetterandbetter.Theydestroyallthose
they encounter in their wake as a threat to their own existence. Resistance is
futile is their tagline. Compare this with Hans Moravec who notes that
"Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors."
Think, forexample,ofhowwedealwithotherbiologicalspeciesthatweconsider
inferiortous.

So, imagine a world where the technology any of us imagine can be made real.
Are we really saying, with an awareness of our human history fresh in our
minds, a historyofarmsraces,eugenicsandmedicalsciencethatharmedrather
than cured, amongst other things, that we could control it all? Could we control
the selfreplicating nanobots, the super intelligent future humans made out of
titanium or carbon fibre or the AI that is switched on and decides that thepuny
humans are a threat? Arethewarningsofoursciencefictionwritersfornothing?
Or is this where we fall back and talk about "greater goods" and "on thewhole"
recognising that, yes, there may well be bumps in the road but that, overall,
theseideasareagood?

To be fair, transhumanists are veryawarethatallthisscienceandtechisnotan

area where we can afford to get things badly wrong even once. These kinds of
ideas are literally a big red button that, if pressed, could make life on Earth
extinct. Many transhumanists are involved in the ethics of these technologies
and in detailed risk analysis of the possible consequences. We also have the
modern phenomenon of the bioethicist. Nevertheless, the idea that we could
control it all, I think, stretches credulity. Our history as a species alone should
tell us that the very idea of such an overarching foresight and control isnotthe
case. Indeed, safety first principles suggest we should expect things to go
wrong. There is a duty to be realistic here and to recognise our lack of
omniscience. Not least, we should consider that some things are too dangerous
to consider with us being the beings that we are, beings that have blind spots
and beings that are always subject to unintended consequences. We cannot
foresee the future or even all possible outcomes of our present. But we have
Murphy's Law and we know that bad things do happen. When that bad thing
could be a future that destroys us in, benevolently speaking of transhumanist
aims,ourmomentofgreatestbenevolence,thisshouldgiveusgreatpause.

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I like to think of it like this:lookathowwetreatthefly.Itdisturbsourdaywith
its very faint buzzing and for its trouble we annihilate it. Butwhatifonedaywe
are thefly?Thethingthatalwayskicksyouintheassisthethingthatyounever
see coming. Bill Joy, in his article The Future Doesnt Need Us,correctlynotes
that we want robot technology, first of all, to haveslaves.Indeed,slaveisthe
etymological derivation of the word robot in the original Czech. (Man
machines, on theotherhand,aremoreproperlydescribedascyborgs.)Butwhat
if intelligent robots don't wanttobeslaves?Beforebuildingbeingsthatmightbe
able to out think you and outperform you physically would it not be prudent to
ask not just if you can but if you should? It is precisely here that the
transhumanist, rational, scientific mind is least helpful for that mind is often
more focused on what it can do than on what it should do. Its focus is
instrumental and on knowing how to do things or understandthemmorethanit
is on the wisdom of various actions. People may refer to Robert Oppenheimer
and his agonies over the atomic bomb. History recalls that two were actually
deployed wiping out two cities in the process. When you wish to deploy
technologies with a much more unlimited potential for destruction, the stakes
areexponentiallyraised.

These dangers, and the prospect of us not being able to control them,wouldbe
bad enough if this was all there was. But itisnt.Everythinghereisexacerbated
by the fact thatittakesplaceinacapitalistscenariowherepersonalgainiswhat
counts. These technologies could and would be on an open marketplace where
having the cash is the only barrier to possessing the knowledge and having the
power to press the big red button yourself. Rivalcompaniescouldveryeasilybe
conceived to compete with better and better versions of this technology but
without adequate ethical or moral oversight over their practices and procedures
(or aims or goals). It needs to be asked: Is this really the right framework for
such world changing activities? We have death for sale to the highest bidder
alreadyasitis.

It is, of course, not hard to imagine ways in which tech may progress. For
example, take the modern fixation with mobile communications and wearable
tech. How hard is it to imagine that a possible future step is that the tech goes
from being the smart phone in your hand or the wearable tech on your wrist or
perched on your nose to being inside you as an implant? Imagine your
connection to the world isanimplant.Youdon'thavetoworryaboutyourphone
being stolen anymore or losing it. This also grants you immediate access to the
Internet and itsresourcesbythepowerofthought.Itisnothardtoimaginethat
people are working on this right now as the next solution to the immediately
connected, modern and desirable kind of life such people say that we need.Oh,
and by the way, this improvement to modern life has just made you a cyborg.
My point here is not that we will one day bepresentedwithaTerminatoronthe
nightly news. Rather, progress will be gradual and presented as benevolent. A
larger view, however, and a sense of greater perspective, will shine a light on
thedangerspresentandthechangesunderway.

There is a trope in modern society. That trope is the mad scientist. We see it
often in literature and film even so far back as Doctor Frankenstein. These
tropes appear for a reason and, whilst sometimes unfair, we understand that
there is a kernel of truth to them. No mad scientist ever thinks of himself as

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mad, of course. Scientists as a whole, whether mad or otherwise, paint
themselves as the very height of rationality.Yetscientistsarestillpeople.Andit
is very easy to show that humanbeingscaneasilybefooled.Eventheonesthat
call themselves scientists. For example, in the 80s there was a group of
scientists working on a nuclear defence shield for the USA under President
Reagan. These were described by one attendee as very bright guys with no
commonsense.Thethingis,withhumanbeingssometimescommonsenseisnt
that common. So the question I would askoftranshumanistsisthisone:whatif
human beings arent up to the job of safely creatingposthumansorofusingthe
technologies they seek to create? One mistake and, as Cypher said in The
Matrix,Kansasisgoingbyebye.

Transhumanists often offset arguments about the dangers by appealing to the

benefits. Take the idea that you want to "abolish suffering" in human life. It
seems laudable and, no doubt, many people suffering would want to take it up.
But if you abolish suffering as a whole (assuming this isevenpossiblewhich,as
with many transhumanist aims, is a big if) then do you enhancehumanityordo
you simply changeit?Ishumanityminussufferingstillhumananymore?Isnot
suffering and the limitations that come with being a biological organism
fundamental to the human experience? The logical conclusion to the elimination
of physical suffering must surely be flight from being biological at all for
biological beings will always be prey to biological threats to our peace and
happiness such as pain or ill health. So, itseems,transhumanistsdonotmerely
seek "enhancement", which is a valuation in any case, but simple permanent
change. This is why I think that transhumanity or posthumanity is simply
something other than humanity. If you change the conditions of existence
enough then you change what exists. The best model I can think of, as I
mentioned above, is the caterpillar and the butterfly. They are related and you
canseeaprocessbutoneisnottheothernorreducibletoit.

And it is at this point that transhumanists are once more vulnerable to religious
metaphors and, specifically, the charge that they want to become gods.
Jonathan Glover, as an example, wrote something called "What Sort of People
Should There Be?" The very title makesonebaulkinitsupfrontaskingofthisas
a valid question in itself, in its Are we become gods?" question begging. When
Glover says here that "not just any aspect of present human nature... is worth
preserving. Rather it is especially those features which contribute to
selfdevelopment and selfexpression, to certain kinds of relationships, and to
the development of our consciousness and understanding. And some of these
features may be extended rather than threatened by technology" we get the
impression that Glover, as with other transhumanists, seems to think he knows
better than evolution and the random eventsoftheuniversewhatshouldbe.He
wants to take a direct handincreatingratherthanrecognisehisownstatusasa
random creation. As such, I think this is contrary to nature. But, he may reply,
how can something of nature be contrarytonature?Anditsaquestionhewould
havearighttoput.

It is worth pointing out and emphasizing that transhuman thinking is a process

of valuation and evaluation. The thoughts of transhumanist thinkers are not
selfevident, obvious or mere rationality. They are choices based in the
evaluations of those thinking the thoughts. One area where this is evident is in

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the transhumanist approach to the human situation and specifically to areas of
our biological existence which they regard as harmful. The problem here is that
transhumanists evaluate things simply as either a harm or not. Things that are
thought to be a harm are then scheduled for future technological deletion or
eradication, problems that need technological solutions. But is it so easy to
evaluate things simply as harms? I myself suffer from various forms of mental
illness. They have certainly seededpainanddiscomfortthroughoutthecourseof
my life. It would be correct to say that I have suffered because of them,
physically and materially, in an ongoing way. But is the solutionthenassimple
aseradicatingthem?

We can go further than this. To what extent are these conditions actually
constitutive of my personality? (Should they be genetic, as I believe they are
due to my mother having similar issues, they would then be as much a part of
me as my eyes and ears.) In what ways have they actually informed me and
shaped my knowledge and experience of the world? Can they, in those senses,
be so easily labelled "harms"? If we go down this road don't we start to
designate forms of life that are worse than others based in prejudices rather
than lived experience, devaluing other forms of life as wedo?Whydoanumber
of mentally ill people refuse to take drugs that medical science says will offer
relief? If it is because, as Stephen Fry says in his two partBBCdocumentaryon
his own mental condition, that they change who you areand your senseofself,
then isn't this a relevantpieceofinformationandmoresoifsharedbyothers
when considering if something is perceived as a harm or not? What to some
from the outside seem clear harms are not so easily designated as such from
within and human life and experience is not so easily chopped up into discrete
sections which can be evaluated as if they existed by themselves. In the case
discussed here, to eradicate a harm wouldbetochangeapersonality.Andmost
people want to be who they are even if that isn't always perfect. Indeed, it can
be argued that part of beinghumanistoacceptanimperfectauthenticityovera
perfectinauthenticity.

This idea of authenticity, especially prevalent in existentialist philosophieswhich
focus on the lived experience of human beings such as might be found relevant
when discussing changing the form of human life (maybe into posthuman life)
forever, is relevant here. All forms of life will be subject to some kind of
limitations. It remains true, of course, that transhumanists and futurists dream
of forms of life that may be said, in some ways, to completely transcend our
own.Buthowauthenticaretheseformsoflife?Whatwoulditfeelliketobelines
of code? What would your existence be like if you never had to eat, sleep,
defecate or breathe ever again? ExistentialistthinkerssuchasMartinHeidegger,
who spoke and wrote a number of times about the dangers of technology that
existed even in what we would now call the relatively tame 1950s, were
concerned with the meaningof these changes and how they affected our being.
These are concerns that, it seems to me, transhumanists both overlook and/or
dismiss. Yet it remains our situation that our life spans are miniscule. Our
perception of time and space is miniscule. We are miniscule. And yet
transhumanists ask our species to make huge leaps with eternally unknown
consequences. We need people who will ask what it means and how it will
changeourbeing.

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Transhumanists are not stupid. They are just human, like you and me. I detect
within some of theirwritinglibertarianinstincts.Thereseemsastrandof"Iwant
to do something and no one shouldbeallowedtotellmeIcan'tdoit"aboutit.I
also detect elements of narcissism. I ask myself what kind of ego you need to
have to think that you shouldbeabletoliveforeverandIconfessthatwhatever
kind of ego it is, I dont have it. I am happy to accept my vulnerability and
mortality, things which I have been burdened with since I could first begin to
think for myself. For me, eternal life would be the prison and not the fallible,
contingent existence I currently have. I do not see how technology could be a
salvationanymorethantheloveofChristorbeliefinTheEternalSpirit.

Nevertheless, transhumanists are often PR savvy andwisetoargumentsagainst

them. Nick Bostrom, who, with others, drew up The Transhumanist Declaration
and has written a number of defences of transhumanist thinking such as The
Transhumanist FAQ, uses the term "bioconservatives" to denote those in
opposition to transhumanist ideals. I find this completely hilarious. It is the
equivalent of us biohumans calling transhumanists bioannihilators or
something equally as ridiculous. Is it really conservative to want to be what
you are? There is also the problem with the name transhumanist which
transhumanists sometimes give evidence for shying away from. Appropriately,
they deploy PR. For example,TheJournalofTranshumanism,whichsoundsvery
like the pamphlet of some dubious religious sect, became The Journal of
Evolution and Technology which sounds very academic and levelheaded. If you
read The Transhumanist FAQ you willfindmanyargumentsdeployedwhichseek
to persuade people to the advantages of transhumanist thinking. I wonder why
the writers feel that they need to persuade people that suffering and death are
things that they might want to avoid? Is it because its not as easy as that and
thereisaperceptionthatbeinghumanistoacceptcertaincontingencies?

I have covered quite a lot of ground here and in a rambling, stream of

consciousness kind of way. This is what I do as I read the Internet digest
thought and thenvomitoutmyown.Ihavetimeonmyhands.Butitisprobably
best to come to a halt nowandcollectmythoughts.Booksofhundredsofpages
have been written about this subject and that by proponents and detractors
alike. There is a lot of ground to cover and consequences as yet unthought of.
For example, just this morning I was thinking about uploading. Imagine if my
mind could be put into a carbotanium (a mixture of carbon fibre and titanium)
chassis. But then I stoppedandthought.Ifyoucouldputmymindintoonesuch
chassis then you could put it into a thousand. Or a million. Once the mind is a
mobile data stream that you can transfer then the limitation is merely the
number of places you can store it. Suddenly, I have gone from being a unique
identity to a ubiquity. Its an overwhelming thought and its just oneofhundreds
youcanhaveifyoustarttothinkaboutthepossibilitiesofthesetechnologies.

We would do well to remember, however, that technology works onthebasisof

planned obsolescence. Every few months Apple devotees go through their ritual
of updating iOS, often accompanied by much cursing andswearing.Technology,
at its heart as a founding principle, is all about being up to date.ItisinitsDNA
(or, in this case, its coding). From your phone to your refrigerator, it is always
evolving, in theory getting better, but always adapting and responding to new
needs, purposes and ideas. As we can see from this, all the old versions get

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ditched and become worthless and, soon enough, literally useless. Now ask
yourself how wouldanyofthistechnologyaffectanoutdatedbiologicalhumanity
whichwouldliterallybesupersededoverandoveragain?

We need to take seriously the idea that the future doesn't need us, that we are
not importantandthatwearenotasgreatassomeofusthinkweare.Itiseasy
to paint transhumanists as people who want to be gods. Many of their aims are
godlike in stature. They pick on humanity because they see us as differentand
because they see us as special, set apart from the time and chance that is the
rest of the known universe of our experience. Some people will argue for this.
Buthowexceptionalwouldwebeifwecreatedasuperhumanitythattranscends
our biological and other limitations? Whywouldn'twegetanXMenlikescenario
where "superior" forms of our species, or ones who see themselves as evolved
from it or superior to it, saw us as things to be destroyed, impedimentstotheir
progress? Why wouldn't the regular, common or garden humans take action
against thesuperiorformsoflifeinanefforttopreservethemselves?Whydowe
thinkwecancontrolit?

Survival of the fittest or another human project to escape time and chance?
Eitherway,thefutureofhumanitystillseemscontingent.Nothinglastsforever.

Friday

I'm not nice. I'm not on the side of good. I don't stand for hope. I don't think
thingswillworkoutforthebest.

I'mjustahumanbeing.

I do not really, deeply care what happens in your life. I maywishyouwellbutI

don't really seeitasmyissue.Everyonehastomaketheirownbedandthebest
of their own circumstances. And they are left to get on with it because we are
individuals not a hive mind. We are temporary souls cast into a turmoil. We
shouldgetusedtolossandchangeandprocessitforitwillalwaysbearoundus.

I have interests and things that animate me and give purpose to my life. I do
not insist that you have the same ones too but expect that you willhaveothers
andmakethemyourown.Thiswilleventuallysetusallatoddswithoneanother
because, whilst we say we believe in freedom, in the end we all know that
unfetteredfreedombecomesaprisonofconflictinginterests.

I am not one of those blessed with close family relationships but I know they
exist and am aware that people canbuildtightbondswithoneanotherbasedon
habit and loyalty. Proximity hasahabitofmakingpeoplecareforeachotherbut
this is not an unbreakable bond or necessarily an eternal one. What's more, it
makes sense that we live close to each other for we candothingstogetherthat
noneofuscouldmanagealone.

Mightisnotalwaysright.Butitsalwaysenoughifitsused.

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I cry, bleed, piss, lie, smile, cheat, steal, despair, hope, want, need, love and
hate in random and unfathomable ways. I'm not even always sure why I even
feelthewayIdo.

I'mjustahumanbeing.

I am not a robot and I can't be programmed like one. I go off piste, I flip the
script, I don't act logically. Because I feel, hurt, have sympathy and empathy
and generally am not comparable to something that you code. A robot cannot
feellikeitdoesn'tbelong.Ican.

I'mjustahumanbeing.

You cannot trust me andIwillletyoudown.I'mmortal,madeoffleshandlikely

to break. My mind is fragile. I want things to be different but have no idea how
to make them so. I dream of things I could never have. I want more but settle
forless.Ihaveknownfailureuponfailureandsometimesevenasuccess.

I'mjustahumanbeing.
I'mjustahumanbeing.

Sunday

Im alone. I wear myself out on endless and pointless flights of fancy, some
intellectual, others merely illadvised. But what else am I to do? My days are
monochrome, all the same, an endless conveyor beltofnow.Mypastisaprison
that wont let me go and my future never exists. When I get there its gone. It
taunts me. Always a day away. I am condemned to stumble around as me and
fated to never be free of myself until such point as I wont be able to enjoy the
freedomanyway.

AllthethinkingIdobutneveranyendinsightforneedingmore.
AllIthingsIhaveunderstoodandyetalwaysthesenseitaddsuptonothing.
AllthefeelingsIhavethatImustsufferfrom.

Life is cruel in that it forces you to condemn yourself. You do things you dont
want to do and you cannot rely on yourself. This is a cruel. And then it leaves
you to carry the can and the consequences all your days. Darren Goodhew
comesintomymindagain.Rightoncue.Iwas10or11yearsofageandhewas
a year younger. We are walking home from the Cub Scouts. He has a bag of
chips and I, predictably, have nothing. I ask him for a chip but he refuses. Fair
enough, I suppose.Itshiscall.Butthe10or11yearoldmedoesntacceptthat.
I hang back slightly then surprise him by running forward and smashing the
chips out of his hand. They spray all over the dirty pavement and I run off,
cackling like a hyena. Remembering this makes me feel sick, ugly andashamed
even to this day. What sort of creature am I? And do you know what makes it
worse? That Darren Goodhew was just an innocent boy enjoying some chips.
And I utterly ruined his innocence and made himpayforit.Idisgustmyselfand
Ihatemyself.ThisiswhatIamcapableof.

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Saturday

Desire, it seems to me, is something that has completely gone under my radar
as I focused on other things. So I come to the subject somewhat fresher and
more naive than I have with others maybe. But that is not a bad thing. Each
human being is unique and each follows theirownpath.Itsnotthecasethatwe
are all carbon copies of each other living the same lives even if we can share
common experiences and have points of contact one withanother.Soitisright,
in those circumstances, that there is a time when things occur to us and a time
when it doesn't. Each will learn things as they become relevant to their own
particularlife.

This uniqueness and individual experience of life, something every humanbeing

values, does come with its own issues though. This individuality impacts quite
largely when we come to discuss desire. But what is desire? This seems a basic
question but its one that, even in preliminary reading about the subject, seems
very difficult to answer. Desire, as a subject, hasbeenofinteresttoreligionists,
philosophers and psychologists alike but their discussions are, to say the least,
not completely lucid on the subject. We do, however, get a few pointers. For
example, nearly all agree that there are different kinds of desires. The two I
want to focus on here are what I want to call "hardwired desires" (things like
wanting to eat) and "volitional desires" (things like "I want to watch that TV
show" or "I want to wear those socks today"). In one article I read these were
called "terminal" and "instrumental" desires because sometimes the latter kind
of desire can be in the serviceofsomethingmorefundamental.(Forexample,"I
want a cheesesandwich"isinstrumentaldesirebutisservingtheterminaldesire
tofindsustenanceandsosurvive.)

So far, so good. But why then is desire seen as a problem in life because it is
by so many different kinds of people and not just those suffering from
unrequited love (like me). For example, one issue of desire is that our desires
are not intellectual or filtered through amoralmaze.Indeed,itmaynotevenbe
that we are always aware ofourdesires,themorecoherentandclearones,held
uptothelightofday,beingthemosttrivialorleastconsequentialofourdesires.
It doesn't matter if you have a cheese sandwich or a ham sandwich, for
example,orifyouweartheseshoesorthoseshoestoday.However,desiresmay
very easily be immoral, dangerous, incoherent, unlawful, selfish or selfharming
(in foreseeable or unforeseeable ways). And then there is the fact that desires
are not deliberately chosen. They operate in the background in primitive and
unseen ways. Its not remotely the case that they are naked and bare, open for
inspection. Its not so much that we form desires in an open and perspicuous
process as it is the case that they form in us and we merely work out their
consequences in our lives. A "hardwired" desire is literally hardwired and you
simplyhavetolivewithit.

This becomes something existential and we begin to see that we need to

separate the desires themselves, instrumental versions of the category, from
"desire" as a thing in itself. For it is the case that we can negotiate with
ourselves to mitigate certain examples of desire but it is much harder, if not
impossible, to not desire at all.Psychologicallyspeaking,itisnotevenclearthat
no desire at all would be a good thing. In one psychology journal I read in

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thinking about this subject it was suggested that both acute and chronic lack of
desire, which were delineated as boredom and depression respectively, was an
unwelcome thing. From this pointofviewitisdesirethatmotivatesusandgives
us any direction in life. And this direction, in turn, iswhatgivesusanymeaning
at all at least in a narrative sense in terms of our own lives. Desire is what
propels our individual stories along and knits one part to another. For example,
when I ask myself why I am writing this now I can make sense of it to my
intellect by saying that I desired to write it and that holds meaning for me. If I
were doing it for no reason at all that would simply make no sense and bevery
confusingtome.

So we can say that desire is very much a fundamental part of the human
experience whether we judge that for good or ill. Desire, as a thing in itself, is
something we cannot avoid. As I havecometothinkaboutthisithasseemedto
methatweareinsomesensedesiremachinesturnedonatbirththatmustwork
until we break and cease to be. This thought is echoed in others I have read.
Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher of the 1800s, wrote a book about
the will in which hespokeofdesireasbeingabout"thebaremaintenanceofthis
existence itself". Slavoj Zizek, a thinkerofourowntimes,hasspokenofdesire's
raison d'tre as "not to find full satisfaction but to reproduce itself as desire".
Desire simply wants to keep producing more of itself. Itisnotrelevanttodesire
if individual desires are frustrated or bartered away in our own internal
monologue as we negotiate our own lives in our internal processes as intellect
and desire battle each other. Desire simply wants to keep desiring and in
desiring it finds pleasure and satisfaction. It is enough for desire that we desire
atall.

Several things follow fromthis.First,weshouldnotethatdesireandintellectare

often in opposition. This has been noted in philosophical and religious circles
from Greek times. There is a famous biblical book of extracanonical literature
called 4 Maccabees, influenced by Greek thought, which sets out to show, from
its very first verse, that "the intellect is sovereign over all the passions". For
religionists, "the passions" or desire are often problematic. For Buddhists, for
example, desire (often I see the buddhist word for it translated as"craving")is
the source of all suffering in life. The thought process is quite simple to follow.
We always want things and we can't stop. What are we to doaboutthat?Itisa
condition of life this desiring. How to escape it? Also we may note that in the
Jewish creation story the whole human race is put in peril because Adam and
Eve are seduced into wanting something they have been forbidden the fruitof
thetreeofknowledgeofgoodandevil.Thisstoryisnotsomuchahistorylesson
as a human lesson: desirewillgetyouintotrouble.And,indeed,whichofushas
not experienced the insane desire for something (or someone) which has sent
our life off course, utterly ignoringthewisdomofseveralyearsinaneedforthis
object of our desire? Desire is a real enemy and it bites. It has real world and
real life consequences. A superfluity of desire is, of course, greed in which you
completelyloseyourself,consumedbydesire.

Secondly, an issue here is that desire is not intellect. Neither, indeed, is it our
beliefs although both things are the context for our desires.Butitisimportant
to notice the separation. Beliefs, for example, are things thatweholdtobetrue
about the world already and our intellects find reasons forholdingthethingswe

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believe to be true as true. Desire, however, is different. Desire is not really
concerned with truth and with "what is the case" in the world. Desire simply
desires and, in that sense, it is not interested in what is true but only inwhatit
wants. It is, as it has been termed, the "blind giant" of the will. Here thedrives
that Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freudalldiscussedinthe19thandearly20th
centuries become very relevant. Drives, intheserviceofdesire,shapetheworld
everybitasmuchasourbeliefsandmaybemuchmorefundamentallyso.

Thirdly, it is to be noted that various desires have contexts. For example, the
desire to be famous, powerful or wealthy, only mean anything in the context of
other people. If you were alone on a desert island you would not have a desire
for any of these things as they would literally be meaningless to you. It is the
same with desires to satisfy, please, impressorbesuperiorto,others.Youneed
the others to desire it. In all these social desires a powerful example to the
contrary is the Greek DiogenesofSinope,theonewhofamouslylivedinabarrel
and was called a "cynic" (the word comes from the Greek for"dog")becausehe
livedseparatefromsocietyandwentaroundinpublicoutraginganddisregarding
societal norms whilst claiming to be looking for a good human being. Partofhis
message seems to have been that you could eliminate various societal desires
(and so live, in some sense, a better life) by living at a remove from society
itself. In one tale about the man we hear that he masturbated in public and
remarkedthathewishedthedesireforfoodcouldbesoeasilydealtwith.

My thoughts aboutdesirehaveonlyjustbegunandIhopetowritemoreaboutit
soon as my thoughts develop and my reading and thinking gets wider. It is
worthwhile, though, to start asking questions about desire to lead that thinking
andreadingforward.Somethathaveoccurredtomesofarinclude:

1. Can we get rid of desire and, if we could, should we? Wouldn't that leave us
as directionless, meaningless beings who just died,notseeingthepointindoing
anything?

2. What is the relation of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, to desire?
Can we see an evolutionarybiological genesis to desiresuchthatthesearevery
primitiveforcesheremerelyforthesurvivalofourspecies?Isitthatsimple?

3. Is desire simply either good or bad (as a thing in itself not as instrumental
examplesofit)?

4. Should desire becontrolledorshouldwesimplyletithaveitshead?(Epicurus

found meaning in life, for example, by exonerating the joys of satisfying our
pleasures.AndthisisnottomentiontheMarquisdeSade!)

5. Is to desire to suffer? (This is regardless of whether individual desires are

satisfiedornot.)

What is already clear to me is that desire is a fundamental of human life and

experience and, as such, it demands to be thought about. Desire is right now
shaping the lives of each one of us and the shape ofourworld.Itsimplycannot
be ignored as a topic of thought and discussion. Desire is intimately involved in

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all questions of meaning, questions I regard as perhaps the most important in
beings for whom things have to mean something. It is therefore with interest
and trepidation that I move forward to think aboutthissubjectabitmoreinthe
comingdaysandweeks.....

Final thought: "Man can dowhathewantsbuthecannotwantwhathewants."

ArthurSchopenhauer

Monday

I login to Tumblr and there are several messages fromKatewaitingforme.She

has received the latest batch of gifts I bought for her from her wishlist. She is
so happy. She doesnt know how she can thank me since, by now, I have a
photo book full of her naked pictures, many made to satisfy my specific
requests, and lotsofherusedunderwear.Theunderwear,frankly,isbecominga
nuisance. Whilst I am usually safe here in my little castle of a room one can
never besureGrandmawontlookwheresheshouldnt.Severalpairsofknickers
would be impossible to explain to Ole MissNosey.ButworsethanthatIamnow
bored. Kate hasgoneasfarasshecangolikethisandremaininterestingtome.
Itstimeforthenextlevel.

I message back Kate and tell her Im so glad she got the latest batch of things
and I hope she really enjoys them. I remind her that ifsheeverneedsanything
she only has to send me a message and Ill see what I can do.Shehas,infact,
sent me several since our last little Tumblr chat. I havent forcedmyselfonher.
Ivejustallowedhertopickupsomelearnedbehaviourwhichwillbecomeavery
hard habit to break. But now its time to attenuate that habit and make it do
some work for me. So I message her back that I would like to buy her a really
specialgiftandgiveittoheroverdinner.Shecanpickthedateandtheplace.

It sparks a response. I had thought that Kate was not currently online but it
seems this message from me has brought her out from her offline hiding place.
She wants to know what gift that isandItellhertonameanything.Igivehera
price. But I say I will only buy it for her if I can give it to her personally over
dinner. Kate says that she does not meet people and neverhas.Iaskherifthis
also applies to very generous people who have bought her lots of things she
wanted and never asked for anything in return. (An exaggeration but whos
arguing?) I follow it up by saying that rules are made tobebrokenandpromise
her, on my honour, that this istheonlytimeIwillevermakethisrequest.Ijust
want to meet this beautiful girl of my dreams who I have come toknow.Surely
sheunderstands?Shecanpickthetimeandplace!

Kate clearly seems caught in her own desire. She wantsnicethingsandshehas

found someone who is prepared to give them to her and all she has to do in
return is give away things she was giving away anyway. Great deal.Clearlyitis
crossing her mind in this eternal silence of her not yet answering that to
disappoint me now might be to risk upsetting me and so stop the stream of
constantly nice things. Kate is right where she does not want to be and she
knows it isherowndesireswhichhaveputherthere.Butwhatcanshedoabout
it? The silence is now becoming noticeably long and shemustsurelybethinking

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that if she doesnt say something soon I will message heragainaboutthedelay
in reply. But I dont. I justleaveherinsilencetofixateonherproblem.Ilether
own mind do my work for me. Eventually, she replies OK. Desire has won
again.

Tuesday

My favourite Wikipedia page is called Timeline of the far future. On it you can
read the speculations of a number of people (all properly footnoted, of course)
regarding the likely future of many things, primarily of our planet andthewider
cosmos. Reading it I learn that Niagara Falls is likely to have disappeared
completely in 50,000 years as it will have worn away the rock it flows over all
the way back to Lake Erie. Similarly, in around 50 million years the Californian
coast will begin to be subducted into the Aleutian Trench, disappearing forever.
Around the same time the Canadian Rockies will haveerodedawaytobecomea
vast plain. Within 500,000 years it is likely that Earth will have been hit by a
meteorite roughly 1 kilometer in diameter, assuming that by this time we have
not learned of some way to divert such a thing. Within 100,000 yearsitislikely
that a supervolcano will have erupted spewing at least 400 cubic kilometers of
magmaintotheairandspreadingitaroundtheplanet.

Theres much, much more of this stuff on the Wikipedia page and I urge you to
read it. It is, of course, far from complete asarecordofverylikelyandpossible
events in the future of our planet and its inhabitants. But its getting there. I
cant speak for you, obviously, but when I read it it all seems to come together
and coalesce into a kind of universal symphony of all that is, a somewhat
glorious overture of all recorded time and a marker to the fact that change and
decay are whats normal in our physical universe. Reading it you become very
aware that seas come and seas go, islands arise and then sinkagain,volcanoes
sit there and do nothing and then they cause darkness around the Earth for a
year or two when they catastrophically erupt. Mountains dont come from
nowhere but they form when continents, which are always moving, bang
together. (In some millions of yearsrefugeeswontneedtoriskcrossingthesea
anymore because Africa and Europe will be joined together.) Butwemustthink
even bigger than this. There are 70 Sextillion (7 x 10 to the power 22) suns in
the observable universe. Many of these suns existed before our own and many
sent out light that reached us after the original sun had alreadyceasedtoexist.
The Heavens, as they are sometimes sentimentally called under an
anachronistically religious influence,giveoffanauraofpermanence.Thetruthis
theyareanythingbut.

And its issues of permanence and impermanence that this is really all about.
That Wikipedia page is my favourite because it reminds me that nothing lasts
forever and everything is not only subject to change but is changing right now
before your very eyes. The problem, of course, is we live such brief and slow
lives. I have often pondered what life would be like if, instead of being the size
we are, we were microscopically small. Perspective is everything. So imagine
you are a millimeter tall, an Ant Man. Everything you enjoy just became
completely impossible and your appreciation of the world has been
revolutionized. A puddle is now an ocean, the slightest breeze a hurricane. But

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you and I arent a millimeter tall and we have the appreciation of the world
appropriate to beings like us. Nevertheless, its just one blinkered, blind, fallible
view. That view, blinded by being set in the context, we hope, of maybe 80
Earth years, doesnt spend its time worrying that mountain ranges will erode
away. It doesnt ask when the next supervolcano eruption will occur or if an as
yet unknown space object will smash into this planet as it has donebefore.Itis
not reminded that whole continents were once under milethickicesheetswhich
thenmeltedraisingtheseasbymeters.

The chances of these things happening in any ofourpunyandpatheticallyshort

lifetimes (in cosmic terms) is very, very small. But all these things and many
more will happen at some point. We are just not conditioned to expect them
because we never look beyond our own experience or the tightknitcollectionof
personal concerns that enable us to survive. If an Icelandic volcano erupts
disrupting air traffic for a few days its an annoyance. But even in the last 250
years volcanoes have destroyed whole islands and sent the Earth into dreary
darkness for a year, killing crops and causing freezing weather in August in
places it shouldnt have. But we werent there to experience it and its quite
possible we wont be in the future either. We see a Japanese tsunamiontheTV
but it just looks like another disaster movie. These days so starved of actual
disastersarewethatwemakeonesupforentertainment.

But what of us human beings? Yesterday, besides reading the Wikipedia article
mentioned above, I got diverted into reading others on one of those occasions
when your inquiring mind is induced to wander (and wonder) through various
ideas in an interesting and diverting flight of fancy. I read about Boltzmann
brains (something to do with the possibility the universe itself could become
conscious) and the Fermi paradox (life in the universe should be abundant so
why cant we see any evidence for it elsewhere?) and the Drake equation (a
formula forpredictinghowmuchalienlifeshouldbeoutthere).Ialsoreadabout
various prognostications for future life on this planet from some quite famous
people. This is an area I have visited before, not least in the context of
Transhumanism, a movement that wants to preserveandprosperhumanbeings
into the far future, often through use of technological means. This might mean
things like giving us robotic bodies and computer brains, turning us into
technological beings. It should beobservedthattitaniumorcarbonfibreismuch
strongerandmoredurablethanfleshandbone.

One famous person who has shared his views on the human future is Professor
Stephen Hawking. As a theoretical physicist heiswellplacedtocommentonthe
future of things, not least since he thinks and speaks about the cosmos all the
time and understanding how it works is his business. He has been reported in
the recent past as oneofthosewhothinksitsquitepossiblethatwehumanswill
kill ourselves in some way, either by deliberate aggression on someones part
(nuclear weapons, for example, of which there are somewhere around 22,000
stockpiled in the world) or by something we create (such as a strong artificial
intelligence, an intelligence truly able to think for itself independently and much
better and faster than we can). He is also not blind to the outside forces that
could potentially threaten us. A number of years ago he was quoted as saying
that if alien life exists and ever came to Earth he could envisage it being much
like Columbus finding the Americas with deadly results for the current

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inhabitants. None of this is to mention things such as anthropogenic climate
change (a political football if ever there was one) or rising population, two
almostmundanescenariositsnotimpossibletoforeseecausinglargerissues.

I could go on and on but the chances are you already get the point and all the
disaster scenarios tend to blurintooneanyway.Yaddayaddayadda.Blahblah
blah. Weve seen it all before. Weve read about it. Weve watched the movie.
But nothing ever happens. Life is quite boring here in the microscopically small
little snippet of time the universe has allotted to us. Yet scientists have known
for a while that our sun, which is growing in size and luminosity, and will do so
for hundreds of millions of years yet, is set to fry our planet, turning it into an
uninhabitablehuskwithsurfacetemperaturesinthehundredsofdegrees,boiling
the seas and causing them to evaporate. Global warming? Our globe is goingto
warm quite naturally anyway. Our species, birthed by this planet and bathed in
the light of our sun, was never meant to be around forever. The sun that now
warms us will one day destroy us. Indeed, light is theverythingthatmakeslife
possible since photosynthesis, the process by which plants harvest energy from
light, is responsible for why any of usarealiveatall.Buttheuniversegivesand
the universe takes away. Because nothing, not even the universe itself, is
permanent. Things have their time and then are gone. Energydissipates,things
growcold.

Why do I write all this? Its not just a rhetorical question, its my asking myself
why I care as an intelligent being who can't help but ask. I find it really quite
easy to be a misanthrope, someone who does not like human beings. We are a
proud species, and, after theoldputdown,aproudspeciesthatdoesnothavea
lot to be proud about. Many of us see ourselves as different, maybe the
universes crowning achievement if we turned outtobetheonlyintelligentlifeit
had ever givenbirthto.(Thesepeopleareknownashumanexceptionalists.)But
it irks me that people might think in this way. Where some see intelligence and
ingenuity I see needless violence, selfobsession, the ability toletyourneighbor
starve, petty hatreds carried on because of simple differences of opinion and
much, much more. There are those who say we must colonise the galaxy if we
are to survive as a species. There are others who say we must never allow the
humanvirustoescapetheEarth.IthinkIdsidewiththelattergrouping.

Humans are a selfish species and bad custodians. They are animals who,
misguidedly, think themselves more than just animals. Many think this planetis
ours. They think itmainlybecausetheyhavethepowertomakeitso.Butitis
no more ours than it is a butterflys or a lions or a crab's. We are all just
animals that rocked up in the same place at the same time. It was a random,
chaotic act in a random,chaoticuniverse.Itmayhavebeenreplicatedbillionsof
times across the billions of galaxies. It may not have. Maybe some distant
ancestors of our's will find out and maybe we won't survive another 200 years
(as some quite bright people think). What does it mean? I dont know. But I do
know that the random chaos will continue on its way through vast swathes of
time we simply cannot imagine until whatever it is that happens further on
down the line... Who knows if the story of all that is will even have an end?
Suchthingsarebeyondtheunderstandingofwhoweare.

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Wednesday

I woke up this morning to sunshine peeking through my curtainsandhittingmy

face. I awoke slowly, as I really like to do, and for several minutes I lay there,
eyes closed, the thoughts in my mind from dreams now receding rolling around
my head. It seems I had been dreaming about aworldwithoutmoneyandwhat
it would mean. Who knows why we dream and who knows how our dreams are
connected to us? Certainly not me. I find it amazing that we human beings can
lie there, essentially unconscious and vulnerable, for several hours a night.
Indeed, as I fell asleep last night I was pondering that that part of us that we
call the soulorconsciousnessistherealusandthatthisfleshlybodythatcovers
over what's inside is deceiving us with its physical reality into making us think
thatitistherealus.Religionistsandspiritualistseverywherewantyoutobelieve
that there is an incorporealyousomewhereintherethatistherealyouandthat
the physical, theworldofasciencethatfetishizeswhatcanbemeasured,isonly
the deception. It would be a major blow to the scientific ego if this was ever
foundtobetrueforthisegomaintainsthatallthereisis(mustbe)physical.

But its not my thoughts as I fell asleep lastnightthatIwanttowriteabout.No,

its the thoughts I had as I woke up and subsequently thought about in the
process of my wakingandthatareanimatingmerightnow.AsIintimatedinmy
first paragraph, I was dreaming about a world in which money was abolished.
Now I'm not the first person to have had this thought. Most famously, the Star
Trek universe is a moneyless universe in the world of science fiction fantasy. In
that universe money is often looked at as rather base and primitive. When I
think about it now, post dream, I can see that point. For what is money and
what does it do? Why do we, individually and as a society, need it? What
purpose does it serve? If money was actually abolished would everything
completely collapse or the world go backwards as weregressedtocavemenand
women? I don't think it would but I also think every person who is rich or who
yearnstoberichwouldtellyousomethingelse!

Maybe one reason I was dreaming about this was that recently, and even
habitually,IthinkaboutmusicandspecificallyfreemusicwhichistheonlykindI
now acquire. (I don't have a bank account and so it is physically impossible for
me to make online purchases.) Some people are adamantly against free music.
They think that the worker is worth their work and that, as such, all music
should carry a commercial price tag. I don't agree. Not only should people be
allowed to charge anything or nothing as they see fit (in a marketplace this
means that the free compete with the not free, of course, and the
commercialists probably don't like that very much) but for myself I also think
that making yourmusiccommercialputsawholeloadofresponsibilitiesontothe
artist that I don'tthinktheyshouldhaveasmusicians.Becausedoingsomething
commercially does, to my mind, change the relationship between creator and
those in receipt of the creation. Thisisespeciallysoincreativefieldsandweget
the ridiculous spectacle of millionaires and even billionaires complaining that
people who basically have nothing might havea"pirate"copyofsomethingthey
created.Thisiscrazybutveryrevealingofmotivesandideology.

But back to my dream. I imagined that money had been abolished. But what
happened then? Well, in my dream nothing happened then. People just carried

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on with their lives except that now no one got paid for anything and there was
no money. This is a disaster, youmightbethinking.Weneedmoneytolive.But
is it and do we? Its a very big thought, one our world does not want to think.
However, in the abstract, no, I don't think it is a disaster and we don't need
money to live. You may no longer get paid to go to work but then what do you
need money for? Everything you need is now completely free. This makes us
face up to a number of powerful ideological questions that are there lurking in
everyone'slife(whichitisforreaderstoanswerforthemselves):

1.Whatdoyougotoworkfor?

2.Whyareyouearningorwantingmoney?

3.Howissocietyrunandforwhosebenefit?

4. Could we humans live perfectly happy lives without money being anything to
dowithitatall?

These are questions that apply to everyone alive although often they are
designated "politics" and many people lose interest what with the terrible
reputation politics and politicians have. Much ofthatbadreputationistodowith
money. When you think aboutit,muchbadintheworldistodowithmoneyand
arguing over money. You start toseewhythosewhoinventedStarTrekthought
money was a very primitive thing. Money has been given a value andsopeople
hoard it and seek means to obtain it, sometimes nefarious ones. The desire for
money leads to many bad things. But if there wasn't any money anymore and,
more crucially, if no one needed money for anything in the first place, then you
remove a whole layer of wrongdoing, corruption and misery. You remove the
very motivation to do wrong in the first place. You couldn't be corrupt anymore
for any financialreasonbecausetherewouldliterallybenothingtogain.Therich
would recoil though as now their treasure chests areworthlessaswastheirvain
pursuitofthem

But you are probably still asking how you are supposed to live without money.
Fair enough, I understand. Each human being hasthisthinginsidethemmaking
them ask where the next meal is coming from and how they survive into the
near future. I understand that very well. In my dream this was pretty simple:
everyone just keeps on doing what they were doing. They go to work, they
perform their job. Everything just keeps happening. Now you might say that I
was dreaming and so this only makes sense in a dream. Fair comment. But
when I woke up and thought about it I asked myself if there isn't actually more
to this than meets the eye. For what do you go to work for (if you are lucky
enough to have work to do)? You go there for money in very many cases. But
why do you need money? Because society has CHOSEN to order itself on
commercial lines. This, make no mistake,isanideologicalchoiceandIDEOLOGY
ALWAYS HAS WINNERS ANDLOSERS,italwayssetspowerstructuresinplaceto
support and defend itself. Ideology is not something given or set in stone
though. You can change your ideology say, for example, if that ideology is now
causing more harm than good. Society COULD carry on withoutmoneyifpeople
simply just did their jobsanywayundersomekindofsocialcompactinwhichwe
all live and survive together and live for the good of all. You don't need any

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individual, financial or commercial motivation to do that. In fact, you might say
that financial and commercial motivations actually CORRUPT that motive and,
inevitably,thewholeprocess.Thepursuitofmoney,iffollowed,neverstops.

And so my dream, I think, shows up the ideology of using money, of knowing

the price of things but not the value, of discounting the harm and thinking only
of the good (for yourself in the main). I admit that I have NEVER been a
commercially motivated person. I have never understood why people want to
toddle off and work for a company when the company wants to make millions
and, as part of that goal,ispreparedtopayyouaslittleasitcangetawaywith.
I admit that I have never understood why there are companies that are richer
than some countries (and who certainly look to wield more influence than them
in some cases). I admit that the notion "I will pay you for your time" has never
been an appealing one because, quite frankly, I'd rather have my time since I
only have one life and I'd quite like to spend it as I choose. So the
commercialist, monetarist, ideology literally makes no sense to me. I am not
even that beguiled by being rich. We could all be rich in a moment anyway if
money was abolished and no one needed it anymore. And that means we
alreadyarerichbutwejustdontknowit.

But society has been set uponcommercialgroundsnow(notleastthankstothe

industrialists of 250 years ago who needed workers for their factories to make
THEM rich) and it would take some very major disaster to make us change our
ways. All those who suffer under a commercial regime will just have to keep on
suffering I'm afraid. This commercial mentality, of course, does not care about
those who do not, or cannot, take part in the moneymaking game. Its looks
with a weird faceatpeoplewhoarepoororwhotakeadifferentpointofview.It
doesn't understand why they aren't or don't want to be or can't be rich. In a
commercial world having STUFF is entirely the point and wanting stuff is your
motivation. But I'lltellyousomethingabouthavingnostuff:itgivesthelietoall
of that ideology.Becausethenyoulearnabouthowmuchyouhavewhenmoney
and stuff is put to one side. It occurs to me that craving for stuff, even if you
havemuchofit,isactuallyapovertyofthemind.

But making this point is not to finish this subject on the nobility of being poor
because in a commercial world those without do genuinely suffer. And they
suffer because they have nothing. In a commercial world there is a mentality
which works against simply giving help as well because everything has a price
and so people, somewhere, are expected to pay. And so everywhere we have
people starving, or using food banks, or dying needlessly of trivial ailments, or
living under bridges because no one would pay forthesmallthingsnecessaryto
help a human life carry on. Stuff can be expensive but human life is often
regarded very cheaply. That, I think, is very much a case of ideology trumping
humanityand,Isayitwithoutanyhesitation,isevil.

My dream of a future world withoutmoneymayormaynoteverhappen.Butno

one reading this should be blind or naive to the consequences ofthechoiceswe
have collectively and individually made. For the one thing we will always have
withusisconsequences.Thereisnoconsequencelessworld.
Thequestionremains:whatkindofspeciesdowewanttobe?

104

Friday

I still have his phone is my secret drawer. Its not very smart to keep it. Every
dayIdoIputmyselfatrisk.

Saturday

I don't know about you but I can't think of anything worse than immortality.
Immortality is the idea that life goes on forever and its usually assumed within
that basic premise that you will do so withrecognizablythesameidentity.What
would be the point otherwise? So this is not to say, as seems true, that the
physical stuff you are made of will go on forever, changing through different
states as it does. Immortality is the idea that you as an identity will exist
forever. There are many religious type people who believe in versions of
immortality whether its the salvation of Christians and Muslims or the
reincarnation of Hinduism. (In the latter a new life begins for a spirit but in a
new body.) But whichever version you might consider it all seems a bit off to
me. The idea that that which is me will always be alivejustseemssomuchofa
burden. For people who think like me, death is nothingtofear.Ifanything,itsa
welcomerelease,apermanentcessationofbeing.Anend.

I am fortunate on Twitter to have some thoughtful people to follow. Some are

open enough about themselves totweetquitepersonalandprofoundthoughts.I
often like watching the timeline scroll as each tweet is potentially a jumping off
point for a new idea or something else to consider. The other day there was
someone who tweeted about choosing to believe that death was not an end to
things they held dear,thingslikeloveandmeaningsthattheycarrywiththem.I
gave a wry smile tomyselfandinwardlynoddedapproval.ButIthinkbothIand
they realized that this was absolutely not true. It was theexpressionofadesire
not the acknowledgement of a fact. It was a wish not a truth. What we both
inwardly acknowledge is that death is an end. Or, at least, we believe so. My
friend who tweeted wished it wasn't so and hoped against hope.I,perhapswith
muchlessthantheytoholdontoanyway,wasmoreresigned.

Blaise Pascal was a very clever boy who grew into averycleverman.Hewasat
least a mathematician, inventor, physicist, writer and philosopher. He did
pioneering work on calculating machines while he was still a teenager. Indeed,
some of the things he did at a young age seemed so prodigious that others
believed his father must have done them instead. It wasn't all sunshine and
roses though. Pascal suffered from poor healthformostofhislifeanddiedaged
only 39. He was a Catholic and in his later years began to write both
theologically and philosophically aboutlife.HismostfamousworkishisPenses,
a collection of thoughts that discuss humanity in theological context. Withinthis
book there is something known as Pascal's Wager. The wager, briefly stated, is
Pascal's idea that people should believe in God (here assumed as the Christian
god) because, in doing so, one covers oneself against all eventualities. If God
exists then you believedinhim(hurrah!).AndifGoddoesn'texistthensowhat?
Itmakesnodifferenceanyway.Pascal'swageristhebetonGod.

105
Pascal wrote the wager in the context of writing an Apologia or defense of the
Christian religion. The book we now have called Penses is, in fact, just the
notes for the book that Pascal would have written if he had lived long enough.
Scholars even today argue about the arrangement, meaning and context of the
notes that Pascal left behind. But its the wager that concerns metoday.Itis,of
course, a ridiculous idea firmly seated in one particular point of view. Pascal
assumes that we should believe in the Christian god but seems to offhandedly
assume that no other gods exist. One imagines that if Pascal had believed in
multiple gods then he would have recommendedthatweshouldcoverourbacks
by believing in all of them equally. So the wager only applies to gods that you
already believe in for what reasons (or lack ofthem)thatyouhavetohand.But
the question remains (and many have pointed it out): is deciding to believe in
something just in case it exists really that commendable? One must wonder
what the christian God thinks of people who believe in him on the off chance.
This certainly does not seem to be anything like the more fullheartedfaiththat
both Jewish and Christian scriptures relate andrecommend.DoweseeinPascal
something of a rationalist trying to make room for beliefs that clash? It is
certainly true that people are capable of the most vicious contortions in their
beliefstomakethingsthatdon'tfit,fit.

Salvation is a strange business, at once an admission that the world of our

experience is lacking and a hope that there is something better elsewhere. It
goes together, in my thinking at least, with naivehumannotionssuchas"Itwill
all turn out OK in the end". Why willit?Isthistheindomitablehumanspiritthat
refuses tobebowedandalwayshopesforthebest?Orisitanaivestupidity,our
egotistical need to believe anything so long as we can still survive? Of course, I
don't necessarily blame people for wanting to survive. I suppose it is aninbuilt
faculty that evolution has bequeathed us. Species do notsurviveunlesstheytry
to. We could all of us sit underatreeandwitheraway.Sosurvivalispartofour
nature. But it is also a part of our nature to recognize our limitations. Much of
life and culture, I think, is about humanity exploring its limitations and
recognizing that it is limited in the first place. To behumanistobelimited.And
I will keep saying it! I was asked lastnight(online,ofcourse)aboutmyviewon
immortality as expressed above. The question was posed ofanimmortallifebut
one sentenced to life imprisonment. Maybe its just me but I say that if you see
life itselfasakindofprisonthenallyouaredoingistalkingaboutwhereyouare
imprisoned and not confinement versus freedom. We live in a world where
billions dream of various forms of salvation so maybe I'm not so alone in this
thinking. No one would want to be saved if they were happy with what they
alreadyhad.Oriftheythoughttheywerefree.

It isapeculiarityofapreviouslifeasabiblicalscholarintrainingthatIhavehad
reason in life to study and learn biblical Greek and Hebrew. TheNewTestament
was written in Greek and my first assignment at universityasanundergraduate
learning Greek was to comment on the use of the Greek word for "eternal" in
John's Gospel. The upshot of this study (for which I got good marks sinceIwas
a conscientious student) was that in John's Gospel the word "eternal" does not
primarily mean "forever" for it is not being used as an amount oftime.Instead,
the word "eternal" is a quality. "Eternal life" in John is not a neverending
amount of life butakindoflife.ImentionthisonlytocritiquePascal.Pascalwas
brilliant but his life sounds something of a horror with its constant bad health

106
(something I know too much about myself). We seethisinhiswrittenthoughts.
He writes of "dark spaces" that terrify him. His vision of humanity is of a
depraved and desperate species in need of rescue (cue God, stage right). It is
not at all difficult to imagine that Pascal would spend his days wishing that
something orsomecircumstancewoulddeliverhimfromthelifeheinhabited.As
I said before, its only those who are upset with what they have that want tobe
saved from it. But the writer of John's Gospel has found another way out. For
him the promises ofhisGodarenotforlifethatgoesonforeverbutforacertain
quality of life, eternal life.Wecantakethiskindoflifetobethegood,salvatory,
Godgiven one, the one that discards all the limitations and tribulations of the
human lives we all know so well. Itsalifeyoucouldexperiencerightnow.Thus,
the Gospels depict Jesus changing people's lives right now. ("The Kingdom of
God" is a similar, more Jewish, idea that expresses a similar thing in the other
threeChristiangospels.)

Im not being religious here. I am not recommendingbeliefintheChristiangod.

I am myself notabelieveringodsandthatincludesThor,AstarteorSvantevit.I
find it childish as with the need for salvation. If you are going to be a human
being you need to realize precisely thatyouarenotagodandthat"salvation"is
nothing but a human wish thatthingscouldbedifferentbutaren'tinactuality.A
similar mentality to that which needs gods is that one which reads comics or
watches films about superheroes. Surely, say we feeble humans,someonemust
be there to save the day? However, I do think that the writer of John's Gospel
has a point and its a point that the supposed believer Pascal didn't get. Its that
quality of life is what counts. By quality of life here I cannot mean its external
circumstances. That is not what the writer of John's Gospel meant either. He,
and I, both mean a quality of life which isnotreliantonexternalcircumstances.
And it must necessarily be this way. To rely on yourcircumstancesistobeprey
to the whims of life, to be a cork on its ocean. You will get tossedwhereverthe
waves take you. By quality oflifehereImeansomethinginternalwhichispartly
to do with your outlook, partly to do with your mentality, partly to do with
whether you can be at peace with things or not. I am sure that the Buddhists
have words and descriptions for this within their tradition but I'm too lazy to
read up about it. My basic idea here, which the writerofJohn'sGospelsuggests
in his own way, is that if you have this quality of inner life then the external
circumstances recede in importance. No longer are you merely a reaction to
what happens around you. You are, in some sense, isolated from it or at peace
with any outcome. The brilliant child prodigy Pascal did not getthis."Saveme!"
was his cry. Perhaps, in contrast, what I amrecommendingisakindofpeaceful
acceptance, a putting aside of care and an abandonment of needs, wants and
desires.Notmuchthen!

Because of this I think Pascal took the wrongwager.Heshouldnothavewasted

his time deciding to give mental assent to the notion that one god existed, a
monumentally pointless exercise in arsecovering. He should haveassumedthat
no gods exist and concentrated on cultivating an attitude which does not see
himself as but a cork on the universe's ocean that needs to be plucked from it.
He should have put hispeaceinhisownhands.(Ithinkthatallmostofusreally
wantispeacebut,Iconfess,itcouldjustbeme.)

107
There have been times in my life when I have wanted to commit suicide. But I
have always said to myself that I cannot do this unless I can do it totally at
peace with myself and the world. To do otherwise would seem to just be an
exercise in running away or escape. The thing is, I would not want my last
moments to be abject terror and turmoil and seeing the ropeortheknifeasmy
exit key. To do it totally at peace would seem, to me at least, noble or honest.
To do it as a completely disturbed person would not. As I'mstillwritingyoucan
assume that I never found the peace I was looking for and so I continue to live
on, a searcher forit.I'dbealiarifIsaidIwastotallyOKwiththat.Iseelittlein
life to cheer about. It is for me more endured than enjoyed. But I have it and
thereyougo.But,hopefully,notforever.W howantstoliveforeveranyway?

Sunday

I went for a night walk since I didnt get up and out early enough and it was
already dark by the time I pulled on my boots. On the second half of my usual
circuit I met a young woman with two young children. She called to me and
asked me if I knew where there was any kind of cafe so I directed hertoone.I
imagine she wanted to feed and water her kids. And then we both walked our
separate ways into the night. And I felt ugly. I feltlikeaworm.Ifeltlikeatroll.
I felt utterly repulsive to women. Nothing the young woman haddonemademe
feel this way. Rather, I just felt it of myself. The image of myself and her
standing together in the street flashed up in my mind and I just wanted to be
sick. I couldnt bare it. I think that successive women not finding me attractive
enough to be with has had a decisive and inevitable effect. Rejection is never
easytotake.Tryrejectionxrejectionxrejection.

Monday

TheLivingImage:ACautionaryTale

Part1

He sat down at his computer desk as he had done every night for aslongashe
could remember. The operating system blurted into life and went through tohis
home screen (a beach babe with unfeasibly large breasts). He opened the
browser and typed www.deviantart.com. Up came his page and he began to
browse. He went straight to his favorite category Artistic Nude. There were
many nudes there and some of them were even artistic! He savored every
pictureandhefoundonewhichmadehimtakenotice.

She was gorgeous. She had creamy white skin, smooth, curvy bumps in all the
right places and she wasn't wearing a thing whilst lying back on her bed. His
pulse began to race and he could feel his heart beating in his chest. His
breathing got louder and deeper. As if by magic, his belt undid itself and his
zipper descended. He grasped his manhood in anticipation. Thiswasgoingtobe
anotherbigone.

108
He took his pants off completely as was his usual routine. Better to be
unencumbered while he played. He imaginedhimselftouchingthegirl,caressing
her. It wasn't long before he was enjoying her to the full as he slapped his
member back and forth excitedly. Hepushedhischairslightlyfurtherawayfrom
the desk so he wouldn't bang histoolagainstitinhisexcitement.Hewasastud
there in his computer chair and he knew every pornstar move. The movieinhis
headwasXXXrated.

"What are you doing?" The voice came from nowhere and it scared the shit out
of him. He stopped jerking andsatboltupright.Helookedaround.Hewasalone
for the night as his wife was out so who was saying that? "What are you doing
looking at me like that?" He turned and looked at the screen. The naked babe
hadmovedfromherposeonthebedandwastalkingtohim!

"I have seen you here before," she said, continuing to speak from inside the
screen. "Every night you come here, take off your belt, unzip your pants, and
whack off while your eyes devour me. I didn't want to say anything before. I
thought maybe it was just a release of tension. But Iwastalkingtosomeofthe
other girls you look at and it seems you've done this nearly every day for the
last 6 years!" He was transfixed, gobsmacked. Hehadnoideawhattodoorsay
and he sat there with no pants on, his member now becoming increasingly
flaccidasaspecofmoisturedrippedfromtheend.

"Why do you do it?" she inquired. "I'm, I'm, I'm just having some fun," he
replied with no conviction at all. "But do you have to be so filthy about it?" she
shot back. "I'm not your filthy whore and you are not going to fuck my asshole
until it's in tatters." "No Ma'am" was all he could reply in atonethatwasbarely
audible.

DING DONG!! That was the doorbell and it woke him with a start. Hestaggered
up off the sofa, knocking a cold cup of tea over as he did so. "Shit!" exploded
from his lips as he headed for the front door. "Hi darling, have a nice night?"
said his wife. He shot back a confused look as the dream replayed in his mind.
What the hell had just happened? "I fell asleep on the sofa again" was all he
could manage as he struggled to come to terms with his recent experiences. "I
think I might checkmyemailsforhalfanhourlove"hesaidasheheadedforhis
study.

He sat down at his computer desk as he had done every night for aslongashe
could remember. The operating system blurted into life and went through tohis
home screen (a beach babe with unfeasibly large breasts). He opened the
browser and typed www.deviantart.com. Up came his page and he began to
browse.HewentstraighttohisfavoritecategoryArtisticNude.

And then he froze. Every nude he looked at was holding up a sign that showed
him jerking off in his study with the word "WANKER" as a heading at the top.
Except forone.Thatshowedthenudehehadseeninhisdreamwavinghispenis
overherhead.Helookeddownandhiswasgone!
Part2

109
Panic gripped him. "Oh God, my cock's not there!" He ripped at his pants and
pulled them down. He was as smooth as a bowling ball! His head was spinning.
All was frenzy, sweat and panic. He felt faint. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" He
didn't know why but he was drawn towards his computerscreen.Thescenehad
changed. No more were harpies holding signs that accused him and the nude
had stopped swinging his now long gone penis over her head. Strange patterns
played on the screen, first seeming to suggest one thing and then another. He
didn't know whethertobeinterestedbythisorterrified.Musicwasplayingsoftly
in the background although his computer had no speakers connected.
Instinctively, he knew it to be by Boards of Canada. He didn't knowwhyorhow
he knew this as he had never heard of Boards of Canada.Theneverythingwent
blackasiftherehadbeenapowercut.

He stumbled up from his chair and tripped over the pants that werelanguishing
around his ankles. His forehead hit the ground hard. Hard! Something he could
never be anymore without a proud, stiff cock! Dazed and very confused he
struggled to his feet and attempted to pull up his pants. "Where'sthedoor?"he
thought as Amo Bishop Roden played in the background, seemingly from
nowhere. He felt in front of him. Theroomwaspitchblack,muchblackerthanit
should have been. Eigengrau. Fingers tentatively stretched out, reaching for
something familiar in a world gone haywire. This was his study. He knew every
inch of it but now he didn't! He couldn't find the door. Goddamnit! His head
began to swim and he foundhecouldn'tfocushiseyes.Itwaslikehewasinside
an actual kaleidoscope.Hethoughthecollapsedbutcouldn'tbesure.Thenthere
was a bright light and he was sitting in front of his desk staring at a blank
computerscreen.

Blam! The screen exploded into pixelated life. A figure dressed in a flimsywhite
robe was walking in a desert scene. There seemed to be the ruins of some old
temple in the background. He couldn't tell at first if it was towards him or away
from him that the figure walked but then it became clear that this figure was
indeed heading in his direction. His consciousness was fixed on this figure.
Nothing else existed. The nearer it got the more he began to make out it's
features. Clearly this was a woman, and obscenelyso.Shewasroughlyfivefeet
teninchesinheightwithlongredhairwhichmusthavecascadeddownherback.
Her white robe did little to hide her perfectly formed teardrop breasts which
sluttily could be seen poking through the thin fabric of her robe. Her nipples
were visible through the cloth and very erect. The robe itself wasslashedtothe
waist on both sides,exposingcreamywhitethighswitheverystep.Occasionally,
the fabric would flare up for no reason, exposing shaved, smooth womanhood.
He imagined that this figure would have a rump like asmoothwhitepeach,firm
yetyieldingtoatouchorasqueeze.

The figure got closer and he began to become enraptured by her. He started to
want her, to go into that desert and lick her all over. He had to have her. The
way her breasts bounced and the flashes of thigh were pulling him in. "God, let
me at her" he screamed silently. It was then he noticed that this was the nude
from the bed, the one who had talked to him and swung his penis so
possessively.Butitdidn'tmatter.Hewantedher.Therewasnofear,onlydesire,
lusty desire, the kind where you just want to rip off clothes and fuck and fuck
and fuck. She kept on walking towards him, teasing, supremely confidentinher

110
womanhood. She was basically daring him to have her. He could see now that
she was wearing white high heels which only accentuated her legs and made
that peachy bum stick out as she walked. She was the embodiment of sexual
passion, of all that was desire. She exuded sex. She wanted to devour and be
devoured.

When it seemed like she would almost walk out through the computer screen
she stopped. But then there was no screen and he was there, in the desert,
sitting on a computer chair with an Amazon standing in front of him in a white
robe which covered very little but displayed everything perfectly. She stood
there, right in front of him. He could smell her, amixtureofsweetnessandsex,
hot,filthysex.Shewasamazing.Andthenshespoke.

"Hello Mr Jemand. Do youknowwhoIam?"Hedidn'trespond.Hejuststared.If

he had had a cock he would have been furiously beating off right now. "I have
been known by many names in my time," she continued. "Once upon a time I
was known as Lilith.AtanothertimetheycalledmeAshtarothorAstarte.Others
know measVenus.GreekscallmeAphrodite.IamLove,Passion,Sex,Beauty.I
am all that you desire. Look at me. Let your eyes caress my every curve.
Imagine your tongue exploring my every crevice. Want me, crave me, desire
me. And now know this: you shall never have me! The horn of your desire has
been taken away from you. You shall lust but have nothing to grab holdof.You
shall desire but have nothing to release that desire with. You are in my power.
Youaremytoy.Youshallneveragainknowsexualsatisfaction!

Bang! The noise brought him to with a start. Bang! Bang! Clint Eastwood was
shooting bad guys on the TV. Mr Jemand was onhiscouchandhadclearlybeen
asleep.DINGDONG!Itwasthedoorbellandhiswifewashome.

Part3

It was now quite late. He turned off Clint and left him shooting bad guys. Man,
that was quite a dream. He felt down at his groin, relieved he still had a cock
and two balls. He cupped and squeezed them gently. Phew! He went into the
kitchen where his wife, Mrs Jemand, was making a bedtime drink. "How was
your evening," he noncommittally offered. "It was good. I enjoyed it," she
replied. In truth Mr and Mrs Jemand did not share manyhobbiesorinterestsin
common. Many of their friends wondered why they were even together.
Sometimes things just stay together because they always have been. They
becomesecondnature.Thiswasoneofthosethings.

The bedtime routine was completely as it had been every othernightsincetime

immemorial: pee,washhands,brushteeth,pullonpyjamas,beannoyedbywife
putting on creams and lotions so that she was a sticky mess you couldn't even
touch. Mr Jemand would have said that the spring had gone out ofhislovelifeif
he could have remembered when he last had one. However, given his recent
dream he decided that a good night'srestwasprobablyagoodthing.Tomorrow
was a new day. "Good night dear," he tossed out into the now darkbedroom.A
snorewashisreply.
It was maybe an hour before Mr Jemand beganfloatinghighthroughtheair.He
was flying, free as bird, high above a snowy mountain landscape. He looked

111
down and saw some deer walking through a forest then a fox trotting across a
field. Ah, he was so free! He twisted and somersaulted, looping the loop in the
air. Warm air caressed his body as he got lost in innocence. Now he began to
descend. A long way off a shape was coming into a view. It soon became clear
this was a log cabin, but on a grand scale. It was the Buckingham Palace of log
cabins! Slowly, he descended as he got nearer. He let himself be guided andhe
drifted into a courtyard right by some steps leading uptogranddoorsmadeout
ofhugelogs.Theyswungopenandhedidn'tthink,hejustwalkedinside.

In front of him was a huge corridor bedecked with aplush,redcarpetandthere

were portraits down both sides. Each portrait was of a more and more beautiful
woman. The portraits had an eerie quality. It couldn't have been truebutitwas
like each painting was alive, a real woman whowasalive.Thereseemedtobea
movement to the painting style that made them seem more than paint on
canvas. He felt like all the eyes werefollowinghimaroundtheroomashemade
his way down the corridor. After about 100 feet there were more doors. They
opened at his approach and he strode in. It was a bed chamber. There was a
huge fourposter bed in the centre of the room. On three sideswereroaringlog
fires. For a moment it almost seemed to him like a sacrificial chamber as if the
bed were being set on top of flames but the thought soon passed. To the side,
just inside the door, there were grapes and a flagon of red wine. He picked up
the cup, sniffed at the contents and then took a deep slug of the fruity liquid.
Electricity shot through his body. Wow, that was great stuff. But now he felt
drowsy. Mustliedown.feelso.tired.now. He made it to the bed and lay
down.Thepillowsfeltsoftanddowny.

Hands were tugging at his pants. His face was being smotheredinkisses.There
was a smell he knew from somewhere, a sweet, sexy smell. He felt his cock
being sucked, long deep sucks that pleasured his shaft with every pass. He felt
his sap was rising. Every now and then a tongue would lick the end ofhispenis
in just the right spot. Oh my God that's good! His shirt was being lifted upover
his headandnailswerescratchinghischest.Hecouldn'tsee,itwasallablur,an
ecstatic, erogenous blur. He heard whispers. You want me. Make me wet. Take
me. Have me. I'm yours. I need you. He felt himself being mounted, his now
proud rod standing stiff and true. Yes, yes, ride me and don't stop. Let me
explode in you. Instinctively, he reached down and felt asoft,yieldingbehindin
his grasp. He squeezed it and the pleasure he felt was immense. He was being
ridden and ridden hard. He grasped the butt cheeks harder and gave them a
slap. Thwack! The sound made him wilder. He grabbed the rounded behind and
began bucking and fucking as hard as he could. Oh God yes! Hands ruffled
through his hair and kisses covered his face in the moments when breasts
weren't being thrust into his mouth. She was a wild one! He felt her juices
dribbling down his shaft into his groin area and that was enough to have him
spasm and explode inside her. Fucking God oh yes! He experienced that
postcoital moment when all is peace and bliss. Then she began to dismount,
kissing his face and then his chest and he felt himself being kissed down his
body. Suddenly his eyes were open and there she was, Lilith. She opened her
mouth to reveal fangs. Her head moved to his groin area.Shewasgoingtobite
his
Part4

112
Argh! He sat bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat. He fumbled at the bedside
table, sending the glass of water flying. Where was the goddamn table lamp?
"What the hell is going on?" a clearly upset Mrs Jemand shot in his direction.
"Badbad..dream," came back his answer. "I'm gonna go downstairs for a
while." "Well keep the damn light off. Some of us want to sleep," spat out his
irritable wife.Shepulledthecoverscloseraroundherfaceinanattempttoenter
the darkworldofslumberoncemore.MrJemandwentdownstairs.Hesatonthe
couch, lent over and put on the TV. He searched the radio channels that came
with his cable. A reggae channel cameonandtheannouncersaid"andnowlet's
have a bit of Max Romeo with 'Wet Dream'". The song began. "Every night me
go to sleep me have wet dream" He switched it off and buried his head in
hishands.

At the turn of the year, at the time when kings go to war, David sent Joab and
with himhisguardsandallIsrael.TheymassacredtheAmmonitesandlaidsiege
to their main city. David, however, remained behind in Jerusalem. It happened
oneeveningthatDavidhadhadanap.Hegotupfromhissleepandwaswalking
around on the palace roof when he saw a gorgeous woman bathing across the
city. The woman was the best and most lusciouswomanhehadeverseeninhis
life. David couldn't stop thinking about her after that and so he enquired of his
staff who she was and was told she was the wife of Uriah, a mercenary captain
in his Guard. On hearing this, and knowing Uriah to be fighting, he sent
messengers to fetchthewoman.Shestayedwithhimsomedaysandhehadher
many times over before she went home again. A few weeks later the woman
sent word back to David "I am pregnant". David didn't know what to do. So he
decided to get Uriah to come back from the fighting and send him home so he
would sleep with his wife and then all would be well. But Uriah was a good
soldierandwouldnotabandonthebattleandhisdutytodefendthekingandthe
city. So David informed his adjutant tosendUriahbacktothefightingandplace
him at thefrontwherethefightingwasfiercest.Thenthearmyweretopullback
unexpectedly so Uriah would bekilled.Induecoursehismessengersreportedto
him that Uriah had indeed been killed. After the prescribed period of mourning
for her husband,Davidbroughtthewoman,Bathsheba,intohishouseandmade
herhiswife.Asonwasborn.

Mr Jemand felt a sharp nudge in the ribs. What the hell? Eyes blearily blinked
open and he looked forward from the back of the church. Sleeping during the
sermon again! He looked over at Mrs Jemand and got a look back that meant
"You are a disgrace". The priest was going on aboutDavidandBathsheba."Just
shows what happens when you chase tail," he chuckled to himself. The priest
had a slide projector running to illustrate hissermoninanefforttostopmoreof
his flock from drifting off. Up popped a slide labelled "Bathsheba". But it wasn't
Bathsheba. It looked just like Lilith and it looked likeshewaslookingstraightat
him! He looked down in an effort to compose himself. He told himself this was
just a strange occurrence. He'd been asleep,hadastrangedreamandhehadn't
quiteshakenitoffyet.Helookedupagainbuttheslidehadchanged.

Church was so boring. He only went because of his wife. She was a social
churchgoer didn't believe a thing but liked the clubs, societies and social
aspect. And of course in church what better image than the middle class
professional couple? Many times he'd tried to make excuses and stay at home.

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Beating off to teenage girls while his wife was at church wassomuchmorefun.
He also enjoyed the thrill of the chase. There were more than a few women
online prepared to play the game so that both got off with exactly what they
wanted. Instead today he was hearing some old priest rabbit on about a king
who wantedthebestpussyforhimself.Wasn'tthatwhatkingsweresupposedto
do.Fuckme,hethoughtwithsomeexasperation.

The sermon dragged on and Mr Jemand's mind wandered. Jesus! All the pussy
he could be checking out now. He looked around the church trying to find a
suitable female face he could fantasise about, the way guys do when they're
bored and horny. Surreptitiously, he slid a hand in his pocket and teased his
dormant horn. Luckily for him he was sat at the back of the church and against
the right handwallsoahandinhisrightpocketcouldnotbeseen.Hestirredhis
membertolife,feelingfortunatethathistrouserswerequitebaggythatday,but
could see no womanworthfantasizingabout.Itwasallwhitehairedoldladiesin
hats with pins in them or middleaged frumps. There was someone further
forward who looked promising. She had red hair or so it seemed from behind.
The problem was she was sitting on the same side so he couldn't get a proper
view of her face. He tried to imagine her sitting there and imagined she was
naked under her rather expensive creamcoloured jacket which was all hecould
see of her. He posited a chance meeting later on after the service in the men's
bathroomwhen,justbychance,theywereallalone.

He zipped up his pants and washed his hands. Church was over for another
week, thank God, he mused ironically. The door opened and in she walked.
Long, straight, red hairflowedoverthecollarofacreamjacket.Underneathwas
a yellow dress with a frilled collar and hemline. The dress extended only to
midthigh and was slightly sheer. It was almost a display case for one of the
most banging bodies he had ever seen. "I'm Bathsheba and I want you to bend
me over and fuck me," she stated with an air ofdominatrixabouther.Hedidn't
wait for a second invitation. He pulled her to him and kissed her deeply.
Instinctively, his right handstartedsqueezing,firstalargehandfulofleftbreast,
grazing over her flat stomach and then he put his hand up her dress. She was
wearing no panties which he took as an open invitation to massage her pussy
lips until they became moist andswollen.Asthisoccurredheslippedtwofingers
insideher,thenthree.Shewasmoaning.

He flipped herroundandpushedhertowardsasink,bendingheroverandlifting
up the dress. He bent down and stuck his tongue into her asshole, licking as
much as he could. Better to have both holes wet and prepareforallpossibilities
he thought. She tasted very good andwiggledherbuttsuggestivelyashelicked
deep inside her forbidden hole. But he better be quick, he reasoned, you never
know when someone might come in. So he undid his trousers and slipped them
down, releasing his manhood, which he immediately slid intoherwettunnel.He
grabbed hold of her hair and began to thrust her hard from behind.Ashestood
there, balls deep in this dream woman he noticed a little tattoo on Bathsheba's
neck,

isHebrewanditspellsLilith.
Part5

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In the year 2313 the drug of choice wasthegamecrazeBITCHSLAP.Everything
had changed in gaming since the invention of what the presscalledthe"WANK"
chip, "WANK" being an acronym for Wide Access NonIntegrated Knowledge
Chip. It was wide access because the gaming mainframe spanned every human
being plugged into the mains wherever they were. It was nonintegrated
knowledge because you were supposed to be free of the mainframe world once
disconnected with no after effects. The chip was the size of a pinhead and was
implanted on the backofthehandnearthewrist.Itservedadualpurposeasan
undefeatable identity tag. The tag was your own consciousness which in 2313
could be plotted and dissectedlikeafingerprint.Essentially,yourconsciousness,
your mind, your soul, was captured and implanted in the chip and then either
used to identify you or to transfer your very incorporate being and personality
into the mains world. Since it's invention by the multinational pornographer
VIVIDcorp in 2099 people had beenabletodirectlyplugtheirconsciousnessinto
the mains via a console in their own home and "connect" to whoever else was
online at thetime.You,ofcourse,weresittinginachairathomewithyourhand
inserted into a small pod which read the chip but in your mind you were in a
world as real asanyotheralthoughitwasmoreaccuratetosaythatyourmind
had been disconnected from your body and placed somewhere else.Yourreality
was now the world of the mains. Nothing happens that doesn't happen in
relation to a consciousness. Connect those minds in one big mutual universe
withoutphysicalbarriersandawayyougointeractionwithoutbarriers.

Such a world was one enjoyed by Pierre Qualcuno, a 21 year old university
student from London. He was meant to be a university student anyway. But he
spent all day plugged into the mains playing BITCHSLAP. He'd even taken
advantage of the Refreshment Attachment optional extra on his WANKchair in
which he sat while plugged into the mains. This fed him intravenously, allowing
him to play for 1620 hours at a time. BITCHSLAP was a game of wits in which
you tried to outmaneuver bad guys and get money and girls for yourself, a sort
of updated and magnified Vice City. Whilst plugged into the mains there wasno
law.TheUNDecreeof2163statedthatnocriminalactcouldbecommittedwhile
a person's consciousness was in the mains because it was a "fantasy world". It
was effectively the Wild West all overagain.Havingbeenaggressivelymarketed
by VIVIDcorp and their female CEO, L.I. Lith, nearly everyone on the planet
played BITCHSLAP. VIVIDcorp had achieved this by underwriting a large part of
the costs in installing the whole WANK chip system for free. You had a measly
one credit a day deducted from your Worldbank account for the privilege of
staying connected. And it was easy to see why people played as a world of no
consequence where you could make your own rules was wildly attractive
compared to the largely robotized and mechanized world of the post 22nd
century.

It was early morning. Pierre stirred in his WANKchair. He'd fallen asleep. He
connected the drip, determined to play an all day session of BITCHSLAP.
Lectures could wait for another day. He rememberedthepileofcommunications
he'd been receiving from the university. He was going to get thrown off his
course. What the hell. He slid his hand in the pod and felt the slight prick as it
was injected with serum that induced the catatonic state necessary to enterthe
mains. He began to drift off..and when he awoke he was once more Pierre
Qualcuno,cablerepairman.

115

Aphi wasbusyinthekitchenwhenthedoorbellrang.Sheheadedforthedoor.It
was the guy from thecablecompanyrightontimeforachange.Hecameinand
got to work upgrading the cable service. Aphi noticed that he kept casting a
glance her way as he went about his business. She was sure he was giving her
the eye. She began to regret did wearing a tight fitting T shirtandshortshorts.
It was a hot day. Well, that was her excuse anyway. As he was down on the
floor messing with something with ascrewdriverAphileantforwardtoaskPierre
a question. ShesawhimtakeagoodlookrightdownthetopofherTshirtwhich
had pressed forward under the weight of her breasts. She asked her question
and engaged in small talk. He seemed a nice enough guy apartfromthecreepy
looks. Soon enough he said he was finished. He packed up his tool box and got
readytogo.

Aphi, which was short forAphrodite,ledhimtothedoor.Asshedidsoshefelta

hand squeeze her ass. What the hell? Even before she could turn around his
hand was down the front of hershorts.Shefeltfingersfeelinginsideherpanties
and one or two entered her vagina which was warm but dry. She winced as he
pushed her against the wall in thehallway."I'mgoingtosatisfyyouwithmybig
fat cock" was all Pierre said as he looked into Aphi's eyes. Holding her against
the wall with a hand to her neck he expertly undid the button and zipper that
wereholdinguphershorts.Herpantiescameintoviewbutherippedthemdown
and thrust fingers inside. He wasn't being careful. He wasananimalinheatand
hewantedtodevour.Welcometothemains.WelcometoBITCHSLAP.

He began thrusting in and out of her cunt, two fingers then three fingers. He
lifted up Aphi's T shirt and gave her round tits rough squeezes, pinching the
nipples so hard she jumped. He smacked Aphi's pussy with his hand because it
was nownicelywetandinviting.Guidingheracrossthehallwayhebentherover
a table. She heard him unzip and then he was inher.Hefuckedherlikeatrain,
pulling her hair, smacking her white ass and calling her cuntandwhore.Parting
herasscheeks,hespatintoherasshole.Shefeltwhatseemedlikeatleastthree
fingers force their way in. "Come on bitch, let's see if youlikeitinbothholesat
once" he said. And so he fucked her hard while 3 then 4 fingers fucked her
asshole.Hedidthisfornighontenminutesbeforepullingout.

Pushing her to the floor he took his meaty cock, which was covered in Aphi's
juices, and began smacking it in her face. Pussy juice flecked her faceashedid
this and then he shoved his whole cock down her throat. She gagged and
choked. She couldn'tbreathe.Hepulleditoutandslappedheracrossthefaceto
make her take notice. "Swallow my cock bitch" he said before shoving the cock
back down herthroat.Shegaggedagain."Suckit",hedemanded,andshebegan
sucking his cock until he was ready to shoot. Whenhedidheshotitinherface.
She couldn't see and hetookadvantageofthatfact,rubbinghiscockinthecum
onherfacebeforepushingitinhermouth.

She thought that it might nowbeoverbutno.Goingtohistoolboxhepulledout

a foot longmetaltorch.Itwassmoothmetalbutcoldandasthickasagoodsize
cock. "Guess where this is going?" he asked impassively.Aphididn'tknowashe
dragged her up to the sofa before pushing her down back onto it. Parting her
legs he shoved the torch up her cunt, watching the lips and sticky cunt spread

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wide apart. Every now and then he smacked Aphi's face and tits, pinching and
biting the nipples. He got faster with the torch, rhythmically fucking her with it
and rubbed her clit to aid stimulation. She could feel she was going to cum. He
watched her embarrassed climax before turning her over and fucking her ass
once more for good luck. He got up and did his pants up. Looking down he saw
Aphifacedownonthesofa,creamycumleakingfromherass.

Part6

Pierre Qualcuno pulled into the driveway. Another productiveday.Helethimself

in and went to the kitchen. He was hungry after the exertions of the day. He
went into the fridge and pulled out some cooked roast beef. He pushed sliver
after sliver into his mouth and washed it down with some creamy milk leaving
dirty fingerprints all over the carton. Appetite satisfied for themoment,hewent
into his study and flicked on the computer to see what emails he hadbeensent
thatday.

VIVIDcorp had grown to be the biggest corporation in the world thanks to it's
WANK technology and BITCHSLAP. It was now led by it's buxom and flagrantly
sexualCEO,LillianLith.Shewasnotoriousbothforhavingbeentheworld'smost
famous ever porn starandforoutragingthebusinessworldwithherflagrantuse
of the technology her company had invented to promote all kinds of sexual
moneymaking opportunities. BITCHSLAP, of course, was the greatest of these.
Under Lith's guidance every sexual fetish, deviancy and lust could be satisfied.
Just sit back in your WANKchair, insert your WANKchip into the pod and insert
your dick into whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted! It wasyourfantasy
and you chose the time and place. The beauty of this was, of course, that
nothing was illegal. There were no restrictions and no guilt about breaking any
laws.

Lith herself was brash and loud. She used her sexuality to get exactly what she
wanted. Even in the 24th century few women rose to run companies, let alone
thebiggestofthemall.ThereweremanystoriesofhowLithhadusedherpussy,
and not just her business acumen, to get whatshewanted.VIVIDcorp'ssuccess
was built on the back of many such illegitimate liaisons. Her office was opulent,
as you might expect. Everything was coveredingoldleaf,includingfourlifesize
statues of men with hugely prominent erect penises. More than once Lith's
secretary had entered her office to find her backing onto one of them with her
panties down. Lith would always laugh at the embarrassment this caused. But
she wouldn't stop. In the corner of Lith's office was her own personally
embossed WANKchair. It was not known how often she used it. She seemed to
have so much sex in the real world one wondered how much time she might
havetoenterafantasyworldintheneedofmorethrillsofanykind.

YetonthisparticulardayLithwasinaverystrangemood.Shewalkedoutofher
office towards her secretary. This was strange in itself. Lith didn't walk
anywhere. She prowled like a big cat hunting prey. She looked pale and what
could only be described as disturbed. She reached her secretary's desk but
carried on walking, almost stumbling in her expensive high heels, and pushed
the button for the elevator. The doors duly opened and she got in. Theelevator

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began to descend. Her secretary, Tera, didn't know what to make of this. She
got up and went into Lith's office. Nothing seemed out of place. The only thing
she noticed was the faint hum as theWANKchairinthecornerfinishedpowering
down.

"Oh yes, fuck yes", exhaled a once more exerted MrJemand.Cumdrippedfrom

the end of his recently satisfied cock and he squeezed his still hard shaft,
extracting every last ounce of ecstasy from his selfpleasuring experience. He
had just shagged the arse offalovelylittle16yearoldblondecalledCarrieafter
imagining her sucking his cock for about 15 minutes. He hadsmackedherassa
few times as he filled her tunnel as well. All in allhefeltsatiatedoncemore.He
grabbed the towel he kept in a drawer in his desk and wiped off the still
engorged member,noticingashedidthatthetowelcoulddowithawash.Itwas
encrusted with the remnants of a hundred previous wanks. He turned to get up
and go and drop the towel in the laundry basket and then fetch a new one. On
the computer Carrie watched and stared back impassively as computer images
do. And then she morphed into a proud redhead with large teardrop breasts
sluttilyprotrudingthroughasheerwhiteblouse.Asmilespreadacrossherface.

Part7

When Lillian Lith got home shewentstraighttoapalatialbathroomandvomited

in her gold plated toilet. And then she vomited again. She fell to the floor,
sobbing,weeping,cryingandwithoutanytraceofdignity.Theimagesofanhour
before swept through her mind with an all too visceral reality. She remembered
what he had said: "I'm going to satisfy you with my big fat cock". She felt the
fingers inside her, the penis, the torch. She wanted to be unconscious.
Thereafter, everything was asickening,painfulblur.Afewhoursandagoodnap
later she was starting to recover her poise. And she determined that this would
not stand. She put a call through to her chief technician for the WANKchip
records of one "Aphrodite Olympus". It was not generally known thatVIVIDcorp
could do this but that was because Lillian Lith did not want them to. In fact, if
she wanted to, she could know who did what, when and where in both the
BITCHSLAP world and the real one. This was the genius of a gaming system
based on an identity software tagged to a person's very consciousness. So now
she had a recording of all actions and interactions ofAphiwithintheBITCHSLAP
world. Anyone she met Lillian could identify. From it she would be able to
determine just exactly who had done this to her and, more importantly as this
was also an identity program, who they actually were when not committing
randomrapes.

Pierre Qualcuno was sitting on his sofa reading his communications. Bills, bills,
bills.HerewasoneforBITCHSLAP.

PIERREQUALCUNOAKAPETERJEMAND31CREDITSitread.

He deleted it withtherestandsmiledtohimself.PeterJemandwasthebestand
cheapest entertainment there could possibly be, the ultimate drug. It was a
license to rob, steal, fornicate and fornicate some more without any come back
and hardly any effort. Tomorrow he would be Peter Jemand the cableguyagain

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and get himself some more easy, unwilling pussy. Somewhere a doorslammed.
Itwasprobablythewind.Pierresnuggledintothesofaandhadasleep.

When Lillian Lith appeared in the Data Center of VIVIDcorp at midnight the
technicians were all surprised. She ordered that they put all programs into a
standard holdingpatternandthattheyleave.Sheenteredadiskintothesystem
containing all the actions from that day of Aphrodite Olympus. When the cable
guy entered the scene she froze it and stared at him. Payback time. She asked
for the ID and gotPIERREQUALCUNOAKAPETERJEMANDasherreplyincluding
all his details since the system had been put up. Mr Qualcuno was an
exceedingly lazy man who seemed to rape and masturbate hiswaythroughlife.
He bought pizza and beer from the store and did nothing but play BITCHSLAP
and make use of VIVIDcorp's other sexualservices.Lillianletoutthesmallestof
chuckles. Inmanywayshewasamodelcustomer,amanwhowasaslavetohis
dick. Her gold plating, palatial home and fleet of Ferraris was built on the
uncontrolled sexual thrillseeking of vermin like him. But this one was different.
This one was personal. She initiated the program that her chief technician had
passed to her when she arrived at the facility. Internally it was known as
MINDFUCK for reasons that should be obvious. It's effect was to literally
mindfuck you whenever you entered BITCHSLAP. And so it was that Peter
Jemand started having some very weird BITCHSLAP experiences from that time
forward.

Pierre woke with a start. There was that slamming noise again. He pondered
whether he should continue his nap or not. No,"let'sbePeterJemandagain"he
decided. So he moved over to the WANKchair and gotsettled.Heconnectedthe
intravenous drip and relaxed his backside into the shape it was now so used to
taking. He entered his hand into the pod, felt that slight sting and lapsed into
catatonia. Outside Lillian Lith hoped the noises she had made were not giving
heraway.

DING DONG! The door opened and Abby Summers let in the cable guy. He
seemed quite a cheery chap but had the rather creepy habit of eyeing her up a
little toomuch.Abbywasregrettingthatshehadworntightshortsthatday.She
even thought about changing but determined it was better to get the cable guy
on with his job so that he would leave as quickly as possibly. Ten to fifteen
minutes later Peter, as he said his name was, was ready to leave. She led him
towardsthedoor.

..just as Lillian Lith strode into the grotty living room where Pierre Qualcuno
reclined in his WANKchair. The irony. Mr Qualcuno was probably already raping
some other poor, unfortunate girl, either that or jacking off pathetically for the
third time today to someimaginarypersonontheinternet.WellLillianknewjust
the way he should go. She tied him to his WANKchair first. As she couldn't find
anything she took off her own expensive stockings and used those. She then
undidPierre'spantsandbegantosuckhispenis..

at exactly the same time as Peter Jemand was forcing himself down Abby's
throat. Abby struggled and squealed buthewastoostrong.Shewasgoingtobe
one more victim of BITCHSLAP. Peter felt this was going really well today. For

119
some reason having his cock down Abby's throat felt extra special. Hepusheda
littleharder,feelinghimselfhittingthebackofAbby'sthroat.Itfeltsogood.

Meanwhile Lillian had made Pierre hard which is quite a feat considering hewas
catatonic. But then she had been the world's greatest porn star. As soon as his
cock was hard she took out a sharpened knife, held the erect cock and balls in
her hand and with oneslashingmotioncutthewholeappendagecleanoff.Blood
pissed everywhere, including all over Lillian. But she didn't care. She opened
Pierre's mouth and stuffed the sodden, weeping expenis into his mouth, down
his throat and choked him to death on it. She left him with a growing pool of
bloodathisfeetandaclownsmileofbloodaroundhismouth.

Peter Jemand sat down at his computer desk as he had done every night for as
long as he could remember. The operating system blurted into life and went
through to his home screen (a beach babe with unfeasibly large breasts). He
opened the browser and typed www.deviantart.com. Up came his page and he
began to browse. He went straight to his favourite category Artistic Nude.
Thereweremanynudesthereandsomeofthemwereevenartistic!Hesavoured
everypictureandhefoundonewhichmadehimtakenotice.

Little did Peter know that he was now trapped in a MINDFUCK for the rest of
time.

Epilogue

(section from the preliminary Police Evidence Report from psychiatrist Dr.
Donald. F. Mankiewicz in the case of the suicide of Anthony P. Lawton, of 37
KarltonRoad,Newtown,UK).

The preceding story was found on the hard drive of one Anthony Lawton in
March 2012 along with photographs, documents and conversations relating to
his exgirlfriend of 3 years, Mary Beaulieu. Mr Lawton had been in a deeply
flawed relationship with Ms Beaulieuinwhichhehadwholeheartedlycommitted
himself to her out of love andshehad,despitesomesoulsearchingonherpart,
given in and satisfied her physical needs on the altarofhiswillingnesstosatisfy
her. But it was a mirage, an imaginary relationship,asMsBeaulieudidnothave
any emotional attachment to him at all. The longer itwentonthemorephysical
and careless the relationship came, driven only by the boundless passion that
they needed to satisfy and which they did satisfy repeatedly in bothprivateand
public places. Eventually, maybe inevitably, Mary got pregnant. She panicked.
There was no thought in her mind but that the baby must be destroyed and
without anyone else knowing about it. Seven or eight weeks later this was
accomplished and thereafter the relationship fell apart. But not slowly. It
draggedon,painfully,overmorethanayear.

This destroyed Mr Lawton. He became even more introvert and obsessive. He

gave up on life and lost himself in music, a skill and a passion he had. Having
moved away from the area, he kept coming back every 6 or 8 weeks to see
Mary, to try and make it somehow work out. But then he ran into trouble with
Mary's mother, with whom Mary lived. There was a big argument and that was
really the end of any meaningful contact. Mary would never cross her mother,

120
not even if Anthony had been someone she really wanted. There were a few
more clandestine meetings arranged largely around twisting Mary'sarmtomeet
him. It helped in this respect that Anthonyhadseveralhundrednakedphotosof
Mary, many in extremely explicit, even pornographic, poses, something shehad
been wildly happy about at the time they had taken them together but which
now she felt adeepsenseofshameabout.Maybeshealwayshad.Shehadtried
to bargain with him to destroy them but what shedidn'tknowwasthatthiswas
all he had left of her. He would rather chop his own arm off than destroy them.
And then there was the scan of Mary's womb. She had not wanted to keep it,
fearing that someone, some day would find it and her secret would be out. So
shegaveittoAnthony.Itwasthenuclearbombinhiswallet.

Over the course of time blind love and attraction began to turn to anger, pain
and hurt. Anthony could not accept that he hadbeenusedinsuchaway.Itwas
not the first time. He doubted himself and his wholeattitude.Hequestionedthe
very point of life itself, cast as we are, into an uncaring universe which knows
not that we even exist nor cares or so Anthony Lawton thought. Mary was
purposely making herself more and more distant. Shewouldnottalkonlinewith
him anymore as they had done daily before. Shetoldhimnottocallanymorein
case her mother were to hear. She was cutting herself off. Then she said that
shelikedsomeoneelsenow.ThiswastoomuchforAnthonytotake.

So he took the naked photos and started displaying them all over the internet
porno sites, exgirlfriend sites, social networks, photo sites, art sites. Anywhere
and everywhere he could display Mary's photos he did so. He didn't even care
about not using her real name as he set up fake social networking accounts in
her name. Neither did he really care if he got caught. He reasoned hislifecould
get no worse and it would be a final stab in Mary's back if she ever knew just
how many men had seen, slobbered and masturbated over every inch of her
body. At first it was togetbackatheritwaspurerevenge.Butthenitbecame
about vicariously experiencing what he'd lost as men in their hundreds and
thousands flocked to this sexually attractive young woman so they could
experience vicarious virtual female sexuality for themselves. Anthony found it
easy to extract sexual conversation and comments (we have many examples in
the accompanying file to this report) and it isclearhewassexuallyenjoyingthe
images that many men put before him as they described sexual scenarios with
MsBeaulieu.

It seems Mr Lawton eventually got lost completely in this fantasy world where
desire for Ms Beaulieu was paramount. Wehaverecordsofliterallythousandsof
messages and conversations across numerous websites where Mr Lawton posed
as Ms Beaulieu, no doubt fooling many tens of thousands of willing men into
thinkingtheywereconversingwithanopenlyandwillinglysexualfemaleintothe
bargain. These ranged from the downright vulgar and sexually explicit to the
playfully flirty. There is no doubt that Mr Lawton sexually enjoyed this as the
semenstained towels found by his bed testify. We imagine that he used the
fantasies these men provided as scenarios for the complete fantasy of his own
continuing sexual relationship with Ms Beaulieu. The story youseeabove,which
Mr Lawton posted on a popularartsite,seemsverymuchhisownsubconscious
allegorical attempt to work out the relationship he felt he had with MsBeaulieu.
It would seem he thought that while he was looking for one thing he

121
inadvertently found another which was supremely enticing but ultimately
completely destructive as Ms Beaulieu (the Lilith character in the story) literally
choked him to death with his own desires. That this lead to his actual death,
after his suicide by hanging earlier this week, is a testament to just how deeply
thisrelationshipwithMsBeaulieuhadaffectedhim.

(Please see enclosed file which includes all photographs so far located, both on
Mr Lawton's computers and on all the identified accounts he used in Ms
Beaulieu's name. Also included are all the recovered comments and
conversationsasMrLawtonseeminglykepteveryoneforhisreference.)

Dr.Donald.F.Mankiewicz

Thursday

Freddy is going to beddy with Kate but first he is taking her to dinner. She
knows about the dinner but not about the bed. Yet. She has agreed to the
dinner. I haverequestedblackunderwear,fishnetsandareddress.Ibelievemy
funding of Kates lifestyle buys me somerequestsanditseemsKatedoestooas
she has graciously agreed to them. Commerce always sets up obligations. She
let me know two weeks ago what the location was and for the last week Ive
been in the area scouting about. She lives in a villageontheoutskirtsofatown
in the south English Midlands. Veryleafy.Itsthekindofplacewhereifyouhang
around long enough you might see most of the people who live there. Such as
tall, young women who earn their living from showing themselves online to
strangers who alsohaveadogtowalk.Jesus,shewasnthardtospotatall.And
relatively easy to follow. Weird that in all this shes never asked for a picture of
me. She hasnoideawhatIlooklike.SoshewouldhavenoideawhoIwaseven
ifshebumpedintomeinthestreet.Forexample.

My preparations mean that now I know where she lives and where the
restaurant is andthelikelyrouteshewilltake.Thisallowsmetoparkacarclose
to the restaurant but not on her route. That might behandyshouldIhaveneed
to suddenly drive somewhere. The car wasboughtlocallyonspecfromaprivate
buyer three days ago. I gave a false name and address to her and she was
happy to get rid of it. I wore glasses, contacts which changed the colour of my
eyes, a wig and a fake beard. It was hilarious. I explained at great length the
journey Id made on trains and buses to get there to buy her car. Imverysure
she just wanted to get rid of me. She didnt seem to know much about cars
anyway. I was offering her price in cash and I bet I was the only one who was
since the car wasnt worth whatshewasasking.ButIdontneedittodrivevery
far so that isnt really important provided it can manage one or two necessary
journeys.

I dress in a smart suit and take a taxi from my discreet boarding house to the
restaurant and arrive ten minutes early. The booking has been made byKatein
her name. I know its her name because I already know what her real name is.
She really is called Kate but her surname onlineisactuallyhermiddlename.Its
her surname she has kept secret but a little digging and somesmartguesswork
enabled me to find her address from the location she had given. Just search all

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Kates with her middle initial. Its possible if you have the time to do the search.
People fill in things all over the place and often those records end up online. I
assume that Kate assumed her little subterfuge had kept her details safe and
that no one would have the time or motive to work out theriddle.Butwhatshe
forgets is that people whogoonlinetolookatotherpeoplenakedprobablyhave
bags of time on their hands. It stands to reason that some percentage of these
willbequitesmartandinquisitive.QED.

Kate arrivesandIstanduptowelcomeher.Sheseemsverynervousanddistant
which is perhaps understandable. Im sure Im older than she imagined. She
probably thought I was mid to late 20s. I offer her wine and she accepts. I ask
her to be at ease and tell her that this isnt going to be anything heavy. Shes
just enjoying some wine, having a nice meal and then going home again. She
should relax. Shegigglesnervouslyandsaysshewilltry.Idothejokeaboutnot
biting unless you ask me too and it doesnt fly very well. Shes clearly quite
jumpy about this whole scenario. I give a nervous laugh of my own and offer a
top up. Actually, thats not true. I ask as Im topping it up anyway. A waiter
comes over and offers us menus. Kate has chosen a steak restaurant which
puzzles me as she had always maintained she was a vegetarian. Just a Tumblr
vegetarian it seems. I order a medium rare steak with side orders of potato
wedges, fried onions and sour cream. Kate orders the smallest well done steak
possible and a side salad. I top up the small sip of wine she has removed from
herglass.

Being generous, I would describe our conversations over dinner as staccatoand

disjointed. In truth, Kate is not being a great conversationalist. I am having to
start every conversation and keep it going. I dontknowifthismeansKatefeels
like she is doing this under duress or whether she is normally uncomfortable in
social situations. I do know that there is no point pushing her on this as it will
only make things worse. I decide that now half of her wine glass is empty that
she needs a top up. Kate says that she needs to use the ladies roomandItake
this as my cue to put the Flunitrazepam into her drink which is three quarters
full when she returns. I dont exactly know how the drug is going to affect Kate
specifically and this is where, as it were, we go down therabbithole.Myplanis
something like she feels confused and tired soIoffertotakeherhomeandtake
advantage of her in her confusion. It is, of course, quite possible that at some
point during this scenario she even falls asleep and forgets everything that
happensinthemeantime.Thesearenotbadsideeffectsfrommyperspective.

We come to the end of our meal and Kate is beginning to slur her speech and
seem confused. She talks about going home and I offer her a lift. Just to make
sure she gets home safe. There is no need for a taxi and all that waiting if you
are not feeling so good. We can go right now as I have a car nearby. Kate
agrees but it is actually more like she seems unable to refuse. She gets to her
feet butisveryunsteady.ImovetosupportherandIhelpherwithhercoatand
usher her towards the door as quickly as I can. We need to cross a road but at
this time of night there is not much traffic. ShehalfstaggersandIhalfdragher
towards the safety of my car.Shecatchesherheelinagapinthepavingstones
which makes herstumble.Thereishardlyanyoneaboutexceptforasolitarydog
walker who I imagine just sees a random couple, one of whom is the worse for
wear. We reach the car I have parked earlier and I bundle her into the back

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seat. I am not afraid she will come to her senses now as shecouldbarelymake
the last 100 yards even supported by me. She isnt speaking. The drug is
workingitsmagicwiththeextraboostthewinehasgivenittoo.

We reach Kates place which, luckily,hasabackwayinwhereIcanparkthecar

in the most secluded spotpossible.Kateherselfiscatatonic.Iquicklysearchher
tiny handbag which contains keys, a phone and a thong, the clean kind. I take
the phone and keys formyselfandpreparetohaulheroutofthecar.Itsadark,
crisp night and at this hour I do not expect many if any people to be about to
notice this last step of the journey before we are safely indoors. I have maybe
25 yards to drag her before we are at the door. Inside, her dog yaps. Its not a
big dog so theres noneedtoworryaboutitattacking.Besides,Ihaveaplanfor
it involving some meat I prepared earlier and a couple more tabs of
Flunitrazepam. It will sleep foraday.Kateonlyhastwokeysonherkeyringand
I guess right first time. Im hoping she doesnt have an alarm systemandIhad
not noticed one visible outside when Id visited her place before. Nothing
happens save the fussing of the dog to which Kate is oblivious. I feed it the
taintedmeat.

I know something about Kates place as she films all her pictures and videos at
home. Her couch in the living room is immediatelyfamiliarfromthemanytimes
Ive seen her advertisingherwaresbybendingoveritordisplayingherselfonit.
It brings a strange familiarity to proceedings. I lay Kate on the couch on her
back, legs slightly apart and sit down for a short rest. Lifting dead weight is
never easy. Kates dog seems to have disappeared and is probably already
dreamingofrunningasalldogsseemto.AsIsitIbegintowonderwhatIshould
do next. I had hoped Kate might be drowsy and confused but slightly more
suggestible than this. She doesnt respondtomyKate?andseemsdeadtothe
world. I get up and step over to her. Lifting up her head, I kiss her long and
hard. There is a very faintmoanbutnothingmore.Iponderwhetherthismeans
she is likely to forget anything that happens here tonight. Things never happen
liketheydoinyourhead.

Suddenly, everything seems very wrong. Here I am with Kate like Ive been
imagining for several months now and it doesnt feel right. I have imagined
taking my pleasure of her in this situation a hundred times but now I dont feel
like I want to. A comatose woman is not the same as aconsciousoneorevena
half conscious one. I lift up her head and kiss her again. Evendrowsythoselips
are sweet as cherries. But it does seem likeoverkilltogotoallthistroublefora
couple of kisses. I ask myself what I would do with a woman if she wouldnt
remember it the next day and Im still pondering theanswerwhenKatesphone
buzzes in my pocket. It is herboyfriendwantingtoknowifsheisstillawake.No
reply necessary and that should also convince him Kate is asleep. Just not how
asleep. Oh WTF. I take offmytrousersandmyunderpantsanddragKatesoher
ass is over the arm of the couch, nicely sticking up, and then I remove her
panties.Inforapenny,inforapound.

Spent, I sit back down in the chair andlookacrossatKatesbehindallpuckered

up and inviting, sticky moisture in between her legs. Her cheeks are red,
evidenceofmyeagerspankingofthem.Doyouthinkacrimecanbecommitted
if no one remembers it happening? I askmyself.Hasanythingwrongoccurred

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if there is no one able to make an accusation? You might thinktheanswerwas
incontrovertibly yes but such absolute and abstract points of view are irrelevant
to this world. This world ismorecontingentandpracticalthanthat.Inthisworld
crimes need things like victims who someone knows (or cares) is a victim and
people to accuse other people of having done wrong. This is why there are so
few rape convictions in the world even where both participants were conscious
and aware. Only two people really ever know what has happened when people
have sex and even out of those two only one knows what they were thinking.
Was someone actually forced or did they later regret letting somethinghappen?
Its a big difference but basically impossible to prove. Bruising proves nothing
because some women like it rough and even the ones that dont might say
nothing in theheatofthemoment.AllveryinconvenientforFlorenceFeministto
accept. Florence Feminist wishes you could just take anything a woman says as
truth without any further questions asked. They laughably seem to think this is
just!

Still twirling all this around in my mind, I go and look for something to clean
Kate up with. I intend to clean her up, put her panties back on and leave her
sleeping on the sofa. Hopefully, she doesnt evenremembergoingoutwhenshe
finally wakes up. I hope inside that she wont have that kind of half memory
which is an itch you cant scratch or a thought you cant place. That would be
mostannoying.Still,Iguessshewillhavetheideathatsomethinghappenedshe
cant remember. Hopefully, she chooses to just forget it rather than keep
obsessing over it. After all, nothing bad really happened, did it? Shehadameal
and felt a little ill and so I offered to take her home. Thats my story. OK, so
therewasalittlecoerciontakingplacebuttheresnolastingdamage.Shewillbe
fine. Plenty of people in the world wish there was 12 or 24 hours they could
forget. And Im sure Kate would ratherforgetthelastfewhoursthanhavethem
brought to mind. So, in a way, Ive engineered the best outcome all round.She
can go back to showing herself off online as if nothing had happened and I can
go back to Berlin and forget about her. Should she actually remember anything
about me I can just deny it. Shell probably do nothing about it anyway. Who
would believe a womanwhopostsnakedpicturesofherself,acceptshundredsof
pounds worth of free stuff and agrees to meet people? She markets herself as
sex provided you pay. If I even said we had sex and she agreed could she
convincingly refute the allegation? Would she want to? No wonder there are so
fewrapeconvictions.

Friday

It is about 3AM andIlietherethinking.ApartofmeisannoyedImawakeatall

but there it is. I am. Inevitably, I think about the recent past. Kate was left
snoozing as was her dog which I found in the kitchen on my way out. I hope in
my heart that they bothwokeupfinewithnolastingdamage.Idontwantthem
to be harmedinalastingwayasaresultofmydesires.Itsovernowsoitshould
pass into history like a billion other incidents that happen every day, things
good, bad and indifferent. In the week since my few hours with Kate I have
heard nothing from her nor anythingaboutmytimeinEngland.Iassumethisto
be something good since I imagine rape suspects arehunteddownfairlyquickly

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if an allegation is made. I make the calculation that the more time passes then
thesaferIcanallowmyselftofeel.

The city seems quiet as I lie there looking at the ceiling through the eigengrau.
Or maybe it is just me that is still. I saystillbutIdontmeanatpeace.Thereis
a kind of inertness about the way I am feeling. Its the feeling you have when
your life is empty, devoid of meaning or purpose, when you look at your future
and see a blank canvas or your past and wonder if you ever did anythingworth
remembering. Its how you feel when you concentrate on your breathing and
then have the thought What am I breathing for?. There is no answer to that.
You dont choose to breathe. Its autonomic. Evolution had the good sense to
know that if people had to choose to breathe then we would all be dead. This
leaves the conscious thinking for other thingsandthebreathingjusthappensby
itself like a thousand other human processes, many of which we dont even
realise are just there, silently, keeping you alive. So much just happens in a
humanbeingthattheydontevenknow.

I staylikethis,justexistingandnotknowingwhy,forelevenandahalfminutes.
It is oppressive but not terribly so. It is mere realization which can often be
enough to lend a distasteful edge to things. Realization often leads you down
blind alleys ofquestionsthatshouldnotbeaskedthatleadyoutoclaustrophobic
spaces. There, hemmed in by your own ability to ask questions that find no
resolutions, you can engage in hours of selftorture, walled in by your simple
ability to think. The Buddhists seem to have this mentality that control of the
mind iseverythinginlifeandIcanseewhy.Whatyouthink,howyouthink,why
youthink,isall.Thatisliterallytheshapeofyourworld.IfyouateMcDonaldsall
the time, every meal every day, you would be oneunhealthymotherfucker.You
can bet your bollocks to a barn dance that McDonalds execs dont.Wellimagine
you think injurious things all the time or feed your mind with crap. What world
will you be living in then? What do you think an endless diet ofpopulistpolitics,
soaps and celebrity gossip does for a mind? The mind needs nutrition tooandit
needs to be trained and disciplined. This is what The Buddhists seem to have
learned. Look at our western world we have created andaskyourselfhowmany
people suffer from some form of mental disease orillness.Manyofthesepeople
will never be diagnosed. They might not evenrealisethemselves.Wevecreated
HellsAntechamberanditsinourheads.

Its then that a pale bluegrey light appears at the end of my bed. At first it is
small, enigmatic. I wonder if I am seeing things. But, slowly, it grows. Now its
the size ofatennisballandnowasbigasafruitbowl.Itisflickeringlikeaflame
and continues to grow. Limbs emerge from it and I begin to see a face.
Suddenly, I become selfaware and I realise that I feel hot and scared.
Instinctively, I push myself towards the top of the bed, into my pillows, and I
pull my feet up awayfromthegrowinglightwhichisnowbecomingtheshapeof
a person. That person is Maruschka. I think that I must be dreaming. Thiscant
be real. This is some kind of dream or nightmare, a reaction to my past, that
thing I can never let go of. But Maruschkas lips move and I hear her voice. It
doesnt sound like she is there in the room. Its as if she speaks from far away
because its all echoing and distant. Yet, somehow, it is perfectly loud and clear
at the same time. I wonder if others can hear this or only me. Maruscha is
sayingmyname.Frederick.Frederick.Frederick.

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What doyouwant?Iask,rathercredulously.NotehowreadyIamtobelieveit
is her. Even in death, whenIknowsheisdeadbecauseIwastheonewhokilled
her with eightyfive passionate stabs of a screwdriver, I want to be able to be
with her. Why? she asks. Why? Why what? I ask back. Why? Then
Maruschkas chest starts to weep or, I suppose, to bleed from puncture wounds
which appear. Its like watching a slow motion recording of her death.Why?I
dont knowwhy!Icryout,soundingrathermoredesperatethanIwantto.Iam
not used to having to justify myself to anyone and that is dangerous for it can
breed a kind of arrogance, a How dare you ask me anything attitude. But I
would want to explain to Maruschka if I could, if there was a Why?. But the
truth is that there isnt a why. There was no plan or reason. It happened
because it could, because in life crazy pathways are always possible and byany
law of averages sometimes people will just choose to do dangerous or crazy or
stupid things. And these things will have terrible consequences. I didnt kill
Maruschka out of some plan or reason, because I saw some pathway that her
death might facilitate. I killed her because I was there and I could. I killed her
because the universe is amoral and because Reason is a lie foisted upon us by
the simpleminded. ThetruthisthatyoucanfloutallReasonandpissintheface
of morality and there is nothing in heaven or on Earth that can do anything
about it. Its chaos out there. Its all there is. We aretoldtobegood,reasonable
and moral people and preachedallkindsofgodsandauthoritiesexactlybecause
none of these things actually exist. Its all smoke and mirrorstokeepyouinline
and to stop you realising the truththatyoucandoanythingyoulike.Allthereis
isactionsandconsequencesbaby.

Why? continues and it gets louder. I feel like the crew of The Enterprise must
have felt in Star Trek IV when faced with a probe they could not answer.
Maruschka wants to know why but there isnothingtotellher,nowaytoanswer
the question. Then she stares straight at me. Why?. It is accusatory in tone.
MyarmsandlegsgetpulledwideapartandsuddenlyIamrestrained.Cordslash
my limbs to the bed and I feel as if there is a weight on my chest, pinning me
down. I look up and a huge metal frame is hanging above me just beneath the
ceiling in the shape of a crucifix. It seems as if nothing is holdingitupasitjust
floats there in midair. Why? The frame seems made of thick steel and it has
six inch long spikes, an inch thick at the base, all over it pointing towards me.
Then it drops and instinctively I close my eyes and tense myself for the deadly
impact. I say herewegoforreasonsIcantexplainjustlikethetimeIcrashed
my car on an icy road last winter and I wait for the inevitable. I am tight and
tensed but nothing hits me. I open my eyes and the metal frame is gone.
Maruschka isstillthereandsaysWhy?onelasttimeandthensheexpandsina
ball of bluegrey flames to consume thewholeroom.Then,sheisgone.Thereis
onlydarknessoncemore.Darknessandemptiness.

Sunday

So where were we? Ah yes, Anthony said, I think were ready to begin. Jan
struggled a little at his bonds, uncomfortable with the position he had been put
in his chair. Easy tiger, whispered Anthony with the selfconfidence of a man
who felt in control. His friend grabbed Jan by thehairandyankedhisheadback
and then smashed his face with the butt of the knife. Jans scream of pain was

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muffled by the ball gag hehadbeenfittedwith.Anthonylaughed.Hahahahado
you know how stupid you look you dumb motherfucker? He now had the
addition of a split cheek to his visage. Along with the ball gag and restraints it
made for an absurd sight. Elka was weeping but not bawling.Pleasestopthis!
she said.Stopnow?saidAnthony.Butweveonlyjustbegun.Illtellyouwhat
Ill do because I am a fair man and Id much rather this went off peacefully as
opposed to any other way. If you do exactly as I say to the letter without
question or hesitation I promise you that my knifewielding friend wonthurtfat
Jan here anymore. Does that sound fair? Well.., Elka startedtosay.Shutup
Elka. It was a rhetorical question, Anthony interjected. Whether you cooperate
ornotImgettingwhatIwant.Somakethingseasyonyourself.

He moved in closer to Elka and asked her to turn around on the couch.Always
remember that my friend here has a big, fuck off knife inches away from your
lover boy Elka, he said with increasing menace. Kneel on the couch facingthe
wall. Hands on the back of the couch. He moved in and lifted her skirt up so
that her rear and panties were exposed. What do you think of that mate? he
said towards his friend. Really nice arse, he replied. I bet youd like some
wouldnt you? Anthony asked back. Too fuckin right,wastheresponse.Well
you just keep a watch on action man there and well see what Elka can do for
us, said Anthony, sounding like a man who very definitely had a plan. Now
Elka, doIneedtorestrainyouorareyougoingtobeagoodgirl?ElkasaidNo,
really, its OK. Ill do what you want. Of course you will girl, replied Anthony,
but theres no harm in a little insurance. With that he slipped a cable tie over
Elkas feet and pulled it just tight enough around her ankles that walking would
be impossible. Ill leave your hands free because youll be needing those, he
said,withawickedgrin.

Keep your hands on the back of the couch whatever happens, said Anthony.
With that he pulled down her panties exposing a smooth, round behind. A
glimmer of shaved pussy could be seen between Elkas legs. Anthony smacked
her assafewtimesuntilhemadethekindofcontactthatheliked.Heknewthat
Elka didnt like her ass being smacked. It made her feel cheap and like shewas
being used. Anthony found it very appropriate to the situation. He smacked it
again. You must be feeling like a cheap whore right now Elka, he said. Elka
didnt reply.Ashiverofherbodyindicatedthatshewasprobablylightlysobbing.
Her head was buried in the back of the sofa cushions. Anthony moved forward
and pushed his face between her legs, eagerly tasting the feminine delights in
two places. When both had been lubricated he said to Elka You can have
anyone in this room fuck you right now. Who do you choose? You must choose
someone otherwise your boyfriend gets stabbed. So who is it going to be, me,
yourboyfriendorMrKnife?

What?I..Elkawassuddenlyflusteredbythisunexpectedquestion.Shewent
through the options in her mind as the pressure of the situation bore down on
her like a heavy weight on hersoul,crushingthelifeoutofher.Ticktock,said
Anthony. Let me think a second!saidElkawithaflashofanger.Anthonyletit
pass. Knife man has a big cock Elka. You might like that, said Anthony,
mischievously. And what about your boyfriend? Let us watch him fuck you. We
dont mind that at all. Lets see what hes got thats so good. Anthony laughed
again, enjoying the sick thrill that absolute power over someone brings. No,

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no, said Elka. Whats that? You dont want to fuck your boyfriend? Have you
got a tiny dick mate? jeered Anthony. Maybe shes gone off sex with you now
theres some serious hot cock in the room. Anthony and his friend cackled
cruelly. Come on Elka. We havent got all night. And I gotta tell you, Im hard
and horny for you right now with that gorgeous hiney of yours all puckered up
andreadytoreceive.Comeon,choose.Timesup!

Elka shouted outYou.Ichooseyou!Justgetitoverwithandleave.Youmade

a very wise choice babe, said Anthony, undoing his pants.Itwaswhenhebent
down to take them off that Elka made her one, desperate attempt at freedom
from the tyranny that had been brought to her home. She flipped over so that
she was sitting on the sofa and then gave Anthony a twofooted kick in the
knees which snapped tendon and cartilage and bone, sending him flying
backwards into a cupboard. Elka made to stand up and as she did Mr Knife,
instead of plunging the knife into Jan as he should have, came from behind the
tied up boyfriend in an attempt to apprehend Elka. It was thenthatJanusedall
his weight and effort to propel the chair into Mr Knife. He fell head first andthe
big knife slipped from his grasp, slithered across the wood floor and stopped at
Elkas feet. Elka picked it up and ran at Anthony, now getting upfromthefloor,
and plunged it into his back. A howl erupted from his lips and this only made
Elka all the more scared and desperate. She brought the knife down four more
times in a blur. Anthony fell down dead in a pool of blood. Get out! she
screamed at Mr Knife. He got up, turned on his heels and fled from the
apartment.

Monday

"I know my fate" writes Friedrich Nietzsche in the final chapter (headed "Why I
Am A Destiny") of his deliberately, provocativelytitled, pseudoautobiography,
"Ecce Homo". Those two words, you will recall, were spoken by Pilate of Jesus
Christ in the Gospels. "Behold the man". Nietzsche means to contrast himself
with the Galilean carpenter become god by using this title and yet not to just
contrast himself but to offer himself as an alternative Christ, an Antichrist. The
last words of the chapter, and the book, are "Dionysos against the crucified".
Dionysos, on the one hand the name of a Greek god aboutwhomNietzschehas
much to say, is also code for Nietzsche himself in his writings much as his
Zarathustra (another holy man), his greatest creation, is another name for him
too. Nietzsche, in his writings, sought to recreate himself through theholybut,
in so doing,tomakeprofaneallintheholythatwas,forhim,dankanddecaying
with the smell ofdeathaboutit.Primarily,thismeantChristianity,thedeathcult
which tried tosellthelieasthetruthand,throughanimpulsetomakeitsvalues
metaphysical,triedtosupportrealityitselfonitsmendaciousshoulders.

But none of that concerns me here you will be delighted to learn. What does
concern me is that pregnant and simplestatement"Iknowmyfate".TheolderI
get, the more I know it. And yet I feel like I am living life backwards. For what
absurdity is it that one knows oneself better even only as the end seems to be
ever sprinting with more speed towards you? Shouldn't it be the case that we
know who weareatthebeginningandthencanactualizeourselveseffectivelyin
life? Would this not be "happiness"? But this is the fate ofnoneofus.Itmaybe

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presumed at this point that we only know ourselves better the closer we are to
the end, our greatest moment of selfrealization coming in that moment before
thereisnomoreselfyettorealize.This,too,isabsurd.

I had a thought the other day, as I account myself fortunate enoughtodofrom

time to time.Fornoteveryone,Iimagine,isfortunateenoughtothinkortogive
priority and space in their lives for being able so to do. This thought, quite
unbidden, was this: if you were to lose the whole world with all its riches,
possibilities, enticements, entanglements and opportunities but, instead, to find
yourself...wouldthisbeworthit?Wouldthisbeawin,somethinggained?

I, of course, know my fate. In having the thought the hand I havebeendealtis

already revealed. My fate is to find myself and, indeed, to die trying. And I ask
myself what more sacred taskahumanbeingcouldhaveinlife.Ofcourse,there
are plenty of people blithely unconcerned with themselves in life and who,
instead, are quite happy to go chasing after the world. These people are fools,
fools so poor and so easily led astray by something shiny that the merest tinge
of glitter is enough to lure their easily led minds away. And yetI'mremindedof
a saying of The Buddha: "Themindiseverything.Whatyouthink,youbecome."
What is meant there is not simply your thoughts. It means that the things you
surround yourself with, the ideas you are surrounded with, your context, where
youliveandwithwhatyouhavetodo,thisiswhatyoubecome.Idonotwantto
become a capitalistic drone with a bank account and a station in lifewhoseonly
impact on life is to swap opinions about Games ofThronesorwhateverthenext
TV sensation will be. I have no views on Kim Kardashian. Yes, I look down on
this vision of life. It is pathetically poor. Do people like this never look at
themselves in the mirror and ask themselves whotheyare,whattheyare,what
theyarebecoming?

For many years now I have been becoming more and more set apartfrom"life"
in general. (Its an irony not lost on me that "holy" basically means "separate",
semantically speaking.) This has not always been an easy process and I have
found myself having to choose between the easy and inauthentic way and the
more difficult but more authentic way. But as I have felt myself drifting apart
from what most of the people in my society seem quite happytoletthemselves
become I have also become an observer of my species. I spend an inordinate
amount of time everydayjustobservingotherpeopleandwhatotherpeopledo,
what they say,howtheyact.Thisisnotinasinisterorcreepywayandisalmost
entirely in animpersonalwaythroughthemediumoftheInternet.Iwonderhow
many of the people I watch with social media accounts for this, that and
everything else ever step back and take a look at their output and ask
themselves what it says about them. I wonder if they imagine that the image
their output presents is one of what they would themselves describe as a good
person. Of course, very few people genuinelythinkthemselvesbadandmanyof
those who do regard being bad as good. And yet I genuinely wonder howmany
peopleevenasksuchquestionsatall.

So much of our world is fake. This is easy toseecosmetically.Onehumanhabit

that fascinates me is its pornography habit, much of which is entirely fake,
beautifully lit and using only the beautiful people (who, often, seem to uglify
themselves the more theydoit).SomepeopleIhavemetinthisarea(online,of

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course) seem completely enslaved to it. Their life is one orgasm after another
and humanbodiesaretheenergysourcewhichfeedsanundyingthirstformore.
Inside much of this I detect a simple need forhumancontact,forattention,and
that from both those lusted over and those doing the lusting. Butitbecomesan
unseemly (and unarousing) spectacle in which all of the wonder, beauty and
intimacy is removed and all that is left is an ignorant impulse, an unquestioned
need that doesn't even know what it is for anymore. These people have trained
themselves only to want more of it. This is relevant for I wonder, on a wider
scale, how many human beings even know what they are for. It is my intuition
that in the human sexual act many people find a spark of the reality that their
livesincreasinglylackandsotheyfocuseverythinguponthissparkassomelast,
pathetic way to resist the kaleidoscope of lies and fakery into which their lives
are constantly being pulled. If you don't know who you are you will, perhaps,
cling onto anything which seems real. Or do anything, no matter how debasing,
tofeelalive.Evenforafewseconds.

Nietzsche, of course, was more profound than me in discussing this. His great
dragon to slay was Christianity, a 2,000 yearliewhichhadinfectedthewholeof
Western society with its deathly poison. Its great trick, so Nietzsche suggested,
was to enable all our apparatus of truth and knowledge, our very metaphysics,
to become basedinmorality.ButChristianmorality,forNietzsche,wasdeathfor
the human being and for what he imagined its greatest possibilities to be
(Zarathustra, the "Superman" or "Overman",thebermensch).Nietzscheaimed
to "revalue" all these Christian values which had created and shaped our world
and to show what a deChristianized world might look like.Buthenevergotthe
chance to realize his vision because at the beginning of 1889, having given us
several useful preludes in books such as Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good
and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals and Twilight of the Idols, he fell into insanity
very likely caused by physical ailments he had been suffering from for wellover
a decade. He never recovered from this and lived the last 11 years of his life in
insensibility.

And yet the world he uncovered and revealed in 17 yearsofpublishedwritingis

a revelation. Even today, in a world he could nothaveimagined,heisapopular
focusofattentionandcollegecoursesaboutNietzscheareoftenoversubscribed.
Nietzsche did not fiddle at the edges of the human experience. He wanted to
speak about the entirety of it, to set it in context. For Nietzsche, not a trained
philosopher but a philologist by training, life was a very biologistic and
psychological thing. He focused on the self (which is why more social
commentators, like the American pragmatist Richard Rorty, are amenable tohis
thought but ultimately shy away withtheirmoresocialandpoliticalgoals)butin
the context of, well, everything. Nietzsche wanted to give an account of
everything and this appeals to me for I constantly ask myself how I can know
who or what I am if I do not have an account of everythingtofititinto.Istrive
to be awake and not asleep. I want tobematureenoughtowithstandtheharsh
truths of becoming and not kept tame and immature by the fakery and lies
which are the common currency of what Nietzsche refers to as Christianized
society.

So, yes, I know my fate. It is to have nothing as the world sees it. If you look
upon me with the world's eyes you see a nonconformist, an oddball, someone

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not going with the program. A powerless nobody. But the world does not offer
me anything I value. There has occurred in the last few years aforkintheroad
of my life. The world has gone one way and I havegonetheother.Perhapsthis
is forever. It increasingly seems so. Of course, I must pay for my choices as
must we all. But I have, for as long as I can remember, always thought that in
my dying moment, whenever that may be, there is just one thing I will want.
This is to know who I am, to know that IfoundmyselfandownedwhoIwas,to
know that I wasnotawillingcorkonsomeoneelse'socean,aplaything,atoy,a
cog in a machine, a drone, a generic human being, a piece in someone else's
game of life, a burgermunching, TVwatching, consumer of capitalist goods,
someone happy to keep quiet if only the powers that be will grant me the right
toservicetheirsocietyforjustanotherday.

Howmanyofuscandieknowingthat?

Tuesday

Idle thoughts just popped into my head as I recuperated from a hard exercise
session on Tempelhofer Feld. I run there now for fun, fitness and mental health
reasons. As I was recovering from running my second and most difficult lap of
the day, the burning feeling in my lungs and the pounding of my heart beat in
my ears gradually receding, Iwasstruck,unawares,bythoughtsofanarticleon
Beyonce that I had read recently. People took sides, as it seems we mustthese
days, with appropriate team this and team that hashtags ready to hand.
Maybe its just me but I find itallaveryunedifyingspectacle.Ifinditunedifying
that anyone would find Beyonce an icon for anything and consciously try to
model themselves on her. I think this not because I wish to belittle Beyonce or
denigrate anything she or other people think she stands for or represents but
because I think peopleshouldhavethestrengthofcharacterandselfconfidence
to be whotheyareandnotwhosomeoneelseis.Beyoncehasbeenentangledin
racial and feminist agendas now and in some senses it would seem quite
willingly. Of course, doing so makes Beyonce richer. Her supporters not so
much.

As in many things, here I go against the grain of our prevailing culture. Out
there in the world it is a shit fight. We have groups for everything and they are
all defined (sharply defined) in various ways, not least by what they are not. In
certain quarters identity and culture are very important. Some people, it seems
to me, identify themselves so strongly and so precisely as for it almost to be a
psychosis. Of course, we all grew up in certain circumstances. We all are,
trivially, if I may say so, certain things. Some people are black, others are
female.Somearegay.Somearenoneofthesethings.Nowtosomepeoplenone
of this really matters.Buttoothersitisworlddefiningandagendasetting.Such
people chop up the worldaccordingtotheirideaofwhatpeopleare,diviningthe
differences andcarvingupthepeopleintogroups,groupswhicharentallhuman
beingstogetherbutgroupswhichareinrealsensesdifferent,other,opposed.

Someone tweeted a poster online that I saw and as I was considering all this it
struck a nerve. Itwasapparentlycreatedbya(nonwhite)femalemusicteacher
and first published on her blog. The point of the poster seems to bethatpeople

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are (of course) different and that, so this person would argue, some things are
easier to see about people who are different than others. The poster is labeled
the cultural iceberg and so we may reasonably conclude that the originator of
the poster thinks these blindnesses (she has chosen seeing as her mode of
communication) are cultural matters. If you come from a different culture then
you operate differently from other people seems to be the point. I went to the
website this came from to try and get a sense of the context for the posterand
found a person concerned about culture and identity. I wouldnt describe the
things I read as militant or radical but there was definitely a sense that the
person sharing the poster was locked into certain understandings of the world.
She spoke, in her blog, at relief in sometimes meeting people like her in
distinctiontothemanywhitepeopleshehadtodealwithdaily.

Now I find no problem in this, per se. We all identify as something and we all
find joy in meeting people who we think share things we value as important in
common with us. But that poster,thatbothersme.Theposter,tomymind,sets
up walls and boundaries between us. It is part of that way of seeing people
which concentrates on differences not similarities. Its part of that agenda which
wants toemphasizewhatweareagainstandhowwearesodifferentthatwe
cant even see, thinkorunderstandlikesomeonefromsomewhereelseorwitha
different experience of life. It sees people as fixed and, apparently, unable to
learn. Really? Whats worse is that it is part of a way of seeing the world which
doesnt see people,humanbeings,itdoesntseeindividuals,itonlyseesclassor
race or gender or a prescriptive history or a onesided story I tell myself about
people who look a certain way. In short, it sees people as cyphersandsignsfor
things that fit into a story I tell myself about the way the world is. This is how
enmities are nurtured, how differences are createdandwidenedandhowpeople
come to emphasize what dividesoverwhatwehaveincommon.Ithinkthisway
ofdescribingpeopleisitselfblindandpartofthehumanproblem.

So let me be very, very clear here. Im on the side of the human beings.
Diogenes of Sinope, when he was asked where he came from, gave the very
countercultural and anticonventional answer that he was a citizen of the
world. Diogenes was putting himself out on a limb by saying that in his own
context. He was effectively pronouncing himself stateless and therefore without
protection by anyone else. He was putting himself outside every tribe and
grouping and saying that hewasjustahumanbeing.AndImwithhiminthat.I
am not part of anyones fictive story of how we are all different and how that
means I cant understand you because youareoneskincolorandImanother.I
dont regard myself as having a fundamentally different experience of life
because something dangles between my legs but not between yours. I do not
live in a cardboard cut out world where people can be put into groupings of the
thinkers choice and then regarded as similar based ontheirgroupings.Allblack
women are notthesame.NeitherareallgayAustralians.And justbecauseIam
this and you are thatitdoesnotmeanthattheconceptoffamilyvalues (even
your family values) is something I am incapable of understanding. Human
beingscanhaveempathyandtheycanlearn.

But its more than even this. When you look at me you will, no doubt, think
certain things. I am from England but I am not just a generic English person
(whatever that mightbe).ImmalebutImnotagenericman.Imwhitebutnot

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a generic white person. None of these things exist. There is not a generic
anything. There is not a generic lesbian, a generic West Indian or a generic
transsexual either. What does exist, however, is individual people. And we are
each together, in common, one of these. But, for some, this willnotbeenough.
Their whole identity, in their minds at least, rests on them being what they say
they are and you being something else. I go from irritable to despairing when I
see thistimeandtimeagainwheneverIseeit.IadmitthatIfindthiswholeway
of seeing people as flawed and as damaging to the common good. Yes, of
course, many people will point to injustice and inequality in society at largeand
diagnose social andpoliticalreasonsforthisbasedinonetribehavingsomething
another or others do not. I am not blind to this. But my answer, in general, is
largely aplagueonallyourhouses.Itscalledthecommongoodforareason.
It is about being in common with each other. And you cantdothatwhilstyou
think someone you aredesperatetoseeasnotlikeyouisyourenemyandyou
regard them as thememberofaclassandnotanindividualhumanbeingjustas
youare.

And with thisIturntowardswhatmanywouldregardasastatedgoalofalltheir

identity politics: equality. Now, lets not be naive here for equality is a very
naive goal to have. I think that strict equality, in the sense that everyone is
always and normally and practically in everyday life regarded as equal, is
impossible toachieve.Itsafable,amyth,anidealthatcannotberealized.Why?
Because look at the world around you. People are partial. People have
preferences. People are social and tend to group with those like them. To have
theidealisticequalityalotofpeoplesaytheywantyouwouldhavetocompletely
change what the human being is. Is that even possible? Maybe over thousands
of years of human evolution. But surely not in the click of some fingers and
definitely not by law. Peoples value systems and beliefs cannot be changed by
force and if you wanted people to not only believe in astrictequalityofpersons
but act it out daily then that is what you would need to achieve. I dont see it
happening. But this fact does not mean that we should not have equality,
treating people equally, as a goal. We may have to settle for treating people
lessunfairlyintheshorttermthough.

Now I find something rather ironic about equality, the thing that identity
politicians and pontificators of many persuasions say they want. Equality would
be much easier to achieve, I think, if we started seeing everybody as a person
first and then all these identity labels we apply somewhere after that. In short,
people stripped of their labels would be equal. But whilst we are going to see
differences between black lesbian women and white heterosexual men (random
choices) this will be much harder to achieve. Why? Because when all you see is
representatives of some grouping then all you will ever see is people you are
ranking in some way in the chart in your head. If all you see is two human
beings then you have no way to differentiate them. But once you bring
ideological apparatus to bear and start differentiating people then you canquite
easily start to rank them, ascribe narratives to them and put them in the place
you assign to them in your world story. How the hell you ever then get out of
the rhizome world you have created, unravelling all the unfairness and bias and
partialityIhavenoidea.Iwouldmuchrathernotseepeoplethatwayinthefirst
place (and just a planet full of world citizens instead). Again, yes, of course,
there are terrible things taking place in the world and many of these are based

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on differences between people. Im not going to deny that. I agree with that
analysis. But if you are following what Im saying then hopefully you see that
concentrating on the differences in the first place is the problem here. From all
sides.

I refer to the attitude Im criticizing here as wallflower syndrome. This title is

mostly a benign joke attheexpenseofthosewhothinkeveryidentityisinsome
sense special and that it is preserving and emphasizing difference that is the
important thing. Of course, not all people like jokes. Some people find jokes to
be a form of oppression. I dont really want to get into the subject of social
media identity politics though. Theres enough of that on Tumblr and Twitter.
Those who take part initseemtohavefledfromcommondiscourseinanycase.
They become like Guardian columnist and feminist writer, Jessica Valenti, who
files her regular pieces without ever stopping to read the comments or points
against (as she has admitted in the paper). In such a world you are just right
and you dont even need toacknowledgethethoughtsorpointscontrary.Thisis
not the world Ilivein.Preachingtotheconvertedwillalwaysbeeasyforanyone
from any side. Standing inthecenterandtryingtobuildbridgesbetweenpeople
of differing positions will always be more difficult though and also much more
necessary. And its not just much more necessary for all of us who live in a
common world, for none of us lives in a vacuum populated only by people like
us, but also for each one of us as individuals. For the blunt truth is that whilst
you may have differences witheveryotherpersononEarthyoualsosharemuch
as well. In fact, for some you probably share much more than you would like.
That other identity you hatemayverywellbetheguywhodeliversyourmail,or
the woman who teaches your child or the person who makes youwellagain.Its
an interconnected world of every identity you can imagine. We rely on each
other,notjustthoselikeus.

We are all human beings. This is the common root of every person alive. We
may divide into separate branches but we are fundamentally the same tree. I
find, as I read around the Internet, there are all too many readytospoutoffon
what makes them different and special but far fewer who want to talk about
what we all share. And if you want to talk about identity, or social justice or
politics, well, this is where it all starts: in the reality that each one of us is an
equalindividualworldcitizen.

The fact we are allhumanbeingstogetheristheonlyreasonwecouldeverhave

for treating people equally in the first place. Weneedtorediscoverourcommon
humanbond.

Itsouronlyhope.

But to conclude by focusingonallthosehumanidentitiesagain.Rememberthis:

we are all just people. Our difference is just a facet of who we are, a flavoring.
When people talkofequalityoraboutwhattheythinkisimportantthatsallitis:
someones ideas about what matters. Its an opinion, a point of view. Its
someones idea about what should count. But because someone has a point of
view it does not mandate that we are obliged to agree with it or follow it. And
neither does disagreeing with it make us enemies. Or, at least, it shouldn't.
Much modern debate has become infantile and degraded as people are readyto

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take offense at the slightest thing. People can, it seems, no longer speak
honestly and from the heart to each other just as equally human beings. But
thatisallwe,eachofus,are.

I hope we start to realize it one day. For a world of difference and division will
alwaysbeoneofconflictandoppression.

Wednesday

Recently, I've hit on a theme and the theme is this: the demonstration of
humanity consists in what RichardRortycalleda"largerloyalty".Thisistheidea
that you see everexpandinggroupsofpeopleas"likeyou"andsogivethemthe
dignity, respect and care which you wouldconventionallyreserveforthoseclose
to you. This idea is based in the notion that people treat those better they feel
they have an affinity with. Most people would agree with this so the only
modification needed in most of us would be toseeeveryoneelseassomehowin
this category. This might radically transform the world we live in and change it.
For the better. And in a way it shouldn't really be that hard. Look at things
straightintheeye:weareallpeople.

Maybe you are asking yourself why you should do this though. People often
define themselves by what, or who, they are against and this factors into their
identity. Fair enough. But there arelikelypeopleyouarefriendswithwithwhom
you have significant or noticeable differences and it doesn't stopyoubeingtheir
friend or interacting with them. Put simply, its a choice to allow a difference in
some way to become an uncrossable chasm between you and them. It is
possible, if we are willing, to put the difference to one side and forge a
relationship that is stable and manageable.Putsimply,ifwewanttowecanfind
reasonstobefriendsorreasonstobeenemies.

But let's look at this a bit more closely. In the modern world many of our lives,
especially inthefirstworldwhichismyexperience,relyonlotsofotherfaceless,
nameless people we will never meet or know the identity of. The people who
grow your food, the people who make sure the power is on at your house, the
people who clean your water, the people who teach your kids, the people who
make you better when you fall sick, etc., etc. All of these people may think
things (or bethings)thatyouwouldnotagreewithifyouknew.Perhapsyouare
a fundamentalist religionist of some kindandyourdoctorisgay.Perhapsyougo
shopping in a store where their bathroom policy is not in line with your beliefs.
Put simply, your life completely exists in a world where you are constantly
rubbing up against people withwhomyoucouldfindreasonstodisagreeoreven
take offense at. Perhaps you are a feminist in aworldofsexists.Orasexistina
worldoffeminists.Youcanthinkoflotsofexamples.

What I note about this is that itdoesn'tseemtostopmanyofusfrompartaking

in the world anyway. Yes, some people do want to move to Montana and livein
the woods with only bears and rabbits for company. But most of us don't. We
find a way around the fact that the world wasnotbuilttoorderaccordingtoour
instructions, morals and mores. Andthisisgood,maturebehavior.Itisasignof
great immaturity when youwanttheworldthewayyouwantittobeandcannot

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accept a basic fact about human beings: that they are free to be who they are
just as you are but in as many different ways as are humanly possible. This is
one way of describing the basic liberal (small "L") dream of educated human
beings for the last 400 or 500years,thateachpersonisfreetobewhotheyare
and to express themselves as they want. It was this mentally that built things
like the American Declaration of Independence (and the Amendments to the
United States Constitution) which speaks of "the separate and equal station" to
which we all are "entitled" and things like the motto of the French
revolutionaries:liberty,egality,fraternity.

But the question then becomes this: If most of us live in places that broadly
accept such ideas and we say we believe in each person's equality and basic
integrity then why doesn't it play out like this? It could be said that there is a
manylayered, conflicted andcontradictorythoughtprocessgoingon.Wesaywe
believe in equality but we don't treat people equally. We saywebelieveinbasic
freedoms for everyone but we deny freedom to some and overextend it to
others. Some people, to be blunt, seem much more equal than others. The
simple answer to this is that ideas of equality are not the only game in town.
Human beings are not morality machines which, if you program them correctly,
will always spew out the right results. In fact,thinkingaboutourconstructionof
humanity and the human mind, as I walked yesterday I was musing on the
various ways people imagine we think. This is the old story of logic or reason
versus passion or emotion. People use these words and ideas as weapons and
I've seen it many times where people describe themselves as logical or
reasonable and their enemies as "emotional" or as just bags offeelings.Insuch
a discussion reason is held up as an ultimate good and emotion as a sign of
weakmindedness,somethingbad.

The problem with this is its one of the most bullshit arguments you will ever
hear. There is no dispassionate thought. There is no unemotional logic. Think
about how you think and imagine that you do so without any particle of feeling
withinyou.Iputittoyouthatyoucannotevenimaginewhatitwouldbelikenot
to feel. If you are trying now you are trying to imagine the nonexistence of
something you have but could never get rid of even if you tried. Indeed, we
know from psychological study that people who have inhibited ability to feelare
sick andincompletehumanbeings.Feelingisnotafault.Itisasignofamature,
whole and right functioning humanity. And this is the case whether you are
thinking about how to help someone in trouble or about equations and science
stuff. For it is the case that every thought you have strikes you a certain way
based on who you are. The thoughts you have are things you will have feelings
about and this will, as a feedback loop, affect how you regard the thoughts.We
are holistic and not discrete beings chopped into parts. Everything is turned on
at once and working simultaneously. Everythoughtwehave,everyreactiontoa
thoughtwehave,isaproductofreasonandemotion,logicandfeeling.

But we are conflicted and easily distracted we human beings. We will happily
take opportunistic joy in personal gain at the expense of others. If there is one
thing I have observed about human beings in years of observing them via the
window of the Internet it is that if you tell a human being not to do something
then that is exactly the thing they will do. Add to this the fact that a bored
human being will often cause destructionjusttowatchsomethingburn.Ihavea

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friend who enjoys starting arguments online. He is basically a nice guy. But he
likes to get involved in what he sees as inconsequential Internetargumentsand
trawls Facebook looking to start fights. Its just passing the time, right? I think
what this boils down to is the idea that we have a range of possibilities before
us. We can be our better selves or our much worse selves. Which way will we
go? The problem here is if this goes the wrong way then structural inequalities
can result which doom many millions of people to unequal lives of poverty and
oppression. Once you have everything it is very difficult tojustgiveitaway.For
every person on top there is a corresponding person below.Beingontopentails
the fact you have people beneath you. You only get to the top of the pile by
treadingonotherssomewheredowntheline.

Iremainconvincedthatseeingeveryoneasthepeopletowhomyouoweloyalty,
seeing all of us not as a sexuality or a gender or a nationality or as any other
kind of division, is the way forward. Its the only way forward I can see. Its the
only hope for the world of inequality to become the one of equality. It took
revolutions to create the French Republic and the United States of America. It
may take yet more to create a fairer world as awhole.Indeed,historysuggests
that this is likely the case. But we need to rememberthathumanityisdiversity.
We need to remember that what we have in common is more than any list of
differences between us we could ever draw up. These things are a choice we
make for we do have influence over if we are going to be our better or worse
selves.

Diogenes of Sinope was asked where he was from. Hereplied,"Iamacitizenof

theworld."

Friday

WilliamJamesdescribesthepragmatistattitudeasthefollowing:

Theattitudeoflookingawayfromfirstthings,
principles,'categories,'supposednecessitiesandoflookingtowardslastthings,
fruits,consequences,facts.

When I ask myself what my values areIthinkinthesameway.SowhenIthink

of myself and morals in the same breath it occurs to me that I lack any. But
what this view is is a reflection of this pragmatist attitude to things. I dont
believe in morals that are above me,overandaboveeachoneofusasstatutes.
God is dead. So there is no eternally inscribed moral code I am duty bound to
follow if I am to be a moralhumanbeing.Whatthereisinsteadisconsequences
toallthoughtandactions.ItistothisthatIfocusmyattention.

Ofcourse,theobservantamongmyreaderswillstraightawayseeanissuehere.
This means that,essentially,Imsayingthatweeachmakeourownmoralityup.
Perhaps thismightbeseenasmesayingthat,morally,wecansuitourselves.To
an extent this is true. I do believe this. On what basis can anyone argue that
there is some other morality that I should obey? Why doessomeoneelsesview
on something override my own view? Of course, we have the law and this, in
some way, encodes moral impulses into the way society is organized. I must

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obey this on pain of action being taken against me if I do not. But this doesnt
mean it is overandaboveme.ItjustmeansthatsocietyismorepowerfulthanI
am and so Imusttakenoteofthatfact.Itisrelevanttosayhere,though,thatI
dont live in a vacuum and so my ideasofmoralsandmoralitywillbeshapedby
thesocialgroupingsandculturesIhavebeenbroughtupwithin.

On the whole, however, I take the view that morality is largely a matter of me
deciding for myself and being able to provide justifiable reasons for my actions.
ThislatterstipulationiscrucialifIwanttoliveasahumanbeingingoodfaith.I
must be able to justify myself (implicitly to others too). Most people would
accept that you should not kill other people. (Oops.) This stands in pretty much
every country as a punishable offense. But if someone has just attacked you or
is threatening to kill your child then you may feel that its quite reasonable that
you kill this person first. If you find yourself homeless and have no money to
feed your children you may feel that stealing food that is thrown out into
dumpsters from fast food places is not only necessary but moral since feeding
your children is a good thing to do. I was once fined for speeding on what was,
at half past midnight, a completely empty road. I was punished as having done
something wrong but my conscience felt completely clean becausetherewasno
harmdonetoanyoneatallbymyactions.

There is a further issue here. I would say that my values arehumanvaluesand

that, consequently, I value the human. Ive developed this view during a recent
interest in matters to do with Transhumanism which is a movement that seeks
to do a number of things such as dramatically extend human life, eradicate
disease and transform what it means to be a human being. I must admit that I
am dubious about some of these aims. This is because I wonder at what point
we have transcended so many of our human limitations that we are no longer
human at all. It might, for some people, be a wondrous thing to imagine
themselvesimmunetoalldiseasesandnowabletoliveto1,000yearsold.Butif
you can do that are you still human? Do you still have human being? Some
Transhumanists think that our future will be as consciousness in nonbiological
bodies that are no longer vulnerable to the weaknesses of the biological bodies
we currently have. But is that to be a human being? And do nonhuman beings
havethesamemoralsashumanones?

Ihavearatherprovocativewayofexpressingmyfeelingsinthisarea.Itsthis:I
don't want to cure cancer. I want tobeahumanbeingwhetherIhavecanceror
not. Now, let me be clear here: I would rather that no one got cancer and that
everyone who did getitcouldbecured.Evenbetter,wedocurecancer.Sowhat
am I saying? Im saying that to behumanistobevulnerable.Imsayingthatto
be human is to suffer. Im saying that to be human is to be weak. Im saying
that human beings are temporary and contingent. We are not gods. I feel a bit
like German philosopher Martin Heidegger in saying this though. After the
Second World War his philosophy developed into one which was very much
against technology (yes, even the technology of the 1950s) because hethought
it was separating us from our humanity and changing us as beings. I feel much
the same way about a Transhumanist future. I see it as a movement to replace
human beings, and a human form of being, with something else, something
posthuman. In contradistinction to this view, I stand for the view which says

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that the human task is to be happytobeahumanbeing,tohaveahumanform
ofbeing.

Humanity and morality I findtobebothmattersofloyalty.ButIfindthisquitea

confusing situation. If asked to whom IconsidermyselftohaveloyaltythenasI
think about it both the answers Everybody and Nobody flash through my
mind. Instinctively, I start to wonder if the answer might be somewhere in
between, the happy medium. But a revulsion at conventional answers fills me.
One thing writing this text has brought to the forefront of my mind,perhapsfor
the first time in a fullyformed and explainable way, is that I detest convention.
Diogenes of Sinope (the man who lived in a barrel), I now see, is my hero.
Conventiontellsusthatweoweloyaltytothosewithwhominlifewehavetodo.
This would be, primarily, family and friends, work colleagues, maybe even
society or those of the same nationality as us and then, perhaps, everyone
else,filteringoutwardsineverexpandingcircles.

But it occurs to me that from a very early age Ive never really felt like that.
There are reasons for this in my biography but, through the work Ive done for
this text, I find that there are intellectual reasons that run to the barricades to
bolster my instincts. You may remember a story from Marks Gospel in which
Jesus is asked who his mother and brothers and sisters are. He replies that
whoever does the will of God is his mother andbrothersandsisters,bothanew
interpretation of where he owes his loyalty and a destruction of conventional
ideas of the same. Even as a boythisstoryresonatedwithme.Itseemedtome
somehow arbitrary that we were supposed to have a close relation to some
people (due to the vagaries of random chance and whoitgaveyouasrelatives)
but everyone else was, somehow, other. I can also see a similar thought
operative in relation to friends. Why are people more deserving of loyalty
because you chose to be their friend? Work colleagues or people of the same
nationality?Wellthatjustseemsevenmorearbitraryandabsurd.

I think my answer has to be that the people I owe any duty or loyalty to is, in
some sense, everyone. This is not only because to choose some people inlifeis
to, consequently, deprioritise others. But this is a big part of it. It might be
argued that you cantcareforeveryone.Thepersonwhoregardsallthetroubles
of the world as their own will soon be buried under them. I would agree with
this. But as I survey this question now I just see the scales dropping from my
eyes in regard to the former conventionality that I had been schooled in. It
remains true that one develops stronger bonds with those you know. This is
natural. But, in terms of ideas, this doesnt make such people more important
than others. Richard Rorty, an American philosopher, in his discussions of
morality, talks aboutakindofeverexpandinghumanconversation,oneinwhich
more and more people are seen to be like us and so come within our sphere of
interest and concern. I think that this is a very good model to take. As Ive
written about on other subjects, seeing people as like us is an important
psychologicalfactorwhenitcomestoempathyandconcernforothers.

Now, of course, to hold this idea before me is not to carry it out. I am not a
conventionally moral person (because there are no overarching values which
command my obedience) but Im not necessarily a moral one in a local sense
either. Like all human beings, I fail even according to my own moral standards.

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Stanley Fish, the American contrarian, has something interesting to say about
this when he talks about theory. He seems to suggest thatnomatterwhatwe
talk about theoretically this doesnt hold much sway over our practice because,
in practice, we are going to do what comes naturally anyway. We dont stand
there, having a moral decision to make (I mean some trivial but nevertheless
moral thing), and theorize about what we should do. Often we just act. Fish
thinks that there is little interplay between theory and practice, regarding them
as separate practices or habits. I think thats something worth thinking about.
Human beings, besides being moral, can also be devious, opportunistic and
calculating. Theres no theory that arbitrates these competing desires within us
once we are in the stream of practice. It may be moreacaseofusdoingthings
andthenjustifyingthemafterthefact.Infact,Ithinkitoftenis.

So my preliminary answer (because Im not really very sure about this) is that
my loyaltyistoeveryone.ButIthinkIneedtoextendthistoalllivingthings.So
then it becomes a loyalty to my planet. And now I thinkImstartingtodescribe
something else. Maybe this comes from moral teachingIvehadinthepast.The
Golden Rule (Do to others as you would have them do to you) comes tomind
and this seems as good a starting place as any. Popularly, this has been
corrupted to Do to others before they do it to you bythosewhothinkthatthe
world is red in tooth and claw and a matter of cynical beings fighting over
resources. Many human beings implicitly or explicitly follow this creed. But this
latter view is only anotherhumanformulation.Ithasnomoredivinestandingas
a statute of the universe than does any pronouncement of any religion or
religious figure. It is just another (and not very good) way of seeing the world.
And so, as with the other views, I ask myself about its consequences in my
pragmatist way. In that world only the strong win and the weakarethepriceof
theirvictory.

It seems to me that this view is yet anotherconventionalone,however.Welive

in a world in which it is implicitly assumed that its everyone for themselves.
There is a decline, in popular discourse at least, of what we might call fellow
feeling. But its not the case that fellow feeling has disappeared. When any
emergency or disaster strikes peoplewilloftengooutoftheirwaytohelpothers
and they get that buzz which results from knowing that someonewashelped.It
feels human to help someone like you. Id maintain thats because it is and,
consequently, I think that we should try and live as people who promote fellow
feeling, theideathatthatotherpersonoverthereisjustlikeyouinalmostevery
respect. Because he or she is. They have the same basic needs and the same
basic concerns. They were thrown out into existence on this planet just as you
were. They can feel the same pain and loss, the same despair and need. Their
difference is only in the path they have had to walk and how they have
responded to that and been formed by it. We do not need to believe that they
are our deadlycompetitorforresources.Butwecansurelychooseto.SoIguess
my view isthatweveallbeencastontothisplanetarylifeboattogether.Wheres
thesenseinarguingoverit?Itsnotlikeanyonegetsoutaliveanyway.

++++++

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The question arises within me "Do I have a philosophy?". This question forces
me back to considering philosophy, philosophy as thought and action, a way of
life. The existentialist philosopher and psychologist, Karl Jaspers, a German and
at one time someone whowoulddiscussthingswithMartinHeideggerbeforethe
two fell out, articulated in his many philosophical writings a dissatisfaction with
mere academic philosophy which, like science or theology, pretended to furnish
knowledge. Jaspers wanted philosophy to furnish philosophizing not
epistemological narratives. This philosophizing he understood as something that
must well up from a person's individual existence and address itself to other
individuals to help them to achieve true existence. Jaspers himself lauded
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as thetruephilosophersofhisagebecausehesawin
them figures who were not inspired by the static academy but by their own
existence. This is very much a concern I take on board myself. A persons
thought, in my thinking, should become an aid for the historically concrete
existence of the individual and that by way of enhancing and confirming the
reliable practice of theirlife.Existenceiswhataphilosophyshouldarticulateand
actualize instead of ignoring it or regarding it as something to be shackled to
some systematic scheme. Jaspers sometimes referred to his own philosophy as
Existenzphilosophie.AsJasperssummarizeshisthoughthesaysthat,forhim:

"Philosophy" is given up in favour of "philosophizing." "The only significant

content of philosophizing, however, consists in the impulses, the inner
constitution, the way of seeing and judging, the readiness to react by making
choices, the immersion in historical presentness, which grow in us, recognize
themselves,andfeelconfirmedonthewaypastallobjectivecontents.

I understand this as a philosophizing stance towards life, a preparedness to

think. But it does not stand for any particular positions or attitudes towards
particular things and how could it for it is based on individual lives. And who
knows what outlook these lives will fund? So, in many respects, I am not
interested in what you do. I'm interested in who you are. What you do comes
from who you are and is contextualized by it. Thus, I never really write or talk
about things people mustdo,Ineversaythisistherightpositiononthissubject
andthatistherightpositiononthatone.Idontwriteabouthowweshouldsave
the whale or take lots of refugees or argue for these political policies ortakeup
that group of ethical stances. This is not to say I dont have views or these
issues are unimportant. It is to say that, for me, thinking, philosophy, is an
experiencefunded way of life. And this stance, of its very nature, promotes
more generalized discussion of what is at stake in the issues over mandating
certain paths before others.Andsonormallyinmythinking,forexample,Ithink
aboutwhoweareandwhowewouldorcouldbeinsteadofwhatanybodyshould
do.

But this is not to avoid the idea that life is a kaleidoscope of decisions,
something that Kierkegaard fixates about in his thought as one who sees the
human need as a need for God (which I donot).Archetypally,hepresentstous
the figure of Abraham who is asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This, for
Kierkegaard, is a description of our human condition: people who must choose.
Allied to an appreciation of Wittgenstein, this life may then come to seem as
something based in such subjectively momentous decisions based in our beliefs
but thesebeliefs,asthelattershowed,are,atsomefatefulpoint, groundless.All

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knowledge is, in the end, based on something not grounded in our human
knowledgemaking processes. It comes, at some point, to being a leap in the
dark. And we must accept this. At this point we must accept thatreasoncannot
absolve us from decisions nor can it be an excuse for the ones we make. You
cannot avoid choices in life and no amount of whistling in the dark at the point
where knowledge ends and reason falls silentcanchangethis.LikeKierkegaard,
we have to embrace the idea that the self is essentially intangible and must be
understood in terms of possibilities, dread, and decisions. But there is a final
balance to this as Nietzsche reminds us that faith, such as Kierkegaard
manifestlyhad,isnotwantingtoknowwhatistrue.

Andneverforget:W hatwecannotspeakaboutwemustpassoverinsilence.

Thursday

Ghost in The Shell started out in the late 1980s as a Japanesemanga.Overthe

following years it was turned into anime films and even games. A whole world
grew up around it. Ghost in The Shell is a story of the near human futurewhen
cyborgs, humans enhancedwiththeadditionoftechnologicalparts,areareality.
In this near human future humans can be hacked because their minds have
become like software and we are all connected to vast machine networks. The
brains of the people in this world, the hardware on which they run, might not
even be biological anymore. Indeed, its even possible that some people have
become fully technological, electromechanical beings yet still regarded as
people. But how would you feel shaking hands with such a being? Would you
consideritaperson?

Moon is a film by Duncan Jones who is the son ofDavidBowie.Jones'sfilmalso

discusses the near future. In his film a technician called Sam Bell is the only
worker on a base on the moon that is mining for Helium3, a resource which
supplies avastamountoftheworld'senergyneeds.Samisoutonthesurfaceof
the moon in his service vehicle when he crashes into one of the miningvehicles
and he becomes injured and does not return to base. The base artificial
intelligence, GERTY, awakes another Sam Bell to do the work for it transpires
that Sam is not a unique person in this world.Sam,andthisnewSam,areboth
clones of an original Sam Bell. Their memories of a wifeandchildareimplanted
memories. Everything they think they know about who they are is false. They
are, in fact, just manufactured employees fed a story so that they will function
within safe parameters for their employer's benefit. GERTY is instructed by the
employer not to let the second Sam find the first Sam but, inevitably, he does
and so both Sams begin wondering about who they are and what is going on.
Imagine if you were suddenly made wise to the idea that nothing you think
about yourself is true. (Indeed, this could actually betruerightnow.Howwould
youknow?)

And so here I've briefly laid out a couple of future scenarios for human beings.
Except these might not be expressly human beings at all. Some people would
say that doesn't matter. Mamoru Oshii, the Japanese director of a couple of
Ghost in The Shell films, has said that the moral of his films in this narrative
world is that, whether animal, human or posthuman, all existence is worth the

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same respect. Clearly this was not the thought of the employer in Moon though
as these people merely sought humanlike machines to do their bidding. They
were fed lies and treated dishonestyallsothattheywouldperformthetaskthat
they were unknowingly made for. Both of these fictional narrative worlds open
up pathways for discussion around posthumanity, that step in the evolution of
human beings that many futurists think is to come next. Posthumanity is, in
many respects, about going beyond the boundaries that nature has gifted us,
deliberately using our human intelligence to engineer and create new, better
forms of life for ourselves. This may well involve completely getting rid of our
biological form which, let's faceit,isabasicweaknessofourspeciesresponsible
for much of our pain and suffering. But this does not mean that a technological
future for our species would be troublefree or even withoutnewdangersasyet
unseen.

This technological future is actively being explored by us even as you read this
blog now. Google, for example, is actively working on AI, as are a number of
other companies.AI,artificialintelligence,isaboutcreatingamachinethatcould
thinkforitself.Butitsalsoastepalongtheroadtobeingabletotakeourhuman
minds and put them anywhere, for example, inside a much better technological
body. Both of these scenarios create new forms of being, newbeingsineffect.I
was thinking about this the other day as I watched some of a recent Apple
Event. Tim Cook and the rest were lauding their new products and saying how
great and forward thinking they were. But in the light of the science fiction I'd
just been watching itseemedallsoterriblybackward.Aniphone,forexample,is
a device you hold in your hand or carry in your pocket. But imagine if all that
tech was simply a part of you. That's what I call forward thinking. For now, the
iphone remains verymuchabackwardproductsuitedtobiologicalhumanbeings
andnotthefuturecyborgswemaybecome.

So this is alittlebackgroundtothethoughtsthatinspiretoday'sthinking.Iwant
to continue now by asking a few pertinent questions in these interlocking
contexts and then engage in some thinking aloud in response to them. My first
questionrunsthus:

1. What isthedefinitionof"human"ifallbiologicalmaterialcouldbereplacedby
technologicalorelectromechanical(synthetic)parts?

In previous writing on this subject you will see that there I've taken the view
that to be human you must be biological. Human beings, people, just are flesh
and blood. This weakness, if it be that, is just part of their make up, what we
regard humans to be. I think I still believe this but it becomes about morethan
this.Whatmakesapersonaperson?BoththefictionalnarrativesI'vereferredto
make the point that being a certain identity, having certain ideas and beliefs
about yourself, does. So, in this sense, a person need not be biological at all.
Nothing about your body need be biological. You could have a metal skeleton
and a computer for a brain but if you have an idea of who you are, where you
arefrom,holdbeliefsaboutyourself,haveintentions,etc.,thenyouarewhatwe
might call a person. This is a radical thought to have because it cuts away this
notion that to be a person you must be biological.Tobeahumanbeingitmight
very well be the case that you need to be biological. But not to be a person,an
identity. So this then forces the question "What's the importance of being

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specifically human, human as we have always known humans to be?" If it was
possible that we could retain our identities as persons but leave the biological
"human"anchorbehindwouldn'twewanttodothat?

Thisleadslogicallyintomysecondquestion:

2.W
hatisamind,soulorconsciousness?Isthisthelocusofhumanity?

In Ghost in The Shell the whole basis of the narrative world is the "ghost". This
is the mind, soul, consciousness of all the characters in the story. Provided you
have one of these you areregardedasaperson,abeing,andworthyofrespect.
(This is also trueinMoonbytheway,atleastfromtheviewer'sperspective.The
Sams may be clones but they are clones with a consciousness.) But it seems
clear that this is something other than our understandingofahumanbeingthat
is being discussed here. A numberofcharactersinGhostinTheShellarealmost
pure machines. Others are more biologically human. (Its noticeable that,
whatever their make up, they all want to appear human though.) But, in all
cases, it is the "ghost" that is the important thing. This is what is regarded, in
the end, as "you". But is this right? Thinking on a biological, human paradigm
the answer to this must be no. You are your biology. Mostbiologicalhumansdo
not regard their arms, legs, heads, even DNA as peripheral to who they are.
They regard them as integral to who they are. Each human body is different,
unique, and experienced uniquelyfromtheinsideout.Thisistrueevenforthose
of us who need false limbs or prosthetics or wear glasses orhaveahearingaid.
We experience our bodies individually as physical things. But these false limbs
and prosthetics are baby steps down the path to a different understanding.
Imagine a machine future rather than a biological one. Replace biological
thinking which is based on the idea of your uniquenesswithmachinethinkingin
which everythingisreplaceable,customizable,upgradeableandinterchangeable.
Your body is now not so definitive nor so integral towhoyouare.Whatremains
as uniquely youiswhatyouthinkaboutyourself,yourmemories,yourthoughts,
your ideas, that nexus of things you think. This becomes the thing that makes
you you, that makes you the person you are. Again, being a person, an
identifiable individual, is not reliant on being biologically human. Sam Bell 1 in
Moon is not Sam Bell 2. They both have a different consciousness even if they
are identical clones. So, yes, perhapsitisour"ghost"that,intheend,makesus
whoweare.

Butthisraisesanissue.

3.W
hereisthelinebetweenmanandmachine?Doesitactuallymatter?

Following the lineofthinkingI'mtakinghere,itdoesn't.AsMamoruOshiithinks,

so long as the being is clearlyaseparatelyfunctioningindividualthenwhatdoes
it matter what it is made of? A bee, a human, an intelligently aware machine,
they are all just forms of life. Of course, it will probably matter in practice.
Shaking hands with a "robot" is going to feel alienandpossiblyevenfrightening
to a human being. Technological life, after all, is completely alientous.Itisnot
our experience of life. Just as if you woke up and you were an octopus or an
elephant and it would feel bizarre (compare Kafka's The Metamorphosis), so it
would be if humans were suddenly machines. But if you accept that future

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beings could be machine beingsthenyouhavenoreasontodenythemanything
you might grant beings of other kinds. Ghost in The Shell raises the prospectof
various stages along the path to machine beings. Some may have technological
implants whilst others have largely had their bodies mechanized. This might
surely helphumanbeingstogetusedtotheideaofmechanicalbeingsandmake
this kind of "line" fade away. But, as I discussed in the context of my second
question, its what makes a being a being orapersonapersonthatcountshere.
And that's not necessarily anything to do with what materials you are made of.
So,no,itdoesn'tmatterunlessyouhadabiastowardsbiology.

Butthisleadsustoprobedeeper:

4. What is the correct understanding of a human? Is "ghost in the shell" useful

asanideahere?

Even though, so far here, I've taken one view on this subject, its fair to say
that's not the whole story. I'm sure there are people who think that machines
could not be people or persons. And certainly nothumans.Iagreethatmachine
beings would not be human. That's why I'm using the term "posthuman" to
describe them. They would clearly be beings based on us but they wouldn't be
us. My point here though is to ask if whether they are human or not is actually
the most important question or even a relevant question at all. Much more
important and interesting is to ask if they are beings and, if they are,whatthat
means. Of course, we are humans and so are doing all this thinking from our
human perspective. Human beings are special, different, to us because we are
all human beings. We are accustomed to thinking of human beings as the
pinnacleofcreation.

And yet we arestandingonthecuspofpossiblycreatingbeingsthatcouldeasily

and exponentially surpass us. These beings could be everything we are only
many times more so. They could maybe become things we cannot even guess
at. At this point we would need to ask ourselves what was left of the human in
them at all. But inordertodothisweneedtoknowwhatahumanbeingevenis
and its not clear weknowthatyet.HereI'vefollowedmyfictionalleadsandsaid
itisthis"ghost"intheshellofourbodiesthatiswhoweare.ButI'mnotblindto
the fact it may well be more than this. Its also quite scary to imagine that if it
were this "ghost" then it could be hacked or deceived as in the fictional stories
I've referred to. Perhaps this says more about humans than werealize.Perhaps
it is thinking itself that is human, thinking as a vulnerability. And perhaps that
thinking is the burden that humans, perhapsuniquelyatthispointintime,must
carry. But its quite narrow to focusthisthinkingonmindsandbrains.Ourwhole
context in life is relevant to this process. We are constantly getting and
processing feedback from our surroundings. A grey sky can depress us and
seeing a smile can make us happy. Thinking does not put you, or your brain or
mind, in a vacuum. Thinking involves all that is. And so the human is a part of
everything and takes part in everything. Its not just some definable personality
or identity in abstraction. That would be to take on the machine thinking of our
posthumandescendants.

But, taking this thinking on anyway, let's push the technological door open and
peepinside.

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5.I fyoucouldcopyaconsciousnesswhatfollows?

This is the type of question my two fictional narratives of choice have followed,
each in their own ways. As Moon shows, you might get hundreds of identical
workers, slaves in effect. (I neglected to mention earlierthatinMoontheclones
have been engineered to breakdown and die after 3 years, the length of their
fictional contracts working on the moon base. At this point all the Sam Bells
think they will be going home to their nonexistent families.) For Ghost in The
Shell the problem becomes that peoplecanbehacked,subverted,corrupted,for
othernefariouspurposes.Atechnologicalbeingthoughtofthroughthemetaphor
of a computer could be subject to all the problems a computer could have. So,
for example, these technological beings could be hacked and viruses implanted
which make them do bad things. Or kill themselves. After all, technological
devices simply run the programs they are instructed to run, don't they? This
would be a specifically technological form of the psychological manipulations we
humans sometimes undergoorundertake.Ifyoucouldcontrolthecode,though,
thenyoucouldcontrolthebeings.

But there are identity issues heretoo.ThereareunendingnumbersofSamBells

in Moon. But, that being so, none of them are really Sam Bell at all. They are
nobody. They have nowhere to anchor themselves and have no timeline along
which they can situate themselves. Identity is fundamentally based on
uniqueness, being able to place yourself in a narrative you tell yourself about
yourself, but also identification with other things that helps you build this
narrative of self. So what if yours had been implanted or was fake, a tissue of
lies? You are Neo from The Matrix in the pod being fed fiction as truth. If
consciousness can be copied then how can you even be sure you are you? You
live in a world without foundations. Not only do you not know up from down,
right from left, you wouldn't even know where to begin. If consciousness could
ever be copied then you could lose controloverthatmostbasicthingofall:who
youare.Itsascaryprospect,atleast,ifyou'reahumanbeing.

We can explore these questions of varying types of being by asking other

questions.Ifindthisoneinteresting:

6.C anyoumurderarobot?Whataboutacyborg?WhataboutanAI?

There are issues of definition at play here first. A robot is here basically a
mechanical drone. A cyborg is different and is a human/machine hybrid being.
An AI isanartificialintelligenceandsowasneverhumantostartwith.Butitisa
living,thinkingentity,apersonalityandidentitywithitsownintegrity.

My intuition would be that you can't murder a robot. It is just a machine as we

think of machines now. It has not developed selfawareness nor does it regard
itself as a being. Because it doesn't regard itself atall.However,thecyborgand
theAIaremorecomplicatedscenarios.

A cyborg is a human/machine hybrid. This doesn't necessarily mean it has a

human mind and brain though. As in Ghost in TheShell,wheresomecharacters
have had technological brains implanted, it might not be the thinking part of
them that is still human. Does this matter? Probably not. To look at them you

147
wouldstillseeaperson.IfindthisstrangethoughandasIwatchedtwoGhostin
The Shell films I wondered why all the characters, who in theory could
technologically change their appearance, were all so eager to stay looking like
conventional humans. Is the human form the best possible form available? This
must be questionable. And so this led me to ask how cyborgs thought of
themselves. Clearly they weren't so detached from their former biological
humanity as they could be. They thought of themselves as people just as the
Sam Bells did inMoon.Thelatterwereactuallybiologicalhumans,ofcourse,but
they had been genetically engineered, for example with implanted false
memories and with a kind of selfdestruct mechanism after 3 years.Itseemsto
me quite clear that you could murder a cyborg. They appear to be and think of
themselves as people. They share in that sense of self and identity we would
regardasthemhavingapersonality.

The same could be said, of course, for an AI. Or, at least, for the possible
socalled "strong" AIs some human beings hope to create in the near future.
Strong AIs are ones which literally do think for themselves just as much as you
couldsaythatyouyourselfdo.Thatbeingso,howwouldyoudistinguishsuchan
AI from yourself or grant it any less dignity than you do yourself? Because it
doesn't have a body and runs instead on circuit boards? This hardly seems
reasonable. You are basically strings of genetic code yourself. And yet you feel
like a person. If a strong AI felt like a person too and expressed itself as one
what reasons could you have for denying it the personality you regard yourself
as having? If you just pulled the plug on it, denying it energy just as if you
starved a human being, wouldn't that then bemurder?Ithinkyoucouldmurder
astrongAI.

So this has been yet just another foray into this subject as I've made many
before. There are unending questions here and not just about the future and
technology but, fundamentally, about us humans and specifically aboutidentity.
As I look out on the world we humans are a mess. We are weak, pathetic,
selfserving, destructive, vindictive, meaningless. It is often said that the basic
human quality is simply the will to survive. But as I ask myself questions about
being human, stimulated by some interesting human stories from thoughtful
minds, I start to ask myself what the importance of being human is at all.
Sometimes in science fiction, and in life, there is a sentimentality about this. In
more cynical science fiction the future is about how the humans win.
(Independence Day films I'm looking at you!) And yet, are humans even
important or relevant at all in a universe they cannot begin to fathom? We may
surmise that we are important to ourselves but so what? The universe is not
mandated to even notice human thinking. And now we see that even we
ourselves are thinking of ways to surpass ourselves.Itmayyetturnoutthatwe
are just another footnote in the history of something that was so big it
swallowedusupinitswakewithoutevennoticingthatwewereeverthere.

Tuesday

The simple fact is that "emptiness" can be used in a number of contexts and so
be given a numberofmeanings.Forthoseofaspiritualdisposition,forexample,
emptiness is a desired condition, a removal of unwanted cares, thoughts and

148
feelings from our consciousness. For someone who is bored emptiness is the
feeling of a lack of motivation or being becalmed. But emptiness can be other
things too. It can beusedtodescribeaphysicalspacethathasnothinginit...or
to describespaceitselfasin"theemptinessofspace".Emptinessisconnectedto
nothingness for when something is empty there is nothing in it. There aremore
ways in which "emptiness" can be used, as many as the ingenuity of our use of
languageallows.

For me its worth noting that all these manywaysaresomehowconnected.After

all, that'sthepointoflanguageandwecouldn'tuseonewordforsomanythings
iftherewasn'tsomecoreideathatwasattenuatedinouruseofit.Sothelackof
motivation that comes from an empty boredom and the emptiness of a space
have some connection to the nothingness of outer space and the spiritual
persons desire for a draining of care from their conscious mind. I find myself
very attracted to the idea of emptiness, of nothing, of silence. Magnetically so.
In fact, its only duetocultivatingemptinessthatI'mabletowritelikethisatall.
I like towriteinthemorningwhichhasalwaysbeenmybesttimeforwriting.Its
because each day is anewstartandwhenIwakeupIamablankpageuntilthe
day starts to impact me. That is when I write, when I'm empty, as soon as I
wakeupbeforestuffstartstoinvademyemptymind.

It is a great thing, I think, to be in control of yourself. Most people, I'm

convinced, aren't. Most people are brutes who stagger from onedaytothenext
with barely a selfconscious thought let alone an analysis of themselves, their
strengthsandweaknesses,theirthoughtsandfeelings,arecordofwhattheyare
doing, when and why. People in general do not analyze themselves. Perhaps
many would never see the need to. There is a cultural meme which denigrates
the psychologist, for example, one who studies how individual humans work,
what motivates and drives them, what hang ups they have, what things cause
them psychological trauma. If you go to one to help you understand yourself
then,tomanypeople,thereissomethingabitwrongwiththis.

I don't understand this mentality, I must admit. We are not all privileged to
travel the world. Many of us will never be rich enough. But wecanalltravelour
own world, the world ofourthoughts,feelingsandexperiences.Theworldinside
us is also unlimited, unlike the world around us. And, just like the worldaround
us, the world inside us will surprise us. Many times I've sat (or laid down)
thinking about my own life and thoughts. "Why did I think that?" "Why did I
react like that when that happened?" and "What is important to me now?" are
just some of the questions that always arise for me. And we all know that as
many times as I do that the questions will keep coming. Because all thought
needs is a little space, a bit of emptiness,toleakinto.Perhapsthisiswhythose
people who can't bear the idea of reflecting or analyzing keep themselves busy
sothatthoughtnevergetsanopportunitytotakehold.

But I must admit that one consequence of my quiet, thoughtful times is an

increased appreciation for emptiness asanidea.Itbogglesmymindtothinkthe
vastness of the universe is mostly emptiness. All that is exploded into
existence... but most of it was just emptiness, a great big silent nothing. Its an
automatic leap for me to go from outside to inside... and most of that I find to

149
be emptiness as well. But this is where the problems start. Most people, led by
our scientific and philosophical heritage, are prone to having a bias in favour of
something over nothing. To have something is better than to have nothing,
right? Humans talk about whatISandnotaboutwhatISNOT.Emptinesscanbe
seen as a deficiency, a lack, and it often is. To have nothing, to be empty, is
bad.

But, I'm sorry, I don't agree. For me, emptiness is beautiful and instinctive and
the natural order of things. For me it is the objects and cares and things of the
world that are theproblemandnotthelackofthem.Formetheproblemiseach
time we humans attempt to set up an order of things,takingtheemptinessand
filling itwithstuff.Eachorderingisanattempttofillthenothingwithsomething.
I think it is, in somerespects,anecessity.Therehastobe"awaythingsare"so
thatwecanlive.Butthetroubleisfartoomanypeopletakethingstooseriously.
They take the things we createanddenominateasrealitiesandthenwegetinto
all sorts of trouble, political, social, emotional, philosophical. The state of the
universe is a vast, abstract emptiness and, for me, emptiness is the wisdom of
feeling as an instinct and as a deep satisfactionthatknowing,whichwethinkall
our creating is, can never be of anything of ultimate meaning. You do notknow
a void. You cannot explain emptiness. Instead, you experience it and
contemplateitand,ifyoucan,cometotermswithit.

I admit that emptiness can be a very spiritual and philosophical subject. This is
why spiritual peopleofmanytraditionshavetriedtocultivateemptinessanditis
probably a version of this that I try to cultivate for myself. I, like them, try to
empty myself of the thoughts and feelings of theday.Likethem,Iseenosense
in holding on to things which then have the power to affect and change me. I
see the wisdom in becoming truly selfaware. It is often described as like
opening your eyes and I see it that way. The more youknowyourself(amaxim
we know of even from The Greeks who invented our western philosophical
tradition) the more you become a fully actualized human being is how I would
describeit.

I've stopped typing and I'm sitting here at my desk in absolute silence. There's
not really any thought in my head. A picture of the universe comes into my
mind. It is dark, empty and cold. And it goes on forever.Thatiswhereyoulive,
what you are part of. That is where you are. That is the context for everything
you do. That's what you came from and what you are returning to. Cold, dark,
emptiness. AfewyearsagoIusedtolieontheflooratnightinmyclothesinthe
darkness and in total silence. I guess now, thinking back, it was a form of
spiritual discipline. I can absolutely say, hand on heart, that it was of benefit to
me. It was a concentrating on nothingness because I didn't think about
anything. Consciously so. If a thought started to form I concentrated on
banishing it. The world is fullofnoise,muchofitpointlesschatter,andIwanted
time when it was all GONE. So I'd lay there, on the floor, in the dark, in the
silence, for maybe 6090 minutes. Not moving. The emptiness was like being
surroundedbycottonorsoftwool.

I'm still sitting here, thinking of nothing. Now I can hear the rain outside.
Occasionally, a car passes by. But its not very often and I'm glad. Its a year or

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two since I used to just sit or lie on the floor in quiet and now I realize that I
miss it. The noise of life likes to pull you back in like a social media giant that
does everything it can to force you to use its service by integrating itself with
every website in the world. But you know what? The emptiness is subversive.
Because when you sit in the quiet of emptiness your priorities start to change.
You ask yourself what matters and you start to realize that none of the things
the noisy world pushes in your face really do at all. I'm not surprised the world
loves noise. Noise is the way the world stops you finding out what counts. The
world, then, is one big distraction, a constant, attentionseeking phenomenon.
Its like a bot on Twitter that uses the icon of a pretty girl and the favoriting of
one of your tweets as an attempt to elicit your follow. But as with the bot, it
doesn't really offer anything. It just wants your attention. But its a distraction
from the emptiness in which you can really think, weigh and value things. And
theworldisscaredofthatbecauseitknowsitcanonlysurviveinthenoise.

I could probably go on writing like this all day. But I need to finish it. Then I'll
probably spend some of the day watching people come and go on Tempelhofer
Feld. In the emptiness as I sit here now the rain is pouring harder outside.
Nothingreallymattersandnogreatpassionshaveseizedme.AndI'mgladthere
is still emptiness I can retreat to in which this realisation about emptiness can
come to mind. If there was only the noise I think we would all succumb to
madness. I find it useful to remember again that before us there was nothing.
And after us there will be nothing again. They say that even the emptiness of
spacewillgototallycoldanddie.Existenceitselfwillbecomeatotalemptiness.

We are already in the void. I find value in embracing it and attempting to fully
enter it. Maybe you would too. In any event, it can't do anyharmand,oneway
oranother,you'regoingthereanyway.

Monday

Ikilledhim.

FOREWORD

Mary sat at her desk and took a selfiewhichshepostedonherTwitter.Shewas

a private person who did not like to sharetoomuchofherlifewiththedenizens
of social media. She had had too many bad experiences of men just following
her hoping for a glimpse ofnakedfleshor,worse,otherswhomshehadbecome
more friendly and intimate with only for them to let her down and become a
source of pain and not joy. However, occasionally, herdesiretoshowherselfoff
overcame this natural reserve and she allowed herself a treat. Feeling quite
happy today, she also posted it to Facebook, but only for friends. Itshowedher
beautiful smile and, unusually for her, a hint of cleavage. She closed down the
book she was writing, Diogenes, and smiled to herself a long, satisfied smile.
She felt she had gotten the characters of these people, including herself, down
quite well. She noticed that she hadapsychologicaltendencytousenameswith
the samefirstlettersasthoseoftherealpeopleshewasbasingthemon.Soshe
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thought about changingthenamesbutcouldntbringherselftodoit.Itbetrayed
the lie that this was somehow just an impersonal fiction. Bullshit! This was
merely a living fantasy being played out by characters on a page. It was an
active part of her conscious andsubconsciousthinkingandmuchofit,forallthe
tapestryoffiction,wasveryreal.

Marys car parked in the street, she went in the front door and, instead of
ascending the stairs to her apartment, she made her way down to the cellars.
She turned right and walked along a narrow corridor of grey doors. No one was
around but at the other end of the corridor someones washing machine was
working as its faint whirring betrayed its activity. The walls were thick down
here. She took out her cellar key and, once more checking for signs of life,
quickly turned it in the quite stiff lock, pushed her way in through the heavy
cellar doorandcloseditbehindher.Shelockeditagain.Sheplacedherhandbag
down on a shelf and walked into an antechamber of the cellar, butterfliesinher
stomach signifying a mixture of excitement and arousal. Inside, to the right,
there was a walled off section and another door. But this door was different in
that a spy hole had been fitted. Mary pressed her hazel eye ball up to it and
inside saw the skeleton now rather pathetically chained to the wall. Once it had
been Frank. Now it was mostly justbones.Ithadntalwaysbeenbonesbutthen
timeisntkindtothedead.

Marys hand wandered down the front of her pants as she remembered how
Frank had come to be chained to a wall in her cellar. She had seduced him so
expertly. Shed surprised even herself at how willingly he had submitted to her,
acquiesced to her every whim, first putting his ankles in thechainsandthenhis
wrists. After that she had teased him so, dancing naked, masturbating herself
until she had most visible orgasms. He deserved it. It was the last thing he
would ever see apart from walls and chains, after all. The tranquiliser dart had
been a surprise and I expect waking up with a most efficient gag and blindfold
had been too. Mary didnt know how long after that Frank had lived for. She
hadnt checked. She left him there chained behind the locked cellar door within
the locked cellar for several months. When people asked what had happened to
Frank she said he had left her. Which wasnt exactly false. The first time she
checked on him again, which was well over 100 dayslateritwastoseewhathe
had become. She had puked at what she saw. Domesticated human beings are
such delicate, sensitive souls and fermentinghumancorpsesarenosightforthe
squeamish. Another year or so had passed and he was mostly bones as the
peculiarconditionsofthecellarandtheopenairhaddonetheirthing.

She stepped back from the spy hole, her hand lingering justalittlelongerdown
the front of her pants, and then she strode away back to the door. Locking it
behind her, she made her way up to her apartment. Hello Mary, said her
cheery but lecherous neighbour, Erich, on the stairs. How are you? asked the
vivacious Mary. Im very well today, replied Erich. And veryhappytoseeyou
today. Youre looking very sexy today! Mary winced. Beautiful would have
been the word used by tactful neighbours but Erich hadnt the sensetodisguise
his feelings and had gone straight for sexy. So are you too! she replied in
kind over her shoulder as she pusheditintothefrontdoorofherapartmentand
disappeared inside. She allowed herself a wry grin and, jettisoning her coat and
her handbag, she walked into her bedroom towards her bed leaving clothes

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behind her as she undressed. She opened the drawer of her bedside table and
withdrew a nine inch knobbledglassdildowhichwassurprisinglythick.Thenshe
lay on the bed, spread her legs and fucked herself until she could take it no
more.Andthenshefellintoadeepsleep.

Wearewhatwethink.Allthatweareariseswithour
thoughts.
Withourthoughts,wemaketheworld.
TheBuddha

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