Blinkersoff

Picture if you will the scene:

A lovely spring day in the country. A gentle warm breeze. The spring smells of first flowers, rich earth, fresh air.

Bees buzz, birds sing and off in the distance a dog barks.

And here is Plodder. He is a draught horse. Big and strong, reliable and loyal. He has been working the land here for most of his life. He doesn’t think about it much, it is just the way it is.

Farmer Brown comes to his stall in the morning, brushes him down, gives him his oats and chats about the plans for the day. Pull the cart in the morning into the woods to get some timber. Stroll into town to pick up some supplies and enjoy the pats and admiration of the local children. Plough the home paddock, pulling the plough behind him with his strong legs working, Farmer Brown focussing his attention on keeping the furrows straight.

Not a bad life.

Plodder doesn’t want for much. He is fed and watered. He has a roof over his head. Farmer Brown is not overly harsh or quick with the whip.

Yes. Life is pretty good for Plodder.

One other thing, whenever Plodder is out and about, Farmer Brown makes sure he puts a pair of blinkers on him. They are comfortable enough. They sit on either side of his intelligent eyes, keeping him focussed on the task at hand, gazing ahead wherever Farmer Brown chooses to turn him with the old bridle. Plodder looks this way and that, down at the rich brown earth, out along the road into town, back down the track to the barn. Farmer Brown seems to know what is best at any given moment, and Plodder takes it in his big gentle stride, happy enough.

This is how Plodder has always seen the world outside the barn. Ever since he was a foal he was trained to accept the blinkers without question. Farmer Brown ensured that Plodder wore the blinkers, that Plodder worked for Farmer Brown, and that in return Farmer Brown would ensure that Plodder was not too uncomfortable, and had the occasional reward for his good work. Farmer Brown got the benefits of Plodder’s hard work, and gave Plodder a fraction of the profit for his trouble in the way of oats and rub downs and the odd sugar cube.

Good old Plodder.

But imagine Plodder’s surprise if he could take his blinkers off. If he could see to each side, to wherever he wanted to turn his head? I wonder if he would be so content with his lot. Ploughing the field, pulling the cart, living in the barn. Doing what he has been taught from birth is the right thing to do.

Would he willingly put those blinkers back on or would he want to see the world his way? Would he prefer to be told what to do and when and how to do it by Farmer Brown, or would he start to think that maybe Farmer Brown was just using him to turn a profit for himself, giving just enough back to Plodder to stop him from being too discontent?

The problem, you see, is that once you take off the blinkers that we have all been told we need to wear, it is impossible to live the rest of your life as if they were still on.

 

A Zombie Apocalypse? Not again!

Apocalyptic, Dystopian, Pre and Post-Apocalyptic, Pre Dystopian, etc etc.. If you believe what you see on the TV screen, a zombie apocalypse is coming and not just to a theatre near you!

We humans have a fascination with the undead. Always have and always will apparently. From vampires to werewolves to ghosts and ghouls, the undead are always in the back of the collective consciousness somewhere.

And so to the zombie apocalypse.

It is coming in all its forms and the preppers are getting ready. Stockpiling goodies and guns to ride out the matinee horror fest until the theatre is empty and the candy bar well and truly raided.

But I fear it is too late. I fear that the dreaded zombie apocalypse has already snuck up behind us and taken over without so much as a moan. Vast hordes of undead walking the streets, looking for all the world like ordinary citizens, upstanding, mobile, not wavering in their determination to either kill us or turn us.

I see them every day. I am surprised that others don’t, but then maybe I am one of the few that is uninfected by whatever virus has worked its way into their undead brains. I recognise them by their eyes. Not alive by any sense of the word, but not yet quite dead. Undead eyes. The thousand yard stare of the veteran killer, Vaseline eyes, glassy, hooded, no emotion.

Typically wearing a suit. Typically in the inner city. Typically around the corporate death zones and high street cemeteries. Once happy children now all grown up with the life force sucked out of them, perhaps still just aware enough to realise what they have become.

Assuming you are not one of them, look around you next time you are walking the streets where you live. Can you see them? Don’t worry, they can’t see you. They can only see what the virus in their brains wants them to see, and I can guarantee you it isn’t you. It’s the next deal, the billable hour, the next big thing. It’s the overwhelming need to impress the other zombies, and feel superior to you (even though you are invisible! The irony!). It is the new car, the hope that the latest gadget will fulfil its advertised promise and make them happy and content, finally ending the endless insatiable miserable life-destroying craving for more, more, more.

Yes, I fear that the zombie apocalypse is already here. And it has infected all levels of society, leaving no-one immune.

So, bring on the next wave. The stumbling, rotting fleshed, brain eating zombies of our imaginations.

I have survived this one long enough, and I am actually looking forward to next. Because at least when it hits there will be no ramifications for putting a bullet between their eyes and putting them out of their misery.

Another zombie apocalypse? Bring it on!

Switching on by switching off

In our rush to leap headlong into being entertained every waking minute by the wonders of technology, and our impatience to have our every want satisfied immediately, it seems to be that the hard learned lessons of past generations are being lost.

It isn’t looked on as a good thing to be thrifty, to wait for things that are worthwhile, to make long term decisions and invest in our future selves and our children and grandchildren. These are things that are looked down on whereas once were values worth maintaining. The majority of the population these days seems intent to spend all that they have as soon as they have it, disregard the old wisdom, and then bemoan their fate when things appear unattainable or out of reach.

If failing to plan is indeed planning to fail, then there are many members of society out there who have very little hope of success (in whatever field, or howsoever success is so defined by them).

Of course, planning takes time, and time seems to be what so many people claim to be short of these days. A claim made while wiling away the endless hours that are spent in front of screens of various sorts, televisions, computers, phones, where time slips by without notice, and minutes turn to hours, and reality is circumvented by the imagined. Where time could be spent for even a few moments planning for the future (even the near future of tomorrow or next week), the claim of boredom takes hold and the panacea of “entertainment”, being but a swipe or click away, is substituted instead. Never before has the ability to switch off by switching on been so readily in reach.

But what of switching on by switching off? Would the time poor be better served by consciously switching off and moving on from the endless cycle of screen time? I think so. It goes without saying.

I catch a bus to and from work most days. I am constantly bemused by the number of people with their heads down, headphones in, staring at little screens that are in turn pumping pointless bullshit into their brains.  Life passes them by outside the bus, they don’t notice. Reality for them is right there on the screen. It is surreal.

I sometimes wonder if that is partly the cause of the disconnect between people and the natural world that sustains us. Why think about what goes on ‘out there’ outside the scope of social media, infotainment and consumerism, when you are convinced all you need to know is there on your little screen. Focussing all their attention on that blocks reality. Food comes from a supermarket, power from a switch, water from a tap. Looking at a screen so intently, unconsciously searching for something specific to make meaning, simply means that they don’t actually see anything at all.

The world is an amazing place. Switch off, even for a moment, and switch yourself back on.

Energy is energy – let’s change the narrative

Energy is usually defined as the ability to do work. That’s it. It isn’t coal, or coal seam gas, or uranium, or oil. It is the ability to do work.

The debate as it stands currently seems to be that we should be using renewable and alternative sources of energy rather than fossil fuels. This isn’t helpful to the debate at all.

The sun is not a renewable resource, any more than coal is. It is just far more prolific. To use the term ‘alternative’ just scares the ultra-conservative types, as they associate it with radical greenies preaching a total alternative lifestyle of neo-socialism and kum bah yah sing-alongs, dread locks and anti-development.

Like the term ‘clean coal technology’ has conveniently dropped the final word ‘technology’, and morphed into the idea of simply ‘clean coal’ (in an obvious and little called out attempt to convince punters that burning coal can somehow be clean or that there is a different type of clean coal being mined out there somewhere), the term alternative energy seems to have dropped the concept of simply being an alternative source of energy other than fossil fuels. It is not ‘alternative’ in the radical green movement sense of the word. It is just an alternative. It is not truly renewable in any sense of the word, it will eventually run out (albeit in billions of years in the case of solar energy), but is a viable alternative to what we are relying on at the moment.

So, there is nothing to fear from developing new models of energy production. It makes sense. Fossil fuels are polluting the planet in ways that are having dire consequences, and there are other ways to produce the same power using alternative sources of energy, if there is a will and the funding to do so.

Not to do so smacks of a conscious decision to keep polluting and polluting, putting the world as we know it currently at risk of irreversible change. It smacks of a deliberate decision to run the risk of a future world that will be very different in a challenging and unpleasant way to the one we inhabit at the moment, and seems unbelievably arrogant and stupid. To consciously and deliberately refuse to invest on a global scale into less damaging ways to produce energy, and to frantically fund and prop up old polluting systems that are clearly known to be harmful to the way we currently live is almost criminal in its stupidity.

So let’s change the narrative here. When you are talking about renewables, refer to them as what they are – alternative sources of energy to run the systems that keep us all in beer and skittles. Not alternative in the sense of turning off the lights and living in a commune. Change the narrative, and maybe some of the conservative types out there might just start to understand the concept.

There are no alternatives. Just sources that are bad for us all in the medium and long term, and sources that might just make the world a better place to live than it is going to be in the very near future.

Energy is just energy.