Twice in two days some quite sane business colleagues have hypothesised to me something that I already know.

Each pointed out to me that the degree of automation in all aspects of production of goods and in the delivery of services is accelerating so quickly that employment levels are soon going to start dropping off precipitously.

Also, both of my colleagues noted that this isn’t good for the global economy because we need all those people to have incomes in order to consume.

What they are sensing is the start of the end of Capitalism, as we know it.

Born out of the Industrial revolution we have had a golden era of Capitalism with ever-increasing productivity for over three hundred years.

For most of this period, humans were necessary units of labour AND consumption, and our economic management has had this assumption implicitly built into it.

But now, with real demand for labour dropping off and potentially taking consumption with it, the central banks are running out of ideas on how to stimulate their economies.

Their levers don’t work if people are unemployed and never will be employed.

Ideally there would be an adjustment period while some new economic model emerges; most likely based on an extension of the existing model of employing people in artificially generated services jobs through the implementation of government legislation.

Financing this model past a smallish percentage of the overall workplace, however, will require some imaginative re-thinking of corporation structures and taxation, as well as income taxation.

[Here I have extracted some imaginative model that I came up with for this. I had troubles re-reading it, so imagine the trauma for others?]

The thing that worries me the most is that such any such re-jigged system relies on ever increasing productivity and an infinite supply of resources.

Unfortunately, climate change combined with our rapidly diminishing resources may mean that we may be better off letting consumption decline.

Maybe the best way to achieve all this is to leave things just as they are but to substantially increase income on salaries so that the hordes of unemployed or artificially employed can be kept alive by government programs.

If this went on for long enough and a large fraction of people were in artificially created jobs, ironically we’d up in a situation of pseudo-communism.

“Why are we delayed?”

“Air traffic control”

“But what is the reason?”

“This is very typical in Shanghai, very typical”

“No, I mean what causes such long delays?”

“Air traffic control”

When the primary unit of work was human labour it made good sense for the power-mad and wealth-mad individuals to attempt to extend their domination over as many people as possible.

The bigger the horde, the more you could produce.

Today, machines and software do most of the work and we humans of the West are more valuable as units of consumption.

The more of us that you control, the bigger your problem.

Pronounced ‘ma-way’ in Chinese this is the best translation into English that this mob could come up with. See exhibit below.

When quizzed, my Chinese colleagues said “it’s very similar, very similar”.

Even the linguist that translated my name on my business card said so.

I’ve got four very different Chinese characters to their two.

My translator, when forced to concentrate on the issue, had to admit that there was a discrepancy with respect to the missing X’s and L’s in the original Chinese pronunciation.

“But it doesn’t matter. Very similar, very similar”.

I thought about suggesting that he try dropping the S and N from Shen and seeing how that worked out for him.

But at that point, I had no option but to shake my head and drop the subject.

They just can’t be arsed finding fault with something that doesn’t matter.

The only down side to this is that, lacking practise, when they do encounter critique they aren’t very good at spotting bullshit.

Proposition: all pain and suffering comes from attachment.

Interpretation: if you follow the teachings of the Buddha and attempt not to get emotionally attached to anything (people, money, achievements, long life, etc) then you won’t ever experience pain and suffering.

Extension: but you also won’t ever feel joy, exuberance or even contentment.

Problem: what goes up must come down, after all.

Solution: what I think the Buddha should have said is:

You have to learn how to detach really quickly if things look like they’re going tits up.

Empathy is, amidst other things, the ability to understand and experience the feelings of others.

But get this; some especially empathetic people can also feel their own future emotions.

My guess is that the mirage of future pain prevents them from being properly happy today.

It’s a self protection racket that sends them down a rabbit hole.

I have a new goal in life…

For what is a pie without pastry but yet another life lived in vain.

That’s rhetorical mate; no question mark for garnish.

Siddhartha. I read the thing, what, twenty years ago. Maybe more.

In my memory, all the key characters were Indians seeking oneness with the universe through the perfection of selfless behavior and thought. Om….

These characters have, over those twenty odd years, blended into one big fat grinning Buddha.

But this book is not about Buddha, they say.

Well it is really. It’s a sneaky critique of Buddha and his followers, if nothing else.

There is a hell of a difference between a how-to guide for membership of a cult of Sansara, and a travel guide for hitchhikers that are avoiding the same.

This book pretends to be the former and is more the latter.

In the book, Siddhartha learns to stop time and imagine his own life. Vasudeva is a figment of Siddhartha’s hallucinogenic imagination, a la Brad Pitt in the Fight Club. Sidd even taps into the singularity of time and space, well before such things became popular.

Whereas Gotama can only conjure up a weight loss program for the morally overburdened. And, to be fair, he also manages to walk around with a very admirable sense of sereneness.

Siddhartha was Hesse of course. It was an ode to himself.

None of this matters too much either. There’s no judgement here. Thanks for sharing, I say.

It’s always good to read the distilled efforts of others.

For the author, this book is an act of kindness, with no obvious downsides, which probably had a primary benefit of allowing him to arrange his wisdom just prior to the binning of it, along with the rest of the hard-earned fruits of his experience and contemplation.

It does leave me wondering, though, where did I read the story about the frog and the scorpion?Nuh, it’s gone.

Here are some randomly noted and recorded quotes gleaned from today’s re-read … akin to a stream of consciousness from the river of Styx;

And so I’m starting to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the desire to know it, than learning.

[Gotama’s failed millennium project] “Have you seen the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teachings? And do you believe, Samana, do you believe that it would be better for them to all abandon the teachings and to return into the life the world and of desires?”

Truly, nothing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own Self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is nothing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!

You should also learn this: love can be obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, finding it in the street, but it cannot be stolen.

Surely, I am without possessions. But I am so voluntarily, and therefore I am not destitute.

Everyone takes, everyone gives, such is life.

Pleasure cannot be taken without giving pleasure.

Siddhartha’s interest and curiosity [in business] was only concerned with the people, whose businesses, crafts, worries, pleasures, and acts of foolishness used to be as alien and distant to him as the moon.

And then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him.

I am like you. You also do not love—how else could you practise love as a craft? Perhaps, people of our kind can’t love. The childlike people can; that’s their secret.

He envied them for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love. These people were all of the time in love with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money, with plans or hopes.

Slowly the disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him.

Never before, had it become so strangely clear to Siddhartha, how closely lust was akin to death.

The name of this game was Sansara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable to play once, twice, ten times—but for ever and ever over again?

He smiled a little – was it really necessary, was it right, was it not as foolish game, that he owned a mango tree, that he owned a garden? He also put an end to this, this also died in him. He rose, bid his farewell to the mango tree, his farewell to the pleasure-garden.

And it was this very thing, so it seemed to him now, that had been his sickness before, that he was not able to love anybody or anything.

I had to become a fool, to find Atman in me again. I had to sin, to be able to live again.

That he had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive after all, this was why he felt joy, this was why he laughed, this was why his face was smiling brightly under his hair which had turned gray.

He had died, a new Siddhartha had woken up from the sleep. He would also grow old, he would also eventually have to die, Siddhartha was mortal, every physical form was mortal. But today he was young, was a child, the new Siddhartha, and was full of joy.

Now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right, that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation. Therefore, he had to go out into the world…

Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion.

Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.

“You’ve experienced suffering, Siddhartha, but I see that no sadness has entered your heart.”

Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? … But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.

He did sense very well that this love, this blind love for his son, was a passion, something very human, that it was Sansara, a murky source, dark waters. Nevertheless, he felt at the same time, it was not worthless, it was necessary, came from the essence of his own being. This pleasure also had to be atoned for, this pain also had to be endured, these foolish acts also had to be committed.

They lacked nothing, there was nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to put him above them except for one little thing, a single, tiny, small thing: the consciousness, the conscious thought of the oneness of all life.

It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.

Did he not have to expect the same fate for himself? Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this repetition, this running around in a fateful circle?

His wound blossomed, his suffering was shining, his Self had flown into the oneness. In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering.

“What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you’re searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don’t find the time for finding?”

Searching means having a goal, but finding means being free, being open, having no goal.

“Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”

After which point, Herman completely loses the plot and proceeds to pass on his all his ‘wisdom’!

I do believe that he got to the place where he decided that wisdom is pointless and consciously decided to end the book in a way that (a) laughingly sent some readers off into a cult-de-dac, and (b) alerted the odd hitchhiker to stop reading the thing so bloody avidly.

Further research dug up this from the Communist Manifesto:

“On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. . . . The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”

That’s probably based on the observation that before the advent of money, humans were a tad more tribal and little less ‘family’.

Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch to extend this to transgender issues in an era where capital still rules.

Kindly, we could call it a stretch target.

As a kiddie, out of sheer curiosity, I once read “The Communist Manifesto” by Marx and Engels.

My overwhelming impression was that it was a simplistic and unworkable over-reaction to servitude, slavery and serfdom.

Thus it was proven so.

A good data point for my latter-day hypothesis that one should never ever adopt a completely new business model; the odds for failure are virtually unbackable.

New business models, to be successful, must emerge in an evolutionary fashion from tiny incremental trial and error efforts by those that are shiftily attempting to improve their own competitive position.

As an aside, not that I remember too much of the Communist Manifesto, I certainly don’t recall anything on the subject of liberating society from gender constructs.

Lots of liberating, but no mention of trapped transgenders and such like.

One wonders who constructed the construct; the nutters with the construct, the nutters opposing the construct, the apathetic non-constructors, the constructive journalistic constructors, the unconstructive political construct merchants, or the gender reconstructed with bored academic mates sans a construct?

Intelligence
Beauty
Doesn’t live in the blues
Own her own shit

Happy most of the time
Doesn’t care what others think of her
Mostly speaks her mind
Dislikes hypocrisy

Expressions morph over time. Fascinating stuff.

Stress; it used to be called strain.

Wanker is now leader.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is now KFC.

Gluten intolerant. Was once called unhappy.

Me and Lola at a crossing. The lights are taking forever.

Eventually we just cross against the pedestrian red.

One further traverse later and Lola said “did you hear what they guy said?”

In reference to an office worker drone on his hybrid bike, together with his autistic daughter, that we’d just left behind.

“Nup. What?”

“He said bad example“, in reference to me crossing against the pedestrian red light with my daughter in hand.

What is wrong with these people?

I never knew coral reefs could have bank accounts. Who woulda guessed?

In the old days, scientists were taught to publicly diss everything new that they ever heard or read (in science, that is).

This practice was designed to put pressure on the providers of new data or novel ideas.

Nobody took it too personally because it was part of the fabric of the discipline of science.

As soon as something had passed this collective stress test, it was absorbed into accepted knowledge or wisdom, and the progenitor was rewarded with a gold star in the minds of his or her peers.

This apparent negative response to the new shouldn’t be mistaken for pessimism nor conservatism.

Just the opposite in fact. It was simply the most efficient means to fast-track science in the context of the loose communications channels that they had to work with.

But then, if you took a scientist out of its native environment into, say, business, such methodology was in fact mistaken for pessimism or conservatism, and generally considered anti-social.

Business preferred then, and still does to this day, passive-aggressive playhouse behaviors. Actors to the man, trained in the arts of purposeful hypocrisy.

Today science has, to a large degree, shifted from discovery to invention. Engineering, if you will, without the discipline of an engineer.

The old practice of instant and mandatory critique of the new has largely been lost.

In fact, younger scientists that I meet behave more like business types, but with much less purpose and no driving metric (profit) to catch out the frauds and punish the weak.

But then I guess it just doesn’t matter that much. Most of what they are inventing, we don’t need.

There goes the federal budget!

This article in the Guardian would have us gullibly believe that the Iraqi government temporarily shut down the whole internet in order to stop students cheating in exams.

Bloody funny article, true or otherwise. People simply can’t think, can they? Your call as to whom I refer.

This is how it should be done.

What do opera and test cricket have in common?

They’re both better on the radio.

New archaeological diggings have shown that Shakespeare’s first play-house was square and not round.

Said the man in charge;

“There’s been a lot of scholarly argument about the shape of Tudor theatres, but the evidence is that it made no difference to the performance of the plays, you could ask them [the players] to stand on a chair and they’d just get on and do it.”

The modern day joyless hippy that is addicted to flaky self-improvement workshops is best described by analogy to Twain’s observation of an Australian dude:

“Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim creature, with teeth which made his mouth look like a neglected churchyard. He had solidified hair—solidified with pomatum; it was all one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes—made of some kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him smell like the very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed and broken and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation gold—they had made black disks on the linen. Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watch-chain of imitation gold. I judge that he couldn’t tell the time by it, for he asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which had been gay when it was young; 5-o’clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and marvelously soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a novelty—an imitation dude. He would have been a real one if he could have afforded it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing everything the way he thought the Prince would do it.”

Over a few beers last night, I heard all about Tinder from a couple that had recently met through the app.

Paraphrasing, the vibe is this;

“If you fuck enough frogs then one may miraculously turn into a prince”

I can’t help but feel that there’s a flaw in that logic.

But the conversation did give me an idea for an app called Tender.

Not the loving kind of tender that you don’t find on Tinder, but the looking for someone to fulfill your ‘business needs at the lowest cost’ kind of tender.

The trouble with Tinder is that no money changes hands. It’s effectively a bartering system, as in:

“Your hope of finding a partner, traded for my sexual needs”

We all know bartering doesn’t work! It’s almost as bad as communism…

Back to Tender; what a great way to match business needs with service providers. Swipe away, looking for a match.

The service providers, the ‘men’ in this scenario, the tenderers, would swipe right to everything.

And the predominantly left-swiping ‘women’, the business tenderees, would be very selective and still get screwed.

A couple walking along:

“Does my breath smell?”

“Nuh but your arse is huge”

I heard a tale today and it involved bicycles.

This young girl in the country discovered as a teenager that riding her bicycle down a certain hill, hands free, provided certain unique and enjoyable sensations.

So she rode up and down that hill quite a bit.

And then her parents moved the family to a neighboring country town.

She rode all over town, hands free down the hills, but the roads were all paved and it was looking dicey.

Eventually she crashed into the back of a parked car, and then sensibly gave away the crusade.

Fortunately she then discovered the electric toothbrush.

The moment you realize that no one is your enemy, except yourself.

I was thinking about judging and being judged and it occurred to me that my natural inclination is to pull back when I am being judged in the pejorative.

This, because of compassion for both the judgey one and for myself. It’s often best to give everyone a break.

But it’s a two edged sword, this behavior.

Selfishly one could argue that there’s always something to be learned from being judged. Not always, but sometimes.

And for the judgey one there’s something to be learned from someone that ignores a judgement. Very occasionally.

And in a way, pulling back could be just absorbing the judgment and using it to self-judge by the metrics of another. Martyrdom.

Maybe in future I will attempt to appreciate what the judgey one dislikes in me, rather than just ignoring it.

And also, maybe I’ll engage to the degree that I can understand their judgements. What are their assumptions, world views, values, emotions, rationale, and conclusions? A little deconstruction, so to speak.

I’ll never agree with everyone but I may be able to eradicate disagreement within myself.

I have finally figured out why people pay $30k a year to send their kids to school when they can get the same outcomes (as measured by every single study that compares things such as university entry, salaries, etc) for free.

At private schools they get more training in what I call ‘anti-hypocrisy’ skills; they are given mental armor that protects them against dissonance relating to injustices, inequality, unfairness and other such wordy in/un concepts.

Euphemistically, it’s called ‘preparing them for life’.

It makes for a more facile life, with an unfair advantage in terms of grabbing resources for consumption, but with a sting in the tail; living on the shell and not in it.

Hollow.

Self-esteem has always seemed like a daft idea to me. In the sense that it’s the by-product of other things and not something that can be modified on purpose with a focus on the outcome itself.

Self-compassion is a lovely idea for people in turmoil but self-empathy seems a tad more balanced since it catches the upside as well as the downside.

At the end of the day, the root of the problem comes down to self-judgement. Whose values are you using to judge yourself, your own or the perceived values of others?

It’s the hardest trick for us social animals to perfect me-thinks; to be surrounded by judging types (and we all are to one degree or another) and to neither judge them, nor absorb their judgements as metrics by which you might judge yourself, nor even imagine how they are judging you.

I like the idea of one day being totally consistent with my own values, totally free of self-judgement.

Some ways to go!

A start is to appreciate all the differences in oneself, rather than assuming that one aspect of one’s personality or self is the ‘good’ one.

Another very important aspect is understanding; which is the very purpose of this blog diary. That is, the understanding of the world, other people and myself.

I’ll never agree with everyone, but if I can eradicate that very concept of agreement from my own inner dialogue then I’m on the way.

It’s a work in progress and I’m sure by the time I’m done, like all human endeavor, I’ll be obsolete!

This is an email from the CEO Institute announcing that one of the Chairs is retiring.

“Dear all, It is with sadness that I’m writing to advise that Susan is retiring from chairing group 43 effective from June. Susan’s leadership has been outstanding … [la, la, la] …”

A bit of background; the Chairs hardly ever see each other. Maybe once a year at a forum and that is it. They aren’t work colleagues as such.

The replies from some of the other Chairs are listed below … it’s one of those great big carbon copy chain emails that go on for ever. 

The question that springs to mind is whether all this sentiment is real or whether, just quietly, they all think it’s tosh but they need to keep up appearances for the sake of club membership?

I can’t participate in the merry go round of carbon copy gush because:

(1) I was brought up to share such thoughts, if I have them, on a one-on-one basis to avoid (a) creating the appearance that I was using them as a currency and (b) since this would be somewhat mendacious, and:

(2) because I don’t have such thoughts. I have absolutely no feelings whatsoever for Susan; I can’t remember ever meeting her.

There is one thing that I have noted in my role as a Chair; I am the only Chair that is strategic in the nature of my chairing. The rest, all of them, are focused on the human side of business.

This works primarily because the majority of the hundreds of Australian business leaders involved are in the services sector or in generic products. They all have roughly fixed market share and no plans for global domination. This is a pretty good reflection of our entire business sector.

Hence the leaders of these businesses are not too concerned with strategy development. All their issues and concerns are related to how they feel on a daily basis, and the hassles of dealing with other people, either employees, customers or vendors.

Thus they gravitate to mentors and consultants that have little advice for their businesses but make them feel better. Any strategic advice they receive is filed away never to be used.

I’m telling you, the leaders of our business sector are soft, cuddly and sensitive teddy bears. They are going to wiped out in a flash if our hidden barriers to incoming trade get properly eroded.

*****************************

“Albeit that I am a relatively new Chair and we have not be able to spend a great deal of time in each others company, I would like to thank you for over 16 years of service to the CEOI. As both a member and now a Chair, I am well aware of what is involved in successfully leading a Syndicate. I wish you well as you move ahead”

“Thank you for this update, and I agree with all your wonderful comments on Susan’s longstanding contribution to The CEO Syndicate. In particular, I would like to add my personal thanks to Susan for her mentorship when I first became a Chairman, and her ongoing support and advice whenever called upon. It has always been invaluable and much appreciated. Susan – I will miss you as part of our Chairman group, however I know we will always remain connected!”

“Susan – I think I first presented to your group some 6 or so years ago and was impressed by your professionalism.  Congrats on a stellar CEO Institute career and all the best”

“My thanks to Susan for trusting me with taking on the Chair of her group.   A group of members it is so very clear she is very passionate about, determined for each of their individual successes and a real belief in the power of what her Syndicate could bring to all the opportunities and challenges they have had.  Susan as others have expressed I will miss you on many levels including your  sense of fun and your  wonderful witty humour.”

“Oh no! Susan, how I will miss your amazing kindness, intellect and warmth. You have inspired me as Chairman on so many levels.”

“Thank you for your friendship and kindness over the years with the CEO Institute. I wish you all the best in the next stage of your life’s journey.”

“We will all miss Susan enormously and I am sure wish her well in the future.  Well done Louise for taking this role.”

I had a dynamo on my bike as a kid, just like the one in the picture below. These have a little electric motor, driven in reverse by the friction with the tyre in order to generate current.

The negatives were the incredible momentum-slowing friction and the wires all over the bike. Plus the feeble little light it helped generate was velocity dependent; if you stopped moving you stopped being visible.

Today’s dynamos are a tad more efficient, create less friction, and help pump out much more light thanks to high efficiency LEDs.

Some dynamo driven systems even include batteries or capacitors so that there is no velocity dependence.

The negatives?

They are hanging off, or around, or in hub of the wheels because this is the most useful rotating device for generating electricity. Hence wires are still present.

They tend to be bulky and heavy in one form or another. This worries some and not others that ride big ugly hybrids or that live in flat countries.

They usually cost a bomb and are eminently thievable, especially when built into a front wheel hub.

And they simply aren’t as bright as battery driven systems. Plenty of lux but bugger all lumens – that’s the give-away. They are useful for seeing but not for being seen.

All up, it’s a non-starter for me.

LOL … we have now evolved to extend our educational habits.

I always said that those idiots in the biological sciences don’t have the first clue about correlation, causation and statistics.

The truly odd thing about this article is that they say ‘uncovered’ instead of ‘discovered’. Damning with faint praise?

Battery-driven bicycle lights come in three forms;

1. Cheapo ones with limited light output and therefore with limited safety value. The only pro is that they are not worth stealing.

2. Expensive ones with batteries that are also very bright and are the best with respect to times between having to do something, like change the batteries. Which is an expensive process.

3. Expensive ones with rechargeable batteries that are also very bright but have a shorter period between having to do something such as removing the battery and charging it.

Both categories two and three suffer from the threat of theft, of either the whole light or in the case of category three, also the expensive rechargeable battery.

Some batteries have odd screws to help prevent theft, leaving them vulnerable to never being able to be removed without a hacksaw, if the odd screwdriver is lost.

The solution is sort of obvious. A light with a built in combination lock as part of the fixing mechanism. Screws if required for adjustment of the diameter of the fixing element would hidden when affixed or not useful in helping remove the device.

This way, say a rechargeable light could be easily removed for USB charging but very hard to steal. The battery itself could be permanently sealed in the thing, all iPhone like.

It’s one of my better ideas.

While I’m at it, I’d like to see a low battery LED indicator on the lights to prevent the annoying situation of cycling without lights.

In Brisbane yesterday, where it doesn’t cost $423 when you are penalised for shooting though a red light on your pushie, I sneaked through the straight section of T-intersection on a red after thoroughly checking for cars (there were none in sight).

I was on my single speed Brisbane special – see exhibit below.

Lo and behold, this fat fucker on an expensive carbon fiber road bike that had obviously lost his peloton, decided to offer me some free advice:

“You shouldn’t be going through red lights mate”

Nasally accent and all, reminiscent of say a law firm partner or even a Vice President, Health & Safety for Orica. Or near equivalent. The spiritual disaster that I am thinking of has three kids, all in private schools, a 300 square modern home, at least three cars, a wife he hardly speaks to and certainly doesn’t fuck, more debt than can be tolerated, and a complete dearth of anything approximating wisdom.

Long accustomed to the brain warping impact that exertion has on the feebly bodied, I chose to ignore the thing.

And then, 100 meters down the road and apropos of no common sense that I understand, he came at the subject a second time.

“The trouble is you give us all a bad name”

He was behind me and I was surprised he was still there. Must have just about fucked him to catch up. Now that’s motivation!

Really, these people feel so protected by the nanny state that they are essentially fearless.

Actually, I think they are senseless to fear. Just like the Dodos were on Madagascar.

[Segue] This old letter describes catching dodos before they went extinct in 1662; “These animals on our coming up to them stared at us and remained quiet where they stand, not knowing whether they had wings to fly away or legs to run off, and suffering us to approach them as close as we pleased. Amongst these birds were those which in India they call Dod-aersen (being a kind of very big goose); these birds are unable to fly, and instead of wings, they merely have a few small pins, yet they can run very swiftly. We drove them together into one place in such a manner that we could catch them with our hands, and when we held one of them by its leg, and that upon this it made a great noise, the others all on a sudden came running as fast as they could to its assistance, and by which they were caught and made prisoners also.”

What I actually said when I finally decided to tell the dodo to fuck off was this:

“It’s you fuck clusters of fat coloured condoms wobbling along at 10 k’s that give us a bad name, mate”

I wish there was some convention preventing the proffering of non-professional free advice with respect to individual conformance to laws and statutes.

That seems reasonable, doesn’t it?

All statesmanlike and what have you, David Marr says;

“What lies ahead is a gruelling and expensive campaign that will leave Australia much as it was before. Power may shift. Leaders may be humiliated. But neither side is offering what both know is wanted yet politics finds so difficult to deliver in this country: change.”

He’s wrong.

Australians don’t want change. They want free.

Expanding on the theme – there’s a handful of intellectual pygmy wankers that are Marr’s mates that want change for entertainment’s sake. Then there’s the bogan masses that just want to consume more and prefer their entertainment in other forms.

The eternal mystery is why anyone would want to represent this swill? Delusion, ego and greed – that just about sums it up.

Bring on globally warming I say.

Now this is funny.

[Scene] Uber. Failing any obvious presence of mobile simpatico, my chauffeur says he’ll dial up some music on the radio…

What we actually got what was one song and a dribble of hysterical conversation.

Three morons, one female and two blokes, straining to be funny, and failing.

They spent a good ten minutes on the subject of jackhammers and hummingbirds, the latest ‘insight’ from the woman that wrote “eat, pray, love”.

Oddly, in the sound-clip she sounded just like Julia Roberts, but even more annoyingly inane.

A quick precis of her latest work product would have it that 4 billion of the people on this planet are jackhammers. They focus on their passions and hammer away for life.

The other 4 billion hummingbirds flit from concept to concept, trying things out and then moving on. These lightweights do, however, help cross-pollinate the world with whatever the fuck she’s talking about.

The three morons spent five minutes arguing as to which they each were.

I said to the Uber driver that the jackhammery philosopher du jour has over simplified things; people can actually be categorized into three types, not two.

Shocked, he asked me what the third category was.

“Cats, mate. We eat hummingbirds and avoid jackhammers.”

[Scene] Me helping Lola with her art homework. We (she) had to come up with a surrealist homage to Rene Magritte. This is it. Girl by Lola. Background and apple by Dad.

Mark Twain in “Following the Equator”. On the subject of his 19 injurious habits…

“It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn’t any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw overboard and lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people though reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it. These things ought to be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with.”

I do believe that freedom of mind is more important than freedom of the body.

Having said that, I do note that certain forms of slavery of the body do preclude any chance of freedom of the mind.

However, in our modern Western world a person with decent permaculture of the mind isn’t going to be very deterred by the mundaneness of their physical minutiae.

In a very round about way I’m having a shot at the Buddhist types and various other types of spiritual bypassers that, not only believe that there is only the one way to achieve spiritual permaculture, also believe that the true path involves mucho removal from daily physical life.

It’s a furphy, born of times when slavery of the body was almost universal and such that it fucked the mind.

Intermodalism, invented 60 years ago, is a system that is based on the theory that efficiency is vastly improved when the same shipping container, with the same cargo, is transported with minimum interruption via different transport modes from an initial place of receipt to a final delivery point.

In a similar vein, the CBA seems to have latched onto business intermodalism and invented a container cult.

That is, an attempt to appear to recreate successful outcomes by replicating circumstances associated with those outcomes, although both the outcomes and the circumstances don’t actually exist, and also where the container cultists are unaware of this.

For some odd reason this is disturbing …

In some US fast food outlets, the voice operators at the drive-throughs are in the Philippines.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Ok.

Tonight I had a few drinks with some work colleagues(ish).

After venue number one closed we moved to venue two, one Frankie’s Bar.

Masquerading as a sort of Hamburg tavern circa 1966, with pizza slices and a real live band (sort of).

On the way in security asked:

“How many have you had to drink tonight?”

Initially surprised and sober enough to comprehend the situation…

“Three beers” (plus 7…)

“Where did you drink them?”

“Ryan’s”

I passed the American sobriety test. Fuck America and everything they have wrought on the world.

In Frankie’s you have the appearance of a cavern bar but I kept looking around waiting for the hologram to crinkle.

Beers in plastic mugs. Security everywhere. Shit fake band. Posters on the walls way, too evenly plastered. The world’s most expensive pizza. Gen Y’s smart-phoning their way through a night out.

I am so, so glad I lived through the seventies and eighties before all this shit.

Poor fuckers.

I made up for the whole experience with a ride home on the pushie. I think. I even shouted at Mia’s place in a show of misplaced solidarity.

What’s the word for spending years figuring out something and then not wanting to believe the answer?

Denial!

It’s very easy to ignore an answer supplied by another.

But one that you’ve worked hard on your ownsome can’t be so easily disregarded.

In the case that I’m thinking of, the answer is such that I don’t even want to convince anyone else of the conclusion that I have arrived at.

For a start they won’t believe me.

But worse still, it’s a dead-end dry gulch; there’s no tricky ways to use the information to change the equation.

This insight, unfortunately, leads to either disillusionment or dissonance.

Mine, or that of others.

I prefer not to be the bearer of unwanted news.

In any case, one can’t expect thanks from the pig that suddenly can whistle but finds itself in a vacuum.

For myself I prefer disillusionment because I am not the fool that fools himself, at least on this subject.

Looking for a positive angle, this gives me an opportunity for a restart. A fresh approach with a new focus.

It’ll take time but it can be done.

In fact I already know one answer.

It was given to me a year or so ago by a person a little wiser in such matters.

Note to self; never farm bulls without a cape and a sword.

To quote the lovely other, be very careful of fools and simpletons that promote the bad other.

You just might be a beneficiary of any such adopted conspiracy theory. And also, a fucking idiot.

For a set of reasons that are not worth going into, I am sent a monthly update of the readership of articles in The Conversation by authors affiliated with the UTS.

The current top list is exhibited below.

The Conversation is an online popular newspaper with free contributions, but only from qualified academics. It’s readership is skewed towards the educated and the concerned.

This popular list of articles highlights the growing divide between those living off government funded roles (eg academics) and business types.

It’s all just one big whinge about the business sector and its undue influence on everything else, including the political sector.

Over the last two or so decades the business community (and their direct dependants) have realised that they have the money and the power, and have used it.

For what?

To get more money and power of course!

My own personal view is that, in Australia, this is just one big first-world problem.

Even the worst-off have quite easy access to the means to be moderately secure.

What is needed is counseling; if people could just let go of their angst and focus on their own good fortune rather than the avarice of others, they’d be so much better off.

But I can’t help feeling that there is some sort of sublimation going on here.

All of them, both the conspiracy theorists and the conspiracy plotters, are avoiding the issue of the slavery of their own minds, the gluttony of consumption, which they have voluntary bought into.

What better way to do so than to have an in-built enemy?

It’s a new-age post-capitalism class war, disguising the enemy within that can’t be faced.

I don’t expect it to go away so, in future, I am choosing to ignore it.

Before the industrial revolution the most effective unit of work was the human body, and thus was born slavery.

After the industrial revolution had wrought its magic, we humans of the West became more valuable as units of consumption, rather than as units of work.

In this process we have transitioned away from slavery of the body towards slavery of the mind.

Such slavery of the mind is required to keep our desire to consume ahead of our ability to do so.

And the genius of it is that hardly anybody has noticed.

If you actually let them eat cake, they won’t think to revolt.

And even better still, most of us are both slaves and slave-masters; we are our own enemy.

The only way out is to be neither and to lay very, very low.