Saturday 19 January 2013

People! - Who needs them?


So what am I to say.  I lie in bed thinking all sorts and it makes a whole lot of sense.  I imagine I am telling someone as if explaining how things are.  We do this, us humans - we explain our understanding to other interested parties.  So we have worked out how to get the honey out of the tree and we explain to our children or a friend how we do it.  We also explain to judges and police why we did what we did or how it happened.  In the first case it is to help them improve their lot, and in the second case it is to prevent them doing us harm.  In different ways they are both interested parties.  We share our understanding or interpretation of events with others.  And in part this is what is going on when I have all these thoughts that make a whole lot of sense going round in my head.  I am rehearsing, practicing  pretending or imagining talking to someone else.  It is a fundamental human activity to communicate.

This morning I was thinking that first of all you are tricked, betrayed and lied to and it causes serious damage and you are lying in the street weak and homeless.  You are telling this person who has stolen your goods and is doing well for it that they are cruel and have lied to you and tricked you and they deny it.  "No I didn't.  You lied to me and tried to steal all my things."  And your response is "No I didn't - it was you..." and then you realise what it sounds like.  The audience - the 'judge' - can hear two people denying the accusations and blaming the other.  But you are the injured party, you are the one in rags, you are the one with no money to pay lawyers, you are the one shivering in the cold and drenched by the rain because you don't have an expensive luxury car to travel in.  You are the one who can't get a decent education who can't explain so well what is going on.  So clearly, according to our current cultural conventions, it is you who are wrong.  You are the angry one raising your voice, you are the one who uses bad language and you are the unsophisticated pleb who is aggressive and dangerous.  It is people like you who cause all the trouble in this world.  If it weren't for the likes of you then us kind, responsible, respectable, honest, wealthy people would be alright.

An aside that is a continuation as well...  I was checking the spelling of 'pleb', not that it seems a difficult word to spell but spelling has always been my archilees heal and Micro$oft Word said it was wrong so I typed it into Google, as you do, and came across an article in the Independent by Howard Jacobson entitled "Yes, I did call you a pleb.  I can say what I like when I’m angry.  Now just open that gate."

So it seems that the uneducated common folk are rude and unsophisticated and they should listen to the wise respectable well educated people who basically cause their poverty and distress because they must be right.  Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' at it's very worst.

I do understand that people who are (reluctantly) in work not only resent the scroungers who are living on state benefits and won't get a job (that doesn't exist) but also don't give any serious thought to the fact that the system is a profound deception.  When it is illustrated that some 'fair' benefit doesn't work the thoughtless retort is that they are lucky to be getting anything - or some other trite dismissal of the facts.  It is clearly contradictory and yet these apparently 'better' people in jobs (and I am talking about the unfortunate majority who 'blame' the poor for their plight) criticise the 'scroungers' as if they are being unfair or benefiting at the unfortunate employed people's expense.  The solution should be staring them in the face if they have half the wit they think they have;  Give up your job, make one of those dirty rotten scroungers do your job for their living and you live in luxury at their expense.  It really is that simple.  Why not?  Because (Sorry to you intelligent folk reading this but I have to explain to the morons - or are they cretins?  I can't remember now.) It is not nice struggling in poverty with no opportunities to do anything.  For the unemployed person who now has your job it would be a little like winning the lottery.

The trouble with my blogs is that some are far more interesting than others.

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