ABUSED TO DEATH

Two news items have congealed on the surface of my fermenting consciousness.

1.  UK prisons 'holding child inmates in solitary confinement against UN torture rules'. (Mentioned in the Independent.)
2.  Facebook 'failed to remove sexualised images of children'. (Mentioned by the BBC)

I encountered them both listening to Radio 4 from my sick bed - and my bed is sick.

Apparently the British Government is in breach of International law by holding children in solitary confinement.  This should not be the surprise it appears to be by being "news worthy".  It was reported that it is well established that solitary confinement can cause irreversible mental health problems.  Again this should not be a surprise.

The issue with Facebook that interests me was that they reported the BBC journalists to the police for distributing images of child exploitation.  Apparently the "investigative" journalists had collected 100 questionable images, posted them, and then reported them to Facebook to see how many they would remove.  Whatever the details this highlights the paradoxical nature of attempting to censor other people's communications with your own judgement.  There is the philosophical issue that you should censor your own communications according to your own judgement, as should others.  But that is a well worn subject and not my issue here.  My interest is in the irony that the BBC expressed incredulity at themselves being reported to the police by Facebook whilst they were the ones distributing images of child exploitation in an entrapment exercise which is also illegal.

What seems most disturbing to me is that the whole ethos of this British Government is severely immoral and draconian, and yet virtually everyone, including myself, mixes up "authority" with "justice".  There is a profound reason for this mix up and it can be seen in the condition of being human.  Our first experience is as a dependant on an authority.  Even Christianity, as an authority and a significant world religion, attempts to mitigate this problem by asserting the paradoxical philosophical perspective that "authority" does not reside in other human beings but rather the Universe at large.  They describe it as God, but as the omnipresent omnipotent creator, God is equivalent to Universe.  The only access to this justice, this benign authority, this inviolable state of affairs, is through ourselves, our conscience, and our heart.  So true authority lies within ourselves and yet at every turn we attempt to appeal to a higher authority for justice from the current violators.  "Mummy, it's not fair he did that nasty thing."  "I'll tell teacher", " I'm calling the police", " I'll sue you", " I'll take it to the Supreme Court",  "It's against the European Convention of Human Rights",  "IT'S AGAINST INTERNATIONAL LAW."  But a brief examination of International Law should satisfy anyone that there is no justice, only dominion, oppression, and control.

Ultimately we all need to stop appealing to higher authorities and to recognise our own inalienable and incontrovertible authority.  Of course this would mean that Doctors would attend to their patients instead of their paymasters, and Judges would serve justice not the Judiciary, and people who work for the DWP would stop enacting paradoxical injustices to preserve their lowly wages.  But none of this will happen because each piece of the jigsaw is inextricably linked to every other piece and at each stage the excuse is that I need to make money so that I can live and continue to do the good things I do.  This is a profound problem in the human condition but I suspect it is not inescapable.  But who will blink first?

It would be nice at the end of a missive to have some satisfying conclusion but I have none.  I have become isolated and terrorised by the manifestation of this self contradictory culture.  In a less obvious way I am subjected to solitary confinement via economic and social constrains.  This has the inevitable consequence of doing me harm.  The sociopolitical landscape is rupturing and I have been pushed to the edge of a bottomless fissure designed to dispose of the non-conforming memes of perception which threaten to dissolve and destroy the current collective matrix of illusion which serves the oligarchs.  There is no higher authority to which I can appeal.  I am being abused to death by my own culture.