A MINISTER FOR TOE NAILS

The idea of a Minister for Loneliness is profoundly sinister.  The Tory Party is transmogrifying at an ever accelerating rate.  I have a view, a sort of general theory, that we, as humans, are in a continuous process of becoming consciously aware of the truth of our existence.  Part of this seems evident in the way that we persistently reveal our unconscious existence, via the material world, to our conscious mind.  It would be a bit heavy duty to try to justify that argument here but I see it continuously in the arena of abuse.  The more people hide from their own pain by attempting to deny it any conscious recognition then the more they behave in a manner which externalises their worst fears for all to see.

This idea is not new.  It is referenced (chronologically) in the I Ching, by Pythagoras, Plotinus, the Talmud, Rumi, Freud, Jung, and most schools of psychology since.  It is an axiom of much philosophy echoed in ideas such as that by discovering more about the world we are actually discovering more about ourselves.  This whole crystal ball of revelation includes what we experience both as good and evil.  It is almost the raw bones of existentialism and linguistic philosophy.  We are interpreting a world that mirrors ourselves.  A beautiful poetic illustration of this idea is summed up by Plotinus "Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful."

So what exactly is going on with our good leader, Theresa May, appointing a Minister for Loneliness?  We know she doesn't give a damn about the people, the actual living people, in this country.  What?  You disagree?  In order to avoid too much digression I will clarify that by saying that she may have sentimental feelings which she interprets as caring about people when she is at home with friends or drifting off to sleep at night but as Prime Minister of the UK she continues to interpret the world in such a way that she promotes and advances policies that evidently erode the social fabric and escalate the harm caused to the least well off in Britain.  She continues to support the wealthy and their tax havens as they pillage the country of all its wealth with the help of her government.  You don't need examples such as Grenfell and Carillion to prove the case but they do a fine job of highlighting the effects of her and her Party's policies.  Her government, and May specifically, vowed to re-house the survivors of Grenfell within three weeks.  Why?  To externalise her desire to appear, maybe even to herself, as a caring and compassionate human.  But they are still not re-housed.  She helps the Saudis bomb Yemen in secret whilst publically exhibiting serious concern for the devastating consequences for the people in Yemen.  But there are too many ways to illustrate that May's evident purpose is to convince the public that her concerns reflect their concerns; that she is what she thinks they want her to be.  It is the act of attempting to convince people rather than the act of being genuine.  It follows that she does not care, in any meaningful way, because it is an evident pretence.

I am not sure what world she lives in but mental health has risen on the political agenda in recent years.  It has risen largely because of the increasing number of problems becoming evident in that domain.  Those problems are mostly a consequence of a fundamental breakdown of a sense of social security.  This is clearly created and illustrated by the most horrible regime of the DWP and the privatisation and profiteering by vetting doctors assessments with corporate tick box exclusion mechanisms with targets.  I won't go on at this point but suffice it to say that Ken Loach's "I, Daniel Blake" will forever stand as a cultural indictment against this government and their ruthless democidal extravagances.

The Tories are clearly losing ground in the political tug of war and there have been numerous attempts recently to increase their share of the public vote.  They have even announced their intent to impress more people with very feeble and flawed policies they say are addressing the concerns of the younger voters such as housing and green issues.  But it is all vacuous, smoke and mirrors, and bluster.  They are perversely attempting to analyse the reasons for Jeremy Corbyn's popularity and Labour's rapidly increasing demographic reach with the sole objective of imitating them to steal their thunder to gain power to continue their ravages against the population of this country for their own benefit.  They are genuinely hideous parasitic beasts.

In attending to the welfare of people in this country the Tories have succeeded in even alerting the UN to their criminal inhumanity.  All their actions with respect to helping the poor have been aimed at getting rid of the poor.  They are not concerned with helping the poor out of poverty but in riding this country of poor people.  They do it in a number of ways including changing definitions and measuring points by which we count poverty.  They devise complicated methods of removing people from categories such as unemployed by fuelling what is called the gig economy, by advancing tax credits, by obstruction using sanctions and what has been judicially cast as slavery in their demands that people do voluntary work for their euphemised 'benefits'.  They encourage and enforce zero hours contracts to remove people from the status of unemployed whilst they are still receiving nothing for their efforts.  Their utter destruction of support for disabled people is almost beyond belief.  These policies are no accident.  These policies are well crafted methods of shrouding their greed and cruelty with a veil of good intention.  These policies are not made up in a back room but rather they are the sophisticated results of studying psychology, sociology, and methods of manipulation and controlling the populations.

We look back in recent history and begin to realise how the two World Wars were driven by the industrialisation of robbery with violence.  The world has moved on and it is less successful to pursue those obvious and transparent industrial methods and so more clandestine ways must be found.  Britain moved from its industrial base to a service economy during the 1980s and what I believe we are seeing is the evolution of the methods of these criminals to something akin to a service based approach to render their objectives of rape, pillage, death, and destruction for their own warped and demonic aspirations.  So the impetus to address mental health issues, for example, has rendered what is described by some as oppressive coercion by putting counsellors in every school, installing 'work coaches' in job centres, and establishing 'talking therapies' as the only available psychological assistance which is designed primarily to keep the chickens quiet whilst they are having their necks wrung.

What continues to happen is that people raise legitimate issues and concerns and the Tories process these topics through their tragically egocentric cognition and render an illusion of addressing the matter whist materially benefiting themselves.  They see this as good business; "What's in it for me?"  The culture, meanwhile, is so distorted by these egocentric authoritarian paradigms that, so far, the majority of the public are clearly fooled by these warped and distorted interpretations and proposed political policies to address the issues in the world.  All the time the evidence is mounting that the rulers are criminally insane and so, inevitably, their attempts to disguise reality are compelled to escalate to a new level.  You really can't criticise someone who wants to help lonely people so obviously the Tories want to appear to be concerned about lonely people.  They are so up their own backsides, to coin a phrase, that they create a Minister for Loneliness to impress the ignorant plebs (to use one of their own terms).

Altercast people as lonely with a feigned concern for their condition and they will interpret their own condition as lonely and will have no choice but to be grateful for the meagre cold bowl of companion gruel they are offered.  There is no accident here.  These are well studied methods of sociopolitical control.  This is the utilisation of information technology, metadata, and complex analytical algorithms, as a service based approach to creating mass ontological insecurity to the point of destroying the manufactured poor.  It is a self consuming, self contradictory, parasitic, and very sophisticated manifestation of the cruelty which the perpetrators are pathologically compelled to deny within themselves.  They are externalising their pain by projecting it onto others in order to manifest it in the world to be seen and acknowledged.  This is the very worst of humanity.

It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that what causes this 'evil' is the simple act of denying reality in the first place.  The evil is the imbalance, the distortion, the deviation from what is good.  It is not that we, as humans, are fundamentally evil and wish to deny it, but rather that we are vulnerable, sensitive, and creative and dare not own it because we are afraid of our own power.  It is actually the denial of the reality that is the evil.  But evil it is.  And, as far as I can determine, the denial of reality is most prevalent in the minds of those who wish to judge, demonise, and control others.  It is inherent in the Tory mindset to cling on to an internal construct of what the world 'should be' and to scream, fight, control, damage, and destroy all evidence in the real world that threatens to counter their desperate internal construct which is, by definition, a delusion.  In their denial of reality they are destroying reality and the evidence is clear for anyone who is looking with their eyes open.  We, collectively, are raising our subconscious knowledge into our conscious awareness and whilst we deny reality we deny ourselves.  Whilst we destroy reality we destroy ourselves.  All of this is only the consequence of a refusal to be what we are.  So we end up experiencing the denial instead of the reality.

Tories are now hoist by their own petard insofar as they have to maintain the illusion of their own goodness reflected in the magic mirror of their distorted world.  They have no choice, they are compelled, they are inevitably and inextricably drawn by their own denial into ever more ridiculous demonstration of their goodness.  It is clearly nonsense to have a Minister for Loneliness since that is one small category of emotional distress which is a mental or emotional health issue which comes under the auspices of the Department of Health and Social Security which they dismantled in the first place.  They cannot 'help' the lonely and will only make matters worse by attempting to force them to integrate with the Tory mindset which is probably a significant cause of the problem in the first place.  They will also attempt to draw people out from the shadows who are hiding from the dysfunctional Neoliberal State in order to coral them into the convenient pens for future slaughter.  The next thing, of course, will be to demonise them for costing the tax payer too much.  This nonsense, which is off the scale of toy town politics can only end in disaster.

I can't think of any other example of such trite, fatuous, and glaringly nonsensical government stupidity.  How utterly ludicrous to create a Minister for Loneliness.  What next?  A Minister for fucking Toe Nails?

Why is all this irrational junk accepted?

This is just a meander.  Why?  Because there are too many issues taking up my time which are important but there is no time to do them justice.  But then this seems to be how it is meant to work.  And the associated image has no relevance to the text except that politicians are wallies.

I was listening to the radio this morning and although I usually like to check my references, get my facts right and generally make sure the writing is correct and that the references are supplied and can be validated I am not going to do this on this occasion because the message is more important than the medium.  The medium, in this case, being the examples which illustrate the point.  The point being that utter bullshit is being swallowed whole by the British public on a daily basis.

So I am listening to the radio hoping to get back to sleep.  It is the Money Program, or something similar, and the gentleman presenting the program has a droning sort of voice ideal for somnambulising me.  But he is talking about John Lewis and some situation where they have been underpaying their workers.  Oh the details!  The wonderful details.  The long and the short of the story is that JL have 'discovered' that they have been underpaying workers due to complex European regulations relating to holiday pay and how it is worked out.  Having acknowledged that they have been underpaying folk they have agreed to put the situation right and to back pay all the underpayments.

But there is a catch!  They are only going to do that for the people who could cause them a problem if they don't.  People who have left the company and are rightly owed some money WILL NOT get what they contractually deserve.  It is a contract and it is legal.  John Lewis OWE them the money.  But, and this is the bit that causes the problem for me - NOTE - I didn't say it WAS the problem for me and there is a reason for this;  It is the issue that causes the problem. 'It', the 'bit' or the 'issue' is that due to recent changes in the law it will no longer be economically viable for people to make a claim against John Lewis.  The law has recently changed such that if you want to claim justice, if you want a tribunal to ascertain if, or that, JL owe you the money you have to pay a non refundable £400 for the privilege.  Of course you will need a lawyer, or a degree in law (costing thousands of pounds borrowed from ... from who exactly?  Currently it is the government that 'lends' money for education but that is just step-politics until you get either used to it or dependent at which point they will 'privatise' the loan system with the banal suggestion that it is to make it more competitive and ultimately cheaper to the customer.  But there is no competition when the government are 'providing' loans at no profit to 'the government' because 'the government' is the system by which we 'govern' 'us'.  Those jerks in suits acting like spoilt toffs are the people representing us in the 'house of discussion' - You know The House of Parliament.  There is no 'government' which is them and not us.  They cannot take money from us because they are us.  They can't make a profit from us.  If they could they would no longer be representing us.  But all that is too much for the ignorant population to understand so they carry on with their irrational junk justifications for whatever it is they want to do next to get their rocks off at our expense.)

This is how it turns into a rant.  Getting back to the point: The politicians have used the mask of austerity to claim that legal aid is a drain on the hard working people of this country.  (Note the divisive and prejudicial verbiage "hard working".)  But what they have really done is only made 'expensive', or large sums, affordable for justice.  To people with money this seems to appear to be like it not being worth stopping your Lamborghini in the street to get out and bend over to pick up a 20p piece.  I think all of us could understand the rational of that.  But what the politicians seem to deliberately ignore and the ignorant public don't notice is that very few people have Lamborghinis .  It is true that it is not worth stopping your Lamborghini for 20p.  It probably costs that in petrol just to stop and start the car.  But for poor people who only have a pound, when they drop 20p they have to stop and pick it up.  After all it is 20% of what they have.  20% of the Lamborghini alone (not counting the mansion you have to have first and the garage with electric doors and the insurance and the unearned income) would be £40,000.  Why do the poor people who are so dumb as to fall for the fake sycophantic bullshit ... I can't put it into a simple sentence.

I am going to get legitimately offensive here.  The FUCKING STUPID MORONS who are working seem to willingly swallow the spunk produced by their abusers because ... because ... because WHY?  Because they are being favoured by the abusers because they comply with the abuse.  They don't want to be the 'poor' people being killed off.  This is profound cultural Stockholm Syndrome.  They shave their heads, call themselves skinheads or BNP or EDL or UKIP and ponce around arrogantly as if they are 'hard working' people denigrating the poor and licking up to (literally in many cases) the bullies.  It is simply not reasonable to withdraw legal aid for 'small' cases'  If large corporations are derelict in their responsibilities and a poor person wants justice they simply MUST be held responsible.  If one supposes that there would be so many illegitimate small claims that the poor lucrative business would go bankrupt defending itself against these claims than one is not living in the real world.  But there's the rub - they are not living in the REAL world.  Interestingly they are living in the PARANOID world.  They don't think they are because they project that attribute onto people they are abusing and they believe that the people beneath them would steal form them given half the chance.  They believe that the people they are 'holding down' would abuse them.  Why would a person who had been brought up in a secure and supportive family situation where they could assume they were valuable and loved act in such a prejudicial and frightened way?  It is simple - they have been abused as children.  Research can, and does, illustrate this no end of times.  There are acres of literature about this.  But it doesn't need the research, it only requires rational logical thought about the evidence in front of you.  But people are frightened out of doing that at school.  I guess it does get complicated to explain it.  John Lennon is a good starting point.  Check out his life story - his life of abuse and how it turned him into an abuser.  Check out how he could see something was wrong and paid attention to it.  Instead of being abusive he tried to figure out how and why.  Then go check out Arthur Janov, the Californian psychotherapist, counsellor bloke who is famous for the misnamed "Primal Scream Therapy" of the 1960s and read his books like "Prisoners of Pain" and "The biology of Love".  The research has been done.  This is not just a fancy idea.  But I guess to many it is like trying to explain Einstein's theory of General Relativity and trying to explain spacetime.  You don't even have to understand it to believe that GPS wouldn't work without the understanding.  You can ascertain that yourself and the people who do know do know.  So why are we so vulnerable to this abusive culture that the general population continue to support the abusers for fear of something worse.  The only 'worse' threat is coming from them.

So back to the Money Program:  Why do people let the fact that people who are no longer employed by John Lewis cannot get justice simply slip by?  In my opinion the whole bloody country should stop until John Lewis pays them.  John Lewis - well the executives enacting this crime - should be jailed if they don't sort it out within 24 hours.  Then, of course, the politicians who allowed the reduction in legal aid should have all their assets confiscated and lose their jobs since they cannot be trusted.  Then the people who instigated the injustice, the illegitimate legislation, should simply have everything confiscated and be thrown into jail.  They will be given the option of a fair trial if they can 'earn' (by being 'hard working' folk) the lawyers' fees and the judges' fees and the rental costs of the court houses from within their prison cells.  What?  That is impossible and so not fair - GOSH!  Pardon me for not noticing!

And there were numerous other things I wanted to mention but that will just have to wait.

Creepy "LETTER FROM A MOTHER TO A DAUGHTER"

I have to comment on this letter because it is doing the rounds on FuckBase and it is a piece of disturbing insanity.  It is sentimental and sounds really nice.  That is obvious, if it didn't appeal it wouldn't be doing the rounds, but there are one or two serious problems.  Here is the letter for your delectation.

LETTER FROM A MOTHER TO A DAUGHTER:

"My dear girl, the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through.

If when we talk, I repeat the same thing a thousand times, don’t interrupt to say: “You said the same thing a minute ago”... Just listen, please. Try to remember the times when you were little and I would read the same story night after night until you would fall asleep.

When I don’t want to take a bath, don’t be mad and don’t embarrass me. Remember when I had to run after you making excuses and trying to get you to take a shower when you were just a girl?

When you see how ignorant I am when it comes to new technology, give me the time to learn and don’t look at me that way... remember, honey, I patiently taught you how to do many things like eating appropriately, getting dressed, combing your hair and dealing with life’s issues every day... the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through.

If I occasionally lose track of what we’re talking about, give me the time to remember, and if I can’t, don’t be nervous, impatient or arrogant. Just know in your heart that the most important thing for me is to be with you.

And when my old, tired legs don’t let me move as quickly as before, give me your hand the same way that I offered mine to you when you first walked.

When those days come, don’t feel sad... just be with me, and understand me while I get to the end of my life with love.

I’ll cherish and thank you for the gift of time and joy we shared. With a big smile and the huge love I’ve always had for you, I just want to say, I love you... my darling daughter."

- Unknown,

If you think there is anything reasonable about this letter perhaps you will discover something about psychology by reading the following observations and criticism.  If you think this letter is appalling but can't explain why then the following might help.  If you think it's appalling and know why, the following may be interesting and may offer support to your relatively rare perception.

Why is a mother asking, almost begging, a daughter to be patient and understand her getting old?  Why is the mother asking for understanding from a daughter who she clearly doesn't understand except in prejudicial anticipation of her being impatient and non-understanding?  Why would you ask someone to be patient except that you were expecting them not to be?

One thing we know about children is that they learn from example.  It is well understood in psychology that telling children what to do teaches them how to tell people what to do.  Bullying begets bullying.  Love begets love.  The mother quite clearly has been impatient and non-understanding and feels anxious and a need to ask her daughter not to be like that.

If there were any doubt about that perception of the meaning of these words the letter goes on to confirm it.  The second paragraph makes an obvious and glaring mistake, or rather reveals the hidden truth.  To paraphrase it says "If I repeat myself don't criticise..." and one expects it to say "remember when you were young I didn't criticise you when you repeated yourself" but in fact it doesn't say that it says "remember when I kept repeating things when you were young."  It is laughably a little worse "... until you were so bored you fell asleep!"  This is a tragic letter and already the mother is pleading with the daughter "Please don't treat me like I treated you."

"When I don't want to take a bath, don't be mad and don't embarrass me."  This is really getting bad!  Why would anyone get angry and embarrass someone for not having a bath?  Of course if you could answer that then you probably know - it's because that is their own attitude to themselves and there is only one place that came from and that is their childhood.  It is clearly the expectation and suggests almost conclusively that it has always been the attitude of the writer and therefore the way she treated her daughter.  But like the second paragraph this one makes explicit that the mother didn't treat the daughter the way she now wants to be treated.  The allusion is to the equation "Don't hassle me I didn't hassle you." and in the most subtle way the wording is altered to confuse the brain into assuming that is what is being said.  But revisit the actual words and what it says (paraphrased for illustration) is "Don't hassle me like I hassled you."  What it says (verbatim) is "don’t be mad and don’t embarrass me. Remember when I had to run after you making excuses and trying to get you to take a shower".  Like a lot of abuse the abuser thinks it is fun and when they retell the story it sounds like fun.  There is complex trickery going on here.  The ambivalence is allowing for the interpretation that the 'chasing' (running after) and 'deception' (excuses)' was fun.  It is ambivalent because these things can be fun.  But clearly the writer is concerned that the child will not be 'fun' and tries to persuade them that they had 'fun' when she was little.  Why?  Why would you need to 'remind' your daughter that you had fun?  Do you think she forgot?

The next chunk is a total disaster.  A lot could be said but the phrase "don't look at me that way" indicates a lot.  First of all the letter was talking to the daughter about a possible future circumstance and now refers to a current event.  Of course that 'current event' is in the mind of the writer but it is clearly being experienced in the mind of the writer as they write.  So the writer 'knows' how her daughter will look at her and there are only two ways to 'know' that; one is prejudicially and the other is from experience.  Given that, if the mother has the relationship with her daughter to which she alludes, she should have a good idea of what her daughters reaction will be then either she is unfairly ascribing negativity to her daughter or fairly ascribing negativity.  Either way it doesn't reflect well on the mother.  She is either being unfair now or was unfair in the past.  Of course, people being what they are, it is likely to be both.  So the mother is pleading "Please don't be intolerant..." and goes on to explain how she taught her daughter how to eat "appropriately", how to get dressed, how to comb her hair and how to deal with life's issues.  This is possibly a case where one has to combine what one has learnt from the letter so far to make sense of what is being said at this point.  The suggestion that the mother "patiently taught" all these things is in the light of the mother pleading with the daughter not to be intolerant.  It seems strange to refer to bringing up a child as "teaching" them how to eat and dress but be that as it may the constant need to justify why the child should treat the mother reasonably is reeking of fear.  It does bring to mind the phrase "The lady doth protest too much, methinks".

The prejudice is rife in this letter and now the writer says "don’t be nervous, impatient or arrogant".  Then a really weird thing happens; the mother says something which may, in some profound sense, be true.  The mother says "Just know in your heart that the most important thing for me is to be with you."  It begs the question why is the mother having to tell the daughter that?

The bit about a helping hand sounds almost reasonable but I am left wondering why it has to be presented as a deal.  Why wouldn't the daughter want to help?  Why does she have to be persuaded by the equation 'do it for me because I did it for you'?

The next bit is the only bit in the entire letter that sounded reasonable.  Given that this is supposed to be a letter about a loving relationship the mother says "don't be sad".  It is the first indication of the mother seeming to care how the daughter feels.  The tragic irony is that the mother doesn't go on to say anything about how it has all been worthwhile but rather asks for more 'understanding' from the daughter.

And the last paragraph, if it stood alone, is really nice.

But overall this letter is the most sickly sweet sentimental gluey manipulation I have read in a long time.  The serious problem with this letter is that it illustrates that some people cannot tell the difference between loving someone else for who they are and 'needing to be loved'.

Counselling Failure

If you eat poisoned horse meat the NHS will treat you.  They will attempt to cure you and make you better.  Why?  Well that is a bigger question than it may appear on the surface but the perceived wisdom is because collectively we want to help people.  As the years go by and the scientific model of physical medicine encounters more and more borderline cases and more complex causes the world of mental health emerges.  It is one thing calling it mental health but eventually they will realise there is a deeper issue and that is of emotional health.  They are getting there but they really are taking their time.  A doctor once said to me that all ailments have a psychological aspect to them.  It is quite amazing since that very doctor completely dismissed psychological ailments as if they were 'all in the mind'.  How inconsistent is that?  But there is some value to the idea that there is a psychological aspect to physical diseases and as time goes on it is being recognised more and more.  We can't really separate our physical and psychological aspects.  And we can't separate our emotional aspect either.

There are many who feel that it all starts with emotions.  They are the instigators of the psyche.  It is what the stuff of emotions do that form, eventually, into our 'conscious' interpretation of our world and our 'thoughts'.  Of course there are physical changes in our bodies which we experience as emotions and to some extent if they do their stuff our versatile and 'learning' bodies comprehend our environment and can usefully adapt and learn how better to survive in this very changeable environment.  But if they cannot process correctly the changes reside in the framework of the body and pervert it.  Hence we find 'bottled up' emotions cause physiological problems ranging from skin rashes to reduced resistance to cancer and higher risk of stomach ulcers and heart failure.  These misdirected fluctuations also lead to psychological problems like bipolar disorder, paranoia, schizophrenia and post traumatic stress syndrome.

So, as the NHS accepts, effectively dealing with emotional problems has a desirable therapeutic effect.  Not only does it help people 'get better' but it also prevents more costly and devastating psychological and physical ailments.  So the NHS invests money in counselling services.  Counselling is a much more important function in my opinion than most counsellors realise.  The public perception, and that of many counsellors, seems to be that counselling is a luxury.  It is perhaps because it is a relatively new subject in the health arena.  But counselling, in one form or another, has been around for a long time and in many cultures.  It is like gymnasiums in that it can keep people well before they 'need' invasive therapy.  There is always the possibility that the pharmaceuticals don't like it for that very reason - it reduces the need for their remedial drugs.

So there is me being a very strong and obstinate and coping with years of difficulties and abuse and trying to prevent my mental health and physical health from collapsing.  I think I am maintaining my psychological health but I am losing the battle with my physical health as bit by bit my physiological systems are coming under strain and collapsing and giving way.  So I attempt to get some counselling from the NHS.  I get to see a counsellor and he decides, after only ten one hour sessions, that he is fed up and wants to leave Britain and sail his yacht round the Pacific Ocean.  He leaves and no one from the counselling department contacts me so I go to see my doctor and request a continuation of this counselling.  I get a copy of the letter from the counselling department to my doctor...

(The names have been altered to protect the guilty.)

Dear Doctor Narrowstrath

Thank you for your referral of the above gentleman.

We note however that Mr Spruce was only recently discharged on 19th December 2012 following a course of 10 sessions of Interpersonal Therapy with Seaman Staines Community Mental Health Nurse and Interpersonal Therapist.

Given the recent nature of this treatment we would therefore recommend that Mr Spruce utilises a therapeutic break from therapy to reflect on previous treatment, consolidating the therapy and applying the principles learned as it is too soon after the conclusion of this therapy for further treatment to be considered at this time.

We have a policy in place that suggests a client needs a minimum of 6 months after a period of therapy before a re-referral will be considered so we will therefore not be processing your referral further at this time.  If however, Mr Spruce continues to experience difficulties we would be happy to accept a referral back to us after a period of 6 months.

Many thanks

Yours sincerely Kirkespir Snakker

Well that struck me as bureaucratically pretentious and a pile of hogwash so I replied...

Dear Kirkespir

Thank you for your effulgent response to Dr Narrowstrath

Your pericombobulatory literary peregrinations were exegetically hermeneutic.  I was  flabbergasted by the euphuistic rhetoric and astonished by the euphemistic obfuscation of your elucidation.

I pondered the humorously sanctimonious prejudice in your authoritarian procrastinations and concluded that R D Laing's comment that insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world may be an eloquent exposition of this situation.

Your bureaucratic collusions inherently preclude the efficacy of your therapeutic proclamations.  Therefore I have no choice but to take a 'therapeutic break' to reflect and consolidate the principles clearly not learned at the hands of one very nice Seaman Staines.

Hurrah and great cheer to you all.

Sam Spruce

Well what else can one say to brain dead automatons?

Jimmy Savile and the Problem of Abuse

Oh what a to-do.  Poor old Jimmy will be turning in his grave.  Well he will be  - literally - when they get their way and exhume him and move him to an unmarked grave.  It is all very pathetic really.  Tragic!  And I probably don't mean tragic in the way the mainstream of our culture would like to think it is tragic.

For many years now I have had a problem with abuse.  The problem seems to be that most people don't know what is wrong with abuse.  I did ask a lady from the Children Services once and the backlash was frightening.

Esther Rantzen expressed the view that she was distressed at how "we" failed to recognise what was going on to the point of possibly colluding with Jimmy Savile.  It appears that the world at large may turn on Esther in a scapegoat kind of way.  Esther should continue her good work and should be 'included' in the conversation about abuse and not 'blamed' or 'excluded'.  However I do have one observation about Esther's presented position and it is this;  "We" missed the signs because "we" don't understand what is wrong with abuse.  I get no indication from Esther's work or comments that she really understands what is so wrong with abuse and I get very little hint that anyone really understands what is wrong with abuse.

The general public consensus seems to be sentimental.  The mainstream view seems to be that abuse is wrong because it is distressing for the victim.  It is the pain that the victim suffers that we dislike and deem "wrong".  It is that slightly empathetic simulation of what the victim is feeling that we can recognise as unpleasant and we would not like to experience.  It seems to follow that it is, therefore, "wrong".  But this is not what is most importantly 'wrong' with abuse.  The pain and discomfort are unpleasant and it is perfectly human and reasonable to regard the experience as undesirable and to respond to that empathetic feeling by questioning it but it is not the 'reason' abuse is so wrong.  There are lots of things that are unpleasant that we don't deem wrong 'because' they are unpleasant.  Having a bad tooth extracted might be one example.

What is so worryingly 'wrong' about abuse is that it damages the person.  And it damages them in a way that perpetrates the abuse.  It damages the person in such a way as to prevent them functioning as well as they were functioning before.  Although we all suffer some degree of abuse in our lives and as humans we are quite robust and cope with a lot of damage it is the damage that makes us perform less successfully and in some cases prevents us functioning creatively and constructively at all.  But there is worse to come...  It turns people into abusers.  So, in some way, the problem with abuse is it creates abusers.  Abused people cannot, by definition, respond accurately to their environment.  They are malfunctioning and this is detrimental not only to their individual well being, which is important enough, but also to the well being of the society, the culture, and ultimately to the evolution of this particular sentient life form in this weird old universe of ours.

The Education Officer and Miss Spiky.

I have just discovered a deception that occurred 3 years ago.  My daughter was having difficulties at school and the Education Authority was involved.  The Education Officer was an officious authoritarian pretending to be a sympathetic avuncular man.  He was decidedly unpleasant.

Things were not easy and, partly on the basis that she was finding it difficult to attend school, my daughter was testing the idea of getting some counselling via the National Health.  I know it is all very paradoxical but we live in a paradoxical world.  The idea being that my daughter has been so unfairly treated that she is unhappy and if you are unhappy in this culture there must be something wrong with you so you can get medical help in the form of counselling.

The lady counsellor that we saw was a little spiky and full of positive attitude.  She made a ridiculous comment on one occasion saying that of course she would try to change my daughters mind.  Given that my daughter had expressed her concerns over people trying to do just that, it was tactless if not philosophically stupid and clearly insensitive.  But even then one can almost feel that there is something wrong with one's self for being hypersensitive in disliking the woman and not trusting her one inch.  That event came and went and my daughter did get a brief session of counselling with a friendly person but declined further offers from Miss Spiky.

For one reason or another I have been trawling through some old documents and I have come across a report from a social worker referring to the issue with my daughter's non-attendance at school.  This report mentions that the Education Officer and a 'social worker', Miss Spiky, were liaising.  I checked the dates and it was during the consultation period with Miss Spiky that the two of them were colluding (oops - liaising - sorry).  It is astounding to realise the implications of this.  The lady in the counselling environment is a social worker and was talking, behind my daughter's back, to the officious little Hitler of an Education Officer.  And those prats think it is 'other people' who are fukced up!

Ruddy Christians:  Matthew 18:6 (1611 King James Bible) "But who so shall offend one of these little ones which beleeue in me, it were better for him that a milstone were hanged about his necke, and that hee were drowned in the depth of the Sea."

So it follows that both the Education Officer and Little Miss Spiky would both be better off drowned with a millstone round their necks.  I conclude that according to Christianity I would be doing a positively holy thing, and God's will, to drown them both.  I wonder if the river would do - it would be so much more convenient.

Philosophically it is ridiculous to suppose that lies and deception can bring about anything other than pain and suffering.  Why do these people, who like to think of themselves as so good, indulge in such treacherous behaviour?  Is it because they think no one will ever find out?  Is that the depth of their perception?  Are they really as shallow as they appear?  Are they, in fact, already dead but still happen to be moving about?  I would suggest they are dead.  In biblical terms they sold their souls to the devil for a cushy life, self-satisfaction and a pension.  Much as I am suffering at the moment I do get some pleasure watching all those teachers and social workers getting themselves so distressed about their pensions being reduced.  I think they should get no pension and should have to pay back their salaries to give the new young people a good and free education.  Just for the record I sincerely despise sanctimonious, hypocritical, officious, smug gits. (Just in case you had any doubts.)

FEIGNED SYMPATHY

The title of this post is a bit misleading but then so is feigning despair.  This is the second interesting phone call I had today.  I have a friend of a friend who has taken to phoning me a lot.  She is very distressed.  Her life is in ruins and she is alcoholic.  She doesn't know me or my name and I don't know who she is so I am talking about this in confidence because it is the behaviour of humans that I am interested in.

Initially she is very distressed and wants someone to talk to.  I am perfectly happy to be that person whilst I have the spare time.  But it doesn't take her long to start trying to get me to support her views so that she feels stronger in asserting them over others.  That description is brief and seemingly heartless but it is what is going on.

She does have some very significant damage as a result of events in her life.  The problem is that in order to "comply" with the cultural framework that she conformed to as a child in order to survive she cannot allow herself to "feel" the pain.  I think this can be said of most people to some degree.

So she perceives events around her now as being devastating and unjust.  She doesn't understand why people are so cruel.  She feels ashamed and disgusted with herself for her laziness, her alcoholism, her inability to ever wash or clean her teeth and generally is so harsh in her judgement of herself that she is destroying her life.

She phones me up saying she has had her benefits stopped and she is beside herself with fear and distress.  I make the mistake of suggesting that they don't have the right to stop her benefits and she should write to them to that effect.  At this point she coldly announces that she has to go to bed and puts the phone down... but it didn't go down.  I was left hanging on to the phone listening to her shouting and screaming at her husband.

But I know what is going on and it is extraordinarily difficult.  Many of us (probably most) are brought up in a judgemental controlling environment.  We are assured that if we comply we will be alright.  The more intelligent of us begin to realise that there is something self-contradictory about the moral structure.  It doesn't take a lot of "intelligence" to realise that beating a child with a stick to teach them that beating people is "bad" is fundamentally and inescapably contradictory.

However, if we were fool enough to "play the game" in order to survive then we are necessarily treating ourselves the same way.  Some people simply take on board the compliance mantle and become authoritarian gits, some simply accept the mistake of landing in a pile of shit and some are mortally offended at the shit that we have been placed in for someone else's benefit.

At this point it becomes war.  An internal war.  To do anything about the injustice one must survive and to survive one must "play the game". so we begin to hate ourselves.  It is brinkmanship in the extreme.  Can we comply enough to survive whilst retaining our internal self respect.  Can we be compassionate enough to ourselves to forgive us for "playing the game" to survive.  Are we risking becoming like "them" and once we can survive we will continue to "play" the same game.  It is hell in here.

My friend of a friend is currently trying to get me to support her view that "they" are bad and should be condemned in the same way she feels they have unjustly condemned her.  So all I can do is listen and sympathise but it won't be long now before she threatens me with her own suicide.  I have no problem with that because I respect her right to make her own decisions about her own life.  Unsympathetic though that would seem to the more "sentimental" amongst us it is because at the moment she is trying to solicit me to be on her oppressors side.  She is trying to get me to agree with her judgemental attitude.  She is feigning her distress to achieve a goal.  She is externalising her feelings and can see no other way because she has to behave this way to survive.  The lessons were learnt at a very impressionably age and there is only one way out: to feel the pain.  But she won't do that for a while yet.

What a convoluted bunch of psycho-biological-blobs we are.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I think I am suffering from PTSD.  That's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Not that most people would need that spelling out nowadays.  It is becoming a common phrase.  They used to shoot cowards.  It is only recently that the British Government pardoned 306 soldiers "shot at dawn" for desertion and cowardice during the First World War.  All of these men were suffering from various conditions from Shell Shock to PTSD.  There are various arguments for and against such a pardon but the arguments against are simply primitive and disgusting.  Freudian projection is probably the most general explanation of this phenomenon.  Strong brave people wouldn't shoot people who are afraid.  In fact the irony is that the 'justification' for war is so often claimed to be the protection of the innocent and supporting high moral values.  But weak people project the 'unacceptable' qualities onto others to protect their own egos.  The frightening thing is that they are probably unconscious of this act.  They genuinely believe that those whining scum are weak and pathetic cowards.  Oh how easily the words flow from my mouth.  I can be so condemning of weak, feeble, pathetic cowardly individuals.  It's easy because I was brought up in a culture of 'blame' and authoritarian judgemental attitude.  And actually I hate them with a vengeance. I might get over it when I resolve the PTSD but applying 'their' values to them is my only way of holding onto any sanity whilst I try to make sense, not only of the world out there, but the world inside me too.

Of course it is not them that have cause my PTSD directly.  It is the culture that has allowed the crimes against me and my daughter to succeed.  It is because we live in a festering cowardly blame culture that the malevolent vindictive cruelty of the ex could find traction and leverage.  Anyone who has been falsely accused of something and the mud has stuck in some seriously detrimental way will understand.  Anyone who has experienced prejudice will understand.  What amazes me is how the academics and the philosophers and any freethinking people all understand to a significant degree what is going on but the politicians, the media, the police (now there's a fine collection of corrupt two-faced hackers), the judges, teachers, priests, social services - STOP!  The list is too long - but the people 'in charge' so rarely seem to get it.  The pretentious judgmental authoritarian control freaks just don't get it.  They are so self-contradictory.  They stand up for 'justice' and dish out injustice.  They construct a killing machine to go to war to 'stop violence'.  Teachers tell kids 'don't be clever!'  Oh the irony of it all.

Gordon Turnbull is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Trauma at Capio Nightingale Hospitals, London.  He has recently written a book called "Trauma: From Lockerbie to 7/7: How trauma affects our minds and how we fight back" which on all accounts is worth a read.  I won't be reading it because I can't afford it.  So go buy a copy read it and send me the second hand volume (You can contact me HERE and I'll give you my details).  If you do I will read it and give it my most severe analysis.  I would be interested to know if the man really understands what is going on.  From an interview with him that I heard on Radio 4 I suspect he is at least half way there.  His work with PTSD patients on all accounts has a good success rate.  It seems that the prevailing view of mental illness is that it is incurable.  It is not my view and it seems it is not Professor Turnbull's either.

PTSD in my view is the condition of an emotionally unresolved experience.  When we experience stuff it gets into our neurological network and we find ways of incorporating it into our being.  One part of that process is experienced by us as 'emotion'.  The emotional experience is part of the 'healing' process.  The end result, if all is well, is that we 'understand' the world out there.  We make sense of our experience.  It is all part of the learning process that enables us to successfully engage with 'reality'  But sometimes, for one reason or another, the emotional processing is interrupted or doesn't resolve.  PTSD seems to be a consequence of something so traumatic that it takes more emotional resolution than we are given time or circumstances to handle.  But unlike some other ways of 'dealing' with trauma it is not suppressed to the point of perverting our comprehension of reality.  So it sits in a sort of no-man's-land between repression and understanding.  That is where the symptoms are visible.  Not dealing with it will result in a malfunctioning human.  And there are many of those littered about the place.  Dealing with it will give a deeper understanding of life.  It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."  Unfortunately the quote is misused in a trite way too often but when calamity occurs it is often the case that either it kills you or you learn and become a little stronger.  Bones that get broken become stronger.  This is not a way to become strong though.  Although going by some parental attitude you might think so.

That's it.  That's the end of this post.  Not the end of the post traumatic stress.  If it seems a bit unresolved, incomplete, or aimless well that is the nature of PTSD!  So I have got it - SEE!

Integrated Children's System (ICS

The Integrated Children's System (ICS) is a piece of information technology (IT) developed to assist in the social welfare of children in the UK. It is a great idea and a great fiasco but it is still in place. A government report deemed the system "not fit for purpose" in 2008. Either on a common sense level or on a scientific interpersonal neurobiological level it is a malicious and dangerous piece of sprawling technology which only benefits Social Workers, the police, other quangos and of course the elite software development entrepreneurs. Read more at Toxic Drums ICS.
(God that was boring!)

Toxic Drums mission

I don't know.  What do you do?  I have this web site and this blog and I have just read an article by Chris Crum about Darren Rowse called Taking Blogging  From a Hobby to a Business.  One message is basically define your audience and just do it.  Well I have no real idea who my audience is and I can't seem to get around to "doing" it.

Initially I thought Toxic Drums was about "saving the world".  Quite a commendable objective I think.  A bit grand but why limit your horizons.  Actually I know that I am a very small part of any attempt to prevent humanity destroying itself but each part matters so I am happy to sit with that objective to start with.  Saving the world (or humanity) has the potential to cover a host of subjects.  There are different aspects from which one is trying to save the world like pollution, starvation, war etc. and then there are the various modes by which humans achieve these ends like politics, business, science etc.

So I am happy to split these things up and to look into them and to discuss them, promote interest and insight, to express views and even solutions (if anyone's offering).  But then there are the ways that humanity seems to operate that seems fundamental to the fact that these issues are problems.  Eventually I get to the way our culture seems to operate which actually explains a lot about how the various errors are occurring.  It's like a grand unification theory of what is wrong.  So the individual issues seem less relevant since they can all be handled with the new insight into what the fundamental problems are.  Well it seems complicated but perhaps on one level it is not.  The truth seems to be...

The fundamental problem is lack of love.

It seems almost trite to say that.  But all my thinking and my experience confirms it and I am left thinking of issues like religion, psychology and education.  They are all subjects relating to love.  Okay so they don't all admit it but in some respect they do all relate to love.  Religion makes it explicit, education has it as an excuse and psychology is trying to understand the emotional stuff that seems ethereal otherwise.

I have spent a large part of my time alive looking for some REAL way to understand what is going on.  On the one hand I have been looking for answers to angst.  I am distressed, bewildered, unhappy, depressed, anxious, stressed etc and I don't believe it has to be like this.  So I have looked for answers.  I have searched religion, psychology and finally counselling.  I have found only one thing that has real practical substance and that is counselling.  It is not that different people can't find therapeutic results from different disciplines but it is my experience that religion is too much about itself and corrupts love.  Psychology tries very hard to remain academic and ends up being a good observation of distress but lacks real resolution and remedy.  Counselling, on the other hand attempts to 'practise' therapeutic action.  It fails a lot of the time but there seems more chance of success through this route than any other.  I will mention the likes of Arthur Janov's The Biology of Love and Dr Robin Skynner's Life And How To Survive It as places to look for some serious insight into the modern understandings of what counselling can really achieve but my point here is that no amount of talking about it actually fixes the problem.  Action is required and for all the theories that abound the inner knowledge of love is the best and probably the most accurate guide.