The Yellow Man (1994-5 Oil on Board)

Love, love, love....

You know, I look around and I see pretty much the whole world in cahoots about love and romance.

It makes me smell a rat.

The media - "ain't love grand."
The family - "ain't love grand."
The peer-group - "ain't love grand."
The politicos - "ain't love grand."
Instinct - "ain't love grand."

And yet, by far the second most popular pastime, after we have finished tootling around telling all and sundry "That love thing yeah - it's just so damn grand isn't it..?" is... Trashing the opposite sex.

As much as men love women, we also, at times, seem to hate their fucking guts. And as much as women love men, they also, quite a lot of the time, seem to hate our fucking guts too.

So which is it..? I don't see the media putting up billboards pushing things like "Give the women you co-habit with a black eye this christmas." My Dad never took me aside with a knowing wink and gave me the talk about "How to make a woman feel like three kinds of shit."
Society in its local and broader examples seldom, if ever, encourage me to "take that bitch down." Well, not outside of the rapmusic and divorce lawyer circles anyway.

So, howcome the "luvvy-duvvy, everyone's just so fucking equal it hurts" side of things has needed such a helping hand to promote it throughout society, and the "trash those fucking men/women" side of things almost none..?

It's like re-cycling, and non-smoking. In a perfect world, I'd smoke a hundred fags a day and buy disposable cars to drive to the off-licence and back. I'd eat baby pandas and throw the heads away. I would guiltlessly consume, just like we did in the seventies/eighties, when global warming was a myth, cigarettes were good for you, AIDS was only something to do with hearing, and greed was good. We all would. Fuck it, we all did.

Love and equality needs the hard sell, trashing the opposition, doesn't. From which I would conclude, that men and women, save for sex and reproduction are pretty much diametrically opposed.

Throughout the eons, women have needed the cock, and men the womb. Without that insurrmountable stumbling block, it would have been intra-species war, and we wouldn't have ever had this conversation. Either all the men would be dead, and the world would be covered in throw-cushions and empty nail-polish containers, or women would be history and the world would be covered in broken engine parts and back issues of guns and ammo.

And about this whole "It's not looks, it's people's minds that matter." bullshit.

If all of us really put the compatability of someone's mind over the sexual/baby side of things, the whole world would be gay.

(I believe the saying goes: "Boy, I'm glad I got that outta my system.")

...Continued...

Personal Reality.

What is the 'real' colour of an orange..? I'm a touch red/green colourblind - so my version of orange, and your version of orange is different. But as long as my 'orange' remains consistant from day to day, I can interact with it unimpaired. The question remains though - which orange, yours or mine, is more 'real'..?

Existance and reality are tricky terms. Common sense would dictate that "that which is real, exists" and equally, "that which is exists, is real."

Which leaves us exactly nowhere. Which makes me think of trees and falling and no-one being there. I dunno, perhaps I'm trying to edge toward "That which is noticed, exists", or "That which is real, leaves a mark somewhere."

The former is self serving - If there is something capable of noticing anything, then of course something already exists, even prior to the act of perception. And also time. Time is an artifact, created by awareness, principally, awareness of change. The slightest sliver of time, is still an instant that can be noticibly divided from the next. What I mean to say, in a universe, or any other place of being, without some form of awareness, there can be no time, and without time nothing can exist. A play on words..? Or something more profound - I'm damned if I know which.

But I lean toward - "There is no existance without a [sentient, memoried] perceiver."

The second - the leaving of the mark - is different. Differing in perhaps not requiring a sentient watcher, a cataloguer of events. Let us have a very simple universe, consisting of space, and a single, lifeless rock. Does anything exist..? Is there any time..? I'd say no. Let the rock move in space. But how to tell here from there, up from down..? Does it move..? Can it move..? Now let us add a second rock, moving in opposition. They collide - each leaving a mark on the other. Now is there time..? Now does each rock exist..? Exist now it is given location, velocity and shape in relation to the other..? I still don't know. Did a trilobite see a universe into being..? Was its perception deep enough..? I still don't know.

Perhaps the act of naming is necessary.

So, I would work from the idea that reality and existance are fundamentally linked to a third component, which is us, or something like us. This idea has consequences, probably more than I can think of - not least the anthropomorphic principle involved - only realities, frames of existance that support the survival of a watcher... Exist. (A little oxymoronic I know).

The other I've been thinking about is perhaps more subtle. Reality contains three qualities - it is noticible, vivid, and unlike dreams and hallucinations, which skip merrily through the first two requirements, consistant, or at least predictable, over time.

But we must remember another condition on reality - something that constrains it. "Nothing exists except in relation to the watcher" "the watcher is finite" "what exists is noticed" "What is noticed is either that which is effective toward, initially, the survival of the watcher, or, secondarily, to the aesthetic sense (much related to the initial proviso) of the watcher."

Physicists say there are many ways to view what is around us. The keyboard in front of me is at once a thing of plastic and metal with symbols transposed across its face, it is also a complexly related set of atoms dancing in space. It is at the same time a unique and very improbable set of probabilities, constantly being collapsed into 'reality' by the act of my attention. It is also simple information encoded into waveforms on the 'surface' of a multidimensional 'brane.' (At least if I remember Dr. Hawkins correctly).

Which is it..? Well, it still looks like a keyboard to me, because I don't come equiped with quantum vision.

No lifeform is. Imagine a fish going through the tortuous evolutionary path toward developing some sensory apparatus able to 'see' quantum probabilities. Imagine how incredibly unsuccessful it would be in discerning lunchtime from dinner, and dinner from a swirl in the mud.

The requirement for a watcher requires that reality be watchable. Usefully watchable, in forms and configurations that allow you to fill your belly.

Okay - we could measure the mass of the orange, the refractive index of the orange, spin that bugger through a gas chromatograph or a spectrometer and read off its consistuant parts. But would all those numbers and readings make orange juice for breakfast..? Are those numbers the 'real' orange..? What about the less empirical traits..? How sweet it tastes - a sweetness again mitigated by whether I'm full or not, or how long its been since I last had an orange, or whether or not I'm happy or sad, or sitting on top of mount everest, or taking my last breathes of this life. The smell of it the feel of it in my mouth..? Is the orange I ate yesterday different from the one I eat today..?

What if I just don't like oranges..?

...Continued...

Me and You

"Why bother with a constant and/or cohesive self in the first place..?"

So why do we bother..? Both in fiction and reality we seem to set much store by rigidly behaving today just as we behaved yesterday. We have our pride and our principles and sometimes we adher to them even to the point of derision or death. It would seem mal-adaptive to have an intrinsic mechanism that drives us to become 'one' person, when a chameleon might prosper better. And yet such a trait seems pan-human.

What worth is being only one certain individual to the individual concerned..?

None at all that I can think of.

Then I remembered my friend, and die-hard drinking-buddy, who suddenly stopped drinking and went tee-total. And about how we aren't all that good friends anymore. And about another friend, who suddenly caught a very bad case of christianity, and about how we went from bosom buddies to erm, not-so bosom buddies almost overnight.

I think we grit our teeth and preserve a coherent and damn near constant self, not through any aesthetic drive to self-expression, nor even from some abstract existential drive to 'authenticity'.
I think we instinctively maintain our particular brand of 'selfhood' simply to preserve social trust. To make sure that the people with whom we deal on a day to day basis know we are X and not Y, A but not B, and therefore safely predictable enough for them to not fear what 'me' tomorrow may bring.

We fear the weirdo or the madman, not because of their (maybe) inhuman strength, nor for their (possible) penchant for eating people's faces - but simply because we cannot know with any degree of certainty what they will do next, or how they will react to what we do, however innocuous in our eyes. Will he shake my hand or break it..? So we freeze, or shoot, or run.

How would my wife love me if I awoke a new person every day..? How would my child dare aproach me if he could not be sure whether my proximity would bring a hug or a blow..? Would my neighbor loan me his mower if he couldn't be reasonably sure I'd give it back and not sell it, or scrap it, or wrap it round his head..?

The irony is then, much of this 'I' we set such store by, and go to such lengths to preserve, is not even for ourselves.

My 'I' is not for me, it is for you, it's always been for you.

...Continued...