Swindon Town- The iGeneration- Passing me by

I live in a nice little English town.

Swindon town.

There’s a football team here.

And a magic roundabout.

The former consists of those that want to be somewhere else.

Swindon shops, always busy.

The later is a traffic jam in the middle of the town centre.

The people here, in Swindon town, live in little houses, and in their cars, and at work, or school.

Occasionally they walk, or cycle.

Plugged in to ithings.

Listening to something else.

Going somewhere else.

I watch as they pass me by.

They’re so busy.

On their way to work.

Or school.

Or shopping.

Or whatever it is that they do.

Because I don’t really know what they do.

I can guess.

But they don’t talk to me.

They just pass me by.

Off they go.

The magic roundabout, always busy.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Zoom.

Zoom.

They're so busy.

With so little time.

I live in a nice little English town.

Swindon town.

I’ve lived here for over thirty years now.

There are people here.

Nice people.

I think.

I don’t really know them.

And they don’t really know me.

Are we happy?

I don’t know.

We don’t speak.

Why do people deliberately avoid the truth? – Epic rant on a rant blog.

‘People like to lie to themselves. Facing the truth is uncomfortable for many. Admitting wrong is very hard for some people to do. They will do anything but that, they will perform mental gymnastics, defensive rationalisation, avoidance of the issue, denial, rejection, refusal to acknowledge, and simply plain old ignore what they do not want to admit to.’ (Kris Nelson)



I always say that people don't want to hear the truth. I say a lot of things, but there's a simple reason for people not wanting to hear about the truth. If they understand truth then they have the moral responsibility to act like a decent human being. By deliberately avoiding truth they give themselves an excuse, a get out clause that justifies their actions, or inaction's. It's not my fault, they will say. I was ignorant. I didn't know. I was obeying orders. I was just doing what I was told. I was a cog in the machine. I didn't understand the bigger picture.

This of course is a lie, but without the lie people have to take personal responsibility. Sadly enough, it appears that the last thing people want to do is to take personal responsibility. So when anything goes wrong, and when truth is exposed (Jimmy Saville scandal, Banks doing whatever the Hell they like, MP's expenses scandal, weapons of mass destruction, child abuse in government 'care' homes, recent wars for corporate profit, the deliberate creation of ISIS, etc, etc, etc) the people personally responsible for these horrible situations always have that moral get out clause. They didn't know. They were just doing their jobs. Lessons will be learnt, lets move on.

These people are always surprised, and sometimes even horrified when the truth that they were deliberately avoiding is revealed to them. The same thing happened after WW2 when allied soldiers forced the local civilian populations to visit the Nazi death camps. They knew, of course they knew. A lot of their family members were working there. A lot of them were working there as well. They just preferred not to know because it was easier for them not to know.

People are very skilled at lying to themselves, but deep down, they know. They know perfectly well how and why terrible things have happened. The terrible things happened because people didn't want to engage with truth. They preferred an easy life, a good 'career,’ no accountability and an in-built get out clause that washes them clean of all moral responsibility for their self-serving actions.

The deliberate avoidance of truth is a lot like the Catholic confessional, and you don’t even have to be a Catholic to use it. Just plead ignorance, and pretend that you are sorry. Works every time, except it really doesn’t.

The eternal moral laws of the universe don't work that way. Moral laws have often been compared to the laws of gravity. If you ignore the laws of gravity and jump off a 200 foot building without a parachute then you will splat on the ground below, like it or not. Laws are laws, and there are consequences for breaking them. The moral laws of the universe act in exactly the same way as the laws of gravity. You might not like them, but if you ignore them then you will face the consequences. These consequences are apparent everywhere we look. The world is the way it is today because that is the world that we deserve. We have broken the moral laws of the universe. We deliberately ignored truth, so this is what we get.

This world is full of people who don’t know the truth, not because they are stupid and they can’t understand the truth, but because THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH. They couldn’t care less about the truth, and they don’t want it. Knowing the truth would mean that they would have to take personal, moral responsibility for their actions. They don’t want that. It would be too difficult, and so they spend their entire lives deliberately avoiding the truth.

We can change the world, but not until we take personal moral responsibility for the results of our own actions. It's not the 'Illuminati,' it's not the 'globalists,' it's not the 'new world order,' it's us.

We create our own shackles, the elite’s benefit, but we are the ones on the ground, day by day laying the bricks of deliberate ignorance that create the prison that we are all living in. If you want to change the world then truth is the key. Engage with truth and things have to change. Avoid truth and endless slavery and human suffering is inevitable. That’s how the moral laws of the universe work, like it or not, we get what we deserve. Ha, epic rant over. Sorry about that. Lessons will be learnt.  It wasn't my fault. I blame the coffee :)




Click link for more details on truth, expressed with far more erudition and eloquence than I could ever hope to muster: (All photographs in my barely articulate rant are taking from this far superior article)
http://evolveconsciousness.org/truth-love/




Summary (of linked article, by Kris Nelson):

‘Do you want to placate, walk on eggshells, keep-the-peace, don’t make waves, don’t get hassled, don’t rock the boat, sugar coat and lie to someone to continue to make them feel comfortable and “good” about themselves (and maintain your relationship, attachment, “loyalty”, etc.) so they don’t have to change, do any work and face themselves and what they do? Or do you want to speak the truth that may hurt or be uncomfortable due to their choice to deny Truth and align with lies, deceptions, illusions and bullshit? Do you want to help them face themselves to improve their lives and the lives of everyone else? If you didn’t care about someone, would you bother to try to help them by having them face the things they don’t want to face? Of course not, you would just let them wallow in ignorance, and not care. Once you understand the importance of Truth, letting people ignore the shadow aspects of themselves that are causing harm to other beings in what they do in daily life, is not Care/”love” for them or others. That is enabling them to perpetuate bullshit, lies, deceptions and illusions as manifestation of action and behaviour to continue the collective self-inflicted suffering, harm, wrong, immorality, etc. that we co-create.’

Jesus Christ as a metaphor for ‘truth.’

A lot of people now understand that Jesus Christ is a metaphor for the Sun, like the many Sun gods that came before him, but he has another metaphorical role that people might not be aware of. 

Jesus Christ is a metaphor for the truth. His entire life is about truth, and he comes to embody truth itself. This isn’t really an arguable point. Jesus even confirms this himself in John 14:6 where he says the following:

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Barabbas, the choice of mankind

After Jesus is arrested something extremely significant takes place. It’s traditional that once a year on the date of the Passover festival one convicted criminal is set free. The man in charge of the prisoners (Pontius Pilate) gives the people a choice. Do they want to free Jesus or a ‘robber’ called Barabbas. A lot of people mistake this part of the story for anti-Semitism, but this is not the case.  

The crowd of people are not representatives of the Jewish people, they are representative of All people. We are that crowd, and we are being asked to make a choice. Do we want truth, or do we want lies? The crowd yells, ‘Give us Barabbas’ unanimously choosing lies over truth. That choice is our choice. The story of Jesus Christ is our story. 

The world CANNOT change until we reach a level of consciousness where we choose truth over lies. What is truth? It is moral truth, doing what is right over what is wrong. We all know what is right and wrong, what these moral truths are, but a lot of us choose to ignore them. By ignoring these moral truths we make the world what it is today. The world is not unfair. It is what we have made it. We get to choose, but at the moment we are still choosing Barabbas. 

Review: Spawn #245- 90's adolescent

Writer: Todd McFarlane
Artist: Todd McFarlane and Szymon Kudranski
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 9th July 2014


It might seem a bit strange for me to say this, especially if you think that I am some sort of far too knowledgeable comic book geek (which I’m not), but I didn’t know much about the Spawn character before picking up this book. I knew it had something to do with Spiderman, and that’s probably why I hadn’t bothered with it before. You see Spiderman is for children, and I haven’t been a child for a very long time, so I pay no heed to Spiderman. That makes sense, right?

I picked up Spawn #245 because I liked the creepy front cover of the fat evil clown, and yes I know the image is a very worn out cliché, but it’s still a good image and also because I didn’t have that many comic books to read this week.

I was initially a bit confused with the book as I saw it was an Image comic, and even I know that Spiderman is Marvel, so what was going on here? A quick Start Page search later (I don’t use the NSA search engine of choice Google) and I was up to date with the situation between Todd McFarlane and Marvel. It's not that complicated.

McFarlane created Spawn in the early 1990’s (not that bloody time period again. Comics have been stuck there for far too long now) whilst working for Marvel, and he had a bit of success with it and decided to bring the character out of Marvel and into Image comics, which he helped to set up. A good idea, and I’m sure he has a healthy bank account now because of it. But is the book any good in 2014?

First off, this is not really a comic book for grown-ups. It’s still very much a comic, with themes and characters designed for the perpetually adolescent mind-set. An audience that might be physically in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or 50’s, but it’s an audience still stuck in the dating and getting to find their way in the world stage of their developments. It’s a Spiderman book basically, for people who haven’t grown up, and perhaps never will. Why do I say this? Because issue #245 has all of those teenage, adolescent concerns that you will find in a television show about twenty-something’s, before children and commitments come along to make things complicated, and stick you on the boring treadmill of routine that so many adults waste their lives upon.

The main protagonist is a handsome, well built superstar celebrity with a gorgeous girl desperately in love with him, a great career and strangers obsessing over how intriguing he is as he nonchalantly passes them by in the street, all cool and mysterious and handsome. This is a wish fulfilment character for teenage boys. The story is all about him, his exciting past and how people just want to understand what makes him so fascinating, so dangerous, so sexy, and so handsome. The book ends with a common fear of the teenage boy, a crazy girl with a knife who will emasculate you (choppy) and take away all of your cool independence and boyhood testosterone driven power.

The art has a darkness to it that gives the impression that this is more ‘adult’ and serious than it actually is, but some of the facials look a bit expressionless and two dimensional. Overall, I’ve seen a lot worse and it does create an atmosphere that just about carries the narrative. There’s no Clown in the book by the way, but that’s okay. If you trust covers you don’t know comics.

It sounds like I hated the book, but I didn’t hate it at all. Comic books by their very nature are adolescent, and this is a half-decent adolescent comic book. There are no New World order issues explored in the book, so it could have been set in any time period, and is most redolent to myself of the early 1990’s time period in which the writer first created the character.

There are mentions of blogs and celebrity television, but there’s more to these times than just throwing in references to new technologies every now and then. Just ask Edward Snowden about it. A guy who told the truth, and is now hiding out in Russia because the criminal US government wants to put him in jail for doing so. We live in very strange and dangerous times. Times where the lies of the western governments that are owned and controlled by undemocratic banking families and corporate interests are being increasingly exposed. The best comic books will reflect the times in which they are written. This book doesn’t do that.

I have to ask a question of myself. Do I really need another 1990’s comic book in my collection? This book is okay, but it’s not exactly cutting edge, and I’m looking for cutting edge these days. I want to read something that screams 2014, not 1992. I’ll be fair to it though, because it does intrigue me, a little. I’ll give it two more months, and if I see any 2014 concerns explored in the book then I’ll keep reading. If I don’t, then at least I know what Spawn is about. It’s not bad. It’s a good comic for teenage boys, but for somebody of my advanced years I need just a little more than it’s giving at the moment. But hey, two months. We’ll see.
Rating: 7/10

The use of allegory and metaphor in comic book writing: Throwing seeds onto the concrete?

al·le·go·ry  (l-gôr, -gr)
n. pl. al·le·go·ries
1.
a. The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
b. A story, picture, or play employing such representation. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
2. A symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.

I was having a brief chat with the owner of my local comic book shop today about how the latest Trees book by Warren Ellis read to me like an allegory/metaphor for the current day banking industry. I was trying to explain to him how the image of an alien tree in the middle of a city with it’s roots under everything and periodically dripping poison on the population was not actually about an alien tree, but a commentary on the way that the banking industry has buried itself within the roots of our civilisation and has ended up owning and poisoning everything, including our everyday interactions like the one we were just having. I told him that the banks owned him, and he thought this idea was ludicrous because he didn’t have much money in his account. That was my entire point. That the lack of money in his account defines what power he has in contemporary society. No money equates to having no power, so when you have private banks that make money out of nothing it gives them supreme power. Supreme power over politicians, and the people they tax to control. These people are you and me, and the bloke that owns the comic book shop. My point is that the banking sector now has so much power and control over all of our lives that they might as well be represented by a giant alien tree that is spitting out poison in the middle of our cities. But to the owner of the comic book shop this is a ludicrous suggestion. The book is just about a tree that spits poison, that’s all, and it will be a good book if the narrative flows well, it has interesting characters and it has some exciting twists and turns in the plot as it goes along. These factors are what makes an exciting comic book, to him, and any allegory or metaphor contained within it sails way above his head, and not being too mean about it, that’s the way that he likes it. Comic books are fun, and he doesn’t want to think about the real world around him, even though he’s living in it, and what happens all around him is going to have a huge impact on his (and his families) life, whether he likes it or not.

This attitude of not caring or even wanting to understand the wider world is a common trait amongst comic book fans in 2014. This is a huge generalising statement to make, but since I got back into reading comics and have had some interactions with comic book fans (in their twenties and thirties, sometimes late teens) it appears that this generalisation is largely true. So why are comic book fans living in a strange state of denial where they think that the real world around them has nothing to do with their own lives? Why do they know nothing, and care to know nothing about the most important issues of our times? Seriously, talk to a comic book fan about fractional reserve banking, Edward Snowden or bank complicity in money laundering for Mexican drug cartels. They couldn’t care less about any of these issues, and most of the time they won’t even have an opinion on any of them either. However, if you want to discuss the latest take on Batman’s back story they’ll be hugely informed and will know every detail about the new take, and every other old take since the early 1990’s. Remember that these comic book fans are educated adults who see themselves as intelligent people. They are not stupid people, yet they purposefully make the decision to remain ignorant about all of the important issues of our times, and when a comic book creator tries to bring up these issues by way of allegory or metaphor they couldn’t care less about it, and are surprised when some annoying guy like myself points it out to them.

I remember the old bible story (Matthew 13:1-23) about randomly throwing seeds, with some of them falling on stony ground, and a few finding fertile soil where they would prosper and grow. This is what Jesus was doing when he talked to his followers. He was talking in allegory and metaphor, and most of it sailed over the heads of his followers. He knew this would happen, but he did it anyway. Why? Because some of the seeds land on fertile ground, and the message is understand by those willing to look a bit deeper than hearing a story that on the surface seems a bit ridiculous. What the conversation in the comic book shop taught me today is that humanity hasn’t really changed much in the couple of thousand years since Jesus (maybe) walked the Earth and confused people with his allegorical way of talking. Heck, if you want to go even deeper, the Christ figure himself is an allegory, for Sun worship obviously, that was then taken literally by the Romans and pushed ever since as a control system to enslave the masses. All of the wisdom he talked through allegory and metaphor was thrown onto stony ground and humanity has been in slavery ever since, thanks in large part to the religions that insist on literal interpretations rather than the bloody obvious ones that Jesus was talking about in the first place.

IF YOU CANNOT SEE THE ALLEGORY AND METAPHOR IN THE STORY YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE STORY.

Is this the state of consciousness where humanity is forever doomed to dwell? With people purposefully not wanting to understand what is right in front of them? Reading the story, but not understanding the meaning behind the story, or even wanting to understand when it’s explained (or suggested, in my example of ‘Trees’ by Warren Ellis) to them?

We are surrounded by truth, but how many people really want to see it? How many people have picked a comfortable little corner where they will stay, and live their entire life in ignorance (meaning to purposefully ignore the truth) whilst the world around them burns? How disconnected from reality can humanity get? It seems to me that the vast majority of the people living in the UK today pick a hobby, but never, ever pick the truth.  Truth is all around them, but they are not interested, and when the truth evades their little hobby bubble of non-reality in the form of a metaphor or allegory they still refuse to see it, even when it’s dancing, singing and screaming in their face.