How I see the world

I've wrote many things in the past, some comical, others just thoughts. However once I get going im hard to stop. It is good to write, even if they're your own thoughts and when you live in the country in a small, dim, cut-off village with no amenities other than a rusted post-box, you get alot of time to yourself. Therefore I do a fair bit of thinking and writing.

Despite being 19, I feel like im knocking on the door of 40 and awaiting a mid-life crisis. Maybe because all I see everyday is stupidity and I cannot truly see the point to doing many things in life. People are always pressuring us to earn money, drive fast cars, own big homes and consume consume consume. What really is the point? If you decide to stop and only obtain what you need in life, everyone scrutinizes you. They look upon on you as if you are conjuring up a dastardly plan for world domination or that you are plotting their downfall.

Around 3 years ago I had some pretty strong views. God knows what happened but I am not the same person I used to be by a long way. I used to be consistently angry with the world and want to change things, all I do now is except things as they are and think “let it be”. For 3 years to breed such contempt for everything I once despaired over destroys me inside, it really does.

I can’t stand my own generation. One full of image conscious, media blinded fools who follow ‘fashionable’ politics. They rave about helping the poor, feeding Africa and solving social deprivation with 'cool' communist ideologies. Yet all they seem to do is purchase an I-pod, put on some Converse, stage a music festival and wear Che Guevara T-shirts. To see these so called ‘communists’ flaunting such wealth makes me sigh at the hypocrisy. A generation in which ‘fun’ is defined as getting drunk, where ‘drunk’ is classified as ‘comatose’. A generation which declares it suffers from the ‘stresses’ of a modern world, using it as an excuse to act like twats or take hardline drugs.

On that point, why do people do things to fit in with everyone else? It is pathetic to see people smoking weed or whatever only when someone else offers it. I honestly do not get the whole drug culture, and how its seen as being cool and fashionable. I truly hate it when people try to impress others with their drug taking history. Who gives a fuck? Whats that? You've done crack? Oh woop dee doo, let me cosult my 'Do I Give A Shit-ometer', it flashing up on "Fuck off" it seems. If you need a drug to get your kicks or fit in better, then frankly thats a bit bastard shit for you, you insecure bastards. There again, each to their own.

I despise those older than me for their constant put downs to the generations below. A usual rant every summer when exam scores are released is...

“Exams are getting too easy nowadays, now in my day when we had the O level…now they were a challenge”

Why do they see such high pass rates? Maybe because they created a society where anyone who doesn’t get good enough grades to get into higher education disappears into borderline poverty. They raised the stakes and they can’t stand to see that the generation below them has risen to the challenge and upped the bar. They give no gratitude, no encouragement, nothing. Then wonder why the so called ‘youth of today’ have ‘gone off the rails’. They once were given respect, they gave us none back. Respect must be nurtured; it doesn’t maintain itself, like a plant, it will wilt over the course of time. The rot started here, the contempt started here, it all starts here. What we are burdened with now spreads its roots here, with a generation which settles disputes on chat shows and in courtrooms.

We’re a society that’s quite rare, it is one that’s never experienced a war, and from what I can see, this is a bad thing. As horrible as that is to hear, it’s true. No one wants to work together with each other, everyone’s against one another. There is no pride in this nation and no desire to keep it strong and secure. Many blame it on, foreign nationals or those of different religion and culture. This however is just a scapegoat, just like in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s where Jews were used as a tool to place the blame. However, as was the case then, the real issue lies within the state itself. It is to blame for its lack of pride in itself. Not decent upstanding foreigners who come over here to slog their arses off to do jobs the average Englishman can no longer be arsed to do, as he’d rather take the social benefits instead of some real work. We do not focus on the majority who come over here to make something of theselves. Instead we focus on the minority who do not adapt to our society and yes, I admit, these people must be dealt with to prevent re-occurence. The reason this country has gone to shit however, is a lack of people wanting to work, to pull their fingers out of their arses and stop blaming everyone else. The lack of responsibility is frankly appalling.

(If you've got this far then bugger me, you're doing well).

The younger section of society blames everything on capitalism. It is supposedly ‘cool’ to blame such a system. There are people everywhere shouting and screaming about communism and socialism. Like it’d make any difference whatsoever? No system works in a society. We’re all too obnoxious to do anything to help ourselves. The human race is a curse unto itself it seems.

While im at it, I must say the one thing that really irritates me is religion. The human races one great flaw, religion, the unwavering need to believe in something ‘unworldly’…and why? For ‘comfort and sanctity’ from the world it seems according to those who I ask. So we believe in things we cannot prove or grasp and understand in order to provide comfort? Such things only provide comfort to those who are contempt with not challenging anything in life. How can there be a religion in a world full of hate and despair? What sort of sick, sadist of a god gets a kick out of rape, murder, genocide, infanticide and natural disaster? Is god Fred West? I bastard hope not. No a god of mine could ever exist in a world like this. I can’t help but feel that everyone in this world should believe in themselves, and each other, not in false teachings, supposedly holy books, artefacts and gods. If we just believed in ourselves and those around us, maybe just maybe, we would become a decent race that progresses. Maybe this accounts for another reason for why I am feeling the way I am, why I feel empty and that I’m missing something, because I refuse to believe in anything other than myself? Or is it because I cannot find anyone out there to believe in me? Who knows?

Religion is simply a tool, propaganda if you must, to rally once separated peoples under one banner, to unite them against a common enemy. Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire, a man celebrated much by Christians. He brought Christianity to the Roman Empire, and why? The empire had an increasing number of Christians within it and some Romans worshipping traditional Roman gods. It was too difficult to divide his people on the grounds of him vs. his enemy…however he could easily divide them by religion, and he could gain a stronger support but converting his empire to Christianity. God is a weapon. Why does the bible keep changing and evolving? Supposedly to reflect the state of society, how can a religious document do this? Religion is always used as a weapon by those in seemingly untenable positions. Religion causes regression. It has never been any other way.

The Media is another aspect of our society which further aids regression. It fuels the fire of discontent at the back of fragile and somewhat dim-witted minds with their propaganda. The phrasing of stories to portray their views no matter what the occasion would delight any soothsayer.

I’ve witnessed those close to me slowly get caught and manipulated by media writing especially from newspapers to believe twisted versions of the truth. I suppose this transition has been one of the big causes of my disillusionment with society as a whole. These causes range from political to that of musical and social disillusionment. Nothing applies to me any more. Nothing is specific to me. New music, new trends, new phases, new movements, new cultures, new ideologies (or re-branded ones it seems), none apply to me. I see myself turning further back in time for music, inspiration and influence. I see myself losing acquaintances at a faster rate than I acquire them. I find myself stuck in a rut, in a black hole that only devours me. I can’t bear the country I live in, the city of my birth, my fellow locals, any of it. All I see is a rise in local loyalties and extreme nationalism. What’s next? Feudalism? Will we go to war with the French? For old times sake at least? I find it all increasingly pathetic. The world moves on and this country and my home town just does not seem to move with it.

I come from Stoke-on-Trent, a city made up of towns, which for some ungodly reason have been linked together through the endless urban sprawl we get due to slack laws on green field developments. Stoke and its inhabitants like 50 years behind the rest of the UK. It thinks it should still be mining seams of coal and producing pottery despite the rest of the world doing all this at a much cheaper (and in some cases better) products. Stoke is full of backward thinking, illiterate, dull, dim-witted individuals with cave-man personas. When people ask where I come from, what the hell do I say? "Outside of Stoke", to say you're from it automatically associates it either Shit or Robbie Williams, and believe me they're pratically one of the same. Stokies in a nut shell spend far too long thinking about what it has been. They don't turn their attention to what it is becoming. A half way point in the UK, where haulage companies and supermarkets build distribution warehouses. Where the old industrial sector has an alarming growth in safe storage lock ups. Is this the future of stoke? If so, see you all later, Im off.

I used to love Stoke, I once had a great pride in it, that was until I actually looked at it in more detail, I looked behind the facades of shops, down alleyways, in the rougher areas. I looked at the queue outside the job centre. I sat down on a bench in the centre of the high street and watched. Bastard hell, I saw some shit that day. Still, I have a wierd love for the football team and I will never know why.

If we were to uncover the main reason behind everything that has caused me to be where I am now it would revolve around politics. A nation that has over a decade of one party rule, under the same head of state is not a democracy. Society changes rapidly, far outpacing governments and policy. How can a government justify a 4 to 5 year period of power without a change between these periods of governor or anything? It can never maintain such popularity over this period therefore. This creates a bigger number of people turning against the party. This just creates disillusionment. Once an election has been won, the defeated are demoralised. They effectively can do nothing until the next election. This applies not only to parties but also to the people. These people then drift aimlessly and try to exploit minor openings and claim petty victories.

All that needs to be done every election is to alternate between Labour and Conversative, even a change as simple as that will introduce massive differences. There will no longer be stupid 10 year plans, projects will be completed quicker, goals will be achievable and there will not be as much slack behaviour from politicians. It is so bastard simple yet people just turn to the extreme parties and expect to see a change. Yes, they will get a change all right, just one that sets us back 20 years. Well done.

Despite this the UK needs revitalising. It needs a brighter future. We need to focus on development of education and create a new breed of thinkers. In the 17th century onwards we generated some of the greatest thinkers since ancient Greece. We need to re-create this, we need to develop a highly efficient and strong education system. Everything else stems from education. This is not seen in our current society. Focus goes to the economy and on unemployment and inflation etc. If we have thinkers, we innovate, we develop and change. We adapt to society and reduce disillusionment as we become society. We become the economy. The world rotates around us and this is what our focus should be on. New thinking creates new approaches, which keeps us ahead of the game

So we come back to the beginning. It seems that once you ‘grow up’ so to speak, you accept defeat. Thus allowing defeatism and inevitability become an instant part of your life. You lose your anger with the world, you forget your past hates and the things that once made your skin boil and keep you awake at night. You become complacent, and contempt despite the madness around you. You keep your head, you keep yourself, you accept the world and everyone in it as they are, and you accept that you alone cannot change a thing. It is refreshing to see that not everyone in the world has given up on making a difference. There again it depends if you are in the situation to make a difference. Some still chase their young ambitions, it is refreshing to se as we all should...We should not forget the thoughts and ambitions we once had purely because we thought (and knew) we couldnt achieve them. These are the thoughts that matter. I suppose a little part of me will always try to change and revolutionise…but it secretly knows that there is no point. I know such things should be left to those wanting to forward their careers (and sell more albums).

Growing up is all about accepting society and in a sense, the futility of everything. Knowing that you will be nothing but a small cog in a vast machine that hasn’t been well maintained. Surely the meaning of life is that there isn’t one? Or if there is then it must be simply “accept futility”. I’m sure if you’ve been reading this then you have lost me by now….long before now in fact. To be frank I’ve lost myself.