Here's a formless rant i wrote a few days into my new job (not that that has a great deal to do with it)....

Remember when you were young / You shone like the sun / Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes / Like black holes in the sky / Shine on you crazy diamond
Remember when you were young / We had so much fun / Shine on you crazy diamond

Perhaps it was just that you’re naïve and innocent outlook that left you unaware of responsibility, repercussion and retribution?
A perspective free from the evil and hatred, that exists deep within us. The evil that can take years to manifest, can take years of repression, and still not surface. Waiting for the one straw, slowly floating toward the earth, to fall effortlessly onto the dromedary of your personality.

Are humans naturally evil, or is it merely an invention of ours to help delineate the good from the bad, and from the ugly?

Humans are, under the surface mostly, animals; we eat, sleep, f**k and s**t. Any other activity is that which our civilization/culture has created to divert us from the truths: we eat, sleep, f**k, s**t then die. No other animals take the time out to consider these things, as they’re too busy doing them. Not attempting to analyse how they do it, or more importantly, why they do.
We’re told it’s because they don’t have the capacity for it, this is perhaps true, but is as verifiable as it is unverifiable. Who’s going to ask a sparrow whether it’s happy with its lot?

I think these thoughts at a million hertz per second, faster than any computer, emotions swirling around my opinions, forming them and shaping them, directing them to my mouth. Conviction forces my vocal intonation into patterns I can’t control, I sound angry or sad or ecstatic. I can control these things but that takes analysis, the ability to think as I speak, about what I am saying.

Put me in front of a girl who I find incredibly attractive and all that goes out the window. My analysis goes into overdrive, I start to doubt why anything I could say could really interest this girl, or how my life could appear exciting to them. I can analyse the way I say things, as clearly and carefully as I could before, I just can’t find the words to say nor the questions to ask.

I spent three years in the study of the Media and Culture. Over that time irrespective of what I was being taught, the Media started to gain a new prominence in our lives. It started to invade our newspapers, our local news shows, the internet, and our magazines. Magazines, which up until more recently catered for hobbies and interests and diverting activities that took us out of the drudgery of our day-to-day life. Now we’re supposed to believe that adoration of celebrity is a hobby, that it is an interest, which should free us from the mundanity of our lives. Yet it doesn’t, it merely serves to underline the difference between us all, those who have and those who have not. Those who want it and those who don’t.

Hollywood has always produced stars. The ones from the golden age of cinema, as in it’s beginning to the late sixties, were global names. People who you shared deep escapist fantasies with, sat in the darkness, watching them, feeling voyeuristic either consciously or not. Beautiful people in exquisite environs living dramatic lives, the like of which normal people could only dream. But that was the beauty of it, the lives the stars led were unattainable, the products they used, the places they ate, where they holidayed; all were too expensive for an average working person. Now though, through cheap sponsorship, clothing deals with high street stores, product placement, many of the stars connotations are available to buy into. To use the same hair product of your favourite star is to become them, feel closer to them, and try to see life from their point of view.

As humans we learn jealousy and desire very soon. As children there will always be the rich child, the one who’s parents unfailingly give them everything they could ever desire, except love. It is into this world of possessions that we are thrust, we are told to work our lives away in order to make the end of our lives more enjoyable. We work for 40 years so we can die comfortably in the last 20. When are faculties are going, our bodies complain at us, our feelings are desensitised by years of world famine and war; we are expected to holiday and gallivant as if we are young once again. We get to the end of our lives with only symbols to show for it. We own our houses, having enslaved ourselves just to say it is ours. We have a new car every few years, why don’t they build them to last? The same for computers, every day they increase in power and usefulness, but what does that help us to achieve, what more can we do simply because we can do it faster? Soon computers will be reaching speeds where every improvement is imperceptible to human eyes. What good will that do us, what purpose can it serve?

I have been alive now for 24 years. In the quarter century I have been alive the world has turned faster than ever before. Between 1970 and the end of the 80’s we achieved all we could hope to on this planet. Since that time, we have done nothing new. No massive leaps in healthcare have occurred, the reason being of course that Pharmaceutical companies seek only one thing: profit. They fund research into drugs they know they’ll be able to market, they control intellectual copyright on drugs that save lives, milking the needy for all they can. They force massive spending – in this country – by the NHS, who cannot afford the prices. When the health service cannot afford certain treatments, those who can go to private healthcare companies, thus undermining the whole public sector.

Which is of course a theme that began with Thatcher and Reagan. Their belief was that people should be able to do what they want; it is the right of the individual to make their own choices. It is the individuals right to die if they cannot afford healthcare. It is the individuals right to starve if they cannot work. It is the individuals right to be fired if they do not agree with their company’s ill treatment of their workers. It is the right of the individual to trample all over others on their way to the top.

Yet there is no progress. Companies only sell us what their research tells them we’ll buy. Where is the good in that? A company creates a great new product, but it still only does what its predecessor could do, it’s just in a more friendly box/case/chassis etc. 50,000 new cars are made in Britain every year, surely we should assume that 50,000 cars go off the road in the same year? We’d be wrong. At that rate, surely over 50 years, there would be more cars than people, more cars than roads, more cars than ground to cover. What is wrong with the world today? Whose logic dictates that we must constantly produce items for leisure, time saving, and transport. Does the amount of money made by car companies mirror the investment in Public transport, or do car companies have no interest in Public transportation? No because they seek only one thing: larger profits for their shareholders. Do these shareholders seek more money to plough into charities or public services? No they only need money to have more money, like power, money corrupts all those who it touches. People want to hoard it, to feel they’ve achieved something; money is a tangible measure, a simple system of tokens that show us how successful we are.