Growing Down

Not a thing in this world you could compare

To the dreams of a child without a care

An imagination so free untouched by life

Full of wonder and magic while free of strife

Dark Wizards battle for the rule of the land

While Heroes charge forth with their weapons in hand

Great battles are fought in the field of dreams

The victorious voice lost in joyous screams

To see the world through the eyes of a child

With an imagination that is free to run wild

Growing up is a path we will all pursue

But can we grow back down to a mind so true?

The Kindness Of Strangers

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Tennessee Williams - 'A Streetcar named Desire

I thought I would share something with you, about the kindness of strangers.  I lived in London for a few years, a city which for many epitomises rudeness and ignorance, cold hearted and uncaring.  I would vehemently defend Londoners for having lived there and known those who live there too I have always posed that the reason Londoners don't speak to people that much is because the city is so full of tourists and so full of people from so many cultures they just don't know who will share their language and interests.  For this reason my theory states that Money is the Language of London.  You can see it in the many stores the markets and even in the streets, some conversations are dull, like buying a drink and some are colourful like a customer haggling with a market trader.

Londoners are not cold hearted I would pedal this belief as strongly as I could and in their defence I have a story to share.  For you see a Londoner may not be the one to speak first, but with the majority if you stop them and ask them a question or ask for help most will endeavour to help you out.  There are the cases however that are most warm and touching in a city portrayed as being so cold.  Two of these incidents I witnessed both in Gay Clubs in London.  One was in Astoria and one was in Scala.  The story of both is more or less the same.  A young man seemingly heartbroken or distraught disappears into a stairwell and with his emotions overwhelming him he drops his head into his hands and cries.  In Astoria, this happened in the middle of the Dance floor with hundreds of people around him a few came and sat on the dance floor with him and spoke to him.  I don't know what they said I couldn't hear for the music.  In Popstarz at Scala I did hear well, the two guys were most certainly strangers.  The second sat with him, I was with my friends at the time trying to call someone from the quiet of the stairwell, there was no answer but I was distracted by the events above so I didn't really care.

This world would be a far better place if we all shared this mentality.  In studying Psychology lately I have read of a few things, the most disturbing being the case of Kitty Genovese which if you have not read I will save the horror and highlight the simple fact it portrays - The "Bystander effect" is the action or lack of action a crowd of people will collectively exhibit as the response of expectation.  In Kitty's case this ended horribly as the crowd in this case being her neighbours didn't act.  Of 38 people who witnessed her murder and death not one called the police.  This wasn't out of callousness but rather out of the response that "someone else will" and in many ways that mentality leads to one simple truth - you are safer within a small number of people as opposed to a large crowd.  You will be more likely to be helped.

What all this has to do with me and you is simple: we are all susceptible to the Bystander Effect but you can chose to be exempt.  You can choose to be kind, you can choose to be the one that breaks the silence and above all else you can choose to be the one to help.

To echo the quote at the beginning of this post, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers and in this last week or so I have really needed people to talk to, and in that time 4 people I have not spoken to in years came back into my life, all through random paths.  I can't help but smile at this and be grateful to whatever higher power guided them to me.  I do not believe in coincidences.  Everything happens for a reason, as random as chaotic as those coincideces may be:

Perfect Order is Perfect Chaos and Perfect Chaos is Perfect Order

Meyers Briggs Personality Types

The Meyers Briggs Type Indicator determines your personality type by asking a series of questions.  Your result will be a four letter acronym that sums up your personality:

I / E - Introverted or Extroverted
S / N - Sensing or Intuition
F / T - Feeling or Thinking
J / P - Judgement or Perception

My result was INFP - I am Introverted, I rely on iNtuition, I rely on my Feelings and I base my actions on my Perceptions not on my judgement.

Jung describes my personality type as:

"Questor". High capacity for caring.
Emotional face to the world. High sense of
honour derived from internal values

Which if you actually knew me you would probably agree with entirely.

Jung also states that INFP personality types comprise 4.4% of the overall population - so I'm relatively rare.  What's your personality type?  Do you agree with the result and what % of the population share your type?

Take your free Meyers Briggs Personality Test here:
http://similarminds.com/jung.html

Love on the Line

This post is split in two sections, the first is yet another short story, the second is the reality - the true story on which it was based.

The Fiction:  Love on the Line

Hasan Patel was born and raised in Dhaka in Bengal, India.  He worked in a call centre for a British telecoms company handling account enquiries.  He was relatively lucky to have a job that was comfortable for he knew people who had far worse jobs than he. the money was crap but he made a living that was all that mattered to him.  The call centre had a practice, that no employee used their real names, instead they had to have 'Anglicised' names or names that did anything but imply they were foreign to their customers.  Hasan got to pick his name and he chose the name Peter Bridges.  He quite liked the name and quite liked the idea of Britain as a whole.  He wanted to travel to London and see the sights, yet he would probably never be able to afford it.

He handled many calls, some were happy customers making silly enquiries of little importance but occasionally they got a 'screamer' - a customer that require you turn down the volume on the headset lest you go deaf for the tirade of abuse you were about to receive.  He'd heard it all before of course and didn't take much notice.  It doesn't take long working in a call centre before you realise that the call means a lot more to the customer than it does to you.  All you care about are your key performance indicators, the number of calls you get through having satisfied the customer.

On one particular day Hasan had a call from a young woman from London, who had recently been travelling around Ireland and had been charged roaming costs to her contract.  She was livid for the charges, she didn't think Ireland was 'foreign' and didn't justify the extortionate amounts it cost to phone home while she was there - she was only to happy to let Hasan become aware of this fact, and one might have thought everyone within a five mile radius would have heard her too.  Her name was Jenny and she had a set of lungs on her that could make any Italian Opera singer quiver.  Needless to say for the first half of the call Hasan's volume control was at near-mute listening only for when she would stop to draw breath.

After some time he managed to calm her down and agreed to reduce her bill but not to write off the costs entirely.  She eventually conceded after a long drawn out tirade of yet more abuse.  When she was calm yet again she told him it wasn't his fault but didn't but didn't apologise for the abuse.  They spoke a while longer and she took a liking to his voice and asked him where he was exactly, he lied and told her he was in the UK, he didn't know if she believed him or not but either way, she asked him for his number but he refused stating company policy forbid exchanging personal details - which it did, despite this she decided she didn't want to leave it like that so she gave him her email address.  He could not write it down but it was easily remembered.

A few hours later while on lunch break he sat staring at the computer screen in contemplation, he hesitated but then gave in.  He set up an email account in the UK with his name Peter Bridges and sent her an email.  He didn't expect it to go any further.  Over the coming weeks they shared many things by email and eventually he told her the truth about where he was and how he lived.  She didn't reply for a few days but eventually he checked his email in hope one day to find a single email in his inbox, it was from her.  They continued talking, yet more weeks passed and as things came to a head she asked if he would mind if she came to Dhaka to visit him, knowing he would not be able to go to the UK to visit her.

They spent two weeks together in Dhaka, his days spent at work his nights with her and weekends together.  His feelings for her grew stronger.  She flew back to the UK and they stayed in touch, sharing emails, talking over the internet as he visit internet cafés in his spare time.  She came back to Dhaka once again to visit him and since he had let her come and go once before without sharing how he really felt he let her know his true feelings.  She was not surprised and she felt the same.  Over the next few months a lot of things passed but in the end Jenny paid for flights for Hasan to come to London, he applied for a visa and he stayed with her.  He found a job, in a call centre in the UK.  You might think that is odd but it was all he knew, he was certainly experienced and he knew exactly how to handle people.  The money was a bonus too, he was paid ten times his weekly wage in Dhaka per hour for the same work and he was in London the city he had longed to visit and most importantly he was with Jenny, the girl he loved.  They got married, he gained a wife and in the process citizenship to the UK - he would never again have to leave the girl he loved and he would never have to leave him.


The Reality:  When Sally met Duncan

If you are my friend on facebook you may have seen this story before, when it actually happened: [names are changed for anonymity of course]

A friend of mine knows a girl who shall we say is a little eccentric, but in all is a typical Norn Iron girl, up for a laugh and give anything a go.  Despite her good nature she has a mean streak too and woe betide anyone who in her eyes should be taking "liberties" or putting her in any position where she feels used for she won't be long in letting you know how she really feels and she's quick to throw a punch - yes I assure you girls can throw a punch and you certainly wouldn't want to be on the end of hers.  One day her phone bill came in, being on contract there is always the risk that it could be higher than you expect and on this occasion it was.  She was livid and as she called the company all the "robbing bastards" of the day she got on the phone to them and got put through to a call centre in Liverpool.

She was put through to a guy named Duncan and after berating the poor boy on the phone for near half an hour she finally let him speak and in his discretion he managed to get her bill cut in half.  That should have been the end of the call but it wasn't she kept talking, because she liked the sound of his voice.  So she said it was nothing personal, he said it was all the same to him he would feel the same, the phone call went on and ended with the two exchanging their numbers.  Yea you read that right she got the number of a guy in a call centre she didn't know anything about other than the fact that she liked his voice.

They text, called and over the next few months they developed a liking for each other, eventually she booked flights to Liverpool to visit him, and he did the same to visit her, a few trips back and forth and she eventually moved to Liverpool to be with him.  They are now married they live together and I think she was pregnant last time I heard, the baby would be born by now I reckon.  So yea, if you think the story of the guy and girl who met through a call centre is unbelievable, it's actually true so go figure - truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Wear Sunscreen

Something Random:

Lyrics:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97.
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience...
I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked...
You're not as fat as you Imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blind side you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy;
Sometimes you're ahead,
Sometimes You're behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults;
If you Succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
Life.
The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don't Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body, Use it every way you can... Don't be afraid of it, or what other people Think of it,
It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own...

Dance... even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, but I've been waiting to be there
For you.
And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings;
They are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will Philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund, Maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen...

(Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, but I've been waiting to be there
For you. And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.
Everybody's free.)

Halloween Movies

Halloween is fast approaching and in the spirit or lack of as the case may be I thought I'd share something that has been playing on my mind - Halloween Movies.

They suck.  There has not been a good one in years.  In my youth Wes Craven was a God but even now the Scream franchise has been bled dry - quite apt given the amount of blood he used in those movies.  Gone still are the movies that as a child scared the shit out of ya, nightmare on elm street and Freddy Krueger are irreplaceable.  Even so on the lighter side of things even the parody / spoof movies have dried up.  The Scary Movie franchise has been bled dry too - although to be fair when you create a sub-genre like that it can't exactly persist if the genre as a whole is failing.

I Know What You Did Last Summer, Valentine, Scream, Scary Movie, Nightmare on Elm Street, to name but a few.  In recent years the movie industry has not fed our appetite, year on year for almost 5 or 6 years each Halloween they released yet another Saw Movie - that franchise has really been overdone.  These movies miss the point of Halloween, these movies aren't meant to be gore and disgusting to watch, they are meant to be scary.

I want proper Halloween Movies again!  I want movies that are going to scare the shit out of you, not ones that are potentially gonna make you puke.

Or at the very least, bring back Movies that on some level play to our darker sense of humour, like the Child's Play Movies and the Chucky Movies - Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky.  Bride of Chucky starring the amazing Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany whose voice is the epitome of the saying "It's like hot honey dribbling down a gang plank"

Like, Lust and Love

I find myself quoting a guy I despise, well despise is a bit of a harsh word, I don't particularly despise him, I despise the circumstances through which we came to meet.  Truth be told I don't know that much about him through firsthand experience, all I know of him I have learned through others, and as age will often teach, the opinions of others, more often than not, will be warped.

Anyway this is beside the point.  When I first met him in person it was in London and we spoke of many things, but one thing in particular stuck with me for some time and that was his philosophy of the three L's.  Like, Lust and Love.  He said that everyone will meet three people in their life, three separate people.  One will be their first like, one their first lust and one their first love.  The ideal order being Like, Lust then Love although not necessarily in that order.

Your first like you may be any age and you may not fully understand it when it happens.  To like, does not imply any degree of attraction.  To like someone is to form a connection with them, a desire to be near them and to be their friend.  I experienced my first like when I was barely a teenager and in many ways I still like him, even though we don't speak any more.

Your first lust will be the first person you develop true sexual feelings of attraction for.  This may be someone in your life or it could be a celebrity or anyone really.  My first lust was a guy in my class.  That eventually ran its course though, as all lust it seems will run its course, either dying of its own accord or developing into something more.

Finally your first love is the first person you truly fall for.  On this final one I could write a book and I don't particularly feel like sharing my feelings on this matter right now as it would be a case of endless repetition. 

So we have our three L's.  As I said before and as He said too, they will be three separate people.  You may experience all three with people but in terms of who will hold the title of first, only one title of each can be held by any one person, reason being if you are with someone, only one of these desires should ultimately define your relationship.  You can lust after the one you love, but love trumps lust, they hold the title of love and so on.

So what is the point of all this?  Well the point is to ask yourself a few questions, namely for each of the above who was your first and most importantly can you tell the difference?

Some experience their first like, and mistake it for love or lust and pursue that person that leads to things like the 40 year old married guy with 2 kids who is a repressed homosexual because he mistook like for lust, only to finally experience his first lust which then causes his world to tumble down and that of all around him.

Then there is the person who experiences their first like, then they experience their first lust and mistake lust for love.  They pursue their lust and end up married, and several years down the line they are not happy and both know it was a mistake but refuse to admit it to one another or worse still [in my eyes] they have an open relationship as they hold on to that last bastion of pride that insists in their mind that they were not wrong that they really loved the other person and that they just need to have different sexual partners.

Then we have the ideal, the person who has experienced their first like, known what it is to like someone and be liked.  They have experienced their first lust, known what it is to lust after someone and be lust after themselves.  They have experienced their first love, and maybe they end up being with their first love, maybe they spend the rest of their lives together or maybe they end up with their second or their third or whatever.

The reality though is that all of the above is opinion it's not fact, it will make a lot of sense to some people and it will be complete bullshit to others.  Wherever you fall on your judgement of all that is written here I still ask of you the same questions, who was the first person you liked, the first you lust after and the first you loved?  Where they different people or did you only have one?  Most importantly, can you tell the difference?  Not just in hindsight but in the moment when you feel these feelings can you tell which is which?

Elijah

There is a cave within the Earth hidden deep under ground farther down than any man has ever been.  Within this cave lies all the desires of Mankind everything he could ever want.  Riches beyond any man's wildest dreams, gems and jewels of unquantifiable worth and rarity, and the power to bend and shape the will of all mankind into the design of your own choosing.

That cave is hidden far beyond our reach yet we have searched for thousands of years for its entrance for the path that will take us there.  All this has been in vain yet ne'er a man existed that set forth in search of that cave whose story was not immortalised in myths and legends.  The Cave of Secrets, The Cave of Treasures, The Mystical cave, this place has known many names.  This cave was sought for thousands of years and never found - until one man came forth and set about on an amazing journey to find this cave, his name, was Elijah.

Within this man the Gods had entrusted and the fates had smiled upon him, for they knew alike that this man had been blessed with virtue, for he did not seek the cave in desire of its contents but instead sought the cave in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

For thousands of years hundreds of men set upon this quest and fell to their death, consumed by greed and their lust for power.  However as is often the way with destiny, fate it seems is not without a sense of irony.  For knowing this man's great destiny and the great path he would one day walk, his beginnings where all but humble and his adolescence would be wrought with turmoil, for before he could know truth and honesty he first sat at the table of darkness where he did feast upon deceit, vindictiveness, callousness and dishonour.

Distraction and Procrastination

Each with subtle differences they both more or less allude to the same thing, i.e. doing something else instead of what you should be doing.  In many ways for me right now writing this post is procrastination as there are a few others things I should really be doing right now.

In listening to her words she hits the nail on the head.  I love Ellen she's one of my favourite comedians.  Anyway the key words she keeps going back to are "I thought about it..." and "I thought..." and therein lies the problem.  Thinking.  No matter what it is you are meant to be doing, thinking will distract you.  There's a quote from one of my favourite Movies, if you know the movie you'll know the scene: "Do not think, become!". [10th Kingdom]

If you want to beat procrastination and stay focused you need to stop thinking about the things you want to do and just do them.  This post is motivated in part by a friend who had some Uni coursework to hand in and left it to the final days to actually work on it - for the record I did that too so I'm quite a hypocrite for standing on my soapbox right now, but what I did and what I should have done are not necessarily the same thing.

How do you beat procrastination?  How do you stay focused in your work?

Dancing Robots (Quadrocopters)

On a lighter note, I have been working on a programming project for the website I am building.  I had to revisit many of my coursework modules from University during this time, the most heavily referenced being the AI Modules [Artificial Intelligence] which I'll use in a Game to create an opponent worthy of playing against.

Software Agents, [AI programs] despite being one of the most frustrating things to program are actually one of my favourite areas of software development.  The field has so much potential in my eyes and that of many others.  For now though in revisiting those areas I thought I'd share with you a video or two, in these videos you will see Quadrocopters.  A Quadrocopter is an autonomous robot - it can think for itself and decide what it wants to do based on its set of actions its environment and it BDI - Beliefs Desires and Intentions.

As you watch these videos remember that these robots are not being manually controlled, they are responding in the way they choose to the environment.  They can hear the music and they can communicate with each other and they decide how best to move and react.  The result?  Robots Dancing.


If you are interested and would like to learn more then you can by visiting ETH Zurich's website: Music In Motion

Lyrical Lesbians

Were they really or were they not?  Who knows, who really cares.  There's a t.A.T.u. song called 'Not Gonna Get us'  which in its day was quite huge even with me although the reason everyone else loved it was for the two female Russian singers who in their music video for 'All The Things She Said' had kissed.  For me however it was the lyrics that I loved - the most meaningful of which which I shall share now:


Starting from here, let's make a promise
You and me, let's just be honest
We're gonna run, nothing can stop us
Even the night that falls all around us

Soon there will be laughter and voices
Beyond the clouds over the mountains
We'll run away on roads that are empty
Lights from the airfield shining upon you


By now you should probably have concluded that a lot of the music I like isn't really for the Music itself but rather for the lyrics and the use of language, the expression, the motivation and the emotion behind those words. This song, co-writtenby one of the Russian Girls, Elena 'Lena' Kiper and in my mind serves as an explanation of the desire to run away and escape peoples' expectations.  I think this song came about directly off the back of the Lesbian image that t.A.T.u had portrayed and whether or not that image was real is irrelevant the simple apparent truth that they had become trapped by it served as the motivation for the desire to escape.

I was a teenager at the time and I knew my sexuality, it didn't help however that they were Lesbians and everyone seemed to 'like' them it actually made my head spin that they were somehow seen more acceptable to my peers than two guys - this lead to me, for many years believing Lesbians were the gays who got off easy.   Thankfully this misconception was later dashed and I was educated on the truth, by lesbian friends and by my membership of the NUS LGBT.  I remember the conversations with many members one year at conference and the issues of bullying and persecution etc that Lesbians also faced as well as Gay men - it has to be said I was never so disheartened to be proven wrong part of me actually hoped that my misconceptions were true and they did have an easier life.

This post has come about after a series of conversations with a lesbian friend who as of late has seen a lot of male attention and the foremost taunt she receives so regular is the echo of that for Gay men "you just haven't met the right <insert opposite sex here> yet", or worse still "you just need a good fucking".  This post isn't aimed at anyone I know, it is aimed at any young Gay Men or Women or anyone LGBT, prejudice and stereotypes exist yes, but thankfully that's all they are - warped simplified views of life.  No truer are these stereotypes than those that state that all straights are bigoted, neither of these are true.  You will meet genuine people in life sooner or later who won't care what sexuality you are, and they themselves may be any sexuality at all.

It gets better it really does.

To anyone Gay or Straight or whatever your sexuality, if you know someone young who is growing up who may or may not be bullied, subjected to abuse, is different or even those that appear completely 'normal' I would ask you just to say one thing to them - tell them how proud of them you are and that you will always love them and be there for them if they ask for your help.  The worst that can happen is that they will look at you like you are a little odd or that you've gone a bit funny.  The best that can happen is that you could save someone's life by giving them hope.

The Psychology of Sleep

This post is a matter of opinion not a matter of fact.

It seems to me that Sleep much more than just rest represents a closing point within our minds.  In much the same way as the end of a Movie, sleep positions itself as the end of our day and the end of the Movie that has played out throughout it.  Sometimes there is a sequel and days will be linked with shared thoughts, unanswered questions and leftover threads the previous day never addressed.

In many ways sleep is a reset of our lives that happens on a daily basis, it lets us leave behind the previous day and begin again.  There will be days when certain thoughts and feelings consume you, the worries of certain debts, something that happened at work, or school, something someone said or maybe even something that you have come to associate with a specific date.

I often find myself in the above situations and when sleep comes I will awaken the next day without a thought of the previous day and any thought is for only a split second before it is dismissed and life goes on.  With that thought I leave you with a song, the lyrics of which mean a lot to me right now so I have posted them below the video.

A New Day Has Come - Celine Dion

I was waiting for so long

For a miracle to come

Everyone told me to be strong

Hold on and don't shed a tear

Through the darkness and good times

I knew I'd make it through

And the world thought I had it all

But I was waiting for you

Hush, now

I see a light in the sky

Oh, it's almost blinding me

I can't believe

I've been touched by an angel with love

Let the rain come down and wash away my tears

Let it fill my soul and drowned my fears

Let it shatter the walls for a new sun

A new day has...come

Where it was dark now there's light

Where there was pain now there's joy

Where there was weakness, I found my strength

All in the eyes of a boy

Hush, now

I see a light in the sky

Oh, it's almost blinding me

I can't believe

I've been touched by an angel with love

Let the rain come down and wash away my tears

Let it fill my soul and drowned my fears

Let it shatter the walls for a new sun

A new day has...come

Let the rain come down and wash away my tears

Let it fill my soul and drowned my fears

Let it shatter the walls for a new sun

A new day has...come

Unity

From a distance you look like my friend,
Even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
What all this fighting is for.
'From A Distance' - Julie Gold

From a distance there is Unity and this world is at peace.  Close up however the truth is anything but this serene image.  In displays of great Unity, the Olympics, the Football and Rugby World Cups, the Commonwealth Games among others we come together and we stand side by side.  Despite the wars, the fighting, the grudges and the hostility we stand together in Unity.

This is quite a sombre post but there's not much on this you can really say, other than, in these times of Unity we stand side by side and it is so hard to believe that we want to kill each other.

If only the spirit of these games could last forever instead of a few weeks every 4 years.

Ambiguity

I know myself.  I've had a long time to get to know myself, 23 years now.  I know what I feel and most of the time I know what I want.  Every now and then there comes a point, hurdles arise and feelings emerge that I don't understand.  In these times I am ambiguous to myself.  I can't say how I feel or say what I really want.

The problem comes when you don't know what you want, you tend to make blind decisions.  You say and do things that you think you want.  Sometimes they go right and you feel great.  Sometimes they go wrong and when they do you either regret that decision or you regret it's effects.

I'm writing this after making a decision, a decision I don't regret, but I do regret its effects.

In a recent tweet I said, sometimes the thought of being forever alone appeals, at least then you will never ruin someone else's life or hurt them - intentionally or unintentionally.  At least if you're alone there can be no collateral damage.  I have to wonder how much truth comes of this.  I know in reality it's easier said than done.

I place this poem here since in many ways it reflects my feelings, however ambiguous they are to me right now:

untitled

Friends in my life have came and went

But I'm grateful for the time with them I spent

A few good friends I hold dear to my heart

May never cometh the day when they should part

These people are rare and so hard to find

With them you connect through heart and mind

Never a scar on their heart you wish to place

Never a tear you wish to wash their face

You can't help how you feel, this you should not hide

The Game of Love is played with prejudice and pride

A story is written with the words that you share

A story defined by love and care

There will be days of sorrow and woe

Days of happiness that others won't know
There may be days of sadness and strife

But to be in love is to share your life

A Psychology Lesson: The 3 Brains

There are a number of levels to Human consciousness, the way in which we think and perceive the world and ultimately the way in which we act is controlled be one or more of these levels and in some cases by all levels.

In the simplest terms there are 3 main levels of consciousness, two of which are polar opposites and the third of which forms a grey area which resides between the two.  The terms used to refer to these levels are:

Conscious Mind
Perhaps the most intuitive and familiar definition, you should recognise this one quite easily and you should be able to define it quite easily too.  Simply put your Conscious Mind is the "Brain" which you are in complete control of - or rather, is in complete control of you, whichever way you want to look at it.

Sub-Conscious Mind
This definition however and the one below you would be forgiven for considering synonymous and thinking they were the same thing.  They are not.  The Sub-Conscious Mind is what you have probably defined in your mind as being the Unconscious Mind - this definition would be in error as the Unconscious Mind is completely different, but we'll get to that.  Simply put the Sub-Conscious Mind is a grey area that sits between your consciousness and your unconscious mind.  This area is where thoughts from the unconscious filter through, in both directions.  This can best be described as your day-dream like side.  This is where thoughts 'occur' to you before you fully pay attention to them.  It is also where your body's senses are managed - that is your perception of the senses.  Your sub-conscious will see, hear, smell, taste and touch things and then deem if they are worthy of primary thought [think now] or secondary thought [think later].

Unconscious Mind
Now for the gorey bit, and believe me it is quite gorey.  Your unconscious mind is completely abstracted from you and for good reason.  Within this area of your mind your Brain 'trains' itself.  In this area you run through hundreds, thousands maybe even millions of scenarios everyday without ever even knowing it.  Inside this area of your mind your brain asks questions.  Imagine you are standing at a train station surrounded by people.  This area of your brain will ponder things like "what would happen if I jumped on the tracks?", "what would it feel like to be hit by the train?", "what if I screamed right now what would people say or do?" etc, the thoughts get progressively more dark and lean in towards questions such as the repercussions of violently attacking someone.

Now I am sure you are sitting there thinking "I've never thought any of that" well I'm sorry [not really, quite smug actually] to be the one to tell you this but the reality is you have - on the unconscious level, you are simply unaware of it on the conscious level and that is why it is abstracted.  There are mental walls that divide the three minds and prevent certain things from crossing over.

Sigmund Freud was one of the first Psychologists to study the unconscious mind and I believe he also coined the term itself.  Since then however we have come to understand it a lot more.  The walls, it seems are not so concrete.

All I have said still stands.  The unconscious mind is responsible to training, it does however communicate with the conscious mind.  The unconscious mind will feed certain results and conclusions to the subconscious mind.  Likewise the sub-conscious may feed experiences to the unconscious for examination.  If you have ever spent hours trying to solve a problem, gone to sleep and woken up the next day seemingly with an answer emerging from nowhere this can be explained by this process.  The unconscious mind constantly receives information to use in its simulations from the sub-conscious mind.

Build It Up and Tear It Down
The problem with all of this is, that with various illnesses and disorders and even through large amounts of alcohol consumption or other depressants, these walls "fall down" and thoughts that should really stay in the unconscious mind emerge.  This is bad. Very bad because the thoughts in your unconscious mind are not your own - they are the result of endless permutations of various scenarios and more often than not those that the unconscious mind retains for study are those that are in the extreme.  You won't "just like" something you'll either love it like it's the best thing in the world and everyone should know [typical reaction of coke addicts] or you'll hate something, so much you want to destroy it and make sure it never exists again [typical reaction people claim as the result of "a bad batch" ].  These emotions may or may not be related to your conscious emotions.  You may consciously love something and the emerging emotion can be the complete opposite.  This is actually quite logical, remember the Unconscious mind's purpose is to think about things your conscious mind couldn't bear to think of - the scenario of polarised emotions to the ones you feel is quite apt here.

All of the above can be reversed however as anti-depressants and other inhibitors build these walls back up and make them a lot stronger than they are naturally..  This is why people using anti-depressant tablets can seem to be themselves at times and at others they seem completely robotic, and it is also why many users of anti-depressants can't handle new situations or "can't think" about them.  All of this and more is the reason why you should never blame anyone for their actions when drugged or drunk - they really don't know what they are doing.  Their actions may have some basis in their everyday life and conscious thoughts but the things they do are things that they would never do if they were in full control.

The French Are Not Rude

There seems to be a stereotype that the French are rude.  Personally I have absolutely no idea where this has come from as in my experience French people are anything but.  They can be rather to the point at times, I could maybe see that being misconstrued as rudeness.  I know that Germans are also sometimes considered rude especially by people from the UK or the USA namely due to the severe lack of 'small talk' in their mannerisms.

On the French, I have met nothing but polite and considerate French people.  Even travelling on the Metro, people allow passengers off the trains before boarding and they even say "excusez-moi", "merci" and "pardon" - something which, for someone who has lived in London is quite bizarre.  The London Underground is akin to a cell in Azkaban, filled with a soul-sucking silence and cold connection-less inhabitants.

I'm sure not everyone in London is really like that either though.  Having lived there I did meet a few people during my time who were very outgoing and tried to break away from this normality.  All of these are just Stereotypes though.  There are many that float around, Asians are good at Maths, Irish and Scottish people are alcoholics, Scottish people will eat anything if it's deep fried in batter, Black guys are well-endowed and so on and so forth. 

You have to ask yourself though, where do Stereotypes come from?  In Psychology, stereotypes can be explained as self-perpetuating through conformity.  The theory of conformity states that individuals when placed in a larger common group will take on the characteristics of that group in order to conform - even if it means denying their own individual desires [this oppression of our own desires is known as deindividuation].  In this context a Stereotype becomes an expected behaviour of a group, and so long as members of that group are seen to be conforming to that expectation and those who don't are not highly visible, then the group as a while will behave in that manner.

In my personal experience I can cite at least one very prominent memory of seeing this process take place.  While working in a shop with a team of around 72 people, a new member of staff joined.  He was bright, highly motivated and wanted to motivate others.  He tried his best to change the way people in the shop had come to think of their work as mundane but eventually his personality broke down and he accepted the "norm" of the shop and 'slowed down' to the pace that everyone else had been working.  You can try and argue who was right in this scenario, who would be the better example but it doesn't matter really.  The only thing that matters is what the majority of the group and more importantly, the most highly visible section of the group had been behaving.

The point of visibility is imperative to understand.  No more so than on the Internet can we demonstrate this importance - in new and emerging technologies and in new enterprises online.  Take Facebook for example.  Facebook rose to its success because the most visible group, of early adopters and students where the first groups to embrace the technology.  Google+ continued this trend knowing full-well that at the beginning, the public at large is not the intended audience.  If you want to control the sheep, you take the Shepherds first - they are different, they are more visible and ultimately their example is the example the flock will follow.

So let's see how people identify themselves.  Are you a follower or a leader?