D. H. Lawrence

“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.


Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.”

“Life and love are life and love, 

a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, 

and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. 

Live and let live, 

love and let love, 

flower and fade, 

and follow the natural curve, 

which flows on, 

pointless.”

Requiem for the American Dream

In this staggering and insightful documentary, Noam Chomsky explores corruption in policies and the dismantling of democracy. Built up with decades of research and studies, delivered in this highly accessible and understandable film, we are brought into the mind of one of this century's most influential and thought provoking philosophers.

Watch the trailer

Official Synopsis:

"In his final long-form documentary interview - filmed over four years - Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality. Tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, Chomsky lays bare the costly debris left in its wake: the evisceration of the American worker, disappearance of the living wage, collapse of the dream of home ownership, skyrocketing higher education costs placing betterment beyond reach or shackling students to suffocating debt, and a loss of solidarity that has left us divided against ourselves."

One can't help but feel more depressed than optimistic after watching, given the evident diligence and persistence of corporate powers driven by greed, prevailing. It seems like a hopeless battle; policies continue to be changed or manipulated to aid the interest of the powerful minority, while the masses suffer.

This film itself gives me optimism, the very fact that we are lucky enough in today's world to share information so easily via the internet. Today, film creation and social media are in my opinion, the two most prominent methods of sharing ideas and knowledge effectively, to the masses. Those who are happily going through life ignorant, or unsympathetic to injustice may stumble upon a thought provoking, sometimes life changing documentary or seminar online, that disturbs what they always understood to be true. We may post something online and spark a conversation that brings in information. More and more we are able to educate ourselves freely, and question what we are taught to be right and wrong.

Chomsky highlights the importance of people coming together and making themselves heard through effort and sacrifice. It all sounds like a lot of work doesn't it? To go up against The Man. It is so much easier to go through life blissfully ignorant... if you're not the oppressed. For the oppressed, where often quality of life is subsequently taken away due to the lack of understanding or empathy from those in control of wealth distribution and power (thus financial distribution to social programs), there is no other choice than to come together and disrupt the silence, to say NO, this isn't right, this needs to change.

Throughout history we have seen over and over again how easy it can be for people to be manipulated and brain washed; common scaremongering tactics, encouraging the oppressed majority to fear one another, to only think about ones self - creating an irrational people who make decisions based on fear or greed. However, we have also seen how other human emotions that are born within us cannot be suppressed. I believe we are generally naturally sympathetic creatures, it feels more comfortable to love than to hate, we are not being true to our natural selves if we live our lives by these negative attitudes. Warped powers try to drive them out because we are easier to control if we are scared. Imagine a world where people notice inequalities for what they really are, and instead of being encouraged to fear and disengage ourselves, we are encouraged to sympathise and engage - this won't do for the powerful minority as it is disruptive - far better for them if we feel as though it is not our problem to deal with, to show selfishness rather than solidarity.

We are so capable of doing wonderful things in our short existence as human beings, let us remember that. We are not stupid, ignorant followers, we are individuals with massive potential. We were not born to fear our neighbours or to ignore the needs of the less privileged. Let's continue to exploit these new ways of being heard to create a better, fairer society - because if we go along with the corporate, privatized, money fuelled society that we're headed toward, which Chomsky quite rightly describes as 'ugly' - in my opinion, it won't be long before the end of the human race. 

Rise & Shine

As Spring sets in and the days get longer, I can feel my lust for the day coming with more ease each morning. It's not quite light when I first wake up but that beautiful sunrise as I walk Finn around 7:30am is just the beautiful lift one needs for the day. 

 

"Rise and shine. I've always held such fondness for that sweet old phrase. As though we are all little Suns. As though we are all someone's Day." - Beau Taplin 

The Soul is not a Smithy

"For my own part, I had begun having nightmares about the reality of adult life as early as perhaps age seven. I knew, even then, that the dreams involved my father’s life and job and the way he seemed when he returned home from work at the end of the day. His arrival was nearly always between 5:42 and 5:45, and it was usually I who was the first to see him come through the front door. What occurred was almost choreographic in its routine. He came in already turning in order to press the door closed behind him. He removed his hat and topcoat and hung the coat in the foyer closet; he clawed his necktie loose with two fingers, took the green rubber band off of the Dispatch, entered the living room, greeted my brother, and sat down with the newspaper to wait for my mother to bring him a highball. The nightmares themselves always opened with a wide angle view of a number of men at desks in rows in a large, brightly lit room or hall. The desks were arranged in precise rows and columns like the desks of an R. B. Hayes classroom, but these were all more like the large, grey steel desks that the teachers had at the front of the room, and there were many, many more of them, perhaps 100 or more, each occupied by a man in suit and tie. If there were windows I do not remember noticing them. Some of the men were older than others, but they were all obviously adults—people who drove, and applied for insurance coverage, and had highballs while they read the paper before dinner. The nightmare’s room was at least the size of a soccer or flag football field; it was utterly silent and had a large clock on each wall. It was also very bright. In the foyer, turning from the front door while his left hand rose to remove his hat, my father’s eyes appeared lightless and dead, empty of everything we associated with his at-home persona. He was a kind, decent, ordinary looking man. His voice was deeply pitched but not resonant. Softspoken, he had a sense of humor that kept his natural reserve from seeming remote or aloof. Even when my brother and I were small, we were aware that he spent more time with us and took the trouble to show us that we were important to him a good deal more than most fathers of that era did (it was many years before I had any real idea of how our mother felt about him). The foyer was directly off of the living room, where the piano was, and at that time, I often read or played with my trucks outside of kicking range beneath the piano while my brother practiced his Hanons, and I was often the first to register the sound of my father’s key in the front door. It took only four steps and a brief sockslide into the foyer to be able to see him first as he entered on a wave of outside air. I remember the foyer as dim and cold and smelling of the coat closet, the bulk of which was filled with my mother’s different coats and matching gloves. The front door was heavy and difficult to open and close, as if the foyer were pressurized. It had a small, diamond-shaped window in the center, which we moved before I was ever big enough to see out of. He had to put his side into the door somewhat in order to make it close all the way, and I would not see his face until he turned to remove his hat and coat, but I can recall that the angle of his shoulders as he leaned into the door had the same quality as his eyes. I could not convey this quality now and most assuredly couldn’t have then, but I know that it helped inform the nightmares. His face was not at all like this on weekends off. It is in hindsight, now, that I believe the dreams to have been about adult life. At the time, I knew only their terror—much of the difficulty they complained of in getting me to lie down and go to sleep at night was due to these dreams. Nor could it always have been dusk at 5:42, though that is what I recall its being, and the inrush of outside air he brought with him as cold, and scented with burnt leaves and the sad way the street smelled at twilight, when all of the houses became the same color and all of their porch lights came on like bulwarks against something unnamable. His eyes when he turned from the door didn’t scare me, but the feeling was somehow related to being scared. Often I still had a truck in my hand. His hat went on the hatrack, his coat shouldered out of, then the coat was folded over his left arm, the closet opened with his right, the coat transferred to right hand while the third wooden coathanger from the left is again removed with the left hand. There was something about this routine that cast shadows deep down in parts of me I could not access on my own. I knew something of boredom by then, of course—at Hayes, and Riverside, or on Sunday afternoons when there was nothing to do—the fidgety type of childhood boredom that is more like worry than despair. But I do not believe I consciously connected the way my father looked at night with the far different and deeper, soul-level boredom of his job, which I knew was actuarial because in 2nd grade everyone in Mrs. Claymore’s homeroom had had to give a short presentation on what our father’s profession was. I knew that insurance was protection that adults applied for in case of risk, and I knew that it had numbers in it because of the documents that were visible in his briefcase when I got to pop its latches and open it for him, and my brother and I had had the building that housed the insurance company’s HQ and my father’s tiny window in its face pointed out to us by our mother from the car, but the actual specifics of his job were always vague. And remained so for many years. Looking back, I suspect that there was something of a cover-your-eyes and stop-your-ears quality to my lack of curiosity about just what my father had to do all day. I can remember certain exciting narrative tableaux based around the competitive, almost primitive connotations of the word breadwinner, which had been Mrs. Claymore’s blanket term for our fathers’ occupations. But I do not believe I knew or could even imagine, as a child, that for almost 30 years of 51 weeks a year my father sat all day at a metal desk in a silent, fluorescent lit room, reading forms and making calculations and filling out further forms on the results of those calculations, breaking only occasionally to answer his telephone or to meet with other insurance men in other bright, quiet rooms. With only a small and sunless north window that looked out on other small office windows in other tall grey buildings. The nightmares were vivid and powerful, but they were not the kind from which you wake up crying out and then have to try to explain to your mother when she comes what the dream was about so that she could reassure you that there was nothing like what you just dreamed in the real world" A passage from The Soul is not a Smithy by David Foster Wallace

Bye bye Bowie

David Bowie has left this world today. We mourn, deflated - to think that one of our greats has been taken, far too early, by cancer. At least he was here and he did what he did. 

While the mortal him is no more, the spirit of Bowie lives on.

Some quotes to remember him with, courtesy of International Business Times:

"I really had a hunger to experience everything that life had to offer, from the opium den to whatever. And I think I have done just about everything that it's possible to do" – interview with The Telegraph

"I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. I felt very puny as a human. I thought, "F**k that. I want to be a superhuman'"

"Fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flame / That burns your change to keep you insane" – Fame lyrics

"I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on" – Quicksand lyrics

"We spent endless hours talking about fame, and what it's like not having a life of your own any more. How much you want to be known before you are, and then when you are, how much you want the reverse" – recalling his conversation with The Beatles singer John Lennon to Time Out

"I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants" – interview with Q magazine in 1990

"To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me" – interview with Livewire's One On One

"I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring" – to his audience at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1998

"The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time"

Winter

“The English winter - ending in July to recommence in August” - Lord Byron


Finn and I still haven't quite adapted to the dark mornings.





Bolt and bar the shutter,
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow.

Horace there by Homer stands,
Plato stands below,
And here is Tully's open page.
How many years ago
Were you and I unlettered lads
Mad as the mist and snow?

You ask what makes me sigh, old friend,
What makes me shudder so?
I shudder and I sigh to think
That even Cicero
And many-minded Homer were
Mad as the mist and snow.

- W B Yeats

Truthfully I love winter; crisp sunny mornings, frost on the grass that sends dogs crazy, open fires, an extra blanket on the bed, rosy cheeks and noses, Christmas. 

It's a beautiful thing to watch the seasons change in nature if you bother to stop and notice it.

Tony Benn, 1992

If we want world peace we need to replace this ancient culture of power and greed with love and compassion. Focus less on defense and destruction, focus more on enhancing life and personal growth. If we respond to evil powers with hatred and violence, it only diminishes our own humanity and fans the flames of evil. It's such a viscous cycle but the only way to change it is by starting inside yourself. There can't be any large scale revolution without that. We can't force this change of culture using violence or oppression, it doesn't work, as we have seen over and over again and as is discussed here: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/…/paris-you-don-t-want-to-…/ I don't know what the answer is either, I just know that violence only breeds violence, we must lead the way with compassion and tactic. "No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet."

What it Takes to be a Rebel in Modern Times

More of the same stuff from my last post.. Although more recent.

Capitalism: A Love Story

This was released in 2009 but I've only now seen it as it's just been uploaded to Netflix. Well worth a watch. More disturbing than any horror movie I've seen:

I fear Britain is growing more similar to this American government/corporation combination.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

------------------------------------------------------------------

Oppression

noun

1. the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjustmanner.

2. an act or instance of oppressing or subjecting to cruel or unjust impositions or restraints.

3. the state of being oppressed.
4. the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, anxiety, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Such a great book on the nature of oppression. It would do the world good if everyone read and absorbed this. It makes perfect sense.



A few quotes from the first chapter:

"The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion."



"The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalised. The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors between speaking out of being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world. This is the tragic dilemma of the oppressed which their education must take into account."



"To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of transforming the world and history is naive and simplistic. It is to admit the impossible: a world without people. This objectivistic position if as ingenuous as that of subjectivism, which postulates people without a world. World and human beings do not exist apart from each other, they exist in constant interaction."

"Reality which becomes oppressive results in the contradistinction of men as oppressors and oppressed. The latter, whose task it is to struggle for their liberation together with those who show true solidarity, must acquire a critical awareness of oppression through the praxis of this struggle. One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings' consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it."



"Any situation in which "A" objectively exploits "B" or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual's ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the results of the violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed has there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.

Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons-not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognised. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate the terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the "rejects of life." It is not the tyrannised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.

For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call "the oppressed" but - depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not - "those people" or"the blind and envious masses" or "savages" or "natives" or "subversives") who are disaffected, who are "violent," "barbaric," "wicked," or "ferocious" when they react to the violence of the oppressors."



"Acts which prevent the restoration of the oppressive regime cannot be compared with those by which a few men and women deny the majority their right to be human.

However, the moment the new regime hardens into a dominating "bureaucracy" the humanist dimension of the struggle is lost and it is no longer possible to speak of liberation. Hence our insistence that the authentic solution of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction does not lie in a mere reversal of position, in moving from one pole to the other. Nor does it lie in the replacement of the former oppressors with new ones who continue to subjugate the oppressed - all in the name of their liberation.

But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated labourers, the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors profound violation of their individual rights - although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are "things." For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognised, but simply concerned, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence."



Every paragraph is worth quoting on here but I'll stop there..

Go buy the book, I had to read some bits a few times to understand it properly but it really is one of those books you could pick up and read front to back over and over, and everyone should.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Penguin-Education-Freire/dp/014025403X

All photos found on Google images.

Ian McKellen - Oxford Union

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

What an inspirational, charismatic man.

Thom Yorke "Harrowdown Hill"

Oldy but goody, based on the death of Dr David Kelly back in 2003. An equally disturbing story if it were suicide or murder.

Thoughts this morning

I like Sunday mornings as it's the only day of the week that Dara doesn't get up for work. We have nothing to do but chill, talk, drink tea, read. It just feels so good to wake up after a good nights sleep, with no hangover, in a comfortable place with no rush to do anything. Even better being next to someone that you love. That couple of hours is just absolute bliss. I'm a smug bitch. 

This Sunday morning Dara read the news and I read some of my book. We conversed, as you do, putting the world to rights.

I mentioned that I'd seen a post on Insagram by someone I follow ('that_paleo_guy'); he posted a picture saying 'SATURDAY SOCIAL MEDIA SHUTDOWN #saturdaysocialmediashutdown' and in the caption he put "Time to detox from social media for the day. Shutting off the cell phone and tablet until the sun comes up tomorrow morning. No notifications, no distractions from the digital world, no blue lights, no nothing. Time to refresh. I'll see you all in the am. #peaceout #timeout #refresh #reset #reboot #unwind #familytime #metime #nodistractions #feelgood" - I thought that was a good initiative.

I also told him about this set of photos by photographer Izabela Urbaniak of her children enjoying technology free summers. 

I have mentioned before on my blog (and in conversation with D) that I really do appreciate my morning walk with Finn as a time to be away from the madness of the world, to not absorb information, to just be with nature. However, I still feel like I spend way too much time sucked into the internet, scrolling though status updates on Facebook and new posts on Instagram. It's often the first thing I think to do when I wake up - check for notifications, refresh, refresh, refuckit. It can't be healthy. This guy explains it well:

"Generation of idiots, smart phones but not people!" Oh dear.

I thought to myself on Sunday morning "I am going to spend less time online and more time in life, organic, natural life." I enjoy using social media as a platform to connect and share photos, humour, interesting articles, perspective on things, it's a great thing but it shouldn't be as pertinent on my mind. 

When I do eventually nestle down and start a family, I'm going to encourage alternative methods of enjoyment and stimulation. I don't wish to deprive my future sprogs of technology as we do live in a technological world, I want them to fit in but I don't want them to be consumed by it. I'm sure not many people admittedly want their kids to be obsessed with technology but undeniably, TV or a game on your iPhone are useful solutions to curing a child's boredom while you're occupied with something else. I will strive to avoid this - summer's without technology sound dreamy and unimaginable in this day and age, yet it wasn't that long ago that these technologies were invented. Let's take a leaf out of Dollyandfife and Izabela Urbaniak's book. 

Let's go outside, let's get sucked into the natural world more often.

Reflecting on my current state of mind...

We all change and evolve as we go through life, we have different information sources around us, different influences. Thinking about my own mindset - At this current time the things that are most influencing my outlook are; videos I watch on Youtube (The Young Turks, The Trews, Secular Talk, The Labour Leadership campaign, mostly Jeremy Corbyn ), the book I'm reading (currently: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire), the conversations I have (mainly with fellow dog walkers and Dara), the things I see on Instagram (I follow a wide variety of people but my favourites besides my friends are - dollyandfife, moistbuddha, michelgaubert, mydaywithleo, beigecardigan, fuckjerry, thefatjewish), work and my goals for the future. (It's ironic because most of what influences my outlook on life I have accessed via the internet, the thing I want to spend less time on is the thing that's educating me. Handy but addictive.)

At other times in my life I may have had or may have more conversations with different people to those I converse with at the moment. I may watch or have watched more TV rather than Youtube videos and on completely different subjects, the books I have read or will read cover completely different topics, so the influences on my mind and my perspective are variable but at the moment, the things that most influence my outlook:

• Youtube
  - Learning about politics, philosophy, spirituality, injustice, flaws in society, humanity...
• Books
  - Same as above and in addition, oppression
• Conversations
  - Talking about these things in conversations, and I've also been talking about history and how much society has changed and is changing (I'm thinking of a recent conversation I had with Tom and Frank who I met walking the dog, they were telling me what life was like when they were young back in the 60s and 70s)
• Instagram
  - The people I mentioned that I like best on Instagram crack me up and remind me that although things are shit and the world often lacks humanity, society is broken in ways but we sometimes just have to laugh. We mustn't take eveything too seriously as it will ruin us. We have to continue to find humour in the world. Other people I follow are inspirational in other ways.
• Work
  - My workplace pleases me and my boss inspires me as he is so successful and intellectual. I am grateful to be in this position. 
• Goals
  - I'm mentally planning our wedding, I'm thinking about finance and how long it will take for us to buy our own house. Naturally the thought of 'nesting' leads me to thinking about starting a family, popping some sprogs out...

Within that I watched Russel Brand's last ever episode of the Trews, watch here:

"I think that we've gone as far as we can with the Trews for now. And the thing that's been interesting over the course of the year is the reaction to some of the stories that we've reported on and the reaction in the press and on TV, to me.

... So it's been like an extraordinary time for all of us, there's a presidential election in America that's thrown up ludicrous characters like Donald Trump but also the potentially optimistic participation of Bernie Sanders. Is there a possibility through conventional political means to return the will of ordinary people to the seat of power it's a really big question. When I talked about revolution at the beginning of this mad journey on Jeremy Paxman, I was kind of gung-ho and stuff but I think what revolution means, well what revolution literally does mean is a change of power not using the conventional means of power. We're gonna have to come together in a different way to create the change. Now I believe that more than ever. I really believe in change, I feel really optimistic about the inevitability of change...

... I believe in the possibility of ordinary people to change their circumstances if they come together, and I believe in me and the Trews and what we've been doing. I'm gonna be learning, 'cause I know change is coming and I want to be part of that.

... I can't do it the service it requires until I go away and learn some stuff so that when we come back it will be more truthful, more inclusive than ever, 'cause the worlds going mental and more than ever ordinary people need to come together.

... I'm going away to think and to learn, because its worth it, because this is an important time because there is a possibility of change.

... So really the obligation to tell the truth as always lies with you as much as it does with me. The only real weapon we have is to be truthful with ourselves, truthful with one another and to formulate new organisations, new ways of pursuing change."

So all of that combined going through my mind is probably why I've been having the weirdest dreams. The capacity of the mind and it's ability to process information is unreal. It would be a shame to waste it on gossip and game shows. Russel Brand talks about Truth being the only weapon we have, I think the real weapon is our mind. Being truthful is something we should all live by for sure but it is our mind that we must harness and evolve. The mind is the tool which we use to channel our energy, our mind is what we use to set our goals and obtain them, our mind controls our emotions, our perceptions, our behaviour. Our mind gives us the ability to make a difference in the world through our consciousness, our minds are what makes us unique.

We should strive to share ourselves through interconnectivity, be equal and one with everyone and everything. We don't need to be rich, popular or highly educated to acquire that. We should be open minded not ignorant, continuing to learn. While it naturally scares us, change is inevitable, so let's embrace it and influence it positively.

As we learn, reflection is so important. Allowing time to process information that we take in and to consider alternative perspectives, that in itself exercises the mind and develops intelligence.

WORD! Eve Ensler

Q: There are a lot of causes out there that are being talked about, you know, poverty, sickness and so on. You spend eight years on this one. Why this One?

A: I think that, if you think about women, women are the primary resource of the planet. They give birth, we come from them, they are mothers, they are visionary they are the future. If you think that the U.N. now says that one out of three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in their lifetime, we're talking about the desecration of the primary resource of the planet. We're talking about the place where we come from, we're talking about parenting. Imagine that you've been raped and you're bringing up a boy child. How does it impact your ability to work, or envision a future, or thrive, as opposed to just survive? What I believe is if we could figure out how to make women safe and honor women, it would be parallel or equal to honoring life itself.

Eve Ensler

Mos Def: "We are in Critical Times"

Thought's on upheaval. In light of the happenings in Ferguson and other parts of America.

Racism, inequality, imbalance of power, Yasiin Bey responds. 

"Free the people. Free the land.

My country is Earth."

Katie Hopkins - Russell Brand Trews

"Isn't it a bit mad, to see human litter strewn about. This is the kind of images that Katie Hopkins doesn't care about... She's just the puss emerging from the pimple that is our policy." 

"Until there's a shift in the lens of the way we see the world, of like "oh right we're meant to be here helping each other", until you make that shift, that you can only make really as an individual and hope that it emanates on a familial, social, communal, national, international level, unless we start making those individual transitions, that's why again what Katie Hopkins says is important, because we can't afford to allow that to be our prevailing mentality in our conversations in our chats in bars, cafes and workplaces, far less allow it to become policy. For us to live under the politics of cruelty, a kind of incremental holocaust. If compassion is not a component, then there's no humanity left to save. Once we kill the compassion within ourselves then we are all then cockroaches, waiting for the apocalypse, and it can't come quick enough."

"I suppose what you can do, is find your own humanity, look for the humanity and connection that you feel to other people and be kind. "

MP cover up's - Russell Brand Trews

Doesn't it make your blood BOIL!

INSPIRATION Raghava KK at TEDxGateway

Beautiful mind and perspective:

Tips on speaking - Julian Treasure