The loneliness of the long distance runner.

That short story from 1959 by Alan Sillitoe, which gained fame through a film of the same name in the early sixties is still one of my favourite stories…The awakening of consciousness of class, the rebellious nature of the “anti-hero” and then that ending of the long distance race where Smith, the working class lad who throws the race in the last few yards as a deliberate and brutal mockery and snub to the upwardly aware middle-class warden of the borstal where Smith was doing his time for petty crime, a most exquisite and obstinate passive resistance to that warden who wanted to “commodify” the running skills of the working class youth as a badge of honour for his own aspiration with his own peers..and indeed to that whole class of degenerate opportunists…a most beautiful and fitting cut to the core of the middle class commodifying of everything we deem most personal..from our social surroundings to our bodies to our very heart beat and soul..

“ Sillitoe uses running in his story as a means of isolation. Running is a solitary action and therefore allows Smith to begin to understand and become aware of the class divisions in Britain. Smith, the narrator of the story, is also a writer and he is an allegoric version of Sillitoe and the isolation that all authors suffer from. Smith is a solitary runner who gets political clarity through running and isolation, just as an author writes alone and thinks alone. The long distance runner and the writer are both individualistic and isolated so that they are able to produce their commodities. The metaphor used to compare both the author and the runner is similar to the author losing his purity when he publishes a work just as Smith loses his purity when he enters the race. “ (Wikipedia)

The hunger for possession that drives the psyche of the most rapacious of that class of humanity, has wrought fearful dispossession and destruction through their desire to both control and commodify without personal work or physical input of all that is necessity and valued by humanity.

From the time of the Oligarchs of ancient Greece to the Equestrian order speculators and capitalist traders of ancient Rome to the Captains of industrial revolution England and in our own day, the so called “masters of the universe” traders in the stock exchanges of the world who constructed through ponzi-scheme creation a false boom-cycle that led to the most destructive collapse of the economies of many nations since the Great Depression of the 1930s…costing so many lives..all this damage and destruction while pleading an innocence of criminal intent..It can be deduced that the entrepreneurial / speculative middle class is a most dangerous provocateur and saboteur of civilisation that culminates in their pièce de résistance of social control : Fascism!

There is also another short story that I treasure, and which I see as a fine, if somewhat more subtle condemnation of class distinction…: “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” by James Joyce, where the young chap ; a Mr. O’Connor, down on his luck sits waiting in contemplation for some desperate pay to come from his employer, a scheming aspirant middle class political wannabe…There is another player in the story who, I believe, represents the traitor to his class that can be found everywhere; the sycophantic : Mr. Henchy, who seeks to both appease those of his own class by siding with and slighting their employer and then beguiling his companions in an oleaginous way to embrace the coming to Ireland of the King of England..thereby betraying the revered memory of their late hero leader : Charles Stewart Parnell…betrayed, like the Irish people, by the priests and the Catholic political class.

It has always been known that a traitor among one’s own class is the easiest of people for an opportunist to find..It is no more difficult to find the Judas here in our nation than in any other place. We are living in a time when our democracy has been sold to international corporations by one of our major political parties for no more than the legendary thirty pieces of silver. We see the nation being “governed” by a criminal gang with little more ethics than a collective Fagan, taking the wealth of the people and then denying them the services and opportunities for a decent and respectful life..the lot of a working person becoming nothing more than a beggar’s banquet of stingy wages and exhorbitant costs of living. The essential utilities; energy and water, the valuable raw materials sold-on at bargain basement prices to fellow corporate shareholders and the booty stashed, again Fagan like, in various tax havens while the citizens are made to go without because of a lack of fair-share tax collection from these high-profit, low-responsibility multi-nationals. “Just as rivers glisten in various colours, does a sewer look the same all over the world”.

What can we do?

Again, we can look to the past, since such avaricious behaviour is more a habit of a greedy mind than a genetic disposition, and we see the plebeians of ancient Rome walking away from the city in disgust at the lack of representation in a aristocratic government and threaten to start a new city over the other side of the Tiber River..We today cannot just up stakes and move to another location, so let us bring that location to us here…let us bring the mountain to Mohammed! Let us create a new society amongst the ruins of this capitalist disaster. Let us re-construct “Community” without the anal-retentive oversight of the money hungry middle-class. From small collectives, Let us grow the food, make the products and educate the ones for our own needs, not for a “just in time” commodifying corporate body. We, in the working / producing body of citizens have all the skills required to re-make a society..Perhaps such a society removed from the waste of “profit motive production” can turn around the oncoming climate disaster that it seems this current collection of governing criothans has neither the capacity nor the inclination to do. Let them go to f#cking Mars, we are quite content with this paradise ; Earth.

Certainly it will be an embracing of hard times..but has it ever been otherwise for the vast majority of us..Let there be a joining of the many multicultural peoples, the indigenous peoples, the unions and those of the middle class who would join the “exodus” ..let us place the first words on the page for a new story, Let US write : “In the beginning . . . “ for new hope, new life..and we could , perhaps, indeed demand that with the rejection of all that a degenerate profiteering class stands for, we hereby proclaim ourselves with a collective of the many we become a union of ONE… ONE voice, ONE mind, ONE body , ONE goal..; to proclaim independence from the non-producing, worthless bigots, racists and thieves..to proclaim that we are standing together against any storm that is thrown against us.. for ours and our children’s future with not one…not two ..but THRICE cry of united defiance :

I STAND !
I STAND !
I STAND !

The Gender Contract.

Did you watch that you tube vid’ ?…no? well go back and watch it.. you have to so as to understand this post.. Says about it all when it comes to gender relations and without a word. Where have we gone wrong?.. What should be an equal distribution of respect of give and take has turned into an mostly male violent, free-for-all. Has it always been this way, that the alpha male has dominated the female in a no-choice oppression system of patriarchal rule?..

“Semba (masemba in plural) is a traditional music genre and dance genre from Angola that became popular in the 50’s. It is the product of an evolution as it was influenced by different ethno linguistic groups from Angola as well as several different African rythms. In the context of dancing, the word Semba means “the body of the man that comes in contact with the body of the woman at the level of the belly button”.

In one of the national Angolan languages called Kimbundu, Semba can also have the meaning of “Umbigada”. Umbigada describes also a dance movement when the contact between the two bodies is provoked by the man who suddenly takes the woman on the hip and brings her towards his belly button. The Umbigada movement is exactly what is still done today in the traditional dance from Angola called Rebita and other African dances.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese the semba dance was part of traditional religion. Dancing accompanied the worship of the godess Kianda, in honour of whom food, clothing and other gifts were thrown into the sea.” (Quotes from various sources of general information on the internet).

I have to confess here and now, this gender topic is a very difficult theme for me to write upon..as a matter of fact, from a male point of view, it could be seen as one best avoided as it could bring the wrath of all things anti-male upon one…..But fuck it!…I’ve not backed out of a good scrap yet and I’m not about to now!..But there is also another reason why I find it rather traumatic..and the one is connected to the other..so to tackle one, I have to tackle the other because both are interconnected by what is now a national moral and ethical dilemma..

As an amateur writer of mostly emotive genre (if I can say it like that), I need to feel an emotional connect to both the story-line and the characters of which I write..and then, perhaps more importantly, I have to want to deliver those stories to my fellow country folk equal with my cultural sympathies..but lately, in perhaps the last few years, I have felt less and less connected to either of those two identities..ie; neither with characters now relevant in my community, nor with my fellow country people to whom I would wish to relate a story.

In the first instance, an attempted financial swindle perpetrated on me by a close kin relative shook my faith in that kinship connection..The attempt was made not out of disguised trickery, but up-front and with the open claim that it was quite legal to do so..never mind the moral or ethical OR cultural betrayal of principle, just the fact that it was an available legal option was enough excuse to “try it on” seemed to legitimise it in their mind.

In the same vein, we saw a political example of this action with the by-election of New England, where the voters returned the late incumbent with an increased majority..overlooking the fact and indeed EXCUSING THE FACT that he had predator’d and impregnated a younger staff member of his team, thereby betraying the trust of his spouse and family, his position of trust in his subordinate staff, betraying in turn that community trust of moral and ethical obligation expected in a government representative member of that constituency and claiming and expecting that “a person’s private life should be kept out of it” exemption..here again we have the apparent legal “termination of evidence” as it is not against the law to have an affair or deceive kin and community.

This crossing of legal, moral, ethical and with the increased awareness of sexual harassment of women in the workplace; social laws, we are come to a place where it is imperative that the lines between what is “right” as in law, and what is “decent” as in morals and ethics must be separated and adjudicated upon, lest we go too far down a road that has historically brought many societies totally undone.

And so we have to ask ; Just where did all this need to dominate the female of the species go so wrong? Was it back in those days of tribal structures? If we look, as an example, to Tacitus’s records of behaviour of early Germanic peoples, which must have in some way reflected many tribal groups in Europe of those times..:

“THE GERMANIA OF TACITUS

But the sharpest spur to their valour ( of the warriors ) is that each
separate squadron or column is not a mere casual aggre-
gation of chance-comers, but is composed of men of one
family and one kin ; and their households go with them
to the field, and the shrieks of their women and the
wailings of their children ring in their ears. Each

man feels bound to play the hero before such witnesses
and to earn their most coveted praise. To his mother and
to his wife he brings his wounds ; and they do not shrink
from counting them, nor from searching them, while they
carry food to the fighters and give them encouragement

VIII. Their traditions tell that more than once, when
a German line was wavering on the point of giving
way, the women rallied it, urgently entreating the
men to fight on, baring their breasts and crying out
that their captivity was at hand. Captivity for their
women is a thing the men abhor far more than for
themselves ; so that, as a matter of fact, we always obtain
the firmest hold over those states which are compelled
to include amongst the hostages they send us some
maidens of noble birth. Nay, the Germans even ascribe
to women a certain inspiration and power of prophecy ;
they do not either despise the advice they give or
neglect their forecasts. Most of their tribes long gave
divine honours to Veleda, whom we saw as a prisoner
here in the days of the Emperor Vespasian, of blessed
memory ; but there was also an Aurinia * in earlier
times, and many others likewise, whom they venerated
sincerely enough, though not with any idea of making
goddesses of them.” (The Germania of Tacitus).

Yet, when we look to Roman law of the times, we find the law of “Patria Potestas” enshrines dominance via a legal authority over a male’s family, property and kin. Is this the result of a “civilising” of The State, the inevitable result of the militarising of society so that those remnants of the tribal “warrior class” use a force of arms to seize not only political power, but also gender domination? :

” The Roman household was conceived of as an economic and juridical unit or estate: familia originally meant the group of the famuli (the servi or serfs and the slaves of a rural estate) living under the same roof. That meaning later expanded to indicate the familia as the basic Roman social unit, which might include the domus (house or home) but was legally distinct from it: a familia might own one or several homes. All members and properties of a familia were subject to the authority of a pater familias: his legal, social and religious position defined familia as a microcosm of the Roman state. In Roman law, the postestas of the pater familias was official but distinct from that of magistrates.

Only a Roman citizen held the status of pater familias, and there could be only one holder of that office within a household. He was responsible for its well-being, reputation and legal and moral propriety. The entire familia was expected to adhere to the core principles and laws of the Twelve Tables, which the pater familias had a duty to exemplify, enjoin and, if necessary, enforce, so within the familia Republican law and tradition (mos maiorum) allowed him powers of life and death (vitae necisque potestas)”. (Wikipedia)

We are a society that has come the full circle to a very dark place…We are at the crossroads of “which way do we proceed?”. We cannot oppress any one minority section of our multicultural society without elevating one ruling ethnicity to suppress them all..likewise, we cannot allow the male oppression of women without the condemning of us all to oblivion.

We cannot allow the overlooking of moral and ethical responsibilities to each other without brutalising each other..and in that at least, we do have a simple understanding of what social responsibility of the adult is : “Room to move, room to grow, a right to decide.”

Now, if we can return to that dance ..: We see the complimentary movements of man and woman intertwined sylph like as two creatures of nature locked in ritual courtship. The woman enticing and alluring, the male encroaching and attempting to entrap and encompass…the woman then slipping from his grasp and out of his control, only to once again spin and twirl in voluptuous attraction to the man’s more brutish hunger…and if she decides to give herself to the male, it must be done on her own terms in her own good time……mesmerising!

Such should be the natural ebb and flow of man to woman relationships..indeed, I recall my own fragile youth when attempting to court young women, fraught with fumbling difficulty of trying to look and sound “cool”..just one wrong word or phrase..one “bad-hair” moment in style or dress could send a youth to “Coventry” for what seemed forever!

From Authority to Power.

From privilege to command to expectation to demand.

How many of us ever obtain an edge of authority?…Of course, as a citizen in a perceived democracy, we each of us have a certain amount of “authority” to demand our rights as a citizen..but in no way do we have authority to command. Yet there are those among us who through one set of circumstances or another see themselves as having that expectation to demand certain beliefs , rules, actions and cultural principles from those around us.

Once, Christian religion would claim it had “Authority from God” to proselytise, but that was when it didn’t want to be seen competing with vain Emperors for divine power. Once it was adopted (after much political lobbying) as THE State religion supplanting Paganism, it suddenly claimed that it now had the “Power of God” to demand certain behaviours from the brethren…and anyone else that could be forced or coerced to “believe” or suffer the pain of death upon refusal.

Likewise in our democracy, we; the people have seen those we have voted to Parliament morph’ from being “humbled beyond measure” to be granted the authority to serve “this great country” and everybody in “this great country” for the good of all..”… and after all..isn’t that what democracy is all about?”…To using false data, false flag events, contrived terrorism scares to now “demand” by the POWER of the State “ invested in me…”…and so on and so forth..to inflict the most restrictive and oppressive burdens on the most vulnerable. We have gone from Authority to Power without any sort of oversight or sunset clause..From a granted privilege to command to a perceived RIGHT to demand!

How does authority segue from rule of law provisions to dictatorship by decree?…Where does this self-proclaimed tyranny arise from?..Not surely from a doting parent’s spoiling of the child, for that would only go so far in any company…Not from one’s workmates in the field, for that would only meet with derision and ultimately a kick up the arse. So it must come from another source that can educate into a child’s mind all the nuances of expectation of a certain class of society..and that would have to be where many of those receiving similar indoctrination would not feel out of place believing and indeed, practicing a form of “rule by tyranny” on those beneath both their contempt or seniority.

The Private / Elite school education system…Where the wealthy and the wannabe hopefuls send their children to obtain instruction in the gentle arts of bastardry…: Supercilious authority, sneering condescension, vainglorious belief in self, total respect for the rule of capital over the rule of law. And entrance into a vast network of like-minded, small-minded middle-class wankers unfit for most useful though complex activities like the boiling of water and best slotted into positions of authority where such concentrated psychosis is put to the worst use…perhaps to even become a LNP Prime Minister…Like Malcolm Fraser (traitor to our democracy) The wannabe; Alexander Downer (career wanker) John Howard ( crimes against humanity) Tony Abbott (serial pants-dropper) and finally now the crème-della-crème of shit for brains – jelly for backbone Malcolm Turnbull ( ……………….what!?) . And remember, these are the finest representatives of such concentrated psychosis…the worst has been spared this nation (so far) and inflicted upon America!

These “Great Colleges” have been spewing out the most gormless (by percentage) “consciousness of kind” arseholes for more years than there are excuses for their incompetent behaviour..These “Great Colleges” have been taking public moneys of more billions than the tax-breaks for the parents of the kids who attend their privileged halls. But what have they really given the nation in return?…if we were to go by the above list of LNP Prime Ministers..and THAT is the usual channel that those hungry for power row their canoe down..then we can claim to have been seriously dudded. If we look to the majority of LNP ministers currently in the House of Rep’s , then we have been taken for absolute fools! If we look to the “leaders of industry”, then you need look no further than the list of court proceedings and current and future goal inmates.

Time to be rid of this pestilence…I call on a future Labor government to seriously restrict Private School funding to no more than “pencils and ink” support…and direct public moneys into public education. I call on a future Labor government to stop giving tax exemption to the religions and to investigate the networks that fast-track “old school tie” graduates into positions of authority. I call on us citizens to isolate those graduates from such elite institutions we meet in our lives that demand the rest of us follow their every diction and “informed” direction in both our opinions and lifestyle.

I have noticed that this segue from a position of authority to a attitude of power has even infiltrated onto social media…where we are slowly being restricted to blogs, commentary and views of the educated elite..their “in-house opinions” gaining ascendancy over the more “aggressive radical ”, the more “difficult” and the more “ intuitive” of those from working-class environs. One can pick the “set pieces” that allow a “safe” letting off of steam but never go too far to demand total radicalism or far-left change.. One can often find the “tch tch” of the waving finger of self-proclaimed authority reprimanding those running too close to stepping over the imaginary boundary of middle-class cultural decencies.. To the ultimate castigation that casts one into the wilderness of “not-amused” silence..That supreme weapon of dis-approval inflicted almost as a unanimous and instant mutual agreeance “murmuration” that has been educated into those minds by their tutors as “not deserving of comment” by a “better class citizen such as yourself ”….well suck eggs!…social media now has a reach open to every individual with many free blogs where one can voice one’s opinions and a twitterverse where one can promote one’s blogs with a freedom of speech never more available to everyperson..If one “cannot stand the heat, best stay out of the kitchen”, because with elections coming up this year, it is going to boil over very soon!..I am ready for it..ARE YOU?

I call for a revolution against upper middle-class tyranny!

I call for political governance by the educated working classes!

“Away with all pests!”

Dead souls..

The title of this piece is from the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol.

“The purpose of the novel was to demonstrate the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and moral character. Gogol portrayed those defects through Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters in his endeavours. These people are typical of the Russian middle-class of the time.” (Wiki..)

I believe we have reached a nationalist age level (if not yet an adult one) of maturity where we will have to confront the moral and ethical vacuum resident in our national communities. The decline of moral and ethical politics over the last few decades is a reflection of deep-seated flaws in the social contract between the structural/social classes in the community. The lack of interest in examining the moral and ethical standards of those members that have been elected to Parliament in the last few elections demonstrates a set of principles of integrity sadly lacking in the electorate.

The emphasis by those candidates on economic reward for choosing them over their opposition even after accusations of scurrilous moral or ethical behaviour shows a keenness in the communities more for financial blackmail than for social good..in short, it demonstrates that the voter base can be bought…and once an object is bought, it is “owned” by the purchaser.

“In the Russian Empire, before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners had the right to own serfs to farm their land. Serfs were for most purposes considered the property of the landowner, who could buy, sell or mortgage them, as any other chattel. To count serfs (and people in general), the measure word “soul” was used: e.g., “six souls of serfs”. The plot of the novel relies on “dead souls” (i.e., “dead serfs”) which are still accounted for in property registers. On another level, the title refers to the “dead souls” of Gogol’s characters, all of which represent different aspects of poshlost (a Russian noun rendered as “commonplace, vulgarity”, moral and spiritual, with overtones of middle-class pretentiousness, fake significance and philistinism).” (Wiki…)

Hence we have a governing class of politicians who juggle their policy mandates to suit their class economics, with little consideration for those from the working classes who suffer grievously from such decisions…We saw tens of thousands of household incomes lost through the cancelling of subsidies for the car industry, while billionaires in the mining sector were granted personal tax relief. We saw other tens of thousands of household incomes lost through outsourcing to overseas interests those jobs in ; IT, banking, airlines servicing, telecommunications, manufacturing and energy while stripping away funding from higher education and trade training here at home…purely to satisfy the barefaced lie that it would “save the bottom line in the budget”..We see hundreds of thousands of workers on cheap labour wages brought into the country on temporary visas to satisfy dis-loyal employers hunger for cheap labour.

The people who are “managing” this chaos of class-warfare, are of the same pedigree who sent us in the space of one hundred years into two World Wars, a depression in between in the 1930’s, stultifying conservatism of the Menzies era culminating in the gross destruction of a war in Vietnam, the betrayal of the National Political Trust with the Whitlam Dismissal, an unlimited farrago of credit driven by a shonky stockmarket surge in the 90’s ( “go on, have a go..it’s going gangbusters!”) , followed by the inevitable Global Financial Crisis of the 2000’s and now another blundering about with absolutely no idea of direction by another conservative govt’ as we head to a crisis of Global Warming and yet they STILL spruik the benefits of burning coal over renewables..These people who are managing us are the private school, elite university trained bozos of the upper-middle class who talk like they have both descriptive nouns and money to burn but in reality do not know shit from clay..their arsehole from their elbow..

Seriously…they do – not – know – shit – from – clay…but they DO know which side of the bread the butter is on and by Christ they spread it thickly when it suits themselves! This clueless class has had its moment in the sun..”MOMENT!!” did I say…they are baked fuckin’ dry!!.. they are already struggling to lie their way into the next election and only a lack of clear choice will give them a chance. There needs to be an indelible line drawn under the rule of middle-class politics..they are finished..they have proven over time that they cannot govern, only rule, they cannot manage, only demand and they cannot advance into the future, only retreat into a fantasy world of their own delusional past.

There needs to be secession from middle-class-capitalist politics to more equitable management of social contract of working-class politics. The trade unions and representatives of the indigenous peoples along with honest representatives of commerce and industry (cough! cough!) need to be brought into the inner circle of governance..no longer a single Head of State, but rather a “Tetrarchy” head of four to divide the nation into four governing quarters combining with State Governments..

With this form of governance, there is more chance for those of the educated working-class to step-up to positions of responsibility through Local or State Authorities via Union activity or Indigenous or cultural serving abilities. This will also put an end to “charismatic leadership” , where the oleaginous main-stream media can promote an individual from the LNP of doubtful moral and ethical quality to rule the nation…as the only way to the top will be through channels of merit, a path more than not denied by intellect AND ability to those from the private school system.

The time of sole middle-class politics is ended, the chaotic voting patterns seen in recent elections of both Houses has left us with a host of wannabe crazies with no hope of redemption and less of usefulness cogitating on bills and laws totally beyond their limited imagination.

There is only one class of citizen with the experience and life-skills inherent in their workaday lives to understand truly what depth and responsibility a social contract requires..that is the working-class..pure and simple…time to reject the failed idiot sons and daughters of the wealthy and bring in new blood and hope to the chaos of Australian politics.

“ The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such communities the distinction between classes is very rigorously observed; and the feature of most striking economic significance in these class differences is the distinction maintained between the employments proper to the several classes…” (Thorsten Veblen; The Theory of the Leisure class)