Our esteemed scientists have spent hundreds of years researching and coming to the working conclusion that humans evolved over millennia from a type of primate to what we are today. It’s clear to me that this evolution still continues and you can see it from our physical changes as a result of our changes in diet, our skin pigmentation as a consequence of our various locations on the planet, but most importantly I feel, from our level of knowledge and understanding of everything around us – our intellect. Yes, you have always had very clever people in the population for thousands of years, after all chess is estimated to be at least 1500 years old and Socrates was alive about 350 years BC, just to give some random examples. The difference now though, is that the proportion of the population with an enhanced level of intellect is larger than it used to be. In the old days for example, only the high priest was allowed to read the Bible in Latin and what he said is what was God’s Word and no one could dare scrutinise the validity of his teachings. Now thankfully we are able to exercise our impetus and research things for ourselves.

In the animal kingdom there are various behaviours we have observed. In a pride of lions for example, you have the patriarch along with other males, the lionesses and the cubs, each with their responsibilities – a sort of structure to which their lives are built upon. Even when we go down to bees, you have a queen, soldiers, workers and these bees are born with features which mean that all they are to be in their lives is a worker or a soldier etc and there’s nothing else that they can do.

By and large we have followed this sort of structure ourselves for thousands of years and democracy has been the instrument with which we have been made to feel a little bit more equal and that we have an actual say in the way our society is run. We have taught ourselves that we can be whatever we want to be with study and hard work and we can rise to become the leader of our country and that, that honour is not only the preserve of a certain family or group of people.

This democratic system is part of our intellectual evolution and is what is pushing us further away from the structures of the animal kingdom. In most western democracies that used to, or still have a monarchy, these monarchies have been relegated to such a status that so many people don’t even know who they are in some instances and some have regular jobs like the king of the Netherlands who often moonlights as a commercial airline pilot. In developing democracies like Nigeria and Ghana, the monarchies there are influential by dint of the fact that they are monarchies and people are programmed to show reverence to such offices, but the government is firmly in control and if a situation were to arise where the monarchy and ruling government were to be at logger heads the monarchies would come out worse off. The monarchies that are still very well known, influential and have executive powers, in my view are those that are still closer to the animal kingdom. They tend to have an irrational belief that it is their ordained human right to rule, especially by force, and the people they rule have been indoctrinated to believe the same. Likely also fearful of the severe repercussions for not conforming.

Perhaps one day we will move away from the democratic system to an even more sophisticated one where merit and expertise is highly cherished and those in charge are those that have been able to show true leadership and expertise in the areas they are responsible for, with various committees and structures in place as checks and balances and to rotate the right people in the right roles. A sort of project management style system perhaps. But that would be for the very distant future and anathema to today’s world.

Luck

The late Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster and one time richest man in the UK, once said when asked to give young entrepreneurs advice about how to be successful, that they should “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.” And the ripple effects of that singularity (for want of a better word to describe an event that changed the course of history) from over a thousand years ago reverberates still today due to our animal instincts to conform to a certain structure. A status quo that gives a comfort of safety and survival by knowing one’s place in society, so as not to be conquered again. A niggling diffidence, so to speak. Thereby stifling the sort of social mobility experienced in other places that haven’t experienced such historical trauma.

Don’t get me wrong, some kind of structure and organisation is important in a civilised society but it should be one based on merit and not birth right. Should we push our kids to be the best they can be? Absolutely! Should we put them in charge because we were in charge? It might work sometimes but not all the time, but if they have merited it that would be more acceptable to the growing, enlightened populace.

Ultimately that resistance to change in how things are boils down to fear, doesn’t it? The lack of evolution or conscious taming of a strong amygdala. This explains a lot of racism, sexism, class snobbery, tribalism, populism, homophobia and any other form of discrimination or friction that manifests from a misplaced fear of danger perceived from the other taking something away from you, or even worse harming you. But what if we can speed up that evolutionary process in ourselves? Tame the amygdala and be more relaxed and open minded about others?

This can be done by persistent training involving regular exposure to other people away from our comfort zones. Generally speaking, the least fearful of the ‘other’ are people that live in cosmopolitan areas or people that are well travelled. They’ve developed a respect for their fellow humans and identified the similarities in all people. There’s nothing wrong with living in a village or suburb but do move around a bit and interact more.

The leadership style of an open and confident person can also be a strong foundation for the attitude of a people for many generations as Jacinda Ardern is currently demonstrating in New Zealand. A country can change its overall philosophy like Germany did after the Second World War with the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung or in English – coming to terms with the past – where they had to come to terms with their role during the Holocaust and undergo a change in psychology in their outlook of themselves and the rest of the world. And after the passing of Charles XII in Sweden in the 17th century, the country moved from a violence and dominance oriented one to a more peaceful and prosperity focused society where intangible nationalistic patriotism diminished and tangible improvements to people’s quality of life became more of the focus in that society.

A figure head in the animal kingdom achieves that status through pure strength. Domination. Power. Are we still animals that need to influence our environment by sheer brute or are we a level higher with the ability to cooperate and improve everyone’s lot? Do we want to live in a society where the Donald Trumps and Kim Jong Uns of this world can make up for their phallic short comings by gorilla style chest beating or a bombastic brutality of the kind that is exercised in the animal kingdom? Is that what we want to follow as a human race? Most human beings are motivated/influenced by charisma, baritone voices and height, which I see as an animal trait but the more sophisticated we get, the more we can look beyond those superficial signals. Obviously we would never want to lose the urges linked to love and sex, otherwise human existence would be more practical than exciting.

Article 2 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty states: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.” I think this is more the traits of a sophisticated and more evolved species than the former examples.

Also, always ask why. I call it asking why to the nth degree. That is to ask why until all the reasons for being told to do something is clear and makes actual sense. Because people don’t ask why to the nth degree they find themselves regurgitating things that simply sound crazy when you properly analyse what’s being said. For example, “I will kill you for talking bad about our leader”. If the person who thinks this way asked themselves why and answers it and asks why again to that and so on to the nth degree, they will soon realise that what they’re saying is simply crazy. You can apply this to so many aspects of life: ‘Those people are bad. Why? Because they steal. Why? Because it’s in their blood? No that sounds crazy. Maybe it’s because they’re poor. Why are they poor? Because. Why? Because. Why?” …and so on. By the end of this internal dialogue you will find that you’ve painted a different picture in your head and nuance becomes more prominent in your understanding of the world around you. Then empathy, which is that characteristic that makes us really stand out as sentient beings will fill us more than psychopathy, which is on the other end of the spectrum.

So I ask you reading this today, where are you in your evolutionary stage? Are you reactionary and suspicious of others that don’t look, sound, dress or have the same beliefs as you? Or are you open minded and considered when it comes to people that don’t have a similar background or come from the same arbitrary land mass as yourself? Do you perpetuate stereotypes because it’s easier or do you actually stop to look at the facts and have an open mind about others you don’t know? These are the characteristics in my view that distinguish us from the rest of the animal kingdom and the more thinking we are, the more that evolution is reflected.

 

I would like to dedicate this blog to Nipsey Hussle who was sadly killed so senselessly on 31st March 2019. After becoming a successful rap artist you stayed behind to make a difference to your community in a hands on way, but someone decided to kill you because they felt they were disrespected by you. I wish they would have asked themselves Why? to the nth degree as to why that was a good idea and realised how crazy it actually was. RIP.

I’ve tried to avoid blogging about Brexit for some time now but one of the reasons for creating my blog in the first place was to express views that I feel don’t get properly covered in other outlets. First of all Brexiter is the term I prefer to use and not Brexiteer, as there’s nothing adventurous  or gallant about the sort of people that have led the UK down this frankly quite tragic road.

Now there are a number of categories of Brexiter in my opinion. You have the ones who just don’t like other people or anything foreign if it’s not a curry or a Saturday night kebab, and they blame the EU for too many Arab or Asian looking people in the country, which just demonstrates their “logic”, if that word can even be applied here. And for people like that there’s really not much that can be done for them except to wait, really. You then have those who were indifferent either way and were only swung by some quite persuasive arguments like extra money for the NHS being splashed on the side of a bus, but have now realised that it was only possible to contribute £350m a week (less rebate) because of the size of the economy, thanks to the immense contribution that immigrants were making in the first place. After a lot of them leave, which they will, the economy will shrink and there won’t be £350m a week to do anything with let alone give to the NHS. But many of this category of people are often humble enough to see the error they have made and are either open to a second referendum with more facts now available for all to see or are too religious when it comes to democracy and believe rightly or wrongly it should be carried out regardless of how much poorer the country is going to be. Finally you have those who should know better but are sticking to their stance, mainly from a sense of superiority that they feel they have. These are the people I really want to focus on.

Now that the dust has settled and we have a much better idea of what Brexit really means, how can anybody stick to the same stance after knowing more? I really don’t get it. Well I do get it, actually and it’s just telling of a certain kind of individual who is impervious and simply revels in the idea of being a disrupter, and ultimately would much rather die first than admit they made a huge mistake. There is something about the English psyche I have to say that is generally absent in Scotland and Ireland. What I refer to here is an ability to view the world in more than simply financial terms. I have to say at this juncture that in order to make the point it is necessary to make generalisations, but obviously not everyone in the three main countries in the UK display the exact characteristics I’m about to describe.

I’ve been to Ireland and Scotland and something I can say from my personal experience and observation is that there is a genuine sense of brotherly love from those two places that you just don’t experience in England in the same way. They even have popular friendship poems in Scotland and Ireland that give a glimpse into the soul and mentality of the people of those countries. This kind of difference in psychology is what in my view explains why some people see things purely from a financial approach in England, and can’t seem to understand how others put people first. This I believe is why Scotland and Ireland voted to remain in the EU because it’s in their DNA. They get it.

The EU project to me is kind of like Bitcoin at the moment – you either get it or you don’t, and the number of people who don’t get it are still quite significant for now. Therefore it will be a younger generation of people that will have to unpick this sad circumstance. I suppose this is always the way when progress is being made, be it technological or social.

I will try my best to articulate the concept of the EU as best as I can. Putting the politics and the imaginary lines aside it is a concept that recognises the equality of all human beings. An acknowledgement that human beings should have the right on this planet to go wherever they want, whenever they want and fall in love with whomever they want, without being restricted by imaginary lines created by people who by today’s standard would have had a similar level of education to a 13 year old.

When the Article 50 letter was delivered to Donald Tusk he actually shed a tear. Not because he was sad that he would be losing the financial contribution that the UK makes to the EU I don’t think, but because I believe he felt a deep sense of sadness and pity for the regressive step the UK was making and how much we will be set back as a people. That’s why the EU’s first priority was to secure the rights of its citizens in the UK, the Irish border issue and the divorce bill. But our Leave leaders couldn’t understand this and wanted to go straight into negotiating trade, but the EU said No, we care more about human beings than money. The EU is a long term project, while Brexit is a short-term lash out over the frustration at the poor governance in the UK, with people not realising that the main problem has always been poor internal governance.

The strategic idea behind the EU is one of human cooperation and mutual respect, which should ultimately lead to a better and more peaceful world for everyone, no matter who or where you come from. I recall people saying how horrible it would be if Turkey was allowed into the EU and holding that up as a reason to leave it. First of all what is wrong with Turkey joining the EU? Some people make the point that it’s a mainly Muslim country and many debate moderators don’t seem to have the ware withal to pull them up on it. I guess they may already have an unconscious bias and see such arguments as valid. That is not a valid argument to me at all; it is just a demonstration of that lack of respect Brexiters have that progressive people struggle to get their heads around. If you see people as your equals, their religion for one should have no bearing on whether or not they are eligible to join the EU club. Other people talk about the strength of their economy; well Turkey has a stronger economy than several current EU countries and is ranked as having the 17th largest GDP in the world according to both the World Bank and IMF (2015 data). So when you strip all the arguments out with evidence, all you have left in the end is xenophobia. Besides, we only get to understand one another better when we mingle with each other and whatever “unwestern” sensibilities there are in Turkey will be diluted and the West will also enrich themselves with some Persian traditions. Feuding kingdoms of old married their children off to one another for the sake of peace so why are we afraid of it now?

I hear people that have never invented or created anything in their lives talking about “We invented this” or “We invented that” so we don’t need “them”. I can’t imagine Sir Isaac Newton being closed minded and not wanting to cooperate and compare notes with the best minds on the continent if he had the opportunity to. In fact I can see him biting the arm off anyone giving him the opportunity to expand his illumination into science and the world at large. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s father was French but we so vehemently claim him as British, but can we imagine him not wanting to easily cooperate with other engineers around the continent to pick their brains on how they develop and build their own transport innovations? Even Tim Burners-Lee who invented the internet is horrified that the UK is leaving the EU, because he sees the bigger picture and the internet is all about bringing people together, which is the opposite of what the UK is doing with Brexit. Yes you could find the odd inventor like James Dyson with a contrary view, but he seems to be the only one wheeled out every time for the Brexit side. Virtually everyone else is on the Remain side of the argument. Kind of like climate change scientists.

One thing that cannot be put on a graph or a PowerPoint presentation is people’s emotions; their feelings and their perceptions of a country. The coalition of the willing found this out after they made a presentation basically saying they would be in Iraq on Monday, get Saddam out by Wednesday and have democracy up and running by the weekend. Being in Iraq over a decade later with so many lives lost wasn’t on the graph when that presentation was made.  It took Germany many, many years indeed to undo the damage the Second World War did to their image and the bitterness still lingers on in some quarters. The damage that the UK is inflicting on itself in terms of perception will be very long lasting and most people don’t realise or appreciate it now. We will only see this in years to come when we are pleading for people to come to the UK to prop up the economy again. It’s not nice when you are looked upon as a country that appears mean spirited because it’s not all about money for everyone. It’s about being treated decently and with respect and as the human race becomes more enlightened the notion of people coming to the UK just for money is a diminishing one. When people think of Canada at the moment, positive emotions tend to be exuded and for good reason too.

What Brexiters don’t get is that the paradigm is shifting quite significantly and the younger generation in particular see the world much differently from the older generation. National flags don’t carry the same kind of significance that it does to the older generation. They have a lot more respect for their fellow human beings and they just want to live in peace and be free to go wherever they want, whenever they want. The older generation tend to wrap themselves around a flag and continually stir up in themselves that primordial urge to defend a territory. Imagine 20,000 people today using crude implements to hack down people for crossing into their territory; it just sounds so stupid, but that is the modern equivalent of Brexit.

Ultimately, there is a far more philosophical point that many Brexiters seem to miss completely. They seem to behave as though they will live forever. When you look at life from a narrow and short-sighted perspective, you tend to lack the imagination that you could ever find yourself in a situation that we tend to mainly see happening to people in other countries. It cannot be denied that some people have been financially worse off over the years as certain industries have dwindled and they blame the EU for the downward change in their circumstance. But the world is changing constantly and it is imperative that we change along with it. If we keep yearning to go back to the 60s and 50s, we must also consider what that means. It means having spam for breakfast, it means minorities being openly abused and assaulted, it means women’s buttocks being smacked in the work place as a matter of course when all they want is to go to work and earn a living like everyone else without being assaulted. Is this really what we want to go back to? Well I want to go back to the good ol’ days when it was just Wessex. It was so good before Mercia, Sussex and Northumbria joined us and I preferred the old lambskin passport we used to have then. You could have had your head off for the most trivial of things, but the scenery was more bucolic and you knew where you stood with other people. Damn that Athelstan!

More and more people today are getting “woke” and political lines are not what they used to be anymore. Brexit is a backward step that I believe will be put right, but after a lot of unnecessary pain. Brexit is a mark of a false sense of superiority. Globalisation and the internet are levelling the playing field and when it levels up, which it will, where will the UK be then? The EU would have set the UK up perfectly to thrive in that world, but we will now struggle for a long time as that levelling happens. Brexit is a statement of a lack of respect for others, subconsciously and to a degree consciously as well in some cases. Brexit is an exposure of the poor governance, which has also shown a huge lack of civic knowledge in the country of how things actually work, when you even have politicians talking ignorantly of things that are just not possible and people cheering in agreement.

But those who get the concept I’m talking about will get it and those who don’t, won’t until such time that they do, if they ever do. The world is changing constantly and we should be going forward and not keep looking backward. It’s all about international commerce now and those political imaginary lines are disappearing. Today individuals can be paid money from someone in another country thanks to the internet and platforms like Ebay. Jobs for life where you work in a company for 40 years and retire will soon be a thing of the past, and those who want to go back to that will be left behind and their numbers won’t be enough to make a difference at the ballot box anymore. Knowledge and enlightenment is no longer the preserve of a few, but is now a human right and the more people around the world are enlightened, the weaker those political structures we have always known will become and the closer we will be as a human race, making the spasm that is Brexit a futile rejection of progress. Progress that will deliver a better future for ALL.

Resistance to progress or achieving goals sometimes comes in the form of an expression of exasperation at the size of the objective or task ahead, and one of the common walls built up to enable this indolence is the phrase that begins, “in an ideal world…”. In an ideal world basically means what you are saying is good, but we can’t do it because of this or that. But if it’s good, why make excuses? Why not just bring down those barriers and make the world more ideal today, rather than in the future?

I gave this a lot of thought and concluded that we do live in an ideal world, and once we realise this and change our mindset we would be on our way to making quicker leaps and bounds as a human race. We most definitely live in an ideal world when you look at it from the lens of a long period of time. For example, three hundred years ago a slave owner’s child would have grown up establishing a strong bond with certain slaves in the estate and would have been saddened to see the conditions they lived in and how they were treated. They would have asked their father, why can’t slavery stop because they are being treated badly and their father would have said, in an ideal world there would be no slavery, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Three hundred years later the thought of slavery is completely incomprehensible and abhorrent to most people today.

It’s still less than 100 years since women in the UK were first given the vote in 1918, and that was just for those over 30 who owned property! It wasn’t until 1928 that all women over the age of 21 were given the vote. Considering there are some people alive today who were born or even a few years old in 1918, we are not even talking about some ancient history so far removed from the present day. There are pictures and videos of the suffragettes we can watch of them protesting and throwing themselves under horse carriages in the fight for their right to vote. I’m sure at the time some people would have said, in an ideal world it would be nice for women to have the vote, but we don’t live in an ideal world and the system must be the way it is in order to protect society and so that men can make the right decisions for their women. After all women were considered as chattel by law until the late 1970s. This was in most of our lifetimes and the mentality has completely changed now. Are we not living in a more ideal world today than 40 years ago?

I won’t even go into the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 where women could finally keep their wages and own property in their own name. I’ve come across women who said that in the 1990s they would receive phone calls from a utility company for example and the person on the other end, often a woman themselves, would ask to speak to the man of the house in the automatic assumption that the men were the ones that pay all the bills. I’m sure if that were to happen today there would be a very stern letter of complaint reaching the management of such an organisation, and the Twitteratti would also have something to say about it, and the company’s name would take a serious battering. So, the world is more ideal today compared to just 20 years ago.

These are just a few simple, blatant examples that most of us can recognise and appreciate which I’ve used to make the point, but there are so many other examples out there that many of us are aware of but feel a bit powerless to do anything about for now.

In an ideal world there would be no hunger, there would be no crime. In an ideal world, we would all treat each other with respect and acknowledge the reality that if we all had similar opportunities, the less fortunate amongst us would probably do very well indeed. The movie Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd brilliantly illustrates this. Why do we have to wait for another hundred years to radically make the world more ideal if we are aware of the many issues that cause human strife currently? We know that the imaginary lines created by people far less literate than most of us are today is giving people in many “countries” a raw deal in life compared to others. The internet has practically destroyed the class system and continues to give opportunities to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to amass great wealth and success via traditional education systems.

The key to realising this progress in my view is respect. From historical times to present day, the more respect shown by people of different countries to one another, the more peaceful they are between each other and within each other. Yes, it’s true that levels of development and knowledge vary from country to country, but like the teacher who shows respect to their students, they get back a lot of respect and admiration in return, making the imparting of knowledge a simpler process. But if you look down on people because you feel you know a lot more than them and should impose your values upon them, they become resentful towards you and will be happy to wallow in their ignorance for longer so long as you have nothing to do with them, making an ideal world take longer to reach.

We all have different points of view of what the right thing should be and therein lies a conflict in itself, but I think for those genuinely serious about making the world a better place for all, the barometer to use in knowing whether you are on the right side of history is if an emotion you feel when taking your stance is of hatred or love. If you say that something is the right thing and you say so with hatred in your heart, then you might be lying to yourself and others as to the motives behind what you are propagating for. But if there is an emotion of love in your heart when taking up a stance about how the world should be, then you are probably more likely to be on the right side of history and progress.

So, policies need to be developed which promote fairness worldwide as opposed to one-upmanship between countries. We need to be less incogitant and a bit more considerate of one another. I’m optimistic because we are certainly in a better place today than ever before generally speaking, but we still have a long way to go. We can either use our awareness to accelerate the process of societal progress so that we can enjoy the benefits today, or wait for our children or grandchildren to enjoy those benefits instead. In any case I believe we will get to Elysium one day, I just much rather it be sooner rather than later.

What’s Going On is one of my favourite ever Marvin Gaye songs. It’s such a deep and meaningful song that invites one to reflect on the state of the world around them and appeals for some sanity to return to proceedings. Gaye’s mellifluous voice over a soothing tempo laced with the soft cries of a saxophone with the power of the Pied Piper, makes such a powerful combination when his deep lyrics are added to the mix. It’s like relaxing you with a glass of wine before breaking down some bitter truths about yourself and your various behaviours, to which your response can only be to take it in and reflect on what you are doing wrong and endeavour to make changes after the dawning of your negative behaviour has properly sunk in. When listened to in the right mood it has the power to make anyone, no matter how belligerent, to stop their madness and try to get back to sanity and reasonableness.

Now, it’s a very well documented fact that violence in the world has drastically reduced over the millennia, even though sometimes we may see or hear of some horrific atrocities every now and again in the news. Violence used to be a fact of everyday life where you could be killed or seriously injured as a matter of course by simply accidentally stepping on someone’s toes or maybe spilling your drink on their shirt, so the mentality has significantly shifted over time and we are now more able to control our animalistic instincts and treat one another with a bit more delicacy. When I left my salubrious and affectionate peppy, American primary school for a Nigerian military secondary school, flogging was par for the course amongst other things that I sometimes see being described when they talk about places like Guantanamo Bay on the news. I think to myself, that’s not so bad, we had that in secondary school too! These days such violence could never occur in that secondary school. The mentality has shifted.

When looking for a trend on a graph you won’t just see a straight line but you will see a line that goes up and down in a jagged manner along the X axis. You then identify a trend by looking at the bigger picture of the general direction of which the line is moving, so the line may be moving up and down in a jagged manner but overall the trend appears to be moving say, downwards for example. In this instance when looking at it from a violence point of view we are horrified whenever the jagged line moves in an upward direction and it is instances like that which often make the news. But most people can be rest assured that the chances of them going through life without suffering violence is the highest it’s ever been and continues to increase.

What breaks my heart though is the specific kinds of violence that seem to be upping the ante these days and it’s things like that that make people feel things are getting worse, despite the facts. I remember as a teenager the very worst that could have happened to me when I had a row with my peers was to have a physical fight of blows and wrestling. Our parents would never even know about it. But I don’t know what it is now that makes people feel they must go a level higher just to show how badass they are. The thought of inserting a knife in another human’s body is something I find incomprehensible and to think I can shoot someone to death because they disrespected me is actually quite laughable if not for its seriousness in the reality of those that have suffered it. The latest craze now in London (I don’t know yet of other global cities) is pouring acid on people.

My God! Is this the height of demonstrating a lack of empathy among our younger people? I think to myself, do they not imagine what it’s like to have acid poured on themselves for them to feel hardened enough to think it’s a great idea to pour it over someone else? I truly despair because the ante seems to keep being raised as far as violent methods are concerned amongst younger people, and the advent of 24 hour news cycles and social media spread the word like never before because it’s not just being reported days after the fact, but in some cases incidents are even being live-streamed to the world in full graphic HD. Is this part of the desensitising process? I don’t know. Quite possibly.

I don’t know how many teenagers read my blog but I want to appeal for empathy. Please, please, please have empathy. Because if you feel something so horrific can never happen to you and you are invincible then you will find it hard to imagine the agony and life changing effect that such actions will have to both the victims and their families.

I don’t know how to best encourage people to develop their empathy but what I know is that it doesn’t matter what your circumstances are, there are things around you that you can experience to help however rich or poor you are. Music, theatre, galleries, dance, travelling, reading! No matter your socioeconomic background reading is something that everyone should be able to do, and the more likely you are reading the less likely you are being stabbed or stabbing someone else. These things, among many others help you think more and imagine what things can be like for others, enabling that milk of empathy to flow from within your heart.

What happened to those good ol’ days when you would have a breakdance battle with your fiercest rivals and everyone will go back home in one piece? I know I’m sounding old now, but seriously it’s a much better prospect than having acid poured over you or being stabbed or shot. If I were to be stabbed or shot it really shouldn’t be because of disrespect. At least it should be for something more worth it like defending my family from a robbery or something horrible like that. Otherwise we might as well bring back duels!

So please try to immerse yourself in productive things that will bring out your imagination and unlock your empathy. No matter how hard you feel you are today, you will still need a job to survive in the future. Even if you own your own business you will still need to kiss someone’s arse in order to get work coming in. So, if you are angry at being disrespected now, how many people are you going to stab, shoot and pour acid over when, not if but WHEN it happens in the future and you need to eat and survive and possibly look after your family too? Think about that when someone disrespects you now.

On a lighter note let’s try to make the world more like in this link. Seriously, this is what we should be aiming for. A world where everyone goes back home in one piece. Stay safe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2guxhefWrQ

You can also indulge in a bit of Marvin Gaye here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbZYRZpNc64

A child was born today to a family that had its best interests at heart and the family loved that child wholeheartedly. The father is proud and can’t wait to impart his understanding of the world onto his child. The mother is so happy and is determined to bring that child up right. They want to do their best to see that the child becomes a good member of society and keeps the family name in good standing in the community. That child grows up, makes their family and society proud and repeats the process again.

That sounds like a good wholesome story, doesn’t it? I’m sure everybody at some level can relate to that understanding of life and society as a whole. The only thing though is where in the world am I talking about? Am I talking about Sweden, USA, Saudi Arabia, Gambia or China? Well I believe my opening paragraph relates to every society all around the world. Who doesn’t want the best for their children, generally speaking? But this is on a localised level.

What happens when all these positive things meet each other on a global level? Well that is where I believe the problems start. Let me elaborate. When in a local society, e.g. a village or a small town, the values or culture of that community are more aligned between that group of people and their value system whatever they may be, is the right value system as far as that society is concerned. You then have visionaries or brutal conquerors depending on your viewpoint, who bring many of these small communities together in the form of a country and instil one overriding culture among those people in the form of a flag, an anthem and a coat of arms among other things. There are some frictions that take place from time to time between those small societies, but generally all the people in that country move in the same direction.

I suppose it’s easier to pull people in a country with similar customs and values in one direction than it is to do with a wider group of people with varying value systems. Some people are taught from a young age that other people are inferior to them, others are taught that their religion is superior and everyone else is going to Hell and everyone feels sorry for everyone else because there is a chip on everyone else’s shoulders as they feel they know something everyone else doesn’t know. It’s all quite comical when you think about it.

So, there are different value systems all over the world and everyone genuinely believes in their heart of hearts that theirs is the right one. Some places are more open minded than others and are open to evidence based information which triggers a shift in the understanding of that group of people. Others that are let’s say, “less flexible” I would suggest are usually more keen on embracing the technologies that the other less inhibited minded people have created, particularly in the areas of weaponry, mobile phone technology and social media platforms.

However, when it comes to intellectual and cultural progression they stick rigidly to the script and sometimes even mete out violence when there is a dissenter. This happens all over the world in varying degrees so every culture is guilty of it in one form or the other. But this mumpsimus is the real challenge when it comes to global cooperation and general human advancement. How do you convince people their way of thinking could be a bit more, shall we say “up to date”?

Travelling is a good start but even that doesn’t work for everyone. With technological advancements in travel, cultures are meeting each other more frequently now than ever before and that can only be a good thing ultimately, but this technological advancement in travel can be a bit too much for some people to get used to so quickly. People in different regions would have interacted with each other over many years and been comfortable with each other over a long period of time, but these days that gentle easing into comfort zones is rather more rapid. It’s for such reasons that when new tribes are discovered like small communities of the Yanomami tribe in Brazil’s Amazon, the perceived wisdom is to let them be and not interact with them as it could be a serious shock to the system as far as their culture and traditions are concerned.

Every culture believes that they have the right template for a good society, so how can the human race ever be as one with so many clashes due to these differences, some of which are complete anathemas between cultures? After all they all mean well, no matter how ill-informed some of it may seem between cultures. I’d say the best thing is to see each other as humans first before any other differences. This is far more difficult than it sounds because it involves treating people with respect, which is something that is easy to say but not so easy to action. In fact, hats off to those that can action this and not just talk about it.

Yes, we have differences in our understanding of what society should be like throughout the world, but I think we can begin to find similarities by first asking each other, “what’s your blood colour?”. That’s a good start for people who are so entrenched in their ways but genuinely want to have an open mind when it comes to learning about others and interacting with them. Interaction will lead to cooperation and the greater advancement of the human race and everything else benefiting thereafter. So, what’s your blood colour? Red? That’s just like me! My name is Ese, what’s yours?

In my late teens or early twenties back in Nigeria some friends and I decided to go on a trip to The Yankari Game Reserve. Jos where I lived to Bauchi was just about an hour’s drive, but Bauchi city to Yankari was easily another hour and a half, if not more, and this was at a time when fuel scarcity was quite rife in Nigeria. There were 6 guys and 5 girls in two cars, one of which was a station wagon. The 6^th guy was a guy I wasn’t particularly enamoured to, but he was a friend of my best friend so he came along for the ride.

Now this was an incognito trip and most of our families didn’t know we had gone on an overnight trip to another state and far into the bushes at that, which basically meant do your best to operate within the margins and don’t do anything too crazy that will give the game away and get you in trouble. When we finally arrived at Yankari after what seemed like an eternity, we had a quandary of how we were going to get fuel for our cars to get back to Jos the next day. But I was just happy that we had arrived ok and I was just chilling back and having a pleasant conversation with one of the girls that my friend had introduced me to.

Knowing that we were at a well-established place, I had it at the back of my mind not to panic over the fuel situation and that we would be able to talk to staff in the morning and see what kind of arrangements they had in place. Being a place where foreign tourists go on holiday surely they wouldn’t leave their guests to be stranded there.

So, there I was chatting with this girl when a couple of my friends walked in to call me outside. I came out and saw all the other guys standing there, and then a proposal thought up by the semi-outsider of the group was put to me that we should try to steal some petrol from other cars in the car park to fuel our cars ahead of the next day. When this was put to me all I said was, “Is this what you guys called me out here for?” Then I kissed my teeth and went back into the room. And that was the end of that ridiculous idea without another word being said from me.

The next morning, we talked to a member of staff and we were directed to the fuel depot they had on site where we were able to buy fuel legally before exploring and enjoying ourselves in the natural spring (which is always at 30ºc throughout the year by the way). Also, the 6th guy ended up stealing our camera with all our lovely photos, which included some beautiful ones of monkeys coming to out chalet in the morning and getting very close to us. The thief still stole something in the end!

The point to this story is that one person was able to convince four other guys that that was a good idea and they were all ready to carry it out until they informed me about the plan. What was going on in my mind was the horror of being shown on national television if we were lucky, considering that in Nigeria justice can be quite swift and very brutal indeed; and that’s before we get to the courts!

I’ve seen many things on the news from around the world where I feel if people had just stopped to think for a second they would have shaken off the herd mentality and not involved themselves in some appalling things. The recent xenophobia in South Africa is something that has really upset me, particularly where people have been convinced to be angry and violent to others for all the wrong reasons. We have juveniles going to live in an “Islamic utopia” offered by ISIL or Daesh only to find themselves committing murder and other atrocities, many of whom I believe did not realise that, that was what they were signing up for when they abandoned their distraught and loving families to go there.

We are all in varying degrees guilty of that herd mentality especially when it has been used for ill or to benefit an individual who has captured our imaginations. We need to be able to stop and think. Think through the ramifications of what we are about to do; kind of like having a conversation with the imaginary angel and demon on our shoulders and letting the angel prevail always. Deep thinking is not a very popular thing with many people but it’s very important indeed. The problem with thinking deeply though is that those who want to control you for their benefit would find it difficult to achieve their aims and they wouldn’t want that so they’d much rather keep people ignorant.

We have people like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage who from their history and public record have never had any interest in the plight of the common man and have only ever looked out for themselves first, but have somehow been able to convince the common man to vote against their own interest, making them believe they’re on the same side, then when it all goes horribly wrong they get angry. As Denzel Washington said recently, “don’t get mad, get informed”.

Being informed means you’re able to think more critically about things and appreciate that there are no simple answers in life. That’s why decent politicians struggle to get ahead because they are trying to reason with people and help them see the bigger picture, while disingenuous politicians know that the 3 word slogan is enough to capture their audience. Obama realised this sad reality and that’s why I believe he came up with Yes We Can! At least he came up with a positive 3 word slogan. But after Obama we reverted back to the negative – Lock Her Up! and Drain the  Swamp! as we saw in 2016 and Strong and Stable & Coalition of Chaos, being patronisingly mentioned in every sentence at the moment in the UK.

We are simple creatures really, like any other animal in nature but it doesn’t mean we should keep being stupid and shallow when it really matters. Please people, when someone comes to us and tries to whip us up into a frenzy over something without the full facts, it’s very, very important that we Stop. Think. And let the angel win.

I love the creative arts. From fine art and music to theatre and movies, to fashion and even the designers of our day-to-day gadgets, I appreciate the whole concept and the inspirations that trigger the machinations in the mind that sparks the frenzy of mental activity, which produces some of the most amazing creative output we have come to see over thousands of years. People who create are, in my mind, people that are a little bit more evolved than most of the rest of the population. Their minds seem to work in a manner that aims to break traditions while most other “non-creative” people’s minds tend to be wired towards holding on to old traditions and are the most resistant to change.

When I think of the pioneers of cultural change over the years, and I’m specifically talking about cultural change that didn’t involve violence here, I observe a kind of frustration on their part if not pity for the people around them who just didn’t see what they could see. It is usually always left to the younger generations to appreciate and take those ideas forward. I’m going to focus on just a few aspects I have identified and how I think they have affected wider society. My comparisons will be mainly between the arts and politics and religion. Politics and religion used to be one and the same and were only separated in the west relatively recently i.e. a few hundred years ago, so I need to use both of them in my examples when comparing the thinking of the religious and political leaders against the thinking of artists. In fact for ease I’ll call it “religiopolitics”. There you go I’ve just invented a new word. My first portmanteau contribution to the world of any note.

Let me start with the three most renowned artists of the renaissance era – Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. While these enigmas were painting, sculpting and inventing gadgets with techniques that are still being improved upon today, what was going on in religiopolitics in the rest of the world at the time? Well, in 1492 in Spain Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon signed the Alhambra Decree basically forcing all Jews to convert to Christianity or be expelled from Spain. Now in their minds at the time this would have been the right and proper thing to do, but I suggest that a lack of empathy resulting from their void in creativity and rigid Catholic dogma highlights how they were held back by religiopolitics while the creative types were sparking deep thinking and innovation in Florence. An interesting titbit I discovered before I proceed is that before the crusaders took back Spain from the Muslims, the Muslims saw Jews as “people of the book” and thereby gave them special status and privileges within society. How things have greatly changed today eh? So who knew better, the Muslims then or the Muslims today?

In the 1600s we had William Shakespeare in England and while he was creating his plays and stimulating his audiences intellectually, politically King Charles I was busy antagonising parliament and making decisions that lead to his eventual beheading. Maybe I’m naïve but I seriously doubt that Shakespeare would have had the stomach to behead or even order the beheading of anyone. Not because that wasn’t the norm of his time but because, I believe, that while all that was going on around him he would have considered it an unpleasantness he would much rather not be involved with and would be far more interested in creating than destroying or oppressing others.

During Charlie Chaplin’s adult life, while he was being creative and sparking the imagination of audiences with his films, politics was throwing common sense out of the window and engaging in the First World War out of a semi-religious belief of executing complicated treaties no matter the cost. There was a Second World War because some people basically felt they were superior to others. And then there was the Vietnam War, which most people still don’t know what the point of it was!

I remember the Taliban destroying the 1,700 year old Buddha statues in the Bamyan Valley in Afghanistan and then Iran where singing the song Happy, by Pharrell Williams was an actual offence of which the alleged “criminals” had to make apologies for their despicable sin on national television. Then you have other governments that don’t like a bit of colour in the lives of their citizens as you either wear white or black, depending on your sex. And obviously we’ve also had ISIS in Palmyra recently. Religiopolitics exhibits its procrustean might here, significantly holding back the true potential of many people in these places.

While writing this blog, Len Goodman of Strictly Come Dancing fame appeared as a guest on Channel 4’s Countdown show, and he told a story of when the waltz was first introduced in England to the aristocrats. They thought it was so “immoral and sinful” at the time and it caused a bit of an outrage. He read out an article from The Times of London which I sought out and I think it best to quote the full article:

“We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced at the English court on Friday last … it is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressor on the bodies in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society by the civil examples of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”

The Times of London, summer, 1816

Can you believe that? The life expectancy of men in those days would have been significantly shorter if they had seen the twerk, that’s for sure. And the twerkers of today will look at a new dance in 50 years’ time and reminisce of how decent dance was during their time. It’s crazy isn’t it? Also, notice how it says “his daughter”? Showing how women’s views didn’t matter much then, but that’s an aside.

I remember visiting the Fashion Museum in Bath a couple of years ago and seeing how fashion has come a long way over hundreds of years and something that particularly struck me was how fashionable and glamourous some clothes were, in my opinion, particularly in the late 1800s and early 1900s. When I try to square that kind of fashion creativity with the mentality of the people of the day, the forelock tugging class system, the level of inequality, the Empire and so forth; it just felt to me like those articles of clothing were more suited (pardon the pun) to a few generations later than that period.

I really admire Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He’s a progressive, decent human being with a huge heart containing a generous helping of empathy and a large dollop of cheerfulness. A man that has an open mind and is willing to listen and learn from the evidence and this is evident in his policies on climate change and being welcoming of refugees and immigrants generally. Other more “traditional” politicians ignore the evidence and seek out for crimes by immigrants to highlight, conveniently ignoring crimes by natives. They ignore climate science and spout their beliefs in the death penalty or long jail sentences in an ignorant attempt to sound tough, and ignore the evidence that growing prison populations probably indicate that those kinds policies have no real effect in the real world and possibly a more intelligent approach is required. Can I point at the fact that Justin Trudeau did a bit of acting in a mini-series before he went into politics? Well it agrees perfectly with my theory so I jolly well will! But I think he exemplifies very well the point I’m trying to make.

So I say we should make Benedict Cumberbach the Prime Minister of Britain, George Clooney the president of the United States, Ben Murray Bruce the president of Nigeria and I bet you anything that the world will be a much better place. I don’t know who we can make the leader of North Korea, but I’m sure the newsreader who always announces how wonderful and successful the dear leader is could do a great job (baby steps). Recently Donald Trump attacked Meryl Streep and in the UK the right wing press regularly attack Lily Allen and Gary Lineker simply for being decent and showing empathy. If we let them get away with it we will wake up in a world of more inequality with minorities trodden upon even more than they currently are. Oh yeah did I mention Trump? You see him and his friends wearing smart looking suits looking sharp and very intelligent, but when they open their mouths you wonder if they are actually members of the 21^st century or if they should be housed in museums for people to see what Neanderthals used to be like. I think in the modern age they perfectly personify the concept I’m trying to highlight of the clash between the arts and religiopolitics. Progress vs the Anchor.

20^th Century Fox and Fox News I think are also perfect illustrations of how people of the arts seem to be of a higher species than those immersed in religiopolitics. You see some of the TV shows and movies that they produce and it leaves you in awe as to how clever the story lines and the production quality is as well as the high level of research incorporated into every detail. Then you turn over to Fox News and hear presenters saying things that makes you wonder if they actually had the benefit of an education. From their ignorance of the wider world to even how things work in their very own country!

So is our only hope for the troglodytes to pass away and for the younger generation who have been influenced by the wonders of the internet and modern enlightenment to take over? It certainly seems that way. In another generation or two we will look like the troglodytes and the recently born will take the human race to an even better place. In any case I feel very optimistic.

 

 

If you want to refer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England

http://www.rounddancing.net/dance/articles/waltzhist.html

Two of the things that make me despair about our world are politics and religion. You watch the news and see stories of people killing each other over both these things. You see people being irate about some imaginary line that was randomly thought up by a small group of privileged people hundreds of years ago. Indoctrination makes people believe staunchly that this matters but when you actually stop and think about it – critically – does it really matter? So someone travelled from one “country” to another or as I see it, one piece of space to another, so what? Who cares?

OK in order to prevent anarchy, governments have been created and laws made in order to have some sort of organised structure and a society and rule of law etc, I get all that. In order to progress as a human race people innovate and develop products because they’ve seen a need and a gap in the market, hence creating jobs and making money and generally improving society, which I’m all for. But is it not possible to achieve all this without the negative side of politics and religion? The “other” factor. Them and us.

You see people being shot or beheaded all because of indoctrination. You see people being tribal and disliking others, not because of anything they did to them personally but just because they have been taught to hate them from a very young age. I kind of understand the concept, being an Arsenal fan who hates Tottenham fans for no explicable reason other than that is just what we’ve been taught to do. I mean I’m sure some Tottenham fans are nice people, I even know one. Our prejudices are mainly learned and if we all just stopped to think for ourselves and get some perspective, and perspective here is the key, we will see that we are attaching a great deal of importance to very irrelevant things. Maybe it’s just human nature to identify with people similar to us but I find that a rather primitive behaviour and we should be evolving to the next level where we are not afraid of the “other”.

There was a particular video on YouTube that really gave me perspective on the world and what should be relevant and not so relevant in life. I have included the link below, but basically it shows the earth and then zooms out to our solar system and then our galaxy and then to all the other billions of solar systems and galaxies of the universe that have been mapped out so far. Then it zooms back in to earth again. Watching that video makes me ask the question, what are we all fighting for again? It’s actually absolutely ridiculous when you think about it.

In the scheme of things we are so insignificant it beggars belief! And it simply underscores our deep lack in knowledge and general life philosophy at this point in time. I’m deliberately being broad when I say lack of knowledge because all the knowledge we have at the moment is 99.99% about our world, from the oceans to the land and frondescence and willowacks and mountains, not to mention the animal and human life, and we are still discovering more about our earth every day. But we haven’t even scratched the surface when it comes to the rest of the universe.

The attainment of knowledge to me should be the ultimate goal of every human being and I’m talking about empirically tested knowledge here, not emotional understandings. The more facts everyone knows, the faster the progression of the human race will be. Sometimes I feel cheated because I think about what people in 400 years will know and I feel quite envious of them. I wish I could be around to get all that knowledge also. I know history repeats itself but I’m confident that our primitive behaviours will diminish further over time and more perspective will be given to the relevance of a lot of the things we currently take too seriously. There’s an excellent book called The Better Nature of Our Angles: A History of Violence and Humanity by Steven Pinker that does a fantastic job of tracking the trend of humans getting more civil over the centuries, so this gives me hope that humanity will only get better.

But back to the universe. If I was in charge, which may not be such a bad thing I assure you, I would see that all our resources are directed towards space exploration. Ok I’ll put some aside for food and other essentials, but I believe we are wasting so much resource on irrelevant things like nuclear weapons for example. Imagine if all the countries spent all those trillions of dollars on space exploration instead? Our knowledge would increase exponentially!

Thankfully the internet and cheap flights have accelerated human interaction and a few generations down I sincerely hope that there will be far more respect among nations than there is now. Once there is more cooperation among the people of earth, imagine the kind of progress that can be made in space exploration. The periodic table will be like volume 1 of an Encyclopaedia Britannica, with the thousands of new elements I believe are out there. Imagine the kind of advances in medicine that could be achieved when we discover new chemical properties and organisms. And ultimately, what we could learn regarding the origins of the universe and life as a whole.

I envy the ones not yet born who will benefit from all these things. I envy their enlightenment, I envy their friendships and collaborations, I envy the good health and long life they will enjoy and I envy the peace I’m so confident they will enjoy. The least we can do is to build the foundations of this future and try to tap into that future as much as we can and hope that we have done our little part in making the human race better.

I hope the link below gives you some perspective on where we are in the universe and the absurdity of the imaginary lines we currently use to oppress ourselves and keep our human race down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

University is that time in one’s life when you are highly energetic and enthusiastic but more especially, idealistic. Like with primary school, university is one place that moulds you for life if life doesn’t beat those ideologies out of you that is. I think we are the most impressionable at that time of our lives and you walk into the work environment with an expectation that we no longer live in a Victorian era, but a more progressive and forward thinking and altruistic world.

Now I know not everyone goes to university, so I can’t really talk from the point of view of those people but I can imagine that the minds of young apprentices or entrepreneurs are also being moulded by the people in their immediate environment, like their employers or other kinds of teachers.

Back in my university days I was a Liberal Democrat. I strongly believed in liberal values – you know, live and let live and all that. For some reason I never really identified with the Labour party. Iraq definitely had a lot to do with it, but before Iraq I just didn’t agree with many of their social policies, noble though they might have been at inception. But when it seemed like it paid more to have a broken home or to not work, I just couldn’t affiliate with such values. So I was a Lib Dem and always voted Lim Dem until Ken Livingstone pushed me to the edge and I became a Tory, plus David Cameron seemed quite appealing too.

My first job after university was at Tower Hamlets and my commute to work involved getting a train to London Bridge and catching the underground from there onwards. I had a manager that was also my friend, although we were friends first. Having become an experienced commuter looking for how best to maximise the margins, whenever I arrived at London Bridge and briskly walked along the platform and down onto the escalators, I’d insert my travel card through the barrier and stomp over to the underground section and boom! standing passengers spilling out onto the station entrance. Trickling in to avoid congestion, and it’s clear I won’t be getting to the platform anytime soon. Think quick! What are my options? Off I go stampeding over London Bridge to Bank station. Typical! More maintenance and the downward escalator is out of order. After all the rigmarole and drama just to get to work in the morning I would get really frustrated when in spite of all the hurdles, I would get to work by 9.03am and my manager would in a semi-jocular, semi-serious way point at his watch and tut while shaking his head. It was so annoying because I knew I sincerely did all I could to get in on time and ended up being just 3 minutes late.

This was one aspect of Ken Livingston’s mayoralty that chipped away at my tolerance for him and the Labour party because the cost of travel always went up each year apart from one time he was seeking re-election. Cynical? I couldn’t possibly comment.

I’m just trying to aspire!

Another thing that frustrated me was Ken’s apparent attempt in my opinion, to supress aspiration. When Ed Miliband lost the 2015 general election the commentators were pontificating on how aspiration had a lot to do with it. I was saying to myself that their analysis was a few years out of date as this was my concern when Ken was still the London mayor.

He was trying to introduce policies like the so-called gas guzzler charge which he dressed up to look like he was penalising the very rich, but in actual fact he was penalising middle class aspirational families. Families of which, the parents often would have grown up in less affluent circumstances, but had worked hard to be successful and provide their families with the little luxuries that they never had themselves as kids. What’s wrong with that? Charging £25 to multi-millionaires will mean absolutely nothing to them. If you like you can make it £500 a day and they will still drive into central London every day. What wasn’t publicised much at the time was that the so-called gas guzzlers also included family cars like the Vauxhall Meriva, but it was dressed up to look like it was only “Chelsea tractors” i.e. Range Rovers and the like, that they were targeting. If I work hard and I want to drive a nice car, what wrong with that? Why must everyone be pushed into getting a Ken approved Prius? I mean, have you seen a Prius??? Urgh!

Also, the charge was only going to extend to the more affluent West London and not Bethnal Green and Hackney in East London. So is it about saving the environment or isn’t it? It’s ok to have a gas guzzler in Bethnal Green but not in Ladbroke Grove? This sort of thing really hacked me off because the hypocrisy was just astounding.

The last collection of things that made me resent Ken Livingstone so much were things like an unbearable arrogance he displayed while in office; not just to his political opposition but to the general populace of Londoners. There was this attitude of “look I know what’s best for you, so just shut up and take it!”. I felt so oppressed and stifled and some people might think of that as a ridiculous thing to say living in a city like London but it’s no exaggeration. Plus who would want to be endeared to someone that says if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down? How disgusting! A communist and a hippy! No, I had enough. I couldn’t take it any longer and couldn’t wait to see the back of him. Boris seemed like such a breath of fresh air and as if the omens were in agreement, there was wall to wall sunshine for two weeks from the day after Boris won the mayoral election in 2008 after weeks of gloomy skies and rainy days.

That was Ken’s contribution. The other person that attracted me to the Conservatives was David Cameron. He was young and dynamic and seemed to be of the 21^st century. He was for environmental issues, he was for equal rights for all citizens, he was the first to do the no hands trick at party conference by delivering his entire speech without any notes long before Ed Miliband failed spectacularly in doing the same thing after leaving out the economy and the NHS when delivering his own party speech without notes in 2014.

I saw a lot of minorities around David Cameron and I admired the level of support he gave to Shaun Bailey during his failed bid to become an MP in 2010. He just seemed so progressive and it looked like under Cameron’s leadership the Conservative party were finally leaving the dark ages and they had a good chance of winning power. I voted conservative ever since but clearly all that has now changed with the old men in grey suits back in charge, with their dreams of a 1960s all white Britain. It’s too late chaps, that horse has bolted but it does hurt to see a glimpse of the negative UK that our parents experienced before my generation were born. That looked like something you only saw in old news reels or black & white films.

I used to think that undecided voters were just attention seekers who gave news organisations a reason to have a segment in their broadcast at every election cycle, where they played both sides of a political argument and asked them if they’ve been swayed by one side or the other. But in recent months I have genuinely become an undecided voter and am likely to nail my mast again to the Lib Dems going forward. From my perspective, I am attracted to general decency, mutual respect and cooperation. I am attracted to genuine friendships and not poker faced friendships. I certainly can’t subscribe to hate and hate is what is being peddled at the moment – and that is just putting it bluntly. Because it is being peddled by various people that have a skill of sailing so close to the edge of legality and because of what some might describe as charisma, they are allowed to get away with it but it still doesn’t negate the fact that they are simply peddling hate.

I hope that there are many more people like me out there, I truly do. I pray that there is hope for decency and reasonableness for the future. I yearn for a more sensible politics where everyone is carried along and not the extremities that are raging on at the moment from both sides of the political spectrum.

Anyway, that is where I am now. Ken made me a Tory and now the Tories have sadly shown me their “true colours”, after many years of defending them to my friends and family. They’ve exhibited a stereotype that I thought had been relegated to a different generation – mean spirited, uncaring, bigoted, elitist and definitely devoid of empathy. I just want a party that is sensible, that is reasonable, that is empathetic and that is “human”. Hello Tim? 🙂

We’ve all been there and we’ve all played the different roles I’m about to describe. The daily rat-race commute to work and back has been a major part of daily life for at least the past 30 to 40 years with the current infrastructure and population of people commuting into the city to their various jobs from high profile executives to wet behind the ears university graduates trying to find their path in life, full of optimism for the future (don’t worry they’ll learn). Then you also have your students and tourists in the mix plus everyone else in-between.

Now I’m not sure if most people don’t give it as much thought as I do considering what I’ve seen over the years, but commuting is a serious art form and to optimise the experience to its fullest potential you need to improve on your commuting skills, analyse each detail, what carriage, where in the carriage, is a seat required or would standing be better? And so on and so forth. It’s all about the margins to bring out the best of your commuting experience. Learning this early can improve your commuting experience for years to come and will bring out your leadership skills in the transport network when travelling with your brood or fellow contemporaries. You’ll show them that on this network you are king and they can trust in you. For anything else like financial advice, they can go see an expert.

My commuting experience began in my university days in the ultimate commuting maze of London. Those early days of being a tyro, getting into any old carriage, arriving at your next stop and realising that you have to walk for several yards before getting to the exit or your connection, and then when you get there you just miss your train by whiskers, with the next train arriving in a whole 5 minutes! That’s an eternity in commuting time. I realised pretty early on that if you get into the right carriage at the beginning you at least have a better chance of catching your next train and arriving at your destination on time.

Months or even years of doing the same commute makes you an expert on that route, but the other challenge you have to overcome is the dreaded other passengers. Oh yes you need the patience of Job to endure sharing the same space as some interesting characters.

Sometimes I want to do a Pepe

Some of the kind of passengers that get my goat are the ones who are over-enthusiastic to be the first to exit the carriage. Even when they’re sitting in the middle carriage and the stop is approaching they push through everyone to be the first person at the doors so that they can be the first to exit. You would expect that seeing as they seem so confident as to what they’re next step is then they must be very used to the tunnels, hence their keenness to get to the doors first. When the train then comes to a stop they step out and do the dreaded thing – they stop. They stop and start looking left and right, holding up everyone behind them, and this makes me want to do a Pepe. I want to just start kicking them repeatedly in a fit of anger as Pepe of Real Madrid did to Fransisco Casquero (be amused or horrified with the following link).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec0CT8yzjAo&spfreload=10

Clearly, I would never advocate violence and these are just fantasies of course – besides, the superego keeps all that well in check. That’s just an expression of the level of frustration I feel sometimes when I encounter such passengers. Kind of like how whiskey connoisseurs feel about people who contaminate fine whiskey with cola or other unapproved beverages.

Fellow Gazelles

Like gazelles to the ready at an Olympic track, when the doors open the race to the escalators is on! The underestimated ones and the overestimated ones all on the move like a startled herd. Who gets to the escalators first? Gazelles with good etiquette know to walk on the right-hand side when they are the first to get on it. Those with bad etiquette dictate the pace to the following pack and the one that has a couple of minutes to catch their connecting train is deeply frustrated and could even go around the dithering animal via the right-hand side. Alas the ticket hall gives space for all to dart in the direction most favourable to them. Paper ticket or oyster depending on your preference and away you go.

Tourists are great!

Surprisingly, in a sport as ruthless as London commuting I actually like tourists, and am always happy to be of assistance should they require it. Maybe it’s because I love travelling myself and would want to be assisted when exploring some foreign city without the fear of being extorted or put in danger. Maybe it’s just because it’s good to help out a complete stranger without expecting anything in return, but I find I have a lot of time for tourists. To be fair you don’t really see them during the rush hour period so possibly I’ve just not bumped into them when trying to catch my connecting train. I’d like to believe however that I would still be helpful towards them even when under pressure.

So position yourself well, time your trains right and be nice to tourists. I remember a friend of mine referring to me as “Ese app” after manoeuvring a journey through London Waterloo station with him. You know you’ve made it as a commuting expert when you are referred to as an app!