Tuesday 30 September 2008

Magician exposes secrets

Some may know of my interests in magic. Here, and in the future, I would like to expose some secrets for you.

Now before any of the magical authorities invoke any of the various curses unleashed on initiates who pass on secret knowledge to cowans and other knowlessmen, let me state that the secrets I will reveal are those of the corporate world intent on getting you to part with your very hard-earned cash.

My purpose is simple. I want to reveal some of the ways sellers get you to buy stuff, particularly stuff you didn't know you wanted. You and I are the targets of deliberate manipulation of our desires. And just as conjurers quite rightly hate having their secrets exposed I am hoping that by showing how some of this manipulation occurs that we can reclaim some of the initiative and not be forced into purchasing decisions that are not in our best interest.

Let me begin then, by giving a brief history of how the situation of us being made to want things came to be. It can perhaps best be traced back to Edward Bernays. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and he was one of the first to try to influence the buying public through the manipulation of the message or, as he referred to it, "the engineering of consent".

Now strictly speaking, what Bernays was involved in was public relations rather than advertising. However, some of the same principles are used by advertisers to influence us and affect our behaviour and are derived directly from his ideas.

He was able to demonstrate the power of his techniques, for example, by helping the tobacco industry. In the early part of the twentieth century few women smoked in public. Even those women who smoked in private were often seen as rebels or eccentrics. Bernays approached the tobacco industry and offered them the opportunity to capture this untapped market (with such health benefits to womankind as may be imagined). To do this he tapped into many women's desire for emancipation, liberation and equality by making the smoking of a cigarette - or 'torches of freedom' as they were billed - a symbol of independence. The market blossomed and through this kind of exercise the field of public relations was born.

In future posts I shall attempt to show how we are being manipulated to this day. More importantly, I shall suggest what sort of counter-measures we might deploy in order to reclaim our right to decide what is important in our lives from those who would seek to decide for us. I believe it is we, as individuals, rather than PR consultants and corporate vested interest, who should decide on what we should spend our time, money and effort. It is up to us to put back the quality in our lives.

Saturday 27 September 2008

When galaxies collide


[Click on the picture to enlarge]

This is a picture of MACSJ0025 showing what happens when two giant galaxy clusters collide. For me the most amazing thing is the number of galaxies (you really need to enlarge the picture to get the full benefit) caught in this picture - each one might be the size of our own Milky Way galaxy or much larger.

Just thinking of all those stars which make up all those individual galaxies and wondering how many of them might have planets orbiting them - and then wondering how many of them might support life. . .

It's awe-inspiring.

We tend to see the world as being more or less at eye-level and downwards. But above our heads the majesty of the universe goes on turning, oblivious to our concerns.

So what's this been about so far?

What I have sought to do in these posts so far is to suggest that we can reconnect with things and feelings that are important in life by travelling slower.

But how does that add to the quality of life?

By allowing me to move at my own internal pace. A pace which allows me to feel grounded, but more than that, to feel in-tune with my own rhythm and sense of identity, to reconnect with the feelings I feel and to let the pieces settle in my mind and my life. It allows me to do those things which rightly, wrongly or simply differently I feel are important and of value to me.

I would like to expand on two points here: When I say they are important to me it is not meant in an egotistical sense. It is meant in a quality of life sense by allowing me to be a functioning spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically connecting being. With whom do I need to have this connection?

First, myself.
Secondly, my wife
Thirdly, the rest of my family
Fourth, my neighbours and local community
Fifthly, the wider world

. . . and in that order.

If I am not integrated within myself I will not be much use to anyone else. My wife comes next as she is without doubt the closest person to me by a long, long way. If that relationship was not settled then I would not be able to relate to the wider rings of my social circle, and so on.

The second point I would make is that it seems to me that there are four speeds at which people metaphorically move and live their lives these days:

The fastest speed is the speed of light: Their lives are lived at the push of a button, by the speed of electronic transmission (video, television and computer). They are living as fast as they can and often trying to speed up still faster.

The next slowest speed is the speed of sound: People reacting and responding to what they hear, to the latest gossip, to stories in the news, the speed of conversation. There is often not much depth here, it is often fleeting, circumstantial and commercial.

Many people seem to be operating somewhere between those two speeds. It is the speed of eveyday, commercial life. But of course life does not move that fast - not real, worthwhile and meaningful life at any rate. To get to that level, you need to stop living your life so fast and slow down.

The next slowest speed is the speed of apprehension, the speed of thought. This is the speed at which your mind can grasp and understand (to apprehend) the significance - the full significance - of what you and others are seeing and saying. It is the speed of your own natural thinking process.

The slowest speed is the speed of feeling or comprehension. This is the speed at which you can internalise, feel and come to terms with something. This is where you relate to others, think before you speak, the speed at which you can pause and consider. This is where you consider yourself and others.

What these levels look like in practice is hard to say. Only you really know for yourself. You can easily lie to yourself and others about how fast you are living. I think we are joined more by our humanity than our technology, that we are more alike than we are different. If you get a sense that someone is living their life too fast then you might be right as you would know how you would be if you moved, thought and reacted that fast.

One of the reasons that we don't like to admit that we are living too fast is that we tend to feel it is more exciting to live faster and boring to live slower. But one of the reasons we feel there is a lack of quality in our lives is precisely because none of the pieces have had a chance to settle, we stop feeling connected to who and what we are deep down and it is our unconscious mind and our body which is sending us signals that we are living our life too fast. When we feel this disconnection, when we wonder what it is all about, we need to take that time to reconnect, to live slower and stop living our lives so fast.

Friday 26 September 2008

The pot at the end of the rainbow

What a lovely day it has been today. The weather was just perfect. A real 'second of autumn' day.

We have 'light-catchers' in our window in the sitting room. These are prisms, crystals and other pieces of faceted glass which catch the sunlight and fill the room with chunks of rainbow of different sizes. The variations and patterns are amazing - little sturdy chunks about two by three inches up to spears of colour one inch by six feet.

Some of the crystals move while others are static. It make for a very magical display enhanced in its beauty by its very fact of its transitory nature.

Drea caught her breath and alerted me to one particular rainbow this afternoon. On the wall opposite the window is a writing bureau and on this there is a vase which Drea had made (she being a very good potter). A rainbow was hitting the vase and producing the most vivid hues.

The vase itself is a creamy white stoneware pot with a matt glaze, and the full spectrum of colours played on its surface like luminous velvet. It make the pot look like the home of the rainbow genie.

As the earth turned and the angle of the sun changed, the spectrum slowly slid off on to the wall with the seeming shadow pushing it off the vase. The final moments were like the last seconds of an eclipse or the final view of the setting sun as it slips under the horizon. The same kind of feeling as when the circus leaves town.

Thursday 25 September 2008

The Third of Autumn

The weather at the moment is very mild. When the Sun comes out the whole day can be transformed. It is the time of year when you can really sense the turning of the seasons.

This is a poem I wrote some time ago to try to express the mood of this time of year.


The Third of Autumn

The first of Autumn is a blue-gray day
A blue-mooded, gray day of dismay
A leaden sulk, a wet face-slap
Trickling 'till dusk and then all the way back.

The second of Autumn is a soft, downy gold
The honey-butter day breathes out and gets old
We're swimming in dapples and big country apples
It smoothes on our faces with unhurried graces

The third of Autumn is a sharp and clear Sun
A bite to our actions, a swallow it's done
We focus our minds and pick up the pace
We harvest the time so the day does not waste
We rustle the papers and pick up our pens

And the three days of Autumn are wed at the end.


Les. P. Cross. 2001.

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Candle

How many parts or separate features of a lit candle can you identify?

Just take a simple candle and light it.

What do you see?

How many separate parts can you really see? Now look again.

Tell me.



(I shouldn't have posted this question, but never mind.)

Grounding

I went to a meeting in Bristol today. The weather was very nice after all the rain and cloudy days we have been having.

I was in very good time for the meeting, so I decided to take an unfamiliar path from the car park to the hotel where meeting was to be held. The path was delightful and was elevated from the road at the side of Castle Park in the centre of town. The path was bordered with some large horse-chestnut trees and some of the conkers had already fallen to the ground.

I picked one up and also found an unopened casing. I pressed it slightly with my foot and two pristine conkers eased out. They were absolutely beautiful. The sheen on them does not last long but the depth of colour and the gently undulating variations in hue are one of nature's jewels. The very nature of this transitory appearance only adds to the magic of the find, knowing that in a few short hours they will become merely brown nuts, passing to one of the three functions of the next stage of their lives: food for squirrels, the hope of another tree or the percussive toy of a child.

What else do I do with my time

I mentioned below that I have better things to do with my time than watching television.

Go here: What else I do

If you follow the link you will see that I also offer character readings for corporate entertainment, private parties and private insights. I get to meet lots of interesting people with very interesting lives doing this. . .

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Why I stopped watching TV

I stopped watching TV in 2001 and I will never go back to watching it.

Why did I stop?

There are a number of reasons and a number of circumstances.

Reasons first:

1. The content seemed to me to be too thin. I tried to look critically at programmes and make a note of what I actually learned as a result of the programme. They seemed to take a long time to say only a little. This was wasting my life.

2. The programme sometimes seemed to be presented to justify its own existence. I had no real interest in the topic being presented and just watched it because it was on. Sometimes the programme was just entertainment and no substance. (I will say more about 'entertainment' in a moment).

3. I can think of more important things to do with my time - I have several hobbies which take time to practice and perform. There are classics of literature which I had never read and was not likely to have the time to read if I give in to the lure of easy entertainment.

4. The information in the programme was very distant. Some 'American comedian', some 'Hollywood actress', some 'Australian soap-opera'. What did that matter when I didn't know the names of my next-door neighbours? Why was watching these shows more important than being with my friends?

5. I tried to think in what way I was a better person as a result of having watched the programme. Over a few months I could not find a programme which made me think I had been glad to watch it.

Now I should say that I am certainly not against entertainment, but there are a number of considerations here:

Is this entertainment I had actively sought?
Was it just appealing to some basic human instinct for titillation or lazy emotion - and did I not want to be better than that?
Was it the best form of entertainment I could think of having?

And so on.

Here were some of the circumstances I ran into:

Whenever I told people that I didn't watch TV they would often become defensive (interestingly) and say things like "Oh I only watch the news and the good programmes, like the wildlife programmes".

Comment: Many of these subsequently became available on DVD (at less than the license fee, could be seen whenever I wanted and were better quality than the broadcast version).

What else? "I like to watch sport and I can only do that on the TV".

Comment: Perhaps you can only watch your particular team or sports person on the TV as travelling to see them might be cost prohibitive - OK I can accept that is a decision only you can make. I am not a sports fan so that wasn't a consideration for me. But I did wonder how fit and healthy I was getting just watching someone else doing their 'day job' and the thing they really enjoyed and got paid for. Of course, I could partake of this licenced voyeurism, but it was not my choice. I have my own interests and my own dreams to live. I want to live my life, rather than watching someone else living theirs.

People would also openly admit that they needed their 'fix' of a particular soap-opera. OK, again, that is their choice. But please consider carefully that this is then an addiction. Consider what you are giving up.

A some questions to think about:

Why can't you get the essential bits of the news from the radio or the internet?
How have you used any of the information you have gained from that programme subesquently?
In what way are you a better person for watching that programme?
What did people do for entertainment before television?

Here is a real story:

I became television-free just a couple of weeks before my wife. One of the programmes she wanted to watch was about Prof. Colin Pillinger, the lead scientist organising the Beagle 2 mission to Mars. My wife and I were both members of the Bristol Astronomical Society and the mission was obviously of interest. She was disappointed in the programme because instead of talking about the mission and looking at the growth of the programme in informative detail it was presented more like a docu-soap. For example, Prof. Pillinger was shown full of expectation going into a meeting to try to get some funding - then a fade out. Fade back in again and he was shown either happy or disappointed with the outcome. There was little actual meat in the programme.

A few weeks later (as it happens) members of Bristol Astronomical Society were invited to Hewlett-Packard's complex just up the road to see a lecture by Prof Pillinger to hear just those kind of details which had been lacking from the programme. Following the lecture there we were sharing a glass of wine and canapes with him and asking belly-to-belly all the questions we still had.

The point of this? It was getting out and doing it which was the most satifying - the real deal.

Just switch off and see what happens.

It's your life and it's ticking by. . .

Stirring the wine

Just stirred the wine during my lunch break.

It was important to me not just to do it as a maintenance task, but to recall that I am doing it as part of an on-going project that is something I set out to create.

In other words, don't think of it as a chore (it's not, anyway, it's interesting), but use the experience to reconnect with what is important in your life.

Monday 22 September 2008

Wine on the go!

We have just started the wine off. Three gallons of Blackberry and Apple. It should give a final strength of 15% ABV, which is quite acceptable.

We had to buy bottled water for the wine as the tap water here has a contaminant which gives it an unpleasant earthy taste which I find quite undrinkable (though I am assured it is not hazardous to health).

Taking the time to enjoy the meal

The meal was wonderful. Lamb Souvlaki with a lemon, spring onion and greek yoghurt sauce. Drea made some pita breads for it and also created a lovely table display from iris leaves from the garden which she wove into a mat and then put on some large rose-hips, some passion-flower fruits and various leaves of different colours to give a feel for what colours are present in nature at the moment. A nice bottle of greek wine which we had been given as a present from holiday was excellent.

Drea also made an apple crumble for dessert, but that will have to wait until the meal has gone down a bit.

One of the most significant things for me about the meal was to take the time to savour the flavours. Don't rush the food. OK, how do you savour it? Think about the sensations in your mouth. Describe them mentally to yourself or outloud to others. What does the flavour remind you of? Take your food in combination with other parts of the dish on offer - what does it taste like with a sip of wine (before, after or during). Try to smell the food as you are chewing it. This is a real challenge for me. Touch, taste and smell are my least developed senses. But the trick here (like so many things) is to want to experience the food.

If nothing else, this can serve as a guide to what to do differently next time you make the dish - a little less garlic, perhaps or a touch more salt.

What else? Candles. A couple of large night-lights to provide that living elemental quality that only a living flame can give.

The most important thing though, is to share the meal if you can - the conversation and the opinions about the dish itself, certainly. But just being with family and friends and letting the act of eating act as a springboard for other observations and comments and a chance to catch up on what has been happening in everyone's life that day.

Starting my blog

Hello.

Today is the middle of Autumn, the autumn equinox, also called Mabon. I thought it a suitably significant time of the year to start my blog.

What do I want to do with a blog? I have thought about it for some time and I want to share some of the things which I feel concerned about and also those things which might be done to improve the quality of one's life.

Now let me state at the start that I believe I already have a good quality of life, certainly compared with the lives of many others one sees reported in the news from around the world.

I noted above that it is the autumn equinox. This is significant in our household as we will be celebrating it later with a special meal - special for us, that is. We like to celebrate the turning of the seasons and just take some time to relax and think about how the year is changing. We don't do this out of some pagan belief but merely to take time to appreciate. One of the beauties of having these celebrations is that they are not commercial and we can make of them what we will.

This is one of the things we do to add quality - or rather, to reclaim the quality - of our lives. So much of life is taken up with moving, working and thinking
fast. It is important to take the time to put some "slack" back into living. Taking time to appreciate and taking a mental breather.

If you want to find out more about when the key points are in the solar year you can find out by visiting the following site:

http://www.archaeoastronomy.com

then click on 'orbital maps' and 'countdowns'.

One of the other things will are doing is to make some Blackberry and Apple wine. The apples are all 'fallers' from my mother-in-law's garden and the blackberries were picked from the lane behind our house and from the garden. Drea (my beloved) is busy peeling and coring the apples, leaving me to do the 'technical bit' of measuring the water, sugar and yeast.

Why is this important to me? Because as part of adding quality to life it is important to create something, even something small. The fact that we are creating something natural like homemade wine which is both pleasant to drink and which serves as a reminder of times spent together is an important part of feeling grounded together. Instead of merely consuming our resources we are creating something which will be greater than the sum of the parts of which it is made.