Professors And People You Shouldn’t

Be Nasty To.

The purpose of this blog is to get people thinking for themselves. It is the most important thing a person can do as an individual. Without being able to think for oneself, it means that the greater part of your life is going to be spent doing things that others tell you to. Which isn’t being the uniquely placed human being, is it?

We all need to work, do a job, and for most of us that means doing as we’re told. That’s fair enough, and we all need to pay our way. I worked for my clients, painted their walls in colours that I truly hated, but it was their house and they wanted to live there and I only had to paint it. They were happy with the result and the result was that I could come home to my flat that is done out with Laura Ashley wallpaper. That I bought twenty five rolls for twenty euros need not detain us here. It’s the boring kind of wallpaper I like.

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Russians Is Rong.

I don’t quite know what has gotten into the Russians of late, but they are behaving very badly. Everywhere in the news there are new articles about their wrongdoing, from their intervention in Syria to their hacking elections across the world – including of course, the infamous Brexit vote – and being naughty at the Olympics.

The Five Legged Beasts Of Nineveh.

The Limassu stands well over six metres high, and must weigh several tons. They also have five legs… which is what this post is all about. Why the Assyrians depicted them with five legs.

A very long time ago, I visited the British Museum in London. In their great hall where they display their collection of monumental sculptures there stood two enormous creatures. They stand well over six metres high, that is nearly twenty feet and must weigh several tons. I knew they stood as guardians to the entrances to palaces in ancient Assyria, and as guardians were shown as godlike figures having human heads with bull’s bodies or that of a lion – and the wings of an eagle.

Guest Post from Alex, blogging at MQ.

MQ is a new charity – yes, another one – that looks into mental health. I can’t quite make out why it’s MQ, but that’s modern marketing for you and they don’t have a contact page so I can’t ask them.

What is interesting in the post I have linked to is the one thing Alex doesn’t speak of. She suffered from Schiz – schizophrenia – and all she talks about are the voices, the circumstances, her friends and how she couldn’t cope. She didn’t mention brain chemistry once…

This is her tale: “I became completely disconnected from the person I had been before.”

A Sideways Look At Information Control.

Those of you who have understood the things I spoke about in my series on the subconscious will at least be aware of the secrets that lie behind control.

Whomsoever wishes to control will do so because they know that they are correct. I will explain: someone wishing to control does so because they know no better. Sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it? But I assure you, it is not. If a person knows no better, how can they truly know their limitations? Those you can only learn if you are ready and willing to listen to what the world around you is trying to say.

Boredom.

What Is It And Why Do We Have One?

Between visiting galleries at the weekend and being at home, my life doesn’t speak of much. In fact, yesterday I was extremely bored, so much so that I really couldn’t get anything done. Anything I turned my hand to was met with a ready excuse that it didn’t need doing.

The Ascent Of The Literary Murder.

This was supposed to be a sort of review and reprise of George Orwell’s “The Decline Of The English Murder,” only my point of view is very different to his. Which makes his essays the more appealing to me. Add Orwell’s beautiful and evocative writing and you have a blissful read.

Not that murders are blissful, but that’s the point of murders – and the point of Orwell looking at their decline. Orwell’s books were written to be read by those who enjoy reading, those who read the story as much for the writing as the story itself. But that is what makes literature; if it’s only a story thinly interwoven by lumpy descriptions, it’s pulp fiction.