White Noise in the House of the Lord

1973 was a year of high strangeness.  For my part, I was only too happy to add my weight to the current of novelty coursing though the alternative scene of the moment.  Entering the final year of university, I set about preparing for graduation exams by doing as little work as possible.  Instead, the flexi-time conferred by a degree course in geography at Oxford University proved of great benefit as I got to know better the bunch of people with whom I was to set up a commune the following year.  We went to Trentishoe festival, a hush-hush, word of mouth, for-the-hardcore-counter-culture-only affair perched on the edge of the north Devon cliffs.  We visited several extant communes, helping out and observing closely, preparing our own dos-and-don'ts list for future communal success.

Yet amongst all the weird things and anything goes-ness of 1973, nothing could prepare us for the album cover to 'Love, Devotion, Surrender'.  It was just too much. This piece of vinyl was primarily a collaboration between those two most iconic of guitarists, Devadip Carlos Santana and Mahavishnu John McLaughlin.  Buy a copy now on CD and the cover displays a mere snippet of the original assault on the visual field.  There are the two musicians, all dapper in pure white attire, displaying an expression of what seemed to me a mixture of contriteness, humility, and barely-concealed smugness.  Looking like two characters straight out of a washing powder ad, Santana and Mclaughlin grated painfully.  Counter culture 1973-style was gritty, a meeting with the dark gods: frayed jeans, raggedy chins for the boys, the all-pervading reek of bonfire smoke and marijuana.  Whiter than white, holier than thou, purer than the Virgin Mary's vagina: Carlos and John had clearly lost the plot, for now at least. Their shiny spirituality displayed a rude denial of authentic darkness and dustiness, the integration of which into the spiritual life had been hard-won through the shedding of much blood and many tears.

Worst of all were the photos of our consecrated heroes being embraced by their guru, a happy-to-be-associated Sri Chinmoy. I never got Sri Chinmoy.  I attended a meeting of his devotees one evening during my own search for a way forward.  I only recall a film that seemed mainly concerned with the benefits of athletics, along with the rare prowess of the great guru on the racing track.  It just didn't make any sense at all. My days of institutionalised sporting torture courtesy of the education system were behind me.  I wanted Enlightenment, not an Olympic gold.  I walked out and never gave it a further thought.            

Thirty nine years on, I finally felt ready to lend a serious ear to 'Love, Devotion, Surrender' without a whole complex of black-versus-white dualistic stuff kicking in.  Three weeks ago my copy arrived.  I opened the packet, checking out Carlos and John in white on the front.  I sat back, relaxed, and listened to one of the most astounding albums ever.......

If there is one great teaching from the electric McLaughlin, it is this: cosmic bliss, divine ecstasy, does not need to equate with quietism.  The House of the Lord can be a noisy place. Many people don't get McLaughlin, just as I didn't get Sri Chinmoy.  A Frank Zappa comment is representative: while admirable for his fast playing style, McLaughlin on guitar just isn't tuneful or melodic.  Cutting across keys, he's not nice to listen to.  In my view, this appraisal misses the point.  When in the mood, I can feel that every high decibel note from John McLaughlin screams Hindu-tinged jazz-rock bliss and ecstasy, in a way no other guitarist manages. The self-inflicted wall in our heads between nirvana and maya comes crashing down; McLaughlin is the real cosmic deal.

To me, the high point of 'Love, Devotion, Surrender' is probably the piece entitled 'The Life Divine'.  Precisely forty-nine seconds into the soft intro of organ and drums a guitar (McLaughlin's, I think) soars in, moving in orgasmo-cosmic cascades of sound, honouring the continual miracle of divine creation.  This is soon followed by the searing yet hauntingly melodic power of Santana's playing, quite possibly the crowning glory of a long and distinguished career.  And 'The Life Divine' goes down as possibly the finest composition by the electric McLaughlin - along with the entire Mahavishnu Orchestra album 'Visions of the Emerald Beyond'.  We are temporarily plugged into the source of all creation.  This, at least, is how it can sound to me.

This is not the way that devotion is imagined in the Church of England.  But it might just be the closest we are likely to get to aural nirvana.

        

A New Year Beckons.....

It's nearly three years since Pale Green Vortex first showed up on the radar.  During this period, I have been privileged to explore a breadth and depth of topics that I would hitherto never have dreamed of.  It has been an immensely rewarding time for me.  I have listened to lectures and interviews with rapt attention, eagerly devouring significant information and enthusiastically taking notes, something I haven't done since my early days in Buddhism.  At times I have almost felt 'born again', a neophyte among the mysteries of life - something which, as I approach my sixtieth birthday, I hadn't exactly expected.  Along the way, I am more than delighted if a few other human beings may have benefited from some of what I have written.

What have I learnt through the multitude of posts that have appeared on Pale Green Vortex?  And what have I experienced to give rise to some of the writing?  Well, many things. But focal, I think, has been the following insight.  This marvellous living universe we inhabit is essentially a creation, an emanation, and a reflection of consciousness.  That consciousness is not a uniform thing; at least, any homogeneity reveals itself heterogeneously.  It manifests in a whole variety of different dimensions, or densities, depending on the degree of alienation of the specific form of consciousness from the source, from its own true nature, call it what you will. Of distinct concern for human beings, blessed as they are with the potential to move closer to 'divinity', is that particular slice of consciousness sometimes referred to as the Control System.  This is a distinctively heavy form of consciousness, dedicated to separate selfhood, which has constructed a good deal of what passes as human culture.  The affairs of politics, economics, finance, mainstream 'culture', media reportage, social systems, and the rest, are not there primarily for the greater good.  Nor do they exist as an expression of some universal, inalienable laws of nature.  All too often they show up as an expression of Control System consciousness. As such, their purpose is stupefaction and containment; to keep the divine spark down.

The fulfilment of human life lies in 'self-realisation', unfoldment, return to the Divine, etc etc - to be 'telestai', as the Gnostics put it, those who are aimed.  Two vital spin-offs from all this have also emerged.  Firstly, that a human spirituality, to be properly effective, requires some experience of the multidimensional nature of consciousness.  Without this, it is likely to remain superficial, half-baked, or largely intellectual.  And secondly, that spirituality without some real insight into Control System dynamics will remain incomplete and hopelessly naive.  This ignorance may well act as an obstacle to effective and appropriate compassionate activity. A fully-embodied spiritual life will seamlessly combine understanding and experience of consciousness (shamanic traditions and the more mystical aspects of traditions emanating from Asia remain foundational) with cutting-edge analysis such as that found in the more intelligent parts of the modern alternative community.

The plethora of ideas that has blasted like a whirlwind through Pale Green Vortex has been necessary.  And more ideas, we can be sure, will continue to come.  Yet there arrives a point where ideas - by their very busy-ness, their concentration in the head, even if they are felt ideas - become an obstacle.  They can begin to take on the function of an escape from that most difficult thing of all: a deepening, non-conceptual, direct awareness of reality in its totality.  The ideas are absolutely vital to sharpen perception, to help bulk out the body of consciousness.  But this very body of consciousness needs stillness, non-mediated awareness, to enter the further reaches of oneness, non-duality, and whatever else remains for awareness to bring its quality to.  This I sense to be the next step.

Interesting times ahead, perchance......

          

Getting Over the Guru

Things change.  In the 1970s, any serious attempt to do the consciousness thing invariably led to the question of the guru.  The aspirant may or may not have ended up following one single embodiment of the divine, but the quest was inevitably framed in this way.  Sometimes it seemed almost like a spiritual equivalent of the quaint Victorian notion that history consists largely of the lives of Great Men (not many Great Women in this particular version of history, I'm afraid).

Some of the pitfalls and dangers of this approach, in terms of potential for deception, manipulation, abuse, and the messy rest, have been well documented.  But one of the underlying weaknesses of the system, the root of many of the problems, is to my knowledge rarely appreciated. It is this: the guru normally turns up as the finished product.  The Great One appears on the scene already enlightened, awakened, or whatever.  Or, if not quite enlightened, still so far ahead in the game that it makes no difference for the disciple, staggering along light years behind.

The guru-as-finished-product presents difficulties.  Foremost is that it creates an impossible obstacle to meaningful communication. There is no shared journey between teacher and student, simply one person who has already reached the destination, providing a map for another person stumbling hopelessly and haplessly through the swamps of samsara.

While he was at pains to distance himself from the hardline guru-disciple mould of some Tibetan and Theravadin schools, still my former Buddhist teacher came firmly embedded within the guru model.  While, to his credit, he greatly encouraged the development of friendship among his followers, still he founded the Order and, in his view at least, anything of import should come from him or pass through him for the thumbs-up.  Most relevantly, although he wrote at length about his earlier life in India, during the twenty-plus later years that I was formally a student of his, he never (to my knowledge) gave any inkling that he was following a path himself, learning and changing as he went. It was as if the process had stopped, no longer appropriate for such a person. Once more, any dialogue based on the shared experiences of two people following the same or similar paths was out of the question.  In latter years, my former teacher's life has been beset with a variety of problems and scandals typical of those that tend to descend on those set in the guru mould ( a fact which gives me no pleasure at all, by the way).  Much of this, in my view, could have been avoided, or at least minimised, if he had presented as a man on a journey rather than as a finished product.  

Imagine how heartening it has been to emerge into the wider spiritual world of today, and find people, openly warts and all, but doing their thing. As an example, Neil Kramer is somebody with a lot of experience and wisdom under his belt, along with a rare ability to communicate it clearly and effectively.  Yet to watch, read, or listen to Neil, it is clear that this is a person following a spiritual path, undergoing the process of unfoldment, as he would put it, in the company of many others doing likewise.  We're all in this together, baby: thus, dialogue is immediately opened up, the possibilities enriched and widened.

Here is another case, potentially less straightforward.  I was recently pondering my own experience of life, and the way that I frame it.  'Consciousness' and 'energy' are words that I use frequently.  My view is a bit 'substantive': there is something, which makes my style not quite Buddhist -at least not in its 'purer' forms, and not in the manner I believe my former teacher to be pushing nowadays.  Some Tibetan schools talk of 'the luminous void' rather than 'the void'.  While this is closer to my own experience, hardliners may consider it degenerate.  The vague notion arose in my mind that, while knowing little about it, my angle might be akin to that of Advaita Vedanta (though I should add that any viewpoint is, for me, a working model rather than a final ontological statement).

In one of those synchronicities that provide an unexpected twist to circumstances, I casually flicked on the television to Conscious TV (occasional programmes on Showcase 2, Sky channel 192 some evenings), something I have known exists but never paid any real attention before.  Imagine my surprise when I was just in time for an interview with Florian Schlosser.  His was a new name to me, but it soon became clear that, if he could be called anything, it is a teacher of  - neo-Advaita...!

It transpires that Florian has many interesting things to say, particularly about how Awakening needs to be 'embodied'.  More of this some other time, perhaps.  He sometimes refers to himself as Florian Tathagata, which makes me cringe, although this is unfair: 'Tathagata' is a favourite epithet for the Buddha, but it never bothered me then. Yet, despite his apparent 'Awakening', Florian speaks openly and unashamedly about the path that he is on: the process he has followed until now, and the issues he continues to deal with.  You feel like you can travel along beside this guy.  Even in the traditional, orient-derived bastions of consciousness work is the guru-disciple model crumbling, or at least softening significantly.  There is an emerging democracy of unfoldment.  This, I feel, can only be a good thing.

Photo: Guru Poornima festival

            

Wot's This Collectivism Lark Then???

Here's a clear, non-extreme discussion of some of the world-moulding stuff happening behind the scenes that people don't know about but should.  I don't go along with everything that Ed says, but that's not really the point. Turn on, tune in, digest, spread the info.

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2012/12/RIR-121213.php

John Lash: The Final Interview

Pale Green Vortex recommended reading (highly recommended reading)

On Red Ice Radio on November 22nd 2012 (link from this blog) John Lash gave what he declared to be his final interview to a wider audience.  This is not because he is retiring, or anticipates imminent death, or is going off to join the Salvation Army.  No.  He sees, quite reasonably in my view, that he has said enough in this particular genre. His task remains to work in deeper and more intimate fashion with those more fully involved in the projects most dear to his heart: Planetary Tantra and the Gaian Navigation Experiment.

Since the initiatory events I described in a recent blog piece, the two people who have spoken to me most directly, who have said the right things at the right time, have been Neil Kramer and John Lash.  The nature of their respective contributions to my life have been rather different, at times complementary.  One area in which they have both provided clarification is the important one of belief.  This is worth a few words here.

As Neil explains, we actually need very few beliefs in order to function perfectly well.  A belief is a heavy thing: adopt a particular belief, then everything else has to fit in around it.  Sustaining a belief can be an exhausting, full-time activity.  Instead of believing, Neil suggests that we simply 'hold' ideas.  Just hold it.  Don't give in to the knee-jerk reaction to either say 'yes, I agree', thereby accreting it to your already top-heavy ego identity; or to say 'no', in so doing making a contrary absolute statement.  Hold an idea and see where it goes.  You can lightly hold an enormous number without them dragging you down.

John Lash's section about belief on metahistory.org (link from this blog) is well worth reading.  'The unexamined belief is not worth holding.' 'It is desirable to believe as little as possible' because 'belief can destroy our capacity to experience.'  Here's the nub of the situation.  A fixed belief acts as a veil between the believer and the world that is perceived as being outside.  It's a kind of screen through which all incoming data is filtered.  In truth, belief is for cowards, those unprepared to face the ever-changing uniqueness of the eternally present moment.  Because belief can destroy our capacity to experience, it alienates us from what is really going on.  Our full-body, open-heart response is denied; everything has to go through the head.

When belief solidifies, it becomes ideology.  And ideology is the focal point for all the social movements that we may come to label that elusive term 'evil'.  Nazism, Stalinism.  More recently, the sinister machinations of collectivism and 'ideological environmentalism'.  They all thrive on the blindness and stupidity that are planted inside the individual by belief. Blind, insistent belief, abstracted ideology.

To change tack, while staying with John Lash: his book 'Not In His Image' is one of the most important on my bookshelves. On the one hand, it provides a deeper and more comprehensive critique of the Christian ethos than any I have encountered.  On the other, it describes in great detail the Gnostic mythos of Gaia-Sophia, along with the part we humans have to play in its unfolding.  When I read all this, I took it as one of the most beautiful myths I had ever come across. And when I read about the Gnostics, I felt that I was reconnecting with my true but lost spiritual heritage in the west.  For anybody serious about understanding how we came to be where we are now, and intent on finding their own place in the spiritual/mystical traditions of the west, 'Not In His Image' is a must-read.

John Lash is a firebrand, and in his final interview he signs off from the exoteric world in typically provocative fashion.  He introduces what he terms 'the taboo subject': violence.  Why, he asks, are humans endowed with such an extraordinary capacity for violence?  He suggests that there is indeed a reason, and that it needs to be taken in hand via magical/tantric action to take out the psychopaths who have perverted the course of human history and heaped so much misery on the great mass of people.

Hmmmm.....  Certainly a novel idea.  Personally, I have no problem with the elimination of various psychopathic politicians and other control system big boys (and a few girls).  I name no names, but there are those whose physical demise I would greet with a sense of relief.  However, there remains a problem; I'm not sure that John has really thought this through.  Remove a bunch of psychopaths, and there will be another gang waiting in the wings ready to take their place. For anyone thinking that psychopaths are mainly criminal serial killers, it's time for a reality update.  Studies suggest that around 3% of males, 1% of females, can be classified as psychopathic.  This is, it seems, across the board, regardless of culture, ethnicity etc.  The chief characteristic of psychopathic behaviour is absence of conscience.  Psychopaths, therefore, tend to turn up in large numbers in politics, high finance, big business, positions where power is the thing.  They can work the system like no-one else.  So John's approach seems rather like symptomatic medicine: get rid of the signs of the disease without really getting at its roots.  Symptoms will continue to pop up elsewhere.

Anyway, plenty of food for thought.  And, in the meantime, thanks for everything so far, John Lash.  I, for one, shall be keeping track of his words and deeds for the future.

            

Initiation

Ralph Metzner

Initiation.  To me, the word conjures up a gompa, a tiny monastery, set high in the snowy Himalayas, remote from the normal affairs of humankind.  Trails of incense hang thick in the air across the room; candles light up dimly the chill dark space.  Strange mudras are performed, eerie guttural chants are chanted.  An icy wind blasts against the side of the building, threatening to blow into obscurity the sacred space being created.  Meanwhile, a deeply wrinkled Tibetan deftly wields a dorje, cutting through the air with rhythmic movements.  Slowly and deliberately, the initiate is introduced to a weird, archetypal figure. Half human, half animal, blue-black in colour, huge bulging eyes, and with a panoply of arms and legs.  A necklace of dry bones adorns the torso.  For the mass of humanity, it would be a vision from the most hellish of nightmares......

Initiation. 'The ceremony or formal procedure with which somebody is made a member of a sect or society' (New Penguin English Dictionary).  Hmm.... not really.  To initiate is to begin, especially to start something new.  The dictionary definition is merely a narrow, formalised version of a function that is universal in scope.  An initiation is an introduction, an invitation, to the hitherto unknown.  Many indigenous people confer initiation upon their members as they pass from one phase of life into the next - from childhood into the world of adults, for example.  Initiation manifests an opening, a doorway, a crack in the world, beyond which perception, and experience in general, will be forever changed.

Some people undergo some form of initiation from sacred plants and other entheogenic substances. 'Take a look at this.  You never imagined the world worked like that.....' Through whatever means, and crucially, initiation shows a doorway, but that is all.  It is up to the initiate, the student, to put in the hard work, the blood, sweat, and tears, to properly actualise that initial insight.

Two events over recent years have performed vital initiatory functions in my life, though in both cases their full significance has become apparent only with time.

In April 2009 I attended a five-day course on 'Alchemical Divination'.  Held in the mountains of Switzerland, it was run by Ralph Metzner, close friend and associate of Timothy Leary in the 1960s.  I do not go along with quite everything that Ralph has to say, but as a researcher into consciousness for half a century he is probably peerless, and invites deep admiration.  Following his LSD-assisted forays into multidimensional space and consciousness, he embarked upon a period of entheogen-free practice, before more recently studying and participating in the ways and rituals of indigenous peoples who include the use of psychoactive plants within a wider cultural and spiritual context.

This particular course focussed on the past, a singular and predictably cathartic challenge for me, having grown up spiritually within a Buddhist environment that concentrated on the present and the future, while relegating much interest in the past to the realms of morbidity or narcissism.  The initiatory aspect of the course for me resided in its emphasis on energy: working with energies, and realising experience as different forms of energy.  My previous Buddhist training and practice had majored conceptually on 'mind'.  'Look at the workings of the mind.'  While sometimes helpful, 'mind' easily becomes too, well, mental.  Identification with the conceptual, the personal, especially personal emotions. A tendency to become vague, colourless, vacuum-like.  Additionally, for anybody raised in the western tradition, 'mind' inevitably gets entangled in the mind - body dichotomy/dualism, with all its attendant problems. To change the movie and see instead a continuous flow of energies has led me into a far more participatory relationship with my own psycho-physical organism, as well as the cosmos around me.  On arriving home from the course, I immediately felt empowered to work with chakras and other energy systems, confident to be creative in ways that had previously been impossible. The shift in orientation, from 'mind' and 'the mind', those peculiar Buddhist preoccupations, to energy and consciousness, has facilitated the opening of many doorways.

With the snow still deep on the ground, I ventured forth from Highland Scotland once more, in February 2010, my destination Bath, south-west England. The event was the first ARC (Alternative Research Community) convention, organised and hosted with grace and humour by Karen Sawyer.  I was enticed south primarily by the promise of listening to two speakers.  Neil Kramer, with whose work I was starting to become familiar, was talking on 'Guerilla Psychonautics'.   And Peter Taylor was presenting 'The Corporatisation of the Environmental Movement', a theme that was beginning to require urgent personal attention.  While these two talks were the highlight, both stimulating significant changes in personal perception, the entire event acted as a kind of initiation into the present-day alternative community scene.  Extremely heterogeneous, and incorporating many people who might disagree significantly with one another ('We present, you decide', the guiding motto of Red Ice Creations, could be equally applied to the whole alternative research thing), it is nevertheless united by the effort to find out what is really going on.

It soon began to dawn on me that there was an awful lot of interesting stuff going on out there, and I wanted to do my own bit, whatever that might involve.  I had needed to cut all my formal ties to the Buddhist tradition in order to effect this entrance into the wider world; however subtly, I was always tethered to a post called Buddhism, which finally prevented me from entering into a more objective relationship with myself and the rest of the world.

These two initiations have informed a good deal of what has ended up on Pale Green Vortex, a project which (not coincidentally) I began soon after the ARC convention.  They have profoundly influenced the direction of my life generally over recent times.  Metzner Alchemical Divination, ARC: to the contributors and participants, I give hearty thanks.


                      

How to Start a Religion

       Ah yes, the Sun of God

Part One

'Zeitgeist: the Movie' is pretty much standard fare in the world of alternative/authentic research.  Unlike Hollywood productions, turned out by people who hardly need the money but insist on getting it anyway, Zeitgeist is offered up freely by Peter Joseph, and is easily accessed on Youtube.  The original 2007 movie with its 2012 updates is what I am referring to, not the second and third films in the trilogy, some of which material is more problematic, and not up for discussion here.

A ten-minute collage of an intro leads into part one proper, exploring the mythological origins of Christianity. It is this, rather than parts two (considering the veracity of the official story on 9/11) and three (on the financial/banking system, and how it holds us all to ransom) that I am mainly concerned with.  It's not a question of 'agreeing with' or 'believing' every detail that's put up in the film; the general flow is both convincing and compelling. And for anyone reluctant to work through the hundreds of pages written by Acharya S. devoted to the astro-mythical roots of Christianity, the first part of Zeitgeist provides a nifty thirty-minute summary of many of the salient points.

The story of Jesus, it seems, has little novelty about it. Instead, it echoes myths based around the sun, the stars, and the precession of the equinoxes, stories that have been the preserve of humankind for millenia.  What made Christianity different, however, was that its mythology became literalised, turned into spurious facts and 'history'.  Timelessness was reduced into time, thereby allowing wonder and direct experience to be usurped by rote learning and blind belief.  Now the proud owner of a literal history with real events, Christianity could introduce the notion into its armoury of heresy. Believe or disbelieve; believe or die. This simple, easy-to-believe religion was eagerly taken up by the Roman Empire, desperately seeking a single religion to make official and help to reunite its crumbling frontiers.  Thus began the long, painful tyranny of the one true religion with its one true god.  

It does not pass unnoticed that there are close parallels between the development of organised, state-sanctioned Christianity and the rise of the modern environmental movement with its own 'Green Religion'.  In the same way that a universal solar myth was literalised into a particular history, that of Jesus, so was the myth, or the various myths, concerning Gaia literalised into the historical truths, the scientific data, of human-made global warming.  Once more, a timeless myth fell into history, with its accompanying 'facts' that we are obliged to believe: facts concerning CO2, temperature rises per decade, the salvational nature of renewable energy sources, etc.  Once more, humankind could be divided into believers and disbelievers ('deniers'); those following the righteous path and those heretics whose influence should be effectively stamped out.  And in  identical fashion to Christianity, the system of doctrine developed has been used as a means for social control and manipulation, with fear of a future in hell as a prime weapon.  In addition, just like Christianity, the new green religion effectively detaches the human species from its direct connection with the natural world and its own true nature (while cunningly maintaining that it is doing the opposite).

When 'Green' is referred to as the new religion, this is not just a cute, vague or metaphorical statement.  It is perfectly precise, intended to be taken at face value.  One of the features of the Zeitgeist movie is that, as its own narrative unfolds, it becomes apparent that an entire fabric of control has been imposed and sustained over millenia through the repeated use of a small number of simple yet remarkably effective strategies - effective largely because enough people have fallen for them hook, line, and sinker. And right up there, still being used, is the strategy of organised, literalised, religion.

Part Two 

Ask almost anybody in Britain interested in 'the great outdoors' and they will have heard of Cameron McNeish.  In Scotland, especially, any television programme containing the words 'wild', 'outdoor' or 'adventure' in its title will invariably find Cameron having wormed his way into its narrative somehow or another.  Some people consider Cameron a great champion of our wild places; others see him as an opportunistic self-publicist.  Maybe he is a bit of both.

A while back I caught Cameron (by chance) on a programme doing a long walk across highland Scotland.  He was standing at the entrance to Glen Dessary, in one of the wildest and most remote corners of the western Highlands.  He pointed out the afforestation that has taken place in the lower reaches of the glen, noting how it has somewhat compromised the wildness of the place.  Still, he mused, we have got used to the plantations, and indeed barely notice them now. 'Maybe we'll do the same with windfarms' he continued cheerfully, before gaily striding off into the sunset.

Whether the Ven. McNeish realised the import of what he was saying, I do not know.  But it amounted to a betrayal of the dignity of the human species.  We have a remarkable flexibility and adaptability about us, which has stood us in good stead when faced with new and adverse conditions. It has given us an edge over other species; we are survivors.  At the same time, our adaptability has left us vulnerable to all manner of abuse and exploitation.  Stick us in a concentration camp: no problem, we'll get used to it.  Hit me with a stick every day: it's OK, I'll learn to manage.  Almost anything will eventually become 'the norm' that we will come to grin and bear. This is a fact well recognised by those who would control and oppress.  Windfarms are a classic example from modern times - or at least that's what is hoped, in the manner given voice to by Mr McNeish.  The perpetrators of the windfarm fraud are counting on our getting used to them as if nothing ever really happened, given sufficient time and sufficient exposure to the inevitability and 'benefits' of turbines through the media.  Which leads neatly into......  

Part Three 

Question: what might you do if you disapprove of unnecessary maltreatment of animals? Answer: stop eating battery eggs and meat from intensively reared animals.

Question: what can you do if you find a particular regime especially repressive and obnoxious? Answer: don't buy mangoes and pineapples from their country.

In an excellent blog piece (November 2nd 2012, 'The BBC and Jimmy Savile: peas in a pod') James Delingpole asks who has been most responsible for the global warming and windfarm propaganda that has duped so many people, thereby making easier the criminal proliferation of windfarms over the years.  The number one guilty party, he concludes, is none other than the BBC. It takes little reflection on my part to agree.  He also says that the BBC's constant propaganda in this respect is more harmful than the case of Jimmy Savile, celebrity serial paedophile, since far more people's lives have been seriously affected. Again, a few moments of thought lead one to the same sobering conclusion.

Question: what do you do if a major player in mainstream media turns out to have been acting in a persistently disingenuous manner, deceiving large segments of the public, all the while hiding behind a spurious cloak of objectivity? Answer: stop watching altogether.

This is the only conclusion that comes close to satisfying personal honour and integrity.  To be honest, this may not amount to much of a sacrifice.  I rarely watch anything on BBC anyway: even its teletext weather updates regularly prove wide of the mark.  I suppose there may be a point in catching 'Newsnight' for five minutes a week, just to see what the dark clowns are up to at the moment, but even that may prove too tiresome.  So for me, it's BBC bye bye.