The World in Grey

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few months you will undoubtedly have heard or seen or even read the phenomenon that is the Fifty Shades trilogy. I bought the first book in a WHSmith’s back before I knew what I was about to delve into and within the first paragraph, I joke you not, I had a strange sense of deja vu creep over me. This is because I had in fact already read this book. When it wasn’t a book. The Twilight fanfiction “Master of the Universe” was circled around many online communities following a search to find something which might be able to match the infamy of “My Immortal”, a beautifully written Harry Potter fanfiction. I seriously recommend this particular one to all. It is something to behold.

Anyway. I read “Master of the Universe” back when it was first written. The only thing I regret is that I paid £8 to buy the paperback of something where the only edits had been to change the names of the characters. I’m pretty sure anyone can work out who is who. The book itself, though poorly written to match its inspiration, isn’t all that awful. I didn’t read it wide-eyed and horrified at the graphic sex scenes portrayed. Because, bluntly, movies with a 12 rating can be worse. The lack of vulgar language makes the book not-so-pornographic, as the world seems to think it is.

 

What I find amusing about this, though, is that if you walk into any book shop in the country, you will find at least one shelf dedicated to the Fifty Shades series and all following books of the same theme. They’re easy to pick out with the symbolic keys or chains on the front covers. And each book is probably as dull as the next, with two dimensional characters who fit seamlessly into the prototypical Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus of the writing world. Because that’s all we want to read about.

The problem is that, and this is for any budding authors out there, the concept of a BDSM-esque novel is now just as mainstream as writing about a boy wizard who has to defeat the ultimate Dark Lord or die trying.

Another prime example is incest. “Flowers in the Attic”, when first released, was a scandal. Now, with the growing popularity of the “Game of Thrones” TV series, based upon “A Song of Ice and Fire”, it is still obscene, but people don’t seem to mind it as much. On the contrary, many writers are actually exploring the concept themselves. All we need now is a book to make “Lolita” obsolete.

 

The point I am trying to make is… soon enough, nothing will surprise us. And with that, nothing will excite us or pique our interest. When my parents watched Doctor Who, they were terrified by the sea monsters and would hide behind a couch. Now… children the same age watch it with bored expressions.

I wonder if there will come a day when parents take their children on safari, or to Niagra Falls… and they just shrug and turn away.

I now know what Hell is.

We’ve all watched the Matrix. All speculated on the possibility that it was real. We’ve all had the eccentric teachers who taught us little of what we were supposed to be learning, instead spending a few hours each week enlightening us about political and philosophical stances.

The teacher who did this for me was my Latin and Classics teacher, who taught me for five of the six years I was in that school. And, through her, I learnt more than on the curriculum. Mostly, I learnt how to think for myself and disagree with people. Even if I was trying to disagree with her and knew from the beginning that I would fail. It was worth a shot.

One of the most poignant memories I have from her classes are the plethora of times she told us that we didn’t exist. Or she didn’t exist. Or school didn’t exist. Or.. something didn’t exist. More often than not I left that class with my a headache and a complete desperation not to head over to Art, where, with nothing else to do, my brain would continue to mull over her words for an hour until I was little more than a mush of confusion. Sometimes, in a few rare moments, I could even agree with her. But then my mind would be changed almost instantly by logic.

It wasn’t until one night this week when I realised she could be right. I suppose it’s also relevant to mention that, as my Classics/Latin teacher, she was the one to tell me about the Underworld. About Tantalus, who tried to trick the gods into eating his children and was punished with an eternity of having food and water always out of his reach. And Sisyphus, who tried to out-do the gods, and was punished forever with rolling a boulder up the top of a hill, but when he almost reached it, it would fall back down and he’d have to start again.

And at the time I thought it was the fact that they experienced pain for eternity through exhaustion and starvation etc. But it’s not. Not in the slightest. That, if anything, is an incredibly easy thing to deal with compared to what Hell really is.

Hell? Hell is the momentary hope and relief that it’s almost over, followed by the crushing despair that that it never will be. It’s terror that the cycle continues forever. And the despair only has full impact when met with the hope.

My theory… is that this is everyone’s fate. and perhaps fate is the wrong word, because I believe that we are already locked in this cycle, and the years that we spend here on earth are but a momentary release from pain before we tumble back down into the abyss. No matter what we do, we will never be deserving of anything else. Never so grateful for what we have because we can never remember the pain of the cycle. So you know what? It really is a gift that we have. Life may be short, and it may be shit. But it’s the best you’re gonna get. Forgive, forget and love. Don’t waste it on hate and anger. You have a whole eternity to deal with that later.

Determinism

There is this whole massive debate about whether the world is deterministic or whether it is based on free will. See, if the world was based on determinism, that is to say that no one has any free will, that our lives are planned out exactly, that the date of our death is set in stone just as our birth date is, then no one can be held accountable for anything. So if a murderer, well… murders someone, then technically we cannot blame them, as what he did was already  and he had no choice but to do it, therefore the justice system is kind of screwed.

This argument brings me back to religion (I brought it up in an earlier post), people say that the one gift God gave us was that of free will, but Christians would have no choice but to say that wouldn’t they? Because if they decide that the world is deterministic, then they are basically contradicting their belief in God. Because that means that God purposely told Adam and Eve not to eat for the apple tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden, but he would have known that they were going to do it anyway because it was part of their linier lives. So he threw them out of the Garden because they had done something he had destined them to do. That seems wrong doesn’t it?

But determinism makes people blameless for all the things they do, I think that’s a really nice idea, that I should not hate certain people in mt life… and they should not hate me. But I guess determinism cannot affect people’s emotions or feelings towards each other. Or… maybe it can. If you fall in love with someone, they fall in love with you, they screw you over, you begin to hate them.. that’s ALL determined. The relationship was doomed from the off because of some sadistic higher power.

In that vein, I really do hate the idea of determinism. I like knowing that not everything that goes wrong in my life isn’t my fault, but that it isn’t anyone else’s fault either. What I hate is that, if determinism was real, I would be blamed for things that I have no control over. Because someone up in the clouds decided what I was going to do, what I was going to say, and how people around me were going to react to it.

And I wish it weren’t true, but nigh on everyone who reads this (there aren’t many of you) will have some personal experience you can relate this post to. This is why I cannot believe in a higher power. How can something(s) be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient… so that he/she/it/they knows when we are about to do something wrong, will be around to stop it and have the power to, but gives us the free will to make so many colossal fuck ups?

**SPOILER ALERT***

–

Maybe the Engineers have it right. And we do get powerful enough we all need to die. ’cause otherwise our mistakes would be irreversible.

Self-Reference

This is a sentence. This second sentence explains that the first sentence can be called a sentence because it contains a verb. Non sentence. Sentence fragment? Writer likes. Short. This one will be a little longer, just because the writer felt like it. Here it will be explained that the previous five “things” give you, as the reader, a clear perspective on how the writer’s brain works. Following the theme of the last sentence, this one will let the reader know that the writer is a very paranoid person. The paragraph will conclude by informing you that the writer can often be bored.

This sentence explains that, by starting a new paragraph, a new train of thought will be undertaken. Here the writer feels the need to inform you that this sentence contains exactly twenty four words, and so she has done so spectacularly. Two words. The writer is having fun. This is the second paragraph… and after the first use of ellipsis in this particular piece, you are now to be told that there will be five more paragraphs to come. The writer idly wonders if this is spoiling the surprise for the reader. The writer doesn’t care. The writer imagines a troll face should be entered here. The writer thinks it should be clear to the reader by now that this is, in fact, a self-referential story. The writer also lets the reader know, in case they haven’t worked it out for themselves yet, that she clearly isn’t taking herself very seriously anymore.

Smiling, the writer informs the reader that she is proud of her embedded clauses, such as this one here, and urges all writers to use them more often. She is a big fan of them. As well as sentence fragments. Here, have another one. And another. Pretty. Smiley face. Here it will be explained to you that self-referential stories aren’t as easy as they look. Now you’re told that they’re relatively easy too. Confused? Amused? Should the writer give up?

The writer thinks it prudent to let the readers know that she is currently enjoying life, though cannot say the same thing about the horrendous weather she has been experiencing. A shrug is what the writer gives here. Here is a realisation that this is the shortest paragraph. Except for one. That is, on the assumption that the next line is its own paragraph.

“I wanted the self-referential story to contain some dialogue,” said the writer, “so here it is.”

A short break for the writer to scratch her leg. She might have fleas. This sentence acknowledges the fact that the previous two sentences are utterly irrelevant to the form of a self-referential story, that the writer is fully aware that the reader had no idea what circumstances the writer is in when writing. Now the story in forms you that she’s in bed. In case the reader wanted to know. The writer begins to wonder for how much longer she would be able to draw this out.

This beginning of the final paragraph, you’ll be pleased to know, is here. The plot (if you think there is one) is running out of steam. Steam trains are cool… old fashioned. The writer’s brother’s best friend loves steam trains. See what the writer did there? Train of thought… different tangent… interlinked? Never mind. This is not the last sentence of the piece. Nor is this one. This paragraph needs to be a little longer to not infringe on any of the other statements in the story. This sentence confirms that the paragraph is now long enough. This is not the last sentence, though. This one is.

 

I have no words to explain why I did this. But I did. So I’m sharing it.

Disclaimer…

So.. I was bored.. I wrote a disclaimer… now.. this disclaimer actually contains more things that would be appropriate to a book… but I liked it, so I decided to share it.

All persons portrayed in this novel are entirely fictitious. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. <- Standard, right? This is where the fun begins for me.

The following (andprevious) is the opinion of the writer and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, gender, sexual orientation or individual. Furthermore, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the people who live in the author’s neighbourhood, city, province, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, star system, galaxy, or universe of origin.

Please also note that the fact the piece is written in English is in no way meant to smear other languages or linguistic entities, nor to malign those who are illiterate or visually impaired and thus are unable to read the piece.

 In addition, the individual letters, words, and punctuation marks involved had no option but to be placed into the blog where they are, and should not be held accountable for the writer’s statement. Any spelling or grammatical errors are not the responsibility of the schools the author attended, the teachers the author was taught by, the regional governments who did or did not fund the author’s educational system, or anyone else involved in the author’s education. (Side note – I’m a Linguist, I’d shoot myself in the foot were there grammatical errors found by others…)

In point of fact, the blogger takes full responsibility for her actions and opinions and does not hold her parents, siblings, other relations, friends, neighbours, acquaintances, people in any proximity, or that strange guy she sat next to on the bus three weeks ago responsible for anything in the following work, or for anything else the author may or may not have done. The writer freely admits that her views may not be the same as those of her religious group, gender, species, ethnic group, neighbourhood watch program, bowling league or other club.

No animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, viri, spores, seeds or any other living things were harmed during the making of this disclaimer. Further, no environmental damage was caused to any ecosphere, existent or nonexistent. All electrons used in the production were strictly volunteers, and all paper used (when/if she ever prints copies out) was made by trees that died of natural causes.

Do you feel more comfortable, knowing the ethics of my blog, now?

My Strange Philosophy

Philosophy has never been my thing. I’ve never really wanted to study it, never really cared. Yet I have endless speculation about everything. I’ve wondered about why it is that I, one person born into a family of countless generations, why I have this position in the world. It’s that exact type of speculation that has led me to a lot of self-doubt. And that has a big impact on my life. You may think it is only simple thought coming from a young girl who simply who does not know who she is, and that’s very true. But think about it in your case. You have had specific things happen to you, things that could have just as easily happened to someone else. Why do you think that is? For many, you will answer this with religion, believing that there is some greater force that has a plan for you and controls your life. I have never had that comfort, the comfort of religion.

And religion is such a hard thing to talk about. So many people, believing so many different things. That there are so many people that have a problem with being exposed to religion. I remember once when I was younger, I was approached by a couple, who were handing out leaflets, they were clearly bigoted fundamentalists who were brainwashed by their parents, but their message has stayed with me forever, because obviously others believe this same thing, maybe not just Christians, but other religions too. Their leaflets basically said that if we were not baptised then we were going to hell. I asked the woman: “What if someone is an amazing person and they’re, say, an atheist?” The reply was: “It does not matter; they’re still filthy in Gods eyes.” So Ghandi died after devoting his life to his people, and now it is ‘You are not a Christian, down you go, peace!’ I find that hard to justify. In fact if it turns out to be true, I will happily go to hell as long as I know I’ve tried to make this world a better place.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolute respect for anyone who can put their faith in a God. I would love very much to believe in God and put my faith in someone who will always be there for me but I think that you cannot truly believe in something if you can prove it. There has to be a leap of faith, and that is what makes it religion. I can’t do that… I can’t jump and hope that there will be a safety net. I don’t think there are many people I would trust to catch me if I fell. So why should I trust a God?

And although this all seems irrelevant, I think what I’m trying to say that all religion is… it is only faith. Faith in different things. But for someone that doesn’t have anything to put their faith in… that makes life harder. Much harder. There have been so many times in my life where I have wanted to have faith in something, in anything, but have been reminded that it all comes down to the choices I make. Think about it.

Those ten extra seconds you spend deciding between a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke that makes you leave the car park ten seconds later. Because of that, you may have caused an accident. Or maybe you avoided one. Every small choice you make might not seem to impact your life, but it will impact someone’s life, for better or for worse. That’s a lesson that took me years to learn.

I think it was Robert Frost, the American poet, who once said “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” Doesn’t that just say it all? That… that was life, in a nutshell. A small, bite-sized one, my philosophy on all you ever had to know. But death, now death was a whole different ball game. There were many ways to die. I knew this, as did most people with any sense. No one ever truly knew what happened after they died. That was just an accepted fact. Someone dies, but they cannot come back to tell us what is on the other side. It is all just part of the grand adventure. Or that’s how I liked to look at it.

For most people, that was how it would work. An undisputed actuality. I do not for a second pretend to be an expert on death, far from it. But some things are always obvious. People lived and died. It was the way of the world. Then they would go on to whatever afterlife they believed in. I had always thought that it was always a nice idea. It gave people hope. Some comfort in the fact that whether their life was good or bad on Earth, there was always the chance for a new beginning.

People may not admit to it, but they do wonder what might be in store for them. How they die. And, unless they want to live out some sadomasochistic fantasy, they will come to the same conclusion as the rest of the human population. Dying in your sleep. I always thought my death would be a peaceful one. Nice and calming. It was the ideal way to die.  Next to the person you would give your life for. Next to the person you would love for all eternity. Next to your soul mate.

Connotations and Denotations

What is normal? How can we define such a broad term and categorise people as it? Because that’s what we humans like to do, isn’t it? Categorise. Can you be normal as well as unique? There can’t be many varieties of uniqueness out there before we start venturing into the realm of abnormal. It’s like that Monty Python sketch where the man comes to the window and shouted to the large crowd gathered on the courtyard below that they were “all individuals”. Then they all chorused it back up to him, only replacing the pronoun. That doesn’t sound like a very individualistic thing to say. And that’s the point, the writers were taking the opportunity to create a satirical moment about the human condition. We watch it and we laugh. But in the real world things like that aren’t funny. It’s sad, pathetic almost.

But, if you think about it for a moment, to be individual and to be normal are two very different things. Abnormal is pretty pejorative, isn’t it? Whereas being an individual sounds like a positive thing to me. Where are you supposed to draw the line between the two? I mean, do we use a simple method of deduction to decide? The ones who go through life with nothing out of the ordinary happening, the crowd-followers, well they’re easy, we needn’t concern ourselves with them. Because they don’t exist. This train of thought has led me to the decision that all experiences are subjective, some affect people more than they would others, and therefore have different repercussions to their situations. In effect, their normality changes ever so slightly.

Maybe it’s about whether they choose to do what they do to be different. Or maybe it is up to fate to play that hand. So if a punk rocker wants to dye her hair electric blue… or a girl decides that wearing a trench coat to school every day is the thing to do, that’s uniqueness, individualism; a good thing. But if the girl with bubblegum pink hair isn’t a punk rocker and did it in a moment of insanity, or the girl in the trench coat wears it because she was raped and is therefore terrified of people touching her and wears it for what she thinks is protection, then that’s not normal. And these people can do nothing about their dictated status.

 

To this end… I hate being described as normal… because that requires someone to take a good look at me and make a judgement. A judgement that is normally wrong. You lot don’t know jackshit about what’s gone on in my life, or anyone else’s lives. So stop prentending to know better.

Excuses, excuses.

Now.. I’m this amazing person… new to university – that is to say, I’ve just finished my 14th week of actual term time. Look at me go. And yeah.. I’m having the time of my life. But at the same time.. I seem to find that I have no time at all. Which is greatly ironic because, as I write this… it is 6.10 in the afternoon on a Saturday and I have yet to get out of bed. My own fault, one would assume.

The thing is, having come to university, yes there are obligations and yes I am well aware of the +£3,000 I am paying to attend my scheduled 10 lecturesa week. But that doesn’t mean that I, or any other student actually does it. A prime example being Friday, where I wake up to attend my 2p.m. Linguistics lecture with three friends. Only two of us turned up. And, standing outside, we decided not to go in, to just get a coffee instead.

And this sparks a lot of thought. Why? It seems that in the summer between Senior school/College and University, all students go through some dramatic change where they lose all motivation to do anything. Except go out and drink. Or, for some, even that’s a atruggle.

It’s the thought of excuses that’s made me really notice this change. i have become much, much more imaginitve when coming up with excuses for why I’ve missed a non-compulsory lecture than I ever was when missing actual classes in Sixth Form. It makes absolutely no sense, yet we all still do it. It’s made me come to the conclusion that “freshers’ flu” doesn’t exist – it’s just the unspoken agreement that when someone can’t be bothered to go out or go to lectures or even pretend to be sociable they will say they have this disease. I dread to think what we’ll all come up with when we hit second and third year, because they’re clearly gonna have to get more and more deadly.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be believable. For example.. the other day I was rebuking myself for avoiding returing to writing my on-going story. But I stopped immediately as the thought strolled into my head that I couldn’t write it anyway.. because my main character is asleep on a thirteen hour plane journey. Has my life really become that unbelieveable that I can now actually make myself believe some of the shit that comes out of my head?

It’s a scary thought, to be honest, that we can create these fantasies when they have absolutely no positive outcome on our lives.