Us and Them – Breaking Down Borders

“What good is the moon if you can't buy it or sell it?”
- Ivan Boesky, Wall Street trader.

So I’ve decided to see the world and broaden my horizons. Experience more of what life has to offer and meet some interesting people. Take in more of nature’s beauty and diversity. Perhaps I’ll move to America, or France or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So what’s stopping me? If I can get the money for a ticket, it should be all I need. Hell, if I can build myself a dingy out of road-kill and dry turds I should be able to go where I like, right? Shit, I’d have earned it by then wouldn’t you say? Wrong. We still seem to have this small-minded, medieval belief in national borders. If I want to go anywhere beyond my bedroom I need to apply for a Visa, prove I have skill and money and that I’m willing to pledge my allegiance to a king and convert to Voodoo so I don’t disrupt the delicate order of the kindly natives I endeavour to co-mingle with. The local government has to reassure themselves first that I am not a ‘terrorist’ or that I’m not planning to overthrow the government… like the British, the French or the Spanish have done so brutally before. Or like the glorious and righteous nation of the United States of America are essentially doing right now. No, they already have enough to worry about without having to deal with the likes of me, a… gulp… foreigner, an… alien. No, I’m far too scary to be allowed to just go wherever I please, spreading my ideas to the gentler folk of this world. Says who? Rich white men with too much at stake that’s who.

The world of today is essentially no different to the world we lived in a thousand years ago. We are still bound by political borders that exist for only a few pathetic, fearful reasons; economy and religion being the main culprits. Oh and skin colour… although we have started letting coloured folk speak unannounced here and there, just for that good public image... not that anyone is listening mind you. This entire issue seems to have one glaring flaw that just doesn’t sit well with me at all; what gives anybody the right to own a piece of land in the first place? And why can’t a chicken claim a section for itself? Or a dung beetle, or a cuttle fish? Because they don’t have anything to offer us economically. And besides, we’re bigger and smarter than they are, so we can just blow the shit out of them if they don’t like what we’re doing… right? So fuck ‘em! I suppose it may be one thing to say that you own your car or your cd player or your twelve inch rubber dildo with the French tickler that plays ‘god Save the Queen’… but land? We are born of the land. We need it to live on. It feeds us and provides for us, we can’t own any piece of the Earth… the Earth already owns us. We’re fucked without it. The Earth on the other hand would be happier to see us bugger off. Luckily she won’t have to wait long it seems.

Let’s go back to how it all started. At some point someone looked at a piece of lush green real estate and simply said “fuck it, that’s mine!” Next, this man (well it wasn’t a woman, let’s face it) decided that if anyone else wanted to stay on his land they had to ‘pay’ him somehow. Skins, cows, sex… something. Now, in order to say which piece of land in particular was his he had to define a perimeter, a border, and within sed imaginary line he could do whatever he pleased and that was that. Eventually we had situations where most of the surrounding land had been ‘claimed’ by one dick or another and battles would break out over who would have the remaining land. Mostly this was due to the fact that the humans (or as I like to call them; hairless monkeys) of the day just couldn’t find a way to play friendly in the sand. Maybe coz they spoke in strange satanic tongues or had funny coloured skin. Of course only white men were arrogant enough to imagine they could own, govern and tax the land that fed them. Black men for the most part knew the land was sacred. Sure they had there designated areas with tribal laws etc, but they never claimed to ‘own’ any of it. Anyway, let’s jump forward, past all the slaughtering of natives, raping of forests and disposal of nuclear waste to today. Now we have a world that is divided to the most minute degrees (including water and air space for god’s sake) and governed by fear, which is based mainly on miscommunication (or unwillingness to communicate) and misunderstanding. So much so that it is nigh on impossible for me to uproot and move to another country without stripping naked, kneeling at a pagan alter while being showered in the blood of a boiled pig and declaring allegiance to Allah, Krishna, Buddha or Bush, while handing over an acceptable sum of local currency. Now they feel a little safer.

The concept of borders is essentially no different from a couple of three year olds fighting in a sand pit over a toy car. The basic problem is that as a race we have not yet managed to evolve beyond the emotional intelligence of an eight year old. That said, an eight year old has probably not yet learnt to fear the black kid who sits at the back of the classroom, or the girl in the front row with the pointy eyes… not unless his parents got to work on the poor bastard early that is. In fact come to think of it, even a three year old is more open and forgiving than most of the world’s population. Anyone can be a three year olds’ friend, even the African-Asian thalidomide girl from down the street.

What are we so damn afraid of anyway? Ideas? Basically, if a guy from the Middle East believes in a different imaginary sky man than I do, we will simply put up an imaginary fence and start shooting each other with very real bullets and fighting for our right to sit where the other guy is sitting. Not because we want his land, but just because we don’t want him to have it. I mean, that fucker dared to challenge my faith in that angry white bearded sky god I fear so much. Mind you, if that odd little man with the towel on his head has some money he can give me, then we might be able to make a deal… for a while at least. After all, this piece of dirt over here is mine… because I said so, that’s why… so there!

But what can I do? I’d say that killing some of these ‘land owners’ would help ease some of this tight assed fear and shit, but I’d only be labelled as a terrorist and create yet more reasons for the imaginary walls to be strengthened with those big scary thunder sticks. But maybe they’d stop to ask me why I was frustrated enough to want to kill them in the first place. Nah, they’re far too white to think of doing something stupid like that. And damn right too! I don’t want just any smelly immigrant to stroll into my country, live in my neighbourhood, go to my schools and take my jobs. Thank the lord Jesus Christ for weapons of mass destruction. Now we can all feel safe in our sheltered prisons and keep those dangerous and economically draining foreigners out. Ahh, I’m just so happy in my hole.

Fuck Me! – Sex and Evolution

I feel it’s time for me to voice my opinions on one of my favourite topics of mental and physical interest; sex. Sex is a primal instinct we all possess. How do you think it came to be that you are sitting here reading this? Consider your very lineage; every member of your ancestral line did, on at least one occasion have sexual relations with a member of the opposite gender. I use the word least as an extreme. I would guarantee that every one of them would have been just as highly sexually driven as you or I. How can I be so certain? Because I’m human, just as they were, and sexual desire is at the very core of what constitutes the makeup of the human species. Moreover, we are in fact the only species, other than dolphins and the bonobo apparently, to pursue sexual gratification for the mere pleasure alone (or so it would seem). After all, Freud postulated that we are in essence ‘pleasure seeking organisms’, driven by the sole purpose to seek pleasure and avoid pain (as a means of survival). Why then, when in a culture so hung up and afraid of sex, did our relatives all copulate so damn much? Because we need to for god’s sake! Sex is the only (unassisted) way to continue the existence of the human species or more specifically to ensure the survival of our DNA.

There is too much negative emphasis put on sex in our western societies. The guilt and fear surrounding this issue has blown the whole thing out of proportion. I mean, it’s actually seen as a bad idea for a family to sit around and watch porn together, yet somehow it’s ok for us all to watch people blow each others heads off in the latest Michael Bay flick. I wish for a day when Mum and Dad, brother and sister, grand-dad and Aunt Jane can all comfortably sit together and enjoy the latest works of Ron Jeremy and Asia Carerra while polishing the family dildo and sharing fuck photos over the dinner table. Why not? What are we ashamed of? Sex is a beautiful and spiritual part of life. It should be openly shared by the whole family, not hidden away behind a wall of fear and shame. Why do you think so many girls lose their virginity to some drunken red-neck football player in the back seat of his Shaggin’ wagon after the school dance? Wouldn’t you rather young Jenny discovers her sexual self in the safety of her own bed where she can comfortably explore this new stage of her life?

These days the average age for losing virginity is around fifteen years and getting younger. The kids know it’s all shit and they’re fucking younger and younger anyway. The problem is they are going into the act with little or no understanding of the whole thing and are being forced to do it in secret, for fear of persecution from their parents and teachers… the very people who should be creating a safety zone of education and fun. Think of how much fun we all could have had if we had no inhibitions or fears of sex when we started. It takes years of private discovery, experimentation and often heart breaking mistakes to learn what the whole thing’s about anyway. How many mothers sit down with their daughters and teach them the finer points of giving a good blow job, or for that matter even teach the poor girl how to make best use of her clitoris? And how many guys out there have fond memories of when Dad showed them the best method for waxing his carrot or how much pressure to apply when fisting a girl for the first time? Not very many I bet.

One of the greatest lies I was ever told came from my teachers in primary school. In a vain attempt to teach us about the human body, we were shown a video about a poor guy who cums in his pants every time he sees a girl he likes in the school locker room. Scary enough, but this walking fire hose of love didn’t just dribble out a few drops of jizz in his jocks like you might expect in any regular wet-dream, no, he gushes forth with what looks like the result of a boy who was never quite toilet trained properly. Now here I was at the influential pre-pubescent age of about ten petrified that the next girl I look at would insight a tsunami in my pants that could take out a small Indonesian village. I lived with this fear for about six years until I finally came to the conclusion, through my own experiences that I had been bull-shitted by my educators. What sort of message do you think that sent to me about my peers? Not to mention the fact that I was petrified of even talking to girls for years… forget ever even hoping to get laid any time soon. Maybe that was the point… scare me into abstinence. Fuckers! I missed out on years of valuable, important and just plain fun sex because I was scared of what unknown horrors my body would produce in the proceedings. We do this to our children every time we tell them it’s wrong to touch their ‘private’ or ‘naughty’ bits, or when we freak out and yell at them after finding a condom in their room. Perhaps it’s time to put aside your own fears and start fresh with your kids. Don’t fuck them up just because you were.

And what about these ridiculous laws concerning ‘age of consent’? Why do we find it so wrong for anyone under sixteen to be sexually active? And god forbid a nineteen year old would ever dare have relations with a sixteen year old! That sort of activity could crash bring about Armageddon! We have already established that the average age the kids are getting into it is about fifteen anyway, so the law means shit to them. It’s only ‘adults’ that seem to be concerned about all this age crap. What’s really happening is that all the fears and misunderstandings of parents and leaders are being pushed onto the next generation, creating this endless cycle of guilt. But why? Well, the argument seems to be that children simply don’t understand what they are getting themselves into and therefore risk being mentally scarred by the realities of it all. But whose fault is that? Certainly not the kids. They are more than capable of understanding the intricacies and emotions of the sexual world… it’s just that nobody has taught them. We’re back to that cycle of fear and guilt I mentioned earlier. Basically it your fault for being too afraid to talk openly with your kids about it all. Look, sexuality should be a healthy part of a child’s vernacular from day one. And forget trying to generalize it by putting an age on this…. “When are they old enough to understand? Three years old, six, ten?” No… when your child starts asking questions about something, it means they are ready to deal with the answers. As much as he or she cares to find out anyway. They won’t give a shit if you don’t. Kids learn fear from their parents, so don’t hold back. Sit them down and show them a porno. “What? Outrageous!” I hear you say… but again, they are your fears that just spoke up, not the child’s. They will be fine, it’s you who needs to grow up.

Sex is a natural part of life… like eating or shitting, not to mention a beautiful, fun and spiritual activity. It can be a wonderful expression of love between people and is nature’s most reliable way of propagating the species. So what are we so afraid of? Why not try to open your mind a little wider on this issue and make a fresh start? It can all change with you.

Fuck you! – Swearing and the Higher State of Being

I’d like to begin my series of rants by dissecting and discussing the very language with which the majority of the industrialized western world thinks, speaks and writes; English. Of particular interest at this point is the concept of swearing, an issue I personally find to be complete bullshit. Why, I repeat why do we even have words we consider to be offensive? This just doesn’t make sense to me. They are merely words. Words that are usually far more versatile and descriptive than their more acceptable kin. Particularly the word ‘fuck’. No other word in the entire English language has as much power, versatility and history.

Of all words in the English language beginning with ‘f’, fuck is the only one referred to as the ‘f-word’. It can be used to describe pain, pleasure, hate and love. This highly useful ‘swear’ word is actually one of the oldest words in spoken language. Like most other words in the English language, fuck has its roots in a variety of other languages; German (ficken, meaning ‘to strike’), Dutch (fokken, meaning ‘to thrust’ or ‘to copulate’), Norwegian (fukka meaning ‘to copulate’) and Swedish (focka, meaning ‘to strike’ or ‘to copulate’). In early times, fuck, and its variant ancestors, was a legitimate word used to describe sex and, as it seems, force or aggression, just as it does today. Yet somewhere along the way some stuck-up religious (no doubt) prude decided he didn’t like the sound or meaning of the word, and so banished it to the realm of crudeness and sin. What a narrow-minded, egotistical cock-sucker! The word itself, as with all other ‘rude’, ‘crude’ and just plain ‘bad’ words holds no negative values in or of themselves. They are perfectly harmless. It is only in the intention of the person speaking these words, and the context in which they are spoken, that any negativity can be found.

The two most hated and feared words in the English language, as far as I can tell, are fuck and cunt. Note that both these words mainly deal with the concept of sex. What does that tell you about our view of this sacred, beautiful, and let’s face it, down-right fun activity? It seems the guilt and ‘sin’ surrounding this act still lives in our psyche even in this day and age. And who associated sex with sin? For this I shall point my accusing finger squarely at organized religion. (I will discuss this outdated and manipulative belief system a little later on in my rants, but for now we need to remember that most of what we believe and much of the governing systems in our culture stem from religion… Catholic, Christian and Jewish religions most predominantly… and is therefore in the firing line of many of my inquiries on life).

The absurdity of this issue stretches to ridiculous extremes. Often in newspapers, magazines and the like you will see an expletive written in forms such as ‘F**K’ etc. Now everybody is clearly intended to know what is being said, there is no mistake about it. So why bother censoring out the letters? If knowing what the word says can’t harm you then what’s the difference to anybody if they actually see the letters printed in full? It’s like saying that the letters themselves are so possessed by the devil that placing them together in that particular order would unleash the fires of hell, torture our souls and cause widespread terrorism. What the fuck!? Ok, so what if we were to rearrange the letters as in the brand name ‘FCUK’? Again, everybody knows what the word is making reference to, yet by simply switching the ‘C’ and the ‘U’ we have avoided long term prison terms and hefty fines. There is just no consistency in this argument I tells ya! The same could be argued for saying the word. Thinking it is apparently ok but saying the word out loud would make the long dead baby Jesus weep, but all that saying the word really does is open a passage for anyone in earshot to also think of that word… and thinking it is harmless, right? So the only time the words carry any danger is as they float through the air between my mouth and your ear. So by this rationale if we could cut out the necessity to speak and simply transmit the words telepathically then no harm would be done.

Thankfully, many of the other ‘swear’ words have been marginally downgraded to the realm of mildly offensive. These being; shit, piss, bugger, damn, hell and the like. Again, what categories do these words tend to fall into? If it does not have a religious connotation to it (hell, damn etc) then it is related to other private and ‘disgusting’ acts of human nature, namely sex and hygiene. Aren’t we a well-adjusted and open-minded species? Humans in the developed western world are apparently so disgusted with themselves that they choose to ignore the most fundamental elements of their survival. Basically, for some reason, we are so ashamed of things like pro-creation and bowel motion that we simply choose to ignore them and in fact assign guilt and shame to these perfectly natural and critically unavoidable functions. Hence, ‘swear words’. What a crock. I can understand that in centuries past, humans were more primitive in their thinking and strongly governed by religious belief and feared (or were taught to fear) anything they didn’t understand. But we have come a long way since those early days, and it’s about time we put such ancient and outdated modes of thought to rest.

The concept of a swear word is just that, a perception. It’s not real. They are just words. There is nothing to fear. So rest easy and have fun with language. At this point in our evolution, language is our most powerful tool, so use it freely and openly and for fuck sake grow up!!