Friday, April 23, 2010

The Metropolis At The End Of The World

On a peninsula that reaches out like a vast claw into the void of the sea, sits a city that was founded aeons ago.
The sea itself is a mystery of existence, as it is not a sea at all, but a vast lake of salty water, seperated from all other oceans and bodies of water, and has been thus for so long that men cannot remember.
The peninsula and its interior hinterlands are dry and dusty places, windswept in the spring and autumn, hot and airless in the summer, whipped by stronger winds, rains and snow in the winter.
For such an unforgiving and bleak place to be the site of a city since ancient times defies the laws of nature itself, then. The city sits inside the curvature of the claw, making a site in the natural bay before it. And yet, these people, these people who defy the curses of nature, make their living there.
Who would come to such an unforgiving place, blessed by neither water nor soil: only blessed by those things which civilised men would call curses?
For the men that survive in this city in a far-off wasteland worship, not nature, for that would seem perverse in such a place. No, they worship the destructive force itself: the flame.
For, yes, I forgot to mention: this peninsula has another outlandish attribute. There are places in these environs where the very earth spews fire. The men that make their home here have also learned to worship and harness the primeval element itself. In this godforsaken place, the earth weeps black blood. The fire-worshippers here also make use of the earth's black blood. And thus do they make themselves into a culture.

The winds blow season after season, as though blown by the devil himself. Time passes, and from this remote and otherworldly spot, do legends and tales grow.
For to reach this place takes a feat of endurance all of its own: across mountains from the north, south and west, and the flat, enduring sea from the east. This place is not easy to reach (as though anyone would want to), and when the traveller, nomad, searcher, whatever, arrives here, he soon realises one thing: that this is The Metropolis At The End Of The World.

People of all inclinations, fair and foul, are silently driven here, as though by some chaotic force within them that seeks out the last place on earth. For although there are other places on the earth that may be drier, colder, hotter more remote, perhaps none of them have inclined men to build such a city there. No, there may be more extreme environs: but none have made their natural plight into such a cause for celebration as here. In this city, chaos itself reigns in the minds of its people.

In such a place, is where legends are born.

The Liberal Democrat Surge: Why Treating People Like Adults Can Have Immediate Benefits

Three weeks before the British General Election, the polls put the LibDems on 20%, where they had been for the last fifteen or twenty years, more or less. As had been the case since the Second World War, Conservatives and Labour shared the other 70% of the vote.

Until last Thursday, and the TV Election Debates.

For the past week, something extraordinary has happened: the polls put each of the three parties on roughly equal footing, plus or minus four or five points.

The question is this: how could one simple TV debate provoke such a dramatic response?

My answer: because it treated people to the novelty of being able to make an educated choice about politics. Before these debates, the Labservative see-saw had dominance over the media outlets, with the LibDems pushed out of the limelight. But now that people can genuinely listen to the three main party's leaders and get a real sense of their ideas, people can have a real choice.

The LibDem surge then isn't that surprising. All it shows is that the two-party system that dominated British politics is paper thin.
If these kind of TV debates had been introduced twenty years ago, who knows what would have happened? Maybe three-party politics and the possibility of coalition governments would have been a reality much sooner.
People get the system they deserve. Once the media treated the British public as intelligent people, they start thinking like them.
Now, there's a pleasant surprise...

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Dealing With Problems versus Not Dealing With Problems

I was sat on the bus the other day, and I remembered a quote by an environmentalist when describing the industrialised world's attitude to traffic. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) "Building more highways to deal with the rise in number of cars on the road is like buying a bigger size of trousers to deal with your weight problem". In other words, dealing with a problem by not dealing with a problem.

This came to mind because I was on a bus and was thinking about this attitude when looking at how in some countries men and women usually sit in seperate parts of the bus. In the Caucasus (in Azerbaijan, but it also happens in the other Caucasian Republics, too), men usually sit at the back of the bus, and women at the front. The general reasoning behind this is so that women don't get harassed by men (more practically, it also makes it easier for women to get off).
Now, if that's how they want to deal with the issue, fine, but it reminded me of this environmentalist's point. By highlighting the difference between men and women, how does this educate men into dealing with this issue? As far as I see, it doesn't. Sure, it might make men more "respectful" of women when in their presence, but what about when they're not in their presence? On the contrary, this way of "not dealing" with the problem can have worrying side-effects - in other words, it can make men more sexually frustrated.

I'll use another example. A number of Muslim women wear a headscarf. Many Muslim women wear a headscarf for the reason that it gives them the power to choose how much they want others (strangers) to see of them. In other words (though this might sound a little strange), they are acting (in a way) like Muslim feminists; giving women the power over men.
Well, this is all fine, but there is the other, more commonly used, argument that women cover themselves because they don't want to attract attention from men. Like the situation on the bus, this also seems like a form of dealing with a problem by not dealing with a problem. How do you educate men into treating women better? If women hide their bodies from the attention of men, then you are emphasising rather than playing down the difference of the sexes. In a strange kind of way, men might get more attracted by this behaviour, as it makes the game of seduction all the more mysterious. And I've seen male behaviour that supports this point of view. Ask yourself this question. Which is more erotic? A naked body, or a partially clothed body? Human psychology would usually choose the latter, because clothing creates the illusion in the mind that the human body is sexual; a naked body is just a biological fact. So the more clothes a women wears, or the more she hides her body, the more it feeds a man's sexual imagination. The fewer clothes she wears, the less imagination men need to use. Of course, if you've ever been on the streets of the UK at night and viewed the number of women in practically no clothing, you'll see what I mean. But the fact is this: humans are sexual animals, and headscarf or no headscarf, men will be attracted to women somehow.All this behaviour does is make men more sexually frustrated, and seek to fulfill their desires in another way. By wearing a headscarf, you give the illusion that men shouldn't have sexual thoughts.

It's time some people got real.