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Is the revolution coming? This morning I was listening to the Rolling Stones ‘Street Fighting Man’ while listening to the news and contemplating the notion of Avalonia. Since sacrificing my television as a gesture towards my writing career, thereby loosing Al-Jazeera and Russian TV News, my world has shrunk to that provided by the BBC news or the Latest Headline button on my laptop. Today the British media, parochial at the best of times, is obsessed by the News of the World and the far from mortal crime of hacking into people’s phone calls which, I suggest, isn’t a lot different from using a pair of binoculars or taking pictures from a mile away.
I suppose I should be too old by now to remain puzzled by how it is that anyone could possibly be surprised by corruption in high places, nevertheless I am. Since I was 14 or 15 it has struck me as self-evident that the rich exploit the poor and the powerful abuse the powerless and everyone lies to everyone, so while I accept most of the supposed outrage is consciously faux it would seem that out there in the nation the purblind are in the majority or how else could they respond to the financial crises by voting in the lackeys of the very fatcats who are screwing them while wetting themselves over the marriage of two golden pussies dressed in fineries stolen off the backs of the people cheering them?
Last year, the so called parliamentary scandals; this year the global banking conspiracy and the exposed corruption of the press and the police: what else do you need to see through the emperor’s clothes of government? Maybe the knowledge that much of the heroin and hash arriving in this country from Afghanistan is brought over by the very heroes The News of the World conned you into supporting with your golden hearts and empty pockets would help you unzip the last veil.
When I was 15 it was 1968 so I had a lot of help in understanding the ways of a world that many of us wanted nothing to do with. For some this meant armed insurrection and street fighting men (and women), for others, for me, ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ was the message we received and the action/non-action we took. (As I said it before, what was so wrong about Love and Peace – apart from the realizing of it?) Of course many of my generation are dead and I doubt whether the names of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert are known to our siblings who probably see hippies as idealistic dreamers (which we were) or down and out hedgers, which we never intended to be. Playpower, universal love and brother/sisterhood, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll – for fuck’s sake we just wanted to enjoy our lives. When the revolution comes, which it will, unless there’s a drastic change of zeitgeist or an outbreak of global Mandelaism, it won’t come with flowers in the hair or with a vision of happiness fuelling the party, but like the Arab Spring it will begin with anger channelled into peaceful protest and finish only when the arms dealers have found more lucrative fields to destroy.
Last week my non-readers would have noted the mention of Barry Long, a now dead Australian teacher of meditation who wrote and lectured extensively on sex, death and unhappiness. In the spiritual field his character and message were uniquely presented and often he seemed to say things that no-one else would be so explicit and blunt about. Even now when I hear his tapes or read his works, I often squirm at some of his statements, particularly about making love or about his being a ‘Master of the West’ ( – actually he says ‘the’ master of the west but I was trying to censor that).
Anyway one of Barry’s most extraordinary books is called ‘Ridding Yourself of Unhappiness.’ Particularly amazing are pages 102-146 in which he describes the beginnings of democracy which he calls ‘the outer god’, the notion inculcated by priests and the like that there is a greater good outside the individual. Democracy, he says, did away with the individual and individual responsibility. Rather than deal with their own happiness the people have chosen to vote for other unhappy people to represent them.
‘Each man through the democratic vote could express his unhappiness by choosing another emotional or unhappy person or party to express his unhappiness for him to other groups of unhappy parties. Then these unhappy parties working unhappily together would produce happiness. That was the hope.’
Interestingly Barry says this was the greatest mistake yet made by ‘the masses’ because at least in previous times when the individual lost power to kings, tyrants, robber barons etc., it was a temporary involuntary surrender whereas now the tyranny of democracy is never ending because when one government ‘falls’ it is replaced by another. Has human happiness increased? Probably not. Has the common weal been shared out more justly than before? Don’t make me laugh.
Having shown the flaw of democracy, the abject self-abrogation of the individual’s power to address his/her own unhappiness, Barry discusses the role of the media in democracy. He begins this by saying:
‘In the democratic way of life man discovered one compensating notion. That was that he(she) was now democratically entitled to criticize and blame others for making him unhappy. This he called the freedom of speech. But really it was a lofty sounding euphemism for the license to pass the buck of unhappiness. Out of this remarkable notion of freedom arose the quintessence of massed irresponsibility and misrepresentation – the unhappy modern newspaper. On behalf of the massed unconsciousness, and in exchange for a few pence a day, the newspapers indiscriminately blamed everything and everyone under the sun (except themselves) for man’s unhappiness – without ever mentioning or pausing to perceive the cause of it.’
On pages 122-131 Barry Long tells David Cameron all he needs to know about his relationship with the press. (Barry wrote this book in 1985.) Initially the politicians used their ‘democratic’ authority to use the press to ‘publish the likes and dislikes of the ruling emotional authority of the day – which of course was the politicians themselves and their self-interests.’ As time passed and the duplicity, stupidity, and ineffectiveness of the politicians became evident, they made a deal with the press by bribing them to keep quiet or portray them in a good light.
“This they did by revealing non-attributable secrets and confidences entrusted to them, which made the headlines (and of course created more unhappiness): and by quietly altering, and failing to alter, the legislative statues to favour the continuance of newspaper irresponsibility without accountability, and giving it a creeping kind of legality. The politicians by then had two faces: one for the public who did not know them: and one for the press that did.’
And thus the conspiracy of government and press against the people replaced the previous conspiracy of the rulers and the church against the people.
But what happens when conspirators fall-out? When I was in Goa recently a conspiracy between an Israeli drugs mafia and the Goan police had just been revealed owing to an unpaid bribe resulting in the arrest of one of the Israelis. Two days later a video appeared showing the chief of police receiving pay-offs. For some time the media has picked off politicians. Yesterday Cameron-Clegg and Millie Band spouted platitudes about how the press should be regulated and made responsible. A few journalists may go to gaol, judicial enquiries will pontificate, but in the end while the faces may change the game will continue because the punters need their drugs and the people need their unhappiness.
The game continues, yes, but doesn’t remain the same. So what comes next? John and Jack Heston have different views about this so maybe this is what I’ll address next week, along with making an expedition to Avalonia.
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