OR HOW THREE WEEKS IN THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND CHANGED ME
I have spent the last 20 years trying to understand myself and the world around me, searching for the perfect ´idea´ that would take root in peoples minds, and create a fundamental shift in human thought and behaviour to create a more compassionate, evolved species.
No tall order then!
I have given up everything I hold dear, used every penny I have ever had, destroyed every relationship since 2003, alienated almost every friend, and ended up homeless, and penniless.
Up to three weeks ago, I was happy to keep going, and had even more ideas about how to cross written philosophy into the ‘real’ physical world.
It’s not that my concepts are ‘bad,’ or unworkable, far from it, but the one key element that I kept forgetting was that for these ideas to work, it would require every person to undergo an instantaneous transformation in the mind, not 20 years of torture as I have gone through.
And Ladies and Gentlemen, that is not going to happen. Here’s why.
I arrived in John O Groats, in the far north of Scotland 3 weeks ago, and was full of hope …but the more I listened to conversations in the local pub ( a great place to learn what the locals are thinking ) and observed the locals in action, remembering that John O groats has only 300 inhabitants, and gerd the same storiiesm, the same complaints about money and immigrants, people constantly spreading malicious gossip about each other.
I witnessed a general apathy amongst the workers, drunken conversations about nothing in particular, except for the occasional comments about vegans, and anyone who is trying to change them.
They talked about hunting, and the need to cull overpopulation of deer, the price of electricity, the cost of housing, food…blah blah blah!
In fact, the people of the north of scotland were absolutely no different from the people of London, Paris,Tokyo, Tehran,New York, Baghdad,Mogadishu,Cape Town, Bangkok,Sydney or Kathmandu…. With one or two ‘cultural’ differences, they were all saying the same things I have heard in every country I have spent time in.
This throughly depressed me!
I decided to go to the remote orkney and shetland islands to see if things were different..They aren’t.
In less than 24 hours I can see the same conditioning I have seen all over the world. People sleepwalking towards death under the guise of free will.
What a waste of a walnut, is what i keep thinking! And it is thinking that rules the world, not men, ladies and gentlemen!
The walnut weighs 3 pounds and is capable of great creation and great destruction as evidenced over the last few thousand years.
Your walnut is structurally the same as mine yet we think and act very differently. Why do I want to save the world and you want to destroy it? It seems that the Human Walnut is capable of thinking anything!
It has no moral or ethical compass!
So while you think of making as much money as you can, beating your wife, killing your child, pretending, raping your friend, cheating vulnerable people, stealing from shops, stifiling dialogue, taking advantage of others suffering, creating, selling and consuming drugs, getting drunk until you fall down, buying another car, getting a sex change , getting a bigger house, protesting, invading and bombing other countries, converting people your religion, saving everybody, killing animals, scooping up the sea, drilling for oil, mining for gold, gossiping, plotting, scheming, paying for sex, watching porn, fishing, gambling, abusing, borrowing, lending, threatening, stabbing, shooting, comparing, dividing, commenting, littering, destroying, building, controlling, conforming, begging, expecting, exploiting, judging, kidnapping, congratulating, beautifying, posting, addicting, digging, chopping, shipping, polluting, butchering, arguing….
I sit here, quiet, wondering where I went wrong. Why couldn’t I help make a better world for all of us?
Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m out. You’re on your own. You’ve fucked the world. Well done. You must be very pleased with yourselves.
Alan
29.12.2023
Oh if I’ve missed something feel free to fill in the blanks!
