I’m detecting a smidgen of sarcasm…whadya reck? And yet there is some truth to this statement as the death rate from Covid has plummeted by 92% in the U.K since January so staying in actually did stop tons of people dying.
As we lurch out of 4 months of lockdown we might be currently winning the war on the virus but the war of information has been truly lost. Everyone seems convinced they are right but no-one appears to agree on anything other than those who think differently to them are wrong and have somehow been duped, misled, deceived and manipulated.
Maybe we have all been brainwashed. How the fuck would you know? Truth is our minds have been moulded since the day we were born. Pulled around like putty and moulded into shape by a multitude of pushy sources. Education, parenting, the media, your peers..all have had a hand in dictating how you think. We feel that our thoughts are our own but they are anything but. It’s just they have been forced upon us so relentlessly that they feel like we instigated them. As if they were formed in a pure and virginal state from within. And yet there are almost no opinions in our heads that have evolved independently.
They say you are what you eat and for our entire lives we’ve all had to chow down on an endless stream of ideas that have been shoved down our throats , just like those poor fucking geese that are force fed to make foie gras pate. We , however, are just being fattened up on a diet of bullshit and it takes a strong will to keep our eyes away from the clickbait and an even stronger will not to be taken in by it.
It is ultimately up to us to try and evaluate all the information we consume and come to our own conclusions but we are still at the mercy of our sources. It has been revealed that since the arrival of the never-ending feed people do not spend enough time disseminating what they read. Instead everything is absorbed and accepted wholesale then regurgitated back out again with the click of a button, without barely a moment spent establishing how factually correct the information we are spreading is. We become the conduits of lies because none of us have the time or can be arsed to fact check that shit before we pass it on.
Next time you are banging on about something with absolute certainty, defending it against all counter arguments and convinced it is nothing short of the word of God, ask yourself these questions…where did I get this information from? Do I know for 100% it is true? Should I be so adamant with 2nd hand opinions? Does this nugget of info deserve to be presented with such conviction when chances are, I probably just picked it up from godknowswhere and have no definitive proof it is actually correct.
I have a mountain of information in my head but I have no real memory of where it came from. Did I read it? Did someone tell me at a party? Did I imagine it? In general I have no idea but once its on the inside and been assimilated into our minds our brains decide it is gospel and that is that. It doesn’t care what’s real. It just wants its world view reinforced for the rest of our lives. This is confirmation bias and we are all at its mercy. So sadly not only can you not trust your sources but you can’t even trust yourself.
So where does that leave us? It means we must remain open & fluid, a work in progress, not set in stone. We cannot become a fixed moment in time or else we will not continue to evolve. We must always be willing to take new shit on board.
I once saw a massive sign in a field in the middle of rural America as we were driving and it said: “Don’t have too much of an open a mind or your brain might fall out”. Eek. (scared face)
So this is all really just to prepare you because as we all emerge from our lockdown cocoons and are re-integrating with each other after a very long time with nothing but our own opinions for company it might come as a bit of a shock to find that not everyone thinks as we do.
I don’t necessarily disagree with this equation but did we really need a name for it? Is that helping at all? And why are you trying to make Britastrophe happen, yeah? How is that gonna get us out of this mess? It’s also not very good let’s be honest.
Why do we feel we have to labradoodle everything these days? It’s like everything has to be simplified to fuck and made hashtagable before anyone pays attention? It’s like our current government seem more focused on creating the right slogan rather than implementing genuine measures to combat Covid. The virus can’t read. It doesn’t give a shit what catchy phrase you use. Maybe now the Spin Doctor of Barnard Castle is gone, they won’t focus quite as much on advise that rhymes and think that’ means the job is done.
So featured this week are some random wall scrawls alongside some stickers & posters that have been plastered around to jolt people into thought. I think it is the fact that printing has got become much cheaper which has spurred on a new wave of slightly more professional executions than dragging a fat sharpie across a wall as presentation for people’s message out there on the streets. Its become more and more of a thing as you can see..
Many are of an anti-government nature but as in the drug one above, (which I don’t really understand tbh -are they drug shaming or class shaming ?) they can be sometimes quite oblique in their intention. Although most, it has to be said, are of a political nature as are most things these days and am quite astounded how over-politicised are lives have become recently.
It feels like almost everything goes through this political polarising filter. It would appear our persuasions are being pulled whilst others are pushing their own agendas. There was a time when not everything was about politics. It seems to really dominate all aspects of life at the moment. I think we all need to take a step out of the red corner and the blue corner and stop looking for a fight with the opposition at every turn.
I blame the 24 news feed which just wants to stoke our rage to keep us wired in and the easiest way to do that is to push our respective buttons & beliefs. But all it achieves is increased polarisation when we really all need to be coming towards the middle. I miss the centrism of 90s politics. Less black and white, less hostile, less like feeling you had somehow fallen into a civil war you don’t remember starting.
As for the anti-lockdown brigade trying to incite dissent, (well done on the logo & slogan, lovely work ;) they are seemingly the only ones oblivious to the irony that their activity will most likely prolong the very thing they want to end. And its pretty fucking pointless..I mean, go ahead, ignore the lockdown by all means, then what? What are you gonna do? Everything’s shut for fuck’s sake.
And so I will end this week of walled bulletins the way I started it, with some good ole fashioned sprayed graffiti with no real agenda other than to delight up your day…are you talkin to me? Awww, shucks n stuff..thanks!
We hold the future in our hands. We decide what happens from here. It is all within our control but it will not be handed to us on a plate. We will have to fight for what’s right, every single step of the way. The days for sitting back and hoping for the best are behind us…destiny awaits.
Meanwhile back in the past…
2020: “Wait till they get a load of me…mwah haa haa!”
And so everything is back on. Well almost/not quite/not at all depending on what business you are looking at. There seems to be a massive discrepancy between them all. Some stores are heavily populated yet a lot seem extremely quiet. Some high streets have got their life back, others are as dead as they were before anything re-opened.
A lot of shops are dependent on office workers and/or tourists who are still not back yet so they are barely getting anyone in through their doors. The Gov wants the country back up and running at full speed but it can’t possibly function as normal until everything is open. And that is going to be a while because we are a long way from normal.
Everyone knows the relaxation of the lockdown has fuck all to do with the reduction of the threat. It’s still out there which means as soon as things pick up it will be back, because it hasn’t really gone away. Yes, we are all ‘over it’ and wanna get back to some semblance of normality but the virus doesn’t care about that. And if it was conscious and could observe the sights of packed beaches, mass gatherings and illegal raves happening all over the country it would no doubt be licking its lips in anticipation…if it had lips.
It’s actually a shame Covid-19 isn’t self-aware otherwise it could maybe look at how much it has achieved in a very short space of time and take a break safe in the knowledge that it will most definitely win “most promising newcomer” at the 2020 Virus awards. “I would just like to thank my carriers, I couldn’t have done it without you…” It should really congratulate itself on a great campaign and a very successful world tour and take a well earned rest but sadly it doesn’t have a brain. Or a body for that matter. But it is insatiably contagious fucking incredible at replicating itself and that is why we are in this mess.
It would be amazeballs to be able to go out and not think about this shit for a while but sadly that is not going to happen. We’re unfortunately stuck with this mofo for the foreseeable so might as well mask up, keep our distance, accept it has not gone away and do everything we can not to create anothe spike just as our exhausted NHS workers are barely recovering.
They desperately need a respite from the relentless onslaught of critical patients they have been battling to keep alive for months. They have seen death on a scale normally associated with war whilst we moaned about being bored at home. We must not let their sacrifice and hard work be nothing. We must do everything we can to keep a lid of this fucker. And we must just be prepared to acknowledge that business as usual is now a thing of the past, it is not coming back…this is Business of the Unusual so we need to act like it.
Nature dictates you either adapt or die and that is what we must do. My fear is that, based on what I have seen over last few months we are seemingly too selfish to survive. Our narcissistic self-centred focus has become so acute it’s actually working contrary to our primary drive to stay alive. And that’s obvs a bit of a problem…we need to be better than this Britain, way fucking better.
