Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

No-one I know, including myself is really talking about the upcoming election in Britain which is kinda weird as so much is at stake. The writing’s on the wall but nothing is being said. Why? Are we all beaten down by Brexit? Was that the point of a snap election? To catch everyone in a state of utter disillusionment  and despair and take advantage of the apathy? It would appear so and it looks like its working. Is the election a done deal? That is definitely what they want you to think but please remember, politicians are only unelectable if you don’t vote for them. The power is still with us. What have recent elections shown us? That it’s never a done deal. That you can  never predict what is going to happen. Your vote counts. It always does. No matter what. Don’t be lulled into paralysis and inaction by a right-wing biased media counting on it. And if you think they are all as bad as each other, think again. Some give a shit about the rest of us and some really don’t. Its not hard to see who is who. Even in a world of fake news.

Find it so sad to think that the internet which was created to spread knowledge and information has created a world where nothing can be believed and everyone is now taking advantage of that. This is why common sense (rather than the current ‘common insanity’)needs to be re-established.  They are banking on the fact that you don’t have time to digest and discern what is real and what isn’t. Spend the time, check the sources, it’s worth it. If you can’t, just file it under ‘maybe’ rather than gospel. The era of post truth is most definitely here. That you can believe.

If you want to be even more mistrustful of the algorithms and how you and your online habits are being manipulated to swing entire elections read this article which shows how the alt. right from the U.S got seriously involved in our EU referendum: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Is it to be believed? Can it be trusted? Its pretty well researched and from corroborated sources and written by a professional journalist so as much as anything can be, yes it is and its pretty fucking chilling stuff. However, like the revelations of Snowden, it might not do anything other than confirm what you already believed and re-inforce your sense of powerlessness and why being involved in the election process is pointless. But, if anything, all it does for me is show why your vote counts more than ever. They are systematically unleveling the playing field to work in their favour. We cannot allow them to get away with it. What can we do? How do we fight this? There is really only one thing you can do…Vote! Vote! Vote!

Whether you agree with the Brexit result or not, whatever your politics are, it showed one thing. Going to the polling booth does make a difference. Most of my frustration comes from feeling that I am at the mercy of the people in power who clearly have nothing but their own (and their donors) vested interests as the driving force of their actions. Voting is all we have. Until they take that away from us as well we must use it to exercise what minuscule amount of power we have as citizens. Add all those minuscule bits together and you have real power.

Am I talking to like-minded people? I have no idea. I kinda hope not. Who wants to live in an echo chamber? That’s what Google and Facebook want because the more they narrow your world the easier it is to advertise to you. That is the only reason. We cannot be afraid to hear opposing views or just slam them down because we don’t agree. If we want others to listen to you so must you be prepared to listen openly to others, even if they are from a different political side. Our brains are geared up to reject new information and instead to seek out anything that re-inforces our world view. It is called confirmation bias and it is the brain’s default. It spends its whole life trying to find things that make you think you were right all along. This is obviously some evolutionary misfire because it’s causing us to devolve. And it affects liberals and conservatives equally (acc to study in new scientist so a pretty reliable source). We can override these mental mechanisms, we just need to understand that  our brains occasionally need overriding. We need to dig deep and access the logic part  of our minds. It’s in there somewhere amidst all the bile and the bullshit…we just need to find it.

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london