TONY ON BUST, IRON & MORE

Including One Single Impression and Manic Monday.
Have you had a go yet?

Welcome to my Monday Magazine post.
As Zoom – another small British budget airline – goes bust, the Chancellor of the Exchequer talks of a profound economic downturn – the worst for 60 years. This comes soon after zero growth was recorded for the UK in the second quarter of the year.

Now that Recession is here, he would say that.

Better, now, to make it sound worse than it is, then they can take the credit when it isn’t that bad. But it WILL be bad. If it follows the normal pattern, unemployment will be raging, and inflation will get out of hand.
It will be worse than the previous two Recessions because we swallowed the lie that ‘boom and bust’ was over. Consequently, we used credit to extend the period of ‘boom’. But the longer you party on, the greater the hangover that follows.
Hopefully we’ll remember this, and not repeat the cycle when good times come again.

Big marches on into prisons now.

A new generation of giant jails have been proposed by the British government. Yet critics, including official watchdogs, have attacked the idea, claiming they are dangerous and do not save any money.
So why go ahead with them, against such opposition? Well, the first thing to realize is it has nothing to do with prisons. Big Biz is getting into the prison game here, and it is all to do with ideology.
We’re told that ideology is dead, but this is a big lie – and you know how I hate big. Big Biz is not an efficient way to run capitalism. Smaller business does a much better job. But smaller businesses cannot deal with ‘big’ systems. Hence, the best way to guarantee Big Biz stays at the top is to think big, and make sure ‘small’ doesn’t get a chance.
Next Magazine post, Wednesday. See you then.

© Anthony North, August 2008

SPECTACLE OF LIFE

Life is full of experience, allowing us to see,
a chain of events for us to feel, never should we flee!
For seeing comes in many ways, the first your vision, true,
but seeing is also wisdom – relating, me to you;
Life is such a spectacle, things we get right and wrong,
decisions form our path, discover where we belong;
This is nature’s duality, the way we know what’s right,
we see our spectacles before us, as life puts up a fight,
to mould us into who we are, so we can see it all,
but strange how our inner sight grows, as our vision begins to fall,
and the greatest of our spectacles end up on our nose,
and we remember those other spectacles; as memories they repose

(c) Anthony North, August 2008

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WAXY AND THE IRON CAULDRON – Horror Fiction

Thank the stars for the black cat, Wane often thought. This was usually after her novice witchery had caused disaster for her fellow sister of the Moon, Waxy. Never quite getting her spells right, the outcome usually resulted in Waxy becoming ectoplasmic goo, saved only by psychic connection with her familiar at the last moment, and pinching one of its lives.
Waxy recalled the metamorphosis as if she’d gone into some celestial shower, and then anything was possible. But Wane’s latest mistake was in danger of making this system irrelevant – not to mention the strange behaviour …
‘Waxy, you’ll destroy the potion,’ Wane would say, but Waxy didn’t care. Whenever the cauldron came out, she dived to her bony knees and began to such iron. After all, she always seemed quite drained nowadays.
It was Wane’s latest thought-form that was the problem. The homunculus had manifested easily, and she was sure it could be a new friend to Waxy. Indeed, to get it just right, she’d used much thought herself, regularly pushing her pointy hat to the back of her head and scratching around a wart.
‘Well you can just wish it away,’ Waxy had said after the first couple of meetings. ‘I can’t take it.’ Indeed, it was beginning to seem like she would never need the black cat to save her again.
‘Ungrateful witch,’ Wane had muttered.
It had gone quite well until she’d realized how much Waxy liked nice glowing white teeth – unlike her own, which she regularly had to put back in. But spells will be spells, and one thing leads to another …
Homunci appeared again. Waxy backed away, but it was no good. And as he pounced once more …
Well, Wane thought Waxy had some neck anyway. And as for Waxy, she thought this ‘undead’ thing was just not for her.

© Anthony North, August 2008

HOW TO EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFTS

A consciousness shift is an esoteric concept whereby, at times, human consciousness changes significantly and we become a different order of being. At the centre of many New Age philosophies, the idea is usually ridiculed by the ‘rational’.
Indeed, throughout my life I’ve been told by various threads of literature that I’m close to one. It seems that always there is some guru working away at our mind, enforcing the idea that we will soon become more than we were before.

One consciousness shift is said to have happened in 1987.

This is known as Harmonic Convergence, and is based on the idea that many Native American tribes predicted such a shift in this year, way back in the past.
What kind of change would have occurred for this ‘convergence’ to become true? It would contain the knowledge that Earth is a sentient planetary entity, and we will return to the Earth.
Well, guess what, it’s happening. Environmentalism is well advanced, and we are all, now, aware that our future must be in being more eco-friendly. Indeed, many cannot understand the mind-set of the polluter, and even many polluters are beginning to feel guilt.

What are we dealing with here?

Is this a change in consciousness, or just a change in attitude? Is the ‘consciousness shift’ nothing more than a fancy name for a new way of thinking and doing?
Let’s look at the Renaissance. This was a re-discovery of the Classics in the 16th century, fuelling an outpouring of the arts. The outcome of this was a move against Christianity, and the eventual succession of the modern world.

So, big changes there, but again, only in attitude.

Yet consider the discovery of perspective geometry at the same time. This concept identified the existence of distance. Prior to this, paintings were two-dimensional. Afterwards, they were three-dimensional.
This is more than change in attitude. This is change in how we actually see, and represent, the physical world. Of course, I’m not saying that people didn’t ‘see’ in three dimensions beforehand. But they had no way of representing it. So consciousness can be said to have really changed.

There’s an argument concerning Shakespeare that adds to this.

In his plays, human foibles and personality were popularly known for the first time. Some argue that he therefore ‘invented’ the modern emotional personality.
Throughout life we are affected by various outside influences, be they societal or environmental. At various times in our lives, these can fundamentally change who we are. New ideas can also have the same function.
As such, we undergo such consciousness shifts often. However, I’ve argued elsewhere that if a particular idea catches hold of society, it can cause a consensus which radically changes our idea of knowledge, and thus our appreciation of the world.
We actually live in a clash of such consensual understandings. Think religion v science, left v right, etc. And each one sees the world in a radically different way to the point that one cannot understand or identify with the other.
Should any one gain predominance, would a consciousness shift be the result? After all, the only difference between a chaotic world, or one ordained by God, is our appreciation of it. Perhaps consciousness shifts are battling for supremacy all the time, locked in an evolutionary battle for the survival of the fittest.

© Anthony North, August 2008