takeITpersonal (CIC)
We are not a charity but we will be a non profit.
Specifically a not for profit organisation set up to serve the Community Interest where technology is concerned.
I know that we just mentioned IT and ICT in the introduction, we hid it in the word “technology” because rolling out the technical terms is generally enough for most people’s eyes to glaze over and their attention to quickly switch to something else, usually, ironically, using some form of technology – smartphone.
Let’s start with a simple fact …
“It’s a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. . . . It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual.” {Terry Pratchett}
Well we can’t promise the “miraculous” but we can think about “the usual”. More specifically what we have tolerated, what we have “acclimated” to, what we have allowed ourselves to “just get used to”. When we are really just getting used – used and abused, mentally and physically.
When you see words that “stand out” in the paragraph, that is because they should, stand out. They are the important, key-words in that particular phrase that need to be “understood” in order to question or agree with this statement. Those are not “air-quotes” either, bold just didn’t make them stand out the way I thought they should.
From roadworks and vehicular traffic to the horrors of human trafficking and modern slavery. We hear the same stories. Stories of international war, global trade and geopolitics to feed our appetite for news.
The really sad news being; as individuals, we have no power, no control of that news cycle, other than turning it off. But that is very difficult in our modern, connected society.
We see bad news every day, we hear bad news every day, we think about it, we talk about it, every day.
Then once every few years we vote for the “least bad candidate” to represent us in Parliament and are surprised when he, or she, doesn’t.
Or more likely they simply can’t because government is not set up to work that way.
The machinery behind our current political structure has built up over many years with layers of bureaucracy and bloat, complex relationships with NGOs and Big Business, lobbyists who are ex-government. Ex-ministers who join the board of major corporations, on huge salaries, I could go on.
In short, most ministers are simply mannequins for all intent and purpose, a physical frame for the window dressing that supports the theatre and circus of democracy. We have seen the fall of great empires including the Greek and Roman Empires. Did they do “bad things”? Well that depends on whose side you are on.
Generally in the United Kingdom we learn about the Roman organisation of the military, the major battles and conquests, the Colosseum, forums and magnificent monuments; the cultural and technological revolutions they pioneered; aquifers and aqueducts, underfloor heating and let’s not forget the sauna and tepidarium. Relaxation was part of their culture (if you were wealthy). It is a Circus, in the Roman sense, that British democracy has become.
Over the last few years I have spent a lot of time thinking about “thinking”. Bear with me and consider some quotes taken from the books by Terry Pratchett, whose Discworld series is fantastic, literally.
She’d tried being alone with her thoughts once, but had never tried it again. It had been too dull
It was often a good idea, Vimes had always found, to give the silly bits of the brain something to do, so they did not interfere with the important ones which had a proper job to fulfil.
That was the thing about thoughts. They thought themselves, and then dropped into your head in the hope that you would think so too. You had to slap them down, thoughts like that; they would take over if she let them.
And then it would all break down, and nothing would be left but the cackling
This highlights one of my particular thoughts about thinking. Where do those thoughts come from and why do particular thoughts just “drop into your head”? Personally I blame the books, reading all those books. Not just the books by Pratchett but hundreds of other authors of fiction, non-fiction and the blurry line in between.
Glenda and Juliet sat side by side, rocking gently to the sway, lost in their thoughts. At least Glenda was, Juliet could get lost in half a thought, if that.
The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.
Space he thought. That was the trouble. It was never like this on worlds with everlastingly cloudy skies. But once humans saw all that space, their brains expanded to try and fill it up.
And then we get to my personal favourite.
Life gets really complicated if you think too much.
I used to agree with this completely; because I found the complexity overwhelming. Knowing that however complex I believed the problem to be; I was still underestimating the complexity.
Trees for example are just as big and complicated underground as the part of the tree we see everyday. On the other hand, the worms, slugs and creepie crawlies that live amongst the tree roots never see the huge trunk covered with bark and complex branch, leaf, flower and seed structure above ground. It is all a matter of perspective.