Blind Blog #1

 Usually I write these posts with a degree of forethought, planning and structure in order to create an architecturally interesting as well as generally health and safety law abiding literary construction. However today I don't have the energy nor the motivation to attempt this degree of creative pondering hence I shall write everything as it occurs to me though in reality, I suppose that very few people will ever see this post and of those few people, only about a cubed root of them will actually be interested enough to attempt to comprehend the chunk of text. Hence what I write here is pretty irrelevant all things considered and for all anyone cares I could write my deepest darkest secrets but remain comfortable in the knowledge that it will probably remain a complete secret to the world.

 Much as many philosophers have pondered over the question, "when a tree falls in the woods but nobody hears it, does it actually make a sound?" I often ponder, "If a blog writer writes a blog but nobody reads it, has he actually wrote the blog." The answer to which is yes but for a completely depressingly futile cause. Though when all things are considered life its self is generally futile since the main aim of any organism is to leave off springs upon the planet in order to ensure the continued existence of the species and human beings are overpopulated as it is, meaning nothing that I might choose to do with my life matters in the slightest when thought of in a longer time frame.

 The only thing that could make life meaningful would be a situation when the survival of humanity is genuinely at stake such as an apocalypse. Though if such an instance were to occur, I doubt I will survive since I have very few survival skills and am not very high in terms of physical fitness. My only possible advantage would be my incessant paranoia concerning a potentially immanent zombie apocalypse. Which, I occasionally consider, might be a manifestation of my lack of trust in those around me since it is that sort of fundamental fear of familiar people ebing turned into enemies that fuels the concept of the undead.

 Now, that sounded quite deep. About 2000 leagues deeper than the sort of thing I usually write on this blog which is a little problematic since when somebody who is usually callous and shallow suddenly makes deep statements it tends to give the impression that they are somehow depressed. I assure you, if you are considering my mental well being at the moment (not in the sense that I might be a psychopath on the verge of going on a killing spree but in the sense that I might be suicidal) that I not in the slightest bit depressed. Though if I do become suicidal, I shall blame it on genetics, though that may be quite pseudo-scientific, since my country of origin, Japan, has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world. So much so that, when people jump in front of trains in Japan, there is barely any delay, only a polite mildly regretful announcement alerting people to a "human accident", sounding like it is more concerned with the delay caused than the loss of life, and an assurance normal services will be resumed in a short while.

 Which, in one sense, is quite enviable efficiency since here in Britain, the unfortunate demise of a leaf on the rail tracks can shock Transport For London on such a deep emotional scale that they halt the entire network for a day or so, presumably in mourning. The same comparison of humanity versus efficiency can be made in other aspects as well when comparing the two countries, Britain and Japan. For example Japanese shops are staffed by extremely well mannered staff who will all greet the customer in synchronization upon entry and work at a fast near automatic mechanical pace whereas British institutions tend to employ individuals who prioritize the social relations with their fellow employee than the many customers waiting irritatedly in an ever accumulating queue.

 In the end however, I would take the humanity over efficiency since it does give a sensation of actual person to person interaction. The feeling that you are living in a world composed of individual people all leading their own individual lives towards an ultimate demise but are nonetheless giving it their best shot. The feeling that there are a multitude of potentially interesting stories and melodramas mingling, bumping into each other, walking past each other throughout the packed human test tube we refer to as a city.

 Although presently even this happiness is slowly being eroded by machinery. For example the automatic self checkout machines which have replaced person manned counters in some shops. They are, though they originally broke down more frequently than a depressed pubescent teenage girl with attention issues,  now quite efficient and not only they prevent the human interaction that used to take place in shops but they also make the buyers into nothing more than mere mindless machines. Mechanically moving arms full of desired purchases in time to the monotonous music of the electronic beeps.

 Furthermore the mass creation and release of high quality headphones and portable music players, allowing, as the adverts often quip, the user to immerse themselves in their own bubble like world, cuts off individual people. Where everyone used to travel in the bus, hearing the conversation of others, listening to snippets of other people's lives; they now have their own little musical worlds in which they hear nothing but the music they've chosen. Maybe the two people next to you are discussing methods to counter the immanently approaching zombie revolution because they are secretly a member of an underground mystical organization of zombie fighters. The story should start with you, the protagonist, hearing their conversation and being sucked into their world to be thrust into a hugely exciting adventure of epic world saving zombie decapitating proportions. But instead you're listening to Lady Gaga or One Direction or whatever is popular so you don't hear the conversation and the gates to the potentially interesting future of fiction is forever closed, the opportunity missed.

 In the end this became just a strange slightly deep rant with the atmosphere of an old person ranting about the good old days. Or in a word, conservative. So to wrap it all up, I might as well end on a highly snobbish posh note by saying the moral of the story is the well worn phrase of Carpe Diem.

Giving Back

 I am currently taking part (not actually doing much but its the taking part that counts) in a patronizing (in the same sort of condescending and judgmental atmosphere of grandparents attempting to be understanding but nonetheless making their lack of understanding blindly obvious in the process by saying things like "Oh darling, you're a lovely girl, it doesn't matter if you didn't do well at school so long as you can cook" or "You're friend forgot to wipe his shoes when he came in but it's fine, its not his fault he's uncultured, I expect they don't teach their children manners in India") government funded program entitled "The Challenge" which aims to get young people (whom they presume have no morals, intelligence, understanding of the world or social life) to "give back to the community" by doing some sort of community service.
 I will make it clear that I don't have a problem with community service in general and think its great (so long as I'm not actually the one doing it) but what I do have a problem with, what causes me a considerable amount of vexation, is the phrase "giving back" to the community.
 Now, the Community has never done anything for me. If the Community were a parent and I its child, I would have been taken away by social services (or possibly not considering the recent incompetence of the social care system) due to gross negligence long ago. The positive publicity of "the community" seems to be that its an integral part of your life, functioning almost as a family member but as family members go, the community has had much of a presence in my life as an aborted older brother. In summary, I owe very little if not absolutely nothing to the community.
 What's more it seems that people think you somehow owe more to the community if you or your family have more money, which when considered logically makes very little sense. My family is relatively well off (and that's relative to the extremely poor economical situation at present) and I'm relatively fortunate (That's relative to those who were born into Uk families with less money/income and not relative to, say, children in Africa in which case everyone in the Uk would be relatively very fortunate which is a positive way of looking at it in a sense. On that note let us all have a moment of silence for those African children for allowing us the privilege of thinking "Thank god that's not me" every time we see a, no longer shocking, "shocking" image of some dying child which provokes less emotion in us than the death of some rich singer somewhere over dosing themselves on recreational drugs) but there's no reason why that means we owe anymore to the community than anyone else.
 We all reap what we sow and the community directly plays very little part in allowing someone to make money (unless monetary transactions by each individual member of the so called community is seen as the work of the community collectively) so I cannot see how the rich need to "give back" anything to the community. If anything the rich are more likely to have private health clinics that do not rely on the community and attend private schools (as do I) that do not rely on the community, as well as doing the community a favor every now and then by contributing to the local economy.
 I am aware that the above paragraph sounded like the height of snobbery and conservatism so would like to make clear that I do like the welfare system and would support a Robbin hood tax (taxing more from the rich than the poor), however I just object to the incorrect, almost deliberately guilt inducing, phrase "giving back" to the community.
 When I said that to those that ran "the challenge" their first response was "well, have you ever used the NHS?", the answer to which is "yes, yes I have once or twice." However my family pays for that enough in taxes and if the use of the NHS is relative to the amount of community service you should do then there are clearly people who use the NHS more but do nothing to "give back" to the community (those in the NHS permanent or intensive care unit for example... possibly because they're too ill to do anything).
 The second response, in light of my "reap what you sow" remark was that I, as a teenager, had sown nothing of my own and have done nothing to deserve being in the privileged position I find myself in. That is very true, its complete chance that I happened to be born to the family I was born to and I'm very fortunate to have done so considering the statistics. However, what that has to do with the community is something I cannot fathom. Why would my extreme turn of good luck require me to "give back" to the community, what on earth makes me indebted to the community for having very good fortune?
 Do "The community" have powers far beyond my understanding that allow them to control who gets born where? Is that the secret task of the local council, the elected members sitting around a table saying "Yes, I think we'll allow him to be born into a nice middle class family because he seems like a good lad ...though at this point there really is no way of discerning one individual from another since unborn foetuses typically tend not to have much of a personality" In which case I shall change all life dreams I've ever held and strive to become a member of the local council for the sheer power of it all.
 However since I highly doubt that is the case, it seems I owe less to the community than I owe to fate and destiny. And if the very little that I owe to the community (possibly in the form of two public library books which have been left untouched in my bookshelf for the last few months, accumulating dust and library fines faster than a cheetah in a car... that analogy possibly falling down due to the fact cheetah's don't tend to have motoring skills) must be "given back" in the form of weekends spent gardening or litter picking (as I was yesterday. Failing to plant daffodil bulbs in a far from local garden which I had never previously been to and picking up pieces of litter which felt more of a disservice than an aid to the community because their garish plastic vibrancy detracted a little from the bleak dullness of the park. All the while wearing skin tight rubber gloves, the type worn by hospital workers and rapists, which makes any job seem more criminal and perverse. The usage of those gloves could transform "baker" to "dough fondler", "barbar" to "hair mollestor" and "Nursery worker" to "Vanessa George") then what terrible price must I pay for the great debts I owe to destiny and fate. How many daffodils do I have to plant to "give back" to destiny and fate? Is that even the right way of going about it?
 Perhaps I should just start a cult worshipping destiny and fate, sacrificing a goat to their names every weekend followed by ritual dancing, spiritual humming and general mystical prancing about.