I tend to be quite pragmatic about politics- as opposed to principle. Because politics is the art of the practical. So often one has to accept that it really is soap powder politics. It's about competence, not principle.
The US Presidential elections are important to the rest of the world, no two ways about it. Why? Because the US is in the extraordinary position of being able to force it's wishes in defiance of anyone else. Sometimes, the rest of the world agrees. But it doesn't matter much if it doesn't. The US doesn't actually need the support of the UN to carry out any political action, it just needs the UK to rubber stamp it's decisions, and then it all looks respectable. Because really, that's the only difference between Vietnam and Iraq. The UK and the Aussies were there to make it look a bit more respectable.
Conversely, no UN decision that lacks US support has any validity. How many sanctions has the UN imposed against Israel? Will it ever matter?
The US, through its films and other media showcases to the world what the paramount culture of the world should be. No matter how out of kilter the accepted paradigms in US culture might be with the rest of the world, these values are continually propagated across the face of the globe with far more effective force than any other values system can possibly hope to achieve.
In a very real way, through their government and its vast armed forces, the two hundred thousand citizens of the United States of America hold power over the rest of the globe.
Because it matters to us who they choose to lead them, far more than it matters to them who we choose to lead us. The leadership of America, the values it espouses, the culture it promotes, the policy decisions it makes, these affect every human being on the face of the globe.
The voters of America really do have an obligation that they themselves do not understand. They are the trustees of global values and the trustees of global peace. In a very real way, our lives and the sort of future the WORLD looks forward to, is in their hands.
And to me, it's all about what's on offer.
I got a little annoyed with those of my countrymen who bombarded the voters of certain Florida counties in the last election telling them to vote for Kerry. I suspect it had the reverse effect. But also, to be fair, the main issue being competence as far as I can see it, though there are huge things wrong with the Bush Presidency and foreign policy seems to have been made up by people not much better than Ayatollahs themselves and whilst I don''t think Bush was exactly an intellectual giant, he at least seemed to have an element of confidence and know what he was doing. He probably didn't, the last eight years seem to demonstrate that, it was foreign policy dictated by a Christian version of Boy's Own Magazine, but take one look at Gore and Kerry and you can see why Bush won.
America is a big, tough, still relatively new country. If neither of the choices really offer you much change, you choose the guy who seems straight talking. I guess the idea was that Bush wasn't clever enough NOT to be sincere.
But Gore and Kerry? No wonder the Democrats hadn't a hope.
And to be honest, when this campaign started, I figured it would be Rudy Guiliani versus Hilary. And to my mind, no question. Rudy might apparently belong to the same lot as the neo-cons and the Bible nuts, but he had proved he didn't think like them. If he could get the nomination, then one assumed he'd probably win over the people. But Republican activists it seems, preferred to cut of their noses to spite their faces.
A choice between Rudy and Hilary, it had to be Rudy. Rudy carried the wind of change with him, Hilary...
It's odd, but by choosing a black candidate with a Ghanain surname, the Democrats have played the wildcard that is perhaps the only card that could ensure the Democrats could win. Because whilst the rest of the world judges America on its foreign policy, most Americans are actually unaware that Britain is an island. The Democrats have tended in the past to talk to themselves whilst the Republicans talked to America- more usually White America, Christian America, playing banjos in the Blue Mountains America, but they manage to get their people out. And last time, they made significant advances into both the black and Catholic votes. It seemed the Democrats were being consigned to being the party of the urban coastlines.
But now it's different. America has a choice. For the first time in a long time.
The choice is simple. Allow the tide to continue as it does and let the current mould set, or break it. Change the world.
And that change isn't assured. Voting Obama in doesn't guarantee that, it might all turn out to be a damp squib. But it's the only shot America- and the rest of us- have.
Because to vote in McCain and Palin guarantees business as usual. Foreign policy will carry on as it is, with the US adopting the role the rest of us think should be reserved for the UN as a whole. It will continue to tacitly exploit divisions in its own culture, to promote 'God Bless America, One Nation Under God' as a legitimate values system, it will essentially be a white Anglo-Saxon America in which black people have a place under sufferance because lip service must be paid to Martin Luther King and Hispanics, well, we don't mind them too much, they try so hard don't they, to BE American, as long as they do that we can live with them.
It will be an America where Enron can happen again. An America where lobby groups dictate policy. It is the America of apple pie, shooting trout, The Alamo, TV Evangelists and belief in an axis of evil. An America that exists on top of inner city racial tensions, giving CIA support to elitist governments in Latin America which float as American puppets to maintain their countries as toothless banana republics suiting the interests of the US consumer.
An America ruled by the clapping of hands in joyful chanting and the frantic writing of cheques.
What Obama offers is something new. We've been here before.
He could be Lincoln or FDR. But the again, he could be Kennedy.
What I mean by that, is that the first two really did change America. In ways that hurt, but ultimately were- in most people's eyes I think- good ways. To be sure, we can argue to death about the long term damage the civil war achieved, and it did, its legacy lasted at least a century. A subject for a post in it's own right sometime, maybe. But Obama offers that sort of choice. As did FDR.
Obama just may break the mould. He's totally counter to what ANYONE thought a US President could be. And not just because he's black.
Because he's real America.
Not apple pie America, real America. The America that doesn't fit the stereotypes. The 'everyone else' America. And that's good, not just for America, but the world. Because if America can elect Obama, that's the most positive message the world can hear. It can give ALL of us faith in ourselves. We're not that bad. We CAN overthrow prejudice, tribalism, ignorance, if America can stick two fingers up to 'God Bless America', than we can all do the same in our own ways.
Obama is about the here and now, he's about saying 'Sod the past, it's about where we are today. It's about you and me, as people, living in the world we do. What are we going to do about it?'
An Obama presidency could create a new America, just as FDR did. One where TV debates about God pass into history, where America truly becomes the democracy it pretends to be not a mixture between a plutocracy and a theocracy. Where it truly embraces the values it espouses and becomes a culture based on the values written in its constitution, not those that it seems to think are its values.
Because actually, America has a damn good constitution- it's just that it's spent it's entire history trying to live up to it.
But yes, he could be a Kennedy. Kennedy, I believe has one man he needs to thank. Lee Harvey Oswald. Had Kennedy served two terms, I have no doubt history would look upon him as a failed President. A man all style and no substance. Contrary to the Oliver Stone starry eyed biopic, the evidence suggests that he would have been far more keen to send troops into Vietnam than Johnson was and far less pro-active with regards to civil rights. Johnson believed wholeheartedly in civil rights, to Kennedy it was just a votewinner. I often think America doesn't realise how lucky it was it got three years of Kennedy and five years of Johnson, rather than a full eight years of Kennedy.
Kennedy is remembered for his soundbytes and his death. He is lucky he isn't remembered as being all talk and no action.
Or worse. He could be remembered as Nixon is.
And that could be the way Obama goes. A lot of fancy soundbytes, but nothing really happens.
It's true.
But I don't think America has anything to lose.
And I think the rest of the world is asking those who act as trustees for the biggest arsenal of nukes in the world; Take that chance. We're all asking you.
Take that chance.
The world will be a better place with Barack Obama being the most powerful man in it, than if Sarah Palin is the most powerful woman in it.
Interesting post by Princess Pointful on expectations we have of people we've never met.
I actually do have a kind of experience of something in that vein, which may be worth describing. An unusual sensation, perhaps, but one which will, I guess increasingly be the norm of human existence- especially as a medium such as this takes off.
I first met the Baker at uni. And as the first year progressed and he, myself and another lad used to spend hours listening to The Prodigy, playing Worms and Tekken Two and passing joints to eachother, from time to time he'd say 'You'll have to come down to Bournemouth in the summer holidays. Meet my crazy mates from school.'
Because from time to time they'd turn up in conversation. I'm going to call them Gideon and Miles.
I didn't go to Bournemouth that summer- though we did go down from uni in the autumn and I met the Baker's grandad who had brought him up. And since Gideon was at uni in Portsmouth, it was easy for him to come over. So I met Gideon.
But not Miles.
Several times during our time at uni I went to stay with the Baker in Bournemouth during the holidays and sometimes Gideon was around. But never Miles.
But the Baker always used to say 'You'd like Miles better than Gideon. I would say you two would get on really well. Of all my mates, Miles is the one right up your street. You two would just click.'
And he'd tell me stories of times they'd spent together and things they'd done. Things Miles had said. You start to feel you get a picture of Miles.
And the years rolled by.
At different times, we've been in different places and it just never happened that I ever met Miles. He often turned up in conversation, but he remained that, someone who turned up in conversation.
But of course, there were times when the Baker was down in London he'd met up with Miles. Miles never dropped out of his life. And although it wasn't something I'd ever thought about till we actually met, he would have got the whole 'You'll have to meet Crushed. You'd get on with Crushed. My best mate from uni.'
I know the Baker's brother well. I see him quite often, more often than my own brother in fact. I see David's Mum and Stepdad regularly, I almost feel an honorary part of their family sometimes.
But the Baker frequently says there are three people he sees as more brothers to him than his brother. Myself, the Chimney Sweep- and Miles.
So it was always wierd hearing him say this, but never having met Miles. It was like knowing your Dad had a whole other family of children somewhere that you'd never met.
Anyway. February 2007. The Baker turned thirty.
Big party in Manchester. And as he said, EVERYONE was coming.
And finally 'Miles is coming. You'll get to meet Miles at last.'
Crushed: And you reckon I'll get on with him, yes? Baker: Yes, he's way better than Gideon. You'll get on, you'll like him.
And I guess there feels a bit of pressure. It's kind of expected. You've never met the guy, but it's so much a part of what the Baker believes that two important people to him will like eachother.
Anyway.
People are coming in all the time. I rarely take stock of new arrivals at parties, I know they'll be brought over to be introduced, so I tend to just get busy socialising.
Baker: Crushed! Crushed! Miles, Crushed, Crushed, this is Miles.
It was one of those moments where you reach out one hand to grab theirs, whilst the other reaches round to give them a hug. Instinctively.
And I just looked at him. And him at me. He looked nothing like I imagined. Nothing at all. But he certainly didn't seem a stranger.
Crushed: I have heard SO much about you, mate! Miles: Same here, same here. The Baker's always going on about you. I've heard some stories, that's for sure. Crushed: All good, I hope? Miles: All good, mate, all good. Crushed: It's weird, I know we've not met, but I feel like I KNOW you, you've been part of the Baker's life for as long as I've known him and I can't remember when I didn't, if that makes sense. Miles: Yes, it does. I guess I can't remember the days when I wasn't hearing about how I must meet you one day.
And we got to talking in depth about how odd it was, knowing OF eachother, knowing so much about eachother for so long, yet not actually knowing eachother.
The Baker always says it was one of those nights I was on 'top form'.
I guess my bizarre sense of humour isn't something that translates at all to blogging. Quite often, you have to be there.
Anyway, at about 4AM I came to a conclusion. A conclusion based on the definite physical ressemblence of Miles to a well known celebrity... Even down to the jacket he had on.
'You know, I've realised. Miles doesn't exist. The truth is, The Baker had an imaginary friend at school and he still believed in him at uni. Only once he'd grown out of it, he couldn't really admit that to the rest of us. This has posed a problem over the years.' The Baker is looking kind of resigned now to the fact something surreal is on it's way. Everyone else is bemused. Especially Miles.
Crushed: I guess he really couldn't come up with an excuse why Miles wasn't going to be here. I guess he was panicking, realising he was just going to have to come out with it. That Miles really only ever was, a figment of his imagination. As luck would have it though, only today, as he was coming up the stairs, he bumped into Michael J Fox. Turns out that Back to the Future, Part Four is set here in Manchester. A problem develops with the Delorien and Marty McFly has to get wrecked in a flat in Manchester. Anyway, this turned out to be the solution to the problem. The Baker went 'Look, Michael, I've got this crisis. Can you pretend to be my friend for a night? You'll get free alcohol and other stuff all night. And get to meet some birds. How's about it, Michael?' And here we are now, Michael J Fox playing the role of Miles, the Baker's imaginary friend...'
As I say, these things are much funnier at 4AM in a party setting.
At the end of the party as Miles was leaving he shook hands.
Miles: Great to finally meet you, Crushed. Crushed: Was I everything you expected? Miles: (pause to consider) Better! Better!
It was the way he said it.
Four weeks later, I went to the christening of Miles' first child, along with the Baker.
And it didn't feel strange.
No, we'd only physically met the first time four weeks previously.
But we knew eachother, kind of. And now that simple crossing of that threshold, of adding knowing in the flesh to just knowing of, meant we were more than just casual acquaintances.
As the Baker and myself left the christening to make the long journey home Miles said to me 'Glad you could make it. It means a lot to me, it does.'
Human connections. They're what life is all about.
Each one is important in it's own way.
We touch people in everything we do, and I don't think we always know how much we do. Or keep alive those connections as much as we should. But they matter.
And I suppose in some ways, it can be. Archaeology is an exact science.
But the past itself, the way we generally look at it, is through the resonance of human experience.
I just got back from visiting my grandmother in the home. I find it relatively easy to converse with my grandmother. She's an open minded person in a way, perhaps, my own parents aren't. And I think that's mainly because she realises something that they haven't realised.
The gulf of history. The gulf of time and experience. She knows that the life I grew up with, the life that has been my everyday experience is one she does not share. She doesn't expect there to be shared values.
Modern life means that it is easier for myself and a Malaysian to see things from a similar angle than it is for our parents to find common ground with us. It's not culture that provides the real difference any more, it's time. The generation gap. Our parents have not realised how great the gulf is that separates us from them, greater even than that which separates them from their own parents. Our grandparents have, and they try to understand.
The pace of change. It ties you almost to your decade of birth.
My grandmother's teenage world was incomprehensible to us. No Nirvana, no furtive teenage sex, no cider, no pot.
My grandmother was born in 1922, nine days before the Dail ratified the Anglo-Irish treaty. She grew up in a world where children really did walk the streets of Athlone barefoot. Where the average household kept guns, where rival paramilitary groups paraded with them in the street, where she was the eldest of seven children, and only five made it to adulthood and they weren't even a poor family.
Where girls who even kissed the boys were liable to be carted off to the Magdalen homes to be reformed.
Even the radio only came in 1936. De Valera's waspish tones on a handful of receivers, but even Dublin was a far off place, reached in a crock of rusty old iron, puffing its way past fields where farmers and their horsedrawn ploughs lived a life barely improved upon that of the survivors of the famine the island could never forget.
A world dominated by the power of the church and the shadow of the gun.
My grandmother remembers 1936. When the boys in their shiny shirts paraded through Athlone, rifles on their shoulders, off to fight for freedom and Holy Catholic Ireland. And they were cheered. They were cheered. Athlone was a Blueshirt town.
She could not know then, no one could, that they day would come when Athlone kept quiet about the contribution it had made to the Spanish civil war.
Because history would frown on the choice it had made.
That is her Ireland. She lived Irish history. Angela's Ashes, that was her Ireland.
And her youth, her days of courting? The Blitz, wounded airmen, the relative freedom of even wartime blackout England as against the rigid censorship of the homeland. Dancing, alcohol, parties, meeting soldiers at dances- all so very innocent, we say.
But that's why I like my Gran. She's no fool. She doesn't think it was all that innocent, not really. She understands that we're the same people now that we were then. She understands, in a way our parents don't yet, that growing up in a different history, is like growing up in a different culture. She doesn't understand the world of today, she's a foreigner in it, but that doesn't mean she despises it. And that's admirable, I think.
Because my Gran doesn't even really remember Elvis. Certainly hasn't a clue who the Beatles were. She'd stopped keeping up with the times by then.
Fifties Britain, there weren't the mod cons. Washing clothes, meant washing clothes, not sticking them in machines. No supermarket, so doing a weeks shopping was a mission in its own right. Life was less convenient. You had your fun, then got married in your late twenties and settled down to grey drudgery.
The politicians she remembers are Anthony Eden and Nye Bevan.
And those to me are historical characters.
But it makes me think.
Because when I talk to someone even seven years younger than me, there is still a slight generation gap.
When I watched Bond films as a child, there WAS an 'evil empire'. Say Romania to me, I still think of secret police and people disappearing at 3AM. Because when I first asked what the Iron curtain was, I was told about all these funny sounding places where life was lived in a constant state of fear.
Margaret Thatcher to me isn't a figure of history, until I was twelve she was the only PM I knew. When I was a child the royal family was still the model family.
None of these things are so for a twenty three year old. Hungary is just the country next to Austria. They don't look at the map and see where the Iron curtain used to be, as I do. To them, divorce and scandal are normal where the royal family is concerned.
And music. To me there is still a certain distinguishing line between the music that used to play in your head as a child, the music that existed in the todays of your past and the music which was always past to you. John Lennon is someone I discovered, but I can remember actually seeing Toyah on Top of the Pops.
And the other things you forget. You look back at eighties TV and think how DIFFERENT it all was. You forget that you were alive then, this is history you lived in.
And yet it seems as far off to someone just that little bit younger, as far off as those things you firmly consign to history, because you don't remember them. Like the Vietnam war.
But I remember how hard it was as a child to dial a phone number- I had to be taught how to use that complex, irritating device that was the rotary phone. Can someone of twenty three really understand that at age seven, it took me about five minutes to dial my mother?
That little items we take for granted, weren't the norm.
We had a fridge, but no freezer. No dish washer.
And it amuses me to look back at all those things my Dad swore blind we'd never get. Things that were a waste of time- things that turned people into the living dead. The video recorder, the home computer. TV was bad enough, actually just going and getting films without waiting for them to come on, that was a slippery slope. And computer games, really, he had no time for them.
I wonder if he remembers, as he plays Desert Storm on his wall sized plasma screen TV, standing next to the shelves and shelves of DVDs.
I doubt he does.
Someone seven years younger than me cannot remember that it's not so very long ago you could turn on the TV at 3AM and just get a blank screen on two out of the only four channels available. And the other two just had education programmes for schools.
That even when I was at uni, hardly anyone had a mobile phone.
Social shifts too. I was a teenager when they were pushing through the change in legislation to lower the age of homosexual consent from 21 to 18. And as a teenager, I thought the idea disgusting. I never thought that one day not only would there be an equal age of consent, but how much homosexuality would have moved into the mainstream- and that I myself would approve.
I went to school in a class where it was still whispered 'Her parents are divorced' never mind if they weren't even married. Admittedly, I went to a Catholic school so it perhaps wasn't representative, but I imagine that today, even in a Catholic primary school, these things don't matter.
The sum of your experience does make a huge difference. I don't actually believe time speeds up as you get older- it's just that each year itself becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of your total memory. It creates an illusion. In time your total experience grows so individual parts get less and less. Time was when President of America could only really meant Ronald Reagan. Now I've lived through three others, and a fourth is about to join my memory.
The day to day experience of a schoolchild is becoming something further and further from my comprehension; soon, school-life will be something culturally inaccessible to me. It probably already is. How can I understand a school life where kids have mobile phones and I pods?
I bounced around Class One singing 'Cry just a little bit' by Shaking Stevens. I played with Transformers. I played Granny's Garden on the school's ONLY BBC Micro.
I watched the fall of the Berlin wall on TV, but still couldn't grasp the idea of a united Germany. United Germanys were things we went to war against. The two Germanies were, and always had been different countries- to me.
I was a voter myself before I ever saw a Labour government voted in.
I can remember the early days of Dance Music and the E-revolution.
I bought Music for a Jilted Generation the day it came out.
Yet I don't remember John Lennon's death, or the Falklands war.
It's history. It's the experiences you lived through, the shared societal experiences that shaped your values.
Our parents don't quite get us, because they don't see we were born when the social changes they lived through; the sixties, the ending of segregation in America, the sexual revolution, it was already history when we came to be.
And they look in horror at our equivalents. And we'll misunderstand our children too.
Because though our generation don't think gay people should be discriminated against, we remember that they were. Our children won't. They'll know it once happened, once. But they won't remember it.
And they will challenge barriers in our tolerance, will accept changes which will shock us.
The internet will be something that always existed. The Soviet Union as historical as Hitler, perhaps the War on Terror looked back on by them as our generation see Vietnam.
It is the generation gap now, the gap in memory and experience.
When race, gender and sexuality have gone as divisive barriers between us, the pace of social change now erects a new one.
The barriers of comprehension. The new identifier; What do you remember? What experiences shaped you?
Because it no longer matters your creed, or your colour, or your gender, the things that unite us far exceed what divides us.
But our memories, that's what now divides us.
Because all those other things, we now discover, matter far less when we thought. But when you were born, that does.
Last week you voted on the best solution to violence in our culture.
Disarm Civilians but Arm the State Further? 13% 2 Give all Citizens the Right to Bear Arms? 27% 4 Disarm the Globe? 60% 9
15 votes total.
Fairly conclusive. The right result, I feel :)
This week's issue is actually prompted by a little insight into what some males out there- the chivalrous sort- think should be our attitude to consent. When I say an insight, I'm going to point that the post in question was, rightly in my view, disavowed by it's author and removed from the public gaze. I can quite see that as soon as he read it, he must have seen just how wrong the view espoused is.
He clearly would not wish to be associated with these thoughts, and I shall not associate him with them either. But his thoughts remain in Google Reader, and exist to remind us just how long a way we still have to go in tackling the minefield of consent and co-ercion.
These speculations concern Mike Tyson's conviction for rape.
Glad to see six people [at the time of writing] agreed he did not technically rape her. It's a principle most women must understand [and those males who also can't see it] that it was a known known. Her history showed her to be not naive. The booze, the come-ons, the whole obnoxious thing was a known known all the way.
She agreed to go up there. That constitutes consent with a known beast like that. If it is not consent, then no male is safe any more. Any female he goes with can, at any time, cry rape and that makes the female gender too hot to go anywhere near, particularly in this litigious society where courts and other authorities are convicting on the most spurious grounds.
No one is denying the appalling things done to women and the need to circumvent them. No one is denying that women have many issues and need the societal laws to protect them. But no one, women least of all, needs this sort of injustice.
Ok.
Where do I start?
If I leave my windows open through my own incompetence and get burgled, does that make the burglar less guilty than if I had barricaded my flat like Fort Knox?
A women is not on trial when a man is on trial for raping her.
She is not being tried for being drunk, being foolish, or being provocative.
The jury is not being asked to decide if she is a virgin or a whore.
The jury is asked to decide on one thing. Had she actually given her consent for sexual intercourse to take place and did sexual intercourse take place in defiance of her wishes on the subject.
As in, did a male person physically insert a part of his anatomy into her in a manner causing her distress and was he aware that was the outcome?
Was this insertion an intimate or an invasive act?
The writer here seems to be implying that because Tyson comes across as a scumbag, people should know that and therefore they are responsible for not knowing he's scumbag and that THEY not HE are therefore responsible for the outcome.
GREAT!! What a GREAT basis for legislation. What a great legal precedent to be set.
Don't leave your car in your drive. If the streetkids spraypaint and vandalise it, no they committed no crime. YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE LEFT IT THERE!!!
Your husband was stabbed and murdered for his wallet. Sorry, we're not investigating it. If he would walk through Moss Side at that time of night, he was asking for it.
I suppose the real implication in this post is that the woman in question, knowing Tyson's proclivities, actually set out to get raped to milk it for publicity.
She 'knew what was coming'.
Even if that were so, he did it. He raped her. So the idea that 'men aren't safe' because of his conviction is drivel. If you don't want to be convicted of rape, a good start to not being convicted of rape is very simple; don't rape people.
But let's look deeper into this. Because underlying it is a major attitude shift taking place in the issue of consent and co-ercion, in regards to sexual issues.
Time was when rape was clear cut. Sex forced physically onto somebody. But it was OK for a man to gain sex by duplicity, deceit, blackmail, threats, claiming conjugal rights or using his greater age or life experience to obtain the same result.
And society is now coping with eradicating that attitude.
And yes, it's causing some problems. Not only are a lot of young men being convicted of rape whose fathers don't see why, because it was 'OK' when they were young, but there are sadly a lot of women out there who are using this societal attitude shift to make false accusations.
But actually, the older generation are wrong. In these circumstances, it is not the obligation of women (or men for that matter) to behave in a manner which reduces their chances of being raped to zero, nor is it their responsibility not to freely give consensually to people that which it would be a crime for someone to take against their will, just in case some court one day thinks they shagged too many people to any longer have the right to decide WHO to have sex with and WHEN.
The burden lies on any MALE (because the penetrating party is by definition male) to ensure that not only did he NOT hear NO, but that he quite definitely heard YES.
And not a 'yes' that was co-erced either. A yes freely given. And anything else must be totally eradicated. Because when I read things like this, actually, I see them as being pretty much in the same ball park as rape. And if we clamped down properly on a culture that thinks that date rape isn't really rape, we'd remove the culture where older men think it's OK to co-erce younger girls into sex. Though actually, if the law change I support came into play, what is described in the linked post WOULD actually be criminal.
You see, males CAN protect themselves very easily against false rape allegations. Make sure you get consent. Make sure it is an established fact. And if you take someone home from the pub that you've just met and you plan to have sex with her, then if you really don't go out of your way to establish consent, you deserve all you get.
I have in the past taken people home who I have just met and had sex with them. But I follow certain guidelines. I make sure their friends know where they're going. I make sure people I know have seen me leave with her. None of these points in themselves prove anything of course. But they're a good start.
And never back to hers- make sure its yours. Again, it proves nothing.
Because what you shouldn't forget is that it doesn't matter if when you cross through your front door, she is thinking of having sex with you. Thinking is the operative word. She probably hasn't made up her mind and that it is STILL hers to make up. Probably a lot of blokes convicted of date rape forgot that. They thought they had a 'done deal' then got pissed off when she decided, actually, no.
I think the point is about not closing a woman down or feeling she's pressured in any way. Make clear that if she doesn't feel like going home, sex isn't a condition for her staying. And don't be talking about going to bed the minute you get through the front door. If you can't get the girl a cup of coffee and play her some music- to give her time to know what she wants- again, you deserve it if you get into hot water later.
You're not an animal. If you want to be treated like a wild animal that can't control it's bodily urges, than a lethal injection solves the problem.
You moan when feminists say 'Men have two brains but only enough blood to work one at a time'. Prove them wrong.
Prove you are capable of possessing a thinking man's penis and understand in your mind that insertion of part of your anatomy actually inside someone else is potentially EITHER an intimate or an invasive act.
If you think there's a chance that it MIGHT be invasive and you ignore that possibility, then yes, it's rape.
Frankly, I really don't care who has sex with who. I really don't. As long as they have full consent of the other party, that the other party was old enough and in a position to give it, and that consent was not co-erced or achieved by other foul means- such as exploitation of younger girls by older men.
If I had my way, the law would be altered as follows. Any sexual acts would be permitted between consenting adults provided they satisfied the following criteria.
Both parties were over the age of fourteen.
If one party was under eighteen, then the other party should be no more than two years senior to them.
Demonstrable proof of consent (rather than the absence of evidence of refusal) should be able to inferred.
Evidence of co-ercion or pressure should be treated as invalidating any consent.
Evidence of incapacity to give consent should invalidate consent.
That's just my view.
Nevertheless, my view is quite simple. I am aware that many people say that the low conviction rate for rape is because so high a proportion of the complaints turn out to be bogus. I'm not disagreeing that that may play a part. I also know that a great many rapes never end up in court, because the victim doesn't feel they have the evidence to support their case.
Now I know at least two women who lost their virginity in a date rape scenario. And that's a terrible way for someone to be introduced to the world of love making.
And it's this, this 'grey area' that needs to stop being grey and join the rest of the black. The goal posts DO need moving.
Men need to stop being deaf to the word 'no' and wait till they hear the word 'yes'.
We are not coming down hard enough on rape, or its apologists.
But it's not up to me, it's up to you.
The poll is in the sidebar.
Have your say!
Update: A reader has provided me with a link to an excellent article on the subject which I think is worth sharing. It expresses and debates the matter intelligently from the point of view of a modern, sexually active woman. I would say her conclusions are exactly the right ones and I urge you to read it.
I've always been quite into medieval epic and romance. I specialised in it at degree level. In fact, you could go further. Myth and legend generally, whether ancient or modern. I have no time for novels about life in the here and now. Give me a knight errant riding through dark forests to defeat a malicious sorcerer any day. Give me Holy Grails, Gorgon's heads and journeys to Utgard.
Give me Sauron and his rings of power. Give me Conan the Barbarian and the intrigues of the Hyborian nobility.
Nick Hornsby? I live in the twentieth first century as a disillusioned single male. I don't need to read about it. I already know what it's like.
Sometimes, of course these romances can lead us to asking some valid questions. Ancient Norse kings, for example seem to have spent a lot of time invading people, sacking countries, destroying giants and the like. Indeed, we are left wondering how these countries were actually governed during the two thousand odd years of legendary Norse history since their monarchs were too busy engaged in random acts of slaughter.
The same is true of Arthurian and Carolingian romance. Whilst Arthur and Charlemagne never leave their castles, they are surrounded by a host of other kings and princes who never seem to go home. And the Grail King seems to reign over a castle and that's about it. Who pays for all the luxuries that he seems to enjoy?
And of course, no one ever seems to know the way anywhere. They just set off and hope they'll bump into where they are going.
'Fancy going to the Castle of the Perilous Falcon, Gawain?' 'Yes, where is it?' 'Not sure. Thought we'd wonder aimlessly till we found it.' 'We could ask Uwain, he went there.' 'Yes, but it'll be in a different place now.'
Anyway, one of the things that always struck me as over the top was how those in love behave. Especially in Italianate Romance. Everyone in love feels the need to carve the name of their beloved in as many trees as they possibly can. And if their love is unrequited they literally go insane. These romances are full of people actually going mad because of the strength of their love. Orlando Furioso is about just that. Orlando finds that the woman of his dreams has been skipping round the Ardennes inscribing 'Medoro and Angelica' in every tree in the forest and turns into a berserker.
It ain't like that, we cynical twenty first century types say.
Oh what short memories we have. YES IT IS. But somehow, we condition ourselves so young to give up on that. To barricade it away.
Go back. Back to the beginning. Be fifteen again.
When I was about fifteen I had a major crush. Her name was Emma. Her second name doesn't matter. I must have carved 'I love Emma ----' into about fifty desks. And it must have appeared on all my exercise books. Along with other stuff I'm quite embarrassed about in retrospect. It was painful. She knew, everyone knew, and I couldn't even look her in the eye. She'd turn every now and then and catch me looking at her, then flick her hair and avert her gaze in ostentatious disgust. And none of this dampened my ardour. I took the most ridiculously out of the way route home from school involving a mile detour, pretty much, just to be walking past her house as she came up the road. I actually had a lock of her hair which I kept hidden between my calculator and its case. It was a bittersweet, unrequited teenage crush. And for about two years I pined solidly for her. At least two nights a week I would be unable to sleep because my mind would be imagining when we were grown up and I had a successful career and she'd have changed her mind and we had a four bedroomed detached house and children.
And to her? I was just Damian, the tiny, sallow skinned, dark haired kid who never spoke much but looked sinister.
But you're not fifteen forever.
Between sixteen and eighteen, I kind of changed. Looking back at the photographs, it's hard to pinpoint. As if that last burst of adolescence just tweaked something. Gangly, became waifish. Taciturn became enigmatic. The dark, greasy locks became, luscious curls. I guess I changed too. I'd been a quiet teen because I wasn't a herd follower. Now I became a lot more confident in my- well- totally different outlook and became somewhat of an exhibitionist. I think I decided that I could never follow, so I made a bid for leading. I went, in two years, from having no confidence whatsoever to being very confident.
Ugly ducklings do become swans.
I think at first, I found it a little difficult to handle myself. I think for a long time I still saw myself as basically unattractive. I suppose the first thing that kills crushes, is actually losing your virginity. I don't know about anyone else, but I lost mine to a Polish waitress who I keep wanting to call Magda, but it wasn't, that was her friend and I'm damned if I can remember HER name.
Anyway, I've always said I've only been in love once, up to now, and that's true. But let's face it, it wasn't hard work.
I was nineteen when me and Joanna got together. I guess I should have noticed she liked me, but I didn't. I couldn't be bothered to remember her name. At the time she first introduced herself to me, I was a kind of on a mission. The mission was simple- to see if it was physically possible to drink two hundred units of alcohol in one week and still do my essay on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and hand it in by the deadline.
So when I woke up next to her on the Saturday morning, I actually still didn't know her name and neither of us knew if we'd had sex, but we did find material evidence to prove we had. It became love very quickly. We had our first row within the week and I went off back to my parents and my mate gave her my parents phone number and she rang and we talked for hours and I went back to uni and we...
...it was easy. It was euphoric. It was perfect. For several months I did nothing except lie in bed all day with Joanna and then go out with my mates in the evening. I'm a nineteen year old bloke. Does it get any better? Because we talked a lot in bed. In between the pretty much hourly bouts of love making. And because we spent all day shagging like rabbits, we didn't want to go out with eachother in the evenings. But we always came home to eachother. And oh, I know she probably got up to things I turned a blind eye to- I think I knew, I just liked to pretend otherwise, I couldn't have dealt with the truth, though I still knew it all the same.
Innocent? In some ways, yes. I mean, I wasn't her first lover. She claimed I was her seventeenth, but I suspect that was a reduced figure. I told her she was my tenth, and that was certainly doubled.
She wasn't intellectually smart. But she was actually very bright. Especially in a practical common sense way. And unbelievably caring. She looked after me. In the sense that mattered, we connected.
In retrospect, I don't know how true a love it was. It wasn't strong enough to withstand the pressures that brought it to an end. It was easy and I know that there were strong emotions on both sides from the discussions we had years later. It was love, certainly, but maybe it was an accidental connection, two people falling into eachother and connecting in some way, very strongly, very deeply, ALMOST perfect, but not quite.
1998. I went into it one person, and emerged another. I couldn't stop loving her, but I was determined to do so. I was determined to emerge someone who that could never happen to again. And I did. I changed myself. The person who went into 1998, was someone else. The person who emerged, essentially, was pretty much me as I was- until recently, perhaps.
Before 1998, I drunk excessively and smoked a lot of pot. But pills were very occasional. That changed that year. I tried the lot. I went to Holland and got absolutely wasted. I went right the way over the line till I couldn't remember where the line was. There are a lot of things I started in that twelve month period I carried on with, such as being a cynical manipulative bastard as regards women, using Coke and Pills like others drink beer, but equally there's much that only ever happened in 1998, lines I crossed and came back from. Smoking Brown, Crack Cocaine, prostitutes.
I got my head together in the third year enough to get my degree. But I graduated a bitter, disillusioned man. And yes, I guess you could say, immune to love. Becuse I have been. For ten long years. I've been a total bastard. Because whilst 1998 had completely destroyed my own capacity to feel that feeling that makes you want to carve someone's name into a desk, I had become damn good at being able to make others feel that way.
Without really trying. It became second nature. I wasn't really alive to it.
You're not going to believe me when I say I didn't know what I was doing. No one does. But I really thought it was the same for everybody. That that intensity of feeling was something that you get when you're a kid, but you grow out of it. After that, it's all bargains. That adult love is a more quiet, restrained set of agreements.
Myself and the Chimney Sweep were discussing recently what made people good and I put forward the opinion that I was basically a good person and if there was a pearly gates, they couldn't really refuse me entry. CS then pointed out that I had a few broken hearts to blot my copybook. I defended myself by saying I could hardly be held responsible for that. But he thinks I am. And maybe, in terms of not trying to understand, I am. But I don't think I'm alone.
Because we fortify ourselves so much against really getting hurt. And I know now what I did. I let people love me on one condition. That I could deep down, be certain of one thing. That they WEREN'T people that would ever make me want to carve their name on a desk. They were approved, given permission to get close to me, because I knew they could never get to me that way. Oh, you kid yourself you can 'grow to love them', and you can. Just not in a desk carving way.
You can love them when it's good. You can love the good feeling they're giving you. Because it doesn't really matter who it is when you're lying on the sofa in eachothers arms and you can feel her breath on your cheek and you can feel her squeezing you, because she just want to be as close to you as she can. Because walking hand in hand with anyone who has soft hands as you point up at the battlements of Warwick Castle and say 'It's impressive now, imagine what it was like in 1400?', yes, it's nice, it's good.
But all it actually proves is that most of the time we deny eachother even that. That when we have it with someone we attach to much to it. Because you can have that with pretty much any female between twenty and forty five. The only point is, she's open to it with you. It's not special, she could be anyone.
And yes, if you're having as much sex as you need along with it, it's good. Most of the time. So you argue, because deep down you don't really understand eachother, but as long as the hand in hand moments outnumber the kicking over of bin moments, it's all good. You don't expect anything more out of life. This is it. Carving her name on desks was something you did as a teenager. Adults carry shopping baskets round Wilkinsons bored out of their tiny minds thinking of an excuse to go to the pub.
But it's in those arguments. I lived with Claire a long time and looking back on those arguments, they show why it could never be desk carving love.
Because what we feel when we carve those desks is a WISH to connect to someone like that. What happens is we learn eventually, that when we get that connection, we'll feel like that again. Only we don't believe it. We settle.
Me and Claire argued once because she painted the house during her week off work. I came home to find it yellow. And I said nothing. I just let her go on about it until she said 'You don't really like it, do you?' I said 'It's done now.' And then she pushed further, that I clearly didn't like it, so I agreed, I didn't like the colour, I didn't particularly want to live in 'The yellow fucking submarine.' And then she goes on about how much time she spent on it at which point I erupted 'Time to go to fucking Wilkinsons and buy the fucking paint but not time to fucking ring me and ask how I feel about living in a yellow fucking house.'
We argued for hours.
Thing is, it's not about paint. It's about the lack of connection. The person she needed to be connected to, would have come home and loved it. She'd have chosen a colour she instinctively knew they both liked, she wouldn't have needed to ask him. She did what she did, because she WANTED that connection to be what she had. It wasn't.
Likewise, it wasn't the connection I wanted. I was angry because the person I need to be connected to, would never make a unilateral decision. They would never have painted the house any colour at all, without us both choosing the colour together. And she'd have known, instinctively, that yellow would be a no-no. Because her aesthetic tastes and mine would be part of that connection.
You can't 'work through' these things. Because really, this is what it's all about. The rest of it, the holding eachother close, the happy days when it's all good, you can have that with anyone. Really, you can.
It doesn't matter whether they're your physical ideal. It doesn't matter how good the good times are, what the sex is like, it's irrelevant.
When you don't want to talk, can they see why? Can they read between the lines with what you didn't say?
When you want them to hold you close but you don't want to talk about it, will they hold you close AND STILL KNOW?
But this is it, the catch 22. Because actually, this is what you're trying to avoid. Someone who has that connection to you. You want it, but you don't want to want it. It's too much of a bloody risk.
I guess the risk assessment I carried out was this. Find someone you do truly connect to and want to carve their name in desks, it will go pear shaped eventually and you'll end up killing yourself somehow, you'll just end up throwing your life away in an orgy of self-destruction.
I didn't want to live through another 1998.
So it's better to settle for someone you'll never connect to and just argue every few weeks over something trivial, like paint.
Find someone who will love you, and be sure you can keep part of yourself back. That was the plan.
Not a conscious plan, perhaps. But the plan.
And now, here I am at thirty. I've written about her before.
Hopeless? Maybe.
I suppose she came into my life almost a year ago now. And she gave me that warm fuzzy feeling straight away. The desk carving feeling. It took me a while to admit that, even to myself. We've become close, in an unusual kind of way. It really is bizarre. She knows the score now, she has done about two months. I feel a way about her I didn't think it possible for anyone to feel. Guess that's why I write about her so much. My way of carving her name into desks.
I guess if you'd described her to me two years ago, in many of her superficial characteristics, I wouldn't seen her as sounding like someone I'd go for. As I've got older, I've liked to kid myself my physical ideal plays a much larger part than perhaps it does. It's been there as an excuse to myself 'Not my physical type.' I've used it as an excuse. I'm only looking for girls who are black, under 5ft7, slim waist, etc, etc.
But now, as far as I'm concerned, she's the most beautiful woman in the world. And if anyone argued with me on that, I'd get annoyed.
So much doesn't really matter. And I guess that explains the oddity of the situation.
I wouldn't like to say she spurns my advances, but she certainly makes it clear she sees me as a friend and would not see me in any other light. And in a way, that's good. We talk pretty much every day, often for hours. Occasionally certain things rear their head but more often not. And even when they do, it never gets nasty. She describes it as bickering, and I guess it is that. And I guess that's part of it. No matter what the issue is, the worst that comes of it is bickering. No hot tempers, no nastiness and I think, even when we 'bicker', I never quite lose that warm fuzzy feeling.
Because these 'bickering' interludes, when they show up never feel symptomatic of a huge gulf, more symptomatic of trying to find common ground where common ground is actually possible, symptomatic of the fact that we both know we DO understand eachother, just frustration that at this PARTICULAR point in time we seem to be in conflict.
Very often I know what she's going to say before she says it. I just know. I can predict her nuances.
But it's more than that. Superficially, we would seem worlds apart. Different people.
Me, outgoing, vain, extroverted, exhibitionist, a crowd lover. Her, shy, self-effacing, introverted, not a lover of crowds.
Where's the common ground, you say.
We have differing mechanisms to handle the world, but the points is those mechanisms protect similar people. Or so I cannot help but believe.
Because the point is in how we understand eachother. It's not so much I can predict what she can say and how she will react, because I now know her so well. And vice versa. Most people find me totally impossible to predict. She can.
For example, when I say the three words to her, or other such empassioned things, I can predict her replies. They will usually be 'I know' or 'Ok'
And I know when they're coming. And it's not just because I know her that well, it's more. Just as I know when she'll change the subject.
Because in her situation, I'd say 'I know' or 'Ok'. And I'd change the subject EXACTLY when she does. I'm not predicting her response. My brain has got used to the fact that it is in interaction with someone whose processes work so similarly, it just needs to look at the answer it would give if it were feeling the way it guesses she must be feeling. It thinks 'Right now I would say 'I know'.'
And it's this, this frequency with which I can second guess her, and her me likewise, that really puts me in the position I'm in.
I'm pretty sure that what I don't show her, she sees. And I'm pretty sure that what she doesn't show me, I see. If I walked out of here after posting into the pub and decided to go home with one of the barmaids, she'd KNOW. She just would. I'm entitled to of course, there's nothing at all between us, we are ultimately, no more than friends. But she'd know. She would be able to pick it up. Because she has the total ability to interpret every one of my responses and match them so closely to her own in a similar situation, she'd be able to say tomorrow 'Did you get laid last night?'
She can see into the dark side of my mind as well as the good. There was a case only the other night where I was describing my frustration about the whole situation. I described how I had gone into the pub and seen a girl there who I know is quite insecure. On one occasion when she was very drunk she accosted me and accused me of looking down on her and seeing her as rubbish. Which I don't, I just don't pay her much attention. But this night, Monday night I was tempted, as I told Haydee.
Tempted to seduce her.
And I was telling Haydee, telling her the awful thought process running through my mind. 'It wasn't lust. It wasn't the need for intimacy. It was rage. Frustration. I wanted to make her feel happy for an instant, then snatch it away, chew her up and spit her out'. And Haydee said, almost straight away 'I know, ---'.
She knew. She knew before I got to the punchline.
This is a side of me I know she doesn't like. It isn't a side she has herself. But she can see WHY it exists in me. She can follow the working. Because she can see the deeper workings, which manifest themselves in her in different ways, but having those same workings deeper down, she can follow how it is they manifest themselves in me.
Occasionally I bring up this world called IF. IF is the world where the miracle happens. Because to me, this connection is what it's all about. Most people don't have it. I don't think.
Because I think on this sort of connection that lasting happiness is to be found. I guess she sees that any woman getting involved me in that way is taking a huge risk. I don't think she realises that SHE wouldn't be. In a sense she- and only she- would have an element of control over me. Because she would always understand.
So the standard evasion, omission and diversion tactics I usually employ would not only have no effect, but I wouldn't actually feel the need to use them anyway. You only need to use those tactics when you feel you have to hide the truth. I can't see there ever being any truth I'd want to hide from her.
She is probably the only woman I'd ever allow to have a say in how I spent my money or used my time. And the thing is, I don't see these things as ever being things we'd ever be confrontational about.
You see, in my head I really do have a vision of the sort of life I believe we'd lead together. And that vision looks totally unbelievably amazing. I do want to carve her name in treetrunks. And I know that if I was walking round Warwick Castle with her, it actually would be with a deeper connection, we'd be seeing at all in a similar vein, the REALITY of history. It wouldn't just be her LISTENING, we'd both be comprehending.
And the other side? Yes, I imagine that as being way beyond comprehension. The sort of love making makes stars jump out of the firmament.
And yet she makes clear none of this will ever be.
Sometimes I don't really know what to do. Sometimes I feel she holds all the cards. Because she gets my friendship, she always has that. No matter what she does, I'd never lose her. I feel I don't get enough of her as it is, I'd never want less. So she has me living in hope, like a man on death row, feeling a warm jolt of electricity every time I get a smile from her.
She doesn't have to make a choice, not really. She will always have me here as I am now. She can have whatever connection it is she feels she has with me, knowing she'll never lose it, yet knowing it never has to be dangerous.
She holds all the cards and she keeps them close to her chest. Because, because, there all those other men out there chasing her, all those other men that are options to her. And she makes it clear I should alway just consider myself a friend.
I can't really cut my losses and run. Because I believe that the potential is worth it. But I also believe something else. Yes, she can read me. Yes, she's mature for age. But she's still just that little bit younger than me and yes, she's been hurt and scarred and battered and bruised.
And I believe she wants someone to love her, who she doesn't have to connect to. Not really. I believe that she would rather not connect and argue about paint and play it safe.
I don't believe that she cannot see the potential of such a connection. Just that she would fight tooth and nail to prevent it. Because she would never let it happen.
I believe its a risk she just will not take.
Because when I was her age, even had it been her who came along, I wouldn't have done either. I had not yet seen just how foolish a game it is long term playing what you think is the safe card.
By the same token, I don't entirely trust this hypothesis of mine. After all, it could just be what I want to believe. Totally in my head. It really could just be that she sees me as she might do a kind of dysfunctional brother. I don't know.
The point is, even if my hypothesis is correct, it doesn't help matters. Because were it to be, we'd be looking at several years down the line before she'd open up to such sentiments- if they exist.
And by that time? No, my sentiments towards her wouldn't have changed.
But I've put my case to her, the case rests. It rests until she decides to make a decision. I say I'll wait, and in a sense I'll mean it.
But time, time will alter that. Not the sentiments, but my perspective. The day will come when it wouldn't matter if she did decide she wanted it- I wouldn't believe her.
That's the tragedy. How long will it take before I've hardened myself totally against really hoping. When will the day come that my belief in that dream has just become a vision I keep in my head, inspiring me to live day to day, but being seen every day as less and less realistic?
Because the day will come, when I just couldn't. When I would feel that I made my case too long ago, that if it took her this long to think about it, it cannot be sincere, cannot be heartfelt and cannot be real. Just settling on her part.
I don't know when that day will come. Not anytime soon, perhaps. But one day it will. One day a day will come when I've returned to settle myself somewhere, happy to argue about paint and traipse round Wilkinsons with a shopping basket, living with a stranger in comfortable incomprehension.
And it will seem too comfortable to give up for something I believe not to be real, no matter how much I'd want it to be.
There really isn't anything I can do about it, really.
All I can do as continue as I am. The way things are, are the way she wants them. And as things stand, it's the best I can hope for.
All I can do really, is wait and see what happens.
I don't ever want to lose her. And I have her as a friend. A friend whose name I want to carve into desks. But perhaps the greatest thing in my life, as it stands.
So yes, I'm happy getting that little thrill of electricity when I get a smile from her.
It's worth the sum total of everything all the other women in the world combined could give me.
We've had a break from the Future- not just in our time (two weeks away), but in future time. Because now we move ahead thirty years.
The hopes and dreams of Martians described by Future Fusion have materialised.
The Unites States of Earth may still be the superpower of the planets and The Republic of Mars and the Republic of Venus its junior partners, but the sovereign independence of each of these worlds has come to pass.
This post now relates events happening after that, as the species now prepares to look beyond, to it's future as a whole. In a time when people no longer see Earth as being the sole home of man, merely it's cradle. When people see the star Sol as being home to the human race.
It is Sol, the star system, that man now sees as his domain, not just one of it's rocks.
Today will certainly rank in history as a day when humanity entered a new era. For at noon today, in the Schiaparelli Building, Lowell, was signed the articles of federation of the United Planets Organisation.
Today also was approved the founding deliberations of it's first, three week session.
It has been a day a long time coming, a day so many have looked forward to for so long. It is almost three hundred years since delegates assembled on Earth in New York City to approve the United Nations. Over time that organisation grew to bring the disparate peoples of Earth together, till now it has united that world into the United States of Earth and it's nine member states. Today, the three sovereign planets of Sol take a similar step, setting up an interplanetary organisation capable of uniting the members of the human species of their different worlds together to agree on common aims, strategically plan how to best use the resources at their disposal and plan ahead on the best way forward for the species.
It is probable that the high debates taking place in Lowell have largely been ignored by the public at large. After all, the issues discussed have little relevance, perhaps, to their day to day lives. The decision to choose Lowell as the seat of the organisation was based on several points. A planetary capital, such as New York, Viking, or Parvati would always lead to the suspicion such an organisation was essentially the tool of the government of the planet in question. A long term aim of the organisation that has been approved at this session is where to find a permanent home, for even Lowell, situated as it is on Martian soil, is still not true neutral ground. But for now, Lowell has all the right attributes to symbolise the common aims of humanity.
For Mars occupies a mid point in two ways. First, of the three Worlds, it represents the middle ground. It represents the norm of the future, and neither Earth nor Venus do that. Because every new home the human race finds can only really look to Mars as it's model. Every new home the human race takes on can be aspire to be Mars. Only Earth can claim to be the cradle, with it's thousands of years of human history. These will always be unique characteristics of Earth, and they mean one day living on a planet which can claim even half a millennium of human history, is a minority viewpoint. It is a minority viewpoint amongst the three planets now, and as the human race truly does expand to fill this star system, it will be even more the minority view. But Venus isn't yet there. Venus is still a developing world. Only Mars today, represents what might be considered to represent a standard human culture- away from the world that gave it birth, yet developed and functioning as a successful human culture.
And Mars is a midpoint in another way. Because today, the real frontier of humanity is Jupiter, the satellites of which are home now, not just to the technicians responsible for controlling the extraction of energy from what is now the powerhouse of the human race, but to a slow trickle of true colonists.
The outer planets, the Gas Giants, which only fifty years ago were seen merely as almost unlimited sources of energy which can and will serve human needs millenia into the future, are now proving that they too, are incipient homes where human beings will live and create societies.
The first session of the United Planets Organisation, showed the issues at hand and it's worth looking at them. The delegates present, ultimately chosen by the people of themselves, represent the two thousand greatest minds alive today. Scientists, philosophers and thinkers of the highest order.
The first points to be established were to realise that the human race no longer has the same dynamics of any species that ever existed before. It was pointed out at on the first day of this session, that the United Nations was set up three hundred years ago, partly in response to the threat of the enormous power at the disposal of mankind related to the splitting of the atom.
That power now means that the species can literally create any element from any other. As long as mankind has access to enough energy, any barren rock can be turned into an infrastructure capable of feeding and housing human life. The only limit, is physical space. With a population of 250 Billion, Earth already pushes that limit. The opinion of the session was that Earth itself cannot realistically support more than twice that number, no matter what the technological advance. Mars and Venus both still have ample room to take on more human lives for now- but that does not leave room for complacency.
The key points in the here and now, were in some ways positive. The human race can guarantee it can always feed its existing population and can continue to not only maintain, but continually improve living standards and quality of life for every human being that comes into existence. In a very real sense, the human race has eliminated the four horseman of the apocalypse that bedevilled our ancestors. We have no war, no poverty, no disease, no starvation.
People only die now, when the cost in energy to maintain them as fully healthy functioning human beings is no longer sustainable, and nature must be allowed to take its course.
It was commented that the human race need no longer fear blowing itself up, as once it did. Not only is there nothing really to fight over, but it is almost impossible to do so. Each planet possess weapons of mass destruction, but it would be almost impossible for them to fire them at another, without that planet stopping such missiles. A planet would have to be highly duplicitous and dedicated in its plans to engineer something of that scale and the circumstances which might cause it do so are, it was agreed, lacking in today's climate.
Indeed, it was agreed that Today is not the issue. It is planning for a future in which those four horseman never return. And the opinion of the session was that this entails the human race starting to plan, not just for tomorrow, but for the centuries to come.
The main point about human life today is that in the laws of nature. Having defeated the four horsemen, the human population now continues to grow unchecked. Every century, the human population now quadruples. It was briefly discussed whether a return to twentieth century birth control ideas was a possible solution, but this was outrightly rejected.
The current set up, whereby natural selection is allowed free rein, society as a whole taking responsibility for all offspring produced, means that ultimately, reproduction is as natural as it can be in a world where life is no longer red and tooth and claw. If the human race is to be allowed to develop naturally, then accepting perpetual exponential growth is a feature of that. Society now pretty much allows anyone to have consensual sex with whomever they want and guarantees to equally provide opportunity for all children, with a fairly minimal burden of responsibility on the parent. It was this approach, coupled with the ability to find homes for every mouth that needed feeding, which meant that the unsatisfactory solution of birth control could be dispensed with, and now that human pregnancies have largely been reduced to simple medical fertilisation and extraction procedures, human reproduction can be said to accord with basic laws of natural selection, and in fact is improved.
The sole interference of Science has been to remove certain genes from circulation, and the elimination of serial killers and paedophiles from genetic stock, must rank up there with eliminating Smallpox and AIDS as great human medical achievements.
The session agreed on its basic premise. That everything is guaranteed, provided that the human race can sustain its own quadrupling every century. We have obtained existential stability by finding a way to deal with this, but if we as a species are complacent about it, then that very stability will lead to its own collapse.
The challenge humanity faces now, is to guarantee homes for that expansion far into the future.
Short term, the session agreed, that isn't a problem. The three planets alone, can find homes on themselves for the next quadrupling century. But if release valves are not already in place, that will be where it ends.
The outer planets provide a medium term solution.
The satellites of Jupiter between them can probably find homes for twice as many people as the maximum recommended population of Earth. And there are three Gas Giants beyond, all with habitable satellites that offer the same, all orbiting fairly unlimited sources of atomic power.
This means that the current rate of growth can be sustained for just over three centuries, unless a further long term solution is found, and started on, not in three centuries, but today.
The Session debated these points as well as the current arrangements in place within the solar economy and agreed on the following points;
At present, the satellites of the outer planets are largely seen as bases of the inner planets for extracting resources from the Gas Giants. In time, as the colonists of the outer planets grow in number, this will lead to tensions, if maintained. The session recommended that each of the Outer planets be recognised as a United Planetary Organisation Protectorate until infrastructural systems are developed enough on each of these systems for them to be admitted as equal members of the United Planetary Organisation. The session recommended that although Jupiter itself is not a habitation, the fact remains that each of it's satellites depends on the same source of sustenance, and thus when the satellites of Jupiter reach sovereign status, it should be as a federal unit akin to the United States of Earth, the United States of Jupiter would be a planetary system equal in status to the Martian Republic.
The session recommended that from this point on, a fair system of exchange should be maintained whereby the inner planets develop the outer planets in return for access to the energy of the Gas Giants. Ultimately, this would mean that access to the energy of the outer planets is conditional on providing resources to the populations orbiting those planets to create sustainable infrastructures of their own.
The session agreed that in the long term, such infrastructures being in existence, the outer planets had every right to expect exclusive access to the Gas Giants. And in fact, once the inner planets had nothing to offer the outer planets that the outer planets could not themselves provide, the inner planets would have been foolish not to have found an alternative source of energy. The session agreed that technological advances in terms of machinery and insulation meant that it should be possible for the inner planets to consider extracting energy materials directly from the surface of Sol itself. The session recommended that the three inner planets start the necessary research and start investing the resources and planning needed to bring this about.
The session recommended Ceres, the sole realistically habitable of the Planetoids, as a long term home for the United Planetary Organisation. By virtue of its position midway between the orbits of the inner and outer planets, it is ideally suited to be home to a truly neutral interplanetary organisation.
The session have appointed a Commission, headed by the star system's leading scientists and thinkers to produce a report and final recommendations on a long term plan, to start with immediate effect, to commence on the colonisation of other star systems. The session is aware that this is perhaps the most ambitious of the proposals deliberated here at Lowell. The session advised that the scale of this proposal is likely to prove overwhelming to most of the people of Sol, when the details are published, in terms of how it is to be achieved and the long term ramifications in what will turn out to be a vast change in focus, in terms of the surplus energy of the human race and in terms of cultural thinking. The session recommended that a full report be submitted in eight weeks and its proposals be published on the internet and actually voted on the form of a universal referendum.
And so we, the people of Sol now begin the first chapter of a new era. We, the people who live round the star Sol. And we look forward now, to where we the people of Sol go next.
The United Planetary Organisation decided to adopt as it's brief the following statement of one of the four great thinkers of mankind (the other three being Jesus, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx).
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment..."
The human race has proved at Lowell that if it doesn't last to the end of time, it won't be because it didn't try.
The human race has woken up to the fact that the universe really does belong to it, it just needs to make good it's claim.
(Yes, people, you guessed it. Next Saturday's post will by the Commision's report on how to colonise neighbouring stars.)
It is a commonly held belief that watching pornography is a substitute for sex. That people do it to remind themselves what sex is, when they don't have access to any.
That the main reason that we see extensive footage of HER, but HIS face rarely enters the frame, is so the viewer- usually male, so the theory goes- can imagine it's himself.
Partly, maybe. But I don't entirely buy that view.
The reason I don't buy it, is because I admit myself to owing pornographic DVDs. And in fact, the frequent with which they get viewed is totally unrelated to the frequency with which I have sex. In fact, I'm more likely to watch them WITH someone else, than on my own.
Because there is, certainly for me, and I guess must be for many others too, a HUGE difference between the sex I like to watch because I find erotic and the sex I actually like to have.
For a start, the idea that I would actually be translating myself into the male role in ANY of the DVDs I own is highly unlikely. Unless I decide to pretend that I; a. Am black. b. Work out. A lot. c. Possess a ten inch penis.
Clearly, none of the above is true. But it's erotic to watch. Especially if the girl is attractive. It's quite a turn on seeing a very attractive girl receiving obvious satisfaction in a way that still somehow seems taboo. For some reason, it really makes you want to have sex with her AFTERWARDS. Quite why, is hard to explain.
But the point is you wouldn't want to make love to her the way she's receiving it in the DVD. That's the point. What YOU'D like to give to her AFTER she's been satisfied this way, is something totally different.
Because yes, what he's doing is great to watch, but actually, you're thinking 'Fair play, mate, but rather you than me.'
Because actually, I don't actually like having sex like that. I don't like having fast and furious, rough and strenuous sex. Nor do I like a woman writhing and thrashing, screaming and moaning, with the only real physical contact being your grip and the mutual genital contact.
Which is why I don't really have a problem with the idea that if I really loved someone and they wanted sex this way, fine, I'd want them to have it. Just not with me, IF you don't mind.
It's a bit like football. Love watching the game. Watching being the operative word. I have utmost respect for the stamina, dedication and observation skills needed and how hard it is to consistently maintain that in front of thousands of people for ninety minutes.
I couldn't do it, and I don't want to. Even the idea of having mud splash on to my legs is kind of offputting to me. Let alone go tumbling down into the mud. But I'll bawl my little heart out on the terraces. Right little football nut me, at times.
The fact is the sex I actually enjoy would make tedious viewing. I wouldn't want to watch it any more than I'd want to watch myself, the Baker and D's kid brother having a kickaround in the park on Match of The Day.
But the fact is, I prefer to feel her legs wrapped round my back. I prefer her hands softly stroking my back, not gripping my arms, perhaps moving slowly to cup the back of my head as she softly kisses my lips, not pants like she's working out at the gym. Slow, tender, rhythmic moments, not fast vigorous thrusts. More of a country walk than a marathon run. So there's time to enjoy the details, to stroke her hair, to kiss her eyelids, to caress the ball of her shoulder.
You hear the intake of her breath, not animal grunts. And she doesn't scream your name, she whispers it in your ear.
I don't want to be rolled over onto my back and pinned down and have chunks bitten out of my neck. I don't like having sex with Rottweilers disguised as women. To me, it really DOES kill the moment when stuff like that happens.
Because after that sort of sex, I'm likely to leave the room and go and have a fag somewhere in peace. I actually don't care for it and I find it a little- unnerving. When I'm involved in it personally.
I prefer it to reach its conclusion, bodies pressed as close as they can conceivably BE pressed without actually melting into eachother, soft gasps of joy, a feeling of warm euphoria rather than ecstatic satiation, a feeling of true bodily union rather than a somatic set of physical convulsions.
And lie there afterwards in silence on her chest as she strokes my cheek. And there isn't any need to say anything at all.
I like to keep the sex I like to watch and the sex I like to have as far apart as I possibly can.
Porn Stars do a great job, I really do applaud them for it. I couldn't do it and I actually wouldn't want to- they do a great job in having sex that is highly erotic to watch.
But I'd rather have my name whispered in tender intimacy than screamed in fast and furious passion.
Because it's actually NICER sex. And when you do reach the top of the hill, so to speak, it's a much more powerful sensation.
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