Kelly Oliver

I first discovered this lovely lady on Fatea Showcases. I always enjoy these as they are great to cast your net out and discover brilliant talent that you may have otherwise missed.  The most recent editions ‘Chemistry’ and ‘Magnetism’ have introduced me to at least three artists that I felt I should explore further.

The first of these is Kelly Oliver who has her debut EP ‘Far From Home’ now available both as downloadable and physical copies. The EP is a standard 5 tracks and the first song I heard was the title song from the EP ‘Far From Home’.

This tune is a very gentle, soft tune with a pleasant guitar strum setting the scene of a young lady eagerly awaiting the return of a young man of which she is pretty smitten. Despite her mother’s warnings and the way the chap decided to spend most of his time away from the central character is still devoted to his return. And they say long distance relationships are difficult.

I ended up putting this song on repeat for almost an hour as each time the beauty of Kelly’s voice and the musical foundation really just builds and builds on you. The occasional harmonica intermission also did a great job of breaking up the song and keeping the variety going so the listener doesn’t get bored in any way, and this keep going throughout other tracks as well.

The next tune, ‘Keilan are you Coming?’ has some nice differences, being much faster paced with a louder strum on the guitar and a lot more fire in the voice. In a way, it’s quite a similar song, but they display two totally separate emotions, the first on ‘Far From Home’ is one of patience and then this one seemed a little more like an excited child struggling to hold back that excitement. This is a nice variety then from a later track ‘He Walked on the Side of the Sea’ which is calmer.

Kelly has been influenced a lot by Irish traditional music and this certainly comes across her music, but luckily that’s all it is, an influence. Kelly does a fantastic job of keeping her music so wonderfully individual and simple. I am often impressed by musicians who make their music stand out with original ideas are bizarre combinations of vocals and instrument, but what is even more impressive is to find individuals who can be original but give you an air of familiarity so that their music is comfortable and soothing. Kelly has certainly gotten this balance spot on.

I loved this EP and I wish I had made it to Folkstock last September (I was supposed to go but alas last minute couldn’t make it) as I would have seen her live! Kelly has certainly made the list of live performances I must find.

I wonder if Kelly would make what I like to call a ‘wildcard’ track when she does a full length album, as she certainly has a secure sound. Wildcards are songs that are quite different from the rest, usually shorter bizarre tracks that many artists are now attempting. Although risky for people I believe Kelly could certainly pull it off, although to be honest she wouldn’t need to.

A lovely singer, to find out more follow these links and be sure to follow Kelly on Twitter @kellyoliverfolk, and me @paulrawcliffe

Kelly - http://www.kellyoliver.co.uk

Folkstock - http://www.folkstockfestival.com/

Fatea Magazine/ Showcases – http://www.fatea-magazine.co.uk/

DFTBA

Never Mind the Boc

This one is a little late, but for me was worth it!

Never Mind the Bocs is a lovely welsh band on their second album together and it is definitely an album worth listening too. The Brownings (each band member is a Browning) adds their own extra zest to the band with button accordions, wind instruments, strings, bodhrán and drums making up the talent tree of instruments.

Never mind the Bocs have opted to remain much more traditionally founded, going with generally slower paced and calming styles of music over rock or folk dance styles. Their latest album release, ‘A Moon to Hang Coats On’ consists of 16 lovely sets that mix up vocal songs and pure instrumentals.

Their music is very diverse, which is wonderful for those who like their music constantly changing and surprising. For example early on in the album we get ‘The Wren’ a beautifully sung song that helps to calm the listener followed immediately by ‘Full Catastrophe Living’ which is then an instrumental track staring squeezeboxes that go through some faster paces that will get your foot tapping more.

The mix of English songs and Welsh language, along with the previously mentioned variety in music makes this band the staple for people flirting with folk or new to the genre as it examples a whole range of what folk can be all in one album.

‘Tom Fahey’s Wall’ and ‘Fi Wela Ynys Cynon’  are amazing songs with not only perfect lead vocals but also excellently harmonised backing vocals which with the very fairy tale style of music accompanying makes for great listening. To me, many of tracks like ‘Barton Island’ and ‘Y Dyn Heb Fochyn’ even conjure images of the Welsh mountains.

My absolute favourite on the album is ‘The Discomfort of Lloyd George’, partly for the hilarious name, and secondly because of the high squeezebox emphasis (it is of course where my own musical abilities are rooted) but also the rhythmic almost Morris dance style that I know many dancers would love.

A great album, I'm going to locate a copy of their first album too!

DFTBA

Gay Marriage

Okay so the topic of Gay Marriage is still pretty buzzing throughout the internet and what sort of blogger would I be if I did not enter this debate.

Well actually I would be a sensible one. That’s right I will not enter the Gay Marriage debate and let me try and explain why:

It will not make the slightest bit of difference.

The last time I was particularly vocal about an issue was the construction of a Muslin centre a few blocks away from Ground Zero and all entering that debate (using the term debate lightly) caused me was one massive headache.

I found a lot during my time running ‘The That’s Debatable Show’ that as soon as you find one of these big topics forming around you the best thing to do is to get out.

First of all let me clarify here that it is not because I do not find the topic important. The problem is expressing one’s opinion (particularly on the internet) leads to is other people shooting you down with a rapid fire machine gun just for the sake of it.

All you end up with is flaring emotions and a lot of very annoyed people and no further to progress either way.

People will rarely change what they believe in. You can always tell those who will because they will have an actual debate with you rather than a mudslinging match. Only people with the legal power to change laws such as the one on gay Marriage need to have the debate.

You may then say well Politicians will go with public opinion. That’s true but as always with these debates the public is then split down the middle, all the time, this means politicians are forced to play their end as they can never make everyone happy.

I feel sorry for Politicians. I wouldn’t even want to imagine how difficult it is to run a country, especially when every decision you make will annoy half of the population.

The other reason I refuse to enter the Gay Marriage debate or any similar ones such as immigration is because of what I like to call ‘Taboo Syndrome’.

Here is an example:

Four men are walking through a supermarket and one drops his mobile phone. A child picks it up and hands it to his Mother, she asks the child which man dropped the phone. The Child says:

“The Black man”

That child then gets grounded for being racist.

It seems to me now that because things such as Racism and Homophobia are such sore points and such social taboos that if you make a logical yet negative decision against a certain minority in the population people leap all over you and rip you to shreds for being Racist or whatever.

This is extremely irritating. Now this is not to say that when someone is blatantly being Racist that they should not be yelled at. They should. However it is perfectly feasible that certain negative decisions may be made against a minority on logical grounds and not because of an emotive response to that group.

It can be as ridiculously for suing tanning companies for not making fake tan for black people.

So my point here is that people cannot freely reason why they do not agree with Gay Marriage because people immediately shoot venom at them and call them Homophobic, even what that is not the point.

People are using Racism and Homophobia as trump cards to avoid having a logical debate and when it happens it infuriates me. So I just distance myself from the whole sorry affair.

I want to point out here that I am not saying that this is the case in every argument, but it is fairly frequent.

I can almost imagine the thought process being like this “This guy just disagreed with me, me must hate Homosexuals!”. No this is not necessarily the case.

For example. One friend of mine disagrees with gay Marriage because of definition issues, not even issues of Homosexuality or anything like that.

He says that the legal definition of Marriage is the union between a Man and a Woman. So therefore to him unless they change the definition of Marriage legally, there can never be Gay Marriage.

He is not making an emotive comment about homosexuals, yet people would immediately use the trump card simply because they heard “Disagree with Gay Marriage”.

And that my friends is why I am fed up with debates and these big world issues. Until people stop being ignorant or start using their brains (or a topic that I really care about comes up) I will not be getting involved.

DFTBA

U is for Utopia

This is a short post but one that I feel we all need to think very carefully about.

What would be our ideal world?

I always think I know easily but then I analyse it more closely and find that nine times out of ten my ideal world is actually not what I really want.

First of all we must accept that we can never control the will of other sin our in our ideal world. If we did then it would not be them and would only be a... fraction of them and for me to have only a fraction of the person I care about would not be ideal.

So then we have to take into account what they really want in their world, which, as sad as it is, may not be us.

So therefore we can never make an ideal world what assumes the wants of others. Obviously there are psychopaths who are happy for everyone else to miserable but assuming most of us here have empathy then  I’m guessing we would be happy at least on a basic level if those we love are happy?

Thoughts?

DFTBA

T is for Treason

Now this relates to the post of Society. Keep in mind I’ve wrote all these together.

Treason is defined as being an extreme crime against ones sovereign or nation.

On this note then Treason is not a moral term. Treason is a societal term. Treason is basically a threat that Governments or Monarchies use to keep their power and prevent people from bringing down society.

Now obviously you’ll have gathered from my last post I do not particularly want people to bring the Government down, it would inconvenience me.

However it is worth exploring and looking at how someone accused of Treason is treated like the scum of the earth. In reality you cannot take an act of ‘Treason’ at face value until you have all of the facts.

For example, all of the freedom fighters trying to get diplomacy for their country and probably branded as committing Treason, yet really many would argue they are fighting for a good cause and doing something morally right.

Just because the Government does not like it, does not make it wrong.  I’m very sceptical over the arrest of the guy who runs wikileaks.

In principle I do not like wikileaks and think it should be closed down, I do not believe in freedom of information (it all relates to my dissertation, I’m not going into that) however, I also do not believe the man should have been arrested over it. We all know they just looked for a reason to arrest him because they couldn’t say that they were arresting him for the leaks.

Even then, it depends on the motive. Treason is morally wrong if you just feel like causing societal meltdown. Treason is not morally wrong if you are trying to change something for the better.

All of which is of course relative.

DFTBA

S is for Society

I should specify here rather, rebellion against society.

I don’t mean here teenagers going through the goth or chav phases and writing on walls with “Take that society” (Family Guy quote). This I think can be explained with hormones and growing up.

I’m taking about serious rebellion, things like the riots that took place last summer. People being extremely destructive to the overall society. These people who blockade fuel runs or want to bring down the Government.

Hate to break this to you folks, but bringing down the Government is not a very good survival tactic. The Government is an entire backbone to a society, if you bring down a Government without another one ready to jump in and take up the slack then you are just going to starve and kill those you are trying to liberate.

With no Government there is no trade. Britain survives on Trade.

With no Government there is no defence. You got any idea how much Iran hates us right now? Oh and our good friends at the Falklands are screwed with a capital Scra.

Obviously this is does mean stand back and let your Government oppress you. In the case of the Arab Spring I do believe rebellion is justified.

I’m talking here about messing with society for the sake of being destructive and sadly many close minded idiots do. They want to cause disruptions to get their points across.

I’m thinking here along the lines of that group of animals rights activists who killed people to make their point that they thought killing and harming animals is wrong...

Society is not a perfect system, but you need to be very careful when wanting to change things within it. As Churchill once said, and I firmly agree with. (he didn’t phrase it quite like this): Diplomacy sucks but every other option sucks more.

This relates back to what I said last post about humans not meant to be living in such high volumes. This is why society doesn’t work and you get such a gap between the rich and the poor.

S is also for Sloe Gin: <3

DFTBA

R is for Revenge

Revenge annoys me. You see so many movies where the hero is out for revenge on a villain who has done him wrong. I don’t think this is right.

If someone purposefully did me wrong, I don’t think I would ever act out of revenge. It just feels wrong to me. I think it casts some kind of authority on yourself which is not earned. To have a wrong act done to you does not justify then doing a wrong act back.

As clichéd as this sounds, two wrongs do not make a right (and two bowls don’t make a bowling ball).

I would act more in the idea of justice. Now there is a very fine line here and possible conflict of motivations which I completely accept. If you want someone arrested and punished for a crime against you then this can easily be seen as revenge.

The key is the focus. If the focus is on the victim regaining some kind of moral high ground etc then this is revenge. If the focus is on making the criminal see why what they did was wrong and truly repent, or to protect other innocent people from suffering then same fate then this is justice.

Now the bible of course talks of an eye for an eye in the Old Testament (I think, should really have looked this up, do correct me if I am mistaken). I have issues with this because I just don’t see what it achieves. If someone takes your eye out then you take out theirs what do you get? Just double the blindness.

I don’t really believe that revenge brings closure or makes a victim feel better either, not really. Or I should say if killing someone who killed your parents does make you feel better then I think there is something wrong with you.

This is why I like Batman.

Batman refused to kill, he seeked out justice not revenge.

Lets all be a little more like Batman

DFTBA

Q is for Quaint

Q is for Quaint

Apologies for the large gap, I’m going catch up to Q,R,S and T today

The reason for my lack of posting had been twofold. The first is my laptop broke down making posting difficult which is why I did not post of then Thursday as promised and the second is I was away in Wales all weekend with no computer access.

I went to a little cottage that is owned by Liverpool Hope University, nearby was a small Church called Saint Philips and the nearest town to us was called Barmouth.

My first thought when seeing each of these places was “oo... Quaint.” But I never really knew what the word meant.

So I searched into Google and got this:

1.

having an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm; oddlypicturesque: a quaint old house.

2.

strange, peculiar, or unusual in an interesting, pleasing, oramusing way: a quaint sense of humor.

3.

skillfully or cleverly made.

4.

Obsolete . wise; skilled.

I think the first definition is the most accurate to what I experienced. I am after all a city boy, but despite that I have spent a fair amount of my time in the countryside. What I really notice whenever I stay in the countryside is my ability to get up early without feeling as tired and my ability to eat breakfast as soon as I get up.

Something about the atmosphere and environment changes me. I would be very curious to know if anyone else has noticed a similar thing.

I think I feel most at home in more Quaint settings, or should I say, at peace. I know my good friend Nel is equally fond of old fashioned houses and cottages. Maybe when she is a rich author she’ll by me out in Ireland.

Wales itself is a quaint little country and gets what I can only describe as an unjustified negative attachment. Wales is beautiful and Welsh people are lovely and kind and I would even go as far to say that there is not a well established community of people who practice bestiality.

I think I like quaintness because it is not as guilty, large cities you can see the vast consumption of the natural world, in a quaint little cottage you feel less of a burden on nature, you can see forests and mountains and other natural beauties, you can hear birds and the soft wind. Rather than destruction.

I don’t believe humans were ever supposed to live in the vast communities that we do. I would even be tempted to go on a village or tribal basis (only in the point of view of working with nature rather than against it)

DFTBA

O is for Obesity

I think weight has very quickly become one of the most interesting taboos of society.

It always irritates me when people make fun of other people because of their weight, it is just one of these typical looking out for anything that is different which can be exploited to hurt another human being.

Being overweight is obviously bad for a person’s health and undeniably costs the NHS millions every year. This is no excuse however to then bully someone because they are big. We must remember that we are all human beings with real feelings and real weaknesses, we must also remember that to just judge someone because they are too big (or too small for that matter) is immediately unfair if you know nothing about them.

Likewise if you are one of these people who does pick on others for their weight (I genuinely doubt any of my readers are) then have a look at your own lifestyle first. Smoking and drinking equally costs the NHS tons of money every year, so if you use the whole NHS costing excuse to pick on someone and you smoke or drink then you have no right to say anything. (If you don’t drink or smoke then... fairplay...just be nice about it).

I know smokers and drinkers are being Tax bullied but it is very rare you’ll get people picking on another for smoking, picking to stop maybe, but not for the thing itself. There are of course exceptions to the rule there but even then it is not in the same way that those who are bigger seem to be constantly judged and penalised by society.

I must of course come to that current up in the air argument about fashion magazines causing social damage by making women think that super skinny is what is beautiful. Reality check here folks, Skinny is not beautiful, if I hug a girl and have her ribs rip me open then this is not sexy, if I look at a girl and fear that just breathing to hard would snap her then this is not sexy. I believe there is a healthy looking weight and super skinny is not it. Nor is very big.
Women who are the right kind of weight level feel the need to slim themselves further because they believe that is what society wants. Fashion is the biggest cause of this and is why I have no time for the entire industry.

On a quick related note about this current campaign to get softcore porn magazines of the shelves, yes I agree that it probably is not nice to have these things on show in shops and should be stopped, if no0thing else for the sake of children, having them on the top shelf is not the answer. However before you even dream of complaining about this sort your own magazines out as they are just as dangerous if not more so to society.

I must of course, before I get the entire female community leap on this, explain my reason for thinking it is more dangerous. Porn magazines to a majority of women is seen as vulgar (proven by the current campaign to sort it) women’s fashion magazines on the other hand are glorified and in the hands of a majority of teenage girls spreading the same poison about what size is sexy, except it is done far more subtly because it isn’t associated with pornography. This therefore does not have that negative connotation that pornography does, making it sink in easier.

Equally I don’t particularly want photographs of men’s muscled chests and arms thrust in my face, I admit it is not vulgar but it damages my self esteem to no end. I think people ignore or simply are not aware that anorexia in men is the highest it has ever been and we are having the same self esteem issues as a result of this media farce. Women are probably still suffering more so, but the point is it is happening to men and it is quickly becoming an equal playing field. I think men let their pride get in their way.

So I think people need to stop looking for reasons to hurt another human being. If you think someone is obese then fine, by why judge because of it? They still have a mind and a soul.

Besides you try telling a walrus it’s obese and see what happens to you.

DFTBA

P.s

Blast it another rant... I’m a happy person!!!!

N is for New Media

As a young man entering the world of media I am finding myself coming face to face more and more with that broad spectrum known as ‘New media’

New media is mostly internet based and revolves as social networking websites sites including Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Youtube and Google+, all of which are slight variations depending on what it is you want.

One common theme between all of new media is the speed. An hour is out of date. New media is all about constant updates, continual barrages of information seconds after events themselves unfold. With most mobile phones now having Twitter and Facebook alerts this information will arrive at you where you are and whatever you are doing.

Is this steady stream of information passing through our minds almost every second of the day good for us?

I find myself often getting distracted from what I’m trying to do because I am trying up to date with all of the latest alerts and news bulletins.

I do not believe this constant alertness and multi-thinking that people need to be doing to cope is actually healthy for us. From a spiritual point of view it prevents us from ‘stopping to smell the roses’ of life as to stay separate from this social media for more than an hour would produce a backlog that would take two additional hours to catch up with.

I certainly think some things are important to come direct to us as events unfold. Fires in  a nearby area, bomb scares or other such serious matter, it could save life for people to have the locations of these events at their finger tips.

I get so many tweets telling me about sentences that criminals have earned or something a politician has just stated... which is all very interesting and important to know, but right as it happens? Something’s can still wait until an end of the day round off and I feel we need to go back to that. The trouble with immediate information is you also find journalist panicking when they haven’t tweeted something fresh for half an hour, as a result you get a stream of useless or unimportant babble just to full up the space until a piece of gold passes through.

On twitter there is something called hash tagging (#) the idea behind this is twitter will search for these and group all conversations with a certain hash tag together. Now this is very useful as some journalists may have quicker updates than others so you can get a broader idea of the same story from a number of different angles by searching a hash tag. So for example #Cameronisaplonker. Anyone who has written a tweet about Cameron and puts #Cameronisaplonker will have their posts group together so you can quickly and efficiently find other related posts to what you are discussing.
I was watching Britain’s Got Talent the other night and notice dhow after every act a hash tag would appear. One was after that troupe of homosexual sailor people and it said #newonedirection.

This annoyed me because it is ruining the hash tag system, if you create lots of different hash tags for lots of different things then it dilutes the hash tags and makes it just as impossible to find related stories as it started with. Going back to my #Cameronisaplonker example, people instead of looking for the hash tag they want to associate with simply make up a new one, so they will go #Cameronisajerk which is a completely separate hash tag, taking the entire purpose away.

A thing like BGT creating separate hash tags for every act only confuses the system. What they should be doing is just show #BritiansGotTalent as the hash tag and that way people can all view conversations related to that episode of BGT, not separately for each act.

As per usual when modern television and Journalism jumps on these social band wagons they misunderstand it and bloody well ruin it! Uh!

*cough* ... hmm I’m really not doing a good job of writing positive posts am I? I am a happy person really #Paulisnotamiserablegit

DFTBA

M is for Minecraft

Since most of my posts have been quite deep so far I thought I’d do a review for this post.

Minecraft is a PC downloadable game (although will be coming out as a disc game for X-Box) which uses basic game coding to create a world divided into cubes. Cubes range from dirt, gravel, stone and wood which you have to mine and gather and then by putting them into different combinations you can create various items.

Think of it as a computer game version of Lego. There are two game modes, Survival and Creative.

In survival mode you have to build yourself weapons and shelter to protect yourself from the hordes of zombies , skeletons and other evil creatures which spawn at night to kill you. One of these creatures is the iconic ‘Creeper’ which effectively looks like a walking cactus. Upon spotting you a Creeper will then hiss and explode, blowing up the building you just spent the last few hours constructing.

Creative mode is more to test people’s skills at building, and I can tell you, there have been some amazing creations on Minecraft, people creature entire cities with working electricity and even complex sewer systems and public transport.

Minecraft goes back to the idea of playing with blocks, helping to nurse people’s creative side and show that given a basic platform people still want to create their own worlds.

I am a big fan of Minecraft (although I am not very talented so my creations are not as elegant and amazing as others I have seen).
I see we are halfway through the A-Z April, and I must admit I did not think I’d be able to manage it to this point, but hey!

DFTBA

K is for Karma

Karma has always fascinated me as a concept. There are of course several ways of interpreting it. Buddhists have it as an element to their belief of Samsara or reincarnation, so if you live a ‘good’ life as a cat you get born again as a human or if you live a ‘bad’ life as a cat you get reborn as Nick Griffin or Walt Disney.

In the modern day context of the West, people see it not so much as a religious theory as a general life rule. If you do good things then good things will happen to you in return, but if you do bad things then you’ll get what is coming to you.

This, much on a similar level of Luck, I just do not believe. At least I should clarify that I do not believe either of these as a supernatural context. There are no scales on the world waiting to balance if you do something bad or good. Nor is there a supernatural context of luck surely, why would having a four leaf clover or smashing a mirror alter your entire life course.

Seven years bad luck for breaking a mirror? Is this the mirror spirit haunting you or the God of mirrors taking it personally?

I think these things come down to people wanting there to be justice in the world. The idea of karma is to make people (good people usually I may add) feel better about how insanely cruel the world can be to people who do not deserve it. We like the idea that things will balance out because it takes the edge off how bad things can be.
I remember an advert for yogurt a few years ago which had a similar idea with pleasure and pain. These amusing TV anecdotes would show someone enjoying one of these yogurts and then some poor sod in the background would get beaten up by a bear or something.

Of course this is only an advert but it brings up a small theme that has been developing through many of these posts.

Humans seem to be very quick to categorise things into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ whether this is emotions or physical feelings. Naturally as part of our instincts we attach synonyms to certain things such as: Anger = Bad, Pleasure = Good. Of course then it depends on the context, so sometimes Pleasure = Bad and Pain = Justice.

I’m starting to think that people need to take a step back from this and simply see it as Pain is Pain with no kind of just connotation behind it. I do not believe in karma because I don’t think the world makes value judgements on actions or feelings, only humans do.

I must point out here, that what I am NOT saying is that I don’t make value judgements on actions or that humans shouldn’t. We should, it is vital that humans pursue justice and protect innocent and eliminate evil. What I am saying is that there is no spirit of the world that makes these value judgements. Hurricanes do not flatten entire towns because the population of it is corrupt or because the world needs to balance out that some people are evil.

With all this said it is a completely different story when we reach the idea of deities and Gods but I want to avoid that topic for now. The point is that the world of itself does not have these extra laws of physics of karma and luck.

Then again, I may be completely wrong, if a physicist turns around and discovered the ‘laws of luck’ well I’ll be the first to post a retraction quite happily! I love the idea of luck and the idea of karma, I want them to be real things... I just can’t!

DFTBA

J is for Jealousy

Are you hit by the green eyed monster?

Of course you are! We all are! Admittedly to varying degrees. It is of course perfectly natural to be envious of others. Yet people still see it as a bad emotion that people should not feel. I have said similar things like this during my first A-Z post about anger.

I believe it is actually very important to be envious, if you think about it. The grass is greener syndrome helps us to survive because it pushes us.

For example in caveman times it would go a little like this.

Ugh is strong man in tribe.

Nuh is weaker man.

Ugh fights big dinosaur (I know they never collided but ya’know)

Ugh brings home big mammoth and feeds tribe, all ladies want piece of Ugh.

Nuh gets annoyed and so makes himself stronger, so he can fight Rex and get big meal for ladies too

Nuh benefits.
Well that’s what should happen anyway. I know in my professional environment that I am riddled with jealousy at every turn. One would assume it would push me to work harder and fight for the career I want. Don't even start on beyond professional!

Unfortunately I’m sure we all know that this is only one several possible outcomes to jealousy. People sadly do not all have the drive to be inspired. Others instead slash out. Jealousy can lead to assault and even in extreme cases murder. More likely jealously leads you to act in hindering the one making you jealous, rather than bettering yourself to surpass them.

I would like to point now that this is bad. Hindering another in whatever form out of jealousy... it just isn’t gentlemanly (or ladylike).

In my case I don’t tend to do either of the above. I am not a malicious person so would never consciously hinder another out of spite. On the flip side my self esteem is so none existent that I do not have the confidence in my abilities to take the steps to better myself. So I take on the third option which is to wallow in self pity hoping that God will take pity on me and makes things fall into place.

This is a silly way to look at it since I know you have to work for what you want, that is just life. Having said that people do underplay the importance of self esteem. If the self esteem is not there then nothing you can say to someone about how good you think they are or that if they work hard enough things will get better, will improve how they feel. Only a life event, achieving something to prove to themselves and raising that low self esteem some will do that.

Has anyone noticed the catch 22 here? If self esteem is so low to begin with then how do you convince someone to do something which succeeding in will improve their self esteem?

Or alternatively... what if they manage to mess up a seemingly easy task... downward spiralling their self esteem more.

DFTBA

I is for Icarus

I am very fond of Greek Mythology and one of my absolute favourite stories of Icarus, the son of talented craftsman Daedalus.

The basic upshot of the story is his father creates him wings out of feathers and wax to escape from Crete and the clutches of the evil Minotaur. Despite warnings from Daedalus not to get too close to the sun or water, he inevitably flies too close to the sun (or in some stories, the sea) resulting in the wax melting (or becoming too heavy with water) and drowning.

This stories is generally accepted to be a symbol of getting too big for your boots. Now I am very torn with the message of the story (at least as I understand it) because I believe we should aim for the difficult things and should aim high as that is how we progress. I don’t believe we would be anywhere near the technological level we are at now if we were not ambitious.

Having said that there obviously has to be caution and common sense involved. I think the key part of the story is the fact that Icarus ignored warnings. Humanity is defiantly an Icarus type symbol. A few years ago now there was a big fuss about the particle accelerator at CERN being switched on and I read a couple of blog posts (I’m trying to find them to give you the links, I’ll update if I find them) that compared this act of ‘stupidity’ to the flight of Icarus.

I don’t think this is a fair comparison because common sense has been used. The most intelligent men on the planet work for CERN and I’m fairly sure those men wish to live, which makes me think that there was no risk involved with the particle accelerator.

What we should be careful of is the fact that our current human lifestyle is being warned against by scientists. Time and time again they warn what permanent damage we are doing to our planet by destroying rainforests (and more importantly disrupting ocean life such as Algae) and releasing pollution. Yet we still do it (I am just as guilty).

This mirrors more the flight of Icarus to me.

What does annoy me, is it isn’t the average man’s (see what I did there...) or woman’s fault, our society and mere survival is based around the whole network of the world which relies on this pollution. We have no power to change things, we can do small things in our communities but unless we can convince everyone to do the same it will be futile. It is the powerful people, the leaders (ish), who we need to change the world and help us change our lifestyle before our wax melts.

DFTBA

P.s I will try and write a happy blog post during this... I’m really not usually this much of a pessimistic git.