The Group

We humans just love splitting off into groups, I suppose we feel safer in group, ‘cos basically compared to other living things we’re pretty weak. 

So we love groups - religions, political groups, sports teams, even gender-preference groups - so many groups and sub groups we contradict our own hate toward competing groups. That’s another given, it’s not just that we like being part of groups we also have to have other groups to hate, or at least dislike.......... 

Never happy ‘till we’re hating, that’s us. It’s no different now, the ‘alt right’ hating the ‘alt left’ , even though from each group there are probably people who share the love in yet other groups, they may support the same sports team at the weekend, but hate each other for political reasons in the week, and on certain evenings meet each other again at a local ‘dark room moment’ in a group hug.

 I have this impression that it could all end in one of two ways. Either we come together and realize we are all so different that every battle against other ‘groups’ is a lost cause and will only cause yet more struggle and strife ..... or that  one day there will be just one huge ‘last man standing’ moment where we club each other to death. Unless, that is, that one or more ‘bacteria group’ gets to us first .

Have a nice day. 

Skin deep.

I've just been stood in the kitchen, coloring my wife's hair, don't worry she was there with me. She's at an age and a stage in her life when grey roots appear every few weeks, and she is having nothing of it. Every few weeks I'm her 'special forces' in her personal war on grey terrorism, it always makes me nervous if I miss any enemy infiltrations it will be firing squad for me.
Usually it turns out ok, and I'm the hero for a couple of days and then it starts all over again. When she buys the coloring product it's always a different chemical cocktail ,never does she use the same product twice, always looking for a better version of all the choices.
What an array of products! just for hair, it's amazing, there is a whole industry helping (mainly women) cover up their natural color, and this is just the hair industry.
We humans have a long history of not being contented with what nature gives us, always wanting a new hair color, eye color and more and more a different body shape and now even new gender.

I was watching a TV programme yesterday, it was one of those body shape programmes that pretend to be sympathetic toward the subjects it follows, but is really just a 'freak show' showing us the extreme end of human industry in changing body shapes, penis lengths and facial construction.
One young gay guy had his lips inflated to the size of a medium hot air balloon, and was now at grief because he could find no plastic surgeon who would agree to inflate his buttocks in the same fashion, surgeon after surgeon warned him that 'enough is enough' and his ass could possibly explode -literally. At the end of the programme we saw the lad walk off into the distance swearing to find a surgeon somewhere on the planet to fulfill his dream of worlds biggest ass (watch out Kim Kardashian, he's coming for you). There was a guy with a tiny penis, who wanted to have an enlargement, to save his blushes in the locker room, the operation was shown in graphic detail, meanwhile the surgeons were explaining the fact that any 'enlargements' are pretty minimal.
Besides the sympathy pain I felt for the guy as I saw him trying to get into the taxi a few hours after his op, was the horror at seeing how the guy was cut open. It was then that I really really and for the first time actually realized how superficial this all is, the scalpel only went skin deep a few millimeters to reach a place where we all look basically the same.
Beauty being only 'skin deep' is true but doesn't really solve any arguments, because we only see skin deep, and let's be honest we prefer beauty above 'non- beauty' , so maybe it's our interpretation of what 'beauty' consists that should be educated. Of all the freak show plastic people none ever look better than they did, plastic surgery is a great help and advantage for people who have suffered life changing injuries or illnesses, that's why it was brought into life after the horrors of world war 1.
But we are humans and as long as there are people conditioned to not be satisfied with their looks and surgeons who see a fast buck in giving in to these people, well it's here to stay.
I think it was Adele (oh my god Nigel what happened to your music taste) who sung in one of her songs 'your perfect imperfections' ,that's real beauty for you, perfect imperfections, let's not go down the road of all looking sounding and smelling the same, let's struggle for the beauty of perfect imperfections, be unique, be yourself.
This being said I'm off to get on my home-trainer to work off some of this imperfect belly fat, summer is coming after all.

The brightest of the dumb.

Will we ever 'get it' ? How things work, how the world is shaped? Why we do what we do? why the same old things happen over and over?
I remember when I was young thinking that 'older people' must know, they must have that secret knowledge that was hidden to us youngsters...... but now I'm old, I seem to know less than when I started out. To me getting older just means giving less of a flying frig about the 'worries of life'.
Politics and politicians? tricksters thieves and psychopaths- all of 'em. Life planning? wake up, see what happens, adapt,adjust and move on. Concentrate on what and who you like doing and being with, there are 7 billion of us, 99.9999% of whom  you'll never meet and only a few of the ones you meet will eventually be of any importance to you, so stop trying to impress people who matter not to your life.
Just don't waste time, a lot of people want you to fail in what you do, only listen to the ones that encourage you in your endeavours.
We keep saying how special we Homo Sapiens are, how we are the most intelligent species on earth, is that an overstatement? Maybe we are the most intelligent of all living beings on earth, but what does that mean, maybe we're intelligent like the brightest kid in the 'special class', just intelligent compared to the rest.
Yes we can almost cure all illnesses that we used to think were incurable, but at the same time we produce products and situations that enhance just those same illnesses we are trying to cure. Smokers outside the hospital doors, vending machines selling unhealthy drinks in Hospital waiting areas. We know we can get energy from wind and sun yet still we prefer digging holes in the planet to mine fossil fuel that will poison the environment or build energy plants that rely on very very dangerous and 'all life' threatening fuel.
Maybe we're not as 'bright' as we think, ok we say we are but is that true? How many parents do you know that think their kids are unbelievably intelligent? Even though the law of averages says most all kids are average. When was the last time you heard parents say "well we have three kids they are at best average, but if I'm honest they are pretty dumb, dumb, selfish and mean, but hey on the bright side they are an improvement on us".