This is a story about comfort...

Halley's Comet will next be visible in our skies on the 28th of July 2061. If I live that long, I'll be 82 years old, which is not inconceivable given that the current life expectancy of a man in the United Kingdom is 81.6 years old. As a lifelong non-smoker, I've also enjoyed a highly nutritious diet and not done a lot of manual labour or worked with particularly toxic chemicals - in theory, I can reasonably expect to live longer than the current national average, which increases quite steadily. In fact, on average, most men my age can expect to live into their 90s.

Edmund Halley was able to calculate how regularly the comet that now bears his name, would be visible in our skies, in 1705 - just 18 years after Isaac Newton published Principia Mathematica which famously contained the inverse-square law of gravity.

Today, we are lucky enough to have telescopes capable of tracking celestial objects with incredible accuracy. We are also blessed with Albert Einstein's General Relativity which allows us to calculate the movement of the heavenly bodies, in agreement with our observations. Before Einstein's GR superseded Newton's law, the orbit of Mercury had not matched up with the predictions of the prevailing theory.

The question that we are left with is this: were the scientific community to discover a huge space rock hurtling towards Earth on collision course, would it be ethical for them to tell the general public?

I'll rephrase and repeat that question again for emphasis: if it were to be discovered that we're all going to die when a massive asteroid smashes into the planet at 38,000 miles per hour, then should we know about it?

Ignorance is bliss.

There will be a certain proportion of society - those who believe all the plants, animals and the Earth were created by a sky monster in just 6 days - who would be resistant to anything that challenges their dogma, no matter how incontrovertible the evidence. There are people who are ridiculously wilfully ignorant, despite the facts, scientific consensus and oversimplifications that spell things out in words of four letters or fewer, complete with cartoon picture-books.

However, one would have to assume that a large proportion of society would accept that they're going to die in an incinerating fireball, earthquake, tsunami, shockwave or some other catastrophic consequence of a huge rock vaporising at millions of degrees, as it collides with the globe.

We could know the specific day that almost everybody is going to be wiped out. Any survivors are likely to die soon after the asteroid impact, due to a cloud of dust and ash that will block out all the heat from the sun. If we were to burn all the coal, oil, gas, trees and use every other energy reserve we have on the planet, we'd only be able to keep ourselves alive for a matter of hours.

Leaving the planet to go and live on the Moon or Mars is a ridiculous idea - only a handful of people would be able to go, and they'd soon die without shuttles from Earth to restock them with everything that moons and planets lack to support life.

The choices are: stay and die, or leave and die.

Given that most of us are going to die in a horrible catastrophe here on Earth, do you think we're just going to sit back and calmly let the billionaires leave and watch our death from space, like some kind of firework show?

Knowing that we're going to die on or around a certain date, along with our family, friends and virtually everybody else on the planet, do you think we're going to act like normal until it happens?

Obviously, there would be anarchy, chaos, looting, barbarism.

If the general public were to learn of the impending doom, wouldn't they plunge civilisation into such chaos that any efforts to save the planet would be derailed - it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the scientists and engineers who might be able to save the entire Earth and its residents, would be ripped limb-from-limb by a crazed mob.

The public might not mean to shoot themselves in the foot, but they surely would. Some people who've seen too many Hollywood movies would endlessly insist that we fire off our entire nuclear arsenal to vaporise the asteroid in space, which would in fact cause masses of fragments of highly radioactive rock to be rained down on half the globe, in a far more destructive bombardment than anything we'd suffer in a single impact.

Deflecting an asteroid could never be done on its impact orbit - the object would be too heavy and travelling too fast - so we simply wouldn't have enough time once we'd discovered the huge rock on collision course to kill us all.

We would be rabidly demanding the impossible, or simply wanting to live a few hours, days or possibly months longer, at the expense of 7.6 billion other souls - diverting our precious resources into lifeboats that would carry us into the hostile vacuum of space: out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Those who grasped the hopelessness of the situation would resign themselves to their fate. Knowing that it would be unethical to bring children into a doomed world, would we kill ourselves, live with the melancholy or become hedonists in our remaining time on Earth? Why bother going to work? Why bother paying your rent or your mortgage or otherwise attempting to lead any kind of life like your ancestors, when an extinction event is inevitable?

If the general public learned of their imminent demise, the collapse of civilised society would be inevitable. So, is it ethical to tell people? In some ways, I'm glad that the world is full of climate change deniers and people who believe that the Earth is flat. It seems plausible that we may have already reached the point of no return, and there are individuals who know beyond all reasonable doubt that we're all going to die, but they are comforted to know that the general public are sufficiently stupid to not realise until mere moments before their death.

Don't scare the horses.

Tags: #physics

This is a story about subservience...

It's grim up North. I didn't think it would be but it is. Here's Coronation Street. Beautiful, isn't it? Presently, that discarded sofa would be where I'd sleep if I discharged myself from hospital.

Without the crutches of alcohol, benzodiazepines and sleeping pills, I feel overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, because of the precarity of my position. Without a home; without a job; without financial security - there's plenty of rational reasons to be distressed.

People implore me to sit back and relax, but they don't realise that I've got loan payments to make; credit card payments to make; overdraft interest to be paid. To have to spell this out multiple times is frustrating.

"Why don't you just go bankrupt?"

Yeah, nice one, Einstein. Did you know that I do a lot of consultancy for financial services organisations? It's imperative that I have a clean credit record - prospective employers will do credit checks on me. You might as well suggest that I go out and commit a crime and add a criminal record to my list of woes.

"It's too soon to be thinking about going back to work"

Well, unless I'm accepting that I'm abandoning all hope of ever repaying my creditors and suffering a life of poverty at the mercy of the state, then no, it's not too soon. There's a concept called runway that I talked about at length during the first half of this year. I was unwell, but during my convalescence I was running out of runway. What happens when a plane runs out of runway?

In short, I'm driven to seek income, to prop up my depleted finances and keep servicing my debts.

If you're really wanting to poke your nose into the darkest recesses of my life, then you should know that I can easily earn enough to replenish my savings and get onto an even keel, with just 5 or 6 months of contract work in London. That I ever left London seems like a mistake, but I had few options - what I did was the right thing in the circumstances.

Today, I'm detoxed from alcohol and benzodiazepines - the physical dependency has been treated - but it quite literally nearly killed me. In addition to the massive deliberate tramadol overdose, my hospitalisation meant I abruptly stopped drinking and taking benzos, which caused me to have loads of seizures - in short, you should never suddenly stop heavy drinking or taking large doses of benzos, because you could die.

So, one might argue that I'm in a better place than when I attempted suicide. Yeah, I guess the biggest threat to my life has gone - my physical dependency on medications and alcohol.

Now, the biggest threat to my life is me - the desire to be dead is an insistent nagging thought that won't go away. It makes so much sense to commit suicide: all I have ahead of me is stress.

The rebound anxiety - having ceased taking medications and drinking alcohol - is causing me to suffer an intolerable amount of unpleasant feelings. It feels like I'm going to feel awful forever, and who would want that?

Of course, my perceptions are probably warped - nothing lasts forever. However, should I really be living my life just hoping to die of natural causes?

I could be writing about how pleased and happy I am to have a second chance - I survived a very large overdose and other medical complications that really should have killed me: the team at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) were very surprised that I survived. Shouldn't I embody every trite contrived platitude you've ever heard? Shouldn't I be carpe diem'ing? Shouldn't I be counting my blessings? Shouldn't I be thanking my lucky stars?

Without stopping to consider all the reasons I tried to kill myself, my problems are not going to go away on their own, are they?

If my suicide attempt was an impulsive thing that I had any regrets about, then perhaps surviving would give me some long-lost appreciation for life. However, I'm spine-chillingly cold and rational about the biggest decision that anybody can ever make: the decision to die. Having been stuck in a never-ending cycle of attempts to get my life back together again, I was exhausted and unable to face rebuilding everything again. I'm still exhausted.

There was a fleeting chance that my suicide attempt could have been a minor setback, but I was completely shafted by the company I was working for. The mistreatment I suffered was inhumane; monstrous. I'm almost speechless that I could have been treated so badly.

I'm stuck between three things:

1. To act positively, and go and earn some more money
2. To act negatively, and pursue my legal rights
3. To simply attempt to kill myself again

To follow the first option is to repeat the behaviours I mastered a very long time ago. It was 20 years ago I got my first full-time job; rented my first apartment. It was 20 years ago that I learned about office politics and how to get ahead in life - a life of corporate conformity.

Instinctively, I reject the bullshit that made me unwell. For 20 years I've observed the rats in the rat race, and for 20 years I've observed the world become a shitter place - an exploding population is on collision course with mass starvation; unrestrained fossil fuel burning has led to runaway climate change, which is causing parts of the world to become uninhabitable, killing and displacing billions of people; deregulated free-market capitalism has raped the globe's finite resources and created a culture of wealth-worship where nobody gives a fuck about anything.

To be a principled, ethical man, is a kind of disadvantage - my political philosophies about social justice and a more fair and equal world, are exploited. I find myself screwed over by people who are willing to trample on anybody and everybody, in a desperate and disgusting scramble up the slippery sides of a mountain of dead bodies.

I've proven that I can play by the rules, but the whole game is bullshit and most people are cheating. I don't have anything to prove to anybody anymore; I've shown that I can wear the corporate mask and fit in with the herd; I've shown that I can live a life of subservient conformity, but it drove me to point of taking my own life.

I don't wanna play anymore, and the only way I can see to call time on this bullshit is to kill myself.

I think to myself that I've suffered and that I must turn that suffering into a piece of art - a monument to the stupidity of humanity. It's grandiose and ridiculous to think that a piece of writing could have any useful effect on the world, but this is my only legacy. Do you deny me the facts? To think that I would no longer live & breathe was a shock to many who've stuck with me and followed my story.

Of course, I'm sick and I've got "insight" into my illness - that is to say that I can consider an objective point of view. It's natural that I'd be feeling terrible, only 24 days after I very nearly managed to kill myself. It's natural that I'd be feeling terrible, given the clusterfuck of issues I've got to sort out if I want to go on living. I can see that I may very well be feeling unnaturally anxious, because my brain is re-adjusting to life without booze and benzos to soothe the stresses that are ever-present in the world.

A doctor suggests that I avoid the news, political protests and other things that I might get worked up about. Is this akin to a lobotomy? I think I would very much like a lobotomy... that's how I arrived at the brain-numbing chemical lobotomy that I swallowed every single day. Unfortunately, my brain is very much intact.

Why am I still so painfully conscious?

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about an addiction to adrenalin...

See that red circle? That's where I've lived for the last 2 years. Only two or three times a year, the combination of wind speed, wind direction, and a low tide will all co-incide, creating perfect conditions to be able to kitesurf at my local 'beach'. That's me, launching my friend's kite at the edge of the water.

The water is slightly brackish, but at low tide it's mostly full of really really nasty stuff that will give you an ear infection, eye infection, gastroenteritis or other medical complaint due to contact with and ingestion of faecal coliforms.

I was on holiday on a North African desert island, with a beautiful sandy beach and warm water, one week after I excitedly told my friend that the conditions were perfect for him to achieve a lifelong ambition of kitesurfing in the middle of our capital city... far, far away from the sea. Is it any wonder that I didn't want to spend a week puking my guts up and taking antibiotics?

Just to prove I'm not pulling your leg, above is a picture of my mate dodging his way in-between boats, as he crossed the river on his tiny kiteboard. He even did a trick because he knew that a bunch of shocked onlookers were videoing him - ever the showman, but who can blame him?

If you don't believe me about dodging between boats, have a look at the kind of vessel that cruises down the river, that I can see from my living room.

Yeah, that's the same river and yes that's my lounge and balcony. That's the same view that I have taken hundreds of photos of, all from that same vantage point. Yes, that's a frigging cruise liner sailing right past my apartment, which is every bit as surreal as you'd think it would be.

Also, if you thought I was making pathetic excuses about why I didn't want to go into the dirty brown water, then check out this next photo, taken a week or so later.

Yeah, that's me in the shades, looking all pasty white because I don't get to leave the house much these days. Just look at the beautiful aquamarine colour of that water. There was no need for a wetsuit - the water was as warm as bathwater. Why would I want to swim in raw sewerage when I had this week of kitesurfing heaven to look forward to?

I will my miss riverside life, but I've paid a king's ransom to experience it, and I've also had a queue of lazy liars, who've wanted to take advantage of me and my industriousness & ingenuity. It's been hard work to make these kind of iconic and memorable life experiences possible. It might sound boastful, but is there anything wrong with reaching a point where you can look backwards and say - without a shadow of a doubt - that you've lived your life to the fullest possible extent.

There used to be a time when the future couldn't come soon enough. I wished away today on tomorrow's dreams and ambitions. Then, I lost my virginity, learned to drive a car, got my first full-time job, bought a house, married a girl... one by one, I ticked all the things off the list.

How rich and 'successful' do you want to be? I've owned both a yacht and a speedboat. I've stayed in fancy hotels and had luxury holidays. I've eaten in the best restaurants, had the most gourmet food and drunk the finest wines. If you continue in relentless pursuit of the glitz and the glamour that you see in films and on TV, then you'll never be happy and content. No matter how many digits you have in your salary or net worth, it'll never be enough. Do you want to earn a million? Why not a billion? Do you want to be the first trillionaire? Why not a quadrillionaire?

If you were cursed with even a handful of braincells, I hope you'd quickly figure out - like I did - that things like experiences and friendship have an intangible value that can't be measured in dollars, pounds, euros, yen, rupees or even shiny gemstones and lumps of rare metals. You can't eat diamonds, although I must say I haven't tried. I have had a drink that contained actual gold, floating around and getting stuck in my teeth, like shiny bits of food, but even if I drank loads of that stuff, all I'd end up doing would be quite literally flushing money down the toilet - gold cannot be metabolised.

So, it's with a heavy heart that I leave my riverside home tomorrow, but it's not been the best place I've ever lived. The best place I've ever lived co-incided with when I had the most friends who I saw on a regular basis. More friends = more happiness. In some ways, my apartment block has had the stench of misery about it - full of rich old men with nothing to look forward to in life except a swift and painless death.

Maybe that's all there is for me in the future: frustration, disappointment, age-related illness, pain, discomfort, suffering and then death. However, I've got a few years before I'm 40 (technically) and I haven't passed on my genes to any unfortunate offspring yet. I'm still a hopeless romantic who believes in true love and holds out hope of meeting a special somebody to spend the rest of my life with; to grow old and grey with.

There's a moral question about whether it's right to drag an individual kicking and screaming literally into existence, as a shitting, puking, pissing, blood and amniotic fluid covered hopelessly helpless baby version of a fully-grown human being. There's another moral question about whether it's right to do so, when you can see that climate change and Donald Trump have our planet on collision-course with disaster. There's a personal moral question, about whether it's right to take the risk that I might pass on bad genes, or act as selfishly and irresponsibly as my parents did - to inflict as much misery on an innocent child who has no choice in matters which so deeply affect their quality of life.

I'm so desperate not to be like my dad, that there's an easy way to guarantee that never happens: to never have children of my own. However, can I say that I really experienced every possible thing that it's possible for a human to do, unless I sire and rear my own genetic offspring? It's a gut-wrenching decision. I'm more risk-averse than you might think, given the number of times I've risked my own life, but it's quite another question entirely when you're talking about the miserable childhood of some poor kid.

In leaving the capital city, I leave behind a huge pool of highly educated, highly intelligent and devastatingly beautiful women of my age, who decided to have put career first and placed motherhood on hold. Now they're all shitting themselves about the sun setting on their fertility, and make bloody brilliant girlfriends, to be honest. Prior to my my thirties, my experiences of the opposite sex had rather made me wish I was homosexual.

Talking of sunsets, this is the last photograph I'll ever take from this balcony, in all likelihood. I literally just rushed out and snapped this photo in-between writing the last sentence and this one. This is goodbye. There will be no time for anything more tomorrow, as I throw the few remaining unpacked items into my luggage and head off to start my brand new life: a fresh start; a new beginning.

You could have walked in on any chapter of my life and felt anything from pity to envy; from disgust to sympathy; from protective instincts to the desire to join a long queue of people who'd like to cause me distress and misery. If you think I've lost my sense of perspective, you're wrong; you've leapt to the wrong conclusions and too hastily. There are two years of my life captured here, on the pages of this blog. I invite you to dip in at random and judge me based on the extreme ups and downs that you can read about... everything I've been through.

Of course, I view myself as no different from anybody else. We all get hungry, we all get thirsty and most of us want to get laid. Beyond that, of course I view pure blind chance - luck and probability - as the only over-arching thing that's led me down one path, while you down another. Our places could easily have been the other way around, in another life; another universe.

So, dear reader, I will write to you again, after I've arrived at a destination that is completely alien to me.

Wish me the best.

Tags: #london #kitesurfing

This is a story about changing beliefs...

Imagine being marooned on a rock in the middle of a vast ocean that's so deadly to life that you couldn't survive for more than a few seconds if you fell in. The ocean is lifeless and has no utility: it can't be purified or harnessed to generate energy. The rock has a fragile ecosystem that keeps you alive, but there is a relentless wind that threatens to blow away all the life-giving nutrients at any moment. You don't know how you got there, why you're there, or how the hell you're going to get off the rock if it can no longer keep you alive.

Welcome to the world according to science.

Isn't it much nicer to imagine an anthropocentric world, where some kind of paradise was created by an imaginary sky monster, just for us. Imagine there's some invisible guiding hand, making things happen, always with us Earthlings in mind. Imagine there's an all-seeing eye that only gives a shit about one particular species on one particular planet. Imagine that this universe isn't all there is: there's also some kind of afterlife. There... that's much more comforting, isn't it?

You could say that scientists believe in nothing. They don't think we were put on Earth for a reason: it's just a cosmic accident. Energy condensed into matter; quarks combined into protons and neutrons, which were fused into atomic nucleii; atoms bonded into molecules and reacted to create amino acids and proteins; the primordial soup created life, through pure chance. There's no reason for us to be here, except that given enough time - 14 billion years ought to do it - life as we know it becomes inevitable, given the laws of physics laid down at the birth of the universe.

When you start to study cosmology, you get some perspective on just how insignificant we are. When you start to deal with things on a cosmological scale, the numbers boggle your mind. There aren't even rulers that can measure the distances between objects in the night sky, because space and time are warped by matter and energy. Things are so far away, and we only have a tiny planet to move around on, so it's not like we can triangulate the position of anything. Everything in the universe appears to be just a point in space to us: the twinkling dots of light in the night sky.

If you think about time and evolution, you begin to see the staggering number of living creatures that died - our ancestors - so that we could be alive today in our current form. Take a look at an ear: it's a fucking weird looking thing, isn't it? Why the hell would it look like that? I can't tell you, but I know that I can take a shower without getting water in my ear canal, which is pretty awesome for listening out for any approaching sabre-tooth tigers while I'm washing myself.

Then, what about consciousness? Why is it that you are you? Why were you were born at the exact moment you were born? Why are you alive, right now, and not a hundred years ago, or a few thousand years ago?

So far as you know, you're the only you. Everybody else is somebody else. You've got your own unique set of experiences. You've got your own unique set of senses, and your own consciousness processing the sight, sound, smell, touch and taste of everything around you.

Ultimately, we can reach the conclusion that each universe is actually tailored to a single individual. The reason why there are lots of other people around who look very much like you is an inevitable consequence of the universal laws of physics. If I tweak the numbers one teeny tiny bit, we might get an almost identical universe, but there's a different person whose mind is "the one" that is truly conscious.

You feel pretty conscious, don't you? You feel like you've got free will and memories and you're seeing the world, right now, for what it is. But, that's only in your own universe. In your universe, I have no free will or consciousness: my world is dictated by your actions. In your universe, I'm not deciding to write these words... I'm not even aware of what I'm doing, even though I think I am.

The test is this: what would happen if you killed yourself?

Right now, there are about 7 billion people in the world. If I was to kill myself, 7 billion people would agree that I was dead and buried. 7 billion people would say that I just killed myself. But what about me? What about my opinion?

Here's how it goes: I get a gun, aim it at my head and pull the trigger. Guns are pretty reliable these days, so lets say I have only a one in a million chance of surviving a point-blank gunshot wound to the head. This is my free will, right? I make the decision to commit suicide, because I'm a conscious being with free will and that's my prerogative to do so.

So, what happens if the gun misfires? What happens if I put the gun down, pick up a different gun and that one misfires too? What happens if I pick up a machine gun, aim it at my head, pull the trigger and it just goes click-click-click-click-click as it keeps misfiring?

Essentially, if you take our very best scientific theories and follow them to their inevitable conclusion, this is what is predicted. If you keep asking "why?" over and over again, until you get to the deepest possible understanding of the universe as we observe it, you will conclude - from reproducible experiment - that the world is influenced by us, as observers. Our very consciousness is inseparable from reality and the laws of physics.

It's quite possible to answer the question "why are we here?" with the answer: so you can ask that question.

That might sound like begging the question, but it's actually perfectly logical.

Without consciousness, the examination of the world around us is not possible. Arguably, without being conscious of the existence of the universe, does the universe really exist?

Taking this reasoning a stage further, you can start to argue whether anybody in the universe in which you inhabit has ever truly been conscious. The evidence would suggest that they haven't, given that they are not able to experience the universe as you do: they are not able to answer the quantum suicide paradox, so they are unable to prove or disprove the reality in which they inhabit.

You and you alone are truly conscious, and everybody else is just an inevitability of the laws of the universe: entropy will destroy anything so ordered and sophisticated as a conscious being like you, but once you get one (you) it's inevitable that there will be billions of knock-off copies that didn't quite make the grade in your universe.

Ultimately, you are immortal and you will witness the end of the universe. It's the only logical reason why you were born when you were born.

"But what about all those people who die before me?" I hear you ask.

Well, they were never really conscious. I'm sure that in their own universes, which were nearly identical to yours, they were perfectly conscious, but the one universe in which you live, is made just for you: you're going to witness the death of everything and everybody, even if you try to kill yourself.

Taking this a stage further, we then wander into the territory of the theological.

What about heaven and hell?

If you're immortal, how do you think the world's going to be shaped by your actions?

Once you realise you're immortal, are you going to be naughty or are you going to be nice?

How's anybody going to stop you doing anything you want, if they can't kill you? You might as well be a thief; you might as well rape and murder; you might as well take anything you want and enslave all of humanity. As you rape and pillage, the world will become scorched and barren: Hell on Earth.

Alternatively, you could live virtuously, impart your wisdom and not abuse the discovery of your immortality. You could influence the people of the world to look after their home planet and try to preserve it beyond the longevity of their mortal lives. Over time, the world will become a place where everybody benefits from the generation before them, and it becomes received wisdom that it's better to co-operate and act with restraint, rather than act selfishly: Heaven on Earth.

Thus, we have arrived at a scientific reason for morality, as well as the negative consequences for 'sinning'. Science has drawn the same ultimate conclusions as religion: don't be a dick.

The chances are our species will wipe itself out before we are able to terraform nearby planets. The idea we're all going to fuck off to Mars on one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets, is actually just a massive excuse to continue raping and pillaging. The billionaires think that they've got an escape capsule, so there's no reason to rein in the corporate excesses and end the inequality that's destroying the planet.

Scientifically and through historical study of past civilisations, we're utterly fucked. The pursuit of pacifism, debt forgiveness, abolishment of usury and the creation of a fair and equal global society, has been completely abandoned in favour of rape and pillage. Capitalism must inevitably lead to the destruction of the natural world, overpopulation and enslavement of the developing nations, in order to fulfil its insatiable demand for unnatural growth. Things can't grow forever on a planet of finite resources: the laws of physics say that we can't just magic all our problems away.

We're acting like a blackjack player who's got a score of 20 but asking for another card, hoping to get an ace. Chances are, we're going to bust.

I really don't want a Tesla electric car: I'd rather not have to go to my bullshit made-up job. I really don't want a rocket ride to Mars: I'd rather people in Africa had some bicycles. I really don't want a NutriBullet food blender: I'd rather we abolished economic policies that leave nations starving, while others waste vast quantities of food. I really don't want an iPhone 8: I'd rather not have wars over mineral resources needed to make throwaway electronic gadgets. I really don't want private schools and top universities: I'd rather educate young women so they can make smart family planning decisions.

Just remember where the fuck you are: you're floating on a rock in the vacuum of space, with an incredibly thin layer of atmosphere just clinging to the surface because of the extremely weak force of gravity. The only reason the air isn't blown away into space - leaving you suffocating - is because planet Earth has an iron core which generates a magnetic field, diverting away the solar wind. Only 29% of the planet is land, and the rest is salty water you can't drink or use to water the crops. Have some fucking humility.

"But I'm some hot-shot CEO of a massive global corporation"

Yeah, right buddy. Try counting your money while holding your breath.

"But Elon Musk is going to fly me to Mars"

Yeah, and what are you going to do when you get there, you fucktard? There's no breathable atmosphere. There's no fertile soil.

"Scientists and engineers will find a way"

You mean the guys and girls who are telling you that the climate is fucked?

"God will guide us"

Good luck with that.

Tags: #economics #capitalism #politics #physics

This is a story about travelling...

Ah, back in the shadow of the towers of broken dreams, at long last. I was very well looked after over Christmas, but there's nowhere quite like home, is there?

I've fought hard to get back to London and make it work, so I'm somewhat superstitious about ever leaving the capital.

There are a lot of dreamers and runaways who try to come to London and seek their fortune, but they fuck off home to Mum if it all goes tits up. London is my home and I have no backup option.

I was made to feel very welcome in the home of my host, over Christmas, but we all need somewhere to call our own, don't we?

I never wanted to live near Canary Wharf, but I always wanted to live by water. Who wouldn't? Central London can be lovely, quiet and beautiful. It's the never-ending overcrowded suburbs that are the pits: zone 99 on the tube. Steer clear of the hoi polloi and tourist hordes and London has everything you could ever want.

It was enjoyable to get out into the rural countryside, but it's not sustainable is it? What the fuck would you do for work: to earn a living and pay the mortgage?

And so, I've got life the right way round in my opinion: walk to work during the week and then drive to the countryside at the weekend. Relaxing in quiet villages, enjoying the rural idyll, and then back to reality on Monday morning. I can never understand why commuters subject themselves to such misery and exhaustion.

Those village greens, cricket whites, country pubs, woodland walks, ancient oaks and British wildlife... they're reserved for rich retired people and lottery winners. To try and have it all would only compromise you; spread you thin.

For sure, it'd be good to have a huge detached house with acres of land, letting the kids play in the massive garden, having some dogs. But, the economy got fucked up by the baby boomers, who expect to retire in obscene luxury, while their kids and grandkids pay the price: job insecurity, low pay, overinflated house prices, long working hours, no respect, no prospects, fucked climate, over-competitive educational system and everything else that makes modern life miserable, depressing and anxiety-inducing.

I'm pragmatic, so my solution is to stick close to where the jobs are, not waste my time and energy on stupid pipe dreams that only those with inherited wealth could ever hope to enjoy.

Tags: #london

This is a story about suffocation...

I was just watching a documentary about the burning oil wells in Kuwait, and I wondered how many barrels of oil we get through in any given day. Turns out it's about 95 million.

Here's where the maths part happens.

So, we're burning our way through 95,000,000 barrels of crude oil, every single day. But how much crude oil is there in a barrel?

In the USA, there are 42 US gallons in a barrel of oil. Given that most figures are stated in US measures, this will do as an equivalent figure for our maths, even though the actual volume of oil in a physical barrel can vary by country.

So, how much petrol or diesel is produced from a barrel of crude oil? Well, refineries generally produce 12 gallons of diesel and 19 gallons of petrol, as they 'crack' the crude oil. That is to say, the refinery does a fractional distillation of the crude oil, and different products will 'boil' off at different temperatures. 31 out of 42 gallons in one barrel of crude oil will go to produce petrol and diesel.

95 million barrels of crude oil multiplied by 12 gallons, produces 1,140,000,000 gallons of diesel.

95 million barrels of crude oil multiplied by 19 gallons, produces 1,805,000,000 gallons of petrol.

How much carbon dioxide - CO₂ - is released when you burn a gallon of petrol or diesel? Well, for petrol that's 19.24 pounds, and for diesel that's 19.91 pounds. Therefore, petrol is clearly the more polluting fossil fuel, because even though it releases slightly less CO₂ more of it can be produced from the crude oil.

So, the amount of CO₂ being belched out each day by petrol cars and motorbikes is 34,728,200,000 pounds. Let's convert that to kilograms, because I actually prefer metric. That's 15,752,446,543 kilograms of CO₂ being emitted by petrol alone, on one day.

The amount of CO₂ coming out of the exhaust pipes of diesel trucks, taxis, busses, trains, boats and everything else that runs on diesel, such as industrial plant, comes to 22,697,400,000 pounds. Again, let's convert that to kilograms. That's 10,295,367,459 kilograms of CO₂ from diesel engines, on any given day.

Right, now let's add those two figures together.

26,047,814,002 kilograms of CO₂ being chucked out into the atmosphere by internal combustion engines, every single day.

Obviously, we don't just use our cars and trucks on one day. Let's have a look at what happens when we do this for a whole year: 365 days.

9,507,452,110,730 kilograms of CO₂ is being produced per year. Ouch! That's 9.5 billion metric tons.

For comparison, The Empire State Building weighs just 331,000 tonnes. The Hoover Dam weighs 6 million tonnes. Therefore the CO₂ emitted in a single year weighs 1,583 times more than The Hoover Dam. Damn!

But what about a really heavy thing. How much does the entire atmosphere weigh? How much does all the air that we breathe weigh? Estimates are in the region of 5 quadrillion tonnes. About 21% of the atmosphere is the oxygen we need so that we don't suffocate. So, there's about a quadrillion tonnes of oxygen trapped by gravity around our planet. However, only 0.039% of the atmosphere is CO₂ which equates to 195 trillion tonnes.

Using these numbers, you can see that petrol and diesel are increasing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere by a small percentage each year. However, it's much, much worse than that.

I've just been talking about just the petrol and the diesel. There's also the CO₂ from all the coal, natural gas, propane, kerosene, paraffin and every other fossil fuel that gets burnt, that emits carbon dioxide. The amount of CO₂ being released each year is more than 40 billion tonnes.

There's a measure of CO₂ in the atmosphere called PPM - parts per million. Prior to the year 1750, which is considered the 'pre-industrial' baseline, the PPM count of CO₂ in the atmosphere never exceeded 300 ppm. In about 100 years, we've taken it to over 400 ppm: a rise of well over 30%. Might not sound like much, but look at what's happened to global temperatures.

I mean, just look at your goddam thermometer. Whether you're a climate skeptic or not, you're able to read the mercury, right? You can tell when it's a hot summer, even if you're not one of these 'corrupt' scientists, right?

We've just had 15 consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures. This isn't just an exceptional year, because this has been going on for years, decades... more than a century even!

"Oh well it can't be the cars then"

Wrong. Before the internal combustion engine - which was invented in 1876 - we used to have coal fired trains, coal fired steam engines and steamships, coal to heat our homes, coal to drive our steel industry and the industrialisation of the world.

You can't on one hand say that the scientists are making it up and climate change is a big hoax, and on the other say that everything's going to be OK because the scientists will come up with a way to save us. You can't enjoy the benefits of automotive transportation, global shipping and air travel, and with the same breath say that those scientists and engineers who gave you those things are a bunch of crooks who are cooking up a breathtakingly well orchestrated global conspiracy.

If you don't believe in climate change, presumably you don't believe that man can fly either, so go and live in a fucking cave and reject everything else that science has given you.

You are quite literally a public enemy if you perpetuate myths that man-made climate change isn't real. I can't believe the USA is potentially going to elect a climate change denier to be the leader of the free world. Donald Trump is actually doing work to protect one of his golf courses from rising sea levels. What reason was given for this? Climate change. The man is a lying lunatic who will take the human race to its grave.

The risk to low-lying countries, islands and coastal towns and cities is dire. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaks up and melts, sea levels will rise by over 3 metres. That means I'll have to use a canoe to get to work here in London. The water will be lapping at my front door. Worse still, if you live in Bangladesh or Holland, you'll be dead.

Obviously, it's not like it's going to be a sudden tidal wave that will come and drown people, but billions will be displaced. It will be a human catastrophe on an unimaginable scale. Even if it was only a 1% chance of happening, you'd still do something about it, wouldn't you? What would you do if your carbon monoxide detector went off? Ignore it, because it might be a false alarm?

The sea rise is just one component. The other is the inhospitable temperatures for countries in the Middle East. Alright so you might not like those "sand n****rs" and "towelheads" very much. You might believe that all Muslims are terrorists. However, these are people who are going to become climate refugees. Whether you like it or not, they're going to be displaced from their homelands, which have been made uninhabitable by reckless energy consumption in the West.

You can't even live on a boat anymore: the sea is littered with shipping containers that are like icebergs you can't even see before you hit them, because they float just below the surface. The sea is a brutal place, and weather is going to get more and more extreme as the planet gets hotter. Only the very best sailors are able to survive for months offshore, and everybody needs to put into port to make repairs and re-stock supplies. In the event of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melting, sea levels would rise by 60 metres, which would mean that the maps of the planet would need to be torn up. Every coast would be dramatically changed, and whole countries would disappear under the ocean waves.

This sounds like an unlikely doomsday scenario, but actually things can accelerate in ways that you haven't even considered. A warmer planet means warmer water. Warmer water actually takes more volume than colder water - thermal expansion - and of course warmer water can accelerate the effects of the melting of the ice caps. Additionally, with less ice on earth, less of the sun's energy is being reflected back into space, making the planet even hotter. Hot air can hold more moisture than colder air, so we will see more and more flooding and torrential rain, as much as we'll also have to contend with rising sea levels, and the expansion of inhospitably hot parts of the globe.

A sustained wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) exceeding 35 degrees Celsius is going to be fatal, because your body can no longer cool itself through the evaporation of your sweat. You'll die of hyperthermia. Heat and humidity will be too much for the body of even fit, healthy adults to survive. This scenario had been imagined as something far off and unlikely, but because of the component that humidity plays, we are likely to see the Persian Gulf become uninhabitable in our lifetimes. Ironically, the Arab nations that pumped a lot of the oil have sowed the seeds of their own destruction.

Of course, with hotter temperatures, higher humidity is to be expected because a hotter atmosphere can hold more moisture. Again, even conservative estimates seem to show that for many parts of the planet, they will quite literally be turned into a deadly sauna.

Even if we slashed our emissions to zero, it seems likely that there's a certain amount of momentum, that means things are going to get a lot worse before they might improve. Even if we mothballed every gas-guzzling vehicle overnight, that atmospheric CO₂ is still there, as well as the temperature gains that have been made during the modern era. It's not like the planet is just going to cool down because we're not emitting CO₂ any more. The greenhouse gasses are still there, creating their greenhouse-like effect. Until we actually scrub the atmosphere, the effects can't possibly be reversed.

The fact that Donald Trump is even in the running, suggests that we have a problem right from the very top. Why are we going to change our ways, when even the man at the top is perpetuating the lie that climate change is a hoax? If he gets elected, I'd better get saving up my money for my spacesuit and a ride on a rocket, like all the smart billionaires are doing.

I sense there is a policy of "don't scare the horses". Politicians don't want a panic on their hands. There is already a refugee crisis. There is already war and conflict because climate change has caused crops to fail. There are already heat waves, flooding, hurricanes and other natural disasters that have been more numerous and worse than anything seen before in history, because of climate change. Look how woefully the Americans protected their own people during Hurricane Katrina. The wealthy elites just don't care about the lives of ordinary people.

It's tough, because until somebody at the top mandates that we all have to make drastic lifestyle changes, who's going to be the first to do it? Why should I give up my car, if you're not going to give up yours? Multiply that attitude by 7.4 billion people, and you can see where the problem is.

You've probably got this whacky idea that you're going to be OK. You've probably got this sick fantasy of all those pesky Africans being wiped out, which is what needed to happen anyway because they were having too many babies. There isn't going to be some Malthusian catastrophe that will return everything to its rightful state. If immigration is your number one concern today - "Britain is full" and "send them home" - then you're woefully ill-prepared for the billions of people who are going to be displaced by this inevitable climate catastrophe. Families aren't just going to stick around to drown and die of heat exhaustion. A certain amount will die, but there will be unimaginable numbers of people coming to Europe and America because their own countries have been destroyed by heat and flood.

Of course, I'm still youngish, healthy and single. My parents treated me like a piece of shit, so they can rot in hell for all I care. I can easily up sticks and head for the hills. I haven't got to worry about any offspring that I unwisely fathered. I can move fast & light. I guess we're still 15 or 20 years away from armageddon, but I'm likely to still be healthy.

Anyway, screw saving for your pension. As is often said, if you think wealth is more important than the climate, try holding your breath while you count your money.

Tags: #climate

This is a story about escape velocity...

A happy healthy life is a fairly simple prescription. It's not hard to look for slightly happier people and imitate their magic formula.

In essence, what I have distilled things down to is this:

• Home - so you can be warm and dry and your stuff isn't stolen
• Job - so you can pay your rent/mortgage, bills and buy food & clothes (yes, clothes wear out)
• Family - not blood relatives, but anybody who loves and cares about you
• Friends - social media doesn't count; you have to see friends face to face
• Disposible income - get deeper and deeper into debt and you'll lose your home
• Goal or passion - this can be work, this can be your kids, this can be a hobby; you need something.
• Girlfriend/boyfriend - everybody's gotta get laid, and it's important to have intimacy and companionship

At the moment I have 3 out of 7. Assuming that you need 50% or more to be OK, it's no wonder that I'm depressed as hell and have a lot of suicidal thoughts.

Yes, I have friends who I see less than once a week, so I do have friends. Yes, my sister and I do occasionally exchange text messages, even though we haven't seen each other for the best part of a year. Yes, my goal has been to get myself into a position of financial security, and I've been making great progress, but it's not really my goal... it's just a necessity because of needing to not be homeless and destitute.

So, all I really have is a home, a job, and I'm making more money than I'm spending, which is digging me out of debt.

I love my friends dearly, and it does help that people are in contact via social media, email, text message. I have the offer of speaking to a few friends on the telephone, which I'm grateful for. I also make the effort to travel as much as I feel able to, in order to see people face to face, and I'm glad when I do it, even though it's expensive, exhausting and time consuming to zoom all over the country, if not the world.

I just don't have a group of buddies you know? People to go to the pub with. People to go out for a meal with. People to play frisbee with in the park. I'm lacking a social group.

I'm also lacking that significant other. Somebody to just hang out with. Have sex with. Make food with. Watch movies with. Play games with. Go sightseeing with.

I've stitched together a patchwork quilt of whatever I can get, in order to just about cling to life with my fingernails, but it's inadequate. That's not to say I'm not ungrateful for those occasional invites to hang out and do stuff. It's just not enough. I thrive on face to face social contact, and I'm not getting enough.

To further compound problems, the team I've been managing at work are all in the Far East, so I don't even get proper face-to-face social contact at work. I sit at my desk, lonely and bored. I've helped to create a great culture in my team, but I don't really benefit from it, because they are quite literally 6,666 miles away (I just looked that up - I love that fact!).

In desperation, I made compromises that are just not acceptable, sustainable. I took a job that pays well and is very easy, but doesn't provide anything other than the money that I need. I made other choices because of the desperate need for something rather than nothing. There's an opportunity cost. If I'm in a job that I hate and drains my energy, then I don't have the time and the motivation to get something better.

In a way, it's good that a couple of things are coming to an end, because it's prompting me to go after the things I want rather than the things that I took through desperation. Of course, I'm grateful to have the money, and the support that I've received, but you make different choices when you're in deep shit.

So, on Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have completed a year of blogging, 6 months 'clean' and my 6 month employment contract will be over.

On Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have 1 out of 7 of the things that I need, with the threat that I will quickly lose even that one single thing.

Without a job, I'll have more expenditure than income. I need to pay rent, bills, service debts. I need to replace worn out clothes and things that break. I need to buy food and toiletries. Life is not sustainable in Western society without income.

I don't have savings, but I do have creditworthiness. Yet again, I will have to borrow money in order to keep my head above water. I have no financial safety net. What I have instead are commercial lenders who are prepared to extract their pound of flesh so that I can avoid homelessness and destitution.

If you think I could have saved more money than I have done these past months, you are mistaken. Without a short holiday, I would never have lasted the extra months. Without alcohol, I would never have coped with the stress and anxiety. I could have penny pinched on my accommodation, but can you imagine how awful it is living in a hostel when you're working full time? I worked, slept and ate. How far has it got me? Well. Probably about 50% of the way towards financial security.

I need to take a break, because my nerves are frazzled and I'm exhausted.

I doubt any contract could be as bad as the job I'm about to finish on Wednesday. For my next contract, I'm going to look for something where I'll be working with a team in London. I need a much more interesting workload. Being bored to death is no way to die.

With money comes the opportunity to travel, socialise, make the investment in a new hobby. With a more tolerable day job comes energy and enthusiasm for each day. With a more liveable life comes the freedom from drink, drugs and medication, in order to simply get through the day.

It's a fucking nutty strategy, to go for the big win. What you just don't understand is just how close to irreparably broken my life is. You just don't understand what it's like to not have so many of the elements that prop up your life. Look again at the bullet pointed list above, and score yourself. How many of the things you need do you have?

Look back at the last 4 weeks of your life and ask yourself this:

• How many nights were you homeless? - zero, I presume
• How many days did you work? - I'm guessing somewhere around 12, on average
• How many times were you in contact with your family? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many days did you see friends face to face? - I'm guessing at least 8
• Did you make more money than you spent? - I'm guessing at least breakeven
• How many times did you do something 'fun'? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many times did you have sex or snuggles? - I'm guessing at least 8

Those would seem like adequate answers to me. If you're hitting those numbers, your life is probably just about OK. Less than that in one area, maybe you can make up for it in another. For example, you might have been out of work and losing money, but at least you were surrounded by your loving family a lot more of the time, because maybe you were staying at home looking after the kids.

I'm certainly not saying it's easy being a stay at home mom or a househusband, but suicidal depression can come about through death by a thousand cuts. All the little things that are wrong in your life add up to an unbearably horrible situation.

In some ways I'm relishing next Thursday, because I can sleep and recharge my batteries. With spare time that's completely free from artificial structure, such as having to be in a certain office at certain times of the day, then I can start to relax and decide what I want to do next.

The obvious thing to do is to get another lucrative contract, and work for at least another 4 months, so that I can get a cushion of savings to support me in pursuing a passion. Without being able to underwrite my own risk, I have zero faith in my family or government to support me if I fall on hard times. I have a friend who's offered me some financial support, but I think it's unethical to accept it because then I'm borrowing from their safety net.

In this individualistic society, nobody parachuted in to rescue me when I was homeless, destitute. Nobody came to rescue me. Nobody came to my aid. Help was not forthcoming. Even when I had letters from my doctor, my psychiatrist, my social worker... all begging for the government to support me as a vulnerable person with mental health problems, the people I dealt with were unhelpful, obstructive and ultimately just wasted my time and effort even asking for the support that I was entitled to, because of their legal and moral obligations. Those public servants' salaries are paid for with my goddamn taxes. I've paid a lot in, and when I needed it, I could get nothing out.  It's down to me to support myself. I might as well be living in some developing world country, where at least the cost of surviving is lower.

People who warn me to stay within easy reach of the National Health Service for mental health reasons, are just naïve. I've been round and round the system many times since becoming clinically depressed in 2008. The system is bullshit. There is no safety net if you're a single man.

And so, I must play russian roulette with my life in order to support myself. The upside is OK: I might become wealthy and comfortable again, in a relatively short timescale of just a few years. The downside is horrible though. Can you imagine how much time I've spent thinking about how I'm going to kill myself? Can you imagine what it's like to spend a significant proportion of your waking hours feeling so awful that you pretty much want to die?

I swear if one more person tells me to go to my doctor and get some magic beans I'm going to scream. STOP MEDICALISING NON-MEDICAL PROBLEMS. The problem is clearly outlined above. I don't have broken brain chemistry. My brain has correctly identified the problems in my life. There are no short cuts. There's no way to cheat the sytem.

Of course, there is a short cut.

Drugs will tell your brain you feel loved. Drugs will make you feel relaxed. Drugs will make you feel happy. Drugs will make you feel contented. Drugs will tell you that you don't need friends. Drugs will tell you that you don't even need to eat or drink. Drugs will tell you that everything is fine.

Everything is not fine, so I don't want drugs - and by that I mean medication too - to tell me that things are fine. Things are not fine. I almost need these awful feelings to prompt me to get a better job, find some new friends, get a girlfriend, get a hobby. It's just that financial circumstances have constrained me more than you can possibly imagine.

Imagine if I'd declared bankruptcy at the start of the year. That would have been a stupendously dumb decision, in hindsight, wouldn't it? I'm presently not bankrupt. Presently, I have enough money to clear my credit cards, my overdraft.

Of course, my position can't last. You have to run just to stand still. I'm losing my job, and that means I will quickly go into debt again.

"Get another job then"

Guess what, Einstein... that's what I'm going to do. Even though I'm suicidally depressed, overcome with anxiety, I'm going to go and get another motherfucking job you c**t. Even though I'm technically entitled to disability benefits and a council house because my mental health is so debilitating, I am able to do these crazy raiding missions to go and gather nuts before my brain explodes and it all comes crashing down again. I'm locked into this boom & bust cycle. No wonder my bipolar disorder is so exacerbated.

And so, round and round I go. Up & down. Boom & bust. Highs & lows. It's not a medical problem. Its the motherfucking dance I'm forced to do by this farcical society. This is what you get when you don't support people. This is what you get when you isolate people. This is what you get when you only look out for number one.

"The pills will help you stabilise"

No, they won't. Have you looked at the long term studies? Have you studied the data, the clinical outcomes? Have you done the research? No. Of course you haven't. You just have this bullshit belief in the power of medical science. If I had an infection, I'd go to my doctor for antibiotics to treat it. I don't have a fucking infection. I have an allergy to shitty unbearable unliveable life.

I've tried all the meds under the sun. I know what life on medication is like. I've had tons of doctors and psychiatrists. I've tried tons of therapies. It's all a crock of shit. The fundamental problem is the fucking shitty world. Look around you; do you like what you see?

I'm not going to change the world begging on the street with a cardboard sign. I'm not going to change the world by impoverishing myself. I'm not going to change the world by trying the same things that people have tried for hundreds of years, without success. Only an idiot tries the same things expecting different results.

So, I'm on this crazy journey. I'm hoping that by next Wednesday I might have managed to write 365 blog posts, and probably around 450,000 words. That might not make a difference to you, but it's surely making a difference to me. It's probably making a difference to somebody, somewhere. I have visitors from around the world, reading what I write. Even if it's absolute garbage, it's better than just being a helpless spectator. Even if you think I'm an irrelevant bleeding heart lefty liberal who doesn't amount to a hill of beans, at least I'm composing my thoughts. At least I have a belief system. At least I have values and things that I passionately believe in.

It's very hard for me to come up with a reason why I'm struggling along at the moment. Why am I putting myself through this awful shit? Why don't I just kill myself, and then the pain will be over? Why don't I just give up, and relapse back into drug addiction?

Actually the second one is fairly easy to answer: somebody who dies of drug addiction is easy to discredit as a 'dirty' junkie. Somebody who's 'clean' and has just completed an important project for a major corporation, in a valuable role, and has set their financial affairs in good order, is a rather more inconvenient and difficult problem to find a soundbite to toss them into the gutter.

I want to be a thorn in the side of every selfish c**t out there who wishes their fellow humans dead. I want to shame people into action, from their comfortable existence where they don't even lose sleep over every homeless, hungry struggling person in pain and suffering out there.

Where the fuck are people when those around them are in distress? Who the fuck do you think is going to sort problems out, if it's not you?

Even though I could have put my tax money to far better use supporting myself, rather than paying the salaries of people who tell me they're not going to help me, I'm still glad to give away a substantial proportion of my income. However, I'm not buying a clean conscience. It's not like I pay my taxes so I can watch my friends become homeless and mentally ill, and assume that the council and some doctors are going to wave their magic wands and make it all better.

What the fuck happened to the empathy? I think I would offer to let somebody sleep on my couch, lend somebody money or go and visit somebody in distress, before I even experienced horrible things first hand myself. I had quite a comfortable existence up to the age of 32 or thereabouts, but I didn't think it was big OR clever to sit on my fucking arse not doing anything when people were suffering.

Those who have been kindest are those who have suffered the most, which makes me detest the comfortably off for their lack of empathy, their lack of humanity.

If humanity is destined for a situation where we let even our own family members and friends flail and drown, then I'm pleased that climate change is going to wipe you miserable c**ts out of existence. You don't deserve to survive, if your "I'm alright Jack" attitude is the prevailing one. I hope you and your kids and grandkids die slowly and painfully if you spawned more mouths to feed with not a single concern for anybody else.

Believe me, I do observe how happy and fulfilled my friends who are parents are, even if they complain how hard it is being a parent. Did you forget that we live in the age of birth control and abortion? You chose to have kids, and no matter what you say, you do get immeasurable benefit from having them. You have happiness and security, knowing you procreated. You have a flood of oxytocin when your cute kids throw their arms gleefully around you.

Believe me, I do observe how happy my friends are to own a dog, even if they complain about having to pick up the poop and hoover up the hair and other mess. You chose to have another carnivore on the planet, eating meat that meant that food for livestock was grown, rather than having more food for those who are starving, and depriving the planet of those extra trees that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Having a pet dog is selfish as fuck, but I do see how nice it is to have your dog playfully jumping with joy to see you, and throwing sticks in the park for them to fetch.

I can see that there are choices that benefit me as an individual hugely, but I choose not to take them, because I'm responsible for more than just myself. I don't believe that collective responsibility is something that naturally follows from individual responsibility. In fact, I see that the two things are naturally opposing.

Can't you see the fucking trends? Of course you do, but you just don't want to believe it.

You don't want to give up eating meat. You don't want to adopt instead of having your own biological children. You don't want to stop driving your precious little darlings around in a gas-guzzling 4x4 "because it's safer for our family". You don't want to plant trees instead of having a pet dog. You don't want to do anything different at all, in fact, even though you're fucking everything up for your kids and your grandkids.

That's why I'm depressed. That's why I'm suicidal. That's why I'm stuck in a hole I can't get out of. That's why I'm desperate and driven crazy by all this bullshit. That's why I'm doing things that are atypical... because the typical is what got us into this fucked up mess in the first place.

I don't care whether you're religious or not, but imagine some future judgement day, when it's obvious that the planet and the future survival of the human race is clearly doomed: will you say that you went along with things, supported the status quo, or did you try and change things? Did you at least act differently? Did you at least try and help in a way that's less pathetic than recycling your bottles? Did you help anybody other than the fucking clones you spawned to replace yourself?

Note: I'm not anti-parents. I don't hate my friends. I'm not some "wake up sheeple" fucktard. Dismiss me if you like using some convenient label that you were taught to use by those who wish to perpetuate the status quo.

If you're not acting with your conscience, or at least kept awake at night worrying about this shit, that's unconscionable.

You probably should worry about me. No doctor in a white fucking coat is going to make everything OK. It's not a medical problem. It's not a government problem. It's everybody's problem, including mine, but it's more than I can handle on my own.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #climate #politics #capitalism #homeless

This is a story about trying to stay ahead of the game...

The Olympics and the Tour de France have been full of sportsmen and women using a variety of drugs to enhance their performance. Doping in sport became so widespread that it was virtually impossible to compete without performance enhancing drugs.

We think that competition is linked to sport and that athletes are naturally competitive, but in fact competition is present in every aspect of our daily lives.

You want an attractive girlfriend or boyfriend, right? The more universally appealing a person is, the more potential suitors are vying to try their luck. The 'hotter' somebody is, the more people are trying to hop into bed with them. Attractiveness means few genetic defects: looking flawless, perfect. The pre-programmed urge to reproduce with the healthiest person who'll have you, is the reason why you're alive today.

We all know that alcohol is a social lubricant. "Dutch courage" means that after a few drinks we are disinhibited, and we can overcome the social awkwardness of talking to the objects of our affection. When we're drunk we take that chance of rejection, leaning in and kissing somebody for the first time.

It's pretty clear that those who are intoxicated will be braver and less anxious about rejection and humiliation, than those sober singles who are nervously hoping to be asked to dance, and trying to muster the courage to chat somebody up. Therefore, there's a pressure to get drunk, and get your date tipsy, if you're hoping to couple off and copulate.

Cocaine gives artificial confidence. Cocaine makes people talkative, gregarious and removes their self-conscious awkwardness, shyness. We tend to be very attracted to confident and outgoing people. The pack alphas are naturally the most confident, and we want to mate with the alphas, not the betas. Royal families are inbred as hell, but every girl wants to marry a prince. Cocaine can help you to talk and act confidently, which makes you more attractive, and cocaine is very likely to bring the affections of potential mates.

So, it's pretty clear that in order to compete with other blokes eyeing up the skimpily clad girls on a night out, being tanked up on alcohol and having snorted a couple of lines of cocaine is going to give you the competitive edge. There's a high incentive to be intoxicated with alcohol and cocaine.

At work, many of us are mandated to work longer hours than we are able to do with our normal sleep/wake cycle. 54% of adult Americans drink coffee every day. Anecdotally, so many people say "I can't function without my morning coffee". It's quite commonplace for people to joke on social media about homicidal tendencies before they've had their fix of caffeine. Many a true word is spoken in jest.

Because so many office workers drink coffee, the working hours take this into consideration. Without coffee, the 9am start time would have to be 10:30am. Without coffee, those late nights in the office would be pointless, because nobody would be able to concentrate and stay awake.

Caffeine is a wakefulness promoting agent, and it's a concentration aid. Caffeine is great for concentrating on laborious boring repetitive tasks for long periods.

However, when nearly everybody is drinking coffee, it becomes a necessity for coworkers to drink it too, in order to match the office hours and concentration span of their colleagues. If your workmates spot your eyelids getting heavy, somebody is bound to suggest to you "can I get you a coffee?". Nobody is likely to say "maybe we should all go home early, not work such long hours and stop drinking so much damn coffee".

There is a huge incentive to drink tea, coffee and energy drinks at work, in order to compete for the pay rises and promotions, and not be seen as a weak member of the team.

We live in a culture that fuels depression and anxiety. The news bombards us with all of the world's problems in full gory high-definition detail. The economy is tanking and we have to live with job insecurity, skyrocketing housing costs and little hope of ever being able to collect a good pension, let alone have our kids able to expect a good education and be able to live on a planet that hasn't been destroyed by climate change. It's depressing as hell. It's stressful as hell.

Instead of trying to change the world around us and improve things, instead we have medicated ourselves in vast numbers. 61 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for 65 million people in the UK, in 2015. Most people will take powerful psychiatric medication at some point in their lives, whether that's sleeping pills, tranquillisers or antidepressants. The very sickest will have to take antipsychotics and mood stabilisers.

Our jobs are stressful, and we're fearful of losing our jobs. If we lose our jobs we'll lose our houses. If we lose our houses, we'll be homeless. The number of homeless people has soared by 80% in a single year in some parts of the country. There is plenty of reason to live in fear of destitution.

Doctors hardly have any time to speak to their patients, and they hardly have any budget to prescribe talk therapy, so people who are stressed out get sent away with tranquillisers. People who can't sleep get sent away with sleeping pills. People who are miserable, exhausted and can't cope get sent away with antidepressants. There's a pill for every ill, but it could be a sane reaction to an insane world, in a great many cases.

When so many people who you work with are insulated from the stressful and depressing nature of the work, and the way that capitalism is raping the natural world and enslaving the poor, it's easy to see how they are able to keep working, because they're drugged up to the eyeballs.

If your job, your house, your family and everything depends on you keeping your job, of course you're going to drug yourself up with happy pills so you can keep trudging along on the treadmill. Who can afford to have a nervous breakdown? Who can afford the risk of losing their job, to take time out to rest and recuperate? Who wants to let their bosses know that they can't cope with the stress, when everybody else seems to be doing OK?

There is peer pressure to put up with shit at work and not complain. Put up and shut up. Fit in or fuck off.

Because of the hyper-competitive work arena, of course we need to mask our mental health symptoms with pills, even if the underlying issue is a deep unease with the bullshit jobs and the negative effects on the world.

"Everybody's got to work"... but what if you're a debt collector? What if you're price gouging your customers who need their gas & electricity, so that you can make more money for your bosses? What if you're manufacturing weapons? Honestly, have a think about what you do for a job, and ask yourself if it's improving the human condition, or not.

Collectively, we should stop and say "this is madness". We can't sit here in the UK where the economy is 80% service industries, and say that what we're doing is productive and useful. It's impossible that we should need so many lawyers and accountants. It's impossible that we should need so many bankers. It's impossible that we should need so much software. It's impossible that we should sit here idly counting beans, while some poor person is out in the beating sun growing our food, earning $1.50 a day.

For sure you don't want to end up in the field picking fruit and vegetables for a pittance of a wage, but that doesn't mean you have to prop up the status quo.

Acting with your conscience and with ethics as an individual is likely to hurt nobody but you, but it's also harmful to you to load yourself up with performance enhancing drugs, simply so you can compete.

It's only in the spirit of non-competition that we can end the rat race and smash the tables of the money lenders and other idle social parasites. The parasite class need to be cast out from society. The parasite class are antisocial. The parasite class are making billions of people's lives miserable.

There's no way to win a rigged game. The only thing you can do is not lose, by not taking part.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #mentalhealth #capitalism #politics #alcohol #caffeine

This is a story about bang for your buck...

The churches have their tithes. The government have their taxes. The world has charities. It's pretty clear that these systems of wealth distribution and assistance for impoverished and vulnerable people, have spectacularly failed.

Tonight, I'm going to eat my dinner. Eating my dinner is something I want to do. Eating my dinner is something I enjoy. I get a kick out of eating my dinner.

So, why don't I start a Just Giving charity fundraising page, so that people can sponsor me to eat my dinner? You can sponsor me to go to work. You can sponsor me to go for a little jog around the park, having a lovely time waving at everybody. You can sponsor me to jump out of an aeroplane. You can sponsor me to abseil down a cliff. Even though you'll be donating to whichever charity I've chosen, it won't make any difference to the world.

You want to make a difference, right?

You buy Fairtrade coffee, bananas and chocolate. You recycle your bottles, plastic containers and cardboard. You give £10 a month via direct debit to the Red Cross. You throw your loose change into a collection bucket, when somebody jangles one in front of your face. You went to a pop concert one time, that was supposed to end poverty once and for all.

Maybe you work for a charity. Maybe you do volunteering. Maybe you organise bring & buy jumble sales. Maybe you bake cakes and sell them to raise money. Maybe it's you who is chugging the collection tins and getting people to reach for their wallets.

However, have you considered whether what you're doing is effective?

Clearly, whatever you're doing, it's not effective. Poverty is not history. In fact, wealth inequality is growing to unprecedented levels.

There are a number of ways we justify our inaction:

• "I do my bit"
• "I already give what money I can afford"
• "I already give what time I can spare"
• "I can't help everybody"
• "It won't make any difference. The world is a cruel place. Life is hard"
• "The world is overpopulated. Africans should stop having babies"
• "That's just the way things are"
• "We've got to look after our own"
• "Charity begins at home"

On closer examination, these beliefs are delusional, and only serve to prop up the status quo. All the reasons for inaction boil down to the same thing: "I'm not going to do any more until other people do too".

We are in a rat race. We are desperately trying to not lag behind the other rats in the race. We are desperately trying to keep up.

The mega wealthy race ahead, while our incomes stagnate. Since the 1980's the average wage increase has been just 40%, but for the wealthiest, their income has increased nearly 300%. As a proportion of their income, the wealthiest share less than ever. The wealthiest guard their income from taxation. The wealthiest spend a very small proportion of their income, meaning that it never enters the economy.

All humans need clothes. A poor person buys a £30 pair of jeans. 20% of the ticket price of those jeans is VAT, so the poor person paid £5 in tax. Let's say that the poor person earned £100 on the day that they bought the jeans. That means their effective tax rate was 5%, on clothes that they needed to buy. If a rich person bought the same pair of jeans, and they earn £1,000 a day, then their effective tax rate is 0.5% for the clothes that they need. A much smaller proportion of the rich people's income goes on essential items like food and clothing. As a proportion of their income, the amount of tax that the rich pay is tiny.

We can't afford the rich.

The rich are responsible for an expensive army and police force, in order to maintain the status quo and protect their wealth. The rich are responsible for deciding to bomb brown people to bits, in order to maintain conflict, to sell them weapons and stop them from ever reaching prosperity. If we let the brown people ever become prosperous, they might be unhappy about growing our food and manufacturing our goods, while we sit around idly doing nothing.

We spend more on 'defence' than on education.

If we were to spend more on education, then people would realise that our struggle is for nothing. Our labour contributes to nothing more than our own enslavement.

Capital growth, through effortless income from interest, dividends and increased asset prices, far outstrips our ability to earn money through work.

Our whole society is topsy-turvy. The old people who are dying are the ones who own all the dividend earning shares, through the pension funds. The old people who are dying earn all the property. The old people who are dying do not work, and they demand to earn money for no effort. The institutional investment managers who look after huge pension funds also do no work. Pension funds simply own huge portfolios of stocks & shares, interest bearing financial instruments and property. Instead of society being run to benefit our children, our workers, and protect the vulnerable, instead we toil so that an ever-growing number of retiring baby boomers can be idle.

I don't begrudge people some time off if they've earned it, but baby boomers are responsible for the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change, pollution, deforestation, war, famine, economic ruin, the end of free university education, no jobs, unaffordable housing and keeping politicians in power who are intent on destroying all life on earth. Instead of protesting at the planet being raped, these insufferable hippies sat around taking drugs and passed on all the problems to their grandchildren.

For me to teach a starving African to write computer code is ridiculous. The world doesn't need any more websites or apps. We've had programmable electronic computers for 60 years, and the world has become a more unequal place, still full of suffering and pain.

For me to volunteer at a soup kitchen is ridiculous. We are manufacturing homeless vulnerable people faster than we can feed them. The Salvation Army was founded in 1865, and there are still shamefully large numbers of people who are homeless and hungry.

For me to work for a charity is ridiculous. The charity model of fundraise & spend has completely failed. The church model of a tithe on our income has completely failed. The government model of taxation has completely failed.

We live in a pyramid scheme, and those at the top of the pyramid want to be idle and earn money effortlessly. There is no dignity in labour. Through work we only impoverish ourselves, because the wealthy get more wealthy while not doing any work. We expend our energy and the finite years of our life, but our wealth is eroded faster than we can earn money.

We shape ourselves in the image of those we are trying to keep up with. We imitate those who we aspire to be. We aspire to be wealthy, and in so doing, we protect our wealth from taxation and tithe. We believe we are being virtuous by being thrifty. We believe we are being smart by saving our money instead of spending it.

In actual fact, the financial system has broken down and fails to serve 99% of the people who are trapped within its confines.

The most effective thing that we can do to fight poverty, income inequality, injustice and the enslavement of the 99% is to campaign to flip the iceberg upside down. We can't afford the rich, and the plutocracy has to end. Our political system is overrun with public schoolboys who earn their money from trust funds and offshore investments, meaning that they pay nothing in tax. We can no longer be governed by people who don't play by the same rules as the rest of us.

The House of Commons was supposed to be a democratic instrument. The House of Commons was supposed to be representative of ordinary working people with a conscience, not Bullingdon Club Tory toffs who've only known a life of wealth and privilege.

I'm not waiting for my neighbour to be more generous before I decide to contribute more to the greater good. I'm looking for my opportunity to topple the cruel elites who have their snouts in the trough, greedily stuffing their ugly faces.

The most effective thing you can do with your time and your money? Campaign for political reform. Campaign for economic reform. Campaign for societal reform.

It makes no sense that the whole of the planet and 99% of humanity is there so that the baby boomers can have an idle retirement. If it was up to me, I'd ban the over 65s from voting until the climate and the economy start improving. You can't leave this kind of bullshit fuckup as a legacy, and expect to reap any rewards or have any say in a future that you ruined.

Here's my golden rule: leave things better than you find them, or else you are antisocial and you should be excluded from society.

Tags: #charity #politics #climate #capitalism

This is a story about being a writer...

I can hear the sound of a pencil snapping. I can hear the gnashing of teeth. I can hear the foam frothing at the mouth. I sense the fingers, poised over the keys, ready to launch into an angry tirade against me.

"You're not a proper writer"

You're right. I'm not.

I don't get paid to write. I don't answer to an editor. I'm not dependent on anybody else to decide whether the work that I produce is worthy of publishing.

So much of what I write is unworthy of publishing.

I wrote an eBook earlier in the year. In fact, I stayed up all night writing 12,000 words in one marathon sprint, because a literary agent had asked to see the first few chapters of a book I was planning on writing. It was total garbage and I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed of the crap that I produced.

In my defence, I was in the middle of a crisis. I had been sick for several months and I wasn't able to pay my rent. I couldn't face re-entering the rat race. My flatmate had offered to make introductions in the book world - he's well connected - and it seemed to make sense to my exhausted and drug-addled mind at the time. I would get an advance from a publisher and then write a book. Simple!

I really don't think that you can write a high quality work of literature when you're burnt out, depressed and you're on a comedown from the best part of 3 months of drug abuse. I cringe at what I wrote and who I shared it with, even though it was semi-coherant and just about readable.

The concept behind this blog is sound: it's a place where I can get the jumbled up things that are racing around inside my head into some structured form. I've tagged everything so that I can go back later and edit things. The reason why it's done publicly is so that it's not an isolating and lonely exercise. I not only have to tell the stories of the past, but I need to weave in the thoughts and feelings that threaten to derail me in the present day. In so doing, I'm able to keep moving forwards.

The concept behind the book I hope to eventually write is sound. The world has plenty of happily ever after tales, fantasies and fiction. When I have been unwell, what I have found to be in short supply has been well written tales about navigating and surviving the underworld of mental health services, hospitals, government agencies, living on the streets and drug addiction. Who are you, if that doesn't match the demonised images we have of the junkie, the hobo and the madman?

We love it when mild-mannered Clark Kent tosses aside his geeky glasses and tears open his shirt, to reveal a superhero lurking underneath an unassuming veneer. Plenty of rich bankers snort cocaine in the toilets, but how many people can say they've been all the way to the bottom and back up again? Those who are 'in recovery' keep their dark past shrouded in secrecy and anonymity. We are so fearful of our reputations being tarnished and us becoming unemployable, that authentic stories are in short supply, unless you want to join the Alcoholics Anonymous cult.

What I've written to date is full of bitter angry rants, blame and finger-pointing, lamentations about what might have been and endless repetition of the pain I feel over things I can't fix.

While what I've written is too unwieldy and repetitive, and filled with harsh words directed at my perceived persecutors, it's about as honest and candid version of a "stream of consciousness" text as you're likely to find.

Many people consider themselves to be 'curators' and prefer to share links and quotations. So many texts will be peppered with the references to the source text that informed the author, as if we wouldn't believe what was written without such things. I like to think that what I write is original content, but of course I have my influences. Of course I will be falling into the pitfall that every 'new' writer must also do, which is to think themselves original also, while producing very much the same work as those who went before them.

The main reason why I'm not a writer - aside from the fact that I never attended some creative writing course - is that I don't get paid by anybody else to write. I'm my own patron. I'm not writing for advertising revenue. I'm not writing for royalties. I'm not writing to impress my editor. Writing is a job I'm told. Well, that must suck.

I wrote a piece that I thought would be popular, and published it. It was popular. It was really depressing just how popular it was. I decided that I would stop writing for me, and write something that I thought other people would like. They really liked it. That depressed the hell out of me.

I absolutely loathe my day job. I feel unbearably compromised in my life, because I have to spend 40 hours a week bored out of my mind, trapped somewhere I don't want to be. However, I'm well paid and I do have enough spare time to write a lot. I'm not happy about this, you understand? But it's an arrangement that works a hell of a lot better than being completely flat broke, and also having to write crap that somebody else thinks is a good idea.

I guess I have no artistic compromise at the moment. Soon, perhaps I will have the time, energy and good health to write the book that I want to write. Although the fear that it may be rejected by the gatekeepers - the literary agents and publishers - means that I would be more likely to write something popular than authentic, which isn't the point at all.

It's important to me that I get to tell at least one story in a coherent way, well edited and with a dedicated investment of time, to produce a piece of work that can be easily picked up and read by anybody.

Arguably, at the moment I have something better: a living document that is also an invitation for people to collaborate. I'm literally begging the world to reach out and connect with me, by sharing my very innermost thoughts and feelings, darkest memories, worst fears, frustrations and my hopes & dreams.

I know I have gone rather off-piste at times, and I regret the period circa mid-December 2015 to the start of April 2016, but it's still an interesting record of my messed up brain and horrible consequences of what was going on at that time, which can be read in-between the lines of those blog posts.

Now I feel I am writing with fluidity and perhaps a little too much verbosity, but at least it's hopefully clear that my mind is now unclouded and my mental health is markedly improved, even if I'm desperately depressed and suicidal.

That sounds like a contradiction, but I do feel that I'm my truest version of myself that I can remember being for a long time. The depression and suicidal thoughts are very clearly linked to how trapped I am in a situation that feels desperately unpleasant.

Yes, it would be easy to point at my well paid contract, my lovely apartment and the fact that in a couple of months my debts will be paid off and I'll be free again. But, I feel like I already have everything I want: all I want to do is sit and write. The day job is a horrible distraction from the thing I really want to be doing: writing.

Who knows where it goes from here. It certainly doesn't seem like the right economic climate to be giving up a good job to enter into a highly competitive arena that's notoriously badly paid. However, perhaps I've already arrived, because I just about have the means to bootstrap myself.

I'm very grateful to both friends and strangers who have encouraged me in saying that they think I could write professionally, but perhaps I already do. I certainly put zero effort into my day job, and I'm putting every bit of spare time and energy I can into writing.

Perhaps writing will never pay the bills ever again, because of the willingness of people like me to 'work' for 'free'.

To me, writing does not feel like 'work' and neither is it 'free' because I do get an enormous kick out of the feedback I receive. Writing is immensely rewarding. Not in terms of money I could use to pay my rent and bills, but in terms of making a tangible contribution to people's lives and having that validated in the things that they tell me and the conversations that it starts.

Perhaps I'm going to stop calling myself an IT consultant and start calling myself a writer, given that it's where the bulk of my time and effort is invested.

What do you think?

Can I call myself a writer yet?

Tags: #writing