motivation - Ina Disguise

creativity, economics, motivation, politics

Broad Brush Thinking

July 5, 2016 No Comments

Broad Brush Thinking

I have cleared 15 ton bags of garden rubbish from my garden in the last month. Not that the garden was a jungle, it is just a large garden, consisting of three lawns, around 35 trees, 4 shrubberies, a large scale rockery and what seems like a mile of mixed hedging.

Occasionally over the years, my friends, whom as I have mentioned are all male, have stopped by to help, which invariably causes great merriment as their ideas about gardening are somewhat different scale to a person trying to manage a large house and garden without spending money on contractors.

The flatulent pedant, as he is known in my memory, recounted a tale of a two week war with his mother about a weed on his 4 square metre patio before he saw my garden. Another ex took a full afternoon to present me with a square metre of perfectly weeded rosebed, and another likes to tell me that I should pave the lot. It always makes me laugh, this variety of approaches to life and thought.

Obviously, dealing with something on this scale when you have limited time, you have to organise your time effectively. At one point I was working 6 days a week at the bank, researching for the government, and conducting corporate interviews by phone whilst decorating and taking care of this garden, all with no assistance and a great deal of criticism from the rest of the family. Any spare time was spent making lists of things to do, their level of urgency, and the likely time of paint or varnish drying so that I could then schedule hoovering, mowing or chopping whilst waiting for other things to be ready to progress. In fact, the Sheep in Wolf’s clothing collection was started whilst I was conducting research from home, since the interviews were by telephone, nobody could see that I was sewing whilst working, hence my time was used productively.

You learn a lot about strategy from all this. Many people have the luxury of never having to learn about strategy, time management or having to accept a margin of error they would never consider if they did not have this level of workload.

So, to get to the point, debating detail is not effective for a broad brush thinker, who is likely to be more interested in the overall structure of the problem. A broad brush thinker is likely to become a large scale strategist, whereas a ‘devil in the detail’ expert is what you require when you have already determined the shape of the problem at hand.

It hugely surprised me, when I was working on a (personal) three dimensional economic project in 2009 or so, that the economists I wanted to involve in the problem did not understand what I was talking about. After much messing around, I finally found a physicist in France who understood exactly what I was saying, who told me that basically I was a car designer, trying to explain myself to a crew of mechanics who wanted to know the specifics of the problem. I desisted with the project at that point, since I felt it unlikely that I would find a crew willing to spend months experimenting to achieve something on my say-so. Such is the problem of the broad brush thinker. We have great ideas, but without the means to carry them out via a team of detail mechanics, we may not be much use. When it comes to tackling improbably large projects however, we are exactly what is required for the job.

It struck me last week or so, when despite the screamingly awful Leave Campaign in the UK, I felt very concerned for poor Boris, that I now recognise and resonate with other broad brushers without even realising it. (Wolfe was a broad brusher too.) I wonder how many more I can find, if I look around? And will my own capacity for grand strategy ever achieve anything useful or be given an opportunity for useful endeavour? So far it seems to have done little for me apart from ensuring that I become extremely bored with small problems and making sure my parents’ family is taken care of.

I cannot help the way I think, any more than someone who imagines that their love of following rules or sticking to tradition despite the disadvantages can help the way they think. I get a lot more done, and require less in the way of help, especially in situations where the way forward is not always clear. This does not mean that you end up with a precise result, but you do get a result.

It all comes down to approach, your ability to prioritise, your willingness to get the job done. A detail oriented person is fabulous when you approach the end of a task, but they are as useful as a chocolate fireguard when you are creating something new. You cannot add the bells and whistles before you have something to hang them on.

So, before you create your masterwork, always draw the sketch. Before you add the embellishments, create the scheme. Before you list the tasks, determine the problem. All of this takes careful thought and a willingness to stretch and bend your reality. Once you have done all that, then you will have a good idea how to present the tasklist in order to solve the problem.

motivation, politics

Intelligence and Flexibility

July 2, 2016 No Comments

Intelligence and Flexibility

I used to think intelligence was linked to knowledge. I think most people make this mistake. The two things have some connection, in the form of memory and capacity to learn new topics, but I can honestly say I never heard people say ‘I don’t know’ as often as I did at university, amongst very learned colleagues and academics.

There is nothing wrong with saying ‘I don’t know.’ It certainly beats pretending you know, or assuming that you know. As the human quest for knowledge has developed, we have attempted to remove cultural and time related barriers to learning by opening everything up for debate. It does not matter what field you are in, or how advanced you are, debate is welcomed by those with knowledge, in an effort to actually further the field.

What we are seeing now in UK politics seems to me to be an attempt to feign knowledge and discourage interest by maintaining tradition that does not exist. Labour and Conservatives are concentrating hard on killing off their most popular candidates, in favour of forcing us to vote for an increasingly vague ideology, led by rather authoritarian and not-particularly-appealing figures whom we are encouraged to dismiss and dislike.

If you have a look around, politics now is rather bland compared with the days before we joined the Common Market. Scenes of people being removed from debates and hustings style appearances were once commonplace. People were highly engaged, and political representatives actually allowed some influence from the people they purported to represent. When did we decide that accurate representation and the interests of the public were subordinate to a bland version of the original ideology? When did people like my Conservative neighbour decide that it was OK and not terribly important that thousands of people die after being sanctioned or starved by Conservative policy? When did people stop feeling?

Perhaps this is the secret of of figures like Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson. Both have a liberal mass appeal, from the opposing sides of an age-old argument that more philosophical thinkers recognise. Stronger meat, and yet street-friendly interpretations of a system that has become stale, self serving and that fails to engage people, even as thousands of disabled people fall victim to strokes of a policy pen.

Perhaps this is the reason that such figures must be removed. If people are too engaged in what our governments are doing, then we will actually notice that it is not OK for people to starve to death, or be blamed for poor social management and inhumane policy. Perhaps we will notice that government is serving masters other than the voters they claim to represent.

In both cases, the parties are killing a golden opportunity for positive change, and we are supposed to eat our cereal and watch it happen, knowing full well that they will be replaced by less interesting, less engaged and more Machiavellian forces in the form of rather tedious career politicians, who care a lot more about the number of gnomes in their garden than they do about actual events or progress. If we are not interested, they are more likely to get away with policies that we do not find desirable or necessary. Whoever is pulling the strings on the crucifixions, they know full well that an engaged, optimistic population is the last thing they want or need.

The civic sense of community has, of course, been eroded by the massive changes in our behaviour in the last two or three decades by the internet. Now, instead of street by street hivemind disagreement and/or collective action, we have old versus young, fat versus thin, right versus left on a far wider basis. We dispose of people quite readily on the grounds of a photograph, or a sentence that may not suit us. We are encouraged to be childlike and yet inflexible. Instead of admiring the capacity for change, we accuse people of flip-flopping or being inconsistent.

It has been amusing, watching the heartfelt anti-democratic protest and accusations of the last week. Amusing because these same people see no merit in liberalism with walls, amusing because the government did not get the result they wanted or expected, amusing because the public, whether they did it wittingly or not, voted for what they believed was best for them and their future opportunities.

As I said in my previous post, it may be a good accident, and if we are patient, we may reap great benefits. It does not matter how things happen, it matters how flexible we can be in our approach to solving problems. That is what intelligence really is. It is not fear of the unknown, complacency about past achievements, or a reliance on conforming to a status quo that does not work. It is picking up the pieces and creating something new. It is making order out of chaos. It is seeing the diamonds in the dust.

As someone who stands outside traditional political boundaries, I am forced to assimilate information on an individual basis. It is rare that I commit myself to one ideology, because some arguments continue for centuries, and much politics is just theatre. It became apparent during my political and religious studies, that many arguments are designed purely to appeal to the ego. You should not regard anything as being ‘true’ or false, because our reality is shaped by the frictional warzone between extremes. All you can do is make your best guess, and then make sure you do the work to produce a desirable outcome. Unwillingness to do this is unwillingness for positive change, and the moronic desire to remain in your comfortable shell.

motivation

Shun the weak

June 20, 2016 No Comments

One of Harry’s favourite sayings, when I was still with him was “Shun the weak.” It usually referred to people who confused me by being a bit lame, but since my recent conversation with him, I now realise that he thought that I was the sort of person who does this, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including my relationship with him.

As someone who has attracted many weak men, I now have quite a bit of knowledge of them. People have different opinions as to what constitutes weakness, of course – I am sure a go-getter like Wolfe would think it was weak to look after a disabled person, for example, but as someone who has actually done it, I can tell you he would not have the foggiest idea what he was talking about. Rehabbing a person back from stroke and multiple bereavements takes a kind of strength people like him know nothing about.

So, let us begin by deciding what I mean by weak on this occasion:

Intense jealousy
Unwillingness to accept the knowledge or kindness of others
Inability to think for themselves without reference to others
Desire for the positive opinions of others, however transitory
Contempt for people not in their social circle
Driven by acquisition or ‘putting one over’ on others
The wish to prove the stupidity of others
Inability to accept that other people have opinions or requirements independently of them
Need for admiration
Inability to admit when they are wrong
Inability to make decisions without a reference point involving the opinions of others

I was aware when I spent a lot of time with Aldous, that he believed that people only rated in relation to social worth, and since I do not choose to spend time with groups of people, I came fairly low on his idea of the pecking order. He was most surprised, when we travelled, that I had a wide range of friends in fairly far flung places, that although I did not see them often, knew me extremely well. It amused me intensely that I went up several notches in his estimation, purely on the basis that a bunch of people he didn’t even know liked me.

I doubt that he even considered that having met his friends years before, I preferred to spend my time alone actually doing things other than drinking or smoking weed. I doubt very much that he consciously thought about it at all. He was probably busy filing reasons for disliking me away in his little cabinet, a habit his brother also clung to.

One of the first things I noticed when it came to Wolfe, that he was basically an Aldous or Harry who has happened to make some money. This puts him into a secondary or tertiary category when it comes to his immediate social circle. It is probably just as well he keeps himself busy, or he might actually notice that he isn’t as popular with them as he might think. It takes time, confidence and a lot of introspection to get to the point where you no longer need anyone’s approval and you can afford to let go of things like jealousy, the desire for blind faith etc. No realistic relationship consists of people admiring each other to the point of mutual and public masturbation, which is why Ina is necessarily a fairly spiky character.

Personally, I am very guilty of being too polite, overcompensating for people’s feelings if I determine that there is something I can do about it, and putting other people before myself. This is a different kind of weakness. Whilst I have no problem with confrontation, I am well aware that other people do, and so I take measures accordingly. Not everyone has the benefit of ten years working under extreme pressure and getting the job done, so they often prefer to bitch behind your back. My advice is let them, shrug it off and get on with whatever you want to do. Generally speaking, if you do this, sooner or later someone else will come along and join in, slowing you down considerably. It is up to you whether you allow this or run away, but running away sometimes has unintended consequences.

Try starting your day by affirming that there is nothing wrong with you. If you find that other people have a problem with that, try ignoring them. If this does not work, try moving away from them altogether. Jealousy is useless to you. If someone wants to be with you they will be with you. Nobody admires you 24/7, so stop seeking that out. If someone says that they do have blind faith, get rid of them because they are probably stabbing you somewhere you just cannot see. Life is not that simple, but you can simplify it considerably by dropping the boring baggage.

motivation

Damaged people

June 20, 2016 No Comments

Further to the previous post, I have taken some time to think about damaged people today. I am sure most people do not bother to consider why people act the way they do, but as someone who is easily confused by crap people, I have spent a long time considering damage.

Sometimes people cannot help the way they behave. One friend of mine is continuously manipulative, constantly looking for weaknesses to exploit, and when he finds a way in, takes it to the max. He does this to make himself feel in control. It is not much fun being at the receiving end of this, but the other 80 or so percent of the relationship is fine, so I tend to let myself become extremely depressed by the time I point back towards the boundary he has crossed.

It was extremely out of character for me to fight back when Wolfe ate me up and spat me out as worthless 6 years ago. Normally I would have absorbed a considerable amount of pain and been very unhappy. Instead I created Ina.

My life really ended at 33, when my father moved downstairs in the course of his battle with dementia. This meant that my going out at night would have been inconsiderate, and my mother’s heart problem and refusal to get treatment meant I was quite frightened to leave her alone in the house in case I came back to find her expired.

Since then, I have been continuously attacked by both friends and relatives, for a variety of reasons. I am no angel, but grieving for five people was seen as an opportunity to pile as much pain on as possible. In the case of my friends, they were fairly damaged people to begin with, had hit middle age, and thought they would come back and do whatever they liked to make things worse. In the course of this, they were sometimes quite helpful. Harry, for example, was very helpful with my mother in the weeks following her stroke, staying in the studio so that she did not become confused, enabling me to continue working for some years whilst caring for her.

My relatives were the real shocker. They refused to pass on information, they refused to help, they refused to acknowledge their parents’ illnesses, they told me that life would be better if I didn’t exist, and then they tried to use badmouthing me to rob their own parents. As you can imagine, I was pretty shot up by the time the Wolfe incident happened. (see welcome page for a sanitised Wolfe friendly version of this.)

Basically by the time it got to the strangely devastating first blocking – there have been about nine, between his personally blocking me and his dumb staff doing it – it was a case of fighting it or losing my spirits entirely. As I was dragging mother through the worst period of her life, losing my spirits was not an option, and besides, Wolfe doesn’t have much of a clue about anything other than how to make money out of health food. You cannot be a genius at everything.

Every piece of information people have tried to pass to me about Wolfe paints a picture of a horrible, selfish person who assumes that being nice to him means they are stupid. I do not believe this picture, from the scanty information I derived directly, Sam, whilst being a cleaned up version, is closer to the mark in terms of general cluelessness. Personally, from the few interactions, I preferred him when he was a bit fed up and laconic, but you will be lucky to catch him in this more appealing and less exuberant mood.

The key to this mode of personal presentation is a fear of seriousness, so as you can imagine, a fat academic woman is not something that he finds particularly appealing as someone to waste five whole minutes on. Wolfe has hit a mark of popularity and brevity which yields maximum results. Seriousness is neither desirable, nor an option if you delve too deeply. This was key to Ina’s development. I wasted years worrying about hitting a mark nobody else would even know exists, in terms of my academic and artwork. So, it was entirely appropriate to start banging out lots and lots of new forms of the work I had been developing for years.

So, when I dissect Wolfe, flatter Wolfe, or decide to finally discard Wolfe, it is because I mean it, not because I have ulterior motives. This is not something he is likely to ever understand, because he has no time to understand anything beyond the question of whether there is money or girls involved. That is OK. Once the book and third section of the artwork is complete, it leaves the game to be completed. This is still a couple of years worthwhile work, for a person who neither gives a shit, nor shows any sign of growing out of a petulant sulk he has maintained for five years now.

I sincerely hope he finds the airhead beachbum that considers it worthwhile to lose her figure sitting on her ass working as hard as I have worked for no results at all in terms of attracting the slightest bit of fucking respect or courteous behaviour. Then I hope that he jumps off the nearest cliff.

motivation

Time off is dangerous

June 19, 2016 No Comments

Time off is dangerous

As with my career in catering, now a long time ago, caring is a full-on thing to do. You are basically on-call 24 hours a day, for a person who if they are human, will not appreciate what you have had to give up for them all the time, and who does not rate you much higher than a vacuum cleaner, if they even remember what that is.

My mother’s time in hospital this time has been very different. Nobody is interested in her medical background, they apparently believe that she went from fully functional to late stage dementia in one giant step, and even as I try to inform them of the background information they need, they continue to tell me that I do not matter.

Now the I don’t matter thing is normal. My mother has told me many times that I do not matter. The department that tried to take her house told me that I do not matter, my siblings have been at great pains to declare that I do not matter, and the inadequate males that I have wasted my life on have all decided that I do not matter after many months of being assured that they do. The I don’t matter thing is a central theme in my life.

It is one thing to be strong and generous enough to discard this and carry on regardless, and it is another when your health is starting to fail because you too have decided that you do not matter. Every time you allow your friend to stand in your kitchen and tell you that you are selfish for wanting to eat properly and therefore do not want crap food in your house etc out of politeness you too are agreeing that you do not matter.

There is only one problem with all of this. I do matter. Without me, my mother would have been dead years ago, the house and money would have been gone, nobody would have maintained or looked after anything, and my lengthy queue of guys that could not be bothered thinking for themselves would be in an even worse state than they are already. My siblings and a few of my exs would all have a criminal record and my cats would be split up and rehomed elsewhere. If I decide that I matter, then everything falls apart for pretty much everyone around me.

Now it is the hospital that are deciding what my mother needs, based on no knowledge of her at all apart from recent testing, and they are telling me that I do not matter. I am supposed to meekly agree to having the house invaded by strangers several times a day and allow access to my lunatic sisters, who will use this opportunity to have me under continual investigation for whatever deranged garbage they trump up this time.

I am now seriously considering refusing to participate in any of this, which means that my mother would have to be put into care, my siblings could take their bullshit somewhere else, and I do not have to wake up petrified every day, looking for other things (like Wolfe) to care about rather than address any of this.

I am tired of people so full of shit that they cannot spare the two minutes of flexibility to consider what they are putting other people through. Inflexibility is a strong marker of poor health and aging. These people apparently need rings through their noses, so they can be led by some patient person to stare at the blisteringly obvious and be told what to think, because apparently they cannot manage it.

The continuing situation has been killing me for some time, it killed my son, which upsets me every day, and I do not think any of these people deserved anything like the quality of care that they got. Wolfe is a cheap scumbag, my exs mostly took advantage, my mother was a cruel, irrational and unfeeling woman who watched me weep day after day and refused to address the issues with the family she seems to think she did not need to parent. At no point has anyone considered what I have been put through.

My goodwill has run out. I doubt it ran out fast enough for my health.

creativity, health, motivation

The ego and creativity

June 7, 2016 No Comments

The ego and creativity – Wolfe’s kiss farewell

Today I had an extremely offensive conversation with one particular friend. He has some very strange ideas about creativity, so I am going to address these ideas very slowly, in a format that he is very welcome to absorb in a space where he cannot commit an assault.

There is a chasm of difference between developing an idea, and developing a marketing strategy. We can see from our television channels that shooting for the lowest possible denominator in the hope of viewing figures is not the way to achieve quality. We can also see from many arthouse movies that self indulgence does not always produce something that you would want to watch.

My friend, who makes arty movies which he does not bother to market, likes to prevent me from speaking at all by attacking me verbally whenever I try to explain to him that he has his priorities a little confused, making it impossible for me, as an extremely patient and understanding friend, never mind anyone else to work with him.

Today, it was a possible sit com that became impossible to even conceptualise, because he imagines that finding a marketing person that will make the magic exposure problem go away is more important than developing a product. This means that you cannot even develop your idea sufficiently to make it worthwhile, never mind discuss it to the point that you get any actual work done.

I have previously tried giving him simple open ended tasks to complete alone, with the idea that if he is left to complete something himself, I will not be at physical risk, and he will gain the satisfaction of moving a project on a stage. Even this has resulted in such a strong stress response that it is not possible to get anything done, and so two projects so far have had to be abandoned. He then likes to tell me what he thinks I asked him to do, which is nothing to do with what I actually said, because he was not listening in the first place.

Now this problem is caused by stress. In particular a fragile and super-stressed ego, so today I tried using myself, and then Wolfe, as an example of how other people work. In my case, as money is not an issue at present, I like to spend one third of my time on the piece of work, and two thirds of the time allocated on marketing the piece of work, whether this is over a month, a year, five years really does not matter as long as I have the time and space. Therefore there is a fairly consistent flow. For someone like Wolfe, for whom money is very important, he spends maybe 5 minutes out of an hour doing the work, and 55 minutes out of the hour telling the world that he has done the work. This can be done by passive or direct means, but whether you believe him to be a loudmouth Yank or not, he is certainly more successful, in a very niche market, than anyone else.

You cannot market a product that cannot exist due to temperament. In order to market thin air, you have to be a convincing person with a track record of actually achieving what you set out to achieve. Your cheaply made arthouse movie can do this for you, if you actually bother to develop your skill to the level where you are presenting something watchable. In order to do this, you have to consider the wider public rather than trying to sell yourself to a ‘marketing person’ who probably doesn’t exist.

700 people a month look at my artwork on the website. I maybe tweet it twice a month to achieve that, the rest of the hits coming from the relatively unrelated blog. This is a good use of time, develops my writing ability and expression, and gives me time to dream up more complicated versions of my work. I picked up a lot of information from Wolfe in this respect. Worrying about what people think of you, or failing to promote yourself is not useful to you. Insulting your friends by preventing them from helping you and telling them repeatedly that their views are irrelevant whilst they try to give you the information that you need is also not useful to you, as they will simply stop trying at all.

A master of an art is not an egotist, too frightened to input feedback. Very much like a British academic, they will listen to the most obscure information related to their interest area in an effort to improve quality, improve audience figures, expand their area of interest.

In my case, since my work is usually produced when I am wounded in some way, annoying me is what usually gets you a piece of work in the first place, which is why Wolfe was such an excellent candidate. He lacks understanding or respect for other people, however, which is why it is now more interesting to me to find some fresh meat.

I cannot help my friend with the knot he has tied himself into. I am just not putting myself in that position again, which means conversation is now likely to be severely limited. If I acted towards him the way he behaved this morning, I would now be in hospital. The great pity is that I doubt a single word I said went in, and so nothing will change.

If you are a creative person, bear in mind what I have said. Even if you do not like your work, it is important to either bin it or promote it to allow others to feed back to you. Otherwise you could find your passion drained by circumstance, and unless your spark is as self-healing as mine, you could end up bitter, hostile and unable to access your own genius.

Thank you David, for being careless, rude and a bit sexist and stupid. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

The post The ego and creativity – Wolfe’s kiss farewell appeared first on Ina Disguise – Author.

creativity, motivation

Tired of the dislikes, Wolfe.

June 5, 2016 No Comments

It has been nearly ten years, since my mother’s stroke, a month before my father died. I have reached the end of my productive adult life as a female, in terms of having a career or having a child before it is too late (not physically, I am unlikely to trust anyone enough to procreate before the time is up, given my slow burn mentality.)

I frequently cry about this, I pretty much started crying as soon as I saw Wolfe. Not for the obvious reasons, just the polar opposite, confident male version of me. These are not all good qualities, given the errors in plain sight etc. He makes me feel very battered.

I did wonder, for a long time, whether there was envy involved in my interest in him. I also wondered why, as someone considered very knowledgeable by even my drinking buddies, I would seek what would be considered to the untrained eye a ‘himbo.’ These people would not understand as I do, the amount of time and commitment Wolfe has had to put in to make his extensive knowledge of natural health look superficial and effortless to the jaded European passing interest eye.

I have been horribly bullied since childhood. I wondered, as a child, why I got on better with my teachers than I did with my own family. I remember at ten or so, having to leave the room because my sisters were shrill, inane, and extremely nasty.

Last week I tried to notify one of them of my mother’s impending operation. Her response was that this was not good enough for her. She only really sees things in terms affecting her. The fact that she had already had a letter explaining the operation had escaped her, because apparently my ability to write frightens her. Were I to describe a summer’s day, she would find it weird and patronising.

So, as you can tell, I am not dealing with brains of Britain. My mother used to tell me I would have to look after them after she was gone. I thought this was very odd, given that I was a small child, and they were ten and sixteen years older, and consistently nasty. Now I am less surprised. My mother, herself pretty unpleasant until her stroke, was identifying the stronger party.

Being strong sucks, however. You get dumped on, everyone expects you to cope on your own, and they think it is quite alright to attack you over and over again. I am a bit fed up, to say the least. I have had to say to her, in all seriousness, that either I have to now demonstrate some form of parental discipline, or she will have to go into care as I am not safe from my own siblings, who have proved themselves to be greedy, dishonest, extremely nasty and extremely ruthless in their pursuit of role playing power points and financial entitlement.

I did not take care of their parents for reasons of power-mongering, but this is what they have always been so scared of, and which is now a horribly self-fulfilling prophecy, and the only way out of it, it seems, is for my mother to live elsewhere in case they want to visit. (in my brother’s case, the visits are now every five months, so this seems like an expensive waste) I am not sure that I see a way out, other than our moving so far away that they cannot visit at all, and this would be complicated by my mother’s progressing illness, leaving us open to further legal attacks from her own children.

So there we have it, the opposite of a go-getting, driven, confident and rather slutty male, is a shy, harried, equally loquacious but somewhat different female that gave her life away for a family who neither deserved nor appreciated it. I have distracted myself from misery, by investing myself in amusing my opposite, who remains unamused.

I do realise that part of the reason that Wolfe hates everything is to let me know he has seen it so that I can take it down, and I also realise that I am insufficiently worthy of note to really affect him at all, but it still pisses me off that I could not even manage to get a sensible conversation out of him in the first place. He spotted me, and then apparently made several incorrect assumptions, based on erroneous ideas about worth, purpose and interest.

I just wanted one thing to go right. I wanted one thing to be appreciated and used appropriately, and I wanted to make something of a life that had already been taken away.

You could say that something else was created, but whether it is worthwhile beyond comforting a few thousand other emotionally scarred people, I don’t know. At least it got me writing in the first place, I guess.

It is unlikely that my family will notice that they have messed up until they have lost everything. It makes me very sad that other people cannot even let my mother die the ways she wants to, and that I am becoming less committed to fighting them. Being strong sucks, and being kind sucks even more.

creativity, motivation

Amos Yee and David Wolfe

June 4, 2016 1 Comment

Sorry I have not updated in a few days – I have been catching up with the backdrop for Wolfish, working on finishing some work under my own name, mother has been super – ill and even I thought she was dying of old age, rather than her persistent infection becoming even more persistent. It just goes to show, you must fight even when it seems utterly hopeless. She is now recovering from a particularly virulent UTI in hospital whilst I take a rest from being me from a few days.

Yesterday I discovered the story of Amos Yee, a charming yet precocious 17 year old in Singapore, who has turned performance art into protest and is facing many charges and years in jail for simply speaking his mind via his blog and youtube channel As a formerly spritely 17 year old myself, I recognise the spunk, but I have to say he is exceptionally brave to be putting himself at risk to change his country’s culture in this particular way.

Compare his efforts to the genius Seo Taiji, sometimes referred to as the South Korean president of culture for his efforts to develop his country’s cultural life via his music career and influence, and you can see that Amos has some hope of achieving his goal of encouraging free speech in Singapore, but his methods are scarily brave, and I see from some of the comments on his videos, that even his followers are terrified by the risks he is running. His parents, too, have been frightened of the repercussions, resorting to reporting him themselves.

Singapore has an appallingly repressed culture. The birth rate is low, due to men being encouraged to be ‘too polite’ to girls, and the economy is geared towards commerce at the exclusion of freedom, meaning that there are an awful lot of shopping malls but not much in the way of freedom of expression. I would encourage you to watch Amos and listen carefully to what he has to say. Although I question his need to ‘destroy David Icke,’ I remember only too well the clarity of thought and limited scope of action involved in being 17, and I hope, for this reason, he wins his personal battle with the jackboot of capitalism. Witness for yourself the future for countries indulging business over people. It ain’t pretty.

I see that David has caught my video. I hope he hasn’t missed hating me too much. (he still does, boohiss) I am working on the book, and will be a bit nearer publication in a few days. I will have to spend some more quality time researching Peru.

Kisses,

Ina

economics, motivation, politics

I’m right, quite a lot of the time

May 20, 2016 38 Comments

The entire story of this blog can be summed up in one word. Confidence. From the day I went from a disparaging stranger to first commenting to Wolfe in an effort to initiate the conversation we never had, almost six years ago now, the entire episode was all about confidence. Why would a keen thinker even bother trying to explain herself to a promiscuous dude selling health food in the first place? It all comes down to confidence, and in my case familial abuse. I thought for a long time before I even tried talking about my ideas to him, and then a lot of emotional upheaval took place which has led me to where we are now.

There are good elements and bad, in terms of consequences. I offer up a far more well rounded and arguably useful package now, since I have always been reasonably good at breaking down complex subjects into terms that even my not-particularly-interested friends could understand. I am less inclined to be flashy for a small audience, rather than down to earth and faintly comedic for a slightly larger one. You may not listen, and you may choose to block it out, but at least I now get a hearing in the first place.

There are several things which came to my attention have assured me that I was right and David Wolfe is/was wrong to ignore me:

A report, possibly two relevant reports, have indicated that GMO has failed to do anything at all for world hunger, as predicted in the writing he did not care to discuss with me.
Yanis’ view indicates that I am right in my thinking in relation to the ethics of allowing corporations to legally challenge governments. We have been at the mercy of false information via discreet lobbying for years, and now we are to get less than discreet legal challenges to force us to live according to profit makers’ wishes. Also as predicted in the original book.
The information on the European Union, provided for the referendum, indicates that the US encirclement policy against Putin is indeed at the heart of these not-particularly-nice trade deals we are being told we have to negotiate. (ditto) We are all supposed to form a giant trading circle around Russia. This is unhelpful, childish and stupid, and frankly I have more respect for Russia as a result.
The Asean nations may be quite happy to go along with this, but the Asean nations have a host of different costs and benefits to Europe. I always previously thought of Europe as being the responsible continental bloc, with less pressure in terms of suffering populations and being more fussy about food in particular, I imagined that the EU would save the world from the mortgage on life that GM has been turned into by American corporatism. As the German chemical companies are also rather keen on modifying genes to accommodate chemical profit-making, this is not going to be the case.

I am sorry Wolfe. I am sorry that I am not also 22, blonde, wearing a bikini or whatever your limited criteria is for speaking to people without messing about like a squirming five year old for several years. I am sorry that I am not a confident person. I am sorry that I thought that you would understand anything that I had to say.

It is a shame that I was going through so much at the time that I did not just dismiss him as an idiot instead of putting myself through all this in order to come back to the point where I appreciate my own mind. I could have lived without the food related self torture too. That side of things isn’t his fault, if I hadn’t bothered actually speaking to him at all, I could have avoided any of it. Discovering that he is even more insecure than I am in some respects, clouded my vision even further.

For the benefit of the rather stupid science ‘experts’ I frequently come across online – here is a short, concise description of what GMO actually does.

Patenting a seed, and then suing landowners if that seed is blown onto their land is a bit like granting the company doing it ‘God-like’ powers for the purposes of profit. It would have been very easy for a supposedly ‘God-fearing’ nation like America to simply spot the ethical problem with this and make an ethical decision that life is not patentable. They did not.
As with the Green revolution, where the USA sent chemical-treated seeds in an effort to feed the starving, instead of paying a blind bit of attention to local foodstuffs and issues with land, profit is at the heart of American altruism. All that happened was that small landowners were put out of business in favour of larger landowners who could afford equipment and chemical supplies to support the growing of unsuitable and unsustainable crops which did not provide year round food availability. This led in one notable case to a poorer village having to feed the next village, the next village having been stupid enough to agree to accept American donations. GM simply took the Green Revolution a step further. According to America, the entire world should pay them for growing food. This is what TTIP will lead to. It is a social and capitalist revolution, not one of altruism or concern for others.
Nature is extremely good at coping with interference. The only thing GM actually does in terms of reducing pesticide or herbicide use, is ensure that ecosystems develop systems for defence against man-made chemicals. This means that the aforementioned chemical company gets to invent another chemical, and stays in business indefinitely, passing the costs of development on to the idiots that agreed to this moronic system in the first place. It is only a matter of time before, like the movie, the Americans produce a crop which can be watered only with Coca Cola.
GM may have saved the papaya, but it kills thousands of suicidal Indian farmers every year. Yes, of course these people matter.
TTIP, TTP etc means that the very very large chemical companies will have the right to challenge any government objecting to feeding the population with GM food. They have already sneaked in a few without telling us, and now they will insist on the same non-labelling policy in Europe that they have inflicted on the American population. This will ultimately lead to a global disaster of mammoth proportions, with the double whammy of chemical resistance and no labelling. Who cares, right?
In addition, TISA can still allow American health companies to lobby for the right to invade our health services. You can look forward to lots of not very tempting bad food advertisements, in tandem with solutions for health problems you need never have had. That is how America works, and they would like us to share their bad management for fun and profit.

Do you want to exist in corporate slavery, to please a few lobbyists and politicians too stupid and irresponsible to see the consequences of their actions?

Do you want to live in a world where you are effectively forced to spend a large part of your life ill, in order to pay someone to make sure you do not become even more ill?

Do you want a world of opportunity, or do you prefer to live in a world where you have to toe the corporate line, whether that is about what you eat or what you do for a living?

Do you want to put up a barrier to your own entry to a market, whether that be by being a small landowner, growing whatever you want rather than being told, as many Americans are, that you cannot grow food on your own land because it doesn’t fit in with the fascist regime? Or by starting a business in an impossibly regulated market?

Do you want private prisons and capital labour?

Do you want armed police turning up if you milk your own cow? (yes, this has already happened in the US of A.)

Do you want an inferior, uncritical corporate education to enable you too to cheer people like Trump?

Do you want to be denounced by a faceless PR company or even your own doctor if you speak out against any of this?

If this is what you want, keep going as you are, because that is the future we are looking at. Sit and play some more Candy Crush Saga, and see if that helps. Make sure that you rid yourself of conscience, self directed thought or any feeling that you can do anything about it. Look forward to corporate militia, because once the stupid politicians and corrupt individuals willing to agree to this retire to their tax haven, this is what you are left with.

Right, Mr Superhero, read it and weep. Move your ass, if you know how

creativity, motivation

Are you agreeing to be a nobody?

May 15, 2016 No Comments

Are you agreeing to be a nobody?

The good thing about having a temper is that you get things cleared up now and again. I tend to have a long fuse and nuclear sized blast, personally, which means that my relationships go through a lot of interruptions, unless I am in a particularly unusual situation. Wolfe may be surprised to learn that I have actually been quite subdued in my response to our various misunderstandings and mishaps, since it is usually unclear whether he is doing it himself, or delegating it to a minion.

If you have a look at the welcome page, you will see that Ina Disguise is a lengthy response to a rather rude, arrogant and complacent individual, who felt quite safe to assume that it was OK to insult a stranger. Your staff reflect you.

The fact that this stranger had already devoted a lot of time to something relatively important was entirely meaningless, and as a side product it wasted a lot of my emotional energy and time. This is not his fault, however, that much I do agree with. I come from a fairly narcissistic family, so I am used to the ‘what do you mean I upset her, it is her fault for being upset’ response.

So I was left with a pile of emotional rubble, no family, nobody to look up to, which is out of character anyway as I am not in the habit of investing emotionally in fame whores. People choose fame for a variety of reasons, and until I came across Wolfe, I did not have much respect for any of them. There are several reasons for his particular love of being well known. Pretty girls, money and providing people with health information, probably in that order.

So I was left with a number of alternatives:

I choose to accept that I do not deserve any common courtesy and am a nobody.
I choose to believe that I did something wrong by bothering to do a lot of intense academic work with the intention of offering it to a stranger who probably does not deserve it.
I choose to believe that I did something wrong by trying to give somebody a present.
I choose to believe Wolfe, my friend in London, or in fact Aldous, that I am way too ugly to be seen by anybody, and that women like me should crawl under a stone and die.
I choose to accept that by belief in any alternative hypothesis means that there is something wrong with me, and the evidence points to my having some sort of disorder, despite there being far less talented individuals out there promoting inferior values and work.
I rebel against a life history of being suppressed and do what the hell I feel like doing for a change.

It took several months to figure out the best course of action. I settled on Ina Disguise. There are a number of branches to the project, seen or unseen. The main theme is, that I refuse to accept that I am either one of thousands of ‘fans,’ (there are many aspects of his work that I utterly hate, and I do wish that he had a completely different life, so I do not think that this is relevant at all) or sufficiently inferior to the rest of the human race that I am not entitled to say what I feel, when I feel like saying it. In the unlikely event that he does any more than check in now and again and read everything at once, which is what he has been doing since I made initial contact with him, then it is his look out. He certainly didn’t care about upsetting me.

It would have been extremely unhealthy of me to agree to be a nothing, in order to do nothing, feel unhappy, and agree to be less than I actually am. I have, in many respects met my match, and it is likely that I will spend the rest of my life alone as a result, presenting a further range of responses. My personal choice is to enjoy the work and ignore everything else, and it benefits at least two people, never mind the thousands that have been entertained by my work so far. I am astonished at the number of young people and men, in particular, who have been touched by my alternative take on love, life and work.

Whatever your approach to life, next time you self-evaluate, think about what I have just said. Are you agreeing to be less than you are? Are you agreeing to be second rate, in order to please someone that did not really know or like you in the first place? Do you accept that everyone else is always right, and you are always wrong? If the answer is yes, then you are the equivalent of a battered partner. You are agreeing to be life’s punchbag. Just say no.

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