Home Comforts

My home is pretty comfortable. It’s wind and waterproof, relatively easy (if expensive) to heat, and to cool down. I have a nice easy chair for watching the TV, and a pretty good broadband plan. What more could I possibly want?

How about the comfort of knowing that people who spread lies, disinformation, misogyny, every kind of -ism, freely and openly into all the homes and devices of the world capable of accessing the internet were subject to the same rules and tenets of acceptable behaviour that we expect of people in the ‘real’ world? Think about it.

If Andrew Tate and his like were walking on the streets, openly chatting to schoolchildren and spreading their ideas, taking money from them, there would be public outrage. If people conducted pornographic sexual acts in front of children in the streets, encouraging them to join in, would we sit back and say "Ooh that's not nice, you should fine them"? For years now, the world has watched the internet become an open field of human excrement, which seems to be impossible to police, because nobody will bite the bullet and call it for what it is. It is part of society, and is should be subject to the same laws and regulations that societies demand, in order to function decently and fairly. Isn't that why we have laws? Isn't that what a society is - i.e. a community that exists to keep its members safe, healthy, productive? Or have we evolved to be nothing but a bunch of self-serving individuals?

Of course, we haven’t actually evolved, as such. As far as we know, we have always been a complicated species, with the good the bad and the ugly-natured always with us. Personally, I believe all species have their fair share of these qualities. I just cannot accept the notion that humans are special.

My research into Archetypes, the subject of my Honours dissertation, led me to join with Carl Jung who believed that every human has within them every archetype in various degrees. Every culture across the planet tells itself stories in which these Archetypal ways of being reveal themselves. I used this concept to develop a training technique for actors, based on John Wright’s Mask training. In the process, I explored my own potential for being a Trickster, a Hero, a Mother, a Maiden and many others. One of my students asked me if there is an Archetype for everything? How about a taxi driver? Yes! I answered. How about Charon? The ferryman (taxi driver) who takes our souls over the River Styx to the Underworld. I reckon I have an element of Archetypal taxi-driver within me, every time I connect people from one discipline to another, or facilitate a performer from one Archetypal way of being to another. Who pays the ferry(wo)man?

And as you’ve probably noticed, I often digress, take an unexpected turn, stay on the roundabout for so long I end up back where I started…

Sometimes it is useful to follow a line of thought to its logical conclusion. So. Imagine the scenario. There is no internet. No place on earth where people can be openly hatefully misogynistic, pornographic, abusive of children without consequences. People who do these things are physically present and identifiable. Imagine there are whole communities of these people gathering together to share their abhorrent views and behaviours. IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR STREET. Wouldn’t you call the police? And suppose there was a whole country where all the people supported this behaviour, and they were invading your country. Wouldn’t you mobilise the armed services?

I don’t think I exaggerate. This is actually the scale of what has happened to the internet. Of all the benefits that it has brought us, they are as nothing to the scale of this invasion striking at the hearts and minds of our children – and their bodies. It has seduced us by incremental degrees over the years into thinking it’s a problem for someone else, that it’s not really so bad, because what would be the alternative?

Shut down the internet?

Oh dear. Oh no. We couldn’t do that. All our online banking? All the websites we rely on for our businesses? All the applications that make life worthwhile? Travel? Education? Entertainment. What would we do without them? What would happen to all the emails I send to Woman’s Hour ranting on about this? I’ll tell you. Absolutely nothing, they never read mine out.

Well, obviously there would have to be safeguards. Give the banks advance warning to get back into the branches perhaps. No, probably wouldn’t work. But here’s a thought:

If, as a society/community which values decency and the law of the land, our political representatives were to demand that the Social Media outlets and website hosting services be shut down until they removed all of these dangerous individuals and groups completely, they would refuse to do it. Right? So don’t just threaten them with fines. Send in the army. Besiege them in their buildings, and don’t let them out until they do it. If anyone escapes, throw them in jail. They are criminals. Anyone who runs, or works for one of these organisations, is engaged in criminal activity. And if it isn’t considered to be criminal in law, then make it so. No more namby-pamby ‘safety online’ legislation that just tinkers around the edges in an attempt to look good. A pathetic attempt to hold onto power. That’s all it is.

Hey! I know as well as you do that strikes involving government rarely work. But still I say, let’s call a General Strike and march on Westminster to demand Equal Rights for our children to live a decent, safe, productive life, free from online criminal, indecent, dishonest, manipulative, destructive (I’m running out of adjectives here, but if I just opened up Rhymezone I know there would be hundreds more – oh my lord, I am being sucked into the internet again. What a hypocrite!) behaviour.

Help!

If we really cling to the notion that we are entitled to some degree of ‘home comforts’, it has to include protection from these monsters. And that’s what they are. Complex human beings, just like the rest of us, but with monstrous tendencies and actions, entering our homes with impunity. It has to stop.

2023 (a song, to the tune of Homage to 2022)

There once was a new year that sank
Without trace after walking the plank
Time blithely sailed on
With a touch of aplomb
From the old year that certainly stank.

Oh 2023
All that I ask of thee
Is some peace and some quiet
Or believe me I’ll riot
Until 24 send you flee-ing.

There once was a year that was new
23 was its name, with a few
mild expletives around it
to keep it well grounded
Unlike its predecessor, 22.

Chorus

In the year of two oh twenty-three
There is so much to do, you’ll agree
Win the war in Ukraine
Keep the rain on the plain
Save the NHS and democracy.

Chorus

In the year of 2 OH twenty-three
We shall fight for the right to be free
From unhealthy biomes
No heat in our own homes
And all forms of misogyny.

Chorus

Thanks for reading my rant,
Flloyd Kennedy

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There's Snow

There is a common, popular misconception that Australia has only one weather pattern, and that is—hot. It's not true, of course. You don't get a land mass only slightly smaller than that of the USA without having variations in the weather. The northernmost tip of Australia is eleven degrees below the equator, while the southernmost tip is looking across the waves to Antarctica.

Snow has been known to fall in Australia.  There are even popular ski resorts in the Kosciusko Mountains, which are close to the New South Wales-Victoria border.  This is nowhere near Far North Queensland, or Papua New Guinea, which is where I grew up. So no, I never saw snow in Australia.

I'd heard about it, of course. All our Christmas Cards showed snowy scenes with holly berries and Santa's sleigh. Still do, as far as I can tell.

So my first experience of snow happened when I was en route from Australia to the UK in 1966, doing what was then a very Aussie thing to do called 'working my way' there.  Myself and my friend Kathy had travelled from Sydney to Piraeus in an ancient Greek passenger ship (you would never have called it a 'cruise' ship, believe me). After six weeks in Athens and Crete failing to find work, we hopped on a train to Vienna where we quickly found jobs as au pairs. Kathy's family had a lovely, huge, historic apartment in the city centre, mine was in a modern house in Sievering, a suburb on the outskirts which had been, until recently, a village surrounded by vineyards.

We arrived in mid-August, and it was a day in late November when winter arrived. Snow was forecast, so Kathy and I arranged to meet in town to greet it together. It was one of those shopping squares with a statue—I'm pretty sure it was Joseph Haydn—which we were strolling through when the first flakes began to float around us as if from nowhere.

If you grew up with snow, you probably have memories of dancing around and trying to catch the snowflakes. You probably remember the joy that seems to bubble up from your insides at the sheer amazement of how magical it appears to be. Well, I'm here to tell you, it has nothing to do with childhood.  We were both in our early twenties, and we danced, and we laughed, and we jumped up and down, and we tried and failed to create even one snowball, but who cared, we tried.

Sievering in the snow

The next morning, I woke up earlier than usual in my tiny au pair bedroom in Sievering. There was that unearthly light that glowed beyond the blinds. There was that strange silence. I tipped the side of the blind away, and saw the deep, thick blanket of pure white snow that covered absolutely everything.  The house was completely quiet, so I dressed with as many layers as I could manage, crept down to the front door, slipped my feet into my boss’s winter boots and borrowed her coat and let myself out. Carefully I placed my feet, one after the other, into the shin deep snow, until I was out of the gate. Fabulous.  Then I had an idea. Carefully, I walked backwards into my own footprints, back to the front door.  I was back in my bedroom for about half an hour before the children woke up, so I helped them to dress and we trooped downstairs for breakfast. Then they realised there was snow, so they rushed to open the door—and stopped in their tracks.

Such a simple thing. But oh, I still enjoy the memory. Young master "I'm Four Years Old and I Know Everything", in a hushed voice, saying: "Someone went out.  And they never came back!"

There's Snow!
There's no accounting for it
There's no way to explain it
There's no point in denying it
There's no excuse for ignoring it

There's no reason to destroy it
There's no time to lose it
If you want to enjoy it— 

Get out there and use it!

Thanks for reading, Flloyd.

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