Day 39. Nothing is real. (8/2/19)

(Soundtrack: a radio show I did on the 8th May 2015 for Northern Quarter Radio; Songs They Never Play On The Radio (for that was the name of the show, stolen from the title of James Young's book on Nico's time in Manchester in the 80s) - With Love From Liverpool. Clips of scouse TV sitting between scouse songs. It's great. I loved doing the show but I really, really, loved the ones where I didn't speak. Contrary to popular belief I don't actually like the sound of my own voice. I just like talking about me. Here's a link: https://www.mixcloud.com/SongsTheyNeverPlayOnTheRadio/songs-they-never-play-on-the-radio-with-love-from-liverpool/ so you can all have a listen. There's loads where I talk but the music is boss.)

Perception. 

We were talking perception, weren't we?

Me and J had been talking about this blog. J had made the point that last time out I had loads of thought pieces, this time it felt more like a diary, like I was putting more of our life on the page. Which she was fine with but preferred the other stuff, found it more interesting.

So, yesterday's piece was that bit more thoughtful, provoked, obviously, by that photo of Everton fans  being used to set an unnecessary agenda and create disruption.

J had shared it to a couple of people who'd said lovely things about it and shared it further. The post blew up a bit. Always nice to see. And somewhere in the mid afternoon, I texted J to say:

"Tomorrow: the subjective nature of existence."

I sometimes think it started with the Walkman. It probably started long before that. Sartre or Camus probably noted it in the first half of the 20th century. Jean-Paul probably spotted it as he sat in a Parisian cafe, wreathed in the smoke from a Gauloise, considering the moment of existential angst.

There's the possibility that Aristotle pointed it out centuries back in the shade of a Greek olive tree. 

If they beat me to it, they beat me to it. These lads were paid to philosophise, I make shit up as I go along for free. Don't expect expertise, I'm basically an amateur getting away with murder.

The moment we had the Walkman we entered a world where everything was subjective. We didn't walk the world to the same soundtrack anymore. Whatever we were doing, wherever we were, the moment moved to a soundtrack of our own choosing. My tapes of Bunnymen and Velvets and 60s garage bands made my world sound different to your Iron Maiden and AC/DC and Led Zep, made both our worlds sound different to those listening to Beethoven, Brahms and Liszt.

(And bear in mind that CDs carried 72 minutes of sound because that was the length of the head of Sony's favourite symphony - personal stereos were very much built for classical.)

As technology built, the access to information built. The sound moved from tape to digital, the storage grew from one album per side to 160gb of songs. The choice, the variety was endless. We saw the same world, we experienced it individually.

Choice changed everything.

Building on the tech of the iPod to create the tech of the iPhone (or whoever you ascribe that development to) gave us access to information and visuals, gave us everything the world had ever had access to in the palm of our hand. More computing power than had put man on the moon in our pocket. In all our pockets.

And suddenly we were all looking at different things. We saw the world differently. We didn't necessarily engage with the world. We engaged with the world of our choosing.

We had choice. Choice changed everything.

Taking the technology that developed to carry everything we needed for this constant access gave us new ways to access entertainment. Gave us streaming. The 'water cooler moment' vanished. The idea that we all watched the same thing last night was no more. With the exception of major event TV - Game of Thrones as the best recent example. The 'did you see' became 'where are you up to in...... on Netflix? Okay, close your ears, there's spoilers'

We choose endlessly. And that choice separates us more than it connects us. There is no need for us to share an experience. There is no need for us to have opinions on things we didn't like because we chose to ignore them. There is no need for us to have an opinion on the reliability of the mainstream media because none of us are sure we believe in it. So we choose where we get our news from. And we accept the news that reflects us most.

We spend our time shouting into an echo chamber. Talking to those who agree with us. Which may be for the best as the last two years have shown that when we talk to those we don't agree with it's simply an endless litany of insults. 

We are isolated. We have isolated ourselves by choice. We have all the choice in the world but we limit ourselves. 

We are no longer a connected species. There is literally nothing that connects us.

Other than this:

We are made of carbon.

Carbon exists in the hearts of dying stars. 

We are literally made of stardust.

We are all made of the same thing. We all exist in the moment of creation, we are the substance of the big bang. We're a freak of nature with a limited existence and we're finding it more and more difficult to get along.

We're changing our definition of reality so that it excludes others.

And god knows there are others that I fully believe need excluding from reality (hello messrs Yaxley-Lennon, Farage, Rees-Mogg etc. And all their grubby followers) but they too have created their own reality. They have created a reality where bigotry is acceptable. They have accessed a reality where their echo chamber shouts back to them that their worldview is not only acceptable but commonplace while 'we' (the liberal elite?) are consumed in our echo chamber where it is obvious that good should always out.

And there's no way of getting our message to anybody who isn't us because they're already convinced that they are right.

And all sides are using that sentence.

We're broken down and we're so subjective about the world that we can't be put back together. Perhaps we were always broken down, perhaps our access to all that history has given us has simply allowed us to show how broken down we are.

So what do we do?

No idea. 

I have no answers. Perhaps the role of philosophy is simply to ask questions of everybody else. But, then, I'm not a philosopher. We've established that. I'm an amateur with a keyboard and an over inflated sense of the worth of my opinion.

Just like everybody else.

What we need at this point is a real philosopher with a statement to make. A man who can give us a message of unity that will point to us all being one and leave us with a creed to live our life by.

Here's Bill Hicks with the news:

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.”