Don’t Believe the Truth

Tom Emery

Is it true that the more you are told something is the case the more likely it is that you’ll believe it?

We live in an age of information. Information is being forced upon us so much of the time. TV. Newspapers, the Internet, billboards- everywhere. Even when I go to the pub I can’t help but notice the newsreel that flows unabated across the screen over my mates shoulder. Timelessly, pointlessly scrolling across the screen. No sound, just the bare facts. But hang on, what is this? I didn’t ask to see this. And who writes it anyway? Do these six words that move from left to right constitute the real picture in the Middle East?

When you are young and beginning to mature from school child into adult you begin to really form opinions and perhaps become 'concerned' about such notions as politics and economics. Following this phase comes a realisation that perhaps things aren’t so black and white as the newscaster says... oh the injustice of it all! Tony Blair you bare faced liar! Bush you fool! What is this sham? Who do you take us for? Oh yes, I see, people really are dumb.

This fact was being highlighted to me continuously... a trip to California; photocopying a reams worth of paper in a day for a high street bank; working for an outsourced Sheffield City Council department and seeing the pace at which the wheels really do turn... reading Herman Hesse at the kitchen table alongside the jars of peanut butter that warn you ‘this product contains nuts’.

The next phase begins as I set sail to India. India has its problems too, but to a westerner with time on his hands, India still has its soul intact and can teach a lot...

So the traveller returns and the next phase begins.

Now the sham seems funny rather than depressing. See through rather than translucent and thus has no impinging effect on the mind. But after a while of no TV, no newspapers, no radio news and no BBC.co.uk: despite all of this the sham begins to surface once more into my vision but this time it’s boring. Just boring. For example: ‘This school is improving, blah’, when in fact the behaviour in the classes that I stand in front of is akin to that in a zoo. ‘Exclusions are down’, well yes they are but that is mainly because they are excluding fewer pupils rather than there being fewer pupils to exclude. ‘Exam results are improving’, yes but come on, the standards are dropping like a gold ingot hurled from a hot air balloon.

‘The economy is thriving... it’s in the best state since the year dot’. Have you been to Barnsley? No, didn’t think so. Just because you change the way in which you measure unemployment, does not change the dire situations in places such as these. And the environment. The poor old environment. Is the Northern hemisphere going to freeze over? Is the gulf stream going to change direction. Yes, no, I don’t know.... Well as I queued behind people pointlessly washing their wellington boots in the taps at muddy Glastonbury it underlined to me the fact that , despite my festival wristband exclaiming, ‘we can stop climate chaos’ there really is no ‘we’.

These people are too plentiful. They are irrational and beyond the state where their mind and ways of being can be such that their carbon footprint isn’t the size of that of some mythical beast of gargantuan size. And I find it so boring. Being told that things are OK, society is great and everything is fine. Individualism has won the day. I accept that I cannot influence the ways of this world. I do nought but see that I live in a manner befit of a rational, caring human being and I guess that’s the way that the powers crush the potential discontent of those such as me. They bore them with their stupidity.

A rational man knows he cannot tame a baboon. No, a rational man just observes the way in which it goes about its life. And I suppose the people washing their boots were not irrational beings at all they are acting out their individualist lives in perfect coherence with the way in which our western utopia demands of them.

As if straight from the pages of Aldous Huxley.

Hail to the TV generation.

Don’t believe the truth.



Shefstock 2007

Skippy

Drizzle: steady precipitation consisting of water droplets less than 0.5mm in diameter. Try saying “drizzle” to yourself 15 times, and you will find it loses all meaning. Drizzle drizzle drizzle drizzle drizzle drizzle drizzle, and so forth.

It was somewhere near Wharncliffe woods I think, but I can’t be too sure: my memory’s crap about stuff like this. Arrival was a little later than anticipated due to General Faffery (who was running night exercises in the kitchen) and it was dark. But that’s fine. No: best: stumbling down the potentially ankle destroying fire-road towards the muffled thrum thrum thrum thrum thrum of distant bass, no real concept of where we are complete darkness passing a joint back and forth with the occasional freak stumbling out of the gloom, muttering and grinning. A real sense of adventure, of something about to happen.

[I had missed the Friday night (intentionally) and also the Saturday day. Apparently both were rather splendid with dancing at the former and bands (and dancing) at the latter, but I feel unqualified to say owt about that so you’ll just have to imagine.]

The track slowly melts into a field, surrounded by trees. From left-to-right: breaks in an old, green military-type marquee thing, guarded by a humorous number of guy ropes; a big dome full of smoke, nitrous, cushions and tea; dub surrounded by the standard dub-issue cam netting; techno and other such beat-fuckery in green-and-white stripes, belching strobes into the omnipresent mist. In each tent a heady mix of ravers, hippies and anyone else in all stages of action from 100% focussed on the task in hand, to asleep.

I stole the phrase “beat-fuckery” off Matt. Cheers Matt.

Other than the appearance of a terrified child of maybe 8-or-nine (surrounded by insanely bright coloured flashes swinging wildly out of the darkness at head-height pounding terrifying nightmare music throbbing so loudly it’s all that exists or ever has existed and all around are making strange and horrible faces and staring wildly) in the tow of a parent more interested in their own enjoyment than allowing their offspring to choose whether or not they want to destroy their hearing and mind in such a way…

All was good, all was well. We sampled it all, but there wasn’t enough: there usually isn’t.

It’s why you go back for more.