Whatever happened to your story Don?

We were enjoying it.

Respect the Bears

Polar bears are very very fierce, but they’re an endangered species. I think maybe Ms Hart’s right that we should respect them for what they are. Will the little girl be alright though?

Respect—or Cash?

Does the black bear get as many of the gold coins as his mates? I mean, I’ve been making things all my life, working with my hands like the black bear, but I never got as much as the polar bears. You’d think if his work’s just as valuable he might see something for it. I mean more than just respect.

Against Discrimination; For Difference

Heavens above! My gosh, I never thought anyone would ever call me a racist! Everywhere I’ve worked I’ve busted a gut trying to eradicate all forms of discrimination from the workplace. No, it’s not racist, Tristram—it’s the very opposite of racism. This is all about cultural difference and how we must all learn to respect that. So we shouldn’t think of what the black bear does as being any less valuable than the polar bear’s work. And the colour’s unimportant—goodness! I hadn’t even thought of it that way!—they’re just bears to me.

Ms Hart’s Bear Story

Hmm. It’s interesting in a way, but isn’t it a bit dodgy? I mean, I don’t want to be rude, but it seems a bit racist to me.

Who Ate my Porridge? The Key to the Golden Locks of Work and Life

Once upon a time there were three bears—a black one, a brown one, and a polar bear. They all lived together in a cottage in the woods and they had a little business partnership. Their little community was a very happy and successful one, and each had fulfilled their aspirations in different, but equally valid, ways.

For instance, the black bear was very good at making things and loved doing simple manual labour, getting dirty and sweaty and exercising his muscles. He was very strong and would proudly show off his work to his two friends, feeling slightly superior as he knew they couldn’t possibly have achieved what he had. In truth, of course, though they were very impressed with the black bear’s work and respected him for it, they were neither very strong themselves, nor did they like getting sweaty and dirty like he did. They had different goals.

The brown bear was very good at buying and selling. He loved going to the market-place twice a week, with the fruits of the black bear’s labour in a little wheelbarrow (that the black bear himself had made). There, he would proudly display the goods they had produced together, talking eloquently and persuasively until a successful deal had been made. Eventually, everything would be sold and the brown bear would bring back a sack full of gold coins in the wheelbarrow.

The polar bear in turn was very good at organizing things. She loved thinking things through in advance, making plans, deciding what they needed to make and when, and who would buy their produce. She had huge note books and would fill them with big ideas that the other two didn’t really understand, but she’d draw pictures on big wall charts and talk to them until her ideas became reality. Sometimes she’d get a bit impatient with them and even a bit bossy, but they just would nod their heads and then laugh affectionately behind her back.

So they each had their separate roles and each was very successful at what they did and they were all very contented. Their little business prospered in harmony. This little enterprise was like a family and had been blossoming for a number of years. But they weren’t prepared for the advent of Change. Change in the shape of a hungry little girl with Golden Hair.

Now, I know by now this story is beginning to sound familiar to you. Well, be prepared for surprises—always a good motto for life and business, incidentally. This story is like the one you’re used to, but it has a different ending.

Fulfil your Aspirations

Well, I don’t like to brag but I’ve written a few books myself. In fact, I’m beginning a new one, and I hope you don’t mind sharing the creative process of my humble little offering. The blogosphere is a very good place to share ideas; sharing’s good for knowledge, and knowledge increases your potential. My new book is all about how to fulfil your aspirations by unlocking your potential and I like to modestly think that some of you in this group might be incentivised by my little fable. I hope it may even change your life—I have many readers of my other books telling me that their business and their life has been turned around by what I’ve written.

Poetry, Women, and Nature

Clary’s been lucky enough to benefit from our cure through dialogue—not adversarial, confrontational dialogue, but a listening dialogue where one accepts the other uncritically, allowing them to preserve their identity; the creative writing is the fruit of this dialogue. And we’re extending this therapy through creative writing to the whole community outside as part of OfTru’s programme of Public Art!

Poetry such as Clary’s does indeed show what a uniquely female consciousness can teach us. It allows us to see women’s difference as a creative force. Clary has transgressed the boundaries of humanity and nature, subverting the binary oppositions imposed by patriarchal desire. She shows how male aggression wounds the environment in the same way that it violates women’s bodies. I think an ecocritical approach that sees poetry imbricated with the natural world is far more fruitful than Dr Feramor’s—if I may be a bit blunt—rather reductive Literary Darwinism. Clary teaches us that a new spirituality can emerge from a feminocentric perspective that rejects all artificial dividing lines and restores our oneness with each other and with Nature. A universal healing community of wholeness where the destructive tendencies of human civilisation are replaced by a world where Nature is re-enchanted and an organic nation is nurtured from biotic communities whose strength is in symbiosis and diversity, like the natural world itself. The rhythms of this self-regulating biosphere become one with poetic metre and our own heartbeat and libidinal pulsations. Just as the Green movement fought for a clean physical world, this new ecosophy imagines a clean inner world; we want our social and mental lives to be free from the alienating pollution of twenty-first-century life. And we begin with rebuilding community values and purging ourselves of the toxins of antisociality.

Literary Darwinism

Well, of course, I’m not a specialist in literature, but I like to think of myself as cultured. There is compelling evidence to show that all literature serves the needs of natural selection. I’m afraid my chromosomes preclude me from appreciating the novel properly, but that outstanding writer Ian McEwan says: ‘Cognitive psychologists with their innatist views tell us that women work with a finer mesh of emotional understanding than men. The novel—by that view the most feminine of forms—answers to their biologically ordained skills.’ Thus, an appreciation of that sort of emotional writing we find in the novel is an expression of women’s reproductive role. And a fine thing too—without that we wouldn’t be here! Evolution is a wonderful process. Ian McEwan says again: ‘If one reads accounts of . . . troops of bonobo . . . one sees rehearsed all the major themes of the English 19th-century novel.’ So we see how our primate past is inescapable, even where the arts are concerned.

You see, Clary, evolution compels you to write in a way that reveals your nurturing instinct and identify yourself with the more benign aspects of organic nature itself. A male would have written a radically different poem—perhaps, indeed, about space travel as Joseph suggests. The male is driven by an outward-directed urge towards exploration in the way that the male primate goes out to forage for food and acquire new territory. I think Joseph definitely has a point in wanting to celebrate scientific achievement. It would have a certain social utility. Though why the need to be in poetic form, I’m not sure. There must be some physiological satisfaction in the rhythmic aspects of poetry that has a conditioning effect, encouraging the reinforcement of the evolutionary message.

Sorry!

It was just an idea Clary, honest—didn’t mean to diss your stuff. I mean I like fantasy fiction and that’s a kind of poetry—I’m not just into science and that. I like what’s imaginative.

Men!!!

That is so just a boy thing. God sometimes you’d swear they have no soul, they’re like computers themselves.

Poems

It’s very nice, Clary—you’re a really sensitive girl. I like the words. It makes me feel all sorts of things. But why can’t we have poems about computers and space travel and operating systems instead of trees and stuff? They’re cool, they’re twenty-first century.

Acephalin

This Acephalin, it’s ok because it’s organic. The Red Indians used it for thousands of years. It comes from Nature so there’s no harmful chemicals involved. It works with your body treating it as part of nature—holistic. It heals the Spirit. Yet I miss the sparkle when I’m thinking. I used to write poems all the time. I don’t have the thoughts like fireworks, like stars, anymore.

What's happening?

It wasn’t yesterday Clary—it was over a week ago!

Therapy

No, Dr Z doesn’t believe in chemicals—we’re doing dialogic therapy and other stuff. And Deva’s brought back one of my earlier lives—that’s her speaking.

Beautiful!

That’s beautiful Clary! What made you brighten up again? Did they give you Acephalin?

Happy New Me!

Sorry about yesterday Joseph, sorry everyone! And Happy New Year! Would like to have met you all at the party but I just wasn’t myself. You really wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me. Anyway, I feel better now. I’ve been having sessions, writing again, searching for my real self. I feel like I’m back to life. It’s the new year and a whole new world. I wrote a poem to celebrate.

Our Earth, Our Body

The Sun.
It is our life-giving semen.
Whales.
They are our singing conscience.
Flowers.
They are our flirtatious eyes.
Bees.
They are our imprisoned thoughts, trapped in the cells of the hive.

Trees.
They are our lungs.
The Nile.
It is our teeming womb.
The hunted, haunted Tiger.
It is our righteous anger.
Death.
It is part of the holy cycle.

Rain.
It is our infected blood.
The Rhino.
It is our pounding, pounding legs, ever seeking freedom.
The larks at break of day.
They are our tongues. The ‘sportsman’ has shot them down.
But my sad poem is like a fly caught in the spider’s web.

Our body is wounded.

OfCare: New Year Report

Now I know it’s the New Year, but the holiday’s over now, so it’s time to take off your party hats and put your work hats back on. First of all, don’t forget to fill in your happy sheets—we value your feedback.

Every now and then I’m going to use this blog to post educational notices about what we—with your involvement, of course—at the Centre are trying to achieve. And you’ll learn about the wider aims of OfCare at the same time. So we can really leverage the technology of blogging to maximise your personal development potential whilst keeping you up to date on our activities in the wider community.

Of course, we’re exploring the latest IT technology in the service of social cohesion and security. As well as your blog, we’re trialling Caring4Every1. It’s an IMS—Information Management System—for monitoring how our members progress under the Scheme. It’s been prototyped in schools, social services and prisons, so we know it’s a thoroughly robust, value-added system. We’re hoping eventually to roll it out to the wider Community as a cradle-to-grave scenario. You see, you really benefit from the most leading edge technology here! We hope to use Caring4Every1 to identify personality disorders at an early age, in schools and kindergartens. We should be able to track problems such as Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Disruptive Behaviour Disorder as soon as they appear. Other dangers that children face—such as drug-using or otherwise overly hedonistic parents—will be monitored: a holistic approach must treat the disorders of the family as well as the individual. We are seeking to identify the extent to which the emergence of psychopathic traits in children result from genetic or environmental influences. The whole aim is to retrieve those who might otherwise fail completely. No one must be excluded from Society. Every child will belong.

For the new year, some exciting opportunities for you all. OfWealth is working together with us on enterprise schools which will offer lessons in innovation, enterprise, decision-making, problem-solving, and leadership. We hope to grow a more entrepreneurial Britain, creating more jobs and wealth, and facing up to the challenge of globalisation. This pioneering new movement of ours brought you the Minimum Wage, but we won’t stop there! It’s been shown that one of the most effective cures for depression and other disorders is simply work. To help people back into work we’re trialling Basic Life Skills, covering Anger Management, Talking in Groups, and Waking Up on Time, to enable people to participate in our new flexible work patterns. So we’re targetting low achievers, such as the unemployed, and helping them to resolve their opportunity barriers. Dr Feramor thinks some of these may be genetic. He is currently seeking volunteers from R Wing willing to subject themselves to gene therapy in return for certain concessions regarding their citizenship.

As you know, our other sister agency, OfTru, is responsible for promoting our shared values and philosophy and keeping the community informed as well as entertained. Here’s a quick bulletin to update you on their activities. Basic lessons in citizenship are broadcast on every media channel, of course, so it’s hard to miss them. But there are other opportunities for participation being set in motion. Those entitled to the new Citizenship Training Scheme could be those who did not have the advantage of the lessons now so successfully instituted in our schools—the older citizens, those who are not from our shores, or those who need extra tuition because, through various impediments, the lessons didn’t communicate themselves. In an exciting new development, OfTrue are sponsoring educational reality TV on how to socialise children with behavioural problems—should be fun! So you can see, the war on antisocial behaviour is being fought on many fronts.

Well, that’s enough from me for now!

Sympathy

Of course we care, Roxanne. I think Dr Feramor may have expressed himself a little tactlessly, and I would certainly disagree with some of his proposals. But we all agree that these unfortunate women need education and therapy rather than punishment and I myself personally argued that they might stay here and be retrained into more productive areas. We are also working on programmes to identify and treat the disorder that animates the men who prey on them—prevention being far better than cure—and eliminate this blight on the community for ever.

Jesus Christ!

Doesn’t anybody care about those poor girls? They’re just trying to earn a living, they’ve probably got kids to support. They probably didn’t want to go back to poxy Latvia or wherever, they certainly don’t want experimenting on.

A Terrible Loss

I personally want to express my sorrow over the additional misfortune of the setback this has had on the exciting research we’re doing into the curing of genetic forms of antisociality. A real opportunity has been lost here. I am in favour of licensed, regulated brothels. Sexual urges should be accepted but socially and medically moderated. I felt that maybe the rescued subjects could have been employed in an experimental programme in connection with this rather than wasting a scientific opportunity by deporting them, but, alas, I was overruled by some of the more emotive and moralistic members of the community. As I understand it, they invoked the currently fashionable feminism without having a scientific understanding of evolutionary psychology and its contributions to the understanding of sexual difference. This has been a terrible blow to our research.

A point of information

The women in question had been moved to R Wing with the other refugees. Unfortunately, a tragic accident has occurred in R Wing—a fire, deliberately caused by malcontents, we have reason to believe, and the poor young ladies were consumed before they had the chance to be embraced by their motherland. There’s absolutely no reason to fault the efficiency or the practices of GB’s Security Division as some malicious persons have tried to do.

Adolescent Holocaust

My sympathies are with Don on this one in a way. Kate Moss is behaving like a man—displaying that typically male selfish pursuit of individual pleasures at the expense of society that we thought we’d seen the end of in the 1980s. Her past glamorisation of heroin culture was outrageous and she still carries on sending out the most dangerous messages. And the damage she has caused to the body-image of countless young anorexic women amounts to a small holocaust—think of their bodies and remember the photographs of Belsen.

Get real Don

Honestly, you’re such a nob at times. She’s just a pretty girl having fun.

Don't Worry

We’re looking after Clary.

Support

We all support you, Clary. We’ve all suffered in some ways and we care for you, don’t feel alone.

Don't feel bad

But we know what you are Clary and we like you—don’t feel bad. It gets lonely here, and that makes it worse, but people are listening and they will look after you.

Music

Woke up this morning with self-hatred thudding through my head. Sounds like a blues song doesn’t it? There’s no music though. I’m like trembling deep inside. Couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to join in. Sorry. Happy whatever and everything. Just lay there. I just think about how awful the next year will be. I don’t, I can’t move or do anything. Just lie there. Like a dead bird. Got up to do this. To speak I suppose. I’ve no free will. Caught in a net. My future’s empty. Because of what I am. Nobody knows what I am. Deep down in my blood. It’s lying there.

Don't Worry

We’re looking after Clary.

Clary

Someone said she wouldn’t come out. She won’t get out of bed. She won’t talk.

Happy New Year!

Well, Happy New Year again! I can’t believe we actually had a party and met each other properly! That was cool! I still feel a bit rough even though we were only allowed the two glasses. Great seeing you all. But what did happen to Clary? Where was she? I really wanted to meet her.