Who Ate My Porridge? III

Well, I can certainly give you the last part of mine. I’m so flattered you all liked it so much; I do hope it’s inspired you in some little way:

You remember last time we visited the Three Bears, someone had eaten all their porridge, someone had damaged their chairs, and someone had been sleeping in their beds! Yes, it was a little girl—or a young woman, really—with long golden locks of hair. They were about to jump on her and eat her up when the polar bear said: ‘Stop. Wait a minute. This girl has actually helped us unlock the barriers to our goals.’ For it was true: far from ruining their lives, the young woman was key to a new way of living. She had made them look at new strategies of coping with change, new ways to look after their food, new seating and sleeping arrangements where they were flexible and didn’t take things for granted. So they went up to the little girl—whose name was, of course, Goldilocks—and gave her a big bear hug. For Goldilocks was Change, and you should always embrace Change. Then they invited her to sit down and have supper with them—porridge, of course!

Don's Spy Story

I liked Don’s better. It was a bit more real. And the spy theme’s really exciting.

Bring back The Bears!

And The Bears!!

My apologies, Clary

Well, whatever. Sorry. Talking of stories, what happened to Don’s ?

Reality

It’s NOT a story Tom—it’s real. It happened to me hundreds of years ago.

Story

Great story, Clary!

Prince of Baghdad?

You should come along to the sessions. You never know, you might turn out to be a prince. ;-)
I was in this place Baghdad. I was lying on a sort of settee, all embroidered. But I’m in a golden cage. There was perfume, musky perfume, in the air, and golden plates laden with pomegranates and dates and figs and melons. There was funny exotic waily music being played and black slaves waiting on me with big awful swords. I feel sorry for them because I’ve been there myself, I’ve been a slave, but I was frightened too—they looked so fierce! I’m wearing a veil and long beautiful richly embroidered gowns. I’m holding this scroll or something, and I’m reading this incredible story from it, even though I don’t read Egyptian. And the funny thing was, I’m talking non-stop, babbling away for England as though my life’s at stake, but I can’t hear a single word, like in one of those dreams. It was like one of those pre-Raphaelite paintings they have in the gallery in Manchester—have you seen them?

Incredible Princess

Yeah, tell us more Clary. What were you saying about being a princess? Sounds amazing!

New Union Me!

Great new flag! That’s just how I feel after regression therapy! I’m like all these different identities all at once!

The New Union Flag

I’m afraid the colours haven’t come across properly—we’ll get the technical team onto this. But we can all pause for a while and celebrate our community through this noble symbol.

Flag Waving

We can still celebrate St George’s Day, Don, of course, if we’re not offensive about it, though we must pay respect to other heroes that have also contributed to our rich and diverse heritage. So we should respect Saints Patrick, David, and Andrew, of course, but let’s not forget we now have Mandela Day, Diana Day, Trafalgar Day, Gaia Day, St Sebastian’s Day, and many other new festivals that celebrate our rich culture and tradition. Of course, at present, our productivity glitch means that we can’t actually grant any more state holidays. We don’t want to end up like France and Italy. Sloth, I’m afraid, is still one of our national vices, despite the educational projects we’ve set up with OfWealth.

I think what you’re worried about, Don, is waving the St George flag. We can’t really allow that as this once-proud emblem has been hijacked by Fascists. And telling the old story about the Saracen—we do have to be careful there. But we do have the wonderful New Union Flag, with its black, pink, purple, and green areas to show the inclusiveness of diversity and our dependence on the environment. I can’t help shedding a few little tears every time I look at it.

As you know, the new flag came out of a competition in schools throughout the NUK after consulting focus groups. Some designs had to be rejected, good as they were, as we wanted our new corporate identity to have some continuity with the old and also to avoid clutter and illegibility, of course. The New United Kingdom is such a wonderfully diverse society—think of all those marvellous street markets and the exciting new vegetables we can buy. But we simply couldn’t fit everybody’s identity in, I’m afraid. We had suggestions for the woman’s symbol, the Welsh and Chinese dragons, Diana’s face. The Islamic crescent—well, in present circumstances some groups unfortunately might have been offended. We had recommendations from the Cypriot community, Latvian guest workers, Wiccans—all these had to be turned down. Though we truly are living in a New Union these days—no-one is excluded from society and the flag welcomes everybody. So this is one flag you can wave with pride, Don!

Harry Humanely Pacified

Well, OfTru have now intervened strategically and pacified that voice as part of the War on Lies. From now on, you’ll only hear a genuinely independent voice that carries on the democratic tradition of the blogosphere. Luckily, OfTru’s charter permits its intervention on humanitarian grounds against antisocial journalism and web sites. And, to make you feel safer, just as OfTru has certain powers in the New UK, so OfPax is licensed to operate abroad to combat illegal ideological combatants—and their websites, TV stations and so on.

Harry's Place

Yeah, I saw that Harry’s Place one—thought it was pretty funny! Knew it couldn’t be for real.

Cheap Satire

We’ve just been passed some bad news from OfPax that undermines some of the optimism we all share about the Blogosphere. Unfortunately, some of those bloggers whom OfTru had identified as independent thinkers bravely defending our own values in the face of widespread ignorance and anti-Western prejudice have turned out to be antisocial propagandists of the worst sort. Blogs like Harry’s Place, while ostensibly supporting our crusade, turn out to be cheap mockers whose web sites are attempts at satirising our arguments.

Bear Diary

And then the polar bear went and scribbled down all her inner feelings and ideas about organization and stuff into her precious private notebooks that nobody ever read or gave a toss about.

Great Piss Take!

That’s dead funny Roxanne—hilarious. Don’t you think so, Mrs Hart?

Bear Necessities

I’ve got an idea for Mrs Hart’s bear story:

When he saw all the porridge was gone the poor black bear sobbed his heart out, for he had a she-bear and sixteen little cubs in a tiny crowded cottage in the shitty part of the woods, and he wondered desperately how he could feed them all, knowing he had but one packet of Reddybrek in the cupboard. The brown bear was also troubled. The polar bear was not so sad, however—she had prudently set aside a secret store of sacks and sacks of Quaker Oats which she’d forgotten to tell the others about and which she would kindly sell to them for the few gold coins they had left, so she’d be ok, ta.

Who Ate My Porridge? II

Well, the bears came home one evening—the black bear had been chopping wood in the forest, the brown bear had been trundling his wheelbarrow to market, and the polar bear had been playing exhausting rounds of golf with some important business contacts, so they were all very tired and hungry and ready for the porridge that the black bear had set simmering on the stove that morning. But what should they find when they got home? The big iron pot was empty! The porridge was all gone! Someone had filled, and refilled, one of the blue china bowls from the dresser, set it on the red-and-white checked tablecloth, and eaten the lot!

‘Who ate my porridge?’ cried the three bears in unison (notice how they did everything together, not like in the old story that you have heard). Who did eat it? Can you guess? What does the sudden disappearance mean in business terms? Think of the moments in your life or work when someone has eaten your porridge. Do you cry, or do you do something else instead?

The three bears didn’t cry. They went to sit down and think. The black bear sat on his simple, but homely, little wooden stool. The brown bear sat in his comfy old battered armchair. But something wasn’t right.
‘My little stool’s all wobbly! Oops!’ And it broke.
‘Ouch! What’s that? said the brown bear, for a spring had suddenly poked through the cushions into his bottom!
Then there came a yell from the boardroom where the polar bear had gone to sit in her shiny new leather swivel chair that she needed to impress her business contacts: ‘There’s porridge all over my new chair!’
‘Who’s been sitting in my chair? said all three bears in chorus.
Suddenly they heard a noise from the bedroom! They tip-toed in to investigate. I guess you know what’s coming next, but here it is briefly:
The honest pile of straw that was the black bear’s favourite place to sleep was all scattered! The brown bear’s cosy hammock was torn! But something—or someone—was curled up under the satin sheets of the polar bear’s four-poster bed!

More a Strong Woman

Well, she wasn’t really such a little girl—women are far more empowered than that these days. But I’ll tell you the rest of the story if you all want to hear it. And hopefully it will help you overcome some of the negative attitudes that I sense around here.

Bears?

I thought your bear story was good. That wasn’t in a box. Whatever happened to the bears Miss Hart? And was the little girl alright?

Scenarios

Yes, and I do agree with Dr Z too on the role of the blog in exploring our selves. Many of us have been envisioning scenarios as part of our shared therapeutic enterprise. Telling stories, in effect. It’s a technique I learnt in the business world—where so many exciting new ‘memes’ if I may use Dr Feramor’s term—are developed. It really gets you thinking outside the box, and I would encourage everybody to explore this methodology.

Our Inner Dialogue

With respect to Tom’s remarks, we on the staff have all confronted our own inner demons beforehand. It’s an important part of anyone’s training who has to do serious pastoral work for the community. I’m sure you don’t really want to hear the details of my own tiny little neuroses! I am rather frightened of spiders for instance, and my mother was—well, we had issues. I have a very settled and rewarding relationship with my partner. I am completely healthy in that respect, or have been since my self-counselling. And Ms Hart very courageously offered to undergo similar training when she was appointed Director of the Programme, so we’re all sisters under the skin really.

Empiricism

The unconscious! Mystical piffle! Facts alone are wanted in life, Dr Douce. Empirical confirmation. Something that can be seen, weighed, touched. We only know what we get as direct sensory evidence, I’m afraid. We can’t arbitrarily postulate mysterious entities behind the sensory world—that’s just pure speculation, not science. A dangerous meme indeed.

We know, for example, that a chimpanzee is an omnivorous quadruped and a primate, formerly genus Pan, now identified through its DNA as a member of Homo. A primate with extensive powers of mimicry and so on. We don’t need to attribute to it any mysterious unconscious, any deep mental structures, indeed even a consciousness. We can observe its behaviour, analyse its genetic identity, watch it process various memes and that is enough to define and understand it.

Share it

Why aren’t you lot sharing and confessing and blabbing on then if it’s so important, that’s what I’d like to know. You don’t hear any of this self examination bollocks from Doctor F or that Hart woman.

Co-operation not Competition

But it’s not all naked tooth and claw and competition! We can develop our spiritual side over our animal side. Most of all the technology can be harnessed to make us a community—by sharing, devolving, decentring. And I believe the hypothesis of the meme is overstated: cultural phenomena can be explained far more effectively by delving into and investigating the role of the Unconscious in the construction of the Self through Language. And again, the dialogic role of sharing through speech is important in unravelling these problems and examining our psyche.

Survival of the Fittest Meme

Thank you Joseph—a very interesting contribution. Though I’d appreciate it if you don’t go into too much detail—we have competitors and enemies, and this network may not be completely secure. We’ve had some disturbing warnings from OfPax.

Well, these alternative and radically new ways of doing things in the IT community that Joseph’s been describing exemplify perfectly what we scientists call ‘memetics’ at work. Once a new idea emerges, it gets selected in an evolutionary way, there’s a struggle for dominance, and the most successfully adapted ideas survive. Memetics is to the meme what genetics is to the gene—you’ve all heard of genes, I’m sure. Genes are what evolution works on to select and to produce what you are now, creating your biological identity. Memes are similar but they explain how human culture has evolved on top of our biological heritage (though we must never forget how memes ultimately serve our genes and can be reduced to them).

A meme can be religion, fashion, a song, a scientific theory, a single word, the novel Don Quixote, Spanish, language itself, the alphabet, delusions, the idea of the self, your identity, bad habits, good manners, community, skills, hobbies, technologies, stories, antisocial behaviour, political systems, tools, blogs, financial institutions.

The meme, you see, is like a virus, a parasite that takes over our brain. Because human beings are essentially like chimpanzees—excellent mimics—like superb photocopying machines—we simply pass on these memes. Daniel Dennett states: ‘A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library’. And we here in the Community are just a blog’s way of reproducing itself—our personalities, our individual selves are unimportant and can be said not to exist. Incidentally, reproduction is involved in another way as we have reason to believe that the most successful memes are those that make their carriers more sexually attractive and so help the spread of the virus. So the best ideas—like Joseph’s new technology—wipe out all the others, paralleling our genetically hard-wired competitiveness.

My Mysterious Past

Yeah, we’re doing all about our past lives in Deva Moonwater’s class. I was this eastern princess, did you know? I’ll tell you about it later. Hey, if you join one of my classes Joseph we can meet up!

Postmodern Perl

Well, I don’t understand all that politics stuff. I’m glad we’re free here and everybody can be different. And all the folksonomy that Dr Zoe was talking about, I’m cool with that. It’s like this computer language called Perl that we used—no honest, it’s not as nerdy as it sounds. There’s no system to it, no rules, you can do whatever you like. They call it a ‘postmodern’ language. It’s really cool technology, all about sharing and freedom, so it really fits in with what everybody’s talking about. It’s really radical cos it doesn’t come from the big corporations. I mean, ok, G & B’s a big company but the software’s free. We were working on this system that looks through CCTV with software to identify suspicious facial characteristics and provocative movements, so you can catch threats before they happen and make people safe. Amazing! They’re letting me carry on developing it here which is great. Makes up for a lot of other things. Am I allowed to talk about this? It’s actually based on algorithms developed by Dr Feramor’s research into our evolutionary past.

Free Culture

Well, a lot depends on the culture. In Austria, for instance, the state quite rightly bans holocaust denial because, the Austrian people being who they are, there’s a very real danger of a Nazi revival. Whereas England has a centuries-old tradition of tolerance. Apart from a few uneducated, Sun-reading types—usually less successful in the socio-economic game, I’m afraid, who are susceptible to hate-speech and so on, and have to be protected.

Free speech?

You mean we should ban free speech sometimes? I thought we were all about being a free society and that’s what we’re fighting for and you said we can blog whatever we like.

A Civilized Exchange

Yes, a bit of moderation, please. Cyberspace is a community like any other and we must all learn its rules—the principal one being that of respect for each other. The marvellous thing about this blog that we’ve allowed you to join—about blogs in general—is how democratic it all is—I know I keep saying that! Everybody is their own journalist. Every opinion is of equal value. Thus, we may not all of us agree with Tom’s views here but he’s free to share whatever he wants with us. And perhaps through this open dialogue with the rest of our little community we might persuade him of his past mistakes.

Of course, this freedom has its dangers: misguided, unverified notions circulate and this can be fuel for antisocial behaviour—not excluding terrorism. Some disturbing propaganda has been written that has served to incite the more gullible among our faith groups. Now we have much to learn from the faith communities about the freedom of writing, of speech, and of publication, from their ability to balance the needs of the community over the abstract concerns of various privileged liberals. And we can learn from their passivity and reaching out to others. However, the conspiracy theories of the literati and liberati of Islington—or ‘Islamton’ as somebody wittily put it—are feeding Islamist paranoia. You don’t shout ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre, and you don’t shout the wrong things in cyberspace either. We hear all this talk of rights, but there is the fundamental right not to be upset; the right to be safe from fear, the right to be free from crime and antisocial behaviour.
And some of these so-called liberties are 300 years old! It’s conservatives, afraid of modernisation, with vested interests who want to resist our progressive radical ambitions to lead us into the twenty-first century. And the people who really benefit form all this are wealthy civil rights lawyers pocketing taxpayers’ money in legal aid, unproductive wranglers who grow fat on the fees from so-called human rights cases.

Talking Cure

Well, we can’t stop them speaking. But let’s keep the tone civilized and respect each other’s freedom. And we can use this opportunity to initiate a healing dialogue.

Don't be angry

Please don’t be angry with him Tom. He’s not himself. He gets a bit worked up sometimes, sounds worse than he is. Sorry Don, love, but you know I’m right really, you’re a warmer kinder person than you let on sometimes.

Stop and Think

Watch what you’re saying Don. Some of my best friends are asbos. And lesbos! I don’t agree with all that keep your mouth shut and don’t cause offence, but just try listening to other people for a change and don’t judge them when you don’t know them. Most of what they call asbo is just us trying to have some sort of social life. When you’re young and hard-up and bored you hang around with your mates. That’s social not antisocial! Older people don’t do that, they stay inside with their familes, cut off, no life—that’s why they’re scared.

Your Story

What’s your story Don? I mean, your real story.

You must go on

You should have a go, love. I mean keep on writing. You know you’re better when you get started on something. Everyone likes your stories. It’s just one of your black periods again.

Telling Stories

I liked that story. How’s yours going Don?

Those Bears Again!

What about Mrs Hart’s bears? Are they one of us too?

Primate Responsibilities

Over in P Wing we are in fact attempting to inculcate some sense of responsibility in our new brothers and sisters, but unfortunately so far they are displaying stubborn signs of antisociality—failing to earn their rights by refusing voluntary work, military tasks, the few undemanding light manufacturing activities assigned to them and so on. And I’m afraid they’re not the only irresponsible primates in this Centre!

Tea Party

I thought they always looked human anyway. Look at how well they did in those tea party ads.

Primate Rights

Hmmm, a linguistic, discursive shift, Dr Feramor, I think. ‘Scientific progress’, for reasons I’ve mentioned, is not the happiest of terms; it’s almost an oxymoron. But, yes, hence the recent welcoming of chimpanzees to the human ranks, where they can be granted the rights they’ve been denied during thousands of years of oppression. Of course, they’ll have to take up their responsibilities too—rights don’t come free.

The Animal Kingdom

I’m not so sure about Dr Douce’s little diatribe against science. There’s still an enormous place for progress and what on earth is this Centre here for but to develop mankind onto a higher level and escape his evolutionary heritage? Yet there is undoubtedly a point to be made here: even zoological taxonomy is not as stable as it used to be. Thanks to our understanding of DNA—the key to biological identity—we now know what behavioural science has been suggesting for decades—that we are extremely close to the other primates, and hence the labelling has to be changed. But this is not an arbitrary act; a paradigm shift has been effected through actual scientific progress.

Fact/Fiction

Well, in fact, the boundaries between fact and fiction aren’t as definite as people used to think in more naïve times. We live everything through language, through storytelling, and Joseph’s computer texts are as much an imaginative narrative as any Russian novel. And, as for the practical side, we can have RFID tags on all the books sending out radio signals—our systems can locate them wherever they’re moved to—and there’s the added bonus that we can keep tracks on the circulation of some of the potentially antisocial content or usage that might be involved. Information in the wrong hands can be dangerous. Thus librarians as well as teachers, nurses, and carers can be enlisted in the battle for your security, releasing resources for our overworked and heroic police and security personnel.

Taxonomy

I know what taxonomy is—classifying things, things put in groups, books have numbers and so on. Like starlings, pigeons, cuckoos, turkeys, larks, hawks, parrots—they’re all birds. The tiger, the lion, leopard, ocelot, jaguar, and Tristram’s Izzy are all cats. But you could put Izzy with the pigeons and it wouldn’t matter? Seems a bit mental to me!

Or if I go into Central Library and I’m looking for Jane Eyre or Bleak House, I’m expecting to find it under Fiction. Joseph comes in, he’s after one of his computer books, he goes to the Computing Section. But the librarian or anybody can just come and shift things around and that’s like respecting you, it’s intelligent?

Folksonomy

The Blogosphere, as Veronica suggests, is an important contribution to social inclusion and harmony, and that’s why we’re employing blogging here on a therapeutic basis. I discuss it in my book if anyone would like to follow up this idea. It’s called Talkin’ to Your Heart: The Dialogic Resolution of Antisociality—we have it in the Centre’s library.

And the Blogosphere shares that anarchist mentality that Ms Hart mentions. Let me tell you now about ‘folksonomy’. ‘Taxonomy’ is the old science of classifying things; folksonomy is new. It’s about how you yourself see the world and arrange it. Not how you’ve been told to classify it by ‘experts’. Different cultures—different individuals even—see the world in different ways, and in the past a dominant elite has tried to impose their way of seeing onto everyone else in order to control them. It’s what we call ‘a discourse of power’. Now that ordering has been taken out of the hands of the elite and made open to the people. You can just label things how you like, group items together according to your intuition or your emotional intelligence instead of being dictated to by bullying elitists who claim to know more than you do. So it’s about identity too—we’re all searching for a sense of identity, and folksonomy lets you create your own. In this new world there’s respect for Multiple Intelligences: people are born with different but equally valuable abilities; no-one is stupid. Anarchist folksonomy respects everyone’s separate identity and the way they differently perceive and construct their world.

Back in the eighteenth century a whole new way of thinking came about. Man—and it was ‘man’; there was no room for women!—were at the centre of the universe. Nature, religion, imagination, and emotion were all mocked and despised. All the things that make you individual and different—your culture, your identity—was submerged under the grand notion of Universal Mankind. Nature was just there to be exploited. Progress was everything; science could conquer the universe. Terrible crimes were committed in the name of these proud, boastful ideas. It was called ‘The Enlightenment’ and there’s never been a more misleading term. Now folksonomy is a rejection of the old arrogances of Enlightenment thought and is the language of the new, social network.

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom

Well, the Blogosphere—that’s what we call the global network of blogging—is not just about our self-expression and talking about your favourite bands, though that’s very important, of course. It’s also one of the best sources for news around. There’s a new kind of journalism—citizen journalism. It’s taking power from the elites and giving it to you. If you really want courageous, independent thinking on current affairs, look at blogs such as Harry’s Place and Oliver Kamm’s. (You see, we can make links to these blogs—it’s a real network!) These guys are rebels, aiming at establishment punditland—you know, those so-called experts you see in the conventional media who like to tell you what to think. Mainstream media content is prepackaged and sent down a narrow channel; blogs belong to the network world. It’s like the samizdat journalism in Eastern Europe that overthrew the Communists.

You’ll find a great variety of independent, daring thought in the blogosphere. It’s really challenging the old established guardians of privilege. Everybody gets a say—just like our blog lets us all have a genuine, open dialogue with each other, with all sorts of views being debated. ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom’: we’re taking a cue from that famous revolutionary, Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution. Of course we don’t condone Mao’s actions. I hope we’re not quite as bloodthirsty! Though look at the phenomenal—and slightly scary—success of Chinese society today—not to mention the benefits the highly-motivated Chinese guest workers have brought to our shores. On the other hand, we do have to worry about the very real danger of an overswollen China devouring the Earth. But I digress—what I mean to say is that the Blogosphere allows every kind of flower to bloom, just like the new society we’re building: Community 2.0.

Chaotic? Unstructured? Even mindless? Yes, I suppose you could say we’re anarchists here! ;-) Everybody in the community gets a chance to speak and you’re no longer following any authorities. Except, of course, and I’m being a bit more serious here, we all accept the authority of the public good and community values. We stand for the community, not selfish greedy individualism. But we’re anarchists in that we’re against all systems and arid intellectualism. We improvise our strategy spontaneously and act practically rather than from abstract ideals. We value the emotions—human things. This is the new world of self-expression, communication, sharing knowledge with the community.

The Blogosphere enables the redistribution of cultural capital so that no one is excluded from the digital community. Our collective, multiple intelligence is harnessed for the community. And many of these bloggers are now advising business on how to leverage the power of the blog, so it benefits the economy, creating wealth for all of us. And it’s a tribute to the democratic spirit of OfPax’s programme of human intervention that most of these very radical bloggers—by no means slaves to convention or servile apologists for our government—support us in our War for Freedom.

Blogging

What was it you were going to say about blogging Ms Hart? I’m really interested, I think it’s really exciting. Tristram said it was utopia and can change the world. I think that’s great if we can all communicate and share and be open.

Health and Efficiency

Ah, now we’re on my favourite topic again—blogs! I do have an awful lot to say about them—I’m afraid I can go on a bit when I get started. Especially on-line—that’s the power of blogs, they encourage you to express your every little thought.

But first, I have to pass on an important bulletin from OfCare.

OfCare Bulletin No. 11073: Health and Efficiency
Our recent Mother’s Day campaign on life style and cancer was very effective and I’m sure helped re-educate those remaining illegal smoking addicts. You probably all saw the marvellous little dramas we broadcast over the Mother’s Day period, with moving cameo performances from real people who’ve lost loved ones through cancer. Some showed the emotional effects of death from an unhealthy life-style on the feelings of the deceased’s mothers. Other stories reminded mothers of their duties by showing the grieving children of those who had lived carelessly and brought cancer onto themselves. So do remember, you owe it to your loved ones to look after your health and avoid risk taking. And the community benefits too—a healthy public is an efficient, economic one. Eat sensibly, exercise, moderate your drink, avoid noxious substances. We’ll be tackling psychic health in our next series of mini-dramas.