Freud and Friends

Freud is a scary man. Time and time again Mr. Sigmund Freud will come up in one shape or another as a part of my studies. Last time it was science at A-level. The time before that, English GCSE. And every time I will think two things. 

1. Sigmund...Fraud? (I will then laugh to myself like a moron)

2. Is Freud a genius, the creator of modern psychology, the father of some of the most practiced techniques in mental health care today? Or is he just a man, standing in front of a woman, asking her to love him? And this woman is his mother. 

Basically, regardless of whether the man is a nut or not, he certainly did something incredible. Consider this; We have absolutely no idea what happens inside the brain, we don't know why people do the things they do, apart from the odd philosophies that people sometimes chucked out. Instead we just wandered around, doing the things we did, suffering from huge depression, possibly making some sort of off remark about feces, we've all done it. 

Then, Freud came around, and said, "hey, how about dreams?" and thus the Freudian method was born. I have dumbed it down a bit, but when you consider that this was the first of the modern methods. Without that man, there would be none of these psychiatrists with chairs. It would change the face of culture itself. Television would be completely different, films, news, politics.

Its a scary thing to think about. 

Things cannot be un-made, or un-seen. They can be forgotten, however. I cannot un-see this, for example. It is terrifying, and makes me thing of nothing but insanity. Its sort of like looking straight into the mind of Mr. H.P Lovecraft and, like the ending of many of his books, eventually going insane. But that's the point of the video, its a comment on how advertising will stick with you, subconsciously. Imagine how many adverts you see a day. Hundreds! Even searching the Internet for about 15 minutes you see at least 30 adverts, all of them designed to stick in your brain for as long as possible. It gets incredibly crowded in there.

I wonder what Freud would think if advertising was as prevalent in his time as it is now. I think he would go insane.

The last thing I will say about Freud is that if, like the little Freud doll at the top of this post, you ask about mothers, you will get answers about mothers, which will lead you to the conclusion that people are obsessed with their mothers. Its a strange conundrum.

Why I didnt like last weeks Question Time

(Lets get one thing clear before anybody reads this, I hate Nick Griffin. I hate the BNP. I don't personally think that belligerent hate has any place in British politics. Having said that, I also believe in the impartiality of the press, what little is left, and the opportunity that Britain gives to everybody, that of a "Fair shake". I am also a strong believer that a Multicultural Britain is exactly what we need, and that people of all races, creeds, denominations and faiths should be able to cohabit with one another without being harassed. I would also like to give Kudos to the wonderful Bonnie Greer for her insight into a very trick subject, and David Dimbleby, a hero of mine.)

Debates are useful, and so are audience generated questions. Its a fantastic system that can spark some really interesting answers from people that have yet to reveal their true agenda, or at least, not in the form they would like to.

Last week, after much media controversy, BNP leader Nick Griffin appeared on question time. It is an event of such massive scale that I watched it later on Iplayer. I saw this question time as an opportunity for a few things to happen. Nick Griffin answering questions that may or may not have hurt his agenda. Interesting debates about the BNP's true purpose in British and European events, and finally, a chance to see, unedited, how strange and crazy this man truly is.

None of those things happened. Sure, Nick Griffin was hung out to dry. He was publicly humiliated by hoards of rightfully angry people, and it was embarrassing. But it was not a debate, and it certainly didn't harm his campaign, at least not by as much as it should.

Instead of people asking him questions about his agenda, and letting him string himself up, hoist himself by his own petard, we were subjected to an hour of this;

"Nick Griffin, my ancestors came from X and they came here to Britain and did Y, so on a scale of one to ten, how much of a bastard are you"

"Nick Griffin, What kind of bastard does this, you bastard?"

"You sick bastard Nick Griffin, How dare you do X, Y and Z?!"

All those questions did was give Nick Griffin a chance to defend himself, and whilst he did not do it particularly well, but he still did. He was very rightly, "Lynch Mobbed". Which is ironic for him to complain about considering his alleged links to the KKK, but still true. What we should have has was questions like this;

"Nick Griffin, what is your stance on this important government thing?"

To which he would reply with some no-doubt racist and offensive remark, promoting much ooh and ahhhs from the audience as well as a few pantomime hisses and boos. We did not get that, and for what could have been a fantastic chance to show a very nasty man for what he truly was, we got a lot of silly questions that were much the same, and only proved to help his agenda by making him a victim.

And that is why I did not like this weeks question time.

Any questions?

I am not a Footballer

In the daily process of Googling myself, I came to a shocking revelation. Theres someone like me, just a little bit different. Now when I google my name, all I get is this man...

Luke Garbutt, pictured above looking shocked that he is having his shoes tied for him, is apparently what they call a "media darling", which, given the fact that he is about twelve years old is unsurprising. The shocking part of this is, he seems to have the exact name as I have, except for the comedy adding of "butt". He basically has the name bullies used to call me, as they shoved my head into the spiky bushes indigenous to Somerset.

They were neither bright nor mercifull...

This is not an exit

Germinal, first published in 1885, written by Emile Zola, represents a tumultuous time in French history, and is seen by many as the harsh but honest truth about the coal-miners strike in the 1860s. Many have praised the book for its honesty, and have seen the scenes of gruesomeness as a very frank and earnest attempt to represent the plight of the miners.

However, some have not been so gracious with their remarks. In fact, they're downright nasty. People have called the novel "Unsubtle" "Crude" "Oversimplified" and "Melodramatic". What a bunch of whiners. Some fail to warm to the novel, instead focusing on the content rather than the meaning of the content, and that's their choice, but I could not help but liken Germinal to the 1991 Bret Easton-Ellis novel, American Psycho.

This may seem like a wild and fantastic voyage to take when comparing the two, but if you'll read on for a few more measly minutes, you will realise the truth. Wow, that was heavy!

So in 1991, American Psycho was published, allowing all of those willing to pay however much access to its pages. Almost immediately, there was outcry. The content was so vile and disturbing, it was even banned in several countries, to spare the people its disgusting disgusting words. And it is disgusting, for you see, instead of miners, its yuppie bankers. And instead of France, its Manhattan. Specifically Wall Street. For those un-versed in the novel, here's a quick synopsis.

Patrick Bateman is your typical 20th century yuppie. He works as a vice-president at a banking firm, earns a ton of money, lives in a fancy apartment, parties at night, and has a loving fiance. Except shes not loving, and he doesn't love her. And he spends his nights murdering and mutilating the less fortunate people in Manhattan. The descriptions of said murders are very...extensive, and there's no denying the content is objectionable beyond measure. Whilst reading the book, I actually had to stop in order to stop myself from having to spend thousands of pounds on mental help. Its nasty, to say the least. But I loved the book. And whilst this may seem strange, its the same feeling I get when I read Germinal.

American Psycho was satirizing the yuppie culture, and ruthlessly and frankly breaking down both the disenfranchisement from morals and respect in the American Youth, and tearing down the foundations of the American Dream. Instead of focusing on the words written in Germinal, one must focus on the deepest meaning behind the words. That's why I found, and still am finding, Germinal so very interesting.

Thesis: The dialectics of nature. Antithesis: Confusion. Synthesis: Panic

The last lecture posed possibly one of the most intriguing ideas I have heard in a good long while. The idea that many of the worlds conflicts, societies and social systems were born of this simple concept of two opposites balancing eachother out with a result.

If we consider that with every action, there must be an equal an opposite reaction, we can see that with the creation of a thesis, an antithesis is born, and therefore the two will eventually combine to form a synthesis. So when a state or ruling body is formed, there will always be a force opposing it regardless of where or when this happens, in the same way that protons will always exist is there are electrons there to oppose them, and thus the matter is always created. Its a system, which despite countless variables, succeeds to occur time after time after time.

The theory works with most things in the world, and is applicable to even to the smallest of situations.

e.g.
Thesis: Normal human
Antithesis: Cold wind
Sythesis: Wearing a coat

It can also be applied to higer scale situations,

e.g.
Thesis: Rats
Antithesis: Ignorance
Synthesis: The Bubonic Plague

It is a succinct system. It is precise and it is true. One thing cannot exist without the other, and there is always a result.