Love

Following on from the last self-indulgent piece with me venting my spleen about my father, Susana said the most extraordinary thing in the comments. She put me and the word 'love' in the same sentence. When I read it, my eyebrows went up and I froze in disbelief. But only for a second. Then I tilted my head back and laughed.

Truth be known, I have no idea what love means. You don't need to take my word for it. You need merely search this site for the word 'love'. Whilst I couldn't be fagged doing it myself, I'm prepared to bet that it will only appear in the phrase 'peace, love, and understanding' which I use not so much as a banner to rally around, but rather as a cudgel to beat things with.

The word, in and of itself, as a stand-alone description, I, um... 'dismiss'. Which is to say, I dismiss it from my vocabulary. Honestly, what the hell does it mean?

Never mind love, here I'm far more interested in lies and lying. Actually the word 'lie' is just as fraught as 'love' and I tend to avoid it as well. Let's just say that I ponder the nature of misrepresentation. But regardless, if we were to take every lie ever uttered and analysed them to see which one predominated, I'd bet money that the phrase 'I love you' would win hands down.

And go figure that more than a few women have made it clear to me that, but for the want of me saying it, they'd have slept with me. I'm a strange cove, sure, but women who do this always fall in my estimation.

---

A while back in Shanghai, there was a woman I fancied. I was directing and she was my producer. She was smart, funny, and sexy. And she told me of her travails with her laowai boyfriend who came to Shanghai every couple of months for business. In between times he lived in Belgium with his wife and kids (Urgh! No one here I hope!). And once or twice a day he would send her an SMS saying some variation of 'I love you'. This made her all gooey. Me, I shook my head. Between words and actions, words are cheap. Hell! He sent these words by SMS, the cheapest means there is.


Me to her - "If I said you were just something to occupy his time when he's here in China and all it cost him was an SMS every day, would I be wrong? Forget his words, what does he do? What is there to say that this guy isn't just some bullshit artist? Men lie you know. Forget his words. What are his actions?"

Anyway, she threw him over. For me, ha ha! Well that was the theory anyway. What with assorted cultural confusions and a plot straight out of a bedroom farce, we didn't sleep with each other. But that was cool, she was going to come to Sydney for Chinese New Year and stay with me. After that I was going to go back to Shanghai and become an in-house director. Sounded good to me. But! - it all went to hell. For reasons that weren't clear she didn't come to Sydney and when I flew back to start up with the directing gig, it was if we were complete strangers.

I had failed apparently. Specifically I had failed to send her an SMS every day telling her that I loved her. God help me! What with her last boyfriend using this precise process to lie his way into her bed, here she was angry with me for not having done the same thing. I shook my head and wondered if she and her Belgian didn't deserve each other. But truth be known, my part in a mad farce aside, I was pleased. If she was that undiscerning, that incapable of distinguishing between words and actions, then she wasn't the chick for me. I never saw her again and packed in the directing caper shortly thereafter. And a good thing too.

---

The above was but a single 'I love you' anecdote from dozens. And I don't doubt that you'd all have your own. Truthfully, there are more stories of lies and lying with 'I love you' at the centre of them than there are stars wheeling in the sky. For mine, the phrase is so utterly devalued that it's worthless. There's a lot to be said for saying nothing.

Like the Japanese! The Japanese are their own variety of laconic. They are not a gushy people. Whilst the younger generation, deeply steeped in Hollywood, are changing now, the older generation do not prate on with heartfelt drivel. If you want to see a perfect example of what I'm talking about, go see 'Hana-Bi' by Beat Takeshi. He's a legendary director and Hana-Bi is arguably his masterpiece. And sure it's dotted with action and violence, but mostly it's a 'love' story. Everything that takes place in the film is an act of devotion by our hero for his dying wife. Astoundingly almost nothing is said. No speeches, no declarations. Actions are all. And the actions are unambiguous. The truth lays in what is done, not in what is said.


And if anyone does watch this film on my say-so and wonders, "What sort of a crummy 'love story' was that? No one even kissed anyone!", you'll actually be making my point for me. Your dissatisfaction will say far more about you as a Westerner than it will about the Japanese.

---

And then there's the Maori and the Hawaiian people. Culturally, since they're both Polynesian, their cultures are as close as could be. Curiously they seem not to know very much about each other. In conversations I've had with Maori about Hawaiians, and vice versa, no one seemed to know anything. But whatever, they have many many things in common. As a complete dilettante I'm pretty sure I won't get in trouble for saying that the concept of 'breath as life' is central to their shared culture. In Hawaii, this breath/life is the 'ha' in 'aloha'. (It's also the 'ha' in 'haole', their word for white person. There's a fabulous story in that, but I'll sling it in the comments.)


The Maori likewise acknowledge the importance of breath in their custom of touching noses. This functions for Maori like the handshake does for white people. The handshake is an expression of 'peace' insofar as it's a demonstration that one isn't carrying a weapon. Three cheers for white people. Compare that to the Maori, who touch noses so that they might exchange the breath of life. But here's the crucial thing - the breath is always from the nose, not from the mouth. This is not because the nose is special but because the mouth is considered 'corrupt', or perhaps more correctly 'corrupting'. The stink of food is part of this but that's actually the least of it. Breath from the mouth is spurned because what comes from a person's mouth, words sure enough, cannot be trusted. In words lay falsity.

---

And then there's that Brazilian chick. This is a looong story, but there I was in her marvellous ramshackle house smack dab in the middle of a picturesqe but down-at-the-heels town two hours from Sao Paolo. She was a Rudolph Steiner devotee and was in the arduous process of setting up a Rudolph Steiner school cum arts-and-craft co-op. And I was going to join her. My head was there. But that too came a cropper. Story of my life. If anyone out there is familiar with the Tora San movies (uber-famous in Japan), that's me. I never get the girl.


Whilst the whole thing was complicated with family and a boyfriend etc. a key moment came in a discussion about 'love'. She looked me in the eye, grasped my hand and told me of the most important thing there is. That being love, sure enough. She even quoted the Beatles to me. And hats off to the Beatles, but between them and my continuum (at the top of this page) with selflessness as the only thing counting, I was, ahem, dismissive. I tried to explain the distinction but got nowhere. It didn't help of course that I didn't speak Portuguese, her English left a lot to be desired, and the Japanese which we both spoke (she being sansei Japanese) was ill-suited to philosophy. But the language didn't matter. She said love and I shook my head. "No, you don't understand," I said. Yeah yeah nobody, just face it - you blew it. Time to do that Tora San thing and smile, wave, and hit the road.

---

Bloody Hell! Do I have a point or am I just blathering? Both, ha ha! The point is that for me, words are worthless, with 'love' at the top of the list. And yep, I just used a thousand words to say that. The irony runs rampant.

Never mind me as cleverpants wordsmith - a blog, an audience, and a huge pile of words being put in some kind of order. Bully for that. But back at the house of geriatric indulgence, with me and the old man, it's positively Japanese. Every day is like a scene from Hana-Bi.

Perhaps I brought it with me from the temple - "shiraberi wa dame" - chit-chat is bad. And there, there was a lot to talk about. Here at home there is nothing to talk about beyond Fox Sports and doctors. And I haven't much time for either beyond needing to know what channel to change to and when the appointments are.

Here there is no love. Or certainly no declarations of it. The only thing that counts is 'doing'. For me (or perhaps for an ideal me) all my actions should be an embodiment of selflessness. And I ain't in that picture. And nor are such messy things as emotions. Like 'love' etc. If I was to start in on that, the whole thing would fall in a screaming heap. It would turn the picture into one that was about me. And if it was about me, it wouldn't be about me because I'd be gone.


But here's a picture of me. Or me as played by Vincent Cassel in the movie of my life, that is. Nothing in his head. Nothing in his heart. No thoughts, no love, no nothing - just emptiness. Dig it, it's like Camus' Stranger albeit with a happy disposition and no Arab monkey business. And when Cassel wants to know what his motivation is, he'll be told he hasn't one. "Just go through the motions. Attempt to embody selflessness. Don't ask us what that would look like since no one bloody knows. Just do your best." Says our Vincent - "But why am I happy?". Sorry Vince, no answer to that one neither. You just are.

Truth is, living with my father has been a brilliant experience. The only way anyone could cope with the old man's utter self-obsession is to let go of one's own desires. I'll admit that there's a certain 'reactionary' aspect to this. And I know that no one likes that word - to say, 'I am not that' is full of negative connotation, a thing to be avoided. But if one is seeking selflessness it's no such thing. Everything I wish to shed is here precisely depicted in the closest genetic template imaginable. It is what I am leaving behind.

And Susana, apologies for using you as a prop, ha ha. It's not you, it's just my brain turning a word around. And what a word! A word so fraught, so plugged into insecurities and self-worth, replete with uncountable meanings, stories, variations, and use and misuse, I reckon we're better off without it.

Do or don't do. Actions over words. That's where the truth lays.

"Now we see if your Shaolin Being Sensible style can withstand my Wudang Shan Complete Idiot technique!"

I'm not sure what I'm on about here. But why don't I start with Bruce Lee? He was really something. Even if all he'd done was master fencing, regular Western boxing, and Wing Chun Kung Fu, he'd have been legendary. But he went beyond these and came up with own style, Jeet Kune Do. Did anyone ever wonder where Jeet Kune Do went? How come when you wander down to Chinatown there's no Jeet Kune Do schools? What was that all about?


I'll admit I'm no great expert on the martial arts. If anyone who is an expert wishes to pick holes in the following, fine. The comments are below. But let's carry on. As I understand it, Jeet Kune Do was not a martial art as such. It might be more accurate to describe it as a way of thinking, a philosophy. Jeet Kune Do did not have any kata (or what my school called 'form'). Nor did it have any particular stance. It did not say A is followed by B is followed by C and that this is how things are done. Whilst it didn't reject these things, it rejected the concept that 'this is how you must think', or perhaps that 'these are your limits'. Jeet Kune Do declared that there are no limits.

The logic here is simple. In fighting an opponent why come at him in a predictable fashion? Think of all those chop-socky movies you saw with the villain fighting in Praying Mantis style, switching to Kwan Lun Toad style, followed by Kung Pao Chicken style, etc etc. Each of these would be clearly demonstrated and invariably accompanied by the appropriate hissing, mad facial gestures, and the hero's announcement of, 'Oh, I see you know place-name-creature style!' Well that's the movies for you. Everything must be explained so that the punters know what's going on. But who would do that in a real fight?

In a real fight it would pay to have your opponent on the back foot with no idea what you're going to do next. Loosely that's what Bruce Lee was on about with Jeet Kune Do. Discard anything stale or predictable. Throw out limitations and constraints. Use whatever works. (And if I, great sage and equal of heaven, may add my own thoughts - keep your balance. Lose your balance and you're fucked. Bruce Lee would probably roll his eyes and say, 'Well, duh!', but let's carry on.)


This style of thinking need not be limited to physical fights. It's useful for all sorts of things besides smashing Mark Regev's teeth in. I know it's poor of me to have thoughts of violence fill my head every time he's on the television, but I just can't help it. As much as one would like to find oneself in a state of harmony with all people and things and become the Buddha it's a remote prospect. Meanwhile, here we are in the real world where arseholes like Mark Regev aren't any kind of exception. Instead they're as common as muck and seem to rule the air-waves and dominate the discussions. So repulsive, obnoxious, and omnipresent are they that right-thinking people turn away in disgust and leave them to it. Funnily enough, that's the whole idea.

In terms of argy-bargy of this nature, I started out on indymedia. Indymedia was founded in a spirit of right-thinking. It would be an open forum (emphatically unlike the mainstream media) wherein all things could be discussed by whomever. However, if a thing like this can be corrupted by the usual suspects, it will be, and it was. Everything connected with Israel became off-limits. Above and beyond all else the bloc-media is about totality. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a bloc (stands to reason, no?) What indymedia failed to realise is that openness of this nature is also an openness to those who would deny that very thing. Totality will always strive for totality.

But there I was, however many years ago, unaware that this was how things were and attempting to have sensible discussions. What a waste of time. There were no sensible discussions to be had. I was talking to individuals who would pretend to be half a dozen people, all of whom would agree with each other. Arguments consisted almost entirely of ad hominem with the routine only being broken up by bare-faced lying, straw men, words-in-mouth, limited hangout and everything except argument-rebuttal-conclusion.

It's all so obvious now of course. The people I was arguing with, in spite of insisting that everyone follow the rules of decorum, didn't give a fig for the rules or for decorum. Back then I was confused. Why were these people here? What was their purpose? What did they hope to achieve? Without having a definitive answer, I'm inclined to think that they were there in a spirit of 'rejection of all that is not me', if that makes any sense. They were not there to explain the rightness of their views nor to have anyone come over to their way of thinking. Imagine a vampire movie where all the people have been turned into vampires. As they celebrate their victory, someone pipes up at the back, 'Yeah, but who are we going to eat now?' Damn!


The metaphoric vampires aren't there to convince anyone of anything apart from the fact that this topic is verboten. Yeah, well fuck that and fuck the hoops they hold up and demand I jump through. I refuse to follow some motherfucker's diktats. If proof is demanded I will ignore it and make my next point. I will leap from topic to topic. If the subject is Hamas rockets I will talk about: the ringworm scandal; the denial of compensation for Holocaust victims; Ehud Olmert bragging about telling the idiot son what to do. It's not their conversation. It's mine. And yes, the 'conversation' will not flow. Nothing will make sense. I will not make sense. Whatever is expected of me, I will refuse to deliver it.

Why not take this to its ultimate point? Why even fulfil the role of opposition? Why not simply be more them than them, if you can dig it. Subsequently I shall be the uber-fascist, the uber-racist, the motherfucker unvarnished. I shall strip away the niceties and say what they really think. I shall be Ariel Sharon screaming bloody murder and calling for the deaths of all who oppose me. What are they going to do? Agree with me? Oppose me? Who are they fighting precisely? Themselves?

I've done this on indymedia and was met with the same thing every time. Complete silence. Weirdly enough, the automatic response is a feeling of social rejection. 'I'm being ignored and no one wants to talk to me.' This is wrongheaded. Truth of the matter is that the motherfuckers have been put on the back foot. The conversation they thought was theirs has been seized from them. It now belongs to someone else and they don't want to be a part of it anymore. Excellent. And sure, the niceties of discourse have been trashed. But these niceties, as far as the motherfuckers are concerned, are things to be taken advantage of. Why stick with a thing that only serves your opponent?


And the last thing I'm going to do is take them seriously. If a thing is expected of me, I'm not going to give it to them. Nothing. Subsequently all they'll get from me is comedy. The role of the fool is a very powerful one. Comedians can get away with murder. Anyone who wants to get huffy over a joke they don't like is going to look like a dickhead. Remember, the point of the exercise for them is not to convince me. They're there to play to the crowd. Well, two can play at that game and we'll see who makes who look stupid.

Okay, so I'm crowing about myself. Cock-a-doodle-doo. But then again Bruce Lee wasn't exactly shy and retiring neither. Mind you, being cocksure and philosophical aren't mutually exclusive. No mistake, Bruce Lee was a philosopher. His dictum 'Be like water' shouldn't be written off as simplistic. It ain't. You cannot grab water. You cannot push it around. And as any body surfer knows, God help you in a dumper. Did you know that one cubic metre of water weighs a tonne? And okay sure, people build breakwaters and canals and pipes etc, but in the context of arguments, these constructs are illusory. If one refuses to concede their existence, they don't exist. It's as simple as that. Whatever rules there are, have invariably been laid down (like pipes are laid down) to suit those who did the plumbing. Like that's a surprise.


And me, I never signed up for this or any other bullshit academic version of Marquis of Queensbury.

Fuck other people's rules. I have my own. And if the defenders of genocide and the racist motherfuckers of this world don't care for how I go about things; my idiocy; my rude manner; my glee at heaping shit on them; my slippery refusal to be pinned down; or whatever fucking thing it is that they don't expect from me, to hell with them. I ain't going to give them what they want. Instead I'm going to dance around in my yellow stripey go-go suit with no form, no style, and no idea of what I'm going to do next. And if they don't get the gag what do I care? I laugh my head off regardless.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Here's an experiment you can try at home. Ask just about anyone what they know about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If they've heard of it at all, it's unlikely that they'd know anything beyond the fact that it's a forgery. This invariably represents the sum total of anyone's knowledge on the subject. This struck me as curious. Can anyone think of any work wherein all we know about that work is that it's a forgery? Are you scratching your head? It seems that in this regard, the Protocols is perfectly unique.


Trespasses against Jewish people are perpetually portrayed in our media as the wickedest thing imaginable. Not forgetting our schools. Here in Oz, we're currently being harangued that the nation's kids aren't being taught enough about the Holocaust. Perhaps Australian kids don't watch TV? There, all things Nazi and Holocaust are pored over in great detail so that we might not miss even the smallest aspect of it. And yet of the Protocols we know nothing beyond its falsehood. Why has no one delved into this forgery so that we might better understand the wickedness of the false slurs it casts upon the Jewish people? Surely this would be as worthy of our attention (and our understanding of Jews as victims) as the endless documentaries about Nazis and their women, pets, haberdashers etc? Curiously, unlike every other crime against the Jews this one get no attention at all. Nothing.


For the sake of ambiguity I will concede that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery. It's a curious forgery though. It's not a forgery like the time I forged a David Bowie concert ticket. The original ticket existed and I merely copied it (Sorry Mr. Bowie but we were poor and there was a particular girl I wanted to impress. I'm sure you understand). The Protocols is not that sort of forgery. The author's lateral means of slurring the Jews is to imagine himself as a member of a cabal intent on world domination. The 'forgery' is an entirely original work that has leapt fully armed from the forger's head. It's fraud lays in its positing of a mindset that doesn't exist, at least not in the minds of Jewish people. Or so we understand.


In reading the Protocols might we not ponder the mind of the forger? What of his outlined plan? Would it work? I defy anyone to not be profoundly impressed by the author's understanding of human affairs, politics and war. Nor by his embrace of a most singular inhumanity. His ability to imagine himself as the most perfect anti-Buddha the world will ever see, is extraordinary. I declare him a black genius nonpareil. Machiavelli ain't in it. Nor Sun Tzu.


Which is curious don't you think? People study and debate both of these aforementioned. They are considered touchstones in the subject of the governance of humans. And yet I doubt that there's a curriculum anywhere that includes the Protocols - except to dismiss it as a forgery, sure. But oughtn't that to add to it's singularity? The other two works, The Prince and The Art of War, were written by men who had ruled nation-states and fought and won wars. Had our forger? Who was this guy? Could he have been some general or head of state? How precisely did he write such an astounding work? By all rights, it should be the literary puzzle of the century. As a forgery that is. But it ain't.


It seems no one studies our forger or his work. Or do they? The Protocols is far too significant a work to be ignored. It's a perfectly workable plan for world domination and the enslavement of mankind. This is a big call sure. But I'm prepared to make it since I see our forger's dictums at play every day in what passes for news in what passes for the media. It's all right there. If you want to dispute this, feel free to read the Protocols and tell me I'm wrong. Good luck.


I will concede that it's possible that those who rule us are carrying out the Protocols' agendas without knowing anything about it. It's also possible to master the violin without ever hearing someone play it. But it's unlikely. To this weary observer it's clear that those who rule us have studied the Protocols and implemented them entirely. If anyone can read the Protocols and not come to the same conclusion I will eat my motorcycle.


Says I, if you haven't read this work, don't miss it. There is nothing quite like it. And it's on the net for free! Oh look, here it is. For those with short attention spans don't worry. It comes in perfect bite-sized stand-alone paras that probably add up to ten pages. Brevity aside, it is gruelling. But don't worry, you don't actually need to read it all. In fact, if you give up half way through take it as proof that you still possess a soul, ha ha.


Certainly you will never read a work that's more hateful. Over and over you will find everything that could be considered great about humanity viewed merely as a weakness for humanity's destruction. Never has the product of a human mind so lacked humanity. Everything that we think of as good in this world: art, music, literature, culture, fellow-feeling, compassion, and love, is absent here. The world of the Protocols, the world being made right now, is a world without joy - a world of shit.


But don't look away. Know the world you live in. Take a breath, steel yourself, and read it.

Buddha v Darwin

I don't have much time for philosophy as such. Between the arcane vocabulary and various dialectics and epistemologies (did I mention the vocab?) it does my head in. I gave it a burl and came away none the wiser. I suspect if I was to spend my life pursuing philosophers and philosophy I'd end up knowing less than when I started. That says as much about me as it does about them.

I decided there were only two men I had any time for. They are Charles Darwin and the Buddha. There have actually been many buddhas but this particular one was named Siddhartha Gautama. When you hear of Buddha or Buddhism he's the one they're talking about. Darwin, of course invented evolution, which is to say he defined it for Westerners. What he defined had always been there but had always previously been explained in as many ways as exist in the human imagination and in none of them usefully.

But I had a problem with these two. I knew both of them were true. When I talk of them, Darwin and Buddha, I conflate their names with their 'philosophy'. This suits me. Just go with it. Anyway, they seemed at odds with each other. They couldn't both be right. One described a system without thought and one with. One seemed to embrace cruelty and one emphatically rejected it. They fought battles in my head and it wasn't until a particularly lucid and thoughtful joint that I reconciled them. But I'm leaping ahead.


There's a lot of shit written about these two and now it's my turn, ha ha. When I talk of them I'm really describing a distillation of my own making. This is necessary. Darwin first. Darwin, apparently extolled the concept of 'survival of the fittest'. Thus we should admire lions, tigers and other predators. They are the 'fittest' and therefore the best. Unfortunately this is a load of shite. Some other guy came up with the 'fittest' phrase and other people, whom I generically call motherfuckers, use it to justify war, eugenics, time-and-motion and every other fucked up thing they could think of. This is called 'social darwinism' and has nothing to do with Darwin.

In essence, under Darwin, things that self-replicate will deal with environmental changes or they won't. If you're eyesight is great it is precisely as great as is required to catch prey and not become it. If you're eyesight goes to hell when you're forty, that's cool. Once you're forty your offspring, to whom you've hopefully passed on your great eyesight, are either viable or not. If they're viable Darwin says you may become prey. He's ceased caring.

Don't be confused by things that have nothing to do with surviving and having kids. You can use those same eyes for star-gazing, admiring Matisse or looking at porn. Darwin doesn't care. Not everything has to be about the viability of offspring - it's just that it can't be against it. I briefly wondered about homosexuality under Darwin. I'm being clinical here you understand. How can he tolerate behaviour so contrary to offspring, never mind their viability? Clearly he does tolerate it. People who prefer members of their own sex have always existed and always will. But there will never be a population that is 100% gay. The percentage of gay people in a population must be less than 100%, a lot less, more like a few percent. Probably 2.1 standard deviations from the norm, ha ha. This is fine with Darwin. The population will carry on and our Charles won't bat an eyelid. Distractions don't matter.


You can see the cruelty in Darwin though. The shit that social darwinists prize is all there. I've seen adolescent bell magpies peck the weakest sibling to death. For an otherwise admirable bird it's shocking. But magpies will spend their entire adult life fighting for turf. There's only so many bugs and worms to go around. With inter-species negotiation impossible, tough guys only need apply. But apart from the aforementioned adolescent viciousness they're like every other bird and avoid a fight at all costs. They're not wantonly cruel. They're precisely as cruel as they need to be. Darwin doesn't advocate this - he just has no opinion.

And what was Buddha on about? A ton of things. It depends on who you listen to. If you've read this far you're listening to me. But don't worry, my opinion of Buddha is pretty unobjectionable. Buddha said there is no self. He knew this because he achieved selflessness. 'Selflessness - As used and recommended by the Buddha!' And the opposition brand is selfishness - as used and recommended by motherfuckers. Never mind the crap copywriting, this dichotomy, or continuum, can be as profound as any ever invented. It's got rules beat. Rules equal loopholes. And loopholes equal 'lying'. The rules about lying and the lying to justify it are, for fans of hypocrisy, exquisite. The four words 'Thou shalt not lie' has magically created an entire ornate edifice of nitpicking bullshit - "I didn't tell you because you didn't ask..." - "I never said that. My precise words were..." - "You asked me if I 'slept' with her. We never slept..." blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum. Under the 'rules' none of these people actually 'lied'. Bully for them and their sense of rightness. But what they inescapably did do is misrepresent reality for selfish purposes. And what of that old chestnut 'the white lie'? That's against the rules isn't it? Or not? Would a saintly rule-obeyer be compelled to tell someone they have a fat arse? To hell with it - forget the rules - forget the words 'lie' and 'lying'. They're worthless. Any discussion involving them inevitably disappears up its own oh-so-clever arse, fat or otherwise. Keep it simple. Did the person behave selfishly or selflessly? A continuum that has selfishness at one end and selflessness at the other is a knife that cuts through bullshit.


And if you ask me, I will tell you Buddha was not a god. He simply achieved complete selflessness. A person who does this becomes one with the universe. Even people a fraction of the way there are spooky. They are possessed of whatever it is that Shinto reveres. I won't describe it, but visit a Shinto shrine, be quiet and understand why the shrine is there. That's what I reckon anyway. But how about you and me - we aspirers to Buddha-dom? Relax. There's no need to leap in the deep end. Satori are possible but unlikely. Best to start small. Small acts of selflessness will do wonders for you and everyone around you. It's absurdly easy and yet it's absurdly difficult. In this world nobody wants you to be selfless. Everybody wants you to be selfish. The entire purpose of corporate media is to encourage you to be so - Buy that thing! You deserve it! Pamper yourself! Whatever you desire! - It's difficult to keep selflessness in mind when everything and everyone urges you to be the opposite. It comprises the air that breathe. In trying to become selfless a sense of dislocation is almost inevitable. But this is good. Go with it. It's the only way you'll know who you are. And if you do it right you become Buddha - but I wouldn't hold my breath. What's far more likely, in fact almost a certainty, is that you become a better person, make the world a better place, and find happiness. Don't look to me. I suck at it. I'm lazy, self-impressed and love to interrupt. Read carefully, it's obvious in every word I write. This 'easiest thing ever' requires perpetual mindfulness. It's hard.

But forget the bombast. This is Darwin v Buddha. A Battle to the Death! Darwinian cruelty versus Buddhist selflessness. One trumps the other. Aaargh! Stop! Forget social darwinism. It's bullshit, which is to say it's a self-serving misrepresentation of the truth. It's nonsense designed by wicked, selfish people to excuse their wicked, selfish behaviour. It conflates Darwin's failure to judge with an endorsement. Darwin Endorses Nothing. Forget the lions and tigers and magpies. Darwin equally addresses earthworms, peach trees and butterflies. A complete absence of cruelty and yet each of these species, and millions like them, persist successfully. Hats off, says Darwin. Whatever works is fine by him. On the subject of human selflessness as a method of dealing with the vagaries of survival he's neither for nor against. Darwin is not a social darwinist, ha ha. If a people can be selfless and have children that live to carry on in like fashion then that's fine with him. Darwin smiles serenely - if it works, it works.

And Buddha? Buddha is uninterested in magpies, worms or any other creature of little brain. These are animals of instinct not thought. None are capable of mindfulness nor can they achieve oneness with the universe. Only we can achieve, or even attempt this, and Buddha addresses us. That we can be cruel is beyond obvious. We can emulate thoughtless creatures if we choose to. Buddha stands shoulder to shoulder with Darwin in acknowledging this. But he goes one step further. He knows that humans can wake from mindlessness. Darwin, immutable avatar of life and death has no opinion. Buddha smiles serenely - selflessness is possible.