Self Image

Yet another chorus calling for government controls! The adverts, leisurewear, music videos and playstation games are all too sexually extreme for our children and we need some morale-master to control, restrict and limit what our children can have access too. First things first, parents bring up their children, it is upto them to set the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable for their children. In our complex society they may have to have some dialogue with the schools but essentially the buck stops with them. It is a cop-out to say the Government must. The Government has no idea what is best for you, your community, its children and how you relate to it with your child.

The commercial world has gotten very clever in plucking our deep, sub-conscious, basic instincts and responses to sell its wares. It knows exactly what works and how to play it to get the maximum effect that suits its purpose, to sell. It is time we grew up, too stock of ourselves and managed these gut basic instincts more maturely and not just accept being manipulated by others.

For girls it has been about appearance, just look "good" and people will like you and want to be friends with you. Stop presenting yourself and your daughters on such a crude and simplistic ideological model. It is really not what they look like but how they respond that matters, respond to dialogue and respond to companionship. Yes first impression do matter, and a lot, but that is not the end of the story, only the start. So throw away lipstick, hair-do's and sensuous clothes and just present yourself well that others might think you have something (other than sex) to offer but only so you can begin to engage but not by aping some idealised sexual desire phantom. Really the answer is that simple, ladies stop presenting yourself as a sexual desire object and start to value yourself. Present what you have to offer as a person not an object. Then your daughters will pick up on your clues and follow suit. And never, never ever project your failed aspirations of sexual allure onto your daughter, she can do without that guilt trip. Chances are in your new asexual look the males around you won't pick up on your underlying sensuality, probability is that they will no matter what.

For the boys it is a similar story but from that other dynamic. The perception is that to be 'attractive' to women, you have to be to seen to display wealth images and be assertive so others defer to you. Simple, crude and basic but denies the real story. You actually have to present yourself as someone worth engaging with, with something to say and with a confidence to manoeuvre your way around this challenging society.

Conduct yourself from these mature perspectives and the commercial world will follow you, giving up on those previously so successful gut reactions.

We do have to grow up as a society and begin to deal maturely with all those fraught aspects of sexuality. It is not about sticking the plumbing bits together. It is not about the momentary high following on from an ejaculation or orgasms but about nurturing the companionship that follows in the slow after glow. It is about building a relationship that will survive and gather strength through life's lows.

We also have to stop treating teenagers as adults able to handle complex inter-sex relationships, they simply cant. Their minds have not matured and they don't have enough experience to cope with the challenges and they still haven't found how to manage their hormonal responses to sexual arousal. We, the adults in society, have to tell them square on to grow-up and ensure offers of guidance are not brushed aside as an irrelevance. We adults have to re-discover our confidence and not be over-whelmed by their exuberance.

With the surge of hormone that the teens brings on and the weirdness of frequent sexual response daily encountered, we as a society to have to think how we suggest they handle it. We need to face up to the problems of life and not try to hide, restrict or control them . Maybe we as a society have to start and talk openly without embarrassment of distraction, relief, or even masturbation as a way of gaining control over those so urgent teen physical responses until the emotional control over relationship evolves and matures.

Better that than surrender to some arbitrary morale judge with a limited agenda deining for each every varied one of us what we can or cannot see, at what times, in which places.

Review: An Education

The 'serious' newspaper reviews rated it worthy, best film of year (2009) so far and there is this Oscar buzz about it. Worth a visit, no not really, just much better than all the other dross out there.
Just light and frothy.
There was a scatter gun of cliches covering most of the familiar 60's issues. Poised at the brink of the changes the sixties swept in, they are all there, challenge to establishment, woman emancipation, life aspiration, sexual revolution, 'pop' culture, material consumerism, exploitation of the vulnerable, racism but in true soap-operaesque, having klaxtoned the emotional hook limply failed to get beyond or beneath the trite superficial observation, leaving us just with tabloid headliners.
Light and fluffy.
What a waste of talent and effort as the actors struggled to imply meaning deeper than the script offered them. It was not hammy but might as well been for all the absence of content and lack of conviction or empathy generated. I'm afraid no matter how well acted twenty three years doing seventeen does not adequately carry conviction in close-up and the snappy facing out of authority figures dialogue struck me more as wane nostalgia of a wistful middle-age woman looking to self-justify her lack of younger judgement than youthful emergent woman coming to terms with her sexuality, life and opportunities.
Light and fluffy.
Nothing wrong in light and fluffy, a bit of escapism, great, a soaring adventure, great, a fresh camper around familiar scenes, maybe, a step back in time to re-assess our path, maybe. It doesn't always have to have lasting impact getting deep under the skin of relationship issues but we, who have turned out and paid the front office, do deserve something to immerse ourselves into, to get carried away or taken to a fresh place or given a fresh view. A bit more than this soap-opera offering.
Light and fluffy, but lacking in substance.
Surprisingly perhaps our thin audience was fellow late middle-aged couples hoping for a nostalgic look back at their missed opportunities? All in all a couple of hours of pleasant but so wide of the mark missed opportunities.

War-Mongering

To start with I am a pacifist, no surprise there then? The one scenario that I doubt I would ever come to terms with was if I took someones life by a careless act of mine.
There is no justification, no provocation, no military goal, no realm that makes the taking of one, two, twenty, two hundred or two million lives excusable any more than I can make a distinction in the mode of taking a life whether by a car, knife, rope, bullet, gassing or nuclear bomb. The only pause for thought is the length and degree of distress experienced before the life taken finally expires.
Setting that aside I can still be objective, take an overview on war-mongering and be relevant. Here is the proof or lie to that!
We are now in a similar position to that that the great powers found themselves just before WWI and WWII. The mechanics of war had moved on by a considerable degree but they were still nostalgically and fatally bound to the war mechanics of their last great victory. So too now. The whole war dynamics has changed. Now nationstates are held to ransom by small highly mobile groups of people and a few readily accessible materials, providing those people have the support of their community.
Which city or field are your tanks to surround, or planes to bomb or army hoist their flag in to prove you have finally subdued that irritant rebel group that constantly depletes your artifacts of war. You might sweep in, replace one governance with your own style but the peoples mind you want to control remain, despite your worst, their minds that they control. In the end you have to deal with them and in doing so your own ethics become corrupted. In the global scale of things what is the point?
The bigger the ordinance, whether it is tank, bomber plane or aircraft carrier the greater the resource cost and the greater the significance in your fighting effectiveness if you lose it. So to protect your big ordinance you have to support them with a host of lesser ordinance with the sole goal of defending the big ordinance. A great lumbering war machine. Not exactly light footed, fleet of foot, bobbing ducking and weaving around those highly mobile groups of people out to scupper your every attempt.
Anything other than a national defense is political suicide. Scrap or more realistically hire out to Europe all the big ordinances, save a vast amount on your budget and replace with light, highly mobile vehicles. Train your people in the mechanics and psychology of sabotage and civic disobedience. Invest in disperse communications. But and a big but make sure your style of government is all inclusive, emphasises the united people so they never experience the need to rebel against you.