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[ 15 minute read ] 3200 words

Stop Thief

A couple of days ago, my theme was on peripheral information, such as reading between the lines and people lurking in the shadows; and the relevance of peripheral information. That theme was picked up and minced to negate my meaning.

I do not have a hidden agendum and clearly state that content or themes in my posts are not written to bolster any agenda that others have, including agenda that is in line with a cult, religion, or self-promotion.Those three are often egregiously conflated. Any connection, whether by addition to, or negation of, other people's, posts published later than this, is fabricated to be so according to their own agenda, or agendum.

I have posted this as late as I can, today.

In writing an email, I formed an idea that many of us bolster ourselves by aligning with something we think is worthy of our attention, in the hope that association with something valuable will also show ourselves to be valuable. That is how marketers sell us expensive watches, cars, fashion, make-up, alcohol etc.

Many of us think that religion is something that we should ascribe our lives to. I don't have a problem with that; not one bit. In fact, I very nearly studied for a degree in Divinity. I find religion to be an incredibly interesting subject. I even studied 'Religious and Secular Ethics' with the, now defunct, London Bible College. It might have only changed its name, which is why if you Google, Wikipedia has this: 

'The London School of Theology, formerly London Bible College, is a British interdenominational evangelical theological college based in Northwood within the London Borough of Hillingdon.'.

I got 63% in my exam, as someone hovering on the threshold of giving up (in the wider spiritual sense, but not with an ultimate mortal finality). Really good course! I thoroughly recommend a similar one. Religion is among us and presents itself on a daily basis. I, like tens of millions of others, do not want it rammed down my throat by a fanatic cult member, or anyone who is associated with, or has been associated with, a cult. 

A conversation, I had, with one of my neighbours drifted into a conversation with his next-door neighbour. He is a Muslim. I have no problem with that, at all. Here is a deeply religious man; a man for whom I have a good deal of respect. Why? Because he reveres God; he makes time for his religion; and he will not be swayed from practicing his religion. But, if I can find reasons to respect him, I should already have at least one reason not to respect him if things were different, right? But, I suggest, we rarely look for flaws to substantiate our beliefs. That requires a different kind of thinking that, as far as I know, is not automatic in us. I was going to write: 'quite simply because we do not need to use it to survive'. I am not sure that is true though. 

From an A4 hand-written sheet on my wall: 'In Social Science, hypotheses are tested in their negative form. This form of hypothesis is called the null hypothesis. The intent is to prove the positive hypothesis.'

I suppose an example of this, is when we ask ourselves: If you could paint a picture of your own heaven or paradise, what would you put in your painting. I mean fine art - with scenes and objects, not modern symbolic art. Many of us would leave out a whole bunch of stuff which we only realise we would have included, when we consider the opposite environment; a most negative environment; hell, or hell on earth, however, you want to safely imagine it. When painting a representation of hell, canny people might paint a desert with no water, and have too much heat or cold; or an absence of living people, yet people are still represented, even if it is no more than destroyed houses in the painting. If we then go back to our painting on heaven or paradise, I suggest, we realise that we have not included water, or family and friends, or food, or love, or respect, or a whole bundle of stuff. What we have come to realise is that by recognising an opposite to something we love or crave, in effect, I think, we have a deeper understanding of what is important to us.

I respect my Muslim neighbour because he does not take anything from me. He does not demand my time; he does not demand my respect; he does not shove his ideas down my throat; important to me, is that his strong belief means he will not pass off something I have highlighted as his own consideration; and he does not try to indoctrinate people - he does not claim significance by being a Muslim. To him, his reverence for Allah prohibits him from using Allah as a signifier of his relevance. He is validated by following Islam - he validates Islam. And it is the last, indoctrination, that is a key signifier as to his whether he should be respected. In order to indoctrinate with religion, there is a tendency to back up one's words with quotes from religious text. In other words. 'Believe ME because it says so here.' I find that to be entirely despicable and abhorrent because the person is validating themselves. This is why I must state that I am not colluding with anyone to compel people to believe something.

My posts are completely out of my own head and many people recognise them as brutally and ruthlessly honest. I believe someone scrabbling for recognition and validation may use any religion to back up their words. Foolishly, they might also find something in any person's honesty and attach themselves to that. In my mind, what they are actually doing by stealing themes or padding out themes is diluting the truth. If it was truth that initiated any good thoughts, I believe I should not mess with it. Inevitably, we are going to queer it with our falsehood. The falsehood I am trying to outline and fill in with colour, is the need to present ourselves as similar to something that we find relevant or important to ourselves.

Being honest, is really hard. It is difficult because we are, I suggest, surrounded by falsehood. I wrote this a long time ago and filed it in the 'Religion' folder on my laptop:

Demons and Devils

Drawing attention to Oneself

       'The attention of the demon-possessed grows ever greater and gradually they creep forward, their ears pricking. Only when the believer swears or curses does the attention of the demon-possessed wane and turn elsewhere, As though the threat of detection is too much to bear does one allow filth to gush from one's mouth.

Or, perhaps the evident building of force from the demon-possessed causes the believer to swear, thus causing the believer to become further from God, We must hold hard. Our weakness is wanting to belong, to not be ostracised, to not feel threatened.'

END

It isn't really a story, but I have to distinguish it as such because it is an example environment that comes from my imagination, and as such, is likely to be untrue. I use the 'Sophia' icon to represent truth (my honesty at least).

One of my most hated character flaws is that I will lie. Years ago, I decided I would tell the truth, perhaps politician-like, but hopefully not, because paltering, which is what we hear when they don't want to tell us something, is also lying. In a TMA question on reflecting on oneself, I lied when I wrote that I enjoyed one subject more than the others. If the question was re-framed to be. 'Which unit or subject did you hate the least?'  I wouldn't have needed to lie. However, the question was on which subject or unit did I enjoy the most. Even if I did enjoy a subject, I didn't want to share that information to a tutor who will probably make a note of it. The fact that my answer was a lie and submitted over five months ago, and I am still very much aware of the lie, might give you some idea of how troubled I am about falsehood. I will never be able to recover from that. Just like a recovering addict, my tally of abstention was reduced to zero. Why did I do it? To make sure I passed the module and be able to move onto the next. I really don't know if it was worth it. I am thinking it was not. I would have passed without even submitting that TMA. I could have completely skipped it, but actively chose to lie throughout the whole TMA, quite simply because I knew what to write to pass the TMA. Shown in the open like that, each to a one, we condemn all me as a harbour for falsehood. I tried to use the French verb 'habiter' but couldn't bend it enough before it snapped. 'J'abite mensonge.' You see how I have corrupted something beautiful. Only fools are impressed by a fool.

So, when someone expands on anything in my posts to further their own goals I am livid. There is worse; when someone twists or expands on my themes or words to further themselves, I recognise a weak and feeble cheat; a charlatan. Perhaps my truth is weak and does not stand scrutiny, but it is my truth and I make sure that is known.

I have a few times stated that I shall never write a book. I do not want people to reference me, and I especially would not want a book reviewer seeking validation to gain any vicarious credence from my work. 

How ugly it is when things are shown in the light. The Open University teaches some of its students to critically analyse other people's words and write a review of their work. Unfortunately, there are some people who, in my mind, believe this to be an admirable quality to hone and perfect. It is parasitic. Without other people's efforts beforehand a reviewer ceases to exist. I shall have to review other students' submissions in forums. I find it so vastly abhorrent that I will get credence for being a parasite, and it is because I have already lied, and acted as a traitor to myself and disrespected everything I spent years working towards, that I have find myself with only four choices. 

1. Plead for an alternative test. 
2. Avoid commenting on any student's work, yet still submit my own.
3. Lie
4. Leave the Open University degree program

I now have three choices since lying is not going to happen, and from that list of three, pleading for an alternative test on account of any eligibility shall also be removed. I am not a quitter so I have no energy for leaving the degree program. So, I must avoid commenting on anyone's work as a task that would personally give me credit or approbation. I can tell the truth, but nobody wants that, and I would not get any points, so I would need to lie. Paltering, you understand, is lying. When I submit my posts in the mandatory forums I shall add that I invite comments only on what is wrong with my posts and comments on what can be improved. It is presumptuous for me to think that anyone might like something I might write. However, it is difficult for us to always find something positive to say. I hope to remove that onus from commentators of my work. I requested that my tutor for an earlier module give only correction and advice on what is wrong with my TMA submissions on the basis of not being able to fix things that are correct or done well. My tutor's job was much easier; the feedback was freely honest and did not need to be couched in encouraging terms and it was easier for me to understand. I really an that serious about honesty. I suppose trying to be honest requires accepting it from others too. Just my thoughts.

There are only two goals or agenda in my life: Be honest and cause other people to consider being honest as a option that will not necessarily harm them; and make sure that people know that being mentally unwell, whether it is frequent, infrequent, temporary or permanent, treatable or not treatable, is normal and interesting. An example is when we dream, and then say to someone, 'I had a weird dream last night', and then go on to describe a psychotic incident. Happily, we believe that we are not really like that. Aren't you? I am fairly certain that every one of us believes something about ourselves that everyone else cannot see in us. The problem we face, I suggest, is that we steal to feed our self-told lies. 'I am kind, and I am right.' should be: 'I give away what I do not need, and I fool myself because I have convinced myself that I have completely and fully understood something.'

I believe that, being honest means trusting ourselves. You might understand now why I am more than annoyed when anyone thinks it is okay to steal or expand on themes when they have not checked themselves for falsehoods. 

'Oh come on, Martin. A leopard can change its spots!' No amount of religion or worship can do that if we are dishonest with ourselves. I am not a writer. I have never written a book. I lack creativity. I have no talent. I freely admit it. I suggest that the first thing to give up is our desperate need to feed on other people, to make comparisons with liars, and give up trying to pull down anything that exceeds our abilities.

In an earlier post in which I published a pseudo-interview with myself I wrote:

'...I live in a constant state of searching for either escape routes or solutions that satisfy the situation, though not necessarily me. In real terms, this means, to me, Fight tooth and nail using smiles and kid-gloves to attempt to achieve an unrealistic vision of peace (which even worse, provides only succour) against people who would vindictively tear my guts out if I show my soft under-belly, simply because it is in their nature to do so.'

What did I mean by that? By being honest, I reveal myself to be flawed; by being honest, I reveal myself to have weaknesses; by being honest, I trigger the compulsion in others to try to overwhelm me and take advantage of me and anything I do. But no, that is less than a tiny bit of it. By being honest, the falsehood in people is pricked and they, like the demons and devils in the earlier imaginative piece, will seek to destroy and twist something that is merely my thoughts, to favour themselves and their indoctrinating natures. These posts are merely my own thoughts; they are not yours; they are not hers or his; they are not theirs. If you are inspired by them and feel you want to expand on them, you first need to recognise that these are not your thoughts that you are expanding on, so if you publish your expansion you have to reference me as the source of your expansion. If you do not, you are plagiarising me. Similarly, If you want to gain some credence for your new revelation and you post your thoughts on the same platform, juxtaposed to someone else, from whom you have agreed or disagreed with, you need to make sure that people know you are inspired, or angered, or in disagreement with the post you have chronologically posted next to, if the content is significantly connected to. To whit: If I write about my version of truth but you see things differently, you need to reference me. Of course, anyone who is not trying to popularise themselves would do so. You don't actually have to do any of that in an OU blog post. It is just polite, fair and sincere. I suggest that if you don't play fair, you are a charlatan.

Plagiarism is a no-no in academic study with the Open University; see this tutor's post: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=286521

Despite a sweeping mood of unrest sweeping the country at present, I cannot help recognising that my Muslim neighbour with his religious approach to his religion is far more respectful to me than a zealot that wants to further his own goal to popularise himself by aligning himself or herself with a few thoughts on honesty and quoting the Bible. My Muslim neighbour is advanced in his attitude towards his God. He would not entertain my thoughts at all when he considers his faith. He, however, would, if he talks from his own self thoughts. For him, when considering his religion and my thoughts, 'Never the twain shall meet'. 

With this in mind, and my repulsion from self-promotional individuals who claim to be better than truth would reveal, some people are not welcome to my thoughts, because it is like throwing pearls to swine. They gobble them up and all that comes of it is pearls covered in muck. Truth is shrouded and transmogrified into something evil-smelling by ego and falsehood.  

I have made statements that I resent my creativity and work being used to promote an individual, but still my posts get used in that way. My posts are not meant to be used to raise people or diminish them, including myself. If a reader can find some way to raise themselves through being honest, then you have my attention. If I say something about myself that is good, I hope I can also say that it is because I saw the opposite in me and that is how I have learnt. Why I have learnt is because I don't want to repeat my undoings.

Back to commenting on other students' posts in mandatory TMA forums: In adding my thoughts based on the practice of close analysis, I have to promote myself as being perspicacious no matter how well or shoddily the student has presented their work, or how much they have gleaned from the course. I must find a way to remove myself from praise or merit, while also showing that I have learnt from the task and the content published by my fellow students. I cannot expand on their work without weakening their effort. Being patronising is one of my faults. 

In the light of day: 'That is a wonderful painting of mummy and daddy, but people are not bigger than houses.' Someone who understands why the parents are represented as bigger than the home would know that the parents are more important to the child than the home. A crass person would patronise the child with physics. The child would be crushed. 

Please don't expand on my themes before you are certain I have not already covered it. Sometimes it is the exploration that is important; spelling it out in an expansion crushes and negates an experience. Please, don't steal that from someone.