Anyone who does not know this can never be anything more than a mechanical implement, reacting to life by clockwork, yet it is interesting that the clockwork people develop hugely sophisticated mechanisms that help to maintain the illusion that they are thinking and have freedom. I always use the writings of Martin Amis as an example of supremely developed clockwork that is so lifelike that it seems like life. It isn’t. It’s a complex code being fed out by a robot.

Only severe shock and tragedy ever wakes people up from this dream. There is no other remedy. And I mean severe. If you have room to doubt then you’re still a machine.

The main problem is that for most people there are several major life issues about which they cannot face the truth. These start young, fester through the teens and consolidate into hidden bitterness overwritten by fake confidence as they “mature”. Usually these are quite straightforward unmentionables about how clever, attractive, well-endowed, intelligent, popular, creative, healthy, fertile, lucky and successful they are. The yearnings that are installed as they grow out of innocence cannot possibly all be met to their full extent. We are all flawed. We go into ultra denial about this and make up “convincing” ideas, behaviours, attitudes, beliefs that will allow us to cope with being imperfect, not special enough, flawed even, a little crazy maybe, infertile or sick if we’re really unlucky.

Once you lie to yourself about the big stuff and install the lie as truth, overriding reality, it is relatively easy to continue on to the space where your entire life is a pretence.

This is where most people live for most of there lives. And I can prove it within one hour with anyone who is willing to agree to stay in the room and enter the debate.

In this context, what people think they perceive is neither here nor there and the difference between a human being and a machine is marginal because the level of self awareness that makes that difference is insufficient.

People who know more than me have claimed that our memories contain so much shock and loss that we can never process it all before the system clogs up with more happening, that we only get some brief relief through separation.

But here is my theory for your consideration: as you have probably realised, your consciousness is not all rational, not all alert, not all even awake. Much of what takes place in the being you call home consists of daydreams, fantasies, speculations, theories, creative images, drifting responses to beauty and music, powerful desires both physical and behavioural – not to mention the third of your life you actually are asleep. I believe that this consists of enough experience to claim that all that stuff, which I shall call for now your “inner narrative”, forms a crucially important part of your life. In fact we generate narrative all the time and we live within its gripping sway most of the time, while we plane, wait, expect, examine, experiment, investigate and draw hypotheses about what is going on.

My theory is very simple: when you overload with shock your mind defaults immediately to narrative drive to protect you against unacceptable truth.

That’s why shock creates grief, madness, despair, depression – all of which are complex negative stories we impose on life. That’s why hope creates hysterical longings and great expectations, also narratives, because the infuse of hope is also a kind of shock. A stable person would feel neither loss nor impending gain; they would treat all experience as equal. We cannot be that person. We must manage our lives. And to achieve that we must manage our narrative lives. People under long term stress commonly develop odd behaviours, sometimes known as mental illnesses, in order to cope. But I’m saying we all do that to a lesser extent….

Someone responded: It would seem to me Steve, most of our inner lives are made up of these inner narratives which are positively designed to keep us asleep. To keep us from seeing ourselves as we really are. Internal lies that play all day everyday, to prevent that bubbling cauldron of ugly reality of self from being faced. So in that sense, I dare say for most people the narrative is always uncontrolled and lulling people into a false perception of themselves and life.

…I’m sitting with it all the time, waiting for things to come forward and wondering how to integrate what I know about the potential healing power of moments of truth. Perhaps sleepwalking in narrative is an imaginary friend who can hold us back in some ways, certainly it is when a person makes up life completely, like a paranoid does, losing all contact with the ability to read motivation and see rational routes to outcomes.
On the other hand there must be an intrinsic de facto narrative that begins as a young child when you differentiate yourself from others and start to realise that your own life is yours alone and has a path that is different from other lives. I think perhaps that process remains confused for a very long time in most of us. And I note that the peoples of the east often subscribe to mental disciplines intended to mesmerise themselves out of the desire, judgement and motivation that might fuel narrative, this finding a safe space in a passive and self-chosen contact with unspecified, meditative reality.

To me their results seem lifeless and I think of westerners who go that route as space cadets who think they have risen above the turbulence of life but are more correctly in denial about what’s going on.

On the other hand, trying to ride the dream world I inhabit and function effectively requires a lot of strength and would be much easier if I found more resonance in the world at large. I do note, however, that whenever I sit down with people, whatever they claim about their point of view, what they do is commence to bleed out narrative. And that it is almost impossible to get them to be congruent, here in the room, so strong is the energy of the narrative, tantamount in force to a sexual desire that they cannot control. If they flirted with me the way they tell me their lives the room would be seriously charged and for me, after a relatively brief period, listening to narrative does begin to feel like a lover who comes on strong only to push you away and then comes on stronger when you try to back off and then cries rape at the moment of truth.

I can’t tell you how many people I have taken right to that moment in my life, only to see the portcullis slam down just before the final, painful release of the lies they live in. And wham, back comes the pulsing narrative, the story, the justification of the way they have lived and the things they have done, all the mishaps that were never their fault and the malaise they suffer that just happened, without warning, over 30 years or more !!!!

Think of the guy who left school at fifteen yet rose to a position of authority in the corporate world. Think my my CV client from the Kabili region of Algeria, a woman who fought her way to university in France and then ran away to the UK to avoid servitude. She started as a bookkeeper in Rainham, Essex and now project manages the installation of investment bank trading floors while living in SW3 with her Danish husband and two children.

Those are the big heroics, and there are countless smaller ones: people who overcome disabling illness and pain; people who fight their way past tragic childhoods. People who deal with stammers and dyslexia. People who know they aren’t that bright but work hard enough to do very well. people who give a lot to others, even though it costs them dearly in time and personal success. In fact the world is full of minor acts of heroism.

Yet, and here is my thesis: very few of us ever receive the acknowledgement, the thanks, the respect and in some sense the justification for being themselves that these marvellous but invisible achievements actually deserve.

So we all share a kind of debilitating hunger, to be known as we truly are, to be allowed to be that person, to be celebrated for our gifts and contributions. Perhaps because a competitive society where everyone is starving for recognition (and only the stars ever get it) – perhaps because this culture will not allow it.

However, as a minor gesture of revolution against loss of person-hood, I think we should all be doing something about this issue and telling those that we care about how very much we celebrate them just as they are. This would be so much better than coaching them on becoming better, so much kinder than giving unwanted advice that makes them feel incomplete as they stand now. And especially, when they are down, when things are bad for them, when they are enduring loss or grief, that particular time in their lives would be the best time of all to see them and let them know that you see them as whole, perfect, acceptable to you and, frankly, heroic.

Don’t fix anybody; find them marvellous instead. It’ll do a lot more good to both of you.

Some things feel right; they relax you, but with energy in hand. Some things feel wrong; they make you nervy and drain your spirit away. Like dealing with call centres and writing to the tax man. Like queuing in the rain at Hammersmith to get into a Ricky Lee Jones concert where she only sang for 45 minutes. Like making a date with the wrong girl at school but feeling you have to go through with it not to hurt her. Like being five years into the wrong career before finally understanding you have to scrap it all and start again.

In my wardrobe I have clothes  I so much love to wear that I save them for a special time and never wear them, choosing instead things that I don’t like so much because it doesn’t matter if they wear out. How stupid is that?

I mean, I know it’s supposed to be the path to wisdom to control your desires but I like my desires, very much. I like clean cotton sheets. I like machines that work first time and do exciting things. I always end up glad I had sex even when I thought I didn’t feel like it. I love my food but I don’t want that much of it these days and there’s a range of tastes that feel good to me, such as asparagus and haddock but no longer beef, which feels harsh. So why do I still eat stuff I don’t like, because of a “balanced diet”?

I think I shall put more emphasis on how things feel from now on and less on what might be the sensible thing to do. Sensible hasn’t been such a great success. It doesn’t make your skin tingle and your heart leap.

I long to tell these people that I respect and admire how they are in facing their lives – far more than I would if they were blustering through with phony optimism. But it seems that there is a kind of guilt in the air, that people feel slightly ashamed for not being at their best, that they would rather not be showing their “negative” feelings, that they long for it all to be over and soon… Which is reasonable.

Only when it isn’t over soon, believe me, I really really don’t mind anyone going over their honest feelings time and time again. It doesn’t bug me in the slightest that someone is or feels they are less than perfect. In fact I feel honoured that they would trust me by telling the truth. It’s like a spark of humanity in a world full of lies…

I did tell someone today that admired his courage and he replied: “I haven’t got any other choice, have I?” Completely without self pity. How magnificent.

Plenty of atmosphere, all of it nasty. Plenty of sharp dialogue without one single moment of human decency ever poking through the total gloom. Nice pointless plot in which all men are suspected of everything and not to be trusted. Possibly the most utterly objectionable film I have ever seen after Silence of the Lambs.

You must see it, as an education in pure, unadulterated prejudice masquerading as interesting psychological complexity. And Meg Ryan really got into it, as you can see from the Parkinson interview on YouTube, and Nicole Kidman co-produced it, so these babes think it really says something about sex, love and men – which is simply terrifying.

Because no mysoginist, no matter how bleak his world, no matter how many women had cruelly rejected him, could ever turn out an image of woman as utterly hating and completely negative as the men portrayed in this film.

What it tells us, that a bunch of rich, attractive, powerful and intelligent women in the most cosseted country on earth could make such a movie, what it tells us is that something is terribly wrong…

This voiceover enables Woody to illuminate the easy lives of a bunch of stupid American clichés, to mould them this way and that around a bunch of stupid romantic and life clichés, to foil them with a bunch of stupid cliché Spanish stuff - and yet to extract a dry laugh from a jaded and hostile viewer (me) at every single turn.

I have never liked the guy, never liked his arrogance, never liked his antics, never liked his strange family relationships and never liked the adulation he used to get from dunderheads starved of anything more meaningful. But if he had learned to step back sooner, as he does here, if he had broadened his field of vision like he does here, my God, he could have been almost half a contender.

For American humour, this film is brilliant, almost European in its almost sophistication. A very enjoyable romp, though the sex could have been more explicit and the Cruz identity almost spoils it by overacting to put  Scarlett in her place when actually the third woman, the incidental, woman, the Spanish artist and the voiceover are the real stars, especially the voiceover.

At home he is a good father with a tidy lawn and a European car. He spends a lot of time with his children, Debbie and Rueben, and his wife Jennifer is a lovely person who contributes a great deal to the local community. Once in a while they do have a stand-up row where the sound spills out of their house but next time you see them it all looks fine and they’ll be taking the kids out on a trip, maybe, nothing wrong except that little Debbie wants to take their dog, who howls all the time they’re gone.

Rupert works long hours but Jennifer often turns up as a volunteer at the school or some local event and she has tried her hand in the town drama group, where everyone says she showed some promise. People who’ve been to their house say the kids aren’t allowed candy and cola and that Jennifer has a thing about eating responsibly sourced food, which you’d assume they can afford and they never seem extravagant except at Thanksgiving, when they always throw a party for the neighbourhood.

If you were scripting a horror movie you might give the characters such a normal façade but in real life these do seem pretty tight, healthy, happy and well-adjusted. This year they rented a camper for a driving vacation covering an ambitious itinerary of places of interest and natural wonder, including a trip to an animal sanctuary where chimpanzees rescued from medical research are housed. It happens to be run by some friends of Jennifer, who said they could stay and organised special visits for them, hoping of course for a large donation to help with the costs. Rupert gave them a hundred dollars, letting Jennifer think it was more. When she finally found out, some weeks later, she was ashamed.

Anyway, that night there was a vegetarian barbecue at the home of the director of the animal sanctuary, a friend of certain celebrities and herself no stranger to television. For once in his life Rupert was feeling slightly outclassed by the smooth talkers but as people stopped drifting and applied themselves to the food he managed to steer his family to a large table around which sat no-one so special they might eclipse him. Here they all were, eating prawn flavoured vegetable protein shaped to look like prawns by a Thai chef, feeling good about themselves and mixing with other people who feel good about themselves, the conversation ebbing and flowing over ecological and animal welfare and sustainable food issues in a complacent kind of way, some of the guys having beards and wearing sandals, some of the woman wearing light, ethnic, organic garments on a warm summer night with cicadas calling and only mosquitoes to ruin the world.

One guest, however, was a secret troublemaker, a writer, a journalist and a teller of blunt truth. When he’d finished raking through the celebs he noticed a table full of nobodies with this perfect family at its head: the handsome dad, the pretty wife, the cute children, the healthy tans and upright postures. He joined them and he listened at first, acting the ingénue and a little shy, which was easy for him because he really is.

He noticed how everything that Jennifer said went nowhere unless someone down the table picked it up. She would speak, her husband would nod, her children perhaps, and then it would drift off into nowhere with maybe half a comment in response but never something that opened the topic up. Her husband, by contrast, launched many interludes of some length by the pleasant tactic of asking people around him about themselves and sitting back like a good listener in the warm glow of their gratitude. Time and time again he accomplished this, gradually adding more and more footnotes of his own so that he too was being revealed and in every case slightly outpunching them. Someone had been to Paris, but he spend six months there, studying in French and he knew the best restaurants and could pronounce them properly, though they probably were not vegetarian. Somebody else started talking about his interest in astronomy, which Rupert let pass for a while until pointing to the starlit sky and asking an innocent question that made the guy look stupid so Rupert could answer for him. A nervy woman wondered in hesitating tones about this depression that she just couldn’t shake and she was talking straight at Rupert with slightly suggestive lip language, because he was now the table’s resident, expert know-all. Quick as a flash he was back to her with a rundown of humanistic and pharmacological responses to depression, which he defined in different ways, trying to pinpoint her problem to deliver a final diagnosis, by which time she was confused and apparently close to tears.

Most fascinating of all to the observer, however, was how Rupert dealt with his potentially fractious kids while all this was going on, which was masterful. Right from the start their eyes had been wandering over to more exciting parts of the party, to animals and a bonfire and a children’s play area with other kids. And since the food held no allure for them whatsoever, they were restless, especially Debbie, because she was not as tame as her brother. What Rupert did to control them was simply beautiful to observe: like a liberal and democratic and loving father he involved them in the conversation, asking them questions: sometimes easy ones that he knew they could answer and sometimes difficult matters of opinion that would stump the average adult and were attended by the terror in their eyes showing how much they dreaded his follow-up questions, asking them to justify their opinions.

Reuben was generally tight-lipped, embarrassed, in recoil and reluctant to say anything the slightest part debatable. Debbie, at this point less wary, was prone to getting into trouble with her second answer and kicking her feet together under the table. Their mother never intervened, though it did not seem to the observer that she was enjoying the demonstrations of progressive home schooling and when Debbie almost lost it you could see she was ready to gather up the tears. Rupert continued, prince of all he surveyed, perfect in every particular, unchallenged in any way. Dynamic, solutions-driven, benevolent and cunning, like the USA herself, he effortlessly subdued an entire table of educated people who are probably themselves the centre of attraction in different social circles. Each phrase he placed was perfectly nuanced and very subtle, sometimes slapping someone down in the nicest possible way, at other times encouraging them to speak up to give him a further opening for his wisdom. And like America in the greater world, spoilt and perfect in image not substance, he had no idea whatever that he was doing all this… He was simply acting out his idea of being a great guy.

Unfortunately that night a sinister force was seated at the table, and almost unknown presence in America, someone who can step back enough to actually notice the minute eddies in the tides of conversation and has a degree of intuition about what they mean. When the moment was right the observer struck, first by deflecting a couple of undermining questions from Rupert as if it had never been spoken and second by asking Rupert about his work. Whereupon, delighted to have the opportunity, Rupert began to describe the joys of being in marketing, in particular his world-famous copywriting skills, in particular the niche he had between science and art, requiring a subtle mix of psychology and blunt speaking, just like he is in real life. He’s been lucky, he admits that, though he doesn’t mean it. What he thinks is that he’s been talented and that he is big-time entitled.

The observer realised without being told that Rupert works in big pharma and that they market their products by deceiving and bribing medical practitioners, one of the most entitled groups of assholes in our society. With a couple of questions he got Rupert to admit this, though the specificity and confidence was now drained from his voice and he looked ready for a counter-attack.

“So it’s an irony for you, I imagine, to be invited here by an animal shelter that houses apes who’ve been tortured in useless tests on drugs that are probably being developed by your company?”

Rupert turned white with fury and stood up in a threatening body-language way that alarmed his wife and scattered his children. It took him several very deep breaths to refrain from an all out nuclear attack and return, gradually, with a false smile, to more cunning forms of domination and aggression. Because he never backs off.

That, more or less exactly, describes the American mind. The one that dominates our earth and shapes everything we will become. No American, as far as I am aware, has ever noticed that they all do it, spontaneously and without pause, endlessly competing with each other to be the best in whatever slot they occupy. Even would-be rappers in ghettoes do it. Even lonely truckers at desolate diners do it. Even hippies do it. Even Bob Dylan does it. They perform. They have utterly lost contact with any archaic notion of sharing the human space, even though they so often retain as vestigial manipulative tools the good humour, friendliness and nice manners that were once a sign of decent societies in other lands.

previous parts of Touch are here

to discuss this please go here

Now jump to any suburb of any large city in any settled country with enough economic activity to provide employment, leisure, diversion, internet, fashion, news, supermarkets, highways, transport, electricity, sewerage, coffee shops and holidays… The terrors of existence have atrophied down to vague unease, nagging angst, minor annoyances, irritating belittlements, occasional minor crises, a slight fear of disaster kept at bay by having more fun. Diluted beyond recognition, they can almost be ignored, unless they have actually become more potent for being less explicit, more challenging for being less obvious, much like The Princess feels the pea under her soft cushion of mattress and cannot sleep. Do you think that a nervous system that evolved over millions of years to keep the organism permanently en guard could somehow switch itself off in a few thousand, even with the aid of alcohol, pop music, diet coke, mobile telephones, twenty-four hour news, Sunday Review sections, The Ballet Rimbaud and plenty of “issues” to keep the mind occupied…

Well, yes, it does rather seem that way, sitting at a fashionable eatery in a leafy suburb, watching parents indulgently allowing small children to select and then discard plates of exotic food costing more than a family of Africans have to get through each week. It does look like we’re all cushioned from life when you take into account the millions of people who seem to spend all day celebrating themselves on networking websites. It must feel that way eating caviar in the VIP lounge on your way to vacation in The Maldives. And it better be that way for the Masters of the Universe in Wall Street and The City of London who earn more in bonus every single year than a hardworking teacher will grub in a whole lifetime. We do seem, some of us at least, to have escaped up the pyramid of needs to the point where perfecting ourselves through investment, good taste, creative leisure, fine food and amateur psychology contain the only challenges left (unless we choose to become environmentalists in order to have a cause).

Of all the things that are known, no one can know but a tiny fraction, so not knowing is actually a cornerstone of our way of life, just as it was for our ancient ancestors. But whereas their ignorance was close to fatal, ours has been miraculously transformed into a divine power, as we switch on our super-efficient machines, taking all their gifts for granted. Yes, there will be line caught tuna, fresh from some far ocean, and all the ingredients essential to turn it into an instant masterpiece and if you don’t feel like being creative because you made a lot of money today then yes, there will be instant Thai food for the microwave, whenever you happen to be hungry. And you will eat it in warmth, behind safe doors, with savings in the bank and friends out there somewhere, watching an interesting film before taking a power shower and relaxing in a gorgeous bed with pink plastic things that vibrate for the woman who no longer feels like it and acceptable porn for her mate.

We have it all and we were entitled, weren’t we? We have so much of it that we now want what anyone has or ever hand. We want all the gifts that wise men gave their courageous lives for, all the ecstasy that obsessive artists wrecked their lives for, all the celebrity we can possibly eat up, always demanding more. Write a blog: let the world read how clever you are. It’s so easy, so instant, so wonderful, creative. You are a somebody, a child of the universe, a great genius who understands things. People should be listening to what you have to say and every time they didn’t take any notice in real life can be wiped away online. You are entitled. You can have it all. Whatever you dream of can be yours. You visions guides your marvellous destiny…

Where will it end?

It could end in several places. We already suspect that it may end in an overpopulated world, denuded of key living species, empty of carbon fuels, polluted by our processes, flooded by melting ice and torn by violent weather, possibly radioactive, forced back into primitive violence, menaced by threatening epidemics, secretly ruled by evolved rats, divided into a small class of super-rich and a huge class that is struggling, once again, even to stay alive. The veneer of civilisation is extremely thin when you recall that a driver froze to death one night at a gas station because his credit card was rejected in the most advanced country on earth. It’s that easy to fall between the cracks and with half the population on the edge of insane, many do… Lose a couple of key pillars such as your job, your home, your family, your health and then make one wrong move and suddenly it can be you, with no direction home, no chance to take, nothing left, no prayers answered.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, as I have said before, the average human being is primarily engaged in one secret, unrecognised and never discussed activity: the search for certainty at any price. As I have already described, this is impossible to achieve beyond any shadow of a risk but yet people will fake it to themselves and their friends, mutually supporting each other’s illusions, wallowing in a playground of unreal optimism about what they have and will become in life, who they are and what they deserve in terms of respect and stuff: entitlement.

There is a subtle word, clever enough that it is now being used even in the USA to distinguish the excesses of our culture as some people slowly begin to rethink what they have and how sound it really is. At last. Yet it is also being wielded with a self-righteous spin, as if it were the final frontier to the promised land of absolute correctness, the place where you are slightly aware of the need to share the earth with other humans and animals and icecaps and stuff, the place where your lavish lifestyle can be justified because with friends you talk about “entitlement”. We have been here before and it won’t work.

Nothing so simple will remove from the soul of a single US citizen what their entire school system and culture pumps in from the cradle so completely that they do not even know it is there: the aggression, the absolute assumption of rightness, the effortless sense of entitlement, the overwhelming need to give positive advice, the ruthless lust to success, the limitless greed for comfort and entertainment, the longing for meaning so profound that each of them spends most of their time mythologizing their own lives in an orgy of self-centredness that would simply have been regarded as insane during earlier phases of humanity. In the USA, this disease has been at epidemic proportions for some years, affecting all levels of society and barely even noticed. It has spread through their cultural viruses to most other countries and cultures, displacing their own conventions of modesty and right behaviour, Disneyfying the entire world, even the places where people are far too poor to ever live the dream, so much so that only Islamic maniacs can still fight back with their ancient obedience to deity.

The images have been seductive and the language too and I doubt that anyone will be giving up their iPods or iPhones any time soon in order to be less entitled.

previous parts of Touch are here

to discuss this please go here

I know there is intelligence living in our guts but I do not know what mean the messages it sends me, often sends me, usually unheard, while my mind tries to control everything.