SatNav for the soul®

It all began with word play; cult, culture – they must have the same root I thought and yet the word cult has an interpretation which is light years away from culture. Odd.

So, let’s put them together, I thought; a cult of culture… hmm, not bad, but what could the cult be about? Well, culture, obviously, maybe a brand new culture that made things up as it went along, a culture out of control…

And so the idea was born. The more I thought about it, the more ideas sparked off as ‘culture’ became the grinding stone onto which I forced the blade of ‘cult’.  It had massive irony and limitless comic potential, there might even be some high profile publicity from a cleverly worded press release somewhere.

So I wrote one. I sent it to a few friends of mine to gauge their reaction. They all thought it highly amusing and a fascinating concept. Eventually, for a joke, I emailed it to the first newspaper I thought of, one of the biggest in the land; The Sun. Within two minutes of it being sent my telephone rang and a Sun journalist was on the line asking me a series of questions, some of which centred around the practices of the cult. This took me completely by surprise and I answered his questions in a deadpan, guarded manner. To my mind, the tone of the conversation was in the desired, ironic spirit. He asked me if I had ever had a cult before. No, I answered, this was my first one. He then asked me how many members were in this cult. I answered two (which was true, in the sense that they had joined in the fun and given themselves ridiculous titles). He lost interest at this stage and asked me to contact him again when the cult had become bigger.

“How many members would it need to be before it was ‘bigger’?”, I asked.

“Oh, half a dozen.” he answered, then put the phone down.

Excitement got the better of me as I marvelled at the ease with which I had got one of the country’s biggest newspapers interested. I only needed four more members and nation-wide exposure for the cult was to be had. Thus started the recruitment drive.

I sent an email to my freethinking friends explaining the situation with the caveat that there could be a slight possibility that The Sun may want to name or photograph them. This was possibly their fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had promised them and I eagerly awaited the flood of membership applications to come in, along with their creatively absurd, self appointed titles.

Silence. Puzzled, I telephoned one or two to ask why they hadn’t responded. It turned out that they were nervous about the possible publicity and ‘fallout’ from the cult label, especially with the tabloid Sun newspaper reporting it. I should explain that the people I spoke to are artists and musicians.

I was surprised and amazed. The concept was a joke, surely anyone could see that? Apparently not, irony is not a strong point with The Sun (I have to confess I never read it and I am only aware of its reputation from the law suits filed against it by wealthy individuals). How they would report my story would probably be in keeping with their reputation. The Sun was a tiger and I had invited my friends to join me in riding it.

I searched for allies further afield and contacted people who I thought would be sympathetic to the core message of resisting corporate homogeneity. Silence. I was beginning to feel like a pariah at this stage. Even ‘hard left’ freethinkers balked at the idea of ‘coming out’ about joining a spoof cult. Artists told me they were afraid it might hurt their career. Artists. What is the job of an artist? No, seriously, what is the purpose of art?

This was turning into something I had not expected and raised some profound questions about mind control. It was almost as if my joke about a spoof cult being out of the control of the authorities had inadvertently exposed a far bigger, more insidious and powerful cult; the cult of conformity. Even artists were ‘afraid’ to appear provocative, controversial, creative. What does that say about the society we live in? We hear stories of tyrannical regimes that overtly use fear tactics to keep their population under control. How much cleverer is it then to use covert fear so that the population are not even aware that they are being controlled? Isn’t this one of the definitions of a cult?

Maybe I’m reading too much into this but I find it strange that everyone liked the idea of the cult of culture and yet very few people were willing to get involved with it (incidentally, my thanks go to Dave Pollard, an established ’serious’ author in Canada who was one of the three other people who did respond to my invitation and who adventurously joined in the fun). Being ’serious’ at something, doesn’t disqualify you from having fun as well.

Even on this very small scale I got an insight into the power of ideas and our automatic, irrational reaction to new ones. Those who propose radical new ideas have my utmost respect because they must know that, if reasoned convincingly enough, their ideas necessarily threaten an existing power base. This is why people go to war over ideas. What courage Charles Darwin must have had to put his name to such an heretical idea as a theory of evolution.

As for the cult of culture, I intend to turn it into a routine for stand-up comedy and possibly a cartoon strip. All the jokes will be at the expense of ourselves.

On 9/11 as the twin towers in New York burned, Jo Moore, a lowly government spin doctor in London, sent an email which stated it was a good day to “bury” bad news about the government. She was later excoriated by the media for this and was forced to resign.

Then tonight, on television, a hedge fund manager, David Yarrow, proudly told the story of how within minutes of the first plane hitting one of the towers, he was on the telephone ’shorting stock’ that was likely to suffer in the aftermath. Presumably he was proud about this because he was ’sharp’ enough to make money out of the situation.

Okay, so you tell me the difference between this insignificant girl in the government composing an email and this parasitic city trader also taking advantage of the situation. I didn’t see him in the news being spat upon by the media days after 9/11.

I’m not quite sure who I’m assassinating here, David Yarrow or the hypocritical, cretinous media.

On 1st December 1955 Rosa Parks sat on a bus in Alabama and made history. Afterwards she said she was tired that day. Not physically tired but spiritually tired of the racial segregation she had had to put up with all her life. So she refused to budge for a white skinned human being.

Here is another story of outrageous injustice, of human depravity and shamefulness. When is someone going to make history for the new segregated, the poor? Who will make a stand against the corruption in the capitalist system? Surely the inequalities in this current financial scandal are as bad as any apartheid practised by white supremacists throughout the world. The supremacists today are a different breed. They are a minority still but their ideology is now arrogantly flaunted on our city streets and so powerful is it that the poor think it is the natural order of things. These supremacists have no need for the shameful, anonymous white hoods and gowns of their forefathers. Their burning crosses have been reworked into the sign of the dollar and now their howls of ecstasy are unbridled as they dance in celebration of their naked greed.

Except the truth is these people are parasites on every working family, cowardly parasites that produce nothing and who will not take responsibility for their actions. And we let them walk the streets with impunity.

Maybe it is because this segregation is not as directly visible as a black and white one but conceptually, it is just as repugnant. Why is it tolerated? And how do we fight it? Rosa could sit tight then get arrested to make her point. But against the inequalities of greed…where can the mythology be created? Any ideas?

Oh this is good. This is really good. Protesters wanting to stop a new runway from being built have bought a parcel of land that sits in the middle of the proposed runway. To make things even more difficult for the planners they have gone on to divide the land up into even smaller chunks and sold them onto people living all over the world – an administrative nightmare for a compulsory purchase order.

What is so good about this is the tactic. They have learned from the masters; multinationals.

I read of one supermarket (Tesco I think it was) that bought a tiny strip of land measuring only three or four feet wide on a vacant plot near one of its own supermarkets purely to stop a rival supermarket from setting up in competition.

Multinationals have hundreds of these kind of tricks, most of them legal. To fight them you need to play the same game but be just that bit more creative.

Sitting in a cinema with my brother in law many years ago, we watched a trailer for a movie which starred Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone. At the final climax of the trailer the gravel voiced narrator boomed, “Stallone! Stone!” to which my brother in law added, “Turkey!”

Even from the trailer it was apparent that this film would stink. To be honest, I never saw the film nor the poster advertising it but I would bet my house that the poster had snippets of reviews that would have shouted things like “dazzling”, “stunning” and “not to be missed”. Various trade journals and newspapers would be listed underneath these affirmations followed by more stars than even the Hubble telescope could take in.

The weird thing is, Hollywood has been promoting its films like this for decades. And probably every cinema goer in the world has by now realised that these testimonials bear no relation to the quality of the film on offer. None. You have to rely on word of mouth from a like minded person to get an objective opinion. So why does Hollywood persist with this strategy? Here are some possibilities;

Here is my idea for an interesting Channel 4 documentary. Make a list of the worst films ever released (using all the available criteria – box office takings, critical reviews, fan web sites etc.). Dig out the posters that initially promoted the films. Make a list of all the trade journals and newspapers quoted on the posters. Go to the offices of these organisations and attempt to find the person who actually wrote that glowing review. If they exist, ask them what the hell they were thinking, or what they were paid by the distributors (delete whichever is inapplicable) to write such nonsense. These people can then be used as a guide for what not to watch in the future if they subsequently give a film a glowing review.

If such a documentary was made I can imagine a ‘MAD’ magazine type explanation for the reviews. The journalist would say, “yes I did write that but it appeared out of context from this sentence, ‘The sheer incompetence of this film is dazzling’”. Or they would say, “Yes I did write that but I was writing about another film entirely. They’ve taken the entire space/time continuum of existence out of context”.

Looking at my credit card statement the other day I noticed an item that was twice the amount it should have been. I contacted the firm that supplied me the part and pointed out the discrepancy between the price they gave me and the amount debited. They checked their records and told me it was the bank, and not them, that had made the error.

I’m supposed to be getting a refund, but of course, I have to monitor my account if I want to be sure of actually getting the money back.

The thing is, has anyone, ever, been undercharged or overpaid by a bank? Ever? I’ve never met anyone.

At a family party the other day I noticed my brother’s television was on standby. As we were partying, I didn’t expect him to suddenly start watching television so I pointed this out to him. He interpreted my observation as some kind of criticism and I could see from his expression he was preparing his ground.

“I’m paying for the energy so I can do what the hell I like with it.” he said in a mock imperial tone. It’s amazing what a couple of drinks can do to somebody.

“But you’re wasting the energy and this benefits no-one.” I responded.

There then ensued a classic conversation which you could probably multiply by many millions; “Me turning off one tv isn’t going to make any difference.” he asserted.

I didn’t bother to point out that his six watts multiplied by several million other six watts wasted by individual people leaving their tv’s on standby amounted to, well you get the picture.

But it was his unswerving belief that because he had paid for it that he could ‘do what the hell he liked with it’ that made me realise the world had changed. Maybe a few years ago the majority of people would have agreed with him. But today, he is on shaky ground. It is only a short while ago that someone would have insisted, “I paid for that slave and I will do whatever the hell I want with it.” And so they did.

But civilisation becomes more conscious, more responsible, more moral as time passes. In the second world war it was illegal in England to waste food (strange that they had to introduce such a law for starving people. Recent documents show that the government during the war were gorging themselves on gourmet meals while everyone else was on rations. Did they want to make sure that everyone else wasn’t being as profligate as they were?). Slavery is not tolerated in a civilised society today. And if we reduce this monetary stance to its absurd level, what happens then? Imagine a man who becomes so rich and powerful that he is able to purchase the entire world. Is it still acceptable for him to declare, “I paid for this world and I will do whatever the hell I like with it.”?

No, it is not. It’s not just about the money anymore. It’s about me, my children, our town, our country, our planet.

Your money’s no good here.