No identifying features....
11 April 2023
I know that only one person i have ever spoken with just maybe has intelligent things to say about the word morality.
It unnerved me slightly hearing her wish not to celebrate the word. It seemed questionable this in her - or that was my thought at the time
But she was right. I had an intuition she was right, but i did not at the time of our speaking have a story-framework around which to have processed the issue fully for myself..
Today I do.
There are several hours of waffling and notes behind this i put here now. Maybe this will be enough.Though it is based on my own dull famousish family story - woven in one could say.
I haven't the time to write this properly and anyway it partly follows on from things i have written and put in an audio journey the last 6 weeks
This is a personal story of course but i know it is universal and useful.
I continue addressed to ...you..... but this is universal.
Your words about the word ‘moral’… I wasn’t sure about that conversation, but this weekend – today, this morning, it is clarified – you ARE RIGHT!!!!!
Ohhh please that we could have had that conversation over time – maybe you are equipped? (with reasoning?) Maybe not, but I have answered it for myself, but as it really is the sum total of the modern human condition i want to know what your reasoning is. N Ireland still, Israel Palestine, all of it...
My explanation of my journey is here – only 20 mins!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18AggUP8RfxhXIUiAr-briBE4tMMiDodO/view?usp=share_link
(m4a file - they are better than mp3 and you can convert them to mp3 if your device cannot deal with them – macintosh can though..)
I understand you ‘need’ to have absolute control, and that YOU cannot be even advised to do anything, maybe for your ‘own good’ – I know you are absolute self reliant warrior… i was always like that but did learn the true happiness in at least attempting to seek others opinions.letting go into sharing .....i do...
– but you are you
Although it maybe a bit too longwinded with my last ‘chapter’ on the est**** and dad story i only finished this morning – in that audio, it is a jolly good story … you can have it, I don’t say this to manipulate, ….
maybe ???it is valuable ???..i think as a universal Greek tragedy myth may be ...to humanity...i don’t know. I will offer it also to Yasmin as she is brave and so sociopath she doesnt have real feelings hahh hahh but she does value really good films
But more than anything seeing this film last night
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Crawdads_Sing_(film)
an astonishing superb film….
i think it has almost entered my top 5 movies of all time
And I do think great works of art like this do ‘help’ us survive this difficult human experience…
this is why I believe in you – because i think you think that too...
incidentally a SUPERB example of a film NOT really telling us what to think….
Superb…
Also in my last 24 hrs – a Yugoslav – even if from the most estranged former bit
Slavoj Žižek catastrophe talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsNBv3noSG8
i heard interesting things in that talk...
I didn’t like him that much in the past but i think he often is very useful (he is headlining a festival here in a month by the way!) – and he has inspired me on “catastrophe” – wrong word, too melodramatic, just ‘shit happens’ – eventually if we are lucky good may come from it... but he is perhaps one of the best speakers on the planet at the moment.
Anyway to explain further - added to the audio above... and none of this is individual to you – its universal, and in time maybe i will share with others (maybe as i seek a publisher one day if i get my stuff organised better - if i think there is in fact a useful fable or two in that story) but i address it to you as you are the only inteligent person i have engaged with for years...
but no identification..i do not do that.
11 april
pt 1
pt 2
pt 3
note on part 3 " bad act leads to autumn 2022 happiness: - misspoke, i was happy years before - even by2004, but was ultra happy – but saw i was still super centred and at peace autumn 2022
pt 4
pt 5 epilogue disclaimer :-)
where i should have also said these are quick videos not thought through and i havent even had a shave or been for a walk and look awful, i have much nicer videos in my ralphsch*** pages.
But of course - i couldnt care less any more about my own personal losses... these issues apply to N Ireland, even Serbia /Kosovo... exhausting issues that are there all my life when we stick on the news. So what is a sensible way of describing our personal series of bad acts? It is universal... and to me interesting. I do know that UK has become terrible at discussing these things - i cannot with families i still occasionally counsel. No one can EVER speak in the terms "s/he did a bad act..but i also did some bad acts.." the reason to leave UK forever - there is no hope.
And my final other conclusion - pondered last night after sending the letter below, that we really have gone very wrong the way the state is involves itself with relationships between people who NEED to maybe at least try to settle or evolve things to a place of sanity (this happened re my daughter 5 years ago)
from blocking to this modern phenomenon of there being some threat (to the female) by trying to conclude a personal matter - its just all no good. People need to go through journeys and those journeys may disturb at times.... all unnecessary prevention of settling matters is bad...i do nt refer to your block button, but i have log counselled younger people, don't block, work through an issue to a natural conclusion - there always is one...
But everything – not for some ‘love’ reason, but still by a magic series of coincidences (including a call yesterday to a friend of my ex family i havent spoken to her 30+ years...such a wonderful useful chat ) comes back to Tango Tight**** also – really... the flying bottle, my flying bake bean can i saw....(she didnt know about despite being v v close to my sister)
.. should we be open about these things? You seem to think so and so do i ... (and understand and forgive etc etc etc)
You are old enough it doesnt matter any more, same with me, and my past is of ZERO consequence to me, i just like to have intelligent chats sometimes...and may need to say intelligent tings to my lass one day – it is good to be in practice but i know so few who can have good chats as you could....
THANK YOU...
I needed to do 'this' - above... it concludes a last personal query inside me - what if my daughter ever wished to hear my real story of 20 years ago... i wasn't planning, but sat here on a hill all weekend forlornly awaiting a maybe call "ok twat... come and i will jab you with the swordstick over a coffee... and make you waste all that money on diesel for being a horrid twat generally .and i shall tell you never darken my life ever again or else i set the whole Serb nation on you... and will.. " ...
i have at last fixed that personal 'outstanding' issue, deep inside i hadn't had the distance and grace to ponder yet until now, in stone...
And as I know there really IS a good 'film' in this table of 'morality' stuff, or ...well it is a long talk
here is a vid i made mid March on how...maybe
Unlisted
20230314 084130
++++++++++++
sent 10 april 2023
Dear Est*lle,
Hello and I hope you are well.
I don’t know if you got an email i sent you a year ago. It was a sort of once-in-a-lifetime thing.
This is a time of the year i think especially of disappearing off abroad with you. The reason is I took you away on the 9th April 2003. It was the day that Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled in Baghdad (it was on tv as we crossed the channel on the ferry). The event is often commemorated on the news. It has been especially so this year being 20 years. It has rather been on my mind.
I want to add something to the email i wrote a year ago.
Or maybe – probably, in a ‘lifetime’ way of writing, my email a year ago was wrongly put.
That time (2002-3) there were various ‘forces’ ongoing. A range of ‘bad acts’.
My own act twenty years ago, I always justify to myself that it was in response to others’ acts. Until that day 20 years ago i was innocent of any real badness or illegality. Others did tell hurtful lies in the proceeding period – lies that to this day in fact cause me upset when i recall them. They hurt. And technically were unlawful in fact. The lies were before and after. And then i suffered years of worry about more lies.
But the simple matter of it is that my own act was worse. Will you forgive me. I ask that.
I will add a little that is all sophisticated ‘argument’ but this must not take away from the last short paragraph. My act was worse. I had no idea what others reaction would be to me going away with you, but still to the majority of people it would be considered the worst act.
I looked on your Facebook 4 or 5 years ago once and saw you had a photo of Dostoevsky’s book Crime and Punishment. Maybe from that great writer you appreciate the subtle and complex matters around morality, good and bad acts. I have read all my Dostoevsky.
Four or five years ago i read the book of short stories by Bernard Schlink Flights of Love. One of the stories starts with the sentences ‘any man who sees his child in danger and does not steal them away is no man’. I often think of that – again as ‘justification’.
But then all my years of thinking just about things like war and conflict elsewhere, and the ‘divisions’ in society so often spoken of in the UK the last 7 years, just makes me realise one can argue forever who has the worst behaviour / attitudes / etc., and who is the lesser baddie. Or who may be entirely ‘innocent’? But that does no good.
It is all an endless and impossible equation. Five or more years before you were born i made a clear decision to leave the UK forever as i am a pacifist. Long long i struggled to figure the real right and wrongs of that. And many argue against pacifism with valid argument. There was a discussion on radio 4 a few weeks ago.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k0xp
You seem to work for an NGO dealing with aftermath of war? I don’t know i looked you up and only see a Linkedin.
All i know for sure is that often it IS possible to walk away – not stand and fight for ones land and territory. It is of curse immoral and against international law that Putin entered Ukraine, But that bad act cannot be ‘punished’ for obvious reasons. And thus to stop all bloodshed we have to move forward and compromise to find peace, and forgive past acts. Move on.
And in 2003 i REALLY hated the jingoistic tak in the UK “go and kill some Iraqis” I joined the STOP The War Coalition. I hated being British.
But then ideally – not that it often happens, eventually when things get nasty, all parties should maybe eventually just admit their bad acts.
Human beings commit bad acts. We cannot get away from that. All we can do is offer the truth to those affected. And then it is up to others how they react.
A bad ‘act’ – several, were done to me January 2010. I can only say in total sincerity I accept all. NOT (important this) as ‘just deserts’ – to me. One bad act does not justify another. Obviously. But because i have in fact learned so much (for myself) about pain loss grief and i guess I am better off for it. I have deeper empathy for any person in life i encounter who has done bad things or suffered by bad acts of others. I have evolved.
I forget what Dostoevsky says about bad acts – the worst acts, but denial – self denial, is certainly no good. It does no one any good. I guess it doesn’t do society at large any good either. And individuals really cannot be too concerned about others bad acts. They can do little about them. Just clear ones own conscience if one can.
I guess (even if i dont really like Christianity) their model of we sin, and its about being forgiven, for real, is all really humanity has ever managed to say about bad acts. No one should really be left all their lives living in painful guilt. No good for anyone. Maybe some people cannot deal with their fault in matters in which case maybe it is impossible to deal with them? I don’t know. Maybe you do know?
All i can say for myself is that i do not live in ANY state of blaming others, or feeling bad at others – having any bad feeling to them at all, for their bad acts towards me. And that applies to all sorts over the last 20years not just any family matter.
So as i say all that matters, can you accept and forgive my fault, my past sin?
I think i have made ‘amends’ to society in general – i kind of know i have. But even that is lesser to the original bad act.
Dad
And that – above is the END...i mean it.
I am going to add just a few things here that over the years have sort of ‘helped’ me figure society, families, etc..
On families, i very often think of an interview i heard in 2012 0r 13 with one of my favourite writers Rachel Cusk. She had written a book Aftermath i haven’t read but it is about her divorce (she had a few kids at the time). In the interview she was extremely honest and i so admired her. In fact it was jaw droppingly wonderful. I wish i could find the interview online but cannot. She related how she became a terrible person – or rather did many bad acts, utterly attacking with crazy lies the father of her kids as they were divorcing. She was completely honest that she acted terribly. She seems (from other interviews and TV) quite a mild and sane person.
I so admired her for her confession. It is not in my head “women do bad, men can’t be blamed for bad response” no, just simply one person admitting their damaging hurtful sins. I think she helped humanity a lot by that admission – if anyone listened?
It is almost random who does bad, worse bad acts, or whatever...
“ we do crazy things when we are wounded...”
I said above that i despise UK. I always have. Arming Saudi Arabia – the #1 women repressing society in the world. My own family profited from that regime. I can never really accept entirely. I made my own decision to gradually part company from them and the UK very young.
I have actually recently a friend woman who totally sums up the world - these things. She is a Serbian woman born and raised in Sarajevo, who left Serbia when she was 21 as the Bosnian wars ravaged from ’91. Those wars were particularly hard for us to take in (even in UK). I had a close friend then who had Croat and Serb parents! The two people at war! People who had lived closely together for many decades started to kill each other. Nightly the tv shocked me. The Serbs were generally demonised as the worst criminals in Western media. But rightly Kosovo has recently been sent to The Hague, too. (B****** was angry that only Serbia ever gets remembered as the baddies)
She is superbly intelligent. She seems to have a forgiving soul. But she exemplifies one just has to move on. Figuring who is the worst baddie is never much use in the long run. Live for tomorrow. She doesn’t ‘blame’ anyone, even if things in the 90s totally destroyed her family life. (i would love you to meet her she is extremely interesting and a writer !)
Me, yes, somehow living without bad feeling towards those that did bad stuff i know is key. And in fact i also know that if we are lucky and mature enough bad acts - pain, trauma, actually always has a silver lining – deepens, broadens, and evolves us. Wendell Berry said something like “what the creative person needs is to have the worst possible thing happen to them, and survive it”. I think that is true.
Anyway there we go, love you no matter what.
PS
If you get this, my number may change
07727 eight four zero 304 was meant to be my rest of life number but it may get cut off as i have an issue with my phone contract
07958 five two six 381 is a secondary number that is pay as you go and i will still have if that happens.
I really hate email and digital - a few email addresses i have had i hardly ever check them - i would love never to use any messaging or email ever again :-)
