City Screen, Coney St., York

Coffee House: City Screen, Coney Street, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: None 

 

Order & Chaos. 

I filled in one of those Facebook apps recently, this one gave you your characteristics based on your forename. Scientific, I know. So the letter N came up as Neat. One of the few that were accurate. I am a neat person (in the tidy sense. In the day 'neat' also meant 'cool' which is very transient concept), increasingly so as the years go by as the, mainly male(?), OCD trait becomes more prominent in me.

I think I've always been pretty tidy, something that has surprised friends/acquaintances over the years as they have associated my periodic unconventional attire/lifestyle with an unkempt/untidy personal environment. If I have ever looked 'scruffy' it was by design rather than accident. I do like things to be in order in my life. For periods of time in any case. I do like change as well so am quite happy to throw everything up in the air for a while before I start to put things back in their correct place

So, I reckon I'm a tidy/neat person. I had assumed for many years that us males were the untidy ones. I'm the youngest of 6 sons which created a lot of untidiness with my mother, the sole female, tasked with trying to maintain a resemblance of order. No criticism of current and past female friends/lovers but I have been, initially, shocked and then disappointed and now resigned to the fact (I think it is a fact but happy to be proved wrong) that women as generally untidy soles. Exhibit 1 being the contents of any handbag. Anyway, as mentioned earlier, the old git syndrome of excessive tidiness helps to balance it all in a feng shui sort of way

Another misapprehension  of acquaintances is that I am a socialist or at least believe in democracy. Certainly seems to be the dominant philosophy amongst musicians. 

The thing I have with democracy is that I don't think I believe in the principal of it and even if I did, we don't have it here or in any other western country. To clarify the last point first - democracy surely means that the views/votes of the majority dictate the actions/policy of the whole. When what we have under our system is that everyone gets to vote for a person who is supposed to represent all of their views and then if that person is elected then they, along with a lot of other people, make up the rules. Hard to see how that is democratic. Obviously it's better than having a group of people making up the rules in isolation i.e. I don't favour a dictatorial system either.

My problem with democracy as a principal is that I don't want the majority of people telling me what I can or can't do. Most of the time there isn't a conflict - I'm not inclined to steal, maim or murder anyone and don't want that happening to others so we're all agreed on that. But what about when the majority come up with a rule that the minority dislike. Maybe to the extent where the minority are actually been negatively affected by the rule. In my lifetime people's sexuality for instance has been judged as good or bad where at one time it was a crime to express yourself as gay to where now two people can get married whoever they are. 

All along there should have been a principal of live and let live rather than a majority view on what everyone should do. 

So Order & Chaos. One of the main reasons for having government of any shape/persuasion must be to ensure that large groups of people can live together reasonably well and cooperate to bring the benefits of size. Be difficult for a small band of people to create road networks, provide access to intellectual resources etc. The problem is size does matter in terms of living together, as the larger the grouping the more potential for conflict/chaos without common/shared rules. I can't see how you can have a large group of people living in a city/country without something resembling a government tasked with creating order. Whether it's voted in or not it'll be a tiny group of people's views determining what the larger group does or doesn't do

All good if everything is working out broadly fine for yourself of course but what about when you're in the minority and things are looking bleak. It would be nice to think that Angela Davis' rally cry to support the 'downtrodden' “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.” rings true with the majority but I doubt if most people give the world outside their window a lot of thought when it comes down to it.

Not sure what the answer is after saying all of the above. Even for me. It would probably mean living in a cabin in Utah but I love living in cities/21st Century too much. So I'll just keep on keeping on and try to keep out of trouble and avoid being caught out too much by the ongoing restrictions to our daily lives. "To live outside the law you know you must be honest" That's the answer. Always ask the question 'What would Bob do?' :-)