Elon’s Rocket
On Tuesday this week we did a night ride in Colden Plantation in the Isle of Man.
The recent storms have felled a tree across a particluarly knarly descent on the ‘Rona trail and instead of sensibly waiting for one of the crew to return with a chainsaw one of us built a jump over it – now named “Elons Rocket” because (originally) it fires you straight up with no guarantee of a safe landing.
And I went over the bars and face planted trying it out.
I thought I’d broken my neck for a few seconds.
I have posted before about how I feel about my own mortality and this was one of those situations where I was acutely aware of it.
And so I introduce you to death and mortality.
Kate Garraway and Derek
My wife says to me sometimes when discussing some random person’s death or ill treatment “no one deserves to die like that”.
Or “no one deserves to be treated like that”.
My wife is very sweet whereas I am not (and beware that there are more and worse people like me out here; i’m just more honest about it).
And I say “Well actually some people do deserve to die (or be treated) like that.”
It’s just my opinion. As is, why can we not “speak ill of the dead”. Did the act of “dying” turn a bad person good?
Can we not say that Hitler was a bastard.
I say we can … this is part of the taboo around death.
It caused me to tweet this in respect of Kate Garraway’s Derek.
I don’t care about Garraway or her dead husband. I’m not sad he died; I didn’t know the man and people die all the time. And actually we’re all dying all the time; just the timing varies… Do many others feel the same? I don’t know. We aren’t allowed to talk about it … Spot on Katie.
The taboo of death
We all self-censor to different degrees; it’s how we get on with each other generally in society and “fit in” so to speak. Death is a tricky subject, for example, that people tiptoe around.
And not being able to talk about death is a western weakness arising possibly because our living has become so comfortable.
Life is the most precious of our possessions and obviously we don’t want to lose it.
But paradoxically, in my own experience, coming to terms with you own mortality is very liberating.
For example, regarding my home, the realisation that I am just taking care of it for someone else’s future makes me appreciate it more.
The same is true of my life – obviously I’m not taking care of it for a future Giles – but I appreciate every day of it!
Another way at looking at your life is to consider the number of “good” summers that you have left in you.
Mine has been stuck at 25 for about 5 years. 😂
And maybe life and death is something you consider more as you get older and start to feel your fallibility.
But once you have faced the finality of it there is no going back. There is the realisation that there is nothing that anyone can take from you that you have not already reconciled yourself to losing.
The only fears that remain now for me are the possibilities of pain and boredom and these ought to be manageable unless I have fallen in with a bad crowd.
Hence I wrote “Fear will shackle you. Conquer it and you will not only free yourself, you will become inviolate”.
The weaponisation of fear
The point that I’m trying to make with this post is that our natural self-censorship is open to abuse by politicians who ramp this tendency up in us to the extent that people are scared to speak out at all, for fear of upsetting others.
This is another way of controlling us, and the reason for my above outburst on twitter ……
I wrote a tongue in cheek post called the “Domestication of Humans” a while back and it discussed how fear can be used to control a population.
It wasn’t meant to be serious, but actually, when I thought about it, we are all selfish and fearful individuals to one degree or another – think of the toilet roll hysteria in covid times – and hence easily controlled.
No one is truly altruistic.
And therefore selfishly/fearfully we want to preserve our lives or wipe our bottoms as the situation demands (I always wondered why people couldn’t just wash their bottoms in a toilet roll emergency but I’m crazy apparently!).
And that’s where the people who’ve thought this through have us!
And at the end, we’re all equal
Finally, and sorry to keep banging on about death …..
What gives me comfort in these crazy times is the certainty that at some time I will die and I’m OK with that.
But the truly evil people in this world, some of them wont want to accept this fact.
They will want their power trip to go on forever.
And it wont.
They’ll hate that!
