My politics... I had to write it...

So South Africa. That democratic rainbow full of wonderful people working together in harmony for the betterment of mankind. You know where I could go with this right? But sadly the truth is that South Africa is doomed. The iceberg is hit, and the band is warming up. How long it takes to sink is only a matter of decades. I realized this sad fact this evening whilst reading an article on the future of South Africa. I totally disagreed with the articles conclusion.

The basics of the article: SA has bad policies and people in power and needs a course correction. I agree. How can one not? However it said to fix these problems all we needed to do was change the present policies with good ones. Nope. Wrong there. The problem is not with the policies. The problem has never been with the policies. It's always been, and always will be with the people. This is perhaps a culmination of my many months of blogging as dramatically dull as it may be.

Have I not over countless essays spoken of how it is the people, the individual, who creates society, and it is the society that dictates how the nation functions. This was typically on the scale of socially acceptable behavior, but it can be extended quickly and seamlessly up to government and policy. After all the government represents the people right? Well it's supposed to do that, but even the American's can't get that right. Hell the Greeks only made it work when they reduced the voting population down to men who were citizens, and had tons of cash. And then it didn't work that well...

No in fact the problem with South Africa, as indeed with most of the world is what we're all presently experiencing: Apathy. And if we look at it, if we decided - as I feel we must do - humans go through cycles. Great loops of history repeated time and again can be seen. And for all our advancement are we not the same humans as those who built the pyramids or the first train or the last Zeppelin? Humans haven't changed. Only time has. And our technology. For all our neutrological understanding, for all our great quantum answers, we are still Human. Take a human from the past as a baby, and raise him in the present and he will be perfectly capable.

So what does history tell us? Oh woe and alack - tis nought but suffering and darkness. Punctuated by moments of greatness where man strives to be higher than he has been. And I'm not just talking about skyscrapers or the moon. But we, dear reader, are on the wrong side of one of these great moments. A book I've just finished re-reading asked why were the Victorians so damned industrious? Why invent geology? Hell why invent all the sciences we have today? And why the steam-engine? Why take over the world?

It was done before (well maybe not steam trains). It was done in considerably less time before. And I believe it shall be done again in the future. OK so now this preamble is done. I've established that humans are humans and we go in cycles. At least to my mind.

So back to South Africa. We've entered an age of information. I love this. I think historians will look back in a thousand years and call it that Age of delusion. Or perhaps the Age of Stupidity in the face of great Understanding. Perhaps they'll remark that at once it was man's golden beginning, and also his largest collapse. I have one or two people whom I admire greatly for being movers and shakers. I have a lot of people whom are cogs in the world. They make it run. I know a lot of people who do not care how it runs.

They're called plebians. In fact they should be called - the majority of the humans on planet Earth. Some of us marvel at the planet and how it works. We stare in fascination at mysteries far beyond the average humans experience. We shudder as we watch history repeat itself. We attempt to better ourselves through knowledge and understanding. It was a craze in Victorian England to 'better oneself'. It helped give rise to general education, and to social upliftment policies. But then humans lost interest and collapsed into what we now call a class-less society. In Victorian England you could not be considered 'upper class' if you were not educated, well read, and in general making the world a better place.

Without class distinction why should I put any effort into being exceptional if Joe Bloggs can be mediocre and still achieve the same? This is the problem of America and Europe today. Social grants and policies allow the average to erode the status of those who would strive for greatness. And whilst a monetary social elite has formed, it is not the elite of Victoriana. It is the common man who has seen a weakness in the market and made his move. Breeding of course has nothing to do with in - in my opinion.

But without some incentive to improve apathy becomes acceptable. When the only important thing is the labels you wear, who cares what floats around inside your head? These are in general terms by the way. There are still thankfully millions of people who are dedicated to improvement. It's just they're the ones no one is listening to. Because the masses don't have time, and don't have a need.

And in South Africa this is what is sinking us. Under the veneer of the money that is being splashed around on projects like soccer stadiums and so forth is a system of acceptance due to ignorance. The average South African doesn't question or think or try to resolve issues. They accept what is told to them, and will blindly follow until they find themselves forgotten in the masses. And for a lot of people this is what they want! Why rock the boat? If it's not sinking, who cares where it's going!

This acceptance and fate, or of circumstance is exactly where the invading Visi-goths, Goths, Huns, and other tribes found themselves after sacking Rome. They didn't need to improve what they had. And when things collapsed they had no means of fixing them, and in general an apathetic 'Oh well' didn't inspire restoration. Indeed the Dark ages are aptly named for man entered a dark period. The only thing invented from scratch in the dark ages was the Ox-Yoke still in use today in some parts of the world. A single invention. Wow.

South Africa is charging into this dark age arms open. The mega-corporations are pulling out all the resources they can before the end. It can be seen. Banks are opening their doors to smaller and smaller customers in an attempt to secure the last of the clients before South Africa sinks into oblivion. The problem is unlike the dark ages of Europe - which dragged on for almost 600 years - we have external agents who have learned how to manipulate and guide collapsing nations. Is there a glimmer of hope? Can we defiantly denounce historical imperative?

No. The only thing that allowed this country to get into the place its in now is the changing attitude of the people who live in it. The masses when from submission to expectation. The minorities went from improvement to resignation. With no one trying to make anything better any more, and everything just sucking away at the resources in expectant hand-outs, eventually the implosion will happen. And with the people of this country only interested in promises of a future, only interested in persuasive policies that appear to benefit themselves, there is no way to save the governments approach.

Business can try to alter policy, but and here is where the global problem comes in - it only looks to change policy to further it's financial goals. Man has always been about money, but in the past money was real. It was physical. It had value. Today money doesn't exist. It's in a constant state of flux. Forever changing, shifting, altering form, gaining value or loosing it, it is no longer something tangible. As humans chase intangible items does it not become apparent that we have bought into the idea of the Emperors new clothes? This cloth we all want to buy and are willing to do anything to get it, is of our own imagining.

How bizarre in this age of information that we are no longer even chasing something real anymore. But something entirely fictitious? Only humans can be that clever! So the driving force behind the betterment of self is lost to the eternal search for the fountain of finance...

South Africa is fucked. It's people are too thick to realize they're going along with it, have no interest in improving their understanding of it, and in general are happy as long as they have fire, food, and shelter. I say gas them all. And I'm not only talking about the black people. I'm talking about the white people, the green people, and the purple people. Anyone who doesn't want to know more, to improve upon existing circumstances, or who is too lazy to want to find better ways. Lets remove them from the planet!

We didn't get this far because we stopped trying new ideas or changing old ones. I'll be damned if I see the human race plunge into another dark apocalyptic age! I need my American spelling-checker damn it. And I wouldn't get laid as often without dating sites. And my mind needs to be inspired by great art, angelic music, and awe-inspiring films. I need my technology to keep me going! Don't destroy all of this, don't let the planet forget our greatness simply because its too boring to learn new things!

We must rally and designate a country for ourselves, with nuclear power stations and digital storage banks buried kilometers below the surface. We need colonies of intellectuals who are inside glass domes to preserve that which has made us a great species, capable of creation. Otherwise, fetch my club cause when it's time to be barbaric and stupid, I've got a couple fuckers who gonna realize that without my intellectual laws and codes to stay my hand, I'm gonna start my revolution one fucking skull at a time...

I want to die... Why?

Sometimes when I'm sitting with someone just watching their mouth flap open and closed, and hear the drone of pointless words falling over themselves in an effort to spew out some old idea, I wonder what the person would do if I suddenly stabbed a fork into their arm? Or if I took the tea-pot and poured the boiling water onto them? Would they leap up screaming? Would they recoil in shock and wonder what just happened? Sometimes I just want to punch them in the face to feel what it's like. To see that look of total betrayal that their eyes would reflect.

And when standing at the edge of a tall height I sometimes wonder what it would be like to just jump off. To crash through the air and then suddenly stop. Would there be pain? Or the relief knowing that the struggle for survival is over? Would the sensation be so exhilarating that I forget my grim purpose and enjoy it? Or would my super-powers kick in and I sail off into the sky finally liberated of my earthly bonds?

I image that the first day-dreams - of committing wanton, senseless violence is an expression of frustration and boredom with whomever I'm talking with. Or more correctly being talked at. The second - wanting to jump off very high places to see if perhaps I can fly - is I suppose a fantasy that will hopefully never be realized. And yet my latest short film that I've penned is all about someone committing suicide. Admittedly there are extenuating circumstances, but the truth remains:

I have written two films about a rent-boy who is forced into difficult situations and must choose. I have written two films in which a young man must make a decision between killing himself or struggling on for survival sakes. In almost all the films the main character is mostly naked. In this latest one - he's completely naked. What's up with my head and why am I consumed with this idea?

I can immediately dis-spell the idea that I want my characters naked because of the erotic element or because I feel it's the only way I can get close to a naked man. I've got a fairly regular sexual partner who fills all my err... needs. So why this naked theme? Could it be an expression of vulnerability? But why do I feel vulnerable? I wear my vulnerabilities as armour. Perhaps I'm afraid that those vulnerabilities are nothing more that illusions, hiding deeper ones. If so the only deep fear I have left is that I am actually a charlatan and that people will one day see through my abilities and see me for what I am: An impostor who is lazy, glib, and just a little self absorbed. And as much as I try to project a sense of intense activity it is of the lazy kind, or if not the lazy kind then the self indulgent kind.

And if I persist and tell myself I am not lazy, am not glib - well perhaps some are true but I've dissociated with self esteem so long ago that its false praise that I add to my list of errors as opposed to rebuking the errors. So a vicious little circle there. As for the self-absorption - is that a by product of a divorce? A rough childhood of uncertainty? I think it's a combination of self reliance, coupled with an innate stubbornness, mixed with a shot of ethnocentric belief (my own culture), all clumped into an intellectual puzzle. A fuck-up in other words.

But I digress... nothing new there then.

What of this choice of rent-boy? Why a recurring theme? Is it guilt? Could it be? I don't know if I could believe it. You see in my past I've approached two rent-boys. Not for my own gratification. But for use for others. The first was when I was set up to take photo's of this friends 'boy'. He wasn't a boy. In fact he was a fairly ugly 40 year old dressed to look like a 20 year old. It was rather sad. To make matters worse he couldn't get an erection. He was degraded. I was ... rather unimpressed. The end result was a boring afternoon and then a rather sad collection of photo's. I don't believe he made much of an impact on my world. Apart from perhaps setting me up for my next experience.

He was a good looking Indian bloke. He wanted me to buy him clothes, shoes in fact. Because shoes could not be taken away and used to buy alcohol. Taken away by his father. His own father would take money from his son. To finish off the deal the guy was super keen to start in the gay porn film I had aspirations of making, but if I was doing any straight films he'd love to be involved because he wasn't gay. I think my first true short film was all about him - I, Whore. But I don't think it exorcised the demon fully.

So now I write another short about a rent-boy who likes doing it. Likes selling his body. Only he gets caught up with a psychopath. A psychopath who wants the rent-boy to kill himself. And to achieve this he degrades the guy. Not physically... not at first. But through humiliation and time. My question is - what drives someone to suicide? I've never really seriously considered it. Oh occationally I wonder if when it all stops whether it does actually stop. Or are those bloody bastards right and its eternal damnation? Because if it is eternal damnation it'll go by pretty quick. Eternity is timeless so time has no meaning. If you just suffer a lot for a long long long time, then you'll suffer a lot for another long long long time. Eventually it'll all blur into meaninglessness.

I do not believe that would happen. I believe you'd end. Cease. The world would weep, would mourn, would rage and say stupid things (as I have done after a death of a friend), would ask why, and would in time move on. And that would be it. A minor number in the history books. All your concerns, fears, and regrets would be over. And yet even in the moments where I've looked at death and thought - perhaps it is easier, my mind has rallied and said yes but...

So in this short film I look at how much do you take and what must you loose before you give up? I firmly believe that most humans have the power to keep themselves going by keeping their brains alive. Oh sure when you're ninety your body is pretty fucked, but if you're active, who cares. Machines can keep most things going. But if you sit back and wait to die, your mind shuts down and 'forgets' shit. Next minute you're dead.

But that takes 60 years of life first. So not a likely way to get someone to kill themselves. Another perhaps would be to give them a terminal disease. Again though it's a the mind that will either make the most of it, or give in. The key here is not external pressures but internal fortification. The stronger the mind, the more engaged it is, the more it wants to live. The less likely it is to perish.

So how do you erode the mind? How do you make the world a meaningless husk? Apart from cutting out all stimulus I think the best way to make the world meaningless is to remove that one ingredient which we share with some animals: Hope. OK so no real revelation there. Take away hope and all is lost right? Well yes. But how do you take away hope? Surely there is always hope?

I don't think so. I think there is a line - on one side is immense hope. On the other is total hopelessness. People get pushed to the line and faith and belief help keep that line from being crossed. For those of us without those comforts dogged stoic stubbornness is required. But when that line is crossed there is very little by way of getting back across it into the land of hopefulness again.

I look at the suicides in my family and all have been - from what we know - at the point where the last shred of hope has been kicked away. After that it seems very easy to end life. Almost as if once hope is removed death is inevitable. Is this true? Hope equals life? How horridly religious. Because hope is often a total load of crap created by over-active imaginations piling 'what if's' onto the table until the table is lost in this sea of possible salvations. Take away those salvations, those what if's, and there is a load gun with a single bullet.

So why do I care so much about rent boys and suicide? Do I feel that I should save all rent-boys? Or that they are hopeless and its a great tragedy? Do I somehow feel like a rent-boy who is in a hopeless situation? I do not know! I am frustrated that I do not know. Or is this deeper and I perhaps fear that I am hopeless and have just constructed a glass dome of false hope over the gaping maw of oblivion?

Is that it? Am I just lying to myself that I have hope? In my darkest hours do I secretly feel all is lost, but rally by placing false what-if's around myself? And do I know this? And that is what scares me? I suppose my darkest fear is that I am in fact nothing. I don't make a dent in the world. I die and no one really cares. But why this focus on death? Why this urgency? Oh god is this a bloody 30 years of existence and what do you have to show for it crap thing? Stupid stupid stupid.

It's late and I'm stuck in a self absorbed ego trip. Bah! Humbug! And Fuck it! I make movies about naked men in difficult situations because I get all mushy and wanna give them a hug when they finally break and reveal themselves to be scared little boys. Is that because I am a scared little boy who just wants someone to say it's OK to be scared shit-less about the sheer enormity of the universe and how little we don't know and the futility of existence...

Am I just being a 5 year old who's worrying about world politics when in fact he should just be playing out in the garden? Huh. That's interesting. Perhaps I should learn to just have fun and forget the reasons for doing so?

What do you dream of? Is it testing the laws of reality by punching people or jumping out of windows? Is it figuring out why you'd want to die? Is it worrying about world politics?

Huh...