Freedom Beauty Truth

Continuing from my previous blog posts, this is the fourth installment in a short series discussing the massacre of a few weeks ago at a Lonmin mine in Marikana , South Africa . I have felt that the general discourse (if discussed at all) among average people has been ‘what’s wrong with shooting a bunch of protesting miners, when they had been violent and even apparently committed murder (two policemen were killed in the preceding week)?’ Well, a lot, actually. In my previous posts I have discussed the most obvious levels first: 1. DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES; and 2. HUMAN RIGHTS. Then the previous post started digging a bit deeper into.... 3. A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE In this post, I will be digging even deeper… and this is where I start to really step on people’s toes… 4. Exploitation and ‘Structural Violence’: Taking another look at my admonishment in the preceding post to ‘build peace’ rather than ‘increase security’ (i.e. arm yourself/ protect your property/ militari...

In the middle of an article on 'resisting consumerism', I hopped off the bus, just to buy that hat I had been thinking of for days. Because I don't have enough hats! Clearly. I walked into the shop wearing the hat I had bought there only a few days ago! Two new hats in a week - and I already had too many to start with. Not only that - I had no money, and still no job. Yet there I was again, at the altar of hyper-consumerism. This altar doesn't even require you to kneel. It's all too easy. It strokes and panders to your ego, and the more you play this game, the easier it gets to drop $200 in a week - a week in which you weren't making any more money.... The buying impulse seems to manifest most strongly at times like this, actually. Self-destructive tendencies. Infantile attempts to placate the raging three-year-old within, who is demanding to be entertained, demanding attention, demanding every toy in the shop. Or perhaps it's my crazy way of tryin...