Wage Slavery...

This week's flaneurial thoughts come from the relatively recently found dada (not capitalized) café in the town of Epping, which lays claim to have the highest High Road in the whole of Essex ( a dizzying 332 feet above sea level). The café is small but perfectly formed. Apart from a very exotic, if somewhat expensive, range of teas and some very strong coffee, they also serve a range of snacks and quiches, employing what seem to be former roof tiles instead of plates. If nothing else, it lends new meaning to the phrase 'put mine on the slate...'.
Reading the café’s copy of “The Times” I discover that the UK is apparently now a land of opportunity for the over 65s. Gone are the days when such folk found themselves 'forced' into retirement. Now more and more of them are 'benefiting' from the 'flexibility' of zero hours contracts. Most of these people are also employed at minimum wage level apparently, another wonderful plus for the UK economy.
In the world of spin, even the ugliest of facts can be made to sound pleasant. The reality, it seems, is that elderly people find themselves increasingly having to work whether they wish to or not. The already meagre allowances are being steadily chipped away by the powers that be whilst the state in the UK is increasingly unwilling to help even the most desperate of folk (unless, of course, the folk in question are the likes of Russian millionaires, Chinese property speculators or hugely wealthy non-doms who seem to somehow manage to maintain that status despite the fact that they have lived in the UK for up to 30 years).
It seems that it is not enough to have a society based on the wage slavery, but if at all possible, the desire from the upper echelons of government seems to be that the slavery continues until the moment the slave in question shuffles off their mortal coil.
The Chancellor, George Gideon Oliver Osborne, formerly known as the 'Oik of St. Paul's' and yet another member of the Bullingdon Club, has developed a fondness in recent times for preaching about the 'dignity of work'. Sometimes the dignity in question seems harder to witness in practice than to espouse in theory, the reality often involving, as it does, employees being forced to work long hours at the beck and call of fickle employers who currently enjoy the benefits of some very 'flexible' labour practices. These entail such things as the aforementioned zero hours contracts, compulsory and often unpaid overtime and a steady eroding away of even the most basic of decent working conditions. Mr. Osborne, it should perhaps be noted, has never had what used to be quaintly termed as a 'proper' job himself...

The American essayist, and very profound thinker, Henry David Thoreau pointed out the nature of the trap that we are all lured into. In his book 'Walden' he devotes the whole of the first chapter to 'Economy'. In it he shows how we are tempted and seduced by the desire to have so many 'things' we do not need and how being enslaved in such a way keeps us having to work long hours at jobs we often hate in order to acquire them. We are enticed, through the skilful machinations of the advertising industry, into greed, into the absurd belief that if we can only acquire enough things that this is somehow, almost magically, going to make us happy.

Thoreau demonstrates with incisive insight that excess possessions not only require excess labour in order to purchase them, but also often end up simply being a burden, something we need to concern ourselves with because they need cleaning, maintaining or even simply storing. People believe they need these things and this 'need' then forces them into devoting much of their waking time to working long hours in order to have these often completely useless items in their lives.

Advertising feeds into this 'need'. It persuades people that they are measured, or somehow validated, by their ownership of objects. It has them chasing after the acquisition of endless 'stuff'. On visiting people's homes, I am often struck by just how much 'stuff' they own. Things that are never used, that seemed a good idea at the time, that now lay neglected and unused in the 'spare' room or garage, or simply cluttering up every available space in the property. This seems to be the case as much with those of limited pecuniary means as for those fortunate enough to find themselves in better financial straits.
Happy, fruitful and fulfilled lives are not achieved by the endless acquisition of stuff, but by doing things that have meaning and value to the individual concerned. Whether that be through family, through relationship, through service, through the expression of talents and the doing of things that one loves, or simply by following the kind of life one wants to live.
Of course it is often necessary to have sources of income and the means to achieve these things, but often far, far less is needed than would be supposed to be the case.
Standing in the way of people's abilities to lead free and expressive lives is often the phenomenon of debt. The system is almost set up in such a way as to ensure that debt is taken on from a very early age (indeed, in the case of students, even before they are working) and piled on from that stage onwards through the acquisition of cars, houses, appliances, etc., so that most people, for the vast majority of their adult lives, are never out of debt.

It seems that very soon the average UK household debt level will top £10,000. This figure, quite amazingly, doesn't include mortgage debt. In excess of a quarter of all British adults of working age spend more than 40% of their income simply to service their debts. They are having to run faster and faster just to stay still.

Back in the Dada café, the lunchtime crowd have come and gone and the staff are busily washing the tiles, attempting to make a clean slate of things perhaps... My final thoughts are of Henry David Thoreau and his notion, when writing about economy, that the most precious thing we possess in life is time. For him, the idea of spending the days, weeks, months and years of our lives doing tasks we hate to obtain things we don't need seemed like an absurdity.
I, for one, would not disagree.

Too many cooks ....or too many crooks?

Today, after a week of temperatures just below 40C, I have chosen to arise early and and write at the small, informal coffee hut attached to the Morning Baan guest house in Kanchanaburi. I have been staying in a small cottage at the side of the guest house for the past few weeks. It is a tad expensive at £60 ($90) a month, plus bills. The bills in question normally come to about £3 a month but I manage to get by anyways. The coffee hut itself offers Nescafe instant, a local brand of decaffeinated coffee and yellow label tea, if one is so inclined, in a completely self-service format. They also supply marmalade and toast, both of which are as much appreciated by the ubiquitous ants as by the customers.

One of the reasons for choosing this particular location, apart from the obvious pecuniary advantages, is its all pervading quietness. The only disturbance experienced is the singing of the birds and the odd scattering of dried up leaves as a lizard runs full-pelt through the detritus, often on its hind legs.

It is a good place to sit and think, and a good place to write. Since publishing last week's effort, events concerning the Dhammakaya temple have become ever more dramatic with claims and counter-claims being bounced back and forth by those involved in the dispute. A former aid to Phra Dammachayo, Mano Laohavanich, has come forward and made scathing criticisms of some of the financial misdoings of the organisations and, in particular, of the leaders themselves. Having made such accusations, he says that he now fears for his life and has asked for appropriate protection. He may well have a point. The connections of Wat Dhammakaya are far-reaching within Thai society, including some high ranking civil and military figures.

Oddly, images from Dhammakaya services somehow remind me of the Neuremberg rallies of Germany in the 1930s, not sure why...

All such shenanigans seem a very long way indeed from anything Gautama Buddha propounded two and a half thousand or so years ago. Dhammakaya seems to be a very status and rank conscious organisation within which, at least according to its critics, position and status is more related by the ability of the devotee to pay for appropriate merit than it is by deeds, character or spiritual attainment. There is also much criticism of the type of 'Buddhism' being taught at Dhammakaya. Mostly, this concerns such things as the ignoring of even such basic Buddhist concepts as non-self (anatta), and the somewhat obsessively materialistic nature of Dhammakaya preachings (to say nothing of the lifestyles of some of those running the organisation).

Perhaps at this point it should be stated that the Thai Buddhists, even those of the Dhammakaya sect, are by no means unusual in this. It seems to be the fate of all human organisations to change, dilute and essentially corrupt whatever system of belief they were originally intending to promote. A couple of examples might suffice to clarify the point. There are many possible of course, this process seeming to be almost ubiquitous in human affairs.

Firstly, in the religious area, we could take the Christian church and the early influence of the Emperor Constantine. Due to political pressures at the time (around CE 325) it became necessary for the Roman empire to try to create a unified church rather than the endless disputes that fractured early Christianity. To this end, the conference of Nicea was called which established the notion of the divinity of Christ, stated which gospels were to be included in the Canon (and perhaps more importantly, which were to be left out), and imbued the nascent Roman church with much power.

Over the centuries since, many schisms have occurred within the church, usually as a result of devotees within perceiving the all too apparent corruption of the status quo and, as a reaction, choosing to establish another Christian order. Within an all too short a period of time though, the same process occurs, and the inevitable corruption sets in. Organisation, in and of itself, and perhaps by its very nature, seems to invariably lead to the misinterpretation, distortion and corruption of whatever message was originally intended to be communicated.

Essentially, if one looks at the history of Buddhism, Islam or any number of other religions, one will find much the same kind of process occurring. As we progress further and further from the source, it seems to be more or less inevitable that the underlying and pure message will become more and more contaminated. As stated last week, if one is interested in a given spiritual view then it seems wiser to go to the source rather than rely on any subsequent interpretations through churches, temples or any other body that involve self-interested men. I would recommend to anyone who is inclined towards such spiritual matters to go to the source, go to the writings or speeches of the originators of these spiritual systems, rather than rely on later interpretations by those within the system who may have had other things on their minds (power, money, influence, etc) than the spiritual advancement of people.

In politics, much the same sort of process occurs with a truly alarming regularity. For a very obvious example, I could cite my own recent visit to China, when it was all too readily apparent that whatever was going on there in the name of communism, it was about as far removed from anything that Marx or Engels would have advocated as one could get.

In the US and the UK in recent years, those inclined towards capitalism and idealistically recommending that 'market forces' be allowed to dictate circumstances suddenly found themselves asking for massive state intervention (policies much closer to socialism or even communism) when they themselves were threatened by a sudden deterioration in the financial situation.

One could go on citing examples almost indefinitely. The process of corruption and misinterpretation are very much the norm once an organisation such as a church, a movement or a party are formed; so much so in fact that I am hard put to think of an exception...

When such widespread and ubiquitous corruption is seen from religions to government, from the so-called forces of law and order to scientific bodies (supposedly ruled by logic but all too often dominated by the usual urges to power or to have influence) it seems small wonder that some give up hope that any such human organisation can ever be free of such urges.

Many people have been struck by such thoughts as these in the past, from the early days of the cynicism of Diogenes of Sinope (famous for barrel living...) and Crates of Thebes, to such relatively modern-day luminaries as Henry David Thoreau and Mikail Bakunin. Often, the response they have recommended comes under the general term of anarchism, a term often misused to imply a state of chaos, but which actually is more concerned with returning the power in organisations, particularly governments, back to the individuals and away from the centre.

Perhaps Thoreau put it most succinctly when he said: "That government is best which governs least". He added, as an afterthought, the clarification: "That government is best which governs not at all!"

Naturally, this attitude can (and maybe should) be applied to many other forms of human organisations, not just government.

Back outside the simple coffee house in the garden of the Morning Baan guesthouse, the sun is reaching its zenith and it is time to seek some kind of escape in a slightly more modern, and hopefully air-conditioned, establishment. Fortunately today, there is a slight breeze coming off the river, rendering the environment just about bearable. Tis a beautiful place, despite the presence of a few timber huts dotted here and there, one is very conscious of being in natural surroundings. It seems that wherever one goes in Kanchanaburi, wherever nature has been allowed to predominate it is invariably rather beautiful. The ugliness only comes when the humans start to interfere...

Loitering without intent

Loitering without intent....

This evening I find myself once again in the delightful surrounds of Cafe do Coral but an altogether different branch of the said concession. This one is in the 'village' of Chang An, a suburb of Dongguan just north of Shenzhen (and that, in turn, just north of Hong Kong, for those who wish to locate the village on a map). I think even the Chinese would struggle to call this place a village in this day and age being, as it is, the home to somewhere in excess of one million souls. On the other hand, the Chinese would not call it a city either. A mere million inhabitants just about makes it to town status in this part of the world. Cities by Chinese standards don't really start until the population of said metropolis is in excess of four to five million. By such a measure, one and only one British 'city' would qualify for that status in modern China - and that is London itself!

Back in the cafe, music tinkers softly in the background which, thankfully, is not of the 'Christmas' variety but rather various strains of what is known as 'easy listening'. To be fair, if I have to listen to such fayre whilst indulging in an Americano, I think this kind of piano base remix of 60's hits is not the least pleasant. Indeed, much as it pains me, I have to admit to quite enjoying some of the renditions, in particular 'The Sounds of Silence' (chance would be a fine thing!) and 'Scarboro' Fair'. It tends to have the effect of allowing me to muse amiably over my flaneurial activities of the day.

 Much of the time was spent sauntering around the streets and parks of this somewhat overcrowded yet still quite pleasant town. Fortunately, the town planners had the foresight to include several generous green spaces which render some relief from the otherwise oppressive constancy of the sun and the traffic. I have to say, Chang An is really quite a pleasant town to saunter around, if one is given to such sauntering activities. There is indeed an art to walking in this way wherein the point of the walk is the walk itself and not the destination. Naturally, this is also the art of the flaneur – slowly walking through town without a sense of purpose or a place to go to but with an omnipresent openness to the experience itself.

According to Thoreau, that great American thinker of the 19^th century, the word 'saunter' owes it derivation to the France of the Middle Ages. There were men who roved around the country and sought charity claiming that it was to enable them to go to the Holy Land, or 'a la Saint Terre'. Over time, when children saw such a person, they would should out 'There goes a Sainte-Terre,' a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. Those who were merely pretending to extract charity were indeed mere idlers and vagabonds but there are those who are saunterers in the good sense, they literally go to a 'holy land' of sorts. 

Another derivation quoted by Thoreau again comes from the French 'sans terre', meaning without land or home. These days I find myself very much in this latter category but... it has proven to be not entirely disagreeable in itself, although perhaps not for everyone. 'Saunter' in this sense also implies to be able to be equally at home wherever one finds oneself, or to misquote Paul Young: Wherever you lay your hat...that's your home!

Sunday afternoon in Chang An is the end of the week and many hard working Chinese citizens enjoy a stroll through the town's parks on this day. Come on a weekday and you will more or less have the space to yourself and a choice of pleasant places to sit and contemplate, meditate, ruminate or simply sunbathe, whatever takes your fancy. On a Sunday however, places to rest are at a premium so most spend the time slowly sauntering beneath the trees smiling amiably to all and sundry.

It is noticeable how much more relaxed he people are, how much more amiable, when they are not obsessed with getting from A to B but are quite happy with A or, if they happen to find themselves in B, likewise. A stroll without purpose - for truly the purpose of the stroll is contained within the act of strolling itself. I look at them, they look at me, we exchange the odd 'Ni Hao' with each other, everyone smiles and seems content with their lot. This amiability is in stark contrast to the rest of the week when the general populace here seems to be in such a hurry that they will happily risk life and limb, yours as well as theirs, in order to gain a few precious seconds and get ahead in 'the race'.

Ah, the busyness of business! The modern Chinese culture is no different to the West in these ways. We are exhorted on all sides and throughout our lives to work hard, be busy, to go get. Apparently, you must have a purpose and must strive unceasingly to fulfil that purpose. And pray, when one fulfils that purpose, what to do then? Why, take on another, even harder one, of course!

 We are told that life is a rat race. In order to be successful we must learn to be ratty enough – to strive, to scurry, to ever give the appearance of busy-ness but...who truly wants to live like a rat? Apparently, there are those that do. There are some who relish the tooth and nail competitiveness of it all. Forever chasing after glistening baubles that seem so tempting from afar. Doing down their competitors by fair means or foul, striving forever to climb to the top of the pile. When said baubles are pocketed though, and one finds oneself seated atop such a pile, it often happens that the glistening that tempted one in the first place turns out not to be gold at all, but merely another encumbrance, another complication, another meaningless commitment to pour one's all too finite energies into. Seated atop the pile instead of friends you have competitors, instead of happiness anxiety, instead of satisfaction the ongoing obligation to defend what you have. Is this state of affairs really something we should strive for, really something we should desire?

Many years ago, the then French Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, on a state visit to Japan, was asked if she admired the economic success of the Japanese at that time. She thought for a second, sighed, and then replied: “It's all very well, but who wants to live like an ant!”

It was hugely controversial at the time, causing a huge diplomatic incident between the two countries but one has to admit she had a point. Watching the British in London or the Chinese in Shanghai or the Japanese in Tokyo queueing in their millions to be stuffed into already overcrowded carriages and carried off to places they really don't want to go (and this process sometimes goes on for 30 years or more)  has to give one at least a small pause for thought. Is the carrot of a few material baubles really worth selling one's all too brief time on this planet for? You may indeed end up with a bigger house, a bigger car and lots of 'stuff' to look after but it will  have taken so much of your existence to pay for it. There has to be a better way.

Meanwhile, it is now closing time in the cafe and I risk being the very last customer. The floors are mopped, the kitchen cleaned and even some of the lights have been extinguished. They really are very polite here but I think it is high-time to curtail my verbal saunterings for another week and let the staff return home to their loved ones and to some well-earned rest.

Wan An!