thursday 3rd November

The northern cold is beginning to bite and actually I am quite happy about it.  Climate change is something we live by, especially this year when it has often been unseasonably warm, to return to a more normal temperature in Autumn is good, though of course the leaves will come off the trees faster.

Yesterday we took Lucy for her vaccination jabs to the vet, and the vet pointed out that Lucy was putting on weight, so a third off her meal each day, not happy days for Lucy though.  We have had Lucy for a year now though it does not seem so, she is gorgeous but has a very strong character, and her nocturnal getting up to mess around at night have sent both of us up the wall sometimes. Door slamming very loudly is one of her tricks, moaning to herself  as she wanders around like Macbeth downstairs is another trick.  We can only think that with her old owners who put her in a shed at night, probably at about 6 p.m, she slept through to midnight and was then wide awake, they got rid of her because she was barking at night!  Still she makes us both laugh with her ability to bring the right thing, tea towels at the end of a meal, shoes for going out, and even garden tools when we are in the garden.

I have been watching Adam Curtis films, both very long, Hypernormalisation and Bitter Lake about how we got to the mess we are in now.  Having one's eyes opened to the sleazy world we live in is not a pleasant experience, sometimes you are not sure that the truth is being spelt out or that Curtis's version is a souped up paranoia.  But it is a good thing to be informed, the Middle East and all the terrible consequences are there underlined by angry Arab faces, who gave the Western world the right to interfere with such impunity?

Now I shall watch on Youtube - All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace  to try to understand where Trump comes from, did such teachings by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged really inspire all those Californians technicans to go for absolute money making power, her philosophy.....

Is the pursuit of profit a noble enterprise or the root of all evil? Is sexual passion an exalted spiritual virtue or a dirty, animalistic vice? Is reason an absolute or is faith an alternative source of truth? Is self-esteem possible or are we consigned to a life of self-doubt and guilt? In what kind of society can an individual prosper, and in what kind of society is he doomed to the opposite fate?

Her answer of course is that the 'pursuit of profit' is a noble enterprise, and that the self, the individual matters that we  should indeed go in pursuit of our own selfish motivations - whoosh! that sounds a bit like  how our world works today.