Vivat Libertas

If discussions of depression and suicide trigger you, I suggest you don't read this post. If you find flippant quips about depression and suicide offensive, I also suggest you don't read this post. Hey, internet people! Instead of looking at cute cat video #364736463 or addressing the gnawing insecurity about how you think you've fucked up your life and are stuck doing something you hate, why not read something inspirational about how a really, really bad thing actually turned out to be a secret gift? Yeah, why not? Well, for a start, you've come to the wrong place. I'm not very good at doing this inspirational thing at the best of times. This is just about the best of all possible times and I'm still being a grumpy little dipshit, which tells you something. I'm not going to tell you the story of six years of depression and five attempts at killing myself (I should really stop, I'm rubbish at this suicide lark), or of being in and out of ther...

Have I mentioned how much I absolutely detest "inspirational" bullshit? Maybe so, but I'll do it again and this time in a more coherent fashion! Anyway, as anyone who has even the faintest acquaintance with me knows, I hate bullshit. I also veer wildly between happiness and despair, idealism and cynicism, and do it all with a huge dollop of snark stuck on top. And I am utterly, utterly sincere. Unlike quite a few people, I don't do insincerity. I won't say one thing and mean another. I won't fake emotions - firstly, it costs me precious energy, and secondly, it's dishonest and I do have hang-ups about lying. Maybe my smile, my laugh, my tears all look idiotic and pathetic (I don't have high self-esteem) but they're all genuine. This brings me to my first problem with inspirational bullshit: it doesn't seem sincere or authentic. It seems to be very much something that is banged out at a keyboard by someone who has nothing better to say ...

Right. So it's the Internet, and apart from more-or-less respectable news sources such as the Guardian and Telegraph , you also have the more...ah...unconventional elements, such as Infoshop and Ye Olde False Flag . I see nothing wrong with that - the more news sources, the better. I get quite a lot of my news from Twitter, as the mainstream media often takes a while to pick up stories. Unfortunately, with the Internet comes Sturgeon's Law and an army of tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorists . The mainstream media has got things wrong before, and it's always good to have new perspectives on things; there's nothing wrong with questioning authority. This is not about those people. This is about the people who think that the world will end in 2012, the Illuminati fixed everything up to be this way, the government put sodium amytal in the water sources, or whatever random crap they're coming up with next. I have no respect for them. Instead of applying cold, hard...

Shockingly, yes, there are some people who still believe in it. And yes, it does still pop up on Google. Take this , for example. It badly needs riffing, and I shall provide, because the fact that people believe in this woo pisses me off badly. Law of Attraction  doesn’t work for most people for the same reason prayer doesn’t for its practitioners. Because it's not remotely scientific or tied to reality? The former, just as the latter, is based on an assumption that the universe, or God, is benevolent and generous. The Law of Attraction or, as it is known in the Bible, the Law of Believing and, sometimes, the Law of Asking and Receiving, all refer to the same law. In fact, you can find some form of this law described in virtually every culture and religion. The Law of Attraction has its roots in  quantum physics .  Um, no, it doesn't, as you would know if you followed the link or had even basic (for which read pop-science) knowledge of quantum physics. The LoA has...