Vivat Libertas

Written for The Activists  and can be found here . "The revolution" is a phrase I've often seen bandied about. It's as if the revolution is imminent, as if nothing anyone could say or do would stop it from hurtling towards us and giving us our long-deserved dues. That is a pack of lies. The revolution will not come unless we fight and toil and sweat blood for it to come; the revolution will not come if we simply sit here talking about it. The politicians and the media and the corporations who finance them all will make sure of that. No, the revolution will only come if we grasp it with two hands and nurture every little spark of resistance. The revolution will only come if we set aside our differences and reach out to others who share our agenda. As painful as it may be - some would prefer to pull out their own teeth without anaesthetic rather than thrash out a compromise - we must fight the establishment instead of quibbling amongst ourselves. The revolut...

This was originally written for The Activists  and can be found here . We live in an age of much information and little knowledge; facts, figures and events are all around us, but few if any people have the tools to filter and interpret them. Enter the media - and by this I mean old media primarily, such as newspapers and TV. They present the news in a clear, accessible format which anyone can understand, served up with some opinions on the side. All in all, fairly good for people. Except the media frequently misreports things, burying the facts at the bottom of the article (and sometimes getting those  wrong as well). They prefer drama - selling stories and scandals - to cold, hard data. They cast anyone they hate - minorities, the poor, rebels, the government, anyone who isn't white and middle-class - in the worst possible light. They report PR stunts as news and kill with their poor understanding of science. And people fall for it, every time. The media controls a...

Everyone knows about me and my crazy politics - legalise pretty much everything, complete net neutrality, corporations have a duty to society and not just to themselves, governments rarely (if ever) have the best interests of the people at heart, we should rise up and govern ourselves... ...so it may seem a bit odd that I'm now advocating a technocracy. The thing is, as patronising as I sound, what people want and what's actually good for them may not be the same thing - hence you get people with actual qualifications  to run the country instead of relying on a bunch of lawyers and novelists. Thus teachers/educators/psychologists run the schools, scientists are in charge of science, economists run the Treasury... ...It's not perfect - no political system will ever be - and I can imagine that there'd be almighty arguments about funding. The head of state would probably have to be a world-class diplomat just to stop the Cabinet from tearing itself apart. But individ...

I spend way too much time on Twitter, I'll admit. I follow all sorts of left-wing types, especially those who believe in revolution as the only way forward (it isn't, and it may actually make the problem worse given the ah... messy  transfer of power involved) and shun consumerism like it's going out of style. They have an agenda - that much is obvious. Everyone has an agenda. Theirs involves shunning human weakness - presumably it is unbefitting of a revolutionary. Meanwhile, when the mainstream media does  pick up on those people (if ever), they're characterised either 1) as brave freedom fighters who could never put a foot wrong or 2) as one step above terrorists, and sometimes not even that. As for the people who know them, the people who are closest to them? They may describe them as being obsessed with power/freedom/whatever. It can be scary to see someone that fired up about something. I will tell you a home truth now. It will seem obvious to you after I ...

Right. So, as I've mentioned before, The Activists is awesome, and they run an equally awesome blog which is apparently contributed to by awesome people. However, some of the articles are...not so awesome, like this one . Go on, read it - it's very short. (If you can't be bothered to read it, it's a rant against powerful people.) Anyway, I have some questions for Adam Haddad and anyone who thought to pass this article. You are intelligent people - think about my questions, really think about them, and answer me honestly. Isn't not being weak part  of being powerful? Didn't many politicians start off wanting to help people? You'll take power after your revolution - at the very least, you'll have to take the helm during a transitional period or risk chaos. Won't you also become dogs, or is the rule magically waived for you? Is there not a part of every person, strong or weak, young or old, slave or free, who loves power? Is power not ad...

I'm sick of liberals and I'm sick of conservatives. I'm sick of Labour and I'm sick of the Tories. I'm sick of the Republicans and I'm sick of the Democrats. I'm sick of fascists and I'm sick of anarchists. I'm sick of the Left and I'm sick of the Right. I'm sick of people refusing to look at the facts, in fact cheerfully ignoring them when they get in the way of political ideologies. I'm sick of people making shit up because it's easier to blame an ancient conspiracy than admit that there's no-one to blame. In fact, I'm sick of people - liberal, conservative, Labour, Tory, Republican, Democrat, fascist, anarchist, left, right - not looking at the truth. I've always believed that you can only fix the world if you actually know what's going on in it. It makes sense, right? If I didn't accept the truth of basic principles, like needing oxygen to respire, I'd die pretty quickly. If you don't understan...

At the end of the day, at the end of that long road, fine words are just those: fine words. Empty rhetoric. Nothing more. And perhaps for a time they will soothe you and paper over the cracks in your consciousness. But if you've looked into the darkness where nothing looks back...that fine rhetoric does very little. Only logic, a powerful, blinding logic, will help, and that logic is difficult to come by. In other news, I have my results for C2 and P2 - both 100% A*. (Slap me if I'm boasting too much.) The modules do seem to be quite easy, as I know loads of other people with A*s...

Increasingly, I find myself wanting to die young. This isn't because I'm depressed, or because I have some kind of death wish. It's because I think that a short life full of worthy acts (such as protesting) is better than a long, quiet life lived doing essentially nothing (i.e. what most people do), and because I fear growing old. But why would I, a future scientist - not a model or actress - fear growing old? Because as well as being a future scientist, I might just be a future activist. I've gotten myself involved (foolishly, some might say) with radicals and motivated people. It's...it's best described as enlightening. I've learnt so much that I never could have in the classroom; I've met people from all walks of life who share my crazy views, and it doesn't matter that other people think us crazy because at least our beliefs can get a proper airing here. I try to think critically, evaluating everything I come across, and I try to join in the ...

Let's get a couple of things straight. I'm a godless egalitarian liberal who distrusts big corporations and has a virulent hatred of Rupert Murdoch. So far, so good, right? I fit in quite well amongst the crunchy-granola ranks of fashionable liberals - perhaps, with my political compass score, I stand out from them a little: In short, I'm a die-hard left-libertarian. But now things get a little more problematic. You see, apart from being a perpetual doubter , I also like science very, very much - to the point where I'd like to be a physicist when I'm older. This already annoys some feminists - thankfully very few of them - who think that some of the most basic principles of science, such as scientific objectivity, are geared towards men. They're pretty much the reason why I self-identify as an egalitarian rather than a feminist. It also seems to annoy members of the wider liberal community, who think that the scientific method and academia are the stomping-gr...

I post too much but... ...I believe that one should work for one's treasured goals. So far, so good. Very few people would disagree with me. I also believe that one should work for these treasured goals even if one believes that they are impossible to achieve. This is the part where people start to look at me weirdly and ask "Why would you do that? Dear God, why?" After all, why should one sink time and effort - perhaps a life's worth of time and effort - into an unreachable goal? Why should one try to do the impossible? Well, pardon me for saying this, but that's based on fallacious reasoning: that either one accomplishes the goal or one does not accomplish the goal, with nothing in between. If that were true, there would indeed be no point in working towards it and we should all give up now. But that's not the case. We don't live in an all-or-nothing world; we can still get partway to a goal, still do a good turn for a society desperately in need...