Reality Class 101: Bullshitters.

"Don't blame me, I didn't do it!"

Good morning children, it is nice to see a full class. First of all, I hope you are all comfortable in your seats. None of you realise this right now, but the positions you are seated in, are already starting to establish your course of existence. Some of you will be bullies, others the bullied. Some shall embrace and love the world like a sunflower, others will hate it like the taste of a bitter pill; for an illness you never wanted, given to you by a person you only pretended to like. 

Anyway, today we are going to learn about bullshitters. Now, before you ask what a bullshitter is, let me tell that bullshitters exist all over Earth. From the indigenous tribes of the Australian bush-lands, to the inner sanctums of the Houses of Parliament – a veritable cauldron for bullshitters, they arrive in all colours, cultures, class systems, genders, shapes and sizes. They can be young or old, male or female, politicians or street cleaners, gay, straight… it doesn’t matter. Like all elements of human nature, it is impossible to define by stereotype. Remember this as a note for future reference – it will serve you well when balancing tolerant liberation, with cold-hearted survival. 

I must also add, not everybody is a bullshitter. There are in fact many genuine, honest human adults in this world, who call life as their hearts and minds see it. Unfortunately, personal experience with bullshitters, distorts levels of trust. Bullshitters are inadequate. This is essentially why they make shit up. They lie about their reality, as a means to sate an internal feeling of worthlessness; believing their willing mark lives an exciting, fulfilling life – when they are usually quite standard. A noted sign of bullshit in action, is when you tell them about a personal achievement, they will tell you they have done the same thing – just a little better than you. If you ran a mile in six minutes, they ran it in five minutes and fifty nine seconds. You earn fourty-grand a year, they earn fourty-one. You once saved a Cat from a high-tree? They saved a Gorilla from a burning tower block. 

Bullshitters are lost in a constant stream of pointless competition; playing a game of one-upmanship to layer a fragile ego. They are in general, harmless (Unless in positions of power like a politician, or defending acts of murder - see picture), and best taken with a pinch of salt. If you feel like pandering to them for personal entertainment, act as if you believe every word of the lie; this will cause their confidence to swell, and shoot from their mouths even more elaborate bullshits. The more convinced they are you buy the lie, the more they are willing to sell.

The self-defeating nature of bullshitters is two-fold. The first is due to their web of lies being impossible to remember, therefore stamping over previous veils of deceit; who wins the lottery, twice – when once is rare on its own. The second is the lack of congruence in their stories; an obese man cannot run a mile in six minutes, as much as if a man is so affluent, why is he wearing a two pound t-shirt from Primark and living in a council house? When someone tells you they fell off a freight train, they never explain why they were on a freight train in the first place; and even if they were, why were they hanging outside of it in full motion? More to the point, why do they have no scars, stories, or more detail to prove it? 

Like all liars, their stories are vague… always, vague. And under cross-examination, fall to pieces like an English defence in a world-cup knock-out match. The only time their lies ever become dangerous, is if they promise you anything progressive to your own life, they simply do not have. If I, as a teacher, promise you information on how to pass a future test – or some financial opportunity, but never deliver, you suffer from a non-existent help to move you forward. 

So be weary of bullshitters. They will go at great lengths to prove their point, but your instinct will always sense something wrong – listen to it! And that is our lesson for today. Feel free to embrace the information as an aid to life, or reject as manipulative bullshit. Life is complicated, and often hard; we as people tend to make it this way. I hope this information has been of some value. I look forward to seeing you, in my next reality class…

Lee.

Reality Classes.

"We don't need no education."

There has never been a time in my life where knowing the names of Henry the Eighths six wives, was of any real value. Knowing Oslo is the capital city of Norway, a Toad is an Amphibian, and the Dodo remains a long extinct form of pre-historic bird, has – beyond being interesting factoids to impress random people with, are completely useless pieces of information; in the grand scheme of personal survival. 

I’m not knocking the education system. I believe teachers do a massively under-appreciated job, in spite of the weight against them, and the system manages to mix a myriad of topics youngsters need to learn about life very well – considering the short time frame per calendar year afforded to them. I just feel there is enough filler masquerading as valuable information, we could easily live without.

Skills such as English, Maths, Science, and the basic fundamentals of communication are untouchable – reading, writing, and being able to count to ten, are the core of a self-aware intellect – and without them watching Countdown would be shit. So they stay. I would add a lot more physical education in the mix; especially nowadays. When I was at school every class had one fat kid, now it seems every year has an entire fat class. Instead of wasting time going over how Muslims and Christians both think the other is wrong; because it’s unlikely either is going to accept the others viewpoint, get those lard arses blubbering around a track every day – teach them the immense value of the human body.

Dump Geography, History, Religious Education, and other fringe topics. My view being the kids interested in Papua New Guinea or the Crusades, will go searching this stuff online. And the thick ones who couldn’t care less for it, will be bored having to sit and listen anyway – so why waste both their times? With all these spare education hours available, we add a fresh new subject to the academic agenda… reality classes.

Reality classes begin at the age of seven, are one hour a week every week; until the legal leaving age of sixteen. Their sole purpose is to teach children that while life is a wonderful, invigorating gift, it is also fraught with brutality, frustration, and having to deal with all manner of wankers and bullshit the school system simply chooses to ignore – which we all have to deal with on a regular basis. I don’t mean telling the young, life is shit, because it’s not. But while it’s not all bastards and beatings, it is not all sunshine and rainbows either.

I am sure someone could suggest learning about the awful times of the past does this, but really it doesn’t; acts of History seem like stuff which happened to other people in oldie, backward-arse times – not today. Plus Churchill and Hitler never had Facebook accounts; though it would have been funny if they did…. Churchill’s status of “Just invaded Normandy – the town, not a person.”, met with likes by Albert Einstein and Harry Truman. While Joseph Stalin comments with “Remember, Adolf told me to do it.” Which Mussolini likes, of course. The classes definitely need to reflect the times.

After thinking about this a little, I have decided to teach a few classes of my own, via the power of blogging. So my next blog will be my first lesson in reality class… bullshitters. I guess I am as good an expert as anybody else – and in truth, anybody who has lived a few years in this life, is qualified to teach. And anyway, none of this is ever to be taken too seriously… perhaps this is a lesson in the class unto itself. 

Lee.

Concrete Roses.

It is a warm summers evening in 2002. I am a twenty-one year old kid who has seen more brutality than he wishes, yet remains clueless to the true realities of life in the human labyrinth. I am a kind-hearted, well meaning, and introverted human being. I am weary of people, but lacking wisdom to know who to allow in, and who to keep out; over the next decade, this will all slowly reveal itself to me, as it does to the majority of others. But here, in 2002 – I choose to believe everybody else is just like me, and carry genuine concern for every person they meet. 

I am looking upon a football pitch-sized car park of a Toy store in Brent Cross. The area is surrounded with random cars, discarded shopping trolleys, and an abundance of human ambition which has flattened natures plan. As usual, I am thinking - I am always thinking. This is a part of me I appreciate most of all; the ability to quietly consider thoughts and ideas; random, logical, emotional, subversive – silly… it really doesn’t matter. I just love to build theories in my mind which make sense – at least to me, anyway. I still do.

I stand in the middle of the paved car park, looking down at the only sight which has managed to catch my attention; a single Red Rose flower has grown between the grooves of a paving slab. There is something mesmerising about it – almost pure. Life around this paved paradise is human made; rigid, functional, kinda boring. This Rose is a welcome note from nature – and I imagine it has come to rise, expecting a hundred-thousand other Red Roses to embrace it with open stems; only to discover armies of shitty stone slabs, gas guzzlers, and commercial trolleys. 

Maybe this is a reincarnated human life coming back in an odd form of hell? Or pure bad luck on the flower? Or just a result of random chances coming together. But the answer is irrelevant. For this is a Friday afternoon, and come Monday a set of feet, a car, or a random mind too stupid to appreciate this wonder, will crush it, and ultimately destroy the short life of a solitary flower. An internal instinct begins to understand how everybody else is not like me; for I could not do anything else, but let it grow as I feel it is meant to.

I don’t cry, but I do feel sadness. I know it cannot survive for long. But it doesn’t matter. Because in that solitary moment in my eyes, it is fucking beautiful. I check back on Monday to see it again… it has gone. The twenty-one year old is upset, and wonders why - as humans, we can often act so cruel to a nature kindly given to us for free.  But as I write this blog a decade later – and ten years older, I now realise the Red Rose lives in my mind. And when I find myself thinking in random quiet moments, the Red Rose arrives as a memory to let me know how beauty can be found in the strangest places, and in all walks of life. And for that reason, I guess it was never really crushed at all.

Lee.