Idle Thoughts

The coming end of work?

There was a time, not that long ago, when technology advanced so quickly that millions of employees were put out of work, never to return to the workforce. I speak, of course, of horses, put (literally) to pasture at the turn of the 20th century as the mechanisation of agriculture and the rise of the automobile irreversibly changed the economy.

So far, despite the massive technological advances of the last 100 years, the same hasn’t yet happened to humans. Both through retraining, generational change and the stimulation of demand by advertising, the proportion of the population needed in the workforce not only maintained previous levels, but increased as women left the home.

This may not always be the case, and I would argue that this is what we’re beginning to see in developed economies as manufacturing moves to low-cost labour countries where workers can be exploited far more cheaply. Even further, three massive social and economic forces stand arrayed to reduce the need for workers even further:

1. The improved productivity attributed to technological advances;

2. The lack of additional material needs of people beyond what is already provided by a first-world economy.

3. The ecological and energy challenges posed by climate change and declining resources (peak oil, for example)

Almost all economic and social thought (bar, perhaps, the Monetarist freak-show with their inflation obsession) to date has seen full employment as a necessary and useful social goal. What happens when the socio-economic system reaches a point where a large portion of the population is surplus to requirements? Even after the low-paying, mindless McJobs are full?

I agree with Jaron Lanier, who posits that there seem to be two paths forward. One, of Marxist hue, which assumes a productive surplus that can be spread evenly around:

One option is the one that Marx advocated. That option is: The society is saving a lot of money, it’s getting more efficient, so we’ll apply that to taking care of the unneeded people. In that case, well it’s a tricky one… Because in every example in which there have been very large numbers of people who were just taken care of by a society, it eventually breaks.

His second path, of a decidedly more capitalist hue, paints an even less rosy picture:

Another possibility is that the extraneous people just suffer, and are maybe given inexpensive amusements. […] I’m astonished at how readily a great many people I know, young people, have accepted a reduced economic prospect and limited freedoms in any substantial sense, and basically traded them for being able to screw around online.

Neither of these seems to be the utopian future I was promised. I’d also agree with Lanier, that the second option seems to be the one we’re taking, though more by default than conscious mass choice. It recalls the concept of “tittytainment”, a word coined by none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski to describe a mixture of titillation and entertainment, designed to “tranquilize the frustrated minds of the globe’s population.”

To my mind, this is one of the great issues facing Western society. In a future society where work (let alone wage slavery) may not be necessary, what does each of us, and all of us, actually do?

A rant for our times.

It’s been a cunt of a week. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I always thought that Things Are Getting Worse, but even in my most violent spasms of raw pessimism, I never thought things would get this bad this fast. 

It’s not just the riots. I mean, it is, because the naked fact that a significant chunk of our alleged society is so alienated that they turn against it can only be interpreted as the symptom of an extraordinary malaise. 

But it was more the response that got to me. The hate of the rioters was reflected perfectly back to them by almost everyone else in society. The calls for revenge dressed in the clothing of justice. From David Cameron (who is a cunt) on down, the revolting calls to strike back at them as they struck at us sickened me. Condemnation. Severe punishment. Hate. The defining characteristics of modern-day Britain are hate and greed. Fuck you all, I’m looking out for me, and I’ll strike down upon thee with furious anger should you threaten that.

Jedem das Seine - mir das Meiste.

We’re even forbidden from trying to understand this rift in society, earning accusations of riot apologia and pop psychology when we do so. Well, fuck that. If there’s any corner in the expanse of the human condition which isn’t fit to be understood by us, then we’re all ready for the ice floe.

Nobody has any fucking idea what to do. Our elites have failed, and the laity aren’t much better. The glee with which the #riotcleanup was greeted underscores the absence of any other concrete action we can take. The anarchist in me is pleased by by the bottom-up organisation of these actions, but, really, anyone can push a broom down the street. Beyond that, what is anyone doing? What can anyone do?

I hear rumours now of the English Defense League using the riots as cover for their own racist projects. This scares me. Not 70 years after we spent literally millions of lives to beat down fascism the last time it raised its head above the parapet, we’ve got fucking brownshirts on the streets of England. Fuck. FUCK.

This weekend, I’m getting a bottle of the finest scotch, and shall drink it while diligently ignoring every source of news. It’s the only thing to do.

A letter to Peter Marks, Chief Executive of The Co-operative Group

Mr Peter Marks
peter.marks@co-operative.coop
Chief Executive
The Co-operative Group Ltd 

Dear Mr Marks,

I write as a member of The Co-operative Group, and someone who shares its values.

You will, no doubt, be aware of the recent allegations published in The Guardian detailing the actions of the News of the World newspaper, a News International publication. The allegations are of a vile nature, that “journalists” and private investigators working for the News of the World not only hacked into the voicemail of missing teenager Milly Dowler in 2002, but that they deleted voicemail messages from that account even as police investigated the disappearance, cruelly causing Milly’s family to entertain false hopes that she was alive.

These actions are revolting, reprehensible, and have no place in the practise of journalism.

When the Co-operative chooses to sell a product, I believe it is making an implicit moral judgement that it agrees with the methods use to make that product. I think the Co-operative believes this too, and it is for this reason, that I am sure that no product it sells is produced with child or slave labour, and I am encouraged by the efforts to obtain and manufacture products in environmentally-sustainable ways.

It is also for this reason, that I urge the Co-operative to no longer stock the News of the World in any of its stores. Its actions have been disgusting, and should not be supported by the Co-operative in any way what-so-ever.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Jason Langenauer
Stockwell, London. 

Why the working class/eudaemonic/whatever revolution isn’t coming.

1. Because people with MBAs are still taken seriously, and allowed to largely determine the direction of society.
2. Because the very architecture of the buildings we live in atomises us and separates us, preventing us from knowing our neighbours and organising with them.
3. Because John in Shropshire and Xian Je in Gungzhou completely agree on what is to be done, but John doesn’t speak Cantonese, nor Xian Je English.
4. And neither of them even knows of the other’s existence.
5. Because people think Cheryl Cole is worth even a moment of their attention.
6. Because if you don’t work, in Western countries, you don’t eat. So you better work.
7. Because human beings value a small amount of pleasure right now much more than a larger amount of pleasure in the future.
8. Because the opponents of change understand psychology and neurology much better than those calling for it - both in general, and in how it applies to their ends.
9. Because working class people see foreigners as their enemy, rather than investment bankers.
10. Because our education systems teach folk how to be good obedient workers, but poor critical thinkers.
11. Because the dominant media fills the heads of its consumers with confused, savage thoughts towards their fellow humans. Have you read the Letters to the Editor page in the Sun lately?
12. And that media is very capable of ignoring things its owners find inconvenient.
13. Because even the educated pay only the slightest attention to the consequences to humanity and the environment as a result of the things they purchase.
14. Because we argue about the rights and wrongs of political parties as though they didn’t uniformly represent the ruling class.
15. Because our idea of socialising almost invariable involves intoxicating ourselves so we can better ignore reality.
16. Because in almost every house, there is a device whose sole purpose is to induce passivity and reduce thinking.
17. Because even those who call for revolution sometimes doubt that they’re right. The defenders of the status quo have no such doubts.
18. Because modern capitalism will turn the Earth’s atmosphere in to one resembling that of Venus before any revolution will even get started.
19. Because a large proportion of the smartest people in our society dream of fast cars, foreign holidays and fantastically large houses.
20. Because our sense of identity is so tied up with our jobs and what we consume, and that to lose them is to lose our identity.
21. Because our superannuation is invested in the stock market, blackmailing us into continued alliance with the owners of the market. You don’t want to die poor, do you?
22. Because we are scared of the awesome responsibility that would accompany the freedom we could create for ourselves.
23. Because the very language of the putative revolutionaries is narrow and academic, which the laity don’t understand. What the fuck is “dialectical materialism” anyway?
24. Because the status quo has an incredible ability to change itself in the cause of its self-preservation, even in the face of existential threats to its existence.

And here’s the kicker: Because overcoming just one of those reasons won’t bring about the revolution, as the others will serve to prevent it just fine.

Nick Dyrenfurth is a Disingenuous Arsehat

In today’s Australian, Nick Dyrenfurth rails against the “nihilist left”, which turns out to be anyone who doesn’t agree with his view that the extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden was the greatest thing since the Inclosure Acts. The shrill tone of the piece belies its intellectual squalor, and the precarious moral scaffolding upon which the justifications are built. As Churchill noted in a margin of one of his speeches: “Weak argument; talk loudly”.

Best considered as rhetoric rather than rational argument, this swill ought to nonetheless be dissected.

The extra-judicial killing was a denial of due process, celebrity lawyer Geoffrey Robertson protested, oblivious to the impossibility of capturing or trying bin Laden.

Impossibility? It wasn’t impossible to try the entire surviving Nazi leadership, nor Slobodan Milošević, nor Mohammad Atta, nor every other two-bit murderer and thief in the last few hundred years. This “impossibility” is a non-sequitur, which refutes nothing.

Not to be outdone, Crikey’s Hunter S Thompson-wannabe, Guy Rundle, downplayed bin Laden’s crimes claiming that: “Morally speaking, 9/11 was no worse than a B-52 run over Vietnam.”

Interestingly, Dyrenfurth doesn’t respond to this statement on moral grounds. Instead, he begs the moral question, and calls the war merely “foolhardy”, perhaps subscribing to the standard orthodoxy that anything the US does is, by definition, good, even if sometimes misguided. I struggle to see how a moral distinction can be made between bombing buildings full of innocent people and flying planes into buildings full of innocent people without abandoning Kant’s basic dictum that each human being is an end in themselves. Possibly acts are more “moral” when they are done by the USA, a relativism to which I shall return.

Perhaps the most disturbing local contribution came from another Drum regular, anti-Israel activist Antony Loewenstein, who announced that “the West has much to learn”. Bin Laden’s “[terrorist] tactics were abhorrent and failed to attract huge numbers of followers” Loewenstein surmised, nonetheless the West’s subjugation of Muslims meant that the “arguments for his organisation’s force have only strengthened since 9/11”.

How rude of Loewenstein to suggest that Western thought hasn’t reached the zenith of its understanding of the world. It only takes a single counter-argument - say, the US’s silence as Bahraini police murdered protesters - to disprove Dyrenfurth’s claim that Loewenstein is wrong. There are many more examples, all easily found, though apparently not by Dyrenfurth.

Today, however, noisy elements on the far Left - think Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and our local scribblers - seem to believe that Western-style democracy is in fact the real enemy.

This is simply an untrue slur, though if we understand “Western-style democracy” to mean “systems in which elite interests act largely unrestricted by popular will and the public interest”, then perhaps some truth can be found in this statement. I doubt Dyrenfurth had this meaning in mind, but instead believes this ad hominem attack relieves him of refuting Chomsky and Pilger’s actual arguments.

And yet if I must quibble with his analysis and that of Geras et al, it is their designation of the apologists for radical Islam, as “Left”, an association that is arguably harming the electoral viability of centre-left parties across the globe. For they are no such thing.

Isn’t it a strange thing that, with both Dyrenfurth, and Mark Foley, whom he quotes approvingly, claiming this rash of left-wing “apologists” for “radical Islam”, that they are unable to quote a single person? Perhaps these mythical apologists have never said anything in a forum where they can be quoted, or perhaps they don’t exist. The left-wing types I’ve associated with certainly viewed the fervent forms of Islam (and Christianity, for that matter) with a very critical eye, and weren’t shy to state it.

To my mind, they should be known for what they are: nihilists.

I’m not sure Dyrenfurth actually understands what the word ‘nihilism’ means, because even if you accept the shoddy premises of his argument, those he has quoted have not rejected the possibility of morality, but have instead made moral claims different to his own. The nihilist rejects all (im)morality as false and a construct; Robertson, Rundle and Loewenstein obviously do not.

Dyrenfurth also holds that the Left are guilty of “moral relativism”, the idea that moral norms are not universal, but instead apply only to certain people and situations. Here, he seems to be far more guilty than any of the Left: opposing all killing of innocents, regardless of justification or actor, as the Left does, would seem to be far more morally consistent than, say, someone who dismisses the Vietnam war as not immoral, but merely “foolhardy”. 

So let them rail against liberal democracy and chant: “We are all Hezbollah” from the rooftops but do not besmirch the good name of others by deeming themselves Left. No, let them stand with like-minded nihilists, Jew-haters and other enemies of social democracy, including a recently deceased jihadist unlikely to be enjoying a judenrein paradise of virgins. On behalf of the sane Left, good riddance to the lot of them.

Fittingly, Dyrenfurth finishes with a flourish so intellectually dishonest and so over-the-top that I’m not actually sure it’s not satire.

So, what happened?

So, for the Greens at least, the NSW election wasn’t as good as hoped. It wasn’t a clusterfuck, by any means - take it from someone who saw a genuine clusterfuck when I was a member of the Australian Democrats for the 2004 federal election. But it wasn’t a glorious success, either.

There is a cruel all-or-nothingness that taunts parties at the stage in their growth where the Greens are right now in NSW. Good vote results can be achieved, yet no (lower-house) seats are won, despite such efforts. This is the “trough of sorrow” into which parties fall when they can muster primary votes of 30-40% - strong primary votes, demanding much hard work, and offering the tantalising prospect of victory, but which often, due to much smaller swings, or the vagaries of preferences, will deliver a big fat zero.

The remedy for this is to keep working in the community, harder than the other parties do, and build that primary vote up to 40-50%. At these levels, winning becomes much less of a long-shot. The major problem with the “trough of sorrow” is that it can be incredibly demoralising to party members and volunteers; a sense of fatalism, that “we tried our best, but it wasn’t good enough”, that “all our work was for nothing” is corrosive to the motivation of all involved. It can be made even worse in immature parties, such as the Greens, where expectations of success (within the campaign) can be raised, making the disappointment of election night all the more bitter.

Perhaps Jamie Parker will win Balmain on postal and pre-poll votes, perhaps not.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, and the correct response is to just HTFU. So we didn’t win. There’s still psychologically-scarred children in vile immigration prisons, and public housing being redeveloped into yuppie studios. The atmosphere, ever more perturbed by the carbon dioxide we pump into it, cares not for your electoral loss. Nor, for that matter, does the State of Israel. There is Work To Do.

My initial thoughts are that the Greens result came down to this: Despite people’s rage at Labor, we didn’t really give them a reason to vote for us, and nor did we tie our policies to the ordinary interests and values of voters. Having run an abstract campaign - “Real change for a change”, for fuck’s sake - perhaps we should not be surprised that concrete votes weren’t the result. We assumed our moral goodness was evident, and enough reason for people to vote for us. It turns out it wasn’t. 

(Thankfully, though, I have yet to hear a Greens member utter that “we’d only do better if the people were better educated about us”, as was common in the Democrats. Shades of Bertolt Brecht!)

Steve Blank has a wise saying: “Inside the building, there are not facts, only opinions”. He uses it to describe a common problem in new businesses: It’s not only possible, but common, for companies to conceive, develop and attempt to market a new product, only to find the market doesn’t want it. To me, this sounds an awful lot like how most Greens campaigns (and formerly, Democrat ones) are managed. A bunch of smart, politically aware people sit in a room and decide what issues to campaign on, absent any actual data of what might be of concern to the voters.

It is entirely possible that no-one in Marrickville or Heffon gave a flying fuck about the accessibility of train stations, despite the worthiness of the issue, and despite the resources the campaigns put into that issue.

Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi who was the wisest man of all, and the oracle said it was Socrates. Upon hearing this, and disbelieving it, Socrates went out to find men wiser than himself, believing that he himself was certainly not wise. But, having spoken to statesmen, artisans and poets, and found them wanting in wisdom, Socrates was finally able to resolve the oracle’s paradox by realising that he was only wise in that he knew of his ignorance.

I think this is the way forward for the Greens: we must admit to ourselves that we know a whole lot less about the electorate than we think we do, and then go out - in to the public - and fill in those major gaps in our knowledge. More meetings, electoral “post-mortems” and reviews (another favorite pastime of the Democrats) will achieve nothing; the same insiders will be spoken to; the same myths perpetrated, true or not; and, if nothing changes, the same mistakes made election after election. As they say, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

So, I’m Leaving Sydney

After a reasonably intense two years attempting to get my company Constrex up and running, and not getting much market traction, I’ve decided to close it down and move on to bigger and better things.

So, having now got my visa, and booked my flights, I’m leaving for London on March 26 and, at this stage, plan to spend two years there. I’m looking forward to it, not least because I should be able to live on something more than the minimum wage salary I’ve paid myself for the last two years.

There will, of course, be some form of farewell party. Possibly several.

Missing the point on the power selloff ripoff.

Anyone of the slightest intelligence reading the common press in New South Wales cannot fail to notice the shallow understanding displayed of most issues, nor the narrow intellectual spectrum of ideas which are permitted to be expressed. The latest in the litany of examples of these tendencies is the present brouhaha over the privatisation of electricity retailers.

An honest press enquiring into the sale of the electricity assets might first ask whether the privatisation was in the public interest at all, an obvious line of enquiry suggested by the electricity price rises experienced in Victoria after the Kennett government privatised their power assets in the 1990s, to say nothing of the well-known Enron crimes in California. I can find no evidence of such questions being even raised in the press - the most trenchant criticism being that an incompetent government wished to rush through the sale for political reasons. As always, analysis of shallow political interests trumps more comprehensive analysis of the public’s interests.

However, the supposedly left-wing Sydney Morning Herald published, not one, but two articles - on the same day - by IPA privatisation fanatic Alan Moran, chiding the NSW government for not selling the power system earlier, before the threat of carbon trading could make the coal-fired generators pay for the pollution they cause. If Fairfax had a sense of humour, they might even wish to describe themselves as “fair and balanced”.

In the News Limited papers, the only shadow on their glee at the privatisation was that the “spoils” would be distributed to only two private companies. The discussion of the matter in the Daily Telegraph was beneath contempt, and we need not spend time reviewing it.

After the sale was announced (negotiated, as always, behind closed doors, and the details naturally kept confidential as the commercial rights of the buyers trump any democratic rights the people, or the parliament might purport to exercise), the NSW premier took the extraordinary step - even in the debased democracy of this State - of proroguing the parliament in anticipation of the March 2011 election, thus preventing any inquiry into the details of the sale.

The naive might expect that this enquiry, conducted by the representatives of the people of NSW, would turn its attention to how the sale would benefit the public of NSW - after all, that is the putative role of parliamentarians in a representative democracy. Of course, this was not the case: the NSW Liberal party narrowed the scope of the enquiry to largely a question of the government’s competence in conducting the sale, rather than the public benefit of the sale itself. Similarities may be drawn to the Inquisition: only the degree of one’s adherence to the dogma may be questioned, but not the dogma itself.

What of our esteemed Fourth Estate? Again, basic questions of democracy elude the Sydney Morning Herald: eschewing the obvious broad themes, it instead dwells on the minor legal details of holding the parliamentary enquiry after parliament is prorogued, preferring the stenographer’s role of simply repeating what was said or written elsewhere to the journalist’s role of placing the complicated policies of government within a context that lets the public understand them, and so govern itself.

Meanwhile, at Sydney’s other daily newspaper, the wider context of the legal wrangling was actually explained with some quotations from Barry O’Farrell, presumably because such explanation would serve the Daily Telegraph’s ongoing campaign to elect the Liberal party. Barry O’Farrell was quoted saying:

“Besides the obvious contempt of Parliament issues involved, there’s an overriding public interest for Kristina Keneally to stop harassing this inquiry,” he said.

“The community’s right to know the facts of the power sell-off and whether it will see electricity bills rise even higher.”

We need not even examine the Liberal Party’s actions to determine if this newfound love of democracy and reverence for the public interest is genuine; even their other rhetoric contradicts it. John Howard himself proudly described himself as “not poll-driven” whilst ignoring massive public opposition to Australia’s participation in the second Iraq war, demonstrating his attitude to both public opinion in general, and his view of its proper role (i.e. none) in governing Australia. A review of the history of the Liberal Party shows that the Howard doctrine is nearly universal, while the O’Farrell apostasy is an aberration, only to be used where political exigencies make it desirable or necessary.

The public are, as always spectators, not participants. 

All the above are not sophisticated questions; they should be obvious to anyone with even a sophomoric understanding of democracy, and the ability to observe the world around them. That our free press ignores them, time and again, illustrates where in the power structure they sit, and where we do outside it.

The Pike River Mine Disaster: Your part in their deaths

Most people would have watched the unfolding Pike River mine disaster on their 42-inch plasma TVs, and expressed their sympathy for the miner’s families under the glare of their house lighting.

Here lies the obvious, yet unspoken, irony: the very setting where most people have seen the worst parts of coal mining is powered by that very coal, hewn from the ground at the risk of miners’ lives. Yet I doubt many would have given a thought - certainly the media has yet to make the link between the demand for coal and accidents - to the human cost of their electricity.

More so than almost every other type of mining, underground coal mining carries unique risks, due the presence of explosive methane generated by the same geological processes that produce the coal itself. Even a cursory examination of the history of coal mining leaves no doubt as to the number of lives that have been lost, and the on-going risks in this type of mining.

• Felling Mine Disaster, UK, 1812 - 91 lives lost
• Blantyre Mining Disaster, Scotland, 1877 - 207 lives lost
• Mount Kembla Mine Disaster, NSW, 1902 - 96 lives lost
• Mount Mulligan Mine Disaster, QLD, 1921 - 75 lives lost
• Pretoria Pit Disaster, UK, 1910 - 344 lives lost
• Ashley Deep Pit Disaster, UK, 1874 - 54 lives lost
• Kianga Mining Disaster, QLD, Australia, 1975 - 13 lives lost
• Moura No.4 explosion, QLD, Australia, 1986 - 12 lives lost
• Gretley Colliery accident, NSW, Australia, 1997 - 4 lives lost
• Moura No.2 explosion, Australia, 1994 - 11 lives lost
• Jim Walters Resources Mine Disaster, USA, 2001 - 13 lives lost
• Sago Mine Disaster, USA, 2006 - 12 lives lost

Or to look at it another way, in NSW between 1990 and 1999, 33 lives were lost in coal mining, out of a total workforce of 14,687. That, for those without a calculator, is a fatality rate of 1 in 445. In no other industry would such a statistic be tolerated.

And to this morbid list, we can now add the 29 lives lost in Pike River.

This is the cost of coal mining.

Electricity is perhaps the most abstract commodity[1]. We plug our devices into the funny shaped holes in the wall; they work; some months later we get a bill for this. Perhaps even more so than the meat industry, in the mind of the consumer, the final product is far removed from the means of its production.

In NSW, over 90% of electricity is generated [PDF] from coal-fired power plants, burning a mix of open-cut and underground mined coal. This is the reality of of the electricity that powers your fridge, your television and your laptop: its production requires that people risk their very lives. We don’t think of this day-to-day, instead preferring to assume that the socket in the wall is consequence free - free of environmental consequences, and free of human consequences. On both counts, this is manifestly untrue.

If you want to pay respects to the miners lost in Pike River, and their families, perhaps the best thing you could do is to call your electricity provider, and switch to one of the Green Energy plans they have. That’s a small step towards a future where no lives are lost mining coal.

[1] Until, at least, you have used your body to conduct it.

On the Anticipation of the Uncertain Return

Amongst my most treasured of feelings, is that of the Anticipation of the Uncertain Return.

Let me explain what I mean. It usually strikes at airports, perhaps train stations. You’ll be looking at the vehicle which is to take you to some place. Not just any place, but a place you haven’t been before, or have visited rarely. Your chest tightens imperceptably, your heart rate rises, just a little. Suddenly, the everyday is no more. No job to worry about. No need to get the same coffee from the same barista. The minutiae of bills and credit cards and dentist visits and kitchen benches that need to be cleaned all evaporate.

At first, you’ll only just glimpse what possibilities the future now holds, like the glint of a fish’s fin under roiled waters. But that glimpse is all you need, a single thread from which you can begin to weave the fabric of a thousand futures (it matters not a whit that only one will come to pass). New places bring new opportunities, and let us think new thoughts.

Our imagination runs free only in the cage we build for it; if we are to leave somewhere for two weeks, we may imagine two week’s worth of new possibilities, and no more, lest we incur a debt we cannot pay. Four weeks vacation earns four weeks of thought.

I’ll not scoff at four weeks new thoughts, for it is many more that some people think in an entire lifetime. But, with a little more commitment, we can knock down the fences of our mind. Quit your job, and end your lease. Say goodbye to your friends. Cast off each and every shackle, tying you to routine.

A return ticket lets us rent the future for some fixed term, but a one-way ticket is its outright purchase. This is the Anticipation of the Uncertain Return, the heady mixture in equal parts of fear and excitement. Of freedom and responsiblity for yourself. Everything is possible, and you, and you alone are to make it happen.

To stand in an airport boarding lounge, and cast a last look over the city you’re leaving.

To board a train to somewhere, not knowing when, or even if, you’ll return to where you left.

To stand on the edge of water of life, suddenly realising its not a backyard swimming pool, but an entire ocean, and to jump in.

A man can only assume his true shape when he is absent of the forces that wish to deform him into something otherwise. Every self-censored word held back in the service of career, every hour spent at gyms in pursuit of images sold to us, deforms us. We may as well be sheet metal in the industrial presses, to be bent this way and that. But I think that humans are made of a more ductile stuff than mere steel; absent those deforming forces, we spring back to our natural shape.

That’s why the Uncertain Return is so special: it is one of the rare acts which completely frees us, and lets us find our proper shape.