Why do people join groups? Why do people buy stuff? According to Darren of ProBlogger because other people do. He calls it social decision making and says it has improved his affiliate marketing sales. There is a book about a guy who put an ad in a newspaper and said just “Join me!” and people did. I’ve not read it yet, but I’m going to keep a look out for it. After all, it seems to have worked for St Boris (you know, the blonde bloke on telly) so why not join us?

Polaraude…, originally uploaded by Cookiemouse.

We must say goodbye to the Polaroid picture as the company announces that it will be ceasing production of the film for its cameras. The technology that produced this picture is what brought it to an end. Digital is instant so the demand for instant film has disappeared. Nowadays we upload via our mobile phones. The image has become ubiquitous. Yet it was Polaroid that first got rid of the middle man and allowed us to see our pictures just after we took them. Speed mattered more than quality. When I was small I had my picture taken at the beach with my mother(left) and my aunt. The photographer sent us the picture later, through the post. Polaroid changed all that, and now, like the cassette tape Walkman and the VCR, has become part of the history of technology.

The ability to produce instant content and publish it from just about anywhere is one of the forces that is driving the information revolution. Words and images become memes that spread virally, self organizing and building new connections. Sonia is back blogging and has posted a book meme, which is also a form of instant art that depends upon the speed of the spread of ideas. Most of my philosopher friends are not post-modernists, but somehow the news of the demise of the Polaroid after such a short period (around forty years) does leave me in a mood to deconstruct my world view and to realize how transient it is.
My Polaroid Blog

On the streets of Amsterdam the Champagne flows as 2008 comes in with a bang as usual. Manon turned up for our end of year dinner which was fantastic. It was very Italian. Peppers stuffed with goat’s cheese and olives stuffed with peppers as antipasti followed by Bruschetta and onion soup and spaghetti pesto genovese (to celebrate Manon’s new Italian base). Cosy as we were with our bubbly, pasta and espresso we had to check out the big Dutch New Year bang. And bang it did loud and clear. Our poor dog was terrified by all the loud noises. When I tried to take him out yesterday afternoon a banger went off just outside the door and so poor Freako ran terrified back upstairs and hid in the corner till it was all over. We went to the Nieuwmarkt, which was terribly crowded as always, and it all went boom, boom, boom! At midnight we celebrated with of all things cans of Heineken as we had run out of bubbly earlier on. One Welshman, one Italian and one Dutch girl in a crowd of happy and crazy revelers said cheers and welcomed in the new year. Some of the fireworks were so loud that you could feel the force of the explosion. Someone gave me a bottle of Luxembourg Cremant which was very tasty. The year started lucky and happy so I think that 2008 will be a very good year. I thought of taking my camera with me downtown but then decided not to under the crazy circumstances. After all, if a picture is a thousand words then a thousand words could make a picture. People with mobile phones were all taking loads of pictures anyway. I’d be curious to see what some of them turned out like in the dark and jolly chaos. Someone asked me if I had made a new year resolution. To be happy I replied and afterwards I thought of our dinner table chat the evening before. We talked about how young Dutch kids no longer know what to believe in a world overloaded with information and how to keep the nasty big picture at a distance and create your own world. I was as usual ranting on about the big picture and upon reflection found myself agreeing with the Dutch point of view. Holland is a peaceful country and we are lucky here to still enjoy tolerance and freedom. As one particularly loud bang went off and its shockwave hit me for a brief moment I counted myself lucky that it was just a firework. My resolution? To look for and tell the truth within my area of competence and to create that positive small world that my Dutch friend described. Have a wonderful 2008, people, and let the heart be with you!

Say fromage!…, originally uploaded by Leighton Cooke.

…and Happy Birthday Sputnik. Today I caught a few rays of autumn sun in the garden which put a nice cheesy smile on my face. After my musings yesterday I was amused by the news that BT and FON are getting together. According to Gigaom not without a price being paid, which Martin Varsavsky denies. This deal certainly looks good for Foneros like me as we will get free access to BT’s hotspots. In today’s Guardian Victor Keegan talks about Britain’s lack of investment in broadband. If you ask me we should be investing in wireless connectivity. The mobile net is here to stay and it could be cheaper in the long run to invest in wireless solutions rather than roll out broadband everywhere. With Wimax being launched in Manchester by Freedom 4 the stakes in the game have been raised. Public internet access makes sense in a knowledge based economy. Foodie that I am I love the thought of uploading quality pictures from the organic market or foodstore in situ and I’m sure that would be good for business. Perhaps we need another “Sputnik event” to wake us up to the future.

Mechanical Elements…, originally uploaded by Leighton Cooke.

…part of a retrospective exhibition showing in my mental universe. It’s been a while since I was in the hatchery. Today I managed to convince the powers that be that I do in fact exist. It took three attempts to access a secure government data base and loads of photocopies of my ID. They gave me a little slip of paper signed by Sophie (name altered for reasons of national security) to confirm that their database was in agreement with my database, which in this case is an old seaman’s chest that also contained this book, that cost me three shillings and sixpence in 1966. That’s 17 and 1/2 pence in decimal. The same work costs about ten dollars, or a fiver, today. My diet of reality TV and instant coffee is holding up remarkably well. Last night I watched Casablanca. It’s a movie I never tire of. It has held up to the test of time like few others. The eternal triangle of love that can never be resolved. I am missing the woman I love too at the moment. Our triangle is more one of geography and I’m glad that we have Skype. Try as I will I cannot get away from the feeling that my exercise in history has run its course. The land of song is a long lost myth and my sentimental journey is a dead end. My compass is turning south and I wish to return to the world of the nomads. It’s a pity we never found out what happened to Rick and Ilsa. They vanished into the mist of Casablanca airport leaving us with a modern legend, the sorrow of displacement. Are we just mechanical elements or is there more to this brave new world?

…as my life enters the stream of modern Britishness. It turns out that after you have been away from this country for over five years you need to prove that you have connections with your home city in order to gain the benefits of being a citizen. Today I had a chat with a government computer that had great difficulties in understanding my postcode. So it gave me a ringtone for half an hour. It seems as if the government has been farmed out to robots and any civil servant or politician you may see is simply a figment of your deranged imagination. There are moments when I do wonder whether some super computer has taken over the planet and we just don’t know it yet. Or maybe it’s all done with mirrors to try to convince us that they are in control and have our best interests at heart. The Welsh, though, are a kind race. You can tell that before the English came here this was a very egalitarian society. People here care for their own in a rough and ready sort of a way. Life here is much faster than it used to be and people are sharp and streetwise. I met a lovely woman called Charlie today. She was from the west country and had that very friendly way so typical of that part of the world. We talked of permaculture and life, cancer and the future. She inspired me with her idealism and brought a ray of sunshine into my day. Then I drank a beer with a man who cried because his best friend’s son committed suicide at the age of fourteen. This was such a typical Leighton day. Extremes and mystical meetings and bureaucratic dullness. Orwell, Camus and Blake, three for the price of one. So now I am off on the merry journey back to my roots with a one way ticket and a poet’s smile for currency.

…is the subject of the book Scepticism, Inc. by Bo Fowler. Thanks to Rigmor for putting me on to this wicked idea. Of late I have been through my own crisis of scepticism so I can empathise with the concept of the folly of placing metaphysical bets. The book is reviewed as a sort of Nietzsche primer for beginners. The betting shop is set up in an old church. Much of what we do in life involves us in taking bets on complicated probabilities as to how events will turn out. Recently I took one massive bet of the spirit and lost. By confusing my trusted beliefs with reality I was brought down to earth with a bump, and now I’m looking for the sceptic’s exit. Not for a long time have I felt so depressed. Five years of living in Amsterdam have left their mark on me. That spiritual supermarket never allows you to get depressed as it’s far too superficial. Wales is too intense for me. Too many memories obscure the present and my unconscious is throwing up all the useless garbage of the past along with some of my most primal fears and imprints. It all leads me to conclude that we live in our own spiritual bubble and when that pops open it can be pretty scary. Dylan Thomas wrote about Llareggub and became an alchoholic in New York City to get away from his Welsh tristesse.

“Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.”

wrote the great Welsh bard, who once drank 18 straight whiskies in a bar in New York. I know just how he feels and hope that they don’t kill any Buddhist monks in Burma. I could never be a monk. I love too easily from my own raging moon. Adieu to the hills of remorse.

After the first draft of this post events took an interesting turn. The raging moon answered back in a soft voice that said be not despondent. The mystery will unfold.

…It is early in the morning and I am listening to Jan Gabarek and the Hilliard Ensemble playing Officium. This is an old Cardiff night when the family get together and drink vast quantities of vintage port and smoke fine hashish and talk of philosophy. I have spent the past few days with my Qi gong teacher learning the finer points of being a streetwise warrior of compassion. These boys mean business and don’t take being fucked about lightly. The Praying Mantis tradition is a pure lineage that goes back to Bodhidharma himself and is a very hard system of training. Only with the utmost power of my inner mind was I able to survive the tests of the past few days. My reward? The dreamweaver. I feel close to Spinoza this morning and am deeply aware of the love of the angels that surround me. I am blessed with the most beautiful and intelligent of muses. So what is the Great Work? In my opinion it is the cultivation of wisdom and compassion in the web of an intelligent universe. Deus sive natura We need to learn that the kingdom of heaven really is within. In the past few weeks I have rewound the tape of my life in Amsterdam, Germany, London, Bristol and Cardiff as if I was preparing to die. I have already lost Clauss. one of the finest warriors I ever knew. But I have found a son who is the finest of gentlemen and a Qi gong teacher who is the finest of bodhisattvas. I should be proud and happy. I am proud and happy. And now? Less is more. A failure is a success in disguise. We are all the children of our mothers and fathers. Namaste. Sapere aude. This week I sat in the park where I first read Candide over forty years ago and realised how much we need to cultivate our garden. Time passes and memory plays tricks. Still the heart is pure. You are here. That is good. Love thy neighbor. And remember that she who dares wins.

…Sixty years ago the Republic of India gained its independence from Britain. Today we celebrate the birthday of the world’s largest democracy. Earlier on I stood before the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the Churchilllaan and said a prayer for this most wonderful of countries. I have never been there, but I once worked with a man who helped to make it all possible, Sir Olaf Caroe. He was India’s last Foreign Secretary under the British Raj and Peter J. Brobst assistant professor of history at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio has written a book about Sir Olaf called “The Future of the Great Game,
Sir Olaf Caroe, India’s Independence, and the Defense of Asia.” Brobst writes, “The Great Game originally described Britain’s efforts to maintain India as a base from which to defend the Persian Gulf and southeast Asia against rival empires. As British India’s leading geostrategist during the end of imperial rule, as well as the last British governor on the Afghan frontier, Sir Olaf Caroe saw the future of the Great Game. He predicted with remarkable acuity how the struggle for mastery in South Asia’s borderlands would play out beyond the end of the Raj.
In the aftermath of 9/11, much as Caroe foretold, flashpoints continue to light up from Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf to Nepal and Burma; threats range from terrorism and insurgency to naval expansion and nuclear rivalry. India commands the vital center, its power key to the overall stability and defense of Asia.
This book examines Caroe’s thinking to illuminate both the geopolitics behind India’s independence in 1947 and the historical precedents of contemporary South Asian strategy.”

My own work with Sir Olaf was in connection with the question of Tibet and its refugees in India. It seems fitting that I have just returned from visiting my own Tibetan spiritual friend Geshe Damchos, who I first met in those wonderful days over thirty years ago. The world is changing and today India is emerging as a new economic superpower. It is all the more fitting to remember the compassion of the Indian people in offering a home to many Tibetans including the Dalai Lama. The Tibetans are a peaceful people and one day they will be free again. Sir Olaf was an expert on the country where the US is now hunting down Al Qaeda as this article in the Pakistani Daily Times shows. The great game goes on today but now India is a major player with its own agenda. When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, Gandhi said he thought it would be a good idea. We have much to learn. I myself have learned much from India. The Sanscrit word ahimsa is what my nursing teacher said to me on the day I qualified. Namaste, India! A happy birthday to you and all of your people.

…and stop being arseholes. Two of my very best friends come from Bulgaria and they are both kind and idealistic young people. Which is why when I read in this morning’s Guardian that Bulgarian workers in Cornwall had been “forced to ‘live like pigs on scraps’, scavenging vegetables from the fields when their Latvian gangmaster withheld their pay for 34 days” I nearly puked. This is Cornwall, for pity’s sake, where I used to go on summer holidays and eat Cornish pasties and drink scrumpy.
“They were sent to work through a subcontracting chain at Southern England Farms, a leading vegetable farming and packing company that appears on Tesco’s website as one of its flagship local producers of courgettes, cauliflowers and cabbage. They were housed in dirty caravans, with seven trying to sleep in a six-berth van in one example. They were initially charged £50 a week each for this overcrowded accommodation.”
What the fuck? Is Tesco’s now owned by the descendants of Heinrich Himmler? Are the British to be able to eat cheap food because subcontractors of Tesco’s run forced labour camps in the 21st century? Have we become a nation that turns a blind eye to blatant abuses of minimal human rights? In 2006 Tesco’s made 2.21 billion pounds profit partly on the back of forced labour. This is a company that shames the reputation of Britain. What about the many British farmers who are also screwed by Tesco’s greed and indifference to whether or not they can make a living? Get your act together, Tesco and stop acting like a corporate parasite. Sir Terry Leahy, if you have any honour, do something about this latest Tesco scandal or resign. I remember when Tesco closed down their store in the centre of Cardiff and made a killing. They have not changed a bit.
Action Network
Tescopoly