Is Suicide Defensible?

A few days ago, I put my foot in it with friends by trying to rationalise suicide. What I didn't know was that a day before, an acquaintance of one of the friends had taken his life! I was ashen with embarrassment.

Life is an emotive and emotional subject. In the days ahead, I may argue on whether life begins at conception or at birth but the question today must be when life ends. Is hanging to life, even when the odds are stacked heavily against one worth it? Is there a point at which one can conclude that having fought like a warrior, it is time to fall on his/her sword? Experts of the mind have concluded that nobody wakes up wanting to be dead! Death isn't the first option even to the weakest of people. Without psychoanalysing the issue, can life be so bad and hopeless that suicide becomes the logical step?

For the victims' loved ones, a feeling of guilt and a perception of blame for not doing enough is often guaranteed. Should loved ones take some blame for the victim's sense of hopelessness and ultimate death?

I love life enough to hang on to it even by the thinnest of threads and yet I can't get to admit to myself how thin breaking point can get. It is logical therefore to admit that at some stage in my life, the possibility of killing myself is conceivable. At a personal level for instance, picking “food” from the litter bin to keep going could be an untenable cost to keep going. Some people's threshold maybe a lot higher but in following that line of thought, it still leads to the question of whether it is justifiable to commit suicide.

In a country so violent with crime, one might also wonder if the respect for life should be more around humanity as whole or first and foremost to one's own. The murderous tyrants and criminals may value their survival above all else just as the suicidal rate theirs so poorly that ending it seems logical.

It would also be naive to assume that all suicides are a surprise to relatives and close friends. Unless a person is an Oscar winning actor or actress, the period before they end their lives must signal turmoil or turbulence that should alarm loved ones. Of course, it is impossible to determine how seriously a person has sunk. Any accusation of a loved one failing to predict the end result of unhappiness or depression is not only unfair but outright stupid.

Politics and The Art of Courtship

OK, so I promised to bare all today. That, in the art of courtship would have been as disastrous as any expectation on your part that I will be telling you something you don't already know. So in act one of our trek back to the garden of sex Eden, let's go back to the basics of romance. It doesn't matter that the courtship will last just a few hours. It may be dinner, a glass of wine and then the dirty...for those emancipated type who waste no time. But, let's face it, there has to be a difference between Mr. Right This Minute and your stimulator back in your closet. Otherwise, what is the flipping point.

Look at our politicians for a pointer on how to do this. They lie to us everyday and as much as we know the difference between the choices to be the same; yes, same difference; we still flock to the polling stations come election day and do it one more time.

Which reminds of what I read as an adolescent about this politician who went canvassing for votes in a brothel. Apparently, he had misread the "erection" poster. But still, politicians make a very good point on how to get screwed with pleasure.They are mostly gross, they lie and cheat and yet we pay them to dominate us.

And this is just for the girls!

I wonder if my love of politics may be nature directing me to dominate or be dominated!

Chat to you tomorrow folks.

Too Much Sexual Rave and No Torque

Ordinarily, I will leave matters sexually charged to my cyber and author friend Paige! Between her and Dr.Eve, I could probably graduate cum-laude in matters nookish. But I have this feeling that Dr. Eve intellectualises the dirty too much and that Paige is all rave and no torque. (Sorry Paige but I will redeem your honour in just a moment; my lady :-)). What's more, as I check some of the blogs Paige follows, I see Apocalypstick lamenting on a friend that is on a long drought!

We seem to have a new deviance in matters of the groin, and the deviance is in the lack of of having it!

Not very long ago, doctors had the exclusive rights to give women an orgasm. Yes ladies, if you were hysterical, you were considered sick enough for admission. The treatment ranged from the doctor using his finger to a water hose being directed at your...you know what! We are wiser of course nowadays and from the car guard to a volunteer to a dildo from the nearest sex shop, coming has gone a long way...so to speak.

But with all the knowledge we have acquired over the centuries, how come then that we seem to be in such a sexual sahara?

Come now! Join me tomorrow when we bare it all... we shall unpack the reasons behind this rather unfortunate drought and if we are lucky, help some of you out! While I am at it, maybe I will just redeem Paige's honour for invoking her name in vain!

Of 2010 World Cup and Afro-Pessimism

The soccer world cup tournament is soon coming to a town near you. The excitement is all around, but for very different reasons. While some of us can't wait to see men chase a piece of inflated leather, others are busy wanting to make a political statement. From Julius to Steve to some loonies with arms caches all over the place, it seems the scramble for Africa (South Africa) is upon us all over again.

It is said that perception is reality if viewed from a distance or something to that effect. I therefore think we should probably excuse some would-have been visitors for deciding that Africa is just too dangerous a place to visit. The airlines have a few unsold seats, FIFA seems to be battling to put bums on the seats in some stadia and the anticipated tourist boom has been revised downwards. The Afro-pessimists are saying "I told you so" while some in Africa are shouting racism

The question we should all ask ourselves is if Afro-pessimism can be defensible under any circumstances.

Africans are a sweet bunch of souls. Without their leadership that is! The African leadership is said to be, by and large, a bunch of incoherent kleptocrats who look to blame others for their cock-ups. So here is their chance to disapprove sceptics. South Africa did convince FIFA those many years ago that we can hold the tournament in our country. It is also true that we have held successful rugby and cricket world cups. If we fail for whatever reason to put on an extravaganza of international standards, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves. To try and pass the buck will be an admission that somehow, we need acceptance and assistance to cut it in cut-throat competitions.

We won the bid and there and then, the game changed. We owe it to humanity to perform.

Failure should not be a reflection on the African as a whole but a failure of its leadership. After all, the people of South Africa got sold on the promises of jobs and investment and goodwill. We will hate to think that our leaders did not factor in every variable at hand. Surely, no excuse can stand six years of unfettered marketing. Not unless the product is just not good enough!

My Pyramid of Happiness

Some of my friends are very smart. So are a few of my foes but what do I care about my enemies. They are or should be irrelevant to my being and wellbeing! Smart people intrigue me. If you are a loser like me; no pressure partner; I am just about to make your day. I see a “kak”-load of very smart people who are as unhappy as hell can allow. Methinks smart and unhappy is a mathematical anomaly. So allow me to decipher this mystery in the best way I know: Foolishly! While smart people will to great lengths to define happiness, conduct research to seek the true meaning and sources of it, I am saying let’s keep it simple.

When someone pisses on your parade, you are going to go ape-shit! Hell, some of you hate me already and I haven’t done nada to you! Getting pissed off with someone or about something shouldn’t be bad. Our friends and families or even strangers will do or say things that will annoy us from time to time. Whether your reaction at that moment is one of blowing your top off or retreating to some cocoon, that short period of momentary anger is not unhappiness! That is you being you! Sadness is when this “momentary” downer lasts for more than, well, momentarily.

My simple theory to happiness is to always run my life as a business. In this business, I have blocks that make up my pyramid of happiness. In constructing my pyramid blocks, what I have done first and foremost is ensure that all the blocks are there! Those blocks are the people around me, things that I do, who I do it with and everything else that makes life around me ever so nice or miserable. Ensuring that these blocks are the right ones is by me setting up clear parameters of interaction with my environment. One such parameter is that of being nuanced and circumspect in my reaction to everything!

Now I am set to live!

The simplicity of this philosophy evades many of us very easily. So, before you start tearing your hair out of our skull, let’s check the premise of our own expectations. The reason my life’s reference is a pyramid and not a square block is so I know the things and people that are anchors to my life and those that are part of the structural support. All may be important but the apex cannot be the base or vice versa! My pyramid cannot stand if I invert it! It follows then that whenever my structure is hit by a tragedy; it is much easier to rearrange my pyramid, ensuring that that pieces are where they should be. Should one be broken, I can replace it without having to resort to building a new pyramid.

To try illustrate happiness at its simplest and crudest, let’s make a pyramid of the following simple choices in a love relationship.

Money Intelligence level Sex (More or Less) Kindness

The rational among us must surely rate the above four aspects in a lover in some way and with some degree of importance. What we can take to the bank is that we don’t all rate them equally. It is obvious then and our choices must be informed by their hierarchy of importance to each one of us. It is that choice, made in the darkest corner of our hearts which will result in the relationship being a happy one or not. If you compromise for fear of rejection or in a bid to please your lover or anyone else, you would have sown the seeds for disaster right there. If you invert the pyramid, even after you have erected it, it will not hold.

--------------To be continued………

Introducing Freud

I love Cape Town. It is the literal Garden of Eden; before the serpent winked at Eve and screwed things up. If you haven’t looked around lately, this town has everything a sane human being needs and even quite a bit of wants thrown in for change. So before you start whining, allow me to jog your rusty memory.

The eateries are of international standards, the scenery breath-taking at every turn, homes made for kings and queens (their servants too) and an infrastructure of acceptable standards if you want to compare it with the best in the world. I know, of course, that the connoisseurs of fine living will grind their teeth and think of a thousand other places they would rather be. Well, these lucky cockers should be even more grateful for the choices they have. It is their like that yours truly will be blasting in the weeks to come.

In the most un-academic way, I will debunk myths; take the Mickey out of your stiff ass and have fun doing so.

For now, let’s talk about me.

The fun part is that I know nothing and I am nobody. And that’s just fantastic because while I have all the fun writing this, you won’t be reading some new insights that Sigmund Freud hasn’t delved into at length. (I have no idea if the girls out there gag for their papas, but I can state categorically to have no Oedipus complex; or simplex for that matter; but that’s an argument for another day). Your shrink is likely to agree with me if I said that all our problems result from a lack of common sense or an application of it. I hope to cause you to reflect on the rarity of common sense; arguing ever so carefully that somewhere in the mental food chain, some idiot is going to cause us grief. We just want to guard against that idiot being us!

So, from philosophy to financial health to relationships and religion, this blog has no sacred cows or dogs: none of the four legged family anyway. We shall have fun devouring the mean and the macabre in a light-hearted fashion and to take the piss on those taking themselves too seriously. We know that some of us live in fear of crime and disease in this country. We wish not dishonor society by belittling these issues but rather by challenging those on the wrong end of the scourges not to be victims of either. That is the point of mental agility.

Let’s tackle love and lust. Let us delve into your bank manager’s lair and teach one another how to tell him to go shove his overdraft facility where the sun doesn’t shine. Let’s thrive, not just in money, but in health and spirit and let’s make this city a tad better than we found it.

Join me daily for a dose of fun. And while we do so, let’s be civil in our engagement of each other and let’s be respectful and respectable, because class isn’t about being pliant to my viewpoint but rather disagreeing, if need be, with grace and poise.