THE WRITER'S LIFE | COMMENT
A regular visitor to my little studio is my adopted kid sister, The Courts. She's the one I met on my first night on the streets, when she and a couple of friends sat with me, surrounded by my life in Sports Direct bags. Those three girls were 15 years old at the time. Later, I was adopted by three more and gained three teenage daughter-types: What nice problems to have.
Since then, much has changed but Courtney became my sister in that family we formed at the squat: The Pink Hearts. We look out for each other, as brothers and sisters do. We chill out in my studio, watch DVDs, smoke weed and talk. She talks a lot and she's naive about a lot of things but occasionally, she'll say something really deep and thoughtful. She did that yesterday, when in her own idiosyncratic way, she effectively said this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryjpu-NWYm8
This feeds into a much bigger debate, which could well become a global conversation soon. As a beneficiary of the democratisation of writing, I know that marketplace is open to abuse because there are those who can and will preach to the gullible. Then it only takes a few "Shares" for potential lies to be spread. Eventually, untruths become believed, accepted and abused.
Trump and Brexit are examples of what happens in a perfect storm: A lack of faith in the gorverning classes has led to an angry right wing gaining traction, while those on the left were ineffective in opposition.
But what's equally important and saddening is that people were lied to and they believed the untruths. They didn't check or research.
There need not be a silent majority though.
We need to talk. We need to debate. We need to arrive a point where we all agree that this current mess can be sorted out. In order to get there, we need to stop fighting.
It's idealistic to think that such a New World Order might evolve in our lifetimes but I believe it could happen in our children's. We have de-evolved as a human race recently and I'm not alone in this thinking.
Read - as I do - the many scientific notes of Stephen Hawking et al. I do it as a fiction writer, for research into near future scenarios I might scare or wonder readers with.
"For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking."
It was a version of that quote by Stephen Hawking, sampled by Pink Floyd in "Keep Talking" which prompted me to write Cyrus Song. All of the above, current affairs and scientific research is fuel for the fiction writer. And that's what I am. I'm not a journalist, but even for my fiction work, I do research my material.
Don't believe all that you see. Check it out. Read The Guardian; check Snopes; Don't spread lies.
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