Categories: uncategorized
Date: 21 February 2005 16:58:24
....that's Karl Marx. I should explain. On my laptop I have a desktop wallpaper of a graffitti portrait of Karl Mark which in real life resides on a wall in Glasgow. If you ever bump into me in Glasgow, ask me and I'll take you there, though the chances of that are slimmer than a pensioners wallet. It's interesting to see/hear peoples reactions when they see my laptop desktop. Some seem to asume that I am a vehement communist out to paint the town/country red. Or that I am a close personal friend to Arthur Scargill. Others express delight in the quality of the graffitti and then ask who the old bearded dude is (I blame the education system....). The thing is the people who give the first response seem to know no more about Marx's life, work and writing then the second group. Now I'm not a Marxist, nor a capitalist, if anything I lean more towards anti-capitalism/globalisation. But saying that you are a Marxist or think that Marx had some good ideas which we have forgotten too easily often provokes a reaction similar to saying that you regularly have conversations with the man on the moon about the process of mass producing cream cheese, which, by the way is a good tactic to confuse those who suffer from a lack of humour agility. A member of my family gave me that reaction the other day. I asked if he'd ever read any Marx (nope), then I asked if he could name any of his main works (nope), then I asked if he could read (he said yes but I lack sufficient evidence to form an accurate opinion, I think the daily copy of The Times is a cover-up). I was going to ask if he understood what the word "prejudice" meant but by that stage I was rapidly loosing the will to live. Now, those of you who know me will know that I'm into synthesisers in a (relatively) big way. And this is where I freely admit to being completely biased. It's just that Soviet era Russia is the only country I've ever heard about which had a State ran synthesiser manufacturer! What a fantastic concept! More seriously Cuba has a higher rate of literacy and a lower rate of infant mortality than a great many 'developed' nations, which for a Latin American country in which doctors are paid a few pounds per month is a stunning statistic (courtesy of the UN). The moral of this tale is that there isn't one. That's because if there was then maybe some of you (apart from *you* of course) would take on board my point of view (if you can find it) uncritically without testing the evidence for yourself, which would be another form of prejudice.
Current reading: very slowly.