Pursuit

By Thomas James Taylor

The world is strange, dangerous, complicated, full of strife, full of beauty and wondrous; and the opportunity and experience of life stretches beyond the everyday, beyond physical boundaries within which so many feel trapped as they struggle to survive. It takes time to g

• Language: English
• Publisher: CMD
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952046698

Thomas James Taylor

Tom Taylor was born near Morphett Vale, South Australia, on Dec, 1st, 1954, and was raised on the family farm, Thrush Grove, which was established during early colonization of the state, and lived there with his family until 1977. Possessing a penchant for adventure, he has embarked on several working tours of Australia, which, together with his rather wide-ranging and sometimes harrowing experiences, has provided him with a rich source of material from which to draw inspiration. In 1983, he retired from work-a-day life and began writing, as much to satisfy his creative bent as to delve a few of the many subjects which had always interested him. "The whole question of existence, being human and living in a world of seemingly limitless possibility is far more food for thought than I could digest in several lifetimes," he says. Tom presently resides near the coast, south of Adelaide, sharing life with his partner, Janet, and is currently busy as a musician while preparing his next three paperbacks for publication. His agile mind and quirky sense of humour are capable of imbuing new interest into almost any subject, and his irresistible curiosity and fascination with life translates into compelling story-telling. Let those who have become disenchanted, cynical and jaded by every-day existence be heartened. Here are a new set of glasses through which to view your universe.Mauve-coloured glasses!

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Copyright © 2020 by Thomas James Taylor

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The reviews expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Pursuit

Hearsay, Opinion, Baggage

Self-education & the Holy Grail

The End

An Eye to the Future

Addendum . . .

Foreword

Why was this book written? It was written because growing up in today’s world is not an easy task. From the age of five to twenty years the rate of learning and adjusting expected of an individual is nothing short of colossal. One’s home environment, geographical location, ethnicity, school life and interaction with others are major factors. From the moment of completing our first eleven or twelve years of prescribed schooling we are exposed to and expected to thrive in the world outside our front door using only the tools we have been supplied with; and not just the physical world, there is also the world fed to us via television, the social media networks and the electronic information superhighway of the internet. Amongst all this we need to remember just how difficult growing up can be, even without being exposed to global connectivity. Forming a self-image, comparing one’s self to other human beings in the world and finding one’s place within the dizzying array of humanity is a major undertaking. It has to be confronting and difficult. There will be many of a young age who do not have the advantage of living within a loving, healthy family. If a child is fortunate and has two parents, the pressures of modern living often dictate that both parents work for an income and commit so much of their time to that, it results in them being unavailable to their children for much this vital period — children who need access to their time and attention — leaving them to sort out so many aspects of their lives for themselves, giving rise to the possibility of a range of life-altering mistakes to occur.

Growing up was confusing in my own time, although I would count my childhood as being as good as it gets, and yet even then it was difficult and perplexing. It should be neither of those.

I have watched the world catapult itself into the twenty-first century with pride, amazement and despair. I got to wondering how I would fair if my own childhood had coincided with all that is going on at this time. I remembered the difficulties I experienced, the things which took far too long to assimilate and for me to come to terms with. Many questions did not find appropriate answers until late into adulthood. Some never found answers. Aside from the question and answer component, there are the existential concerns we all deal with. There are so many facets to existence, so many paths to choose from, so many decisions to make, and, when one is able to step back to view it all clearly, so little allotted time in these our lives. This book is an attempt to put a little prospective on the whole crazy deal, perhaps open a few doors which might otherwise have remained unopened or even unnoticed, to point out that there is no gulf of emptiness between one human being and another, and hopefully to entertain just a little. This rendering might be considered a Primer, posing questions which, as time goes by, will need answering.

I have found it impossible to do these things without prizing open the door to a few personal experiences, the intent of it being to illustrate that life is never straightforward and not always logical, to reflect human idiosynchrocies and differences as an embroidery which only serves to enrich life, and encourage emerging adults to have faith in themselves, to validate how they see, feel and assign meaning to the world they live in — the world we share.

Pursuit

Observations

I once judged people very leniently. I figured people were all basically very much like myself in that we were all trying to muddle our way through life the best we knew how and were willing to give everyone else a fair shake, and as we got older we got better at it, acquiring new skill sets, learning to cope with the negatives, trying not to feel smug when we achieve something which improves our situation money-wise, comfort-wise and finally getting to the point where we had enough leisure time to indulge in what pleased us most: an all round average achiever without looking for status or one-upmanship.

And war. . . When I was a child the concept totally baffled me. It must baffle all children, and I hope that stands true for the latest generation. I thought, Why can’t we all just get along? It totally does not make any sense. Baffling, right? I still feel much the same way on the subject, except today I am well aware of human nature. It bodes badly for us, does it not? that we are so quickly drawn into conflict over such things as living space, arable land, natural resources, religion, conflicting ideas regarding race, modes of government, status and human rights.

It is likely our continuing sophistication over time that initiates our tendency to begin judging others. If someone has taken pains to improve their skill set in the process of making themselves increasingly productive or even more popular, it appears the next step in the evolution of self is to be more critical of others who, for whatever reason, lack access to education or the time and money to facilitate the process. Think on it a moment. It’s true isn’t it? The tendency to elevate ourselves in our own estimation of worth is a most common occurrence. Smugness, being up one’s self and looking down on other, lesser beings. It is achieved in very short time, and once it has begun, like a virulent and noxious weed, it is extremely difficult to eradicate. Why—? Why is this condition so swift to take hold? Most of us have criticised so called snooty, arrogant people, and yet the moment we improve ourselves one way or another the view in the mirror of self–perception immediately wants to elevate us to a higher position than everyone else. It is a question worthy of examination, for it is exactly this and allied perceptions which set people against people, allowing us to separate ourselves emotionally, spiritually and psychologically from any other individual, group, race or nation. Like minds, birds of a feather, PLU, clique, club, tribe; the number of words in the English language which describe delineation is astonishing. Language is a manifestation of thought; and then there is the question of competitiveness. Trying to fathom the root of what makes us competitive is not easy. It is, upon analysis, almost a type of basic instinct. Psychiatrists must study such things during their training. Competitiveness may more accurately be described as a drive in the same way that procreation is a drive. We appear to be born with the competitive instinct. No doubt it has a lot to do with survival and what made us good at surviving. We once were in competition on a level playing field with all the other predators on the planet for food, shelter and space. Maybe I am answering my own question here, about war. If we possess a competitive gene it was honed to a point through millions of years of being in competition with everything else around us which threatened to diminish our resources or threatened outright to take our life. If such is the case, we were completely at the mercy of the environment and we either became highly competitive, combative even, or fell by the wayside in the survival stakes. If competitiveness is an environmental condition, something learned and ingrained, it would take us as many years of living again, in a non threatening environment, to cancel out that trait. Modern day society does not exactly provide a non threatening world where children and consecutive generations will not be exposed to the condition. War, however, is an extreme, and something which could be done away with by exercising the power of thought and logic. War is wasteful on every front. Financial commitment, life and limb, stress, distraction from other much more positive pursuits; all these things result from war and conflict generally. The human brain has a way to go, it seems, before the stupidity of war is realised for what it is, and is once and for all time consigned to the scrap-heap of evolutionary bad ideas.

And yet competitiveness was highly regarded, much impressed upon us as school children during the late nineteen fifties and into the sixties. In every aspect of education the important delineation was about whoever was academically or athletically superior. Here in Australia it was very much a British Empire thing, and there was very little to no consideration given to those gifted in and following other than what fit the mould for producing citizens who slotted right into the positions preordained and waiting for them at the end of their education. Society, industry, the legal system, politics and even the arts and literature were narrow in their view of the then perceived horizon of human destiny. . . or so it seemed to me. So short sighted was the world of that period that I can scarcely believe we have come as far as we have in the last fifty plus years. There is a little irony in the fact that proponents of the counter culture, drop–outs, misfits, writers and poets, experimental drug takers and similar were much responsible for the groundswell of fresh ideas which so altered the course we were once committed to as a race. Now there’s a curiosity. I am talking about competitiveness as being an integral component of human beings and the term human race adroitly slipped into the phraseology. The human race? Indeed.

The group of people mentioned above were not the only or the most contributive people when it came to the revolution of the period. The free thinkers — those naturally gifted individuals who needed no movement, popular culture or media to inspire them toward liberation of the mind. Every generation has these very important individuals. They act as a catalyst, generally, but their talent for independent thinking and uncompromising clarity of perception cannot be understated when we are looking for major instruments of change — change for the better, particularly. We can nominate many such important people who acted as a catalyst for major pivotal events, but not all could be considered to be righteous and noble minded people. They also come in the evil variety, but such as they cannot rate as more than mere manipulators, possessed of guile and cunning as well as the minimum requirement of intelligence. Such people deserve nothing in the way of admiration or notoriety and will get none here.

Life Wasn’t Meant To Be Easy

‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy.’ Many people have said it. Their reasons for saying so are as many and varied as there are people to say it to. It is somewhat banal, one of those things one might say to a friend or family member when that person is up against it, when something has happened to complicate matters or when life itself throws a curly one at you which is about to make survival just that much more difficult. It happens to us all. Sooner or later life begins to get difficult, either by changing circumstances for those near and dear or for ourselves directly. Why does it happen? We are born with minds completely devoid of experience and knowledge, and from that zero beginning we must grope and blunder through the world unsuspecting until, at some juncture, we begin to assemble the pieces of the puzzle and learn to predict outcomes of action and circumstance. Simple cause and effect, a universal constant discovered from infancy. Cry and get attention. Smile and receive a smile in return. Put your hand into a flame and get burned. Like the universe itself, life is comprised of very basic elements which in combination and over time assemble into far more complex structures and states of being. Some of us learn quickly to conform to the regime purely out of the instinct to follow the path of least resistance. Some of us will test the boundaries in search of weaknesses, loopholes and inconsistencies in order to build a more detailed map of reality. While it is commonly upheld that to repeat the same behaviour over and over in expectation of a different outcome is the definition of insanity, to my way of thinking it is not necessarily the case. There are exceptions, and discovering these exceptions does not come by accepting a single outcome from a single action, and that is especially true where people are concerned. Where people are concerned prediction is a very iffy proposition. Foolhardy even.

We begin life as a blank slate and through trial and error establish a few basic ground rules. After a time, logic comes into play. More complex thought structure develops. Through the action of inherited genetic traits, the development of instinct and the common sixth sense with which nature has endowed us, we are able to perceive, interact and shape our world. Our developing abilities even allow us to perceive and create our future world — our future selves — and that is a major asset. The really important discoveries come through time and trial, in defining our own individual strengths, weakness and array of attributes. Many never make those discoveries until so late in their life that it is already too late to employ them to their most effective outcome; after working 40 years in a steel–bending factory, their life and property fully mortgaged and with little left in sight but to play out the dreary scenario to its banal and indistinguishable end. It is the unique, the subsurface and at first glance minor abilities we possess which can, and often do, make all the difference in life. It is, therefore, of vast importance to identify and strengthen those underlying talents peculiar to each of us. Conformity? Pfui to that. Schooling. I know little about the curriculum being taught in schools at the time of committing these passages to hard–drive, but at the time of my leaving high school, in 1971 if memory serves, the youth of the day were being groomed not by infusing them with a great knowledge of history, geography, philosophy and the like, but much more focussed toward mathematics and the sciences. This was the cusp of the computer age; the very beginning. Soon after, perhaps 1983, the personal computer would take off in the biggest way imaginable. A true revolution it was, and the currency? Knowledge. In the world which was to follow, knowledge was to become, and perhaps it always had been, the most powerful of all things, if only by a small degree not the most important.

The internet — the information superhighway — it quickly established itself as an indispensable tool for the advancement of mankind. The impact on our way of life is too far–reaching to go into, but suffice to say that it has accelerated our advancement a hundred–fold.

One rapidly arising spinoff from the computer revolution was video gaming. Space Invaders, okay not the most imaginative or sophisticated beginning, but a beginning nevertheless. The speed with which this area of development grew is truly inspiring. By the year 2000, fully immersive, digitally contrived, artificial reality games (if games is not an insult to those who design and build them) had become so advanced and enticing that a whole generation of young people became a subculture who lived much of their lives acting out a stream of fanciful roles immersed in a contrived world of great freedom and imagination. One can understand the attraction. The world — the real world — they had inherited was already in serious trouble, and we were not about to truly hand it over until we had fully achieved our vision of an overpopulated hell, short on natural resources and long on desolated Edens of nature.

In this new computer generated realm there was little that was beyond the imagination. Virtual societies could be realised, whole worlds without limitations could be dreamt up and enacted. Were it not for the fact that I knew I would easily become so wrapped up in such a diversion that I would leave unattended the things of importance in the real world, I knew I would have jumped into the fun with both feet. Unfortunately I was of an older generation and already tied to the mores and patterns of survival which that entailed. It was a fascinating addition to the already diverse and numerous pastimes pursued by the species. I have always felt that I missed something of great fun in not having joined in, but to do so would have meant deserting the interests I had already cultivated and committed to. But I have digressed. . .

Education and schooling changed significantly in the eighties. It became much more focussed, less general, which, I have to admit, it had to do. The human organism had become a commodity and knowledge needed to be specialized, compartmentalized, in order to keep pace with the rapid transferal of information. The human being was becoming a far more specialized individual who would slot in to the reformed model of organized society. A broad ranging wealth of knowledge was still admirable but unnecessary when it came to fitting job description. To be knowledgeable in a specialized field now holds high advantage for the individual rather than a broad ranging general knowledge. Schooling reflected this. The number of subjects being studied fell from a laudable but difficult eight or nine to near half that number inside 25 years. Such things as philosophy, poetry and literature, trade craft and physical training have become obsolete. This bothers me terribly. To lose the ability to see the big picture of life through an informed and critical standpoint vastly better equips an individual and leaves plenty of possibility for a perceptive mind to judge the world in which it lives. It would perhaps be a little paranoid to suggest that this is exactly the outcome aimed for, but I believe this shift in focussed education is definitely producing a less adaptive intellect than was previously the case. In this event it is now behoving of the individual to follow their own natural curiosity and to self–educate. At least the internet provides such a conduit. We will have to trust that the information being sourced is accurate and undiluted; a somewhat vain hope especially in the case of history. Actual historical fact is exceedingly elusive and not easy to verify. I noticed that facts were being constantly tampered with from the outset of my own primary education. The history books provided by the education department, even in primary school, were filled with untruths, distortions and outright deceit, and that is a fact. I would be suspicious, still, of the content filling our hungry young minds of today. I can only hope we are past that nonsense. If we are not, maybe what is to be found in some of the pages following will help to open a few doors for nascent, enquiring minds.

Shit Happens

A friend called via telephone. I had sent a message in the morning asking how the house hunting was proceeding. He had recently announced that he and his partner were expecting a baby and his partner’s aunt had agreed to guarantor a loan for a house for the new family to be. It was a happy period for him — his happiest ever, I would hazzard — but his call was not one of joy. Just the opposite in fact. His partner had miscarried. The aunt, upon hearing the news that they had secured a house, reneged on the offer of the loan and they were both negatively affected. It was a terrible turn of events. The aunt had predicted, as a result of her own life experience, that the couple’s relationship would falter and fail under the emotional strain of the terrible turn