Things that slowly sap my will to exist

- The impending ragnorok of my Norse exam, which seems to have a quirk that I shall term "fractal revision". The more revision I read and decide I have to do, the more presents itself. Inverse to this revision, growing in volume and complexity, is the true sum of my understanding of Norse. This formula presents the following outcomes: my brain feels like it is trying to eat itself and I'm sighing wearily so often that I may well develop a gnarly gnarled Richard III in-built dromedary fashion accesory.

- The nostalgia of re-reading the old stuff I wrote (I found it, after 20six decided to kill and cull all the old links) and realising I never wrote so profusely or aggressively than I did with the vigour, candour, arrogance and ignorance of one who was awaiting the Holy Grail escape plan of Uni. Since then: decline, despicable laxity and diminishment. And my anxiety now probably doesn't exceed my anxiety from back then.

- Seeing people in the library and getting tired of the awkward, antsy dance they perform when I accidentally and abominably force them to recognise me by simple manners until I give up on formal or informal greetings and now dive behind book stacks if I catch a glimpse of a familiar face in my peripheral vision. Then I watch them, Bernard Black style, from between a spyhole I have dislodged in the books so that I may scurry deeper should they approach. Honestly, another look of barely concealed dismay upon recognition may well break me.

- The weight of words. The amount of each essay left is not insurmountable but becomes positively Sisyphean when one considers it in terms of rewrites rather than mere volume. I'm terrified I'll snap again and simply surrender to the apathy of wanting the damn things to GO AWAY rather than paying any attention to those minor and wholly unnecessary details such as style, coherence and original thinking (the latter being discouraged if one truly wants to excel).

- The fact that I decided to measure how long I had returned by the most middle-class calendar imaginable: croissants. I brought a pack with me to have one for breakfast each morning mid-afternoon and was actually genuinely surprised and then summarily depressed on the first breakfast to see that I hadn't opened the pack. That first day had, to my mind, been at least three. Thus, I have been here a week and am already becoming Papillon in my own treacherous and meretricious fashion.

- York.

In which the mighty Oxford University Future of Humanity Institute probably doesn't care what I think.

Shamelessly stolen link from Warren Ellis, but the following seemed interesting at first and then proceeded to nag the bloody snot out of me.

It deals with the concept of a "Singleton" which immediately drew my eye as Bridget Jaunty Jones terms herself and all people without significant others as being categorised by this term. When, in fact, it apparently refers to:

"a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.[1] Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain (including taxation and territorial allocation)"

Which, pardon me, sounds like it would be workable as a global system of governments but with greater strictures. Like a Justice League version of the United Nations. So far, so philosophy (with the intention of determining a viable "future of humanity", so sayeth the Oxford University institute). Except except except a singleton can be the product of

"convergent evolution, e.g. if it turns out that all sufficiently advanced individuals or cultures come to accept fundamentally the same values or goals. These common values in combination with all the individuals and cultures that embrace them would then be an “agency” in the broad sense intended here, and it would constitute a singleton."

Got that? An open source version of the Illuminati, if you will. Or the Masons. Or the Rotary Club, as it turns out:

"the universal spread of a single self-enforcing moral code. The code might specify that agents should give preferential treatment to other agents that follow the code. If such a code becomes accepted by a sufficient number of agents, and if monitoring and enforcing compliance is sufficiently feasible, it might in the self-interest of agents who have not yet adopted the code to do so. This could lead to the code’s universal adoption. If the code is sufficiently prescriptive to result in effectively coordinated goal-oriented behavior at the level of world society, it would constitute a singleton."

Again, I'm not a philosophy professor at Oxford,which is why a lot of this struck me as obvious territory covered by...oh, say, EVERY SCI-FI EVER. From Star Trek to Judge Dredd. Although there seems to be a get out clause that a singleton can't exist within reach of alien civilisations but this really seems to be dodging a bullet. In fact, early Judge Dredd seems to be the closest to a singleton in printed media that I've seen recently. The first 50 issues, before it got all Cold-War-tastic, construct a perfectly self-contained system of dependent territories in the Mega Cities and the Moon Colony of Luna 1. Then the Soviets turn up, like the intrusion of a secondary singleton and destroy a bunch of lunalympic athletes and my perfect metaphor.

ANYWAY, to get away from flashing my meagre geek credentials, "a code with preferential treatment of other agents that follow the code"? Like, an Old Boy's network? A combination of Old Edwardian conditioning and Bridget Jones's MSN whoredom amalgamated in an instant. What with that ADHD progeny of humanity called technology (more specifically, the internet) blasting through the communicative barriers of distance, walls and (thanks to facebook) total apathy to other's status, social networking has created a situation whereby homogenisation and monoculture take on the mantle of morals beyond even the meagre dabblings of consumerism. The idea that these previous structures would not be eroded by a global means toward communication, but instead become more tight-knit and attractive to followers is hardly novel.

Though it would kind of only work with minorities, because preferential treatment to majorities doesn't totally work in terms of, mayhap, firing and hiring. And would make for really boring episodes of The Apprentice. But in the form of a sort of moral Ponzi scheme, with satisfaction and other abstract well-being uppers being distributed by inclusion, the whole thing becomes feasible. As a system of singletons, concurrently operating on the same societies without any knowledge of the true extent of their interaction. Religion, forum boards, B3ta. Or singular units of one. Sort of like...the world?

Or humanity, if we're following my pernickty logic to final conclusion, because we all have the shared aim to breathe oxygen.

Except it isn't just my logic, because Nick Bostrum (didn't I introduce him before? He wrote this. And got paid by Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, I'll bet) comes to the conclusion that he (probably) concurs that "Earth-originating intelligent life will (eventually) form a singleton" due to emerging technology. Like communication. Or, rather disturbingly, mind-control. Disturbing because he muses over mind-control being viable both in terms of a possibility and a technological plausibility before he ever thinks "Oh, yeah. INTERNET."

"Once formed, a future singleton might be perpetually stable. This could happen if surveillance, mind control, and other security technologies develop in such a way as to enable a singleton to effectively prevent the emergence of internal challenges."

Treading on the thin (David) Ic-k-e there a smidgen, we round off with a lovely dystopian view of a system that cannot turn dystopian. So, we end with a massive rip-off of Brave New World.

Now, I'm not saying a fifteen-year-old could have lashed this article together (though I AM saying a fifteen-year-old could have forged this sniping little crit-fest in his tiny angsty heart, in between bouts of Firefly). No. I'm TYPING it. And there is a difference.

Alright, no I'm not. All I'm getting at is that this man was paid. And I would like monies, please. Muchos monieros. I'm only getting antsy because I can't envision a future career and this man appears to have synthesised one out of early issues of 2000A.D. and his article had the wherewithal to make me think. How dare he etc.

OK, I'm not typing that EITHER. I'm avoiding my essays and revision, alright? Good. Return to whatever you were doing before this wasted your time.

Weight: Wet-tissue paper spread across a rake. Height: Neglible. Pages of Bridget Jones's Diary read: 201. Moments contemplating suicide by putting note-taking pen through eye: 402. Twice per bloody page. Number of rather explicitly racist comments read: approx. 8.

I'm starting to go absolutely insane. I must be. Even more so than just the essay topic carved out of pure dementia. The moments of bigoted, judgemental, middle-class naysaying and utter surrender to what turns out to be a thriving misogynist agenda are starting to mutate and blend with the comedy so that the book transmogrophies into a satire on the desperation of the bourgeousie.

Then I hit another patch where the Turkish are described as universally possessing dreadfully awful funny headscarves. Or the Japanese are considered a cruel race. Or Bridget wishes she was part of a wonderful Third-world family (which in this particular instance is code for a mythical pan-African identity) just because "ethnics" have such marvellous dinners together.

Why? WHY? Because I hate myself as much as I hated my course, romance literature, English literature tutors & students, medieval literature, Helen Fielding, Richard Curtis and Bridget Pissing Jones. Cumulatively typing, that's a lot of compound self-hate which is obviously manifesting itself in the form of masochism. And probably ocular tumours.

Just another 100 pages to read before bed. And then the film to rewatch. And some criticism lauding the incestuous luvvie-fest of the multiple adaptations as if this piss-weak piece of copyright dodging and self-reference were the second coming of Post-Modern Jesus (like Jesus, but in sunglasses. So, Bono) instead of a crutch and a stopgap for real creativity. And three arduous medieval texts. And my Norse revision. And those other two essays to do.

"Oh my godfathers!", "Crumbs!" or something equally insipid.