The erosion of adulthood by public sector twats and their stupid questions

A genuine question on a public sector form in 2011:

Can you give an example of when you were working on your own initiative, unsupervised?

The answer it deserves:

What are you talking about?  An adult’s life is unsupervised. What a silly question! Supervision causes the supervised to make mistakes thereby justifying the self-fulfilling need of a supervisor in the first place. A supervisor is an expensive parasite that inhibits personal growth, jealously sabotages opportunity and impacts profoundly upon corporate wealth. Send them all to a special home with lots of mirrors that they may act out their funny little self-importance games while the rest of us exchange knowledge and techniques freely as and when requested and pre-emptively where intuition and instincts dictate.  

The Tau Ceti Fairy - The opening to Tom Swan's Story of an alien encounter

 

"I speak to the mind that burns behind the eyes of all of you when I tell you my story."

You might think me mad, but you’d be mad if you were raped ragged by God.  We seek patterns and hope to discover purpose within them, but there is none, save for the self-organising and self-serving aggregates of biology. Ultimately, no species knows where it’s at or where it’s heading, all life fumbles in the existential dark. I was haunted – as a place is haunted.  Unlikelihood’s, fantastic and savage, constantly accompanied me, illuminating the strange and beautiful but always blotting out mundane happiness.

I do not care for your opinion; these things didn’t and don’t happen to you. “More things in Heaven and Earth” – fuck you!  You spout it but you don’t believe it. You worship a zombie from Bethlehem, yet you appeal to my common sense.  You believe in Karma; Original Sin’s more plausible but equally vicious twin, used for the endorsement and aggrandisement of well placed fortunates and for the taxation of complicit serfs and you preach justice like it is audited by unseen wisdom equally for all of us. You proclaim that the stars that burn for their own sake, a universe that declines from causality is as equally from no-when as it is from nowhere, is a rational thing that conforms to the currency of the simplest. And for those who would believe my story unconditionally, I despair of you equally. You make a nonsense of Infinity with your paranoid conspiracies that are crude and ungainly compared with the opulent history and technology of Life in the countless voids and worlds; a tiny piece with which I have had close contact.

The Universe is young yet, but our baby blue planet is oh so young. That Biology, and its inherent technologies is prolific throughout the stars and deeper, should not be such a leap of faith for those of you who have a mind for numbers and their need for expression.

Oh I’m a monkey like you, just more elsewhere is all; driven by aspiration to make sense of your language, and driven out and driven mad by intelligent misfortune. But I’m a monkey that found something shiny in the shit.  It was Exotic. All that is beautiful and otherworldly cannot be otherwise I suppose. Fanciful, sure, but I swear on all that matters, including you, it was as real as it was wondrous.

All The king's zeros and all The king's ones

Understanding the nature and location of consciousness is the holy grail of philosophy, psychology and most science but I predict it will be a physicist who will get there first!

Boingy Splat

The Evolution of Paintball

You don’t need me to tell you that Paintball is good for both your physical and mental health and for society as a whole.  You already know that, I already know that. It’s weird though, well not even weird really – typical more like.  You get a strange little sub-culture come along like Paintball and it gets very popular and then it dies back a bit and then it ticks along quite nicely and never fully goes away again. It may have reached its peak, it may have another or series of peaks. Certainly it has raised its profile again just lately with televised competition.

But like so many things, I think it kind did a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Culturally it was hijacked by an unlikely alliance of banker lads and anoraks who have at least found an arena where they are at ease with each other, but in terms of the game’s evolution, the said social hybrid caused Paintball to be stuck in an ultra conservative policed structure based on historical ball games.  The whole point of Paintball is to get in touch with those internal primal engines that need to express a bit of violence now and again without any real harm.  Because the fatality rate in Paintball is very small, it’s a great medium and environment to do that.  But where did all these referees and geezer policemen come from?  I want to shoot my friends, enemies, strangers and loved ones with impunity.  I want to shoot my girlfriend for all those arguments she’s won and will continue to win with her flawless logic and superior rhetoric skills.  Is that so wrong?

Yes it would seem so.  The Paintball marshals want me to play capture the flag. It’s an ok scenario, although it’s a bit too much like football crossed with tag for my liking. Aren’t there any other games you can play?  Can we not just have some all-out gun fights?  Paintball is far too two dimensional.  It needs to be 3D.  On a typical course, you have barriers and barrels to hind behind and mock/inflatable forts like the mockney/inflatable accents of some of the good- ol-boys that run some of these places.  When you’re playing Paintball you need to take to the air, the dimension of height with a bit of. I’d like to see Paintball courses that are far more like adventure playgrounds or assault courses.  You know - for kids!

Wouldn’t it be gratifying to shoot someone off a rope swing spanning a small river? How about a wire? Wouldn’t it be more exciting if you were being shot at twenty feet above the ground while you’re picking along a fallen tree zapping along a wire dodging or not dodging the high velocity paintballs causing you to fall off whatever apparatus you’re dangling from?  Yes safety nets, of course safety nets, I’m not saying don’t be safe. Eyes, orifices, testicles, breasts need to be protected from paint pellets. And players need to jump and fall off things. There’d be big rope nets so you can fall dozens of feet and be caught. Falling from great heights and not breaking anything or not dying is also very good for you, mentally, physically, and socially like Paintball itself but dare I say it, it is good for you – Spiritually? Of course it is!  As well as or even instead of safety nets, have big trampolines instead.  Falling from great heights while adrenalised is mind expanding – cosmically so, and it is morally restorative, both for the individual and Society as a whole.

Scoring

Scoring in Paintball is all so wrong. You get hit once and you’re out. You’ve paid out a ton of money and ignited your adrenal system only to get the outdoor pursuits version of a parking ticket. Fuck that!  I propose a better system which not only means everyone probably gets more air time (literally) and makes it easier for our part-time policemen friends, the marshals to adjudicate but augments the fun of Paintball as a whole, boosting creativity, fitness and endurance levels. 

Instead of being out by being hit once, a system is in place where there are several ways of scoring or being out of the game.

1.      For each splat the opposing team scores points. So each time you are hit, you’re giving points away, so you still have to modify courage and dodge bullets. At the end of a game, the marshals can count the splats and do the maths. The Paintball vendor will also sell more ammo this way as people will be out in the field more.

2.      Surrender.  You surrender for a couple of reasons. You are surrounded, there’s no way out and if you don’t surrender, there could be hundreds of splats and indeed pain. So although there is a surrender bonus for the opposing team for being denied shooting you at close range at a rate of fifteen bullets a second multiplied by the amount of people you're surrounded by, it will be less expensive and better for your health just to surrender. That is even if the trophy bruises are magnificent. If you have died a grisly death, however, and it is impossible to distinguish the quantity of splats; the marshals can execute a special score modifier for indiscernible splats – a bit like scoring a six in cricket.

3.      A knockout or a fall.  Yes, you are fifty feet up in the air, hanging upside down on the trapeze wire, all the while giving rapid fire to your opponents below and maybe even above you, either way they all appear upside-down to you. You are drawing lots of enemy fire, although brave and hardy with a high constitution, you are being stung to death, knocked off or visor-blinded by the enemy. The pain or shock causes you to plummet into the netting – you’re out.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that a one shot and you’re out score would be good in certain games and scenarios.  For example, one player versus absolutely everyone else. Me and m’anorak chums played that scenario a few times with lazer tag.  It is interesting that most people, who play themselves versus everyone else, do tend to fare better than they would expect. So a one-shot death in that scenario would be appropriate. I think that the thing which is missing from Paintball is tons of innovation. This brings me to the most important thing that is missing from Paintball. Paintball’s missing soul mate in fact…

…Skates! Blades – or quads if that’s your thing.  It is time that Paintball was played on skates! I don’t doubt that this has happened somewhere on the planet.  It has to have done, because it just makes so much sense, whether legally or in some disused warehouse or something. There are lots of sites, if you google, that tell you how to put your own Paintball setup together, It cannot be too long before skates and Paintball find each other. It does confine it to indoors, mostly at night mostly, or concrete urban surroundings but with some imagination, it could be awesome.





An indoor arena could have all manner of banked race tracks, jump ramps, mega ramps in fact, like the one at the end of this sentence. Big Ramp Vid  , giant quarter pipes that are part of an elongated half pipe system for goals in flag capture games.  Flags could be placed a few feet above the top of the quarter pipes, so you have to get airborne to retrieve or plant the flag. This encourages more shooting, more bravery, more flight and more acrobatics.

Midair gunfights on skates have been scientifically proven to create well being and an unconditional love for all things. It could be argued that midair gunfights are one of the easiest routes to fulfilment and enlightenment. Everybody loves midair gunfights. Paintball on skates gives you that opportunity.

Imagine...

The enemy flag bearer has hit the ground after an ungainly collision with another member of his team and yours. A couple of other players who were only a third of a second behind him in pursuit manage to avoid the pile-up. Meanwhile slower-witted skaters behind them falter and add to the carnage that is now growing. A fight breaks out as the flag bearer is beneath several people and fires a few point-blank shots to shock the pile off from on top of him. You see the flag sticking out beneath his arm and skate towards him.

A skater falls in front of you and you have to jump over him to resume your course and grab the flag. Success, you did it!  He and others are quickly alerted to what you’re up to and bullets are coming from all directions, some spiteful high velocity shots from only a few feet away. Still, you dodge them and yank the flag from underneath the pile. You skate towards the goal/quarter pipe but you don’t have the speed to get up to the top, let alone the speed you need to get the air to plant the flag. You do a circuit of the banked track; you come down from the banked track on to the opposing quarter pipe and then back towards your target socket on the enemy’s quarter pipe. With your gun slung under your left side, firing wildly and your right hand gripping the flag as the paintballs burst and splash off your arm and flagpole, speckling your visor, causing you to lose 20% of your vision – you still have enough to finish the job though.

You hit the foot of the ramp and the whole world goes into slow motion.  It’s all gone silent as you swoop upwards. Still in slow motion, it seems you reach the end of the ramp and you are now launched into the air. Just for a second, a floodlight dazzles you, there’s a burning glare at the back of your retina but as fate would have it, the paint speckles on your visor dampen the lights and you plant the flag in the socket five feet above the top of the quarter pipe. You have won the game before you have landed.  Like a cat the top of your body twists around in midair, and your legs follow as you begin the descent back to the top of the ramp. Before you reconnect with the plywood, however, your vision is red, blood red as if you have red-out!  Blood red with the paint of the shot that hit your visor when you were in midair.  How does it end, you’re flying blind, do you land like a ninja or a hippo?

The Skateboard Option

The advantage of the skateboard is that it allows a quick change from and aerial shooter to someone on the ground. You can get rid of your wheels and holster your board somehow, or maybe even dump it,  as there could be several skateboards lying around for foot-player use.  If you are wearing skates you are committed to them, but you can switch tactics with a skateboard.  The trade off for this quick get away and stealth advantage is that you don’t quite have as an immediate or effective way of getting up speed that blades and quads have, you have to scoot unless you’re dropping in.  Unless! Unless you have bikes, BMXs – sure, that would be good.  But what about motorbikes?  Only little ones like in Rollerball (1975) just to tow players around the arena. The bikers would be armed as well, of course. The skateboard really becomes effective, now you can have the quick change from wheels to feet to wheels again while exploiting the tow facility of the bikes, on yours or the other team’s if you’re sneaky.  Then there’s Power Stilts. Paintball with Power Stilts. No need for trampolines when you have Power Stilts.  Badda badda boing badda badda boing. How boingy splat would that be?

Luminous Paintball ammo in complete darkness, Zero Gravity Paintball…

Ok, I‘ll stop now

                                                     “Go get em Freud.”   

Psychosoma

A computer game that may assist in the eradication of diseases and the obliteration of some!

Given that I have thrown this idea out into the world in the hope that it will reach critical mass, it will probably now have to come from some public sector boffins rather than some business engine. At the very least this little essay is a goofy neuro finger print into the mindset of misplaced potential; at best...it's a viable idea! That is not to say that there cannot be many variations, mutations and developments from this idea - I hope there are. Besides, I no longer care as I'm flying off with aliens - N'yeh!

Psychosoma is an adventure that takes places inside the human body. Not just any human body but the body of the player. Its primary purpose is to assist the player in the healing and repair of any mechanical damage or disease. This is done by creating a reproduction of a part of a brain or body from an actual cat/bio scan which maps the area local to the disease or damage and provides a complete cross-section 3d photograph. That image is then uploaded onto a computer or onto a platform like The Sony PS3 and when integrated with the software, once again becomes a fully fluid representation of the body at the moment of scanning, complete with injury and/or disease.

There are many cases where psychosomatic input can have a significant, if not, profound effects in assisting the eradication of something like a tumour or the time and effectiveness of injury repair through conventional means. There are a sufficient number of cases where there is a total recovery. In such cases, however, it is helpful if the person is able to make massive lifestyle changes, diet, environment or more rarely, a massive a paradigm shift.

The more inclined a person is to having positive psychosomatic attitude, the greater the chances and effects of healing and repairs. One of the main obstacles to psychosomatic repair or health management in general, is an inherently self-destructive mindset that comes with being human. Very few people naturally possess an ultra positive mindset, most of us have to get there with meditation, mantras, education, struggle, seemingly God-given disasters, or, if we are very lucky; a lot of money. Very few people achieve a level that could challenge a major threat to health or life. The superstitious claims of spiritual types have helped to prejudice the very real possibility that we all have a powerful influence over our bodies in a psychosomatic way. Most people have the idea that the psychosomatic effect is supernatural or mystical and therefore to be dismissed as spiritual bullshit.

In order to assist healing and repair psychosomatically, we have to bypass ego; inherent negative thought patterns and stress reflexes. There are many anecdotes of successful psychosomatic healing and repair and many of them are simply untrue or exaggerated. Many are negating of the fact, that the person was undergoing some other good old-fashioned tried and tested orthodox treatments from our much maligned Western Medicine which has served most of us well, most of the time. There are enough, however, to suggest that there is, for whatever reason, a very real phenomenon. You don't have to get all spiritual to buy into the idea that you have some degree of influence or ownership of your own body.  

If culturally inherited beliefs and damaged psyches are the biggest impediment to psychosomatic repair; playing PsychoSoma will hopefully have an impact upon the sub-conscious mind by bypassing the conscious consent or niggling objections of the player through play.

This is facilitated by several principles:

The body or part of the body plus its tumour (or otherwise damage or disease) is visually/symbolically reduced to something that can be stored digitally. In NLP terms (Neuro Linguistic Programming) this literally reduces something that seems total, i.e. imminent death, to something that is merely an object of observation that can be observed, studied, contemplated and held in the hand to be ultimately diminished in size until it no longer is a tumour. Yes, it is only symbolic, but it counts!

The player will be skilfully journeying around the body and its disease in nano submarine. (Fantastic Voyage/Inner Space) They will be confronting their tumour as a pilot of a vessel loaded up on a pulsating throbbing, electron crackling arsenal of blinding weaponry to destroy whatever disease occupies them at the time. There will also be an arsenal of exponentially reproducing nanobots and neuropeptide cannons for the repair of cells. They will have to skilfully deploy other fanciful machinery and energy beams pregnant with fresh DNA to repair tissue and rebuild the body. Not only is this symbolic; it is symbiotic! The idea is, that, a clear message has been sent to The Mighty Subconscious, which will hopefully respond with like and direct the body with its many medicines to begin to shrink the real tumour. What I mean is tricks of distraction, play, focus and symbolism, rather than "I will either beat this or I won't and some of that is in the lap of the gods." We get rid of fatalism, gods and dread and replace it with fun, engagement, purpose and victory. The eradication of your disease and subsequent repair is a job of work, and work is best done in a state of play in total immersion, from which we get a sense of craftsmanship. Psychosoma has another technological device to deepen the effect of this.

Alpha and Theta soundwave generators provide the soundtrack to Psychosoma. These devices are controversial but I believe them to be powerfully effective in altering the mind-state of anyone using them. They are supposed to put the brain into a similar state achieved by accomplished meditators. Our Psychosoma pilot is carrying out his or her mission to symbolically and therefore hopefully actually destroy their disease! This is done over a period of days and weeks giving the subconscious mind time to absorb the idea and directing the body to deploy its own defense systems in a realistic time frame. While engaged in destroying disease with laser beams and the like, the pilot is simultaneously repairing their cells with exotic machinery, sending all the right signals to their brain/body/subconscious, both attitudinally and physically. Their brain/mind is in a heightened state of suggestibility, however lucid, while they are carrying out this activity. It is now no longer relevant what beliefs or personality disorders they have, while he or she is submerged in play and awash with the caress of strange nourishing pulses and waves, the Psychosoma suite is going straight to the governing agencies of the brain and the body. It does this by using NLP techniques, plus a kind of hypnosis and suggestion on the back foot, during which the brain is all pliable, through focus, play and mild mind - mashedness.

The Pilot will also be able to choose from a list of affirmations, recitations and mantras that will be broadcast within the sound waves .With his or her mind all whoosy and mildly mashed, The Pilot will engage, bombard, deconstruct, dissolve, vaporise and nuke the blight, and all the time their mind will direct the whatever known or unknown psychosomatic repair agencies to follow. We don't care how the body does it; we only know that the body does it. The body has its secrets...or as some Buddhists say, "Seven Hundred Medicines." We just get behind and endorse them with like a director or conductor.

Cancer is the obvious disease to lead this with, because it is a disease comprised of rogue cells, and experiences the most remissions and eradications for sometimes no apparent reason. It does not however matter. People who are diabetic often report that their sugar levels are better when they are "in the zone." That is, when they are achieving and in a flow state with their activities. Psychosoma maybe applicable to pretty much all injuries and illnesses to varying degrees. It is also a useful totem to the healthy - for example, the athlete, who wants to bring his cholesterol, levels down, or scrape the plaque from the walls of his arteries. A person pilots their nano submarine so that they may optimise or even augment their body's performance. The demographic is therefore huge.

 Remember, while playing, the body is swimming in either alpha, theta or delta waves making it nice and receptive to the idea that the viruses, bacteria, rogue cells, and other sundry parasites or unbidden attacks are taking a hammering from the array of powerful weaponry, futurist technology and miraculous imagery that inspires the body with its Seven Hundred Medicines. There are many pain workshops that work on imagery, and Psychosoma greatly assists people with or without a great visual imagination to enhance that imagination and suspend disbelief and therefore bypass intellectual or nagging voices, doubts and obstacles. A Pilot may sail through a virtual representation of his own body, zapping stress hormones and widening his or her own arteries, while at the same time zapping internal organs with cell repairing artillery and fusing damaged cells. It is about immersion and repetition, until such time as The Pilot is soaked in the new belief that they are the boss and the body will comply.

Education, the Secondary Benefit

Psychosoma is primarily a healing and repair tool. It could also be the definitive working encyclopaedia and museum of the body. It is a passive educational aid. A Pilot will have a better working knowledge of the human body merely by voyaging through it.

Two Player

When it comes to the psychosomatic effect, there appears to be no conclusive proof that there is a mystical component. With the right mindset, sure we can be the boss of our own bodies, "get the mind right and the body will follow!" For me, Extra-personal or remote healing is for new-age bombastics on a self-aggrandisement trip. Therefore, I think it remains to be seen if having a two-player option is a good or a bad thing! If someone begins playing Psychosoma and it actually works; will it have a dilatory effect if his or her partner joins in because the Sub-conscious loves first-hand information? The Subconscious of the person with the tumour, for example, is not fully present at every part of the destruction of cancerous tissue, it might not, therefore acknowledge the impact the person's partner or friend is having.

Alternatively, the subconscious mind might just be interested in the net result of the battle and might be all too ready to reckon upon the efforts of the second player, without having to be there every step of the way - particularly if that person is a loved one. Fact is, I don't know. One for the placebo test groups, I think. If it is proven, those secondary players have an impact on the psychosomatic healing of the first player; then we are into interesting territory for sure. This means that we can upload a person's body and illness on the Internet and have a veritable blow up the Death Star type assault, involving many people; I'm guessing that the original person would have to be present. If that person is not present, then we are in the nebulous territory of remote healing and all the other bullshit that often accompanies that. Psychosoma makes no supernatural claims and cannot be sold on that basis. Faith has to be restored to an individual that they can dupe their mind/body into healing itself by soaking the brain in suggestibility and then pounding it vigorously with exotic and dazzling imagery and sound or by truly embracing self-empowerment.

Technology

I am not sure if it is important for the sake of conviction, if it is a true reproduction of the tumour that is uploaded. There is probably all the generic software available to create a world inside a body, In this case, instead of uploading a 100% recorded image of the body/disease and transposing it into the 3d world of Psychosoma, the player creates a virtual version of his disease/injury by computer assisted drawing methods. This way there is a kind of confrontation and resolution. He or she has literally created the condition as has they have in their real body and they are now setting about the business of destroying it - might be useful. The disease is no longer deified - merely weeded out in a repetitive job of work, zapping stars with a jug of coffee in 'Dark Star,' springs to mind.

Psycho Sonar

It is a shame to think that someone will miss out on this because they are blind. PsychoSonar, then, will be the same principle but with a sound textured audiodrome version, so that the Pilot may execute all the same devices but based upon a sonar sounding feedback environment.

Final Word

I am as secular as they come, but as someone who has been both a medical fugitive and a vagrant, I discovered that I had no choice but to get healthy on the medicine of mindset and attitude. I achieved what I consider to be miracles...maybe they were coincidences. Who knows how and why the psychosomatic effect works? Maybe there is a mystical component, maybe there isn't? We may think of spiritual agencies being involved in healing, but if angels and gods are metaphoric, there does seem to be a correlation between a spiritual life and a long and healthy life. If God is the word, then it's a good enough metaphor for me. It may be God it may the subconscious - I don't care! That is how Psychosoma works. It is not interested in logic or conversely, new age bullshit. It is interested in tripping up the average malcontent mindset in order to program the subconscious mind with a new agenda. I draw no conclusions; I call upon no mystical truths or scientific facts. I merely believe in the body's biomechanical ability to rule itself with its arsenal of material chemistry assisted by a by a robust and rightly aligned mindset.

The Ragged Millionaire$

An alternative Millionaire TV show

The aim of The Ragged Millionaire$ is to demonstrate that if a creative person has no distractions and no personal emergencies, they would then be enabled to get on with the fun business of making money relatively easily.  ‘The Dragons’ Den’ and ‘The Apprentice,’ have both increased business literacy amongst the general public. The Ragged Millionaire$ builds upon this and also helps the British to remember their lost entrepreneurial prowess in the tough times.  Also, it seeks to explore how effective various moral templates are in the pursuit of money.  For example; a ruthless ‘dog eat dog’ approach compared to a culture of honour and altruism in the business environment. These templates will be played out naturally throughout the series, in varying degrees by the contestants as their egos, alter egos and humanistic aspects battle with each other to bring home the money.

There are 10 contestants!  This is not a vote-out reality TV show based upon personality prejudice or meritocracy.  This is a race! A tense, dramatic, sometimes ugly but always engaging race; where so many moral styles and templates as well as social innovations and technologies may be employed to be entrepreneurially very creative.   Each contestant is given a lap-top, a mobile phone and a work station alongside the other 9 contestants for 12 weeks in a dedicated environment to make as much money as they possibly can from a starting stake of £10,000.

The objective of the exercise is to make as much money from their stake over the 12 weeks by ANY means available to them.  Players may wish to enter into deals and business relationships for single deals or for longer initiatives.  For example, if a player had found a very cheap consignment of coffee in Brazil for which he needs £16,000 and he only has £11,000, he can go and find the other £5,000 in the big wide world, or he may enter into a deal with of his or her opponents/fellow contestants. 

The object of the race is to be the person at the end of the 12 weeks with the most money.  If you pull a bum deal and lose your stake, then you are out of the race.  In traditional environments like, ‘The Apprentice,’ or ‘Big Brother’, that would be good for the other contestants, in ‘The Ragged Millionaires, it could be good or bad depending upon so many factors; it certainly is a death of an income stream for the final winners as it is the end of an open-ended resource. Most reality TV shows are people vying for a finite prize.  Feasibly, all contestants might cross the finish line.  It is the two who have the most amount of money who are the winners.  Yes my friends, two!  This is a financial version of the game of Diplomacy.  Sabotage and double-crossing will be par for the course for some players. 

Who are you reallly in league with?

[It's time for a Coffee Break while you process the many numbered possiblities of that game device.] 

  The two winners of the game not only keep the fortune they have made, they keep the fortunes of the other contestants also; the plot thickens.  Whoever wins not only automatically seizes the others’ fortunes; they have the power to allow other contestants to keep their fortunes.

The combinatorial elements are prolific.  You wouldn’t want to sabotage a person’s business transactions in the early days; they are, if all goes to plan, busy making you money for You!  There really has to be a right moment or maybe not.  You may have an idea how well the others are doing, but to truly know requires a keen sense of your environment and maybe some snooping, or maybe even trust!  Some people might just play the maverick rocket off into the sunset game and hope they will win focussing their efforts on pure money making.  But the job of making money will be done better by pooling talents for most.  Espionage, intrigue, chutzpah, innovation, diplomacy & manipulation and collaboration are just some of the tools that will be needed to be employed by our contestant millionaires.

To provide contrast, there is a sister series running simultaneously.  The sister series features 10 people, all pulling together in a non-competitive environment towards a single goal.  They too have their lap-tops, phones and mini offices.  The only enemy to our second team is mismanagement, ego, organisation, apathy, a lack of solidarity in the absence of competition, and otherwise genetically or culturally booby-trapped group dynamics.  For the second team, it should be easy.  They have to make more money, than their counterparts.  That should be easy! Therefore if they fail to make a million pounds, the money they have made, say, half a million pounds, goes to the most despicable member of the first team – as voted for by the public on the minimum charge of fifty pence phone line.

My conclusion is that The Ragged Millionaire$ is an engaging piece of TV anthropology resurrecting the inflammatory politics of hard-nosed business versus ethical capitalism, filled with all the Death or Glory of a disparate set of personalities in an artificial environment.  In the current zeitgeist the one thing that is better than watching little people hitting each other is, people of average height making oiks of themselves and each other with money. In the universe from where these series originate, the more ethical contestants tend to win out over the more Thatcherite by an average of about 4 -1. The Split or steal option in Golden Balls is a real view into a person’s psyche. It is dualist, however. In The Ragged Millionaire$, there are many more factors that motivate honour or treachery, it is not an ‘either or’ scenario. Money that is hard fought for and won will colour the game.

Schmanarchy

Anarchy is not the politics of pissed-up stoner crusties with their Teutonic tendencies. More, it is the way of life of empathic gentlefolk who are autonomous and self-sufficient. That said, I am a big fan of The Levellers - they are a splendid folk/punk/rock band who really know how to get you going. Hurrah!