"There's nothing to do here!" and other British lies

"This place sucks."

"There's nothing to do"

"It's just full of old people."

These are the arguements I've heard for a lot of places around Britain. All of it flawed and all of it steeped in a history that we've both lost and not learned of, with a light sprinkling of gentrification on top of the oppressive ice cream we call British society.

I've tried for a couple of weeks now to write this, as my brain was literally scrambled(1), but my point always seemed to be more and more incohesive. As if where I wanted to go wasn't actually in this blog post than I first anticipated.

So where am I going here? Basically, there is this idea that a lot of places in Britain(2) are without any real entertainment. We could say this is the truth, but what are the underlaying truths of this truth? And if it is the truth, is the primary truth able to be dissected into smaller truths that we could piece together into a massive British jigsaw of British truths?

Yes, because we are a great tapestry of community and oppression that we haven't even recognised in our time.

Beginning at the start, 'There's nothing to do here!' as a quote implies several factors of lack; Economic, Political and Social as a start.

Economic TNTDH(3) implies that there are no prospects for jobs. People in an area are left to fend for themselves for the job search, or must travel or drive to places of employment. If you can't do that, you will be left behind.

Political TNTDH implies that you have no real say in your area. Your politician doesn't live in your area and rarely holds surgeries, or your village is part of a bigger area that takes priority, like it swallows up other less populated settlements.

Social TNTDH implies that there is nothing to do to meet up and form communities. The pub has closed and the social hall has been sold on to a developer to make more houses.

With these in mind, I think we can paint a picture that been three hundred years in the making, starting with the enclosure acts and leading up to what we now know as gentrification.

So let's start with today. A lot of places that would have been a hub for the community have been lost. Pubs were more than just a place to drink alcohol, they can be called third places, a neutral space where everyone in the area could come and socialise. And the loss of these specific third places, which can be a community hall, cafes, barbershops, even a gym occasionally. Churchs and parks are also examples. Anyway, these places allow for groups to meet and socialise, but when the cost of a pint of a coffee is outside of your budget it now becomes a place of exile. You are poor, therefore not welcome.

This might not be true, my favourite local(4) is more of a social space. They are a place to talk rather than drink, they just happen to cheaper as well. The point still stands though, people feel like outsiders because of price in their own towns will be full of TNTDH, fuelling discontent. This leads to more antisocial behaviour as people become resentful of where they are. I've been on trains where people litter all over it because 'They don't own it, so it's not their problem', isn't this the same mindset that makes people litter in their town? As they have no say, cannot use the services in their area, and there is no community to call their own.

This makes people leave for a city as there is more options and opportunities, leading to a death of a place. This death then allows the developers in to 'gentrify' the place, kicking out the last few residents to cater for the newcomers. These newcomers will commute and have very little interest in the area unless it plays into their interests. Goodbye Red Lion fro the 1500's, hello cereal bar cafe(5). This then kills the last part of the town, until these newcomers have little newcomers that soon find that to actually entertain and form their own connections they will have to look outside of their residence. This gentrifiation leads to a settlement as community to settlement to residence, how fucking sad.

This leads me back to my favourite gripe in the social sundae of Britain, the legacy of that fact called enclosure. We're jumping right back in time here but it's similar. Lords and landlords closed off the land to the common people, alienating them from the fields and valleys that were open to them before. Soon, the locals have no choice but to work for the lord for income. When the landlord wants them off the land, the work drys up and rent isn't paid. They then kicked these locals, sometimes many generations down the line, out of their houses to make way for sheep or a massive green expanse of grass. For me this is always the start of the flavour of British alienation to the land that has purveyed the world through our empire.

Both these examples, Enclosure and Gentrification, fuel TNTDH that creates dead areas. But both need people to exist, showing how shortsighted and self destructive they are. People are not numbers, they are the reason we do things. TNTDH is corporate takeover of our public and private lives, telling us we cannot go places because of ownership or the other way that you must own something to fit in, like a crappy brown bag. TNTDH as an attitude is control over the population to value what they value, and to deny that is a strong decision to make.

I think this is my point that I'm going to leave with this. I hate TNTDH. It's a nihilistic, conformist way of playing to the powers that have created this hell scape we call a lonely society. we have to actively kill this attitude to find a new way to live.

Trespass, visit your friends, have meals in parks and socialise in open view of the powers that be. Permission will never be granted as they don't want you here. A house is more profitable if no one lives in it, so the dream is for a country that has no one in it, as they can't do that a population that stays inside and makes no fuss will suffice. Britain has many things to do, but you have to look for them.

Explore! Go to a town you've never been before! Eat food you've never tried! Learn a skill that only benefits you! But never fall for TNTDH, as that is a bad arguement and only plays into the pockets of those who wish you to buy buy buy their stuff. Never fall for that lie, it will kill you and everyone you love.

(1) Had an epileptic seizure, it was not very fun.

(2) Where I will be staying, as I don't know anywhere else.

(3) There's nothing to do here, abbreviated.

(4) Peasants Revolt, Brentwood

(5) Real place in Bethnal Green i beleive.

Duolingo-Double-Down

I'm sure you've heard the news, Duolingo has decided that it will cease to hire people for jobs it needs doing if AI can do it for them. This means that all lessons will be graded, evaluated and improved using Artificial Intelligence for all aspects of it's user experience.

What happened? Why is this App, which was one of the best in the business, sudden nothing more than a load of cow dung that playfully threatens to kill you if you don't do a lesson?

As a long term user, I can say that this has been happening for a LONG time now. And the term I will use to explain it is this, enshittification.

Now, enshittification is a real word that is described as the slow decline of a service to the point of unusability. We've seen this with many items within our lives, usually technology such as software and programs where the services we pay for (or use for free, such is the case for Duolingo) slow decline in quality. I remember when Duolingo was actually useful, explaining and giving answers to what you were doing wrong. When you got questions wrong and ran out of hearts, you could refill them by practicing. Now everything is adverts, and they want you to use all your diamonds so you have to buy them or buy the super package. Something I will never do.

You see, what has happened with the enshittification of Duolingo is that they have removed the human aspect to their service. You don't have to be a linguistic graduate to know that the whole point of language is to communicate with your fellow humans, and the removal of this shows that they are only thinking about the game rather than the educational material. We all knew that Duolingo was the gamification of language(1), but now it's just the Temu of language. Poor quality with poor usability.

The CEO has recently doubled down on his comments, saying that AI will be a better teacher of language than any human teacher, showing that he isn't actually in it for humanity.

Where did all this AI dreaming come from? Why are we so attracted to removing anything to do with community? The idea that Duolingo or any language platform would be better if left to an Artifical Intelligence is just crap! But it's not alone, nearly all companies have removed people as a cheap replacement to employees, even if the whole point of their business is humanitarian. Banks removing people in their phone calls, customer services being replaced with fake voices. Even adverts are clearly AI, even the ones that litter Duolingo.

I think what we've stumbled across is the natural progression of capitalism, which arguably started as a way to improve services through competition but became a sedative. Duolingo does not care about you learning a language or gaining knowledge or skills in what they offer, they only care about you buying their service. It's all about streamlining that cash to the shareholders over any actual product, and Duolingo does not have a product anymore.

It's stupid and irresponsible for a someone in an educational(2) platform to say that artificial intelligence is somehow superior to teachers, because an app cannot teach you everything. And if we've noticed anything in the last few years, the management of this failing app has shown only complete negligence to their product. Teachers and first hand experience will always outlive it, and it cannot give you an actual understanding of the cultures that the tongues come from.

That's another point, this app is the most superficial way to look at a language. It teaches you the grammar, but not the phrases and logic that comes with the language. The AI understands where to put the words, but not the history or the uses of them. "In bocca del lupo" is Good luck in Italian, could AI tell you why?

NO!

Of Course not! And people know this with google coming up with phrases like they are common knowledge because someone asked what it meant(3)!

I've just came out of Hospital and am really struggling to write this, so I'm just going to leave it here. But I'm ready to call myself a Neo-luddite, because this world is sleepwalking to a death of any form of actual skill, and it's happening because some rich dick wants to make a quick quid off something we are hardwired to want to learn.

(1) Which is a fair arguement for a bad learning platform, but does encourage revisiting what you've done. Say what you want about gamification, I think it works well to help solidify the knowledge you've gained.

(2) I mean this in a very loose way now, but also Duolingo should not be the only way you learn a language. Other ways like face to face lessons. Duolingo was great for revision, but even now that is under scrutiny.

(3) https://futurism.com/google-ai-overviews-fake-idioms You can't lick a badger twice.

Hell, what an idea!

Many cultures on this wandering rock we call earth have an idea of hell.

We have the Christian idea of hell, the fire and the brimstone, very similar to the Islamic Jahannam, also we have Gehenna in Judaism, a place of purification. In the un-Abrahamic corner we have the Norse, Germanic and Celtic(1) for Europe(2), the Naraka for Hindus, Reincarnation kharma for Buddhists and the countless other religions(3).

What's interesting with the more 'pagan' beliefs I use here is that hell is not hell. There is a place of punishment and atonement, but it's temporary until purification happens and you live in a place a better person than before, similar to Gehenna in that respect, but even then places like hell or the greek underworld don't see it as a place of damnation, but just another place after the death of your mortal body. You have to make sure you pay the ferryman, as the gods were more fickle then.

That's what interests me is that so many different creeds don't need a 'Hell' as we know it, especially if you are one of the two major religions in the population. They need a place where bad people go to rectify their past mistakes, but those mistakes don't damn them for an enternity of torment. If anything, it is much more human.

Going to where we get Hell from, which is the Norse 'Hellheim', its just the other place that is separated to from the gods, Valhalla. Greece has something similiar in the elysium fields, but the many thing is that those not favoured by the gods go here, the other place.

And it's not a bad place, but if you've been worshiping Thor all your life, you might want to spend the rest of your afterlife in their presence. Your heaven is battle, and that's what he offers.

But if you're a farmer, an eternity with your family in endless fields that cater for your desires is heaven. You aren't favoured by the gods for any militaristic reason, but that's just how you lived your life, and that's still valid.

So why do we need an idea of an afterlife? Surely when we die, we just cease to exist, so why worry?

Imagine if you were a person in a village in the medieval period, maybe before that actually. You would be aware that people die, and some of them will be family members and friends. You will be full of questions like 'where are they' and 'where will i go?'. And the people around you will understand the question with the world around them.

Sometimes it's punishment for not meeting expectations or norms, the Abrahamic way. Sometimes it's cost and benefit, such as the dealbrokers of the ferryman. Others will be reincarnation, where the soil that feeds the plants is the body of the deceased, continuing the cycle of death and rebirth. All of which shows an understanding of the environment that they inhabit. All of them speak of a place where they will be looked after and continue to live.

I can't ignore the athiest point, which I must point out is different to the nihilist point(4), where there are no gods or other worlds, we have what we have and that's it. But you could also argue that the life you live before an afterlife is still important as it is a process of living. The atheist stance that we should look after the world as there is nothing after is echoed in the statements of polytheists where the earth is an important place in the order of things. We need to look after the earth as much as our place in the afterlife. Hell and Valhalla are separate places to Earth (Midgard) but is still an important place that needs to be treated correctly. The different worlds are like a desert and a forest, where there are different ecosystems but are still part of the whole.

So why are we so against the planet? If it is as important as the afterlife(5) why do we crave the place afterwards?

The rise of this could be brought on by the ideas of the conservative christians, the Puritans, who beleived that to get to heaven you must work hard. To work is to be a moral being, and we can't escape that fact that so much to do with capitalism is down to this ethical standard. If you are to save your eternal soul and join with your creator, that takes prescedence over the world around you, which could be seen more as a tool or a test. It is temporary, unlike what comes after.

But I can a parallel with places like Valhalla, where the chose of the gods go. Heaven gets conflated with work and worship to meet god whilst the other is seen as undeserving. Hellheim is not a place of torture, but a place where the souls go that didn't value the gods. This reminds me of Maori beleifs where the gods don't care about you, but you must treat them with respect (Tapu). But if you worship them, they would value you and respect your service. But the difference is that they are indifferent.

So Hell becomes undesirable from a point of prestige, but also corruptable if you're in power. A king for example could instill the fear of Hell (the debunked fire and brimstone) in their populace to make them be loyal to them and their rule. It's not a far stretch to say that this is what happens in companies, where productivity is a direct descendent of the royal and puritan thought. Hell is bad because it is not heaven, therefore you must do everything in your power to evade this.

I think my last point here though is that a lot of convertion and preaching is quite unsustainable. The Vikings for me show that. To die outside of battle is undesirable and you will go to Hell instead of Valhalla. So to counter this you must always show your commitment to the gods by constant acts of faith to gain favour. This leads to a need for conquest after conquest until you die, and I can't see that as a life.

So in conclusion, Hell is underrated, both in its history and its corruption to its evil counterpoint. Most cultures see two versions of the afterlife and hell is just the common one, and whats wrong with that? That's wonderful! You live, you die, there's no great judgement as you cannot live a life wrong(6). Even the Jewish hell is a place of cleansing and not torture. But it's been co-opted as a place to avoid as a form of control, where there is a right way to live and all others must be ignored. This has lead to a great robbery of a paradise we currently inhabit.

Maybe this is equally a paradise, lets not make it a parking lot.

(1) I'm taking liberties with Celtic as we know little about their ideas of afterlife, but there is evidence in an idea that we are somewhere afterwards. Also it might have been equally polytheistic.

(2) North western, I don't know much about the East, but I do want to know more in the future. I know siberia has animistic beliefs in the mountains. Also the Roman pantheon, but rule of three.

(3) I would include the many different beliefs, but I don't know enough to do any justice. So if you feel excluded, please don't and please let me know! I love to learn!

(4) Nihilism should be combated with everything. I don't understand how people can accept it. Absurdism just makes more sense than just saying nothing matters. Grow up.

(5) You could even say that it's even more important than the afterlife, as you need to exist before you de-exist.

(6) Unless you piss off the gods or spirits. Then you must atone.