There is something on my mind for a long time that I would like to share with anyone who cares to read or listen…

I have travelled a lot over the years and have seen many different cultures. What’s right in one place is completely wrong in another. There are a few basic human traits that I have noticed everywhere, and I can only put them down to human nature, which seems to me to be the common language, and which is stronger than any culture. It’s a higher level of understanding which surpasses all cultures and religions, as I understand it. When you get to this level of understanding, life becomes a little bit easier, or has done so, in my experience. Be very careful of what you read here because this is just my opinion and it could be complete shit, but it’s based on what experience (or lack of it!) I have of life.

The main point which I want to make is that across all cultures and religions greed, selfishness, dishonesty and jealousy are the roots of everything that goes wrong in this world, regardless of one´s intelligence (or lack of it).

If we could only control these conditions in the human being, what a great party we could all have! To control these human conditions takes effort, but it leads to a much better result than not to.

Sometimes greed is expressed through ego, sometimes through material things, but it’s still all greed, whichever way you look at it, same as is jealousy.

Like everyone else, I have been as guilty as hell but I spend a lot of time trying not to be. I can’t stand anything that separates people, and I love anything that brings people together, regardless of nationality, culture or religion. I’m always trying to find the common ground and not the uncommon, but I don’t always succeed.

If you look at capitalism and communism, you quickly understand that communism is fantastic on paper, but capitalism suits human nature much better. I have lived in the former USSR for a period and all of the older folk would much prefer to have communism back. They felt safe. They didn’t have a lot by Western standards (materially), but they had a lot more than the Third World. They didn’t know this as they were kept in the dark, but they will tell you that they went to work, they had their apartment, a Lada car and a holiday every year. They had enough. The truth of it is that this system may well have lasted, only for the fact that the USSR engaged in the Cold War, which cost billions of any currency you wish to choose, and ultimately ended with the fall of the USSR.

One of the saddest things I have ever witnessed in my lifetime was the collapse of the Russian Rubel – not because a currency collapsed, but because there were hard working people who had saved for their pensions all their lives and they lost everything in a week.  When you meet highly educated or intelligent (not always the same) hard working people begging in cold train stations in their 60s +, it makes you sick to the bone.  You listen to their stories and it would kill you.  I have lived with these people in the same house and got to know them.  The lucky ones had sons or daughters who got out to the West and sent money back home so their parents had a comfortable living.  The unlucky ones… you don’t want to know.  Again, the whole lot of this human suffering was caused because of greed or pride/ego.  Will we ever learn?

To be half fair, in the Russian situation they seemed to me to be more on the defensive after the Second World War, after what Germany did to them, and wanted to make sure that it never happened again.  I know there were desperate atrocities carried out by the Russian establishments long before the Second World War against the Russian people as well (which is a different story), but again leads back to the same thing:  control caused by greed, ego etc etc.

I feel that no human being has the right to determine where another lives or not.  Forget communism and capitalism for the moment.  If everybody in this world was able to travel and trade free, we would come to a situation where every human being had at least an equal opportunity to share in the World´s wealth.  Who the f*ck do we think we are to tell another human that he cannot go here or there because of his colour/nationality or culture?  Open your minds and your doors, don’t be afraid and the results will surprise you.

I have today read two things in the papers that caught my attention and are very relevant to this topic.  The first I read was about a tribe of 240 people called the Zoe (I think, I put the magazine in the bin and when I went back to check the name someone had put more waste on top of it and I wasn’t willing to dig through it to get the name right!).  This tribe are and have been living in stone age times and are protected by the Brazilian government.  They have no contact with the World as we know it.  They have been watched and studied, just like wild animals would be for a documentary.  They don’t wear clothes, they kill only what they need to eat, and no more.  They have straw built tents and they sleep in anyone they want to, with whoever they want to.  They have no crazy man invented rules, and they share everything automatically.  Disputes are solved by tickling – whoever laughs the first loses.  They know f*ck all about religion, never mind penalty points or traffic lights, and yet they live in perfect harmony in their ignorance – or maybe it’s our ignorance.  Back to basics, and this is as close as you would get to human nature at its best before we were corrupted by all kinds of rules and sh*t.

The second thing that I read today was that the English government want the English flag displayed much more and have lifted old rules which say that the flag can only be flown at half mast with the consent of the Queen.  So now it is OK to fly the flag at half mast if a local (good person) dies in the community, without the permission of the Queen.  They want to fly the English flag from every government building in the country and they are encouraging people to fly it from their homes as well to get back their identity, regardless of whether it’s England or anywhere else!  Did you ever hear such f*cking bullsh*t in your life?!  Anyone who has to identify themselves with a flag is as insecure a human being as you will meet on any road.

I am Irish (culturally) and I am proud of it, but not nationally.  I see the Irish flag as a sign of “welcome”, whereas the English (and only the English that would support this shit, which is not all English, by any means) see this as a defensive measure.  They feel they are losing their identity and need to get it back in this stupid way.  I also know that there are many Irish that think we should not let any foreigners into Ireland, but they too are the greedy, trying to protect what they have and not share with other fellow human beings because of their own insecurities.

As far as I am concerned, anyone who is willing to pull their weight should be welcome in any society.
If I ever go missing, I will be with the Zoes in North Brazil, but I don’t expect that they would accept me after being so corrupted by all kinds of organisations making rules of how I should and shouldn’t live.  Where will I go then?  I will be simply f*cked if the Zoes don’t accept me!!!!

Murphy