Today the news said that the GDP growth for the UK was 0.1% . The wife asked how I thought they calculated that. I said that there was a whole host of metrics but that I doubted the measurements were accurate to the 0.1% level. In my mind the error bars on GDP calculation must be far bigger than plus or minus 0.1% so that all the hoo-ha concerning a 0.3% rise {for example} is simply bollocks; a headline made by those who do not understand data. The more you think about it the more bollocks it becomes. The reported number needs realistic error bars and some measure of statistical confidence. The headline figures are misleading.

That is my opinion and I offer it up.

This morning I had yet another dream about a massive mess {karmic} made by people I was previously acquainted with mostly of English nationality. “Yawn, not again, not still” was my mental response. It led me to thinking about national archetype. People who embody and display behaviour archetypal for the nation to which they pertain. I have already noted the political shenanigans associated with perfidious Albion and that never ending petty bickering one upmanship can be seen as archetypical. Such archetypical behaviour does by extrapolation feed into national karma.

What you do effects the karma of the nation in which you live. You are sharing your shitty behaviour with others, what you do impacts upon them.

My social interactions historically could be seen {in this life} to have largely been with the English {UK} intelligentsia. Specifically that part of the intelligentsia which pertained to science and perhaps a lesser extent technology. I had little to do directly with the overtly political classes.

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“The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the intelligentsia consists of scholars, academics, teachers, journalists, and literary writers. Conceptually, the intelligentsia status class arose in the late 18th century, during the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795). Etymologically, the 19th-century Polish intellectual Bronisław Trentowski coined the term inteligencja (intellectuals) to identify and describe the university-educated and professionally active social stratum of the patriotic bourgeoisie; men and women whose intellectualism would provide moral and political leadership to Poland in opposing the cultural hegemony of the Russian Empire.”

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The problem of “not letting go” pervades social psychology. People bear grudges, are envious, hateful, vengeful, clingy. They may hang on to some illusion, some unmet ideal. They can be obsessed about how things are supposed to be, how they should be and how they ought to be. They can conspire with each other and mutually reinforce an unwillingness to let go. Even if some notion or idea is well past its sell by date, they cling. Not letting go can cause anxiety, misery and inertia.

The antidote to “not letting go”, sometimes painful, is reality.

“Not letting go” can be a phenomenon of group mind. The most trite example of this is 1966 and the soccer world cup {FFS}. People can imagine themselves patrician benefactors instead of brutal colonialists. To admit that India is/was not British {old boy} was a hard pill to swallow.

One of the primary glues in group mind which prevents letting go and moving on is secrecy. Shared secrets are perhaps the singular most psychologically binding pact between individuals. Secrets are rarely seen as the knot and shackles which they actually are. Strange things grow in the darkness. Offered to the light of day pustules can cease to fester and may even heal.

That which you keep secret has a power over you unlike any other things. Your secrets whisper to you in a conspiratory tone, they gnaw at your fear and stoke your near sexual salacious enjoyment. They skew sense of proportion. In very many cases a secret dragged out into the light of a dawning sun simply evaporates on a cloud of “no big deal”. No drama.

If you share a secret with another then you are bound and shackled to them. The strength of the chains relates to the nature of secret.

The thing is that unresolved problems are thermodynamic in the sense that the do not spontaneously self-resolve by magic. Mess does not clean itself up. There is no saviour or fairy godmother to sort your crap out for you.  

I am sorry if that seems brutally unfair…

One of things people have difficulty letting go of is their personal narrative of events and of they themselves. If they have cast themselves as knight in shining armour, it can be hard to accept that they have behaved like a shitty little nematode. People invest very heavily in the stories they tell themselves and tell others. It can be very liberating to let go of a lie you have been propagating.

Until you have the wisdom gained from personal experience, letting go of an increasingly dubious story can be a terrifying notion.  It is only when the massive boulder of propping up a lie has been let go of that you feel lighter and may be able to soar. A story, a narrative can be like the boulder of Sisyphus.

Many, in fear of letting go, keep pushing that same old shit up the hill day after day.

In many cases shared secrets are like a mutual ball and chain that keep you tightly claustrophobically incestuously bound together. There is nothing quite like a secret to stoke the fear of letting go. They can be hellish.

This is an opinion and I offer it up.