Hope

How far to grapple,

            Shaking hands

                        Reaching fingers

                                    Dirt and nails

Reach far to eternal

                        Not the solution

                                    Not the climax

                                                The return

The substance of effort on the path to hope

Confluence of insight into my fellows

Over

            Branch of hope the bearings

                                                          Found

Over

            Matter stringed together my lead

                                                                  Found

Over

            The bodily impasse of being

I long for abyss some portal may

                                                     Found

The Economics of food

The current model of food we have in the west is a creation of market economics with repercussion on our culture, space and identity. We eat fancy food on few occasions, the food we consume on daily basis is essentially fast food. Western fast food tastes poor, unhealthy and not a viable solution for daily consumption. There are three main reasons and they are caused by the economics of free market. They are the illusion of choice, personal space and the role of the real estate.

McDonalds do not offer real choice but it creates a different model than a chef brewed stew in cauldron. It doesn’t offer relaxing space but it creates a different model than eating as part of an ensemble – a row on a breakfast bar. These two are cultural transformations brought about by capitalism through emphasise on individualism, competition and choice. Property is different as it’s a market mechanism; the real business of McDonalds is not burger its real estate.

A good model is where the chef opens a restaurant and charges £20 and makes £25. The chef should not have massive overhead costs for premises and labour. Food should be seen as part of social tradition. The policy of capitalism that customer first ruins good food because good food is prepared without customer in mind, they don't know who you are and how you react and what you prefer. Food should reconstitute cultural and social norms where people eat together in a group and the chef serves food they made. The chef has prepared food that he believes is good and puts it down for sharing there is no menu and there is no waiting list and there are no separate tables, it is a bit like your mother serving food. We have to go back and recognise that food is part of our psychological sense of space.

Our cultural identity in food is appropriated by the market; markets also shape influences such as peers and friends who take over our food by labels such as organic, vegan ... Food chains dominate the restaurant sector and only exist if the local community does not provide good service and is only a sign of community decline. 

How do you rejuvenate your thinking?

As you get older you become aware your views are hardening and closing off to new ideas. you become aware when you start rolling your eyes - "thats what the kids think."  I believe intellectual quality just like the quality of every other function is regulated by input. Creating routine help improve habits and there are ways of breaking out of bad intellectual habits. Work in coffee shops to be around people of all types and make it less serious. travel a lot to remind yourself what the rest of the world is like. take long walks to allow your thoughts to prevent thought congestion allowing it to spread. go on nature trails to reset your mind to other elements. dogmatism builds up in the residue of years by act of homogeneity.  

I also fear that such intellectual flexibility becomes a way of protecting broader and more hidden edifice, its a kind of hidden desperation or even pessimism embedded in certain type of flexibilities. something to be said about erecting rigid structure which people do when they are young and then it could be toppled and people become more flexible, wiser, more willing to revise. i worry that its deeper dogmatism than erecting dogmatic structure that could be toppled.  

its not the similarity of routine with younger age but the awareness that come of our susceptibility to dogmatism that alters the experience and I wonder if such routine could be of much help.   

Where is interest rates going

The Bank of England is getting increasingly nervous about the inflation overshoot and feel compelled to raise interest rates, however I don’t think it will take place before 2018. It’s because the root cause of rising prices is the pound's Brexit fall, rather than an overheating economy, the Bank can hold fire on raising rates to stall it.