The Madness of Crowds – What Ever Happened to Critical Thinking?

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds – Charles McKay 1841

Critical thinking has been banned, it’s no longer allowed,
GroupThink’s now the edict, we must all follow the crowd;
We’re being bullied and forced to all think the same,
And if we fail to conform we’re given some nasty name.

Activists agendas create a set of nonsensical  rules,
Which we must all adhere to, or be labelled as fools,
Or racists, or deniers, or something much worse;
A free thinking mind is becoming a curse.

Fail to follow the narrative, then be left in no doubt
The woke mob will come baying to cancel you out.
Common sense and logic lie abandoned in tatters,
Some weird political correctness  is now all that matters.

The order of the world is being changed,
The old values discarded, or being rearranged,
We’re becoming unhinged, believing in fantasy tales,
Such as man is at risk from what he exhales.

A totalitarian environment; what to think we are told,
No reason, no debate, thoughts completely controlled,
Facts conjured out of fiction, history rewritten or ignored,
It’s an Orwellian future we’re all racing toward.

 

Who Will Raise The Alarm?

“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind” C S Lewis

Who out there will raise the alarm
And have the courage to halt the destructive self-harm,
To stop all we have gained being thrown away,
Without the people having their say?


Who has the voice that won’t be ignored?
Who’ll declare that “the science” is so totally flawed?
Who’ll be the sense and reason defender?
And expose the madness of the net zero agenda?


Who’ll shout out for the empirical facts,
Denouncing the propaganda, which from reality detracts?
Who’ll take on the, so called, financial elite
And all those politicians who sit at their feet?


Who’ll tell the world that the UN’s primary goal
Is over our lives to have total control?
Who will arrive and throw off that yolk
And free us all from the tyranny of woke?


The silent majority now need to find their voice
And loudly decry the loss of freedom and choice,
Brush aside the fearmongering, for fear is a liar,
And dismiss the gaslighting by those who conspire.


It’s time to reject any new totalitarian state,
Time for the individual to rise up, before it’s too late!

New Year Resolution 2021

“The sad truth about humanity…is that people believe what they’re told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.”
Neal Shusterman

My new year resolution
Will be different this year,
As I feel I’m missing out
On the panic and fear,
So I’m abandoning critical thinking,
And instead of being challenged by that,
I’m going out to buy
A dumbing-down hat.

Then I can be taken in
By all of the media hype,
Believe the relentless propaganda,
All the BS and tripe
And I won’t form the opinions
That I used to keep,
I can just nod in agreement,
Become one of the sheep.
I’ll stop all of my questioning,
Just learn to accept,
And worship the politicians
Even though they’re inept.
Forget about their manifestos
That they choose never to follow,
And all the promises they make
That turn out to be hollow.
I’ll appreciate that Covid
Is just the worst thing ever,
And destroying our economies
Was really so very clever.
I’ll believe in “the science”,
Pretend it really exists,
Instead of wanting to throw things,
Or slit my wrists!
I’ll pretend that CO2
Causes the planet to warm,
And that we’ll all be dead soon
If we fail to conform.
Believe that renewable energy
Is not all about money,
And claiming that it’s “green”
Is not all that funny.
Imagine that Extinction Rebellion
Is not really extreme,
The child Greta is not as ridiculous
As she might always seem.
Accept the BLM movement
Could be about race,
And demonstrations of subservience
Really are not a disgrace.
That the social media giants
Are not a dangerous breed,
And that my personal privacy
Is not something I need.
That being politically correct
Is a must at all times,
And not following the narrative
Is the worst of all crimes.
That our freedom speech
Has no right to be free,
And our thoughts need correcting
Quite radically ……..
Hold on for a minute,
Stop just where you are!
Being turned into ‘woke’
Will be one step too far.
By wearing the hat
Perhaps the cost is too high,
How can I meekly accept
Without asking why?

Happy 2021
May the ‘thoughts’ be with you.



A New Age

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” Lord Acton

Are fear and ignorance
The foundations for a new age?
Instead of enjoying our freedom
Would we rather live in a cage?
Economies destroyed,
Societies deranged,
For an illusion of safety
Our liberty exchanged.
Democracy obliterated,
Has taken centuries to achieve,
Crushed by the false gods
That we choose to believe,
Who have taken unlawful powers
That absolutely corrupt them;
But in this new age of fear
Where’s the courage to disrupt them?


I Am A Contrarian

I am a contrarian,
A skeptic through and through,
Don’t follow the narrative,
Like I’m told I must do.
I am my own person,
Not some left wing classification,
And I believe in free speech,
But not the Marxist interpretation.
I’ve retained my sense and reason,
Not been politically corrected,
And by the woke ideology
I’ve not been infected.
A critical thinker at heart,
When critical thoughts aren’t allowed,
Not in awe of the media,
By their brainwashing not cowed.
 Consider myself an empiricist,
Doesn’t mean I lack emotions,
I just don’t confuse them with facts,
Coming up with ridiculous notions.
An environmentalist as well,
In the true meaning of the word,
Not a climate change disciple,
Following a religion that’s absurd.
Not frightened by debate,
Don’t need to call people a name,
Don’t feel responsible for our past,
Not looking for someone to blame.
I used to be one of many,
Perhaps now one of the few,
Just shows what dumbing-down
And indoctrination can do.
Being a questioner and a thinker
Makes me a strange kind of man,
But I’ve no plans to change,
Proud to be a contrarian.  
TOOTG Copyright 2016-2020 01

The Garden at Stone Cottage

“Life begins the day you start a garden”
                                           Chinese Proverb

The garden at Stone Cottage
Is such a magical place,
It wraps around our home
Like a scarf around a face.
Despite the heat and the dry
And the wind, it still thrives,
As it demands our attention
And helps shape our lives;
A true reflection of us,
Of our efforts and care,
So generous in returning
All the love that we share,
Teaching us about nature,
Of its fascinating ways,
Watching our garden evolve,
Surely the most special of days.

IMG_20170703_092005

But there’s so much more to the garden
Than just the plants and the trees
Its insects attract the birds,
Its flowers draw the bees,
So the garden is never still,
Always movement for the eye,
Whether a breeze rippling through,
A visiting bird or butterfly,
Or a bee hard at work
As it moves from flower to flower,
Mesmerising us
For hour after hour;
A world within a world,
Where from stress we are free,
Our garden at Stone Cottage,
There’s no better place to be.

TOOTG Copyright 2016-2020 01

The Reading Room

Sometimes there’s the need to close all the doors,
The outside world’s nonsense, shut out, put on pause;
Settle down with a book in a comfortable chair,
And spend a hour or two just relaxing there. 

TPOTG Reading Room 02

In a favourite room, in a favourite house,
 Which good fortune allows me to call home,
Is where I escape and loose myself,
In a novel, or some historical tome.

The room, almost square, hushed by walls of thick stone,
Looks to the mountain that protects it so well,
 And its old well trodden, polished wood floor,
Must have many a tale it could tell.

Now shelves filled with books, pages full of words,
Sit in anticipation of their turn to be read.
And in my winged back chair I can often be found,
When I’ve swapped my garden for a good book instead.

Reference books nestle alongside those full of verse,
And novels, classic and modern, abound;
The history of the world is there to explore,
While biographies wait to be found.

A room filled with riches, of literary treasures,
 Some, their secrets have yet to be told,
And it’s there, with the books, that I immerse myself,
And let the magic around me unfold.


 

Pecan Tree

One of the joys of early winter is the taste of fresh pecan nuts…

A neighbour’s pecan tree
Hangs over the garden wall,
And each year I gather the nuts,
That in my garden fall.
But they’re not all for me,
That harvest hanging there,
As with the local hornbills,
The crop I always share;
And they do have an advantage,
Those hornbills, over me,
Being able to reach the pecans
Still hanging on the tree.
So while I patiently wait
For my pecan nuts to drop,
My clever feathered friends
Are able to browse and to shop.

TPOTG Pecan Nuts Frame 01

Some years there’s not so many,
If the pecan crop is small,
Then my black and white visitors
Leave so very few to fall.
But I don’t mind about that,
As their needs are more than mine,
And the few they always leave behind
Will simply suit me fine.
But this year was a bumper crop,
Pecan nuts are everywhere,
And so there have been plenty
For the birds and I to share.
Pecan butter, candied pecans,
What a treat I’ve got in store,
Freshly made from the pecan nuts,
From my neighbour’s tree next door.

TOOTG Copyright 2016-2020 01

They’re Watching Me – But Who’s Watching Them?

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who’s watching me, who should I call?
Asked the government, but they refused to discuss.
Won’t say who watches the watchers who are watching us?

They’re watching me,
But who’s watching them?
The endless government surveillance
It’s time to stem,
What’s private to me
IS private to me,
And it’s not what I want
Some government employee to see.

Will Scribe Surveilance 01

Conversations that I have
Why do they need to record?
Have they nothing better to do
Are they getting bored?
My e-mails and my texts
They also scan;
To take control my life,
Do they have a plan?

CCTV cameras watch me
Where ever I go;
Where ever I am
They seem desperate to know.
To help prevent crime,
Is the government’s claim,
But more police on the streets
Would achieve just the same.

So how do they process
Their information haul?
How do they catergorise my privacy
Through which they constantly trawl?
With all my private life stored
On some government file,
With my personal rights to freedom
How does that reconcile?

And all of this information,
Who controls how it’s used?
How do we know
It’s not being abused?
Perhaps it’s being collected
For some dubious intention,
That’s not on the list
That governments mention?

My personal freedom
No longer mine to enjoy,
As new methods to watch me
They continually employ.
It’s for national security,
That’s what they pretend,
Taking away the very rights
That they claim to defend;

Yet this desire to watch everyone,
To record everything,
Caused them to miss 9/11
And that terrorist ring.
If their fetish for spying
Had been less intense,
They would have been more effective
In that nation’s defence!

At the end of the day
Our apathy’s to blame,
We used to be fighters,
But now we are tame;
We’re just too accepting
We never demand why;
So when the government says jump,
All we can ask is “How high?”

 June 2015

TOOTG Copyright 2016-2020 01

From the Classroom – The Silencing of the Lambs

“Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think, but how to think. Today their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of ‘race, class and gender'”
Thomas Sowell

TPOTG Lambs SilencedGood morning my little lambs,
How are you all today?
Sit up and pay attention,
Please put your phones away.
Before we start our lesson,
Johnny won’t be coming back to school,
He has broken what is perhaps
Our most sacred golden rule.
He used the forbidden word “why”
In class yesterday,
And we all know that’s a word
We must never ever say.
So he’s being sent to a special school,
With those similarly infected,
And we send him our best wishes,
And hope he gets politically corrected.
Now back to our lesson, see I have written
“Free Speech”, there on the board,
And our lesson for today
Is why that should be ignored.
I’m here to teach you what to think,
All you’ll ever need to know,
So any unnecessary free speaking
Will help confusion flourish and grow,
And if we all become confused,
Well, that’s a very bad idea,
And that’s the reason why free speech
Is something to fear.
So there you are my little lambs,
Why your silence you must always keep,
Then you will all grow up to become
Nice, obedient little sheep.

TOOTG Copyright 2016-2020 01