War Metal – A little history lesson

I guess maybe you might be surprised that we were so nervous, perhaps even paranoid about putting ourselves in the hands of another group. There are reasons behind it but they get a bit complex so I’ll try to explain a little and see if that helps. After the Big Blast knocked civilization into the grinder it all got a bit tense for a while. The survivors couldn’t quite get their heads around the idea that life had changed, and changed big time. You couldn’t just pop out to the shops anymore. If you got into trouble you couldn’t just call the cops. You had to fight for whatever you could find, and if you weren’t strong enough to fight you were in trouble. In some areas there were small groups of survivors who had come through it together and it pretty soon became clear that the old saying “There’s strength in numbers” had a ring of truth to it. It’s easier to keep yourself safe I guess if there is someone watching your back, someone with a vested interest in keeping you alive if for no other reason than so you can watch theirs.

These small groups started to act like late 21^st Century gangs, preying on the isolated, the loners, the weak, and I guess it’s part of human nature that some people like power. So leaders started to rise to the top, and you’ve got to bear in mind that it ain’t only the cream that floats to the top. In some of those groups the leader could be pretty nasty, pretty vicious and that made the group powerful. Smaller groups were taken over, dominated and forced to yield or die, and in that way over time factions started to develop. Now a fair few people could see that this was just going to drive us down the same road that had got us into this mess in the first place. These people took to the hills I guess, long time before my time but the stories still get told round the camp fire. Anyhow, I’m getting off track a little. So, these groups got pretty hardcore about protecting what they had and getting whatever they wanted off everyone else. They got organised and gave themselves names, usually related to wherever they were based.

The only ways to defend against these groups was to have a group of your own that was big enough to defend itself or to hide and scratch an existence on the margins of habitable land. Neither was ideal, but I guess of the two, banding together made more sense. The trick was to find a leader who wasn’t completely insane. Our little band had been forced together by one of these groups. A nasty bunch called the Red Maw. They took their name from the desert area around us, the red sand coloured by the vast amounts of iron oxide rusted from the building frames of the skyscrapers that had dominated the area before the end. It was a tough environment, but it was fairly resource rich if you knew where to look. The Red Maw had small camps through the area but their base was hidden away in a vast plateau area in the centre of the desert. When we first started to come together as a group we each had some knowledge of the Red Maw set up, and between us we were able to get a pretty clear idea of how they operated.

We knew that if we just looked after ourselves eventually we would be over-run so the only option was to strike first. We started out with scouting parties, pairs and small groups heading out across the sands to find the smaller Red Maw camps. We had to move fast, if we were spotted or worse, followed, we would have been in serious trouble. Our mission was not to engage these camps but just to scout them out, map them out, work out their strengths and vulnerabilities and report back to develop a plan to hit as many of them as we could and take out the communication lines to stop them alerting the larger bases deeper into Red Maw territory. Having gathered the information over a period of weeks we were in a position to organise a coordinated strike taking out a ring of small bases around the perimeter of the area. It was a tough ask. I met one of the old timers who had formed part of the assault group when I was a kid and he told a mean story of close quarter combat, hand to hand when the ammo ran out, but it was worth it. Each of those camps, it turned out, had work parties made up of enslaved survivors who had not had our group advantages but were more than happy to get a bit of payback once they realized that we had the upper hand. From what I understand it was the liberation of these slaves and prisoners that turned the tide in our favour and left us in a position to regroup and plan for the assault on the Red Maw heartland deep in the desert.

Of course we didn’t have it all our own way, but it showed us that we could progress, that we could look after ourselves, that we could make things different, even if we had to fight to make things happen. There is a name that comes back to us from that time, and although we don’t really do leaders anymore, if we did, this name would resonate with leadership through the ages. So much so that the name still survives in our current guide and mentor. Our very own Sirius can tell you a pretty good story about his Grandfather and the way he organised us and led us and how it was his strategy and understanding of tactics that was our saving grace. Maybe the old stories of powerful families had some validity. Who knows. All I know is that we owe a debt to Siruis’ forefathers, and we make sure that we look after him and keep him going. So, apart from getting distracted again, that gives you an idea of why we were nervous about joining up with this obviously stronger group. We had been looking after ourselves for a while now, and we had got pretty good at it, but maybe it was time to look to a brighter future. Who knew what was still out there to be found…..

The effects of stress on business decision making

With the current boom I new businesses and many people looking to start up businesses of their own in the current economic climate it thought it was about time that I highlighted something that I see time and time again. We all know that the banks are not that forthcoming in terms of business lending, and that the pots of grants and interest free loans from the Government and Europe have largely dried up, so many businesses are started with little or even no working capital at all. This causes one of the most detrimental situations it is possible to find within a business, the situation of desperation, and with desperation, stress.

Without working capital it is difficult to plan ahead, it is difficult to manage income and expenditure, to balance the books and to keep control of the balance sheet. This can lead to high pressure to generate cashflow into the business, and with that pressure it is often that case that incorrect decisions are made. These can take many forms but the most common in my experience are price cutting to the extent that goods and services are sold at a loss, not a successful long term strategy, allowing customer service to slip through inefficient organization of time, which again is not ideal and failing to follow the business plan as originally set in place.

This last point is critical since a well constructed business plan is crucial to any business, particularly a start up, but it is useless if it isn’t followed. Now, this does not necessarily mean slavish adherence to something if it isn’t working, but it does mean taking time to analyse the situation with a clear head rather than acting as the proverbial bull in a china shop and that is something that is incredibly difficult to do when under stress. Stress is a real problem if for no other reason than it prevents you thinking straight leaving you with a constant feeling of having to run just to stand still. From the point of view of a new business owner this can be significantly damaging to the business.

If you feel yourself under pressure in your business my best advise is to start by returning to your business plan and assessing whether you are sticking to it or not. Chances are that you won’t be, in which case you need to get back on track, but if you look and find that you are still sticking to it, you have to consider the possibility that your plan may be flawed. The key concept is that there is nothing wrong with being wrong, so long as you find out quickly enough and are big enough to admit it and do something about it. Part of the joy of running a business for the first time is the learning process that you will inevitable go through no matter what you have done before. Take time to enjoy learning rather than assuming everything will come naturally and stressing when it doesn’t.

Above all, when you feeling yourself losing control, that is the moment when you must, must wrestle it back if you are to succeed.

War Metal – Forging alliances

It was a simple question, but the implications went far deeper than any of us realized at the time. You have to bear in mind that after the Big Blast civilization had pretty much broken down to the extent that the remnants of the human race were living in isolated camps of maybe a couple of hundred people maximum with limited communication between camps and those camps at least fifty miles apart. It was only about fifty years ago that we finally managed to get the radios up and running and started to be able to communicate, and even then it was sporadic as each camp had learned to be pretty much self-sufficient and in the main distrustful of other groups. Hell, for a good while I reckon most camps though they were the last human beings on the planet! So you can imagine that the idea of forming an alliance with another camp was not one that we took lightly, but here we were asking the leader of a group that was obviously stronger than ours what we could do to help!

Lord Alexander looked around out control room, his steel eyes taking in the cracked computer monitors, the spaghetti cabling running to the old radio set, the stack of small arms piled up against one wall and said

“Have you got transport? You need to know that you are now the furthest Southern camp left. Everyone South of you and that’s twenty six camps has already gone and it looks like you’re next. We’ve got a similar problem further North but we’ve also got better facilities and one or two little bonuses that are going to be useful, but you’re going to have to get together everything you can and head north.”

“You mean leave everything that we have built up here?” Natasha asked, with what I’m pretty certain was more than a hint of sarcasm “When do you want us to be ready?”

Lord Alexander smiled, the first time I had seen him do so since his arrival and said “How soon can you be ready? I’ve seen a few of these Wyrm attacks now but this is the first time I’ve seen one defeated and I have no idea how long it will be before another one shows up so sooner the better”

Sirius pursed his lips and looked thoughtful for a moment before saying “We have six transport trucks and a handful of heavy troop carriers, we can get loaded up in six hours, fueled and ready to go. We’ve also go some seriously talented people here that I think will be useful to you.”

“Ok, that sounds like a good plan to me” said Alexander “Get yourselves together and I’ll give you the co-ordinates of our camp. It’s just over a hundred miles North and it’s quite a bit bigger than you are used to.”

With that he turned and left the Command Centre and we started to make the preparations. Orders were barked and basic belongings, supplies, food, water and fuel were loaded into the transport trucks piling them high. In the end it was more like eight hours but we got there and with barely a backwards glance we left our home for what we knew was almost certainly the last time. We didn’t know what our future held, only that if we stayed we had no future at all, and if the aerial drones were anything to go by, we should have a better chance with our new allies than we could possibly have alone. We would probably have been a little happier if we had known what we were heading towards but that would have to wait.

The journey passed pretty uneventfully. The land between camps was pretty desolate, large scale farming never having re-established itself due to the nature of the contamination of much of the soil, but scrub grass and low trees broke up the featureless landscape as the miles rolled by. We mostly sat in silence, crammed into the troop transports our meager belongings clutched on our laps. I saw a few people dozing, the efforts of the previous night finally forcing sleep onto them but in the main people just sat and stared, and as we travelled through the night most of us managed to catch a few zees and as the sun rose we could see in the distance the defensive walls and gates of a camp that was much larger than the one we had left and looked much more heavily defended. Only time would tell how it would affect us all.

Can anyone be a mentor?

There is a lot of discussion around the subject of mentoring. It is something of a hot topic in education and in a business setting and there are all sorts of training courses available to teach people how to be mentors. This suggests that it is something that anyone can do, but is this the case? I guess this is a similar argument to the question of whether teachers are born or made. For me this comes down to some fundamental points around what is actually involved in mentoring. I believe that in order to be an effective mentor it is essential to be able to understand and to empathise with your mentee. You need to be able to establish effective two way communication quickly and to be able to engage in an open dialogue not simply around the subject at hand but in broad terms. You need to have a fairly sound grasp of basic psychology and the way in which the mind can work, or more importantly not work effectively, and the potential blocks to growth and development in the mentee, and perhaps most importantly you have to be able to address the relationship between you and your mentee from a position of credibility. It is crucial that your mentee has confidence in you if they are to develop confidence in themselves.

This brings me onto the next set of questions. What is the role of the mentor? There are some core answers to this, although the exact nature of the role may vary somewhat depending on situation, but in the main a mentors role is to support and encourage growth and development in the mentee allowing them to express themselves appropriately in their setting, to provide advice and guidance on the systems and structures within the mentees environment to facilitate effective integration, and to provide a sense of security and confidence appropriate to their role. In order to achieve these goals, it becomes clear that the criteria laid about above in terms of the mentors abilities become crucial. It is my belief that the majority of the criteria can be taught to the majority of people, but is this the same as saying that anyone can be a mentor?

I am not so sure. If we take the example of someone who has a wealth of experience in a given job role attempting to mentor a junior staff member. They should, by dint of their position and experience have the credibility required to be an authority figure. They should also have the specific job skills required to be an effective teacher of those skills, but they may not innately have the ability to convey those skills, they may not be an effective teacher. Training can help here, but how much is debatable. Further they may not have the necessary empathy to understand the requirements of their specific mentee, or the psychological understanding to address barriers to learning. Again these can be trained but particularly in the case of empathy there is some evidence to suggest that this is difficult to instill if it is not a core part of the makeup of an individual. There has been some controversy of late over the need to train nurses as part of their education to be empathetic towards patients. This seems to me to be a nonsense, since if one is to go into nursing for any other reason than because one is drawn to a caring profession then I would consider it unlikely that the empathetic demands of the role, which are considerable, are unlikely to ever be met, with the consequence that we are now seeing patients mis-treated and neglected on hospital wards which to me is incredible.

So perhaps some people are better able to cope with the demands of being a mentor. I would argue that yes, anyone is capable of being a mentor, but in order to achieve success for the mentee, however that success is defined there is a requirement of quality on the part of the mentor, and that is far harder to train for, and I would suggest, far harder to monitor.

Sensory perception, extra or otherwise….

It is pretty much accepted now that the old model of us human beings having five senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell has been superseded by a more complete understanding which gives us something more like twenty senses allowing us to understand and analyse the World around us. These additional senses include things like the ability to perceive direction and motion, to perceive changes in air pressure and to detect electro-magnetic fields. This is not that surprising given that these senses have been acknowledged in other species for many years. What is interesting however is that it appears that one of the reasons they weren’t picked up in humans is that we are not ourselves aware of them as discrete senses. Let us look at one of these in particular. The ability to detect electro-magnetic fields of magneto-reception. It has been acknowledged that fish such as rays and sharks have an inbuilt capacity of magneto-reception through a structure within the flesh of the fish called the ampullae of Lorenzini, a mucus filled structure that makes use of Faradays law to detect changes in electro-magnetic fields in a way that is thought to be useful for hunting in low light conditions.

It has also been established in birds and some insects and a mechanism has been suggested for these animals using the earths magnetic field for navigation. Two methods have been suggested, the first being particles of magnetite embedded in the nasal bones of birds, and a light sensitive cryptochrome molecules found in the eyes of birds and insects that when activated by blue light for a pair of two radicals, the spin and correlation of which indicates the direction of magnetic force lines. It is interesting to note that there are suggestions that these same processes are at work in humans. So why focus on electr-magnetic perception? I would contend that there is a possibility that if it transpires that humans can perceive electro-magnetism then this could be at the core of what has previously been described as extra-sensory perception. Things like aura-viewing, telepathy, telekinesis and so on could have a rational explanation after all.

Let us posit that as part of the natural body processes the human body emits an electro-magnetic field. Why might this be the case? Well, we know that the nerve impulses that drive the body are electrical in nature even if the voltage is extraordinarily low. We also know that the activity of muscle groups can generate electrical signals and that muscle groups can be controlled by electrical impulses, it is the technology behind pacemakers and also the work being carried out on thought control for artificial limbs. Given that the human body generates electricity it makes sense that some of this may leak beyond the body in the form of an electro-magnetic field. Now let us posit that it were possible for someone to train their electro-receptor sense to increase their capacity to detect EM fields. Why would we suggest this? Again this is evidence based. We know that the primary senses can be trained. There is a lot of military research into sharpening snipers eyesight and hearing, and top food and drink connoisseurs are described as having a refined palate having trained themselves to detect subtle flavours that most people would miss. Similarly, highly trained musicians, composers and conductors can hear a single note played poorly or a single instrument out of tune within an orchestra more easily than someone who doesn’t have that training. So it does not seem an absurd assumption that it would be possible to enhance through training, a secondary sense like electro-reception.

This individual who had so trained themselves may be able to detect more consciously the EM fields around them, whether from people of objects and to understand them. They might exhibit the ability to predict storms or earthquakes, both known to have EM precursors. They may be able to detect objects or people when in complete darkness or blinded. They might, with sufficient training be able to interact with the EM fields of other people or objects and here we get into a very interesting area. Let us suppose that different though patterns gave rise to distinctive EM field changes. For example anger or threat may be expressed differently to calmness. Now let us suppose that someone trained to perceive EM fields was faced with some who was threatening violent behaviour. If they could perceive the changes in EM field in that person they would be able to guage how likely they were to be attacked and potentially when that attack was about to happen and respond accordingly. This has been demonstrated by highly experienced and trained martial artists and has been put down to subtle changes in the opponents posture of eye movements, but what if part of that process was in fact perceiveing changes to the EM field even if only subconciuosly?

Taking this a step further, is it possible that if you could perceive someones EM field and modify your own you could sycronise with them and directly interact with their field? This would allow for the possibility of telepathy since you could potentially read their thoughts in their EM field, and would also provide a potential mechanism for “psychic healing” since it would make sense that illness or injury would affect a persons EM field and that by being able to interact with that field someone trained in electro-reception could modify that field to bring say, pain relief, if not more complete healing.

Personally I am far from convinced but it makes an interesting mental exercise to think about the possibilities…..oh, and a link to a bit more info on electro-reception, just in case you think im making this stuff up ;)

A question regarding fate….

Can the concept of Fate as a guiding force that has our lives mapped out have a place within Pagan beliefs? Is Fate comparable to Crowleys, and be inference Gardeners concepts of “True Will”? Does Fate have a place within specific paths or as something that influences everyone whether they know it or not? Ok, so several questions regarding Fate, but hey, it’s a big subject. I guess the place to start will be my own answers to these questions, bearing in mind as with all of my random musings that this is only my opinion and should not be regarded as fact ;)

So, how do I feel about Fate as a concept? Honestly, I’m not sure. Bit of a cop out I know but there you go, not everything is cut and dried. I like the idea of completely free will, in that I am free to make my own decisions, and to take the consequences of those decisions, good and bad in the knowledge that I am determining my own future. Having made this however I also like the idea that there is a thread to my life and my interactions, and that the decisions I make have far reaching implications not just for me but for everyone I interact with, even if those interactions are only incredibly slight. The point being that I feel comfortable that I am free to make whatever decisions I want from a position whereby I am aware that ever decision has implications and that there is a concept of ”Future” which is conditional on the decisions I make but has a framework within which those decisions are made.

My slight reservation is that this strikes me as quite similar to the Christian concept that God has a purpose for each individual but that each individual is free to submit to that purpose of not and to accept the consequences of those decisions. God in this case taking the place of Fate perhaps? So is my concept of Fate a hold-over from my Christian upbringing or does it apply within my Pagan beliefs? For me it feels like it is a core part of my beliefs. My interactions with the natural World around me and with the creatures, human and non-human within it are the thread along which I am travelling past to future, and there are choices that I can make that will move me closer to or further from that thread, and I am free to choose which I do. However where Fate comes into it is in the sense that the closer I remain to that thread the more interesting my life will be. I see interesting as a good thing, just for clarity.

So, I consider Fate to be a major part of my Paganism, but where does this Fate come from? Is there a guiding force that lays my thread out at birth and severs it at death? I’m not so sure about this. I certainly don’t see it as something my Gods do. I am, by inclination Deistic, but my interaction with my Gods has suggested that they are not unduly interested in the decisions I make beyond whether I am being true to them or not. They have their own existence, and for me, their own Fate. Fate is something separate and beyond deity for me. It is more a sense of a Universal concept of Fate which lays the threads for the complete network of the Universe from start to finish of which my little thread is just a tiny part.

My understanding of how this fits into wider concepts of Paganism is that within some of the Pagan paths there is a clear concept of Fate as a directive force. Within Heathenry there is the concept of the Wyrd, a skein or fabric that maps out life paths for everything. Within Wicca there is the concept of being true to your own will, and here there is a pretty clear link to Crowleys idea of “True Will” being something which we are not instinctively aware of but that we have to discover through ritual practice and being separate from our own petty wants and desires. Both concepts suggest, for me, that this idea of true will is linked to an idea that there is a higher purpose to our lives which in turn suggests that to fulfill that purpose we must embark upon a specific journey. Within Shamanism there is a concept that there is communication with the spirits of ancestors and place and that these spirits have a clearer picture of the future and the past and act as guides. All of these feel to me to be reasonable matches for an idea of Fate as suggested earlier so I would say that it is possible to establish a link between concepts of Fate and specific ideas within Pagan paths.

Just musings…..

War Metal – After the Wyrm

I watched as our rag-tag forces surrounded the body of the Wyrm, their cries of victory echoing across the camps central square. The aerial drones that had come to our aid circled high overhead as the lead Cerberus unit left the formation and began to descend towards the flat ground outside the camp. I headed towards the gate, and as I covered the distance I was aware that I wasn’t the only one who was going out to meet our saviours. Natasha, Anastasia and even Sirius were heading the same way along with a couple of hundred of our own defenders. As the Cerberus unit landed it was immediately surrounded by the cheering crowd and I had to fight my way through to the front, breaking clear just as the side door slide open revealing the tall broad figure of Lord Alexander himself, a stern look on his face as he looked over our camp, his eyes taking in every detail as he analysed our resources. He didn’t look impressed.

I grabbed Natashas arm as we moved towards the craft and whispered urgently

“We need to find out all we can about the resources further North”

“Leave it to Sirius” she replied “I’ve already spoken to him about it. We’ve been monitoring some interesting radio chatter for the last month and I think he has a plan to form an alliance.”

“Well I hope so, we were lucky today but how long can we be lucky for?”

We walked forward together as Lord Alexander descended from the Cerberus, his physical presence impressive even at a distance. Sirius and Anastasia beat us to him by a few seconds and were already in conversation when we got there, their tones hushed, barely audible over the hubbub of the crowd but it seemed that the conversation was going the right way. I could just hear Sirius starting to ask about what had been happening at other camps, and how contact between camps was going. We started to move back towards the camp, the crowd coming with us as we walked back towards the Command Centre. Once inside the real work began.

It transpired that the camps up country had already started to forge links and alliances between each other, sharing information and resources, backing each other up against outside threats and beginning to rebuilt the defensive technology that we had all lost. So far the Northern camps had not been hit by Wyrms confirming our own suspicions that they were coming up from the South, but we got an understanding of why his Lordships forces had re-engineered drones as his next piece of information came as a complete shock.

“We may not be having your Wyrm problem, but there is something else that we have been seeing that is causing us just as much of a headache”

Sirius looked alarmed as Lord Alexander continued

“We’ve been having what we thought were meteor showers for about the last three months coming out of the polar North skies. We didn’t give them much thought at first but about two weeks after the first shower a base about a hundred miles from where the meteors feel suddenly stopped communicating. We sent out a scout party and they found the camp completely destroyed. It was a week after that that we were hit for the first time”

“What happened” Sirius asked

“We were attacked from the North West by a group of flying beasts blasting our camp with fireballs. We managed to hold them off and when we analysed the remnants of some of the creatures that we shot down we found that their chemical profile wasn’t like anything that we had seen before. The only match we found was with the chemical composition of the meteorites that had fallen. We can only assume that these meteorites are transport systems of some kind, something like eggs, from which these creatures hatch. Once they have hatched they swarm up and attack the nearest camp, destroying everything they can. We have called the Hatchling Swarms…..”

There was shocked silence for a moment then everyone started shouting at once until Anastasia cut through the questions with one of her own

“How can we help?”