About

Overview

STIMULANTS is an independent bookshop that thinks independently and keeps an interest and knowledge about what we stock. Unfortunately we live in "the world as it is now" with its accompanying  driving force of costs, prices and profits that have the effect of perverting human relationships but 'we' believe there's more to life than being "only in it for the money". If 'we' are able to help people break free from restricting thought processes that encourage us all to acquiesce then great. Maybe you'll want to look for answers as to how to transcend "the world as it is now", then all the better.

Longer statement

What you’ll find here on the whole are ideas and theories about how human beings shape and could shape the world around them.

None of us are born into the world in a vacuum. We are encouraged to identify with and uphold the supposed values of whatever particular ‘country’, wherever in the world we happen to live. The reality is somewhat different, in that all these countries have states and a state’s primary role is to try to protect, promote and secure economic interests within their borders, interests that are constrained within a wider global market economy where the profit motive has priority over human need.

At present we live in a world in which nation states are at war with each other over resources, with the vast accompanying destruction and loss of life. Much of the competition that companies are inevitably locked into in their quest to survive and prosper has and continues to have disastrous consequences for humans and the ecology of the planet that supports us.

Most of the world’s population spends its time engaged in employment divorced from its own desires and needs because in order to exist it must work for a wage to satisfy the economic interests of others.

Individual writers or organisations listed amongst these pages would be hard pushed to say that they have all the answers to a world geared to meeting the human needs of the planet as a whole. How could they when, what most of the writers contained within these pages who are calling for a fundamental/radical changes in the basis of how society is organised, believe that people should look to themselves and believe in themselves as the real basis for a transformation of society.

Many of us are encouraged to think that ‘politics’ is something outside of ourselves, uniquely the job of the elected ‘specialists’ called politicians – you get on with your job and they’ll get on with theirs. Political terms such as democracy, socialism, communism or anarchism are also frequently misused and so misrepresented which can easily have the effect of causing confusion and thereby preventing people from thinking about the type of politics that may potentially transform the world for the better.

Are we to believe that the former East Germany, referred to as the German Democratic Republic, was democratic just because it contained the word ‘democratic’ in its name?

What kind of a world do we live in where most of us are encouraged to have opinions within closely defined parameters not of our own choosing?

Cynics would have us believe that a radical transformation of society is beyond us humans. The more this acquiescent attitude prevails then of course the more it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We only have to look around ourselves to see that change is a constant feature of life itself. Despite the competitive battles that we may often observe, for example between companies, religions and nation states, we may also observe cooperative behaviour flourishing, such as when people cooperate freely because of a shared interest in something, such as an interest in art, computers, the countryside or the vicinity in which they live to more pronounced examples when people come together to help out at times of accidents, emergencies and disasters.

Human beings are so often viewed by themselves as being imbued by an uncaring and ultimately selfish ‘human nature’ when, so many of us have given time and money towards helping others.

The dismissive attitude is usually expressed as though “humans, others or ‘they’ are not capable of living in a different world”. A view which is incidentally voiced by many who would say that they themselves would be quite happy to exist in a world tailored to satisfying human needs. If the dismissive ‘they’ don’t care then it’s still a massive ‘us’ that are moved by the plight of others, or what has been called a part of ‘the human condition’.

We may be moved by our direct experiences, or those recounted or displayed in the form of disturbing images through the media, past and present. We can also be powerfully affected by representations of ‘the human condition’ reflected in art, film, literature, music, poetry or the theatre. What we choose to do with that information as a consequence of being exposed to it should surely be up to us?

Hope you find some value in looking within.

-- Stair