Muslims
It all seems a bit strange to me that they all believe they are right and everybody else is wrong and that god demands all this weird garb and behaviour.
Poetry – Solstice 2 – Our ancestors used to hold ceremonies to celebrate this. Mine’s just a little late.
Poetry – Solstice 2 – Our ancestors used to hold ceremonies to celebrate this.
We’re tried worshipping most things. The sun makes more sense that most. We live within its atmosphere and it gives us the light and heat that gives us life.
The Green Man and the sun gods Helios, Ra, Kehpri, Atum, Inti, Lugh, Hepa, Garuda, Huitzilopocthli, Apollo, Surya, Sol, Sol Invictus, Shemesh, Sunnya, and a host more, were all widely worshipped.
The longest and shortest days are good reasons for having a great festival and celebration. Nature is what supports us. We should respect it and celebrate its bounty.
I wrote this poem after seeing Nazca Nine on the Summer Solstice. It was a great gig. They were definitely waxing lyrical and many of the monarchs of yore were thought to be incarnations of Sun Gods.
Then there’s the Moon. It’s been a long time since we walked on it. I think some ancient cultures would have shuddered at the very thought.
Solstices are like a rebirth. I like the idea.
Solstice 2
Waxing on the lyrical
Beneath the sacred sun
Getting quite satirical
When God and Queen are one
Verging on the mystical
Beneath the sister moon
Leaning metaphysical
Hope we get there soon
Nineteen Nazca nine
Is looming from the dawn
Me and thee and thine
Are going to be reborn
Opher 31.12.98
Automation – Good or Evil?
Automation – Good or Evil?
It seems to me that every innovation that comes along heralds in a new age of possibility and a new age of problems.
Just like the start of the industrial revolution, which spawned the Luddites of yore, these developments threaten existing jobs and ways of life. They are usually seen as a bad thing but gradually we adjust to them. The old ways never survive. Once the new age comes in the old is shunted out.
We saw this with the new machines of the industrial age that threw people out of work and ripped apart communities that had existed for centuries. No longer were masses of labour required to farm the land; machines could do the work more efficiently. The workers poured into the cities and ended up slaves to machines in the factories. Trains, trams, cars, diesel engine ships and planes replaced the horse and cart and old wooden clippers. The world changed.
We’ve recently seen it with IT which was meant to lessen our load.
We are now seeing it again with globalization and automation. We are seeing it with the death of the old industries of coal, steel, oil and dirty power production.
We no longer need a huge workforce. Robots are more efficient and productive. The profits are greater.
So is that a good thing or a bad thing?
To me that depends on how it is done.
If the workforce is simply dumped and the profits siphoned off into the pockets of a wealthy elite then it is terrible.
If the profits are used for the good of society it could be wonderful. The workforce could be retrained to do all those vital jobs that cannot be carried out by robots – nursing, medicine, teaching, social care, plumbing, electricians, IT technicians – everyone could have a three day week on the same pay which could give them a better quality of life.
To me we can either embrace the changes and demand that the wealth is used wisely for a better quality life or we can fight it and lose – and see the rich and wealthy walk off with the spoils while everyone else is thrown on the scrapheap.
What do you think?
Is there a god?
Is there a god?
Let us follow this back to see the logic of it. I don’t believe in god but let’s make that assumption.
In the beginning was god.
Now we can say there was no beginning and god was always there.
Or we can say that god had a beginning.
If god had a beginning how was he formed and where did he come from?
If god was always there where was he? In the midst of nothing? What as? A discorporate mind?
Now if god was always there living in his kingdom – what kingdom? Where did that come from? Was it created by god? What was there before he created the kingdom? Did it always exist? Who created it?
Then god created the entire universe out of nothing.
Why?
He created the entire universe for the benefit of tiny conscious being that he created on a tiny planet that he placed in an insignificant galaxy. Why?
Now the standard answer is that we cannot understand the unfathomable wonder of god and his plan.
Why go to all the bother?
You see once you start delving and thinking about it none of this is coherent or making any sense.
All we are told is don’t bother your head. It is faith not logic. God knows what he is doing. It’s beyond human comprehension.
Science traces the universe back to a singularity from which everything emerged – all energy, matter, time and space. They call it the Big Bang.
It makes little sense in terms of my comprehension. It is awesome. It has no purpose. But then why should it?
At least it does not saddle us with false answers.
I like questions.
I am not so keen on answers but I like thinking.
So what is the evidence for god?
Well we have a bunch of medieval texts describing miracles and people who have purportedly talked to god while alone up mountains, in wildernesses or in caves.
Can I give these any credence? No. They are unvalidated.
There is a wondrous universe of unbelievable proportion and complexity that people cite as evidence of god’s work.
Is it evidence? No. It exists and we do not know how but that does not mean that it was created by a supernatural being. It is wondrous but that does not mean it was purposefully created.
We have our consciousness. That is indeed incredible but does it mean that we are created in god’s image. No. It means we have an incredible consciousness that we don’t yet understand.
Everything has a beginning end and purpose. That means god has a purpose for us. Evidence for god? No. Just a very human way of looking at things. That’s how we see it. Why should everything have a beginning, an end or purpose. It just is.
God rescues people in need. Is that evidence? No. Some people get lucky. The gunman who killed twenty six people in the church the other day killed babies. Why didn’t god intervene then? No I’ve have seen no signs of intervention just luck.
People have supernatural experiences. Evidence? Not for me. Things happen to people that they can’t explain. There is a lot we can’t explain. Human psychology is complex. Most of our cerebral operations are subliminal. There is much still to be discovered. Just because we can’t explain something doesn’t automatically mean it is supernatural.
I see no evidence for god.
It seems to me that the concept of god or gods was created to explain the things we don’t understand – the universe, life, consciousness, and death – to give a purpose to life, to comfort us with the prospect of the inevitability of death, to give us a promise of something better sometime in the future where everything will be alright, to give us a promise that the nasty ones will get their comeuppance. It is psychologically satisfying. It is comforting. It explains things. It’s a nice story. But is it true?
It does not explain anything for me. I see no evidence. I do not believe that replacing one set of unknowables with a bigger set of unknowables explains anything.
Today the Clocks went back!!
Today the Clocks went back!!
What an absolute farce. I now don’t quite know what the hell the time is. Every time I look at a clock I have to ask myself if it has automatically updated itself or not. Some do and some don’t. I have to go around in the same muddled state that the country was in when we went decimal. Some measurements are in old and some new – some in pounds and ounces and some in kilos, some in old pounds shillings and pence and some in newfangled pence. So what is the time in real time? Did we go forward or back? Do I take an hour off or do I add it on? And how does that now line up with other countries?
Supposedly I got an hour extra sleep. Not that I noticed. I woke up and checked the clock and my mind was instantly doing calculations and asking questions that brought it straight out of my pleasant dreamy state into stark uncertainty. Do I get up? Is it early or late? How can I be sure? Has this clock automatically updated or not? What is the real time?
Of course, once more they have changed the clocks at the beginning of half term so that the benefits of that extra hour will have worn off by the time school comes around. Instead of all those kids, parents and teachers having an extra hour in bed to make them feel cheery at the beginning of a new week, by the time the school rat-run comes about they will all have adjusted and will receive no benefit.
Why do we do this to our body clock? It is nuts!
Somewhere in the middle of our heads our little pineal gland is happily plodding along, drowsily pumping out its melatonin at the right times to makes us sleepy or awake, then – what the fuck??? It’s blown right out of the water. Everything is an hour different. We’re no longer in tune with the daylight or our body rhythms – all of those lackadaisical routines are blown to bits. We’re fighting our natural cycle to do things at the wrong time. Our internal chemistry is disrupted. Our poor pineal gland, which doesn’t have the benefit of logic and knows nothing about the poor Scottish farmers, has no understanding of how dark it gets in winter in the Highlands, or all those poor cattle who need feeding in the gloaming, is suddenly thrown into complete confusion.
It will recover. But it takes time. Until then we will function at less than optimum.
Jet lag is an unfortunate downside of travel. We don’t like it and would rather it didn’t happen but we have to put up with the crap way it makes us feel, and operating below par for a few days, because we want to see the wonders of the world. But to put ourselves through all this confusion and biological disruption when we have no real need seems daft.
I have never understood the argument. I know that in winter the daylight hours in the Northern regions is limited and it is dark in the morning and farmers need as much daylight as they can get. But altering the bloody clocks doesn’t give them any extra hours of light and the flaming cows can’t tell the time. It doesn’t matter to them what bloody o’clock you call it. Their biology doesn’t alter.
Then there are the schools – we don’t want little Hamish and Flora going to school in the dark – so why don’t we simply start Scottish schools an hour later instead of buggering up everyone’s biological clocks in the whole sodding UK?
I hate it. When these clocks change that is the start of that psychological misery – winter is on its way. We are now rapidly heading for the gloom and the cold, dank, dreary days of winter. The warmth is over. It’s depressing. I could do without it being dramatically spelt out.
Then to add fuel to the flames, next spring, when the days are drawing out, the weather is picking up, warmth and brightness is returning to the land, and everything is renewing, green and full of hope, the bloody government steals a sodding hour off you in the middle of the night and throws a spanner in the works!
So isn’t it time (whatever flaming hour it might be?) to put a stop to this stupidity and leave the bloody clocks alone?
Happiness
Happiness
Epicurus was on to something when he said that happiness was extremely difficult to achieve.
He said that material possessions won’t make us happy for long.
The standard belief is that pleasure is the absence of pain and the presence of good feelings. But Epicurus pointed out that all pleasures are ephemeral. Our lives are full of cravings. We buy something, achieve something, gain promotion, eat something, drink something, have sex and it makes us feel good. We imagine that if we only had those things, that life, those looks, we would be happy. But that sensation of feeling good rapidly goes and we need another fix. Not only that but we need something bigger and better to create the same level of thrill. Each new experience is not as pleasurable as the previous. We have to up the ante. Too much of the nicest thing eventually becomes boring. We have to keep doing something more just to get the same level of buzz.
Ultimately the pursuit of pleasure leaves us miserable.
We can go out on mad drink and drug sprees, indulge in orgies, earn fortunes, purchase yachts and penthouses, have cosmetic surgery, buy the most expensive jewelry and clothes and end up depressed.
There is more pleasure and happiness to be found in friendship, love and creativity than can ever be bought or possessed.
GNP has had its day – It is time for GNH!!
We are not here to serve the state; it is here to serve us!!
Instead of judging a country by its material production we should be judging it by how happy it makes its population. All countries should ditch GNP for GNH – Gross National Happiness!!
Schools should not be turning out mindless numbers equipped only to fill economic or military roles in society. Schools should turn out individuals equipped to live happy fulfilled lives!!
In Singapore each individual produces, on average, $56,000 per person.
In Costa Rica they only produce a measly $14,000.
But Costa Ricans record far higher levels of happiness!!
So do you want to be part of a hard-working productive country making the state richer or a happy society making the people happier?
I think we may have got our priorities wrong! I say let’s change from focussing on GNP to focussing on GNH!!
Vote today for happiness!!!
Youth Culture – A label that no longer makes sense.
Youth rebels against authority. We have always known that. Way back in history it was the young apprentices, renowned for their drunkenness, sexual exploits and brawling, who did not conform to the standards of the day.
In the ‘modern’ era we had the advent of ‘Youth Culture’.
In the early fifties it was the Jazz-laden bohemianism of the Beat culture where Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and others set out a vision of wild excitement, sex, marijuana, crazy journeys and Zen that was an anathema to the apple pie and ice-cream of the suburban American Dream.
In the later fifties it was the visceral beat of Rock ‘n’ Roll that tapped into the hormone stew of the young, full of sexual energy and running on hot-rods and danger and a real threat to the staid older generation who did their best to shut it down as primitive and a bad influence on the young.
Then in the sixties it was the Hippies who took the Beat philosophy and acidified it into psychedelic protest against war and the capitalist establishment; who preached hedonism and a simpler way of life based on spirituality, friendship and nature.
In the seventies it was Punk that harnessed the anger of Youth at the future that society had mapped out for them. Theirs was a fury aimed at the failed Hippie dream as much as a society that had thrown them on the scrapheap. Bored and destructive, anarchic and out to shock, Punk set out to oppose.
After that we had many cultures that have come and gone – the neoromantics, grunge, heavy-metal, goth and the like – all with their dress-code and attitudes.
It was all labelled Youth Culture. But was it? What typified these cultures was nonconformity with the aims of the mainstream establishment, a desire to break away from the prescribed path set out for you by society and an alternative lifestyle.
In Britain in the 1950s there was a history of conformity. Life had a pattern. For a boy you wore shorts up until fourteen and then there was a rite of passage as you went into long trousers and adopted the same appearance as your father. Likewise girls took on the same appearance, hairstyle, make-up and clothing as their mothers. Looking at film in the fifties it is remarkable to see everyone so stereotyped. The pattern was laid down not only in appearance but also in attitudes. For men it was work and the pub and for women it was housework and babies.
Following the Second World War there was a move by young people to break away from the strictures of society. They wanted colour, meaning, excitement and more. Their music reflected it.
It was certainly a youth rebellion but was it really youth at all?
Now as the rebels reach old age many still cling to that same rebellion and the values that went with it. It has matured. There is a distrust of the establishment and the easy trap of quiet, comfortable suburban living. Many hanker after a lifestyle that is more meaningful, creative and exciting than that of the generations that preceded them.
Was it ever really a Youth Culture at all or more general than that? Was it more of a rejection of the empty consumerism, the hypocrisy and defunct values of the society we are trapped in?
Are the Beats, Hippies, Punks and Goths, now in their 50s, 60s and 70s, still making a valid statement of disaffection? Do these alternative lifestyles highlight the failings of a staid, exploitative way of life? Or are they merely stereotyped markets for society to fleece as adults desperately cling to the outmoded excitement of their youth?
Is ‘Youth Culture’ a disparaging term to enable the hoi polloi to write off dissatisfaction with this empty consumerist lifestyle of runaway capitalism?
What we need is a new, positive zeitgeist!
Every age has a prevailing zeitgeist. I believe it is created by the conglomerate mindset of the people and we all swim in its flood.
The sixties was a time of deep distrust of the establishment and its war machine. The counter culture set about leaving the breadheads to one side and producing a more spiritual community based on sharing, harmony and love. It was a time of great optimism, fun and happiness. It was great for a while until everyone woke up to find they were merely being ripped off and exploited in a different way and that the war machine and environmental destroying machine were still churning away.
This present zeitgeist has been born out of despair at austerity, runaway capitalism, inequality, hopelessness, joblessness, terrorism, mass migration, low wages, frustration, fear and helplessness. People have lost all faith in the establishment but are turning to extreme politics to vent their frustrations. They see that we are definitely not all in it together and the politicians are not making a jot of difference; they are pawns in the game. The right-wing and fascists, with their black and white rhetoric, easy answers, fear induction, racism and xenophobia, offer up easy solutions. What everyone wants is to believe in easy solutions.
I think the zeitgeist is one of fear, despair and a need to change. It’s the mass psychology of the age. The right-wing are exploiting it. It is what they feed off. In many wayus there are analogies to be drawn with the 1930s.
Hence we have the rise of right-wing politics, the Tea Party, UKIP, Trump and Brexit. On the continent the ultra-right parties are gaining ground big time.
I believe this needs opposing in every way possible. There are no easy answers. Belligerence and war do not solve problems. Isolationism is in nobody’s interest. Racism and xenophobia create problems.
The future is global cooperation, global laws, global rights, global enforcement of laws. The imperative is the protection of the planet.
We need to jettison the mad capitalist system with its mantra of growth and profit, which is destroying the planet and creating mass inequality and war. Greed is not the answer. Selfishness is not a solution. Compassion, empathy and love are much better.
There are better ways for us to live on this planet. For the sake of nature and our great grandchildren we need to create a different zeitgeist.
The Curse of Human Nature
Whenever anyone comes up with an idealistic vision to put an end to war, prevent the destruction of nature, solve the overpopulation crisis, or put into place a socialist government that would create fairness and equality, we are always told – ‘great idea but it can’t happen because of human nature’.
What is this curse of human nature?
It seems that whenever anyone tries to do something good someone comes along to undermine it. They either selfishly exploit people or do something destructive.
This human nature is the side of us that likes inflicting pain and being cruel, greedy and selfish. It is the bullying side; the violent, brutal side.
Over the centuries religions have warned against this curse of human nature. They have set out rules and commandments and followed them up with humungous threats of eternal damnation. But that hasn’t worked. What with paedophile priests and greed and avarice rampant in society it obvious that people pay lip service at best.
Yet there is another side to human nature. There is the good caring side, the compassion and empathy, tolerance, love and responsibility. People are capable of the most altruistic acts. They give up their lives to care for others and that even extends to nature – people protect and care for the plants and animals. That is the good side.
So is the curse of human nature the fact that a minority of us are always, selfish, cruel and exploitative? Or are all of us like that to an extent?
Can nothing be done about the bad side of our nature?
Many say no – it is intrinsic in our genes and we cannot change.
I say they are wrong and that history proves me right, we are improving. History is full of the grossest deeds. In modern times we still do a lot of mean and nasty things but I would contend not on the scale of past centuries.
So what is to be done given our human nature? Do we merely say that we are beyond hope? Do we say that there will always be poverty, inequality, racism, destruction and cruelty and there is nothing we can do about it? It is in our genes. The powerful will exploit the weak. That is just the way it is.
Or do we use the power of our knowledge of psychology and education to nurture the good side of our nature and eradicate the bad?