The Relious Belief and its shortcomings

 

Subject: Religious Belief and it’s shortcomings





Is religious belief nothing more than a comfort blanket to human beings, invented to ward off the fear of the shadow on the cave wall, or was it a socialising instrument created by people to co-opt others into leading a way of life which could be gainfully used by society at large.

The problem with secular thought is its individuality.  Each person has their own agenda and in this individuality there is no common binding agent to compare with religion.

From smoke and mirror storytelling to the soothing parables, there is also the sowing of fear in equal proportion to love alongside the blinding light revelation and the mystical creation of god and his prophetic teaching, told by people who subsequently took on the mantle of a saint.

People are susceptible to fraud in all kinds of way. Examples are the people who gather around Donald Trump, to the telephone call from someone purporting to be from your bank encouraging the transfer of money and forever eroding the trust in institutions at large and you are encouraged from having rational thought into a belief system in which you are convinced only you will gain. It’s mankind’s Achilles Foot, their weakness to envisage gain as a principle to live by.

Religion, at its root, also has reward as its motive.  Imagine its success if  debauchery were its modus operandi but instead, we are subjected to abstinence in all but faith.

There’s only room for a quick fix adrenaline rush of prophesy, there are no pleasantries, only the ‘surety of being told’.

Mankind’s obsession with knowing and understanding has many benefits but in the sphere of death it has no answers only the supernatural rules, from ghosts to the image of an old man in the sky defining how our lives should be lived. It’s a comedy and like the film Ghost Busters, it depends on a hero’s rescue.

We are nothing more than a momentary blip, a footprint in the sand waiting to be swept away by the next wave. Our passing is located only in the mind of others who themselves are but a temporary abstract. Like the ant or a worm, we fulfil no great purpose but have evolved to think we do. Perhaps even the worm, if asked would profess some use, some reason for having existed and it’s at the moment of death, when we transform from the known to the unknown that reasoning gives way to the emergence of gods and mythical creatures to answer that question, why do we exist.

But does there have to be a purpose, can’t it be evolutionary chance, not provenance. The richness of our experience on earth is enough to fill many volumes without seeking meaning or continuance in an after-life. The religious thought that life is a ledger of good and bad is chilling enough and that one day there will there will be reckoning with punishment metered out, this can only be the thought of a sadist.

We now have the comfort of having discovered Black Holes, the very antithesis to life after death and our clinging on in some form of how we picture ourself since in a Black Hole knowledge is lost completely and our reasoning has no purpose once inside. It’s a principle of physics, that matter can only be exchanged into something else and not eradicated but the situation within the Black Hole is unique since the process of a Black Hole is the absorption of mass in all its forms and render it to nothing. This means everything is reduced to only random effect and that the laws of physics disintegrate. Where does this leave our mind and the information it contains. It’s certainly not the territory of the psychic or the bone thrower.

The phenomenon of the Black Hole speaks of another destiny and not the fantasy world of drifting around in a universal graveyard.

The rich teaching the poor to be poor

 Subject: The rich teaching the poor to be poor.



The rich teaching the poor to be poor. This in essence is the future for many as the glory days of equality and democratisation give way to nationalism, neo-capitalism and diminishing returns for the poor.

The upliftment of the uneducated to become educated,of the under nourished to be properly nourished, of the people to be securely housed and protected by laws which covered all citizens equally. These were the aims of the 1947 Labour government under Clement Attlee and amazingly they progressed a long way down that path but the insidious pressure of the rich and their influential Market forces has chipped way since practicing a devious divide and rule policy with an outrageous, disingenuous, press to fill the minds of people with rubbish and culminating in the rise of a populist showman, Boris Johnson who manipulated Brexit through Parliament much to his everlasting shame.

The tragedy is that we have to put so much faith in the democratic system which is clearly undemocratic when it comes to using the ‘First Past the Post’ method of eliciting a winner which deviates from a ballot for the total number of votes in the country , each persons vote counting the same value instead by pooling the votes into regional, city and rural weighting, it relies on selected boundaries to encompass the voter. A small rural pool of voters elects its parliamentary representative and is equal to a much larger constituency, in a city where many thousand make up the ballot for their MP.

We in fact practice a country wide party voting system which elects a minority to rule over the majority. Even given the crushing defeat inflicted by the Conservative Party over their main opposition the Labour Party in the 2019 election, the Conservatives only held 43% of the countries vote but gained an extra 48 seats in Parliament with a tiny 1.2% increase in the vote share.

All votes are clearly not of the same value when it comes to winning a seat.

For instance it took the SNP 28,000 votes to win a parliamentary seat whilst it took 800,000 votes for the Green Party to win one. 600,000 votes for the Brexit Party didn’t win them one seat and Labour had to gain 50,000 votes to win a seat whilst the Tory’s elected an MP on only 38,000 votes. This is clearly not equitable democracy.

Only marginal seats matter, the so called swing seats and as a result parties and politicians concentrate on these marginal seats sometimes offering all kinds of enticements, ie more public spending (our version of pork-barrel politics much favoured in the USA). In the First Past the Post system each person is represented by an MP but for the majority of people, that MP doesn’t represent their views.

This severing the link between a ruling party and the populous demolishes the understanding people have when encouraged to vote and their scepticism towards politics and politicians stems from this anomaly in representation and is at the heart of our lack of faith in the political system.

Proportional Representation where a wider spectrum of candidates and political opinion is on offer on the ballot paper and you have to rate them first preference, second preference, third preference and so on which then provides an amalgam of choices from each voter which elicit a more rounded view of he or she’s political persuasion. In this method its  more likely this quartet of political view points represents a view across the nation from which the extremes are removed and a more reasonable voice can be heard in parliamentary debate as the MP raising issues and voting for an amendments is likely to include many of your issues and is closer to being judged democratically more representative.  

The current farce where an unpopular party with increasingly unpopular policies simply railroads the vote through the voting lobby by the use of the parliamentary whip (another antidemocratic tactic). Is it any wonder we feel increasingly powerless.

The disadvantage for the main parties is the diminution of their power  as they have to seek consensus with other political views. This watering down of power is seen by some as an emasculation of power but we have seen enough over the last decade of the misuse of power by an increasingly unrepresentative government which has driven us ever closer to bankruptcy.

But where do you really come from

 Subject: But where do you really come from.





Is our presence here on earth a moment when we can contribute to some ideal we have in our head of the way we think things should be or is it merely  a moment to go with the flow with what ever the current flow is.

My writings have a theme, they are conciliatory  yet demand better, they see a way of attending to societies needs and not getting lost in our individuality. The needs of the flock, not the recalcitrant ewe, the moderation of ‘individual rights’ for the rights of the group and the groups recognition of its group and their specific values.

I don’t equate all mankind as being of the same group. In someways we are almost the same with small genetic variances but in a more profound way, our lived experience makes us different. The modern intolerance for someone who doesn’t believe what you believe might not be modern but rather a historical characteristic, a sort of collar we wear to indicate where we come from. 

The recent rumpus over an old lady in the royal household brought down and kicked out of what she conceived as her home and her clan by someone who took offence to being asked “where do you come from” highlights a strong racial throw back from ‘people of colour’ to those who supposedly have no colour. This is becoming the unhelpful dividing line in this country as women of colour line up, on popular phone in m shows to show their support ‘their sisters’ against the ‘white sister’ of other tribe. 

The support for the 87 year old ‘Lady in Waiting’ and the contrasting vitriol against her seems to define us as brickbats fly based on presumptions of what Lady Susan Hussey meant when she said “but where do you come from”.  It used to be a reasonable question, one of even paternal interest for someone so far away from home, a method of opening a line of questioning to establish your interest in them. If I meet a fellow Yorkshireman I inevitably ask “which part of Yorkshire” is he from to find if we have a common experience of the locality, if I chat to a Polish guy or a Lithuanian I ask lots of questions about where he lived and what it was like to live there but this fragile, almost febrile society here in the UK and protests its sense of the ownership of being the underdog by unnecessary hostility. Of course it doesn’t own being thought the underdog since there are thousands of poor white people who are chastised for being poor, they even make television programs about them in ways they wouldn’t about non- white people.

Ngozi Fulani (Marline Headley) the West African lady who was upset at not being recognised as British, rushed home to her Twitter Account to express how upset she had been about the encounter and within a day Lady Hussey, after 60 years of loyal service, was out on the street. 

This sense of being British or English never arose in any dealings I had. Yes “I’m from England” was as far as it got, I maybe specified Yorkshire but that was it and although there were instances where the group around we’re capable of being hostile to such a claim, such as watching rugby at Loftus Versveld in Pretoria, or in the Sydney cricket ground where the term ‘Pommy Bastard’ was used to differentiate me from the other ‘bastards’ around me.

The claim of being made to feel I was not one of them only cemented my own feeling towards the nationality I represented  and it seems that Fulani doesn’t feel easy to be recognised for having roots through her parents in her native Barbados. That term native is also decried these days as we seem to shrink from our roots. The pride of being Barbadian is lost in and amongst the commonwealth of people born in London which happens to be in England. Does she also reject the culture of her parents, their food, their probably their propensity to attend church. Does she not feel relaxed when amongst the Barbadian people listening to their slang and laughter. Does she really feel more at home amongst the cosmopolitan tide of people in Bermondsey, Poplar or Walthamstow where culture is a rag tag of leftovers. Or is it perhaps her claim as CEO of Sistah Space a charity organisation to support African and Caribbean women who have suffered abuse paints a picture of the cause she supports surrounded by the abusers. She’s worth $1.000.000 and having dressed in African tribal dress to a gathering at Buckingham Palace is it any wonder she was asked “where are you from”.

This seems to me a divisive piece of propaganda.

The seasons change

 

Subject: The seasons change





As the season changes there’s a nip in the air, the trees loose their leaves and the garden takes on a more bedraggled look. The sight of a hedgehog brought much excitement yesterday as my next door neighbour and I discussed the frogs her cats carry live and unhurt indoors. Frogs and hedgehogs are from that outer group of co residents who live nearby, out of sight, themselves a whole world away from the worms and slugs who are starting to batten down for winters hibernation. The birds migrate to Africa leaving only the stalwart Robin to brave the snow. Such a fearless cheeky bird, he stands only a pace away contesting the space you both occupy, not in the slightest bit perturbed by your size and unpredictability he thrusts out his red chest as if to say, come on then test me.

The plants withdraw and the weeds die back as the earth cools and then freezes, this seasonal dance of life and death which we, in our artificiality have no fear. Perhaps this year will be different with the high price of gas, perhaps the more vulnerable will die for lack of heating, the sleepers in the doorways or under the bridges, the ones too tired to care any more, made desperate by the gnawing of hunger, knowing that yesterday, today and tomorrow will be the same.

Human fundamentals

 

Subject: Human fundamentals



As we enter ever more chaotic conditions regarding the condition of national economies across the world, we see on our television screens the growing disparity between these nations. From the simple tribal village in Africa to the millions living in India under conditions unacceptable in the west, from the medieval grassed roof hovel serviced by the horse and trap in rural areas of Moldova and Romania and other areas in eastern and Central Europe. The disparity is wide and yet we continue to make assumptions about the similarities between people. Undoubtedly we  grow, through the different and varied  associations in our respective childhoods and view these conditions around normal, given we know no different and can't judge if we are better off than someone living in another country. It is my contention that the metaphorical standard on human rights is merely a yardstick with little meaning because of this wide discrepancy in the condition people live under. The characteristics we assume as normal are aspects of the surrounding culture which we absorb as we grow and travel is with us in what we might call our makeup whereverI we go. If that surrounding culture is made artificial such as for the British in the colonial times in India or the current religious communes in this country then we have to consider the long term consequences of cultural disharmony.

That's not to say our similarities don't far out weigh our differences and just as the character is different in different people, even within the same family, fundamentals are hatched at birth and learnt by cultural osmosis's to be at odds with the majority.

Men, women, boys and girls learn the tricks of their gender by observation and so it is through observation that we form who we are. If I grow up on a street in Mumbai then my mental assumptions will be formed by that experience. If my parents from Mumbai emigrate to Nottingham and settle in a close knit Indian/Muslim neighbourhood which practices  the habits of Mumbai, then the trend is to enforce separatism rather than consolidation. Our English penchant for individualism, of leaving behind family and friends to seek our fortune elsewhere is the same as our Mumbai family with the one important difference, the collective influence of religion carries the cohort with it and forms a separate entity in an alien field in the way an individual cannot. If this gives one group a tremendous advantage over time, especially if it begins to displace the existing traditions which initially make a country recognisable then we should be aware of it and not be frightened to disagree.

There's none so blind as those who will not see

 

Subject: There’s none so blind as those who will not see.





In the film ‘Zulu’, Shaka, the Zulu king strikes his shield with his stabbing spear and stamps his foot to a deep resonating grunt from his warriors.

Outside 10 Downing Street in London a very different kind of leadership. The skins are set aside for an stylish suite, heavy horn rimmed spectacle’s, the Etonians  penchant for academic  phraseology learnt over a decade or more of expensive private education but the result is the same, a very heavy defeat.

I said all along that Liz Truss was not up to the job of Prime Minister and repeated my earlier prognosis that Boris Johnson would fail due to his character failings. 

Being Prime Minister seems to require more a John Gielgud’s actors skill, to elevate the language and give it a theatrical flourish, perhaps in the process deliberately diminishing its meaning.

Johnson had too much flourish, Truss none at all and it’s taken the smiling mandarin

Jeremy Hunt, (married appropriately to a Chinese woman) to steady the ship.

Being Prime Minister is not all about acting but it helps to keep the parliamentary show on the road week in and week out. Selling stuff others wouldn’t touch with a barge pole while continuing to prod us with a regular sound bite.

Tony Blair was a master of hyperbole,  Gordon Brown not so. Margeret Thatcher brilliant in the set piece, John Major too honest and charitable. An actor could take any of their scripts to make them work, he could manufacture the villain whilst wooing the heroine, he could make the implausible plausible simply by laying extra emphasis on the syllable.

Politics is a parody of real life, it promises the impossible, it derides the sensible, it is the worst friend to have and best villain to stay away from. It practices deceit like it were philosophy and philosophy like it were calumny and yet we trap ourselves in its rhetoric, we believe politician  when they malign the truth and applaud them when they defame the honest truth teller.  

The film director Ken Loach has just been talking about his life’s work, telling the story of hardship amongst working class people specifically in this country. His socialist ideals were often out of tune and struck a jarring note with the comfortable sensitivities of the middle class who didn’t want to look under rose briar cottage image of England. He turned the cinema into the dock to publicise the inequity of it all. 

Cathy come home, I Daniel Blake, Sorry we missed you, Kes, are all riveting and mournfully sad stories about hardship and struggle amongst the working class. Stories never told from the floor of the House of Commons, it not being part of a politicians script.

It takes a film legend to regale, in all its pathos the tragedy of life for so many people. 

The king makers, the political illusionists are there performing a different play to a different audience but there’s  none so blind as those who chose not see.

Questioning the motives

 

Subject: Questioning the motives.



Is there any humanitarian link in the fact that the Chinese Chairman Xin Jinping has no regrets about isolating his citizens from Covid whilst we in the west bicker over the economic fall out of closing down commerce and industry to protect our people and seem more concerned about its effect on the balance sheet. The heartless balance sheet versus a primal concern for the health of the proletariat .

I know in many other spheres of communist control they seem brutal in their oversight of the population, encouraging them for instance to conform by informing on each other. Their lack of being able to accept critics especially from the media, where opponents of the system are thrown in jail seems to flow contra to a caring society and yet we in the west happily acknowledge that casualties can rise to a high plateau with mortality being an acceptable price to pay to keep the wheels of commerce turning. Do we worship mammon more than the individual, do we measure success by the lack of deaths or by a minimal disruption to the economy.

Jacob Rees Mogg that archetypal pinstriped businessman was all for chiding  the people back to work irrespective, whilst Xi Jinping was for isolating them at home. We wondered at first did Xi know something we didn’t since the virus had escaped from China and we wondered if it wasn’t a plot to wipe out much of the wests economy by weakening its people. The more we have shone light on the dreadful foreboding of those early days in 2020 and now, with magnificent antivirus technology do we begin to  question their and our motives.

Solace

  

Subject: Solace

Awe in our presence on earth used to be the celebration of man each day in the traditional moments when we gave pause to celebrate our being. This is not a religious thing but a timely thing, morning and night, the seasonal occurrence of summer, autumn, winter and rebirth in spring. Much of our reverence for these time spots was they celebrated a re-emergence out of the dark and danger into one of light and safety they were subliminal to our actual experience.

Living our modern life, many of us are fortunate to experience the solution to night and day by flicking on a light switch or turning on the heating, in a way we have distanced ourselves from the essence of life, it’s fundamental rhythmic pulse. We have imposed artificial barriers for our convenience  without understanding the importance repetitive cycles play in our well being.

Everything comes and goes.  Initially dependent on the cycle of feeding and sleeping just to live, we now have fast food, all night living, a jungle of of experience and so that rhythm is lost. Much of the mental illness in our youth is due to the fact we have nowhere to repose, repair and reflect, no quietus from the next phone call discussing the next event.
The sanctity of breakfast or the evening meal, together as a family to check in on each other and establish those special sureties is no longer a function, we become loners in our loneliness.  If we could have institutionalised no-go zones, (like the clinics the Hollywood set turn to), blackouts from the noise of modern living,  periods of peace when we could reconnect with our own lives  and not be obliged to follow someone else’s.

24/7 and at the beck and call of the phone. It’s not as if it’s friends or business but it’s our need to be connected to media platforms and the trash displayed on them, like lemmings we rush for a door, eager to see what’s on the other side, the next party the next take down of someone you might have read about and therefore purport  to know but we never seem happy in the environment we are in. This is a condition you see in animals, the panic of blind following. The comfort of a religious congregation is a positive example of the pack at work but even here it has the effect of you merging your individualism for the packs identity, as if your own reflective strength were not enough.

We have to reassert our individualism, to rely once again on our own self assessment and not continually be looking over our shoulder for a lead. All the bad news has nuggets of good mixed up in it and where the bad is so dark and we can’t make sense out of it we must forcibly disconnect for our own well being. The world has always been as we see it today but ir was out of sight, now for the first time we see it in the videos as it manifests itself on the media as a crazed place.

Even the quietus a bodkin of wine which brought Old Khayyam so much pleasure is now frowned upon by the ‘commentators’, their shrill disgruntled cry’s singing after us as hopefully we hoist two fingers into the air and shout pestilence on your houses.