I was desperately trying to come up with a witty play on the word Pope for the title of this blog. Something like Pope Goes The Weasel. As you can tell, i failed.
So i'm pretty tired of people covering Facebook with anti-Pope remarks. In general i'm pretty tired of this wave of atheism. It's not so much the common observation; that atheists shove their atheism in your face as much as a Jehova's Witness knocking on your door, it's that people seem to mistake atheism for intelligence. It's like you can't possibly be intelligent if you believe in God. Einstein believed in God. He made reference to him many times, 'God doesn't play dice with the universe' was his retort when trying to dispel the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. Who wants to lock intellectual horns with Einstein? It's a crap argument, but it holds up here.
If you don't believe a higher power made the universe, that's fine. You carry on. I'm not convinced by the Big Bang either. It's a better theory scientifically, but it still doesn't hold up. If you consider the size of the universe (and there's some lovely web sites you can visit that take you on a virtual tour of the known universe), i expect that if someone did create this thing, they couldn't give a rat's rear what you think of it. You are so tiny and insignificant it's a wonder you bother to breathe. If someone else wants to believe there was a master mind behind it all, you leave them alone. If it doesn't affect you, why are you bothered with it? If someone believes in God, or Allah, or that Scientology crap, it doesn't mean they are stupid. It means their beliefs differ to yours. What's the big deal about that? No-one is right or wrong, because nobody knows what happens when you die. Feels like i'm stating the painfully obvious here.
As a budding Psychology student, i'm stupidly interested in the way the mind affects the body. Good mental health equals good health generally. There's a number of things that happen, chemically, when you're down that can drag your immune system down too and result in any number of cold or flu viruses that can make you feel a whole lot worse. It's unfair but goes hand in hand.
If i'm inaccurate here you'll have to forgive me, but if memory serves placebos were first used in World War One. The medics had run out of morphine but had seriously injured and dying soldiers screaming all around them for some kind of relief from the pain of a severed limb. Some bright spark - either on purpose or accidentally, i can't remember now - hooked up a saline solution either claiming or believing it to be morphine. It worked just the same. This is simply the power of suggestion. An idea was planted in the patient's mind, that the drug is a drug that will work, and the patient's mind did the rest. Social Psychologists use the same kind of idea with Priming, which is a very frightening way of getting someone to behave in a certain manner. It's basically suggestion, and people are so busy on auto-pilot, they fail to fight it off mentally.
This was taken a bit further in 1955, when a cardiologist from Seattle decided to fool patients into believing they'd been opened up and had surgery carried out on their heart. He really did do the surgery for some, but on others just made incisions around the heart area to give the impression they'd been opened up. And yes, both groups reported the same relief from their symptoms. Of course the medical fraternity went mental. What this guy was proving was that the operation didn't need to be done. That the chest pains were all in the mind, or at least, the pains are real but can be cured by the mind. Kind of puts a few of them out of work doesn't it?
There's plenty of remarkable stories about the placebo effect. In this day and age, Homeopathy is a shining example of the placebo effect being bottled and sold. Homeopathy is basically water. Yet people take it, and it has a positive effect on them. I don't agree with it. Someone rightly labelled it Snake Oil. But it works for some. It makes them better. Who am i to get in their face and call it bullshit? I don't want anyone to be ill, so if it works for them then i should be happy about it. It goes against every scientific bone in my aching body, but it works.
Back to the Pope then. And religion. For many, the Lord is a source of comfort. I too have felt very at ease and at peace when sat in a church. There's just something about it. To the believers, the peace i feel is the Lord. He's channelled through the steeple and straight into my heart. It's quite flattering but i don't buy it. It's quiet in a church. It's completely unthreatening. It's like sitting in a library. You don't have to do anything, just exist. Unless you work there of course. It's subjective and it works in the same way psychics and mediums do. If you want it to be real, it will be. If you're looking for the holes in a theory, you'll find them. There are no facts, only interpretations. And Nietzsche said that, so ner. I'll interpret it my way, and a God botherer will interpret it in theirs. Live. Let live.
If the presence of a God makes someone feel better mentally, if it makes them a happier, altruistic person more likely to inflict their good mood and altruism on everyone else, then in no way can believing in God be a bad thing. It's a mental placebo, but placebos work. Faith, for this is the crux of it all, is so powerful it should not be ignored. Regardless of whether this faith is drilled into a person from a young age or if they find Jesus in a jail cell in Arizona, the strength of it can do extra-ordinary things. A Christian's faith is way more powerful than any scientific evidence you can present to them. You will never win if their faith is unshakeable.
The damage religion has done to the human race must be addressed of course. From the Dark Ages to 9/11 and all points in between, religion has a lot to answer for. What about all the good though? What about the charity organisations and the volunteers that help to run them? If these people were spurned into action from reading the Bible, this is no bad thing. If these people believe that in doing this they will earn their cloud, halo, and harp then fine, snigger at them a bit but at least they're doing something. They're not sat there clutching A Brief History Of Time pretending they've read it, contributing nothing.
A long time ago in a galaxy that looked a lot like this one, Pope Leo the third crowned a Roman emperor. This established a link between the church and state. This meant that the Holy Roman emperors, followed by the kings of Europe, were given the glow of divinity. Crowds would gather, hoping to get a touch from one of these fellows. And guess what, in true placebo fashion, the 'royal touch' as it was known, was said to have cured thousands of people. It did this through belief.
The Pope is but a human being. However, in the minds of some he has been chosen by God. As such, one touch from him and things will be alright. There will be no scientific explanation, but the person that believes it will benefit from it. Yes, they are curing themselves from a mental problem or a physical one, but if it works then it's one less person in the NHS queue. It's one less person with a grey cloud over their heads, perhaps it's one less suicide and therefore one less person who has to walk in and discover that suicide.
This blog is simply not big enough to discuss all the pros and cons of religion and organisations like the Catholic Church. They have done bad, they have also done good. Probably a lot like you.
My beef is with the soapbox Atheists. A person of intelligence will hold out for evidence. A person of intelligence will think, discuss, evaluate, research, and then speak. They say the burden of proof isn't on them. Well, i think it it's just as much on them as it is on a priest. To say something doesn't exist....prove it. We haven't found a cure for cancer, but it doesn't mean there isn't one. I've got one odd sock, the other one is around here somewhere but i can't find it. Doesn't mean that other sock has ceased to exist.
Many years ago, Democritus came up with the idea of Atomos. It meant 'uncuttable'. It was the smallest piece of something you could possibly get to. Its where you can go down no further. This was ancient greece. It was a theory. Years later, we have atoms. We know they exist.
So, just because there's no evidence for something now, it doesn't mean there never will be.
Democritus was spot on, though he didn't know it at the time. He had no evidence, no empirical evidence, but he was right.
If i were God, i wouldn't make myself so easy as to be understood by a human. We understand so little, yet we claim to know an awful lot. The Bible claims God made man in his own image. But the Bible wasn't written by a God, it was written by a bunch of geezers. They didn't know. They had no idea. They were pissing in the wind, writing a story. The point (RB), is that their story has touched millions. In many cases for the better. In the case of a Jehova's Witness needing a blood transfusion, probably not so good. The women in my immediate family found great comfort in the church when my Dad died. Did he go to heaven? Not bloody likely! But they believed he did, they believe he has been forgiven, and they probably believe he's watching over them now.
This makes them feel better. In every way. Do i then thrust a copy of The God Delusion in their hands? Would that make me intelligent? No, it would make me someone so high on their own sense of self importance they've completely missed the point, and it would make me someone i'd rather not know.
Yes the Pope's visit is costing the taxpayer. So is the royal family. So is being in the EU. So are junkies and alcoholics. So are speed traps and Community Police Officers. So are green schemes and carbon credits. Take your pick, none of it is really an argument. Sadly we don't get to choose where our tax money goes. You are entitled to an opinion on it, but yours is no better or worse than mine, nor Abu Hamza's, nor the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor Stephen Hawking and definitely not Richard Dawkins'.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Sunday, 5 September 2010
The Un-Examined Life
The other day i had a bunch of stuff to do. Things are hectic right now. I'm surrounded by boxes and bin bags. It's like putting your life through a seive and hoping the good stuff makes it through. Amidst the chaos i have to keep tabs on a number of forms and letters, all important for the things going on right now. Being unsettled and out of your comfort zone can make you edgy and frankly, when i go out and mix with the general public, i'm edgy anyway.
You know that film Falling Down? I'm a heartbeat away from being that guy, especially when i have to enter the concrete hell called a 'Supermarket'. When i was a kid, supermarkets sold food. Tinned goods mostly. Now, my local Sainsbury's sells everything. It's like a department store. As such, it commands attention not just from regular folk doing a weekly shop for groceries, but also those looking to clothe themselves on the cheap, or buy electronic goods from somewhere other than Argos. Couple this with it still being the ass end of the school holidays, and i picked a bad day to walk into Sainsbury's.
Before i even got to the Star Trek-esque doors that open for you, my pace of walking was forcibly slowed by a family in front of me. Now, before i go on i should make clear that i do have prejudices. Many of them. Not socially appalling or just plain dumb ones like racism or sexism. I have prejudices against chavs. Idiots. Boy Racers. Slags. You know the kind of thing i'm on about. If i see someone walking towards me with white track suit bottoms, a name brand t shirt, a baseball cap perched precariously on the head and the same swagger i saw Fiddy Cent do in his most recent video, i'm going to label him a dick. If that offends anyone, tough. I would put good money on me being right, and frankly if i was proved wrong, i'd be happy then too. I love situations where i can't lose!
So this family in front of me.....they were fat. Not appallingly fat like you see some women where you can't tell where their breasts end and their belly begins, just fat as in they'll be at the breasts/belly stage one day, but they're still working up to it. Fat girls - as three of them were - tend to wear figure hugging black leggings or other such attire. Not really sure what this achieves, but they all tend to do it. These three didn't let me down. They had that uniform and they wore it with pride. Since they slowed my pace, and i was no longer wrapped up in my own world and it's problems and how i just wanted to get in there, get some migraine pills and get back home to continue decanting 34 years into brown boxes, i was free to get a good look at these people.
We've all heard the speech......"It's glandular". I'm sure it is. Being dishonest with yourself is simple. I think we all are. Daily. It's called denial, and we do it consciously or otherwise. There is every chance that for some people, the problem is a fuck up in their bodies. The technical term 'fuck up' isn't new by the way, sorry if it threw anyone there. However the more likely scenario, is that fat cells are collecting due to a bad diet and lack of exercise. The third thing could be that it's a mental problem.....you're not going to be the prettiest girl in the class so you comfort eat your way out of it. If they're going to call you fat anyway, you might as well give them something to call you fat about.
Rather than looking down on this family, or dismissing them as fat and lazy, instead i thought about a quote i'd read earlier that day by the Greek philosopher Socrates. He said "The unexamined life is not worth living". He was defending his role as a philosopher, and he did so in a very elegant way. When i looked at the fat family i wondered if they were aware of how fortunate they are. To eat so much and work so little as to become fat, should be considered a luxury. Generations before us struggled, then they struggled with two world wars in just under forty years. They didn't have an obesity epidemic. Gluttony i thought, is a gift. It's a symbol of how well the human race is doing. In some quarters obviously. Areas of the world are still starving, there's an imbalance there, but i'm not addressing that here.
Once i got passed the fatties, i wondered further about everyone in the supermarket, and how self aware any of them were. It tied in with a book i'm reading about social economics, which describes how ignorant we can be of our everyday actions, and the effect they have on us as people, our well-being, and the way we interact with friends and family.
To go back to our chav friends earlier, the uniform they wear - that of the bad boy rapper - to me represents self denial. Wearing those clothes and walking like you have a butt plug inserted may make you feel like you'll pop a cap in the ass of anyone dumb enough to cross you, but most chavs are skinny fuckers aren't they? Clearly the attire and the swagger provide them with some degree of confidence, and they just run with it.
I've been told in the past that i look down on stupid people. This may be true, but who defines stupid? Stupidity is, like everything else - wealth, beauty, status - relative. Besides, i hate ignorance a lot more than stupidity. If you're stupid by choice, that is you don't want to learn, you don't want to improve yourself because you know it all anyway, then it's a form of ignorance and yes you're a dick. To be aware that you need to learn, that maybe you don't know it all and never will, that illustrates self-awareness. It proves that you've looked at yourself and acted upon what you've seen.
Our actions are governed by a number of things; brain chemicals, upbringing, past experiences and stimuli. I've recently read a book on the brain and the author, Susan Greenfield, was incensed at people who see the brain as a computer. Well sorry Sooz, but i go one step further. I think people are computers. In fact i think we're computer processors programmed to relate to our surroundings.
Where you sit right now, determines how you're acting. If you're in your house, in the warm, just reading this drivel, then you're quite comfortable. If it's YOUR house, you're probably more confident than someone who's renting. Just slightly, but it's enough to affect your actions out there in the big wide world. If you were reading this in Afghanistan, in the war zones, you wouldn't be sat there with a drink and smoke. You'd be running for cover to avoid whizzing bullets.
Why? Because your brain has taken in information from the outside world and you act upon it in the way it considers best. That's it. That's your life. The way you act upon it is determined by many different things as listed above, and it's enough to make us all individual - especially the upbringing part. Our glorious individuality though, is just a reaction to the world. To use an extreme example such as Afghanistan is just there to prove a point. Some people wouldn't run for cover, some people would try and be a hero, others would simply freeze. It's how you're wired, and it's how you're wired on that particular day too.
The fat family will continue to eat more than they should. They'll become ill quite early i expect. Diabetes, fluid in the ankles, high cholesterol and risk of heart attack. To me, these things could happen to any one of us. I don't find it sad. Illness and death are inevitable. I find the idea that they've never looked at themselves long enough to avoid those things a great deal more tragic. The mirror can be a scary place but it's what everyone else sees. Those brave enough to be comfortable with the person staring back at them have my respect. Recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have done that. They've examined their lives and made a change because they've had to. The rest of us carry on the lies we've become comfortable with because it gets us through the day. I don't think it's enough to just 'get through' life. I think it'd be a whole lot more fun to enjoy it, and i don't think you can do that until you know who you are and what you want. This year i've took great leaps towards discovering the answers to those things, which is why i'm surrounded by bin bags and brown boxes....
You know that film Falling Down? I'm a heartbeat away from being that guy, especially when i have to enter the concrete hell called a 'Supermarket'. When i was a kid, supermarkets sold food. Tinned goods mostly. Now, my local Sainsbury's sells everything. It's like a department store. As such, it commands attention not just from regular folk doing a weekly shop for groceries, but also those looking to clothe themselves on the cheap, or buy electronic goods from somewhere other than Argos. Couple this with it still being the ass end of the school holidays, and i picked a bad day to walk into Sainsbury's.
Before i even got to the Star Trek-esque doors that open for you, my pace of walking was forcibly slowed by a family in front of me. Now, before i go on i should make clear that i do have prejudices. Many of them. Not socially appalling or just plain dumb ones like racism or sexism. I have prejudices against chavs. Idiots. Boy Racers. Slags. You know the kind of thing i'm on about. If i see someone walking towards me with white track suit bottoms, a name brand t shirt, a baseball cap perched precariously on the head and the same swagger i saw Fiddy Cent do in his most recent video, i'm going to label him a dick. If that offends anyone, tough. I would put good money on me being right, and frankly if i was proved wrong, i'd be happy then too. I love situations where i can't lose!
So this family in front of me.....they were fat. Not appallingly fat like you see some women where you can't tell where their breasts end and their belly begins, just fat as in they'll be at the breasts/belly stage one day, but they're still working up to it. Fat girls - as three of them were - tend to wear figure hugging black leggings or other such attire. Not really sure what this achieves, but they all tend to do it. These three didn't let me down. They had that uniform and they wore it with pride. Since they slowed my pace, and i was no longer wrapped up in my own world and it's problems and how i just wanted to get in there, get some migraine pills and get back home to continue decanting 34 years into brown boxes, i was free to get a good look at these people.
We've all heard the speech......"It's glandular". I'm sure it is. Being dishonest with yourself is simple. I think we all are. Daily. It's called denial, and we do it consciously or otherwise. There is every chance that for some people, the problem is a fuck up in their bodies. The technical term 'fuck up' isn't new by the way, sorry if it threw anyone there. However the more likely scenario, is that fat cells are collecting due to a bad diet and lack of exercise. The third thing could be that it's a mental problem.....you're not going to be the prettiest girl in the class so you comfort eat your way out of it. If they're going to call you fat anyway, you might as well give them something to call you fat about.
Rather than looking down on this family, or dismissing them as fat and lazy, instead i thought about a quote i'd read earlier that day by the Greek philosopher Socrates. He said "The unexamined life is not worth living". He was defending his role as a philosopher, and he did so in a very elegant way. When i looked at the fat family i wondered if they were aware of how fortunate they are. To eat so much and work so little as to become fat, should be considered a luxury. Generations before us struggled, then they struggled with two world wars in just under forty years. They didn't have an obesity epidemic. Gluttony i thought, is a gift. It's a symbol of how well the human race is doing. In some quarters obviously. Areas of the world are still starving, there's an imbalance there, but i'm not addressing that here.
Once i got passed the fatties, i wondered further about everyone in the supermarket, and how self aware any of them were. It tied in with a book i'm reading about social economics, which describes how ignorant we can be of our everyday actions, and the effect they have on us as people, our well-being, and the way we interact with friends and family.
To go back to our chav friends earlier, the uniform they wear - that of the bad boy rapper - to me represents self denial. Wearing those clothes and walking like you have a butt plug inserted may make you feel like you'll pop a cap in the ass of anyone dumb enough to cross you, but most chavs are skinny fuckers aren't they? Clearly the attire and the swagger provide them with some degree of confidence, and they just run with it.
I've been told in the past that i look down on stupid people. This may be true, but who defines stupid? Stupidity is, like everything else - wealth, beauty, status - relative. Besides, i hate ignorance a lot more than stupidity. If you're stupid by choice, that is you don't want to learn, you don't want to improve yourself because you know it all anyway, then it's a form of ignorance and yes you're a dick. To be aware that you need to learn, that maybe you don't know it all and never will, that illustrates self-awareness. It proves that you've looked at yourself and acted upon what you've seen.
Our actions are governed by a number of things; brain chemicals, upbringing, past experiences and stimuli. I've recently read a book on the brain and the author, Susan Greenfield, was incensed at people who see the brain as a computer. Well sorry Sooz, but i go one step further. I think people are computers. In fact i think we're computer processors programmed to relate to our surroundings.
Where you sit right now, determines how you're acting. If you're in your house, in the warm, just reading this drivel, then you're quite comfortable. If it's YOUR house, you're probably more confident than someone who's renting. Just slightly, but it's enough to affect your actions out there in the big wide world. If you were reading this in Afghanistan, in the war zones, you wouldn't be sat there with a drink and smoke. You'd be running for cover to avoid whizzing bullets.
Why? Because your brain has taken in information from the outside world and you act upon it in the way it considers best. That's it. That's your life. The way you act upon it is determined by many different things as listed above, and it's enough to make us all individual - especially the upbringing part. Our glorious individuality though, is just a reaction to the world. To use an extreme example such as Afghanistan is just there to prove a point. Some people wouldn't run for cover, some people would try and be a hero, others would simply freeze. It's how you're wired, and it's how you're wired on that particular day too.
The fat family will continue to eat more than they should. They'll become ill quite early i expect. Diabetes, fluid in the ankles, high cholesterol and risk of heart attack. To me, these things could happen to any one of us. I don't find it sad. Illness and death are inevitable. I find the idea that they've never looked at themselves long enough to avoid those things a great deal more tragic. The mirror can be a scary place but it's what everyone else sees. Those brave enough to be comfortable with the person staring back at them have my respect. Recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have done that. They've examined their lives and made a change because they've had to. The rest of us carry on the lies we've become comfortable with because it gets us through the day. I don't think it's enough to just 'get through' life. I think it'd be a whole lot more fun to enjoy it, and i don't think you can do that until you know who you are and what you want. This year i've took great leaps towards discovering the answers to those things, which is why i'm surrounded by bin bags and brown boxes....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)