Perspectives

Rather than write some kind of review of the year, i thought it far better - and hopefully more interesting - to write about an observation. I've made this observation before, after i was promoted at work, but now as i find myself a mature student, this observation becomes more apparent and ultimately more grating.

My observation is difficult to spell out succinctly, and would make for a rather poor blog post so i'll explain it all and you can see what i mean.

Sometimes you do things that surprise your family, friends and best of all, yourself. Me going to College was one such move, and me going to University was another. When you become good friends with someone, its kind of the deal that you want the best for them. It comes out of love and its the same reason people in supposedly stable relationships break up; because they want the best for each other.

I only have a few good friends, friends whose opinion i'd value and take on board. I got mixed reactions to going to college, but mostly positive reactions to the news that i was going to University.

Now, here's where it gets weird. It's usually the case that you mock the things you don't understand. A lack of understanding can bring about fear, and the fear is dealt with by taking the piss. It's all very interesting and i've only touched on the surface here, but just give it some thought and you'll realise it to be true.

I had, and continue to have, some piss taking for being a mature student. This is fine, i can both take it and understand it. However, the problem i have is with people saying how much i've changed since starting University. I'm sure i have changed a bit. People always change in new situations. Its how we adapt. What i think people miss though, is how their attitude has changed towards me.

This brings about more change than i've gone through. Now, people think whenever i say a word with more than 3 syllables, it's because i've learnt it at University. Whenever i say something interesting, it's because i learnt it at University. Whenever i argue my point, i'm being arrogant because i think i know it all because i'm at University.

The sad truth is, i've always been arrogant with my point of view, i've always tried my best to say things that are relevant and interesting, and because i like to read i occasionally pick up words longer than 3 syllables. I make no apologies for any of it.

Trouble is, people seek out the things that back up their theory and ignore everything else. I'm expected to change into a smart-arse snob through University attendance, so anything that can be seen to be related to that is plucked from a conversation and expanded on. The rest, the bits that are 'still me', are ignored because they don't back up the expectations.

It's selective listening. The down-side is i get accused of changing into someone horrible when really, it's the people listening that have changed the way they're listening to me.

The environment you find yourself in changes your behaviour. It has to. People change all the time, and its a good thing. I don't know why you should be ridiculed for changing yourself, especially if the direction you're trying to head in is For The Better. I detest those people that rip the piss out of others trying to give up smoking. Anyone who does is both a smoker themselves, and utterly incapable of giving it up themselves. It's envy, pure and simple. I've seen these cunts blow smoke in the faces of those trying to give it up, in an attempt to what? Get them started again, to what? Spend tens of thousands of pounds on cigarettes, for what? To die a painful, cancer-ridden death. That's a friend is it? You can keep that kind of friend.

I suppose i should feel flattered, that the old me was such a splendid chap people don't want to see him go, but living your life to suit others is insane and will leave you very bitter. You'll say you're angry at everyone else but really you're just pissed with yourself for letting them dictate how you've lived your life.

I cannot change the behaviour of others (or can i?), but i can learn to ignore it. Of all the piss taking about being 'back at school' i seem to receive, i find it humorous that those doing the piss taking are the ones acting like they're in a playground.

The Perfect Drug

Bob Ainsworth is a home office minister, and has recently called for all drugs to be legalised in an effort to beat the criminals who supply it on the streets. Or rather, the people who supply it to the people who supply it on the streets. Tackling street dealers annoys me. Arresting a street dealer is like blocking up one of those tiny holes in the end of a watering can, and wondering why water still comes out when you tip it. You need to remove the source, then you don't have to worry about the little holes. Plus, think of all the time and money has gone into prosecuting our friend on the streets. It does nothing. Acheives nothing. Changes nothing.

It's the same as prosecuting people who download child porn off the internet. By all means find these people but don't prosecute them, offer them help. They are mentally ill and should be treated as such. I'll tell you who you can go after though: the people who make it, upload it on to the web, and charge money for the mentally ill to view it. That's where the problem is so that's where you go to solve it.

Ainsworth believes the medical profession should supply drugs through prescription. Logistically, i can see problems there. I know a huge amount of people who smoke that pathetic drug, cannabis. I can forsee very long queues of people wanting to get a 'script for that, and Boots would have to turn into a warehouse rather than a high street store to keep up with demand.

However when it comes to hard drugs, the notion of prescriptions should be welcomed. Heroin is at best 20 - 25% pure according to a recent study of heroin scored on the streets of Liverpool. What else then, is also going into their bodies? Do you even care?

Cocaine - probably a greater degree of purity, but it can be cut with glucose powder if you're lucky, and all kinds of awful things if you're not.

So not all good news for the junkie, but the idea that legalisation of such substances would take Johnny Pusher off the street is daft. The idea that it would do away with the shadowy heads of organisations that bring the drugs into the country, and cut off their earnings - which run into millions - is even more daft. These people won't just say "It was fun while it lasted" and then apply at McDonald's. They'll move on. Fraud. Identity theft. Heck, even armed robberies. Johnny Pusher will mug you, and our shadowy underworld figure will steal the passcode to your internet bank account.

As a human, in possession of a mind and body, i should be allowed to do as i wish with it.
However, we must bear in mind that some people are idiots. Well, actually there's quite a lot of idiots, just take a walk outside you'll spot 'em. I use to oppose the idea of banning films. I believed they were pieces of art, i believed they were skillfully made and i believed they had no effect on a person's disposition. I didn't believe they could influence someone in a negative fashion and that if someone wanted to perpetrate a crime, they would do so without having watched Goodfellas before hand. Now, i'm not so sure. Some people really are fucking idiots, and i wouldn't let them loose with a remote control. They cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, and they consider themselves to be someone - or something - they're not.

If i want to take cocaine, to wake me up and make me feel good, i should be allowed to do so. I should be allowed to take the money into a reputable establishment and ask for it. The product i am given should be as pure as it can get without making my heart explode, and i should be given a clean tube with which to administer the drug. Once i've had my enjoyment, i can then just forget about it for a while until i fancy another boost.

Seems simple, but this is the pattern of drinking for some. They dip in and out, they socialise with it, then they return to life. For others, they become alcoholics, and for some social or recreational drug users, they become addicted. Just because i know when enough is enough, we must remember that some people are fucking idiots, and they don't know where the line is. Or, they do, but they want to impress their friends by stepping over it.

I read a good question the other day; "Would you rather bump into a drunk, or someone who's stoned at three in the morning on a city street?"
For me, it'd be the stoner every time. He might try and enlighten me, he might laugh at me - wouldn't be the first -, he might try and get me to 'toke' with him.
What he wouldn't do, is ask me what i was fucking looking at before threatening to harm me physically. We've all been there. Drunks are assholes. Angry drunks are cunts.

Yet alcohol is widely available. And there's good alcohol (Guinness and Jamesons) and shit alcohol (Hofmeister and Jack Daniels). So you pays your money, you gets a-wasted. The state however, makes a whole lot of cash from your booze and they have the potential to do so with legalisation of drugs.

Let's talk frankly here, they're called drugs because they make you feel better. Perhaps the root of the matter, the question of why people are feeling bad enough to want to take drugs should be addressed. Drugs are a sticking plaster, sometimes over an amputation. As such, they won't work. No matter how big the plaster, you still have a problem.

I applaud Ainsworth's style, his guts, and his attempts to try and discuss ways ahead with Britain's drug problems and its so-called 'War On Drugs'. Not sure how you can either wage or win a war with an inaminate object but there you go. Of course the hand-wringers will win, and Bob will be shouted down and probably fired.

I applaud the idea of legalistation. Because i'm a grown up. Because i'm a human. Because i believe a break from reality is essential every now and then. Because i believe the brain to be a marvellous thing, and to stimulate it in various ways through chemicals is no different to looking at porn or reading a poem. Stick your head in an fMRI machine whilst doing coke, looking at Tori Black going for it, or appreciating Yeats, and areas of your brain will fire up relating to pleasure. That's it. That's all drugs do. Fire up and stimulate areas of organic matter. It seems painfully stupid to me to try and stop people having fun and enjoying life, but certainly the coalition seem hell-bent on putting the mockers on it. Full marks to Ainsworth then.

I find it ironic also that most of the customers for coke deals are people who work in the City for huge corporations. My friend told me that i don't understand irony. Which was ironic because we were waiting for a bus.

Feeling Karma

There's an awful lot of blah about Karma on the social networking site, Facebook.

Whenever someone is appalled at the actions of others, they seem to make posts pertaining to the idea of Karma sorting this person out.

It's as if Karma is some kind of bigger brother who's always on the look out for anyone being a shit.

What's funny to me is that if these same people changed the word Karma for the word God, they'd probably feel very foolish. Or rather, if i started using the word God instead of Karma, they'd make fun of me and claim to be intellectually superior. In fact the Hindus believe God is behind Karma.

Karma certainly feels like the new lord. The omniscient, ever watchful master that makes everything all right. People will get their just desserts because Karma is on the Kase. Just like the Christian Deity, Karma has its roots in a religion and cannot be proved or disproved.

Many people understand a very simplistic idea of Karma. Namely, that if you wrong someone, you'll get yours. Not necessarily from them, but some other aspect of your life that will teach you the lesson you sorely need. Karma is more involved than that, but i feel that this Sainsbury's Basics idea of Karma is the one people allude to.

Here's my beef with Karma: it's a complete cop-out. It basically means you get to leave the entire situation alone and depend on some other-worldy form of justice to sort everyone out for you. Karma is the universal police force. Not only that, Karma transcends lives - in Buddhism at least - so you could get punished in your 'next life' for something you did in this one. This makes it completely impossible to prove. How fortunate for Buddhists everywhere.

Picture the scene; it's Christmas Day. You've got all the family round, all wearing nice clobber. All wearing silly Xmas hats but what the hey? Tis the season. There's roast turkey plus all those trimmings you hear so much about. You've exchanged gifts and all been happy with the results. You just raise a glass to toast family, friends, and the end of a hard year and what happens?

A big, sweaty, skin headed biker barges in the door. He's wearing dirty leather. His tattoos are so old they're just blue blobs, the arms they sit in could suffocate a grizzly bear. He grabs your Mother, slaps her round the face - her wine goes everywhere - and then bends her over the table. He proceeds to violate her, anally, then uses your serviette to wipe the blood from his cock, before leaving the room.

There is silence.

You lean back and say "Boy, I would NOT like to be him when Karma gets hold of him."

Or, you make every effort you can to take the brute down before he has a chance to even grab your favourite relative.

You wouldn't leave some things to a supernatural source, so why leave others if they peeve you so?

It's the same with medicine, when people claim to use Echinacea to both stave off and fight colds, or when they use any other herbal, 'alternative' medicine to help them with ailments.

Would these same people choose a herbal alternative to morphine when they're laid up with cancerous tumours? What about if they get run over and suffer massive internal injuries? Or hey, what about a routine kidney stone operation?

When you're in the kind of pain that makes you want to pass out, i somehow doubt you'll be asking what the herbal alternative to morphine is. I imagine you'd be begging the nurses to take the pain away by whatever means possible.

It's the same with Karma. There's certain things you shouldn't leave to some wishy-washy, completely unproven - and unprovable - bullshit to sort out.

Gandhi said something like the problem with an eye for an eye is that it makes the whole world blind. Karma is your eye for an eye. It just takes you out of the equation. When people bring up Karmic consequences, i have no doubt they do it with a vicious streak about them. They want to do the punishing, but it's against their character to do so. Or at least, it's against the kind of character they aspire to be.

So, they leave it to a mythical force to sort out.

The other thing with Karma is, for those that buy into it, to what extent are your actions good because you're a good person? Or, being good for good's sake?

If you act in an altruistic manner thinking "I'll do this, then buy a lottery ticket....if Karma's on my side i should win something", then apparently Karma doesn't work. It only works if its a natural action.

What garbage. How the hell does Karma know what you're thinking? The known universe is billions and billions of light years across. And i'm supposed to believe that it's bothered with the action of an insignificant human down here on a tiny planet in the Milky Way called Earth?

I doubt it. I really do.

Karma then. For those that expect rewards for good behaviour, those too gutless to sort out the bad guys, and those too intelligent to believe in God....yet not smart enough to see how Karma is a form of God.

An odd concept. And one that should be saved for TV programmes about blokes called Earl.

(Anti-Benefit Television Blues)

T'other day there was rather a grand speech made by a memeber of the Coalition government. I looked in a dictionary the other day, and apparently Coalition means Conservative Party.
This lanky fellow, Iain Duncan Smith - or IDS as he's known....how upsetting to be one letter away from an embarrassing condition - claimed that with the measures he was laying down, the benefits system in this country would be shaken up to the point where they actually work. And ideally, the people that once claimed them would work too.

No more would the bone idle sit back doing nowt whilst decent folk graft away supporting them.
It's a lovely idea. It seems that those that genuinely require benefits usually get the third degree about them.
Where i used to live, in Frome, there was a group of 'people' - i prefer the term 'organ bags' because donating their organs is both the only thing they're fit for, and the only decent act they could possibly do in this world - that were perfectly healthy, yet had never done a days work in their lives.
They'd wander around the town making a nusiance of themselves. They wore designer clobber, smoked weed etc. All paid for by someone else. What annoyed me most about them was not the fact they were doing this, but that the authorities seemed content to write them off.
They're no good for work, even though they can, so let's just let them spend their lives on the dole.
Why? When i got made redundant and tried to sign on, i was met with a shit storm and told if i wasn't in a job after three months i was in trouble. Felt a trifle unfair i have to say.

I'm willing to bet that despite these new measures, that same gang of wasters will be walking the streets of Frome doing nothing, learning nothing, acheiving nothing.

IDS (Chortle) made reference to the statistic that there is currently 450,000 jobs available in this country, and frankly there was no reason for it.
IDS forgot to mention there's approximately 1.5 million on the dole right now. So, even without my abacus, i can see that the figures don't add up and that there'll be a million people with no job to apply for yet they'll be told they have to otherwise they won't get benefits.
IDS also forgot to take into account those qualified for the 450,000 jobs and also those with the experience and also geographical logistics.

So. Here's my idea. I've run it past a few people and always been met with the same response but i'm sticking by it.
I think people don't like to be threatened. I think they'll kick back if you do so. It's an instinct.
Instead of saying 'Get a job or else', we need to change things around so these people want a job.
And when i say these people i mean those terminal dole-ies. Those that can but won't. Those that have been can't-ing but won't-ing for many a moon.

My solution is a simple one: take their televisions away.
The idiot box provides boredom relief and company for the terminal doley. They kind of need it.
Imagine their existence without it. The silence. The space where it should be. The lack of Kyle, Street, and Enders. I imagine their lives would become rather grey rather quickly.

Once they gain successful employment, and stick to it for over 3 months, then, and only then, may they be granted the right to own a television set. Be it plasma or cathode ray tube. We shall not discriminate on technology.

The usual response i get from people is that it's an infringement of human rights. Well, we all know that the law can be changed and we all know the human rights act can be side-stepped.

Even if the lack of tv doesn't spurn our organ bags into work, it may lead them to the library, it may lead them to self-evaluate, it may lead them to think.

I want to try this. As a budding psychologist, i want to do this experiment and i want to record the consequences. I want to make sure my idea isn't romanticising, i want to examine relationships and attitudes before and after the TV has gone. It will be my own Stanford Prison Experiment and earn me a doctorate. Who knows? If it works so will the people taking part in the experiment. If it doesn't, its no more screwy than the Coalition plan to squeeze 1.5 million people in 450,000 jobs.

Thinking In Pixels

Some females get shirty if members of their gender are considered sluts for sleeping around, whilst men earn only compliments from their friends and the right to wear some kind of badge with the word STUD on it. Understandably, in their justified crusade for equality, this isn't right.

So t'other day part of my Psychology course meant i had to learn a little on Evolutionary Psychology. I read with interest that there could be an evolutionary explanation for such behaviour. The theory goes that long ago, males would mate with as many females as possible in order to ensure their genetic line continues. It was like a fail safe. The more the merrier and the more chance of your blood line being continued. Don't think it was a conscious effort, it was instinctual. The women would go for mates that were strong and capable of bringing home the food.

Males would also go for women that looked healthy. Healthy enough to produce healthy offspring. From this we could derive the nature of beauty, and maybe even a tenuous link to beauty products as concealers and foundations mask any impurities and give gullible males the idea that yes actually my skin is just fine.

The evolutionary idea also attempts to explain why women go for men who are wealthy and older then they. Bernie Eccleston for example, is very old. And he's small. And he's kinda funny looking. His wife however, is tall and glamourous and they look very odd in photographs. Bernie provides though. Very well indeed. He is a billionaire. His wife need not want for anything. The evolution theory thinks it has that explained. Bernie is the provider, so he's a hot catch. His genes look good, even if he doesnt look good out of his jeans.

I was in conversation once with my friend Sarge and Mother-Of-Child. They were wondering out loud - as i was trying to read of all things - why it was that men couldn't see through the fat of fat women and just take them for who they are. There's so many ironies with their meanderings i don't know where to start but that's not the point today. In an attempt to cease their ramblings, i said that in my opinion it was because men like the idea of women who look after themselves. A woman who dresses nicely and has splendid hair and takes pride in her appearance could be seen as at ease with herself and confident too. She won't be a handful.
A chubby girl with lank hair and questionable dress sense obviously has esteem issues and is best avoided. Who wants to hang around with someone who's down on themselves?

I was simplifying, but now i can see that i had a point. If a woman looks after herself, it should stand to reason she'll look after your offspring too, ergo she appears attractive and you want to fuck her.

However, we have a few problems creeping in. Firstly women can and do fuck around. It is no longer only the rights of males to 'pull' on a Saturday night and creep out early on a Sunday morning. I know girls that arrange for weekend trips here and there and the majority of them will let a stranger insert his penis into their birth canal, and they'll never see or hear of each other again. I'm not moralising, it's their body and their choice.

Secondly, in my experience those women that take pride in their appearance and wear name brands and hair extensions and heels to make them taller are usually selfish creatures who spurn the idea of raising a child because it would take up time. Time they could be spending in clothes shops or planning a weekend trip with the girls. The chubby ones with the lank hair may well come into their own when they have a new life to take care of. They may find it gives their life purpose and meaning, and they may flourish into the best person they can be, fiercly proud and protective of their children.

Where then, does the theory go? Social trends and attitudes seem to be battling evolutionary instincts here, which may create an inner turmoil not yet researched or studied by those who are in a position to do so.

The notion of attraction is an odd one. Only the other day a friend of mine said she found someone 'horny' because he looks like he's an asshole. This is one of the most confusing things you can say to me. Not least because i have funny ideas about the notion of what's fair and what's not, but because it backs up the saying 'Nice guys finish last', and that strikes me as rather depressing. How does liking someone who looks like they're going to be a jerk fit in with things? Perhaps it doesn't matter and as long as the genes look attractive, the actions don't have a bearing on things.

I am fascinated by what people see in other people, and i always like it when people say ' I cant understand what she sees in him '. No you won't love because you are looking at it from your own dumb ass point of view and know nothing about their lives and how they are when you're not around.

I like it when gorgeous women are on the arm of ugly guys. Maybe because i always like it when an underdog wins. Maybe because it pisses the attractive guys off. Maybe because the ugly guy is wealthy and the evolutionary psychologists light themselves a self-congratulatory cigar. Maybe because it gives me hope. We love to think we roam around with free will, doing, saying and thinking whatever we please. Really, we're just going through the same genetically instructed motions that our ancestors did.

Give 'Em Enough Pope

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'.

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....