Questions

Joni's started asking questions. Uh-oh. I don't just mean asking "why?" after everything you ask her to do, which she's also just started doing (she is THREE now Daddy, after all!) - I mean looking at me in the eyes...a look that says "there's something I really need to ask you".

The first one was this - how about this for starters? I think if metaphysical leanings are a gene then it's firmly switched "on" in me, and Joni's inherited it - "Who made the moon?". Well, Daddy? Whatcha gonna say to that one? No one? God? The universe? I'm afraid, at least I think I am, that I answered "God, I think, Joni". Well, I still do think (not know) that something going under such a title as man would probably give to that something (even if the something didn't give it to itself) exists. What a mouthful. Well, I couldn't say that, could I? When Joni pushed me on the subject (immediately) saying, "like the meeting?" (referring to the Jehovah's Witness "church" gathering). I'm afraid I said "I think so" too. Which is probably less true, in my opinion, but it's not something I can explain in any words Joni would understand. Yet.

Then she asked me, next morning (Monday), after picking some sleep ("bogeys" she calls them!) out of her eye, "what are they there for?". Enough of the unanswerables baba! She also asked me in the bathroom "why does the water come out of there?" (the tap). I gave a childish explanation of the water system - the only sort I could give really ;-). At last I could give a firm answer though! I think she was giving up on me....

Then this morning, I heard her say to Bex "Where do pumps come from?"!!! (Only Americans need follow that link). Haha!!! Picture me giving an (erroneous?) illustration about cars, petrol and exhaust pipes...

It's funny, but not haha funny, how one feels the need to give a child an answer, as in the illustration by Jesus about the Father who would not refuse food (a fish I think) to his child when asked. Maybe this is a lesson in how we must "become more like children" - by accepting answers from trusted authority figures. I know Christians would view it this way (as Jesus taught us the same). It could just as easily be a lesson in growing up though - "when I was a child I thought like a child, but now I am a grown man..." (to paraphrase another scripture). Really, one can make of childish questions, or more to the point childish acceptance of the answers given to their questions, what one likes. I could have told Joni that we pump every time an angel touches us, and she would have believed me if I had explained "why"... Personally I go with the second interpretation.

There was this guy, when I used to attend "meetings", who when praying publicly sounded, in words and intonation, like a little child talking to his dad. It wasn't nice, it was disgusting. Creepy. It's not fitting for a man to talk like a child, to act like a child, to think like a child. To be gullible is not permissible in an adult as it is in a child. We mustn't permit others to mold us as our parents did, for better or worse. We must, for better or worse, attempt to mold (or unmold) ourselves, decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, which answers are valid and which are not. This is indeed the tree of knowledge which all who claim to be adults must eat heartily from.

Another question I was asked recently - last week - was from my Dad. He asked me whether I was going to the memorial this year. I wrote about this last year, which was the first time I hadn't attended the memorial. I still feel now as I do then, but less guilty. I answered my parents as I truly feel: if Witnesses are right, I would go to every meeting, not just one a year. The thing is, I don't class myself with the small group of mankind that call themselves Witnesses. I class myself with, stand proudly with, everyone else. Even if God, as Witnesses believe, stands with them to the eternal detriment of everyone else - I'm standing right here. I don't believe in that God, the God who doesn't stand for everyone else, even if he's the true God. Because everyone else is to all intents and purpose everyone, and a God who doesn't stand for them is no one. I suppose you could say this about any religion that claims Gott Mit uns, and I think that's right. My Dad said that I was bloodguilty if I didn't go - because I have known the truth, and rejected it, so to speak. Trampled on Christ, so to speak. Well, that's your opinion Dad, I'm afraid that's all it boils down too, even if you can find a lot of people who would agree with you (more wouldn't). My Mum said she would rather live with a hope even if that hope turned out to be false. I basically said that's fine by me, but I wouldn't, personally. Dad proceeded to lambast the various "other" religions that I (in his eyes) was seemingly defending, but I asked him to consider the famous slogan worn proudly by early Witnesses. I said I'm not defending any religion, I agree with the guy, a Watchtower president, who said "Religion is a snare and a racket". Is, not was. A snare from which I feel I am still painfully pulling myself.

Quiet whilst Crossing

Imagine a country which had, amongst its many laws, two capital offences: murder, and talking whilst crossing the road. In other words, if you kill somebody, or if you talk whilst crossing the road, you will pay with your own life. Putting the reasonableness of these laws aside for a moment, I would say that one is self-evident, and the other is not. Wouldn't you? I think there is a difference, in the TRUTH value of each of these laws, even though they may be made to carry the same penalty. I think that if a truth is evident (or evidential) everyone knows it, or can come to know it, without recourse to anything other than reason.

If religious truth were of this nature there would be ONE religion (like the one, even if unwritten, law against murder in all countries and languages) - for who could argue successfully against evident truth? Who could argue against the law forbidding Murder, or against a heavenly voice validating one religion above another?

Because religion is not like this, there can be no morally just punishment for not following a non-evidential law such as talking whilst crossing the road, as one man's law is another man's non-evident law. If we would not punish a good Muslim for not accepting Jesus (talking whilst crossing the road), then neither would a just God (if he exists, and exists as a punishing entity). How was that Muslim to know that he had to accept Jesus as his personal savior, how could this be an indisputable truth (and I mean indisputable as in "it's wrong to kill people" indisputable)? And according to the Bible, such a person does indeed face Death for his crime.

Because religion is not of this nature, because it holds faith up as a higher thing than even truth, all religions stand on level footing, building invisible bridges to an invisible God (or idea), only those of "Faith" being able to see the bridges, or the God (or idea). Yet there is no argument that truly supersedes evident truth, and therefore religious division (and multiplication!) speaks to the falsehood in every religion.

"Faith is the path of least resistance" according to Woody Allen, speaking through a character in Match Point. It's EASY to believe, oh so nice to believe, that "everything will turn out alright in the end", to paraphrase Sam Harris*. It's hard to admit that we don't know, but this is the simplest answer (and therefore best bet for the right answer), one built on the evidence, and it has a substance, a greater substance than Faith, despite its seeming lack of substance. It is a choice beyond the type of least resistance that casts us at odds with - forces us to actually resist in person or in ideology - millions of fellow human beings, and one which opens our eyes to the similarities we share with everybody, not the differences. It is the open mind, the open eyes, as opposed to the closed mind and eyes of praying, hoping, quiet whilst crossing, faith.

*Even if Faith comes hard to a person, as it did to me, I still hold that it is the path of least resistance for the above reasons, as it was the path of least resistance for Winston Smith in his society to accept that 2+2=5.

Time Goes On

Brian's Nana died on Wednesday. She had a "long" life, and is now dead. She died in a small room facing the place where I work in the hospital, the room with the closed curtains pictured below. Those curtains were open a few hours earlier, opened onto blue sky, onto sounds of doctors, nurses and students walking by, talking, laughing, rushing on to one place or another. Now the curtains are closed onto blue sky, onto sounds of doctors, nurses and students walking by, talking, laughing, rushing on to one place or another. And in another part of the same building, a baby is being born, and parents feel a crushing, overwhelming joy.

So it goes.

"Imagine the earth - 4 600 hundred million years old -– is a 46-year-old woman" suggests Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things. "It has taken the whole of the Earth Woman'’s life to become what it is. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise."

"The Earth Woman was 11 when the first single-celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was 40. She was over 45 -– just eight months ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth. "

"The whole of human civilisation as we know it began only two hours ago in the Earth Woman'’s life."

Only two hours ago. We've not even been here a day. How insignificant our species is, and how much more so the individuals of that species - me and you - whose lifespan is a blink of the planets eye. Yet how much damage our species has done in such a short time - over the last two hundred years, two blinks of an earth-eye - to its home! If, as Vonnegut suggests, viruses may be (part of) an immune response by our planet to rid itself of us...in the planet's eyes, maybe we're the viruses, they're the immune system, the white blood cells. We're certainly acting like viruses (Gaian theory may hold some weight here). So H5N1's been confirmed in Scotland. The planets immune system is readying itself incredibly quickly, building up stores of its own white blood cells, throughout its body, in preparation for the attack, the ever so recent attack, on itself. Maybe before the day is out, there will be no more danger from any man, for all men will be gone.

I used to think that, even though individuals of a species (an oak tree, a man) may die, representatives of species (oak trees, man) would always live on. But given that 99.9% of all the species that have ever lived no longer exist, why need we think that any special case applies to mankind (or to oak trees)? In fact, if a species ever needed eradicating for the benefit of all others, isn't it ours? So I think that I'm special, as did Brians Nana no doubt, as does Brian, as does everyone? I think our thoughts are lighter things than even our unbearably light lives.

In the video below (the second part of which is here) Michio Kaku gives us another useful metaphor to use in our attempting to comprehend our smallness. All things considered, I don't think the expression "Life goes on" can really mean anything in our world. Life doesn't go on. Time goes on.

Please Notice When You Are Happy

I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's 'memoir' A Man Without a Country, in which the writer who swore never to write again, is moved by his, shall we say negative, feelings about the current state of affairs in his country, to again put pen to paper, or fingers to typewriter - but NOT to computer keyboard, never!! We can be glad that he did, because he gives us yet more wisdom by which to live our lives. He's just a Sci-Fi writer, isn't he??? Yeah right. And H5N1 is just flu.

Here's a quote, the most memorable I think, from the book:

"... I really don'’t know what I'’m going to become from now on. I'’m simply along for the ride to see what happens to this body and this brain of mine. I'’m startled that I became a writer. I don'’t think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don'’t have that feeling. I don'’t have that sort of control. I'’m simply becoming. All I really wanted to do was give people the relief of laughing. Humor can be a relief, like an aspirin tablet. If a hundred years from now people are still laughing, I'’d certainly be pleased. I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government. Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any '“Good Old Days',” there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, "“Don'’t look at me. I just got here."”

There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity:— the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, "“Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end."” When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, "“You'’re a man now."” So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it. Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can'’t be a man unless he'’d gone to war.

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father'’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "“If this isn'’t nice, I don'’t know what is."”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "“If this isn'’t nice, I don'’t know what is."”"


Kurt himself mentions the above advice right at the end of this BBC Radio 4 interview for the front row program of February 6th this year, along with one readers fitting application of it...

I took, albeit with my always-ready cameraphone (ironically since I invested in a good camcorder), some nice footage of Ed yesterday (below), holding a "conversation" with me.
Joni really, well, "Mothers" him is the word, she loves him to bits - cuddles him so hard he nearly does end up in bits! She says "awwwwww!!" every time he does something cute (how could you ever program a computer to recognize a 'cute' look, sound or situation? How would you even begin to define cuteness? Yet Joni gets it spot on every time) - even though she's only 2 herself (3 in a fortnight). Bex had to take him for an injection yesterday, and she said that Joni cried as much as Ed did, in sympathy! Joni (yesterday again) said to Becky, who was struggling to get the pram into the house, "can you manage?" ;-) and, scarily, moved Becky's ironing, which she had put into little piles by the living room window, into one big pile hidden in the corner. She told Bex off "Mummy, you do it like this, tidy!" - the scary thing being, that's exactly what I'm like, always moving anything on the floor into a corner somewhere, out of sight (and mind)! She's my mini-me.