Once again into the breach dear friends!
I have ignored this site for a long time but have just found out that I am paying for it, unlike my other sites which have been free so I think I’d better start using it. Expect a new and scintillating post real soon.
Think about it
IDENTITY POLITICS
The Western world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. The Left Wing Establishment (actually the middle class ‘intelligentsia’.. the so called ‘chattering classes’ in Days of Yore.) appears to be ignoring the aspirations and needs of the working classes and to be actively sponsoring cultural anarchy.
One of the areas that are being used as a battlefield is that of gender/sex.
This elite are doing this by campaigning for the acceptance of Diversity in all aspects of daily life except in Thought. If anyone should hold and dare to express an opinion different from that that meets the approval of these Left Wingers then woe betide them as the full wrath and ire of this clique will be vented upon the opinion maker. It is very similiar in attitude to that of Fundamentalists of all religious beliefs and the Puritans of the 17th century. “I am right, you are wrong and you are evil and must be punished for not agreeing with me.”
Now, if a man wishes to wear a dress and call himself Deidre then good luck to him I say but if he then claims that he is a woman and always has been one with all the rights and privileges of being a member of the female sex then there is a problem as he is not, and could never be, female. To give that same opportunity to 16 year old children is ludicrous. A young person/adolescent can change their self-identity at the drop of a hat and change it back again just as quickly. these children are not allowed to vote, to drive a motor car, to buy a drink in a pub, to get married without parental permission or to leave school (in the UK) yet it is okay for that child to ‘change’ their sex.It is tantamount to child abuse to encourage them to do so.
To prey on the psychological and emotional insecurities of a teenager and lead them into a lifestyle that will cause them trauma, physical pain and discomfort for the rest of their life is a great failing of the ‘adult’ having and exhibiting responsibility for the welfare of the child.
Think about it.
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Pity poor Ebeneezer Scrooge
Carole and I went to see a very good production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ a couple of days ago and so I thought I would post this
As part of my Christmas tradition I am reading, Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’. A truly fabulous story but…and mine is a big but…
I am saddened by the dreadful press that Scrooge gets, not especially in the book but by all critics since its publication!
Scrooge as an adult was the product of the neglect he suffered in his childhood. Unloved and indeed hated by his father who blamed for causing the death of his mother when giving birth to the child. As soon as he was old enough he was sent to a cold and dismal boarding school where he endured great privation and was left there during the school holidays by his father. His older sister, Fan, was loved and cared for by their father, all his spleen was vented on Ebeneezer.
Picture the young Ebeneezer, watching his schoolmates and friends travel home for the holidays and festivities with their loving families whilst he had to remain alone in that terrible place knowing his father hated him and hsd abandoned him there.
When he was in his teens his father allowed him to return home, a message sent to Ebeneezer via a third party, his sister. No apology or words of regret from the old man for his treatment of the boy, no words of love or welcome, just the information from his sister that ‘Father’s mood has improved’ and that she had managed to persuade him to let Ebeneezer return home. Did his father want him home or was it because Fan wanted him back that his father relented?
But what would his home life have been like upon his going back to live at his father’s house after spending most of his young years away fom it? Could he have trusted his father’s offer and could he have learned to love him? Did his father love him? Is Love a good and dependable emotion for him to attach to?
As an apprentice at Fezziwig’s he saw fun and jollity at Christmas time, but could he trust it or was it a sop to the workers by the employer to make them feel wanted and so work harder? If it was a genuine outpouring of Fezziwig’s love and friendship ! how does Ebeneezer react to seeing such benevolence? He sees that Fezziwig likes his workers and loves his children and shares happiness with them. He sees that Fezziwig’s children love him! But was it a prudent business practice or is there the fear that the workers will think less of their employer and so shirk their duty through the rest of the year?
Has Ebeneezer read Machievelli’s book ‘The Prince’ which advises that it is better for a leader to be feared than loved by his vassals?
Ebeneezer falls in love but tries his best to ensure his loved one’s future comfort and happiness by the accumulation of status and wealth. In so doing he becomes avaricious and loses his Loved One’s respect..
Ebeneezer rejects love because Love asks naught of him but to be Loved and does not appreciate what he needs to offer it. , Can we see shades of Alberich the Nibelung emerging here!
Ebeneezer’s beloved sister dies giving birth to his nephew and this nephew grows up and rejects his ‘good’ advice. We do not know if he rejected financial or career advice fron Ebeneezer, but he does not seem to be a businessman. (Has he a private income from his late mother’s will? . But Ebeneezer is heard at one point to chide the boy for marrying someone ‘as poor as himself’, so maybe there was none!
This nephew, whose mother died giving birth to him and who, on her death bed asked Ebeneezer ro look after the child, marries someone for love, paying no heed to how he will provide for this woman. Not only is this a sign to Ebeneezer of folly on the part of the nephew but further ‘proof’ of Ebeneezer’s intrinsic worthlessness as his counsel is ignored!
By the time that the ghost of Jacob Marley has left him on that gfateful night Ebeneezer’s bad grace is beginning to weaken and during the visit of the Spirit of Christmas Past he is seeing that life could be different, could be better and that he has the ability to enjoy it if it was. It is, however, necessary for the Spirits of Christmas Present and Future to visit to convince him that he can change, that it is worth him changing, that he can join Life, that Life will accept him if he does and that he can sustain and maintain those changes.
Poor Ebeneezer, weep for his loneliness and his rejection of human interactions. Rejoice in his Salvation. And God Bless Us, everyone!
Le Voyage
I am listening to my cd of ‘Le Voyage…’ by Pierre Henry through my bluetooth headphones… sorry I’ve got to turn it off for a moment so I can concentrate on writing, bear with me for a tick…
Back in the 1960s I ‘inherited’ from my brother Tony an lp of The Voyage from the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Pierre Henry, a French composer of ‘Musique Concrete’ or what most people would term ‘a bloody awful noise’. It was early electronic music, before synthesizers etc were invented, mostly played by manipulating sound generators and processing feedback on multiple tapes. A glorious sound so sublime and evocative in my humble opinion. (evocative of what I’m not sure but it’s wonderful whatever it is.)
My favourite way of listening to it was by putting my stereo on the floor, placing the speakers a headwidth apart then laying there between them as the lovely tunes echoed and reverberated INSIDE my head. I truly believe that this was one of the reasons I never got into drugtaking, the sounds took me to a place of sheer, almost psychdelic, bliss (Listening to those sounds like that also took me to a world of deafness but I don’t mind, it was worth it!)
Over the years I have tried to find people who also like this style of music and ‘Le Voyage’ in particular but without any luck even among Avant Garde electronic and Industrial music afficianados there ain’t no-one who likes this stuff like what I do.
When I get to Heaven God’s public address system will be playing ‘Le Voyage’, Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’ and Brian Eno’s ‘Swastika Girls’ on an endless loop. I will love it, it wouldn’t be Heaven without it, but I reckon I will be in a lonely and remote corner of Heaven where no-one else can hear what is going on!
‘Nuff said, Headphones back on.
Think about it!
The Scillonians
Many years ago in the Iron Age. Although entrance graves from the neolithic/bronze ag
Entrance graves are found in close association with simple and cist cairns. A contemporary association also exists between entrance graves and menhirs. Though not uncommon in Scilly entrance graves are rare in England. These monuments exhibit some diversity in their form. A menhir/long stone is a deliberately set upright stone and serves as a ritual or burial monument.
Entrance graves have very restricted distribution within the British isles. In England they are confined to the isles of Scilly and west penwith in Cornwall. Further afield they have been recorded in the Tramore area of south east Ireland and lesser numbers of vaguely comparable monuments are known in the channel islands and Brittany. Entrance graves are scattered over much of Scilly though there are particularly large concentrations on Samson, gugh and the south east edge of St Mary’s most are set along ridges, relatively level gently sloping downs or on hill summits, in some cases they are near to ancient sea cliffs and a few are known the bottom of slopes and close to the modern shoreline.
Menhirs in Scilly range in height from1.5 to 2.4m.
Contemporary associations exist between hut circles and entrance graves and cists so are these the graves of resident/indigenous scillonians or are they the memorials of people who do not live on the islands but who came here to be buried in this ‘place at the edge of the earth’ High Kings’ ‘people of high honour, stature or religious standing’ Another final resting place ‘in the west nearest the setting sun and the edge of the world would have been in West Cornwall mayhap for the internment of those not high or wealthy enough to afford the carriage to Scilly.
Evidence hA BEEN found of a goodly sized population on Scilly but not of there being a profitable or worthwhile agricultural or manufacturing industries to generate an income and trading economy with other settlements outside the islands with one exception; the burial of the dead?
And he saw that it was good
For arguments sake let’s assume that the Earth was created by God (bear with me on this, even you non-theists, I’ve been thinking about it!). At each stage of his work he checked on it and made sure it was okay, only when he ‘saw that it was good’ did he move onto the next part of his project.
Once god had completed his Creation and had given Man, his supreme creature, stewardship over all things he left them to get on with it. God was always there for Man if they needed help and support but since they had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge they had freedom of will and of choice in what they could do (bear in mind that the scriptures were written at a time where Man’s thoughts were mainly attributed to divine action and influence, the writers did not have the cognitive capability of attributing Man’s thoughts to anything other than supernatural influence; if it was good God made you think it, if it was bad the devil made you do it.) So Man’s early attempts at living were not going well, a brother killed his brother, father attempted to kill his son, a man built a ship to save animals and his immediate family from a flood but left the rest, his mother, father, aunts, uncles, all his and his children’s in-laws and all the people that helped him build his ship to perish (you don’t think he built that great boat all by himself?). Eventually, so we are told, god felt that the time was right to give Man a set of rules to live by, the ‘Ten Commandments’ (there were a lot more but the ‘Ten’ were the main ones, applicable to everyone within the community.) The question I often ask of atheists etc who condemn these ‘rules’ is ‘Which of the Ten Commandments proscribe something that you feel you have a need or a right to do or have done to you by someone else? With the possible exception of the First Commandment, an objection that can be obviated by reaching a closer understanding of the meaning of the term ‘God’ the others are rules for living together in a society, Respect for each member of the community and their possessions (you can choose which category a wife falls into?) and having respect for the community itself (Honour thy father and mother [respect the history and traditions of your society]. Do not use the name of the Lord your God in vain [‘name’ here means more than just a nomenclature it includes the whole ethos of the named one] .)
The other commandments are ‘rules’ for living in a community. nothing godly or spiritual about them, they just explain how to be nice to each other.
And what if god doesn’t exist, do the same rules apply?
The famed anthropologist Magerate Mead recorded that the first sign she saw in the fossils of humans of Civilisation developing was when she unearthed a skeleton with a broken femur that had ‘healed’. This person had been cared for and tended to whilst the bone set and afterwards when they were unable to take part in hunting. They were they given a less active role in the hunt or assigned another job in the community that did not involve running (or even standing unsupported)? Unlike in other animal societies they were not just allowed to die. If this was not a god-inspired code of practice or way of living then the evolution of the human brain and mind had instilled in them a community spirit of mutual assistance and dependency (to witness this development in action watch the documentary ‘One Million Years BC’ and see how the brutality of the cave dwellers towards each other was transformed when they encountered the cooperative morals of the coast dwellers who helped and respected each other. (this documentary also shows that Man invented the eyebrow tweezers before he invented the wheel. [think about it, even Neanderthals made and wore jewelry so mayhap early female Man dolled herself up a bit!])
Joshing aside, was there a factor in the evolution of the Homo Sapiens that brought about cooperation and ‘rules’ for communal living, if there was, would those ‘rules’ be very different from the ten commandments?
Man is not a solitary animal, he seeks community, indeed he needs community, to thrive. To live in a community successfully requires rules, whether these rules were given by god or by evolution is not the first issue to be dealt with here, it is that they are there and when followed a community turns into a society and all can flourish.
Think about it
DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY!
Chatting to a friend of mine about politics the other day I told him that all Tories were scum. He accused me of being over emotional and offensively irrational by claiming that ( he did not notice that it was not a claim, it was a fact!). He could not understand that I hold that view, not because of any political allegiances that I may have but because it is my ‘Lived Experience’ that I have never met a Tory who wasn’t scum.
Scum is the term for the thick layer of unpleasant effluvia and detritus that floats on top of a liquid or whatever stagnating and polluting it.
So why are Tories scum?
It is the role and responsibility of a democratically elected government to care for the welfare of all of it’s citizens and to foster an environment where these citizens are able to work towards achieving their aspirations, it is not the purpose or right of a government to ostracize or ignore the needs and wants of one section of the populace in favour of facilitating the desires of another.
Conservative/Tory governments have always been what Matthew Arnold, the 19th Century essayist and social commentator termed as ‘Aristocratical’ a term he used to include not only the landed gentry but the oligarchs and wealthy citizens of the land, the aristocrats cronies; all those who have a vested interest in there being a ‘small’ state intervention in the internal structure of the nation and there being ‘allodial’ rights to land and property ownership (allodial rights are where the property owner has sole rights without state intervention, although the state can exact punishment or fines if the property owner does something untoward. Since the ‘aristocrats not only own the land but comprise the State, the government that sets and exacts the punishments levied, there is a clash of interests and no great impetus to set punishments at a worthwhile or deterrent level)
A Feudal system allows a property owner rights over his land but also it insists that he has responsibilities towards his tenants and the law upholds the rights of those tenants to be treated responsibly. With the eventual and inevitable decline and extinction of the Feudal System there came to the fore a plutocracy and an untrammeled aristocracy that could ride roughshod over the rights of the plebeians and ‘working classes’ nnnmmm
The Conservatives praise a ‘low tax economy’ where citizens have more money to spend on what they want but do not explain that people will need to spend that ‘extra’ money on health care, education costs and pension provision for their old age; these financial outgoings of the populace will be administered by privately owned agencies who will take an administrative fee for doing so. So a low tax more spending money regime implies a low tax more statuary outgoings scheme and more money and profits for private companies. Is that fair?
The Tories/Conservatives still hold to the methods and means that they held to back in the days of yore, dividing society, ignoring the least ‘worthwhile’ and exacting hardships for the needy. In Victorian times the Workhouse was the place appointed for the needy to go to but the authorities made the places so hard to access and so unpleasant and undignified that people would rather die than go there. In the current day Universal Benefit is made so hard to access and to survive on that people have to jump through hoops to get it and to live in fear of losing it when they get it and to rely on food banks to feed themselves, a system which some Conservatives see as a thing to be proud of whilst they and their companies and consortiums pay less tax than is equitable.
That is why they are scum.
in a future post I may have something to say about the Labour party abandoning their principles and the Working Classes and thereby becoming ‘aristocratical’ bedfellows of the Tory scum.
Think about it
What a Waste
I don’t know why I keep doing it but once again I have started reading modern Atheist stuff. The Atheist philosopher John Gray described present day atheism as having only ‘entertainment value’ as it rarely or never says anything of import and I must agree; there is little in today’s output from non-theists, be it from the ‘top’ ones like Richard Dawkins to the very bottom grade: ‘Atheist Republic’. And that lot really are the ‘bottom’ , what a batch of assholes with more axes to grind than they have brain cells to think with! I recently dug out their book of ’50 essays that prove how small god is’ or some such title. My self appointed task is to find something, anything, within it’s pages that can be construed as a serious argument that I or any theist can engage with meaningfully. I will let you know if I find one or else try to explain to you why not if I can’t locate one.
Think about it.
ps
I found the ‘edit’ key so tidied up this post
It’s a Dog’s Life
I hate dogs, actually to be more accurate I hate dog owners those antisocial types that walk with a dog on a long lead, let the cur poo and pee wherever it wants, including my driveway, they don’t clear up the mess, they take their mutts into shops where fresh food is being served or wait outside with the dog lead stretching across the doorway. These people post videos on facebook etc of them or their children teasing their dogs, even the short tempered breeds or film of their dog licking their child’s face, well I suppose if the dog’s just finished licking its own butthole it needs to wipe it’s tongue on something to get rid of the taste. The list of these people’s rude and disgusting behaviour is long…very long and I am made out to be a rude and grumpy curmudgeon because I don’t find these dog’s antics to be amusing or acceptable.
I believe that there should be a return of the dog license of maybe £10 a year, that you can only own one dog and before you purchase a dog you must go on a training course to prove you know how to look after a creature, that after you’ve got the dog you and it must attend obedience classes, long and extending leads should be banned and all dogs especially in built up areas should be walked to heel and not allowed in any shop. Dogs that foul in the street, or anywhere should be immediately put down, I would be willing to do the deed if the council will give me a heavy shovel to hit the dog with, the owner should be made to hold the dog on a lead whilst it is euthanised and made to pay for the disposal of it’s body. The dead dog’s owner should be banned for life from ever owning another dog or in fact any sort of animal as it is obvious that that person is not fit to take care of an animal.
Why should I have to put up with walking through your dog’s crap and trip over the mutt just because you are to bone idle to take care of your pooch and clean up after it.
Think about it.
In the Humble Opinion of Eddie 