I got a few calls from my mobile phone provider recently, offering me an early upgrade. Each time I told them I'd have a think about it and call them back. About a week ago I finally called them back, only to be told that it wasn't them that had called me, it was some third party company(s) and had I taken them up on the offer they would have signed me up to an additional contract which would have taken me about a month to sort out! My advice is, if you get a call from anyone offering you anything, even if it is from a company that you already deal with, don't agree to anything, but instead call them back. OK, it means you foot the cost of the call, (if that's a real pain, ask for the name of the person you speak to and get them to call you back,) but it means you definitely know who you're dealing with.
I was told that my provider don't usually offer early upgrades either, so I decided to go into the local store in town to have a look at handsets and ask about upgrade charges for the ones I was interested in. I'm usually pretty up on handsets but this last year there has been nothing out that's particularly interested me. There was however, the next model up from my current phone.
I like my current phone. It does everything I want it to and it's small to boot. The only thing that slightly bugs me about it is that although you can have an MP3 as your ringtone, or several if you set groups of callers up - heck you could pretty much have a different MP3 for each person in your contact list, and you can also have an MP3 as your morning alarm, for some reason you can't set one as your text message tone. What? Why? All you get is a list of preset ones, that on the whole are pretty crappy.
I asked the guy if he could check if you can set an MP3 as a text tone on the new model and also another, similar model by the same manufacturer. Nope.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. I don't get it either, most phones you can do that on now, but I checked both of those and it doesn't allow you to do it."
So we had a discussion about possible alternatives and the guy was very helpful. He told me that the next model up from mine had a shitty battery life too - a friend of his took it out and had to charge it before she got home. I eventually decided on a Sony Ericsson walkman phone for a number of reasons:
- I know Sony phones are pretty decent. The only problems I've heard with them is that the joystick in the middle sometimes breaks. This one doesn't have a joystick.
- It's a walkman phone. Now, I have a 30GB video Ipod, so I can't really see me using it as a walkman, (I used to use my old phone as one before I got my Ipod,) but at least I know it'll handle MP3's OK and the sound quality should be good.
- It comes with a 1GB pro duo memory stick, which I can also use in my PSP. :)
- It's a slide phone, which I like. I'm not keen on the handsets where the keypads are always exposed and my last two phones have been slides. Also, despite first impressions, it's actually about the same size as my current phone.
- It has a 2 megapixel camera. My current phone is the same, but the screen on the Sony is apparently better. The next model up from my current phone had a 3MP camera, which was a big draw for me. I mean 3MP? That's the same as digital cameras used to be not that long ago! I like having cameras as part of my phone. A few years back who'd have imagined it, but now we have mobile phones with respectable quality digital cameras and MP3 players built in! I don't do much photography, but it's something I'd like to do more of and learn more about, but I definitelty like the idea that if I ever want to snap something, I've always got a camera on me.
So I'd made my choice. Now we had to talk tarrifs. He suggested I change mine because my current tarrif was price matched to a competitor's and I couldn't get the phone for free unless I changed. There's always a catch. In this case however, it seems to have worked out pretty well because for an extra £5 a month, I get 500 any time, any network minutes and unlimited texts. Unlimited texts actually means up to 3000 a month, but that's still way more than I would use. At the moment, I pay £30 a month and my bill is usually between roughly £32 to £37 a month when the calls and texts are added on. This way, I can't really see me going over £35. It meant changing my number, but I figured, hell with it, it's not like I've never changed my number in the past, I'll send out an email and a text and people will update their contacts lists/books and get used to using the new number in about a year or so. Now because I was changing my number, this was effectively a new contract rather than a standard upgrade, (it still amazes me that I've been with this provider for two years and I'd still get a better deal if I just walked in off the street, but hey...) so there were forms to fill in and I needed to provide them with two forms of ID - one for signature, which my credit card sufficed for, and a second for proof of address, like a drivers licence or bill. I didn't have anything with me so I said I pop back the next day with it & the assistant kindly offered to charge the phone overnight for me so it would be ready when I came in. Now that's decent customer service.
So I went back in today and I walked, like I usually do when I go into town as it's only about 30 minutes walk and saves me first finding somewhere to park and then paying for the priviledge. The weather was shite and I got pretty wet on the way in, but I was excited at getting my new phone and spending an hour or two playing with it, moving my contacts and photos across and that sort of thing. This is one area where I am a bit of a typical bloke - I get excited by new gadgets. Particularly phones and games consoles, but I used to want to work in the computer games industry, so that's my justification for that one. For the most part, I'm not really a typical bloke in a lot of ways, I don't like drinking until I'm sick and getting in fights, (OK, perhaps that's a little unfair, but although I like a drink I'm a self confessed lightwieght and I'm OK with it,) I don't like football at all and I don't mind going shopping.
Anyway I got to the store, and I'd taken two bills, one from the phone company themselves, and my passport - just to be sure. The assistant duly informed me that they couldn't accept the bills as proof of address, despite both of them having my name and address emblazoned across the front and one of them having been sent by the company itself! After a minute or two or verbal wrangling, my mood rapidly deteriorating, I asked to speak to the manager. I don't usually like doing that, having worked in positions where people asked to speak to my manager, only to be told the exact thing by them. The manager came over and instantly made a huge mistake: He called me 'chap', as in, "Well, the problem we've got chap, is..."
He stopped short of concluding his sentence upon glancing up at my rather less than pleased countenance. I've had a fair few people tell me that I can look rather intimidating at times - even my current girlfriend thought I was something of a 'hard case' when she first met me and I occasionally have people cross the street to avoid me. I'm not that type of guy at all, as anyone that knows me, including my girlfriend now she knows me better, would tell you. In fact I'm a big softie, but if I'm annoyed, people can usually see it and this guy saw it now.
He wasn't to know that this was one of my buttons, but I really, REALLY dislike being talked to by shop staff as if I was one of their friends. I think it's just unprofessional. I once went into a branch of popular high street electrical retailers to ask about MP3 players, just before I bought my Ipod. The young man that served me chatted to me as if we were talking about the subject in the pub, over a pint. He eventually got the message from looking at my expression too, after telling me that a particular model was, "the dog's bollocks." I have no problem with swearing at all - I have a mouth like a dock worker most of the time myself, (if you knew where I grew up, you'd know how apt that was,) and most days the air between my colleague and myself in the office we share is blue with the language, but when I go into a shop, I expect to be treated the same as every other customer, which is to say, professionally and with some respect. Needless to say, I bought my Ipod elsewhere.
I'm prepared to accept that it's because I'm getting older that I feel this way, but I do place a high value on politeness and respect. You'd never hear me swear in front of my Grandmother, for example. There's a time and place and it's about what's appropriate for the situation. Besides which, I must still look young enough that these teens-to-twenties twats feel I'm enough of 'one of them,' for them to be able to get away with it.
I've become aware over the last ten or so years, that I have 'one of those faces', but the strange thing is it seems to be a different, 'one of those faces,' to different people.
Some people think I'm intimidating, (which I have to confess, I occasionally use to my advantage,) and like I mentioned I still have people actually cross the street to avoid me. That face seems to be when I'm most relaxed, strangely. When I'm just feeling OK, content, but maybe thiking about something, my face relaxes and apparently turns into some kind of snarling scowl. I know this isn't exactly the case, but this is when people seem to think I look scary. I remember a guy I used to work with asked one of the managers to ask me something because he was too nervous to ask me himself. He actually referred to me as, "that scary guy," to which the manager replied, "Him? You couldn't meet a less scary guy!"
Sometimes that same face comes across as merely pissed off - this usually happens with people that know me already. the amount of times I've just been sitting, quite content and happily thinking about something when someone I know has asked me what's the matter. Sometimes this has even ended in an argument because the person hasn't believed I've been OK and for some reason feel I'm reluctant to talk to them about whatever is supposedly bothering me and we both end up getting exasperated with the other.
For some reason, I get asked for directions a lot. I mean, I lot more than I think should be normal. I think sometimes this might be due to the fact that I walk pretty fast, so people look at me and think, "Oh, there's a guy who knows where he's going, let's ask him." which is true - I know where I'M going, but maybe not where they want to go. The wierd thing is that I get asked in towns and places I've never been to before, again, more than I think is probably normal. So I obviously have a face that looks like I belong wherever I am and maybe that's not such a bad thing.
God I'm bored...
I've been at work the last three days and I've had very little to do. I was only in to cover really and people haven't needed me much. I had a little project to do which I started just before leaving yesterday and I was looking forward to carrying on with it today and actually enjoying the challenges it would inevitably bring. Unfortunately, it went almost completely according to plan and everything worked first time.
Normally this would probably be a good thing as I'm usually pretty busy but I wanted it to go a little wrong so I would have to sit and think about it and maybe puzzle things through, but it wasn't to be.
So now I'm sat at work with little to do. Of course there are lots of things I could do if I wished to, but I'm tired, I'm not happy at being at work between Christmas and New year in the first place and my motivation, (which seems to peak at around 60% of an average person's on one of their bad days,) has slunk off outside to have a fag and is sulking.
There are lots of topics to blog about, but again, I'm tired, my motivation has now decided we're not on speaking terms and I've lost the will to finish this se...
Every now and then I'll get the little envelope sign that means I've got a new email. This elicits a small wake up call in my brain and I get, for a short period, slightly more alert and just the tiniest bit excited. A new email! If I'm really lucky it will be from a friend and I'll relieve my boredom for a handful of minutes by reading it and then concocting a reply that probably far outweighs the necessary response. This is how my friends can tell if I'm busy or not, stressed or bored etc - by the length and verbosity of my emails. If I'm busy, it's short, sharp and to the point with no wasted words. Strunk and White would be proud of the brevity. If I'm bored, then I digress, I wax lyrical and generally write my prose in a flowery and rambling style. If I'm really busy, then they get no reply at all and if I'm really bored, then they get a draft of a manuscript for a story I'm working on and a request to proof read it and mark any salient points that require attention. Anyway all day so far it's been system administrator messages or bouncebacks from spam that I just have to delete. *Sigh*
I do like to write. I pretty much always have. At age 5 on my first day of junior school we got given little excercise books, and I diligently wrote my name on the front without being asked because it said 'Name' with a little space next to it. My teacher came over and said I shouldn't have done it because he was going to write our names on our books for us, at which point I stared him straight in the eye and told him in no uncertain terms that I was quite capable of doing it myself, thank you very much.
I started this blog partly because it gives me a chance to write in my own voice, in my own style and without getting bogged down in things like character and plot. I have so many ideas for things and so many projects I've started, it's untrue. I have an idea for a short animation I'd like to do, (which has stalled during the creation of the main character like so many before it,) I have two short stories which I have jotted down a few ideas for, I've had ideas for at least three cartoon strips, one short-span comic and I have one main book that I have actually started writing, including a fair amount of background research and back story creation. Oh and I've also jotted down some ideas for material for stand up comedy, (which I'd still like to have a crack at cometime, just to attend an open mike night. Even if I bomb I'll only be doing it for the experience of doing it, so what the hell.) as well as ideas for a sitcom I'd like to write, with some crossover from the stand up stuff.
There are a number of obstacles to my finishing these projects: My previously mentioned motivation, (I would state a lack of time, but I find plenty of time to spend doing other things like watching comedy dvds, going out to pubs and spending time with my other half.) my short attention span, (it's not like ADHD short, I just have lots of new ideas all the time and a new idea seems more shiny than a project I've worked on for a while,) and time is a little bit of a factor - I do work full time after all.
I often think if I won the lottery, I might spend a lot of time doing this stuff - finishing these projects so I can put them to bed. This would be after I'd done a hell of a lot of travelling of course. I also think about taking some time off work and just going for it - beavering away at some of them until they're done, but I pretty much know I'd end up just watching dvds and so on like usual and then I'd resent having taking the time off and not doing anything with it.
I bought myself a laptop, justifying it to myself by saying I would be able to take it to cafes and pubs etc where they had WiFi points, (or even without internet access,) and do some writing. I used to take a paper into a local cafe bar at the weekend and sit and have a coffee or beer, read my paper and it would completely relax me for the duration of the weekend. There was just something about reading alone in a room full of other people that I liked, so I figured if I had a laptop, I could bring that and write and that might be even more wonderful still (I still think it sounds like it might well be,). Thing is, I've bought the laptop and two things have happened.
One is that my original plan of getting rid of my desktop machine has faltered. I thought once I have the laptop I won't need the desktop any more, so I'll sell it. Thing is, I've found I've become rather attached to it. I did build it myself from parts I selected and then put together, but that's not it. I think part of it is the fact that it has 200GB of space over two hard drives, whereas my laptop has only 80GB and I have at least 15GB of just music. I'm still thinking of selling it and getting an external HDD for all my data.
The second is that I've stopped going to the cafe bar at weekends. I do like my laptop a great deal - I love WiFi in a way I never thought I would and adore being able to sit in the lounge and surf the web when the router is upstairs, (One of my housemates keeps her laptop in the lounge and is very rarely off it, even if we put a dvd on,) but I haven't taken it with me anywhere, apart from to my friend's house when I visited them over Christmas (I took it in case I wanted to do some writing, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be able to for the three days I was there as I would be spending time with them,). I even got a decent carry case for it so I had no excuse, (it fitted in my old rucksack perfectly well, but I wanted a carry case because it just looks cool. Well, it does if you're a bit of a geek like me. OK, a big geek...) but no, nada, nothing.
I guess I'll just have to break it out and actually DO something on it. *Sigh*
OK, Christmas has now come and gone for another year. I don't generally participate in Christmas and I thought I'd go into some of the reasons why.
Firstly, it's a religious holiday and as previously mentioned, I am Agnostic. Agnostics do not, as far as I am aware have any holidays of their own, (If anyone knows different, I'd be happy to learn more - perhaps there is a national Agnosticism day somewhere?) and really shouldn't be celebrating other religions' holidays.
The usual response I get to this goes something like: "Oh yeah, but it's not really THAT religious any more is it? It's about buying gifts and spending time with your family etc." Well you know what? There are lots of Christians that think it IS that religious and I think maybe it should be. I would guess that most of the population of my country if pressed would say they were Christian - partly from habit, although many of them probably don't attend church on a regular basis (weddings and funerals do not make you a Christian,). They are probably somewhere between the holy trinity of Christian, Atheist and Agnostic, but the bottom line is most people, it seems to me, just don't care. They will say they don't have time for religion in their lives or that they try to get to church as often as they can or whatever, but they are really mostly just apathetic. They don't care enough to think about it. I think this partly stems from the inevitable cognitive dissonance that arises when you try to teach people about a guy that walked on water and turned water into wine whilst also teaching them about scientific reasoning in the same socialising institution (School, in case you were unsure.).
In any case, as an Agnostic I don't celebrate Yom Kippur, Ramadan or any other religious ceremonies because I don't share the beliefs of the people that do, so why Christmas.
I think Dickins has a lot to answer for. In my society it is NOT OK to dislike Christmas (Possible exceptions exist for people who have had family tragedies happen around this time, but even then other people seem to think by trying to include them in the festivities it will lessen the pain of what happened.). If you do not like Christmas for pretty much any reason, you are treated as some kind of pariah and virtually everyone you know will line up to extol the virtues of this wonderful holiday in order to try and convert you.
Here's the kicker: ask any one of those virtue-extolling celebrants how they are doing in the weeks before Christmas. Invariably you will get an uncensored tirade about how they can't find the perfect gift for their partner, how they've set a spending limit this year, but they are worried their partner will buy them something extra, forcing them to go once more into the breach that is the local shopping centre at its height of Christmas frenzy, how they are sick of shopping, how they might not buy something for someone this year because the present they got from them last year was crap - and so on ad nauseum.
Wander into your local shopping centre on a day when you aren't doing any shopping yourself. Once you have gotten over the dizzying high that the lack of personal stress gives you, take a moment to observe your fellow shoppers. Look at their expressions, their posture and body language and watch how they interact with each other. See much goodwill and cheer? I thought not. What you will see is stressed out people trying to find wish-list gifts, most of which will end them up getting into debt in order to buy and taking much of the next year to pay off before it all starts again.
Fights have broken out over the last (x) in the shop. People beep their horns at each other in frustration because everyone and his mother have decided to drive in to the shops as well. It's just crazy.
Another issue I have with Christmas is that it's just crass and vulgar. The thing is, conventional thinking has got to the point where even people that cover their houses in lights, tacky ornaments and all manner of crap, (including inflatable Homer Simpsons dressed as santa,) are seen as 'getting into the spirit'. I'm sorry, the spirit of what? When the wise men brought gifts for Jesus, it was gold, frankinscense and myrrh, not a snowman that flashes different colours while singing and dancing along to all your favourite Christmas hits (Don't even get me started on Christmas songs. The same fucking selection of maybe 10 songs played constantly for a period of approximately two to three months in every shop you go in, as well as T.V. and radio, all but maybe one of which I loathe and even that one by the time Christmas is over. Does no one else notice it's always the same songs every bloody year?). If those same people covered their houses with all manner of crap at any other time of year they would be viewed as garish and possibly unbalanced, but do it at Christmas and the worst you get is being seen as extroverted. I'm all for extroversion by the way, but I'm also all for taste. Even your average house has a tree full of tinsel, (Oh for the love of Pete do I dislike tinsel,) various shiny ornaments that rarely match and enough lights to illuminate the Gobi dessert at night. It's as if these people, even those whose houses are normally paragons of minimalism and style, temporarily give their interior decoration duties over to a crack team of magpies with kleptomania.
The thing is, everyone buys into it, despite hating having to do it, despite some of them not following the religion it celebrates, even some of them despite knowing that historically, Christ was supposed to have been born in January and the 25th December was chosen because it was the winter solstice and the Christians converted many pagan holidays into Christian ones in order to ease the transition and coerce pagans into adopting Christianity (See also 'Easter' or 'Oestre' as it was originally known, which has the same root word as Oestrogen and was a festival of fertility - hence the eggs and bunnies which are symbols of fertility and have absolutely nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ.).
Yes, despite all of this, most people I know fall for it every year, getting themselves into debt or at least blowing a large sum of money and hoping for some decent presents in return and that's partly the reason why.
It is said to be better to give than receive and I know many people that really do enjoy giving presents, (I myself do find pleasure in getting something nice for someone I care about, I'd just rather do it on their birthday, or some random day just because I felt like it.) but honestly most people are looking for some kind of (preferably equivalent,) reciprocation. You give in order to receive.
On a related note, it's interesting that a similar form of control is exerted over children at Christmas to the type I mentioned in my religiosity post - "If you're good Santa will bring you lots of presents, if you're bad, you won't get anything."
The other, and far more compelling reason I think most people participate in this charade of excess is that they were brought up doing it, and everyone else does it. That's a pretty hard cycle to break. Add in the facts that they get to over consume, spend money, receive gifts and get time off work & you have a winner that's going to keep the economy chugging along for another year.
But! (I hear you cry,) What's the alternative, considering that everyone does it? How can you possibly get out of it without your family disowning you? Well, yeah that can be a problem, especially for those of you who have families that don't like their members to think for themselves, (That's not a jibe, I know they exist & you have my sympathy,) but there is a simple way. What I did was to explain to my family that I didn't particularly like Christmas, that I thought the spirit of the holiday, (which I am totally in favour of by the way, it's just that it never actually happens,) had been lost, to have been replaced by crass and rampant commercialism which left me cold. I stated, in no uncertain terms that I would not be buying anyone any gifts and I asked that they buy me nothing in return.
If people did buy me things, I would receive them thankfully, but state again that I would not be buying them anything, even whilst feeling guilty for not reciprocating, because it's the only way to get out of the cycle. Call me a bastard if you like, but if I say I'm not getting you anything & get me something just in case I do or in case I was kidding, that's your problem. If you want your gift back, (and I have to say that this has never happened,) I have no problem with that but it just illustrates the point that you were only doing it to receive something in return, not for the pleasure of giving.
The way I view this problem is in the same way I view any problem; (I class anything anybody considers to be a problem for them to be a problem. I don't believe you should have levels of problem because then you get a friend talking to you about a problem they have & you give the reply, "You think you've got problems! Let me tell ya..." which helps no one.)
If you have a problem, you have exactly three options:
- Do something about the situation. Do anything about it, but at least try to make a change of some kind.
- Accept it and try to integrate it into your life somehow. This is a fallback from (1.) and is used in three cases:
- The problem is small enough to effectively ignore.
- The problem is going to be temporary.
- You adopt a zen like stance and adjust your plans accordingly, viewing it more as a challenge. (I like (3.))
- Sit on your ass and whine about it to anyone within earshot.
I think (3.) is used in most cases by most people. You can call me a misanthropist, but that's actually not the case. I love human being on an individual basis, but people en mass are generally all the things we dislike about ourselves - lazy, arrogant, stupid, etc, but then maybe that's not really true and I should stop listening to the media so much because the people I meet on an individual basis are usually really nice, with the odd exception. Of course, it could be argued that the people I meet are down to the sort of person I am and therefore associate with people that have qualities I admire. I'm less likely to meet people with qualities I disparage and those I do, I don't strike up friendships with, but now i'm starting to ramble.
I really hate whining myself and I dislike whiners. Whining is like worrying - neither accomplish anything except making you and more than likely in the case of whining, the person you are whining to, feel worse.
Your best bet if you have a problem is to get off your ass, stop whining and do something about it yourself and stop waiting for your mummy or the world to do it for you. Take responsibility, make choices, even if they're bad ones and then stand up and take your licks for the bad ones and learn your lessons. Apply Occam's razor indiscriminately. (If you don't know, look it up - that's how you learn, applying the do it for yourself principle.) Break things down into solvable problems instead of shitting yourself because you looked at the big picture.
This is the way I approached my problem with Christmas. Here's a rough transcript of my thought process:
"I don't like Christmas, it's crass and over commercialised and the real meaning has been lost under a sea of needless spending."
"My family all celebrate Christmas. This could be a problem."
"My family are all reasonable, intelligent people for the most part, so I should just talk to them about it & make sure they understand that it's not anything against them but a choice I've decided to make for myself."
"Anyone who still has a problem with it can talk to me about it, but I'm still going to do this & they will have to accept that as a fact. After that, it's their problem."
Basically, make the problem simple, then do what you have to do to solve it. Explain yourself to the people it affects but tell them that this is what you are going to do and provided you ensure they understand your reasons and that you're not doing it to upset them, you should be able to do it, but you do have to be prepared for some people to have an adverse reaction - some people don't like change or people that think for themselves but I have to say the view from the road less travelled is considerably better than the one populated by the throng of the masses. Sounds a little pompous, but when was the last time you made a decision that went against 99% of people you know?
A while back I decided to change my religious beliefs. This might sounds like something you have to fill in a form for, or at least notify your local governmental representative, but no - you can just go right ahead and change your mind.
I decided to change my beliefs from Atheist to Agnostic. Those among you that are believers of some kind may be thinking, "big deal", but I think it's an important distinction.
To give you some background, I decided at around age 12 that organised religion was not for me. Any believers among you looking for a scapegoat at this point would do well to talk to my R.E. teacher from that time, as it was my R.E. lessons that started my line of thinking. Being a noble sort however, I think I have to own up to making a conscious choice based on the information available, combined with my own reasoning and experience.
We were learning about different religions around the world - Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. and it occurred to me that most religions were practised by people according to two variables; geography and culture. If you look at a map of the world, there are areas of concentration of religion. The eastern areas like India, Japan etc are mostly Buddhist, the middle east, mostly Muslim, the west, mostly Judeo-Christian. I realise this is a gross over-simplification, but pick up any decent encyclopaedia and you should find exactly the kind of map I'm talking about.
So it occurred to me that I was the product of two parents, who happened to live in a certain country that was predominantly Christian. If I had been born to parents who lived a stones throw from Mecca, chances are I would have been raised as a Muslim, and so on. This to me seemed absurd, but this was not the only problem.
A second problem lay with prior religions of the world, which is to say the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, the ancient Greeks, The Romans, (although they stole most of theirs from the Greeks before converting to Christianity,) The Vikings, The Sumarians and so on. Because those societies are dead, we cannot talk to people who held those beliefs and try to understand them better. Who is to say that they were wrong? Why is it the Greek and Viking stories are now classed as 'myths'? (Read: pretty much fairytales so you don't have to give them any serious thought.)
Religion is generally told to have arisen from humankind's desire to explain the world around them. Lacking the capacity for reason and scientific method at the time, they created stories that explain how the world came to be and how we came to be on it. If you tell the creation myths of any tribal culture to say, a Christian or someone from one of the world's larger faiths, they will view it as a quaint story, but not something to give any real attention to. So why do they believe some omnipotent entity created the world in six days? Why do people no longer believe that the head of the gods was called Odin who had two Ravens, but some people still believed Jesus walked on water and performed numerous other miracles - or feats of supposedly genuine magic? To me, no one ideology seemed any more believable than another.
Another issue was that there was more than one religion at all. To my mind, most religions lay claim to be the true path to God, and all other religions are, in some way, wrong. Usually this seemed to be accompanied by some sort of caveat that inferred that if you were not a member of 'their' religion, you would suffer some sort of terrible fate once you passed on from this world. To put it simply, how was I at 12 years old, supposed to know which group were telling the truth? If the Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus were right, then I may well be going to some sort of Hell dimension after I died, (Never mind what would happen to me if the Catholics were right,) just because I happened to be born where I was. Talk about clerical error!
After a little thought I realised that all the claimants had certain similarities to their claims:
1. There is a God or Gods.
2. They created everything, including you, little man.
3. They are omnipotent.
4. They love you. (this one is a little iffy - some claim unconditionally, some claim God IS love... more later.)
5. If you don't believe in them you're in big trouble after you die. (Even if you believe someone else's version of them.)
It's the last one I had the most problem with, especially coming after number 4. Why would any all-loving God want to punish me due to mix up of geography and/or culture? If it, (I really don't like ascribing gender to a deity, but if I was pushed to at gunpoint on a monotheistic basis I'd say it had to be female. On any other basis I'd say genderless; both genders at the same time - being of dualistic nature; hermaphroditic, or polytheistic, depending on both my mood and also how much caffeine I'd ingested that day,) created us all and loves us all, it must understand the cultural and geographical issues and make allowances surely?
So, either God didn't love us all, (and I'm prepared to believe that an omnipotent entity would be very likely to be entirely indifferent to us,) or else the religious guys were wrong somewhere. If they were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about?
I started thinking about Hell. Hell is the place where wicked people go right? Now I realise morality is not an absolute, (I'm not getting into that here, that's for another post,) despite some religious guys claiming to have it literally written in stone, but for me any God presented with, for the sake of argument, an atheist who is generally a good person, a believer from another religion who is generally a good person and a baby eating, mass murdering rapist and says, "No entrance to Heaven for any of you guys, off to Hell!" is definitely one sandwich short of a picnic.
Also, in some religions, provided you repent your sins, you will get into Heaven. God forgives you right? So now we have the good atheist and the good believer from a different religion being cast down while the baby eating, mass murdering rapist waltzes in through the pearly gates because he started attending mass a couple of weeks before being sent to the electric chair, probably chanting "nyah nyah nyah" as he goes.
So I started thinking, if God forgives you, it's doubtful it does so because of which religion you belong to, having understood the geographical issues, (actually, in theory having created the geographical issues...) therefore no matter what you are, you get forgiven because God loves all of us right? The only thing that most of the religions were in agreement on was that if you were an atheist, you are definitely buggered when the rapture comes. However, what sort of God would grant it's 'greatest creation', free will & then judge them on their actions? "Hey I'm really proud of these human beings I created! What can I do to show them how much I love them? I know! I'll give them free will! There you go guys, you can do whatever... whatev... HEY! What the hell are you doing? I mean yeah, free will sure, but I didn't mean you could do THAT! Oh man I need to set some rules around here..." Just doesn't sound right does it? That being the case, even atheists must get 'forgiven', (I prefer to think of any God that grants us free will would simply accept us and our actions, rather than forgive us for them,) so what purpose does Hell serve?
I think it's all about control. Maybe religion has its place and maybe, just maybe there's some truth in there somewhere, but to me it just seems like a system of control put in place by some humans in order to get other humans to behave the way they want. Shamans used to be the the true power in a tribal society, because although the elder or leader made the decisions, it was the shaman they went to for council on how to make those decisions. So little has changed. As societies progressed, the priests took on a more powerful role and this can be seen in any number of societies until the separation of church and state. A society needs rules in order to operate effectively. (Point of interest, most people think a society without rules is anarchistic, but anarchy is actually self government by each individual, chaos is society without government.) Some of those rules are of a moralistic nature - the role of many, (I would say probably all,) religions in society is to provide a moral framework within which the society operates. Look at the ten commandments:
- "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me..."
- "Do not make a sculpted image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."
- "Do not swear falsely by the name of the LORD..."
- "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"
- "Honor your father and your mother..."
- "Do not kill"
- "Do not commit adultery."
- "Do not steal."
- "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor"
- "Do not covet your neighbor's house..."
Pretty moralistic right? Gives people a set of rules to live by. So what happens if people decide they don't like these rules? You need two things to make people adhere to your rules. Firstly, you need some kind of legal system - policing and subsequent punishment. Secondly, you need some kind of deterrent to make people not want to break the rules in the first place. What better deterrent than telling people they will be subjected to eternal torment when they die? Since no one knows what happens when humans die, you can make up any story and if enough people buy into it - you have a believable truth. As a sweetener, you say that if people do follow the rules, they will be taken to a perfect place after death, to enjoy eternal bliss instead.
What it all seemed to boil down to for me was that there were still many things about the universe that we couldn't explain and people, as a rule don't like being in a state of confusion. Confusion is used as a tool in warfare for that very reason. What people like is to be able to have an explanation for things, no matter how bizarre or unlikely, so that they can consider it done and tick it off their list of things to think about. "Well I don't understand how the universe could possibly come to be here, but I've been told that God created all in six days, so that's good enough for me. What's on T.V.?"
The moral framework removes confusion - questions like "Should I do this?" disappear. People know what is right and wrong because they have this framework as a point of reference. (It still doesn't stop people doing things they have been told is wrong, but they understand that it is wrong so they are more likely to accept punishment.)
This leads me on to why I changed from being Atheist to Agnostic, but first I'd like to reiterate that I'm not trying to offend Christians or Muslims, Hindu's or anyone else who has faith of any kind. I'm not saying you shouldn't have the beliefs you have, I'm merely explaining why I don't share that belief. You have the right to believe whatever you wish and I wish you well with it. To each their own.
So I had come to the conclusion that none of the world's religions were for me, which lead me to believe that I was an atheist. However, after some thought, I decided I wasn't an atheist, I was agnostic.
Let me clear up a misconception: Agnostic does not mean you don't care if there is a God or not. It may mean that for some people, but that's more apathy than Agnosticism. Not caring infers that you haven't given it much thought. I have given the subject a great deal of thought, as have most Agnostics. Agnosticism isn't fence sitting either. A lot of Theists and Atheists see Agnosticism as a cop out - a kind of "Oh, I don't know," answer, again inferring that not a lot of thought has been put into it.
Agnosticism is not knowing if a God exists or not and being OK with that. Weird huh? Agnosticism is about admitting there are limits to human knowledge and admitting being comfortable to admitting it. Personally I think that takes a lot of courage. When 99% of the planets population profess to either believing in some kind of deity or else believing that there is definitely no deity, then Agnostics walk the path less travelled and they do it because of an inherent function of the human mind - reason.
Here are the facts:
- There are believers and non believers.
- These people are diametrically opposed.
- Belief is not knowledge. (Dictionary.com describes belief thus: confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.)
- Therefore belief is not subject to reason. (Dictionary.com defines reason as: 1. The mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences.
2. Sound judgment; good sense.
3. Normal or sound powers of mind; sanity.
4. Logic. a premise of an argument.
5. Philosophy.
a. The faculty or power of acquiring intellectual knowledge, either by direct understanding of first principles or by argument.
b. The power of intelligent and dispassionate thought, or of conduct influenced by such thought.
6. To think or argue in a logical manner.
7. To form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises.
8. To think through logically, as a problem (often fol. by out). - Reason derives from logic and therefore it is not logical to believe or disbelieve in a God or Gods as no proof of existence can be made either way.
- Therefore it is impossible to know if there is a God or not, the only choices are:
- To believe that there is a God without proof.
- To believe there is no God without proof.
- To accept that since no proof can be given either way, there is no way to know if a God exists or not.
The Taoists of China believed that if there was a God, it was the universe itself, and because we were part of that universe, if we lived in harmony with it, instead of imposing our own agenda on the nature of things, we could lead happy lives. They also believed that there were limits to human knowledge and understanding and there were thing we simply could not understand and that trying to invent definitions was arrogant and against our own inner nature, which lead to conflict. That makes more sense to me than any religious doctrine and seems to be pretty true.
By my definition, everyone in the world is Agnostic, regardless of what they believe because they cannot KNOW if God exists or not, only believe. The only difference is that some of us accept that fact. Personally I think it takes the kind of arrogance that only humans exhibit to profess to 'knowing' that a God exists, or that a simple human being could possibly fathom the complexities of an omnipotent mind and speak on behalf of it.
But hey, I've just admitted that I don't know everything, so what do I know, right?
I opened a myspace account a while back, for the simple reason that I wanted an online blog to be able to post stuff to. Random thoughts, interesting (to me anyway,) topics and musings... that sort of thing.
There were a couple of problems with that idea. One was that I got sucked into the whole Myspace thing for a short period. I know, I'm not proud of myself for entering what is essentially an online popularity contest, but obviously the site exudes some sort of chemical that can be ingested visually, the symptoms being that you lose any semblence of decorum, propriety or the ability to be embarressed by your own actions and I therefore console myself with the fact that I cannot in any way be held accountable as I was essentially the victim of online bamboozlement.
The second problem was that, although I have a passion for almost all things creative, (needlecraft just doesn't do it for me, but several members of my family enjoy it immensely,) with writing being a top two favourite, I am so bad at journal writing that any attempt throughout my life to keep any kind of diary has ended both swiftly and abruptly and so the Myspace blog was almost destined to failure before I'd finished typing the first post.
Another issue was that I kind of wanted the blog to be anonymous, having read about Dooced.com, coupled with prior problems involving writing things down and then having people read them and take offence or else I'd end up in trouble some way or another. This makes it sound like I go about leaving post it notes with inflammatory remarks on people's desks. This is not the case. I have however, written down my feelings, (at the time, which may have changed later as feelings can,) and have had the people involved read them and get upset at how I felt at the time, assuming that nothing had changed in the intervening period. This is why most people don't want their diaries read.
Writing, despite being a major form of communication has an obvious flaw - the loss of all non verbal communication (actually in theory the loss of verbal communication too since writing is non verbal,). So you lose not only any accompanying facial expressions, body language but also intonation. If you're reading a novel, it's usually written in such a way as to make the intonation of any character's speech implied, but there can still be misunderstandings. Translate this to a personal message that was not intended to offend anyone, but without the intonation behind the missive it becomes ambiguous or else can be misconstrued as to intent and you have your average internet forum or chat room. It is my belief that the sort of technology you see in sci-fi, (video calling etc,) needs to be widely implemented pretty quickly because if we all end up online as our major form of communications, then one badly worded post could end up escalating into ww3 or the rapture, whichever you prefer.
All this is by way of saying hi & welcome to my blog. I'll probably be pretty crap at keeping it updated, but one of my new year's resolutions is to try & post something at least once a week. (I've had to promise myself that if I post more than once in a week, it doesn't mean I don't have to post next week or whatever.)
Some of the content may be funny, (at least I hope so,) some of it might be serious food for thought, some of it might be short & sweet, other parts rambling & possibly incoherent like now. Anyway, I'm doing this as an outlet for my mostly addled mind, so any offence caused is due to you implying something from the text rather than me inferring it.
