Hergest Ridge

My day started full of frustration and agitation (grumpiness is another good word for it). I suspect it had to do with the construction and jackhammers on floors above, but one can never be sure. Last night ended with me trying to tame some CSS code, and the new day started where the last left off - another potential reason for the sour mood.

By noon, three events blew the clouds away, and all had to do with a public bus ride. First was the social factor. Despite standing room only, my mind was mainly drawn to the positive feeling of being surrounded by other humans - an unusual but welcome emotion for a solitary mind. Much of the space was occupied by a group of preteen children on a field trip. Generally care free, sometime pretentious, always loud, but in the case of this group, mostly well behaved. When a mother with three children came on the bus, three field trip youngsters stood up and made room for their slightly younger peers and their mother. They did so without being asked, before the doors of the bus shut again. I almost wished my ride was a longer one, or that my errand could wait a bit longer while I rode past my stop. Before I could step off the bus, the driver had sent me off with a loud and determined “Have a great day!”

Sometimes, people will surprise you.

On another note, I’ve finally tamed the CSS code, and post contents are now displayed in Times, with paragraph indents in place of the ugly line breaks. I hope it gives the blog a slightly more friendly and warm atmosphere.

Joe Dallas - the author of The Gay Gospel? How Pro-Gay Advocates Misread the Bible, and Founder and Director of Genesis Counseling - believes that gay Christians practice a theology of desperation: “I am desperate to believe God accepts gays, so I will abandon a certain amount of common sense to believe” (paraphrasing from “It’s a New Day”, aired July 11, 2007 on Omni).

It would be a tremendous feat to quantifying with any accuracy the amount of compartmentalisation required to utter or believe such an obvious fallacy. While math is my thing, in this case the exercise is useless, and I’d rather go rescue a kitten from a tree.

All of religion requires a complete abandonment of common sense. That’s part reason why it’s called faith (read blind faith if you’re one for arguing that everyone has faith of some kind). Not only is common sense absent in religion, religious faith is near universally an act of desperation. To put forth so much time and effort into something so unsubstantiated, unproven, and unlikely, ‘desperate’ is one of the nicest labels I can apply to the practice.

The overwhelming majority of ‘finding god’ journeys I’ve heard in my life went something along the lines of “I was at a bad spot in my life, didn’t think I could go on, but God saved me”. This group of church-goers is likely second only to those that came to religion through family tradition. Isn’t it time we stopped believing that an imaginary friend saved us from ourselves? It’s just not healthy, if you know what I mean.

The thought of Joe running a sexual counseling shop is nearly as frightening as an elderly, celibate priest giving sexual advice to a young couple. The whole scenario strikes me at par with asking a pedophile for child rearing advice. Some things you just don’t do, and asking a priest for sexual advice belongs in the “don’t” category, somewhere between ‘licking a frozen pole’, and ‘making toast in the bathtub’.

(Spoiler free, but does give a general idea of the plot)

Nineteen Eighty Four was in my hands before it had chance to gather dust on the mental ‘novels to read’ book shelve. It happened quite by chance, and had infact been a compromise to the main purpose for that day’s visit to the library. The title I was after was not available at the library branch I visited, and I had simply put in a request for it to be brought in. Not wanting to leave empty handed, I decided to look around and see what other goodies might turn up in the process. That’s when I found Nineteen Eighty Four.

It was only in the pages of 1984 that I realised the dual meaning of “Big Brother is watching you.” If Big Brother is trustworthy and really cares about those under him, the words are reassuring and comforting, but even an individual only partially lucid will agree that this portrait of the Big Brother is not the image that the mind conjures at instinct.

Orwell swiftly paints a hologram of a gray and drab world where the past, present and future is a product of a mastermind - The Party under the guise of Big Brother. Winston Smith is the main concern of the novel, and his experiences become the reader’s.

Here, I resist temptation to illustrate with clichés the success Orwell achieves in bringing the reader into this alternate universe, where the presiding social oppression becomes a cancer on the reader’s own mind. It’s no wonder then, that the heart and mind explodes with every positive emotion when this stoic stream of so called life is suddenly interrupted with three simple words - the last words one could imagine. I love you.

These spontaneous and unexpected written words tear out any remaining emotional detachments from the world at hand, and claim the reader as its citizen - Winston Smith the vehicle through it; It is where I completely surrendered myself to the world of 1984, only to suffer its twisted Doublethink, where two and two equals five, three, or any other and seemingly absurd solution.

In the words of Fredric Warburg, 1984 “is a great book, but I pray I may be spared from reading another like it for years to come.” Having read the final quarter of the book in one sitting, I hoped to end the therein torture sooner than later. Only by having read the novel in full had I learned that the suffering ends not with the novel, and that only ignorance or death can end the struggle.

Of the two, I’m pretty sure I know which will end it for me, but only insofar as my experience does not resemble that of Winston’s. Should the opposite manifest itself at any point, I’m afraid all bets are off.

In a flash, all was clear. The theory I had been formulating over the past couple of months finally blossomed into a concise idea that can be described on a single yellow post-it note (other colour post-it notes would do equally well).

Theists often perceive atheists to lack morals. This is reflective not of reality, but of a fundamental difference in how each defines life and much in it. The atheists is pro women’s choice on abortion, not because she or he believes that killing babies is acceptable, but simply, the atheist does not see a cluster of cells as a baby. If an atheists sees the zygote as a baby, even without being religious they’re likely against abortion.

Most of the world’s theists and atheists share moral convictions, but since each defines murder and life, lust and sexuality, nature and existence, and so on in different ways, an illusion of immorality can manifest itself.

When a terminally ill patient is unable to end their life and asks for assistance in doing so, and if the atheist answers the call on grounds of mercy, the theist is likely to conclude that murder is what took place. From this, the theist will often conclude that atheists have no morals, but the difference is not of morals, but that in how each defines murder. The atheist may in turn see the theist as immoral (although this case is less likely). After all, what kind of being sanctions and forces suffering onto another? Surely, not a moral one… Does a theist not put down his dog if all it has is suffering?

Contrary to the Christian’s belief, people did not go around and murder, rape, pillage, and sin to their heart’s content until the bible came along. Morality is not of the bible, but often the bible is wrongfully believed to be of morals. Everything good in the bible existed before it did - arguably, some evils not known to man before the bible, came into existence right around the time it was published.

Few weeks back I’ve contacted a client via Email, with the request for content for their new website. I informed them that the design they approved is nearly coded, and by week’s end we’ll be ready to populate the pages with their information. Several busy weeks later, with no word from the client I decided to send another Email. If no reply came within a business day or two, I planned on a phone call - just in case.

The second Email received a prompt response, and declared that the content was forwarded after our initial request. “We need to meet” became the second urgent option. I am not sure exactly how much time need have passed before we were contacted to verify that the sent content was indeed received on our end, but I digress.

Narrowing down a meeting time for the next day - again via Email, this time without brownouts - I happened to be passing near the client’s shop, and subsequently decided to poke my head in with hopes of a quick resolution right there and then. On arrival, I was informed that the key individual is in, and would be done with a client in a few minutes.

“Did you want to wait?” asked the receptionist.

“Does he have time between this and the next appointment, or, is this the last one of the day?”

A quick glance at the schedule confirmed that no other clients have been scheduled for this day.

“I’ll wait then.”

Several minutes later, my client was done with their appointment.

“I was just in the area, and though we could have a quick chat, get everything going again as soon as possible.”

“I can’t.” The quick answer came across as dismissive. “I’ve got other appointments coming up. We’ll need to meet tomorrow, say around noon?”

“Tomorrow at noon works. See you then.”

And so, it seems, I Caught a Little Lie.