Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

Have you ever been to Germany?

I have. Well, sort of. Because the reality of the situation is that there is no such place as Germany. There is, however, a place called Deutschland.

In fact, in the English language, we have names for most countries which are entirely different to their native. I’ve studied both the French and German language, and I’m currently browsing Complete Finnish, a book Elina bought me for my birthday and all of those have different names for each country in their own language that differ from the actual place name as well.

But why?

We don’t translate any other proper nouns. People’s names for example. Or brand names. It would just be strange meeting Gijsbert and saying “Gijsbert? No, I speak English so I’m going to all you Ken.”

There is perhaps an argument to be made that when languages have significant differences, such as Far East or African languages where the native words are particularly hard to pronounce, but given most of Western Europe is based on Latin, they are quite easily interchangeable pronunciation.

It gets stranger though. For example, the Finnish domain name is .fi. It’s named .fi because that is short for Finland. But Finland is the English name for the place – they call it Suomi! What is going on…

Condoms are fantastic, they protect against pregnancy and STIs. They’re increased usage has massively reduced the number of people dying from such diseases and reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies, leading to lower crime levels too.

But there is one massive problem with them. After you’ve engaged in foreplay and your penis is full erect and ready to go, the last thing you want to do is stop in the middle of it all and put a condom on.

Also, what if you can’t find a condom? That is a nightmare situation to be in. Do you stop? What else can you do? Put on a very, very baggy pair of trousers and hot foot it down to the local convenience store?

The reason I mention it is because I recently had a discussion with a good friend of mine. We both consider ourselves to be quite intelligent, well educated, rational human beings. Yet, we have both, at previous points in our lives, been in a situation where we were in the middle of foreplay and found ourselves unable to find a condom.

Interestingly, we both had the same thought process – “can I just risk it? It will probably be OK…” Luckily, we both came to the same conclusion, that it wasn’t worth the risk. But I had to think about it for a 30 seconds.

So here is my concern. If me and my friends are having to have a serious think about whether we could justify risking having unprotected sex with a new partner, what about people who are less well educated?

Actually, is it any wonder that so many people do have unprotected sex? When you’re in the middle of it, your rational mind is otherwise occupied and while I’ve never engaged in it, it really took some thinking to decide that and so I can easily understand why other people may end up making less wise decisions.

It probably goes as far as justifying why 14% of students had unprotected sex in Freshers’ Week.

How do we tackle such a problem? I guess the answer would be education. Restlessly drilling into people that you absolutely always do need to use a condom when having sex with a new partner. But the rational part of the mind is quickly overwhelmed by the emotional one and in some ways, we may be fighting a losing battle.

Alcohol is an interesting creature. As Gijsbert points out, it makes us feel really ill every Saturday morning and yet we all go out and drink it again next Friday night. That is in large part due to how addictive alcohol is, and leads it to be classified as a more dangerous drug than cannabis, LSD, ecstasy and many others.

Some groups are so afraid that their members will go off the rails if they drink the Devil’s Nectar that they are banned completely. Some groups are even so intolerant that they refuse to enter buildings which serve alcohol, even if they aren’t participating themselves.

A few months ago, I started to wonder if my life would actually be better without alcohol. I don’t really get hangovers because I always take a lot of time to sober up before going to bed, but that none the less brings its own problems with sleep deprivation on school nights.

I hadn’t wondered enough to actually give it a go, but as a result of recent events I ended up giving up alcohol as a side effect of some health issues. I also have up caffeine and have made a few other small changes to my diet and lifestyle as well.

However, having been trying all this for a few months now, it turns out that it isn’t any better.

Actually, your life is much better with alcohol. Alcohol is something which can bring real, measurable benefit to our lives. Of course, if you abuse it there are consequences, much like chocolate, credit cards, gambling, vitamins and basically everything in life ever. But enjoyed responsibly, drinking alcohol is really a pleasurable experience.

So learn from my experience. Alcohol is great and there is little to be gained from this clean living nonsense. As with everything else in life, the best path is responsible usage.

Following on from yesterday’s post about Remembrance Day and my recent thoughts about venerating the military, I thought I would expand a bit on the subject based on some of the conversations I’ve had.

As I said in my previous post, it is interesting that we give so much respect to those who gave their live in war, but so little respect to those who gave their life to keep our supermarkets stocked with fish, or our power plants stocked with coal – even though fishing and mining are high fatality industries. You’re right, I wouldn’t want to go to war and I’m glad someone else is willing to do it, but I would equally hate working down a mine!

The standard response to such a question is that people choose to work as fishermen and miners, but then people choose to sign up to the military as well. We don’t operate any kind of conscription in the UK, beyond that of economic conscription that I discussed in my previous post, so every solider in the army today signed up voluntarily, and is handsomely rewarded for it. Interestingly, I’ve never heard anyone say “no, don’t bother paying me, I’m joining because it’s the right thing to do, not for the money.”

It becomes a different matter when we were talking about actual conscription during the world wars, when people were forced to go to war. But the sad reality of it is, if you were conscripted into the army, that wasn’t really a noble sacrifice was it, because you didn’t have a choice. It’s a pretty horrible truth, but a truth none the less.

Actually, the truth is much more horrible when you think about conscription. It wasn’t that these people chose to die for their country, it’s that we, as a society, murdered them. We executed them; sent them to their death. They didn’t decide to go and die, we made them go and die. If anything, Remembrance Day should share a similar tone to Holocaust Memorial Day.

What I found most interesting about the attitudes of people surrounding Remembrance Day, was how closely it fits in with what I said in my previous post about venerating the military. The upper classes sending the lower classes to die in their wars.

This was most apparently in specifically two of my friends, Kieran who retweeted extensively on the subject and Rebecca whose idea it was to go out to the war memorial on November 11th. Now, neither of these are people are either royalty nor right wing nutters. I consider them both good friends, but they are both from well off backgrounds and if I was to pick the two of my friends most likely to vote Conservative, I would pick those two (except for Norm, who I suspect mostly votes Conservative because even though he wants to vote Labour now, could never admit he was wrong about a political party 😉 ).

Indeed, when I had a discussion with Rebecca about it, and pointed out that if you sentence someone to death using conscription (it’s a to lot easier because you don’t have to bother with that whole trial by their peers nonsense), then it’s not really a noble sacrifice because they didn’t choose it, she seemed to get very flustered and told me to “just stop it now.”

That upset me somewhat because I felt like she was trying to claim the moral high ground, even though she was speaking on the pro-war side and I was suggesting it isn’t cool to sent working class people to their death just so our dirty work can get done. But this isn’t about my sensitive emotional centre carefully wrapped in an excessive amount of hair.

The response struck me as that of a religious believer when you’ve just found a massive problem with their worldview. They don’t know what to do. “You can’t say that – that’s not on the script! Don’t you understand how this works. We have to maintain the veneer or all the poor people will realise that our wars aren’t worth them dying for.”

Though as I discussed in my previous post, just because I feel that is the truth, doesn’t provide an answer as to what to do about it. Maybe we do need to keep even our own minds ignorant of the beast below.

I’ve suddenly found myself becoming a prolific anti-war blogger and I didn’t really mean for this to happen. But, I have a severe tendency to play Devil’s Advocate and with it being Remembrance Day as I write this, I suddenly seem to have become left wing.

So, I was just wondering. Remembrance Day. My question is, what exactly are we remembering?

I think the answer is, we’re remembering those who gave their lives in war, but I think a more accurate way to put my question might be, what is the purpose of remembering?

It isn’t to honour the dead, really. No remembrance ever is. Because they’re dead, so it doesn’t benefit them. Funerals are a great example of this, we don’t hold a funeral for those who have sadly passed away, we hold it for the people left behind to help them move on with their lives. A funeral is to give ourselves closure and help us to deal with the loss.

So perhaps the answer is to give ourselves some closure about the whole incident.

However, I’m not sure that is the case because we do it every year. I think, actually, Remembrance Day has a far more important purpose. We remember to remind ourselves that this should never happen again. Although clearly, we didn’t remember hard enough the first time, so more accurately, this should never happen a third time.

That I think is a worthwhile and noble purpose, one which the tradition of Remembrance Day is well worth dedicated time and effort to. It makes the world a better place.

Unfortunately, when I look at this, I wonder how much good it actually does. We don’t even have pictures of some of them.

I’ve never really done much for Armistice Day since entering the world of work. However, given the opportunity to get out of work for five minutes, we headed down to the war memorial in Headingley for the short ceremony. The saddest part of the whole tragedy is that getting us out of work for five minutes was no more an unjustified reason for so many people to die, than war itself.

It was striking how religious the ceremony was. But then of course, non-religious people never really did anything for their country, so it only seems fair to forget them.

Ben brought up an interesting topic in this month’s Humanist Community of Leeds meeting. The topic was the discrepancy between the age of sexual consent and the age at which you can vote.

I’ve heard the argument before, and similar ones that I don’t buy in to – for example, you can pay tax at 16 but you can’t vote until you’re 18, therefore it could be suggested it is unfair that you pay tax to a government you can’t vote for.

I don’t find this a credible argument because you don’t necessarily pay tax as a way of gaining a vote in democracy. You’re vote in democracy is a guaranteed right, even if you’re not paying any tax at all – it simply isn’t available until you’re ready to make an informed decision. The reason you pay tax is primarily to pay for public services such as hospitals and schools, which you almost certainly have been making use of at the age of 16.

The argument for having a different age for sexual consent and voting is a less clear cut one though. Indeed, Ben made a very powerful argument that I think may be winning me over.

The reason we don’t let people vote until they are 18 is because we’re worried they would vote for the wrong political party – a lot of them might vote for the Monster Raving Looney Party, or the BNP, or the Greens, or one of the many other fringe parties and being the pretentious grown up real adults we are, we don’t approve of such free spiritedness.

But it’s very hard to make the case that they can do more damage with a vote, than they can do by having sexual relations.

Actually, having a vote probably won’t make any difference. Voter turn out is low in young people anyway, let along even younger people and at the end of the day, it’s only one vote and there are lots more people aged 18 or over than there are aged 16 or 17.

Sex however, can be quite damaging. Initially it could appear this is primarily damaging to themselves which is perhaps why we allow it (whereas voting for the wrong political party would be damaging to society and is therefore not allowed), but of course sexual relations can be incredibly damaging to society.

Unwanted children are a huge problem because they don’t get properly parented and therefore become out of control kids and eventually grow up to become criminals, breaking into your house and filling up those prisons that your tax money pays for. Not to mention the possibility of ending up in care, which our tax money also pays for.

In fact, one of the biggest reductions in crime has come from legalising abortion^[1], simply because most of the unwanted pregnancies that would have previously been born and grown up to become criminals are now getting aborted. Unwanted pregnancies cause problems, as do STIs which are also prevalent with young people who engage in regular exual intercourse with multiple partners.

Therefore, giving how damaging it is in society, it is very difficult to justify having a higher age for voting than you do for sexual consent.

There are only two places you are allowed to sing in public – church and karaoke bars. Unfortunately, many people feel uncomfortable doing karaoke and you never get to sing anything good at church.

The solution – karaoke congregations! It’s a meeting, where you all turn up and do karaoke as a group. There are a number of different songs to suit people’s tastes (or as the movement grows separate meetings with different genres) and you come along and everyone sings along together. This way, you can sing popular songs and you don’t have to be embarrassed because everyone is singing so nobody can really hear you anyway.

It’s also important to point out that it is karaoke. That is an important term because it stresses that it is fun and you don’t need to be able to sing. As opposed to a term like choir where there is a focus, or at least an interest in signing properly, in a formal way and performing together, these meetings would just be fun meetings where you can turn up and sing badly because it’s just about having a laugh, just like when you go to a karaoke bar with friends.

Thoughts?

Earlier this month, Sir Jimmy Savile sadly passed away.

The reactions of the Leeds community showed just how much of an impact that he had. Having re-watched the Louis Theroux documentary, Jimmy estimated he has raised over £40,000 for charity. Now I like to think I’ve raised quite a bit in my time and yet, I’m fairly sure that you compared it as a percentage, it would be 0%.

It is no wonder, however. There doesn’t seem to be a person I can find who has a bad word about him. Indeed, the more people you ask the poor you seem to get a heartwarming story. Whether it was when he took time out to take a photo with Casual Dave or sign an autograph for my mum. Or the time he went to visit my dad while he was in the hospital or the time he gave my grandfather a lift.

Unfortunately, I was unable to go down and pay my respects as they moved the public viewing back from 9:00 to 9:45 and I had to be at work by then. Still, I’m never the less starting or getting involved with the following campaigns:

• A Statue for Sir Jimmy. If Don Revie is getting a statue (http://donreviestatue.com/), who was someone who I’m sure what a great guy, but I had to ask my dad about, I think it’s the least we can do for Jimmy.
• A Song for Jimmy. Jimmy is the new Princess Diana (the King of Hearts, if you will), I think it would be a fitting tribute for Elton John to write a song about him.
• The Jimmy Savile Arena. We’re building a brand new arena in Leeds, so why not name it after him? Why not indeed?

The Humanist Society of West Yorkshire recently had a discussion about whether we should participate in an official remembrance service, as many faith groups do and the BHA had encouraged local groups to join in by laying a wreath. In the end, the group decided not to, because there was a split feeling about whether it was a cause we should endorse.

After all, killing is wrong. The military is not a positive institution; it’s an institution of death. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t exist.

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world and the military does exist in practically every country in the world. Even Switzerland has a small armed forces. War is even arguably necessary – though in some cases, significantly less so than others.

Yet we, as a society, have a great reverence for the military. The United States, significantly more so. Being a solider is something noble, something to be looked up to, people sacrificing themselves for their country. This is an attitude reinforced by many different groups within our society and is deeply ingrained in our traditions.

But, I would propose that this isn’t congruent with many peoples attitudes. Many people, humanists and religious people alike, strongly detest the idea of war. A million people marched through the streets of London to protest against the Iraq war.

And anyway, is it really that noble to sacrifice yourself in such a way? The military is quite well paid, not to mention you get accommodation, free meals, a company car (so the advert picturing a young soldier driving a tank would have me believe) and get to travel round the world going to a variety of interesting, if a little dangerous, places.

Not to mention the fact that many people sacrifice themselves in a similar way. Yes, soliders can be seen as putting their lives on the line to keep us safe (though when was the last time sovereign British territory was under threat – The Falklands?), but similarly fishing is a very dangerous industry, it has one of the highest mortality rates of any industry and yet we don’t have remembrance days for those who lost their lives filling Tesco with cod fillets. This special privilege is afforded to the military alone.

However, I think I have an idea why. Much like Doctor Who’s The Beast Below, it’s hiding a terrible secret that none of us really want to acknowledge – giving special reverence to the military is the only way we can trick poor people into going to fight the wars we want to fight, so that we don’t have to go ourselves.

That, I suspect, is the cold hard truth.

We always send the poor to go die in our wars. It’s not officially conscription but when you have little education, little chance of gaining a well paid job and improving your quality of life significantly, the military must sometimes seem like the only option. It’s called economic conscription. It’s a condition created intentionally by us as a society, to railroad poor people into joining the army.

However, simply by forcing people to join up, doesn’t mean that you can automatically get them to lay down their lives for their country. You can brainwash them of course, and that is essentially what basic training is, but the best way is to make them think there is some noble, higher cause for what they are doing.

In a way, there is. It’s just not one that we think is personally worth fighting for. Because given the choice, none of us are going to join the military. It’s not worth it – we might die, and there is nothing worse than dying. That’s the worst thing that can happen to you, the end of the line, nothing is worth your life.

But we have a problem. Wars need to be fought. This is a whole separate argument in itself, but lets agree that whether we personally agree that wars need to be fought or not – society on balance, especially the government, thinks that wars do need to be fought. More so in more clear cut examples like defending ourselves from invasion in World War II, but also you could argue that humanitarian intervention is countries like Iraq, Zimbabwe and North Korea are well worth while.

So the problem is this – how do you fight a just war, if you’re not willing to actually do it yourself because you don’t want to die and as a rational human being you therefore won’t go to war. The solution is simple. You convince other people, through a combination of creating a society which venerates the military and coerces poor people with economic conscription, that it is noble for them to lay down their lives for their country.

But what do you do about this? If you agree that there is in some situations an argument for war, such as those mentioned above, and you agree that as a rational human being you don’t want to go to war, then have you rationalised yourself into a corner where you can morally support the propagation of nobility in military sacrifice? I’m not sure what the answer to that question is yet. Answers on a post card.