Sometimes, just sometimes, you have a strange couple of days. Those days when life packs into a singularity and bursts out with the energy of a mini Big Bang, creating a point of initiation that you just know will lead to life’s future supernova, heavy elements and chaotic fractal constructions. A couple of days that will be part of what passes through your mind as your life ends, forcing a wry smile while oblivion stares into your eyes, readying itself for your final annihilation. A powerful, all too brief moment in time leaving you numb and dizzy; for me, it has been such a weekend.
On Friday morning, I wake to hear the sad news of the passing of Christopher Hitchens. A man of such stunning intellect and erudition that even his most vocal opponents will feel the loss. After a Hitchslap marathon, I find the recycling of life takes another turn. From a death to a life, and my list of Nieces and Nephews grow one further on the birth of Eden Firth, the new daughter of my wife’s brother, Robin. It has not been long since my own brother, Andrew, added another to the growing list; I’m now at 16. So the tendrils of life and family continue to expand, and in some strange way I feel my own personal connection to the planet grow with each and every one.
By Friday afternoon I had to say goodbye to Dawn for a short time, something I rarely do, and head off back to Sheffield with my oldest brother, David. He and I travelled up with his eldest son, Ethan, newly but gently rotund after discovering our family’s love of food; David tells me he widens out before he shoots upwards; I look forward to my own shoot upwards with longing. We have a pleasant journey up the motorway accompanied by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (original radio series and, in my opinion, the best version). Ethan at 11 years of age already knows all the lines, all the jokes, and is starting to understand the deep philosophical sci-fi comedy genius of Douglas Adams. We arrive around midnight at my mother’s house. My mum isn’t there as she is sunning herself in Spain over Christmas, but my oldest brother Peter, who has travelled up also, meets us; his son, Tom, is asleep in the living room. I rock climb into the readymade bed left by my mother, a bed so tall I for fear my life and experience near altitude sickness as I reach its summit. In the piece I remember what happened on the train from my Flat to my Brothers house for a minute, and I focus on the fuzzy feeling I have in my stomach when I recall my phone flashing with the arrival of a new email. I read it once, twice, three times. Have I done it? Can I have done it? Bloody hell, I have done it!
When I was at school, and ever since, I had two secret dreams and one public one. The public one was to be a rock star, or at least a professional musician. It’s a dream I flirted with for over a decade before the stark realisation that, A. I couldn’t make it without compromise, and I wasn’t prepared to compromise, and, B. the music industry is dying. This made me contemplate the possibility of the other dreams; they were intertwined. I had dreamed quietly from about 8 years of age of becoming a Doctor by getting a PhD, and I dreamed of going to Cambridge University. The email was confirmation that the chance to fulfil both had arrived: the degree committee of the History faculty at the University of Cambridge have recommended me to the Board of Graduate studies. This means (paperwork pending) that I am going to Cambridge to do an MPhil/PhD, in Early Modern History. I called Dawn who whooped for joy. I felt a buzz. I had BLOODY WELL DONE IT. Two and a half years of working my arse off, shutting myself away, spending hours and hours on essays and research had come to fruition. My thirst for each and every bit of work to be graded a first had paid off. I was going to the best University in the world for my subject to get the highest qualification in the world. Wow. What a day.
The next day, it got stranger. Me, my brothers - Peter and David - their sons - Tom and Ethan - two of my sisters sons - Jack and George - and one of my sisters husband’s sons - Jordan - headed to Sheffield S6, Hillsborough Stadium, to watch the mighty(ish) Sheffield Wednesday take on local(ish) rivals Huddersfield. It was the most bizarrely brilliant games I have ever seen. 20 minutes in, Huddersfield had torn Wednesday to pieces- they were 0-2 up and eating us alive. Their striker, Jordan Rhodes, was a knife and our defence was butter. It was humiliating. It was all over. Then, with just about their 2nd shot on goal Wednesday equalised and at that, it was as if Wednesday manager Gary Megson had given the players an enema. Wednesday dominated and the absolute joy of going level at 2-2 was followed, after the break, with 2 more. Wednesday were 4-2 ahead. Ah, but that this was the end. Wednesday tried to close the game down and made a hash of it. Very quickly, Huddersfield drew one back, Rhodes melting the buttery side of our defence once more. It was 4-3 and injury time. As we had very few injuries, we assumed it would soon be over and Wednesday would take the 3 points. Not so. The injury time seemed to stretch out forever. If you were cynical, you might say that the referee, the amusingly named Derek Deadman (seriously!) was waiting for the now on fire Huddersfield to equalise. And equalise they did, in the 7th (count ‘em) minute of injury time, and immediately the whistle was blown. Bugger. One more instance of awful refereeing, but then, Wednesday shouldn’t have let them take over the game. But WHAT a game! WHAT a stunner! They come but once every few seasons, decades even, and I am glad, even honoured, to have been there.
The curry that night was great; well, the company was, not so sure about the Curry. Mine tasted like a bad stew. The next day David, Ethan and I saw relatives (my late Dad’s brother and sister- Uncle Leonard and Auntie Marion- my late Dad’s late brother’s wife- Auntie Christine- and my Nan (on my mum’s side)) and David and I got the distinct impression we’d made a few old ladies (and I suspect an old man) very happy. We made Ethan happy too,as he realised Nans and Aunties tend to do things like give you a hand full of sweets and the odd fiver. I think he likes his northern extended family. We head home, and those connections to the planet, from seeing so much of my family, feel all the stronger. Douglas Adams once claimed we are attached to the place we are born by tendrils of guilt; I think the same is true of family. I miss my Dawny however, and feel great to be back with her on Sunday evening. She’s got me my favourite food and a Bottle of CV Champers to celebrate the news about Cambridge; all in all, one hell of a weekend.
So in a nutshell, in the space of 48 hours an idol dies, I fulfil one of my dreams and make another almost certain, my family grows once more, I see what is probably one of the greatest football matches of all time, and I help make a few old dears very happy.
All I can say to that is: Happy Christmas and a Very Merry New Year!
Monday 19 December 2011
Sunday 11 December 2011
The Folly of Rhetoric (or fighting fire with fire).
Rhetoric is a disease. It is a false reality: the last desperate hope of those who fear what science and learning have brought us. Rhetoric is used where the cracks are, where the arguments decay and the discussions should have ended. Rhetoric is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The world is filled with Rhetoric. Flat-Earthers, Conspiracy Theorists, Creationists, so-called Race Realists, Geocentrists, Climate Change Deniers, Postmodernists, Critics; they are all the same. Rhetoric makes people believe that appealing to words can overturn what we know. Rheotric waves the flag of the literal turn, gets in bed with Derrida and suggests that scientific knowledge is mere opinion. Rhetoric claims that any interpretation- any unqualified interpretation- is a valid as any other. It appeals to emotion and incredulity in a desperate attempt to overturn the universe we observe. They misuse and abuse logical fallacies, fallacies that for the most part should have been consigned to the intellectual grave with the rest of the Scholastic Aristotelian school that spawned them. Reality is NOT about opinion. It is NOT about faith. It is NOT about blindly following your otherworldly worldviews and casting what is actually observed aside. Real Science, real History, real Psychology and Sociology are not about words but actions, and the understanding of those actions. They are about study, research, hard work. They are about putting the hours in, many hundreds of hours in, and after all that time, all that searching, being prepared to find nothing, being prepared to be wrong.
That is what makes science amazing. With each mistake comes a correction. With each correction comes a better understanding of the real world. Those of us in pursuit of such an understanding know it is not going to be easy. But to overturn what the Germans would called ‘wissenschaft’ [“ learning : science”- Mirriam Webster.] takes hard work and study. Far too many are far too lazy. They would rather indulge their personal biases by seeking out You Tube videos, Wikipedia entries and the abstracts (though rarely content) of seemingly supportive papers; often without reading the papers, almost always without seeking out dissenting voices and never considering the academic consensus. Science and learning are not based around controversy; there are actually very few controversies to teach because what rhetoricians call controversy, we call ‘unknowns’. It is about consensus. To many of the more rhetorically minded, consensus has become a dirty word, a conspiracy word, and they surround it with whooping hordes of rhetoric, wilful ignorance and more science denial.
Rhetoric is not enough. You can state whatever it is you believe and you can throw around your fallacies, long words and philosophical [mis]interpretations all you want. You can smother the observable universe in semiotics and linguistics and postmodern deconstructionist analyses. But at the end of the day, as David Hume observed
www.davidhume.org/texts/dms
So why do I care? Some might say I myself have been guilty of such rhetoric in the past, and they are right. I am prepared to be wrong and move on; are you? Some would accuse me of using rhetoric right now: perhaps, again, they are right. But my words are backed up by the fruits of Wissenschaft; by the computer I am using, by the coffee by my side, by the train that brought me home this evening. They are not merely contemplative, but demonstrative. I don’t imagine them at work, I see them in action.
The more people disappear into their other-worlds, no matter what those worlds may be, and think that rhetoric, born of emotion, born of faith and in turn born of whatever fairy story their culture or subculture likes the most at the time, the more the reality- what we actually know- will become diluted. I am a Historian, and I for one do not want to return to a world where the only reality is rhetoric, the only truth the loudest shouting voice; I have seen it in the pages of documents and the horrors of Europe’s past. Others would rather rule by loudly shouting about what they cannot possibly know. They want to change the game back from observable, measured reality to conjectured, rhetorical fantasy.
I do not. And neither, if truth be told, do they.
Richard Firth-Godbehere
The world is filled with Rhetoric. Flat-Earthers, Conspiracy Theorists, Creationists, so-called Race Realists, Geocentrists, Climate Change Deniers, Postmodernists, Critics; they are all the same. Rhetoric makes people believe that appealing to words can overturn what we know. Rheotric waves the flag of the literal turn, gets in bed with Derrida and suggests that scientific knowledge is mere opinion. Rhetoric claims that any interpretation- any unqualified interpretation- is a valid as any other. It appeals to emotion and incredulity in a desperate attempt to overturn the universe we observe. They misuse and abuse logical fallacies, fallacies that for the most part should have been consigned to the intellectual grave with the rest of the Scholastic Aristotelian school that spawned them. Reality is NOT about opinion. It is NOT about faith. It is NOT about blindly following your otherworldly worldviews and casting what is actually observed aside. Real Science, real History, real Psychology and Sociology are not about words but actions, and the understanding of those actions. They are about study, research, hard work. They are about putting the hours in, many hundreds of hours in, and after all that time, all that searching, being prepared to find nothing, being prepared to be wrong.
That is what makes science amazing. With each mistake comes a correction. With each correction comes a better understanding of the real world. Those of us in pursuit of such an understanding know it is not going to be easy. But to overturn what the Germans would called ‘wissenschaft’ [“ learning : science”- Mirriam Webster.] takes hard work and study. Far too many are far too lazy. They would rather indulge their personal biases by seeking out You Tube videos, Wikipedia entries and the abstracts (though rarely content) of seemingly supportive papers; often without reading the papers, almost always without seeking out dissenting voices and never considering the academic consensus. Science and learning are not based around controversy; there are actually very few controversies to teach because what rhetoricians call controversy, we call ‘unknowns’. It is about consensus. To many of the more rhetorically minded, consensus has become a dirty word, a conspiracy word, and they surround it with whooping hordes of rhetoric, wilful ignorance and more science denial.
Rhetoric is not enough. You can state whatever it is you believe and you can throw around your fallacies, long words and philosophical [mis]interpretations all you want. You can smother the observable universe in semiotics and linguistics and postmodern deconstructionist analyses. But at the end of the day, as David Hume observed
"We shall then see, whether you go out at the door or the window; and whether you really doubt, if your body has gravity, or can be injured by its fall".-David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
www.davidhume.org/texts/dms
So why do I care? Some might say I myself have been guilty of such rhetoric in the past, and they are right. I am prepared to be wrong and move on; are you? Some would accuse me of using rhetoric right now: perhaps, again, they are right. But my words are backed up by the fruits of Wissenschaft; by the computer I am using, by the coffee by my side, by the train that brought me home this evening. They are not merely contemplative, but demonstrative. I don’t imagine them at work, I see them in action.
The more people disappear into their other-worlds, no matter what those worlds may be, and think that rhetoric, born of emotion, born of faith and in turn born of whatever fairy story their culture or subculture likes the most at the time, the more the reality- what we actually know- will become diluted. I am a Historian, and I for one do not want to return to a world where the only reality is rhetoric, the only truth the loudest shouting voice; I have seen it in the pages of documents and the horrors of Europe’s past. Others would rather rule by loudly shouting about what they cannot possibly know. They want to change the game back from observable, measured reality to conjectured, rhetorical fantasy.
I do not. And neither, if truth be told, do they.
Richard Firth-Godbehere
Monday 5 December 2011
The world has gone mad: an economic rant.
(I may be a bit more regular in this- no promises)
The ‘markets’ have got to go. I am sicking of hearing about them and how they become so easily upset. I don’t recall voting for these ‘markets’ (or the shareholders that create them) to become my government, but a world-government they seem to have become. It’s enough to make a conspiracy theorist burst forth with angry happiness. After a decade of privatising their wealth they have now socialised their debt amongst the poorest, and in Greece and Italy even democracy has bowed down to them. As Meatloaf once cried “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii want my money back!” Life may not be a lemon, but it would appear our economic setup is. To make the situation even more juicy and delicious we have a ‘proper’ government, indeed a series of ‘proper’ governments around the world, who are like idiots with a flame. They see that pretty flickering austerity measure and can’t help but touch it over and over. “Ouch…it’s pretty…ouch…it’s pretty…” goes the cycle and unemployment rises, the economy collapses further and their only reaction is to burn all our fingers once again. Why? Because the metaphysical guff that is economic ‘science’ tells them that they must, and they don’t have the dingly-danglies to change course. After all, politicians can do many things. They can get caught lying; they can get caught having affairs and embezzling cash. They can go to jail, wreck the economy and lead us into badly if at all justified wars, but they can’t say “sorry, I got it wrong.” That would be professional suicide.
One thing that really puzzles me is this. They tell us that if we tax banks in any way whatever, they will move off our shores. Now call me daft, but isn’t that a good thing? These institutions have cost us hundreds of billions of pounds and brought the economy to its knees, but we just have to keep them? It’s like having a tenant who not only doesn’t pay rent, but burns your house to the ground and then tells you: “put my rent up to cover the rebuild and I’ll move out.” Good riddance, I say. Let’s move our economy back to making things, creating things and away from making money from making money. Let’s find new financial tenets.
The next point which pops into my mind (and yes, I am writing as I think) is: when did money become the be all and end all of life? When did being “rich” become synonymous with being “happy and successful”? It seems our worldview is all mixed up, especially those right-wingers who seem to think that the order of priority should be wealth (or property) - people (if we must) - and the planet (perhaps, maybe, actually, sod that, it’s too expensive). Sorry, but this is 100% back to front. Sadly, our economic morals seem to come from Mandeville more than they do from Hume and Smith, and we are stuck in an early modern cultural mind-set that equates property with power. I dream of a new economic model. One thinks first about the planet first, then about people’s happiness in this one life we have, and finally about wealth. If you first look after the planet (without which there will be no people), then keep people happy, and finally make plenty of money through taking risks, grasping opportunities, and working hard, then all power to you; I’m no socialist. How this becomes possible? I have no idea.
The markets need to stop ruling the world. We need to stop a group who believe we are all as self-interested and fiscally rational as they are. We need to, somehow, work out how on earth we can change this model so that the invisible hand stops strangling us, without descending into a world where market over-dominance is replaced by governmental over-dominance as all too happens with socialism. I don’t have any answers, but how about first our governments grow a pair and ask those responsible for the problem to pay for it, and stop bowing to financial blackmail? That, at least, would be a start.
The ‘markets’ have got to go. I am sicking of hearing about them and how they become so easily upset. I don’t recall voting for these ‘markets’ (or the shareholders that create them) to become my government, but a world-government they seem to have become. It’s enough to make a conspiracy theorist burst forth with angry happiness. After a decade of privatising their wealth they have now socialised their debt amongst the poorest, and in Greece and Italy even democracy has bowed down to them. As Meatloaf once cried “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii want my money back!” Life may not be a lemon, but it would appear our economic setup is. To make the situation even more juicy and delicious we have a ‘proper’ government, indeed a series of ‘proper’ governments around the world, who are like idiots with a flame. They see that pretty flickering austerity measure and can’t help but touch it over and over. “Ouch…it’s pretty…ouch…it’s pretty…” goes the cycle and unemployment rises, the economy collapses further and their only reaction is to burn all our fingers once again. Why? Because the metaphysical guff that is economic ‘science’ tells them that they must, and they don’t have the dingly-danglies to change course. After all, politicians can do many things. They can get caught lying; they can get caught having affairs and embezzling cash. They can go to jail, wreck the economy and lead us into badly if at all justified wars, but they can’t say “sorry, I got it wrong.” That would be professional suicide.
One thing that really puzzles me is this. They tell us that if we tax banks in any way whatever, they will move off our shores. Now call me daft, but isn’t that a good thing? These institutions have cost us hundreds of billions of pounds and brought the economy to its knees, but we just have to keep them? It’s like having a tenant who not only doesn’t pay rent, but burns your house to the ground and then tells you: “put my rent up to cover the rebuild and I’ll move out.” Good riddance, I say. Let’s move our economy back to making things, creating things and away from making money from making money. Let’s find new financial tenets.
The next point which pops into my mind (and yes, I am writing as I think) is: when did money become the be all and end all of life? When did being “rich” become synonymous with being “happy and successful”? It seems our worldview is all mixed up, especially those right-wingers who seem to think that the order of priority should be wealth (or property) - people (if we must) - and the planet (perhaps, maybe, actually, sod that, it’s too expensive). Sorry, but this is 100% back to front. Sadly, our economic morals seem to come from Mandeville more than they do from Hume and Smith, and we are stuck in an early modern cultural mind-set that equates property with power. I dream of a new economic model. One thinks first about the planet first, then about people’s happiness in this one life we have, and finally about wealth. If you first look after the planet (without which there will be no people), then keep people happy, and finally make plenty of money through taking risks, grasping opportunities, and working hard, then all power to you; I’m no socialist. How this becomes possible? I have no idea.
The markets need to stop ruling the world. We need to stop a group who believe we are all as self-interested and fiscally rational as they are. We need to, somehow, work out how on earth we can change this model so that the invisible hand stops strangling us, without descending into a world where market over-dominance is replaced by governmental over-dominance as all too happens with socialism. I don’t have any answers, but how about first our governments grow a pair and ask those responsible for the problem to pay for it, and stop bowing to financial blackmail? That, at least, would be a start.
Friday 18 November 2011
Friday 15 July 2011
When Two Roads Diverge in the Woods
I’m more a Doctor Who than a Star Trek kind of a guy. For a long time, my life was pretty Star Trek: shinny costumes, loud bangs, competition, desperate dog fights with a hierarchy dependant on brown nosing, and the constant thought that some of the best and the brightest, yourself included, were being sacrificed on a shoddily built planet like a red shirt wearing extra. ‘Has Rich gone mad’ I hear you cry? Not at all; I am talking about the musical part of my life, my life as a musician.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing music and I still do; the composition, recording, producing, mixing, performing and all that is fantastic. But the Phasers set to kill Borg-like groupthink horror of the industry itself was a huge turn off. All the joy brought by, for example, performing to thousands of insane Scottish homosexuals (as I did) was tempered by the Vulcans that ruled the labels forcing mediocrity and, as they are now, shying away from any suggestion of emotive content in music, making it bland, safe, easy to sell. Really, when I look back at it, it wasn’t for me at all.
So now I think of myself as a Historian, a writer, a critical thinker and, hopefully one day, an academic. This is a Doctor Who world, a world where thinking matters, where battles are won by wits and analysis, where then only weapons are the Sonic Screwdrivers of argument and the ability to [mentally] time travel. Often you are alone; occasionally you have assistance but in the end it is about you and only you, you don’t have to rely on all too often unreliable ‘others’ to do what you want do and get where you want to go. I am much happier in the Tardis than I ever was on the Enterprise, and the beauty of it is that, as a Timelord, I can go anywhere, do anything, I am not confined to the here or the now like Kirk and Picard are. As a Timelord, I can still visit the Enterprise from time to time and remember, even indulge in, the good bits without having to worry about the Federation breathing down my neck. In short: I can love music again for the music and only the music.
Many of us find ourselves on paths we love only to find an insurmountable cliff in the way, some bit of logic, some action, some reality making it hard to continue the way we were going. The problem is that emotions are, themselves, the product of our goals and so to find an obstacle to those goals causes a whole raft of negative emotions; it rarely creates what is needed- a logical response, an evaluation and an affect free reflection on whether it is worth pursuing the same path or finding another. It also taught me that no matter how focussed on one path we believe ourselves to be, more often than not we can find another which is equally worthy of our attention. In my case, I swapped the guitar and the recording studio for books and a library; I swapped musical notation for Latin.
Don’t get me wrong, again, History is not without difficulty and my hardest times lie ahead, but it is a difficulty I can see a way around not based on kinship and arse licking but purely on talent, and I hope, in history at least, I have a little.
But this is why people who believe the unbelievable get caught up in what Stephen Law calls ‘intellectual Black Holes’. Be it religious faith or tarot reading or homeopathy, they and their goals are invested at an emotional level. For many people, all the logic and reason can go hang, so long as they ‘feel’ that their path is the right one. The unmovable objects are simply walked around and ignored. ‘Faith,’ as a character in House once put it, ‘is not an argument.’ It is often when those who have such beliefs hit intellectual rock bottom that they begin to rethink. When all those pesky little thoughts that kept popping-up start to attach themselves too firmly to escape from; a drip drip drip that leads to their current goals becoming more painful than pleasure, more a chore than a joy. When this moment comes, and only when this moment comes, the need to stop, work out why they feel so bad/wrong/uncomfortable and the need to find a new goal, and new path, to shake of the music world and travel back into history or leave faith at behind and look sceptically forward, become overwhelming. When trying to argue the case for Skeptisism or atheism, these are the people we are really talking to, not those entrenched in their faith-based world. We are all guilty of it to some degree, and we could all do with looking at those areas that are becoming just too damn hard and thinking ‘what is going on here’ from time to time.
What I am saying is this; don’t keep trudging along in a life you wish were someone else’s, you don’t have to keep going down the path just because you set off that way, there is another route. And whatever you do, don’t go after Klingons, when you really want to be fighting the Daleks; it’ll just end up far too complicated and unfulfilling and your guns will be too big. You have one life, one attempt: do it right.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing music and I still do; the composition, recording, producing, mixing, performing and all that is fantastic. But the Phasers set to kill Borg-like groupthink horror of the industry itself was a huge turn off. All the joy brought by, for example, performing to thousands of insane Scottish homosexuals (as I did) was tempered by the Vulcans that ruled the labels forcing mediocrity and, as they are now, shying away from any suggestion of emotive content in music, making it bland, safe, easy to sell. Really, when I look back at it, it wasn’t for me at all.
So now I think of myself as a Historian, a writer, a critical thinker and, hopefully one day, an academic. This is a Doctor Who world, a world where thinking matters, where battles are won by wits and analysis, where then only weapons are the Sonic Screwdrivers of argument and the ability to [mentally] time travel. Often you are alone; occasionally you have assistance but in the end it is about you and only you, you don’t have to rely on all too often unreliable ‘others’ to do what you want do and get where you want to go. I am much happier in the Tardis than I ever was on the Enterprise, and the beauty of it is that, as a Timelord, I can go anywhere, do anything, I am not confined to the here or the now like Kirk and Picard are. As a Timelord, I can still visit the Enterprise from time to time and remember, even indulge in, the good bits without having to worry about the Federation breathing down my neck. In short: I can love music again for the music and only the music.
Many of us find ourselves on paths we love only to find an insurmountable cliff in the way, some bit of logic, some action, some reality making it hard to continue the way we were going. The problem is that emotions are, themselves, the product of our goals and so to find an obstacle to those goals causes a whole raft of negative emotions; it rarely creates what is needed- a logical response, an evaluation and an affect free reflection on whether it is worth pursuing the same path or finding another. It also taught me that no matter how focussed on one path we believe ourselves to be, more often than not we can find another which is equally worthy of our attention. In my case, I swapped the guitar and the recording studio for books and a library; I swapped musical notation for Latin.
Don’t get me wrong, again, History is not without difficulty and my hardest times lie ahead, but it is a difficulty I can see a way around not based on kinship and arse licking but purely on talent, and I hope, in history at least, I have a little.
But this is why people who believe the unbelievable get caught up in what Stephen Law calls ‘intellectual Black Holes’. Be it religious faith or tarot reading or homeopathy, they and their goals are invested at an emotional level. For many people, all the logic and reason can go hang, so long as they ‘feel’ that their path is the right one. The unmovable objects are simply walked around and ignored. ‘Faith,’ as a character in House once put it, ‘is not an argument.’ It is often when those who have such beliefs hit intellectual rock bottom that they begin to rethink. When all those pesky little thoughts that kept popping-up start to attach themselves too firmly to escape from; a drip drip drip that leads to their current goals becoming more painful than pleasure, more a chore than a joy. When this moment comes, and only when this moment comes, the need to stop, work out why they feel so bad/wrong/uncomfortable and the need to find a new goal, and new path, to shake of the music world and travel back into history or leave faith at behind and look sceptically forward, become overwhelming. When trying to argue the case for Skeptisism or atheism, these are the people we are really talking to, not those entrenched in their faith-based world. We are all guilty of it to some degree, and we could all do with looking at those areas that are becoming just too damn hard and thinking ‘what is going on here’ from time to time.
What I am saying is this; don’t keep trudging along in a life you wish were someone else’s, you don’t have to keep going down the path just because you set off that way, there is another route. And whatever you do, don’t go after Klingons, when you really want to be fighting the Daleks; it’ll just end up far too complicated and unfulfilling and your guns will be too big. You have one life, one attempt: do it right.
Friday 4 February 2011
Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy Theories
This week, I chatted with Rob, a man with a mission to get to the heart of the anomalous psychology of people who are at the mercy of conspiracy theories. This is an area of great interest and great overlap in a great many areas. As a student of History and Psychology, I find conspiracies everywhere; not just in space but in time.
Historically, conspiracies pop up all over the place. Nero used conspiracy theories about Christians in order to use them as a scapegoat for the fire which all but destroyed Rome; a conspiracy was invented and expanded upon in order for Pope Urban to convince the great and the good to stop fighting each other and instead make an armed pilgrimage, a Crusade as it was later known, to the Holy Land; Witches became the brunt of conspiracy theories and the ideas that these marginalised people, on the edges of society, were in some way in league with the devils and responsible for all the great horrors of society- a conspiracy theory given great weight by by eschatological underpinnings of the eras cosmology. The conspiracies of the Jews that Hitler believed in, and the conspiracies of the religious that drove many of the horrors of Stalin, could also be included. History is awash with conspiracy theories that have gotten out of hand, conspiracies that have led to great evils and terrors. One could even argue that wherever you see a great atrocity, you can find a conspiracy theory behind it.
Spatially, nothing has changed. Conspiracy theories still abound and still surround our culture. We are lucky in the west where most conspiracy theorists are dismissed as 'tin hat wearing lunatics' and generally laughed, but other parts of the world aren't so lucky.
Take certain parts of Africa, for example. Currently in the grip of one of the most terrify government sanctioned sets of conspiracies in history; be it the hunt for child witches or the persecution of homosexuals and those that harbour them. Almost all of these 'faith based' conspiracies that have become, or became, government sanctioned, lead to persecution and loss of life on a massive scale, be they secular or religious at their core.
Rob's work is desperately needed in a world where conspiracies can destroy whole civilisations and destroy human rights; where such theories can lead to demonisation and prejudicial out-grouping for nothing other than an dislike for the other, and a need for the in-group to increase its self esteem.
Rob's work is very interesting and long overdue. I can't wait until results start to appear.
This week, I chatted with Rob, a man with a mission to get to the heart of the anomalous psychology of people who are at the mercy of conspiracy theories. This is an area of great interest and great overlap in a great many areas. As a student of History and Psychology, I find conspiracies everywhere; not just in space but in time.
Historically, conspiracies pop up all over the place. Nero used conspiracy theories about Christians in order to use them as a scapegoat for the fire which all but destroyed Rome; a conspiracy was invented and expanded upon in order for Pope Urban to convince the great and the good to stop fighting each other and instead make an armed pilgrimage, a Crusade as it was later known, to the Holy Land; Witches became the brunt of conspiracy theories and the ideas that these marginalised people, on the edges of society, were in some way in league with the devils and responsible for all the great horrors of society- a conspiracy theory given great weight by by eschatological underpinnings of the eras cosmology. The conspiracies of the Jews that Hitler believed in, and the conspiracies of the religious that drove many of the horrors of Stalin, could also be included. History is awash with conspiracy theories that have gotten out of hand, conspiracies that have led to great evils and terrors. One could even argue that wherever you see a great atrocity, you can find a conspiracy theory behind it.
Spatially, nothing has changed. Conspiracy theories still abound and still surround our culture. We are lucky in the west where most conspiracy theorists are dismissed as 'tin hat wearing lunatics' and generally laughed, but other parts of the world aren't so lucky.
Take certain parts of Africa, for example. Currently in the grip of one of the most terrify government sanctioned sets of conspiracies in history; be it the hunt for child witches or the persecution of homosexuals and those that harbour them. Almost all of these 'faith based' conspiracies that have become, or became, government sanctioned, lead to persecution and loss of life on a massive scale, be they secular or religious at their core.
Rob's work is desperately needed in a world where conspiracies can destroy whole civilisations and destroy human rights; where such theories can lead to demonisation and prejudicial out-grouping for nothing other than an dislike for the other, and a need for the in-group to increase its self esteem.
Rob's work is very interesting and long overdue. I can't wait until results start to appear.
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