Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastards, beginnings, buttocks, Chinthanaya, damned lies, even more fish, fish, identity, lies, more fish, more lies, patriotism, politics, religion, republic, sri lanka
One morning I woke up and found that I was evil. That all I had stood for was twisted and blackened. All I believed in was unclean, contaminated by a germ that had taken hold while I was asleep. No longer could I feel patriotic, share in the simple pride of a waved flag, of a crisp military parade. Words like honour and independence tasted bitter now. Altogether new synonyms had wormed their way into my mind. Unity meant conformism, discipline meant submission, patriotism was now racism. Pride had become hate, democracy a shapeless beast, terrorism an excuse and freedom meant absolutely fucking nothing.
But last night, I was an innocent. I knew but did not fear the “Patriotism” that was Shaw’s “… last refuge of the scoundrel”; for what is society with no shared purpose, with no pride, no symbols to rally around? Would it even endure? So I had sought out that which was clean and honourable and euphoric, what I could stand up tall and salute. There was a simple pleasure of the skybound firework on the day of Independence: its rushed journey heavenwards calling me to the giddy heights of citizenship in this great enterprise of this country. I grew to love the clean detergent smell of wearing my national dress, the raising of a flag so ornate and symbolic that other’s tri-colour flags seemed so stark, dry and childlike. I honoured the pioneers who had not long ago secured our independence from the clenched fist of colonial strength.
Then, last night, delirious fevered dreams flashed vivid technicolour corruptions of what was simple, beautiful and pure. I dreamt of a State that disenfranchised its own citizens with a single act of parliament. Of academics and the educated, who should know better, incite violence against those who had been my brothers before I slept. Of laws to punish a religion growing, of an Oxbridge educated elite spewing Sinhala Only. As the fever took hold, I saw hundreds of citizens horded into buses and driven into empty spaces. There were flashes of children severed by shells that we calculated to be an acceptable cost of political convenience. I mutely screamed at an electoral majority that could not see any other solution but War. And all the time, I saw hate, spilling like bile, mixed with spittle, running down the jowls of the politicians, gathering on the chins of bestial men and women who in their bloodlust cornered and attacked all that was different, alien and ‘para’ –‘other’.
And at that point, my weakest moment, the microbic invader struck, confusing me. In this confounded state it showed me that we had become the Nietzschean evil we set out to destroy, that our souls were tainted and it told me that the articles which I had shaken my head at before were true, we were monsters, the LTTE and I, two sides of the same coin. That morally, this nation and all we tried to preserve was exactly the same as a group of people who strapped bombs to themselves and blew up innocents.
In my shame, reader, I believed this all. I hated myself. I read comments, op-eds, and even the hysterical messages of trolls who painted my red door black. Shrill voices screamed out how we were no better than that which sought to destroy us. As the infection multiplied, as the moral lethargy replaced the will to act and cycles of cynicism and withdrawal lowered my expectations further till all I could do was tiptoe past my bruised conscience and better sense. I almost succumbed that night to the fever that gripped me ever harder, a final mocking image locked in my mind of hundreds of my brothers and sisters lined up for busses with no destination as men with grey faces and grey guns looked on.
Just like that, the image flickered and I remembered how the story actually ended that day: A single citizen filing a fundamental rights petition against the forced eviction. I felt the ground tremble as the judiciary like a waking giant, reached swiftly to stop and reverse the executive action, holding it unconstitutional. And there alone, in the calm at the eye of the cyclone, I saw clearly what ideal was left to us, what it is we were fighting for, why were different from the monsters we confronted. It never mattered how stupid, base or corrupt the people and their elected officials were, we are still a Republic, we are a representative democracy, we have institutions, a separation of powers and checks and balances. We have a constitution which is a covenant between every citizen and the state. We are greater than the sum of our parts. No matter how often the law is bent, broken or bought it will always be there, if nothing else but as a sullen reminder, and we will know it is wrong and it cannot be got rid of. No matter how many votes are stolen, coerced or rigged, every so many years every leader must endure the risk of being cast out. It will not matter how many journalists are silenced, the media can only be reined, never retired. A state of emergency that has lasted some of us, our whole lives and successively more brutal governments have not been able to completely do away with the freedoms that is the promise of our noble enterprise. The glass may only be half empty, but, damn it, there is a GLASS. It can always be filled. Are we appalled by a state sunk in debate, argument and compromise? Celebrate this. We talk, because we know the alternatives. We know their price.
There is NO comparison between this Republic which we are equal citizens of and a systemically violent, fascist personality cult. If I need something to hang on to, I will hang onto this. I don’t need to expect the best motivations of the leaders to ensure that my freedoms will survive. It will, battered and bruised, because that’s what it is built to do in a democracy.
I see now that we’ve quite missed the point by celebrating our independence. There is so little to gain recounting our release from an imperial rule, when you consider that the single most significant event that took place that day was the birth of the republic. The beginning of the hard work of building a nation. The metaphorical inking of the eternal contract between the state and all its citizens, even those yet unborn. This day something wonderful was birthed, a people with the mandate and opportunity to create their own destiny, to govern themselves, a prize that so many are denied elsewhere. As much as we’ve squandered it and made ourselves unworthy of it, it still there, silent, resourceful enough to swiftly counter even an act Executive excess and only needing a single citizen to call it into action. And that is what we need to do, we need to USE IT. To build on it. THIS is the ideology worth fighting for, THIS is worth standing up for. This is my pride. I have found myself to be an Idealist and I am NOT ashamed.
The fever is gone. I’m going to put up that flag now.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastards, belief, buttocks, escaped gorillas, even more fish, fish, god, kuhn, lies, more lies, philosophy, popper, religion
Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φ, οβʊμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λεύθερος.
‘I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.’ – Inscription on the tombstone of Nikos Kazantzakis
Prelude
You presumably believe in something. It is possible that we differ in these beliefs. While the particular question of whether you are right or I am wrong is clearly not getting a conclusive or persuasive answer in a hurry, it makes sense to, you know, understand the nature of our differences and perhaps where our conflict if at all, may lie. A highway code if you will. Learning the signs and the basic flow could help us, both, avoid painful collisions and looking like right idiots.
A confession first. As far as I am aware of, atheists are not syndicated. It is likely that this manifesto would only apply to a few of us.
Some of us are agnostic. Boom. Boom.
Guess what, it seems these questions of deities, afterlives, creation, are a little tricky. And we have to put our hands up and go: you know what, I have no clue how to prove there isn’t a god. It looks like this one will go to the judges. But hey, for everyday purposes, I’m going to stick to the premise that there isn’t one. It makes sense to me; and you know, should overwhelming evidence present itself to the contrary, I would be more than glad to re-evaluate my position. Your contribution here is minimal unless you can produce that evidence. And please, please don’t hand me a piece of your scripture or even WORSE, some damned leaflet written by a complete yokel for whom ‘Bible Belt’ is both a home town AND what they keep their trousers tied up with.
Some of us are not un-examined lives.
70 percent of my class inherited daddy’s faith along with the used car business and the mysogeny. Eating chalk between classes, demonstrating sheep-like cognitive functions and an otherwise complete lack of personality kept them off the radar of the more vicious and punitively inventive of our teachers.
A few of us were getting into trouble with Jesuit priests for asking them what existentialism meant. And for arguing the question that was the hairline fracture that lead to the final schism from the beliefs of my fathers: ‘Why is faith needed for redemption? Isn’t my Buddhist friend, who leads a good life as deserving of the embrace of a just God?’
The chief questions that troubled my gangly colleagues at this time was: ‘does it show that I am a compulsive masturbator?’ and ‘how long is it before the blindness/anemia sets in?’
Soon after, as my friends embarked on a voyage of self discovery with the opposite sex, their genitals and extra strong beer, some of us weren’t that hot with the ladies. So we read. Of Descartes’ failed attempt to prove the existence of a God in Meditations of First Philosophy; of Heller rail against a God in a world gone mad in Catch-22; of Satre’s protagonist secure an abortion for his mistress… no doubt still smoking Gauloise and looking cool.
We also debated. Entire coffee and tobacco harvests have been laid waste in our earnest late night discussions, musings and dialogues. Were searched for Gods, Justice, Goodness, Values, and mostly Truth. We spoke with the smartest people we could find, with the disinterested and zealous; with the godless and devout; priests and madmen. And now, here, our choices and ideas are not those of the unexamined or unquestioned mind. Nor are we afraid of our ideas being picked apart or questioned. We are the product of our journey and our ideas have developed and changed as a function of it.
So if you want to be the next leg in my explorative journey, do better than a patronizing smile and a ‘why don’t you want to read my leaflet?’. Otherwise, my guess is that you discovered religion late, right after you gave up the compulsive chalk eating; probably though your personal difficulties or the fear of mortality, loss or isolation and think the rest of us are late starters too. If I’m refusing to engage you, it’s because frankly, I think you are going to waste my time. I’m really OK with you calling this arrogance. Which it isn’t; but frankly, your premise that I am a blank book, unexamined and intellectually inert, is.
We don’t think all of you are stupid. Just some.
No. Honestly. We do not think you credulous or stupid by virtue of your beliefs alone. Unless you are a Scientologist or Mormon. There’s really no way I can broaden my definition of beliefto include people who believe what they read in paperback sci-fi. That’s not a belief. That’s a condition. Like the guy who fell on his head and now thinks he’s a tomato.
Nevertheless and notwithstanding, the intelligent and accomplished have had unshakable faith in the divine. It is possible that individuals who commanded respect and awe, or others who thought, said and did the fantastic, would have not evaluated their beliefs; that they would have accepted the faith of their fathers without choice or analysis. But we would find this uncharacteristic and irreconcilable with our idea of them. Your belief is neither offensive nor laughable to me. Really. Here’s me not laughing at Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Science is not God.
Philosophers have a really tough time with the Scientific Method. Thomas Kuhn argued convincingly in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that science was not a linear process of the accumulation of knowledge, rather a set of crises which forced ‘paradigm shifts’. Suddenly, the scientific method was full of dispute and speculation. It wasn’t the simple, incremental, rigorous, unbiased process it was purported to be.
Meanwhile, we had lots of trouble with crows. Karl Popper took induction apart, the logical basis of observation, leaving no logical argument in favor of it but that it works till it doesn’t.Inductive logic, which says that having observed black crows all our lives, we expect the next crow we see to be black is as unjustified as the counterintuitive process saying ‘well the next one must not be black.’
So if you think that you’re on to something by exploiting your perceived difference between a ‘law’ and a ‘theory’ as your masterstroke against Natural Selection, well guess what, ALL OF SCIENCE is THEORY. And none of it, say the philosopher, is truth.
We have beliefs and values.
That bridge I’m about to drive over? Is it going to crumble while I’m on it? Did I know the man who built it? Designed it? Do I trust the physics to hold up? The materials? You know what, the guy in front just made it across. What the hell. Guess I will too. We believe in things, both spiritual and not. Your assumption that my mind is an anarchic wasteland, where I believe in nothing but what I have evidenced, is wrong. We have belief structures. In fact for some, the non existence of a god is a premise we accept without rigorous proof, i.e. a belief.
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“How important is it for a candidate to have STRONG religious beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are the same as yours? Is it very important, somewhat important, not very important, or not at all important?” CBS News Poll. June 26-28, 2007 |
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. |
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Very |
Somewhat |
Not Very |
Not at All |
Unsure |
||
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
||
|
ALL reg. voters |
27 |
36 |
16 |
20 |
1 |
|
|
Republicans |
43 |
35 |
12 |
7 |
3 |
|
|
Democrats |
23 |
35 |
19 |
23 |
0 |
|
|
Independents |
20 |
36 |
17 |
27 |
0 |
|
In the great Democrat litmus test recently Senators Obama and Clinton showed that both a Woman and Black was conceivable and realistic as a choice of the American people’s Chief Executive. But polling numbers above have ruled out a non-religious President of the United States. It’s not surprising therefore that ‘Shares our Values’ is a consistent and accurate measure of a voter’s personal preference for a candidate.
Despite the popular idea that values must be religious, I ask you, is it hard to imagine that atheists have values and make conscious choices to live by them? That our values should differ, like our belief structures do is expected, but that they stem from choice, experience and commonsense is so hard to imagine?
In the end, I must admit my personal search for the divine was spurred by my firmness for the very values i am suspected of not having. Having my question above on the necessity of faith for salvation answered in a manner I saw as unjust, I made a decision:
I rather be in a hell with friends I knew to be wonderful, warm, exemplary people than in a heaven in the shadow of an arbitrary and unfair god.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastards, belief, buddhism, butter, clover, cosmologies, faith, fish, lard, margarine, more lard, religion, sheep
Scene
A kitchen. Sparse, but with all the features of communal student living. It is surprisingly clean and bare, but for two things that catch the eye. A half empty bag of dry spaghetti lies splayed open on the rack next to some empty bottles. A small pot sits on the sink’s draining board. Yesterday’s warmed up baked beans are still in it. The quantity in the pot suggests that nothing has been eaten. Two young men sit at a table near the window. They sip tea from cracked mugs.
Charle-maan: Did he say he was coming?
Aasvogel: He just called and said he wanted to see me. Oh, man. It’s my time. I’ve tried to delay this but I can’t anymore.
C: Time to pay the piper.
A: He must have smelt me. My fear. He must have known I was vulnerable, dammit.
C: Over the phone. Can I wait and watch?
A: You are not leaving, dude. You are going to HELP a brother.
C: Yes! Hahaha!
B walks in. His eyes flash towards C and he stiffens, stops, then jerkily joins both at the table.
Ben: Hi C.
C: Hi!
B: Am I disturbing you, A? I didn’t realize you were busy.
A: Not really, C just swung bye, you know. You don’t mind C being here, right?
B: [Frowns] Not really.
A: So what’s on your mind?
B: A, Have you ever considered where God would fit in your life?
A: A few places suggest themselves.
B: Let me draw this for you; [scribbles on a sheet of paper] first there was God. God made earth. [draws a circle]
C: So you would have us believe.
B: Yes, I would. [adds a stick man] Then God made Man.
A: Why not?
B: Man denied God. [Crosses something out] Man tried to rule creation [Draws a little crown on the
man]. But Creation revolts against man! [crumples up paper]
A: Hang On!
C: Give us the paper!
A: There’s more to that story! Give it back!
B: No! But what if I can prove that Christianity is the One True Religion with three questions?
A: You will… what the fuck?
C: Ha ha bring it on!
B: OK. [Draws a grid on the other side of the paper.] The first question is: ‘is it internally consistent?’ as
in is it free of contradiction? And Christianity is!
C: [Laughs wildly] Oh for fuck’s sake!
A: No wait, I can see where this is going. Carry on, B.
B: [Ticks the first box]The second, is ‘is it externally consistent?’ as in does it match what evidence the world provides?
C: And it does?
B: Of course it does. [Ticks box two]
A: Fine. Keep going.
B: And finally, ‘Is it relevant to man?’ Which of course it is. [Ticks the last and sits back and looks at A and C.]
[Silence.]
A: Give ME the paper, freak. [Takes it] Thanks. Now, I know that technically Buddhism is not a religion, but it’s a belief structure and we’re going to treat it as one for this exercise, OK?
C: So question one: Is it internally consistent?
B: [Wails]I don’t know anything about Buddhism!
A: Shut up.
C: We do.
A: And Buddhism, you cretin, is internally consistent. It doesn’t contradict itself logically.
C: And it is externally consistent.
A: Yes, it matches with what we understand of the world, empirically speaking.
B: But,
C: Shut up. And it’s relevant to humanity. It discusses life, death good, evil and all things relevant to man. Got it?
[More silence.]
A: Screw this. [Walks over to the fridge, opens it, comes back with a tub of Clover – Butter Substitute. Puts it in the middle of the table.] This is our belief, B.
B: What? You’re making fun of this!
A: No, listen up: C and I are Cloverists: our belief structure is made up of a few simple premises. [Holds up the tub of Clover] One: Clover is a Spreadable Butter. Got it, fool?
B: Come on!
A: Which begs the question: ‘Why is Clover spreadable?’ The answer being: ‘Because there are Demons in the butter that make it spreadable.’ See, logical. Of course this prompts the next question: ‘Why cannot we see these Demons?’
C: The answer being, simply: ‘Because these demons are invisible.’ I challenge you to show any logical contradiction to this doctrine. It meets your first criteria, then? [Ticks first box]
A: And of course it is externally consistent, because see, the butter is both spreadable, and no, you CANNOT SEE ANY Demons. Can you?
C: And on the subject of relevance,
A & C: [Now practically shouting in joy] … spreadable butter is of immense relevance to our lives! [tick the rest of the grid and push it back to B]
[More Silence]
B: Please, just put the butter back in the fridge.
End.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aasvogel, belief, fish, lard, lightning, more fish, religion
As a hopeful deity, I like to keep up with the practices of both my predecessors and contemporaries. Why reinvent the holy hand grenade, when there is an entire arsenal, tried and tested, to pick from the relevant religions of the world? An arsenal with proven results of keeping the flock content and ever so slightly grovelly? So well equipped, we’d practically only need to read off from a list.
So today, my fellow lard-eaters, make sure you’re wearing at the very least, a pair of rubber slippers and join me in the exercise in creating a religion from scratch. I’ve put some ideas down, but only as suggestions:
ü Comprehensive Holy Book with a few words blurred/blanked out to create ambiguity and schisms. I’ve always liked there to be factions fighting over how to worship me better. Competition can only breed efficiencies.
ü Continuity of life after death. Can’t forget this.
ü Universal fairness, preferably delivered after death. A popular classic.
ü Poverty, a VALUE. I want to attract the lower income masses AND give the wealthy something to work towards.
ü Simplicity/ ignorance, a VALUE. You want to enable discussion and dispute within a FIXED space, after all. Can’t have the sheep dispute the damn concept of GRASS, you know?
ü Communal worship. See point on competition above.
ü Compelling Event. Either the world is going to end next week or the Almighty Aasvogel is coming again to kick ass and take names later. Get ready everyone!
ü Terrible alternative. The always important stick with a nail in it. Red hot demonic penises, lake of fire, something classy like that.
ü Add Guilt for flavor and garnish with lots of Symbolic Ritual.
We’re just getting started, you know? What about access to sex, fertility and wealth? Would we have a structured hierarchy? Based on what? Should we have a reformation? An Inquisition? A living embodiment of the deity? I’m thinking more points for creativity AND sustainability/longevity.
In the end, can we even agree that there should be huge fucking conceptual gaps and contradictions that need Belief to piece it together? We can’t do ALL the work, after all, right?
Oh, and do avoid open spaces and tall trees this monsoon.
