Things What I Think # 9 – Death Threats

I can’t seem to be able to read a single days worth of news without seeing at least one person from the public eye talking about receiving death threats. Now, it’s not nice to receive any ill will in the recorded manner of writing, be it a handwritten note, and email, a tweet, a Facebook post or one of those Edward Nigma-esque collages made from letters clipped from the newspaper to preserve the authors anonymity1. My problem is that the rhetorical potency of the term “death threat” is far too great to make it an appropriate description of 90% of the correspondences that end up being labeled as such. This leaves the term free to be used to generate undue sympathy and attention for those who receive them – often for the legitimately contentious and abhorrent things they say – while simultaneously devaluing the size the legitimate 10% that remain. More often than not, those who receive them and express an earnest concern for their safety are either simply lying for the easy, strategic generation of support it affords them for whatever reason, or are fusty old idiots who don’t understand the nature of internet anonymity.

1. Admittedly if  I received one of the latter, I would feel an edge of genuine concern because that shit is extra loopy and requires a measure of commitment to make.

In the pre-internet days, the most analogous act to a piece of online abuse that I can think of is “road-rage”. It’s fairly shocking the things people will spit from the comfort of their wheeled, windowed, metal boxes, in reaction to the slightest piece of poor automotive etiquette. Their fellow man is often reduced to nothing more than a sentient obstacle in the path of their hum-drum daily goals, goals that are only negligently impeded by the presence of incompetent motorists, and represent perhaps only a 3-5 minute deficit in their travel time. My father for instance, a by and large genial man with those who are strangers to him, becomes a fuming, rabid animal who uses “cunt” as a piece of punctuation when confronted with a driver whose only real sin is not facilitating his frankly aggressive driving habits. Even more bizarre, when sitting in my brothers passenger seat I’ve witnessed him have a full-on bout of vitriol directed at the actual sun which was in his eyes at the time, bashing a raised middle finger against the part of the wind-shield through which it was shining. However, neither would never dream of flagging the subject of his animosity down to the hard shoulder that they might both exit their cars to externalise their rage into a violent altercation of some kind2. Barely anyone does, because barely anyone actually wants to. In fact, in the UK, the crowned “world leader” in road rage incidents, there were only 601 incidents of road-rage significant enough to be recorded – so presumably ones severe enough that one or other of those involved called the police – in 2014. Only 19% of these lead somewhere physical and barely any resulted in actual murder. A seven year study in the US – the land of freedom and firearms – attributed road rage to only 200 actual killings. It’s too many, no doubt – any violence and killing it too much if you ask me! – but considering how many cars are actually on the roads, and the anecdotal fact to which we can all attest, that most motorists get incredibly antsy behind the wheel at one time or another, this is barely any statistically speaking.

2. Not that my brother could have; aside from the impossibility of him doing so, I can see but one winner in the bout of him vs. a massive, celestial ball of flaming gas.

It seems to me that the feeling of wild hatred that tends to present when someone is behind the wheel, rather than being a proportional response to the poor road-bound behaviour of others, is an outlet for the general angsts that plague almost all contemporary humans. The stresses of unfulfilling jobs that yield too little money, the inability to meet the absurdly high standards of living presented to us to keep us buying crap we don’t really need, the powerlessness felt in the wake of ineffective governance and broken democracy in general, and the broader inkling of existential insignificance.

Why does this come out in the car? The same reason it comes out on Twitter. The so-called shield of anonymity. Sure people come up with justifications to convince both themselves and those around them that their enragement is an apt response (e.g. the risks that dangerous driving poses their personal safety and that of their family), but there’s a faulty logic a play here, particularly when you consider that the more rageful drivers have also been found to be more lax about wearing a seatbelt and are more likely to drive under the influence. Add that to the obvious fact that allowing yourself to become enraged at one unsafe driver while behind the wheel is going to do nothing more than add yet another one to the mix and one can conclude that safety isn’t practically all that much of a concern. It’s far more about a build up of steam that needs the release valve opening every now and then.

Internet culture often represents another, basically anonymous release valve being opened. A Twitter death threat is, almost unanimously, hot – if undeniably filthy – air. Taking them seriously imbues them with a status and an influence they neither actually have nor deserve. It is simply a weak, powerless, disaffected individual lashing out for want of a productive outlet or any measure of general contentedness. They may feel like whatever issue, or whatever public figure has aroused their ire is fully deserving of it, but the fact is that if they were happy or enlightened people it wouldn’t even occur to them behave in such a way. Alternatively, it is just your garden-variety troll who gets his or her power-kicks from heinously anti-social conduct online, but the behaviour is usually engaged in for much the same reason. The truly dangerous, truly threatening individuals, those likely to attempt a real act of violence, do not announce their intent for all to see, they simply turn up at their targets doorstep with an illegally purchased gun or a kitchen knife and do the deed. I think if anything can be said for certain about those who dish out public, online threats of harm to another person, it’s that they are almost entirely unlikely to actually do it.

Death threat then, becomes something of a redundant term. If it’s all air, then there’s no real threat, and if there’s no real threat, it’s just “death-trolling”. And as all competent, conscientious users of the net know, you do not feed the trolls! Yet day after day there are news stories in which politicians and celebrities claim to feel a very salient threat to their personal safety due to what the internet says at them. Whether they are being truthful or simply melodramatic is basically irrelevant, by boohooing about these “death-trolls” to the BBC, they are providing them with a veritable 12 course Roman banquet of validation, the desired fruit of their perverse labours. That their empty words, written from the safety of their laptop3, words that they would never in a million years have the wherewithal to act upon, can actually inspire real fear? That is their bread and butter; it’s what they live for! I’ll reiterate: to not see this you would have to either accidentally ignorant due to naivety, or purposefully ignorant to serve some anterior motive such as the generation of sympathy or support. Meanwhile, the actual solution completely passes them by. A confident, inward “who gives two shits!?” manifesting in complete neutrality – or even pity – towards online death-threateners, is the only obvious solution.

3. Or, in the case of the really unhinged, a computer at the public library.

When there’s such a huge number people in the world, there’s bound to be a group who hates your guts, and there’s bound to be a proportion of them that want to let you know, in no uncertain terms. It’s always been this way, the only difference now is that people have a direct conduit to what they see as the subject of their antipathy sitting in their pocket. What used to be simple bile-spitting contests over a pub table are now delivered direct to the perceived trigger of said bile. But the real danger is just as absent as it always has been, in fact I’d argue more so. If a feeling of antipathy bounces around a small group of mutually encouraging, universally incensed people, a feedback loop will occur causing the antipathy to grow and eventually fester. And an intensely gangrenous feeling of antipathy, one in dire need of a kind of amputation, will always be more likely to lead a person to act out; it’s that very idea that revolutions are built upon! At least now, the moment the urge to harm someone for whatever vaguely justified reason arises, it comes out as a piece of online abuse metaphorically equivalent to the petulant arm flailings of a freshly grounded adolescent and is equally unthreatening. If it does threaten you, first get some perspective, then use that perspective to get over yourself, then, if you must respond at all, do so with either humorous condescension or pity at their, honestly, cute outbursts. Ideally, go for complete lack of engagement with it and focus your energy on whatever it is that you were doing already, or on any of the other numerous, far more upsetting issues that surround all of us and in fact create the social environment where people feel both the desire and the inclination to take to the internet with such feelings. Anything else would be counter productive.

Things What I Think #8 – “Pure Evil!”

The papers of late are, unfortunately, awash with news of child abuse. This, understandably, promotes quite a bit of discussion. The vast majority of this discussion however, revolves around either the various inventive names those who perpetrate these kind of acts should be called, or the various heinous ways in which they should be punished. It may be happening from behind a screen from anywhere in the world, but this is the same bloodthirsty, primitive, tribal bullshit mindset that we’ve been practicing since before we had a clue! One word receives particular favour. EVIL! PURE EVIL! Here’s my problem…

Accepting the existence of a concept such a “evil” presupposes a false dichotomy of “Good and Evil”. Neither really exist. They’re conceptual fabrications born out of an innate human tendency to define things using strict categories. And you’ll find that the perception of what constitutes “Good” and “Evil” changes from person to person, culture to culture, country to country. In the end they’re meaningless unhelpful rhetoric used to explain away complex things that, in reality, require considered analysis and understanding. The word “evil” gets used a LOT in the media these days, and I don’t struggle to see why, but once people and acts are hailed as “evil” it allows the rest of us to feel like these things are something separate from us; something “other”. EVIL! It avoids the responsibility we all should undertake to try and understand what drives a humans to behave in certain way, understanding being the first step on the path to identifying and reducing/removing/medicating the underlying social and physiological issues that lead to people commit these kinds of heinous acts.

Recently convicted child molester, rock musician Ian Watkins, is a man of average talent, probably with significant nuerochemical and/or neurostuctural issues, but he also lives in a society where we don’t endeavour to understand the condition of pedophilia for what it is; a treatable, partially innate, inappropriate attraction, which, due to the obvious social stigma, often inspires feelings of self hatred in those who suffer from it. There is no system in place for those afflicted to come forward and seek treatment before they commit a depraved act; they’re proclaimed as EVIL by our society even before they have done anything, while the whole behaviour is still only thoughts; concepts in their broken mind. If there were a more tempered, less rhetorical reaction to Watkins and his ilk, maybe (and I’ll grant that it’s a big maybe; see ‘furthermore’) he would have sought treatment, or been sent to treatment as a result of an intervention before this whole string of abuses even occurred.

Furthermore, he lives in a society which idolises attractive people of dubious talents (models, actors, sports-people and musicians – and I say this with full self awareness as a musician myself) more than it does doctors and nurses (not that there aren’t staggeringly talented artists of various kinds, I just mean that when compared to, say, the contribution of the best doctors and nurses, the aforementioned talents are less significant). It is this shallow, ignorant, celebrity obsessed culture which laid the conditions necessary for Watkins to have the kind of influence that facilitated him in committing these acts.

My overall point is that to call him, or any child molester “Evil” is entirely unsatisfactory and unhelpful. The issue is so much more complex than that. And it is in that complexity that we will find the answers to curbing this kind of transgressive behaviour.

Picture Point #1

Things What I Think # 7 – 5 Reasons why Amsterdam’s Coffeeshops Shit all over Bars, Pubs and Clubs.

1. The Drug – It’s no secret¹ that consumption of marijuana trumps that of alcohol in most ways. When you ignore the pure comparison of sensation when under the influence of each of the drugs – the part that could be said to be subjective – the huge pile of evidentially supported reasons to favour pot are irrefutable to any right thinking person. It’s natural; they grow it, they dry it, you buy it, you smoke it. It’s that simple. Provided you smoke responsibly (i.e. without tobacco/with a tobacco substitute – see TokePURE²) a joint will prove no more physically harmful to you than a few minutes in the centre of London. Smoking marijuana – unlike tobacco which is full of tar –  contains no carcinogenic effects past those associated with inhaling any particulate matter, and there are numerous studies which support the notion that it doesn’t inhibit respiratory function, even in asthmatics. Going further, you can vaporise³ the weed and cut smoke out of the equation all together; that would leave you with pure THC, a substance which has a relatively harmless therapeutic index⁴ of about 1000:1 and evidence supporting it’s negative mental effects which is, at best, dubious.

Compare all this with alcoholic drinks, where even then ingredients we know about (alcohol⁵, sugar and empty calories) are incredibly bad for you (particularly in the quantities they are consumed on an average night out) let alone the ones we don’t! As for the ones we don’t…well, I’m no scientist, but I think if a liquid is fluorescent blue and tastes like Bertie Bassett had sex with a Chupa Chup on a tablespoon of cheap vodka, it’s probably not gonna be best mates with your insides. This proves itself the next morning, when the drinker awakes in pain, disorientated, dehydrated and nauseous, with a mouth that tastes like a horses dick and a gap in their memory so wide that it could well have been an ACTUAL horses dick that did it. They proceed to stay in bed all day, usually complaining as they do. The stoner awakes and is…⁶a bit mellow. For about an hour. Then they get on with their lives.

1. At least to anyone that doesn’t take everything they see at face value.

2. TokePURE

3. A process that utilises the fact that THC turns into vapour at a lower temperature than the cannabis plant burns at. You use a device which heats the plant material to about 200°C and take in only THC vapour. Clean as a whistle.

4. A term usually used with regards to pharmaceuticals referring to the distance between an active dose and a lethal dose. Quantitatively, it is the ratio given by the lethal or toxic dose divided by the ‘therapeutic’ dose.

5. Which, incidentally, has a toxicity ratio of about 5:1. For some perspective, morphine’s is about 70:1 and cocaine, 15:1.

6. *Gasp* dun dun dunnn!

2. The Staff – Buying a drink from a bar, particularly a busy or popular one, can be pretty nightmarish. You wait in a deafeningly loud room, in a dense, sweaty crowd of irritatingly drunk people at the bar, shuffling unperceivably slowly towards it without any knowledge of the system⁷ being used to select who gets served next. When you finally do reach the bar and provided you are able to convey to the bar-staff⁸ what drink you want, their reaction can range, in my experience at least, from: “Drink? BOOM! Money? BOOM! Bye!” to “Don’t call it ‘SoCo’; it makes you sound like a prick⁹”. Can I blame them? Not really. There were World War I trenches that had better working conditions than some bars I’ve seen in my time. Seriously, interfacing with drunk people, in a room where you can’t hear yourself think and where the likelihood of being covered in various sticky liquids is off the chart, AND where you aren’t even allowed to dampen the horror with alcohol like the rest of the people in the room; that sounds like a special kind of hell! Were I in that position, I honestly can’t guarantee that I would be any less of a dick. To put it perhaps more grandiose than is necessary, they are agents of a faulty system!

Meanwhile, at the Coffeeshops, the quiet atmosphere, knowledgeable staff¹⁰ and more than a puff of smoke make the whole experience of just buying their product something notable on its own. They WANT to help you, they WANT to talk you through every strain; they WANT you to have the experience you’re after. They’ll regale you with often-hilarious tales of first-timers and space cakes, of crazy¹¹ shit they’ve done under the influence and, as a result, your relationship with them doesn’t end once you’ve got what you came for. In fact I’d bet that if you were an Amsterdam resident, and a regular at a Coffeeshop, you could probably build up quite a meaningful¹² relationship with the staff there. The closest thing to this that I have experienced in the UK is in certain local pubs. I have a friend who lives in the rural-est of rural areas¹³. His village pub has a staggering array of local cider¹⁴, and staff that know their shit about them; it’s quiet, friendly, and you get on with your social lives. Unfortunately it’s in the arse-end of nowhere and is the only such place I have encountered in my 21 years on this planet. ‘VodkaRev’s¹⁵’ is the standard and that just makes me want to weep.

7. It might be generous to even suggest there is one.

8. Presumably by hand-signing it; talking has become pretty futile by this point.

9. That was actually once said to me.

10. Seriously, wine connoisseurs provide a much better comparison for these guys than bar staff do.

11. And harmless…not “I got so trashed that I woke up at 6a.m. with my face in a bar toilet bowl, a floater inches away from my nose” kind of stories…

12. Not childhood-sweethearts-been-together-since-they-were-15-and-been-married-30-years kind of meaningful, but certainly more so than “here’s your drink. Now fuck off!”

13. The kind of rural where drink-driving laws are regarded as more sort of guidelines.

14. Some of which are so “niche” that they have to get them from ‘The Back Room’, which I’m fairly sure means they ladle the stuff out of a bathtub.

15. Or, if that’s not a lazy enough truncation of ‘Vodka Revolution’ for you, how about ‘Rev’s’? I heard that one used. How about just Rrrrr? Good thing you didn’t say the whole two words! How would you have squeezed in that last shot of bright red swimming pool water otherwise?   

3. The Company – In terms of patrons, I’ve never seen a more diverse array of people in a social establishment, than in the Coffeeshops of Amsterdam. Young and old, of all creeds, colours and social backgrounds come together in an atmosphere that promotes civility to one another. You can share, talk and laugh with complete strangers, people who you would never be paired in any other context; I feel there’s a certain profundity to that. And it’s an atmosphere that is not taken for granted. The only two times we experienced a situation even approaching tense inside a Coffeeshop were a) a drunk who had no sooner walked face first into and through the front door than he was thrown out of it and b) a Jamaican chap who, clearly very anxious to procure some herb, started making a fuss when no one was at the counter. He was soon defused when the guy behind the counter returned saying “seriously man, be calm; it’s a Coffeeshop.” It’s a Coffeeshop. What a wonderfully succinct was of saying “Aggressive dick-heads like you aren’t welcome here so either stow it or fuck off.”

If only that worked in any drinking establishment. Speaking seriously for a moment, when I see what alcohol does to people, I find the fact that it’s tolerated while marijuana is villainized a pretty harsh indictment of our society. Alcohol demands that you leave you’re dignity, intelligence, tranquillity and memory at the door. What do you get if you put a bunch of temporarily moronic hot-heads with no regard for their dignity in a room together? Arguments, and involuntary release of various bodily fluids at best, fights and murder at worst¹⁶. Why would anyone willingly submit to be in an environment like that?

16. Not to mention the thousands of police man-hours wasted on saving people from themselves that we can go ahead and add to the hundreds of thousands already being spent on the failed prohibition of a drug which, if legalised, could potentially solve this whole social issue, as well as a whole bunch of economic ones. That’s for another blog.

4. The Music – In clubs, the order of the day, everyday, is terrible mainstream dance. This is because by the time you arrive at ‘da club’ for the final leg of ‘the lash’, all your poor brain is capable of comprehending is the Neanderthalic pulse of ‘four on the floor’¹⁷. Your brain has been drunk so far into oblivion that it can just about count to four. And what do you do then? Well, since you no longer have the brain of a fully formed human, you spasm and flail in a rough approximation of what you think dancing might look like¹⁸, in the hope that some scantily dressed tart will throw an easy one your way. I mean for fuck’s sake; have we literally been on evolutionary stand-by for the last 100,00 years?!¹⁹ Bars tend to be a little better, mostly playing bearable music if you know where to go. Even so, it’s still at a volume that is not conducive of good social interaction. Surely, you go to these places to be with friends and the music is there to enhance the whole experience; why then is the music way louder than my any friends could ever possibly talk? It doesn’t make any sense!

Coffeeshops on the other hand play GOOD²⁰, diverse music²¹ that you might never listen to otherwise, and do so at a volume where you can just as easily tune out – i.e. when you’re having a conversation – as tune in – i.e. when you want to appreciate the sounds. It’s that simple and, weed or not, it’s the way it should be.

17. A term used to describe a beat where there is a kick drum on every quarter-note in a musical bar in a 4/4 time signature. 

18. What actually happens is you look like cunt.

19. “Ug! Pretty lady! Ug! Check out leopard skin pants dance! Ug! Come back to cave with me”.

20. Good, with regards to music, is obviously a relative term. It’s an argument that, as a music student, I have had countless times and don’t wish to have again. By saying ‘good’ here, I mean something a bit more intellectually stimulating than the unsophisticated, unoriginal, repetitive dirge of mainstream dance music.

21. A sample of some of the gems my friends and I were aurally pleasured with during our visit.   

 Coffee & TV – Blur

Feel Good Inc. – The Gorillaz

Dough Nation – Blockhead 

 (It’s notable within itself that I have composed this list from memory because, unlike with alcohol, I CAN remember.)

5. The Toilets – This may not seem as big a deal as it is but honestly, for me, this parallel works as a pretty neat microcosm for all the reasons Coffeeshops are better than bars, and was the inspiration for me writing this blog at all. I only used a toilet in a Coffeeshop once during my 4 day visit – this is a perk within itself; because you aren’t constantly drinking, you aren’t constantly going back and forth to the pisser – and as I went for the door, knowing that I was “out” and that it was a Friday night, I instinctually prepared myself for the olfactory cocktail of piss, shit, vomit, urinal cakes and shame that I have grown to expect at this point. And what greeted me? A waft of peach, an unblemished toilet bowl, and solitude. No paralytic fuck-wits pissing up the walls after having bludgeoned their motor functions with shot after shot of Sambuca. No yobbish dick-bags commenting on the size and shape of my penis²². No rows and rows of toilet stalls without a single working lock and where all but one is clogged because some bunch of thunder-cunts thought that putting whole rolls of toilet paper down them was not only socially acceptable, but actually funny, and the only reason they one left out is because there was a massive shit in it. NONE OF IT! Just me, the toilet, and the pleasant fruity aroma. So it occurred to me that this shows a mutual respect between the coffeeshop and the coffeeshop patrons that simply isn’t found in bars. Because of the nature of coffeeshops – namely a drug that allows you to pee strait, be considerate to fellow people and does so without requiring you piss every 30 minutes – the toilet stays pretty clean on its own, so, unlike in a bar/club, the coffeeshop staff actually see the point in cleaning it, and the fact that it’s clean makes further patrons treat it with a bit more respect; it’s a beautiful circle of bathroom hygiene!

22. That actually happened. I am not kidding.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Amsterdam is a wonderfully vibrant and interesting place, with a culture that follows suit, and is somewhere that I don’t see myself staying away from. They have aspects to their society that most others could learn from if they wanted; it’s like they’ve acknowledged that – within reason – vice is inherent in human nature, and that supressing and criminalising it will inevitably lead to more problems than are caused by the vices themselves. It’s not a seedy and unpleasant place for it; on the contrary, it’s diverse, equal, free and above all happy.

Things What I Think #6b – A Short Follow Up.

Much of the discussion incited by my last blog was related to the atheism vs. agnostic debate, as in…

Atheist: “There is no God”

Agnostic: “But you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist so being agnostic is the only logical conclusion”

Atheist: “Comfortable on that fence, is it?”

I want to clear the air: I agree with this assessment of things. I acknowledge that there is currently no way of knowing that there isn’t a god. My problem with this debate is that, more than anything, it’s one of syntax. Technically, looking at it this way is the most accurate. It’s also petty, and doesn’t really help anyone further his or her understanding of anything. Hermione puts it nicely…

Hermione: “…what about the stone, Mr. Lovegood? The thing you call 
the Resurrection Stone?”

Lovegood: “What of it?”

Hermione: “Well, how can that be real?”

Lovegood: “Prove that it is not.”

Hermione: “But that’s – I’m sorry but that’s completely ridiculous! 
How can I possibly prove it 
doesn’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold of all the pebbles in the world and test them?  I mean you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody proved it 
doesn’t exist!”

For centuries philosophers have mulled over the idea of reality. Descartes summed it up best with the idea ‘I think therefore I am’. In essence, you cannot really know the truth of what you are experiencing as all of your senses can be fooled, all you KNOW for certain is that you exist at all, by the fact that you have consciousness; everything else is pure conjecture. Thus, saying “I am typing on a keyboard right now” is not technically correct, that would be “What I understand to be my senses are indicating to my consciousness that I am typing on a keyboard right now”. I doubt, however, that any practical, pragmatic and scientific individual would seriously hold the view that they are “Reality Agnostic”. Technically correct? Yes. Helpful in anyway to furthering debate or discovery on…well anything really? Not at all.

I approach the existence of God in the same way. I acknowledge his possible existence, but only to the same extent as I acknowledge the possible existence of anything similarly irrational. Leprechauns for instance. Or ghosts. You can’t prove the non-existence of either of these things, yet no self-respecting, pragmatic scientist or academic would claim to be a ‘Leprechaun agnostic’.

So why the need to do it with God?

Perhaps because it’s such a massive issue, in which so many people have so much stake, that people feel the need to qualify their position so as not to step on the toes of the ‘believers’. That is an AWFUL reason. How many people have subscribed to an idea doesn’t effect how rational that idea is. A higher power creating and controlling everything is NOT rational when faced with the scientific evidence of how life, the universe, and everything came about. Not even a little. Perhaps only slightly less irrational than a small man in a green suite beckoning you to a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow; yet if you went round saying that Leprechauns might exist, people would think you were more than a bit mental!

Another one I have heard is that it’s because saying “there is no God” is arrogant; it’s an absolute so doesn’t allow for an alternative assertion. Another AWFUL reason. We deal in absolutes everyday. “The sky is blue” in an absolute. Again, something like “our atmosphere only allows through certain parts of what we have come to call the electromagnetic spectrum. These parts are relayed to our consciousness by our visual senses which interprets them as what we have come to call blue” would be far more accurate, but “The sky is blue” is something that currently would only be said from one human being to another, and all humans tend to experience reality in the same way so “the sky is blue” does the trick.

I suppose what I am trying to get across is that when I say “I am an atheist; there is no God”, really I am expressing the agnostic view “nothing in my experience, or anything I have ever learned from the experiences of others indicates to me that there is a God”, but I DON’T feel the need to qualify it much the same way as I don’t feel the need to qualify “The sky is blue”. If you are an agnostic about the existence of god, provided you aren’t just fickle, you HAVE to, by definition, be an agnostic about EVERYTHING, and if you are an agnostic about EVERYTHING then congratulations: you’re a right thinking individual! Ultimately, it’s the only pragmatic thing to be; agnosticism could be seen as the doubt which allows new ideas, theories and discoveries to penetrate; if you are going to learn and develop you have to be able to accept the fact that your beliefs aren’t infallible and may have flaws, or gaps which will be filled or amended as our understanding grows. With that in mind, proclaiming yourselves to be agnostic specifically about God is utterly pointless and can only be, as stated above, a sign of pussy-footing around those who do believe or fear of taking sides; fence-sitting of the highest order.

This is why, until I am provided with evidence to the contrary, I will remain an atheist, and term myself as such.

Things What I Think #6 – The Vacuum of Ignorance.

I’m going to start this by saying that I am under no illusions about how privileged I am. I have grown up in a stable loving home, been well educated and had no onus on me to be anything other than a good person. No expectations for me to follow a specific career path, hold particular political or social views or – most relevantly here – follow a certain religion. Or any religion. Of course my parents and peers hold views, and those close to me have influenced throughout my life, but only ever vicariously. In short I have never been ‘indoctrinated^{1, 2}’ into anything. I’m not even baptised, as some of my brothers are. Fairly easy then for me to become an atheist; in my eyes, if presented with all the evidential facts and provided they are free of bias, atheist is all anyone would become. I am incredibly thankful for this opportunity and relish every wonderful, godless day for what it is. A fucking miracle. And not a boring Jesus miracle³, I’m talking statistically, in terms of pure probability – the chances of life existing at all are infinitesimally small. Yet here we are.

1. The process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology. It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned.

2. And before anyone says something along the lines of ‘But being taught to believe in science?  That’s just another form of indoctrination’, NO! It really isn’t. The whole point of science is that it is intended to be questioned; it LOVES being questioned! That’s the only way it can develop, and there is no doctrine in something that is constantly changing in light of new developments; science is the ‘anti-doctrine’ if you like.

3. Big deal, you cured a leper. Alexander Fleming used good science to discover penicillin, which has since cured a number of people that is literally impossible to count – but it’s BILLIONS. Out of academic interest I wonder if this single discovery of science has saved more lives than have been slaughtered in the name of god – or rather what god was the ‘in’ deity at the time – throughout the ages.

I say all this because I recently experienced a brief insight into the lives of some young people who haven’t had the impartial perspective I have been given, and it brought two things to the forefront of my mind. One was the humility I should – and perhaps now more than ever DO – feel (as I hope has come across so far) and the other was the realisation of just how unremittingly evil and subversive organised religion can be.

I haven’t been to church – or any religious gathering for that matter – since probably Christmas carol services between the ages of 6 and 9 when, lacking any kind of perspective⁴ on theological matters, religious ceremony was simply a boring nuisance. During my adult life, when I now have my own informed opinions, I have avoided all such experiences like the plague⁵,out of a fundamental disagreement with what I understand them to represent. Because of this lack of tangible experience, I don’t think I have been fully aware quite HOW profound and fundamental my disagreement is⁶. Until now, that is.

4. My prime concerns were probably Angel Delight and the question of why Barbie is so interested in an overtly metrosexual, ascot-wearing tit when my Action-Man has a submarine and a gun!

5. During which, incidentally, Christians all over Europe took to burning entire Jewish communities to the ground and murdering all the inhabitants under the unimaginably deluded assertion that they we’re causing the disease by poisoning wells.

6. To quote Einstein “The only source of knowledge is experience”. To REALLY know something, you have to witness it first hand.

My girlfriend and I were walking through Liverpool yesterday when an enthusiastic young guy presented us with a flyer for a free “Drama” show. The flyer was pretty ambiguous; the show was called ‘The Thriller’, the imagery on the flyer was dark and brooding and it had a ‘Parental Advisory’ mark – the sort you find in the sale of music – in the bottom corner. I’d go as far as to say I found it a little intriguing, and we were going for a drink pretty much next door to the venue shortly before it was scheduled to start, so we had a “fuck it!” moment and decided to go.

Upon arriving it became quickly apparent what we had let ourselves in for. The show opened with an MC taking to the mic and demanding of the audience: “give me a ‘J’ ”. I’m sure you can assume the rest⁷. It turns out that the flyer neglected to mention that the show was, for lack of a better – or real – word, ‘Jesustastic’. On the contrary it was deliberately misleading⁸; a liar-flyer⁹ if you will. At first it was more or less innocuous; there were songs, raps and dances all praising ‘The Almighty’, kind of like a contemporary Hip-Hop Sunday service. Then the ‘Drama’ of which the flyer spoke began and things took a turn for the kind-of-fucked-up.

7. He spelled Jesus…

8. Which seems to be a staple of the faith it was attempting to gain support for.

9. Groan if you please.

Ostensibly, the story centred on a young girl of about 16 who, during the play, is pressured by her friends into loosing her virginity to her boyfriend of 3 years. She does so, making herself ‘impure’ and leading the boy – having ‘got what he came for’ – to leave her¹⁰, which ultimately reduces her to a suicidal wreck and she is only able to escape her self inflicted demise by listening to a friend who informs her of ‘Gods Love’ and they all live happily ever after. Interspersed among the demonization of young men, the repression of sexuality and the truly horrible and tasteless depiction of the leading lady’s desperate, suicidal thoughts, were testimonials from the real life ‘saved’ girls who comprised the cast, and who’s combined experiences formed the plot of the play.

10. Wow. Three years for one sex. He’s certainly determined I’ll give him that!

Quite frankly, it made me fucking sick. These young, vulnerable girls had the destructive double whammy of being both underprivileged, and indoctrinated into the Christian faith. Their beliefs – or rather their inherited beliefs – teach them that sex – the natural biological urge teens often get when the puberty hormones are rife – is inherently sinful outside of the institution of marriage. Because it is regarded as ‘sinful’ by the community that supports them (their parents/church/school), ideas of sex are either educated poorly, or not at all, and what we get are sexually confused young girls existing in a part of society where sex among the young is particularly prevalent, having sex, getting pregnant, having abortions all the while thinking that their god sees them as impure murderers who aren’t worthy of his love, and who are going to burn in hell for eternity. And they’re supposed to NOT feel suicidal?!?! The main deterrent of suicide – if you subscribe to the Christian faith – is that you end up in hell. If you already feel like you’ve ticked off everything the list of shit to do to get there, what have you got to loose!?

And the MOST messed up thing about the whole situation is that it is at this moment, when these girls are broken, empty and vulnerable, screwed up inside because their natural human behaviours conflict with what they have been falsely convinced is acceptable, that Christianity swoops in to save the day. “Hey girls, you know that guy who thinks that pretty much everything you have ever done or thought about doing is evil? Yes, the same guy who tells you that for doing those things, you’re going to spend the rest of eternity in perpetual agony? Well, it turns out he actually loves you.” And they buy it. They’re at the lowest they could ever get and Christianity poses them a “quick-fix” for all of their problems; why wouldn’t they?

That’s what religion does¹¹. “Nature abhors a vacuum”, and it fills with falsehoods any vacuums that it can get its grubby little hands on; from the void of knowledge of the world around us to the empty space in a hopeless heart. It comes along and offers simple, digestible¹² solutions for those without the ability, support or determination to find their own.

11. Among many other things, some far less, some far more abhorrent than this.

12. Not to mention WRONG.

From here, the resounding cry usually comes; “If people find solace in their beliefs, why not let them?” Until recently I found it hard to argue with this point of view, as to do so seems to contradict the ideas of freedom of expression that civilised humans live by, however, I have come to realise a couple of things.

First, is that I don’t think it is the beliefs that ‘heal’ these broken people; I believe it is other people. The valuable thing about turning to organised religion in times of hardship is not the beliefs themselves – if it were, organised religion would be pointless; individuals would have their beliefs and that would be enough to fulfil them – it is the network of support that such a community offers. Surrounding yourself with people struggling with similar problems for the purpose of repairing one another is wonderful and uplifting in itself; why the need to complicate it with dogma¹³? Group therapies for victims of things like drug addiction and sexual abuse do without¹⁴!

13. RHETORICAL!

14. I was going to put Alcoholics Anonymous in there, but upon further research, it turns out that AA is tied up with Christian dogma. Why? Just WHY?!?!

Second, is that the truth¹⁵ of world we live in, the true answers to the questions religions explain away with supernatural, superstitious, reductive hokum, are infinitely more interesting, fascinating and – given that they don’t contradict themselves and actually make sense – satisfying than anything anyone could ever dream up. Nature is beautiful perfection begat by billions and billions of years of trial and error. Anything in nature that exists today is, by definition, perfect at doing what it does; if it weren’t, it simply wouldn’t BE. I fail to grasp how the pure and simple divinity of that fact alone, if fully understood, could not be preferable to inconsistent and flawed ramblings of the minds of primitive men.

15. As in the facts as we understand them based on evidence gained through empirical study, not the proverbial “Truth”. That’s exactly what I DON’T mean!

Which do you find more interesting: A solar system formed nearly 5 billion years ago, from clouds of gases over 13.5 billion years old and the contents of 10 billion year old exploding supernovae flattening, compressing and rotating under the weight of their own enormous gravity OR God put it there?

Which sounds more feasible: A young earth, created around 4.54 billion years ago; oxygen-less and molten, swirling with volcanic activity and bombarded by cosmic bodies before cooling and forming land and oceans around 4 billion years ago OR God put it there?

Which penetrates the fibres of your being more: The Earth, just a billion years after it’s formation,  surrounded by a violent, primordial atmosphere bombarded present gases with UV light and electrical discharges creating a soup of simple organic compounds which, over the course of further billions of years react, combine and create the complex amino acids necessary for the formation of DNA – the building blocks of life – which then, over the next couple of billion years, gives rise to single celled organisms, then multi-cellular organisms, then – eventually – us, OR God put us here?

No contest.

If reading this is making you feel insignificant then WAKE UP! You ARE insignificant! You are, as Douglas Adams once put it, “An invisible dot on an invisible dot; infinitely small.” But there’s no shame in it! The Universe is a fairly big place¹⁶ with lots of space to fill, and worrying about your context in that is stupid. Everything is relative and that includes the worth of individual humans; to think that accepting that we live in a godless universe leaves us without purpose is in the same vain school of religious thought that suggests everything around us was created for us. Simply, if you matter to just one other person, then you matter. Acknowledging and embracing this fact is far more profound than anything any religion has to offer; it liberates you and present’s you with one pure goal: MATTER to people; be good, and do it not for desire of reward¹⁷ or fear of punishment¹⁸, but because it’s right.

16. About 46 billion light years across at last count.

17. Heaven.

18. Hell.

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” – Marcus Aurelius

The closest things we atheists have to heaven and hell are being remembered well, and being remembered badly. Preying on the uneducated, naïve and hopeless and providing them with lies and false security in exchange for control is not right, and I say, as an atheist, if you are propagating such a system, you are probably going to hell.

Please do read my short follow-up to issues raised about this post that can be found here…

Things What I Think #5 – Who Is Kate Middleton?

I was sat at dinner with my family the other night, when the subject of one Kate Middleton came up. Having given more of a shit about many things¹ than “The Royal Wedding”, I didn’t really know who she was. I mean of course I’d heard the name² , but more as an essence, a concept floating around in the ether of national pride, and one that I’d not cared to solidify into actual knowledge because, as I said, there are many³ things about which I give more of a shit. This lack of solid knowledge caused me to ask, during this particularly interminable conversation⁴ , “who is Kate Middleton?”.

1. The numerous, bloody wars taking place globally, the financial state of the world, my own financially bleak future as a musician that will see me eating cold beans straight from the tin with a plastic spoon in a few years time, my crippling self doubt and anxiety in most social situations, what to have for dinner, what t-shirt to wear that day, cheese, Alton Towers, Family Circle biscuits and air (the band, or the stuff we breath; whichever you find least interesting).

2. Apparently I only have my head up my arse as far as the ears.

3. Many, many, many, many…

4 .from the little attention I was paying, I think it was about Kate Middleton’s mother favourite brand of toilet paper or something…

In truth, if I’d just thought about it for about 5 seconds I probably would have pieced it together from vague, half-remembered headlines/news reports etc; I really wish I had because when I said “who is Kate Middleton?” I may as well have said “do you guys mind if I drop my kegs and do a big steamy dump in my Yorkshire pudding?⁵ This is a reaction that I don’t quite understand.

5. I had to choose between about 12 things-they-looked-at-me-like-I’d-done s; here are top three:

• “If I wapped out dick and put it in a finger-roll would any of you eat it?”
• “you know, the Nazis may have had a point there…”
• “I like Geordie Shore”

If I’d started talking about something like LulzSec – a group of computer hackers who, throughout 2011, hacked the FOX, Nintendo, Sony, the NHS and CIA websites and, though they were not malicious for the most part, they did point out that due to the role of the internet in modern society we’re approaching a situation where a very small group of very skilled people have the power to bring it all crashing down if they wish⁶ – and one of them had said “What’s LulzSec?”, I doubt I’d have had the licence to flop my jaw open like an egg snake that had just walked in on my egg snake parents having egg snake sex⁷

6. Like Die Hard 4 or something!

7. I fell asleep with a nature show about egg snakes on the other night. I’m not sure, but I think it may have subliminally wormed its into subconscious. Maybe.

Further to this, people get so fucking defensive of our precious Royal Family, to the degree whereby, on this occasion when I said “…oh yeah I remember, I didn’t really pay attention to the whole royal wedding deal”⁸ I received the same old tired shit in retort: “Don’t you have any respect!?”, “Do you know how valuable they are to this countries economy!?!”, “ANARCHY! THAT’S WHAT YOU WAN’T ISN’T IT!!!” “Blah blah sovereignty…blah blah tourism…blah blah Britain Britain Britain!!!”. I don’t lack knowledge or appreciation for The Royals. I respect oxygen in much the same way; I like it for it’s benefits to both myself and society⁹ but that doesn’t mean I’m constantly thinking “Ooh that was a good breath. I’m glad I get to have these breaths. I’m looking forward to my next breath, it’ll really be something!”, and if there was a special day marked out, when oxygen was going to marry another gas – nitrogen say -, I’m not so fickle that I would suddenly decide to start giving a shit for a bit, while being a sanctimonious prick to people who haven’t blindly hopped on the band-wagon! I’m happy for Kate Middleton ¹⁰ and Prince William, but only in the same way that I’m happy for any and every happily married couple. I hope that clears the air.

8. Seriously I didn’t even get a day off (the reason most people cared) I was already on a holiday, so my life was literally no different as a result of that day.

9. Namely, preventing us all from dying.

10. Now that I know who she is I mean.

Things What I Think #4 – “Keep Digging”

Now there’s a phrase that riles me up if ever I heard one! “Haha! Oh yeah, keep digging Dan”¹. The number of conversations I find myself in where this is duly whipped with the intention to quell some semi-risky thing that I might have been saying is far above average I’m sure. I do have a taste for what some might call “inappropriate” humour, both in what I consume and what I think myself, but none of it is motivated by hate²; on the contrary it’s motivated by love. Love of thoughtfully constructed comedy, love of laughing, and love of the laughter of others.

1. Usually accompanied by a ridiculous mimed action of them using an imaginary spade to shovel imaginary dirt out of an imaginary hole, that makes them look like an actual dick-bag!

2. I leave such things to the likes of Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson; though not so much anymore since the formers fat bloated blob of a body took a shit and died, as did the latters fat bloated blob of a career. Just goes to show kids, racism DOESN’T pay!

Therein lies my first problem with “keep digging”; given that the metaphor of “digging a hole” represents both the deepening awkwardness of the “diggers” situation, as well as getting lower in the opinions of those opposite me in the conversation, the implication when it is quoted at me is that there is some deep-seated negativity about what I am saying. As I said, I’m motivated by only the positive – even when I express negative views it’s usually as sarcasm to parody those who actually hold those views – so I don’t see how this can be so, thus I am lead to believe that said other people just don’t “get” what I’m saying.

This leads me on to my next problem. “keep digging” is a phrase used by idiots, in the company of idiots, to make a clever person seem like an idiot³. Let’s look at it as a process…

Step 1 – Person says risky/mildly inappropriate thing, usually using sarcasm/irony, which, if said in earnest, would be offensive but obviously isn’t intended as such.

Step 2 – Idiot misunderstands this and gets offended and/or points out how it might be found to be offensive

Step 3 – Person rationally qualifies what he/she said, explaining that there was linguistic slight-of-hand that might not have been picked up on, and that it was all said firmly under the guise of irony.

Step 4 – Idiot says “oh yeah keep digging”. All other idiots laugh and agree.

Step 5 – Person is fucked. No further attempt to make the idiots understand the point of what he/she said, regardless of how rational it is, will be greeted with anything other than “Haha! yeah yeah, keep digging”. Idiots win.

3. I really don’t mean to sounds like an arrogant tool who regards himself intellectually superior to everyone else, but I DO regard my self as a bit more clever than people who chooses to remain ignorant when rationality is handing them a reason not to be! Incidentally, that’s a very long list…here’s my top 5!:

#1. Christians – need I say more?

#2. U2 fans – They aren’t good and they never were.

#3. Matthew Broderick – You’re married to a horse!

#4. People who’ve been to Scarborough – you didn’t have a good time.  

#5. People who say “keep digging”.

And, looking at “Step 5”, there is my final problem with “keep digging”. Once switched on in a conversation, it CANNOT be switched off. It doesn’t matter how well you argue your corner, or how simply and flawlessly you rationalise what you have said; you could be Albert Einstein using the Theory of General Relativity to explain away why you had a dig at fat people and the reaction would be the same: “Yeah yeah, keep digging Einey, you crazy tached German bastard…”. I guess there’s just no pleasing some people.

P.S. The first person to comment with anything to the tune of “Whatever Dan KEEP DIGGING! HAWHAW LOLZ ROFLCOPTERS!” will receive my grand prize of a swift e-kick in the their e-balls/e-gina. You’ve been warned!

Things What I Think #3 – Priorities.

Okay, this is a pretty serious one. If ever I needed evidence that people (or at least the people of the UK) have their priorities WAYHEYHAAAY out of whack, here it is. Clicking to the BBC News website this afternoon, I am faced with their most read articles “chart”.

Here you can see that articles related to the death of singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse cover DOUBLE the chart positions of those regarding the recent tragedies in Norway, AND one of these is the top spot.

So let me get this straight; in the battle for people’s interest/sympathy we have…

A notorious, albeit talented drug addict, finally and predictably going the way of so many, similarly brilliant, young, talented drug addicts before her…

VS.

The worst atrocity to occur to a peace-loving nation and it’s people since at least the Second World War, but very arguably EVER, in which (so-far) 93 people have been murdered, 96 injured – most of whom were children/teens -, and at least 5 are still unaccounted for.

And Winehouse is WINNING?

I know that one chart, on one website, isn’t necessarily representative of the overall interest in those subjects mentioned, but the idea that news of Amy Winehouse’s death is evoking more interest than that of the tragedies in Norway on EVEN ONE media outlet (not to mention my entire fucking Facebook feed) really makes me question people and their priorities. I’d have thought that, were there any justice/sense in the world, news as comparatively unimportant as that wouldn’t even get noticed until the waves of shock and horror that are currently bombarding an entire nation had died down a bit. Not only is that not the case, but the death of the singer is actually MEASURING UP in column inches! Yes it was untimely and tragic and, yes she was talented, but seriously people…

WHAT.

THE ACTUAL.

FUCK?!?!