Too much monkey business

[Mock Turtle]

Since I don't think they allowed comments on this article, or I just couldn't bother - my reply being too long - I'll post this here since I doubt I will get another chance.

What scares the new atheists | John Gray

What scares the new atheists by John Gray

The vocal fervour of today’s missionary atheism conceals a panic that religion is not only refusing to decline – but in fact flourishing.

I doubt the new atheists are any more scared than the old atheists, and have very much the same concerns as always - that religions will continue to dominate in the less-thinking world. The panic Gray appears to see is mostly that atheists now have a much larger voice in the world, and it is the reaction often from the religious that provides what he sees as panic. I am sure many atheists do recognise that probably most people will cling to their religions (about 85% having one), and no amount of persuasion will pry this from their grasp - that is to be expected - but atheists have as much right to proselytise their views as the religious appear to expect - and usually do. And actually religion is declining in those places where freedom is the norm.

In 1929, the Thinker’s Library, a series established by the Rationalist Press Association to advance secular thinking and counter the influence of religion in Britain, published an English translation of the German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1899 book The Riddle of the Universe. Celebrated as “the German Darwin”, Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; The Riddle of the Universe sold half a million copies in Germany alone, and was translated into dozens of other languages. Hostile to Jewish and Christian traditions, Haeckel devised his own “religion of science” called Monism, which incorporated an anthropology that divided the human species into a hierarchy of racial groups. Though he died in 1919, before the Nazi Party had been founded, his ideas, and widespread influence in Germany, unquestionably helped to create an intellectual climate in which policies of racial slavery and genocide were able to claim a basis in science.

The Thinker’s Library also featured works by Julian Huxley, grandson of TH Huxley, the Victorian biologist who was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his fierce defence of evolutionary theory. A proponent of “evolutionary humanism”, which he described as “religion without revelation”, Julian Huxley shared some of Haeckel’s views, including advocacy of eugenics. In 1931, Huxley wrote that there was “a certain amount of evidence that the negro is an earlier product of human evolution than the Mongolian or the European, and as such might be expected to have advanced less, both in body and mind”. Statements of this kind were then commonplace: there were many in the secular intelligentsia – including HG Wells, also a contributor to the Thinker’s Library – who looked forward to a time when “backward” peoples would be remade in a western mould or else vanish from the world.

But by the late 1930s, these views were becoming suspect: already in 1935, Huxley admitted that the concept of race was “hardly definable in scientific terms”. While he never renounced eugenics, little was heard from him on the subject after the second world war. The science that pronounced western people superior was bogus – but what shifted Huxley’s views wasn’t any scientific revelation: it was the rise of Nazism, which revealed what had been done under the aegis of Haeckel-style racism.

It has often been observed that Christianity follows changing moral fashions, all the while believing that it stands apart from the world. The same might be said, with more justice, of the prevalent version of atheism.

We might start with this - what exactly is the prevalent version of atheism? Does it have its adherents, a creed, a dogma, practices - like a religion? No, it is basically a non-belief in propositions put forward by others concerning their religions - most having a belief in god or gods - for which most atheists see no reason to believe such views. Where, therefore, are these atheists who can be described en masse, as in prevalent? They are all defined as having a lack of belief in god or gods, that is all, so all of them?

If an earlier generation of unbelievers shared the racial prejudices of their time and elevated them to the status of scientific truths, evangelical atheists do the same with the liberal values to which western societies subscribe today – while looking with contempt upon “backward” cultures that have not abandoned religion. The racial theories promoted by atheists in the past have been consigned to the memory hole – and today’s most influential atheists would no more endorse racist biology than they would be seen following the guidance of an astrologer. But they have not renounced the conviction that human values must be based in science; now it is liberal values which receive that accolade. There are disputes, sometimes bitter, over how to define and interpret those values, but their supremacy is hardly ever questioned. For 21st century atheist missionaries, being liberal and scientific in outlook are one and the same.

I think most atheists would rather human behaviour was based in reality rather than dictated reputedly by the word of some sky-fairy, especially when an abundance of these prophets seems to occur such as to split humans into numerous warring factions.

It’s a reassuringly simple equation. In fact there are no reliable connections – whether in logic or history – between atheism, science and liberal values.

Why should there be? Atheists, in general, recognise the value of science, logic, and history, but they usually don’t require any of these to be automatically interlinked so as to provide an alternative to the religions.

When organised as a movement and backed by the power of the state, atheist ideologies have been an integral part of despotic regimes that also claimed to be based in science, such as the former Soviet Union. Many rival moralities and political systems – most of them, to date, illiberal – have attempted to assert a basis in science. All have been fraudulent and ephemeral. Yet the attempt continues in atheist movements today, which claim that liberal values can be scientifically validated and are therefore humanly universal.

Fortunately, this type of atheism isn’t the only one that has ever existed. There have been many modern atheisms, some of them more cogent and more intellectually liberating than the type that makes so much noise today. Campaigning atheism is a missionary enterprise, aiming to convert humankind to a particular version of unbelief; but not all atheists have been interested in propagating a new gospel, and some have been friendly to traditional faiths.

Patently wrong. Atheism is about refuting the propositions concerning the religious beliefs of the many, not about converting anyone to an alternative belief system.

Evangelical atheists today view liberal values as part of an emerging global civilisation; but not all atheists, even when they have been committed liberals, have shared this comforting conviction. Atheism comes in many irreducibly different forms, among which the variety being promoted at the present time looks strikingly banal and parochial.

But a lot less worse than many religions - how many atheists do you see advocating and practising the many barbaric practices that most civilised nations abandoned centuries ago. And most atheists hardly base their views concerning homosexuality on books written centuries ago, when even the workings of the human body was a mystery to them.

In itself, atheism is an entirely negative position.

Rubbish! It is purely a negative assessment of propositions put forward by others, for which there is, and never has been, any evidence - that is, that there is a divine creator of this world and life in general. Would Gray say the same about any other propositions that have no evidence at all.

In pagan Rome, “atheist” (from the Greek atheos) meant anyone who refused to worship the established pantheon of deities. The term was applied to Christians, who not only refused to worship the gods of the pantheon but demanded exclusive worship of their own god. Many non-western religions contain no conception of a creator-god – Buddhism and Taoism, in some of their forms, are atheist religions of this kind – and many religions have had no interest in proselytising. In modern western contexts, however, atheism and rejection of monotheism are practically interchangeable. Roughly speaking, an atheist is anyone who has no use for the concept of God – the idea of a divine mind, which has created humankind and embodies in a perfect form the values that human beings cherish and strive to realise.

I think this where much of the problem lies, in that many religions propose to know the mind of their god, and to dictate how they conceive of this to others, even though it generally is translated through the voice of some prophet or other, and wherein often lies the problem. Should we mention death for apostasy.

Many who are atheists in this sense (including myself) regard the evangelical atheism that has emerged over the past few decades with bemusement. Why make a fuss over an idea that has no sense for you? There are untold multitudes who have no interest in waging war on beliefs that mean nothing to them. Throughout history, many have been happy to live their lives without bothering about ultimate questions. This sort of atheism is one of the perennial responses to the experience of being human.

Perhaps it is because, for the first time ever, atheists have as big a voice as many religions, courtesy of the internet, and hence feel free to express exactly how they feel without the kind of sanctions often imposed on those who, in the past, might have had much more extreme forms of censure imposed upon them. A voice which they never had in past centuries, so why not SHOUT their beliefs as loudly as the next now.

As an organised movement, atheism is never non-committal in this way.

No such thing - only those who are committed enough to join with others seem to form a movement. Most atheists I am sure couldn’t be bothered to be pro-active since they probably recognise the futility of doing so. Why just target the vocal few?

It always goes with an alternative belief-system – typically, a set of ideas that serves to show the modern west is the high point of human development. In Europe from the late 19th century until the second world war, this was a version of evolutionary theory that marked out western peoples as being the most highly evolved. Around the time Haeckel was promoting his racial theories, a different theory of western superiority was developed by Marx. While condemning liberal societies and prophesying their doom, Marx viewed them as the high point of human development to date. (This is why he praised British colonialism in India as an essentially progressive development.) If Marx had serious reservations about Darwinism – and he did – it was because Darwin’s theory did not frame evolution as a progressive process.

I think that many atheists are beyond this, and do recognise that modern Western thought is not necessarily a high point, or ever will be, but it is probably superior to most religious thought, being free of many or even most restrictions.

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The predominant varieties of atheist thinking, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, aimed to show that the secular west is the model for a universal civilisation. The missionary atheism of the present time is a replay of this theme; but the west is in retreat today, and beneath the fervour with which this atheism assaults religion there is an unmistakable mood of fear and anxiety. To a significant extent, the new atheism is the expression of a liberal moral panic.

I think the rise of intolerant fundamentalist Islam is seen as more of a threat.

Sam Harris, the American neuroscientist and author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (2004) and The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Moral Values (2010), who was arguably the first of the “new atheists”, illustrates this point. Following many earlier atheist ideologues, he wants a “scientific morality”; but whereas earlier exponents of this sort of atheism used science to prop up values everyone would now agree were illiberal, Harris takes for granted that what he calls a “science of good and evil” cannot be other than liberal in content. (Not everyone will agree with Harris’s account of liberal values, which appears to sanction the practice of torture: “Given what many believe are the exigencies of our war on terrorism,” he wrote in 2004, “the practice of torture, in certain circumstances, would seem to be not only permissible but necessary.”)

Harris’s militancy in asserting these values seems to be largely a reaction to Islamist terrorism. For secular liberals of his generation, the shock of the 11 September attacks went beyond the atrocious loss of life they entailed. The effect of the attacks was to place a question mark over the belief that their values were spreading – slowly, and at times fitfully, but in the long run irresistibly – throughout the world. As society became ever more reliant on science, they had assumed, religion would inexorably decline. No doubt the process would be bumpy, and pockets of irrationality would linger on the margins of modern life; but religion would dwindle away as a factor in human conflict. The road would be long and winding. But the grand march of secular reason would continue, with more and more societies joining the modern west in marginalising religion. Someday, religious belief would be no more important than personal hobbies or ethnic cuisines.

Hope lingers on. Unfortunately children are usually indoctrinated in the faith of their parents, and it often takes time to shrug off such teachings. This is not possible for many, so inertia rules.

Today, it’s clear that no grand march is under way. The rise of violent jihadism is only the most obvious example of a rejection of secular life. Jihadist thinking comes in numerous varieties, mixing strands from 20th century ideologies, such as Nazism and Leninism, with elements deriving from the 18th century Wahhabist Islamic fundamentalist movement. What all Islamist movements have in common is a categorical rejection of any secular realm. But the ongoing reversal in secularisation is not a peculiarly Islamic phenomenon.

This is not right either. What is happening in Islam is basically what has happened in many other religions, where there is questioning of change, and a return to the fundamental (original) roots of the religion. We have numerous examples of splits in all faiths, and since Islam is the latest major religion, it is to be expected for this turmoil to be occurring today and will perhaps do so for centuries.

The resurgence of religion is a worldwide development. Russian Orthodoxy is stronger than it has been for over a century,

But mainly it is a reaction from the suppression of religion during the Communist era, and hence a rebound is to be expected. It doesn’t necessarily mean that such revivals have much in common with any other’s.

.. while China is the scene of a reawakening of its indigenous faiths and of underground movements that could make it the largest Christian country in the world by the end of this century. Despite tentative shifts in opinion that have been hailed as evidence it is becoming less pious, the US remains massively and pervasively religious – it’s inconceivable that a professed unbeliever could become president, for example.

But the entrenchment of Christianity in the USA might be seen as a reaction to the rise of other religions around the world, Islam for example, rather than for other reasons. And religion is declining in the USA too.

For secular thinkers, the continuing vitality of religion calls into question the belief that history underpins their values. To be sure, there is disagreement as to the nature of these values. But pretty well all secular thinkers now take for granted that modern societies must in the end converge on some version of liberalism. Never well founded, this assumption is today clearly unreasonable. So, not for the first time, secular thinkers look to science for a foundation for their values.

Hardly. Religion has dominated most cultures for the last few millennia, but since we know more about our human nature than ever before, we do know that such beliefs will be difficult to eradicate. And atheists I doubt have looked for anything to justify their lack of belief other than evidence for other’s beliefs.

It’s probably just as well that the current generation of atheists seems to know so little of the longer history of atheist movements.

I couldn’t care less about what others believed before, just as I mostly ignore how religions evolved - it is all just shifting deckchairs on the Titanic - it is what is relevant today that matters. If something is wrong why nitpick on the details or the history.

When they assert that science can bridge fact and value, they overlook the many incompatible value-systems that have been defended in this way. There is no more reason to think science can determine human values today than there was at the time of Haeckel or Huxley. None of the divergent values that atheists have from time to time promoted has any essential connection with atheism, or with science. How could any increase in scientific knowledge validate values such as human equality and personal autonomy? The source of these values is not science. In fact, as the most widely-read atheist thinker of all time argued, these quintessential liberal values have their origins in monotheism.

Arguing about the origins or not, how do we know that such values would not have evolved devoid of any religious belief. We know that the religious are no more moral than the non-religious. It is highly likely that all such values evolved from some survival aspect, and became enshrined within their particular beliefs. Like many, I doubt any of the non-religious propose to know it all, or in fact anything, but as the following, from Richard Feynman, on what being a scientist is all about states, at least we acknowledge that we don’t know, unlike the many religious advocates, who presume to know - from what others have said in the past:

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything.

The new atheists rarely mention Friedrich Nietzsche, and when they do it is usually to dismiss him. This can’t be because Nietzsche’s ideas are said to have inspired the Nazi cult of racial inequality – an unlikely tale, given that the Nazis claimed their racism was based in science. The reason Nietzsche has been excluded from the mainstream of contemporary atheist thinking is that he exposed the problem atheism has with morality. It’s not that atheists can’t be moral – the subject of so many mawkish debates. The question is which morality an atheist should serve.

And this doesn’t apply to every religion? We might compare the current beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims with any other religion to see the vast differences and problems thrown up by perceived morality. At least atheists get to debate rationally about what should be considered moral behaviour without threat or recourse to questionable historical evidence. The existence of all the religions just makes rational debate harder.

It’s a familiar question in continental Europe, where a number of thinkers have explored the prospects of a “difficult atheism” that doesn’t take liberal values for granted. It can’t be said that anything much has come from this effort. Georges Bataille’s postmodern project of “atheology” didn’t produce the godless religion he originally intended, or any coherent type of moral thinking. But at least Bataille, and other thinkers like him, understood that when monotheism has been left behind morality can’t go on as before. Among other things, the universal claims of liberal morality become highly questionable.

It’s impossible to read much contemporary polemic against religion without the impression that for the “new atheists” the world would be a better place if Jewish and Christian monotheism had never existed. If only the world wasn’t plagued by these troublesome God-botherers, they are always lamenting, liberal values would be so much more secure. Awkwardly for these atheists, Nietzsche understood that modern liberalism was a secular incarnation of these religious traditions. As a classical scholar, he recognised that a mystical Greek faith in reason had shaped the cultural matrix from which modern liberalism emerged. Some ancient Stoics defended the ideal of a cosmopolitan society; but this was based in the belief that humans share in the Logos, an immortal principle of rationality that was later absorbed into the conception of God with which we are familiar. Nietzsche was clear that the chief sources of liberalism were in Jewish and Christian theism: that is why he was so bitterly hostile to these religions. He was an atheist in large part because he rejected liberal values.

Morality seems to stem (originally) from what ensures the survival of the group rather than coming from any mystical beliefs - and do unto others, etc (which is still the best basis for living, in general) existed long before Christianity.

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To be sure, evangelical unbelievers adamantly deny that liberalism needs any support from theism. If they are philosophers, they will wheel out their rusty intellectual equipment and assert that those who think liberalism relies on ideas and beliefs inherited from religion are guilty of a genetic fallacy. Canonical liberal thinkers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant may have been steeped in theism; but ideas are not falsified because they originate in errors. The far-reaching claims these thinkers have made for liberal values can be detached from their theistic beginnings; a liberal morality that applies to all human beings can be formulated without any mention of religion. Or so we are continually being told. The trouble is that it’s hard to make any sense of the idea of a universal morality without invoking an understanding of what it is to be human that has been borrowed from theism. The belief that the human species is a moral agent struggling to realise its inherent possibilities – the narrative of redemption that sustains secular humanists everywhere – is a hollowed-out version of a theistic myth. The idea that the human species is striving to achieve any purpose or goal – a universal state of freedom or justice, say – presupposes a pre-Darwinian, teleological way of thinking that has no place in science. Empirically speaking, there is no such collective human agent, only different human beings with conflicting goals and values. If you think of morality in scientific terms, as part of the behaviour of the human animal, you find that humans don’t live according to iterations of a single universal code. Instead, they have fashioned many ways of life. A plurality of moralities is as natural for the human animal as the variety of languages.

This might be so, but surely a consensus of morality based on informed discussion is better than recourse to quotations from some preferred historical document (however factually based), which is what mostly happens when religion has centre stage.

At this point, the dread spectre of relativism tends to be raised. Doesn’t talk of plural moralities mean there can be no truth in ethics? Well, anyone who wants their values secured by something beyond the capricious human world had better join an old-fashioned religion. If you set aside any view of humankind that is borrowed from monotheism, you have to deal with human beings as you find them, with their perpetually warring values.

This isn’t the relativism celebrated by postmodernists, which holds that human values are merely cultural constructions. Humans are like other animals in having a definite nature, which shapes their experiences whether they like it or not. No one benefits from being tortured or persecuted on account of their religion or sexuality. Being chronically poor is rarely, if ever, a positive experience. Being at risk of violent death is bad for human beings whatever their culture. Such truisms could be multiplied. Universal human values can be understood as something like moral facts, marking out goods and evils that are generically human. Using these universal values, it may be possible to define a minimum standard of civilised life that every society should meet; but this minimum won’t be the liberal values of the present time turned into universal principles.

Whatever it is, it has to be better than constantly warring religious factions grounded in myth.

Universal values don’t add up to a universal morality. Such values are very often conflicting, and different societies resolve these conflicts in divergent ways. The Ottoman empire, during some of its history, was a haven of toleration for religious communities who were persecuted in Europe; but this pluralism did not extend to enabling individuals to move from one community to another, or to form new communities of choice, as would be required by a liberal ideal of personal autonomy. The Hapsburg empire was based on rejecting the liberal principle of national self-determination; but – possibly for that very reason – it was more protective of minorities than most of the states that succeeded it. Protecting universal values without honouring what are now seen as core liberal ideals, these archaic imperial regimes were more civilised than a great many states that exist today.

For many, regimes of this kind are imperfect examples of what all human beings secretly want – a world in which no one is unfree. The conviction that tyranny and persecution are aberrations in human affairs is at the heart of the liberal philosophy that prevails today. But this conviction is supported by faith more than evidence. Throughout history there have been large numbers who have been happy to relinquish their freedom as long as those they hate – gay people, Jews, immigrants and other minorities, for example – are deprived of freedom as well. Many have been ready to support tyranny and oppression. Billions of human beings have been hostile to liberal values, and there is no reason for thinking matters will be any different in future.

The problem is our human nature, and I think many atheists recognise this, but religions just complicate the issue.

An older generation of liberal thinkers accepted this fact. As the late Stuart Hampshire put it:

“It is not only possible, but, on present evidence, probable that most conceptions of the good, and most ways of life, which are typical of commercial, liberal, industrialised societies will often seem altogether hateful to substantial minorities within these societies and even more hateful to most of the populations within traditional societies … As a liberal by philosophical conviction, I think I ought to expect to be hated, and to be found superficial and contemptible, by a large part of mankind.”

Today this a forbidden thought. How could all of humankind not want to be as we imagine ourselves to be? To suggest that large numbers hate and despise values such as toleration and personal autonomy is, for many people nowadays, an intolerable slur on the species. This is, in fact, the quintessential illusion of the ruling liberalism: the belief that all human beings are born freedom-loving and peaceful and become anything else only as a result of oppressive conditioning. But there is no hidden liberal struggling to escape from within the killers of the Islamic State and Boko Haram, any more than there was in the torturers who served the Pol Pot regime. To be sure, these are extreme cases. But in the larger sweep of history, faith-based violence and persecution, secular and religious, are hardly uncommon – and they have been widely supported. It is peaceful coexistence and the practice of toleration that are exceptional.

Quite true, but at least we might be honest about our failings without recourse to the book or any other book.

Considering the alternatives that are on offer, liberal societies are well worth defending. But there is no reason for thinking these societies are the beginning of a species-wide secular civilisation of the kind of which evangelical atheists dream.

Nope. Just as we cannot expect the end of all wars, poverty, exploitation by the wealthy, or any other product of being human, but we can work towards the elimination of all these, and religion should get a priority place since it contributes to many of the worst aspects of humanity simply by being untrue.

In ancient Greece and Rome, religion was not separate from the rest of human activity. Christianity was less tolerant than these pagan societies, but without it the secular societies of modern times would hardly have been possible. By adopting the distinction between what is owed to Caesar and what to God, Paul and Augustine – who turned the teaching of Jesus into a universal creed – opened the way for societies in which religion was no longer coextensive with life. Secular regimes come in many shapes, some liberal, others tyrannical. Some aim for a separation of church and state as in the US and France, while others – such as the Ataturkist regime that until recently ruled in Turkey – assert state control over religion. Whatever its form, a secular state is no guarantee of a secular culture. Britain has an established church, but despite that fact – or more likely because of it – religion has a smaller role in politics than in America and is less publicly divisive than it is in France.

There is no sign anywhere of religion fading away, but by no means all atheists have thought the disappearance of religion possible or desirable. Some of the most prominent – including the early 19th-century poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the Austro-Hungarian philosopher and novelist Fritz Mauthner (who published a four-volume history of atheism in the early 1920s) and Sigmund Freud, to name a few – were all atheists who accepted the human value of religion. One thing these atheists had in common was a refreshing indifference to questions of belief. Mauthner – who is remembered today chiefly because of a dismissive one-line mention in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus – suggested that belief and unbelief were both expressions of a superstitious faith in language. For him, “humanity” was an apparition which melts away along with the departing Deity. Atheism was an experiment in living without taking human concepts as realities. Intriguingly, Mauthner saw parallels between this radical atheism and the tradition of negative theology in which nothing can be affirmed of God, and described the heretical medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart as being an atheist in this sense.

Perhaps those of us who do want to see religions as part of history prefer less violence in the world and more compassion towards others. Something that is often impossible whilst we have the means to separate one from another merely by the use of a label.

Above all, these unevangelical atheists accepted that religion is definitively human.

How far would Gray like to go with this. Slavery might have been said to be such for much of the past, as was child marriage, brutal punishment of offenders, and almost any other practices consigned to the dustbin of history. We have progressed. At some point in our past we must have been religion-free. So ??

Though not all human beings may attach great importance to them, every society contains practices that are recognisably religious. Why should religion be universal in this way?

Um, because we are human and we seek answers? So, seeing meaning where none perhaps exists is a likely consequence for such seeking, and why it is so widespread. And it serves a purpose - control.

For atheist missionaries this is a decidedly awkward question. Invariably they claim to be followers of Darwin.

Followers? The best explanation so far as to how we got to where we are now might be a better description, and reason for believing this. Are all those who believe scientific evidence followers?

Yet they never ask what evolutionary function this species-wide phenomenon serves.

Why do we need to ask such a question? Why not just accept it, and wait until a theory arises. Having an answer that is wrong is worse than not having an answer often. Can't deal with doubt? Tough.

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There is an irresolvable contradiction between viewing religion naturalistically – as a human adaptation to living in the world – and condemning it as a tissue of error and illusion.

Produce the evidence and then we might judge. Until then, knowing the fallibility of humans, why would we not see all religions as purely the constructs of human minds.

What if the upshot of scientific inquiry is that a need for illusion is built into in the human mind? If religions are natural for humans and give value to their lives, why spend your life trying to persuade others to give them up?

Perhaps because they might not be based in fact. OK, so we all live our lives as children believing in fairy tales, or we become real and recognise that as humans we are vulnerable to various illusions and delusions. I know which world I would rather we inhabit. Too much scope for deception, trickery and exploitation in the fairy world.

The answer that will be given is that religion is implicated in many human evils. Of course this is true. Among other things, Christianity brought with it a type of sexual repression unknown in pagan times. Other religions have their own distinctive flaws. But the fault is not with religion, any more than science is to blame for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or medicine and psychology for the refinement of techniques of torture. The fault is in the intractable human animal. Like religion at its worst, contemporary atheism feeds the fantasy that human life can be remade by a conversion experience – in this case, conversion to unbelief.

Not true. We just want others to have better thinking skills rather than relying on possibly fraudulent documents from who knows where. How many atheists do you know quoting from some Good Book?

Evangelical atheists at the present time are missionaries for their own values. If an earlier generation promoted the racial prejudices of their time as scientific truths, ours aims to give the illusions of contemporary liberalism a similar basis in science. It’s possible to envision different varieties of atheism developing – atheisms more like those of Freud, which didn’t replace God with a flattering image of humanity. But atheisms of this kind are unlikely to be popular. More than anything else, our unbelievers seek relief from the panic that grips them when they realise their values are rejected by much of humankind. What today’s freethinkers want is freedom from doubt, and the prevailing version of atheism is well suited to give it to them.

It’s non-believers rather than unbelievers actually, and it is not freedom from doubt, it is freedom from the many religious influences who deem to have all the answers (but conflicting) - that is what I believe most atheists actually want, and which they probably see as benefiting the world more than the current situation.

So there!

 

[Mock Turtle]

Pornography and the future?

There are so many images of beautiful females available on the internet, in the most explicit naked poses, and doing the most explicit sexual acts, that it is a wonder that fewer females are not raped these days. The theory that availability of porn tends to lower sexual attacks on females might be true, but the presence of so many of these images might also inflame many to more aggressive behaviour, perhaps when the desire and consumption of such images simply wanes. With the increasing prospect of a beauty war evolving in adult pornography, is it likely that this will tend towards interest in the young becoming more common, since undoubtedly the young do possess more natural beauty than those older. And I mean not just facial beauty here - search for Vulvapaper (legal). Some paedophiles make the case for legalising child pornography (Sweden and Denmark actually decriminalised the possession of child pornography in the 1970s), because there has been some evidence (not entirely conclusive), that doing so actually lowers the rates of sexual abuse of children. The fact that such material might be used to groom children into thinking it to be normal, and hence less abuse coming before the authorities, seems to have escaped them. In addition, is the fact that the images are of abuse, and do not deserve to be distributed as trophies. This might be similar, but in reverse, to the numbers of rapes apparently increasing (in some countries) - just more people are coming forward to report such abuse. At least one can find the girl of one’s dreams (or fantasies) on the internet, since there are so many adult females doing this, but whether this is a good thing or not is debatable. It might just make males much more choosy and demanding towards females in real life. I tend to the view that these images are more arousing than appeasing, and not necessarily benefiting society in general. As per usual, money often tends to dictate behaviour rather than common sense. The following is perhaps a little alarmist though, since the evidence that watching pornography often causes users to abuse others is not exactly robust:

How Internet Pornography Makes Men Stupid

An acquaintance recently told me of a grandfather in the family who had discovered pornography on the Internet and had begun viewing it on a regular basis. One afternoon, when the family was off running errands, it was just the grandfather and his 12-year-old granddaughter in the house. The grandfather was in his bedroom with the door locked, getting his Internet porn fix, consisting of images of naked teenage-looking women. Having descended to the narrow bottom of the funnel in his arousal, he rose from his chair and proceeded to the room where his granddaughter was. He doesn't remember what he said to her, but he exposed himself and attempted to sexually molest her. She fled to the house of the next-door neighbor. I'm sure you can imagine the sequence of painful events from that point.

One morning after spending hours on the Internet surfing pornography, a successful executive drove to a meeting across town. While on the freeway, he noticed a pickup truck ahead of him with two teenage girls inside. A great deal of his Internet porn viewing had been at sites that featured teen porn, i.e., teen girls in sex acts with older men. The image of the girls in the truck went straight to the neural pathways and cells where the Internet porn images were stored. This triggered a series of connections in his brain and body and he immediately became sexually aroused. Pulling up next to the truck, he pulled his pants down to his knees, exposed himself and then honked the horn of his car. The two girls looked over and were so startled at what they saw that the driver gunned her engine and swerved away from the man's car, nearly causing an accident.

An Internet site shows girl-like women dressed in Girl Scout uniforms being raped; a few weeks later a local newspaper reports the brutal rape of a girl Scout while selling cookies door-to-door. After viewing a graphic video on the Internet portraying little girls in their school uniforms, a porn addict kidnaps, rapes, tortures, mutilates and murders two children in their Catholic schoolgirl uniforms. Mere coincidence? Sound too far-fetched? These are actual cases! They are only two of the thousands of such copycat crimes committed by porn addicts each year.

There is a similar debate about the affects of violence depicted in the media (TV, films, video games, and the internet for example) and how this relates to initiating violence in those who view such material, particularly perhaps in those who view such material more than most. There does not seem to be any conclusive evidence either way, although there has been some evidence that it increases and some that it decreases violence in society.

The trend for shaving pubic hair, almost universal in internet porn and possibly also for many Western females, may not be new since women at various times have done so similarly, but the newer trend for labiaplasty perhaps is more worrying, since the combination of the two does tend to make an adult female’s genitals look much like those of a prepubescent. There is some concern about such procedures, mainly stemming from the female genital mutilation (FGM) aspect - this article is from March 2015:

MPs want a blanket ban on under-18s having 'designer vagina' surgery

Cosmetic genital surgery, in particular labiaplasties to reduce the size of the labia so they do not protrude, has become increasingly sought after in Britain amid concern that women are feeling pressured by misleading depictions of the female body in the media and popular culture. The number of such procedures carried out by the NHS has increased five-fold since 2001, with 2,000 operations carried out in 2010. Private clinics do not submit statistics, though one London specialist reported an 80 per cent rise in demand over the last two years. Campaigners and professionals have expressed concern that cosmetic surgery could be used as a cover for FGM as well as sending a mixed message to communities where girls are most at risk of being coerced into undergoing clitoral and labial mutilation.

Apart from perhaps fuelling the desires of many for ever younger girls, it will make the policing of adult porn more difficult, since many legal age females might be mistaken for those underage, especially if they are flat-chested and/or petite, and there is no shortage of such females on the internet. It appears that Australia had a little moment some years back concerning a proposed law banning pornography involving small breasted females, because they might be mistaken for underage females. And even in the UK the police here have used such adult images to try to force a conviction when other evidence was not available - the definition of appearing to be underage being rather loose - and mostly reliant on what a jury perceives as such. Those females who do have such genital alterations might point to the fact that almost certainly their genitals do look nicer (or neater) than those more natural, and hence if they are in the glamour or pornography business, their livelihood might depend upon keeping up with fashion trends. With the competition so high regarding facial beauty, perhaps perfection, or what some might see as perfection, will be more important in the genital area also. The numbers of females in the pornography sector who have this done might also be affecting many other females, in that they might feel inadequate, perhaps thinking that they have to do this too, to keep up. Also, many females will have this surgery for other more personal reasons, so why should anyone question their decisions. Are we to see all such females banned from being pictured nude? A freedom of rights issue would say otherwise, but this trend is a little worrying, as is the consumption of child pornography by a growing number of young people, without too much thought as to the consequences of doing so it seems.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Young men 'download illegal porn'

John Grisham: men who watch child porn are not all paedophiles

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-10-adolescents-gist-risky-decisions-online.html

 

[Mock Turtle]

Such a divine joke

If any have read this far in my journal then you will know something about my life and why I seem to have had problems in having a female partner in my life. Lacking motivation, I just didn't go out of my way to seek out a partner, and even when the opportunities arose (as they invariably do), I just couldn't take advantage so as to initiate and/or maintain any possible relationships. As I have detailed, I strongly suspect this was down to having an avoidant personality disorder for much of my life, together with emotional inhibitions, so as to not make this possible. I was able to maintain friendships, predominantly male, and mainly because of shared interests, but female friends were almost entirely lacking. Sex came and went rather rapidly usually, and even though mostly I had no problems in that regard, these didn't tend to be that meaningful. I never saw such females encountered as just convenience or treated them with any kind of disrespect but nothing further really materialised when perhaps it might have done. If one scans the various support forums for AvPD one will usually find few who do have satisfactory partner relationships. So, one can see where I was at for much of my life, just not feeling in that place of relaxed being that might have enabled me to approach and/or have such relationships. Plus, the motivation seemed to be missing.

Over the last half dozen years or so I have apparently left the AvPD behind and, feeling much more relaxed within, I don't seem to have any of the inhibitions that plagued me before. Perhaps it is just the result of getting older - there are changes to be expected, and many of us just do not turn into grumpy old men - but I really don't see it this way, especially when over the past decade and a half I have noticed changes occurring and often related to events and experiences happening then or prior to this. So now I am in a position to do exactly as I want, mostly without inhibitions, and perhaps reverting to the playful child I once was. I was quite a nice person as a child actually (commented on by a female who knew me then and according with how I saw myself mostly), and this perhaps didn't make me want to have that many friends since I often saw many as not that interesting and/or quite nasty too. The one friend I had as a younger child was much like me and we got on very well together. One good friend is often all that is needed really rather than many not-so-good friends I have usually found. Hence, as mentioned, I am back to being the relaxed person I once was but in addition now lacking any inhibitions towards others - including any females. They were just an unknown to me as a child - growing up with two older brothers and no female relatives close by. Now, I am quite comfortable with any females and hopefully will interact with them as easily as I generally do with males. But not too familiarly I hope.

So, now comes the obvious joke. If you have looked at my profile you will see my age, and I am mostly a rational human being knowing that my life is nearing its end rather than starting out, such that any relationships that might be possible will clash with any attractions I still have. And if you believe the evidence, adult males just do tend to retain the attractions that they normally would have - that is, to those they find the most beautiful and attractive - and mainly being much younger (perhaps early 20s onwards). The joke therefore is that at last I have the ability to enable such relationships to happen, but they will most certainly not happen because the other parties will not even be looking in my direction and obviously towards those who are appropriate for their age. Mind you, I am, like many of my age, not entirely focused on those younger since I do appreciate the other things that age brings and the physical attraction is but part of why we are attracted to others - and often the smallest part. Females, as they age, will often be mourning losing their attraction value to others, but males tend to have the same - still being attracted to those they will always find attractive, but losing the ability to ever consumate any such attractions the more one ages. Bit of a dilemma for both sexes then.

As related, I suspect all this has occurred because of personal mental health issues, and probably initiated by some childhood sexual abuse, but one might see it as my punishment from God (what a joker ), since I mostly started my journey of non-belief in religions roughly about the same age as the abuse occurred - that is, about age 11.

Divine joke or just another pear-shaped life based on what life throws at us. You decide.

PS Of course I do not engage in some of those desires that inevitably are still there - well only mildly.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Missed putting this in the previous:

Men prefer younger women, regardless of their age - study confirms

It’s one of the few age-old sexual stereotypes based on scientifically-proven fact: heterosexual men prefer younger women, regardless of their own age. However, a new study into age limits of considered and actual sexual partners has found that contrary to popular belief, men’s preferred age-range actually expands as they get older, in other words, it’s not just younger women they’re attracted to. That’s not to say men don’t still have a penchant for women in their twenties, in fact, the research revealed that the youngest age men claim to be attracted to remains the same no matter how old they are i.e. a 40-year-old man would still consider a relationship with a 22-year-old woman when he turns 50 and 60 and so on.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Religious musings

Many seem to accept their religion at face value, that is, what was once prescribed originally as tenets of the faith will endure and be applicable for ever, but the passage of time has ways of throwing up all sorts of problems that some religions will have the greatest difficulty in dealing with, for example:

Transgender children - It might be an inconvenience for some, like homosexuality is for some religions, but it appears that many of us have disparities in our human form and how our brain works, such that many children of one apparent gender identify as the opposite gender in their minds. Whereas for homosexuals, their sexual attraction is for the same gender, those born as transgender will rather be of the opposite gender, possibly in every way. Since it appears there might be scientific explanations for this, involving genes and hormones, how do the religions deal with such people? There is some evidence that homosexuality has a genetic origin, with many other animal species exhibiting homosexual behaviour as well, so there is the likelihood of some biological causes for transgender individuals. How will any particular religion cope with such matters when such considerations were not around when the religion was formed. Are they just abominations, much as homosexuality is often viewed by some religions? How enlightened of them, if so.

The roles of females in society - The obvious problem here, for Islam mostly, is how their attitude to women it appears is so much out of kilter with the rest of the non-Islamic world. How can this religion, or the more fundamentalist aspects of it, ever be compatible with what modern democracy and liberal thought insists are the rights of all females to have equal status with males. If anything was to hold Islam back (hopefully) it would be this aspect. And if anything is holding back the emancipation of women it is Islam.

Artificial intelligence (AI) - Another development that would hardly be envisaged during the creation of nearly all religions would be the technological progress that was to come, and eventually leading to the possibility of intelligent machines. Although still on the horizon, we do have the very real possibility of artificial intelligence being incorporated into robots and other systems, possibly having some form of conscious existence - even if this is quite remote. How will all the religions deal with this. Just machines, so no concern of religion?

Life existing elsewhere than on Earth - Perhaps even further away than AI is the prospect of discovering life on astronomical bodies apart from the Earth. How will all the religions explain this, and how will they alter their positions regarding Earth and humans as possibly being the centre of existence.

How we treat other life-forms - Many religions don’t seem to have a problem with humans devouring other animals as part of their omnivorous diet. Although this has no doubt come about from existing conditions and cultural traditions during the formation of these religions, will this remain the case when the population perhaps becomes too large for such meat consumption? Will religions be able to adapt to the possibility of genetically engineered and/or manufactured food?

Genetic manipulation - Following on from the above, how will all the religions deal with the very real possibility of gene manipulation becoming widespread such that children are designed or born to order, firstly perhaps eliminating all possible birth defects that might arise from genetic problems, and secondly, for the designer babies that many might want to produce - that is genetically enhanced babies or even clones. Where does God come into this?

Disparities in wealth - How do religions justify the hierarchical nature of many societies, especially the monarchies? Saudi Arabia, a country with quite strict adherence to the more fundamentalist Islamic doctrines, is one example of a monarchy which appears to exist solely for the benefit of the rulers. Will it be long before such a regime is toppled when it is seen for what it is, apart from funding much of the evangelising of Islam all around the world, it is still a rich man’s paradise, and not exactly what many other religions would hope to see.

Democracy and religion - Is it possible that some religions, Islam in particular, are so incompatible with democracy that where such religions dominate then true democracy will never prevail? Does the following article (an excerpt) explain why Islam is possibly the greatest threat to democracy, apart from capitalism?:

Is Islam Compatible with Democracy?

To us Arabs democracy means aping the Western World. We want to do what we want, where we want, when we want. That is freedom without responsibility. We do not have the internalised disciplines needed to take responsibility for our action. Democracy will, therefore fail. There are other reasons why democracy has not worked in the Islamic world. Islamic society is a patriarchal society predicated on obedience of the male father figure. Almost by its nature, it precludes the maverick, the eccentric, the different, the creative and anyone who finds it hard to conform. Islam is not only a faith. As is often said, Islam is a way of life. Islam's precepts are not predicated on choice - personal or otherwise. Even with the Islamic schisms of Sunnis, Shi'as, Alawites, Salafids, Wahhabis, Druze and so many others, all have one quality in common: They dictate in no uncertain terms how their adherents should live. Indeed, the expectation of how I, as a Muslim, should live is not only religious (with the ultimate punishment of Hell fire) but it is also earthly (with the ultimate punishment of being excoriated, ignored, marginalised, exiled and, in extremis, executed). In other words, the concept of choice as we know it in the West is anathema in the Muslim world.

I often wonder if it is that many of those in Western liberal and non-religious societies have basically just grown up as individuals more than those in the many religiously-dominated and less advanced countries. I know this just reeks of cultural imperialism, but the phrase above - We want to do what we want, where we want, when we want. That is freedom without responsibility. - perhaps encapsulates the mind-set of those who need a religion to govern them, and I think that most who believe in democracy will know that responsibility is the other side of the coin of freedom. The advocacy for the equality of the sexes, and leaving patriarchy to gather dust in the past, is another factor that seems to many to be an advance rather than a backward step. The belief, which apparently is the case in Islam, that rule by God is what should happen, rather than what most see with regard to democracy, should rule out Islam as in any way compatible, and especially for those without a religion. I would propose that for the future we have a choice of freedom or slavery, whether that be to a religion or any other authoritarian diktat. I hope it is the former.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Some of the basic reasons why I have no belief in religions

1. The abundance of so many different religions could be seen as evidence that we have an innate propensity for such beliefs, and that although there is often conflict between the different religions, essentially they all have much in common and are telling it how it is. However, an alternate viewpoint, my own, would be that societies tend to formulate such belief systems as a natural tendency for humans to search for meaning in all things, and when they are sophisticated enough to appreciate the scale of 'life, the universe, and everything', to quote Douglas Adams, then this is what tends to happen - an external agent being posited as the creator and manager of all life, that is, God or gods. Since human societies have existed in relative isolation from each other until fairly recently, it is also quite natural that there have been many different interpretations of this belief, that there is an external agent, and hence the rise of so many different religions.

2. Further to the above, it does seem as if most religions have similar origins, that is, a 'prophet', the followers, the sacred text, etc., and subsequently they all also tend to follow the same path - of discord, disputes concerning what has been written, etc., so that there is rarely just one continuation of the original message and/or beliefs but different strains of the original religion form, and conflict then usually ensues between these different factions. There is of course friction between different religions, where generally there will be much greater disagreements than between different factions within one religion. So, religions essentially separate us from others, thus causing much more strife than is necessary if none had such beliefs in the first place.

3. There have been several studies, all of which have shown that prayer has no effect at all, apart from perhaps on those who pray in helping maintain their belief, but that is mostly irrelevant as the object of prayer usually is to effect change elsewhere, as in praying for a miracle or to help others. This of course doesn't stop people praying since the doctrines of many religions espouse this as fact. What seems odd, to me at least, is that some seem to expect prayers to be answered yet their particular god doesn’t appear to have the power to eliminate all rival religions. If a god cannot operate on this level how could S/He operate on the individual level, since, as we know, there is plenty of conflict and friction between rival religions.

4. Religions often claim the high ground with regard to morality, but again, studies have shown that those without any religion are just as moral as those with a religion, and it is highly likely that morality, even if more primal, has pre-dated religions by a long way - simple moral behaviour can be seen in other animals for example.

5. For all the postulation and drumming up of evidence, there is no evidence of an afterlife or of any parallel spirit life. The belief in an afterlife seems to be one of the major reasons for some behaving as they do, and when rewards are promised to the faithful, many will even commit what to most others are criminal actions, such as terrorism, and although the non-religious might do likewise, they at least cannot justify their actions by any religious doctrine. To the non-religious, crime is just that, and laws to prevent these from happening, with suitable punishments, can be worked out by rational debate, not by references to some text written long ago by who knows who.

6. Following on from 2., the original doctrines are often questioned and usually distorted over time, hence leading to different factions, and often the original written texts are just a ball-and-chain to the time when they were written, thus not only tying one to past behaviour, but also not allowing for progress that cannot be foreseen when these works were written.

7. The god issue. Although a few religions espouse the view that there is more than one god, most of the major religions propose there only being one God. If this is so, why has such a god allowed so many different religions to evolve and flourish, often in conflict with other religions. This would seem to be rather irrational - conflict between humans - when a simple 'Hi, it's me, I really am God' would suffice to make all recognise this one God. Except perhaps it is not possible, and the lack of any god or gods would explain this. What exactly is the point of being God? Was he just too fagged out after all the work needed to create the universe? Did he just wave the starting flag for life and then say, 'Good luck - you'll need it!'.

8. Evidence of visions or revelations can mostly be explained by unusual mental processes - there are enough of these that we know about already, and it will no doubt not be long before we know much more about such processes, where we can be deceived by the workings of the human mind and how we perceive the world. Many mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, have much in common with those who apparently hear voices in a religious context.

9. For a religious person, every major tragedy or personal loss can be a test or affirmation of their belief, but for non-believers, like myself, we just have to put the events into an appropriate context, acceptance coming more naturally when we know that some things just happen, and that major disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., are just events that happen due to physical causations and there is no intent towards any humans caught up in such events.

10. Life is simpler without having any religion, for example, one is never torn between one's allegiance to others of the same faith and outsiders, and the non-religious probably have a better chance of viewing all others as essentially the same, rather than promoting some to greater status and demoting others. There is also often no conflict between obeying the demands of some religious doctrine and what one's conscience is telling one, but this cannot be said for the many religious, especially those whose belief system is rather stricter than most others. Whilst our tendency to commit crimes might be equally likely whether we believe a particular religion or not, at least the non-religious will not tend to justify what could be seen as criminal actions with reference to their religious beliefs - as many religious often do. This particular point I find to be the most pernicious thing concerning religions, and often causes most of the problems, when people are treated differently based upon whether they are seen as brothers or outsiders.

11. Consistency. I don't believe in ghosts, angels, fairies, or other such phenomena, and since I believe it is important to have a consistent view of life and the universe in which we live, it makes sense to apply a uniform reasoning to all such similar possibilities. No concrete evidence has ever emerged for any of these, other than the evidence from one or more humans, so why would I believe in them? I tend to need much better evidence in forming my beliefs.

12. I believe that when we have to make decisions about what might be the unknowable or where lack of evidence is the main factor, it is best to choose the answers that make the most sense, and the existence of the numerous conflicting religions, along with no substantial supporting evidence is enough for me.

13. A further reason why I am generally negative towards all religions, although it doesn’t necessarily take a belief in any religion to have such problematic views and behaviour towards others, are the issues surrounding gender and sexuality - the notions of what the roles might be for different genders, and behaviours that might or might not be appropriate. Although many religions have moved on from their initial beginnings and become more tolerant as societal views change, there still are beliefs and practices that many of the non-religious would see as being intolerant and against the concepts of freedom and equality that most progressives would like to see ruling our behaviour. The roles of males and females in society, and in their relationships with each other would seem to be a fundamental area involving freedom and equality, but at least one religion, Islam, does not appear to believe in such concepts. Attitudes to sexuality, where homosexuality is often not seen as a legitimate sexual orientation, for example, is another such area.

14. The sheer hypocrisy, dogma, and related issues that comes with many religious beliefs tends to make me at least think that the particular religion is just a product of humans with no intervention from or dialogue with any spiritual realm. For example, apostasy, excommunication, and blasphemy can all be seen as defensive devices for that religion, when, if the religion was indeed true then there would be no need for them, it being obvious to people and beyond criticism. Why on earth would it be necessary to have the death penalty for apostasy, as many countries do have? This is just ludicrous. Prayer has been mentioned before, the fact that it doesn’t appear to work, but one aspect of prayer does likely work, the indoctrinating and grooming aspect, such that the more one prays, then the more one is likely to maintain one’s belief.

15. I don’t exactly hate all those with a religious conviction, I just hate the thought that so many see a life of servitude to some imagined entity as being more important than a life of freedom, especially when they rather tend to want this to apply to so many others, who might not exactly want this. Of course, many don’t see it this way, but instead see it as serving or glorifying their particular imagined entity. But to many of us, their particularly beliefs are exactly the opposite of freedom, that is, slavery, to some particularly belief system. No room for manoeuvre here I’m afraid!

16. Another thing, that perhaps is just petulance on my part, is the apparent dismissal of the history of other nations when some seem to think that their religious views take precedence, although the conflicts which have taken place in the past would no doubt skew their views somewhat, as they might ours. I just think that many of the religious evangelists lack any respect for others - that they have a right to their own ways of life and thinking. Mind you, virtually all the colonial powers, including Great Britain, have acted so throughout history so we have little to whine about there. Many nations need to apologise to other countries (or certain groups within such countries) for the way they treated them in the past.

17. One other thing often seen with those defending religions, but seen elsewhere too, is the dumbing down or misrepresenting of science, especially such things as evolution theory or any theories concerning the origins of the universe. The Young Earth Creationists seem to be the worst at this, having really untenable views regarding the age of the Earth, when all science disciplines accord with the modern view that the Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Much the same could be said about evolution theory, that is, that most related disciplines accept that the theory of how life evolved is mostly correct, but the Intelligent Design view has believers seemingly because it has originated from religion - especially the Christian Bible and Genesis.

18. Finally, some seem to believe in a particular religion (even half-heartedly), and often the most dominant where they live, because they feel they have to, or because of Pascal’s Wager, or because they are afraid that something terrible will happen after they die if they do not do so. All rather pathetic reasons in my opinion (especially the Wager), when just some courage is all that is required.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Now that I have my scanner working again:

A friend's wife (also a friend) at the entrance to a cave. This won a little photo competition for underground pictures in our club, and so annoyed one person who objected that it wasn't really underground - which was partly true, being at the entrance.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Let's go back to your childhood

My mother would have been 100 today had she not died in 2002. The last few years were blighted by her having dementia, probably Alzheimer's, with the last year or so spent in various homes after I couldn't cope any more. It was probably a year before she died that I felt her personality had largely gone and where I felt grief over this. This kind of end is not something to be wished on anyone and the caring alone is difficult enough without added difficulties. I do miss her. And her time in the homes were not that great - I had to move her from one when I found her with a meal and no cutlery. What exactly was she supposed to do? This kind of ending is much like becoming a child again - and perhaps a lot worse.

And her childhood wasn't that great anyway it seems - what with the abuse.

My mother was 84 when she died, and some of her last years were not so pleasant, as were many of her childhood years also. However, she made up for this by living an exceptional life for the time in between. It is often said that we look for qualities in a partner that we see in our mothers, and this is certainly the case for me, since she was about as perfect a mother as one could get. She raised three boys, all born during World War II or at the end, and it cannot have been easy at times. All her life she has displayed the sorts of qualities that many of us aspire to - she was attractive and vivacious, had a ready smile, and was capable in all the things she did. She was the epitome of the hard-working, cheerful, caring, and honest approach to life. She was also well-balanced, intelligent and compassionate. She gave myself and my brothers a stable home life, looked after us all very well, and rarely complained, although she must have been very tired at times. Any friends that she made will I am sure have had the same kinds of things to say about her. I wished that I could have told her how much we all loved her more than we probably did, but I never missed her birthday or Mother’s day to express my feelings, as did my brothers. As children, how do we know what shaped our parent’s lives - the horrendous conditions that they might have had to endure, such as child sexual abuse, poverty, or deprivation of the appropriate forms of love that all children need. The fact that her mother appears to have abandoned her and her siblings will also no doubt have affected her. Perhaps how my mother will be missed might be illustrated by the following - she used to feed the birds in her garden such that quite a few would feed from her hand, blackbirds in particular. When she went into a nursing home, perhaps some birds missed her, since I can remember one blackbird appearing to get quite excited when I moved the curtains in her bedroom once, and I don’t think it was me or merely the prospect of food arriving shortly. She was just such a lovely person.

 

[Mock Turtle]

A weighty issue

I have a facial scar, not that noticeable since it looks more like a normal laughter line, but apparently I got this as a toddler. My mother said it was whilst trying to eat from a food tin, but I have no memory of the event at all so I don’t know how traumatic it might have been for me at the time. In fact, my mother had to point it out to me since I had not recognised it as being due to an injury. Perhaps the first few years after the war were particularly stressful, more so for a mother with three young boys, and I don’t know how severe the shortage of food was at the time, with much rationing still in force. Rations were cut in 1947 apparently, and it was also a very cold winter (1946/47). Those born immediately after WWII (including me), in general, have been the most physically healthy generation in the past several decades, presumably because they at least did get a relatively controlled (rationed) diet after the war. School dinners possibly helped in this respect, and although I can’t say they were exactly delicious, nearly all were eaten, especially the puddings, some of which were quite tasty for us kids then, apart from the frogspawn (Tapioca), although even that slid down the throat - eventually. The egg custard (not sure if we had this at school), cornflake and marmalade tart (rather than strawberry jam), jam roly poly with custard, and the chocolate puffed wheat squares (still around now) were all quite nice as far as I can recall, usually making up for any deficiencies in the main meal. At home, we were all well cared for as children, eating good fresh food cooked well by my mother or occasionally by my father on a Sunday (my mother either working or sleeping).

For many years after the war, there was still rationing in force, but apart from sweet-rationing, which ended in 1953, it didn’t seem to affect us that much. We certainly didn’t go hungry. We always seemed to have a few large bars of chocolate amongst the other presents in our Christmas stocking each year. This was also the era when one was sure to find a silver threepence in one’s portion of homemade Christmas pudding. My mother would of course also make the Christmas cake, with lots of marzipan, which I loved. She was also quite good with her Singer treadle sewing machine, as she was with jam-making and baking all sorts of cakes for us. My favourite sweet was probably lemon meringue pie (tying perhaps with butterscotch Angel Delight), although her apple pies, jam roly-poly, delicious gooseberry pies, blackcurrant pies, and scones were also so good - she had quite a range of dishes that she could cook. Of course, trifles and jellies were always on the menu, being the 1950s. It’s only recently that I have found some blackcurrant tarts and gooseberry pies - seems the fruit is too expensive to pick, so not as popular as they once were perhaps. We grew vegetables and fruits in our garden (including blackcurrants and gooseberries) and we also had an allotment - where I occasionally helped my dad - he being the main horticulturalist in the family.

I was not particularly picky as a child, and I seldom left anything on the plate, apart from the sultanas in curries, which I detested, and had to pick each one out before eating the curry. I could eat them on their own but I just didn’t like the sweetness and squelchy nature contrasting with the hotness of the curry. Although I didn’t like brussels sprouts (still don’t), I would usually eat them first to get it over with - I trusted my mother not to poison me, so if she insisted we eat certain things (they were good for us) then usually we all did. We all got our dose of malt extract and cod liver oil regularly - the malt I liked - so I presume she made sure we all got the right amount of essential nutrients, as did most mothers then probably, and there was always a pint of milk in the fridge for me to swig down after a spell of cycling. Apparently, my drinking milk rather than anything else was the best way to rehydrate. As mentioned, my mother was very capable, and the only accident I can recall happened when she once got her eyebrows and hair singed after a timing error whilst lighting the oven on the gas cooker. I don’t know if I was just lucky in my genes, or whether our nutrition was just better then, but I appear to have no allergies, and dislike few foods, although of course I still prefer some over others.

The primary school was next to a bakery, and they used to deliver the bread and cakes by means of horse and cart. A few of us kids sometimes hitched a ride, if we were unseen, and managed to enter the bakery yard. Any unsold cakes or buns in the van would be fair game. I think this was where I got my liking for cream doughnuts. Many enterprises were still using horses then - the coal merchant and the rag and bone collector amongst others. Once, I saw a boy on the roof of the bakery, and later he came past me with the calf of his leg ripped open. He probably fell through the glass roof and was lucky just having that injury.

So, as for many then, I generally had no issues with controlling my weight - plus the fact that I was quite physically active - more so than most probably too. These days it seems not so easy to keep the weight off and/or be so active as to be generally as healthy as we were long ago. So I tend to regard this as being the only benefit coming from a previous war. A very big price to pay though.

 

[Mock Turtle]

The Good Old Days

If we were to look back on any particular decade we might possibly be horrified by what was acceptable then. TV programmes such as It Was Alright in The 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, etc., highlight how some born after these decades, as well as a few who lived through them, view them now. It seems that those in the present are readily able to condemn all that has gone before - we could pick holes in any time period - but will fail to see that what they consider normal for them now will be so criticised in the future. There is often an air of sanctimonious and hypocritical thinking about the present with relation to the past, even for those who did live in those past times - as if we all thought and acted so. A typical example of revisionism at work:

John Lennon footage showing singer ridiculing disabled people branded 'painful to watch'

Currently, we seem to have it in for the 1970s and 1980s concerning underage sexual relationships, with more being seen as abusive, when it might be difficult to know exactly what occurred at the time. The simple factor of being underage seems to be enough very often. I think, in the future, we will undoubtedly question why we allowed adult pornography to be made so freely available on the internet during the last few decades. Although there is little scientific evidence that the viewing of such material is definitely harmful, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence about the affects that it plays in the lives of many, such that it often does degrade relationships and often becomes compulsive viewing for many.

In the 1970s, one aspect was the few countries that made the possession of child pornography legal (Sweden and Denmark), and which we might now see as a disastrously wrong policy. Perhaps this had an effect elsewhere too. In the late 1970s, for example, we had a very naked Brooke Shields, aged about 11, in the film Pretty Baby, and she had appeared nude in a photo-series by Gary Gross, at the age of 10, prior to this film - photographs that she and her mother later tried unsuccessfully to remove from circulation. Pretty Baby has even been on UK TV several times. The film Taxi Driver, with a similar theme, also came from this decade. The 1970s was a rather strange decade in some respects, as mentioned, the possession of child pornography was legal in at least two countires, but about a decade later it was made illegal to possess. It appears that it was only in 2014 that Denmark finally banned bestiality, and only because it was damaging the reputation of the country - this practice was illegal in the rest of Europe, and has been for a long time in the UK. In the UK, the underground magazine OZ, had at least two issues with pictures of naked prepubescent girls in them (mid 70s?), for what reason one knows not, apart from simply being for shock value perhaps. The owners were charged with obscenity over one edition, the Schoolkids OZ, but were acquitted, after top representation from lawyers and the aid of expert witnesses. The issues with the prepubescent girls apparently escaped untouched.

Although the protection of children is rightfully a major issue these days, we cannot just go on expecting the young not to be sexually active until they are 18, even when the AOC is several years lower in many countries (16 in the UK) and many of the young will be sexually active long before this. It does seem to be that our efforts to protect them are also stifling their freedoms too, even if we think we are doing this for their own protection. The numbers of under-18s who have had problems for sexting will undoubtedly rise unless there are changes in how such cases are treated. Attitudes towards racism and sexism have both fortunately improved a lot, but the impetus to equalise the participation of females in almost all societal roles does seem to be rather misconstrued, especially when this is not reciprocated for males doing so in the many roles currently assigned mostly to females - teaching being one area.

Perhaps another thing that will be pointed out in the future about the current generation will be their apparent sublime indifference to the hypocrisy that is often seen today, with such things as political correctness and gender equality issues, as if they ever had a chance of changing attitudes by just saying it is wrong. Comedy from the past can almost always be criticised, but to act on such criticisms often just leaves the whole arena lifeless and without any value. One thing that can almost be guaranteed, much of the present younger generation will always feel superior to any previous one, simply because they usually cannot imagine themselves in the position of these others. I just hope that all the TV programmes where these critics mouth off about earlier generations and times are preserved so that we (probably not myself) can laugh at their misguided condemnations of those they so vociferously attacked and their rather sanctimonious attitudes. Such is history. The condemnations of sexual attitudes in the past, as if the young had no actual say in what occurred, or even perhaps wanted it, is one thing that will undoubtedly come to haunt those now who are so vociferously denouncing many who will have had sexual experiences that crossed the age boundary. In the future of course this will not occur - as if! This article is worth a look:

Stephen Fry: Girls who had sex with rock stars at 14 wouldn't call

Fry said the case of Savile, a man he described as "an absolutely monstrous, depraved and repulsive piece of work", had left the establishment deeply paranoid about similar figures and their historic sexual activities. "If you want to talk about rock stars, do we have to name the rock stars that we think almost certainly had sex with 14-year-old children? But those 14-year-old girls were so proud of it that they now in their 50s wouldn't for a minute call themselves 'victims'." He went on to say he believes it is wrong to use the term "victims" for those who claim to have been sexually assaulted "before the case has even come to court, before certain figures have even been charged. If they're guilty then quite clearly there should be evidence, but they shouldn't be hung out like fly paper to try to attract other 'oh yeah, I think he touched me too when I was that age'."

And some of the comments on his article, since Fry was apparently telling the truth about the past:

He's right about the girls going after rock stars in the 60s and 70s (and 80s) and not thinking of themselves victims. Many of them have written books about their experiences. They certainly don't seem to see it as abuse (either at the time or in retrospect.) Anyone who has read (for example) 'I'm With the Band' by Pamela Des Barres or 'Hammer of the Gods' (the Led Zeppelin biography) will know that the most famous of all the groupies were all totally underage, some as young as 12. Some were even interviewed by and written about in the rock magazines of the time. It's acknowledged in the film 'Almost Famous' too ("How old are you?" "Eighteen." "Me too! How old are you really?" "Seventeen." "Me too!" "I'm actually sixteen.." "Me too. Isn't it funny? The truth just sounds different." "I'm fifteen.") It was (and is) common knowledge. Iggy Pop wrote a song (decades later) called 'Look Away' the first line of which is "I slept with Sable when she was 13" (referring to early 70s super-groupie Sable Starr, who would later (at 15) run away to New York with Johnny Thunders.) Jimmy Page's groupie girlfriend, Lori Maddox, was 14 when they were a couple (Lori's previous claim to fame being that she had lost her virginity at 13 to David Bowie.) There are loads of examples. You'd pretty much have to arrest everyone who was in a band in the 60s, 70s or 80s if you want to catch all the guys who slept with underage girls...

I knew girls of 14 who had bragged about it when I was 16, they would also say how much they had conned their victims (pop stars etc) it was a known fact then that these girls would dress up heavily with make up to fool these artists who would fall for their lies of being over sixteen. The reason I know this is because I had sex then with a 14 year old and she had told me she was 18! Yes I did believe her as she was working in a taxi office at that time. Am I ashamed? Of course not. Did I do wrong? NO! PERIOD!

Mr Fry is absolutely correct. If you were a performer on stage in the 60s and 70s (I can't speak for later, but I suspect nothing changed) it was a full-time job keeping the groupies at arms length. Coupled with so many girls at the time looking as though they were well over the age "of consent", it is absolutely inevitable that many things took place that would now be frowned on. It is also worth considering that the girls that were competing with each other so vigorously to "take the scalps" of those they considered as celebrities, it can hardly be a surprise that those same girls are able to seriously consider the financial rewards (to say nothing of getting their photos in the Daily Mail, et. al.) that they might gain from making the claims as we see them today.

A few of you are forgetting that some of these "adults" who were having sex with 14 and 15 year olds in 1972 were probably hardly more than a few years older than their sexual partner themselves.When I read in Wiki about the bands I loved at the time I am always shocked to discover that they were only 4, 5 or 6 years older than I am. They seemed older of course because they were famous and on the telly. So all these people who are talking as though these "adults" were licentious old men lusting after young girls are forgetting that they were in fact quite often only kids themselves. I agree whole heartedly with Stephen Fry. A lot of this is knee jerk mentality to compensate for the cap doffing deference to a very powerful egocentricity that allowed That Savile Git to to get away with all that he did. The powers that be were afraid of his litigious threats and he got his way in more ways than one.

I have been waiting for someone to say this. Having hung around stage doors for much of the 70's, I saw numerous underage girls invited into dressing rooms and hotels. This is the next story to break and there will be some very big names involved. Young girls were considered part of the perks of being a rock star.

No he's right - we weren't victims. This is the era when we were ripping our knickers off to throw on stage at rock concerts don't forget. Fry is absolutely correct. Girls would do just about anything to get with a rock or popstar. I know, I was there. Don't kid yourselves we didn't know exactly what we were doing.

Back in the 70s I had 14 and 15 year-old cousins who easily passed for being 'of age' - and they were sexually active (and devious as teenagers are) so the parents had no idea what they were up to. The law is the law, and hormones are hormones - guess which one teenagers take most notice of!

And this article too:

We gave Seventies rock stars a licence to behave badly

Perhaps not the good old days though.

The age thing mentioned is interesting, as Eric Clapton was only six months older than me as I watched him play at the Marquee - which I hardly realised at the time.

 

[Mock Turtle]

How not to go caving? Burrington Combe is a real caving location, by the way - my first experiences (as a Scout) were there actually.

I think one might have to have been caving for some time to appreciate all the humour here - nice music too.

Can't remember the film Descent (I have seen it), but I presume all the footage was taken from it?

 

[Mock Turtle]

The Name of the Rose (A great film too)

Although my writing is probably adequate for conveying any meaning that I might want to express, I don't find it that satisfactory in many ways. I think I can only put this down to firstly, having been in a technical occupation for all my life, and secondly, because non-fiction reading has dominated my life much more than any fiction - the ratio being really high actually. Hence, although I would like to get into expressive writing, and I might even go for some kind of writing course, it might still be difficult to achieve much success given my age. My writing has definitely improved though - about which a friend recently commented.

One thought struck me recently, and perhaps will resonate with some, that we often have favourite names of others that tend to punctuate our lives. For me, the names Sally, Grace, and Wendy have particular significance and which I especially like - all being quite nice names in my mind. Sally was the first girl I had full sex with, her being 19 to my 25 (yes, a late-starter ), whilst Grace was the name of a girl in the year below at school. Sally was a really sweet and nice girl. Grace was a real cracker, and probably knew it too, and although I fancied her and apparently she quite fancied me, we never got together, mainly because of my inhibitions. At one swimming gala, some of my friends commented on her gorgeous body, and she I'm sure knew how we all felt. I had a disastrous door-step leaving moment with the only girl I had properly gone out with - only lasting a few months - when I became over-excited. I was ashamed of this such that it prevented me from even apologising, and it all ended there - but she too didn't seem to make an effort to recover our relationship. Anyway, my girlfriend might have told her friends about the incident and Grace was one of these girls. Grace sidled up to me shortly after this incident, whilst we prefects were trying to evict them during break (as one does), and pressing herself against me, she had me in the condition that caused the problem with my girlfriend. One might guess what this was. Then she went back to her mates and they all had a good giggle. I think some confusion over this incident between myself and my girlfriend might have led to her not making an effort to save our relationship. Anyway, enough of Grace. The last name, Wendy, was the name of a girl I really liked in primary school, and talking with her many years later, I found out that she quite liked me too, but she was just as shy as I was. So, another non-relationship.

So, three names, and often it seems that they echo down the years. I quite like, for example, the actresses Sally Bretton and Sally Phillips, and also Sally Field, but perhaps this is just being selective when I am just as likely to like others as well. Not sure of many Graces - Grace Kelly being an obvious one, her being so beautiful, and perhaps Chloe Grace Moretz - I quite like her acting and she is nice enough. As for Wendy, well there is Wendy Craig and Wendy Richards, but not that many more - Wendy Padbury (from Doctor Who) is nice enough too. And it's all a bit of a nonsense really when one thinks about it. These days, I find actresses such as Lily Collins and Emma Stone to be the most attractive, with the latter doing a lot better in the acting stakes. I have always tended to find those less well-endowed to be more attractive than any with acres of breast, and I suspect that many who are attracted to the latter perhaps are still imprinted with their mother's breasts. Perhaps. Many female models will of course find favour, since these too will have the type of frame I find so attractive, apart from the beauty side - for example, Frida Aasen, Helene Desmettre, Kristine Froseth, Merethe Hopland, Ginta Lapina, Barbara Palvin, Delilah Parillo, Abby Pivaronas, Bridget Satterlee, Rosie Tupper, Natalie Westling, etc., to name a few from the many more like these. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing.

Of course, I like many other female names too - my mother's was especially nice.

 

[Mock Turtle]

The perils of school life

Although there was little interaction between the boys and girls at primary school, as in boyfriends and girlfriends, this obviously changed in secondary school, where many of the boys did have girlfriends, but it seems that more girls would have boyfriends than boys having girlfriends. Although relationships between girls and boys at primary school can be common, many of these relationships seem more about prestige and gender determining factors, that of belonging to your group. A good book on this subject is Girls, Boys, and Junior Sexualities by Emma Renold. At secondary school, having a girlfriend in even the year below might be described as cradle-snatching, and almost definitely would be if two years separated them. This didn’t stop me from being attracted to girls a few years lower, even if I might not ever have done anything about this. And quite a few younger girls did flirt with older boys, which perhaps is to be expected since they usually mature earlier than boys around this age. Girls on the other hand were perhaps expected to have older boyfriends, and quite a few girls in our class actually did have older boyfriends - some it appears with much older boys who had left school. Overheard conversation from some of the older girls revealed that some were also sexually active - one particular couple were quite open about how they felt about each other.

One of the few boys who appeared to have an active sex life in our later years at secondary school was from an island off the coast of Venezuela, and was very dark-skinned. He often said that we were square if we were still virgins by the age of 16, which most of us probably were. He regaled us with his sexual dealings with his long-time attractive girlfriend quite frequently, which did see him almost caught naked in bed with her once by her mother. The girl apparently broke up the relationship, something he was really upset about, and we witnessed this when we saw the girl once and he shouted abuse at her. If we had had selfies then I think he would have shared these with all and sundry, such was his anger it seems. Her parents possibly came to realise that the two of them were having a full sexual relationship, and since he was so dark-skinned, perhaps this affected the decision to halt the relationship rather than her doing so - this was the 1960s. One girl, probably amongst many, did have a long-standing sexual relationship with an older boy at school, and the two made no secret of this fact. She was a very nice girl, and quite well-developed, so might have attracted his attention quite early.

Although sexual abuse of children doesn't seem to leave the media for very long, it was quite evident many decades ago just as much - and perhaps more so. I witnessed several sexual assaults of girls whilst at secondary school and elsewhere - but none at all at primary school. Few boys actually condemned such attacks, and there were several cases when other boys joined in once an attack had begun, including a few boys in my class, but not myself, although pinging the bra of a few girls sat in front of me wasn’t very nice of me - for which I later apologised. Most of these assaults seemed to consist of breasts being felt, or sometimes groping of the genitals. Two boys in our class did target one girl along with some others. There was even a stage on the playing field where many of these attacks took place - a wall next to a raised area, not open to view other than from the playing field, but that didn’t limit some, since girls could be attacked anywhere. Boys would often congregate around this playing field area at breaks perhaps hoping to witness such assaults - there were at least four that I can recall. No teachers were usually on the playing field at such times, or were preoccupied elsewhere. A few girls might encourage such behaviour by the boys, but mainly it was the innocent and often attractive girls who suffered such assaults. There were two girls in the year below who seemed to enjoy being felt up by the boys in their class, and it was not uncommon to see the two of them lying on the ground with a pile of boys on top of them, or the prettier one being cornered by a group of boys trying their luck. This seemed to have started when they first arrived at secondary school.

One younger boy was talking to some older girls sat on the playing field when he suddenly grabbed at one of the most attractive girls, such that he almost had her panties pulled down before she managed to stop him. No doubt he did see what he wanted to see, but he got no further. She was rather an unexpected target since she seemed such a nice girl and not one to flaunt herself or tease boys, unlike some. He was probably quite disturbed as an individual but I doubt the girl actually reported the incident. My friend, who was at a nearby grammar school, related an incident when a larger boy dragged a girl into some bushes at the school and raped her. She too probably didn’t report this. She and another girl were well known as targets, and temptresses perhaps, for such sexual assaults. Perhaps many of these girls who seem to invite such sexual behaviour from the boys gain some sort of power in their minds - being more desirable over other girls - but at what price. The vast majority will probably be completely innocent victims however.

The abuse of the girls on the playing field, and elsewhere, does tend to show the lack of empathy that the boys who took part had, and their complete disregard for the girl in any way. Perhaps only by transplanting their brains might a boy have understood the humiliation and degradation probably felt by the girls - it was fully in public after all. It seems that these boys were just immature, and possibly having a poor moral framework to guide their behaviour, but no one else seemed able or willing to intervene.

Oh for the joys of single-sex education - but perhaps even there, bullying and sexual assaults might be common. A girl mentioned in the previous post, Wendy, related to me some years back how she was bullied and possibly assaulted by other girls at primary school, perhaps because she was so pretty but also very shy.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Disappointment.

And more - of Dave Allen -

 

[Mock Turtle]

Should add this to my case against religions:

28. Religions often prevent us being united as a species: If there was one thing that we could do with, as a species, to confront all the various issues facing humans on this planet, it would be to speak with one voice and to have a united belief in what we should do to ensure we as a species survive, and also, that we don’t do things that will corrupt or destroy our environment so as to endanger both. Religions often make us pull in opposite directions rather than enabling this. We have enough problems with nationalism without adding religious beliefs into the mix so as to cause more woes.

 

[Mock Turtle]

The Name of the Rose (A great film too)

Although my writing is probably adequate for conveying any meaning that I might want to express, I don't find it that satisfactory in many ways. I think I can only put this down to firstly, having been in a technical occupation for all my life, and secondly, because non-fiction reading has dominated my life much more than any fiction - the ratio being really high actually. Hence, although I would like to get into expressive writing, and I might even go for some kind of writing course, it might still be difficult to achieve much success given my age. My writing has definitely improved though - about which a friend recently commented.

One thought struck me recently, and perhaps will resonate with some, that we often have favourite names of others that tend to punctuate our lives. For me, the names Sally, Grace, and Wendy have particular significance and which I especially like - all being quite nice names in my mind. Sally was the first girl I had full sex with, her being 19 to my 25 (yes, a late-starter ), whilst Grace was the name of a girl in the year below at school. Sally was a really sweet and nice girl. Grace was a real cracker, and probably knew it too, and although I fancied her and apparently she quite fancied me, we never got together, mainly because of my inhibitions. At one swimming gala, some of my friends commented on her gorgeous body, and she I'm sure knew how we all felt. I had a disastrous door-step leaving moment with the only girl I had properly gone out with - only lasting a few months - when I became over-excited. I was ashamed of this such that it prevented me from even apologising, and it all ended there - but she too didn't seem to make an effort to recover our relationship. Anyway, my girlfriend might have told her friends about the incident and Grace was one of these girls. Grace sidled up to me shortly after this incident, whilst we prefects were trying to evict them during break (as one does), and pressing herself against me, she had me in the condition that caused the problem with my girlfriend. One might guess what this was. Then she went back to her mates and they all had a good giggle. I think some confusion over this incident between myself and my girlfriend might have led to her not making an effort to save our relationship. Anyway, enough of Grace. The last name, Wendy, was the name of a girl I really liked in primary school, and talking with her many years later, I found out that she quite liked me too, but she was just as shy as I was. So, another non-relationship.

So, three names, and often it seems that they echo down the years. I quite like, for example, the actresses Sally Bretton and Sally Phillips, and also Sally Field, but perhaps this is just being selective when I am just as likely to like others as well. Not sure of many Graces - Grace Kelly being an obvious one, her being so beautiful, and perhaps Chloe Grace Moretz - I quite like her acting and she is nice enough. As for Wendy, well there is Wendy Craig and Wendy Richards, but not that many more - Wendy Padbury (from Doctor Who) is nice enough too. And it's all a bit of a nonsense really when one thinks about it. These days, I find actresses such as Lily Collins and Emma Stone to be the most attractive, with the latter doing a lot better in the acting stakes. I have always tended to find those less well-endowed to be more attractive than any with acres of breast, and I suspect that many who are attracted to the latter perhaps are still imprinted with their mother's breasts. Perhaps. Many female models will of course find favour, since these too will have the type of frame I find so attractive, apart from the beauty side - for example, Frida Aasen, Helene Desmettre, Kristine Froseth, Merethe Hopland, Ginta Lapina, Barbara Palvin, Delilah Parillo, Abby Pivaronas, Bridget Satterlee, Rosie Tupper, Natalie Westling, etc., to name a few from the many more like these. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing.

Of course, I like many other female names too - my mother's was especially nice.

Should have added this:

Or this:

 

[Mock Turtle]

Avoiding the obvious?

What are some of the things in the form of therapy (or perhaps not) that might be effective in lessening the impact of AvPD or even in seeing it completely eliminated? Although possibly very presumptuous of me (and sermonising), perhaps some of the following need to be in place first or could be achieved through therapy. Some general maxims included, and these are just aspirations, since no one is perfect. Just some of my thoughts.

The items in this list, for those who might need some work to achieve, could perhaps come about from the following forms of therapy as listed for each item, along with some others no doubt - I'm hardly up-to-speed on any therapies - not having had any of course:

GT: All these aspects might be improved during Group Therapy, and it might not matter what the overall aims of the particular Group Therapy might be.
CBT: These aspects might be improved during Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
Expressive therapies: Many of these aspects might be improved during all sorts of activities, particularly physical ones and where self-expression is a common requirement.
Other: Personal experiences and perhaps some special types of therapy might work here.


1. The building of self-confidence and self-esteem - in that one feels that what one does is important to oneself and relevant for others. This might mean becoming good at one particular thing, which will tend to build self-esteem, and might mean success following in other areas. A bit trite perhaps, but few people are good at everything - GT, CBT

2. The ability to handle fear and anxiety - only experience will probably help here, and we all face new situations constantly. Most of us have some fear of the unknown, but we need to distinguish specific fears from a delusional generalised sense of fear which might be entirely misplaced. It is often the case that things look entirely different looking back than when they seemed threatening. It should be noted that public speaking is probably the most common specific social phobia - GT, CBT

3. The ability to experience and withstand pain of various sorts, e.g., physical pain, grief, disappointment, loss, etc. - knowing that usually such pain is often only temporary. Many can’t seem to differentiate between uncomfortable, painful, unbearable, and life-threatening - GT, CBT

4. The ability to face threats and to display courage - it might take many forms, i.e., in physical activities or in social situations, or in having radical views on something, and often only comes when one can accept that pain will sometimes be experienced - GT, Expressive

5. The ability to be able to focus on any particular thing, to have commitment, to get involved - and also to have perseverance - GT, Expressive

6. The ability to be versatile, and to change when necessary - to adapt to new circumstances, but also to have the ability to be decisive, and to stick with one’s decisions - GT

7. The ability to recognise better sources of information (accurate, scientific, impartial, etc.) from bad information (personal opinion, poor evidence, myth, how information is presented or absent, agenda-based, that based on extrapolation, etc.) - it is a bit pointless basing thinking or behaviour on bad information, but we often do, especially if one has a religion to guide one - CBT

8. The ability to recognise irrational thoughts, sometimes produced by worry or anxiety - and especially not worrying so much about things one cannot change readily - CBT

9. The ability to perceive accurately, to think clearly and objectively, and to form a valid view on any particular subject, e.g., recognising the dangers of the various forms of fallacious reasoning - CBT

10. The ability to argue a case and not be easily swayed by others - recognising the important points from the more peripheral ones, and not to get too readily into arguments without any relevant knowledge - GT, CBT

11. The ability to recognise that there might not be a black and white answer to everything (or in fact anything), such that some things are best left as unknown - there are many grey areas in life, such that being less judgemental is often the best course. This extends to recognising what we often don’t know - CBT

12. The ability to withstand criticism - it might hurt but usually one will survive. Also, to recognise valid criticism when it is given, listening properly, and not to be automatically defensive - GT, CBT

13. The ability to experience and handle anger where appropriate, and not to react to non-offence - GT

14. The ability to have compassion and empathy for others, and to act on these where required - Other

15. The ability to feel a full range of emotions, and to recognise each properly - Other

16. The ability to express oneself emotionally, and with one's thoughts - i.e., not being embarrassed about displaying any emotion, not suppressing them, and to act emotionally rather than have our thinking inhibit any actions that might normally result - GT, Expressive, Other

17. The ability to trust others, to understand our and other's limitations in this respect - GT, Expressive, Other

18. Respect for others and their beliefs should be a natural attitude unless by their actions they perhaps forfeit such respect - the religious expecting others to behave as they do, for example - CBT

19. The ability to understand friendships and the unspoken rules - honesty, loyalty, non-abusiveness, not using others as tools for other aims, etc. Also, we perhaps measure ourselves by our friends, so why tolerate bad friends, when a bad friend is perhaps worse than having an enemy - Expressive, Other

20. The ability to be able to relax when necessary, and to just chill out - nobody really needs to be doing something 24/7, and being able to relax will often help when encountering potentially stressful situations. Being more relaxed in general, however achieved, apart from using illegal drugs or excessive use of alcohol, will usually be of benefit - Expressive

21. The ability not to become addicted to anything, particularly drugs, alcohol, pornography, gaming, etc. - they just limit our actions for other things, and why risk becoming a slave to any thing. Perhaps an ability to recognise when we might be liable to becoming addicted is also important - CBT

22. The ability to be positive in life, especially when all the events around us can make us depressed about humankind in general - in short, to have perspective about events and others - CBT

23. Be positive, but realistic about ambitions and expectations - i.e., don't live life as if you deserve everything, or that everything needs to be done today, or often, in a day - Expressive

24. Don't expect success without hard work - it might come, but don't expect it - Expressive

25. Don't think you can do anything - we all have our limitations, so best to live with them and use one’s resources to best advantage. We are all essentially born different, otherwise we might be clones, like many animal species, but that also doesn’t mean we have to live within our boundaries. Happiness (or contentment) tends to come from a balance between aspirations and achievements, regardless of wealth - Expressive

26. Try not to compare oneself with others - it will usually not be profitable, and it is your life you should be concerned about - CBT

27. Do not let others dictate or determine your life, e.g., bad friends, or by advertising and other media influences. Be deterministic, not a ball kicked around by others, and it’s no good blaming the media for any influences - you have one life, and it is yours to make or break - CBT

28. Don't worry too much about mistakes - they all tend to have a lifespan, but never be inhibited to apologise when necessary. Perfectionism is fine, but not in everything. Try to avoid self-pity, since it tends towards negativity, and where being positive but realistic is a better option - CBT

29. Keep laughing, and don't believe all you read, since it often doesn’t reflect reality - perhaps just imbibe less of the news which is often just the same old depressing influence on us. In fact, just make time for some peace, that is, no outside input so that some thinking can develop.

30. Liking others starts with liking oneself, so don't be too critical of yourself, especially about one’s appearance. Equally, hatred of others often starts with hatred of oneself - CBT

31. If events from the past appear to be painful, and reoccur often, then it might be best to confront and resolve such issues, rather than leaving them to fester - it might be painful but it is likely to be the best way to deal with them - GT, CBT

32. Recognise which events or experiences tend to cause us to go into reaction mode - that is, we display the same typical response, rather than actually dealing afresh with each new case - GT, CBT

33. Take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally, by moderation in most things.

34. The most effective form of self-control is belief and ownership of responsibility, rather than some imposed rule, even if one inevitably agrees with any such rules - CBT

35. Probably the greater progress in dealing with avoidance, will come from not seeing anyone or any thing as a threat, unless of course they undoubtedly are. One should aim for never feeling less than another person, or in being inhibited in one’s actions because of worries about how one might be perceived. We might have real worries about our capabilities and performance, but this is different, and many people for example will be unsettled by public speaking - GT, CBT

36. Perhaps to sum up all this advice - try to expand all the parts of one’s personality, and not be limited in any one aspect - GT, CBT, Expressive, Other

37. Lastly, and perhaps the most difficult for many, seek help from others, be they friends or professionals if you have concerns about your behaviour or how you experience life, such that problems arise that you cannot deal with. It might seem obvious but another viewpoint is often helpful.

Not a lot then. As the old saying goes - better to say one's piece and be thought an idiot than leaving them all in suspense.