Hatching Mayflies

I’m not much of a linker but this song is beautiful, a sort of, sad ethereal Smashing Pumpkins Alternative Cold Play sound to it, that four songs in one thing nobody has the talent to do anymore, oh and that absurd self-indulgent art theatre theme in the music video, if that’s your thing, they’re a Japanese band singing in a strangely beautiful English. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZrB_DQsk68

I was up in Maitland last weekend, it’s a small town outside of NewCastle in NSW, it is a lovely green most of the year. A hard old German woman runs what I suppose you’d call an Op Shop, it’s just junk she has collected over the years, it’s sprawling and includes everything, old cooking ovens, hideous glass features, workshop tools, paintings and drawings, dozens of soft toys, everything she could find. She had a hard attitude and spoke absolute nonsense to me, as though it was a universal truth, she picked me as a target, nothing had a price on it, she charges what you’ll pay, which to the dimwitted means bargains but again, hard old German lady, nobody was ever going to walk into her shop and get the better of her that’s for sure.

"Oh these things today, all made in China, they are cheap and badly made, cheap materials, they don’t last, not like this (she picks up a fork) this fork is still as sharp and strong as the day it was made, if I can I always buy old, you can’t go wrong with buying old items, you see the stuff in the $1 shops? That’s not going to be here in 60 years, but this fork, already 60 years old, will last that again many times."

Oh don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just old Communist Bloc escapees, they also had a bar around the corner. My family back in Ireland were all publicans, Michael my half-brother keeps looking at the local Post Office up for sale as a great investment choice for a pub, he’s 44 I should mention, somewhere in my family I have a half-niece that is older than I am.

My other niece Chloe, 6 years old, spent the weekend insisting upon piggy-backs everywhere, even at the church she quietly sat through the whole service whilst Tommy, her older brother 9 years old, was taking the sacrament of confirmation, where he becomes a little soldier for the church. It was all very boring, rigid and peculiar, I’m not a church goer. After sacrament had finished out in the church courtyard Chloe again insisted upon a piggy back, but we compromised and instead we danced for a bit, swinging around and twirling, she is a peculiar little girl.

Hmm, I should mention that although I was at church it was just an unusual event, we went because Tommy wanted us there and family takes priority over personal agenda I’m actually an atheist, in fact the whole family that was invited are Atheists, Terence my father, Michael my half-brother are, separately as are the majority of my friends but Robyn my mother I don’t think really is and in her situation it’s actually the sad reverse of normal where everyone around her is an Atheist and she is the one who is different. Terence is very open about his Atheism with those he trusts and is critical of religion, I used to be like that as a teenager, but, I have a great deal of sympathy and understanding for people who turn to religion so I am no longer as militant about it.

Simply put I believe it exists primarily as a comfort to humans, it solves and answers questions, it provides a framework in which to live and there are a lot of people who desire that. However, the real draw card, better than anything else, is the promise of eternal life.

For me, I find nothing that compels me to trust in the existence of their being an afterlife, but this is a personal matter and I think it’s a matter treated much too clinically in popular Atheistic texts, but that’s understandable as we really are at the forefront of the debate, Atheists are better educated and equipped than ever before, everyday their arguments are strengthened by scientific work, and so everyday is the best day for them to argue their point. For many they feel that this debate will shape the world, and most people want the world to exist in their form.

It is astounding to think how well connected we all are now, especially now thanks to the internet, during the Egyptian and Libyan uprisings the internet was used as a tool by individuals to get their circumstances into the wider media, both countries governments were desperate to shut down the internet which is understandable as without the internet it’s hard to imagine the events taking place so swiftly and thoroughly.

Information in those examples was the threat, and as anyone will tell you it’s a powerful commodity, now in the digital age the controlling limitations have mostly been destroyed due to the prevalence of things like true mass media, investigative reporting, mobile phones, smsing, and of course the internet, sites like facebook, twitter, myspace, wikipedia, even OD, are all examples of the individual sharing their story, that might not sound like much but history was never interested in the stories of the common individual, I hate to use the term but that is a massive paradigm shift, suddenly there are billions of accounts of every single day in history, not just a handful, and better yet they are for the most part not curated by a governmental board with a clear agenda either, China is the biggest exception to that with their aggressive censorship, but for most of the developed world the dull, mundane, outrageous and improper, is all readily available and recorded, even 50 years ago this wouldn’t have been feasible because the scale just wasn’t big enough, the internet has made us all stronger individually, but it does pose risks as traditionally a group is a hard thing to destroy, but an individual is easy, that’s a separate matter though and I’m already sort of getting off topic again.

If I thought there was a real chance for an afterlife, I would want it, I think it if could be clearly demonstrated everyone would, it would be wonderful, if my friends and family who had died were simply shifting planes of existence, that they were just somewhere else and I could join them eventually, of course I would want that. Who wouldn’t?

It is tremendously difficult to accept that the people around me that have died are gone, that they aren’t off being happy somewhere else, more than that, they can’t be happy or sad, I can’t talk to them, they can’t do or be anything, they’re all gone and it is irreversible and I am powerless in a fundamental sense. If that didn’t have to be the case, who wouldn’t want those they love to still exist? Somewhere, even if not here.

So if Robyn does believe, I understand and I certainly don’t begrudge her it, and in that case it must be hard for her I expect due to all of us, and that’s sad, I don’t want to deprive her of her comfort. Terence complicates the matter for Robyn, he is 77 and so the first thing worth mentioning in this example is that it’s very unusual for someone his age to be an Atheist, not just a late in life Atheist either he was an Atheist as a young man. Worse yet coming from Ireland as he does and with the history there, the perpetu

al conflict he grew up in between the Irish Republicans and the United Kingdom spilled over into many proxy wars of differing sizes, one of the biggest certainly was regarding the ideology between the Catholics and the Protestants, taking up Atheism was the same as being a pacifist, that is no easy thing to be in a situation where your family and town is subjected to continuing violence and threats, family, friends and village acquaintances being killed, injured, arrested and imprisoned, everybody was expected to take a side in all matters, it’s just that very few considered Atheism as a side, Atheism and Pacifism, the side was virtually unrecognised.

So for Terence that’s what it meant to be a Theist of any sort, to take a side, to engage in the war and by doing so pick your enemies, as such he is open about the troubles of religion and doesn’t have the sympathy for it I do.

I actually disagree with a lot of what Terence thinks on that matter, but I understand his position, really though we’re totally different Atheists, his Atheism is a form of protest and pacifism, my Atheism much more an intellectual and personal pursuit, it forms my fundamental understanding of the universe and I, as much as anyone else, want to understand the universe. They’re not easily comparable as I’ve never had to risk or sacrifice anything for my Atheism, where as he did, so again, I understand why he is not as sympathetic or tolerant as I am, being an Atheist means something different to him than it does to me.

People find the subject terrifying don’t they? In large social interactions with relative strangers, it is better to withhold thoughts like these, which is precisely why large groups are boring to be in, I’d always pick one person to talk to over a dozen, always. Sadly there is often someone in a large group who is deeply intolerant of any differing opinions, and worse yet they take personal offence to others having a different opinion, I suppose people forget that we are not our arguments, that I can think something which contradicts even your basic understanding of the universe, but we can still be friends, I can still like you and have no trouble with you and vice versa, nothing ever has to be a point of difference, we elect those ourselves, some people act like it’s out of their hands but they’re just reluctant to take responsibility, better to pretend they’re not hateful bigots, and believe that that’s just how people are.