Upsetting the Witnesses

SORRY MICKY, BUT I CAN'T JOIN YOU IN BEING A BELIEVER

We've all had them on the front step.  You have to admire their persistence, despite so many doors slammed in faces.  The Jehovah's Witnesses just keep on turning up, or hanging around street corners, hoping to find someone desperate/vulnerable enough to take on board their strange beliefs.  My usual response is "sorry, but I try not to be superstitious at all", and see what happens from there.  The superstition bit sometimes throws them, so it can get quite interesting.  They haven't converted me yet.  Sadly, I haven't managed to convert one of them either, but that's no reason to give up....

I was brought up 'in' the Church of Scotland, but on a very low gas.  I'm not sure if my father believed in anything at all, and probably just went along with it to placate my mother.  She 'believed' because that's what you were supposed to do, and the greatest possible sin in her eyes was the flouting of social conventions.  I can vaguely recall attending Sunday School at the local church, and there was the usual half-hearted attempts at religious indoctrination in school.  Did I ever believe any of this stuff?  Maybe as a small child, but by my early teens I was pretty certain it was all nonsense.

In my twenties I called myself an agnostic, because I thought it would be fairer to acknowledge the existence of doubt.  As I got older that seemed too lukewarm so I took to saying I was an atheist.  And now, older and (possibly) wiser, I can no longer see the point in these labels.  Why should I have to define myself by my non-belief in something that seems clearly made up in the first place?

A view I should perhaps justify, so here's what I discussed with one of those tenacious door knockers.

How many religions are there in the world?  I doubt anyone knows the real number, but I did see a figure of around 4,500 quoted once, and that sounds entirely believable.  As far as I'm aware every human society developed some form of supernatural belief system as part of their development.  Deeply held tenets, often codified, that made some effort to understand the world around them and, often, provide guidance on how to behave in life.  And ascribing an ability to influence human affairs to some form of supernatural power.  The latter might be embodied in the sun, or the moon, a wide river or high mountain, a volcano or forest, perhaps the local major carnivorous predator.  Some thing which could be worshipped, prayed to, act as a focal point for the belief system.

Greater sophistication brought greater imagination, and the powers were attributed to imaginary beings.  Sometimes in human form, sometimes animal, even curious hybrids between the two.  Eventually one religion came up with the notion of there being a single being, a god, which was omnipotent, and this would go on to spawn two descendants, Christianity and Islam, which have become amongst the most successful in spreading around the world.

Why did these emergent feel the need to develop such beliefs?  Given how universal they are, and how varied, I can see two possible broad conclusions which might be drawn.  The most likely explanation is the desire to know how you fit into the universe.  The need to have an explanation for why you are here and what purpose is there to your existence.  The answer to what has come to be know as The Human Condition.

And in world without science, where the physical world was vast, confusing and often unintelligible, there was a need to seek out explanations for the inexplicable.  If you can't see any rational reason for your life, then an irrational one will do instead.

Or.  Possibly there is some form of supernatural power out there, but thus far beyond the understanding of human knowledge, and religions are the efforts we have made to attempt to fill in that gap.  Although, if that were really the case, wouldn't there be a greater convergence of thinking?

One fact strikes me as critical to this line of thought.  There has never been (do correct me if I'm wrong) an occasion where two societies came into contact for the first time and, on finding out more about one another's culture, suddenly went "heh, that's what we believe too!".  You might have expected, if one of these belief systems had actually got it 'right', something similar might have developed at some other point on the globe as well....

Not that there has tended to be much discussion when two societies meet, with brutal subjugation being the norm.  It's notable that the two biggies I mentioned above, Christianity and Islam, have been spread around as much by military conquest as any form of persuasive art.

All of which means that, unlike Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, there's no chance of me ever becoming a believer.

When Scotland is better than England....

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I HAVE TO LOVE SCOTLAND

Regular readers will know that I voted Yes in the Independence Referendum last September. Not that I'm a nationalist, but it seemed like the only route open to the possibility of a more socially just society, an aspiration that Westminster seems a million miles away from. I'd be perfectly happy to change my mind and stay with the UK if something significantly changed for the better. Were Labour to come to their senses, return to their roots and choose Jeremy Corbyn as the next leader then there might be some hope. But how likely is that?

Which is a long winded way of saying that I have no truck with the Scottish good/English bad mantras of the more extreme elements of the SNP. My argument is with the UK political establishment, not the English. But there are some moments when it's hard not to conclude that we not only do things a bit differently up here, but sometimes a bit better as well.  And yesterday morning on Twitter was definitely one of those moments.

Katie McGarvey tweeted :

Thinking of finally joining a party in run up to Scottish elections to help campaign properly. Heart says Green, head says SNP. 😩 #help

It's hard to imagine what happened next taking place in England.

Within minutes she had a response from our First Minister saying "I accept I might be a bit biased...but I hope I can persuade you to make it @theSNP". Somewhat bemused by this, Katie decided to be cheeky and see if the Greens' Patrick Harvie could make her a better offer. Free chocolate maybe? (Fair Trade, of course!). Patrick swiftly replied that he'd been known to turn up at branch meetings with a cake and maybe that would do?

That precipitated an exchange that ended up with yet another Holyrood party leader joining in the cake debate, and Nicola complaining that her well known lack of kitchen skills were being mocked. You can see the tweets in this article in the Herald, and The Scotsman joined in the fun as well.

OK, it would be naive not to recognise that high profile politicians have staff handling their social media accounts for them, so it may not have all been the actual leaders themselves. Ms Sturgeon is a busy individual. All the same they will at least be responsible for setting the tone of their communications.

But can you imagine any of the Westminster party leaders (and I include Angus Robertson in this) doing something similar?  Can you imagine their image makers allowing such a thing to happen?  I can't.  

It's perhaps no coincidence tha,t of our five main party leaders, only one is of the traditional white, straight male variety.  And he, the LibDem leader, is probably the least likely to be seen behaving in the above manner.  Even the leader of the Scottish Tories, much as I disagree with her policies, is  often likeable and funny.  And, perhaps bizarrely, the Scottish leader of ukip is gay, albeit a total moron....

The referendum shook up the whole country and created a much more politically conscious nation.  We had a General Election result that was a shock, even for the winners.  And Nicola was the only party leader to emerge from the TV debates with positive approval ratings, with many in England wishing they could vote for her and her party.  Politics is different in Scotland.  And sometimes a lot more human than anything we see coming from London.

A new me?

GOING BACK

We moved into our new flat just before last Xmas and we're still in love with it.  Sometimes it's hard to believe that we found it.  Not only does it meet all the criteria we'd set before we began our search, but there are a few extras we never expected to find.  I mean, how many flats in Edinburgh come with their own garage, and even a bit an area behind it that just about qualifies as a shed?  We are also, as residents of the complex, entitled to make use of the small on site gym.

We used to go to a gym regularly.  For about seven years, beginning in 2000, we were part of the hardy sect who frequently turned up by 7am and put in an hour before going home, breakfasting and getting into work.  For the first time in my life I added a bit of  muscle to my spindly frame, and I felt fitter than I had since my twenties.  But, for a variety of reasons, the motivation began to fail and attendance trailed off into nothingness.  By the time we'd retired our gym days looked to be behind us.

In the past eighteen months I've had a few minor health worries.  There were problems with my knees, and the gout attacks I've blogged about in the past.  Signs of the inevitable decline in physical ability that we all have to face up to eventually.  It feels like half my life is now occupied with stretches and exercises and pills and diet aimed at putting off collapse for as long as possible....

The major factor in fending off future gout attacks is maintaining a high hydration level, but it's also recommended to keep physically fit.  Exercise, but try not to sweat too much!  I do try to use the stairs up to the flat every day (we're on the fifth floor), but that's not much of a regime.  About time I tried using that wee gym.

As I'm on my own for a couple of weeks this seemed like a good time to give it a go.  So I planned to go there by around ten this morning (no point in overdoing things, is there...).  Well, that was the plan.  But a part of my brain decided to sow a few doubts.  If my body has been guilty of letting me down recently, why would I think it was up to doing something energetic?  Wasn't I setting myself up for failure?  Wasn't there a risk that I might incur more damage than benefit?  Why take the risk?

This internal dialogue, combined with my legendary ability to procrastinate, let the hours slip by, and by, until I could finally convince myself to stop being stupid and just go for it.  And so it became early afternoon (oh, alright, mid....) when I finally made my way along to the gym building.  Discovered I'd brought the wrong key fob with me, went back for it, returned, let myself in.

Guess what?  It was (almost) fun.  I didn't do much (and I'm not going to embarrass myself by saying just how little), paced myself carefully, but did work up a sweat.  What was I worrying about?  I think I'll enjoy being back and seeing if I can reclaim some of that long lost muscle.  And maybe I can get up to the fifth floor without calling for oxygen.

As I sit here typing I have muscles aching like they haven't ached in a very long time.

But I'm aching smugly.