A long day at work today. Had to work late. We had a band called N-Dubz appearing. No, I’d not really heard of them either. They are a band for the kids. The kids absolutely love them they do. Yep – they’re certainly hip with da kids, them N-Dubz are. And when I say “the kids” love em, I really do mean THE KIDS. Most of the audience were about 14 years old. Should I feel fortunate to be somehow involved at the pulse of this apparently, cutting-edge phenomena? Well let me tell you, working with N-Dubz does not make me feel hip. I’m just too old to be feeling it; too preoccupied by the worry that I’m some sort of surrogate guardian of a room full of squawking juveniles. They’re nothing like the ill-at-ease, angst-ridden teenagers of my day. They get all excitable about stuff. They run about being all self-assured; screaming and fainting and always seem on the verge of some hyper-actively inspired misbehaviour. Ordinarily I would feel uncomfortable being in the presence of four of them sitting on the back seat of a bus journey I was sharing, but being responsible for the welfare of a thousand of the buggers is inevitably makes for a buttock clenching evening from start to finish. I go through the night with an anticipation of dread that all this young energy will bubble up and explode into some sort of disastrous consequence which I would feel hopelessly equipped to deal with.
As you can probably tell, these are not my favourite shows to be working. Given the choice, I would avoid such nights like the plague. But I’m sure all my colleagues have a pretty similar attitude toward such these shifts, so there is a kind of burdening, unavoidable obligation to take a turn with them once in a while. If there was a way to weasel out of them, I certainly would; and tonight I had a brain-wave. I figured that if I could just get myself on that sex offenders register thing, then I’d no longer be allowed to work with the younger market. My burden would be lifted forever more. Luckily the evening has passed without incident, so for the moment at least, such action does not seem necessary. Still, it’s nice to have an option of a ‘get out of jail free’ card, banked away at the back of my mind.
Thu 26th Mar 2009
I was walking past a telephone box when it suddenly started ringing. I entered the booth and picked up the phone. To my surprise, it was my sister on the other end of the line. She informed me that my car had been stolen. Apparently, I had left the keys in the ignition and the thieves had smashed through the window and driven my car. I hung the phone up and walked round the corner to where my car had been parked. She was right. It was gone. All that remained was a few shards of glass on the floor. Then I woke up.
Thankfully it had all been a dream. I pulled on my clothes, munched on my breakfast and headed out to my car. It was only when I turned the ignition key that in real life, I noticed the crack in my windscreen, which occurred a couple of months ago had increased by a fair few inches.
Isn’t this dream weird? Firstly, how did my sister know which phone box I’d happen to be walking by when she rang? More to the point, why didn’t she just contact me via my mobile phone? Clearly, I was nearer to the car than her – how did she know it had been stolen in the first place? If she was nearby when it happened, why didn’t she just jog round the corner to tell me? Or had she phoned around every phone box in the vicinity in the hope that I’d happen to be walking by? If I had left my keys in the ignition, then inevitably I wouldn’t have been able to lock the car. Why didn’t these hapless thieves just open the door using the handle rather than smashing the window and potentially drawing attention to the crime?
The answers to all these questions are easy to explain. It was a dream. Dreams are weird and often make little sense. But what about the windscreen crack, which I had noticed had expanded the morning after the dream. Some people would argue this seems a bit weird, like my dream was some sort of premonition. These are the same people that would believe in spirits and ghosties and ghoulies and an omnipresent old man in the sky that watches and judges us. But I am confident that these people are wrong on all counts. I have just finished reading the atheist bible, “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. It really is an excellent read. I have always been an atheist at heart, but have actually been trying to maintain agnosticism; if only as a kind of politeness to those of faith. More crucially, I was also once prescribed the belief that faith in ‘other powers’ was necessary for a fulfilling and creative existence. My scepticism always felt like a hindrance; that people with a third-party faith were always going to be better equipped to succeed their high ambitions. In my experience, people who lived with the attitude, “Jump and the net will appear”, generally seem to achieve more personal fulfilment in their lives than those empty cynics who merely exist. Maybe non-spirituality really is a disadvantage? As Julia Cameron writes about the other-wordly guiding force of synchronicity,
“It’s my experience that we’re much more afraid that there might be a God than we are that there might not be.. People talk about how dreadful it would be if there were no God. I think such talk is hooey. Most of us are a lot more comfortable feeling we’re not being watched too closely. If God – an all-powerful and all-knowing force - does not exist, well then, we’re all off the hook aren’t we? There’s no divine retribution. And if the whole experience stinks-ah well. What did you expect? If there is no God, then everything can roll along as always and we can feel quite justified in declaring certain [self development] impossible, other things unfair. If God, or lack of God, is responsible for the state of the world, then we can resign ourselves to apathy. What’s the use? Why change anything? Anyone honest will tell you that possibility is far more frightening than impossibility.”
This quotation comes from a well-meaning self-help book. In fairness, it is an otherwise reasonable and motivating work. But this passage always jarred me. Partly because I knew belief the existence of a ‘guiding hand’ largely improbable, which would imply it of limited use to me. Partly because it is almost a ‘challenge’ to believe (it is seems very logical suggest one is more afraid that there might be God than there might not be). Everyone likes a challenge, but this challenge was too difficult. But what is being implied as an alternative? No-one wants to see themselves solely as a victim of circumstance, resigning to apathy. Can hopeless apathy be the only fate for an atheist?
This is an example of faith is being used in a well-meaning fashion. Yet it is a notion of faith which troubled me, making me feel at a disadvantage; belief sold as the mechanics of achievement. It all seems so easy to deconstruct now, but by virtue of a third-party faith being something I could not subscribe to, ultimately this book made me dishearteningly condemned. If a little belief in synchronicity is necessary in fulfilling ambition, then I would forever long for nothing more than to be a believer.
It is only after reading The God Delusion two years later that I have been able to resolve my feelings about this matter. Dawkins has articulated my own thoughts; a justification of hope and ambition, without the necessity of third-party faith;
“How lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will never in fact be born. For those of us lucky enough to be here, I pictured the relative brevity of life by imagining a laser-thin spotlight creeping along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything before or after the spotlight is shrouded in darkness of the dead past, or the darkness of the unknown future. We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn’t this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place? The knowledge we have only one life should make it all the more precious. Art and science are runaway manifestations of this bonus.”
After reading this, I am warmed by a sense of self-importance and affirmation just in the act of being. There is no longer need to feel the slightest futility or despair just because I don’t believe in any “nets that will appear” should I jump. Such clichés are cosy and nice if you can subscribe to them, but seem of no logical basis. To be honest, I feel a bit embarrassed I ever lost faith in my lack of faith, if you get what I mean. It’s like I was taken in by a kind of toytown theological theorem I have simply been ill-equipped to dispute. I am sure I will look back at this entry with a degree of shame. It would be an exceptional folly were it the fruit of teenage philosophical angst; yet I am a 31 year old man. But for now I intend to bask in this new sense of having been licensed such affirmation and inspiration. We are indeed lucky to be here, and our very insignificance should be everything we need to make the most of our lives. Rather than being at a disadvantage, I feel emancipated from any psychological necessity for a spiritual guiding hand. Could this actually be the most positive entry I have blogged thus far? This truly has been a Day of Enlightenment, which has given me a new motivation. There is so much left for me to do with my brief time on this Earth.
For starters I resolve to get up early and finally sort that damn windscreen out.
Thankfully it had all been a dream. I pulled on my clothes, munched on my breakfast and headed out to my car. It was only when I turned the ignition key that in real life, I noticed the crack in my windscreen, which occurred a couple of months ago had increased by a fair few inches.
Isn’t this dream weird? Firstly, how did my sister know which phone box I’d happen to be walking by when she rang? More to the point, why didn’t she just contact me via my mobile phone? Clearly, I was nearer to the car than her – how did she know it had been stolen in the first place? If she was nearby when it happened, why didn’t she just jog round the corner to tell me? Or had she phoned around every phone box in the vicinity in the hope that I’d happen to be walking by? If I had left my keys in the ignition, then inevitably I wouldn’t have been able to lock the car. Why didn’t these hapless thieves just open the door using the handle rather than smashing the window and potentially drawing attention to the crime?
The answers to all these questions are easy to explain. It was a dream. Dreams are weird and often make little sense. But what about the windscreen crack, which I had noticed had expanded the morning after the dream. Some people would argue this seems a bit weird, like my dream was some sort of premonition. These are the same people that would believe in spirits and ghosties and ghoulies and an omnipresent old man in the sky that watches and judges us. But I am confident that these people are wrong on all counts. I have just finished reading the atheist bible, “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. It really is an excellent read. I have always been an atheist at heart, but have actually been trying to maintain agnosticism; if only as a kind of politeness to those of faith. More crucially, I was also once prescribed the belief that faith in ‘other powers’ was necessary for a fulfilling and creative existence. My scepticism always felt like a hindrance; that people with a third-party faith were always going to be better equipped to succeed their high ambitions. In my experience, people who lived with the attitude, “Jump and the net will appear”, generally seem to achieve more personal fulfilment in their lives than those empty cynics who merely exist. Maybe non-spirituality really is a disadvantage? As Julia Cameron writes about the other-wordly guiding force of synchronicity,
“It’s my experience that we’re much more afraid that there might be a God than we are that there might not be.. People talk about how dreadful it would be if there were no God. I think such talk is hooey. Most of us are a lot more comfortable feeling we’re not being watched too closely. If God – an all-powerful and all-knowing force - does not exist, well then, we’re all off the hook aren’t we? There’s no divine retribution. And if the whole experience stinks-ah well. What did you expect? If there is no God, then everything can roll along as always and we can feel quite justified in declaring certain [self development] impossible, other things unfair. If God, or lack of God, is responsible for the state of the world, then we can resign ourselves to apathy. What’s the use? Why change anything? Anyone honest will tell you that possibility is far more frightening than impossibility.”
This quotation comes from a well-meaning self-help book. In fairness, it is an otherwise reasonable and motivating work. But this passage always jarred me. Partly because I knew belief the existence of a ‘guiding hand’ largely improbable, which would imply it of limited use to me. Partly because it is almost a ‘challenge’ to believe (it is seems very logical suggest one is more afraid that there might be God than there might not be). Everyone likes a challenge, but this challenge was too difficult. But what is being implied as an alternative? No-one wants to see themselves solely as a victim of circumstance, resigning to apathy. Can hopeless apathy be the only fate for an atheist?
This is an example of faith is being used in a well-meaning fashion. Yet it is a notion of faith which troubled me, making me feel at a disadvantage; belief sold as the mechanics of achievement. It all seems so easy to deconstruct now, but by virtue of a third-party faith being something I could not subscribe to, ultimately this book made me dishearteningly condemned. If a little belief in synchronicity is necessary in fulfilling ambition, then I would forever long for nothing more than to be a believer.
It is only after reading The God Delusion two years later that I have been able to resolve my feelings about this matter. Dawkins has articulated my own thoughts; a justification of hope and ambition, without the necessity of third-party faith;
“How lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will never in fact be born. For those of us lucky enough to be here, I pictured the relative brevity of life by imagining a laser-thin spotlight creeping along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything before or after the spotlight is shrouded in darkness of the dead past, or the darkness of the unknown future. We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn’t this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place? The knowledge we have only one life should make it all the more precious. Art and science are runaway manifestations of this bonus.”
After reading this, I am warmed by a sense of self-importance and affirmation just in the act of being. There is no longer need to feel the slightest futility or despair just because I don’t believe in any “nets that will appear” should I jump. Such clichés are cosy and nice if you can subscribe to them, but seem of no logical basis. To be honest, I feel a bit embarrassed I ever lost faith in my lack of faith, if you get what I mean. It’s like I was taken in by a kind of toytown theological theorem I have simply been ill-equipped to dispute. I am sure I will look back at this entry with a degree of shame. It would be an exceptional folly were it the fruit of teenage philosophical angst; yet I am a 31 year old man. But for now I intend to bask in this new sense of having been licensed such affirmation and inspiration. We are indeed lucky to be here, and our very insignificance should be everything we need to make the most of our lives. Rather than being at a disadvantage, I feel emancipated from any psychological necessity for a spiritual guiding hand. Could this actually be the most positive entry I have blogged thus far? This truly has been a Day of Enlightenment, which has given me a new motivation. There is so much left for me to do with my brief time on this Earth.
For starters I resolve to get up early and finally sort that damn windscreen out.
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