The Fly Is Undeterred

Today I happened to find myself in a taxi driven by a happy-go-lucky Muslim man. He was enjoying the warm sunshine, and pontificating to me at great length about how as a Muslim, he believes we should all live in peace and happiness. When I pointed out that religion was a great divisive force in the world, he totally agreed. But also rejoined with the fact that (again) as a Muslim, he does not buy into dividing people, as the holy Koran tells us, etc. “We are all human; we all have one brain, one heart, two arms, two legs”, and so on (at least most of us share an equal number of various body parts. But I digress).

I was trying not to get myself drawn into an argument against someone with whom I really didn’t have a beef with. I had to consider beside the fact he’s driving me home, and now knows where I live, I’ll hopefully never see or talk to him again. He was a friendly sort of fellow, so why not live and let live? It’s not my job to have to deal with everyone’s belief systems. Anyway, I didn’t feel up to causing a fuss.

But later, I realized that I missed out on a good opportunity to point out that we don’t need god to be able to treat each other with peace and understanding. We should be able to throw away our bibles and korans and all the rest. Religion is a great divisive force; after all, my driver identified himself (repeatedly) as a ‘Muslim’. His appearance also suggested a link to his faith; I’m sure many of his cultural habits were also in line with Islamic thinking. Why do we need all that excess baggage  to treat each other with respect? I got a strong sense that he was unable to see himself as separate from his religious identity; what is he if he’s not a Muslim? And more importantly, can he contemplate living in peace and harmony with his fellow human beings without using the crutch of religion? Probably not. And therein lies the problem. We all separate ourselves in various ways: white/black, rich/poor, Democrat/Republican, Labour/Conservative, North/South and so on. Whether it’s clans, tribes, football teams, nations or religions, the fences go up. Some are inconsequential, some are trivial and some are serious. Serious enough for a few to die for, or to kill for.

And yes, I’m aware that I’m probably just as guilty of erecting my own fence, between believer and unbeliever. But I don’t feel it’s particularly fair to start preaching your faith to what’s essentially a captive audience. I’d like to think I could have met him halfway and had a nice chat about the weather or something; but when he started going on about “As a Muslim…”, then it becomes the elephant in the room which makes it that much harder to ignore when trying to reach across the divide. Maybe it’s just conceited and big-headed of me to think I could relate to him on an equal basis. And probably just the same to say that now we’ll never know.

In the process of rejecting religion as an outmoded system that should be abandoned to history, I don’t discriminate against any single set of beliefs. Without some real proof that a god exists (a holy book that more or less says, “Because I say so!” is not proof, sorry), then it’s just another impediment to any kind of equality between people. Conflicts about nothing are a waste of time and energy, not to say lives and property. My biggest regret about my journey today was that I was probably a bit too respectful when perhaps I shouldn’t have been. I find that when I have these sorts of encounters, I do learn a little more each time, and consequently enter into the next set of circumstances a bit better prepared. I wonder what my new friend would have said if we had been on a slightly longer journey, and I was a bit more emboldened to ask if his Muslim point of view regarding peace and understanding also extended to women.

I’ve seen many examples of Christians who also espouse this warm and fuzzy idea of “lets all just get along”, and find that they are the kind of people who don’t study their bibles very well. No doubt the same thing happens with Muslims; many parts of religion, especially the Abrahamic ones, are actually very much of a siege mentality. People with strong or rabid faith (including Ministers, Imams, etc.) don’t share this “peace & love” ideology at all. They are strongly opposed to mixing with people of differing faiths, demand that the young are indoctrinated and immersed into the holy ways as soon as possible, and for as long as possible, and generally aren’t too concerned about the fate of unbelievers. Any differing opinions (including scientific points of view that contradict holy writ) are to be suppressed, if not completely stamped out. I find my taxi driver’s remarks hard to reconcile with what I know about religious belief in general. Is he ignorant of the darker aspects of his own professed faith, or putting on a friendly face for the obvious infidel sitting next to him? Stupid or lying? Only he could say for sure.

Either way, it’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Next time I’ll take the bus.

For many years I have considered myself an agnostic. While I had little or no doubt that religion is a waste of time, I still carried around a nagging ‘possible’ belief in God. But I couldn’t anthropomorphize ‘him’ as an individual. I focused on the idea of ‘All That Is’ from the Seth books by Jane Roberts. Here, God is seen as a gestalt of everything that exists. Energy is God and Energy is Consciousness, no matter how inert something appeared to be. Even rocks had a rudimentary awareness since they possessed energy. As for an afterlife, I grew to embrace the idea that there is either nothing, or something far beyond what most people would conceive of. Here again, the Jane Roberts/Seth material seemed to offer the best potential.

But there were flaws in this  worldview that I was never comfortable with.  The concept of Atlantis for example, and how the natives would use sound waves to move large rocks around. There’s clearly no evidence for any of this, and while I found much to admire, details like this always made me squirm in my seat. But for a long while I was content to stick with it in lieu of anything better. Eventually however, I stumbled upon the British Humanist Association. It was a revelation to find an organization with like-minded individuals who had deep-seated reservations about God. I quickly joined the BHA as a member, and I’m proud to be associated with it. I have since taken part in many letter-writing campaigns, to add my voice to the calls for a more secular society.

Also, I have a child, and living in a country without a separation between church and state, I intensely disliked having my child coming home from school singing about how ‘God is great’.

These experiences led to me buying and reading Richard Dawkin’s bestselling book The God Delusion. I found this to be a polarizing experience, and while there are parts of the book that I think are somewhat obtuse, it began a process of ‘politicizing’ me in regards to religious belief. I turned to YouTube for videos of Dawkins engaging with believers. This led to my introduction to Christopher Hitchens, and his in-your-face method of slamming those who insist of pushing their faith on other people. Some who don’t like this call it new atheism. My feeling is that after all these years of having Christian values pushed on me (and others), it’s time we stood up and starting fighting back (in a peaceful method – religious warfare has an extremely bloody history, and I don’t intend on contributing to the carnage).

This in turn, led to the Austin, Texas cable show The Atheist Experience:

And the excellent series of videos from AronRa regarding the nonsense of creationism:

What these videos (and others) do is help show and explain the arguments regarding atheism and the claims used by those who espouse God as the creator of the Universe. It’s also a great comfort to know that other people think along similar lines to myself. On a recent trip back to my hometown (and country), I was dismayed to see the strident jingoism and holy fervor on evidence throughout the media, as well as made concrete (literally) by the number of churches lining the boulevards. It was all very depressing. The work of the Atheist Experience and AronRa helps balance the scales back towards reason and logic.

So where am I now? I’m still learning, still absorbing. I feel less inclined to stay silent, and more and more able to state my position if pressed. I am encouraged to stand up for my lack of belief. I don’t have any trouble stating that I am a Humanist. Am I able to say that I am an atheist? My viewpoint certainly is in line with atheism, but I’m still not quite ready to cross that Rubicon, at least in my mind, and declare myself one. At least not yet. I certainly do not believe in religion, and most emphatically not organized religion. I believe there is no convincing proof of God’s existence. Could God exist in a method that we have not been able to ascertain? Obviously I can’t answer that. It’s certainly a possibility, but I concede that the window on that possibility is getting smaller all the time.

I have moved closer to the edge of atheism, but am I caught in a Zeno-like paradox, never quite able to get all the way there? Maybe applying a label to myself isn’t that important. Rejecting a worldview is a big step, and one not to be taken lightly, for whatever reason. In my case it means having to admit that there really is no afterlife; my loved ones are gone forever, and one day I too will simply cease to exist. It’s tough to just give all that up, but if that’s the price for accepting reality over superstition, then it has to be. Perhaps I just need more time to dress myself up in the garb of an atheist, and eventually I’ll feel comfortable in those clothes. I know in my heart that I’m nearly there now. Maybe I’ve been closer than I would have admitted all along. Maybe resolving my paradox means going over that edge instead of just drawing nearer. It’s scary, but also liberating at the same time.

I’m almost an atheist. Almost.

Every year I consider writing about Christmas, but put it off until it’s too late. This year I seem to be rolling along a little farther down the path. Let’s see how far I can get.

As a child, whenever I would see some reworking of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, I would always wonder about the spirit of Christmas Future. The other two ghosts who come to visit Scrooge are obvious enough. The ghost of Christmas Past is shown as an angelic figure (male or female), and Christmas Present looks a lot like Bacchus, the God of Wine.

But the ghost of Christmas Future (or Christmas Yet To Come) is a black-robed grim reaper-like figure. Why should this be so? True, he does show Scrooge a possible vision of the future that foresees his own death, but are there other reasons? I think so.

Leaving aside the blatantly obvious faces of Xmas (birth of Christ, Saturnalia, the economic boost, etc.), Christmas is about death. Set only days after the beginning of Winter and the longest night of the year, the holidays are a solemn reminder of the transience of Man. Many of us can remember particular Christmas events, even when most of the rest of the year fades into a blur. It’s a time to stop and mark time, especially as one gets older. With more than a half-century of Christmas Days under my belt, I can easily recall specific ones – particular gifts, funny memories, sad times, etc.

While children revel in the materialistic aspects of the day, older adults look back and recall family members who are no longer around. When I was growing up, it seemed my family would last forever. But of course, eventually the child becomes the adult and leaves to start a new family. The older members pass on, and the cycle continues anew. I’ve lost more than one member of my family in December as well, which makes the absence at this festive time of year particularly difficult at times. I continue to mourn their loss, and a portion of my childhood is gone with them forever.

One of the most memorable aspect of Christmas to me has always been the music. The happy-go-lucky fun of Jingle Bells, the quasi-Medieval feel of We Three Kings of Orient Are, or the Victorian blunderbuss of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I love ’em all. But it wasn’t until I heard a version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas by a New York City Gay Men’s Choir, that I really understood it:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Some day soon
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
(Hang a shining star upon the highest bough).
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

I realized that the choir were singing about friends lost to AIDS. It’s a sad little song about loss and loneliness. The shining stars are the people you love who are gone, and they are terribly missed. It never fails to make me cry now, because it’s a stark reminder of those I’ve lost.

And that’s why the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come is a figure of death. I still love the holidays, the music, the decorating, the presents. It’s one small moment every year when the ideas of peace and family and goodwill are at least given lip service, which is more than they see any other day. A day to share with family and loved ones, to grow those fond memories for the next generation. While the religious value of Xmas fades away, it’s still an important day, and must always be so.

But as individuals, as we age, it’s also a day to stop and take a look back. To hang that shining star on the highest bough. To remember.

Have yourself a Merry little Christmas now.

I suppose, in the words of Stephen Fry, it’s time I nailed my colours to the mast. I am a card-carrying member of the British Humanist Association (BHA), and I am at a point in my life where I have totally rejected religion. Probably no surprise to anyone (anyone?) who’s read through this online collection of musings. But I never came out and really said it before. Altho I have said that religion is one of the most dangerous evils we face today.

And by that, I mean that religion is a force that has always divided people, and been the cause of a great deal of suffering and death. The rising up of different sects, on through the Crusades, the Reformation, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 9/11, 7/7 and so on. We have killed the Jews, killed the Christians, killed the infidels, the non-believers, the unfaithful, etc., and so on, and so on. Children in many religious schools throughout the world today are taught to hate people who do not believe the same things they are taught; science and evolution are “wrong”, and outmoded religious texts are all they need.

At one time, religion was important; when human understanding of the world was insufficient to explain the workings of nature, religion offered a framework that people of those eras could fathom. Today we use fairy tales to explain concepts like sharing, manners, and basic scientific concepts. However, civilization has grown up in the past few thousand years, and we should no longer rely on fairy tales to explain to adults how the world works. Our technology is sophisticated enough to delve deeply into natural phenomena, and dispense with a god who hides behind supernatural magic and demands constant devotion.

Let’s briefly mention god here. I consider myself more agnostic than atheist. I feel that it comes down to one of two possibilities – either nothing, or something beyond what most people consider god. If nothing, then you die, and that’s it. Your consciousness is gone forever. Brutal, but possibly true. In which case the whole idea of religion is a useless waste of precious time.

If there is a god, then it is totally unlike the standard idea of god, i.e. an old man in the sky. A real god would be the total sum of all things in existence; galaxies to subatomic particles, including you and me. We would all be part of god, no more or less divine than any savior or prophet. Experiences after physical death would be more, much more than just going to Heaven or Valhalla or even Nirvana. The Bible, Koran or Bhagvhad-Gita could no more explain it than you could explain the Star Wars saga on a grain of rice.

So whichever way it is, religion is a remnant of our collective childhood that we cannot bear to dispense with. But now it no longer helps us deal with existence, it hinders our ability to comprehend the true nature of reality. The Universe is a fascinating place, and each of us truly precious and unique. Religion suffocates us, and blinds us to the real wonders of the Cosmos. We do not need the illusion of god to shield us from what’s out there, or divide us from each other in our lonely journey on this planet.

The ‘true believers’ always condemn such talk, and try to find fault with ‘proof’ of solid theories, like evolution. “Where’s the proof we evolved from apes?” is one popular cry. “How can you prove the Earth is as old as you say? is another. It becomes a pointless exercise, since people like this will not admit the proof when it stares them in the face. I was involved in a discussion like this once with a very religious co-worker. “What’s the proof?” he would ask.

“What about the fossils?”, I replied.

“What fossils?”

It’s very clear that we have a good overall record of how humans evolved. There may be quibbles over the details, but the proof is in the fossil record. For other animals, such as horses, the fossils are nearly complete and tell the story very well. But if you don’t believe in the proof when it’s shown to you, what will it take? My co-worker had no knowledge whatsoever about the details of the obvious evolution of Homo left behind in the rocks. If you don’t know how your supermarket shelves are restocked each night, you might as well believe elves do it.

And there’s certainly more proof for things like evolution than a garden of Eden. It strikes me as odd that people who are willing to believe superstition on faith will always demand ‘proof’ of any evidence to the contrary.

They will also try to point out that our moral codes, the rules that govern our societies, were fashioned by god and given to us so that we might lead ‘good’ lives. Anyone who rejects this is ‘bad’, ‘immoral’ or ‘anarchic’. This is of course, utter nonsense. Morality was devised by human beings, not a supreme being. I don’t need god to live a moral life. I’m not worried about divine retribution.

It may be asking too much that people who are raised not to think for themselves suddenly have a blinding flash of insight and reject the beliefs of their family and immediate society. But it does happen, nearly every day. Will religion ever really go away? I don’t know. At various points in the past, concepts like slavery, the oppression of women, the ridicule of homosexuals were all firmly entrenched. While they all still exist today, their standings are decidedly less sure, if not outright wobbly. It is my hope as a Humanist that one day the notion of religion is discarded as an outmoded archaic way of thinking. One that’s no longer relevant in the modern world. Standing up to religion, seeing it for the pack of lies it really is, and raising our children to be good members of society without all the mumbo-jumbo is of the utmost urgency.

First of all, let me say right off the bat that I’ve been wrong before. When I was first informed about the nature of email, and blogging, I thought they were ridiculous concepts. I wasn’t remotely interested. I enjoyed sitting down to write long letters. I’ve since discovered that my letters were long because they were ponderous and boring. I didn’t understand why anyone would bother writing what amounted to a diary on the Internet. Surely a personal journal is by its very nature a private matter, to be found after death and published to great posthumous fame. Or tossed out in the trash. Heck, the first time I saw a web page for a new car, I couldn’t believe it.

And yet, and yet. Here I am, compulsive emailer, sometimes blogger and owner of many websites, some a lot smaller in concept than a new car. So my track record is not good on predicting future trends. I admit that. But (and you knew there would be one, didn’t you?), I am currently drawing the line at the current craze lumped under the messy heading “social networking”. For anyone reading this (heh) who’s even more of a Luddite than I am, it’s the frantic desire to connect to everyone you know and deliver the minutiae of your life, literally moment by moment. Socal Networking takes many forms, starting with mobile phones.

I remember the first time I saw someone with a portable phone in a restaurant; a fellow in a group with a somewhat bulky bag slung under his shoulder, and a handset that looked like a walkie-talkie out of WWII, except in black instead of camouflage. And of course it rang as they were sitting at dinner, and he got to show everyone around what a trend-setter he was. It seems laughable now, when everybody walks around like zombies, talking to themselves about where they are in the mall (“I’m walking by the bookstore now, and nearly up to the shoe store. Now I’ve passed the shoe store and can see the vitamin shop off to my right…”).  Those who are not actually speaking are instead texting out into the void.

I have nothing to say to anyone that’s so important. I don’t have a mobile, which sends people who try to get me to change my mobile service into paroxysms. I suspect they don’t believe me. After going on about how they can save me money, and how concerned they are that I’m spending so much, their concern evaporates when  I suggest that they pay for me to have a mobile, so I can save a lot more.

The next step in the social networking universe was sites to share information, such as Digg. I still don’t understand how this works. If I like a website for whatever reason, I click a button. Somehow this informs other people, who I assume are just clueless, and a site can be more or less put into a bottle and cast adrift on a great social network ocean. Who actually goes to these sites, other than spammers? Hmm, I wonder if there are any good movie review websites? I’ll surf over to Digg and find out. Why not go to a search engine and type “movie reviews”? The system just seems cumbersome and over-complex.

After that, the world went nuts for Twitter. You can tweet, or type a 150-character message which other people can be informed about. People can subscribe to your tweets, so every time you announce that you’ve gone to the bathroom, or espied a bodacious babe, someone on the other side of the world can keep abreast of it. How dull is your life that you have to get up-to-the-minute bulletins about someone else like this? The most common tweet would seem to be: I am tweeting. The content may be different, but the message is the same. And I don’t care. I do have a Twitter account, but mainly to reserve the name. I’ve never sent a tweet, nor am I subscribed to receive any.

Finally, the nadir of social networking is now Facebook. When the Internet first became popular, there were great concerns about being tracked by legions of faceless Big Brothers. The privacy of the populace must be protected at all costs! The privacy was of course, mainly to look at online porn, which is no doubt why lawmakers were so eager to embrace privacy restrictions. But now you have Facebook, where people rush in a great mania to proclaim their private information in excruciating detail. Can websites of banking and medical details that are open to anyone be far behind? Why would anybody want a Facebook account? The irony is that in giving up their anonymity, people may be just another commodity, where any individual is shielded from glare by the overwheming crush of sheer numbers.

This idea of course, is utter nonsense. Computers can effortlessly weed any single person out of the chaos of the multitude. Governments have computers, and so do criminals. And with laptops full of personal information being lost almost daily on some street somewhere, we are probably already in an age where nobody can hide. Centuries ago, the idea of privacy was unheard of. Even the rich and noble lived surrounded by entourages. The poor simply huddled together for warmth like they always do.  The Internet is a true revolution in our lifetimes. I use it daily, and have come to depend on it for many things. But not social networking. In the great march of progress for our species after a million years, the concept of ‘privacy’ may be one day seen as just a passing conceit, put paid by the Internet.

But I still won’t get a Facebook page.

Tonight I was listening to some masses by Palestrina, whom I was turned on to recently by a show on sacred music. Palestrina (d. 1594) was in service to the Pope for most of his career, singing in the Sistine Chapel choir, and writing great polyphonic choral music for church services.

Listening to music like this, the mind can’t help but wander back to the great cathedrals these pieces were meant to be heard in. I’ve been to quite a few fantastic cathedrals in my time – Westminster, St. Pauls (both in London), Salisbury, Lincoln, York Minster, Beverly Minster, and one of the greatest of them all, Canterbury, to name a few. I find them fascinating buildings, living reminders of a time and a people long gone to us now. How many generations of pilgrims have I followed in who have stood at the spot of the Martyrdom, or viewed the crooked tower of Lincoln? I gaze in awe at the English coronation throne, used by nearly every British king and queen since the 1300’s. Yes, covered in carved schoolboy graffiti now, but there sat Henry the Eighth; his daughter Elizabeth (at whose tomb I still genuflect); Edward IV, winner of the Wars of the Roses; Henry VI, who lost those wars (and his life); George III, the ‘tyrant’ of the American colonies, and so on. All of them sat in that nasty little chair.

The whole point of these giant churches, with their soaring naves and acres of stained glass, was to worship and glorify God. The music of Palestrina, its effortless grace and stirring complexity, was also created to celebrate a creator who returned to Earth in human form, and will supposedly return at the end of days.

But I venerate these lovely old piles and beautiful voices blended in harmony for a different reason. These are fantastic objects created by the mind and reason of man. The builders, authors, architects and musicians may be worshiping a deity, but I worship the ability of the human beings who left us these monuments in stone and song. The talent and creativity of those people reach across the centuries to us, and on into the future. How simply, utterly wonderful.

In some cathedrals you can take tours up into hidden parts, to see things that most tourists don’t get to see. Things like the walkway over the roof of the nave in Lincoln; it’s like walking over great piles of rubbish, except those are the arches towering 80ft. or more above the ground. The great chain Wren wound around the inner dome of St. Paul’s, to make sure it would be strong enough to resist the weight of the outer dome it has to bear forever. Towers with their endless tiny spiral staircases lined with rough-hewn rope banisters, or the narrow walkways, with openings cut into the columns, far up above the gentry below, threading through the church walls like stone blood vessels. I’d love to spend the night in Westminster, with a set of keys to all these little doors barring me from the exciting bits.

While the aim of the creators of these hulking emissaries from another time may have been to remind themselves (or us) of God, the message I hear from them loud and clear instead is, “Remember Us”. And so I think not of some supernatural being who may or may not exist at all, but of the flesh and blood stone masons, or woodcarvers, glassblowers, painters, composers, and all the rest.  I know they existed. Sir Christopher Wren, the designer and builder of St. Paul’s, is buried in a very nondescript little corner of the crypt of that great palace of religion. The Latin inscription over his tomb slab would suffice for all the builders of the great cathedrals:  “If you seek his monument, look around”.

I was thinking today about the efforts to grow skin in the laboratory. It’s a worthwhile endeavour, mainly for things like burn victims, etc. It got me started wondering about growing animal skin as well. At some point in the future I imagine that we will have enough knowledge of the genome and cloning to really begin to design custom-made life. Imagine being able to grow leather in a petri dish. It might even eventually be cheaper to do than having to nurture and deal with the whole animal, only to kill it and strip it of its flesh for our belts and handbags and shoes.

Before going any further, I will state for the record that I do eat meat, and do not feel guilty about it. Other animals eat meat, humans are clearly omnivorous, end of story. However I do believe that most of us eat way too much meat, and animals should not be forced to suffer unduly or in a cruel manner. This post is not about animal testing, so I will refrain from offering an opinion one way or another about that subject.

At any rate, once I began ruminating about football fields of cowhide, growing without the cow, I took the next step. What about one day growing meat? Once we truly understand how to control the DNA of  complex creatures like cattle, why not focus on the parts we want, and turn off the things we don’t need? Eliminate the brain, the limbs (or at least the hooves), the horns, probably even the internal organs. We could just grow meat (with as few bones as required), in vats of nutrient solutions. And with cloning, there could be huge farms of steaks, chops, etc., all identical.

While this may conjure up bizarre images of grotesque bovine mutants, cared for by robots a la the human energy farms seen in The Matrix, it may be more effective than the current approach. No need for grazing land, no need to find use for the extra bits (yes, I know the hooves, horns and offal go into things like animal feed and hot dogs, but that’s probably more to do with having the raw material around to begin with).

And since so much of our resources and concerns, from food and water to global warming is currently tied up in grazing land, animal feed, shelter, etc., it would be important that the system used in creating and maintaining these new Animal-less farms be less demanding of resources, greener in output than our current models.

Of course, we’re a long way from having huge tanks of brainless, legless meat being grown to feed the masses, but it sounds like something that should be possible eventually. I’m wondering where people who take a stand on ethical rights and treatment for animals would feel about it. One of their arguments include the glib line, “never eat anything with a face”. Howabout with no head at all? Cloned meat is probably blurring the line of what an ‘animal’ is. But it wouldn’t be suffering, or exploited (at least not as an animal, the product certainly would be). Would people who oppose eating meat for these reasons be tempted back to hamburgers and sausages?

It’s a fascinating idea, and I don’t have a clue as to how they would respond. To my coldly logical thinking, it would be the best of both worlds – plenty of protein-laden food, and whole herds of beasts spared the chop. The question arises then, would we need so many cows and pigs and sheep? The answer would be no, but I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t just let their numbers dwindle naturally to a smaller representative population.

Still, in a world where people think GM crops are the work of the devil, who knows what kind of debates would rage regarding this.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a child of the 60’s. It was my decade, and it shaped the person I became many years later. I was too young to recall where I was the day Kennedy was shot, but I do remember the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. I grew up very close to the Space Center in Florida, so of course I remember the moon landing. I remember the launch, watching it go up into a beautiful sunny sky, and thinking to myself “I must remember this”.

The 1960’s, from my perspective, started with the death of JFK, leading quickly to Beatlemania. They ended on election night in 1972, with the defeat of George McGovern, and any chance the youth of America felt they had in putting their convictions to the test. Nixon continued to reign, and everybody hunkered down and put themselves first for awhile.

While I was only a child for the entire decade (having instead to spend my teenage years in the 70’s, living with Disco), watching footage from that era leaves me feeling very nostalgic. I accepted the world around me like any youngster, be it Beverly Hills, Hanoi, Biloxi or Beruit. The long hair, the clothing, most of all the music, filling me, leaving its imprint upon my soul. I had a Nehru jacket at seven (with black-frame glasses and about a quarter-inch of hair closely-cropped around my skull). Woodstock passed me by, but the film now is oddly familiar in a way that Lollapalooza never could have been.

By the 80’s of course, the world had moved on to corporate greed and the ‘me generation’. By today’s standards even that was a gentle, naive time. I’ve seen the sixties dream torn to shreds, first by Watergate, then cocaine, punk, crack, Reagan, Bush, 9/11 and Iraq. People who missed it all roll their eyes when talk turns to old hippies, probably much like we lampooned ‘rebels’ in the 50′, or those wacky young men in the Roaring Twenties, with their Dagwood Bumstead hair and raccoon coats, swallowing goldfish or piling into phone booths. Kids today are so much more hip (or so they like to think).

But I don’t care. The idealism of those days still burns inside of me, and I’m sure many others. Even if the leaders grew old and disillusioned, the kids who hung out with them, watching and wanting to be like them, still carry the torch they dropped so long ago. Some years ago I recall reading a magazine article about parents who were also Beatles fans, and how they were ‘living Beatle lives, and raising Beatle kids’. And that’s true, I’ve seen that with my own eyes. It makes me terribly proud for some reason, that in the face of all the postmodern doubt about the world, families are still telling their kids about a band that once, long ago, ruled the world.

In spite of all the terrible bad around us today, the small glimmer of hope that shone on the faces of kids with flowers in their hair is still here with us, even if most of the hair is gone. I believe in the sixies dream, and always will, until my last breath. I am a child of the 60’s; peace and love.

Have you ever actually watched the Teletubbies? I have, many times, and even before I had a child. When I first saw the show, it was in a UK college dorm room around the late 90’s, not long after the show first premiered. It was like a train wreck, horrible, but I couldn’t stop watching it. It seemed mindless, a demented fantasy that somehow ended up being made, like Springtime for Hitler from The Producers. But I couldn’t take my eyes from it.

Some years later, I watched it again, after it had been shown in America, and denounced by Jerry Falwell of all people, for promoting homosexuality (because one of the Teletubbies, Tinky-Winky, carried a purse but had no definite sexual identity). I had a different take upon it by then. It struck me as an attempt to recapture the beautiful innocence of childhood, before the world took it away forever, as it does for nearly all of us. Most of the time I would actually cry by the end, as I felt it reach into my heart and call out to that long-ago-lost child whose memories I carry with me every day.

Then of course, the merchandising came, and I drifted away again, back to adult concerns.

One thing I’ve always thought about the Teletubbies, however, is that I firmly believe that in part the show is based on H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Teletubbies are the Eloi – the simple, dumber descendants of ourselves, far into the future. Wells’s time traveler goes forward and meets the Eloi, who are smaller, nonsexual beings who seem to have no real language, living a life of paradise without work or illness. Technology exists, but they cannot utilize it or create it. They are like children in a world created for them. But they cannot really learn, or grow or evolve. In short, Teletubbies.

Now of course, I have a child, and so I watch it yet again. She seems to like it very much, altho she prefers In the Night Garden, which is a sort of second-generation version (Teletubbies TNG, if you prefer). Maybe one day she’ll think back to it the same way I think back to Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, or dear beloved Captain Kangaroo. Altho I didn’t notice back in the day how appallingly bad the production values were (thank you, YouTube). I guess she won’t have that problem in 30+ years, thanks to DVDs or whatever will replace them.

But I do wonder what her take will be – beloved childhood icons, dopy marketing figures, or a dark vision of the future of the human race?

Last year in some of my more political posts, I was certain that by this time, we would be living in a world where the United States was governed by a woman. How wrong I was. I also compared Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. The jury is still out on that one.

My misgivings towards Obama were based on the impression he left me with that he believes his own press releases. I really feel he thinks he’s the chosen one, who will lead the world out of darkness and ignorance, and into a new age. Would that it were so. I freely admit that I would love to be proven wrong about the man; that in four or eight years, I write about how good he has been to the nation, and how much better off we are.

Sigh. There are already signs of a backlash in Congress, where Obama tried to reform the earmark system, and nearly had his economic rescue plan handed back to him on a silver platter (in place of his head). The American people seem prepared to give him unusually wide latitude, no doubt because they know the mess we’re in now is not really his fault. We can blame Bush and Cheney (the ‘one-man axis of evil’) for that. But at some point the tide may turn, then all his oratorial skills may do him little good.

I do agree with a lot of what he’s done – reversing Bush policy on things like stem cell research, refusing to turn a blind eye to torture, releasing previous administration reports that suggest suspending the Constitution in all but name is a good idea, etc. The allies of the US need to know they’re still backing the good guys. Putin and Pyongyang are talking tough, but how far will they go, really? Many feel they’re testing the new government, like Krushchev tested Kennedy.

But on the other hand, why is the Obama administration not interested in pursuing the legality of the warantless wire-tapping scandal? Why have three nominees had to withdraw from various appointments because of non-payment of tax? Doesn’t anybody learn? Doesn’t anybody vet these things? Obama seemed to suggest that it’s okay the head of the treasury can’t pay his taxes without media scrutiny. Would he have given McCain’s nominee the same free pass?

And before you ask, I don’t care what color the president is. He’s half-white as far as I’m concerned. Why doesn’t anybody talk about that?

But, I’m rooting for him. Not so much for Carter… er, Obama the man, but for the President of the United States. I hope he can put us (and the world) on the right path. I’m pessimistic, but they say a pessimist is just an optimist who’s had his heart broken too many times.