Dee Jayne Walker.

I encountered a quote today by Maya Angelou: "Hate. It has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet." Much as I love Maya, I don't think it's as simple as that. Through recorded history there has always been a tendency to think some emotions are fine., happiness, love, joy: and others, like hate, anger and fear, should be exised from our lives. I have never really been convinced of this. I hate child poverty, I hate injustice, I feel angry when I hear of them and so do most people, I fear the consequences of thoughtless acts. And if none of us felt such hate, would anything ever change? The problems start when we are angry with people, when we come to hate people, and come to fear them as individuals or groups.  This is related to something known in psychology as the 'actor observer effect'. Essentially we can think about this phenomena like this. If I walk into a room and trip over the rug, I think, "that rug shou...

OK  I have a confession to make. This may shock you? This may come as a supprise? I like Americans. OK, so not all of them but more than you'd think. It has to be said I think some Americans (note 'some') are bat$#/t crazy. But then there's quite a lot of British we could say that about. Let's face it our government was elected by 25% of the people, someone hasn't been paying attention and we have minority hegenomy again. So its all evens there. And shock of horrors, I even have admiration for the American Constitution. I am a bit suspicious that, the modern influence of business on government, has become something akin to: the buying and selling of the imperium by the pretorian guard in ancient Rome. Do I think Britain is in a much better state? Not really. We still have a monarch, a symbol of privelidge by right of blood. At which point palm and face achieve close proximity. Though we do have 'Magna Carta' which put king John and every ot...

Ok, I am sitting here with tears in my eyes. Why? I hear you cry. Well it's like this: I was researching translations of the text of codex sinaticus, and one thought led to another, and so one link led to another and, somehow I ended up on Sir Terry Pratchett's wiki page. And I read this. * A t last,   S ir   T erry, we must walk together. Terry took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night. The End. And the tingles started in the nape of my neck, ran right down my back, and up across my scalp, pulling the skin at my temples, and tears welled in my eyes. Some time ago I made the video in the following link,  Friends and fans.   ** In which I described meeting Sir Pterry, and why I thought he had millions of friends, rather than millions of fans. Don't take me wrong, I am a huge Tolkien fan, also CS Lewis *** and others, but it always seems like Sir Pterry leaped out of the page, no matter what ...

What strikes me about the religious right, is the ongoing attempts to take possession of words. For a long time they seemed to: claim, imply, presume and assume, that: 'morality', was an exclusive preserve of religion. Similarly they seem to want to claim the word 'spirit', as if the only interpretation is 'ghost that survives death,' rather than the essence of something, or someone. The same thing can be said of their approach to the words 'liberty', and even 'war'. This is an old strategy, used for millenia,  Orwell outlined it in 1984, control the language, and you control meaning, control meaning and 'crime think' becomes impossible. Except of course humans have a well documented habit of creating their own meaning, particularly teenagers, who love to subvert language, hence 'wicked' or more recently, 'Sick' often mean good. (Yes I know I am showing my age.) Likewise the religious right attempts to present ...

OK, I give up, I cannot resit the temptation to write a polemic on Spirit. Many of my regular readers will, by now, have realised I am an atheist. And something of an anti-theist. I am also interested in what we might term 'spirituality'. "Wait!" I hear you cry,  "Atheists don't believe in 'spirit', you can't be spiritual! It's against the rules." But is it? I wonder? And now to throw a real cat among the pigeons. The symbolism of 'gods and goddesses'. A quote from Terry Pratchett seems to sum this up nicely. "I ain't against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they've got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take 'em to bits for parts when we don't need 'em any more, see?' Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies. Which seems to me quite one of the most profound statements I can imagine. When we see a boxer fight, we often say he or she fights with spirit. It seems legitimate to me...