My book deals with many topics on theme of “question everything,” so here’s another trailer, this time on the issue of mind control, particularly in relation to the first seven years of our lives, when we are like sponges soaking up information with no critical thinking:
[ Link ]
Yesterday evening I watched the recently released remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. If you’ve seen it, do you recall noticing a huge McDonald’s advertisement being thrust in your face partway through? If you spotted it, good for you, because you weren’t supposed to. It’s what’s known as a subliminal, which means “below threshold” – something that’s designed to get into your head by bypassing the critical faculty of normal conscious awareness. Most people have heard of subliminal messages, and the example that probably comes to mind is a lightning-quick message flashed across a screen – gone before you’ve time to read it. That certainly is a subliminal, but subliminals are also much more crafty than this. There’s a scene in The Day the Earth Stood Still where Jennifer Connelly and Keanu Reeves pull into a parking lot at night. The camera is positioned in front of their car, looking in through the windshield. As the car grinds to a halt, the reflection of a huge letter “M” crawls up the glass, a yellow “M” with very familiar curved peaks. At this point, the attention of most viewers is on Jennifer and Keanu and the conversation they are having, not on the McDonald’s logo. Typically, we look through the glass, not directly at it. Someone may ask, “What’s the value in an advertisement, if no one pays attention to it?” It’s a sensible enough question, if you’ve never researched how the human mind works. But when you understand something of the nature of the mind, then it becomes clear that it’s precisely your lack of attention that the advertisers are counting on!
Our minds have a tendency to build associations between things that are placed together. I’ll explain what I mean by that by illustrating how a phobia – an irrational fear – operates. I know a young woman who finds it extremely uncomfortable to be photographed. At first I thought her reaction to cameras was based on insecurity about her appearance, but I later learned from her that the origin of her fear was much deeper. As a young child, her parents hired a professional photographer each year for her birthday party. It was always the same bearded man, the physical appearance of whom frightened the child. As the photographer, he was never without his camera. And so the negative emotions that the girl felt in response to the man became associated with the camera, too. When this was reinforced over a few years, the same emotions occurred when the camera alone was pointed at the girl, regardless of who was holding it. As an adult, she is completely aware that her fear of cameras is irrational, but the feelings persist regardless of what her conscious mind knows. You might imagine that all we would need to do to cure a phobia is to realise how irrational it is, but it’s not that simple. The mind creates links that bypass conscious awareness, and these links take time and effort to break.
This tendency of the mind to create unconscious associations may give the impression that our minds are somewhat faulty, or less optimal than they should be. But that’s not the case. The tendency of the unconscious to make associations is vital to us being able to function effectively in the physical world. The fact that I can sit here and tap this computer keyboard rapidly without consciously thinking about each key-press is due to my subconscious having established links. I simply think about what words I want to appear, give the okay to my fingers, and off they go. This is in stark contrast to when I was ten years old, playing with my first computer, gradually learning where each letter was located by roving my index finger across the keyboard. Little did I know back then that I was beginning the process of creating a bridge between intention and action that would allow my conscious mind to be bypassed, turning me into a rapid typist. If you’re not a heavy computer user, a better example of this is driving a car. Remember what it was like when you first learned? All the careful thinking you had to do, between watching the road, steering, changing gears while correctly operating the clutch and accelerator, not to mention the safety aspects of paying attention to the mirrors and being able to find the brake instantly. Now, if you’ve been driving for a few years, you’ll know that the car feels just like an extension of your body, and you don’t even have to think about those things at all. They happen on automatic, because your mind has built the necessary subconscious connections that give your conscious mind the freedom to be elsewhere, such as talking on a mobile phone (not!).
In the case of the woman with the phobia, the very same principle is operating. Her mind has created an unconscious association through repetition of experience. A camera appears, and the subconscious says, “Oh! There’s a camera pointed at you. I know what I’m supposed to make you feel: fear!” The conscious mind says, “Stop it. This is irrational. There’s no reason I’m supposed to feel this.” And the subconscious replies, “Sorry, but I already know what I’m supposed to be doing.” The purpose of the bridge-building tendency is to allow the bypassing of conscious awareness, and that’s why the subconscious isn’t listening to the conscious mind, even when the conscious mind attempts to correct it. The way to cure an irrational phobia is to re-train the unconscious mind to feel something different, by confronting the fear head-on and persistently attempting to create a new experience, until a different association is built through repetition.
So you see, the tendency of the mind to build unconscious connections is both necessary but, given particular circumstances, is prone to veering off in a direction that is less than helpful for our lives. This tendency also makes the mind prone to deliberate abuse by those who know how the mind works. And have no doubt, advertisers are very much in the know.
Picture this: you’re sitting at home, warm and snug in your living room, tucking into a snack, while The Day the Earth Stood Still is pouring out of the TV across the room and into your eyes. While you’re in this feel-good state, a big McDonald’s logo is staring you in the face, but you don’t even see it. Or to state that more accurately, your conscious mind doesn’t see it; your subconscious, on the other hand, takes it all in. You’re not aware of it, but a feel-good emotional connection with the McDonald’s logo is covertly building itself in your subconscious. Later, when you drive your car past the local McDonald’s “restaurant” and you spot that big letter “M” on the building, you start to feel good, and you have no idea why. The effect is so subtle that you don’t even ask yourself why you feel good. Of course, one subliminal message in one movie isn’t going to have much of an effect. A cumulative effect is created by the constant repetition of the same theme, again and again, in other movies and during commercial breaks. Ask yourself, how many television advertisements are designed to inform you, whereas how many are designed to make you feel something? With this is mind, you can start to appreciate the importance of a company having a distinct, simple, identifiable symbol on their products or services. In time, your subconscious learns a clear message from the experiences you feed it, and it starts to tell you: “McDonald’s makes me feel good.” And unless you’ve educated yourself with the likes of Morgan Spurlock’s excellent documentary Supersize Me, exposing the horrors of the fast food industry, then you have no reason not to follow what makes you feel good. Ka-ching! “Big Mac and fries, please.”
Some time ago in the UK there was a television advertisement for the cervical cancer vaccine that was being introduced for teenage girls. Did this advert inform the public of the medical facts about cervical cancer and the vaccine? No. Instead, it staged a little feel-good play, where a schoolgirl sang a song with words like “Had the jab we need; girls feeling safe,” combined with images of her playing netball in the school playground with her friends. This was designed to make the viewer feel the positive emotions associated with fun school activities and associate those emotions with the cervical cancer vaccine, regardless of what the viewer does or doesn’t know about the vaccine. The only useful information in the advertisement was a web-link at the tail end, where you could go and get the facts. I mean, really, who keeps a notepad by their armchair to take down websites while they watch TV? The web-link was there because it covers the NHS’s legal asses. Based on the content of the advert itself, it was essentially saying, “You don’t need to think. Information is irrelevant. Just feel how we want you to feel.” How about instead using those thirty seconds to properly inform me about the risks of developing cervical cancer and the side-effects of the vaccine? Then I can make an informed choice about whether to have my daughter vaccinated. But no, the National Health Service prefers to subject schoolgirls to mind control, to lull them into feeling positive emotions instead of presenting impartial freedom of choice. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I suspect the real reason why the vaccine is advertised in this manner is because it is a product, just like a Big Mac is a product, and they want as many people as possible to “consume” this product, so that they can make as much money as possible at the expense of the tax payers who have no choice but to fund them. “But we care!” says the NHS. I’ll believe that when you stop trying to control my mind. Here’s the advertisement; judge what I’m saying for yourself. See how many different things you can spot that are designed to evoke positive feelings in teenage girls – things which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with cervical cancer or the vaccine …
A few days ago I spotted another alarming TV advertisement. This time it was a recruiting drive by the armed forces. The advert dramatised a combat scenario in the style of a first-person shooter videogame, placing the television screen as the eyes of the soldier. It was clearly designed to appeal to the young gaming generation. The viewer is reminded of the good feelings associated with playing games – the adrenaline rush of full-on virtual combat, the pleasure of outwitting an enemy with superior tactics. The subconscious is then encouraged to link the real-life combat shown on the advertisement with the good feelings of videogames. The message is clear: “You like videogames? Well, if you want the ultimate adrenaline rush, sign up for the armed forces!” No useful information. No critical thinking encouraged. It’s all feel, feel, feel. “Feel what we want you to feel. You’re the donkey; just follow the carrot we’re holding in front of your nose. No need to think.” Remember, this isn’t an advert that’s trying to make you change your brand of fabric softener. It’s using the feeling you get from killing videogame characters and attempting to associate it with the killing of real people in real war. Here’s the ad …
These are not sinister exceptions in an otherwise clean and safe world of advertising. This is how the whole advertising game is played. It’s the straightforward and informative adverts that are the exception. Emotional manipulation is the norm. Ever watch a television advert and you thought it was completely daft? Doesn’t matter. Did it make you laugh? That’s what mattered. Can you even remember what the product was? No? Doesn’t matter. Your subconscious took note of that brand logo, and rest assured you’ll feel good when you see it again. Why would a company pay thousands of pounds to parade a celebrity in front of your nose for thirty seconds when a second-rate actor would do just as well? You won’t feel the same way about John Smith as you do about Bruce Willis, Ewen McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson – take your pick. We’ve all had experiences with celebrities before, because we’ve enjoyed their movies, appreciated their recipes, tapped our feet to their music, or whatever. Their presence in an advertisement is not to inform you; it’s to make you feel good and manipulate your subconscious to link that feeling to the product or service, regardless of what you do or don’t know.
This is how the wool is pulled over our eyes. This is how we are treated like sheep every day. This is how we make decisions without any awareness that a great part of the decision-making process is being done for us – below threshold. I encourage everyone to start watching their televisions in a very different manner. In movies and dramas, keep an eye out for those product placement logos. In advertisements, always ask, “What am I being encouraged to feel right now and why?” When a subliminal is spotted, all its power over you is gone. And if you want to go as extreme as tossing your television in the dumpster, it’s further than I’ve gone, but kudos to you. The world may laugh, but I won’t be joining in.
In the 1970s film Dawn of the Dead (a splatter movie with a profound subtext), four humans take refuge in a shopping mall from the undead hoards ravaging the world. Gazing at the zombie-infested parking lot from the safety of the roof, Fran asks Stephen, “What are they doing? Why do they come here?” Stephen replies, “Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.” In another scene, another survivor, Peter, says, “They’re after the place. They don’t know why, they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.” Fran asks, “What the hell are they?” Peter: “They’re us, that’s all, when there’s no more room in hell.” In other words, when Peter looked at the brain-dead behaviour of the zombies, there was no significant difference to the behaviour of a typical human being.
We’re zombies! To one extent or another, we’ve been lulled into becoming mind-controlled non-thinking zombies by a black box that sits in the corner of the living room. We think we have free will, unaware of how much we’re actually reacting to craftily constructed emotional stimuli. The mind control of advertising can only be described as genius, since it can manipulate you to do something whilst you feel it was entirely your free choice. Time to be informed and take back your mind.
Let me hear you make decisions
Without your television.
- “Stripped” by Depeche Mode
[This is my second attempt at an essay on pornography. I’ve done this complete rewrite because (a) I felt the first essay was too way too long, (b) the practical side of it was in danger of being lost amid my spiritual meanderings, and (c) I’ve since had some fresh insights. To those who would criticise me for the essay below, please bear in mind that it doesn’t benefit me in the slightest to be this frank or transparent. The issues facing young people are very real, regardless of how jaw-dropping it might seem to those who have lived more sheltered lives. I say what I say only because I think it is helpful.]
Statistics at Family Safe Media state that the average age of exposure to pornography is eleven years. Take note, that’s the average age, not the lowest. It means that for every person who first encounters pornography at fourteen, there’s another who encounters it at eight. 90% of eight- to sixteen-year-olds say they have viewed pornography online, most while doing homework. 80% of fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds admit to having multiple exposures to hardcore pornography.
These statistics would have been radically different when I was growing up, for one prime reason: there was no such thing as the internet. Today, it’s quite common for parents to naively grant their children unrestricted internet access, often in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and this is clearly why the stats say what they say.
The topic of pornography is so unpleasant for some people that they feel it should be hushed up and never spoken of. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are those who enjoy pornography and feel there is no problem with it whatsoever. And others will settle for a stance somewhere in between. It strikes me that any worthwhile opinion on the morality of pornography should not be based on something as diverse as personal taste, or on a set of values that we’ve merely inherited without question from our family, social circle, or religion. Any worthwhile morality is based on considering the consequences of our actions for ourselves and others. So, I will be asking the question: what are the consequences of exposure to pornography?
There is a mind game that’s commonly played upon children today (being a guy, I’m speaking only for the guys here). You turn twelve or thirteen and your sexuality starts to awaken. On the one side you’ve got religion telling you that lust is a sin, so right away you’re associating your sexual desires with something shameful. But your sexuality is so powerful that you just can’t help these thoughts. The need for release leads you to discover masturbation, and before you know it, you’re a junkie to your own little in-built bio-chemical drug dealer. And you secretly indulge yourself, perhaps with the sense of some divine disapproval. Opposite religion, you’ve got the arena of pornography, readily accessible with a couple of clicks on your home computer. It’s calling out, “Come on in. The water’s fine.” And you’re curious, as any kid would be. Except it’s not just bare breasts and curvaceous bottoms that catch your attention. Quite by accident, you discover … kinkier stuff; stuff that gives you greater excitement, but feels that much more wrong; stuff that you don’t want anyone else to know you’re enjoying. After some struggling, you find an equilibrium of sorts. Sexual attraction draws you to pornography; fear of perversity lets it go so far and no further; need and guilt become uncomfortable bed partners, forever nudging each other. And life goes on, while you feel powerless and ashamed and bewildered. That is the situation that faces a typical modern pubescent teenage boy.
Christians in particular are eager to overcome the problem of addiction to pornography, but unfortunately it is often done from a polarised standpoint. The big mistake Christianity makes is to replace the addiction with impossible standards of behaviour, where it is seen as sinful to allow a single sexual thought to enter your head. This view is based entirely on a misinterpretation of something Jesus said in Matthew 5:28. “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus was speaking specifically to married men with wives of their own. This is clear because he used the word “adultery.” If this had been a message intended for all, he would have said “fornication.” Also, notice it was a rebuke about actual intent towards real living, breathing women, not about our fantasy life. In a situation where you’re totally turned on by a girl, and an opportunity presents itself to have sex but you choose not to, that is the difference between so-called “lust” and the lust Jesus was talking about. Sexual attraction and intent are two different things. He was not criticising people for feeling sexual attraction to others; he was criticising people for the intent of mind that says, “I will have her.” Sexual attraction, in and of itself, is good. Yet Christianity often uses what Jesus said to bind Christians to impossible psychological goals. Impossible, because we are wired for sex. I mean, in a perfect sinless world, is a man supposed to experience his first ever erection on his marriage night? “Aargh! What’s happening to me!” It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, but the “sex is dirty” attitudes that permeate Christianity have got to go. And nobody suffers more than Christian young people.
If you put aside for a moment everything you were taught or conditioned to believe about sex and just look at it for what it is, the truth is fairly obvious. Sex is nature’s way of making sure the human race continues. And nature’s method is really quite crude, if we’re honest. We can romanticise all we want, but nature is basically saying, “I am gonna make this the tastiest dish you ever had, so that you’ve no choice but to eat it.” If it were left up to free will alone, the population would be drastically smaller. As it is, nature constantly nags us to reproduce, whether we want to or not. Most people would never dream of injecting heroin into their veins, but nature uses exactly the same chemical pleasure principle to get us to do what it wants. Of course, we’re more than merely stimulus-response machines. We do have free will, however strongly it is influenced. We can choose what desires to fulfil and which to deny (although nagging nature always insists on making the latter uncomfortable for us).
Of course, there’s more to sex than just procreation, as anyone who has experienced sexual intimacy knows. Sexual intimacy allows you to connect with another person in a deep and fulfilling way. I hesitate to spiritualise it, but it is something way beyond a mere bodily exchange of fluids. In a relationship of this kind, you can feel so connected to another person that the unexpected ending of the partnership can be a devastating blow that takes years to recover from. In naturalistic terms, this bond occurs so that children are born into a stable family. I don’t place any mystical significance whatsoever to being “in love,” or finding “the one,” nor do I think that people who choose to be single are necessarily leading a less than fulfilled life. I simply suggest that the “sex, love and babies” package deal is what nature intended.
In times past, we had a natural, workable relationship with our own sexuality. We weren’t constantly being stimulated day in and day out. We simply hit puberty, chased members of the opposite sex until we found mutual attraction, fell in love, hooked up, and started a family. In other words, we did what we were designed to do. But something happened to affect that balanced situation. It began with the invention of the camera, reached fever pitch with the advent of the mass media, and reached critical mass with the internet. Sex is simply everywhere nowadays. You turn on the TV and the advertisements are using sex to sell anything from cars to toothbrushes. After 9.00 p.m. things are really allowed to get steamy and you might catch an erotic programme, or an unexpected sex scene in a mainstream movie. But the internet is where the real action is. A flashing cursor underneath the word “Google” and a switched-on curiosity is just one small step away from an explosion of pornographic photos and videos.
This is where I notice the first real, tangible problem with porn. The invention of pornography is to the human what the invention of the electric light-bulb was to the moth. There are a few theories about why moths head towards lights. One is that they use the moon as a means of navigating. Without going into detail, suffice it to say we’ve all had the experience of switching on the bathroom light at night and seeing a confused moth flapping against the glass in a persistent but futile attempt to come in. Life was easier and less confusing for the moth before the invention of the light-bulb. His instinct tells him, “It’s the moon. Go that-a-way.” Smack! And his tiny little brain can’t comprehend the fact that he’s not in the open fields any more; he’s in the big city and it’s wall-to-wall with misdirection. He sees the moon everywhere, but can’t understand it’s not the moon.
Porn is exactly the same kind of misdirection. Sexuality was designed to produce children whilst rooting you in a deeply satisfying bond of love with another human being. Porn simply can’t fulfil what your sexuality was designed for. As such, disappointment and unfulfillment are built into it. The potential of human sexuality for love and creation is reduced to a lonely, loveless orgasm, repeated ad infinitum.
Pornography captivates men because women captivate men. Women are supposed to. But women are not on tap in the way that porn is. It is so easy for your entire sexual attention to be consumed by pornography, to the point where you give up on pursuing real relationships, settling instead for a substitute. Like the moth, we no longer see the moon because we’ve been mesmerised by the electric lights. The challenging question (which is impossible to answer, but worth thinking about) is this: how many people are alone who would otherwise be in fulfilling sexual relationships if not for the misdirection of pornography?
What of the actual content of pornography? This is where it gets difficult to talk about because it’s often not pretty, and people can feel soiled by the mere verbalisation of sexual ideas they have never before heard of. Pornography is not (as is sometimes claimed) a celebration of female beauty. Pornography is designed to tap into something quite bizarre and difficult to explain about human sexuality: the ease with which it can be perverted.
Interest in pornography often starts out as innocent curiosity about the opposite sex. The trouble is, you can’t easily control what you encounter, and you can’t always predict your own reaction to it. Maybe all you’re looking for are some nice pictures of some celebrity or other posing with her kit off, but sooner or later, you’re going to come across something a little naughtier that invokes a sense of excitement because it’s forbidden. I’ll give you a fairly tame example, one that isn’t even considered porn. Several years ago, a pop duo called t.A.T.u. emerged from Russia, consisting of two teenage girls who were apparently lesbian lovers (likely just a marketing tactic). In the music video for one of their songs, they kissed each other sensuously while dressed in school uniforms. Not only were the girls lesbians, they were schoolgirl lesbians – the forbiddenness of same-sex relationships and the forbiddenness of slightly underage sex. Neither of these details were by accident; the marketing people behind the band knew exactly what they were doing, just like pornographers know exactly what they’re doing.
Since pornography is unfulfilling by its nature, it acts like a drug that over time requires ever greater stimulation to work. As best I understand it, pornography seems to encourage us to mix sexual desire with negative emotions in order to get a bigger hit. On one end of the scale this is illustrated by porn featuring two people doing something a bit naughty. On the other end it’s women being degraded and abused in horrible ways. If a person new to pornography was immediately shown the nasty stuff, he might run a mile from it. But give him exposure by degrees and it’s another story. When what you’re looking at becomes more mundane and unexciting the more you are exposed to it, the quest for greater stimulation leads to ever darker forms of pornography.
How do you discern what’s normal from what’s perverse? Is it all subjective? I would suggest one simple rule: if you find yourself enjoying the thought of doing something to a woman that you wouldn’t dream of doing to her in a real life relationship context, then you’re perverting your sexuality. The choice is yours, of course. If you want, you can go down that road, but accept the consequences. You can embrace the dichotomy of treating women with respect in public whilst privately wishing you lived in a world where you could do all sorts of things to them without consequence to them and yourself. That’s not the kind of person I want to be.
It’s also worth asking the question, what turns a man into a rapist or a child molester? The sinister mentalities of such people don’t spring into existence from out of nowhere, as if they were one day suddenly possessed by the devil. I think the ongoing indulgence in pornography plays a key part in the lives of people who end up committing sexual crimes against others. You can’t feed your dark side and expect it not to grow.
The crux of my whole objection to pornography is this: porn changes you. If you think you can navigate those waters safely, think again. There’s an adult DVD website that features its own chart of top-selling pornographic movies, and at any time the list will consist of titles featuring all kinds of perverse sexual practices. These are not DVDs stocked to cater for a minority of men with particular fetishes. These are the top sellers! This is clear evidence that the more you indulge in pornography, the further you will slip towards liking the really nasty stuff.
If there’s any doubt about the truth of what I’m saying, there’s one experience you can have that will clear it up. And that is to fall in love with someone, or even to simply recall what it once felt like to be in love with someone. The kind of sexual thoughts you have towards this person are so different from the things you gravitate towards in front of your computer screen. Being in love makes the scales fall from your eyes, bringing the two opposing views of sexuality into sharp focus and showing how utterly different they are, and how horrific one of them is.
When you understand what you’re dealing with, it provides greatest motivation for staying away from pornography. Be wise.
Many of you will know that I wrote a lengthy essay speaking out against pornography. The tone of the essay was one of empowerment against addiction and also of sympathy with those already addicted. I do not believe in condemning people, only in helping them to better themselves.
The essay was part experience, part information gleaned from conversations, part introspection, part personal philosophy, and part research. Throughout the essay, I made no distinction between those elements, because I was not interested in writing some kind of personal confession. However, somebody out there has interpreted it just like that. In the eyes of someone (I don’t know who, because this was communicated to me through a third party), I am viewed as dangerous. I am gutted that someone could so completely miss the 101 positive things I had to say that will help young people steer clear of pornography, and instead see me as some kind of villain.
I knew I was taking a risk to tackle such a taboo topic, but I also knew that so many young people were naively exposing themselves to porn and becoming addicted behind their parents’ backs, and all I could think was, “I know exactly what porn is, and I know exactly how to keep it out of my life. I can’t not share what I know.”
Anyway, I took the essay down, and in doing so I disappointed myself, because I feel I caved in to something I try very hard not to do: live in fear of what other people think of me. It’s the way a lot of people live, and it’s no way to live.
I plan to make some changes to the essay and put it back online. I want to improve the accuracy, amend some parts that I’ve had new thinking on, and snip a lot of unnecessary waffle out.
I try to live an inspiring life. I try not to be someone who merely comes home in the evening, switches on his television, and has no higher purpose than to entertain himself as much as possible on the way to death. I want to be the sort of person who does what he believes is right without fear of the consequences, but sometimes it’s so hard. I am just so disturbed that someone could read something I said and paint a picture of me that is the total opposite of what I am.
I leave you with some statistical information that reveals the sheer scale of pornography on the internet. The word “epidemic” comes to mind, and it’s clear that it extends to young people. I feel this is the ultimate justification for the necessity of an essay like mine:
These stats are from Family Safe Media. Click the link for a lot more.
Sometimes I hear local people talking about what a dump our area (Portadown & Craigavon) is. True, there’s graffiti sprinkled here and there, and you’ll encounter the occasional abandoned housing estate that looks like a set from Escape from New York. But there’s another side to living here that makes it a wonderful place be. And I imagine this applies to the majority of places in Northern Ireland. Sadly, the good side often goes unnoticed, for want of simply turning off the TV and getting on a bicycle or going for a walk. Living here can be a real feast for the eyes, if only we would open our eyes.
On Sunday afternoon I packed a camcorder and went out on my bicycle. I travelled no more than three or four miles from home (from Killicomaine to Craigavon Lakes), photographing anything that caught my eye. Sadly, I ran out of battery before I ran out of things I wanted to film.
So here’s a brief snapshot of the natural beauty of Northern Ireland without any special effects or filters. This is where I live, and this is why I have no desire to leave …
I saw a documentary recently called A Crude Awakening, where a bunch of experts said what they thought about oil. Documentaries tend to have an agenda, so you’ve got to be cautious about what you take from them. In the 1970s, scientists worried over the coming of a new ice age; now it’s global warming. As for oil, the experts seem to think that it’s all going to be gone in the next twenty years.
I’m not going to get too attached to specific projections, but there are certain inescapable facts we can take away from a documentary like this. The main one is: it doesn’t matter when the oil’s going to run out, it is going to run out. Oil is a limited resource. It doesn’t matter how many new repositories we discover, there can only be so many. Whether we use it all up in twenty years or a hundred, one day it will be gone. And the human race will be in big trouble. And I can’t help but smile.
You see, I don’t like the way the world is. On a simple practical level, as a cyclist, I hate these lethally fast, carbon-monoxide spewing, four-wheeled metal monsters that I share road-space with. I can’t help but smile at the thought of oil prices rising and rising, as oil becomes less and less available, while our pay checks stay the same. Eventually, I think people will have to consider bicycles, as it will simply be too expensive to drive. Flying somewhere on holiday may become a luxury that only the elite can afford.
I’ve been a fan of the idea of the electric car, but this documentary gave me a new perspective on that. With electric, there’s no longer any need for petrol, so that solves the immediate oil crisis problem, but all we’ve done is transfer the demand for the needed energy to our home electricity supply. And where does that come from, in the majority of cases? Electricity power plants based on non-renewable fossil fuels: coal. The electric car is also almost as much a pollutant as the regular car. It’s just that the pollution is all spewed out at the power plants instead of distributed evenly across the country via the tailpipes of millions of cars.
Even nuclear power isn’t the answer to the oil crisis. I personally hate nuclear power because of the deadly waste product it generates and our need to store it somewhere safe on our very unsafe planet. But even if I could get my head around that objection, nuclear power depends on – surprise, surprise – a limited, non-renewable source: uranium. And when it’s gone, it’s gone forever. So, with nuclear power, all we’re doing is pushing “The End” forward another by another few years, and not very many years according to the documentary.
They say there’s no way to build enough wind turbines to serve entire countries, in keeping with the energy consumption that we’re used to. Solar panels are very expensive to buy, in comparison to the small amount of the energy they generate. The bottom line is, the oil is going to run out, and there is nothing to replace it with. The modern world is living in a state of addiction to a drug, and someday the dealer isn’t going to have any more product. When that happens, we’re all going to experience withdrawal symptoms. No more long-distance travel. No more import-export trade. No more plastics. The impact sounds monumental, but it will likely happen in stages. Everything will simply start to get more and more expensive, and we will lose our privileges by degrees.
But you know what? It’s absolutely fine by me. Funny, even. I have grown to care a great deal about the environment, and it’s heartwarming to know that man can’t keep doing what he’s doing to the world, in the name of expedience and big business, indefinitely. The means of his destructiveness will run out and the earth will recover. I would love to see the roof of my home decked out with a big solar array, and a wind turbine blowing in the garden, while I learn to live a simpler life (something I’ve already started doing in many ways). Mankind lived for thousands of years just fine before the invention of electricity. We’ll never have to go back to that, but we won’t be able to enjoy anywhere near the level or energy we’re used to. I can’t help but think that in several hundred years time, our children might be sitting in schools having history lessons about the horrors 20th and 21st centuries. And they will be shaking their heads in disbelief at the things we’ve done to the planet in our pursuit of wealth and affluence. “Yes, children. In some population centres there were so many motor vehicles causing so much pollution that entire cities became encased in a smog that was so dense you could photograph it. The smog made it more difficult to breathe and caused illness. But people thought this was normal life, and they refused to change.” And the children will gasp in disbelief. People don’t accept their personal responsibility for the planet’s welfare when they see themselves as one among billions. But when all those billions are spewing out pollution, we are indeed all collectively responsible. There’s a saying that I love: No snowflake in an avalanche ever felt responsible.
I understand the predicament people are in. Not everyone is free and single like me. Not everyone works within two miles of their home. Not everyone can say, like me, “Screw cars. I’m gonna ride a bicycle from now on.” Not everyone feels they can change. But the change is coming. And I think that’s great. You can cling to the present system tooth and nail, feeding your oil addiction while the government makes you poorer and poorer through rising prices, until finally you are broke and beaten; the oil is gone and your money is in the hands of the fat cats. Or you can look for ways to beat the system and turn it into personal empowerment.
Of course, the discovery of alternative energy isn’t something that I can completely write off, and it’s certainly something to hope for. The past hundred years have seen massive technological leaps, and I think we can expect more. It’s only fair to say that change of one kind or another is coming, and none of it looks bad to me. The sooner the better, for the sake of the health of the planet and ourselves. To quote a song by REM: “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”
“Eek! Has Darryl Sloan got a messiah complex?” you cry. Nope. “I aaaam the one and onlyyyy … Nobody I’d rather be!” Good ol’ Chesney Hawkes, eh? You can’t beat ‘im. I’m serious, actually. I love that song. If you can get around the 80s cheese factor and listen to the lyrics, it’s actually carrying a really positive message championing individuality.
Individuality is claiming the freedom to think for yourself, to form and hold your own opinions. And the enemy of individuality is anything which denies you that freedom.
In the previous post I stated that our freedom to think for ourselves is “taken away by Popes, pastors, and every other religious authority that insists it has a right to your mind.” Let me clarify and expand on what I mean by that.
Our freedom to think for ourselves is only taken away because we give it away willingly, and are encouraged to do so. This is illustrated by the way that most Catholics don’t become Protestants; most Protestants don’t become Catholics; the majority of adult Christians are those brought up in Christian homes, rather than people who converted to it from here, there and everywhere. Churchgoers generally aren’t moving towards greater awareness of “the truth,” despite listening to countless sermons week after week. They are buzzing around merrily in their own cliques. That is not my opinion; it is observable reality in all the countless church factions. In my personal case, it is illustrated by the imbalanced state of mind I went through in my earlier years as a Christian – the days when I took at face value what I was told about what it is to be a good Christian. Only by taking back my freedom to think, by slowly realising that I was being fed error on some levels, was I able to say, “No. The way you people want me to think is not right.” And to step away. It was very hard to do, and took a long time. The scope of the problem is illustrated by how many people choose to blindly tow the line of whatever their individual church scene says is right. Churches are not teeming with people who embrace their individuality, nor are they encouraged to be individuals. Paradoxically, all the factions in the church were no doubt created by certain people expressing their individuality and rebelling, but this does not negate the point that the only way to escape the prison of a particular church faction that is in error is to start thinking for yourself and to stop giving up that responsibility to your minister.
The Bible itself, as an authority, is also a problem because when you become a Christian you have to accept all its precepts en masse. If your own intelligence leads you in a different direction on some points, you have to agree with what the Bible says regardless of what you think, because it’s the word of God. Take homosexuality for instance. I believe it’s not natural, okay? I did as a Christian; I still do. But if I allow myself the luxury of disregarding that the Bible calls it an “abomination,” I suddenly find myself able to empathise with other Christians who have been dealing with homosexual urges all their lives, with no evil intent (two of whom I’ve known as close friends, incidentally, and one of whom was responsible for leading me to Christ). And yet, typically, if I’m sitting with another Christian and a homosexual comes on TV, the Christian will happily pass a remark about “that queer.” There is the general feeling among Christians that homosexuality is a great evil, with Bible verses to back that up. My personal individual view is that there’s something very unbalanced about that attitude. So, do I believe what the Bible says, or do I believe what my experience of knowing homosexual Christians tells me? When your indivuality conflicts with a belief system, you’re in trouble. And that’s the problem with belief systems. For me right now, rejecting the belief system and embracing my right to have my own view, it is so refreshing to be able to look at somebody and say, “It doesn’t matter to me what you are,” instead of regarding them with suspicion as if they must be some kind of deviant. If I’m honest, I haven’t looked upon homosexuality as “evil” in a long time; “not normal” is as far as I can reasonably go. So, I’m guilty perhaps of covertly reclaiming a little of my individuality that was not strictly permitted for me.
I’m not just Bible-blasting here. This giving away of one’s freedom to think is equally true of people who vegetate in front of soap operas, and base their moral outlook on the behaviour of what they see there. On the topic of homosexuality, it’s interesting to note how society’s view of it has become gradually more tolerant over the past couple of decades. Is this because people have suddenly become more enlightened? Could be, but (the rights and wrongs of homosexuality aside) I’m more inclined to think the change came about by the bombardment of the population by positive depictions of homosexuality on TV dramas and movies. It’s covert manipulation, folks, made possible only by our willingness to accept what we’re told without thinking for ourselves. True, attitudes to homosexuality really were in the dark ages a couple of decades ago, and social consciousness has probably been moved to a better place, where we’re less likely to kick the crap out of a couple of “queers” in a dark alley, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the means of delivering this better understanding was a manipulative one. I mean, these days a guy like me can hardly raise a single objection to homosexuality on purely rational grounds without being immediately branded homophobic.
The big problem is that we can so easily sacrifice our ability to think for ourselves without realising we’ve done it. Another manipulation I fell prey to at a point in my life is the idea that the scientific view of reality is the only one that holds any water. You get an impression from society – and that’s all it is, just an impression, with no actual substance – that scientists are the truly smart people. Before you know it, you’re beleiving in an axiom like “Nothing is true until I can smell it, taste it, touch it, measure it, or quantify its substance by some means or other.” A man who opens his mind to the possibilty that there may be a God, and who chooses to pray to this God, is seen as backward by comparison. But the wider possibility that science won’t acknowledge is that a whole lot of stuff might be true that we just haven’t discovered with our microscopes and telecopes, etc. It’s no surprise, really, that a great many scientists have an athiestic perspective. They have decided that if they can’t find it, it mustn’t be real. To only have room in your heart for scientific thinking is a great pity. Once you ackowledge that it’s possible to discover truth beyond the narrow constraints of scientific investigation, you realise that the scientific mindset is a prison for your mind – useful within its own capacity, but inadequte as an exclusive principle to live by. The problem is, the wool is pulled over our eyes without us realising it.
Yet another aspect of this lack of freedom to think is what goes on with friendships during our school days. The more I look back on my youth, the more grateful I am to have been a geek – an outcast from the popular crowd. It was painful at times, sure, but the most beautiful gift of this is that peer pressure has absolutely no power over you. Since the popular crowd have already made you an outcast, there is absolutely no benefit to you in doing anything that would please them. You grow into a true individual, making your own decisions, and thinking your own thoughts, without any great feeling that you ought to conform. It’s no surprise that I finished school having never smoked a cigarette or consumed any alcohol.
The ultimate expression of indivuality is when you just don’t give a damn what anybody else thinks of you. That’s largely what’s motivating the direction of many of my posts in recent months. It’s easily mistaken for arrogance, but it’s really just the detemination to live up to a standard that I’ve set for myself: to speak out about what I care about, to be unafraid of rebuttal or ridicule.
It’s an interesting experiment to observe others, keeping your ears peeled for evidence of the fear of what others think – various expressions of the old “What would the neighbours think?” attitude. Even more challenging to look for it in yourself. As ol’ Chesney says, “You are the one and only you.”
[Appended 27 July 2008: On my stats I've noticed that people are arriving at this blogpost through search engines, using phrases like "how to kill yourself." I have no idea how to give a complete stranger a reason to live in a single paragraph, but if you are thinking of committing suicide, what I can do is offer you an understanding, listening ear. So please, contact me. Nothing would make me happier than having opportunity to help someone.]
I have had a problem with being overweight my whole life. It was pretty bad when I was at school, until I finally had a moment of clarity at age sixteen (i.e. I had the hots for a particular girl and wanted to be in with a chance). I cut out lunches, bedtime suppers, and went cycling every day after school. It worked. Within a couple of months I was looking great, and I kept most of the weight off for several years. But I gradually started putting it on again, and although I never ended up with the same obesity as in my boyhood, I did end up with this annoying layer of flab around my middle. I’ve even made an effort to eat reasonably well in recent years, but I never managed to shift the blubber … until something came to a head in December 2007.
I started experiencing some bowel problems. That’s a lie. I’ve been having bowel problems for a few years. You know, soreness, minor bleeding, occasional constipation. Okay, if you need to, have a big horselaugh and get it over with, because I’ve actually got some important things to say here. It got to the point where I would hate the thought of going to the toilet. In December 2007 I decided: This can’t go on. What’s the first thought that comes into your head? “Go see the the doctor.” That might well be a big mistake (I’ll get back to that in a minute). What I did was a little internet research and I came across an interesting site called Wai Says. Some of the stuff on the site is radical, but I came across an interesting piece on how “Eat more fibre” is not the answer to constipation. This piqued my interest, because I had a very fibrous diet already and it wasn’t helping.
To cut a long story short, I learned that the old “Five portions of fruit or veg per day” is a misnomer. I was getting my five portions a day, but I was making it all veg, no fruit. When you think about it, fruit is completely different than vegetables, in terms of sugars, so how can the health profession make this blanket statement, lumping the two types of food together as if you can ignore the quantities in each? I’m convinced that lack of fruit sugars was a major factor in my constipation, and my overindulgence in vegetables (too much fibre) meant that my bowels were often trying to evaculate food too quickly, causing soreness and bleeding.
That’s not the whole story. I still liked my weekly (or twice a week) Chinese takeaways, full of who knows what in terms of artificial additives. I decided the only thing to do was to cut everything out and start off with “safe” foods – those proven to benefit the human body. Six months later, here’s how I eat …
Breakfast: Every morning I have toasted brown bread with butter and honey, a big tall glass of pure orange juice, and a slice of melon. I find this perks me up to the degree that I don’t even feel the need for a caffeine drink. In the beginning I was pining for a cup of tea and a big bowl of cereal, but these cravings vanished after a few days. I actually have a big problem with cereal. I think it was instrumental in me gaining weight in the past, and the processed nature of it responsible for some of my bowel issues. In any case, I find cereal completely unnecessary. Pure orange is great, and I go the extra mile to buy the “not from concentrate” variety.
Lunch: Sometimes I don’t bother. If I do, it’ll be a banana, crisps or nuts, or all of those. You might find it weird I mention crisps. Well, the only crisps I’ll eat are those hand-cooked Kettle Chips containing nothing artificial. Also, I don’t want you to get the idea that I’ve got this completely regimented eating schedule. I don’t. I just know what I can and can’t eat.
Dinner: Every evening I will have some kind of meat with my meal. I regularly buy fish (proper fish, like a Salmon steak straight from the meat counter at your supermarket, not some processed Fish Fingers), steak, and bacon. I never make chips, nor do I buy those oven chips (which are coated in fatty batter). Instead, I cut potatoes up into wedges, roll them in olive oil and cook them in the oven (a little herb is nice on ‘em, too). I make three particular meals regularly: (1) salmon, pasta & salad; (2) steak, wedges, peas, mushrooms & onions; (3) bacon, egg, rice, mushrooms, onions. After dinner, I will often indulge in a cup of tea and some chocolate (the expensive organic 70% cocoa variety); I find it doesn’t do me any harm at all.
I’ll be the first to admit this is not the only way to eat, but it represents a pattern of eating that is the only way to eat, if you want to maintain your health. The pattern is this: Eat real food. Avoid all processed meats and as many artificial food additives as you reasonably can. When you’re at the butchers browsing the meats, did you ever look at the label under the sausages that says something like, “Actual meat content 75%”? What the hell is it that the rest of the sausage is made of! Do yourself a favour and buy an actual pork chop or something. You want to know a really delicious alternative to a humburger? Buy a tenderised minute steak (instead of a processed pattie; the meat will be tougher, but still brittle enough to bite), some tomato (as an alternative to ketchup), add lettuce, onion, cheese, and put in a bun. Delicious.
For a savoury snack, if you buy a packet of Kettle Chips crisps, you know you’re eating actual slices of potato cooked in sunflower oil. Look at the ingedients label on a packet of Pringles and you’ll see an unintelligible list of chemical substances that is frighteningly long. I noticed a Smarties television advert a while ago that said “No artificial colours.” This is the perfect example of the way companies will try to deceive the public into believing their product has a healthy side. Here’s how you tell. When a product says, “No artificial colours,” it means there are artificial flavours, otherwise they would proudly display “No artificial flavours or colours.” I see this all the time, and I steer clear of food like that. When you purchase candy for your child, do you realise you’re giving him nothing more than a lump of chemically enhanced refined sugar? Do you honestly believe that is beneficial? Do you suspect, as I do, that it might be harmful? Why not introduce him to a variety dried fruit snacks instead?
Here’s how common modern eating habits work. The crap is there being sold, so we buy it and eat it. And we find that it tastes nice. So we keep on doing it. And the detrimental effects don’t show themselves for years, until we suddenly realise we’ve turned into Ten-Tonne-Tessie, or we’re diabetic, or we’ve got bowel cancer, or who knows what else. A friend once said to me, “All things in moderation.” But to me, processed foods and artificial additives are more akin to slow-working poisons, and it would be crazy to subscribe to the idea of arsenic in moderation. One microgram won’t kill me, but don’t ask me to eat it anyway. I was at someone’s house a while ago (quite a rich family) and they asked me if I would like a glass of orange. I said, “Yes, please.” Then I watched them lift a big bottle of diluted “orange” from the cupboard, fill the bottom of my glass with this chemical substance, then top it up with water. And they handed this poison to me like it was normal. These are people with their heads in the sand, who (despite being rich) will save a few pennies by buying artificial orange juice that doesn’t even taste like orange, and think they’ve make a sensible choice. I let my guard down recently at a barbeque, where there was processed meats on offer. So I indulged, just this once. I paid the price the following day; my body, now re-sensitised to eating real food, almost felt like it was trying to tear me a new arsehole.
Am I an alarmist? I think I need to be. I’m no dietition, and I’ll be the first to admit there may be some innacuracies in this article, but if you still think there’s no link between cancer and food, you clearly haven’t been watching the news in recent years.
I no longer have bowel problems. And I’m glad I was able to sort my problem out without resorting to a doctor. Although I didn’t realise until recently how lucky an escape I may have had. I know of someone else who has bowel problems who did go to see a doctor. And the doctor prescribed a remedy. In other words, the doctor gives you something that allows you to keep on harming your body without noticeable ill effects (until it’s too late), and also helps keep the laxative industry running smoothly, as well as helping you grow dependent on an artificial means of keeping your body functioning normally. The last thing the health profession needs is to run out of sick people. It’s called treating the symptoms instead of the causes. Far be it from me to strike off all the good doctors in the world, but this is something to watch out for.
I could very easily have ended up sitting here today as overweight as I was in December, thanks to doctors. “Ah, you must have Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Here’s a prescription.” Instead, I’m 2.5 inches slimmer at the waist and feeling a darn sight better than I’ve felt for most of my life. And I did it without dieting. Dieting is fruitless because it’s temporary. I lost weight even though I’m eating chocolate regularly, for goodness sake! What I did was make a permanent lifestyle change – one that I’ve adjusted to completely and love, and one that will stand to me for the rest of my life. I have not only woken up to the dangers of unhealthy eating; I have lost any kind of craving for it. When you detoxify your body from all that crap, you learn that the foods God placed on this earth for our enjoyment are actually delicious.
The only downside to this healthier way of living is that it costs more. And to that, I reply with a simple, “So what.” Putting your health and your bank balance side by side on the scales strikes me as foolhardy in the extreme.
My previous post provoked an excellent debate. What I want to do now is amplify something I mentioned as little more than a closing remark in the post, because it’s really this remark that lies at the heart of the matter of why I’m so convinced there’s life after death and why athiests are so convinced there isn’t.
It’s the issue of conditioning. We have all been conditioned. Sometimes it’s as overt and obvious as those kids on the Jesus Camp documentary, indoctrinated by their teachers to believe the craziest ideas. And sometimes it’s so subtle that you carry it from the moment you learn it till the moment you die, without ever realising you were imprisoned by it. And the way to escape from it is to question everything, especially why you believe what you believe. Conditioning happens through every means the world throws at us to learn something, be it the media, education, religion, etc. These things are not evil in and of themselves, but we are conditioned every time we take in information and fail to question that information. Every time we get lazy in our thinking.
I’ve been waking up gradually in recent years, and I’m probably nowhere near fully woken up. A while back I wrote a post called “A Christian perspective on Jericho” (the TV series, not the Biblical city), which is an example of how I had started, at that time, to question the idea of Capitalism, something that we in the West are entrenched in. I never questioned Capitalism before, because we’re all Capitalists – so it must be the right way to live, right? Rubbish! That’s like living in 1940s Germany and saying, “The Nazis must be right, because everyone around me is one.” Capitalism is all about the ownership of things and the accumulation of wealth to the detriment of all else, including the welfare of the planet. School is shaped around the idea that the greatest course of action is for a student to stay in education as long as possible, so he can be as qualified as possible, so he can get the best possible job, and make the most money. We are encouraged to spend our lives pursuing the vacuuous quest of the accumulation of wealth. Nine years ago, I was faced with a crossroads. On the one hand there was a low-income job that I knew I would enjoy greatly, and on the other was a more stressful and problematic job that offered more money and status. Thank goodness I chose the former, but the choice was not easy, because I had been conditioned to think that the latter was what I was supposed to pursue and that not choosing it would have been some kind of personal failure. Conditioning! It’s bloody everywhere, and it’s tricky stuff to see!
Now, I’m going to bring into sharp focus what I think is one of the most subtle forms of conditioning. Science has taught us to think like this: “If you want me to believe something, show me verifiable proof. Without proof, I will not believe.” It sounds correct, doesn’t it? Deny it and you might as well start believing in flying pigs, eh? Oh, if only it were that simple, but it’s not, as I will demonstrate …
A man starts off by contemplating his death. He says, “There’s no evidence of an afterlife, so I won’t believe it. Death is the end.” So far, we are agreed. Then he considers the implications of his belief. He realises, ultimately, that his life will be robbed of meaning by his death. It will be as if he never lived, all his memories and experiences lost. He takes it further, and realises that one day, billions of years in the future, the same fate will befall the sun, and it will be as if the human race never existed, all our great achievements and knowledge forgotten. So what does he do? He shrugs and says, “That must be the way it is. Wishing otherwise doesn’t make it so.” Maybe he tries again, and asks himself, “Is there life after death?” And he answers, “There is no evidence, so I cannot believe it. No.”
Here’s where I differ. I give my mind permission to see the absurdity of the idea that the human race is meaningless, to contemplate the mockery this makes of our every achievement. And I allow this new information become a factor in the question. So, I ask it a second time: “Is there life after death?” Yes! When the alternative turns the human race into the greatest cosmic joke of all time, of course there must be life after death. The alternative is absurd beyond imaginging.
We have been conditioned not to allow the full range of our rationality to determine our view of reality. This is the inadequacy of the scientific method. It says that while a thing may be true, the human being has no right to believe it unless he arrives at that belief through an examination of observable evidence.
If you think the only road to truth is through observable evidence, you are thinking from inside a prison of your own making. Learn to see the wider picture of human rationality and break free. Don’t blind yourself with the idea that it’s evidence versus flying pigs, when there’s a hell of a lot more that goes into good clear-headed thinking.
Not long ago, I enjoyed watching the first season of the TV series Jericho. It wasn’t fabulous viewing, chiefly because it descended to the realm of post-apocalyptic soap opera, but there was another side to the story that I found fascinating. I don’t think everyone notices this (and I’m not even certain the writers see their show in this light!) so I want to draw attention to it. To me, Jericho is a story about the failure of capitalism.
Capitalism: an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
This is the way we live today. Life is about the pursuit of wealth. I devote enough time to that pursuit as a means of survival: to enable me to keep a roof over my head and to buy those things that make life liveable. I could probably have a high-flying IT career if I put my mind to it, but instead I chose to do a job I enjoy, regardless of the lesser wage. I’ve got some perspective. But not everyone does. Some people devote their entire lives to the accumulation of wealth. And it’s no wonder. It’s essentially what school teaches us to do: get as qualified as possible, so you can get the best job you can, so you can make as much money as you can. When you’re a kid, and you spend six hours a day, five days a week, under the pressure of that mentality, most of us end up buying into it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for education, but education with a little wisdom thrown in would be better.
The reason I like post-apocalyptic fiction so much is because we get to sweep away all the things we hate about present society and start again. Never mind that all the good things get swept away, too. I get a kick out of radical change. In Jericho, the USA is devastated by a nuclear attack. Some towns survive unscathed; Jericho is one such. Initially, the townsfolk get together under the guidance of the mayor. The US government no longer exists. Life is thrown into such disarray that the only course of action that makes sense is neighbour helping neighbour. But what’s really interesting about Jericho is that few of the people buy into it. They’re so infected with capitalistic thinking that not even the end of the world can bring them to their senses. First, there’s the old lady who runs the store. Suddenly, everyone needs what she’s got, so she uses it as an opportunity to drastically raise the prices. Later, a teenage boy inherits the store, and is fierce about retaining personal ownership of it. His girlfriend think he’s so cool because he kicks ass to stay on top of his rights. Likewise, one of the farmers is determined that he still owns all the of the grain in his fields, and any decision to share it will be made by him. When refugees arrive, they are all housed together uncomfortably in one building. It takes the townsfolk so long to allow the refugees to live in the empty homes in town, out of some ridiculous loyalty to the owners who are most likely lying dead in another part of the country. Things really heat up when Jericho has to have dealings with its neighbouring town. A willingness to share resouces and help one another is put aside in favour of an “if I do this for you, what are you going to do for me” attitude. Jericho withholds what the other town desperately needs, and the end result is war.
I found it amusing watching the people of Jericho blindly clinging to the self-centred ethics they were accustomed to and seeing it fail them at every turn. I have to ask myself whether this “message” was deliberately put into the series, or whether the writers were simply writing what they considered to be normal, decent behaviour. I honestly don’t know! Regardless, the message is there.
The thing is, this is probably how the human race would behave in those circumstances. It’s all me, me, me. Life revolving around accumulation and ownership, which is daft when you consider that the only things that are of any use to us are the things we can make use of while we’re alive. You can take nothing with you when you die.
I’m always impressed with how things were done in the 1st century Church:
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. (Acts 2:44-46)
There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. (Acts 4:34-35)
That’s a far cry to today’s Church, isn’t it? People arrive on Sunday morning, sit down and listen to a sermon, then leave and disconnect themselves completely from the lives of everyone else there until the following Sunday. If someone in the Church suddenly lost their home, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else offered no more assistance that an apathetic, “Sorry.” Will the Church ever be like it was in the beginning? Probably not. But at least if some of us realise how utterly infected we are by the fallout of capitalist life – greed, in other words – then it’s a step in the right direction.
Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. (Proverbs 23:4-5)
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