groundhogdays

Donnie Darko comments at one point that ‘destruction is a form of creation’.  He’s analysing The Destructors by Graham Greene.  It’s a short story, described as ‘a whopping thirteen pages’.  I don’t think it is a form of creation.  When we break something, it is not for the purpose of the aftermath, it’s entirely more primal than that.  When we break things on purpose, we’re searching for control.  A place has been reached where other actions seem to have little gravity on a situation.  Frustration builds and the basic parts of our brain recall that a large impact can be achieved with minimal effort by smashing something up.  When fights break out from heated arguments, it’s because the person that threw the first punch no longer wants to deal in words, perhaps because he doesn’t feel he can adequately win the argument that way.  When we destroy something, we do create something new - bottles will break into bright shards - but that is not the point.  The point is the power that we reclaim and dominate over that attacked small fragment of our lives.

I took a shortcut through the park on the way to poker this evening.

I had my sunglasses on and tbh they’re so dark I can’t really see where the fuck I’m going.

A girl of about 10 in a spongebob jumper ran right past me shouting to her mates:

‘I’ve just been trying to convince those people over there I haven’t got jizz on my back!’

They grow up so fast.

“Trepar”, in Portuguese means climb. For this game, this operator didn’t buy separate Brazilian translations from us. In Brazilian “Trepar” means “FU**”.

The Brazilian rules state:

“Simply click the HIT button to FU** the Money Tree. You are given three chances to FU** to the next rung of the ladder and win the prize that is displayed. If you fail to FU** you lose a lifeline. If your FU** is successful, the winning value is credited to your account and the lifelines are restored. The prizes displayed in white are free FU**.”

I work in Ipswich, so it got my attention when an Ipswich hospital failed to meet “essential standards” recently.  It got me thinking about a distance from patients and in some cases apathy I have personally experienced when talking a few NHS staff members.  In some cases, a patient seems to be something that will exist however it’s going to exist.  Maybe not quite so far as live or die in all instances, but in these cases there seems to be little caring for the person themselves.

This is by no means an attack on all NHS staff.  Some of the most caring people I know work in the NHS.  However it seems, from what I’ve perceived, to be a relatively recent but progressive problem.  One that can’t be one just limited to those with sufficient psychopathic tendancies to enter the world of medicine and be comfortable with horrific injuries, surgery and death being a part of their lives on a sustained basis.  It’s more likely that the problem is a symptom of a gradual shift in the behaviour of society.

Now I’m a card-carrying agnostic.  In fact, the more I see of the world, the more I’m leaning heavily towards atheism.  I’ve got real problems with organised religion.  I think that many of the people in powerful religious positions are prone to abuse that power, whether it be by living in massive palaces whilst others in the world starve, or amongst horrific and hopefully rare individuals the touching of young children.  I’m no saint in terms of giving to the poor.  I give a small amount of money to the NSPCC each month but that’s it, but these people hold themselves out as examples in a belief system based around morality so they open themselves up to criticism.

That being said, there are some real benefits to religion.  During World War II, I’m reliably informed by my grandparents (both regular churchgoers today, as I imagine many of your grandparents are or were) that religion played a great part in how they got through the war.  Indeed, when a society is put in peril and/or separated from the outside, banding together around common beliefs gives it a strength in morale at a time when panic could set in [‘The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice’, Kenneth Pargament 2001].

Religion, particularly the vanilla-y jam and jerusalem religion of the Christian church in this country teaches us to have a real regard for other people.  ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a maxim.

Since 1983, Christianity in this country has dropped by 20% [www.britsocat.com (as at 2011)].  Less than a third of teenagers now believe in God and I cannot help but wonder whether there is a link with the attitude of care towards other individuals.  I cannot imagine a modern-day Cliff Richard getting to number one at Christmas now, yet it happened all the time when I was a child.  Not that this is a bad thing at all, but it does indicate a cultural belief shift.  TV shows like Cribs show the amazing, affluent lifestyle that pop-stars can have and the world of X-Factor shows how normal people, that the populace can relate to, can achieve it.  Society is so much more disposable now, and maybe so are people’s lives.  It may be that religion as a concept is becoming obsolete, but with it, the caring elements that it teaches might be slipping out of society too.  It is very easy to persuade someone into compassionate behaviour, Pavlovian style, at a young age by training them with the stick of eternal damnation but when that stick is removed and what’s left is the fuzzy benefit of being a good person, many are questioning the personal gain.

Perhaps religion isn’t the answer but it seems to me that as a society, we need something to guide us to kind morals in its place.

Maybe as a species we’re not predisposed towards compassion unless someone else tells us to do it…  Is that what upbringing is?  If it is, how do we as a people tackle what is evidently a growing problem?

As an aside, ‘The Cambridge companion to atheism’ [Michael Martin, 2007] collects together sources suggesting that 65% of Japanese people do not believe in God, 55% do not believe in Buddha and 84% state they have no personal religion and just follow the culture of the Japanese people and yet the Japanese are known for their culture of respectful behaviour towards others.