Judging a book by its cover

In these days of political correctness it is often said that “you can’t judge a book by its cover”, meaning we cannot validly judge people on their appearance - however this is generally not true. If you are an astute, socially sensitive person, you will able to assess someone in seconds from dozens of factors about them that you will automatically perceive. You have this skill because it has been honed across thousands of generations primarily for defence purposes.

There are exceptions to most rules, and sometimes you might turn out to be mistaken about a person, but in my 34 years so far I have found this to very rarely happen. People give away a myriad of signs about who they are, their inclinations, tastes, psychological state and outlook on the world. You can tell a great deal about a person from their gait alone. Don’t accept the absurd politically correct claim that you cannot judge a book by its cover. Just learn to read even better… and look out for the best books.

(Image above: a bible. If it looks dark and serious that’s because it is!)

Under armed guard

I am paying money each month to help keep this woman alive. She is under the constant threat of death from Muslim fanatics, because she - in soft and thoughtful tones - speaks the truth about her experiences under Islam.

I’m paying this money not only to save an individual. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is more, even, than that. She represents all women who are fighting back against the oppression of theocracies in the world, she represents reason in an age which (incredibly) embraces baseless superstition, and she represents the fact that even heavily indoctrinated people can sometimes break free of, as AC Grayling has called it, the ignoble grip of faith. She also represents the fact that these are people who would like to convert or kill any of us “infidels” if they could (and indeed they would be following their texts correctly to do so).

You can find out more about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s story and you can help protect her too, and thereby make a statement that you also reject theocratic fascism and absurd superstition, and that - most of all - you value human life.

Kate Bush: The Sensual World

Good old Kate Bush. Such a great back catalogue…

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Punctured faces

Very often you will be walking around London, or almost anywhere in the developed world (yes, the developed world) and you will see a person with a beautiful face which they have ruined by puncturing it in a bizarre place.

Not content with perhaps a discreet hole for an ear-ring (which I personally find effeminate on men) they will have a stick through their eyebrow, a row of spikes through the upper area of their ear, a stud in their tongue or indeed a ring inside their ear lobe so large that you could poke your finger through it.

It might make you wince to see these people. It looks as though they have had an accident with a rivet gun, and many times you might feel a compassionate impulse to offer to assist them with their apparent injury. It’s hard to believe these assaults are self-inflicted, and frequently you might find yourself picturing their face without the spikes, studs and rods which so terribly and literally deface what would otherwise have been beauty.

Now, why is it offensive to see these things? “What’s wrong with it?”, I am asked. “Live and let live”, etc. Well, the first thing to understand is that the moral theory of consent is wrong.  Just because someone consents to something doesn’t make it well advised or right, for them or for others around them. People are often mistaken about what is good for them. The moment a moral relativist concedes this point, their position is severely weakened.

These piercings are painful. People have gone through pain to acquire them and any sensitive person should be reminded of that on seeing them. They are also like scars or blotches on an otherwise pleasant and unblemished landscape - and self imposed ones at that. Faces are extremely important to human beings. We can discern the slightest differences in expression. We’re attracted, usually, to their softness, their regularity and approximate symmetry. A ring, rivet or spike ruins a face as much as skillfully applied make-up can enhance it, because it is completely incongruous.

What makes people do this to themselves, and without shame (sometimes even with pride)? They do think it looks nice, I grant you, but this is because their aesthetic judgment has been severely off-balanced by other psychological factors. It is a statement. The exact content will vary, but major ingredients are likely to be “I am a victim”, “Look how much pain I can take”, “Look at me”, “I don’t care what you think”, and so on. Frequently mere juvenile cries for attention.

Another reason people do this to themselves is because they are following fashion. In particular, they are following the very prevalent current fashion which betrays civilisation by idealising primitive beliefs and customs of the past. One begins to wonder how soon it will be until western people begin doing even more harmful things such as elogating their necks with rings, putting plates in their lips and sacrificing their young to imaginary gods.

It is hard to see why this perverse attraction to a more ignorant past has come about, but it is probably a reflex reaction to the superficiality and materialism of today’s age - and it is equally misguided.

Personally I am always inclined to completely ignore such people, because that is what they least want, but I cannot help but feel sorry for them. Some adornment, fine. But this kind of painful and aesthetically repellant self-mutilation is really better avoided by all concerned. Only political correctness prevents more people from saying so.

Addition: Tatoos. Regarding these let me merely say a 60 year old looks even worse with them than does a 20 year old. Especially when they make a statement with which the poor individual no longer agrees. It is a misguided arrogance to think we can improve upon the simple natural beauty of our bodies by covering them with tatoos. Do yourself a favour: save the money (and the pain, and the regret).

See also this excellent analysis of tattooing by Theodore Dalrymple.

Two kinds of atheist

There are two kinds of Christian, and there are also two kinds of atheist. The first is the person who is not religious simply because they can’t be bothered. This lazy kind of atheism is not to be admired, but it is to be preferred to irrational theism.

The second kind of atheist is the person who has carefully considered all the issues and seen the patent contradictions, inconsistencies and immorality of religion - and accordingly rejected it.

Within this latter bracket there are many other types, as Richard Dawkins has detailed, but in particular there are two: those who remain quiet and those who speak up. If you care about the world at all, then realize right now that what Christopher Hitchens said is true: there is no “over there” and “over here”. Fascist theocratic states such as Iran are a threat to us all (and even if they were not, we should still be concerned). The time for sitting on the fence is over. Stand up, be counted, and fight for humanism. If you don’t, you are effectively part of the problem.

U2: Window in the Skies

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Two ways of living (advice to the young)

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Bertrand Russell

There are two broad ways of living. The first is one whereby life lives you. This is the mode of living whereby, although you may be having great thoughts, good ideas, etc. you see it as not really your place to push them on people. You think you’re probably right, but you don’t want to cause any upset, and after all, these people are: older than you / more experienced than you / more sure of themselves, whatever. And you want to be polite. You’ve been raised to be polite. So you stay quiet. You wait to be discovered. Life lives you.

I personally wasted far too much time living this kind of life, and I am keen that you do not do the same. When you are young it’s hard. But the moment you get into adult society and free from the threat of actual physical violence (simply because people are now afraid for their jobs and aware of litigation) you should start speaking up, loudly.

I have realized that in many ways life for me in recent years has consisted largely of a steady, inevitable, removal of the benefit of the doubt from others. You don’t “get discovered”, you make yourself discovered. Furthermore there are certain qualities which a person must possess in order to appreciate them in others, and society is a pyramid. If you have rare qualities (such as refinement or intellect) you’d better hold up a beacon, throw out a flare. And keep throwing them out. The Internet has made this far easier than it used to be.

You need to come out, fearlessly. Be sure you can justify what you say, and then say it. Empty vessels do tend to make the most noise. Many people do not know what they are talking about but act as if they do. You do yourself a gross disservice if you know what you are talking about and act as if you don’t. Not only is such meekness generally unattractive to others, it is unwarranted.

So the second way to live is to take a grip of life, look at it, as Russell said, “fair and square”, consider your convictions carefully and be true to them. And, if you are not ashamed of what you believe, get up and say it. You will make some enemies, certainly - and you should consider what they say - but it is also the only way you will make real friends. You owe it to yourself to assert yourself, right now, because life is short… and the alternative is really no kind of life at all.

A short appraisal of “24″

I don’t watch the television because there is so much rubbish on, however, the one programme I do watch on DVD is Fox Television’s 24, which is extremely well acted and produced. Its storylines can be contrived, granted, but the programme nonetheless teaches a variety of very important lessons, including:

• The need to keep our own problems in perspective.
• The importance of integrity.
• That things are not always as they seem.
• The importance of decisiveness.
• The need to be confident, clear and concise.
• Utilitarianism.
• The need to guard against political naivity and idealism.

While plot mechanisms can become tired, these principles never do.

Money for nothing

I’m actually not talking about the track from the classic 1985 album by Dire Straits (pictured) . Rather, in association with my articles The Embrace of Decadence and The Problem with Gambling, I would like to repeat how the most admired person in society has apparently come to be he who does least work for most gain. The property dealer, the money trader, “management consultants” and so on. Some of these people do work, but often what is most celebrated is how little work they might have do in order to make money.

Take for example this person, who actually proudly says the following on his site:

“One of my personal interests is learning how to make money totally risk free. The perfect trade I like to call it. It seems like a dream but there are plenty of people out there that do it. These people (you may know someone like this) have everything yet seem to do nothing. I am one of these people. You can distinctly carve up the working population in to two categories:

1. the people that do the work and create value

2. the people that recognise the differences in value and exploit it

I fall in to the second category. I do not create, carry out or construct anything. All I do is recognise that something is undervalued, buy it and then sell it for its true value.”

He doesn’t even seem to notice that this is the same behaviour as a parasite.

These are the people I admire least in society, and those I admire most are the opposite: those people who work hard at something they believe in for its own sake. Wealth might or might not come along as a pleasant bonus, but it is not the primary objective.

I like to have money, but I like more the feeling that I have done my best and been honest with those around me. In fact this is vital to me. It is called integrity, and it is a shame it is not held in higher esteem by society, and by tabloid newspapers in particular.

Cultural evening: A lecture on Rumi

This evening I attended a lecture by Lady Mohini Kent Noon at Asia House (of which I am now a paid-up member) about the figure Rumi, who was a Sufist theologian and poet in around 1200 AD. It was to promote a new play called “Rumi : Unveil the Sun”.

Let me say clearly first of all that the people who organised this event were all highly gracious, and I had the pleasure of chatting with the Chief Executive of Asia House, who is a charming combination of so many admirable qualities they are too plentiful to list. Asia House themselves are to be commended, since they open up a dialogue between east and west, however I had some reservations regarding the subject at hand this evening. I’m sure Asia House would not deny me the freedom to express them.

It is always interesting to learn about other cultures, but this was really a celebration of the irrational, as we often see in the western world these days. Rumi was a Sufist Muslim who believed that poetry and dance was a “pathway to god”. Excuse me? Are we in the year 2007 or are we still in the year 1200, when people might have been excused for believing such nonsense?

As a rational humanist I am tired of hearing about god in this day and age and saddened to see such an unthinking celebration of a charlatan, or at best a delusional individual.

Following the speech there was a performance of some Indian music, and the musicians had travelled from Delhi only today. We need to be clear about this: they are probably nice people and it is admirable they had travelled from Delhi, however the music was somewhat primitive, lacking in melody, and involved a great deal of drum banging and wailing. Even worse, I fear I know what the wailing was about: it was more than likely about how miserable we are as mere humans and how great god is, which I (and many other humanists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins) find sickening. We should face it: the music itself was not sophisticated and neither was the message.

What are we to make of all this? Well, it is typical of a trend in western society these days to idealise and romanticise times gone by and fantasise about “hidden meaning” etc. instead of being happy with what we have. This man Rumi was living at a time when people had no idea even what the sun was. We do not have sufficient grounds to accept his metaphysical claims, nor those of Mohammed or any other unproven mystics.

We must learn to separate morality from religion and frankly we should call a spade a spade. It is not admirable for people to quiver in self-deprecating submission to an imaginary deity while banging a drum - this is ridiculous and pales in comparison with the musical genius of Mozart, Beethoven or the likes of U2 or Sigur Ros, who craft multi-layered masterpieces of sophisticated emotional impact.

People: learn about other cultures - great - that’s what I do. But do not worship the primitive and absurd. Instead be thankful for how far we have come and how much more we understand now than they did then.

Addition: The gallery inside Asia House which I visited prior to the event was actually far superior to the event itself. It featured insightful photography of China in 1979. See my photos for this…

Sigur Rós: Andvari

If you have not yet been lucky enough to hear the beautiful ethereal music of Icelandic band Sigur Rós, here’s your chance… This is a gig I would like to have been at.

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