Why I hate Christmas (and why I don’t)

If I could change it, my Christmas would focus on the good things -

“Peace on earth and goodwill to all men” (and women of course)

It’s a time when we suspend our normal lives for a few days. We suspend the strife and stress of everyday life, we try to see the good in people we have little in common with – especially family members.

It’s a winter festival – so we celebrate the joys of winter – good food and drink, real fires, clear frosty nights, the muted colours and clarity of the landscape in winter.

It’s a time for parties, feasts, warmth, love and friendship

We would sing together and laugh together.  

But the rest would have to go:

It would have nothing to do with the birth of Christ. Nobody knows when Christ was born but the least likely date is mid December.  I’d still call it Christmas though because to change the name would offend lots of people I like and respect.

It would not be Pagan either – we don’t need any religious or pseudo-religious excuse to celebrate the turning of the year.

There would be no Christmas shopping. We would give gifts to those we love but not things we had bought.  If I couldn’t make or write or picture something for them I would give them something I already owned.   People would stop spending ridiculous amounts of money giving people STUFF they don’t need.

We would refuse to adopt American ideas of Christmas like SANTA CLAUS, and those horrible Christmas songs like “White Christmas”.

We would do away with all the “Dickensian” rubbish and return to an older more austere form of celebration. Dickens would go back on the Eng Lit bookshelf where he belongs, and all the mawkish Victorian carols would be banned.

We would stop sending Christmas cards to people we scarcely know and wouldn’t recognise in the street.  We would write personal messages to people we like and admire who otherwise we might lose touch with.

We would get rid of everything fake -  fake snow, plastic santas, fake conifers, fake log fires, fake goodwill, false sentiment

People would be fined for wasting electricity on gaudy lighting displays

Bah Humbug! Scrooge was right about the humbug but recognised in the end that the real message of Christmas was a good one.  So why not get rid of the humbug and keep the good stuff?

Food prices up again

The BBC News announces: 

"Food prices look set to rise after poor UK harvests due to recent wet weather." Further down the article says:

“Meanwhile, the global price of wheat has risen by some 30% over the past 12 months, adding to fears over rises in food prices”.

It’s easy to see the connection between the cost of food produced in Britain and the bad summer. We’ve had bad summers before, and we’ve had food price rises before. It’s the global bit that’s interesting – and frightening.  For 40 years or more the Green movement has been saying that there are not enough resources in the world to sustain the human population at Western levels of consumption, and that was before we knew about global warming.  From the eighties until fairly recently the “business as usual” proponents of “sustainable growth” have fought back as human technical ingenuity found ways to keep expanding the availability of those resources. 

They did that by expanding the use of fossil fuels, and it is this expansion which is driving climate change. This view is now very widely understood, but it is not at all easy to understand the completeness of the vicious circle we’ve got into, and perhaps the most difficult is why we got into it. The how is to do with the laws of entropy and the why is to do with the laws of evolution. Both are explained in this book, but it’s not easy reading: http://www.amazon.com/Too-Smart-our-Own-Good/dp/052176436X

I’ve tried to explain my understanding of these things here (My 2012).

Many now believe that it’s too late to do anything about it and that huge change is about to overtake the whole world. I prefer to believe that we will only start getting real when we are at the brink of catastrophe. Every news item like this brings that point closer.

Cabins Boats and Sheds

We watched Kevin McCloud playing the hippie last night - http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kevin-mcclouds-man-made-home/4od

It was an entertaining programme and I would have liked to see a straight documentary about him building a cabin on his patch of land, but as ever with modern TV the producers took over and turned it into something silly. It had to follow the model of other “lads” programmes and go completely over the top with biodiesel from sewage. Still, it came at a good time. We have just sold out boat.

The money had been transferred the day before and at 9 am yesterday we handed over the keys of the wide-beam barge “Father Goose” to Jonathan Taphouse.  This had been our second home in Bristol Harbour for nearly 3 years. Unfortunately, our situation had changed and six months ago we decided we would have to sell it. We had 30 people view it, two price reductions and three previous buyers pull out. It took a month of negotiations, surveys, and an ever growing catalogue of things wrong before we finally agreed a price.

This then was the moment I’d been working towards for 6 months and I felt awful.

Yesterday morning we went shopping and I spent an hour in Jessops unsuccessfully trying to decide what camera I wanted to buy. It didn’t make me feel any better, and even getting home, knowing I had a large chunk of money in the bank didn’t improve my mood much.

I suppose it’s a bit like losing a cantankerous old family member. Father Goose was something I had loved; it had become an intimate part of our lives.  There were lots of happy memories as well as much that was stressful and not so happy. Actually perhaps it’s wrong to think in terms of happy and unhappy. The boat, the pontoon, the people, the barges, cruisers, boats and ships, the streets, the buildings, the water, the swans, the light, the sounds...they were all intensely familiar. We can easily experience them again, but we will never be part of them again.  

For several months now my huge three year house-building project has been winding down. As I approached the last of the jobs on the house, the job of selling the boat took over as my primary focus. Now it’s gone and I’m finding it hard to replace. We have reached the position that Thelma has been longing for - financial stability. My brain tells me I am very fortunate, but my stomach is telling a different story. I’ve been feeling slight nausea for several days. It could have a physical cause – fighting off a virus perhaps- but it’s much more likely to be subconscious. I dreamed last night of being suddenly sick on the floor. What’s that about? I can’t remember the last time I was sick.

All my reading and research tells me that our human lives have no purpose, so why do I feel the need for my comfortable existence to have a purpose?  Why do I want to achieve something?

Partly I am uncomfortable with having large sums of money in the bank. By head buzzes with big ideas  - the flat in Bristol, the camper van and lately the cabin in the woods. What’s the common thread? I suppose they are all ways of finding an alternative to living all my life in one place.  For most of my life I’ve had a second home of some kind, even though my income has seldom risen even to the average. Now it’s very unlikely I will ever have another second home. 

Oh, poor you! No second home! Join the real world!

For Thelma it’s easy – if you want to live somewhere else for a while you rent. She does not share my intense need for “My Space” so well understood by the digital community, and by Kevin McCloud. A rented space is someone else’s space you are borrowing for a while.  It’s probably a male territorial thing.  We carry our personal life with us in our gadgets. This is why cars are so popular – the car is your space.  What Thelma sees so clearly is that the greater your commitment to an alternative space, the more like a second home it becomes, and the less freedom you have to move and change.

The challenge for me now is to adapt to a period of greater flexibility but less territory.  Perhaps just a little cabin? A shed?

On reading "Straw Dogs" by John Gray

I’ve not yet finished this book and I am also half way through Nicholas Stern’s “ A Blueprint for a Better Planet”, Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”,  Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and ”Britain on the Couch”  by Oliver James. I’ve also just finished re-reading Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”.

Before “Straw Dogs” if asked why I am reading these books I would have said “To understand why humans behave the way they do.” I saw this as some kind of seeking after truth. Gray makes it clear that a search for truth is just another form of faith. “Darwinian theory tells us that an interest in truth is not needed for survival or reproduction. More often it is a disadvantage.”

Gray’s book attacks just about every pre-conceived notion that we humans have contrived. He attempts to sweep away all our illusions, all the fanciful ideas that our overgrown brains construct to make our lives more comfortable. There is no purpose to our existence, we cannot teach ourselves to live better, there is no good and no evil, no morals, no justice, no ethics, no afterlife. Happiness is irrelevant. Even our consciousness has very little control over our lives which are mostly lived exactly as animals live, by reflex.

I’m not sure that I “believe” all of this; it’s a lot to take on, but I can accept the main thrust of what he is saying, and that leads me to attempt a more precise definition of what I hope to achieve. What I am doing is trying to find some sort of consistency in what is going on around us. It was easy enough to find consistency if some external agency – e.g. God  – was deciding what went on. It was all “God’s Will”, and there are many people now who are adamant that the world is indeed shaped by God’s Will – my sister-in-law is one of them. It seems to me that the accumulation of scientific knowledge (that is the mechanisms of the physical universe) has led to an increasing understanding of the flaws in the creation theory, and the rejection of the traditional idea of God. Evolution is a far more consistent way of explaining life on earth, and as yet no scientific research has found a better one. I have enormous admiration for the way Darwin insisted on examining in detail every aspect of the living world which he had access to, even when his understanding of what he observed came into painful conflict with his Christian beliefs.

John Gray is professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. I’ve always been aware of the influence that philosophers have had on the course of history. The ideas of Plato, Sophocles, Kant, Machiavelli, Marx and the rest have had direct affects on the lives of millions.  Yet, have they really helped in this quest for the consistent?  It seems to me that philosophy has been so concerned with patterns of thought that it has neglected the way the natural world actually functions. Although he is an academic philosopher, what Gray is saying is that we don’t need thought. Life goes on perfectly well without all this philosophising.  

In our Western material culture the world seems full of contradictions, many of them neatly summed up by Gray: “It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness – The United States - (which is engaged in) a puritan war on pleasure”. That same country has one of the highest rates of church attendance in the western world and by far the biggest pornography industry.

One of our most cherished beliefs is in the sanctity of human life yet we deliberately kill each other in ever greater numbers. Everywhere it is obvious that the explosive growth of the human population is devastating the planet, yet we will not tolerate any deliberate policy to reduce those numbers.

I’ve been trading books and ideas with my friend Andy Brice recently, and he puts it like this: “...governments and almost everyone else in positions of power (are) still talking about the need for economic growth, only a few small voices in the dark are expressing the need for radical change and everyone else, i.e. the great majority of the population is doing 'business as usual' and chatting about when they are getting their phone upgrade.”

My reply was: “..or you could take the view that we should upgrade now for tomorrow we die”

I think this is a reasonable attitude to what we see around us. Why not take advantage of the fantastic technology available to us?  It won’t be available for much longer. Once it becomes obvious that the life we are leading is not sustainable, and once you look clearly at the implications of that, then the future looks very bleak indeed. Nicholas Stern, also a professor at the LSE, advisor to governments, and co-incidentally an old friend, makes a strong argument from the position of the liberal/left establishment. He is an economist so he has to believe that government policy can reverse the process of destruction. He puts his faith in intelligent people in positions of power being willing and able to negotiate international agreements which will control human rapacity. Those of us who think it is now too late for that are a small minority, but our numbers are growing rapidly, and I am convinced that one day those in power will see the full extent of the mistakes they are still making. By then the best we can hope for would be an apology, but by then a very large number of us will have ceased to exist and the great and exciting challenge for those who remain will be to live lives that are truly sustainable.

It might seem odd that I derive comfort from the thought that our descendents might be able to create a more sustainable society. I shall be dead; even my children will probably be dead. Why should I care? This is one of the strange and wonderful things about us humans – we do care very much about what happens to our species.

.

Only Women Allowed

I am looking after an old, arthritic, memory deficient dog while his owners, two members of an all-woman band called “Meet Your Feet” https://www.facebook.com/MeetYourFeet , and their roadie, Thelma, go to play the headline spot at the “Women In Tune” http://www.womenintune.co.uk/ festival near Lampeter.  The two are our old friends Heie and Fanny, and we have shared many interesting  and funny episodes with them in the last 10 years.

The first and funniest was when Heie and Thelma were working together in Bristol. They had become good friends and Thelma suggested they should meet up together with partners. Heie looked a bit sheepish and said “You do know my partner is a woman?”

“Well, I guessed she might be” (Even Thelma, famously oblivious to sexual nuances, could tell that Heie was no babe)

Heie relaxed, and with her trademark twinkle, and in her lilting German accent said:

“It’s funny you know, you have your Dick and I have my Fanny”

That cemented their friendship in the way that John Slater had endeared himself to me when we first met by not knowing how to put his Land Rover into 4 wheel drive.

We were the only non-family heterosexual s at their wedding and felt very privileged to be there. I sometimes tease them about male female differences  and can’t help feeling sometimes that my maleness is only tolerated, but then I remember that they don’t really feel comfortable in all-lesbian or in any all-homosexual  company and have very mixed feelings  about Women In Tune. It’s OK for them to criticise it but wouldn’t want outsiders to do so. They felt it had a really important function in giving hundreds of women who don’t easily fit into straight society a chance to really be themselves  where they felt safe and accepted.  It reminded me a bit of the main purpose of the Welsh Language festival  “Gwyl Bro Dinefwr” http://www.menterbrodinefwr.org/#/gwyl-bro-dinefwr/4564804921  – a chance to spend a whole evening speaking your native language and singing along to the band lyrics.

I too have mixed feelings about the WIT festival, because I had a close friendship with one of its founders, Heather Summers. She is an adventurous violin player and joined my experimental music group “Sound Waves” during its short and unsuccessful history. She gave me a lot of moral support in what was a doomed venture, but she won’t let me go to Women in Tune because I am male.

Another occasion which could have been embarrassingly funny was when Fanny and I planned to go to a jazz gig in Bristol. Ian Storror is the former landlord of the famous Albert jazz pub in Bedminster where Andy Shepherd cut his teeth, and one of the most dedicated jazz promoters I know.  He had been running Sunday night gigs in the most unlikely surroundings of a big new chain hotel in the centre. I had been to several memorable (and several to be forgotten) concerts in the hushed and carpeted basement in the glass and concrete environment of the new Cabot Circus, and was looking forward with some apprehension to going there with Fanny. In the end she cried off sick and I never faced the problem of how to introduce her to Ian. How couples called Richard and Francis cope I don’t know.

Heie gave me long instructions about Sam’s foibles and how he needed looking after. It sounded like a big chore, but actually I enjoyed it. It’s a long time since I had that particular discipline – looking after someone by guesswork and body language.  I used to so much enjoy the way Flash (our previous dog)and I communicated by signs and gestures. Sam seems very distant at first. He ignores me most of the time and seems to wander about aimlessly, but after a while I could see a pattern. He wanted to go to the front of the house and then up the lane, and I think that was looking for the others, last seen getting into the car. He preferred to me near me rather than on his own. Once we had established some sort of pattern he went to sleep. We both followed his meal routine to the letter and that reassured him. Out walking he had none of the eagerness of a young dog, but still preferred going to coming back, and enjoyed checking out the smells.

I went to bed feeling I had done something worthwhile, but sleep was fitful because I knew he was likely to need to go out again around the time I expected them back – 1am. I had several dream versions of the car arriving in deep darkness, one of them with Carol Stenning driving.  In the end I woke for a pee at about 1.30 and found them sitting round the table full of adrenaline from a successful gig. They were laughing about the way some of the women had stripped to their bras and bounced around in front of the stage – “you would have liked that Dick”. By then I had joined them for a beer and it was like going back to the early days of the Small Nations Festival  when the whole family would congregate round the table at Felin Maestwynog in the early hours of Monday enjoying the release of tension at the end of three days of excitement and stress. Thelma remembered earlier times when we had bands staying with us after their gigs – particularly she remembers Niominkabi the African reggae band all sitting round smoking individual spliffs and talking about football.

Driving on the Beach

The opening credits of the film "The Boys are Back" (BBC2 last night)  shows Clive Owen driving a 4x4 accross a public beach. The bathers are shouting at him;  he justs smiles and says "What's your problem? Relax" . Out of context it looks like very anti-social behaviour. We later realise that it is his way of dealing with bereavement and of bonding with his son. He creates a child-centred chaotic household with lots of risk but lots of joy. It breaks down when, in his absense, the house is invaded by dozens of teenagers intent on partying. Individual freedom also leads to crime and violence.

Ghandi said "Live simply that others might simply live." Great wisdom, but a wisdom which will only appeal strongly to some people and has little attraction to many of us. This seems to me the central problem of all the notions of the simple life, the communes, the eco villages etc. Returning to  the idea in my last post, that the Bonobo ape genes in us represent our empathetic side (political Left) and the Chimpanzee genes the autocratic (political Right), I would suggest that the simple life has great appeal to the Bonobo but none to the Chimp, and precious little to young humans.

For the young, life wants to be in the fast lane - full of  noise, speed, excitement, danger - and many of us continue to live our lives in this way until the physical limits of age intervene. When this translates to anti-social behaviour (eg the bankers) our reaction depends on our position on the bonobo/chimp spectrum. If we tend to the right we will tend to tolerate anti-social behaviour if it is seen as an expression of individual freedom and increases wealth. If it is seen as an attack on property or respectable society it will be condemned.  The left will wish to protect the interests of the community against anti-social behaviour by selfish individuals. Individual freedom is to be curbed for the benefit of society as a whole. The horror of the right is the nanny state, and its antidote is individual freedom. Given the choice, for example, between population limitation by a one child policy or starvation for some and 10 children for others, the right would choose the latter, providing it was someone else doing the starving. The left would choose whatever is seen to be best for the community as a whole.

In our society the usual response to individual violence against it is to inflict violence on the individual.  Many of us can see why this is a bad idea, but we often fail to see any positive side to our violent impulses. Yet, without those impulses we would not be here; we would have been selected out like the dodo. We need the killer instinct and should not be ashamed of it.  If any of us are to survive the looming catastrophe we have to be able to accept and make use of all our instictive behaviours. If we believe profoundly that our political opponent is wrong, we have to understand why he (in my case it is nearly always he) thinks the way he does. If we can't change how he thinks we must find a way to work round it.