Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Inequality

  • Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains

    Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains

    As the world writhes in the grip of rapidly increasing extremism and greed, it would be well to imagine what a better world would look like.

    A peaceful but profound revolution is needed in the way society is organised to achieve the highest possible degree of equality.

    It is sad to witness the behavior of the ruling US political class, and it would be unfair to blame the appalling shift in emphasis on the President alone. Primarily one must blame the voters, although once in, it is difficult to dislodge a rogue president, especially when his own party has a majority in both Houses.

    Behind Trump stand men and women equal or worse, ready and no doubt willing to take his place as age withers him. The talk is of aggression and power: we shall take what we want from the rest of the world whether you like it or not. Their playbook is depressingly familiar.

    Not satisfied with inflicting violence on foreign sovereign states, the ruling elite is also intent on coercing and subduing its own people. Those who dissent are swiftly dealt with by branches of the state which ought to be separate and impartial, but which are quickly becoming part of the political machine. How many times in history have we seen the same moves played out. Fear is rampant and the state has its boot on the face of the people.

    ICE and the National Guard send chilling reminders of the jackboots which paraded roughshod over people in another century. Killings are no longer to be investigated – might is right. The elite is right and woe betide anyone who gets in the way.

    The US has been riding down this brutal road for a while. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, torture and murder come to mind. Now the ruling elite seems to be turning on its own people.

    Leaders in Europe and elsewhere refuse to call a spade a spade. Refuse to express their disgust and distaste for what is happening in the US. So far, no action is being taken on the threats to Greenland and elsewhere, and it is difficult to see much that can be done if the military juggernaut and its violent drivers are determined to invade.

    But it is certainly time to cut dependence on the US. Time to cease being yes men. Time to stand up for decency against greed, violence and hypocrisy.

    Time to accept that what is happening is inherently evil, and that such evil is by no means new. And by no means an American monopoly. What country in the past has not relied on violence to subdue both its own population and that of its neighbours. What country has not invaded, enslaved, stolen. Murdered.

    And so I come to the point of my post once again – the need for draconian reform of human society. Everywhere. The need to make sure that people like Trump cannot rule over us.

    The need to make sure that no one can: that we have rules but no rulers. I am a Utopian but it does no harm to dream.

    So here are a few well rehearsed ideas on egalitarianism. Which will, of course, never see the light of day.

    Tax Reform

    Establish global high progressive wealth and income taxes, close tax loopholes, shut tax havens. Abolish inheritance to prevent the inter-generational concentration of wealth. Abolish “wealth mountains”.

    Asset and Resource Redistribution

    Abolish land ownership to ensure that all individuals have equal access to essential resources and opportunities; provide fair use rather than ownership. Establish a Universal Basic Income to cover basic needs and Universal Basic Services including housing, education, food and healthcare.


    Political Reform

    Abolish elitism, elite institutions and the political class to give equal participation to all citizens. Move to proportional representation. Moving decision-making power away from central “corridors of power” toward local and regional bodies. Expose and outlaw vested interests. Establish and enforce credible legal sanctions for corruption.


    Legal Reform

    Abolish all forms of legal immunity for elites and ensure every human has access to the same quality of legal defense and due process.

    Environmental Reform

    Treat natural resources and the atmosphere as a “global commons” – a paradigm shift away from national sovereignty and private ownership toward collective stewardship and equitable distribution.


    Social Reform

    Enforce anti-discrimination laws that dismantle hierarchies based on race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.


    Workplace Reform

    Mandate the transition of corporations into worker-owned cooperatives where employees have an equal vote in management and profit-sharing.


    Technological Reform

    Ensure that life-saving innovations and AI advancements are open-source and publicly owned to prevent a “digital divide” in human capability.


    Relational Reform

    Shift societal norms away from status-seeking and meritocratic elitism toward a culture of mutual respect, co-operation and horizontal social relations.

    Environment

    Encourage a severe reduction in the world population. Give rights to animals and prevent their use as food. Stop the concretisation of land and restore a nature based landscape. Stop pollution.


  • The Unwashed

    The Unwashed

    Tate Britain has become very political and I cannot claim disapproval.

    I chose today to look at the earliest paintings in the collection, mostly portraits of the great and the good who had benefitted from Empire, commerce and the slave trade. Not to forget those kind gentlemen who enclosed what had previously been common land open to all, for their own sole benefit and delectation.

    Nowhere is there a finer place to admire human greed and the violence and persistence which has gone into acquiring great fortunes throughout human history.

    Happily the Tate now points this out at every available opportunity.  That the smug bastards who spent a fortune getting themselves and their ghastly families immortalised on canvas had become Washed by doing down the Unwashed. Usually with great violence.

    For me, it has got beyond the stage of feeling mildly guilty for being marginally “Washed”.

    I remember my puzzlement when I learned that a former member of my venerable and expensive private school had ditched his title and become plain old Tony Benn. I now undersdtandt the man rather better and can appreciate his conerns.

    The painting above is The Whig Junto, painted in 1710 by John James Baker.

    About which the Tate opines:

    “This portrait shows the leaders of the political Whig party. A Black servant appears behind the gathered guests. Britain was profiting from the increasing trade of enslaved people from West Africa. Most of the Black servants who worked in British households were enslaved. They were seen by the white British elite as symbols of their wealth and often depicted in paintings to reflect this. “

    Well, quite.

    The social and political commentary is to be found on almost every single painting and in commentaries on every gallery wall.

    They do rant on a bit, but it has to be said. We humans live in a society which is and always has been rotten to the core.

    All our modern politically correct tropery can be found here at the dear old Tate: “Black Identity and Art”, “Disability and Art”, “Queer Lives and Art”. Bless, well someone has to say it.

    As a youth and scion of a then rather wealthy manufacturing family, my earliest obsession was with money. Once much of the wealth dissipated, I became even more anxious and became an investment banker.

    Somewhere along the line I saw through it all. I think it was the truly awful Margaret Thatcher who woke me. Something seemed badly wrong with a world governed by “competition” rather than “cooperation”. A world where the “market” was going to set the world to rights. Even if the consequence was misery and poverty for anybody stupid enough not to be up to it.

    Was I ever a Tory? No, I don’t think I was. Too concerned that the likes of Rees Mogg will turn into Oswald Mosely. Or worse.

    Have I ever voted Labour like the illustrious Tony Benn? No, because with a posh accent I would be sent to the Gulag or Guillotine once the Cultural Revolution swept through the land in a post-Mao viral blast.

    Who would I vote for then? A wise philosopher king perhaps (no, not Jug Ears), the Reverend Septimus Harding maybe.

    Failing which, out of desperation, the Green Party. Who will doubtless prove as venal and awful as all the competition.

    Maybe I won’t vote – after all no-one seems keen on the ultra radical overhaul our entire planet needs.

    Jesus of Nazareth had it just about right but the silly fellow never did come back to sort it all out.

    So in the absence of any real hope of improvement, I will bury my head in the sand. I will carry on living my mildly privileged life in my own small and modest fashion. I will draft a few more algorithms to trade crypto and recognise I am never going to save the world or amount to much.

    But I will carry on visiting the Tate and see what they manage to come up with next. Non binary genders must surely be on their list somewhere? After all, the BBC says there are 11 of them. Or is it 64?

  • King Charles’s Roman Circus

    King Charles’s Roman Circus

    Today’s £125m fancy dress party both amused and bemused me.

    Vast inherited wealth and privilege sits uncomfortably beside a world engulfed in the flames of war and beset by poverty, want and savage cruelty.

    Life is still nasty and brutish and in all probability many only wish it had remained short.

    The King himself is reputed to have inherited £1.8bn and the day found him dressed in mediaeval garb surrounded by the flummery of crowds who could surely have found better use of their day. But of course the great and the good love to see and be seen.

    Religion could have made itself a force for good but to this day panders to the powerful and wealthy rather than remaining true to its humble and sincere origins.

    We understand from the Christian gospels that Jesus of Nazareth lived a lowly communal existence while he continued his short ministry. He famously declared that the meek shall inherit the earth and the New Testament quotes Jesus as saying in Luke 18:25 that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Jesus and the rich young man).

    And yet today the church establishment continues a centuries old tradition of gratifying the fripperies and conceits of the rich and the famous, where once their founder sought to heal the sick and feed the poor and the hungry.

    The British Prime Minister ( a man of enormous reputed wealth, and, paradoxically a Hindu) read from St Paul’s epistle to the Colossians.

    “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.”

    Wise words indeed from Verse 5, and much the same sentiments are to be found in all spiritual doctrines including the beautiful sacred texts of the Hindus.

    Whether Prime Minister Sunak is a supporter of such sentiments I would not know. But he would presumably have difficulty passing through the eye of a needle.

    What a great pity that as a species we have always been unable or unwilling to practice what the original holy men so rightly taught.

    I have no doubt that some of today’s “holy men” will wish to defend the institution of the monarchy and would be little wont to cast off their own regal garb and prominent position in the great Cathedrals and Abbeys. And yet one has a suspicion that Jesus of Nazareth would encourage such prelates to pull down the vast edifice they have built and to slum it with the masses.

  • Seeking economic benefit?

    Seeking economic benefit?

    Wouldn’t you if you were living in the Third World on 10 cents a day?

    No doubt the Messiah himself would have been turned away from our borders as an undesirable. Unless he had a large donation to make to the ruling political party. Or was a Russian Oligarch, a money launderer seeking to wash his funds in the City of London, or a non domiciled person intent on the tax advantages Great Britain so obligingly offers the obscenely rich.

    But then presumably such people arrive by private jet or super yacht and do not have to rely on toy inflatables provided by people smugglers to cross the treacherous waters of the English Channel.

    Leaving aside any belief in the supernatural, if the accounts in the New Testament of the life of Jesus of Nazareth are true, what a man he was. Sadly, humanity has not improved in the last 2000 years despite his efforts.

    Christmas is worth celebrating. Our collective behaviour is not.

  • City of Iniquity

    City of Iniquity

    Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and stablisheth a city by iniquity.

    Unaccustomed to his birthplace after years of absence, a recent visit left him questioning its very foundations.

    From fashionable young Fulham to Sloane Square, from Hyde Park Corner through Kensington and back home along the river from Hammersmith, he quietly stole along on a push scooter. His vehicle of choice in this bustling, bursting, heaving metropolis.

    Was he ever really a part of this great city. Did he ever belong there amongst its gilded rogues, living in the high palaces of gods, a mere stone’s throw from the unwashed, little different except for their luck. More ambition perhaps. A lack of the drive or reckless energy of the hardened street fighter may be all that separates he of the glittering tower from the downtrodden of the bleak government housing estate. Or worse; the man on the street, soused in the oblivion of alcohol or some other narcotic of choice.

    A shabby old man in hiking trousers and an old pair of black trainers can glide quite unobserved along even these most glamourous parts of the city. Largely unnoticed, like an urban fox or a tramp sleeping it off under the arches.

    Until his way is barred along the Embankment. On a pavement outside one of those tall, wide, grand mansions of brick built in older days, for hard men of a different age.

    The way was blocked by two swarthy men in dark black sunglasses and the swaggering walk of men not unaccustomed to violence. They wore black, tight, shiny suits and their muscles bulged through the expensive cloth. Shiny black winkle pickers on their feet, they emerged suddenly and silently as two huge gates drifted quietly apart and a large, black, pearlescent limousine emerged from the luxury within and shot out into the traffic, across the pavement. Blacked out windows hid the occupant as well perhaps as bullet proof glass, run flat tires and armed protection inside this chariot of dark apocalypse.

    The surly hit men melted back into their masters domain and the great doors slid back to exclude the common man from this hallowed ground. Once again free to tread his way along the public footpath, with a gentle push, the old man passed by, thankful perhaps that he had not come to any harm greater than humiliation and a vague sense of unease.

    Who was he then, this Titan in his cloud of blackness? A magnate of some great enterprise, so much was clear. Minister of some government perhaps, living to peddle influence and distribute fat contracts. Drugs – who knows, perhaps this was some London bolt hole kept by the head of a ruthless cartel in some far flung continent. Here perhaps to spend some of his gains, to play in the casinos, to feel the warmth of a call girl.

    And so feels central London, and so perhaps it always has. Huge wealth and barbed wire to keep out the people, barbarians if you will who might seek revolution or justice. Street upon street of magnificence all with tales to tell. Some wealth perhaps honestly gained, albeit jealousy guarded across generations. Dukes and Earls with hundreds of acres, worth billions, housing the iniquitous and somehow managing to escape the ravages of inheritance taxes.

    And so to the more rural glories of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, grand still, but less obviously populated by gangsters and other super rich. Until that is, the grand palace of Kensington comes into view, behind which stand more stately mansions along the enormous avenue of Kensington Palace Gardens. Shared admittedly, this road, by foreboding and dread embassies.

    London was always thus of course. As a younger man, perhaps you do not notice its character. Perhaps you aim to join the elite yourself and hire your own armed guards, bury yourself in your own fortress in this capital of gold.

    Perhaps you dreamt of selling enough Eurobonds to build your own Bonfire of the Vanities. Perhaps in those early days you were not driven by a keen observation of the absurd. Then perhaps, you may have thought nothing of currying favor with an Eastern despot. Of helping to bank his money, or rather that of his subjects, underneath the streets of Zurich.

    But the old man on his scooter laughs; sits on a pavement with a cold drink and an ice cream, somewhere west of Kensington in a less salubrious area called Olympia. Drapes his feet over the curb and watches the world go by.

    And that is what he tends to do these days. Watch the world go by. Taking nothing too seriously, least of all himself.

    Image: Pixabay

  • Post Scarcity

    Post Scarcity

    How many lives lost in competition for scarce resources.

    Every living thing survives by exchanging energy. Most plants in a benign exchange with the sun. Most others by killing and consuming all around them.

    We with higher sentience live mostly in fear. Some of us recognize our fear and work to control its negative effect on our actions. In less aware souls, fear is the motivation for most of our behavior but goes unrecognized.

    Fear is not just about food. Far more generalized and insidious than that, so many actions around us are perceived as a threat.

    My neighbor seeks to build on a field next door to me and destroy my peace. The “professional” recommendation is to get hold of the land by fair means or foul. The man on my bumper in the winding country lane seeks to get there before me, and risks both our lives in his mad scramble to do so. One pointless meme threatens another to take hold of minds and hearts and doubtless the reverse is true.

    And in less enlightened days I did the same.

    Struggle. All is competition. All ends in violence of a sort, even if only symbolic.

    A director of Barings is said to have produced a paper to then British Prime Minister David Cameron which claimed to solve scarcity. Or at least monetary scarcity, which counts for quite a lot.

    Abolish inheritance he said. All true “wealth” on this planet is locked in the land. The land produces food, shelter and minerals. Every resource we need to survive.

    Let people collect assets during their lifetime and pay no taxes. Let them build their pointless anthills and enjoy them, but on their death take those precious assets back for the good of the commonwealth.

    Use that re-distribution to provide plenty for all. No shortages he said. No failing national health service, no lack of cash for any of our needs.

    Was he right? Were his figures correct? It is likely we will never find out. We are far too fearful for such radicalism and such dreams have lead in the past to monsters and dystopia.

    But the idea can not be wrong. One rocky little planet and it belongs to us all. The smash and grab we have allowed to take place is no less than monstrous.

    And our universe? Infinite and with every resource we could need or dream of. Will we allow the same pillage and greed to rule when we escape the confines of our small planet and insignificant solar system?

    Doubtless we will, if history teaches us anything.

    Survival of the fittest was foisted on us by blind evolution. Fear begat greed and greed begat violence. It need not always be thus had we but the will to change.

  • Between the Cracks

    Between the Cracks

    I am frightened of homeless people.  They remind me how all too easy it is in this world to fall between the cracks.

    In a prosperous town in the South of England, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a woman sat this afternoon in filthy clothing and a sleeping bag in an alcove outside a derelict shop.  I had heard that the best thing you can do for the homeless is to talk to them. Make them feel that they are not an outcast, a leper. Find out what their problems are and why they find themselves on the street on a freezing winter’s day.

    Its not something I have done very often – speak to such a person. Give them the common courtesy of acknowledging their normality, their humanity. And it is not because I do not care. It is because I am terrified of ending up in the same condition and I look the other way. Irrational, foolish, selfish. What do words cost? Why not look at life as it is, face up to the horrors suffered by all too many?

    I walked by her. I carried on up the street towards chocolate, diet pepsi, a cup of hot tea.  A beautiful little cottage with heating, a lovely garden and dinner out in a seaside pub. But god knows how, I made myself turn. I wanted to know her story, I wanted to see whether I could add anything. I wanted her to feel like a normal person, not an outcast.

    “Nowhere to go?” was my inane and tactless opening line. She was lucid, intelligent. She was not a wino; nor was she a drug addict. Her story was simple and sad. Her husband had died and she had been evicted from her accommodation (presumably for not paying the rent).  She suffered from epilepsy but it appears she managed to control this illness since in better days she had worked, with enjoyment and pride, at several nursing homes. She felt she would be welcomed back there as she had a good work record but could not approach them in a filthy state. If she was going to work at a care home she needed to bath every day and feed herself.

    And this is where it became truly scary. She had literally fallen between the cracks. She had no bank account and no formal identity and so the Benefits Office would not pay her what was due to her. She was being helped, thank god, by a charity called Torchlight and a doctor had offered her a letter of identity once she had been on his roster for two months. She still has a month and a half to go. Then, hopefully, the damn fools at the benefits office will pay her what she is due and she can get accommodation and food.

    Shame on those Benefits people. Shame on the whole damn stupid system. Shame on me, shame on the whole damn human race for leaving people starving on the streets in the middle of winter. Here was a woman who, god knows, needed and deserved help. And yet the damn fools would not give it her because apparently she had no “identity”. Is not a body identity enough? Is not a starving mouth and a freezing cold woman an “identity”?  Does a piece of paper from a bank, or a doctor, or some hateful government agency somehow make an “identity” whereas real  flesh and blood does not?

    Thank god some kind local had taken her in at nights and hopefully this will last until she gets her “identity” and her benefits. And, I hope, her job at the care home. In the meantime she has to sit huddled in the streets during the day, begging for her food.

    There but for the grace of god go I. It could happen to any of us. It does happen to many.

    We must stop this; we must act. Not just here in this privileged island, but everywhere. These people are not animals.  The homeless, the starving and the destitute – they are you, they are me.

    Surely to god we can do better than this?

     

  • The Snob

    The Snob

    How hilarious, the asinine snob,

    Mr. Collins, the pompous and obsequious clergyman from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Hyacinth Bucket of the BBC comedy series Keeping Up Appearances.

    According to Wikipedia, “snob” is a pejorative term for a person who believes there is a correlation between social status and human worth . Or indeed, we might add, financial status.

    You have to laugh at the stupidity of it all. We all emerged from a bunch of savages, five or six hundred of them apparently, who left Africa a few hundred thousand years ago to colonize the world as we know it. The “Out of Africa” hypothesis.

    We share most if not all of our DNA with mice, elephants and numerous other species. And of course we share all of our DNA with less privileged people who live in remote parts and have not yet caught up with baths, democracy, the English language and political correctness.

    Long before the jolly exodus from Africa, all life on earth from the jellyfish, to the human, to the toad had a singe common ancestor.

    How’s that? Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Hyacinth Bouquet are descended from primordial gloop? Yes, I fear so!

    And yet Mr Collins insists on sucking up to Lady Catherine because she has a big house and quite a few bob in her bank account. Mr Collins insists on believing that Lady Catherine is worth sucking up to.

    Who gives a tinker’s fart? I mean, really.

    Its not just the nobs we suck up to, although a vapid couple were recently heard to announce grandly that they had just come from “Highclere”. It’s politicians also, and grubby, tarnished Biznizz people. Chevening is dropped into the conversation, or Chequers. Anyone will do. Anyone with piles of filthy lucre and/or a media presence. Yes, royalty (minor or otherwise), the filthy rich, the vulgar, the famous.

    Grub, grub, up the greasy pole we climb.

    I wonder if snobs suck up to the Kardashians? I’m not too familiar with American snobbery but I assume they must have at least some sense of perspective? Perhaps they only suck up to wealthy Wasps and descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims?

    Does an American snob suck up to Trump? God forbid, but snobs are such fools you never know and after all, he is rich and famous whatever else he may be.

    So beware, be on guard lest you find yourself name dropping. Be on guard lest you find yourself “brown-nosing”. The trick has to be the exercise of constant vigilance. Stand always with a hat pin ready to hand, ready to deflate the preposterous pomposity and stupidity of all around you.

    And if you catch yourself dropping a name, god forbid, stick that pin right up your own bottom. It’s the only way.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Class Prejudice

    Class Prejudice

    Is it right to feel distaste for your fellow man?

    I was sitting on a train station this afternoon, waiting for my connection, minding my own business and munching a sandwich.  I had been listening to Dvorak and following along with the score, muzzing up for a concert at the end of June.

    So I was in a pleasant place.  I was sitting in my usual ivory tower, albeit in public rather than in my book-lined and very quiet study.

    I was in a contemplative mood; a mood in which I was likely to be interested rather than irritated by what was happening around me.

    My interest concentrated on my reaction to a couple of young men who started to chat to a couple of young mothers just down the platform.  I wasn’t being nosey but could not help overhearing their conversation.

    They were not a foursome: the two men (white, rough) just happened to start a chance conversation with the young mothers (one black and demure, the other white and not). It was simply jolly banter.

    The men were both shaven headed and in tracksuits. Both had topknots.  Both were either hungover or slightly drunk. One of the men was drinking wine out of a quarter bottle.

    One of the men said he would rather be back in prison than suffer the aggravation he had had the night before and the hangover he was suffering today. Every other word was anglo saxon. “F..k” this “c..t” that….and so forth.

    My language is bad anyway but not so openly.

    And it was all about graphic sex, alcohol and drugs. Their antics from the night before. One of them had slipped the other a big dose of some drug; I didn’t catch the name.  The victim was apparently curved round the lavatory bowl (I wasn’t quite sure why) and the drug donor apparently had to “p**s” all over him.   There were women involved the night before, casual strangers, it seemed.  For casual sex.

    You get the picture.

    I was not quite sure if I felt revulsion and if so, then why.  I don’t think I did and I was and am quite sure that if I did feel revulsion it was wrong to do so.  If some people choose to lead their life in this way, does it really matter? Is there anything wrong with it? Why should I mind or care? Or feel offended?

    And then I thought about my own luck in the genetic lottery; in having been born into the prosperous upper middle classes.  And my luck in the lottery of life in making out in a reasonably or comparatively satisfactory way.

    Pity would certainly be wrong: what business would I have to feel pity? Anger and derision would be equally wrong.  After considering it all and weighing things up in my mind, I found the right attitude (for me at least) was one of acceptance and neutrality.

    These were people. Living their own lives. They were not threatening or violent. They were simply different.

    Live and let live. They may have been far better people than I.  But I was glad I was not irritable, or tired or impatient today.  There are occasions when I am ashamed to say I can feel less charitable, although I know this is wrong.

    I made amends for my muddled thoughts by telling them they were on the right train when they enquired, a few stops down the line.

  • Bishop Michael Curry – the Royal Wedding

    Bishop Michael Curry – the Royal Wedding

    Bishop Michael Curry preached a fine sermon at the wedding today of Prince Harry and beautiful actress Meghan Markle.

    We must discover love – the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world.

    It is all too rare that I listen to a sermon but when I hear a good one, delivered with passion and energy and providing an uncluttered message of hope it cheers my soul. Even though (as a devout atheist and christian apostate) I don’t have one.

    I keep thinking of Utopia. I can not help but hope that secular redemption is possible.  That indeed as the good Bishop preaches “we will make of this old world, a new world.”

    What beautiful sentiments and however you like to define love, I think we know what he means.  Even though when used in public “love” always somehow sounds a little overstated.

    I started wondering whether he needed to fill out his manifesto a bit. If like most good clergyman he seeks to make the earth into a kingdom of his god, then does he have any agenda? Any concrete proposals?

    You see I have been thinking of how to give weight to some of the platitudes I promote. A better world? Sure but what specifically does that mean? Does it require legislation? Higher taxes? Better education? Social awareness? How do we create our Utopia slowly but surely so that it does not degenerate into yet another disastrous killing field like Soviet Russia?

    And then I thought about Bishop Curry’s sermon once again. No, it does not contain any specific recommendations. It is not a political manifesto. It does not venture pedestrian practical steps to ensure the enslaved are freed and the hungry fed.

    I realised that it actually does more than all of that.  “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is actually all you need to do and suddenly his vision becomes realised truth.

    You don’t have to be a believer to realise the truth of this faintly embarrassing phrase.  And yet how difficult it will be to live up to that ideal. It is difficult enough to “love” ourselves yet alone our irritating neighbours playing headbanging music all night.

    But he is right; in the great simplicity of his message he is right. If we were all able to change our nature, to change human nature, to eradicate greed, envy, lust and anger and to treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we would have no need for manifestos and grand political aims. It would all happen.  Food would be shared, shelter and treatment given, violence ended.

    A simple and beautiful message but one none of are likely to put into practice any time soon. Sadly.