We Are Gods!

Saturday: Over to Jo’s to watch Arsenal beat Liverpool and drink wine from her wine cellar under-the-stairs. The Liverpool fans have Justice for Hillsborough banners and protests (which is odd, since it’s neither April nor a significant number of years since the disaster). This struck me as showing the rather large gap between what football used to be and what it is now – nothing to do with terraces versus all seater stadiums, but the way it has had its very own world revolution. Apart from Gerrard and Carragher, the players are not Liverpuddlian. Their manager is Spanish, their players from all over the world: from Poland to Mali to Brazil to Australia. What do they care about Liverpool and its history (and Liverpuddlians if nothing else are fiercely protective of their history)?. They are journeymen for hire, and if they had a better offer from a bigger club where their position was secure, they would move. This is not to take the racist view that only English people from the club’s specific area are loyal (cf Alan Smith, Wayne Rooney etc), but it expresses the gap between the fans’ view of the game and its club’s traditions, and the modern globalised careerist game.

This and the fact that Terry Henry is wearing gloves reminds me of the comment made at the Sutton on Sea Social Club that there are too many foreigners in the Premiership, so I mention it. This leads us onto French protectionism, the probable existence of aliens, Strictly Come Dancing vs Honey We’re Killing The Kids, To Kill a Mockingbird vs Science, whether immigrants working long hours is cultural or circumstance or capitalism, and marketing vs God. My brain loosened by desert wine, I start pontificating about mammals and how the fact that they bring up their young means that children look up to parents and that to have an omnipotent someone “above” us who is always right and can control our lives at whim is because we experience this in childhood. We constantly want something bigger than ourselves. To other mammals, especially domestic ones, we must seem like Gods! Dave says Richard Dawkins came up with the same theory, although I can’t find this on t’internet. Dawkins is not really a psychologist.

Neither am I, but I was seven (as opposed to Dawkins nine) when I questioned the existence (i.e. asked my dad) of Father Christmas, the Tooth-Fairy and God. Maybe they didn’t have the tooth-fairy in Nairobi. One doesn’t have to be an evolutionary scientist to realise that a bearded man in the sky makes as much sense as a bearded man bringing presents when you’ve seen your mum going shopping. Squabbly atheists spend much of their time trying to prove God doesn’t exist, thereby missing the point that the religious don’t need proof – they have faith. Just as socialists believe that everything will be fabulous sans capitalism, or – an uglier analogy – racists believe that once all the immigrants have left the country, we’ll be living in Albion. Blind faith - or shall we call it ignorance – until something jolts them out of their (self)righteousness. I prefer the likes of Joss Whedon's existentialist, tolerant atheism to Richard Dawkins’ hectoring, although I don’t think Whedon ever came up with A Unified Theory of Parents/God/Cat either.

I don’t really like Dawkins; his ferocious brand of atheism is as fundamentalist as the most fervent religious acolyte’s and his claim that religion has started all wars ignores both early 20^th century history and tribalism - people always want someone to hate, including, of course, us liberals. On the way home, I decide that the best thing for Britain would be if we rounded up all the Wrong People by putting an advert in the Daily Mail and The Sun for a free holiday, getting them all to turn up to one place (Romford?) and then turning on the gas.

Sunday: There are two Hitchcock/Cary Grant films on, so the day is technically gone. The socially historic nuances get me to thinking about things that the internet couldn’t answer (and I’m not paying AQA to):

1.       When did the fashion for champagne “coupes” – the ones allegedly modelled on Marie Antoinette’s busoms (she must have been a flat chested gal) - go out of fashion and flutes come in?. The ‘70s? They’re still drinking out of them in North by North West.

2.       From what date did people telephone directly to each other, rather than going through the operator? 1950s maybe? In the ‘60s in Britain, you still had to apply for a private line (which could take months to be set up).

3.       When did people stop wearing black after a death in the family? I’m guessing it would be during or after the Second World War. My grandma, who married in ’39, wore a dark suit rather than a white frock at her wedding because my grandad’s father had just died. Perhaps the number of deaths, and lack of cloth, during the war necessitated social change.

We Are Gods!

Saturday: Over to Jo’s to watch Arsenal beat Liverpool and drink wine from her wine cellar under-the-stairs. The Liverpool fans have Justice for Hillsborough banners and protests (which is odd, since it’s neither April nor a significant number of years since the disaster). This struck me as showing the rather large gap between what football used to be and what it is now – nothing to do with terraces versus all seater stadiums, but the way it has had its very own world revolution. Apart from Gerrard and Carragher, the players are not Liverpuddlian. Their manager is Spanish, their players from all over the world: from Poland to Mali to Brazil to Australia. What do they care about Liverpool and its history (and Liverpuddlians if nothing else are fiercely protective of their history)?. They are journeymen for hire, and if they had a better offer from a bigger club where their position was secure, they would move. This is not to take the racist view that only English people from the club’s specific area are loyal (cf Alan Smith, Wayne Rooney etc), but it expresses the gap between the fans’ view of the game and its club’s traditions, and the modern globalised careerist game.

This and the fact that Terry Henry is wearing gloves reminds me of the comment made at the Sutton on Sea Social Club that there are too many foreigners in the Premiership, so I mention it. This leads us onto French protectionism, the probable existence of aliens, Strictly Come Dancing vs Honey We’re Killing The Kids, To Kill a Mockingbird vs Science, whether immigrants working long hours is cultural or circumstance or capitalism, and marketing vs God. My brain loosened by desert wine, I start pontificating about mammals and how the fact that they bring up their young means that children look up to parents and that to have an omnipotent someone “above” us who is always right and can control our lives at whim is because we experience this in childhood. We constantly want something bigger than ourselves. To other mammals, especially domestic ones, we must seem like Gods! Dave says Richard Dawkins came up with the same theory, although I can’t find this on t’internet. Dawkins is not really a psychologist.

Neither am I, but I was seven (as opposed to Dawkins nine) when I questioned the existence (i.e. asked my dad) of Father Christmas, the Tooth-Fairy and God. Maybe they didn’t have the tooth-fairy in Nairobi. One doesn’t have to be an evolutionary scientist to realise that a bearded man in the sky makes as much sense as a bearded man bringing presents when you’ve seen your mum going shopping. Squabbly atheists spend much of their time trying to prove God doesn’t exist, thereby missing the point that the religious don’t need proof – they have faith. Just as socialists believe that everything will be fabulous sans capitalism, or – an uglier analogy – racists believe that once all the immigrants have left the country, we’ll be living in Albion. Blind faith - or shall we call it ignorance – until something jolts them out of their (self)righteousness. I prefer the likes of Joss Whedon's existentialist, tolerant atheism to Richard Dawkins’ hectoring, although I don’t think Whedon ever came up with A Unified Theory of Parents/God/Cat either.

I don’t really like Dawkins; his ferocious brand of atheism is as fundamentalist as the most fervent religious acolyte’s and his claim that religion has started all wars ignores both early 20^th century history and tribalism - people always want someone to hate, including, of course, us liberals. On the way home, I decide that the best thing for Britain would be if we rounded up all the Wrong People by putting an advert in the Daily Mail and The Sun for a free holiday, getting them all to turn up to one place (Romford?) and then turning on the gas.

Sunday: There are two Hitchcock/Cary Grant films on, so the day is technically gone. The socially historic nuances get me to thinking about things that the internet couldn’t answer (and I’m not paying AQA to):

1.       When did the fashion for champagne “coupes” – the ones allegedly modelled on Marie Antoinette’s busoms (she must have been a flat chested gal) - go out of fashion and flutes come in?. The ‘70s? They’re still drinking out of them in North by North West.

2.       From what date did people telephone directly to each other, rather than going through the operator? 1950s maybe? In the ‘60s in Britain, you still had to apply for a private line (which could take months to be set up).

3.       When did people stop wearing black after a death in the family? I’m guessing it would be during or after the Second World War. My grandma, who married in ’39, wore a dark suit rather than a white frock at her wedding because my grandad’s father had just died. Perhaps the number of deaths, and lack of cloth, during the war necessitated social change.