Well Norman, in our religion lectures that was exactly what we were told except that it was described as an 'organised belief system', which given the chaos we sometimes see... Same difference anyway, innit?
Peter
I did say a FORM of religion, as it is the 'belief' in something spritual - and what else could any expectation of an afterlife be? Hardly physical as we know it, 'cos what we've got in that department we leave behind don't we?
A belief system is a fair description of a religion don't you think?
CS&N, obviously :)
I don't associate the Airplane with the sentiments of that song ; that Starship stuff was too far out, man.
Which version, Crosby, Stills and Nash or Jefferson Airplane?
"In a very strange way the present is becoming diametrically the opposite of the 1960s. As the song could have said 'What a difference a half century made'!"
Wooden Ships
If you smile at me I will understand
'Cause that is something
Everybody everywhere does in the same language
I can see by your coat, my friend you're from the other side
There's just one thing I got to know
Can you tell me please who won?
Say can I have some of your purple berries?
Yes, I've been eating them
For six or seven weeks now haven't got sick once
Probably keep us both alive
Wooden ships on the water very free and easy
Easy, you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline let us be
Talkin' 'bout very free and easy
Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die
We are leaving, you don't need us
Aaaah ...
Go take your sister then by the hand
Lead her away from this foreign land
Far away where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don't need us
And it's a fair wind
Blowin' warm out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I'll set a course and go
With you absolutely, especially the last bit.
As for choice, well I concede that death is not a democratic institution, but a dictatorship... I'll have something to say about that in the event!
Yes, fear eats soul and then hope dies last... Fear and hope are like gravity in a jojo toy for the "politically responsible" priests ;-)
No Norman, not necessarily. Why do you assume the afterlife etc has to be linked to religion ? I believe in the afterlife but not in any God.
Then we come back to at least a form of religion don't we? Most are predicated on just such an outcome. Personally I have no such belief, although I will admit to a certain sneaky hope.
The point of death being a release from pain and misery is a good one, and I sincerely DO hope that in another few years we should have the legal option of choosing when to go for ourselves, without being subject to the appalling Right-To -Lifers restrictions.
Funny (peculiar) isn't it that Governments and pollies have no compunction about putting our young people in way of death and injury, but have great problems with allowing us oldies to choose our own time to go.
I don't believe you will have any say in the matter Brian ! That's just my take on it.
Catching up on many years of lost sleep is as good as anything by my books. I would not want an afterlife since this one has been a hard fight already and any risk of a replay...
Depends on your beliefs Norman. For me death is the stepping stone to other things. Death was a release from pain and misery for my good lady after too many years of suffering...
To quote whoever, we all end up in a wooden suit.
Peter, Everybody dies in the end though don't they?
In a very strange way the present is becoming diametrically the opposite of the 1960s. As the song could have said 'What a difference a half century made'!
As for god. Well, to roughly recall what somebody big and famous said a couple of decades ago; 'we can blame god for a lot of things except creation, since if she had been that good at making things such a faulty bit of work such as humanity would have been binned immediately'. I laughed at the time, perhaps the metaphor has far more going for it than I realised then.
..."No-one finally comes out a winner do they ?"
Well, i've never seen a poor arms dealer Norman !
I agree with all the foregoing, and didn't offer religion as the reason - just an interesting correllation.
However all that has been said here in various forms does nothing to change my view that War and conflict are man's natural state - certainly all the evidence seems to point in that direction - I just wonder how all the apparent reasons and validations and even excuses change that apparently basic fact.
That animals are just the same is merely another extension of our own human state, if one subscribes to natural development of man generally.
As the man said ''were doomed I tell ye - DOOMED!'' Maybe if we all accepted that, there would be no need to pre-empt the inevitable? No-one finally comes out a winner do they?
Too much to hope for I fear.
Talking of which have we noticed that now we are all 'fearful' of Islamism - NB the Fr24 debate last night. Very interesting to me as this was always the cornerstone of all Marketing activities - find or create a fear, and offer a solution or cure for it.
One English guy bucked the trend by saying he is not fearful of it but angry about seeing his town (Luton) disappearing and Sharia Courts per-empting English ones. Fair point?
However fear is an interesting and basic motivator, but in the current climate I wonder which side of the fence, eg pro or anti-Islamic immigration (notably) is truly the most fearful? Very often in history it has been those on the side of appeasement - as in 'don't rock the boat', who have ultimately been those who ended up doing the most damage surely?
I see the coming year as seeing quite serious development in 'anti' everything and increasing discontent with our politicians. Where that will lead us is conjecture, but none of the signs look good to me.
Finally and with my odd mind. We note in Europe and elsewhere the rise of anti-Islam, but also the cry that Europe is ageing and needs the migrants. The USA has a main problem (again apparently) with Catholic Mexicans - is anyone following my drift? If Europe needs migrants, then why not encourage those with a compatible religion to the existing order of things, and who to my knowledge have never killed off other Catholics opposing them. Viva Mexican Migrants? Why not?
Theo, touching a sore point there. I began my academic career studying migration, OK specialising in child and youth migrants, right now my wife and I are writing a report to conclude our contract on child and youth migrants in Cambodia. It is the past catching up with me to a point. Refugees are being lined up as scapegoats for all evils possible at present. Either they are those who have needed to take refuge in their own country who are further punished by advancing armies and closed borders holding them in, hence the Syria and Kurdistan situation with IS that nobody is doing much more about than standing and watching them die, or those who are blamed for trying to make new lives. Refugees, particularly the ones known as asylum seekers, are unwanted and rootless victims of violence. Now they are being conjoined with economic migrants who may be seeking refuge but are more frequently seeking a better life. One has nothing to do with the other, but it is a great excuse to disown them all as one mass.
I worked in Mosul, now occupied by IS, at the closing stages of the Iraq war. I was training them to work with their street children. There were so many they had no hope. They were refugees who had lost or been separated from their families. Now IS either forcibly recruits them, abuses or kills them. It is heartbreaking. The ones who were children then are young adults now but the newer generation is considered vermin, so they exterminate them. The population is already traumatised from the days of Saddam, the war and what has happened since, what kind of future do they have and how long will it take to recover IF somebody manages to give them the help they need?
But, oh no, bureaucrats redefine them, reduce their scope for finding refuge along with all the other sad people moving aimlessly from one country to another. Without war those people still have no peace. They may never find that. I have given the largest part of my life to what can always be slipped comfortably under the classification human rights and now I openly say that is the domain I work in. It is almost half a century and all I can say in all honesty is that from the optimism in the 1960s when we protested against Viet Nam and saw that war end, protested against nuclear weapons and saw the tensions relax enough for us to breath again, we now see a world in which conflict is as bad as then, some of it far worse but now there is no real peace movement to give those of us who want to see peace companionship.
Politicians, bureaucrats and bankers are playing poker with us. If they get the war they clear need to help them get richer whilst getting rid of a few people, then they will be happy. People are being kept uninformed about how bad some things are but at the same time being fed hatred of people they do not understand by the media.
For some of us 2015 may be a good year for some others, too many, it will just be misery as before.
Well, well, now not so pessimistic.
Brian, on the whole, you're right. But Norman has brought the problem with these Brussels bureaucrats right to the point with this transfiguration of the term refugee and migrant.
these people are of course the result of conflicts. Check it out with Israel: there thousands people had arrived there from the former Soviet Union. They fled anti-Semitic foolsin Ukraine, Russia etc... So they were settled in the West Bank. Now Israel is being blamed just because it has taken people who were no longer safe in the former communist countries because they were terrorized by nationalists and Nazi gangs.
When it comes to Europe and the refugee saga, we must remember that this Bush Jr. and his poodle had set the entire region into chaos with their silly lies about WDMs (Toni: "missiles can reach London in 10 minutes"). Their "humanitarian intervention" was followed which the expulsion and flight of about 500,000 Iraqi Sunnis into Syria. Check old UNHCR stats. This then meant that the Wahhabi chiefdoms could also sent the drop-outs of their societies as "freedom fighters" to topple Assad and this then lead to this absolutely absurd beheader Caliphate called ISIS... I laugh when I hear these outraged howls of the mainstream media priest who now want to explain the world bring it in context to us. Even Joseph G. had made propaganda smarter. These Saudi Arabian, Qatar, Bahrain sacks, who own 30% of Londons best place haven't let any refugees into their chiefdoms! But Europe is picking up the pieces? The UNSC should demand Saudistan and all this other Stans have to accept at least 70% of the ethnically cleansed populations because this undemocratic theocracies are responsible for the mess in the region. If they done accept, there will be sanctions. Basta. Since this will not be happen when girls like Sami Power are bluffing in the UN the only thing that helps is just take care that in your "immediate vicinity" everything remains relatively peaceful and manageable before the implosion of the financial system, this time a credit crunch in the energy sector is quite logical. So 2015: Wellcome!
Difficult to disagree with any of that Martin.