covid-denial

Some people I know, many of them intelligent, devout and kind, object to the measures that governments have taken to stop the spread of covid. What I have to ask them is whether they object to the measures because:

• such measures are intrinsically unjust, however bad the disease
• covid isn't a serious enough disease to warrant such measures?

If they hold the first position, they would presumably agree with the statement that deaths caused by a serious infection are acceptable because the right to go out and socialise is more important. If they hold the second position, they would presumably support measures such as those that have been taken with covid if they believed that a particular disease actually was dangerous.

I would want to ask those who supported unrestricted circulation in time of plague whether they really mean that! I'd want to ask those who say covid isn't dangerous to produce peer-reviewed scientific papers to prove it; theories about freemasons and reptiles just aren't enough.

never had it so good

OECD countries account for some 1.3bn people (17% of the world's population) but around half of global GDP. Around 10% of the world's population live in extreme poverty, and the UN hopes to cut that to just three percent by 2030. As I write this and you read this, some of our fellow-human beings are starving to death. Not all of these people are beyond the reach of aid-agencies, among which the World Food Programme is pre-eminent. From our computers and smartphones, we can do something right now to feed the starving.

The suffering of those in poor countries contrasts with the luxury enjoyed by people in rich countries. The worldwide gambling-industry is estimated to be worth more than $66bn, compared with $8.5bn given to the WFP last year. The challenge is to get people into the habit of giving to famine relief. Research suggests giving to charity makes you feel good.

the book of life

Check your spam folder (or even your inbox) and you'll see a tsunami of emails from coaches, gurus and prophets, all of them offering advice on everything from getting up in the morning to becoming a billionaire, by way of walking on coals. Some of this advice is offered in exchange for money, to which I have no objection; some is there for the taking. This whole area of advice-giving runs all the way from sacred texts and worthy Victorian self-help books to assertively-expressed life-coaching, meditative practices, therapeutic interventions and collective therapies such as the 12 steps for overcoming addiction.

The advice isn't always consistent. Some teachers advocate emptying the mind, others filling it with good things. The same guru could one minute be telling you to be grateful for your current situation and the next minute telling you to make bold changes to your life. Credibility can be a problem. We can be told that we are entirely responsible for what has happened to us and/or that we can do anything we set our minds to. This advice must ring hollow with innocent victims of others' misdeeds and those who (like most people) have some limitations on their physical or mental capacity. Is it actually all worthless hype, or are there some verifiable techniques for leading a good life? And what is such a life like?

living spiritual lives

The Sunday-Mass readings this weekend include these words from Romans 8: "[T]here is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives." The material world matters a lot. We can't neglect the everyday and claim that we are living well. However, we need to see this world through supernatural eyes. We need to decide what matters in spiritual terms, and then implement those priorities in the tangible world. As we put those transcendentally-determined plans into action, we should also judge them by eternal (not temporal) standards. I may win in the world yet lose in heaven; I may fail here on earth, yet gain a celestial crown.

swings and roundabouts

The British electorate swings to the right and, in the media’s view at least, the Conservatives finally look electable. But not so fast say I and Mr Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail. In his blog, the latter warns that the left-leaning media are only prepared to make Mr Cameron look credible because he’s adopted their policies. Things won’t change, he warns, and I’m minded of my own blog (presently de-published by my esteemed hosting-company) which said that British voters were liberal democrats who just didn’t vote Liberal Democrat.

Depressingly, Mr Hitchens gives us his take on the transition from Major to Blair: “And when it was all over, the Government was almost exactly the same – high taxes, slovenly services, hundreds of thousands of people in baseball caps living off the State, feeble police and courts, mass immigration. You know the sort of thing.” We do indeed, and he predicts more of the same if the Tories win in or before 2010.

My “not so fast” is broader. Exciting and interesting though a change from Ken to Boris may be, fundamental problems will persist. England, from being a holy nation in the early 16th century, has become secularised, a bastard-heir to its Christian tradition, charging admission-fees to its despoiled cathedrals and abbeys. Marriage is a wreck and genteel behaviour mocked. The nation fixates on self-harming celebrities from TV, sport and music, drinks itself silly, and increasingly disregards just laws and regulations.

Most of us who work do so for others and not ourselves, let alone on our own land. The property we occupy may be rented or bought at usurious interest. Just a few people own most of the nation’s wealth, parallelling the global situation. Our savings are eroded by inflation and the state takes and controls a huge share of the nation’s wealth. When we do encounter government’s attempt to provide us with a service, we experience bad staff-attitudes, unionisation, rationing of those services, lateness, budget-overrun and just plain bad quality. (I include the railways in that category because, while the motive may now be commercial, sometimes monopolistic, the ethos is statist.)

We are involved in dirty wars overseas which do not relate to our territorial security but, rather, to trade-driven geopolitics. They make us hated and, as if that weren’t bad enough, we seem actually to be losing those conflicts. National policy is effectively surrendered to Brussels and Washington, our highest courts for at least some cases are overseas, and, while we have enough nuclear weapons to commit major war-crimes, we still need someone in the Pentagon to give us the scratchcard with the launch-codes on.

Just because globalisation exists doesn’t mean we need to succumb to it, any more than the existence of malaria means you don’t bother with mosquito-nets or vaccines.

Sadly, the malaise runs deep, and at least some of it is to do with the gathering of much power and property into a few hands. I used to fear that such observations made one a communist, yet, with its doctrine of state-control, that creed is as bad as capitalism. What folks can’t see is that politics, like life, has three dimensions rather than two. Even on a flat sheet of paper you can represent a line which cuts across an otherwise single ideological spectrum (the one from left to right).

We are imprisoned in the view that you must be left, right or centre (even though 21st century centre is way to the left of, for example, 19th century liberalism). You can be state-dominated, trade-dominated, or enjoying some kind of standoff where, as in modern Britain, government provides poor-quality essential services while big business makes billion-pound profits out of the rest (including food which is kinda essential too).

I'm presently considering moving here, but, for now, I'm at http://pauldanon.blog.com/.

HISTORY OF THE WORLD
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Desert and travelled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants live elsewhere.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinnessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain asked "Am I my brother's son?" Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingreadients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada. Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured people and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died of and overdoes of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline. In the Olympic games Greeks ran races, jumped. hurled the biscuits and threw the java.
Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed on in one place for very long. Julius Ceasar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made King. Dying, he gasped out "Tee Hee Brutus". Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonised by Bernard Shaw. Finally Manga Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offence. In midveil time most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literaure. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through and apple while standing on his son's head.
Queen Elizabeth was the Virgin Queen. As queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah". It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenburg invented moveable type and the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a hostorical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcied the world with a 100 foot clipper.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespere. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tradegies, comedies and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are and example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespere was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hotel. The next great author was John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

During the Renaissance America befan. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrims Progress. The winter of 1820 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captin John Smith was responsible for this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea...
Also, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxies. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contenter Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independance. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared 'A horse divided upon itself cannot stand'. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic security. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. Abraham Lincon became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin, which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theature and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assasinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a resonable time. Voltaire invented elevtricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compostitions and had a large number of children. In bettween he practised on and old spinster which he kept in the attic. Back died from 1850 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf that he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827, and later died for this.
The French Revoulution was accomplished before it was happened and cataputled into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted and heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't have any children.
Queen Victoria was the longest Queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practised virtue. Her death was a final even which ended her reign.
Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Dawin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
The First World War. caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

People are possessive of their writing-style and it may be impossible to convince them that it can be improved, let alone persuade them to do so. It may be, however, that good style can be taught to children. It may already be being taught or, alternatively, schools may only teach correctness.