Why ‘Hatred’?

Yes, why?

Well, let me see.

There are two reasons, really.

The first one is obvious but, still, I have set out on this road so I will pace the distance it takes to travel it.

All of my life has been taken up with observation and reflection. Even in the depths of drunkenness there were still occasions that caused me to sit back and dwell for a moment or two on what was happening.

Perhaps, it is just possible, that these occasions were especially during periods of drunkenness. Unfortunately, these occasions were frequent and prolonged for a long time until eventually, I managed to emerge from living in a bottle to find that the real world was not as rosy as I thought it was going to be.

A story for another day.

I have noticed, for example, that people like to taunt. They like to hurl accusations and blame – whether true or false seems immaterial.

Commensurate with that is that the best response is, wherever possible, to ignore them.

That really stirs their pot.

It would seem that the point of goading someone is to make them respond. Once a response is obtained from the ‘goadee’ then the ‘goader’ has won.

Another good thing is to stay calm. Used soft, measured responses.

That gets them going, too. They want you to lose your temper, they want you to shout so that you lose control and say something they can use against you.

In both instances the person proffering the taunts is trying to bring you down to their level.

A friend of mine, Jim Mac., has the perfect solution. He says absolutely nothing until the whole thing gets to a point where nothing is going to help and then he knocks them out and walks away. I have never known Jim to lose his temper but, then, he doesn’t need to because he is assured of his own capabilities, he is confident that, whatever happens, he will win.

Is violence the answer? Asimov famously said, “Violence is the final recourse of the incompetent.”

Sadly, there are times when violence is the only answer in spite of what our conscience and the pacifists tell us.

As a small boy it was important, in the school particularly, to establish a pecking order amongst our peers. This is now being stamped out (they will not succeed, of course) by the left wing, politically correct crowd who are set on abolishing, for example, school sports. They are doing this on the grounds that someone losing a race will get a ‘complex’. Poor dears. Coming last in life will give you a much bigger complex! Coming second in a firefight with an enemy will remove that complex.

Getting the pecking order sorted out was a matter for fists and still is. The PC people will not stop that, it is the natural order of things amongst school children.

This extends into the growing up and grown up world where the tendency is for the fists to be replaced by words.

In order to gain superiority over a rival it becomes necessary to hurl abuse. This is not just something that happens occasionally—no, it happens all the time.

You hear it every day.

You hear someone telling you, or another person, that so-and-so is fat, that Mrs G is hideously ugly. This is said, not just as a matter of fact, but to gain superiority over the fat or ugly person. It is rarely said in a kind manner as a form of sympathy; the words are formed in a kind of gloat.

These are negatives, they are abuse. They give rise, as do the fists in the playground, to hatred.

This happens at every level. It is most pronounced at a political level because it becomes public property.

It is part of our competitive world.

Hatred abounds.

In spite of the idea that we are bound by charity towards our brothers and sisters in the world.

The second reason?

Ha! You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?

You may have noticed that I write things down. When I’m not writing stories I’m writing books on jet engines. When I’m resting from writing about jet engines I write, what are generally, philosophical ramblings on this ‘Blog’. When I’m not writing I draw cartoons and write captions, very often.

So. I write.

Stories. Mostly.

What are stories about?

Read Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. Then gradually come up to date through Bacon, Dickens, HG Wells, Verne, Conan-Doyle, Asimov, Clarke, et al.

Look for common threads.

Sex.

Yes. Shakespeare was obsessed with sex. He really went to town with Titania in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Violence.

Most stories contain violence because most stories rotate about crime or war.

Power (money).

At some point every story is about power or the acquisition of it.

Many stories contain elements of all these things and somewhere within it there is hatred. Always hatred.

We are inured to it. It is so much a part of our everyday life that, in all probability, we have ceased to notice it.

It is there. It lurks in every corner of our lives.

The latest one to hit America is the ‘Occupy’ thing that most people outside of America barely understand—if at all. But there are images of policemen pepper-spraying citizens with the accompanying captions proclaiming ‘police violence’ or ‘police justification’ depending which side of the fence you reside.

We don’t have to look far for other sources of hatred. It is not necessary to rake over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict however distasteful that is to see other examples.

Homophobia, racism, hatred of drug dealers, homeless vagrants, government health policies (or lack of, notwithstanding), the neighbour’s dog/cat/goldfish, that teenager with a face full of safety pins and spiked hair... The list is endless.

For all of us there is something that makes our spleen tingle and the veins in our neck stand out.

And that, as a writer, is what we have to observe. What is it that makes people tick, lust, drool, salivate, itch, throw up?

Not just the obvious. The devil is in the detail.

Now I’m just off to study a bit of lust... er... I mean for food—gluttony!  Yes, that’s it. Gluttony.

Don’t you just hate gluttons?

Hatred

At a very young age there was a dawn of realisation that the one emotion that is exceptionally easy to promote in anyone is hatred.

It takes very little for another person, no matter how ‘well adjusted they may think they are—or seem to be, to feel that antipathy towards a cause or belief well up inside them.

To be honest with you, I feel that Vegans, particularly, have got it all wrong. I don’t hate them; I just feel that they are, somehow, on the wrong track for, potentially, the wrong reasons. Perhaps that is a story for another time.

But hatred would be, if you follow a specific line of reasoning, a reasonable next step. I could write a book saying that Vegans are a threat to the World Order; that they are ‘Undermining the Food and Agrarian Economy’; ‘Vegans plot Genocide in the Third World’.

We could ignore the facts and use evidence from ignorance. We could make up stories; we could fabricate details that would make Vegans appear not just despicable but loathsome.

Stupid?

Yes. Of course it is.

And yet the majority of Earth’s population do this all the time. Not against Vegans, I hasten to say, but in other matters.

Religion.

Never talk about religion. My Gran had a notice up in the dining room—a somewhat grandiose term for the kitchen-dinette in her tiny flat (apartment), that stated:

“The following topics of conversation are forbidden around this meal table:

Sex

Politics

Religion”

Nowadays she might have added ‘football’ (soccer)!

I am not, in this discourse, interested in any one religion. What I am interested in is the idea that the only way to promote your own cause is to denigrate the beliefs of other people.

Most of us are familiar with the Atheists postings on the net. They are full of ‘cut and paste’ arguments and contrived dogma that all boils down to the idea of “prove it”. Atheists require theists to ‘prove’ there is a Deity of some form.

The hole in this idea is that, if there were proof that a God exists, proof would change a ‘belief’ system into a ‘fact’ system.

The whole point of a faith is that there is no definable proof. There is no mathematical equation and yet they press on with their immature and nonsensical arguments.

Similarly, people of different faiths like to try and bring down those who believe otherwise.

Why?

There is a book extant written by one Robert Morey that is, from cover to cover, filled with lies, half-truths, misdirections and points taken out of context that purports to be a ‘well researched document revealing the truth behind a growing religion’.

No. It is not.

The saddening and disquieting part of it is that many people who are not of that belief will believe it. They will not research the truth themselves, they will not check the facts nor will they even view it with some cynicism.

No. They will believe it implicitly because it is what they want to believe. They want to feel superior; they like it that somebody has ‘revealed the truth’ about another faith even if it is a pack of lies.

Perhaps I could tender another idea.

Many of my friends have different faiths. My Hindu friends have three million Gods—this gives them a wide choice to select from, something to suit every taste and occasion. My Buddhist friends enjoy the thought of reincarnation as do my Pagan friends but they have ‘Summerland’ to go to first. My Christian friends are full of rejoicing at their beliefs and my Muslim friends like to pray five times a day every day.

None of them insult the others. None of them mock or denigrate the others.

Why can we not enjoy our own beliefs without recourse to slighting the faiths of others?

The Pilgrim Fathers set sail from Britain in order to worship as they saw best fit. Their beliefs were very different from the spirits of the local residents of Plymouth Rock but they felt strong enough in their own ideas to press on.

Yes, there were almost immediate differences but that is another direction.

Freedom of religion and belief.

America, and now most of ‘Civilisation’, was built on that.

Enjoy yours and let others enjoy theirs. Look at the celebrations of others as we enjoy Deepavalli, Christmas, Aidul-fitr, the Hungry ghost Festival and others in their turn.

Why turn the beliefs of other people into hatred?  If this goes on the next thing is that there will be those who stir up aggression because of skin tone.

Heaven forfend!

Shalom, Peace be Upon You, Wassalam

Internal Struggles

A thousand years ago, when the British Empire was still a twinkle in some merchant’s eye, I had a thought that rose up from the words in a book I was reading.

In those days, after around seven or eight years of life, I would read anything. Books about birds, birds’ eggs, animals, trees, aeroplanes (avid reader of anything about aeroplanes), astronomy... anything.

Astronomy was one of my favourites although I have never been able to pick out constellations or other planets. My interest was purely academic—no practical applications at all.

As a side note, astrology has never interested me. For those who gain comfort from it, may it warm your heart and keep your soul. For me? I cannot imagine how a star many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light years from us can have any bearing on our lives. Furthermore, the future has yet to happen and so soothsaying and other forms of ‘voyancy’ into that ‘which is yet to happen’ is a nonsense; too many variables.

I should love to know what is going to happen in the next few minutes—never mind next week, month, year...

[NB: This ‘spell/grammar check thing has no clue about ‘astyanax’. It’s quick enough to leap on ‘fragment’ and ‘passive voice’. Irritating!]

Where was I? Too many idea sprites sparking away, they trigger ‘The Voices’!

Oh, yes. The thought.

While reading about stars and galaxies, steeped in a sense of wonder at how many different forms these things take, ‘The Thought’ hit me.

Where does it end?

Our planet goes around a star that we call ‘Sol’—our sun; this, in its turn, goes around with billions of other stars in a galaxy; billions of galaxies, spreading out, presumably rotate in a Universe.

Perhaps there are many universes—in fact, there would have to be or there would just be an infinite void full of nothing out there.

So? Where does it end? Is there a wall or fence? Is there a sphere of crystalline rock entombing all that we know?

But, then, what lies beyond that?

I could feel my mind slipping away. This was a thought that I was not equipped to deal with but I knew that it would grab hold of my mind and put it in some sort of cerebral lock forever if nothing was done.

The only way I could rationalise it was to write a story. Where the story is now I know not. Lost forever in some rubbish bin swirling around in the space-time continuum where favourite teddy bears and stamp collections go.

The Seed

A boy gazed at a seed. It was quite a large seed, possibly from one of the trees that grew all around the place where he was sitting.

His focus was entirely on the seed. Nothing else existed, not even the faint sound of his Mother’s voice calling him in for lunch somewhere in the distance.

Somewhere within the seed he knew that there were smaller parts that made up the seed. That it was a collection of molecules and atoms arranged to form the flesh of the seed so that it would grow and become something bigger, perhaps huge.

He held the seed closer to his eye even ‘though he was well aware that those tiny particles were invisible; even microscopic life forms were beyond the visual range of his eye.

‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘one day someone will invent something that will be able to see atoms and molecules. But, then, how will they know that it is the atoms or molecules they are aiming at and not the particles that make up the machine for seeing such infinitesimally small points of matter.’

The boy sat back, staring, unseeing, up at the trees.

We are going around the sun. The sun is part of a galaxy. There are billions of galaxies out there just as there are billions of atoms in this seed.

What if this universe is an atom?

What if we were able to go so far out into space that we could observe millions, perhaps billions, of universes?

What would that make?

If we went even farther out, what are the universes rotating around?

Could we go so far out that we could see what becomes of these universes?

Eventually we could see that all those universes were part of a seed.

A small boy is holding it, wondering. Wondering at what tiny particles make up this seed. He is ignoring his Mother’s voice in the distance.

Does he realise that deep, deep down inside that seed is another boy holding a seed just like his and that that small boy’s seed also contains a small boy holding a seed?

Does he know that he, too, is just part of an atom?

End

Little dogs have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em.

And little fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Anon.

Now you know.  Even back in 1956 or ’57 my head was full of odd things.