The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘religion’ Category

Like the title says, I’ve been think­ing about the ques­tions that will never have answers; I’ve been pon­der­ing the imponderable.

What do I mean, exactly?

What I mean is sim­ple: I’ve been think­ing about the stuff that we, and I mean humans, earth­lings, what­ever you would like to call us in the col­lec­tive “we”, will never ever know the answers to such sim­ple ques­tions as:

“Why are we here?”

“Where did the uni­verse come from?”

And more importantly…

“Do good hip­pies from north Lon­don go to heaven?”

Ok, I can answer that third ques­tion myself.

Hip­pies from north Lon­don, just like every other liv­ing crea­ture, just cease to exist when we die.

There is no heaven.

Any­one who claims oth­er­wise is quite frankly, full of shit.

Any­one who claims to the know the answers to the first two ques­tions is, espe­cially if they answer them with some sort of reli­gious mumbo-jumbo, also full of the same shit.

I’m smarter than all of those believ­ers, because I know that I will never know the answers to those first 2 ques­tions and fur­ther more, I’m very cer­tain that no one who is alive today or any­one that is born in the future will be able to answer them either.

That’s one of the things that makes me smarter than many peo­ple; I know there’s a lot more that I don’t know, than I do. No mat­ter how old I get, that will always be true.

I don’t know why we’re here, not for sure. No one ever really could.
If pushed for an answer, I would sur­mise that we’re here for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son, we just are. I take com­fort in that rather bleak assess­ment, because it is so lib­er­at­ingly honest.

I’m point­less; we all are.

We, the col­lec­tive we again, don’t serve a sin­gle pur­pose, unless the rap­ing and pil­lag­ing of the planet, and each other is our pur­pose, in which case we are kick­ing some seri­ous ass!

We add noth­ing to the uni­verse at large.

We may do things that enrich the lives of oth­ers, or our­selves, but that doesn’t ben­e­fit all of exis­tence, does it?

I can appre­ci­ate a Van Gogh paint­ing as much as the next guy, or a great song or a well-made film, but so what? Our lives and the lives of even the impor­tant, tal­ented and cel­e­brated of our species don’t mean shit in the con­text of the universe.

Life on our planet has only been around for a blink of an eye in cos­mo­log­i­cal terms. Intel­li­gent life has been around for a frac­tion of a frac­tion of that blink.

And by “intel­li­gent life”, I mean us and yes, I am using the term very loosely in this context.

In the scheme of the uni­verse, we are all noth­ing but flot­sam and jet­sam, or as Kansas once put it so suc­cinctly; “We are all just dust in the wind.”

How does it feel, hav­ing me tell you that you don’t mat­ter; that no one mat­ters? Do you hate me for speak­ing the truth so plainly?

If Jesus’s mes­sage were bleak as mine, would any­one still be fol­low­ing him today?

Where’s the hope, hippy? Where’s the hope?

I’m com­ing to that, because of course, my mes­sage actu­ally is, one of hope.

As I sit at my desk, in the mid­dle of the night, strug­gling to keep my eyes open and my brain engaged, I think about these things. I don’t know why we are here and it dri­ves me insane that I will never have the answers I seek.

I could seek them in reli­gion, for many peo­ple find com­fort in the fairy sto­ries offered by the major and minor reli­gions of our world.

But I won’t, I can’t; I’m not will­ing to accept the delu­sions of oth­ers mas­querad­ing as fact.

Think about your reli­gion if you have one, then apply some sim­ple log­i­cal think­ing to it and then ask your­self this ques­tion: Does it sound like some­thing made up by peo­ple for peo­ple, or by a god for people.

Every­thing I know about reli­gion smacks of man. Men invented all of the fables we are sold as fact. And I’m being very gen­der spe­cific in this ref­er­ence, because men are respon­si­ble for most, if not all that is fucked with our earthly existence.

Reli­gion, all reli­gion, was invented to keep peo­ple in line. If you don’t do what the bible says, god’s gonna get ya! He’s gonna get you but good!

Bull­shit!

Look up to the heav­ens right now and say the fol­low­ing out loud:

“Hey, god. Yes, you god. It’s me, the hippy (use your own name, dummy). You know, the one from north Lon­don (and use your own loca­tion!). You know what I think, god? You wanna know what I think?

I think you are a right fuck­ing cunt.”

Don’t worry; I’ve done this myself. Many times; often with an audience.

Actu­ally, it’s always bet­ter with an audi­ence and my dream is to one day be on a stage, deliv­er­ing a lec­ture or speech (upon accept­ing my sec­ond Pulitzer prize I hope), when I utter those offen­sive words, shout them really loud.

And then I sud­denly drop dead of a heart attack, live on stage!

Wouldn’t that just put the fear of our imag­i­nary god into everyone!

Hey, if I’m wrong and there is a god, I bet I get that sec­ond Pulitzer. He’ll do it just to show he’s got a sense of humour.

The point of this lit­tle oral exer­cise is a sim­ple one, to prove that god, whether he exists or not, doesn’t give a shit what you say or do.

Peo­ple do really get away with mur­der in this world and there never is divine retribution.

There is no god in my opin­ion, but if there were, he would be noth­ing like the way you pic­ture him. You couldn’t ever pic­ture him, because his form, shape, being, what­ever you would want to call it, is beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of the tiny lit­tle meat-based com­puter in your head.

Here’s the thing, if I’m telling you we won’t know the answers to any of these ques­tions, ever, then how can I be so sure there is no heaven? Isn’t that a hubris­tic contradiction?

Nope. Guess again.

There is no heaven. Heaven is an inven­tion of men; it doesn’t exist; it couldn’t pos­si­bly. You need to ask the right question.

Is there an afterlife?

Maybe, but I highly doubt it. It’s awfully unlikely, don’t you think?

Has any­one seen one shred of gen­uine evi­dence that our minds con­tinue on after our bod­ies die?

Notice I didn’t say “spirit” or “soul” because again, these are false con­cepts cre­ated by men.

I would love for some­one to prove that there is some form of life after death, but I think I have a bet­ter chance of those super-duper boffins com­ing up with a way to down­load my mind into a supercomputer.

And by the way, where can I sign up for that? I’d love to be hard­ware based, as long as I had a vir­tual tongue and cock, I’d be all set for eter­nity! And bring on the vir­tual spliffs!

Believ­ing in any of this requires some­thing I decid­edly lack and that’s faith. I have no faith, not in god, not in any­one else, not even in myself. Hey ho.

But where’s the hope?

I’m get­ting to it right now. Hope comes from free choice and free will.

You have the choice between being a decent per­son and being a bas­tard or bitch. You have the choice on how you view the world and how it views you. You alone have the abil­ity, the con­trol to choose a direc­tion for your existence.

We all do.

It doesn’t mat­ter who you are or where you are on the face of this planet, you can choose to do good and be good in every­thing you do.

I don’t care if you are the rich­est or the poor­est, the tallest or the short­est; the colour of your skin doesn’t mat­ter either; nor does the shape of your gen­i­tals, it all makes no dif­fer­ence.
In your own way, in your own life, you can choose to be a force of good.

Ok, tell me that is not hope­ful. Tell me that’s not life affirming!

Think about it; let it sink in, really deep.

In your every thought, your every action, you can strive to bring some­thing pos­i­tive to this world for the sim­ple, sat­is­fy­ing rea­son that it’s your choice to make!

Imag­ine if this was the “Ser­mon on the Mount” or if we could replace the “Ten Com­mand­ments” with this sim­ple approach.

Imag­ine if you heard this sim­ple mes­sage every day from when you were young. Imag­ine if we all did. What a won­der­ful world this would be and yes, Sam Cooke said that first.

Threats from god don’t stop peo­ple from lying, cheat­ing, steal­ing, killing or cov­et­ing thy neighbour’s wife, but my phi­los­o­phy might.

Do “good” because you can. Choose “good”, because there is really is no other choice; be good because it’s the right thing to do!

Imag­ine if every­one thought this way. We might actu­ally be able to turn things around before it’s too late.

We might be able to reverse global warm­ing, sort out all inter­na­tional con­flicts, ban­ish poverty, famine, dis­ease, small-mindedness and the stu­pid, point­less pro­hi­bi­tion on weed!

A hippy can dream.

So you see, I know it took some time, but we reached the hope­ful bit. Now, the rest is up to all of you.

Believe in your­selves, even if you have no faith.

Know that you are just as val­ued in the uni­verse as any­one else on the planet, no more and more impor­tantly, no less. Live your life as if oth­ers mat­ter; we share this planet.

In every­thing you say, every­thing you do, strive for there to be a ben­e­fit. Give more than you take, always.

Choose to be good, choose to do “good”, because the choice is yours alone to make. It’s what really sep­a­rates from the animals.

You see, that tagline at the top of your browser isn’t an idle boast. I truly am a mes­siah for the new millennium.

I think I’m ready for a spliff. I’ve earned it! Catch ya next time!

Hey ho my fine-feathered fuck­ers, for­give me for my absence, but I’m back now and feel­ing bet­ter than ever!

Bet­ter than ever for me is not really say­ing much. It’s some­thing, I guess.

So I’ve got a joke for you. If you are eas­ily offended, please look away now and go read some­one else’s blog.

Please note, I said, “please”.

Ok, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Jesus is get­ting butt-fucked by Satan.

Satan is really giv­ing it to him hard and Jesus turns around and asks Satan, “Is this heaven, or is this hell?”

Satan then looks up at Jesus and says, “I was just think­ing the same thing.”

Ba-dum-bum.

Did I make you laugh?

Did I offend you?

Does it mat­ter either way?

The joke is inten­tion­ally offen­sive; it’s meant to get a reaction.

The big laugh; if there is one, should be sparked by the open­ing line. It’s the humour of the out­ra­geously uncomfortable.

Trust me, open your stand-up rou­tine with this line and you will be greeted with a burst of ner­vous laugh­ter fol­lowed by the sti­fled silence of peo­ple try­ing to con­tain their guilty guffaws.

The punch­line, if you can call it that, is far more sur­real and intel­lec­tual. It under­mines the open­ing line because it requires the audi­ence to think about what the joke is really saying.

What is heaven, what is hell? Could one person’s heaven be another person’s hell? Is there a heaven or a hell or for that mat­ter was there really a Jesus? Is the Devil still in busi­ness? Was he ever?

The main thing is did I offend you? And if I did, what does it say about you?

We’re sup­posed to have free speech, but do we? Can I really post this joke in my blog and not expect some sort of reaction?

Well, prob­a­bly not, because I remain largely undis­cov­ered and under­ground. I’m the biggest inter­net celebrity you’ve never heard of blah blah blah.

Are Chris­tians going to take to the streets and start burn­ing hip­py­ef­fi­gies? I think not.

Most peo­ple are strong enough in their beliefs not to allow the rav­ings of one mad hippy in north Lon­don to upset them.

Those who would be offended by my lit­tle stab at blas­phe­mous, thought pro­vok­ing humour, are the weak minded of our world. Their frag­ile belief sys­tem is such that there is no room for any pos­si­ble doubts to be raised, satir­i­cal or otherwise.

Which is why I’m not mak­ing any jokes about a cer­tain well-regarded Prophet, peace be upon him. I don’t want a fatwa on my ass!

But sup­pose, for the sake of a lit­tle spec­u­la­tive game play­ing, that some­one stum­bled upon this post and was offended.

Now, take it one step fur­ther and imag­ine this per­son, who is so offended, belongs to some right wing, fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian group in America.

Sud­denly the link to my lit­tle blog is fly­ing through cyber­space at the speed of light to all cor­ners of the globe and before I know it, thou­sands, maybe even hun­dreds of thou­sands of crazed Chris­t­ian war­riors are out for my blessed hippyblood!

Egads! What’s a poor hippy to do?

I go into hid­ing, max out my credit cards, mov­ing from one 5-star hotel suite to the next, check­ing in under assumed hip­py­names before end­ing up in Rome, where I would sur­ren­der to the Pope him­self seek­ing sanctuary.

The Pope would invoke a long for­got­ten law of the papacy and have me put to death, iron­i­cally, by crucifixion.

With my beard and long hair, com­par­isons would undoubt­edly be made, as the nail­ing of this hippy to a cross would be broad­cast live, on every tv chan­nel across the planet.

And when I reach the after­life, after deny­ing it’s exis­tent for nearly my entire life; guess what happened?

I’ll find myself bent over, get­ting butt-fucked by Satan.

The uni­verse does have a sense of humour. Even I’d be laugh­ing at that eter­nal outcome!

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the pub­li­ca­tion of cer­tain car­toons in Den­mark (and now many other Euro­pean coun­tries), which have upset some of our friends in the Mus­lim world.

No doubt, you’ve also by now heard about the ferry that sank in the Red Sea while trav­el­ling to Egypt from Saudi Ara­bia. The pas­sen­gers were mainly the very reli­gious, return­ing from the Hajj.

You have also have heard that these car­toons, which satirise the Islamic faith have spurned vio­lent reac­tions in the Arab world and some fairly scary demon­stra­tions here in the west.

Now there are some that might draw some con­clu­sions over these unre­lated events, sug­gest­ing that god didn’t like how the Mus­lim world was react­ing to these draw­ings by send­ing them a fairly clear mes­sage in the form of a ship­ping disaster.

But not me. I would never sug­gest such a thing.

Why?

Because I reject the con­cept of god. Because god, if he did exist, prob­a­bly would have a sense of humour. If you don’t believe me, just look at your­self naked in the mir­ror sometime.

If there was a god, he wouldn’t get angry about car­toons. He wouldn’t sink a ferry either.

I think we’ll dis­cover some­where along the line that a human error of some sort caused that ferry to go down.

Any­way, if there is going to be an all-seeing, all-knowing, all pow­er­ful god, I’d nom­i­nate myself in the role. I’d be a great god, you’d all learn to love me!

So don’t be sur­prised when peo­ple far cra­zier than me start mak­ing this con­nec­tion between the car­toons and the ferry. They will and yes, Pat Robert­son, I’m glanc­ing in your direction!

Just another day in hippy-heaven! How’s every­thing lit­tle thing with you?

I met my old friend for some drinks last night and had a very enjoy­able time. I’d not seen him in sev­eral months, it was good to catch up. While there will be no work with him any­time soon, we agreed to make an effort to stay in touch and he is up for tak­ing some shrooms with me soon.

The real high­light of my evening was my mini-cab jour­ney back to Casa del Hippy, which was spent in deep con­ver­sa­tion with my dri­ver. He was an Arab gen­tle­man and unashamed sup­porter of one Osama Bin Laden and his merry band of cold-blooded killers, Al Qaeda. He doesn’t view them as ter­ror­ists at all; he sees them as “free­dom fight­ers”. His opin­ions didn’t shock me, but his will­ing­ness to share them so openly with me, left me more than surprised.

Now, hear­ing ter­ror­ists being referred to as “free­dom fight­ers” is noth­ing new to me. As a jour­nal­ist, I was taught early on that one man’s ter­ror­ist is another man’s free­dom fighter. If mem­ory serves, the style of both the Asso­ci­ated Press and Reuters is to not use the word “ter­ror­ist” unless it is in a direct quote from a source or inter­view subject.

I’ll give you an exam­ple, if you lived in Britain in the late 1700s, you prob­a­bly would have viewed George Wash­ing­ton and his fellow-fighters as ter­ror­ists hell-bent on end­ing the King’s rule in the colonies. Sug­gest that to an Amer­i­can today and you would prob­a­bly be smacked in the face, or reported to the office of Un-American activ­i­ties for fur­ther inter­ro­ga­tion. Bring on the rub­ber hoses.

I can think of a few cur­rent and recent world-leaders that started out com­mit­ting ter­ror­ist acts. How about one I admire, Nel­son Man­dela,? He was involved in vio­lence against the state. I won’t argue that the state he attacked and its sys­tem of apartheid was evil, but do the ends always jus­tify the means? Machi­avelli cer­tainly had a point, but if you sub­scribe to his phi­los­o­phy, then you would have to extend it to peo­ple who’s ide­ol­ogy you do not agree with — you would still have to respect their right to pur­sue their own goals by what­ever means they choose.

My mini­cab dri­ver, who quite con­fi­dently claimed his views were held by the major­ity of Arabs around the world, said that the vic­tims of the Madrid bomb­ings deserved to be killed, “because that is what hap­pens in a war and this is a real war with Al Qaeda.” He gen­uinely believed that all of those peo­ple, over 200 dead and more than a thou­sand injured, were legit­i­mate tar­gets. He said all this in a calm, gen­tle man­ner with a smile on his face, which made it all the more disconcerting.

I am not going to claim that all Mus­lims feel that way, just because one mouthy taxi dri­ver says so, but I do think that his opin­ions are more widely held than you or I would care to believe. My trav­els whiling work­ing have brought me into con­tact with extrem­ists before, there’s only one way to han­dle them. Lis­ten politely and keep your own views pri­vate, dis­agree­ing or argu­ing will not do you any favours.

I when got home, I relayed this tale to Mrs. Hippy. She thought I should have got­ten his details and reported him. To whom and for what, I asked. He’s enti­tled to his opin­ions, no mat­ter how repul­sive I may find them. And as far as I can remem­ber, thought-crimes only exist in “1984”. There’s was noth­ing I could or should do about it.

I’ve begun to think I was born at the wrong time. No, I don’t mean too late, I don’t believe all this “good old days” non­sense. The world is not that great a place now and it wasn’t back then, although dif­fer­ent rea­sons ruin dif­fer­ent times.

I try to imag­ine what the world will be like in one thou­sand years. I know that is silly, because it is fairly unknow­able. I don’t sub­scribe to a Gene Roddenberry-Star Trek ver­sion of a future utopia, though I can appre­ci­ate his opti­mism. I think about a future where dif­fer­ences in race, nation­al­ity, reli­gion are all gone and over a period of one hun­dred cen­turies, this level of change is cer­tainly pos­si­ble. Likely is another story.

We live in a world where every major city is one suit­case nuke away from being blown back into the stone age, where gov­ern­ments, espe­cially the US are erod­ing our civil lib­er­ties daily. And what is at the root of all of this? No, not the threat of ter­ror­ism, that is a symp­tom of the greater prob­lem, the divi­sions across the globe.

Every­thing that sep­a­rates us today, all the things I’ve men­tioned above, race, reli­gion, nation­al­ity, plus poverty, are all behind the insta­bil­ity in the world today. They always have been, but thanks to glob­al­i­sa­tion and the media, these divides have never been more appar­ent. The key is the homog­e­niza­tion of the entire planet.

What the fuck does that mean? What it means that over time, the res­i­dents of this planet need to unite, how about under the catch-all ban­ner of earthlings?

Think about it, if we all view the entire world as one place that we all reside upon, think about how it might change the way we treat each other. I read a report the other day that said by 2050, the white folks in Amer­ica will be out­num­bered by “peo­ple of colour”. I think this is great! I’m by no means a racial purist, leave that to the eugen­ics nuts, but I dream of the day when there is just one race on the planet, the human race.

Think about it, if every­one was just a shade of brown, it would elim­i­nate one of society’s biggest dividers. It will hap­pen, not in my life­time, but one day this will be true and it will be a good thing.

Nation­al­ity and reli­gion are a bit trick­ier, since they are ide­o­log­i­cal rather than phys­i­cal. If you look at the “us vs. them” nature of the world today and extrap­o­late it a bit fur­ther, you see that there are two com­pet­ing sides already, the west vs. the fun­da­men­tal­ist Arabs. In terms of resources, the US and its allies have the upper hand, but in turns of nation­al­ity and reli­gion, Al Qaeda is winning.

What do I mean, that Al Qaeda are winning?

OK, for starters, Al Qaeda blurs the nation­al­ity issue, its loose col­lec­tion of groups and mem­bers come from just about every coun­try. They see them­selves as Mus­lims first, their nation­al­ity is sec­ondary or totally unim­por­tant to them. In this regard, they are doing more to unite their cause than Amer­ica. The US, on the other hand, has suc­ceeded in dam­ag­ing or destroy­ing rela­tion­ships with some of their old­est post-world-war-two allies. Amer­ica is more iso­lated today than I can ever remember.

And how about reli­gion? Again, Al Qaeda scores well because they are com­mit­ted to their fun­da­men­tal­ist views and see it as a foun­da­tion for every­thing else they believe. The west, with its mix­ture of Judeo-Christian and mod­er­ate Mus­lim val­ues has no mid­dle ground, and they can’t even man­age to have a smooth co-existence amongst them­selves. How can the west be an exam­ple to the rest of the world when they are not show­ing a uni­fied front?

One side will be vic­to­ri­ous over the other, that much is clear, its a ques­tion of which one. Of course, I want the west to win, but I have clear enough vision to see that this is not guar­an­teed. Com­pla­cency in the face of com­mit­ted resis­tance could lose this fight. So could a fuck­ing dun­der­head like George W. Bush!

I don’t have all the answers, I’m not even sure of all the ques­tions. I do know that the world has always changed and will always con­tinue to change. The shape of the future is unknown, but I like to think that in one-thousand years, we might man­age to put an end to most of this shit. A boy can dream.

I’m start­ing to won­der if anyone’s vis­ited my blog yet. Only one per­son knows about this so far, my brother and he hasn’t really both­ered to read any of it yet. I haven’t told Mrs Hippy, but I will, once I build up the archive a bit.

Email me if you’ve read any of my blog, I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing from *you*

“Your ass is a space ship that I want to ride.…“