Sunday, December 31, 2006

Me, Myself, and the 'I'.


Anyway - first things first... What's the best question to ask..? "What is the self..?" Seems fairly obvious but...

Nope - that is best answered later, after we've found out why the self came to be. "Why did the self arise..?" Still not quite the right question. How about, "Why was the arisal of the self inevitable..?" or "Why did humans develop a self, to a greater degree than any other animal..?" Those questions I like.

There's the easy answer of course: God did it. End of story.

But, moving swiftly past the big beardy guy in the sky, let's have a go at answering it ourselves, shall we..?
...Continued...

The Rise and Fall of Morality


What's the point of life..?

Well, if you buy into the currently advertized model - it's all about living a moral life, or at least as near to one as you can, praying all your sins be little ones, and popping your clogs with a clean conscience. To be whisked away to heaven for a eternity of mana sandwiches and ambrosia on toast.

There's a catch however - If Saint Peter is any kind of lawyer, he can get us all on technicalities... Heaven is empty.

...Continued...

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Christmas in its absence.


I walk, tee-shirted and jeaned, open toed in dark leather, toward a conversation I have had before. "Are you not cold..?" she will say, as I buy milk and bread. Matriarchal, grandiosely ugly, shapless in a dress of volcanic orange, lava-flows of fat boiling beneath. All bustle and muscle: I've seen her hoist tubs of rice as big as a barrel off the delivery truck single handed. Hair you could put an oil-field on she will sit behind the till, her eyes glowing like gimlets above wrinkled cheeks she will smile at the under-dressed Englishman in her shop. I will shrug, lop-sided and make her laugh. I will say I am a man cooked in a stone-oven, foreign words playing easy idiom on my lips.

...Continued...