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George Monbiot wrote an interesting article in the Guardian recently, entitled “In Memorium”, and available on his blog¹. It concerned how we can so easily forget the names of creatures that have grown less common over the years, as consequently we come across them much less frequently.

In his case it was the name of a caterpillar, now virtually relegated to obscurity by intensive farming, overuse of pesticides, and tons of weedkiller, that taxed his memory. The brain tends to file unused items deeper in its vaults, sometimes never to see the light of day again. Recall becomes even more difficult with aging: the name of a caterpillar or wild flower may trip from the tongue at age twenty, only to be perplexingly absent when not needed for the next thirty years.

I sympathise with George, an ardent naturalist as well as an excellent journalist. His article continues to lament the loss, or radical decline, of so many species native to the British Isles, and he outlines the often obvious reasons for their demise, not just in Britain but throughout the world.

He concludes the article by stating:

We forget even our own histories. We fail to recall, for example, that the Dower report, published in 1945, envisaged wilder national parks than we now possess, and that the conservation white paper the government issued in 1947 called for the kind of large-scale protection that is considered edgy and innovative today. Remembering is a radical act.

That caterpillar, by the way, was a six spot burnet: the larva of a stunning iridescent black and pink moth that once populated my neighbourhood and my mind. I will not allow myself to forget again: I will work to recover the knowledge I have lost. For I now see that without the power of memory, we cannot hope to defend the world we love.

But George has failed to realise one vital fact. It’s not just our own failing memories that are at fault here. Those of us who have already lived most of our lives still have many memories ranging from childhood, through adulthood, to seniority. The sum of life’s experiences have provided the memories held in our brains. For me, a love of wildlife from a very young age helped to fuse many related memories into my brain cells, but they will die with me.

Generations past, before our age of technology and social education, such memories were transferred by word of mouth from father to son, mother to daughter, grandparent to grandchild. In today’s world it is rare for a child to have access to such information. Parents are too busy working to spare time for that type of home education, grandparents no longer live under the same roof as their grandchildren, and schools today are particularly bad at disseminating the sort of information once passed on from generation to generation in the home, being more concerned with facts relevant to examination success.

If we were born with the sum of all the knowledge in our parent’s memory already in our brain, we would be a totally different species. But we’re not. Children born in just a few year’s time will no more be able to relate to an orangutan than we can to a dinosaur or a dodo. The sight of a swift drinking in flight…

…or a hen harrier hovering as it searches out prey…

…will be unknown to them. Consequently, they’ll not miss such things. They may come across the creatures in books, even view old video on their computers, but they won’t relate to them because they’ll be gone forever. Their world won’t contain them anymore. After all, I’ll readily admit I don’t miss dinosaurs, or dodos.

That knowledge, that appreciation, will be lost forever, taken to the grave by those of us fortunate to have witnessed such sights and marvelled at the natural wonder and complexity of a world rapidly becoming far less wonderful.

^{[1] “In Memoriam” monbiot.com, July 2nd 2018}

“WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR PORN STAR?”

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The long-running morning show, “Fox & Friends” may be losing one of its presenters soon after this quote today from…

…Abby Huntsman, the glamour section of the three stooges fronting the program. Referring to Trump’s imminent meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, she asked Anthony Scaramucci:

“Regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators, what we are seeing right now, this is history.”

Oooooops! Bye Abby.

^{[1] “”Two dictators’: Fox News host says sorry for reference to Trump-Kim summit” Guardian, June 11th 2018}

Have you ever stopped to consider the question: what is religion? I don’t mean is it Christianity, or Judaism, or, Buddhism, or even New Age spiritualism. Those usually form part of another question: which is the true religion? But what exactly is ‘religion’ itself when you strip away its many forms.

Collins defines ‘religion’ as “…a particular system of belief in a god or gods and the activities that are connected with this system.” The Cambridge English, “… the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship.” Merriam-Webster, “… the belief in and worship of God or gods.”

So is it possible to ‘have a religion’ without a belief in a god or gods? There again, what is belief? Where does it come from? And where exactly does ‘faith’ come into this equation? After all, virtually all religions demand a degree of faith. It’s the mortar that holds those bricks of belief together, preventing them from crumbling away. Priests and clergy, mullahs and rabbis, are like religious bricklayers repairing the mortar and making it strong again.

Why do we have a belief system, and do we really need it? So far as we know we’re the only living creature aware of our eventual earthly demise. Is our belief system merely there to comfort the dread of our mortality? Probably not, though it can certainly help in that direction.

Of course, it can be argued that belief is not just about religion. In fact, our beliefs are often extremely malleable. How many young men through the ages have marched off into battle because they’ve been glibly persuaded by some emperor, king, or politician, that they’d be ‘serving their country’, ‘fighting evil’, or, ‘doing the will of God’, when in reality they’re simply serving the purposes of their political leadership.

Belief systems support whatever or whoever we want them to, from the team of our local football club to the next President of the United States of America. Amazingly, once that belief is established in the human mind it can be very difficult to shift. Even the most hardened of atheists may be caught out praying if caught in a life-threatening situation.

Another noticeable example of late has been the vast and solid support by those struggling, financially-crippled Americans, for a president they voted into office on the promise of restoring their livelihoods and well-being, only for him to direct wealth away from them and into the coffers of the already rich and powerful. Yet still their adoration knows no bounds.

Political belief systems today are well supported . No priest or rabbis here, but cleverly disguised political propaganda blown around by the winds of media like so many dandelion seedlings on a spring breeze. A TV channel for every belief system, repairing the mortar and sticking those political belief bricks back in place.

But a belief system, of whatever persuasion, is more than just mental bricks and mortar. It needs leading, promoting; like-minded believers to make you feel you’re in a supportive club, and someone, or something, to admire and look up to. It may be the quarterback of your local team, or a politician promising a brighter future – or, what better than an invisible super being welcoming you to an eternal heavenly existence? And, the rougher your life on earth, the better you’ll be be once you’ve shuffled off this earthly plane.

It’s hard to see harm in being a devotee of your local football team. Politicians, however, are (and always have been) some of the finest snake oil salesmen (and women) ever. Their job is to convince your belief system they’re better for you than the opposition. But what of God? Have the churches been the super snake oil salesmen of all time?

Before answering that question it’s first necessary to ascertain whether ‘God’ (or, indeed, gods) actually exist. If ‘He’ doesn’t, or ‘They’ don’t, then we’re looking at the finest, the most unscrupulous yet magnificent, marketing ploy of all time. Given that we’re dealing with something invisible and any communication with it is almost certainly only a product of human imagination, it’s impossible to state with any certainty whether there is any divine being ‘out there’, or not.

Invent an invisible, omniscient, super being with the power to create a wondrous spiritual paradise for us when we die. Make Him a benevolent, gentle, being, but also judge, jury, and possibly executioner if you don’t toe-the-line while on earth. Make access to this paradise easier the harder your life is on earth. Just accept all sufferings, the beatings, the starvation, the disease, the hardships inflicted on you by your earthly masters so they can live in luxury. You’ll get your reward in Heaven. But only if those who drew the lines you have to toe, and inflicted the hardships, beatings, starvation and disease you have to bear, aren’t the ones who invented the whole thing in the first place. Otherwise, you’ve been conned into putting up with all that abuse and at the end of it you’re dead. Period.

So what is religion? A glorious, eternal, afterlife full of ill-defined goodies? Or the greatest confidence trick there’s ever been?

I’ll leave it up to you. Or you can, of course, just sit back and let your belief system decide for you.