About Friends.

The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) is much misunderstood today. His name is used to stand for lavish meals, heavy drinking, and indulgence in every pleasure. In fact he took a dim view of all of that, and was inclined to the simpler pleasures, one of the most important of which was sitting in his garden talking with his friends. And as he recommended drinking cold water, there would not have been any headaches the day after. For Epicurus, friends were the greatest pleasure and were not to be done without.

In Ancient Rome the rivals to the Epicureans were the Stoics. But in fact the Stoics too have been much misunderstood: Stoics and Epicureans had much in common. The Stoic philosopher Seneca liked to quote Epicurus approvingly when writing to his pupil Lucretius. And one of the things that they had in common was the importance of friends. Seneca compared a man without friends to a man without one of his hands. I've just had the pleasure of meeting up with two of my oldest friends, Gregory and Harry.

It all began in 1967 when I met Gregory in the King William IV in Hampstead. He was friendly, warm-hearted and funny. A tall man, frequently clad in a bright red sweater, he was inclined to hold court in the pub on a Saturday evening, telling stories, laughing and drinking a decent amount of Courage Director's.

Gregory is an organist, rather a fine one, certainly the best organist I have known personally, with the.possible exception of David Nield. We'd sometimes have a pint or two in the North Star in Finchley Road, then we'd go together to the church where he played. Sometimes I'd sit on the organ stool and turn the pages of his music for him, sometimes I'd lie on a pew in the dark and let the sounds of Gregory's music cascade round me. I'd grown up in a musical house, but one with rather conservative tastes. Gregory played Bach's organ music for sure, with which I was reasonably familiar already. But I had the delight of sitting on the stool turning while Gregory sent the dazzling notes of the Toccata from Widor's 5th Organ Symphony cascading round the dark and silent church. He introduced me to the wonderful music of Buxtehude and Rheinberger and others too. In the summer of the following year Gregory introduced me to someone who had a seemingly permanent smile, Harry.

One of the best memories of my entire life stems from Harry. He had contacts at Jodrell Bank and on the night of the moon landing we were there, with all the famous scientists, in front of an enormous screen, to watch the pictures from the moon and Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder.

But it wasn't all highbrow stuff. Many a Sunday night the three of us would cram into Harry's 2-seater sports car and drive across London to, sometimes, the Vauxhall Tavern, or more often the Union Tavern in Camberwell, to be entertained by the raucous comedy of London's drag scene – Lee Sutton, Alvis & Odell, Pussy & Beau and others. 

We had some adventures, we didn't always agree, but overall, the three years I was a regular in that pub with my two friends count, along with my days as a theology student when I lived in Streatham, as the happiest of my life. It's 42 years since we went our separate ways. Greg became a teacher, and now is still in demand to help youngsters struggling with A-level Physics. Harry's career in computing took him to the USA where he now lives. I continued to study, earning my living as best I could, because I cannot settle with unanswered questions in the field that most interest me.

Meeting again in the same bar, on more or less the same spot, having a few beers and talking to each other about the things that interest us somehow distilled the happiness of the late sixties into one afternoon of my late sixties with two people I treasure and whose company I enjoy even (maybe especially) when we're all expressing our views at the same time, and not always on the same topic.

It wasn't all fun. We had the fallings out one expects as well as the good times. We've all acquired the troubles of age:

Ollie: I'm interested in Richard Price
Harry: You'll have to speak up, I'm getting deaf
Gregory: (leaning forward and cupping his ear) Pardon?
And three rather elderly men fall about laughing at Gregory's weak joke.

But we continue to like each other, to enjoy each other's company, and to value what we each have to say, even when the other two are wrong. That's what friendship is about. Epicurus and Seneca were right. There is nothing more valuable in the world, no pleasure greater, than time spent with friends. I am so grateful for all my friends, and especially to Gregory & Harry for making the time to have a few beers together in the old familiar way and at an old familiar place.

Let's read Richard Price!

I am frequently struck by the applicability of Richard Price's insights to the modern world. Price was born in a Welsh village, the son of the Minister of the Chapel, in 1723. His talents were such that he went on to become not only a Dissenting Minister himself but also an adviser to the Government on finance, a mathematician deeply involved in putting Insurance on a sound footing, a moral philosopher and a nationally known political pamphleteer. Despite being a churchman he was against obscurantism and argued for liberty both politically and for free inquiry and free speech. He was convinced that the truth had nothing to fear from free rational debate and that a man's conscience could not be dictated to by anybody.

Price would be horrified by our sound-bite culture, and by the encouragement that wilful ignorance gets from religion. In his book "Review of the Principal Questions in Morals" first published when he was 35, Price argues in one place from the then recent scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton to make his case. He was a friend of Joseph Priestly, another Dissenting Minister and the discoverer of Oxygen, concurrently with and independently of Lavoisier. It was Price who published the notes of Joshua Bayes, the discoverer of Bayes' Theorem, the foundation of mathematical probability that still underlies Insurance and much else. Bayes too was a Dissenting Minister, although of a different persuasion to Price. But it is typical of Price that the differences of opinion that he had with both Bayes and Priestly did not dim his admiration of their scientific work. For Price, reason and rationality were extremely important. All three of these churchmen were elected members of the Royal Society for their contributions to science. Hard to imagine today, isn't it?

But back to our sound-bite culture in which politicians and celebrities are encouraged to give their opinions on everything under the sun on television. Price was scathing on speaking with neither thought nor knowledge. Price, a man who was never shy to think, and think hard, says, in Chapter 1 of the book mentioned above "There are hardly any subjects so plain, as not to require care and attention to form a competent judgment of them." He continued "What then must we think of those whom we continually see readily delivering their sentiments concerning points they have never considered; and deciding peremptorily, without thought or study, on the most difficult questions? If such are ever right it can only be by chance. They speak and think entirely at random, and therefore deserve no regard." I get the feeling he had a television! He then goes on to make the point that arriving at the truth of any matter is not easy. "The more we know of men, the more we find that they are governed, in forming and maintaining their opinions, by their tempers, by interest, by humour and passion, and a thousand nameless causes and particular turns and casts of mind, which cannot but produce the greatest diversity of sentiments among them and make it impossible for them not to err. There are in truth none who are possessed of that cool and dispassionate temper, that freedom from all wrong byasses (sic), that habit of attention and patience of thought, and, also, that penetration and sagacity of mind, which are proper securities against error. How much then do modesty and diffidence become us? how open ought we be to conviction, and how candid to those of different sentiments?"

The word "candid" was used differently in 1785 (two years before the 3rd edition of Price's "Review") to our use of it. In his ground breaking dictionary published in that year, Dr Johnson gives "Candid … Free from malice; not desirous to find faults; open; ingenuous" and "Candidness … Openness of temper; purity of mind" and he includes for candour "sweetness of temper". So when Price says that we should be "candid to those of different sentiments" he means that we should listen open-mindedly, without rancour and ill-will or ill-humour and give their arguments the weight they are worth and discuss differences reasonably and rationally.

Price's model, forged in the 1750s, is much needed today.

Greek Referendum

Everyone seems to be surprised, angered, struck dumb, by the decision to hold a referendum in Greece. I am personally a believer in representative government. I think it achieves the aims described by Richard Price (1723-1791) in that it will “collect into it most of the knowledge and experience of the community, and at the same time carry it into execution with most dispatch and vigour”¹. So long as the elected representatives are free men, freely chosen by the whole community, are elected for short terms and can be held to account by the electors Price thinks this is the best way to arrange for the will of the people to be carried out. To which I would add that it avoids the worst effects of short-sighted and emotive or uninformed responses to events. But in the case of the Greek decision I can appreciate the argument for a referendum as well.

Excuse me quoting Price, but I am doing some work on him at the moment and am familiar with, as well as in admiration of, his writings. Price warned that “Civil governors see themselves not as servants but as masters”². And so, it seems do foreign Politicians, Bankers and Captains of Industry who all object to consulting the Greek people and putting the deal at risk. Their fear or assumption appears to be that these people will reject the deal reached by their betters for reasons of short-sighted self interest. They don't want austerity and they don't want to pay taxes.

Price also wrote that “All civil governors are trustees for the people governed, and when they abuse their trust they forfeit their authority”³. The possible abuse of trust in question here is falsely representing the state of the Greek economy in order to join the ECU and get the benefit of Community handouts. Another possible abuse of trust is the actions of those whose mismanagement of the economy got Greece, and indeed the rest of Europe, into this state to start with. And in that event another of Price's sayings comes to mind. “Without all doubt, it is the choice of the people that makes civil governors. The people are the spring of all civil power and they have a right to modify it as they please.”⁴

A Greek commentator on the BBC this evening said something to the effect that the Greek people were not the ones who lied about the economy to get into the ECU and the Greek people are the ones who are being asked to pay for it. Everything I know about Price's thoughts on civil government indicates that he would have had the utmost sympathy with their objection to being ridden over by their political and financial masters.

Price wrote: “I am very sensible that civil government, as it actually exists in the world, by no means answers to the account I have given of it. Instead of being an institution for guarding the weak against the strong, we find an institution which makes the strong yet stronger and gives them a systematical power of oppressing. Instead of promoting virtue and restraining vice, establishing liberty, and protecting alike all peaceable persons in the enjoyment of their civil and religious rights, we see a savage despotism, under its name, laying waste the earth, unreasonably elevating some and depressing others and trampling upon every human right.”⁵ I cannot help but feel that the Greek people are the ones who are paying for the misuse of power by others, and would be an excellent example of the situation that Price had in mind 200 years ago.

Just maybe George Papandreou had in mind that “Civil government is an expedient for collecting the wisdom and force of a community or confederacy in order to preserve its peace and liberty against every hostile invasion, whether from within or from without.”⁶ Maybe he thought that it was right to collect the wisdom and force of the Greek people, faced as they are with such an awful prospect, that he is their servant, not their master so he should get their authority, and maybe he also thinks that when the case is put before them they will act honourably and with responsibility and support his deal and as a result bring some social and political peace to the ravaged nation.

Notes:
1. Two Tracts, in Price Political Writings, Ed D.O.Thomas 1991, p80
2. Op cit p89
3. A Fast Sermon in Thomas Op cit p106
4. Two Tracts Op cit p88
5. Two Tracts Op cit p89
6. On the Importance of the American Revolution in Thomas Op cit p122

Eating Out

With all the visitors we've had lately we've tried a few restaurants and I thought people might be interested in the results.

First a place that isn't really a restaurant, but of which Bonnie is very fond and all our American visitors have loved: The Old Forge at Cranford (http://theoldforgecranford.com/). It's what it says, an old forge, restored into a tea-shop. The food is very pleasant,  the helpings more than adequate, and the welcome warm. If the weather is nice, it is pleasant to sit outside. It's a very pleasant place for a late breakfast, a not-so-lite lunch, or afternoon tea.

Now for the restaurants. The Red Lion at East Haddon (http://www.redlioneasthaddon.co.uk/) has an enviable reputation, and has recently opened a cookery school. We've been twice lately, and each time the food was excellent. But on the second occasion the service was in melt-down. Bonnie had to send her steak back as it was not cooked to her specification, the two people at the table opposite got their main courses at a wide interval, and the party on the table next to me had a nightmare experience. The usual Head Waiter was on duty and was properly apologetic, but it seemed to me that the rest of the staff were under-trained short-notice stand-ins. That can happen. Who knows what had caused the regular staff to be absent. The first time we were there it was excellent all round, so I hope this was a one off. The food is so good we're bound to go back for another try in the not too distant future.

I've long enjoyed The Samuel Pepys at Slipton (http://www.samuel-pepys.com/). Once again the food was wonderful – we had a table full of American guests who were all full of praise for it. Sadly here too there was a service issue. Once the full party had arrived no-one appeared to take our order or even look to our need for drinks. After 10-15 minutes I button-holed the passing manager who took our order with a scowling visage and made no attempt to make us feel welcome or to express his regret at the lack of service so far. However, once the normal waiting staff took over, everything went like clockwork and the young man who seemed to be responsible for our table was charm and efficiency rolled into one.

Next, an unqualified success – The Cock at Hemingford Grey (http://www.thecockhemingford.co.uk/) – a little further than we normally go, but easy enough on the A14 and the extra standard they achieve more than repays the effort. They won the National Dining Pub of the Year last year and won the regional stage again this year. I'd very much like to see somewhere that can beat them. The menu is very interesting, the wine list likewise, the food is excellent, and the service as good as I have had at Michelin Starred restaurants. It is impossible to imagine the kind of cock-up described in the two pubs above happening here. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending them warmly to my friends.

I'll be eating at The Falcon at Fotheringhay (http://www.thefalcon-inn.co.uk/) and The Plough at Bolnhurst (http://www.bolnhurst.com/)soon. Watch for my assessments!

My debt to dissent.

Last Friday I greatly enjoyed Evensong at King's College, Cambridge. Next Saturday I am attending a Symposium at Dr Williams' Library. How are these related?

I grew up in a home that attended the local Congregational Church, and of course I went too. The Congregationalists (now the United Reformed Church) are inheritors of the Dissenting tradition that was prominent in English religious and political life from the late 16th to the early 18th Centuries. They separated themselves from the worship of the Church of England; their opposition was focused around the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Generally they became known as Non-Conformists.

Dissenters objected to prescribed forms of worship and church government. They asserted that no statute could over rule an individual's conscience. However the precedence given to conscience could not but lead to further division. I remember being somewhat aghast, in my late teens, to discover that the local Church Meeting, in the Congregational Church in my home town, was supreme – if it didn't like the message that the Minister they had appointed was preaching, they could simply dismiss him. Doctrine, it seemed to me, was decided at the whim of the Church Meeting, while I had grown up to love and revere the saintly-seeming men whose task it was to interpret scripture to us, for task which they had been uniquely trained. Surely, I thought, what the bible taught could only be one thing, and advanced study would reveal what that was.

Looking back from 50 years on, it isn't hard to see how later I gravitated to the Church of England, where doctrine filtered down from above and the people learned what they clergy had to teach them.

My interest these last few years has been grabbed by certain philosophical ideas: liberty, free speech, rights and ethics. These come together in political philosophy, and I went back to Thomas Hobbes, the father of English political philosophy, and read quite a lot of philosophical authors and a fair bit of history as one cannot understand an idea without understanding the circumstances in which it grew. Some figures jumped out at me, as I worked to understand how the values that we now take for granted were originally expressed and developed. Hobbes himself, John Milton, John Locke, Richard Price, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill were the most prominent among these. And a surprisingly large number of them were part of, or derived from, or owed something to, the dissenting tradition. That isn't to say that there were no Anglicans who made an important contribution to the development of new ideas. Bishop Edward Stillingfleet played a prominent role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, for example. But it was the Dissent that provided the soil in which the radically democratic ideas of Richard Price, the minimal government beloved of William Godwin, the thrust against censorship of John Milton all put down their roots.

Locke's background was Puritan, as indeed was Milton's, while Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham and Mill's rejection of Anglicanism went further until it was a rejection of religion per se.

For an old Anglican, who still loves the ritual and music of the great Anglican churches, this was a bit of a shock, until I started to think about it. Take for example the day when, as a young curate, I found that we were celebrating Mass on the Feast of Charles, King and Martyr. What's that? I wasn't in a position to question it at the moment, but I felt a jolt. Charles I was rather far from being a Saint who died for his faith. He was the ultimate autocrat, a believer in his own divine right to rule and to require obedience. He fought bitterly to maintain his superiority and to deny popular rights, such as government by elected representatives, which we take for granted. The God he worshipped and the religion he valued were the things that underwrote his power. Yet for several years I regularly kept the Feast of Charles, King and Martyr.

Or take something more recent – the incredible surroundings of King's College Chapel, wonderful singing, that amazing roof, candle light... and the collect of the day. This time it was the Feast of St Simon and St Jude. The prayer of the day asks that we be “joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee”. Which is to say that the dogma these men may have promulgated (and apart from the Epistle of St Jude, itself of very doubtful provenance, there is no evidence of anything they may have said or done or taught) about 2000 years ago, in superstitious ignorance of everything we have since discovered, should be the basis of our common belief and practice today.

Listening to the collect of the day in King's I was strongly reminded of the thrust of dissent, claiming freedom of conscience and the liberty to do as we believed right, opposed to the claim for unyielding authority demanded by the dead hand of Anglican teaching.

There is nothing to be gained from yielding to authority, especially when it is not based on the least shred of evidence, and everything to be gained from exploring where new ideas lead. It is that dissent which has brought us to the values and privileges we enjoy today and against the loss, and the misuse, of which we must be for ever on our guard.

Claude's Progress

This weekend it will be 7 months since Claude moved in. There have been lots of issues, but overall he is a healthier, more confident and more relaxed dog. Leaving the living room (apart from going out the back way to the garden or for his walks) has remained a problem for him. He clearly had conflicts, and without making them worse we tried to show him it was okay to step over the threshold into the hall.

Yesterday Bonnie came home and found him relaxing on a rug in the hall. It's hard to believe it's taken him 7 months to take the chance. I think he knows now that he is not likely to get into trouble for passing doorways. We feel the Little Man is making progress, and learning to trust us.

This evening he was more than usually playful in the park. He ran, he came to me to be scratched, he greeted his friends. The timid, thin, shy, dog that moved in with us seemed to be a totally different animal to confident playful Claude.

So we came home and I went to my computer to attend to some stuff. When I came down, Claude was nowhere to be seen: not on his mat, not lying in his favourite spot, and not in the hall. It took me a moment or two to spot him.

Having not shown the least interest in the last 7 months, Claude was dozing on the sofa. He has finally, we think, decided that he's at home, and may as well enjoy all the benefits. We fussed him, so he knows he's not in trouble, then we suggested he'd probably be better somewhere else, as we needed the sofa, and he went. I paraphrase - that was the outcome, though some cross words were spoken by both sides in the process. The point we want to get to is that he feels free to use the sofa - the cover was made for Laddie after all - but that he knows he has to give it up if we want it.

He's rather a handsome dog these days, and since today, also for the first time, he licked my ear, I guess we may be friends one day after all.

Freedom to advise?

A report on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14406818) suggests that there is a small but rising incidence of HIV sufferers being persuaded by Christian Pastors to give up their drug treatment and rely on prayer. Some people have died as a result.

As far as I can see, there is a very large and growing number of actual clinical cases where people have received drug treatment and been enabled to live many years and enjoy a reasonable quality of life too. But on the other hand there is not a single authenticated case of cure through prayer, and meanwhile those people who do not take the drugs to control HIV die of AIDS.

Therefore even if you believe, counter to the evidence, that prayer will be efficacious, stopping drug treatment is uninformed to say the least, stupid maybe. To deliberately convince someone to stop drug treatment and rely on prayer instead is not merely uninformed, it is playing with people's lives and indirectly hastening their death.

I suggested on Facebook that a Pastor who persuades one of his followers to take this course should be prosecuted. Well, I suppose that's a bit wild. As far as I know there is no law against talking someone into risking their life in that way. One of my friends suggested that even if there was no-one would be prosecuted because the Human Rights Act would defend their choice to live by their culture. I'm not so sure there is a Human Right to persuade someone to behave in such a way, but it is true that main-stream churches have gotten away with hiding and harbouring criminal child abusers, so one doubts that talking someone out of taking beneficial drugs would incur the law's wrath.

As so often is the case, my mind turned to John Stuart Mill, whose work “On Liberty” ought to be read much wider, and much more attentively, than it is. Mill thought that liberty, in thought, speech and action, was an essential condition for human growth; that no-one could reach their full potential without it. If your liberty is circumscribed, so is your growth. There ought only be, Mill thought, one check on liberty, and that was causing harm to others. The problem, of course, is that it all depends on how you understand causing harm. Does getting allowing your child to get hooked on smoking tobacco by not showing him the error of his ways and a good example? After all, the habit will, very likely, shorten his life. Or what about feeding one's child hard drugs? In that case the harm is even more certain. Or what if the person affected is not a child but an adult with the right and ability to make their own decisions on the subject?

Pastors are almost always persuasive speakers, and they have been vested with great authority. It seems to be the case that once someone has chosen to follow a particular pastor, they have in some sense handed over their decision-making capacities to him. He can then persuade and convince them into all sorts of courses of action, some benign or helpful and others potentially malignant and harmful, both to the individual and to society at large. So in the kind of cases quoted by the BBC, it seems to me that their actions, their use of words, falls well within the definition of causing harm, and not so far short of manslaughter.
I did wonder whether if we were starting again with the criminal code crime could be defined simply as causing harm to another, with a range of punishments according to the degree of harm caused – a black eye might attract a lesser penalty, and causing death, whether by crazy driving, pushing drugs, deliberate murder, or recklessly lethal advice from a position of power, a more severe one.

But we're not starting again, and people with high status will be enabled to get away with recklessly endangering others as they have been to date. What a shame.

Thomas Malthus

There are two sorts of reasons that everyone should study Malthus: reasons to do with argument and style, and reasons to do with his arguments, and the way society should be organised – basically, politics and ethics with a good helping of sociology.

Malthus' most famous work, An Essay On The Principle of Population, is much maligned. His solution to the problem he foresaw was to withdraw the support provided by the parishes of his time (the book was written in 1798) under the Poor Law for the relief of those who could not provide for themselves. He thought that the only effective way to control population was to encourage people not to have families that they could not support, and the way to do this was to leave them to their own devices. Poor relief only encouraged families in those that could not afford them. The problem he saw was that population tends to increase geometrically, and left to its own devices would tend to double every 25 years, while the increase in the food supply is arithmetic, and therefore will soon be outstripped by the number of mouths to feed. For reasons he could never have foreseen, it now seems that he might have had a point in seeing the problem, but his proposed solution was at best naïve and at worst downright callous and cruel. I'm pretty sure he didn't see it that way. He was a Church of England clergyman, good natured, and well meaning. He was also concerned with the truth of the matter, as opposed to what he regarded as his adversaries unfounded speculation. It's just that he could see no other way to provide for the number of mouths that would soon populate the planet.

The book discusses the issues in detail. He examines population growth from the best statistics then available, and he explains in detail why it is that agricultural output cannot keep up. He uses the example of America, where at the time there was a vast surplus of resource over requirement, as well as Europe and beyond. He discusses human nature as well as he is able. And he puts forward his solution to the problem.

Malthus was inspired by the work of William Godwin and others who believed that humanity and society was progressing inexorably towards perfection. The 2nd edition of Godwin's major work “An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice” had been published in 1796. Malthus was a mathematician, he believed as we do that policy should be based on observed facts, and what he saw around him convinced him that what Godwin said just wasn't so. So he picked up his pen.

Anyone who has an interest in social science would do well to study Malthus' case carefully. He leaves no stone unturned, and it is educational just to follow his train of thought critically and see if you agree with him, and if not, why not. A discussion group would be almost certain to be enlivened by the controversies arising from Malthus' case. It would soon range into politics, and into ethics, and into social anthropology.

Apart from this, Malthus, uncommonly for his age, writes with great clarity. His English is precise and clear. He writes to defend a case without being carried away by his feelings. He states his position politely and considers his opponent's counter-arguments in the same vein. And he is persuasive; his argument develops step by step and carries the reader along with it. It is an object lesson in how to create a case, how to argue for a cause, how to set out the facts revealed by research. It is no accident that Malthus met his adversary Godwin and that they discussed the question together on numerous occasions, dining together and disagreeing without falling out, for a number of years. Students of written English can also learn from him.

Kindle users at least have no excuse for not getting a copy – you can download it from Amazon starting from £1.73 or from www.gutenberg.org for free.

Memories of my father...

Today is the 38th anniversary of the death of my father. I hadn't realised. I looked the date up because of something someone said, and there it was. As it happened, I've not been feeling too good today, and I can't help wondering if at some unconscious level I knew the significance of the date. It brings into focus a lot of sadness and things that I miss.

Actually my Dad is hardly one of them. I didn't know him all that well, despite living in the same house for 23 years. I didn't know that his order of priorities was not the same as other fathers I knew. There are two headings under which these things I miss gather - the things I didn't have from my emotionally absent parent, and the things I didn't give the children I never had.

Going back to my childhood, maybe 5 or 6, I remember him going out to football on Saturday afternoons. I used to listen to the results on the radio, and when he came in greet him with how many goals Tottenham Hotspur had scored. I didn't understand that he'd been at the match and knew the score. Nor did I realise till much later that other fathers took their sons with them when they went to the game. Nor did it occur to me at the time that other fathers played football with their sons in the park, and stuff like that.

For my father the priority was his Trade Union, the National Union of Printers, Bookbinders and Paper Workers. Some way behind came his wife, and behind further still, his kids. I can only think of one thing he positively did for me. I was a skinny kid, prone to being bullied. He'd been a professional boxer when the came out of the army after the First World War (he was born in 1896). And he taught me some stuff that enabled me to compete successfully in the school and Air Training Corps championships, and boys who that do that don't get bullied.

I was bright, academically, and could have done well at school, much better than I actually did. But my father gave me no guidance and took no interest. Nothing was expected of me except that I might get an office or shop job when I left school at 16. There was no encouragement with my homework, no reaction to my school reports. When I was at Grammar School he came once to a Speech Day and was totally bored by it.

It was many years later that I discovered he had an earlier family and three other children that he had drifted away from when he lost interest in them in favour of his Trade Union. He last saw them in 1936 and took no interest in their later lives. When I left home there were no phone calls, no letters, nothing.

Looking back, my mother's loyalty to him and care for him in his declining years were nothing short of admirable. His fidelity had been severely in question and even after he retired I don't think she was ever the top priority in his life. At the end of a long and painful illness he died in hospital without my ever feeling the need to visit him, which now I regret. I remember phoning the hospital from work that morning to ask how he was, only to be told he had died. I remember going to my mother's home, and sitting in silence with her and my sisters overwhelmed by her feeling of desolation. And I remember being in the Funeral Director's car behind the hearse on the way to his funeral. Of his funeral itself I have no memory whatever.

So where my father should have been in my life, there is a big empty space.

The reasons I never had children are complex, and seemed good at the time. Now I regret their absence, I regret not being able to be proud of them, or to have played with them and taken part in their education and development. I hope I would have done those things, but the reality must be that I would not have done it very well, having no model to learn from. But maybe I'd have done a better job than he did. And maybe I'd have those children as adults in my life now, able to do things together, share each other's interests and perhaps take my grandkids to Lords or The Oval, or the zoo, or the sea side.

That would be nice. I regret not having the opportunity.

Not an easy problem, therefore no easy solution.

In a blog post my friend Paul Baird makes the point that no-one and no institution is above the law. He writes "If any Priest or person holding a similar position is found to withhold any knowledge that would permit the perversion of the course of justice then they should face the full force of the law. The confessional has no penitent/confessor protection, and none should be assumed or actually given."

In principle, you have to agree with this, that the law is the law and no-one and no thing is exempt. And of course I'd want information on a crime to be passed to the authorities, child abuse maybe more than any. But there is also a problem. Unenforceable law is normally bad law. A law that says that something said by one person in secret to another must be reported is unenforceable. No-one knows, and the person told simply shrugs his shoulders and walks away. Unless confessions are monitored by secret surveillance (in itself unacceptable) how is such a thing to be enforced? Law like that brings the concept of law itself into disrepute and disrespect.

I'd like to think that there is another solution - and admittedly this has not worked with the Catholic Church in the past and probably could not work perfectly in the future. It involves the education of the clergy until and so that they are on side with action against child abuse and other serious crime. As a former clergyman who has heard confessions (in the Church of England) a priest has a sanction. He can withhold absolution, or make it dependent on the penitent taking a certain course of action. In such a case he could require the penitent to turn himself in, and make absolution conditional upon that. Now, assuming the penitent took confession and absolution seriously, you have a strong lever. The problem is that most abusers do not see anything at all wrong with what they have done. They know it is against the law, but that, in their eyes, does not make it wrong. So I cannot see that such a person would have any need to go to confession in the first place.

Many years ago I knew a clergyman, now dead, who plainly had a strong interest in children. No-one suspected how far that interest went - it just was not on our radar all that time ago. So everyone who knew him was shocked and horrified when he was arrested. On the occasion in question he had been bathing a young boy and touched him "inappropriately". The child told his parents, and the law took its course and my friend got 2 years, suspended. Whether the leniency of the sentence reflects the nature of the assault or attitudes at the time or both I cannot tell. He resigned his job, and as soon as the period of suspension was over the church found him another one.

My friend was shaken up, not because of what he had done, but because of the outcry. His view was that he was in love with the child, that he was giving him pleasure, and there was nothing wrong with that, indeed, love is of God. Of course it was technically against the law, but until relatively recently so were homosexual acts between consenting adult males, and so was driving at above the speed limit, which the majority of motorists just did all the time with no ill consequences.

Why would a person who thought like that take his crime to confession, which depends on acknowledging actions as wrong and sinful? Paedophile acts are rightly criminal offences. But that does not make them wrong in the eyes of perpetrators. Until they see the desires they have, and cannot avoid having, as being misdirected and acting on those urges as wrong, harmful and worse, the problem will persist.

Making Progress

Since he arrived from Collie Rescue on 3 April 2011, Claude has been a challenge. Issues over doorways, issues over food, issues over being brushed, issues over the car, and above all, common to them all, willingness to use his teeth. On top of that he's been to the vet for surgery twice, once because of gum disease which meant 10 teeth had to be removed, and once because he had foreign bodies in his ear, and, as it proved, embedded in his gum too. He was thin to start with and lost weight at an alarming rate. While he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to go into the great outdoors he was incredibly timid with other dogs and very wary of people too. We had a major falling out when he grabbed hold of my wrist with his (remaining) teeth, and hung on, shaking my arm as though it was something he needed to kill.

Bit by bit we've come to understand The Little Man, and to set boundaries and routines that seem to help him. I'll never forget the time he decided not to come when called in the park, and headed off the other way. I will never know what was going on in his head, but I do know that when I finally caught up with him he expected to be hit, and flinched. The brush may well remind him of being groomed, possibly for the first time, in rescue, when, as his coat was so matted, it had to be shaved off almost to the skin. I can imagine that he fought, and he had scars where the clippers had cut him and must have hurt.

Living with him day by day it is easy to be overwhelmed by the effort sometimes needed. His feeding routine, which has certainly taken the anxiety out of meal times for all parties, canine and human, is time consuming and laborious. But he is undoubtedly making progress, and we are enjoying seeing him take strides forward into becoming a more confident, less neurotic dog. Sometimes he seems to take a big step forward almost out of nowhere, like the time, after being lifted into the car 4 times a day, he suddenly leaped in from a standing start and left me open-mouthed. Or the time, after running back to the car whenever he saw a group of two or more dogs approaching ever since we'd had him, he mingled with a group of 7 dogs, exchanging rear-end sniffs, as though he'd been doing it all his life.

This morning was just one of many occasions when we met someone who saw Claude earlier, and has not seem him since, and who expressed their surprise at how much he had come on. Well, he has. After a month of weight loss he stopped losing it, then started gaining. I am expecting him to be heavier still when he is next weighed, so his exercise quota can be increased. He is probably just passing a birthday as he is moulting (male Rough Collies moult once a year) and his coat no longer feels like an out-of-condition horse and is actually soft and smoother. Maybe it will get glossy in time. And he is actually going up to dogs he doesn't know and greeting them, if a bit gingerly at first. This morning he was milling about with 3 Labs, a Spaniel, 2 Great Danes and a Mastiff. You have to remember his flight for the car the first time he met any one of these dogs to appreciate what this means.

So I thought I'd post some pictures, gathering together a few from my Facebook and Picasa albums, to show the road he has travelled and down which we hope he will proceed far in the months and years ahead.

First, Claude as he was when we first met him at the Kennel where he lodged after Collie Rescue got him. This is my first sight of The Little Man, and his of me. I must admit I wondered what we were taking on. His eyes were sad and lifeless; he had no interest in being stroked, rather the reverse. He plainly was not sociable.

Claude was very reluctant to go indoors - if only we'd realised then what was going on - and when he was finally taken inside, he lay on the mat and tried to ignore everything happening around him. It is easy to see now that the poor little fellow had no experience of the good things of life.

We tried to make him welcome in his new home, but looking back, he must have found this a very stressful experience. Here he was, able to wander round the garden and come and go at will, and the people were trying to handle him - all of this was probably new to him. We were told he was 7 - and that may not be far out, but when the vet saw him the next day he thought he was at least 10, he was in such poor condition.

A couple of weeks later, having been introduced to Twywell Hills and Dales and having met some friendly other dogs, and now that we felt confident of his recall, he was taken on a longer walk with another human, someone he'd only just met, and her dog. So off we set, Jill and Ozzie the Black Lab, and Bonnie and I with Claude. He had not been in the company of another dog for more than a few minutes before, so this was a major challenge. But I knew Ozzie from before and if there was any dog Claude would not have a problem with, I was sure it was he. So off we set.

And here we are, heading for the woods, everyone getting on fine. I hoped Claude was picking up on my confidence that all would be well.

My next idea for helping Claude socialise was to invite two dogs he knew from the park into his territory. We had a head start here as he really likes their owner, Sarah. He was soon happy enough with Lucy & Lillie, but when Sarah lay on the grass and tried to encourage him to play, he just didn't know what to do.

Now here is Claude a few weeks later, in mid June. Note not only the new hair around his face, but the confident air with which he surveys the picnic area at Hills & Dales, watching the other dogs, most of which he now knows quite well, several of which he has been on walks with.







Compare this shot on the left with Claude after his walk with Ozzie and Jill, below. Can it be the same dog?

Bit by bit, sometimes in small increments, sometimes with great leaps forward, Claude has been growing out of his old timid self into his new life as a confident, if rather arthritic, gent in late-ish middle age. He does still have his foibles, and he does like to test the limits from time to time, but he is definitely both fitter and happier.

 Here is Claude today, at the end of July, after all but 4 months with us. He'd not met Misty before, but he went up to her (he always approaches girls these days) they got on, and she made every effort to come along on his walk. He must have something she liked.

Claude does know how to have fun now. He runs playfully from one to the other of us, chases the girls he thinks he has a chance with, bounds around forgetting his painful joints when he is feeling exuberant, and so on. He can't keep up the running all that long, but he can trot for quite a while. He looks forward to going out, gets excited when I put on my dog-walk clothes, and generally gives the impression that life is pretty good on the whole. He has entertained more visitors at home (two long-haired dachshund girls that he knows quite well) and is generally becoming sociable.

Up to now he has usually resisted any grooming or deseeding (long hair + country walk = seeds in coat). But today for the first time he took no noticed of the comb in his coat, and didn't even resist when we took seeds out of his rear paws, up to now something he hated. He even stepped into the foot bath when we got home.- that is a real first.

Here he is at Twywell Hills & Dales picnic area, posing for his photo, with his family. Is this the same dog as the one pictured at the top of the page? Yes, but also no: he is a different dog in that he has acquired a raft of new characteristics which we are proud and pleased to see. We hope he will be with us, and that his personality will continue to grow, for a long while yet.

Violence Against Women

I am aware that I only caught a short part of a discussion on Radio 4 when I was in the car this morning, but as far as I can gather a woman was arguing that porn (all the way from the soft porn of Playboy bunnies to hard porn on the Internet) is the main cause of rape and violence against women.

This is ignorant nonsense. I forget the exact biblical reference, and I don't want to look it up just now, but there is a passage in the OT that runs "If your son disobeys you, remonstrate with him, beat him if necessary, and if he still disobeys you take him to the elders and if he disobeys them, stone him to death". There is no similar sanction of violence against disobedient women. The reason for that is that violence against women was the norm, and in many parts of the world it still is.

For example Islamic teachers have argued recently that it is good for your wife if you beat her and women & girls are ritually murdered in India on a regular basis. The references are easy to find on the web. It is only in the parts of the world that have benefitted from the Enlightenment, where there is freedom of expression, an equal franchise, and so on, that women have equal rights with men to protection under the law.

Those are the same societies that allow porn to some extent under freedom of expression. But protection, for everyone, women included, against violence comes first. To equate porn with the cause of violence against women is simply ignorant of what is happening in much if not most of the world, and against which we should all be protesting as strongly as possible. The guy the woman was arguing with called her "nuts". It's a pity he didn't call her "ignorant" and bring the facts of the matter to her attention.

Missed Opportunity

My mother was a poetry expert. Actually she earned her living as a Speech Therapist and Elocution Teacher, but what she most enjoyed was working with her senior pupils to get them through the LAMDA and Poetry Society exams. Some of those who came to her went on to be distinguished in various aspects of the dramatic arts. She knew her Shakespeare inside out, and was very fond of Keats and Shelley among others.

Most of this passed me by. A steady drip of poetry, both good and less so, has a similar effect on a child as inoculation. I did learn to appreciate some poets and their work, but not as widely as I might have. And I never took the opportunity to discuss with her the basis of her interpretations. When she advised that a line be rendered this way rather than that, what exactly did she have in mind? Was it the sound, the dramatic effect, the poet's meaning? And if the latter, what did she know of the background against which he was writing?

I know a little about Shakespeare's place in history, not much, and nothing at all about Keats. But I do know quite a bit about Shelley. He married the daughter of one of my heroes, William Godwin, who went on herself to write Frankenstein. Shelley was deeply influenced by Godwin's 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and in some respects was more Godwinian in his views than Godwin had been when he wrote it. Shelley certainly disapproved of adjustments that Godwin made to his theory in later editions of the book in the light of experience. Shelley's poetry is intimately related to Godwin's original philosophy.

And so was his behaviour. Shelley's cavalier attitude towards other people's feelings and opinions, which sprung from his enthusiasm for Godwin's ideas, led indirectly to the suicide of Mary Wollstonecraft's first daughter, Fanny, and directly to the suicide of his first wife, Harriet, who he abandoned for Mary Godwin, and to his subsequent total disinterest in his children from that marriage.

Which is why I would like to have discussed my mother's interpretation of his poetry with her. How much of this did she know? How much of it, if she knew it, did she take into account when teaching his poetry? Did she think that the relationship between the poetic expression of ideas and the behaviour to which those ideas led was important, or even relevant?

I shall never know. Does it matter? Godwin's ideas also form the basis of his daughter Mary Shelley's brilliantly original novel, Frankenstein, and many of the conflicts and questions that arise from his teaching are worked out between the characters of the story. Indeed, it was to popularise her father's insights that Mary wrote the book. But who cares about that now? It's just a darn good story, isn't it?

Claude...

Claude has a phobia about doorways. He has yet to leave the living room and enter the hall. Getting him out for a walk has been really difficult. We didn't want to force him and make his fear worse. Despite his not liking being picked up, that's what I resorted to. Once over the threshold he was fine. The odd thing was that it was the threshold out of the living room into the conservatory that stopped him on the way out, and the one from the garden into the conservatory on the way back in. In either direction he crossed the second one without a thought.

So last night Claude had a visit from Canine Behaviourist Sue Kinchin. Because he has problems with his teeth he has also not taken treats. But Sue had some that were tasty enough to attract him and small enough to swallow without chewing. We spent a long time gaining his confidence, rewarding steps towards the door and relieving the stress that built up when he got too near.

However this morning we got the first fruits. I wanted, if it was at all possible, Claude to decide to cross the threshold and go out. He loves his walk, and with his lead on he is highly motivated. He came to the doorway, put a foot across, and then backed off. Then he tried again, but at the threshold he lifted one front leg in the way he does when wanting his chest rubbed. So I did that, and he obviously felt better and put a foot over the doorway again. I rewarded his progress, he backed off. But the next approach he managed two feet through. The point is that he wants to go out, but for some reason he can't. So I rewarded him for his effort - all I had was kind words and my hands - and he backed off but came straight back and tried again. After 45 minutes of to and fro he finally stepped through with all four feet. I made a big fuss of him and he trotted off to the car, through the remaining doorway, no problem.

He also has a issue with getting into the boot. Where we walk in the morning I reverse up to a grassy bank, so he has no trouble getting in and out. After a vigorous walk when he is limbered up he can walk up to the car and leap in. But when his arthritic hip joints are cold he bangs his back legs as he can't get enough height into his jump. I've been trying to teach him the Laddie method - put his front two feet into the car and wait for me to hoick the back end up and in. So he came up to the car, but not near enough. I got him to walk in a circle and this time he stopped closer to the car. But he sat down, clearly recognising that he was going to have a problem leaping in. Then, of his own volition, he put one paw into the car. I praised him and lifted the other paw up and praised him some more. But he was still sitting down and I needed him to be standing up to lift him. So I put my hands under his rear and raised him into the standing position, but before I could get my arm under to lift, he leapt. He didn't have any momentum and banged his legs again, but at least he was a step further towards the right method, so we had a big praising and comfort session before setting off.

After a vigorous walk and many friends to sniff - he as so gained in confidence in the week he's been here - we had to face the reverse issue of getting him to decide to go back into the house. It was exactly the same as it had been in the other direction, just a different doorway. But he was highly motivated - his breakfast was waiting inside, as he well knew. It isn't that he doesn't want to go in. He wants to very much, but some interior mechanism is preventing him, and he can't. So we started the one foot / two feet routine again, with much backing off and walking round. I did my bit, supplying praise and stress-relief. It took him half an hour to make the decision, but he did eventually put all four feet inside and we had a major "well done, take your time and feel better" session. Then he happily trotted across the other threshold that had stopped him on the way out, tucked in to his food, licked his bowl clean, flopped onto the floor and fell asleep.

The Little Man had a demanding start to the day.

Seneca was right

Lucius Annaeus Seneca is one of my favourite philosophers. I like the Stoic writers as a whole, and he was one of the greatest. The main competition for the Stoice school was the school of Epicurus. One of Seneca's virtues was that he recognised the greatness of Epicurean thought and quotes from it liberally.

One of Seneca's important creations is a set of 124 letters to Lucilius Junior, which I have been reading while on a visit to an old friend in Israel. At the end of letter 8 Seneca is borrowing from Epicurus, and justifying it by quoting Epicurus in support - the truth belongs to everyone. Then in the next letter he supports Epicurus in his denial of the idea that the wise man is content with himself and needs no friends. Seneca goes on that the Stoic wise man is indeed self-sufficient, but none the less he desires friends. He makes an interesting comparison - a man that has lost a hand learns to do without it, but he'd still prefer to have both hands. In the same way the wise man, being self-sufficient, is able to do without friends, but it is better to have them. In the same letter he says "Great Pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building a new one." And once again he generously quotes Epicurus, who said that he didn't want friends for their support when he was in trouble, but on the contrary, to have someone to support in their troubles. Seneca is talking about real friends, the person one can talk to about anything, or similarly sit with in silence. He distinguishes real friends from the fair weather kind who clamour about successful people. Seneca goes on that friendship is something to be sought out for its own sake, and the self-contented wise man is entitled to persue it.

My visit to Jerusalem has been a great refreshment for me. I've had the opportunity to do new things and to revisit old ones; to enjoy things past once again and to decide to let some things go and move into the future. I've read some new books and revisited some old ones too. All this has been made possible by the generousity of one old friend, and also that of a new one, his wife. I first met Brian at school, rather more than 50 years ago, and we both were members of the same adult chess club. It was there that I realised what an unusual, generously open-minded, person he is.

Chess players are rather apt to be dismissive of people who beat them in a game: "Oh you were just lucky, if I had done this or that you would have been lost". Grandmaster Bent Larsen once said that he had never beaten an opponent who was fully healthy, and very chess player knows what he means. Back in the chess club at Palmers Green I had a game with Brian that I won with an unusual manouvre that the books would say was a bad idea. Maybe it usually is, but not this time. Brian did not resort to the familiar "Oh, I was feeling unwell and had something else on my mind" response. Instead he was eager to go back to the critical position and understand why a move he would not have considered was correct on this occasion. Not at all defensive, he wanted to understand. Typically, Brian has forgotten the incident. I remain impressed, and he hasn't changed.

Being with my old friend (as we are both over 60 I think that's the right term) has been the greatest treasure of my visit. Meeting Maggie and finding her to be of like temperament, and similarly a pleasure to be with, has doubled the benefit. I'd like to think it has been similar for them. I've been made so welcome and felt so at home.

After my heart surgery I resolved to put more time and effort into the things that really matter, the people in my life, and less into other things. Brian and Maggie have helped me recover that resolve, and I shall always be grateful. I have also had the pleasure of taking part in a relaxed and good humoured style of living that I shall try to emulate.

Seneca, and Epicurus, were right. Real friends are a tremendous asset, an extension to life, an enrichment, a treasure to be enjoyed and valued.

Dogology

Dogology

Laddie was an exceptionally laid back and very friendly dog. But he did have his favourite people. He was always very pleased to see Tony. I think it may have been connected to Tony's touch, which he seemed to really enjoy, or it may have been the scent on him of his bitch Daisy, or it might have had something to do with the ready supply of biscuits, or perhaps all three, or something else.

It was different with Jill - he'd greet her so warmly, often with his singing tone, and for a year or so as her dog Ozzie grew to maturity he'd try to displace Ozzie's ownership of her. When he became ill for the last time he stopped that, but he still showed Jill loads of affection. I never worked out why, but he was rather possessive of her. Did he pick up my affection for her?

He was similarly pleased to see Sarah and her dogs. He liked the dogs. They were friendly to him and greeted him without jumping all over him. He hated that more and more as he got older and his joints became more painful. But he was fond of Sarah too, and would come when she called him when he was busy ignoring me. I think it was something to do with the way she greeted him, although once again he may have been picking up my affection.

But best of all, his very top favourite, was Helen. He stayed with her when we were away, and really enjoyed it. I'd drive him round, open the car, and he'd spot where he was, walk to the front door, and wait to be let in. He greeted Helen almost as he greeted me. He let her wash his feet, even posing while she did it. One of the few things he protested about when I did it was foot washing in water. But with Helen, it was alright. Helen was the first person to allow him on her sofa. He wasn't allowed at home. Helen let him break the rule on his first visit, and he was settled there when I went to collect him. I took him home, he walked into the living room, looked me in the eye, and got on the sofa, gazing at me and wagging furiously. What could we do? Bonnie made a sofa cover for him. I'm glad we did that as it gave him somewhere soft to rest when his joints hurt but also in the heart of his family. He never liked being left if we had to go out, but when I took him to Helen he'd greet her, get on the sofa, and not even look up when I went home without him. He adored her. Something must have been going on after I left! Thanks to Helen he never had to go into a kennel and was never distressed by our holiday breaks.

When Laddie came to us he was a bit anxious. He was disturbed in the car on the long journey back from Manchester. But he settled in quite fast, appointing himself Sentry on the first day, a job he took very seriously for the rest of his life. He always gave the window cleaners a tough time. Once we came back from a walk to find that they had let themselves in the back gate and were cleaning at the rear of the house. He'd not had a very active walk, and was plainly feeling stiff, but he saw them as I reversed in and started barking. I opened the back and he leaped out and charged, chasing them both up their ladders and showing his teeth, growling fiercely. Good boy! Whoever Laddie's successor is will need to learn that role, but it's going to be a hard act to follow.

Laddie's initial anxiety soon passed as he found he was loved, rewarded, fed, walked, and generally made welcome. He showed his love for us in return in many ways, and was always at the door when one of us came home. Well, almost. He was once asleep on the sofa when I opened the door, and I heard the crash as he came running. He'd gaze into our eyes, wagging like mad, sometimes singing too. If we were all sitting together he'd suddenly look up, fix one of us with a meaningful stare, and wag firmly, beating the carpet or sofa in emphasis. I took to working downstairs with him, and if I got distressed at the computer he'd detect it, and come to me from where ever he was, sit by me, and look up, staring into my eyes as if to reassure me that everything was okay while he was here to defend me. He was so loyal.

We adored him with his laid back, affectionate, gentle manner, and he plainly showed his adoration for both of us. And now he's gone. The thing I miss most is the sound of his tail on the floor when he detected that I was out of bed in the morning. Another day was beginning, we'd do things together, and whatever they were he was ready to go for it. Even in his last days he was eager to go out and meet his friends, canine and human. We will always miss him.

Sir Patrick

According to The Week, the nation's favourite stereotype of a scientist, dear old Patrick Moore, is in a bad way. His health is failing and he sees himself as being near the end of life. I'm sad about that. I treasure a photograph of him standing next to me chatting in a friendly way, taken at an Astronomy event we both attended 7 or 8 years ago. He is, of course, an unbeliever as far as religion is concerned, so I was surprised to read that he expects death to lead to another life. And not merely that, but a life which can influence events in this one. According to the report I read he has left instructions for a gathering after his death at which he will blow out a candle!

Somehow I am almost more sad about this than his approaching demise. But it is not atypical. When my dog, dear old Laddie, died, dog-walking friends tried to comfort me by saying that he was probably playing in an otherworldly field with their deceased dog. People I meet who have zero religious beliefs expect to be reunited with deceased spouses and parents. Of course I never challenge beliefs like that. I might, in a formal debate for example, but people are entitled to what comforts they can find in the face of death. The idea of non-existence is terrifying to some, and incomprehensible to many. I am lucky in that not existing after this life frightens me no more than not existing before I was born does. That luck does not give me the right to trample on the compensations for death and loss that others entertain.

But here, no-one has to read on who doesn't want to, and no-one who doesn't want to read what I really think need read another word. Please take that as fair warning about what is to come.

Sir Patrick is a highly educated man, and I doubt he is unaware of all the work in neuroscience and related disciplines that demonstrates how totally dependent we are on our brain chemistry and physiology. A minute change in the chemical reactions in our brain can render us so different a person that we would not recognise ourselves. An injury to the brain can cause dramatic changes in both personality and physical capacity. There is experimental evidence that seems to show that the actions we think we undertake as the result of a decision are in fact initiated deep in the brain long before we become consciously involved.

None of this proves anything, and it certainly does not prove that there is no life after death. But it does lend credence to the idea that who we are is dependent on our brains, both physically and chemically, and that therefore we ourselves are so dependent, and that when our brains stop, we stop.  Sir Patrick must be aware of that, even though it is not his specialised area of scientific work. But the existence of this line of empirical work does nothing to change his belief and his expectation of an afterlife. In that he has a lot in common with most people. I think it is sad that someone of his knowledge and critical judgement doesn't give it more weight. But the fact is that our emotions are more important than our rationality in determining what we believe.

There is nothing in either neuroscience or medicine that gives any reason to think anything other than that we are totally dependent on these frail human bodies for our existence, and in particular dependent on our brains. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it does look very suspicious. It seems to me to be like the general anaesthetic I had when I underwent heart surgery. The drugs they gave me stopped certain parts of my brain from working and I was completely unaware even of being unconscious. Everything that was me stopped until the effect of the drugs was reversed and I regained consciousness, with no idea how much time had passed and so on. Effectively the real me ceased to exist although my body lived on. The wonder of modern anaesthesia is that it is reversible, and once the brain chemistry began to flow again, my self returned. When I die all that brain chemistry will stop and the physical circuitry will become unusable very quickly. I fail to see how I can in any sense exist when this has happened.

If Sir Patrick can show me any reason at all to think that this line of thought might be wrong, I will be delighted to examine it, test it, and take it seriously. Sadly the prospect is remote since no such reason has ever been shown to exist. I prefer to go to my death aware of the realities and with no expectation of their being overturned.  If that's wrong I hope the surprise will be pleasant, but I am reasonably confident that any such non-physical existence in another world will be totally unable to blow out any existent physical candles in this one. All that influences matter is material in origin, including the four great forces of nature, the weakest of which is gravity.

Our old friend Laddie is gone.

My dear old friend Laddie died. I have a big aching hole where he used to be. He was getting on when he came to us, and we were told we'd probably have him for a year or two. Happily it was a lot longer than that. He was big for a Collie, but as gentle as any dog I have ever known. Totally laid back, he was always so pleased to see his friends, both canine and human. And the greetings we used to get were second to none. Laddie knew how to make his feelings known.

As long as we've known him he's had two problems; his digestive system and his joints. When he first came to live with us stomach upsets were frequent events. As we got to know his dietary needs better these decreased. He did have a couple of major problems even so. The first was a very bad attack of colitis which laid him so low we thought we'd lost him. But he survived, although he never regained his former energy after it. Later another stomach problem defeated all the vet's diagnostic tools, but once again he came through, having frightened us to death first.

But his joint problems got gradually worse, and from being an active dog who loved his walk in the country he became a dog who liked to go out and sit in the sun and meet his mates. Arthritic joints and collapsed ligaments in his feet made walking a trial for him, despite all the anti-inflammatory drugs and pain killers we could pump into him. None the less he retained his good nature, his love of socialising, and his desire to play (even if mostly from lying on the sofa) right to the end. And even on a day when his joints were playing him up, he never lost the desire to show off to a bitch in season. His amazing nose could detect female hormones from a few hundred yards, and he'd set off at speed. Lately he could not keep the chase up long, and I knew the end was getting near when I spotted one of his lady friends that I knew to be in season, some distance off. Laddie's nose went into overdrive, but he didn't even haul himself to his feet. He knew it was hopeless.

Last week another stomach issue laid him very low, and he had to see the vet late on Sunday night. But he recovered and was pretty perky by Wednesday or Thursday this week. However yesterday he was clearly having trouble getting about, and this morning he could not haul himself to his feet. I managed to get him into the car and to his favourite walking spot, but the best he could do was crawl a few yards on his stomach using his front legs. A friend helped me get him back into the car, and shortly after a large group of his friends came by. He was as usual pleased to see them, but he could not get up. He received sniffing from the dogs and stroking from the people and seemed happy enough to lay there for that. Then we took him straight to the vet. His life ended with his family round him, assured of our love and appreciation.

The Great Census Religion Con

Probably most people are aware there has been some debate about the census question on religion in the upcoming census. At the last census, in 2001, the same question was asked as this time: ‘What is your religion?’ It was placed directly after the Ethnicity question, and responders seem to have read it as another question about their background.

I say this because the most recent British Social Attitudes Survey split the question into two parts:
1.‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ and
2.‘What religious tradition, if any, were you brought up in?’

Answers to the second question closely match the 2001 Census return: only 18.5% said ‘No religion.’ But answers to the first question gave 50.7% of responders saying ‘No religion’ – almost three times as many. This is a strong reason to believe that people understood the census question to be about their religious background rather than about their religious practice. However, the answers are interpreted by decision makers in terms of religious practice for things as diverse as Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' and funding for Faith Schools. They argue that less than 20% of the population are not religious, and therefore they should provide for the remaining 80%. In truth, as the answers to the first Social Attitudes survey show, the reality is somewhere close to 50:50.

The British Humanist Association tried to get the question for this census revised to be closer to the more carefully phrased one on the Social Attitudes survey. But resistance of the census authorities to any change was resolute. An item in Radio 4’s 'Sunday' on 27th February threw a clear light on the cynicism which lies behind this. The Deputy Director of the Census explained that the reason for keeping things as they are is that the users of this particular item in the 2001 census data want the question left as it was. Of course they do. The reason they are ‘users’ is that it gives them the answers they want. If it were changed now it would mean that their policies over the last decade had been unfounded. Who goes looking for egg on their face?

Speaking on the same programme for the Church of England, Linda Barley said that the question ‘is not about believing’. That made me sit up with a jolt! How is that so? Let's hear it again: ‘Religious affiliation is not about believing.’ Up to now I thought that the religions claimed that membership was entirely about belief and demanded respect, and even exemption from some laws (such as those discrimination against gays or women) on the basis of that deeply held (but unjustified) conviction. I am amazed that someone speaking for the church was prepared to admit on air that people who claim to be religious may not in fact believe a word of it. What they want is, for example, to manipulate access to a certain school, an opt-out for their prejudices, or some similar benefit. I am as glad as anyone to see the church admitting to the cynicism of those on their roll of members. Now I wait for other religious leaders to follow suit.

But back to the point. If you, being non-religious, want public policy over the next decade in matters affected by religious attitudes to be based on the facts, rather than on a carefully and cynically nurtured fiction, make sure that you tick the ‘No religion’ option on the census form.

There is a very nice short presentation on this topic prepared by the Milton Keynes Humanists. Click here to access it.

Thanks to Charles Baily for his help preparing this item.

Musical Talent

I'm sitting in a coffee shop mulling over some ideas for a blog post. As usual there is background music. It so happens that it's not to my taste, but that's normal. Sometimes I'm lucky and get good music to go with good coffee, more often not, but I am not the arbiter of taste for the world, or even for Wellingborough. No doubt more people will enjoy the music that is playing than would enjoy something I chose.

My issue is with what degree of talent it takes to be successful and make money from music. For many people this isn't important. Music is about satisfaction and enjoyment, and I am sure that is true for the performer I just heard. But he is also making money, a recording company has paid him in anticipation of making a substantial profit. So what does it take?

The other evening I was at an organ recital by one of the world's leading organists. His talent is undeniable, as is the amount of hard work he has put in to reach his present eminence. At the other end of the scale, a few years ago I was at a concert at a quite prestigious venue given by a local amateur orchestra. I paid a decent amount for a ticket, and they played with enthusiasm and enjoyment, but less skill. The violin section, for example did not so much attack a note as gang up on it and smother it with sheer weight of numbers. One cannot expect the same degree of skill from amateur performers as professionals, and one of the differences may be the accuracy with which violinists can tune their instrument and then hit a given tone exactly. But this failing spoiled the concert. Over and again a phrase began with a smudge rather than a note or chord, and severely detracted from the music. And the ticket price was not significantly less than for a top notch professional performance. I've not been to hear that orchestra again. Money is short, and I prefer to spend it on things I really enjoy.

I did not pay for the music in this coffee shop other than indirectly through the price of the coffee and food, which is in my view good value anyway. But in principle, the same question arises. I was sitting here, relaxed, soaking up the sunlight streaming through the window, barely aware of the music. Then it happened. The singer went for a high note that needed to be held. It was obvious from the chord the group was playing and the general direction of the melody what the note was supposed to be. He missed it, and not by a small amount. He then tried to hold the note he had missed, but his voice was not capable of it, and he wavered around in the general area of the note he had missed, without ever actually finding it. It was excruciating. And suddenly music I was happy to pay no attention to had been forced, painfully forced, onto my attention.

The singer lacked talent. He could neither hit nor maintain a note, which factors are the essence of singing. And it was recorded! The technology exists to correct such errors. Either no-one noticed or cared, or perhaps if it was pointed out the singer was offended. The singing produced was his style, and if you didn't like it, tough. Who knows? But why should lack of talent be rewarded with a recording contract? The question of musical taste is irrelevant. If it had been a harpsichordist who could not accurately render the works of Handel, a fidler playing Gypsy dances who could not keep in tune, or anything else, the issue is the same. Music is about melody and harmony. Styles and tastes vary over time and between people, but music remains the same in essence. Talent should be recognised and rewarded. Lack of it should not.

Toccata!

Life conspires with itself to bring a mixture of rough and smooth. Last night I had a ticket for an organ recital at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, which is my favourite concert venue in the UK. The Albert Hall is something special and different, but it has its drawbacks too. Symphony Hall manages to combine elegant appearance, compact size, excellence of location, perfect accoustics and a marvellous organ. I love to go to Symphony Hall. The only issue is the M6. Well, I know Birmingham pretty well, having worked there for several years, and consequentially I also know the the M6. It can be nasty, but the journey door to door ought to take less than an hour and a half. So I allowed two hours to be on the safe side. It was not enough - there was an accident (on the other carriageway) in road works and that added 50 minutes to the journey. Then on arriving at the NIA to park there was an event there. Finding parking was hard enough, and the task was complicated by hoards of teenagers milling about. So I was grouchy and late, the one being a direct consequence of the other. We missed the first two items on the programme. But we were finally ushered into wonderful gallery seats, my favourite seats in Symphony Hall, comfortable, roomy, with a great view of the performer.

The performer: I probably have not heard all the excellent organists in the UK, but I have heard a high proportion of them. Birmingham is blessed by having Thomas Trotter as the City Organist giving weekly recitals. Liverpool rejoices in Ian Tracey. Manchester enjoys Wayne Marshall. But for me the organist par excellence is John Scott, formerly organist at St Paul's Cathedral he is now at St Thomas' Fifth Avenue, New York City. He is not a showman like Carlo Curly, but listen to him play!

I had settled comfortably into my seat when John Scott began to play the last piece before the interval, the Toccata and Fugue in F Major by the incomparable J S Bach. It was simply magnificent. Bach himself would certainly have approved. Indeed, great organist though he was, Bach never had access to such an organ, with electro-pneumatic action and programmable stop combinations, and could hardly have created such sounds himself. I've long enjoyed this work, and here it was played as well as I can imagine it being played.

After the interval came a new work to me. Robert Schumann's Romantic style is a long way from Bach's Baroque. Bach's music had fallen out of favour soon after his death, and it was restored to its rightful place in the repertoire by the efforts of Schumann and others around the 1840s. Schumann wrote a series of 6 fugues taking the letters of Bach's name as his starting point (B flat, A, C B natural in our notation corresponds to B, A, C, H in the German equivalent). This interesting fugue combined the essence of Bach with the flavour of Schumann, and I look forward to hearing it again.

Then came the climax of the concert. Everyone knows the brilliant organ piece played at the end of Charles and Diana's wedding. It must be the most popular ending to church weddings, and is thus either rendered or slaughtered by church organists depending on their ability many times over every year. It is in fact the 5th movement of Charles-Marie Widor's 5th Organ Symphony. Sadly while the final Toccata is commonly heard the remainder of the Symphony is infrequently played, and I had gone to this recital specially to hear it.

It is a spellbinding work created by a master musician and outstanding organist. The first movement is an exciting Allegro, then comes a lyrical second movement. The third movement begins gently, then ups tempo with most of the melody in the pedals. The fourth movement is a wonderful, almost heartbreaking Adagio and then comes the brilliant virtuoso finish in the final Toccata which had me on the edge of my seat. It was nothing short of superb. Having heard John Scott play it in Birmingham there is only one thing left to do: go to Paris and hear it again on the organ of the church of Saint-Sulpice where Widor himself was organist for over 60 years.

The applause was deafening, and John Scott came to the microphone to thank the audience, and to say that, having heard the second most famous Toccata, should anyone feel short-changed by not having also heard the first most famous, he'd play that now. So we were treated to more Bach, the wonderful Toccata ‌and Fugue in D Minor, for which John Scott brought the utmost out of the fabulous Symphony Hall organ. Bach would have loved it. The sound of that great organ filled every cell of my body as the fugue reached its climax, and every shred of frustration on the way up the M6 had been compensated for many times over by the exhilaration generated by this combination of fine instrument, superb organist and glorious composition.

But next time I'll be in Birmingham in time for afternoon tea.

Scepticism

My main philosophical interest for the last 20 years or so has been epistemology, the study of what we can and cannot know, what the limitations on knowledge are. My natural inclination is to be sceptical of claims to knowledge. In my view there are good reasons for suspecting that our confidence in what we think we know is not well founded, and that the greater the confidence someone has in a position the more likely they are to be on very shaky ground.

Recently I have noticed that other fields of study are coming up with work that underwrites the sceptical position. For instance, a few years ago I read 3 books by the biologist Andrew Parker. The books are mainly about vision, and describe his work particularly in the evolution of colour vision. In these volumes he describes in great detail both the seeing end in different versions of the eye, and also the seen end and the physics of the different ways nature has evolved that give us colours to see. (I'm not really happy with the way I've phrased that, but it'll do.) This convinced me that the colours we see are created by the brain - they represent something out there, but we cannot be sure exactly what. Cannot, in the previous sentence, indicates a fundamental barrier to knowledge. Certainly colour does not exist in the accepted sense: it's a creation of our brains.

I have taken an intelligent interest in cosmology, as much as a non-physicist can. One thing we can be reasonably sure of is that there is a whole lot out there we do not understand. There are theoretical reasons for thinking that there must be dark matter, dark energy, but so far we are not able to detect either directly. Gravitational lensing of distant objects makes us think that there must be a massive something between us and it. But we cannot actually detect that something itself. Who knows what else there might be out there, and who knows how accurate our present understanding of the natural world is? But if we have good reasons for suspecting that we are ignorant of something in excess of 90% of what exists, how can we claim to have secure knowledge of the other 10%? All we can say is that what we think we know represents what is actually there well enough to produce effects we can repeat and describe, whether in my toaster, or by flying the Atlantic and sending space-craft to Saturn, or in the Collider at CERN. We can trust what we think we see well enough to support our evolution, but perhaps (necessarily) no better than that.

Then there is all the interesting work going on in Neuroscience and Psychology. There is experimental evidence that seems to show that limb movements which we take to be the result of conscious decisions are in fact initiated in the brain long (up to 6 seconds) before we become aware of them. Miles's TV series shows, among other things, how pre-conscious emotions determine what we take to be rational decisions. Work by psychologists with illusions is also convincing that a good chunk of perception is in the brain, not the sense organs. For example, the subject is shown a face saying either BAH or PAH. The lip movement is clear and distinct. He also hears the speaker's voice saying either BAH or PAH. But the sound played is always BAH. Even the researcher who described this, after 20 years of working on it, always hears what the mouth seems to say, despite the fact that he knows very well what sound is actually reaching the ears. It always works. For some reason the brain hears what the eye sees, not what comes in the ears. There is a lot of work along these lines showing similar things. In other words, our perceptions are, to a larger extent than we would want to think, constructed in our brains, and are not a reliable reflection of the world as it is.

Now the BBC has reported some work with painkillers described in Science Translational Medicine. In short, people acting as experimental subjects are hooked up to a system that delivers a powerful pain killer, and are also subjected to some pain. The experiment seems to show that the subjects' experience of pain is greater or less depending on what they are told is happening, and not on the pain given or the pain killer administered. The brain's expectation of pain can completely wipe out the effect of the pain killer, for example. It's well worth reading the item.

The point is, of course, that our experience of the external world and how it impinges on us is created in the brain, and is not directly connected to our experience itself. What we think is what we experience, not what happens to us.

The idea that we can be certain of anything outside our own heads appears more and more ridiculous.