Dialogues with God 1

It is said that the conversation went something like this, though I have my doubts:

God, we've fucked up!

God: What’s the matter, why are you looking so glum?

Man: Why d'you think?

G: Come on, don’t play games, tell me.

M: It’s this fucked-up world of ours, that’s what it is.

G: ‘Fucked-up world’? What do you mean?

M: Yeah, fucked-up world, you know what I mean.

G: I’m not sure I do, but even if it is in... err.. poor shape, you only have yourselves to blame. I gave you humans a wonderful place to live, more than you probably deserved, and you’ve… well… gone and spoilt it.

M: Maybe, but YOU made us and you must’ve known we’d fuck it up sooner or later.

G: You overestimate me. I may have made mankind but I had no way of knowing you’d make such an unholy mess of things.

M: But you made us what we are and part of what we are is to fuck up everything around us. That's what we do.

G: Well, that’s only part of you, as you say, most of you is good.

M: I don’t know about that.  I don't think the rest of us is much better, it's just one step away from the part that fucks up.

G: Oh come on, it isn’t sooooo bad, is it?

M: Oh no? Have you taken a look around lately? Have you seen the state of the world? We’re poisoning the air we breathe, tearing up the land we live on, dumping shit in the seas we fish in, wiping out the animals and plants, killing each other in all sorts of crazy wars, eating up the planet, and trashing the environment everywhere. Isn’t that bad enough?

G: Hmmm… I must admit I have noticed some dysfunctional behaviour lately.

M: ‘Dysfunctional’? There’s the understatement of the year! It’s fuckin' suicidal, mate.

G: Hmmm… well if you know you’re making such a mess of everything, why don’t you do something about it instead of whining about it to me?

M: Cos we can’t. You're the only one who can.

G: What do you mean you can’t?

M: Exactly that. We can’t do anything about it cos of the way you’ve made us, and you won't do anything about it cos you don't want to.

G: ‘The way I’ve made you?’ Don’t talk silly. And it's not for me to interfere.

M: There’s nothing silly about it. You’ve made us the way we are and to do the things we do. We kill and destroy cos that’s how you’ve programmed us. We don’t know any better.

G: That’s nonsense. Of course you know better. Anyway, what about free will?

M: Free will? Doesn’t exist, mate. It’s one of those myths. Sounds good and everyone gets all worked up over it but it’s just a myth. We’re hard-wired to piss on everything around us.

G: ‘Hard-wired’ to do what?

M: You heard. You’ve deliberately created us with a serious inbuilt flaw.

G: Oh really? And why would I do that?

M: Cos you’re a sadist. You’ve created us with the instinct to be destructive, so you could sit back and enjoy the action. It’s gone like clockwork for you and you’re loving every minute of it.

G: Don’t talk soft, man! Do you think I wanted this? I know you started off on the wrong foot but I was hoping that, given enough time, mankind would sort things out.

M: We’ve sorted things out alright. We’ve fucked everything up good and proper! And there's no unsorting it now.

G: Well ok, I must admit things are not looking too rosy at the moment, but the show’s not over yet.

M: Not for you, maybe, but the curtain's about to come down on us any minute now.

G: Oh come on, it can't be that bad.  Can it?

G: Oh no? Well take a good look around and tell me again if it can't be that bad.

G: Well, however bad it is, it could be worse, a lot worse.

M: Yeah, sure, we could all be stone dead already!

G: Well there you are then! Just be thankful for small mercies.

M: Oh I am, I am. Just because we’re busy blowing one another away, killing everything that moves and a lot that doesn't, putting shit into our environment and ripping up the planet we live on doesn’t mean things are going badly for us.

G: That’s more like it! All is not lost. And it’s not over till the fat lady sings.

M: Trouble is the fat lady HAS sung, and not just once but lots of times. We’re definitely living on borrowed time now.

G: Oh come now, it isn’t that bad… is it??

M: Not that bad? How can you say that? Have you taken a look round lately? Our species, your single-handed creation, is pumping shit into the air, tearing up the land, poisoning the seas, killing off all plant and animal life, wasting each other in shit-crazy wars, overruning the planet, and buggering up the environment everywhere, and….

It was evidently going to be a long night, as the dialogue was now in playback mode and, I dare say, you know what’s coming next. So, regardless of the outcome of this exchange, I leave you to be the judge of whether we’ve fucked up our planet or not and, perhaps more crucially, whether the fat lady has sung… or not.

Stop the World! I want to get off...

Do you ever feel, like me, a sense of growing despair at the state of our world in this the 21st century? The sentiment expressed in the somewhat humorous title of this post is meant to convey this sense of ‘fed-upness’ with the present state of the world that we humans have forged. We have somehow created a world seething with conflict, war and strife on all sides? If only the world were like a fairground carousel from which we could jump off at any time! I myself grew up in a time when we were made to believe that, having emerged from a massively destructive global conflict and the dark days that followed it, society and the world in general were gradually becoming a better place by the day in every way and that it would continue to get better until we attained some sort of earthly utopia or Nirvana. We were not, of course, given a time-frame for this, but there seemed little doubt that it would come to pass one day.

But that’s not happening, is it? Not even remotely. There’s precious little peace or harmony in the world today and danger seems to lurk round every corner. All over the planet earth, one country or people is dumping on another country or people. One nation or cultural community is clashing with another. The apparent cause may be territorial, political, economic or religious. It hardly matters. An excuse or pretext for aggression or hostilities towards one’s fellow men can always be found. And once found, the business of making war or launching homicidal attacks can begin in the name of Jesus, God, Allah, or some other suitable deity, holy figure or to-die-for cause, with a clear conscience.


If it's a war waged by Muslims against the Infidel (nowadays that's us in the West), it will inevitably be a holy war or crusade, in the name of Allah and all Islam. It would seem that Allah, the All Merciful, is quite happy to see women, children and innocent people in general being slaughtered in His name by such devotees as suicide bombers, providing it’s proclaimed a holy war. So that's alright then. So much more reassuring to know that one might receive a holy bullet in the head or be blown up by a holy bomb than by one of your common-or-garden bullets or bombs. The reality, of course, is that there's nothing holy about any war, whether it's waged by Muslims, Christians or the followers of any other religion, and one could not imagine either the God of Abraham or the God of Mohammed sanctioning such carnage in His name. War is wrong whoever practises it, its outcome consumes many lives and causes untold misery and visits the participants with destruction and devastation.

If it’s not human beings butchering each other in the name of their god or other ideal, it’s a natural disaster: it’s a flood that sweeps away people and their homes, a tsunami that swamps the land and bulldozes everything in its path, an earthquake that demolishes villages and towns, a volcano that disgorges molten lava and spews out hot ash engulfing whole communities, a hurricane or cyclone, or some such phenomenon, that tears its way across the landscape carrying all before it, torrential rains that transform huge swathes of land into lakes, months of drought that parch the ground and turn it into a dust-bowl, and so on and so forth.


And of course we mustn’t forget the threat posed by contagion when it becomes an epidemic and then spreads across national borders to develop into a full-blown pandemic, killing thousands of people as it extends its reach. Suddenly there’s an outbreak of some life-threatening infection in one country and within days or weeks it’s spreading from country to country, sowing fear and panic in its path round the globe. Before you know it, it’s arrived on your doorstep and emergency action is being taken by the local authorities to check it and to immunise the population against it. Usually too little and too late.

You would think that with so many natural disasters and calamities occurring throughout the world, that would be more than enough for us. But you’d be wrong. We feel compelled to add to the sum-total of our miseries and misfortunes by serving a dose of our own man-made woes just to be sure there’s enough sorrow and grief in the world to go round. So, those few pockets on our planet which have relatively few natural calamities often have local nationalist movements busy planting bombs in public places designed to kill en masse and indiscriminately. A sense of injustice or desire for regional autonomy or even independence seems to excuse nowadays any act of mass murder of innocent people, as they go about their day-to-day business, to make its point.


We often brand someone an ‘animal’ to indicate that their behaviour is unworthy of a human being or we might say that a riotous mob behaved like animals to signify that they ran riot or behaved in a savage manner. And yet this is the last thing that animals actually do. Animals very seldom kill for sport, but for food. Humans kill for sport and out of sheer spite and revenge. Animals rarely go on a rampage of destruction. The history of humans is full of countless acts of looting and rioting. Animals are not known to indulge in serial or mass killings, humans do it with alarming frequency. Need I go on? In fact, when we want to describe wanton and unacceptable conduct of any kind we should say that we’re behaving like humans! Because we are the savages, not animals. We are the species that kills and slaughters and pollutes and destroys on a large and systematic scale and are a threat to ALL other species of life on this planet and to our very environment. Animals live in harmony with their environment, whereas we are antagonistic to it and are constantly harming it.

We humans have made a very complex place of the world. Unless you are prepared to take yourself off to some exceedingly remote and hostile location and live in a cave or hut, cut off from society, you cannot escape this all-pervasive complexity. Today human society is more complex than ever before. Our technology and our scientific inventions, which are meant to assist and support us, add to this complexity as they become ever more sophisticated. It is difficult to really keep up with anything these days. Innovation and invention means that no sooner have we familiarised ourselves with one weird and wonderful device or gadget, than a new one comes along to replace it. Not because it has outlived its use or is outdated, but simply because the policy of ‘planned obsolescence’ dictates that products must be constantly renewed and given a face-lift to keep the relentless wheels of capitalist enterprise turning.


We are a wasteful, voracious, destructive and lethal breed and bad news for the environment and all other animals on this planet, and we consume vast quantities of the Earth’s resources to sustain our ever-growing numbers and maintain our prodigal way of life. When God went one step further than the apes to create humans, was it possible that he did not know what He was unleashing on the planet? How could this be, given that God is prescient and omniscient? Could it be that he knew and did it anyway? Perhaps He foresaw that without man the earth would be a very boring place, with no bloody wars, savage conflicts, genocidal massacres or social unrest, just peace and harmony all around. It seems that even God needs a bit of excitement in his celestial existence and so He created mankind, and I’m sure we’ve never disappointed him since!

Shit Begets Shit

Having come back from a leave of absence which was meant to recharge my batteries, refresh my brain cells, re-stock my store of ideas, and renew my spiritual and intellectual momentum, I find that I cannot think of anything to write about in this blog of mine which is worth writing about other than the fact that I cannot think of anything to write about in this blog of mine which is worth writing about! Or can I?

There are of course countless things to write about, but many of them are just plain boring, others are too weighty, others too trivial, others suck, and still others are too personal and would make me the laughing-stock of the world! If, that is, the whole world read my blog, but as it doesn't and as those few who do can be counted on the fingers of one hand, would it really matter? I suppose not, but standards must be maintained and pretences kept up. Self-delusion is everything when there's nothing else.

Out there in the worldwide Blogosphere countless blogs are being composed at this very moment, some interesting and entertaining and some, well, just plain trashy and an embarrassment to the author were he mature enough or intelligent enough to see it. But we are all free to write what we want and now to put it out there in the public sphere for the edification of whomever is unfortunate enough to stumble across it.

Everything exists in excess in this world... except good sense. The greatest excess in this world is of course people. And an excessive number of people create an excessive quantity of garbage in one form or another, be it tangible or intangible. The obvious consequence of excess is of course pollution, and this too is created in excess and planet-wide. As if the environment did not have its work cut out in digesting the phenomenal output of excrement (aka 'poo') produced and ejected by billions of human bottoms worldwide, an unavoidable concomitant of life, it also gets dumped on with all the rubbish and waste generated by human activities (i.e. the by-products of manufacturing etc). And so it gets double-dumped on! It's a bowl of shit whichever way you look at it.

We inhabit a world of exaggeration. We live beyond our means and we do things in excess. We have unrealistic expectations and make overblown demands and we cultivate oversensitivity and will ourselves to be offended so we can experience righteous indignation. We rail against our politicians but each one of us would probably be a thousand times worse if we were in a postion of political power, as evidenced by the ridiculous things people say when questioned in the street by some canvasser or pollster. God protect us from the common man! There's none worse than the so-called man in the street and his black-and-white views and sure-fire panaceas!

In truth the world is a confusing place. Confusing enough to drive us all mad if we could but contemplate it all. But thankfully we are by nature limited in what we can take in as part of our human consciousness and hence we are able to preserve our sanity and keep going. The world is only digestible in minute morsels and our minds can only handle snippets of the overall picture and the reality that's out there. We often choose to be aware of what we can usefully take on board in a viable way, and it is just as well, as it enables us to carry on psychologically and physically.

And yet we now live in a world of information overload. Thanks to our advanced communication technologies we are today bombarded by news and information from many quarters. Our ears are assailed by noise and our minds by information of one kind or another and in one form or another. It is a constant flow and it is much too much for us to absorb and process. There is no peace or tranquillity in our lives, no refuge from the barrage of information coming at us from a multiplicity of sources. And of course there is no escape from the mountain of obligations and debts that attach to us from just living our lives. We think we have free will and freedom of action and yet the reality is that we are so hemmed in by a myriad of restrictions and obligations that we often feel suffocated by the pressures placed upon us and the stresses that result. Our freedom is not curtailed by iron bars but our lives are constricted by an infinite number of rules and regulations, duties and obligations, and the burden of heavy debt which our modern living frequently demands of us.

The name of the beast is of course 'materialism'. Its vehicle is money. And its manifestation is goods. And we have so constructed the world that we need to have continual growth to have prosperity. How we make sense of that when the planet and its resources are finite and exhaustible is anyone's guess. We appear not to have spotted the absence of any logic in such a policy. So we worship at the altar of growth, which of course neatly brings us back to the theme of excess with which we started this commentary. In some mad sort of way everything seems to slot seamlessly into this jigsaw puzzle: materialism requires that we constantly acquire things, growth dictates that we constantly enlarge and expand, and money, the vehicle by which we stoke the fires of materialism and achieve growth, necessitates that we work to acquire it, and so we have the complete cycle, at least in simplified terms.

It is a much quoted saying that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing. But like most sayings, there is more than a grain of truth in it. The world has become a noisy place. There is no privacy any more. There is no real asylum. Communications are instant. Globalism is a reality. Money is the engine that drives all economies. Greed is the motivation that makes money work. Selfishness is the quality that allows materialism to thrive. Pollution is worldwide and its effects are changing the planet. Man's nefarious activities are threatening the survival of both plant and animal species. Human wickedness guarantees the continuance of crime. And a society that is becoming more and more amoral (if not immoral) ensures the recurrence of disasters brought on by shady dealings and dubious professional practices effected in the name of quick and easy gains, as typified by our banking systems in the recent past. The pieces are all in place and their adverse effects are constantly being felt.

That's all I'm going to say on this for now, little though it is, as I intend to return to this theme from time to time. If nothing else, it gives me the chance to have a good moan and to let off steam. It has many aspects to it, many facets, and it is an inexhaustible source of material to gripe about, rightly or wrongly. But one thing's for sure: the world's in a mess, the planet is in trouble, and humanity is in deep shit. Need I say more? Well perhaps just one thing: keep in mind that shit begets shit and that a huge proportion of the earth's biological resources or biomass has been recycled many times over, so that we can truly say that we who walk the planet today have come from.. well, how can I put this tactfully?... recycled shit! There, I've said it, and it's a sobering thought.

New Worlds

Planets, stars, galaxies, nebulas and supernovae are some of the bodies that populate the depths of space and that may harbour worlds unseen and unimagined by us with civilisations equal to or greater than our own. Perhaps we will find out one day and perhaps, more likely, we never will.

The likelihood is that we shall already have destroyed ourselves, if not the planet, with our constant depredations and rapacious exploitation of the Earth, and with sheer overpopulation by the human species and its consequent demands for resources that the planet will no longer be able to provide to the teeming billions of humans.

Perhaps our salvation lies in space travel, which might enable the human race to spread out across space, populating other planets and easing the pressure on the Earth, seeing as we are not doing very well at limiting the proliferation of humans on a naturally finite planet. But to achieve this, it will probably have to be on a galactic level, since we have already seen that no planet in our solar system other than the Earth can sustain human life. We shall have to journey much further afield than our humble corner of the universe, to distant star systems in search of worlds not inimical to human survival like our group of planets that are as hostile as can be to sentient life.

And talking of the Earth, here it is. The Blue Planet, as we have christened it. Our home in the vastness of Space and most likely the only habitable planet for many light-years' distance. Mostly covered in water, which we cannot drink, but teeming with life forms and which supplies us with seemingly limitless food of one kind or another, it is the only thing we have at present, our only habitat for many years to come. And yet we treat it so harshly and so cavalierly, and now it may have begun to repay us in the currency we richly deserve, with natural phenomena that are capable of sweeping away hundreds or thousands of people at a stroke.