Jesus Says: Don't Be A Dick

I am a big fan of organised religion. When it is well-organised. The thought of millions of devoted, caring people, working towards a happy, fair and just world is a happy vision. Naive perhaps, but I can dream.

More and more people describe themselves as atheists these days, and in line with this, church attendances are falling every year. The sneering part of my brain tells me that this is a great thing, that we should throw off the shackles of dogmatic traditionalism and smash the corrupt institutions that perpetuate this slavery through mythology.

In the back of my mind, just behind the section devoted to my unconditional love of kittens, there is a nagging doubt. Not about the existence of God, or whether He wants us to eat fish on a Friday, as these absolute truths are unknowable for me. My doubt is about the triumph of individualism, the relentless march to empowerment of the self over growing together as a species.

The removal of identity entirely is recognised as dangerous, as the atrocities of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia have shown. Reducing individuals to numbers in a ledger makes them easier to forget or erase. However, in the examples above, the reduction of identity in the general population was in parallel with the rise to supreme power of one individual, with their followers clamouring and fighting to gain a share of this power.

“Community” is one of the most over-used words in the modern vocabulary. The abuse of the word has led to negative phrases like “care in the community” or “community activist”. The word now seems to indicate something external, separate from the individual and their needs and desires.

None of the greatest experiences of my life occurred while I was by myself. Whether it be laughing with friends, seeing a new baby for the first time, or packing down on the rugby pitch, I feel better when I'm with other people.

A community often needs a focal point, and in the past it always used to be the church, because everyone went there. In our multi-ethnic, mixed-race, poly-lingual society, that doesn't seem possible. We need a new centre for our community.

When thrown together, people tend to work together. In school you had to try and get on with everybody, because you saw them all day, every day. I'm sure an extraordinary number of lasting friendships started out this way, certainly many of mine did. If as adults we can find this common ground, maybe the world would be a little friendlier.

Why the guilt trip?

I suffer from a lot of guilt about how I live my life, and how that affects those around me. Do I work hard enough? Do I care enough about friends & family? Do I contribute to society? Do I recycle enough? This is undoubtedly a common state of mind for many people, particularly in today's unbalanced world.

For example, I regularly worry about the quality of my High-Definition TV picture, and not just when I'm sitting in front of it. I run silent, internal cost-benefit scenarios through my head with regards to upgrading the quality of cables I use. I consider using rubbing alcohol on my roof-mounted TV ariel to remove any imperfections that might impair crystal-clear viewing. Asleep at night, I fantasize about walking into John Lewis and telling the suave, elegant salesman to “...just give me the best damn TV you have!”, avoiding eye-contact with him, glancing only at the PIN-pad as my platinum credit card effortlessly dispatches the trivial matter of expense. My new plaything arrives in a 18-wheel articulated lorry, thoroughly inconveniencing (and impressing) my neighbours with its bulk. After inspecting the heavily branded packaging in full view of said neighbours, I retire inside to lovingly unwrap it with the joy of a six-year-old at Christmas, carefully placing the instruction manual to one side for later perusal. Next, I slowly and methodically connect the external cabling with the precision of a master wood-craftsman, ensuring the TV and all its inter-linked paraphernalia are arranged in the perfect combination of viewing angles, brushed metal edges and neatly stowed wiring. Now the moment comes to perch, cat-like, on the edge of the sofa and give the piano black remote a deliberate, yet gentle, push on its precision moulded power button. The TV hums into life, the briefest of pregnant pauses before the screen lights up, my pupils contracting at the brightness of its diodes. I would expertly navigate through the near-endless cascade of menus, selecting the most precise combination of options to give a picture quality of untold magnificence. The image displayed would seem dream-like, hyper-real, crisper than a winter morning, with the warmth and depth of a meadow in late-spring. Perfection achieved, I would turn off whatever blockbuster movie I had utilised to explore the boundaries of my new technological marvel, relax back into the cushions of the sofa, and, in my post-ecstatic glow, tune to the BBC for some more pedestrian programming.

This is the moment when I see that day's grisly compendium of footage of the latest atrocity to beset mankind, the shattered limbs and ruined lives wrought by the evil, corrupt organism that is homo sapiens.

Perspective is an elusive concept. By definition, it is ever-changing, always in motion, much like the lives we lead. Perspective is also how we define ourselves, how we differentiate ourselves from one another. Most often, intellectual criticism of human behaviour extends beyond the basic physical acts committed, regardless of whether one is discussing a cold-blooded murder or a spot of shoplifting. The overwhelming majority of people feel the penalty of guilt for their actions, however minor, and cannot fathom how someone could live with the thought of being responsible for a death of another person, or even for mildly insulting a friend's dress sense.

War criminals and purse-snatchers alike invariably try to justify their actions, as do bad parents and reluctant recyclers. We all constantly strive to get other people to see our point of view, to understand our perspective. This blog would appear part of this seemingly endless mechanism of persuasion.

What I seek to do is to investigate this cycle of mutual indoctrination, disassemble it and describe the component parts. I want to understand and illuminate the way we think and communicate, and how this affects the entire world around us.

It is possible for humankind to co-operate and live together harmoniously, to grow stronger through understanding what connects us together, without ignoring what makes individuality our defining characteristic as a species.