I have thought for a while about how to share these thoughts, but writers block isn’t writers block if you’re not bursting to write. I think, when I was 15 and 16, I was so eager to write because I felt it was how I could prove to someone, anyone, that I was growing in intelligence and maturity. Well I say anyone, but really I was trying to demonstrate my growth to you and my mum. Plaudits and criticism really only meant anything from you two. Nowadays, genuine introspective realisation of my growth as a person is all I need for contentment.

If someone were to look at where I am in my life, they could understandably infer some stress or worry on my part. The dream I thought I had been chasing my entire life has eluded me one day too many, I no longer place any significance upon the game of cricket. I am left with predicted grades that aren’t quite enough to get me into any Russel Group University. As a consequence, I have a gap year in which it is likely that I face my first real experience of hard graft job wise, and am faced with the prospect of not seeing some of my friends very frequently, as they are off gallivanting in other countries or on university campus’s over yonder.

But I am happier than ever. I am no longer feeling the hot whips of panic that life is known to conjure from within even the best of men. I think failing in achieving my dream of professional cricket has made me so much more secure than achieving it could have ever made me. I am a competent, and at the very least, a compatible and coherent human being, even when I am in life’s very own relegation zone. Going through the depths of the doldrums on my cricketing journey has given me experience that very few other young people around me have. This experience grants me the knowledge that I have, attached to me, enough of the substance that maketh good men, for me to live a comfortable and happy life.

Chasing a dream involves living day by day, being in a constant state of motion. Often it involves believing in the black, or the white. The tyger, or the lamb. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired”. To chase a dream, one must be a pursuer. And what of the tired? They weren’t born tired, they were the pursuers not long ago. In my experience of meeting people who have lived their dreams, or who have achieved them, it is clear that they have realized the distinction between achieving a dream and being happy. The luckiest amongst the dream chasers stumble upon happiness before they reach their destination. Meanwhile, the rest of those who have achieved their dreams look longingly into the past in attempt to rekindle the happiness they thought they would feel once standing at the great height of which they are currently.

It is true to say that the journey is often far greater than the destination. The destination just becomes the cherry on the top of a fucking fabulous cake. (a gluten free, vegan, anti war slogan cake obviously. Its 2018)

Just as a background for anyone who hasn’t sat through a slow hour of the show: Love Island is an ITV reality show in which contestants all stay in a tropical villa, aiming to “couple up” with each other and the last remaining couple get £50,000. It is essentially a cross breed of Big Brother and The Hunger Games. The classic model of fall outs, evictions, challenges and quintessentially trashy broadcasting has been reworked to monetise the most fundamental feature of human connection and enchantment; Love.

Contestants become less like humans and more like characters, both for the public and the shows’s producers. The show’s makers find any inch of human vulnerability from within the contestants and exploit it to garner the most feeling from the contestants and therefore the most entertainment for the episode. For instance, the producers bring back contestants ex’s into the villa, they grant the contestants phone calls with people at home, who rather predictably tell the contestants of all the rumors circulating about the show from home. The whole time the producers are using the contestants as pawns in their own chess game. All of this happens in the most synthetic of environments- forced dates, 24/7 contact, forced sleep arrangements.

1.6 Million people tune in on a daily basis to watch this dystopian pile of shit too. It is a fairly sinister number actually. It highlights that the less humane some humans are treated, the more the other humans want to watch. The show is elevated to a kind of post-reality reality show. This is because of the pure fact that if reality shows were the contestants actual non altered reality, there would be no public interest. Reality shows have to be synthetic enough to be more interesting than the viewers personal reality.

But all this producer intervention and interruption of the contestants reality is essentially a working metaphor model of fate. The producers have a desired outcome for every small situation they create. They therefore make sure that the contestants travel in the direction set out for them. The contestants lack of knowledge of a path and outcome already set for them means they believe they are still following their free will. They in actuality, are following their free will through the options set to them, but there are far more options they do not know about.

For a metaphorical example, contestants are given the choice to follow two roads to a promised destination. They pick with their free will one of the roads. What they don’t know is that there are 3 other roads that they could pick to reach the promised destination too.

Love Island is frighteningly like the films “The Truman Show”, “The Hunger Games” and many other fictional dystopia. I’m afraid that it won’t be too long until these fictional dystopia become part of mainstream entertainment.

The Fine Tuning argument is a type of teleological argument, most famously employed by Christian ‘thinker’ William Lane Craig. The argument draws attention to the astronomically delicate balance of initial conditions necessary for life in the Universe as we know it. The scientific study of astrophysics in the past 50 years or so has brought attention to examples of these fractional details of the Big Bang. For instance, the life permitting range of the relationship between the force of gravity and the weak force of an atom is so minute that the chance of it happening is 1/10 to the power of 10, to the power of 123. William Lane Craig says that this is evidence of the fine tuning of the Universe by a designer.

Among Atheists, this teleological style argument is well respected. Even the revered self proclaimed ‘anti-theist’ Christopher Hitchens admitted in a documentary he made with Bishop Douglas Wilson that it was the least trivial of all the theistic arguments. The Atheist response is usually one of three:

1. Pointing towards the cosmological anthropic principle. This states that the fact that we even exist shows that no matter how unlikely it is, it is the case that these numbers are in the fractional balance that they are.
2. The Multiverse theory. There are different versions of this theory, but they all point to a situation in which either                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  a) there have been a number of failed Universes and ours is simply the mathematical eventuality of this process                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    or                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            b) Universes can only be life permitting, so the multiverses are just different variants of the same formula for the possibility of life.
3. The acceptance of fine tuning but not the acceptance of the designer. This rebuttal is the most common among atheists. They highlight the missing link of logic between the realisation that the universe contains marginal balances, and the assertion that it was an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, personal God that designed the universe.

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My argument is one rarely pointed out in debate. I point out that we cannot say that the different laws of physics and values pertaining to necessary balancing forces are the same in every universe. The whole nuance of different Universes is that they don’t have to contain life “as we know it”. I think it to be a rather selfish view that Human life, or life of any sort, is the reason behind existence of anything at all. Even asserting the need for a reason requires the need for something driving the Universe to have intelligence.

The point of the Fine Tuning argument is to ridicule scientists early ideas that evolution of life or evolution of some kind would happen in every and any universe. In my opinion, the argument does not actually do that. It just establishes the fact that an exact same evolution chain as ours could not be repeated if the basis of what our universe is grounded were changed. When you put it this way, the Fine Tuning argument argument is actually making quite an obvious and logical statement.

Bishop and Philosopher George Berkeley introduced the idea of immaterialism to the western world. His writings suggest that the material objects by which we live are simply illusions delineated through the prism of the five senses, and do not exist. Thus, following through to conclusion, Berkeley argues that perception is all illusion. An illusion of what, is the question that remains.

Some believe that because of immaterialism theory, there can be no reality. Other Philosophers reach a different conclusion, believing that human perception is a distorted interpretation of a set reality. The empiricist can only strengthen these claims. Empiricism in practice tells us that our eyes can only see between infrared and ultraviolet light, yet our technology shows us that there is far more light bouncing about in our universe. It establishes that our eyes can hear only a minuscule decibel range, around 20-20,000 hz, but our technology receives the millions of other high and low pitched frequencies that we can’t.

Once the limits of the Human senses are highlighted, the likeliness of other vibrations, energies, frequencies, consciousnesses moving through the universe are revealed. The desire for material things feels redundant. Humans become aware of their impermanence and irrelevance, which let’s be honest, is a hard pill to swallow. If one lets it, everything can become quite dull and fruitless. For others however, the reason why it is a hard pill to swallow becomes apparent. It is because we Humans feel so connected to something. This search for what this connection is has been attempted and is still being attempted through many mediums, the more cerebral astrology and religion, and the more physical yoga and meditation. The aim of all these mediums is to be transcendental and to reveal higher dimensional/elemental truth. Ultimately they all lead one to the realisation of the importance of the same virtues. These virtues are the ones of unity, love, compassion, and a sense oneness among us all.

Now, I cannot expect everybody to want to pursue this spiritual higher dimension, and because of this, the enlightened need to place these virtues at the top of society and create structures that revolve around the promotion of these values. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Technology and Human progression has made it easier for people to be content with the material world, to leave us not yearning for more real connection. The current western societal structure is based around the masses reacting to the individualism of a propelled certain few. These certain few become puppets for a media rhetoric, a rhetoric that follows a plot line similar to that of the some of the most archetypal forms of Greek storytelling- heroes and villains, gods and beasts and so on. It seems the media are obsessed with the rise and fall of these puppets. The existence of the aforementioned virtues in such rhetoric is sparse and minimal.

The promotion of jovial synthesized things such as borders, money and power is however in abundance. And once you attach a virtue onto these terms, you realise that these objects are the physical representation of some negative human factors: Greed, selfishness, lustfulness, division, just to name a few. Personally, I would prefer a society that didn’t stimulate the most horrible aspects of human behavior.

This is why I find myself located firmly on the left side of the conventional political continuum. Ideologies that support the virtues I’ve mentioned, ideologies that force social change, Ideologies that support true unity never seem to emanate from anywhere else but the left. The right is about conservation of the current. I ask why would you want to conserve the ecological, economic and spiritual crisis we find ourselves in right now?

I am sick, as a young person, of adults patronisingly telling me that this desire for human compassion and unity is ‘cute’.  It isn’t too far fetched, but the longer the people in charge keep resisting change-revolution-progression then the more afraid I am of my future.

Just Imagine

It is futile and untrue to rise “above” emotions. Ignoring them is fruitless. I want to listen to my heart, not to my head. But my heart has been dormant for some time now. There is an occasional opening through the clouds that reside around it, sadly though, it is more often than not a lighting bolt piercing it’s way down rather than a ray of sunshine.

For most of what I am conscious of, my heart has become more of a receiver and a consumer instead of the radiant core that it used to be, and that I feel like it should be. I cant feel anything, but I can feel that.

However, silence is heavier than noise, and through tranquility and peace, I find myself in a state where it is easier to feel. A sense of connection? Soul? I am happier in a state like this. In fact I don’t feel happy when I’m not in this state. If whatever it is is wisdom, then wisdom is being wise to see how unwise I am.

Yes, I am scared of a time I may not be able to reach the state again. In fact, every time i leave this state I am scared I can never reach it again. The worry for consistency dominates my life. I feel it is not within my reach. Death is the least of my worries.

Sometimes I feel more connected to something that isn’t people. Is it a part of me? Am I really me? Or is the construct of what I think is me, and my full energy, force and matter two identities?

Perhaps I am most scared of not being me.

But then, the longing to mean as much to other people as I mean to me is still heavy. Maybe even more foolishly, the longing to mean more to other people than other people have meant to those other people is also a flame not dwindling.

some people feel the rain…others just get wet

-Bob Marley

Imagine all of your consciousness.

Imagine none of your consciousness.

Imagine something but nothing.

Imagine blank vibrant colours

Imagine a chilling eye.

Imagine a never ending end

Imagine a quiet rumbling

Imagine a bending light that screams

why can’t you be sure of what you imagine.

everything we imagine is filtered through a basic cycle of logic

a cycle that logic itself tells us is a good cycle to have

but this means we cannot be free 

the best concepts have come from disregard for logic

because logic is our idea now, a continuous pattern relying on the correctness of its last link to function

but when you challenge the link you get somewhere

that is, if scientific exploration is progression to you 

I don’t see why

because surely progression means going backwards now.

perhaps mimicking the universes and all matters cycle, constant growth and destruction

The title of this 5 minute youtube video is entitled

This is Proof That Christians Are Smarter then Atheists

I know the title is Ironic, but anyway…

Your argument revolves around three ideas;

1) You believe the majority is always right. You quoted that 83% of Americans are christian many times in your video (In regards to that statistic, the amount of genuine practicing Christians who pray every day and follow all aspects of religion in America is under 10% , 83% of Americans tick the christian box in a census.) May I remind you that America, less than 200 years ago, was about 95% christian, 95% of all Americans identified publicly as a christian. OK. May I remind you that for 245 years, (1619-1864) it was legal to own slaves in America. So for 245 years, the overwhelmingly christian country of The United Sates was completely morally accepting of slavery. Was slavery right in any way? No. Did the majority of christian America believe it was right? Yes. That completely demonstrates that the majority (in many cases the christian majority) is not always right and therefore cannot be used as valid argument for either the existence of god or why non religious people are not as smart as the religious.

2) You believe that religion precedes morality and intelligence. This is where your argument falls down entirely. You amalgamate capitalism and christianity. The existence of capitalism is not because of christianity. The ideology was created by christians because in the 1600’s it was unheard of to be an atheist as there was massive public stigma about it, an atheist would keep quiet because of the danger he or she would be in for stating the bleeding obvious. Capitalism was created by christians but not in the name of christianity. Slavery was created by christians, I know undoubtedly you would not say the two are in cohesion with each other, but this is the same with capitalism and christianity. You do not have to be intelligent or unintelligent to believe in any religion or lack thereof. You do not have to be morale to be religious or not religious. There are many examples of good religious people and bad religious people, and good atheists and bad atheists. This shows that morality and intelligence actually precede religion not that the other way around as you infer.

and finally

3) You believe that Communism is not religious. Communism and communist dictatorships are all about worship and have the same moral principles of religion. Look at North Korea, look at China, look at Stalin’s era of russia. They all revolve around citizens worshipping the leaders like they are gods. They all ban strange things and all have strange and unexplained rituals. There is irrational violence littered in all of them. They are all the literal metaphor of Hell on earth. This is what religion is like, but religion is in fact more ill founded because religious people worship something or someone that they have never seen before, that has never communicated with them, that they have no proof or evidence that exists. Your argument is ill founded and its whole premise is highly subjective and immeasurable. Define smarter? Is a man that has got an A* on every test he has ever done but cannot figure out how to solve and 30 piece puzzle “smarter” than a man who never did an exam in his life but did the 30 piece puzzle easy in no time? You can’t say, because being “smarter” is immeasurable. One thing is safe to say though, you should change your video description “This is something that you can’t deny” please. You have been embarrassed.