back to the garden

All I said about this was that I was taken by surprise with respect to new allegations, and though I managed to say what those allegations were, that is the digging up of the garden, I didn’t make anything of it. I should’ve dwelt on it as capturing very effectively all that was wrong with this co-op, where you don’t have to raise your voice or become abusive in order to shatter someone’s spirit. All you have to do is make quiet insinuations against a person’s integrity, on this issue and then again on that, piling unsubstantiated claim on top of unsubstantiated claim, so that the poor crushed ‘enemy of the co-op’ doesn’t know where to begin in terms of defending herself. I mean, the squadron leader had really done me a favour by showing just how casually destructive she could be, but I’d stuffed up the opportunity to take advantage of it. However, the trio who sat on the panel struck us all as being a very reasonable and cluey bunch, and I reckon they’ll have sorted much of that stuff out for themselves

So goodbye to all that. Now to return to something a bit more down to earth, like gardening. My lemon verbena’s doing particularly well as luck would have it, and I’ve been meaning to research the plant. It doesn’t like the cold weather, and there’s not been much of that lately, and it obviously likes my soil as well as weather conditions. Interestingly it likes plenty of water – I’m always feeling that I’m not watering enough, and plenty of my plants have died, but not I think due to the lack of water. My bay has died, one that I really wanted to survive, likely due to lack of shade. Ditto the gingko. Fruit trees are all doing well though, the two established ones bearing plenty of fruit, and the new ones, the lemon, the fig and the cumquat newly flourishing with the addition of mulch and osmocote.

Lemon verbena (Lippia citriodora) comes from South America and its leaves have a very pure and intense lemon scent. The plant is attractive and easy to grow, by my reckoning. It was once very popular in European gardens but has for reasons unknown fallen out of favour. It has never been a commonly used flavouring herb, but it can be used in soups and to flavour fish and poultry, but it’s more commonly and perhaps more effectively used in intensifying the flavour of desserts and drinks. So now I’m off to prepare some fruit for the custard (instant custard powder) that Mat’s making, and I’ll add a few verbena leaves (probably to Mat’s disgust).

Well, that was a waste of time. Mat has all the aesthetic sense of a Porsche and Nissan Skyline-obsessed sixteen-year-old, and simply tossed my decorative verbena leaf out. I tried to get him to partake of the delightful lemon aroma, which involved chasing him round the house. Anyway they’re not particularly edible I’ve since discovered, though they might be worth adding early and later removing, like bay.

facing the old guard

In conclusion, I feel that SACHA should be reminded of its duty to intervene in a situation such as this, where a co-operative has irretrievably broken down due to breaches of co-operative principles as expressed in the Housing Co-operatives Act 1991, the relative sections of which are outlined in the submission to the meeting of November 1 2004. Anna feels that her situation also reflects that of other members who are unable or unwilling to make a stand against a powerful and manipulative minority in the co-op. The co-op has written of its excellent financial state. As a person who has been treasurer of a co-op over a number of years I know that the financial state of a co-op can be and usually is the result of efforts by individual members and can be completely divorced from the state of health of the co-op itself, so I don’t see this as a valid argument for maintaining the status quo.

I would finally recommend to the appeals panel the letter of the co-op’s former Chair, Sheila Ward, dated 8/1/05, as an excellent summary of Anna’s particular difficulties with the co-op.

That appeal submission has finally been delivered, and it’s in the hands of the appeals committee, which will present its findings to the SACHA board at the end of February. we spent a gruelling day at SACHA, Sarah and I, with our ‘clients’ – Sarah represented one appellant in the afternoon, I represented the other in the morning. We faced three old guard co-op members, described by Sarah as the squadron leader, the faithful lieutenant and the dumb corporal. The squadron leader of course did most of the talking, and the term trepverter comes to me again. I’m never able to come out with the right rejoinder at the right time. I was asked to summarise at the end, and not being familiar with the process, I was unprepared - my initial submission had been written. I did respond to the remarks from the other side about Anna’s moving day. The squadron leader actually said to the panel that Anna shouldn’t have been given her keys on that day, backing up the neighbour’s claim that she should have been sent home with all her goods and chattels on a hot day in late January, only to return the next day when she had her pay slip. In criticising this, (I said it was ridiculous) I unfortunately failed to target the squadron leader, and the fact that she still insisted, after knowing about Anna’s legitimate explanations, that the letter of the law should come before trust. I spoke only of the general behaviour towards Anna on that day, and I’m sure the panel accepted my point.

The other point I missed was more serious. During discussions about the maintenance committee’s responses to Anna’s maintenance issue, the stormwater drain and the flooding of Anna’s small garden was brought up. The squadron leader said, almost in an aside, that of course Anna had dug the garden up to make the flooding look worse than it was (presumably before photographing it – she brought much photographic evidence to the appeal). This jaw-dropping claim was totally unsubstantiated.

a terrible state

The maintenance committee has since told Anna that only emergency maintenance will be dealt with by the committee while the property is under appeal. This decision was not taken to the general meeting, and seems to be an example of discrimination against Anna (and other appellants). It should be noted that any property handed over to another co-op or association will need to be handed over in a proper state of maintenance, and if they are not handed over then maintenance will need to be done as usual, so there is no rationale for this decision.

As she has felt intimidated by the presence of maintenance committee members in her house, when they have raised issues irrelevant to the matter at hand – including discussion of Anna’s membership – Anna has been reluctant to deal with the maintenance committee directly, though she has always communicated any requests and concerns in writing. Many of the committee’s written responses have been dismissive and factually inaccurate. Responses are often back-dated, to cover up for the inertia of the committee.

It should be noted that Anna is well aware that the maintenance committee cannot all be expert in maintenance matters, nor is it to be expected that all maintenance matters will be dealt with as promptly as tenants may hope for, but the lack of respect for Anna shown by maintenance committee members, the constant distortions of her requests, and the systematic abuse with which she has been treated have made her position in the co-op untenable. Since she has done nothing wrong herself, she feels strongly that she shouldn’t be penalised by losing her house, which would indeed leave the maintenance committee with a sense that this is ultimately a ‘victory’ for them.

Apart from her difficulties with her neighbour and with the maintenance committee, Anna has had to contend with the behaviour of members at general meetings. As someone for whom English is not her first language, she has found it difficult having to compete with other members to have her views heard. This is of course not how co-operative meetings should be conducted. In the document defending the decision not to agree to transfer properties, the co-op states that ‘unfortunately there will at times be unavoidable conflict’ at meetings. While nobody wishes to deny this, the document makes no admission whatsoever about the enormous degree of conflict that has existed in this particular co-op for a number of years, resulting in largely futile attempts to mediate or resolve the situation by SACHA and CHC. A great number of women have left the co-op due to stress or dissatisfaction with co-op members’ behaviour, and it is very clear from the omissions and distortions in the co-op’s submission to this appeal that the co-op, or those entrenched members responsible for the terrible state the co-op is in (and they would no doubt have been responsible for preparing this submission) have no intention of changing their practices or acknowledging the damage they have done and the suffering they have caused. To illustrate this point, an attempt was made to organise training and conflict resolution sessions with Karen Burns to get the co-op back on track. Anna attended the first session but it was poorly attended by other members and the sessions had to be abandoned.

the maintenance mêlée

Another issue which needs to be addressed here is maintenance and the behaviour of the maintenance committee. The co-op has asserted that the property is in excellent condition, being only twelve years old. This is generally true, though it fails to take account of the effort and expense to Anna of maintaining and enhancing the property. She has spent some $6000 in the past twelve months on improvements to her property, with a view to long-term tenancy. It should be noted that neither she nor other CHOW members are ever thanked for making these improvements, and this is another cause for resentment.

Before Anna moved into the property she insisted, encouraged by the outgoing tenant, that the house be painted internally and externally, as no painting had been done in over ten years. She was told that ‘unless you insist, the co-op won’t do it’. She also insisted that as the incoming tenant she should have some say, in consultation with the co-op, as to the colour and type of paint. This would seem to be eminently reasonable and is standard practice in most co-ops. However, these demands met with much resistance, and when a general meeting reversed the maintenance committee’s decision to paint the exterior windows against the wishes of the tenant, who wanted them to be revarnished, one of the Maintenance Committee members said to Ella, ‘don’t think that this is your victory.’

This is just one example of the petty-minded and aggressive behaviours directed towards Anna by the maintenance committee in the course of her tenancy. The list is exhausting, but a couple of examples should be noted.

On the day that she was to move into the property Anna was prevented from entering by her neighbour and fellow CHOW member Alison because she hadn’t yet obtained a second payslip from her work, required to calculate her rent. Anna explained that she would get the pay-slip the next day, but Alison was adamant, and argued very loudly with Anna outside of the premises. Anna was only able to move in after Alison rang the finance officer for advice. The delay and stress caused by this incident resulted in the opening inspection, which took place on that day, being curtailed. Anna said she’d have a closer look at the rooms and report any further maintenance problems within the next couple of days, and this was agreed to by the Tenancy Officer. This was duly done.

A month a and a half later the maintenance committee made a lengthy complaint about Anna in its report to the March general meeting. It contained a number of distortions, and omitted to mention their intimidation of Anna at a recent maintenance inspection, which caused her to have to take time off work. It implied that the additions made to the original opening inspection report were somehow ‘sneaked in’. The report suggested that Anna’s maintenance concerns (letter of Feb 17 2004) were mostly trivial, though at least one, the stormwater drain, turned out to be very serious, requiring outside intervention before anything was done about it. Another, the garden gate, still hasn’t been fixed though it has since deteriorated considerably.

the neighbour

But I haven’t time to turn the case into a dubious narrative, I must professionally appeal against the decision of this co-op not to release Anna’s property. The decision was unjust and unreasonable, even oppressive, because it failed to take into account or to acknowledge the dysfunctionality and extreme inflexibility of the co-op, and the stress that this has caused to Anna, and indeed to other Members who are prepared to question co-op processes and decisions.

Anna and other appellants were initially given no reason for the decision of the co-op not to agree to the transfer of property, and were only given reasons just over a week ago, upon the request of one appellant. The document providing the reasons is unsigned, undated, and we have no idea who wrote it or whether it reflects the views of the whole of the co-op or one or two members.

While it is accepted that the property is a good one in terms of location and overall quality, the implied argument in the document, that the property would not be easily transferable due to the shared water meter and shared driveway, doesn’t stand up. Separate meters can be provided for properties, and the driveway is also shared by an adjacent two-story property, which isn’t a co-op property.

However, there is another problem with this property, not mentioned in the document, a problem which could well be alleviated by splitting the property off from the co-op. Anna’s next door neighbour, Alison Campbell, is also a co-op member, and Anna has experienced serious problems with this neighbour from the day she moved in, culminating in an alleged assault on December 9 2004, which has been referred to the police. Previous tenants have also had difficulty with this tenant over numbers of years, and there is a supporting letter from the immediately previous tenant to this effect. The neighbour has interfered with and questioned tradespeople visiting the property and even takes photos of visitors. At a mediation session, the neighbour was told that this behaviour, which has been going on since at least 2001 (see letter from Pam Papadelos, 8/8/01) was wrong. However, she continues to photograph people who visit Anna, including myself only a couple of weeks ago.

No information was provided to Anna about the neighbour problem before she accepted the property. Since disputes have arisen, no sympathy has been shown to Anna in her difficulty by any co-op member (apart from another appellant) even after the incident which led to the police being contacted. Moreover, the neighbour, as a long-standing member of the co-op, has enjoyed the protection and support of other long-standing members, who appear to be in complete denial about this difficult and extremely stressful situation. It’s noteworthy and I think extraordinary that no documents or correspondence pertaining to this issue have been presented by the co-op.

The stress for Anna in having to front up to meetings at which this neighbour is present and enjoying the support of other powerful co-op members cannot be underestimated. Anna believes, I think with good reason, that if her house was transferred to another co-op or association, the stress for her would be greatly reduced as any dispute could be dealt with under the RTA, and she believes that the neighbour would ‘lose interest’ if they ceased to be associated under one co-op. Moreover, due to the co-op’s complete denial of this problem, it’s inevitable that, if Anna left the property, the next tenant would experience similar harassment. This raises the question of whether the co-op, considering its unco-operativeness and extreme insensitivity in this matter over many years, deserves to retain this property.

an appeal against unreasonable treatment

Anna’s been in her current home for a year, from late January 2004, having joined her co-op only a month before. As it turned out, the co-op had been experiencing conflict for years before Anna’s advent, with much mediation and intervention being necessary, and many women leaving due to the stress of the meetings and the high-handed behaviour of a handful of well-entrenched members.

Anna’s first experience of difficulties with the co-op was a doozy, and it’s largely been downhill since then. On the day that she was to move in, a hot January day, with her car packed to the gunwales, she was prevented from entering by her neighbour and fellow co-op member Alison, of whom we’ll hear much more, because she hadn’t yet obtained a second payslip from her work, required to calculate her rent. Anna explained that she would get the pay-slip the next day, but Alison was adamant. Extremely stressed at this, Anna rang around the co-op for help, and was eventually able to move into the premises. The delay and stress caused by this incident resulted in the opening inspection, which took place on that day, being curtailed. Anna said she’d have a closer look at the rooms and report any further maintenance problems within the next couple of days, and this was agreed to by the Tenancy or Maintenance Officer (in fact it may be that this suggestion was made by the Officer herself). This was duly done.

But I need to go back further, to really explain why Anna and the co-op’s maintenance committee reached hostilities so quickly. Before Anna moved in she was advised by the outgoing tenant, also a co-op member, to insist that the house be painted, inside and out, as this hadn’t been done in over ten years. The parting advice was ‘if you don’t insist, they won’t do it’. So Anna did insist, and even had the temerity to suggest that she, as the incoming tenant, should have some say as to the colour of paint and so on. Now, such an attitude would seem to be eminently reasonable, and would be encouraged in my co-op, but this co-op’s maintenance committee immediately saw Anna’s attitude as a threat. They tried to argue that the paint had already been bought, the colours chosen. Whether or not this was true, the fact that they hadn’t even considered that the incoming tenant might wish to have a say about the paint colours in her own home is quite extraordinary, and speaks to the culture of a co-op in which consultation is far from being the norm. It’s a co-op which might well suit women who don’t want their own say, who don’t want to make waves, who want all decisions made for them and so on, but few women fit that description.

So these early maintenance requests, with regard to the painting of the house and certain other items such as the guttering, the gate and so forth, none of which were remotely unreasonable, quickly saw Anna branded by the Maintenance Committee as a ‘troublemaker’, and a complaining letter was tabled at a meeting in March, only two months after the tenant had moved in. It contained many inaccuracies and, basically, Anna was amazed by it.

finishing with Muggeridge

One of your arguments – or not really an argument since you don’t argue, but rather a theme in your writing – is that ego is a dirty word. Buddhism, if you were born into a different culture, might’ve appealed to you, except that you’re far too egotistical to be able to get over making high-handed pronouncements on the behaviour of others, which makes you, I suppose, an interesting mixture of interfering busybody and unworldly mystic. Neither side much appeals to me, because I consider myself a realist first and foremost, prepared to take the actual measure of my ego and that of others, to realise both its value and its problematical nature, and to try to steer an Aristotelian mean course between rejection and celebration.

Your own unremittingly negative remarks about the ego are a product of your idealistic absolutism. Clearly for you the ego is the problem, one that you tend to exaggerate in order to promote the solution to it (giving the self up to god), just as you tend to exaggerate sensual urges in order to promote the virtue of restraint. Again, this ideal of ego-denial is one of the few themes in your writing which might have a modern appeal, as it resembles much so-called Eastern mysticism, yet it seems that for all your fulminations against the ego and the worldliness of religious leaders, you’re very much engaged, if not in contemporary politics, at least in opinion-making about and scrutinising of your peers and of contemporary events and trends. This inability to keep from sticking your oar in is what you refer to as your restlessness, and no doubt it derives from your strong bond with your father the socialist preacher. All of this is mildly interesting from a psychological perspective, but though it helps me to understand where you’re coming from, it doesn’t make your attitudes any more palatable to me. I tend to steer clear of idealists.

A had intended to do a closer reading of your essays, but on second thoughts I don’t think it would be worth the energy. I feel sufficiently satisfied that your arguments, such as they are, don’t hold up to much scrutiny. I don’t even find these essays adequate as a profession of faith, they’re too lacking in real self-awareness, it seems to me.

Now to take a break from the religious stuff. There’s drama all around me, from Fiona temporarily stealing my car to the importunings of two older women seeking my help in their conflict with their housing co-op, which is specifically for older women. With Fiona, of course it’s drug-related, and I’m trying to arrange a sit-down session with her, but I suspect she’ll find it too threatening. For now I want to focus on the co-op conflict, as I’ve agreed to act as advocate for Anna (not her real name - she’s Polish, and not confident in her English, quite apart from being stressed to the max), in her appeal before the SACHA appeals panel later this month. It’s pretty well a legal role I have to take on, so to clarify it in my own head I’ll present at least some of the case here.

oh mal 2

Now, a corollary of your obsession with the ideal is an indifference to and a devaluing of the real. One of your great heroes, it seems, is Pascal, whom you value not for his human achievements, which mean nothing to you (indeed you’re way too idealism-obsessed to be equipped to evaluate the real achievements – scientific, political, philosophical or humanitarian – of any of your earth-bound contemporaries or predecessors, which is why it’s so easy for you to sneer at and belittle those achievements), but for his apparent rejection of his own earthly activities for the sake of the next world.

In answer to the question ‘Is there a God’, you say that God simply is the oneness of the universe, which ‘indubitably exists’ and which ‘cannot die’. You then speak of the reverence that is thus owed to every particle of the universe. It’s a view of god that seems on the surface of it, unobjectionable, though of course there’s no reason to revere this immanent god, or to put it another way, since your god just is the oneness of the universe, there’s no need to call it God – you could just as well call it ‘the oneness of the universe’ or ‘the interconnectedness of all things’, and reverencing every interconnected part would be rather time-consuming, and even counter-productive – for to revere everything might just be to revere nothing. You use this argument, it seems, to denounce abortion, and yet you seem to have no trouble dismissing homosexuality as a perversion. Not a very reverential attitude. Your reverence for everything seems to call for abstinence, and it seems to me that you vaguely associate homosexuality with a lack of abstinence, even with some kind of terrible indulgence, making it therefore evil. Do you also argue that we should revere all living things as coming from God, and advocate vegetarianism, or better still abstinence from all forms of eating as destructive of that which was created by god? Oh but now I’m assuming a transcendent god, whereas your conception is of an immanent one. Tricky stuff, trying to make sense of all this, much easier to admit it’s all guff, in spite of the radiance you write of. Funny you don’t mention the infinite varieties of shit that also come from god or in fact are god, but they can’t be so easily incorporated into poetic yearnings I suppose.

I think there’s an obvious confusion in your head between an immanent god, which just is and has no power, and an overarching transcendent one who punishes the indulgent and the insufficiently reverent (both gods are of course products of your imagination, but the transcendent one, yourself writ large, is surely your fave, as it is everyone’s, for a god without overarching power just isn’t any fun). After all you ‘converted’ to the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, as power-obsessed and hierarchical an organisation as has ever existed in western civilisation, an organisation wholly committed to a power-wielding transcendent god, so there’s surely something suss about your gentle pantheistic claims.

oh mal

To return to the terrible tragedy. These events are always testing times for the religious. Some have their faith broken, some have it reaffirmed. It's my view that humans invent religions and gods largely through fear of or dissatisfaction with their own mortality. They invent gods who in turn reinvent humans as demi-gods, created in God's image, capable of attaining immortality through salvation or good works or whatever. Events like this, with its horrendous toll, with the seeming arbitrariness of its destruction, have the effect of blasting away such cosy religious notions, but not for long, the human spirit is ingenious, its ability to rationalise virtually infinite. Don't worry, Christianity isn't remotely threatened by events such as this, and nor is any other religion.

Our only response a groaning that is like prayer? Poetic perhaps, but there are many practical things that can be done for the bereaved, and to prevent such tragedies from recurring, and already much good work is under way. This may sound glib to those who hear behind this tragedy the sound of God stirring, but I can't help sounding glib to a believer - I'm an atheist after all, it's an occupational hazard.

My weight is 77 kilos according to my unreliable scales. Too embarrassed to mention all my eating, not good.

Reading: more Shane Maloney, The Big Ask; some pages of Adelaide Review; a few pages of Life, a user’s manual by Georges Perec; a few pages of The Bloomsbury book of the mind; essays by Malcolm Muggeridge; essay ‘Earthquakes and the objectivity of the world’ by Peter Sellick.

Back now to Muggeridge.
So dear Malcolm, it seems that your belief is a matter of faith and obviousness, something not worth arguing for, as that would only cheapen it, but it seems to me that your belief is all about the idealism that has obsessed you since childhood. Your god is an absolute, and his ideal nature is captured in your remarks about ‘confronting’ this god. ‘What can be said with certainty is that, once the confrontation has been experienced – the rocky summit climbed, the interminable desert crossed – an unimaginably delectable vista presents itself, so vast, so luminous, so enchanting, that the small ecstasies of human love, and the small satisfactions of human achievement, by comparison pale into insignificance.’ I believe this is something of a gloss on Bunyan, but I don’t believe in your certainty – non-believers are all convinced that believers are bullshitting themselves. Anyway what is this but an ideal to beat all the broken ideals you’ve kicked at throughout your life? Your final attempt to evade the quotidian horrors of reality you so fear and so exaggerate, a reality you’ve never been able to fully face or to suffer in terms of hard work for little gain? Basically you wanted everything to be effortlessly larger than life, so the natural conclusion would be to embrace a ‘faith’ and a ‘God’ who‘ll guarantee this effortless space beyond the wincing failures and tweaking hungers of actual red-in-tooth-and-claw existence on this planet.

something more current

However, before going on with Muggeridge, I’ve tackled something much more contemporary. Here are my comments on an article by Peter Sellick in the most recent Online Opinion.

I appreciate that this article was written in the wake of a terrible human tragedy and I'm reluctant to use the occasion to score points or to split hairs, but since you have sought to categorise atheists in a certain way, a proselytising atheist such as myself feels duty-bound to respond.

You mention 'self-proclaimed atheists', but I don't know why. Atheists are atheists, and many have arrived at this position after a great deal of thought. Presumably people with a theistic or any other position are also 'self-proclaimed', so the term just becomes meaningless. For this reason I believe you've employed it for psychological reasons, to emphasise 'self' as in selfishness. This seems borne out by your characterisation of atheism further on in the same paragraph in terms of an 'absence of a critique of the self' which produces the 'narcissism' of the 'modern individual'. You then characterise the 'classical atheist', whatever that is, as an 'isolated self who is incapable of seeing the other'.

Boy, you must really feel threatened, mate. These are extraordinary claims to make, and they seem to be no more than mere opinion, since there's no argument or evidence to back them up. I don't think they're worth making sense of, since they’re only attempts to denigrate. There's no effort to understand or truly see things from an atheistic perspective, there's only the vague and unfortunately rather smug sense that atheists must be morally shallow, even though they are (almost inexplicably) 'capable of living admirable lives and of participation in society'.

I'm sorry to have to say it, but this is truly fatuous stuff, but of course it's the sort of stuff we atheists have served up to us constantly by believers. You describe God as 'in eclipse'. Surely you must be joking? As a crusading atheist, I have often seen myself as a Don Quixote figure, battling against an ever-increasing tide of believers, girded by the rightness of my cause, but full of the wry knowledge that I must lose, because the human ego, which is at the heart of religious belief, will always win out against truth and the rules of evidence.

If I may stick with the same para I've been concentrating on (I must limit myself - there's so much I could critique), you come out with this claim - unfortunately rather badly-worded but I think I get the drift - about 'practical atheists': 'If they lack anything it is the critique of common sense and social mores that come with the gospel and hence a vulnerability to intellectual fashion and the idols of the age.' Again, this is a critique which would only satisfy a believer. The gospels are remarkable documents, no doubt, and full of thought-provoking passages, though I must say I find the dialogues of Plato even more remarkable and thought-provoking, and nothing if not critical of common sense and social mores. Of course, if you happen to believe that the gospels were written by a divinity, then the critiques of Plato will pale into insignificance. But if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

raising the standard

Suppose it’s a bit strange that I should be taking aim at such an easy target as the presumably long-dead Muggeridge (well, in fact he droned on until 1990), but since he’s written so much and so publicly about Christianity and the haplessness of a world without it, being obviously keen to share with others his deep convictions and to persuade others of their truth, and since he’s I think representative of a set of attitudes which still prevails in some circles (most notably in the hierarchy of the Church), I think he might be worth dwelling on, but I should pause here for a while and tell folks of my decision to devote this blog largely to the questioning of religious and spiritual belief systems, looking at their underpinnings, at people’s reasons for belief, cultural or individual, rational or irrational, sublime or silly. I want to range from the tensions between science and religion to the psychological needs that may underlie conversion to a religious faith. So I’ll be at times philosophical, at times psychological, and I’ll do my best to be fair to my opponents, but I’m sure I won’t always succeed.

People are wondering why I should bother. Maybe it’s just something to do. Maybe I’ll get over it. Maybe it would be better to focus on the things of this world, the big ethical issues, without worrying about religion, treating it as irrelevant, à la Peter Singer? Tackling religious belief head on is a sure loser, n’est-ce pas? It’s just that it’s the one issue I keep coming back to, that keeps on firing me up, and I think I like having a hopeless ambition, I like fighting for a cause that I know to be right, perhaps even more so when I know it has no chance of winning against the ever-increasing tide of believers out there. This is my crusade, and I see myself as a Don Quixote of a Luigi Funesti-Sordido, setting out to vanquish blind faith without even a companion by my side, throwing myself into the fray, spurning the scorn of the smugly convinced, raising proudly on high the urbane colours of the society for sceptical romantics, hoping they’ll catch the light for a moment and sparkle in someone else’s eye before being ripped down and shredded by the outraged or uproariously indifferent multitude.

It’s probably just all sublimation anyway.

Returning to Muggeridge, since he’s not making any attempt, it seems, in this set of essays, to give a cogent defence of or justification for a set of beliefs which I consider bizarre in the extreme and sorely in need of justification, I’m left with no alternative but to examine the psychology behind his beliefs. It’ll be a partial examination, as I’m not sufficiently interested in, or perhaps too frustrated by and contemptuous of Muggeridge’s worldview to read all the essays in this collection. I’ll try to glean as much as I can from thee first three essays, ‘Jesus rediscovered’, ‘Am I a Christian?’, and ‘Is there a God?’.

responding to Muggeridge

From here on in I’ll respond to Muggeridge more directly.

It seems to me, mate, that you don’t know your temperament too well at all. Like Lear, you’ve ever but little known yourself. Nowhere do you state your set against what this world offers more clearly than in the title essay, ‘Jesus rediscovered’, when you write: ‘The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realise, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth. As long as we are aliens we cannot forget our true homeland, which is that other kingdom You proclaimed.’ Now, if I were myself a more sympathetic, less hard-hearted person, I might feel a certain pity and sadness for someone who thinks this way, but I’m not and I don’t. Basically, I see this as a frightening and horrific piece of rhetoric, reflecting a very insular attitude (it shows up how Judao-Christianity is a regional religion - like all religions - that has become too big for its boots), which is as potentially damaging to the future of life on this planet, our only home, which we share with every other species, as even the most crassly short-term exploitative attitude. No wonder so many environmentalists have blamed Christianity and some of its teaching for our abuse of the earth.

Such claims need also to be looked at from the perspective of coherence. You’re saying that we shouldn’t get too comfy-cosy here because God wants us to focus on another world (clearly not one with any material existence) which he has set up for us after we die. Presumably you’re suggesting that this earth is merely a proving-ground for life in this other extra-material world. This raises the question of how we can prove ourselves here for a world that’s so different from this as not even to have material existence? It also raises the question of how we can prove ourselves here when we’re asked (by you, though perhaps not by a god) not to feel at home, in fact to consider ourselves as aliens? And if this isn’t our home, whose is it? Should we consider ourselves as honoured guests or unwanted intruders? Finally, what sort of god is it who creates a universe as infinitely complex as this, with dynamics and dimensions we’ve really only just begun to tap into, and who provides us with the awesome gift of life and consciousness in order to inform us (presumably through you, Malcolm Muggeridge) that this life and world ain’t worth shit compared to the next one, where the real action is? There’s no coherence to this at all.

Eaten: four small pancakes for breakfast, with honey. Can’t remember if I had muesli. Lunch, ham and cheese and lots of it on delicious sunflower seed bread. Dinner at John and Debra’s (auction held for tsunami victims), a spoonful of mango salad, two sausages, more salad and a delicious slice of aubergine bake.

Reading: only found time to read a few more pages of Muggeridge, the foreword and some pages of ‘Jesus rediscovered’.

an old fart rediscovered

I’m old enough to just remember Malcolm Muggeridge on telly, interviewing and being interviewed, a gloomy-looking irascible intellectual elder, someone who’d definitely lost the way to Fun City. I hope these old impressions don’t hopelessly prejudice me against the old fart, because I really would like to try to get into the state of mind of a religious believer, to tap into the emotional connection between believers and their deities (not that I’ll be looking much at the emotional or spiritual requirement of the deities themselves, I think it’s probably safer at this stage to concentrate on their worshippers).

I believe it was the poet Paul Valèry who wrote that believers always feel that non-believers are being insincere, and vice versa, and I have to guard against too much scepticism when dealing with what are clearly intended to be sincere professions of faith. However, with Muggeridge, in the few pages I’ve read so far (and I must admit to not being too keen to read the whole 200 pages of these essays collected under the title Jesus rediscovered – I just want to read enough to get the general gist of his position), there seems to be an attitude that comes close to disingenuousness.

In his foreword to these essays, published, and presumably written, in the sixties, Muggeridge claims to be a theological ignoramus, someone who has, moreover, never had the slightest interest in theology. Perhaps if I’d read this before I read his four-page essay, ‘Is there a God?’ I’d have been better armed against disappointment, for the essay doesn’t attempt to answer the question in any rational sense. Muggeridge is no abstract reflector, he’s more the rhetorical type, and his pages abound in topical references, to such knowns and unknowns as Ted Willis, Harold Wilson, Ulbricht, the Maginot Line, Rachmanism and Thomas Cook, and curmudgeonly throwaway lines such as ‘all I can find to say for the Genesis version is that it strikes me as more plausible than Professor Hoyle’s, and I certainly find the notion of the Virgin Birth as a notion more sympathetic than, say, family planning’. Someone of philosophical spirit could easily make short work of such remarks, but clearly we’re dealing with one of those people who will decide to be indifferent to all philosophical arguments when it suits him.

Disingenuousness or self-delusion? It seems to me that Muggeridge’s opening salvo in ‘Is there a God?’ brings about his immediate defeat. ‘I myself should be very happy to answer with an emphatic negative. Temperamentally, it would suit me well enough to settle for what this world offers, and to write off as wishful thinking, or just the self-importance of the human species, any notion of a divine purpose and a divinity to entertain and execute it.’ A glance through these pages though, convinces me of the exact opposite, that Muggeridge has the classic temperament of the frustrated idealist, full of irritation and even contempt for the things of this world, as ripe as anyone could be for the consolations of Christian eschatology.

touching on health and faith

The new year begins with health issues. My weight’s up, but I don’t know what it is precisely. It’ll have to be graphed. My walking’s good but insufficient to bring weight down. Butter of all kinds is banned, and gym and WEA classes need to be looked into. I’ve been told recently by a friend that I’ve never looked so fat and ain’t that what friends are for.

So this morning, 100 steps on the BWM (the Big Wanker Machine), and should try to do, say, 500 a day on there, but it’ll be impossible today to do anything much because I’ve been called into boring work, five hours sitting blearily at a counter, minding the store, for a miniscule pay that I don’t strictly need. I suppose it gets me out of the house but I’m screaming with frustration, this looked like a good day for starting to get stuck into that weird idea known as the ontological argument, along with doing some of my own and Sarah’s garden, getting sorely neglected, the weather’s great for it and Mat’s off visiting a friend all day. Space too to plan the future, my year, the gym and so forth.

Been a frustrating day, but some progress made. I’ve now got broadband, which will eventually make my life easier, but it’s been something of a hassle setting it up, and it has knocked me off journal-writing for yet another day, basically I’m now a week or more behind with my 500 words a day effort, and talking about measuring, I only managed about 125 steps on the BWM yesterday, though I did quite a bit of walking to keep the pedo levels up (caught the train into town and work, walked through the mall, kept active in the shop).

Before reflecting upon the ontological argument for the existence of god, I’ll look at what Malcolm Muggeridge says on God and religion in his collection of essays under the title Jesus Rediscovered. You might say it’s not like me to be stimulated by the explorations of faith of the religious, but stimulated isn’t the word, I’m perplexed and occasionally fascinated, and maybe even sometimes jealous of those of easy (or difficult) religious faith. I want to devote much of my blog to considering all the reasons for belief, not just the intellectual.

Need to measure or at least monitor another thing, daily food intake. Yesterday it was late breakfast, muesli with a good cupful of low-fat high calcium milk, and a generous scoop of fruit salad yoghurt. Lunch was a single sandwich, wholemeal, with nothing but maasdaam cheese and ‘lite’ butter (oops), and when I reached town, a big biscuit with my Hudson’s coffee. Dinner was a foccacia after work, with chicken, mayo, swiss cheese and greens. And no grazing between meals as far as I can recall. Regular intake of coffee and little white minty pills.

Reading yesterday: Paul Johnson’s short history of the Renaissance, The Big Ask by Shane Maloney, ‘Is There a God?’ by Malcolm Muggeridge, New Scientist, Dec 25 issue, and a page or two of the Adelaide Review (late Dec issue).

it takes two to tango

A night out at the Royal Oak, birthday dinner with a friend and his friends, a delicious ocean trout steak, medium rare, but with crispy skin, on a bed of honey glazed stone fruit, and a pineapple chutney and baby or at least quite youthful rocket leaves. I knew few of the people at table but they were very approachable and I conversed readily, a relief after a number of dud evenings of late, in which I just couldn’t get myself into gear socially, especially the new year thing at Catherine’s, but then I’ve become very wary of her friends.

Highlight of the evening came upon leaving the Oak, packed with persons mainly of my generation, dancing merrily and mouthing along to the words of Lucifer’s Lounge schmaltz covers, Do you know the way to San Jose, Perhaps perhaps perhaps, Delilah and such. A bit too smiley for me perhaps perhaps perhaps. Visited the Banque and it happened to be tango night. About half a dozen couples, all ages but mostly forty plus, had commandeered the front section of the bar to strut their stuff. Playing fuzzily on the back wall was a French tango flick, the tangoistes all with glossy dark hair drawn taut to the nape, their stick-pins stumping with swift precision forwards and backwards and sideways, their upper torsos stiff and stately as carriages, swinging from side to side in perfect unison, and from time to time, the pins halted, the male would bend back the female and loom over her. These formal dances are a self-disciplined form of sex, surely a formalisation of the stalking and courting rituals of certain mammals and birds, with predator-prey undercurrents, an extension and teasing out of ecstatic foreplay, and played down at times even to the near-opposite pole of applied mathematics, yet ever-present is the beauty of human grace. Watching all this – and the half-dozen partner-exchanging couples in the room were almost on a par with the pros on the screen – gave me a surge of pride and delight in being human, in our endless ways of transforming the primitively urgent into something delicate and artful, and somehow profoundly respectful, a recognition of how seriously important it is not to tread on each others’ toes.

miscellaneous reflects

Time to return to philosophy. Something fairly exciting’s happened, I’ve received some eight emails in the new year, I’m way behind again, from interested parties. Two interested parties, and they seem to be communicating and arguing with each other, through my blog. Just what I’ve been hoping for. About evolution and religion, and referring to other sites and such.

I’m not responding quickly enough, keeping the interest bubbling, so many distractions, including reading, birthday dinners, co-op tenancy and other responsibilities, foster-caring responsibilities, ongoing family dramas, libidinous itches, gardening maintenance, fitness struggles and the like, but now that I have a couple of readers I should make an extra effort in the desired direction.

Had a sort of fit and suffered from a surfeit of Pringles, for which I would like to blame Mat.

The eight emails were in fact in the form of comments on earlier blogs, on the cosmological argument but it was the issue of evolution that got people going. Will respond in the appropriate place, but I just wish I could make links with ease.