The Blindfold Dowsers of Alabama

I have listened to the new Kraftwerk album over and over again. Forget Techno. They are just as good as they ever were. Well maybe it is not quite a new album but it sounds pretty much like it. The problem - how to make yourselves sound like you always have and at the same time sound totally new. Brilliant! And while we are about it forget all those new polyphonic ring tones. I thought they might add something to the naff beeps that we have had up to now but they are naffer. Most phone conversations are pathetically unnecessary anyway so why inflict further misery by playing terrible versions of terrible songs? How many of you have set Kraftwerk as your ring tone? Sorry! I don't care.

I think reading some of the other blogs has made me change my style slightly. Am I angrier than I used to be? It does seem that I write short entries with little substance rather than long reflective ones. Today will be different I hope.

My daughter has just found a pink star on the ground at the park. I told her it must be one of the Perseid meteors which were visible last night. I went out at about 11 and saw one or two streaks though it was not very impressive. I did see one satellite go over though. Years ago that would have been very exciting but now it is just another light in the sky. Now is that because I have generally got more cynical or because there are so many, more exciting things to see? Just writing about this has depressed me somewhat. Maybe I should find something else to write about.

This is not a rebel Blog.

We all want a quiet life - apart from those who want to go jet-skiing or bungee jumping or car-bombing or making religious points. What is the difference between racism and evangelism. If you accept the fact that not everyone can be correct in their assumptions regarding religion, then it is only a short step to regarding that all religions are either completely wrong or are windows on the same spiritual reality. It is a form of racism to suggest that one religion is right and all others are not. I regularly argue that we would be better off without religion and of course, our secular society is doing its best to supplant any spiritual belief. However, there has been no thought as to what would replace it as the guardian of morals (not that all religious practitioners seem to hold with any morals either those of their own religion or anyone else’s). I like to think of myself as quite moral but then again my definition of morality is far removed from a lot of other people's. Blowing up a building can be considered well within the bounds of morality as defined by some people. I know you are thinking maybe of one particular religion but I mean all of them. The church is used as justification for acts in a lot of cases.

All this has gone pear-shaped in my head. I did know what I wanted to say but I have got really wound up at the injustice of it all. It is very difficult to justify anything even to myself when my head is like this. You know that the ultimate end of morality is to make the world a better place for EVERYONE, but you also know that it never will be perfect no matter what you do. There will always be the I'm all right Jack figures who accept that anything goes as long as their life is happy. I am thinking of a certain arms dealer at the moment who thinks it is alright to be a pillar of British Society AND to sell missiles to people he thinks are going to use them to shoot down commercial planes. However, there are also people IN GOVERNMENTS who do not see incongruity in THEIR actions. Blowing up buildings makes them blow up more buildings and we have a big circle. I was going to make an analogy with the ructions I had with my daughter this morning over her getting up at 5:50 am but this is too simplistic. All this sounds like Sixth form ranting without any realisation of how things in the world work.

If you read many blogs it is clear that many people do not have a real idea how big the world actually is and how many people there are. Solutions are for thousands of people not billions. The sooner we realise that we have to design world-wide solutions which help all of us rather than some tiny portion of civilization. None of us makes the effort to understand how the rest of the world acts. It appears that the US thinks that its own version of freedom is the ultimate civilized society. It thinks that by fighting for this version to become the model for the rest of the world, then everything will be better. It is the arrogance that this betrays which is the problem for a lot of people. Of course, the reaction is far worse than you could ever expect. Conversely, the superstition which rules a lot of the world (and the US is high up on the list when it comes to superstition - more on that in a bit) is also a real problem for us all.

The superstition bit - A US veteran's association has begun investigations into dowsing for evil. Now when this sort of thing is promoted, you have to worry. Actually, I am not as sceptical of dowsing as you might think. I used to really believe in it though I am prepared to accept that I was so enamoured of the deal, that I falsified results in order to 'prove' its existence, like when I forcibly bent the fork during a Uri Geller programme when my Dad wasn't looking. Hey Dad. You knew that really didn't you. A few of my friends and I convinced ourselves that we had managed to follow the water pipes under the common outside our house. A bit of me still believes that there is some bio-physical explanation for dowsing.

Sincere apologies for the upper case - yes I was SHOUTING.