Category Archives: hypocrisy

Sorry For Any Inconvenience (a rant, part three)

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More meaningless phrases that are used unthinkingly. I hate the lot of them!

We are closed today/unable to provide the service you’ve paid for, etc. We apologise for the inconvenience.

The hell you do. You couldn’t care less about what your withdrawal of your service means to your customers or you’d have done everything in your power to prevent it. And to suppose I’m only mildly ‘inconvenienced’ by your slipshod ways, not to mention your glib apology, is to underestimate the trouble you’ve put me to.

‘Your reaction is abuse’. 

Anything remotely assertive is now regarded as abuse. The term has been degraded the extent that those who are genuinely abused – physically, sexually or emotionally – are now on a par with those dealing with a dissatisfied customer in a shop or an obstructive bureaucrat down the phone (assuming you can speak to a real person these days). Of course, it’s best to be calm and civil when trying to resolve a problem, but a little forcefulness is occasionally necessary. These days you’ll have strayed into ‘abuse’ if you make your point with anything other than submissive meekness. As Spectator columnist Mark Mason put it (after I originally drafted this post), a claim of abuse ‘has become a go-to argument of the grievance generation. Express the slightest irritation with them for being irritating and you’re the one in the wrong’. (Is this post abusive? Probably.)

Shit, as in ‘I’ll just collect my shit’ or ‘I need to get my shit together’. The imagery is gross – you do know what shit is, don’t you? – and if you have such low regard for your belongings or your thoughts maybe you should think twice and about telling us about it. There are plenty of other decent and less revolting words for your stuff and your psychological state and to aver them for ‘shit’ is downright lazy

And while I’m having still ranting, let me have a go at the f word. I’m sick to death of it. I do occasionally use it myself, particularly in totally rational disputes with technology, but I get weary of hearing it in snatches of conversation I hear while walking in the street, where every other word is the f-word or one of its derivatives. It is used by parents in the presence of their children and, worse, when addressing them. I deplore its use on TV and in films where it’s added to give more force to dialogue or insight into how a character’s feeling. Any half-decent actor could and should convey emotion or urgency or whatever without the need for superfluous swear words. ‘I want you out of my life, ‘ delivered by a competent actor conveys more personal anguish and naked pain than ‘I want you out of my f***ing life,’ which conveys only anger and reflects the scriptwriter’s societal conditioning that compels him or her to include the f word because that’s what people in the street do. Scriptwriters need to trust their actors far more than they do and cut out the needless profanity. Shakespeare never found the need to include it in any of his 37 plays. ‘Is this a dagger I see before me’ would have been robbed of its power if the bard had seen fit to stick a ‘fucking’ in there somewhere. Likewise, comedians who think a line is made funnier by adding the f word to it; if the line is funny, it’s funny without it. If it’s not funny, adding fuck won’t make it funny. Let’s have less of the f word and more considered writing and genuine funniness.

Rant over.

Newspeak (part two of a rant)

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I’ve been considering the changing meaning of words. I acknowledge that this happens over time: language evolves like everything else. My concern here is the deliberate redefining of words to suit a given (political) agenda. This often underhanded stretching of words to give them new meanings, actually diminishes them and renders them dangerous. 

As part of its definition, Merrian-Webster describes racism as ‘behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster ‘the belief in racial superiority): discrimination, prejudice, or violence against people because of their race.’

Violence, it seems to me, is hardly ever justified. I have detested it since I was a child. There can be no doubt that violence is sometimes motivated by racial hatred, but like all the words I’m dealing with here, racism as an accusation is overused to the point of meaninglessness. While other nations – the Scandinavian countries, the US, Scotland and Wales – proudly fly their national flags practically everywhere, here in the UK it has been deemed to be racist by some on the Left. It’s common for the Ukranian, Palestinian, Scottish, Welsh and LGBT flags to be flown here, why are the English and Union flags now considered to be racist? It might, at a stretch be that they are divisive, but then aren’t all flags? Isn’t that what they’re for, to declare a national identity that is distinct from that of other states? The British flag is no more ‘racist’ than any other. Neither is expressing genuine concern for immigration, which is dismissed by those who’ve failed to control it, as racist. How can it be when those coming into Britain are from a variety of ‘races’, many white and European?

It’s racist, and hateful too, say ‘community leaders’ and white liberals, to object to the treatment of women within Islam, or first-cousin marriage or frequently expressed anti-Semitism. ‘Racism’ in these instances is an attempt to shut down discussion and censure those with legitimate concerns. Similarly, for fear of being considered racist, authorities have failed to investigate (hateful) criminal activities by ethnic minorities. And while it’s become clichéd to say it, criticism of Islam and its practices is not racist: Islam is a religion, not a race, its practitioners drawn from a range of ethnicities. The true meaning of racism has been lost. Those who suffer from it abandoned in the transition of the word into meaninglessness.

My 95 year old mother was in hospital recently. She struggled to understand what some of the nurses were saying to her, either about her condition or treatment or something else. She didn’t know which because, between her deteriorating hearing, the mouth coverings some nurses wore and the accents of those from other ethnicities, she couldn’t understand them. What she couldn’t do, she felt, was say this to them. In Britain today it is regarded as racist to tell someone from another culture you can’t understand them. So she didn’t, nor did she mention the problem to any other of the medical team for fear of being thought racist. This is where we are in today’s Britain.

Advice

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Image sourced here

Good news, everybody. The UK Government has released its ‘advice’ to help us all avoid ‘anti-Muslim hostility’. Thank God we have such intellectual giants as Keir Starmer to advise us on such matters. We must not, it turns out, treat Muslims ‘as a collective group’ with ‘fixed negative characteristics’.

This, it also turns out, is what human beings do with every group that exists, and every group that has ever existed, since the beginning of time. We lump people of comparable beliefs and behaviours together no matter how much each category protests they represent a multitude of nuanced perspectives: Jews, Christians, LGB, Trans, environmentalists, Mormons, atheists, feminists, Rastafarians, teachers, sinners, billionaires, politicians, Americans, journalists, the Right, the Left… They’re all subject to criticism as ‘collective groups’. This is often on the basis of the bad behaviour of a few of their ‘community’, or of a caricature of what a member of these groups is perceived to be (as a gay person, I speak from being on the receiving end of this kind of condemnation). It’s neither fair nor reasonable to do this, I agree, but it is what happens. But now we are ‘advised’ we must not do it of Muslims. Don’t criticise Muslims as a whole just because some of them are inclined to blow people up. Don’t criticise them collectively for the pronouncements of extremist preachers. Don’t even criticise them for the practices of the majority.

Okay. But shouldn’t that also extend to all the other ‘communities’ I’ve mentioned? Yes, and it would in an ideal world. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. While we continue to judge Christians as a whole, on the basis of the hypocrisy of some, LGB people because of the excesses of a few and Jews because of the actions of their state (Muslims and their trendy left-wing supporters do exactly this in the case of Jews), then why can we not judge Muslims similarly? You’d have to ask Starmer that. But don’t expect him to give you a straight answer.

Oh, and how long before this ‘advice’ becomes law? 

Pray With More Urgency

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‘Try Praying’ it says on the back of the buses in the UK. Let’s pray for peace says the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Reverend Sarah Mullalley:

…let us pray and call with renewed urgency for an end to the violence and destruction in the Middle East and the Gulf… May all people of the region receive the peace, justice and freedom they long for.

It’d be nice, wouldn’t it, if the world was at peace. I’m just not sure how praying ‘with renewed urgency’ as Ms Doolally puts it will make much difference. Or praying at all. She might as well beseech her flock to keep happy thoughts uppermost in their minds. The peace she yearns for is not, obviously, for Ukraine and other of the world’s conflict hot-spots. Only a week before the Archbishop beseeched The Lord for an end to (selective) violence and destruction, Muslim terrorists had again massacred Christians in Nigeria. Perhaps the Rev Malarkey didn’t pray urgently or with sufficient renewal because God evidently ignored her pleas. He makes no attempt to rescue even his own people; either that or he’s incapable of doing anything about megalomaniacs and murderous zealots. You’d have thought if he was opposed to us slaughtering each other he’d have put a stop to it already, what with all the urgent prayers down the centuries.

Meanwhile, over on the Dark Side, Pope Leo XIV has been assuring his devotees that God does indeed ‘reject violence’. This surely can’t be the God of the Old Testament who loves a good set-to, can it? Nor the God of the New who supposedly sent his son to be violently executed by the Romans. Nor the God of Revelation who plans to send that same gentle Son to slaughter most of humankind. God’s propensity for ‘violence and destruction’ is renowned and Leonardo has let that Oscar go to his head if he thinks otherwise. After all, any number of his predecessors have rolled up their finest-silk sleeves for a good old holy war, with God on their side of course.

Still, if those posters and the Rev Mullalley think prayer is our best hope, maybe I should try it. That bus isn’t going to get here on its own.

Showing Off

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We interrupt this blogcast to bring you breaking news of shenanigans in the wonderful, wacky world of religion.

There’s been a kerfuffle here these last few days after Muslims gathered in Trafalgar Square to engage in mass prayers (that’s mass as in ‘3,000 men‘, not Mass as in the cannibalistic ritual beloved of Catholics.) This was not well received by many in the capital with a number of politicians on the right questioning whether it was really the Good Thing the Muslim mayor of London (and number one Donald Trump fan), Sadiq Khan, thought it was. Sadiq is himself is a Muslim and was present at the pray-in, taking selfies with his admirer. One politician who thought this wasn’t kosher (am I confusing things here?) was Nigel Farage – Donald’s real number one fan – who suggested that if he were ever to become Prime Minister (there’s a chance), he would ban ‘performative public prayer’ of the sort witnessed in Trafalgar Square.

This seems to me not an unreasonable proposition given the Quran (Surah Ma’oon, 107:4-7) regards ostentatious public prayer gatherings as not quite the done thing:

So woe to those who pray yet are unmindful of their prayers; those who show off…

Naturally, Christians have waded into the controversy, wailing that should Muslims be stopped from enjoying prayer spectaculars, they too might be prevented from doing the same thing. Some fear carol singing and pushing their faith on others who have no interest whatever in hearing it might similarly be prohibited. Of course, banning public prayer would not, unfortunately, include carol singing or proselytising on account of the fact that neither of these two activities are prayer bonanzas in and of themselves.

The authors of the Bible also seemed to think that ‘performative prayer’ is a no-no. As Jesus’ script writers have him say in Matthew 6:5-6:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Let’s not forget that as well as being God incarnate for brainwashed Christians, JC is a prophet in Islam. Both Christians and Muslims are prepared, naturally, to ignore their holy books, their prophets even, when they take to the streets and squares of modern cities ‘to be seen by others’ as they debase themselves in front of imaginary gods. It’s not Nigel Farage who wants to forbid ostentatious public displays of piety. Jesus and Mohammed got there first.

As a post script, can I mention that as an atheist, I find these prayer pantomimes, by whichever brand of the deluded, to be both unnecessary and offensive?

No, I thought not.

Jesus the Great Revolutionary

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According to Matthew and Luke’s gospels, Jesus was a revolutionary. He wanted to see the world turned around, the very meaning of the word revolution. He preached that the world as it was would be destroyed and remade, this time with the social order reversed. Those who had been first in the old order – the rich, the powerful, the cruel – would be made to be the last, while those who were formerly last – the poor, the downtrodden, the lowly, the compassionate – would find themselves in first place. They’d be best in show, the new top dogs and, in ways that really mattered, rich. Meanwhile, those who had really committed themselves to him, his closest followers, would become the rulers with him of the renewed revolutionised order that he envisaged: his Kingdom of God.

How would all this happen? Jesus’ Father in Heaven would soon be sending the Son of Man to set the revolution in motion. This powerful being, who perhaps Jesus envisaged as being none other than himself, would ensure all the unimaginable but necessary changes would be achieved. There would be some violence of course, because you can’t have a revolution without at least a little violence:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (The Prince of Peace himself in Matthew 10:34)

Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:10)

Once the old is done away with and the new order established, there would be something of a socialist utopia on Earth. Everyone would share what they had; each would have his or her needs met by everyone else. Even those who came late to the party would enjoy all the rewards the new Kingdom had to offer (Matthew 20:1-16). There’d have to be some slaughter too of course: the one who advocated loving one’s enemies looked forward to exacting bloody revenge on his:

“But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” (Luke 19:27. See also Revelation)

Except of course, none of this happened. The Son of Man did not emerge from the clouds when Jesus expected him to. He himself did not become the Son of Man, ready to kick-start the great social revolution. Instead, the rich, the powerful and the cruel put an end to Jesus’ revolutionary ideas; they were gaining too much traction among the poor and downtrodden and needed to be quashed. An uprising couldn’t be ruled out, specially as Jesus recognised the need for force:

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been coming violently and the violent take it by force. (Matthew 11.12)

He predicted too that blood would be spilt, going so far as to recommended his followers arm themselves:

He said to them… ‘the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless”; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.’ They said, ‘Lord, look, here are two swords.’ He replied, ‘It is enough.’ (Luke 22:36-38)

According to the gospels, the Jewish religious leaders persuaded the Roman authorities to do away with this dangerous revolutionary and insurrectionist. Once they were made aware of him, the Romans were more than happy to oblige. They mocked Jesus’ aspirations as King of the Jews and crucified him alongside other ‘rebels’ (Matthew 27:38).

His followers however were not yet ready to let go of him or his revolutionary ideas. Perhaps they saw the possibility of their ruling the world slipping from them. They continued to preach that he would appear again, possibly as the Son of Man, to bring about the revolution he had foreseen.

This is, as I say, Matthew and Luke’s version of events. The writers of the fourth gospel would jettison the failed New-World-Order narrative, building their own Superman-Jesus and dispensing entirely with the great social revolution. In their story, the Kingdom of God is ‘not of this world’ (John 18:36) but only in people’s heads.

The four gospels are, of course, make-believe; allegories of the hoped for Messiah. The Kingdom of God, the revolutionary leader, the reversal of the social order are what some of the earliest cultists wished for, looked for, hoped for. It is their aspirations that are reflected and embodied in the earliest gospels. Like the hopes and dreams of every cultist before and since, they came to nothing.

Many of today’s Christians would not, in any case, have cared for the Kingdom of God that Matthew and Luke’s Jesus is made to promote; far too much socialism and the wrong sort of people in charge. Jesus’ new Kings of the World would, in any case, have made a mess of things in much the same way as all those who took control in the revolutions the world did actually experience. Power, as Lord Acton put it, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Better for Jesus that he became a personal saviour, confined to the minds of those who think he really existed, a mere revolutionary in the head.

The Case of Plagiarised Essays and the Missing Source

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This is a true story. I was involved. It took place when I was a university tutor and had dozens of student essays to mark at any time. The work of about 120 students were distributed randomly between myself and two colleagues.

On this particular occasion, I had about 40 to assess and about half way through them I came upon an essay from a student whom I’ll call Matty. It wasn’t a particular good essay; it was poorly argued, and was littered with errors, the most glaring of which was the referring to the well known psychologist E. (for Elizabeth) Loftus as a man. I gave it a grade only a little over the pass mark and moved on.

Three or four essays later I reached one by ‘Lucas’. As I started on this submission, I realised I’d read it before. I searched back in the marked pile and pulled out Matty’s work. Sure enough, both essays were pretty much identical. The occasional word had been changed, paragraph breaks altered here and there and some sentences rearranged, but the two pieces of work were essentially the same. Crucially, the second essay used the very same quotations from E. Loftus and again used male pronouns for her when discussing her work.

The university, quite rightly, took plagiarism seriously. I summoned Lucas and Matty to my office and confronted them with their third-rate essays. Both insisted they had not copied. They had, they insisted, worked independently. They hadn’t even seen the other’s work.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘how is it your essays are so similar, identical in many places, and most tellingly, how have you both ‘independently’ managed to attribute the wrong sex to Elizabeth Loftus?’

‘We must have used the same books,’ Lucas offered.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘and which book was it that thought Loftus was a man?’

‘Not sure, ‘ Matty offered, ‘but we could maybe find it for you. Because it definitely did.’

‘Just point it out to me from one of your identical and very thin bibliographies,’ I suggested.

The two scanned down the list of three or four books. ‘Erm, not sure,’ Lucas said.

‘No, it’s not there,’ Matty concluded. ‘I’m not sure which it was.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘when you find it, maybe you can bring the book in to show me.’

They nodded eagerly, believing they’d averted the problem.

‘In the meantime,’ I said, ‘I’m going to fail both of your essays. I’m afraid too I have no choice but to report you to the Academic Standards Board for your plagiarism.’

The boys looked stunned. ‘But we didn’t copy and that book definitely said Mr Loftus was a man.’

‘There’s no book that says she’s a man,’ I said, ‘and you know it. You’re not going to be able to produce the book because it doesn’t exist. One of you made the mistake of thinking she was male and the other simply copied the error. I don’t know which way round it was, but that’s the only reasonable explanation.’

They left dejected. I did report them to the Academic Standards Board. Unbeknown to me, a tutor from a different department had also reported them for plagiarism in the essays they had submitted to him. Both students were eventually expelled for repeated offences.

I recalled the episode while reading Gary Marston’s Escaping Christian Fundamentalism blog about the hypothetical ‘Q’ that some scholars argue existed before Matthew and Luke’s gospels were written. These scholars postulate that both gospel authors lifted the material they have in common, other than that copied from Mark, from ‘Q’. Like my two likely lads, none of them has ever been able to provide evidence for the existence of this mythical document.

The most obvious explanation for the similarities between Matthew and Luke’s non-Markian material is that one of them, probably Luke, cribbed from the other. Like my two plagiarists, Matthew and Luke are without credibility. Whoever came first – probably Matthew – plagiarised from Mark and made up stories that Luke then copied, mistakes and all, and altered to suit his own purposes. If they’d been dishonest students they’d have been expelled long ago.

Live Backwards

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I wanted in this post to think about the source(s) of evil, given it cannot be supernatural. However, defining evil isn’t as straightforward as I anticipated. The Oxford English Dictionary offers ‘Profoundly immoral and wicked’ while Merriam Webster goes for ‘morally reprehensible: sinful, wicked.’ Other dictionaries also mention both immorality and wickedness, replacing one concept in need of explanation with two. ‘Wicked’, it seems to me, is synonymous with evil, which doesn’t get us any closer to defining it. There are problems with ‘immorality’ too, as what constitutes immorality is frequently culturally determined.

Evangelicals, for example, regard same-sex relationships as immoral (so that’s me told) as is sex outside marriage. When I was involved in the church, dancing, drinking and listening to rock music (with all its backward messages!) were anathema. In some countries today many of these behaviours attract the attention of so-called morality police and are punishable by death (how moral is that!) Then there are those who fail to keep their word. Within months of being elected, the UK government under Keir Starmer has reneged on almost every promise they made prior to the election. Everyone expects politicians to lie so perhaps allowing ourselves to be duped by them means they’re not entirely responsible. Let’s not forget too that for some, eating meat is immoral, as is using fossil fuels. Our eating meat and our burning fossil fuels, that is.

So, are the practitioners of such relatively low-level, and disputed immoral acts – being gay, having non-marital sex, drinking and dancing, lying, using oil, eating meat – actually evil? Are women who have abortions, and the people who carry them out, evil? Of course not. It’s debatable whether some of these behaviours are immoral to begin with, but even if they are, immorality does not always equate with evil. I would argue that while all truly evil acts must, by definition, be immoral, not all (supposed) immorality is evil. Somehow personal immorality lacks the scale and awful consequences of true evil.

The Sanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is much nearer the mark when it comes to defining evil:

Evil must involve harm, and it must be serious enough to damage its victims’ capacity to function normally… Furthermore, the harm must be unjustified…

I’ll adapt and paraphrase this as ‘the malicious and unnecessary inflicting of harm on others’ to give us a working definition of evil.

So, who qualifies? Hitler obviously. Putin certainly. Other oppressive regimes. Murderers. Hamas. Child abusers. The gangs who have raped very young girls in numerous UK cities. How about the God of the Old Testament? He orders the cruel deaths of Israel’s enemies (Deuteronomy 7), promotes the smashing of babies’ heads against rocks (Psalm 137:9) and orders the taking of prison-of-war virgins as sex slaves (Numbers 31: 17-18). Later, Jesus – like father, like son – relishes the opportunity to put his enemies to the sword (Luke 19:27) and orders those who don’t believe in him be consigned to hell where they’ll be tortured forever (Matthew 25: 41-46). This is evil by any definition.

So, given there isn’t a God nor a heavenly Jesus, from where does evil originate? I’ll get to that, at last, in the next post.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

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Dennis and I found ourselves in Rome last week, doing what I’m sure native Romans don’t do: the tourist trail. It’s a magnificent city.

As we were passing, we thought we’d call round at Frankie’s little place. We knew he wasn’t in, seeing as he was still on his world tour, just behind The Boss himself. He’s certainly got a great pad – Frankie that is, not Bruce – and after being frisked by hunky security guards we were admitted to St Peter’s Square. We felt moved, in the Pope’s absence, to grant an audience to the fairly thin crowd (it would get bigger later in the morning) and issue the benediction they so evidently craved. ‘Go, get a life,’ we offered from the steps of the Basilica. The faithful remained unmoved by this sage advice.

The Vatican is, I have to say, stunningly beautiful, a monument to human ingenuity and skill. But the cynic in me couldn’t help wonder what the majesty of it all had to do with the (supposed) teaching of Jesus in the Bible. I found myself playing a little game in my head along the lines of ‘how many ways does all of this contravene, contradict or downright ignore the beliefs of the earliest Christians, as expressed in what is now the New Testament?’ (Before any evangelicals tell me this is only to be expected of the Roman Catholic church, let’s not pretend that every other denomination doesn’t do the same thing.)

So, here are my suggestions for the Biblical admonitions that had to be ignored to create a religious monument on the scale of the Vatican. Feel free to make your own suggestions in the comments.

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. (Exodus 20:40)

The statues of Paul and the apostles atop the buildings, the numerous images and carvings of saints, pious Marys and gruesome blood-spattered Jesuses certainly qualify as exalted images. The prohibition might not be New Testament but it is one of the Big Ten. The Vatican ditches it wholesale.

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21)

Like this ever happens!

Jesus said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6)

And the Pope. And Mary. And the Saints. And the Church. And the Priests.

…the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. (Acts 7:48)

So why build them for him? They may be meant to reflect his power and glory but they really only reflect that of the popes who had them built, plus the gullibility of their followers.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

The Vatican’s tax free wealth, only some of which is on display around St Peter’s Square, is estimated to be between ten and fifteen billion dollars.

As I say, the Vatican is stunningly impressive; my photos don’t do it justice. If Christianity had never existed it would not have been created. But something equally impressive would have been, inspired by different ideals, deities or practicalities. Rome has stunning examples of these kinds of structures too. Nor am I getting at Catholicism per se. But you won’t find in it any expression of the beliefs, apocalyptic expectations and social reversals of the original Christian cult, nor in religion in general. Like all movements the cult had to evolve to survive, to the point it would be unrecognisable to its original quarrelsome adherents. Even if their images do look down on you from the roofs of beautiful buildings.

Featuring the Battle of the Century! Doomsday v. Panacea!

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Human beings love doomsday scenarios. We have perpetually convinced ourselves that the circumstances in which we live are the most dreadful ever and, to quote The Beatles, can’t get no worse, The earliest Christians thought it: things were so bad that the end was surely to come. YHWH would tolerate the awful state of affairs no longer. But to the surprise of no-one he did.

Those alive in 17th century Europe couldn’t conceive of a worse time, what with the plague and all, and persuaded themselves that the world was ending. During the Covid lockdown we were told that the human race faced being annihilated by the virus and that whatever we’d previously regarded as normal would never return. Today we’re assured that the planet faces extinction if we don’t stop using fossil fuels. At the same time others claim that democracy/the West/civilisation are in such decline that the world will soon disintegrate into anarchy. Who knows, perhaps one day one of these modern doomsday scenarios will come to pass. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Equally though, we are adept at devising panaceas, universal remedies to our problems. We have an unshakeable belief that by making a few simple changes – a new government/president/policy/ invention/initiative/innovation – we will avert disaster and resolve the challenges we face.

How have the panaceas of the past fared? The Jesus’ cult’s promises of new life and heaven of earth collapsed in the first century when God failed to rescue those who identified as his Chosen Ones from the wickedness that surrounded them. Nevertheless, Christianity bullied its way on to the present day, still offering the same tired solutions to age-old problems. Religion, in all its forms, only makes matters worse.

Revolution is no solution either, as the socially aware songs of the 1970s advised us. The French, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions changed situations but they didn’t usher in an age of peace and prosperity or remedy everything their instigators said they would. History demonstrates again and again that violence fails to improve anything. The freedom and independence that the Baltic states now enjoy came not from revolution but from the foresight of Mikhail Gorbachev who knew Russia could no longer afford to sustain its satellite states. Putin however knows better and seeks to reabsorb them back into his own soviet union.

Other panaceas of the past have similarly failed to deliver. The so-called industrial revolution created our modern world, led to the end of slavery and gave us the standard of living those of us in the West enjoy. Now we must deal with what many perceive as its legacy: world pollution, climate change, dwindling resources. Eliminating these is the new panacea. Once these challenges have been met, or so we’re told, the world will find itself on a much better footing, on course to recover from the damage we’ve caused it. Hence Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. It’s as simple as that. Except we know that surely it isn’t when the biggest polluters – China, Russia, India and potentially the US (Trump says he will pull out of climate change agreements if returned to the White House) – are not wholly on board.

We are a very long way from eliminating the use of oil: for a long time to come it will be needed to lubricate machinery, engines and windfarms, and for the production of plastics (a panacea in their own right not that long ago), computers, mobile phones and building materials. That’s not to mention the need for oil in the nation’s defence: the navy’s ships, the air force’s planes and the army’s tanks. We do not yet have the means of replacing the oil which fuels and lubricates modern life. We can be sure too that when we do, this new panacea will also have its own drawbacks, which will only become apparent once we have committed to them. We know this already with nuclear power which, once fossil fuels are eliminated, will be the principal means of producing electricity in the enormous quantities required to supply to industry, for heating, lighting and transport, including electric cars, which, if politicians have their way, will be the only kind available. We are already using ‘environmentally-damaging methods’ to extract the rare minerals used for the manufacture of batteries, a process which also, ironically, creates more CO2 than the manufacture of a petrol car (itself a panacea not too long ago): ‘According to MIT’s Climate Lab, one ton of mined lithium emits almost 15 tons of CO2’.

While there are those who claim that EVs cause less environmental damage than petrol (gas) vehicles, damage is still damage. It is not net zero. The dream of worldwide net zero is impossible. The only way it is even approachable is for the car and other forms of transport to disappear altogether – and we all know that isn’t going to happen. Even  hypocritical eco-warriors use the car and other forms of transport dependent on fossil fuels to get themselves to whichever work of art or ancient monument they plan to deface. 

China, which produces two thirds of the world’s electric car batteries, accounted ‘for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023.’ Then there’s the disposal of spent batteries: do we have policies for doing that in an environmentally friendly way? Is there an environmentally friendly way?

As you can probably tell, I’m not a believer in panaceas, whether religious or politically devised. They don’t work and never have. In years to come, the West will be wringing its hands at its plundering of the Congo for cobalt and South America for lithium for electric car batteries. ‘How could we get it so wrong?’ we will cry. ‘There must be a better way, a better panacea. Meanwhile, we must do penance and make reparations.’ I don’t have the answers, but extremist approaches like the half-baked schemes of Ed Miliband, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (yes, really), and pursuing impossible dreams do not seem to me to be the solution.