Category Archives: beliefs

beliefs, personal, pleasures, thoughts

Winter Lights

In a few days, on Twelfth Night, our Christmas decorations will be coming down. Anything which gets forgotten has to stay up until next year as it is believed to be unlucky to remove Christmas decorations after Twelfth Night.
But there’s an exception. Our lights. Which are Winter Lights, rather than Christmas Lights.
How come?


Almost all major religions have a winter light festival, mostly around the Winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere) to celebrate the turn of the year and to provide light and hope in the darkness of winter.

  • In Hinduism the most important light celebration is Diwali – the victory of light over darkness – which is slightly earlier than the solstice as it normally occurs around early November. Jainism also keeps Diwali.
  • Buddhism, at least in Burma, has Tazaungmon which mostly falls in November-December.
  • Chinese New Year seems to fit I here, as it too is a light festival celebrated on the first new moon between 20 January and 21 February.
  • Islam, at least as practised in Iran, has both Jashne Sade, a mid-winter feast to honour fire and to defeat the forces of darkness, frost and cold, and Shabe Chelle, the turning point, the end of the longest night of the year and the beginning of growing of the days.
  • Judaism, of course, has Hanukkah.
  • The Roman feast of Saturnalia, with its reputation for debauchery, lasted a week and also fell around the Winter Solstice.
  • Paganism, in its various forms – either ancient Paganism or its more modern incarnation as Wicca – celebrate the Winter Solstice as Yule.
  • And of course Christianity has Christmas, which it cobbled together from Pagan Yule and Roman Saturnalia with Christian iconography as pargeting.
  • And let’s not forget St Lucia’s Day on 13 December, a light festival widely celebrated across Scandinavia and some other countries.

I’m sure there are more, but you get the point.
There are many different traditions embedded in these festivals. In fact so many that years ago we decided to create our own. Hence our Winter Lights. So when the Christmas decorations – tree, holly, cards, crib figures and so on – come down the lights remain, just as they preceded the Christmas decorations.
In fact the tradition we created was to put lights in our main windows. They go up on the Feast of Christ the King, which is the Sunday before Advent (so in late November) and stay up until Candlemas on 2 February.
Why? Well, why not? Lights cheer the place up! They add some fun, interest and maybe even some mystery. They give light to scare away the dark during the gloomiest two months of the year. And while the lights don’t banish SAD they do shine a little happiness, and let’s be honest we could all do with that at this time of year.
Yes, OK, before anyone says it, the lights do take a certain amount of energy to run. But if, like us, you standardise on LEDs then the cost and environmental impact is negligible. As an example, the set of lights plugged in by my desk are rated to use 3.6 watts of electricity; over 70 days that’s 6KwHr at a cost of about £1. So you could run four sets for the cost of a couple of coffees, or (in London) the cost of a pint of decent beer. Even my environmentally conscious brain isn’t going to worry too hard about that; maybe I’ll just drink one fewer mug of tea a week.
So if you would like to help cheer the place up, and you have lights that you could like to leave up for a while, why not join our tradition. Together we might even be able to make it into something big.

amusements, beliefs, personal

Five Questions, Series 10 #1

So here we go with the answer to the first question in Series 10 of Five Questions.

★☆☆☆☆

Question 1: What is the nature of the universe? Does it function by itself or would it degenerate into chaos without some kind of intelligent control?

As a scientist, I tell you: We haven’t got a clue; it’s being worked on although we don’t believe in intelligent control (or intelligent design).

As a (sort of) vaguely Buddhist-cum-Taoist, I tell you: No-one has a clue, nor ever will have.
As an “ordinary Joe” in the street, I tell you: Nothing the fuck to do with me, mate.
So yeah, basically, search me!

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, personal, thoughts

Thoughts on #metoo

I’ve been thinking about all the recent posts. While in one way I’m not surprised, in another it is frighteningly disturbing to realise the level of abuse that we men inflict and remain totally unaware of. But from what I’ve seen (and I may be misinterpreting) I don’t think most women are saying that every man harasses them or is a sex offender.
(On the other hand, in some senses maybe we all are offenders, if only in our heads. Be honest, which of us doesn’t look at a pretty girl and think some variant of “I wonder what she’d fuck like?”. But then there is a line between thinking it and grabbing it.)
However if even 50% of women have experienced men being inappropriate (and 50% seems to be a very low estimate) then it isn’t just a tiny minority of men doing it.
We are all thoughtless and stupid towards others at times, whatever our gender and whatever the gender of the other person. (This isn’t just men on women, although that is almost certainly the vast majority or the “action”.) That’s not an excuse – there are no excuses – but a fact of life. We will never totally eradicate it, just as we can never be completely certain that our actions can ensure “X never happens again”. There will always be outliers. But we can all work hard to ensure our thoughtlessness and stupidity is reduced to an absolutely minimal level and those few outliers are all that remain.
I’m not conscious of ever having done anything wrong physically – though I will concede I probably have unknowingly. But I know that at times I have said, either verbally or in writing, and mostly without meaning to, something stupid, thoughtless or just plain badly worded. At times I’ve been called for it; at times I’ve realised myself I’ve overstepped the mark. I hope that on all such occasions I’ve apologised, learnt something, improved; and hopefully we have all been able to move on with some level of dignity restored. Even so there are a few of these occasions which still haunt me.
And for those occasions where I still don’t realise I’ve overstepped the mark, I apologise now!
Obviously as, I hope, a considerate being I would never deliberately set out to harass or abuse anyone; something I outlined in my post earlier in the year on my personal ethics and morals.
I feel sure that very often men don’t realise they’re behaving inappropriately; but I don’t buy the “that’s just because it’s the way men are” non-excuse. I suggest it’s because we’ve never been taught to be aware of such things – how can we have been when previous generations of men haven’t been aware of the problem and women have been too frightened to speak up, so no-one could teach us – and we’ve been too lazy to think about it for ourselves?
Hopefully the new, heightened, awareness can help change this, but realistically it isn’t going to happen overnight. Hopefully men can start to trust and believe what women say; they can start thinking about how they behave; and they can learn about being generally more sensitive, considerate and thoughtful human beings. Many – the more thoughtful men – will. But I do worry that the majority, who go through life relying only on their animal cave-man instincts, are just going to say “fuck off” and carry on regardless. They are going to need a lot of work by the rest of us – men and women. We all have to be brave and stand up to them, and that in itself isn’t always going to be easy – but if we’re being considerate human beings we have to try, pro bono pubico.

amusements, beliefs, personal

Ten Things

Here we are again with his month’s off-the-wall ten things …
Ten Concepts I Try to Live by:

  1. Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself
  2. If it harm none, do as you will
  3. Nude when possible, clothed when necessary
  4. Gender, colour, race etc. are irrelevant to ability and worth
  5. Sex and nudity are normal
  6. Openness and honesty in all things
  7. Say what you mean and do what you say
  8. Don’t worry about things you can’t change
  9. Pro bono publico, nil bloody panico
  10. Zen Mischief
beliefs, nudism, ramblings

Just One Person

Following on from my post of yesterday, British Naturism (BN) are challenging those of us who are nudists/naturists to talk about it.
Their campaign is called “Just One Person” and we are being challenged to tell one person about our naturism. As their press release says

We hope to inspire those who do not talk about their Naturist lifestyle choice outside to tell just one person.
Many people don’t even know they know a Naturist and assume that we are still that fringe minority on the far edges of society. In fact, we are their next-door neighbours, their work colleagues, the people on the next table in the pub, in the aeroplane seats in the row in front, in the car hire queue behind them at the airport … everywhere.
We completely understand the individual fears and possible complications … but do want to encourage you to help Naturism in the UK to grow and to become normal. While it remains hidden, misguided and incorrect views of Naturism will continue … We want to escape from the association that nudity means sex, or even worse, perversion.
[The aims] are to:
– Improve the public understanding of Naturism by engaging people in conversation about it.
– Encourage more people to become involved in Naturism.
– Help increase people’s confidence in themselves (by having the conversation) and their bodies through experiencing non-judgemental social nudity.

So if you’re a naturist – even, like me, a solitary naturist (largely through force of circumstance) – or just someone who is not afraid of naturism and social nudity, go out and tell people. Help break down those unnecessary taboos – taboos about keeping naturism to yourself; taboos about not talking to people about naturism; taboos about the fear that naturism will deprave and corrupt. Even just a blog post or something on Facebook will help; but better to talk to people face-to-face and have an open conversation.


What? You’re still scared of nudity? Remember two things. First, we all know what’s underneath this t-shirt and jeans. And second, nude bodies are not sexual per se; it’s the context that makes them sexual. So really, why is there a problem?

beliefs, nudism

Be Naked Day

1 Comment

Today (Saturday 5 August 2017) is

National Be Naked Day*

So I shall be spending as much of the day as possible déshabillé.
It won’t be as much as I would like as I shall be spending some time at an event in central London and unfortunately most pubs are still not clothes optional (why not!?!?!).
What about you?
* National Be Naked Day is sponsored by British Naturism.

beliefs, ramblings, sexuality

Pornography vs Obscenity

I’ve just finished reading Brooke Magnanti’s The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong (review later) and she makes a useful point about pornography and obscenity.

The word ‘pornography’ comes from Greek roots: porno-, related to prostitution; graphos, to write. Stories about hookers, in other words … People in the nineteenth century became more worried about drawing a line between what was art and what was obscene. Those worries helped shape the view of what today is labelled ‘pornography’ versus what is labelled ‘erotica’ – even though few people, if any, can give a clear idea of the difference.
‘Obscenity’, meanwhile, comes from the Latin obscenus, meaning repulsive or detestable. Something obscene is something that is offensive to the morality of the time, something taboo. The definition of obscenity is different in different cultures, and even people in the same culture can disagree about what is obscene. Many laws have tried to define obscenity. While erotic imagery can be defined as obscene, it isn’t always considered so, and some laws recognise this

To which I would like to add the word ‘prostitute’: one who engages in sexual activity in exchange for money (payment).
Put that lot together and it means my world view goes something like this …
Technically pornography is stories about those who engage in sex for money. To me this means that any video (or other medium) which portrays a sexual act, where one can reasonably expect that (some of) the participants have been paid is pornography and (depending on one’s predilections) may also be erotic. Mere photographs of vulvas or penises may also be erotic, but are not a sexual act so are not (at least in my world view) pornographic; they aren’t ipso facto a sex act.
Whether one defines the pornographic, or the erotic, as obscene depends very much on one’s personal morality. We each have our own moral code, which may or may not align with that of society at large, and an act (image, description) doesn’t become obscene until it offends our morals and transgresses the line into being taboo. And that act doesn’t have to be sexual.
To use my own views as an example, I have no problem with the depiction of sexual acts, let alone the depiction of breasts, vulvas or penises. Pornography (as defined above) for me only becomes obscene when it crosses the boundary into being violent, non-consensual or involving minors or animals. There are sexual acts I greatly dislike (eg. male homosexuality), but that doesn’t per se make them obscene. But I do find many other things in this world obscene, amongst them the gratuitous killing of people and animals, blatant disregard for human rights, FGM, rape (of people and the environment), corporate greed and bankers mega-bonuses. YMMV.
So pornography is essentially, technically, amenable to definition. Obscenity is not readily definable so easily in anything other that one’s personal world view. Pornography is (should be) a largely objective measure. Obscenity can only ever be subjective. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that legislation cannot prohibit certain acts because the moral view of the majority of the legislature is that they are obscene for them – that’s how our collective, social, morality works and it is only by iconoclasts like me pushing the boundaries that such collective views are shifted.

beliefs, books

Book Review: The Path

Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh
The Path: A New Way to Think about Everything
(Penguin, 2017)
This purports to be a self-help book of a new kind: one which encourages us to change our philosophy, and hence our actions, by doing small, simple things. As the cover blurb says:

The first book of its kind, The Path offers a profound guide to living well. It reveals for the first time how the timeless wisdom of ancient Chinese philosophers can transform the way we think about ourselves. Covering subjects from decision-making to relationships, it shows how making small changes in our everyday routines – as simple as showing weaknesses in meetings or greeting people differently – can make us happier and more productive.

The idea is good and the book should have been interesting, but I found it facile and superficial: like cheap brawn, lots of aspic with very little meat. I had to give up on it half way through.
As Ambrose Bierce once commented in a review “The covers of this book are too far apart”. It is a book of 200 pages, which frankly should have been no more than a third of that.
First off it suffers from the current publishing malaise of an over-large typeface, excessive leading, and wider than needed margins; ie. much too much white space. It is also, typically of Penguin, printed on appallingly cheap and nasty paper which is not going to withstand the ravages of time.
But for me, worse than all that, it is written is a very simplistic, almost dumbed-down, laborious style which I found it hard to read – it is so wishy-washy I had trouble picking out the key concepts. Consequently it gave me nothing to think about and take away. It needed a robust editor.
In a way I don’t blame the authors: the concepts are sound and the content would be a good subject of a single philosophy seminar. But it isn’t a book, and for that the publishers have to shoulder the blame.
Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆