And so we crawl our way to the last of my current series of Five Questions.

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Question 5: If you could write a note to your younger self, what would you say in only two words?
Wow! Two words is actually quite hard. Almost everything one can think of is at least four words.
So one is tempted to go with the advice forum Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC!
But I think instead the advice I could best have used and learnt to implement when younger was:

QUIT WORRYING!

Just learn to let everything flow over you, although that does mean I no longer do “excited”, “panic” or “real anger” any more. I’ll happily forego the “excited” in return from the relief from “panic” and “anger”.

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OK, so that’s the end of this series of Five Questions. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, maybe learnt something (if only about the oddness of my mind) and possibly even had a think yourself.
If I can find enough good questions I may do another series later in the year. So if you have a good question, or something you want to ask, then do please get in touch.
Meanwhile, be good!

Ah, so we’re getting towards the end with this the fourth of the current round of Five Questions.

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Question 4: Would you ever admit to being racist?
Yes, of course …
Hello. My name is Keith and I am a racist.
I wish I wasn’t thus, but I am.
In fact whether we like it or not we are all racists, although some are better at hiding it than others.
Yes, that’s right, we are all racists. It is a tribal thing.
We have sports teams, religions, political parties and socioeconomic classes. And yes, people of different colours, ethnicities and languages. We go through life knowing and interacting with people like “us”, lodging contentious feelings towards “them”. We do it now, and we always have.
Like all animals we all identify with, and thus instinctively prefer, our own tribe and our own territory. And thus by implication we dislike — in extreme cases even hate — the next tribe. The tribe that lives the other side of the river or mountain. Or the one up the valley who are a different colour. I’m green, I’m right, I’m good; you’re red, you’re wrong, nasty, diseased etc.
Neighbouring groups of chimpanzees will fight with each other. As will meerkats and many other species. Yes, this is partly territorial; but to me that is all part of racism. Many animals will ostracise, even kill, a comrade who is a different colour (say, albino).
We do this naturally; at least it is not something most of us are overtly taught. If anything we have to be taught not to do this.
Some of us learn better than others. And some of us can apply the lessons better than others. It’s a bit like learning woodwork or French at school — some can, easily; others never can. I like to think I am one of the better amongst us, but I’m probably not the best person to judge that.
But underneath I am still a racist. We are all racists. All we can ever do is learn to subdue it.

And so question three of the latest round of Five Questions.

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Question 3: Is masturbation a homosexual act?
There’s a body of very right wing, conservative Christianity (maybe other theisms too) which maintains that solo male masturbation (after all women would never do such a thing) is a homosexual act (the man is touching a penis) and therefore must indeed lead to the horrors of homosexuality.
I see the logic, in as far as it goes, but I don’t agree. For me homosexuality is defined as involving two (or more) persons of the same gender; one just doesn’t hack it. Whatever one might think about Onanism (and I view it as beneficial) homosexual it isn’t.
Thus I reject the idea. Not just because it is wrong, but also because it is believed by some set of wacky nut-jobs, who I neither like nor trust.
And anyway so what if masturbation is a homosexual act? Do all of us (male and female) not have at least a tiny percentage of homosexual leanings? And why does it matter anyway?
Get a life, guys!

And so we come to answering question two of my latest round of Five Questions.

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Question 2: Give me an unpopular opinion you have
Oh, my word! There are so many of these. Here have a selection …

1. Sex work of all kinds should be decriminalised – indeed encouraged.
2. Every leisure centre and swimming pool (whether publicly or privately run) should be required to hold at least three one-hour mixed-sex nude sessions each week between 8am and 8pm with one of them on a weekday between 9am and 5pm and one at a weekend.
3. All toilets should be omnisex. And all changing rooms should also be omnisex and without cubicles.
4. All sports teams should be mixed-sex. (If the armed forces can do mixed sex frontline troops, why can’t sports teams?)
5. The private motor car should be banned.

Well, no-one said you had to like them or that they had to be practical.

OK, let’s go. Here’s the answer to the first of my latest round of Five Questions.

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Question 1: Can we understand everything?
No. Not a hope in hell. At least I bloody hope we don’t.
One of the defining features of our species is our ability to make connections. From birth, we can’t help but recognise patterns — and hence we begin to understand how the world works. What goes for us individually applies to our species as well. The history of science is the history of seeing ever deeper connections between apparently unrelated phenomena. And there is no reason to suppose that this won’t continue ad infinitum.
However chimps, smart as they are compared with, say, tortoises, will (we assume) never grasp quantum theory, or even recognise the need for such a theory. And although we are smarter than chimps (at least for some measures of “smarter”), why shouldn’t there be concepts that are too big or too complex for our brains to handle? Even too big/complex for us to be aware of?
So isn’t it just arrogance to think that we will, one day, understand everything? And anyway, isn’t being able to understand everything a frightening prospect? Because then we would know what everyone else was thinking; all the time; about everything from apples to zoophilia. That way madness surely lies.