James Cook and the problem with colonialism

James Cook was a Captain in the British Royal Navy who was known for exploring a lot of places, using his expertise in navigation and cartography. He claimed to have discovered a few places, which he hadn’t really, and ended up being done in on an island of Hawaii.

So, now that’s out of the way, we can talk about the effect that people like Cook and colonialization generally had on the world. While they did much for making the world more connected, they did it in a way that all but obliterated any culture they came into contact with.

From an Australian perspective, Cook wasn’t even close to discovering it. He may have been the first from Britain, but he wasn’t the first European, and definitely not the first human. The credit for that goes to the indigenous population, the multiple Aboriginal nations who inhabited the land, having travelled across from Papua New Guinea some 60,000 years prior.

It takes a pretty confident bloke to rock up somewhere, see other people, and think they’ve discovered somewhere new. It’s also pretty poor form to declare a place full of people “terra nullius” and just move in. Ok, that wasn’t Cook as such, but it was the colonialists who came after him.

The British culture was very heavily dependent on ownership and, more specifically, land ownership so when the came to Australia and found these people who were, to them, other and who observed no ownership of the land so far as the British could see, they saw no problem with simply claiming the land as their own.

While this was a problem in and of itself, it has led to a whole raft of other problems, notably racism. Racism stems from the idea of other based solely on the outward appearance of a person. We know now that the idea of race within the human species is pretty ridiculous considering the miniscule variation between individuals on a genetic level. It also seems ridiculous to judge a person based on the amount of melanin they produce, and to then decide that the amount of melanin bears any relation on what sort of a person they are.

Of course, first you have to see them as people, which the British didn’t. While it is a myth that they were covered by the Flora and Fauna Act until 1967 (you can find a good breakdown of this here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/fact-check-flora-and-fauna-1967-referendum/9550650), they were seen as something less than the while settlers.

Fast forward to today, and the long reaching effects of those colonialists is still being felt. We see people raging against the co-called privileges that the aboriginal community enjoy, in the form of affirmative action, etc. What people don’t see is the underlying discrimination which still exists towards Aboriginal people that makes these initiatives necessary.

On the other side of this is the blame laid at the feet of all those with British or just white European ancestry for the misdeeds of those colonialists as if we (speaking as someone with both British and general European ancestry) were somehow culpable for the actions of people to whom we might not even be related.

Yes, I enjoy a certain amount of privilege as a person of white colouring, but I also suffer discrimination as someone who is female, and of a lower socio-economic background. In a perfect world, all people would be judged by who they are rather than what they are but we stuck with a legacy of a people long since dead which we must discard but not forget if we are to move forward as one people because, if we forget, we are doomed to repeat, and repeat and repeat, until the end of time.

First Date

Being single for most of my life, I've had my share of first dates. Most of them have been disastrous. I rarely go on second dates. So, what was wrong with them? Where do I start? But this piece isn't about the terrible, awful first dates. It's about the good one. The only one that's actually worked. And why I am stuck in this terrible holding pattern because of Covid-19.

Let's talk about what makes a good first date. Male or female, these same tips apply.

1. Turning up on time.

I don't even wear a watch and am notoriously punctual. In fact, I am often early, which isn't always great, but it's better than being late. Now, I'm not talking about being a minute or two late. I'm talking about anything more than 5 minutes. If you're going to be late, let the person know. In the modern age you have zero excuses for not letting the other person know. Whether it's a phone call or a text or a facebook/twitter/kik/whatever-other-social-media-platform-you-have-been-talking-through message, it's easy enough to do.

When you turn up on time (or at least let the other person know you're running late) it tells the person you're meeting that you value their time, not just your own. It shows consideration. And it means you're able to prioritise.

2. Listening to the other person.

Listen is a great skill to have in life. It will get you a lot further than not listening. But just listening isn't where it ends. You have to actively listen. What's the difference? When you just listen, you take in the information, possibly store it for later. Active listening is where you engage with what the person is saying.

How do you engage? By asking questions, by recounting related stories of your own, by discussing ideas their topic has brought up. It's not talking over the top of them, or just sitting there saying, "uh-huh" or some other meaningless utterance.

3. Be polite.

This doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say, but it does mean showing a bit of respect when they do say something you disagree with. It also means, be polite to others around you. Don't talk down to the wait staff. Don't abuse another customer who bumps into you. And don't be loud to the point of domineering so that others, including your date, can't enjoy their meal.

4. Offer to pay for the meal.

I don't care if you're a man or a woman, offer to at least pay for your share of the meal. It's up to the person who arranged the date to accept or refuse your offer. If it's gone really well, and you think there's a strong possibility of a second date, think about offering to pay for the next one if they refuse your offer and pay for the first themselves.

If you're not going to offer because you can't afford it, don't order something expensive. Order as if you were paying for it because at the end of the meal, they might just turn around and expect you to pay anyway.

5. Don't expect anything.

It's the first date. Even if you've hooked up through Tinder and they're flirting the whole way through the meal. Both parties have the right to say, "ok, I've had enough" and walk away. You don't have the right to expect anything - not a hug, not a kiss, and definitely not going back to whichever place for whatever you're lucky enough to get.

Also, don't expect that they are exactly the same in real life as they are online (if that's where you met them) because hardly anyone is. Personally, I'm far more talkative online and tend to be more reserved in real life. I've discussed this in other blog pieces, so feel free to trawl through them if you're interested. They might be a bit shorter, or taller, than you expected. They might be thinner or fatter than you expected. They might dress in a way you didn't expect.

In the end, what someone looks like shouldn't matter, but everyone has their limits. If someone turns up that looks nothing like their photo because it's 20 years or 50kg out of date, you can accept it and enjoy the date with the person who showed up or you can be polite and excuse yourself.

6. Expect the unexpected.

Yes, this is in complete opposition to the previous item. Yes, it does make it confusing. That's life. Deal with it. What this means is really pretty simple - be prepared.

Not expecting to pay for your meal - take your wallet anyway. There's nothing worse than hearing your date say, "oh, I've forgotten my wallet" so don't be that person, especially if it's going well, because it's not a good sign and probably won't get you a second date.

Not expecting to have sex - take contraception anyway. Ladies, if you're on the pill, make sure you've been taking it regularly, there's usually a 7 day stretch when you've missed one or when you first start taking one where the likelihood of the pill not working is increased. Gents, not every woman who says she's on the pill is actually on the pill, or is taking it correctly. Both women and men should have condoms with them, just in case.

Not expecting to drinking - have a taxi/uber/ride share account set up, or know the bus/train timetable. If you drive to the location, either don't drink or give the bar staff your keys.

7. Don't turn up wasted.

Whether that's through drink or drugs, it's a bad first move. Your mates might encourage you to have some Dutch courage, but overdoing it is not the way to go. There's not really a lot to say about that one - just don't do it!

8. Be yourself.

It's really hard to keep up a persona for a long period of time. Eventually, your date is going to find out, whether that's on the date, in a months time or after a year. It's not fair on the person your dating to lie to them about who you are. You want someone to fall for you, not some version of you that doesn't exist in the real world. If you're a geek, own it! Do not be afraid to be unashamedly passionate about something. Not everyone shares the same passions but that doesn't necessarily make a bad date.

9. Remember something about your date.

If you've only met briefly, or met online, try to remember something that they're interested in, and that you want to learn more about. It gives you common ground, and shows that you are interested in them. There's nothing, I don't think, more flattering than being remembered. So if they've mentioned they like tropical fish and you've been to the Great Barrier Reef, saying, "I remember you saying you like tropical fish" gives you a good in to not only talk about something you have first hand knowledge of but is something that you can share.

10. Don't bring guests.

Unless you're on a date for swingers, turning up to a date with extras is never a good idea. If you're nervous and want your friend to be nearby, that's fine IF THEY'RE AT ANOTHER TABLE ACROSS THE ROOM. It is unacceptable for you to bring your friend on the actual date. Anyone who follows me on twitter will know the story of the date I had where the guy had not one but two guests with him - his brother and his friend. It did not end well for him.

So what does make the perfect first date? Whatever you want it to be. The above is just my advice. It's not the law. It's not a guarantee. For me, the perfect first date was one where the guy showed up on time, he was polite and respectful, he listened and he asked questions. We had coffee in the park on his lunch break. It wasn't fancy, it wasn't long. It was an icebreaker. Yes, there were a few awkward silences. We had a laugh about them. We didn't kiss 'til our second date. We'd been seeing each other nearly a month before we slept together.

It hasn't been easy. We've had our ups and downs, our moments where we wondered if it would work out at all. But without that first date, none of the rest of it would have happened. You have to take chances in life. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't, but if you don't try you'll never know what might have been. It took me far longer than it should have to work that out, so if you're young and reading this please take my advice and don't be afraid to ask.

Remember, the longest journeys start with a first step ...

Balance

Does everyone deserve an equal voice, even if they’re wrong?


We see it all the time, but especially when an election is coming up: the idea of balance in reporting, that both sides get an equal stake in the air time or print media to put forward their views and that one side is not unfairly left out of the process.


But sometimes, we see it when an incident has happened and you just know that there’s a right answer and a wrong answer, but the media will give just as much air time to the wrong answer as if it’s just as deserving of the attention as the right answer.


Ok, this can be subjective, and some people might agree with what I perceive as the wrong answer. I’m not by any stretch saying that I am the arbiter of right and wrong. It’s just that, well, sometimes, it’s obvious.


Take medical breakthroughs, for example. This most often occurs when vaccines are made or new medications are being trialled. The journalists will report on the story, because we (the public) like to know what’s going on in the world, especially if it’s going to affect us or someone we know. The trouble comes when they give a pseudoscience practitioner air time as if they are just as credentialled as the doctors who have just spent many years developing the medical breakthrough in question.


I would like to see journalists, if they insist of talking to every crackpot with a conspiracy theory, actually take them to task over their claims. If they complain about the level of scary sounding things in vaccines, like formaldehyde, ask them if they’re aware that there is a significantly higher amount of it in fruit (in that particular case) and don’t let them off with just spouting their own agenda without asking them to back up their claims, just like the scientists and doctors have to.


Another example is the recent protests in America over reopening certain states prior to case numbers falling, or a vaccine being available. They’re no protesting against reopening the state. They’re protesting for it. One woman stood, face covered so she couldn’t be identified, with a placard that read “Sacrifice the Weak” and it turned my stomach. But people like her are not only being photographed, they’re being interviewed on local, state, national and international broadcasts as if their opinion that we should let the old, the infirm, the disabled and the immunocompromised die is as valid as the vast majority of people who are crying out for people to stay at home and maintain social distancing methods in the midst of a global pandemic.


In the modern world there is little excuse for ignorance if you live in a developed nation. I will end this piece with a quote that sums up this whole problem, by Isaac Asimov (American writer and professor of biochemistry):

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

Social Responsibility

The obligation to act for the benefit of those around you, as a concept, is not new. It is, in fact, as old as man (as far as we know). Tribal communities often lived, and still do in some instances, communally, sharing resources and making sure all members of the tribe were looked after. A colloquialism that gets bandied about is “it takes a village to raise a child” and this harks back to this sense of community and social responsibility.


For the purposes of this piece I will keep my observations to what is colloquially termed western civilisation, specifically Australian, American and British societies, as they are three I receive the most information from, and which has been the basis for my study of history in my previous life as a university student.


What does social responsibility look like? The answer is incredibly multifaceted, and it depends hugely on the scale you’re talking about. It can range from the social responsibility any one individual feels, to the social responsibility we impose on multinational companies.


So, let’s break it down.


From a personal perspective, social responsibility is living your life in such a way as to not bring harm to others within your community. This could be not breaking the law, not being rude, being a productive member of society, helping those who may need it, sharing your knowledge and creating an environment in which others can operate without fear or favour.


From a corporate perspective, the responsibilities that any individual might feel is scaled up depending on the size of the business. While an individual may feel a social responsibility to keep the environment clean, the multinational corporations have the influence and money to actually be able to do this on a scale that may be effective.


Today, we tend to outsource our social responsibility. We give to charities rather than help those in need ourselves. While a pooling of resources is a good idea, it removes the personal connection to that responsibility. We also tend to use social responsibility as a mitigating factor to counter something we do that, perhaps, isn’t so great for society. Think about industries which are mass polluters such as coal and gas companies pumping boat loads of carbon into the atmosphere. They might give a portion of their profits to a charity or initiative which cleans up the ocean. The portion of their profits that they give is usually miniscule but still a huge amount more than most people can give, even collectively. They will also use the argument that they are being socially responsible by creating jobs in third world or developing nations, when it could be argued that they are simply exploiting those people for profit as they can pay them less and work them longer.


Social responsibility is leading by example. It is raising your voice to speak for the oppressed. It is valuing your worth and recognising the worth of others, not in a monetary sense, but in a social sense. How can you make your world better? How can you create a society in which people come out the other end a better person that which they entered it?


It might seem too hard a task but there are ways in which we can be socially responsible and in which we can influence others to be socially responsible. You can make a personal decision to be the best person we can be. We can make a personal decision to try not to make the world a worse place for someone else to exist. It’s impossible to get through life without hurting anyone but if we can be aware of our actions, and take responsibility for our actions we can develop a more socially responsible lifestyle.


The funny thing about social responsibility is, it’s contagious (in a good way) and we can purposely spread it. If you find a company that is being socially responsible, talk them up. We live in an age where communication to a wide audience has never been greater. You use your money to support that company over a less responsible company. You tell your friends and family about this company. Maybe they make the swap, so their dollars are going to the more socially responsible company. Then they tell their friends, and so on, until the less socially responsible company starts to see a hit to their bottom dollar. At which point, the less socially responsible company will either continue to lose money or become more socially responsible.


We can also pressure our politicians into making more socially responsible decisions. We can do this directly by voting for those with policies which are socially responsible or, once elected by writing to them and letting them know our feelings. It might not seem like one person can make much of a difference but one drop of water started the Grand Canyon, and the more we come together and use the power of our tribal cohesiveness and fervour to create the change we want the more we will create a world we want to live in.


Oh, now where have I heard that sentiment before? If you automatically said Mahatma Gandhi, based on the quote “Be the change you want to see in the world” then you’d be close but not quite there. This quote does exist but it’s not directly attributable to Gandhi himself. Nonetheless, it’s a terrific way to look at life because social responsibility begins with personal responsibility, whether you’re just making it by or the CEO of a fortune 500 company. So, to pull out another popular quote, go forth and prosper, but in a socially responsible manner.

Homeopathy: Harmless treatment or dangerous quackery

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat. Not all homeopathy is created equal. In and of itself, some homeopathic "therapies" are indeed quite harmless. The harm comes in the claims made by those selling the "treatments".

What is homeopathy? It is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. Thanks, Wikipedia. The basis for homeopathy is simple - if you give a healthy person a substance and it makes them sick in a particular way, then a diluted version of that substance, when given to a sick person with the same symptoms it will cure them. The dilution process is repeated to such an extent that the solution being taken is often completely devoid of the original substance.

Seems harmless enough, doesn't it? Like a placebo? Except placebos aren't given to people in lieu of medicine except in the trial phase of a medication or treatment. Regular patients don't get handed a placebo at the pharmacy and told it's an effective medical treatment.

If you had cancer, and I said to you that I had a medicine which would cure your cancer, you would want to be sure it worked. If I was a good homeopath, I would be able to convince you of this, despite there being absolutely no evidence which would stand up to even basic scrutiny. You take the "cure" I'm selling. You spend lots of money on months or even years of treatments. You might see an initial improvement in your overall well being - that's the placebo effect. If you believe a treatment will work, you can convince yourself it is working even if it isn't.

A positive frame of mind has been shown to have short term positive effects on a person. In pain studies, especially. People use hypnotherapy, breathing and other mind-over-matter techniques during child birth, in particular. This is where the placebo effect can be useful. Parents will also use the placebo effect on small children when they have a bump by giving them a bandaid to make the pain magically disappear. The bandaid is doing nothing for the bump, the parents soothing voice and the distraction of the bandaid are usually what is doing the trick, as well as the child not understanding how pain or bandaids actually work.

But back to you and your hypothetical cancer. You've been taking my homeopathic medicine for months, maybe years. You initially felt better but, as the cancer is still progressing, the symptoms return and are quite possibly worse. If I'm really good at my job I can convince you to try a different treatment or change the dosage of the original. Your cancer will keep progressing. It will eventually kill you.

If you decide that my treatments aren't working, no harm no foul, you can just change over to scientific medicine, right? Well, maybe. But maybe not. Even if you can start scientifically designed medical treatments right away, you are probably in a worse position that you were before I started treating you, so the medications you're now getting might not work as effectively, or at all.

You might think that's an extreme example and that most people use homeopathy for things that aren't going to necessarily kill them. They might use it for a cold or the flu. What's the harm there? Except the pain to their wallet, there probably isn't one for the person taking the treatment. In fact, a recommendation for many low level infections is to keep well hydrated, so drinking a homeopathic concoction is probably quite good, in that sense. But they would have had the same result from drinking a glass of water every day, and saved themselves a lot of money in the process.

The harm comes from thinking that the homeopathic treatment is speeding up your recovery and that you are no longer contagious to other people. The harm comes from that person advocating homeopathic treatments to others who might then seek that kind of treatment for more serious conditions. The harm comes when parents treat their child with homeopathic allergy treatments at the exclusion of all other medicine and that child dies.

So why are homeopathic treatments as popular as they are? Because people like to think they are putting natural things in their body. It's also why natural remedies and organic treatments sell so well. The clients hear the line about "the body healing itself" or the familiar sounding ingredients and are comforted. That is the stigma of science. People distrust what they don't understand.

A classic example of this mistrust is the di-hydrogen monoxide experiments that have been conducted, usually by university students. They convince people to sign petitions to ban the substance. The substance is, of course, a fancy way of saying water. But they used a "chemical" name which sounds a little like an actual substance you wouldn't want to ingest - carbon monoxide - and it scared people into signing a bogus petition to ban water because they didn't want their foods washed in di-hydrogen monoxide.

Homeopathy works on the same principle. It tells people that scientific medicines with long, scary-sounding names are not to be trusted, but their unproven elixir will work wonders.

I'm not telling you that science has all the answers. No scientist worth their weight will tell you that either. What they will tell you, however, is that the medicines available go through rigorous testing, must meet incredible scrutiny, and are pulled from shelves when proven to be ineffective.

Would I go anywhere near a homeopathic treatment? Not if my life depended on it.

ANZAC Day 2020

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day. Every year people gather in huge numbers, in major cities, in country towns, in ex-pat communities around the world, to commemorate the Diggers from Australia and New Zealand. Not this year, though. This year will be different.

We will still commemorate, but it will be more private. Residents of a street standing in their driveways. Members of a household standing for a minutes silence. There will be no grand pageantry. But I think that's somehow just as fitting.

For me, ANZAC Day has always been about the moments of solitude, remembering those who fought, who maybe didn't come home, or came home completely changed by the experience. Many returning soldiers, especially from World War II, don't like to speak about what happened to them. My grandfather never talked about it. All I have are his service records to show something of what he did. They don't want to burden their loved ones with the horrors of war.

While I don't think it is healthy for anyone to keep completely silent about the traumas they have endured, regardless of the type of trauma, I do think it's important for us, the civilian population, to cherish those moments of silence, to reflect, and to consider the impact of those events on the people, on our communities and our countries as a whole.

With our World War I ANZACs all gone, and our World War II vets low in number, it is up to us to remember, to commemorate and to carry the baton forward. We must use our moments of solemnity to bring to mind the reasons for their sacrifice, the lessons learned from these tragedies and the promise we must make not only to ourselves but to our family, our friends and our future generations to not repeat the mistakes of history, to not surrender an entire generation to the futility of war, and to not ever be at peace with the loss of so many for the sake of greed and selfishness.

Lest we forget.

An Athiests Guide to the Bible: The Story of Creation

In the beginning, when God created the universe ...

Well, that's a interesting way to start. Regardless of which version of the bible you read, they all start with this idea. That God created the universe. But what is God? Not who. What. Is the Christian god a physical being, an incorporeal consciousness or an idea dreamt up by man? Obviously, if it's the third option, then the whole concept of the bible is severely put in doubt. The idea that an idea could create anything is, quite frankly ludicrous.

So if we are to believe that the bible is not simply a book written by man to explain that which they do not understand, then God must be either a physical being or an incorporeal consciousness. If God were a physical being, you would think that someone would have spotted him. We have some very smart scientists, high ranking religious clergy, philosophers, and all manner of extraordinarily intelligent people in the world. None of them have shown any physical evidence for the undoubted existence of God as a corporeal being.

That leaves us with God being an incorporeal consciousness. So how do you prove the existence of something that has no physical presence? Well, the short answer is, you can't. And that's the mistake that so many people make about atheism. Atheism in it's purest form is the rejection of the belief in any god because we see no evidence for it, mainly because much of the argument for any god is exactly the same argument for any other god, and they can't all be correct.

Anyway, for the purposes of this post (and future Guide posts) let's assume that the Christian God of the bible I hold in my hand for the purposes of writing this series is an incorporeal consciousness. Now that we've defined what God is, we must define what the universe is. So let's see what my bible says about that ...

In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulphed in total darkness, and the power of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, "Let there be light" - and light appeared. God was please with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness, and he named the light "Day and the darkness "Night." Evening passed and the morning came - that was the first day.

As someone who trusts the scientific explanation for the beginning of the known universe, this biblical explanation is troublesome. The first way in which is troubling is that is doesn't say how the universe was created. Of course, the bible was written at a time when physics of any description wasn't a thing. Even science struggles with the creation of the universe, so this isn't a criticism of the writers of the bible so much as a criticism of interpreters of the bible who think that a description of the beginning of the solar system is the equivalent of the a description of the beginning of the unknown universe.

The next troubling aspect is that the earth was created before light. Science tells us that the sun formed before the earth. The Sun has been around for around 5 billion years. The earth, young thing that it is, is only about 4.5 billion years. To give some context to just how young our solour system (and our earth is), the known universe itself is just under 14 billion years old. So it's not a great start for the bible.

The last bit that troubles me is the separation of light and dark to create day and night. We know that the sun provides the light for the earth and that the spin of the earth gives us day and night. We also know that there is not a distinct separation between light and dark because as the sun sets over the horizon the amount of visible light from the sun lessens, the reverse happening at sunrise. At its extremes we see how difference night and day are but it is extraordinarily hard for ordinary human beings to pick the point where day actually turns into night because, despite there being a time for sunset, the minute (or even the second) after that time is not exactly night, there still being light from the sun visible even thought the sun itself is not.

The bible continues ...

Then God commanded, "Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places" - and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. He named the dome "Sky." Evening passed and morning came - that was the end of the second day.

You can, naturally, imagine the writers of the bible looking at the sky and thinking that, because the sky was blue and the water was blue, there must be water above the sky to give it the colour. Today, many Christians will tell you that the dome is actually just the edge of the atmosphere in an effort to marry their faith and science. It fails to answer what the water above actually is and where it is located.

Then God commanded, "Let the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear" - and it was done. He named the land "Earth," and the water which had come together he named "Sea." And God was pleased with what he saw.

As far as the bible goes, this part I don't really have a problem with. We have earth and water. Ok, the water isn't just called sea, but oceans and lakes and rivers and all manner of different things. This is largely by the by, and if you're picking up on this point as something to argue against the validity of the bible, I think you're probably being a bit picky and a lot petty.

Then he commanded, "Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit" - and it was done. So the earth produced all kind of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw. Evening passed and morning came - that was the third day.

At this point, I have to leave what the bible actually says for a moment and remark upon the utter lack of creative thought that went into the writing of the bible. It feels like it was written by a small schoolchild who has been tasked with writing a narrative for the first time. It is very dry, almost procedural. The texts that engage people the best are not manuals but those where language engages the reader on a psychological and emotional level. The bible does neither.

Then God commanded, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night and to show the time when days, years, and religious festivals begin; they will shine in the sky to give light to the earth" - and it was done. So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night; he also made the stars. He placed the lights in the sky to shine on the earth, to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God was pleased with what he saw. Evening passed and morning came - that was the fourth day.

And this is where we go HANG ON A MINUTE! There is so much wrong with this passage. Not just in relation to the actual science of reality but simply as a consistent narrative. Let's start with the science. The moon is not a light in that it doesn't produce it's own light. It reflects the light of the sun, that's why we get eclipses. Also, the sun and moon and stars are not equidistant from Earth.

The moon is 384,400km from Earth.
The sun is 150,440,000km from Earth.
The nearest star is 4.37 light years from Earth.

The idea that all those things are attached to a dome over the earth is, given current scientific knowledge, absurd. Most Christians understand this. Most Christians have given away with a literal interpretation of the bible. They still believe that God created everything but they make the distinction between the difference in the understanding of man at the time of writing the bible and now, so far as to say that the people who wrote the bible didn't understand how God did it, so they made it up. My counterpoint is always that if they made up that bit, could they not just have made up the whole thing?

Apart from the lack of scientific reality, there is a huge disruption to the chronological progression of the narrative. On day one God created light but didn't create the sun until day four? This doesn't make any sense. Also, God separated the light and dark on day one but he's doing it again on day four? Did he forget? If he didn't forget, what was creating the light on day one and how was that different from the light the sun? This is but one of many contradictions or anomalies in the bible and we'll get to many of them in this series but let's move on ...

Then God commanded, "Let the water be filled with many kinds of living beings, and let the air be filled with birds." So God created the great sea monsters , all kinds of creatures that live in the water, and all kinds of birds. And God was pleased with what he saw. He blessed them all and told the creatures that live in the water to reproduce and to fill the sea, and he told the birds to increase in number. Evening passed and morning came - that was the fifth day.

Scientifically speaking, fish and birds were not even close to being the first living creatures. Maybe the writers of the bible just didn't think the previous creatures were important. The first creatures on earth were single celled organisms. OK, we are just repeating the argument that the writers of the bible probably didn't have any idea about science but this leads to a questioning of the concept that the bible is the direct word of God. If it's the direct word of God and the writers are simple transcribing it, then surely God would understand the science and be able to explain it in a way that the writers understood, without the huge gaps and errors, and why did God wait thousands of years between creating humans and starting his book? But I digress. Lets push on, we still have two days to go!

Then God commanded , "Let the earth produce all kinds of animal life; domestic and wild, large and small" - and it was done. So God made them all, and he was pleased with what he saw. Then God said, "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish , the birds and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, blessed them, and said, "Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds and all the wild animals. I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; But for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food" - and it was done. God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came - that was the sixth day.

As a writer who got a distinction in grammar, I get very cranky when texts are not consistent in their tense or their pronouns. Here God refers to himself as we/us. There are a few explanations:

(a) There are many gods or God is talking to the angels.
(b) There's only one God but he's referring to the holy trinity
(c) There's only one God but he's using the royal "we"
(d) The writers stuffed up

If we are taking the atheistic position, this is clearly a stuff up by the writers. If we're taking the Christian position, it could be any of the other possibilities. This is not ever really reconciled. What is also not reconciled is that if God makes humans to be as himself, why are we not incorporeal consciousnesses? The fact that we have physical form could mean that this is the image the God has of himself or that God has a physical form. Going back to the opening of this post, if God had a physical form we, as a species, would have discovered a trace of it by now, one would think.

And so the whole universe was completed. By the seventh day God finished what he had been doing and stopped working. He blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a special day, because by that day he had completed his creation and stopped working. And that is how the universe was created.

Well, the solar system is not the universe, so that's a bit of a reach on behalf of the writers to claim that. It's not even all of the solar system, if we're being truthful. And there's not much of an explanation of the how, either. This is a huge problem I have with most religions, not just Christianity. God did it is not an explanation worthy of any enquiring mind, even if it was fundamentally true. If I built an amazing Lego world and someone asked you how it was made, and your answer was, "Nona did it" that would be true but not an explanation of how it was made.

But let's look at the story of Creation as a whole. It took 7 days. According to the bible, they were Earth Days as evening came at the end of each day, so seven lots of  24 and a bit hours going by current time telling techniques. But was it? Scientific studies of the bible have speculated that perhaps each day was an era, not a strict day as we know it. This is marginally closer to reality in that it allows time for evolution to take place but doesn't do anything to explain this process meaning that they thought this was unimportant, it didn't happen or the writers had no concept of it.

If you subscribe to a literal interpretation of the bible, you must deny the science that contradicts it and all the evidence which supports the science. I have talked to people both in real life and online who fall into this category. I have no problem with their belief in God but I do take issue with their rejection of evidence-based scepticism.

In the next Guide, in a few days time, we will look at the story of the Garden of Eden: its location and what it looked like. We will deal with the disobedience of man in the subsequent post.

A Month in Isolation

I wasn't going to do a post about the pandemic but, well, here we are. Yes, this is the biggest thing that's happened to the world in the last 100 years. Yes, global economies are stagnating or failing. Yes, thousands of people are dying. How could I not talk about it?

There are, however, a lot of people far smarter than I who can talk about those things. Historians. Economists. Doctors. I am not any of those things. The closest I come is having majored in history at University, but the 1918 pandemic didn't feature highly in my studies.

What this post is going to deal with is the real world impacts on every day people. People like me, and probably you, who have no immediate political, economic or medical influence on the course of events. We will look at the day to day impacts of a global pandemic on predominantly the working and lower classes.

On Monday 23rd March my workplace officially shut down due to the pandemic. We knew it was coming. Personally, I was quite happy for it to happen. Others weren't. There was a mix of feelings due to the fact that no-one quite knew how long it was going to last, what it meant for our wages, and how our Government run welfare system would cope.

I'm not going to lie. I am in the fortunate situation that a shutdown was not going to affect me financially. I would have qualified for government benefits, I had enough leave I could take to carry me for a short period, and my workplace was able to apply for Job Keeper payments set up by the government as a wage reimbursement for permanent staff (yes, I have oversimplified this package but it's long and boring and as long as I'm getting paid, I'm happy) so financial concerns were not an issue for me.

For other people, financial concerns have hit very hard. Renters who were laid off (rather than stood down) can't pay rent. Landlords relying on rent because they have no other income can't pay bills or mortgages. Businesses have closed, at least for the duration of the shutdown, but many for good. Stocks have crashed. Relying on investments for income has always been a bit risky but, right now, it's probably the worst possible income stream, especially if those stocks are in oil.

So, as far as economics are concerned, pandemics are not good. Those who are rich, and by rich I mean really, super rich billionaire types, won't really notice. They are beyond money. Economics really only affects people who, if they lost a years salary, would be significantly worse off than before. That is, the 1% wont notice the stress of an prolonged economic downturn on a personal level but the 99% will.

Moving away from the economic impact, historically, this pandemic is unprecedented. Even though there have been other major pandemics in history, the most recent being a little over a century ago, the movement of people and things has never been more prevalent. The travel industry in the 21st century is massive. Countries import and export goods on a daily basis. This increases the ways in which virus' can be transported from one area to another. The method for disease control hasn't changed however. The best way we have limit the spread of any disease is prevention.

The prevention of disease transmission as a society comes about in several ways. Vaccination is a medical way of preventing transmission, however, it only works on a individual level unless enough of the population is vaccinated and then we develop what's commonly referred to as herd immunity. Vaccination is an imperfect science, though. No vaccine is 100% effective. They also take a long time to develop so, when faced with a novel virus as we are now, we cannot rely on vaccination being the first line of defence. It is going to be a year at the very minimum before we have a working vaccine suitable for humans. While it isn't going to be part of the first wave of stopping the spread of Covid-19, it will become important for subsequent waves of this virus by protecting individuals and providing herd immunity.

Not wanting to get inundated by anti-vaccination types: yes, you can get herd immunity through natural immunity. How this works is exactly the same as vaccination induced herd immunity except that it requires the vast majority of the people in a given population to contract a virus, develop antibodies and survive. This is perfectly reasonable for diseases that are fairly mild. It's not such a great thing for diseases with highly unfavourable outcomes. This leads into the discussion of death rates and contagiousness of Covid-19 and as this is getting too far to into the medical side of this pandemic, I will leave that aspect to the virologists and other medical experts.

The other way to halt transmission is through contact denial. Washing your hands and keeping physically distant from people is how this works on an individual level. Shutdowns and quarantines are how this works on a societal level. Where I live, we are in what we are calling Stage 3 restrictions. The basics of this level of societal distancing means that people are not allowed to congregate in groups of more than 2 outdoors unless in a family group. Restaurants and cafes are restricted to take away menus only. Schools are not closed but students are advised to stay home unless their parents are essential workers. No sports are running except horseracing. Beaches and public spaces are either closed or limited in the number of people allowed to be in the area.

What does this mean for me? I'm not working as I work in sport and rec, which came under Stage 1 restrictions. I also live with a person considered to be in the vulnerable category - my mum. She's 82. She's pretty healthy for her age but she is a much greater risk of unfavourable outcomes. This means that my son and I have to be extremely careful with bringing the virus back into our house. I pulled my son out of school as soon as I could. We have been self isolating now for a month. My son has been going out and walking to do exercise, I have been exercising at home. This means that, except to do grocery shopping, I have not left the house in a month.

This extreme physical isolation has profound psychological ramifications. I suffer from anxiety and depression, though I am not currently medicated for either, I am also an introvert. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I was quite happy for my work to be shut down early. For the first week, I was doing extraordinarily well. My anxiety was low because I wasn't being potentially exposed to the virus. Our family was safe. But here's the thing: as any introvert will tell you, it's not that we only want to be in our own company, it's that we reach our social exhaustion level a lot quicker than other people.

For me, I missed the kids I worked with. They exhaust me completely. I complain about work a lot. But I do miss it when I'm not there, especially for extended periods of time. So while my anxiety was low, my depression was growing. It was not a suicidal depression. It was just an overwhelming emotional fugue. During the next two weeks, I had three migraines, I would cry at the drop of a hat, and I was irrationally irritable. My motivation for anything productive vanished completely. I would think about things to do because I fundamentally knew I had to do something to get me out of this funk but I constantly procrastinated, doing anything to not do something.

I eventually had to do something. I had to go grocery shopping. I had to get dressed and leave the house. And I did it. I like grocery shopping. It's not something I find stressful (except when everyone has been hoarding and I can't actually get half the stuff on my list) because its a very structured experience. That's when I started to realise it wasn't just the kids I was missing from work. It was the structure. It didn't come as an epiphany. It sort of burbled around in my brain for a few days trying to come to some sort of conclusion.

What finally got my brain to click was a post of Facebook by one of my friends of an isolation well-being checklist which contained things like "do one thing to get your heart rate up" and "be mindfully present to something you see." Most of the things on that particular checklist were of no interest to me at all but the concept it represented grabbed hold of me. Here was the structure I needed.

How did I put this into practice? I made myself a schedule. It seems really obvious but this is what happens with depression and anxiety. Your brain just doesn't make connections like it should. My schedule wasn't just a list on a piece of paper, though. It is on my phone, as a list of reminders, with alarms to tell me to do the next thing on the list. I've broken the day between 9am and 9pm into hour long increments. There's meal breaks scheduled. It's full of things I like to do. Obviously, some things can be done at the same time. Some things take longer than others. But that's ok. It's not the actual time it takes that's important, it's the sense of achievement in ticking something off once it's completed.

This blog (as well as my poetry one) are on my schedule. This post has taken me several hours to write, others mostly won't be this long. Probably. It is one of the last things on my schedule precisely for this reason. If it takes longer than its supposed to, it's fine.

So what has this previous 4 weeks in self imposed isolation taught me? I do need social contact and social media just doesn't cut it all the time. I need strict structure. It's why I'm bad at online learning. I don't have the self discipline. I need an external schedule to follow, even if it's one I've created. Anxiety and depression don't go away when your circumstances change, they just change their manifestations.

And what does the future look like? Immediately, much the same as it does right now. For the next 10 to 12 weeks, I probably won't be working. My son won't go back to school until we are out of restrictions and will continue to do home schooling. I'm hoping that the grocery shopping will return to some sort of normal soon because this hoarding is completely ridiculous. I'm also hoping that people manage to stick with the social distancing guidelines and the government don't rush the reopen purely for the sake of the economy.

Lastly, maybe we can carry some of the lessons we've learned into the future. The ability to work and school from home more easily, especially for those with disabilities, is hugely important. The respect and love for our emergency services personnel needs to move into our future interactions as well. And we need to look out for each other. In the last 4 weeks, I've seen more people ask their fellow humans how they are, and actually mean it. Let's not stop doing that when this pandemic ends.