The End of Faith - Read Sam Harris and wake up

 

 

You would know by now that I call myself an atheist. Of course, as Richard Dawkins said, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." Well, that someone is me!

Richard Dawkins wrote about this book, "The End of Faith by Sam Harris is a genuinely frightening book about terrorism, and the central role played by religion in justifying and rewarding it. Others blame 'extremists' who 'distort' the 'true' message of religion. Harris goes to the root of the problem: religion itself. Even moderate religion is a menace, because it leads us to respect and 'cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence'. Why did men like Bin Laden commit their hideous cruelties? The answer is that they 'actually believe what they say they believe'."

 

Read the book online here

 

At last here is a book that focuses on the common thread that links Islamic terrorism with the irrationality of all religious faith. "The End of Faith" will challenge not only Muslims but Hindus, Jews, and Christians as well. It is a must-read for all rational people.

 

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The lives I haven't lived

 

"Flamme empor" with "Melbourne" in the background

 

Some people had their life flash before their eyes, often during a near-death experience. Gazing into a blazing fire on a cold winter's morning is far from a near-death experience but can induce a similar phenomenon, even more so when fortified with a steaming glass of "Glühwein".

 

My Burn Notification BN0173362

 

By the second glass of "Glühwein" I felt extremely grateful that I was sitting here at "Riverbend" rather than somewhere in (c)old Germany, which would have been the case had I never had the courage to take that first step and leave the "Vaterland" more than sixty years ago.

And, as unlikely as it may seem, I may have continued driving a delivery truck around Canberra, had I not seen that advertisement in the "Canberra Times" which led to my becoming a bank officer with the ANZ Bank, which was a career good enough to aspire to even for an Australian school-leaver, let alone someone whose school education was almost entirely useless by the time he stepped ashore in Melbourne.

I could have seen out my working life, as so many others did, working for the bank and living a good and stable 9-to-5 life until my retirement. I could have accepted my good fortune but I refused what was spread before me and turned by back on it. I refused, so as to better hunger for what had so far been denied me, because to enter the promised land was to despair to ever coming near it. And on I went, holding everything at arm's length, and coming closest to arriving when farthest from it.

I could've started a new life again in Germany when I returned after two years, but both my parents refused to take me back in, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I wouldn't have mustered the courage a second time after being spoilt again with three home-cooked meals a day and clean underwear and an ironed shirt every morning.

And so on I went to South-West Africa which was like Germany but with blue skies. I fitted in well but again I refused to accept my good fortune and kept looking for that promised land, which I found a year later in Papua New Guinea. It was everything I had ever wanted from life but it was also too close to arriving, and so, after several years, I left again.

And on and on I went, one country after another, always holding things at arm's length, until, finally, I am sitting here beside a blazing fire on a winter's morning, holding nothing more at arm's length than a steaming glass of "Glühwein". Somehow I've got this far! Sometimes it seemed like driving a car at night. I could see only as far as the headlights, I couldn't see where I was going and very little of what I passed along the way, but somehow I managed to make the whole trip.

Now the only trip left is to the house for another glass of "Glühwein"!

 

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Another siren call I heard some years ago

 

 

It has been quite some years since I received a message like this from the U.K. I have kept it for all this time to remind myself of how life used to be before Domesti-City had swallowed me up:

 

"Dear Peter, I work for WYG International, a leading British consultancy firm working on development projects worldwide. We are currently preparing an expression of interest for the Asian Development Bank’s “Strengthened Public Financial Management Project” in Kiribati – please find attached the Terms of Reference for your information. I have found your profile online and wondered if you might be interested in one of the positions. We are currently looking for a Treasury Specialist/Team Leader and an Attaché Specialist to be included in our team for this project – you can find the descriptions of the positions in the TORs attached. I only have a very brief version of your CV, so I wanted to check whether you had experience of using Attaché accounting systems and whether you think you’d be qualified for either of these positions? The project is due to start in early April 2012, and will run for 21 months – the Treasury Specialist will have 10 months of inputs and the Attaché Specialist 3 months of inputs during that period. The ADB is following the Consultants Qualification Selection method, meaning that we will not need to submit a full proposal, and we should know relatively quickly whether we have been successful in our application (the deadline for submission of EOIs is 11th February). WYG International has a specialist public finance management practice area, and we are currently expanding our work in South East Asia and the Pacific. We have a representative office in Cambodia and have significant experience of working with the ADB, including a current project in the Solomon Islands, large PFM reform projects in Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Laos and previous experience in small island states, including the Maldives and Fiji. We are therefore confident that we have a strong chance of being selected for this assignment. If you would be interested in being included as part of our team, please send me your latest CV (stressing your Pacific islands and Attaché experience as much as possible) as soon as you can – as I mentioned, the deadline for submission is the 11th February and we need to ensure that we have the right team in place before submission. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have in the meantime. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Kind regards Sara Breen Senior Consultant WYG INTERNATIONAL LTD 100 St John Street, London, EC1M 4EH"

 

Of course, there was a time (before email and the internet) when a single phone call was enough for me to give up a secure job, pack up my things, and follow the siren call of yet another challenge in yet another country. Alas, not anymore. I am now stuck in this big place called Domesti-City which won't let me step onto that "canoe that flies" and wing it to Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas), and so I sent this email in reply:

 

"Hello Sara, thank you so much for your email. What you have to offer is indeed very tempting but, alas, I am no longer 'in the game'. My knowledge of ATTACHÉ has also become somewhat dated even though I was one of the first to use it after Michael Rich, the owner, had bought out the rights from MICROTIGER in the USA and 'Australianised' it for the local market way back in the 1980s. I am now a self-funded retiree and live on the beautiful South Coast of New South Wales in Australia. Under Australian tax law, being a self-funded retiree makes me entirely tax-free but also does not allow me to re-enter the paid workforce which is another reason why I can't answer this tempting siren call ☺ However, I know from my past assignments that consulting firms sometimes find that a member of a team suddenly becomes unavailable. Should you find yourself in such a situation, I would be happy to bridge the gap for a much shorter period of time."

 

Another faint echo of a siren call I heard all those many years ago.

 

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P.S. The name Kiribati is the local pronunciation of "Gilberts", derived from the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands. Gilbertese or Kiribati (sometimes Kiribatese, a mixture of both) is far from extinct, and just about all Gilbertese use it daily. Only 30% of Kiribati speakers are fully bilingual with English, meaning that the language is in no current danger of being swallowed by English. It is written in the Latin alphabet, and has been since the 1840s, when Hiram Bingham Jr, a missionary, first translated the Bible into Kiribati. Previously, the language was unwritten. Bingham had only a typewriter with a broken "S" so it does not occur in the language and "ti" is used for that sound instead. One difficulty in translating the Bible was references to words such as "mountain", a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati at the time (only heard in the myths from Samoa). Bingham decided to use "hilly", which would be more easily understood. Such adjustments are common to all languages as "modern" things require creation of new words. The Gilbertese word for airplane is te wanikiba, "the canoe that flies". Almost as good as the Pidgin Inglis word for helicopter: Mixmaster blong Jesus Christ. I just thought you might like to know ☺ .

 

The School of Life

 

Go to www.theschooloflife.com

 

There is a quote that says, "it’s never too late for new beginnings in your life". We are all trapped in a myth that there is a certain age limit on when you can start to learn and when it is too late. This is a thought that needs to be forgotten. If you hate your job or career and crave a new change then it is never too late to start.

Many people assume that skill development is an ‘age sensitive’ thing and can only apply to people who are just starting their career. Whether you are 17 or 75, there is no reason why you can’t start now. Age is nothing but a number. In fact it is said that learners of the average age of 80 are less likely to develop brain-related illnesses such as dementia.

Learning is a necessity. It is simply a tool that nourishes our mind and relieves our soul. Learning new skills is a way of preparing you to feel more ready to take on new challenges and opportunities that will come your way. It keeps your mind engaged and allows you to explore new paths for your future.

It isn’t just about making money; it is about protecting your wellbeing, making sure you are enjoying what you do and allowing the world to open up new opportunities for you. Don’t be afraid to take on a new challenge, it could be the best thing that you ever do. Which is where "The School of Life" come in.

 

 

I haven't been to my favourite op-shop in the Bay for a while and I'm sure they're missing me. As soon as the verandah is done and the weather has warmed up a little, I'll be back in there but for the moment I'm still going through some past treasuries I picked up several months ago, one of which is Alain de Botton's Volume 1 of "The School of Life".

 

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

I don't know why anyone would surrounder such an engaging book to an op-shop because it's the sort of book that you'd dip into time and time again, as I've been doing this weekend while sitting on the jetty and facing the timeless river. My only regret is that I didn't read it fifty, even sixty years ago, although I'm consoled by the copyright imprint on the inside page: "First published 2012 by Macmillan Publishers Limited".

By that time I had already committed most of my life's biggest mistakes, but as they say, "it’s never too late for new beginnings in your life".

 

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Waterlog

 

 

I grew up far from the sea or even a river or swimming pool, when swimming was the thin line between waving and drowning. Now that I am old, and after having spent almost a lifetime near the ocean, swimming to me has become a moving meditation, a way to escape, to breathe, to find peace in the chaos of life.

Which is why I enjoyed Roger Deakin's book "Waterlog", which puts into words my own feelings about water: "When you swim, you feel your body for what it mostly is — water — and it begins to move with the water around it ... The swimmer experiences the terror and the bliss of being born. So swimming is a rite of passage, a crossing of boundaries: the line of the shore, the bank of the river, the edge of the pool, the surface itself. When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens. Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking-glass surface and enter a new world, in which survival, not ambition or desire, is the dominant aim ... You are in nature, part and parcel of it, in a far more complete and intense way than on dry land, and your sense of the present is overwhelming." [page 3]

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

Perhaps our profound response to water appears to be our evolutionary inheritance — we came out of the ocean, of course, but never fully. As Roger Deakin writes: "We spent ten million years of the Pliocene era of world drought evolving into uprightness as semi-aquatic waders and swimmers in the sea shallows and on the beaches of Africa. We went through a sea change to become what we are, and our subsequent life on dry land is a relatively recent, short-lived affair. Apart from the proboscis monkey of Borneo, we are the only primate that regularly takes to the water for the sheer joy of it. We are also singularly hairless like dolphins and, alone amongst the primates, have a layer of subcutaneous fat analagous to the whale’s blubber, ideal for keeping warm in the water." [page 147]

There is something primordially powerful about immersing yourself into the water and propelling yourself into motion and silent thought, the daily bustle of the world left to the land. "As you swim," Anaïs Nin wrote in her beautiful meditation on leisure and the art of presence, "you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances."

Let these thoughts sink in when next you sink into the water. To me, the best thing about swimming is that water doesn't know how old you are!

 

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