Lest We Forget - the universal battlefield from jon Pullman on Vimeo.

In October of this year, i took my elderly parents to Belgium. Like many of his generation, my father, having lived through a world war, retains a keen interest in the events and stories of both the global military conflicts which have come to define the 20th Century.

We shuffled round the war museum in Ypres, trudged through a stretch of surviving trench in the fields beyond the city, and with dusk falling, wandered silently between the gravestones of a cemetery dedicated to the fallen of the Great War.

Having visited these places, taken the pictures, and gathered the footage I decided to put together my own reflection on World War I, or “the war to end all wars” as it became known.

As often with projects of this sort, the scope widened out from the originating idea and become a more general observation on warmongering.

The means to conduct battle may have become more sophisticated, and the legal justifications to wage it more ideological, but the aberration in human collective behaviour which resorts so readily to killing other people as a way of resolving conflict persists. It is an instinct which shames us all, and especially so after the visceral horrors of our recent history. 

At a time when we are encouraged to remember the particular sacrifices of our own countrymen in the defence of a perceived good, there is also an urgent need to consider the loss and waste of all the victims of war, and to recognise the reality of the greater battle; one which goes beyond patriotism and politics.

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In a mad start to May when international newsdesks have been smoking with the combined heat of wars, rumours of wars and ghastly natural disasters, it may be a comfort for some readers that the news editors representing them can remain focussed on local stories for local people. 
 
It’s all very well having elephants in the room, to be studiously ignored for ever and a day but sometimes the sheer oppression of it all makes leaving the room altogether a much more attractive option.
 
Whether the elephant in question happens to be Israel, US imperialism, or the uneasy knowledge of historical western connivance in the whole sorry mess of junta-led regimes like the one in Burma currently allowing the people of its country to literally rot, the burden of helpless despair can result in an impulse to disengage from the lot.
 
At such times the sorry plight of humanity might seem so intractable and self-inflicted that the fortunes of endangered species other than our own might sometimes appear more worthy of care of attention. This is understandable, and there are countless local publications, special interest magazines, glossies and news “comics” available to provide a sanctuary of distraction for the world-weary.
 
Nevertheless I would expect a bit more gravitas from the The Scotsman. Although claiming to be “Scotland’s national newspaper”, and therefore presumably seeing itself as the preferred source of serious news information for the nation, it leads today on the Pandas from China coup, while the genocide by neglect unravelling in South East Asia comes in on page 4. This is an interesting juxtaposition of priorities, with survival being the theme in both cases, but it is the editor’s job to make a call based on a perception of what the target readership are most interested in and he presumably knows something that I dont.
 
The other coup, not the Edinburgh Zoo one, but the one involving silly men in masks and guns over in Beirut appears on page 22, copping marginally more space than the ad for Scotland on Sunday’s UEFA Cup Final souvenir pullout.  
 
Now I have nothing against pandas, despite their Chinese credentials, and nor can anything be taken away from Rangers’ European achievement, but if the Scottish conversation with itself about political, broadcasting or any other sort of autonomy is for real, then surely the newspaper that claims to speak for, reflect and inform the nation as a whole should be seeking to put a bit more distance between itself and all the other tabloids. 
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Tesco

Today, a few words about a supermarket.

TESCO DOESN’T LOVE THE PEOPLE OF EDINBURGH!

I was instore at Tesco metro on Clerk street yesterday. More check-in than checkout, the till queues stretched backwards and deep into the aisles, where shoppers had to negotiate lines of lightly snoozing customers, and a basket-strewn floor to select the least guilty-looking Israeli pepper. The alarm system at the door exit was oversensitive, obliging the uniformed security man to further detain those lucky enough to have paid for their stuff and almost got clear of the place, only to have their bags subject to a further rummaging. But the long wait, parked beside toiletries and pre-washed salads provided adequate time to scrutinise the various suspended ad boards, urging you to save more efficiently, spend more conveniently, and, with the money that’s left, get insured with Tesco Finance.

But despite all those garish invitations to help manage our lives, and ease us through the labyrinth of consumer choice, Tesco doesn’t love us really. It loves profits and passing trade and opportunities for self promotion, but it doesn’t love us. It doesn’t give a monkeys about local traders, be they in booze Britain or South East Asia, but it does have time for local council planners, and pliable government officials. It does of course like docile Clubcard holders (an analysis of spending habits is, after all, a great way to get to know somebody better), but it really has a problem with anybody who dares think ill of their manners or motives, and worse still, gives vent to them. All of which simply encourages the subversive in me. How soon after starting to parade along the shopping forecourts of Tesco outlets with a placard denouncing the company’s muscular intolerance to criticism or handing out fliers with some politely stated facts and figures about the ramifications of its actions, and attitudes, before the corporate legal might of this global grocery giant raises its great clunking fist, in the conviction that it simply has no other option but to sue, and to sue BIG.

http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/newsdetail.php?No=852

Then onwards to Edinburgh’s west end. And oh, urban dislocation most magnificent! The sheer abeyance of the city’s main thoroughfares under the full assault of the current road works has become so bad that it’s actually rather good fun. I can think of no greater restriction on vehicular or pedestrian progress currently in force at the end of Princes Street than a full US occupation. With America having already invaded Scotland on account of its part in the long-suspected UK-wide incubation of Islamist terror, one could imagine the barriers and fencing along Shandwick Place and half of Lothan Road to be a security measure in an attempt to curb the upsurge in sectarian violence. Although intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants is not uncommon in recent times, the tensions aroused by a conspicuous and sometimes cavalier military presence seems to have stoked old enmities. Yellow-jacketed private security men, (with alleged links to Tesco) armed with plant machinery and very long bits of piping now patrol the buffer zones in between Russel Square and Queensferry Street, while overall control is being co-ordinated from the golf clubhouse at Murrayfield, the palatial headquarters of Edinburgh’s Green Zone.

Sitting on a window stool at Pret a Manger watching the steady stream of pallid faces sliding by, I am reminded of the exceptional stoicism of the Scottish people. And as they silently, grimly manoeuvre themselves from pillar to post, past all the chaos of a city they once called home I wonder if the promises of the coalition authority (under the auspices of TIE) will ever deliver effectively for a population it supposedly descended upon to liberate from its own penny-pinching resistance to change. A succession of platitudinous viceroys and medal-encrusted military chiefs have publicly committed themselves to infrastructure improvement in general and to the “That’s Right, Another Money Scandal” (TRAMS) project in particular. But it could be a long time coming and the final cost is anybody’s guess. The occupation it seems, could be with us for many more years yet, but as the defenders of such interventionism are prone to say, be it about the progressive policies of Margaret Thatcher or the West’s re-engineering of unfriendly countries, history will be a kinder judge. I Can’t wait.

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stgeorge_cutout

So, one moment Gordon wants us all to salute the union flag and get a warm glow about Britishness, and the next you know he’s flying the St Georges Cross from outside his house in deference to English nationalism. Thing is, ignoring the Prime Minister’s desperate attempt to bat for both sides, whichever symbol or logo or ritual we gather around as a unifying statement of our collective identity, the object of our loyalty must surely first be something we are proud of.

While struggling with this concept, I have often reflected on the good fortune of having been born a Brit and it is true that, in the great scheme of things, we are remarkably prosperous and free and that the vast majority of alternatives are, by a variety of measures, quite shocking. But it is always worth remembering that this is despite, not because of the establishments of the day. It is only people of principle, energy and conscience who over the generations have sought to overcome the conforming pressures of blind patriotism and deference to tradition who have forced social progress and curbed the worst instincts of the powerful.

Various accidents of history, culture and geography have left us largely self-determined, well-fed and safe, but we should guard against trying to take too much credit for this. In response to the objection that Britain is only great off the back of centuries of bullying and exploitation, it could be pointed out that if we had not asserted ourselves in this manner, then somebody else would have instead, a similar argument to the one for selling arms to the Saudis. But while it may be true that we were the first to get the boot in, it doesn’t mean we should celebrate the fact. Defeat of Hitler might be an honourable exception, but then it’s the Russians who deserve the greatest thanks for that.

Perhaps this covert understanding lies beneath a certain reluctance of the English to overindulge in Morris dancing or other similar behaviour, yeomanly bastions of the green and pleasanter places aside, when it’s own national day arrives. Even St Patrick is more indulged than St George on English soil, although this may be more the result of a commercial conspiracy involving Guinness rather than any intrinsic merit or admiration of the Irish. France has its bastille day, and Scotland has its Burns but these countries do have some cause to celebrate an act of defiance here , or a liberation from oppression there without accusations of supremacism or the creepy hint of triumphalism. Certainly, there is a default stability to our lives, and for that we must be thankful, but the small print on each renewal of our contract with the State is always worth studying, lest we sign away too easily what has been centuries in the making. And it is vigilance to this, rather than mutual congratulation on the status quo which I suggest should exercise us most.

The abolition of the 10p taxband, to those who cared to think it through, always seemed unduly harsh on the hard up, and the government is now appearing ingenuous in its “whoops, didn’t really notice that, but look how we are prepared to listen when it is pointed out to us…” approach to an enforced and embarrassing reconsideration. There’s a horrible suspicion that the most likely losers of this tweak in the national housekeeping were not considered electorally significant, besides which they were assumed to be too busy keeping body and soul together, or struggling to understand English, to even notice. Ministers could not have expected their fellow party MPs to champion the cause of the poor with such determination.Not in these days of corporation-friendly New Labour. And now it’s the turn of the nation’s well-heeled financial speculators to feel the pinch. But paying off the banks to soften the rebounding blow of their own headlong avarice with taxpayers money might be even trickier to negotiate with the defenders of fair play.

Then there’s our steadily ebbing justice system. Even a Times correspondent usually more than happy to express his contempt for the berobed peddlers of political Islam was moved to dismay by the recent incarceration of London-born sparky turned ranting apologist for Jihad, Abu Izzadeen. Regarding the latter, anybody who heckles John Reid cant be all bad, and I have considerable sympathy with his indignation about the sacking of Fallujah, among other acts of monumental US heavy-handedness, but the idea of an undemocratically imposed caliphate right here in the UK is a major point of disagreement between myself and the moslem radical formerly known as Trevor Brooks. Still, however distasteful and misguided the man, his only “crimes” were of thought and speech, and for what he said, and for how he said it, he has now been landed with a four and a half year prison sentence.

But just as the law must be dispensed overzealously in order to protect national security, so for the same cause it must also sometimes be suspended, it seems. The Serious Fraud Office, the Attorney General, BAE systems and Prince Bandar should all be tied up together in a large sack, but the full implications of their corruption stramash are grave indeed. If judgements of the highest figures within our judiciary, whose independence from the executive is, after all, an absolute cornerstone of our democracy, are considered dispensable on matters whose legitimacy is finally determined by government, then the wheels are well on their way to coming off the constitutional wagon. Apart from the astonishing deference to blackmail as a means to manipulate the laws and policies of another sovereign country, experts have poured scorn on the notion of Saudi Arabia being in the habit of sharing intelligence with us in any case. If it did, 9/11 should surely not have? Which leaves us with good old commercial interest at the bottom of it all.

And of all the current examples of this country’s venality, its prioritisation of economic interest and its mollification of corporate will, the arms trade is probably the least defensible. Even if you accept the role of modern government as an amoral facilitator of economic growth, a mere rubber-stamper for UK plc, lethal weapons of war, especially the more indiscriminate ones, should be handled with care. And certainly, when a global movement takes wing to phase out, or ban the worst of these, one ought to expect Britain, a country, after all, whose leader exhorts us to be proud of what it represents, to be part of it. Unfortunately this is not the case. A conference in Dublin next month will seek to sign off a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs, and the UK, together with a handful of other western countries is currently seeking to weaken the terms of its application.

Cluster munitions are supposed to be deployed only in combat areas free of civilians but however well intentioned the armies of those that use them might be, the reality is that modern warfare is largely undertaken in civilian environments, and that given the high rate of undetonated bomblets, this is ordinance that effectively amounts to uncontrolled mine laying. As such it continues to kill innocent people long after the end of “legal” hostilities. On this occasion, one can only grimace at the militaristic impulse which continues to define every stitch of the flag, be it the St Georges cross or the butcher’s apron itself, and wish the MoD and its agencies anything but the best of British in seeking exemptions for continued use (and sale) of this awful weapon.

photo7
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I propose two questions. And the answer to both should correlate according to basic principles of common sense…..
 
Which of the two images below best represents the core problem underlying today’s binge drinking “epidemic”?
 
Which of these two scenarios are worst hit by Chancellor Darling’s recent booze duty hike?
 
Stella

 

Still 2

 

 
As a generally prosperous and largely compliant nation,  we have become so wearily used to being hit in the pocket by successive chancellors for our drinking habits, that the latest higher than usual increase in duty has failed to excite the additional level of criticism which, on closer inspection, it really does deserve.
 
The unofficial campaign to ban Alastair Darling from the country’s pubs, which began in Edinburgh’s Utopia bar, has now spread south of the border, while the latest glossy posters on the walls of JD Wetherspoon establishments include a rueful and topical reference to our misguided and mean-spirited Chancellor’s.
 
Such reactions as this might be the natural response of an industry which yet again is forced to bear the brunt of government revenue-raising, but in a wider sense there is the additional rub of this latest price hike being touted as a legitimate response to the much reported problem of binge drinking.
  
On such a matter, the chancellor is either being disingenuous, or he is an idiot, both equally troubling qualities in a man charged with the purse strings of Britain.
 
For the purpose of framing an argument against this latest example of muddled, or just plain cynical, treasury thinking, I make no apology  for a defence of beer drinking, because ale, after all, is the wholesome, time-honoured beverage most associated with the great British pub and it is this same cultural institution which is now further threatened by Darling’s inability or unwillingness to grasp the consequences of his budgeting strategy.
  
The imposition of an unprecedented 4p on a pint (a 13% tax rise), with more increases of 2% above inflation planned over the next four years  might just be tolerable if it were clearly aimed at curbing the culture of alcoholic abuse, especially among the young, which the government claims to be so worried about.
 
But as Mike Brenner, the Chief Executive of The Campaign for Real Ale pointed out recently “This budget will do nothing to stop binge drinking, but it will lead to pub closures on a huge scale and widen the gulf between supermarket and pub prices”.
 
So while pubs, many of them run as small businesses, will be compelled to pass on the increases to its customers, the nation’s flagship superstores, with their financial muscle and wide range of staple groceries will remain capable of aggressive, competitive discounting on the most popular alcoholic products.
 
Competition law prevents businesses from  discussing prices with each other, but while Tesco claim to be fully supportive of a mandatory ban on cut-price alcohol across the industry, it remains to be seen if Gordon Brown possesses the requisite level of political courage to face down all the vested business interests involved.
 
Meanwhile, as the discepancy between a drink in the pub, and the one indulged in on street corners or behind the closed doors of suburbia continues to increase, the ludicrous implications are clear. The naturally self-regulating mechanism  of well-run community pubs, the “local” since time immemorial, and responsible social drinking in the ambience of beer halls or winebars takes a further hit, while unsupervised, gratuitous, intoxication fuelled from supermarket shelves and towering promotion stacks continues unabated. 
 
All those regulars, those raconteurs, those robust, but financially struggling  pensioners, the football enthusiasts who’d rather watch the televised game in company, and the many ordinary folk who simply like a drink and some interaction while they’re at it, are effectively penalised on account of a  delinquent minority for whom theses same duty increases can still be artfully evaded.
 
So, for example, how about an actual reduction in duty on naturally brewed, high quality, and “session strength” (ie relatively weak) Real Ale (a fitting reflection of today’s preoccupation with home-sourced, organic produce) counter-balanced with prohibitive rises in the cost of alco-pops and suppression of all the advertising that goes along with it. In other words, an acceptance of our attachment to alcohol but coupled with some intelligent tax targetting to change the emphasis of it’s use.  
 
In short, some sensible and fair-handed decision making which addresses the real issues and elevates principle above the most powerful commercial lobbies. 
 
Now that really would be radical.   
  
 
 
  
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smeatonator

  

I was never much smitten by John Smeaton. Nor was I especially reassured by the bulwark against Jihadism, or its threat to our way of life that his man-in-the-street intervention at Glasgow Airport supposedly represented. 

Medals for gallantry, world acclaim for trademark celtic pluckiness, and a media profile to make faltering celebrities choke on their champagne, it all seemed like an overplayed propaganda stunt in the war against terror,  just like the tabloid treatment of our taliban-busting young prince Harry.

So it was with nothing less than gleeful satisfaction that I heard news of some fellow compatriots, foot soldiers of this latterday William Wallace, and themselves unsung participants in the Glasgow mayhem, stepping somewhat belatedly out of the woodwork and casting aspersions on our hero’s alleged heroism. Their testimonies to Smeaton’s exaggerated involvement in the subduing of desperate, bungling, and in one case burning, clinicians turned terrorists, comes across with typical, down-to-earth, Scottish drollness, and there is no reason to doubt them. Even more telling in this hopefully conclusive exposure of the politics behind the hype was the nature of Smeaton’s own reaction to the story.

Echoing a sentiment expressed many times over in the course of his transatlantic lap of honour, he empasized a reluctance to accept acclaim while repeating a wish that other, equally deserving locals, had been similarly recognised. For all his bewilderment at being so singled out, Smeaton insists it would have been rude to spurn the mantle of greatness that the establishment and a media-whipped public were so urgently keen to wrap around him. 

Perhaps now the cynically manipiulated arbitrariness of it all will become clear, because if the heartfelt thanks of Queen, Prime Minister and country are really as deserved as the hullabaloo suggests, then Smeaton is wasted as an airport ancillary, and should be posted, at officer rank, into the Middle East theatre forthwith. Until then, in my mind, he is just another bloke throwing people’s luggage about with the normal level of disregard, and this latest revelation will hopefully bring Smeatomania the disdain it deserves.
 
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Nobody, not even the most news averse among us could have have failed to notice the loud and lengthy celebrations of post-invasion Iraq’s fifth birthday this past week.
 
It is an indication of how little attention this running sore of the middle east has received from the media in recent times, that so much recapping of the past and updating of the present was considered to be necessary as part of the coverage.

Yet as the years roll by, so the analysis, with all its enrichment of retrospective wisdom, becomes more charged with the enormity of it all. I have been sure in my own mind for quite some time that the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation is the most devastating and far-reaching geo-political event of my lifetime. But from a context of recent Gulf troubles and then on to invocations of Suez, commentators are now reaching all the way back to the Boer War for a comparable British foreign policy disaster.

As an inveterate consumer of Iraq’s ongoing story, most of what was served up by the media as party food for this inauspicious birthday was already quite familiar, but a few delicacies still caught my fancy.

Channel 4’s screening of “The Battle for Haditha” was immediately followed by a program updating us on the fate of that massacre’s protaganists; namely, those same US marines forced by the evidence to retract initial denials and subsequent half-truths and finally admit to knowingly killing innocent women and children. The program told us that all those concerned are now well on the way to acquittal of all charges, and that the army chief who leapt so determinedly to their defence has already been honoured with a promotion. 

At the height of the Abu Ghraib outrage, the US administration insisted that America stood apart from its terrorist enemy on account of a willingness to bring its own wrongdoers to book. Even if we concede, as it seems we must, that the rules of war, for the top dogs at least, are not worth the paper they are printed on, then this latest whitewash, steered by the uncontestable nuances of legal interpretation, and rooted in a conviction that the war morale must not be compromised, must surely end any remaining doubt about America’s utter lack of moral authority in the affairs of the world. Meanwhile of course, that country’s current military hegemony renders such an observation purely academic - for now at least.

Then there was the BBC’s “10 days to War”, which came to its stirring five year anniversary climax with Kenneth Branagh playing colonel Tim Collins addressing the British troops on the eve of the invasion. The reconstructed scene takes to the Kuwait desert, on the edge of Iraq’s southern border and the tanks are about to roll. 

Branagh, one of our most celebrated contemporary Shakepearian actors unleashed one of the great military speeches of modern times, and it was an astute piece of casting. Collins’ eve-of-war oration was worthy of one of the Bard’s very own warrior kings. All that lyricising about magnanimity, and avoidance of hubris. Those soaring, biblically-referenced sentiments about the  region’s ancient, and magnificent civilisation. The perfectly weighted emphasis on fierceness and bravery in battle but respect for the dignity of the dead and the rights of the innocent. The importance of treading lightly, and of leaving the land a better place than before they arrived. All neck hair bristling stuff.

In fairness, the British were never as gung ho as their coalition partners (although their strategic role may have been crucial to this), but oh, how cruelly the Americans have proceeded to subvert each and every one of those noble and eloquently articulated principles of the Lieutenant Colonel’s speech, as it was boomed across the ranks of the invaders on that day in the desert.

Finally, there was Newsnight, and in all weighty matters of the day, there’s no show without Jeremy Paxman, so I considered my quota of birthday entertainment incomplete without tuning in to his own po-faced contribution to the “my, how time flies”, and ” 5 already, but look how you’ve grown” jamboree.

The panel of assembled interviewees included Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff five years ago, and Richard Perl, arch neo-con and longtime defence advisor to successive US administrations.

Even with Perl for company, Powell proved to be the most unreconstructed apologist for the war of the lot, whilst Paxman himself was disappointingly meek in his line of questioning. But like so many  recent post mortems of the conflict, Oil did not even get a mention. Is the fog of politics already closing over an essential part of the landscape of truth as it slips backwards into history?

In the warmth of the studio, where intellectual soundbites often provide the flimsiest correspondence with reality, the ghastly nature of war itself was also too readily dismissed. After the unspeakable death and destruction of two world wars, one might expect any current debate about the present horrors of the middle east to include a rigorous analysis of the principles underpinning it all.
 
However, if anything has been learnt from the slaughterfests of the past,  it is the propaganda impact, positive and negative of one’s own casualty figures. In an increasingly secular and individualistic western world, the value of life is greater than ever, and modern attitudes to warfare reflect this. Forget military sportsmanship, or rules of engagement based on combat-eligibility. There was a time when a soldier would be expected to embrace an additional degree of risk, as befitting his his job, in order to avoid the death of innocents. But nowadays its all about stretching the semantics of “collateral damage” and a range of weaponry, allied to battlefield tactics, that put the protection of one’s own forces before everything else.

As the party winds down, and various friends of Iraq, real or bogus, slope off home with their swag bags, life for the birthday boy goes on, and even this week, another couple of towering ironies presented themselves.

Addressing his nation with that grave expresion of his which always looks so forced, President Bush reassured his people that the final victory in Iraq was edging closer. And the reason for such optimism? Al Qaida, bombed out of Fallujah, and flushed from the central provinces, have now been chased, five years down the line, to their final stronghold in the country’s north. But Sir, Al Qaida did not exist in Iraq at all before you clove the country wide open.

And with all the continued hand-wringing about Sunnis and Shias, local insurgents and foreign fighters, government corruption and Iranian influence, infrastructural breakdown and bureacratic chaos, it is just becoming clear to some of the occupying power’s more astute analysts, that a strong and secular leader is required who can foster nationalism in a way that overrides sectarian interests. Somebody who can rule with a totalitarian grip, if that is necessary, and deal brutally with political opponents and terrorists alike. Somebody in a similar mould  to a certain, ahem, Saddam Hussein, perhaps?

   
 



 



 

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view-of-surgeons-from-patients-perspective-~-2080-542XA

I know i know. Routine surgery is not supposed to induce a near death experience, real or perceived, nor to prompt all those unsettling intimations of mortality that come along with it. But it takes very little to tip me into a perspective that renders everything about being human seem all too fragile and fleeting, so the first general anaesthetic of my adult life for vascular leg surgery was never likely to pass without some epic travails of the mind.

Current mortality rates for general anaesthesia are about 5 per million. These are exceptionally good odds. But so are those governing modern aviation. And lots of people are unreasonably terrified about climbing aboard aeroplanes. Young, fit and healthy is all well and good, but human error, or equipment failure, as with flying, still apply and are quite beyond the wit of patient or passenger alike to change. Which is where a marvellous and too often underrated quality of the human spirit really comes in useful. Without blind hope we would be forced to deny ourselves many of life’s pleasures and necessities.

This difficulty with engaging in certain experiences which are statistically much safer than many of the other things we do without a second thought, stems from the enforced relinquishment of control. Anxiety based on this loss of control is something that affects a great many of us, sometimes to debilitating effect. This should come as no great surprise. After all, we live in enlightened, choice-rich, self-determining times in which we are fortunate to wield control over pretty much every other thing about our personal lives.

Such was my own fear of being knocked out by some error-prone human armed with potentially lethal chemicals, that I explored all the latest and less invasive alternatives to dealing with varicose veins, even though ligation and stripping, a description to my mind all too suggestive of butchery, is still considered, in the words of my consultant, ‘the gold standard’ for treatment of the condition.

It is a mark of my suspicion of other, newer methods, like having foam squirted along your veins, or getting them cauterized into crisps from the inside, that I finally plumped for the gold standard, bringing with it the mildly consoling advantage, given that I had been prepared to dip into my own money to avoid being put to sleep, of getting the operation carried out with the NHS.In truth there was a touch of hubris in my decision to go with the leg stripping option.

I still recall with pride, some ten years ago now, the daft alpha male bravado of cycling home after a vasectomy under local anaesthetic, followed later that evening by a full test of all the plumbing, just to prove to myself, and the world that medical interventions were barely an inconvenience. Apart from going to sleep for a while, I judged that my little local leg difficulty would be a one day mission of comparable insignificance.

But as the date for treatment got nearer, and despite all the assurances given by friends and relatives alike about modern advances in anaesthesia and the consummate professionalism of the medics, I was unable to stem the advance of dread. It announced itself as a draughty hole in the pit of my stomach, and emerged with ever greater frequency from beneath the leaky floor of my thoughts into a palpable, spoiling distraction.

Due to administrative error, the NHS were forced to farm me out to the private hospital at Murrayfield. The prospect of my own room, a distinctly smaller risk of MRSA, and all the benefits of a more personal service should have punctured my gloom a little. Instead, I allowed myself to become even more twitchy. The Murrayfield paperwork, complete with various informational booklets all nicely presented in its own stylishly branded folder, included the confirmed intention of keeping me in overnight, and by my reckoning that could only mean I was getting something done on me that was more major than I felt happy to acknowledge. This proved to be true.

There are two main superficial veins in the leg, the long saphenous, originating in the foot but with its uppermost valve sited in the groin, and the short saphenous, running from the outer ankle and up the back to the calf, with its valve to the deeper vein situated behind the knee. It was my misfortune, most likely through heredity, to have defective valves in both of these, and the whole lot, complete with collapsed and tangled tributaries would have to come out. But if a job is worth doing, I was trying to convince myself, it is worth doing well.

It was over ten years ago that I had first noticed my varicose veins, as I ran motionlessly along one of those gym treadmills with their full-length, face-on, love thyself mirrors. The light was probably unflattering, but there they were, tracking their way, bulging and tortuous up the inside of my lower right leg. At the time I considered them as cosmetically regrettable, but nothing more than. The subsequent sequence of symptoms suggested a growing problem, and one that could only worsen through later life. Ligation and stripping of the offending veins was a highly reliable solution to the problem, it was still freely offered by the NHS, and it was imminent. I should have been upbeat about my special day under the (surgeon’s) spotlight. But I was not, nor could the substantial cosmetic spin-off of a nice new leg for showing off on the treadmill offset my growing anxiety as I trudged up to the hospital reception desk clutching my overnight bag.

The modern prefab of Murrayfield’s main hospital block is a Travelodge with pharmaceuticals. Each room is ensuite with remote controls for lighting, bed position, TV, and room service. The only giveaway to its main function is the tell tale wheels and steel tubing of the bed, together with an oxygen mask on the wall, although perhaps even this is available in the discreet executive suites of today’s modern hotel chains.

Once shown to my room and ensconced, the closing in of perspective became a strangely stepped affair. A sudden and unexpected amelioration might appear in a flash of humour or the tumble of rabbits on the sunlit grass beyond my window but this just as quickly snuffed out by a further, yet more advanced return of gut-wrencing fear.

Propped up in bed sporting gowny and identity tag, and with Lorna sitting faithfully at my side, it was impossible not to imagine the endgame enacted in this way. I imagined being similarly prone, and suffering the slow, inevitable victory of some terminal condition. The love of those closest to you and the occasional distraction of a shrinking world outside, both ultimately inadequate, provided the only bulwark against despair.

The surgeon knocked and entered. He seemed an assured man, although rather too Tory, by looks, accent, and mien for my own taste. He could equally have been a barrister or a company chairman. However, at this point, my only concern was his knowledge of anatomy, the sharpness of his knife, the steadiness of his hand and the general pride he took in his job. The task at hand now was the specific identification of smaller protruding vein systems, those pesky extras to be teased out along with the main stuff, just to make things neat and tidy. But with a signal of absent-mindedness so adeptly picked up by Lorna and caricatured, the surgeon promptly rushed back out for the marker pen, the only thing he had needed to bring with him and which he had forgotten.Lorna rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in that classic pose of self-proclaiming scattiness. A slightly hare-brained surgeon. Good start then! Such black humour seemed perfectly pitched for the occasion and for a moment at least, cracked the tension clean open.

My initial slot for theatre was suddenly brought forward due to a schedule change and everything started to happen with sickening speed. Another knock, a quick visit from the executioner just to check on allergies. “We’re prepped and ready for you” he said “they’ll be along to take you down very shortly” . My only hope now was an 11th hour telephone call from the state governor. It never came.

And so, successive diminishing waves of soothsaying and consolation finally ran out and the nice people came for me. They even let me keep my glasses on as they wheeled me out of the door, although heaven knows they were never going to be needed. Perhaps in that retention of bookish looks, right to the last, I sought some dignity and they indulged me the right.

The world was fast collapsing in on me. A final farewell was exchanged with Lorna as she scurried off towards the exit, but she was of no use to me anymore, and I didn’t even make eye contact.The speed and efficiency of the porters seemed wilful, as they manoeuvred me around corners, along corridors, and into the prep-room, parking me finally and quite literally hard up against those swing doors into theatre. I imagined their inevitable opening, now maybe less than a minute away, and just beyond my oblivion. How ominous and final a fate they seemed to lead into.

I had already seen the surgeon en route. He was fully dressed for action and seemed to be smiling, although he didn’t look directly at me. His own steps took him along a separate corridor, presumably leading to the backstage area, from where as protaganist he would emerge, masked and gloved, into the theatre lights as the stage curtain rose. Meanwhile I was being trundled, like all the punters, noisily and unceremoniously straight through the front door of the stalls.

By that time, my fevered mind was in overdrive. The costumed assistants now crowding in could have been commis chefs, and me a nice joint. Through those small squares of pannelled glass lay a kitchen full of chopping boards and knives, and businesslike purpose. Or they the bio-technicians, running a secret laboratory, bubbling and whirring with test tubes and strange apparatus.By this stage, the descent into foreboding had become a freefall. It was hard to extend even the merest of responses to the surrounding staff, their surgical masks hanging at half-mast as a mark of respect, but with smiles as comforting as demons.Having been brought thus to the gates of doom, I was now invited to make the final transfer of my body to the menders on my own volition. I was still regrettably drug-free at this stage, having been flatly denied happy juice to ease my passage, and it was with indescribable reluctance that I shifted myself over from my room bed onto the soft white slab of the surgical tolley, sleek and stark; minimalist, mercilessly sterile, and quite without regard for the quiet, helpless panic of those climbing on.

At this point, the veneer of self control which had remained intact throughout the morning began to slip. Something akin to a whimper just made it past my lips, together with some pointless slow head-shaking and equally futile facial contortions. Nor could i find it in me to turn and face the anaesthetist, who had introduced himself minutes earlier in my room, and was now busying himself with my right arm.

Even as the medicine man’s mixture took its rapid hold, and his gift of unconsciousness rushed towards me, (bringing with it the promise of a post-op awakening within seconds), I remained (metaphorically at least), gripping the bed rails, with teeth gritted and eyes wild. Inwardly I had run to the furthest corner of the room, with my back pressed to the wall, and cursing. It was the plains of Africa and a group of conservationists were chasing me down from the back of a jeep. It was only as I tired that the tranquilizer dart found its target and I was brought clattering to the ground.

At least I carried the power of my convictions to the bitter end and had the decency to show the most determined attempts to resist the irresistable even as the dripping jaws of aneaethesia closed around me and the darkness came.

I had read about anaesthesia beforehand and was alarmed to learn that after the initial lapse into coma, a state of agitation occurs, or, as I see it, a very reasonable brainstem response to the crisis of being mugged. During this potentially hazardous “induction” stage, all sorts of spastic movements may occur, together with pupillary dilation, irregular heartbeat and errratic respiration. It is the further risk of vomiting at this point which necessitates the hours of pre-surgery fasting. Medication is quickly administered to minimize this stage, relaxing the skeletal muscles, suppressing the gag reflex and bringing corneal activity to a standstill. Surgery can then commence.

And so, mysteriously unknown to me, the doors were swung open and I was delivered unto the high priest, with his scalpel and his fiddling, with all the oozings, and monitoring of vital signs, the standard procedures of scraping and plucking and zipping back up of flesh. It is only later that a vague sense of pique developed at being so excluded from something so feared, so important, and so deeply personal.

As I came to in recovery, I am certain that I was playing with some political thought or other. I cannot recall its exact nature and although my mood was sanguine, the subject matter irked me slightly. I would have hoped for something more deeply epiphanic on emerging from simulated death than a musing on government policy. That said, I had been at a rousing public meeting the previous night organised by a campaign group bidding to save a much-loved city-owned sportsground from being sold off for short-term council book balancing. The church had been packed and the air charged. The principle at stake was enormous. A front row comprised of local politicians was subjected to an entire evening of articulate argument and passionate tirade and it had left a big impression on me. Enough to embed itself deep into my sub-conscious and wait for my return from brain shutdown.

Once I was a basically functioning human again, I was wheeled back to my room and left slowly to unfog. I managed to exchange a few words and punch out a text or two. I sent news of my survival to some, just to let them know I had been in here at all. Lying there, sore but intact, with the posh, wealthy surgeon having already been to cheerfully click approval of his work and gone, I knew I was pleased, very pleased, but only as far as the medicinal equivalent of 15 pints of european-strength lager allows the true appreciation of such things.

rueful2

At one point I tried to sit up, only to be immediately overcome with dizziness and nausea. I grappled for the bed control panel and whirred myself straight back down again. That was a “turn” I thought, and was put in mind of this description for Margaret Thatcher’s latest short hospitalisation episode. Only hers was given national press coverage, and up popped her high-flying acolyte, David Cameron to speak for us all with his “I’m sure the whole country joins me in all best wishes..” etc. But It occurred to me then that I was no less worthy a candidate for such collective goodwill. After all, I was feeling a genuine love for everybody at this point and was quite certain that Mrs Thatcher’s affections for the people she governed so long were far from so unqualified.

window

Outside my window the afternoon was fading, but the grey pall sky had broken a little. Enough light was now creeping around the rear end of the hospital to animate the wet trunks and branches of the trees on the opposite embankment. Each west-facing limb wore a thin yellow shine which seemed a to emanate from within the damp wood itself. It was enhanced, and luxuriant in a Tolkeinian kind of way; a classically half lit scene, modulating in colour and intensity even as my heavy eyes struggled to stay open and gather it all in. Behind the rooves and treetops, great fat feathers of white-bellied clouds reared up; smoothly-combed and voluptuous. I imagined one of them transmogrifying into nurse Galadriel; drawing me in to that celestial, computer-enhanced glow of hers, making everything soft and comfortable. Surely, I thought, this was a superior level of reverie to that available on the NHS.

Sometime later, it occurred to me that hunger was returning. Shortly after that a member of staff popped her head round my door and confirmed that my dinner was soon to arrive. It was only then that I recalled one of the morning’s more peripheral moments, together with a grim realisation of its consequences. The jarring irrelevance of a dinner menu had been thrust in front of me just as the privations of nil-by-mouth and a nervous stomach had rendered all thoughts of food an intellectual exercise, and an unwanted one at that. In the dry-mouthed state I was in at the time, fruit juice seemed infinitely preferable to all the more substantial starters on offer, and I didn’t even bother to look at the options for pudding. “I dont do desserts” I had declared, superciliously.

Eight hours later of course, and room 134 was occupied by a three-course-ready Johhny with a normal, healthy appetite fully re-established. So then, how bitter and foolish I felt as the meal tray was brought in with it’s small glass of orange concentrate and a modestly accompanied breast of chicken.

I phoned Lorna requesting food parcels, and she arrived a couple of hours later, although by then, matters of nourishment seemed less important than pain management. It now seemed absurd to have anticipated a discharge after a mere four hours, together with all the aggravations of trying to get home. As a further aid to my self-pity, the nurse had left my medical chart on the windowsill and Lorna could not resist scrutinising it. My careering blood pressure readings were a fitting reflection of such a gruelling day. From the pre-theatre hyper-tension levels of 150/100 it had plummeted to a dramatic 77/44 while emerging from anaesthesia. It was little wonder I felt so fragile.

gammyleg

My nurse for the night, Carol, was a sweet and lovely lady but with a maternalism perhaps too cloying, too redolent of the suffocatingly loving mother of my childhood memories. She drew tight curtains I would have preferred left open, she brought the means for bedtime ablutions right to my lap, complete with pre-pasted toothbrush, and she refused to allow me out of the bed to pee, bringing instead a bladder-shaped receptacle and clipping it to my bedside. I had to call her in event of success and she would carry it away, no doubt bearing a grin of pride in her docile charge. And I was very docile, it must be said.

With all the fussing complete, Carol withdrew for the night, leaving me propped up and alone and waiting for Newsnight. The only sound was the click clack of the white metal wall clock and the distant corridor rattle of a trolley. However else I might choose to describe this day, from bounding morning rabbits and prowling fox amid the unreachable greens of nature beyond my cell window, the Jacobs Ladder meets One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest freakery of my progress to theatre, and all the stages of recovery therafter, the defining impression was of a butchered leg, and the fact of an operation whose invasive severity I only then appreciated. Beneath the tight dressings that bound it, my right leg glowed with the conviction of the surgeon’s knife. Every incision, every guddle, every wrench and jiggle seemed remembered in my tissue. I am now glad to have began the day in such ignorance.

release2

Emerging through the front door of the hospital at 11am the following day and into the boundlessness of fresh air beyond was a rare moment of simple, unquestioning intoxication with the ordinary. Looking South across the generous, sloping grounds of Murrayfield Hospital, the West Edinburgh skyline, backed by the Pentland ridge and raked by a split and stormy sky, seemed like some mythical city of dreams.

Triumphantly ignoring all thoughts of taxis and chaperones, I limped with exultant purpose alongside the puddled greensward and down towards the hospital exit, just as a day of sharp and violent showers was preparing to release another volley of rain. But never have I been so happy to be lashed sidelong by a scottish squall as now. Wind, wetness, and buckets of oxygen hurled ecstatically against my face and through my hair and even as my skin chilled under the assault, sunshine was chasing towards me along the glistening tarmac. I could have shouted with joy right then and there.

release3

How many “this is the first day of the rest of my life” moments we accumulate in the course of living our own nobody knows, but this Wednesday morning of March was another one of mine, and how I wish they came more easily more often.

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Broomfield
Watching “The Battle for Haditha”, Nick Broomfield’s latest distinctive docu-drama treatement of the Iraqi occupation’s most notorious coalition atrocity, I was gripped by the overwhelming certainty of one thing. Of the many misfortunes that might befall you in going about your daily business, and in the case of this hapless Iraqi family, it was party preparations, nothing could be more terrifying, and lethal, than being in the way of a battalion of totally pissed off US marines.

As an inveterate doom monger who has played close attention to the Iraq war from invasion and throughout the years of its grisly aftermath, the facts of this incident in November 2005, have  long  been known to me. I still recall the day it happened, and the subsequent unravelling of predictably covered-up details.

The massacre at Haditha only came to light because a local had taken footage of its aftermath. In the absence of this evidence, the American military’s non-incriminating version would certainly have gone uncontested. On the basis of this intended evasion of the truth, and given the (characteristically euphemized) rules of engagement (in this case to “clear” four houses) we can all be very confident that there have been many more Hadithas that will never be known about.  

The film itself captures all the chaos and harrowing reality  of that grim day, but the manner of its making has a poignancy of its own too, and, on Friday in the Edinburgh Filmhouse, Nick Broomfield was on hand at the end to elaborate further.

Broomfield shot the entire film in Jordan with a crew small enough, he says, to fit into one car. He enlisted a cast comprising of both real Marine veterans of the conflict, most of them still struggling to re-integrate into American civil life, and local Iraqi refugees, many of whom had fled the country after losing relatives in the rout of Fallujah. The real-life challenges of such an enterprise, with all the residual trauma, of both groups, and the problematic dynamics between them, provided a powerful story of its own.

Initial contact between battle-hardened young American troops, with all respect and trust for Arab people trained out of them, and the Iraqis, some of whom’s relatives may even have been killed by their fellow cast members, was understandably fraught.

Throughout the filming, there were marines who had to cope with the paranoia of being killed or kidnapped. To them, Jordan must have looked, felt, sounded and smelt just like their patrols of death so recently endured across the border. 

Even with the issues of cast dynamics beginning to settle down, Broomfield had several on-set challenges to overcome. With the natural modesty and cultural expectations of Muslim women, some of the critical scenes were more difficult to capture then they should have been. This was especially true of a kissing scene, the only obvious application of artistic license in the film, but an important way of showing a human reality not often depicted in the Arab world, for which Broomfield had to recruit an Iraqi female from the US.

And then there was the trauma. With the exception of the hired American actress, every other cast member had lived through scenes of fear, horrific violence, loss and suffering that none of us are ever likely to get close to. 

The lead American marine, acting out one particularly poignant post-massacre scene back at the barracks, which Broomfield retains in the film, was tripped so intensely into the recovered emotions of his own combat experience that it took him several days to recover. 

Similarly, for those Iraqi women called upon to dramatise the grief of bereavement after the murderous spree is over. A despair grounded in recent family losses of their own takes over and gives the spectacle of wailing and breast beating an authenticity which is all too familiar from years of newsreel direct from the killing floors of Iraq. 

Broomfield comes across as urbane and measured, an impression  strangely at odds with the troubling nature of much of his work, and he clearly treats this  incendiary subject with a careful sense of balance. His non-partisan treatment  of that day in Haditha, together with the sequence of events on either side of it, seeks most of all to depict the victimhood of all involved. 

The Iraqi people may well have been appallingly betrayed by their invaders (and I still recall the grave, imploring face of George W Bush, addressing the civilian population of Iraq just as the first night of shock and awe was kicking off, and giving his personal assurance that they would not be let down) but America’s own service personnel have largely been abandoned to their fate too.

It has long been a matter of the grossest shame for governments of supposedly civilised military nations that for all the training and investment made available to brutalise and dehumanise young men for the efficient killing of an enemy (and nobody should be in any doubt as to this is what it is), there is so little acknowledgement of or support for its consequences. Human beings are simply used by the state to carry out its war aims and then dumped. Those servicemen unfortunate enough to have sustained injuries requiring a lifetime of care may garner a little state benefit, but for all the mental and emotional scarring suffered by so many others, there is nothing.

And as the modern world unfolds to a pattern of such assymetrical warfare, where the capacity for inflicting untold carnage on largely defenceless populations as part of the so called “War on Terror” is so great and where the principles and legality underpinning it is so less certain, i can only imagine that the mental fallout necessitating such help and support would be only the greater.   
 
marine

 


The marines who convened in Jordan, under Broomfield’s care were quite able to admit that the events of Haditha were a momumental screw up. But many of these same men felt themselves let down by the united states marine corps and the policies governing their behaviour in theatres of conflict. The army report, and ongoing legal proceedings in this case are all testament to the reality of what happened and why. Meanwhile, a sequence of dropped charges and plea bargains has largely left the perpetrators of these crimes to pursue free lives. To walk the streets, perhaps, but forever incarcerated inside minds that their superiors, via all their chains of command, may have somehow colluded in breaking forever. 

As Broomfield himself pointed out to his Filmhouse audience, which included one or two folk still inclined to make excuses for western indiscretions, accountability for  any blatant disregard of the international laws governing the waging and prosecution of war must be seen to be enforced. To his mind, however, the buck only really stops at the very top, and in this case, those jauntiest of alleged war criminals, Bush and Blair themselves. 

I’m inclined to agree.


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Having recently been approached to contribute to The Humanist Society of Scotland’s ”Thought for the World” Podcast series and in advance of any such offering being accepted and placed in the podosphere, I thought it high time to research the subject a little, especially as a close friend of mine is herself a humanist celebrant and as such, something of a mystery to me.
 
My childhood in the south west of England was dominated by a Christian fundamentalist upbringing and despite those protracted and excruciating teenage years toughing it out,  it was an experience I now acknowledge as being a useful reference point in these times of fevered preoccupation with God in general, and religious extremism in particular.
 
photo gospel hall

 

 
The biblical certainties of knowing Jesus, together with a hot ticket to eternal life were great, while they lasted, but once I had reached an age to start figuring things out in the urgent jumble of my own pubescent head, it was only  a matter of time before I  jumped ship. And when I did, it was with unerring conviction. 

With such an early exposure to doctrine and dogma, my subsequent shopping trips around the bustling marketplace of -ologies and -isms looking for human meaning, were marked by a zero tolerance for anything that seemed to be founded in faith, ritual or the supernatural. 

I proceeded in the best tradition of iterative questioning, but was easily distracted. There was lots of reading, reasoning and experiential observation, but the exercise was not without a few blind alleyways and some foolish diversions along the way. The conclusions I eventually came to and the resulting lens through which I now see the world correspond remarkably closely with the principles of Humanism which my recent investigations have revealed. It prompted the thought that there must be many other unwitting humanists like myself  walking about out there.
 
Dalai Lama

 


In his book “Ethics for The New Millenium“, The Dalai Lama says: 

“I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being…….We may also conclude that we humans can live quite well without recourse to religious faith”. 

This is as good a summation of humanism as any. 

While humanism functions as an umbrella term encompassing a broad range of ethical philosophies stretching back centuries and representing both religious and secular schools of thought, the contemporary form has at its core a celebration of the dignity and worth of every individual and asserts that moral sense is a facet of human nature which is both universal and innate. Of course, this has huge implications when counterposed with the central doctrines of some of the world’s established religions.

Of these, Christanity, being the religion of the world’s most dominant cultural-political-economic  block ,is the most powerful theological influence, if not the most populous. It holds to a belief that still underpins a great deal of our actions and our thinking in the West. The belief that every man and woman is born sinful.
 
 
 
Garden of Eden
 

Apart from the sheer horror of being confronted with an eternity in hell should one fail to negotiate redemption in the correct manner, there are other, and more immediate, associated drawbacks. 
 
Buying in to the concept of original sin is to cede personal responsibility on some crucial moral issues. Dovetailing with the popular Hobbesian vision of our savage primitive heart (and this is surely no coincidence), it reduces the suffering and injustice of our world to an inevitable consequence of the brutal selfishness lying at the root of the human condition. The only earthly solution that follows from this is a strict set of rules, based on God’s own commandments, to limit our worst excesses. But this can only be, at best, a damage limitation exercise, because salvation is outwith our own wretched grasp. Goodness and mercy can only be dispensed from above and even these things will be scrutinised for authenticity when the great day of accountabilty and judgement finally arrives. 
       
But not only is God the lawgiver, and the sole moral reference point for all human behaviour, he also moves through the world in mysterious ways. So if you happen across the good fortune of a life steeped in privilege and plenty while the other half starve, then it is part of God’s will and that, it seems, is well beyond our mortal minds to even attempt to understand.
 
Yet I cannot think of any virtue or moral position represented by Christianity as a framework for ethical living, apart from the arguable one governing sexual orientation and behaviour, that is not also shared by the humanist. 

In fact the tenets underlying a humanist world view have a clarity and unambivalence not always immediately evident in the interpretation of religious teachings. 
 
“An eye-for-an-eye” versus “turn the other cheek” is a biblical contradiction that remains unresolved. My own observation is that a Christian conscience can be a little inconsistent on this one, and perhaps applied as the context demands. The notion of mankind set out in the Book of Genesis, as the crown of creation, and lording it over everything else,  is less ambiguous, but carries within it all the hazards of speciesism. This might not strike everybody as a troublesome issue, but our modern sensibilities are increasingly offended by the gratuitous abuse or exploitation of animals, and the related growth in popular activism, backed up by a growing body of protective legislation bears this out. The fact that the rights of animals in this, our Christian country, sometimes receive more priority, more attention, and more coverage than some members of our own species is a further contradiction,  and an ironic subversion of the status quo set out in the opening book of the Bible. Proximity, and its distorting effect on perception, does seem to impact powerfully on a pecking order of ethical priorities that are supposed to be fundamental and universal. But we are only human, after all.

Apart from the “capacity” (and the qualification implied by this word is important here) for moral wholeness rightly credited to ourselves by humanism, there is the matter of that more elusive gap in our being. It is a need which religion purports exclusively to fill and is best understood by our use of the term “spiritual”.   
 
spirituality

 


But so entrenched is the interpretation of this word and so disagreeable its associations, that I have a problem using it at all, in any discussion, and not just of humanism, but of any form of expression or understanding about “life, the universe and everything”. 

A recent conversation with a friend who teaches moral education actually revealed what I should already have guessed in this increasingly secular part of the world. Self-development, attention to one’s inner life, and the connection to those higher elements of the mind which allow an exploration of motives, feelings, and responsibilities are all legitimate concepts  to inculcate “spiritual” values in today’s schoolrooms. It highlights an alternative way to understand a “spiritual” dimension without automatic recourse to the supernatural. Here then is a definition which lacks none of the qualities of wonder, humility, gratitude and respect but which is not necessarily the sole preserve of religious faith or non-rational belief.

None of which, however, addresses the bottom line of our own mortality, or more crucially, the lack of anything beyond it, and for me this remains the biggest challenge to anybody for whom, due to the remorseless insistence of rationality, the consolations of a supreme deity with the prospects of a hereafter are simply not an option.  

History, indeed the very world we inhabit today, is littered with examples of the astonishing nobility of which humans are capable. Importantly, these stories of bravery, stoicism, selflessness, and kindness are not confined to the god-fearing. Indeed, many of the greatest, (and often institutionalised), demonstrations of the obverse of these qualities; ignorance, cowardice and cruelty, are  by people for whom the vale of the shadow of death is a mere navigational necessity en route to heavenly mansions, and ought to know better. 

There is surely no more convincing a case for the claims of humanism than that some lives are lived so well, and so flourishingly, many under the burden of provocation, hardship or injustice, and yet, as “unbelievers”, with neither the spectre of divine judgement nor the incentive of individual persistence beyond the grave to shape their attitudes or behaviour. This is wisdom, courage, dignity and acceptance of a truly extraordinary kind. It is the kind possessed of humans at their best. 
 
 
diving bell1

I recently went to see “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly“, the true-story film adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s extraordinary book, written by the author’s nurse and effectively dictated by a single eyelid; that being the only part of Bauby’s body still under his control. 

Here was a typical, contemporary man; successful, ambitious, materialistic, perhaps a little neglectful of life’s more important things, and then suddenly struck down by a rare brain stem collapse into a permanent state of complete paralysis. This was Locked-In Syndrome and a physical catastrophe that, nature throughout its aeons of evolution, could never have been expected to make provision for. Amid all the imperfections of replication, a selective order still pertained, ensuring that an organism’s capabilities were proportionate to its environmental and sensory demands. Even in the epoch of homo sapien, with a supreme level of resoucefulness and adaptability now attained, a structural failure or systemic collapse brought about by age, disease or mishap was never meant to result in the state of existence now confronting Jean-Dominique Bauby, and with it the ultimate examination of what it means to be human.
 
The clever interventions of  science and technology, such soaring testimony to our inventive spirit, had now made possible, through machines and medicine, a dimension to being alive that demanded inventiveness of an entirely different kind 
 
At times, the attempt to empathize with Bauby’s struggle was almost too much to bear; here he was, in possession of a perfectly functioning brain, as yet still the most complex thing in the known universe, but, apart from one good eye and a pair of ears, it might as well have been in a jar. 

And yet, from some invisible place, sown into the li