The Financial Misery

We're all going to die! Death, destruction, misery! The markets are going to collapse, and there's going to be complete mayhem!

Hang on a minute. I'm still here, you're still here. We still buy things which are expensive but affordable if you're careful about what you buy. Petrol's gone down in price. What's the problem?

I tell you what: The "misery" isn't in the supposed "crisis" that we're in. It's in the constant barrage of media hype that we're bombarded with day after day. I've been checking on its progress on Reuters. How long has the so-called "credit crunch" been the headline? Three weeks, a month?

But why? Have people stopped starving in the nation's poorest countries? Are the various altercations around the globe in a state of suspense? Is there no good news to report? (Don't tell me the standard line that no-one's interested in good news. This mentally disturbed minority are the sort who watch EastEnders and Celebrity Love Island, listen to vacuous music and use the word "cool" as if it actually means something. Enough said.)

Is it really such a bad a situation that everything else in the news has to be put on hold? Is it not suspicious that the term "credit crunch" is coined, and soon afterwards referred to as if it is real? (Credit to Channel 4 News last night, who ran a fascinating and off-beat cultural story about Lucian Freud campaigning to save a Titian painting.)

What is a "credit crunch", and where is it defined? If it is defined, was it defined by experts in the field - economists, philosophers, mathematicians? Somehow, I don't think so. If it were, then it has been very carefully hidden. Frankly, I find the politicians who must have come up with the idea laughable, and I find the people who are taken in by it laughable. I have to, because if I didn't laugh then I'd be depressed, which incidentally is what the people who make money out of market turbulence would like me to believe is happening to the economy. No doubt, that is the real reason for the invention of the term "credit crunch".

What a crap state of affairs that, not only does the news spread this tripe as if it's the end of the world, but people actually buy it, in more ways than one. Where's George Galloway when you need him?

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Update (30.10.08): Today's Reuters front-page headline mentions rising fears about the economy. Perhaps, just perhaps, media propaganda such as that same article might have something to do with it. Hmmm.

Faith

Sod the meek.
- The Pope

This month (July 2008), a quarter of Anglicans boycotted a religious conference because of unrest over Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop.

Now, if I boycotted work because it employed someone who was openly gay, I’d probably get the sack. If I boycotted my gym because a member was openly gay, then other members would think less of me. If they didn’t, it would probably be a pretty crass, thuggish, chav-type gym that you wouldn’t really want to go to. If I boycotted a conference on the grounds that one of the speakers was openly gay, people would probably be baffled. The thoughts of those that worship rational thought might even posit,

“Why the big hoohar? He’s giving a lecture about botany. He’s hardly likely to go onto the stage in drag, make a series of homosexual double-entendres, pull members of the audience onto the stage and embarrass them with fake sex acts involving flowers. How dare you stereotype him so severely and unfoundedly on the grounds of his benign, personal and private preferences?”

Well, Rational People, you'd be right.

But the Church? Oh, that’s different. It doesn’t have to abide by moral and legal rules – instead, it has its own set of rules, enshrouding a meaningless notion backed up by circular and dead-ended arguments that it likes to call “faith.” The following brainless pattern of justification is typical and - worse - widely accepted as valid by the 'outside world':

“Why do you believe that bishops should not openly be gay?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?”

“Because it’s against the principles of my faith.”

And so into the black hole the argument goes, the faith-defender hiding behind the ridiculous notion that he believes (in) something, and that that's a justification in itself. They believe it “just because.” Not only that – only to those who are members of various exclusive posses that call themselves religions or denominations does the law give an exemption to sense. Even The Public has been taken in, although we know what The Public's like.

Believe in something because it makes sense, by all means. Believing in something as long as it doesn’t unfairly discriminate against someone else is no problem. But believing in something not only immoral, arbitrary and unfounded but hateful is just one step too far. In fact, it's evil.

There is a further point to be made about the word “belief”. Faith is belief, but without rationale. It is unquestioning belief. “I don’t have to have a rational explanation for what I believe, because I have faith.” The sentence sounds convincing, except that the “because I have faith” bit doesn’t really mean anything. It’s also yet another circular argument: it’s the same as saying “I believe, because I believe.”

Faith is pathetic and cowardly. It’s a cop-out that requires no thought (and indeed, hides from it) as to a purpose; it gives the ignorant a delusional sanctuary, and provides a convenient way of ‘explaining’ something without really giving an explanation. You might as well replace the word “faith” with “bananas”:

“I don’t have to have a rational explanation for what I believe, because I have bananas.”

It makes just as much sense, and it's just as valid a point.

To return to the gay bishop story, such behaviour is childish. If children can’t play with their toys without abusing them, then their toys are taken away. Why does the same not go for religious bigots? I was under the impression that hateful organisations and practices were illegal. They certainly shouldn't be tolerated, regardless. So ban them from practising their faith, if it breaches or erodes the peace between innocent people. The rest of us have to live by these rules, and I see no reason why these haters can get away with such things on grounds that it is “their faith” and that it is “part of the religion.”

By the way, according to Wikipedia, the word “bigot” originally meant “religious hypocrite.”[2]How apt for an organisation that claims to be founded on a doctrine of tolerance and morality.

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[1] Reuters. (16.07.08) “Quarter of world’s Anglicans boycott conference”,http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL1572153620080716

[2] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigot

Nature, God

Nature? Crap. What the hell was God (or the gods, the Architect, Mother Nature, evolution, luck, fate or whatever else you happen to believe in), thinking when he/she/it/they invented the concept of nature and of the sentient being? It’s made a complete cock-up of humans, for a start. It is the nature of things for living beings to die, but it makes no sense for us to (be able to) worry about death. We only need to have the drive to avoid it. Worry gives us the added complication of thinking about death even when there's nothing we can do about it and when we are not in danger of dying. So why have we been made to worry about it? Why do we have to worry about anything full stop? Things are, people die, and the best we can do is to avoid it as much as possible. What’s more, we have in our possession the ability not only of irrational thought, but negative irrational thought. Oh well done, God, very useful that.

Another thing is that Nature would have us evolve to the point where we live in huge artificial communities. What’s that all about then? We’re put together with a lot of people that we don’t care about, who distract our time and attention from the people who matter – those emotionally and spiritually closest to us. While this is happening, we’re surrounded by artificial constructs that house, clothe and feed us, and have to pay particular attention to politics, law and making money, which wouldn’t be necessary in a natural environment. So, while we’re biologically configured to being “close to nature,” Nature has given humankind the mistaken ability to “better” itself by “improving” on these things. Yep, it’s some improvement: stress, cancer, pollution. Abstraction from the real realities of living can only be a bad thing. Whether you believe it damages the soul or contradicts what comes naturally, it’s at the very least not what we’re intended for. The happiest communities are quite clearly the smallest and most tribal communities. What more proof do we need? This is where happiness comes from – working for others because it’s in the best interest of the friends around you, and doing jobs that please you to do simply because they help everyone. Less stress, no cancer, minimal pollution and everyone knows his place. It doesn’t really offer much room for argument when you think about it.

Intelligence is crap, too. Intelligence is God’s way of admitting, “I can’t do a good job of guiding you on the right path, so you decide.” It’s an admission of defeat. Some reliable, guiding force for good God is, then. And it’s a non-argument to say that God’s purpose is to give humanity the ability to think for himself, and that at the same time He gives humans guidance. God’s perfect, right? And if that’s the case, everything He creates is perfect. So we should need no guidance, because we’re perfect creations. Seems like He’s shot Himself in the foot on that one. Or perhaps God knows this fact, and the theists have missed the point.

Intelligence is also evidence of God’s hobby of tormenting His little pets. The most intelligent people I know are hardly the happiest. The happiest people always seem to be those who are oblivious to what’s going on and those who bypass intelligence in pursuit of a simpler or more natural life. So what does that mean? That the purpose of intelligence is for it to be ignored? Or that God enjoys causing misery?

Here we are, held in a perpetual web of artificial worry, through modern living and evolution, that captivates us with things that, any way you look at it, shouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps it’s all a big test, for a higher purpose that we’re not aware of. But to me it just sounds like God is having a laugh. And I don’t think much of His sense of humour.

The Alleged "Oil Shortage"

The laws of profit and loss are simple. If you sell more goods or services, you make more money. If you sell less, you make less.

So why, in a world where we are supposedly facing an oil shortage, are oil companies making record profits? It’s all hype, and it’s all just crap designed to make powerful people more money. This week it was Shell (see main link on title). Even better – the first paragraph (at least, at the time of writing) says that Shell needs continual price rises, otherwise it will suffer a loss in profits. Aww, boo bloody hoo.

There are other examples from around the world of profits increasing over the last 12 months, occasionally even because oil output has increased:

Indian Oil Corp: 17% profit rise[1]
Shanghai Petro: 50% profit rise[2]
Canadian Oil: 400% profit rise[3]

Equally suspiciously, no-one in the media, nor in government, has uttered a single word about the gaping inconsistencies, either to say "haaaang on" or to rationalise them. The conspiracy theories are too obvious and numerous to be mentioned here, and it's getting bloody difficult to discredit them merely for being conspiracy theories, which seems to be the fashionable thing to do these days.

What's next? I predict that, as a result of the problems of Northern Rock in the UK and the so-called sub-prime "crisis" in the US, both countries will soon introduce a raft of measures to allow financial institutions to make lots more mon... I mean, to recover so that they do not adversely affect people's savings. I don't know about the US, but in the UK it's already happening: the government is thinking of allowing banks to be bailed in secret[4][5]. Who needs transparency when it's far simpler to hide problems behind people's backs? And this is despite Mervyn King's excellent statement that:

The only thing that will stop banks taking risky activities is the knowledge that if things go wrong, they, and they alone bear the consequences.[6]

Needless to say, if I go missing within the next few weeks and this Blog is suddenly shut down, then you'll have a good idea as to why.

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[1] Reuters. (31.01.08), “India’s IOC Q3 net profit rises 17 percent yr/yr”, http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKBMA00028720080131

[2] Reuters. (31.01.08) “Shanghai Petro says 2007 net rose over 50 pct”, http://uk.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUKSHA16615320080131

[3] Reuters. (30.01.08) “Canadian Oil Sands profit jumps on prices, output”, http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKWNA784920080130

[4] Guardian. (31.01.08) “New Powers for Bank to Stage Secret Rescues”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/31/northernrock.bankofenglandgovernor?gusrc=rss&feed=business

[5] publicradio.org. (30.01.08) “Bank of England to save banks in secret”, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/30/bank_of_england_bailouts/

[6] Reuters. (24.09.07) “Regulation stalled Northern Rock Rescue”, http://uk.reuters.com/article/personalFinanceNews/idUKNOA03409820070924?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0