Deadbeat has been having a quiet time for a while - winter hibernation explains some of the lack of output, but mostly It is simple idleness. After all, Deadbeat has a reputation to live down to.

Three occurrences have roused me out of my torpor - the first of which was a message from a dear reader saying "beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - please comment". The second was a visit to hospital to have an x-ray photograph taken of my hip. The third is the G20 summit and the ongoing global financial cock-up. These three things have combined to produce the following meditation....

Firstly, alcohol doesn't make us happy - it makes us drunk, and the associated lack of inhibition and self-consciousness produces a spurious feeling of freedom. The downside of this particular drug is that in a significant minority of its adherents it also spawns lethal driving, aggression, violence and life-destroying addiction. These side effects permeate society - see any A & E department on a saturday night, and that is just the most visible tip of the alcohol-related misery iceberg. Only crack cocaine and heroin are more socially divisive - and the downsides of these drugs are to do with funding the addiction through crime rather than as a direct effect of the drugs themselves. Which is not to discount the problems of each individual addict, but personal tragedies do not destroy society. Dying alone of an overdose or smoking a life away is a waste and a loss to friends and family but it doesn't equate in scale to the mayhem of robbery, violence and organised crime caused by the economics of illegal drug supply and acquisition. Deadbeat says legalise them all, or ban them all (can you guess which one I would choose?) because anything else is illogical and hypocritical.

The association of God and alcohol in my correspondent's message is interesting, mostly because it begs the question 'which God?' Throughout human history, one of the most pervasive themes is the adoption by each society of a God and a drug - and the vicious repression of all other avenues of spirituality and inebriation.
In some parts of this mad world you will be flogged for owning a bottle of whisky instead of enjoying a quiet hookah of marijuana - while in England you can legally wreck your life on Tennant's super, but don't smoke a joint in sight of a CCTV camera. A word of advice - don't try to understand this ridiculous situation, it will drive you mad and/or to drink and drugs.

Secondly, God doesn't love us - or if he does (God is definitely male, look at the mess...), it's the same sort of love which keeps children locked in a cellar and repeatedly raped for twenty years. Following the Lamb of Christ lead directly to the obscenity of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. The gentle, humane teachings of the prophet Mohammed (may peace be upon him) has inspired the inhumane exploits of murderous extremists (may the fleas of a thousand camels inhabit their underpants and feast nightly on their scabby privates). How many peaceful Moslems did the Crusaders hack to pieces? How many innocent lives have the Moslem/Hindu conflicts claimed? How much bloody hatred has been expressed in Ireland, by the most empathic and poetic of people - whose division was occasioned only by minor doctrinal differences in the worship of the same God, for Christ's sake? Six million Jews wiped out, for being Jewish. The list of rapine and brutality in the name of God goes on and on, an unbroken river of blood, torture and unspeakable wickedness runs through all of history and is running still. No, God doesn't love us, not a bit. Give me the Atheist's uncaring universe or the physicist's probability theories - or even beer induced oblivion in preference to a monstrous fraud fabricated to justify the worst of mankind's inhumanity.

Please note that all of the vitriol in foregoing rant is aimed at the power-hungry interpreters and usurpers of divine will, not the actual belief or god himself. Deadbeat is still of the opinion that, if he exists he is locked into omni-impotence (see Deadbeat 9) and therefore useful only as a theoretical expression of some sort of perfection, an ideal.
There's the rub - ideals are beautiful but if they are adopted as principles for living they all fail (arguably the only real question is which one does the least damage). We witness daily how religions fail - but it' s just the same for political (democracy? - don't make me laugh) and economic 'isms'.
The beauty of Marxism entranced me as a student - but look how badly it has failed. It failed, not only because it was hi-jacked by a bunch of murderous power-seekers (nothing new there, then) but also because of a fundamental mistake - human beings simply aren't like that except within family or comparatively small tribal groups.
Capitalism is also lovely in theory - It's to do with personal freedom, generosity and fellow-feeling rather than fear, greed and callous indifference. (Honest). Theoretically it provides for everyone to seek and achieve their own happiness and fulfillment. Of course the same unprincipled scum floats on the surface, and the perversion permeates down to child-staffed sweat-shops and all the other disgusting expressions of its abject failure.
There are also, however, a couple of fundamental errors:
Error 1 - Capitalism is a system in which growth is an imperative. The earth's biosphere is a closed system. If the problem isn't clear yet, ask your Mummy.
Error 2 - As any engineer will tell you, a machine which is designed to accelerate infinitely must destroy itself. This (probably the less important problem, ultimately) seems to be what underlies the current global economic crisis. No-one yet is calling it a crash, but you read it here first.

The visit to the hospital, occasioned by the decline of deadbeat's hip towards an inevitable replacement in plastic, was great fun. I got to chat with a friendly woman who operates just about the most sophisticated camera any of us are liable to see close up and I had some nerdy questions.
Once up on the table, the radiographer stood beside me, holding a towel up in front of her face and asked me to drop my trousers to my knees. I was amused by this and said that I wasn't embarrassed (after all, my underwear was clean on that morning) but she said that this was for her benefit, not mine.
Less than a minute later a fully-dressed Deadbeat was standing beside the radiographer who had just taken such extraordinary precautions to not see my knickers, gazing at a beautiful high-definition screen with my x-ray on it.
The resolution of modern medical imagers is astonishing. There, breathtakingly clear, was all the minute detail of my deteriorating hip. And there, just below, perfectly outlined in a gently phosphorescent glow, was Deadbeat's dick.
There is a lesson to be learned from this: that, no matter how unpleasant the prospect, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, there are some things that you are simply going to have to take a close look at.

The G20 meeting recently was trying to prevent the whole international financial system falling into chaos. They have agreed that more regulation is required (which is another adulteration of their own ideals, for the pragmatic heart of capitalism is that the market regulates itself) - but it wasn't the lack of regulation, it was the incessant need for the banks to find new markets which drove the whole thing. The machine, creaking and groaning as it is, must still speed up - and whatever regulatory patches are stuck on the leaks will simply increase the pressure behind the next failure.
The other thing achieved by the summit was a commitment to pump over a trillion dollars into the world economy. Many people (Deadbeat included) feel that this is like trying to put out a blaze in your garage by throwing petrol onto it.
It would be nice to think of the G20 as moment when the most powerful leaders in the world, ably advised by the most gifted brains, turned the x-ray of their concerted attention onto the crippled hip of the world's economy.
Unfortunately, I think they are still holding the towel in front of their faces.

The Summer is almost upon us - may optimism sprout like new leaves in all our lives.

More soon (promise)

Deadbeat

Comments from Dear Readers - (in red, with Deadbeat replies in blue):

Latest entry read with delight.

Only point I would like to debate is the above ref'd term (the Atheists uncaring Universe). Understand where this has come from, i.e. as an obvious corollary to a term such as 'Christian morals'. Am often dismayed by the inference that one needs to believe in a god to have a 'decent' code of ethics to live one's life by. I propose that atheism may well (albeit not necessarily) be synonomous with humanitarianism. As a staunch atheist I believe I have more time and spiritual energy to devote to promoting human wellbeing and therefore need to refute any terminology that inculcates the coupling of the word 'atheism' with 'uncaring'. Happy to debate 'universe' another day!

Glad you didn't put the term in quotes or I'd have had nothing to say except 'yes'. Although probably need to reflect on the legalise issue.

Look forward to the next edition.

B

Deadbeat's Reply:

I agree completely. Without a supreme being to give damn, the universe is by defition uncaring. The individual atheist, without any recourse to a higher moral authority, must take full responsibility for his/her actions. This means that s/he is free to adopt any ethical or moral framework as an aesthetic choice rather than as a slavish self-subjugation to rules imposed in the name of a 'higher authority'. A decent, thinking atheist would, almost of necessity, be humanitarian - as there is nothing else, where but to humanity and co-existence could one turn for moral definitions and behavioural guidelines? I would go further, in fact - the use of godlessness as an excuse for inhumanity is an obscene perversion of a beautiful 'ism'..... (nothing new there, then)...

As far as the 'legalise it' question is concerned, my main point is pragmatic - prohibition doesn't work. Legalisation offers the possibility of control, and might work. The money and effort spent criminalising people who may be failing as individuals but are not sociopaths could be better deployed. The money saved just by not repairing the damage caused by skag-head burglaries could pay for proper, informative (not scare-mongering) drug education (I haven't done sums. But you get my drift.)

Thanks for the comment, clarification aften suffers in Deadbeat's search for pithiness.

My second correspondent's comment is pasted below, without any comment -, except for thanks - Deadbeat is inwardly digesting...

07 April at 18:32
Congratulations on the fabulously constructed DD no 22 the interweaving of each subject to the next was brilliantly contrived and most thought provoking. It really is the best thing of its kind I have read in ages and given the amount of similar rhetoric we are all subjected to on a daily basis you should take that as a very sincere and heartfelt compliment.

You have however touched on a pet peeve of mine namely the tarring of huge and complex beasts with a single brush. I realise you did draw a distinction between the flame in the inner sanctum and the moral delapidation of the temple which surrounds it but nevertheless I think you bent a few realities to fit your general thesis (a perfectly acceptable polemical technique but still open to cross examination I feel).

Most of the 'religious' conflicts you invoked were not religious in origin. The Irish civil war was stoked up by the Tories who deliberately enflamed the hitherto less concerned Ulster populace into resisting the Irish state. In the hoo-ha surrounding the 1886 Irish Home Rule Bill introduced by Gladstone's liberals, Randolph Churchill wrote in the press 'Ulster will fight, Ulster will be right!' a screed which in modern times could lead to him being banged up for inciting acts of terrorism. The religious differences were cynically invoked not by priests but by politicians who held the glory of Britain's empire as an irreducible principle (and no doubt possessed commercial interests in the wealthier northern region of the country). The Protestant politicians of the north were far more concerned at being politically marginalised than anything else (due to the fact that the impoverished south would form a crushing left wing majority in the event of home rule).

Anti-Semitism originated in Europe in the second millenia due to the fact that Jews were the only race in those pre-capitalist societies for whom usary was permissible. Whilst it was religion that forbade money lending on the one hand for the Christians and permitted it for the Jews on the other, it should surely be remarked that the origin of the resentment which turned to racial (not religious) hatred was secular. Its a bit like the resentment that sometimes builds up towards the one pot dealer in a community if they're unsympathetically accumulating wealth over the course of a season whilst everyone else is getting steadily more skint, nonetheless handing over 20,30 or 40 quid a week to the same person. In the Middle East anti-semitism is a symptom of the most persistent of a long series of territorial battles. The collision of these two phenomena after WWII (brought about by the guilty awakening of the West to what we'd be visiting upon the Jews for 700 odd years) has led to the bloody conflicts in Israel/Palestine ever since.

The Crusades are horrifically complex things to deconstuct and certainly hard to attribute to a single factor. The religious motivation certainly doesn't provide the will alone to muster a peasants army and forcibly march it half way across the known world to take on an enemy that most people have never seen. The oppressive power of the monarch and or ruling class existed long before the Lamb of God. Xerxes managed to take a gigantic army to Greece in the 6th century BC and the reason he was able to do so was because he had the power to make it happen. I doubt much effort was put into religously motivating the troops in those times, men on horses with spears were enough to muster an army. Hierarchies were at that time a lot more important than gods (and still are). However I dare say religious or cultural difference have always been used to throw the oppressed masses a bone and enable some of them to believe that there are loftier reasons to go to war other than to prevent their untimely execution, repossession of their lands and enslavement of their families by the crown.

I have very little understanding of the nature of the early Islamic wars (and concede that Mohammed himself waged bloody wars of conquest not long after his 'enlightenment'). I would note however that at the time of the birth of Islam there was far more integration and trade between lands as far apart as Afghanistan and Morocco than any other part of the world and that wars of conquest were not unfamiliar in this period.

I am sure you are aware of most of what I have just noted but it all goes to back up my argument that it is elaborate hierarchy that is most to blame, and quite often the person at the top of that triangular structure is under more pressure than the serfs at the bottom. The pressure on a ruler is how to cling onto the greasy pole when the ambitious little fuckers below you (Prime Ministers, sinister Grand Viziers etc) are perpetually waiting for the moment to stick a spear in your bottom. If one wants to stay in this position, establishing a healthy, balanced status quo is not enough, one must foster wide spread belief in the necessity of some grand scheme or divine quest if you will to give you the necessary popular backing for your exalted status. This usually has the effect of keeping the scheming duplicitous bastards restrained in their scheming and at least keeps them busy with something not related to planning your early demise. This means that nearly every powerful person is trying to stimulate some sort of progression thereby meaning that as a race with or without capitalism, triangular power structures have thus far led to us attempting the unachievable feat of infinite growth (every empire that ceases to grow collapses, and every empire that grows too big... collapses).

I think things like the Crusades have far more to do with this than anything else. Of course we can also cite the influence of Augustine (a complex figure I do not yet fully understand) who pioneered the integration of church and state and could reasonably be cited as the start of a lot of these calamities. At some point the parasitic priests realised they'd do a lot better if they threw their lot in with the biggest fish in the pond (with the divine right kings to throw down on the table they were never going to be rejected) and sometime around the birth of Christianity the whole grubby scheme was put together and has evolved through ever more subtle and insidious mechanisms ever since.

A lot of very good people have been forcibly co-opted into this grand scheme, pastors who do nothing but look after the needy and infirm. Sufis and monks who spend their lives trying to connect the people back to the flame in the temple which was walled off by the powerful long ago. The existence of an over-riding philosophy that persists through the ages has paradoxically assisted these people in their work as well as provided the grist to the mill of the power crazed. Whilst personally I believe you get closer to whatever God is through a unique, individual journey I also concede that won't provide a communion visit to the 80 year old who isn't able to leave the house any more or a chaplain to visit those rotting in jail. The same institution that oppresses also liberates and if as a race we could learn how to foster these structures without providing opportunities for the Stalins and Nazi gold hoarding Popes of this world then maybe we could keep the baby Jesus and get rid of the scummy bath water.

The conclusion of all of this is that there are only a few avenues for the human race to go down. One is the standard apocalypse followed by smaller more feral communities route which will lead to more small scale conflict but eradicate the globally damaging ones. The other is that we don't learn any of this and destroy ourselves and provide the primeval mulch from which another generation of conscious beings can grow and make all the same mistakes again (in a Great Wheel stylee). The last is some kind of gigantic 2012 type awakening which won't solve the problem in itself but might mean that there is a universal acceptance of the principles outlined in DD22 or this elephantine reply which will enable multi-lateral activity to try and preserve this astonishing phenomena known as consciousness (I really hope its this one).

This reply is now longer than your entire blog and far less elegant for which I apologise. I think I have cited enough of merit to justify its length although you may disagree. Many thanks for agitating me enough to set all of this down thereby ignoring the various tasks which I should currently be engaged in.

Once again, congratulations on a really good piece of writing.

Best wishes,

Will