E Readers

People now read books, newspapers and magazines electronically. The natural logical progression will be that one day a tech hungry, novelty craving, human race will make the printing press obsolete. When that happens, given that any current data storage is evolvable and transferable to the next generation of software, history will be constantly, literally rewritten. A Ministry of truth* working 24/7 to constantly change the past and present An electronic Hansard? * see 1984, G.Orwell

Racism

The belief that a human may be of more value, dependent on their ethnic origin is a total misunderstanding of the nature of existence. To begin with, any value judgement of a person is utterly flawed due to it's subjectivity, and secondly the current Anthropological paradigm that all human life emigrated from north west Africa reduces racism to nothing more than a personality disorder.

Religion

"My Country is the world - My religion, to do good" - Thomas Paine. My personal religion is........actually let's define religion. For me it is a personal guide that exists other than my impulsive mind, which I refer to when I need to make a decision on how to behave. It is also something I use, much like a book or bible when I leisurely think/ponder the non immediate, broader issues of life, e.g. politics, ethics, realtionships. Freudians might call this a super-ego. Christians would call it the word of God. The most powerful, enduring, motivational concept in religion is that of accountability and answering to a higher power/God/Creator. I personally answer to the most powerful of all judges and the one from which there is no dodging, no escaping, no abstract expiation: myself. My judgement comes from my memories, the feelings I carry as a result of past behaviour and experience, what I feel is right. In a book that I read, a zen Buddhist said that we are already enlightened, we know the truth, we know the answers, all we have to do is wake up. This feels right to me. If you have to learn good behaviour from text, you might forget certain parts, and so.....are you not able to act correctly toward other people? In fact, that's all there is, that's ALL we have to know....how to act correctly toward others. A handy simple tool that I now employ instinctively(as I have been using it for so long now) is behaving in response to seeing each situation from the context of human existence. That is, never forgetting that I am an organism on a planet in space and therefore seeing the extent of the problem in measurement to our true predicament. so, for example;......I get the insatiable urge to steal from another person, or to make a hurtful comment about their body or to judge their job etc etc. I then am able to see clearly that this person is in the same predicament that I am. Born into consciousness on this planet with a physical form and subject to the inherent unfairness of life. So....can I still go ahead and make everything harder for them and choose not to see their position and story as clearly as I see my own????? Much like existentialism, I believe that we are alone in an indifferent universe. Therefore.....and this is the most powerful part of my religion, we must metaphorically (or literally) huddle together as one against the massive black coldness that we are a tiny part of. If we are all in the same boat then we are all equal and can only find meaning in meaningless in being on the same team. Value Judgement of one-another is pretty impossible and unhelpful. Obviously we have to make sure we don't veer into ennui or apathy as I have done many times. Pointlessness does not mean there's no point in doing anything, it means we are free to find our own point. For some it is joining the Red Cross, for others it is collecting teapots. Everyone and everything is unimportant, therefore everyone and everything is important.