A Sobering Thought

Sobering thought to think that by around 2150 I will have been completely forgotten -- as if I had never existed. Unless my blogs survive, or my Facebook posts etc, which I doubt.

Northfield School

Northfield School in Teesside


This is the school I attended for 5 years.

Article says:

"Northfield School has been providing high quality education for the young people of Billingham for over forty years".

What complete nonsense, I learnt next to nothing. My one regret was not playing truant. A misspent youth wasting my life in classrooms, not listening to the teacher, and daydreaming my life away. I could have been reading Enid Blyton, or playing on the swings, or whatever.

Humans and Dolphins

"[M]an [has] always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons".

Douglas Adams on intelligence from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979

Banning the advertising of Junk Food

I read the following article:
Labour vows to ban junk food adverts during X Factor and Hollyoaks


I hear people arguing that this is a ridiculous policy. They tend to say that:

a) Banning these advertisements would have no effect on the consumption of these foods.

b) It's the parents responsibility and the state shouldn't intervene.

If "a" then the manufacturers are wasting their money producing and buying the time for TV commercials. They should simply keep this money so they'll have higher profits. Or pass the savings on to the consumer. The latter would be good, cheaper prices and we don't have to suffer their adverts!

Frankly though I regard it as being preposterous to suggest these adverts have no effect at all. Especially advertising tasty food.

As for "b" it'll simply never work. Kids see junk food advertised, they'll go and buy it if they have the money, especially as their friends are all buying it.

Human beings are human beings. Many of them are influenced by adverts -- especially for nice tasting food. You can't change what human beings are. You can't change their nature -- you have to change society to accommodate their nature.

An all pervasive spiritual force

From here:

Completely independently, many indigenous groups developed concepts of a fundamental ‘spiritual force’ which they perceived as pervading the whole of reality.
...
As these peoples perceived it, this force is not a personal being such as a deity, who watches over the world and requires human beings to worship it. It is usually seen as an all-pervading force or power, with no gender or personality

Yes, I think this is pointing along the right path. Reality as a whole is somehow infused with awareness, and indeed a manifestation of awareness? And all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be, is infused with ultimate meaning. A meaning that eludes us in our daily day to day existence, but whose existence might be very briefly glimpsed with peak experiences and mystical experiences. Jus' thinking aloud.