Jim Stewart's Blog

I caught an episode of Star Trek the other night. There was a question asked in it, “What do you treat as sacred?”. That got me thinking, what do I think of as sacred.

I looked up several definitions. One aspect of being sacred is something set aside for worship. The other aspect seems to be something that is worthy of respect or veneration.

There are a lot of sacred places and items in our society. Churches (mosques and synagogues etc), statues, crosses, symbols are commonly looked on as sacred.

As I thought about it I realised that I probably don’t see anything as sacred according to the definition. There are a lot of things I find helpful, but nothing I consider as worthy of respect or veneration as far a physical objects go. That isn’t to say I don’t find some objects or places spiritual.

I find it hard to see a difference between Stonehenge and a church building. I find it hard to see some of the ideas about buildings and places as more than something like ghost stories.

I even go further – I see the idea of objects and places being venerated as a religion of the object, and worshiping objects is a foreign religion to me.

But we need to be real, it is the only ship we have.

I am of course talking about the new restrictions being put in place. We all have the ability to put more restrictions in place on ourselves. But the only national restrictions we have are the ones we have.

We can all challenge for more restrictions or less restrictions – people want one or the other, but right now the only ship we have is the one we are on. Yes, maybe we think there are holes or the paint is the wrong colour, but sinking the ship is not a sensible option.

But if we see holes in the the boat and want to plug them how do we go about it? Some people seem to think standing up and screaming “the boat is sinking” is the answer. I wonder how that affects the others in the boat.

If we think the new restrictions are not good enough surely we should be encouraging people to comply with them as a minimum. But it seems people are almost saying “these are not good enough so what is the point in obeying them”. Yes, we can ask for better, but we need to consider how we go about it and what impact it has on others.

Looking through the TV listings today was interesting. Just how many programmes are there about death and murder? We have Death by the Seaside, Worst Killers, Unsolved Murders, and then you have all of the soaps with murders. Death in Paradise – I would hate to live on an island with so many murders, Midsomer Murders and all of those deaths in Oxford investigated by Morse. The BBC did an interesting review of TV murders. I love the fact that they go back to Titus Andronicus to compare death rates there.

Isn’t it about time we had shows like “Twisted Ankle in Torquay”, of “Headache in Horsham”. It would be much more realistic, and might be a bit less depressing.

But it is worth looking close at the TV listings. Once again I have started to see an apparent increase in WW2 films. If I were to say “Broadsword calling Danny boy” would you recognise the film? A lot of people would.

I remember one time I was in central Vienna when a student protest walked through the street – complaining about the far right Joerg Haider. They were chanting “Haider is Hitler”. A young man walked up to an elderly gent who was standing in front of me. He held out a leaflet and said “Haider id Hitler”. What followed next gave me chills. The elderly gent said “Young man, if Haider was Hitler you would not be here.” And you could tell he had seen his country run by Hitler.

But he was right, we tend to over-exaggerate how evil leaders are. Really – Germans are not trying to invade us. The war ended a long time ago. I understand that we needed propaganda films like “Went the Day Well” during the war, but it really does feel like we are being subjected to propaganda films today. It is almost like some people want us to dislike our European near neighbours.

I’ve seen several people comment on the gap between the government announcing things and making them mandatory. Why do they wait a couple of days? As an aside, this is because it takes a couple of days to make the legislation – we don’t live in a dictatorship.

We have new rules coming in to force on Tuesday and people are trying fit in the stuff that will be banned now. There have been long queues trying to get to Blackpool.

Some people seem to think a speed limit is the speed you MUST drive at. Try driving at 20 in a 30 limit and see how many people get annoyed with you.

But, believe it or not, we are not required to do everything that isn’t banned. Maybe we have come to believe we should because so many of our leaders push things to the limit.

Maybe asking “Should I?” is the better question.

I saw a restaurant owner complaining because the new time restrictions meant they could only do one sitting.

It took me back to the times I visited Shepherd’s Restaurant in Pimlico. It was originally set up by Michael Caine, Peter Langan and Richard Shepherd. They only had one sitting all night. No rushing to leave, nobody was going to take your table.

Why do we allow the world to force us to rush?

Maybe instead of complaining the restaurant owner could make it a selling point?

In 2007 the planets urban population exceeded the rural population for the first time. From 1960 to 1980 the urban population was about a steady 2 billion lower than the rural population. From then on it started to reduce.

We see a gradual move in so many areas of life to the large. We have large supermarkets. We have larger football stadiums. We even have larger churches.

Some time ago Greenpeace started pushing the idea of small distributed power production. We now see the government pushing the idea of small nuclear reactors.

We get more efficiency by getting bigger. But now we have a threat of massive unemployment. Maybe we need to be less efficient. Maybe we need to go smaller if we are to survive as a society.

Watched Ambulance tonight. It was interesting seeing the focus on stress and panic attacks with the younger generation.

The number of positive cases is increasing – especially in young people. We all know that they are going out and meeting friends and partying.

I wonder whether there is a link here. With jobs going I can imagine the levels of stress in the younger age groups must be rising – even though they are already high. Maybe they need to e-stress.

The level of stress in young people is unacceptable. Maybe by helping reduce that we will also be getting rid of a driver for the parties that seem to be the source of the virus spread.

In other news I got my car serviced today. Still getting one year to the tank….

The new rule of six means you cannot gather in a group of more than six. It struck me this opens the door to some mischievous behaviour. Just find a random group of six people and walk up and join them.

It was interesting watching the clips of people in a queue for testing today. Very few wearing masks and no social distancing. Hey folks – maybe that is the reason you find yourselves in the queue.

I still say there are a lot of people thinking a test is like the absolution from a confessional. No a test will not protect you from anything that happened in the past.

I also found the news reporting interesting when the lead story was that the testing system is failing, but a later story went on to say one reason we are seeing more cases is the increase in testing. It does sound like somebody is adjusting the reality of the news.

I have been watching the moonshot for a while (even before Boris mentioned it). The key was the change from the word “infected” to “infectious”. That suggests to me moving to an antigen test. It isn’t as accurate, but it could be a quick easy test that can be self administered in 10 minutes according to the claims from MIT. There are certainly positives and negatives about this idea. I see the newspapers are claiming it would cost 114 billion based on leaked reports. Except the developers are suggesting it would cost 3 billion to roll out.

I think maybe my mischief is being outdone by some of these reports.

Interesting thinking about the difference between the two. To me the idea of a dream is the sort of “I want to be an astronaut” that people think about when they are young. Something you can imagine achieving. The idea of a vision to me is an idea of what could be – something that you can work toward, but maybe never achieve in your lifetime.

I see both as demanding action – but vision is more about a journey to me and a dream is more about the destination. I’m not sure others will share that idea. Different words with similar meanings can be hard to differentiate, and I am not sure we all think the same about many of them.

Dictionary definitions suggest that vision indicates that you are not happy with how things are – but I don’t see that. I remember we had dictionary practice at primary school. With all the IT I am not sure we do the same these days.

I saw some interesting errors in sub-titles this week. I remember there is one line from “The Longest Day” from Sean Connery where the subtitle reads “Stone a Grouse” rather than “Stone the crows”. At times I wonder how on earth we manage to get something from inside one brain into another brain just by sharing words. I think Dave Gorman agrees.

Anyway, back to dream and vision, I saw a documentary about Bono today. The one repeated theme was a vision of a world where stupid poverty was eliminated. He clearly worked toward a long term aim.

I did a series about the SDGs previously, which are all about a path to a better world. But it seems to me that so many people today want to jump straight to the destination and don’t want to bother with a journey.

I just read an article where Trump is reported to have said “I don’t think science knows actually” after telling people what he thought would happen.

I mentioned the other night that the ER demand for a citizens assembly to manage climate change issues was flawed. But to those in the group it was natural to believe they were at the centre of community thinking.

We recently saw statues being ripped down because people knew that they were right in their views.

The growth in the “I’m right and represent what the world should believe” seems unstoppable. I see it in politics and I see it in social media. Few people are able to take part in a disagreement without abusing others.

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.

Love others as you love yourself. A good guide to how we should live our life. I have “snoozed” a lot of people on Facebook, not as much because of what they are saying, but more because of how they say it. Too much self belief can be a bad thing if it is not tempered with a belief in others.

The good news is that I heard our little owl tonight for the first time in ages. I was getting worried.