"Constructed Views: Stone Cut"

A captivating short documentary on Etsuro Sotoo, the Japanese immigrant stone cutter who ended up being a chief supervisor at the Sagrada Familia cathedral (still under construction) in Barcelona.

https://www.nowness.com/series/constructed-views/stone-cut-la-sagrada-familia

New centre in Barcelona for Plural Masculinities

 

"The Plural Masculinities Centre is a new municipal facility which is opening to foster a diverse, positive and plural perspective of masculinity, helping to generate different collective perceptions from the strictest and outdated meaning of “being a man” or “behaving like a man”. 

Greater flexibility in the perception of masculinity paves the way for promoting healthier and more equal relationships and doing away with binary-based stereotypes.

The new centre is an open space for citizens and will carry out its projects in conjunction with organisations linked to masculinities, through three areas of action:

• Education: boost awareness among young people through work with the education community, taking into account formal and non-formal education alike. This action must allow for work on different models of masculinity with children and teenagers, and also to address parent models and ways of exercising masculinity with parents and adults.
• Culture: foster the creation of pieces and spaces at cultural facilities in the city which address this area, with projects which allow them to reach the general public and open up the debate on the problems of hegemonic masculinity.
• Sport: this is a social sector where the stereotypical role of masculinity has a strong presence, meaning work will be geared towards collaboration with sports organisations to conduct training and awareness campaigns.

The centre is located at Av. Marquès de l’Argentera, 22, and has a team of ten specialists. The premises include a large multi-purpose room and shared facilities with the Men’s Support Service for the Promotion of Non-Violent Relations (SAH).The annual budget for the new centre is 1.3 million euros.

The idea behind the opening of the Plural Masculinities Centre is to develop public policies on gender which include men and offer reflection from the perspective of masculinities in two ways: firstly, to highlight the benefits for men in the construction of positive and respectful masculinities, and secondly to get men to commit men to the change towards equal gender relationships.

Debate on masculinities with the Decidim platform

In a move to facilitate open debate with the general public, a specific section has been created on the municipal participation website Decidim Barcelona, to work on masculinities jointly and connect local people with experts and organisations in this area. Initially, the project has three different spaces: introduction and perspective, open debates, and city agenda and resources on masculinities. Campaigns and communication initiatives will also be designed to reach out to young people via social media."

Read more from source at Barcelona's local government here.

"Thanks to Life:" Mercedes Sosa - Gracias A La Vida

  

Just over 10 years ago I first posted this video and have now replaced it with a version that is still available. 

Mercedes Sosa - Gracias A La Vida - YouTube: surely one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded in the Spanish language (and one of the most well-known songs in Latin America apparently.)

[Lyrics translated into English:]

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
"Mother," "Friend," "Brother" and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human mind,
When I see good, so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes...

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone's song, which is my very own song.

Spanish youths' surprising outlooks

 

[Photo: EFE]

‘Young Spaniards believe that they will live better than their parents, but in another country.

Those aged 15 to 29 are critical of the value of friendship, committed to social causes and sceptical of their political representatives’.

The survey includes a useful graphic. From La Vanguardia but found at Business Over Tapas.

"Australia’s burning questions" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[EFE]

The great tragedy of the Australian bushfires -- that even after several months are still consuming huge parts of the country -- is that so much of the destruction is entirely avoidable.

How can this be? Why have more than 1 billion animals perished? Why have over 2,000 thousand homes been destroyed? Why have 23 people died and how is it possible that a total area of land bigger than Portugal or Hungary has already been burnt out?

The simplest correct answer is that Australia has always suffered from these kinds of wild blazes but that this time around the ‘fire season’ started much earlier and the spread of the fires was much wider than usual, with hundreds of them burning out of control at any one time.

Firefighters (most of whom are unpaid volunteers) have been almost completely powerless to stop the hydra-headed infernos because of continued fierce winds and the extreme high temperatures that the fires themselves have partly made worse.

Another major cause of the devastation can be accurately put down to state and federal governments underfunding emergency services for year after year.

ln an attempt to push any responsibility away from his own ultra-conservative party, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has used all kinds of political trickery and lies across the mainstream media (which fully supports him). He has also been widely condemned for choosing to go on holiday to Hawaii during the crisis, as did the relevant state minister from his party.

As well as that, Morrison has repeatedly argued that the global climate crisis is not a factor in this disaster, despite overwhelming scientific evidence showing it undoubtedly is.

As a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, he has instead maintained it is all the fault of arsonists or “greenies” who oppose targeted ‘back-burning’ to stop fires spreading. (The Green Party has always supported it, in fact.)

Accusations of climate denial against Morrison have come as thick and fast as the air that has choked the populations of Australia’s big cities of Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney over periods of weeks and months.

Even several former leaders of the PM’s own party have called for rapid action against carbon emissions and emergency policies to combat the years-long drought across the nation.

In many Australians’ experience, these fires have come on top of continuing and severe tap water shortages in many of Australia’s rural towns. Some, such as the small rural village of Murrurundi (located in a once relatively fertile area) have already run out of water and are having to buy in supplies privately. An increasing number of towns are expected to follow this disturbing practice soon.

Of course, water running low in Australian drought periods is nothing new.

What is causing outrage though amongst groups as diverse as farmers and environmentalists, is the massive (and often unmeasured) amounts of natural water from rivers, lakes and underground sources that are being sold off to private companies.

The Indian (multi-national) mining company Adani (which has the absurd, double-speak slogan of “Growth with Goodness”) extracts coal from the earth, among other things. It runs a business that is a major cause of global warming through carbon emissions and it requires large amounts of water in the coal cleaning process.

Adani -- which has paid not one cent of company tax in Australia -- will be allowed to siphon off 12.5 billion litres of local river water up until the year 2077. Another of its mines is being given $4.4 billion in public subsidies from the government. An open secret muddies the waters here: mining industries have been major financial donors to the conservative political parties in Australia for many years.

Corruption? You bet it is. For the governing parties, it’s raining money. This at a time when both rain and money are what’s really needed across a land that is dying of thirst and from fires on a biblical scale that Morrison had only ever read about.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Feb. 2020.]

Q and A on life as an immigrant in Europe (or "expat" if you prefer.)

From ExpatFocus.com  (November 11, 2019) 

Brett Hetherington (Photo credit: robbiekavanagh.net)           
 

Who are you?

My name's Brett Hetherington and I'm a European (Australian/British) journalist, teacher and author (most recently of Slow Travels in Unsung Spain) living in Catalonia, Spain with my partner/wife Paula and our teenage son Hugo.


Where, when and why did you move abroad?

Our first move was to Japan in 1999 (where Hugo was born) and three years later we moved to England.

After two years there we moved to live in inland Catalonia in the Barcelona region and have been there since 2006.


What challenges did you face during the move?

Plenty! Languages were a big one because we all had to deal with Catalan as well as Spanish. Hugo was only five when we came, so he picked it up quickly with the help of some great teachers at his Catalan primary school. I've become functionally fluent in Spanish and generally understand Catalan okay, though I don't speak it.


How did you find somewhere to live?

Luckily, a teacher my wife was replacing was leaving his apartment in the town where we wanted to live, Vilafranca del Penedes. I communicated directly with the landlord (in a mixture of his poor English and my even worse Spanish). Later, we bought our own place in a small nearby town, almost a decade ago now.


Are there many other expats in your area?

Very few here, but 20 minutes away on the coast around Sitges (where we used to work) there is a strong expat community.


What is your relationship like with the locals?

Friendly, and some acquainatiances, but few real close friends, I would say. Most small-town, rural Catalan people call themselves "closed." They mean that they're not open to having many new social relationships outside their already established ones.


What do you like about life where you are?

The vineyards and open spaces of nature around. It's a great balance too when you mainly work in the big city of Barcelona.


What do you dislike about your expat life?

Well, I think of myself as an immigrant more than an expat because I don't see who we are as any different to others who came here from somewhere else for a better life. I do intensely dislike the bureaucracy and arbitary kinds of decision-making in Southern Europe. The low salaries that never rise are making life harder every year too.


What is the biggest cultural difference you have experienced between your new country and life back home?

This has been our home for a long time now, but if I compare it with where I lived most of my life, I'd say I miss the more spontaneous way people socialise and talk to strangers, as well as the multi-cultural population being a part of the mainstream.


What do you think of the food and drink in your new country? What are your particular likes or dislikes?

The food is wonderful: seasonal, fresh, still not too expensive in general. It's a big reason to live here. The range of vegetables is always limited to Mediterranean ones though, unless you want to pay big money for "ethnic" ingredients.

That's the only downside, because the seafood and usual high quality in well-priced "menus del dia" is great. There's fantastic, cheap wine in this area too.


What advice would you give to anyone following in your footsteps?

Do it! But be prepared to live in a low-wage economy unless you are very lucky. On the other hand, Spain/Catalonia is a great place to bring up kids, in my opinion.


What are your plans for the future?

Stay until we can't afford it anymore and if Brexit doesn't make life impossible or any more costly.


You can find Brett's book, Slow Travels in Unsung Spain, on Amazon.

"Natsukashi" -- My latest column for Catalonia Today magazine

This morning, with the dying of this summer and noticing the shortening of the hours of light in the evening, I remembered that exactly two decades ago I went with my new wife to live in the city of Kyoto, in Japan.

It became possibly the single most influential experience in and on my life. 

To look at a period of what became three years and see it as one complete experience (or a collection of thousands of experiences wrapped into one) is obviously unusual. But Japan is exactly that: unusual. 

In fact, it’s unique. Living there, I found myself sometimes saying to myself or whoever was near me, “Everything here is different. Everything!”

Of course not literally everything is, in fact, different there but that was how Japan and its people struck you, especially at first sight. 

Essentially, Japanese people want the very same things as you and I, and the rest of the inhabitants of the planet. We all basically want love, food, shelter, respect and satisfaction. But it often seemed that how they thought they would get these wants was a polar opposite to me, a 30-year-old male from Australia, so geographically close to Japan.

The Japanese language is unique, too, like every language, I suppose. There’s a word in Japanese - “natsukashi” - for which the closest translation in English is “nostalgia”. This translation, though, does not do justice to such a complex, nuanced word that is actually a highly emotional one.

In Japan you would find even primary school children saying this word, not just adults. I think this is because from a very young age in Japan you are taught (or at least influenced) by parents, schools, and wider society to reflect back on your actions, your experiences, and even individual moments. This is a mentality not currently in vogue in much of the Western world, partly because Japan is a very formal society.

There is a structure, a ritual, an accepted composed method and set order (and a set order of words in a phrase) for virtually every daily action the Japanese do; whether it is eating, leaving home, getting to or leaving school or work, or even how you conduct relationships with people. 

To my wife and I and our non-Japanese friends, for at least a year or two, this was mystifying, confusing, frustrating but eventually somehow comprehensible. Although it was quite simple to understand and learn the basics of daily routine, having relationships with Japanese people was another matter, despite the fact that almost everyone was extremely kind to us.

The multiple layers of meaning that everything has in Japan can be seen in my current nostalgic yearning feeling towards Japan through the word ‘natsukashi’.

It turns out that my understanding of this word was not quite on the mark though. After researching it, I find that this feeling is better expressed by the longer word ‘mukashiwonatsukashimu’. ‘Natsukashi is apparently a more simple term for someone or something that is dear, desired or missed.

Next month, I plan to write a follow-up article on some specific examples that illustrate the points I’ve made above about Japan, this most unique of unique places. Until then, I’ll finish with a ‘haiku’ I wrote in Japan. ‘Haiku” is the traditional 5-7-5 syllable simplified form of poetry that’s designed to recall a single moment:

Portuguese song voice

Sweet, controlled, but free and light

Heard in a night street.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2019.]

"Who are The English?" --- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

This summer while we on the continent of Europe are enjoying doing whatever we can afford to do under the Mediterranean sun, we should all spare a thought for the English and their other Brit cousins.

They will be living through the continuing economic and social disaster created by Brexit and other agonies that are certain to multiply and crowd around like flies at a July barbecue.

A large slice of the pain of modern England comes from its identity and Brexit is only one symptom of this disease. 

I recently read an exceptional book titled ‘God is an Englishman’ published exactly 50 years ago, and all the way through it the Australian author Donald Horne, (who also wrote the well-known book ‘The Lucky Country’ about his own homeland) shows as much penetrating insight into who exactly the English are as anyone else I know of.

Using his book as a measuring stick against the past, it’s remarkable how little England seems to have changed (especially for the better) in that half a century that I have now lived through.

Facing up to the coming instability of the 1970s, Horne found that Britain’s history meant that it too deserved to be called a fortunate country. As he saw it though, “what gets on British people’s nerves is that they no longer know who they are.” (Loud echoes of today’s Brexit confusion?)

He saw a culture where people “find reality in excitements of..fashion and the entertainment businesses.” This led to an emptiness and general dissatisfaction with their lot. For him, it meant too that almost half of young British people alive then were fantasizing about emigrating. Of course, many did or already had (including my father.)

Some of Horne’s other best observations come from his clear understanding of the social class system that still operates deeply all through life there. He recognised that all Brits essentially operate to serve the comfort and ease of the “Upper English” but that a visitor who stayed for years might not notice that England is genuinely one of the world’s most working class nations.

Here, the author, who did in fact marry an Englishwoman and live for five years on a farm in Cornwall, west England, relates a truth that few Brits would have liked to admit, even in the unlikely event that they knew it. Twice as many manual workers as white-collar workers went out to their jobs in this “antique economy”; one that directly made it possible for the queen to stay happy in her castle.

The average Brit was in fact a relative of a peasant who had been tossed by need into the provincial towns or London, just like so many ’internal immigrants’ who arrived in Catalonia from (other) parts of rural Spain in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Soon after the time that Horne was writing though, it was estimated that at least half of England’s land was entirely unregistered: a hotchpotch of inherited wealth. Today we now know that this half a nation is owned by just 1% of its population: 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations.

These crucial numbers of course ignore the ironic title of the book. It refers to the 16th century monarch Elizabeth’s bishop of London who specifically claimed that “God is English” and “His nation was to be the New Jerusalem” of the British Isles.

The very English genius George Orwell warned against the “habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects” but if we think about today’s English people I’d compare them to that little desert lizard who hops from foot to foot to avoid getting its feet burnt on the hot sand. 

Here I mean the political and social temperature, not that from the sun.

(This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2019.)

"The market forces cult" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today

The illusion that has been successfully sold to most of the people across our planet is that anyone can become wealthy if they work hard.

This is no more than a spin-off of the Protestant work ethic.

It is true that less affluent individuals in society can occasionally ‘rise’ to the (now rapidly shrinking) middle classes, as conservatives and other market forces cultists assure us.

They might even make it into the rich elite.

But, as a consequence, this increasingly remote possibility naturally pits one person against another in a battle, not necessarily for survival, but for a limited number of shaky footholds at where the excess is.

Clearly, it is impressed on every aspiring rich man or woman, the only way you can get near being moneyed is at the expense of others.

The trick that has deluded much of our society is that those forces of the free market work in the interests of the majority. We are now wakening to the undeniable fact that this current economic and social arrangement continues to deny the basic humanity of most of those who live as part of it.

Free market dogma expressly state that ‘labour,’ meaning people who work, must be subject to ‘supply and demand’ in exactly the same way as inanimate objects are in the economy. A human “resource” is therefore no more ‘valuable’ than a tree or a piece of coal, or even a purely abstract concept like a dollar bill.

If this entity called “the market” decides that a unit of labour (a human being) has to be paid less, has to work longer or shorter hours, has to move location, or has to effectively vanish into thin air, then nobody should stand in the way.

The free market cultists maintain that it is not the role of a government or a trade union or anyone else to prevent the operation of this always ‘reliable’ market.

The cult of market forces is not only one that deceives others but is duping its own followers as well. It is mistaken about some important aspects of human nature.

Their most serious error is that the doctrines of this cult are entirely based around the central idea that consumers will without fail, act rationally and in their own personal interest.

In other words, every individual, whether they are a child making their first purchase of a chocolate bar that they happened to see advertised on TV; someone choosing a sexual partner, or selecting between Coca-Cola or Pepsi; or even a chain-smoker with lung cancer buying their last cigarette: they all do so, every time for one reason only.

So, we are making supposedly rational and self-interested decisions in every waking moment.

This suggests then that there is a cold, quite detached weighing up of the pro’s and con’s before all choices.

It exists in the mind of a drunken man, or a psychotic killer, or a hormonal teenager, in a hateful army Lieutenant, or in a neurotic housewife.

It must be there in the gambling addict, too. Before he or she spends them self into complete poverty, maybe they can be consoled with the thought that at least it is in their self-interest. The economic rationalist textbooks say so, anyway.

But, what then is the core belief about the mystical entity called The Market?

According to the cult it is, in short, a ‘mechanism’ that ensures that the ‘demands’ of all consumers for goods (for example, petrol) and services (for example, a train ride) are met by the ‘supply’ of all producers (given available resources.)

This so-called “market equilibrium” (that is, the money-price paid by consumers) will vary depending on how much consumers are prepared to pay for each and every good or service.

This concept of the free market is based on the old-style market place, where traders would display their homegrown vegetables or the family’s handmade clothes physically in front of them at their open-air stall.

Buyers would walk up and haggle with each shopkeeper over the price of what they were interested in. A price might be eventually agreed upon, and a purchase could then take place.

In the medieval-age of simple village squares and relatively limited consumer expectations, this basic economic model might have made some common sense.

Today, and for some time now, it is surely absurd to continue living based on these out-dated principles in a modern global society that is technologically fast-paced, and massively productive.

The market though, is the vehicle for humanity’s continuing progress, argues the cult. It guarantees economic growth in its ‘natural’ cycles they say. In truth, what it does certainly create is a mentality that defines “winners and losers.”

Little money equals big loser. Success is measured by the size of your wallet or bank balance.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2018.]

"In western democracies, is reading a political act?"

[Azar Nafisi. Photo: SJ Staniski]

 Azar Nafisi is an academic and writer, who left her native Iran for the US in 1997. 

Her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was an international bestseller. Her new book, The Republic of Imagination, looks at the importance of fiction to democracy. It is published by Heinemann.

What made you write your new book?

Saul Bellow posed the question of how those who survived the ordeal of the Holocaust would survive the ordeal of freedom. When I came to America, I felt there was an evasion of this ordeal of freedom. The idea I had of America was replaced by an efficient and ideologically polarised attitude. I had to fight it here as I did in Iran.

The book argues that fiction can be a solution to the loss of freedom. How? 

A democratic society is supposed to be based on plurality of voices. What is happening here – and I’m sure in Britain – is that this is being replaced by greed and utilitarianism, where we educate our children not to have a meaningful life, but to become efficient worker-bees. The philosophy that education exists to orient you towards careers was horrifying to me. American fiction is a reminder of American morality – that aspect of the American dream which brings with it the question of individual responsibility. It is always written from the point of view of the outsider. I wanted to recall this voice of conscience. The denigration of ideas and imagination is also a denigration of reality.

Is arts education too easily dismissed in the US?

This utilitarian attitude has always been part of American thinking. It has now gained dominance. Right now, people talk as if being a teacher, a museum curator, a librarian – things essential to any vital society – are barely jobs, because they make less money. I relate it to the reality we live in, to poverty. There is monopoly of both money and ideas. It is very dangerous.

Why do you feel so strongly about this?

I came from a society where an absolutist religious ideology took away all our rights as human beings. It wasn’t just about torture and political repression; it was about robbing individuals of their humanity. So I am very sensitive to the same thing happening in the US, through the seductions of money and the encouragement of greed. In a democratic society, individuals can only survive if they make choices freely. To make free choices in a society where everything from your toothpaste to your candidates is packaged, you must be able to reflect, to be critical and self-critical.

How does technology affect personal freedom?

The access to information and the fact that if something happens in Iran or China, people can tell the world – that is a good aspect. But we have turned technology into a god, and developed intellectual laziness and sclerosis. We are using technology not to think harder, but to evade obstacles and questions. The owners of technology can manage our private lives and live with us in our homes. How can you talk about democracy without privacy?

Reading Lolita in Tehran portrayed reading as a deeply political act in a repressive society. Is it the same in western democracies?

It is a political act [but] not in the obvious manner. It questions the basic tenets of authoritarian thinking. That is why this plurality of ideas and voices which fiction represents becomes dangerous to tyrants. In fiction, there is no status. In the realm of ideas and imagination, the only thing that is sacred is to allow the profanities to come in. Every great revolution starts with an idea. America is based on an idea – Enlightenment. Once you take that away, all that is left is a different kind of tyrannical mind-set. Great 
fiction always questions us and brings to the foreground the essential human questions.

You ask the same serious questions of the US as of Iran. Is there a comparison?

In the west we say, “It is their culture” and think we are being supportive. But this is condescending, because the worst aspects of culture – like the treatment of women – should be rejected, in the same manner that women in the west fought for their rights even though society said women should stay at home because it’s in the Bible. While I see the complete differences between Iran and America, and appreciate the freedoms I have in America, having lived in Iran I realised that I have to use those freedoms to fight for freedom. Freedom is not something static that you gain and have for ever. People who come from repressive societies are blessed with alternative eyes. We become sensitive to the signs of tyranny, even if they are sugar-coated.

Were you surprised by the success of Reading Lolita in Tehran?

I was absolutely flabbergasted. I didn’t expect it, especially because I was so discouraged by so many people. But I had no choice. It is like falling in love – everybody tells you this man is not good for you, but there you go, you follow him. So I followed it, with utter despair.

You left Iran many years ago. What’s your view of the political situation there?

Living in the Islamic Republic is like living in the month of April – there are a lot of thunderstorms with periods of sunshine in between. I’m both pessimistic and hopeful. My hope is in Iran’s civil society. The way minorities, journalists, women and various strata have been putting up a fight. I hope that change comes from within, through open democratic means.

In the West, debate on Iran is often polarised.

I had hoped to continue the discussions we were having underground in Iran among the Iranian diaspora in the US. But I discovered that inside Iran, this debate around who we are, what we want, what we used to be, was far more vital. Despite the dangers, we talked. Unfortunately, over here I discovered a soulless, partisan debate that is very disgusting.

Does this matter?

Iran was the first country in the 20th century to overthrow a secular regime and create a theocracy. With 1979, everything changed. Iran formulated this theory about Islam invading the rest of the world, the internationalism. The defeat of that ideology is so important – but nobody is paying attention. Everybody wants me to tell them whether the US should talk to Iran. In a democracy, diplomacy is the first thing. But you have to know who you are talking to, and you should not compromise on the principles."

Read at source, New Humanist here.

"God-bloggerer" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo: DNA strand. Religion did not give us this.]

 I call myself an atheist because god has not been proven to any clear degree, but like other people I can enjoy certain things that are called “the spiritual”.

I think the biggest mystery is to do with what we call consciousness and this is one of the enticingly ’wonder-full’ areas that art and creativity can put to use so well.

One problem of atheism is that some atheists go too far by maintaining that religious-inspired work is automatically somehow wrong, regardless of its content.

I only have to listen to someone like the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to feel the power of his voice as an expression of something right and good, even though I don’t share the love of Allah that fuels that voice.

We all need that sense of awe and humility that comes from, say, the extraordinariness of so much in the natural world: all that science cannot explain or come near to doing justice to. (There is after all, not even an adequate definition of what a thought is.)

Plenty of scientist-atheists have no problem with the unknown and the transient, in fact they embrace it and some even work at finding answers in it, though they often end up with more questions than they started with.

When religion asks questions, I applaud it. But when it simply quotes ancient texts or ‘interprets’ them I start to twitch.

I think it makes perfect sense to doubt what you know. The attitude of “I could be wrong, but...[insert opinion]” is the most sensible one to have because without it there is either blind faith or the conceit of absolute certainty.

I think this is the healthy basis of what we could call moral concerns. Organised religion often likes to claim that it has a monopoly on the ethically correct outlook but too often the people who are making the claims have not genuinely questioned their beliefs and have instead relied on their traditional leaders to set out a position first.

Equally, the celebrities that are so admired in today’s world are often ignorant about basic scientific truth but we still hold many of them up as role models and guiding lights. Even someone as cerebral as Barack Obama recently made comments linking vaccines to a supposed rise in autism.

It seems like this era’s obsession with the body, rather than the mind or the continuing inequality that exists across the globe, means that everything from karma to astrology to detox dieting is legitimate as something to believe in and use as a basis of living.

If our species can eliminate superstition we will have eliminated a major cause of our problems.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2018.]