This week we celebrate Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of his world-redefining book On The Origin Of Species, the book that changed how almost every kind of scientist and philosopher looked at the world. Before his work, there were so many unknowns — for hard science, like genetics — but also for soft-sciences, like sociology and psychology. We finally had some idea of why we do things, and why we are what we are.

As the saying goes ‘you have to know where you’ve come from, before you know where you’re going’. That’s not say the social scientists really know what’s going on with us, psychologically, but perhaps they know a bit more about what makes us tick, empirically.

Darwinism was also a big finger-sticking to the Creationist types. ‘God didn’t actually make the Earth in 7 days,’ Darwin cleverly surmised. We’re actually descended down through many, many generations of other species. Early, monotheistic thought put the Earth at only 25,000 years old — something we now know to be completely false. The Earth is closer to 4.5 billion years old!

The controversy that followed fueled the distribution of Darwin’s books — how better to pique a world’s interest than to stick it to the man himself, God?

The thing is, most intelligent Bible-based believers (i.e. most of the popular religions on the planet today) acknowledge that evolution makes sense. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to deny evolution, there’s just too much evidence to support it. The problem is, teaching evolution in a school is as good as saying God/Allah doesn’t exist. A religion has a bit of a problem if it starts teaching its children that God didn’t really create the world. “It’s just a metaphor!” Like a lot of most religious canon.

Sadly, teaching evolution in some American schools is still outlawed. It’s crazy! It’s like denying the world is round, or that we orbit the Sun; science moves on, that’s the whole point of science. Science is all about what can be proven as fact, at a given time. As our tools improve, and our ability to analyze our world grows, the rules change. The known rules change. Gravity has always existed, we just didn’t know about it until Newton discovered it — just like evolution.

You can’t refuse to teach something because it doesn’t fit in with your world view. That’s not even education. That’s indoctrination…

Luckily, some religious types have found a lovely midground between evolution and creationism — Intelligent Design. It’s a theory with a lot going for it (and this page has a lot more information on the topic), and the current state of science and anthropology doesn’t really have a counter for it. That’s not to say it’s a viable theory, if you are in any way a scientist — it simply doesn’t work with science. Intelligent Design basically implies that someone had a helping hand in the ’steps’ in evolution; going from a fish to a  monkey to human is quite a large leap, without some kind of magic. The fact that we first ‘became human’ about 6 million years ago (not 6 thousand years ago) as we stepped out of the jungles of Africa and onto the great plains, probably puts rest to the fact that God (or some other supernatural being) was in any way involved.

Here’s a nice quote from the page I linked earlier:

Anti-evolution efforts in the United States are having a significant effect. A Harris poll in June 2005 found that 54 percent of Americans do not believe that humans developed from earlier species (up from 46 percent in March 1994).

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite YouTube videos of all time — An Atheist’s Nightmare:

My cute, curvy Cuban friend Jossie (what kind of name is Jossie anyway? Is it a nickname of Josalyn?) recently posted a picture from her childhood. She told a sad tale to accompany her salad days photo from a school yearbook; a tale of her mum oppressing her wishes to look less like a floppy-haired, goofy blood clot (my description, not Jossie’s — don’t hurt me!) Not one to miss an opening, I thought I would share my childhood woes: the struggle and strife, and life, of a bowl-cut Beatles lookalike.

Unfortunately the haircut was not fleeting. It stalked me ruthlessly throughout my formative years, with my mother only allowing me to grow it after my 16th birthday. To this day I’m still haunted by brief visions of John Lennon out of the corner of my eye when I look in a mirror. Perhaps it was a rite of passage: become a man, develop body hair, lose my virginity, and stop looking like a poor, podgy, pudding basin child. My mother swears she wasn’t doing it out of spite, or some kind of cruel and unusual punishment. She also denies a childhood infatuation for the Beatles.

In actuality, I think my curse goes back another generation, to my grandmother. I’ve seen photos of my mother as a child, and she has the exact same hair cut as me. The contagious nature of nurturing!

While other parents beat their children, continuing the chain of abuse from their parents, my mother abused me mentally, with a formless and floppy coiffure.

Why am I making such a fuss about a haircut? Well, the clue was in the title — my haircut was really the only thing that plagued me through my childhood. Mind you, I didn’t have a girlfriend until I turned 18, and that sucked. I was always the one looking on and sighing wistfully from afar. I wish someone had told me back then that girls like guys to be confident and go-get-’em. It was only after I left school that my sister informed me that all the girls I fancied had a crush on me. I think that was the saddest day of my life, knowing I’d missed out on kissing some seriously beautiful European girls, and that I might never get a second chance. Thinking back, maybe it was the hair that scared them all away when I got close… Damn you, mother.

I was also bullied for a year or two, which caused some self-esteem issues throughout school (and was the main reason I never had the balls to ask a girl out). It was stupid, being bullied for being the brightest kid in school — and having a stupid hair cut (Damn you, mother!) Really, it’s depressing that such groups of people exist; they weren’t even bad on their own! I was friends with some of them individually, but when they grouped up… Ugh.

Anyway, I’m still a little mentally scarred from the bullying, and it’s probably my only mental ‘flaw’: I lack self-esteem when it comes to girls. I don’t actually believe a girl could be interested in me. It’s OK, while I’m talking, but when it gets right down to it, it becomes that that classic question: ‘How do you get a girl that’s laughing at your jokes into your bed?’ If anyone knows the answer to that, let me know.

With a grown-up view of things, I can see that my self-confidence issues are without merit and totally insane; but hey, who said fear or self-deprecation of any kind was rational?

But back to the happy childhood: you can see from the blurry background of the photo, that I was at Disneyland, at the age of 3 (I was a very large child!) By the age of 3 I’d been to Disneyland and Disneyworld and I’d walked up the steep hills of San Franciso. Back in England I was liberally educated, studying whatever I wanted to study — and excelling. I disliked sports, so I stopped running around and kicking balls. Instead I spent my time dissecting and rebuilding computers, and later programming and playing games on them.

The problem with a happy childhood is that there are no real stand-out moments that I can easily relate to and write about. I remember running around a lot — something I don’t do any more — and being a lot more bouncy than I am now. I remember being given a lot of attention from both my parents, and my inquisitive nature was never quashed. There’s a lot to be said for gentle guidance and the continual feeding of a young, impressionable mind.

I don’t propose to know more about parenting than anyone else — God knows I’ve not done it myself yet — but bringing up a child ‘correctly’ must be an interesting balancing act, if ‘correctly’ can even be defined (something to do with societal norms, I guess). I have friends that were brought up by completely claustrophobia-inducing and burgeoning parents, and I also have friends that might as well not had parents. Obviously I can’t be objective, as I’m the one in the middle, but I definitely think I’m the most ‘balanced’ of any of my friends.

It reminds me of my first week at university — do you know who partied the hardest, drunkenly slept with the most people and got horrendously sick? The kids that came from very strict backgrounds.

Temperance is the way forward!

Oh, just to tie it all up… Despite the hair, I do look a lot cuter in the picture than the modern-day hairy Sebastian, right? You can even see my dimple! Nice comments might encourage me to do a ‘Sebastian as a teenager’ entry (still sporting the Beatles bowl-cut!! Thank you, mother).

I also want to add that I still own the Transformer that you can see at the bottom of the photo… it’s on a shelf behind me, looking very dirty, dusty and worse for wear, but still very much my favourite toy.

I want to tell you a story. It’s not a particularly exciting story, but it perhaps goes some way to explaining why I didn’t kiss a girl until I was 18, and until very recently didn’t know which hole was the ‘right’ one.

You see, I was never given ‘the talk’. I can only assume this was because my parents noticed just how little testosterone I had. A soggy noodle probably had more testosterone than teenage Sebastian. My skin was clear, with spots only developing under my long, froppy fringe (bangs). When my voice finally decided to break, it took about 5 years; my balls just didn’t know when to stop their voice-deepening descent!

See! I look like a damn girl! I even have a beauty spot, like that damn super model Cindy Crawford! And I TOLD you that bowl-cut would continue to haunt me for years to come!

Looking back, I probably should’ve asked my mother for hormone injections or something; I have her to thank for my limp-wristed effeminacy that ensured my complete lack of  action at school — zero, zilch. Even if our school had a bike shed, I would’ve had no one to use it with (I made up for that when I got to college, though — I had sex behind a bike shed! Hah!) On Valentine’s Day I would always be the one sending flowers and getting nothing in return; only ’secret’ love notes from my lovely mother. I blame my young, undefined, pretty face! Moving along now… (I told you I would post a picture from my teenage years!)

I was quite afraid of girls throughout my formative years; a fear that today shows itself as an awful lack of confidence when it comes to the actual ‘pulling’ of a girl. While all of my friends were playing spin the bottle and playing that ‘5 minutes in the cupboard’ game (where you were meant to come out with switched clothes! Were we the only kids that played that game?), I was sitting at he edge of the circle, or in the corner, praying the bottle didn’t land on me. As it turns out (and I wish someone had told me sooner, as I might’ve tried to change!) girls really dig a confident guy. Above all else maybe, girls nearly always want a guy that knows what he’s doing; and that certainly wasn’t me.

So, my teenage years, with a complete lack of sex or even sexuality were dull. That isn’t to say I didn’t do anything interesting, just nothing teenagery and interesting. I won competitions, and both my education and vocabulary were both growing at an alarming rate but… but there was no damn sex! Occasionally a girl would look at me with her big eyes and look downwards, blushing… but at the time, I had no idea that she liked me. No one told me what girls do when they like you! As I’ve said before, it was only after I left school that my sister told me about all these girls that had crushes on me…

But, you know what? I don’t blame my complete lack of sexuality entirely on my apparent lack of testosterone, or my ineptitude at talking to women. Sure, it would’ve been nice to receive ‘the talk’ from my parents, or at school, but I don’t blame that either.

I blame a certain teacher. A teacher that treated sex like a sin that would send you directly to Hell, without even the briefest glimpse of Purgatory. The kind of teacher that took a black marker to our textbooks and removed everything that could in some way be related to sex — even the novels we had to read for English! I remember picking up Pride and Prejudice and finding chapter upon chapter with blacked-out blocks of text.

It’s unsurprising then, as a teenager, I might’ve thought sex was a bit like the MI5 or the secret police: you know it’s going on, somewhere, somehow, but you don’t talk about it, and you certainly don’t act upon any urges you might be experiencing.

Now, the great thing about most schools is that even if you get a bad teacher, you know that next year you’ll have a new one! You know that no matter how bad it was, and how awfully you might’ve behaved, next year things will be better — you’ll have a new teacher, and a clean slate.  It was the same logic which drove me, on the last day of the school year, to spread glue on this teacher’s chair and laugh in her face when she tried to get up to write on the blackboard.

Imagine my horror when, after a gloriously long summer break, we swung the classroom door open to find the same teacher grinning at us from behind her big, mahogany desk. Our mouths hung open in what she can only have assumed was awe, but was in fact 10 kids displaying their combined rictus of mortal terror. ‘Welcome back, little children of God, to my shrine of celibacy and all things pure’ she said. Well, she didn’t really, but that was the thought racing through all of our minds. Would we really be having another boring year of sexless education?

Sadly, we would — another year passed; another year without even a lingering hug from a girl, or a nervous grope from my shaking hands. I was now 14, and whether I liked it or not, my voice was starting to break. I was starting to find hair in new and exciting locations. I was having to stay seated behind my desk while the class emptied with increasing, and alarming (but not unpleasant) regularity.

And then, the impossible, through some wicked twist of fate became… possible. The infinitely improbable somehow occurred. Someone, up there — the God of Schadenfreude, if she exists — was obviously having a rather hearty laugh at our expense.

We had the same teacher for the third year running.

By this stage, most of the girls were already wearing burqas and avoiding unnecessary contact/communication with the boys on pain of death by stoning. The boys had pretty much forgotten what a crafty, under-the-desk erection felt like. I was fully expecting to be handed a chastity belt as I walked into her classroom for the third year running; a chastity belt that had no key and was sealed with an unbreakable resin glue.

Some way through the third year, it was someone’s birthday, and it was normal for us to have a little birthday party on Friday afternoon to celebrate — you know, some music and decorations, some cake and ice cream. Normally someone would bring in the latest-and-greatest pop album and we’d dance and laugh for hours. This time though, someone had a great idea, a great idea that would resonate through the ages: let’s make a mix tape… a mix tape with naughty songs on it. Songs like… Let’s talk about sex, by Salt-n-Pepa.

God, looking back, we were so excited about the prospect of one-upping our draconian, prude, preacher freak of a teacher. We talked about it for days in hushed whispers during class. The giggle fits which inevitably followed only resulted in the removal of yet more privileges, which eventually led us to behave. We were mortified that she might actually cancel the party and ruin our glorious, immature plans!

The day of the party finally arrived. The girls had dressed prettily. The sporadic and not wholly unwelcome erections were back. Spontaneous, girly giggles could be heard regularly; lingering touches could be felt during and after hugs. After the party, with hot, red blood coursing through our systems and with pheromones thick in the air, surely this was it. Surely this was going to be my first kiss. At worst it would be my first tentative grope. I was ready; this was it. Bring it on!

4pm came and class finished. I got the tape player out with a bounce in my step and a grin on my little (effeminate!) face. I pushed the symbol of our freedom into the machine, pressed play.

She’d got to the tape.

Somehow that witch of a woman had got to our mix tape. There was a rather severe lack of Salt-n-Pepa; instead, the soft, sultry tones of Cliff Richard wafted into the air. The soft, completely devoid-of-sexuality notes of Summer Holiday hit our ears like a sonic boom; the silence that followed was deafening. The sexual tension that had positively thrummed throughout the day dissipated in an instant. Today wasn’t going to be the day of my first kiss; it wasn’t even going to be the day of my first sweaty-palmed grope. It was to be yet another disappointing day in the life of teenage Sebastian.

Fortunately, just a few months after that party, and after three long, boring years, the winds of luck finally changed: we got a new teacher!

For years afterward though, the playing of Let’s talk about sex as loud and as often possible was the signature prank of my class — preferably from outside her window.

(Another entry, another podcast! Recorded all in one take without any kind of planning, so the voices you hear are ‘off the cuff’ — I’m particularly proud of my attempt at a crazed feminist. Hopefully there are no repeat or missing paragraphs. It sounds a little bit nasal and wet in places, but hey, I can’t and don’t want to fix that: excess saliva has always served me well in the past.)

Once upon a time there were was a seedy, fleet-footed fellow that only moved under the cover of darkness. Only after the sun had descended and the campus took on the dusky, dark-blue hues of night would he emerge in his long coat and broad-rimmed hat. His black leather boots moved with surprising grace, the slight squeak of foot against foot the only noise betraying his location.

He skirts the meeting point, watching his target nervously hop from foot to foot and light a third cigarette, its burning tip faintly outlining his hooded face. Eventually he approaches, sidling up next to the smoker. He grunts a quiet greeting.

‘Got the money?’

‘You got all the stuff I want?’

‘Of course.’

‘Even the ebony-and-ivory one?’

‘Does the Porn King ever fail to deliver?’

…

At university I ruled the roost. I was invited to all the parties and chicks clung to every limb. I was that guy on the white leather sofa, splayed out languidly like a snow angel, girls curled up in the spaces left between my arms and legs. Merely opening my mouth would cause those nearby to quickly hush and watch me; watch my lips, my teeth, the expansion of my ribs as I breathe in, preparing to speak.

‘The Porn King requires a blow job.’ A flurry of activity followed as the girls quickly clambered off the sofa onto the ground and two others standing nearby rushed to help.

I once lived a life of regal opulence. Hedonistic extravagance. Girls and boys available to me at any time for any need and every want: food, sex or even… conversation. I’d be given free tickets to the local cinema and I’d be rushed through the other entrance at nightclubs, the one without a queue. At restaurants I’d always get the best table, the freshest bread and it wasn’t uncommon for the chef to prepare a special dessert, just for me.

I felt just a bit like The Godfather.

Unlike the Godfather though, I hadn’t built an empire based on coercion, fear and racketeering; this was an empire built upon something far healthier: sex and satisfaction. Not the human-trafficking kind either: sex, gooey and juicy, safely condensed into an easily-transportable disc.

The word ‘pornography’, perhaps aptly if you’re a ‘moralist’, comes from ancient Greek literally meaning ‘the writing/recording of prostitutes/prostitution’. That’s not a good start for an argument in favour of pornography, but wait!

Historically porn has been outlawed for religious reasons — monotheistic of course: the Greeks and Romans loved sex and all the sticky extras it entailed — but more recently the anti-porn brigade has been led by the feminists: ‘Porn is degrading to the female form!’ they decry. At the same time they claim that we’re now grown up enough, as a culture, to grant women the rights they’ve for millennia done without: to vote, to display and do with themselves as they see fit, to sleep with whoever they damn well please — to be a separate race or species: women. For the longest time women have merely been an extension of man, their subordinate helpers, humans without penises. Feminists — and most sane people — argue that it’s time women were allowed to plant their feet on the ground, look around, and strike out in any direction

The argument is, of course, that the actresses in porn aren’t ‘being women’; no, they’re prostituted lumps of meat, their bodies sold for money to the highest bidder for the satisfaction of a paying audience that’s sitting in front of their TV or computer screen, fapping, flapping furiously. But… is there something wrong with that?

It’s the classic problem: how restrictive do you make laws? You can’t re-outlaw porn — it just wouldn’t wash without the stranglehold that religion once held over law-making. You can’t point your finger at the mischievous boys and girls and say: ‘You behave and keep your clothes on now, y’hear?’ The cat — the pussy — is out of the bag.

Perhaps a better question to ask is: why is porn considered to degrade women, but not men? Is it because the woman always ‘receives’? Is it purely because women have been on the receiving end of male leadership and ownership since the dawn of time? What about gay male porn? Are there masculists out there campaigning for the rights of men that always ‘play the bottom’ in porn? Another case in point: I had to look up ‘masculist’ to see if such a word even existed. That’s how foreign the concept of ‘male rights’ are in today’s society.

It’s a shame that women and men must resort to starring in pornography, and no doubt it’s hard and unsatisfying work wrought with risk. In all but a few unfortunate cases however, it was their choice to take part — perhaps they like sex so why not be paid for it? It’s a lot safer to have sex on a porno shoot than with some random guy or girl that you meet at a club — for a start, you have a camera crew and director watching to make sure they don’t stick something in the wrong hole. That’s probably a better problem to address: the current urge for ‘modern women’ to screw anything with a pulse just because they can, but that deserves a separate topic of discussion.

It boils down to this, feminists, priests and conservative law-makers: is it possible to have too many human rights? Do you somehow pretend to understand more about ourselves than us? Ethics — the ability to decide what is right and wrong — is fundamentally personal. You can’t tell someone the right answer for any given situation: to retain the human right of free thought and self-determinism they have to decide for themselves. Instead of trying to govern our actions, educate us fully and hope that we come out the other end wiser and relatively unscathed.

As a race we’re great at getting through things if we know what we’re getting into. When we are blinkered by lies and propoganda, when we walk into a situation without unbiased information, when we are unable to see both sides of an argument due to outside influence — when we lose our ability to make rational and fair decisions, then we’re in trouble.

The reason I hate ignorance is because it’s the opposite of inquisitiveness.

Inquisitiveness is the reason you and I are both here today, reading this blog. Monkeys bashed  rocks against coconuts and early humans rubbed sticks together until they got warm — that’s why we’re here. The world we live in is made of energy, a force that comes in forms too numerous to list but one thing is certain: we haven’t discovered them all yet. If it wasn’t for scientists poking around at the universal fundament we’d still be hefting rocks into the air and giggling like children as they, yet again, fall to the ground.

The difference between ignorance and inquisitiveness is the number of times you fly a kite in an electrical storm. The ignorant man flies it just once and gets scared off by a near-death experience. The inventor, the thinker, flies it twice, thrice,  four times, discovering a new form of energy in the process and thus enlightening the whole of humanity.

There’s a reason the stereotypical image of the inventor is ruddy-faced and static-haired with their goggle-sized glasses askew: their appearance doesn’t matter. Straightening your spectacles can damn well wait until after your appointment with particle physics! When you’re tearing apart reality to find out what makes it tick there are more important concerns than when you last ate. For the scientist, learning the hows and the whys are all that matters; personal safety — mental and physical — is a fleetingly unimportant notion.

The more I think about it, the more my hatred for ignorance grows. Every time I hear about or see yet another ignorant pissant, another monkey-faced bigot, it’s like throwing kindling onto a very virulent, white-hot fire that’s sitting underneath my ass.

I hate ignorance. It’s very, very close to stupidity, another thing I am not so fond of.

Ignorance is in the same vein as refusing to learn because you think you already know everything. It’s the gathering of just one working set of data, a singular, monofaceted education and the righteous, indignant refusal to admit any other viewpoint as valid. They say ignorance is bliss — they, not me, not us — ‘Here’s my view of the world: accept it or get lost.’ God shaped this banana; the world is round; all men are pigs; drugs are bad for you. Ignorance is bliss only for the ignorant.

Rationally, it’s impossible to know everything, so why do people claim otherwise? Why is there a sizable subsection of society that thinks it’s wise or intelligent to stick to their poorly-educated guns? Why are there goons that will deny new research and rational arguments all the way to their shallow, but wide, graves?

I think it must be an innate human coping mechanism: we tend to glorify our traits, even if they’re negative. We exagerate stories until they contain just a grain of reality. We revel in aberration, we justify and pass it off as ‘human nature’: how did it become cool to pass out from alcohol poisoning?

Our most powerful drive though, the one that seals the deal, is the requirement to be right, the necessity to win the argument. There’s a facet of our genetic makeup that forces us to be right, even if it involves altering our, or other people’s, view of reality to make it so. The problem is, it’s the same trick of the mind that grants us the ability to ’stick to our guns’. Only it’s called stubbornness and not ignorance when you put it like that.

And therein lies the problem: stubornness — inflexibility, implacibility, remorselessness, whatever you call it — is a good trait in most circumstances. Did Caesar march into nigh-impossible battles because he was ignorant of the risks? No, of course not: he was simply a genius that hated to lose. And he never did.

This won’t be a complete backstory, but it will fill in a few big gaps. It includes and expands upon bits from my childhood entries and the ‘about‘ page. This should illuminate my scattered, eclectic writings on this blog. This should spread light on themes that you may’ve noticed and upon which I will now elucidate. This post is actually celebrating a ‘blog milestone’, though in true, chronically-understated British fashion, I shan’t say what that milestone is. Enjoy this revealing expose of inner Sebbiness; I’ll be hiding in the corner over there.

* * *

As I forced the last piece of LEGO into position with a snap I decided then that I would be an engineer; I was only five at the time and didn’t know what the word meant, nor what they did. The only thing I knew was that making things — crafting intricate constructions from simple, constituent parts — was fun. Really damn fun. You start off with a box of bits and amorphous blobs leftover from previous creations, and you can make anything! Well, almost anything, as defined by the rules and mechanics of LEGO blocks.

It was those rules, those axioms, that interested me the most. My parents will tell you that I was never a huge fan of using my hands — I was never the kind of kid to make rickety tree houses or bird tables — they were just a means to an end: to discover rules! Hands were great at pulling apart and unscrewing video machines, toasters and televisions. I had no idea how things actually worked, but God-damn it was fun trying to work it out! I would look at the parts, at the wreckage of my latest interest, and try to somehow divine the magical rules that made them go.

As I grew up my LEGO bricks turned into Technic cogs and Meccano struts, and thus my education continued: I learnt about physics and the inescapable force of gravity; torque and various structural designs to nullify its effects; the fun that could be had with elastic energy! Most importantly, I learnt about the two forces that dominate our current understanding of the world: chemical and electrical energy. Heating mixtures of chemicals and watching in (pained) awe as they exploded into my face taught me the wonders of cause and effect; reactions. Adding electrical motors to my constructions added life. And that was the key: I’d finally found out how to make things happen.

Enter my first computer at the geriatric age of eight (I was spoilt, some might say). This is probably where the tale should take a dark and oppressive turn for the worse but fortunately… it does not! Unless you consider the abject horror and avoidance of all physical exercise, caused by continued computer use, a bad thing. Actually, that’s a lie: I enjoyed tennis and badminton, but only because my arms were so long that I could reach almost everywhere without moving. I won’t bore you with any more from my teenage years, but you can read my childhood entries if you’re really interested.

In short, my teenage years were… OK. Not great, and often introverted. I was bullied for being fat and far too intelligent. Fortunately the bullying didn’t impact my thirst for knowledge, but it did culture my antisocial tendencies. I don’t mean I went around throwing bricks through windows (I did this just once, when I fell in with some bad boys), I mean that I’ve been a hermit ever since. My teenage life wasn’t completely devoid of social interaction. I did have friends. But for example, the only parties I would attend would be those I couldn’t skip, lest I become a social outcast. Being social, for the teenage Seb, was an obligation.

Looking back, it was a sad, lonely way of living. I don’t know if it was caused by the bullying, or just my continued interest in learning. Y’see, I would be great company until I realised that I’d actually rather be somewhere else, learning how to make explosives or program a new computer language. The only friends I did keep were ones that had identical interests to mine, or were intelligent enough that they remained interesting to me. A bit of a pragmatic — some would say selfish — view of friendships. Again, I don’t know what caused it, but my thirst for knowledge compelled me to flit about from person to person and from book to book, devouring anything and everything that I stumbled across in my search for more data.

When you’re a teenager, mixing your friends up a little is a common occurrence — so what if one day you’re best friends with John, and Steve the next? Looking back, I guess that’s why no one noticed what I was up to. And I’m still the same today, though my years at university tempered my hermit-like tendencies and almost turned me into a social butterfly! Still, when it comes to friends — relationships that I nuture and tend to regularly — I still only have two close ones. The first, I talk to once a week if I’m lucky, the second I might see once a year, or less (does that make me a bad friend?) It’s not so easy to ‘bounce between friends’ when you’re an adult; when you’re a grown-up you can’t just chew, digest and unceremoniously dump your friends.

That’s why I travel and I guess… why I don’t have friends.

It feels lame to cite Fight Club of all things, but its popularity will help make my point: I like single servings. The people I meet on trains and planes are tasty enough to tantalise my taste buds without the risk of becoming dull or flavourless. I might only spend six hours with a friend made while climbing over ancient ruins in Turkey, but when you’re thrown into a similar situation together and share the same experiences, you learn a lot about each other, and you learn it quickly. Single, intense servings of personality; more than just a passing acquaintance, but less than a friendship. At the end we can both go our own ways; a single serving with no strings attached.

Finally, we’ve arrived at the contemporary Seb, where I understand enough about myself that I can attempt to define my personal philosophy. ‘Attempt’, because it’s hard to name and qualify thoughts that, without scope or definition, have run around my head for 25 years. So bear with me as I try to put it into some clumsy words: I demand rationality, but not in the conventional sense. As humans, we are exceptionally good at being rational, but only within the confines of a working, true set of data. You can only be as rational as your education allows — if you have been told that the world is flat, it’s rational to assume it is indeed flat. But that’s not rationality; at least not for me. Most ’stupidity’, as viewed from an objective point of view, is (unsurprisingly) caused by a lack of education. The stupid person probably doesn’t know he’s being stupid though — in his head he’s just doing as he’s been taught!

Rationality, for me, is an absolute: not simply a given, limited set of truths taught through nurture, dogma or education.

Rationality, for me, is the neverending search for a body of knowledge so vast, so all-encompassing that, one day, will hopefully allow me to understand the workings of the universe, and those that populate it.

There we have it: one of my most secret and character-definining traits laid bare for all to see. I hope it goes some way to explaining how I look at the world, and ultimately what I write on this blog. I am, in essence, trying to get my head around everything; I’m pulling the world apart, screw by screw, hoping to find the answers. As and when I find them, I’ll be sure to share.

* * *

There are some fun photos to follow tomorrow. They were meant to accompany this entry, but now it seems inappropriate. If you want funny pictures, go and look at the ones of me as a kid…

Imagine for a moment a world where clueless people remain silent; where those without working knowledge shut up and listen. A society whose people, instead of making wild, uneducated stabs, feels compelled to investigate, question and probe. Consider a culture that actually cares about the damage caused by ignorance and prejudice, to friends and strangers alike.

* * *

Once upon a time there was authority. I don’t mean in the policing or juridical sense — Rome didn’t have police, you know? — I’m talking of intellectual authority. If you had a question about childbirth you went to see the wizened midwife that delivered both you and your mother into the world. If you were ill, your only hope was if the sawbones had seen a similar case, or had a beaten, weather-worn hand-me-down almanac that described how to use leeches effectively. Slowly though, over thousands of years, authority shifted to the written and printed word; the professionals remained masters, but they could not travel the world as quickly or as effusively as books. Information became available, accessible, free — and both culture and science surged forward as a result.

Society began to revere the written word. For some reason, ink impressed on paper in the shape of words and sentences have immense weight and meaning. What you read about giving birth is suddenly more true than the wizened midwife’s decades of experience. A book says the world is flat and, in your mind, in an instant, the world becomes flat. It’s magical just how much credence the written word is given — people will believe the craziest things if they’re written down.

Whoompf! Religion.

Blam! Newspapers.

Poof! The Internet!

Authority still exists — somewhere — but its voice is muffled, drowned out by a sea of disinformation; information that gets propagated as wisdom because we simply don’t know any better. That’s what old wives’ tales are incidentally: something your great, great grandmother once read, assimilated as truth and then forwarded it along through the generations. Does masturbation really give you hairy palms? Is thirteen actually unlucky? No.

And therein lies the problem: knowledge is power whether it is proven true or not. Fallacy, slander and gossip — it is all, from the (unfortunate) recipient’s point of view, working knowledge. You read some juicy little factoid about a famous celebrity and… it makes you feel good. Chances are it’s not true, or only partially so, but knowing that little nugget of knowledge somehow makes you feel enlightened, powerful. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” Winston Churchill famously said. There is a reason people peddle in lies and half-truths. There is a reason why newspaper editors ‘add one’ to death tallies or run with unnamed sources. And that’s the other, far more tricky problem: lies, if repeated enough by any kind of authority — a priest, a mother, a teacher — become truth. Cold hard truth that, within a generation, becomes wisdom.

We’re all walking around with a lot of data that we think is true. It’s a survival trait: our nurture is like gospel. And that’s bad when it overrides our nature, our experiences. We feel qualified to dispense these false truths to others.

‘You must have something wrong with your head’ we tell our friends and loved ones.

‘You shouldn’t do that, it’s wrong, it’s bad’ we say to our girlfriends and boyfriends.

‘How can you believe in that?’ we say to our friends with a differing faiths.

Anyone that’s mastered a field or subject will know that it feels a lot like peeling back layers of untruth — Oh, so that’s how it works! — that’s all real education is. It fills in gaps and rewrites what we’ve known and worked with for years. But it’s not easy. It’s no simple task to alter your entire vision of the world just because an encyclopaedia or wise man tells you to. How long did people hold onto the fact that the world was flat? That’s why false knowledge and data will continue to propagate through generations. We’re stubborn bastards.

Next time, before you pass along a piece of information, think about whether it’s actually true or not. If you’re not sure, go to the library and find out what the truth really is. At the very least you’ll be doing the next generation and tomorrow’s civilisation a huge favour.

* * *

Please excuse my use of the African American vernacular — dis, to disrespect –  but it was necessary. It’s altogether more punchy than ‘Don’t go insulting what you don’t know nothing about.’

This isn’t finished. Next I want to tie this into religion, prejudice and ignorance.

I’ve covered the sorry state of knowledge and inherent lack of truth that plagues contemporary society.

But it didn’t start yesterday or even 100 years ago! It’s an eternally recurring theme of dumbing-down and almost-truths dispensed by nasty people posing as intellectual authorities over thousands of years. There is an endemic ‘loss of wisdom’ that has an iteratively degenerative effect, gaining more momentum with each generation.

Historically these lies, these tales, were of a philosophical or mythical nature and virtually harmless. They were stories that became true through retelling: Hercules, Romulus, Arthur. The stories were told first by the travelling bard, then more abstractly through tribalism and shamanism. Polytheism followed with its anthropomorphic (god of wine, god of war) pantheon of valiant heroes and demigods. Finally monotheism trumped them all and wrapped up with its epic, fearsomely vengeful tale of apocalyptic events.

Old wives’ tales (or fables or myths or whatever!) might’ve been lies or half-truths but they didn’t really harm anyone; they might have been ‘not ideal’, but that’s not the point — they were moving towards the ideal — they were retold to children with good intentions! The same could be said for the basic spiritual maxims of most religions: everlasting life; don’t murder; try your best not to sodomise your brother’s wife; treat others how you would like to be treated. All good but… it sadly didn’t last. Something changed. All of a sudden enforcement entered the equation. Arbitrary enforcement: rules, laws and peer pressure with little or no basis in moral/cultural advancement or ethical living. If abstract/intellectual enforcement wasn’t enough, there was a strong physical aspect too: witch-hunts, the Inquisition and the Crusades are but a few obvious examples.

Why did it happen? For thousands of years our focus had been on becoming a more advanced race. But one day, probably after the fall of Rome, we woke up and well… we fell asleep again. Life was no longer about pushing the progress of civilisation. Perhaps it was our growing understanding of human anatomy and psychology that caused the change. Maybe it was due to the formation of metropolises like Rome and the urgent need to control large groups of people quickly and easily. Personally I think the continued development of written and spoken language — and rhetoric — played a big role. Whatever it was, something snapped. No longer was storytelling used to share wisdom or morals to improve our progeny’s standard of living. Gone were the tales that frightened children away from actual dangers like dank caves or poisonous fruits.

A new breed of story started to appear, tales that weaved lies and believable half-truths into their narrative. And we know that words, both written and spoken, have a terrible power. Instead of cresting taller peaks and pushing towards new horizons people started to fear their surroundings. Authorities of knowledge slowly faded away to be replaced by scary chieftains, oppressive teachers, greedy priests and, of course, a vengeful God.

I’ve written about magic before and how it is ultimately synonymous with technology. Television was magic (find an old person that was around when television was invented and talk to them about it!) but sure enough, it very quickly became mundane. What do you think would’ve happened to the inventor of the television if he had been around in the Middle Ages? What do you think ‘witchcraft’ actually was? With such an attitude towards innovation and revolution (or evolution, hah!), is it a surprise that books, education and intellectual enlightenment all but disappeared for 1,000 years?

For a very, very long time the pursuit of knowledge and truth — science! — was frowned upon, persecuted. Scientists were shunned or burnt at the stake. Why?

Because they were dangerous. Knowledge is power.

We humans learnt just enough for the monotheistic surge to take place. We learnt how to exploit the human love of mystery with smart wit and sharp turns of dogmatic phrase. We have become a scared and tentative flock too fearful to break from the pack. In essence we learnt just enough to be dominated and no more.

And now we await — or do we create? –  the next Renaissance where veracity of knowledge is returned to us.

***

Still more to come, I think; on prejudice and ignorance. Oh, and if you’re reading this on the blog itself, remember you can double click a word to find out what it means!

I can’t recall where I originally had this argument. It’s an interesting one with no real solution or conclusion, but it’s interesting. It’s the kind of thing that you can posit or postulate, but because it involves rewriting history, no one really knows what the ‘best’ answer is.

I am of course talking about socialism versus capitalism. I don’t describe myself as either a socialist or capitalist, or subscribe to one political party. My thoughts and beliefs tend to span the entire gamut — and if you read this blog regularly, you’ll probably know how I feel about most important issues.

I’m not going to tackle politics itself — I don’t think I’m educated enough to do so — but I want to cover one topic in particular. It’s an argument that’s cropped up a few times over the last few years, as technology has begun its (scarily) rapid consummation of the world and its day to day activities.

So, exposition first: I am capitalist/right-wing when it comes to matters of technology. The arguments I have are usually with socialist, left-wing types.

It goes something like this: ‘It’s sick that these large tech companies are so rich! And there are so many poor people in Africa without technology! Those CEOs on billion-dollar salaries make me SICK! …’ — you get the idea. Basically, spread the love. You see, technology is so damn all-encompassing. It affects healthcare, education, amenities, entertainment — the benefit of advanced technology is SO VAST that most of us can’t begin to imagine its impact on the world.

But would these socialists be quite so socialist if we weren’t living in some kind of utopian world? Are there socialists in sub-Saharan Africa? Do tribes share their deer with the clan next door? How about if they invent a new kind of spear — do you share that technology? Or do you look after your own first?

My argument goes something like this: capitalism drives invention. Capitalism is all about SELFISH NEED. But it is selfishness that inspires ingeniousness. If your kids are being bullied by some thugs with knives, do you report it to the State and trust it will get sorted out? Or do you make your kids body armour and teach them how to fight?

That’s perhaps a bad analogy, but you get the idea? Are you as likely to fight for someone on the other side of the world as you are for your friends and family?

How many inventions have been made with the Developing World in mind?

So the way this usually goes, in politics, is that a conservative party rules for a while, technology flourishes — and then ‘the people’ feel like change has to be made and a socialist government comes to power. I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing that there’s a change of power. God knows it’s good to shake things up occasionally, lest things become stagnant — and you never want a country to become stagnant. (The robot workers vs. labour unions is a good example?)

I just hope there are no iPhone or BlackBerry owners that are also socialists. It’s incredibly hypocritical.

The counter-argument is obviously this: why are we so inherently selfish? Can we change that, or do we have as much chance of that happening as the deconstruction of racism?

But the sad truth, whether we like it or not, is that we are selfish. We’re never going to push the development of technology solely for other people.

The Developing World should be grateful for our inventive endeavours. And we should be proud of them, not ashamed.

On a surprisingly regular basis I get asked the question: ‘What would your empire be like, Seb?’

It always makes me stop and think. Who told you I’m planning to be an emperor…?

I don’t think I’ve told many people about my aspirations of world domination, but perhaps it’s the kind of thing that manifests and makes itself known in other ways. Maybe it’s the sparkly glint in my eye, or the grandiose sweep of my arms when discussing important issues. Who knows though, really. Humans have a way of picking up on things, right? And it would be stupid of me to deny something that is so plainly true. People will continue to ask me what my empire will be like — so it would be good to have some answers that I can give those that inquire.

And I have some answers. Not a complete manifesto of course — I guess I have another 15 years or so before the world will take an entire manifesto seriously. Damn my lack of senatorial grey hair and wrinkle-implied wisdom. But I have some ground rules, some ideas that would make it a grand and just and mighty empire.

Let’s call this My Manifesto, just for fun. In case any historians are reading: this is liable to change at any time — I haven’t finished travelling the world yet. So consider this manifesto in flux.

Starting at the beginning:

Education

Proper education for all. Plain and simple. ‘Proper’ is defined as ‘an education that prepares you for later on’. If the world wants to be a democracy, education will teach you political science and democracy. If the world wants to be a dictatorship, education should teach you how to be a good subject of the dictator. Remarkably little is actually learnt at school — and most of the ‘important’ things aren’t even touched upon. Probably because politicians/parents/?? are afraid of kids actually knowing what’s going on. Kids used to know so much about the world when they lived their education. Depending on what is important, that should be taught. It will vary from country to country, but it’s about time we actually teach useful knowledge.

This section has been expanded in its own entry

Politics

I’m split between dictatorship and democracy. Both have their merits. Democracy/bureaucracy doesn’t tend to get things done quickly. Perhaps a ‘temporary dictatorship’ system like the Romans? This requires the world to actually trust their leader(s) again though — something we haven’t had in a long time now. To successfully push through the changes in this manifesto you would need the support of an entire parliament/senate. Dictatorship would be easier… but that’s the trap, eh?

But I think if you have an educated populace, politics don’t matter quite so much. Politics is all about reaching a compromise between (wildly) varied points of view. Tyranny is easier because only one point of view matters. It works until that point of view is ‘wrong’ — that’s why you have democracy/bureaucracy, to ‘even out’ the wrongs, to make sure things don’t go too wrong. But you ‘even out’ the peaks as well as the troughs. The good bits get diluted. Why do our opinions and the opinions of lawmakers on important matters vary so much? Is it simply due to differing levels of education, knowledge and wisdom?

Research

Historically, most research funding is spent on defence — obviously, if I had a world-spanning empire, conventional military force wouldn’t be required. Planetary defences would be though. But this is a two-pronged thing: research into space travel also aids planetary defence. Many inventions and leaps in technology between 1900 and today have been off-shoots of military spending. But it’s time to move on now. We’re so ‘Earth-centric’ that we’re ignoring a frickin’ huge frontier that’s just begging to be explored. You would be shocked (or appalled) at the tiny budget allocated to space travel/research. We’re talking fractions of a percent of the annual budget. I think we need to care less about what we have now and more about what we could have. We need to give the explorers something to explore. They’re getting antsy, I assure you.

There’s more to it than simply ‘explore space’, but that’s a large part of it. Many corollary industries would surge forward too. Right now our inventions and technologies are very, very ‘Earth-centric’. Alter the playground, the locale, and the game changes. Just compare the kind of inventions we saw in the 1900s to the ones in the 200s. Compare motor vehicles to the Internet — and the sub-industries that have formed beneath each.

Welfare/Taxation

I quite like the concept of ‘flat tax‘, but I appreciate that my grasp of economic science isn’t perfect. Social support is a tricky one: how far do you extend the helping hand and deep pockets of state welfare? I think if we explored, our stockpile of available resources would expand at an alarming rate. There are other planets with resources like those of Earth. There are other places with gold nuggets literally dusting the landscape, just as they did when explorers first set foot on the New World of America. Resources dry up but the universe is almost infinitely large. Again, why are we so ‘Earth-centric’? I wonder if Big Oil (or national government even) realises just how much money they could make if they found a planet with oil or [insert some other fuel that hasn't been invented yet].

Taxing the rich is just one way of providing welfare. Would taxes need to be so high if our population density was lower and we had more natural resources? There are (I assume) always going to be people that need support from the state. There are other solutions than taxes.

Arts

You can’t begin to regulate the arts — they’re not something that should ever be under the jurisdiction of a government. Thankfully the days of artists being ‘commissioned’ to make self-adulatory statues or paintings of dictators are gone. Arts and artists simply need to be nurtured and they will flourish. I guess this ties into the ‘education’ section above because everyone’s an artist. You are artistic whether you like it or not — it’s just a matter of how easily or readily that art comes out! I have a feeling that making sure schools have adequate resources for the arts is another one of those ‘cheap, no-brainer’ things. I don’t think we need to worry too much about arts on a global scale — TV, film — I think we’re just all suffering a little from ‘cabin fever’ at the moment. All cooped up here on this fair planet with instantaneous communication and the equally instant/urgent need to satisfy our needs.

I know we’ve been static for a very tiny period relative to the entire history of humanity. But things are now moving quickly. The cogs are whirring but we’re standing still. We need to push forward now, towards the fringe, lest our own technology crushes us.

[Updated 30th November 2009]