Politicians are corrupt

Oh how I hated Margaret Thatcher (British prime minister of the 80's who curbed Union power and cut back the welfare state)  I hated her beliefs, I hated her policies, but there is one aspect of Margaret Thatcher that I have that I have been forced to acknowledge as admirable when I compare her to the majority of politicians of today .. she was a conviction politician.  What I see in today's politicians, from the Prime Minister down, is an overriding pre-occupation with their prospects of re-election.

Margaret Thatcher's politics started with her conviction, and ended with her election having convinced enough people that her convictions were probably worth following.

If your primary concern is your electability, you constrain your policies and lie to the electorate about who are.  So much of what you do and say is a false construct designed to make you acceptable to the majority.

These politicians excuse their behaviour under the banner of pragmatism.  They say "We must get elected so that we can at least do some good".  But once they are elected they remain constrained because there is always the next election to think about.  

With all these politicians fighting to be whatever the electorate want, rather than fighting to convince the electorate in the rightness of their position it really doesn't matter who gets elected.  Whichever political party gets elected the resulting policies will be very similar to those that would have been implemented by any of the other mainstream parties.  

Politics has been reduced to individuals fighting over who gets the pay cheque, more akin to employees fighting for promotion than people fighting for a cause.  Every now and again when their election is in doubt you will see politicians switch parties. It is not a common occurrence because it generally looks bad to the electorate, laying bare the lack of principle involved, but I believe that many make this kind of career decision when they initially decide which party to belong to.  The important issue being career opportunities rather than beliefs.

I consider this to be corruption.  

If I was to tell you of a politician who promoted a set of policies in exchange for money I hope you would agree with me that that politician was a corrupt politician.  Substitute the word "money"  for "wage", and I hope you can see what I am getting at, and why I say non conviction, career climbing politicians of today are corrupt.

Of course there are politicians out there whose convictions happily coincide with this generic electable stereotype.  But I'd argue that these politicians while not corrupt  themselves are the beneficiaries of the corruption of others, selected to represent their party to the exclusion of others primarily because of their electability.   

Better to be out of power, integrity in tact, fighting for what you believe than to be in power, corrupt, fighting for someone else's beliefs.

Why I am a believer

Have you ever asked yourself why you believe what you believe?  You have probably asked yourself what it is that you believe on many occasions but have you asked yourself why?

Even if you have thought about it for some things I'd wager that most of you haven't given it more than a passing thought, even for the big issues such as god, religion and morality.

There will be some of you who might respond "I believe because it is the truth", but that answer is just a way of avoiding the question.  First consider that to believe something is to think that it is true. Second consider that when you say something IS the truth, you are either saying
a. "that on all the evidence presented to me so far I think that this is true."
or b. "that I don't care about evidence, I just choose to think that this is true."
So the statement "I believe because it is the truth" is equivalent to "I think this is true because I think this is true".  Not exactly a rigorous argument.

For those of you that have undertaken research yourself, or those of you have looked inward like a Buddhist monk spending years contemplating the nature of reality, your belief in any particular truth potentially only lasts as long as the next discovery or revelation.  Even the briefest look at the past will show you how ALL belief systems have evolved over time.
 
Scientific minded people often consider themselves to be beyond reproach in this area, and will come out with statements like "My beliefs are based on the evidence of years scientific experimentation", but I doubt there is a scientist alive who can claim to have based all their important beliefs on experimentation that they have done, or even on having a good understanding of all relevant areas pertaining to that belief.

So why do you believe what you believe?  Simply put you believe most things because someone told you it was true and you chose to believe.  It isn't hard to see evidence of this everywhere you look.  Is it just a co-incidence that the vast majority of children share the same broad religious beliefs of their parents? Of course as children we choose to believe what our seemingly all knowing parents tell us.  Apparently there is also evidence that we humans are programmed to copy those around, both in terms of how to do things but also in terms of belief.  It provides a survival advantage in a complex social groupings.

Of course we are not pre-destined to continue believing tomorrow everything we believed yesterday, but for most of us once a belief is held it takes something significant to change that belief.  The belief becomes part of us, part of our view of ourselves, and we naturally defend any attack on ourselves.

My father was an atheist, and so it was only natural that I grew up an atheist.   Recently I discovered that my father was in fact not an atheist, he was agnostic, i.e. He thought that god might or might not exist.  Discovering this did not change my belief, even though I accept that the reason for me believing what I do was a child's misunderstanding.

And my point?

Maybe that whenever we feel superior because of our "rightness" or angry at others "wrongness" consider that your truth is not a rock but insubstantial sands.  It is unlikely that it is an absolute truth and you probably owe it mostly to the chance circumstances of your birth, or as a by product of choosing to belong to a particular community.

Dieters, get a grip

On the radio this morning was a program about loosing weight ... people's experiences, expert advice etc.  I found myself feeling very annoyed by the show, and thinking further on why I was so irritated by it I realise that I find most peoples attitudes and concerns around dieting completely obscene.

I am not one of those that think it is wrong to be concerned about your body shape.  Unless you have given up on wanting to be attractive to your sexual partner(s) or potential partner(s) wanting an attractive body shape, however you define that, is a natural and healthy desire.

Nor am I one of those that think it is wrong to pander to society's common body stereotypes.  We can be angry about how wrong it is for men to be attracted to hourglass figures (just an example), or for women to be attracted to zero fat six packs, but unless you have been brought up in a windowless box you and your partner(s) are a product of this society.  Campaign to change society, I'm behind you,  but in the mean time, don't kid yourself that most people are not affected in their sexual preferences by these stereotypes.  And if that is the case it is perfectly sensible to want to conform.

I also believe that trying to improve your body, however you choose to define that (excepting practices that are very harmful to your health) can be a laudable pursuit.  Pursuing an accomplished mind is admirable and pursuing a healthy body is sensible and wise, yet for some, pursuing a beautiful body is looked down on.  I am an atheist, so with my belief in having one life and one body, it seems that I should get the most out of it while it lasts.  But I imagine many of you who are religious would agree that you should make the most of Gods gifts to you.  I think my argument here gets a bit thin for those of you who believe in re-incarnation  .... so I'll just move on quickly.

Unfortunately for me, I am an unfit, chubby 54 year old with nothing better to do with his mind that write notes to himself in blog posts, but that doesn't mean that I cant appreciate people more motivated and less lazy than me.

So what exactly is it that I find obscene I hear you ask.  

It is this ...  that in a world when around 15% of the population of developing countries are undernourished anyone can consider it a problem that they are peckish.  And lets face it it, when most people talk about hunger they are actually referring to a state of premature peckishness bought on by their own overeating (yes, me included).  

I'm not talking about those of you out there comfort eating because of depression. You should of course stop dieting and see someone about your depression.  I'm not talking about those of you with a medical condition that causes weight gain, you do have my sympathy.  But for the rest of us, this is just about an irrational fear of being a bit peckish.

The fact is for those of us in the developed world, we eat far more than we need to be healthy.  Our bodies typically are racing to keep up with all the food we shovel into our mouths by upping our metabolism etc.

It is also a fact that if we eat less, our stomach shrinks and our desire and ability to eat too much will reduce.  Simples.

Of course, just eating less on its own is not the most efficient way.  Exercise is a no brainer for those of us that can be arsed. It keeps your metabolism up, burns off fat, and I assume helps ensure that the body consumes fat instead of muscle.  But I understand that exercise isn't for everyone. I am pretty lazy when it comes to exercise and I can use my dodgy knees and general decrepitude as an excuse to myself why I shouldn't exercise more.  

So finally I think we have identified my target audience, the majority of us "developed world" residents who are, I contend , not clinically depressed, reasonably healthy, sexually engaged, gluttonous and lazy. 

And we as a group whine about how hard it is to loose weight, obsess about one diet over another diet, attend weight loss groups, get into food fads, spend fortunes on prepared diet meals and drivel on about it on radio programs.

Yes I am sure that you can speed things up a little or be a little less peckish if you eat your carbs and protein in a particular order, or vary the times of your meals to coincide with your daily body rhythms, or drink 20 litres or water a day etc, but why?

Because you really can't stand the thought of being peckish.  Jeez people are starving out there, suck it up.