Apolcalypse from a distance

These are very strange times. Strange enough to justify a post, the first in a long time. I have arrived in Taiwan in a set of circumstances that feel like the start of a story of global dystopia. I’d brought my flight forward in the fast-changing situation, choosing to fly on Friday 13th in the hope that it might not be a popular one. In a virus panic you don’t want to be surrounded by crowds in a metal tubes for hours. That part of it didn’t work. It was almost a full flight, and the empty seat next to me was the only one I could see. Almost everybody wore a mask. Having promised I’d be scrupulously careful, I wore a mask myself. I also wiped down every surface with alcohol wipes, and then didn’t move from my seat for the twelve hours flying time. The airline staff disinfected the toilet after every visitor, but it still felt like the riskiest place. However, it was a good choice of flight, because while I was in the air Taiwan raised the threat level of arrivals from the UK from one straight to three, and so we were the last into the country before really stringent restrictions kicked in. Even as it was, having already filled out two entry forms on the plane, there was a new two-part form rushed around after landing. Then there was a long queue way before immigration, as we all had to pass through disease screening. Anyone with a Taiwan mobile number could be screened online after scanning a QR code, but the rest of us had to wait patiently for the manual version. They wanted to know where we’d recently been and where we’d be staying, a contact name and number for the next fourteen days, and for us to complete a health check every one of those days on the form provided. What was particularly impressive to me was that they actually called the number each person gave, live, to check it was valid. As a level one arrival, I am allowed to go out as long as I wear a face mask. If I’d arrived a day later I’d be obliged to stay indoors by myself, and I’d have a tracking app on my phone so officials knew where I was for the quarantine period. If I didn’t have a smartphone, they’d give me one. As it is, I have my form, take my temperature morning and evening and tick the boxes to say whether I have any symptoms, and get a text message every evening to check on me. I have to answer: 1 if I’m OK, 2 if I have any of the symptoms, or 3 if I have any other problem. If I don’t answer at all, they assume a 2, and someone gets in contact straight away. There’s a free phone number to call at any other time too. The clever thing about all this is that the Taiwan government knows the whereabouts of every possible source of virus infection, which means they haven’t had to shut the country down in other ways. I’m extremely happy to be restricted for two weeks if it keeps a whole country safer, and it feels like a much better solution than anything in Europe. But meanwhile I look at the news from Europe and the UK and that sense of dystopia grows and grows.

The cold world

"The World", for brethren, which is just the normal everyday world for everyone else, is a dark and scary place. It's held up as a warning of what the alternative to the brethren's life is. It's cold, and lonely, peopled with strangers who will never care about you, and to be cast out into it is to be deprived of all human warmth as well as to know that everybody you ever cared about feels you unfit for companionship. It isn't so, of course. People outside the brethren are pretty much like people inside the brethren, much as that may shock a few on each side. They aren't inherently more heartless, and come in enough varieties that pretty much everybody should be able to find some likeable ones. Having said that, though, I have to confess that after a few years of experience it does quite often feel effectively the same as the brethren claim. It can't really be otherwise. I left behind what was basically a huge family, where I was firmly plugged into a communal life where everybody was affected by everybody else's actions, and there is nothing to replace that. And yes, I mostly found it stifling at the time and couldn't face going back to it, but that doesn't mean its opposite is always ideal. The wind on a mountain top may be bracing and exhilarating, or it may be bitter, depending on one's condition and vulnerability. I guess there may well be people around, including ex-brethren, who enjoy a constant round of friendship and have daily social interaction. I don't. I don't much like group socialising, and if you don't like groups it's very hard to stumble across other people who feel the same way. I haven't cracked that conundrum yet. The people I met when I first left were either secondhand friends, who were taken back by their original owners when I parted ways with them, or were more interested in my ex-brethren condition, which has become normal. None have stayed friends as I would think of it. There isn't anybody who can talk or meet up at any time for no reason. That probably says more about me than about them, to be honest. I conclude most people's lives congeal over time. They set, not quite hard, but they set, and the friends and family in their lives at some point between youth and middle age become the ones they take through life with them. Everybody I meet has that kind of life, and since I cut mine off I'm without it. For them, I'm an extra, and they will think about me sometimes if the circumstances are right, but that's all. That doesn't mean the world is cold and pitiless, it just means that I've had a disconnection in my life which other people haven't. But at times the difference can be hard to spot.

At a distance of five years ...

I would hope that there is less of the Exclusive Brethren Survivor as part of who I am than there was for most of this blog. That hope is the main reason why there have been no updates. This feels like a good time to ponder in writing what does remain, though, and how some feelings have changed and clarified. Actually, it's been more than eight years since this all kicked off.

TV Quiz pt 1

Back at the beginning of the year, I did something a bit reckless. In my defence I didn't have much idea what I was doing. In response to "you should do that" while watching BBC Mastermind, I filled out an online application.

So yesterday I was in Manchester having my knowledge/ignorance quotient recorded for television.

Between the two events there were phone interviews and tests, a face-to-face audition and more phone consultations, during which time I repeatedly thought "why am I doing this?" and repeatedly teetered on the brink of pulling out. I don't like being the focus of attention, I avoid competitive situations (I'm not fond of losing, but I find winning embarrassing too), and I've spent a large majority of my life insulated from popular culture. Each time, though, I told myself that those were all very good reasons to go ahead. I'm not good at putting it into practice, but I firmly believe in the value of going beyond what I think I am capable of.

I also discovered one thing which showed how little I knew about popular culture: Mastermind seems to come packaged with a whole set of assumptions for everybody. They ALL know the format, most can name a previous winner, and all regard it as something that other people do. That may be because it still has a bit of prestige among the many quiz shows there are, or it may be a hangover from the days when there weren't so many, I'm not sure.

Needless to say I didn't cover myself with glory in the event, and I confess to feeling a bit deflated in spite of that being exactly in line with my expectations (don't we all dream of the perfect set of circumstances when we imagine a scenario, even we keep replacing it with realism). Still, I'm quietly proud too, mainly because I know I tend to avoid putting myself on the line in any way, and I know, even if nobody else does, how hard this was to do - effectively putting an aspect of myself out to be judged in as public a way as possible.

Probably the second hardest thing I've done, actually. And that's a good positive thing, and I'm glad I did it.

Tidying the straggles

I feel at a crossroads right now. Having said that, I've felt similarly for about three years ... which is how long it's been since I started to write down what I felt and thought about life among the brethren and in the process changed my life.

It feels a bit strange at this distance. I was quite worked up, and I can't recapture that. Not to mention that once I'd made my feelings public it became impossible for me to stay in the circumstances that were driving my writing, although the novelty of the change to "normal life" provided material for a while.

If I've learned anything on the journey, it's that there's nothing particularly remarkable about being in the brethren, nor about not being in the brethren, nor about having a past in the brethren. Human life is varied. Everybody has a story about where they came from and where they are now. Everybody has hopes, fears and ambitions. So do I, and my past still provides interest to people I meet if it happens to come up, but interesting is all it is. Nobody assumes it defines me, or that it explains anything, let alone provides an excuse for anything. I was once in this strange religious group that has plenty of quirks useful for small talk. Someone else lived for years in a third-world country. People are interesting.

I suspect that this is pretty much incomprehensible to those remaining in the brethren. The group is the centre of the universe, and the fact that they simply don't matter much is something they cannot grasp. They expect that anybody who isn't for them must be against them, and that anybody who's left must have very strong feelings because everything is black and white, especially about such a hugely significant thing as the existence of the brethren and their doings.

From my observation of many of us who have left, I think we tend to carry a lot of that with us. I spent a good while feeling as though my ex-brethren status defined me, even while trying to prove otherwise, and using it (mostly just to myself) as a reason for all sorts of things. "I'm new to this," I'd think, "I can't be expected to understand / succeed / react correctly." I've gradually realised that that is how most of the world feels most of the time, actually. Maybe it's the rigid boundaries of our old brethren life that makes us unusually conscious of the fluidity and unexpectedness of normal life - or maybe that's just another layer of the excuses that come so naturally. Anyway, I think it's a trap, moving subtly from thinking we're unique and different because we're part of the brethren to thinking we're unique and different because we used to be.

So as and when I find time, I'm going to try to note down my thoughts as they are now, three years from the start. I'd like to round this whole blog off neatly instead of letting it dribble away to nothing! Then perhaps I can move off into proper normality, leaving this phase as a properly-formed complete document of the experience.

My Lunch

Brief break in the busy-ness-induced silence to announce that my fifteen minutes of fame have arrived:

Monster Burger Lunch

Compassion

This seems very appropriate, somehow.

If God had wanted me to be compassionate ...

Spiritual on Demand

I suppose it hadn't occurred to me how odd the assumptions behind activity in Brethren meetings are until I saw the interest sparked by my comment on preparing for preachings. At some level I know it isn't standard, but it's all so familiar to me that it doesn't arouse much thought.

There is a slightly awkward mix of spontaneity and pre-planning in most brethren meetings, the result of the belief that all participation should be the result of spiritual promptings and not "the natural mind", combined with the usual pragmatism about what works in practice. Even in the most spontaneous of occasions the format is quite rigid, for example.

In a reading meeting, which is typical of the way the brethren work when gathered, one man acts as a sort of chairman of a discussion, and all questions and remarks are addressed to him. Somebody else usually has the responsibility of selecting this chairman. Theory says that whoever is asked to "take the meeting" should be ready and willing to do so, and should be open to whatever God gives him to say to get things going. Normally, though, several people refuse to do so for assorted reasons, and are prepared to accept the implication that they aren't close enough to God for the messages to get through, before somebody actually does the job. If there are too many refusals then distress can build up among those taking it all seriously, because they conclude that there is too much slackness in the company for anybody to have God's word for them. However, there is a subtle social jostling going on in all this, because taking a meeting implies acceptance of the fact that the person doing so has been given (by God) what is required for the whole company gathered, yet it is wise for the person concerned to be humble - often humble enough to deny that they should be taking the meeting at all. So the ideal situation is for them to be pressured into doing so because then they get to combine the prestige and the humility. The result of all this is that it can be quite complicated getting these meetings started at times, as people dance between what is said and what is actually meant, and the selector tries to judge whether the person they've picked on is really unwilling to bite the bullet or they're still fishing for more pressure.

Preachings actually follow a similar pattern with one key difference: the selection is not done in public. Typically two men are responsible for picking preachers in each place where preachings happen, and it is done outside meeting times. For some reason, better excuses are required to refuse to preach, although obviously nobody could practically be forced to do so. The fact remains that the stakes are altered by the lack of publicity, and I suppose that is one cause of a taboo against refusal - otherwise it could prove even harder to persuade potential preachers. There is little prestige in preaching because everybody is fully aware that the preacher is the preacher because he was asked to be (and I'm not sure why this differs from readings, but I can only conclude that the difference derives in some way from the visibility of the selection process), and so few people enjoy the responsibility.

Here again, preaching is theoretically the giving of a message from God provided at the time, which is the apparent reason why it is bad to refuse: the person refusing puts themselves in the position of declaring themselves unready to receive such a message. In reality, though, it is only human to prepare if you have advance notice, especially for the many who don't preach very often. The rationalisation of this says that God will speak to a person in the right "state" (broadly the current degree of moral cleanliness and harmony with the divine), and therefore the preacher will take extra care to be so by doing good brethren things such as reading the brethren literature and taking time out to think about spiritual matters. It is axiomatic in the brethren system that the person will then get some kind of message to give.

It is a clear enough pattern, indeed, that when a preaching follows a reading the person charged with finding the man to take charge for that reading will normally hit first on those he knows will be preaching ... because it is hard for them to claim they have no message! The only trump card in this case is to claim to be so dependent on the provision of this message at the time it is required that the reading beforehand is too early to have received it, and usually this is quite hard to pull off, not least because someone so in tune with the spiritual needs will surely also be able to perform in both cases.

Younger men, being less aware of the complex etiquette and social belief around all this, tend to be a bit blunter in their methods when asked to preach. They know they are supposed to be a mouthpiece for the Holy Spirit, but make as sure as they can that they don't dry up entirely the moment they stand up in front of everybody, and that usually means pretty blatant preparation, not least because they know for a fact that their usual lives don't bear much resemblance to the way people who get messages from God are supposed to live! Consequently it's usually apparent that they've arrived with their message spelled out in their heads to some degree, and the rest of the congregation indulge them in that. I do recall one case where a young man gave a surprisingly coherent blood-and-thunder preaching, and a friend afterwards discovered it written out word for word in his bible ... but that is very definitely frowned upon. Most at least TRY to include some spontaneity.

Other meetings have different balances, but I think this is long enough for now.

Prospecting in the Indexes

I'm just reading an article about Gorbachev, and how he truly believed in Communism, and that true belief is a prime reason why it collapsed - essentially, he thought it was strong enough to survive reform.

I have thought before that there are many parallels between political ideology and brethren beliefs. But what caught my eye in this case was a little reference to lip-service. Apparently by the Eighties, even most Party members in the USSR had stopped really believing in their system, yet it was necessary to claim to believe. Gorbachev himself read Lenin for enlightenment on issues, whereas for most it was a politically sensible move to have his books on the shelf but no more.

"It was politically correct to have Lenin in your library. If you had to write a speech you were keen to find a Lenin quote so you turned to the index."

Doesn't that sound exactly like a brother preparing to preach on Sunday, especially if he doesn't do it very often? My preference was always for novel phrasing of conventional doctrine, but I know many contemporaries who did it this Russian way by checking ministry indexes. It was always pretty transparent, I thought.

Incidentally, the magazine with the article is Prospect. It's one of the few magazines with enough words in it to be interesting for more than half an hour, I find, but I'm regularly disappointed to find yet more friends who think it's the very essence of dullness.

True Belief

A friend just recently gave me a nudge (in the form of a magazine article) which has pushed me onto a path of learning about Gnosticism. Not a subject I've encountered often before, but rather rewarding in an arcane sort of way. It seems to be like Christianity cross-pollinated with Eastern mysticism, and that is a mix I like.

Anyway, my primer for now is a slim book about the Gnostic Gospels, discovered around the same time as the Dead Sea Scrolls but, it seems, somewhat less notorious. This book teases out apparent differences between what would become orthodox Christianity (with a small "o") and the original variations which would come to be called heresy, as shown by these manuscripts which were hidden by someone before they could be destroyed by those with power in the steadily-more-established church.

What appears to crop up repeatedly is the way rival doctrines stand or fall not because of their inherent merit - what is more influential is the difference adherence to particular doctrines makes to the structure of society. As an example, the author of this book makes the case that the literalness of Christ's rising from the dead was a necessary belief because it was from the contact with the ex-dead man that the original disciples had their authority. There would have been no credible leadership for Christians with Christ gone, had he not returned to proclaim living men the means of continuing the faith. So alternative versions of the doctrine which said that the resurrection should be understood more subtly, were also subtly undermining the leadership of the church by putting the whole of humanity on the same footing: that of spiritual-only contact, not handed-down direct physical instruction. Weakening the leadership could not be allowed, and so alternative doctrines were stamped out with as much force as was needed.

I find this interesting, because the natural tendency when looking at this with modern eyes is to be cynical. The leadership shore up their own position, and power maintains the status quo which suits it. The author is careful to point out in this book that such assumptions are careless.

Anyone spot the parallels with brethrenism? How often does the outside observer look at a typical brethren "turning of a corner", or even an established brethren belief, and think "Oh, that's very convenient for them"? Yes indeed, but it may not look cynical from the inside, and I'd say it usually doesn't.

The point is that such things are the result of a whole world-view. The leadership of the ancient church thought, of course, that they had it right. The structure of the church was, as they thought, modelled on the natural inherent order of life as ordained and blessed by God. Had they thought otherwise, why would they have risen to the top of it? It suited the way they thought, and the fact that it had worked well for them personally surely didn't feed any doubts about it. And so, no doubt, they felt compelled to defend that "truth" - the fact that they were at the same time defending themselves, boosting themselves, was merely a happy side-effect, proof, if anything, that they were on God's side.

So be careful assuming that a religious man with a message increasing his own power is a hypocrite. He may be, but it's more likely he's fooling himself first. Look for the patterns of belief the message implies, and you're more likely to find ammunition there than in cynicism.

TV Equivocation

The long gap in blogging has been extremely busy in other ways, which is the
principal reason for the gap. One change I have noticed in that time is that
for one reason and another I have been watching more television.

Those with a clear recent connection to the brethren will appreciate that
this is more significant than even a person moderately familiar with the
group would think. Even now, with all the recent changes in the brethren's
attitude to technology, TV remains a convenient shorthand for all the things
of which the brethren disapprove. I can recall the key question about people
who had departed the fellowship: "have they got a television?" The answer,
yes or no, pretty much summed up whether or not there was hope for them. So
even now on the outside the medium feels as though it has more tangible
associations than most other things I do differently.

Yet, as I say, I am watching more of it.

I still have my own quibbles with TV in general and, if anything, they have
actually strengthened with time. I have no moral objection, naturally, but
having only come into contact with the whole television system as an adult
there are aspects of it that I find incredibly odd and borderline
disturbing. It seems to me to have an uncomfortable amount in common with
devices in science fiction dystopias, where something is dispensed
continually to keep the masses occupied, something innocuous enough to be
welcomed without worry and just engaging enough to dull the need for true
fulfilment. What I see of most TV brings that thought forcibly to mind
almost every time, just because of its sheer disposability. The programming
drifts by, filling time, with a complete lack of consequence whether it's
watched or not. What value there is often strikes me as extraordinarily thin
due to the constraints of the medium - for example, the news is restricted
by a time-sensitive format, which places great responsibility on the editors
who choose exactly what viewers get to learn, both by filtering important
information and filling gaps with trivia.

Parenthetically, that also highlights a long-standing concern I have that is
specific to the UK, which is that citizens pay for the right to watch
television by funding an organisation that I feel has too much power.

I also struggle to understand the idea of live broadcast, except in the case
of, say, sports where knowing what you're watching is taking place NOW is
important. I am told by some that there is a quality of community about
watching what is on while it's broadcast, and that that quality improves the
experience by adding the knowledge that others are also watching. However,
it seems to me bizarre to simply accept one of a small choice of options at
a particular time and, with it, the need to regulate other aspects of life
around the start and end times.

Personally, I still don't have a television set, and consequently I don't
watch live television. My watching of television is by means of the
now-excellent web services available (which means, I suppose, that I have a
moral obligation to buy a TV license, but fortunately not a legal one or I
would probably abandon watching entirely instead). I like to watch
television when I need to relax and not concentrate for a while, and while
doing something that needs doing but doesn't require my full attention
(typically ironing, but I also find the slight distraction helps to avoid
getting bogged down in the detail of some thinking-heavy projects). Yet,
with weeks of programming available at any one time, I frequently find it
very difficult to come up with anything that appears even worth watching for
these slight purposes. What, I often ask myself, would be the chances of
finding something I would want to watch just when I turn it on?

This all seems very negative, but it's really all preparatory ... what I'd
like to say is that when TV is good, it can be extremely good.

Over the last few days I have watched a documentary called "How to be a
Composer", and I found myself not only enjoying it but consciously enjoying
it. The subject was intriguing - a music critic with no formal knowledge
attends the Royal Academy of Music for a year to study composition - the
format suited to visuals and the spoken word, besides the music, and for me
the whole concept just worked very well. More than that, I admired the look
of the documentary viewing it as a photographer - the framing, the lighting
(including some techniques I like to use myself), the use of selective
focus. And I found the story-telling methods instructive too, particularly
the way simply cutting to a new scene can force the viewer to consider new
information in the light of the preceding information, leading to
conclusions without ever spelling them out. I think I got quite a lot from
my time watching this particular documentary, and it also left me with an
urge to have a go at composition myself (not that I expect to have time to
indulge that urge).

There's no particular conclusion to this other than that I wish the
possibilities of television as a medium were fulfilled more often. The
populist wastelands of the schedules seem to be such a waste in so many
ways, and leave me with no wish to defend this bete noire of the brethren to
them.

The Price Paid

I've been thinking some more about my likening the brethren system to a serial story, and the more I think, the more I like the analogy. Obviously the parallels aren't exact - such thought exercises never are - but it is a useful way of looking at it. I think so, anyway.

One of the points I was trying to make was about plot twists. Surprises and changes that confound expectations are a good thing in a drama. They keep up interest, they provide reasons to carry on when otherwise things might be getting stale, they stimulate and, in this case, they provide the always vital sense that the story is moving forward. But only as long as they are believable. A twist that undermines what has gone on before can disengage belief, without which the story is pointless.

Which brings me to the technology issue.

From my observation, the brethren themselves seem to have swallowed this dramatic u-turn quite well. There is a little bit of cynicism in places, and I'm quite sure there will be a bit of dark muttering from some who like consistency more than development, but the great thing is that people who tend to be slightly rebellious have their interests directly aligned with the change (technology can be very useful to people who don't find brethren life itself very rewarding), while those who are most inclined to dislike the change, having invested emotional energy in hating technology, are the ones most loyal to the person instigating the move forward. That doesn't leave much room for any upheaval.

But I've had reason to chat with a few non-brethren over the last few days, ones from that specific group who have never been part of the brethren but who have reason to know them quite well. And I think the brethren management would be a little bit shocked at the cost to their public image of the switch from technology rejection to embrace.

The general feeling is that while the brethren held out against modern ways, they inspired an admiration of a kind even from those who thought the whole thing was mad. They got credit for sticking to their guns and articulating a point of view, even though it was becoming an obviously increasing disadvantage to them. People know about other religious sects who reject aspects of western life, and the approach gets the benefit of the doubt. "Not my cup of tea," says the average tolerant Briton (at least), "but hats off to them for making a go of it."

And now? Well, that benefit of the doubt has been pretty much entirely replaced by cynicism. If the brethren can change so abruptly on something which, to the world around, was a central component of their beliefs and one of the main things a person could rely on when dealing with them, then nothing they say is of much value any more. Now, people expect that as soon as there is enough reason to change, they will do so, and so their beliefs get no respect at all.

I'm a great fan of technology and what it can enable, but I can't help thinking the brethren may find they've paid a higher price than they think for that enablement. They're more reliant on the goodwill of those around than they think, and in this case they've lost the most from those who know them best and have been natural supporters.

Brethren in the business world

Yesterday was spent (mostly) in a business meeting. My employers have signed up with a company that provides a management system with a managed database and server, and their representatives needed to go through a long list of questions in order to tailor the software to the needs they discover.

That's interesting in itself, because it has taken less than two years to move from "no computers ever" to near normality. All the while that I've been jury-rigging systems using nothing more than MS Office, I've been saying that it would be better to do things properly, but it was never an option. Now it is, and there will soon be very little to differentiate brethren businesses from others in their systems. I'm a little bit wistful that my funny little systems with customised quirks will be less needed but, as I say, it's been something I've recommended all along. And it turns out (doesn't it always?) that the new system is not quite so all-embracing as it was first presented, so no doubt I'll be kept busy with things that need doing and in the meantime there's a major transition period.

But what led me to post was the meeting itself, which made me chuckle internally.

The brethren way is to compare notes on everything they do, and every option tried on anything that may need doing, and converge on something. So various brethren businesses have been signing up for software, and the company that comes out best is now getting a big boost to their sales ... and this is the company in question here. That happens quite often, and a particular company will suddenly become very familiar with brethren as the word goes round.

And always, they can't resist getting sucked in. It must feel like privileged access to a secret society or something. Whatever it is, they start to drop hints about things they know, people they're familiar with, and make clear how unsurprised they are at oddities in the interaction. Yesterday, for example, the meeting was structured to avoid the need for lunch. Names were dropped. Other brethren were proclaimed to have found particular features valuable. Awareness was self-consciously demonstrated of the need for some settings.

To be honest, most brethren don't like this much. As I've said before, they like to maintain a feeling of mystery, and are suspicious of people getting too interested in the detail. That often comes across, yet still these outsiders can't help it.

At one point, the main man in this case had to show off that he was well inside by claiming knowledge of policy that hadn't yet been announced. Apparently he'd been chatting to the person at the central brethren computer organisation who has oversight of systems, and got hold of the fact that company websites were on the way - so we shouldn't rule it out. Keep the option open, nudge nudge wink wink.

I do enjoy watching people interact, even if I do have to go without lunch to do it.

A Straightjacket of Story

This week I had my first ever direct exposure to Doctor Who. For the record, I thought it was great, but that isn't why I'm writing this time.

My mind seems to work by way of parallels, metaphors, similarities and common threads. And while noting the way a long-running serial works, I realised that the management of the brethren as an organisation is in many ways the same. The Brethren - new series! Where will the twists be this time around? Will the audience still be enthralled, or will they drift away?

No, seriously.

As I understand it, a show like Doctor Who (or, say, Star Trek for something equally long-lived) is big enough that it needs quite a large team to make it work. Also, at least in the case of my prime example, there is one person where the buck stops, and who gets to say what goes. Other people may do a lot of the writing, but it must fit into the top person's structure. It is the Creative Director's personal universe. If that sounds familiar in any way, you may see where I'm going with this.

In a similar way, a new person was recently employed to write a new James Bond novel. Imagine the sense of power, being that person. Finally (assuming the person is a fan), you get to say what goes. If some detail has always annoyed you, then zap! that detail need no longer exist. James Bond is now a chivalrous teetotaller who has a clear understanding of the importance of a clear command structure and proper bureaucracy.

But there's a problem. In any of these types of scenarios, the all-powerful creator of story is not operating in isolation. There is an audience, and that audience has some kind of investment in the history and workings of the narrative universe. They will want something new, if the genre is not completely fossilised, but it must not be at the expense of the structure already in place ... and for any long-running story, that structure will have a lot of detail, many tangles. Some untouchable pillars, but also a whole load of "just stuff" that makes it what it is. As a story-writer in such a situation, complete freedom is not what it sounds like.

Yes, you can make changes. But major changes will need a lot of work within the story: something that happened earlier must be revealed to be a mistake, a dream, presented wrongly for some reason first time round, or some reason must be found for the change that doesn't insult the intelligence of people who value the story. Small things may be glossed over, but people have a deep need for even trivial things to somehow make sense, and contradictions will weaken their hold on the story by making it easy to dismiss. And how many such changes could be made without fatally weakening the story structure by mocking its past?

What I'm saying, which is probably obvious by now, is that while I've often thought of the brethren as a kind of creature, this week it has occurred to me that the system is just as much of a narrative. A long-running serial, handed over from team to team and head writer to head writer, always with the body of the brethren as the long-term audience. The kind of things that finally led me to lose patience with even pretending I could believe in it were just plot twists that were too sudden as the new team let the continuity slip. I give them some credit - they're trying to drag the story into the modern age - but it's a tough task doing that while keeping an audience on board who have certain expectations, and I think they're struggling.

Favourite Book given low marks

I've just been looking for something light to watch while winding down (something has hit me hard in the last few days, I don't know what, and drained me of energy), and happened upon a show where the host finds out things that his guest has never experienced and makes sure they do - always something very popular or well-known that the person has avoided or missed out on. It's called "I've never seen Star Wars", which gives the flavour.

Anyway, the guest in the chair this time was very well read, and was familiar with most of the books on the show's list, and so they ended up discussing one of the two options she hadn't previously read, which happens to be one of my all-time favourites. And neither of them liked it at all, or understood it!

The book in question: The Satanic Verses.

Now, is it my background that makes me love this book so much? After all, I remember when I first read it, in the sixth-form library (probably mostly when I should have been at lessons), and the disappointment then when the teachers and the woman in charge of the library both dismissed it as nowhere near as good as Salman Rushdie's other books. They didn't seem to "get" it, either. I have wondered since whether you need to have experienced both an insistence on religion and an awakening of personal thoughts to appreciate it, and today's discussion kind of confirmed that. Obviously the religious people who read the book and hated it enough to wish the author dead realised what it was all about, yet these intelligent and educated people on the TV had so little clue that they were reduced to finding the book's synopsis on Wikipedia so as to be able to say anything about it. I could hardly believe it.

Very definitely The Satanic Verses is a heretic's book. The aim of it, it seems to me, is to explore the consequences of doubting dogma, how who we are is related to who we try to be, the shape of our souls in response to the mould of our circumstances, and the ridiculousness of the notion that there is any inherent meaning in the world or our lives. I can only conclude that for many people, none of that has much meaning. They have never experienced anything in their lives that lets them even see it within fiction. Certainly to skim through the book looking for some scandalous passage that caused the trouble is missing the point - both tonight's readers concluded that such a passage didn't exist.

And it doesn't. More, there is a steady drip-feeding of absurdity, and the unforgivable sin of treating a serious religion as slightly silly and mildly amusing BUT by someone who is clearly very familiar with its detail. That must have hurt, and clearly did. While modern agnostic Westerners have grown up thinking that religion is slightly silly and mildly amusing and that life is pretty pointless, and so, for them, a book that says so at great length is just deathly dull. Well, I think it's great.

But I am now feeling slightly vulnerable, having seen something I love belittled, and I am seriously wondering if I am in a one-man fan club here.

And, as an afterthought, I am also wondering what the result of a similar book that dealt with the brethren would be ...

Slight Attitude Adjustment

At some point during the second tutorial of my Open University course, I began to see a bit of the other side of education to the one that always annoys me. This is, I think, a good thing if I am to continue.

The second tutorial felt like much better value than the first, and we packed a lot of useful work into it. Almost the most important for me was the chance to talk to someone higher up the tutorial structure, who was sitting in, about where to go from this existing course, and how far my past qualifications will take me without covering the same ground again. I suspect I wasn't the only one who felt that the first tutorial lacked something, as only six people turned up for this one. But we were the winners, in my opinion.

It has always seemed to me that formal education puts a higher premium on conventional thinking than it does on useful knowledge. And I have chafed against that, because I would always want to cover ground that appears "old" as quickly as possible in the hopes that the cutting edge of the subject studied is where the action is. Even after my little flash of enlightenment I can't quite escape the suspicion that most higher education imparts its benefits at the cost of a freshness of view that can be a very valuable asset. Many things, once forced into a container of convention, not only lose their zing but also a percentage of their range of possibilities, put beyond reach by being off the beaten track of established thought patterns.

But what occurred to me while talking about the subject matter I am currently studying was that the few people who manage to acquire the conventions while also preserving their own originality do gain something very precious. And that is the gift of communication. Originality and freshness is undoubtedly valuable, but its utility is limited without the means to share it. Being able to work within an established mode of thought and language puts large amounts of the subject onto a routine basis, so that exchange of thought is efficient - and the new thoughts quickly reveal their worth or faults to the community.

Of course, it all runs the risk of becoming fossilised, just jargon and repetition, but I think I see why it's worth the risk now. I know several people who are naturally gifted musicians and have a suspicion of music theory (including printed music) that is similar to my dislike of formal study. They think that it would stunt something that they have naturally, and aren't sure the benefits are sufficient compensation. Yet I know at least one who was pushed through the process of learning music theory by a teacher who refused to accept that as an excuse, and the combination of natural talent and proper training puts him some way ahead of those who have chosen to hang back. Because something MIGHT curb spontaneity doesn't mean it WILL curb it.

I suppose those who tear themselves free of the rigidities of brethren thought tend to head one of two ways: either continued wariness of any systems of thought at all that might impinge on the hard-won freedom inside the head, or refuge in some kind of replacement, that might or might not be a better system but at least provides external certainties. Neither, as a sole guide, can be healthy, so I am glad to be able to adjust my thinking a little bit.

Lake District Holiday

Last week was an enjoyable one: we spent three and a bit days in the Lake District. We seized on a bargain hotel offer just outside the National Park a little while ago, and the time itself came around remarkably fast. In the end it was beautifully timed, too - between some quite large events and in perfect weather conditions.

Cumbria is renowned for being a little inclement weatherwise at the best of times, and mid-March is not that time. It is a lovely place, however, so we weren't worried. In the event, though, we had glorious sun most of the time, and no crowds and no restrictions. All the restrictions, according to the signs, begin on Good Friday. So it was a good time.

It did make me think, though, about how new and different it was to able to do something like this. We had time, no deadlines, and no obligations. Brethren days out to natural places are not exactly discouraged, although it is generally assumed that people who are really spiritual wouldn't want to spend their time viewing such Earthly pleasures. However, as the requirements to attend meetings daily and stay only with other brethren trump almost all other activities (there are some exceptions to do with life-or-death brethren-management necessities and business trips), the best way for brethren to see natural wonders is to become good friends with someone who lives near some such natural wonder. And hope for an invitation to stay overnight on a convenient public holiday. As such, brethren viewing of such things tends to start at an unfeasibly early hour, and happen at a rapid pace with high efficiency.

This was not like that.

Oddly, some brethren friends (I do still have some), saw my car outside the hotel one evening, and left a "best wishes" note on the windscreen, which was weird. And I just knew that they would be feeling sorry for me, stuck in a hotel room and free to do as I pleased in comfort and privacy, when I could have been making small talk at some brethren host with nothing in common with me, and handing over the obligatory bottle of spirits instead of paying a small fee for my night's accommodation. It's a hard life. Seriously, I don't think they could stretch themselves to imagine that a room with no strings can be enjoyable.

I haven't described any lakes, mountains, quaint towns, wildlife, etc, but I think it's enough to say that holidays are good things, and brethren should try them sometime.

The Invisible Divide

I may have commented on this before, but I find I have two thinking modes: "brethren" and "non-brethren". The former doesn't get as much use as it once did (thankfully), but in certain circumstances it pops up effortlessly.

What is MUCH harder is attempting to use both modes at once, and somehow forcing brethren thoughts into a non-brethren framework - as is necessary to be able to explain them. There really is some kind of barrier which makes it a major challenge. I thought I'd cracked it when I started this blog, which was one reason it was so exhilarating to begin with, but it gets more difficult, if anything, as time goes on.

So how difficult is it for total outsiders? Very, I should think, although I don't agree with the ex-brethren who so stoutly maintain that nobody else can ever understand.

It struck me this week, for instance, how Orwellian brethren language can be. They can use a phrase and understand it, and non-brethren would imagine they understand it too without question ... and yet through brethren use that phrase has acquired a meaning that an outsider doesn't share and doesn't know they don't. It isn't deliberate, so far as I know, but simply that brethren customs change and the terms used to refer to them don't - however, it does please them to be obscure and they like the fact that other people know less than they think they do as a result.

Case in point: "reading", which is modified for outsiders to its old form of "bible reading". In a literal sense this is not misleading, as such meetings start with a passage of scripture. But to anybody versed in Christian customs, the term comes loaded with a set of assumptions such as textural analysis, study, search for meaning and collective focus on a sacred text. A reading among the brethren is simply a discussion around a theme that is on one man's mind with, by convention, one or more passages from the bible loosely attached. Generally speaking, that convention is all that is left of the original meaning of the term "reading".

That's the tip of a fairly sizeable iceberg, too, because you might suppose that religion in general is extremely important to these people. Well, it is and it isn't. Surely, you might say, any system which makes such extreme demands (I'm thinking of the likes of separation) must put a massive premium on the belief system underpinning it? Wouldn't everybody in such a system spend a lot of energy studying those beliefs, delving into the mind of God in whatever way they can? If you ask the brethren, the answer is "yes", and they think so. But for them, religion and practical life are the same thing.

For brethren, theology is done. Finished. They had it all figured out by the nineteen-fifties. Anybody attempting to get any further is wasting their time and probably heretical - and, as all past knowledge is summed up in the top man of the time, the only necessary thing to do is absorb what he says. The duty of the Christian is perfect his or her life on Earth, and the focus of the brethren is to chip away at what they see as the rough edges of that perfection, getting closer all the time. So there is study, reading of the bible etc, naturally, but it is done because of instruction, because they have been told that that is what a perfect life involves. What comes of it is secondary. It is, if anything, more important to dress correctly, because that is as much a part of a perfect life and is visible to others as well.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that for brethren religion is what you do. Belief is implied by action: if you're doing the right thing, it shows you believe, and if you aren't it shows you don't. And in all cases there is only one right thing to do. In that case, it's no wonder their time, their meetings, their energy, is spent on refining the rules. Outsiders look at what passes for ministry and wonder where the religion is, but brethren honestly don't see it that way. Traditional Christian activities seem to them to be missing the point. Knowledge that makes no difference to the way a life is lived is valueless.

They would also be mystified by accusations that the rules keep changing, for much the same reason. The rules must change, because otherwise there would be no forward movement. If things were perfect, they reason, they would have been called away to glory. So they must pursue that perfection and change things as better ways are revealed to them.

It's a hard viewpoint to convey, as I say, and all the harder because it comes cloaked in familiar terms whose meaning has shifted. I think it's important to keep making the effort to cross the divide in both directions, though. It can never be insignificant for non-brethren to channel what Christianity means into the closed minds of the brethren, because you never know who might be ready for an alternative view. And I find it useful to explain to myself what my assumptions were all those years, even if it doesn't benefit many others!

First Tutorial

A little checkpoint on the university progress. I've had the first of five tutorials now.

Up to this point it's been a "phoney course" in WW2 terminology. I had a pack of books, a website log-in, a few downloads and software installs ... and that was it. The course started on the seventh. Yesterday, the seventeenth, was the first tutorial, and the preparation was only basically getting a computer set up. I looked at the first assignment, and it told me to try the relevant computer-marked exercises first, so I looked online, and the exercises won't be available until the twenty-first. So I wondered exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

Well, it turns out I should be partway through unit two by now. The glossy books, which looked to me like useful things to refer to, turn out to BE the course. I'm actually supposed to DO the little tests that appear every other page - they're not just rhetorical devices. Oops. I suspect I'm not temperamentally suited to formal education. I have become accustomed to absorbing information as required, and actual work looks like hardship ... or maybe I do have student attitudes?

But the tutorial was interesting, not because of the content (it was all about the background aspects of the course, and no mention of the content of the course), but because of the people and so on. The tutor is a nice guy, quite traditional but easy-going, the classroom is in a childcare department and decorated accordingly, and eight of nineteen students turned up. Most of the others live miles away - mind you, the guy next to me had travelled about two hours.

As might be expected on a distance course, the main point in common between us was an attempt to better ourselves. Most people seemed to have a feeling that they had so far settled for something short of their ambitions, and this was a step towards doing something about it. There were delivery-drivers and technicians, and one woman with two jobs (full-time and part-time) and two children as well as the course. One guy was a herdsman (his description) who wanted to learn about computers before robots were installed to do the milking of his cows, another worked in military security and is apparently one of the ones who gets stick whenever a laptop is left on a train as appears in the news with monotonous regularity, and another writes blurb for eBay. All reminded me of the later stages of my education before, once it was optional, in that there was a set of people together who might not be natural at what's on the agenda, but they're going to give it a good try. I felt a bit of a dilettante by comparison, just as I did before.

Two of the eight people also live near me, so just maybe that might be a social link too. We shall see.

Darwin Anniversary

If you follow the news, it's hard to avoid the fact that Charles Darwin's two-hundredth birthday has just been and gone. No doubt my old fellows among the brethren have had a few reminders of the evils he brought into the world, as there are always a few people looking to spice up the regular meeting fare with something topical.

As with so many hard-core religious groups, the theory of evolution is an absolute offence to the brethren. It always seems to me a slightly odd way to think, but the approach is that it MUST be wrong, and therefore any evidence will be interpreted in that light. They're not by any means alone: I saw today that apparently the latest statistics say that fifteen percent of people believe Darwin's theories.

Somebody ( I think Stephen Jay Gould) said that the difference with evolution is not that it's hard to understand, but that people go to such lengths to avoid understanding it. Certainly that's the case with many non-believers (in evolution, that is) I know. I continue to find it hard to accept that such a logical proposition can meet such resistance, but when presented with the theory such people seem able to distort it into something they can then demolish to their own satisfaction in straw-man fashion. Quite why they should go to such mental trouble, I'm not sure. It must surely be quite a hostage to fortune for the future, just as the Catholic church found with the theory of heliocentricity.

Personally, I can't recall a time when I actively disbelieved in evolution. I can remember being surprised to find that my brain was somehow compartmentalised, and I was happy to believe in creation and evolution at the same time, quite literally. I don't know how old I would have been. I still don't see why a Creator God shouldn't have chosen to use a sensible means of creation like Darwinism, but I don't think I even thought that far when I was younger.

Mind you, depending on who you ask among the brethren, they are careful not to be too vigourous in their denunciation of Darwin. There is a line of retreat left in that they carefully accept that creatures adapt and change according to the pressures of their environment, so presumably there will be a face-saving way of changing the doctrine if they ever need to face some hard facts that prove the unpalatable.

In a way, the brethren show the essence of Darwinism in their endless changes. The whole group has come a long way since the eighteen-hundreds, constantly adapting to pressures on their beliefs and way of life. It's often not pretty, but change is there when it's needed for survival.

And my favourite snippet from the anniversary news coverage concerned some eminent Victorian woman, who apparently said after reading The Origin of Species that she didn't see why everybody made such a fuss of Mr Darwin - after all, if she'd had the same facts she'd have come to the same conclusion. That, I think, is the reasonable and honest thought anyone must have if they allow themselves to understand (not to take anything away from the genius of the man, of course).