This may not make as much sense as I'd like, as I'm battling a headache right now. I have been prone to those this week, which seems to be something to do with my neck. An extra osteopath visit may be required.
Still, my thoughts have been about the perennial puzzle of why ex-brethren feel useless and alien in some circumstances while other "normal" people struggle to see what's so strange. And yes, I'm talking about my own experience, but from conversations it does seem like I'm not the only one.
What eventually occurred to me was that I was thinking about this the wrong way around. In some situations, I feel awkward and odd and don't know what to do. When I say so, I am told not to worry because everyone feels that way, and I've wrestled with why that still leaves me worried. And my conclusion is that it's not that the difference between me and others is that I feel odd and they don't, but that they are used to feeling that way whereas I'm not.
Brethren lead a sheltered life, there's no doubt about that. And for many of us who've left it behind, that was one of the frustrating things we longed to leave. Yet shelter and predictability are habit-forming, and something deep within me expects life to only present me with situations in which I know what is expected - or at least in which I can work out rapidly at a gut level how to act. Rigidity is convenient at an emotional level.
Here on the outside it feels absurd to expect life to be like that. Hence the average person is familiar with unfamiliarity and it must be hard to imagine the kind of life that could lead to normal everyday variation feeling alien. As with so many things, the mind knows that, while something underneath finds it harder to accept.
Most people my age have not experienced everything there is to experience. Yet it is definitely old enough to discover oneself and feel comfortable with a standard set of reactions to the unfamiliar. Whereas I am new to so many things that all I feel able to do is freeze, and that in itself worries me. At least I have a bit more perspective on it these days, and so can watch myself and control the process. Knowing there are understandable reasons does help.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Little bits of life
I had thought I would note a few more things this week, but the days have rushed by and another weekend is almost here. So just a couple of comments, one on unclean links and another on pipelines of filth.
I am now a member of the National Trust, and not just a member but a joint one. That links me with the largest society in Europe (apparently), and surely some of those are bound to be disreputable people? That's what my old co-religionists would say, anyway. In actual fact, one of the things that's so pleasant about the NT is that the average member is so relentlessly middle-class, predictably well-mannered and unobtrusive. We visited yet another of our series of old houses last weekend - Ham House in Richmond - and the pattern held. And it was nice to snack in the sun, sitting on a bench that looked a hundred years old.
My membership sticker is in the windscreen of my car, but I haven't had any comment yet. I'd rather be externally identified by that than as a member of the brethren, I have to say, regardless of their thoughts on the subject.
I have also acquired an increasing fondness for radio, and now wake to the sound of a clock-radio thanks to a gift. That too would be a shock to my family, as radio is almost a defining moral point for brethren - if you can't see the evil, you are the wrong side of a very definite line. Yet I was thinking about that this week, and noting to myself that the doctrine appears to have weakened a lot in the last year or two.
As I understand it, the original argument against radio was that it was an uncontrolled medium in which external forces decided what would emerge from the machine stationed a Christian's home, and such a risk could not be countenanced. But along the way, all electromagnetic waves longer than infrared became demonised ... well, actually, microwave ovens were always acceptable. That never made any sense to me - how could you decide at what wavelength they shifted from innocence to evil? But nevertheless, all kinds of things were banned purely for making waves of the wrong frequency. That seems to have ended now. Radio remotes are OK. Mobile phones are OK, as long as they're from the approved source and carefully crippled. Just another example of deliberate sliding from one emphasis to another, as the original stated reason for banning something is replaced by a convenient alternative reason, which can then be stated to have changed somehow. Still, I can't see radio in the usual sense ever being permitted, as entertainment of any kind is just not a brethren thing.
Oh yes, and one final thing. Fishing. Brethren do not do field sports, and official doctrine says that animals are only to be killed for a reason such as food. Yet I know quite a few brethren who are only to keen to go on fishing expeditions. I've never seen the attraction myself, but having dabbled this last weekend just briefly, I begin to see just a little. Mind you, the water we fished in contained fish who were tragically innocent of the ways of people with rods (maybe something to do with the sign alongside us), and consequently weren't much of a challenge. Another time I hope to do a bit of the sitting-and-doing-nothing type rather than just pulling fish out at will.
I am now a member of the National Trust, and not just a member but a joint one. That links me with the largest society in Europe (apparently), and surely some of those are bound to be disreputable people? That's what my old co-religionists would say, anyway. In actual fact, one of the things that's so pleasant about the NT is that the average member is so relentlessly middle-class, predictably well-mannered and unobtrusive. We visited yet another of our series of old houses last weekend - Ham House in Richmond - and the pattern held. And it was nice to snack in the sun, sitting on a bench that looked a hundred years old.
My membership sticker is in the windscreen of my car, but I haven't had any comment yet. I'd rather be externally identified by that than as a member of the brethren, I have to say, regardless of their thoughts on the subject.
I have also acquired an increasing fondness for radio, and now wake to the sound of a clock-radio thanks to a gift. That too would be a shock to my family, as radio is almost a defining moral point for brethren - if you can't see the evil, you are the wrong side of a very definite line. Yet I was thinking about that this week, and noting to myself that the doctrine appears to have weakened a lot in the last year or two.
As I understand it, the original argument against radio was that it was an uncontrolled medium in which external forces decided what would emerge from the machine stationed a Christian's home, and such a risk could not be countenanced. But along the way, all electromagnetic waves longer than infrared became demonised ... well, actually, microwave ovens were always acceptable. That never made any sense to me - how could you decide at what wavelength they shifted from innocence to evil? But nevertheless, all kinds of things were banned purely for making waves of the wrong frequency. That seems to have ended now. Radio remotes are OK. Mobile phones are OK, as long as they're from the approved source and carefully crippled. Just another example of deliberate sliding from one emphasis to another, as the original stated reason for banning something is replaced by a convenient alternative reason, which can then be stated to have changed somehow. Still, I can't see radio in the usual sense ever being permitted, as entertainment of any kind is just not a brethren thing.
Oh yes, and one final thing. Fishing. Brethren do not do field sports, and official doctrine says that animals are only to be killed for a reason such as food. Yet I know quite a few brethren who are only to keen to go on fishing expeditions. I've never seen the attraction myself, but having dabbled this last weekend just briefly, I begin to see just a little. Mind you, the water we fished in contained fish who were tragically innocent of the ways of people with rods (maybe something to do with the sign alongside us), and consequently weren't much of a challenge. Another time I hope to do a bit of the sitting-and-doing-nothing type rather than just pulling fish out at will.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Prospective Pieces of Paper
My exploration of the jobs market, although half-hearted, has shown up a few interesting and in some cases disturbing facts. The first among these is that a degree appears to act as a simple indicator that a prospective employee can think with more than their hands, and is therefore used as a filtering mechanism. I should imagine that very few people really think that only graduates are worth employing, but equally I can sympathise with the view that there are so many graduates around that trawling through the mass of the rest of us is more trouble than it's worth.
My inclination is to look for ways around this, as I have a long history of regarding higher education as a combined time-killer and connection-former with a piece of paper at the end of the process. However, having been rebuffed by the MI6 website (well, I think I'd be good at the spy stuff), I began to think the unthinkable: that a simpler solution would be simply to demolish the diploma deficit by doing a degree.
I hasten to say that it's only an option at this stage. Even so, though, complications begin to surface.
At this stage of my life I'm none too keen on taking three or more years out of earning. I doubt I'd ever make up the difference. If I had a solid wedding-photography business for weekends, say, as I have sometimes considered, then perhaps it might be possible to devote weekdays to full-time study. But I'm not convinced. That leaves distance learning.
Then there is the study subject to consider. Should that be merely something that interests me (hopefully enough to last throughout an entire course, which would be a first in my life), a purely functional subject intended to increase my employability in a particular area, or something midway if such a thing exists?
I'm not short of interests. I can imagine fruitfully studying Maths or maybe a more concrete type of Philosophy, but I suspect I'd be better occupied in something with visible results such as Engineering. I have often thought I'd like to get involved in Robotics, for example, or even to learn the formal aspects of software engineering. I'm partway through a tome by Bertrand Meyer, but I think there would be a lot of merit to being taught instead of merely learning in that area, as it is easy to skip important concepts while too ignorant even to see what I don't know.
Yet a look around what is on offer shows that distance learning is very much a poor relation to full-time education, and caters to the lowest common denominator. I can't (admittedly without a comprehensive trawl) see anything like the engineering courses, and the Maths I saw was aimed at people who might not even have a school qualification in the subject. I get the strong feeling I would be heading for frustration.
Welcome to life, everybody says, where there are no simple answers, not even to simple questions.
My inclination is to look for ways around this, as I have a long history of regarding higher education as a combined time-killer and connection-former with a piece of paper at the end of the process. However, having been rebuffed by the MI6 website (well, I think I'd be good at the spy stuff), I began to think the unthinkable: that a simpler solution would be simply to demolish the diploma deficit by doing a degree.
I hasten to say that it's only an option at this stage. Even so, though, complications begin to surface.
At this stage of my life I'm none too keen on taking three or more years out of earning. I doubt I'd ever make up the difference. If I had a solid wedding-photography business for weekends, say, as I have sometimes considered, then perhaps it might be possible to devote weekdays to full-time study. But I'm not convinced. That leaves distance learning.
Then there is the study subject to consider. Should that be merely something that interests me (hopefully enough to last throughout an entire course, which would be a first in my life), a purely functional subject intended to increase my employability in a particular area, or something midway if such a thing exists?
I'm not short of interests. I can imagine fruitfully studying Maths or maybe a more concrete type of Philosophy, but I suspect I'd be better occupied in something with visible results such as Engineering. I have often thought I'd like to get involved in Robotics, for example, or even to learn the formal aspects of software engineering. I'm partway through a tome by Bertrand Meyer, but I think there would be a lot of merit to being taught instead of merely learning in that area, as it is easy to skip important concepts while too ignorant even to see what I don't know.
Yet a look around what is on offer shows that distance learning is very much a poor relation to full-time education, and caters to the lowest common denominator. I can't (admittedly without a comprehensive trawl) see anything like the engineering courses, and the Maths I saw was aimed at people who might not even have a school qualification in the subject. I get the strong feeling I would be heading for frustration.
Welcome to life, everybody says, where there are no simple answers, not even to simple questions.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
No Mistakes
Over the last couple of weeks I've been attempting to take life easy. For some reason this time of year is one that I find difficult and I start to get stressed. So in this case one thing that has taken a back seat is the blog.
However, I have had reason to think a little bit about the brethren's attitude to their leadership. One thing that is obvious from the outside, yet baffling, is that they consider their leaders to be infallible, whatever the circumstances.
The thing is that brethren doctrine ties the spiritual very closely to the earthly. It is an important piece of truth to them that it is possible - even required - for each person to be perfect, and so it has also come to be important for them to have proof of that possibility by claiming that it is already achieved by the leader. Who else would they look at for proof? Then, once that step has been taken, it cannot be undone so they are obliged to accept whatever the leader does as perfect.
It isn't actually as hard for them is it would appear. Another article of faith is that God cannot be understood by the natural human mind, and another is that God communicates His thoughts directly to his representative on Earth. Therefore anything strange is not so much unexpected as ineffable. What right has any human creature to understand what might be done as God's will?
This is then backed up by their conviction that, as God's chosen people, they must be misunderstood and hated by the world in general. So it isn't surprising that they might be required to do some things that would look bad to the outside, and the very fact that anyone outside objects is then taken as proof that it has worked and is justified.
Of course, viewed rationally, all this is very dangerous. It leaves the possibility of blatant abuse of authority very open, for a start. And many might say that such abuse has happened on occasions. Yet infallibility, once accepted, is something that can't be backed away from, and so the brethren are stuck with it.
However, I have had reason to think a little bit about the brethren's attitude to their leadership. One thing that is obvious from the outside, yet baffling, is that they consider their leaders to be infallible, whatever the circumstances.
The thing is that brethren doctrine ties the spiritual very closely to the earthly. It is an important piece of truth to them that it is possible - even required - for each person to be perfect, and so it has also come to be important for them to have proof of that possibility by claiming that it is already achieved by the leader. Who else would they look at for proof? Then, once that step has been taken, it cannot be undone so they are obliged to accept whatever the leader does as perfect.
It isn't actually as hard for them is it would appear. Another article of faith is that God cannot be understood by the natural human mind, and another is that God communicates His thoughts directly to his representative on Earth. Therefore anything strange is not so much unexpected as ineffable. What right has any human creature to understand what might be done as God's will?
This is then backed up by their conviction that, as God's chosen people, they must be misunderstood and hated by the world in general. So it isn't surprising that they might be required to do some things that would look bad to the outside, and the very fact that anyone outside objects is then taken as proof that it has worked and is justified.
Of course, viewed rationally, all this is very dangerous. It leaves the possibility of blatant abuse of authority very open, for a start. And many might say that such abuse has happened on occasions. Yet infallibility, once accepted, is something that can't be backed away from, and so the brethren are stuck with it.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
One hundred and eighty degrees
The only time I wish I had a television is when there is a good football match on. Today I discover that the BBC has started streaming the action on their website, so I can watch anyway. The wonders of the modern age.
In the meantime, my main computer has finished updating to a new operating system and is busy cataloguing and backing up my important data - most importantly more photos than I can countenance losing. They were already backed up, but it was time to regroup and do it differently. So computers remain a major part of my life - I can do without TV.
It's interesting to see the brethren's attitude to computers changing quite steadily. From being a complete no-no, they have become vital and acknowledgedly so. That's kind of strange, as over many years I heard all sorts of rationalisations saying that there were more than moral reasons (moral in a brethren sense, of course) for brethren's avoidance of computers. Nothing important should ever be entrusted to machines. Paper and people are always the answer, and machines are a distraction even when they're not actually causing problems.
Well, no longer, it seems. Computers are important. I couldn't agree more, even if I don't agree with the general methods, and it does seem a shame that the neat doctrine U-turn had to wait until after I'd given up on the whole system.
In the meantime, my main computer has finished updating to a new operating system and is busy cataloguing and backing up my important data - most importantly more photos than I can countenance losing. They were already backed up, but it was time to regroup and do it differently. So computers remain a major part of my life - I can do without TV.
It's interesting to see the brethren's attitude to computers changing quite steadily. From being a complete no-no, they have become vital and acknowledgedly so. That's kind of strange, as over many years I heard all sorts of rationalisations saying that there were more than moral reasons (moral in a brethren sense, of course) for brethren's avoidance of computers. Nothing important should ever be entrusted to machines. Paper and people are always the answer, and machines are a distraction even when they're not actually causing problems.
Well, no longer, it seems. Computers are important. I couldn't agree more, even if I don't agree with the general methods, and it does seem a shame that the neat doctrine U-turn had to wait until after I'd given up on the whole system.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Vapourous Goals
There comes a time in most people's lives, I understand, when they come to the sad realisation that this is all there is. The dreams of youth give way to the mundane realities of real life, and they acknowledge to themselves that they are, after all, just an ordinary person and not the special gift to mankind that the whisper of youth in their head said they were. And that there is not some great task that they are destined to do, just a long long list of small and dull tasks.
That's when men tend to buy big expensive cars and make a few foolish decisions for a while.
I've been feeling a bit like that, but I think it's mostly just an adjustment process. Although I knew that leaving the brethren would be difficult and painful, in some corner of my mind I thought of it as a gateway to something, kind of "in one bound he was free". Instead, not much has changed since, and it's taking some work persuading myself that, actually, that's OK.
I have spent many years telling myself that I was building up to something, and that all the skills and knowledge acquired in the meantime would all be valuable one day. When times were hard I patted myself on the back, knowing that there were things I could do that others couldn't, and sometime that would be just what I needed to get somewhere.
Note all that vagueness. Something, sometime, somewhere. At the moment, my goals have evaporated due to insubstantiality. The barriers have gone, and with them my sense of direction. That's a tricky thing to deal with.
Still, I have a good life, and if nothing much changed for quite some while it would still be a happy one. OK, so I feel there's a hole where some ambitions used to be, but that will be fixed in time. There's no hurry, and when it gets to me I can talk it through with someone understanding. I am learning that it's OK to just "be" sometimes, to go with the flow rather than push and drive forward. When I have learned more about the world as it is now, and about myself in the process, I hope I will be in a better position to make some wise choices.
That's when men tend to buy big expensive cars and make a few foolish decisions for a while.
I've been feeling a bit like that, but I think it's mostly just an adjustment process. Although I knew that leaving the brethren would be difficult and painful, in some corner of my mind I thought of it as a gateway to something, kind of "in one bound he was free". Instead, not much has changed since, and it's taking some work persuading myself that, actually, that's OK.
I have spent many years telling myself that I was building up to something, and that all the skills and knowledge acquired in the meantime would all be valuable one day. When times were hard I patted myself on the back, knowing that there were things I could do that others couldn't, and sometime that would be just what I needed to get somewhere.
Note all that vagueness. Something, sometime, somewhere. At the moment, my goals have evaporated due to insubstantiality. The barriers have gone, and with them my sense of direction. That's a tricky thing to deal with.
Still, I have a good life, and if nothing much changed for quite some while it would still be a happy one. OK, so I feel there's a hole where some ambitions used to be, but that will be fixed in time. There's no hurry, and when it gets to me I can talk it through with someone understanding. I am learning that it's OK to just "be" sometimes, to go with the flow rather than push and drive forward. When I have learned more about the world as it is now, and about myself in the process, I hope I will be in a better position to make some wise choices.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Gathering
I'm not entirely sure what to make of ex-brethren en masse. Large groups of people are not my favourite habitat, and I can't decide whether being classified as belonging to the group helps or not, but that's just me.
Brethren vary, as people, whatever it may look like to the uninformed observer, but ex-brethren vary more as they have had time to grow away from the previously uniform aspects of life and thought. That applies to appearance, beliefs and behaviour. I'd like to think I could still spot somebody as having the brethren background, but in reality I'd be fooling myself. And, of course, in such variety, there are some I like more than others and some I find more interesting than others, and I expect that applies to all of us - hopefully our opinions on that differ, too.
One key aspect of the brethren past is the difficulty of explaining it to anyone else. It has a shape and a pattern such that it feels as though it makes sense, yet few of those who haven't shared it can grasp more than a succession of details and surface facts. That means that it's a relief for those who share the background to find each other, and somewhat tedious for anyone who doesn't. Many ex-brethren, even those who have successfully moved on in their lives, continue to pick at the whole brethren situation with fidgety mental fingers, and seize on opportunities to compare musings with like-minded others much to the bafflement of outsiders, who wonder why something obviously so negative need be anything other than the past. Any explanation tends to sound like self-pity, and there is very little like self-pity to make a person unsympathetic.
It really is a little like being an expatriate, which was reinforced for me at the weekend by a queue of people wishing for news from "home". I use the word for want of anything better. As I am still a recent leaver by the standards of most, I am in possession of memories that are comparatively fresh, and others hunger for information of some kind it seems: friends and family mostly, or just comparisons with their own experiences and some feel for how things really are now within the barrier of separation. I did my best.
But there is really nothing quite like mixing with people who have that one large factor in common. There is no need for explanation, no need to avoid saying things which make no sense out of the old familiar context, no worries about what anybody might think - at least in that respect. That relaxes a part of my mind that I didn't know was tense.
Brethren vary, as people, whatever it may look like to the uninformed observer, but ex-brethren vary more as they have had time to grow away from the previously uniform aspects of life and thought. That applies to appearance, beliefs and behaviour. I'd like to think I could still spot somebody as having the brethren background, but in reality I'd be fooling myself. And, of course, in such variety, there are some I like more than others and some I find more interesting than others, and I expect that applies to all of us - hopefully our opinions on that differ, too.
One key aspect of the brethren past is the difficulty of explaining it to anyone else. It has a shape and a pattern such that it feels as though it makes sense, yet few of those who haven't shared it can grasp more than a succession of details and surface facts. That means that it's a relief for those who share the background to find each other, and somewhat tedious for anyone who doesn't. Many ex-brethren, even those who have successfully moved on in their lives, continue to pick at the whole brethren situation with fidgety mental fingers, and seize on opportunities to compare musings with like-minded others much to the bafflement of outsiders, who wonder why something obviously so negative need be anything other than the past. Any explanation tends to sound like self-pity, and there is very little like self-pity to make a person unsympathetic.
It really is a little like being an expatriate, which was reinforced for me at the weekend by a queue of people wishing for news from "home". I use the word for want of anything better. As I am still a recent leaver by the standards of most, I am in possession of memories that are comparatively fresh, and others hunger for information of some kind it seems: friends and family mostly, or just comparisons with their own experiences and some feel for how things really are now within the barrier of separation. I did my best.
But there is really nothing quite like mixing with people who have that one large factor in common. There is no need for explanation, no need to avoid saying things which make no sense out of the old familiar context, no worries about what anybody might think - at least in that respect. That relaxes a part of my mind that I didn't know was tense.
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