I was walking the short journey from my front door to the tram stop this morning, a Wednesday and it must have been around 12 noon. Exactly in the middle of the week, I just realised that whilst typing it, that's pretty cool. Anyway, I was almost at the tram stop when i was approached by a leafleting child, who i would guess at being no older than twelve. I would usually pass on leaflet-ers but as it was a child i decided to accept, thinking it would give me something to read while i would no doubt be waiting around for Georg in the Student's Union Coffee bar.
The following images are scanned directly from the leaflet that I was handed earlier today in order that they were to be read. It was presented as a near A5 size four page booklet.
As I was raised a catholic child, I have very strong opinions on this kind of practice. What shocked me is that a child, in the middle of the day when they should have been in school was being used to publicise the church. I have been a strong believer for a while now that everyone is entitled to their own personal views when it impacts no one else's life. However, when beliefs start to encroach on beliefs of others around you, those effected are entitled to defend their opinions which may be in opposition to those they are being presented with. Therefore I feel that I can openly talk about my opinion of this.
I want to refer you at this point to the work of Prof. Richard Dawkins. Especially his documentary called: 'Faith School Menace' where Dawkins explores the issues and implications involved in growing numbers of faith schools in the UK. I won't reiterate everything that Dawkins said in the documentary because that would be pointless (I couldn't explain the topics half as well so i highly recommend that you see it for yourself.)
I will however recite what i remember as being a very poignant point. "Some may say: 'Here we see a Christian child, over there a Muslim child, and there's a Jewish child.' It would be far more accurate to term these children as 'a child of Christian/Muslim/Jewish parents.' A child, for very good Darwinian reasons, is programmed to obey what he/she is told by their parents. No wonder the Jesuits said 'Give me the child for the first seven years, and I will give you the man." I will leave you with this thought to ponder upon.
I recently read a text for one of the critical practice seminars. It was the Exactitude chapter of Italo Calvino's 'Six Memos for the Next Millennium.' I wasn't a huge fan of the text (at first, I'm now unsure as to my stance on it. I want to read the entire book to see if, put in context, it makes more sense.) and at the moment i still believe that Calvino's writing made me come to the conclusion that he is a victim of what I would describe to be, The Human Condition.
The Human Condition, to me is a silent, but ever prevalent mental illness that everyone suffers from and therefore is treated as the norm. It was at the point where Calvino starts to talk about the intricate workings of the universe and the philosophy of science (which is a phrase i don't believe in. Science does not have philosophy, it is based on evidence and demonstrable experiments.) that I came to the realisation about The Human Condition. In my mind, we may never understand the universe, even if granted infinite time, because of one principle which is always overlooked. That to understand the universe we have to translate it into human terms and this is where the problem lies because in my opinion human communication, language, is a fundamentally flawed system.
If you think about it, how many words does the english have that mean fundamentally the same thing. Conversely, there is at least one word that really doesn't mean anything, nice. Nice is a word I try never to call someone as it implies nothing apart from the user of the word not knowing anything about or having any persuasion emotionally where the person they are talking about is concerned. (Quick side-note: I've thought this since year 5 when Mr Davis mentioned it to us in class once and it's stuck with me ever since.) I also thought this was quite ironic considering the chapter was supposed to persuade you of the exactness of language and literature.
So, The Human Condition, explained in it's most simple form is thus: "The Human Condition is the lack of awareness that to understand the universe we have to translate it into language, an imperfect human construct, and some things may not be translatable." That, is the best way i can put it at the moment at least.
But my main concern has been that by using this imperfect human construct every day seems incredibly futile. To try and put the whole spectrum of human emotions, and the innumerable wonders of the universe into a limited set of predetermined terms with finite combinations, is statistically impossible. The only way out of this that i can see is the hope that as we steadily discover more of the universe, language will evolve to accommodate the evolution in our knowledge.
