03 February 2012
Under a Certain Little Star - a poem by Wislawa Szymborska
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02 February 2012
Power tools that will pay for themselves, by Bob Tedeschi
The Guilt-Free Handyman Shopping Spree
By BOB TEDESCHI
PUT a new tool in the hands of some people, guys especially, and they become giddy at the prospect of all the jobs they can now do. For me, it means one more thing to feel stupid about, and one less excuse to blow off a project that surely could wait another week.
Part of me would like to become that other guy, but such a conversion requires a bit of cash and a bigger measure of wisdom.
The very basic set of tools I own is good for home repairs and maintenance, and some simple work, like installing shelves or a shower head. But are there other tools — better tools — that would inspire me to chase down ambitious projects instead of fleeing them?
I put the question to three home improvement specialists: Gordon Bock, an author of “The Vintage House” (W. W. Norton) and former editor in chief of Old House Journal; Duo Dickinson, an architect and the author of “Staying Put” (Taunton), a manual on home remodeling; and Bob Vila, whose syndicated home improvement series jump-started a genre, and whose videos can now be seen at BobVila.com.
What I needed, they told me, was a good set of aspirational tools. But a set like that leans heavily on the power-tools category, and could therefore make your bank account tilt.
Though, as Mr. Bock put it, “good tools don’t cost — they pay for themselves in improved work and long service.”
If a set of basic tools (hammer, handsaw, jigsaw, drill, screwdriver, level, tape measure, pliers, Vise-Grips, adjustable wrench and socket wrenches) costs around $150, the next step up costs roughly double that.
Nevertheless, within hours of adding the 10 other items they recommended to my workshop, I had taken on a door-modification project that I’d ignored for a full decade, and I completed it in two hours. Had I paid a carpenter for the work, it might have cost as much as buying all of those tools.
At Mr. Bock’s recommendation, the first item on my list of new tools was an 18-volt cordless drill.
“It’s almost de rigueur,” he said, and the tools have improved in recent years.
“It used to be that 24 volts was the sweet spot for a tool with power and durability,” Mr. Bock said. “But now you can get the same thing in a smaller package. They’re just incredible.”
You can buy one for around $60, but my panelists strongly advised me to get one with a spare battery, so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing power midway through a project. Extra rechargeable batteries cost about $30.
What’s the best way to shop for a drill? Mr. Vila said that most builders and carpenters choose the major brands carried at home improvement specialty stores and local hardware retailers. Bosch, DeWalt, Hitachi, Makita, Skil and Craftsman, he said, are good ones to consider.
A battery-powered circular saw is another good thing to have, Mr. Bock said, “especially if you’re outside working on a fence or up on a roof, where you don’t want to drag a cord.”
I built a picket fence in August a few years back, and wasted a good bit of arm strength and a few pints of sweat sawing off the tops of posts. Back then, I’d have killed for a cordless circular saw.
Like cordless drills, battery-powered circular saws start at around $60 for models with 5 ½-inch blades, which will handle most basic tasks. The least expensive 6 ½-inch models sell for about $100.
Mr. Bock’s next recommendation was slightly more controversial. He suggested buying the cordless version of a tool I’d long coveted for its destructive potential: a reciprocating saw. Also known by one of its brand names, a Sawzall, it’s good for demolition and for cutting through walls.
Or body parts, Mr. Dickinson noted.
“It’s the greatest tool in America, and second only to chainsaws as the most dangerous,” he said.
“I know my limits,” Mr. Dickinson continued. “If I’m doing a project at home, it’s usually before or after work, when I’m tired, or distracted, and I don’t trust myself with anything dangerous.”
Aside from severing a finger, Mr. Dickinson said, reciprocating saw users might be tempted to blindly cut through a wall containing live wires.
Duly spooked, I sought a tiebreaker.
Mr. Vila came down on the side of Team Sawzall.
Envisioning my next credit-card statement, I felt a good sweat coming on. But Mr. Vila said I could buy a combination cordless kit with a drill and circular and reciprocating saws for $200.
It was the first time someone from the construction industry gave me an estimate that was actually high. An 18-volt tool kit from Ryobi, with a flashlight, drill, 5 ½-inch circular saw and reciprocating saw costs about $150. The kit even includes a spare battery.
I bought it, and pledged never to pick up the saws without heeding Mr. Dickinson’s warning.
Mr. Dickinson, who runs a firm in Connecticut, chose as his top tool recommendation a multipiece drilling-and-driving set, which vastly expands the utility of a cordless drill.
“This thing has changed my life,” he said. “I can be fearless when I attack a job, because no matter what I might need, it’s all here.”
His set is a DeWalt 80-piece drill-and-drive set, which sells for about $30 and includes nut-setters, roughly 20 drill bits and more than 50 screw-driving tips. For those with more specialized woodworking needs, Ryobi sells a 90-piece drill-and-drive set that includes tools for boring and circular cuts.
With a multipiece kit, Mr. Dickinson said, you can choose bits of different sizes and shapes that come in handy if, for instance, you are trying to remove a screw that someone stripped as it was put in place.
In other words, I’ll be able to deal with all of the screws I previously wrecked, for lack of the proper screwdriver. It will also help replace some of the driver bits that mysteriously disappeared the last time my teenage son used them.
If I’m going to embark on more ambitious home improvement projects, I should resign myself to making a mess of the workspace.
On this front, Mr. Bock made a nice recommendation: a wet-dry vacuum, more commonly known as a Shop-Vac. They’re far less expensive than I’d previously imagined (a Ridgid six-gallon model is $47), and they’ll suck up substances that would destroy a typical vacuum.
“You don’t think of it as a tool,” he said, “but you get addicted to it.”
Slightly less addictive is the noise it generates, which is like what you’d hear if you were strapped to the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Grab some earmuffs, Mr. Bock suggested (ones by MSA Safety Works cost around $18), or a good set of earplugs (3M TEKK Protection, $3 for seven pairs), if you can wear them comfortably.
Also on the list of low-tech tools were a few that can help save homeowners from writing big checks to contractors.
Mr. Vila suggested an auger for unclogging toilets or drains. “Plumbers charge such enormous amounts that for $15 you might be able to do a serious unclogging that saves you a lot of dough,” he said.
I found none for $15, but I did find a three-foot Ridgid toilet auger that cost about $34, and a six-foot model that was $50. Both would pay for themselves in the time it would take a plumber to walk from his truck to your front door.
Another of Mr. Vila’s favorite money-saving gadgets is a spline ($5 for a Home Depot brand), which is a specialty tool for replacing screens. “Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy,” he said. “And if you have someone else do it for you, it triples the cost.”
Mr. Vila suggested a set of wire strippers as well ($16 for Klein Tools wire strippers). “If you’ve ever tried to rewire an old lamp, they’re very handy,” he said.
He also recommended a hatchet. But as I studied a shelf filled with shiny, expensive blades, I backed into a display for a Workmate portable workbench ($30) and got that instead.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to fix a bike as it squirms atop a garbage can, or pushed a circular saw within centimeters of the pavement, simply for lack of a proper work surface.
I also can’t count the number of jobs I’ve avoided for the same reason. I grabbed a Workmate and the rest of my new tools, and headed home for my long-overdue door-modification project.
The door belongs to a guest bathroom, and since it is almost an inch and a half too short for the doorway, people who use the bathroom have little aural privacy.
I pulled the door from its hinges, steadied it on the Workmate (which took about a half-hour to assemble), drove to the lumberyard for a $2 piece of wood, drilled pilot holes in the wood, added some wood glue and secured the piece with a few screws.
It was too big by a hair, so I trimmed the piece with the circular saw, and the deed was done. At last.
Next to that door, the most vexing characteristic of my house is the lack of light on the eastern side, which makes my office cavelike in the morning. A window would make a huge difference. All I need is a framing tutorial and something to cut a hole through wallboard, studs and aluminum siding.
I think I’ve got just the tool for the job.
Storage Options for Tools
AN ambitious set of tools can help you take on projects you once feared, but only if you keep track of your new equipment. Construction industry veterans have developed a long list of home-brewed solutions for organizing their tools and supplies.
Duo Dickinson, author of “Staying Put,” a home renovation book, recently bought an angler’s tackle box to hold loose items. “All the respectable D.I.Y. guys have one,” he said. “In a world with Ikea, you find yourself with all sorts of hardware you have no use for whatsoever. But you don’t want to throw it away, either. Now you have a place to store all this stuff.”
Toolboxes are usually big enough to contain the old-school arsenal, but if your arsenal includes power tools, a cheaper and more versatile alternative is a five-gallon bucket. Manufacturers like Bucket Boss and others make sleeves that slip onto buckets, and have multiple pockets for tools and supplies (the Bucket Boss 56 costs around $30). Power tools can fit into the bucket, while the supporting cast fits in elsewhere.
Lykke Li sings I Follow Rivers
Oh I beg you, can I follow
Oh I ask you why not always
Be the ocean where unravel
Be my only, be the water and I'm wading
You're my river running high, run deep run wild
[Chorus]
I I follow, I follow you deep sea baby
I follow you
I I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey
I follow you
He a message, I'm the runner
He's the rebel, I'm the daughter waiting for you
You're my river running high, run deep run wild
[Chorus]
I I follow, I follow you deep sea baby
I follow you
I I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey
I follow you
You're my river running high, run deep run wild
I, I follow, I follow you deep sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you deeps sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you
[Repeat till end]
I, I follow, I follow you deeps sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you
Lykke Li sings Sadness is a Blessing
My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
And I keep it like a burning(?)
I'm longing from a distance
I ranted, I pleaded, I beg him not to go
For sorrow, the only lover I've ever known
Sadness is a blessing
Sadness is a pearl
Sadness is my boyfriend
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
These scars of mine make wounded rhymes tonight
I dream of times when you were mine so I
Can keep it like a haunting
Heart beating close to mine
Sadness is a blessing
Sadness is a pearl
Sadness is my boyfriend
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
I ranted, I pleaded, I beg him not to go
For sorrow, the only lover I've ever known
Every night I rant, I plead, I beg him not to go
Will sorrow be the only lover I can call my own?
Sadness is a blessing
Sadness is a pearl
Sadness is my boyfriend
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
Sadness is my boyfriend
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
Oh, sadness I'm your girl
Carl Sagan: The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, the astronomer Carl Sagan related his thoughts on a deeper meaning of the photograph:
"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
01 February 2012
Poems by Tomas Tranströmer, Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2011
From The Sorrow Gondola - the great Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer's first collection of poems after his stroke in 1990. Translated by Michael McGriff.
From The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer. Translated by Robert Bly.
April and Silence
Spring lies deserted.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side without reflections.
All that shines
are yellow flowers.
I’m carried in my shadow
like a violin in its black case.
The only thing I want to say
gleams out of reach
like the silver
in a pawnshop.
Landscape with Suns
The sun emerges from behind the house
stands in the middle of the street
and breathes on us
with its red wind.
Innsbruck I must leave you.
But tomorrow
there will be a glowing sun
in the gray, half-dead forest
where we must work and live.
Midwinter
A blue light
radiates from my clothing.
Midwinter.
Clattering tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled across the border.
From The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer. Translated by Robert Bly.
| After a Death | ||
Once there was a shock that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail. It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy. It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires. One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun through brush where a few leaves hang on. They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories. Names swallowed by the cold. It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat but often the shadow seems more real than the body. The samurai looks insignificant beside his armor of black dragon scales. | ||
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What are the 100 most common words in the English language?
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For the next 900 words, please see this list.
Three of the words come from Old Norse: "they", "their", and "them"
One is derived from French: "number"
The rest come from Old English.
This info is from
Religion for Atheists, by Alain de Botton
Synopsis
What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? The long-running and often boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved forward by Alain de Botton’s inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are entirely false—but that it still has some very important things to teach the secular world.Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religion, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from it—because the world’s religions are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we look to religion for insights into how to, among other concerns, build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, inspire travel and reconnect with the natural world.
For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing some peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.
Excerpt
from Part One: Wisdom without Doctrine1.
The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true – in terms of being handed down from heaven to the sound of trumpets and supernaturally governed by prophets and celestial beings.
To save time, and at the risk of losing readers painfully early on in this project, let us bluntly state that of course no religions are true in any God-given sense. This is a book for people who are unable to believe in miracles, spirits or tales of burning shrubbery, and have no deep interest in the exploits of unusual men and women like the thirteenth-century saint Agnes of Montepulciano, who was said to be able to levitate two feet off the ground while praying and to bring children back from the dead – and who, at the end of her life (supposedly), ascended to heaven from southern Tuscany on the back of an angel.
2.
Attempting to prove the non-existence of God can be an entertaining activity for atheists. Tough-minded critics of religion have found much pleasure in laying bare the idiocy of believers in remorseless detail, finishing only when they felt they had shown up their enemies as thorough-going simpletons or maniacs.
Though this exercise has its satisfactions, the real issue is not whether God exists or not, but where to take the argument once one decides that he evidently doesn’t. The premise of this book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.
One can be left cold by the doctrines of the Christian Trinity and the Buddhist Eightfold Path and yet at the same time be interested in the ways in which religions deliver sermons, promote morality, engender a spirit of community, make use of art and architecture, inspire travels, train minds and encourage gratitude at the beauty of spring. In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts.
It is when we stop believing that religions have been handed down from above or else that they are entirely daft that matters become more interesting. We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise. God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions which do not go away when we have been nudged to perceive some scientific inaccuracies in the tale of the seven loaves and fishes.
The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed. Once we cease to feel that we must either prostrate ourselves before them or denigrate them, we are free to discover religions as repositories of a myriad ingenious concepts with which we can try to assuage a few of the most persistent and unattended ills of secular life.
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Table of Contents
ContentsI. Wisdom without Doctrine
II. Community
III. Kindness
IV. Education
V. Tenderness
VI. Pessimism
VII. Perspective
VIII. Art
IX. Architecture
X. Institutions
About Alain De Botton
Alain de Botton is the author of essays on themes ranging from love and travel to architecture and philosophy. His most recent work, Religion for Atheists, came out in March on 2012. His best-selling books include How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and The Architecture of Happiness. He lives in London, where he is the founder and chairman of The School of Life (www.theschooloflife.com) and the creative director of Living Architecture (www.living-architecture.co.uk). Visit him at: www.alaindebotton.com.Author Q&A
Q+A: Religion for Atheists1) One of the premises of your book is that living without God is dangerous, can you explain why? Which are the dangers?In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I do want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up - we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour can be overlooked.
Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). I am simply wanting to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what is missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely. By all means, we can dismiss him, but with great sympathy, nostalgia, care and thought...
2) Is it possible to be a good person without religion?
The problem of the man without religion is that he forgets. We all know in theory what we should do to be good. The problem is that in practice, we forget. And we forget because the modern secular world always thinks that it is enough to tell someone something once (be good, remember the poor etc.) But all religions disagree here: they insist that if anyone is to stand a chance of remembering anything, they need reminders on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis.
3) What do you think of the aggressive atheism we have seen in the past few years?I am an atheist, but a gentle one. I don't feel the need to mock anyone who believes. I really disagree with the hard tone of some atheists who approach religion like a silly fairy tale. I am deeply respectful of religion, but I believe none of its supernatural aspects. So my position is perhaps unusual: I am at once very respectful and completely impious.
4) a) What is it you're most interested in in religion?
The secular world believes that if we have good ideas, we will be reminded of them just when it matters. Religions don't agree. They are all about structure; they want to build calendars for us, that will make sure that we regularly encounter reminders of significant concepts. That is what rituals are: they are attempts to make vivid to us things we already know, but are likely to have forgotten. Religions are also keen to see us as more than just rational minds, we are emotional and physical creatures, and therefore, we need to be seduced via our bodies and our senses too: this was always the great genius of Catholicism. If you want to change someone's ideas, don't only concentrate on their ideas, concentrate on their whole selves.
b) Is it really possible to distinguish, as you do, between faith and the “technicalities” of religion? To reject faith and to save something similar to pray, church, religious rituals?
I absolutely believe that this is possible. I am writing for the sort of reader who thinks, 'I really can't believe in anything supernatural, the supernatural side of religion is impossible for me BUT I love so much here: the ritual, the architecture, the music, the connection with the past...' Why should we be forced to make such a brutal choice? Why is it 'either you have to believe in all kinds of implausible things, but then you get some great architecture etc.' OR, you believe in nothing supernatural, and you are then cast out into a world dominated by IKEA and CNN... The choice doesn't have to be so brutal.
5) You also propose to reform schools and universities to teach humans how to deal with, not knowledge, but the most important existential problems, loneliness, pain and death for example. You even propose to abolish the teaching of history and literature, two basic humanities. Why? Is knowledge so unimportant? Can existential lessons be taught at school?The starting point of religion is that we are children, and we need guidance. The secular world often gets offended by this. It assumes that all adults are mature - and therefore, it hates didacticism, it hates the idea of guidance and moral instruction. But of course we are children, big children who need guidance and reminders of how to live. And yet the modern education system denies this. It treats us all as far too rational, reasonable, in control. We are far more desperate than the modern education system recognises. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time - and religions recognise this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.
6) Are you nostalgic for the deeply religious past?
Like many people, of course I feel nostalgic. How is it possible not to feel nostalgic when you look at 15th frescoes or the rituals of an ancient carnival? However, we have to ask: how should I respond to my nostalgia? My thought is that we can use it creatively, as the basis for a rebirth, for the creation of new things, for the creation of things that later generations will feel nostalgic about... So it frustrates me when people say things like, 'Well, they knew how to build in the 15th century, now it is impossible...' Why! Anything is possible. We should not sigh nostalgically over religion, we should learn from them. We should steal from them.
7) How do religions teach us?
Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people's lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organisations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.
8) You say that our society lacks of collective rituals, a network of secular churches, of vast high spaces in which to escape from the hubbub of modern society and to focus on all that is beyond us. But what about the fact that whichever society tried to create an effective kind of propaganda in the name of virtue was, after the french revolution, a totalitarian regime in which the state itself became god?
We are too easily frightened here. So often, anytime that someone proposes a valid idea in this area, people say, but what about Hitler, or Stalin... This is not the choice. We can have public morality without fascism, we can even have certain kinds of censorship (for example, of pornography) without dictatorship, we can have great civic architecture which isn't done by governments for their own glory. It is right that people have been scared by certain tendencies in the 20th century, but we shouldnt' always be so unambitious about what we can do. We don't need to abandon ourselves to freemarket capitalism under the spiritual leadership of cable television.
Much of modern moral thought has been transfixed by the idea that a collapse in belief must have irreparably damaged our capacity to build a convincing ethical framework for ourselves. But this argument, while apparently atheistic in nature, owes a strange, unwarranted debt to a religious mindset – for only if we truly believed at some level that God did exist, and that the foundations of morality were therefore in their essence supernatural, would the recognition of his nonexistence have any power to shake our moral principles.
However, if we assume from the start that we of course made God up, then the argument rapidly breaks down into a tautology – for why would we bother to feel burdened by ethical doubt if we knew that the many rules ascribed to supernatural beings were actually only the work of our all-too human ancestors?
The origins of religious ethics lie in the pragmatic need of our earliest communities to control their members' tendencies towards violence, and to foster in them contrary habits of harmony and forgiveness. Religious codes began as cautionary precepts, which were then projected into the sky and reflected back to earth in disembodied and majestic forms. Injunctions to be sympathetic or patient stemmed from an awareness that these were the qualities which could draw societies back from fragmentation and self-destruction. So vital were these rules to our survival that for thousands of years we did not dare to admit that we ourselves had formulated them, lest this expose them to critical scrutiny and irreverent handling. We had to pretend that morality came from the heavens in order to insulate it from our own prevarications and frailties.
But if we can now own up to spiritualising our ethical laws, we have no cause to do away with the laws themselves. We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of Hell or the promise of Paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves – that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) – who want to lead the sort of lives which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognising ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments.
9) If we were to replace religion with a secular equivalent, who would be our gurus?
We don't need a central structure. We are beyond the age of gurus and inspirational leaders. We are in the age of the Wiki structure. This means that it is up to all of us to look at religion and see what bits we can steal and place into the modern world. We might all contribute to the construction of new temples, not the government, but the concerned, interested individual. The salvation of the individual soul remains a serious problem - even when we dismiss the idea of God. In the 20th century, capitalism has really solved (in the rich West) the material problems of a significant portion of mankind. But the spiritual needs are still in chaos, with religion ceasing to answer the need. This is why I wrote my book, to show that there remains a new way: a way of filling the modern world with so many important lessons from religion, and yet not needing to return to any kind of occult spirituality.
10. Don’t you think that, in order to truly appreciate religious music and art, you have to be a believer – or, at least, don't you think that non-believers miss something important in the experience?
I am interested in the modern claim that we have now found a way to replace religion: with art. You often hear people say, 'Museums are our new churches'. It's a nice idea, but it's not true, and it's principally not true because of the way that museums are laid out and present art. They prevent anyone from having an emotional relationship with the works on display. They encourage an academic interest, but prevent a more didactic and therapeutic kind of contact. I recommend in my book that even if we don't believe, we learn to use art (even secular art) as a resource for comfort, identification, guidance and edification, very much what religions do with art.
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