All I can say is that it wasn’t me who started it.

First, we had Lady Bracknell:

…there’s a lot to be said for cremation. Because, apparently, if you choose burial, and your nearest and dearest cobble together the money for a fine headstone for your grave, that headstone will eventually fall over and become a birdbath for some pretty sinister-looking carrion crowsThe Perorations of Lady Bracknell: Twa Corbies

True. However, what you also have to bear in mind is that if you are cremated, Del Trotter will allow your ashes to accidentally be sucked up in a roadsweeper thingummy. And at least if you have a gravestone, there’s somewhere for family members to come and visit for a while before you get forgotten and neglected. Which is one of the negative things about death.

And then nobody likes the idea of gradually suffocating inside a coffin that has been buried with you still alive in it, do they? On the other hand, waking up inside a coffin that has just been placed in a furnace probably isn’t on my list of “top fun ways to die painfully” either.

Now I used to think that doctors were capable of successfully determining whether someone was alive or not, and I don’t mean like in the joke about the hunters…

…okay… there’s these two blokes out hunting, and one of them accidentally shoots the other in the head. The shooter, in somewhat of a state of panic, phones the emergency services, and says “I’ve just shot my friend in the head — it was an accident, but I think he’s dead — what do I do?”. The person on the other end of the line tells him to remain calm: “first, we’ll make sure he’s really dead.” The phone goes silent and the operator hears another gunshot: “Okay, he’s definitely dead… what do I do now?”

…no, I had expected that the special medical training doctors have, including all sorts of training on diseases and so on, would allow them to determine whether or not someone was alive. But seemingly not:

Doctors are being given tips to help them diagnose when someone is dead.BBC News: Doctors Get Death Diagnosis Tips

Bloody hell. If doctors are struggling to know whether or not someone’s dead, what chance have the rest of us got? I mean, is it possible that we could have a mild case of death without knowing about it?

Of course — to take a serious note for a moment — various hospitals are being used to study Near-Death Experiences at the moment.

Although many independent studies have shown that the brain reaches a ‘flatline’ state during clinical death, it has consistently been shown that 10-20% of people who are revived back to life report some activity of the mind…

While an absolute impossibility to many scientists, for those who have experienced them and their respective doctors they are real. The key for science is to determine whether these experiences are illusions or whether they are real.

During AWARE, investigators will place images strategically in hospital bays, such that they will only be visible by looking down from the ceiling and nowhere else. BBC News: Towards The Light

While I am aware that if people are capable of floating outside their bodies and experiencing stuff during periods of no brain activity, it might be possible that they could look down from the ceiling and see cards placed on high shelves, I just can’t see it happening. I would tend to imagine that if you were floating mid-way between this life and the next, on the one hand watching people trying to resuscitate you, and on the other being called by dead relatives, you would be concerned about whether or not you were going to live, you would be pleased at the knowledge that you do have a spirit independent of your body, and you’d not be spending the time studying what was on the shelves in the room.

So on that basis alone, I wouldn’t expect the experiment to produce a positive result. You also have the strict materialist interpretation which says it’s impossible anyway, but the anomalous — although mostly anecdotal — evidence does suggest it is maybe worth investigation.

So to recap: we’re all going to die, probably in pain, then we’ll either rot in the ground or our ashes will be sucked into a vacuum cleaner by mistake, and we’ll be forgotten about, but it’s okay because we’ll have floated off to meet our relatives by then. Meanwhile, the junior doctor will be poking through your ashes trying to determine if you are dead or not…

Sometimes I think life is too absurd to possibly be true. But that’s a whole nother theory

A huge particle accelerator experiment is about to start and a tiny group of people believe it could spell the end of the world. But why are we so obsessed with the possibility of apocalypse?BBC News Magazine

In summary, the basic theory is this. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is to be fired up this week, as physicists attempt to find out a bit more about the universe. Some people however believe that it is technically possible that mini black holes could be created, which, were they to be stable, could quickly destroy the planet. Alternatively, ’strange matter’ could be created which — if I’m understanding the doom-mongers correctly — could corrupt matter around it and again the entire planet would be quickly converted into ‘junk matter’.

Scientists don’t believe that either of these scenarios are likely (I don’t know anything about ’strangelets’, but from what I know about micro-black holes, they would tend to be unstable and vanish in a puff of Hawking radiation). Having said that, I can still understand some people being concerned about them “thinking it unlikely”. But science sometimes needs to progress by pressing that big red button, just to find out what happens…

For example, during the development of the atomic bomb:

Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might “ignite” the atmosphere, because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei.Wikipedia: Manhattan Project

One the one hand, we might have developed an atomic weapon. On the other hand, lads, if we press this button, we might wipe out all life forms on the surface of the earth. What d’you reckon lads? Let’s press it and find out, eh?

Now, I don’t think it’s likely that CERN’s LHC will blow us all to kingdom come either. But I agree with the BBC that it is interesting that so many people seem willing to predict the end of the world…

The BBC article mentions various theories for the end of the world. Obviously, the Earth as we know it will end when our sun turns into a red giant: but the Earth will have become uninhabitable long before that — in about 1 billion years the sun will be too hot for water, so we’re already more than 80% of the way through the Earth’s habitable life. However, that’s not really apocalyptic enough for most of these theories, who seem to favour The End sometime in the next generation or so.

For many Christians — seemingly a higher proportion in the US — there is the belief that we’ll have The Second Coming and/or The Rapture … end times stuff. For others, there’s the whole apocalyptic stuff found in The Revelation of Saint John the Devine…

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

The Revelation of Saint John the Devine: Ch 13 v 16-18

…and of course, once you combine this with the theory that when you buy everything these days, it’s bleeped in via a bar code, and that barcodes contain 666, we’re obviously into the end times.

Or there’s the Mayan calendar — in particular the Long Count calendar, which will reset itself at the end of 2012. This has therefore been used to suggest that this will be the time of some great cataclysm, or some other something or other which will end the planet.

I don’t know exactly what all these doom-sayers have been meaning by “the end of the world”, but I’m guessing that they are talking about at least the complete collapse of civilisation, rather than say, a world recession, with house prices dropping by 25%.

Of course, if I’m going to listen to a lot of end of the world doom-mongering, I’d rather they were backed by a decent soundtrack, which is why I’d recommend The Shamen’s Re:evolution (yes, the same people who did Ebeneezer Goode)…

Persistently western religions have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world. And I think that a lot of psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition.

I mean it isn’t going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion, but the basic intuition that the universe seeks closure in a kind of Omega point of transcendence is confirmed.

The Shamen ~ Re:Evolution

Obviously, you don’t need to be mystical, religious, or shamanistic to believe the end of the world as we know it is coming soon. We’ve got the whole global warming thing; the fact that there is only a finite amout of oil left (2007 estimates would suggest something short of 100 years); there’s Ebola, AIDS, bird flu, meteor impacts and so on to worry about. Oh, and natural disasters, nuclear wars, bioterrorism, and so on.

Us humans as a species are only around 200,000 years old (or around 6,000 years, if you’re a follower of Ussher — but then, if you are, you have to put up with the idea that God put dinosaur bones there just to mess with our heads, which I think is even more disturbing). There’s no guarantee we’ll last another 200,000 years. There’s no guarantee we’ll last another 20 years. There’s no guarantees as to how long we’ll survive.

Even if by some chance we have moved from the earth before the sun expands, there’s the ultimate cosmological endings: the Big Rip, which seems to be the latest hot theory where all the atoms in the universe are torn apart as the rate of expansion increases; the ‘universe continues to gradually expand’ traditional entropy/heat-death one; and of course the Big Bang in reverse — the Big Crunch (not the Gib Gnab, regardless of what Douglas Adams thought).

So why are we so interested in apocalyptic scenarios? I dunno. Maybe it’s because we’d like the universe and ourselves to have some purpose, and for our lives to be important — so we want to be living in important times. Maybe it’s because the planet/world is likely to go out spectacularly at some point, so we want it to mean something. Or maybe we’re just a bunch of pessimists…

Me, I’ll stick with The Shamen. It’s the same New Age apocalyptic mystic mumbo-jumbo, but it’s got a good tune…

History is ending, I mean we are to be the generation that witnesses the Revelation of the purpose of the Cosmos.
History is the shock wave of the Eschaton.The Shamen ~ Re:Evolution

For those of you who haven’t read that, and can’t be bothered to read it, here’s a one-paragraph recap:

I suffer from thanatophobia. That’s the fear of death. It’s not a fear of dying, it’s a fear of being dead, and there not being a ‘me’ any more. It’s not so much ‘how would you like to be remembered’, it’s that I’d rather still be here, thanks. And it’s the bloody inevitability of it that’s depressing. I mean, you can live longer, but in the end you’ll still be dead and (assuming there’s no afterlife) that’s it. No you any more. And I don’t like that idea at all. And as the original post has had over 200 comments on it now, it would appear that I’m far from being the only person who feels that way.

So anyway, the Richard Bacon show on Radio 5 Live are apparently having a discussion/ talk about death from between 11:59pm on Wednesday 30th July and 1:00am on Thursday 31st, and this lady was asking me if I’d be willing to be on the radio to talk about it.

Now my previous radio experience wasn’t exactly a wonderful success, but that hasn’t put me off, because for one thing it helped me make a friend: the other member of the Mike Parr Survivors Club. And besides which, it’s all really tied in with phase #1 of my plans for world domination. Or something.

Apparently Richard Bacon is on holiday and Rachel Burden is standing in for him (it does beg the question: is it mandatory for the stand-in to have the same initials as the person they are replacing?), and I know that there will also be apparently a funeral director and a comedian (who, I am presuming, makes jokes about death, rather than just being some random comedian to keep the comedy quotient at satisfactory levels) appearing, so I’m quite looking forward to it.

Hopefully some of the listeners will be like some of the commenters on my blog: people who used to think it was only them, until someone else stood up and spoke about it. Knowing you’re not the only one does help, because you know other people understand what you’re feeling. And if anyone listening to that show falls into that category, then I feel I will have achieved something worthwhile. And, you never know, I might get a chance to plug the blog

Besides, if it’s tough for me and the other guests, then I could always set up the Rachel Burden survivors’ club, anyway….

So I’ll just get out of the way and let her tell it…

There is no way to make this easy so here it is, I’m dying, and probably fairly soon. I am going to try to use a series of letters about the emotional experience around dying and my thinking about that to share where I am and what I am feeling [...] my life is coming to an end. Now that could be a couple hundred days away, or maybe if we get the right equipment in time, even longer, or of course, much shorter.

I asked a nurse on the lung unit who saw that I was on oxygen and my fingers were purple, my lips blue, what exactly was the progression, what intervention could they do? … The blue will advance or the black until it goes to the shoulders. And the solution? The only thing they can do is increase the flow; give me a face mask. And after that? There is no after that.

Elizabeth McClung (Screw Bronze): A Letter on Dying #1

I hope that when my time comes I have the bravery to face up to it like she is doing. Because we’re all going to die in the end. And when it’s my turn, I want to be able to look death in the eye, and tell it I wouldn’t have done a damn thing differently, except maybe look more closely before I stepped out into the road.

And then just go and see what, if anything, happens next …

Not a pleasant thought, is it? And yet, that’s the reality of life. You are going to die. Possibly those of us who don’t suffer from thanatophobia don’t think about it very often, but it’s something which is acknowledged whether or not you like it. Which is why it’s not so much a question of are you going to die, but precisely how you are going to go.

So just pick your preferred option from the list and sit back and wait for the inevitable.

1. Not being thin

   Apparently, unless you’re as thin as it’s possible to be without being underweight, you’re increasing your chances of getting cancer and dying. (“Be thin to cut cancer, study says”)

   And of course, if you’re overweight, you’ll get heart disease and die from that, too.

2. Eating bread

   And let’s not forget that eating bread ‘raises cancer risk’.

3. Drinking fizzy drinks

   As per seemingly everything else, drinking fizzy drinks increases the cancer risk.

4. Ebola

   There seem to be quite regular outbreaks of various forms of haemorrhagic fever in Africa, one of the latest having accounted for 170 people since April. Obviously, if the highly infectious disease were to break out and for people to start being infected in airports, it’s be across the world before you knew it.

5. Aids

   Let’s not forget AIDS; in the 80s we were regularly exhorted not to “…die of ignorance” (which didn’t in itself make it to the list), but the battle against AIDS has taken several steps back since then — lack of availability of condoms, desire to use them and education being important factors — and more than 40 million people worldwide are now HIV positive.

   Just remember kids: if you sleep with someone, it’s going to kill you. At least, that’s how the campaign seemed to me in the 80s…

6. Houses may drop in price

   To many of us, this wouldn’t automatically be fatal, but seemingly from the coverage given to the possibility at times in the Daily Mail and the Express, it is of such concern to their readers I can only presume it must be fatal in at least some cases.

7. H5N1

   Or Bird Flu as it’s better known. Obviously it’s only a matter of time until this becomes a global pandemic and kills everyone too.

   But if you’re feeling a little concerned about it, why not read the BBC’s Q&A. That’s bound to put your mind at rest … isn’t it?

   Researchers are now concerned because scientists … found the virus can affect all parts of the body, not just the lungs. This could mean that many illnesses, and even deaths, thought to have been caused by something else, may have been due to the bird flu virus.

   There is no failsafe way of preventing its spread. Despite mass culls, exclusion zones and other measures put in place to prevent its spread, the H5N1 virus has continued to travel.

   If the virus gained the ability to pass easily between humans the results could be catastrophic. Worldwide, experts predict anything between two million and 50 million deaths

   BBC Bird Flu Q&A

8. Meteor Impact

   And let’s not forget the possibility that we could be wiped out (or at the very least that other mainstay “the end of civilisation as we know it”) by the earth being hit by a sufficiently large meteor. After all, this accounted for the dinosaurs, and there is plenty of evidence that the earth has been regularly hit by large meteors capable of doing this sort of damage.

   Although what is ‘regular’ to a cosmologist is somewhat different from what is seen as ‘regular’ to someone going about their normal day to day business who doesn’t normally think on a millenial timescale. But we can still worry: it was forecast in 2004 that the 320m asteroid 99942 Apophis had a 1 in 17 chance of hitting us in 2029 (although it’s now believed it’s going to miss).

   That’s not really planet-killer size, but approximately once in every 10 million years of its history, the earth has been struck by an object with a diameter of 5km or more. That sort of impact would be the equivalent of 10 million megatons (with the largest ever nuclear device exploded having a yield of just fifty megatons.

   So that’s another thing for you to worry about.

9. Nuclear War

   Possibly not looking as likely as it once did, but that old mainstay of the Cold War is still a possibility: an itchy finger in the wrong place and pop goes the weasel, as it were. But of course the leaders of our governments are too sensible to lead us into pointless wars that will go nowhere and just cause pain, death, and destruction. Aren’t they?

10. Worrying

    Worrying too much is bad for you — increases stress, blood pressure, can lead to heart disease, strokes and so on. Of course, it’s a bit difficult not to worry sometimes when it seems that you can’t get through a single day without discovering another fifteen things that are likely to kill you…

11. Terrorism

    Terrorists don’t actually kill that many people (not when compared to heart disease, cancer, malaria, TB and the like) but my goodness me they certainly make the headlines, don’t they? And with scare stories about terrorists planning to use dirty bombs (including those which involve fictional substances, such as the alleged ‘red mercury plot‘), this is going to be one you can worry about for some time to come…

12. The Earth Flipping Over On Its Axis

    In just 30 years time, according to the writer Sir Ian Rankin in his book “Doomsday Just Ahead”, the earth will flip over on it’s axis when the magnetic pole shifts around. Now it’s certainly possible that the magnetic pole will shift around — there is plenty of evidence for what is termed “geomagnetic reversal” — but it’s entirely possible that some people in the scientific community will scoff at the suggestion that the earth will suddenly spin randomly on its axis for a bit, have the oceans slooshing about willy-nilly across the land, and then establishing new north and south poles.

    Particularly since it seems that his book says that:

    …more radically still, he claims that human civilisation has reached its current sophisticated levels many times before – and on each occasion was obliterated by a pole shift.

    …gravity doesn’t exist…

    …the Sun isn’t the centre of the solar system…

    Telegraph review of Doomsday Just Ahead

    …Hmm. Maybe I’ll not worry about that theory just yet, then…

13. What about that scientific one, then — Geomagnetic Reversal?

    No, this isn’t going to kill you. Current estimates are that the earth’s magnetic field is currently weakening to the extent that the field may collapse at some point between 3000 and 4000 AD. There are theories that this will be unpleasant: it may lead to a damaging increase in cosmic radiation (although our earlier ancestors seem to have survived prior shifts), and almost certainly it’ll play merry hell with your in-car sat-nav. But it’s quite a way off, so you can probably ignore this one.

14. Global Warming

    Ah yes, you remember those millions of tons of CO₂ we’re pumping out into the atmosphere, all that energy we’re wasting and so on? Well apparently, that’s a bad thing too.

    The planet is warming up, and some models predict that as it warms up, the sea will be unable to store as much carbon, making it warm up more, and that there are deposits of methane under the ocean beds which will bubble to the surface if the seas get warmer, and as that’s a greenhouse gas, they’ll warm it up even more. Basically, we’re seriously arsing up the planet simply because it’s deemed more important to keep businesses running smoothly and not to upset the economy more than it is to ensure we’ve still got an inhabitable planet in another hundred years.

    And it’s not just the warming that’s the problem: it’s the idea that whole swathes of continents will effectively become dry climates and become uninhabitable…

    You can’t call it a drought anymore, because it’s going over to a drier climate. No one says the Sahara is in drought.Richard Seager, quoted in New York Times (Online)

    …then there’s the freak weather conditions: the hurricanes, the tornados and the like which are increasing in frequency. There’s the fact that with a warmer global climate, the malarial mosquito will have a far greater effective range and diseases previously generally only associated with sub-saharan africa can spread into temperate climates.

15. Superbugs

    Then of course we have MRSA and Clostridium Difficile: the new superbugs that are antibiotic resistant, that you’ll obviously contract if you do so much as go near a hospital, and then will kill you.

16. The Rest

    Then there’s traffic accidents, suicide, various other infections, accidents at home, accidents in the workplace, necrotising fasciitis, murder (what with you being likely to be shot or stabbed seemingly if you visit the wrong city — “ooh, isn’t society violent these days?”), there’s drugs overdoses, there’s liver failure from everyone who’s now binge-drinking 24 hours a day — in between fighting of course — there’s salmonella in pretty much everything. And if isn’t that something kills you, you’ll end up going senile or you’ll get CJD and your brain going all spongy and only then you die.

So there you have it: you’re fucked, basically. It’s just a question of what kills you.

Alternatively, you could just go through life enjoying it; accepting that the inevitable will arrive at some point but not living your life so choked up with fear that you’re actually afraid to live…

I just had to post something in response to that for two reasons — firstly because her stance seemed remarkably similar to mine, and secondly because a colleague has recently been reading this and I’ve been discussing it with him too.

• Goldfish highlighted Dawkins use of ad hominem arguments: suggesting Hitler retained his Catholicism is, as she rightly points out irrelevant. You get nice and nasty people who are religious; same as you get nice and nasty people who are atheists: basically because you get nice and nasty people, not because there’s something inherently good/bad about belief/disbelief.
• Goldfish disagrees with Dawkins that a rational approach means an atheistic stance and agrees with me that it means an agnostic: if you can’t prove or disprove God, the only logical answer is to say “I don’t know”. But that still enables you to sit anywhere on the agnostic spectrum: you can “think it likely” or “think it unlikely” — but you have to admit that you don’t know.
• Goldfish, like me and again unlike Dawkins, doesn’t object to beliefs that are different to her own. I’d clarify: I don’t object to beliefs, but I may object to actions based on those beliefs. If someone thinks homosexuality is wrong, that God will send homosexuals to burn in a lake of fire, then that’s up to them. I’d suggest that maybe they are suspiciously uptight about the whole thing, but they are entitled to that belief. What they are not entitled to do is to mistreat people on the basis of that belief. Yeah, it’s complex, yeah, it’s maybe impractical, but that’s my opinion, ok?
• I agree with the Goldfish that open debate is a good thing — although I’d tend to add the proviso ‘assuming it doesn’t descend into a slanging match’
• I’m also an agnostic who fears that there may not be an afterlife. That’s the thanatophobia kicking in again, then. I get the impression that the Goldfish is again similar (except hopefully without the added phobia bit)

It’s also fair to point out that as someone who studied as a biologist, and who had (and retains) a passion for evoloution and evolutionary theory, I’d come across Dawkins long before he became known for having gone off on a militant atheist kick. The problem was that I went off Dawkins as started to go off on a militant atheistic kick. I wanted to read books about evolutionary theory, not about how he believed religious people were stupid and deluded (which is frankly offensive), even if at the time I would have classed myself as an atheist.

I’m now a confirmed agnostic. I want to believe (because without some kind of meaning, life itself is pointless, irrespective of how long it is), but more than that I want to live in a tolerant society where even if people disagree they can respect one another’s lifestyles and beliefs.

Assuming people are prepared to read both sides of an argument, rather than just picking ‘their side’, I’d recommend reading Dawkins and then reading and comparing the works of the theologist Alister McGrath, including Dawkins’ God, The Twilight Of Atheism, and in particular his rebuttal to this specific book, The Dawkins Delusion.

However, don’t let the fact that Alister comes over as all reasonable (in comparison to the hellfire-and-brimstone preacher of atheism that is Dawkins) sway your beliefs. Tone shouldn’t win an argument, regardless of whether you like it or dislike it. What you should consider important are the arguments presented.

For me, McGrath and Dawkins are at a standstill: McGrath has torpedoed much of Dawkins reasoning for not believing, but not provided me with any reason why I should believe. But whether that’s because that’s just the way those arguments have panned out, or whether psychologically I was never going to change my initial standpoint of agnosticism even though I thought I would be prepared to change it in either direction, I just don’t know.

Anyway, there was a little kind of a documentary about him, talking about his career, what people thought of him, all that sort of thing. In fact, for a moment I wondered if he’d died, because you don’t normally see TV programmes “in honour of” someone unless they’ve just bought the farm or are doddering through their eighties. However, I watched it all with a great deal of interest because for some unknown reason Stephen Fry has cast some sort of spell of fascination over me.

And given that he’s just had a 50th birthday, now seems like the opportune time to talk about it. You can consider it my birthday present to Stephen. Although he’s probably have preferred a book — but since he’s never bought me anything, he can just get what he’s given!

I’m not particularly interested in his fiction: I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read, but I can take it or leave it, but it’s when he’s speaking as Stephen Fry that the spell is at its most powerful. Ordinarily, I’d just put this down to me being some kind of weirdo, but I don’t think that’s what it is in this particular case, because a few of my friends have encountered it similarly.

No, I think it’s just that I’ve grown up with him. He’s been part of my life, taking part in my favourite TV programs for … ooh, the majority of my life … and I’m so used to seeing him in my living room that I think he’s a friend of long-standing.

Possibly the most worrying thing about this is that were I to actually meet him, I feel I’d be likely to say something along the lines of:

All right Stephen? How are you mate — here, I’m going out with the lads for a pint on thursday, can you make it this week?

Which would no doubt take him somewhat by surprise.

But he’s been a part of my life since 1986, when he first arrived as Lord Melchett in Blackadder II, more Blackadder, a whole pile of Fry and Laurie things, with Laurie again (who is another favourite of mine as that curmudgeonly House) in Jeeves and Wooster, as Oscar Wilde, as the quiz master on QI (more of which later) and also revealing the secret life of the manic depressive.

It was particularly interesting to hear Stephen talking about his bipolar disorder, and about how he finds himself thinking about death a lot, because this was not long after I had written my first post on thanatophobia (my so-called irrational fear of death) and what was particularly interesting was the complete difference in attitudes between the bipolar and the thanatophobe: the bipolar sufferer thinks the world would possibly be better of without him, the thanatophobe couldn’t care less whether the world is better off or not, he still wants to be here.

He’s also referred to as a ‘flawed genius’ from time to time.

I’m not going to spare Stephen’s modesty (partly because I doubt he’s going to read this), but I don’t think the ‘genius’ point is worth arguing. The man plainly is a genius. Flawed, I’m not so sure.

Admittedly, you could come up with a list of mistakes he’s made — anyone having read his autobiography ‘Moab is my Washpot’ will understand that he probably could have been just a teensy bit of a pain at various times. But in many cases the mistakes have just reinforced the fact that he’s our Stephen, and we want to make sure he’s all right. Sure, there was a certain media spin initially suggesting he’d flounced off in a huff that time because of a bad review, but for the most part people were more concerned about him and wanted him to be ok (I’m not wishing to gloss over what was a serious inicident, merely trying to remember what the initial reaction was like).

He’s human. He’s made mistakes. So has every-bleeding-one else.

At let’s be clear: having bipolar disorder doesn’t make him flawed; any more than him being a big whoopsie would make him flawed; or someone needing to wear glasses would be flawed; or someone with one leg would be flawed; or someone who doesn’t like cats would be flawed. It’s just part of him, same as my thanatophobia is part of me, or Imaginary Alf the Greengrocer’s prosthetic backside is part of him, or whatever.

The human race is not a homogenic mass: we’re a bunch of people who all have different character traits, abilities, and preferences, and gosh darn it, but I think that’s a good thing!

But is it the fact that Stephen Fry is seen as a ‘flawed genius’ that means the Great British Public™ have welcomed him into the warmth of their bosom? No, it’s a combination of factors: Stephen isn’t perfect but we don’t expect him to be; he’s funny, witty, intelligent, urbane and uses entertainly flowery words and phrases which we wished we used in conversation more often but don’t because we don’t think of them.

Stephen Fry — or at least the Stephen Fry we get to see as the quiz master of the rather excellent QI comes over, in addition to being witty, intelligent, charming and a touch high-brow intellectual, to be an all-round good egg.

In short, Stephen Fry is a hero to the Great British Public because we want to be like him.

Okay, maybe not exactly like him: maybe we want to be sufficiently low-brow to have used beer goggles rather than a Madeira pince-nez…

…but at the very least we’d all like to be more like him. We’d like to have been there, sharing that joke with him. We know he’s not perfect, but that humanises him, and makes him seem like a jolly nice chap that we’d like to hang around with, and tell us entertaining stories about all sorts of things, and come up with lovely phrases and we’d all have a jolly nice time…

Which is why so many people seem to want to be his friend on things like Facebook. So many people wanted to be Stephen’s friend that he either had to basically spend all of his free time accepting friendships, or seem to be rude by ignoring them. Stephen of course, being the typically jolly nice chap, found this dreadfully unpleasant to deal with.

But then of course, demonstrating his genius and niceness at the same time, he solved the problem (heh! I really hope he’s reading. He’d probably be thoroughly embarrassed by now. Unless of course his private persona is very different to his public one and he’s really some unpleasant arrogant egotistical individual. But I doubt that. I suspect he’s a nice genius who worries that he might be an unpleasant arrogant egotistical individual). Where was I? Oh yes, his idea:

The actor attempted to avert social meltdown by creating “Stephen Fry’s Friendship Proxy Group”, open to all-comers. “If you join this group instead of applying for friendship, you might save me a fair amount of heartache in having to turn you down on account of there not being enough hours in the day,” he wrote. “Some of you are friends, of course, and some of you technically aren’t, but you’re all very welcome to this group, which I hope you’ll enjoy. Consider membership to be congruent to friendship.” Currently it has 2,500 members.Times Online

So there you have it. My theory to account for Stephen Fry’s immense popularity is basically that the man deserves to be popular; we all want to be his friend because he’s the sort of friend we’d all like to have.

So anyway Stephen, drop me a line and we’ll get together for that pint, eh? It’s about time — I’ve not seen you in ages…

In short, I like the stories he writes. They entertain me. I also like his writing ‘voice’.

It was therefore nice to get the opportunity to go and meet the bloke and have him read a couple of chapters of his latest book to me.

Not only that, but he performed a magic trick for us. He got a number of members of the audience to write down their name and favourite film on pieces of paper, place them inside envelopes, seal them, and hand them to the front. He then held them up to his forehead and read out what they were.

In fact, he read out my name and my favourite film, although I knew he wasn’t psychic because that wasn’t my favourite film, it was just the first one I liked that I thought of at the time. He also claimed not to have any paranormal powers, saying instead that it was a trick which was explained in the book.

To be honest, I’m inclined to believe him. I’ve not started reading the book yet, so I don’t know precisely how it was done, but a couple of notions sprang to mind quickly:

• The envelopes were quite thin, and when he put them down on the desk he shone a light through them to see what was written
• I don’t recall him pulling my card out of the envelope (although he may have done); so knowing what is in a couple of the envelopes is a lot less impressive than knowing what is written in each individual sealed envelope. For this he needs the help of… maybe his mate in the audience to note down a couple of the answers being written down?

Of course, there are probably plenty of other ways it could have been done. As long as you start from the assumption that it wasn’t psychic power and try and work out how it was a trick, you’re heading in the right direction. If it turns out someone somewhere does have psychic powers, then you’re not going to be able to prove that anyway unless you can rule out all of the non-psychic ways that they could have done it.

Then there was a bit of a general question and answer session, which I thought was quite interesting because when he was answering the question “what harm is it?” in relation to religious beliefs, and listing various harms that could befall someone (being scammed etc), I mentioned the thanatophobia, and the fact that I’ve had over 100 comments on my original post about living with thanatophobia, and suggested that if a thanatophobic did believe in a God or an afterlife, then so long as they weren’t been fleeced by anyone, it would actually improve their quality of life, providing a tangible benefit even if it was wrong.

He even knew what thanatophobia meant, bless him, although he did pick up the reference from the song “Thanatos” by the Skids, which actually earned him bonus points in my eyes for liking a decent bit of punk rock.

I probably offended him by calling him ‘Chris’, on the assumption that most of the people I know called ‘Christopher’ prefer to be called ‘Chris’, yet he’s a chap who has all of his books with the name ‘Christopher Brookmyre’ written on them. It might be that he’s fond of the opher bit. If so, then I can only apologise; no offense was intended.

However, he should also look on the bright side: at least no-one asked “where do you get your ideas from?” during the question and answer session!

Then he read a bit more of the story, told us a bit about the book he’s currently writing (A Snowball In Hell) which features Simon Darcourt again — the Rank Bajin himself, which was a coincidence, because I’d just finished re-reading A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away (where Simon first appears) the previous night.

And then he read a bit more of the story, I bought a book and we all went home. Or rather, I went for a quick pint with the lad from work I’d attended the book signing session with and then I went home. What I should have done is to have asked Chris(topher) if he fancied coming along for a pint too: after all, as a Scotsman coming frae close to Glasgae, he’s got a stereotype to live up to!

I see the grey within and the grey without
While from inside swells a silent shout
I fear, I dread, I do confess
That eternal boundless emptiness
And here upon this long cold shore
‘Midst scattered people, I feel it more

That all through life, through all the rain
We feel the mournful aching pain
Our days tick by and then are spent
The piper calls, collects his rent
What then, we cry, what happens then?
From dust we came, to dust again…

But what of that spirit light
Then flies unshackled, is all right
Is there such? Do we carry on?
Or does the world but turn, us gone?
Forever nothing and never more
Can we come to stand upon this shore

Be silent, child, and still your cries:
Do not think on, for madness lies
that way, behind that darkest door
marked ‘life’s end, for evermore’
No more your mind, no more your will
Your body lies decayed and still.

No point at all for deeds you do:
Time will wipe clean last trace of you
Were for good, for ill, ’tis all the same
All is naught in endless game
So then what point life, why should we strive
To buy scarce few more years alive?

No point at all, for the end we’ll meet –
but think not of that as your defeat:
For ’tis not defeat when given, nay;
So remember, come your dying day
To accept you’ve drawn that final breath
And smiling walk straight unto Death

Accept this then, and with it smile
For at least you had life for a while
Your time was short, you met your end
But you’ve known the value of a friend;
So face him down and tell him true:
“Death, I’m not afraid of you.”

This piece of doggerel was inspired by Eric Meyer’s post Creativity Jam Session: Images And Words and was supposed to generate the synopsis of a book or a film, but for no reason in particular I was inspired to poetry. Let me know what you thought…

There are two main views of consciousness. One, Cartesian duality, suggests that the mind is a separate and non-physical construct which influences the brain. In this case, the mind could easily be considered to be the equivalent of a soul, and so this option tends to be preferred by people who believe, or want to believe, in an afterlife.

The second view is a more materialistic view, and it is that what we perceive as and understand as consciousness is entirely a construct of the physical brain and without this brain there can be no consciousness. This certainly seems to be the more scientific approach and indeed is the approach favoured by a number of prominent scientists, such as Richard Dawkins. This is generally the default atheistic postion.

And then of course you’ve got the agnostic position to add on top of that: which in a restatement of the famous cogito ergo sum declares that I know my consciousness exists now, but I have no way of knowing whether or not that consciousness will exist after my physical brain no longer exists, if I do find out, it will mean that it does, but if it doesn’t, then I won’t be here to know otherwise.

Are you still with me so far?

Now I’m not an expert on either position, so I may be mis-representing one or both positions, but there are to my mind problems with both. With the dualism theory, you need a mechanism by which the incorporeal “mind” can influence the physical world in terms of the brain, for which we have no adequate explanation.

And with the purely materialistic theory, we’re left with the certain knowledge that there’s no such thing as free will, and that what appears to be free will, including my decision to write this article about free will, is actually deterministic.

I guess I’d better explain that, right?

Firstly, the materialistic argument is explicit that there is no “external” mind; our consciousness is entirely a product of the chemicals, electrical impulses and so on that rattle around in our brains. This means that the thoughts we are thinking are generated not because of some external mind, but because of a particular state of electronic impulses and chemical balances. Right?

Now take a step back.

If there’s no such thing as an “external” mind, then nothing has ever had an external mind. The earliest life forms to develop what could be termed “thoughts” (whether actually conscious thoughts or just impulses) were determined purely by their environment, because there’s nothing external to that that could have come into play. At this point, it all comes down to physics.

Your thoughts are therefore purely a product of your internal physical environment .The idea of “nurture” is redundant. Why?

Okay, another step back.

Let’s recap: the first creature to have thoughts was having them purely on the basis of it’s physical environment. So what influences the thoughts that the descendants of this creature have? Genetics, which can be considered part of the organism’s historical environment. It’s upbringing — which is down to the physical environment it’s parent was inhabiting because we’ve accepted the parent did not have thoughts independent of it’s own environment, and then the organism may have thoughts created by its own physical environment.

At no point can any organism stop and act in a way contrary to it’s genetic nature (historical environment), it’s nurture (historical environment) or it’s immediate physical environment, because any thoughts it has must be caused by one of these.

That’s not to say the future is entirely deterministic: events that are truly random may still influence others, so radioactive decay, genetic mutation and so on may all change the story of the planet, but, according to this logic, every thought that everyone has and every decision that everyone makes, and therefore every action that everyone takes can theoretically be traced back to some form of physical root.

This is the materialist view, like it or lump it.

Which presumably means that if I were to commit a series of crimes, it might appear that I’d made some conscious decision to do this — and I may even have felt that I made such a decision — but instead it would have been an inevitable consequence of my internal physical environment, which I have not at any point in time been able to exert any free will over — because I simply haven’t had any, despite the fact that I may have believed otherwise — because I’m not able to think thoughts that aren’t created by my internal or external physical world.

I’m not saying that this theory is nonsense. I’m just pointing out that if you hold to this theory, you must be prepared to take it to its ultimate conclusion. It could certainly be argued that the decisions and opinions I arrive at are those that a cleverly programmed computer fed with the same or similar information could arrive at. Possibly a sufficiently sophisticated computer could become self-aware. At this point would it still be running a set of programs, or would it be conscious? If we’d term it conscious, then is that consciousness simply a result of a sufficiently sophisticated set of programs?

… and let’s leave The Matrix out of this!

In which case, the whole of human achievement is a fallacy: it was something that has been derived by a combination of the physical environment and by random factors and nothing else.

So we’re left with two unsatisfactory options:

• Body and mind are separate; the mind is a separate and non-physical entity such as a soul which can exert influence over physical entities; or
• The mind is a product of the body and physical environment and there is therefore no such thing as free will

I’m not saying that either of these options is inherently more right than the other. All I’m saying is that these are the only two options, take your pick.

… and yes, this is what it’s like to live inside my head.