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“We eat when we're not hungry, drink when we're not thirsty. We buy what we don't need and throw away everything that's useful. Why sell a man what he wants? Sell him what he doesn't need. Pretend he's got eight legs and two stomachs and money to burn. It's wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Man sprang from a faulty world... It's a bad design, the human body. The skin is not thick enough, too little hair, no claws or fangs, we weren't meant to stand upright, exposes our heart and genitals ... Nature is crooked.”
— Allie Fox, character in The Mosquito Coast (1986)
"The Mosquito Coast", a character driven story about one man's attempt to recreate an Eden in a faraway land, dragging his family along with him. Harrison Ford's Allie Fox is driven insane by his own intelligence and inability to control his ego, and the film details flawlessly the grotesque decomposition of a good and true man. It makes for uncomfortable viewing, but even more remarkable and disquieting is the fact that this is based on a true story.
For some reason, I was reminded of the film as I watched Melanie Phillips bring her usual kind of racist vitriol that is destroying the world on to BBC's "Question Time" a week or so ago. I was not shocked at how she was suggesting the West "neutralise" Iran, because - so she believes - they have a nuclear programme in place to bring about the apocalypse, and thus instigate the Second Coming. Phillips probably doesn't realise that this is not only an Islamic belief, but one shared with Christians and Jews to a smaller or larger degree, but watching her spout her racist attitudes at a heckling audience was frightening.
Phillips is not an uneducated woman. She is a British journalist, author, and publisher. She started on the left of the political spectrum, writing for The Guardian and New Statesman. You can't dismiss her as some hooligan right-wing Nazi, and so watching her say live on TV that we needed to "neutralise" another sovereign country because of its religious beliefs was worrisome to say the least.
But like the educated, intelligent protagonist in "The Mosquito Coast" who makes sense at first, she, too, quickly down-spiralled into some crazy loon shouting at a booing crowd. Her views on other subjects were amazingly sane and compassionate, but then, as if someone had flicked on a switch in her head, she started ranted about things to which she could provide no solid evidence for.
But who is to say that genuinely good, or educated, people are immune to prejudice? We would hope that critical thought would provide a basis for immunity against what can only be described as ignorance, but sometimes we can learn without understanding.
In the Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:12, it warns "of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body." Commentary on the Bible tells us this is meant to mean that (over much) study in mere human books, wearies the body, without solidly profiting the soul. Possibly Phillips, for all her education, could still be spiritually as uneducated as a primary school child is in advanced mathematics.
Again, one would think that as a woman she would have some "instinctive" compassion for her fellow human being, as one half of a species that actually brings the other into the world, and for the most nurtures it for the rest of their lives. She is also proof that we are all unique, that gender is not our only identifier, and that often what we think and believe will affect what we say or do towards others. Her extremist views merely fuels the extremism of others, and rather than the solution, she becomes part of the problem.
I think everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Phillips is also proof that susceptibility to malice, or wrongdoing (whatever that may be) is NOT subject to gender; we all need to take responsibility in a shared culture - men and women - to bring about the basis of integrity, trust and honesty necessary to foster peace. Because that is what we all need, and will all lose, if we don't get our act together.
Before I get blamed for "bashing" girl-power, history shows that women have not been any softer in governance. Eighties British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is a good example. If anyone has read the Stanford Prison experiment, it shows that good people do bad things if the system lets them do it. The system is to blame rather than individuals. We live in a system where the narrative of war is attractive to us. We don't have Xbox games about providing refugee aid, or action movies that make peaceful resolutions look glamorous.
The majority of girls may not play war games, but girls do play them, and enjoy them. Tens of millions of adults spend all their free time in fictional worlds in gaming, combining internet anonymity with people who have large amounts of free time, which yield ugly results of how we treat strangers.
One such example came from the World of Warcraft and was every revealing. In a game where people can be heroic knights or masterful mages, many leaped at the chance to become a small Taliban-like force of plague-carriers actively nuking and reinstalling their entire world. It was backstabbing on measurable scientific and national security scales: real-life scientists and bio-terrorism experts now study it as a case example of the kind of people that would destroy worlds they hang out in for fun. Obviously, this was a mechanism that motivated people's behaviour in ways that were not expected.
The violence in films, meanwhile, has become so graphically close to mirroring reality, that some actors have even begun to distance themselves from projects they were happy to sign up with initially. Jim Carrey, star of "Kick-Ass 2", has withdrawn support for the film following the Sandy Hook massacre, where twenty pupils and six staff were killed at their elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut last December by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza. He had earlier shot dead his mother in their home. Carrey, well-known for his support of gun control measures, tweeted: "I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart."
Creator of the original comic book and Kick-Ass executive producer Mark Millar said he was "baffled" by Carrey's decision. In a forum on his website Millarworld, he wrote: "As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I'm baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay eighteen months ago. Ultimately, this is his decision, but I've never quite bought the notion that violence in fiction leads to violence in real-life any more than Harry Potter casting a spell creates more Boy Wizards in real life."
The problem as far I can see with Millar's analogy is that there is no danger of wizardry influencing our lives, like violence can. One is complete fiction, the other is fact portrayed as fiction. There is a difference, but there is also a similarity. We see how many Potter fans dress up as boy (and girl) wizards dreaming of being able to replicate in their lives what they see on screen. And human nature being what it is, there is no need to dress up violence to make it more consumable.
The science suggests as far as our brain is concerned, fighting is exactly as "awesome" as sex. Scientists hypothesised that aggressive behaviour triggers the release of dopamine, which is the body's way of dangling a carrot in front of our faces. It is believed this may be one factor why many like to mix sex and violence. Simply put, some scientists say the evidence suggests being violent can release chemicals that makes us feel happy. Using games and films as a cathartic way to release this need may well be beneficial - but we need the appropriate education to nurture healthy minds that can clearly distinguish between fact and fantasy, and the differing obligations we have in both.
Individually, women can be just as bigoted, and just as competitive, and power hungry as men, who tend to be happier in a society where women enjoy greater equality. But even in those societies were women enjoy great freedoms, it is always an uphill battle not to slide back to the way things were. It may seem insignificant, but with all the women in the course of our history who have made such a huge contribution to society, the economy, scientific knowledge and politics, in Britain we have a less than proper representation of women on our bank notes.
The Bank of England has announced that Sir Winston Churchill will feature on the new design of a banknote which will enter circulation in 2016. The wartime leader's image is planned to feature on the reverse of the new £5 note, together with one of his most celebrated quotations to replace the current face of the £5 note, social reformer Elizabeth Fry.
Churchill was chosen owing to his place as "a hero of the entire free world", according to Bank governor Sir Mervyn King, but a campaign has been started to include more women on English banknotes on the back of this decision. It is not that they disagree with Churchill, but some people are shocked that, apart from Queen Elizabeth II, soon no famous woman will be on a Bank of England note.
But women know how to fight for representation and their rights, as illustrated by the marathon speech a Texas Democrat gave in her country to block an anti-abortion bill. In a process called a filibuster, Senator Wendy Davis spoke for more than 10 hours to block a measure that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Arguably, the spirit of this form of militancy comes from a deep and abiding reverence for human life and the right of choice over our own bodies.
It is similar to the women's suffragette movement, when women in the past had to fight for the right to vote. This was in the main a peaceful movement, to highlight that government itself does not rest upon force, it rests upon consent. So long as we consent to be unjustly governed, we will be. But if we remove our consent, not by any force, even the forces of civil war, can you govern the weakest person. You can kill that person, but they escape you, because you can't govern them. No power on Earth can govern a person however feeble who withholds his or her consent.
We only have a chance of reaching solutions when we reach out to people compassionately. Will we get our hands slapped away? Yes. But not for ever. Not always. With the issue of Syria, for instance, is providing arms the only means of achieving peace? Instead of providing arms - which might one day in this merry-go-round world of ours come back to shoot us very literally in the foot - surely we need to reach a negotiated solution? The humanitarian suffering of civilian Syrians is what I am bothered about most - millions of displaced people in the refugee camps on the borders of Syria. That's where our efforts should be going, not on arming some side you want to win.
If the reports are true that the Syrian rebels' movement has been hijacked by jihadist movements, focused on pushing Islamic fundamentalism, then there are some really terrible things being done in the name of the Syrian rebels. The murder of a boy accused of blasphemy has come to symbolise concerns about the power of Islamist radicals in Syria's armed uprising. Even if this were not so, giving arms would just be intensifying that conflict. Even using the threat of violence (showing your big stick) to bring someone around the table for talks seems wrong, because it is a bluff you may eventually have to back up. Some argue that we have seen what America has done with their big stick in the past in that region, and that Syria is simply a battleground over the growing dispute between a nuclear-powered Iran (and its allies such as Russia and China) and America with its allies on the other. If these countries cannot one day find a way to negotiate, there will be war, because that is the oath chosen when violence is the route we go down.
War always writes the saddest parts of our human history - which has devastating consequences for more than just our own species. One such sad chapter in our story concerns a million horses that went from Britain to France in the First World War. Almost none came back. If they weren't killed in action they were likely fed to prisoners or turned into fertiliser as their reward for their part in the war effort. According to English author Michael Morpurgo, who wrote "War Horse", in total 8-10 million horses died in the First World War. They didn't have a nice time of it even if they did survive; people thought they would be diseased when they came back, so they didn't want them.
This resonates personally with me. My first love was a pony called Frank. He wasn't very handsome; he had a patchy mane and a spotted neck, but my mother always said if I could love Frank, then everything in the world would always be beautiful to me, because I thought he was beautiful. He was missing an ear, which disables a horse as they use a lot of body language, talking with their ears. And he was beautiful in his own unique way, treating his challenges with great elegance. Horses are such regal, intelligent creatures; so when I read of the plight of horses in our wars, it saddens me to the nth degree.
To be militant. mercurial and bellicose is not helpful to anyone. Whoever wins, it will be a hideous outcome because of the cost of life that has been spent already, and it feels as though no good will out of anyone for this. I don't feel it is my place to give an opinion from the luxury of my home here in the West, when so many people are suffering on all sides of the conflict. The only reason I feel I can have any say on the matter is because it is my world, and the Syrian people are my people, too, because they are human.
I don't have to be Syrian to wish them well; I have absolutely no connection with country, and I have never met any Syrians. But I want them to live in peace, as we do comparatively here in the West. Their children deserve to grow up with their parents, in their culture, don't they? We're all designed to smile, so let's allow everyone the freedom to do that where possible. We need to educate people not only on how to make up their own minds, but also to allow their souls into their thought process.
Education matters a great deal to me. Cultural changes that benefit society are spurred on by education. Writing for the BBC, Tom Shakespeare argues in a recent article it's time to democratise art. We, the public, should be allowed to borrow works of art from our national collections, because the cultural literacy we gain would give us a foundation on which to build a life with deeper meaning. Museums should become libraries; our streets should be exhibitions where art is not selling, not scaring, not "sloganising", not titillating - just existing. Intervening silently in our lives with beauty and wonder and mystery.
I was up in Edinburgh with my twin flame on a moonlit romantic weekend away, to celebrate the arrival supermoon, and after watching Phillips' racist rant on TV, I was mindful that this city was one of the historic centres of the Enlightenment. This was a movement that highlights we all need to use our powers of reasoning to make informed choices, but we need to add some human compassion to get some real profit out of them. It was designed to increase knowledge and the power of reason to benefit society, and drag it out from its fearful, superstitious past.
Read more about moons and superstition.
Continuing the theme of intellectual advancement, we spent a day in Glasgow, too, and visited a grand country house near its city centre, Pollok House. Built in 1752, this ancestral home of the Maxwell family is Scotland's answer to Downton Abbey, and I had been wanting to see it for ages. Handed down through the generations, the estate was inherited by Sir William Stirling Maxwell in 1865. He was an art connoisseur and great traveller, and was inspired by a trip to Spain to collect Spanish art - and it was his collection that I most wanted to see.
By the 19th Century Spanish art was either ignored or largely forgotten throughout Europe. But owing to Sir William's love for all things Spanish, he did in effect reintroduce Spanish art to Britain with his writing and collecting. Sir William was especially interested in portraits for their historic relevance, and perhaps the most iconic image amongst his great collection of paintings is of King Philip II of Spain painted around about 1565.
Philip was the second Hapsburg ruler of the Spanish Empire, and he ruled between 1556 and 1598. At that moment in time, Spain had one of the largest and most powerful empires in the world. But within 100 years of the date of his portrait being painted, Philip's family, despite their great power, were in crisis. Scroll forward 100 years in the Hapsburg rule in Spain, and you come to King Charles II, whose portrait can also be found at Pollok House.
Charles reigned in Spain between 1665 and 1700, and the contrast between the portrait of the robust warrior-like figure of Philip II and the image of the little fellow painted as Charles is extreme. In fairness to him, he is only 12 in the painting, but in the intervening century there had been an incredible amount of intermarrying. They were determined to hang on to the purity of the Hapsburgs, and, as a result, he was produced from the union of three previous uncle to nieces - which is far too close an arrangement.
In Charles' portrait you can see he is a product of a tradition of incestuous couplings. He has a pronounced overbite in the chin, the Hapsburg chin is personified in him. He couldn't chew properly, he couldn't speak properly. He dribbled a lot. His mental faculties were not brilliant. He couldn't breed; he married twice and produced no offspring. There is a crisis at the end of his reign, and when he died it set in train a horrible series of wars, known as the Wars of the Spanish Succession.
The view of intermarrying among royal dynasties is nothing new, but one of the "healthiest" (at least from the gene pool's point of view) was the Ottoman tradition of kings, who relied on slave concubinage along with legal marriage for their heirs. These women were not chosen from the same dynastic families - or even from other royal families in Europe (as they were not deemed worthy enough) but were instead taken from women captured from all parts of Europe, and so adding their DNA to the royal gene pool of the Ottoman Turks. Thus a powerful sultanate of women grew whose ancestry lay in Greek, Russian and Serbian origins, to create strong and fertile - and very good looking - offspring. In part, it was this form of interracial breeding that helped produce heirs for the House of Ottoman (or Osman) to last for over 500 years.
Historians also point out that royal women were powerful in Ottoman times before and after this sultanate of women. The famous Muslim world-traveller, Ibn Battuta, who visited the nascent Ottoman state in 1336, remarked that "among the Turks and the Tatars their wives enjoy a very high position". It is also said that Islam promotes marrying outside of race and faith as a way to spread its influence, but there is a very strong scientific basis for doing so. Evolution dictates that for genetic health we need to breed with someone that has different coding in their DNA, and we have seen the results of trying to stick to your own racial gene pool throughout history. DNA survival is important, and resilient - stretching back much further than the history of our human species. I am not advocating interracial couplings alone; I am advocating love - something which is not bound by race, creed or even gender. Twin flame love is about a union of souls from the same source that has no limitations as to colour or creed.
One of the greatest royal twin flame romances in imperial history was between the greatest emperor of the Ottomans, Suleiman the Magnificent and his Ukrainian concubine Alexandra (also known as Roxelana). So great was his love for her, that she soon became his favourite consort and then legal wife. She became of the most powerful women in Ottoman history and a prominent figure. She achieved power and influenced Ottoman politics through her husband and played an active role in the affairs of the state.
Today women are acquiring their fair share of power on their own. Hollywood actress and activist Angelina Jolie ranks as the most powerful actress on Forbes magazine's 2013 Celebrity 100 list - which if you believed its editors, girls now run the world. Although wife and mother Jolie has been called "not brave" for her preventative double mastectomy, there is no doubt that she can turn her pain into an agenda for awareness and change.
Does that mean we can take for granted that a woman's fight for equality is over? Far from it - across the world we see that the plight of women is not authentically represented by any celebrity list. While on one end of the scale we have female celebrities turning the hand very deftly to business, on the other we have the everyday individual still struggling to be accepted as an equal dependant on the sacredness of life - and the bringer of life into the world.
The business acumen and popularity of the few does not mean equal rights for the many. Saudi Arabia's appalling record on gender equality, where women are not allowed to drive, they must have a guardian, and will vote only for the first time in 2015 is shameful, while "Cartoons for change" illustrate the steely point of patriarchal dominance.
"Cartoons for Change" are 12 cartoons produced specially for women on gender equality by three leading cartoonists from three leading Indian newspapers. They took to their drawing boards to portray the current status of women in India, and to advocate for change, as part of a campaign to create greater awareness about women's empowerment in India. A string of brutal sex attacks in India have made headlines in recent months, including the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus last December.
Earlier this month a 21-year-old Irish tourist was allegedly drugged and raped while in Kolkata volunteering with an aid agency. Just one day later, police said a 30-year-old American woman was gang raped by three men while hitch-hiking back to a guest house in the northern Indian resort of Manali. Also this month women and students poured onto the streets in Barasat in protest over the gang-rape and murder of a 20-year-old college student.
In March six men appeared in court in India accused of raping a Swiss tourist and beating her husband with sticks while the couple were on a cycling holiday in Madhya Pradesh. Most recently in India, a 10 year-old girl died in hospital days after being gang raped repeatedly by four teenagers aged between 13 and 14, two of whom were brothers. It's said she knew her attackers, and had been raped previously by one of them.
Although such treatment of women is not particular to India, it does highlight the way women are viewed in what has been termed as the world's largest "democracy". But are things better in the world's most powerful democracy? Especially when we look at the rights afford to the LGBT community - because human rights is not just a gender issue, or a balance of dominance between "male" or "female". We often confuse the "masculine" and "feminine" dynamics as somehow severely restricted to the physical gender or private parts we are born with, but as science is increasingly showing us, one does not necessarily follow the other. And even though recently, the United States Supreme Court decided to give married same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, many so-called democratic nations are still openly discriminating against same-sex marriage.
Events that have taken place in a number of cities around the world as part of this year's Gay Pride celebrations shows the global divisions on this issue. While tens of thousands joined festivals in London and Paris to celebrate the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, anti-gay demonstrators attacked a march in St Petersburg in Russia that ended in arrests and violence, with the victims of homophobia remembered in a solemn protest in Rio. It is an important reminder that being a member if the LGBT community is not merely an issue of marriage, but an issue of life itself. Things are, however, changing.
In America, the new ruling on same-sex marriage came after the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) - a federal law that gives US states licence to disregard same-sex marriages carried out in other states - was declared "unconstitutional". While many A-list celebrities and the American president himself came out in support of the decision, others in America were not so happy. The president of the fast-food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, has once again injected himself into the gay marriage debate, this time criticising US Supreme Court rulings.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cathy had tweeted: "Sad day for our nation; founding fathers would be ashamed of our gen. to abandon wisdom of the ages re: cornerstone of strong societies." The post was later deleted. Naturally I have respect for everyone's interpretation of their faith, and their views, but if we were to go by strict biblical definitions, then the truly funny thing is that the biblical definition of marriage is marrying your rapist, or marrying your dead husband's brother, marrying multiple women, and having concubines. Besides, the cornerstone of a strong society isn't marriage, it is love. Marriage is just a way to celebrate that union.
Although I don't advocate we follow celebrity lifestyles, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are an example of how a strong relationship doesn't need a wedding ceremony. It doesn't work for everyone, but then again, neither does marriage. It is poor glue for a weak relationship. Although Hawn and Russell have never married, the loved-up couple - who have a 26-year-old son, Wyatt - are still going strong. Of their relationship, Hawn told Australia's Woman's Day magazine in 2007:
[We] have done just perfectly without marrying. I already feel devoted and isn't that what marriage is supposed to do? So as long as my emotional state is in a state of devotion, honesty, caring and loving, then we're fine.
Moreover, as science takes bold steps for society, the idea of relationships are constantly revalued. There are talks to make a ground-breaking technique for preventing serious genetic disease available in Britain, which will have an impact on families as we know it. The technique itself will result in babies with DNA from three people - two women and a man - and this genetic alteration will be passed down the generations. Some believe that, although individual women in power have been no better than men in a patriarchal system, as we change the DNA of future generations - literally injecting femininity into the blood - in turn the system will eventually change, too.
The idea of gender is being blurred more than ever - "gender identity disorder" is a designation the American Psychiatric Association removed last year from its list of mental ailments. The removal reflected the growing medical consensus that identification as another gender cannot be changed; it's not a mental state or a DNA code you can rewire from this side of the pool (even if you would want to). It's about changing attitudes; we shouldn't be afraid of change.
Life is change, and we have to go with its flow. Innovation is driven by change, and so is extinction. We are dealing with new diseases all the time, while history is littered with examples of societies that suffered because they wouldn't change - like the medieval Norse community on Greenland, who starved to death because they refused to eat fish and seal like the natives, but insisted on maintaining a tradition of cattle farming that was unsuited to their fragile northern habitat.
We try to shield ourselves from the ravages of time, but change is imperative - and often change is for the better. At one time mental illness was treated as shameful as well, but not any more. Recovering from personal challenges, we may initially hide and lie about illness, but why should we have to lie about something that can make us grow into a stronger and overall better person? Why hide something that makes us unique? Our personal challenges can highlight other qualities we might have overlooked, or the insight it provides can offer up the opportunity to give valuable advice to others. More and more of us are speaking out when we have problems; and sometimes even celebrities can "get real" to share their problems (when they're not selling exclusivity rights on the images of their newborn children for charity, or acting like smug selfies).
Although bunching English comedian Stephen Fry along with the most of the "celebrities" that adorn our media pages is unfair, he is a good example of the bravery needed to speak out. Fry, who has bipolar disorder, revealed he had attempted suicide in 2012. The actor has always been candid about his experiences of depression, and has campaigned to end the stigma around mental health issues for the charity Mind. He also serves to remind us that loneliness really is a state of mind and soul, and not a physical result at all.
Heal your loneliness with love.
The 55-year-old said his mental health had improved, but he still struggled with loneliness and unhappiness. On his website, he had this to say:
I am writing this for any of you out there who are lonely too. I am luckier than many of you because I am lonely in a crowd of people who are mostly very nice to me and appear to be pleased to meet me. But I want you to know that you are not alone in your being alone. Loneliness is not much written about... but humankind is a social species and maybe it's something we should think about more than we do.
Famous people in the public eye can be heroes and nice-guys (and gals), too. American actor, writer and director (and one time fire-fighter) Steve Buscemi is one such person who doesn't readily fit the celebrity stereotype. After the 9/11 attack, Buscemi went back to his fire-fighting job as a volunteer to help search for survivors in the rubble. In 2003, less than two years after 9/11, Buscemi's old firehouse was deemed useless and slated to close. Buscemi showed up with a bunch of other firefighters to protest this decision, with the entire group ultimately arrested for their efforts. It's not what we expect from celebrities too busy tweeting their latest luxury purchase, but we are infinitely diverse as a group, as we are a species.
The traditional attitude of strong divisive gender roles have changed, too. The decreasing divide between genders is definitely a good thing, and one of the first stepping stones toward a truly equal world. But in a tongue-in-cheek article by American humour magazine "Cracked", it suggests that researchers have found that being too gender neutral and ambiguous can actually make you seem less likeable and less trustworthy. Notwithstanding that the same article states there is scientific evidence to suggest, despite what society tells us, people don't like the stereotypical (low-pitched) masculine and (high-pitched) feminine voices, at least not when it comes to relationships, it seems the majority don't like people to look androgynous, either.
The humour intended by Cracked aside, it does open a window into how embedded cultural and traditional views have become in even the most modern societies. Look around and you'll find articles filled with complaining wives over their husbands spending more time on their appearance and waxing then they are, or about "strong women" who should somehow be immune against domestic abuse - as though we need to play out to a certain stereotype of certain look.
When we do this, however, we become caricatures. We become caricature human beings, and live out a caricature life. Isn't this why so many of us laugh at "celebrities", because they are caricatures of themselves? Fascination with celebrities is a funny thing; we either feel they have more money than sense and no moral compass, or put them up on a pedestal and forget they are human, too - and that some of them can have their own brand of suffering and wisdom to share.
Some can even show us how to survive the hype of stardom and age gracefully, refusing to have their personality cut away by a knife. American model and actress Laura Hutton, looking stunning on a shoot for an ad campaign just two months shy of her 70th birthday, had this to say about why she hadn't fell victim to the plastic surgeon's knife when she spoke to the London Telegraph in 2009.
Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be. I don't think I will ever cut my face, because once I cut it, I'll never know where I've been.
It's an amazing trait to be comfy in one's own skin, because when you love life, life loves you. People who are in love with themselves in this way will have a lifelong romance - but a healthy affair isn't an egotistical one. It's one that has compassion, and a great fondness which allows for self-deprecation as well. People who are this way, provide joy. They focus, not on the physicality of things, but on their instinct to bring joy. They believe there is no instance we cannot improve. When we do this - although at that precise moment we might not think it - looking back with hindsight we can see that every challenge is really a door that can open to greater things.
I am happy when I read of issues like same-sex marriages, simply because it means the rights we afford to people are expanding, but marriage shouldn't just be a "gay" issue. We are saying we will no longer dictate whom people should love - that is up to their own heart and consensual desires. Why should we be restricted by age-old dogma, or by convention when the scientific evidence is forcing us to see otherwise?
Why should following our heart be a sin? Follow your dreams; there is no one quite like you (even if you have a twin or are a triplet), we all are in some way a unique individual part of a greater common whole. No single cell in your body can be complete without the whole, and vice versa - and it is this interconnectedness which we must pursue.
Highlighting this interconnectedness, DNA taken from a bone of the ancient ancestor to the horse revealed some amazing results, suggesting that the ancestor of all equines existed around four million years ago. How does this scientific discovery affect humans? The genome dramatically extended the known limit of DNA survival, pre-dating all previous ancient DNA sequences by more than 500,000 years.
Thus, when we pursue the light of knowledge, we are in effect chasing the dark. Isn't it better to allow people to love - and express that love - freely, rather than trying to dominate people because of their age, gender or "social class"? If we don't let go of our bigoted views, and embrace change, then the only thing we can look forward to is the past.
Caring in Britain has now become a "social lottery", and some are complaining that there was a time when we didn't begrudge the disabled every penny, and spend millions trying to prevent them from claiming it. A time when the government actually served the populace instead of pandering to the worst elements in it. Seems like an unattainable dream these days; and some believe that we are fast becoming a mean and shabby nation. According to one study, benefit sanctions are contributing to a rise in homelessness in England.
Of course it's easy to give advice - and fairly irritating - for those that don't want to know, but burying our heads up the ass of ignorance will profit no one - least of all ourselves. There are many real issues we need to tackle as a society, rather than waste our time - and the taxpayer's money - on blocking people the right to love who they so desire.
Like it or not, drugs are a common feature of the British festival scene, with over £100,000-worth seized in 2012 alone. Let's tackle that and leave the festivals for the live music. Or how about raising awareness and creating debate on prepubescent female mutilation? Or that the sexual age of consent is 12 in the Vatican City? A landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, it has the lowest age of consent in Europe, and the highest crime rate per capita.
And let's shine a light on the dark corners of the net where live streaming of child sex abuse via webcams means children are being abused "to order". And how about clearing up our television screens, so we stop producing shows objectifying or stereotyping women - or if we are going to allow that freedom, then we also make sure we educate the masses on why objectifying any living thing is objectionable.
Or how about we crack down on political corruption, smear campaigns and climatic disruption? Or public theft, police abuse, and moral accountability? Or how about America's ongoing inhumane treatment of its prisoners at Guantanamo prison? More than 100 of the 166 prisoners held in the notorious Cuban facility, which opened properly in 2002 after the invasion of Afghanistan, are on hunger strike. Around 20 are still being fed through the nose. Shouldn't we deal with that?
Or how about the increasing tensions in the Middle East? Or the intelligence leaks that fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has revealed showing America has been keeping wires on almost every country across the globe? Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that Mr Snowden had "done something very important for humanity" and "deserved the world's protection". He told the BBC:
The world's conscience should react, the world youth should react, the decent people who want a peaceful world should react, everyone should react and find solidarity with this young man who has denounced and altered the world that they [the US] pretend to control.
While back at home, there are still places in Britain where poverty is endemic, and children starve at the start of life. Countries like Finland put Britain to shame, where for 75 years, Finland's expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It's like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates. Every child deserves a good start in life. Let's, then, take a look at how to eradicate poverty, rather than force people who are born a certain way to be ashamed of who they are, or of whom they love.
Bashing people for the way they were born is abhorrent. It's what the ancient Greeks used to do to any one that they deemed as a loser. The Greeks would throw their babies in wells to die if they were born less than perfect in the eyes of their society. The vibrant societies of ancient Greece have had a profound impact on the modern world, and it seems that in compassion some of us haven't travelled any further than those terrible times. Fundamentalism is like a dark parable about how things haven't really moved on in the last three thousand years. The good news, however, is that global consciousness, compassion and awareness is growing.
As it grows, the majority of people are more accepting and understanding of people's differences and their need to express their individualism. We should be proud of who we are, and not allow the small, ignorant, basement dwelling minority that have a problem with the way we were born change our view about ourselves. Do what makes you happy, be you a gay man or a gay woman, or a straight man or straight woman, because the day will come when these labels will mean nothing. We have started creating societies where we do not judge people on their sexual orientation, but on their character. You are who you are, and if you have love to give to another human then there should be nothing stopping you, least of all people who choose a certain religion.
Religion IS a lifestyle choice that has protections in law, but the US (like so many) still has a long way to go in terms of enshrining legal protections for the LGBT community. The institution of religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality - which is not the stereotypical lifestyle that many believe it to be. That lifestyle was a reaction against the prohibition of open same-sex relationships, and it is not just homosexual people that want to live that way. However, there are many same-sex couples that have conservatives tastes, beliefs and ideas of family, who just want to be free to express who they are, without focusing on the dynamics of the bedroom. Members of the LGBT community are some of the most loving and family orientated people you'll find, because they know what it is to be deprived of love and acceptance from their closest friends and family.
Gay people did not choose to be gay, and cannot chose to be anything other than what they were born as, so why should we shame them, or persecute them? Freedom of religion doesn't give us the freedom to discriminate or, worse, persecute others that do not fit into our religious concepts. Why should "coming out" have to be such a hard experience? It's hard to struggle with your sexuality at the best of times; it's really a difficult thing to discover you are different from everyone else, especially when the culture you grow up in tells you that the feelings you have are not acceptable.
When I read of such real-life stories, I can't help but think: How dare we make people feel shameful or guilty for their feelings that are an expression of who they are? We cannot deny who we are without demonising ourselves. When Matthew Schueller came out to his internet following, he spoke of the shame and the hate he had for himself - so much so he couldn't face looking at himself in the mirror. He grew up thinking he was a mistake. It took him time to learn to be proud to love himself. He felt his sexuality was a disease.
This disconnection from our authentic self is what causes real loneliness. It is why so many people take their own lives. Yet, there is light if they can manage to hold on. For the many people that will reject us, there are plenty of others who are willing to accept us for who we are. Once we can accept ourselves, we open the door to acceptance from others, and to their loving support of who we are.
When I look at YouTube and other similar sites today you can find many "coming out" videos like Schueller's and heartwarming responses in kind - and their bravery is heartening. But there are still many that feel they have to hide who they are, because we have loaded words such as "fag" and "gay" with so much hate in the past.
Why do we hate others different than us so much? It's been said that the things we hate in others are often the things we hate most in ourselves, and that people will hate your for one of three reasons. Namely, 1) they want to be you or wish they were in your shoes, 2) they hate themselves and you show them what they are not, and 3) they see you as a threat and are intimidated by you. We should remember that when we come across bullies in our lives, or when we want others to like us.
Seeking approval from others to fill the void a lack of self-love creates is how things actually progress to deviate us from the path of real fulfilment. But such approval or getting others to like us, shouldn't make us deny our authentic self. Because the real Hell is the hell you are in within yourself. We need to tune out unhelpful thinking. Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality. We all deserve the best.
A very moving example is Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns, who reached out to LGBT teens with a personal story and a message of hope. Sharing stories about some of the teens who have committed suicide, he tells us, as a gay man himself who went through it, that "it gets better". His speech is one that we could all benefit from listening to. More people could change the world in amazing ways with his perspectives. Why should so many of our young teens feel the need to commit suicide over the way they were born? This is no longer a gay issue. It is a human issue. But why should their wish to marry the person they love be such an issue in the first place?
And let's not stereotype every heterosexual with religious beliefs as "gay-bashers". American Emmy and Grammy Award-winning stand-up comedian, Louis Szekely, known professionally as Louis C.K., had this to say on the matter, in his own style (who isn't gay - but not that it should matter):
It doesn't have any effect on your life. What do you care?! People try to talk about it like it's a social issue. Like when you see someone stand up on a talk show and say, "How am I supposed to explain to my children that two men are getting married?... I dunno. It's your shitty kid. You fuckin' tell 'em. Why is that anyone else's problem? Two guys are in LOVE and they can't get married because you don't want to talk to your ugly child for five fuckin' minutes?
It's nice to see a straight man not be homophobic - but let's not stereotype. There are outstanding examples in our society amongst some not so note-worthy ones; still we have to stop thinking of "straight" people as more natural, as we once did with white people over darker skinned ones. It's easier to repress one's sexuality than it is to bleach one's skin, but without exploring our sexuality, some experts say, we will not discover who we really are. This acceptance works on so many levels of diversity, whether gay, straight, transgender, or bi-sexual, black, white, academically strong, from an impoverished background - it nurtures understanding for all walks of life.
We all deserve to be thought about in a sophisticated rather than stereotyped way. This is true not just for our sexual orientation, but our skin colour and belief of creed. Too often in the past, the American media has made darker skinned people seem like they were illiterate, ghetto thugs - although the majority of people (whatever their skin colour) are not any of those things. We get shocked when we read that a black person has saved someone's life, or when a Muslim person shows compassion - because we have a mindset unjustly caged in stereotypes.
We are better than that way of thinking. And if we don't stop, it will come to the point where we begin to discriminate against ourselves - seeing ourselves a certain way. I am white, so I must be somehow better than other groups of people. Or that the black society somehow lacks the capabilities of being intelligent and educated. Or if you are a male Muslim, you must be a murderer of a paedophile.
Currently in Britain, the Muslim community faces major challenges in the wake of recent news stories including the sentencing of an Asian paedophile ring and the senseless murder of a soldier. Irrelevant that larger paedophile groups are mainly from white societies, with a basis in such ancient civilisation as the Greeks, we always choose to believe the worst of those different than ourselves. Subsequently, many mosques have been set on fire, and Muslim children have been hurt and accosted, while some are even in fear of their lives In Britain. These are innocent citizens of this country, who are being treated a certain way because of their lifestyle - even if it is of their own choosing.
For while we can't choose our sexual orientation, we must be allowed to live freely in the lifestyle of our choosing, as long as it is peaceable and allows the same tolerance. But highlighting the fringe of any society to caricaturise the majority is more than unfair, it is dangerous. Contempt breeds contempt, and causes radicalisation of groups, when really what we need to be doing is working hard to break down barriers between societies. We need to begin fostering the understanding - that as uniquely individual we all are - we are also all one.
Rather than deepening the divides we falsely believe our differences create between us - when really it is our own fears - we need to focus on advancement. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. This new era of will be different than anything we've seen before. It is a future that is both utopian and dystopian (depending on your perspective), in that the human experience will change dramatically.
Medical advancements and computing technology will cease to be something we turn on and off, but will become an inextricable part our environment and ourselves. The world is becoming a place where human sexuality is out in the light, where we can decide for ourselves whether or not we are ready for it. Our goal for the future should not be to merely improve upon the past, but to advance beyond it. We need to go on journeys of discovery, try something new, stand up for all human rights, and neither conform to or act on stereotypes.
Stereotypes are the antithesis to individuality, and are in effect a globalisation of self. Canadian author Naomi Klein, in her book "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" focuses on branding, and often makes connections with the alter-globalisation movement. Klein writes about issues such as sweatshops in the Americas and Asia, culture jamming and corporate censorship. She pays special attention to the deeds and misdeeds of Nike, The Gap, McDonald's, Shell, and Microsoft - and of their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies.
In the same vein, being hooked on to wearing human labels as though they were global brands to be loyal to reduces the creative diversity individuality and pluralism brings. Life is far too sophisticated to be divided into camps of "gay" and "straight" or "black" and "white". For instance did you know that white horses (known as greys) like Lippizaners are born almost jet black? Or that piranhas are NOT predators (as we have been led to believe thanks to the exaggerated tales of American president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt) but scavengers that are eaten by dolphins?
Sometimes positive stereotypes hide darker realities. The Kingdom of Bhutan is a "carbon sink", it absorbs more carbon dioxide then it gives out, effectively making it is the greenest country on Earth. It's written into their constitution that the forest area of Bhutan shall never dip below 60%, and even its energy exports are renewable. The general state of Bhutan is not measured in money, but in happiness. It is their equivalent of currency.
But Bhutan is a Buddhist country, and although of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first - and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion - monks have been using hate speech against communities of peaceful Muslims, and joining mobs that have left dozens dead. Moreover, Buddhism prohibits gay sexual relationships, believing anal copulation to be "unholy". Nevertheless, neither Buddhism, nor the actions of a few monks, generic of the whole kingdom.
Yet, the exaggerated stereotypic image is a strong one which when it is repeatedly reinforced becomes strongly set in our minds. Old notions and myths about certain cultures continue to persist. All "rag-heads" are suicide bombers. All Yanks are obese and greedy. All queers are camp. All police are racist pigs. All Brits live in manor houses. All Aussie males are racist, meat-eating misogynist alcoholics.
I mentioned in a previous post that some believed countries like Australia were becoming more "female" with women taking higher positions in power, but that is never the complete side to a story. With the ousting of its first female prime minister, BBC correspondent Nick Bryant writes that Australia has slid back into a love affair with its racist and masochistic past. It's more a case of the country typecasting itself, rather than the crass stereotypes every country faces from the international media. But it proves that a group can start to believe the negative hype about itself, and start acting to type.
We need to stop stereotyping and generalising people, and see everyone as an individual. We stereotype celebrities because many conform to type, but even they have their unique differences. They are not what they appear to be on their Instagram accounts. Women know better than anyone what it is to be stereotyped - for centuries females were branded as sinful because of the biblical story of Eve persuading Adam to "sin". The more we treat people as their stereotypes, the more they will believe that is the way they have to act.
But self-worth needs to be based on the qualities of uniqueness. It has been said in times past that civilised people seek out intelligent company so through learned discourse he or she can "rise above the savage, nearer God". I prefer to say that we need to be more focused on pursuits and studies in higher education, knowledge and experience through development of one's passions. Passion is a word that is often over used these days. Passion in our career, our family and our talents. It is often used to describe a desire to learn and grow in chosen areas of our lives. Yet, some believe that passion - like our sexuality - isn't a choice.
To some of us, passion is a prison of thoughts and feelings from which we can't escape. The driving force behind who we are and what we are meant to accomplish. It is the air that moves around us, the whisper in every moment of silence. Passion is the invisible hand that touches us, directs us and pulls at us. Passion is the silk we spun tightly around us. The softness that in which we find our comfort. The cocoon we wait within for a metamorphosis to occur. Not a physical or biological metamorphosis. We wait for a metamorphosis of condition and function within our existence.
When we focus on ourselves and our passion, rather than pointing out the differences in others, then we become the ideal student in the class of "life lessons". Think about it, no one knows the answer to everything. In addition to being an institution of learning and teaching, seeing life as a "teacher" will open your eyes and expand your horizons to keep studying and taking courses, which lead you further into the wisdom of understanding.
In the school of life, we live or experience topics more so than by reading them, and doing the homework which in this case would be mock trials of the real thing. Some LGBT teens know what it means to be bullied, they are best equipped to advise other teens going through the same thing - of whatever sexual persuasion they happen to be. In short you have to put on the shoes and walk in them, as averse to just looking at them and daydreaming about it. This is the way to bust stereotypes, and to discover a well hidden secret of life.
It is this: To the most complicated questions we can usually find simple answers. Love instead of hate. Peace in place of violence. Standing up rather than standing aside. Young and old, we need to speak up about things that matter. We shouldn't shun anyone; when we love them and accept them, we will find that they reciprocate that love back to us. And when we are linked up with love, we discover the passion for dealing with each other on a common ground of understanding. This creates an environment ripe for happiness.
Research has also shown that we can make ourselves happier because happiness does change over time, and these changes are not just a matter of better circumstances but of better dealing with life. It's believed elderly people tend to be wiser, and for that reason, happier. Happiness inspires, and in order to have a happy life - a rewarding life - you need to be active. So involvement is more important to happiness than meaning in the sense of the why, why we are here.
We are all on a journey, and death is the one destination we all share. Although we are often reluctant to focus on death, it is life's changing agent, clearing out the old to make way for the new. So as we live, let's not be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Let's not allow the opinionated noise of other people drown out our inner voice.
Let's live with the belief that we can connect the dots, that life's purpose is about loving communication. Let's start to enjoy this bonus of life, let's love life and profit with the love we receive. Because once love gets into your blood, you'll do anything to keep it flowing, and however far away you are, no matter where you go, love will always find you - smiling.
Yours in love,
Mickie, I love your articles. You just have such a natural wisdom, and I learn so much about you. You share so much with us, and I just wanted to share my story with you, because you play some part in it as you will see.
