Keeping Busy

Well, here we are late at night and I had the crazy idea to write a blog post. For those of you who thought me dead, this might come as a pleasant surprise......I would like to think???????

Anyway, I have decided to write a bit about what I do with my time in retirement, or at least since I gave up my job some 4 years ago now. It seems whenever you see any adverts on the telly to do with retirement (usually linked with DEATH....oh boy), they always seem to show the old man pottering around in the greenhouse or in the garden....or some suchlike thing. Often the wife is talking really enthusiastically about some "British Old Gits" death insurance policy which will ensure their loved ones will get all of £26.50 each to bury them when they pop their clogs, which, if the ads are to believed they are enthusiastically looking forward to! Well, OK, I wax lyrical and exagerate somewhat, but if you follow the popular fiction, your later non-working years are the twilight zone where you are in some kind of gardening, insurance paying limbo awaiting the arrival of the grim reaper. I decided this kind of retirement was not for me. It just isn't me, and it never will be. I am a retirement non-conformist.

So what DO I do with myself, I hear you ask (not). Well, I have developed an interest in the history of the RAF, and particularly RAF Wyton, the place where I began my career as a boy in blue, and finished my career 46 years later as a civvy, spookily habitating the same office as my first boss in 1967. How's that for full circle! RAF Wyton has by good fortune a heritage centre, and I have found a bit of a bolt hole there as a volunteer. I now spend time showing people around the exhibits as well as teaching them some history, though some know considerably more than me! We also do road-shows to educate the public as well as give talks both at the centre and away at libraries, WIs, Probus groups and such like. All the time I am having to keep reading and researching to increase my knowledge so I can speak more authoritatively . The subject matter is the entire history of RAF Wyton from 1916 to the present day, the RAF Path Finder Force (RAF Wyton was the Headquarters of the Path Finder Force in WWII), and photo reconnaisance, as the base has spent a lot of it's life in that sphere of activity.

In 2015 I had a surprise visit from our local District and Town councillor who thought it a good idea if I ran for the Town Council. This was all a bit of a surprise as I never saw myself in local government, though he had suggested it briefly before, and after a milisecond I said no. Obviousely he was not convinced! Following conversation over coffee and biscuits I decided, oh what the heck, and accepted to stand. The next thing I knew I was out knocking on doors around the ward and more or less got a friendly reception. On the night of the election I won 1306 votes which won me the seat.......so here I am doing my bit for the town as best I can. Given my background in media, I am now chair of the Media sub-committee as well as chair of the Town Twinning sub-committee. I am also vice chair of the Leisure and Community Services committee, to name a few of my responsibilities. Last year, the District Council in their infinite wisdom decided to cut our 4 year term short by one year so as to bring town and parish elections in line with the district elections. However, there is a twist in this tale in that I have decided not to stand next year. I was so disgusted with the policies and actions of the Conservative government and after a re-assessment of who I really am and what I really care about, I left the Conservative Party and joined the Green Party.  I have decided that I will be a Green activist in the future, but I will not be standing again for office, although I reserve the right to change my mind!

I am a lover of books. I am a real bookworm. For me, an hour in Waterstones is like a kid in his favourife toy shop or an alcoholic in a brewery!  I just can't get enough of books, and regard the gift of reading one of the most precious things in my life. In 2013, shortly after I packed in work, I went for a browse around my local Oxfam bookshop, which I had only just noticed, despite the fact that I must have walked past it many times over the years. I fell in love with the place instantly and offered myself up as a volunteer. A month or so later, following a holiday in Cornwall, I worked my first shift.  Since. then I have never looked back. The manager is a  man who in his previous life was a college English teacher. The ethos of the shop is number one, have fun, number two, offer the customer the best experience you can. We get masses of donations, and some of what we get turn out to be real gems, including first editions which we might sell for hundreds of pounds. We do a big trade in vinyl records, which have made a big comeback in recent years. Many of our customers are serious collectors and it is not unusual for a customer to spend a three figure sum before walking out the door. Of course, we are very particular in what we put out for sale at the front of shop, as we have built up a reputation which we have no intention of tarnishing. We also, as well as selling things, give our support to local artists. These can be painters, contempory artists, or musicians. A couple of weeks ago we sponsored a concert by two local rock groups at a local hotel. I did the photography for the event, the prints from which will soon be used as a window display.

So there we are. There is a lot more I do than I have mentioned here, but it ought to be apparent that I am far from having nothing to do and have no excuse for being bored, though I have to say, I did spend an hour trimming our front hedge earlier this afternoon.

Advancing years.

OK, I know I have said this before and not carried it through, but this time I really do mean to write and publish posts more frequently as it has been clearly mega-yonks since I last wrote anything. How long is a 'yonk" by the way?

The next question of course, is what to write about? I have to confess I have gone very stale since my first flushes of enthusiasm when I started this blog nearly a decade ago. As I have aged somewhat in that time, I think ageing will be my  topic for this post.

It only seems a little over 26 years ago when I suddenly realised I had reached the incredible age of 40......wait......it WAS a little over 26 years ago.....gulp! I had just finished 23 years service in Her Majesty's Royal Air Force and was now being unceremoniously booted out as I had outstayed my welcome and was past my 'use by' date. Of course, this caused a tremendous shock to the system as the RAF had been most of what I had ever known and I couldn't believe the years had flown by so quickly. But more than that, for the first time I began to feel old. It occurred to me that in another 20 years I was going to be 60 and given how quickly the last 20 years had passed, I was on a fast track to oblivion. This put me in a bit of a panic. After all, unless something unfortunate happens to finish you off in the meantime, you die when you get old, and I wanted neither of these eventualities. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with the cold and panicky thought that I was going to die, and I would try to imagine what it must be like to be dead! Of course, this was all very stupid as it is clearly not like anything and beyond the realms of imagination. I suppose if you are religious then your outlook would be completely different, but I was in the process of giving up on professing to be a 'born-again' Christian, and despite being a lay preacher for a number of years and even getting a couple of GCE 'A' Levels to go to theology college to become a minister, after some good nights sleep and a few neat whiskeys I had my own 'road to Damascus' experience where I realised it was all a load of impossible and irrational tosh, so I made a complete about-turn. That is not to say I am not spiritual, but then that's getting way off track.

Anyway, as the years passed I realised that worrying about ageing and mortality was pointless and somewhat stupid. One of my work colleagues also advised me in a moment of solemnity that growing old is a privilege which many people are deprived of. Thinking about this, I realised he was quite right, and growing older or being old is not something to get depressed about, but savoured. I have always lived a very active life, and achieved many things, and I decided that this was the way I should continue. In 1997, I walked the 'Pathfinder March'. This is a annual 46+ miles walk around the original four Pathfinder Stations of the Path Finder Force which came into being on 15th August 1942, with its headquarters at RAF Wyton. I managed to complete the walk in good time and in lots of pain and mind bending fatigue, but was pleased with myself as many people much younger than me had dropped out. Since then, I have completed it 5 more times, the last time being the event on 18th June 2016. I keep myself fit and work out at the gym and try to eat reasonably healthily, though I do have a penchant for ice cream and fish n' chips! Since retirement three of years ago, I have found a new life in volunteering and community service, though not the type which the beak hands down to you in a court of law! I also follow my photography hobby avidly and keep finding lots of new ways to make use of it, both for my own satisfaction and the benefit of others, so I am kept extremely busy doing things I enjoy and find worthwhile. Thankfully, I am blessed with good health.....sort of...........but guess what??????........ I just don't care. As Spike Milligan once said (I think)..."If you say you have nothing wrong with you, then there is something wrong with you".

Basically then, I do quite like being an old git, or fart, or codger or whatever the current common terminology might be prevailing. I am going to continue doing what I do as long as I am able and to hell with the advancing years, I am going to wallow in them. I may well lose my marbles, but then as one of my friends recently said to me - "Its alright losing your marbles so long as you don't know you have lost them"!

Philosophical musings on death and consciousness

This is going to be a bit of a philosophical thought experiment.

I am fascinated and puzzled by the concept of consciousness. I am also fascinated by death.

There is, as far as I can see, a direct link between consciousness and death. We are conscious that we are going to die. We are probably the only species with this foresight. Because we cannot quite accept the notion of oblivion, non-existence - we have invented a number of hypotheses to get around the problem and these hypotheses are mainly enshrined within religion. We thus postulate an afterlife of one kind or another. Because we cannot understand our own existence, or even why anything should exist, the notion of a God, or many gods was mooted throughout the disparate societies of the planet to account for this. And so we have creationism.

Turning to the genesis of the universe, as you do, creationists espouse the notion that God created it because nothing can happen without a "first cause". Also, because God is God, He doesn't need a first cause to bring Him into existence because He is the eternal one, in whom and by whom everything exists. The problem I find with this idea is that there is no more reason for the universe to exist as there is for God to exist. If this god can exist without any beginning or first cause, and as this god must by definition be part of what exists, then by the same token, there is similarly no reason why the universe itself should not exist without a beginning or "first cause", and both concepts are equally conceivable - or inconceivable.

Consider this. We need a "first cause" because the laws of physics demand it. We are taught at school that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Also, there is the law of the conservation of energy which states that the energy in a closed system remains constant and can neither be created or destroyed, but changed from one form of energy into another. If we look at Einstein's famous equation of E=mc2 where E is energy, m is mass and c2 is the speed of light squared, we see that matter and energy are part and parcel of the same thing. We are made of energy. Anyway, these, and all the other laws of the universe exist because there is a universe within which they can exist and can work. However, if there were no universe, or any kind of anything (or nothing) in existence, there would similarly be no laws for anything to apply to. We thus find ourselves in a situation whereby there is, by its very non-existence, the potential for a universe to spring into existence complete with its own laws of physics which govern its evolution. My belief is, therefore, that the universe sprang into existence by the "Big Bang" because there was no law of physics to prevent it from doing so. There was no need for a first cause. There was no need for a god. There is no need for God, or any god; the universe just is, because there was nothing to stop it from being otherwise.

Consciousness is a real puzzle. How can something which is made up of matter, irrespective of how complicated our make-up is, have self awareness, or whatever it is that makes me "me" and you "you"? In his book "The Emperor's New Mind" by Professor Roger Penrose, the concept of consciousness is explored in depth, and without any firm answers. From Penrose's arguments, it would appear that we will never be able to re-create consciousness on a digital computer, no matter how "clever" we make the program. It is apparent that consciousness emanates from a much deeper level of existence than we have so far managed to delve. He looks at quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, as well as quantum entanglement and the other spooky effects of the sub atomic worlds, of which we know so little. From Penrose's perspective, until we have a proper understanding of the laws of quantum physics, there is no hope of us understanding the phenomenon of consciousness, because it is from this quantum level of existence that consciousness would appear to arise. We should also consider that scientists are developing a new type of computer which works using quantum mechanics as the basis of it's operation, and this type of computer is called a quantum computer. Still very much in its infancy, and a long way from appearing on the high street, the development of such a device holds out the prospect of our current most powerful computers looking like no more than pocket calculators by comparison. Such a computer may hold the way for us to either simulate or create (how would we know the difference?) an artificially conscious entity. Even so. this is no more than wild speculation and there is much we do not know about the sub atomic universe and the laws which govern it. Hopefully, when the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is finally repaired and up and running, we should make significant strides into a deeper understanding of the quantum world and, possibly, consciousness. Indeed, it may well be the case that only biological systems can exhibit consciousness, and we may never have a complete answer to this mystery. Even so, that is no reason to defer to a god, simply because we have not discovered a convincing answer to a question.

Moving swiftly on - what happens after death? Or, to put it another way, what happens to ME after I die? I have a simple solution to this conundrum, and it is tied in with consciousness. In order to be conscious of anything, you have to be alive, or to put it another way, in existence. I cannot be conscious of not existing as I have to exist in the first place to possess consciousness. In other words, death, or being dead, is not something any of us can experience. To put it as simply as I can, if I am dead, I am in the same state of non-existence as I was before I was born. I had no complaints then, and I do not expect to have any again when I have shaken off this mortal coil. The only thing I did have in this non-existent state, was the potential for coming into existence. In as much as I can never experience, or be conscious of being dead, by the same token I can only ever be conscious of being alive and I therefore have a kind of immortality. The only thing "I", if it be "I" can experience after death is being born again as a new conscious entity somewhere in the universe. In this respect, I am immortal, but will almost certainly have no recollection of any previous existence, notwithstanding the odd instance of apparent cases of reincarnation which appear to refute this notion. Either way, I do not think we should fear death, but only the manner in which we depart.

One final conundrum is this: why am I "me" and not someone else. What is it that indelibly links "me" to this body and personality, and not to anyone else. Or, to put it another way - when I awaken in the morning, why do I still find I am "me" inside of my own body and not someone else in a different body? You might think the answer to this is obvious, but think about it and you will see, hopefully, that the matter is not as clear cut as it might seem. Indeed, it might be that what we call consciousness is merely an illusion and the true nature of reality is actually permanently hidden from us.

Life and death and life

I am reading a book at the moment on reincarnation. I don't normally read books on reincarnation, but a friend at work lent it to me, probably thinking I needed it - what does HE know??? I am of a somewhat sceptical nature. I was once a devout Christian, but not any more. In fact, I completely reject the whole notion of god or gods, consigning it to the realms of fantasy, myth, folk-lore and legends with a sprinkling of wishful thinking mixed with superstitious fear. In short, I'm a "born again" atheist. There, that's got that out of my system, I feel so much better! Thankfully, the book hasn't mentioned god yet and I'm over half way through it, so I haven't given up on it yet. If the writer stays away from the g word for the rest of the book, I dare say I might even finish it.

Yes, I am a skeptic, but I will consider almost anything weird, so long as there is some reasonable evidence to back it up. What seems to come out of this book, as well as documentaries I have seen on the television is that there are many well documented cases of people, often young children, who seem to have detailed and very accurate memories of past lives, sometimes, many past lives. A lot of research has been carried out into this, and the weight of the evidence seems to be far too great for mere chance. There is also, it would appear, evidence building, that between incarnations we go through a process of reviewing our previous life in a sort of a "judgement"and choosing the next one. Another colleague at work lent me a book by a different author who claims to have had an "out of body" experience after clinically "dying" during a major operation. The spooky thing is, the whole experience she describes is almost exactly similar to the "between births" claims of the subjects in the reincarnation book, lending a degree of independant re-inforcement to the argument. I am not saying here that I neccesarily believe that these are real cases of reincarnation, but if they are not, then there is a lot of further research needed to come up with a rational, reasonable explanation. Is it possible, for example, for a person to "receive" the thoughts and personality of a dead person, and not actually be reincarnated? There is plenty of evidence in physics to suggest that time can go backwards. Also, at the quantum level of the sub-conscious mind, who knows what is possible. We hardly know anything about what constitutes consciousness, let alone the mind. We are only scratching the surface.

Personally, although I reject the idea of a god, I don't, in principle, have a problem with reincarnation - of a sort. The reasoning goes like this:

There was a time before my birth when I didn't exist.
When I die I will go back to that same state of non-existance. Since I came out of that state to be here writing this now, who's to say I won't do so again at some point in the future?

There is a problem here, however, as what I describe is not true reincarnation in the classical sense of the word, because I have left out the concept of a spirit or soul. The "reincarnation" I describe would not transmit any memories between lives, because although "I" might live again, I could never be conscious of this life without a soul or spirit which constitutes the essence of "me" crossing from one life to the next. However, another way of looking at life is that we are all immortal until we die. As we cannot experience being dead because we have to be conscious to experience anything, we cannot be conscious of being dead. In that sense, the only thing we will ever experience is life itself. Death doesn't exist in our experience. Better make the most of life!