Is weight complex?

Read 'complex' here as a euphemism for we don't know how to do it/ we are going about it the wrong way. The body gaining weight finds it so simple it doesn't require any conscious direction from us, ditto losing it, as long as the body takes the lead there too. That is because it knows what it is doing.

It is we who do not consciously know how to call up that information so we can do it at will. Scientific inspiration/instinct I think its called.

Don't get me wrong, I find weight and proper weight loss/ gain complex, that's because I don't know how to achieve it, i.e., I don't know how to extend the body's ability to shed/ gain weight at will as it does virtually every single day of our lives, to a conscious decision.

Luckily, we do know something, how not to do it, guess what though? We cannot accept it!  Why? Because we are stupid and that's something I rarely say.

This approach has overcomplicated it, really if it wasn't for that, we'd just be in the dark. Wait a minute, is that why? We are terrified of the void!

Having invested so heavily in being so sure that we know, we cannot mentally cope with the fact that we don't actually know very much, okay, correction above. Poor us, face has got to be saved. Despair has got to be kept at bay. Imagine people being told nothing can be done for what they weight. So even things that don't work will do, if we just pretend they do. The thing is to keep hope alive, if nothing else.

Excellent.

This means it will be even more complicated than it could or should be, because apparently its moral.WTH! Yeah, clearly that is bull, so you have to ask the obesity industry why it must happen a certain way, rather than the best way. That's of course assuming those in the know think the same way behind closed doors.

Luckily no one cares about those people fat and thin who are suffering or dying because we don't know how to manipulate weight up as well as down. Because guess what? How useful is expending energy to lose weight, the really fat who also struggle with mobility and the very thin, dying because they can't keep weight on to live another day?

Presumably the latter can keep still and live and eat fast food ( nobody can resist, its 'addictive') even though lack of appetite is usually implicated in why they are fading away.

Genius.

Thing is if they are able to reverse weight successfully to thinness and keep it there, by wasting energy, they will have discovered another way by dint of that fact. Because I cannot see how that route can pay off, without some *underlying change in metabolism preceding it, which would render that approach optional anyway.

* I'll bet that's the 'secret' of those bodies that 'keep weight off'.

The morality of adherence

It is intriguing to see someone turn away from a community (of ideas) with an ethical basis centered around what you eat. Reading that thread made me wonder if I was in a similar position to someone observing those who believe in healthism/ dieting and people with an FA perspective, go at it.

Overwhelmingly those who argue with FA just bring straw to burn. Some feel a strong aversion to it, but are aware that whenever they try to put this into words, it violates their own standards. They try to make that work by attempting to inveigle people into self hating, in their head their motive is sound so they throw a hissy and take the get out clause of FA is 'fanatical'.

Its also amazing to read so many things you've felt in an on the surface differing context, it makes me sad that in FA we struggle be as self caring as Tasha is of herself because of history and who we are up against. In a way her ability to maintain this partly epitomizes an element of the 'thin privilege' slipstream (not because she is thin!) I mean her sense of self even under such overwhelming duress and her doctors patient and kind reaction.  Compare.

People who apologize for doctors fat phobia-in the process insulting and infantalising them because that is the only way to try and make this make sense- should take note of how some of us expect them to behave. To observe their actual patients rather than sell them out for a self serving ideology. I don't by any means expect all to be any where near as understanding as this one, but when it is clearly destroying you? Come on! People who keep venerating doctors regardless are exhibiting their leftover default setting of contempt for fatness.

I've always suspected that suitability of any particular kind or balance of diet has an intrinsic bio chemical basis of some kind. The greater the imbalance and restriction the fewer are likely to be innately suited to it. That's just a fact of fitting on any spectrum of human categorisation balance is likely to be the most suitable for the most people. A vegan diet probably suits a core of people at best after that there are varying degrees of suitability for others until you get to people for whom it is ill advised to put it mildly. The problem as ever comes from the desire for that minority to be the majority.

For some unsuited, it can shorten their life palpably. In a sense the writer Tasha had a silver lining along with her cloud of ill health, the effects on her were dramatic enough to make up her mind about whether her health was more important than the vehicle for her ethics. That is something we should all find out before we do ourselves irreversible damage.

It's also something healthists and diet wallahs the latter especially refuse to come to terms with, since the advent of obesity hype. Whatever health prognosis placed upon fatness, calorie restriction is rarely 'healthy', that's one of the reasons fatness has to be unhealthier in comparison.

If Tasha was a fat person, trying to force and keep her body at semi starvation mode she would have to swim harder against the tide even if she could perceive it, not just a minority viewpoint. Veganism doesn't appear to have that much mainstream support-I've never heard few recommend it and only temporarily. Therefore even its adherents are aware of the possibility that it could be a problem. That has been overcome in the case of WLD, which the authorities like the more unforgiving vegans state, cannot fail.

She had to decide on her health and sanity first because the effects were too serious to be borne and could not be contained, even if they were. A lot like dieting, except rather than vitamin deficiencies, which are often made up at least to some extent by the rebounding it creates is the mental and physical energy it draws, which is then not available for other things.

Even without reading between the lines of her strong need to justify herself (due to fears of internal and external judgement), no one with a heart could truly blame her. But I'll bet there are some-who's effects are more manageable possibly-who decide that a shortened life and worse health is a price they are willing to pay for their beliefs. They have that choice. Some of them even have the decency to admit this, in fact she herself recognised and was outraged about this and so she should be, that is a decision that must be made by the individual.

It may sound shocking that some are prepared to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs, given the way idealism about perfect health have taken hold of current moralizing, but not everyone would sell their mother for the mere promise of a little more time on this earth or to lose five pounds or whatever. In the end we all die for our beliefs in some way, from that to people who believe they are 'addicted' to various habits or behaviours that compromise their health or even die as a result of that kind of framing to those who decide there are certain things they are not prepared to keep in optimum health.

I'm not casting aspersions, although I'm not in sympathy with vegan fundamentalism, I did agree with some of her detractors that going from "veganism is the best for all, but oh wait, its killing me, perhaps not, I'll try meat again, oh, that's the ethical high point of all etc.," Was a little hard to swallow, as hard as a soaked nut pate, ummmm. Even though I cannot say she's wrong, its just she knows she ignored this going in, so now it seems a little convenient regardless of the truth of it.

It was a bit hard not to snigger reading how bad veganism (now) is for the earth and how great meat eating is (now) for the same, some people have got to believe they are the most moral the most goody goodest of all. I guess that's the micro nutrient they need most. And I can't help feeling that for her, that was the real draw of veganism, often the danger when you are proselytized at from an overly emotive stance rather than being trusted as much to reason.

Mind you that is the point, those spreading the word don't trust it to get past reason and deliberately target this urge to pander to it and attract those who are highly competitive in this way. We've seen that PeTa and others appeal directly to that on numerous occasions, in fact they will try to appeal to some quite unsavoury urges which is possibly why they assumed repeating the playground trauma of many fat kids i.e being called "whale" and traded on the promise of calorie inefficiency some experience with vegetarianism to entice fatz desperate not to be insult by being compared to large beautiful mamals.

This from an animal rights charity which should consider the insult, contemptable. 

It only makes it all the more galling when those people recover from the thrall of whatever urge or impulse you are manipulating. It reminds you of what you are trying to escape, minority status.

The power you invest in these urges tends to get in the way of staying in touch with your own needs which is why that is an avenue in the first place. There is clearly some underlying, possibly not wholly conscious realisation among those who are chemically inclined towards veganism etc., that maybe if you were inclined to towards veganism, you'd have had a bit more of a clue about it before. They stoke that fervour precisely because they hope others can become like them in reverse hooked mentally first with the body following suit.

The fury unleashed when you step off, is not with you as such, although that doesn't matter it will be aimed at you, but underneath it's with your differing biochemistry and is a bit like being averse, threatened or hating people because merely they are different from you. Whats more interesting though is what that tells us about the motivations of spreading modish dietary restriction it's supposed to be ethics or health, but its clearly no different than any other life force, the urge to make the world more like what you think will be most hospitable for you.

Again, the rage is prospect of denying that. Its a dream we all have to some extent some even go so far as to wish their minority status will subsume the majority through coercion and internalized recrimination. Tasha's struggle to come to terms with her reality of her diet's effects on her sounds a lot like ours, certainly mine, except with me, it was "scientists/doctors wouldn't lie", they wouldn't insist I keep trying unless it was possible unless there was something in the unhealthiness of fat over and above the reality of this. In the end I never resolved that, I just comprehensively burn out, like hanging over the edge of the precipice, I got to the point where my fingers couldn't grip anymore. So I had to drop.....

I never was able to say, they decided that dieting must be recommended at all costs and not give a damn to monitor the effects of that insistence. Full stop. Rather like the enraged vegans who felt 'she did veganism wrong', like I said the issue is not weight loss dieting or fatness but the construct that ignores reality to keep itself going and has nowhere to go.

It's not about veganism or WLD its about universalist coercion.

What's also evident is how morality rather than always being an essentialist truth of human ethics sometimes has other functions. It is the centrality of ethics to the human psyche which leads us to give respect to a presentation of something as ethical, which may be undeserved. In this case ethics act as a tool to help structure adherence to a set of principles as much as being purely an abstract or objective concern.

The hating healthist eaters are the same and it is the similarity of attitudes between them and many vegetarians, vegans, weight loss dieters those who use eating disorders as a lifestyle template, religious dietary laws, government guidelines et al that make me realise the more strictured your eating, the more it tends to become and contain your whole philosophy of existence, including your personal morality-which may include and increase wanting to be holier than thou. The two come out of one another as there is probably an ethical aspect in every decision and action, it cannot really be avoided.

That's why the FA saying that 'eating is not a moral issue' has always seemed to make FA ethics on eating, invisible. The  choice is which moral guidelines you consider the best and most inclusive and flexible.

I don't know if I've ever said this before but normal eating or what some people feel comes under intuitive eating felt intensely moral to me after spending years trying to ignore my body, even when it showed levels of distress that are quite appalling and caused me a lot of problems.

Even if it is your own choice, you are doing someone an injustice and that willing choice doesn't mean diddly squat when its hurting you. Yes it might be worse if someone else was doing it to you, but that does not invalidate or erase your abuse of yourself.

Any thing else shows a contempt for human beings that I can tell is a very bad idea indeed, regardless of how freedom loving you think that is, there comes a point when this mentality undermines the very freedom is supposed to liberate.

I'm sure the poster Tasha didn't feel free even though the choice to be and stay vegan, was her own. The damage done to her was not less because it was her choice.

I'm glad to say....

I can stop feeling badly disposed to raging bully du fatz * LINK WARNING: weight loss hokum masquerading as healthy lifestyles( or vice versa) Gillian Mckeith, she appears to be suffering for her misdemeanours.

Whatever possessed her to put herself at the mercy of the public in this way? Though they may enjoy fat hating themselves, tend have a strong urge to see if those who can dish it, can take it themselves.

And they can be as merciless as Mz.M is with uz fatz when they come upon someone who clearly cannot.

That's the problem with folks who spend time uncovering the purportedly unique reactions of fattiez to demeaning and invasive assaults on our sense of self, those reactions, are no different than any other humans. The central thesis that fat people are in some way lesser than others, is utterly false, attacking that falsehood means attacking the person.

All this may well lull the more underlyingly decent and earnest hater into a false sense of their own stoicism because they read the reaction of fat people to being mis-used as not the reacting like any one would to that but as the inner degeneracy that got us fat rearing it's ugly head.

In that sense they tend to be at a disadvantage to bona fide trolls who are likely to have less need to pretend this fat hating power trip is out of selfless concern for fat people. No they're aware that its just quarry and they do not give a damn about any such thing as 'morality' or the whys and wherefores, it's just (blood) sport to them. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't make them admirable, just that a more compromised moral centre doesn't always make you the most amoral.

I came upon the reality TV fluff she was involved in just at the right time. I've ignored it so I have to put it down to serendipity that I happened upon it yesterday and didn't switch over fast enough to avoid the preamble, which sold it for me.

I saw her give way to a swoon when given none of the room for manoeuvre that just an ounce of fellow feeling-from your tormentors-can give. Good for her, when you've taken all you can take, time for a strategic exit, hopefully on your feet, but hey, on your knees if necessary.

Sorry if I sound unsympathetic, but I've endured a few hair straightening times myself ignoring my own signals of distress too persuaded by what she represents that distress was actually my own moral incontinence. Call it gallows indifference.


Good news for her is I was betraying myself, whereas Mz Mackeith has the comfort of knowing that it is others who are getting at her to fulfil their own needs. Something she is more than familiar with herself. In fact, I'd say she lives by it.

Never mind Gillian, you dry your tears with the money they pay you for it, even taking into account any PTSD therapy, your likely to be ahead. At least you are getting paid for it hopefully you learn a lesson and sin no more.

I wouldn't hold my breath though.

Fat perspectives

I think of a fat perspective as an open and objective (as possible) deciphering and definition of fatness from an accurate experiential point of view.

If your reading of being fat is an internalization of your community and/or society's lores about fat or fatness, or you consider yourself to be up on the science, until you are describing any aspect of fatness seeking to understand and explain it as accurately as possible above all else, you are not seeking a fat perspective.

Whether you are fat or not.

By seeking to fit fatness into a constraining model of disease, the obesity industry cannot rightly describe itself as objective, therefore cannot honestly portray itself in opposition to lay folks', (such as in FAetc.,) subjectivity, especially as they have even substituted that for their own ignorant and reductive version.

This cannot match the richness of actual experience once it emerges slow and blinking from under the light deprived layers of outer and inner repression.

It doesn't mean that no one but fat people can evince the experience of being fat, not at all, but in order for non fatz to do this they must fulfil a legitimate rendering of the outside perspective, the same in essence as that of a fat person who seeks honest accuracy rather than to craft and validate pre-destined ideology.

The one who is not experiencing a state of being must jettison any agenda to degrade others to aggrandize themselves or to pursue a sense of self identity, even more than those experiencing said state, to engage honestly with what they perceive and observe in others. They must question their own feelings and assumptions as much if not more than the object of their study, if they cannot or do not wish then that disqualifies them from a fat perspective.

They are only of interest in relaying the unfolding story of their own fantasy or ideology of fatness. For instance, it may be interesting to note the concept of having 'fat days'. 

I don't say this won't touch upon any truths, maybe numerous ones although they will have to be deciphered carefully according to those biases. The writer Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie described stereotypes as problematic not because they are necessarily untrue, but because they are incomplete.



Unless you can be open to interpreting what you see freely, you can be as useless as if you'd seen nothing. The issue is not observing fat people openly and comparing notes to achieve mutual communication and understanding. It's the dominant motive of a conclusion that doesn't value actual truth, but the construction of it to fit a pre determined model of pathology and disease. That and the desire to make fat people continue to submit to this regardless is all important.

After spending years passively internalizing this model, your mental input becomes a choice between how far you can go with it before it exhausts your capacities or to protect yourself from it and survive it. Either will lead to rejection eventually, it was inevitable that falsehood would eventually be rejected  by some for your own actual experience.

The subtlety of this effect can be amazing, I've mentioned the way fat people (and others) can suddenly look at photos, sometimes very familiar ones and 'see' themselves for the first time. Rather than through the lens of fat loathing.

Clearly, I don't expect everyone fat or thin to feel as jaded by falsehood, we can see from observation what a thrilling joy it is for many. I can see, perceive, even sense the rush of pleasure it gives them to continue with constructs which demean others, often themselves.

I'm not even that upset about that more bored by it because, I do pity someone for needing to get pleasure that way, for counting themselves so cheaply, when they are supposed to be winning. When I'm aware of an opportunity to do similar on the whole I find it unnerving to succumb aware that pushing someone down doesn't make you go anywhere but merely makes in look so in comparison to them. It's partly a weird kind of pride, if I cannot raise myself, I cannot lower others to appear to do so, how embarrassing, how desperate!

Subjective, is often defined in opposition to objective as a biased and overly skewered personal vision.

taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias;

"a subjective judgment"

immanent: of a mental act performed entirely within the mind;

"a cognition is an immanent act of mind"

It of course can be, ditto objectivity, it too happens "entirely" inside the mind of someone, the observer. Clearly this vantage point is supposed to make observation objective, but it doesn't necessarily certainly not if overwhelmed by it's own agenda.

Both this and the base ignorance of an agenda formed from the outside to serve itself have made an actual truthful fat experience objective in comparison, even sometimes a partial and biased one.

That is what can happen when you set such a low standard of 'objectivity'.

Leaving the children out of it

If you think about the times when weight change is most predictable overall, changing balance of hormones often has a palpable influence.

As hormones act on the nervous system, I wonder whether that is a key link with emotional and stress triggers which go through that system, by that affect the endocrinal glands especially.

I get this sense from my own body and others that too many overwhelming emotions can seem to pressure even ‘swell’ the nerves, due to the volume of messages flowing through them. I wonder how much this has in common with other times when the nervous system has extra demands on it, such as in periods of growth.

That's what was so funny about those who fancy themselves to be experts on 'obesity' telling us that it seems fatness creates inflammation in the body. It would be too cute if there was some kind of connection, or overlap.

There is a difference between extra messages swelling its carrier and chemicals released which cause swelling through irritation. As we know stretching can sensitize too. Thing is, it could be one then the other (sometimes) and so on. Not forgetting the extra tissue that can accrue with a cluster of fat tissue to increase the messages due to that growth.

I could ask if there is a connection, if there could be a separation, but experts rarely answer those sorts of questions. You aren't supposed/allowed to ask them, even if they could actually answer. Your supposed to play as dumb as your 'diagnosis'.

The overall point I'm making is the possibility should be allowed for, that this is merely observing how fatness tends to occur, rather than an opportunity to mis-use adult authority over children. We have not shown a reversal of child weight, in various interventions.

Wave after wave of certain processes; can affect your physical predilections and underpinnings more. A bit like as we age, we are more likely to plump up over time, putting it simply, the waves of life breech thinness, it happens for some earlier than others. For some not at all, because they've either always been fat or never so.

Even if he's right, do you know what? Manipulating input and output, sucks big time. Look at the hate fuelled politics of bullying it has lead to, its ugly vile and mean and has cheapened the worth of people before our eyes. Just because it’s not happening to the real people, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.......... to people.

I wouldn't care if forcing children to diet 'works' because the end doesn't justify the means.

So leave the children alone and find something humane and effective that is the direction modern societies are moving in. Punishing the youngest of people for existing does not go with progressive innovation and imagination. What the societies of the future will major in.

Any reverser of weight or anything else must go in that direction or drag us back to an authoritarian past in another guise. Do people really choose to read books on the basis of how many calories they use up doing so, rather than what the text means to them?  How degrading would that be of experience? Endlessly direct your body to burn calories, rather than participate willingly is a sure recipe for burnout. The younger you start, the sooner it happens.

Allow children to be brought up to be encouraged to choose their activities on the basis of their own desires and yes trying new things in the face of reluctance, but not to shape their acceptability or existence, unless they choose it.

Children need to be allowed to develop a sense of their own physical boundaries.

As a young fat child, your boundaries are often infringed mentally and physically, your body objectified and pointed out and at. Your are repeatedly devalued and encouraged to devalue yourself, thereby sticking you with a sense of guilt about your own self betrayal.

I’m sorry if this is at all disturbing or disgusting, but I’m fed up of the silence about what we’ve had to put up with and the effects on us. And in many respects, adults of today had it better.

I actually feel hurt inside to imagine what some children are going through now.

Try to understand this is not the way to go for any of us, regardless of age. If you wish to reverse weight or prevent fatness, you must find holistic and gentle and effective ways to achieve this. Allow children to express their physical natures in keeping with their own inner rhythms and desires. Let's build upon this to teach them more. Let's not mess them up in on the roulette wheel of diet fail. If we failed on this, sticking it children is not an option. They can't cover for this failure either, nor should they be asked to.

Let's leave the children out of this

Okay, I think I've managed to work out some of what this set off. The title was the initial hook; "dieting gets you nowhere". Congratulations Hercule Poirot, maybe we can get Miss Marple in to help work out why people or should I say, the menz of science, cannot accept this.

It's rare enough for anyone to state it that boldly-it still draws the eye. I'm interested in what makes others come to the same conclusion in the face of a tidal wave of heavily validated counter reality.

The basis of Amitai Etzioni's conclusion is simple observation. He noticed that as most people remain more or less the same weight over the years, dieting is clearly ineffectual.

That is how easy it should be people.

Yet, what turned out to interest me more is the almost inevitable failsafe of even the most direct WLD sceptic; let's take advantage of our power over children and their naivety to impose what doesn't work on them. So we can keep dreaming. Upshot, we can force it to work as we we can tolerate their distress, better than we can our own. Even if that was true, should we?

Can we not think of anything better? Like progress ..............?

He explained it using cement as a metaphor for weight and how it can be reformed when still wet-in childhood and youth- but later when dry, it can be re-shaped, only to reformulate itself back to its prior shape.

Actually no sorry, I got far more exercised than that.

The thing about the adult drag, adopting a tough and stern pose under the guise of "it's for their own good", is children grow up. And develop minds of their own. And the betrayal catches up with you. 

Little folk become more troublesome when they finally awaken as adults; eventually, to the tricks played on them. A lot of us in FA show that childhood programming can stay for a hell of a long time, but not for life.

According to a study by the Diabetes Center at Howard University, obesity in infants is only a 20 percent predictor of obesity in adulthood, but by the time children are 6 years old, it is 50 percent. By the time they are adolescents, it is 90 percent. Other data, though somewhat less dire, point in the same direction

Ignoring "other data" for the mo, this could reflect hormonal influence, which combines with genetics. Starting with pre-natal hormonal influence during development in the womb. Then next around the age of 7, give or take, there seems to be what may be the beginnings of the major hormonal flux in the lead up to puberty.

Puberty's often described as if it's a bit like an explosion, but there seems to be some kind of hormonal lead up to it-which starts around this time- which ends with that fast release of puberty. More like the action of a syringe. I wonder if that is part of the early puberty phenomenon. Either than pre stage is accelerated, or skipped.

Around that age comes up a lot when it comes to things that might seem to be related to some of the effects of this kind of activity, weight, sexuality, etc., A hell of a lot of realisations seem to happen around that age so it may also be related to a leap in brain and nervous system development.

I'm aware of course this is anecdotal and may increase with a bit of confirmation bias and the old Jesuit motto "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," comes to mind. In spite of all that, I still think it's a significant period which can influence weight especially in those susceptible to this.

We are on the same page, aren't we?

I read a really good piece based on an interview with Christopher Hitchens at the weekend. I know a lot of folk cannot stand him, as it is I still retain a gratitude for his take down of  the Mother Teresa's sainthood. I've seen her work, seen her interviewed in India when she was still in the land of the living. And yet when I became aware of her name being used to denote sainthood, I was nonplussed to say the least.

The first couple of times didn't quite register, then it happened to be a woman inserted her name in place of saying someone was saintly, or not. There was that weird pause where you've heard and understand everything, yet realise there is a great big hole where those two should connect.

Finally, it dawned Mother Teresa was the embodiment of sainthood therefore could be used interchangeably with the term. I swear my first reaction was," you have got to be kidding". And do you know what? I'm not sure I could have told you exactly why. I just felt that was a mistake.

Then along comes Hitchens amongst others to puncture that balloon, although I do notice all her most prominent critics are men, I felt relieved, I wasn't just being funny. It's not that she didn't have admirable qualities that her achievement was not amazing, or that her work was worthless. I don't feel that. In spite of all that, I just felt there was something deeply unwholesome about her attitudes. Indeed this critique feels more balanced than others.

During the interview, he said something in reference to religious belief that really summed up the whole of my frustration with the way FA tends to point itself;

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Aaaaaaaaaahhhh; that relieves some of the tension!

Time and time again I've thought we continually refer to the senselessness of fat hating tripe, of its profound  (to itself) necessary ignorance which it has little choice but to maintain, or be destroyed by the cold light of reality.

Yet, we keep treating it as if it has some logic. Why? When asked to 'prove' what is evident, we scuttle off to try and find what will often be dismissed rather than responding; "you prove reality is anything but what we are saying". A little like religion what they are asserting has not been backed up in real life, so why do we not have the confidence to make that clear, all of us, so that they are aware that they are on the back foot, as they should be.

Instead we are.

I've been guilty of getting caught up in this myself when maybe I should just keep quiet, I've been excluded from some discussions anyway. FA ends up pandering to what it dismisses and assumes that same level. I have to ask, do people in FA believe the obesity crisis is a lot of rot, or not? Are we all speaking on the same page on that?

If we are, when are we going to stop arguing as if we aren't? As opposed to saying why we are saying what we are saying? In a way that's far more of a derail that weight loss dieters who wish to turn FA into WW's bourgeois outreach.

For all I know it possibly encourages this impulse. I recognise the primacy of simplify, but even simplicity comes out of deep roots, shallow simplicity is hollow. It adds to the feeling that 'we are not taken seriously', which is sometimes code for we don't feel serious.

I'm going to have to drop my referencing of Ditchkins seeing as he's come out against the kind of proselytizing atheism, that is wearing my last nerve with Dawkins and his ilk. Tee hee, (to that last link). If you become merely the counterpoint to something, you will begin to assume the same level as that thing. Atheism has got nothing to do with religion, in essence it is something in its own right it is more than just 'irreligion' thanks. If you reduce it to that, it will become like (your idea of) religion.

There's another noteworthy thing he said, referring to religion, but very applicable to the crusade;

it's religion, he contests, that is "cosmically hopeless, as is all the related masochism that goes with it – you've got to spend your entire life making up for the vermin you are. What is that if not degrading? We don't do that to people.

Emphasis, mine.

This is what shocks me about all the non-deists and secularists on board with the crisis. I cannot understand how belief in it is compatible with humanism. If you claim that those you believe in are greedily suicidal indolent fools for the heck of it or without strong minded intrusive intervention, doesn't that pose questions about your own judgement and intellect?

* edited for something approaching clarity