Richard's friends

I'm sooo bored with being on holiday now. I can't stand having nothing to do, I wake up in the mornings wondering if there is any point in getting out of bed. Would you believe it that a couple of months ago I went on the internet for about half an hour every couple of days? Then study leave started and I've barely moved from this chair since.
 
Everyone seems to be away at the moment. Sophie is in Thailand, Jess is in America, Georgina's in Cornwall, Sarah H is in Austria (I think), Helen is still eating lunch, my family have gone to the library, even Richard (who doesn't appear to ever leave his house) has gone away somewhere and won't be back till tomorrow. So, in an attempt to allieviate my boredom I have been reading all of Richard's little friends' blogs. I have never met these people so I don't feel quite able to comment on their blogs but they've made me think of things. For all these blogs, if you go to Richard's blog (The Dickyblog) there are links to them there.
 
First Deutsches Dave's blog:
 
I used to be really unhappy with mainstream religions, especially Christianity. I had a long angst-ridden phase during my early teenage years where I was still nominally a Christian but really wasn't happy about it; I believed in it more because I was scared of dying than anything else. I left one church because they didn't believe in evolution and they said I couldn't be a Christian when I said I did, one of my friend's there told me that she believed that dinosaur bones had been planted in the ground by satan and that the Earth was only about 4000 years old. I thought that the world was a good place, that people were naturally good, and sure, people made mistakes occassionally but I didn't see why good people couldn't go to heaven just because they happened to believe in something else.
 
It was only a few months ago that I began to see things differently. I was in a politics lesson one day, talking about the American soldiers who abused the Iraqi prisoners, and it suddenly occured to me that these people weren't monsters, they were just like me and hence, conversely, I was just like them. One day when I was about 10 or 11 my little sister and I found a baby bird in our garden. We brought it in and looked after it and fed it and, after a while, I decided to take it out to the garden. As I was playing with it on the grass, I noticed one of our cats creeping up until eventually it paused, crouching, beside me. At this point I should have shooed it away, or picked up the bird, or done something, but in a way I wanted to see what would happen so I didn't do anything, and I thought I'd be able to stop the cat. Anyway, the cat pounced on the bird and carried it off. I chased after it and got the bird back, but it died a couple of hours later. I let that bird die just because I was curious about what would happen to it, I still feel sick whenever I think about it. In a way, what those soldiers did is not that different, just on a larger scale. I think I'm a pretty good person, but put in that situation I could not garuntee that I wouldn't do the same thing.
 
It takes effort to be nice, especially to people who aren't particularly pleasant themselves. We all have a huge capacity for greatness; in the same politics lesson we also talked about a girl's father, who found himself on a sinking cross channel ferry and made himself a human bridge so that all those people on the lower deck could climb up him onto the top deck. He saved over 100 people's lives. However, we can also be cruel and nasty, and that's how most people are, most of the time; not deliberately cruel, just not very nice. It is so easy to hurt someone unintentionally, and it takes so many kind words to make someone forget a nasty comment. I have a friend who I've known for 10 years now, and he's a lovely person. We have had so many lovely conversations, but whenever I think of him I think of when I was 13 and desparately fancied him and how, after we kissed for the first time, he told all his friends that kissing me was like eating a slug!!!
 
Anyway, my point is that human beings are not naturally kind, gregarious people, and all the good we do in our lifetimes is not nearly enough to cancel out all the hurt we've caused. That's why I need to be forgiven. Heaven is not just a paradise, it's being one with God; Hell is simply being without God, just dying and becoming part of the matter that makes up the universe. If one doesn't believe in God then obviously one can't go to heaven because one doesn't believe in that either. It's not a question of not believing in Jesus, it's a question of not being forgiven for all that one has done. God is perfect so, in order to become one with God, we must be perfect too and we can't be perfect unless we've been forgiven for everything. God still loves me, despite all that I've done and all that I will do in the future and I can never do enough to make up for all the hurt I've caused him. All I can do is try to spend the rest of my life trying to be like him and doing whatever he wants (I realise I'm going into Christian language now. When I hurt anyone, I'm hurting God because he loves us all. God wants what's best for the world, so in doing what he wants I am trying to make the world a better place).
 
A while ago people like me scared the bejeezes out of me. I even think I've heard God talking to me! I'm not trying to convert anyone; my mother's a buddhist, my dad's an aetheist and I wouldn't dream of trying to tell someone else what they should believe. I never thought I'd end up being a bible bashing, happy clappy Christian, but I am, and I'm a lot happier now than I was.
 
 
Right, now on to Megatrobe's blog
 
I agree! Well, partly.
 
Karl Marx (I'm sure everyone knows who he is) went on about how religion was the "opiate of the masses" and things like that and basically said that people used their hope for the future to make them happy (ie heaven in the case of religion) rather than doing anything about their current situation. He didn't exactly follow his own advice and spent his lifetime writing about his hope for the future, although when he did it it wasn't hope but scientific reasoning, of course.
 
There's this buddhist thing that says "craving leads to suffering" and basically what they say is that everyone always wants things they can't have and don't really need and that we should all be happy with what we have. In a way hope is good, but if that's all your happiness is founded on then obviously you will get gradually more miserable as time goes on. A more stable and better form of happiness comes from being content with who you are, what you have, and knowing what your limits are so that you aren't constantly craving things you will never acheive.
 
nonnesuch's blog
 
I don't really feel I have anything to say here, apart from the fact that I was reading through the comments when I found this:
 
DickyBod said...

Can I be some sort of guy who is murdered whilst making sweet love to some buxom blonde? 

You know, like in Predator II. Sure, it's a cameo, but at least I get to brag to my friends...
 
AHEM!!!!!
 
 
teradud's blog
 
I liked Never Been Kissed!
 
As for the world not getting any better, I think it does, only a lot more slowly than we would like it to. If you just look at the things that used to happen in Britain, people being hung for minor offenses, slavery, serfdom and all the terrible inequalities in life between rich and poor, then you can see that the Britain we live in today is so much better. It's like evolution, you can't really see it happening, but it is. Of course, there's still a long way to go, but humanity is amazing in the progress we make in a short time. The first powered flight was only in 1904 (I think) and by 1968 we had men walking on the moon! At the end of the 19th century the bloke who ran the patent office said "everything that can be invented, has been invented", and the 20th century saw the most advances that man has ever made. Who knows what is to come.
 
 
Blimey! you people can be so cynical at times! After my GCSEs when I was 16 I went to Nicaragua for a month and helped build a road, a church and a school. I wanted to become an environmentalist when I grew up and learnt Spanish so that I could go and talk to all the people in South America and pursuade them to stop cutting down the rainforest. You shouldn't be dissolutioned this early! You'll have nothing left for when you're grumpy old men in your 40s! I started this post nearly 5 hours ago now, so I think the time has come to finish it.
 
Adieu, dear readers, adieu