The Afterlife

The Afterlife

I'm going to try and cover all forms of how the world sees life after this one. Life after life. Life after death. Eternal life.

Let's start with Ancient Egypt.

Humans have "ka" (a lifeforce) that leaves the body at death. Like humans, it lives on food and drink. It must carry on eating and drinking. The way it gets this food is through the sacrifice of food that those lucky enough to be alive make. The food would then pass into the ghost realm for the ka to eat.

The "ka" then joins up with the "ba" - your personality. When the ka and ba join together they make an "akh." This is what the Egyptians would call a ghost or soul. The tombs of the deceased need constant upkeep to keep them in a good condition, as well as many rituals and sacrifices or else the akh will die. A second time. These ghosts would also require the power the "heka" (magic) that exists like The Star Wars' Force. All Gods had heka, and some priests of magicians did too. The priests would use the heka to perform The Opening of the Mouth Ceremonyso that the dead person could get some air into his mouth and nose, which'd warm up the senses and mean they'd enjoy their food and drink sacrifices all the more.

And move on to Ancient Rome

The classics believed that not doing the correct rites, sacrifices or religious observances would not only bring the wrath of the Gods aginst the wayward indivdual but also the whole state. Talk about guilt.

There were hundreds of cults in the Roman religion. Some were public cults and others private. They had so many feats and festivals that dies fasti (sacred days) outnumbered normal days.

and Ancient Greece

When you die you become a shade (a ghost). The body left behind is given sacrifices to nourish it and coins are placed in either the eyes or mouth for you to pay the boatman to take you across the river Styx (no relation to "living in the Sticks" by the way - which is a baseball term).

Then you go down the river of misery and past Cerberus - he's quite friendly despite popular belief. He only gets nasty, of course, when you try to get out. 

You are then judged by the three Fates and given a chance to justify what you did in your life. Those three Fates are Minos - that's the guy who built the labrynth and installed the Minotaur in it. What happened was that Poseidon wanted a bull sacrificed to him, but at the last minute Minos switched his favourite bull for a less good one and Poseidon was practically apopleptic. He cursed Paciphae (Minos' wife) with bestiality (animal sex), and made it so that she could only be satisfied by a male bull (we'll leave the details to the reader's imagination). So Minos built a giant wooden bull for Paciphae to get inside and get freaky with whatever nearby bull was passing at the time. She got preggers and gave birth to a half-bull half-man creature (interestingly enough, this also happens in 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade). To hide him away Minos got Daedalus - a local engineer and thinker dude to construct an amazing maze (or labrynth) so that he could banish this freak of nature from sight.

To keep the Minotaur (as it was called) alive, they fed him 14 people a year. Then in a move well before Dan Brown's time, thought to keep all this a secret by feeding Daedalus and his son, Icarus, to the Minotaur. Course Daedalus had built in an escape plan, and made some wings together, held with wax. Icarus flew too close to the sun, you know how that played out. Minos went to exact his revenge on Daedalus using a conch shell a piece of string and an ant (look it up) and was eventually tricked into taking a hot bath. A very hot bath. And died.

All this was enough to impress the Gods into giving him a encumbant position in the afterlife.

They also gave his brother (Rhidamanthus) a job as he was an excellent ruler that Minos had driven out. The third judge and Fate is Aeacus. He was a bloody good King too. Although he had the poor luck of ruling over the Myrmidons, a race of ant-people related to the original she-ant Myrmidon, daughter of Eurymedousa, who was seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant. (Again, we'll leave that image to you, the reader.)

These three fates then pick where you go to: purgatory? Yes, if you've been a bit naughty. The Elysian Fields? Only if you've been really good. Like a warrior or hero. Off you go to the Plain of Asphodel if you're just an average Joe. Been bad? Really bad. Off to Tartarus with you! There you'll be dipped in lava, have your liver eaten out a bit, push rocks up a hill, etc. But the ancient Greeks had quite a progressive view of eternal punishment though. You could work your way up the ladder into a better afterlife, if you worked hard or pulled a few strings.

Hesiod said that the Greek afterlife was "9 days fall" from Earth. But, if a human falls at 122/mph (terminal velocity), he'd end up 26,352 miles below the surface of the Earth. The Earth, though is only 7929 miles thick, and would only take you 40 minutes to get through. Meaning you'd be 18,423 miles above the Earth's surface (that's about 1/10th of the way to the Moon) on the other side of the globe, somewhere above New Zealand for Greeks. Not China, as originally thought. To end up in China, you'd have to dig a hole through the Earth in Argentina, Chile, Peru or Brazil.

Christianity 

Christians believe a soul is the life breath. This comes from the term "nephesh" in the original version of Genesis. This is where God breathes the breath of life into Adam. This breath returns to God after the body dies as it is God's innermost aspect of humans, and the definition of being made in God's image.

But where does it go? To an intermediate state? In the Old Testament it's called sheol - a storage facility of souls - where the soul is kept until Judgement Day. At this point the good ones get immortal bodies to live in the Garden of Eden. The bad go to hell. In sheol, the souls are in a state called soul sleep. It means that souls aren't immortal, funnily enough, as they have to come back to life for Judgement Day. Some Christians believe that your soul goes straight to heaven or hell for a taster session, then back for Judgement Day before spending the rest of eternity in their designated roles.

Heaven is, of course, a dwelling place for God. It's like Eden apparently, and Hell is often seen as a lake of burning sulpher etc. But it's quite hard to tie down the Bible for an exact description of either afterlife. Even Pope John Paul II said that rather than a place it's a state of being for anyone who has accepted or rejected God. This caused a bit of an uproar at the time, but does highlight how most of our idea of Hell comes from Dante and not the Bible, which doesn't really describe anything.

Judaism

So in Judaism, if you're really good you go to the World To Come (Olam Haba), in which they will inhabit a Garden-of-Eden-like place, or be cast into the barren Gehenna (Hell). You might get a chance to atone in the after-life though and go through a re-schooling period.

Islam

In Islam the more good deeds you do, the higher your level of Imam and the more Gates of Jannah and Pillars of Islam you observe, the better place you get in heaven. There Gates of Jannah are thus:

• Baaab us-Salaah (prayer)
• Baab ul-Jihad (Jihad gets a bad press, but it's more to do with a struggle than a war. It can be a struggle for a noble cause or promoting peace)
• Baab us-Sadaqah (Charity)
• Baab us-Rayyan (Fasting)
• Baab ul-Hajj (Pilgrimage)
• Baab ul-Aiman (Resisting temptation)
• Baab udn-Dhikr (showing zeal in remembering God)
• Baab ul-Kaazimeenal Ghaiz wal Aafina Anim Naas - (Forgiveness)

If you're bad or don't do enough of these things you go to Jahannam where you will experience

• The burning of skin
• The burning off of all your skin
• Having your skin regrown and then burnt off again
• Garments of fire being put out with boiling water
• Face on fire
• Lips burnt off
• Backs on fire
• Brain boiling
• Being spitroasted (ahem)
• Faces dragged through fire
• Eating the Zaqqum
• Which is a fruit that is really spiky, and really hot and will pierce your tongue and your throat and burn you at the same time as you eat it. It also tastes really bitter, so there. 

Hinduism

They believe in reincarnation whereby you go through the cycle plenty of times until you become one with God. Your body is a shell and you go up and down in the scale of things depending on your Karma. Inbetween each incarnation you  get to experience some punishments or rewards (like a bonus round) depending on your behaviour.

Buddhism

Similar to Hinduism but instead of moving between shells and getting the perfect life right, your soul is on a journey like a cosmic game of snakes and ladders where you're being born into the new life in the same condition as you left the previous one. Eventually you leave the cycle and experience Enlightenment, but you don't become one with God like in Hinduism.

Sikhism

A more structured version of reincarnation: a good live moves you up one level, and a bad life down one. Plants are at the bottom, up through bugs, fish, animals and Humans and then Oneness with God at the top. You also get a choice whether to become One with God or return to serve the people of the planet Earth.

Zoroastrianism

The battle of Good vs Evil exists in everyone and after death the soul lingers on and all the spirits of the good deeds have a massive scrap with the spirits of the bad deeds and the winner drags the soul off to the respective afterlife.

Wiccan

They believe in reincarnation, but in some strains they believe that there are only a set number of Wiccan souls and only Wiccans are reincarnated as Wiccans.

Ancient Norse Religion

If you die in battle as a glorious warrior you go the Valhalla - the Hall of the Slain. If you're average you go to Hel (with one L) - aka the Covered Hall, to be with your loved ones. If you're a bad egg you go to Niflhel where you're punished in the usual ways.

What It Means To Surrender

What It Means To Surrender
As suggested by Christopher Bailey

Surrender, from the Old French surrendre: sur (on, over, above, additional, super) + render (make, give, deliver, cause, become, transform, remove). Although for our purposes: sur (super) + render (give). A super-delivery. Whereby you don't just give something to someone, you super-deliver it, you capitulate it, you surrender it.

Surrender has many meanings. It means many things. Most loosely, it is used commonly in a spiritual, religious or motivational capacity. David Robert Ord of the Compassionate Eye suggests that we often feel out of control in life as if decision are made for us or as if we are stuck in our ruts. In this case, so it goes, we have undergone the wrong kind of surrender. We have rendered ourselves powerless. and what holds us back is our own resistance to the right kind of surrendering: whereby you just don't worry about it, you let things go, let go of the worry and stop being anxious about the outcome of our lives. Thus we reach a state of alert stillness. Eckhart Tolle (who wrote The Power of Now) claims this is needed for a clear look at our lives.

Eckhart Tolle
Knows much about surrender. He was depressed and suicidal for much of his young life. Until he reaches the age of 29. At this point he reaches and epiphany and "surrenders" everything he had: both possessions and emotions to live on a park bench in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, London. To get him out of homelessness and poverty he pens The Power of Now (this is in 1997) and three years later it's on the New York Times bestseller list, since making over 100 bestseller lists to this day and has been translated into 34 languages.

So surrender is to stop worrying and give everything up. It cured Eckhart of his depression. But, in many spiritual philosophies, it's also about realising how you're part of the Universe at large. Uma, part of the basicindia Alternative Living Collective, talks about having enough intelligence to realise that because the universe is so big and you such a tiny cog - there's noneed to worry. Instead let your decisions be influenced by the knowledge that you're just part of a big infinity machine.

Finally, in Christian dialectic, many discuss the concept of surrendering to Christ - whereby you attempt to strip away your self, divest yourself of worries, sins, and even personality and let all your decisions be made instinctually, but instinctually by God's word - He being so powerful that He will fill you with this power and guide you.

Eckhart Tolle

War. Nngh.

Of course, most people think of surrender in the military sense. In unconditional surrender - say - there's no guarantees given to the surrendering party except for those provided by international law.

Two of the biggest unconditional surrenders have been in the American Civil War (what's civil about war?) and WW2.

Union vs Confederacy

In the US Civil War, the Confederacy - 11 slave states (that is where slavery was legal) decided to join forces and attempt to seceed from America. They want to keep slavery and thought that the abolistionists - at the time gaining severe political power - would undermine their way of life and prevent them from owning the slaves that they not only needed but also deserved.

Though, it's easy, with hindsight, to look at these people as evil. Slavery was big business back in the day and it's important to bear in mind that, repugnant, oppresive and universally revilled and condemned though it should be - it was a livelihood to many people of the day. Slaveholders earned their bread and butter, put a roof over their heads through it. Many, both directly and indirectly lived off and relied on the slave trade. Surrendering it meant surrendering their homes and wellbeing.

Also, in such an epoch they believed with almost a religious fervour that the subordination of the black people to the superior race of caucasians was the natural and true order of things. It was God's order, God's word to have slaves. And more: it was mutually beneficial, according to the slave owners, to both owner and slave to recognise this natural order. Although, I don't think the slaves ever got a say in the matter.

1861
There's bitter civil war on the horizon. Soon we'll break into four years of fighting. Lincoln comes to presidency and the Confederacy of Slave States told him to shove his country where the sun don't shine. They're leaving the United States and forming their own country. To spark it all off they attacked Fort Sumter. They surround it and prevent all supplies from getting through. They claim that allowing even food and water in would leave them open to attack. Eventually all it took for the confederacy to secure a surrender is to fire shots at the walls and over the top of the fort. Nobody was killed. That is, until a barrel exploded during the surrender ceremony and killed two Union Soldiers.

1862
At the Battle of Fort Donelson, a Confederate Fort, the Union army surround the fort. On the 12th February (a Wednesday - also birthday of Charles Darwin and pornstar Silvia Saint), the Union army attacks. 

 Charles Darwin

Silvia Saint

Ahem. In only four days General Floyd of the Confederacy knew he'd lost. So he lumps the responsibility on General Pillow and escapes across the river. General Pillow has a look around and decides he doesn't like it much either and gave his power to General Buckner and escapes across the river. Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest is so disgusted at this show of cowardice that he ups sticks and takes off, again over the river, with 700 of his men. He later becomes a the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. 

This left Buckner feeling rather abandoned and sad. So he decides he's the one to start the surrender process. He sends a note to his enemy, General Ulysses S. Grant and asks what their terms of surrender are. Grant and General Smith put their heads together and send a letter back. It reads:

"Sir,

...No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately on your works. I am, Sir: very respectfully, your obediant servant,

Ulysses S. Grant

Brigidier General"

One of my favourite letters. Such a good letter, it convinces Buckner and coins the term "unconditional surrender" for all time. U.S. Grant  is promoted to Major General and the newspaper give him the nickname U.S. Grant: Unconditional Surrender Grant. 

World War II

Although Japan eventually offered an unconditional surrender of their own after they were bombed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - it wasn't always a plan. In fact many of the Allies were a bit dubious about asking for an unconditional surrender. Asking for an unconditional surrender may have extended WW2 and causes more suffering than neccessary. 

Play It Again, Sam

In January 1943, the Allies decided they would only accept an Unconditional Surrender from the Axis at the SYMBOL conference in Casablanca, Morocco. But this creates a problem for the resistance. There are plenty of people in Germany and Nazi-Occupied France and Italy fighting against the fascists, but to what end? Even if they win, the Nazis are overthrown, Hitler and Mussolini killed, in an unconditional surrender they will be as worse off as those they despise - the whole country whether good or bad will be punished, there are no conditions for providing for the "good" guys behind enemy lines, because it is an unconditional surrender. The Nazis capitalised on this, using it in their propaganda and strengthening their cause of fighting to the very last. 

In the end, they did surrender. Mussolini is killed, strung up in the streets and then has his body trampled into the gutter, Hitler talks to his SS doctors and comes up with a plan for him and his fiancee. They marry in the Fuhrerbunker, spent two days hidden away and then simultaneously take cyanide and shoot themselves in the head. Those close to the Fuhrer take the bodies outside, douse them in petrol and set them on fire, eventually burying them in a blast crater. 

The other option is to not surrender and fight until there's no one left to fight. The act of Debellatio (or engaging in a debellation). Usually states surrender before they get to this point, but sometimes (as expressly forbidden by the Geneva Convention and other laws of war) the victor gives what is technically known as No Quarter. Very illegal and morally reprehensible, you slaughter a surrendering party, giving a true unconditional surrender: not even the condition to stay alive. 

Thank goodness that doesn't happen in the modern day. Or does it? In 1958 the United States passed a law forbidding the government to spent any money on researching strategic surrender, whereby surrendering avoids a final battle. Bear that in mind when declaring war on the States, won't you?

If I've ascetic once I've ascetic a thousand times...

There are other forms of surrender too. Asceticism (which means a practice or training) is an abstinence from things in order to prepare for a better life. Just to be clear, ascetics don't do it HAVE a better life, but to prepare for one. They don't consider the practice virtuous in and of itself, but in order to make them ready. Yogi might prepare for enlightenment in this way, or those in monastic life (monks, nuns...) prepare for the afterlife in this way.

Max Weber classified two forms of asceticism. Ausserweltliche - monks and hermits that live in an other world to separate themselves from society. And Innerweltliche - an inner world life - whereby ascetics live in this world and try to make changes for the better of everyone. Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi and St Anthony of the Desert are all mendicants and ascestics to this end.

While we mention St Anthony of the Desert, his life is pretty interesting. He decides to prove himself by striking out into the desert and living as a hermit, but the  pesky devil takes an instant dislike to this goody two-shoes and send images of women and other temptations. Old Tony ignores them all and Satan is sent into such a rage his lays an almighty smack down on the poor bloke, beating him to a pulp in a fistfight. Anthony's friends find him an drag him back home, and patch him up. But not to be deterred, St Ant storms back out further into the desert and holes up in an old Roman fort. Communicating only through a crack in the wall and surviving only on scraps of bread. The Devil tries to flush him out with scary images again, but 'Tone once again resists and Lucifer is finally beaten.

Jubilant, his friends break down the door of the fort and drag him out, expecting him to be wasting away and completely insane - but no, he's fine and St Anthony goes out and starts his own cult. Quite a contender for Dragon's Den. 

The Best 'Til Last

 The final type of surrender I'd like to cover is that of sexual surrender. The D/s (that's Dominant/submissive) lifestyle is not about brutality - although it does involve a lot of hitting people with sticks - but that of a consensual power exchange. In this underworld there are many parallels with how "normal people" (whatever that means) conduct their life. They are built on relationships but also casual encounters, and some making a longer term committment through "collaring" ceremonies, whereby the submissive party recieves a collar and becomes linked to their dominant partner in a form of wedding.

Some people even surrender their humanity in this style of relationship: in Furniphilia, someone enjoys becoming practically an object such as a piece of human-shaped living furniture like a chair or coffee table. 

I am told that the concept of the safe word - much parodied in popular culture - is a much more serious matter than many consider. The use of a safe word is to signify that a dominant party has gone too far without considering the submissive's needs and the relationship has turned into abuse. 

Sado-Cataclysm

This has historical parallels, not only for the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher Masoch (the roots of Sadism and Masochism in Sado-Masochism) but that of medieval Courtly Love. Whereby a knight would demonstrate his love for his betrothed princess by publically humiliating and flagellating himself, cross dressing, beating himself, putting himself in stocks or a pillary - just to show how much he loves her. Aww. 

Finally, I'd like to finish, as usual with a mention of popular culture. Many songs and albums have been written about the concept of surrender and they include:

ALBUMS by Chemical Brothers, Diana Ross, Delby Boone, Sarah Brightman, Jeff Deyo, Javine, Kut Klose, Moonlighters, Camille Jones, Jane Monheit, Hans Christian 

and

SONGS by Ashlee Simpson, Billy Talent, Cheap Trick, the Electric Light Orchestra, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Debbie Harry, Paul Haig, Evanescence, Kasey Chambers, Kut Klose, k.d.lang, Laura Pusini, Perry Como, Roxette, Swing Out Sister, Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers, Trixter, U2, Depeche Mode, Alanis Morisette, the Dropkick Murphys and Rainbow.

Rolf Harris' Portrait of the Queen

Rolf Harris' Portrait of the Queen
As suggested by Michael Keane, actor, real tennis player and cricket tour host from Stockwell, London. 

1926. Elizabeth "Lilibet" Alexandra May Windsor born 21st April, 2:40am, 17 Barton Street, Mayfair by caesarian section - only a lowly Princess of York, 3rd in line to the throne - never expected to take the throne in her lifetime.

Also born in this year: Time Magazine, the Walt Disney Corporation.

1930. Rolf born in Perth, Australia (around the same time as Margaret, the Queen's sister, around the same time that Pluto is discovered. Is the discovery of a cold, hard block of ice floating in the dead of space at all symbollic? We shall see). Rolf is born to Crom and Agnes Harris from Cardiff in Wales. He's named after Rolf Boldrewood (aka Thomas Alexander Browne) who spent 25 years of his life as a squatter, 25 years as a civil servant and the remaining 40 years of his life as a novelist. Boldrewood/Browne is best remembered  for Robbery Under Arms - set in the bush and goldfields of Australia in the 1850s, it follows Dick Marston and his brother Jim in their escapades alongside their cohort Captain Starlight (no, I'm not kidding) whereby they engage in cattle theft and ROBBERY UNDER ARMS. Agnes Harris was rather fond of him and so named her son after the writer..

1934. Queenie meets the future Prince Philip. She's aged 8. Adolf Hitler becomes Fuhrer of Germany. Just saying.

1935. There's a major Royal Rumble. George V dies, King Eddie 8 steps up. Then he meets Wallis Simpson who releases him from an unknown sexual dysfunction through practices learnt in a Chineese brothel - mostly featuring BDSM. At least according to Dr. Alan Campbell - Don Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time. Edward VIII abdicates the throne to marry her. It's her third marriage. Scandal abound. George the VI steps up and becomes King-Emporer of the British Empire. This is all dramatised somewhat notably in a recent filmed play about some speech or another.

1936. Lilibet Windsor meets Phil for the 2nd time. She's aged 11.

1937. Elizabeth meets Philip Mountbatten for the third time - and it's the charm. She falls in love. They begin to exchange letters.

1943. Rolf has his first exhibition in Perth.

1945. The Queen marries Philip. They receive 2500 wedding gifts. 2501 if you include the Blitzkreig bombing of Dresden in Germany.

1946. They have to rush through the paperwork to ensure that their first child, Charles, is born a royal prince. Had that paperwork been later, he wouldn't have had any royal entitlement. Unluckily for us they got it through just in time.

1948. Rolf Harris becomes a swim teacher, then one morning awakes to find himself paralysed in an awake coma. He's rushed to hospital and stays there for several weeks. He has an epiphany to move to London and become an artist. George VI begins to get ill.

1950. He moves to London and becomes and artist. George VI dies.

1951. Rolf stars art school and immediately is offered a job on Fuzz-  a puppet/cartoon show. The Queen has her coronation to co-incide. It annoys Scotland as she picks the regnal name Elizabeth II, and they never had a Liz the 1. The new Prince Philip is a little peeved as they instate the house of Windsor (her name) and not the house of Mountbatten (his name). He laments how he's the only man in the country not to be able to name his children with his own surname.

1952. The new Queen visits Melbourne, Australia (things are starting to become cyclical) and in her honour the Moomba festival starts (we'll revisit this in 1973 with Rolf).

1954. Harris monopolises BBC and ITV - unheard of at this time - he's the only person to appear on the Beeb and commercial TV.

1955. Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport is released, inspired by Harry Belafonte's calypsos. It's about an Australian stockman on his death bed. The recently deceased taunts us from beyond the grave with his seemingly never-ending demands to "Tie me kangaroo down, sport" or "Take me koala back, Jack" or "Play your didgeridoo, Blue." The song culminates in an gruesome orgy of violence as the ghoulish cadaver demands to have his skin rendered from the body and after being skinned, and in a feast of filth have the strips of flesh from his buttocks nailed to the shed wall to cure into leather in the sun. 

Rolf offered four unknown musicians royalties for the song, but they turned him down, thinking the hideous murder ballad would be a flop. They opted for the recording fee of £28.00.

For the song Rolf invents the wobble board - it's made from Masonite (invented 1924 by William H. Mason - and used in construction of houses and toy models. If kept painted it will last the life of the house).

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport inflames the passion of so many women that the oral contraceptive pill moves into the final stages of testing.

1956. Rolf marries his darling Alwen. He appears regularly at Clement Freud's Royal Court Theatre Club in Sloane Square where he serenades the debutantes and their escorts.

1958. Rolf develops a tour in America -a stage show using only Dulux emulsion paint. It is this tour where he hones his catchphrase, "Can you tell what it is yet?" The show is so popular it forces commercial television into Australia.

1959. Rolf pioneers beatboxing, beating Doug E. Fresh, Swifty, Buffy and Wise's 1985 efforts. And they claimed they were the inventors of the form.

1960. Rolf returns to the UK and settles here. This inspires the Beatles to form and release their first record.

1961. Rolf comperes a Beatles show at the Finsbury Park Empire.

1963. Jake the Peg is released. It is voted the fourth best Australian single of all time in a recent poll.

1966. Rolf receives an MBE.

1973. Rolf is crowned King of Moomba, the very festival that Queen Liz 2 inspired in 1952. Official Moomba means, "let's get together and have fun." But in Victorian slang "moom" means "anus" and "ba" means "in." I'll leave you to decipher.

1975. Rolf is given an OBE.

1977. Amthony Blunt is unmasked as a spy. He was in charge of portraits of the Queen. Rolf Harris would later paint a portrait of the Queen, had Blunt been allowed to stay in his position he would have been in a position to pass secrets about Rolf Harris' portrait of the Queen to the Russians.

1979. A man with a starting pistol fires blank shots at the Queen. The Queen is praised for her excellent horsewomanship as she was mounted at the time.

1980. A man breaks into the Queen's bedroom and sits on her bed. They talk for 7 minutes before he is escorted out. Who knows what they discussed.

1991. Rolf Harris' Stairway to Heaven is released and despite major criticism inspires South Africa to end apartheid. Maybe.

1992. Rolf presents Animal Hospital.

1994. Charles and Diana divorce.

1995. Diana is killed in a car crash in Paris.

2001. Rolf is exhibited at the National Gallery, London. 9/11 strikes.

2003. Rolf paints the Queen. Normally the Queen doesn't comment on pictures of her. She makes an exception for Harris. She says it looks friendly.

Ontology, or therein perhaps, The Meaning Of Existence

Ontology
as suggested by Benois Charland, hirsute actor from London and Christopher Bailey, originally from Canada, now of Debden, Essex, and actor and bowling lanes worker with a Starbucks fetish.

Ontology is the domain of what is. An objective reality. Of Epistemology (that's what the chain of events are that lead up to us knowing something). Anything that employs the verb, "to be." It's the study of being and trying to find a catagory to grouup things in.

For example, I can be considered a human, an animal, a caucasian , an actor, a man and an idiot all simultaneously and separately. Am I one? Several? All? None of these things? That's ontology.

Ontology asks us whether the catagroies we put things in are universal. Can a person be good? In what way are apples and oranges different and the same? Is fake money real?

Plato would say that if you give it a name it exists, others would say that when you name something, say a table, its your mind remembering the idea of a table and all the things that make it, well, table-y. As an example, you may not have a "society" because what IS a society, exactly?  Can you hold it in your hand, or paint a picture of it?  No, but it does describe a bunch of people with similar characteristics. This is what we're concerned with in ontology.

People that ascribe to these thoughts are called nomilalists. They'd might say things like, "You don't have universalisms like strength or humanity, they don't exist. Not properly, like." They'd say they are things you can think about, oh yes, you can think about them, but not have them. Not really hold them tight.

So, if ontology is looking at how we group things - how DO we group things?

Bundle 

Well, there's the elegantly named bundle theory, where you, yknow, bundle things together. Like a
philosophical fruit salad.

Dialectics

Or there's peer-to-peer comparisons, or if you will, dialectics. Which is basically down to how you argue things out. A dialectic is an argument between two people who want the same thing. That's a different thing to a debate.

A Debate
 
Which is where you want to tell someone their wrong. Again and again. Year after grinding year. Dialectics vs debates, like a first date vs marriage.

Value

Then there's value theory. In this we go, "That power station will give electric power to the masses." But then someone else goes, "Yes, but it'll also turn the children into snake-skinned, bug-eyed Susan-Boyle-a-likes, but with the legs of a raptor and with the ability to see round corners." Through this informed discussion, we work out how valuable something is.

Finally, Metaphorical consideration

"I won an argument." What's an argument? "Something that you win or lose." Oh.
 
OK

But all of these are just methods we use to work out what a thing is worth, what a thing means, or even what a thing is. It's what-ness, it's thing-ness. It's quidditas. 

Let's look at where ontology comes from and what it contains.

Monism

 Which says that everyone and everything is part of everyone and everything. The universe is one whole thing and we're just cogs inside it. We don't have a beginning or end as we're just a continuation of the eternal.

Ontological pluralism

The opposite of Monism. There are loads of things and we're different people from one day, or one second, to the next.


We've said how Plato talked of all nouns existing because they are nouns, but then Aristotle went on to say that we should look at the ways in which everything is connected property of everything that's even existed.


Conclusion

And that's your primer on ontology - the method of grouping things and understanding what exists and how exists and if anything doesn't exist. Now you may think I've got some of this wrong, but as they say - just because it's wrong doesn't mean it's not true. If you fancy providing any examples or counterexamples to say I'm wrong I would like to assure you that your counterexamples depend on construing my thesis in a way I had not intended. I intended my thesis to be no counterexamples and to always be right.

Welcome to ontology.


PS How many existentialists does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change it and the other to notice how the lightbulb represents a beacon of subjectivity illuminating the Cosmic Netherworld.

Cheese Consumption

 Cheese Consumption
 As requested by David "Gubba" Gubb, originally from Norwich, now a Regulatory Operations Associate in Peterborough. He was once the president of the oldest rowing club in the world - Braesenose College, Oxford.

Cheese is a collective name for milk-based food products. The word cheese comes from a proto-Indo-European word, "kwat" meaning, "ferment" or "sour."

According to Pliny the Elder, cheese was a sophisticated enterprise even by the founding of the Roman Empire, and so predates recorded history. Some propose cheese was discovered between 8000-3000BCE.

The legend of cheese runs that an Arab trader was storing milk in a container made from the inflated stomach of a sheep when the rennet in the organ turned the milk to cheese.

Ancient Greek myth (circa 800BCE) credits Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. And bee-keeping. And how to make nets. Busy guy. But not all his idea. He was taught this by the Myrtle-nymphs (the nymphs of the flower Myrtle, if you must know. A plant related to eucalyptus).

However, it was the Romans that spread cheese like some lurid amused bovine spread across Europe. And with the fall of the Roman Empire (on September 4th, 476ACE - a Monday. Ever since, Mondays have never been the same again) people could no longer engage in long-distance cheese trade, or gamble of cheese futures. Presumably one of the few things you could engage in 1500 years ago. This meant they had to spend their time developing their own cheeses.

Britain leads the way in diversification of cheese with over 700 different cheeses (and these only the ones that are officially recognised). France and Italy have about 400 apiece.

Whilst on France, indeed, Charles DeGalle - a staunch favourite of Phil Mann's Full Minds (Phil Menn's Full Mind?) and classic Frenchman that everyone outside France loves to hate, once asked of his own country, "How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?" I guess you had to be there.

Making Cheese

This is hideous. To make cheese you must seperate the milk into curds and whey by souring the milk with vinegar, acid or bacteria and adding rennet. Some cheese-making bacteria is related to menigitus, pneumonia or necrotising fasciitis (that's the real-life zombie flesh-eating disease to you and me.) Think about that the next time you're scoffing down some Port Salut.

It's this bacteria that when reacting and producing carbon dioxcide creates the holes in Swiss cheese.

The cheese is now curd (a lumpy white thing) and the whey (the white juice like you get in sealed packed of mozzerella) is removed. This whey is used as an additive in processed foods, dried and sold as body-building powder or you can drink it. In fact in the 1700s they enjoyed this particularly delightful beverage.

Chin Chin

Take a quantity of whey - or cheese juice.
Mix it with white wine.
Pour in boiling water like you're making a nice cuppa
Syphon and sieve off the curd and sediment that settles at the bottom (yum!)
Add a few teaspoons of sugar (this for the builders among you)
A dash of lemon balm and a slice of lemon.
"Enjoy" your hot, cheesy, lemony, alcoholic soup in a traditional wooden tankard.

Anyway

Some cheese are just drained, salted, packaged and sold. Others have to be heated, stretched, cheddared, washed, salted, ripened, have mold spore cultures prepared and added and preserved through chemicals. To cheddar a cheese you must chop off the corners while it's setting and reform it several times. This stops the edges drying out.

The softness of a cheese is determined by its water content. Cheeses with a slightly higher water content are better for melting and employed usefully in snacks on toast. These semi-soft-to-firm cheeses like Emmental, Gruyere, Gouda, Edam, Jarlsberg and Cantal are perfect.

Processed Cheese

...has an extended shelf-life, resistance to seperation and a strong uniformity. Like the Red Army. It's made by taking normal cheese and adding unfermented cheese, emulsifiers, salt, colouring, whey, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, tartrate and citrate, cream, milkfat, water and spices. There are three types of processed cheese.

1. Pasturised processed cheese
2. Pasturised processed cheese food (which MUST contain at least 51% "optional cheese ingrediants")
3. Pasturised processed cheese food spread (which MUST be spreadable at room temperature and less than 60% water).

Cheeses

Stilton is a village near Peterborough, once famed for its cheese and an important coach stop on the Great North Road as it is 70 miles North of London. Daniel Defoe was fond of Stilton's cheesy comestables.

Although this small market village progenated Stilton cheese it is FORBIDDEN BY LAW to make it there. Due to the cynically and ironically named Protected Geographical Status of the cheese, you can only make Stilton cheese in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire but NOT in North-West Cambridgeshire where Stilton actually is.

Cheese Consumption

The list of those making the most cheese contains few surprises:

1. The United States of America - 4,275,000 metric tonnes
2. Germany - 1,927,000t
3. France - 1,884,000t
4. Italy - 1,149,000t
5. Netherlands - 732,000t

Although if you think French cheese is incredibly expensive and over-priced - then you're entirely correct in this sweeping assumption. If you were to display that chart in terms of monetary value then France would move from third to first.

France is also the world's biggest exporter of cheese, although to give you an idea of scale, it's the third most prolific cheese maker in the world and only exports one third of its cheese.

Ireland, on the other hand exports 75% of its cheese. Probably because even the Irish won't eat it. Even more unsurprisingly, America makes the most cheese. But exports very little. Remember that in just a moment, won't you?

In terms of cheese eating (consumption) - France surprises us again by not being number 1. Greece leads the way here. Every person in Greece (on average) eats 30kg of cheese a year, where feta cheese acccounts for three quarters of this. That's 62 grams of feta a day. The weight of a tub of hairgel, or the average man's wrist watch. A wristwatch of cheese a day keeps the (somethingsomething) away. In France they eat 24.6kg of cheese a year.

America is 13th on the list, consuming 15kg per year per person. But let's recap. So on the first list we found out that America makes more cheese than anyone else in the world. But they only consume the 13th highest amount in the world. So what happens to the rest of it? Well they don't pack it off to starving Africa as we've already found out that America exports very little of their cheese.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO AMERICAS CHEESE? Presumably its being piled up somewhere in a vast resevoir. A huge mountain of cheese looming over the American people.

Just to finish up, I'd like to answer a few questions about cheese.

Can you freeze cheese?
Yes, please.

At what temperature should I serve cheese?
Well if you're going to do it properly, take it out of the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature before serving. It improves the flavour.

Is the moon made of cheese?
Don't be like the wolf. There's an old folktale about how an animal often preyed on by wolves (let's call her a hen) tricks the wolf into thinking that the reflection of the moon in a deep well is actually a cheese floating in it. And as wolves love cheese more than they love the hunting and catching of small flightless birds, the wolf literally leaps at the opportunity and drowns horrifically like in all the best children's tales.

Can you make Human cheese?
Well, kinda. You have to add a bit of cows milk as human milk is a little low of protein. It is possible though. Apparrently its quite sweet.

When did our most famous cheeses come about?
Cheddar was invented circa 1500, Permesan in 1597, Gouda in 1697 and Camenbert in 1791.