Steven Colborne's Blog, page 60

A Lightbulb Moment

Hi friends. I’ve spent quite a lot of time on YouTube over the last few days, as I signed up for a free trial of YouTube Premium. This means no ads and a considerably better viewing experience. While using YouTube without ads has been wonderful, I’ve still found myself skipping around content quite a lot looking for videos that will educate or inspire me.

And, WOW. I stumbled upon something which had a profound impact on me. I have for many years been a supporter of the idea of a justice system that rehabilitates rather than punishes. As I explained in this post from 2012, I feel that aggressive forms of punishment for criminals only continue the cycle of bullying, fear, anger, and hatred, and do little to rectify society’s ills.

When I spotted a video this evening on YouTube entitled How Norway Designed a More Humane Prison, my interest was piqued. I think that the idea of compassionate justice is so alien to us in the West that I had never really considered places of imprisonment could be humane to this degree.

What the video made me realise is that so much of what I struggle with on a daily basis comes from fear of the kind of violence and oppression that is commonplace in prisons in Britain and America. Please don’t get me wrong. I haven’t committed any crimes. But I realised I have been living for many years with a subconscious fear of accidentally breaking the law in some way and ending up in a prison where I would suffer violence and intimidation.

If Britain were to introduce prisons of the kind featured in this video, it would be liberating in a way that could be really transformative. That underlying sense of fear — which is perpetuated by the media, I might add — would be lifted, and I for one would feel so much freer — not free to commit crimes, but free to just relax and focus on contributing to society in a positive way. I feel that without the fear of harsh imprisonment I would actually be a kinder and better person, because, paradoxically, fear of being bullied is actually the cause of most bullying.

This really is a life-changing moment for me, and I hope some of you, after watching the video below, will feel the same way. I immediately feel more motivated to campaign for humane prisons in the UK, and I really hope some of my American readers will be inspired by this video, because I know rates of incarceration in the States are especially high.

As I write this I have a vision of a future where populations do not live in fear of punishment, and where this actually reduces rather than increases crime. Wow, this is huge for me. I’m realising that prisons are a major cause of crime rather than functioning to prevent it. Crikey, praise God for this revelation.

I’ll leave the comments open below and you’re welcome to share your thoughts.

Here’s the video:

(Image by Pavlofox from Pixabay)

Two Possibilities

God is truly amazing, and yet all of God’s intricate, complex, and extravagant work is ultimately meaningless. I have written in my books about how this might be a kind of agony for God, although I believe God’s ultimate nature is perfect bliss, and that He is complete in a way that cannot be easily grasped by finite minds.

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible talks about how everything that happens has already happened before, and that there is nothing new under the sun. If this is true, it might be immensely frustrating for God. For if God cannot do anything new, how can He remain inspired, excited, and stimulated for billions upon billions of years?

I find in creation significant evidence that God has been playing the game of life for an incredibly long time. When we look, for instance, at the way global news stories unfold, and the way technology advances, there is a gradual and systematic unfolding of the events in history that is surely the work of a Master Craftsman.

Consider for a moment the history of the last two thousand years, and the billions of people who have lived and died in that time, all contributing something different to God’s plan for Earth. And then consider that we are inhabitants of one planet out of possibly billions. The story of the universe is so epic that it puts a Tolkien or Lucas story to shame.

The countless stories within stories, and the way in which complex and diverse storylines fit together in the microcosm and the macrocosm, reveals a kind of intelligence so vast that it baffles the mind. And yet, I suspect that the story of the entire evolution of our planet is a relatively simple thing to God, because where we experience novelty and change, really God is employing the same techniques over and over again with only superficial variations, as might be compared to an aged composer who, having studied the intervals between notes for a lifetime, has become a master of the mechanics of the way in which musical notes communicate, and is able to churn out song after song with great ease.

If God has created everything which it is possible to create, I consider that there are two possibilities. One is that God is bored to the point of agony, and yet continues to create simply for something to do. The other is that creation forever remains an interesting, exciting, and joyful process for God, and that He delights ceaselessly in the new iterations of beings and things that He creates.

Which of these two possibilities represents the truth about God is possibly the single most important question I find myself asking as I mature as a philosopher and theologian. For if God suffers, it makes sense that we suffer, because God has frustration which He needs to vent. On the other hand, if God doesn’t suffer, and all is perpetually joyful for Him, then our suffering is much more likely to be only a stepping stone towards a happy resolution which God will manifest — and that we will enjoy — at some time in the future when this particular iteration of God’s grand game is brought to a conclusion.

The Madness of Science

Scientific exploration, particularly in the domain of physics, can be summarised as the investigation into what causes what. Hugely influential ideas in the contemporary scientific paradigm, such as evolution, genetics, and the Big Bang theory, all have this methodology at their core.

According to my own philosophical perspective, however, there is one cause of all supposedly differentiated processes, which is God. From this viewpoint, the past doesn’t cause the future, but instead there is only a present moment unfolding in which change, wherever it takes place, is directed and animated by God.

This perspective, a kind of ‘occasionalism’, says that an event will only happen on any occasion if God wills and directs it to take place. The so-called ‘laws of physics’ are not absolute, and can be overruled by God at any time, which is what happens in the case of events that religious people often describe as miracles.

The cause and effect paradigm has become deeply embedded in the contemporary zeitgeist, so that we speak about nearly every event in terms of what caused it. But this is a kind of madness — if I choose to do a little dance around my living room right now, could anyone seriously argue that my every gesture is merely the result of a chain of causes and effects leading back to the first moment of our universe’s creation?

Surely, such a perspective is wildly irrational. The correct perspective is radically different: The solution to the scientific problem of what causes what is simply that God causes everything. I wholeheartedly believe this to be true, and if you closely examine your present moment experience, you may discover this truth for yourself.

For an in-depth exploration of the perspective that God is in control of everything that happens, including how this perspective relates to science and leading world religions including Christianity, please do check out my 2019 book entitled God’s Grand Game: Divine Sovereignty and the Cosmic Playground.

(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

The Paid Work Dilemma

In this post, I’m going to offload some frustration which has really been getting me down recently. This article is more about my life circumstances than philosophy or theology, so feel free to skip this post if you follow this blog for the philosophy and are not particularly interested in my life struggles.

I have prayed to God dozens, possibly hundreds of times, about whether I should begin working again. He makes me feel excited about the possibility of working, then brings fears to my mind in relation to how stressed I would be and how it could lead to financial instability and a lot of headaches. These two polar opposite feelings plague me on a daily basis and have done, on and off, since about 2008.

For those of you who don’t know, the reason why I have been out of work for some time is because I have a mental health condition, diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder, for which I take medication and have been hospitalised on several occasions.

I did actually register as self-employed a few years ago with the intention of starting a small business offering web-related services, but I was living in a five bedroom ‘supported housing’ mental health property at the time, and everything felt so unstable that it just wasn’t viable to work, so shortly after registering I wrote to HMRC (who administer taxes in the UK) to revoke my self-employment status.

Even prior to that, when I was living in a different shared house between about 2010-2012, I thought seriously about self-employment, and even made some business planning and strategy documents.

For whatever reason, God always seems to take me to the brink of self-employment, but I am never able to go through with it. When I’ve prayed about it, God has promised me that I will never work again, so that is always at the forefront of my mind when I’m considering what to do. I just wish, if God’s promise is true, He wouldn’t continually give me feelings of enthusiasm about the possibility of working.

I never really get bored, because I have this blog, my books, my music, Tealight Books (my publishing imprint), and some other projects which excite me and stimulate me creatively. I’m not a lazy person, and enjoy working, but it’s very different working on what are essentially hobbies, to undertaking paid work and the responsibility that brings.

Sometimes I feel I am well enough to work, even though I’m taking some really unpleasant medication with all its side effects. At other times, I feel work would be too difficult, what with my troublesome neighbours making so much noise, the medication, the risk of sacrificing my government financial support, and the risk of having a relapse of schizoaffective disorder.

There is also a significant stigma surrounding people with mental health problems working, and I do worry that this could affect the number of clients I get. It’s true that I don’t necessarily have to disclose my mental health problems as part of my business activities, but it only takes a bit of online research for people to find this blog or my book The Philosophy of a Mad Man, and then it becomes clear that I’ve had mental health problems, which will no doubt put some people off wanting to work with me.

The considerations outlined in this article are continually in my thoughts, and as much as I pray about it, God never gives me peace of mind over my circumstances. My thoughts always seem to come back to God’s promise that I will never work again, which I feel I have to trust, even though it very often seems counter-intuitive, and is very difficult to explain to others, such as my atheist care coordinator, my atheist doctor, or other people in my support network.

The arguments for and against undertaking paid work feel about 50/50, but what always sways it for me is when God brings to mind His promise that I will never work again. I do sometimes wonder whether I should see God giving me this conviction as part of my mental illness, but He never gives me clarity in relation to this, so I am always frustrated and confused.

I have so much to be thankful for in terms of the way God provides for me materially with food and shelter, and enough money (at present from State benefits) to be able to live comfortably. I mean, I have to be careful with my finances and I normally only spend £1-2 per meal, but that doesn’t bother me at all as I’m happy to live frugally and in a very basic way.

It may be that if we get a Labour government there will be reforms to the welfare system that will make this predicament easier and enable me to see a solution. But I fear our country has become so morally corrupt and spiritually lost that we may well end up with another Conservative government after the General Election in December. If that happens, I will pretty much lose all hope for the future of the UK.

I do always remind myself that God is above all these circumstances and that He is working out a plan for my life and for the world with great care. I just wish I was able to feel a sense of peace in relation to my day to day living and financial situation.

I suppose it’s part of human nature to always strive for more peace and stability, and I guess that’s what I’m doing when I’m wrestling with all these issues. If I felt able to commit to Christianity, I wouldn’t be struggling with these issues nearly as much, although these struggles would be replaced with a different set of struggles, of course (I know because I spent years as a Christian).

Well, that’s a snapshot of my life which should help you to understand why in my last post I wrote about the fact I’m feeling very frustrated. Thanks for reading, and prayers are always appreciated.

Peace and blessings,

Steven

Why Are You Cruel, Lord?

I feel incredibly frustrated and rather angry. All I want is to feel peace and joy. I know, Lord God, that You could grant this for me easily. I have suffered too much, Lord, and I don’t want to harm or enslave or punish anyone, all I want is peace.

I’m so tired of struggling, Lord, of all the depression and fear and confusion. I don’t know what the solution is, except I know how very easy it would be for You to grant me this and answer my prayers.

You are in control of all things, Lord, and You choose to make me suffer. It’s so frustrating, Lord. Why are You cruel, Lord? I honestly don’t understand. It seems so unnecessary. Have You created us only to make us suffer, Lord? Why would You be so cruel?

Please, God, reconsider. Choose peace and love and mercy, over fear, anxiety, frustration, and punishment. I know I must trust in Your wisdom, Lord. But I’ve had enough. I want my suffering to end.

Noughts and Ones

It’s no secret that I have significant fears about the role of technology in our lives. Those of you who have listened to my song Machines Taking Over the World will know this is a big issue for me.

Well, today I had someone come to my flat to fix a problem in the bathroom. Before he carried out the work (it was a very simple fix) he got a tablet out of his bag and started answering questions on the screen. He voiced his frustration at the fact that, even as a plumber, the digital world has made his job more difficult in certain ways.

I voiced my sympathy with the plumber, and said the following:

The problem with technology, and machines, is that they make everything black and white, whereas in reality, life isn’t black and white.

I think this argument sums up why machines will never be able to do so many things as well as human beings. Scientists often get very enthusiastic about the capabilities of artificial intelligence to carry out a range of tasks, but anyone who has ever used technology will appreciate that it goes wrong so much of the time for this exact reason: organic beings do not do things in binary ways. There are always infinite possibilities regarding how events can unfold in any given situation. Computers simply can’t cope with that, and they never will be able to.

Now I’m not anti-technology per se; I love my MacBook and my iPhone which improve my life in many ways. But I will keep making the argument that technology should be employed in a strictly limited and controlled way if we are to avoid colossal societal catastrophes in the future due to a simple ‘nought’ or ‘one’ being out of place somewhere.

The over-excitement that many tech enthusiasts feel about AI makes me very angry, because I can clearly see that these people haven’t fully considered the consequences of their actions. Making machines that are ever more powerful is something that many people lust over, but it’s a kind of insanity that may prove catastrophic in the near future if we’re not careful. We have to learn to use technology only when it is advantageous to human (or creaturely) flourishing, not just because it boosts our egos to know that we have created something powerful.

You Never Know (poem)

You never know when someone

May catch a dream from you

You never know when a little word

Or something you might do

May open up a window

Of the mind that seeks the light

The way you live might not matter at all

But then again it might.

It might.

And just in case it could be

That another’s life through you

Could possibly change for better

With a broader brighter view

It seems it might be worth a try

At pointing the way to right

Of course it might not matter at all

But then again it might.

It might.

And one day when I’m older

And my life is nearly through

I’ll reminisce over challenges

And the light that got me through

I’ll know I’ve always done by best

To follow the road that’s right

The way I lived might not matter at all

But then again it might.

It might.

© Steven Colborne 2007

The above poem is an adaptation of a poem I found online by an unknown author. Many of the words, including the entire third stanza, were written by me.

My version of the poem was birthed during a period of intense breakdown and spiritual searching in the aftermath of my mother’s death. I wrote a musical accompaniment to this poem which I recorded for a YouTube channel, but I was feeling so much emotional pain when I recorded it that I could hardly sing. The song is ‘unlisted’ on YouTube because I’m quite embarrassed about sharing it, but if you’d like to view/listen you can do so here.

A Gift to my Readers

Greetings, all! I mentioned yesterday that I would post again with details of the price promotion I’m running for my new book, Big Ideas from Ancient Greece. I’m thrilled to announce that for a very limited time the Kindle version of the book is available as a free download from the Amazon website.

Click here to view the book on Amazon

The chapter listing for the book (not including front and end matter) is as follows:

1. Is Everything Made of Water?


Thales of Miletus

2. Reality as Numbers

Pythagoras of Samos



3. A God Unlike His Creatures

Xenophanes of Colophon



4. Rivers of Change

Heraclitus



5. Do Ideas Exist in Reality?

Parmenides



6. Infinite Wisdom

Zeno of Elea

7. Can We Know Anything?

Socrates

8. A Realm of Forms


Plato

9. All Things Have Purpose

Aristotle

10. The Theory of Atoms


Democritus



11. God and Hedonism


Epicurus

12. A Radical Philosopher

Diogenes of Sinope


I hope you find the book to be an interesting and thought-provoking read. A lot of effort went into producing this book (from both me and my editor) and I kindly ask that if you enjoy it, please consider leaving a positive review on Amazon as this will go a long way in helping me to reach new readers.

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To download the Kindle edition of the book for free, click this link which should direct you to your local Amazon store.

You don’t even need a Kindle device to download and read this book, as Amazon offers free software for reading Kindle eBooks on pretty much any device out there, whether it be your PC, Mac, or smartphone. Here’s an article explaining how to download the software for various different devices.

Finally, if you have any philosophically inclined friends, please let them know about this offer and please also consider putting out a tweet, a repost, or an Instagram mention, as this will help me greatly with my promotional efforts.

Any questions, let me know in the comments. God bless you and I’ll see you again soon!

Less Chaos, More Perfect (I hope!)

Good morning, people. How are you? Ready to tackle a new week? Thankfully, mine is off to a good start. A representative of my landlord came early this morning to do some repairs in my flat. There are some fairly substantial cracks in the walls that needed filling. I know that sounds major, but the surveyor had said the damage was cosmetic rather than structural, so that was a relief, and I guess I have to trust his judgment. In any case, it’s great to have those repairs out of the way, and the guy doing the work was a friendly chap so we had a good chat. Praise God for His grace on a Monday morning!

If you visit the homepage of my blog you’ll see that I’ve been doing something of a repair job myself, albeit a virtual one rather than a physical one. I was feeling that my blog was becoming bloated with links, and I don’t want the experience of visiting Perfect Chaos to be a confusing one. I already have my website where I share my music, my YouTube channel, and various other projects, and I felt like linking to all that content from Perfect Chaos as well as my website was doubling up and probably overkill. The last thing I want is to confuse the people who kindly take the time to visit my blog. So, I have stripped things back to the bare essentials — Perfect Chaos will be focused on my written work (mainly articles related to philosophy and theology, as well as info about my books) and those who are interested in my other activities can follow me on the relevant websites elsewhere on the interweb. Is this a good plan?

I will not be too rigid in terms of posting only about philosophy and theology, as this blog is also about my life in general and it’s important to me to be able to share life stuff as well as intellectual stuff. But I think the changes I’ve made make things a lot simpler and clearer. I hope you agree.

I’m excited to be running the price promotion on my new book Big Ideas from Ancient Greece from tomorrow, so I’ll post about that in more detail in the coming days. It’s a lovely little book and I do hope some of you will read it, but I know we’re all bombarded with book releases these days and only have so much time. The book was professionally designed and edited by my superstar editor, and I believe it’s a high quality release albeit a relatively short one. For a preview of the book, go here.

What do you have planned for this week? Do let me know in the comments, and also let me know if you have any feedback or advice in relation to the tidier look and focus of this blog and the changes I’ve made. God bless you and I’ll see you soon.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Sharing More of What Matters

Greetings, all. The last few days have been unexpectedly wonderful for me. It feels strange to write that, considering all that’s going on in the UK with the Brexit crisis, but, of course, knowing that a God exists who is above any political and economic difficulties means that I’m probably a lot less fearful and depressed than many of my fellow countrymen and women.

The reason why I say things have been ‘wonderful’ is because the Lord prompted me to revisit a bunch of CDs that have been gathering dust in my flat ever since I moved in (and were in my previous accommodation before I moved here). The CDs include backups of files from old computers that I’ve owned, as well as the master recordings from music projects I’ve been involved in in the past, and some miscellaneous stuff, including music by friends I used to work with, and some photography projects I was once involved in.

I purchased an external CD player on Amazon that I could plug into my MacBook, and started working my way through all these CDs, inspecting the contents of each one. It was an incredibly interesting and enlightening endeavour, and I loved the process of rediscovering all this creative work and deciding what might still be relevant and useful.

One of the highlights was finding lots of music and videos from my old band, Marconi’s Voodoo. This is work that I put a huge amount of love and time and effort into, but that has never found an audience due to the fact that the band split up and parted ways before we had a strategy for releasing it.

Also amongst the content on the CDs was poems, erotic writings (!), letters of complaint to various people, artistic creations, and a whole lot more. I’m prayerfully and thoughtfully considering how I’m going to use all of this wonderful content which captures in a significant way my raison d’être — the reason why God created me.

I’m so very proud of and excited by all this content, but I want to share it with others in such a way that important things don’t get lost (due to me sharing too much at once), and I also want to put it all in context and explain why so much of it is very relevant to the current political situation in the UK and across the world.

I already added an Art page to the blog this week, so that’s a start. And I’ve been working on collating and organising the whole body of musical works that I’ve created and contributed to, so I’ll be sharing more about that soon too. The difficulty is trying to find a way of sharing all this stuff that doesn’t make me seem like yet another person hustling to try and become rich and famous. I have no desire for wealth or fame — all of my creative work has always been about honest expression and changing the world for the better.

I hope that the pieces of work that I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks will be of interest to you, and I also hope to engage with some of you in relation to your own content, as blogging should never be a one-way-street, and I know what a talented and creative bunch my readers are. Things have been rather hectic of late, so if I’m behind on ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’ on your blog posts, please don’t be mad at me, I’m doing my best to keep up.

The last thing I’d like to mention (I almost forgot!) is that my new book ‘Big Ideas from Ancient Greece’ is now available and I’m going to be running a price promotion on that book in the coming week. So stay tuned if you’re interested in reading it. Here’s a link to its page on Amazon where you can check out the cover, blurb, etc.

God bless you and have a wonderful week. I’ll be posting again soon.

Image by Rayna Bauman from Pixabay