It seemed appropriate that for my first proper Substack piece I provide an account of myself. What follows is an edited and updated version of some personal details which originally appeared in various forms on my Wordpress website (numbered footnotes here are explanatory or new commentary).
First off is a new version of the ‘About me’ page from the website:
I’m a graduate of the University of Edinburgh (yes, I’m Scottish. And I’m called Daniel James Sharp- hi!) and I fancy myself a little bit of a writer. I’m deluded, clearly, but aren’t we all in some way? One of my dreams is to be an old-fashioned journalist, of the sort one reads about in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. If anyone out there wants to send me on a trip to Iraq (a beautiful country, and a dream destination of mine) to cover conflict and politics, well, it’s your lucky day. (As long as you cover all expenses of course, most of which will be cigarettes and social lubrication i.e. alcohol).
To give you a sense of myself, I’ll list some of my viewpoints briefly. I’m a humanities graduate with a love of and interest in the sciences, particularly evolutionary biology. I think much of the academic community in the humanities is unduly threatened by what they label ‘scientism’- which doesn’t really exist and is just a scare word thrown around by the threatened.1 To me, humanities subjects and the sciences should be far more intertwined- there’s so much to learn from each other! I suppose I favour a ‘Third Culture’ along the lines of John Brockmann’s online salon.
I’m a philosophical naturalist, atheist, sceptic, humanist, secularist and all-around ‘passionate rationalist’ in the words of Richard Dawkins. I’m rather fond of the so-called New Atheist writers: Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others. I was President of the University of Edinburgh Atheist, Humanist, and Secularist Society, and am or have been a member of Humanists UK, Humanist Society Scotland, the National Secular Society, the Scottish Secular Society, and the Edinburgh Secular Society (phew!). So I hope that gives you some idea of where I stand on certain issues.
I also love literature- poetry, plays, and prose are lovely things to spend one’s life studying. I often find myself bewailing the fact that there’s just so much to read and so little time. Not to mention my other interests- scientific writings, TV, film, and more. Such a short life, so much to do… (Probably that means I should quit smoking to extend the old lifespan, but ah well.) I’m a fan of the BBC’s Doctor Who and some of my other favourite writers include (here is a miscellaneous and far from exhaustive list, and one in no particular order): John Donne, Ian McEwan, Muriel Spark, George Orwell, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, Evelyn Waugh, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Jerry Coyne, Saul Bellow, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Timothy Conigrave, Jonathan Rauch, A.C. Grayling, Ian Fleming, Omar Khayyám, Shakespeare (I studied literature, what do you expect?), Thomas Hardy, Mary Renault, Joseph Conrad, and many, many others. Generally, I love a lot of different authors, and I’m always looking to expand the list.
A word on pictures. The website2 icon is the famous Pale Blue Dot picture of Earth from a long way away, and the main picture above the site title is of The Day the Earth Smiled, another picture of our planet taken by a probe very far away. To me, these images speak to the importance of humanism, compassion, and reason. Carl Sagan’s words on the first of these images encapsulate these ideals perfectly, and never fail to fill me with awed humility. The latter picture is also of personal importance to me as my father and I, shortly before he died, looked up from our beloved St Andrews pier as it was taken (if I recall correctly, I also had my telescope with me, but I wasn’t very proficient with it and the conditions weren’t great to see much, in any case. Still, I, perhaps we- memory fails me on the exact details- tried to look up, telescopically, at the time- but either way, we looked up with our naked eyes at least). This was on our last trip to that beautiful place, so the photo may well be the last picture of us together.
Another personal cosmic tale, since we’re on the subject. Around the same time as that final trip to St Andrews, my Dad and I had our names and messages added to the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which sent back samples in December 2020 having completed a mission to a nearby asteroid, which I have just read is ‘potentially hazardous’ to us. Since June 2018, then, our names and messages have been floating about in space, near to an asteroid that may well kill a lot of us one day.3 Let’s not be too pessimistic, though. Here are our messages:
My message: ‘For whom it may concern: hello, greetings and well done.’
Dad’s message: ‘God Bless Danny, Aileen [my mother], Sasha [our dog, now passed away] and all my family. 12/07/13.’
I have the certificates to prove it (though the asteroid’s name has been changed since 2013). Going by the page linked to above, I think our messages will be returning to Earth with the craft, rather than staying up there, which is quite a nice round trip for me and my Dad I think.
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Secondly, here is a new version of a March 2019 piece from my site, reflecting on churches, tragedies, and comedies in my life (the immediate reflections and dates are from 2019, bear in mind):
The boring and basic stuff first. The name’s Sharp, Daniel James Sharp. The ‘James’ is from my father, who was known as Jim. I was born in Falkirk, which as anyone from Falkirk will tell anyone not from Scotland, is about halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I currently live at home in Fife (The horror! The horror!) which is on the east coast of the country. My mother, named Aileen, moved back to her hometown in Fife, where much of her family still lives, in 2016. It was sad saying farewell to Falkirk, where I’d lived all my life, and since 2016 I have found myself living in Fife and Edinburgh as occasion demands.4
The Forth Rail Bridge is not far from here, and whenever I cross it on the train to Edinburgh I can’t help but gaze at the astonishing views on either side of me. It really is beautiful, particularly in the summer early evening and dusk, just when the light is fading to night.
The reason I am currently living at home is my appendix. Last summer I was living in an overpriced flat in Edinburgh (they all are) when, a few days after returning from a trip to Turkey, I found myself in paroxysms of pain and sickness. I went to hospital, was informed it was food poisoning, and was sent back to my flat with anti-sickness pills and the like. They didn’t do much good. The next day or the day after (I can’t remember which) I felt marginally better. Now that I reflect on it this was probably the brief relief period some sufferers of appendicitis experience when the organ in question has burst and its contents are spilling out their poison into one’s organs. I managed to get a train home, spent a night in excruciating pain (the relief period isn’t very relieving anyway, and does not last long) before going to another hospital nearby and being whisked quickly away to yet another hospital in Kirkcaldy for emergency surgery.
My appendix had burst- and it had burst bad. No easy keyhole surgery and a couple of days recovery for me; rather, I was sliced open in the operating theatre and spent weeks in hospital recovering from infections and sepsis, being pumped full of antibiotics and unable to eat or move without a lot of pain. Once I was on the mend somewhat, thanks to the efforts of the wonderful National Health Service, I was able to go home, but even then was in pain and had to spend weeks carrying around a Vac, which is a small square machine attached to one’s wounds by a tube, which uses negative pressure therapy, whatever that is, to aid healing. I became quite attached to it in the end, named it Vic the Vac, but was soon well enough to have it removed. Then, weeks in bandages. Now, just an ugly remnant wound and scar tissue.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose, though I remain quite annoyed that I never got to see my removed appendix as I hoped I would, and baffled that such a nearly useless organ, on its way out evolutionarily, can cause so much pain and suffering. Given how many people died from its nefarious activities before modern medical advances, and how easy it still is to die from a burst appendix today, and how horrific an experience it is even in the best of medical hands, the appendix serves nicely as yet another weapon in the (already well-stocked) armoury of the case against ‘intelligent design’ (otherwise known as creationism, though ID advocates like the fatuous Michael Behe try their best to hide from the embarrassment this old term brings them, whilst still occasionally making a fool of themselves and their now not-so-new appellation anyway).
So, of course, I had to take this year out of university and leave the flat I was renting. Instead of approaching the end of the third of my four years of studying, I am now waiting, with considerable time on my hands, to re-enter my course in September. Another year behind, alas, is nothing new to me.
This is because I’m already several years behind where a typical person who’d finished school and gone to university at my age (which, I hate to be reminded, is twenty-three) would be. Brace yourselves for some more painful recollections.
I left school in 2012, which already feels too long ago5, in my fifth year (which is the second last year of secondary education in Scotland, where one gains the Scottish equivalent of A-levels: Highers) and, for reasons unknown to me at the time but probably pertaining to my rather low standards of mental health back then, did pretty much nothing for a year. Then I applied and got into the University of Stirling in 2013- my application was a late one and it was the only place that would still take me, though it is a fine institution for all that, and has a most beautiful campus.
For a few months, I got myself ready to move out to the student accommodation in Stirling and prepared myself for university life- and then my father died. In 2011 he had had a bleed in the brain which he’d recovered from. In August 2013 he had another one, and this time he didn’t recover. That was a long week, in and out of hospitals, visiting him as he was moved to different wards in Forth Valley Royal Hospital, and then following him when he was moved to the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. They had more specialist neurosurgeons there, and so his brain was operated on, a procedure which we were told went well. I remember how odd it was seeing him with half his hair shorn off, which of course they had done to get access to his skull. It was funny, actually, in that weird way things are funny when everything’s going to hell around you.
(I remember when my mother and I were visiting him in Forth Valley. A woman walked by us as we entered the ward, saying something about how her husband or a relative was dying, and my mother replied that we were in pretty much the same boat. An odd kind of solidarity, this has always stuck with me.)
That week was stressful and emotional, and much of it is now a blurry memory. My Dad wasn’t in a great condition. He could not speak properly to us, and was under the impression that he was needed at work (he was retired but was still making money working as a delivery driver), always trying to pull out his catheter (having had one of my own lately I can testify that pulling one of those out of your urethra would not be a pleasant experience) and get out of bed to get there. This sort of dedication still impresses me. He may well have had a bleed in the brain, his skull may well have been cracked open so that unsubtle knives could attack his affliction, but he was damned sure he was leaving and going to work. Me, on the other hand, I can barely be bothered getting out of bed when I have nothing to do, let alone when strenuous duty awaits me.
On 23 August 2013, I was sitting up all night, as I often did at that time, watching rubbish TV into the early hours (for some reason another thing stuck in my mind is that an episode of some crappy show centred on American college life called Greek was on, and the resolution of some mystery in the episode’s plot is something I’ve never found out, though I doubt it would be worth it). It was around 6am, I had not slept, and the phone rang. When my Mum told me it was the hospital telling us to get to Edinburgh immediately because this was the day when my Dad was going to die, I’m not sure how I felt, aside from shocked. Because, for all the worries of that week or so, I really did not expect anything other than full recovery from my Dad. In 2011 we’d been told the worst and he had fought through it and recovered. It was utterly foreign to my mind, the idea that he could die. I don’t think it even seriously occurred to me. But here it was. He was going to die, and we had to hurry.
In the event, we did not actually have to hurry. We should have reminded ourselves of my Dad’s stubbornness. He had had numerous catastrophic strokes and the like during the night, and he did die that day, but not until around 10pm at night. He was unconscious all day and was simply taken off life support, given morphine, and left to pass in his own time with his loved ones around him (or, as we all could hardly stop ourselves from hoping, wake up against all the odds).
As I said, I had not slept at all, and I occasionally collapsed in sheer exhaustion in my grandmother’s lap, so it was the most tiring day of my life as well as the very worst. My Mum and I were not alone. Many family members made their way to Intensive Care to be with us and him and each other. We had our individual moments with him, as he lay there unconscious, his breathing loud and somewhat laboured, to say our piece.6 In the end I believe we caught his last breaths. Afterwards, the kind nurses cleaned his body and his room and dimmed the lights so we could go in and say goodbye. It was beautiful in its way, peaceful even. But it was the first dead body I’ve ever seen, and I do not recommend the experience.
This year, 2019, will mark the sixth anniversary of my Dad’s death7. I miss him all the time. I regret our arguments and how little I told him I loved him- and how little time I spent with him whilst there was so little of it left. But then nobody knows such things at the time. Hindsight is a tempting and potent tool of self-torture. I can only be thankful for my family and my Mum in particular, who were also there for me all through my own illness.
My Dad and I used to go on weekend trips to St Andrews in Fife, one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I will forever be happy that just a few weeks before his death we were there. I think the last picture of us was taken there, from outer space, and this is not the only cosmic story involving my Dad and me (see above). Those memories of St Andrews are eternal in my mind. Dad, I miss you, you flawed but brilliant and loving man. I hope you would be proud of me, having had a job, learned to drive, and gone to my dream university.
At his funeral, I picked out the poem ‘Invictus’ to be read.8 It will always be one of my favourites. I wrote a piece for The National Student a few years later near the time of the fourth anniversary of my Dad’s death, in which I reflected on the poem and its importance to me. My Dad was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, alright. Not long after his death, one of his driver colleagues informed us of a touching anecdote. Dad used to deliver to a lady’s house and would kick a ball about with her small son. Stuart, the colleague, had recently delivered there and had had to inform them of his death, if I recall correctly, because the boy was wondering where his friend was. This moved me immensely and still does. I never knew of this touching relationship my Dad had with this woman and her child, but it was so… him.
This, the worst time of my life, happened a week or so before I was due to start at Stirling. I was seventeen. Naturally, it delayed me a while, and though I moved to the city and studied for a semester or so, I dropped out in 2014. I just wasn’t ready. I decided to take some time out of studying to get a job and just experience the real world for a while and make some money. I ended up working at ASDA for two years, and the less said about that the better, except for a nod to some of the wonderful people I worked with, at least one of whom I think is a friend for life.
I applied to the University of Edinburgh twice, which, as Scotland’s best university, and indeed one of the world’s (oh, calm down St Andrews students, your institution is also brilliant and I’d also love to have studied there, but I’m not that rich and certainly not that posh), and which has educated many fine minds over the centuries, including those of David Hume and Charles Darwin, was my dream university. Edinburgh was also of course the centre of the Enlightenment and is one of the world’s most utterly gorgeous cities, and it is right on my doorstep. Try not to be too jealous.
The first time my application fell through due to some technicality I’d overlooked, but once I’d sorted that out I was given multiple offers and accepted a degree course in English Literature and History. That was in 2016. I moved to a student flat in Edinburgh for my first year, where I met some more great people, stayed at home for my second year and, as I said, was living back in the city due to start third year when that evolutionarily irrelevant organ called the appendix launched its assassination attempt on me. I’ll be re-entering university in September. Hopefully this time no tragedies will befall me.9
Which reminds me, I seem to have bad luck going to university. Before entering first year at Edinburgh I wrote off my car after a nasty motorway accident on the way to a birthday party (for which I apologise to the dear friend in the passenger seat I could have killed that day). Fortunately, no mortal coils were shed and nobody was seriously hurt. I must add here that I did in the end put in a brief appearance at the party, showing people I was still alive by having a whisky and a cigarette or two. (My two favourite vices, as it happens.)
So: family deaths, car crashes, medical emergencies. Has someone really taken a dislike to the idea of me going to university? I also broke up with my boyfriend, or rather he broke up with me if you must insist on things like the truth, a few weeks into my first year at Edinburgh. Which incidentally reminds me to inform my reader that I am, in fact, a homosexual. I was already going to hell for being an atheist so I decided to double up on the sins while I still could. Men are just much better looking, don’t you think? Aside from Eva Green, I’ll give that to my straight brothers and lesbian sisters (not my literal ones, of course- I am an only child, conceived through IVF).
Close friends knew before I came out to my Mum; I never got the chance to tell Dad, though despite his, shall we say ‘old-fashioned’, views on gay people a couple of things he said to me make me think he suspected and would have been accepting.10 Mum was (oddly, given she later told me she had also in fact suspected) slightly put out at first but quickly put that behind her and has since been as supportive as anyone could wish. I came out to Mum because of my relationship with the aforementioned boyfriend, so it was downright rude that he broke up with me. Millennials, eh? Though I suppose I ought to at least be a little thankful for his part in making me finally come out.
(A digression. I once used the word ‘homosexual’ in an essay for a university course, and the marker took it upon himself to write a little comment saying I should have used ‘LGBT’. Hmph. I’ll use whatever words I damn well please, thank you very much.)
Swinging around to the subject of metaphysics, one of the best parts of my student career so far has been my involvement with the University’s Humanist Society (recently renamed as the Atheist, Humanist, and Secularist Society, not incidentally at the same time I was elected President for the year 2019-202011). I’ve made some great friends there, and the discussions are always stimulating and intriguing. Before my appendix incident, I was Secretary of the Society, ready to bravely take the group forward into the new academic year with my two colleagues on the committee, but of course I had to leave that position too, as well as my post as Deputy Editor of Retrospect Journal (more of which in my website archive) which I had written for as a columnist during my second year; it is another great society with some lovely people involved.
(I mentioned IVF above, and discussing the Humanist Society reminds me of another opportunity for digression. A year or two ago the Humanists had a discussion with the university’s pro-life society. I mentioned the circumstances of my conception and asked if the wasted eggs/embryos meant my mother was a mass murderer [they were sure life begins at conception]. I was told she was, but that they could still be happy for, mistake though I was, I was a person, and I was there, and that was good. Little old me, a happy result of mass murder! I told my Mum this. I think she said there were no other eggs/embryos, which is a bit disappointing. I was quite fond of the idea that I was the sole survivor of some sort of laboratory genocide.)
As it happens, I was once a Christian (oh, what a long time ago that was!) and even part of the Scripture Union at primary school. The man who organised this little lunchtime Bible group was John Rollo, son of Pastor Michael Rollo, both nice men- the Pastor was known to my Dad’s side of the family and conducted his funeral (my father was of Orange Order Protestant stock, and therefore I am too, however unwillingly. Love for my Dad leads me to attach some loyalty to Rangers football team, though I don’t care much for the game, or sport in general for that matter, and certainly not for religion). I attended youth groups at the Pastor’s Pentecostal church sometimes, which were fun but I recall great impatience for the sermon to be over so that we could all get started on the video games. The biscuits were quite nice too. I also attended some sort of communion service there with my Dad once and convinced myself I was tipsy on the wine, though I found out later it was non-alcoholic.
I still have my Bible, one of the ones John bought for all of us in the SU. We got to choose exactly which ones we got, and I have one with a black magnetic case. I’m looking at John’s inscription now (which makes me wonder about people writing in Bibles- is that even allowed?) in which he gives me a kind ‘well done’. I cannot remember what I did well, but vague recollection suggests it was for completing a course of quizzes or something. That was why we got the Bibles I think. Slightly odd present, now I think of it. Wouldn’t it have made more sense if we’d had Bibles to study before doing quizzes on its content? Or maybe we just got our own Bibles at the end instead of having to use used ones. Who knows?
I have just looked up that Pentecostal church’s website. It is still of that particular Christian movement, but is now named ‘Found Church’. Which is also odd. How have they only just found it? It’s been in the same place for years! Oh, I really shouldn’t tease. I may now be avowedly anti-religious and a confirmed homosexual atheist, but none of that is their fault, and they were really very nice. I do remember being slightly disturbed by a baptism they showed us, though they only do it to adults as I remember, which is good. I’m not sure what their position is on homosexuality, but I vaguely recall an anti-gay-marriage YouTube video they may have put up a few years ago- but don’t quote me on that. The organisation of which they are a part, Assemblies of God Great Britain (such modesty!), does not mention a stance on homosexuality, at least not one my brief perusal of their website has revealed to me- but then I don’t claim knowledge of divine revelation so my powers of penetration are perhaps limited. The section on their beliefs does indicate a belief in the infallible inspiration of the Bible and belief in the Virgin Birth and all that guff, though. No, I must stop this- I’m trying to be kind!
On that note, I must reiterate that I enjoyed my time with them. They certainly didn’t turn me against religion (let alone guide me towards realising my homosexuality). No, it was a high school friend of startling intelligence who recommended to me Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion (and much of my own subsequent reading over the years) which led me to put away such childish things- and indeed to stop harking on to people about how ‘well you can talk about the Big Bang all you like but if there was no god how did the Big Bang happen? Well there! Nenenenene!’ This sort of statement, it must be said, is about as sophisticated as the most eminent theologians have ever gotten in millennia of trying to prove their doctrines. Incidentally, I recall spending my early days as a zealous atheist debating religion with my great aunt in her kitchen. She humoured me, sitting on a chair with her trademark whisky and Irn-Bru in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Perhaps that’s where my own similar habits started…
But, no, I’m supposed to be being nice, aren’t I? Well, John’s inscription in the (alas, New Living Translation second edition, not the King James Version) Bible directs one towards 1st Timothy 4:12 which reads: ‘Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity’.
I’ve certainly failed in being a believer and in having faith, and am not particularly pure, but aside from those parts it’s fine advice, and advice I will try to follow (joking aside, I am still young). Of course, I’ll ignore the genocide, rape, and general insanity of the Old Testament and peaceful Jesus’s ravings about Hell and damnation in the sequel, and the climactic Revelation’s disturbingly lurid depictions of (not to mention desire for) the end of the world, and- but wait, again, I’m supposed to be being kind, sorry! Well, aside from all the rubbish in the Bible, there are some nice bits, and much of it is beautiful literature (particularly in the KJV). Amusingly, my Bible with John’s inscription has a sticker on the back with a quotation and an attempt to appeal to modern youngsters: ‘How strong is your signal?’ I can picture it now: ‘Move the phone around a bit boys, I’m just getting static but I can hear the deity mumbling a little, there we go, got him, clear as day! What’s that? YOU FAVOUR THE AMISH? Boys! Throw the phone away! Buy a horse and cart!’
Well, anyway, that’s about as kind as I can be about the Bible I’m afraid. But I feel much warmer towards those Pentecostals, particularly Pastor Michael, who my father liked very much and who, as I mentioned, presided at his funeral.
Now, this has gone on rather longer than I thought it would. I seem to have got carried away. I’ll end soon, but first I’d like to echo Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rusdhie and affirm some of my loves and hatreds:
Loves: literature, science, people, non-human animals, irony, debate, openness, tolerance, freedom, liberty, democracy, history, politics, philosophy, sexy men (particularly Richard Madden).
Hatreds: faith, fanaticism, fundamentalism, religion in general, evil and stupidity, racism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and, most of all, health fascists.
That is not to exhaust the two lists, but it gives a nice flavour I think. My life’s philosophy is based on humanism, reason, compassion, and joy. Counter-posed to that are things of the kind listed in number two of the above, all of which are tyranny. I’m not entirely sure what I wish to do with my life. I hope to live it well for myself (I’ve started working out and- dear lord- meditating12) and for others. Life is inherently purposeless in any cosmic sense, and absurd in the extreme. I like David P. Barash’s idea of thinking of meaning through combining the insights of evolutionary biology with the philosophy of existentialism- ‘evolutionary existentialism’ as he puts it. I recommend his essay on the matter.*
I think I have changed somewhat down the years and I have certainly been through a few rough spots, to say the least. I also discovered booze and fags (and cigarettes) at some point: the only revelations I shall ever need. I hope I have learned something from all of it. I would like to write more, and travel, and meet the wonderful and the exciting as well as the odd and the misshapen people of the world. Perhaps my fondest dream is to travel around as a Scoop-style journalist in myriad locales, particularly dangerous ones.
Most of all, however, I’d quite like to win the lottery so that I can actually do some of that at leisure and in security.
Mum, Dad, and me as a baby in my gran’s house.
*‘What the Whale Wondered: Evolution, Existentialism and the Search for ‘Meaning”, pp. 255-262 in the Festschrift Richard Dawkins: How A Scientist Changed The Way We Think: Reflections by scientists, writers, and philosophers (2006, Oxford University Press), edited by Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley. See also here for a similar piece from Barash.
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Finally, some newly-written words:
As mentioned, I’ve edited the foregoing- but only slightly. Looking back on it, I think there are some cringingly obvious flaws with the writing and how I present myself. But then again, I’d probably be similarly critical about my recent pieces given some time and distance from them. Still, I think the above account gives a good précis of some of the highs and lows of my life so far. I’ll just add a few more recent developments and thoughts.
I’m now in the strange limbo between finishing all of my university work and graduating, so for all intents and purposes, I’m a graduate, though technically I’m not one yet. Now I’m continuing to work at Areo Magazine with the lovely and indomitable Iona Italia and volunteering with Free Speech Champions while searching for permanent, paid employment. I have some projects to work on, too, and am tugging on a few threads re. the employment bit.
I intend to enjoy summer in Edinburgh before devoting myself to all that more strenuously. I also want to lose some weight and get a bit fitter. I’m looking forward to normal, pre-Covid nights-out, too. Love is still elusive. And I still yearn for opportunities to travel and write from the most dangerous, beautiful, and interesting places in the world. There are causes I want to champion more forcefully, such as the cause of women in Iran as exemplified by the gorgeous and brilliant Masih Alinejad, and places I want to visit when they are free (as they will be, sooner or later).
In the meanwhile, I will keep writing, for better or for worse. And I remain thankful to you poor souls who signed up to endure the end result.
DJS
This was too cavalier. There are definitions of scientism that are valid and on which it’s clearly very silly, but I still say that much of the time the word is used loosely by the offended merely to complain. For example, at least some differences between the sexes, and not just physical but behavioural, can be imputed to evolutionary factors. Another example: many of the most important claims of religion, and supernaturalism generally, are empirical and admit of rational testing (the efficacy of intercessory prayer, for one, which has been all but utterly disproved). But, yes, the version of scientism that says nothing apart from hard science is of any value is wrong, but I’m not sure that all that many of those who are shriekingly accused of holding views labelled scientistic are guilty of this. Richard Dawkins, for one, explained in a recent interview with Iona Italia that the effect on us of emotion and poetry are worthwhile in and of themselves: the causal chain that connects genetics, biochemistry, and the expression of these things is irrelevant to our experience of them. One of Dawkins’s favourite poets, by the way, is Yeats, and he evinces in his books a knowledge and love of poetry and literature that is beyond many of his critics.
The Wordpress website, that is. I wouldn’t have included this, given the awkwardness of the crossover, but it seems important, so see here.
I see that the mission has been extended until 2031, so perhaps our names are still out there.
As of publication, I’m actually staying in Edinburgh since occasion has demanded it, but will be returning to Fife soon.
Even more so, now, two years later, aged 25…
Alone in the room with my unconscious and dying Dad, I said a lot of things to him. One of them was the truth of my sexuality, which as I mention later I think he suspected and would have been supportive of, despite his traditional views. I’ve joked ever since that he probably would have recovered if only I hadn’t mentioned I was gay and thus shocked him to death!
The reason I think he would have been supportive, though, is because I have a memory- and it is one of the pains of being human that one can never be entirely sure how accurate one’s memories are, or if they even happened at all- that he tried to probe me on the (undeniable, I admit) beauty of a female career counsellor he had taken me to see, and in the car once said something along the lines of: ‘You’ll have a beautiful wife one day’ before pausing and adding, ‘…or husband.’ Did it happen? Is it a false memory? I don’t know. I’m near certain he said it, or something like it, though, whatever the details. In any case, he was, beyond everything else, devoted absolutely to his family. For me and my Mum he would have killed and died. Another, earlier memory: I was arguing with him about being gay and asked if he would accept it if his child was so inclined, and he said yes, he would support his child, even if he, in general, didn’t approve of it. This annoyed me at the time, as hypocrisy, but now I see it as another sign of the man’s utter dedication to his family. And, after all, isn’t that how all minority acceptance comes about- through one’s coming out to and being loved by family, thus leading them and others (and, ultimately, broader society) to become more tolerant in general?
Whether or not these memories are true in every detail, or even happened, is perhaps beside the point though. Because Dad’s unyielding devotion to me and my Mum meant that he would have supported us no matter what. So, yes, I think he would have been okay with my being gay. And I think that if I ever needed support against violent homophobes on that matter, he would have been the first to raise his fists in my defence, whatever his views.
And this year, 2021, will mark the eighth anniversary. Nearly a decade- how the hell can he have been gone for so long? How many milestones he has missed. Dad, I raise a drink to you now: I think, or at least hope, that you would be proud of me. For all my failings, I have had some great successes. I only wish that your dream of me wheeling your aged self home from the pub had come true. I wish I could have shared my first pint with you. I wish you had received that telegram from King William on your hundredth birthday that you so dreamed of. Too young, you were, too young. [I add this the day before publication since it also happens to be my Dad’s birthday: another glass I raise to you, O my beloved father.]
I originally planned to read it myself, but couldn’t, and so the presiding pastor did. Now, though, I would do it unhesitatingly: I have grown in confidence a great deal, another thing of which I think my Dad would be proud.
Happily, none have, and from 2019 until today I’ve been living in a lovely little well-priced flat near the central campus and met another friend for life in the form of one of my flatmates.
See note 6, above.
As it happens, I ended up being President until this year, because the election of a new committee was postponed thanks to the Covid pandemic. I’ve passed the baton on now, though. On my website, incidentally, you can find the podcasts I hosted during my tenure, including interviews with A.C. Grayling, Peter Hitchens, and various others.
I still meditate, but the exercise bit I have not kept up with…