The lies of 'happiness'

So many times I've heard people say, "I just want x to be happy!"

As if happiness is the most important thing in life. It's a load of rubbish. It's a farce. 'Happiness', as it's understood today, doesn't exist. Possibly the most-used French word for 'happy' is content. Although it has slightly different connotations, the English word contentedness is much more realistic.

We can be 'content' with what we have: with our material possessions, our job, our family, and so on. (And perhaps, instead of the usual, "I'm fine," this is a more realistic answer to the question of, "How are you?")

But happiness? Nowadays it seems to relate to an extreme sense of satisfaction. Marketing strategies use this as much as possible: almost every product out there is the best ever and will do just what you want it to. We know that money can't buy happiness, but the driving ideology is that what you buy with money can make you happy. But it's a lie.

More than material things, our mental state is incredibly important. Our outlook on life, how we feel about the world around us. The pressures and stresses of life can 'get us down'. Over the last few years, I've been told that one in four British teenagers will suffer from depression. Counsellors certainly won't be out of a job, but they might only have limited success.

The pressure to 'stay connected' with the latest technology and gadgets is more than most of us can bear (or afford). So many people succumb to this game. The pain people go through because someone 'unfriended' them on Facebook... it seems worse than if the person had simply died! Insults online are taken are more personally than if people were to just meet face-to-face.

Keeping up with the latest trends and fashions becomes too heavy a burden to carry: it's too high a target and the result of failure is a step along the descent into depression. It's simply not worth it.

But that's the problem: most of our 'state of happiness' is driven by material needs. Whether it's the type of car/house/furniture we have, where we go on holiday, what technology we own... it's all materially-linked, and it's the main source of worry, unhappiness, discontentment.

Some people get into Christianity because they are told that no one is happier than when they live a life with Jesus. But that's a lie too.

Knowing Jesus doesn't make us happy. All our problems don't miraculously disappear. Even the hope of an eternal state of euphoria (the common interpretation of heaven, also not quite accurate) offers little help to us now. Some church services become driven by a need to make their congregations feel happy and want to come to church. It becomes an entertainment show with upbeat songs and dynamic preaching to try to convince people that their church is where you find happiness.

The reality is that Jesus never promised happiness. Even the apostle Paul said that he has learned to be content in all aspects of life (Phil 4:11-13). Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble." Jesus even talks to his followers of when you are persecuted, not if you are persecuted (Matt 10:23 and Luke 12:11). He also says, "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also."

The truth is that there are many hardships in life, many trials which we will all face at some time. No one is exempt. Persecution comes in many forms, even from within the church too! Happiness will always evade us, always just beyond our reach. Jesus tells us, "Take heart! I have overcome the world."

The pursuit of happiness will lead to depression. Many times, the Bible says 'do not be afraid' and that is what we need to cling to. Learning to not fear in life will keep us away from depression. Our lives will never be completely free from trouble, but through it all we can have inner peace, the peace that only Jesus can give.

Do not confuse happiness and peace. And do not mistake the peace of Jesus as freedom from troubles. Anyone who preaches freedom from troubles is a liar. Anyone who preaches that Jesus brings happiness is also a liar.

It's not wrong to be happy, it's just short-lived. Although it's one of America's 'unalienable rights', don't spend your life pursuing fleeting moments. In the words of Robert Heinlein:
The 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives - but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can ensure that I will catch it.

So be careful with using the phrase: "I just want you to be happy." It's a farce.

Education in the UK: some of the problems

I often wonder where education in the UK is headed. Honestly, it scares me. Serious reform is needed, and I know I'm not the only one thinking it. Even the government know something needs to be done. But the changes that come into effect just don't work.

1. I read an article entitled "Calls for reading and basic maths tests for new teachers" and I honestly thought I had read the title wrong. When I did my teacher training, I had to pass a literacy and numeracy test at the beginning and end of the course. Plus, to get into teaching in the first place, prospective teachers had to have achieved grade C or higher in their GCSE English and Maths (and this was recently increased to a grade B in Wales).

To enter the teaching profession, it would seem there is still a basic standard of literacy and numeracy. I think this is perfectly reasonable: if we want children to be well-educated, we need well-educated teachers. It was never a burden for me as I had a high level of literacy and numeracy anyway, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to share my knowledge with younger people.

The above article says "trainee teachers told MSPs at Holyrood their training did not give them the basic maths skills to educate primary seven pupils." I had always assumed that 'teacher training' was to train a person to be able to teach. I guess I was wrong. It would seem that some people enter teacher training expecting their training to include re-learning what should have been learnt at school.

This is the first problem with the current education system in the UK: teachers should know their subject well enough so that teacher training can focus on how to teach the subject.

2. Another problem: the changes in the curriculum and exams. Teachers having to spend extra time re-planning their teaching schedule because a non-teaching government official thought changing the syllabus was a good solution to improving education (in reality, enforcing a change to try to justify their official position).

3. I want to throw in the problem of pay. So many people have told me that teachers have it easy because of the holidays. So let's do a few calculations. To make sure we get an underestimate, let's ignore the amount of work teachers do outside of school hours (planning, marking and other paperwork) and assume they only work between 9am and 3pm: 6 hours per day.

Teachers are required to work 195 days a year. At 6 hours per day, that's 1170 hours per year. Considering the starting salary for a teacher is about £22,000 (and that's before we bring tax into the equation), that equates to £18.80 per hour.

Now let's consider the extra work teachers do. Let's increase the number of hours per day to 8, to account for some of the marking, and let's increase the number of 'working days' to 200. That's 1600 hours per year. This now gives an hourly wage of £13.75, before tax.

Now consider the labour costs of your plumber, electrician, car mechanic, painter or any other 'vocational' professions. Is £13.75 per hour really justifiable for someone who has to have spent 3 years at university to obtain a degree, followed by a teacher training course? Since teachers don't actually 'make more than you think', I guess even the government doesn't expect teachers to have basic mathematical skills.

4. Extra government-induced pressures: Grammar schools and other private schools see a lot more success, mainly due to entry exams and a much higher expectation of behaviour. And now the Conservatives think it's a good idea to make these independent schools make up the budget deficit by 'sponsoring' a state school? It sounds like good schools are now facing punishment from the government's failure.

5. There is also the problem of expectations, and this takes a number of forms.

Firstly, there's the case of the one or two pupils who disrupt the class and flatly refuse to follow the teacher's instructions. Nowadays, this results in the pupils blaming the teacher for the behaviour of the disruptive pupil(s). Plus, even those causing the disruption blame the teacher for their academic failure.

Secondly, there is a trend for pupils to think that their desired grades should be handed to them on a plate. Since they've been good and have an attendance record of over 98%, they feel entitled to that grade A.

Thirdly, there can be the expectation that pupils should be roughly performing at the same level in each subject. Personally, I was good at Maths but I hated History. My grade Es in History would have been seen as my failing, rather than me having an exceptional natural talent in Maths. I have seen this 'average across all subjects' cause emotional distress in pupils.

Fourthly, the expectation of parental involvement. As we get older, we forget things. When I was at school, it was expected to take 10 GCSEs, then narrow our field of study to just 3 or 4 A Levels. At university, only one (sometimes two, for joint honours) subject is studied. What happens to the knowledge of these other subjects? It is forgotten along the way. Whilst basic skills remain, unless specific knowledge is used over and over again, parents will not (and should not be expected to) be able to help their children with schoolwork. As a teacher, I never expected parents to help a child with their homework: if the child paid attention in class, they would manage the homework, unless...

Fifthly, if a pupil has a problem with their work, they seem more incline to ask their friends or parents for help. Surely their teacher should be their first port of call? I always expected pupils to ask me if they didn't fully understand in class. Perhaps this was unreasonable, since I was always amazed at how many pupils seemed happier with a lower mark than with coming to me for help.

Sixthly, most of this is tied up with the expectation that teachers should be so understanding of their pupils, able to counsel them through difficulties, never say a harsh word but be forever encouraging (even when a pupil does no work)... and always maintain adequate discipline. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that: life is competitive; hate crimes are real; some professional counsellors aren't very good; and when one person commits an atrocity, new/revised laws affect the whole of society, including the innocent.

Yes, there may be some tears, unpleasantness and even some minor injustices at school. Work through them, helping teachers to remain able to teach (their subject), knowing that these things will better prepare us for the real world: life after school.

Added to which, teachers are human beings too. They have a hard enough time with inspectors blaming them, not knowing which standards to conform to and the government changing the curriculum... teacher abuse by pupils is an under-reported crime because the emphasis is 'every child matters'... but not every teacher.



Reform is needed. Teachers need to be treated with respect or they'll keep walking away. Expectations need to be revised. Something sensible has to be done or the UK will become a very poorly educated country, affecting the lives of millions of children.

I am among a number of teachers who found that private tuition pays much, much better than teaching in school. Added to which, there is less paperwork, less marking and almost no behaviour issues. If this trend continues, education will be only for the rich: those who can afford to pay for private tuition for their children.

Problems with 'transgender'

I recently came across this article:
A trans adult speaks out against gender indoctrination of children.

Well worth a read right to the end.

People like Jenn Smith need to be supported and encouraged to raise their voice. They are part of a minority of rationally-thinking LGBT people who see through the ideological bias to the practical problems.

The UK will not be an 'LGBT utopia'... certainly not in the next few decades, if ever. Serious indoctrination would be needed, and they are trying: in the name of 'tolerance' and 'equality'. And yet, the loudest voices of the LGBT community are trying to push forward their agenda without regard to the damage that is being left in their wake.

Seriously, read the article above.

From the "About Us" section of the Transgender Trend website:
Over the past few years there has been a global rise in the number of children referred to gender clinics. There is no reliable scientific basis for the diagnosis of transgender, nor long-term research on the outcome of treatments. Setting children off on a path towards medicalisation with irreversible life-long effects is an experiment which has no precedent.

In my opinion, it's actually child abuse.

If you haven't already, read the article above.

Predicting the future

Some might call it 'prophecy'. I was very interested when I came across an article entitled "Your brain has a 'sixth sense' that thinks ahead and predicts the future".

"Incredible!" I thought. "Science has shown that humans have the ability to know what's coming their way!"

How wrong I was.
Another example of a misleading headline.

The article tells of how a group of subjects were shown images of a dot moving across a screen. Then, when a dot was shown not moving across the screen, the subjects' brain activity showed that they expected the dot to move across the screen. All this, apparently, shows that we have the ability to predict the future.

I felt let down.

Predicting the future - to me, at least - is about knowing what's going to happen. In other words, those people should have known that the dot wasn't going to move across the screen. That would have been predicting the future.

There's even a quote:
"Our visual cortex might constantly predict events happening all around us on a daily basis..."

At this point, I still clung to some hope of sensible scientific analysis. But I suppose my 'future-predicting' sense is only as good as that of the test subjects': I wasn't particularly prepared for what came next:
"...the rotating arms of a windmill, or how to catch the ball that is moving towards us."

Is this really the forefront of scientific research?!?
Even a two-year-old will expect windmill arms that are already rotating... to continue rotating.
Does that mean two-year-olds are highly developed in their 'sixth sense'?

'Predicting the future' in that way is not particularly difficult:
When I pedal my bike, the wheels turn and I move forward.
When I throw a ball, it moves away from me.
When I flick the light switch, the light comes on.

Surely this 'predictability' is what actually makes it possible to live. Surely it's just common sense. Imagine what the world would be like without that sort of predictability: "I want to grow some tomatoes, but which seeds should I use? The tomato seeds might give me pineapples!"

Perhaps my expectations are too high. Perhaps I am doing scientists an injustice by expecting their research to inform me of something I didn't already know or couldn't work out by myself.

What's really quite interesting is the use of the word 'might':
"Our visual cortex might constantly predict events happening all around us..."
If this scientist struggles to predict the moving arms of a windmill, then I should feel sorry for him.

Black and white

It's funny: for those of us in the Western world, we think that we are the civilised ones. We have (or dominate) scientific and technological advancement. We have a more developed (or consistent) education system. We have better medical facilities and medications. We have more stylish cars (and without dents) and our roads are made with tarmac. We eat our food with knives and forks (mainly) and there's a napkin close to hand.

The civilised West!

And we often feel a sense of duty to spread our ways to those 'less fortunate' than us.

In other words, where white people used to dominate the world by conquest, we now do it through 'charity'. Some people out of a sense of guilt because of how these 'less fortunates' have been treated throughout history; others out of compassion for anyone who is 'less fortunate' than themselves.

It's the arrogance that gets me. It's that we think that 'our way' is superior. So many people (myself included) have been to these 'less fortunate' places and seen with our own eyes... that material wealth is not what brings happiness. And yet we still celebrate our 'civilised' victories of providing water pumps, electricity, finance, clothes, school books, computers and so on to these 'poor unfortunates'.

We've polluted the world with a 'West is best' mindset.

At this point it's easy to start thinking that providing housing, medication, schools and the like is surely a good thing... and it is... to an extent.

But the real difference to 'impoverished' blacks and 'enlightened' whites is that it's the whites who are losing their humanity. (Of course, I'm speaking in generalisations.)

It's white people who label a child who thinks differently or needs more exercise than sitting in front of a TV can provide. It's white people who take a pill at the first hint of bodily pain. It's white people who say you're a failure if you just miss the grade. It's white people who drive on by when someone's broken down.

In the UK, they say that 1 in 4 of the current teenagers will have depression. 'Civilised' society has done that. You won't find that statistic in Africa.

Whites are more disconnected from their communities.
Whites are more concerned about their access to technology than their friends' wellbeing.

And we say that we (the whites) need to help them?!?
What education! What enlightenment!

As if the white conquest of the world wasn't enough, followed by our current tendency to import our groceries from Africa, taking their best produce and thereby contributing to their poverty (because it's cheaper for us, and anyway we're entitled to bananas and other fruit we can't grow ourselves or isn't in season, aren't we?)... we now have to destroy them with our 'civilised' society.

We need to take a lesson from them.
Then work together to make a better world.

For us all.