Month: March 2012

I love skyscrapers, but mostly the old ones which incorporated gothic and other architecture rather than the glass boxes, gherkins and pyramids built in later decades.

I include some of my favorites below, not in any particular order. New York City (Manhattan), Moscow and Chicago probably come out on top for me, for the sheer abundance of great skyscrapers. Stalin based the design for seven Moscow skyscrapers, and one in Warsaw, on the New York gothic ones of the 1930s.

London has few pre-war skycrapers, but I include two here – Senate House and Shell Mex House. Also the Shell building from the post-war period. All these, I feel, capture the essence of good design.

I include the Kuala Lumpur skyline because of the innotive new designs, and also two Pyongyang skyscrapers from the North Korean capital which I believe have some merit. The pyramid shaped one I include because it does have some attempt at a slightly more interesting design than The Shard in London and other pyramid shaped skyscrapers around the world.

My idea of an ideal apartment would be on the 108th floor of a gothic-style skyscraper surrounded by similar buildings. A balcony would be a nice addition where I could have a mini-garden in the sky. The nearest I’ve got to this is the 18th/19th floor (depending on whether you count the ground floor) of a block in Battersea, London, but alas it had no balcony and looked over the Southwestern suburbs rather than east towards the city center, which would have been a much more interesting and dramatic view.

It is not the height of new buildings which concern me, but their overall design. Square glass boxes of two or three stories are just as boring as skyscrapers which look like a glass matchbox standing on end. Shards, gherkins and other unusual shapes (all designs for London skyscrapers) are all very well, but they are no substitute for more interesting architecture in my opinion.

 

 

Woolworth Building, New York City, USA

Empire State Building, New York City, USA

Flatiron Building, New York City, USA (one of the first skyscrapers)

Chrysler Building, New York City, USA

 

Kuala Lumpur skyscrapers (Malaysia)

Ukraine Hotel, Moscow, Russia

Moscow University, Moscow, Russia

Pyonyang skyscraper, Pyongyang, North Korea

Pyongyang skyscraper, Pyongyang, North Korea

Senate House, London University, London, England

Shell Building, South Bank, London, England

Shell Mex House, London, England

Palace of Culture, Warsaw, Poland

Chicago skyscrapers, Chicago, USA

This refers to the current debate among Spiritualists, prominent in their publications, about Christian trappings and terminology which, it is felt by many, are inappropriate in this day and age. Quite apart from being incompatible with Spiritualism, Christianity is on the decline as evidenced by the dwindling congretations in churches, and this has spilled over to Spiritualist centers calling themselves ‘Christian Spiritualist churches’, some complete with ministers, reciting the Lord’s Prayer, singing hymns, and celebrating Christian festivals like Christmas and Easter. All this is very off-putting to people of other religions, to humanists, atheists and agnostics. In fact it is off-putting to all genuine Spiritualists and Survivalists who seek empirical evidence of an afterlife and are not interested in ancient creeds and dogmas or in religious texts written by goodness knows who, tampered with through the ages, and designed basically to control a subservient population.

Of course Christianity adopted pagan festivals as its own, the virgin birth of a deity on December 25th being but one of these pagan myths, and the Spring renewal of Easter and the resurrection being also borrowed from pagan myths. In the past century or so Spiritualism has done the same thing – adopted Christian myths, terminology and festivals in order to try to win converts from that religion.

First of all, Spiritualism is not a religion. It is a scientific movement which is based not on faith or ancient religious texts, but on empirical evidence and experimentation. We seek proof of an afterlife, not vague promises of ‘pie-in-the-sky when we die’.

While all religions may well have a basis of truth, none have the whole truth, and there are many distortions. For instance, taking Christianity as an example, Spiritualists and Survivalists do not believe there is any evidence of a Heaven or a Hell, of a Devil/Satan nor do we believe Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, physically resurrected from the dead, was the Son of God and died to redeem our ‘sins’. How, then, can Spiritualist centers call themselves ‘Christian Spiritualist’?

Spiritualists know that we are all responsible for our own actions, will have to face a life review on transition to Spirit, feel all the consequences of our actions (good and bad) on others, and that the law of cause and effect or karma applies. ‘No saviors from on high deliver’ says the atheistic Socialist anthem ‘The Internationale’, and this line could well be incorporated into songs sung at Spiritualist/Survivalist meetings and seances.

There are no short-cuts to Spiritual progression. We all have to take personal responsibility for our actions, learn from our mistakes, and through the karmic process gradually evolve to higher levels.

As to the various religions and their leaders, many have good points, but also many bad ones. The Bible, for instance, is full of intolerance and murders, genocides and mass rapes, all apparently sanctioned by ‘God’. Many Spiritualists and Survivalists don’t even believe in ‘God’ as such. We talk of the Great Spirit or Source, and there are many other terms, but the idea of an all-wise deity handing out justice and taking vengeance on ‘sinners’ is not backed up by the evidence of Spiritualism/Survivalism.

On the contrary, all the evidence suggests we are all part of the creative energy and universal consciousness which is necessary for the material universes to exist. The evidence suggests that everything is evolving, and we are all part of this process.

Religious figures like Jesus, the Buddha, Hare Krishna and also more contemporary people like Mahatma Gandhi, the atheist and humanist Sir Bertrand Russell and even Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels can all be regarded as either setting an example of how to live a good life, or giving directions and advice as to how to create a better world. That some of their writings, particularly Marxism, has been distorted does not invalidate it. Much of Christ’s teaching has been distorted over the centuries, and it is certain he would never have endorsed the Crusades, the Inquisition, the notion of the ‘just war’ or the possession, let alone the use, of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons.

Spiritualists and Survivalists (the latter being basically humanists/agnostics/atheists adopting a very scientific, empirical approach to the evidence for the afterlife) can take inspiration from atheists like Sir Bertrand Russell who said ‘remember your humanity and forget the rest’. Or from Karl Marx who showed how humanity could be freed from exploitation and progress through Socialism to the ultimate utopia of Communism proper, or something akin to heaven on Earth.

The Spiritualist movement is also suffering dwindling congregations in its churches. This is hardly surprising since Christianity and religion is having less and less relevance in countries like Britain. I rarely go to Spiritualist churches as I don’t want Christian hymns, prayers, etc. shoved down my throat. More people attend demonstrations of clairvoyance in huge theaters, or watch it on TV. They seek proof of survival, not pseudo-religious services in churches.

In this modern age science is actually backing up and confirming the evidence coming from the afterlife. Quantum physics suggests strongly that consciousness is non-material, and is the primary force which actually creates and organizes matter. Without consciousness, in fact, nothing can exist. Spiritualists and Survivalists welcome this scientific backing for the theory that our conscious beings are eternal and non-material, rather than a biological and chemical product of our brains which ceases on death. This is now far more than a theory, it is being proven by all the evidence that consciousness is filtered by our brains, but originates outside the worlds of matter altogether. In fact reality is pure consciousness, everything else, all matter, is an elaborate illusion or virtual reality created by consciousness. A vast and complex thought, if you like, or a creation of thought.

There are, it is true, texts which Spiritualists and Survivalists often quote, but these are passed on from Spirit guides like White Feather and Silver Birch. They do not claim to be infallible, or to be the word of ‘God’. Spirits communicate from various levels according to how much they have evolved, and they therefore have different areas and different levels of knowledge. Certainly guides like the above come from high Spiritual levels, but even they do not know everything and interpret things differently.

For instance, the question of reincarnation. This causes much debate in Spiritualist/Survivalist circles since even high Spirit guides appear to disagree. It seems the subject is extremely complex since our Higher Selves on the Spiritual planes have many different facets, and we also belong to soul groups. These different facets and also the soul groups all share experiences and evolve together. It seems it is extremely doubtful that individuals ever reincarnate but their personality continues to exist indefinitely, at least until such time as they are ready to merge into a greater entity as they evolve to higher levels. Indeed spirits on the Other Side have actually met past ‘incarnations’ of themselves so that would indicate these incarnations are indeed different facets. We have been told by high Spirit guides that the conscious being we are aware of here on Earth is but a tip of the iceberg, our Higher Spiritual self is much, much bigger and more complicated, but to enable our mission here on Earth knowledge of this greater self and our life-plan is blocked or filtered out. A computer is programmed to do a particular task or set of tasks, and we are similar during our time on Earth. Only when we transit to Spirit and are reunited with our Higher selves do we see the full picture.

So you can call Spirtualism a religion if you like, but it is one based on scientific experimentation and gathering empirical evidence using many different methods including clairvoyance, other forms of mental mediumship, physical mediumship including Direct Voice, Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC), automatic writing, analyzing out-of-the-body and near-death experiences, studying ghosts and apparitions, etc. It is the sum total of all this evidence from various sources and the lessons learnt from Spiritual guides and teachers communicating through mediums that has resulted in the evolving science of Spiritualism and Survivalism. All backed up by scientific string-theory, Quantum Physics and new scientific ideas like the Pearsonian Big Breed Theory.

Some would turn Spiritualism into a religion, and rather than Christianity, many are creating a sort of New Age religion including all sorts of mystical things like crystals, angels, astrology, Tarot cards, etc. I and many others take the much more scientific approach.  The evidence for survival endorsed by scientists, inventors and medical people like Dr Peter Fenwick, Ron Pearson, Edison, Marconi, John Logie-Baird, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Alfred Russell Wallace and many, many others.

Christian Spiritualist churches are on their way out. In their place will be universal knowledge of survival and the afterlife, and eventually ITC will be perfected so we can communicate regularly with the Spirit realms via inter-dimensional videophones, thus eliminating the need for the human medium which is always prone to suspicion of fraud, and liable to misinterpret the messages from Spirit.

I give here one example. A man died falling off a ladder. With his wife in the audience at a Spiritualist meeting he managed to convey the image of a ladder to the medium. She told the man’s wife that she saw a ladder indicating success or good fortune. She added that last bit, completely distorting the true message. Had she just passed on what she received, the image of a ladder, the wife would have immediately known why – because her late husband fell to his death off of one. The man did eventually find another way of proving to his wife it was him contacting her through the medium, with reference to a ring she was wearing, but it would all have been so much easier thru a videophone where the man’s messages were not distorted by the interpretations and ideas of a human medium.

There have been so many changes in recent years as gay couples, both male and female, have become accepted by many more in society. With civil partnerships and gay marriages in many countries, nowadays in Britain nobody bats an eyelid on TV quiz shows when a gay man or woman introduces their partner or says they are ‘married’ or planning to get ‘married’.

This is all fine and well overdue. My partner and I, and all those gay couples of my generation, were not allowed to get married or have a civil partnership. This meant our relationship was not recognized officially, or even by family in many cases. A cousin drew up a family tree, and I complained because she’d omitted any reference to my life-partner. We were together 21 years but he died in 1991, long  before civil partnerships became possible. I am not recognized as his widow, and the only advantage I can think of in not being allowed a civil partnership was, because our relationship was not recognized, we were allocated a two-bedroom council apartment which I still have.  We always had a spare bedroom as we both shared the other one, but in those days two adults of the same sex sharing a council home were just regarded at joint tenants and had to be given separate bedrooms.

We would certainly have registered our partnership had it been possible as we were keen to put things on a legal footing. Now marriage is becoming unfashionable among heterosexuals, with many living together and having families without getting married, many of these couples probably don’t realize they have very few rights. Like gay men and women in the past in relationships outside marriage the partners have virtually no rights. If one dies without making a Will then their surviving partner has no right of inheritance, can be excluded from the funeral, thrown out of their home. If one partner ends up in intensive care the other can be refused visiting rights. For all these reasons we would certainly have had a civil partnership had it been possible back then.

Nowadays, however, with so many gay couples getting ‘married’ and so many heterosexual couples ‘living in sin’ as it used to be quaintly called, the whole pattern of society is changing.

What has happened in the last few decades is that children have increasingly become part of many gay relationships. This started before my life-partner died as we noticed on Gay Pride marches more and more lesbians were wheeling children in pushchairs. This seemed very strange to us, as children were never, ever part of the gay lifestyle.

Now, of course, many gay men are adopting children. They are anxious, it seems, to be accepted as a nuclear family. Contrast this with the attitude of gay men of my own generation (60 and above). I had a postcard from a gay couple of this generation this morning complaining about all the ‘squawkers’ at their holiday hotel on Gran Canaria. This word, of course, referred to screaming kids. My life-partner and myself referred to them as ‘brats’. We always seemed to end up near some screaming, ill-disciplined, spoiled brat on long journeys, and this gay couple in Gran Canaria often have the same complaint.

Why on Earth gay men should want to adopt children is hard for those in my generation to understand. As to whether it is a good thing or not, I am not at all sure. The interests of the child must come first, and I suppose if the alternative is life in an institution or an abusive heterosexual or one–parent family, then a gay couple, male or female, is preferable. Also if an older child, a teenager, is gay and wishes to be adopted by gay parents.

However I was brought up in a one-parent family, and even before the separation my father was largely absent and very hostile. This had a detrimental affect on me as I had no male role models. I didn’t even know what a urinal was on my first day at primary school, so kept trying to use the girls’ toilets rather than urinate against the wall, which is what the filthy boys, as I felt, seemed to be doing. I had no father to interest me in sport, DIY, etc. or to teach me the facts of life. Children need access to parents of both sexes if at all possible, which is part of the reason why heterosexual couples who split have to both have regular access to the children in most cases.

So gay couples who adopt children should, in my opinion, be required to insure that the children have regular access to an adult who is of the opposite sex to their adopted parents. This could be the biological mother or father in many cases.

There is also the stigma of having two mothers or two fathers when the child is at school, and likely to be bullied and teased because of this unusual family background.

Of course in the bad old days gay men tended to be very promiscuous. This was virtually forced on us by the fact that stable gay relationships were not only not recognized, they were illegal until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act was passed. Gay men were frequently arrested, and landlords often evicted them if they were known to be gay. This made living together in a stable partnership almost impossible unless you were discreet and rich enough to own your home, which was unusual for working-class people in those days. My life-partner and his friends, before I knew any of them and before the law was changed, were frequently evicted and having to live rough on the streets, forced into male prostitution because without a fixed abode you couldn’t qualify for ‘National Assistance’ as the benefits system was then called. My partner and nearly all his gay friends had been ‘on the game’. The idea of bringing children into this sort of lifestyle of fleeting sexual encounters, some for money, others for mutual gratification, was, of course, quite out of the question and would have been illegal.

So the new gay man is emerging, seeking a stable, monogamous relationship with adopted children. It seems very strange to us of the older generation, where even when we had a life-partner it was usually an open relationship. This was for many reasons – the way promiscuity was forced on us by society, the fact that stable gay relationships were difficult and not recognized (and illegal for years), and also because sexual roles were not obvious. Some gay partners were basically sexually incompatible, but had very strong emotional ties. With no marriage vows or pressures from society to be monogamous, when the sexual relationship between gay couples got stale or boring, it was all too easy to seek sexual gratification outside the relationship. Of all the gay couples I knew of my generation, not one were monogamous, including my own. Yet we remained together for 21 years till death parted us in our case, while our other gay friends had partnerships lasting 40 years or more, none of them monogamous but most very caring.

I am not an expert on lesbian relationships past and present, and lesbianism was never illegal in Britain, so the circumstances were different. Hence the title of this piece. I also imagine women being naturally maternal, having children of their own or, in more recent years, adopting them was not quite so strange for lesbians. For gay men to adopt children, or father them and then raise them with their gay partner, does seem very strange to gay men of my generation.

Why would any gay male couple want ‘screaming brats’ and ‘squawkers’ brought into their home? Are they seen as some sort of status symbol to prove they are a real family? Perhaps in some cases it is because, as my Greek-Cypriot father kept telling me, ‘you must have children to look after you in your old age’. Not that he ever looked after his parents, and he pissed off back to Cyprus in his old age so I and my brother certainly couldn’t look after him. He did, however, find himself a common-law wife to take care of him, and I am now carer for my mother who lives near me and is now 97.

I do sometimes wonder who will care for me if I reach anything approaching her advanced age. I suppose it will be a mainly heterosexual care home, which I could easily settle into as I mix with mainly heterosexuals and have done so for much of my life. For a gay friend of ours, however, it was very sad when he ended up in a heterosexual care home, living with people he had nothing at all in common with.

This is where the gay community still has a lot to learn. Looking after the elderly and disabled in their own community. I look forward to the first gay care homes, and organizations which provide practical care and help for gay and disabled people in their own homes. This should, in my opinion, be a priority over adopting children. Too often elderly and disabled gay men, and presumably lesbians, feel excluded and rejected by their own community.