Why I Have Not Been Posting

So, abandonallfear.co.uk is confined to the Internet archives, and there has not been a post on here for 6 months. Perhaps part of it is because I lost the passion for heated debates, playing devils advocate and a raft of other things. I let the .co.uk domain slide because my paranoid side wanted to avoid a future fight with any companies that would seek Abandon All Fear as a label – I just can’t be bothered to get into a war of ‘I was here first’. Secondly I don’t really care if people find this blog or not. Over the last year I’ve been reassessing what’s important to me, and aside from a record of what I think, and a record of a contrarian view out there amongst the hubris, I care not for the events and opinions of the current era.

But I feel I will be drawn out soon to comment on the state of Churchianity. You see, I’ve been trying to mainstream. After resolving personal difficulties with the church in general and coming back to God, in a sense, I’ve been attempting to bridge my controversial viewpoints and social commentary to a public real identity twitter feed. What that means is, or rather what I’ve discovered is, that the need I have to mock and rubbish the sacred cows of society is a core part of who I am I can’t get away from. But recently I’ve also discovered that it just won’t work, I’ve realised that there is a need to have a split online personality. Some friends and acquaintances are just not ready for either truth, or ideas that challenge their lives and careers.

There’s sometimes a need for anonymity, a prophet is not accepted in his hometown, and perhaps it’s because people are not ready to accept truth from those they have some kind of relationship with. It’s far easier to accept truth and wisdom from an anonymous source outside your social circle – perhaps because changing your mind over something need not necessarily be looked upon as an embarrassing turn around by people who are close and in the know. Perhaps it provides another voice with which to feel allegiance with, that you are not alone in your ‘extreme’ thoughts and can feel a bit more normal.

I guess there’s a need for Lex Fear, not because the world needs Lex Fear, it’s just me that needs him. A persona to vent about the things I see that drive me nuts. And if you agree with what Lex says, then that’s great, if you don’t then don’t worry, it’s nothing that in any way will affect how you live or who you mix with.

[Soul Searching] Vapours

“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!”

What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

I, the Teacher, was king of Israel, and I lived in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done under heaven. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless—like chasing the wind.

What is wrong cannot be made right. What is missing cannot be recovered.

I said to myself, “Look, I am wiser than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. I have greater wisdom and knowledge than any of them.” So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.

The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.

Solomon, Ecclesiastes

A while ago I was discussing politics and the recession with a friend. I was doing what I considered my dutiful task of informing him of how all the decisions of Gordon Brown, since ZaNuLabour rose to power 12 years ago, have led to the bubble in house prices and the subsequent eonomic collapse. But my friend then asked a pertinent question which caused me to consider my very purpose.

If the Conservatives had been in power, would things have been different?

And the very truthful answer to that is, No.

It’s not just a political thing, it’s not just that ZaNuLabour stole Tory policies. It’s the old cliche that absolute power corrupts absolutely – greed, extravagance, gluttony, apathy,  envy, pride and anger. What have we not seen in recent days? There are very few people – and politicians are people – who did not fall into the trap of thinking the good times were never going to end. Everyone was happy to turn a blind eye to the injustices, to the corruption, the expense claims whilst the money kept rolling and the price of their house kept rising.

What would have been different? Nothing. And it’s this answer which has formulated my cynicism and means I will never have absolute faith in politics.

That’s not to say I don’t believe there are individuals who appear at times who see all this and really do want to change the system, but all too often they either fall to the dark side, or they find themselves being chewed up and spat out by a great machine which is fueled by the ignorance of man.

You think our politicians have learned from this boom and bust? You think things will be difference because they are putting rules in place to stop it happening again? Let me tell you that most of them don’t even know how to prevent it, or don’t really care, and of those rules they do make… they will be ignored by future generations just as we have ignored the rules and the lessons of the past.

So why bother even blogging about this, why bother discussing it? The most reward that any of us can get is the option to say “I told you so”, because we all lose. The truth about teamwork is that the team moves forward at the pace of it’s slowest member, and the same is true of humanity. For all our scientific innovations and discoveries, we cannot solve the problem sin. When I use this word, sin, I refer to human failings, things which are inherent in our nature which cause evil – deceit, selfishness, murder, greed, sexual desires, war… but instead of acknowledging these we redefine them. (The idea that someone would have sexual relations with a 10 year old disgusts us and strikes us as immoral, but the boundaries of sexual morality are being increasingly eroded. As adults fight for more sexual freedoms there is nothing to stop this becoming socially acceptible – all that’s needed is to redefine what constitutes being an adult. For instance at 10 years old in England, you can already be tried for a crime as an adult – why can’t you be considered sexually aware?)

But I digress. I have questioned why I should rail against something which cannot and will not be stopped as long as there is an unsanctified human race. A human race of which 1/3 does not even acknowledge God’s existance let alone as Lord. (And of those that do acknowledge and worship God, how many of them are truly taking a stand against corruption and not partaking in it?)

The truth is, I have lost the drive to blog about politics and world affairs, to question the system. I still hold strong political beliefs but since there is no longer any difference between man and pig, I no longer see a purpose in it.

Instead, I’ve taken some time to reflect on blogging, and I am going to go back to my roots in blogging about Christianity and experience – that means I’m still going to post the odd consumer post but I see my primary purpose in apologetics.

It may be something to do with having made my peace with the church.. or at least the church I now attend. It may be something to do with reading and listening to the arguments of atheists more.. which provides me a source of great mirth and sometimes deep thought.

Of course my co-author Hudson has a lot to say about politics and anyone else can be free to join and write for AaF about these topics, but I have said enough, and will now focus on something which is close to my heart.. and I guess, in that way, I’m being true to the subjects I’ve always posted on.. those that are important issues for me.

[Web Pointing] This Is Very Cool

I’ve finally managed to wrest control of abandonallfear.co.uk from Lycos to my current domain provider and am now able to keep it for the next year or so, and point it towards this blog.

What is really cool is that doing a little test on google leads me to believe that any old pages that have been indexed at abandonallfear.co.uk with a p=? number eg. “abandonallfear.co.uk/p=123” will automatically redirect to the full corresponding page on abandonallfear.org.uk.

This must mean WP keeps all blog pages indexed via page, number and long-name rather than rebuilding the index for each option you select. Interesting.

[Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes] Teething Problems

So I had to go pick a theme that doesn’t show the post author, and since we now have two authors on the books I’ve had to do theme change.

Why am I not using a customised theme instead you ask? Because underneath this domain it’s ‘just another WordPress blog’ which has limited theme choice, and this is because I’m being a cheapskate.

The other issue I have is loss of comments. I’ve been doing some housekeeping and updating my older content and noticed that I have lost the comments for all my posts which originally started on blogger. I apologise to longtime followers from the early days, I have no way of now getting these back (without painstaking recreation of each one from the old content).

Ce la vie.

[New Writer] An Introduction

As this is my first post as a guest writer on AAF, I’d like to introduce myself (very) briefly.

In short, I’m a student from the South of England, interested broadly in politics, literature and music. Politics and a taste for  news with views I trust led me to the Osterley Times, and hence to here.

I’m not sure how long my stay will last, but I’ve got a few posts planned. First of all, I’d like to introduce you to the principles of agorism, and I’ll see how it goes from there. Thanks to Lex for giving me the opportunity.

That seems like enough of an intro for now.

BHudson.

[Metablog] Resolutions

I hope you like the new colour scheme, it’s one of the best from a limited choice, I miss the red and black but I thought this resembled it somewhat in a grey/black way.

I’ve been having some problems accessing the site, particularly in resolving the domain name, but I’m not sure if this is my ISP or whether it’s an issue with the transfer. Hopefully it will settle down.

As is customary this time of year, and since this is a new starting point for the blog, I thought I should make some new resolutions and share them with the faithful.

1. Turn long comments into a blog post. I have a bad habbit of going into a dissertation sometimes when I’m leaving a comment – and I’ve had the odd complaint. But whats more I’m depriving my own blog of valuable Fearisms. Just as long as I don’t come off as a cyberstalker then I should be alright.
2. No sacred cows. Well, I tend to abide by this rule anyway, but as long as someone doesn’t make an asshat of themselves, I’m happy to have disagreement, dissent and mocking.
3. No more reinventions. Well, maybe. It’s just hard for me to stick to one topic or character for so long. I think I’ve done alright with ‘Lex Fear.
4. Say more with less. Ties in with the 1st resolution. Never write a debunking article when a good sardonic quip will do.
5. Do reviews. I’ve been hopeless at this in the past and will probably continue to do so, but I know I want to include reviews of things I’m reading and watching.
6. Get into a routine. This has to be my number one downfall and is the reason this blog is so sporadic. If I can just nail the routine everything else falls into place.
7. Sort out the back catalogue. A lot of internal links are broken, colours and images are out of contrast, so I’m going to go through the past 4 years posts and try to update and tidy them up so they fit the theme of the rest of the blog.
8. Relax a little. I think, for the last 4 years I’ve been tightly wound and found myself slowly unwinding. Maybe it’s age, maturity, being able to confront my demons or simply tired of the war. maybe all of the above, but it’s time to enjoy blogging.
9. Introduce a new writer. Yep, that’s right, a new writer will be joining me shortly on Abandon All Fear, but I’m going to let him do introductions.

Peace, for now.

The Future

A belated Happy New Year to all my readers who I can now count on two hands. It seems odd to be posting after such a while, I’ve been taking some time out as well as harassing other bloggers by over-using their comment feature.

Firstly, I’ve had some emails recently so I want to let those who have emailed know that I’ll get round to responding to you soon.

This post is about the future, the future of this blog specifically.

I think about the future a lot. I think about the current state of cultures and societies, scientific consensus, and what will those who come after us will say about this time. People who ascribe to old values, or belief systems that are considered a throwback to medieval times are mocked and villified. I see no reason that some of the accepted theories and philosophies of the day will be also be derided and mocked in the future. I wonder how many times a ‘new paradigm’ will be declared only to be shot down in flames when the next paradigm comes along.

I don’t think many bloggers or forum posters think like this. I say so because I’ve read their posts.

I like the idea that my words will be here for future generations to read and observe ideas were around at the beginning of the 21st Century. I like that people will be able to marvel at how insightful and forward thinking I was… or how spectacularly wrong I got it.

But on to the future of this blog. I have some interesting developments which should please people who consider Alex Fear to write things worth reading.

I have been advised by my site hosts, Lycos, that they are feeling very credit crunchy indeed and so are selling the web-hosting business. Some time in February in fact, this site will cease to exist… unless I transfer.

But I’m not transferring.

This website remains due to my ability to fund it. Apart from a small amount I’ve received from advertising, it’s funded by my own pocket. Whilst I like the idea of having my own base, as it were, something has always troubled me about this – what if something happened? What if I got struck by a bus and the funding no longer continued?

Though I wasn’t ready to contemplate a move, it seems my hosts have forced it upon me, therefore I’m going to be migrating this blog – to a WordPress hosted one. It’s not my first preference, I’d rather go back to Blogger, but WordPress hosting is the only way I get to keep all the comments and settings from this one, for now.

I’ll be migrating shortly, and I’ll be removing content from this site and putting on redirect. I may look and see if it’s possible for me to keep the domain name, without hosting- but admittedly and embarrassingly I’m not definite of how this works.

There is more news to come, which I’ll follow up with soon.

[Mentality] How To Be A Victim

This Post Is Rated: O for Downright Offensive! It’s controversial! Get your lawyers, call the police, a blogger has commented on a hot issue and we don’t agree with his opinion.

Whoa, Alex, getting personal now?

Well, in a way yes, but no, not really.

[Blogger] That Was Odd…

This Post Is Rated: F for Friendly. Reflections on lost blogs.

In my last post I mentioned my other blog Dark Side of the Light in purgatory (see comments).

I just checked tonight and darksidelight.blogspot.com was available again, along with abandonallfear.blogspot.com.

Of course I reclaimed! Particularly since the folks at Dead Yet Living failed to update their link since it was lost.

[Blogdeath] Where Do Blogs Go When They Die?

This Post Is Rated: F for Friendly Post. Nothing here you’ll find insulting your religiosity.

The End of the Road – Raw Carrot
So this is free speech? – Argos Employee
Stand Down – Universal Soldier

Theories

Re-incarnated? Independant Christian Voice
In Purgatory? Dark Side of the Light
Zombified? Quinnblog
Bodysnatched? The Cranky Insomniac Bartender

Is there a blog afterlife? Should there be a charity for abandoned blogs?

I actually like what the cranky insomniac did- but I wish the new tenant would change the title already. I offered up my starter blog when I decided to move on, but sadly had no takers. I moved some of the archive posts over here, but it’s now gone to the abyss.

I’m now feeling my favourite mood. Melancholy.