A letter from June 25th, 2020

Hello world! I hope you and your loved ones came safely through this difficult time, and if not, I hope you find comfort and consolation Lockdown was interesting for me.. My usually withdrawn, home-oriented, socially minimal, anomalous life abruptly became much more closely aligned with the standard and I felt reasonably 'normal', in synch with the human world, for the first time in 57 years of life. I did not use the weeks of lockdown time to learn anything new, or do anything useful as I had planned. Instead, I had plenty of wifi interaction with my distant siblings and parents who are talented, amusing, intelligent, unconventional - the best family I could ask for. Since lockdown was lifted I feel almost as incongruous as before, but oddly my usual depression is minimal - particularly for winter which has come late and mildly here. We're now allowed minimal gatherings with masks, physical distancing and hygiene. Non-essential businesses are limited, as are large gatherings, except for church of course. I loathe and despise religion for the credit it is given for good and the glossing over of (or support/excuses for) the bad, and for the ludicrous belief in a personal, caring, all-wise-knowing-good-powerful-and.so.on god. Such god/s are the stuff of fairytales, and belief in them is as illogical, superstitious and patently nonsensical as a belief in gremlins and fairies. Emma Thompson said it well, "I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by [many] of the things said in the Bible and the Quran, and I refute them." I wonder whether society is any different in 2021? Is COVID still around and has humanity learned anything from it, such as not ruining the planet any further? Have more of us stopped abusing and eating animals (wishful thinking!)? And has our species finally started growing up, taking responsibility, cleaning up our act? It's a fine opportunity to make changes for the good but historically we're unlikely to do that. Human leaders are strong in managing and controlling us, and useless in anything practically, usefully beneficial; they much prefer to keep things ruinously nasty but profitable. On that grim note, may we be better in the future!