Who the hell do I think I am? Blathering on, week after week, about the size of flies and falcons and potatoes and Chuck Berry. I mean, why would anyone give a fig for my opinion?
That’s the trouble with this blogging lark. If you’ve got an ounce of humility about you – and the last time I weighed it, I had just over an ounce – you can’t help feeling a little uneasy every time you posit an opinion in public. There’s a fine line between ‘having an opinion’ and ‘being opinionated’ and it’s a line I’m always trying and failing not to cross.
You cross it every time you write your opinion down, because that very act assumes there’s someone out there who gives a damn, and frankly, my dear, that’s a pretty presumptuous assumption. I don’t know about you, but whenever I read someone proffering a particularly punchy opinion, my first instinct is to wade in to the argument. Perhaps it’s a consequence of reading The Henry Root Letters as a youth.
Take Richard Dawkins, the high priest of atheism. There, see, I’ve started already! As an atheist myself, I ought to go along with Dawkins every step of the way, but instead I want to tweak his nose. Until he can explain where the Universe ends, I’d sooner share a pint with my friendly local shaman.
I’m trying to read his book The God Delusion and I have to say I’m finding it hard going. Not because I’m a fervent evangelist (see above), nor because it uses big words I can’t understand (it’s actually a nice, straightforward read), but because, to be quite honest, I’m struggling for motivation. I feel like a non-smoker reading a quit smoking manual. It all seems so blindingly obvious, you can’t help wondering why he felt motivated to write it in the first place. It’s like a reply from the complaints department at GWR or Westminster Council Parking Dept: a cogent argument about something that is completely and utterly beside the point.
Even more baffling is why it made such a big splash. If he’d written it in the 16th century then yes, I could see how it might have made waves, but today? Really? But then you read the testimonials on the fly sheet and a pattern begins to form. All the people who worship Dawkins appear to be from the same demographic: well educated folk brought up under the yoke of organised religion, who have spent their lives craving an escape. Dawkins provides that escape and, like born-again non-smokers revelling in their release from nicotine, his disciples are so grateful they could kiss his ring.
I’m talking the papal ring here.
Because we get the word pontificate from pontiffs – high priests like the Pope – whose job it is to, well, pontificate. The irony is that Dawkins can’t seem to tackle pontiffs without pontificating and I can’t seem to tackle Dawkins without doing the same.
So here’s my advice (and if you know what’s good for you you’ll take it): when faced with pontification, look for the gaps. I’ve spent the last few weeks collecting insightful pontifications from successful people for a book I’ve been asked to compile for people who want to be successful. (Now there’s a book that can’t afford to fail!) From Julius Caesar to Isaac Newton to Henry Ford to Mark Zuckerberg, they all put their success down to the same five essentials: ideas, risk, hard work, perseverance and associates. Clearly they’re leaving something out.
I have ideas, I take risks, I work hard, I don’t let adversity get me down (much) and I’ve got one or two clever friends (you know who you are). I’m currently worth sixty-seven pounds and thirty-four pence – and that will go down when Paypal settles my outstanding eBay bill.
Here endeth another worthless load of opinionated nonsense that no-one wants to read. Least of all me.
Or does it?
