“Woe to the lukewarm. Shame on him who is ashamed. Woe to and shame on him who is ashamed. The question here is not so much to believe or not to believe. Shame on the man who would deny his faith to avoid ridicule, to avoid being laughed at, to avoid being branded a fool. The question here concerns the man who does not trouble to find out whether he believes or does not believe.” – Charles Peguy

Well, I suppose that mining is ok in itself … of course , it does matter what it is one is mining. I mean digging a big hole in the ground can be justified, its kinda fun … But, digging something up and burning it is another question altogether … And then, digging something up and creating a big hole and then selling it to someone else to burn – well, that just criminal. Unconscionable. No possible justifications; not now, not in the 21st century.

I just heard one one the most stupid things I’ve ever heard! “That these are personal stories and politics and religion have no bearing on how one experiences them” … The rule ‘no politics no religion’ – these are for something that’s euphemistically called a Sunday Salon. I’m going to have to think that these ‘Salons’ are based on the salons of the enlightenment period … The sorts of gatherings that all the great thinkers and wits participated in in those wonderful times of free discussion of new ideas and the challenging of the mistakes and the misconceptions of the past and the present – political thought and human rights and the debunking of faith that had been usurped by a church.

What’s sort of a salon could you have where things like politics, religion, science and social values couldnt be discussed because they may be seen as offensive to some of those at the salon, or more to the point, that they may challenge those who do not practice the things they preach? Making people uncomfortable is precisely what these salons were all about – what on Earth do they discuss now? And how is it possible to utter such an ignorant statement, that politics and religion in this day and age, have no bearing on our experiences! Really? Politics is everything and well, the hypocrisy of religion is precisely the thing that is defining our world today. Where are these people getting their experiences from?

Back in the late 1970s a group of my friends in old Mosman wanted to have a Salon, a discussion club – we were all teenagers – we wanted a no holds barred discussion on all the things that mattered; all things. Music, Politics, Science, Gods and god, History, Philosophy, Hypocrisy, Morals and Language … All things, all things. We based our club on the Famous Lunar Club of Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestly, Ben Franklin, James Watt, Matthew Bolton, Josiah Wedgwood, Tom Paine, Thomas Beddoes and others. Imagine the things we discussed – the things that mattered.

My how we’ve managed to allow our world to be closed up us for us. And what for? So we don’t discuss the things that really matter. More than ever these are the sorts of salons our teenagers should be organising and attending and they should be doing it with pride and in public. Why? Because if our Kings and Priests know we are discussing them openly and in all ways they may just stop and think … Of course they may not. They may just send the men from State Security around to shut them down. Sounds familiar?

Not, I suppose, if politics and religion – and all the things that hinge upon them – are banned for legitimate discussion and we just get on as our Kings and Priests allow us to.

‘The judge … told the jury unmistakably that even though they might feel they could not possibly have any sympathy for the woman, it should not make them any more ready to convict her of her crime. It should, if anything, make them less ready to accept evidence against her.’ – Battenburg & Stoner 1935, Famous Trials.