Technic structure

I wanted to say something about Lego, which is a toy that I've enjoyed for as long as I can remember. Growing up I was a bit embarrassed to still be playing with it when I was around 15, when I had a medium sized collection of classic Space and Technics themes, and I guess I pretty much stopped then. Around 10 years later I passed my collection onto close friends for their children. But eventually I got back into playing with it again with my own daughter, then last year I bought my first new kit just for me - the Technics 42037 off-roader (I loved it's 4 wheel suspension - something I'd struggled with for ages on the old style Technics).

I enjoyed building the set model and pushing it around, but for me proper Lego building was always about making up your own things. So since then I've been building up my collection again with the 42036 motorbike (which I liked for its chain drive and more suspension), the 42049 mine loader (great value, with nice wheels, turning and controls, which include a worm gear), and the big 42042 crawler crane (wonderful tracks, a motorised gearbox and just loads of pieces). That's given me plenty to play around with, though I've not been too proud of my own creations so far (e.g. cars, tracked vehicles, and helicopter skeletons). I experimented with things like gear boxes and suspension on tracks (with help from Pawel "Sariel" Kmiec's excellent Unofficial Builder's Guide), but I guess I found them small or inelegant compared to the set models.

Coming back to Technics has been an interesting relearning experience though. The studless style of construction simply didn't exist when I was young. It intrigued me that models have no intrinsic way up anymore. So I've also done lots of fiddling about just making structures on the 3 perpendicular axes. Picking up the trick with Pythagorean triples (especially multiples of 3,4,5) seemed useful too.

And that led to the first model that felt original - a kind of diamond teardrop with hexagonal cross section, which has no function and isn't a realistic representation of anything...

The approach to learning was new too, using photos and tips from the Web (and Sariel's book, of course). Before we were all online I remember having to learn everything on my own through the set model instructions and experimentation. At first it seemed like cheating to just lift Sariel's gearbox design, for example; I clearly wasn't a proper builder if I wasn't being original. But this just doesn't hold up. We all learn have to learn from someone else. In the olden days that someone was only the set designers who wrote the instruction books, and their lessons could only go so far. Now we are all connected in online communities, with blogs for anyone to publish on. It's daft not to engage with that shared culture.

Update 2016-08-08: I've just added the immense 42043 Arocs truck to my collection. Even with an online retailer saving, I was sceptical about spending so much on a toy. However, it is staggeringly well designed model, with 2-axle drive, 2-axle steering and suspension all round before you even get to the motor and pneumatic functions. It's a deserving centre-piece to my collection (as the 8860 car chassis was when I was a boy), even if I can't imagine incorporating design features like that steering into my own creations.

A non-theist's spirituality

The facts are: I attend Quaker's regularly; I was brought up in the Anglican church; I practice meditation as taught by Buddhists; I value empiricism, rationalism and scientific method; I respect for the work of Daniel Dennett (e.g. as in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea) and Richard Dawkins (e.g. The Blind Watchmaker). Can this come together without making me a hypocrite or a liar, or in a way that is of any depth and value?

When I was a teenager, I would have called myself a Christian without hesitation, though I was enthusiastic about science from an early age. I would never have been too happy with the literal truth of the Bible, but I was behind the Christian message of "love your neighbour", and took comfort that however bad it gets "God so loved the world that he gave his only son". Then I studied some Western philosophy, starting with Descartes' principle of doubt, and I couldn't sustain any faith in a supernatural divinity. From then on, for many years, I'd definitely have called myself an atheist.

That said, I still had some respect for Christianity, and felt that my culture was in Anglicanism. I enjoyed spending time in cathedrals and listening to choral music, and I happily go to church occasionally for family events - the most moving of these being funerals, I guess. I also thought it significant that freedom of religion was one of the first liberal rights won (say, in 1701 with the Act of Settlement versus Thomas Paine's Rights of Man in 1791).

Also, I was struck deeply by the great pathos in Doris Lessing's Shikasta, where one of the characters has a part in a divine plan but gets distracted by the political and legal ways of the world. He's still doing what he thinks is the right thing, helping those who need it, but he misses his greater purpose. It seemed tragic to have a calling, in the religious sense, but then never know that it was really there through blindness to faith.

Anyway, I got into meditation later via yoga with a teacher who also followed Zen. I felt the breath exercises could help me to concentrate, make better use of my mind, and help overcome the frustration and anger I sometimes felt. So I then started going to classes with teachers from the Theravada tradition, who were fine with my practical secular attitude. I wouldn't say the practice filled me with the joy and insight I'd been hoping for, but it seemed to help me keep a bigger perspective in view. My partner also noticed it had a positive effect on my moods too, which helped me see its importance.

I've continued meditating for many years, and I'm now following Headspace courses to help keep a regular practice going. But a few years ago I also started going to Quaker meetings for worship, partly for family reasons and partly because I felt they dovetailed well with my attitudes about the value of silence. I feel I've grown into the Quaker way more for myself now, recently becoming a more regular attender at a small meeting, and that's what I'd planned to talk about here.

However, right now, I find I can't say much. The value that I place in sitting in silence with others and (sometimes) moving through a calm state of mind toward something that others have called God or the spirit or the inner light perhaps really is ineffable - ideas that cannot be put into words. I guess this is something I'll come back to here, though.