Masturbation for the masses

Blimey Miley, that was quite a show you put on. I didn’t watch it of course and had it not been for Twitter I wouldn’t even have known it had happened. As it is I still don’t know what VMA stands for and I’m only vaguely aware of who you are, but then I’m in my late forties and not, let’s hope, the target audience. That would be a million teenage boys and girls for whom it’s good material; well, for the boys anyway for whom you give such relief. I’m not so sure what it does for your female following but I should think it involves an unhealthy body image and neutering the English language. Yes, I think you’re a poor example (I would say that wouldn’t I) but if Elvis couldn’t manage then what chance have you in stunting their growth?

I am curious as to what Miley’s Dad, who was in the same line of work - singing that is, not twerking, whatever that is - made of it all. From what I read he has a connection to one of those over-bearing parent groups with a never-ending fear of moral corruption. I however couldn’t muster the outrage, besides half-heartedly musing on a Cyrus family subterfuge; it’s all so banal. So banal I’ve just devoted two paragraphs on the subject. So trivial that after a long hiatus I choose this rather than Ed Miliband’s “Neville Chamberlain” moment. What am I thinking?

It’s a crisis of something or other - I‘d say faith only I’m not that way inclined. I have thought on it before, though with more conviction. Science tells me everything, or will, given time; the when, the how, the why; and in doing so it tells me nothing. Science endows and then strips the world of meaning; though I recognise the two are separate - the actual and the spiritual - I speak in a non-religious sense as I haven’t the imagination for much else; the world is what it is and often I’m finding that sad.

I appreciated the bluntness; his explanation that life appears to have no meaning because life has no meaning; and what do you do, asked Camus, once you’ve discovered this ‘truth’? There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn, he says, and that appeals too. But enough of the self-flagellation; to deny the world a meaning is not (this atheist prays) to deny myself an internal meaning, and that can be as I choose. Kindness, compassion and companionship; and pain - it would be false to deny the pain of those I have (and those I will) hurt, though I might wish otherwise; and not forgetting love, to deny love would be the greatest sin of all. God help us if science finds a reason for that.