Private Dick’s Big Bang Theory
“The male salmon is as pugnacious as the little stickleback….” Charles Darwin
“He’s an intelligent bloke, why doesn’t he wear one?” The Semen Skater
Watching a TV programme on Darwinism the other night, I couldn’t help but think about Mr Jarvis Cocker’s rockin’ beat combo Pulp and their popular music ditty Common People. Here we are spinning at approximately 1038 mph through space (although as you get towards the poles that figure becomes less – apparently) and I know those mad boffins in Europe spent billions of Euros building some kind of particle accelerator to prove what happened the second after the creation of the universe – but why? Didn’t they go to Sunday School? If they had read the first chapter of a certain popular book – Genesis – and I’m not talking about the Phil Collins Easy Listening Chamber Orchestra, but the Old Testament of all things, then they would have had a bit of a clue – but hey I’m not a rocket scientist! In the beginning…etc. Of course, as the Rev Professor Michael Reiss, recently of The Royal Society has found out, it all depends upon your point of view – and perhaps more importantly, how that point of view is expressed. Points of view eh.
Now, whilst I’m not John Major, taking Darwinism theory back to basics we are all rather like the pugnacious salmon. The male and female salmon – or to use the correct terminology cock (oo’er etc) and hen’s job is to mature, having traversed the streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, grown up a bit, learnt a bit about life and survival and then go back home to copulate. This act leaves the poor male so exhausted, that he dies, usually at the paws of large bear at the point of his conception – if he’s in Canada, or he runs himself aground to be eaten by other mammals that depend on the spawning fish for their survival. Or, he’s caught by a fisherman on the River Wye. Whichever way it turns out it ‘s a pretty rough deal…
“What?” I hear you say has this to do with sexual health in this country? Well, from Private Dick’s point of view, quite a lot really, especially when you think about the unfolding wider picture. Mr Cocker hit the nail on the head with his lyrics to Common People, illustrating a clear divide between the working classes and upper classes (weren’t these supposed to have been swept away with the jackboot of the ‘classless society?’ We think not). Unfortunately our working classes – or perhaps that should now read underclass – over the past few decades no longer work and are stuck in a perpetual poverty trap – so what else can they do, “but dance and drink and screw because there’s nothing else to do”.
Charles Darwin comes to the rescue. Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest, of reproducing to carry inherited genetic traits from one generation to the next is, despite the academic debate, accepted as science fact. Since 1859 – which is definitely post-flood, unless you happen to live in Hull or Gloucestershire. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game – which means not necessarily survival of an elite, or the best that humanity has to offer in terms of academia, politics, science etc (by-the-way, eugenics has had a bad press ever since Dr Goebbels mistook a cyanide capsule for a gobstopper back in the Berlin bunker in 1945). Survival of the fittest then, which means that it’s not about your membership of Mensa or the fact that you host ‘feel-good’ dinner parties with your smooth friends, jet to conferences in Seattle and can afford an Aston Martin and a Rolls, whilst the chap who slogs to work at the council dump on his old bike and lives at the top of some Brutalist 60’s tower block can’t afford a ticket to see his favourite football team, which you and your friends are clueless about, but occupy the hospitality suite at the football stadium anyway and are thus in some way ‘superior’ – no. Afraid not – it’s about the fact that Mr Brutalist the Bike’s genes might be more successful in the procreation game – after all, an old bike can be pretty useful getting into some dark corners that an Aston Martin or Rolls could never negotiate. So-called losers, drifters, slackers, the great unwashed – these ‘dysfunctional’ people perpetuate a series of events – survivals, that cascade ever forward – just like the Big Bang. Are you getting this Stephen Hawking? I don’t need to spend a gazillion pounds to understand this theory. The money spent on proving Big Bang theory, could have been used to educate our youth, our population, that banging is OK and fine, in the confines of their homes, their roadside caravans, their tents and cars, just so long as no one is infected, or impregnated, because unless they can afford it like the middle and upper classes who are not supposed to exist, but do, then in Red Knob speak, they really need to put a cap on it. If they can afford or have easy access to condoms. And of course, as we all know good intentions fly out of the window at the moment of arousal. Nature or nurture? But that’s another debate.
Lost the plot yet? Now just like those bears and other critter mammals, this is where other organisations come into Private Dick’s theory of the wider picture of what’s really going on. This country is blighted with what I consider a deplorable waste of money… Yes, for those of us who pay tax anyway. Because there is money to be made from all of this. Ouch…what a revelation. Mischievous? Upping the ante? Who us? Being blunt, it could be construed that the misfortunes of our younger generation are being exploited by those very organisations that profess to be their advocates, their counsellors and youth workers. What? Surely they’re not just all well-paid, cosy, lifestyle maintenance strategists, intent on preserving their very long-term paid annual leave, the timeshare in Barbados and the house in Brittany? A point of view? We’ve all got one. These are the real predators preying on the vulnerable, ‘pugnacious salmon’, that are our youth. Allusion – or illusion? ‘Cause there is money to be made in their education. Horrified by this diatribe yet? If you’re one of the aforementioned I’m sure you are – after all that university education was supposed to mean that you’d never have to put up with this sort of riff-raff - but this stiletto isn’t aimed at ‘the poor bloody infantry’ – it’s aimed at the strategists who fail to connect to what happens at ground level. Consider this; grants, contracts, ‘commissions’ are awarded to organisations, who profess to deal with ‘the problem’. However, it seems just another ploy to fund and recruit a body – who will either try to reinvent the wheel, or succumb to ‘provincial think’ in dealing with ‘the problem’ – a ‘provincial think’ that is blinkered by the statutory advice that workers daren’t break away from for fear of the resulting outcry and recriminations if they don’t toe the party line. Ad infinitum. More money, more people thrown at an ongoing issue – but no solution. Without wishing to enter the Darwin/Creationism debate (which we’ll again remind you closed sometime in the 19th century) in terms of sexual health work there’s a lack of creativity – or rather a reluctance to engage with it at a higher level – and we’re not talking God here. More points of view. In the words of that great existentialist, my friend the Semen Skater I’d like to ask “why?” And by-the-way, whilst we love to revel in Branson-type millions, Red Knob is a part-time company, whose mission is to break the hegemony of restrictive sexual health practice – to deal with situations and people as they are – not to try to change them and by challenging them create barriers to engagement. Is it really that difficult to understand? Solutions don’t always need to cost the Earth.
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