too educated for hierarchical structures?

I wonder if there is a progression of believing depending on how educated you and your culture is. Ancient cultures often have very well defined hierarchical structures which dominate life. It is said that children develop best in a well structured environment.

So I wonder if my dissatisfaction with institutional religion is a combination of being taught (and strong belief) in democracy and the importance of self-thought and self-action and living in a culture where the usefulness of most hierarchical structures have been demolished. Does that even make any sense?

In most periods of history, presumably democracy would not have been much use as most people would not have known how to exercise their rights. Maybe there is no point in telling a woman she has the right to make her own life choices when her only experience is within a rigid hierarchical society where she has few apparent choices to make.

As we're educated, we appreciate how many other options there are and how many other things we could be doing. With reference to religion, I don't really want to be told how to behave or how to think - presumably as I've been taught to argue and consider the merits of a case rather than accept someone's word for it.

OK, I'm boring myself now.

reshuffling

According to my MP, he is going to send my recent communication to the Minister of State for the Middle East. Which seems a bit of a strange way of referring to Kim Howells, given that his responsibilities are not only the Middle East.

Kim appears to be one of the few unshuffled ministers. Still, in his ministerial team at the FCO, he has the awful Meg Munn who I met at the Co-op Congress 2006 and the unelected and unaccountable Mark Malloch Brown, who is as yet not even a member of the House of Lords.

Let us see if we get any more sense out of this crowd than we did from the last.

half term

It has been half-term this week and B has been having a bit of a holiday with the Grandparents.

Our computer died, but we fixed it by buying some new bits.

We ate some broad beans from the allotment, which is overrun with weeds following the recent rains.

We've been sorting out T-shirts for the Enough! rally in London, 9 June.

We went ten-pin bowling. I got a strike and a couple of spares with my first few goes, then it went disasterously downhill from then onwards.

We went out for dinner with some friends and spent a long time talking about their historical reenactment society. I like being around people who are passionate about something, even if it is completely mad.

Our council started the trial for its plastic recycling scheme, but it seems unlikely that it will be effective.