Tuesday 28 October 2014

Finding my religion

I've just had a religious epiphany. It happened over the weekend, after reading Rodney Hide's excellent NBR column.* I spent the weekend thinking about it. I've come to realise the following:

  • Neckties are religiously offensive, or at least are offensive for me to wear. They represent the time my people were in bondage and had to wear neck chains. I'm sure I have ancestry somewhere who were at some point enslaved; it harms the spirit of those ancestors that I wear a tie.
  • The Power of Evolutionary Biology Compels Us. Things are enjoyable, or comfortable, because they are fundamentally in keeping with that which nature and evolution have prepared us for. Foods are tasty because 30,000 generations on the Pleistocene savannah can't be wrong. That which is unenjoyable, or uncomfortable, violates the spirit of the evolutionary process that made us human. Consequently, I cannot wear a suit jacket, long-sleeved shirt, or long pants, in the summertime. They are perfectly comfortable in the winter. But when it is warmer than 20 degrees, it is religiously offensive to wear clothing more constraining than shorts and a loose-fitting short-sleeved shirt. They can be business-appropriate shorts and shirt, but they must be shorts and a short-sleeved shirt.
  • Art and music are an important part of what make us human; read Denis Dutton. Sufficient at-work bandwidth to allow streaming of Spotify, and accommodation of my religiously required Edifier speakers, is also important.
  • I am still pondering to what extent my religious beliefs require accommodation of flexible work hours. They took naps in the Pleistocene, right?
I'm sure that Oliver will have no problem in accommodating my newly discovered, but earnestly held, religious beliefs. 

Update: Simpsons Did It. (I actually cited the Feast of Maximum Occupancy in this morning's meeting as one of the days off I'll now be requiring.)

* The article is gated. Hide details the case of a satellite TV installation company where an employee, who signed a contract to work on Saturdays installing satellite dishes, joined the Seventh Day Adventists and declined to work on Saturdays. The court awarded him lost wages and sent the managers who fired him to human rights training. I'd normally say this kind of thing jeopardises our "Outside of the Asylum" status, but if it lets me wear shorts in summertime....

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