Wee angels of our teeny tiny hearts.

A little angel.
Originally uploaded by Eleventh Earl of Mar.

So it turns out that a lot of people believe in angels.

fair enough.

Some people believe in pixies at the bottom of the garden, some people believe in aliens - I knew a girl who believed in Allens for a while, but it turned out she was dylsexic...I mean dyslexic.

I knew a bloke who was incredibly stupid, and we were friends (in a way) for years. He discovered that quite a few famous and clearly bright people were dyslexic, so he decided that was his own problem (not being stupid or anything), and that's why people thought he was stupid, and that's why he didn't read books (not because all those words on a page made his tiny IQ ache).

Now what was I on about - oh yes - angels!

Yes, so here is the good ol' You Way Survey you can think what you like (as long as it doesn't involve communism or socialism of course, perish the thought, mind control, propoganda, peer pressure, secret police kicking your door down, Guantanomo Bay etc).

It turns out that some people believe there are angels that are completely unrelated to God, that watch over them and they're all around.

Yes, I was somewhat taken aback too.

So my understanding of this is that it's yet another way of disowning personal responsibility. If something 'good' happens, well that was an angel doing that for you. If you work hard and everything comes out right, that was an angel doing it for you. If you drop something and it breaks, well then that was a bad angel or an evil pixie, or a little demon. You get the picture.

It's a little like the notion in some cultures that everything is down to fate and you have no power and no control over it.

The saddest thing about this is that the majority of people who believe this are the poorest and most socially deprived people. It's pretty harmless in and of itself, but it does explain a little more about the society in which i have chosen to live.

A few years ago a friend of mine came over from the UK. He was doing a piece of work for The British Museum, and this was related to angels. He had noticed a thread throughout history in many cultures of angels, and was pursuing this from several angles, including visting the City of Angels.

We got wind of a lady in Thousand Oaks who collected angels.

We went to her house - on a hillside with a stunning westward view. She was unfeasibly pleasant and welcoming, and charming (as were we of course) and allowed us to take pictures of her two thousand angels and angel related items. They were everywhere.

I don't know what my friend did with all the material he collected during his brief sojourn to my city, but he did complete he work for the British Museum and gave me a copy of the book that was published to go with the work.

I'm all for people believing what they want, as long as they do not then go about trying to inflict it upon others, or act upon thei personal hatred of whatever particular ethnic/religious/gender/animal/mineral etc that they despise.

However, we live in a world where people are becoming less responsible for their own actions, and yet more selfish, more likely to blame other people and outside influences for their own failures, and more insular.

The angel dependency club takes it to a new level.