User:Henry Flower

Henry Flower is a teacher, lawyer and Wikipedian born on 26 February 1976, three days short of having something interesting to say at cocktail parties. He is a recovering Scot, for which he attempts to compensate with exaggerated interests in the further flung corners of the world, primarily southeast Asia, China and Japan. His POVs are largely those of Peter Singer.

Life
Henry Flower was brought up in the second worst city in Scotland, and has been moving in a southerly direction ever since. His school years imparted him with the rudiments of German and a dislike for teachers and for public speaking. Having gained a degree in law, he took up a position as security guard at one of the UK's less salubrious supermarkets. Watching the various elements of human society pass by his post convinced him to move to a country where at least he would not be able to understand what people were saying. Spells in China, interrupted by a brief real job, led him to a career in TEFL and several years in Thailand. Once he began to understand some Thai he moved to Isan, whose language he can understand only when sung. He has long been plotting a move to Japan: he hoped that Japanese was similar enough to Chinese for him to get by.

In his teens he discovered the only true and logical system of moral philosophy, although it later transpired that someone else had got there first. He has a strong sense of justice, which he believes is always on his side. He was born grave as others syphilitic, and wouldn't have it any other way.

An idealistic know-it-all with nothing original to say, he was soon attracted to Wikipedia, which he has also adorned with his pedestrian but worthy photographs. His (mostly former) featured article babies are Dmitri Shostakovich, Du Fu, Mor lam, Isan, Casablanca (movie), Athanasius Kircher and the youngest, Angkor Wat. He has been an admin here since July 2004. Aside from whichever article he is currently working on, the article most likely to keep him awake at nights is Johann Sebastian Bach. He should on no account be confused with User:Mark.

Beliefs
In his fuzzier moments, he agrees with Steven Weinberg that; "if there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that -- in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play."

In his more melancholy moments he agrees with Schopenhauer that; "A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten."

He always agrees that tags are evil, has little time for infoboxen or categories, and suspects an inverse relationship between a typical user's devotion to these and the amount that user contributes to the encyclopedia. Ah, for the good old days...

Copyrights
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below: