Andrew Miller: The true meaning of Easter is obvious, so why don’t we just say it?

My nominee for nonsense phrase of the decade is “you can’t say anything these days.” What it really means is “I don’t like feedback from people who will no longer just shut up and take it.” To demonstrate freedom of speech, let’s discuss the true meaning of Easter, which is obviously fertility. Those sweet, heathen eggs are symbols of ripe fecundity, readied for the northern hemispheric spring. Sexual reproduction enables evolution of a genome in the face of variable environmental stressors. It’s why we, and other species, are still here. Anyone interfering with anyone else having - or not having - children is an evolutionary busy-body. We are evolving into superior beings far too slowly, but I lean toward optimism about the human race - not just because of the chocolate, but it helps. We are all a product of carnal processes, even if we prefer to decontextualise. The idea of our own parents making babies is better left in the abstract. I am only half joking when I say that our species has survived hundreds of thousands of Easters because of the generously low standards of women. I am still amazed that the vast majority of men that I went to school with have kids. Many of us struggled to bathe and wash our socks, yet most of us have passed on our genes. To “death and taxes” it seems we can add the certainty that communities will produce babies. Philosopher Mike Tyson said that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” In the same vein, everyone is sensible until they fall in love. Often limerent, dopaminergic sabotage puts the idea of parenting beyond conscious decision, at least for fertile cisgender heterosexuals. Around half of our pregnancies are unplanned. Our gametes have ideas of their own, enacted because our hormones cause itches that we feel compelled to scratch. Intimacy is a modernist luxury, though it adds far more cultural and personal value to families than simply making sperm and ova collide. The biological imperative is where it originated, but our humanity has made it much more valuable. It is a pity that the potential of such love is, like the teachings of Jesus, so often corrupted, commoditised and caricatured. Nowadays when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much it’s because the app’s AI matched them based on their location, spending patterns and social media algorithms. Technology is now participating in our evolution, and assisted reproduction is fortunately enabling many diverse people, who could not have children before, to also contribute. My smart watch tells me to stand up, periodically reminds me to breathe, and at the end of last week it said “You have done seven work-outs of at least five minutes each this week! That’s worth some recognition.” Slow clap. The mocking condescension of a stereotypical IT dude is the unsurprising default of our future AI gods. Many people track their fertility plans on these devices, so the marketers know when and where to target the ads for baby monitors, prams and therapy. However, some socio-biological challenges are not remedied by greater connectivity. We need men in particular to recognise and respect when someone is not interested, even when the drive to be validated is causing them great angst. We need to educate young people, and middle-aged men in the work-place and at home, to understand, respect and accept disinterest from a love-interest I veered into an unapologetically gendered discussion because angry men who refuse to accept responsibility for their own impulses, feelings and actions remain our largest problem group - even for themselves. Did you expect the meaning of Easter to be more about the blood of the lamb, rather than Lindt & oft-overlooked Sprüngli? I might write more about the exploitation of Jesus for money and influence, and his famous discomfort with profit in the temple, next year. Because you can say anything these days.