Category Archives: thoughts

thoughts

We're All Zombies Now

The other day I came across this article on The Zombification of the West. While obviously written from an American perspective, it crystallised for me a number of thoughts which have been covertly buzzing around my mind for some while: basically we have allowed ourselves to be stuffed.
It isn’t quite George Orwell’s 1984, but we’re getting uncomfortably close. Let’s look at some of what the article says.

Slightly more than ten years ago, in the heat of the moment, the West believed a war on terrorism was useful — so, it was prepared to give up civil liberties. Then the crisis hit in 2008. The banks unjustly demanded a bailout and the West passively went along. Today, again, the West in general passively believes the narrative of its secret services in favour of state control. What’s wrong with us? Why do we give up our liberties so easily? And how can we avoid this trend toward authoritarianism?
…
What did Western governments do in recent years to establish justice and ensure domestic tranquillity?

Indeed, what have they done? Basically not a lot. Or as the writer of the article, somewhat cynically, suggests …

Well, first they helped our inner tranquillity by dusting off medieval practices like waterboarding and humiliation; they simply tortured people. Next, they hypnotically repeated the unjust idea that taxpayers, not the unregulated banking sector, were the root cause of our economic problems. And to further our calm, they extended the use of secret evidence; they spied upon us and increased the installation of cameras on every corner of our streets. This process toward possible authoritarianism is still far from over. Somehow, we all seem to accept this McCarthyist paranoia. That highlights the following question: what is going on in the West? Why do we have this uneasiness inside our minds that makes all of this possible?

So what is this new McCarthyism trying to protect us from? Has anyone ever expalined it? Really explained it? No, I thought not. It seems that apart from the nebulous “them”, no-one actually knows!

We lack the time in modern life to reflect on things that are really important to us, like taking up the responsibility to help secure our civil liberties.

It’s the “God makes work for idle hands” approach. Keep us too busy and we don’t have time to think, let alone rebel.

This process of the “zombification of the individual” as one can call it, works something like this: For the past 40 years, we have been dominated by the ideology that people would be happier and more at ease if they were constantly shopping for the best deals. But there’s a catch.
To do that, most people are obliged to spend a lot of time at work. Meanwhile, the time to enjoy the mystery of life — to watch children grow, to develop one’s creativity or to learn oneself — passes.

Or as Clive Hamilton observed: People buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like.

Most people seem to accept the status quo, give up their dreams and, thereby, their power as well. They accept the downside of materialism as the natural order of things since they’ve come to believe that possession of material goods is what it takes to experience personal fulfilment … welcome to the age of cynicism and decadence, where there is no hope for a more fulfilling future other than “buying stuff” …

OK, yes, I’m guilty of that too, although I am trying to cure myself. Honest I am!

On a psychological level, what our laissez-faire capitalistic system effectively does is construct a social reality that seduces most people into omitting their inner call for personal growth. Thus, they neglect their very own personal responsibility and, consequently, their democratic duties as well.
And so we end up in a situation where most people in the West don’t believe in fighting for civil and economic liberties anymore. They simply can’t imagine that a more humane form of capitalism and democracy is attainable
…
This basically means that there is a whole lot of negative energy out there. However, people are not necessarily aware of their own inner state, especially when, on average, they have less and less time available for contemplation. And above all, it is too big of a taboo to talk openly about these issues.

And as the article goes on to say, this lack of debate is incredibly dangerous. In fact, when you think about it, it links back to Lord Neuberger’s recent comments about freedom of speech.
Remember too that Napoleon, Hitler and much more recently Mugabe all came to power by the will of the people, who they subsequently proceeded to subjugate. In other words …

Because of this cultivated resistance to growth, politicians gain in popularity when they facilitate this process of zombification. That’s why they push political discourse farther and farther in the direction of the punishing police state instead of the social state.

Whereas …

To build a vital democracy, most artists and intellectuals … conclude that one needs a soul at ease. But income stagnation and the cultivation of cynicism, consumerism and decadence throughout the West makes it hard for most of us to have the tranquillity to bolster our democracies. Instead, people passively seem to accept tight state control.

All of which means it’s not going to be easy to change things, for to do so one has to get people to see the problem and that means they have to recognise their inner resistance. That process has to start with people like us continuing to speak about such things, challenging the status quo and being a thorn in the flesh of TPTB.
Even that is not going to be easy. As the article says, this zombification has been going on now for over 40 years. Indeed I suspect it all goes back to the late-1950s/early-1960s reaction to WWII that we deserve something better. A belief that was picked up and actively promoted by Harold Wilson in the UK.
Why does everything in the UK today seem to funnel back to Harold Wilson?

freedom of speech, thoughts

Free Speech

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It isn’t just me who sees our culture and freedom of speech under threat. There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Times, quoting a speech by Lord Neuberger, President of the UK Supreme Court.
Liberal censorship is preventing traditional attitudes to issues such as sexuality being heard in the national debate and permits only “inoffensive” opinions, Britain’s most senior judge has warned.
…
This new “censoriousness” was similar to the “moral reaction” of previous, often illiberal, generations which prevented alternative views being aired.
…
He cautioned, though, that efforts to improve diversity carried the risk of shutting out more traditional views that were just as valid. “A tendency appears to be growing in some quarters which is antithetical to diversity in a rather indirect and insidious way,” Lord Neuberger said.
…
Possibly as a counter-reaction to the permissive society, a combination of political correctness and moral reaction appears to be developing”.
…
“As has been said on more than one occasion, freedom only to speak inoffensively is a freedom not worth having. The more that arguments and views are shut out as unacceptable, the less diverse we risk becoming in terms of outlook.
“And the less diverse we become in terms of outlook, the more we risk not valuing diversity and the more we therefore risk losing diversity in practice”.
This is precisely why society needs people like me — mavericks, controversialists and thinkers who will, and do, put forward divergent views. Our role is to be the grit in the oyster; to make people think; to keep us from descending into politically correct group think. And I make no apology for doing this.

sexuality, thoughts

Why Monogamy?

I’m dipping into (“reading” is too organised a concept for my random excursions) This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful and Elegant Theories of How the World Works, edited by John Brockman. This is a collection of almost 150 short essays written in response to the Edge question of 2012: What is your favourite deep, elegant, or beautify explanation?
The answers cover the spectrum from particle physics through psychology to the social sciences. Authors include luminaries like Susan Blackmore, Leonard Susskind, Stephen Pinker, Carl Zimmer and Jared Diamond as well as a whole host of people I’ve never heard of.
One essay I read last evening stood out for me, and I am naughtily going to reprint it here in its entirety.

The Overdue Demise of Monogamy
Aubrey de Gray
Gerontologist; chief science officer, SENS Foundation; author, Ending Aging
There are many persuasive arguments from evolutionary biology explaining why various species, notably Homo sapiens, have adopted a lifestyle in which males and females pair up long-term. But my topic here is not one of those explanations. Instead, it is the explanation for why we are close — far closer than most people, even most readers of Edge, yet appreciate — to the greatest societal, as opposed to technological, advance in the history of civilization.
In 1971, the American philosopher John Rawls coined the term “reflective equilibrium” to denote “a state of balance or coherence among a set of beliefs arrived at by a process of deliberative mutual adjustment among general principles and particular judgments.”* In practical terms, reflective equilibrium is about how we identify and resolve logical inconsistencies in our prevailing moral compass. Examples such as the rejection of slavery and of innumerable “isms” (sexism, ageism, etc.) are quite clear: The arguments that worked best were those highlighting the hypocrisy of maintaining acceptance of existing attitudes in the face of already established contrasting attitudes in matters that were indisputably analogous.
Reflective equilibrium gets my vote tor the most elegant and beautiful explanation, because of its immense breadth of applicability and also its lack of dependence on other controversial positions. Most important, it rises above the question of cognitivism, the debate over whether there is any such thing as objective morality. Cognitivists assert that certain acts are inherently good or bad, regardless of the society in which they do or do not occur—very much as the laws of physics are generally believed to be independent of those observing their effects. Noncognitivists claim, by contrast, that no moral position is universal and that each (hypothetical) society makes its own moral rules unfettered, so that even acts we would view as unequivocally immoral could be morally unobjectionable in some other culture. But when we make actual decisions concerning whether such-and-such a view is morally acceptable or not, reflective equilibrium frees us from the need to take a view on the cognitivism question. In a nutshell, it explains why we don’t need to know whether morality is objective.
I highlight monogamy here because, of the many topics to which reflective equilibrium can be usefully applied, Western society’s position on monogamy is at the most critical juncture, Monogamy today compares with heterosexuality not too many decades ago, or tolerance of slavery 150 years ago. Quite a lot of people depart from it, a much smaller minority actively advocate the acceptance of departure from it, but most people advocate it and disparage the minority view. Why is this the “critical juncture”? Because it is the point at which enlightened thought-leaders can make the greatest difference to the speed with which the transition to the morally inescapable position occurs.
First let me make clear that I refer here to sex and not (necessarily, anyway) to deeper emotional attachments. Whatever one’s views or predilections concerning the acceptability or desirability of having deep emotional attachments with more than one partner, fulfillment of the responsibilities they entail tends to take a significant proportion of the twenty-four hours of everyone’s day. The complications arising from this inconvenient truth are a topic for another time. In this essay, I focus on liaisons casual enough (whether or not repeated) that availability of time is not a major issue.
An argument from reflective equilibrium always begins with identification of the conventional views, with which one then makes a parallel. In this case, it’s all about jealousy and possessiveness. Consider chess, or drinking. These are rarely solitary pursuits. Now, is it generally considered reasonable for a friend with whom one sometimes plays chess to feel aggrieved when one plays chess with someone else? Indeed, if someone exhibited possessiveness in such a matter, would they not be viewed as unacceptably overbearing and egotistical?
My claim is probably obvious by now. It is simply that there is nothing about sex that morally distinguishes it from other activities performed by two (or more) people collectively. In a world no longer driven by reproductive efficiency, and presuming that all parties are taking appropriate precautions in relation to pregnancy and disease, sex is overwhelmingly a recreational activity. What, then, can morally distinguish it from other recreational activities? Once we see that nothing does, reflective equilibrium forces us to one of two positions: Either we start to resent the temerity of our regular chess opponents playing others, or we cease to resent the equivalent in sex.
My prediction that monogamy’s end is extremely nigh arises from my reference to reproductive efficiency above. Every single society in history has seen a precipitous reduction in fertility following its achievement of a level of prosperity that allowed reasonable levels of female education and emancipation. Monogamy is virtually mandated when a woman spends her entire adult life with young children underfoot, because continuous financial support cannot otherwise be ensured. But when it is customary for those of both sexes to be financially independent, this logic collapses. This is especially so for the increasing proportion of men and women who choose to delay having children until middle age (if then).
I realize that rapid change in a society’s moral compass needs more than the removal of influences maintaining the status quo; it also needs an active impetus. What is the impetus in this case? It is simply the pain and suffering that arises when the possessiveness and jealousy inherent in the monogamous mind-set butt heads with the asynchronous shifts of affection and aspiration inherent in the response of human beings to their evolving social interactions. Gratuitous suffering is anathema to all. Thus, the realization that this particular category of suffering is wholly gratuitous has not only irresistible moral force (via the principle of reflective equilibrium) but also immense emotional utility.
The writing is on the wall.
____________________
* A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971).

Friends with benefits. Or just friends. Or just benefits. Where’s the problem?
As one of my university friends used to observe: why should sex not just be an expression of friendship; we have sex just because we’re friends and feel like it; no more, no less? How is this actually different from having a drink, listening to records, or playing tennis together?
I’ve always struggled to see why anyone has a problem with this.

ramblings, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 5 #1

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OK, so here we go with an answer to the first of the Five Questions in Series 5 that I posed about a week ago.


Question 1: What is time?
Well from a technical, scientific, point of view if I knew the answer I would have a Nobel Prize. Yes, this is one of the most intransigent, but most important, questions in the whole of physics. The answer is critically inter-related with our understanding of the whole of cosmology and the structure of the universe. If we knew exactly what time was, and why it appears to move only in one direction, we would likely have a theory of everything. Yes, scientifically it is that important. But despite the best efforts of the best brains in theoretical physics, we basically have very few clues.
At a more prosaic level there are all sorts of constructs around what time is. One of the best that I can come up with is that it is an artificial construct for distinguishing past, present and future in a vaguely, but also artificially, quantum way.
At an everyday level we divide time into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. All are essentially artificial, although years, months and days do have a more or less tight relationship with astronomical events. But weeks, hours, minutes and seconds are essentially arbitrary and historic divisions of time. Why are there 24 hours in a day, and not 10, 20, 25 or 100? And one can ask a similar question of weeks, minutes and seconds.
And essentially, non-scientifically, we treat these divisions of time in a quantum-ish sort of way. Either a second has passed or it hasn’t. Although we know that these time divisions are not really quantised at all. If they were we would never be able to time the 100m dash in the way we do.
That doesn’t mean that time cannot be quantised. Physicists think it may well be quantised, but at a much finer level that we can currently measure, ie. with quanta smaller than 10-15 seconds.
But time is even stranger than that. Scientists tell us that time ticks along at an absolutely constant rate, which is what our clocks tell us. But maybe this is only because scientists have defined it that way? And so our measuring systems reflect that.
At a very personal level we know that time does not progress linearly. Some mornings we get up, shower, dress, breakfast and are ready to leave for work at 7.30. Other days we do exactly the same only to find that it’s 8.00 and we’re half an hour late. We’ve all experienced this. We know intuitively that time does not pass at a constant rate.
How can this be? We don’t know. Some think this is a function of the way our brains work. But is it not at least possible — though scientists will deny this — that time really is non-linear and somehow these imperfections are embedded deep in the underlying structure of the cosmos? Well who knows? But quantum effects have found equally strange and unexpected effects.
So then, what is time? Well only God (who or whatever he or she may or may not be) knows. And she’s not telling us!
I’ll leave you with a couple of thoughts from greater luminaries than me:

Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90 … time is a concept that humans created.
[Yoko Ono]

To us, the moment 8:17 AM means something — something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance — did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.
[Aldous Huxley]

thoughts

Five Questions, Series 4 #4

OK, OK … I know … I’ve not finished answering series 4 of “Five Questions”. And no, I hadn’t forgotten! Here’s the answer to question four.


Question 4: Is it even possible to create a Utopia?
Well surprisingly, yes it is possible; but it is possible only ever in your mind, because as novelist Chuck Palahniuk observes:

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.


Moreover there is human nature to contend with. If one were able to create whatever your notion of Utopia is, two things will apply:
(a) It would not be anyone else’s idea of Utopia. My Utopia is not your Utopia, and vice versa. We all have different ideas of perfection. So there would be an immediate disagreement (or worse), which by its very existence would destroy Utopia.
(b) No sooner had Utopia been created than you would think of something else you’d like, or which it should/shouldn’t contain and have to start over (or at least change things around) … ad infinitum.
So yes, Utopia is possible, but only as an individual mental concept.

personal, thoughts

What Little Thing Might Change Your Life?

A few days ago Leo Babauta posted 28 Brilliant Tips for Living Life over on his Zenhabits blog. It is a compilation of tips suggested after he asked “What’s the best tip that has made your life better/easier?”.

Now some of them seem trite, some I don’t agree with and some just don’t work for me. Which is fine; that’s as it should be. Nevertheless there is a nucleus which many of us — me included! — would I think benefit from. So here’s a selection.

  • Use travel delay as opportunity to stop rather than get stressed. When the world stands still, let it.
  • Stop clinging and embrace change as a constant.
  • Try and give people the benefit of the doubt if they snap at you. Might be something going on you don’t know about.
  • Life is so much easier when you make a decision within 5 minutes. Longer than that and you get bogged down & never decide.
  • Friendship is a gift, not a possession.
  • Mostly nothing is that serious as it seems in the first moment.
  • When you think you want something, put it on the planner a month from now. When that month rolls around and you still want it, OK.
  • Smiling … seems to help with most things. 🙂
  • Expecting less or nothing, and just being. That way disappointments are nil and you are pleasantly surprised often.
  • QTIP: quit taking it personally.
  • When in doubt, take a deep breath.
ramblings, thoughts

Wrong!

Crumbs it’s a busy week again, which is why there’s been no blogging. Hopefully I might catch up a bit over the weekend, because next week looks like being busy too.

Meanwhile earlier in the week I came across the best advice I’ve seen in a long time about recovering from mistakes written by Matt Shipman over at SciLogs. It is very simple, though not always easy. It goes like this …

Assuming you are a human, you are going to make mistakes. But [for many of us] those mistakes can be public. And embarrassing. So how do you recover gracefully, or at least with as little damage as possible to your reputation?

Here’s the short answer: admit your mistake as early as possible; never make excuses; and do not make the same mistake again.

The rest of the article is worth a read too.

We’re human. We make mistakes. That’s what we do here; it’s called “life”!

So yes, three golden rules:

  1. Admit you made a mistake — and that includes saying “Sorry!”
  2. Never make an excuse — they cut no ice; it was a genuine error and these things happen.
  3. Log the mistake in your brain so you can guard against it next time.

We all make the best decisions we can, at the time, with the information we have available. That information includes the state of your aberrant brain. Unless we’re mental, we none of us deliberately make mistakes. So yes, we are going to get things wrong sometimes.

When I was at work I expected to make errors, but I knew I could hold my hands up to them and often correct them. I also expected to get a bollocking for it occasionally. And I was fine with my guys as long as they admitted they got things wrong. There’s only a problem when someone keeps making errors — usually the same silly errors — and not learning from them.

Keep calm, admit you got it wrong, and learn from it.

personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 2 #3

Time to cudgel the brain with an answer the the third of the five questions (series 2) I posed a few weeks back. So …

Question 3. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?

That ought to be easy. But is it? Well, I guess it probably is actually, at least for me.

I would immediately narrow down the options to one of the personal mottoes by which I try to live. (Yes, I know! I usually fail!)

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary

If it harm none, do as you will

Sex and nudity are normal

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

Say what you mean and do what you say

Don’t worry about things you can’t change

Of those which are the most important? Well I guess that without too much mental contortion several can be combined.

Nude when possible, clothed when necessary and Sex and nudity are normal are really only aspects of If it harm none, do as you will. So too is Don’t worry about things you can’t change if doing harm to no-one includes oneself, as it should.

And I would suggest Say what you mean and do what you say is really only an aspect of Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.


Which leave us a choice of two:

If it harm none, do as you will

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself

But is not the latter encapsulated within the former? I think it arguable that it is. By treating others as we would wish to be treated is surely doing harm to no-one. Isn’t it?

So we are reduced to giving our hypothetical newborn the basic tenet of Gardnerian Wicca:

If it harm none, do as you will
And if we extend none/no-one to include the environment (Mother Nature if you prefer) that’s a pretty good rule to work to, nurturing both people and planet. What’s not to like?

Hmmm … interesting. I wonder how Gerald Gardner came by the idea?

personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 2 #2

So what shall we do on an extra hot September Sunday afternoon when I’ve got a large part of a sinus infection? And when nothing from the neck up is working properly? (No change there then!)

Oh, I know, I’ll tax my brain with answering Question 2 from my Five Questions, Series 2. So …

Question 2. If you had to diagnosis yourself with any mental illness which would it be?

Well that should be easy: all of them! But maybe we should look at the options.

Depression. Yep, definitely got that one.
Intelligence. Yep, got that as well.
Schizophrenia. Nope, not even by the farthest stretch of the imagination.
Autism. Nope, though I’m sure many of my former colleagues thought I had.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Nope, no more than anyone else.
Stupidity. Yep, very definitely have that.
Optimism. No; dunno what this is.
Quadrophenia. I guess this must be where each of your schizophrenic personalities is itself schizophrenic. Aarrrgggghhhhh!!!!! So no, don’t have that. Anyway The Who never were my favourite band, I didn’t like the album, and I wasn’t a mod.
Realism. Sadly yes, all to much of it.
Drug Dependency. Yeah, got lots of those. Can’t get off the anti-depressants without withdrawal symptoms (must try again!); like a moderate drink (like every day); and of course there’s always food.
Honesty. Yep, got that one; definitely out of order in today’s world!
Bipolar Disorder. Nope, I’m never manic enough. More like I have Monopolar Disorder.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. No, thanks.
Eating Disorders. Yep, I eat too much, which may be an addiction.
Münchhausen syndrome. I have no clue how you fly a triplane — Oh, sorry; wrong German … See, my life isn’t nearly colourful enough!

Which I think means I just suffer from an extra giant dose of totally insane stupidity!

history, ramblings, sexuality, thoughts

If Scotchmen can wear kilts …

Well indeed! If Scotsmen (and Irishmen) can wear kilts, and females of all ages can wear trousers, why in blazes can’t boys wear frocks?

It makes no sense. Except as a means of perpetuating the male dominant status quo.

There was an interesting, and rather worrying, article a few weeks back in the New York Times about the angst that parents go through when their son wants to wear what they think of as “girl clothes”. Of course, being America, whole families are in analysis rather than just getting on with life.

And do you know what? Most of these kids are no more than four or six years old. But they’re still seen as deviant, or worse. The article even acknowledges that few of them continue to want to dress as girls beyond the age of about 10.

And so what if they do? Why on earth does it matter?


Read this for another scary example of sexist reaction
to a 15-year-old boy in a dress.
Doesn’t the lad look rather good?
It is really only in the western world that we’ve become wedded to the idea than men have to wear trousers, and to do anything else is either deviant or at best a huge joke. See most people’s reaction to the aforesaid Scotsmen in kilts, or actors in drag.

Until about 100 years ago effectively all small boys, regardless of class, would have been routinely dressed in frocks until they were at least five years old. In Arabia and northern Africa men and women still wear loose robes. In Japan men traditionally wore kimono the same as women. Not to mention the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians … or monks.

OK, it’s easy for me. I’m not a parent and I haven’t had to cope with it. But I would hope that if I had I might have been a bit more level-headed. And yes, I do concede that it must be hard — especially for the young kids — when most of society doesn’t understand and people are so spiteful. So they need strong and sympathetic parents, not analysis!

But FFS why do parents have to worry when the kids are only six, or in one case in the article as young as three!? Kids of both genders, especially young kids, like to dress up. Whether that’s in mum’s high heels, as Davey Crocket, or Spiderman, or My Little Pony. And some kids are more comfortable in some clothes than others; some (heaven help us!) are most comfortable in no clothes. Where’s the problem?

When I was young we didn’t have much choice in clothes. There were no t-shirts, sweatshirts, football strip, trainers, batman outfits, jeans, … Today kids can have a whole range of choice, so no wonder a few will pick something a section of “society at large” thinks unsuitable. Most of them grow out of it, just as they grow out of collecting Pokemon, plastic pigs or used tea bags.

Even if they don’t grow out of wanting to wear dresses, WTF does it matter?

Society is able to accept many things that were formerly seen as deviant or unacceptable — men with earrings, homosexuality, bikinis, tattoos … So why can’t we be more comfortable with boys wearing dresses?