tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25933192229580152272024-03-14T00:24:01.919-07:00Breaking Freesearching for wonder...Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-6948487298917292582013-01-24T13:07:00.004-08:002013-01-25T15:53:55.463-08:00Ecologies of consciousness<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b>ESSENTIALLY, personal consciousness is:</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><b>• Finite</b>: </i>it has
a beginning in infancy and an ending at death. We experience a particular
consciousness in this particular life. If anything of “us” continues into some
other reality, it’s inaccessible to us here and now and doesn’t play back in discernible
ways into our present: it’s irrelevant. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>• Bounded</b>:</i> it has
horizons: in a lifetime we can see only so far, we can do only so much, we can pursue only
one path, broader or narrower though it be.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i>
<i>• <b>Accretive</b>:
</i>consciousness gathers as it goes — memories (experiences, cultural/social and
imposed/indoctrinated assimilations) accumulate and add shape to the whole of our
personal consciousness — we are filled out by what we have been.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>• Selective</b>:</i> by
ways of attention, forgetting and “conforming”, we modulate and direct our
inputs and out retentions around a growing sense of “self”, creating a
narrative of our own differentiated personhood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>• Multichannel</b>:</i> the
various things that go into shaping personal consciousness arrive as a
complicated flow of information, emotion, sensation, affirmation, negation and consolidation
— we tend to draw different modalities of experience together, modulating and attenuating them
in personally particular ways.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i>
<i>• <b>Integrative</b>:</i>
consciousness may form branches but it is reluctant to divide, preferring to
suppress or discard inputs that conflict with what it has already incorporated into its overall sense of unity. The conscious impulse towards
coherence and congruence is often thought of the search for personal
“meaning”. It usually includes an expectation that the universe will conform to our hopes and way of thinking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<b><i>• Evaluative:</i></b> in
its shuffling of inputs to establish coherence, the impulse of personal
consciousness is to seek affirmation rather than information, and discard paradox and contradiction. It hungers after certainties. This inclines us to become better “believers” than “seekers”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So personal consciousness, in becoming unique, increasingly becomes its own context.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The more effectively it achieves this, the more susceptible it becomes, not
only to disappointment, but also to whatever doctrines, creeds and conventions
seem resonant and offer a more vivid illusion of personal identity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As social creatures, we seem to experience most
personal wellbeing when there are various bonds of affirming intimacy and
coherence within groups of consciousnesses: social, economic and physical. We feel good when we have or imagine ourselves having a "role", a purpose and a "mission". From
such searches for wellbeing are forged the bases and bastions of empire, revolution,
organized religion, “strong” government, mass movements, amateur dramatic societies, professional organizations
and biker gangs… and their collapse. It just the old problem that’s
inherent to setting goals: we achieve them, then realize that they were
inherently unsatisfying or that we have acquired more sophisticated goals and, unwilling to overhaul the personal consciousnesses, we become suckers for new goals and strive even harder …or we self-destruct.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
TWO things seem to offer important escapes from the trap of
hardening shells of personal consciousness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first is to look at the <b><i>ecology</i></b> of consciousness.<br />
<br />
How do
I put a few cracks in my need for affirmation? How do I perturb my compulsion
to burrow deeper in “same old”? How do I curb my appetite for reassurance?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Under-employment helps. The attendant collapse of income is
liberating, once the anxieties are seen to be silly (which they are). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I found the option of shifting my passion for the ocean
to listening closely to the nearby river — and a discovery that it sounds
different every day… I listen until I hear its song, or let its song take form
in my imagination. The song has a meaning… it comes from the dynamics of its flow and that ties it into all sorts of widening contexts… the weather, the climate, the seasons, the geology and the geo-history. So I began finding out about watershed hydrology and
what's happening under the river, under my feet. And then I promoted my interest
in pollinators into a passion, looking for the things they might tell me. The
interesting thing to me has been that these things have proven a lot more lucid
and sensible than your average philosopher, author, scientist or theologian. The river and the
bees, flies and wasps all make sense… moral, intellectual and emotional sense. And, all
of a sudden, I find I’m writing poetry again, waking at 2 a.m. full of
excitement to scribble.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there are always new ways of giving and receiving
hospitality… and new friends who are affirming in new ways. As strangers become friends, new worlds start appearing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are all essentially changes in the ecological setting
of my consciousness. And, like any ecological change, they oblige changes and adaptation in the
creatures inhabiting the niches under their sway. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A human consciousness can be versatile, provided its
ecological setting is not too hostile. Hostility encourages a consciousness to cling harder to existing "certainties": that's how wars and persecutions start. The best, most conflict-free way to tend a personal
consciousness is probably to push it towards healthier ecologies. In purely physical ways, our hunter-gatherer ancestors did this all the time. The impulse to journey is rooted in out being.<br />
<br />
In a busy,
urban, consumerist lifestyle, where the wounds are swathed in muffling bandages
of entertainment, drugs and distraction, the surroundings are about as healthy
as the Athabasca River, downstream from the tarsands exploitation. Noise, junk
architecture, jarring ugliness, endless needfulness, boredom, recreational
shopping, ego-jousting, commuting, long working hours, endless rivalry and pressures to
“succeed”… the human being did not evolve to be trapped like this, and the human consciousness
is not equipped to flourish in raucous over-stimulation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's easier to move to fresher fields — new ecosystems — than to adapt one’s
being to torturing psychic surroundings.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The second thing?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Curiosity! Curiosity is like aspirin… it’s a fairly safe,
all-round remedy for most that ails the consciousness. The World is endlessly
interesting, pretty much wherever you look. More passes us by unnoticed in an instant than we can explore in a decade: rekindling jaded curiosity,
re-examining things taken for granted, wondering in new ways, with new
questions and widened senses can feel like an explosion of new life… in fact,
that’s pretty much what it is. Curiosity lights a fuse that sparks away in all
directions and as far as ever you can see, illuminating countless marvels to
make an imagination leap and dance and sing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The hard part isn’t doing it… it’s breaking free from the grip
of what has been, to prise loose the grip of reassurance in the caverns of
one’s own personal consciousness. The consolation of affirmation is the flesh-eating, vitality-sapping minotaur at the heart of the personal labyrinth… it can be slain. We can, like
Theseus, step into the light and found a new Athens. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can be free. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="File:Theseus Slaying Minotaur by Barye.jpg" height="600" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Theseus_Slaying_Minotaur_by_Barye.jpg/455px-Theseus_Slaying_Minotaur_by_Barye.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="455" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">THESEUS slaying the Minotaur<br />— a bronze sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye (1843)<br />(Baltimore Museum of Art)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-71006868784094164812012-11-26T05:32:00.001-08:002012-11-26T06:56:12.964-08:00Christmas: the rhythm's the thing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMcwGHuFGr2TrwR27Ufoqt0ziDqcajnMlgnQ3G1vgU_g7PlXnfefdw5Ga7QQnt7p4EJMz71ttmYXz5VUOrbzB2iQDZZ392Zm7-IvuQSpsHBR4iGKTE2qmII2l8luTCjTuzYD2ES8ipiQ/s1600/ICICLES2-b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMcwGHuFGr2TrwR27Ufoqt0ziDqcajnMlgnQ3G1vgU_g7PlXnfefdw5Ga7QQnt7p4EJMz71ttmYXz5VUOrbzB2iQDZZ392Zm7-IvuQSpsHBR4iGKTE2qmII2l8luTCjTuzYD2ES8ipiQ/s400/ICICLES2-b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><b>TIME,
even to science is still a bit of a mystery.</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
Earth-time’s leading edge, as it scours its circuits of this turning planet,
seems to sweep up the energies of the day, of the night — the joys and
torments, creations and annihilations — and radiate them to the infinities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Each
day, it’s all just a little bit different. We are different. And — if we put
aside whatever fears unsettled us yesterday — we can breakfast on new insights,
opportunities and hopes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">But, here in the north, winter has come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
nectar’s gone. The fruit have fallen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
frosts have bitten: bees huddle in their catacombs. Squirrels, finger-lickin’
fat, snuggle in their nests.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
life-sapped stillness of bare trees and greyed grass tell us it’s over, dead, done, ended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
isn’t the World a mess, all things considered? Walking the dog, I find the
weakened grass revealing more of the roadside trash. It makes me wonder what
General Petraeus is buying his wife for Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Christmas…
the birthday party for… no, not for Santa, for Yeshua — for “Jesus”, whose
ministry became the foundation stone of Christianity… or, ah, alternatively, it’s
just the “season”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
date was not arbitrarily chosen. It coincides with the northern winter
solstice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">So
Christianity celebrates not just a person, but all that person stood for …and everything
he came to stand for: new hope, new life, new joy… the possibility of
redemption.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
solstice is easily explained: have an obedient child hold a basketball. It’s the
sun. Take a wee green pea carefully between thumb and forefinger: it’s about
the Earth’s relative size. Hold the pea on a 23.5 degrees angle. Which end is nearer
the basketball? The top? The bottom? Now, walk a big circle, counterclockwise, keeping
about 90 feet away from the child (if he’s still there), with your attention fixed
on the pea. Watch what happens to its “top” and “bottom”. If you suddenly find
yourself in heavy traffic or a neighbor’s kitchen, move the child and start
again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Once
around the circle represents a year. Half way around is six months. Take your
time. This is important. Stop when you get to June and consider the pea: which
end is closer now? The rest is self-evident.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Exactly!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Actually,
we don’t need the seasons explained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
matters is the rhythm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
let’s not rush ahead to the “first century”: it’s a long story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Since
Neolithic times, the shortest day of the year has been marked as a turning
point: after it, the lengthening days will lead into spring and usher in all
the beauty and abundance of another summer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nature
had not trashed life, after all. Joy and plenty with goodness would return:
refreshed and revitalized. Cultures all over the planet drew hope and vitality from
the solstice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Th</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">e
ancient Babylonians celebrated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zagmuk</i>;
for Persians it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deygan</i>; old
Anglo-Saxons held a “mother’s night”: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Modraniht</i>.
At the same time, across the Atlantic, the Incas were into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inti Raymi</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">In 1995, in Brighton, England, a group
of New Age Brits launched a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Burning the
Clocks</i> festival as a counter-attack on the debauch of commercialized
Christmas. Oddly, at least from a Canadian perspective, it was called off in
2009 because snow and icy weather were forecast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the Northern Hemisphere, this year’s winter solstice falls on 21 December. In
the Southern Hemisphere it fell on June 20. There, despite the milder climate, Maori
people observe Matariki (the rising of the Pleiades constellation).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Which
brings us, at last, back to Christmas… and, whether you or I are Christians, or
not, it’s what the longer days MEAN that matter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Think
about those longer days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Remember them?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Std W8";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The wildflowers?… the bees?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Remember witnessing their constant relationship.
It has been going on, just as you saw it last summer, for 100 million years or
more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">And, remember, in sustaining itself, the bee,
fly, wasp or butterfly (whatever pollinator you have in mind) also sustains the
plant. In fact, through its ancestors, it helped that plant to evolve, and made
possible today’s diversities of all we see, smell and taste among flowering
plants, their fruit and in byproducts like beeswax and honey. Few of the fruit
or vegetables we eat would have formed without a pollinator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moreover, all of these good things have long served
humans as sources of inspiration. Inspiration is as essential as food and water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sure, it can all be explained. But, when we look
for “meaning”, instead of walking around in circles, we see that “the whole” is
far greater than the sum of its parts. Everything has been benefitting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pollinators are creatures for which we seldom
spare a thought, far less esteem as our evolutionary elders or teachers. Yet,
in sustaining themselves, they benefit us all — even in mid-winter — honey and
lemon is a great treatment for winter colds — and, apart from the odd sting, they
do us no harm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: "Times New Roman";">We seem to have fallen into a
dangerous place where, in sustaining ourselves, we damage our planet (including
the flowers and their pollinators). We impoverish, dupe and damage each other
and each others’ cultures; we surround ourselves with “collateral damage” …
perhaps we’d do well to heed more humbly the teachings of the beauty and
abundance that embrace us?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Std W8";">And, doing that, we can feast on
the hope and joy the “holiday season” offers: the hopes that Christmas offers. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Forget the economist who tells you that
deepening your consumer debt for Christmas puts a great, passing spark into “The
Economy”.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Std W8";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">There
are far more important things get going with: new hope, new life, new joy. Even the
possibility of redemption. Enjoy!</span></span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span></span>
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Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-11821956173789614042012-09-09T04:14:00.003-07:002012-10-12T07:22:24.419-07:00The "god" vexation<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It seems to have been "forever": a deep human need to find a reassuring appreciation of the mystery of existence.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Reassurance” is relative. Some cultures have populated the
infinite with personifications of oppressive brutality, many have come to
notions of more or less delicately balanced forces and a few to concepts of
all-sustaining total goodness. Enter: "GOD". Or "the gods". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In each case, appropriate human responses have been prescribed by
religions or wisdom teachers: unwavering obedience, public or private
sacrifice, formulaic worship and adoration, denial or annihilation of
“self”,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>obedience to codes of socially
practiced goodness, obedience to codes of purity and “cleanliness”, the
practice of ecstatic social ritual or private reflection and meditation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Across the board, you can find all sorts of similarities… and
all sorts of differences. Many of the differences can be traced to cultural
insights, biases and practices (the tastes of the “gods” happily coinciding with the
culture’s set of sanctions). Many of the similarities can be linked to
widespread or universal human capacities (we share finite abilities), or to the daily needs of social
animals: genes or survival.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But, no matter how the impulse is expressed or where you
find the shapes of its expression, the existential mysteries still vex human
consciousness: “god” does not go away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is where atheism fails, not because of its apparently
watertight arguments but because "god" will not go away. And whether or not “god” or the “gods” take form in the
human mind or at the furthest ends of the universe, or exist all-pervasively, is similarly irrelevant — in
that case, we are just conjecturing about the gods’ location, not their
existence. Either way, they are just as “present”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There is one way to get away from the issue. That is to
build a brick wall<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>around all we think
we know and call the wall “the ends of the universe”… enter the “modern”,
rational, “practical” man of action, the pragmatist who gets things done. As a
cultural style, it produces the literalist, the materialist, the rule of law,
the clinician, the accountant, dualism and fundamentalism thrive: you can only
be “right” or “wrong”. Minds close. All becomes vanity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The trap here is that there’s no “higher court” of appeal:
there is no effective recourse for aesthetic, intuitive or “spiritual” values
and “emotionalism” is a weakness. Nothing is sacred.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We have moved a long way from the Middle Ages, when magic
pulled the strings, to the rising reign of the rational …and the danger is that
human beings have always tended to swing between extremes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We need “religion”, “spirituality” and “faith” in order to be fully
human.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">THIS is the “bedrock” of any faith…
not what is “believed” but where we plant its foundations. It's the context, not the content that's decisive. And the context is the absolute mystery of existence.Where, in our
being, is the seed of faith? How have we found it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I don’t think the churches, collectively, know. I don’t
think they even think very deeply about it, nor our culture and the directions in
which we are pulled — at the deepest levels — by it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But we are healthiest and happiest when we are most fully human; not
necessarily when we are rich and clever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We find “god” when we seek the wholeness of our own
humanity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where are we going?</span></i></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFaZV1BfPTTC0FoaOk4rvFviGcsmf_eTFWGFdMiMV7NE_9bs8MDhOxkkbVGDP3RzfISRXTvgBhuRJPCA-ywT3G6F_2sXLfEsPHQMh40jFw5Ve5gbwxJ5F_PdVY1V3Nlh9cv9H0qcD_Fg/s1600/Where+are+we+going%3f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>HOW do we go about that search?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here are my thoughts:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">CURIOSITY… as an youthful atheist I felt the
purpose of life was to experience it all as fully as possible: in New Zealand in those days, that meant going up mountains, down caves, into the wilderness and, as often as
possible, to the ocean: sailing, diving, surfing or just swimming. It meant
partying and mixing it with different (mostly Polynesian) cultures. This led me
to an awareness of an overriding unity that makes life “real” as opposed to
something that passes by. I found that incidents began coalescing into
narratives — there was some kind of unintelligible “meaning” to it all. I
experienced this as the biggest “why?” of them all. So I tried doing stuff I
didn’t think I wanted to do, just to push the boundaries and this led me into
religion and on into Christianity (of a sort).
I’ve sought meaning intellectually but, much more importantly, experientially.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">OPEN-NESS… to life, people, places… accepting the
unexpected, the “strange” and the “stranger”. It’s an amazingly diverse little
World. Without open-ness I think my curiosity might have dried up. I feel I’ve
come to faith by trying to be the least interesting person I know. At the same
time, it is the stimulus — a vivid face of love — I’ve found among very
different people that’s given me confidence to seek my “self”-hood.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But
self-hood has no meaning to me without its connectedness to the “meaning” I
began to discern as an atheist. While open-ness adds to the narrative (meaning)
and self-hood — which inevitably becomes defined in the context of some sort of
community — it does nothing to diminish the mystery: the mystery keeps
expanding. Self-hood helps me enjoy the ride and, thereby, learn from it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">LOVE… love rises when I let myself be
passionate about entering into experience. And love then energises and
heightens the experience. I find it difficult not to feel love rise among most
the people and in most of the places to which I’ve let myself be led. I’ve seen
love expressed widely enough to conclude that “love” is a human being’s natural
state. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The distance any of us moves from that natural state is a measure of how
screwed up things are. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But I easily get immersed in and distracted by all sorts
of beauty — beauty is, in my conception, god's language of love — and incessant drama, often as commonplace as a spider making a web, a fish in
the river, a cloud unfurling in a high wind, the way a creature moves… and by
watching people interact: you can learn more about people by watching their
movements, gestures and expressions as they interact with each other than you
could from a transcript of their conversation. And it all adds to the grand
narrative of existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>BUT there are obstacles.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• “Wants” and “needs”: To serve a need or
a want is to narrow your frames of experience — it becomes
necessary to exclude the “distractions”, to “focus”. The false premise behind
pursuing “wants” is that fulfillment and happiness are “out there”. I can’t
remember ever having seen the satisfaction of that sort of “want” bring enduring
pleasure or joy. On the contrary, it usually seems to spark awareness of some
new “want”. I’ve known people who have been made made less happy than they
expected by relief from desperate material need. The hope that sustained them
through their direst times and gave them the resilience to last the distance…
that was the basis of their joy — even after the need was satisfied. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Most of
us though, in the global middle class of “Western” societies generate wants and
needs, it seems, for their own sake. So, blinkered by fanciful “needs”, we consume vast
amounts of “entertainment” because we are blind to the torrents of stimulus
that wash over us ever moment, everywhere we are. (According to the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s annual Communications
Monitoring Report released on 4 September, the “average” Canadian watched 28.5
hours of television a week in 2011, up from 28 hours a week in 2010.) And entertainment annihilates awe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• ANXIETY… is another enemy of faith. Anxiety is
a culturally induced frame of mind that draws boundaries close and dampens interest in anything beyond one's immediate self.. Our own, very often
groundless, little fears and worries about trivialities nag us away from
curiosity and the risk-taking that open-ness to life requires. We are made to
fret about our comfort zones and our fretting too often grows into fear. And
fear is paralyzing. If anything can damn us, it's fear and anxiety.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #0b5394; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p>As I said above: </o:p>we are healthiest and happiest when we are most fully human; not necessarily when we are rich and clever. And, when we seek the wholeness of our own humanity, we find “god”.</span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-43085744276478882062012-05-12T12:23:00.000-07:002012-05-12T12:23:14.973-07:00It really is a wonder...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqNNpmd2Mgb8WEHWkyPULvTvM5If0bkaUwLulV7KxT9cMLyZaSHNgFyI1gjW47Bc21vbmNeSlejMiwNt3SCxg7ftfofFPwkJHNwjehDSYQ17dsMCCxPrEhJ8wr5w37cu5Pg0p5kYX1g/s1600/NZsea-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqNNpmd2Mgb8WEHWkyPULvTvM5If0bkaUwLulV7KxT9cMLyZaSHNgFyI1gjW47Bc21vbmNeSlejMiwNt3SCxg7ftfofFPwkJHNwjehDSYQ17dsMCCxPrEhJ8wr5w37cu5Pg0p5kYX1g/s400/NZsea-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">WONDER’s a word that’s long carried with it strong implications of openness to joy. It’s a word that has been traced back to the origins of our English language. It isn’t a new emotion. And it’s typically our first response to the giddy depths of mystery.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Wonder has been credited with energising human curiosity, inspiring art and the origins of both religion and science. It penetrates deeply, extending the senses and animating the intellect. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Mystery energises us. Mystery gives us the appetite to strive to understand, first of all ourselves, and then in order to become what we should. Mystery makes it clear that we’re all humanity together, and that we inhabit a shared predicament. It’s one that makes us burn with awe and curiosity, so it’s good for us to talk with each other. But is also teaches us that cleverness is an illusion: it has too few dimensions to approach truth.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Mystery is neither good nor evil; it is enfolded into one human life no more or less than any other. Human lives can in turn only enfold themselves into the mystery, one at a time. The mystery is far more to be trusted than our deepest insight or anxiety. After all, as most other species seem to be aware, it’s where we are and how we all got to be here. So who are we to be picky?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The greatest gift mystery gives us is wonder… wonder’s essential to being human.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">BUT, a little while ago, when I searched the word “mystery” in the “books” category at amazon.ca, the title that popped up at the top of the list was a work called: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mystery Method: The Foolproof Way to Get Any Woman You Want Into Bed</i>. So, expecting an tale of rejection and disappointment, I read the first “reader review”… but, no. It was glowing. And I soon had to look up “PUA” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wikipedia</i>. I discovered it means “pick up artist” and that there’s a “PUA” genre of “literature”.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Putting to one side the images this suggested of sullen, drooling men with low foreheads, their long, over-sized libidos slithering along behind them, I returned to amazon.ca where I discovered that, for $18.96, I could buy another favourably reviewed book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God is a Woman: Dating Disasters</i>. Here, in a single non sequitur, was a title that simultaneously trivialised concepts of “god”, “woman”, “dating” and “disaster”. Breathing deeply, the moron images came right back.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It really gets wearisome, beating a path through the morass of mindlessness that the “rise of civilisation” has managed to generate.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We of the West claim to have spent thousands of years in the pursuit of knowledge, human dignity, truth and the “just” society… we have aimed for the stars, walked on the Moon and, inexplicably, wallow around in neurosis, vacuity, trashy dependencies, violence, despond, timidity and credulity, and the inane trivia that endlessly belches from the bowels of a global entertainment industry.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A human consciousness needs real food to flourish. It starves on trivialities and simulations. A healthy human consciousness sings with birds and breezes, weeps with a suffering friend, is grateful for goodness, needs and gives love, is distracted by beauty, seeks and values friendship, enjoys laughter, esteems intellect, is endlessly curious; it loves more readily than it hates, opposes injustice and is from time to time fired with inexplicable joy. But it has to be fed. It can’t thrive in stasis or find peace in one place: it has to journey.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A starting point is immediately at hand: beauty.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Although “beauty”, too, is a word that’s been savagely trivialised, beauty itself is inviolate. Beauty is an experience of the BE-ing of goodness. It attracts. It inspires. And it redeems words like “mystery” and “wonder” because beauty lies at their core.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Beauty, it is commonly said, lies in the eye of the beholder. That isn’t true. Beauty is primal. But beauty undoubtedly exists, long before it is beheld.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Among the varieties of stone most favored by sculptors in marble for more than two and a half millennia — since the time of the Athenian cultural efflorescence — has been the luminously white marble of Naxos, a small island in the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Its fine grain and capacity to take a lustrous, polished finish made it a prized material for temples and statues of gods. Naxian marble has a capacity to glow as though it is on the point of being animated by an inner energy. Glistening in the brilliant Mediterranean sunshine of 2600 years ago, the freshly erected, 25-foot high statue in Naxian marble of Apollo in Delos must have been every bit as breath-taking as its creators intended. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It all begins with the sea: like time, its long, regular oceanic risings and valleyings, its sharper, breaking pitching and heaving, its rush to shores and hissing retreats, and beneath the sinewy flow of currents, a dark, seeming stillness. And beneath even that, there continue the achingly slow journeyings of the earth’s mantle itself… sliding and folding under to soften and grow molten or, prised upwards, rising and hardening so that the seas toss their wrack against new shores whilst patiently gnawing away at the old.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It all begins with the sea, like the surface-parting exhalations of whales that loom for air from their ringing depths, the majestic passage of sharks, the otherworldliness of depths where colour is washed away and countless creatures live lives that shake off everything we know from our circumscribed lives on earth to inhabit a three-dimensional freedom that surpasses even that of the globe-circling albatross; the heaving, changing otherness of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the ever-presence of it, the plunge and crackle of surf, and the lurch of a surfboard catching the wave; the yawing roll of the deep ocean swell, lucent-black under a keel, and the trailing wake that slowly vanishes; oyster-clad rocks and spray-drenched mussel beds, tresses of kelp on the rocks, the thud and thrust of a filling sail and a ship’s churning wallow through the waves, that ship-smell of tar and cordage and iodine, the glowing trails of fish through phosphorescent subtropical seas at night while overhead the stars reflect on the open water where swells rise and fall as they did for millions of human lifetimes before the first human appeared, eons of motion, never the same, never different.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The loneliness of the sea’s constant, animated companionship, its power to console or destroy… this it where it all begins. Even the marble began here because, for at least 500 million years, small one-celled creatures called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Foraminifera</i> have teemed in the seas. We need microscopes to see them, but they take up calcium salts and carbon dioxide from the water and transform them into tiny shells for themselves. Their shapes are countless and striking in their life-formed beauty.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Over the millennia, these tiny creatures have lived and died, and their tiny shells rained slowly to the ocean floor to form deep beds of nearly pure sediment. The gathering weight compressed the small shells into limestone.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In some parts of the world, beds of limestone rock were lifted upwards by the planet’s slow re-adjustments. Water, slightly acidic from decaying plants and deepening soil, seeped into crevices and very gradually mined out dripping tunnels of underground watercourses and, as each small droplet of minerals-laden water evaporated, it left a trace of calcium carbonate behind. The residues turned underground caverns into pillared, chandeliered, glittering wonderlands that can be seen by human eyes only when people make their way into these unlikeliest of places — squeezing through tiny passages, scaling sheer, underground rock faces, swimming through dark pools and crawling through fine, clinging mud — then light lights and look about… and wonder. It is still possible to be the first person ever to stand in such a place and to reel with the revelation of it all.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In other parts of the world, the deep sheets of limestone were carried far into the Earth’s mantle: to depths where the core’s intense heat melts rock. Molten, the limestone was lifted again, and as it cooled, crystals formed. In a few places, where the limestone was sufficiently pure and the crystals that formed in the cooling were small, the rising layers contained lodes of fine-grained, white marble.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGD8dDhy0NTosBA1zbou2o6GfGBHelrz5FmB5dlkbLNJTaD2ZcF6fKAAwavI9vVFHtgqYArzWohmh1546ii1AM4vef4V8zxqibHDJBUNCE4RPtNFZQgn1soov804AIP5ogsFy57NJUBA/s1600/marble-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGD8dDhy0NTosBA1zbou2o6GfGBHelrz5FmB5dlkbLNJTaD2ZcF6fKAAwavI9vVFHtgqYArzWohmh1546ii1AM4vef4V8zxqibHDJBUNCE4RPtNFZQgn1soov804AIP5ogsFy57NJUBA/s320/marble-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marble quarry on the Aegean island of Naxos</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The neighbouring islands of Naxos and Paros rose from the sea endowed with such a stone. And, eventually, human beings stumbled upon this remarkable rock and, in their desire to honour the gods they’d moulded from the mystery, found a purpose for it that was appropriate to its worth. It is another wonder, an afterthought of nature, that placed beside the shimmering white marble are black seams of emery: the abrasive rock that is perfect substance with which to work the sculpted surface of marble to that heart-stopping polish.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWiu5T3vAOliRImSUsfuivG-04SVSn-OX3nSvn96zOV1Crv-D3qgHaPo_21ERbrkZ1HWKVuEkDfkRYXZRd1IjBkyPBsbG8dT1aVGWc0TUKu029P7tvL3FKQ3xEtMAAu1s1pwnzMrGq4w/s1600/Emery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWiu5T3vAOliRImSUsfuivG-04SVSn-OX3nSvn96zOV1Crv-D3qgHaPo_21ERbrkZ1HWKVuEkDfkRYXZRd1IjBkyPBsbG8dT1aVGWc0TUKu029P7tvL3FKQ3xEtMAAu1s1pwnzMrGq4w/s200/Emery.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A seam of black emery in Naxian marble.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">My point in all of this is that beauty cannot be confined to this place or that. It permeates our world and is discernible everywhere and its discernment is a conscious act that ignites feelings of hope and “rightness”, meaning and gratitude: a “fit” with goodness.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">There’s something elemental and universal in its character. The beauty of a musical note has been a part of the Earth’s acoustic capacity since the Earth was formed. The beauty we experience in various configurations of light, of sound, or form may be more of less apparent in different ways to each of us but it is there for us all. Nor does beauty ever seem to be a sufficient end in itself: it propels consciousness forward. It nags at its every beholder to take the next step, to continue the journey.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When and where did our sense of beauty get marginalised? Why? How did the idea of “beauty” get reduced to a broad-spectrum, unnecessary buzz-word? What makes us so often the arbiters and trivialisers of beauty rather than its discoverers and celebrators?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Real beauty is everywhere. Every insect I’ve ever seen, every creature I’ve seen, has been a masterpiece of dynamic design, a fusion of form and function that fascinates the mind as well as inspiring the spirit … an aesthetic marvel. Scientists estimate there are close to 10 million different species of insect. They pollinate our fruit trees and flowers, they give us silk, they give us honey, they are food for many people … and most are benign: unsung contributors to our wellbeing. And, moreover, creatures like this have been around for 400 million years, compared with our 750,000 or so.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We have a few blueberry bushes that produce delicious, health-promoting fruit. Blueberries are the sort of thing we tend to talk about “by the pound” — and there's nothing like commodification to rip the meaning from things.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQTsCgb5TueHWmusrcwRkAQOpRNEdlrxtsFEqpK-yqTlnkQ2JXINsxJnd84BWxA4hWPwblkn6l-YyfgU6zFbvAjAX5rEWF6TVTBFeC4_5H_H2VBpzFONrwL_yoqWbcFgHgLyLvS4hmhw/s1600/Blueberries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQTsCgb5TueHWmusrcwRkAQOpRNEdlrxtsFEqpK-yqTlnkQ2JXINsxJnd84BWxA4hWPwblkn6l-YyfgU6zFbvAjAX5rEWF6TVTBFeC4_5H_H2VBpzFONrwL_yoqWbcFgHgLyLvS4hmhw/s320/Blueberries.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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But look at the complexity of one single blueberry: the seed-bearing pale flesh that tastes so different from the astringent skin. But two flavours complement each other beautifully and uniquely. And they’re not really very “blue” at all. Each berry is a gifted thing to pop into your mouth, but it’s also beautiful in its form.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">So what gives us the capacity to be transported by beautiful flavours?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And sounds …</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And colours …</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And smells…</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And textures …</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And sensations …</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And what does it mean? We seem to have evolved with a capacity to apprehend an infinite array of beauty, and to grow our wisdom in its “soil”.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And, primed with beauty, consciousness itself can hope to become beautiful. </span></div>
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<br /></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-11430436105618008032012-05-12T11:00:00.000-07:002012-05-12T14:15:55.126-07:00What’s your problem with god?<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">I CAN only imagine reality as a kind of a sphere: a bowl of
existence we inhabit for a time. We’re bridled by horizons. To me, “god” is a
handy word that lets us contemplate and talk about the mystery that lies beyond
as well as within the boundaries.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Without that word, I find it hard to talk about what
“meaning” might “mean” — and, while that’s not a biological imperative, it is a
by-product of consciousness that can have some big implications for how much we
make of our lives.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Our experience of “god-ness” is limited to recognizing
reflections of the more-than-obvious and immediate in the place we live,
and those reflections are everywhere, playing with our every emotion, imagining
and thought. And we can in-dwell all this experience as expectations of
“god-ness”. We can helpfully think of our being, too, as a manifestation of
“god-ness”, simply because existence is inseparable from stuff we can not
possibly know directly. So we each, separately, can be deeply changed as living
impressions of “god-ness” are formed by our search for experiential coherence.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">The “god” we dare to name and think we know is necessarily
shaped by our shifting discernment and experience. If we’re careless and
undiscerning, we can ignore the experiences of god-ness that are everywhere
available to us, and deny those we can’t avoid. Within the search for
coherence, they seem too chaotic and uncontrollable. Denied, they engender
fear, egocentrism and greed; denial excites loneliness, nihilism, cravings for
identity, addictions, sadness and boredom. It gets easy to feel existentially
doomed (or damned).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">With discernment, we can learn to sense “truths”, but we
certainly don’t have minds capable of understanding them. Experienced truths
are not intellectual challenges. They’re be-ing challenges. The greatest
teachers have always struggled for words. And their followers, forgetting what
the question was, have too often missed the point and turned them into tools or
weapons of control. Take them a question and you get slapped with a demand to
just “believe”.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">But NO amount of religion or raw scripture, on its own,
gives us “knowledge” of god. The sacred scriptures of every faith are not about
information: they are about transformation. It’s transformation that makes them
“sacred”.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">God-knowledge can only ever be partial, personal and
experiential. Each of us inhabits a unique consciousness with its own
particular horizons. And, without personal experience to communicate with,
religion is just words echoing in an empty room: the words of our culture,
faith or denomination — religious practice becomes little more than play-acting
or indoctrination. This is happening when we’re told to “believe” this or that
about “god”, or where the language and/or premises of religious liturgy are
rooted in assertion. Trust, not assurance, is the foundation of faith. The
poetics of love are its servant. Logic stumbles. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Ideally, Christian worship serves me as a sort of spiritual
dry run for the week ahead. Good guidance and companionship help us to grow in
discernment, and serve us well. But solitude is also necessary. As is deep
reflection. Silence helps us deal with the inner clamor that ongoing experience
quickly generates. We need time without inputs to re-establish the coherence
that sustains our trust.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">So Islamic coherence recognizes the unity and singularity of
the mystery of “god” and is a “true faith”; Judaism’s coherence recognizes how
wholly we’re in the hands of the mystery, and is a “true faith”; Christianity
finds coherence in the mystery experienced as love, and is a “true” faith;
Buddhism sees the need to pass through the curtain of “ego”, and is a “true
faith”, native American spiritualties see the whole of creation as interrelated
beings — equally necessary kin —and, so, are also “true”. Hinduism sees the
mystery’s myriad faces and the dynamic balances between creation and
destruction, and so is “true”. Daoism emphasizes the quest for harmony with the
mystery, while Sikhism teaches the need to live “truth”, so there are “truths”
here too. And, so it goes. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Meanwhile, the mystery continues to perplex us all… passive
and remote but immediate and interventionist, granting us sensations of freedom
but circumscribing the outcomes of our every thought and action; blessing us
with goodness we fail to understand while frustrating our “reasonable” hopes;
letting us to get things horribly wrong but being present as a strange
consolation in extremity. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">On the one hand, evolution is “true” as a tool towards
understanding the unity and deep entanglement of life on Earth. “Creation” is
also true, because, without forces that are too vast for us to understand (or at least to coherently talk about), nothing
exists. The mystery lures us into dreams of permanence and security… but places
us in a dynamic universe in which everything changes all the time, at it’s own
rate and in its own way, but with a puzzling kind of choreographic
synchronicity. Any notion of static existence is a self-refuting idea. But we
can’t help experiencing some attributes of existence — meaning, for example —
as enduring values.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">But who are we to “know”? Surely every “known” is a
hypothesis? Isn’t everything we say about “god” falsified as it leaves our
lips? Don’t we base our concepts about “god” on endless fallacies? How could
the question, “what is truth?” — asked out of Pilate’s legalistic intellect —
possibly be answered?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Isn’t it more about “trust”… not because it pleases “god” to
be trusted but because it gives us the hope of “pleasing god”? It’s for our own
peace of mind that we think we act decently… that “god” will be pleased. But
who knows all of the consequences of our actions? How far do they reach? How
are others affected? And, if they are affected, how does that experience
radiate from them? Can a smile unleash a catastrophe? Can a smile shape a
saint? … or can it do both, at the same time?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">All of our words and actions are participatory, interactive,
and malleable. They can be silenced, re-construed or amplified in ways that are
beyond our control… we need “hope” as well as “trust”. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">The mystery grants us both, but only when we let ourselves
be ridden with the viruses of vulnerability, open-ness, curiosity and passion.
Of course: we must not judge and cannot be judged. Of course: forgiveness is an
absolute necessity. Of course: the “kingdom” is both of this world and beyond
it, but also within us. And of course: love is the only way we can give our own
life meaning and value. “What is love?,” Pilate might have asked, and been
answered by the same silence. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Love is the best we have, given our nature, culture and
capacities… to give, or receive. How are we empowered to love? By immersing
ourselves in it… hoping, trusting. We have to know love to become love. It has
everything to do with the mystery… and nothing to do with the mystery.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">I have come to understand beauty as “god’s language of
love”: beauty, inspiring gratitude, raises our will to express love. It has the
power to affect us morally as well as aesthetically.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUEKe6-TYD-wPgFXw9rqJFPj6eX7rE5ThDWYXmyZMuDvAPBWvQ28A9CyN2AIrOZgh0p-K-qe9HYViJYHx_BdGVzfBsPNkkpL612V75FKwvNPmZnMUDIiVPAN76S3huhhvcZtZxGEHF7g/s1600/GULLflying.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUEKe6-TYD-wPgFXw9rqJFPj6eX7rE5ThDWYXmyZMuDvAPBWvQ28A9CyN2AIrOZgh0p-K-qe9HYViJYHx_BdGVzfBsPNkkpL612V75FKwvNPmZnMUDIiVPAN76S3huhhvcZtZxGEHF7g/s400/GULLflying.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: small;"><i>I have come to understand beauty as “god’s language of love”…</i></span></td></tr>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></o:p></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-8908717090554724252012-05-12T08:18:00.003-07:002013-02-05T07:35:25.567-08:00Wisdom. anyone?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>WISDOM is scarce and difficult to acquire.</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is wisdom? Let's say “wisdom” is the fusion of experience and gathered
knowledge into core principles that, integrated into our awareness, being and behaviour,
help us to live well. Living “well” means living satisfyingly, joyfully,
confidently, with integrity and without harming other people or nature. It is
about peace, within oneself and with the World. It is a dream, an ideal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In youth, we’re called upon to gather ideas in a great rush to make
our way in life. Most of those ideas about the World are constructed by others.
Some are great and manage to survive the testing times of life; most are, at
best, expedient, and they get us through… sort of… with a bit of luck. And some
are total rubbish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They come to us through our parents and peers, our educators and
employers, from society, politics, friends, economics, religion… and a lot of
them are convincing because, in those particular, close contexts, everyone around
us is similarly mistaken.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Along the way, we also pick up glimpses of truth, insights into
reality and some genuine wisdom. We almost certainly start seeing flaws in the
ways we are living, in what's offered as “common sense” and in “conventional wisdom”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we become growingly aware of our necessary selfhood, most of us are
likely to be picking up signals that our favourite falsehoods are, in fact,
false. To avoid the stress of self-examination and the effort of reworking our
accepted ideas and beliefs, we might to decide to cling to them anyway and hope
for the best.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or we might feel more “wisdom” would come in handy. And that leaves us
with a couple of ways to become wiser:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. Seek more insight. This, though, means opening more widely to
experience and that carries risks. It means adventuring into new (to us) ideas,
fields of interest and personal reflection — and that’s hard work for which we
probably have limited time and little energy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. Discern and ditch more falsehoods. Though
this, too, means taking some risks. Can we get by without some of our
deeply embedded falsehoods? What will happen when we pull one familiar prop out
from under our cherished sense of who we are… then another, and another?
Besides, what is all THAT wrong with us?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or we can let life continue to simply run on by us… and linger within
familiar boundaries. There are dangers here, too.
The biggest is the vulnerability of trying to stand still in a changing,
inherently dynamic world; our self-image is bound to become less and less
tenable unless we let it shift. Placing that shift in the hands of others will
leave us, in the end, not knowing who we are, feeling lonely and without
“meaning”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What might be a few “favorite falsehoods”? The list here
is necessarily personal but a few I’ve done my best to eject from my own life
would include, for example:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that there’s ever “us” and “them”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that winning a war, a game or a
life-contest is something to be celebrated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that we can pick and choose the
people we should treat decently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that anyone can move on in life
without forgiving completely and utterly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that what I’ve done by simply
earning a living hasn’t really ever harmed others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that some things never change
and that some things are reliably predictable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that someone who’s more needy
than me is somehow less deserving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that hard work, intelligence and
education guarantee “success”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">• The fallacy that our responsibilities end at
living decently and not making waves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">ANYBODY</span></b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> can seek wisdom… and, for humanity's sake, everybody should. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Wisdom has very little to do with information,
data or blitzing through books… nor with genes or Myers-Briggs profiles. Nor is
it necessarily archaic or arcane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's not about “knowing” (in the popular
modern sense) — or job training — but “meaning”. And it lies around
in everyday stuff: the walls we bounce off and the torrents that lift us high.
It's a gift, to be sure — but no more special than our other capacities.
Denied the ability to fly like a bird, we have to do our flying with our wisdom
journey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Wisdom simply has to do with cultivating an open-ness to
experience and that has a lot to do with trust: trusting, for example, that whatever got
"me" here today can probably also take me to where I need to be
tomorrow. That trust may be misplaced but — even if it is — there's
nothing gained by withholding it. As we go, discernment grows and life deepens
as it unfolds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So far, the mystery's okay by me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To not “let go” into life is a seriously
self-debilitating choice… imagine a swallow on a wire thinking “what if
that stuff with the wings doesn’t work this time?” and clinging to the
wire, waiting for food to come to it until at last it dies of hunger.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm saddened by the way we “elders” collectively allow the “system” to regiment young people into what’s
called “responsibility” when the world — everywhere — is such an exciting,
interesting diverse and dynamic place to be. Young people would be far
happier and better off with vision quests than with law and business degrees,
or with jobs that eat up their capabilities and give them fretful lives of
struggle to keep corporate castles in the air. A bit of irresponsibility can be a marvellous tonic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We “elders” owe young people more than we give them… and, to
be “elders”, we should be helping them to open their eyes and ears and
interests and minds, and dissuading them from embarking, passionless, on some glassy-eyed,
psychic sleepwalk into student debt, but to follow wherever curiosity and inspiration
lead. Knowledge should be as accessible as fresh air and water. God knows,
education should at least be free and available to anyone who wants it. And the idea of what
counts as “education” needs to include the whole of life. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Truth and beauty are
more important than any career skill. Wisdom is a journey for which all should
be allowed, or must claim, space and time. Its pursuit is to the common good.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwSsMpkk4ae72d-OCHztUCj24YUrU5yCes7BBbJBIfJJEuBd5SBQTgU7GouMk2e-ZDbLwDbPbOl3PQ_-VvFHx-R0pYE5W3LV_dmXnyTOg4BrPH43yUeWL5BEczoIcK5xLIX6udHP69Ng/s1600/Truth%3F0.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwSsMpkk4ae72d-OCHztUCj24YUrU5yCes7BBbJBIfJJEuBd5SBQTgU7GouMk2e-ZDbLwDbPbOl3PQ_-VvFHx-R0pYE5W3LV_dmXnyTOg4BrPH43yUeWL5BEczoIcK5xLIX6udHP69Ng/s400/Truth%3F0.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i>Learning to see truth and beauty is more important than any career skill…</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-52805616044355571892012-04-24T13:34:00.007-07:002012-04-24T14:01:55.648-07:00Just the facts…?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVfMtWycmHDX1u6yKZNjNA21yAJ24U5nkHhcWbs8eZH3llaWqIYqxBaqBTC7SDMEBh_FUbsF0jCK2udY0iY-HieCslYoP_hgJ451GEsAkSkLMcM7aZ-1mGkGYV8bomWvvnfIr3rGM8YQ/s1600/BEAUTY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVfMtWycmHDX1u6yKZNjNA21yAJ24U5nkHhcWbs8eZH3llaWqIYqxBaqBTC7SDMEBh_FUbsF0jCK2udY0iY-HieCslYoP_hgJ451GEsAkSkLMcM7aZ-1mGkGYV8bomWvvnfIr3rGM8YQ/s400/BEAUTY.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;"><i><b>BEAUTY — god's language of love… </b></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"FACT" is a word that comes to us from a a Latin word that had the sense of something that is “done”, more than something that “is”. Popularly, it's become associated with “truth”.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I think about my experience of “facts”, a “fact” has almost always come to me as the answer to some sort of question, or as an assertion that’s come from a question someone else asked. In each case, the question came first. The question arose in the mind of the person who asked it — not from nature, which simply exists. The question need not even have been explicit. It can be embedded in the way we have come to “see”, and to understand.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A “fact” is invariably the outcome of a question… it is discrete, separated from its source… extracted, like a museum exhibit, from some greater reality. It is static, despite the busy dynamism and apparent purposefulness of reality. It is a fragment of information chosen intentionally from the flows of change and indivisible interaction in which we’re immersed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A “fact” — pretty much by definition — is “true”. But there’s a lot wrong with that notion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The way any “fact” is observed or discerned and the reasons for its being chosen have a lot to do with our culture and the way we exercise our attention. A “fact” has almost everything to do with our values, interests and attitudes. Certainly a “fact” is a “western” concept. It fragments reality in ways that expose events to particular sorts of intervention and manipulation. All cultures have their own “knowledge” and wisdom systems as ways of extracting meaning from experience and the flows of being. But different tools, of course, produce different outcomes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Science tries very hard to exclude all sorts of irrelevant variable from its research procedures but can forget that silly, limited or incompetent questions will generate as much data as wise and accomplished questions, and that statistical predictions may or may not have a lot to do with the personal experience of particular events. Science does what it attempts fairly well but it remains a limited activity facing infinite challenges. One of its limitations is the capacity of the human mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As a journalist, I became very aware that a news story — written in fluent "fact-ese" — was a selectively chosen and carefully circumscribed representation of something that seemed to have taken place, looked at in a particular way. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Whatever had happened took place for reasons that were far to complicated to explain in the few words journalistic conventions allowed, and everyone — from the players themselves (and their agents) to the clock watching news editor steaming full speed ahead to a deadline — would see your story according to their own lights and priorities and, by the time anyone read, heard or saw your “story”, reality would have already moved on and the “players” would be doing other things. Nevertheless, people will tend to believe what they want to believe and, by and large, have enormous appetites for self-affirmation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Understanding this makes journalists cynical and public relations companies profitable. It makes advertising and marketing the most lucrative business activities of all (their raw materials are vanity and credulity… which both come cheaply).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Facts never coincide, except in the bluntest of ways, from one culture to another, and not necessarily between one person and the next. Misunderstandings are rife. A person’s “facts” can place and identify that person in his/her culture, society, class, occupation, interests… the more stratified or specialised a society becomes, the less well to people understand each other, their society, or themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we try to share “facts” by way of language, we are ensnared. A language is like a pipe, a conduit. It channels “facts” (better understood as “perceptions”) into the constraints of the particular language. And different languages achieve this in different ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some languages emphasise substantiality, others emphasise dynamics and activitity. Some emphasis relationality and contextuality. Some emphasise people, some emphasise roles or wider forces. And, always, it’s a matter of degree. But every language rounds off a statement into the regularities of “meaning” that are inherent to it. Language organizes experience into sets of familiarities. So what is said (written or represented) is not the whole of what is “meant” — and what is “meant” has an only approximate bearing on raw experience. And that is the extent of our communication: whatever can be said within the conventions of overlapping premises and references.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Even raw experience is very much shaped by the interests and questions we apply to reality. When we approach reality with an agenda, we are almost certain to end up mistaken. But, rid ourselves of agendas? That is very, very difficult.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Art can free us from language, but risks being either so subjective and idiosyncratic that it’s unintelligible, or so bound by conventions of its own that it means little. Our behavior can communicate a lot, but most of us show the world something other than our “true” self… not that we are very good at seeing or understanding our “true” self anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Which is why “wisdom” is such a rarely attained state, why "meaning" is elusive and why we spend so much time feeling confused, and bickering with each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“Facts” are especially dangerous when we <u>believe</u> them. My mother used to tell me that you didn’t get “it” until you saw the truth in its opposite. Still, facts do have their functional value… as, indeed, do hammers, explosives and heavy earth-moving equipment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">IT is a popular-level “fact” that, let is say, water is “wet”, unless it’s vapor or ice. Vapor is the gaseous phase of water, “wet” only when it condenses; ice is a crystalline or polycrystalline solid (wet only when it melts), like iron or limestone. Some scientists consider ice a "mineral".<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Wet" is a "fact" but that doesn't make it "true"… and any memories of truer times we may have may are almost certainly coloured by experiences of consensus.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was a time when monocultures existed more or less seamlessly. They were able to instill and maintain values and ideologies in ways that established powerful cultural solidarities. There have always been dissenters and rebels but there have been times — and still are — when they have been relatively easily dealt with. Nevertheless, it was rebels and dissenters who, for example, ended the rule of the great European monarchies… less by force than by the propagation of new views of what being human was all about. They cleared the path for good stuff and bad stuff… but mostly for new stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The good stuff — to some of us — includes the rule of justice rather than the rule of law. This is what Parliaments and the like were supposed to have been about. But most parliaments have attracted representatives of “the people” who still think in “rule of law” terms — it’s simpler, after all — and are swayed, understandably, by personal ambition. Democracy is an idealist’s dream: it assumes that the surrender of personal interest to the widest benefit for all is a sufficiently common impulse to ensure the common good.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The admissibility of evidence in courts of law has long been — and continues to be — a contentious issue: one that is under constant review in those states that care about justice. As its resources have allowed, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Innocence Project</i> in the United States has applied DNA testing to cases where convictions may have seemed clear enough at the time but denial of guilt has been obstinately maintained… and won a quite a few exonerations. Sometimes the necessary evidence for comparison has been lost or destroyed, and the Innocence Project has also has won exonerations in several of these cases too, though its focus has been on DNA testing. It has a waiting list of thousands of cases. You can check them out at <a href="http://www.innocenceproject.org/">http://www.innocenceproject.org</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The “opening of minds” that many claim as a feature of the new era is an interesting notion. The reality is, of course, that we are all and each ultimately trapped in our own consciousness. There is no way for us to avoid that place. Even nirvana does not reach that far; it is merely the extinction of greed, delusion and hatred… it frees the consciousness to open more fully and wholly to experience, but is does not allow it to explore the consciousness of others.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Social and media diversities almost certainly make us more aware of our existential loneliness but they don't help us deal with it. Rather, they "atomise" our world: they open us to extremes of relativism and, simultaneously, to intensified self-centredness. We see it expressed in fits of “joining” activity (chasing around after like-minded or congenial groups of people who make us feed good for a time but often disappoint us in the end), in feelings of insecurity, futility and pointlessness; it engenders ambient fears, suspicion of the “unknown” and deepened needs for reassurance. It can drive people to extremes, to fickleness, to madness and to straw-grasping desperation.It seems to exacerbate depression, suicide and addiction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The “truth” forever lies in pieces in a million hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Meaning is necessarily contextual. And “meaning” is the vessel of “truth”. Contexts don’t contain “truth” but some contexts have bigger windows and thinner walls.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finding “truth” has to be about finding contexts in which “meaning” can be experienced. This is why I open as keenly as I can to “beauty”, and see beauty and god’s language of love. That’s NOT a “religious teaching” in any religion I’m aware of (and I do look around a bit) and it seems to be very eccentric, but it is a personal source of “truth” to me. It is important because it leads me to a kind of nirvana. It is accessible to me because I can find it at my fingertips. But all I can attribute it to is my whole-of-life experience: the workings of my own consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s that personal consciousness that we neglect or abuse at our peril. Which is why I pretty much live the way I do and pretty much why a deep, sustaining joy is always immediately available to me. If we are going to survive as a species, I do believe that we each need to nurture and value our personal consciousness more hopefully and more discerningly but also more more freely, more boldly, more deeply…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Historically, “facts” — by virtue of their ephemerality, and the sorts of questions that have produced them — have been a distraction from that. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The “facts” are found among the chaff of any winnowing.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-61716919651339745152012-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:002012-01-09T10:34:22.440-08:00The need to know<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I’ve got a course coming up and I’ve been revising and updating my handouts and materials. It’s a course that encourages people to pass on their personal stories within their own families. They do it by putting together reminiscences, experiences, everyday thoughts… the stuff of conversation. And assembling these as a well-bound book.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In the course of my recent revisions, I spoke to a few bookbinders. One pointed out to me that someone who did as I was suggesting, and passed it on in their family, could well be responsible for the only book to be found in the home of a descendant, decades or centuries from now. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The course is called <i>With Love: gifting your stories to grandchildren</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Imagine having in your family a book of personal writings that had been handed down, generation to generation for 400-500 years. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">There's no quick way to come up with a treasure like that — but it's never too late to start. And for the past 24 years, I’ve offered these courses in New Zealand, Scotland and Canada.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Through the ages, in every culture you can think of, elders have handed on their stories. It has to continue. It's a responsibility they have to the younger generations. My hope’s long been to encourage more of our elders to meet that responsibility and make their gift to the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">It’s something that's a bit weak in the West — we've got used to thinking the big, public stories are the really 'important' ones.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">But start listening to the ordinary stories of ordinary people: you’ll find them connecting time and again with the universal experiences of humanity, and with each other. Story-sharing is the start of every friendship and the best stories are about the ordinary, personal things that touch us all.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">But, especially across generations, people can find it difficult to hand stories on. The extended family no longer sits around the fire. As a teacher of cultural awareness to people working across cultures as nurses, journalists, police officers — young people who often knew very little about their immediate ancestors — I saw that as the problem to be overcome. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The need seemed to be for some new medium. It had to be compact, portable, reproducible ... durable and robust, and it would help if it had an increasing potential value. It needed to be easily accessible, independently attractive and as independent of particular technologies as possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">It’s so simple it sounds silly, but the best option is to make a book: a special book that can become an heirloom. My inspiration was a friend’s family Bible, damaged but not destroyed, that spent six months under water before being salvaged from the wreck of the ferry Wahine that sank in New Zealand’s Cook Strait in 1968.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I’ve since been totally persuaded by the splendid collections of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany: properly constructed books are the way to go.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">THE FIRST <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">With Love</i> course was offered it as an adult short course in 1988 at Whangarei, New Zealand, where I was teaching journalism and cultural awareness. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I remember a bit of official discomfort with the title but to me it was the only title that made sense of what I was trying to achieve with the course. I wanted to express my skills and experience in the simplest possible way to encourage people to hand on their own stories so that their children's children would have a keener sense of who they are and where they have come from. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I saw <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">With Love</i> as an approach, not as a single, simply-explained thing. Explanation wasn't the point... doing it was the point. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I put a lot of myself into that first course. I couldn't believe how well it went: and those wonderful people! They fired me up to offer the course whenever I could and I've done that over the years." And their popularity steadily grew.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">We are living in the midst of ephemera… more and more of our experience is virtual and none of it seems to lead anywhere that’s particularly reassuring on enlightening. So I see more and more people sacrificing intellect, integrity and aspirations for almost any kind of apparent certainty. As the West continues to be drawn inexorably into ever-greater centralization of power and wealth, so it falls towards collapse: it the old, oft-repeated cycle of centralization and collapse. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">As victims, we victimize; living without assurances or consequence, we grow assertive… and all we achieve seems to further the dissipation of meaning and responsibility. Visions meet with skepticism, ideals meet cynicism, creativity meets exploitation, and acquisition compounds disappointment. We can even lose the courage to be joy-filled and hopeful.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">But the World continues to throw up beauty all around us — we just have to be bothered to look and listen — so our anguished confusion is not absolute, nor its it to do with reality — it’s within. It’s existential.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Each of us needs to know who we are. That’s a gift our elders can give us, no matter how right, wrong or misled they have been about the perplexities of modernity and postmodernity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I launched the ‘With Love’ courses at a time when I was living in a community where that wasn’t happening: I came to realize that very few of my young journalism and nursing students had a clear or helpful sense of their personal origins and influences. Busy lives, mobility and social change had interrupted the age-old flow of wisdom from one generation to the next. The ordinary, intimate family stories were seldom getting told. So I went to my students’ grandparents — in person. They told me there was never time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The extended family no longer sits around the fire.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">But I have since found, over and over again, that a lovingly-prepared and well-presented collection of personal writing inevitably attains a value of its own and is probably the best way to hand on stories that might otherwise never be told. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">One day, someone in the family will read one of the stories. And another.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Once one story is read, it can never be “un-read”: it has broken the barriers of time and place… and generations yet unborn may one day start writing their stories too…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">We all need a sense of selfhood, of existential “rightness” or “fitness”, of necessary continuity, to withstand the torrents of ephemeralism and resist the pressures to conform to ideologies and dogmas that are, all too clearly, calamitous.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span">We need to know who we are — as unique individual human beings — before we can approach other people and other cultures with the confidence, respect and compassion that are needed to save us from self-destruction. That confidence, respect and compassion can open doors to new ways of being together as people and as communities, of sharing, of trusting, of finding firm common ground… of making a future that works.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The book is currently out of print: sorry about that.</td></tr>
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</div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-58163119499885700812011-08-09T10:03:00.000-07:002011-08-09T11:18:45.696-07:00Beyond time's boundaries<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>HOW is it that we seem so securely locked into unidirectional time? Everything but time seems to have more dimensions and directions than we can know. Time is something we experience plainly enough, as life’s tomorrows turn to yesterdays… or do we merely imagine it?</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We live on a turning planet that orbits its sun and is itself orbited by a moon; a planet turning at some other speed in some other orbit around some other sun would give its creatures a different experience of the succession of nights and days we call time but how different would the raw nature of time be? Our time is conventionally bound to conditions and perspectives that are unique to our planet, yet different cultures have found different ways to organise concepts of time around those perspectives and “measured” time has been variously understood as cyclic or linear despite broadly similar experiences of days and seasons, flows and tides, hunger and satiation, births and deaths and bodily changes, and contexts of constant change. Measured time has long been problematic, not least because the natural phenomena on which the definitions have been based are themselves variable. (The current scientific definition of one second of time is impossible for us to relate to in our day to day lives — it’s based on the transition periods of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom at rest at absolute zero: 9,192, 631,770 of them….) <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So desperately does the so-called “human condition” cry out for illusions of order in the midst of apparent chaos that it’s hard not to imagine that time does not have something to do with consciousness. Does consciousness need some organizing construct to exist? Without the framework of time, would consciousness collapse into disjointed sensation? Do we imagine time as a kind of skeleton, a helpful illusion or construct that’s necessary to give consciousness a form we can experience and utilize? Do we need a concept like time to lift experience from an ocean of chaos and personalise it as a sense of selfhood? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">Certainly, a living organism without consciousness (as we think of it) can continue to exist, morphing from one generation to another with no pressing need for individuality and, arguably, with no particular attachment to time. After all, our own DNA carries physical, identifiable remnants of life’s earliest origins.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"> (See: </span></span><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/creation-story.html" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">Creation story…</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Without time, would our conscious existence, perhaps more realistically, be just another mystery?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Consciousness, after all — even our personal experience of “time” — is individualistic; and our sensations of it stretch or contract depending on what we’re doing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Simply “being” is rendered difficult by the album of our memories. First experiences become consequential to a conscious being, memories of them coloring every subsequent approach or aversion. Pull away the struts of time and who would you or I be?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But experience radiates backwards and forwards in time. I walk, for example, through an unkempt field. It is midsummer. Long-stemmed seedheads arch over the purple vetch and mauve clover flowers. A warm breeze sends satiny waves of shade and light through the long grass. Dandelion heads, fragile, grey, sway on the point of disintegration; tiny, white, ten-petalled flowers are knitted into cool, dark spaces close to the ground and, when I part the grass I see a solitary five-petalled pink flower. It is tiny. Above them rise the gaudy yellow blooms of some other weed. There seems no particular order to it all but that does not stop the field laying down a fresh sheet of memories in my being that in some slight but enduring way alters the sum of myself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</tbody></table><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A change has taken place that’s side-stepped my conscious control: something that’s not to do just with the various ways of “knowing” but also with my ways of coming to know. It gently recalibrates the ways I open or close to whatever experiences follow, and even to the memories that have already stored themselves away in the complicated networks of my consciousness.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is especially hard to imagine is the consciousness that was the sum of “me” before the field. That “self” has passed in an instant. Could I ever return to my earlier engagement with life as though the field had never existed?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For example, how do I now remember the summit of Mt Ruapehu in New Zealand. I vividly remember the day, the friends I climbed with, snatches of 40 year-old conversation, even the feel of the wind on my face. In my being, that peak now seems just a little higher than it was before I walked in the field, the wind a little sharper. There are remembered seas that seem a little wilder, moments that seem sweeter, or funnier. All of them passed long ago, except in my memory, and even there they are susceptible to change.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The malleability of memories is well known. And it points to dimensions of what’s called “learning” that go far beyond skill sets and adaptive, utilitarian “knowledge” to the shaping and shading-in of the “person”. Yet the experiences that manipulate our memories and personhood are not of our own making, and their impacts and effects can only very loosely and unreliably be predicted, even if we have chosen to set out on on a particular path of action and interaction. Outcomes are constructed in the loosest and bluntest of ways. The nuances of meaning are always discoveries after the fact. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Besides, the will we exercise when we make our choices has also been shown to carry the scars and rewards of our pasts. Consciousness is acted upon as significantly as it acts, yet we accept its governance over our lives as the mediator of both our intentions and the experiences our actions lead us into.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We grant consciousness its authority because it feels like the stuff of our “selves”. Moreover, it shapes our interactions with other people and is fitted into the bedrock of whatever society we have become a part of. But it is a mistake to never question its nature or challenge its easily mistaken and often misleading dictates. Our consciousness can lead us into false complexities and unhelpful choices; ways of being that cripple our true capacities and trap us in apparent inevitabilities.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Time is the mainstay of its throne and the linchpin of its seamless coherence. Measured time can become a dictatorship that crushes questions and subjugates the soul, that often opaque inner sanctum of our being, and turns selfhood into servitude. Life, no longer an open-ended adventure becomes a steep pyramid of goals and factitious “needs”. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Letting go of time is the secret to restoring the balance of the self’s countless illusory and sometimes painfully contradictory understandings of what we “know” — all the supposed causes and effects — and the felt c</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ompulsions of our life’s apparent trajectory, of its boundaries and possibilities. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">One way to step back from time and the rule of unquestioned selfhood is meditation. Meditation is often taught with its own encumbrances and contextual baggage. But at its essential core, in offers simple, effective techniques — a focus on the breath, for example — that banish time from our awareness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another way to thwart </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">time is to enter into the experience of sights and sounds that deepen our engagement with beauty — and they are readily available all around us, in a patch of unkempt grass, in the labyrinth-like tracery of a spider’s web, in the natural flow of water, in the muttering embers of a spent fire, in the elegant structure of a flower and the detailed form of a tree, in the gait of an insect, in the gatherings and passages of clouds, in the slow-cycling of the stars… in the letting go of that compulsion to understand and systematize and explain. Nature is at its core chaotic, and when its chaos produces what we recognize as beauty, it has the power to overlay our accumulated memories with a rich cloth of reassurance. It is reassurance without meaning, without particular content: it is a reassurance that comes from transcendence into the intact, undissected coherence of elemental, restorative beauty. Entering into it without anything more than openness to the experience it offers lets the self to get on with that recalibration of all that we are that is sometimes called “inspiration”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Recognising and accepting the gift of beauty is a respite from the snares of time and the domination of a noise-filled, damaged and fatigued consciousness. It just takes a summoning of the will to see gently and trust open discerningly but deeply… and let the self rediscover coherence in contexts of joy.</span></span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-30570534673775406762011-05-14T09:43:00.000-07:002011-08-09T10:36:01.570-07:00Seen the news today?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">...</span>towards 'restorative news'</i></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">IT’s amply been demonstrated that gloomy, violent and troubling television news reports encourage us to catastrophise our personal anxieties; they encourage us to focus more vividly on worst-case scenarios in our own lives. They spoil more than our day.<br />
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Researchers have documented the extent to which the enormous attention given to the 9/11 attacks in the United States, for example, with television networks endlessly running images of the collapsing World Trade Centre towers, intensified whatever stress and depression people had been feeling before 9/11.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
Extended media coverage stepped up the impact of the terror attack.<br />
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One research group identified the emotions stirred up by vicarious exposure to the attack as ranging from shock and anger, through fear and anxiety to feelings of helplessness, guilt and depression. During the first week, shock and anger tended to subside, but anxiety and depression-related emotions deepened. The more time people spent in front of the television, the greater were the impacts.<br />
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BUT it happens all the time: “bad” news is not hard to find, and a diet of “bad” news has known physical and emotional consequences. Now it's the stupid economy. And those consequences are certain to flow on into society at large, given the spread and reach of mainstream media.<br />
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This could easily turn into a “so let’s shoot the messenger” rant… and, indeed, the media are commonly blamed for all sorts of societal failures. But I believe it’s a far deeper issue than that.<br />
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Sources of information have become so numerous, so pervasive, so heterogeneous, so entangled with entertainment and so idiosyncratic that any big “story” almost instantly shatters into dozens of angles, interpretations and versions. Meaning dissolves into floods of images and assertions: confirmations, denials and conspiracy theories, re-tellings, deceptions and misconceptions.<br />
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In this post-Murdoch era, print media have very largely abandoned their credibility. For various reasons, television, having never managed to find itself, has become background noise that’s influential only through the imagery it disseminates. Radio — a medium with tremendous potential — has very largely become a low-level promotional tool and source of free muzak. And the Internet thrives as a cauldron of hopelessly relativistic nonsense.<br />
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In this information environment, most of us inhabit tiny zones of immediate personal consequence and necessarily tend to exponentially trivialise information according to its distance from the centre that is ourself.<br />
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The forces of information overload are nudging us towards ever-narrowing individualisation and away from socialisation; ironically, globalisation is leading us not to any celebration of our universal humanity but away from it. Bespoke worlds are the order of the future. Games designers and the like are designing and manufacturing them now, and gaming principles are being experimented with in workplaces. We are become less articulate and more removed from decision-making as we undertake humanity’s next great migration: the journey to virtual worlds. There, we will find we all have become slaves.<br />
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In many ways, you could claim that journey began long ago, certainly with the advent of the printing press: the ability it gave us to freeze particular versions of narratives into an enduring, portable form that could be widely distributed. To the Western mind at least, bookish reality has long seemed to offer clearer certainties than the fluid mutability of oral tradition where a single narrative can unfold into many meanings depending on the contexts in which it is heard and the particular ways it is told. A book can seem to escape its contexts and, distanced from us, tempt us to grant it far more universality and authority than it ever, in fact, has deserved.<br />
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The book was brought low, though, as per-unit production costs fell and literacy became a norm. The paperback revolution placed ephemeral and trivial publications on shelves that, till then, had been reserved for “literature”, a status conferred by the fact of publication. Book publishers quickly turned status objects into recyclable pulp; no longer was typography a badge of esteem or authority.<br />
<br />
At the same time, riding high on the fallacy that seeing in believing, television — a medium that was originally hailed as the harbinger of worldwide educational opportunity — was almost immediately lured into a business model that subordinated content to mass appeal and advertising revenues. Along with mass-market cinema, it made a god of entertainment and, in doing so, opened the door to new media able to far more cost-effectively serve that god.<br />
<br />
The trajectory has been from elitism to populism, as though those are the only options, as though they are necessary polar opposites.<br />
<br />
For as long as we see things that way, we are likely to remain blinded to the fundamental social need for narrative.<br />
<br />
Narrative is the source of social meaning. As communities, we tend to care nothing for things we do know nothing about. “Knowing” in this context is not about facts or theories or data and statistics. It is about the intimacies of encounter.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that we’re not helped by news styles that present world events as a disordered succession of ugly detonations; as ongoing tableaux of inexplicable violence and catastrophe that sometimes occur close at hand and at other times explode far away. “News” has become a sensationalist feeding frenzy. It does nothing but cultivate a widespread state of anxiety and hovering gloom. Its widespread consequences are most likely to include the rekindling of atavistic fears of strangers, change and risk exposure. And this is what the “news” media and much internet chatter tends very largely to do.<br />
<br />
As a daily newspaper journalist it often nagged at me that what I was doing — what “we” were doing — was excerpting incidents from the ongoing flow of activity around us and clipping it to fit in five, ten or twenty column inches of type as if they were independent, free-standing events. Of course, they were not.<br />
<br />
The incidents we presented as “news” were all part of far larger stories of causes and consequences, people and circumstances, very little of which could possibly fit into the stories we published. And, of course, by the time any of these stories were read, life had moved on. A news story gives a glimpse of what was, not what is. And it is a partial, incomplete glimpse at best. Seldom does a news story have room for any meaning.<br />
<br />
I had a particular loathing of court and crime stories. They are basically cheap and easy to get, a stenographic job at best. And they trivialise it all. The format is simple: a few words from the charge sheet, maybe a pithy quote from the judge (if there’s one to be had), and a note of sentencing. There is no room in the story for explanations, and subsequent appeals seldom make it into print. But, if you sit down with the perpetrator or the victim, with an arresting officer, with a lawyer, or with somebody’s mother, you can find stories, real stories. These stories often have little to do with the charge or the sentence, and everything to do with the intimacies of encounter that carry meaning. What happens in court is the depersonalised working out of an institutional process, and the less intimacy the better. Nobody really lives there.<br />
<br />
The reader gets nothing of substance from this sort of reporting, nothing of use and no understanding or meaning.<br />
<br />
News is, I believe, absolutely necessary. It is essential to us individually and communally. But news need not be clinically depressing. Nor does it all need to be escapist jolliness. It just needs to be real.<br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">But news gathering and presentation are in crisis. You’ll find it evidenced everywhere, whether it be in the opinionated inaccuracies of an amateur’s blog, in a manicured segment of a prestigious television network’s prime time newscast, in a carefully edited radio news item with its obligatory clip of gritty actuality, or in a facts-filled item in a leading daily newspaper. The crisis is its meaninglessness.<br />
<br />
Meaninglessness is what gets in the way of our engaging and our understanding.<br />
<br />
To introduce meaning to news presentation, there is a desperate need to learn afresh from the basic elements of effective narrative as they’ve been known for millennia in oral traditions.<br />
<br />
An effective narrative shows transformation and consequence, in involves change; a narrative has characters whose actions make sense, even if only to them. An effective narrative is essentially compassionate. An effective narrative invites us to enter into a situation and relate it to our own experience. An effective narrative respects all of it characters, even the “evil-doers”. An effective narrative helps us to understand ourselves, not just our surroundings. An effective narrative challenges and changes our assumptions and enhances our way of seeing things.<br />
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How might it be applied to news work?<br />
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A community newspaper I once edited won an award because one of my staff was willing to spend a week working alongside a make-work project team, spot-spraying and grubbing thistles on farmland. Mainstream coverage tended to feed a stereotype of lazy bums and beneficiaries getting a timely taste of the meaning of a day’s work. My reporter was able to write about an energetic group of people delighted to be part of a team with some purpose available to it, with a role and a challenge, instead of feeling isolated by a contemptuous community that they felt consistently denied them opportunities to work.<br />
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The feedback from the coverage was all positive and I believe the community benefitted. My reporter got over her blisters and aching back and, I think, was all the more glad to be a journalist.<br />
<br />
To cover crime, I encouraged reporters to talk to police, criminals and criminologists and write about perceived “problems” rather than cryptic entries on charge sheets; to look into why different types of crime might be happening. To cover local body meetings, I encouraged reporters to get out and talk with the people who would be affected by a decision before the meeting at which a decision would be made, rather than transcribing agenda entries.<br />
<br />
I wouldn't say that this is never happening, just that we could use is as a norm.<br />
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The key to what I’d call “restorative journalism” is getting the story, not just the “facts”; facts tell us far less than they purport; the story tells us far more.<br />
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<b>Shared stories draw us together; facts, too often, push us apart.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><br />
</div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-61769231894006547252011-02-02T08:11:00.000-08:002011-02-02T10:36:02.848-08:00It's just "the way you hold your mouth"...<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“HABIT” isn’t quite the right word for it; neither are “knack” or “acquirement”… nor is “technique”, although each has a bearing on it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I’m looking for a word — an everyday word — that gathers up all of those things we learn to do that, once learned, we seldom think of again but continue to do: that riding-a-bicycle sort of thing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“It’s the way you hold your tongue,” my dad would tell me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The way these things are learned is often more a case of assimilation than study. It would be a sad and lonely geek, for example, who’d go to scholarly journals and books to learn how to ride a surfboard, make a good fly-fishing cast, ride a bicycle … or, to get exotic, bring down a wild cow with a triple-weighted gaucho <i>boleadora</i>. These are “cultural” things, to be sure, but they’re also physical.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Our unique bodily constitution and physiology play a role, setting limits and horizons: I could probably have learned to run faster but I could never in my life have become a competitive sprinter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And another dimension to this sort of learning lies among other people, and the whole business of acquiring skills or attributes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I remember watching in awe as one of my dad’s friends deftly rolled a cigarette with one hand. And the two-fingers-in-the-mouth whistle was another sure-fire way to impress boys like me. Now I watch handymen and carpenters with the same envious awe… there are definitely “cool” and “uncool” ways to handle a builder’s hammer, pencil, tape measure or chalk line.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then there are tricks like ear waggling and knuckle cracking… it is all of these kinetic relationships and their interactions that refine the “knack” of doing something, and we experience the “knack” subjectively as an attainment and usually perform it in our own characteristic way. And the sum of it all becomes a part of our identity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">These little accomplishments, all added up and implicated with each other, become almost impossible to analyse, disentangle and describe in detail: think of the scientific elaboration and technical description, the psychological expertise and the physics you would need to objectively describe, detail and explain the implications, causes and consequences of, say, a golfer’s remark that “my drive was a bit off today”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I’m sure that most of what I know about this side of myself is beyond my own view. I </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">only</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">get glimpses of it when I see someone giving me odd looks or doing something in some obviously different way but with the same practised facility and the same lack of self consciousness that I experience when I’m doing it “my way”. And it’s only then that I’m able to find a way to ask myself about the nature of our difference.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Perhaps the worst of it is that it is so easy to fall, in the same sort of way, into similar patterns in the way we think, cluttering our heads with untested assumptions, familiar ways of thinking, habit-formed ways of evaluating things, attractive or flattering ideas, popular wisdom, common sense, ideas about the way things are without really examining them... all of them cramping our imaginations and annihilating possibilities, opportunities, insights and adventure.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So, by way of example: </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Being used, I guess, to handles on things, I always peeled a banana by clasping the fruit in one hand and tugging at the stalk with the other. It never occurred to me to think about this. My dad did it this way. Sometimes the peel comes away reasonably easily; sometimes — especially if the banana is not so ripe — it’s a bit of a wrestle. I’ve even gone to the knife drawer and got the job started that way. For more than 50 years, that’s how I peeled a banana.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then I learned that monkeys and sensible people peel bananas by nipping the opposite end of the banana with fingertips: the skin obligingly splits and the peel comes easily away. Having never lived among people that sensible — not at banana-peeling time anyway — and, having </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">never</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">been familiar with hungry monkeys and wild banana plants, I never learned the easy way to peel a banana. I’d never thought there night be a better way than struggling with what looked most like the tear-tab.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Sometimes — often, in fact — there’s not a lot at stake between one way of doing something and another. Learning several ways can sometimes be handy. And learning a whole lot of good ways to do a lot of stuff is how plumbers, electricians and carpenters, piano tuners, fitters and turners, surgeons and all of the other tradespeople make themselves so valuable to the rest of us and to society.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And often these things come out simply as mannerisms and accents: those particular ways of being who we are, a part of our social identity… our personality’s signalling system. We often can’t recall where or how we learned our particular little ways, and they are often unconscious… they’re “just the way you hold your mouth”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">At the beck and call of our personality, they can mean the difference between “cool” and “naff”, attractive or irritating. They’re often the characteristics our teenage children loathe most about us… while we grit our teeth as they endlessly repeat the latest “cool’ word. In other people, less well known to us, they lead us to draw conclusions about their background, interests, occupation, status, attractiveness, personality… they undoubtedly help to maintain class distinctions.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And from there, we are led to judge them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that it takes two to make a difference.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that people who agree with us, and act like us, teach us little.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that both sides of an argument can be — and often are — “wrong”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that the same signal can mean many things to many people… and can be disastrously misleading where there’s a cultural divide between us.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that the “right” answer to the “wrong” question is as misleading and dangerous as the “wrong” answer to the “right” question.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that people who seem very different from us can be as “good” as we are… and, given half a chance to express their intentions, may even turn out to be even more generous-spirited, more open, more hospitably motivated and more given to goodwill than we are.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We easily forget that it is too easy to esteem people who seem to exemplify our own aspirations… to be drawn to the resounding attraction of the affirmingly familiar, as opposed the apparent obstacle of the somewhat different.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And it can all boil down to “just the way they hold their mouths”… and maybe our timidity.</span></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-9708482641954734172011-01-27T09:31:00.000-08:002011-02-17T14:13:23.284-08:00The stupid economy (part 3)...<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">AN English businessman in Canada, Ian Ward, saw his markets for British Columbian timber and salmon in the Persian Gulf suddenly dissipate with the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. And international timber prices fell. He couldn’t have foreseen or prevented it.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And it was at that point that he discovered the demand for disposable chopsticks.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Chopsticks go back 5,000 years in China. As status objects, they have been crafted from gold, precious jade, coral and ivory. Everyday utensils are usually made of plastic, resin, bamboo or poplar wood. And you can get “portable” chopsticks, even collapsible chopsticks, that fit into a specially-made case or cloth bag so you can use your own chopsticks when you are eating out. For show-offs, Luis Vuitton makes an upmarket set of rosewood chopsticks in a carry case that retails at over $400.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The shared-toothbrush reflex seems to kick in more strongly in Asia than in Europe. We seldom think about the places restaurant utensils might previously have been put. And to take our own knife, fork and spoon to a friend’s place for meal would be thought odd, even insulting. In Asia, communicability is a bigger issue… all those surgical face masks when there’s a bug in the air? They can seem odd in the West but they almost certainly prevent more contagion than our fear of used toothbrushes.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Back in the 1870s, cheap, disposable chopsticks were enterprisingly developed by a frugal Japanese artisan as a way of turning his wood scraps into a useful product. It made sensible use of wood that otherwise would be wasted, and fitted with Japanese cultural sensitivities.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The idea caught on. And not just in Japan.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Restaurant customers throughout Asia liked the idea of pristine utensils in little paper packages to accompany every meal. By the latter part of the 20th century there was a staggering demand in Asia for 80 billion pairs a year. Factories struggled to meet the demand and forests were felled. Throwaway chopsticks had become an industry calling for 16 million mature poplars a year and, by that time, with Asian economies on the rise, most of the wood was coming from China. It didn’t help that less than half of the raw timber cut was suitable for chopstick making.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Ian Ward saw all this and, looking around, realised he was surrounded by what could be the opportunity of a lifetime: the aspen forests of western North America… poplar wood!</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The Rocky Mountains region is dominated by pine forest, broken by tracts of pale, straight-grained aspen. This is timber country. Forestry skills and lumber mills… with ports for shipping product across the Pacific.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In the America State of Minnesota, a slump in steel had seen unemployment soar and the Governor, Rudy Perpich, saw his hometown, Hibbing, as a great setting for a chopstick factory that Ian Ward saw employing 120 people, churning out seven million pairs of chopsticks a day and bringing in $5 million a year. It wouldn’t hurt his chances of re-election, even if there were accusations of pork-barrelling.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Several millions of government-sourced funds were soon found to help get the ball rolling and it’s said that 3,000 people — impelled by the fall of the steel-centred local economy — joined the queue for the first 30 jobs the company advertised.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">There was no environmental lobby rushing to the defence of the 60 or so bird species that thrive the nutritious habitat provided by the groves of straight-grained aspen. There was no outcry on behalf of an ecosystem that sustained countless insects and more than 50 species of mammal —including bears, moose, elk, deer, rabbits, beavers, porcupines, squirrels, chipmunks and gophers — and provided forage for farms as well as for wildlife. In the grasslands, aspens are often the only natural source of shade and shelter.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Instead, local optimism ran rampant. But, after two years, the specially-built machines fell silent, stalled by a $7 million debt. The market was virtually all China’s.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">What could have gone wrong? There were some start-up glitches with the machinery and other small issues that might reasonably be expected. But the killing blow was delivered by currency speculators who pushed up the relative value of the American dollar, making the chopsticks ever-so marginally dearer, and pushed shipping costs fractionally higher. And, because of the enormous volumes involved in the big chopsticks challenge, the slight difference in the cost of a single pair of chopsticks translated into a tremendous price hike for Asian importers looking to buy scores of container loads of them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">You could say that the greed and opportunism of the currency speculators saved the aspen forests. Or that their greed and opportunism killed a few hundred jobs and an entrepreneur’s dream. Either way, the currency traders were indifferent. They were pursuing blinkered self-interest in a way that’s sanctioned by our notions of economic freedom.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">There’s a story you can unravel if you look at the history leading up to the recent financial crash that goes straight back to the racist basis of “subprime” mortgaging practices… time and again, opportunistic greed spills over into social destruction.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Now, to its great credit, China is discouraging the use of disposable chopsticks altogether… because of their environmental impacts. And that’s not an idea that occurred to any of the players in the story of the Minnesota chopsticks story.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently published a report called <i>Population: one planet, too many people?</i>. It demonstrates that we already have all of the technology and know-how we need to peaceably accommodate nine billion people on the planet. We already have the technology to move to a low-carbon energy economy — what we need to address is “market failures” that stand in the way of its adoption. And, it argues, instead of razing slums and re-building, we would do far better to help the world’s massive urban slums to improve and develop organically towards healthier standards of living and economic vitality.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And a newly published report of a massive five-year modelling study undertaken jointly by France’s INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research)and CIRAD (the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement) — both major European agricultural and development agencies — concludes that feeding the project nine billion isn’t an insurmountable objective either.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The study looked at the sustainable capacity of the world to provide everyone — everyone, the whole projected peak world population of nine billion human souls — with 3,000 calories a day, including 500 calories from animal sources.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, it’s do-able.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The necessary steps include ways to curb world price fluctuations. The rich, they say, have to stop consuming as much as they do and reduce their wastage from the current average level of 800 calories per person per day. Even as farming methods take greater account of environmental necessities, including reduced use of fossil fuels, the production levels are achievable. The strategy would involve, rather than pest-prone large-scale monoculture, h</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">elping farmers to lift production while maintaining biodiversity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It calls for food scientists to organise globally, as climate science has been able to do.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Together, the two pieces of very significant research point — not to any technical or scientific obstacles but to the aimless social effects of our tolerance for profit-taking by individuals in ways that harm society at large. And perhaps it slips the collective mind that legality isn’t quite the same as morality.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In a time of unlimited surpluses, that may not matter quite so much. But, though we certainly have “enough”, we don’t have those buffering surpluses any more. And the problem isn’t projected population figures — population growth is topping out, right now. Nor is the problem to do with living space, technology or limited productive capacity. It’s nothing that complicated… it’s our unconcern. But food prices are rising , critically in many poorer countries, triggering risings and riots... and a part of the pressure comes from pension plan investments in the wealthy West, and speculation in the commodity market.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">As for disposable chopsticks… maybe it’s time to think twice about buying more and more short-life, over-packaged cosmetic niceties and novelty goods we don’t need, no matter how good an idea they seemed in the first place.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Eating’s more important.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: blue;"><i><b>Also see:</b></i></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/stupid-economy.html">Part 1</a> - </span><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/12/stupid-economy-part-2.html">Part 2</a> - <a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/economic-history-in-tea-cup.html">Economic history in a teacup</a></span></i></div><i><br />
</i></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-13953838761063391422011-01-25T17:20:00.000-08:002011-01-26T12:02:26.788-08:00Beautiful, beautiful bicarb....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJmz0gX4SQwcLtO9fkoy02Fkh7z6OpKK4ChOG2UHahSELhfV5K8TMj9X8VMqjR5f2GPXSAJFmcFjJCz6PmRz_Aqv9dTGRYgoCeTOsFP_n7Q-t2nfG4q1puGLJPvnpurR4EqmfZ6vOUA/s1600/BICARB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJmz0gX4SQwcLtO9fkoy02Fkh7z6OpKK4ChOG2UHahSELhfV5K8TMj9X8VMqjR5f2GPXSAJFmcFjJCz6PmRz_Aqv9dTGRYgoCeTOsFP_n7Q-t2nfG4q1puGLJPvnpurR4EqmfZ6vOUA/s400/BICARB.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">WE'VE changed the chemistry in the bathroom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We’re now using tooth cleaner that’s a mixture of sodium chloride and sodium hydrogen carbonate… sea salt and baking soda, mostly baking soda. It has the fresh, clean tang of the ocean to it… a taste I especially enjoy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">The toothpaste thing </span><span lang="EN-GB">got really complicated.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Looking at the shelves in the store, I’d start to glaze over: there’s stuff to “whiten your teeth” …as opposed to? Miracles in a tube promise variously to “strengthen your teeth”, “remove plaque”, “fight” tartar, “sweeten your breath”, “cure gingivitis”… “fight” cavities… fight cavities? Now there’s a thing.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">How do you FIGHT a CAVITY: a cavity is a hole. Fight the doughnut? Maybe. But the hole? What does this toothpaste do to the hole? Does it lay siege to it somehow? What if, like the last dentist I had, it concludes: “to hell, let’s take the whole damn tooth out”… but, wait! There on the shelf lies another intriguing promise: “cavity PROTECTION”. It protects cavities? From the cavity-fighting brand?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">And to board the “other bus” Colgate, for one, has even put out a bicarb and peroxide paste in a tube so it “looks like” toothpaste. They call it “</span><span lang="EN-US">Sparkling White”. </span><span lang="EN-GB">Go ahead… they need your money too.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">Is this all confusing, or is it just marketed by confused people? Toothpaste IS confusing. The flavours are incredible for the tongue-tying variations on the word “mint”: there’s “mint”, “regular mint”, “fresh mint”, “kiss me mint”, “ice mint”, “cool mint”, “citrus clean mint”, “intense fresh”, “peppermint”, “spearmint”… then, at the bottom of the cliff, there’s “bubble gum”, “strawberry” and “watermelon” flavoured gels for kids — and, leaving “mint” for dead, even a “Spongebob Squarepants” variety. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;">I’ve heard of, but never experienced flavours like lavender, tea, vanilla, citrus, pine, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon"><span style="text-decoration: none;">cinnamon</span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennel"><span style="text-decoration: none;">fennel</span></a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_butter"><span style="text-decoration: none;">peanut butter</span></a>. </span><span lang="EN-GB">I’ve gone through drugstore shelves across Canada and continue to wonder why there’s no “premier grand cru Bordeaux” toothpaste? If you want toothpaste to taste good, why not be a little more ambitious about it?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then there are toothpastes for “sensitive teeth” — sensitive teeth? Teeth tear, rip and reduce flesh and plant matter to a pulp, for heaven’s sake… and they get all precious and “sensitive” about toothpaste? There is “refreshing” toothpaste… how does that work? Where do you put it?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Oh, and you can get “fluoride-free” toothpaste and “menthol-free” which seems a bit like selling “white” milk on the basis of its being “chocolate-FREE!”. Or you can get fluoride-added toothpaste — and menthol-added toothpaste.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The Canadian Dental Association “recognises” more than 40 varieties of toothpaste (including Colgate’s bicarb and peroxide in a tube).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So, what’s in toothpaste?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;">Well, having researched this, I can tell you that as much as</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;"> 40 per cent of most toothpaste is hydrogen dioxide (water) — the stuff that gushes from your tap — and rest is mostly abrasive, insoluble grit — fine sand, essentially — that’s there to grind away the scum, but it rips away a bit of enamel with it. This surface damage is called</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman, serif;">“polishing”. Some toothpastes use glitter — white mica — for extra dazzle.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">The other ingredients are cautiously added by parts per million: a <i>soupçon</i> of some sort of fluoride salt — </span><span lang="EN-US">to toughen the teeth — and hint of detergent to help break up the scum… a bit like the stuff they use in greater quantities on oil spills. </span><span lang="EN-US">And there are tiny pinches substances that produce some credibility-enhancing foam. The same sort of stuff goes into</span><span lang="EN-US"> shampoos.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then there’s Triclosan: an organic toxin that slaughters bacteria by taking away the enzyme they need to make fatty acids. Of course you do know that alcohol takes care of bacteria pretty effectively? And that the tiny little bacteria that teem all over your skin, in your every orifice, in your digestive tract… your microscopic, lifelong personal companions… they outnumber your body cells by a ratio of about 10:1 and are, for the most part, benign. Yet you want to provoke these little creatures by using Triclosan-laced toothpaste?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Then there are flavourings and colorants intended to present toothpaste as a tempting confectionary item.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">And the colours: blue, white, pink and white striped, pale green… which reminded me of “caries fighting” toothpaste and those good old days when Levers put chlorophyll in toothpaste as though my teeth might be encouraged to photosynthesise.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">They used to advertise “</span><span lang="EN-US">sodium lauryl sulphate” until they found out that, though not quite a carcinogen, CH3(CH2)10CH2(OCH2CH2)nOSO3Na </span><span lang="EN-US">tends to peel the skin off some people so it probably isn’t very good for you: a bit like bleaching your hair with lye.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">I’ve even seen pet toothpaste (as in toothpaste for pets) and a terrifying warning that </span><span lang="EN-US">80% of dogs and 60% of cats have gingivitis, peridontitis or tooth decay — side-effects I guess of all those pet foods manufactured from grain by-products and abattoir waste.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And I asked myself a question: WHY do I want to buy toothpaste… for me? And why would airlines ban it from carry-on luggage? I know what they say… but what’s the REAL reason.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Besides, Ben Franklin, I believe, used honey and charcoal as toothpaste.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">And my mother happily used and got the superfluous added value from baking soda that it’s </span><span lang="EN-US">hypoallergenic (my mother had no allergies</span><span lang="EN-GB">).</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">The rest of the story? Well, baking soda — alias “bicarb”, NaHCO<sub>3,</sub> sodium bicarbonate, etc — is a fine, crystalline powder. </span><span lang="EN-US">It doesn’t smell, it’s slightly alkaline but relatively non-toxic. It doesn’t burn or explode and only sparingly dissolves in water. It sounds safe on aircraft.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Besides, it’s already in our bodies: in our bile, it’s what stops </span><span lang="EN-US">the hydrochloric acid in our stomachs from burning holes through our bellies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Ancient Egyptians mined it in a form called “natron” to use as a cleaning compound. And, over thousands of years, it’s proved itself in so many ways… as a water softener – great for washing machines and for washing dishes; it’ll deodorise and freshen shoes, carpets, cupboards, rubbish bins, and things like kitchen sponges and shower curtains. Even your pets. </span><span lang="EN-US">Oil and grease stains wash out better with baking soda in the wash water.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">It will put out fires, help polish iron and stainless steel and clean marble or formica — it even works as a silver polish — and it leavens dough. Mix it with sugar and it will see off cockroaches and silverfish. As well as cleaning your teeth, it is a good antacid and, added to bath water, it helps to relieve sunburn and eczema. It even takes tea and coffee stains off pots, mugs and cups.</span><span lang="EN-US"> It works as a facial scrub and body exfoliant … and you can pat baking soda onto your underarms as a deodorant. Made into a paste with water it will soothe insect bites, clean ovens and floors, and stand in as a handwash or hair cleanser A cup of baking soda a week down the drain will help keep a septic tank in good working order.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">As well as helping to wash cars, inside and out, it will neutralize battery acid corrosion. Just be sure to disconnect the battery terminals before your attack it with your baking soda and water. </span><span lang="EN-US">A wipe with baking soda on a dampened cloth helps repel rain from the windshield.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, if you happen to be plucking chickens, baking soda added to the boiling water will help loosen the feathers.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Try doing that with a tube of toothpaste!</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfcnNbQ0I0HQQmpLOe_I4MNHUKt60g0Md9-eLrxBTT0K-aeX_GwfzQUDLZ993X7ASWkdqpaX3YNoaH-GBa7kQakh7kt9SAUPz50lHlcwq00n5ikuRIWkmjbO8ISbh7WbUk-gaIeJknQ/s1600/ARM%2526HAMMER.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfcnNbQ0I0HQQmpLOe_I4MNHUKt60g0Md9-eLrxBTT0K-aeX_GwfzQUDLZ993X7ASWkdqpaX3YNoaH-GBa7kQakh7kt9SAUPz50lHlcwq00n5ikuRIWkmjbO8ISbh7WbUk-gaIeJknQ/s320/ARM%2526HAMMER.JPG" width="245" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-57316840554169891682011-01-20T08:08:00.000-08:002011-05-29T13:49:55.842-07:00Boredom? Really?<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">FOREVER slow on the uptake, I've only recently fully realised why my mother gave me a copy of Edmund Spenser’s <i>The Faerie Queene</i> for my eighth birthday.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It was because I had learned the word “boring” at school a few months before.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">When I tried it out at home, I suddenly found myself with a cup of water in one hand and an old toothbrush in the other, cleaning the bathroom from floor to ceiling, a task that engaged me from around four o’clock that afternoon until close to six. It gave me time to reflect on my mother’s tirade about boredom being the symptom of a “slovenly” mind, and, she told me: “you are not going to waste your life trying to be an imbecile,” adding, perhaps ambiguously: “Don’t miss the bits in the corners.” Boredom, to her, was a self-inflicted disengagement with life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I used the word “boring” within her earshot only once again… a year or two later, totally unthinkingly. I hadn’t even meant it. It artlessly “slipped out” in my unguarded “how was school?” reply. Again, I was compelled to some introspection with a toothbrush in the bathroom. I never saw it again, but I’d bet that she put that toothbrush away safely somewhere in case it was ever a needed again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">By then, though, I wasn’t finding school “boring”… rather, I think I’d forgotten the real meaning of boredom. <i>The Faerie Queene</i> had me in thrall. It’s not a book “for kids” and my mother, herself a teacher, obviously knew that. It was written in 1596 in early English for heaven’s sake. And it is all about grown-up lust and violence and courage, cruelty, faith, truth and virtue, about deceit, deception and self sacrifice… a metaphorical working out, through poetically articulated fairy tales of chivalry, of life’s enduring moral conflicts. And the “v”s are all written as “u”s… it’s stuff beyond any eight year old’s comprehension. But it flooded my imagination for life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I guess it began after I started throwing out words like “wondrous”, “soothly” and “betide”, and calling the sun “Phoebus” — stuff that made teachers blink. I had a small coterie of friends who’d all talk the talk and get into “knightly” rough and tumble in the playground, at the beach and wherever else we got together to play. We had words no-one else had… I looked up their meanings in the glossary at the back of Spenser’s book. We were a movement, pledged to imagined arts of chivalry. We picked playground “giusts” with boys with “lumpish heads” who failed to meet our standards by pushing around “faire”, “milde” or “innocent” girls or telling “guileful” lies. We were severe but comical pains in the butt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">But we were never bored. We were always on quests for “adventure”. We lived vividly in a transformed world at the edge of craziness. And the problem was that so much of Spenser’s allegory expresses of the sorts of “truth”, conflicts, failings and qualities we discover within ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">As I said, my mother was a teacher. Her classrooms generally brought together a mix of cultures: pakeha (New Zealand European), Maori, Pacific Island and sometimes English, Dutch and Asian children, new immigrants. She had syllabuses to work to, but bent rules, I know, to fire the curiosity of kids who seemed a bit left out or were falling behind. And, when I was rather older and studying psychology and anthropology at university, we’d talk about things like cultural influences and the way people think. By that time, she had moved on and was working with the ethnology department of the big regional museum.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">She was a complicated, intelligent and demanding person who would incisively put her finger on things she saw obstructing human fulfillment and goodness. Boredom in her view was, I learned, not just about a “slovenly” mind. It was about an obnoxiously ill-mannered, lazy and immaturely self-focused mind. It was a cowardly refusal to explore anything beyond the boundaries of one’s own immediate preoccupations. Its cure was curiosity, and firing curiosity was, to her, the first obligation of a teacher. Curiosity is what feeds and grows the “self”… not times tables and the alphabet: curiosity makes the “self” interesting enough to live with. And the truth in <i>The Faerie Queen</i> is that it resonates with the inner struggles of bringing one’s “self” to maturity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Boredom, my mother would say, is a dereliction of that struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Boredom seems to be a peculiarly “modern” mood. It first appeared in literature in 1852: several times, in Charles Dickens' <i>Bleak House</i>.</span><span lang="EN-US">The expression “to be a bore” apparently turn up about 100 years earlier. Recent research has connected boredom with cultural variables and gender, attention spans and depression. And it’s been linked to a host of psychological</span><span lang="EN-US"> physical, educational, and social problems including depression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Boredom seems to have had a lot to do with the odd angst of Ivan Chtcheglov. </span><span lang="EN-US">The son of a taxi-driving Ukrainian revolutionary father and a French mother, he was a perfect candidate for the toothbrush. He won some notoriety </span><span lang="EN-US">when a fit of ennui drove him and a friend</span><span lang="EN-US"> to try to “deconstruct” the Eiffel Tower</span><span lang="EN-US"> with stolen dynamite because “its light kept them awake at night.”</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">For five years following his failed attempt on the Paris landmark, he was confined to a mental hospital and died in 1998.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">As a political theorist, activist and poet, </span><span lang="EN-US">Chtcheglov</span><span lang="EN-US"> inspired</span><span lang="EN-US"> several small, volatile, left-wing avant-garde groups like the Lettrist International and the Situationist International: left-wing cliques of exclusivist, squabbling and egocentric artist-intellectuals. </span><span lang="EN-US">“We are bred in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun,”</span><span lang="EN-US"> Chtcheglov</span><span lang="EN-US"> declared in 1953.</span><span lang="EN-US"> “A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization,” he wrote with characteristic portentiousness. “Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Then, in the late 1960s, the Situationists coined a </span><span lang="EN-US">Chtcheglovian</span><span lang="EN-US"> slogan: “The society that abolishes every adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” It was an augury of punk that reappeared on a banner under which members of the “Reclaim the Streets” movement partied when they shut down London’s M41 motorway in 1996. But is was not society but their own timidity, laziness, lack of imagination and extreme presumptions of entitlement that denied these listless souls “adventure”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">The thing that shines most vividly from </span><span lang="EN-US">Chtcheglov</span><span lang="EN-US">’s intellectual legacy is its self-pitying, ineffective pointlessness. A few attempts at penetrating observation float off to die alone and incompletely understood in voids of self-absorption, all for want of a toothbrush and a cup of water.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">My mother would have sorted out Martin Heidegger. He associated boredom with waiting at train stations. “So walk, you fool,” I can hear my mother sharply snap. A couple of hours in our bathroom, and he’d have prised his head from his navel and the world would never have heard his pronouncement that: "profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole.” What a wuss. It seems to me he missed a bit in the corner too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Baudelaire blamed society's corruption for inflicting boredom on sensitive souls. My mother would have blamed Baudelaire. Schopenhauer described boredom as a “tame longing without any particular object”, while to Dostoevsky it was “a bestial and indefinable affliction”. </span><span lang="EN-US">Erich Fromm viewed boredom — “perhaps the most important source of aggression and destructiveness today” —</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">as a psychological response to industrial society that locks us into alienated labour. </span><span lang="EN-US">A Canadian classicist, Peter Toohey, has countered that boredom is “a timeless universal human emotion” that impels us to art and literature. “Stuff it… I think I’ll write a novel,” one can imagine Tolstoy grunting as he launched himself into page one of <i>War And Peace</i>. </span><span lang="EN-US">Author Elizabeth Goodstein says that, although boredom seems embedded in the human condition, it’s linked to ways of thinking about our existence and experiencing time that reflect a specifically modern “crisis of meaning”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Boredom has certainly become the bane of modern and postmodern society. It seems to have a way of surfacing wherever societies suffered self-inflicted surfeits of wealth: it drove Roman emperors mad. But, while the likes of Caligula could express their cravings for heightened stimulation in “real life” by engaging with high-risk abandon in real violence and extreme experience, boredom merely scums our social interfaces as an appetite for simulation and depictions of fantastical activity. It sustains a stupendously lucrative market for “entertainment” and titillation. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It leads us over the rainbow to a place where consequences scarcely exist, a kind of nowhere zone that is far safer, less demanding and less disappointing than reality, but also less satisfying. Life takes on the characteristics of an air guitar: the only place we get to live out our fantasies in is our heads because the fantasies are, in real life, beyond us: untenable and inexpressible. And, shorn of consequence, they lead nowhere. But, so demanding does real life seem by comparison that the temptation is to let our imaginations shrivel like vacuum packaging around the simulations.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Entertainment is a form of transcendence, but it’s one that persistently reminds us of our own ineffectiveness. It mocks us, and what else can we do but glaze over?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">On the other hand, the transcendence that comes from within, rising sharp, bright and scary out of real life, changes us, often dramatically; it brings us to life: vivid real life. And, when we are changed, our world is changed.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Real life is not in the least boring, yet the amount of time spent in front of computer and television screens is rising.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Different studies produce varied estimates but a good idea of what’s going on was given by the U.S. ratings service Nielsen in May 2008. It reported that the average American was then spending a little over four hours a day locked in communion with a television set (127 hours and 15 minutes a month) and another 26 hours, 26 minutes a month working out online: together, on average, that’s five hours of electronically delivered inputs a day: one third of a healthy waking human life, or 75 full, 24-hour days a year. A 2010 Canadian study of high school students found their average daily screen time was about seven hours: more than 100 days of the year. If work and commuting take up nine hours a day, and sleep a healthy eight, and another seven hours are spent staring at a screen… that leaves no time at all for family, for preparing and eating food, for keeping fit, for getting to know friends and neighbours, for smelling the roses… for silence and solitude, for contemplation and reflection. Something’s wrong here …entertainment has become THE thing, and the most damaging, hurtful accusation that can be hurled at a person, a place, an event or an activity is that it’s “boring”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Young backpackers, eagerly looking forward to taking a gap year to explore “the world”, were surveyed by <i>TNT Magazine Travel Show 2008.</i> Asked what they rated as the most essential item to take with them, 32 per cent of these intrepid would-be adventurers (mindful of the acute danger of travel-tedium) chose their iPods. That a first aid kit might come in handy, just in case, occurred to a mere two per cent of them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">An unfortunate thing about entertainment media is the way that the experience has to keep intensifying to hold the interest of its quickly jaded heavy users. It works precisely like a drug addiction: each “fix” needs a bigger kick to keep up with the craving.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So, in just over 50 years, “horror” movies have progressed from the whimsical absurdity of a giant radioactive octopus in <i>It Came From Beneath the Sea </i>(1955) to the graphic sexual torture of films like Eli Roth’s <i>Hostel</i> (called “a sadistic freak show” by one of the film’s more charitable reviewers)… while electronic games have gone from William Higginbotham’s innocent <i>Tennis for Two</i> game of 1958 to Nintendo’s <i>Mad World</i> that lets players rip enemies’ hot, pulsating hearts from their chests, hack them apart with chainsaws and impale them on road signs… all on the “family friendly” Wii console. Entertainment is fraught in this way with the characteristics of addiction. And the boredom deepens.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Genrich Krasko, an American physicist and author of<i> This Unbearable Boredom of Being</i>, sees boredom as one of the most burning problems of today's America: crime, drugs, greed, ugly gender polarization, disintegration of family, decay in morals, racism, and so on, are the direct consequences of a crisis of meaning that has engulfed America. </span><b><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Krasko, is a fan and follower of the late Dr Viktor Frankl: a </span><span lang="EN-US">psychiatrist, psychologist, philosopher and Holocaust survivor </span><span lang="EN-US">who, in </span><i><span lang="EN-US">The Unheard Cry for Meaning</span></i><span lang="EN-US">,</span><span lang="EN-US"> wrote: “</span><span lang="EN-US">For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the <i>struggle for survival</i> has subsided, the question has emerged: <i>survival for what?</i> Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, in <i>Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning: “</i>Unlike an animal, man is no longer told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do... or he does what other people wish him to do...”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s time to pull out of the nosedive.</span></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-90969172334992343822011-01-13T10:22:00.000-08:002011-01-13T12:18:07.530-08:00But what can one person do?<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">THERE are days when it seems that nothing is going very well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Life on Earth’s become a succession of crises and catastrophes; climate change is ramping up in the shape of floods, storms and extinctions, crime is everywhere, half the world’s at war, new diseases are afoot, everyone’s ungrateful, our hopes are unravelling and we’re working our butts off to support a system that sucks. And, whilst we’re bound in servitude to “The Economy”, humanity, the world and even our front lawns all seem to be sliding into voids beyond our reach and not of our making.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Well, there are plenty of alternatives to the way we’re living if we want something different. And there are ways to change the society we’re living in; we are not powerless.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Some 6,000 different cultures have managed to survive on the planet: proven, historically-tested options, ideas and choices.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The big problem for us, many agree, is “The Economy”. But even “The Economy”, thankfully, is vulnerable. And, around the world innumerable small, medium and large-sized activist organisations are steadfastly promoting values and actions that challenge the social and political <i>droit de seigneur</i> the “The Economy” enjoys.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Besides, there are not in fact all that many beneficiaries of “The Economy”: though the super-rich wield tremendous power, they’re vastly outnumbered by their victims and underlings and — as every drug baron knows — life at the top of the cartel is hardly one of settled contentment.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Mahatma Gandhi’s advice was to “be the change” you want to see. It works. It is one of the few ways that does. And that is what many of those activists are doing.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Politicians can’t do much for us. We’re quick to blame them but it’s our volatility, impatience and self-interest that leave most politicians in positions of impotence: as apologists, punch-bags or scapegoats for the latest machinations of “The Economy”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">What is “The Economy”?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s a vortex of all the capricious impulses and narrow self-interests that run through a community at large, within which every dollar counts as one vote and every vote is quickly cancelled out by half a dozen others. And the dollars, of course, have no stable value or absolute worth… every one of them is a notional entity. “The Economy”, as we have come to know and loathe it, is a drunken, stumbling, capricious, out-of-control caricature of the credulity and greed of its participants… a burlesque of human failings. And we, the butt of all its parodies, cling to it all the more desperately when it offers us the most transparent views of our inanity.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“The Economy” feeds and clothes us? Well, some of us more than others. Others get very little, hardly any at all, and a rare few get mansions and big cars that leave them in almost as much need of anti-depressants as the ones who get hardly anything. It’s an arrangement that cultivates envy, cupidity and resentment.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“The Economy” ridicules our artless jealousies by parading before us our envy-laden tolerance for vast “bonuses” being uplifted by people who have just pulled spectacular failures out of the hat: failures that dumped other people out of homes, jobs and opportunities. Yet neither the bonus recipients nor the disemployed can explain it… it all just kind of happened.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“The Economy” is a faith system, a religious movement whose high priests bow in fear to the “invisible hand” and speak in tongues of greed, stupidity and computer modelling.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Prostrated before their wisdom, we allow currency and commodity speculators — gamblers – to profit-take from trading relationships and generate cost fluctuations that can result in starvation, destabilisation and even war. We endure accounting standards that hide the full environmental and social costs of resource exploitation. We have come to see usury, exploitative employment practices, manipulative marketing and extortionate pricing as inseparable from “economic freedom”. We have come to see that there are two distinct types of human being: those in whom massive rewards must be “invested” as “incentives” to ensure their productivity; and those who must receive minimal rewards so that they do not get lazy, and to ensure that costs are controlled.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then, as if any of this makes sense, we join in choruses to oppose taxation (which delivers returns in things like education, social security, justice and infrastructure) but, the next instant, will throw money into voids of no return at lottery ticket outlets and casinos.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It gets far more extreme than that. Canada is not alone in having been persuaded to go to war out of “economic considerations”. Think about that for a moment. It makes scarcely any sense at all, yet it gets believed. The “traumatic stress” to young people who are placed “in harm’s way” (as they say) is less of a concern than compromising the economic “goodwill” of an “ally” who has a habit of making its economic incapacities ever more spectacularly visible. We’re talking about killing and maiming young human beings, sons and daughters, as sacrifices to a god that can’t and won’t deliver.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Face it: “The Economy” is failing. “Economic considerations” are piloting us all towards catastrophe… if it’s your dream to be filthy rich and you’re not already filthy rich, forget it: the odds are you’re not going to make it. You owe “The Economy” nothing. Every day it ploughs under more and more of the world that’s your grandchildren’s birthright. They will experience a wasteland. And we simply do not have the resources of the multiple planet Earths that it will take to sustain levels of consumption as they are right now.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So how do we start corralling “The Economy”?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We start by getting sensible. We start by getting to know ourselves better than we do and interacting more constructively with the people around us.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We need to bolster our faith in our political system, making democracy a higher priority, as we start wresting it from the control of “The Economy”. The launch pad for this is a committed re-appraisal of some of our own personal values.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">As we incorporate into our own lives values we say others should hold dear we will see, through our happier eyes, a gradual re-orientation of society… close at hand to start with, then radiating outwards. It doesn’t happen overnight but neither does it take forever.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And it sure as hell does not take “The Economy” to sustain us… that is an illusion.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Of course, we need food and shelter and all sorts of products we can’t stitch together in our back-to-earth cottage co-operatives from recycled disposable diapers… but it’s networks of human relationship that provide for our needs, not “The Economy”. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“The Economy” has gone altogether too far in subverting and taking over these networks, turning them into cold-blooded struggles for control, disengaged from sustaining reciprocities. “Fair trade” initiatives seek to introduce some sense of mutual interest and greater moral responsibility into the relationship between a supplier and a consumer. It is good sense to see a transaction as a reciprocal investment by each party in the other party’s survival, future and vitality; simple supply and demand thinking doesn’t run to that. Some corporate organisations have made gestures in the “fair trade” direction too, and they are to be greatly encouraged (if less than wholly believed). “Green” has become a cynical con in many contexts, but it’s not entirely without value.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Hypocrisy, it’s worth bearing in mind, has an “up”-side. When a hypocrite speaks, he or she can thereafter be challenged to make good his or her pretensions of virtue… or at least reminded of them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s far from woolly-headed idealism to say that moderating our consumption at a personal level has a critical effect. It’s a first step of trust in ourselves, and, as such, it steals ground from the “greed, stupidity and computer modelling” guys. And that’s a step towards getting “The Economy” into a cage of reason rather than superstition, and transforming it into something new that serves us instead of controlling us.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Each step beyond that first one takes us towards a greater trust in each other and further loosens the hold “The Economy” has on our lives. As communities strengthen their bases of reciprocity, the more able and ready they are to enter into wider-ranging reciprocities. It’s about the way we interact with each other… like drug barons or like friends.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Friends are easier to get along with.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And they’re less likely to place your children “in harm’s way”.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><i>Also see:</i></b></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: blue;"><i><b><br />
</b></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: blue;"><i><b><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/economic-history-in-tea-cup.html">Economic history in a teacup</a></b></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><i><b><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/stupid-economy.html">The Stupid Economy</a></b></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><i><b><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/12/stupid-economy-part-2.html">The Stupid Economy -- part 2</a></b></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: blue;"><i><b><br />
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</div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-37585771994066916312011-01-11T05:28:00.000-08:002011-01-19T03:43:59.665-08:00Looking for "truth"<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">YEARS ago, in a psychology seminar, I was asked: <i>What are the next three numbers in the following set:</i> <i>minus-2… 0… 2…</i>? — and, the instructions went, <i>work out the rule behind the sequence, test your hypothesis by suggesting a few sets of numbers, then tell us when you’ve got it.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Our lecturer said she’d tell me whether I was right or wrong, then let me know when I’d worked out the rule correctly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Me (thinking, ‘this is sooo beneath me’): “4… 6… 8?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Correct.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Me (remembering where I am, and suspecting a trick): “8… 10… 12?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Correct</span></i><span lang="EN-US">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"> Me (gaining confidence): “20… 22… 24?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Correct</span></i><span lang="EN-US">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“Ahhm… it's an ascending sequence of three even numbers?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Me: “Add two each time?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Wrong</span></i><span lang="EN-US">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Me (losing it…): “There’s got to be a negative number?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">No. Wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Ummm… wrong?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I gave up. The rule was simple, simpler than I’d been prepared to think. It was: <b><i>any</i></b><i> succession of ascending numbers</i>. They didn’t have to be even numbers; there could be any gap between them and there didn’t have to be three of them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Once I’d fixed the idea of twos and even numbers in my head, in sets of three, I hadn't thought of challenging my assumption to see whether I might be wrong; my rule described what I heard. I’d let my mind blank out other possibilities. Once I’d seen a pattern, I’d locked in, stuck with it and the more affirmation I got, the more confident I got. And my dread of smart-ass little tests like this, especially when they’re sprung on me out of the blue, encouraged me to cling to what I’d thought was my way out. To then be told I was wrong in front of the class… well, that pissed me off, to be honest.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Most of us fall into the same trap… try it out on someone.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The topic of that seminar was stereotyping. And, by the time it was over, I’d been persuaded that the stereotypes I’d formed about other people had nothing to do with other people… like my leap to end the sequence puzzle, they were my untested assumptions, all mine, and they were dangerous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">BUT it’s far bigger than that. Our culture has fanned innate inclinations to see patterns, seek order and attach ourselves to predictability wherever we think we see it; we crave predictability, we are easily bilked by fortune tellers and betting “systems”, and the simple logic of cause and effect suits us very nicely. As a species, we’ve spent most of our relatively short history as hunter-gatherers, depending on regularly cycling seasons and the predictable habits and habitats of prey. We’ve inhabited a food chain in which indecision can be fatal.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It was a way of life, relying on a few perceptual skills, quick reactions, teamwork and sharp weapons, together with a bit of luck, that’s left us too impatient for results, overly eager for immediate answers, too quick to conform and too easily led into simplified two-dimensional worlds of false dichotomies and persuasively closed categories. And we get pissed off far too easily when things don’t meet our expectations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We define categories by their apparent boundaries, forgetting that the boundaries are our inventions… the reality is that, far more than categories, the world we know is typically composed of continuities and their interconnections. Reality’s not a production line; it’s more like a weaving-in-progress.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Few categories have unbreached boundaries; almost all are blurred. Despite its having tried, biology has produced no boundary markers for race. “Race” is an illusion… a false category made of sloppy thought and careless stereotyping. There is sexual differentiation but there’s no gender “gap” either. Sexual differentiation is a physiological continuum. Species are nowhere near as clearly defined as once they were thought to be. For various reasons, medical diagnoses (and the prognoses based on them, of course) are notoriously unreliable. The closer we look at the world we think we know, the fewer boundaries we find and, blunder by blunder, we come to see that “clear” differences are usually mistaken, culturally discerned and constructed, and exaggerated.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then, when we go looking for enduring certainty and solid permanence, we discover that everything is in motion. The seasons cycle, we age and die, new lives begin, our cultures come and go, new ideas replace old ones, species and empires rise and then vanish. Our little blue planet — with its history of climatic, magnetic and atmospheric variability — rotates daily as it circles around the sun at a speed of 30 kilometres a second. And the sun, in turn, is traveling at more than 15 kilometres a second around the centre of the Milky Way, carrying us with it. Our Milky Way galaxy is, at the same time, moving at a speed of around 600 kilometres per second against the background radiation of the expanding universe. Where it’s headed, nobody really knows<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Meanwhile, back on Earth, tectonic plates are shifting, bumping and grinding into each other, at average speeds of between two and ten centimetres a year, inexorably changing the shapes and elevations of continents and islands… all of our cities, towns and creations will one day be erased: their ruins sunken under oceans and subductions of the Earth’s crust, or heaved and broken upwards to form mountain ranges.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, when we turn to cause and effect for consolation, we discover that a cause usually involves coincidences of many circumstances, each with its own sets of causes, while an “effect” embraces a range of outcomes, some bad, some good.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">There are no stationary points… and we are fleeting. Even our sun, five billion years old, is expected to burn out in another five billion years but, long before then, it is certain that humans will have vanished from the Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So where, amongst all of the continuities, undivided measures and constant motion that reality provides, not to mention the assurance of extinction, do we locate ourselves, and find our own being? Our own being is our entire universe because we exist only to the extent that we allow ourselves to. To fully exist, we need to discover and explore of our own existential truth… all of it, if we can.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">There’s no one single truth statement: even if its essence was reducible to one single little word, where would you find two “selfs” who’d understand it the same way? Truth is a river, a flow… a dynamic that resolves, not in one time or place, but everywhere, at all times and forever. It is both closer and further away than our “good sense” allows. Does it exist? Of course it does. Can I tell you what it is? Only truth itself can do that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We find “our” truth in the gap that lies between who we are and what we experience. We are engaged, like it or not, in an exchange of life for experience. That process of exchange is the “eternal” truth. That’s the deal. And, ultimately, we do it alone. If that’s frightening to you, you haven’t understood. It’s what we’ve each been born to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">My wife is my dearest, most closely known reality: my closest companion and my most preoccupying, most complex, best known and certainly most deeply loved realm of reality — but I can not know for sure what even she experiences as real, nor can I experience it in the same way, no matter how close we are. And, no matter how much we share or how deeply, our real worlds remain uniquely our own. None of us comes to be fully known by another person, nor any other person by us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We’re all inclined to take a tour bus approach to our “selves”: a bit of affirmation-seeking sightseeing by day, followed by some familiar food and a cosy bed at night… we know what we like. But affirmation tells me nothing: affirmation is how pet take over people’s lives. The comfort of affirmation anaesthetises me against reality; it helps to dig me deeper into whatever holes of ego-absorption I’ve fallen into… <i>2, 4, 6, 8… perhaps it’s time to hesitate</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">My “self” needs to be prodded and pushed into being. So, I TRY to read a proportion of books that contradict my thinking or lie on the edges of my interests. And, as opportunities come along, I love to plunge into unfamiliar experiences, places, cultures, food, music, ideas… I do all I can to stoke the flames of my curiosity: to me, curiosity is a moral imperative.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Without curiosity, I can’t imagine being able to achieve the emergence of self that meets and meshes with experience in encounters with truth. And I need those encounters… I think we all do. Truth is our place of liberation… a kind of spiritual release that feels a bit like that last thrust of the plunger that clears the pipe and drains away the gurgling sink-full of tired, grey, dirty dishwater. Then we experience the feeling of filling with freshness and peace and energy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We know that it’s true because it rings with an unalloyed voice that impels us to strength, purpose and fulfillment; it’s a new day and we’re not entirely sure why, but with feel in love with life… and we somehow are made to know we're worthwhile in ways that don’t forever sniff after us for affirmation. We sense a blossoming being released through us, a fitness of intention and effort, an awareness of meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">To have traction on life’s journey, it’s essential to have some guiding principle in mind, some sense of quest, a vision. That’s what our “truth” enables. That’s what it’s for.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">To experience our truth is to become woven into the one certainty we can lean on for reassurance: that all of the majestic motion around us is what brought us into being. It fills us with the curiosity to learn about its workings, and rewards that curiosity with apprehensions of beauty and awe that become growing points... like buds after winter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So how do we reach that point of realisation?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">That it’s to be expected doesn’t stop most us from spending an awful lot of a lifetime making mistakes of one sort or another. So it’s not a good idea to patter along, puppy-like, after somebody else because, from where you are, you’ll have no way of knowing whether that other person is making a mistake or a discovery. Similarly, we don’t arrive at our truth by reading holy books or self-help guides, anymore than we understand the differences between, say, Marakesh and Kobe by reading travel guides. It’s not a “head” thing, or an information thing. It has to be lived. The travel guides can certainly help… but it’s being there that changes your life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, because the way we “are” is of such consequence to other people, we have an absolute responsibility to undertake the journey.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">All I can offer is an observation: in the case of my own journey, I have found the most present, most steadfast and most usefully communicative beacon to be beauty. And I have always found my way into its beam by following my curiosity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Truth is the source of beauty’s light, the light itself, and all that the light illumines.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And it shines everywhere.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><i>Also see:</i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/11/making-connections.html">Connections</a></span></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-13336653125380057752011-01-07T07:38:00.000-08:002012-10-21T04:59:56.621-07:00What’s in a name?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIoGiWT3ZqqYUT-J3qJ0N71ThKfl2E4cPpfepeqhvdnB-fQwca3hoyAvVBlLALR2nHnC3VoNFLSt8mUkWJTkhbnk0b4Qv2e8Krqxv5DgrEryAFljqFLv_1VXsyyxhZ47QQkwJ5HyNfiw/s1600/++REREKOHU-1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIoGiWT3ZqqYUT-J3qJ0N71ThKfl2E4cPpfepeqhvdnB-fQwca3hoyAvVBlLALR2nHnC3VoNFLSt8mUkWJTkhbnk0b4Qv2e8Krqxv5DgrEryAFljqFLv_1VXsyyxhZ47QQkwJ5HyNfiw/s400/++REREKOHU-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">FARMERS will tell you: “never name an animal you’re going to eat.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Giving an animal a human-like name particularises it and anthropomorphises it, releasing it from the categories of “food” and “commodity”.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">It’s not the animal, nor its culinary potential, that’s altered but the way it gets treated. And we who give it the name, and other people who know the name… we are the ones who change. For us, the named creature, now an inedible companion, begins accumulating a story, an identity; it becomes an increasingly influential part of our lives as the story grows and deepens. And the more it gazes into our eyes and curls up purring on our laps, the less like food it looks.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">“Other” names break through food boundaries that, crafted by centuries of history and culture, have become embedded in everyday vocabulary. So, for example, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">escargot</i> is a word that can turn a “snail” into a delicious delicacy</span><span lang="EN-GB">… but say “snails” and most North Americans start gagging. There’s a market for horse meat in Canada, and I understand it’s a delicious and healthy source of protein, but there’s growing opposition to it based specifically around the idea of eating horseflesh, even though the culls would continue with or without that market.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-GB">Within cultures, all sorts of preferences and avoidances are shaped. What is preferred in one culture is neutral in another and loathed in another. And our names too can plunge us into all of that complexity.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-GB">Some of us have names our parents chose to reflect family relationships and friendships to draw us into a community. Some of us carry names intended to encourage a sense of our own uniqueness. Some parents name children after celebrities of their day, while celebrities of our day devise names for their children that often seem calculated to set them apart. In some troubled parts of the world, children have been named “Kali” after “Kalishnikov”, the weapons manufacturer.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Once a name is ours, we can be made over into the minds of others who construct and orchestrate our social presence. We “fit in” or are “fitted in”… then face the responsibility of growing our name into its presence in community discourse. But, whether we recognize that responsibility, whether we care or not, no matter what our inner sentiments may be, we are seen to grow and take shape within that skin of external reality. We are all of us bound to discover while we are still quite young what it means to be misunderstood.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Our name becomes the avatar that other people have created and maintain for us… it’s felt in the twinge of fear when we wonder “what will other people think?” or the surprise when someone offers us some praise we never saw coming. <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Try as we might, it’s hard to remain an impassive mollusc as others begin shape our destinies as “snails” or “escargots”.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">But life opens before us and we attach our accomplishments, successes and failures, experiences and relationships to our name. Our name grows private and public identities and is the label by which the sum of our selves is known<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Some of us choose to act our identity out as “image”, constantly trying to enhance it; some of us hope to flee it by moving on. Some of us go so far as to change our names, adopt aliases, or try to act in anonymity. We can escape temporarily into online avatars — to a point — and it can flet us to unleash a few impulses for expression denied us in the “real” world. But it’s not good to spend too long in that thin ether.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">In urban and urban-influenced modern life, we tend to give our children names we “like”, without too much calculation behind it. We see ourselves as free and independent entities, choosing our social contexts as we wish and as we go along. Our world is fluid and laden with opportunities. We see our children being free to put their own stamp on the name we give them.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">But our names, and our children’s names, can be laden with consequence. They can be sources of empowerment or liabilities; liberating or confining. A name can admit it bearer to the benefits of positive stereotyping or preclude that advantage. Barrack Obama’s “foreign” sounding name has been flourished as a weapon by right wing extremists in the United States to incite hostility and undermine the authority of their own duly elected President: actions that in some nations would be considered treason. In the extreme Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, a Shi’ite name like Omar (the name of Islam’s second Caliph) can get you killed. Meanwhile, the United States Navy’s insistence on referring to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” is ethnically provocative in a region that’s alight with tensions and conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">An overtly “Jewish” name marked a person for death in Nazi-sympathising Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, and there are parts of the world where, to this day, it is of no great help. Traditionally-minded Rom (gypsies) shun surnames altogether. And among the stories you’ll hear from New World immigrants there are often accounts of ancestors having changed family surnames to something more pronounceable or to conceal a particular ethnic origin in the hope of being more readily accepted into their new communities. It is a migration from one community-held stereotype to another.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Names can be misleading. In olden Highland Scottish culture, for example, a commoner who moved from one community to another typically took the surname of the local chief. While the form of government may have leaned towards feudal exploitation, the cohesion of a clan was based on real or opportunistic notions of family. It helped to create an extraordinary romanticism. There are many people who, though distanced by time, DNA and geography from the reality, delight in Highland heritage assets that include a landscape, a history and a mythology, a language and music, costume and identity… despite their ancestors having fled or been expelled by the proprietors of that heritage. There’s a kind of identity nostalgia for the very castles in whose pit dungeons their ancestors may well have innocently languished.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">In many cultures, naming is — or has been — an act of supreme significance: understood as a serious, ritualized and deliberate act that binds a named place, person, creature or object into a relationship with a particular community, culture, religion, caste or family. Naming often follows well-established cultural traditions rather than personal preference.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Near Gisborne on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island there is a named tree: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Te Waha O Rerekohu</i>. It is a magnificent old tree. A sign in English not only points out why this tree is special in its own right, and gives it the status of its own story, but also, by linking its name to a chiefly genealogy, deploys the power of kinship. This puts the tree under the protection of almost every Maori person born in the region by virtue of familial relationship. The recording of the genealogy in effect names each of those relatives personally.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">The naming of this tree is far from unique… and not only trees are named: there are named tools and weapons, valuable garments, buildings, places, landscapes. The distinction we so routinely make between animate and inanimate is effectively erased by this kind of naming.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">What this kind of naming achieves is a repositioning, not in fact but in the mind. It is an anchor sunk in human consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">All names have the potential to provide something of this quality. But it’s also helpful, perhaps necessary, to weigh that anchor from time to time.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Ideally, the possession of a name that can exist as sound, as fleeting vibrations in the air, should remind us less of the power of our unique, separate individuality than of our fleeting relationship with all of life… not just “the neighbours” but with every thing and living creature.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">Maybe it’d help to go to a lonely hilltop and shout your name out loud to the farthest places you can see, announcing your claim of kinship… I confess that I’ve done it and found that it both startling and humbling. It somehow put things back into perspective; it helped detach me from the epicentre of my own small centripetal thoughts and identity and the chatter that so readily enmeshes us. It broke the shell. It helped free me to realign my priorities. I did it a second time and imagined that laughter came back to me. The third time, I was aware only of silence. I felt a mere mollusc again, vulnerable but free.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">It was a feeling that reminded me to hold in regard those too easily forgotten things and creatures for which I have no name. Our names, known or unknown, are not our all-important essence.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span lang="EN-US">There’s also the real, breathing, blood-circulating, nerve-knitted, sentient, feeling, thinking and intelligent substance… the miracle of life.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This replica storehouse and explanatory sign stand beneath<br />
the spreading canoppy of the tree called <i><span lang="EN-US">“Te-Waha-O-Rerekohu”</span></i> </span> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #3d85c6;"> </span><span style="background-color: #3d85c6;"></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The sign reads:</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The name of the school “Te-Waha-O-Rerekohu” is the same as that of the great pohutukawa tree. Believed to be well in excess of 350 years old, it stands 21.2 metres tall and measures 40 metres at its widest point. It is also reputed to be the largest of its species in the world. There are two explanations of this name, both refer to the ancestor Rerekohu, paramount chief of this district in his time. According to Hatiwira Houkamau, Rerekohu had a store house where the tree now stands. This store house was called Te-Waha-O-Rerekohu. When the house was no longer there, the name remained with the tree. Manahi Parapara’s version differs slightly. According to him, the name Te-Waha-O-Rerekohu was given to commemorate the bringing of tribute food to feed the child Rerekohu. This food was brought to Rerekohu’s father, Huarere, at his pa, Kohangakaeaea.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Rerekohu’s genealogy from the eponymous ancestors (on his Porurangi side:) Porourangi and Apanui, is as follows. Porourangi, Rakaipo, Rakaiwetenga, Tapuatehaurangi, Tawekeurunga, Hinekehu, Whaene, Te Ataakura, Tuwhakairiora, Tuterangiwhiu, Hukarere (and on Rerekohu’s Apanui side:) Apanui, Taikorekore, Hinetera, Tautuhiorongo, Te Whakapurunui O Te Rangi, Puatohimaru<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">— Rerekohu.</span></span></i></div>
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Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-40606306113895338332011-01-01T12:33:00.000-08:002011-01-01T19:00:15.739-08:00A view from the bunny farm...<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">God, but it’s great to win! It’s euphoric: a hormonal high that justifies all the effort, the discipline, pain and calculation that goes into achieving… and the greater the pain, the worthier the win.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The publicity, respect, new friends and opportunities, accompanied perhaps by wealth and power, re-brand our identity.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Yes, success also has its hazards. It can download new responsibilities and unexpected obligations. It affirms the priorities effort and focus that led to the success; it can also affirm any mistakes that were in the mix. It can bring new temptations and distance a winner from nurturing relationships of the past. Success can also lock into place a punishing need to keep winning… a one-time winner can quickly lose the lustre.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In a democracy, where people “fight” for electoral “victory” and the laurels of governance and have to face that contest for re-election time and time again, strategies for re-election necessarily kick in the moment a politician takes that coveted seat.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s good and necessary that those who govern be accountable to those who consent to be governed. But obtaining that consent can invite the deployment of devices that are more apparent than real. Dumbing things down to self-evident slogans, for example, can side-step a lot of complicated rationale. Clothes and charisma can hide shortcomings. Announcing “fresh” crises can divert an electorate, particularly if the crises can be blamed on others and/or easily solved. Self-promotion and the power of the party influence perceptions of personal effectiveness; the immediacy of “good” outcomes can be persuasive. But initiatives that are slow to yield returns offer windfall kudos for one’s successor.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Addressing issues of complexity or long-term social change can leave an electorate wondering what the hell you’re up to: keep it simple, keep it quick. Attention spans in contemporary culture are short and readily re-directed. Some issues, therefore, are best kept in the background. Politicians are criticised for “spin” but there may be no alternative. No politician can do everything, be everywhere, or fully satisfy everybody. It’s a high-risk occupation… ignore the wrong issues and any one of them can blow up in your face; focus on the wrong issue and you’ll be accused of ignoring “real” problems.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, the more complicated societies become, the harder it gets to please most of the people most of the time. Any opportunity to do so will be snatched up before the opposition gets hold of it. Issues that deny opponents a popular advantage are pretty sure to be pushed into the spotlight, whether or not they’re particularly significant.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And the difficulties of evaluating vast amounts of information make decision-making tricky. Few people have the time, training and expertise, or the patience, to wade discerningly through, for example, the 111 million hits I get when I Google “climate change”. And that’s before I start getting into the real science behind the issue. Information flows have become such torrents of confusion that most people get bored and go away.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So governments tend to crowd their concerns around a few fetishistic issues that can be illustrated by way of clear, vivid personal impacts. So “health services” gets presented as wait times, cures for cancer or pandemics like ‘flu or HIV viruses; “the economy” is reduced to sets of indicators like share market indices, unemployment rates and GDP; “crime and security” to things like “crackdowns” (longer prison sentences), crime rates, police and military budgets and interminably repeated rhetoric about the hair-raising threats we face from terrorists abroad and “youth crime” at home. And this makes life easy for a nation’s lazy or under-resourced media: all that readily accessible chatter.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Within all of this the nature of “success” bears examination: competitive success and the psychology of winning… and the social implications of winning in a competitive society. By definition, the least competitive are destined to be losers. Will they also be of the least concern, the least listened to?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In most contexts, one winner will be surrounded by a field of losers. And, for a winner, being well ahead of all those losers in the distance is comforting. Yet “losers” in the game of acquiring power and money nevertheless make many necessary contributions to society and its sustainability.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Power and money, removed from social contexts, are worthless… but how concerned for the “losers” that sustain his or her community can a “winner” really afford to become? </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">What are the reciprocities? Should there be reciprocities? What are the privileges and responsibilities of winning? What constitute the reasonable expectations of “losers”? Can good ideas, good people and wider arrays of choice, better solutions and greater hope be left to die in chasms between the rival collectivities of party politics?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">All of these things are, of course, in fact worked out, in a sort of a way, in the to and fro flux of government action and inaction, prioritisation and policy formation, most of it implicitly. But, as an encouragement to raise these questions more explicitly… let me offer several thought experiments:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">1. Consider is the high-ranked notion of “</span><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">efficiency</span></b></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">”. What would “efficient” government look like? Efficiency calls for predictability and reliability and, in real life, efficiency can be over-rated. A highly efficient government would have to micro-manage our every inclination… it would be an excruciating, dystopian dictatorship by experts and cost accountants. So perhaps we should call for the formation of a Bureau of Inefficiency to modulate the level of efficiency in our society. If things get too regimented, it would be empowered to introduce new reporting standards and evaluation procedures, overstaff top performing offices, restructure core functions, pass out caffeinated alcopops at lunchtime and launch viral attacks on the databases. In extreme cases, it should be empowered to contract the French civil service to conduct a performance review.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">2. THEN there is, in any society, “</span><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">the last guy</span></b></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">”. I don’t believe anyone chooses to be out of work, drug-addicted, poor, illiterate, scorned, banged up in jail, vulnerable, homeless or embroiled in pointless violence. Rather, I think life’s often unfair and we’re far too casual about preventing or redressing the inequities… and it’s our community’s good health that suffers, hurting us all. I recall an old Arlo Guthrie monologue that’s very funny in a serious sort of a way. It includes the following: </span><i style="color: #134f5c;">“</i></span><i style="color: #134f5c;">You know, you have a bad time of it, and you always have a friend who says ‘Hey man, you ain’t got it <b>that</b> bad. Look at that guy.’ And you look at that guy, and he’s got it worse than you. And it makes you feel better that there’s somebody that’s got it worse than you. But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last guy. Nobody’s got it worse than that guy.”</i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #134f5c;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So, just imagine: what if, instead if evaluating a government’s performance by sets of economic data and policy implementation, broken election “promises” and screeds of social statistics, the whole reckoning was based on just one measure: the health, welfare and happiness of one person… the “last guy”. If, through the structural workings of the state, the “last guy” was feeling better about life, everyone better off than the “last guy” would also, in all likelihood, also be better off or happier. Imagine, every New Year’s Eve… an in-depth interview on national television with the “last guy”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">A first step on the road towards this might be to pay politicians the median wage (whatever it is), ban lobbyists and toughen up penalties for corruption.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">3. How about the issue of democratic </span><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">representation</span></b></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">? In the western tradition, we usually appeal to the blatantly elitist Athenian model. In the Samoan </span><i style="color: #134f5c;">matai</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"> system, all male heads of families also sat in on decision making at the </span><i style="color: #134f5c;">fono</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">, or assembly, as of right, rather than as the result of election. And decision-making in the </span><i style="color: #134f5c;">fono</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"> is by consensus. Then, in the decentralised federation of the </span></span><i style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Haudenosaunee</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #134f5c;"> democracy of North America, women were granted a bit more respect. So there’ve been attempts in several cultures to get it right. But, even where things have moved beyond the majority-rule principle of the “Westminster” system to consensus decision-making, and despite attempts to improve representation by way of various forms of proportional voting, it’s always stopped short of actually trusting each other to get it right. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So… how about representation by random selection? It’s good enough for jury service, and what is Parliament but a big jury? “Called up” for parliamentary duty you’d face, say, a five-year term at the “helm” as a parliamentary panellist; you’d get a living income and reasonable expenses, job protection while you’re “away” and rehabilitative assistance afterwards. Each year, a fifth of the representatives would be chosen, given a quick orientation course, and begin their terms of service; and the longest serving fifth would be retired to resume their lives as ordinary citizens. In between, there’d be a nice flow, enough for continuity’s sake, and, although parliamentary panellists would pick up influence along with experience, they’d be out the door before lobbyists could completely corrupt them totally or the power trip gave them too many ruinously dangerous ideas. Some panellists would bring wonderful ideas for reform with them, and be partial to wide-ranging views in the communities that their terms of appointment required them to serve. But, best of all, they’d be genuinely “representative”. Some lazy, stupid people would be bound to get into the net… and that would change things?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">THE real reason I brought you here …</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">is to suggest that the most robust safeguard we losers can offer our democratic cabinets of political winners is critique.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We should be constantly agitating, not on our own behalf for petty advantages and trivial tax cuts, but especially and most vehemently wherever we see failures of democratic principle or natural justice, or impartiality, and ant endangerment to the land and its resources… things, in other words, that involve risks of damage that’s not readily be undone.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The eyes of an elected politician can seldom focus on anything more than a few years distant; the winner sees the next challenge, and has to understand it in personal terms. We losers are less bound by the detail and proximity of all that. We can vote people into power then get on with framing longer-term, bigger views… grander , worthier views to do with the kinds of experience that are going to be available to the generations of our grandchildren, and their children after them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It was a high-powered oil company executive who introduced me to this view of politics, in the course of an interview for a book I’d been commissioned to write. He was a company-trained strategist who referred to the parliamentarians and cabinet ministers a couple of times as “here-today, gone-tomorrow bunnies”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">He told me that his company’s approach was keep its main objectives straightforward and consistent. And to work to a 20-year plan. The Chinese were successful, he said, because they took a much longer-term view of things than countries in the West. The idea, he said, was to keep a succession of current, glossy, politically attractive “big proposals” on the appropriate cabinet ministers’ desks. Sooner or later, they’d be faced with circumstances that called for a persuasive response and, if your proposal was on top of the pile and the best looking, the bunnies would be bound to pick it up in their panic.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Anyway, it wasn’t necessary for a government to always do what you wanted — the critical need was for decision-making to move forward. With laws in place, his company could work to its own advantage within the terms of whatever came down. “It’s like sailing a yacht,” he told me. “If there’s a wind, you make way; if not, you go nowhere.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">His company and others, he said, had helped several countries — he mentioned Indonesia — draft environmental protection legislation because, if they then complied and things still went wrong, the solution would be to tighten to legislation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, regularly, his company offered tactfully worded appraisals of government policy and its “public” impacts.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">He was describing an adversarial relationship between his company and the countries it worked in… very profitably.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And I’d suggest that we losers can learn from that sort of bunny-baiting approach to government — and make it more thoroughly “our” government — by keeping our main objectives as straightforward and consistent as demands for “justice, honesty and good government”. And, if we’re looking towards the welfare of our grandchildren, we can work to a 20-year plan too. In fact, we could make that a 30-year plan.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Along the way, we keep throwing ideas at the “ bunnies”, we persistently offer our tactfully worded critiques, and we push them to make substantive decisions that let us make our communities happier, healthier, friendlier and more satisfying, interesting places to inhabit — just as the oil companies have to engineer their own massive returns, we can do “compliance”… then it’s up to us to furnish our living space with the qualities of life we seek.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Even the “last guy” should benefit from that.</span></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-20182294588751837262010-12-28T12:41:00.000-08:002011-01-02T10:54:49.710-08:00Looking ahead<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">THE FRUITS of science have been phenomenal… and what could once be parodied as the inspired labour of eccentric boffins with test tubes, telescopes or butterfly nets is now more likely to be the strategically sophisticated, systematic work of international teams pulling patterns and regularities from the networked analysis of torrents of data, much of it remotely gathered and often from sources and forces invisible to the naked eye.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">Nevertheless, science continues to be the patient application of observation, experimentation and measurement, and the collection of data followed by logical analysis and the formulation of testable statements. Over the centuries, it has produced a very powerful body of knowledge.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">Fields like electronics and nanotechnology, genetics, physics, chemistry and materials science have been leaders in the accelerating delivery of new applications and the articulation of new questions… lots and lots of new questions. But the leading edge of science is far broader even than this.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Science has revolutionised everything from architecture to entertainment, artistic expression to information gathering, work to warfare, education to reproduction… shopping, sports, the contents of our grocery carts and the way we prepare them, what we read and the way we read it. Our ideas of what our homes should be, contain and provide have very largely been shaped by science, and we are not what we would otherwise have been.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">Historically, as the major pathways science branched into specialisations with their own diverging pathways and branches, the body of science has become an exponentially growing array of sophisticated sub-disciplines addressing almost every conceivable interest, hundreds of them:</span><span lang="EN-US"> acoustics, and aerodynamics, aerology, aeronautics, agronomy,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13pt;">anesthesiology, anatomy, analytical chemistry, archaeology,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US">astrobiology, astrodynamics, astronomy, astrophysics,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt;">audiology, bacteriology, biochemistry, bioinformatics,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt;">biophysics, botany, calorifics, cardiology, cellular biology, classical</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9pt;"> mechanics, clinical chemistry, chronobiology, computational </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 8pt;">physics, condensed matter </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9pt;">physics, cosmology, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 8pt;">cryogenics, cytology, developmental biology, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 7pt;">embryology, endocrinology, all the way through to… zzzz</span><span lang="EN-US">… and each proliferating branch of modern science has its own sets of particular academic and career qualifications, its own specialised technologies, methodologies, conferences and journals, its own applications, relevance and perceived value. Science has so much breadth as to be all but impossible to keep up with: thousands of scientific journals are published each year and scientists struggle to keep abreast of research and theoretical developments in their own and immediately relevant spheres of interest. For non-scientists, it is nigh impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">Yet, </span><span lang="EN-GB">directly or indirectly, science informs most of the decisions we make in our personal and public lives (or the excuses we offer afterwards), as well as what we conceive of as being “possible” and the ways we imagine achieving it. We find science and applied reason persuasive. With its own language, values and conventions, science has many of the attributes of a culture and, even in places where its principles do not reach, its flag is raised and its cultural forms are mimicked to conjure up reassuring mirages of authority. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The outcomes of scientific achievement haven’t all pleased everyone all the time, or to the same extent — some people, in fact, have fallen violent victim to it. And, because science costs money and is applied to make money, the fruits of science have tended to drop more generously into the laps of the wealthy. Some of the changes made possible by science have been experienced by some people as an imposition, even as the means of their oppression and annihilation. But that has seldom been science’s first intention.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Science was the principle champion of the maturing rationalism that took hold in the West with the European “Enlightenment” of the 18th century, and the elevation of “reason” as the necessary measure, justification and mechanism of human progress. In this role, science has produced an approach to understanding the world, the human condition and, many would say, the universe.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Science is said to have freed people from the chains of “superstition”. Well, it has tried… the upset here arises from a seriously limited public comprehension of science. One consequence of that is our tendency to heap enormous expectations onto science, relying on people in white coats to come running in and mop up after our every social, moral and economic blunder. The popular over-estimation of what science can do is a real danger in public decision-making. It was, we should remember, their sublime confidence in the unsinkability of the <i>Titanic</i> that fatally delayed the effective response of many of its wealthy, well-educated passengers to their real predicament.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">This widespread but mistakenly uncritical trust in “science” and technology has been aggressively exploited. Thus for example, over-prescription is particularly rampant in North America where a rich vein of credulity has been mined to sell psychiatric and psychoactive medication. Therapists and their patients can look like co-conspirators in thrall to drug companies. The pharmaceuticals industry is driven first and foremost by the pursuit of financial returns and led by marketing objectives, hence its interest in natural, universal, unavoidable “afflictions” — enduring markets, like the effects of ageing, freed from limiting diagnoses that involve injury or infection — as rich fields for drug diversification.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Intellectually, few have turned the contamination of popular knowledge to greater profit than Walt Disney, the billionaire anthropomorphist, who was personally responsible for so much of the Western mind’s confusion and “anti-knowledge” about nature. He depicted nature as weak and vulnerable and, worst of all, as “cute”. Nature simply IS. It is nature that is invincible; we are the vulnerable ones. Nature can wipe us off the face of the planet as soon as we cross the line, impassively and without the least concern about collateral damage. Nature will go on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Walt Disney is why stupid people get mauled by bears. One of his most characteristically despicable acts of charlatanism was to have a special centrifuge built to fling lemmings over a cliff so his cameras could affirm a popular but totally wrong-headed folk myth. But I find him most objectionable for his stunting of so many people’s capacity for awe. He put wonder in a safe little suburban headspace called “cute” that helped open the door to an unprecedented depredation of the natural world. The world described by science is nothing at all like Disneyland. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">A large part of our vulnerability to the likes of “cute” is that, as adults, we get most of our science through the filters of the scientifically careless (or feckless) and sensationalising popular media. And we are far more socially predisposed to hearing stuff that affirms us or amuses us, even if it’s been generated with that purpose solely in mind. We recoil from information that challenges us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">Very significantly, science is a disciplined commitment to change: old ideas are constantly being jettisoned as their failings are identified and new, better-proven ideas supplanted them. Science offers no guarantees of absolute certainty. Its “dead” ideas file includes phrenology; the “balance of nature” (a notion that ecosystems, left alone, will arrive at a stable state of maximum productivity); the notion of human “races”; the “steady state theory” of the Universe; the principle of a “vital force”; </span><span lang="EN-US">the argument that instinct is evidence of hereditary knowledge; </span><span lang="EN-GB">the theory of a “triune brain” that was popularised by Carl Sagan in his 1977 book, <i>The Dragons of Eden</i>… all have been consigned to science’s dead files’ drawer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Then there are, of course, a good number of scientific theories that are best thought of as “in formation”. So, for example, there’s no agreed, conclusive theory of gravity, or of the origin of the universe. And there are a number of competing theories and ongoing scientific debates about the origin of the Moon, the demise of the dinosaurs, the nature of time… scientific issues seldom remain closed forever.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, in public contexts, there’s a fraught line in North America between an interest in science — real science — and a kind of nervous hysteria that’s expressed in extremes, as doctrinaire “scientism” or atheism on the one hand or, on the other, as a credulous “belief” in alien abductions and the special effects imagery of films like <i>Star Wars</i>, <i>Avatar</i> and <i>Lord of the Rings</i>… yet we remain so innumerate that we buy lottery tickets every week. We hold obsessive fears about infinitesimal risks, but harbour gross over-estimations of our capacities for consumption and problem-solving. Then we brandish the existence of science as an assertion of our good sense. While our self-deceptions seem life threatening in the end, we’re very lucky to get as much good science as we do, even if we understand scarcely a word of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">Science, we must remember, is a human activity. It began as a human response to the great mystery that is the Universe. </span><span lang="EN-US">In his diary, Rene Descartes, the 15th century French soldier whose mathematical genius paved the way for the emergence of modern science, recorded that “one night when I was in a deep sleep, the Angel of Truth came to me and whispered the secret connection between geometry and algebra.” Then there is the story of the great Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, a co-founder of quantum mechanics, who was asked by a student about the superstition attached to the horseshoe Bohr had nailed to the door of his summerhouse. Bohr denied believing that the horse shoe brought him luck, then mischievously added: “but I understand that it works whether you believe it or not.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Albert Einstein said his life work in physics was an extended meditation on a dream he’d had as a child: he was on a toboggan and the stars — it was night time — changed color as the toboggan accelerated down the hill. And, in his late 60s, he described a moment he vividly remembered from his childhood: “I experienced a miracle… as a child of four or five when my father showed me a compass.” It excited him so much that he trembled and grew cold. “There had to be something behind objects that lay deeply hidden… the development of (our) world of thought is in a certain sense a flight away from the miraculous.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Science is a creative, exciting, powerfully enabling and imaginative realm, and it is a powerful tool. A great part of science’s inspiration is awe: an experience of awe that is not totally different from the awe that, for millennia, has been inspiring the genuine mystics of many cultures. But science has not yet unraveled the mystery. Nor, in its entirety, is it ever likely to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">For that to happen, and for it to be intelligible, the mystery would have to be no greater than the reach of the human mind, and the human mind’s shortcomings make themselves abundantly clear. Science would also have to become something it is not. Its questions are all about “how?” and, without the “why?” it can leave us in the cold.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">A large part of life is sustained by a sense of “meaning” and the scientific worldview does not extend to that. Meaning is left to culture and to religion, both of which give every appearance of creative fatigue and intellectual torpor. But, coasting downhill with their tanks dry, they are rolling past the abundant replenishments that science and philosophy offer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Material reality is science’s domain. And it is so often breathtaking: the capacity of science to resolve the paths and study the intertwined histories of subatomic particles in nanoseconds, and to track the passage of billions of far-off stars and galaxies back to the point of their cosmic creation; to discover the vulnerabilities of a bacterium and the marvellous accomplishments of a spider; to demonstrate that all life is interconnected… yet popular culture and contemporary religion give the appearance of being impassively unimpressed by all of this.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">That’s too bad, because the pursuit of knowledge on its own puts us on a classically tragic path… glorious without question, but tragic because we can never know quite enough. Every path forks and every fork leads to new needs to know and, along the way, we release genies that we can never again hold captive. It is a one-way quest because its pursuit erases the reality that lay behind us. We are changed and, changed, we yearn for more change but we cannot know where we are going. There is no Minotaur to overcome at the end of this labyrinth, just the entry to another labyrinth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The discoveries, the insights, the narratives and the visions of reality that science lays before us lead us to the very extremes of human understanding and, ultimately, that is our final boundary, our horizon: even science is bounded by the capacities of the human mind… despite the head-splitting intellectual accomplishments of mathematicians and theoreticians whose conclusions defy human capacities of visualisation and imagining.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It is precisely at this point that culture and religion should be vigorously, explosively evident: creating, celebrating, encouraging, exploring and debating, opening channels for gratitude and delight, generating ideas, insights, tears and laughter… science is delivering its contribution, but we can only make good use of “reason” — pragmatic good sense — when we weigh it against, for example, “compassion”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It is not good enough that qualities like generosity, loving-kindness, courtesy, forgiveness, pity, mutuality of respect and hospitality should be set aside as aspects of private personal morality… as eccentric, individualised options distanced from political expression, social policy and public debate. Without them, science and reason will do us no good at all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We need to ease up on reason — it’s not like we’re all THAT good at it — and demand more of our poets, theologians, visionaries, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, priests, dancers, writers, liturgists and choreographers: we need fresh visions and imaginings of our own redemptive place in the universe. We need an existential present tense that fills us with excitement and awe. We need reinvigorated curiosity, a quickened conscience, a poetic of purpose, a livelier aesthetic sense… new capacities for love, trust, adventure and morality…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">This is the hope-giving essence of humanity’s continued progress. This is where we must demand priority and investment and resourcing: in means of making reason virtuous and progress worthwhile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">There’s not a lot of point flying to Mars if our hearts and hopes, spirits and ideals can’t flap their wearied way to the top of nearest hill.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<br />
And (click here): <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.dunaber.com/2010/12/29/ceci-nest-pas-une-bagpipe/">The bagpiping connection</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Michael Grey</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">)</span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-31239785221123424892010-12-21T06:41:00.000-08:002012-01-09T15:44:07.046-08:00What IS it about love?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">PERHAPS it’s because love extends so far beyond the visible, tangible world of habitation while, at the same time, being so immediately, intimately and powerfully experienced that it’s is so easy to sing about love but so hard to write about. Yet, it seems to me, it’s necessary that we not only write about it but also talk about it, think about it, express it, live it… openly express it and publicly require it.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Love is easiest to express directly; it so readily becomes the expressive force behind the action; it leaps and dances and staves off every other emotion in its need to animate us. Love is the energy that that makes goodness possible, appropriate and effective.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I’ve seen it push aside good sense, hunger, need, fear and self interest… even sleep, sex and selfhood. It is love that makes hope not only possible, but also practical.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, while I’ve seen love make apparent “mistakes”, it’s always brought with any mistake a gentleness of consequence. In fact, that gentleness of consequence, or otherwise, is probably a good indicator of love’s place in the original motivation.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Given its compelling, transforming power, and its essential goodness, it strikes me as odd that love is not more explicit in what we are allowed to see of “public life”… could love become an election issue? I think it should be THE election issue.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">But it would have to mean much more than the word “love” that pops up in a few clichés, as a euphemism for sex or, most tritely and irrelevantly, as a synonym for “like”. It has to be about other people because that is where love compels us to go. We love ourselves by throwing ourselves into love, not by gathering it in and holding onto it; love is dynamic, it is like a wind, it is like the interface of matter and energy, it moves, it cannot be confined. And it is so crucial that it be available to every person. To be secluded from love is crueller that to be secluded from food or water, and more darkly lethal.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So, yes, it should be a political issue. It should saturate public affairs and international relations. What a joy it would be if, somewhere in the flood of Wikileaks documents, there emerge classified messages expressing unbridled, self-sacrificing love for other peoples as a diplomatic priority and a democratic necessity. What goes around comes around. So imagine how liberating it would be to discover that our “enemies” love us, despite our flaws and blindness… imagine our enemies covertly discovering that our priorities were focused on our love for them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">This may sound flippant. But how much sadder and duller is it to go around saying things like, ‘I’d love a cold beer’, ‘I love my i-Pad’, ‘I love that ad where they…’: you mean you would lay down your life and everything you have for the sake of that ad, i-Pad or beer can? I don’t think so. Please, for the sake of all it truly stands for, don’t diminish the word by shrivelling it to parity with its opposite: to “like” is to want for oneself; to “love” is to empty oneself into what is loved — so it had better be worthwhile.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Love is often ignited involuntarily out of some sense of affinity or admiration; it begins as a yearning to give your whole life over to the object of your love, and as recognition of the need to push obstacles like ego and old hurts as aside. This is what takes the discipline of deliberate will.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">If love is not to die, then this clearing away of debris from the past — of fears, of irritations, of angers, hurts and anxieties — must become a delicious, liberating discipline, a broadening embrace of widening circles of love, simply because of the connections that link the living world together and form its dependence on the inanimate world.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">When you know your lover needs to eat, you will not poison the food sources; when you see your lover’s sleeping breath, you will not contaminate the air. When your lover drinks, will you spoil the water or sour the wine? And, when your love has extended into the places of air and food, you will yearn to reach beyond that… your curiosity and all that is beautiful lead you on… you will be led to the fragility of their essence. And nothing in life holds more value than experiences of that essence.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So… what is worthy of love? Well, we are… you are and I am. And we should, I guess, be striving to make that evident. How do we do that? The best way is for our selves to discipline ourselves to outpourings of love. The more determinedly we do that, the easier it becomes to love existence itself, and all that supports it: the blade of grass, the person in the passing car, remembered joys, the air, the sun, the planet… the universe. The universe? Really? Why not?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So much of our experience of it has to do with its ample capacity to sustain all of us. If, out of love, we will only stand out of each other’s sun and let it reach us, it is enormously generous to us… and the more love we pour into the small part of it we can touch, the better prepared we are for experiences of it.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In this way, we can move past “doing” some loving towards “becoming” a source of love.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I once watched an elderly Samoan canoe builder working on the hull of a <i>paopao</i> (a carved fishing canoe). He had chosen the log in consultation with local indigenous people and it’s cutting was a ritual that recognised the life of the tree and its various bird and insect inhabitants, and the gap its cutting created.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">He wouldn’t let noisy, fast European tools touch the log. Instead, he swung an adze, hollowing out the canoe’s interior… chip, chip, chip, chip. And on the outside of the hull he held his other hand flat against the wood. His son explained to me that he was gauging the thickness of the hull: if it is too thick, the canoe will be too heavy and slow; too thin and a split will open. The “right” thickness depends on the wood — the master canoe builder knew when the thickness of this particular hull was “right” from the shocks he felt through the wood as the adze blade bit into the inside of the log. He had no measurements and no drawings: building the canoe was an ongoing dialogue between the “perfect” canoe that existed only in his head, and the imperfect log that lay before him. The log retained something of the vitality of the tree; no other log was quite like it, it was unique. In effect, he loved the canoe into existence with his being.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-US">A task that’s taken on in this way of “being” </span><span lang="EN-GB">has an array of outcomes, none of them entirely predictable, from the weaving together of a number of related stories in which there is no single lead character.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Even the outcomes fall together into yet broader stories and themes that have directions rather than endings. The one who is “becoming” does not wrest control from hostile or indifferent forces but, rather, sets out to re-form his or her nature until the experienced cycles of dance, play, gain and loss, struggle and survival mesh with the rhythmic certainties of sunrise and sunset, or the succession of the seasons. The costs here are frightening because we yearn for predictability and may not like the way all of the stories end. Moreover, we discover, certainty is an illusion. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s the difference between “doing” and “being”, between going hunting, say, and becoming a hunter… between a craft and an art.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We’re called to more than “doing love”. I think we’re called to “BE” love.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #134f5c; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 2pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to remember each ocean wave’s<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">wonderful, unfurling form…<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to recall the sweet startle<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">of each picked berry bitten,<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to re-live the grateful rise<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">of every in-drawn breath,<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to re-wonder the first time<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">that the stars shone into your night,<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to thrill as when first you rose<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">to set off on your way alone,<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to sigh as at last you sighed<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">when you found your long way home,<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Try to dream all your fondest dreams<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">over and over again.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">Now try to look deep in another’s eyes <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">and release what you feel inside.</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;"><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</div></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-56977387446881163732010-12-18T08:07:00.000-08:002010-12-18T12:20:05.969-08:00The stupid economy (part 2)...<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">FOR centuries, poverty has clearly been visible as a costly and ugly social sore: shortening lives, impairing health, engendering crime, incubating violence and nurturing “black economies”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Evolutionary biologists who have studied survival strategies in harsh, unpredictable, unhealthy and marginal environments that are likely to shorten your life — the sort of conditions engendered by poverty and oppression — tell us that they predictably include reproducing as soon as possible (teen pregnancies) and engaging in high-risk activities that can bring quick returns (like crime, gambling and dominance-related violence).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The “scientific” way to address the problems linked to poverty is not to foist education programmes on the poor but to reduce inequality: to narrow the gap between rich and poor. That gap is the cause; the other disparities are symptoms and consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">But “The Economy” has been resistant to conclusions like these, preferring to see poverty as an inescapable warning of how bad things get if you don’t play the game the way you should: in more ways than one, your credit gets cut off. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">A billion children live in poverty. That’s half the children in the world. According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.” That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under the age of five, each year. They should get off their lazy butts? It's their parents' fault?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">One popular myth is, of course, that poor people impoverish themselves by having too many children: the crux of their problem is “overpopulation”. This is a naïve notion that assumes a Congolese child will gobble up as much of the world’s resources as a child born in Manhattan. The fact, of course, is that it takes scores of children in the “developing world” to rival the consumption of just one only-child born to a middle class couple in the wealthy West. It is that one child whose impact is problematic… on scales of both consumption and pollution. No one woman in the “developing world” could possibly bear enough children to rival its impact. In any case, families in the “developing” world are, at this, point smaller than anyone remembers. The “population problem” is topping out. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">You have to think in terms like “middle class” and “wealthy elites” in contexts like these because poverty is not confined to poor countries. Canada’ poorest citizens — predominantly aboriginal peoples — are also the most frequently imprisoned, the shortest-lived, the least healthy and the most deprived of opportunity. Most tellingly, they have been and continue to the most ruthlessly denied the dignity of their cultural and personal identity. Their history is invisible, their languages and community life have been suppressed and marginalised, their wisdom denied… their resources have been appropriated or wantonly destroyed… and they are then blamed and insulted for the position into which they have too often been cast.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And blaming the poor for their condition is not unlike blaming holocaust victims for their fate. That one or two manage to escape from time to time changes nothing when it comes to the morality of it all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Poverty is oppression.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">A study of poverty and income disparity by the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) published in October 2008 found that the gap between rich and poor had widened since the mid-1980s in more than three-quarters of the world’s “rich countries”. The previous five years had seen growing poverty and inequality in two-thirds of the OECD countries. Canada, Germany, Norway and the United States led the spread. The latest “recession” saw the position of black Americans worsen both in absolute terms and relative to white Americans: by 2010, their median household income had fallen to 61.6 per cent of the white median household income from the high in 2000 when it had reached 65 per cent. In Canada in 2006, the median income of aboriginal people trailed that of non-aboriginals by about 30 per cent ($18,962 compared with $27,097). Even educational parity didn’t close the gap.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Globally, the social devastation wrought in the name of economic “freedom” is horrendous. When we take a look at the numbers, we get a picture that’s the antithesis of what “economic development” is purported to mean, with environmental degradation adding weight to the chains of poverty and demoralisation that “development” has inflicted.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In its ‘Least Developed Countries Report’ of 2008, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development found that poverty was deepening in the world’s 50 least developed countries despite their economies having grown by a record average of seven per cent in 2005-2006: 277 million people in these countries were still living on less than a dollar a day, up from 265 million in 2000 and 245 million in 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Since 2006, the situation of the poorest of the poor had been worsening thanks to climate change and a new biofuels industry. Together, they pushed food prices up. Some countries saw basic staples like maize, wheat and rice double in cost in 18 months. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“Biofuels demand is soaking up grain production, as is rising consumption in emerging countries for animal feed,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme. “We face the tightest agriculture markets in decades and, in same cases, on record. Global wheat stocks have fallen to the lowest level in 25 years. We are no longer in a surplus world.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">This is a statement that’s at serious odds with a premise that most academic economists have long subscribed to: that supplies are inexhaustible. As part of the basis for their modelling studies, economists also have subscribed to the curious belief that everyone acts rationally and single-mindedly to pile up as many possessions as possible, and that growth is essential. It is as though life itself has no value, and “quality of life” is a by-product of having lots and lots of money.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">So, where is the money going? In 2006, military spending was $1,158 billion worldwide: an average of $173 per person (or 2.41 per cent of global GDP). That same year, by way of comparison, the United Nations World Food Programme distributed about $2.9 billion in food aid. It’s a whole lot more cost effective, one might idly imagine, to feed people than it is to kill them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Throughout human history, the interdependent benefits of group bonding and personal satisfaction have been more or less recognised. Value has been accorded skills that enhance the experience of living in community, and the customs and the easy interactions that help a community to maintain a balance. It’s not just about pouring in entertainment from a globally centralised source like Hollywood; it is about town planning and the integration of families, about tranquillity as well as excitement, about local economic bases and celebration, it’s about sharing food and fun and relaxation. It is about flows of ideas. And it involves an aesthetic of life in which everyone has a value.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, where there’s a healthy aesthetic of life, poverty presents an aesthetic as well as a moral and social affront. The existence of poverty is a sign that the community isn’t working… something is broken, with consequences for everyone. For the wealthiest to simply move out to suburbs or enclosed “communities” with razor wire and security guards is not a solution. It turns a community problem into a societal one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">IN a recent speech, </span><span lang="EN-US">Gerard Mitchell, former chief justice of the Prince Edward Island Supreme Court, identified poverty as ” the most important and pressing human rights issue in Canada.” And he isn’t alone in identifying poverty as a moral issue: as a condition that’s imposed on those who experience it. Poverty is not simply about want of income; it is about the social deprivations that are imposed on people who lack financial power; it is a pernicious, institutionally inflicted form of bullying that becomes exploitation when low paid, tedious, dangerous and dirty work is dangled in front of the poor as a false promise of hope.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">One of the truisms I was brought up with was that hard work always brings its rewards. So, believing that and keen to make our fortunes, you and I might set out together in search of some seriously tough jobs in a nice climate as a sure-fire way to get rich… mining gold in Africa, perhaps, or offering ourselves as farm labourers in Central America or, if we prefer to indoor work, as line workers in an American chicken processing plant or a South Asian sweatshop making plastic trinkets for something rich white people call “Christmas trees”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">But we’re not that silly… we know that the big money really piles up in a kind of vast, international casino where the work lies in rigging the odds, loading the dice and stacking the decks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The casino’s name is “The Global Economy” and it is manoeuvred by collectives of the wealthiest and most powerful of the world’s elites in ways that are calculated to over-accumulate their surpluses.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, despite the considerable intellect of Milton Freidman and anything that economists might tell us, money is nothing more than a faith-based means of communication. It isn’t “stuff”; its existence is notional. It’s our source of sacrificial tokens for the modern Caesar. And, should some sufficient mass of people suddenly stop believing in it, whole societies would collapse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">More and more of the world has been enveloped within this fantastical, viral way of thinking and, although it has become extremely powerful, it has not been for the best.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">There was a time when to gain control of someone else’s resource, you had to fight them for it, face to face; now you just buy it. Oddly, it has not made the world a markedly more peaceable place. But it has made appropriation very much easier. And that has often been damaging. When trees become “money”, deforestation does not only denude landscapes of their forests. Human cultures may be annihilated or rendered unsustainable; plant and animal habitats are wiped out; erosion can make soil fertility irrecoverable and rivers carry toxins, silt and shock-levels of nutrients into the sea.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">When fish are turned into money, overcapitalized fisheries stretch themselves to breaking point and marine food chains come apart. When initial gluts turn to inevitable shortages, fishermen take loans to buy bigger, better boats and install new, more costly fish-chasing technologies and it all becomes a client sector of the banking industry. When over-fishing can no longer service the interest payments, fishing communities collapse and the banks repossess the boats and gear, presumably to sell as scrap to the steel industry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">When it’s minerals, everything that’s not the target ore is turned into over-burden, a nuisance to be removed, even if it happens to include ecosystems that have been millennia in the making, or human cultural values that have sustained communities for centuries, or watercourses that affect lives many hundreds of miles away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Exploitation is usually hailed for the jobs it “creates” but financial and competitive forces make it best to extract the target mineral as quickly as possible, so the jobs are usually short-lived. And the collateral damage to the “overburden” is likely to take centuries to repair, or prove altogether irreparable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We’ve seen airwaves, water and the right to exploit various resources turned into money, even genetic material, which turns it all over to exclusive ownership and rights of access. In the case of patented crops, corporate development efforts went into hybridised maize rather than wheat because the characteristics of maize make it the easier crop to exert patent controls over. Community resources — too often thought of in cash terms as “free” — get less respect than they should and can come to be viewed as useless and, therefore, a good place to dump garbage.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The life-sustaining atmosphere and the ocean depths are two towering examples, and these fundamental sustainers of life have both been compromised by carelessness, over-exploitation and unchecked pollution. Biodiversity? Who owns it? Who needs it? Actually, we all do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">Yet we have insisted on finding ways to make consumption endless, and not just through online shopping and 24/7 malls. O</span>n one hand, <span lang="EN-GB">money lets us postpone consumption but to continue hoarding the potential to consume; on the other, debt enables us to have now what we can’t pay for until later. And economists keep telling us that a lack of growth — stability — is unsustainable failure. The treadmill has to keep accelerating.</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">BUT “The Economy” offers few assurances or certainties, it’s a gamble… and, if you stand back and look at it with a clear and open mind, you are very likely to start wondering whether it’s not hopelessly unsustainable anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I don’t want to scare you, but poisons are accumulating in food chains; clean water’s getting scarcer; rare metals needed for hi-tech applications face potentially extreme shortages; no-one’s yet found a safe, long-term way to get rid of nuclear waste; biodiversity is being lost at a calamitous rate and cultural diversity has already crashed; social and economic gaps are widening; war deaths, global temperatures, sea levels and species extinctions are all rising; diminishing resources are likely to ignite wars; international debt levels will become unsupportable… and, on its way down, “The Global Economy” as we know it is going to spit out a lot of its loyal devotees and, given its interest in weaponry and indifference to justice, things could turn seriously nasty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Most of us have far more than we know in common with the world’s poorest of the poor... much more than we do with the profit-takers and the “wealth creators”: wealth is not “created”… it is taken. And we are duped if we think it is taken to provide for our general benefit. It is, in fact, to our grandchildren’s imperilment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB">The moray eel can be dangerous to divers because it strikes blindly. It knots its body into a crevice in a reef; its backwards-curved teeth make it almost impossible for the eel to let go of anything it sinks them into. Clenched too tightly into their crevice and with their teeth locked into something too big to swallow, they can die. The lesson here is about the dire alternatives to letting go, and swimming free… things we modern humans are not at all good at. We adhere to “stuff” as if were grafted to it.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s time to loosen the grip.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Shaping your own heart-full of hope and sharing it with friends… valuing small things and taking pleasure in beauty… learning to enjoy growing, preparing, sharing and eating food… loving-kindness and curiosity… these are the sorts of life skills that will surpass an MBA for satisfaction any day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s still a wonderful world. You just have to make a point of experiencing it.</span></i></b></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>- See also: <a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/stupid-economy.html">Breaking Free: The stupid Economy</a> -</u></span></span></i></span></div><span lang="EN-GB"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></i></b></span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-46009643772148147432010-12-11T23:37:00.000-08:002010-12-18T08:26:14.360-08:00Freedom's banner...<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">THE granting of social and political “freedom” to the majority of a nation’s population — once so natural to most aboriginal North Americans and Australians — is a relatively new idea in European contexts.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Slavery gave way slowly to serfdom, and serfdom to indenture and oppressive employment practices… but, even today in the most libertarian countries, the ideas of a minimum wage, unemployment benefits and universal housing, health and old age care, suffrage and access to education — basic prerequisites of freedom for society’s poorest people — are widely seen as impositions on the freedom to amass wealth, and often begrudged among those keenest wavers of freedom’s flag, the proprietors of the Western economy. It becomes a contest between two desirable but definition-defying principles: “progress” and “justice”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It surprised me to see, in Ontario, signs saying something like, “This land is our land, government keep out”: if you deny the very authority that ensures your possession, what are you saying? Don’t protect me? Don’t educate my children? Cut off the hydro? Deny my vehicles access to “your” roads? Deny me health care? Don’t count my vote? Revoke my citizenship? Erase me and my family from government records?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Despite the absurdity of this, it is with rhetoric about the “darkness of injustice” and “shadows of oppression” that The Ontario Landowners’ Association presents its claims that “the urban environmentalist, politicians, bureaucrats and academics covet and thirst over our priceless property”… which is not the tone these same people welcome when, say, aboriginal Canadians point out that their lands were appropriated without payment to provide land “owners” with the ”brightness and freedom” they say has now been reduced to “ but a dim reminder of a bountiful past.”*</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The problem is that, as long as we remain social creatures, public freedoms are always negotiated, always antagonistic, always a compromise. Its brokers, as in ancient Rome, have usually been the land-owning wealthiest of the free. Those to whom it’s least extended have always been the poor, the undereducated, the dispossessed and the weak… people like the disemployed petty debtors whose homes are forfeit when banks over-reach their capacities to aggregate interest. Historically, it has too often ended badly, in wholesale bloodshed.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">That said, it’s interesting that 4,600 years ago there was a wise king of Sumerian Lagash who, among other reforms, outlawed forced sales and seizures, put other constraints on exploitative enterprise and granted tax relief to widows, orphans and debtors; that, historically, Judaism and Christianity have both found the charging of interest theologically odious; that in a number of early medieval European states charging interest on loans was outlawed; and that Islamic financiers have developed a different form of banking, based on partnership formation, that obviates it.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">For the people at the base of the modern Western financial food chain, the social and political freedom that’s granted comes at the cost of insecurity: spurts of consumption and indebtedness in times of surplus; layoffs and foreclosures in times of shortage. And, if there’s a choice, the curtailment of freedom has long been preferred to starvation. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">“Freedom”, although it’s long proved an effective battle cry, becomes a mercurial concept when it gets to the detail, and to workable political accommodations. There are “freedoms to…” and “freedoms from…”. There is political freedom, intellectual freedom, academic freedom, economic freedom, religious freedom, press freedom, freedom of travel, freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of association. There is the freedom of the wild, the freedom of consumer choice and the freedom of ownership. It’s nice to be free from violence, bigotry, coercion and fear, “cruel and unusual” punishments, crime, invasion, enslavement, exploitation and unnecessary pain or hardship. And — in even the most ideal of states — the varieties of freedom we want to enjoy tend to impinge on and limit each other. It doesn’t help that individuals and different cultures value some social freedoms more highly than others. It becomes an endless, essential but never entirely satisfactory negotiation, ideally striving for the greatest possible good for the state as a whole and, within the state, for the greatest number of people… with some safety nets added for those least well served. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, ironically, there is probably no more contentious issue in a healthy, freedom-loving, pluralistic democracy than the extents and boundaries of personal “freedom”.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">But, in all of the clangour and turmoil over abutting rights and interests, values and egos, the greatest compromiser of freedom is oneself.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It is some nagging, unworthy thing inside me that resents humility, that gets afraid, that wants what it does not need, that frets about tomorrow and stirs envy towards the strengths or successes of others. It is prickly voices within me that ask “but what if?” when I feel drawn to something unfamiliar. It is the same voices that threaten to throw tantrums when I start tossing out old ideas, old perceptions and old attitudes. They are responsible for my fears and failures, for my possessiveness and insensitivities.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It is the voices within me that urge me to lock doors, and hang back when someone else is hurt, insulted, confused or attacked. They make excuses for me to keep a distance from strangers and encourage me to surround myself with cocoons of entertainment and consumption.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Claiming freedom from this source, from myself, is the most headily exciting form of liberation I know. For one thing, it brings revelation after revelation of ways in which I am not alone and that there is far more beauty in the world than I could previously have imagined. It floods my experience with more vivid colours, more exciting flavours, more alluring forms… it feeds a growing desire to counter in whatever ways I can the ugliness I meet with: the ugliness of cruelty and damaging ways of fear, anger, neglect and ruthless acquisition; the ugliness of power and suspicion and violence against people but also against other creatures and landscapes. “Bad” acts and impulses are always ugly when you see them with any clarity and, too often, they arise from those false voices within.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Breaking free of them is to step into a different, wonderful universe of experience. It frees us from failure because it very quickly becomes clear that each of us is part of a flow of forces that ebb and flow in ways and directions that are not responsive in precise or specific ways to an individual’s best intentions. Individuals are essential, but the actions of one are always affected by, and diminished or magnified by the actions of others. What one person seems to achieve always hinges on the actions and inactions of thousands; what one person seems to inflict out of personal vindictiveness has happened in the same way: released from a flow of malice that is rushed on its way by the actions and inactions of thousands. You and I can join these flows deliberately, or obliviously unaware… but we cannot step aside, and we all share responsibility for the outcomes. Each of us is implicated in whatever comes to pass on the planet: in the causes and the consequences.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Fortunately, it’s extremely rare for a truly free person to choose a life of destruction, ugliness and wanton brutality; these forces are seeded in fears and doubts, anxieties and anger… in failures to forgive and compulsions to judge… and they generate experiences and emotions that are, in absolute terms, as unnecessary as they are damaging.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The truly dangerous way to live is as a prisoner to all those inner voices of fear, anger, envy, self-righteousness, false need and unnecessary doubt, listening to all of those ego-manipulating murmurs of “what if?”… .</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The classical Greek stereotype of slaves was negative: slaves were widely held to be fearful, acquisitive, not interested in ideas or beauty, unprincipled, dishonest, ungenerous and self-centred. The “free” person, on the other hand, was recognised as self-sacrificing, generous, learned, principled and acting with integrity and justice for the benefit of all.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Freedom that is simply self-interested offers no freedom as all. And, where one person is denied justice, there can be no assurance of justice for anyone.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The price of freedom is the sacrifice of self-interest.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">If we think like slaves to our inner anxieties, we enslave ourselves. It’s only when we risk freeing ourselves from ourselves that all of those widely debated public, social and political freedoms begin to matter or have merit.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">*see: the Ontario Landowners Association website: www.ontariolandowners.ca</span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-28174277972876513512010-12-07T13:09:00.000-08:002010-12-22T16:11:36.779-08:00Stories upon stories...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivukmIZYcuCfre2DqadtqaSBSfYhCw8tv5wIaDE_UeFMSqfVlQHaTgJzY6vmK6QevwdXvlwobN3OvFZfrWVS7YLjC86hOf5rcr-l7ey0IC0He7hfnNTd1r73X2RQES1NjMnFFnsKOjpg/s1600/Stones.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivukmIZYcuCfre2DqadtqaSBSfYhCw8tv5wIaDE_UeFMSqfVlQHaTgJzY6vmK6QevwdXvlwobN3OvFZfrWVS7YLjC86hOf5rcr-l7ey0IC0He7hfnNTd1r73X2RQES1NjMnFFnsKOjpg/s400/Stones.JPG" width="400" /></a> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">ON the local beaches of northwest Prince Edward Island, I’ve been fascinated by the variety of small stones and pebbles: their colours and textures and shapes. And, magpie-like, I often pick them up.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Each has a story that’s tantalisingly just out of reach. The pointed stone at the top right of the picture above is chert, and it has been flaked: someone once held that in skilled hands, worked it for a bit, then discarded it. It’s an unfinished hunter’s tool. Or perhaps it was an apprentice piece… a practice exercise, or an experiment, using an inferior piece of stone? I found it on a beach within a sheltered bay, among a scattering of flaked and un-flaked stone of the same sort — none of it native to Prince Edward Island. The pebble to the left of it is the same, semi-translucent material.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Was this once a Mi’Kmaq workshop? A place where, perhaps, a young hunter learned a necessary skill from an older expert? Why was so much un-worked stone lying around? If it had been imported, probably from deposits in New Brunswick, surely it had some value to whoever worked it? What happened that it was left there?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62Uj1UESeCN2aGdI5_9t9OT9c_4KyDZkdNa0kCflASokXcG3T8jX5-vI9PpFy3XREEQD8GjhldFEpdUv1SZU0JlShMjxgbQYE8fiEkSyPZhfANTTcLytidOq0rythEGBb-1RNGkIHQw/s1600/++Pebble-13small.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62Uj1UESeCN2aGdI5_9t9OT9c_4KyDZkdNa0kCflASokXcG3T8jX5-vI9PpFy3XREEQD8GjhldFEpdUv1SZU0JlShMjxgbQYE8fiEkSyPZhfANTTcLytidOq0rythEGBb-1RNGkIHQw/s200/++Pebble-13small.JPG" width="166" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Most of the pebbles on these beaches are fallout from the glacial morraines that overlaid the area at the mouth of the St Lawrence River during the last glacial… more than 12,000 years ago. They’re now eroding out of the soft sandstone and you realise that they were smoothed, not on the beach here, but on long-vanished shores and in rivers many thousands of years ago. Others arrive in the spring with ice that formed on, then was washed from beaches further north, probably the Labrador coast. When the chunks of ice ground on our shores and melt, they leave little mounds of the pebbles, shells and the other beach wrack they’ve brought with them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi99sQG-nFAfduPZAe2zCaej5c9O5dv8OckgalvlVc5jE75By7dvQpdLQgNLsdIwmX-JXhBFdk-CW29axgByHYlNamrgCu0ZGeSX1WyxkhhyphenhyphenIGggQXgT0jeXkXICDt52K-GwXocR5SmJA/s1600/++Pebble-45small.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi99sQG-nFAfduPZAe2zCaej5c9O5dv8OckgalvlVc5jE75By7dvQpdLQgNLsdIwmX-JXhBFdk-CW29axgByHYlNamrgCu0ZGeSX1WyxkhhyphenhyphenIGggQXgT0jeXkXICDt52K-GwXocR5SmJA/s320/++Pebble-45small.JPG" width="188" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">IN most cases, the mother rock from which they came is likely to have been formed billions of years ago in the vast volcanic plateaux of “Arctica”: the highly mineralised sheet of rock that, as well as laying down the Canadian Shield, contributed to the landforms of present day Scotland, Greenland, Siberia and eastern Antarctica.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Many experts think it could well have been there that life as we know it began (see <i>Creation Story: <a href="http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/creation-story.html">http://nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/10/creation-story.html</a></i>).</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The biggest stone pictured is decorated with patterns I imagine to be the result of some sort of fossilisation: I’d love to hear from anyone who can tell me more. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And that finely-grained, shiny black pebble (on the right in the top picture), naturally buffed to a tantalising sheen, fascinates me: there are so very few black pebbles on these beaches, one like this stood out. Much more common are quartzes and calcites like the snowy-white smoothed pebble at the bottom left corner of my picture. The little deep-red one? Iron? Volcano? Earth’s core? Maybe.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmMi1UCxFU4lFZBWdksB1LT35oUaSDREch6a54qerJCs9TKSsV0di9KD36QEA8jR89LnOfwSPsiI4_Mw6w86bnEEXb4p9cdNsEWvwtLnXWWKe_iysUtGLCEfPzv5H9pAPFB8bUuOBGjw/s1600/++Pebble-22small.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmMi1UCxFU4lFZBWdksB1LT35oUaSDREch6a54qerJCs9TKSsV0di9KD36QEA8jR89LnOfwSPsiI4_Mw6w86bnEEXb4p9cdNsEWvwtLnXWWKe_iysUtGLCEfPzv5H9pAPFB8bUuOBGjw/s200/++Pebble-22small.JPG" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"> </span></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9CQ4hQ3-VS120IGMg7__53S8l-tuJhZeZ1ZUQHpf45avL6VjEfQT107I7dJvORwqbAQsuJbFFgfKE2l_0pRKabtMU9h_Ufj5v05g0ztBXakZfMgoSWesP6QO1RQvhf2dSTvT4NRITuA/s1600/++Pebble-37small.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9CQ4hQ3-VS120IGMg7__53S8l-tuJhZeZ1ZUQHpf45avL6VjEfQT107I7dJvORwqbAQsuJbFFgfKE2l_0pRKabtMU9h_Ufj5v05g0ztBXakZfMgoSWesP6QO1RQvhf2dSTvT4NRITuA/s200/++Pebble-37small.JPG" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">I have no geological training and little knowledge — this’d be more interesting if I did —but I do realise that each small pebble I pick up is its own, remarkable story: story on a timescale so far beyond first-hand human experience that it’s humbling, and even a geological explanation would not dispel the feelings of encounter-with-enormity I get from holding one of these pebbles in the palm of my hominid hand.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">In fact, we all occupy our own measures of time, even though there are all sorts of unresolved questions about what, exactly, “time” is. In many ways, WE are time; in many ways, we generate time. And, when we see ourselves this way, we realise that each of us is an unfolding story: a story we graft on to all the other stories around us in ways that we, individually, can shape.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We respond to story in a deep, primal way. Stories connect directly with our emotions as well as our intelligence and reason. As every charity fundraiser knows, we “feel” stories, and fall for them, while any amount of raw data can leave us utterly unmoved.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">This sense of story, this need for narrative, is deeply implanted in our human way of understanding things. We’re adept at finding patterns, order and uniqueness, and excerpting from patterns of experience “our” stories and “my” story.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We’re born with the magical power of finding meaning in particular interactions with all that’s flying by, sweeping past and around us, and carrying us along. Once we have found that meaning, we’re enabled to create places to live and ways of living in company with others, even though we can never come to know them fully. But, thanks to the new stories that begin to include them, we generate resonances between “me” and “you, “us” and “them”… and the stories bring us feelings of companionship, predictability and control: we are NOT alone. We are a “community” that, as time goes by, continues to grow its own repertoires of reassuring narratives.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">As our dread of the chaos falls from us, we claim for ourselves the power to act, to analyse and to shape destinies we’re able to believe are of our own making.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Intuitively, we compose and tell stories all the time. We see events and experiences as stories. Story is THE art that seeds all of our other arts, all the way back to their origins. Stories shape our political and moral evaluations. Stories are also the stuff of daily conversation, whether it’s the quick sharing bit of gossip about some acquaintance we saw at the mall the other day, or the thoughtful telling of our hopes, or a description of some activity we’re engaged in; they regularise “our” worlds.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Shared stories establish and maintain relationships, build communities and define cultures. When we hear a story, it enters the world of our experience and changes, perhaps in just the smallest of ways, the way we appreciate and think about the world — and this, in turn, changes us. It’s all cumulative: we are shaped by the stories we hear, just as we are shapers of our own stories.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">THE “magic” elixir is meaning.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Information gets useful and available to us when it can be related to what things mean, when it can be seen in the context of a story or theory (and a ‘theory’ is just a good story in an academic gown). Information that stands on its own, alone, is hard to see as anything but intellectual litter. If we can’t find any place for it, we’ll disregard it altogether. At the same time, entire, coherent narratives can form around hardly any facts at all, if there’s a mite of meaning to be had there: phrenology became “science”, Loch Ness hides a monster in its depths and failing to win a lottery improves your chances the next time… for example.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The power of a narrative to manipulate information into meaning — and thereby to make it considerably more persuasive and memorable — applies to everything. An e-mail or letter that’s sensitive to the principles of narrative (by clearly linking new information into an existing story), will be better understood and remembered than any unorganised downloading of data. Computers need software to systematise the data that’s put into them; we need a story.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">It’s revealing to deliberately start looking at all the “things” around you as moments in a continuing story. Nothing around you has always been the way it is now. Everything was once something else and, right now, is gradually or rapidly becoming something else again. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Think about your clothes: those synthetic fabrics were made from hydrocarbons that came out of an oil well. Chemically, they originated in some vast, dripping, decomposing prehistoric swamp. Once they were plants, waving in the sun and wind, beaten by rains of long, long ago …or creatures ploughing around in the primeval muck.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The wool you’re wearing was once on the back of a sheep. Where? Some sprawling Australian sheep station? A moist, misty Scottish hillside? Some coyote-threatened threatened flock in North America? Can you imagine the particular sheep? What hands sheared the sheep and graded the wool and baled it? It was dyed and milled and woven. People did that and many of them are probably doing the same work today.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Your genuine cotton grew on a plant … where? The Nile Delta perhaps, where Mark Antony once made his fated way? Or was it Uzbekistan, the world’s second-largest exporter of cotton where children as young as seven are conscripted to help bring in the annual harvest. Where was it processed? In Turkey or the Phillippines, both notorious for sweatshop labour practices? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Your leather? That was once the hide of a cow or bull, or some other animal that grazing pastures you may never see.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Everything you touch, smell or see is like that, a moment is a story that has yet to be concluded. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">And, once upon a time, every atom heavier than hydrogen was formed in the cataclysmic collapse of a dying star, then flung out into space to coalesce into the shape of the world we inhabit. Everything — a person, a place, an object — nudges everything else and is poised, ready to catapult us into experiences we don’t have time to consider … unless we choose to enter into them.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">Categories — the way we’re inclined to name experience with the most obvious, habit-formed label — can trip us up because they can hide our own experience from us, they can hide, even to us, the true, personal measure of an event or ongoing experience. Few categories are as clear, as consistent or as closed as we routinely assume. We get a most of our categories from our culture and, when we stop to think about it, it’s all pretty obvious, but our culture — by way of our routines — ensnares us in habit-formed ways of thinking so snugly that it seldom occurs to us to re-examine them. Who has the time?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We all, and each of us, are surrounded by constant opportunities to rediscover, reshape and refresh our world. Taking charge of “my” story frees me to lead “my” life without loads of wanton baggage. Taking charge of “our” story helps us to shape the community that gives us our courage.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">We don’t need a press campaign or massive social networking effort to do that: we simply need to express and present our essential values, insights and discovered meanings by telling the stories that are “true” to us.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;">The narratives we make, shared in our regular contacts with friends and the people who matter most to us, have the power to transform our lives, and our communities. It’s something we can do as we go about doing whatever it is that we do… just by sharing OUR stories.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">As a way of living, it stands to extend our freedom, gain us respect</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">… and inflame our hopefulness.</span></span><br />
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</div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-62972731135080358562010-12-05T04:32:00.000-08:002010-12-06T08:33:27.863-08:00It's a wonder...<span></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXYPsIB-P8yhSFnVXjUSFL5WJqWpxI4OiNdGm5xo8M7-XfcgeusWGaRtZeBQM5I5GNgDYC-vr7grvyY_qn5cr3fHkvdkUbwW9RXe2HhsY2OxCDkNgRQh9LwDJpmZ7bP7ybsTsnVLlYA/s1600/NZsea-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXYPsIB-P8yhSFnVXjUSFL5WJqWpxI4OiNdGm5xo8M7-XfcgeusWGaRtZeBQM5I5GNgDYC-vr7grvyY_qn5cr3fHkvdkUbwW9RXe2HhsY2OxCDkNgRQh9LwDJpmZ7bP7ybsTsnVLlYA/s400/NZsea-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>"It all begins with the sea..."</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">WONDER’s a word that’s long carried with it strong implications of openness to joy. It’s a word that has been traced back to the origins of our English language. It isn’t a new emotion. And it’s typically our first response to the giddy depths of mystery.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Wonder has been credited with energising human curiosity, inspiring art and the origins of both religion and science. It penetrates deeply, extending the senses and animating the intellect. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Mystery energises us. Mystery gives us the appetite to strive to understand, first of all ourselves, and then in order to become what we should. Mystery makes it clear that we’re all humanity together, and that we inhabit a shared predicament. It’s one that makes us burn with awe and curiosity, so it’s good for us to talk with each other. But is also teaches us that cleverness is an illusion: it has too few dimensions to approach truth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Mystery is neither good nor evil; it is enfolded into one human life no more or less than any other. Human lives can in turn only enfold themselves into the mystery, one at a time. The mystery is far more to be trusted than our deepest insight or anxiety. After all, as most other species seem to be aware, it’s where we are and how we all got to be here. So who are we to be picky?</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">The greatest gift mystery gives us is wonder… wonder’s essential to being human.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">BUT, a little while ago, when I searched the word “mystery” in the “books” category at amazon.ca, the title that popped up at the top of the list was a work called: <i>The Mystery Method: The Foolproof Way to Get Any Woman You Want Into Bed</i>. So, expecting an tale of rejection and disappointment, I read the first “reader review”… but, no. It was glowing. And I soon had to look up “PUA” in <i>Wikipedia</i>. I discovered it means “pick up artist” and that there’s a “PUA” genre of “literature”.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Putting to one side the images this suggested of sullen, drooling men with low foreheads, their long, over-sized libidos slithering along behind them, I returned to amazon.ca where I discovered that, for $18.96, I could buy another favourably reviewed book called <i>God is a Woman: Dating Disasters</i>. Here, in a single non sequitur, was a title that simultaneously trivialised concepts of “god”, “woman”, “dating” and “disaster”. Breathing deeply, the moron images came right back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">It really gets wearisome, beating a path through the morass of mindlessness that the “rise of civilisation” has managed to generate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">We of the West claim to have spent thousands of years in the pursuit of knowledge, human dignity, truth and the “just” society… we have aimed for the stars, walked on the Moon and, inexplicably, wallow around in neurosis, vacuity, trashy dependencies, violence, despond, timidity and credulity, and the inane trivia that endlessly belches from the bowels of a global entertainment industry.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">A human consciousness needs real food to flourish. It starves on trivialities and simulations. A healthy human consciousness sings with birds and breezes, weeps with a suffering friend, is grateful for goodness, needs and gives love, is distracted by beauty, seeks and values friendship, enjoys laughter, esteems intellect, is endlessly curious; it loves more readily than it hates, opposes injustice and is from time to time fired with inexplicable joy. But it has to be fed. It can’t thrive in stasis or find peace in one place: it has to journey.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">A starting point is immediately at hand: beauty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Although “beauty”, too, is a word that’s been savagely trivialised, beauty itself is inviolate. Beauty is an experience of the BE-ing of goodness. It attracts. It inspires. And it redeems words like “mystery” and “wonder” because beauty lies at their core.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Beauty, it is commonly said, lies in the eye of the beholder. That isn’t true. Beauty is primal. But beauty undoubtedly exists, long before it is beheld.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white; color: #073763;">Among the varieties of stone most favored by sculptors in marble for more than two and a half millennia — since the time of the Athenian cultural efflorescence — has been the luminously white marble of Naxos, a small island in the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicm8fqVDLquPe1B0qMqNFo0iZUTrH6aWCPSIWQYUxPULBFJKllB6MiHliARycFUf78KrtVmzoSegUKfKTFxbVkWKJOupqRzob84eJmxzqFVGBySRjqbrNEKfQulRpxteLuIVuVx83ZeQ/s1600/marble-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicm8fqVDLquPe1B0qMqNFo0iZUTrH6aWCPSIWQYUxPULBFJKllB6MiHliARycFUf78KrtVmzoSegUKfKTFxbVkWKJOupqRzob84eJmxzqFVGBySRjqbrNEKfQulRpxteLuIVuVx83ZeQ/s200/marble-2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>Marble quarry on the Aegean island</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>of Naxos.<br />
(The black seams to the right are emery.)</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;">Its fine grain and capacity to take a lustrous, polished finish made it a prized material for temples and statues of gods. Naxian marble has a capacity to glow as though it is on the point of being animated by an inner energy. Glistening in the brilliant Mediterranean sunshine of 2600 years ago, the freshly erected, 25-foot high statue in Naxian marble of Apollo in Delos must have been every bit as breath-taking as its creators intended.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">It all begins with the sea: like time, its long, regular oceanic risings and valleyings, its sharper, breaking pitching and heaving, its rush to shores and hissing retreats, and beneath the sinewy flow of currents, a dark, seeming stillness. And beneath even that, there continue the achingly slow journeyings of the earth’s mantle itself… sliding and folding under to soften and grow molten or, prised upwards, rising and hardening so that the seas toss their wrack against new shores whilst patiently gnawing away at the old.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">It all begins with the sea, like the surface-parting exhalations of whales that loom for air from their ringing depths, the majestic passage of sharks, the otherworldliness of depths where colour is washed away and countless creatures live lives that shake off everything we know from our circumscribed lives on earth to inhabit a three-dimensional freedom that surpasses even that of the globe-circling albatross; the heaving, changing otherness of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the ever-presence of it, the plunge and crackle of surf, and the lurch of a surfboard catching the wave; the yawing roll of the deep ocean swell, lucent-black under a keel, and the trailing wake that slowly vanishes; oyster-clad rocks and spray-drenched mussel beds, tresses of kelp on the rocks, the thud and thrust of a filling sail and a ship’s churning wallow through the waves, that ship-smell of tar and cordage and iodine, the glowing trails of fish through phosphorescent subtropical seas at night while overhead the stars reflect on the open water where swells rise and fall as they did for millions of human lifetimes before the first human appeared, eons of motion, never the same, never different.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">The loneliness of the sea’s constant, animated companionship, its power to console or destroy… this it where it all begins. Even the marble began here because, for at least 500 million years, small one-celled creatures called <i>Foraminifera</i> have teemed in the seas. We need microscopes to see them, but they take up calcium salts and carbon dioxide from the water and transform them into tiny shells for themselves. Their shapes are countless and striking in their life-formed beauty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">Over the millennia, these tiny creatures have lived and died, and their tiny shells rained slowly to the ocean floor to form deep beds of nearly pure sediment. The gathering weight compressed the small shells into limestone.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">In some parts of the world, beds of limestone rock were lifted upwards by the planet’s slow re-adjustments. Water, slightly acidic from decaying plants and deepening soil, seeped into crevices and very gradually mined out dripping tunnels of underground watercourses and, as each small droplet of minerals-laden water evaporated, it left a trace of calcium carbonate behind. The residues turned underground caverns into pillared, chandeliered, glittering wonderlands that can be seen by human eyes only when people make their way into these unlikeliest of places — squeezing through tiny passages, scaling sheer, underground rock faces, swimming through dark pools and crawling through fine, clinging mud — then light lights and look about… and wonder. It is still possible to be the first person ever to stand in such a place and to reel with the revelation of it all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">In other parts of the world, the deep sheets of limestone were carried far into the Earth’s mantle: to depths where the core’s intense heat melts rock. Molten, the limestone was lifted again, and as it cooled, crystals formed. In a few places, where the limestone was sufficiently pure and the crystals that formed in the cooling were small, the rising layers contained lodes of fine-grained, white marble.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">The neighbouring islands of Naxos and Paros rose from the sea endowed with such a stone. And, eventually, human beings stumbled upon this remarkable rock and, in their desire to honour the gods they’d moulded from the mystery, found a purpose for it that was appropriate to its worth. It is another wonder, an afterthought of nature, that placed beside the shimmering white marble are black seams of emery: the abrasive rock that is perfect substance with which to work the sculpted surface of marble to that heart-stopping polish.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">My point in all of this is that beauty cannot be confined to this place or that. It permeates our world and is discernible everywhere and its discernment is a conscious act that ignites feelings of hope and “rightness”, meaning and gratitude: a “fit” with goodness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">There’s something elemental and universal in its character. The beauty of a musical note has been a part of the Earth’s acoustic capacity since the Earth was formed. The beauty we experience in various configurations of light, of sound, or form may be more of less apparent in different ways to each of us but it is there for us all. Nor does beauty ever seem to be a sufficient end in itself: it propels consciousness forward. It nags at its every beholder to take the next step, to continue the journey.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">When and where did our sense of beauty get marginalised? Why? How did the idea of “beauty” get reduced to a broad-spectrum, unnecessary buzz-word? What makes us so often the arbiters and trivialisers of beauty rather than its discoverers and celebrators?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">Real beauty is everywhere. Every insect I’ve ever seen, every creature I’ve seen, has been a masterpiece of dynamic design, a fusion of form and function that fascinates the mind as well as inspiring the spirit … an aesthetic marvel. Scientists estimate there are close to 10 million different species of insect. They pollinate our fruit trees and flowers, they give us silk, they give us honey, they are food for many people … and most are benign: unsung contributors to our wellbeing. And, moreover, creatures like this have been around for 400 million years, compared with our 750,000 or so.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">We have a few blueberry bushes that produce delicious, health-promoting fruit. Blueberries are the sort of thing we tend to talk about “by the pound” — and there's nothing like commodification to rip the meaning from things.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKutunaPbvMDRuZzsvxy-DtX50XLLIRQgjrS50NBbP1uqBpRzHNJof4v4IhlSYO0qAi9aCr1N-9nIlrYxWNB343TQB0Hm1QIKW_F1OiFG7S8-735DUH4-4TQgiac1FBP0uNmU-oBOXBg/s1600/Blueberries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKutunaPbvMDRuZzsvxy-DtX50XLLIRQgjrS50NBbP1uqBpRzHNJof4v4IhlSYO0qAi9aCr1N-9nIlrYxWNB343TQB0Hm1QIKW_F1OiFG7S8-735DUH4-4TQgiac1FBP0uNmU-oBOXBg/s320/Blueberries.jpg" width="320" /></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">But look at the complexity of one single blueberry: the seed-bearing pale flesh that tastes so different from the astringent skin. But two flavours complement each other beautifully and uniquely. And they’re not really very “blue” at all. Each berry is a gifted thing to pop into your mouth, but it’s also beautiful in its form.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;">So what gives us the capacity to be transported by beautiful flavours?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And sounds …</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And colours …</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And smells…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And textures …</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And sensations …</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And what does it mean? We seem to have evolved with a capacity to apprehend an infinite array of beauty, and to grow our wisdom in its “soil”.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #073763;">And, primed with beauty, consciousness itself can hope to become beautiful. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2593319222958015227.post-51147766517049303292010-11-30T07:55:00.000-08:002010-11-30T07:55:29.604-08:00Morality? ...ummm...<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">ONCE upon a time, the word “moral” simply meant acting in “customary” ways, as opposed to ways that were “just” (which meant ‘lawful”)… or “legal” (which meant “laid down”: compelled or prescribed by the ruler).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">The terms drew contrasts between what everybody does, what’s okay to do and what the state insists that you to do. In terms a medieval peasant could understand, these contrasts told you how to keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Morality” particularly involved community consensus; in a community where there was no consensus, there could really be no “morality”: merely choices between conflict or mutual toleration. And, for centuries, tolerance was not an option… and we still wage wars for want of it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Historically, consensus has usually been enforced by the ruthless and the powerful. They were the architects and enforcers of moral codes: codes that justified heresy trials, the “divine right” of kings and privileges of class, military conscription, gibbets, firing squads, dungeons, exiles and appropriations, harassments and marginalisation. Husbands owned their wives… it was in keeping with the moral order. Masters could flog their slaves… it was in keeping with the moral order.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">In our own culture, in the shamefully recent past, moral codes based on “consensus” have favoured slavery and abusive labour practices, racism, sexism, homophobia, militarism, imperialism, witch burnings and the persecution, even genocide and the murder, of various “undesirables” …in Canada and other former colonial regions, for example, it drove energetic programmes of ethnocide against native peoples. We look back and are appalled, but are tempted to complacency about our “new, improved”, more “liberal” moral principals despite the presence of more injustice-inflicted misery in the world that we dare to imagine. Consensus doesn’t guarantee great ways to live. Morals can suck.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">There are biologists who locate the origins of altruistic behaviour and, by implication, the antecedents of morality, in the evolutionary narrative by demonstrating that other species are not slaves to immediate, apparent self-interest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">There’s something a bit anthropomorphic in this view, especially when it’s taken out of the context of the wide ranging interdependencies that characterise all forms of life — a truth that’s often under-recognised. It’s at least “species-ist”: the idea that somehow we humans have, by virtue of our genes, regularised monkey survival tactics into the higher accomplishment of formalised ethical systems. In purely behavioural terms there are fascinating and informative similarities, but the contexts are too different for direct parallels to hold. Social behaviour among members of various species is not uncommon and, in each, it has its own parameters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">As Karl von Frisch showed us, honeybees communicate symbolically, co-operate compulsively and even act self-sacrificially. If we cast what we know of them in human terms, they look the very models of consensus morality and altruism. But there is no evidence that their communications are debates about the ethics of their situation. As a more loosely socialised species with divergent and sometimes contradictory needs for different co-operative strategies, we should not be amazed that the forms of co-operation we practise are more varied and, from the perspective of a bee, would look shamefully haphazard… more like monkeys, responding to “unfairness” with sulks or aggression. In fact, of course, we all do our own thing, and “altruism” is not necessarily indicative of nobility of spirit. It is as much an indication of our readiness to add value to a collective survival strategy by talking it up… medals to soldiers comes to mind. It helps us to prime others to act in similar ways on our behalf.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">If, as some say, morality’s source is necessarily religious, one might expect the American Christian right to be calling for the forgiveness of terrorists, clamouring to restrain us from judging others, and urging greater outpourings of largesse as international aid. It would disdain war and militarism. Rather, I suspect the strength of movements like these derives from unsophisticated desires to draw clearer boundaries between “right” and “wrong”, “us” and “them”, “good” and “evil”… a cry for consensus with all of its simplicities… hunger for set of values that are perceived to be empowering.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">The idea that anyone is privy to a universal or superior, god-gifted morality is naïve: it really shouldn’t takes the Ten Commandments to persuade us that there’s no good to be had from go around killing people, stealing from them, slandering them, seducing their partners and coveting their asses, slaves, oxen and houses. That was divine advice to a rough bunch of brutalised, wandering troublemakers who seem to have been remarkably reticent when it came to bonhomie. And, sure, some of that advice works for us because we’re people too, and not always that bright either.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Waving these insights about as having special significance on the grounds that god said so, masks some very selective thinking about god’s instructions as they’re spelled out on nearby pages of the Old Testament. It’s bad, god said, to vex strangers or curse deaf people, and you mustn’t gossip. A lot of those who say they take god’s word at face value seem to have got slack with the burnt offerings, “marring the corners” of men’ beards, having the local priest check out skin blemishes and running sores, or leaving a part of the harvest lying about for the poor to glean. God “said” you’re not supposed to wear wool and linen together, and you’re supposed to put fringes on your clothes. Then there are matters like having insubordinate sons stoned to death. Nowadays, the best we seem able to do in the West is try to get the car keys off them. There’s morality on the skids for you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">At some level, asserting the universality of even the best-intended moral principle is, by virtue of that claim, an expression of intolerance that’s bound to lead to conflict in a pluralistic community that has no consensus. And pluralism pretty much characterises modern societies… pluralism, and its lack of consensus. So, for peaceability’s sake, tolerance tends to be preached even where it’s not necessarily practised but that, undoubtedly, is better than a forced consensus.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I’ve often heard professions of attachment to the “Golden Rule” — treat others as you’d want them to treat you — as a foundation for possible consensus. It’s rather speciously claimed that the “Golden Rule” synchronises, harmonises and summarises the ethical teachings of all the great religions. But, as well as failing to understand what religions are about, this little rule of thumb assumes that everyone wants to be treated similarly… and that’s simply not the case, nor is it the case that many proselytisers of the “Golden Rule” spend vast amounts of their time in detailed studies of human social, cultural and political diversity to find out how others would like to be treated; cross-culturally it has been found that even evaluations of “fairness” vary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">The communications revolution (particularly if we date it from the launching of the printing press) has been responsible for a still-limited and widely resisted but naggingly persistent and growing awareness of global diversity. For many, this carries with it with a fear of moral dissolution. What it has in fact done is that it’s stretched illusions of intimacy beyond the reasonable boundaries of consensus, leaving us with much stronger perceptions of morality as a personal responsibility.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Instead of proclaiming consensus, we’re inclined to declare an attitude of broad relativism — “everyone has a right to his or her own opinion” (which we then studiously try to ignore) — whilst reserving for ourselves a place of personally satisfying of moral superiority. Without consensus to affirm us, we’re inclined to draw affirmation from the apparent chaos around us. And that too easily becomes the smugness of the “moral high ground”, every bit as dangerous in its own way as the clamour for consensus.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">The hope, as I see it, lies in a fostering the emergence of a kind of social, philosophical and moral environmentalism that accepts the rootedness of humanity in biology but its beauty and worth in expressions of diversity and creativity: it is “human” to seek and establish harmonies because harmonies are sustaining; it is human to develop cultures that feed hearts, minds and spirits as well as bellies; it is human to express insights, excitements, dismays and anxieties in language and in art; it is human to wonder, to laugh and to weep. It is human to produce an array of knowledge systems. It is not necessary to uphold any one way, any one particular path of awareness, as the only possible way. In fact, it is almost certainly impossible to sustain one single way of being human. Humanity is far greater than any one person’s or culture’s repertoire of thoughts, meanings, intentions or actions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Exploring an ethos centred on harmonies could certainly take us into new dimensions of sustainability, beyond naked competition or coerced centralisation. We’d need to find and practice a morality that recognises preconceptions as misconceptions, and is expressed in efforts to contain enmities and conflicts in ways that cushion and check their capacities to inflect fear, devastation and violence on bystanders.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Somehow, we need to find security and peace of mind in knowing that there is enough to go around if we set our hearts on it; if we’re willing to curb waste, find ceilings to greed and surrender to compassion, we could do it. There’s room on the planet for us all to discover who we are and find ways of becoming fully ourselves. There is enough love in the world for everyone to be cherished. Humanity is enormously varied, brimming with far greater treasuries of insight and expression than any of us can hope to glimpse, even in the most experiences-rich lifetime. That we do not devote ourselves to appreciating so much as a glimmer of this wealth is our own failing. That we too readily allow it to be suppressed, broken or obliterated is far worse than failure: in its vandalising of human hope it’s on a par with handing over an insubordinate son for stoning.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">All of this is, of course, expecting a lot. But there are signs that it’s already on the way. There are places of growing dialog. There are movements, minority movements to be sure, to protect minority cultures, languages and livelihoods; to press for peace; to relieve poverty; to stop torture and capital punishment; to control disease; to feed and clothe the destitute; to provide clean water where water is absent or contaminated; to protect the environment; to live more simply; to prevent extinctions; to free and intervene on behalf of political prisoners; to combat racism, homophobia, sexism and ageism; to promote freedoms and discourage unfettered consumption; to widen the distribution of life-saving vaccines. There are dialogues between East and West, between the great faiths, between science and art and religion. More and more, academic work has become interdisciplinary; experiences of diversity are, for many, closer to hand. There are thousands upon thousands of small group initiatives and, together, they are heading towards a sort of consensus that could usher in a morality worthy of humanity, one capable of supporting humanity’s survival. It could happen… it really could.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I believe it will.</span></div>Mike Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13797345015398703557noreply@blogger.com0