Values trump Ideas

I paid a visit to the doctor today. He confirmed for me that peace of mind is certainly worth forty plus travel expenses – I'm just relieved that their fees aren't higher. We're fortunate that nature so often leaves obvious evidence of our afflictions, whether they're benign or not.

Even in the seemingly blank slate of our nascent minds we find its many traces, a flexibility that allows us as many professionals to interpret them. It's out-of-character that our scientific elite are so late to this lesson that our prodigious quacks learned long ago – and have been practising ever since.

The latest flame these charlatans have been fanning for our great moth circus of a media is of course the immunisation debauchery; it's too generous to call it a 'debate.' Merely by commenting I join the audience, but surely there are creative ways to show dissent.

For one, we have bigger flames – heck, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. What cheek the religious establishment show when they call us arrogant for advertising our achievements. You can't hide hypocrisy by preaching a disembodied creator of the universe. They only got a reformation, we attained enlightenment.

We can't expect them to be perturbed by the recent creation of artificial life; after all, we haven't been able to sidestep that law of thermodynamics and create something out of nothing. Although our ancestors – by their inventions – helped make their ideas impregnable, we can still make ours shine brighter.

The Dream of Non-Violence

Identity

Identity,
Oh, how you seduce,
Filling that gap.

You know my scars, you are my scars,
Tear them open, revel in my pain.

Time does not change you, cruel mistress,
Perpetually in youth.

You lead on, you lead astray.
Clinging; can't get away.

Justice, hah. There is no reform.
Corrupt at your conception.

Calling for help, they stare, they stare.
Your reflection colluding them,
Seizing their air.

Breathe.

In, out.
Your life force, your power.
Enchanting; exhausting.

The ruse of weakness, you put on with mastery,
No knight, but slave, stumbling to your aid;
No chivalry, but pride, marking the way

Slave, drugged by your presence,
Wake up.
Wake up.






The weakness of our notions of 'self' and 'other' is not their contrast, but their reflection. Words have no inherent meaning, they gain it by their distinctiveness from other words. The coins and notes we use to convey wealth have little value on their own.

Just like our language and our values evolve over time, we ourselves do not remain fixed. Even a statue is battered by the elements. Yet how often we try to cast ourselves in a mold that we call 'identity.' We are deluding ourselves.

We often desire a sense of completeness, but how can such a thing exist in a world that's constantly changing? The media exploit this desire to no end, and it is the basis of advertising. Our life wouldn't be complete without product X, they say. You haven't lived until you've experienced product Y.

We give ourselves names, we wear certain brands of clothing, and some of us follow a kind of religion. It seems kind of ironic that we have the so-called 'world-renouncing religions' like Buddhism and Jainism, but it's not surprising that they have come about. Henry Thoreau was on to something too. Exclusion is a necessary consequence of identity. And war has been a very common result of exclusion throughout our history.

Am I endorsing homogeneity? Not at all, I just think it's damaging to think so much on difference. Thinking on difference is reflecting on the past, and why expend so much effort on something you can't change?

Yesterday I attended a lecture entitled “Is Non-Violence Politically Viable?” The presenter showed great experience and a wealth of thought in the areas of peace and human rights, and it was on the whole a thought-provoking, fascinating session.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing unless I had an itch to scratch. Here was a man who was involved in an organisation pursuing the elimination of war, the thrust of his thesis however was that we should be trying to rid our society of the things that dispose us toward violence. Admirable, for sure, but it came across as both quixotic and dissonant.

We cannot compound our thinking on global conflicts with that on national and domestic conflicts; they all require different strategies. The decision-makers in all of these conflicts differ. Considering western democracy, since it's most familiar to me, we must remember that this means 'representative democracy;' it is not the public making the decision to go to war – even though their sentiments may support the idea. Different governments will respond to public in their own ways; some will wage violence, some will find peaceful resolutions. To reduce global conflicts, it seems sensible that we should promote leaders of educated, cosmopolitan backgrounds; a problem that seems much more soluble than trying to bring all of society up to that level.

During question time, I asked him “given the advances in technology that are always making it easier for individuals to kill larger numbers of people, do you think that makes the ideal of reducing conflicts on a global scale less significant.” He said that basically supports his thesis. Well, sure; it would have been nice to know his thoughts on the other half of the question.

We live in troubling times. I can't help but wonder whether the problems of global warming are going to eclipse those of violent conflict; no doubt the former could lead to the other.

!*@#->%

[A talk I'll be giving in a few weeks - I doubt any attendees will read this...]

I decided that I'd make an effort to be unoriginal this-morning. For the next few minutes, I'm going to do quite a lot of complaining. We're probably all pretty used to this, quality is the norm. When served a tasty meal, many of us won't send our compliments to the chef, or lavish a partner or spouse with praise, but when that meat or fish is overcooked, boy, can we let them know it.

We could use more compliments, but that's not what I want to complain about. No, my problem is that people just aren't very good at complaining. Do I want more of it? Absolutely, but not if people keep doing it the way they have been.

At the moment, I'm not doing much better, in fact, probably worse, so let's step it up a bit. There were two things that drove me to do this, the first was a seminar I went to, the other was a talk from Tony Robbins. The first guy was talking about his research into policy decisions to try and make our society more healthy, Tony was giving me content for my next points.

This researcher deserves some praise. Making society healthy is a great idea – not very original, but in this age of obesity you could wonder. There's the first point – finding something worthwhile to fix. We all know someone who can find something wrong with everything. Maybe some have a point, but thanks to our short lifespans – we have to prioritise, right?

He also hit the second nail on the head. He shared thoughts on how to fix it. Alan Kay once said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. I heard more recently that the second best way is to invest in it, but anyway... This is where a lot of people fall short. We live in a society that says anyone can do anything they want, as long as they work hard – the great American Dream, right? Unfortunately, there are some people – who for all sorts of reasons – can't invent the future. There's wisdom in the old saying “Those who can't do, teach” - inspiring others can be valuable too.

But I'm supposed to be complaining, right? Where the researcher – and many others like him – fail, are their proposed solutions. We heard from Rhys a while ago how often we don't try to solve the right problems, more recently I was reminded by Jocelyn - from her talk on violence – how Walmart will happily sell automatic weapons, and at the same time ban violent video games.

It's important to mention that this isn't entirely the researcher's – or even Walmart's – fault. Researchers get their funding by following the whims of policy makers, and Walmart gets harassed more by vocal activists against violent video games than proponents of free speech or good parenting.

Ultimately, we have to blame someone. I'm going to blame everyone. We are generally pretty poor at reasoning about the future. The further into the future you go, the worse we are. People respond to this in different ways, some will follow the way of the ostrich, and bury their head in the sand, and those more out-spoken will lead others to make bad decisions.

Tony Robbins made the point that we live in a therapy culture. People react to problems when they occur, they don't try to shape situations so they won't happen. The history of medicine has mostly been 'how can we cure?,' not 'how can we prevent?' Psychiatrists quell depression, they don't promote happiness.

History has left us with more inventions than we have inventive ways to use them. The goal of science has always been to figure out cause and effect. What happens when you do this? Here we have a tool to predict the results of our actions. Sure, it won't always get the answer right, but evidence is a better bet than superstition. The more evidence we get, the more guilty we are for making poor decisions.

The more evidence we get, the more guilty those in-the-know are for not raising awareness; for not letting younger generations know their actions have consequences, and what those could be when they are old enough to take them. What happens in schools? We grade people on their ability to solve problems – we pose them a question, and supply a small box to enter an answer, when instead we should be testing their ability to ask their own questions, giving them a box to think outside of, rather than within. To develop a culture of creation, not reaction. We can appreciate our thermostats being reactive, we should expect more from our leaders.

The financial crisis is showing many of us the results of our actions – how much cheaper it can be to prevent rather than cure. The dangerous effects of the climate crisis aren't yet visible enough to give most people a sense of urgency, but unless massive changes occur soon, we could be stripped of far more than wealth.

New generations are being left with ever greater power to change the world, and all the responsibility that goes along with that. But we have a responsibility too. We have no right to decide what the future of these new generations will be, but it's up to us to ensure that they can ask the right questions, and are able to wield that power to shape a world they can be proud of. Science won't always give them the right answers, but hey, that's why we need more complaining.