Fast Tristram Shandy Paradox

I really should do more reading, I just discovered this eponymous paradox. It is the opposite of the situation I find interesting.

Suppose Shandy starts writing his autobiography on his 30th birthday. He is a very fast and detailed writer and each day he puts to paper a whole year of his life, exactly moment by moment, missing nothing out. After a month he comes to the Betty Blue moment of sitting at a table writing about the build up to writing his autobiography. Then a new chapter starts of life after 30 and the final pages of the autobiography are the month he has sat writing his autobiography. Assuming he is able to compress the events, and write about them, rather than get stuck in the finite loop of copying his biography out, then a moment will come where he is writing about the actual present**. If he is writing with a pen he will be able to describe the movement of the pen nib on the page, the thoughts he is having, but he won't be able to ever end because even the final full stop on the last line that stops his autobiography will not be discussed in the autobiography. How can he discuss the end of the autobiography? How does he end it? The ending becomes something else very interesting to write about. Perhaps he can anticipate the end. For example,

"So as I write this perfect account of myself detailing all the things both big and small that have happened to me, there naturally comes a time when I must give up writing and return to living again. Hang up this pen, and walk out of this room where I have incarcerated my self for 31 days , and join the world that has travelling past my window this long while, apparently unperturbed by the secret attempt to defeat time that has been unfolding in this meagre room. Unfolding just as steadily as the words that have marched across these many pages now and which tired seek some sort of conclusion, some nucleus upon which to coalesce and cessate, an impenetrable wall that might arrest their flow. But where might one find this? I might be be interrupted by a knock on the door, or perhaps and emergency that demands my attention, or perhaps Death may steal into my room and take me away mid word, but this is not an end. Perhaps through pure will power I may stubbornly just stop, take charge of this situation and end the act of writing that, after all, I did initiate 31 days ago. But I was a different person then, that person is no more to be seen, that person I wrote about some pages ago, this person the one who must stop this autobiography is faced a challenge not met by the person who began this work. And I so I can keep writing forever looking for that conclusion, searching within the writing process for an end, but I have a paradox and the paradox is that to complete this ultra-detailed autobiography I must put to paper what is happening, and what is happening is me trying to end this autobiography, and so I can never put to paper the end of the biography. And were I to suddenly come upon the end (as indeed I am about to), I would only know after it has ended for sure whether this end has come. Perhaps in another day I may go back and make corrections, and these (to be accurate) would make new pages at the end of this stream of consciousness."

And so I can only end it by stepping outside the autobiography and look back at the quote marks and see that I did finally end. But the real paradox here is that the person who was writing is trapped inside those quotes. It takes me, outside the quotes, spreading down these words here, to look back and make a judgement from outside that the section above was ended. And if only I know that it was ended, if only I have that sort of perspective on the work, then one wonders whether the person writing really had a full view of themselves. And if they did not have a complete view of themselves then is the autobiography complete, is it really not just a biography from a perspective, albeit rather limited perspective. Were I to rewrite that passage above, I could say all sorts of things about the author that they were clearly unaware of as they wrote. And as the work already points out the person who started the autobiography was facing quite different issues to the one who was tasked with ending it.

So in conclusion there are many paradoxes to be had with trying to take ownership of what we write, and also with realism and the attempt to write the truth. If we cannot even write an autobiography that accurately records this moment in time, what chance do we have of writing the past. Suddenly what seemed to certain, is really more creative and abstract.

** If he translates time into writing at an even constant pace then he will arrive at the Fast Tristram Shandy Paradox after an infinite series with ith term = (30/365)^i. = 5475/182. SO it will arrive at the singularity point on the 31st day at 1.49am and 26.4 seconds exactly. At this instant he will be transcribing to paper the instant of transcription itself. It is also a fixed point of the transformation of writing because what is written is the same as writing itself.

Unconditional Truth

First off Conditional Truth. This seems like a contradiction. Truth surely is true under all circumstances, it is universal and there are no counter examples. A law of physics is called a law because it is always true. Even the law of the country is so called because no one is beyond it.

But consider a trivial example. If it was sunny at lunchtime on Monday then it can't have been cloudy. It is true it was sunny, and false that is was cloudy. Yet we know nothing about Tuesday. This truth is conditional as it depends upon it being lunchtime and Monday. Without it being lunchtime and Monday the truth is undefined. So it is with facts. Other facts are less dependent however. The speed of light is a constant regardless your frame of reference. Unlike other speed measurements which depend upon your own velocity, the speed of light is always the same. That is very unconditional it seems. Yet it is about light. It doesn't tell us the velocity of the planet Earth.

An unconditional truth then is a marvel. It can't be about anything and must be true for everything, in all times and places and regardless in fact any conditions. It is just true.

An important thing to note is that a conditional truth must be learned. Mankind certainly did not know that the speed of light was constant until Maxwell's laws of electrodynamics were examined. Up until then it was not a fact, it had to be discovered. Now it may be argued that while we did not know this fact, it must have been true all the same. And indeed this can be argued, but it must be noted that while it was true before Maxwell, it was not evident. To become evident required considerable work and learning. Indeed the evidence of the truth was itself conditional.

By contrast an unconditional truth is immediately evident. Because it depends upon nothing there is nothing to learn, and nothing to hold back discovery. Except one thing: unconditional truth is held back by learning and the search for conditional truths.

Conditional existence is most obviously characterised by change. We go from a state of ignorance to  a state of learning. We go from failure to success. We go from hungry to full. Every moment of conditional existence is determined by conditions changing and new truths emerging.

So what of this truth of conditional existence that everything is always changing? It is unlike normal truths which are about things like light, because it is about everything. You name it, it is at this moment changing. Even your own mind is changing as it reads this, or thinks of something that isn't at this moment changing. Memories are emerging, and also thoughts all in a state of change. Even that truth that everything is in a state of change, has been discovered and is conditional.

So where is the unconditional? The point of the unconditional is that it acts as the stage on which all the conditional things play out. We arrive at it not by looking for hidden truths, or playing around with what we have discovered or learned, but rather let go of all this achievement and growth and return to the minds of children. Unconditional Truth is always evident, even to the minds of children. It is egoless and unpossessive. It belongs to no-one and everyone can grasp it. It is not easily grasped however because we are dazzled by the world of changing things, of what will come tomorrow and what has gone today. Yet by accepting this world of changing things and seeing its flow from one thing to the next, of how we uncover things, forget things, learn things, like things, dislike things and so on and so on by seeing all this conditional world we are gradually approaching the unconditional which holds all of this carefully in its lap.

Great Comment to a Peterson video, Ayn Rand and Individualism... really?

Great comment to this video "Jordan Peterson: IQ, Race & The Jewish Question" quoting Ayn Rand:

He is understandably dodging the intent of the question. But by conceding that "human intelligence does not equate to human value" and that "there doesn't seem to be any relationship between intelligence and virtue", he is uncovering the presupposition of the interviewer and affirming the counterfactual, for which I will quote Rand, "Even if it were proved — which it is not — that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one’s judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has “produced” some brutes — or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has “produced” Goethe, Schiller and Brahms." - Ayn Rand

Thank you Turee Cook for that.

So I can see where Ayn Rand's supporters get off on her thinking. But I've always disliked the way people almost worship her. Surely she would dislike such a profile, wouldn't she be happier for people to think for themselves rather than copy and quote the ideas of other people. Famously satirised by Monty Python in Life of Brian...

And yet it seems almost no one who endlessly quotes this (even Monty Python?) realises that there is an irony that while we joke about people reciting Brian's demands for them to be "all individuals" in the West we adopt the mantra of "being individuals" in exactly the same way. Even Monty Python adopted this meme and mantra in the movie... who exactly is the joke on? Brian? That film is very much a product of its time and age, very much embedded in the rise of "individualism" in the post 1960s. Monty Python aren't stupid, perhaps they were mocking the hollow mantra chanting "individualism" that has arisen, but no-one takes it that way. Its as bad as people quoting Ayn Rand as though she was a prophet.

What is an "individual"? Well the quote is excellent. It points out that "race" and "individuals" are different things. When we say that a race is intelligent, for example as Peterson says the Ashkenazi Jews are a standard deviation smarter on average than the European populations as a whole, this does not tell us how smart a particular Ashkenazi Jew or European is, it just tells us that given a random Ashkenazi Jew and a random European the Jew will on average have a higher IQ. But there are genius Europeans and idiot Jews.

Ayn Rand makes a religion of this notion of the "individual" being different from the group. Really what we are talking about here is what the Greeks would have called the difference between existence and essence. Cups may have handles, but it doesn't tell us about this particular cup: this one may be broken, or it fell part on the potters wheel, or maybe its a goblet being called a cup. And the mystery of the connection between existence and essence is well documented... how "broken" does it need to be before it isn't a cup anymore, and is a goblet a type of cup... and so on. Regardless what it is, we know we have something.

The "essence" of Human Rights is the recognition that regardless what someone is, under lying it all is the fact that they exist. It is upon that human existence that everything else is worn. This is the sacred antidote to prejudice and oppression that the world sort after the horrors of the Holocaust. Mankind was no longer happy to tolerate indifference to itself, and sort a common brotherhood and underlying recognition of the existence of each individual in their own right regardless what they were.

Ayn Rand originating from Soviet Russia had seen the monolithic Soviet machine bulldoze over the lives of people, people sacrificed for the greater good and the State and she hated it. To her the antidote is a sacred individual and the rejection of the State.

I'm not in any way disagreeing with this, but I don't think its that black and white. Ironically its the grey that has been the essence of the diversity movement and freedom of the individual. This whole topic is steeped in irony and that is what makes it interesting to me.

We have Ayn Rand being held up as a champion of individuals by people who respect the right of the individual to chose and think for themselves.

We have individuals joining forces to fight the tyranny of collectivists.

Ayn Rand's followers don't say this, but there is the idea of fellowship between all people and races - the brotherhood of peoplekind. As much as Ayn Rand uses individual freedom to fight off the tyranny of collectivism, Collectivists use brotherhood to unify mankind and eliminate exclusion and prejudice. Opposite ends with the same goal.

At root the irony is that because we are all individuals we share in one body. (Copying from the Communion liturgy).

I prefer to leave that contradiction as it is because the issue of being an individual is a contradiction. Ayn Rand goes all the way one way, and Stateists can go all the way the other.

Before Marx there was Hegel. And like Marx his system progresses like a dialectical machine toward a great unity in diversity with the famous quote "I that is We, and We that is I" (Ich, dass Wir, und Wir, dass). My favourite philosopher Kierkegaard took exception to this type of massive system philosophy. What of those who break the mould and step beyond such a mechanism, those who break the system. He was searching for an individual freedom that deified rational definition. He found it in the story of Abraham and the divine madness that was his attempted sacrifice of his son. Madness yes, but not chaos but rather madness governed by laws beyond those of worldly society: a direct connection been soul and God accessible only by the self. This is the pinnacle of the Lutherian church movement to remove the Vatican from ones relationship with God. God knows each one of us, and we stand before God as an individual to be counted and pay for our own sins. Ayn Rand stands simply upon the shoulders of this great movement. It goes far back into the mists of time in fact, as it seems mankind has always (since the Bronze Age anyway) believed they will stand individual trial for their sins. In India the god Yama serves this role, so the individual is at least as old as Yama.

But in some ways Hegel has a march on Kierkegaard because while I love and hold very dear Kierkegaards struggle to break out of logic and see the world with immediate and fresh eyes, Hegel captures the irony at the heart of this problem. We are both individual and group at the same time. Its not controversial these days to believe "I" am after all just a collection of atoms! And I wonder what Ayn Rand thinks of that? In her atomic system of indivisible selves which atom am I?

But at the same time individuals being bound up into systems so that they say ridiculous things like "I was only following orders", which appears to have held sway at the Nuremberg trials, is complete nonsense. At this point the establishment shudders and cracks down, because this is where the cracks start to show in feudal capitalist society. Capitalists need law and order to protect their capital, and they need armies to both defend their wealth and attack the wealth of others. And Armies need people who will obey orders and do the bidding of their commanders to protect the society's wealthy elite.

If Ayn Rand and her followers really have an axe to grind it is not really at the altar of the collective, it is at the altar of the elite. The elite gain power and promote a mindless collective of drones to protect them, but the collective alone are harmless. They need to be led to achieve anything. If there is one battle to be had then it is simply that we must never take orders, and must always act from personal conscience. But this not Ayn Rand it's the oldest belief there is: that we will all stand before God before we are done and have to answer for what we have and have not done.

And yet I can't really leave this here because it is a false conclusion. A nurse working alongside a surgeon trained on a particular operation takes orders. Not because they are brainless and without conscience but because they accept that the surgeon has become skilled in this operation, and they are trained at different things. Let emotively a trumpet player take time from the conductor, not because they are mindless drone but because they have accepted they are a part of this performance. At what point does the trumpet player decide that the conductor is playing too fast and starts plays at their own tempo? Sometime it is better to do something wrong for group cohesion, than to be strictly correct and break the whole thing. At the end of the day the conflict between self and group is a complex compromise with no other answer than you must work it out yourself.

And then we are at real individualism. Granting people the freedom to join armies and become mindless drones as they individually see fit. Yet now I swing to the other extreme of complete laissez faire, and remove myself from the picture. The real truth of this matter is that there is no fixed answer. It is something to puzzle and decide upon continuously throughout our lives. This indeed is Life, having to make decisions on whether to join in, or stay outside, of whether to get involved, or let things carry on without us.

In Soviet Russia Ayn Rand decided to get out and come to America. That was her freedom. But she could have stayed and joined the Soviet machine also. That was her freedom. Perhaps working in Russia which needed to hear the message of individuality she might have achieved more than coming to the West were the lesson was already learned. But then in Soviet Russia she probably would not have become as famous as she would have met resistance from the Communist Party. But that makes a life also. Swings or round-about?

A thought about Anarchism

Anarchism does one thing very well: individual freedom and responsibility. Anarchism says what ever state you live in, regardless your circumstances you are free to chose what you do next. This means you do not need to obey authority or expectations and can just get on with your life. There is no politics because ultimately what you do is your choice, no amount of membership or grouping can change that so no point in joining any groups or working for a collective identity.

Often this is criticised and deliberately misunderstood to mean that Anarchism tells you to do whatever you want. This is wrong, Anarchism doesn't tell you anything, it simply reminds you that you have the final choice. So it doesn't say that if you see someone with lots of money you should just take it from them, it simply says use your head, think and do what you think is right. Which is probably what you are doing anyway.

But a problem. Anarchism is so individual that it doesn't allow any room for group effects at all. It works fine with small items of private property but what about parks? I love the example of parks, or commons, they are a great political play ground. Consider one with a lake and a football pitch. Anarchists could just divide the park into little blocks of land one for each person. But who gets the pond, and how do you play football once it is divided up. To solve this people need to agree on a collective ownership, or give the park to a private trustee.

Now people can continue to be anarchist, but sooner or later a compromise will be needed. Suppose half the people play football and the other half play rugby. The pitch will be booked at weekends for football games and rugby games and if you don't like rugby you will not be able to play some weekends. Suddenly your life is looking exactly like it would under any system, full of compromise and respect for social and group level events.

Now Anarchism as a reminder of personal responsibility and freedom is always valuable. But as a lesson in social and political organisation it doesn't actually contribute anything.

P vs NP and binary searches

If I understand right one part of this is the question of whether working forward towards a solution to a problem is of similar order to working backwards from the answer to check it is right.

In my mind the class of problems I'll call mazes are obviously NP. Or even better a monkey climbing a binary tree to find a single banana. At each fork the monkey must chose left or right. Importantly there is no way to know if the banana is there until we get to the end of the branches.

This splits into 2 problems. (1) checking the solution space made up of all the branch ends where the banana could be (2) checking the solution space of paths to the ends of the branches.

The number of possible solutions grows exponentially with the number of forks, and obviously therefore so does the search time for (1) since the only information we have to go on is to look at the end of each branch and see if the banana is there.

There are ways to do this very badly, like set off randomly each time. But if we equip ourselves with a memory, and always chose a left turn initially, and when failed backtrack to the last branch with an unexplored right and take that, we'll cover the whole tree in pretty much optimal time. Whether there is a better solution to that is another question (2).

While the problem has 2 components with (2) being very hard itself, what we can't do is eliminate the fundamental problem of (1) and having to search an exponentially increasing number of possibilities.

But once a solution is known, it is easy to give the monkey a list of left/right turns and have the monkey shin up the tree and check for a banana.

Nothing rigorous but seems to my initial mind that there is an insurmountable problem here that definitely separates N from NP.

Cultural Relativism

Following my previous post yesterday by strange coincidence, and I do appreciate google for this, one of my subscriptions Paul Joseph Watson has posted a rant against "cultural relativism." And while it contains some truth, it is also rather simplistic.

So we can agree with PJW that there are dangerous people, there are dangerous beliefs, people easily misunderstand each other, and people are rarely good. But we can disagree with PJW that this is entirely the work of culture and upbringing.

For example it is true that migration is a serious issue. If we allow the free mixing of cultures then soon we have no culture. Consider a country which needs to designate legal festival days. If there is one culture like in UK then it is simple we have the Christian festivals. Christianity is a complex mixture of the original culture and the imported Christian culture that was evangelised but he festival days have been preserved since very ancient times. In this sense the culture ha snot changed. But true culture is fluid and does change, but at any one time authorities champion a dominant culture for simplicity and practicality. Consider Emperor Constantine switching the Roman Empire to Christianity. But the problem here is "dominant culture" can lead from expected culture and to persecution of non-conforming minority groups.

So what about people who do not want to be Christian? This is where Cultural Relativism kicks off. The problem is that they may be disadvantaged compared with Christians and worse may experience prejudice, persecution and rejection for being essentially "abnormal".

An important distinction to be made here. If I go to a Synagogue and can't find sausages on the menu I am not being persecuted and prejudiced against. Likewise if I go to a country and can't find a church I am not being persecuted against. When we go to another country we accept implicitly their customs. If we decide we don't like the weather and climate then we have come to the wrong place. It is not the responsibility of a foreign country to accommodate our wishes, it is up to us to adapt or move. Where would this stop? Perhaps I have a personal desire for walking naked in the street. Unfortunately this is something I will have to do without in a foreign country that doesn't accept this. This can be summarised by the idiom 'when in Rome do as the Romans.'

However there is a deeper thing here that is not cultural which is respect for people in general. Whether a Kosher or Halal butcher should sell pork to a customer is entirely up to them. But if the Halal or Kosher butcher was to start insulting the person who asked for pork then we begin to step beyond culture toward whether it is good to insult people. Likewise a customer demanding pork from a Kosher or Halal butcher and insulting the butcher for not respecting their wishes is equally problematic.

But before examining this problem of mutual cultural understanding, a quick conclusion of the political problem of multi-culturalism and holidays we began with. It could be said that not providing a national holiday for each and every faith is prejudice. People of faiths that are not given national holidays may feel not included in society. But then we would have national holidays almost every day. The simple solution is to have a dominant culture and legislate around that. If the law legalises the drinking of alcohol and you don't like that, then perhaps you live in the wrong country. Or you can start lobbying like every other political group. But what you cannot reasonably expect is for a country to start legislating for minority groups. It is plain impractical, and it also suggests that the minority groups have not learned the tolerance that they expect from others. The obvious solution for festival days, is for minority cultures to move their traditional holidays to fall in line with the local holidays. This in fact is what Christianity did when it moved into the West. Flexibility is the key to survival. The strongest reed bends in the wind etc. Yet minority cultures may feel their identity being diluted if they start changing too much, and this arrives at the same problem as above of dominant culture.

In a country with one culture then everyone understand everyone and social harmony is easier to achieve. As diversity increases like becomes harder for everyone. Annoyances at finding people doing strange things will only grow. The Halal or Kosher butcher may indeed be deeply insulted by someone asking for pork, so much so that they think it must be a joke or deliberate attack. The customer may be genuinely ignorant and be themselves annoyed at the unjust treatment they get from the butcher and soon each is hurling insults at the other thinking they are both victims of prejudice. I have seen things like this in real life. The problem is understanding and having a multi-cultural society is making huge demands on people to understand each other. One solution is to water down culture so much that no one cares anymore. But this like above is the "no culture" solution. A Jew or Moslem should be able to be righteous about not eating pork, and even have difficulty with people who do because for them pork is dirty and expressly forbade by God. To ask them to tolerate people of different belief, is to either ask them to turn a blind eye, or to in some way water down the belief that it is wrong. It is like Indians having to tolerate the Pakistani practice of marrying cousins. It is disgusting and hard to normalise when your own culture is against it. Where do we stop. Do we start tolerating child sacrifice? Diverse societies can work, but it is very much harder and requires a lot of education and mutual understanding and tolerance to work.

So this is where Watson is correct. You cannot just airlift an alien from one culture into another and expect it to work. It will take a childhood to learn the practices of a culture so that you operate correctly and fit in. Expecting immigrants to fit in over night is cruel on both the immigrants and the people they must share their lives with. Not surprisingly immigrants feel hostile to the country they don't understand (and which they probably have unrealistic expectation of from media and the lies of the criminal gangs who make an industry from people trafficking). So I agree with PJW immigration is a serious problem, and not something to be taken lightly.

But this is where the agreement stops. PJW talks as though there is an objective truth: like the truth that immigration is a problem. There is an objective truth, that is not culturally relativistic and that truth is the truth of what he calls the "lefty progressives." It is something of a contradiction in fact to speak of cultural relativism and absolute well being between people. Meanwhile Watson does the opposite and speak of the absolute truth that people are different.

Watson must agree that everyone agrees in some absolute truth, even the relativists. He proposes absolute truths himself. His absolute truth is that Evil exists, and the "lefty progressives" believe that Good exists. In fact a bit of philosophy will show that Watson is wrong and the progressives are right. There is only Good at root. For example consider this: if there is an absolute truth then it applies to all people, and this then unifies all people in that truth whatever it is. There cannot be an absolute truth then that there are fundamental differences between people, as this would itself become a fundamental similarity. And there cannot be an absolute truth that there is no absolute truth.

But there being only Good at root has everyone confused. The path to Good is a particularly difficult and subtle one. Our culture and education may help us down the path to Good, but at the end of the day it is something we must take for ourselves. In Buddhism this is called our Buddha Nature. But Christians could call it our Jesus Nature (aka Holy Spirit) and Muslims our Muhammad Nature, and Jews... (I don't understand the Jewish views of salvation enough).  When we follow those teachings properly it is because we embody them into our heart, we find resonance between the teachings and ourselves. But without an ourselves there then there is nothing we can do.

This is where Watson is wrong. Within each person is Goodness. Whether they can access that Goodness and bring it to flourish and grow is a matter of culture but also their own inner strength. Where there is Evil you have weak people who have been abused and misguided to run from their inner souls rather than face the storm of pain and suffering and reach out to their vulnerable true self.

So why in Watson's video are there so many Evil people out there. One thing that Watson ignores is the rape levels in America. This is not because of recent immigrants, this is because of Americans. Evil flourishes in America as with everywhere. But why are other countries so much worse?

Now we begin the examination of History. "Other countries" in the main are the creation of Western Powers. For many centuries there has been a western policy of colonisation, which has amongst other things tried to enforce the Western mould of Western style governments and economies in nation states. In the same way that it takes an entire childhood to learn a culture, likewise it takes an entire childhood for foreigners to adopt the ideas of Western society, politics, economics. Failures in the Western program to entirely transform countries toward Western ideals have led to disaster. Imperialists also used 'divide and conquer' to control countries, setting groups against one another so that they would never unify against the ruling power, and so that the ruling power could use them to fight one another instead of the government. When independence came you have divided nations, trying to adopt a social order that took centuries for the West to develop. Combine this with exploitative post-colonial policies for example debt to 1st world nations and promotion of proxy leaders and you have recipes for disaster. When we take in immigrants, we are naturally taking them from failed states. Why would someone from a successful state want the hassle of immigration. So we are importing people who are unable to live in their own country, who have been failed by their own country and expecting them to flourish in the UK. Unless they are very young and are open to education and transformation into one of our own, then they are doomed. No use for multi-culturalism here as they need culture in the first place!

In many countries political movements that blame colonialism make it very dangerous for Western people also. They are useful as political targets, as well as just being hated. Western media also portrays Western women as whores who will drop their clothes and have casual sex. For strict cultures where female sex is something restricted to marriage (so that women don't have children without a partner which is required since culture gives men the trade jobs and child rearing to women) then seeing white women dressing freely and who are seen as whores is very dangerous.

So it is quite correct that travelling to foreign countries requires sensitivity from the traveller. But that works in both directions. Westerners travelling to war torn unstable states will meet centuries of misunderstandings and hatreds that they simply cannot overcome simply. In reverse importing people from these countries will bring confused people bearing centuries of misunderstandings and hatreds. Watson is correct here. But with time and understanding there is no reason why we cannot slowly begin to increase the understanding between people and cultures and arrive at a common humanity on Earth that will do a very great deal to calm down Evil and make it lose its power.

Western Civilisation?

Description: The arguably most significant view of the modern world sees the battle between Civilisation and Barbarism. It is all over the news all the time as people and societies are dismissed as barbaric, and the World year on year celebrates apparent progress. I want to argue this is a myth and propose there is no fundamental battle between Civilisation and Barbarism.

General note: I'm learning to write blogs. So far the millions of words here have been just a mental notepad for my own future consumption and "Thesian thread" to replot my wanderings in the Labyrinth. On the off chance this will ever be read by anyone else, I should perhaps give some thought to the reader. To that end I will summarise the point in future at the outset and then expand which inevitably will be complex, non-paradigmatic and polemical. My purpose is to push thinking, my own and others, never to present an off the shelf closed box.

Summary: the international world has been for millennia seen as composed from advanced, progressive civilisations and static, backward barbaric communities. The assumption is that the civilised have a duty to civilise the barbaric. It is very much evident in British and American thinking that they are civilised, and the rest of the world looks forward to being civilised. But is this really true is the question. The proposed answer is that this is only true if you look at the world in a particular way. The Civilisation/Barbarism dichotomy is like a length or weight measurement. Once we have chosen our measurement e.g. weight, length it is easy to get a number and decide who is heavier or longer. But what measurement do you chose? And that is the point you must chose. So when people speak of a Civilisation they are choosing certain traits that score well, and when they speak of a Barbarism they are choosing certain traits that score poorly.

Continuation of Argument: The obvious challenge to this is that surely there must be some absolutes. A civilisation for example that commits child sacrifice is Barbaric, while one like our own which promotes life for all even while in the womb (although there are still arguments about abortion) is Civilised.

Whats need to be introduced here is the idea of Normalisation. In the West it is quite normal to eat meat. When you walk down the meat isle of the supermarket you don't see anything especially unusual here. But walk down a market in the far east and suddenly you might take notice of things. Suppose we see a cat in a cage ready for slaughter. In the West we have a very special place for cats often around the home as family members. We do not Normalise eating them. Yet when you think further what is different between eating a very intelligent pig, and eating an less sentient cat? Now we can see how Aztecs were able to live in a society where priests committed gruesome sacrifices to the gods, once normalised no-one notices.

But it can still be argued, Normalising something doesn't make it right or go away it just hides it from notice. This is true, but it leads deeper into the philosophy of the Absolute.

Consider current trends in Western society. End to racism, liberation of women, end to sexual and domestic abuse, end to prejudice against all genders and sexual variations, continual struggle to end slavery etc. Why did it take so long? It is because all these were Normalised, but now society has progressed and become more civilised (or so the argument goes). So what remains that we currently normalise that in the future we will look back on as barbaric. For me eating meat is barbaric. I walk down the meat isle of the supermarket seeing slaughtered animals that may as well be dogs and cats since it doesn't matter: it looks very primitive and barbaric. Equally I look at armed forces and think their methods are very primitive and barbaric. I look at society split into rich and poor and I see this as very barbaric and uncivilised. So we have a very long way to go to become fully civilised.

But now look at societies that haven't made the "progress" we have, where for example women are still subordinate to men, and homosexuality is rejected. Measured this way they have even further to go to become civilised. But we might look a different way and see that everyone belongs to a tribe and has a tribal area that they can farm. There is no such thing as homelessness or unemployment here because everyone belongs somewhere. Suddenly measured this way they look very advanced and our society looks primitive.

It turns out that you can always select measures to make any society look advanced or primitive.

The proof of this lies in 'sunyata' or emptiness. This itself is a proof of the point. Western Civilisation never arrived at this idea, although pre-Platonic thinkers appear to me to be speaking of the same thing when they spoke of 'logos.' Man is the measure of all things, says Protagoras. Heraclitus even more relativistically says that the world is in endless flux, never arriving at anything but always been a work in progress. The man who messed it all up was Plato who tried to say that the world has a perfect "form" somewhere, which is imperfectly copied again and again in the existing things of the world. They all grasp that the world is imperfect, but for Plato that imperfection is paired with the eternal Perfection of the form that left its stamp in the world. While for Heraclitus it is a conveyor belt of imperfect things each morphing into the next and never having a definitive moment of existence.

Heraclitus and Protagoras cause a peculiarly destructive problem for 'Progress' and 'Civilisation.' Protagoras suggests, even more deeply than with Normalisation, that the people in a society are the only measure of their society. Protagoras is not saying that there is a Perfect Platonic Man who is the measure of all society, who can walk around the Earth and make absolute judgements of each person civilisation. He is saying that our standard of civilisation are based upon us, and then how can you separate the people from their civilisation? As Kierkegaard asked, how can you separate the dancer from the dance?

More damaging is Heraclitus who says that 'civilisation' is like a river, it has no start or end, and flows from one thing to the next.

The ultimate problem for anyone who wishes to define an absolute measure of civilisation is like Archimedes looking for a place outside the Earth to use as a vantage point to leaver the Earth. How do we know we are not our selves influenced by our own circumstances. This of course is the problem of objectivity. And the answer is you cannot escape being influenced by your own circumstance. But this is paradoxical anyway: anyone so divorced from their own circumstances is also unable to provide a relevant comment. Anthropology has long wrestled with this problem. Without embedding in society and knowing it intimately how are you to make sense of it? I realised this is the truth of tourism. As a tourist if you wish to get beyond the limitations of tourism and really get to know a foreign people, to say you have truly travelled to a place: you will know when you have arrived when they no longer seem foreign and you find yourself at home. Ironically this is where ever tourist was before embarking on their journey. This is also the great spiritual truth noted in The Alchemist and even in Zen Buddhism : before following Zen mountains are mountains, then mountains stop being mountains, then finally mountains become mountains again. For Paulo Coelho it is the shephard returning to where his quest started to find gold. The truth is right here and now within ourselves, but never-the-less we often have a huge journey through the world to travel to find it.

The solution to this is approaches like Phenomenology that assume that we start at the end, and work backwards. We are already fully embodied and influenced by our world, and we begin to dig down and examine what this means for us. Each person in each civilisation and each barbaric nation does the same, starting at different points, and we assume finding some commonality as they excavate deeper. Very hard now for people to present themselves as more advanced, civilised and progressed.

But like all my posts lets not go too far. There is some common ground that all humans share. But this is actually the hard part, and it is a much more fruitful discussion to start with this question, than make assumptions about what is Civilised and go around excluding uncivilised nations.

To begin with all societies whether civilised or uncivilised are made of people. That must be our starting point. Whether they sacrifice children or work hard to protect them we first acknowledge we are talking about people here. If we ever forget this we are becoming very much uncivilised. How much uncivilised behaviour has been caused by people believing they are the civilised ones. Civilisation itself makes people uncivilised.

But since I raised the extreme case of the Middle Eastern practice of child sacrifice let me do the unthinkable and defend it! If we go back 2000 years more than half of all children would have died in childbirth or within their first year. Malnutrition and disease would have made childbirth a very risky process. Within the mindset of people of that time, death was controlled by the gods of the afterlife. So logically to appease these blood thirsty gods you gave them blood. So it made sense then to give your first born child to the god so that the rest of your off spring would be blessed with good health. Embedding within the time and thinking suddenly what seems absurd makes sense. From this we can learn two things: (1) people actually wanted their children to live (2) they were logical and well meaning. So what looks like madness from the outside, is very human when looked at from the inside.

We can make the hypothesis then that on one hand all humans share a commonality, but on the other hand how they express this can be extremely diverse. So how do we measure civilisation, by the inside or the outside? If we measure by the inside, all humans are the same. So there is no civilisation. Yet to measure from the outside, we have the problem of what to measure. How do you compare a baby sacrificing culture and a Hypocratic scientific culture. They both want the same thing, but by drastically different approaches.

Suppose we arrived with our technology and started saving the lives of babies. Initially we would be worshipped as gods, since the gods are ones who have this power. By the time we have educated the tribe to apply medicines and understand disease they are already on the path to joining our society. We are not comparing societies we are simply changing one into the other. Once the gods have gone everything would change. In no time this tribe would find itself at the end of a Western dole queue looking for work, and wondering where they went wrong. I think of the Kalahari Bushmen who experienced exactly this transition and result.

Now to be fair transition the other way from Western society to baby-sacrifice is much harder. In this metric it is true that western society has infinitely better pre- and post- natal care and infant mortality is almost a thing of the past. Western society has definitely made progress in this direction. But when have we ever used 'infant mortality' as a measure of civilisation? It is certainly an excellent one, and perhaps a future measure should include it. But all of human history has not been a single line toward zero infant mortality. Humans have lived perfect lives even with quite high infant mortality. Everyone does die, and dealing with death is something that we must do. You could equally measure a societies ability to deal with death as a direction. Which is better: the society with zero infant mortality but with people who are neurotic and stressed by death, or a society with considerable infant mortality but with a deep understanding and acceptance of death? This is the point of the blog post: there is no absolute here. Human societies are multidimensional and win in some directions and lose in others. There is no perfect society, and there is no imperfect society. There is simply a society that is right for the people it embodies, and the natural infinite flow of progress that all societies experience.

The poor pay for the rich

This is the oldest feature of mankind. It has been called "class system" by Marxist, or Aristocracy by philosophers and historians, but underlying these designations is the simple fact that the poor pay for the rich. It could be said like this:

"Those who do not have, give money to those who do have."

This typifies most of human societies in history. The main way that this transfer of wealth occurs is defined in what is called "property." Property is a system whereby the dominant extract wealth from the subordinate in what is usually called "Rent". The essence of Capitalism is Rent, but the diversity of vehicles by which those who possess property extract wealth from the poor has diversified immensely. We have bailouts now, where risk is transferred from capitalists owners to tax payers who in the large part are not owners, or at least still take a wage as their primary income rather than returns on investment. Let me make a definition here:

a capitalist is someone whose lifetime income is more than 50% gained from investment and inheritance, and less than 50% from wages.

Owners of almost all companies in UK take their income in dividends rather than wages to escape tax. This is a loop hole which greys the boundary of the definition. But the freedom to take dividends rather than wages, and the tax breaks this affords clearly separate such people as the boundary of a different class compared to their employees. The size of the tax breaks only increase as the capitalist becomes more powerful.

Defenders of the system say that investors earn their income because of the risk they take. However the only risk they really take is to lose everything and have to join the dole queue like their employees. The only risk taken by investors is that they might lose their status as investors. You cannot logically reward a wealthy class for taking the risk that they might lose that status. It is absurd. Indeed the system of Capitalism is absurd.

All manner of absurd excuses are given for the system. Most recently a back story was invented of 'trickle down' to justify in hindsight the no longer concealable (or defendable) wealth of the Capitalist class. A wealthy upper class benefits a system by creating jobs through their spending. This obviously would have worked in the ages of Kings and Aristocracies, and it didn't work then any more than now. The level of idiocy demonstrated by the myth writers of the Capitalist class shows the level of degeneration our society has already seen.

It may come as a surprise to many that the poor pay a higher rate to the Capitalists than in medieval times. During the Middle Ages, after the Norman conquest, while England was enslaved to the Kings of Normandy workers gave 50% of their produce to the land owner. Today in England workers pay about 40% tax on their income and then 20% on the rest via VAT. That is 52%. Under a democratic socialist country like England that 52% is paid in the service of the tax payers through central government, law courts, defence, universal health care, universal education and a host of other services.

Yet under Capitalism this 52% has changed meaning. It is used to fuel inject the economy to drive growth in Capitalist investments. Debts so gained are paid for by cutting back on non-profitable parts of the economy so that taxes can be used to support contracts in 3rd party industries like construction ultimately benefiting the investors in those industries. This is why government spending may slow but it cannot stop increasing. If the government stopped spending then the Capitalists would lose. The tax payer meanwhile is sold a myth that cut backs are necessary to save the economy and jobs, neglecting to point out that investors are the real concern. Despite each person in the UK having a vote, it is worthless as the largest lobby group that determines both the funding for the Conservative Party and the Media and so controls both policy and public opinion is the Capitalist Investor class. UK Ltd. is run by a Capitalist oligarchy. In this way it is exactly the same as it has always been, just the Public Image of the country has been very carefully engineered by spin doctors.

And so we are left with the stark fact that UK, and the entire world that has fallen under the Western Empire (and most of the rest of the world that still hasn't escaped Feudalism), is split roughly into two types of people. Those who have too much, and those who do not have enough. And the latter then end up working for and paying for the rights to borrow things from the wealthy, thus increasing the wealth of the wealthy, and keeping the poor in poverty. We can try and dig our way out by becoming Capitalists our selves. The recent Buy-to-Let boom has offered many people the dream of finally becoming Capitalists. But it only works when you have poor people who need to rent from you. The size of the Buy-to-Let was always limited by the number of desperate poor there are. Obviously not everyone can become Buy-to-Let landlords else who would move in and pay rent? This way it can be seen that systems of rent must always divide society into those who will pay rent, and those who will collect it. And the former must by definition be a much greater number than the latter. But it is not that the system makes a two tier world but rather the other way around. Human society at the moment is still built upon a fundamental belief in inequality. It is from this root belief that we chose to live by mechanisms that enforce inequality and division. It is pointless complaining about poverty in the world, or seeing desperate people on the streets, and even the charities are swimming against the tide. The very root of human existence is still based on inequality. This deepest problem that lies at the heart of Humankind's war with itself still waits to be solved.

OCD, depression, freedom, vertigo, existentialism

I mentioned before I have undiagnosed OCD which presents quite a mental challenge.

We begin with doubts. For most people they are abstract doubts to do with identity. Am I made to be a doctor, does this job suit me, do I really love my partner, am I good person etc. Depression really helps to fuel self doubts and when we want to hurt ourselves self-doubt is an excellent tool. I really am worthless, no-body likes me, what is the use in my life.

But this is all pretty abstract. At the end of the day the sun still rises and I will find some food somewhere. What more really do I need.

But no! the brain is not done with us yet. Depression probably stems from lack of freedom. Someone we love does not love us back, the job we wanted goes to someone else, we see someone with the life we want and we can't seem to get it our self. In some way we seem powerless to step up and become that person or be that person we either want or feel we should be. One quick step is to shut down and let it go. This is a good step, time to reflect, but it closes our energy down.

So we are frustrated by life. Dukkha they call it in Buddhism. Discontent with the way things are. Desires that are not met; indeed desires are unforgiving masters. This is not our failure, but a deep feature of "unenlightened" life where "unenlightened" simply means those who have not fixed this problem yet... which is pretty much everyone.

There is something else lurking around the corner. Frustrated by lack of freedom we begin to lose perspective on our freedom and action. A friend who does not have OCD told me once that as a kid in a block of flats with the window open he suddenly felt like jumping out of the window, and there was nothing to stop him. His brother said he had experienced the same. But they grew out of it. The problem with OCD is that things which are probably abstract to others like jumping out of a window suddenly become real possibilities. Like standing on a cliff edge and realising that one false step and we fall to our deaths, a sudden panic of freedom fills us, and a fascination: I really could just fall it is that simple. Ironically this becomes an abstract battle, because if we stop panicking and look clearly we can see we don't really want to fall. If we wanted to fall we would not be panicking. But it doesn't help OCD. The panic shuts our brain down, the doubts topple everything and we no longer know what we want. After the panic has gone we then spend the following years checking all the time obsessively to see if we really did want to fall, and we deeply embed this idea that maybe we wanted to fall. Constant checking and self doubt seeps right through us like a revoltion over turning everything.

I am reminded of Sartre and the existentialists obsessing over freedom and the fear that realising that right now we could do absolutely anything completey fills them. Perhaps they had OCD! I think also in a moment of quite reflection we realise that we don't have that much freedom. Hitler killed 12 million people, and the world seems to have shrugged it off and carried on anyway. What we really can do is complex, many think with enough hard work they'll become world famous singers. As Simon Cowell is always trying to remind people, probably not unless you are lucky enough to have considerable talent to start with. Not that hard work isn't needed, but if someone with no talent does 10,000 hours of training they won't be in the same place as someone with starting talent doing the same. I say this only to relax the OCD sufferer with fears over their freedom. Pushing someone in front of a train, or shouting out during a classical music concert are some of my fears. They are the last things I want to do (I think ;-) there's the doubt), but because I could do these things, I feel the fear.

The LA OCD centre says that brain scans of people experiencing OCD show that the spinning doubt and struggle which feels so real, is actually in a different part of the brain to the action centres. When someone goes to do something that part of the brain fires up first, and the frontal-cortex and "high" stuff fires next. If we are going to stop ourselves from doing something then it works this way around. In OCD we go to stop ourselves when we don't even have the initial impulse. But that's not how it looks. We feel like we are struggling with a real urge. (The solution eventually, when we regain the strength to beat OCD, is to stop struggling and just the feared urge come forward. Then we see that there is nothing there. But while doubt and fear is there, and constant checking, we can't do this clearly.) It's the amygdala firing off our fear response that sends the brain into a panic, shuts down high control centres and goes into defence mode. In defence mode we are reacting to a perceived fear, that we don't realise is actually invented by us. Yes I can jump out of the window, but I am safe. We forget we are safe, and get obsessed with jumping out of the window. I myself am the danger, and I get afraid of myself.

As I discovered in the Summer meditate on the fact you are safe. This is rule 1. Then meditate to shut down the narrative: the I can jump out of the window. Just shut it down and think about something else - takes time and practice. This is rule 2. Then feel the fear, cos it isn't that easy to beat, but feel it safely now, and feel as much as you can: really take it on. With narratives shut down, fear does not become "I am going to do it" it is just fear, just a feeling. This is rule 3. And rule 4 is feel the suffering of everyone who has this problem, take that suffering onto yourself and try to empty the bucket of OCD suffering not just for yourself but for everyone.

Its a shame that tackling OCD hasn't given me deep existential insights into freedom. It is rather that struggling with OCD and struggling with "freedom" have both carried me forward.

p.s. OCD is usually associated with much simpler checking behavior. I've had them all from cleaning to being unsure I've switched lights off, to being unsure I killed someone the night before, to feeling responsible for a piece of glass I moved off the pavement, etc etc. In every case however we go into a checking behaviour that cannot be satisfied. I want to be sure that 'x' is true. Even with the room gone black, I still have no proof that the lights are off. I switch them on to be sure, and off again, but its still not 100% sure. It is like Descartes doubting everything. An obsessive desire for perfection and unobtainable certainty is the problem. With cleaning it came to a head when trying to arrange the contents of a box, which needed to be put back on a shelf. Each time I put it on the shelf I could not be sure I had not upset the contents.I tried again and again to find satisfactory certainty that the box was still tidy inside. Eventaually realising that perfection was impossible th whole project of tidying became worthless and after 6 months of this strong desire I threw everything on the floor in a mess. Job done. No more interest in perfection... till next time.

Are we our brain?

This is another trick question, but one almost universally misunderstood by literally everyone from the man on the street to Nobel Prize winners.

A spectacular account of the problems and much more is given in the Shurangama Sutra. Some say this was not actually given by Buddha, and represents developments in Indian thought after Buddha, but that does not matter for those wishing to expand their minds.

In brief though the trick lies not in which we think of the 'brain', but what we think of the 'I'. When people usually try and examine the question "Am I my Brain" they assume they know what the I is and they go examining all the neurons, computations, physics etc of the brain. A moment examining the 'I' will show where the problem lies.

Science has never found the 'I' and so has never found the owner of the brain. And they won't because there is no owner of the brain. There is just the brain. So what are we trying to find out when we ask this question?

We don't ask am I my 'arm' so why do we ask am I my 'brain'?

It is a modern development of the idea of a soul. When someone dies the arm is visibly left behind but something very dramatic is lost. This used to be called the soul. It is now called the "self." But they are indistinguishable.

Self is not to be confused with identity. I and my neighbour may have a car. We drive to the pub for a drink and then learn that a car has been stolen from the car park. It makes a very big difference whether it is his car or mine that is taken. The identity of the car that is taken is a real thing and it matters (under Western property ideas anyway). In the same way as you car and my car are different we expand this to say your brain and my brain. If your brain dreams it is noticeably different from if my brain dreams. Likewise if you close your eyes it is different from if I close my eyes. There appears to be something here in that what happens to you and yours is different from what happens to me and mine. But notice this yours and mine is not to do with the brain it expands to everything from brain to eyes to arms to cars.

So I am quite separate from my brain. That is how I can even call it my brain! And it gets weirder. After I am dead my will is read out and my property is distributed to other people, but it is still my property. We even talk of Darwin's Theory of Evolution - it still belongs to him more than a century after his death. Darwin has long out lived his brain!

So as usual time is short, but hopefully this has started to tease apart the confused elements of this question to show that it doesn't make sense.

Much more can be said here and I'll probably examine again (its been done before in this blog) the deep issues of existence and what it is to exist and die at all.

The philosophy of Species and Creation

Consider the Galapagos Tortoise. Famously on dry islands they have a higher neck arch than on wetter islands. The argument is that on dryer islands food is more scarce so it is important to be able to access food higher up. Being able to reach ones head higher means that such a tortoise may well survive where another dies leading to a population of higher neck arches.

What Creationists note however is that we are talking about types of tortoises. Some tortoises have a high neck arch and others a smaller one. Adaptation they note only effects the magnitude of existing traits. But all this variation occurs on an immutable species. A tortoise is a tortoise. Whether it has a high or low neck arch does not change its essence. God made tortoise and tortoise is a thing He made.

This is very similar to Plato's musing on essence. What makes something what it is? But it is actually not as simple as Essentialists like Creationists think. Consider alchemy. Gold was thought to be the most pure element, indivisible and underlying the universe. By 1905 it was Rutherford's experiments on gold that showed to the contrary that the majority of mass of gold was actually in tiny nuclei. Perhaps gold was made from tiny particles of gold? And what makes these smaller particles gold? Perhaps even smaller particles of gold? And so their is infinite regress without ever examining "what is gold." So the theory developed that gold was an atom of a particular number of protons, and these determined, in obeyance to thermodynamics and quantum theory, the geometry and behaviour of electron which gives us the chemical properties. Its a beautiful theory which puts gold alongside all the other elements and explains the essence of gold. Gold is no longer a unique "thing" made as indivisible gold by God, it is a type of atom with 79 protons. To explain something then we must do it in terms other than itself, it means throwing away the itself you are explaining! (This is realise is another example of my SRH.)

But then we have the problem of the essence of "protons" and "electrons." Haven't we just shifted the problem of what is gold to what are protons and electrons? In biology we say that animals differ only in their DNA. Swap out the DNA of one animal in an egg for another and it grows into the animal defined by the new DNA. Like gold, tortoise is no longer indivisible and god given, but sits side by side all other species. With atoms we can experimentally create all the possible atoms by adding protons to nuclei. With species, its far more complex, and its not so clear what DNA sequences gives us animals and which don't. We can never-the-less using this theory create both elements and species. The only question remaining was the apparently more trivial one of how particular elements and species got created. Questions like why is Oxygen so abundant, or why do dinosaurs no longer exist?

And so 20th Century science would be happy with this account of essence. No God in this system, everything explained by more general atomic theory.

At college I had a problem with this, much in fact like Kierkegaard reacting to the Big System philosophies like Hegel. Something was lost when we move to the big theory. To create a universal theory, the unique parts must be discarded. Yet it is the unique parts that we start with. A tortoise crawling slowly across the ground, regardless whether it can be explained by a unique DNA sequence, is still a tortoise and Tortoise and DNA are not the same thing. If they were the same thing then like gold being explained by smaller particles of gold we would be explaining nothing. Tortoise must be different from DNA for DNA to be of any value in explaining tortoise. All we do is discard "tortoise" in favour of more general DNA theory, and that felt wrong at college. Perhaps I am an artist at heart. A painting of Tortoise DNA is really a very different thing from a painting of a Tortoise. Both painting appeal to a different essence. God made Tortoise, God made DNA!

But what we can say is that one thing correlates with another. You push the accelerator and the car goes faster, does not mean that the clutch IS the car going faster. You change this gene and the result is a higher shell arch on the tortoise, but this gene is not a higher shell arch. Both shell arch and gene have their own essences that are bound together in a complex dynamic system. Ultimately the Creationist is asking if genes are responsible for the size of shell arches then what is responsible for that? There is an infinite regress, just as their was with gold. Whatever essence is promoted as the cause of some other essence, say atoms to explain gold, the question still remains but what causes that essence. So if we know that atoms are what makes gold what it is, then what is it that makes an atom what it is?

Ultimately we realise that the pursuit of essence like a bullet being shot into water has initially impressive impact but the endless dissipation of energy in fanning out ripples leads eventually to the bullet being stopped. The pursuit of essence is endless because the idea of essence is flawed.

When we first teach a child that something is a tortoise we stimulate a fascination. I remember the day I first saw a tortoise. I was in Africa aged about 2. A tortoise was pointed out to me at a distance and all I could see was a rock. I still didn't see a tortoise. Then as we approached it moved and I was blown away by a moving rock. What a fascinating thing. A rock that moves is a tortoise. How can an animal be a rock. How can a rock be an animal. The fight between essences exciting and fascinating my fledgling mind looking out on an endlessly new and exciting world. I had just run away from an imported giant scarlet macaw that was as large as myself. With no knowledge of DNA or even species the world is just new and fascinating and the mind finds things and essences everywhere.

With that initial fascination we continue searching, the bullet has been shot. And as already explained we dissect tortoises to see how a rock can move, and endlessly expand the essences of this excited mind. Behind it always looking for the true essence, the gold and philosophers stone underlying the universe. But its a dangerous quest because to move on we must discard where we have been, and we lose some of the bullets velocity. I very quickly discovered that stones don't move. Stones are boring lumps of rock (well boring compared with animals), and tortoises are like lizards with eyes and mouths and scales. I lost that initial magic. And so it continues.

Creationists still have that initial magic of creation 100%. They are not prepared to discard anything. Evolutionists are prepared to entirely throw all that magic away and explain life in terms of the same boring matter that they explain stones. Yet both hold on to essence. The Creationist holding onto the pristine initial kids book, zoo like essence. Evolutionist seeking deeper the gold essence at heart of the universe.

What if essence is the mistake? What if looked one way a tortoise is just a tortoise, really very different from a lizard and strangely similar to a rock. What if looked the other all are just matter and chemistry? Neither way is more fundamental than the other?

I've been meaning as a slowly roll out the polemic to briefly mention the criticism of "adaptationism" as coined by E.O.Wilson. The dogma is that DNA holds the differences between one animal the other. You want to see how a Tortoise is different from Lizard just look at its DNA, its all in there. And you want to know why a tortoise looks like it does and a Lizard looks like it does then just look at the environmental pressure, selection and adaptations of that DNA. A tortoise has a domed shell because it feeds on plants and so only needs to move slowly which means it must be able to defend itself. A lizard is slender and streamlined because it feeds on active prey and defends itself by running. E.O.Wilson questioned whether this is the right way to see it. It is more that we have some clay that was moulded in a direction. We don't say that clay is critical to the functions of a plate and a cup. We can make them from wood, plastic and metal also. The essence of a cup does not lie in its matter. It just needs anything that is suitably rigid and waterproof. So too with tortoise. How much of a tortoise is to do with what it is moulded from and how much is moulding and adaptation. We look at insects with their exoskeletons, 3 body segments, 6 legs, wings, spiracles and see no difference across the entire group. Yet this starting setup has been moulded into the greatest array on Earth (of multicellular organisms). Its not correct to say that 3 body segments is necessary for an ant to be an ant, its just it has inherited this because ants came from the family we call insects. When we buy a plate and a cup from a potters it will be clay not because a plate needs to be clay but simply because that it where it came from. So when Evolutionists and Darwinists speak of essence they are often bundling things that are nothing to do with adaptation into their idea of essence. It is like gold being able to be made from things other than atoms. And indeed this is a step to realisating that essence is the problem.

Suppose we buy some gold in a computer game. It looks like gold, it behaves like gold, but it is not made from atoms. It is a narrative and stimulation of sense created by a computer. It may even have value like gold, as with various virtual currencies in games. It is actually as good as gold, yet it isn't made from atoms. It is the same with convergent evolution two different evolutionary families adapt to create something similar. We have the Orcas and the sharks. Yet one is made from mammal essence and the other is fish essence. If you eat them you will notice the fundamental difference in what they are made from.

Time is running out and this polemic is huge. I hope enough has been said to start to drive the wedge into essence. We think in terms of what things are and what they are made from. We believe in essence. Creationists think this essence is made by God, immutable and unchanging as fixed now as when it left Gods hand. And they are right looking one way. But alchemists and scientists want to throw that away and look at more fundamental underlying essences that unify things. And they are right looking another way. But there is a third way that does not need to apply fixed essence to things. They can be fixed like the tortoise in the zoo which has a cage specially for its type, or they can be unified like Orcas and the Sharks that could be in separate mammal and fish houses or could be put in the same fish tank as top ocean predators. Or we race through the insect house at the zoo and not being that interested just see nasty six legged critters without much essential difference. Yet to me who loves them I would see 20 or so families and countless genii. Or they can be really unified as we walk through the DNA labs of the zoo and see tortoise, orca  shark, beetle DNA in test tubes. Or even more fundamental as we go through the chemistry labs and see the chemical process and diagrams showing the elements from which the molecules from which all the animals are made. Or we could put on 3D goggles and walk through a virtual zoo where dinosaurs exist and imaginary creates we never even saw have been made, forgetting for a minute it is make believe and attributing essence to each of these creations.

There is no fundamental essence. There is no fundamental moment of creation because there is no fundamental thing there. Its a infinitely complex world with endless faces, as fascinating as when we first had a tortoise pointed out to us, but as deep as we wish to go. How could a God have created this bit by bit? Did he moulded existing clay like in the Bible or did he make the clay itself. And if he made the clay did he mould atoms or did he make them also, and electrons, and quarks, and strings... its an infinite regress again. God does not play with essences, if He did anything he made essence itself.

Is there a problem with Semitism?

Much has been said about Anti-Semitism but before Anti-Semitism there was Semitism of which little is said.

Before we start its a bit meaningless as all the tribes of the region are Semitic. But the most famous Semitism and the one most people associate with Semitism is Jewish Semitism. This is the promotion of the Jewish race.

Most imfamously when the Germans got sick of the impoverishment caused by the Versailles Agreement of 1919 they fought back to reassert themselves generating what might be called "Germanism" or "Saxonism" as the Germans viewed the English as the same race. They promoted the Saxon races above other races, and in particular the Jews were suppressed.

Now the problem with these "-ism" is this. Supposing a Semitist (e.g. a Zionist) meets a Saxonist (e.g. a Nazi). The Saxonist will promote people of their own race. The Semitist will say well I'm not a Saxon so I don't care about you I will promote my own Semitic people. And the Saxonist will say well I don;t care about you I'm not Semitic I will promote my own people. It starts small, but as the assumpion that you will be rejected by the other group in favour of their own, and that they may even be working against you becomes entrenched, the divisions grow. And this is what happened in Nazi Germany. The Germans stopped helping the Jews but it is important to realise the Jews stopped helping the Germans. You cannot have two gods. As an "-ist" you cannot be Semitic and Saxon at the same time. You either promote Saxon people, or you promote Jewish but not both. I know almost nothing of Hitlers views but on Wikipedia there is a passage from his book were he expresses exactly this problem. Jews are not Germans. I don't think this was a German problem as much as a Jewish problem. Ask a Semitic Jew - they do not see themselves as Saxons. If Germans are Saxons with Saxon culture then Hiter was right Jews are not Germans, and Jews would have agreed with him - they do not see themselves as Saxons.

After the horrors of WW2 a solution was proposed to this problem. People stopped being "-ists". The Germans were told that they were no longer a race of people, bur rather a Nation that embodied people of all races. The same has happened across Europe and America. So Saxons now live alongside the rich ethnic diversity of Europe and the world. Obviously a "pure race" like the Germans and the Jews both believed and believe in is a myth anyway. Everyone has mixed parentage. In UK while the Nazis may have felt kindred racial identity with us, we are a mix of celtic, spanish (the beaker folks), gaul, saxon, angle, jute, roman, danish (viking) and an ever increasing huge genetic diversity and cultural heritage. Hitler famously had Jewish ancestry, and Jews if they are honest have a diverse ancestry also. They are not homogenous and there are many branches of the Jewish tribes. The Ashkenazi contraversially for example I believe do not even originate from the Levant.

So it seems the whole Western world has moved on from the Nazis except the Jews. While the Germans have stopped being Saxonist the Jews have remained as Semitic as they were before the war. They still believe in promoting their own people based on race, they believe their race is pure and distinct from other races also. Indeed the very racist attitudes that started the whole problem have not changed at all. As long as people view themselves as fundamentally different from others they will generate distrust. Cultural difference is fine - we don't all need to celebrate Christmas, Hannukka or Diwali or wear suits, Hasidic dress or Saris but we need to be open and freely share this culture with others. The moment this culture becomes an exclusive right (of who?) then the barriers are up. If because of bloodline for example people become exluded then social problems will start to emerge, barriers between communities will form and differences deepen and entrench. We had this problem with the old global aristocracies. Wealth passed on by bloodline led to fundamental divisions in society controlled by marriage. Eventually society ended these bloodlines in the guillotine. It is the risk faced by all closed bloodlines - the only way for insiders to get in is either by marriage or by spilling that blood.

So Anti-semitism is not the real problem. Anti-semitism is only a reaction to another problem: namely Semitism. But what can we do about this? Ironically Anti-Semitism is the solution. But I say that very, very carefully so as to be misunderstood!!!! I reject violence.

Anti-Semitism is not racism. It is not saying that the Jews are an inferior people with less rights than other people. That is no better than Semitism (which says that the Jews demand better treatment than other people). It is rather exactly what it says: a demand for the end of "Semitism" in exactly the same way that the Anti-Disestablishmentarianists demanded an end to Disestablishmentarianism.

For the world to be peaceful people must respect one another equally, and especially not based on race or colour. If you run to someones help do not discriminate based upon their race or colour. A black person should not help the black person becase they are black, and the Jew should not help the Jew because they are a Jew. You help people because they are friends or family or because you resect their basic humanity. Indeed ultimately we should aim to see only the humanity in our fellow humans. This way society remains fluid and free.

At the moment the focus in not on help but on harm. They say you should not harm someone based on race or colour. A black person should not harm a white person based on colour, and a Jew should not harm an Arab based on race. But no one should be harming anyone so this is rather missing the point. Racism is about treating people differenly based on race which makes Semitism a racism.

What a different place the Middle East would be with an enforced end to all this nonsense racism from both Jews and Arabs. Indeed it used to be like that in the Past where Jews and Arabs lived together without deep divisions. The advanced Western world should impose absolute restrictions on the Middle East and enforce a change of dialogue completely away from race and religion. I fear however the biggest opponents to this will be the Semites who with each generation seem to entrench this medaeval way of bloodline thinking and division ever deeper.

On reflection it is extraordinary in this analysis how the very dialogues that are being closed down of "anti-semitism" are actually the ones that will lead to peace. And how a persisting fear of examining the multi-lateral problem that led to the Holocaust have completely frozen progress in this particularly difficult subject. This insistence on supporting Semitism and promoting the differential treatment of people based on race cannot ever lead to peace between people because it is based on inequality. The Middle-East is currently built by several generations of inept fools on inequality and the security of the people there is thus built on inequality. This apparent secuity is in reality no-security.

== Update

It is extraordinary on further reflection that we are philosophically still in the same place we were in 1930 even after the deaths of 12million people in Nazi concentration camps and 6millions Jews we are, if anything, in a worse place than then.

The problem in 1930 was the belief that there was a pure race of Aryans and a pure race of Jews. I think in the 21th Century the idea of a pure breed of Aryans is not so popular, but the belief in a pure race of Jews is actually far worse. It is so rampant that there is even a country built upon this belief now. Exactly how we are to see the difference between a Germany built upon the idea of a pure race of Aryans and an Israel built upon a pure race of Jews I am currently completely at a loss to understand. The "Pure Race of Jews" (PRJ) can scream anti-semitism all they like, either I am stupid (for which they shouldn't really discriminate against me its just low IQ) or there is a philosophical problem here.

Its a very deep problem as well. I just posted on Species and realise its a very similar problem to "Jews". Much time is spent projecting "species", even by people who know full well that species are mutable, and change all the time and even go exitinct. It is the same with races. We all know that races are not pure, they change and they can even go extinct. Perhaps deliberately trying to make a species or race go extinct is wrong (except perhaps wth some diseases) but that they can and do is not a question. A quick DNA test on any Jew will prove to them that (1) they are of mixed parentage (2) there is no real "Jew Gene" difference between them and anyone else. Its just the same with Aryans. There simply is no such thing essentially. People can be more one thing than another, but are absolutely and definitively are not purely one thing. I blame Plato for this type of thinking, but perhaps we can blame thinkers who "identify with being" Jewish as well. I'd need to know more about Jewish thinking to see where they went wrong. The extraordinary irony here is that the type of questions I'm asking are very much Aryan thinking from places like India. How odd that such a notorious period in our history contains such deep resonances. It is for ths reason that we shouldn't just do a case-closed on it. When 80 million people die, it was far from a simple case-closed.

Jews are not the only problem. Arabs are too. Only last week the NEWS was referring to Qatar as an "Arab host." How can Qatar be Arab. Arabs are people: Qatar is a country? It is as bad as Israelis calling Israel a Jewish Nation. Jews are people: Israel is a country (created it should be noted by Gentiles. How non-kosher and Isur is that!). True Qatar is home to a majority of Arabs who follow an Arab culture and identity, but this can change. The Arabs can lose their culture: start wearing jeans, start eating sausages and burgers and start speaking American. They quickly will cease to be Arabs. They can have partners from other parts of the world and soon Qatar is not Arab at all. Some conservationists (conservatives, traditionalists) may try to stop this indeed it might be a good thing if the new habits are bad habits, but change is not avoidable. It should be pointed out that no-one was Muslim before Muhammad, Arabs were not Muslim at some point. How much else did they gain on the way through history and how much is really not changeable? Unsettling questions for people who hold strongly to an identity. But if we are to live together we can't hold that strongly. The tiger may not be the lion, but they are both cats. Where there is difference, there is also similarity. And the more different a Jew thinks they are from an Arab the more similar they are. They are ultimately both Semites who worship the same God and prophets. Perhaps it is the similarity which makes them feel so different. Quite why the Germans and Jews came to feel so different is also probably because of similarity too. They both think they are pure superior races so much so in fact that they both forgot that they are all humans. We are reminded of the 6 million innocent Jews who died, but 9 million mostly innocent Germans died also. A tragedy not for Jews or Germans but for all of Humankind.