Moralism - the enemy of Reality

If Moral Virtue's Christianity
Christ's pretensions were all vanity
The Moral Christian is the cause
of the unbeliever and his laws. - William Blake

Morality and politics are a toxic mix. 

I'm thinking of thousands of prisoners banged up because of the spasms of moral outrage their actions cause to - wait for it - those guardians of moral rectitude, the tabloid editors. 

Wind the years back, and in 1945, homosexuality was also seen as immoral, and the moralists made it illegal. So much so that when the concentration camps were liberated in 1945, some gay people imprisoned in concentration camps by Hitler found themselves imprisoned again by the "liberators".  Sick.

In our lifetime, suicide also was treated as a moral crime. One of my patients was banged up after a failed suicide attempt. The shame of imprisonment affected his or her whole life.

That was then. In our more enlightened times, thousands of dope heads are in prison - at huge cost to the taxpayer - because they seek instant pleasure, at risk of modest mental and physical harm to themselves. The tabloid editors, whose preferred drug is ethyl alcohol, see that as immoral, and so the absurd criminalisaton continues.

Morality sucks. Lao Tzu, the writer of the Tao Te Ching, said

When the Tao is lost, we have goodness

When goodness is lost, we have morality.

Just listen to the Moral Maze on Radio 4. A maze is a place deliberately designed to make you get lost. It is set up to create confusion, because morality deals in absolutes, in black and white categories where no compromise is allowable or possible. 

In cognitive behavioural therapy, the main aim of treatment is to identify such good-bad, right-wrong absolutes in the mind of the client and to help them to see that a more graded evaluation of things reflects reality more accurately, and results in a more harmonious way of being.

Which is not to say that we can do without ethics. But that is a different thing. Think of moralism as ethics gone rotten.

That's all.

PS Blake meant by pretensions, the things that Christ was putting out - such as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus found himself continually at loggerheads with the moralists of the day.

GMOs in brief

People get muddled up between science and technology. Genetics is science, and it's brilliant. GMOs are technology, and some of them are dodgy. Then there's advocacy, things like saying that there is "substantial equivalence" between GMOs and natural food, and that is simply disingenuous.

GMO food should be labelled so that those who choose not to eat it have the freedom so to do. This is also important for science, bcz to study the health effects of GMOs you need a population who are not exposed to them. Like you need non-smokers to find out about the health effects of smokers.

That's all

What is wrong with us humans?

What is wrong with us humans? Something is amiss. We are not, overall, a happy bunch.

Violence has always been part of human behaviour.  There is some evidence that we are making progress.  Also, despite the impressions conveyed by media reports, figures show that wars at least, wars between states, are getting less frequent and destructive in recent times.  Maybe the UN should take more interest in resolving separatist conflict.

Nevertheless, we have a way to go. Humans have symptoms: War, crime, violence, hatred, rape, greed, theft, anger, prejudice, unkindness, coldness, psychopathy, disputations, thoughtlessness and arguments, you name it, we show it at some time or other.

The infinite diversity of vices can all be traced back to one single vice: selfishness.
Prioritising our own individual interests above the interests of other people.

In the case of the psychopath, the individual is absolute. In some cases, the "Family" (or in-group)  is treated well, but those outside the Family are not respected. The Family may be the biological nuclear or extended family, or a social family, as in groups like Mafia or Cosa Nostra, or to sect members in the case of closed religious sects or cults.

This problem of selfishness can be viewed as a developmental problem. The human infant lives in a bubble of self-absorption. When a baby has needs - hunger, thirst, cold, etc, it yells, and the need (usually) gets attended to. Growing up is a process of learning that the needs of the individual must be balanced with the needs of other individuals. This is the process of socialisation, of learning that one is a member of a society.

If this process is radically disordered, we end up with a psychopath (aka sociopath) who cares only about his/her own needs, and is blind to the needs of others.

All this is pretty obvious. Why spend time setting it out?

Because the dominant ideology of our time is individualism.  It is the ideology behind free market capitalism and libertarianism, and these are the dominating themes that drive climate change denial contrarianism. They are also squaring up as distinct anti-green campaigners. It is individualism that leads to the idea that the State is intrinsically bad, and wants to reduce the size of the state, regardless of whether that should lead to (more) corruption.

We must always remember that individualism is also unscientific, since homo "Sapiens" is a social animal.

This is not to claim that all capitalists are sociopaths (though some are)  The point of all this is, that for humanity to function optimally, we need to see beyond our immediate individual needs, and take a broader and longer view of the situation of all humanity, and of the environment that keeps humanity alive. We need to be able to see that others have the same emotions and needs as ourselves. We need to take a social and an ecological view of the world.

The point is that a world view based on individualism is unlikely to build the best of all possible worlds, because the narrow, individual world view is so often the problem, not the solution.

Free Market Fundamentalism's absurd contradiction

Regular readers know that I have been debating with a free marketeer.

Free market fundamentalism (FMF) has an inherent internal contradiction:

How come that a free market, 

which consists of sinful* men 

competing against each other for filthy lucre, which is the root of all evil, 

can produce the best of all possible economic worlds?

This is the opposite of axiomatic. 

(Green economics is based on three axioms or self evident truths)

All they can do is to say that law makers who seek to influence the market may make errors also. This is true: but the law makers are working, however imperfectly, from a position of being democratically elected to serve the interests of the people, and if the interests of the people are logically worked through, they will arrive at the aforementioned three axioms. 

The fact is that Free Market Fundamentalism is a species of philosophical idealism, perhaps the last remaining in an age when most real philosophers have abandoned idealism. 

Its idealism is of a free market whose Invisible Hand will make everything right. This is clearly not the case, but when faced with this, FMFs blame the contamination of the ideal with interference by Governments. 

They overlook the tendency for market actors themselves to interfere in the free market, distorting it by forming cartels and also by bending public opinion away from reality, as in the case of AGW sceptics.

FMF is absurd, and it's continued existence is a tribute to the power of money to influence thought and opinion.   

*Tories seem to believe in original sin, but it still works without original sin, by substituting self-motivated individuals.

Wikileaks puts an end to Leo Strauss and the idea of privileged information

The recent Wikileaks farrago, and indeed all leaks in the Internet age, put an end to the idea that governments can and/or should govern by keeping people in the dark.

The philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was accused by Shadia Dury of teaching that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." This view of Strauss is, not surprisingly, rejected by Straussians, but the suspicion remains that those in government feel that they are in some way special. The other side of this is the common belief that governments know things that common people do not, which gives them a licence to do the insane things that they do (e.g. invade Iraq).


Whatever the truth of Straussian protected knowledge, the fact remains that anyone in government who commits his/her thoughts to paper or electrons must now think twice: How would this look if it surfaced in the public domain?

This is not necessarily a bad thing.


PS Iain Dale is not happy about Assange.
Are there any lengths, he cries, sounding more and more like Indignant of Tunbridge Wells, to which Julian Assange will not go to slag off America and compromise the security of the west?

I pointed out that he did not complain when Wikileaks published the "climategate" papers, which delayed and diluted the response at Copenhagen. Sauce for the goose...

To think, or not to be?

I think, therefore I am.
A reasonable start
for any man,
not just Descartes,
but doesn’t get us far.
“What am I for?”
is more the thought
that calls us to the bar.

Make sure that you don’t fail:
set out to be the alpha male.
get the top job.
Make sure you don’t get stopped
or get your bollocks cropped.

Don’t mention that we’re headed for the shit.
I said it once, I think I got away with it.

Here’s what to do:
Eat, screw,
Look out for number one,
Have loads of fun.
Make mon-
-ey.

Don’t get caught, and if you do
blame it on someone you once knew.
Stay with the pack
head for the brink
and, no matter what may come
just never, ever,


think.

© Richard Lawson
Congresbury
3 Sept 2006

Camelford Poisoning: Scientists preferred scholastic to scientific method.

The Lowermoor poisoning incident is back in the news:"Water staff told 'keep quiet' over Camelford poisoning".

This is what I wrote back in 2006, slightly edited, in the context of an essay about the difference between the scientific method and authority statements made by scientists:

On the 6th of July 1988, 20 tonnes of concentrat ed aluminium sulphate solution were discharged into the treated water reservoir at Lowermoor, Cornwall, which serves the town of Camelford. Local residents and holidaymakers who drank the water experienced a variety of acute effects, and a lesser number also remained ill for a long time there after.

Six months later a committee ("Group") was set up under Dame Barbara Clayton to provide independent expert advice to the Secretary of State for Health.

The group noted that this incident was unique in the history of pollution; there was no previous experience of humans taking in this particular cocktail of ionic lead, zinc, copper, aluminium, and sul phate. They noted that the symptoms of the people was also unique.

They had wide ranging problems, with sore/dry mouth, felt unwell and tired, had stomach aches, were very thirsty, had nausea and vomiting, itching, sore eyes, and mouth ulcers. The persistent effects noted by the group were aches and joint pains, memory loss, poor concentration, speech problems, depression and behavioural problems in children, hypersensitivity, rashes and mouth ulcers, and gastrointestinal disorders. These symptoms do not fit into any recognised diagnostic category.

So the observation is a unique toxic insult, and a unique resultant syndrome.

The reasonable hypothesis here is  that the toxins caused the illness.

Surprisingly, instead of testing this hypothesis by advising on necessary medical and scientific studies, the group opened their textbooks, and looked up the known effects of each of the ions, taken in isolation.

In each case they found that the ion in those concentrations were incapable of causing those effects.

On this evidence, which was book-based scholastic theory that did not relate to mixtures of ions, they con cluded that the cocktail was incapable of causing the observed ill ness. There was specific scientific evidence of deposition of aluminium in the bones of one affected case. The group specifically advised against following up this lead.

The group concluded that their book-learning could not account for the illness and that ergo, the symptoms were due to "anxiety". There was no psychiatrist in the group to advise on this point. As a result of the public outcry that followed, the Clayton Group was reconvened, and came to the conclusion that they had been quite right in the first place.

Years later, the affected citizens were given out-of-court settlements in compensation for their suffering.

This incident occurred when South West Water was being prepared for privatisation. Which would explain why staff were told to keep quiet, in the BBC report above.

We can conclude from this that the statements of scientists, especially those working at the behest of Government, are not necessarily "scientific" but statements based on their authority as eminent and respectable scientists. In the Lowermor case, the scientists did not use the scientific method, but the scholastic method, the same line that the Church used to discredit Galileo.

As Galileo might have said "Quel puzzi"



I tried to express this at the time, wrote to the newpapers, but you try talking to a journalist about scholastic method and watch his eyes glaze over. Thank the gods for the blogosphere, where we can discuss complex ideas.

Why does Osborne want to kill UK science?

A physicist on the post below asks why Osbore is so intent on his madness in eating - or in fact, burning - the scientific seedcorn.

Good question. In this case, madness = detachment from reality. Probably Osbore does not experience auditory hallucinations, ideas of reference etc, although the Market he is such awe of does have bipolar features.

The political equivalent of psychosis is idealism - in the philosophical sense, which sets up a single idea as a reference point of all existence and experience. For the Tories, the ideal is of the free market. They are Free Market Fundamentalists, and they are Individualists.

These paired ideas lead them to distrust any collective ("State") activity. If the "state" is taking money off individual tax payers and giving it to scientists, they are opposed to it.

Another motive is that to a great extent the Tories are ruled by the tabloids - Murdoch and the Mail. These have a huge influence on Tory voters and therefore Tory party thinking. The tabloids are salted occasionally with research that is daft, or presented as daft. It is motivated by the desire of the thick to believe themselves to be cleverer than smart people.


Third, Osbore does not understand investment because it involves multiplication and stuff, not to mention systems analysis. He only does adding up and taking away.

That's my feeble attempt to answer the "why".

Has Stephen Hawking got his sums right? 0 =1??

Centre of Milky Way Galaxy; Image from Hubble Site

Professor Stephen Hawking has decided that there is no need for God to explain the Universe. Although it is clearly dodgy to debate his argument without reading the book, the nature of his argument, according to condensed reports, does open itself to thought.

He is quoted  as saying:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," says Hawking. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going".

So far, so good. He has demolished the Pyrotechnnologist God, the idea of a BigPerson outside of the universe who initiates the causal chain that sets the Big Bang going; the idea of a Creator who exists for eternity, but suddenly, possibly out of  boredom, decides to create a cosmos out of nothing, just to have something to watch. Bit like switching on daytime TV. The dismissal of that conception is not a problem, except for religious fundamentalists, but they have problems with the thinking of the man sitting next to them, so that is not a problem.

The problem I, and many others have, is the idea that "the universe can and will create itself from nothing."  Spontaneously.

Nothing is nothing. No-thing. It means no energy, no matter, no branes, no strings, no dimensions,  no laws of physics, nothing. It is zero. To assert that something can come from nothing is to assert that zero is equal to one, 0=1, which would overturn mathematics, the most  positive of all our mental disciplines. Not to mention causing all computers to malfunction. This is a big problem.

Let's go from what we actually know. We know for certain that the universe is expanding. As we go forward in time, it gets bigger. Indeed, it is not an expansion of matter within space and time, it is an expansion of space and time.


So if we run the arrow of time backwards, the universe gets "smaller" until it reaches a point of origin in space and time. In our imagination, this point is small, but that is an illusion, because what we are looking at is all that is, which is...how to express it...a big lot of very big bigness.

Now physicists have been studying the state of affairs in the few milliseconds after the Big Bang. They can work out conditions and interactions of particles and things. Hawking appears to have concluded that we now have a full understanding of all the laws that obtained then. He may or may not be right. The point is, as they work their way back, there comes a point where distinctions are no longer possible. Existence is just that, existence. A Singularity.

Now although the conditions that obtain within a Singularity are by definition beyond the reach of science, I personally cannot imagine that the Singularity is anything but totally undifferentiated. It is beyond space and time, and differentiation can only exist withing space and time. The singularity is also infinitely massive, and infinitely energetic, since it is destined to become the Universe. There is nothing outside of the Singularity, (see above) so it must be infinitely extensive. It is beyond time, so it is eternal and unchanging.

What intrigues me is that this description of the Singularity, which is the result of rigorous use of the scientific, analytical function of our brain, is that it is remarkably close to the description of the Infinite given by mystics, who arrive at the Infinite through the rigorous use of the synthetic function of the brain. Synthetic in the sense of refusing to let the mind wander from one point to another, a refusal to look at distinctions.

The only difference is that the mystics view their Singularity with an overwhelming sense of positive awe. They describe merging with the One as a state of total undifferentiation.

It is very clear that some may choose to regard these two singularities as totally different things, one real and one imaginary. More on this later, because this was a bit of a diversion.

The key point is that the Singularity Exists. That there is being, rather than non-being.

Again, there are two possible views on this. One is to regard it as completely inconsequential: if there were no being, we would not be here to wonder. We are here, so there is no cause for wonderment.

The other view is to contemplate the Mystery of Being - both in its singular state, and its differentiated state, as viewed by us in the matrix of life that sustains us. To me, being is the ultimate mystery - a question completely beyond the bounds of science, since it is untestable. The only thought we can bring to it is that Being manifests a tiny portion of Itself to us every time we use our senses. The trees, grass, flowers, sky, sun, stars are all an exposure of an infinitesimal fragment of the Immensity that was once a Singularity and is now a differentiated unfolding universe in its many levels - matter, energy (both visible and dark) stars, planets, life, consciousness with all the infinite complexities that occur within human consciousness, right down to events like #MetGate.

In encountering the natural world and other human beings (and by encountering I mean authentically experiencing them, not just registering their form in our perceptions in an automatic, habit driven way), we are experiencing a part of the Mystery that is Being.

Think of the cosmos as a hologram, where each part contains an image that is most accurately seen in its totality.

One of the most important encounters is with other people. There are two main options here: to experience them as objects, or reflexively as sentient beings. The former can result in killing; the latter can result in loving.

The highest response it to give a loving response to those that are trying to kill us, metaphorically or physically. To love our enemies, not just our friends.

Behaviour authenticates or refutes belief. It is useless to entertain high thoughts and behave like a complete bastard. The loveless fundamentalist is a walking advertisement of the falsity of his belief system.

Somebody said, "If you cannot find God in the next person you meet, it is pointless looking any further".

That is how Quakers think. "There is that of God within everyone".


I'm just saying. I'm not trying to start an argument.

PS Stephen Hawking is a genius, but not infallible.

PPS Does unconfirmable M-theory plus the anthropic tautology represents the end to the quest to solve the  riddle of existence?

Deep Greens, Environmentalists, Paul Kingsnorth - and Jeremy Clarkson

Over on openDemocracy, there is a debate over Paul Kingsnorth's  position. He is unhappy that environmentalists support renewable energy systems, because of their impacts, and because of the influence of the Left in the green movement. He sets out his position here. This is my response:

As a Green Party activist, I would be reluctant to be labelled with any "-ism", even ecologism, since -isms usually signify that all reality is in the process of being shoe-horned into one ideological box. I could make an exception, on the grounds that ecology does refer to all reality.



Green political philosophy is based, uniquely, on the realisation that mankind is not a being in itself, but that our existence is dependent on a biosphere that we are in the process of destroying in a long, progressive act of mass suicide. Green is a political philosophy based on human ecology, the study of the interrelationship between humankind and our environment. It is unique, because all other political philosophies are anthropocentric, based on a view of one human attribute, whether that be our social aspect, or our individual aspect, our need for freedom or our need for rules. Each absolutises that aspect, which ends up with a distortion of reality - and degredation and devaluation of both those humans who do not conform to the model, and the non-human world which is sidelined by the philosophy.

Ecology is not a thing, it is a relationship. Paul Kingsnorth's position, it seems to me, is not so much ecocentric as allocentric, in that he makes his absolute reference point the non-human part of Nature. It seems his ideal would be a world in which he alone is in a position to view the wilderness, perhaps able to go back to a small community of like minded souls. We should remember that if everyone lived like Arne Ness, the deep ecologist, there would be no wilderness, just an ex-wilderness dotted with hermitages spaced equidistantly from each other.

It all comes down to the famous Irish direction: "To get there, you don't want to start from here."  Well, right, but we are here, there are too many of us, we are causing a massive extinction event, and we are wrecking our planet's thermostat.

The work of green politicians is to guide mankind from its present autistic (in the sense of self-preoccupied) position to a place where humanity is living in balance with nature. It is a difficult job, which involves difficult choices, such as putting up technology that harvests the abundant energy that the sun gives us, in the knowledge that it will offend the retinae of Paul Kingsnorth and others who see a well loved skyline or horizon changed; likewise putting up long distance electicity gridlines. But if the alternative to these regrettable visual intrusions is runaway climate change and resource wars, that is a choice that we have to make.

Categorisation is always dubious. Positions on continua is usually more true to the state of affairs. To try to split the green movement into deep greens and shallow greens, ecocentrics and environmentalists, is unhelpful. Likewise the categorisation I gave above - into ecologists and anthropocentrists.

At heart, every human has a love of Nature. There is a green light in every human heart, based on some moment of wonder as the child sees nature for what it is. Some, like Thomas Traherne, and perhaps Paul Kingsnorth, have this to almost painful degree. In others, the memory is almost forgotten, buried under mistaken ideologies and day-to-day concerns.

Categorisations lead to disputes. Some disputes are necessary. The major dispute of our present time is between the free market fundamentalists who are in the driving seat,  the Jeremy Clarksons who flooring it on a road that leads over a cliff, and the ecological economists who are trying to persuade him to stop and take a look at the map.

Compared to this, debates between the nuanced differences between ecologists are pretty peripheral.
Ultimately, we are all one family, and we have to learn how to get from the madhouse of where we are to a position where the needs of humanity and the health of the natural system that sustains humanity are in balance.

Restating the philosophical basis of the Green Party

Over on Bright Green  I found an interesting discussion on the dangers of diluting Green Party radicalism.  All good stuff, but  I stubbed my toe on this line:

"Our socially justice approach is what makes us unique. "

Er...no. There are several other parties, ranging from Respect, right down to the LibDems and poor old Labour who would claim (with varying degrees of justification, or not) that this is what they also are about.

The Green Party's USP lies in the fact that our political philosophy is rooted in ecology - the study of the interrelationship between an organism (in this case, humans) and its environment.

The great historical political divide has been between individualists (Hobbesians, Conservatives, neo-liberals &c) and Socialists - Communsits, Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, Labourites &c &c &c in their infinite regression of sub-divisions). The only thing they share is their anthropocentric starting point. Political ecology takes us beyond this divide.

The fact is that humans are social animals, like wolves, not solitary animals like bears. Socialists base their philosophy on this fact, which is undoubtedly better than individualist philosophy, simply because individualism has no scientific basis (all it has is a lot of money, which gives it its dominance).  Labour demonstrated the weakness of its socialism in its corrosive attack on individual civil liberties. We on the other hand have a fairly strong libertarian and anarchist tradition in our party.

We greens base our philosophy on our interdependence on the real world, that is, on ecology. We were called the Ecology Party before we changed to the Green Party. In basing our thought on ecological reality, we transcend the individual-social divide, and can reconcile the individual-social antithesis in our bigger framework. Our affinity is more with socialists, simply because of the fact that we are social animals, and because the solution to the ecological crisis depends on co-operative action. But because we are not merely social-"ists" (i.e. not religiously wedded to the idea of the primacy of society, or the interests of one group within society above all other groups) we can also promote the importance of individual liberty within the constraints of the needs of environment and society.

Our emphasis on social justice is not just based on the fact that it is ethical, but also on the fact that only an equitable society will have the strength and cohesion necessary to make the radical transition to a sustainable economy. (Spirit Level stuff)

I keep hearing this line from new(ish) Green Party members: "We must get beyond being an environmentalist party".  We never were an environmentalist party, in the sense that the LibDems would claim to be.  We sorted this one out in the 70s, but it seems that we have to sort it out again. We are an ecological party. The difference is between something that is desirable, and something that is existential.

The argument can be summarised by saying that we seek justice and equity, not just

• within our own nation (as most other parties would claim), and not just 
• between our nation and other nations (as internationalists would wish), but also 
• between our generation and future generations. 

This tripartite approach to social justice is what makes us unique.

Killing Spree Hypothesis: Kyrgyzstan, Bloody Sunday, Derrick Bird - and Trident

Here is an hypothesis that links the events in Kyrgyzstan, the Bloody Sunday killings, and Derrick Bird the Cumbria killer and Trident.

Some human beings,  in certain circumstances, once they have killed, will tend to proceed to repeat the act of killing. Once the human being steps out of the house of civilisation, once the sanction against killing has been bypassed, we go into a state of mind that seeks to repeat the experience. In extreme situations, it is common for people to go into a derealised state - a mode of consciousness where emotion is suspended. Most people who have been in a car accident go into this state. There is a feeling of calm in this state, and of detachment. The state of mind is well known. As a psychiatrist, I should know about the kinds of behaviour in this state, but I have to confess that I do not.




Some readers may find this hypothesis to be a mere truism. Others may well challenge me to produce evidence. And so I should. Manana. Research to be done. Someone has probably written a book about it already.

But if the hypothesis is anywhere near correct, it has a huge implication for nuclear weapons policy.  I have shown here that our Government's insistence on trying to cling on to its weapons of mass destruction, because there is no guarantee that they will not be used. The Killing Spree Hypothesis predicts that it is improbable that a limited nuclear exchange would stay limited. There is a high probability that if one goes up, they will all go up.

Marx once said that he would not want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member. The Club of nuclear weapons states - US, Russia, China, UK, France, Israel, Pakistan, India - all think they are sufficiently rational to sustain general nuclear deterrence without escalating to nuclear war. Just like junkies, who reckon they can handle it. They declare Iran and North Korea to be too irrational to be allowed to join the club. But in fact, they are all irrational humans, capable of kicking over the traces of civilisation. There is no binary rational / irrational categorisation of human individuals or of states of mind: rationality and irrational states of mind overlap, coexist, are arranged on a continuum.

Any regime that is sufficiently irrational  to think that it can create security on the basis of being able to threaten total insecurity is clearly unfit to be in possession of nuclear weapons.

The UK budget deficit, and the military review clearly provides an excellent time to look at the £70-100 billion cost of Trident. Now is the time for the British Government to provide firm international leadership, and call a conference of all nuclear weapons states with the intention of creating a nuclear free world.


It is a brilliant opportunity.

Except that Dr Liam Fox has taken Trident out of the defence review.

And we are just sitting hear, reading and writing, pushing ideas around. We should be out there demonstrating. I should be out there demonstrating. But I don't. I just sit here writing.


Maybe I'm derealised too. Maybe we all are, to a greater or lesser extent. In the words of the song,

We sleep not part but all our lives,
Times past are just a moving dream
Made by a self that is not I 
but one I was.



I wrote that.

I wrote this too:

RETURN

If we could see that endless point in time
when we shall know for certain that
our journey here has reached its final end

and in some way   reel in the flow of life
and from that soaring pinnacle
look back upon this state

when we  can live and  love
and walk and breathe and
sing and talk and eat and act

and then come back
remembering what we'd seen
no longer lost inside the crashing now

and now of world wave history
smashed in a broken compound eye
a shattered image of a breaking time

then with that timeless vision
we'd live each golden heartbeat
with such a fierce intensity

to drink the music of the  sky
study the winding ivy on the branch
feel the excitement of the water in the stream

dance to the rhythms of the wave
and learn to live in such a way
that joy is everywhere.
We covered a lot of ground here, but the underlying theme is that we need to not kill each other, because once the killing starts, it is hard to stop it. Nuclear deterrence is a kind of suspended killing spree, and the certainty of "nuclear deterrence" turning into Nuclear Terror is a value that appoaches unity with each year that passes. We have to get rid of nuclear weapons (and militarism generally) and we can get rid of nuclear weapons, because we - the nuclear nations - simply cannot afford the bloody things.

Nigel Farage insults EU President of Council: punish him with cold debate

I see that Nigel Farage MEP may be summoned for his outrageous rudeness to Herman Van Rampuy.  Farrage will become wet with smugness that if it goes ahead. It will give him more media attention, and an opportunity to rant about  EU as a threat to free speech. To be banned from the EU Parliament would give him a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure.

Farrage's attack is a classic example of the debating style of extreme right wingers. They major in ad homs and  personal abuse.  To try to exchange insults with a free market fundamentalist would be as if to enter a crapping contest with an elephant.

Why are extreme conservatives like this? The reason is that as fundamentalists, they believe that their point of view is absolutely and completely right. They scorn any kind of relativism, and they regard anyone who differs from their POV as 100% wrong, and stupid with it. They regard the rest of humanity with contempt, and for them, society does not exist..  The EU to them is a socialist plot, a deep conspiracy dreamed up by unnamed defeated Communists who went underground in 1991.

The best punishment for Farage would be somehow to compel him to debate the philosophical basis of his faith in such a way that he was unable to use personal abuse.  His presupposition, that the individual human being is the basic building block of economic reality, if not of all reality, would be shown to be absurd. The out-workings of his philosophy, from his boorish and contemptible words in Parliament, to the monstrous, debt-based  free market economy that is predicated on his philosophy, will be exposed as the dysfunctional behaviours that they really are.

Is the Green Movement a Religion?

One of the Ethical Man's points in his provocative piece entitled "Are environmentalists bad for the planet" is the assertion that the green movement is a religion.

Now I know all about this. Well, no that's stupid, because nobody knows all about anything. I have knowledge of it. I had a traumatic childhood in the Darbyite-Taylorite branch of the Exclusive (Plymouth) Brethren, from whence I migrated in adolescence to the relative liberty of evangelicalism, from there to the more intellectually interesting realms of Dooyeweerdian Christian philosophy, which is still an integrative influence on my thinking.

Before the sceptics start throwing brickbats, I must say that I am now happy to be a dogma-free zone, a Quaker, though not a very good attender.

It was a tenet of Dooyeweerdian philosophy that faith underpins any intellectual position, whether religious or secular. Maybe D. did not invent the idea himself, but it was certainly implicit in his work, and it seems to have gained currency at least in the USA. In fact my good friend Dr Glenn Friesen traces Gooyeweerd's influences back to a mystic by the name of Franz Xavier von Baader (1765-1841) . Unsurprisingly, this has not made Glenn popular among the tightly buttoned up Calvinistic Christians who cluster around Dooyeweerd's philosophy of the Cosmonomic Law Idea.

But I digress. The point is that there is a view of man that says that everyone has a religion, even if it's not a religion. Communism is a religion, Capitalism (worship of money) is a religion, consumerism is a religion. Green is a religion.

Bob Dylan, in his brief evangelical Slow Train Comin phase, put it like this:

"But you're gonna have to serve somebody

Yes you're gonna have to serve somebody

Well it may be the Devil, it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody"

So Rowlatt's point about green being a religion is just a truism. Greens are humans, humans are religious, therefore greens are religious, just as free market fundamentalists have a religion, and shoppers have a religion and football fans have a religion. Religion in these terms is what you hold most dear.

Big deal. It means nothing to anyone outside of the American Right Wing Aggressive Christian tradition, where is means that all greens are going to spend eternity roasting screaming in hell because we believe that it is important to protect our life-giving planetary environment, rather than believing in the Bible.

That, is of course, a matter for them. It has no bearing on whether the ecological ideology is true or not.

As far as I am concerned, the green political ideology is soundly based on the knowledge of where our bread comes from, as opposed to alternative abstract political philosophies which are based on the idea of mankind as a self-existent individual or social being.

OK.

Now to look at the valid part of Rowlatt's criticism. There is a cultic tendency in the Green movement, as there is in free marketism, or footballism, or consumerism. I find it within the Green Party, because that is where my life experience takes place, but it probably happens within all other strands of the green movement, and indeed any other political movement.

There is a regrettable exclusivity to some Greens' thinking. To be really Green, you have to be in the Green Party. Zac Goldsmith is not really a Green, because he is in the Tory Party. &c.
This is wrong.

The Quaker-style view of it is more accurate. There is a green light within everyone, a spark of attachment to Nature, that is experienced most intensely as a child.

Thomas Traherne said it best:
"The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things" It is well worth reading the whole passage.
He concludes
"So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world".

Everyone has the impulse to love Nature, but that the impulse is covered over with "education" and with learned behaviour, for instance the patently absurd notion that perpetual economic growth is necessary and sustainable. Of course there are real greens in other political parties, no question. The difference is that the green party is seeking political ways to make implement sustainability at the outset, not as a bolt-on added extra. Note "is seeking". We are in process, not at our destination. The written record of this endeavor to develop policies that can produce a sustainable society and economy, one that works with, and not against the grain of nature, is called the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society. (MfSS).

Which gives rise to another cultic manifestation within the beloved Green Party - MfSS fundamentalism. In this view, no green party person is supposed to say anything that is not contained within the MfSS. No going beyond what is written therein.

I think that the underlying cognitive psychology for some members is this : "The world is in a horrible mess. The Green Party is a little sub-creation where we will perfect an idea of how the world should be, and that perfection, the Manifesto, will save us".

It is a strange paradox, a quirk of psychology, that the very people who has the most strict and particular emphasis on this doctrine, may also be the most vehement in attacking MfSS policies that they disagree with.

Having written this, I am a bit worried that it will cause a storm for displaying some of the inner workings of our party just before a general election. However, the subject has been brought up, by Rowlatt. Spin doctors would meet his accusations with simple denial. Since transparency is one of our core values, we should show his argument for the truism that it is, but also examine our internal religious tendencies in order to get beyond them.

So, in summary, Justin "Ethical Man" Rowlatt's provocative claim that environmentalists are bad for the planet was a typical piece of light weight angled journalism. The oft-quoted claim that green is a religion is a trivial bit of truism. But we in the Green Party do have to look to the danger of exclusivism and fundamentalism, because they will only hold us back. Our ecological political ideology is the soundest political ideology around; it is a rock on which the wave of free-market fundamentalism will break itself.

Climate science is a proxy for ideological clash

The interminable debate about the minutiae of the science - today's news is about regrettable flaws in the methods of Jones and Wang - is really a proxy for a titanic ideological struggle between free market fundamentalism and ecological economics. The free market cannot deliver sustainability any more than Communism could. If anthropogenic climate change is happening, then we must found our economics on ecology, guiding the market, not letting it run free. This is anathema to the free marketeers, therefore climate science must be proven wrong.

Is AGW "proven?"

A reader asks (in a comment below on the Is Climate Change Man Made post):

Doc - I am not a scientist, rather a regular Joe concerned that we are uprooting our entire economic system due to unsubstantiated research. If any reasonable person with an open mind should accept the argument that scientists have put forth......why are there so many credible scientists that make strong and logical arguments discounting your claim?
You really do sound like an anti-capitalism - political activist versus a pure scientist.

How do you explain all of the DRASTIC climate changes our planet has experienced before humans?

I am like many other average citizens that do not know who to believe. I just know it has not been proven that man is THE ONLY EXPLANATION for GW.

Hi Skeptical Joe

Good question.
"So many credible scientists". Well, not so many actually. There are a few. Lindzen is a skeptical climate scientist. There are a few others. There are some petitions of scientists, like the Manhattan Declaration people, but if you look at the back story, you find that the list withers away like a snowball in a warm kitchen. George Monbiot has just done this, well worth a read.

Much of the skeptical stuff is just sand thrown in the air. It is highly effective, and they are having huge success just now, so the journalists are saying "the scientists manipulated the data". The facts are otherwise.

The stock in trade of the skeptics' armoury is to pick up one point - Medieval Warm Pariod, Ice Age Lag, Hockey stick, emails, any inconsistency, and announce "This proves global warming is not man-made" - as if their one piece of data overthrows the whole mass of evidence that the community of climate scientists have been putting together over the last 30 years. It does nothing of the sort. To refute the theory, they need to show how modern temperatures can be explained without the input of anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gases. This they have not done. If they were serious scientists, they would have done so by now. They only have to input valid data into the models. There is even a model on-line that they can play with.

I just know it has not been proven that man is THE ONLY EXPLANATION for GW.

What the general public - and quite a few scientists - do not understand is that science is always in a state of amendment. That is normal for science. They take a lot of convincing. It took 20 years and 20,000 scientific papers to "prove" that smoking causes lung cancer. In fact, everyone is surprised to know that there is no "proof" in science. The best any theory can achieve is "not-yet-disproven". There comes a time when the theory is so durable, such as evolution, or smoking causes lung cancer, that there is no point in anyone, even scientists in the pay of the tobacco lobby, arguing any more. AGW is now in that position.

Your statement is not correct. Anthropogenic is the only satisfactory explanation for the temperatures that we are experiencing today.

Why then do the skeptics persist? Well, the tobacco saga is a good model. The tobacco industry did exactly that the oil industry is doing now - they put up a series of skeptics, and kept the scientist busy for years, thus delaying the political clampdown on tobacco - health warnings &c.

Which brings us onto your statement:
You really do sound like an anti-capitalism - political activist versus a pure scientist.

I am a political activist. I am trained in the science of medicine, and have an amateur (in the sense of someone who loves) interest in philosophy.

I am not anti-capitalist in the rock-throwing sense, and I am happy for people to use their capital to set up enterprises (so long as they do no harm), but the market has to be guided, not free to do as it Carter-Rucking well pleases.

What happens is this: scientists try to establish a reasonable approximation to the truth.
When the scientific community has consensus on a topic that is of importance to humanity, they brief the politicians. When the politicians are persuaded, they make policies designed to address the problem. Standard stuff.

There comes a time when decisions have to be made. That time is now.

The reason that the skeptics are so persistent is that they are driven by the ideology of the free market. They cannot accept AGW, because what flows from AGW is action of the kind that is slowly, painfully slowly, forming up at Copenhagen. Global agreements to put an environmental price on carbon. This cuts across their profound belief in the free market. They cannot abide a guided market. Therefore AGW is wrong. From this flows their obsessive critique of the science, and their claim that every detail that they can cherry pick disproves the whole body of scientific work.

So, yes, I am a glad to have a political ideology that takes as its starting point humanity within nature - the ecological world view. Although it has few official adherents in the global community of Green Parties, it is a philosophy that has many many adherents, though most do not know one end of philosophy from another - most people work on gut feelings. That's OK.

There is an ideological clash brewing behind the free market fundamentalism and the ecological world view.

Final point: even if AGW should be shown wrong, decarbonisation is still the best option, on a blind choice basis.

I could go on, but that's enough. I responded in full because you sounded as if you are genuinely seeking clarification. Please take time to click on the climate change tab below to cover all the other aspects.

Thanks for commenting.

Climate change skepticism, science, logic and ideology

AGW skeptics assert that human greenhouse gases have no effect on global climate.

If it is a faith-based assertion, there is nothing that will change their mind.

If on the other hand, they view it as a factual assertion, then it it is a statement in the scientific arena, and must therefore be capable of being refuted.

They agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that is, that it traps infra red radiation, since this is a physical fact.

They agree that concentrations have risen since the Industrial Revolution, since that is an observed fact.

They accept that global temperatures are rising, since they often say that "climate change is happening, it happens all the time, due to natural variation".

So their case is that although CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and is rising, it makes no contribution to the rise in temperature. Or maybe they mean it makes a negligible contribution.

But the climate models say that it is making a significant contribution.
So they reject the use of climate models out of hand, rather than agreeing that they are, like all machines, a useful but imperfect instrument.

It is impossible accurately to study a complex system as the atmosphere without models.

Therefore there is nothing that will convince them that they are wrong.

Therefore their case is not a scientific case, because science must always be falsifiable.

What this leads to is that just as they accuse us of having an ideological agenda, so also do they have an ideological agenda.

It goes like this:

"I believe in individualism. My prime responsibility is to Me as No 1, also my family if I so choose. I will look after my own interests in my own way, and Government should get out of my face and my backyard. There is no such thing as society. I am not responsible for what happens to others, if bad things happen to them, that is there look out. Sh*t happens.


Individualism demands free market fundamentalism. Individualism means that corporations, which are individual persons in law, must not be subject to any regulation, because the Invisible Hand of the Market will produce the best of all possible worlds.


If global warming were true, it would be necessary for representatives of the people to intervene in the market to make carbon pay for the damage it does.


I reject any intervention in the market.
Therefore I reject the idea man-made global warming.
Nothing will induce me to change my mind on this point, because I am an individualist".

Ayn Rand and the problem with individualism

The Guardian has an article on the current Ayn Rand revival.

There's an Ayn Rand revival in America these days. Sales of her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have skyrocketed in the past year, along with the number of Rand-themed articles in mainstream publications.

The central philosophical (and indeed, scientific) problem for individualists like Rayn is the fact that homo "sapiens" is a social animal.

Individualism is an idealism in an age when all philosophers are non-idealists. The idea of a free individual is an abstraction. We are all constrained by physical needs (food, water, shelter &c) and also social needs. Within that framework we must find out how to maximise freedom.

So the resurgence of individualism in its various forms (from neo-con to libertarian) would be funny if it were not so serious.

Individualists form the core of the global warming denialist lobby, working along the following lines:

*I am an individual who chooses to do whatever pleases me
*My high carbon lifestyle pleases me
*AGW theory compels all humans to change to a zero-carbons lifestyle
*Therefore AGW theory is wrong.

Monbiot's question: What do we do about AGW denial?

There is an interesting counterpoint to the current discussion of Alan Johnson's rejection of scientific evidence on drug abuse, in the ongoing rejection of climate science by the AGW (man-caused global warming) denial lobby.

George Monbiot has an excellent piece in today's Guardian about climate change denial.

Denial in the US has risen from 44% to 74% in the last 2 years. 6 of the top 8 books on global warming are by denialists. He rips into Clive James, showing him to be a sucker, not a sceptic/skeptic. And he points to the Prostatic Problem - evidence that older men favour denial. He mentions Ernest Becker, a social anthropologist who argued that fear of death deives us to protect ourselves with "vital lies".

Denial is a real problem, in that the Copenhagen Climate change negotiations are stalled by a US Congress stacked to the ceiling with global warming denialists. Congress is a ball and chain tied to Obama's ankle, and the EU and UN are pressing for him to show leadership in addressing decarbonisation of the economy.


Monbiot's final question is -

"How do we confront this reaction of denial in the face of annihilation?"

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the classic work in answer to this question as it was posed by patients faced by death. A paychiatrist, she defined the stages of coming to terms with impending death as denial, bargaining, depression, anger and acceptance.

This could be a little depressing in itself, if we have to wait for the denialists to go through three more stages before they come to terms with reality. It is not as as bad as this, as the stages are not in a fixed linear pattern, can come as a mixture, and not everyone has to experience all five stages separately.

The denialists are angry as well as in denial. Anger seems to be the basic leitmotif of conservatives everywhere in all aspects of their thinking, as anyone who has glanced at comment lists on political blogs will know only too well. The bargaining is represented in their tactic of saying "Well, what about this link to Malinkovitch cycles/warming preceding CO2/polar bear population increasing &c" The depression stage is reflected in the well known jump that denialists make from "There is no problem" to "There is nothing anyone can do about it".

The first thing we as climate realists have to do is to recognise that we are dealing with people who have a psychological problem, not a rational problem. Sure, we can point them to places where their questions are answered, such as Real Climate, and we can point out clearly that global warming is happening now. The point about recognising that we are dealing with an irrational problem, not a rational one, will help us to avoid becoming frustrated with their inability to see what we can see. Kubler Ross is clear that the process cannot be rushed.

We should not make too close an analogy between the stages of grief and the predicament that humanity faces with AGW, since individual death is inevitable, but catastrophic climate change is not. The analogy is much closer to a nicotine addict with chronic bronchitis who is rejecting advice from his doctor that he must give up smoking. We know that he can be helped to give up, but we also recognise that the first step is that he must want to give up. Clive James and the other suckers who buy the denial story do not want to give up. They are coming towards the end of their lives anyway, so why should they not spend their children's inheritance on a flight to Disneyland?

Which brings us to the fundamental problem with the philosophy of Individualism, which is the intellectual underpinning of free-market capitalism. Have a look at the wikipedia article in the link, to get a flavour of the religious fervour of the writer. I am pleased to see that there is a Criticism chapter now inserted, and a Neutrality Dispute notice at the head. It took me several attempts to get that put in.

The basic philosophical problem with Individualism (which, interestingly, it shares with Scientific Materialism) is its ethic. There are plenty of ethical individualists, who can make the Enlightened Self-Interest argument: "If I behave in such a way as to allow others to be free, they will also allow me to be free". This is a bit of a step of faith, but it works for some. (We would argue that it works because they are tuning in to humans' social instincts). But there are plenty of others, ranging from sociopaths to Clive James' genial and quasi-amusing buffoonery, who are prepared to say "Blow you Jack, I'm all right".

So, back to the question - how to deal with denialists?

First, we can move the debate beyond the endless roundabout of academic paper-swapping to where it really stands: "What economic choices do we need to make? How does the Cost Benefit Analysis of the two options, decarbonise or Business as Usual, stack up?"

This is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, aimed at pointing out the basic beliefs that underly their position. Their construct is "The case for AGW must be proven with mathematical certainty before I will take my foot off the accelerator". This is a wrong framing of the case, because it is not an academic argument, but an existential one, and the Cost Benefit Analysis comes down emphatically in favour of decarbonisation.


Second, reality will put an end to AGW denialism, just as death puts an end to terminal illness denialism. Something like the Great Flood of London will get the politicians to put their money where their mouth is.

Third, we can keep on keeping on, at a practical household level, implementing the 5 Rs -
Refuse (to buy unnecessary things)
Reduce (the amount we consume)
Repair (things that break)
Re-use (old underpants instead of a new J-cloth)
Recycle

We can keep on keeping on with talking, writing to papers and MPs.
We can keep on voting Green. Not nearly enough is made of the virtue and influence of the Green vote in causing the grey parties to buck their ideas up.

Fourth, we can start thinking and talking about widespread Civil Disobedience. The people are like an elephant tied to a stake with a bit of baling twine. We can easily break free. This is a serious thing to do, as a loose elephant can be a destructive force, but when the alternative is a 4*C rise in global temperature, it may become necessary. The approach I favour is to give a tiny warning tug on the string with a General Tea Break, a gentle nod in the direcion of a General Strike.

Fifth, we must not give up hope. Schumacher said, "We must do the right thing, and not worry about whether we will be successful, because if we do not do the right thing, we will be part of the problem, not part of the solution".

Green activism is like a parachute on a hang glider - it may or may not save your life, but it sure gives you something to do while you are spiralling out of control towards the ground.

Health Care debate USA: the barbaric ideology of Individualism

The hysteria of the American individualist "Christian" right over Obama's health care plans is mind-boggling. By which I mean that it literally boggles the mind, overwhelming its capacity for a rational response, specifically because they dare to criticise the NHS when the USA has no health care for 46 million of its citizens - 15% of the total. This is barbaric, a scandal, and a negation of the claim of the USA to be a civilised, democratic country.

By "hysteria" I man the neurotic tendency to absolutise a debate. Sarah Palin calls the health proposals "evil". Rick Joyner, a "christian" minister, extends the necessary rationing implications in any healthcare system as being about euthanasia, and then extends this concept to a comparison with Hitler and Stalin - always ignoring the fact that the present US insurance based system condemns the uninsured to untreated illness and early death. Others describe universal healthcare plans as diabolical, that is, things of the Devil.

Is there any point in trying to reason with these people? In their totalist, black and white frame of reference, anything that does not fit in with their ideology is demonic, a threat, something to be resisted totaly. In this the American Right is at one with Osama bin Laden and his cohorts: anyone who deviates from their beliefs is absolutely anathema ("Christian" term) or Haram (Islamic term).

Individualism is the foundation of this species of thought. It is a term which is rarely used, possibly because it has seven syllables, as opposed to the four syllables of socialism, but individualism is the ideology of the Americans who are screaming at the town meetings on healthcare. The Wikipedia article is a good example of their approach, and a bad example of Wikipedia, since it is an expression of a dedicated Point of View, without the Criticism section which is normal for a Wikipedia article. Several times I have put in a line to the effect that the problem with Individualism is that humans are a social animal, and each time it has been removed bythe ideologues of individualism.

Individualists claim to be giving rights and freedom to the individual, but the healthcare debate shows that their definition of individual does not include all human beings, or even all citizens; it refers really to economically successful individuals who are able to prosper in a divergent economic system where the tendency is always for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

I find it difficult to write about the politics of health, partly because it is myday job, and partly because I spent a year writing a book about what makes people ill, showing that about one fifth of healthcare spending is devoted to treating illness caused by unnecessary conditions caused bybad political decisions, such as unemployment, povery, poor housing and pollution. That is another undiscussed elephant in the room.

As for Daniel Hannan, MEP for South East England, arguing that the NHS should not exist, I hope that the voters in the South East feel proud that they have elected such a man. The simplest way of assessing the depth and robustness of Hannan's thought is to ruminate on his endorsement of Iceland's economy, writing in the Spectator in 2004: "Icelanders are rolling in it, says Daniel Hannan". The "it" to which he refers is not a pile of dogshit, but money, in case there is any misunderstanding. Readers with a short attention span may need to be reminded that Iceland's banks were among the first to need to be bailed out by the people.

Cameron calls Hannan "eccentric", but in fact, Hannan is mainstream, but outspoken. People should be aware that the whole underlying trend of thinking by politicians and officials in Westminter is for the NHS to be restructured along the lines of the American model.

The best way I know of to deal with the sheer magnitude of the irrationality of the so-called public "debate" about US healthcare, not to mention the banks, is to place the palms of the hand on each side of the skull, sit down and utter low moaning sounds for about five minutes or until bored, and then to go and do something practical.