It just has always been my position that Philosophy and Science are not in competition to uncover the secret of reality, and that the attempts by Physicists to paint this dichotomy was self-destructive and not worthy of their time. It is almost as if they are leaving their old enemy of “Religion” alone and picking on a group they don’t think will fight back.

Well we will Physicists, we will. It starts here.

To the physicist reality is explained in terms of a mathematical framework, chosen for its ability to reproduce results. Calculations are seen to be of two types. Those regarding billiard balls (as it was said of Newton’s laws that his rules for the actions of billiard balls were so right, so settled, that any argument over the matter is futile) and those regarding the mysteries of the universe at large (of which we are unsure).

It seems to me that the physicist has invested in an attractive conceit that they cannot bare to face: the presumption that the rules for one are the same as the rules for another. It must necessarily be a presumption because human theories, human understandings, account for 3% or less of the Universe (i.e. the bit light reflects off).

Moreover, the physicist’s theory of reality also includes a presumption, or series of presumptions, regarding the nature of dimensions. That is, how many do we have and how do they work? work on these questions are not separate from the general question (that we call “what is reality?”) that we are trying to answer. This may yet actually completely change the entire question so that any answer not taking dimensions into account is meaningless. To put this in perspective, consider this masterpiece from the great Carl Sagan:

Imagine that Flatland is where we live and our drawings (theories) about flatland are mathematically perfect. Indeed, we could eventually understand that this flatland is huge, millions of miles along each side, and our drawings equally apply all the way from one end of the paper to the other. Even with all this confidence, even with all this mathematical explanation, we are still in Flatland. Our explanation does not explain the nature of reality correctly, or even well, it just works from our perspective.

So, to announce that theories are almost complete and that they have something approaching a grand theory of everything is surely an outlandish exaggeration, as if the missing matter in the universe is a simple, solid and singular unknown. Like the missing matter was all one block of the same stuff, simply explained by the label we give it, “dark matter”. Like, one day, they will find it like a discarded lump of black coal in the bottom of a sack. That it only needs pulling into the light.

Dark matter may yet prove to be something, that is a tangible “thing”, but such a definite label could well be very misleading. Indeed dark matter may not actually be any “thing” at all, merely an aberration and the result of faulty calculations, faulty premises and faulty reasoning from the very ground up.

I used to say to people that any understanding involving the idea of “infinity” was the result of faulty premises. It could equally apply to sentence with “dark matter” in it. If it does exist, and for some reason is exactly what we expected, can we seriously say that the search for the meaning of the order in the Universe is over? What does any of that stuff mean anyway? It has no point to it. The explanation is all the “how”, but what about the real question; that of the “why”?

I have also often remarked that philosophy is not so much to do with having all the answers, but rather about having a better understanding of the questions. For the question is all to the Philosopher, the question means all. With the right question the answer becomes simple and the real answer means something. “Dark matter” is not an answer it is only a cool name for a mystery pretending to be a question. With such a mystery on the table, and in the equation, one cannot but agree that the question is lacking in encompassing the necessary values needed for a correct answer. Such an answer will remain ever beyond our reach as long as the question is “how?” and not “why?”.

Higgs or no Higgs

While that label exists, it fools us into thinking it is a “thing”. “Dark matter” could be a new and different operation of the Universe, a new force, and could suggest the necessity for a paradigm shift in science.

Given such quicksand as the ground under our scientific feet, it is really a bit rich to point at Philosophy and call it “worthless” and “dead”.

Such claims ignore the simple world around us. I listened to a physicist being challenged regarding whether he thought that this damming applied to all branches of Philosophy. Surely, Political Philosophy isn’t dead? Economic Philosophy? Ethical Philosophy? Surely, no one could claim that Religious Philosophy has no relevance in today’s world? Or the Philosophy of Art?

Well no, admitted the scientist, those are still relevant.

It soon turned into a Monty python sketch entitled, “What has Philosophy ever done for us? Well, apart from ethics, morals, politics, economics and the arts?”

What has philosophy ever done for us?

What is left?

I almost felt sorry for that Physicist, but I knew exactly which Philosophy he meant, he was talking about “metaphysics”. Again, we immediately find another Physicist conceit: The philosophical study of the nature of reality can go two ways, we are told:

Firstly, one can look out at the world. There one counts and measures, weighs and tallies by type. From this weighing and measuring, the Philosopher involved comes up with a neat theory to explain the results. This he forms into an experiment with a testable hypothesis. He repeats a number of such experiments and the results either fit his hypothesis (and he rejoices) or doesn’t (and he changes the theory and tests again). That is the scientific method and these Philosophers are called Scientists.

Secondly, the searcher for the nature of reality can look within. He can say to himself that reality is a matter of perspective in his mind; indeed all our realities exist only in this mind. He will then try to deduce from introspection, observation and logical analysis if there is something that can be known about this reality. That is metaphysics. From that a theory of knowledge will be created and tested.

Both are very similar, only one is written in the precise language of mathematics and the other in written in English. This is for good reasons as English (or whatever word-based language) is the way that the results are able to mean something. Writing in English is imprecise, precisely because reality itself is imprecise.

Of course, the conceit is that people only work in one of the above two ways without crossing over. Like there is some sort of wall separating them. Could it be a large part of the problem that philosophers ignore those fake boundaries and work in any way that they want? Is the Philosopher stepping on toes?

Our Physicist wants to prevent that as for him it is his understanding of math that he holds up the highest. Physicists honestly think they are better placed to find the nature of the universe because of their superior understanding of math. Philosophers, they say, cannot do this math anymore; it is too hard. Let us leave aside that math is not the sole property of one group of scientists, and consider that it too is grounded in what we call reality. It has been, for a long time now, correct in its predictions. Indeed, for most people the idea is that math is intrinsically correct (an idea invented by Philosophy called “a priori”). I.E. if humankind was to die out 2 + 2 would still equal 4.

However, would it really?

Math is an abstract; it models reality: it doesn’t direct it.

When the math doesn’t fit with the reality, we say that “we lack the math to describe” such and such event or happening. That’s commonly taken to be the humans fault, but really it’s the fact that new mathematical methods have to be invented to explain the occurrence. In other words, to be able to explain new occurrences into mathematical terms we are forced to invent new math. This simply means that math is entirely a human invention. It is “meta” and detached from the reality it is describing, not built into it. Math may explain the turning of the stars (from here in Flatland), but it doesn’t control that turning.

It is, I am sure, a sterling achievement to be able to predict the stars but it is not separate from the minds of the men that formulated it and for that very reason it is not a part of the universe that exists were it not for humans.

By way of example. Science created the iPad I am writing on. It built its plastics, put together its processors and worked out (using math) how to get the screen to light. What it didn’t do is create the reason for it. Apple did. One guy at apple had an idea, a cool idea, a vision and the science enabled that vision by converting it into this device. I am sure you can see that these two things, the idea (the philosophy) and the components (the science) worked hand in hand. They are in fact inseparable.

Remove one and the entire experience is removed. No idea = no iPad.

So said Steve Jobs:

It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing — and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.

But what if we removed the math?

Consider this:

We often say that if/when we meet alien life that math will be our common language. However, there is no reason that this will be so. I’m not suggesting that they will speak English like Star Trek characters, but I am suggesting that there is no reason that they will have math like ours.

I’ll give you an example to highlight what I mean. Our DNA splits, grows, and copies itself without conscious thought. There is something seemingly intrinsically built into DNA, into life, that gives rise to it having these powers. Nothing in our understanding explains why this works, we can only observe, record, predict and theorise. Imagine an alien species that do math like that. In other words, they don’t have a formularised language of math that requires theories, conscious attention and men with beards. Instead, it just happens. In the same way, our power to live just happens. We don’t try to explain it, we can’t control it: it just “happens”.

So, we meet these aliens…

We can’t even say “beings” or “race” as such concepts are entirely human centric. I mean, we will no doubt try to label them a “race” because that is how we think of our (so-called) “races”. This in itself may cause all sorts of problems as they may not see us in these terms, but I digress.

We meet these aliens and try to communicate in the form of maths. To them we are appearing as though we are doing something so natural so common, so inbuilt into their “being” that they don’t even recognise it.

They just are.

Our entire, confident, intellectual edifice is worthless in this case. The aliens can’t explain why they can do what they do as to them it is an unconscious and natural as DNA splitting is to us. They don’t use math as a language, they don’t speak in math. Math doesn’t exist to them.

We are pretty buggered then without philosophers! Wouldn’t the scientist simply say that the aliens weren’t alive at all? Would they recognise the life in these aliens?

Is this happening all the time already?

Being good at math is not going to unlock the heavens for us. We must be able to go beyond, to sublime this human built language, which for all its elegance, is no better than those of the poets.

Unlike the Physicist, The Philosopher can be a specialist or a generalist. Philosophers have developed an ability to be able to step back and ask “why?” Not in the way scientists ask “why?” which is actually, “how did that happen?” Philosophers ask, “Why do I ask why?” Philosophers take a concept or collection of concepts, pick them up and look at them from the outside not the inside. Philosophers ask what went into the question to which this “thing” is the answer. Philosophers are concerned with paradigm shifts and complete changes of presumptions. This is a skill set trained in philosophy to a very high level. Higher than in other subjects and it is a key skill in inventing new things and new ways of seeing.

It is part of humanity that makes us restless. Sure Philosophers are dreamers in a way, but then so are scientists. Sure Philosophers are not so good at math to be able to keep up with high-end Physics (again a presumption, some person may be able to who identifies himself as a philosopher), but math is not ever going to answer “why” only “how” and “when”.

Philosophy is human in every way, all-encompassing to all thoughts and theories and passionately in love with wisdom. History’s greatest accomplishments have all been tied to such innovative thinking from the dawn of time. Science uses these skills, uses this language developed by the Philosophers and so does politics, military theory and even maths. Philosophers know that they are on the outside asking the difficult questions and we understand that this frustrates some scientists, especially Physicists, but that doesn’t mean our contribution is lesser.

Indeed, scientists sometimes come out with the stupidest pronouncements, obvious to Philosophers, and we can’t help but stick our head in our hands in exasperation.

Philosophy is a part of science, part of math, part of politics, part of religion and a part of living on this planet. It is the question “why?” asked of our assumptions, asked of ourselves. It requires no evidential peer-reviewed papers to be considered right, it has no governing body and it is open to all. Indeed speculation over “why?” is practiced by everyone every day. Since it is so ingrained and ubiquitous to living, society and life, it is perhaps best that we have some experts in it? Some dedicated philosophers coming up with new tools, new skills and new ways to thinking?

Physicists want to be right and in their desperation, they have setup a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. Physics is not opposite to Philosophy, in the same way that the work of surgeons is not opposite to the work of GP’s. They are complementary and equally important. Physicists borrow from Philosophy to do their job, and visa versa. They are not in competition to find the nature of reality they are together- a team. I hope that one day a discovery will be made that requires the powers of both parties to understand, to comprehend, and we may then find that Philosophy and Physics together can come up with an answer truly worthy of inclusion in the list of humanities greatest achievements.

Regards

Basho

I realised upon seeing the chaos on our streets that we were dealing with many different groups of people with different agendas. The following is my take on those who casually looted during the riots. Particularly these two idiots I heard on the radio:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

The mechanisms used by such people to loot during the recent sequence of UK riots are not well understood. Normal analysis of the behaviour of people has one enormous presumption: that the person was rational at the moment they made their choice to loot. But, to me, this doesn’t tally with their actions. I say they were irrational choices, but they must have had some mechanisms to assist them in making their decisions and in later justifying them (so drunken and stupidly) on the radio.

The behaviour of those casually looting elicits a number of different reactions and comments from “normal” people. Most respond with a large slice of “they’re just wrong’ns” vindictive spleen. It is as if once someone has committed a crime they somehow stop being human altogether and are instantly transfigured into Martians. While I too have very little sympathy for the fate of people committing crimes like this, I do feel it is very important to understand what was going on in their minds in order to be able to prevent such happenings from occurring again. This is not just important in terms of stopping future crimes, but also important in terms of preventing ill thought out, knee-jerk reactions such as, for example, blaming social media.

In general, there are two worlds of behaviour:

The first is the “Social” world and this is the world of our friends and families. It is also a world in which money is very rarely mentioned. After all I don’t ask my friends to “pay” money for favours and I only hazily keep track of the balance of such favours between us. In this world I often work quite hard (as there is little I would not do for a friend) and the work is in my own time and at my own expense. This is a common enough concept that I am sure you recognise it.

In contrast to this friendly world, there is another. When payment is involved it puts us firmly in the “money” world that has different rules. There my time is valued according to my sense of self-worth and career. There I don’t do favours or work late and demand a significant reward for my time. For example I would always offer to buy my mate a pint at the bar and forget the cost, but I would immediately query the barkeep if he screwed up the bill.

This is also why your boss refers to the company team as a “family”. He wants you to work as if you are in the “social” world because you will work harder, longer and for less. However, he also clearly only wants to pay you from the “money” world. As the saying goes, “management is getting the maximum milk for the minimum amount of moo”.

Anyway, put simply, the looters are making their decisions in the money world. For example while most people wouldn’t steal directly from a friend or even a stranger (a social world rule), a faceless high street company is considered fair game. These corporations may be legally “people”, but in the terms of the looting, they have no human “face”.

The following mechanisms represent a slippery slope from simple looting to the sorts of muggings we (tragically) saw on the news. As social norms are eroded by the continual bad decision-making, eventually all sense of right and wrong (as dictated by society) is gone.

The first mechanism is to do with the price the people pay for the things they buy. Normally, buying things in London shops are relatively expensive. The cost of something, a Sony PlayStation for example, is a known thing. However, during the riot, the potential becomes for that price to fall to zero. “Zero” isn’t actually a price. “Zero” is in a whole world of its own. Temptation increases to the point where some people will loot PlayStations and justify it because it’s a faceless crime with no “real” victim. Indeed the looter thinks in terms of being the victim. In other words the price “zero” is the bridge between the “money” and “social” worlds, and is so alluring that even normal people will act against perceived social norms in its presence.

Why is this? Because of the second mechanism:

The second mechanism is to do with herding. When deciding what to do, the sensible thing is to balance the risk and the reward. The risk is arrest and imprisonment, the reward is the ability to have “something for nothing”. However, this is not actually the way we make decisions at all. It is quite hard to stop and make decisions based on sensible logical calculations, instead we simply base our decision on two things:

1. What we see others doing.

If we see others doing the thing we are considering, and crucially having a positive experience (in a crime example: such as they get away with it). Then we will be far more likely to take that choice ourselves. If we come across a $10 note, would we hand it into the police? Yes, perhaps. But, if we came across a millions pounds in the street, and hundreds of people were taking them as they blew away in the wind, would we be so inclined to hand the note it? Possibly not.

2. What we have previously done.

Once a choice has been made for the first time, and if the experience was positive, then we are very likely to take that choice a second time even, and this is the important part, if others are no longer doing it. We effectively use our memory of the prior event as the quick and easy shortcut to the future decision.

So, in a non-criminal example, if we see others buying coffee at Starbucks and enjoying it and we have bought coffee from there before and enjoyed it, then we are much more likely to repeat the experience. Now imagine that there was a sign saying “free coffee today!” outside and that temptation would be massive.

This is one of the reasons that crowds behave the way they do during a riot. They are full of people making all sorts of short-term decisions using the above mechanisms while all the time they are in a terrible place to make “right” choices. This is why people claim in court that they “went too far” or had a moment of “insanity”. In fact, they have behaved in a (unfortunately) automatic manner.

To combat this it is the behavioural conditioning of childhood, which is supposed to contain examples of the benefits of making socially accepted decisions. A person with these memories will have plenty of experience of the positive outcome being when they did not steal.
Finally, there is the related matter of those we look up to. If a person looks up to a particular person or group, then they are likely to act in accordance with how they (think) that group would act. This is doubly strong if it this is the person from the examples above.

So what does this tell us? Firstly that the people looting and fighting against the police are letting off rage against the (perceived) negative influence of the law on their decisions. The law, enforced by the police, is uncaring to their lack of satisfaction with their lives and struggles, and has no cares at all that they don’t have a footballer’s salary or a banker’s bonus. This uncaring has probably been there from all sorts of perceived authority figures all their lives; parents who say one thing and do another, brothers that steal, teachers who cower and a society seemingly having it all. After all this person has little and so all that stuff in the shops must be being enjoyed by others, right?

The second thing it tells us, is that many of these people have very little in their lives in the form of memories of people doing the “right” thing. Nothing that can be used to balance their decisions the way that society wants. This is usually a part of that person’s “tragic” story of drug abuse, parental violence, etc.

Thirdly, the looters are very aware of what others are doing in similar situations to they. This is the root of the whole “BBM” and “Facebook” social messaging issue. The net, the phone and their friends are all communicating a positive reinforcement of the looting action. As is the press in highlighting it on the news.

It seems clear to me that the government is missing a trick with threatening to shut such services down. A messaging system that works for one will also work for another and the police and government should be sending out the message over these mediums, not turning them off. The message should be a reinforcement of the negative outcomes that await looting and the positive outcomes that comes from being “good”.

So, to stop these sorts of crimes, these looters need to live lives full of positive reinforcement of “good” choices and negative reinforcement of “bad” choices.

Whose job is that?

This isn’t just the job of parents, but also of police, government and indeed the entire society as a whole. This is the larger and more difficult issue to deal with. Since their “wretched” lives don’t “naturally” contain these memory forming influences then society could “gift” them by opening lots of social programs in these areas. These can create these positive messages at all levels.

This of course requires us to care about these people and about society in general. Since most of us are not these people, why should we care?

That this is even a question highlights those greater problems that exist in our society. The job of fixing that is the governments. The government is a massive influence in all our lives whether we want it or not, but the social contract is two-way. On a grander stage, our treatment of other countries and even our way of making war should reflect our values we want our people to have, but all too often it is itself a “grab and loot” on a larger scale and therefore a message that reinforces the wrong decision in the mind of our potential looter. Unfortunately, our society rewards aggressive, self-serving and violent behaviour only as long as it is done by companies and in boardrooms. Alternatively, as long as it is performed by “famous” people (who are of course then role models for the negative reinforcement).

Nevertheless, these are larger aims, designed to change society slowly and will take a long time to implement. What can we do right now?

Ethical Training.

Yes, right now every single person convicted of looting, rioting and violence on our streets should (after their term in prison) be sent for training in what would basically amount to “how to make good decisions”. I have often remarked that the first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its existence. To that end, training people to recognise the situation they were in and how to avoid making the wrong decisions (i.e. they committed the crime and got arrested) will be the most effective way of giving them the memories needed to react correctly when facing the same decisions in the future. This is generally known as rehabilitation.

For some this probably sounds too “liberal” and even that I am suggesting that society should “go easy” on crime, but on the contrary: the complete pillaring of the looters is a vital mechanism in changing behaviour. Indeed these measures will only work if the negative “down side” punishment is harsh enough to enable the lesson.

Only by understanding a thing can we stop a thing. Ignoring the fact that the usual incentive (prison) is not working and blaming the communication technology is worthless in the extreme. If we understand how someone makes the “wrong” decisions and appreciate that the mechanism this person used is essentially the same as ours then we highlight what is missing. These looters can be understood and by this understanding can they and the next generation be prevented from making the same mistakes.

Regards,

Basho

If you have any comments on this article please keep in mind two things:

1. This blog is set to moderate comments. I wont post abusive commentary. I respect the opinions of others and I ask that you do the same.

2. Please leave comments that are a little more constructive than one line or one-word answers. If you want to debate this article, feel free, but keep in mind that this is not /b/ and childish bullshit simply won’t be published.

Announcing the opening of a new Basho website!

www.buddhabooks.co.uk

I have been writing reviews of books on this site for something like 5 years, also I have – as I am sure you know – a passion for Eastern Philosophy. Finally I can bring them all together!

Buddha Books is an editorial review website specialising in books on Daoism, Buddhism, Philosophy and other Eastern Religions in both book form and also audiobooks.

Here is the deal:

• I will be posting a couple of new reviews per week.
• All the reviews will be of books I own and have paid money for (I have a simply enormous collection).
• They will all take into account my knowledge (degree in Philosophy), views (one who has travelled the East) and beliefs (Daoist) and those of Cesca.
• Every review will contain a link to somewhere where you can buy the book.
• 50% of all the referral commissions will be donated to the The New Cambodian Children’s Life Association (NCCLA), which is a charity set-up for orphaned Cambodian children.

Also – after the great success of Cesca’s Photo exhibition, we will be offering prints of her collection for sale in a variety of sizes and frames all set to be posted straight to you. Bonus!

I invite you all to take a look and let me know what you think. The site is new – as is the theme – so there will be changes in the coming weeks as well as a large amount of new entries. My hope is that some serious discussion can be had over the books. If you disagree with a review – don’t hesitate to post up a comment.

Regards,

Basho

www.buddhabooks.co.uk

P.S. This does not effect this site. OC will continue on a dual monthly posting rate until the new year where it will then go back to weekly (I am working on a Diploma in Preventing Financial Crime at the moment)

I’m an avid reader of New Scientist magazine. In fact I get it every week. The headline will usually be about something “quantum” or allude to some current or near “breakthrough”. Of course real breakthroughs are hardly on a weekly schedule. I know this, but still I buy into it. It is a classic marketing technique that tempts impulse buying. New Scientist covers about Quantum are the geek equivalent of putting Princes Diana or perhaps Jordan on the cover of a ladies magazine or putting Bruce Lee on the cover of a martial arts magazine. In each case the marketers know what make people pick up the edition, what buttons to push.

It is this technique that got me to buy this book.

A few weeks ago my wife started a Skype chat to me at work. Normally this signifies that I need to pick something up on the way home or that I forgot to turn the iron off, or similar. However, this time she was definitely excited about something,

“Stephen Hawking was just on Radio 4 and said that Philosophy was dead!” she announced.

“As an ironic statement?” I typed back.

“No, he means it”

This I had to hear. Sure enough the Cambridge Physicist had a new book out. I picked it up at the train station and thumbed through it. On page one he announces “Philosophy is dead”. Like the banner of a New Scientist magazine, I found myself wanting to buy it just to read why. To be able to feel the argument’s weight, to be able to rebut it, because, frankly, he had really pissed me off. Cash was exchanged for book and I walked to the train with it in my bag, most of my arguments already forming in my head. Then something struck me:

I had fallen for it.

I had, as John C Dvorak would say, “Drunk the Kool-Aid.”

I was now even more miffed. Without even opening the book I suddenly knew how this would go and, I’m sorry to say, I was proved right. This isn’t a book about M-Theory. This isn’t a book inviting debate or interested in discussing the issues. This isn’t even a book for anyone who has access to Wikipedia. This is a book making a statement. Not, as the first page claims, that Philosophy is dead – I will deal with that in a minute – no, this is a book that is trying to setup a different type of mythology.

The mythology of the Physicist.

In this book Physicists are accorded a very special significance, a higher order than mere mortals. We are told again and again that their works are special, unique and different. That they stand apart.

All that is rubbish.

You see, it is a commonly held belief that in the past it was possible to be a specialist in multiple disciplines at the same time. Indeed some of the greats from the enlightenment were what we called then a “Polymath (these days we say “Genius”). Such giants as Goethe, Leibnitz and Hook. These men’s understandings, works and contributions to humanity are almost immeasurable and the fruits of it surround us every single day. However, since then science has been branching further and further into divisions and specialism’s and it is considered impossible for another Leibnitz to exist without him having to focus on one subject or become a businessman. This has led to a lot of scientists jostling for “rank” and “order”.

XKCD satirised this internecine strife perfectly in this cartoon:

The “purest science” award is generally granted to the Mathematicians; creators and guardians of the official language of science and pure in their abstract prowess to describe things in forms of numbers. But there is another group, self-aligned with the math geeks, who apply that language to something in particular; the Universe. These are the Physicists. The self proclaimed wizards of science, they formulate theories that attempt to probe the deepest corners of space and time. Even to the point of realising that space and time are actually spacetime. They exist in a constant battle against each other. The battle of modelling. Since there is hardly any evidence for much of theoretical Physics, these Physicists aim to create models that are “elegant” in their mathematical construction. A poem of maths, which they say points to the truth. They even get a feeling of “just knowing” that the theory is solid due to the ability to simplify the maths down to as small an equation as possible. These mini equations are their haiku’s; piquant attempts to explain the almost ungraspable.

Works of art?

Such grand and lofty aims sometimes lead to a kind of arrogance, conceit and over bearing self confidence that many scientists can get in their work. Ego mania is a strange and afflicting problem in the community (I’m looking at you Dawkins!).

However, entrenched positions that take generations to dig out of are against the basic fundamental principles of science in the first place. Chief being the principle of falsifiability. That is the principle that any theory can be proven wrong.

My Christian friend once asked me what it would take to prove science “wrong”.

“If I held out this beer can and dropped it,” I answered, draining the drink from it. “And if as I let it go, it didn’t fall; it just sat there in the air. And you wrote it down and photographed it, and filmed it and told people, and every time I did it; it was the same result…”

“Right…” He ventured.

“Then, Well, then they would get out the Theory of Gravity and tear it in half.”

“They would do that?” He sounded sceptical.

“Yes. The most cherished, most important, most agreed upon theory. They would tear it in two and throw it away.”

He now looked sceptical as well.

“And I tell you what, they would be glad. They would be happy about you having proved them wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because science is not one man. Not one theory. It is linked together on one vital understanding.”

“What is that?”

“That a theory, any theory, even a theory that has become a law, is only right until it is proved wrong. Once it is proved wrong by demonstration, then it is thrown out!”

“Really?”

“It’s happened before, many times.”

“That must hurt”

“It must be a real bitch mate,” I said and I held out the can and dropped it. It clattered on the floor. I looked at him and smiled, “The Theory of gravity survives for another day…”

He chuckled and passed me another beer.

Professor Hawking has written this book to try and pass the “good news” of his latest thoughts regarding a type of String Theory. A theory he has, in fact, changed his mind about in the last 5 years or so. Early types of String theory have been around for even longer than that. String theory is an attempt to answer two conflicting truths and to unify them. What is called “Classical Physics and Quantum Mechanics” Or in laymen’s terms, the theories of Newton, which are about the everyday normal sized objects, and the theories of Quantum scientists such as Feynman, which are about the very smallest of objects. These two theories make predictions about the future (another vital ingredient) that are seemingly both born out by experiment. In other words, Newton is demonstrably correct regarding gravity and Fennyman is demonstrably correct about Quantum. However, they don’t agree.

How can they both be right?

The general approach to this is to say that they are both wrong in different ways and that a further “truth” is waiting us to work it out to account for them both. A grand theory that unifies all Physics together. This is because, strange as it might seem, Physics theories are a moving target. For example, when I was young, I was taught in school the classical model of physics. This is what most people think of when they think of atoms and such. That classic iconic image:

This is now considered wrong as it ignores much of the known universe – such a gravity of the very very small; quantum gravity. One of the theories trying to explain quantum gravity was Super String. You don’t need to understand it to realise that this will eventually be proved wrong too. But it is a better type of wrong than the first. Lots of people worked on the theory and came up with different flavours, variations and entrenched positions. Then, one man, almost for a joke, wrote a theory for a conference that suggested that the competing string theories should actually be seen as one theory from different angles. He called this M-Theory. The M standing for both nothing and everything that starts with an M, which if you think about it is a part of the joke. However, M-Theory was thought to have something and many people started working on this. It became fashionable rather than freaky and soon Super String was moving from the fringes of Physics to the mainstream. Now it is the official “best candidate” for the Grand Theory and thereby for reasoning (with justification) how the Universe started. A question that has always been levelled at scientific explanations for the creation of the Universe theories such as the Big Bang is basically “who lit the match?” Simply put, in M-Theory, the Universe started by itself and is one of multiple Universes, endlessly flowing like bubbles in a bottle of coke with a Mentos Mint thrown in.

There is only one problem with it. Well, there are buckets of problems including that it requires many more dimensions to exist that are observable. However, by any measure the largest problem is almost unassailable; that it is almost impossible to prove.

The other day a scientist on Radio 4 claimed that all discovery was over and science would shrink in importance. This is a predication people have been making for generations, and it fails to take into account discoveries that await while we apply science in new and exciting ways. For example, the European Fusion reactor is running at something like 60% efficiency. Once they get it to run at 99% then they predict that the issue will become one of engineering; that is improving the machine to squeeze out the extra juice needed. During such a process a startling discovery may be made that changes everything. it’s happened countless times before in almost every field, especially medicine – take smallpox, it wasn’t until we discovered that milk maids didn’t get it that vaccination was posited, and no one can say that hasn’t changed the world.

Physics may be heading for a period of reengineering, where theory is not being moved forwards, it is the physical application of that theory (the experiments and the products) that is going to have to catch up. What is impossible to prove now, may be discovered to not only be provable, but may prove wrong as well.

This is Hawking’s good news: he thinks M-theory is almost impossible to prove, not totally impossible to prove. Great to hear, after all: if they discover the Higgs all this may become more important than ever.

However, that aside, Hawking tries a number of unconvincing things in this book that ruined it all for me:

1. He tries to suggest that M-theory is the natural successor in the smooth progression from ancient to modern man. He takes history and draws a straight line through it claiming some sort of manifest destiny for M-theory. This is rubbish. Super String is and more importantly was waaaay-out-there as far as mainstream science goes.

2. His grasp of historical thought. The book is peppered with quotes from historical figures all taken light-years out of context.

3. He places Physics on a pedestal. A big pedestal. I understand that he is a physicist, but in the book he tries very hard to make them look special and cool. It is as bad as Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory and as arrogant.

4. He tries to establish Physics as separate from other sciences. As I said at the top, science does struggle with over-specialisations, but the borders between one discipline and another are not as solid as Hawking claims. They are often walls only of our making, and he knows this! Theoretical physicists are not a true breed apart no matter how much they only live through their blackboards. All science is a brotherhood and should be treated as such.

5. He has a few pops at Philosophers.

Taking that last point in detail. On page one he claims “Philosophy is dead”. This is possibly the most ironic statement I have ever heard since Jim Tyler stated to me that if he ran the country:

…all extremists would be taken out and shot.

You literally cannot form the sentence “Philosophy is dead” and have it be true. Such a statement is a philosophical position by default. It’s oxymoronic to claim that “Philosophy is dead” Given any reasonable definition of the terms he is talking nonsense.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. Later in the book he refers to Philosophy as though it was all made up. I personally think it is a bit rich for someone who is forwarding a theory that has no shred of evidence to point the finger at Philosophers. After all, Science and Philosophy were once the same subject called “Natural Philosophy”. That they have diverged is not the wish of the Philosophers! Anyway, the only true difference is the usage of Maths. Philosophers are sceptical of maths whereas physicists love it. His claim that Philosophers lack the maths to understand his answers is not telling anyone anything they didn’t already know. Philosophers don’t want to use the maths! That doesn’t stop them coming up with the same answers in their own language.

Many great Philosophers have postulated the multiple universes stated in M-Theory. Not to mention that over 2000 years ago Plato suggested that other dimensions may exist, Indian Yogi suggested alternate realities and Chinese sages wondered if they existed on another plain in a different form. M-Theory?… pah!

Secondly, in the modern world, Philosophy is more important than ever. The Prime Minister of England studied it, as did many MP’s. Books on it are everywhere. It pervades the fabric of humanity at every level, from talking to friends down the pub, to high end intellectual conferences. This is because Philosophy is the human inclination to turn a question on its head. Philosophy is less about having the answer to everything, rather it is about having a better understanding of the question.

Clearly, he is trying to be contentious to make the book sell in the US.

I am not sure who will enjoy this book. There is nothing in it that you cannot read for free on the web, and if you already know the “public understanding of science” version of M-Theory and Quantum then you won’t read anything new at all. In fact I found his description of the famous Double Slit experiment to be one of the worst I have ever encountered and it is one of the most amazing scientific discoveries of all time. I still use it to amaze bright children.

I really like Hawking. I love his TV shows and would count myself as a fan. But this book was too lite to be interesting, too confident to be correct and too ready to jump on the money-train driven by such people as Dawkins to garner respect from me.

I would advise you to skip drinking the “Kool-Aid” on this one:

5/10 & YMMV

The story of a simple Buddhist priest travelling from India to China in the 5th Century doesn’t sound like something that would make for an interesting novel, but the after effects of this solitary man’s journey still reverberate today. In all parts of the far east, the name Bodhidharma is still very well known. In Japan, for example, little girls have Bodhidharma key-chains and all sorts of other cultural influences and footprints can be found. And not only in the geek fringes or the religious halls, no his is a visage often seen in paintings; most of the time shown as an old priest with a particularly fierce expression of concentration, and it is for this ability that he was most highly prized. Bodhidharma didn’t bring Buddhism to China or Japan, but he started a school of Buddhist thought that spoke to something deep inside the Eastern people that heard it. Spoke to their marrow with a simple and unselfish message of compassion, dedication and submission.

This effect changed them forever.

Can anyone claim to “know” the east without knowing the message of this man? His sandals touched the ground lightly, but his teachings thundered across half the world like a spreading earthquake. This was the effect of the Chan school of Buddhism, known in Japan and in the west as Zen.

As with many classical figures from Buddhism, and indeed many other religions, Bodhidharma’s journey has a few undisputable facts that have been the skeletal bones around which many tall tales have been spun. Some tell of his almost magical ability to stare, even to the point of literally “drilling” into rock with his eyes. Others say that he cut off his own eyelids, so that he couldn’t fall asleep when meditating (something that gets you a whack around the head with the stick in Zen training). All these tales have been worn smooth like pebbles on a beach and over the last thousand years have come to a “standard version”. That Goran Powell  diverts from the standard version in A Sudden Dawn is not relevant at all. His tale is the mythical idea that Bodhidharma not only brought Chan to China, but also brought Kung Fu along with it. That Kung Fu descended from India is almost too obvious to be true and many have seen traces of Yoga in the Chinese martial arts. The idea is that Bodhidharma was born into a martial class in India, which became knowledge he carried with him. Knowledge that he taught and that he used. However, such origins are hardly conclusive, as it is worth noting that the Buddha himself came from a martial class (again in the “standard version”), and he certainly never raised his staff in anger. Anyway and regardless, it is a very enticing idea and the martial reputation of the Song Buddhist monasteries such as Shaolin means that there must be some explanation to how the knowledge travelled from India. That is unless, like the calculus, it was discovered in two places at the same time. I am quite happy to imagine that it was Bodhidharma who brought it, whatever the real history.

The other “deviation” from the standard version is that he walked. Common lore says that he caught a boat, but this is mainly due to the belief that walking into China from India was impossible. Nothing could be further from the truth. The walk to Tibet from Himachal Pradesh is not for the unprepared and unfit, but it isn’t impossible. I have been to the starting point and spoken to guides who say it is not only possible, but that many amazing sights and temples await the brave. I plan to do it 9 years from now (Chinese government willing.) Bodhidharma could certainly have done it if he picked his time of year.

In many respects this novel is in the classic old-fashioned genre of Historical Action Adventure. Whereas very modern writing is obsessively focussed on the details of exactly what happened, here we have an attempt to tell us why. Why did Bodhidharma tell the Emperor of China that he had achieved nothing by building hundreds of Buddhist temples? Why did he sit in a cave staring at a wall for months? The answers that Goran finds to these questions illuminates some of the fundamental truths of Zen and the genre this novel belongs to is the same as that of Siddhartha by Hesse and Musashi by Yoshikawa. It is a genre that is fascinated with the East, see’s it through a certain idealised point of view and gazes at it like one would gaze at a beautiful flower. It is somewhat similar to Shogun, in that its idealised depiction of the characters and situations follows certain tropes. So here Bodhidharma is a giant of a man, able to amaze all around him very quickly. He has a diamond-hard stare, a firm staff hand, a kind heart, and knows his Buddha Nature like no one has since the great B himself. He is also a folk hero and protector of the weak, someone who is humble (a priest) but also someone able to stand up and be counted amongst the highest in the land (and to back-chat the Emperor of China!). The reason that Goran gets away with this is that by all known accounts Bodhidharma was exactly like this.

I loved this book. I found that it spoke to me personally in many ways. Firstly, the action is well written and clearly from someone who knows the martial arts inside and out. I have trained with and under Goran in Goju Karate and I can attest that he has a very high level of skill with the Bo Staff, which is the “weapon” wielded by Bodhidharma in the novel. The fighting depictions raised my pulse level and I found myself imagining the fight in my mind. And this wasn’t the cold style of combat writing, again more modern, that permeates the works of writers such as Iain M Banks and William Gibson. Goran brings the emotionality and desperation of combat into the writing enabling an intimate connection. These fight scenes bare this emotion out on the page and the reader is taken along with it. An effect similar to watching Star Wars for the first time and something of a rollercoaster ride. This feeling is also there with the other emotional scenes. There are a number of sex scenes in the book and they are handled well by not being over written and too involved. They also, mostly, manage to stay away from the purple overused prose of sex writing (again something that terrifies modern authors; because they fear the winning of a “bad sex award”). Goran handles the fact that we know Bodhidharma makes it to Song, by putting those he travels with under the hardest pressure and in danger and although I guessed the end scene I was still deeply involved with its conclusion.

The second way it touched me was that, as mentioned above, my wife and I have almost exactly covered the journey made by Bodhidharma in the novel. We have stood in the mountains of Northern India looking at the mountains of Tibet in the distance, we have stood on the other side (we flew over) in the Tibetan city of Shangri-La where I drank Yak Butter Tea (its horrible!). We have walked Tiger Leaping Gorge . We have seen the Buddhist treasures of the Emperors (now in the Forbidden City in Beijing). We have even been to a great Chinese martial-arts mountain (although, being Daoists, we went to Wudang Shan rather than Song). Reading about Bodhidharma’s journey and realising that Cesca and I, unconsciously, echo’d it was a great pleasure and brought memories of China flooding back to me – what an amazing place and people! I can’t wait till I get to that part in the writing on this site (it’s not long now before the Buddhism parts of our journey start, with a visit to the Bodhi Tree in northern India.) This definitely increased my enjoyment of the book and made me long to return there. If you have an urge to visit the far east, this book may well be your tipping point!

Finally, there is Zen itself. Zen is a jewel; a world treasure. It is incredible. The happiness that comes from a Zen Satori will stick with you forever, touch you deeply and change you in many ways. However, obtaining a satori is one of the hardest things it is possible to do, because you can only do it by not trying, by breaking down barriers in your mind, in your life and accepting a big leap. While Buddhism in general demands dedication and practice, learning and the gaining of wisdom, Zen cuts through all this with a transmission outside the scriptures. Its formation comes from the famous sermon given by the Buddha where he stared a flower and said nothing. However some Buddhist sects claim that this never happened. Whether they are right or wrong is not relevant as the Buddha definitely said, “Buddhism is like a raft across a river. Once to the other side, you no long need the raft.” You can’t argue with that! Goran handles the Zen parts of the book exceedingly well. Bodhidharma’s own enlightenment moment is swift and not drawn out – which to my mind is correct and just as it should be. Zen is romantically un-romantic. No great peal of thunder. No Vangelis music and no Matrix slow-mo. Just a switch in your head. Bodhidharma’s understanding of Zen is driven by strife and is grasped only after going through traumatic experiences, and this shows that Goran too clearly understands Zen. In a book where Zen is the “main” character, exemplified by Bodhidharma, this is the vital element in the book’s literary success.

I loved it and feel it would read well for people interested in Bodhidharma, Buddhism, historical fiction, martial arts, the far east or even just a good read. I think, you will surely agree, that this is almost everyone.

8/10.

Regards,

Basho

_______________________

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About Goran Powell

Goran Powell’s martial arts training spans more than 35 years, and today he holds the rank of 4th dan black belt in Goju Ryu Karate. He is a qualified instructor with Daigaku Karate Kai (DKK), one of the United Kingdom’s leading clubs, and assistant coach to the successful Mixed Martial Arts team, DKK Fighters.

There follows a selection of images regarding Buddhism and Bodhidharma from Cesca and my travels around the world. These images contain a few spoilers, but if you like what you read in the book, these may help your imagination.

Introduction.

I am often asked, “Just what is Daoism?”

This is a natural enough question to ask, as since I “came out” as a Daoist many people have been genuinely interested. What the question really asks is, “Please can you encapsulate the concepts of Daoism into a single sentence?” The person then normally looks a little askance as I singularly fail in the attempt:

“Well,” I begin, “it’s, er…”

“Yes?” they ask, waiting on my answer, clearly forming the opinion that I can’t be a very serious Daoist without being able to enunciate at least that.

“It’s complicated…” I manage after a ruminating struggle, made all too plain on my face.

These are not particularly comforting moments in my life. I once attempted to write an answer for a work colleague and accidentally sent him a blank email with the subject, “Daoism is…”

He wrote back, “Are you trying to make a point or did you miss off the text?”

I wasn’t, but I wish I had thought to do so. I could then create an email that reads:

Subject: What is Daoism?

(THIS MESSAGE IS LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK)

Some people would perhaps even get it from that. It is possible a new Buddha would be created by the universal satori (enlightenment) brought about by reading my blank message. Stranger things have happened and there are documented examples of people having satori’s while gardening and doing the dishes. But if it were always that easy for everyone then we would all be Buddha’s by now. Indeed one of the ideas in Daoism and Buddhism is that you already are a Buddha, but have merely forgotten it.

NOTE: Daoism is the translation into English of a Chinese word. There are two ways of doing this. The old way invented by the English, translates it as Taoism. The newer way, invented by the Chinese themselves, gives us Daoism. Both mean the same thing. That is why the city of Peking is now known as Beijing. The city didn’t change its name, the way we translated it changed. I will always use the Chinese way.

Problems with defining Daoism.

When trying to define Daoism most people first get hold of the most famous book of Daoism “The Laozi”, more commonly known as the Dao De Jing, and start reading. Some of the poetry in that great work rubs off on the reader and like someone fumbling with a jigsaw puzzle formed of a million blank pieces they start to catch the edge… of something. At least the DDJ makes it very plain why naming Daoism is so hard. Right on page one, line one:

The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao.

Dao means “way” and it means “way” in every possible, er, way of saying “way”. So it means, “The way (to something)”. It means, “My way (of doing things)”. It also means “The way (of life)” and “The way (the universe works)”. But, as the line suggests, it is mysterious and you cannot simply name the Dao by containing it in a word or phrase. You can point to it by observing a tree, but you cannot extract its mysterious essence by chewing on the bark.  You can taste it in the air, but you cannot pick some up down the shops. You can suggest it in 10 thousand words, but you cannot write its definition in 1 sentence. It’s like the family quiz game Taboo in that you can talk about it, around it, but you can’t never simply grasp it “cleanly” using our limited language. That is not to say that language cant “evoke” the sense of it like poetry, stories (particularly stories as we shall see) or music. It’s why you nod your head to good music or dance when hoovering and no-one is watching, It is the blind spot, the blank space between the lines, you can no more nail it down than catch lightning in a bottle. It is the living meaning of the saying:

The map is not the territory.

It is all around you, in you, linking the universal heart beat and behind your eyes. If I am starting to sound like Master Yoda from Starwars, well now you know where they got the idea of The Force from.

But reading the DDJ raises more questions than answers. The DDJ is a very old collated-series of ancient sayings, it points to no deity and has no single author. It is attributed to Master Lao, but he almost certainly never existed and what remains was already ancient when it was collected into the current form and split into the two parts. The chinese did exhaustive research into trying to find Master Lao, but eventually gave up. Trying to force these sayings into some sort of fully sensible and coherent form is one of the major hurdles one has to come to terms with when reading the DDJ. Indeed, it has thousands of translations into English and all of them fail to capture the original perfectly. I have 20 copies in formats as diverse as podcasts, Penguin editions, master scholarly works, bowdlerised poetic rewrites and iBooks digital copies. All are different and all are, as the famous saying goes, “Fingers pointing at the moon. Concentrating on the finger means you miss the heavenly glory above”. You miss the point.

The same goes for the other major Daoist work in English, the Zhuangzi. Unlike Master Lao, Zhuangzi did exist (around 370 BCE), but he also only wrote part of his famous book. However, what a book! Zhuangzi’s work is a core text in the movement of scepticism and relativism. He is mostly concerned with wondering why people try so hard to split the world into dual notions, such as “Right and Wrong”, “Good and Evil”, “Smooth and Crunchy” and more importantly, “I and Thou”.

He criticises these things by telling funny stories.

In these he shows, gently, loftily, that trying to over analyse situations is almost always to commit a fundamental error. His stories tell of people who just “do” rather than think. people such as cooks, craftsmen, swimmers and butchers. People to whom reasoning is of little use in their activities, in the sense that a Cicada-catcher is attentive to his task and heedless of the doubt of “thinking too much”. He just catches the bug.

Master Zhuangzi is poking fun at people’s perceptions in order to show them that most of the things they over-think and rationalise are actually the arms holding them back from being happy and free. Zhuangzi would probably be labelled a “free spirit” today, but his work isn’t a dreamy loose fantasy, his mind is sharper than a razor. It is chock full of epistemology (How do we know “what is true”? How do we get knowledge?) mixed with an attractive humour missing from most Western religious texts. Zhuangzi was a detached master flowing with the world and not against it.

It asks some amazing questions:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.

He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi.

But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.

Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction!

This is called the Transformation of Things.

(2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

It is at this point that a lot of people give up; having fumbled with the subject, but found no clear answers, they leave it safely on the shelf. Only the stubborn continue to look further into it. However even those robust investigators may not like what they find. Reading into the history of Daoism brings no golden age of philosophical freedom, in fact it brings up many “types” of Daoist endeavors full of cults, crazy gods, Celestial Masters and drinking mercury to live forever.

To western eyes this part is a real turn off. So in their defense they simply ignore Daoism’s history and focus on the two books mentioned above. Thus you get the “break” between Religious Daoism and the so-called Philosophical Daoism. Let me assure you that break is not really there. It has been created by philosophers with limited access to the works of the subject and taking the small parts they see as something else from all the dress up and dancing. In fact the religious practice is an expression of the Dao. The strange Celestial Master Daoism found in China today is also an expression of the Dao.

Daoism is the embodiment of the phrase, “the correct answer to free speech you find offensive is more free speech!”

For Daoism is a religion and not a simply a philosophy. That it is a hard to understand and essentially mysterious religion does not change that it contains a religious experience at the heart of it. That is a necessary part and cannot be worked around by wishful secular longing for an Eastern path that doesn’t “get weird”. Without that you wont be able to stick at it long enough to “get it”.

So, I am going to take up the challenge of communicating “what is Daoism” in two parts. Firstly, I am going to give a brief history of Daoism. That’s the easy part. Secondly, we are going to, if not capture lightning in a bottle, at least be standing atop a hill during a thunderstorm with our fingers in the air.

Daoism: a short historical primer. 

Please note: While the following is a gentle line drawn through the history of Daoism, I am not suggesting that Daoism has a linear progression in the same way as the churches of Europe. Hence I have not written this history with many names and dates that would become “milestones” in the movement. Daoism is a very large and diverse subject and China is a very large country with space for all sort of “interpretations”. In fact Daoism encourages interpretations.

Daoism started as a shamanistic collection of cults and religious practices in ancient China (around 1000 BC). It mingled with the folk religion of nature worship and a few principles stuck. These are such ideas as personal transformation, which is the commonality in all Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. This principle first took the form of talismans, mysticism and external alchemy that was basically trying to find ways to produce potions and become immortal. That proved popular and many cults and sects were merrily trying all sorts of poisonous brews to become one with the gods in heaven. Around this time (4th Century BC) some written works appeared that would later become the most recognisable Daoist thoughts such as the DDJ and the Zhuangzi, while a man called Zhang Daoling codifyed Daoism into a religion with a canon and gods after a spectral visitation from Lao Tze. Eventually this transformed into the idea of internal alchemy (3rd century onwards). No longer searching for elixirs, the Daoists searched inside themselves through such practices as meditation, sexual magic and living in caves. This practice gave us the notion of “chi energy”.

Daoist priests, philosophies and practices were in the heart of the Chinese culture and even with the arrival of Buddhism it remained a driving influence in China even for hundreds of years. There were even Daoist states in China back then. But China’s history is one of various rulers and philosophies rising and falling and while all this was happening another great master was born whose influence on the Chinese is still felt today. He was called Master Kong, who is better known in the west as Confucius. His teachings were seemingly at odds with Daoism, but nothing could be further from the truth and all three practices spiralled around and through each other, in and out of the corridors of power for the next few hundred years. They influenced each other immensely as shown in this classic painting:

Song painting in the Litang style illustrating the theme “Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are one”.

It depicts “Taoist Lu Xiujing (left), official Tao Hongjing (right) and buddhist monk Huiyuan (center, founder of Pure Land Buddhism) by the Tiger stream. The stream borders a zone infested by tigers that they just crossed without fear, engrossed as they were in their discussion. Realising what they just did, they laugh together, hence the name of the picture,Three laughing men by the Tiger stream.” Source: WIKIPEDIA

Also worth noting is that religions were not split by class in China with Daoism being the stuff of the country folk. Emperors were Daoist, Daoist priests were at court performing ceremonies to keep the country in harmony while farmers followed the paths of Confucian thought and family structure. Over these years Daoism gave rise to many of the things we take as Chinese, such as Tai Chi, the Ying Yang symbol and speaking like Master Yoda. Chan Buddhism (heavily influenced by Daoism) was practiced in such places as the famous Song monastry of Shaolin, but after much persecution moved on to Japan, and became Zen Buddhism.

Eventually, Daoism and Confucianism met with the unstoppable force of Maoism and were both sublimed and crushed in equal measure. The Maoist revolutionaries knew that they could never totally eradicate Daoism as it contains a large amount of “folk” belief that resides in the cultural psyche and so they selected a particular form of it and put the governmental stamp on it.

That is an incredibly short version of the history of Daoism. What I hope it highlights is that Daoism is a little strange for a religion:

• It has had gods and deities at some times and not at others.
• It has been an immortality cult for while and contained shamanistic magic at others.
• It has “borrowed” from Buddhism, but also given back to the middle path.
• It has had celibate priests in the heart of empire and yet has had sexual magic practiced in the mountains.
• It has two main books translated into English, but neither author knew about the other, neither would label themselves as Daoist and at least one of them is legendary.

I can appreciate the problems in trying to understand such a changing and seemingly constantly moving target! Western intellectuals have worked hard for hundreds of years to try to bring the wisdom in Daoism under their command. The traditional method of doing so is the finding of commonalities amongst the various beliefs. After all, no matter how many strange and diverse Christian sects exist; they all believe in Jesus as the Saviour; that is what makes them Christian. It is what gives them their religious comfort. Daoism is eventually just as comforting, but given the five contradicting points above this is not an easy exercise.

The trick is to realise that these actions are an attempt to “express” the Dao, but there is no “true way”, indeed anyone claiming to have one is always false. For this reason, Daoism has at its heart the understanding that everything is relative.

Relation to Buddhism.

Another method, and one expounded by such philosophers as Alan Watts, was to not only draw a line between the various “Daoisms” of antiquity, but to highlight by reference to the religion it most heavily influenced; Zen.

One of the main ways in teaching Zen is through the master ignoring his students. Often the master will reject a new applicant outright and in such a forthright way that the student will give up there and then. “I have nothing to teach you,” the master will say. The pupil will, if he is earnest, persevere with the master and many stories and legends abound regarding this strange situation and how various adherents have dealt with it. The most famous story is told of the Indian Zen Master Bodhidharma, who rejected a pupil again and again until finally the pupil cut off his arm and demanded an audience. The great master agreed to meet with the pupil and took him under his wing.

This story only makes sense to Western eyes in that we know that one must strive to understand and that one must show commitment and diligence. But actually there is a secret here:

The Master truly had nothing to teach.

Zen is about coming to your own realisation. It takes a lot of time and work and the master will help you, although not in a way you might appreciate. Should he accept you as a student then don’t expect to receive anything that could be construed as an “answer” to Zen. That is, don’t presume that Zen has esoteric knowledge and concerned only with moving through stages of learning. In fact, the most similar western experience to Zen training is probably Army Drill School. The army takes in “normal” people and turns them into killers; people with the will to kill. This is not easy. They do this by working you physically until you drop, regimenting your life and stripping you of your identity until you can be mentally reprogrammed. Zen is similar to this, but instead of forming you into a killing machine the Zen master strips you of your illusions, pares your personality down to its core and then makes you look at yourself. He does this by forcing you to answer impossible riddles, making you work in the fields, attend very very long ceremonies and hitting you with a stick if you are not meditating properly (or even if you are). This effort can take a lifetime, but finally you break the distinction between body and mind, between self and universe and wake up. You realise that the personality you hold so dear, that special “me” you think is yourself, it is a blank sheet of paper with no writing on it. It is not there at all. You are not apart from this Universe at all.

Zen is a form of psychoanalysis!

Daoism is similar to that, just without a Japanese guy hitting you around the head with a stick. In Daoism you have to hit yourself. Daoism is therefore like many religions from the East in that they all believe that you can transform yourself through training. This training involves mastering meditation and learning to live in the “now”. This means not allowing your mind to float into dreams of the future nor reminiscences of the past.

To the Daoist , the future doesn’t exist, the past doesn’t exist, there is only the present.

There is no set way to do this, no definite doctrine to follow and no master to teach you. There is only yourself, the books, other Daoists and a number of self then universal realisations on the road to understanding. Be they sudden or slow, they will come to you.

So, how does one become a Daoist if there are no “vows?”

Where is Daoism Practiced?

There are many Daoist mountains in China, but one of the most famous is a mountain called Wudang Shan.

It is famous for being the birth place of internal Kung Fu styles such as Tai Chi. Walking up it is quite an experience. There are 20 thousand steps up Wudang before getting to the top and it is an exhausting journey.

The endless stone steps tower above you, winding upwards seemingly into the heavens. Along the way there are many temples and the steps often lead you through the courtyards. Each of these temples has an increasingly strained mystic name which each subsequent temple tries very hard to trump.

So the harmony temple may be followed by the grand harmony temple, the majestic temple of great tranquillity and so on ad nausea, all the way up the steps. This naming convention seemed to me at the time to be a cute cultural translation and something quite un-purposely funny, but actually it had a definite point; the idea that you are rising to heaven and every time you think you have made it: you haven’t and there is more to go. Along the way you meet many people on the same journey. You see rich and poor alike. The rich are carried up in palanquins, totally breaking the point, and this is most discouraging. More encouraging, but not perhaps comforting, are the groups of little old Chinese ladies you meet that even at the tender ages of what looks to be 150 can hop up the steps like a heard of mountain goats.

After hours of climbing you arrive at a large temple and then upwards still more until you finally come to the top, which is above the clouds. You are here at the pinnacle of China’s attempts to reach heaven. Here sits a large golden temple and some very old Daoist priests.

Here is a film about my trip up that mountain:

After an age you have to walk back down and find some hot water for your strained leg muscles. For me, and I didn’t know this at the time, I was not the same guy walking down. My trip into the clouds had prompted me to leave something behind and to gain the courage to be what I wanted.

Experiences like that are something of a slow burn for most of us. It took another two months before I felt a change in myself and what I believed. I suppose that was simply how long it took me to “check” my beliefs inside. Most of the time people simply remember that they believe something, but they don’t check. Many religious practices are geared towards sustaining belief so you don’t have to check it.

So, what exactly are the beliefs of a Daoist?

Daoist Beliefs.

Many philosophers and religious teachers, not to mention a lot of Western Intellectuals, have found and labelled a common set of traditional Daoist thoughts. These do not stretch from all the way back to 1000 BC and I don’t think anyone will ever manage to capture that, but they at least enable you to have some conceptual framework around which you can talk. Often you hear people refer to historical Daoism becoming “recognisable” as we come closer to our age. So, let us start with the big one:

Dao.

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.
Non-existence is called the antecedent of heaven and earth; Existence is the mother of all things.
From eternal non-existence, therefore, we serenely observe the mysterious beginning of the Universe; From eternal existence we clearly see the apparent distinctions.
These two are the same in source and become different when manifested.
This sameness is called profundity. Infinite profundity is the gate whence comes the beginning of all parts of the Universe.

There is a reason that Western films and culture like to steal gently from the Daoists. It is because Daoism concerns itself with something that is all around us, that it the fundamental core of us and indeed the core of everything, but is hidden from view.

Consider this:

Scientists have worked out that the elements that make up the human body are the same as those found in the core of stars. In its beginning the Universe was not even. If it were, if matter was laid out in neat rows, then galaxies, stars and life would never happen. Instead the gaps in the lattice of matter mean that gravity acted to pull matter together. This process eventually collected enough matter that it underwent collapse and exploded, leaving behind a star. In this super-heated ball, more advanced elements formed up in layers inside the star. At the end of its life it no longer had enough energy to hold itself up and collapsed. Because of the layers of elements, energy was released in the form of an enormous explosion that we call nova (super-nova and hyper-nova).

This burst of energy, released by the star’s death, flung the more interesting and exotic elements into space. But, as before, these elements are uneven and some formed, through the attraction of matter to matter by gravity, into planets. On one particular planet the elements gave rise to life and. by forming complex molecules with strange chemical patterns, this life ate, reproduced and died. It also “evolved” under the same principles and eventually formed a creature; the first animal. This animal, our common ancestor, swam around the primordial soup until it too reproduced and died, but leaving behind generations of new creatures: faster, stronger, and more determined. One of these took the most important step on behalf of life on Earth. It took a step onto the land, giving rise to larger animals and eventually to us; humans.

But through all this the elements that make up those creatures haven’t changed. They are still the remnants, the sparks and debris, from those exploding stars. You, me and everything around you is formed of those elements.

You are made of stars.

Doesn’t that make you feel connected to the world, the sky and the Universe? It did for this man:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of piece of mind.

Albert Einstein

You may have imagined that you are apart, that you were born into the world without being asked. That you don’t belong to it. But, actually, you grew out of this Earth in exactly the same way that an apple grows out of a tree. You’re a fruit. You’re a cantaloupe. You are not separate from the world, you cannot be separated from it.

And you know what? Neither is anything else. Look out into the country and you will see the light play across the hillsides. Can you separate the valley and the hill? Just because one side is dark and the other light? The whole world, the whole Universe, is fundamentally connected. It is the nature of the Universe. It is the way the Universe works. It is the mysterious Starmaker, it is the spirit behind the beating life-energy of spacetime. You cannot grasp it, because it is chaos, it is formless, it appears passive because it works on such a grand scale that nothing you do bothers it. All life is sustained by it and would not exist but for it.

It is the Dao.

The great Tao pervades everywhere, both on the left and on the right.
By it all things came into being, and it does not reject them.
Merits accomplished, it does not possess them.
It loves and nourishes all things but does not dominate over them.
It is always non-existent; therefore it can be named as small.
All things return home to it, and it does not claim mastery over them; therefore it can be named as great.
Because it never assumes greatness, therefore it can accomplish greatness.

Taken in this way, one see’s that all creatures share this world with us, that all races are simply one and that compassion for others is the way of the Dao.

The Universe wants you to live with it. It is ready to catch you if you accept it. If you want to be happy then live in accordance with the Dao; the life energy of the Universe.

The question is How?

Ah, well, now you know why Daoism has changed so many times. How can one live in accordance with a mysterious spiritual nature that defies the understanding?

There are a number of ways, and the DDJ, Zhuangzi (among the other Daoist works of which these are but the central texts of a huge canon) have many things to say about how to live with the Dao and in accordance with it.

These principles are worthy of entire articles in themselves and indeed there is much you can read out there to assist. They are, like Dao, also endlessly translated, here is the outline of two:

De.

That which things get in order to live is called De.

De is the second core principle of Daoism along with Dao itself, its rough translation means “inner integrity” or “virtue”, but it basically can mean to grow, to ascend, graciousness and even heart as in “heart and mind.”

It is virtue in the sense that a medicine has the virtue of healing. For the Daoists, this virtue comes from living in accord with the Dao. So, if you act with wisdom and inner integrity then you are having a positive effect on your life and expressing De.  In other words if you wish to be a “good man”, do so. Don’t wish it, do it. If you can achieve the focus “on the now” required to be able to move from wishing for things to doing them, then you are expressing De.

When they clearly understand the Dao and De (Virtue), they then understand benevolence and righteousness.

Wu Wei.

A person like that could ride through the sky on the floating clouds, straddle the sun and moon, and travel beyond the four seas.
Neither death nor life can cause changes within her, and there’s little reason for her to even consider benefit or harm.

Wu Wei is “non action”. Acting without acting. This does not mean “doing nothing”! It is best thought of as “not forcing.” For me I bring my martial arts to the fore with this principle. In martial arts the most masterful skill is in getting maximum effect for minimum effort. Many martial arts are based around finding and mastering ways of achieving this. But, they basically follow the idea of a fulcrum. A fulcrum is a pivot point and the point at which other things can revolve with multiple times the effect. In the martial arts this is best seen in the soft styles that enable even the most gentile motions cause tremendous results.

I was once thrown by Don Bishop who is a 7th Dan in Shodokan (Tomiki) Akido. He asked me to attempt a stab at his stomach using a rubber knife. Now, Don is in his 70’s and a small frail looking old man. However, looks are deceptive for he is one of the powerful martial artist I have ever encountered. But, how does he generate so much power in such an old and small body? I, 6ft 2 and 18st, lunged at him as hard as I could. Don gently moved aside and using only one finger on each hand pulled me in such a way that I totally over balanced. Then, at the perfect moment, he changed the position of his fingers only by a few inches and suddenly I was thrown right over my own head. He had moved hardly at all, hardly used a jot of effort and yet had thrown me across the room. Was this magic? No, this was Wu Wei.

Another example I can give was with another martial arts master. This time it was Kendo sensei Jeff Humm of Hizen Dojo in London.

He was giving his normal end of lesson berating to the class and singling out a few choice lessons for black belts and beginners (like me) alike. He was explaining to a senior grade about a counter to a head strike technique. After a few puzzled looks he tutted and called for a training-sword.

“Hit me,” he said to the student. Now the sensei was not in armour and not wearing a helmet. He was also just standing there in his glasses. The pupil, naturally, performed the strike very slowly and gently. Sensei Humm waved his hand, “No no no, with effort.” The class slightly held its breath as the student drew back his hand and with a brilliant loud scream flashed his training-sword down at the sensei’s unarmoured head. But, the sensei was no longer there! In fact at the absolute precise moment he had moved very slightly so that not only did the students sword miss, but he had somehow cracked the student a clean ringing blow on the top of the head. I sat watching this dumfounded by the skill. Acting while not looking to act, that is what it means for me.

The essence of his life is perfect.
He can cry all the time without losing his voice.
His inner harmony is supreme.
To be aware of inner harmony is to abide with reality.

These principles, together with many others detailed in Daoism, help me try to live in harmony with the Dao. I am, of course, only human and not a master at it, but I persevere (without trying too hard to!) All the principles combine and complement each other and gives rise to the truly virtuous human being.

And eventually to becoming a sage.

The Sage.

A person who masters the principles and lessons of Daoism, who lives perfectly in harmony with the Dao. He/she is The Sage. The concept of the sage is key to Daoism. The sage is the master of life, but he is also a man who sees reality as it is.

What does that mean?

As I have said in my prior articles on philosophy: many of the things we cling to in the world are not actually real, they are figments and creations of the person thinking them and culture that they live in. Human judgement on “what is right” and “wrong” or “what is beautiful” or “ugly” are in the mind of the speaker, not the universe. Following the principle of Wu Wei, the sage realises that it is our clouded minds that create these distinctions and judgements and he refrains. Thus, Daoists do not see the world as a toy of man. This is why they are often said to be deep lovers of nature. They realise that man is a part of the animal kingdom and do not consider man to be other than an animal. However, Daoists also realise that life requires that one creature eats another so not so many will be vegetarians. A dead animal is a dead animal. It should be respected, loved, cared for but to eat one is no bad thing.

They realise that ethical judgments are fraud with peril and that there is no true man-made morality. Nature has a way. Not that Daoists suggest we all become troglodytes! Just realise that much of the intellectual and rational “truth” we take for granted is nothing more than “models” of the truth, tellings us only one perspective and not, perhaps, something that we should rely on. Daoism has no celestial monarchic view of the universe, it can accept what it likes. Many Daoists have great respect for religious masters, but most are not and cannot be “believers” in the Christian sense. Many Daoist are big fans of Buddha, but are not “Buddhist”. Other Daoist hero’s include Ghandi and other Indian masters.

In many ways the sage is similar to Plato’s theory of the Philosopher King.  A man of great natural wisdom: living within nature and strong in will, but able to see what must be done. When he acts it is gentile yet powerful. Such a sage has no fear of death, but more importantly he has no fear of life either.

So, that’s a little bit about Daoism, what it is for me. As I said at the top “It’s complicated” and yet simple. I always keep in mind the first lines of the DDJ and I always try to capture the humour of life found in the Zhuangzi. I don’t think I have a compete understanding of it, but I am trying all the time to learn and appreciate more about this most amazing of religions. Daoism is like a template on the nature of reality and the Universe. One can believe in a god and still be a Daoist, and indeed this is the form found today in China. One can certainly be a Buddhist and a Daoist. One can even follow many of the teachings of the Christ and be a Daoist.

Following the Dao, using De and Wu Wei brings the person naturally to gain the “Three Jewels” of Compassion, Moderation and Humility and these, I hope you agree, are some of the highest virtues of all.

A good soldier is free from violence.
A good fighter is free from rage.
A good winner is free from competition.
A good leader is humble before the people.
This is called the attainment of non-contention,
Or the application of the strength of others.
It is also called identity with the ultimate
Beyond space and time.

Regards,

Basho.

If you would like to know more about Daoism, please leave a comment.

Quotes: Various translations of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi, most – if not all – of the translations are online here: http://home.pages.at/onkellotus/index.html

It is your brain.

And while we can explore the furthest reaches of light-enabled space, we cannot claim to have begun understanding this small lump of tissue we each possess. Our sciences regarding it are crude at best and mostly replying on mere observation. That sum of knowledge eventually comes down to this: which bits you should not poke. On the other hand, our mental science experts, doctors and scientists try to reduce the functions of the brain down to an increasingly morbid collection of faculties about which they then bicker and argue about endlessly.

And every single one of them has missed the point…

Like the people locked up in Plato’s cave they are looking at shadows on the wall, dancing in firelight, and totally missing the magic trick. I suggest ignoring the slight of hand, diving in and seeing if we can make head or tail of it on our own. So, let’s try this:

Hold up your hands so that your thumbs and forefingers are touching and then hold them out at arm’s length. What do you see? What have you formed?

A triangle.

But, is it actually there? Is it not defined by the gap between your hands? Isn’t it really formed of nothing. There isn’t really a triangle there; it is negative space.

Oh, there is a triangle you claim…

Ok, then pick it up…

You haven’t created a triangle. You have bound a negative space in a shape, which from your point of view is similar to, what they told you at school, is a triangle.

It is your brain saying that it is triangular. It doesn’t exist other than that.

Take your hands away. Where is the triangle now?

And yet, your hands still at the ends of your arms?

The difference between these two things is the mental back flip you will have to come to terms with in this article.

OK, another example for those with furrowed brows…

Imagine (or cut out) three blue squares all the same size. Put them on the table. These three objects conform to what, they told you at school, are squares.

They are square objects:

Now place them in the following order:

What shape is there in the middle?

You can say to me that it is a triangle. Right? You can work out its length, its height and its width. You can do all sorts of things with it. You can even say exactly how much weight it would support if it were in steel or in concrete.

You can also destroy it.

In the end, it was only conceptually real. It wasn’t really real. You can talk about it all you want, but it wasn’t really there.

You are applying form to it with your brain.

You do this to your notion of “self”. Your “self” is not really there. It is the gap in you made by the meeting of all the objects that make up you.

It is negative space.

Now that we have that cat in the chicken coup, let’s start:-

One of the most common mental illusions, one that almost everyone falls into, is the identification of the “self”. Most people identify perceived mental states (collected into what we call consciousness) as somehow comprising and illuminating this self. In other words, they believe that they are in control of the consciousness to such an extent that they identify totally with it.

Many people, if asked and pressed to identify the self and its consciousness, would say that the consciousness is something in the head, perhaps a few inches behind the eyes, or between the ears. They also think that they are in control of it like a captain in a ship or a driver in a car. The body is the car and the conscious mind is the driver who directs the car into action directly through the will. From this comes the idea that the self resides in the body and yet is separate from it in some manner that is unknown. After the body dies, it goes somewhere else.

Where? Who knows, but one thing is for sure: Dead people have no consciousness.

It is clear that all the stories, fables and myths of all the cultures are founded on this unmistakable observation and the formulation of potential answers. Usually very complicated ones involving magical kingdoms in the sky or underground. That makes sense. After all, the dead person’s consciousness, their self, sure isn’t around here anymore.

Science laughs at this. But science is wrong to do so. It all follows logically. In fact science is doing a pretty bad job of coming up with answers regarding the self and consciousness as well. For these people thinking about this problem is simply a matter of reductionist dogma. Entire tomes and uncounted reams of paper go into arguing whether mental states can be literally counted and consciousness explained in simple terms of reference, as if attaching a term to something somehow enables it to be real.

It just appears real. Or at least your “self” appears real. Some people believe that other people are mere ghosts or robots. This is a common form of fantasy entertainment.

All of these arguments start too far “up the tree” and not at the root of the situation. The truth is that consciousness identified as the self is not real. Consciousness is an illusion in exactly the same way that the triangle was.

But before going any further, I want to speak of this in simple terms with an example of oranges.

I like oranges.

Should someone throw me an orange then my hand will always rise to catch it. If I deconstruct the chain of events in this circumstance then I come to a startling observation; my (so called) conscious mind has little to do with my effort at all.

Most descriptions here would start with the orange being airborne, but let us move a little backwards than that.

Firstly, the person throwing the orange will usually warn me that an orange is “incoming”.

“Do you want an orange?” they will ask, often brandishing the orange aloft for me to view in their hand.

They do this to let me see it, and secondly to enable my brain to start calculating how the affirmative response may be achieved. My brain will have already worked out that the person is likely to throw the orange to me. It does this by instantly remembering everything I know about this person. If it is my brother, then oranges’ will soon be aloft. If it is my wife, well, she will always pass me an orange like a gentlewoman should. All of this memory stuff happens in an instant and then my brain really gets to work and all sorts of new things happen at once.

My brain works out if I am hungry and if I like oranges.

Many women would say that the male brain ends its decision processing at this point, but in reality that is a crude explanation for the richness of what my brain is doing.

It actually performs thousands of calculations in that split second. From how healthy does the orange look, to will I have to wash my hands after and where is the nearest sink? It also considers if you have washed your hands recently? As well as perhaps wondering why am I worrying about cleanliness so much these days? or will this orange be a really juicy one or like that last one I had, which had been sitting around for ages?

Where does the brain get all these questions from?

The brain is full of memory connections formed from the linking, copying and combination of concepts into memories. Some concepts are stronger than others and the links between them, forged into large enough conceptions, become what we call opinion. The most important aspect of memory is that it appears to us as history and is the way in which the brain perceives the passage of time.

Time, of course, is also an illusion but that is another article.

Suffice to say that an opinion is a collection of memory connections that has been formed via the perception of history. At a higher level the brain is collecting, mapping and storing memories all the time. Like a stream of information, data, is flowing through the eyes, down the ears and across the skin. This is the endless information of the senses. It flows into the brain in the form of electrical signals, or at least that’s how we can detect its flowing, and the brain sorts it all into different forms.

Out of this massive signal, the brain picks out how I feel about oranges (in particular this orange I see in front of me and in pedantry how I feel about you holding this orange that I see in front of me).

“Yes please!” I say in return.

The orange is hefted aloft and flies through the air towards me.

Now the brain is able to go into another mode. Out of all the data coming into it, it is able to single out the orange in flight. It calculates its trajectory in a microsecond. It then orders signals to be sent to various parts of the body. It does this by finely calculating which nerves to pulse and which to switch off. A fascinating and very complicated ballet unfolds as signals bounce around my muscles in my arm and other parts of my body like my shoulders, legs and hips. All of this is amazingly routed through memory again as I am able to avoid objects around me, recount the hundreds of thousands of things I have ever caught, the known weight ranges of oranges, the past grips that have worked well in orange catching situations and even the danger of catching the orange too tightly and thereby ending up covered in orange juice.

I catch the orange as though it was easy.

From the start of this orange flinging section maybe two seconds have passed and my brain is not even tired. But, something occurs to me:

In all the millions of calculations that the brain performed; in all the pulses, memories, actions, movements and expressions; I did not “will” any of it. I did not “think” any of it. My body acted on its own to catch the orange and indeed this does shock me, but come to think of it, my brain acted on its own as well.

I did not muse through my so called consciousness to make the decision to have the orange; I did not make a logical list and consider the points of orange eating. I certainly did not control my arms directly nor pump blood to my lungs to take a breath.

I, me, my “self”, was not involved at all. I did not even will the motion. Many people think that the body is awaiting the consciousness to say “go”. But, actually, all the options, all the thinking and all the doing was outside the will.

But not the effects.

I was aware of what was happening, but not in control. Not in control? But this is my body! My actions, my mind, my “self”, my will!

Well, was it?

Which part of your consciousness was involved?  None, the brain did it all on its own. And that got me thinking. I started thinking about the other things that this wonder flesh lump between my ears does without my say so.

Driving. Fighting. Shooting and running to name but a few.

When I drive, sure decisions are made, but does my consciousness make them?

No.

My mental perception of the orange event, especially the catching of the orange, was behind that of the brain’s. The sequence of events is difficult to unravel, but when it finally comes out the consciousness only knew after the fact.

The “I” knew last.

Why does my body move without my “self” saying? And I don’t mean in simple crude ways, I mean in all ways. Why does my consciousness get in the way when I am driving or fighting or shooting? Why, if I let the brain get on with it, do I perform better?

These are important questions because they outline the shape we are building with the blocks that the brain gives us. The shape of me. The sides of the “self”.

We know that our consciousness can be affected by many things. Poke us in the brain, punch us in the jaw and fill us full of beer (often this list operates in the opposite direction) and we notice an affect on the consciousness. Take LSD and we notice consciousness expand. Take a class in yoga and we notice it change shape.

Clearly it is controlled by the brain.

One of the highlights to these questions is the actions of memory. Memory is, as I said, the recording of history in the form of various types of neurokinetic links between bits of the brain. Like a mesh, all connected and yet separate. A matrix of the past. Why do we perceive one thing happens after another? Because the brain is recording it somewhere second by second. It happens so fast that we don’t even notice. Second by second the brain records, assimilates, turns back up the right way and presents.

But in which order? If I am not “thinking” of an action makes little difference to whether the brain does it or not. The brain manages to do everything automatically. I perceive that I am still breathing. Still on a train. Still waiting to get home.

Waiting is the answer. The brain is clearly aware of time, but the consciousness drifts. Why is this? The clue is in the nature of what Einstein called Spacetime. You see, time and space are not actually separate. They are one. They are indeed different ways of looking at the same thing. The brain is a real thing; it records the “passage of time” correctly. Can’t fool the brain. It knows when you are hungry, when you are tired. What of the consciousness? That can be fooled very easily. Simply make me bored and time drags on and on. Make me excited and time rushes passed like, well like a train.

Could it be because the brain is in the real world, and therefore effected by space time, whereas the consciousness is not and can therefore become detached from it? Nevertheless, my consciousness is directly affected by the operation of the brain and not able to act separately from it. The question is does it control the brain? As we have deduced it doesn’t. In fact, it happens to be at the end of the chain when it comes to even knowing about things.

But, you say, if I want to pick up a cup, I can do so by my will!

Really? We have shown that the brain operates separately from the consciousness. This we knew, what is new is the causal relation between them. The brain runs the conscious, not the other way around. The brain is paying attention to the world around it. You are the brain, the brain is you. The brain controls the picking up of cups and other objects. It is not too much to understand the brain as having much more influence on the decisions that you think. Your consciousness doesn’t try order the brain to pick up the cup, nothing orders the brain at all. The brain is the thinking organ. It hears, thinks, decides, controls and picks up the cup.

So what the hell is the consciousness?

I am not suggesting that there is nothing in control of your body’s actions, I am just saying that the brain is actually what does it, because you are the brain, you are your body. You are not separate. The consciousness is the memory of the brain’s actions.

The brain needs to be able to mesh together the data coming into it to be able to make decisions. It needs, what is in effect, a focused light of sensation. Now there are so many sensations coming into this part of the memory that the brain meshes only some together. The brain does this. This is like spotlight thrown onto a wall of shapes. The spotlight of the consciousness. The point at which the brain joins together the data-streams, so that it may use this data to function, is the consciousness.

The conscious is just a function of the brain when writing to memory. We have come to identify ourselves so much with these endless perceptions that we mistake it for the “I”, the soul, or the “self”.

There is no “I”.

There are millions of memories being written all the time, to use a metaphor: millions of perceptions being posted into boxes or millions of waves of data crashing together. The conscious is the foam on those waves. The clashing of signals.

And like the output of a TV, it projects a picture. Sure that picture is in full colour, full sound, full experience, but it isn’t in control. The TV does not feed back into the studio and change the program. It is just a projection.

This is what Plato was going on about. This is the truth behind David Hume. It is the point being grasped at by Bishop Berkley. The consciousness is not the real “I”. We draw the data together and believe that the mental mashup, the energy of the brain crashing sensations together, is somehow in control. Well, like in the TV metaphor, the brain is the real viewer. It is using the consciousness to make decisions, not the other way around.

That is why if you “think” too much you get in the way of being able to act. Because the brain is spending too much energy turning up the fidelity of the signal and not enough processing the effects. That is why you can narrow the focus of your mind. In actual fact the is brain narrowing its focus, your consciousness just experiences it. That is why you get drunk and forget. That is why LSD works. That is why you can experience the world as boring. That is why the so called “self” can be in a mood.

The brain is making the sides of the triangle and you are mistaking the sensation of consciousness for the “self”. But, like the triangle, take away the walls; take away the brains signals, and consciousness cannot form. That is why “you” die. That is why how you see yourself is different from how others see you.

That is why you dream. That is why you feel love. That is why you consider yourself alive and that is what we identify as living. Having a consciousness is an illusion of having a separate “self”. In actual fact the brain is the sum total of you. It is in control of your mind, not the other way around.

This is why sometimes answers, “Just come to you”. They are not coming out of thin air, the brain – you – has worked them out, but not shown the consciousness.

Enjoy it. Enjoy the knowledge that “you” are surfing on the shoulders of one of the galaxies’ true wonders. It will look after you, this little fleshy lump is you after all. You are it.

You are wonderful, little brain. I love experiencing your actions; I thank you for being me and for showing me myself. I promise to take care of us both and together we can go out and experience the entire universe.

So, having come to this conclusion, what does that mean for the science of the mind?

It makes no sense to talk about consciousness as separate from the brain. The conscious states are an output signal, the brain makes decisions based on them, but those decisions are all, entirely, what is called sub-conscious. The illusion of decision making by the conscious arises from the passage of time and historical memory. The brain makes all decisions and the consciousness is not involved. The brain does all the thinking, including the thinking about the brain thinking. It is more than capable of being self-referential.

So it makes no sense to talk about consciousness in any way that suggests control. Or of decision making and of it being the “self”, soul or “you”.

That is the worst type of illusion. The brain is in charge. The brain is capable of processing everything we ascribe to the consciousness, which only acts as an output signal matrix of sensations clashing together. Our over-identification with this sensation matrix as the self is holding science back.

Regards,

Basho.

This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ, of how they were born, how they lived and how one of them died.

Despite the use of the definite ‘the’ in the first line of Philip Pullman’s new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, it is not actually claiming to be the real back-story of the influential spiritual leader. Rather it is a telling of a myth; a fable. And in doing so makes us face what the story of Jesus really means. All stories of the Gods are the subject of myth and they all have within them the patterns that stretch directly into the mind and subconscious. As with other tales of half remembered, but not forgotten, ancient wisdom, the story of Jesus has meaning beyond the telling. His is the hero’s story told again and again through the ages, and its lessons are to be read and dwelt upon over many tellings. So, as he steps though the doors of his life – the foretold stages of his journey – we step with him and arrive on the other side together.

The layers of understanding, which come with changing from child to man, are ones I remember clearly. At 10 I was always told that Jesus was also a God. Or was the Christian God himself in a certain form. This lesson led to my childlike wondering of, given the immense creative powers ascribed to this God, how it was that Jesus allowed himself to be nailed up in the first place. Why did he not use his godly power to save himself? Such are the practical thoughts of the child.

To an adult, the answer to this question is Gnostic and illuminates the spiritual level, understanding and beliefs of the speaker. The story sold to me at my Sunday school was that Jesus let himself be executed because he wanted to save us. This was something my young mind could not understand and, I presumed at the time, I would have to ‘grow up’ to realise. In the same sense that one finds an answer to Santa Claus’s apparent ability to travel around the world in one night, I did. In the sense of coming to an understanding of the churches’ view of Jesus, I did not. Growing up involved coming to terms with the world, my limited place within it and to walking some of the steps of the spiritual journey within myself. Together with the practical teachings of my schooling, the categorisation of reality scientifically defined in certain ways, this meant that the Christian God did not fit into my life.

I then came to another step on the path by wrestling with the relationship between God and Jesus. I was told that he was the father to Jesus, the son. My now adolescent mind, fresh from GCSE Biology and genetics class, wondered at the holy power that Jesus would inherit from having such a powerful father. After all, God apparently created everything, and had only one son. That son should have some serious power. I did not know then of the power of myth or of the real Jesus inside the tale. I had only the first inkling of the separation between the man and the myth. For Jesus died in a very human way. A visceral end of brutal reality. A grounding. At this point the myth rises to meet us, finding us contemplating the horror of such an end. My school told me that this was a humbling of the God, a sacrifice by the creator who wanted to understand his creations. But, my mind knew that the God could not really sacrifice anything. Astride the clouds of time and space, outside the mundane and unknowable in his extremes; so that even hearing his voice would shake the foundations of the planet, a God could not know fear, and without fear Jesus’ death meant less. His was the certain knowledge of his coming assention and his seat next to the father. For Jesus’ death to mean what it claimed he would have not been able to ask his father to forgive his persecutors. He invalidates it by his knowledge that he was immortal.

Finally, as an adult, I came to fully understand myth. I came to understand allegory and the nature of belief. Jesus suddenly became what he truly was; just a man. His is the hero myth of my culture, adopted over those of countless others. The myth of Jesus and God the Father rather than that of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas of Compassion. Or the Avatar Krishna and great blessings of Shiva. Jesus, like all these heroes’s, wandered into the desert, or sat under a tree, or flew through space or any number of ways of being removed from normal life. These forced the hero to look within and pass through temptation. Coming back from such an experience with new powers, new understandings and the ability to grant boons in the form of special teachings. The power to promise futures near at hand and of rewards from the Gods. Jesus was a man with in certain frame of mind. A man who had an experience in the desert that changed him. A man who really died on the cross and who suffered fear, doubt, uncertainty and pain for teaching his understanding. A human man of special significance, whose mind altering thoughts have been distilled into the strong myth around us today, taking in parts of all other myths, fulfilling all prophesies and speaking all truths.

That Jesus would have disappeared into the sands of Israel, swallowed whole by history like so many enlightened ones, without such myth making is a fundamental truth. As such was necessary for the teachings of Jesus to survive and flourish. How that came about is one of the great stories never uncovered. Who made the man Jesus, who died on a Roman cross as a Jewish heretic, into one of the ultimate personifications of the monomyth?

And what was their motives?

This is what is explored in Pullman’s novel. But instead of placing it historically or pointing the finger at anyone in particular (such as Saint Paul), Pullman makes his story a part of the myth itself. He uses the language of the myth to highlight the influence and effect. To point out which parts are which. So in this book Jesus is like so many other spiritual leaders in that he had an epiphany in the desert, changing him forever. However, in this book Jesus is born along with a brother called Christ. Christ represents many characters in the familiar story, but is actually the chime of the myth acting on the history of the man. At one point Christ acts in place of Judas, in another he is the elder brother in the prodigal son fable and in the finale stands in for Jesus himself.

As Robin Williams once said, being the brother of Jesus is a tough gig, especially since Jesus pretty much ignores his brother all the way through the story. Christ is left to run around after his more popular sibling and, like someone not cool enough to be in the band, becomes a chronicler of the events in Jesus’ life. The story is about how those events are presented in future times.

And the lesson is that no one can watch and record without changing what they write.

Jesus is not the first ancient philosophical master to have his words distorted by those around him. Socrates also never wrote anything down, yet he had all the ideas. It was his lover and friend Plato who was the author of the Republic.

20 years later.

How accurate an account is that going to be? Is there not a lot of temptation to round off the corners of the story and to join up the loose ends? To smooth out the kinks, enhance the events and to simply make the story fit with what you want to say? At which point do such actions become alteration and embellishment, rather than clarification and judicial editing? And why do it? To place yourself in the story or to keep on message?

Or just to make the story survive? To make the power of the message live on in myth?

Jesus didn’t write anything, but taught much, and so perhaps he expected such treatment? I feel that is the question Pullman must have asked himself before writing this novel and he really does a magical job of weaving the story of his narrative into the history, embellishing it so that the myth is formed in front of our eyes. Christ is present, Forest Gump like, at many major event in Jesus’ life and writes down what he sees. Jesus is presented as a powerful and contentious religious leader, more forceful and less eloquent than in the Bible. I found the speech of Jesus to be much more believable than in that older-tome. Jesus, in much of the New Testament, spoke in the riddles of emotionality and story, all powerful myth indicators. Indeed he never debated anything directly. Everything was thrown a curve ball that illuminated his point of view rather than expressed it. However, this may have been as in reality; I once met a poet on a train who spoke in the same rhythms and it was almost impossible to get a straight answer, which was most hilarious when he was asked for his ticket. This is not because Jesus is being difficult, says Pullman; it is because he has been getting rewritten. Jesus in this novel is a practical man, not aloof in his view of the world, but more alive, closer to the core of it.

In Pullman’s account Hirram the cripple is briskly told to, “take up your mat and walk”. This “get on with it” style of speaking is how Jesus deals with almost everything. Very direct, cutting out peoples illusions. Indeed Jesus is very believable and I found myself liking him. His directness and sight of what is really there is at the core of my own religious beliefs founded on yet another hero, Lao Tze. Of the events around Jesus Pullman reports those plainly and lets us draw our own conclusions. It is only into the mind of Christ we are shown, not Jesus, until the last moments. Christ wants Jesus to start the church and it is he, not the Devil, that approaches Jesus in the desert to “tempt” him with tales of the church’s future.

Christ himself is eventually approached by, “the Stranger” who convinces him to record the life of his brother, and he does but cant help subtly editing it. Why he would do this is brilliantly realised. The message of Jesus is not timeless, but the story of Jesus is. Thousands of preachers have expounded similar teachings. History has crushed them all underfoot. It is only Jesus’ story that is allowed to shine by the church in his name. Anyone else with a vision of eternity was burned or simply ignored. Christ needs to make Jesus special or, as the Stranger says, Jesus will disappear into history; forgotten. The Stranger tempts Christ by using his wish to help his brother and also his want to grab some of the limelight for himself. A subtle fall. The fall of making a myth. Christ is given a decision atop a slippery slope: help the Stranger and Jesus lives forever, refuse and stay true to your brother and his truths die with him.

I felt sorry for the Christ character, his final fall – the betrayal of Jesus – is seductively realised. Brought into the presence of the Jewish religious leaders by the Stranger, Christ is completely overawed by the proximity of their power. Suddenly he is inside the circle where he wishes he was with his brother, he is being asks for his advice; solicited not politicked. He gives Jesus up with barely a whimper of complaint by swallowing some comfortable lies. The arguments given by Pullman in the passage are those given to the coward looking for a way out, agreeing to anything to end the torment of embarrassment of being in the limelight for a brief moment. Told that it is the “right thing to do” and, believing it over his better judgement, it is he who kisses his brother in the famous olive garden and sends Jesus to his death.

This leaves Christ to become the immortal and risen saviour and to be mistaken for Jesus on Easter and suddenly the myth is made real. The actual message of Jesus almost becomes lost against the power of this story. Myth that grows to reach all corners of the world. That allows for no questioning of the story because pull the myth down and one risks pulling the message down with it.

I get the distinct impression that Pullman respects Jesus but hates Christ. I think he understands the power of the myth all too well. He blames the priesthood for using that power to conduct “evil”. So much “evil” that there aren’t enough rivers to hold the blood that has been spilt in the myth’s name.

Pullman has written an excellent book and one I recommend. It is important to be able to step along the hero’s journey and understand the ever repeated rhythms within it. Whether it is the ancient story of the Minotaur, the modern tale of the Skywalker or the encompassing monomyth of Jesus, the story goes on and will be retold in the same forms forever. I don’t think Pullman has a problem with that, his is a problem with what we listeners then go and do after hearing the story. We forget the point is to transcend the tale and grow spiritually along with it. As the Buddha said of his teachings – that it is a boat to cross a river – once to the other side you no longer need the boat.

You leave it behind.

I realised that those questions of my youth have no answer, no truth, they are the unknowable koans of my tribe. I celebrate them and no longer resent my apparent lack of answers for I have put away childish riddles and have found my way in the spiritual realm; this other shore. I can love Jesus the man as I can see him separate from the myth created around his life. I don’t think of him as God, unless in the sense that “I am God, you are God and we are God”.

Pullman too respects Jesus, but he cannot forgive the myth for its affects. He cannot forgive Christ.

A note on versions.

I read this novel in the iPhone Enhanced version and it was fantastic. Philip Pullman himself read the audio novel aloud and with a quick gesture I could move from the audio to the text version. The package also included some interview videos with Mr Pullman that I found most interesting.

You can also get the audio version on Audible without the text, also read by Mr Pullman.

Finally, you can of course buy the book in the traditional sense.

Regards,

Basho

The question is this:

Here we go!

Dear Mr Owl,

Firstly, don’t worry about using a nom de plume, just be careful you don’t end up as I; for sometimes it seems like more people now know me as Basho than as not. In fact, I have real life friends who don’t actually know my given name! After realising this was happening, I concluded that I actually quite liked it.

I now don’t know if I am Basho dreaming I am being James or James dreaming he is Basho.

After all, Basho is a “silly name” that sounds great in English, but, and I always keep this in mind, means “Banana Plant” in Japanese. A good and funny name for a Daoist!

Anyway, thanks, once again, for lending your obviously well thought out comments to this article and its conclusions.

I think my original point was covered in the term, “Temporary” Insanity and that being no good defence, but I too have been thinking about it, and it deserves a larger answer. Your answer shows you know something of legal moral logic, the kind of logic that my first article came out against; was that what prompted you to reply? Nevertheless, I think I can clearly say something about what I mean now.

In my ideal society, a sort of Basho’s Republic I have started to call, ‘new society’, life is lived according to a new set of values. What are these? I suppose the nearest Western approximation, and no Western idea covers half of it, would be either Anarchism or Anarcho-Syndicalism.

I say it doesn’t cover the half of it,and that is mainly because in the west we deconstruct everything.

We can’t help it I suppose. It is the nature of our science that before we can believe something we must explain it in scientific terms. That is we must measure it, for all science is about finding out ways of measuring things. Then we use those measurements to build conceptual frameworks from which future judgements, predictions, can be made. This is a very successful method of doing things in terms of building cars, computers and space stations. But, it leaves a whole aspect, a important aspect, of human nature outside in the cold. In the largest of the societies arranged this way, such as the US, they have married their science, which they all know is not the whole deal, with religion. Here in the UK, we used to have a sense of the “English condition.” It was formed by many things, such as: cricket, football, beer, Jane Austin novels and the second biggest empire of all time. It gave us our sense of spiritual identity. Recently that has been replaced, or at least degraded, and the English identity is now some sort of uber-selfishness fostered by uncapped capitalism.

That aside, one other growth from this attitude of “frameworks” is the legal code. Now, everyone knows that no western legal code is “perfect,” but we rarely ask why. It is like an itch we can’t properly scratch, but it is still there, just out of reach of our understanding. Despite this we hold our laws near and dear. Indeed, we scoff at legal codes other than our own. For example, the US legal code is the victim in many crime dramas, the very idea of the Sharia legal code of the Taliban and other extremist Muslims is abhorrent to many. I don’t know why, since I think very few actually know what it comprises of, I suppose it is the simple foreignness, the difference between it and ours. I expect that if I was to propose we ran the country by the Law Code of King Hammurabi, then my mother (often the example I pull out of the hat when it comes to a certain Pro-British view point) would dismiss it out of hand, possibly with anger. Not that she knows what it is; simply that she hates any foreign influence and fears the further loss of her “national identity.” However, when watching the news of the two boys who tortured another boy because they were bored (something that highlights my last post’s point horribly well), then she is the first to call for them to suffer in the same way. This is “an eye for an eye,” the idea of which was fist invented by an Egyptian king called Hammurabi.

The point is that much of what we take for granted as the legal inventions of our society, which is of course a society of well thought out and well intentioned laws, is actually a hangover from the ancient times. Much fun is made of the supposed common law that Welsh people can be shot by a long bow if they are on London Bridge, or the legal right of those in receipt of a “Key to the City of London” to drive their sheep about the centre of town. These common laws make up much of the fabric that our edifice of legal code is built upon, and some of them are ancient in the extreme. They come from a time when what was right and wrong was not dependant of a legal framework. People didn’t need to be told, they knew.

While that may sound romantic, and even perhaps a sort of primitivism, I would posit that actually nothing has changed. The reason that we “know” the legal system is not perfect is because we know right and wrong naturally to some extent. If we listen to ourselves, then we can touch it inside. The legal code of our country is an attempt to give that feeling an expression. Where the code differs from the feeling, is where the knowledge of the imperfection of the legal code comes from.

Where there is a large and intractable problem is the dehumanising nature of such a legal code. It reduces people to concepts; neat boxes that we stack like crates in a warehouse.

So, while I don’t want to attack your position too much in this (we are dancing around each other quite well), I am going to point out a few things. You wish to council me from suggesting a framework that would lead to potential disastrous societal judging, and that is a commendable kindness, however, after this you do the very same thing yourself. You warn of moving to a point where any “deviation from popular and societal norms may be considered unacceptable” and yet the “permanently insane” are to be kept in imprisonment to prevent them from “harming others.”

Is that not the same thing? For what is it to be “permanently” insane unless it also includes a serious deviation from societal norms. It must be so, or you would not be able to judge it as such. It seems that it is ok to judge someone as an outcast of sorts, as long as it is done in a legal framework that “protects society.” Laws like this are less and less about justice, and I men justice in the pure sense that Hammurabi advocated. Laws, as you express them, are to do with protecting society. What I think you mean is the structure of society; the fabric of our public will. These insane people are outside of that structure, a threat to it, and thus must be kept locked up lest they run amok in public, pulling down society’s sense of self and crossing norm boundaries at will.

How terrible these insane people must be to deserve such treatment?

Moral majority you call this. Really, it is a majority that doesn’t want to see things they don’t want to see. Who don’t want to deal with the insane, only protect themselves from them? Indeed, no doubt, once judged insane they are no longer people at all.

In fact the only time you do deal with them is when you have temporarily medicated them to normality. Then you are willing to try them in court. I don’t suppose in that case that they could have been “permanently” insane could they? More a sort of, “un-medicatedly-insane.”

I would suggest that the term “insane” is supposed to be a medical one, but that it currently isn’t. It is a legal one. Once legally “insane”, a person is stripped of their freedom and controlled. This is not because they have done something, but rather that they might.

Indeed, they might. Then again they might not. There is not exactly a shortage of “non insane” people doing “bad” things is there?

What I would advocate is simple: Insanity is removed from the legal books.

Insanity has nothing to do with a defence or a charge of killing. Again, we are talking about killing, as this is at least the clearest cut of the examples. Those who are medically judged to be permanently insane, such the elderly with extreme dementia (the horror of all horrors and a good example as they are sometimes very violent) actually make up a few small percentile of those who are “mentally challenged,” as New Labour would say. I know a person who has spent time in a mental institute and apart from her being amazing at poker, due to her ability to bluff out anyone because she unpredictable, I don’t think her problems, treatment and ability to stand trial for something is in any way diminished or indeed even similar to the elderly dementia sufferer. She represents the middle end of that spectrum.

At the shallow-end of this crazy pool is the rest of us?

Are you sure? For, I think we all go a little insane in our lives at some point, as Ferris Bueller said, “Sooner or later we all go to the zoo.” If that is the case, where is this line to be drawn for an excuse for ones actions?

Take my friend; if she went back into a home, escaped and killed someone (say with her car), she would be able to claim that she is absolved from the act due to her “temporary insanity.” Should she be so absolved? I don’t think so.

In fact, people should not be judged on what they thought what mind they had and what angered them (consider the ridiculous Twinkie Defence). They should only be judged on what they have done. The action speaks loud and clear. The reason that insanity and such like are currently the focus is due to intention. We differentiate between killing (manslaughter?) and murder. The Insanity plea is an attempt to present a case that the defendant is not guilty of murder or attempted murder because he was “temporarily insane” and thus “did not have murder in his heart.”

Indeed a case I know personally comes very close to this. Many years ago, Cesca and I witnessed an attempted murder. We went to court to give evidence for the prosecution and sure enough, the defence claimed that the defendants “went a little too far” and “didn’t want to kill the victim.” They “lost control” and “were not responsible for their actions.” So what? Believe me, I could clearly see they went too far as they stabbed the victim 50 times in 30 seconds. Should they be able to use this as an excuse the fact that they went “too extreme”? Is it that the more extreme the crime, the less the responsibility for it?

How to judge a person’s intentions is such a maze that it is almost certainly a folly. To try to do so is to miss the essential nature of what it is that they have actually done. By focussing on that actual act rather than the intention of the actee, we come to a place where insanity is irrelevant. You stand and fall on your actions. It is fair, balanced and blind all the things the legal code should be. Therefore, I present the idea that intentions should not be so important when judging an action. The reason this is a change is that at the moment a court judges the public safety and the intentions as the vital thing. Guilty is the verdict, “You are guilty” is the format.

Slightly silly really, as most criminals do not feel “guilt.”

Quite the opposite. Killing in the form we know as murder is often an “elated experience.” A good book I really recommend in order to get inside the head of a violent career criminal is the self defence tome, “Dead or Alive” by Geoff Thompson, who interviews a horde of muggers serving time.

However, how to judge right and wrong without intention? The only real objection to this idea that I can think of is the problem of accidental actions. That an action was accidental should be, to my mind, the only defence under the law. Not only that, but we should not be so ready to put people into boxes. That is reducing them to the status of things, concepts to be moved around and stacked. Insanity is such a large and intractable grey area that it is a very slippery slope for abuse. I advocate a freer society.

But, what of the risks? You may ask, what about letting dangerous potential killers run lose?

Last week, a boy went into his school with a science project. The security guards spotted the project in the boy’s bag during a random inspection and set off the terrorist alarm. They closed the school, called the parents of all the children, alerted the FBI, Homeland, and the Press. This boy was dragged through hours of hassle. When they realised that the boy had done nothing wrong, they demanded he apologise for the trouble he had apparently caused. When he said, the innocent have nothing to apologise for, the school then demanded he go to “counselling,” to bring his abhorrent, and outside the norm, behaviour back into line.

When stupid things like this happen in a country, I do not think my ideas are the things that generate fear. However, none the less, the answer to the questions above is the same in both the case of me and the boy.

Society’s structure is to blame here. In the case of the boy, the stupid law that children can have access to firearms, leads to a “fear overload” A knee jerk reaction that only makes sense in the terms of the framework in play. Similarly fearing “crazy” people is a result of the society we live in. We have bred insane people who are violent. Of course, a small percentage would be regardless, but our society encourages such comfortable numbness in its people. Take those two boys mentioned in the first example who tortured a boy in England. Their reason was?

“We was bored”

The sorts of punishments these two deserve are not the point. The sort of punishments the country deserves is. I am saying that in a new society, that does not raise such psychotic shitheads as those two, we wouldn’t need to be so afraid. We need a spiritual revolution, a liberal revolution and a total countrywide project to learn to relax.

We need to learn that science is not the be all and end all. Nor is religion. Some sort of sense of spiritual upbringing, a new deal with the citizenship and a new justice system is just the start, but it is a long way to making this life and this country know itself again.

And justice be real.

Regards,

Basho

So, not to disagree with you, because I don’t, but merely to add to the argument, not so much in war, but in the scheme of moral judgements, where do you stand on killing for pleasure? and I don’t mean just for humans…

Note: Any complete answer could stretch to the length of a whole book. Ideas are not isolated but rather conjoined in a massive net of links comprised of concepts, indeed that is their purpose, and I am wary of giving a less than full account of an answer by the necessity to keep within a blog post length. Suffice to say, that this is a “clip notes” version. There may be much here that is lightly treated, but that is not (I hope) because it hasn’t been thought through.

Anyway, the short answer is this:

To kill purely for pleasure is to kill because one is grasping at desire.

This comes from not being able to “feel” anymore. The person is pushed into trying anything to feel again. To sate desire is the only modern way (or indeed requirement) to “feel” something. To kill because one desires seeing the pain of others is to dwell in extreme darkness. However, the new society; a society built around knowing itself, the society un-judging and filled full of people who know themselves will not produce people who kill for pleasure. This is because they would have too much understanding and natural respect for life.

Utopian?

Consider where the “pleasure” of these actions really comes from. Is it not from the illicit nature of the act? The illegality, the acting against the laws of the society brought without? The doing of “wrong” as a source of feeling something, anything? As the main character in “Natural Born Killers,” said, “…eventually you just become bad”.

Consider the school massacres in the US. Many people, many many people, have moralised as to why those guys killed their classmates. Some said it was the lack of prayer. Others claimed it was the access to firearms. Some even blamed the music and games they had. One guy claimed that they were “friendless” outsiders. As Chris Rock said, “I counted 4 of them, that’s more friends than many have. That’s enough for 2 on 2 in a half court!”

The truth is that these boys had lost themselves to such an extent that they couldn’t feel anything. Wrapped in a cotton wool ball of a society, a life with no meaning whatsoever, a culture of only saturating desire, where the highest virtue is to be on the top of a pile of people with, as Eddie Izzard says, “…enough money to grab it with both hands and jam it in your ears and go blarg!”

When satisfying desires are the only virtues, people lose touch with the sense of reality. They start to only define themselves as the “I” in contrast to the world of “not I”. They can only care about themselves, this I, this illusion they have identified themselves with.

They are essentially Super-Selfish.

Clearly, killing in this mentally degraded form is not going to follow the flow of natural justice. It is a symptom of a sickness in the mind and soul. Not in the way often imagined in court, which claims that they have lost the so called “moral self”, rather in the way that they have forgotten about anyone but the “I” that they imagine themselves to be.

But, you asked about the “animal world”.  As I said in the article, I strongly suggest that we are not apart from the animal world; rather we are in it in every way. I don’t differentiate between human and animal. Therefore it is the same. The Killer Whales throwing sea lions to each other may be acting in some way other than “pleasure killing” (in the way we say of a psycho killer), but they may also not be. They may be acting from a pure natural instinct or even a societal pressure. We have no idea. They may be, as Nietzsche said of eagles, acting from a noble principle. A principle he hoped we would develop. In fact, I am sure we have got it – we just repress it for its brutality. They may be suffering every false perspective that we are. I don’t contend that “the animal world” is any better or worse than ours. Basically, because there is only one world and we exist in it in the same way as any other animal.

If I ran a court of law and a case came before me, I would consider it differently from one might expect. In the courts of today, a man may claim to have been “deranged” at the time of the crime. They say this as an excuse. It is not. One who kills in the mind of derangement would be instantly guilty in my court. Being of “unsound mind” at the time of the crime would garner a harsher treatment and punishment than not being. Being out of touch with the natural flow of what is right would be no reason for leniency; it is a damning thing to say in defence.

This is essentially because in the new society freedom comes from a sound knowledge of reality. A person who is freed from the chains of desire would not kill unjustly. Freedom, of course, also means the freedom to commit crimes, but – importantly – it also means knowing the consequences. Killing would garner being killed. Stealing would mean being stolen from.

This, of course, sounds simplistic. Bourgeoisie. What about stealing to prevent starvation?

Ah, well, this is where the new society differs from our own. One would never have to steal to eat or to live. The very concept of the poor is completely tied up with the equally horrendous concept of the rich. They are like a valley and a mountain. In our current society is a necessity that some “have not”.

Digression: I was once told by a teacher that they “don’t want everyone to pass their exams; someone has to clean the roads”. What a horrible concept. In some countries, like for example Japan, they respect all professions and those cleaning roads do so with pride. It is a strange and humbling thing to see for someone brought up in England, but no doubt slowly being eroded.

It is in the heart of capitalism to segregate people into whether they possess “things”, “stuff”, money, “riches”, etc. Society needs to come to know itself. Coming to know that the “I” that we obsess about is by its very nature a tool of grasping desire. It forces us into patterned illusion. So, we look at the “culture of celebrity” rather than look within, we desire what “they” have. Be it better bodies, money or success. We are intensely jealous of their success (usually success in some shallow and worthless realm) because we have been conditioned to believe that financial success and fame is the source of happiness. Take Jordan, or Paris Hilton. Both are only famous because people either want to be them or sleep with them. In a similar way as this looking up and wishing, we look down on others too. We look at such things as the TV show “Eastenders” to tell ourselves that, no matter how bad it is, we do not “sin” as much as those poor petty fuckers!

It is like the old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch, where the three classes all look down on those below and up to those above. Indeed the entire “morality” inherited from Christianity is setup in this way. God sits at the top like a king, his half human son as a prince, the Pope, the Queens, the Lords, the Plebs. Such a structure from above is actually a reflection of our own society. Jesus’ real message was actually quite different and much more mystical.

“I am God’s Son…,” Jesus said. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 10:36 & John 14:9).

This doesn’t make sense to us in the West if we don’t have a religious hierarchy and thereby make Jesus an immortal son of God. If he had been born in India, and said those things in Hinduism, he would have not garnered even a raised eyebrow. From their point of view we are all “God” and the world is an “act” (in the sense of a play or performance). The spirit of God is “playing” at being us. The comment, “I am God’s Son,” would have been met with congratulations for finally working that out, not a stoning!

Our structure of life in the West, that flows from Christian morals into its Capitalist/Humanist successor, is setup to say that “you are not special”. You are not Jesus. No, you are not even Jordan. You are nothing until you climb over the rest, until you get all that you desire – something you can never do, and become “rich” in stuff. It’s an almost worthless existence.

As Tyler Durden said, “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

All of this is to take our mind off the truth, which is that modern life sucks. It is fundamentally, insipidly and culturally bankrupt, puerile and meaningless under its own rules.

In the past we were told that we should become “rock stars” to be happy. In a very important way I “got this”, as at least “rock stars” create something; music. But, then this requires effort, talent and knowing oneself to be creative (try creating art while under illusion, you can’t (and before you mention drugs and music, consider that drugs often open reality not hide it)). In modern times you don’t even need to do anything creative. You just need to be rich. Richness is its own reward and access to fame. It is quite worse than pathetic.

So, while our society is ordered in this way and the world is lost in this way (the Capitalist way of doing things is truly taking over the world spiralling everything down the plughole) then killing can be performed for pleasure, but it is a form of mental sickness. A sickness of losing the connection with oneself and therefore the connection with the ultimate reality; the Dao.

In the new society killing would not and could not be performed for pleasure, but it might be performed for justice.

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.

Lao-tzu

Basho

Note: Of course, my personal philosophy is not pure Daoist. I am the product of my training and upbringing, not to mention my environment, genes and epi-genetics. In this vein, I make no claim to know the true Dao. Anyone who does hasn’t read the book. The very first line makes this clear. I don’t speak the Dao, but sometimes I feel it, and for me that is a source of great happiness.