Grime and Reason

Organised Religion Vs Neoliberalism

2011-11-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Please note: I make no judgement on any individual, no matter what their beliefs. It is the systems themselves I criticise, as is my right. Not believing in free will (what we have today is a long way from deserving that term), I cannot condemn any individual that has had to live life through these systems.

I want to ask something of all the skeptics out there regarding religion and Neoliberalism. This is a sincere plea; I am a long-time skeptic and would genuinely be thrilled if anyone can spare the time to explain what I hope I am missing. I just want to know peoples thoughts on why I cannot find a single skeptic speaking out specifically on the issue.

See, there are plenty of discussions about religion in the skeptic community, despite it's rather glaring similarities with the political system the majority of skeptics lives are governed by, my own included.

BOTH are doctrinal ideologies conceived by the few and imposed upon the many. Rather than priests etc we have politicians, economists and CEO's. Having "power" to vote politicians into office does not make a difference, morally, in this analogy; would it have made a difference if the Church chose two candidates and asked you to pick? Nor does the fact we have different political parties make a difference; show me which one does not accept Neoliberalism.

BOTH make claims of salvation/prosperity for all those that participate (to the extent they decree), based not on evidence but on outdated books and ideas of human nature. Apparently a "rising tide raises all ships". I think that's the technical terminology anyway for the justification for deregulation in the 70's and 80's. "Trickle-down effect" was another. Yet no one really seems to care that after 30-40 years, not only is there no evidence to show it's true but it has laid the foundation for the ideology to get even more extreme; it has made a virtue out of extreme wealth and managed to convince many people that Greed is Good. I thought extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence? Corporations are people? Now we are just getting ridiculous...

BOTH believe in trying to attain a utopian fantasy. For Heaven read Free Market, a creed which ignores the role of inheritance, ignores the use of money in securing and retaining power through politics, ignores that for the free market to be theoretically feasible, we would need to start from scratch on a level playing field with complete transparency and a public right to corporate data.

BOTH used their monopolies on cultural production to shape peoples identities. Our culture has become suffused with the messages of Neoliberalism, no less so than religious culture pre-enlightenment. We are assaulted from dawn till dusk, day-in-day-out with aspirational images and messages specifically designed to exploit our lack of free will and to manipulate us into spending money (even when we have none). Live through this culture and the chances are you will not ever question it. That's called indoctrination, same as it ever was.

BOTH are quite capable of inflicting massive amounts of suffering on 'others' not of their ideology. We seem well aware (and happy to remind those who claim religion is needed for morality) of religions involvement in the history of warfare . Well, guess what? Need evidence? Oh Dear... I think the bigger question is why you've not come across any yourself.

BOTH govern with a moral code defined and controlled by those in power, which in turn favours those in power disproportionately. Perhaps if they did a swap, and a CEO of Goldman Sachs turned out to be a child molester and a group of Priests brought down the global economy, then we might see some accountability (at least you would hope so)?

BOTH target heretics who dare question their doctrine or authority. Although, to be fair, the lions share of the violence and power in this regard the last few decades hasn't been Religion. Certainly women have been coming under a fair amount of fire regarding reproductive health issues, but religion isn't the one with an intelligence agency employing millions, a police force brutally targeting peaceful protesters, a CIA agency kidnapping people of the streets and detaining them without charge for years in secret prisons, an army that requires further racial-indoctrination so that the soldiers can do as the rulers bid and a national media establishment under it's direct ownership and control. Funnily enough people also get accused of not speaking out because to do so would make their careers, shall we say, difficult? Something to think about.

BOTH prey on the weak, with all the good intention in the world, in order to spread their power. Religion had missionaries; Neoliberalism had the Chicago School of Economics. Graduates moved into the ranks finance ministries of whichever country that found itself on the IMF's agenda. Once there, often by virtue of Neoliberal-backed dictatorships, they would oversee mass-privitisation of state assets (much to the profit of US companies), rocketing unemployment, slashed public spending, and exploding inequality (with all the misery it brings). Naomi Klein and Joseph Stiglitz, among others, have written extensively on this.

So, like organised religion, Neoliberalism is a all-encompassing doctrinal ideology promising salvation it cannot achieve, one that causes immense suffering to others whilst not tolerating any dissention, without any scientific evidence to back it up.

Let me ask you this. We skeptics want a world based on reason and evidence, correct? Then why should politics be excluded? It is based on questions of human nature, and area of study that while particularly contemporary (pre-MRI? Pfft, forget it) is nonetheless now adequate to dismiss these Neoliberal fantasies. How can it be physically possible that an ideology born decades ago could even be remotely accurate?

The one major difference between religion and Neoliberalism is that, in Western democracies at least, religion is responsible for an ever decreasing amount of suffering comparatively speaking. Neoliberalism is the dominant fundamentalist ideology of today; that is what should be skepticism's top priority were we to honestly apply criteria consistently

Change is coming. I don't want people to look back and ask where we were as a community. Don't we pride ourselves on being objective, being consistent? You know what I see in the Occupy movement? The recognition that individuals dont have the answer, that answers only come from evidence and discussion. I see natural skepticism... this movement has emerged around the world with a shared identity already there and it is not the product of an ideological few. It is a crowd-sourced identity, inspired by people around the globe, who have all come to the same conclusions regarding Neoliberalism based on the evidence. It has gotten so bad that they have spontaneously come together in over 900 cities, giving up their lives temporarily to say enough is enough. How have things gotten this far without the matter being given serious attention by the skeptical community?

Imagine if thousands were occupying against the immorality of religions place in the public sector... we would be all over it. I thought I would find support,yet all I hear is cynicism from my peers when I'm merely trying to be consistent, cynicism largely indeterminable from Neoliberal trolls that pester me for having a conscience.

Skepticism isn't just for hard science. It should be for everything that has impact in our public world. Besides, there is data and evidence out there, there is knowledge about how we have evolved and what is good for the mind. Our relative nature is but one piece of evidence not only ignored by Neoliberalism but actively opposed, all for money. Are concerns about empiricism enough to justify not lending our voice against this dangerous ideology?

I can only conclude that were the skeptical community living in the 16th Century, they would ignore the Church and instead focus all their energy on the relatively harmless fortune-teller. A week ago even I would have dismissed this as absurd. I'm not going to go through the possible objections yet because the type of answers I get are integral to the question itself, so I will answer any replies below the line. Also, before you post your reply, just consider 1) what the answer might be were you talking about religion instead of neoliberalism and 2) where the answer comes from and is that the equivilent of taking the Church's word on the matter?. I have found that often sheds light on the matter.

An open letter to skeptics.

2011-11-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

I have been a skeptic for a number of years now. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe hooked me away from any esoteric leanings I might have had in my youth, and since then I've come to see that the rejection of ideology inherent in the community can itself be a uniting factor in a vanguard for evidence-based change. Now however, I am no longer as sure as I once was.

As skeptics, we try to use a set of evidence-based rules to evaluate information. But what do we use to objectively pick which information to evaluate in the first place? I'm sure many would reply that aim of skepticism's public face is to try and educate others and counter some of the many falsehoods that have the potential to cause suffering. Huge amounts of energy have gone into tackling Power Balance bracelets, anti-vaccers, climate-change deniers, homeopaths... any number of people that abuse reason and science. Well, I put it to you that if you really care about miss-information causing suffering on a massive scale, we have one massive elephant in the room.

The Neoliberal capitalist system the majority of us live under is founded upon false premises that have absolutely no evidence to back them up. Where else would we countenance such power on the scientific basis of a couple of slightly intuitive but evidentially lacking phrases (trickle-down, rising boats etc)? It causes misery to billions. We are real, society is real, the economic system is real... surely that's all we need to be skeptical? Where are the guests at TAM speaking out about the falsehoods inherent in the Neoliberal economic model, or their views on human nature? Is politics off the table, and if so why?

Scientific consensus is adequate to assure that the skeptical community trusts scientists regarding climate change. Why then do we patently ignore the consensus regarding the relative nature of the human mind? Both are conclusions born from complex systems. Both have deniers yet we go for the crack-pot and not the powerful. Have we all lost sight of what is most important in life? How else to explain the silence while a psuedo-scientific ideology structures societies in ways that are completely counter to what the consensus suggests makes humans happy.

Any other pseudo-scientific, profit-driven endeavour that caused this much suffering would be brought up all the time, on multiple podcasts and proportionately represented at TAM. Glancing through The Amazing Meeting line-up from London, I see one person, a blogger Greta Christina, who has politics among their interests. This is just wrong.

I have long thought that the skeptical community will grow and usher in a new age of (actual) rational, ideology-free thought. But the ideology-less taking on the BIG skeptical issue of our times are not the skeptics but the people of the Occupy Movement. Their courage to speak truth to power while rejecting ideology has made me question why the skeptical community seem content to tackle the little fish. As a community we have to discuss this glaring blind-spot and ask, honestly, why it is there. I sincerely hope that it is not to avoid controversy. If you don't feel like me, then all I ask is that the next time someone asks why you do what you do, just consider saying "mainly it's because I don't like the direct affront to the science I care about" instead.

Because people ARE suffering, and if we do not challenge this ideology and reverse this explosion of inequality, the science says it's only going to get worse if nothing is done to reverse this trend toward greater inequality.

I'm struggling to reconcile this now I've thought about it. Would sincerely live to hear your thoughts.

Yours sincerely

Ben King

If you would like to read more on why Neoliberalism is the new organised religion, here's my take on it.

Word Cloud of Anger from Comments on Mayor Quans Facebook Page as of midnight GMT 27/10

2011-10-26T15:56:00.001-07:00

created at TagCrowd.com

My thoughts on Occupy Norwich and Occupy Together

2011-10-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

“The world is beginning to fracture, dissonance is building and if nothing is done by those in power the fault-line will snap. The world may be talking of an Arab revolution, but History will, I believe, see this as the birth of something bigger: the emergence of the first global identity founded on equality and a rejection of power.”

I wrote those words in February 2011, though I can happily say that I wasn't expecting it for a little while yet. To have a common cause shared between people all over the world used to take decades, if indeed it could be said to have happened at all. Occupy Together took just a few weeks; around 1000 protests in nearly 90 countries, simultaneously expressing a collective subjectivity the like of which has never been seen. Occupy Norwich is a part of that, and it does more for soft diplomacy than the government ever could.

Whether in the name of Occupy or not, change is coming. This is because what Anderson called the 'imagined community', our cultural identity, is closely correlated to communication technology which is itself going through a fairly extraordinary exponential growth. Throughout history, it was a rare place that the 1% of the time did not have near complete monopoly in the production of cultural identity, often utilising the 'other' against the 99% for no reason other than it works. Now such technological advances have progressed to beyond national boundaries, beyond language even, we are seeing the first generation in History able to form an identity that was not of their masters' creation. And what do they see? They see “others” of their generation around the world cheering each other on, helping each other in the face of arrest or even death, connecting with them far more deeply than they do with their own rulers (who themselves share far more in common with each other than they do with their own citizens). It is no longer justifiable to us to kill, exploit and profiteer from millions of our brothers and sisters away from these shores; the social-contract needs re-writing.

For the first time, people can develop through a cultural milieu not created by this ideology or that, but by thousands of regular folk the world over. This democratised identity, of which Occupy is but one emergent property, comes to radically different conclusions about morality than the closed, institutionalised mindset of capitalism or nationalism. It sees human equality as a given, not a PR weapon. It recognises the value of plurality, the danger of any ideology. From all corners of the globe, we are finally starting to produce the hitherto missing context that is necessary for many to even be aware there is a problem. It is a first step, and it will help.

Right Vs Left? That's what they want you to think.

2011-09-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were discussing Ron Paul last night, in light of a friend of hers having taken to campaigning for the guy. I find him really interesting, if only because he really sets things in a light different to that of the orthodox duopoly of U.S. politics. Personally, I think the guy is a 50/50 mix of way ahead of his time and utterly deluded. He is bold enough to say that government is corrupt, that central control of national spheres is insufficiently legitimate, yet blind to the inherently anti-social nature of capitalism and the danger of putting money before people. That got me thinking.

Ask anybody, Left or Right, this simple question: "Should people be able to work freely together to determine their own fate in a community that provides for each other?" Only severe ideologues would say no, right? So, let us assume that the vast majority of people, on the Left and the Right, would answer the affirmative. Now let us break down how Left and Right interpret that question and see where things go wrong...

From the Left, many would argue that America is already there; that democracy represents the rule of the people, that people live freely and that tax revenues, since they are administered by the people's representatives, is synonymous with 'providing for each other'. The threat, as they see it, are the corporations, those that would impinge on our ability to 'determine our own fate' by administering an economic system which keeps the majority in or near poverty, manipulating us as consumers and acting outside of the law.

The Right could make a good case for saying the same thing, though for very different reasons. Markets and the private sphere represent the most advanced form of working together, communities providing for each other in the most efficient manner. It is the Government that threatens this self-determination, it alone hampering the freedom of the private sphere with regulations, federal laws and tax (seen here as an illegitimate form of coerced cooperation).

If either of these descriptions fit the glove that you, dear reader, wear... please ask yourself this: Have you been lied to? Both interpretations are theoretically true (as in utopian/dangerous if acted upon/actually false), hence it's perfectly understandable how people can be led to believe them. Look again at the initial question I posed: both Left and Right want that - the great divide we see is nothing more than hyped-up bullshit jointly fed to us by the supposed leading lights of an apparently divided ruling class . Look at the differences in the two arguments, see how easy it is to join the dots and meet in the middle. Say it with me:

The government is corrupt. They do not work for the public good.

Corporations have corrupted it. They do not work for the public good.

Now, if one of these statements seems false to you, I am sorry. Nothing I say here will make the slightest bit of difference and I simply take heart that your views are the memetic equivalent of a genetically inbred evolutionary dead-end. If both these statements ring true, be you Left or Right, please recognise that you in this you share more in common than either do to politicians or CEOs. While bi-partisan bile continues to rise, the real irony lies in the closeness of state and corporation, our "leaders", GovCorp; collectively getting filthy rich while fuelling this charade of a battle between two "competing" concepts of freedom (the only difference is the method by which they take your money). They are not competing! They swap jobs, share lunch, do rich person stuff and quietly ignore the filthy cultural-wash that trails in their wake, dividing us, conquering us.

Wake up people. Corruption is what ails us all. Corruption is what that can unite us.

Cablegate highlights that U.S. distain of West Papua is undiminished after 40 years

2011-08-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

This disgraceful cable from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, is something I truly hoped I would not see: contemporary documents showing that U.S. indifference to Papua is as strong as ever. I had to wade through 400 pages of declassified documents for my university dissertation on West Papua; page after page of racist, ignorant, scheming betrayal of an entire people. To fill people in on the sordid tale, a mere two weeks after gaining independence from the Dutch, West Papua was invaded by Indonesia under the pretext of rescuing them of subversive minorities. It was an invasion sanctioned by a United States desperate to keep hold of a key, non-communist country in a highly volatile area of the world. The reason? Well, it does kind of look like it's all part of the same place, I mean, it's just one massive archipelago right? Oh, and it has the worlds largest copper mine in the world...

Here are some excerpts from the cable:

"The group's focus on "self-determination" basically makes their efforts a non-starter with the GOI.  Moreover, the exiles' almost exclusive focus on Papua's legal status highlights a growing rift with activists inside Papua,who are considerably more moderate."

The Act of Free Choice was the deeply ironic name given to the UN ratified sham election in 1969. 1050 hand-picked (by Indonesia, obviously) Papuans voted unanimously to give up their hard won flag, their fledging independence, and become a province of Indonesia. The declassified documents make clear that everybody knew this was a sham; that near every Papuan despised the Indonesians that had been subsidised to colonise their land afresh; even that there was a high likelihood of human rights abuses. Yet they have the temerity to ask for self-determination? Pfff!

"WPNCL spokesperson Paula Makabory asserted to poloff in a recent telephone conversation that numerous Papuans within Indonesia supported the coalition. She added, however, that she could not provide more details out of "fear" for their safety."

Nice quotation marks asshole.

"The new group's grievances are not new."

No shit?

"The WPNCL's approach basically rests on the claim that Indonesia illegally absorbed Papua (then Dutch New Guinea) through the 1969 UN-supervised Act of Free Choice."

Their "claim", as you call it, can be verified by the person you are writing to at the State department if you wish, or you could google it? This though is the killer paragraph...

"WPNCL statements also regurgitate many of the dramatic but vague claims that are the stock in trade of Papuan independence supporters.  These include accusations of genocide, gross human rights violations and massive environmental destruction purportedly committed by Indonesians."

Ouch. Don't you just hate hearing the same old stock-in-trade accusations of genocide? It all gets so boring doesn't it? I also like the way that he says, "purportedly committed by Indonesians", as though the companies committing the destruction weren't American and British.

"Ronald Tapilatu, an advisor to Papua Governor Barnabas Suebu,[said] it would... undercut the efforts of both national and provincial leaders to implement Papua's Special Autonomy agreement with Jakarta."

This would be the Special Autonomy Agreement introduced in 2002 that has done next to nothing in nearly 10 years?

This next I am particularly pissed off about, and not just because it is the Catholic Church standing up for oppressors... again. Here are the thoughts of Budi Hernawan, Director of the Jayapura Diocese Peace and Justice Secretariat (SKP)...

"The WPNCL's activities could hamper the work of human rights advocates in the province.  WPNCL public statements combined claims about alleged human rights violations in Papua with demands for political independence. This, according to Hernawan, made it more difficult for human rights defenders to convince Indonesian authorities that they were only concerned with human rights and did not have a position on Papua's political status.  "We can only work if we are seen as above politics," he said"  

So, Papuans should learn to stop worrying about self-determination, even though it is the only logical response to the human rights abuses, political imprisonment and genocide, just so that the people investigating these crimes can be taken seriously by an oppressive regime that has no interest in listening to them anyway.

These concerns were not for the likes of America back in 1969, and sadly neither are they now. It has been over 40 years since the Act of Free Choice, 40 years of genocide, abuse, environmental devastation viewable from near space and absolutely no moral evolution for the U.S. government. They have morally stagnated; no better now than a generation ago, just PR savvy.

Papuans deserve freedom. Someday they shall have it.

A Manifesto for Social Evolution in the UK: Part 2

2011-08-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to part two of my sociocultural evolutionary manifesto for reforming the UK's institutions. Today it is the turn of education and housing...

Education

If there were one sector of society that should evolve alongside communication technology it is education. Knowledge is information, whose transfer directly benefits from technological advance. Yet here we are in the 21st century with what appear to be factories attempting to force children of all shapes and sizes through the exact same hole, metaphorically speaking. Education has a duty to embrace the tenets of cultural evolution mainly because they are also the basic tenets of a good education; communication, synthesis of ideas, progression of discourse, adding to human understanding. They are thus because education as an ideal transcends identity, serving our basic, inherent desire to rationalise the world. What we need to do is ensure it goes back to these ideals, out of the grip of Government Inc ideology.

First of all, exams are the most pathetic way of making or breaking years of hard graft; they utterly misrepresent any likely future scenario for utilizing these skills. We don't lock ourselves in the bathroom with naught but a pad and pen to complete a report due in 90 minutes, do we? The whole point of the system as it is is to ensure standardisation in evaluation so that grades actually mean something in the context of everyone else's grades. Yet one person (me, for example) can study tactically and another person can work day and night on the entire course and they often still come out with the same grade. Perhaps it was because I am lucky in that I personally don't mind taking exams, but here again is another problem. We are condemning the unlucky, those that for whatever reason can't handle pressure that is in no way necessary, to potential lifelong negative consequences. Such a simplified, artificial, irrational system as this cannot hold legitimacy in such interconnected, fibre-optic times. We need virtual systems to track, accumulate and share knowledge we gain through education, borrowing ideas from RPG's. Teach kids in ways that they understand; the benefits could be far greater than we know).

Why do we still have textbooks? They can't move, can't play sound, can only provide maybe a couple of gigs of pre-defined information, cannot join you in learning with kids all over the country, nay, the world. They can't even be updated for crying out loud, you actually have to buy a whole new set! Being centrally controlled by the folks in Westminster, our education system is held hostage, condemned to evolutionary stagnation for all but a few schools, sorry, academies, that were lucky enough to be expensive political photo-ops. We also need to accept that children come in all varieties, with different skills and interests. We must find a way to vary methods of learning to fit each child; forcing all the children to fit the same antiquated and counter-intuitive system is absurd, something that particularly impacts boys. Talking about fitting education to the needs of the child, any child in this case, why don't we start feeding them properly? Complicated stuff I know.

Not only do we need radical ideas, cultural evolution always works best when experimentation can happen in multiple, interlinked locations and knowledge shared and synthesised. For this reason we must decentralise power, preferably down to individual school levels, so that teachers are free to teach in ways that suit their students. Give them the freedom to borrow from other teachers around the world ideas, games and techniques that might actually work; or else continue to do nothing in a system that is cracking at the seams.

For higher education, I suggest we stop talking about how wonderful interdisciplinary work is and actually take the plunge. I had to beg to be allowed to take the Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science course, a course that changed my life, simply because it wasn't in the school of humanities. Putting these artificial walls up helps nobody. What we need instead is a format whereby students are free to go to any lectures they wish during the first two years, perhaps with a minimum figure per week. Lectures should be recorded and made available online with forums and chatrooms. A weekly seminar allows you to present on the best/most interesting lecture you saw last week, or alternately respond to a previous presentation by another student. The first two years should be about allowing students to take their own path, with the freedom to learn different subjects depending on where their thinking takes them i.e. no exams, no marking. Come the third year, students would pick two dissertation questions, entirely of their choosing. For each work, the student chooses three types of professor (e.g, historian, social scientist, cognitive scientist) to convene and mark it as a group. This way, students are free to go beyond the knowledge of their teachers, force established professors to consider alternative views and break the closed structures of defined disciplines.

Just because capitalism doesn't care much for History doesn't mean it isn't important, perhaps if they realised that they'd have a better idea of their own intransigence. Universities must be about knowledge and only knowledge; enough with the GovCorp subversion. They must be independent, affordable and seek to expand virtually to greater numbers of people. Which brings me to my last point...

Most importantly of all, particularly in light of the fees hike, is the need for recognition of people's ability to educate themselves. I resent the fact that in order to get jobs for which I am perfectly capable, I am required to get massively in debt so that I can own a piece of paper from someone assuring employers that I do actually hold information in my head. Almost every person in this country now has access to a previously unimaginable wealth of knowledge and educational resources, factors greater than the entire education system could have provided just 20 years ago. We cannot continue as if the only education that matters is the one granted official status by the state. Not only does it mean a reliance an out-dated, nationalist-centred syllabus, but it also discriminates against those who cannot afford to go to university. Giving individuals direct access to nationally recognised qualifications, to be completed in their own way, at their own pace, is long overdue and could radically empower those who feel excluded.

Housing

Well, this is a pretty simple one. Not much cultural evolution has to say on this one, unless you want to talk about architectural styles. Or we could take about historical accidents?

Apparently, because I was unlucky enough to have come of age after the housing boom, I am now forced to pay one of the thousands of already wealthy people who bought up every cheap house going, split them in half, and rented them out. As with every other under-30 who doesn't have rich elders, my wife and I have absolutely no hope of owning our own home despite both having jobs. Norfolk, where I live, has seen house prices treble and quadruple in the last 15 years, mainly as second (or third, or fourth) homes for greedy people. The UK has one of the smallest average house sizes of the developed world, with rent accounting for an ever increasing portion of people's salaries. How can we as a generation take authority seriously when we see them doing nothing to tackle this gross injustice, while they sit on multiple homes, often paid for at our expense, earning inordinate amounts of money for doing absolutely nothing?!

Where are the new builds? Where is the investment in new home technology? Where is the protection for those priced out of living near their family because of the artificial prices created by self-imposed mega-salaries of financial industries gone mad? Is our construction industry so healthy that they don't need the work?

How does government, or the public for that matter, expect the young to have an inherent respect for property when they themselves blindly hoard it to the exclusion of a whole generation? Where is the sense of shame or duty to rectify this betrayal? It is the same place it has always been, throughout History, for property owning classes: nowhere. It has ever been thus that ownership of land and property has acted as a barrier to sharing identity and moral concern; it shouldn't surprise us that by merely increasing that number to a large part of the older generation shouldn't change that dynamic. Now it's become a generational divide, wonderfully illustrated in the book Jilted Generation, rather than serf and lord. By denying us this opportunity, authority is satisfied to see us as cash-cows for the already wealthy, accepting huge chunks of our meagre minimum wages each month because we have no other choice.

In the long run, I expect such greed to be seen as deeply immoral. But, since evolution is a step-by-step process, reform must first come through affirmative government action: investment in new builds and investment in providing affordable mortgages to first time buyers. Eventually, the issue of hoarding property will have to be tackled, perhaps through having upper limits on the number of properties you may own with the excess being offered to tenants with rent, back-dated, going toward payment of ownership. The owner gets paid, the tenant feels they are not being fleeced, house ownership goes up and society gets a bit more equal.

Previously: Part 1: Police and Justice

Coming soon: The Media and the Internet.

A Manifesto for Social Evolution in the UK: Part 1.

2011-08-20T15:45:00.000-07:00


"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
What Kennedy meant to say...

I had wanted to write about the punitive sentencing that occurred in the wake of the riots, yet the more I thought about it, the more depressed I became. The issues were so clear to the non-ideologically bound that they had already all been said. So, in an attempt to get ahead of the curve, I figured someone had better make a start putting forward some solutions...

This is not about left and right. This is not about socialist or capitalist. This, a manifesto for reform for the institutions of the UK, is an attempt to derive solutions to our growing malaise from the philosophy of cultural evolution and complex systems. Over the coming two weeks I will review, using a framework derived from cultural evolution, each of our public institutions and sectors of society that I see as being in need of urgent evolution, lest they lose all significance and authority to the new generation: the police, the justice system, education, housing, employment, the economy, foreign policy and state governance. Often the foundations upon which they are based centuries old, using misguided concepts often much older still. In a time of globalisation and exponentially growing communication technology, we must bring them up to date if we are to expect them to remain relevant to 21st century identities. If they are not, they risk losing all authority and right of representation, with potentially disastrous consequences if resisted.

I just want to finish my introduction with this: I do not see it as my job to describe a utopia before demanding people adhere to it. If that's your impression, then you've misunderstood. Evolution happens a step at a time, by definition. I'm just aiming to point out the bleeding obvious to those that are blinded by walled identities in the here and now... it's for tomorrows generation to pick up the ball and keep heading in the right direction. All we have to do is leave the world slightly better than we found it.

First up, law and order.

The Police

Firstly, I'd just like to say that I once seriously considered becoming a police officer (and still would, should they significantly change). There is something noble in principle about protecting people... so long as by 'people' you mean 'everyone', equally. The list of grievances justifiably held against the police grows by the day; deaths, cover-ups, obfuscation, lie after lie. The fact that most coppers are probably honest, hard-working people is simply not a satisfactory defence.

The police represent one of the most closed institutional systems in the country. Their shared language, uniform, privileged position of power, procedures etc, combine with the situational pressures of conflict to bond the group together (much like the army). As such, it has always been seen as a virtue to stick up for your colleagues no matter what; conversely, the conflict inherent in grassing on a fellow cop has been staple diet for cops shows to the point of cliche. This level of tribalism might have been sustainable once, but no longer. It is simply not possible to maintain that level of corruption, that many deaths in custody with seeming immunity, the brazen politicisation... not when every citizen has a camera in their pocket. Such a closed system evolves slowly, if at all. The police may be independent in name, but their remit is determined by government, not the people*. As such, it is the poor who represent the police's 'other', those who transgress capitalism's norms, be it in their dress, their disdain for greed or their misfortune to have been born into a class forgot. While it remains this way, there will always be incidents that continue to decay what little remains of a reputation they have

In such a situation, assuming the majority of police officers are honest people, we should expect to see officers speaking up, denouncing those shown to have defiled their position in the name of the people. I'd certainly like to think that at least one of them had got to know some of these youths to the point of empathy, and then on to questioning their own actions publicly. That this hasn't happened is telling, and in a large way makes each and every one of them an enabler. This is why I couldn't be a police officer; at the very best I would never get promoted, at worst who knows?

They need opening up. All data must be on-line. Civil rights groups, lawyers and the public should be the ones to hold the police to account, people whose identity allows them to do the job that needs to be done. Clearly the IPCC is far too close to be considered impartial; certainly their record is pretty pathetic. The anger felt by thousands when they think of the name Ian Tomlinson, to cite but one person, simply cannot be undone. It is there in the cynicism greeting each report of a new death at the hands of the police, in the resigned sorrow for the latest family to get lied to and dicked about after losing a loved one. The public must be allowed to video police actions and record conversations if they so wish (not least because technology will soon be doing that for some 24/7 anyway). I would go further and consider helmet-cams for armed response units that upload to independent servers... the first public inquiry avoided would ensure they pay for themselves pretty quick. If the police don't like the idea, perhaps they should stop routinely covering shit up?

The police must be seen to be about more than simply stopping criminality. Combine probation and front-line duties, let those on the street get to know these kids in deeper and more constructive contexts than stop-and-searches. Government must give police greater support by increasing investment in youth clubs and groups who do great work like Connexions instead of seeing youth related services as an easy target for slashing budgets.

And the most painful thing? When officers and politicians admit the police were corrupt once and yet insist that things have changed. As if they would even know.

The Justice System

An activist awaits trial. They know, their friends know and their lawyers know that whether they get off or get sent down depends largely on whether Judge A or Judge B is appointed to the case. If you think this is an exaggeration then congratulations to you; you are lucky (or submissive) enough to have not experienced the pleasure of finding out the limitations of 'universal' law. This alone says all that needs to be said about the problem inherent in our justice system: that power is too to ensure objective, consistent application of law. It is also too concentrated in it's identity (rich, largely male, largely white); an identity far too exclusively intertwined with other rich white guys in the police, the government and business boardrooms to ensure equal representation for the whole population.

A dangerous number of people now view the justice system, correctly as it happens, as representing the power of wealth; a number that is only going to rise as communication technologies advance. This is because of the inherent contradiction between the underlying capitalist assumptions of national courts and the multinational, globalised culture we now inhabit. Do not preach to us about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights only to throw those who embody it's spirit in jail for having the temerity to disrupt a British company turning a profit.

What I wouldn't encourage is a radical overhaul. For all it's faults, our system in the UK has built within it mechanisms that allow for evolution of law. It may be slow to do so, often to the point of exasperation (see: Drug Reform), but there is much that can be done without risk of evolutionary over-reach (otherwise known as revolution). As with all institutions, transparency, open data and an acceptance of new communication technologies must be a basic starting point, including easily searchable and mashable data records from individual judges to national statistics. Law cannot remain cloaked in legalese and expect people to feel represented. Activists must be allowed to speak their cause when in court for non-violent direct action and, if shown to adhere to international humanitarian law, they must trump issues of purely economic or political interest. How else do we avoid another Diego Garcia or West Papua?

Finally, the one thing you absolutely must not do, under any circumstances, is allow criminal minds to congregate in a culturally closed system, away from society, for any length of time.

Oh.

Seriously, of all the flaws in our institutions, none compare to the prison system for sheer misguidedness. If you were to look at humans as they truly are, a complex system governed by cultural evolution, then prison is the complete opposite of what is needed. At the heart of this misunderstanding is an immature concept of justice as retribution, of responsibility lying absolutely in Judeo-Christian notions of the soul and free will. Instead, it is simply a mechanism for providing feedback to the system, issuing formalised judgements of collective will in order to influence the community as a whole. By shutting these people away, we are merely hiding from ourselves evidence of our collective failure, or, more likely given its power, the failure of authority.
Restorative justice is exactly what cultural evolution demands, offenders being made to see the damage they have done and, where possible, meet the victims themselves. It would take a much bigger budget than such measures have now, but it must be considerably cheaper than housing them in criminal finishing schools and tarring them with further non-constructive social stigma? We need a serious reappraisal of the fundamental nature of law and justice; who it represents, it's necessary limitations and most importantly of all its need to be grounded in universality and objective fact. Do not hope for progress while bankers, arms dealers and corrupt officials act with seeming impunity while thousands are criminalised for smoking a natural substance often less harmful (certainly to others) than the champagne they so lovingly hold as a mark of sophistication.

On Monday: Education and Housing...

* No, they are not the same thing. See: Government, coming soon

So many long words to say such a stupid thing...

2011-08-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

I accidentally 'liked' someone's comment on Anne-Marie Slaughter's post on the UK riots in The Atlantic (disclaimer: yes, she mentioned my post, and yes, I'm happy for that, but no, this isn't an excuse to link to it) because, were you to switch the first 'homogeneous' for 'diverse', I could totally see it as a valid point of view that is seldom mentioned...

Jean c Rien:

"I grew up in an ethnically homogenous, economically diverse neighborhood. It was crime free, and there was great community. I now live in an ethnically diverse, economically homogenous neighborhood. People are rude and/or hostile to each other. I'm going back to the 'hood."

Artist impression of Jean c Rien

Pissed about the liking of the comment that I couldn't undo, I spent the next half hour writing a a slightly pissy reply, hence why I thought I'd post it on here to compensate for the dirty of having fed a troll.... again.

"I used to live in an ethnically diverse, economically homogeneous area, and it was the best place I've ever lived, never known so many people in one place.

Instead of falling back on your own circumstance as being representative of the greater whole (which, when you think about it, is pretty arrogant), why don't you look at the stats, the actual data, that show a clear correlation between wealth inequality and quality of life.

If you did manage to find an area that was ethnically homogeneous and yet had wealthy people kicking it with the poor folks, please don't hesitate to tell us where... seriously, it could hold the key to you..., what? Proving racism is good? It's natural?

Our identity is not determined solely by our genes; cultural identity acquired through one's life has slowly come to dominate in humankind, as civilisation accumulated and thought evolved. That is to say it is malleable, evolving through the interaction of billions of minds in a complex system... if all races have equal access to cultural production, then within a couple of generations only hardcore fundamentalists would be left. Will your kids be one of those?"

Or we could learn from old Jean here how rich and poor can live in unequal harmony together... so long as they have the same amount of melatonin in their skin organ.

And another thing on the riots...

2011-08-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to speculate a little on my previous blog regarding the looters and the elite being more alike than they care to admit, and on where this may stand in terms of the very big picture...

A lot of interesting dissonance is being created as Cameron, mistaking the one portion of civil society he can relate to (Daily Mail readers, aka shareholders) as being representative of public opinion, seeks to make political hay with collective punishment and vengeful justice. Quotes abound regarding the naked greed of these feral youth, quotes from people who own rather nice kitchens at the taxpayers expense. Talking heads and hesitant journalists vie with each other to see who can get the analysis wrong in the simplest possible way, decrying communication technology with such imprecision as to make 8 year olds wince with embarrassment.

A woman accepts a pair of shorts the day after the riots, having slept through them, and gets five and a half months in prison, separated from her two children. David Cameron hires someone he simply must have known to be a criminal in Andy Coulson and he wont even apologise for his judgement. Where is this woman's second chance Dave? So many people are contrasting this response to the aftermath of the financial crisis, comparing the damage caused and the retribution dealt out. How many bankers are in jail? Just how far does the hypocrisy have to go before the entire system loses all credibility?

I have written previously about how cycles of forms of identity, driven by technological evolution, are also revolving at an exponentially growing rate. We are reaching a new stage whereby identity creation is once again monopolised by a narrow point of view, only now that of money. We know the dangers of religious fundamentalism and extreme nationalism; we have yet to see what forms of extreme manifestations will arise from fundamentalist free-market ideology.

For possibly the first time in human history, the state and religion bare absolutely no relevance to a large portion of the new generation. What has replaced them is an orgy of commercial culture, aspirational, shallow, meaningless, irresistible... created by the scientists of human manipulation and unleashed upon a public largely unaware of what they are up against. Dark shit happens when you view the world through fundamentalist eyes; it doesn't matter if you see God, honour or money, the important thing is what you don't see: moral concern for those that don't share your views. And when these people are in power... well, we've already seen enough of that haven't we, now that we are free to watch the suffering 24 hours a day?

It is a sick joke that I am 'represented' by those who have never known poverty simply by virtue of exiting through the right vagina. Those protestors in Tahrir Square represent me more than you hypocritical fools. They want respect? They can bloody well earn it. If the Neo-liberal agenda continues to push to, ironically, possibly the most fantastically self-deluded utopian ideal out there, I have no doubt the complete subjugation of state and religion that that would entail would see us on the road to all-out corporate fascism. Will corporations be brought to heel, or will they continue to blackmail nations, make social destruction in the name of efficiency a virtue and destroy foreign lands? One thing is for certain... the next ten years will almost certainly be the most explosive and significant decade in the history of humanity.

Let's cut the bullshit and start some serious debate shall we?

2011-08-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sick to death of the partisan bollocks spewing forth from the usual cabal of out-of-touch opinion creators, both left and right, regarding the causes of the riots. Actual reasoned analysis is thin on the ground, little diamonds in a sea of bile, ignorance and cliche.

This is a question of morality.

I have yet to see a philosopher interviewed on the subject.

Moral regard is determined by who and what you identify with, which is itself comprised of the culture through which one grows up. A large number of youths clearly have no moral regard for the police or for their communities. Ergo, we can deduce that a situation has developed whereby large numbers of youths are growing up devoid of the kind of influences that generate shared cultural identity. This is clearly evident; conforming cultural appearance (as suits are to businessmen), a shared dialect (much like that shared between politicians and the business world, not a coincidence and yes, the same applies regarding the moral concern...) etc; natural examples of divergent cultural evolution of separated groups (just like genetic evolution does). This has made them so alien to the rich and powerful that they have zero chance of making it, no point in aspiration and through no fault of their own. It is a mighty rare person who can buck the human instinct to conform in groups... do we then demand it of those who have the least instead of addressing the real causes? Who has created the walls? Who has caused the segregation in the first place? Why is there such a huge gulf of worlds between the haves and have-nots?

There are no jobs. That's where most of us are forced to mix, forced to expand our moral concern by taking in structure, responsibility, exposure to people you would never normally mix with. What jobs there are do not pay enough, not to deal with the sheer volume of advertising generating needs and desires through a process of saturation (and now smart) bombing. Whereas before one person could work and still happily sustain a family, now both parents (where there are two...) have to work just to survive, members of the ever growing working poor. There are no pools, there are no clubs, there is no chance of ever buying a house, ever going to university. There is nothing but corruption in their eyes, foolishly looking directly at the Sun much too often; the greed and dishonesty of the haves (politician's expenses, Ian Tomlinson, phone tapping, bailouts) acting as convincing rationales for simply doing whatever they want to do. And why shouldn't they? They have no moral concern for us. Imagine if the Right's dreams came true, and all the people on benefits suddenly worked really hard, doing everything they possibly could to get ahead. What would change? Nothing, except they'd look like chumps instead of scroungers.

Yet despite this, they still have to be seen to be responsible even if they are victims of the system (in the same way that we have to assume free will, even if science tells us it aint so). Those kids have had little choice over their lives - that responsibility falls on the parents. Unfortunately they may be just as excluded has the youth. Either way, society progresses with the aid of law and justice, and in this case restorative justice HAS to be the way to go. Until these youth are forced to face their victims, until they are forced to spend time working in the communities they trashed, how will they gain the experiences to help them break out of this limited group identity?

It isn't a choice between "It's poverty, leave them alone!" and "use live ammunition, that'll teach the bastards!". Criminality isn't some ontological entity, some insidious cloud that infects people... it has a cause like everything else in existence. Neither is it a question of a bad soul which can be redeemed if broken first. It is a reaction; a reflection of parts of society that our leaders are blind to; a warning sign of severe cognitive dissonance. These youths and Politicians Inc are more alike than they realise: both are closed systems and both have moral regard for their own groups first and foremost. Society at large needs to realise this, because I fear the former will not be saved until we deal with the latter.

An analogy for our body politic

2011-04-10T01:25:00.000-07:00

More great stuff as I read my way through The Multitude has inspired this seed of an analogy I'd like to share. I'll make it short and sweet because I have lots to do...

We, society, are one system. Some now regard its borders as having disappeared, but most of us are still partitioned politically according largely to centuries old borders. Either way, the analogy can work at any level due to the self-similar nature of complex systems.

Imagine our system, the political body, as a literal body. Society is broken-down into parts according to people's skills and specialisations, forming the bodies organs and tissue and limbs (armies for its, well, armies). I think it would be fairly bi-partisan of me to say that money is now the lifeblood of society, hence blood for me represents its place in the body.

Unfortunately, in this particular body, the blood seems to be ganging up on the rest, subjugating the brain (politicians) into creating ever more blood that then stubbornly refuses to go anywhere except around and around the main arteries and to two highly-pumped arms whose job it is to beat up on its own legs (the exploited masses). Meanwhile, the rest of the body is suffering, unable to do anything against a brain gone rogue and poisonous blood.

If you are rich, tell me, is this rational? You are part of this body. If we get sick, trust me, you'll get sick too.

So what would be rational? Well, it wouldn't be too radical to suggest that the blood needs to circulate to all parts of the body, in sufficient amounts, to ensure that the whole body can work in unity. The brain needs to attend to those areas that require it, and not to just one organ or function. The arms need to be told to stop beating itself up, and perhaps reach for some painkillers, or else try a bit of massage to ease the pain its been causing. This is a minimum standard, sufficiently rational to be understood by everyone; an idea whose time has come now.

But we can do better than that.

Our collective endeavour in accumulating knowledge is delivering to us an escape, a hand up from the gutter of having to be a rectal muscle your entire life. Every one of us has a brain of our own. We are all qualified to be part of the brain, indeed, a brain only works because of the sheer number of neurons in the system. Soon, if we can just stop the blood from killing us through our currently tiny brain, we will have the chance to all be part of the brain, infinitely malleable, pure subjectivity giving rise to optimised emergent properties, a global consciousness that does not seek to destroy what has become itself. The body can be mechanized, automated, intimately controlled by the multitude of the brain for the rational end of optimised sustainability and quality of life. This is what the Venus Project envisions. People take the piss, but philosophically, historically, sociologically, cognitively, physically... I can see no reason why it cannot come to pass... indeed the opposite: I see it as an inevitability that only the rulers of the top-down identities stand in the way of.

Better that than dying in a puddle of blood, no?

What we need to learn from future robots on Mars... and Bees

2011-03-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

On this weeks ever-excellent Skeptics Guide to the Universe, I heard tell of a possible future plan for exploring the surface of Mars. Rather than use a single rover, the idea is to use a swarm of robots that will spread out from the landing spot, search a wide area and then return to upload and share data and presumably recharge. Each robot would have searched for the same list of pre-defined information and used common measuring techniques so that when the data is shared, a consensus can be reached as to the value of each robots findings. Should a particularly interesting spot have been found, a larger group could go to analyse in more depth, or perhaps nothing of interest was found and the search could continued elsewhere.

The inspiration for the idea came from bees. It is the same process that is involved in looking for a new place to start a hive. Each bee will scout before reporting its findings back to the hive, which will then come to a collective decision. In each case, consensus is possible because each individual is part of the same shared reality, which is in turn interpreted the same way, according to the same rules. So what the hell is it that robots and bees have that humans don't?! Well, the question actually needs to read, "What do we humans have that these bees and robots don't?"

Here's a thought experiment (I will use the robots for the comparison, since the concepts are more familiar to us, being tools of our creation, than the inner-workings of a bees brain): Clearly the robots represent a highly simplified model of what our society actually represents. To make analogy true therefore, we would need robots that were looking for different things, with different measuring devices, and different concepts of what information was of most importance. Furthermore, instead of each robots having an equal voice, a small percentage of the robots spoke for all the others, thereby ensuring that all but a few of the observations were ignored and consensus remains an impossibility.

We humans do not all share the same software; we are not the Borg. Indeed, geographical separation alone has ensured radically different coneptions of what has value and how to measure that value, simply by virtue of the natural environment one inhabits. On top of that, more abstract separations have further undermined the unity of our judgement: Religion, race, sex, gender, wealth, even being ginger for crying out loud; All of these things and a thousand more have ensured that we are far from the robot ideal in terms of reaching consensus. All of these things I have mentioned, together they form culture, the software, our imagined community, our political identity. It is thousands of years of top-down cultural (bio-political as Micahel Hardt and Antonio Negri call it) production, shaping our identities, passing from generation to generation; religious, nationalistic, commercial. It is what we believe, where we live, what we do... that is what we have that bees and robots do not. That is what gets in the way of us sharing an understanding our reality, the same shared reality that makes consensus possible in bees and robots.

Notice above that I blame top-down cultural production for our woes? Top-down production of our identities is, by definition, synonymous with political power, not in the strict 'state' defintion but political in terms of the power to govern peoples lives in any form. This includes the religious and commercial as well. Each time communication structures have progressed, the political structure has been forced to evolve, open-up, in a constant struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. Yet always the oppressors had the power of identity creation, thereby ensuring that whenever the tension did finally break, the oppressed would, like an abused child, know nothing other than retribution-in-kind. This no longer holds. The internet is ushering in a new dawn of democratised cultural production, horizontally-derived identity that can, in all but a few countries, ignore all of the boundaries that stop us from reaching consensus (Anonyminity being the extreme conclusion). Note here the I'm not saying that the Web is some sort of ready-made utpoia; all I am saying is that is can allow you to ignore those boundaries and that, since kids enjoying the internet have in many cases not yet internalised prejudice and ignorance quite yet, it can innoculate the young from the prejudice filled fear-politics used by their apparent elders. Unfortunately, evolution is slow, condemning the Internets early years to cultural production whose authors were still very much of the top-down identity.

Another criticism would be that I am arguing for us to literally become the Borg, something that is further reinforced by the fact that I'm totally up for transhumanism. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Robots and bees have one primary function. We do not; we have and should cherish our subjectivity. Consensus need only be reached in political arenas, in areas of societal organisation that has the power to impose identity upon us. We must work toward a complete split of past culture and politics, a counterintuitive notion yet only so to that part of us that has been directly formed from hundreds of years of top-down political identity. To put it a less counterintuitive way: Do we want the fundamentalist religious, nationalistic or capitalistic ideologies of the few to determine the organisation of all of society? For all of past identity is the creation of the few, ensuring that public policy is determined by religious ideas thousand of years old, 18th Century political philosophy and institutions or wealth grabbing corporations fresh from the 19th century. The alternative is to allow reality, evidence, to guide us, to recognise our own flaws and the insignificance of the individual, to harness, trust and give equal voice to all of the swarm. If we were to work toward that then, far from becoming a mindless bee, you would become free in all the other areas of your life to be more than simply an indictrinated robot. All that is being asked is that in political arenas, where people make decisions that are imposed upon others (whether willingly or not), that those decision makers leave their personal past, their personal judgement, their concept of right or wrong at the door, and allow the evidence to dictate the end results. This could not fail to be more humanitarian, since all of the evidence points to us all being one system.

None of us should trust our own judgement. We must all recognise our own pejudices, reflect on the perhaps instinctive rejection of the idea of splitting our known-culture and politics. Even our physiology works against us, showing patterns that aren't there, showing us a limited confabulation of reality. Slowly we are coming to realise these things, something epitomised by the exploding growth of the skeptic movement. Consensus is possible in science, precisely because it understood very early on that culture was an impediment to truth and thus attempted to filter out its effects. It has advanced tremendously, a testament to our ability to work together toward understanding ourselves and our environment. It is by defintion a step-by-step process evolution; but we are beginning to walk the right way.

A look back to Athens and the writing that was on the wall.

2011-03-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

Looking for a photo, I came across this blog I wrote about the Greece riots of 2008. I thought I'd repost it here since it seems quite prescient (if, given the subject, slightly more Eurocentric than reality turned out) given what 2011 has brought us thus far. That, and the fact that I am more certain than ever that the West too shall have their revolution unless drastic, I would say impossible in the States, reform takes place separating business and politics and addressing the enourmous social imbalances that have been allowed to occur....

__________________________________________________________________________________

9th December 2008

Athens burns... but how far will it go?

This is more than simply unrulely hooligans, this could be a warning for us all.

I have been following the protests which have effectively brought Greece to a debris strewn stand-still with much interest. Once again, as with Mumbai, twitter and Flkr have been keeping the world up to date with minute by minute eye-witness reporting. As with the mainstream, one obviously has to try to detect and filter bias from what is understandably emotional reporting. Having read many conflicting accounts I thought I'd try to collate my thoughts and see where it plays out..

The Greek government, like its economy, is in a pretty sorry state. With a majority of a whopping one whole seat and corruption rife throughout, Greece has witnessed a privatisation policy which, rather predictably, has led to a growing wealth gap, rising unemployment, a rise in violent crime and poverty and continued police brutality (something which amnesty international today condemned). I say predictably because as many people know (it was after all the central theme of Naomi Klein's new bestseller Shock Doctrine), this is what always happens when a state attempts to push such harmful reforms through. Some countries fare better than others... the UK for instance decided on going to war with Argentina to pull people onside (though they didn't skip the police brutality).

Many Articles speak of the selfish and destructive mob of holligans terrorising Greece. I do not doubt for one second that there are groups of youths who are, quite simply, cunts and who are quite rightly admonished for their behaviour. Yet these articles invariably fail to mention the thousands willing to face tear gas and riot police whilst remaining steadfastly non-violent. Nor do they mention the, in my mind at least, legitimate groups who are willing to stand up and fight for the kind of state that they feel people deserve.

Lets get this straight. When a corrupt government gets rich by privatising the state at the cost to the people, they have every right to demand change. If the state then uses the police to repress this dissent, people are fully justified in fighting back. I understand that the pros and cons of the free market is a decisive subject. It is roughly divided like this. Much of America believe it to be the economic ideal (overlooking their own heavy subsidising of key industries), as do the ruling corporate/political elites in charge of countries where and when it was enacted and a smattering of intellectuals around the world. On the otherside of the fence lie the millions of people who have suffered throughout the years: witnessing their rulers siphon billions of dollars, the WTO blackmailing them and depriving them of any future prosperity through outrageous debt, suffering military juntas and severe repression. Standing side by side with these victims of the silent economic war that we in the west have been sheltered from even seeing are those that have refused to be blind-folded. Anarchists are one of those groups.

Anarchists are not simply bitter hooligans. Sure, a minority have no objection to using violence. Yet as I outlined above, there are situations in which it is necessary (had it not been for the anarchists leading the uprising in Spain, Franco could have walked over Spain from the start). The simple fact is that anarchists, like a growing number of young people now that the internet is considered an integral part of our development, are well-read, politically aware and share a common theme of believing in the equality of all.

They are all aware of the effects of the free-market: how it has brought war and repression to numerous countries and millions of people, and here, before their eyes, unfettered greed has wrought a mighty blow upon the world under the banner of capitalism. The coming depression promises harsher economic conditions and a rise in poverty. To see infrastructure crumble for lack of money whilst $27 billion has found its way to Greek Banks in bail-outs is simply to much to bare.

Another thing of note about anarchists, and all actvists in general, is the incredible networking capabilities now available. Twitter and Flkr capture countless acts of police brutality and mob retaliations which are disseminated and read by people all over the world. It is in these networks of young, active groups which the most interesting developments lie. The solidarity felt at an international level, particularly in Germany and France, is really quite remarkable. For this reason I wonder whether this is really the extent of the hostilities. If we really are about to enter the kind of depression many fear, frustration at the vast sums given to banks, the vast bonuses and the greed which infects the financial sector and the universal corruption in politics will manifest itself in similar riots around Europe and beyond.

It will no longer simply be about how we can get back to being a stable credit-fuelled consumer society in a world which cannot afford to consume on an ever-expanding orgy of luxery-fucking. As liberal democracy attempts to hold on to the jet-set corporate mentality of placing profit over a fair and just society, it will come up against an ever increasing and ever more militant educated generation who place the planet and people first.

Dan Carlin smacks it once again.

2011-03-08T04:10:00.000-08:00

If you haven't already discovered Dan Carlin, I suggest you check him out. Be it his Common Sense political podcast or his Hardcore History podcast, both are excellent. I have just gotten around to watching the short video introduction to the website and I was struck once again by what he said.

He talks about the relevance of social, digital media to our future descendants by reflecting on how different our historical knowledge of Alexandra the Great's times would be if they all had blogs and podcasts. Our future selves will be able to look back on our own time and garner a three-dimensional image of our society, rather than a culture that is rigidly controlled by power structures that monopolised cultural creation (the 'Gatekeepers', as he calls them).

As ever with Dan (he can be rather downhearted and pessimistic at times, not that I can blame him for that), I can't help but feel he doesn't follow through with his clearly excellent grasp of History and apply those rules to the present time. Just as Historians could only ever work with history written by the winners, so too has society only ever been able to form identities written by the winners. Historians work with culture to construct identity.. precisely what we all do in the creation of our selves everyday of our lives. Therefore, what is revolutionary to future historians is, ipso facto, revolutionary to us, today.

We too can now construct a three dimensional view of our world, bypassing the biases and interests of the Gatekeepers. Indeed, with digital technology this revolution will be visualised, a 3D epic to end them all. Our global shared identity is being born, spreading through wires and through the air, attracted to that which is most rational; our reality whose perceived order betrays our shared existence within it.

There are walls to be overcome, fundamentalists of religion, state and commerce, but we must remember that for all but the few with everything to lose, everyone will be exposed to attractor of the most rational in a time of global communication: our global, universal commonalities.

A Sociocultural Evolutionary View of Skepticism; Its Origin and Function.

2011-03-07T04:34:00.000-08:00

I am going to give a talk on my theory of sociocultural evolution and how it applies to skepticism at our next Skeptics in the Pub meeting. As preparation I thought I would write a blog on the topic to try to flesh out my ideas. Bare in mind, I have to take it right back to the beginning of civilisation and back again, but skepticism does appear eventually...

In the beginning there was instinct ;), and the abstract had yet to exist. Foresight and memory evolved alongside social living and created the first shared abstract notion of identity emerging from our knowledge of the world and our place within it. Imagined communities did not exist beyond what was immediate, the 'other' incorporating everybody not of ones own nomadic tribal group. Shared experience was limited to geographical space since communication was limited to speech, story and song. As I see it, a few simple evolutionary maxims, once the domain of instinctive genetics but now rationalised by early humans through newly developed cognitive abilities into a cultural form, ensured the emergence of human civilisation:

1) Fear the unknown - The new and different is potentially a threat. When applied to humans this would include cultural factors since such a difference would suggest genetic difference i.e from a rival nomadic group, due to the limited extent of communication networks.

2) Do not waste energy fearing the known - The familiar can only become familiar if it hasn't already killed you. This is seen in various forms of habitualisation, and when applied to other humans would also include cultural familiarity since this would highly correspond to genetic similarity.

3) Defer to authority - Whether it is something akin to Blackmores imitate the best imitators, or simply an evolution from animalistic strength hierarchies, Authority has since the dawn of power structures been synonymous with exclusive knowledge/cultural production

4) Just as the brain constantly strives to rationalise our physical world, so too the brain strives to rationalise our cultural world. Really, there is no clear distinction since both combine to make up our environment.

Then technology started. Agriculture brought with it geographical stability and the concept of belonging to a certain area. Power dynamics, once limited to shamans and the like within individual groups, began to grow along with the resources now available: overabundance of food, increased leisure time and specialisation leading to new weapons. Instead of ruling a nomadic group, those first individuals to claim superiority now found it possible to rule over more than one group within a geographical locale. The imposition of abstract knowledge (initially religion, understandable rationalisations given the lack of knowledge) from the exclusive few could now find form in art, artifacts, story, song etc which means, according to the above maxims, that enough common culture was produced and consumed by the different peoples to ensure a stable group identity (pretty much the definition of a group) under a common hierarchy.

All over the world these cultural units formed. Written language arrived, and with it came exclusive literacy and ability to construct and record abstract concepts. Culture was either created by or influenced from a monopoly of the few creating the identity of the many, utterly saturating all of society. Yet technological advance ensured the status-quo could not last. Ships, mathematics and all manner of advances came from the opening up of these largely closed systems through trade (primarily around the Mediterranean and along land trade routes) creating cultural mixing (and bringing about the end of the Bronze Age). Now huge empires were possible, encompassing a number of different religious identities. This did not produce for stable times, and as humanity tried to rationalise this state of affairs memes such as secular citizenship flourished. It was in effect the large scale adoption, a scaling-up, of old memes from Classical Greece and other localities that, due to their diversity, had found ways to accommodate such differences. A new form of imagined community was created, that of the state, and it managed this not by replacing religion but by capturing a niche and constructing for itself a role separate from that of religion: politics. Religion was relegated merely to matters of the esoteric (and even this was not free from the manipulating intrusion of political memes) and the rest of culture was monopolised by the state. Once again, this monopolisation led to a permanent suffusion of state-memes within culture, becoming a part of all that came after. Expanding empires made various degrees of attempts at imposing 'home' culture on plundered lands but in Europe, the close proximity of closed systems of 'others' meant the continual war of states, just as nomadic and religious closed systems fought before that.

This type of transition has happened once more since the emergence of the State. Once again, technology was the driver. As science led to revolutions in navigation, weapons, bureaucracy and the like, individuals began to escape the closed system of state's common vernaculars (derived from market forces after the invention of the printing press) and trade internationally. This fresh autonomy, directly analogous to the Mediterranean traders, led once more to increased dissonance as people saw the actions of the state as counter to their desire to maintain peaceful trade. Multinational imagined communities arose such as traders and academics, the increased mixing leading to massive innovation, something the state needed to tap in order to achieve it's own aims. Yet the memes of Commerce, those of individual freedom, were more rational than the status-quo of war, propaganda and fear espoused by the State. Slowly, the States role was sidelined (just as Religion before it) as Commerce became the new producer of cultural, and therefore identity, production. They had their monopoly, granted in recognition by the State (and fetishised in corporate personhood laws) in its new role as protector of Commerce, as well as in the large, inhibitive cost of production. In this age of mass-production, imagined identity is formed by the wealthy few who censor and produce according to the narrow interests of state and commerce. Commerce has become a fundamental identity, the democratic state now restricted to Public Service campaigns and press statements, funnelled to us through the corporate sphere.

Religion is what we believe. The State is where we live. Commerce is what we do. These three monopolies, allowed to suffuse culture with their memes, have between them constructed our cultural environment and our identities. Yet now we face a technological revolution to put all the others in the shade. With each previous transition, cultural production has passed to more and more hands, from the Demi-God to Multinational CEO.. Yet it has always remained the foundation of the power dynamic, the exclusive domain of the few who rule over the multitude that are cast in their image. These past transitions of imagined community have been quantitative revolutions only. The Internet (presaged by universal education) has democratised cultural production and made it global; A truly qualitative revolution in the creation of imagined communities Dissonance is once more rising as the communication network outstrips the reach of either religion, state or commerce. Their 'official' imagined community narrative, based upon a now false notion of exclusivity and exploitation of the 'other', is now at odds with what we have come to understand for ourselves. Yet this is misleading as I will come to soon... a better description would be to say that our selves are now produced by, and so now morally includes, the multitude itself: horizontally derived, global, democratising, open system (there is no one else that can be the closed-out 'other') A new global identity is being formed based upon information, a basis which includes everybody regardless of belief, habitat or profession. In the words of this Syrian journalist, "A real revolution is nothing like what we were taught about in our school books. No military coups, no revenge, no political bloodshed in the name of the revolution. Tunis first, then Egypt. I watched how young men and women declared their refusal of the reality that had been forced on them (my italics)

This is where skepticism comes in (finally). The reason that we can form a universal imagined community is because we have universal commonalities. Not only are we physically similar but we also share familiar real communities; we are all mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, we all need to eat and we all need to rationalise our existence. This last point is key. Because we all share the same reality, the scientific method reaches the same conclusions for everyone, creating a universal commonality based upon legitimate, agreed consensus (including agreed upon provisos, distinguishing it from dogma). This creates an attractor, truth if you will, that objectivises creation of shared identity and thus insulates it from manipulation of the few, the powerful. Updated: It's kind of analogous to Entropy in regard to time, in that the same false beliefs are far less likely to spontaneously appear the world over than an the ever more rational interpretation that is the scientific consensus, based as it is on a reality independent of subjectivity. In terms of individual rationalisation, false beliefs demand a complex, specific, amalgamation of different memes in just the right order, with defense against dissonance, for the overall belief to hold up. There are many different false possibilities, but only one consensus that attempts to describe reality objectively. There is an asymetric drive towards belief in the rational, determined by our inate need to reason and our acumulating knowledge of the world; eventually objective reasoning will replace superstition. I like the idea of skeptical thinking being analogous to high entropy, fits with the notion of broad, disparate knowledge as opposed to localised, low entropy dogma. The attractor chips away at this structure leaving only that which requires no dogma whatsoever, the ever-changing world of science.

Up until now, science has retained, due to a need for trust, an exclusive network within which it works. So long as cultural production via the scientific method remained exclusive, it remained alien and unknown to many of the multitude, resulting in the state and commerces ability to ring fence it for their own use. This has limited the ability of science to influence the social sphere, since it was still produced by exclusive culture (even exclusive language), for exclusive groups. The Internet and open information memes are chipping at this closed structure, trying to open it up, something that I think is central to the aims of skepticism.

Skepticism can be to the social what the scientific method is to the physical. Both seek to objectify thinking and behaviour by attempting to identify and work around our human limitations, both biological and psychological (or cultural, i.e. accumulated knowledge. The terms are to me largely interchangeable though psychological would also account for the effect of genetics too). Objective knowledge of our world has reached a point whereby different people, applying skepticism, can come to universal conclusions of abstract notions (morality, ethics etc) in the social sphere (as the scientific method does for the physical world). Previous forms of meta-subjectivity created for us by the few, the foundations of exclusive imagined identities, are mere constructs designed to maintain the status-quo; institutionalised culture rationalised (communicated down) in such terms as paternal (religion), duty (state, social contract) or theories of economics-as-freedom (commerce). We must reject these dogmas, for that is what they are, and objectivize the subjective through the objectification of thought (applying skeptical rules).

This is what skepticism does. It facilitates the emergence of a common identity through the universal acceptance (within the group) of agreed upon rules that are designed, from our objective knowledge of science, to recognise and mitigate our own mental flaws and biases. These rules demand that we all recognise and mitigate those parts of our identity that are exclusive, that have come from an undemocratic sphere of cultural production, and instead accept the evidence of our shared reality.

This attractor of truth that is independent of humanity is a revolutionary concept when you consider its correlation with technology. Hegel always imagined History as the story of mankind coming to know itself, but I think he underestimated the next step, getting to know each other. So long as capitalism continues to connect people the dissonance will grow. Yet the powerful, those purveyors of ideology, have come to believe their own dogma... how else do you rationalise greed so one is able to sleep soundly and be a good family man? This makes them dangerous. They have created a global gated community, inoculating themselves from the darker externalities their wealth accumulation demands. Yet even they inhabit the self same world as the multitude and it remains to be seen how high the pull of the attractor can reach. Each transition of imagined identity has brought with it increased reliance on the cooperation of the people and as the latter of the three, commerce can, reluctantly, change when forced to by the expanding moral spheres/communication structures of its consumers. That those with the most to lose and of the most immoral nature (oil, weapons, finance) are the ones to have used their wealth to subvert the state, the supposed representatives of the very people that now exceed them in moral capacity, is not a coincidence. They will be the last bastions of imposed identity, the most fundamentalist of opponents against the emerging global identity.

Everyone will always have reality in common. This fact must not be allowed to be taken from us by the extreme post-modernists who represent the social equivalent to pseudo-scientists. To endow validity to individual 'realities' is to erect walls where there need not be any. Celebrating subjectivity is not the exclusive domain of those who deny a shared objective truth. If it were so, we would be doomed to the constant threat of manipulation as we continue to allow belief to be a valid criteria for defining authority to which we are subservient. We have tried that, indeed we have tried nothing else. While it may have been moral according to the limited definition granted by limited communication technology in the past, it was still the cause of much pain and suffering as dissonance, caused by the attractor, began to contradict those belief systems. The only way for us to reach a globally just and fair society is to base that society on universal commonalities of reality as it really is. The public realm must be free from the ideologies of religion, state and commerce and be replaced with institutions that emerge from the complex network of independent minds. The multitude must be allowed to communicate, to create global culture that eliminates the 'other' and renders the identities of the oppressors obsolete.

No longer will we be defined by what we believe, where we live or what we do. We will be recognised for our unique set of knowledge and the social value that contributes. In short, we will go from objectified subjectivity of the soul, to the subjectivised objectivity of a complex network. We are a system, and a system is defined by the number of links, by relationships, more than by individual nodes. Ironically, we once knew that, as indigenous people do, but we didn't understand it. That's why it all got a bit crazy for a few thousand years. Now we are beginning to understand it, we are replicating that understanding in culture because it seems the most rational interpretation and eventually people will be able to grow in an environment where there is enough understanding that we can once again come to know what it is to be part of a system, both human and, inseparably, ecological. We can only know such things when we are allowed to live it, understanding clearly isn't enough. As such, I predict that skepticism will grow to become a fundamental part of this new, information based, global identity and will eventually lead to the eradication of enforced, indoctrinated, false subjectivity to a true subjectivity whereby an individual is free to express themselves as they truly feel themselves to be, not as a call-centre worker from Hull who wishes she had the time and money to learn violin.

Thanks to @Mikeharris100 for his input!

David Cameron: A man on the wrong side of History

2011-03-04T00:54:00.000-08:00

I just read this quote in todays Guardian. Given everything I have written I don't need to tell you here why this is wrong. This shit speaks for itself:

In February, Cameron criticised "state multiculturalism". He argued that the UK needed a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to all kinds of extremism and proposed an end to engagement with non-violent extremist groups as well as violent ones, on the basis that extremists often begin in non-violent groups.

This way is Fascism. It is time for the Multitude to assert itself.

Is this the worst definition of meme ever?

2011-02-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

This "definition" of a meme was in the 'about' section in a Facebook quiz about how many of the top 100 literary books you may or may not have read. It has to rank as the worst attempts at defining a meme I have yet come across.

A “meme” is a little chain-letter-like game that people send around the internet.

Is it? I couldn't resist... here was my reply.

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Oh man that definition up top of 'meme' makes me bristle. In one hundred years time cultural evolution, through memetics (or whatever the fuck you petty academics want to call it), will be recognised as equally significant as genetic evolution; it is what makes us, us.

Without memes there would be no identity. We would be animals of pure instinct. Memes are all human-made products, all language, all artifacts, all culture. They are the basis for our morality, the vehicle of our progression, the network from which History emerges. When shared, they are what give us our humanity; when not, our inhumanity.

Dawkins name will go down with Darwin's as the two most influential individuals to avow and propogate evolutionary ideas. Once humanity comes to understand the power of the meme, we will understand the conceptual darkness humanity has suffered under, the false notions of the self as soul and external, interpretable moral codes born of a time of memetic infancy, where the 'other' prowls relentlessly and power was held by the few over all civilisation.

We are now coming out of that darkness, the illusion of 'other' dissapating before our now global eyes. We will soon recognise our true responsibilities and our true sense of self within a complex network of equal individuals.

The Internet, global identity and the overthrow of power.

2011-02-21T02:52:00.000-08:00

The world is beginning to fracture, dissonance is building and if nothing is done by those in power the fault-line will snap. The world may be talking of an Arab revolution, but History will, I believe, see this as the birth of something bigger: the emergence of the first global identity founded on equality and a rejection of power.

Why do I think this? Throughout my writing, one thing stands out as crucial: Morality is correlated with communication technology. That we empathise with that which we know, that we connect with, has been known a long time yet it's ramifications have yet to be fully understood. It is clear that the accelerating pace of technological change was responsible for an accelerating pace of emancipation, inclusion into societies moral sphere. Now this advance has progressed beyond national boundaries, we are seeing the first generation in History able to form an identity that was not of their masters creation. And what do they see? They see others of their generation around the world cheering them on, helping them at risk of arrest, connecting with them far more deeply than they do with their own rulers.

Lets be clear. We are relative beings. Its all very well having lots of material goods, but if your 'advanced' nation has extreme wealth inequality then happiness it will not bring. Every nation on earth is governed by corrupt people who share more in common with each other than they do with their own citizens. Let me explain why this is so important.

Imagine taking all the people in the world and splitting them into two groups. In the first group, you have all of the people with power: the wealthy, the politicians, the capitalists and all the resources they command. In the second group we have everybody else: the dispossessed, the relative poor, the oppressesed. Seems fairly one-sided right? Well you are right... the powerful don't stand a chance. Here's why.

Imagine these two groups as two circles whose size is proportioned solely to the number of individuals. Now see the people tower over the powerful (at least on paper). But, those resources I mentioned earlier are also people: the army, the police force, lower ranking officials who decide they don't have enough to risk their own lives... an awful lot of their family and friends may well be on the other side of the divide. Those not fully indoctrinated, once confronted with a huge fucking circle that aint afraid no one no more, will switch sides, aware of their kingmaker status due to the reliance that power has on them.

Where it gets messy is when you consider those 'old-school' elements of society, potentially numerous, who have been subjected to living an identity constructed by others, be it religion, nationalism or free-market ideals. These people know no other identity, literally. They are unable to empathise with the 'other', unaware that all around them their children are coming to identify with them more than their own parents. This largely generational divide has never been more evident than now, the young having evolved beyond the power schemas of their elders, disgusted at the immorality of outdated politics.

Example:

N.b This is very generalised but, since I'm making judgement calls solely on systems theory, I don't feel like I'm being offensive in what is to come. After all, I'm not actually passing judgement at all here, merely talking History.

America is an interesting memetic sandwich. Down the coasts it is highly multicultural. It is here we also find the most liberal, open-minded, largely Democratic individuals. Through the middle and down south you have a more religious, largely Republican society with little memetic mixing at all. If one looks at the different memes inherent in these two polarised views, you simply have to come to the conclusion that Democrats represent the most recently emancipated ideas. After-all, Republican dogma is wrapped up in religious ideas whose age is measured in thousands of years. Their most recent dogma is that of the free-market, an unobtainable ideal decades old, long disproved, that is successful solely because of it's undoubted facilitation of greed. These are ideas whose time came when communication technology was still limited to a state monopoly! They may have been moral then, but in the face of an opposition whose ideals extend further they appear ever more selfish and immoral.

The problem is that there has been such limited mixing in many Republican heartlands that identity there is still created with mental tools that are decades old at best, retaining the 'other' of that time. History does not swing back as far as republicans want. Not without major repression. They are desperately clinging to certain ways, certain of God, certain of the possibility of the chance of the dream of becoming Rich; indoctrinated to blind subservience and supplied with pre-packaged, logic-defying ammunition with which to insult dissonance away. Group-think, positive and negative bias; a cultural bubble unto themselves where the unknown is riduculed in an unknowing way. Whatever narrative Fox news says, is.

On the other side, Democrats too are now on the wrong side of History. They share more in common with their Republican counterparts than either party has with the citizens they represent. Both comprise a Duopoly of corruption self-legitimised by unquestioned capitalist ideals of the primacy of wealth and misguided social Darwinism. Neither talks about the real issues: military spending, corruption, bought-power, a re-evaluation of what it means to be a state in the globalised world, because it is both parties that are guilty of forgetting their place. The choice of social destination is a sham, a mirage; it is merely whether you take the scenic rout* to repression or the highway.

Yet through it all comes a youth that by human nature seems to grow into technology as if it has always been there (which to them it has). This ability to adapt is leading millions of youths to plug in, along with like-minded individuals around the world, and witness global events of shared importance. Images and voices of Tunisia and Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, have seared themselves into minds the world over, especially in the wired-up West, marking the beginning of a global identity that will countenance the universal use of the 'other' by states everywhere. This breaking free of nationally enclosed, officially-manufactured identity will coalesce into a global moral force that will rally around the one issue that unites people everywhere: Corrupt Power. Rationality will act as an attractor, and rationality derived from global communication structures will be global in its conclusions: One people, One planet.

When people see freedom, they yearn for it. The opening up of social spaces into a global communication network will, without doubt, mark the greatest revolution humanity has ever known. Until now, revolutions have been subject to limited, nationalistic worldviews, the oppressed becoming the oppressor because, like the abused becoming abusers, it was all they ever knew. Global communication and the explosion of comparative data it brings marks a turning point, the first expressions of global identity no longer bound by the grip of the few. Here dissonance begets cynicism and the very concept or 'power' begins to go the way of racism; a social ill that will no longer be tolerated. This is the first generation for whom their moral common denominator is that of humanity as a whole, and that is something that the inherently nationalistic state, a concept born in ignorance of the wider-world, was not built to cope with.

Read Anonymous's latest statement. Tell me that social schema isn't way more moral than the racist, wealth-obsessed, real-politik of the status-quo. That shit's contemporary, that shit's on the right side of History.

* (sic)

The out-dated mindset of the Social Contract and it's support for exploitation

2011-02-19T02:45:00.000-08:00

Since I haven't posted in a while, I'd thought i'd share this rant I was compelled to write in reply to someone my wife knows back in the states...
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History is not one continuous, unchanging line. Humanities empathy is determined by what we know; our fears determined by what we don't know. This means morality is determined by the extent of the communication infrastructure that capitalism is responsible for building.

As exploitative as it is, at least capitalism is thereby sowing the seeds of its own downfall.

You see, militarism makes sense when communication structures were limited to national borders (except for the republic of letters during the enlightenment). In that age, everyone was an 'other', a potential enemy that meant governments had a duty to protect their citizens with strength. During this time, xenophobia was a virtue and racism acceptable.

That is no longer the age we are in.

Communication is global. Global influences through the internet are generating a youth who, more than ever before, incorporate humanity as a whole as equally worthy of rights and respect. But where does that leave nationalist duties of government? What was once a virtue: wealth grabbing, resource plundering, national security entailing military bases all over the world, propping up repressive regimes because it suits (i.e for money, or access to it), being a superpower... these things are no longer the moral imperative. They unquestionably assume that whatever is best for ones own population must be done, no matter the cost to 'others'.

There are no 'others' anymore.

Violence begats violence. Unquestionably, the U.S has been the single leading sponser of terrorism for the last 60 years, no corner of the globe has been left untouched. Whether it was directly in proxy wars with Russia or beating on Latin American countries who dared defy the corporations that held them to ransom, or indirectly through scores of dictatorships, armed by U.S companies, trained in the U.S and sent to subjugate people like those in West Papua, suffering cultural genocide whilst their land is sullied and raped.

Imagine. Look at Americas response to 9/11. You rightly, as did I, got amazingly upset and angry. The 'other' of which you are scared are human too. They fear, they get angry, and then you have the gall to wonder why?

"It's because they hate our freedoms!" - The most insulting soundbite of them all. It is because they want your freedom but the U.S. denies them this chance.

Seriosuly, what Human does not want to be free?!

The safest thing America could possibly do is to practice what it preaches. Stop the militarism, stop the exploitation, stop determining peoples futures like they are pieces on a chesssboard. Because it isn't the 'other' that will be the threat when it all gets too much. No, the 'other' will have actually have joined with the increasing millions of Americans and people around the globe that have seen their humanity and empathise with them. It will be corporate apologists that will become the 'other' as people fail to understand how such one-sided, exclusive empathy could exist in such an unjust world.

Good luck Egypt, the world is cheering for you.

2011-02-04T00:43:00.000-08:00

Atheists, to my regret, have thus far failed to coin a phrase more resonant than "God help them", exclamation being so infused with religious terms. Instead, I hope with all my heart that Egyptian helps Egyptian today, the 'Day of Departure', a 21st Century civic D-Day. Will they march on the palace? Will the army finally flinch? Will Mubarak be forced to step down and would the people settle for Suleiman? Having done my back in, I shall be watching the bravest example of journalism since Bradley Manning leaked those files, that of Al Jazeera (English Version). It will be an emotional ride as I cheer the brothers and sisters I never knew I had on their struggle to end the nightmare of dictatorship.

Whatever the outcome, we are seeing a seismic shift in Geo-politics. Don't think for a second that with the Euro still in danger, the utter failure to reform the financial system, the widening inequality and the like, politicians the world over aren't thinking to themselves just how far this could spread. This fight for freedom (a stunningly rare occurrence given that some would have it used as the subtitle for edited highlights of the last decade.) is being watched worldwide, the majority cheering for those who have finally had enough with living under a dictator. They outnumber armchair Mubarak fans by thousands to one. It provides empathy through shared memes (#jan24: symbol for 'freedom') in just the same psychological way that sports fans bond. That isn't to belittle the situation; that's to accept humanities beautiful capacity to empathise. And it's that which is going to win us this battle against corruption and abuse of power everywhere.

If the protest groups that gained freedom in Tunisia can gain political representation of some description and reach out to (we hope) protest groups that gained freedom and political significance in Egypt and beyond, then they have an amazing opportunity to form bonds from the unique (in the multinational sense) position of already having a strong bond. Has this happened before? There is a certain anti-politics in the expressions of the last few weeks, unless the manifesto from the Gaza Youth has influenced subsequent views. Has dissonance simply got to a point already whereby political reality and social reality are now too far apart, creating a generation of cynical, sceptical youth? It is clearly on the rise in West, and I'd put money on a lot of people in Greece being inspired by Egypt at this very moment.

But today is Egypt's day. We must do everything we can to help. Phone your congress, phone your MP, offer words of hope and encouragement online and continue to develop this shared, global, imagined identity. Everyone is linked now, in ten years time: ten times more so, a crowd-sourced, democratised (pray* it stays so) global identity. If all those who legitimately support freedom continue to support it, be assured that when your time comes, the people of newly, truly, democratic Egypt will have your back.

* See what I mean?

A Defense of Capitalism, not that they might see it that way...

2011-01-24T03:05:00.000-08:00

Capitalism is shit. That I feel is the consensus of the majority of the world from my limited viewpoint from on lucky street. It is also, I would argue, closer to what the majority of the capitalist world itself would proffer compared to its glittering opposite as the contemptuously titled ‘End of History’. The growing inequality; complete ignorance of what it is to be happy, nay, the frightened denial inherent in wealth’s desire to buy what cannot be bought. It has the potential to tear us apart as a species, this walling off of homes and minds. But this article isn’t really about that. It is about perspective, about how we got where we are and why we can have optimism about where we may be going. It is also about picking the right target, so that we may endeavour not to marginalise those that might otherwise adept to the zeitgeist.

Humanity has progressed to varying degrees through three main types of imagined identities (as in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities), created by those who monopolised cultural production. Religion, the State and Commerce emerged one from the other to accommodate the ever-greater complexity that derived from the accumulation of knowledge and technology. Larger empires, multiple faiths and disparate people... they could only be bound by common memes to the extent communication technology allowed. This is why a common vernacular in Europe, as brought about through the printing press (commerce), facilitated such fervent nationalism.

Throughout history, power has devolved; and that is reflected in the level of brutality. Just a few hundred years ago, heads were left on spikes in city streets as warnings. Genocide was commonplace, the wholesale rape, pillage and hand-made destruction of entire cities… who could imagine that in the developed world? From Emperor and Demi-God, King and Aristocracy, CEO and Marketing… Those who create culture, create identity. That power is now democratising further, toward an information-based identity. If we identify with the ‘other’ through shared culture then we have done the complete opposite to the dehumanising process that enabled the Holocaust. Even simple communication is enough, since our shared humanity brings with it common desires, familiar fears, more than enough to make that connection.

This is what capitalism has given us. It got here through some pretty noble ideas, ideas that the right are loudest to (often blindly) shout but which, compared to what came before (and sometimes now to be fair) are pretty radical. Individual Freedom? A lot of the headway with that was from merchants and business. Free-Markets and movement of capital and labour are very much post-nationalist ideals that resulted in a changed dynamic by the mid-20^th Century. The consumerism it produced enabled TV’s to be in almost every house, something many would regard as negative when it fact it’s merely primitive. By the standards of the age however it was a miracle and no one can deny the effect film has had on the global consciousness. In the book Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri sum up this transormational aspect of caiptalism by saying:

"Capital has always been oriented towards the production, reproduction and control of social life... [however], the production of Capital is, ever more clearly and driectly today, the production of social life."

In other words, now that the fuits of capital have enabled the multitude itslef to partake in social production, capital has gone from creating and maintaining virtical social identities (when the form was monopolised by the state) to being the medium of expression of the multitude itself. Truly this represents the biggest shift in tendency since Marx himself recognised the coming hegenomy that capital represented at a time when agriculture was still hugely dominent. Now we are tending toward true emancipation of the individual, a reawakening of the notion of network, not centralised discipline.

We have to be careful to remember what Capitalism actually consists of. We are quick to picture the fat cat corporate exec, lighting his cigar with a fifty-pound note. Yet the majority of capitalism feeds from the same meme-pool as you or I (assuming you aren’t an actual corporate exec reading this which, if so, please change). Sure, as you get to the top, the memetic influence becomes restricted to high-powered, institutionalised jargon and dogmatic priorities, an identity that has outsourced its own responsibility to humanity for the sake of shareholders. But they do not live in a vacuum. Not like Kings, not even like the four-yearly terms for politicians. They have customers and they have staff and more so than religion or the state they have more incentive to keep us happy. They know about evolve or die.

In the last hundred and fifty years capitalism has shown considerable amounts of adaptation in the west when it comes to western populations. It’s because we aren’t the ‘other’ anymore, no longer the proles. We’ve had that outsourced now too. For decades, multi-nationals have polluted, killed, bribed, betrayed and pillaged their way across the world, every bit the fundamentalist with their own holy book with it’s own commitments. Number 1, Make money for shareholders. Number 2, Make money for shareholders… I’ve no doubt many are great family people that sincerely believe they do good. We are relativistic beings, and if you are unknowingly trapped in a wealth induced meme-bubble consisting primarily of positive reinforcement how can you think otherwise?

The co-opting of the political class by corporations combines the two most potent cultural identity producers in the world since the demise of religion in the west. Listen to a politician. Now listen to a high-level manager. They speak the same language. There is a pretty obvious reason why: it is because of the intricate web of links between business and government, a back-slapping, champagne swilling orgy of congratulatory arse-licking; a web that forms a cocoon. It is this meme-bubble that the global consciousness should seek to expose, using the infrastructure capitalism lays, (as they must to compete) to counter this push from corporations (unlimited funding of politicians in the U.S., the concentration of media conglomerates, the institutionalisation of mainstream media) in an info-war that will grow ever larger as technology continues to explode exponentially.

But this will take time. Evolution has to happen in steps. There are no sky-hooks in biological evolution and there aren’t any here. Violence can clear a blockage, but it must be an act of last resort on behalf of the majority else, like suicide bombings, they will appear illegitimate to the global consciousness. It must be rational, targeted violence and only when the right to speak and to listen to contributions to the creation of imagined identity have been fully denied. Too much, and without rational limits and objectives both stated and kept to, and the chaos produced can have the opposite to the desired effect in the short-medium term leading to greater suffering.

Cultural evolutionary function of Twitter and Wikileaks and how it applies to Tunisia

2011-01-17T04:07:00.000-08:00

Did wikileaks cause a revolution? Did Twitter? Did rain in LA a couple of weeks back cause a mild spell in the UK today? Probably not, but it is impossible to tell anyway. They all aspects of non-linear complex systems sitting on the edge of chaos, a googol of tiny threads interacting in ways that produce unpredictable and sometimes emergent outcomes.

Complex systems have emergent properties, new phenomena that arise as a result of interactions in networks of enough nodes. When humans began to settle, the network was at such a scale as to generate emergent properties; there were enough threads to create a tapestry. Story, myth, nature… those that could decipher them to the level of believable knowledge of the time could command prominence in the system, conflating the religious authority with authority over humankind and monopolising the memetic content of the system. Religious empires were the result of millions of nodes acting from, I would argue, a few simple axioms (1), an emergence that evolved along with communication technology into the state and then commerce, though all remain to varying degrees of power throughout the world. Our culture represents a tapestry of countless links that interact in unpredictable, chaotic ways.

Wikileaks function is to introduce new material that can be woven into the tapestry. It so happened that it’s colour didn’t match the colour that those with the most potential to weave were describing to us. How much? I couldn’t possibly claim to know what the picture is in reality, too much content I’m exposed to is manufactured, be it for power or profit or spin. Some content is easier to trace, such as the blinding significance of Mohamed Bouazizi. It shows that from what we each know as individuals we can only make subjective, if as well-informed as is possible, claims on the subject. Besides, without prior prediction the claim leads to criticism of post-hoc reasoning, a rationalisation for western minds who, as is our curse, demand to see cause-and-effect according to our personal, wiki-saturated, schema.

Our societal system has an infrastructure that connects us. It is our speech. It is our culture, our reality, accessible through sight and sound. It is us. And now we are intimately connected to Moore’s law. Computer-based technology, whether in manufacturing or the final product, is accelerating at an exponential rate. That means that an already significant proportion of our systems links are also increasing exponentially. More than that, they are going global, pitting growth against the established order of the state, whose nodes are indoctrinated into a nationalistic mind-set as institutionally demanded by the democratic concept of the social-contract.

That could all be about to change, and for me personally this is the most exciting prospect I have the optimism to believe in.

Twitters function is to weave this new content via commenicating information in as close to real-time as possible in an auto-correcting, crowd-sourced system. Try to see where this is going: imagine Twitter 2.0, as part of an advanced semantic web, when everyone’s connected most of the time, multi-sensory, multi-media communication controlled by speech and thought, mashable with any other function on the web (i.e. google earth). What you could well see is its own emergent property, it's own artists and culture yet so diverse that the picture it weaves encompasses all humanity, a realised tapestry-within-a-tapestry, a fractal self-similarity that we will all be able to see free from the perverting conduit of self-interested, narrow-minded, nationalistic, corporate ‘protectors’.

Wikileaks is a node. Twitter is a network of links. Yet they are but parts of a larger whole, the internet. This is itself but a part of a larger network, one that encompasses all of the culture and civilisation that each node experiences. To give credit to one or the other for people taking to account the previously unaccountable would be glib to the extreme. It would ignore the decades of suffering for a society who for the most part didn’t even have the internet.

As long as technology continues to progress and the number of people who have access to it continues to increase, we will see the creation of a global scale memetic Hamilton’s rule that will finally eliminate the ‘other’ that for so long has been used against us. Evolution is inevitable. For that reason the onus for allowing this progression for humanity falls upon the politicians. Yet it is the state, with their subjugated media, and corporations with their subjugated states, those hegemonic meme-producers, that have the most to lose. In these globally connected times, our collective sense of morality is raising the bar to a point that states and multi-nationals aren’t happy with. It’s not profitable and it makes no sense to them because they are simply doing their job as they should, as nationalists and profiteers. That reality is beginning to become untenable to todays youth due to their ability to sync with technology and the resulting dissonance. Exposure to dissonance, be it wikileaks or the sight of a Palace, equals conclusions contrary to that which we are told by those in authority. It is the state’s resistance to this moral change which turns evolution into a revolution.

So there you have it. Ultimately it was the Tunisian government that was responsible for the revolution..

1. Axioms of human behaviour: All that is needed for this thesis is three axioms which I think you'll agree make both evolutionary and intuitive sense.

· Fear the unknown
· Do not waste energy fearing the known
· Defer to percieved authority

Addendum to last post

2011-01-03T03:45:00.000-08:00

What we once knew/what we need to at least understand

@exiledsurfer put me onto a blog by a guy called George Mobus. This particular article dealt with the difference between 'knowing' and 'understanding'. Then I started watching The Coconut Revolution and it struck me that there was an ethnocentric hole staring me in the face from this essay. To say that we have yet to acheive widespread recognition of the individual, let alone as part of a complex system, is to ignore that once we all knew that once before. Indiginous peoples know their place within nature, recognise the relationships and the reliance. This is not to say they understand it. Theirs is a language of metaphor and story, myth and song as beautifully explored by Jay Griffiths in Wild. I very much doubt an indiginous amazonian knows that sand blown from across a massive ocean helps fertilize their homeland and that isn't to be derogatory. Knowing an ecosystem is in a lot of ways far more difficult to acheive. The amazonian may not know of the Saraha, but I very much doubt the scientist who figured it out would last very long if left in the Jungle on his own. You can buy understanding. You can only acheive knowing through hard work, in this case survival.

So how did we in the developed world lose our knowledge of the environment? Was there no place for mans idividual link to nature within the plans of those early usurpers? Was there a point whereby History bore silent witness upon a Reformation in reverse, an initial event that instigated the worlds first organised relgion, the first of many obstacles to place themselves between the individual and the system they inhabit? What happened? Were we infantilised? Well, not right away. I've no doubt that as the chart would predict, those first creators of imagined community draped their visions in the laguage of the land, invoking spirits and myths, many using drugs, all using music and dance... happy to be the priviledged mediator for the time being. During this time, knowledge of the land would still be to the fore, it's simply that their understanding will be becoming skewed.

When humans began to settle, two things happened. They lost a lot of the previous knowledge of the land that came from nomadic life (obviously not at once, it was and still is an ongoing process). They also had a far greater opportunity and motive for replacing it with an imagined community. As the land lost it's power on the minds of the people, the reins were handed to the preachers and the prophets, the witch-doctor and the shaman, the CEO and the Politician. Rather than an amalgamation of beliefs stemming from each groups connection with the land, the need for shared memes across greater numbers of people required a central dogma to homogenise the group. Unless the territory was small, the land often would not be able to provide that link with different, isolated land types and entirely different peoples often located within the same dynasty. Technology was such that stories were the only way to provide this bond, and so as the marauding armies expanded, religious belief grew.

Since then we in the west have lost almost all our knowing of the complex system that surrounds us. We have literally insulated ourselves, placed walls between nature and our senses, plugs in our ears, cars on our feet. Yet paradoxically we are also beginning to understand it for the first time. Will this understanding explode in sudden realisation? Seeing ourselves as part of a complex system is possible for those who grow-up unawares to come to understand, it's merely very difficult. How is knowing nothing conducive to coming to understand it? Our culture has cut itself off from nature, reduced it to a therapy or somewhere to buy a third property. The people who know their lands, accross the world, are screaming at us to look at what we are doing, and our leaders simply do not want to know. By cutting nature out of the question, it is eaier to rationalise the raping of it for wealth. In the national interest.

It would be far easier if we geared more of our resources into both knowing and understanding our role in natures system to transcend it's identity from national, to global, to ecological before we fuck everything up. Indiginous peoples want to help, maybe we should let them, we can teach each other a lot of fascinating things.

Or we could continue to kill them and destroy their homes for profit and we all lose.

Some predictions for humanities continued progress

2011-01-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

Extrapolating from the Historical Progress of Identity

After reading the inspirational predictions for the next 25 years on the Guardian website, I felt inspired to expand on my theories of the correlation between identity and communication technology and attempt to extrapolate my own predictions from the historical progress of identity and humanities study of the complex system that is society.

Here is the chart I drew up giving a rough outline of the cycles and progression of memetic production (identity), as accelerating advances in communication technology take our complex system to greater scales of connectivity: http://tinyurl.com/2ub9khm

Nb. For the sake of identifying key features, simplification and generalisation are to some extent necessary. Exceptions will always be found since the spread of communication technology (the framework of the complex system) is not universally even. Indeed, accross the world all stages of identity may be present at any one time until we converge together.

The following identities are based upon the catagorisation of what Anderson termed 'imagined communities', those identities that transcend the local and which bind humans together into large enough groups to constitute emergent properties we know as History. Emergent properties of complex systems are self-similar, and so we see at each definition of scale self-similar processes and cycles regardless of the actual content of these imagined identities...

Fundamental Imagined Identities

Three fundamental identities have arisen on Earth: Religion, State and Commerce. These identities have found homes within each of us to varying degrees of dominance in what we believe, where we live and what we do, respectively. Each arose in times of expanded communication technology (language, mathematics, transport, media, digital etc) and became seemingly permanent by attaining a monopoly of memetic production which then suffused cultures with language, symbolism and memes which persisted beyond the control of the monopoly itself, continuing to influence future individuals identities.

As each new identity emerges it goes through a cycle. Firstly, it identifies itself in relation to the older identity, by definition a necessity since this is the memetic monopoly one has to play with. Thus States began as theocracies, corporations evolved from National enterprises and individualism is the progeny of the corporately defined 'individual as consumer'. There have been three fundamental identities thus far, but a fourth is now emerging, that of the autonomous individual.

Each progression is the result of an increase in knowledge facilitated by a more detailed, diverse and extensive complex system (society). Each progression of identity represents a new level of emancipation, with greater sharing of power, more feedback, more freedom and importantly greater democratisation of memetic production. This last point is crucial. Since identity is produced from culture, the less monopolised memetic-production is the more emancipated individual identity can be. It represents the opposite of dogma, of ideology. Democratised memetic production means the elimination of whole-scale identity creation of the many by the few and the exposure of that manipulation through contact with the demonised, mythologised 'other' of which they speak.

Driving this emancipation is rationality and cognitive dissonance. Each new identity succeeds the last because it's embracing amalgamation of more diverse memes results in a closer approximation of reality. As the anachronisms of prior identities become visible through the advance of knowledge, cognitive dissonance increases also, leading to new generations to come to predominantly new conclusions contrary to the dogma of the established order. It is precisely because we grow old and die, together with the rebellious, adaptive, open-mindedness of youth, that society is able to progress politically as our technologically driven shifts in identity occur.

The cycle of each fundamental identity

Emergence
As dogma becomes exposed through increased communication, ideas begin to form from the emerging cognitive dissonance. These ideas are presented as rationalisations within the context and under the regulation of the existing memetic monopoly (as cause-and-effect demands). As knowledge advances and more of the unknown becomes known (diluting the power of the mythological other), these sporadic rationalisations become untenable and cognitive dissonance spreads with more veracity for it, eventually leading to a paradigm shift in political governance and identity creation.

Co-opted Monopoly
Emerging from the language and culture of the previous fundamental identity comes a new monopoly on memetic production. Religion is divorced from the state, corporations go from state enterprises to multi-national to supranational. And yet, despite gaining absolute power, they still feel the need to dress themselves in rationalisations of memetic identities past, co-opting the power of reminiscence . Hitler draped his genocide in divine garb, corporations practice with 'national interest' and individualism defines itself according, for now, to the corporate plan. Each subverts the last to saturate our culture with their identity-creating memes common interests: power, wealth and the wilful ignorance of dissonance that may shake their self-serving, manufactured, yet no less sincere rationalisations for maintaining their brief turn at benefiting from inequality.

Peak identity
Our innate nature insists we continue to communicate, the obvious benefits that result maintaining a drive at increasing our communication networks. Whilst political structures may come about through a domino-like paradigm shift, communication technology keeps accelerating exponentially, telescoping the rate of change dramatically as we get to ever finer definitions of this networked complex system we call society. As such, there comes a point where dissonance becomes too great for the rationalisations of the ruling elites to make sense any longer. Take the Democratic system. Founded on the inherently nationalistic doctrine of the social contract, it's usefulness is drastically outdated and unsuited to a globalised world. It represent a broken network, with nodes that shut themselves off from one another, polluting the system. When communication structures available to the public exceed what is directly manageable by the ruling class, reality will begin to contrast with the official line, creating dissonance and the desire for change.

Decline
As our newly emerging identity (more complex network) forms, it's greater scope and scale of identity emancipation produces far more rational memes than those that came before. This exposing of anachronisms is most keenly felt in the young, those who have yet to be infected with the dogmatic ideology they have had forced into their brain. Dogma dies, to be replaced with better dogma, more inclusive dogma, until finally we break the cycle altogether.....

So what happens next?

I think Hegel will be happy to hear that his notion of History being mankind coming to know itself is truer than most gave him credit for. As communication technology spreads to the masses one step at a time, political structures follow suit by slowly adjusting, sometimes piecemeal, sometimes radical and violent, much as an earthquake does depending on how much tension has arisen. The Internet is a radical technological invention and its effect on that tension cannot be over-estimated. The corporate meme-machine as been busy telling us we are individuals, the by-product of which (lets not forget it's central aim is to flatter us into buying stuff) has resulted in a radical notion of the self as an autonomous unit, a self-contained bundle of rights and privileges.

This information age, where the democratisation of memetic production has exploded in a noisy, ill-defined sea of identity bits and bytes, isn't the utopia people make it out to be however. It's message is better for sure, we are sovereign citizens of our own mass-manufactured castles, walled off mentally and physically in order to capture that essence of individuality, that false veneer of material possession hiding us from ourselves. This hyper relative individualism, combined with the concept of competition that previous rulers deemed a virtue, plays havoc with peoples minds! The dissonance between the religious, state and corporate models of perfected form and the reality we as individual live with is vast, resulting in depression, mental health problems and growing neurosis.

These problems, together with the Wests emerging relationship with those that have until now silently shouldered the burden of manufacturing our continued opulence, will expose the anachronisms of the corporate subversion of the state. The supranational manifestation of wealth production will lose it's facade of greater good once the publics idea of what 'greater' constitutes exceeds that of their former creators. Religious identities will continue to decline in-line with access to communication technology, with only those shunning the technolgoy itself left to ever-more radical ratioanlisations of their own actions. The state will follow a similar course, with direct-democracy coming to those who recognise and escape the crip of corporate co-opting.

The advantages of this progression are vast. The information age will at last recognise humanity as one complex system, eliminating much of the discrimination and prejudice the exploitation of the 'other' has caused. The corporate co-opting of the state will be exposed mainstream, with a separation similar to that of church and state (already a publicly stated ideal, it is never-the-less another lie rationalised from above) and the autonomous individual will demand greater power and control over their political lives through the co-opting of corporate ideals of individual freedom from outside forces. The availability of information will need to adjust to the finer definition of network connections, recognising that democratised memetic production invalidates the rationalisation for such extensive centralised power and access to knowledge.

And beyond that...

Religion will become an ever decreasing force though still visible as memetic echoes of a former age. States will be udner ever greater pressure to stampt out corruption, open itself to accountablility and allowing the public to govern itslef to ever greater degrees. Corporations will be under similar pressure, perhaps basing themselves within those states that are most stubborn in embracing progress (since those conditions best for profit also appear to be worst for the public as a whole). Free from national obligation, they could become even more explicitly dangerous, even to powerful states slow to change, before subsiding themselves into a rather different legacy than they currently envisage in their assumed noble ideals.

I am reminded at this point of an interview in the film Waking Life. Aklilu Gebrewold talks about humans coming to understand themselves, how our minds work, what and who we waking up to in this new age of hypersubjectivity. Only when our individual minds fully understand themselves in relation to reality can we then look outside of ourselves anew with a radical objectivity. The ideas in this essay are in a similar vein, having come from an attempt to work my knowledge of philosophy and cognitive science to the world of the emergent properties of complex human systems (what we call History). And so it goes with identity. Once we understand ourselves as part of a complex system, it is a small step to recognise that that system is not closed, the sole dmoain of monosapien. No, we are but one part of a greater system, that of Nature, which in turn is but one insiginficant part of even greater, galactic, universal systems.

This will become the next source of conflict, the recognition of Nature and the environments place within our network. Although communication structures will encompass all of humanity, we will still need to hear from Nature itself in order to understand our effect on it. Dwindling resources and growing destruction of habitats and wildlife cannot continue if we are to exist peeacefully. As such, practices and beliefs that run contrary to this will in turn produce enough dissonance to ensure that after the age of the individual comes the age of Earth itself: An identification with and recognition of this global biosystem and our place in it. Once we are there, there is no other to be exploited and we will finally be able to live in harmony before amking the jump of understanding our place not simply on this planet, but within our galaxy, our universe. We are still only at the beginning of that journey.

A Letter to the Guardian...

2010-12-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

I encourage you to copy and paste this letter and send it to reader@guardian.co.uk so that they can be encouraged to remember they are allowed to use google.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was just wondering when you were planning to retract the false story regarding the supposed banning of 'Sicko', Michael Moore's documentary?

As he says in this article, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/viva-wikileaks, a simple google search would have enabled your journalists to see that it was in fact shown in theatres throughout the country and was even broadcast in prime time on national television!

This laziness in reporting, despite much talk of the hard slog contextualising and checking the cables, has led you to miss the real story; that despite histories lessons, the U.S government is still deluding itself regarding Cuba and making the same mistakes as decades ago. Namely, that embassy staff are making up news to pass on up the chain of command where upon it can get seized upon in a fit of positive bias. This in turn fuels the kind of groupthink that enabled the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the first place.

So... presumably this correction will be appearing soon then? I also presume that a lesson will have been learned and that future leaks will have at least a bit of fact-checking? I'm a huge fan of wikileaks let it be said, but those claiming that these cables aren't Truth do have a point. They are instead the inner workings of wholly nationalistic machinations and as such can also be bewilderingly wrong (whether purposefully or not).

Yours,

A sociocultural evolution view of Wikileaks..

2010-12-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

Democratically elected governments are meant to be for the people, by the people. This has never really been the case, but the argument against mob rule and it's relative advantages over other forms of government have led to it being the acceptable, prosperous and relatively peaceful system that it is.

The only reason we as citizens could accept this was because communication structures in the world led to a national concern only, stretching to a European/U.S. concern at the most. We were prosperous and peaceful because capitalism was able to outsource exploitation away from it's major markets and onto the environment and workers of undeveloped and voiceless people of the world that were hidden from us in our nationalist bubbles of bordered language.

Recent technological advances in transport and communication have popped this bubble. Sociocultural evolution teaches us that a form of memetic Hamiltons Rule operates as an evolutionary function of maintaining tribal/group loyalty. These two facts combine to create a global movement whereby people are now able to communicate and come to know people the world over and regard humanity as a whole, entirely worthy in recieving concern and respect.

The democratic system as it is however is, rightly from the age in which it was derived, stuck at the nationalistic level demanded by the enlightenment concept of the social contract. Since that time, memetic Hamiltons rule has ensured that, since money is the main factor in determining progress, private companies have been co-opted by governments and vice-versa the world over, both through lobbying and individuals swapping public and private high-level jobs. This is apparent even in the shared language of corporatese.

This puts them in direct opposition to the new generation who do not share such nationalist/corporate limtiations of identity and who instead recognise and empathise with those exploitated masses which were necessary for the system to progress peacefully in the West. These cables represent the internal machinations of that corporate/government class, exposing it's inner-workings and crucially showing the vast gulf in moral criteria between what is good for state/business, and what is good for humanity as a whole. Both sides feel they are doing a moral thing... it's simply that those who are for wikileaks are using a much vaster criteria in coming to those moral conclusions (i.e. seeing humanity as equals). This for me makes Wikileaks the good guys and the true heirs to progress.

Releasing this material contributes to undoing this veil behind which the state operates. The internet is going to lead to this kind of thing as a matter of course. It is inevitable. That those in power rail against such leaks is also sadly inevitable since it threatens their position of power and represents a view of the world that they do not understand from their caged meme-pool of self-satisfying positive feedback and group-think.

We have come to a point where 'mob rule' is coming to be understood as crowd-sourcing, it's connotations going from contemptable to highly efficient. The new generation, a globally-minded generation, see those in power for what they are, a relic of an age that is no longer with us and whose time was, in reality, suited for a pre-global communication age. This kind of cognitive dissonance (the cables) is desperately needed because of the homogenisation of discourse, the corporate takeover of mass media, things utterly antithetical to sociocultural evolution.

When we see humanity as a whole, one has to see the 'democratic' system a immoral and detestable. From the destruction of environments to the brutal pursuit of fenced-off profiteering, humanity is suffering at the hands of the few on a scale never seen before. To say that 'we have it good' is not enough in a world of global communication. That isn't how the Hamilton Law works.

Seen from this persepctive, not releasing it is a far greater crime than releasing it.

Sidenote:

These cables were accesible to nearly 3 million people accross dozens of U.S. agencies. Unless espionage simply aint what it used to be, that would seem a walk in the park for at the least Russia, China and the UK to get a hold of it. So why the anger? Why the outrage?

If they knew America knew, yet did not raise a whimper until it got out into the wider public, what does that say about th relationship between these various states governments? It says that so long as everyone keeps schtum, nobody cares what each other knows. Russia knows America's corrupt, America knows Russia's corrupt... everyone knows everyone is corrupt. Like Democrats and Republicans keeping quiet about stuff they both do, it has become an unwritten rule to simply keep mouths shut.

How did it get to this? Well, there is one area that is powerful and multinational... corporations. Take bribary. U.S corporations have to bribe (see Haliburton in Nigeria) along with everyone else. Big multinationals have to stoop to the lowest common denominator when business is global. If that means competing with Russians, then that's what tehy'll do... safe in the knowledge that they certainly aren't going to complain about it if they too do it. Corporate aims and ideology have seeped into that of the state, perverting it from principles of serving the public interest into a multi-state conspiracy (forget the kooky connotations, this aint truther territory) creating a secret environment amenable to profiteering at the expense of the public interest.

A new model of poltical debate...

2010-11-25T00:13:00.000-08:00

It is time to bring technology to the process of governance and harness the power of the crowd. Here's my idea about how we can do that...

In the houses of parliament, we need politicians to be working on national issues. MP's should still be voted on by constituencies but as representatives working on national issues (they can of course still represent their locale, when called upon by councils if necessary).

Each day Mon-Fri, There should be a two-three hour debate on each of the main areas of interest: Economy and Business (inc. Employment), Energy and Environment, Home Affairs (transport, health, housing), Foreign Affairs and Science, Technology and Education (just off the top of my head). In front of each seat is an ipad-like device, with software that facilitates the debate.

Each member can prepare for the debate in advance, uploading evidence and questions and even debating the questions in forums. Come the debate, evidence and questions can be dropped into a queue during the government reports to argue or counter the claims made. This queue is voted upon by MP's and those questions that get the most votes rise to the top to be asked. If it is particularly pertinent to that precise moment of time, then an urgent flag can be attached and the speed with which the votes are placed contributing to the speed with which the question or evidence is put forward.

With practice, and with a slower oratory, I believe technology is finally at a stage where this can happen in close to real-time (it would take no longer than having to wait for the "rah rah rah' to die down). Not only that, it can also open the process even further.

Imagine that you then have a pool of people picked for their outstanding knowledge. Have their piers vote on them in journals in various expert disciplines, have NGO's and activist groups vote on experts of Human Rights etc.. Nurses, doctors, architects, lawyers, anyone with expertise and not simply academics. This pool of people is then split into the five areas of interest for the debates, plus a pool of people that represent the universals. By this I mean those factors that must be thought about in any given debate.. the environment, human rights, philosophers, historians etc. This sixth group is included in every debate, alongside the segment that are experts for that particular debate. MP's have no authority over members of these independent groups.

There could be space, say 20 virtual seats, that are open to public vote over two-yearly terms, subject to acceptance from the person. Again, I don't care who is voted for.. they will have duties to attend and the possibility of recall if not participating. A level of commitment is required and, bottom line, they are going to be as human as you or I. As the only common denominator we all share, that has to be a valid viewpoint. It would also allow campaigners to argue the case for any academic that may have fallen foul of their pier-group for whatever reasons (and there are good as well as bad...). The worst case scenario, some kook gets in denying something, would see that person up against the hundred most eminent thinkers in that field and his lack of any sort of support would automatically stop progress of his or her agenda. He would have to argue his case and if they are a kook, they'll lose. It will be a totally public airing of their inadequacies as shown by the multimedia smack down he took. If you feel that's time-wasting, be assured it wouldn't impinge on the debate itself, but in the experts only section.

These two groups (universals and each set of experts) would total a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people strong. Exclusive software areas enable them to debate the following weeks debate in advance, do research, think of questions etc, which get voted upon by the group as a whole with the top 6-8 automatically guaranteed to be asked. They then watch the debate live with the software shunting urgent or highly voted real-time questions into the parliamentary software for MP's to judge and vote upon also. If a question or piece of evidence gains, say, 60% of the vote in the experts section, it would automatically bypass the MP's section and be put forward regardless.

It would also be conceivable to have a national, open version with the top question voted prior to the debate, and the most voted upon question during the debate, being addressed at the end. I don't care if it the most trivial or comical or irrelevant question you could imagine. It could become a national sport to have asked of the prime minister a 'would you rather, or...' question and be good practice at campaigning for anyone willing to put the effort in just for a laugh. We need to connect to our leaders in a deeper, more human sense as well as connecting to cut out the bullshit.

Everything should be viewable to the public. Not only would we have hundreds of committed experts both contributing and holding our leaders to account, but the legitimacy would be so much greater. We would be able to see for ourselves and contribute, the public funneling useful ideas and important evidence to experts, who are able to then pass it on up.

At the moment, we are but numbers in a faceless bureaucracy.. we need to use this technology we have now to create a structure connecting us all, one that we can see working and see when and why it doesn't. MP's profiles would have to include all previous voting patterns with explanations attached, details of all contributions and interests.

Same too with the experts. We need complete transparency, including all data. There are computer wizards out there who are voluntarily inclined to sift through data, mashing it up and creating illuminating displays. Let's use them! They would be a great tool for the experts to present their questions and arguments in as concise a way as possible to facilitate practical real-time debate.. Twitter is a good training tool. It could become an art-form in itself, stream-lined understanding.

To some, this may sound a backward step. "Complicated things take time to discuss, you cannot present arguments in 140 characters!". However, when as is the case in politics today, all that we the public hear is 90% corporatese bullshit spun from a yarn of obscurities anyway it might simply help trim the PR from the evidence. It would be judged upon its merits, and with multimedia technology as it is, the possibilities for mashing evidence together in beautifully clear ways, labeled and linked from to indicate the providence of the evidence, together with a short paragraph outlining the implications, those merits could be substantial and contribute significantly to debate.

This kind of mass conversation in governance hasn't been possible before now. But we would face such a fight to instigate it. MP's have far more to lose than to gain in implementing this kind of reform. The idea of opening themselves up to that level of expertise with the ability to upload implicating or contradictory evidence before everyone's blink of an eye would terrify them! Yet this is surely the direction that democracy must take at some point in the non-too-distant future; it would be folly to fight it.

The Betrayal of West Papua and the Ongoing Cultural Genocide

2010-11-16T04:48:00.000-08:00

This dissertation is based upon over 400 declassified documents as well as the limited historiography surroundign the subject. In light of the recent videos showing the continuation of the brutal repression by Indonesian soldiers, together with Obamas capitulation in not bringing up the issue on his recent visit, I thought it was time for a new push to get people to read it and understand the history of the situation...

nb. The references are linked due to copy and pasting issues. For some reason they simply lead back here. The link at the bottom of this article will take you to a list of references, which are themselves linked to original documents where possible.

Introduction

The scale of the Holocaust showed the world just how horrific state sponsored crimes against humanity could become if left unchecked. Following Hitler’s downfall, the victorious allies helped create the United Nations, a multinational governing body whose focus was to ensure that the world would never repeat the mistakes and catastrophes of the previous half-century. They introduced a raft of new international humanitarian laws and ideals such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which laid the framework for future international laws and state conduct, marking a significant step in the progression of theories of human rights. With the establishment of the U.N, the international community had created the judicial structure needed to enshrine this new humanitarian declaration as a guiding principle for the world to uphold. After such discriminative inhumanity, the explicit recognition of basic freedom and rights to all of mankind was a significant milestone, possibly even vindicating Hegel’s idea of man’s teleological journey toward self-realisation. At the time of the infamous Nuremberg Trials, Robert H. Jackson, America's Chief Prosecutor, said in his opening statement that, "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow."^¹ With this statement in mind, I intend to focus on the case-study of Indonesia’s invasion of West Papua in 1962 and the subsequent ‘elections’ which saw them gain official sovereignty of the country in 1969. After leading the way with the introduction of equal rights for all mankind, have the western states kept to their word?

Geographical and Historical Background

The archipelago of Indonesia, consisting of over 2000 islands, spans 15% of the world’s landmass^². A Dutch colony from 1828 to 1961, West Papua (formally known as Irian Jaya) is located on the western half of the large island of New Guinea, 400 miles off the Northern Australian coast. Despite having just 0.1% of the world’s population, the primitive, tribal groups that live within its rainforest harbour some 15% of the worlds known languages^³. The people of New Guinea are predominantly Christian (through missionaries dispatched to the Island after the tribes were discovered) and are Melanesian in race, compared to Indonesia which is mainly Muslim Javanese.

Indonesia carried out military operations in West Papua through 1961/62 after the UN had refused to recognise their territorial claims.^⁴ This resulted in the signing of the U.S brokered New York Agreement^⁵, a roadmap for the transition of power from the Dutch which required Indonesia to hold free elections (the Act of Free Choice as it was to become known) so as to uphold the West Papuans right to self-determination. This right is enshrined in International Law established by the UN, an organisation to which Indonesia, the Netherlands and the US were member states. Since the ‘Act of Free Choice’ (AFC) in 1969, West Papua has been widely recognised by the vast majority of world states legally to be a province of Indonesia. West Papuan representatives voted to become incorporated into the newly independent and emerging power of South-East Asia. The UN oversaw and ratified the election, providing legitimacy that was recently endorsed in a letter sent to Robert Wilson MP by Meg Munn MP, UK Foreign Office with responsibility for the UK's relations with Indonesia.

The Act of Free Choice took place in Papua in 1969. A group of 1,000 Papuan representatives, who were given the responsibility to make the choice on behalf of the Papuan people, voted to remain part of Indonesia. The British Government of the day supported the Act of Free Choice, as did the United Nations and almost all members of the international community.^⁶

Current Historiography

This is the reigning official view presented to anyone who enquires about West Papua to the UK government^⁷. The current literature dealing with this subject is somewhat sparse; at least within the mainstream press. There have been numerous Non-Governmental Organisations such as Minority Rights International and Amnesty who have compiled reports on the situation in West Papua, but it seems that East Timor’s conflict with Indonesia in 1975 and the realization of independence in 1999 has overshadowed West Papua’s case. British Historian John Saltford has written on the Act of Free Choice^⁸, and others, such as Dr Kees Lagerberg, have highlighted aspects of Indonesian Imperialism and human rights abuses. West Papuan authors are ‘censored under certain criteria set by the government or are banned entirely’^⁹. The main reason, I think, that has contributed to the lack of literature regarding West Papua is the fact that since the AFC, West Papua has been regarded as an internal matter for Indonesia and as such has not received nearly the amount of attention as the invasion and occupation of East Timor (which never received UN support or ratification). Many of those writing on this subject do so to highlight the plight of the West Papuan people. Dr John Saltford is one of the only people I could find to have written a book documenting the role of Britain and the United Nations in the AFC, though this represents a focus on the time of the AFC only. West Papua and Indonesia Since Suharto by Peter King and Reluctant Indonesians by Clinton Fernandez represent the sum total of English language books released on the subject in the last decade yet even those do not cover what it is I wish to explore: how the International Community attempted to fulfil their human rights obligations as member states of the UN.

I intend to examine the historical account of the AFC to see whether and how the international community complied with UN resolution 1514 (XV): Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples^¹⁰ Using declassified communications between the U.S embassy in Djakarta and the State Department 1968-69, I will trace the story of the U.N supervisor for the AFC, Fernando Ortiz-Sanz, to show how these elections were rigged in Indonesia’s favour, despite the known possibility of repression and persecution.

Having established the illegitimacy of the AFC and Indonesia’s annexation of West Papua, I will go on to show that since the handover of power in 1969 there have been widespread occurrences of human rights abuses as a matter of government policy. In assessing Kees Lagerberg’s claim that ‘between 100’000 and 200’000 West Papuans have died or simply vanished at the hands of the Indonesian military”^¹¹, this section contextualizes the International Communities’ response in the years after the AFC. The lack of English language historiography regarding this matter requires I use NGO reports and investigative journalist materials in my research.

1969 and the Act of Free Choice is highly significant given that it’s illegitimacy makes all future repression an International crime with the international support for Indonesia’s illegal actions directly undermining the UN charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I intend to evaluate to what extent they complied with Ortiz-Sanz’ warning that “the international community cannot renounce its responsibility for assisting them (Irianese) in years to come”^¹². Member nations of the U.N have a clear obligation under the UN Charter to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth… without distinction of any kind”.^¹³ From over 200 pages of recently declassified documents stretching over 30 years from British, U.S and other governments it is possible to analyse in depth the geo-political, commercial and ideological forces at play in the highest levels of office for the continuing support for Indonesia actions. The result is an insight rarely seen into how it was possible that such violations of international law could be perpetrated, apparently without recourse, despite having the framework in place designed to avoid such situations.

The Act of "Free" Choice, West Papua, 1969.

Under the Dutch plan for self-determination in 1961, West Papuans completed a ‘territory wide vote for representatives to the newly established New Guinea Council… which ratified the adoption of the national Papuan Morning Star flag, the national anthem and a new name for the territory: West Papua^¹⁴’. When the UN refused to support Indonesia’s territorial claims, the Government of Indonesia (GOI) invaded West Papua leading to the establishment of the New York Agreement in 1962^¹⁵. When the New York Agreement was signed, it was stipulated that free elections were to be held (again) to establish the West Papuan people’s right to self-determination. This had to be done in order to bring the transition into line with the 1960 UN Resolution 1514 (XV). The UN says that, “while the Charter of the United Nations treated self-determination as a principle, rather than a right, the Declaration marked a turning point by stating that “all peoples have the right to self-determination”^¹⁶. Its first article states that ‘The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights’^¹⁷. Bolivian Fernando Ortiz-Sanz was sent to Indonesia to oversee the preparations for and the implementation of the AFC, a subject of numerous in-depth communications between the U.S embassy in Djakarta and the Secretary of State from July 1968 until the AFC took place in September 1969.

It was clear to Ortiz-Sanz from the very beginning that the forthcoming elections would not satisfy international law, namely Resolution 1514 (XV). As early as the summer of 1968, the U.S embassy was warning that “he [Ortiz-Sanz] will resign rather than preside over a farce”^¹⁸. What concerned Ortiz-Sanz was that Indonesia had no interest in holding a free election and that since the New York Agreement left Indonesia responsible for its implementation, it rendered his role “useless”^¹⁹. In August, having recognized that if such views became public it would “be most embarrassing”, the U.S resolved to do “anything we can to make him aware of the political realities”^²⁰. Following conversations with Ortiz-Sanz, the US mission of the UN in New York informed Washington that they were “convinced Ortiz [is] fully aware of [the] difficult situation in which GOI finds itself and has no intention of making [a] difficult situation worse”^²¹. The ‘difficult situation’ which faced GOI was the risk of domestic upheaval should West Papua be lost to Indonesia; there was a ‘widespread belief in the military and other circles… that West Irian is [already] a sovereign part of Indonesia’^²².

Having been made aware of the ‘political realities’ involved, Ortiz-Sanz strove to win the best possible deal for the West Papuan people as he could. He was “deeply moved by his contacts with the primitive Irianese”^²³ and tried to urge the GOI to accept a ‘one man-one vote’ system in coastal cities^²⁴. Despite his efforts, Ortiz-Sanz clearly felt the AFC to be below the required standards laid out in Resolution 1514 (XV), telling the First Secretary Robert Slutz that he ‘would make no conclusions regarding the elections in his report and that each member state of the UN would have to decide for itself whether the act were acceptable under the NY Agreement’^²⁵. “On the positive side...” wrote Djakarta Embassy to Washington regarding this meeting, “...the ambassador concluded that there is little doubt that the Act will be decided in favour of West Irian’s continued inclusion in the Indonesian Republic”^²⁶.

How could it be that in May of 1969, months before the election took place, the result could be in ‘little doubt’? Ortiz-Sanz makes clear after the election that ‘despite his efforts, art XXII of NY Agreement relating to Freedom of speech, Freedom of movement and assembly “was not fully implemented and the administration exercised at all times a tight political control over the population.”^²⁷

It was known well in advance to the UK, US and Australian governments that only one outcome of the AFC would be deemed acceptable by both Indonesia and the western powers. The British Embassy in Djakarta, commenting on Ortiz-Sanz role when he entered the country in December 1968, said, “Tactically his aim is to contrive a formula whereby the AFC will result in a positive affirmation of Indonesia’s sovereignty but will also represent a fair reflection of the peoples wishes… clearly no easy task”^²⁸. The following month they clarified this comment, stating that ‘most independent observers are convinced that, given a free choice, the majority of the local inhabitants would not vote for continued incorporation in Indonesia.”^²⁹. This fact was widely known to all parties at the time, with one journalist telling the British embassy that of all the people he met (300-400) none were in favour of integration. Indeed, he said that he felt ‘the Papuans loath the Indonesians, perhaps in the same degree and as a direct consequence of the way which Indonesians have despised and belittled the Papuans’^³⁰. The U.S embassy in Djakarta summed up the situation rather beautifully in a telegram dated September 1969, just before the ‘vote’ took place, which said, “the Act of Free Choice in West Irian is unfolding like a Greek Tragedy, the conclusion pre-ordained… it long known that the outcome of AFC is predictable… separation is unthinkable”^³¹. This was clearly not the wish of ‘99% of the Papuan population^³²’ and directly contravenes article two of Resolution 1514 (XV): All peoples have the right to self-determination^³³.

As early as October 1967 the U.S already knew that there was little hope for a fair election. ‘The reality is grim…’ reads an air-gram to the Department of State, ‘Now there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement, and forceful oppression is the rule’^³⁴. In the end, the GOI hand-picked 1025 representatives: these included bribed tribal chiefs and family members and friends of Indonesian administration officials^³⁵ which, together with the ‘great efforts of indoctrination… [and] Indon (sic) repression caused by fear of separatism’^³⁶, combined to create a unanimous vote for continued inclusion in Indonesia^³⁷.

Had the U.S, U.K and others thought that the result of this election would lead to development, economic growth and a better life for the people of West Papua, one could possibly understand the reason why international law was ignored when the UN ratified Indonesia’s sovereignty. However, in reality this was not the case, as this air-gram to the Secretary of State in August 1969 shows:

It is difficult to predict whether the GOI will (be prepared to) take harsh repressive measures or seek to establish good government and further economic progress in the region. The outcome is likely to be mixed or uneven^³⁸.

Interestingly, the ‘be prepared to’ was crossed out on the document but is still discernable underneath^³⁹. It goes on to say that ‘Overraction (sic) and brutal repression would have an undesirable effect on International opinion but, then, the Indonesians have been known to ignore these consequences in quashing other revolts in the past’. As a member state of the UN, it seems a shame that the focus of this ‘undesirable effect’ is not on the West Papuan people themselves, rather than world opinion.

The justification given for supporting this rigged election appears two fold. One is that the U.S was ‘determined not to lose Indonesia to Communist influence’^⁴⁰, either through a coup or increased Soviet influence. The other often quoted reason was that a democratic election was impossible due to the nature of the ‘stone-age, illiterate tribal groups whose horizons are strictly limited and who would be unable to grasp alternatives involved in free plebiscite…free election among groups such as this would be much more of a farce than any rigged mechanism Indonesia could devise^⁴¹’. Despite independent observers noting the understanding of overwhelming numbers of people with regard to their wanting Independence, article 3 of Resolution 1514 (XV) was ignored: ‘Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence’^⁴².

Post Act of Free Choice: Attempted genocide?

Other than a few NGO reports and papers written by (mainly Australian or Dutch) academics, there has been precious little written about the situation in West Papua. The genocide committed by the GOI in East Timor received more attention though even that has not served as a catalyst for a re-visitation of the AFC. A few academics, NGO’s and investigative journalists have attempted to raise the issue of Indonesian policy towards the inhabitants of West Papua, finding enough evidence to produce the occasional book, report or documentary. Although the current UK stance is that 'human rights abuses are hard to verify due to the remoteness of the area’^⁴³, this does not seem to have stopped others from finding evidence of such crimes (though it has taken a long time for people to take notice with much of the material being published only in the last 15 years.)

Dr Kees Lagerberg, author of West Irian and Jakarta Imperialism, is one of the few western academics to have written on this topic. He served the Dutch colonial administration for 11 years and travelled back to West Papua to document the post-ACF situation in West Papua. He claims that 'it is impossible to explain away the disappearance of 150'000 Papuans without highlighting the considerable measure of neglect shown by the Indonesian authorities towards the Papuans^⁴⁴' He uses population and migration statistics to conclude these statistics although he does not appear to have considered the possibility of inaccurate census data. Over the following chapter, I will contextualize the international communities’ response by highlighting occurrences which could help account for Lagerberg’s claim.

Even before the AFC, it was clear the extent to which Indonesia was prepared to use force against a largely unarmed population: Indonesia’s military command had already shown their capacity to commit mass murder. Following Suharto’s accession to power in 1965, over 500’000 known or suspected communists were killed in one of the most bloody episodes in human history^⁴⁵. This was even celebrated in the U.S, where it formed another front-line in the ongoing fight against the spread of communism^⁴⁶. This letter from the British embassy, dated April 1968, highlights the UK government’s knowledge of Indonesian tactics: “The Indonesians have tried everything from bombing them with B.26's [sic]. to shelling and mortaring them, but a continuous state of semi-rebellion persists. Brutalities are undoubtedly perpetrated from time to time in a fruitless attempt at repression”^⁴⁷.

Having made its decision on the legality of the AFC, the UN had ensured that the matter remained an internal dispute, closing off any chance of justice for the West Papuan people through the correct, legal channels of the General Assembly. As an internal matter for the GOI to resolve, the plight of West Papua was no longer a matter for discussion within the International Community and the Media. The Hon. F.H. Faleomavaega called the U.N ratification “a truly pathetic episode”^⁴⁸; unfortunately what was to follow turned a pathetic episode into the pre-curser for 40 years of repression and possible genocide.

‘Genocide in West Papua’ is the title of a 2005 report written by John Wing of Sydney University. He holds no punches in his assessment of Indonesia’s efforts to control the local guerrilla movement called the OPM. Here is an excerpt from that report:

the current situation is referred to as a “silent genocide”. Villages are destroyed by TNI (Indonesian forces) through arson, following “incidents” blamed on the OPM guerrilla movement, but the incidents themselves are staged and guerrillas (if any) are manipulated by the TNI. Civilians are then forced to take refuge in areas away from their food gardens, where they perish from malnutrition and exposure^⁴⁹.

Abigail Abrash from the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program has also written a paper entitled ‘Papua: Another East Timor?^⁵⁰’. She highlights examples of racial and religious discrimination, including ‘extrajudicial killings, torture and rape… that amounted to an undeclared war against the indigenous population^⁵¹. What both reports have in common is there insistence that genocide is, whether as a matter of policy or not, at least a very real possibility for the people of West Papua.

Non-governmental organizations work hard at providing objective and accurate accounts of human rights abuses all over the world. One such report by Minority Rights Group International highlights the effects of Indonesia’s transmigration policy in West Papua which, as well as dominating West Papua’s economy, ‘will also make the indigenous peoples a minority within their own country’^⁵² Amnesty International, in their latest statement regarding West Papua, conclude that ‘there were reports of extrajudicial executions, torture and ill-treatment, excessive use of force during demonstrations and harassment of human rights defenders’^⁵³. Others include Tapol, meaning political prisoner in Indonesian, a website ‘promoting human rights, peace and democracy in Indonesia’ who publish regular articles and reports relating to ongoing human rights issues. More partisan websites like FreeWestPapua.org also work hard in bringing together the latest news and reports from various independent sources. Together with unverifiable, though extensive and detailed, reports of human rights abuses, they also collate media reports, political developments and NGO and UN visits.

Australian investigative journalist Evan Williams travelled to West Papua in 2006 for a Channel Four documentary entitled ‘Rainforest Warriors’^⁵⁴. Under heavy observation from Indonesian officials, Williams travelled deep into the jungle to meet with guerrilla soldiers including many students who have fled urban areas following protests which left them vulnerable to arrest or “disappearance”^⁵⁵. They tell the film crew of their grievances with the Indonesians, such as the threat of 15 years imprisonment for raising the ‘Morning Star’ flag of West Papua, the immense environmental damage and exploitation of natural resources by US mining company Freeport McMoran and the fact that the local West Papuans see no benefits from the enormous profits being generated there. More worryingly still, Evan Williams visits medical clinics which, although short of almost every type of medicine and drug, seem to have ample supplies of contraceptive injections which, the medical staff there tell Williams, they are advised to give to Melanesian women without their consent or knowledge.

Any way you look at the situation, it is clear that the indigenous people of West Papua have not benefitted from Indonesian rule. As for the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, it would be considerably easier to refer to those clauses that have been applied than to those that have been ignored^⁵⁶. Yet because this is now regarded as an internal matter for Indonesia there has not been a single Security Council resolution asking for a cessation of repressive measures undertaken by this member state. Now that it is clear that the AFC was neither representative of nor beneficial to the people of West Papua, I wish to look at what the response of the International community was in upholding their obligations of universal human rights and how this response contributed to the contemporary historical development of the region.

The International Communities Response

Diplomatic and Strategic support for Indonesia post-AFC

It is very clear from U.S and U.K government documents from 1968/69 that there was an almost universal feeling of ‘understanding’ for Indonesia’s situation and indifference to the problems faced by the West Papuans^⁵⁷. I.J.M Sutherland, writing to London from the British embassy in Djakarta, summed up this feeling when he said, “I cannot imagine the US, Japanese, Dutch or Australian Governments putting at risk their economic and political relations with Indonesia on a matter of principle involving a relatively small number of very primitive people.”^⁵⁸

Even the former colonial rulers of West Papua and their nearest neighbour provided no official objections, as this quote from a US State Department telegram from 1969 shows: “Dutch government, despite its historic interest and Australia as neighbour appear disinclined to become involved and have indicated their acquiescence in GOI method and result of AFC”^⁵⁹. It seems that individually, western states did not feel compelled to adhere to International Law and chose instead to foster good economic and political relations with Indonesia.

What about the United Nations itself? Having ratified the AFC, did they not, in the words of Ortiz-Sanz, have an obligation not to ‘renounce its responsibility for helping them in years to come’? It is clear that, in this situation, the will of individual states triumphed over the principles of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Resolution 1514 (XV). The British government recognizes this when it concluded in November 1969 that the AFC had led “[Impartial Observers to] feel that the United Nations part has done nothing to enhance its standing”^⁶⁰ Since that time there has not been a single General Assembly or Security Council resolution regarding Indonesia’s actions in West Papua.

Whilst some countries, such as Australia and the Netherlands, chose to merely acquiesce to Indonesia, others chose to actively support them. The U.S government, in their ideological struggle against the spread of communism, saw Indonesia in the 1960’s as an important ally in a region where the U.S was fighting in Vietnam and Indochina^⁶¹. Since 1965, the U.S and President Suharto have been close allies, with Suharto having met with successive US Presidents until his forced resignation in 1998. Every meeting was recorded and the minutes have since been released on the National Security Archive. These minutes provide an illuminating account of the ‘excellent relations’ between the two nations in a joint struggle against the spread of communism; a threat that Suharto emphasizes time and again in an attempt to secure arms deals^⁶² (a topic I shall come back to shortly).

In the year following the AFC, Suharto came to Washington where, having been briefed by Henry Kissinger, President Nixon pledged $15million of military aid, including C-47’s transports ‘which can be turned into ‘gun-ship’ versions’^⁶³. In the minutes for that very meeting, commenting on Nixon’s questions regarding the communist threat, Suharto claims outright that ‘strategically their strength can be said to have been nullified… tens of thousand have been interrogated and placed in detention…[as for the students] they have received indoctrination concerning the ideas of the New Order’^⁶⁴. The bluntness of Suharto’s claims was almost a match for the hypocrisy shown in Nixon’s concluding remarks to Suharto. Barely six months since West Papua’s forced capitulation to Indonesian sovereignty, Nixon spoken of Vietnam that:

Our interest is solely to help create those conditions which permit these countries to freely choose their own way, not determined by any outside influence. This is a fundamental principle. We would like to cooperate with all nations which share this fundamental principle^⁶⁵

President Nixon to President Suharto, 1970

Genocide in East Timor

Despite extensive knowledge of Indonesia's violation of Human Rights both in West Papua and Indonesia itself, even the invasion of East Timor on December 6^th, 1975 failed to cajole any major western state to officially condemn Indonesia's actions. After a civil war which left the leftist, nationalist Fretilin party in control, there was a general acquiescence to Indonesia's takeover before it had commenced. As early as March 1975, it was clear to the British Foreign and Commonwealth office that “East Timor's eventual integration with Indonesia is probably the right answer.”^⁶⁶ It was given the green light by the US who actually asked for the invasion to be delayed by one day so as not to coincide with the visit of President Ford and Henry Kissinger^⁶⁷.

Nor did Australia seem prepared to publicly condemn Indonesia. Despite receiving instruction to 'deliver a clear message to the Indonesians that Australia could not countenance Indonesian interference in the affairs of Timor”, Australian Ambassador Woolcott described how he had persuaded Canberra to modify these instructions and of how he spoke as “softly” as his new instructions permitted to Indonesian foreign minister Malik on October 18^th 1975^⁶⁸. This suggests that Australian Officials had decided as a matter of policy not to oppose Indonesia's pending invasion.

After Indonesian troops killed five British and Australian journalists in 1975, the UK government lied about having information on the event and refused to even raise the matter with Indonesia, suggesting to Australia that ‘it is pointless to go on demanding information.^⁶⁹”. The UK Government even went as far as blocking a parliamentary debate on East Timor, called for by 105 MP's, fearing that “widespread publicity... [might] have an unfortunate effect on our overall relationship with the Indonesians”.^⁷⁰ Despite knowledge of the “rampage of looting and killing” by Indonesian forces in Dili, the official UK government line was to be a lie: “If asked to comment on any stories of atrocities I suggest we say that we have no information.”^⁷¹

However, unlike West Papua, the UN were not prepared to ratify Indonesia's sovereignty and refused to monitor or recognise any vote Indonesia may conduct. On December 12^th, the General Assembly called for the recognition of Resolution 1514 (XV) and the withdrawal of Indonesian troops from East Timor^⁷². Two Security Council resolutions were also passed but to no effect^⁷³. On December 1^st 1976, almost one year later and having seen no improvement, the General Assembly again passed a Resolution calling for an end to the 'critical situation in East Timor' and refusing to accept Indonesia's claims of sovereignty^⁷⁴. Despite Indonesia's refusal to withdraw and their eventual occupation of East Timor, this was the last time a resolution was passed by the UN regarding East Timor until intervention was required over 30 years later to halt what is now widely accepted as genocide. In the first 12 months alone, church sources estimated that in excess of 100'000 (or 1 in 7) East Timorese were killed.^⁷⁵ The role of the UN was even purposefully undermined by US diplomatic efforts, as Ambassador Moynihan admitted in the book A Dangerous Place:

... the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success^⁷⁶

Arms Sales securing Indonesia’s military superiority over East Timor and West Papua

Throughout the 1970's, America was supplying some 90% of all of Indonesia's arms^⁷⁷. On the eve of the invasion of East Timor, Kissinger said to Suharto that that the use of US arms could ‘create problems’ before adding, “It depends on how we construe it (my italics); whether it is in self defence or a foreign operation”^⁷⁸. Following questions raised by the US senate on the issue, Kissinger met with Deputy Secretary of State Robert Ingersoll, legal advisor Monroe Leigh and others to discuss the issue of US arms being used in the invasion. Kissinger is angry that his deputies had sent him a cable shortly before he was due to return. His aides wished to clarify his position on the continuation of arms sales to General Suharto, leading Kissinger to assess how many people may have seen it and declaring that, “Everything on paper will be used against me^⁷⁹.” Here is an excerpt from that meeting:

Kissinger: No one has complained that it was aggression.

Leigh: The Indonesians were violating an agreement with us.

Kissinger: The Israelis’, when they go into Lebanon – when was the last time we protested that?

Leigh: That's a different situation.

(Under-secretary) Maw: It is self-defence.

Kissinger: And we can't construe a Communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self-defence?

Leigh: Well...^⁸⁰

Later on in the meeting, Kissinger states that, “On the Timor thing, that will leak in three months and it will come out that Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and violated the law...” Despite congress raising questions regarding the legality of selling arms to Indonesia at that time, Kissinger had given orders that he wanted to “to stop the shipments quietly”, but that they were secretly to “start again” the following month. In fact, as the genocide unfolded, U.S. Arms shipments doubled^⁸¹. As Noam Chomsky later testified to the UN, “the flow of arms was uninterrupted, including attack helicopters and other equipment required to wipe hundreds of villages off the face of the earth, destroy crops, and herd the remnants of the population into internment centres”^⁸²

The UK also tried to make use of the situation. The briefing paper for Sir Michael Palliser's visit to Indonesia in October 1975 includes one objective being “to benefit from such defence sales as might be in our interest”. In April 1978, after the slaughter in East Timor should have been apparent, British Aerospace announced its first sale of Bae Hawk 'trainer' warplanes to Indonesia; these planes, 'which are suitable for ground attack', were delivered in 1983^⁸³.

Summary of International Communities response and contraventions of International Law

This widespread knowledge of Indonesia's actions in East Timor and the condemnation by the UN did nothing to stop the flow of arms from the UK and US and neither did it encourage a re-visitation of the AFC or even a fact-finding mission to West Papua. The main difference is that, despite glaring similarities between West Papua and East Timor, one is considered legal and the other has always, in name at least, been considered illegal, respectively. From supporting acts of aggression with arms and logistical support to providing diplomatic and legal legitimacy for Indonesia’s takeover of West Papua, the historical narrative patently shows at best an attitude of reluctant pragmatism with regard to the Melanesian people’s right to universal human rights, such as self-determination and freedom from subjugation. At its worst, the evidence points to an understanding that there will be little in the way of objection from the International Community, that repression and brutalities were likely and were to be supported and that this was deemed a price worth paying for the economic, ideological and geo-political benefits reaped by states far removed from the area in question. Clearly the International Community chose pragmatic policy over principles, as this excerpt from the Honourable Mr. Faleomavaega highlights:

Mr Speaker, in other words, it was our national policy to sacrifice the lives and future of some 800'000 West Papuan New Guineans to the Indonesian military in exchange, supposedly, for Sukarno and later Suharto to become our friends, who would organise the most repressive military regimes in the history of Indonesia.^⁸⁴

So far I have detailed how, despite an extensive framework of International Law and Judicial system provided by the UN, the International Community contrived to support Indonesia at the expense of the Melanesian people. It has been shown that the US, UK and Australian governments both knew and accepted that the AFC was rigged despite knowing that the West Papuans almost unanimously desiring independence, emphatically contravening UN resolution 1514 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite knowledge of and support for the Indonesian communist purge in 1965, the West armed Suharto and left West Papua, and later East Timor, to the extensive brutalities which were known to be a distinct possibility. As a recognised province of Indonesia, the situation in West Papua is but a domestic issue in the eyes of International Law (at least until there is a re-visitation of the Act of Free Choice). However, West Papuans clearly did not have a chance to express their desire for independence to the satisfaction of UN Resolution 1514 (XV). It certainly is not an election through which you could morally legitimise Indonesian Sovereignty.

In the concluding chapter I wish to highlight the reasons as to why this failure to enforce International Law was allowed to happen. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a direct response to the realisation of what state-sponsored repression could achieve. It has failed in its objectives for 40 years in West Papua and it is vital that the reasons given by the International Community are fully disclosed and understood. To say that a Government broke International Law is not enough; one must give a fair hearing in these matters and so I will now outline the US, UK and Australian motivations behind ignoring Resolution 1514 (XV), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter.

Pragmatism over Principles: Economic Benefits in Supporting Oppression

The almost universal ‘understanding’ shown by the International Community towards Indonesia’s actions needs explaining if we are to retain any faith in these Governments willingness to fulfil their obligations as member states of the UN. Is Faleomavaega right in saying that the US ‘sacrificed’ all those lives just so that, ‘Suharto would be our friend?^⁸⁵’. Certainly the International Community did not go along with Indonesia’s invasion of West Papua so as to become enemies, but such an explanation is over-simplistic. It is the value of what this friendship entails which motivates the breaking of International Law; that, and the lack of consequences incurred when those who are denied their Human Rights are both primitive, poor and on the other-side of the world. Although ideological reasons were raised at the time of the Act of Free Choice with regard to the spread of Communism, the same argument could not be applied today. Whatever has caused the International Community to disregard Human Rights is still relevant today; how else can we explain the current antipathy from the UK government?

For many centuries now, representative democracies have attempted to maximise the wealth and security of their own population, fulfilling their duties according to the social contract theory. There was a time when this took the form of colonialism, where the human rights of the colonised country came a distant second to ensuring large wealth for the coloniser. The signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Resolution 1514 (XV) were designed to put an end to such exploitation yet the practice continues in all but name. The concept of ensuring benefits for ones own population at the expense of other nations is now called pragmatism, as this secret cable sent by Ambassador Woolcott to the Australian government sent in August 1975 shows:

I wonder whether the Department has ascertained the interest of the Minister of the Department of Minerals and Energy in the Timor Situation… The present gap in the agreed sea border… could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia… than with Portugal or an independent Portuguese Timor. I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about (my italics)^⁸⁶

What did the International community hope to gain which could begin to justify the ongoing support for Indonesia, the crime of military support for an act of aggression in East Timor and the rigging of an election and (therefore) occupation in West Papua contravening Resolution 1514 (XV)?

Energy and resources are a powerful influence in the zeitgeist of world trade and capitalization. Shortly before Australia sent in troops to East Timor, Australia signed an agreement with Indonesia resulting in the two nations sharing the gas fields off the coast of Timor, to be piped to refineries built on Australia’s northern coast. East Timor’s greatest natural resource and its best chance at fulfilling a stable and viable independent state were signed away. Yet perhaps this is actually a blessing? With nothing left to gain from occupation, Indonesia no longer had anything to lose in relinquishing control. Ironically, West Papua is not so fortunate. The country has incredible natural resources of Gas, Gold and Copper, with large investment by Western companies such as BP and RioTinto.

Henry Kissinger, having clandestinely supported Indonesia’s expansionist policy, is now a board member of RioTinto who operate the world’s largest copper and gold mine called Grasberg in West Papua. When asked whether he could use the lobbying power of RioTinto to persuade Indonesia to change its policy and support self-determination for the people of East Timor, he said, “As a private American corporation engaged in private business in an area far removed from Timor, but in Indonesia (West Papua), I do not believe it is their job to get itself involved in that issue.”^⁸⁷. The response is significant in two ways. Firstly, as a matter of ‘private business’, it assumes that economic activity by a private business is not bound by matters of ethics or principle when it comes to making money. Secondly, it shows that even someone who was deeply involved in Indonesia’s expansionist aims and with insider knowledge of the rigged elections can dismiss West Papua as part of Indonesia, thereby legitimising actions agreed with the GOI at the expense of West Papuans Human Rights.

Kissinger’s claim that it is not RioTinto’ job to get involved in the East Timor issue may have some validity. After all, it is indeed far removed from the area in question and RioTinto are not themselves involved beyond paying tax to Indonesia. What Kissinger must be aware of however is the similarities between East Timor and West Papua, where the Grasberg mine is located. The history of the Grasberg mine is one of confrontation between RioTinto and the indigenous people. RioTinto bought vast swaths of indigenous peoples land from Indonesia before the implementation of the AFC, signing a 30 year deal with Indonesia in 1967^⁸⁸. Since then, the mine has had such a devastating environmental impact through the dumping of 40m tonnes of waste rock into the river system every year that in 1995, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation revoked Freeport's insurance policy for environmental violations of a sort that would not be allowed in the US^⁸⁹. Alongside the repression from the military authorities, the RioTinto Grasberg Mine is a fundamental bone of contention for West Papuans who see little improvement in living standards and a lot of environmental damage to the mountain and river systems below. The security for the mine is provided by the Indonesian military, which stand accused of faking attacks on the mine in order to increase the amount of money being paid for protection straight into army officer’s bank accounts^⁹⁰. In this instance it is hard to make sense of Kissinger’s words. Having been responsible for much of the US policy with regard to Indonesia in his role as US Secretary of State and now profiting from Indonesian occupation of West Papua, perhaps it is not a stretch to suggest it is his job to get involved in that issue?

Britain and Australia also benefit greatly from Indonesia’s expansionism. British Petroleum has signed a deal to extract Gas from the extensive fields located in Beru-Bintuni Bay, West Papua, due to start production in 2008^⁹¹. Although they have vowed not to use the Indonesian military as security, there are concerns that the social and environmental cost could lead to another situation like that at the Grasberg mine. Australia, as already mentioned, has signed agreements with Indonesia, sharing the Gas fields located off the coast of East Timor.

The nature and extent of the wealth generated by natural resources cannot be understated: they are finite materials which will never drop in value and which by their nature are fixed and immobile. They provide massive amounts of wealth, most of which goes to the companies themselves and the GOI. Unfortunately this means that in giving West Papua its Independence, UK, U.S and Australian governments would be sacrificing the business opportunities for large domestic companies (It is highly unlikely that RioTinto would be allowed to continue at the Grasberg mine were Indonesia to relinquish sovereignty).

The story of West Papua’s forced capitulation to the military regime of |Indonesia is little known outside of South-East Asia. Despite the US, UK and Australian governments supporting the invasion, the rigged elections and the brutal repression of the Melanesian people, the general public of these ‘civilised’ states have scant knowledge of their own governments’ actions. No-one has yet been brought to account and the AFC still stands as a legal and binding declaration of West Papuans wish to integrate with their oppressors. The UN was made obsolete by the very countries that helped create it for no purpose other than pragmatic economic and geo-political gains. That there has never been genocide without pragmatic economic and political aims does not seem to have occurred to those involved. It is enough it seems to know that our pragmatic aims are justified, whatever the historical facts may say. Indonesia may be the ones that are directly responsible, but the International community was, and continues to be, fundamental to its continuation. Until the UN ratify this situation and re-visit the AFC fairly the plight of the West Papuans will remain a matter for Indonesia alone to deal with, as they see fit.

For references: Click Here

The NHS directory of absolute nuttiness, sorry, 'alternative therapies'.

2010-11-10T03:02:00.000-08:00

Oh boy! One of my fellow sceptics pointed me in the direction of this list of alternative medicine practitioners on an NHS trust website! As if it wasn't bad enough that they were spending £4m per year on homeopathy, this list legitimises some pretty mental practices, a few of which I've never even heard of. Let me give you a couple of examples:

Bowen Therapy

Developed in the 1950’s in Australia by Tom Bowen, Bowen therapy is a gentle, relaxing, holistic and non-invasive energy vibrational therapy that operates on the muscle, nerve and connective tissue systems.

Non-invasive energy vibrational therapy? That doesn't even make sense! It's just a jumble of woo-woo buzz words strung together into some incoherent non-sentance!

Thought Field Therapy

TFT has also undergone considerable “field testing” in the most challenging of situations. In October 2001, for example, Dr. Shkelzen Syla, Chief of Staff with authority over all medical decisions in Kosova, officially adopted TFT as the treatment of choice for those with PTSD in the region. This followed a 100% successful supervised clinical trial.

It is important to state that the procedures do not work on everyone nor for every problem. However, research has indicated that in excess of 75% of individuals undergoing TFT can expect to obtain the enduring resolution they seek.

Brilliant! Works 75% of the time, EVERY TIME! Poor old Kosovo, as if they haven't had enough to worry about. I not that there are no links to the trials, oh well.

Ayurveda

The 'science of life', Ayurveda, is firmly embedded in Indian philosophy and its theory of evolution, according to which the universe is composed of five basic elements, namely: ether, air, fire, water and earth. These are present in all things, and in the human body they manifest as doshas.

So has nobody told them that Aristotle was wrong?

Shiatsu

Developed by the Japanese over 2000 years ago from the medical practices that originated in China, shiatsu is designed to promote the free flow of the vital energy known as Ki through the meridians of the body.

Shiaaat.. the free flow of vital energy. That old chestnut. And people struggle to understand these things as cultural artifacts from ignorant times? Seriously, scientists used to be cookoo too back in the 17th century... if any of the pre-modern belief system were true, they would have discovered it!

Unfortunately, 'flower therapy' doesn't have any description, but I'm guessing it's this, from Wikipedia: Bach flower remedies are dilutions of flower material developed by Edward Bach, an English physician and homeopath (surprise surprise)

Anyhow, I thought an email was required to clear up some questions so I shot this off to admin@nhsdirectory.org....

Dear Sir/Madam,

Regarding your NHS Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners. I was writing to confirm that none of my tax money is being spent on 'Thought Field Therapy' or 'Flower Therapy' or 'Dowsing'!? Sorry, but that last one, isn't that trying to find water with a stick?

Why are you giving legitimacy to such nonsense under the trusted NHS name? Do you have any criteria at all that would make you think twice before legitimising a practice with a place on your website? Seriously, could I come up with absolutely anything, make a website and drop you an email and you would put it up there on your list of practitioners?

People who need therapy are often the most vulnerable people in society. You should not be giving legitimacy to anybody who has an active imagination and no scientific grasp of reality, no matter how well-intentioned they are. For one, it may stop people seeking help that will actually do some good. Secondly, it is immoral to present something as beneficial when it is no better than placebo (if you can find studies that are controlled and double-blinded for any of these I would be more than happy to include that in my blog...). Thirdly, by legitimising such practices you perpetuate the unhelpful dichotomy of belief vs science and leave people vulnerable to other, less well-intentioned people who use the same language and concepts but for no reason other than scamming people out of money.

They are all scams. That many people belief in them and are well intentioned is beside the point. Please assure me that no tax payers money is being spent on this nonsense. If you would like to respond to my blog, I would welcome your comments at www.grimeandreason.blogspot.com

All the best,

Ben

As ever, I'll keep you posted on any reply.

Update:

I have had a reply from the admin for the NHS directory. Thankfully no public money has been spent on compiling the directory, although worryingly it is designed as a directory for those willing to work with the NHS in the future, should GP's make that decision. Given that there are more than a couple of GP's who believe in the effects of Homeopathy that isn't terribly reassuring. What is more worrying is that this directory was compiled in response to the findings of the House of Lords scientific and technical committee. I am presuming therefore that either the committee wasn't very scietific, or else the NHS Trust Association ignored it's findings and helped facilitate the possible cooperation of services deemed pointless by the committee.

Here is the reply in full:

Dear Mr. King,

We refer to your email of the 10th November regarding the above.

The Directory was published in response to the findings of the House of Lords scientific and technical committee, which published a report on complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM) in 2000 and how such therapies might be provided by the NHS. The therapies included are based on those referred to in the House of Lords Report, which included flower therapy and dowsing. Information regarding the therapies is provided by those organisations which represent the individual therapies in question. The Directory is intended to provide information to healthcare professionals on practitioners that have a particular commitment to working with the NHS should they be asked to do so. The decision to provide CAM via the NHS remains a matter for the clinical judgement of individual patients GP's.

Please note that the NHSTA does not receive any public money whatsoever and not a single penny of tax payers money has been spent in the production of this Directory.
Yours sincerely,

NHSTA Admin Department

Annoyingly, the report is only viewable if you subscribe to a journal (damn it!) which stops me from checking their conclusion myself. So, given the conundrum highlighted above, I have replied thus:

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I have a question that is bugging me. You say that the directory is in response to the findings of the House of Lords scientific and technical committee. I assume therefore that the inclusion of these therapies, mentioned as they are in the committees report, means that the committee did not discuss the efficacy or evidence for these therapies as part of the report?

I am presuming that either the committee wasn't very scientific in it's aims and methods, or else the NHS Trust Association ignored it's findings and helped facilitate the possible cooperation of services deemed pointless and inefficable by the committee? I would be grateful if you could comment on this.

I find it worrying that this directory is available for GP's guidance. Just because someone is willing to cooperate with the NHS doesn't mean we should let them. GP's are human too, as the minority support for homeopathy shows.

Yours sincerely

Ben King

This guys awesome! Dr Wheeler and his giant balls/tiny conscience.

2010-11-08T03:42:00.000-08:00

Check out this website! Immediately one is thrown back to the heady days of the late 90's... it's been a while sicne I've seen such a great website! This guy is selling water for $100's, sorry, 'living' water, so I thought I'd send him an email...

Dear Dr Wheeler

Do you actually make a living off of this? Dude, you have huge balls. And a tiny, tiny conscience. It's just water! If, as you say, it represent a medical breakthrough, could you please show me where you have invested in proper clinical trials, double-blinded with control groups?

I'm presuming you have done this right? After all, to be in possession of such a life, nay society changing breakthrough as this I presume that you don't merely intend to get rich from it? I know that's the impression people might get, after all you clearly haven't even spent money on your website since the late 90's but is it too much to ask that you attempt to bring this out of the closet and into the mainstream? You could help million, nay billions of people!

So, what do you say? You gonna show me the research? Otherwise answer me this... are you only in it for the money, or are you simply so shy and reserved that not even changing the world for the better would make you stick your neck out for your fellow humans?

All the best,

Ben

A Letter to MIND, the mental health organisation using crystals and shamanic healing.

2010-11-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd share a letter I sent to the mental health charity MIND after being shown a programme for the University of East Anglia's Well-being Week that is coming up. Honestly, until 'well-being' gets a grip and ditches the woo-woo that has forever been a part of it, how are people meant to take it seriously enough to actually learn it's lessons? Anyhow...

Dear Sir/Madam,

Reading the programme for the UEA wellbeing week that you are attending, I was wondering why you invest in pseudo-scientific, cultural-quaintness such as crystals and shamanism... Do you not agree that they are born of ignorant (not meant in derogatory sense) times which saw the possible positive aspects (closeness, human interaction, placebo) misinterpreted and projected onto symbolic references due to our pattern seeking nature?

In light of this, it is not right that you give legitimacy to the perpetuation of these myths, thereby fuelling the dichotomy of science Vs belief. In doing so, you exacerbate the cognitive dissonance associated with this dichotomy which helps give rise to mental illness in the first place.

As an established mental health service, I applaud your intentions and believe you do good for the right reasons. Yet as an established mental health service I would also expect you to be experts on mental health practice. It is a logical fallacy to assume that science-based medicine is unable to answer questions of mental health due to the apparent correlation between modernity and increased mental health issues. It is in contemporary science-based medicine that the answers to your questions will be found.

I would put my life on shamanic therapy showing no better results than placebo in a rigorous, double-blinded experiment. As you say, they've been around for thousands of years... enough time work out something that works better than placebo I'm sure you would agree.

Please, take the money that you are using for Shamanic healing and crystals, replace them with standard stress-relieving practices (I know it's a bit more boring, but it's not condemning people to a life at the mercy of less well intentioned snake-oil salesmen) and use the rest to fund some scientific research at the university instead. Find a curious cognitive-scientist who is striving to do good and who actually stands a chance of doing so.

All the Best

Ben

Here's the feedback form on their website if you want to chime in. Remember though, be polite and civil, these are undoubtedly nice people I'm sure.

Update:

OK, so I didn't think that I'd have to do this, because, well, it's shamanism and crystals we are talking about. Evidently however, given the comment below, some people are still unable, or unwilling, to do the research for themselves and so here is why I think shamanism is a cultural artifact:

"available scientific evidence does not support claims that shamanism is effective in treating cancer or any other disease." American Cancer Society

Wikipedia definition of shamanic healer:

"Shamans gain knowledge and the power to heal by entering into the spiritual world or dimension. The shaman may have or acquire many spirit guides in the spirit world, who often guide and direct the shaman in his/her travels. These spirit guides are always present within the shaman though others only encounter them when the shaman is in a trance. The spirit guide energizes the shaman, enabling him/her to enter the spiritual dimension. The shaman heals within the spiritual dimension by returning 'lost' parts of the human soul from wherever they have gone. The shaman also cleanses excess negative energies which confuse or pollute the soul."

I almost feel like I could leave that quote as it is and it would be enough. But if I must... Spiritual world, entering another dimension, spirit guides energising the shaman, lost parts of the human soul, excess negative energies... I could believe all of these things with absolutely no evidence, or I could believe in the proven and very real placebo effect. Occams razor dude.

The only scientific study quoted on the wikipedia page (don't you love the way these people try and co-opt science when it's done badly, but deny it's validity when done right) surprisingly did show a positive result... surprising until you realise that not only was it not even blinded (let alone double-blinded) they didn't even have a control group for measuring placebo. Now, why do you suppose they did that? I mean, anyone who has done high school science knows you need a control group, and yet they went to all this trouble without bothering? Mighty suspicious don't you think?

Now, using the names of the people conducting the study together with 'shaman' brings up dozens of identical hits, carbon copies of the wikipedia entry that have all been cut and pasted with no mention of the fact that this experiment was terminally flawed from it's very design. So I tracked down the actual paper. And yes, it really was that bad. It even got published in a "journal".

And to think that had I done this study in High School I would have got a fail.

Seriously though, you want people to accept shamanism's validity based on what shamans say, and nothing more. You want us to overthrow hundreds of years of cumulative experiment, debate and knowledge and accept that there are souls and spirits on the basis of what shamans say? People once thought the earth was flat and was circled by the Earth. Now we have seen otherwise we know that everyone was wrong before Galileo (with the odd exceptions). By the same token we now know how shamanism and every other cultural artifact works, the very real, very observable and very interesting placebo effect.

Incidentally, if there was any evidence of souls or spirits we would have definitely noticed by now. Think it's all a conspiracy keeping the funding away? Tell that to the Catholic Church who funded science for hundreds of years, practiced by early modern scientists who were themselves religious. The reason most aren't any more is because they didn't find anything.

I have emailed one of the researchers who conducted the 'experiment', one Michelle Ramirez:

Dear Ms Ramirez,

I was wondering if you could enlighten me as to why, in the study 'Journey Into Healing: The Transformative Experience of Shamanic Healing on Women With Temporomandibular Joint Disorders' you failed to include a control group or any blinding procedure in the experiment. I notice you randomised which patients went to which practitioner but this is utterly irrelevant unless randomising between a control and what it is you are studying.

I'm curious because such an error instantly invalidates the experiment. Why bother doing it in the first place? This mistake would have resulted in a 'fail' in high school science, surely as a PHD graduate you were aware of this?

Yours sincerely,

Ben

P.S I would love for you to contribute to my blog on the subject and give your side of the debate. You can find it here: http://grimeandreason.blogspot.com/2010/11/letter-to-mind-mental-health.html

I'm not holding my breath on this one, but fingers crossed we'll get a reply.

An addition to my Socio-cultural and Identity essay...

2010-11-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

I have just read Mark Ward's book Universality, 2001. It is a great book, the title of which does not purport to encompass everything, merely that within certain complex systems this feature of universal connectedness emerges, extending to the system as a whole. It is a feature that can give rise to chaos if too much input is fed into the system and one that can dissipate, along with it's potentials, if input is decreased. It is apparent in the myriad of fractal patterns and beats that nature has discovered in order to reach complexity from the greatest simplicity. It shows how we as a species may have benefited from evolving to the edge of order, reaping the emergent benefits of collective intelligence, a historical dialectic of push and pull, power and curiosity, maintaining the complex system of cultural evolution as the safety net of communication infrastructure drove spikes of recorded, cumulative knowledge into the high-water marks of the historical swash.

This book came at a good time for me. Since the death of Mandelbrot last week, I have been pondering fractals often, sure that they, along with other phenomena such as chaos and synchronicity, were fundamental to the very fabric of reality. Not simply on an arbitrary scale such as the planck length of the diameter of the universe, but on all scales at once, a Metaphysical Theory of Everything. This book is a call to arms not just to the scientific community but also a clarion call for arm-chair philosophers like me. It gives motivation in the thought that the academic world, though filled with great minds, is driven to speciality and expertise in narrow fields. Universality shows that in studying small pieces of the canvas, many people are unable to see the big picture staring them in the face. The Internet is driving like-minded individuals in all disciplines to act on the very simple premise that maximised communication, larger conceptual data-sets, are the key to success. Whilst they are still realising that, you and I are free to use this wonderful invention to wallow in a multitude of specialities, see connections the experts cannot; all from the comfort of your sitting room, or on a bus, or walking in the countryside. It really is an exciting time, this whole new digital generation soon to be snapping at the heals of the established ways.

But I digress. The reason that it can help explain, at least philosophically for the time being, reality at any scale is because complex systems exist at all scales and complex systems share the same emergent characteristics. By focusing on this emergent dynamic, instead of the particulars of any one scale, we can gain a very complete picture of the forces directing us both as individuals, as societies and as a tiny speck of dust in the cosmic carpet. It is part and parcel of coming to understand ourselves as human beings, as Hegel said. Many of the worlds ills: organised religion, fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, all sorts of 'isms', they all share what seems to be a group-think inspired gross ignorance of their own flaws or how humans actually function. It is apparent every time some Republican tells us that bombing them is the only way to stop them bombing us.

Wildly speculating, it's fun to think way outside the box, but what if the universe inflated fractally? What a beautiful sight that would be if one could slow it right down and sit back. Why not? It sure is a mightily complex system and if you care to extend the scales up from the smallest found (and it goes down pretty far, check out this: Fractals and golden ratio found at the quantum level), signs of self-similarity go up a long way. What if we kept going? How about theories of sprouting universes, perhaps they branch of in fractal patterns?

Power Balance Holographic Bracelet.. or An Expensive Con For Gullible Idiots

2010-10-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

So I was in a sports shop the other day getting some brake pads for my bike when on the counter I noticed Power Bracelets!

Sounding like some add-on in an RPG for leveling up balance, they are priced at a highly reasonable £29.99. Reasonable for the manufacturers and retailers that is, since so far as I can tell it consisted of a plastic band with a holographic sticker on it. Unfortunately, that was as much as I could ascertain about this product, since it didn't even see fit to even attempt to explain how it might work on the packaging. That really takes the biscuit: How hard is it to come up with some good quality mumbo-jumbo these days? No, all this relied upon was argument from authority, displayed here as a fallacy in all its glory.

I struck up a conversation with the guy behind the till, asking how they worked and marveling at the price. He didn't have a clue how they worked, merely that Beckham had one (he doesn't, but a host of other athletes do). When I said it had the stench of pseudo-scientific nonsense about it along the lines of magnets and the like, he lowered his voice and said, "well, between you and me I think they are just a load of bollocks".

"So why do you sell it?", I replied...

"Why do you think?", rubbing thumb and forefinger together...

Oh Dear. I can barely imagine what sort of mark up retailers are invited to take on this product. Unless I'm very much mistaken and there actually is a highly complex, state-of-the-art holographically-powered balance machine in each bracelet, they must consist of 5p worth of plastic and a sticker. Even if they charge retailers just 20% RRP, they are still making a killing!

So, to their website. It's a glitzy affair, with promises of national websites all over the world (how depressing), though only the U.S. site is open at the moment (how surprising). Numerous athletes have been paid to lie (or else are just as dumb as any other schmuck and have been convinced by their agent, also paid, that these things actually work) and claim that these really help with just about every aspect of sport and everyday life, as opposed to the years of dedicated practice and commitment to their sport.

At least they bother to hint at how it works, though the lack of imagination is astounding in this day and age:

What is Power Balance?

'Power Balance is Performance Technology designed to work with your body’s natural energy field. Founded by athletes, Power Balance is a favorite among elite athletes for whom balance, strength and flexibility are important.'

How Does the Hologram Work?

'Holography (from the Greek, ὅλος hólos whole + γραφή grafē writing, drawing) is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded.' OK, I admit that was from wikipedia... this is what they actually say...

'Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.'

Ah, Eastern Philosophies, those age old sages of holographic technology. I'll give them 8/10 for ambiguity, but it's gotta be 1/10 for originality. Sorry guys.

They've been a bit more clever when it comes to the testimonials. Here's a selection of some of the best/worst quotes...

Pri Lima, Beach Volleyball:

"This product will raise your game and make a difference in how you feel. I mean there has got to be some reason almost every player on tour is wearing it now…" Perhaps they have the same agents?

Ekolu Kalama, Stand-up Paddleboard

"I started using Power Balance after I saw my wife have the best sesh of her life with the stickers on her board, she sold me! Since then I use PB every time im in the water. Also, in stand up paddle boarding you use the paddle as a means to maintain stability and Power Balance is just another tool to keep your balance." See! It's no different from using my paddles to keep balanced! Doh!

Andrew Ference, Hockey

"The best way I can describe the difference is that I feel more grounded and in control of what my body is doing. I have shared the product with my team and it is now in most guy's skates and shoulder pads..." I wonder if Power Balance were good enough to offer them for free? Shill!

Shaquille O'Neal, Basketball

I want to do everything to get the slightest advantage; wristbands, necklaces, t-shirts, band-aids, everything and anything we can get our hands on. I’m here to tell you it works!” Because nonsense isn't limited to just bracelets and necklaces! Just get one tattooed on your forehead so we can all have a laugh.

Peter Smolik, Skateboarder

"Power Balance is the realest device in the industry right now." Especially with people who say 'realest'

Oh man, that's low. I just noticed the 'cause' page... special bracelets which see money fromt he purchase donated to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Urgh. You little, squirming, ingratiating, sneeky arseholes. What better way to say "we're not conmen!" than raising funds for cancer?

Part of me thinks that if people are so easily fooled out of £30 then fuck 'em... the other part of me riles at people getting rich in this way when the rest of us have to struggle. How is such bollocks legal to do? Bloody extremist cultural relativism that's how. Can't slag of someones Eastern Philosophies now can we?! I love Eastern philosophy and I can assure you that they never spoke of the sport enhancing qualities of holographic bracelets.

The consumer protection website Choice has this to say about Power Balance bracelets:

CHOICE verdict

CHOICE is all for the power of positive thinking, but we can’t find much positive to say about Power Balance. It has no discernable effect on flexibility and balance. Any benefit you feel while wearing it is almost certainly due to a placebo effect. So, zero stars for the Power Balance. If the products were cheap, we could at least call them a harmless bit of nonsense, but at $60 for the wristband and $95 for the pendant they’re far too overpriced to laugh off.

Next step: record some check-out people slagging them off and posting them on youtube. There is something rather convincing in this consumerist world of someone who should be selling you something doing the complete opposite. If anyone else fancies joining me, please link to this blog from sports forums and the like!

Also, many sports stars have twitter pages so lets target them publicly there! Check out my twitter @grimeandreason for some I've already found and give em a guilt trip from hell!

Athletes on twitter supporting the Power Balance scam:

Rubens Barrichello: @rubarrichello - Particularly dissapointed in this one given the reliance on science of Formula 1. Would have thought he would know better than that.
Casey Patterson: @caseypatt
Matthew Stafford: @matt_stafford9
Lamar Odom: @RealLamarOdom