Towards global thinking.

The recent elections in Europe embarrass me. In so many ways we have come so far. We are remarkable. But when we are pressured by circumstance we have let ourselves down, and old instincts have beaten our reason.

Nationalism; them and us; blame the tribe next door; be wary of those that aren't exactly like us. It's all just so ludicrously small.

We live on a planet where we are one of 8.7 million species, all of which we share an ancestor with at some point in our history. Our species, Homo Sapien, has its origins about 200,000 years ago in south west africa. That's all of us alive today. We're all the same. At that point, everyone of our species was exactly like us. We all share a great great great....etc ancestor who lived somewhere around the Namibia/Angola coastal border. 

Around 125,000 years ago our ancestors had expanded to the Middle East. From there, about 50,000 years ago they spread east into South Asia. By 43,000 years ago they had reached Europe, and 40,000 years ago they arrived in Australia. East Asia was reached around 30,000 years ago. Around the same time they may have reached North America, although this is disputed and it could have been as late as 14,000 years ago. The Polynesian islands were reached from Taiwan around 5,200 years ago. (Please forgive this very rough summary of dates!)

It was only 10,000 years ago, with a move towards warmer consistent weather and the development of agriculture, that we stopped being nomadic hunter gatherers. (interestingly in those societies there was often much greater social and economic equality and often sexual parity, than we know today!)

And so from the travelling tribes settling came the farmsteads, and from the farmsteads came the towns. From the towns came the trade routes etc etc But still it was hundreds of years before we thought of ourselves as from any given "nation". Arguably, most of the nations in Europe have only developed in the last 700-800 years. (based on most definitions "of nation state")

Only in our most recent history have we had nations to be nationalistic about! On the other side of the political borders of our nations, are the very same people who prior to that time had similar journeys, similar histories. "They" are not different from us. They are us!   

Perhaps one might better argue that nations are like clubs. Clubs that can compete against each other at sporting events. Clubs that have taken along their own refreshments and resent it when people from other clubs want one of their sandwiches. Clubs that get protective of their pork pies. Members of other clubs, coming over here, eating our salad. Perhaps if you've paid your club's subs to fund that picnic you might resent a member of a different club taking a pickled onion from your jar. But if you turned away a hungry competitor with a "Sorry, this picnic blanket is full" would you feel proud of yourself?

What would it be like if we got some perspective on what's important? How would it be if we stop expecting our politicians to be drawn into arguments and debates about the petty and pointless - just because it makes quick copy to sell papers? If we vote entertainers into roles of state, we shouldn't be surprised when they turn out to be clowns.

In the early 90s Carl Sagan said "The old appeals to racial, sexual, religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervour are beginning not to work, a new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognises that an organism at war with itself is doomed." 

If I had to be the one to tell Carl about the recent election results in Europe I would do so mumbling, looking at my shoes, ashamed of what has happened. 

The real threats to us do not come from nations, towns or picnic blankets. They are threats that can only be dealt with as a species. Climate change will only be controlled by global consensus and action, not the childish tit for tat of nations run by the childish soundbite mongers pandering to the press which in turn panders to the stupid so as to sell adverts. Impact events will only be averted by a global effort to fund and build a system for detection, interception and movement of threats. How can decisions of that magnitude be taken whilst the biggest effective unit we have is the nation state? The threat of self destruction, of nuclear war; of a rogue state releasing chaos through some sort of bio weapon or even bio or nuclear accident... these things seem less likely in the world today than in Sagan's time but the threats remain, and again, they are either threats caused by the nation states, or threats that would be best dealt with by units bigger than the nation state. 

Communications and business have now outgrown the nation state, and it becomes increasingly more futile to try and frame discussion of one in the context of the other. Human's greatest achievements in recent years always cross national boundaries, be it disease control, the space station and exploration, or the power and speed of social media to bring local issues to a global audience.  

Consider then a Human Council. One decision making body, responsible for all citizens of Earth. Protecting world resources, and working to ensure distribution of those resources as needed for the benefit of the majority, not those who happen to be born near them. Making decisions in the interest of all citizens of the planet. The idea seems so alien to us who've grown up in tribes/nations. How would "our" economy work? What would happen to currency exchange? How long would the queues at Disney Land be!? But these are all problems of transition. The transition from a world formed of tribes to a world of just one combined tribe. Think how one big tribe would look, and what would and wouldn't be possible then!  

The transition from a planet divided into nations, to a planet united as one species looking forward is a very tough thing to envisage. In today's short termist inward looking, border conscious climate, few politicians would be prepared to state their ultimate aim is to dissolve independent nation states into a single world Human Council. Yet, long term, our survival as a species seems to me to be dependent on the population getting behind just such an idea and requiring the governments of our nations to consciously take every possible step towards their own succession. 

Just because the transition seems impossibly difficult to navigate, doesn't mean we shouldn't start to travel. I wonder how that journey will look; how long the journey will take, and how long it will be before we set sail. 






  











































  

Alternative Therapies

I'll admit it. I know a couple of quacks. I also know a number of people who use them. I've mostly thought "each to their own", or the more cynical "it's a mug tax", but I've supported their businesses and vouched for their character. I don't believe these are snake oil peddlers, they believe in their product. They are honest.

Except, then I follow the logic... And it becomes uncomfortable.

Start with the premise that a therapy or product either has a physiological effect or it doesn't.

If it doesn't work we have two outcomes. the therapist either wrongly believes that it does work, in the face of failing treatments; or they know it doesn't work and are deliberately peddling snake oil.

(So we conclude they are either a little dim, or a fraudster.)

If the treatment does have an effect we have two outcomes. Either the therapist sees it has an effect and looks to behave in a safe manner by testing the safety of the treatment, or they treat with no consideration for side effect or negative outcomes.

(So we conclude they are a professional, or reckless.)

And this is where I have become uncomfortable. Let's say a therapy seems to work but we don't know how. We see a physiological response. We need to know it cannot damage! If you honestly believe that pushing pressure points on my feet might affect my liver function, you need to know that it can't stop my lungs working surely? Otherwise you're dangerously reckless. Manipulate my scalp... Feed me dilutions... Stick a candle in my ear... If you think it can change my body, you need to know it can't change it in a negative way before you risk peddling it.

The only way you can be comfortable that your untested therapy won't kill someone is if you know that it's theatre. If you know that it's theatre, you're peddling snake oil. Deliberately selling placebo.

Someone with integrity who genuinely believes in a therapy would only give it if it were tested as safe; and if it were tested as safe and effective, it's therapy... Not alternative.

So the only conclusion I reach is that the person giving untested "alternative" therapies is either selling snake oil knowing it's snake oil or recklessly giving an untested therapy without caring enough to consider unknown side effects.

Given I like the various individuals I know in this field, I think I'd prefer it if I knew they were deliberate snake oil peddlers, rather than deliberately reckless.

Football vs Cricket, Long vs Short Game

There's an argument that cricket is the slow game, played over days, more nuanced. Football is more immediate.


But I think it's flawed.


YES those points are true if you assess the game as from start to finishing whistle. 


BUT that's not really what supporters are about. 


90mins of football is just one over in cricket to the fan of the football league. 


To them the game is played with every transfer of a player, every sore throat that stops someone training, every morale sapping tabloid scandal. Football is the longer game! The bit on the pitch is just the busiest bit.

The Referees a Banker

At school the boy studies hard. No one is surprised when he gets his a-levels and goes to Uni. When he gets his degree the grunt job at the bank seems a natural progression. Good money for a graduate too. Every one is pleased for him.


Learning and working hard - leads to a series of promotions and sideways moves, climbing the corporate rungs. Responsible for ever more people on the lower rungs, and the upkeep of ever grander titles. Eventually, the top echelons are his. 


The 50yr old schoolboy runs the show. 


Continual learning, continual growth, and some hard work... make him responsible for thousands of people... generating huge profits. The boy's done good! 


His responsibilities command a huge salary, and a huge bonus when growth is achieved.


But the public don't like it. We all have an idea "what we're worth". We won't seek earnings beyond that. If you're earning £30K and you see a job ad for £60K you don't even look to see if you could do the job! AND WE STRUGGLE TO ACCEPT THAT OTHERS SEEM TO BE WORTH MORE because they aim higher. 


You can scapegoat the banks as the cause of the downturn, but that's just naive. 


You can criticise the internal mechanisms of a finance system you barely understand just because the numbers seem so much bigger than your perceived personal worth. 


You can strip someone of a title.. 


You can bring the pressure of the masses to make it hard for a successful person to earn well.


But will you ask the tough questions? If a knighthood was given undeservedly who screwed up? The recipient or the teams of people who got "services to banking" that wrong? 


It all looks very ugly to me. "Isn't the boy working hard and doing well for himself?" transitions into "how can anyone be worth that much?" and we don't notice the point of change. 


Envy, jealousy, and the need to claw others backwards in the mistaken idea that the action of pulling them backwards somehow propels us forward. 


When it's done, when the finger pointing is over, the scapegoats sacrificed... Where are you? 


Still in the same shitty job, moaning about bigger bills and tiny pay rises... Expecting more and more for the same task. Mistaking longevity for added value. Watching those lottery numbers. Sharing the opinions you read in the paper during the first coffee break of the day. 


Whilst we focus on the easy populist noise, we change nothing at all. Sad. Ugly. Dangerous.

Arrogance, Religion, and Respect.

So let's get something straight. You can be a Nobel laureate and if you're religious I'm still going to think you're weak minded. A view that has had me labelled as arrogant recently. As if my feeling like that implies I consider myself superior. Which is not the case more than it is. You see, I can admire someone for one reason, yet be sickened by another. I can admire a nurse for their compassion but be sickened by their racism for example. Complexity is not a vice. So I can think you're an idiot for crediting your successes to something divine, whilst admiring those successes none the less. But being called an arrogant athiest made me think. Is there anything more arrogant than someone with faith? To dismiss the knowledge of generations of thinkers, just on the basis of something you learned to believe?

Todays tech wonders...

I wonder what my boy will marvel at?

One Xmas, perhaps 25 years ago, my Dad marvelled at the tanks bouncing blocks off of walls in the immensely playable "Combat" that shipped with the Atari 2600.

In the Commodore64 I was a space trader exploring a huge space that couldn't possibly fit inside that tiny machine. (OK so Fibannacci played his part... but when later in life you find out how it's done it only brings greater wonder at the ingenuity of those B&B boffins.)

At Uni a friend had a PC with its own hard drive. We could write our essays and make them pretty. Without tippex. He shared it with us.

A while after starting work I was allocated a brick of a phone to stay in touch with the office. It worked whenever the roads went over the crest of hills.

In the mid 90's a Leicester firm showed me this thing called Yahoo. For a fee they'd give me a phone number my computer could call, and then I could look at pages of information. I actually asked the guy "why would I want to do that?" and didn't sign up for a month or so.

I upgraded from 33 to 56 - and marvelled at only 2 mins per MB.

My brick got smaller and worked in more places.

In 2000 I got broadband and considered a Psion to run my life. Decided to pass.

In 2010 my phone handles all sorts of communication. Live video, photo, documents, spreadsheets. My calendar, everything. In one small block. I can sit in my car, and use my phone to run every aspect of my business, from sales to production. It even lets me play Sonic the Hedgehog.

I went to the cinema, donned some glasses to watch Avatar. An average plot but in an environment like no other I've experienced. The entertainment genre moved forward again.

Games consoles using wands that record your movement, and soon a games console that simply watches your movement for its controls. Next Windows will become "Boxes" and you'll work in three dimensions without a mouse.

Every era has its wars, it's disasters, it's crises. But there was only one wild west, one age of steam, one industrial revolution, and I've been lucky enough to experience the information age.

Last year, a man who saw further than most left us. But Arthur C Clarke left us three laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I wonder what my boy will marvel at.

LIfe? Don't talk to me about life.

I turned 35.

If I leave the house before 8.30am or get home after 6.30pm my little boy misses his dad, and my wife gives me hell about it.

If I work 12 hrs a day I can just about keep my company going, although I can't keep all my customers happy.

There aren't 12 hrs between 8.30am and 6.30pm.

I can live with my wife giving me hell, but I can't handle my little boy missing me.

We want the best for our kids and that means moving to a bigger house in a better school catchment area.

We make ends meet now but the mortgage on the new place is twice as high, as are many of the other associated bills.

To make more money the company has to do better which means it needs to grow, which means better performance and probably more of my time.

I struggle to say sober for 24 hrs and for the first time in 5 years I'm craving cigarettes.

BUT

My house didn't fall down around me when the earth shook.
My house didn't blow away or wash away in a typhoon.
No one I know contracted something nasty.

My point....

Is there a scale of stress and upset... and everything.... or are there many perspectives? (or is there just one perspective and many self important people who don't get it - myself included?)

One person worries about whether not buying that second bottle of Moet makes them look tight in front of their friends. Another person worries that the water they've carried from the river carries a disease that'll kill them. I worry my boy is upset at not seeing me cause i'm working. Someone else worries that their child's AK47 might jam whilst they're in a shoot out with other guerrillas...

We start. We survive. We are. We create more starts. We end.
What we do with the rest seems to be up to us.

There's nothing wrong with going through life focused on the mundane and trivial - but surely we should all be intelligent enough to recognise that's what we're doing when we're doing it?