For some time now I have been frustrated by the persistence of the western myth of the origin of the universe.

It was about forty five years ago that I wrote to the then prominent astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, and proposed the idea that the universe didn’t begin. Astronomers at that time were using the idea of a ‘big bang’ to hang their theories on.

Since we observe stuff in the physical world being made, that is a pattern of thought that we have adopted. One day you go down to the car showroom and you have a look around and choose one you like the colour of and say, I’ll have that one. And you read the documents that come with the car and it tells you where and when it was made.

But that isn’t the case – even for a car, it was made from other things. Some clever chap pulled together all sorts of stuff in an original way, as if from nowhere, and made a car.

This is compelling notion from which Judea, Christian and Islamic religions base their premise on the origin of the universe; Jehovah, God or Allah made it. And that was a convincing enough answer, until scientists started asking awkward questions in the eighteenth century. Sir Isaac Newton pulled out the idea that the universe was some sort of enormous clock that was put together in such a way that it ticked. And that fooled everyone enough to last a few centuries until scientists started talking about a big bang.

But that idea, as clever as it is, denies the questions about what was there before the origin of the universe and introduces the next question which is; what is there after the universe?

In Hindu mythology they have a story which they call the churning of the ocean. You have two opposing / complimentary forces lined up holding a huge snake like two ‘tug of war’ teams. They pull hard against each other and sometimes the snake is pulled in one direction and sometimes in the other. In this way the Ocean, which scientists call Space (although it is nothing of the kind) is churned, so sustaining matter and movement from one eternity to the next.

This was the meat from which I gained my sustenance to write to Sir Fred and suggest that the Universe doesn’t need to have a beginning or an end; why would it? He wasn’t convinced.

In recent times we have been presented with the image derived from mathematics called ‘fractals’. These present to me very clearly how the Universe is made. It is not stuff or the spaces between stuff but pattern. If you observe atoms and electrons under a microscope you see an image which might as well be a picture of suns and planets, or suns and galaxies, or galaxies and universes, or universes and …

You see if you think it through eventually you run out of words because language runs out of the ability to fit your thoughts. That is why the Zen Masters and Sufi Masters described the universe in poems, because poetry is a kind of verbal fractal. It can describe matter and movement at one level in order to describe a similar process in infinite levels, infinite universes.

So for me the ‘big bang’ was a whisper, not a bang. It was just a changing of direction of everything that already was and always will be. It was what you might call ‘a cosmic breath’ that keeps existing because it changes state, changes direction.

Because we were once ‘born’ and had our little bottoms smacked to put air into our lungs for the first time, we think the universe came into being in the same way. But we think like this because we use scientific materialism as our model of thought, especially at an unconscious level from where we obtain our ideas.

Because we imagine ourselves to be the development of a ‘me’ inside a bag of skin, we separate ourselves from the universe in a most fundamental way.

Astronomers will tell you that your body is made up of ‘star dust’ that is elemental matter from the origin of the universe. And this is a fractals way of telling you that not only is our body the universe, but our spirit as well.

We are no more separate from the universe than a newspaper is from it’s readers. What I mean is that a newspaper is at one level skins of paper which is really nothing, it’s just something to read or light the fire with. A newspaper only exists in the minds of it’s readers.

So do we come alive when we stop thinking of ourselves as a bag containing organs and bones. Instead we should see ourselves as part of the churning ocean, the ocean from which we evolved, are evolving and will evolve into something else…not dust to dust, but star dust to star dust to star dust to star dust ad infinitum.

 

Strengths

Europe has the potential to act as one nation. With a population of 500 million and its standing as ‘First World’ states, it is strong compared to many other players in world politics. Two world wars were fought to make it so, at the cost of the lives of millions of it’s citizens and allies from other countries around the world.

In my view, Europe shames their selfless contribution to peace, if it does not work as one for the greater good of it’s citizens and the world.

There is a Parliament in Brussels bristling with highly paid politicians and civil servants, who are responsible for policies. This parliament could have made a strategy to deal with immigration and have passed it into law. This would have controlled immigration by quotas, processing visa and asylum applications and closing down the illegal business of trafficking migrants.

Weaknesses

Europe has a large number of member states making it difficult to have unanimous agreement on policy.

Instead each state has ‘done it own thing’. Germany opened it’s doors to migrants weakening the strong government, other states like the United Kingdom accepted limited quotas, and some states like Italy and Malta closed their ports.

Immigrants have waited in camps in questionable conditions for their claim for a right to residency to be considered. One can only presume that too few resources have been allocated by the EU to process claims within a humanitarian time scale.

The whole business of trafficking of migrants has flourished at the cost of thousand of lives and human suffering.

Migrants are forced to use unseaworthy vessels to travel to Europe because the land borders are closed. At the airports, airlines themselves are at risk of being fined if they allow passengers without papers, to fly. So instead of paying 60 Euros for a flight to safety, they pay 1000 Euros to a criminal gang.

The risking of their own and their children’s lives, acts as a form of moral blackmail on European states to ‘do something’. Failure to act is seen as contrary to the Human Rights legislation each country is signed up to, including Italy and Malta who are now refusing to take migrants for rescue ships like the Aquarius.

Failing to stop migrants using unseaworthy vessels, has given moral cause to these humanitarian ships, to come to the rescue of drowning immigrants. But they inadvertently allow the traffickers to prosper because it gives hope to those setting out. There is a case (yet to be proven), to prosecute those aiding migrants on the grounds of aiding and abetting illegal trafficking

Opportunities

If there are wars on ‘terror’ and ‘drug trafficking’, why is there not a ‘war on immigrant trafficking?’ This would involve gathering intelligence within the states from where the traffickers operate, arrest and extradition of traffickers through sting operations and raids, removal of asserts likely to be used by traffickers such as unsafe inflatable boats, unsafe life jackets etc.

In an age when technology is able to monitor the entire north African coast and Mediterranean sea by the use of real time satellite images and drones, it is strange that unsafe vessels are not intercepted early and made to return to the port they came from. This policy would have a devastating effect upon the businesses of the traffickers who rely on never seeing their clients again – dead or alive.

Dealing with the human traffickers will potentially uncover and or deter terrorists and other criminals trying to enter Europe illegally.

Within those who chose to leave their countries, there are many who are educated and able to contribute to the country that accepts them. At a time of falling birth rates in much of Europe, it’s economic prosperity depends on a growing work force. It is possible to process applications for asylum at their country of origin or neighbouring states offering temporary asylum whilst processing takes place.

Threats

There is an opinion that the large influx of persons of the Muslim faith is designed to destabilise European governments, some of which have showed a strong prejudice against Muslims, perhaps following the lead of the USA president and Brexiteers . Such a prejudice would not be acceptable towards Jews and yet it is left unchallenged by Europe when directed at Muslims.

The cultures of the countries from which migrants are from are very different to the European way of life. Language, religion, social and family values, law and religious jurisprudence, community values ( sometimes tribal in nature ) prejudice, misinformation and unrealistic expectations – all place a large burden on migrants and their potential host European nations. European nations have to be flexible and realistic enough to allow the assimilation process to take several generations. Their citizens must be  informed and educated so that they view the process in the same way, otherwise their expectations will be unrealistic, leading to anger and dissent.

Right wing nationalist views are being expressed by many political parties in Europe. If such views and the effects of the economic recession gain dominance amongst the people Europe, there is a risk of some European countries falling under the control of fascist dictators. Dealing with immigration ineffectively gives the power to persuade to these parties and spreads their influence amongst the people of that country.

The bottom line for the European Union is this; if it cannot control it’s borders to deal with the arrival of desperate souls in rubber boats and prevent their deaths en-route, how can it be successful at anything?

It is the year 2050 and we are witnessing the annual conference of the World Organisation of Flight Safety (WOOFS). At the podium is Mr Carlos Sanchez having just finished a rather long speech. He is handing over the Medal for Preservation of Human Life to a short man in his fifties. Uncomfortable in a oversized grey suit, the man is a software engineer and part time inventor from Boston, Massachusetts. He flats down his greying hair with one hand and holds the gold plated statue of a heart in the other. The photographers from the world press shout at him to lift it above his head. He does so and the audience raise the level of their applause.

If you missed the speech it went something like this. Mr. Peter Striker, employee at MIT, conceived of something that has revolutionised aviation safety. That claim is no exaggeration. In the year 2049 to 2050 there were no fatalities as a result of civil plane crashes. None.

He achieved this single handedly by conceiving of a way to bring passengers and crew safely to earth, in the event of a catastrophic system or structural failure of the plane, or that old chestnut, pilot error.

With his ‘inventor’s hat’ on Peter conflated several design solutions that bring heavy objects safety to earth. The first was watching the lunar module deploy a parachute as it plummeted into the Pacific Ocean. The footage was a rather fuzzy black and white video from the 1960’s but the image locked in his mind. The other inspiration came from the joke about sitting near the Black Box flight recorder if you want to survive a plane crash. Peter wondered how you could put passengers and crew in a literal ‘black box’ and how you could extract it from the plane before it crashes, not after.

He came up with the idea of a sort of ejector seat, as has saved the lives of many military pilots. But instead of a seat, the cockpit and passenger compartment can be pulled out of the plane by large parachutes. This pod came to be known as the POPE or the Protection of Passengers in Emergencies.

The engineers came up with a ‘double skin’ concept for the aircraft. Using the latest composite materials including mass produced spiders web filaments in structural polymers, they were able to reduce the weight of the outer skin. The effect was a minimal increase in weight gain and thus fuel consumption.

Their designs produced a long pod which was on runners and bearings and locked into the fuselage until an emergency.  The pilots were able, for the first time in the history of aircraft design, to make a decision to ‘abandon ship’. Instead of looking forward to a freezing dip wearing a plastic life preserver with a whistle and light, the passengers would all remain in their seats. The parachutes would deploy from the end of the plane and pull out the POPE. As it comes out further parachutes deploy along it’s entire length making it level off in a few seconds.

The rest is up to gravity and the wind. Balloon pilots look for a safe landing zone and this is something the pilots would have considered before deployment. The POPE descends either onto land or sea.

In the event of landing on land, it is strong enough to withstand impact, partly due to it’s curved outer shell and the reinforced frame under the passenger seats. Like a balloon, impact does not involve a direct collision. Lateral forces drag the pod until the parachutes collapse. Much of the kinetic energy is used up dragging the POPE and thus reducing stresses from impact which would otherwise cause damage and injury.

In a desert or forest or farmland, the passengers and crew can stay with the POPE until rescue arrives. Various advanced beacons send out messages containing vital information enabling a swift and successful rescue mission.

Whereas older planes were not designed to float on water for very long, the POPE is designed to remain afloat indefinitely. The parachutes are jettisoned and sea anchors deployed to prevent it moving to a less safe location. Again the pilots will aim to land the POPE away from danger.

As now all passenger aircraft contain POPE’s, there were three deployments in 2049. Two of these were overland. One in the Syrgarya Desert in Kazakhstan and in Oman near the Arabian Sea. In the latter case the pilots brought the POPE down fifty kilometres south of the city of Muscat. Emergency services reached the POPE in under thirty minutes and apart from minor injuries, nobody was hurt.

One critical advantage to this system is that the cockpit voice recorders and flight instruments recorders are preserved within the POPE. A full investigation is able to start straight away, with or without the fragments of the rest of the plane the search for which is costly and time consuming.

Military aircraft have adopted designs similar to POPE but ejecting the whole of the pilots cockpit only. Pilots no longer have to take the risks of injury and mental stress associated with the ejector seat!

After the photographs Peter Striker gave a short speech of thanks to those organisations who had helped him and a gibbe at those who had derided his concept. He noted that not everyone is born with the ability to make things better for others. When we see someone trying to do this, we should at least, listen.

He sat down and placed the trophy on the table beside him. His toes pointed slightly inwards and the public nature of his predicament obviously made him uncomfortable.

Blessed are the Meek

The most simple image to produce for early photographers was in tones of sepia. As techniques improved, colour photography took over. The same transition occurred with television. In each example the process was from simple, to complex.

The same can happen to the way we think. As children we are introduced to ideas and skills starting simply. As adults we have the opportunity to develop our thinking skills.

So if you were outraged about my previous blog concerning the difference between artists and art technicians, I will admit to being tongue in cheek – deliberately to introduce this subject.

The point I was making was not that there is no art to playing the piano or any other technique of an artist. Clearly there is. The debate is around how much art.

It was Albert Einstein who said that science is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. I expect he would agree that artists have to perspire to produce too. The question is again, how much?

If I were to give an opinion, I would say that artistic technicians vary in the art content of their performances between ten and one percent. My view of the artist is that they put in between fifty and ninety percent art. The remainder is the technique of the artist, varying conversely.

The point I am trying to illustrate is that decisions are rarely yes or no; that is polarised between two opposites. Each yes contains a no and each no contains a yes.

Consider a court of law. There the only possible outcome is a polarised decision, guilty or not guilty. And yet, it might be that the victim bears a little of the guilt, albeit a fraction of the guilty party. If this is believed then why should not both parties be punished in proportion to their share of the guilt.

I once witnessed a road collision. I had a good clear view from a distance from start to finish. Both drivers pulled into a car park and I joined them to leave my details as a witness. In my view both parties had broken the Highway Code and their driving had fallen below an acceptable standard – known as driving without due care. The day came when the court was due to hear the case. I waited outside to be called. After a while both drivers appeared with their solicitors. The one who had been least careless had been let off and the other fined. I wasn’t even called in as a witness. But I did notice the look of exasperation on the face of the driver found ‘guilty’. He couldn’t understand how the other driver, who had also been careless was being treated as the innocent complainant. I didn’t speak to him but I sympathised with his frustration.

Because of the need for a decision in a court to be polarised, the court could not find both parties guilty.

Part of the problem is vocabulary. In English we use numerous terms that express opposites – black / white – hot cold – yes / no.

Apply the first couplet to this argument in terms of race. Negroes are not black – they are different shades of brown. Caucasians and not white – they are different shades of pink. Regrettably there are no words for these shades other than exaggerations, from which prejudice can develop. In Apartheid South Africa under Prime Minister Ian Smith, Chinese people were black and Japanese white! That proved a problem for bus conductors on the ‘white only’ buses.

Is a bath hot or cold? A mother will test the temperature with her elbow before placing a baby in a bath. Somewhere between hot and cold is the correct temperature, but alas it has no name.

The sparsity of language blinkers our ability to discriminate the finer points of anything. Most of us are familiar with the ability of Inuit people to describe snow in forty different words. This is because they need to know the difference as it will affect how they travel, hunt, predict weather, what to wear etc.

So when language lets us down we have to create in our minds the space between the meanings of words. If we do not then decision making becomes over-simplified. We start to ignore complexity in favour of ‘keeping it simple’.

Beware the effects of ‘dumbing down’. In our present society, politicians, entertainers, journalists have to be wary how they communicate with the population. Perhaps it is time adults went back to school, to brush up on thinking skills?

Perhaps it is time to teach our children how to think as well.

I firmly believe that we should teach them not to think in black and white – but to think in colour.

The first match of the 2018 World Cup is about to start. On one side are the team representing artists and the other side, technicians.

In their fine new strip of red and orange, the colours of fire and inspiration, are the artists. They represent the fields of fine art, sculpture, architecture, landscape architecture, musical composers and songwriters, writers and poets, choreographers and screen and playwrights

Their opponents sport a new strip in green, the colour of growth and regeneration. They include the fields of art critics and historians, art and sculpture reproducers, builders and architectural technicians, musical instrumentalists and conductors, cover bands, literary critics and historians, dancers and actors.

The whistle blows and Vincent Van Gough kicks the ball skilfully to the left centre forward, William Shakespeare who, almost immediately, is taken down in a foul tackle by Gwyneth Paltrow.

You can imagine how the game continues for yourself. The point I am trying to make is to distinguish between those who create art and those who are proficient at the technical reproduction of art. The reason for this is that I am tired and frustrated of the trend for the technicians to adopt the mantle of ‘artist’. They may have artistic feelings about their interpretation of the artists work, as do critics and historians, but the real artist is always the originator.

An extreme example of a technician, would be a person who produces forgeries of paintings by famous painters. They have the same technical skills as the originator (sometimes greater) but appear to have no access to the muse of their imagination. They usually end up in prison.

When I was a young architect embarking on my career, I worked under an architect called ‘Les’ for six months as part of my work experience. Les designed everything in the style of the nineteen fifties and was not a cutting edge designer. I don’t know what he thought of me but one day one of the technicians ( who produce technical drawings ) came over with some design of his own. Les could see it the design was third rate, as could I. Afterwards I made the remark, ‘Knowing the language, doesn’t make you a poet,’ which caused Les’s eyes to light up with surprise. He had not expected such an insight to come from this inexperienced student.

Later in life I had a similar experience when I took part in a concert in the town I lived in, as a ‘performance performing my original poems. There were a couple of pianists, singers, other musicians. I remarked to the pianists quite innocently how refreshing it was to have some original work in the evening, meaning myself. I had not meant this vainly but just as it says. They appeared quite shocked at the suggestion that their contribution was not of supremely high value. They walked away and avoided a debate with me that probably would have made them uncomfortable. I might have been tempted to point out that you could train a monkey to play the piano.

Learning by rote through repetition and honing technique are the give away s for someone who is an art technician. Take a mediocre ‘boy band’ from any pub or club and spend a lot of money re-branding them and voice training – to produce a ‘media sensation’.

The difference to the false ‘musical artists’ of today and the originators of popular music, is that the originators have careers. The boy band members of today are the supermarket shelf stackers of tomorrow. The ‘Madonna’s’, ‘Bob Dylan’s’ and ‘Beatles’ will be remembered and repeated by the art technicians for eternity. If eternity strikes you as an exaggeration, then consider the works of Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, the Renaissance painters and architects, the architects and painters and sculptures or ancient Greece.

So please let us not devalue art by giving an over generous pay packet and praise to the art technicians. Let us value those amongst us who are connected to ‘The Muse’ and one day will live for ever in the museums as Artists.