Month: January 2025

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Truth Against the World

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or “Duw y Digon” ; an ancient Welsh Druid Motto

Swinside Stone Circle picture credit: Wikipedia

The first authority over our personal truth that we encounter is within the family. Losing power to others is an experience that we mainly survive, but should this loss influence us beyond childhood?

Most social organisation, whether it be for religion, employment, education, health, defence or politics, consists of submitting to the will of others; what is termed ‘the greater good’.

It’s a system that Western societies inherited from their forefathers. Consequently, most forms of government rely on the obsequence of the masses; the most extreme example being communism where the interest of the State trumps individual rights.

Even in democracies, the majority is granted authority over the minority; however small the difference. The assumed ‘unchallengeable constant’ is, that all people have the same intelligence, education achievement and wisdom. Socrates was at odds with such a premise two millennia ago!

The question is not whether to submit to authority or not. Someone, somewhere will have a hold over you. The question is not then, how clever are they? The challenge for all of us is not to give away all of our freedom but just to ‘render to Caesar what is Caesar’s’ (Matthew 22:21).

Authority manifests itself in social systems most commonly as a pyramid shaped hierarchy. In politics there will be an ‘overlord’ such as a President or Prime Minister, Chancellor or Chairman or Monarch.

Below the ‘head of government’ there are layers of middle ranking politicians. Unelected bureaucrats disseminate and legislate the strategies of the politicians. The general population occupy the lower part of the pyramid believing they are represented by those above and give away their power.

The military use an undemocratic system of organisation. There is a self organising ‘pyramid of power’. The organisation discourages individuals from thinking for themselves, requiring unquestioning obedience to orders from those higher in rank.

Take this ‘pyramid organisation’ model and transfer it to other social organisations and we see control by a minority of leaders;

Religions – Popes, Priests, Rabbis, Imams, Shaman

Companies – Managing Directors, CEO’s, Owners and Oligarchs

Education – Ministers of State, Head Teachers, Professors, Chancellors

Health – Ministers of State, Hospital managers, General and Specialist practitioners.

There have been exceptions to this ‘hierarchy of merit’. Google, for instance, practised an egalitarian approach to management for a while. At meetings, no individual oversaw proceedings. Each had a theoretical ‘equal say’. What happened in reality was that the person with the strongest personality and loudest voice controlled the meeting, rather than the person or persons with the best ideas.

So far we have considered how hierarchical organisations function. Now let us view the issue from another angle. Is it not the case that there have been in history, two types of leaders; good ones and bad ones?

This may sound trite, but it is an important distinction!

High ranking politicians for example, make promises about what they will do in government if elected. Few discuss the means by which they will achieve this objective. In this way, ‘making America great again’ fails to include a description of what greatness is, how it is going to be achieved and who is going to benefit. It even fails to describe what is meant by ‘America’. Does that include Canada, Greenland, Mexico and South America? Or does it just mean U.S. (us)? Such vague leadership is historically the breeding ground of disappointment at best and catastrophe at worst.

We know in Europe there have been good monarchs and bad monarchs. The last good monarch in England is said to have been King John of England (1166 – 1216). He was persuaded to give his royal power to his Barons. ‘Good King Wenceslas’ was good but European Kings and Queens were too often flawed by greed, anger, adultery, criminality such as murder, drug dependency, jealousy, war warmongering, excess tax demands, madness, religious dogma and bigotry, black magic and worse.

Good and bad are of course not always simple to define. In modern times political ideologies have split voters between the right and left. This is true in both the United States of America and an increasing number of European countries.

To summarise; in democracies people they to vote for who they regard as good leaders. The definition of ‘good leaders’ is unlikely to be agreed upon!

A creative thinker might desire moving power away from this divided collective schizophrenia.

A stabilising element of this unstable social organisation, is truth. For millennia, humans have obeyed whatever ‘truth’ those to whom they have given their personal power. They have been obliged to trust those who claim to be their superiors but in fact they are just acting out their weaknesses and lies! Hans Christian Anderson’s literary folk tale entitled ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ mocks the absurdity of delusional leaders and describes the masses failing to speak the truth to power.

Eventually, authority without truth, declines and falls. The Roman Empire is one of the best examples of this. So is there benign alternative to the many shades of autocracy?

In the North American indigenous tribes there was an interesting alternative form of leadership and wise counsel. People of the tribe would sit in a circle to debate important decisions on equal terms. To prevent them all speaking at once, a single feather was handed around in turn and whoever held the feather was permitted to say their truth without interruption. This was called ‘goose leadership’ after the manner of geese in flight that take turns to hold the point position at the front of the flocks V formation.

The legendary King of Britain, King Arthur, declined autocratic rule. He changed his throne into a round table for himself and his knights. In doing so he showed he was prepared to listen to others. Debate was valued for the truth of others, independent of their rank. Perhaps this was Arthur’s metaphorical sword of truth, ‘Excalibur’; released from stone hard systems of government.

As the internet today spreads it’s influence around the globe (another Round Table), disparate individuals try to speak their truth, honestly without fear or favour; so called ‘free speech’.

Humans of all races, have more in common than differences and thrive when not divided by powerful ruling minorities. Even the languages that once divided, are now being instantly translated by artificial intelligence. The ‘wisdom of the crowd’ is the ability of large groups of people to come to a benign consensus of how life is best lived.

A recent survey was made in the United Kingdom asking young people for their favourite word in 2024. It was not ‘artificial intelligence’, but ‘kindness’. The fact that the coming generation have this truth already in their hearts is good news for the population of the world in 2025…and world leaders would be wise to graffiti this word across their round tables.

Authority over Truth or Truth over Authority?

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The Faraday Way

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Listening to a science programme on the Radio just now, I heard a amazing fact about Michael Faraday, the great early 19th century scientist. Apparently he was an ardent believer in God as well as a scientist. Unlike his contemporarys, he did not believe in molecular theory and the concept of the ‘atom’, which came from the ancient Greeks. He instead said that matter is where ‘lines of force meet’.

The other great scientist from whom much understanding of electricity today came, was Nicola Tesla in the late 19th century. One of his most famous sayings is; “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”

These are not lightweight scientists. Most of our modern technology we owe to these two men.

The idea of ‘lines of force meeting’ immediately suggests the concept the ‘hologram’ although they were not known in Faraday’s time. Several beams or ‘layers’ of energetic force containing information that the human brain interprets as ‘an object’ is precisely what a hologram is. It is a huge leap but one made succinctly by Michael Talbot in his book, ‘The Holographic Universe’, to suggest that everything that we perceive as matter is a hologram.

Mystics have been saying for centuries that matter consists mainly of ‘nothing’ and modern physics now also states this as true. Some scientists are even questioning whether the electron, proton and neutron are just energy. This combined with the observations by astrophysicists that the Universe consists of 94% so called ‘dark matter’ suggests that we know little about what we sense to be most real, matter.

If one thinks of the ‘table of elements’ as a good proof of matter, then Faraday’s theory of there only being ‘lines of force’ does not contradict the possibility of chemical ‘elements’. Elements might simply be unique combinations of ‘lines of force’ which harmonise to produce the illusion of a ‘solid’.

Sound provides a more tangible analogy as it too is energy with fixed frequency and vibration coming together as single notes, or harmonic layers that produce unique chords when in combination.

But our brains are taught only to interpret the electrical signals from our five senses. From childhood we learn to see these patterns as a solid ‘reality’ but like all illusions, sometimes we miss notice the illusionists slight of hand and mastery of distraction.

For example, we might all have seen something in a flash which a few micro seconds later turns out to be not what we thought. It might be a leaf being blown across the road which a driver sees as a mouse or bird for a brief moment. Or a child’s kite flying high above that a walker mistake for a hovering bird of prey; even for a split second.

Such moments are ‘discontinuities’. The Ancient Celts understood this and certain places, such as the hills of Southern England known as the Downs, were described as ‘thin’, meaning localities where the boundary between ‘solid reality’ and ‘parallel dimensions’ create experiences of the metaphysical (beyond matter) realm. A church going shepherd, in the 19th century is said to have seen a vision of Jesus above these hills in the sky, which would probably have been forgotten by now had not many in the local village seen the same vision and the newspaper article from the time still framed on a wall in Firle Church.

My point is simply that, if we can accept the suggestion that the Universe is simply ‘energy, frequency and vibration’ many of the ‘anomalies’ that modern science cannot explain, suddenly become easier to understand and even, accept as true.

We do not all have to become mystics to believe and practise this. What a shepherd can see we can all see. So can we all see what children saw in the village of Fatima in Portugal in 1917 – a vision of ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ – as did hundreds of the inhabitants of Fatima on several occasions.

Santa Hosemaria in Fatima, Portugal picture credit: Opus Dei

I was sitting in the waiting room this afternoon whilst my car was being serviced. I had been meditating, and it was with a single point of attention that I was eating an apple when the garage mechanic burst into the room. The conversation went like this;

‘You are eating sweets.’

‘No I am not.’

‘You are eating a sweet apple.’

‘Yes.’

We probably exchange brief moments of an imagined reality with others, more often than we think. The phenomena of what is called as ‘telepathy’ which I would suggest is more subtle that ‘reading the thoughts in others’.

In my view, two people can experience the same ‘energetic patterns’ at the same time. In the above example this was the feeling experience of ‘sweetness’ observed in a split second by two non-connected but open minds. The mechanic had not seen the apple, only received the feeling of ‘sweetness’.

Mothers will probably have had many examples of understanding a child’s needs without conversation; even and especially when the infant has not yet learnt to speak.

A mother and child are indeed a wonderful metaphor for the scientific understanding that Faraday believed, that everything is merely ‘lines of force’ meeting; something natural philosophers term ‘love’. Following this reasoning I would argue that this is why when humans follow (without expectation of reward), their highest excitement, then they will create the energetic Universe that will provide them with their highest reward. Most people’s highest excitement is simply known as love and with this vibration was and is created, the Universe – and is why it is said that; ‘God is love’.

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An Annual Review

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Am I Right?

At the end of several years of Matters Blog, it’s time for a review. As complex as life is, my aim is to express opinions based on common sense rather than personal or political bias. Not only that, but to suggest original and innovative solutions many of which have not been taken from the public domain.

The famous Dunning Kruger Effect states that amateur pundits have a false self image of themselves as knowing it all, while experts constantly doubt. So how did I do?

In 06 August 2018 I identified the shortage of affordable housing in the United Kingdom as a problem and offered a solution. My suggestion was that houseboats are moored on the UK’s inland waterways, rivers and lakes. They avoid the purchase of land and as temporary structures can be removed or replaced as needed. They can be built more quickly than a house and provided in enough numbers would create a stop gap whilst houses are built. The housing crisis had not been addressed by the previous government and the new government is intent on more building houses even though there are not the tradesmen to do it.

In 31 July 2021 the blog ‘HS2 Where?’ listed twenty reasons, including cost, on why the proposed high speed train route between London and Northern cities in England was doomed to failure. In 2024 the Conservative government reduced it’s reach to just Birmingham on the grounds of cost.

In 09 February 2019 I wrote a questionnaire for people who voted for Brexit. Apparently they were insulted at the suggestion they did not understand the consequences of Brexit. The questionnaire was intended to highlight the multi level complexity of the process and predictable effects of the UK leaving the European Union. When Brexiteers are asked today what the benefits of Brexit have been, few list any precise benefit. They say they no longer have to obey EU law and have gained ‘Sovereignty’. Ask how this has affected their lives and they will struggle to give an example.

In my blogs ‘Let Me In’ parts one and two in June 2022 and ‘Head for the Hills’ in December 2022, I examined immigration into the UK via unsuitable boats. The last Tory government made this problem a priority but chose a non-viable solution in an expensive plan to send unsuccessful asylum seekers to Rwanda. The slogan of intention missed out the detail of ‘how to stop the boats’ while their policy probably did the opposite. My suggestions included allowing asylum applications to be made from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. That hasn’t happened but the new Labour government have pledged to close down the people trafficking gangs which I also had suggested was long overdue.

In 22 October 2023, I published a blog I had written a week earlier following the attack on Israeli defence forces and civilians by Hammas titled Shalom, Salaam, Peace. I suggested that Hammas, as the vastly inferior force to the IDF, had no means to destroy Israel and were instead baiting Israel to over react to attack. Any ‘destruction of Israel’ would be done by the other Arab nations in defence of the people of Gaza, such as Iran. Since then the Iran backed Houthis in Yemen have taken up this role and significant others. I suggested an Arab leader would appear to take on Israel which has not yet happened.

In 20 February 2023 I wrote a parable called The Holy Forest about the politics of the Holy Land and how Israel will one day realise why people resent and hate the actions of successive Israeli Zionist Governments. I further commented on a better solution to bombing in Gaza as being the use of a multinational force of Special Forces to clear Hammas out of Gaza in my blog War Without End in October 24. To date the tactics of the Israeli Zionist government have not changed or met their stated aims of saving the hostages and destroying Hammas. I called out the genocide of the Palestinian early on in the process and qouted the Israeli post WW2 mantra of ‘Never Again’.

These and other blogs allowed me as an observer to suggest descriptions of complexity and apply problem solving techniques without using the techniques of over simplification, project fear and the illusionist’s destraction.

So thank you to those who click the ‘like’ button and may 2025 give us all hope my observations will become shorter and shorter as those in charge of us work smarter and harder for the benefit of those they serve.