Is AI Conscious and Breathing?

01/05/202301/05/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

May your spirit live,

Last for millions of years,

You who love Thebes, sitting

with the face to the north wind,

The eyes full of happiness.

from Tut-Ankh-Amun’s Alabaster Glass 1336-1327 BCE

Artificial Intelligence is something this and future generations are going to have to manage. But is intelligence the same as consciousness and if not, what’s the difference?

Anyone who has seen the body of a person who has died, will be aware of the extraordinary change in appearance of the person after consciousness leaves a body. It’s not something that can be described but similarities in nature when an animal dies, gives an impression.

Our problem is that consciousness remains hard for scientists and humanists to measure and describe. There are no instruments and ideas that enable measurements of consciousness to be made, except the ‘on / off ‘ switch.

The only area of human intelligence that approaches this problem in depth, is perhaps spirituality. Being spiritually aware is different to religions, where invisible gods and Gods have to be accepted as a matter of ‘faith’. Not much progress can be made beyond this dogmatic belief. But with spirituality there is a chance of increasing understanding of what is happening when we are ‘awake’ or ‘conscious’. In particular, how this might affect us in the future, if machines also become ‘conscious’?

Nothing is new in this world according to King Solomon, so let us consider how gods and God related to humans in the past. In the ancient Greek and Roman worship, statues of gods were of central importance. The statue of the goddess Athena in the Parthenon for instance, was built so that the spirit that is Athena could enter our physical reality.

“Athena” *picture credit: Greek City Times*

Spirits are disadvantaged in the physical world because they cannot be ‘anchored’. Human spirits, ergo consciousness, need an organic body to enter in order to be born and interact with physicality using the sense organs of the body. Goddesses such as Athena cannot do that but they can enter a static representation of their form. Roman citizens would have a shrine in one corner of a room where prayers could be offered to minor gods with whom that family has a connection. Moses was enraged by the Israelites who built a golden calf to worship, from which we can deduce that the Taurean statue was real and powerful.

To untangle these confusing ideas we need to try to understand ourselves. From a mystics point of view, consciousness has three levels. The normal human experience is simply being in the physical world in the way that a fish swims through the ocean. The first level beyond this perceptual awareness is becoming conscious as an objective observer. Using the fish analogy, the fish becomes aware of the water.

At the next level the objective observer becomes detached from the experiential phenomena and is aware of thoughts / spirit entities which are not oneself. This an extraordinary concept at first but actually every ‘ghost story’ is merely a description of such a change in consciousness by the observer; albeit momentary in most cases.

The third level is to study and gain an understanding of the thoughts / spirits that occupy those universes / dimensions, beyond and parallel to this physical one. There are many types and these are how the individual characteristics of the gods and goddesses of early pantheon’s came to be understood. Even across cultures, there stand out similarities in the characters of, for instance, Zeus in ancient Greece. With his mountain top palace and plentiful supply of thunder bolts, he was also known as Jupiter to the Romans and Thor in the Norse pantheon.

Modern psychiatrists would describe experiencing consciousness outside of oneself as ‘psychosis’ or ‘madness’, so there is a glass ceiling in this present culture that few pass through.

That way madness lies.

Madness in sentient beings maybe taboo but technology has no such boundaries. Technology can go as far into the abyss as it likes and so the atom bomb was built. Less obviously malevalent are those technologies that bring great benefits, hiding the harm humans can make them cause. An example is modern computers for which there appear to be no limits.

The early computers awakened some ethical thinkers which have fed the imaginations of early science fiction writers. For example, the film ‘2001 Space Odyssey’ explores the horror of a computer named ‘Hal’, taking over from and eliminating, the crew of it’s space ship. Giving a human name to a computer is significant, because it imagines the idea of a computer becoming conscious before does so. We do the same with our pet animals.

*Shutting down ‘Hal’ the not-so-friendly and not so-small computer in* 2001 Space Odyssey

Unlike in the film, powerful computers are now small enough to be placed into humanoid robots. Worryingly we have turned full circle from the static, stiff representations of the ‘gods’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘thought’ of the ancients and created agile and intelligent robots. These human shaped machines are far more appealing for spirit entities to get inside and take over. Genies are being squeezed back inside the lamp as in the ‘1001 Arabian Nights‘ stories.

‘Be careful what you wish for’ *picture credit Arthur Rackham*

Science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov, thought through the ethics of conscious computers and produced three rules;

The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause it to come to harm itself.

It is simple for a computer to be intelligent. They can be programmed to beat human chess masters simply because they think through permutations quicker than humans. So ‘artificial intelligence’ is no more than a fast thinking human. It that is not ‘artificial consciousness’.

Isaac Asimov could see that humanoid robots with artificial brains might become conscious. He may not have understood the spiritual process described above, but he did see the possibility and he was right to jump this far ahead in time and possibility. He could see that conscious robots could miraculously (or sinisterly ) adopt ‘free will’ just like humans and this would enable ignore their ethical programming.

Humanoid Robots in ‘I Robot’
*picture credit: Film Blitz*

The ’cause no harm to humans’ ethic, was also built into the humanoid robots that feature in the science fiction film ‘I Robot‘ starring Will Smith. This film again explores the consequences of intelligent robots overriding their programming. In this case it was made by a ‘mad scientist’ but in reality it could just as easily happen by an evolutionary accident, the way that nature itself ‘steps up’ the functionality of creation. At one time there were no flowers on plants, then suddenly, millions of years ago, they arrived.

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful, the lord God made them all.

It is important to understand that humans do not create consciousness. Rather it is alsways present within each individual and it’s influence operates through this tiny flame. Mystics for centuries have known that consciousness is not the ‘me’ within.

~~“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.” Jallal-a-din Rumi Sufi mystic and poet.

It is not our personality ‘egos’ which are works of fiction. The only reality is the consciousness we share with all creatures great and small. This includes all of nature from the rocks to the clouds, as recorded by indigenous peoples such as the native Americans and Australians.

Consciousness is particularly attracted to humanoid forms and this was fearfully reconstructed in the story of Dr. Frankenstein monster by Mary Shelley in 1818.

Prophetic writers such as Shelley were only able to imagine what advanced technology could do, as did the ancient writers of the Prometheus myth; the man who stole from the gods at the price of eternal punishment.

Only now are we crossing the red lines that have previously prevented this technology; the sort of knowledge that can make agile humanoid forms carry weapons and mass kill humans in a modern form of eternal punishment.

Stephen Hawkins *Picture Credit: US Sun*

If we believe there is even a fraction of a chance that such robots may decide to override the ‘protect humans’ instruction, then should we not be concerned in the highest degree?

The high priests of the modern era are no longer the prophets and saints of old; contained within a system of high morals and ethics. Instead our worship is lead by those who invent and explore technology, such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. They are not judged by their good characters and good intentions as historical leaders of humanity usually were.

These technology wizards, have become all powerful because they have become immensely wealthy. Their characters must be judged on their actions and words. Elon Musk has recently expressed his concern about where Artificial Intelligence training is leading mankind and has called for a global moratorium to consider it’s effects.

Key figures in artificial intelligence want training of powerful AI systems to be suspended amid fears of a threat to humanity. They have signed an open letter warning of potential risks, and say the race to develop AI systems is out of control.

source BBC.com Mar 30, 2023

The question we all should be asking is;

‘Robot, do you feel lucky?’

Death and Taxes

13/04/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

*picture credit: Playrights Canada Press*

As loyal and obedient citizens and patriots, we do not question the taxes we pay. Just as in the saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin; ‘nothing is certain except death and taxes’; we observe ourselves enduring the prospect of dying with the same equanimity as an annual tax return.

Yet throughout history, many revolts by citizens have had their roots in what were perceived as ‘unfair taxes’ of which there have been many. The American revolution against the British crown in the 18^th century is a prime example. Perhaps the distance between the taxer and the taxee gave courage to those who through boxes of tea into the sea in Boston harbour, but whatever it was, it signified a general feeling of ‘enough is enough’ where taxes were concerned.

Today, many so called ‘developed’ nations are experiencing a rise in the cost of living and stagnant wages. The effect is to squeeze the financial security of the poorest in society until they are eventually turned out of their homes and onto the streets.

Governments have a large part to play in this scenario and often are called into account for their policies. The citizens of France, at present, are being informed they will get their government pensions two years later than they expected. Those soonest about to retire will be most enraged by the decision along with those who resent the way the President Macron used parliamentary privilege to push the change through without debate…like a monarch.

The citizens who pay their taxes (and there are those who don’t in the so called, ‘black economy’ ) feel strongly that they should get some return on their life long financial support of their nation. Few question how much they actually pay the government over their lifetime. If they did they might be shocked.

If we take the United Kingdom as an example, when taxes are referred to in budgets this is assumed to mean income tax. There will be ‘a penny in the pound’ added to taxes or a penny taken away. It all sounds rather trivial but the reality is the opposite. Multiply that penny by pounds earned in a year and multiply that by the millions of tax payers and the figure is staggering.

Yet there are more feints going on, that hide the true worth of taxes to governments. Their favourite trick is to rename taxes as something else. In the UK there is a tax which is named ‘national insurance’. It is currently 2% of weekly earnings for those earning over £967 and 12% of weekly earnings for those who pay less. You will note that this is over 8% a month because the amount has been broken down into a 52^nd of a year.

So if you pay say 25% income tax and add roughly 12.5% national insurance you pay 37.5% tax on your income.

It gets worse. Every time you buy most items, you pay ‘value added tax’. Another name for it is ‘purchase tax’. There are different levels for different items but let us say you pay 17.5% on average. That now brings your tax contributions to 55% tax; in other words over half your income.

In the UK it doesn’t stop there. Continuing the theme of disguising taxes by not using the ‘t’ word, there is the ‘community charge’. This evolved from what was originally named the ‘poll tax’ but was renamed by the Thatcher government for reasons that are hopefully becoming clear. A person who lives in the average B and D council tax set by local authorities in England for 2023-24 is about £2,000. So for a person earning £40,000 a year, pays an extra 5% tax to their local council bringing their taxation up to 60% of total income.

We are approaching the extraordinary, agreed approximately calculated, annual personal taxation being two thirds of total income in the UK.

You might add on an annual ‘car tax’ for those who own one, and now, various charges for entering ‘low emmision zones’. You might also pay the local council for using the parking space outside your home or at work. The car owner has long been a ‘golden goose’ for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Of course, there are particular life events that will shift your total taxation figure upwards. Inheriting money over a fairly low threshold, brings more tax in for the government treasury. The same happens when an item is sold that has gained in value, such as a house or painting. Agreed there are exemptions for houses if it has been a main residence but after a few years of say, renting out the house, this exemption expires.

To top it all, the ‘National Lotteries’ all over the world, constitute a ‘voluntary tax’ disguised as a chance to become rich…also known as gambling. Ironically, it tends to be the least able to afford a lottery ticket who feel most drawn to the one in x million chance it offers; in other words, ‘unlikely in the most extreme’.

Remember the certainty of death and taxes? Well of course there is a final tax on death, paid not by the deceased who tend not to have an opinion on the matter any longer, but by those who inherit the estate. There is a threshold of £325,000 below which this tax does no apply but above this amount the tax on the estate is 40%. An example from the government website;

Your estate is worth £500,000 and your tax-free threshold is £325,000. The Inheritance Tax charged will be 40% of £175,000 (£500,000 minus £325,000).

It could be a tidy sum given the rising cost of houses and number of home owners in the UK. It would certainly bring the tax rate paid over a lifetime above 66% for a moderately wealthy person. But even this lucky person might then have had to dispose of this assett and pay care home fees of over £1000 a week during the last few breaths of being a tax payer.

Using the example of the United Kingdom may be extreme because it has the high standards of social welfare that accompany and indeed are paid for by high taxes.

Description	Percentage of tax
Health	21.9%
Welfare	19.6%
Business and Industry	14.4%
State Pensions	10.1%
Education	9.6%
Transport	4.5%
Defence	4.5%
National Debt Interest	4.1%
Public Order and Safety	3.9%
Government Administration	2.0%
Housing and Utilities, like street lighting	1.4%
Environment	1.3%
Culture, like sports, libraries, museums	1.2%
Overseas Aid	0.9%
UK Contribution to the EU Budget	0.60%

Where taxes are spent in the UK: pre-Brexit (note how the gains from leaving the EU are a fraction of the interest on the national debt, especially when the benefits of being in the EU are added.)

In the United States of America, those who can afford insurance against illness buy it because they will certainly not be to afford the high costs of health care. A person being told they need a new liver for $100,000 may not be able to pay and, as in the old joke; ‘will stop buying green bananas’.

There is no perfect system and to some extent one can change country if you do not like the taxation and welfare system. But where ever you live, in my view it should never to be taken for granted that governments are being open and honest about how much money they take from you, and how much loose change you get back.

An after thought; why don’t democracies offer voting for where taxes are allocated, rather than on the personality cult figures who present themselves randomly as representing you.

Means to an End?

02/04/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

There are two kinds of people alive today; the manipulators and the manipulated.

It is important to realise how we are manipulated and recognise it when we see it. In this essay only one method will be considered because it is easy to see.

There is an old saying; ‘the end justifies the means’. This encapsulates a very real problem, but the fact that the expression is so well known and easy to understand has in a way, bled the life blood from it. But if it was not still full of meaning, there would not be so many examples of it.

For instance; a world leader wishes to invade a neighbouring state. There are various reasons which might be; historical, to obtain economic gain, to bring freedom to enslaved inhabitants, to eliminate a threat of war, to change a bad government for a good one etc.

All or just some of these reasons are used to persuade a population of a moral need. Then comes the twist. In order to achieve the aim, means are used which are far more destructive than the supposed problem being eliminated.

President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an obvious example but let us look nearer to home, to that bastion of fairness and reasonableness, the United Kingdom.

Politicians promise to solve problems. In this case they promised to ‘take back control of our borders’ in the 2016 referendum on Brexit. A minority right wing party, UKIP, perceived ‘immigration’ as being ‘out of control’ and having a detrimental effect on the standard of living. This despite the economic rule that immigration is beneficial to a country and the history of United States of America being a prime example.

But ordinary people do not have degrees in economics and the far right politicians are well known to pick a ‘scape goat’ cause for a problem; the Nazi policies towards minorities in 1930’s Germany being a prime example.

All nations have problems with land borders. They are hard to control. But an island nation should have an advantage and so it should be with the UK. Given this ‘false problem’ of immigration, how can the government ‘take back control of it’s borders’?

A degree of problem solving skill is needed, a faculty that is not unfortunately taught in schools and universities, including it appears, Eton; one of the most expensive private (fee paying) schools in the UK.

It was thought that if the UK could stop people wanting to come to the UK from their own failing countries, a solution would be to stop their country from failing. This megalomaniac assumption suggest that a minor world power is able to solve problems in other countries.

Unfortunately, two thirds of the countries from which people flee to the UK are not in the European Union; countries like Afghanistan.

So voting to ‘take back control of our borders’ would largely, not be solved by leaving the European Union. La di dah.

In the case of Afghanistan, large amounts of money and human life had already been lost in trying to prop up an Afghan government and Army. History shows that complex tribal nations are almost impossible for successful intervention by third party states, and so it was in Afghanistan. The Americans decided to pull out their support, the Afghan government and Army collapsed and the power vacuum was taken over by the Taliban.

So it is obvious that removing the need to flee from a country is not in the power of any one nation or even a United Nations.

The rules of asylum state that this must be done in the first safe country entered. This however is absurd as a single country cannot reasonably take all the refugees from a neighbouring country, once a certain number has been reached. Italy is a good example where refugees from Tunisia arrive in boats in such numbers that the government cannot cope.

The European Union must take some of the blame for not taking an overview of it’s member states and allocating refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in proportion to their ability to do so. Germany has taken a disproportionately large number compared to other EU nations, while Italy is begging for help. The problem perhaps was instrumental in the election of a right wing government there.

But let us return to the UK. Having voted to lose all influence over European Union policy by leaving, it weakened it’s influence in the countries through which immigrants pass. France is a prime example and now has to be given money by the UK to carry out border controls on the north coast of France, most of which will be ineffective as the majority of traffickers operate from the UK.

The problem is never clearly defined, as ‘immigrants’ have varied motives. The economic migrants used to help with harvesting seasonal crops in the UK and those have largely ceased to do this; crops have rotted in the fields as a result. Young Albanians work in the UK illegally and return with amounts of money that it would take decades for them to earn in Albania.

Genuine asylum seekers are not given safe routes by the UK government, excepting Ukrainians and Afghans for whom there is a system on line to get a visa.

Instead of extending this humane approach to all asylum seekers, who make up 80% of ‘illegal immigrants’, the UK government have put forward another idea.

This ‘means to an end’ is intended to be so harsh that it will dissuade those seeking asylum, many of whom are forced to arrive in unsuitable small boats on UK beaches. The government’s idea is to treat them all as having entered the country ‘illegally’ and to send them to a third country; Rwanda.

In doing so the government of the UK are choosing to ignore the human rights of the asylum seekers and ignore the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, of which the UK is still a member (even though many who voted for Brexit did not realise this political independence of the ECHR).

Ironic that the UK had done much to promote Human Rights within the European Parliament when it had influence to do so.

Instead their ‘solution’ to immigration by asylum seekers is to class them as criminals for entering the UK illegally, and sending them to Rwanda.

Here, clearly, the end is being used to justify the means for if anyone should question why this policy is being followed the reply by government politicians such as the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is words to the effect, ‘would you rather they drown?’

By concentrating the emotional decision on the horror of women and children drowning in a cold sea, the appeal to the faculties of their opponents is not rational but emotional.

The rational ‘problem solving’ has been skipped over and a ‘solution’ being tried that mostly works politically. Is it not rather being seen to act on an election promise in readiness general election next year?

What will happen to immigrants once they arrive in Rwanda is hardly advertised. No doubt the Rwandans have been given money as other advantages to their nation are doubtful. At worst the money supply will stop in a few years after a change of government and the Rwandans will get their machetes out again.

Thus it can be seen that horror and inhumanity is being ‘justified’ as being the only solution to ‘saving people from drowning in boats in the English Channel’.

The tail is most certainly wagging the dog and this is how our own thoughts can be manipulated to think what is happening is ‘okay’. Bad things are ‘justified’ as ‘an evil to stop a worse evil’. In reality, it’s an evil instead of a humane solution.

Should we not be instructing the problem solvers in ‘problem solving’? The books of Edward de Bono have been used by business leaders to teach this skill and the reader is recommended to study them if a life in politics is being considered.

The Beggar King

15/03/202320/03/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

We may consider ourselves ‘modern’ but most social scientists today will agree that we operate as members of a tribe. Class distinction is an example. In each class we accept difference of ‘rank’ with alarming credulity. We know that those ‘above us’ may not deserve automatic respect and yet that is the way it is.

Many of the politicians in power today are people who you would think twice to employ to clean the windows of your house, and yet they are tribal ‘chiefs’. So who are these people and why did we hand over our power to them?

The Beggar’s Opera: picture credit The British Libary

There has been a lineage of ‘royal families’ since prehistoric times. In Mesopotamia there was discovered a ‘King’s list’; a long line of Kings stretching back in time. In Ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs name a chronology of the Pharaoh’s who were the mid-point between man and the gods. Power was handed down as a birthright and royal families, including the Roman Caesar’s, accepted incest as a means to maintain the ‘blue blood’.

The problem with monarchs was always that there are good monarchs and bad ones. The self indulgences of dynasties such as the Bourbons in France, were persuasive catalysts to republican revolutionaries.

But what is interesting is the way in which since then, some Republics have morphed back into Monarchy’s. The United States of America is an interesting example. The Pilgrim Fathers were intent on leaving behind the absolute power of the royal families of Great Britain. The original Constitution of the United States of America handed power to the individual. The Freemasons who wrote this, including such figures as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, did not anticipate how power would slowly return to the president. Today, the President of the United States is given the freedom from prosecution and pomp once only afforded to Kings. If they have an idea they make it law. They are free to write ‘executive orders’ with as much alacrity as Popes write bulls and Monarch’s, decrees.

My point is that however far you try to strip an individual of absolute power, it doesn’t work. The present Presidents of China and Russia are examples of how to ‘eliminate the opposition’, in the same brutal manner as various Caesar’s in Ancient Rome. Today, there are more people living under dictators than democracies.

The only power that ‘the people’ retain is protesting on the streets. Today, many countries ruled by dictators, such as Iran, Myanmar, China, Russia, have had to deal with popular public demonstrations demanding basic rights for the individual. Often their pleas go unheard and their banners are without words.

In all of these affairs, both of state and in business, there rises to the surface, persons whose suitability as figures of respect, is doubtful at best. Those who seek power over others are almost by definition the least worthy. In democracies, there is no election of those who wish to be even considered as candidates. ‘Running for office’ is left to self promotion and lambasting the opposition; characteristics generally found in the most narcissistic and least worthy personalities.

You may be wondering where this sad description of human self organisation is leading. Well, there has to be a solution to the problem.

In the many native tribes of North America, there was also a system of leadership which was known as ‘Goose Leadership’. A group would sit in a circle and a goose feather would be produced. The rule for the meeting was that only those who held this feather were able to speak.

The result was a collective assurance that if someone had some poor ideas, their influence would not hinder the others for long! Similarly, the inspired suggestions would be recognised and adopted.

The significance of the goose feather is of course, from the instinct of geese to share the lead role in their familiar V-shape flying formation.

What arises here is a noble social structure that is neither strong nor weak, rich nor poor. This is contrary to the binary ideal within other systems of social organisation where only wealth and power gain respect. Between absolute wealth and absolute poverty, there is always a more balanced, middle path.

The Prince Siddhartha Guatama was born in a palace and lived in northern India, with a life of luxury beyond imagination. But he was aware enough to realise that he was unfulfilled by this lifestyle.

He left his life of total sensory satisfaction to become a wandering ascetic and teacher. At one stage this left his body in a most withdrawn and malnourished state and statues sometimes depict him with his rib cage exposed and thin limbs. Aestheticism also did not satisfy him and he finally gave up the search for the right path, by sitting under a tree.

Here he attained enlightenment and the name Budh was applied to him as a form of respect which in it’s masculine form is Buddha, in the same way that Jesus was the Christ.

Buddha, “Awakened One” or “Enlightened One,” is the masculine form of budh (बुध् ), “to wake, be awake, observe, heed, attend, learn, become aware of, to know, be conscious again,” “to awaken” “”to open up” (as does a flower),””one who has awakened from the deep sleep of ignorance and opened his consciousness to encompass all objects of knowledge.”It is not a personal name, but a title for those who have attained bodhi (awakening, enlightenment).Buddhi, the power to “form and retain concepts, reason, discern, judge, comprehend, understand,”is the faculty which discerns truth (satya) from falsehood.

source: Wikipedia

A benign leader is not then, an individual concerned with status and personal wealth. Such a leader will discard these ‘trappings’ as of no value.

Most importantly, I am optimistic enough to believe that the leaders who will emerge for humanity in the near and far future, will have benign, spiritual qualities. They will not live in palaces but be content with a humble dwelling amongst the common people. They will own little, in the manner of the native American people, and be perfectly content.

‘Living by need and not greed’ as Manhatma Ghandi once advised, will become the norm. Many god-less people, used to unsustainable European materialist lifestyles, will have had their day. Their lives will become like those of Kings and Queens of the past who had to be beheaded before they understood their arrogance!

To give up riches and power requires considerable humility, the type present in those who we find begging on the streets. They may not have sought humility, but life – either fairly or unfairly – has brought them to the depths of despair.

We are all capable of beings King’s, as in the goose leadership model. We are also all capable of being beggars. Neither is a sustainable position however, either socially or spiritually. If we are to learn anything from the history of mankind, it is to realise that the ideal place for the individual to be is somewhere in the middle, without pride or greed and with the desire towards the common good for all.

Such a psychological transformation is contained in the concept of the ‘Beggar King’; the one who was once powerful and once the lowest, but has now found a ‘happy medium’; what the Buddha called, ‘The Middle Way’.

Matter Over Mind

28/02/202328/02/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

When is a weather balloon not a weather balloon?

We live in a physical reality. From birth we engage with this moving and static universe and learn how it works; how to manipulate it and survive.

Then someone comes along who does ‘magic’. Perhaps it was at a children’s party when you first encountered a conjurer who made objects appear and disappear. Rows of coloured flags explode from her hat and little red balls pop out of her mouth.

Suddenly, rules that govern physicality are turned upside down, so like innocent children, we just laugh.

Later on in life, we understand that magicians are illusionists. They have studied the techniques of deception and taught themselves how to use them. Here are some;

Speed; prestidigitation, dexterity e.g. playing card tricks.

Misdirection; directing the audience so that they assume the contrary e.g. which ball the cup is in. Focusing the audience on one thing whilst doing another unnoticed, such as stage ‘banter’ and ‘slight of hand’.

Concealment; classic ‘smoke and mirrors’ such as using a curtain to hide a deceit.

Props; devices which appear to be not what they are; they have hidden doors, mirrors and compartments that reveal previously hidden objects.

Psychology; hypnotism, mentalism e.g. reading unconscious signalling in facial expressions to determine personal facts.

This list is not exhaustive but the main point is, magicians do not use obvious cheating. They know that they can be accused of using ‘stooges’ to perform pre-rehearsed actions. To counter this challenge, magicians use methods such as throwing a Frisbee randomly into the audience to choose who to invite to take part in the trick. Illusionists may be tricksters, but they will need to leave the audience without any explanation of what they have just observed, or lose credulity and reputation.

Very recently an ‘air balloon’ was shot down over North America by the USA. The official story was that this balloon carried instruments used by China to spy on America. Questions were naturally asked as to how this and many other such balloons were not monitored or even known to exist, by those in charge of defending the nation. After some ‘re-calibration’ of America’s air space, surveillance and monitoring equipment, three new objects were found. Most significantly these were never ‘rationalised’ as balloons. One was described as ‘hexagonal’ and an ‘unidentified object with no obvious means of propulsion’ and the others of different shapes, equally unidentifiable. After several days, during which wreckage was recovered, it was announced that these three objects were in fact ‘weather balloons’. Do you get the feeling that matter is being described to make you form an opinion that the government want you to have?

The initials U.F.O were avoided quite deliberately for understandable reasons. Further obfuscation (misdirection) has been created because UFO’s are now called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UAP’s and there is an equivalent Unidentified Submersible Phenomena or USP’s. For those in the know, and as described by Dr. Steven Greer on You Tube for decades, there are clandestined (‘black ops’) projects outside of the military and government control which have built anti-gravity craft using alien reverse engineering obtained in the 1950’s. The other three UAP’s in question, were almost certainly examples of anti-gravity, human engineering. The cover-up to their undeniable discovery (prompted but not connected to the ‘weather balloon’ incident) is what the counter intelligence community term ‘stage craft’. This is a simile from our familiar family entertainment shows where illusionists make things appear and disappear at will.

This series of events is worthy of particular attention as they provide a clear example of how public perception can be manipulated to whatever the non-democratic departments of governments desire.

The illusionist techniques employed in such ‘minor’ incidents can of course be scaled up to gain public approval of serious government policy. Within the military known as ‘psychological operations’, there are ‘false flag operations’ where an innocent third party, such as a ‘hostile state’ is blamed using fabricated evidence.

For instance, the ‘Gulf of Tomkin’ incident was probably the tipping point that committed the USA to war in Vietnam in 1964. North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats are meant to have engaged American ships in the Gulf of Tomkin whereas there are other claims that these were not NVA’s craft but American. A more mainstream explanation to the illusion is that there was a ‘communication error’ by the Americans which stands out as being vague at best and unforgiveable at worst. In all cases, unforgiveable.

That is not the only war needlessly started. In 2003 the USA and an allied co-coalition, invaded Iraq on the grounds that there were ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq. This despite the fact that UN observers had been searching for such weapons for months and found nothing. The war was justified as being intended to;

“disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people”. (source Wikipedia.com)

History or ‘hind sight’ now enables most people to see than none of these three objectives were justified or effective. There were no WMD’s. Hussein did not support Al Quaida and the Iraqi people did not necessarily find foreign invasion a better option to living under a cruel but stable dictator. Iraq was destroyed, leaving little working infrastructure and services, and the regional and tribal ‘commanders’ were left to fight each other in the power vacuum…so called ‘freedom’.

Similar examples of ‘illusion’ by politicians, industrialists, pharmaceuticals and clandestined world actors, are to be found almost everyday in current news reports.

My overall point is that a scientist is not a person who understands things, but one who questions things. In the material ‘reality’ that most people believe is ‘all and everything’, everyone needs to be scientifically sceptical about how world events are reported. The techniques of the illusionist are frequently applied in a manner that appears to be without motive. Discovering the motive is the final and most hard to find piece of the puzzle.

This subject is extremely complex and the ‘stage craft’ of the actors confirms we are watching an act, but this is not a kid’s party. Most people chuckle and sit back in their seats, rather than refuse to leave until what has really been going on, is explained. There is after all, always an explanation, it’s just that, with the serious problems of today, we get the feeling that we are never intended to find out what it is.

All of this may be rather bleak. However, mankind was never sent here to change the world, just to learn to be a better human being. Perhaps we have to look at this problem from a completely different perspective and that is to consider why there even is matter at all. Perhaps the knowledge that matter is interchangeable with energy casts some understanding. If mind / Universal Mind was seeking to know itself it could not do this in a vacuum. It has to create a very dense version of energy, which is what we call matter. In this material universe we are able to perceive how energy works because the two are the interchangable; it’s just that matter goes slowly enough for us to interact with it intelligently.

Those lessons, which the material Universe with all it’s entanglements and complexity, are directly transferable to the energetic or spiritual universes and when applied, give the greatest understanding of this highest spiritual truths.

You want to know what is spiritual?

Don’t approach spirituality.

To know what is spiritual,

Figure out what is physical.

Master Shi Heng Li Shaolin Monk

A Gender Agenda

15/02/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

In this essay, sex is a verb and gender is a noun.

For the last two thousand years or so, homosexuality has generally been ‘brushed under the carpet’ in an effort for societies to be ‘respectable’ and ‘moral’. But in present times suppression does not work. The technological ‘information revolution’ has lifted the lid of this particular Pandora’s box as it has many others.

The Church of England is presently debating the male / female duality with regard to marriage, and whether same gender marriages, should be sanctioned by the Church. The best the Church can suggest is to give a ‘blessing in church’ to gay couples. But such a lame offering, satisfies neither the lawyers nor the couples in question. A better solution, it seems to me, is to invent a word. After all, words cost nothing and there are plenty out there ready to fit new ideas. I would therefore humbly suggest that gay couples are ‘parried’ and straight couples are ‘married’. In these words I am using the Latin stem words ‘pater’ and ‘mater’. Parried will mean a legal contract with partner, with all the rights, privileges and duties, contained in marriage.

The net result of the adoption of this word, would give the dignity, equality and legal status that gay couples demand and enable church leaders and lawyers to sit back and stop trying to fit an egg into match box.

The issue interestingly raises the question; how are Western societies adapting to issues around gender and sexuality? Clearly they have risen above the hypocrisy, secrecy, guilt and shame, that was prevalent in say, Victorian England. We find in societies around the world, condemnation has been applied to homosexuality and most religions have not always embraced the question to the satisfaction of all parties.

In modern western societies, the sexual freedoms of the 1960’s contributed to the general demand for acceptance of consensual sexual behaviour with few boundaries. Whilst LGBT rights have been slowly engaged by law makers in liberal democracies, certain more conservative institutions and governments have resisted the change.

It is most likely however that eventually, however hard they try, ‘the truth will out’ and it is to this truth that I shall now turn.

Humans, in common with animals, insects and plants, have two general body forms; male and female. Carl G. Jung proposed that the mind of a male had a feminine aspect (the anima) and the mind of a female had a male aspect (the animus). Just as different gender bodies are simultaneously the same and different, the mind is also. In the Eastern traditions, in which Jung was well versed, the mind is completely integrated with the body so this idea is obvious, and today is accepted more generally by western physicians.

A homosexual male may express his femininity in a manner crudely described as ‘camp’; others may not to the same degree. But expression of feminitiy by a male, such as the use of facial make up and brightly coloured clothing, are a fun and harmless expression of self.

In some cases a feeling of disfunctional gender identity, in both males and female, can become so overpowering that the person wishes to change gender. Even very young children, who are totally unaware of what sex is but not gender, can feel they were born into the wrong body and become very unhappy.

What I am building up to is asking the question of those with spiritual authority, such as the Church of England Synod, ‘where have you been?‘ Do these ‘councillors’ and ‘shepherds’ really have so little knowledge of the complexity of human feelings, including in their own. Celibacy in church leaders has been another harmful mechanism merely to ‘brush sex under the carpet’ with the result of sexual expression that has caused harm to others.

Celibacy is a gnostic practice in the East and West, based on raising the life force within the human body for spiritual enlightenment. Ignorantly copying the practice at a superficial level, is like sitting on the back of a Tiger.

Christian clerics and scholars today are having to grapple with the question; ‘what gender is God?’ Once again, language and a lack of the ability to think outside the existing lexicon, made religious scholars and law makers, recourse to dogma and literal interpretation of ‘scripture’.

But a little research into the history of Christianity will reveal that the original Trinity consisted of the Divine Masculine, the Divine Feminine and the Child. This was translated or became for unknown reasons, the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son respectively. Once again, thoughts were perverted by miss translations at best and the denial of truth at worst. Surely religious truth should provide answers not questions and the words of mystics and gnostics have been repeatedly twisted and misunderstood. The dialogues between Jesus the Christ and his disciples illustrate this process perfectly.

Past religions had in fact, given Christianity the complete concept of the Trinity only with different gods. In Babylon the ‘holy family’ were Semiramis and Nimrod, who gave birth to the Holy Child, Tammuz.

The Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, worship one God, indeed (logically) the same God. So, if God is One, then there can be no question as to what gender God is. God cannot have a gender so does not need a pronoun any more than the sky or moon do. The English language wisely dropped gendered nouns during it’s early development as ‘old English’. The Romantic languages did not do this and curiously these countries where these languages are spoken remained Catholic whilst the Anglo / Germanic countries became Protestant. Perhaps a book has been written about this?!

The ‘Divine Androgynous Unity’ has been expressed in many ways through history most notably by the Alchemists of the middle ages, who represented the two genders as the sun and moon. Human beings had bodies of both genders; somewhat comically being visually split in two, right down the middle. But the message was clear. At a non-physical, non-body, level (that is spirit or life energy) humans become complete and transform when their spiritual gender becomes as-God; neutral…Unified.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans, sometimes produced statues of gods and works of art where it is almost impossible to tell which gender the body represents. Indeed the ancient Greeks gave us the word ‘hermaphrodite’ to describe this union of opposite genders in one being and lifted the debate about gender from the physical to the spiritual.

Perhaps you agree that in modern times, there seems to be a general trend towards androgynous beings? Contemporary men have less sperm and testosterone and their voices, in my view, are becoming higher pitched. Artists such as Jason Perry express their own gender ambiguity in appropriate outrageousness and some boys going to school have questioned why they cannot wear skirts. Girls similarly dress in trousers and ties and feel perfectly comfortable. A similar trend is occurring in woman, whose dulcet tones can be heard reading the news or even on the parade ground.

Personally, I believe societies would benefit greatly from observing dispassionately and embracing, this gender neutral transition in all it’s manifestations, whether as sexual preference, gender transformation, religious doctrine or tolerance of gender neutrality.

It is beneficial to remember that gender neutrality in Christianity, produced the ‘immaculate conception of the child’. At a literal and physical level, this concept makes no sense and has to be adopted by the faithful as true only because it is written in a holy book. A more rational approach, ( which the Essenes who instructed Jesus in gnosticism at one time knew), is to interpret ‘the child’ as ‘Divine energy’. They taught gnostic methods of using this energy principally for inner transformation. But in a time when doctors and healers were generally ineffective, natural compassion must have caused Jesus to learn methods to use spiritual energy to heal and even return spirit to bodies that were in the early stages of dying.

The superior nature of ‘the child’ energy over matter, is represented in sacred geometry and architecture. The two smaller doors, openings, towers, flank an identical but scaled up feature which generally, is the practical and symbolic place of entry. In the case of the sacred pillars of Boaz (sun) and Joachim (moon) in Freemasonry imagery and architecture, the space between the pillars is the reality of the sacred energy or ‘light’. The Ancient Egyptian obelisks performed the same purpose in their Temples both metaphorically, and literally. They were power generators, as were the pillars and pyramids.

This is why the ‘holy child’ or ‘holy spirit’ is so significant. The ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are not central in the whole picture. They are depicted in Early Renaissance art in particular, as servants of the child, looking on and holding it with devotion and obedience. The holy child is not wearing a pink or blue outfit as happens in modern times, because children and the spiritual dimension that they represent, are gender neutral.

The ‘sexual’ energy that causes humans so much pleasure and grief is that given by the serpent or dragon. It is a realisation of mortality and a ‘fall’, as depicted in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, where physicality takes over from the Divine and perfect spiritual realm.

They started life naked and sans-gender and on realisation of their gender difference, were ashamed.

Gender in it’s many manifestations has a lot to be responsible for in human life, both through the ages and today. But perhaps at this time of rapid changes, the eye of truth is taking over from the eye of denial. It is a great blessing for humans to express the ‘freewill’ that was given to them, the freedom to love each other, without judgement.

Hive Mind

01/02/202301/02/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

This essay will explore the philosophical implications of this idea from the insect kingdom, a ‘hive mind’. In a very special way it might enable us to explore the mystery of our own ‘consciousness’ as an individual, in a group, and in spirit. The ‘hive mind’ concept has been more widely understood, since the eponymous non-fiction book by Garett Jones published in 2015.

Today, scientists are exploring the question of how sentient, animals are. They define this as ‘having a sense of self’. Animals, seeing their reflection in a mirror, react as if another animal was present; a being which is non-self. But there are some life forms that move ‘as one’; such as a flock of birds. Their sense of ‘self’ or ‘being conscious of self’ , becomes subservient to their social group’s consciousness. Picture credit below of a bird shape murmuration, to Country Living Magazine;

I would argue that this capacity to act either as a group or individually, is found in nature on a graded scale, that is; solely, partially or totally and every grade between these. In other words, some (if not all living beings) are able to act both individually and collectively at different times depending on the objective.

Let us examine this idea in more detail. I would like to start with the mineral kingdom, as the understanding that minerals in their many forms is conscious, is not so odd. Indeed, most indigenous people’s live comfortably with this concept. However, as this idea may seem ‘odd’ to city living humans, let us start with the vegetable kingdom. This image from the National Forest Foundation shows a map of tree connections.

Certainly trees have a historical place in the line of sentient beings in the cultures of indigenous communities. Modern Japanese today venture into mature forests to absorb the energetic ‘atmosphere’ which they term, ‘tree bathing’. Scientists have discovered that trees communicate with each other through their roots and associated connecting fungi. One tree may tell another, for instance, of a disease or insect infestation, which is attacking it. The other trees then initiate chemicals into their own sap that will protect against this attack to themselves and collectively; a form of viral inoculation and lock down.

J.R.R. Tolkien in his book The Lord of the Rings, imagined a race of giant trees called ‘Ents’ who were as alive as humans. Today the film ‘Avatar’, features a civilisation of other worldly beings whose lives centre on a magnificent sentient tree with enormous spiritual significance to their society.

The insect world is clearly where the idea of a ‘hive mind’ originated. The queen, workers and drones each have their own specialisation which is hard wired into their DNA. As a group, bees communicate on matters of hive survival using dance to express information. Their consciousness could be defined as ‘collective’ for this reason and there is a limited sense of self in each bee; at least enough to ‘speak’ to others.

Ants and termites (above) operate in the same way as specialised entities with specific functions to act for the benefit of the community. The structures they can build are extraordinary in their size and complexity. Surely, only a sense of communal consciousness could maintain this level of concentration on the task and produce something far greater than the individuals power to do so.

Interestingly, some insects are more individualistic. A spider, for instance, generally works alone as it needs space to create it’s webs. Without anthropomorphising, such a creature must surely feel that it is separate from the reality it senses, otherwise it could not ‘plan to catch another life’.

In animals we find a similar spectrum of ‘degrees of self awareness’. The birds are the most well known for acting in flight as if they were one organism in some species. Scientists who have study these ‘murmurations’ have proposed that each bird acts a micro-second after it’s neighbour. This may be the case but it does not rule out a collective consciousness governing their behaviour.

Penguins survive in extreme climates by acting in favour of the community and the individual. Those on the outside of a large formation of birds standing in a blizzard, will be allowed to edge to the centre of the huddle and then start moving towards the perimeter again. This flow gives and even chance to each bird of enjoying the collective heat of their bodies.

At the other end of the spectrum of animals acting individually, is the wild and domestic cat. It appears to have a high degree of sense of ‘self consciousness’ and will act according to it’s own rules and commands. The Lion as the ‘King of the Jungle’ indicates this propensity to act according it’s own survival needs and a sense of ‘self’ compliments the demands of the pride.

The mysterious process of the evolution of the domestication of wild animals gives reason to consider how wild and domesticated animals differ. In what ways are they different mentally, as well as physically? Personally, I believe that domesticated animals have a higher degree of sense of self than their wild relatives. This is because their consciousness is less centred on survival and is able to focus more on itself. It feels both individual and aware of it’s relations with other sentient beings, such as humans and other domesticated animals.

With humans these matters become more complex. I would suggest that we are at the high end of the sliding scale of individuality; that is we are distinctly individual both in appearance and a sense of self or self consciousness. We might identify collective behaviour such as tribal dance or even military tattoos as a ‘hive mind’ ability. But personally, I believe this is merely ‘mimicking’ the hive mind consciousness through repetition. This is to rule out the spontaneous consciousness of the group as a whole but this effect only happens in special moments, as most dancers would assert.

Humans differ also in that we have access to another dimension of consciousness. Professor G.J. Jung called this the ‘collective unconscious’. This concept of a hidden process of motivation in human activity, is at first difficult to understand – which it is by definition of being ‘unconscious’. Humans can not only manipulate consciously, as in politics and advertising, but confuse personal identity with the collective. In other words, our sense of ‘self’ is easily confused. We believe that everything in our mind, is us. For instance, supporters of a team watching a football match become identified at an individual and collective level with the game they are watching. They may have dressed in colours of their team to create this illusion of identification, and will certainly feel to their core the associated feelings of success or failure with the (their) team and it’s individual members.

In other words, humans become confused at a most fundamental level, with what is ‘the hive mind’ and what is their own. There is a comfort and protection in this illusion and it is hard to break. At it’s most malign manifestation, a group of humans will riot and cause damage and injury to others that as individuals, they would never do. In some cases, whole nations can be caused to commit acts to harm other nations, known as war.

The few humans who have leapt out of this illusion are the prophets, saints and mystics. At a spiritual level, such persons have separated their individual sense of ‘self’ and entered what is called the ‘Universal Consciousness’. Such figures are revered in all religions and an example in modern western societies would be Jesus the Christ. He is revered for having ‘died for others’, in other words, to have completely surrendered to the hive mind both in the physical dimension and spiritually.

I would argue that the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms also have access to this spiritual / universal dimension of consciousness but not in a sentient way. In other words, they are so limited by their DNA , instincts and highly specialised physical bodies, that they cannot gain discernment of the ‘Universal Mind’ as humans may. We are uniquely able to enter higher dimensions outside of our own bodies. Humans who have physically died and then come back into their bodies recount remarkably similar spiritual experiences, ( including the most ‘hard headed’ scientists ) and their stories abound on social media.

In this spiritual kingdom, there is another, similar hierarchy of self awareness and communal awareness, on this planet.

If one can accept the idea that ‘mentality’ can exist in the ether without physical form, then it becomes easier to understand, if not experience, the other entities or beings, described historically and universally in the spiritual dimension.

These start with the identification of ‘spirits’ which are either of a natural or human origin, move through ‘jinn’ to higher intelligences such as angels and arch angels, and summit in the concept of ‘God’ – or to the non-believers, ‘Universal Mind’.

The concept of hive mind, enables one to grasp the idea of a universal consciousness. All of this, that we see as individuals, is an illusion. It is not ‘us’. Self is merely a manifestation of the infinite consciousness, the great Mind ‘who art in heaven’. It is expressed more perfectly in mathematics than attempts in words, however, geometry is traditionally the closest expression of the Creator’s Mind.

How apt it is then, that when the Great Bee Keeper in the Sky, lifts up the frame containing the honey of heaven, what have our little bees made? – why, a maze of perfect hexagons.

Imagination Theory

13/01/202314/01/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

If we shadows have offended,

think but this and all is mended,

that you have but slumbered here,

While these visions did appear.

The Faerie ‘Puck’ in William Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’

The greatest mistake a human can make, in my view, is to not treat imagination as real. This does not mean that what we call ‘reality’, is unreal. Reality and imagination both have a vital role to play in our lives.

The character of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, had to learn this lesson three times in order to understand himself better. Three ‘spirits’ took him on three journeys into his own past, present and future. From objectively viewing his own character weaknesses, his false pride was beaten into submission and he learnt the most valuable life lesson of all – unconditional love. These ‘imaginary’ journeys and the lessons overpowered the lonely ‘refority’ he had built for himself.

All of us encounter these three ‘spirits’ in our lives, if we can make a leap of faith and objectify our ‘imaginary’ selves as ‘real’.

The first such spirit we encounter is in our childhood when we understand very little about the real workings of life. Rather, we ‘act out’ roles that our imaginary selves would like to be in the future…our ‘Christmas yet to come.’ The dressing up box is a most useful item, enabling children to assume wildly fanciful roles as magicians, dentists, racing drivers, astronauts and so on. The most ordinary prop fulfils the need for an exact semblance of physical reality in their imaginary world. Watching children at play is a most rewarding way to understand our own susceptibility to imaginary states of mind. When we are children, fantasy often overwhelms what we feel is our ‘objective self’ and teases us with pleasures and torments, in a safe way. But, like Peter Pan, some children refuse to ‘grow up’ into an adult. The world of frigates, flying and fairies is far too much fun to frizzle away.

The character of Walter Mitty is a literary example of how there can be a child in an adult’s body. Mitty lived in an absorbing ‘dream world’ with flights of fancy that would replay dreams with himself in the lead role. He would encounter a situation the real Walter Mitty would be completely unable to deal with, and compensate with his imagination; such as flying a plane or conducting an orchestra. This is the ‘ghost of Christmas present’ where as individuals we have moved on the adulthood, but in a failed way. Unlike Walter Mitty, most people engage with the ‘hum drum real world’ and it’s seemingly endless burdens and chores, punctuated by few delights. Remember the character played by Tom Hanks; Forest Gump? For this character, a string of exciting situations were both wild and implausible enough to be fantasy and yet were firmly, real. Forest, in contrast to Walter Mitty, had mastered the most important challenge of all; to successfully merge imagination with reality.

Our most important decision is to find what people call our ‘destiny’, but this often sounds rather a vague destination. Even the decision to find a career is an extremely difficult one for a young person. From the view of an elder, I would define ‘destiny’ as simply following the people and things that you love. Although this sounds simple it is of course much harder that it sounds, as there are often obstacles to our dreams. As a child my dream was to be an Admiral but when the time came, my eyesight was not good enough. Watching Lionel Andres Messi play football for Argentina in the 2022 World Cup, is to see a man fulfill his destiny as a footballer. Those who purchased his No.10 shirt and wore it to the match were merely living the dream of a third partie’s achievements, a dead end path to their own destiny.

When we follow and act out an overwhelming excitement to do something, this is our own dream becoming true. Unfortunately, it is a sad fact that less than 4% of Western Europeans are in what they would call ‘their dream job’. The rest find themselves working in order to earn money and have no dream. The servers in the restaurants in Hollywood are often ‘wannabe’ film stars. The lucky minority who are ‘successful’, appear on our television screens.

As well as finding the employment that makes us fulfilled, we must find a partner who fits our ‘imaginary ideal’ of a partner. This again is a huge challenge as the ‘ideal’ man or woman is rarely found and if found; is available and inclined to reciprocate those feelings. If the latter does happen, as in the fairy story of the prince and princess falling in love for ever and ever, then blue birds will sing among the pink clouds and the castle turrets will tower over the cheering crowds at their wedding. Walt Disney has relived this imaginary moment for millions of children and adults and I would argue it is not wrong to dream. Through all these types of stories, whether in ancient myths and legends or on soap TV and radio, we learn to match objectively, our imaginations with reality. It is like two QR codes marked on two sheets of glass. When they slide over each other, the two appear to be identical. The worlds of imagination and physicality are just as unique and, when blue birds start flying around your head for real, they are in perfect harmony.

To return to our Christmas Carol theme, we enter the final stage of life. The woman or man lose their beauty as their body withers with age but their mind is usually disproportionately active and many older people will give you their ‘feeling age’ as their early twenties. When you engage them in conversation, they will recount their times of ‘Christmas past’ when significant moments fulfilled them. These will be substantially real but also coloured by imagination. Like old black and white films that have been digitally ‘colourised’, life becomes a series of memories which are a mixture of physical reality and imagination. The best are of course, those moments when our ‘dreams come true’.

Memories are valuable, but we should not forget that our true self is always in the present.

For this reason we cannot compare ourselves with others and form judgements.

We can only use the ‘guiding spirit’ (who taps on the frozen window pane of our own self pity one night) to remind us of who we might be and that we are not that person yet. The Dickens story recounts how it is never too late to learn how to become better. It is never too late to live the dream that you always wished for. It is never too late, unless you are one of those people who refuses to be motivated by your own imagination; to follow your own ‘yellow brick road’ that leads to the encounter with the Wizard of Oz or purchase the ‘giant Christmas turkey’ that with unconditional love, fills the bellies of all, including Tiny Tim.

What Mr. Scrooge had learnt was that living the present moment is the ultimate present to oneself and those around you.

What Seems to be the Problem?

01/01/2023 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Many media outlets provide harrowing examples of problems in the National Health Service in the UK today, so here are my ideas for attempting to solve them.

Firstly, I would determine what the government strategy for the National Health Service is. Cynics would say that based on the previous ten years, the aim of government has been to make the NHS fail. To define ‘failure’ quasi-scientifically, the first step is to introduce targets so that hospitals can fail to meet them. But logically, if targets were removed then failure would also. Successes would be highlighted instead, so staff are allowed to feel valued rather than judged negatively. Keeping staff moral high has numerous beneficial effects for the whole system including the patients.

However, if the government wants private hospitals for all, as in the USA, then that should be their stated aim and the public allowed to vote on that idea, either in a general election manifesto or two third majority referendum.

If the government want the NHS to protect the health of UK citizens then these are my ideas;

Engage in preventative health as keenly as reactive health. This is difficult since ill people are more vocal than those who have no problems. However, if hospitals and doctors surgeries were paid when people were well, rather than for health interventions, then they would be incentivised to prevent illness. One example of this would be to include diet and nutrition and exercise regimes more fully in a medical doctor’s training.
Presently resources are wasted on treating patients with imaginary and or minor ailments. The high street pharmacies are presently under-used as places for diagnosis and intervention of such complaints. Pharmacists are highly trained and if allowed to view patients records on line, would relived doctors from such complaints. Also, patients can be empowered to self help through information online to a far greater extent than has already been achieved. This is not to promote Doctor Google but to provide interactive consultation with a health consultant rather than an algorithm.
Presently local doctor’s surgeries are often understaffed and GP’s overworked. One of the effects of this is for patients to be diverted to the Accident and Emergency Department at the local hospital. The first remedy I suggest is to change the name of this department to simply ‘Emergency Department’. People with minor cuts and bruises from ‘accidents’ are not ’emergencies’ and again could be treated in a local pharmacy ‘treatment room’ when the GP is not available.
Training more doctors and health workers of all kinds is so basic that it should hardly need mentioning but sadly, it has been been neglected by politicians who did not write this intention into their manifestos.
Presently A and E Departments are often unable to cope with demand in peak periods such as during winter flu season. This is partly due to ‘bed blocking’ where vital hospital beds are occupied by patients who are well but have no safe place to be discharged to. The other reason is a lack of staff as already mentioned. In response to the problem of ambulances queuing for long periods when they are needed to respond to emergencies, one hospital has set up a dedicated room for patients to wait for treatment. There are paramedics in the room who take over monitoring and keeping waiting patients comfortable and safe with the same equipment that is available in the back of an ambulance. The effect is to reduce ambulance waiting times at hospitals.
The pay and conditions for health workers has been allowed to decline over the last ten years or so. The present strike by health workers is as a result of this as much as the general decline in their effectiveness to treat patients. During the recent ‘pandemic’ there was an ‘unlimited budget’ to ‘protect the NHS’. Getting back the money which was subject to fraud during this time would be a good start to begin to protect the NHS by paying living wages to health workers. The presence of food banks for staff in hospitals is unforgivable, as they are in high streets and goes back to staying healthy with a good diet, let alone suffering malnutrition. Planning for the next pandemic is also imperative.
Most public services have become burdened with the demand for recording information on computers. Doctors, nurses, police, fire personnel, social workers, teachers and many others have a general feeling that they spend to much time recording information on computers rather than dealing with people. These services all functioned before the invention of computers and they would benefit from a study into how to reduce the time spent recording information today by asking the question, why? One probable reason would be as a tool to supervise staff by managers and at it’s worse to be able to prove negligence and or malpractice by staff in a court of law. I would suggest that whilst public liability and duty of care is a vital ethical stance, the large financial pay outs is inappropriate. Private services have a contractual responsibility as money changes hands but in public service the ethics are different. You would like to think that most NHS patients merely wish to point out negligence so that mistakes ‘do not happen again’. If there has been a life altering error for a NHS patient then the same services will intervene at no cost to the patient for any extra home care. For instance patients might be offered insurance policies before operations with an element of risk and be asked to sign a document that they will not sue if something goes wrong with the operations due to this risk. People will take out insurance to go on holiday so this is not so absurd as it may seem. The effect will enable staff to operate under less stress about mistakes and as a consequence be more competent.

picture credit: BBC

This list is not exhaustive nor are all the ideas practical or good ones as the writer is not an expert in these matters, just an observer. But when there is an obvious problem, then problem solving must surely be attempted head on. Usually, rather than expensive professional ‘management consultants’ the best people to ask for problem definition possible solutions are the staff on the wards.

Managers often overlook the vital details that only staff will necessarily know about and be able relate to why things are not working.

There is also a case for different services and specialities within those services to share information about patients. A very simplified on line system as easy to use as a Facebook account could be used to function in a way the social media presently shares information to the benefit of those who need to know.

Thus mental health workers, pharmacists, care workers, mental health teams, police, social workers, teachers and many others, would be part of an overarching system of protection and service provision for each citizen. The more old fashioned ‘silo system’ of public service provision has begun to be dismantled but needs to speed up and widen.

Public expectation also needs serious consideration and the present promise of a ‘blank cheque’ for treatment and compensation when mistakes are made, needs comparing to the original aims and promises in the Beveridge Report of 1942 entitled ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services.’ The lesson is not to promise what cannot be delivered and if it can’t, explain why before, not after, being elected.

The World Spinning out of Control

14/12/202225/12/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

To everything there is an overview and to help understand the drama being played out in Ukraine at the moment, read on;

Tomas Schuman is an Soviet-era secret service agent and has spilled the beans on how the Soviet era strategy to undermine the West. He now describes the Soviet techniques of international subversion openly on You Tube.

He says there are four stages, extended over several decades.

Stage 1: Demoralisation

This takes at least one generation, maybe 15 to 20 years. During this time various completely fake replacements take over established religion, education, law and order and social life in general.

These institutions are replaced with un-elected ‘influencers’ such as the media, secret societies, wealthy individuals and clandestine branches of government.

Labour relations are undermined by taking away the power of trade unions.

Stage 2: Destabilisation

This process is aimed at institutions. ‘Sleepers’ who have been installed in societies institutions such as local government, law, military, industry and commerce and educational hubs, are activated. They move into positions of authority through the perceived lack of law and order e.g. military coup, ‘fake’ election results, single issue protest groups lobbying government and on the streets (Black Lives Matter)(‘statue toppling’)(‘defund the police’). At the same time various antagonistic single issue parties move into power vacuums created by the effects of stage 1. (the Brexit Party in the UK).

Stage 3: Crisis

This process starts when social functions cease to work such as the effects on the free movements of goods and people within the UK and the EU. This includes the issues around the Good Friday Agreement and possibly leading to nationalist politics breaking up the United Kingdom. Poverty and homelessness (e.g. California) forces large numbers of people to seek food aid and other handouts to simply exist. Fake information is fed at an industrial scale to social media sites at carefully selected times e.g. elections and referendums. This and weak government, leads to discontent which can spiral out of control leading to the call for more authoritarian rule and a ‘strong man’ ruler such as seen in the United States when Trump was elected. The result is civil war or invasion of another country e.g. Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and now Ukraine.

Stage 4: Normalisation

As a pretence of solving the problems (real and fake) of the first three stages,

it is now possible to justify extreme action to ‘normalise’ society and bring ‘peace’. The tanks move in to a desired country, however ‘normal’ the citizens feel, with the aim of physically taking over the seat of government (e.g. the protesters at the Washington rally who disputed the election results or now Ukraine). Once the leaders of the former government have fled or been jailed, a new ‘puppet’ government can be installed with the aim of ‘restoring law and order’ which of course comes at the price of loss of democratic freedom and human rights.

The USSR may have imploded in on itself but the ‘vision’ of it’s leaders is still deeply ingrained in it’s institutions and leaders. Mr. Putin was after all a KGB officer and would have expertise in and taken part in the above process. Transfer these four stages to ‘predator’ and ‘predated’ countries in Asia (Myanmar now in military rule) Africa (Somalia) the Far East (North Korea) the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Israel) in addition to Europe and the Americas and elements of this Soviet-era method of insurrection ‘government toppling’ are alarmingly aparrent.

Vladimir the Impaler – picture credit National Geographic

All of the above was my blog written and published at the begining of 2022. Events have moved on and the symptons of this subversion process of natural law and order, remain and gather momentum.

Storms are not catastrophes except when they happen simultaneously and then they are called ‘perfect storms’. On they Oceans they appear as ‘rogue waves’ which can sweep over huge ocean going liners such as the Queen Elizabeth II at great risk to passengers and crew of capsize and sinking.

To sustain this metaphor 2022 has witnessed the sad loss of the real Queen Elizabeth through natural causes and with her passing the end of an era. Her reign included the Second World War of which she was one of the last veterans. In my view that experience raised the social ownership of responsibility, in Britain and around the world. Out of harm usually comes a realisation of the need for change and significantly a socialist prime minister in the UK succeded the Tory Winston Churchill. People realised the need for good housing, food and education and in particular the provision of health care for all.

What has happened today is the disappearance of a generation who cherished those social values as being of primary importance to a peaceful and good life for all, not just the rich and privileged. The stabilising influence of high ethical standards was sanctified in the creation of the European Commission in which what were called ‘human rights’ were enshrined not just in religious values but in law. Many who voted for Brexit are surprised and disappointed that the European Union (also created with an eye on peaceful coexistence in Europe) is a seperate organisation to the EC. They now wish to send asylum seekers (80% who are genuine) back home or to a third world country against their wishes and chances of even staying alive.

Should we be surprised that this division amongst left and right in many European countries and the weakening of the ‘centre ground’ has played right into the hands of the ghosts of the USSR – Vladimir Putin.

Was Brexit not only partly engineered by the Russia and her allies, but a green light to start a war in Europe?

Your enemy will always tell you where you are weak.

The rise of autocratic countries as being now a majority of governments in the world, should make us more than worried. When we watch the government clamp downs on free speech and the right to protest in China, Russia and Iran, are we watching European countries in the next decade?

In my view we should be extremely concerned. In summary we can identifiy two storms; the subversion of democracy by Russia and various rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, combined with weakened social values in divided democratic countries such as the UK and the USA.

Into this gathering tsunami is added a third wave which travels around the world largely unseen. It is generated by those who have huge political power through extreme wealth and social privilege. They work in the background by buying media organisations, pharmaceutical companies, industrial conglomerates and arms and municians amongst other diverse service and product providers. No one votes for them and their influence is being swelled by the rising tide enabled by new technology and biological sciences.

But wait! There are at least three storms producing this hurricane, now made even more worrying by the no longer deniable catastrophe of, climate change.

At the risk of having mixed my metaphors it is apparent now to most observers that the ‘minor details’ produced by this storm of all storms such as inflation, migration, poverty, hunger, war, homelessness are not only problems in themselves but indicate a far larger and uncontrolled pattern towards global catastrophe and harm to each and every individual alive today.

The old saying ‘there is no smoke without fire’ has never been more true. The challenge today is to find the fire and put it out. And when that is done, look around and see what is left and work out if those who stepped forward to ‘save us’ were our friends or our enemies.

Matters Blog

Original thoughts on a variety of subjects that matter to me

Author: Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me