Taking Things Lightly

14/05/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

‘Angels fly because they take things lightly’

There are two meanings for the word ‘light’ in the English language. The first is ‘something that is not heavy; an easy burden’ and the other is that everyday source of illumination…’light’.

To consider ‘burdens’ first. In the West we tend to acquire information and knowledge at an early age, in a process known as ‘education’. The Victorian roots of this social ideal of free ‘education for all’ has evolved and developed but is still stuck in it’s original root ‘fact learning’ principle. Not useful facts such as what temperature to cook a lasagne but academic facts. Some young people must be highly bemused by this emphasis on information that bears no relation to ‘real life’. Even in later life, adults look back at their school curriculum and realise they have only ever used a tiny fraction of what they were taught.

My generation in the 1960’s, memorised basic multiplication tables and this at least has proved useful, but now most mental arithmetic is obsolete.

Higher education tends to move towards the ‘knowledge’ of things – that is connecting the dots that are the packets of information in order to make sense of things.

Yet the process is remorseless in as much as in an ‘information age’ there is no chance to pause for breath. Knowledge piles up in the library shelves of the mind and collects dust. There is an attempt at some point in life to form ‘opinions’ that cannot be taken down by ‘counter argument’ but it is not easy. There are two sides, we learn, to every conviction.

The very way that we are taught to think encourages the ‘taking of sides’ as politics, sports and even wars, mirror. We have to be in one camp or the other or we risk being in no camp at all.

All of this in my view creates a bonfire of the mind that is a type of collective psychosis. We are literally made ill in the mind, leading to depression in people of all ages and in it’s most extreme manifestation, suicide.

Now I am never one to shine light on a problem without having a personal suggestion as to what the solution might be, so here it comes. It involves challenging the very basic assumption that ‘the more you know the cleverer you are’. Memory ‘quiz shows’ on television…even the IQ test…re-enforce this assumption. The biggest swot gets the prize for remembering stuff but then runs into the green room and bursts into tears because there is no IQ for emotional intelligence. The ageing library in our heads of the unused and forgotten, is testament to how education heads us into unsatisfied and unfulfilled beings.

The technique I use now that I am ‘older and wiser’ is to deliberately ignore and forget most stuff. Like so much compost from the garden of life, I create a huge rotting pile of ‘information,’ and let it create heat on it’s own; somewhere where it will cause no harm.

I have come around to thinking that as children in quite a good place, mentally. We are good at questioning, we do not judge, we do not form opinions, we laugh and cry without fear of judgement and when we are hungry, eat.

A Zen master once wrote;

When I eat I eat, when I sleep I sleep.

Simplicity is a virtue that education demands we forget. And yet, humans enter this world with an infinite capacity for self understanding that has not come from books. The ‘University of Life’ has created many self taught geniuses who might never have risen above the formally educated. Those children who spent their school days looking out of the window can do very well for themselves because they have learnt the power or dreaming.

picture credit; The Marketing Desks

If we need a skill, we watch others and acquire it. It is this process of ‘absorption’ which is how we learn naturally. People living close to the land in ‘indigenous tribes’ never go to school but simply absorb all they need to know from the tribal elders.

Wise people, exude an air of calm and a capacity for understanding that is not directly proportional to the number of years that person has spent in education. Wisdom is more a river than a sea. It is constantly moving in speed and direction. It does not study itself or how close it is to it’s final destination, it just is.

So to move to the second meaning of ‘lightly’. Light is that part of the electromagnetic spectrum of energy which illuminates us physically. Our eyes seek light just as our minds seek illumination. When the mind acquires clarity, clarity acquires the mind, meaning; there is a process that takes humans far beyond any skills that they might be encouraged to learn in ‘normal life’.

And because our bodies are completely interconnected, the light which falls upon the eye and the mind also penetrates the heart. By this I do not necessarily mean emotions, although emotional intelligence is part of it, but the certainty of knowledge and the knowledge of certainty that is perceived through the heart.

As a human clutters the mind during the journey through life, like a monkey in a forest of fruit, so too becomes the heart full of nonsensical impressions. These express themselves primarily through the ego and that part of the mind Buddhists call ‘the monkey mind’. It never stops analysing and repeating words to itself, except when it uses the mouth to force other unsuspecting monkeys to listen to it’s own opinions.

You will intuit an ‘enlightened human being’ by the aura of silence and the gentle movements of that person’s body. They will always be completely present. This skill of operating in comparative emptiness to other human beings is needed for moving into parallel dimensional, places that are not apparent to those ‘over busily’ concerned with the physical world.

To the devout, there is only one other dimension worth living in which is the place occupied by Divine love. All other places encountered on this journey are regarded as similar to the ‘dunya’ or ‘maya’ of the physical world in that they have no value and are no more a destination than wind and waves are.

Just as humans can undergo this process of change in a lifetime, so can planets and stars and Universes, all of which have their own lifetimes, albeit on a completely different scale. The energy we know as light is part of the great spectrum of energy that pervades creation, and like all energy, it contains information on a scale incomparable to the largest library on earth.

When humans overcome the limitations of the physical world by becoming one with the physical world, they begin to have access to these ‘Oceans of Knowledge’. This knowledge of certainty is a mere by-product of the greater relationship with love and the loving Creator that is behind all the multiple veils of creation.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Genesis 01:03

The Cave of Light

01/05/202201/05/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

*Roman Barcelona – picture Eportfolios@McCaulay*

There is a city plan used by the Romans which is a circle divided vertically and horizontally into four sections. The divisions form streets aligned to the four points of the compass.

The circular form aligned to the cardinal directions had been used by many other cultures before, most notable being the great Henge’s found around the world. Research into these has revealed their astronomical alignments predicted precisely the solar, lunar and stellar cycles. The motivation for understanding these cycles was to appease the instinctive and intuitive desire to be in harmony with nature. Ancient civilisations depended on the cycles of nature for their next meal and their most holy festivals.

There are four principle solar annual events; the equinoxes and solstices. Using the solar calendar the winter solstice occurs in December, the summer solstice in June, the spring equinox in March and the autumn equinox in September; on around 21^st and 22^nd days of these months.

These correspond with four sacred festivals that originate in ancient times and are celebrated to this day, even if they have morphed from their origins.

In the most simple way we can divide the six months from September to March as being ‘winter’ and the subsequent months as ‘summer’. There are six months of ‘darkness’ and six months of ‘light’ in the broadest of terms.

In the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, the goddess Aphrodite or Venus lived in the light or ‘Heaven’ and Persephone in darkness or ‘Hades’. Both were in love with Adonis and appealed to Zeus to decide how they could share him. His decree was that they should have him for six months of each year.

*Aphrodite – picture Smithsonian Magazine*

The figure of Adonis is in this way critical to understanding the importance of the movement of the seasons in ancient times. Nature lived and died quite literally, as did their harvests, from these forces. If the harvests failed, famine turned nature and cities into wastelands.

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain

The Wasteland – The Burial of the Dead – (opening lines) by T.S. Eliot

This uncertainty placed enormous importance for people to give proper respect to the ‘gods’ and nature through ritual worship.

Within the solar year are overlaid the twelve ‘moons’ or months within each solar cycle. The phases of the moon and sun combined were known then and to this day, to govern the process from seed to harvest. This is naturally between spring and autumn, the exact length of this season being determined by latitude. Nevertheless, the spring equinox is a date used today to fix the date of the festival of Easter. This is the Sunday after the first full moon after the 21^st or 22^nd March, proving the importance of the moon combined with the sun in their influence for humans and everything on earth.

We know this because of the plethora of ancient gods and goddess whose lifespans fitted into these celestial cycles. Because spring is the ‘rebirth’ of nature there are corresponding stories incorporating the ‘death and resurrection’ cycle. In the Christian calendar this is known as ‘Easter’ but it is known that that the goddess Astarte preceded this in the ancient Near East. Much later Ostara ( medieval Germanic) gave rise to the traditional Easter symbols of the moon gazing hare and eggs.

What is less well known in our current times is the antithesis of this ‘spirit of new life’. There is a tradition of the deaths of various ancient gods and goddesses at this time; the goring of Adonis by a boar, Dionysus with the first leaves from grape vines, the rape of Persephone and the death of Hyacinthus. Each of these however is given a heavenly reprieve by a resurrection. Adonis was turned into a Myrtle tree, Persephone released from Hades for six months of the year and Hyacinthus turned into a spring flower, the Hyacinth by Apollo – the Solar deity.

It was natural therefore when the Roman Church fixed the date for the death and resurrection of the Christ Jesus, to choose the beginning of spring in the celestial manner described above. The church fathers did not need to know about the strong and balanced influence of the sun and full moon at this time of year, but relied upon the old method of supplanting old ways with a new religion using the previous festivals.

Adonis is an interesting mythological character as for many scholars his festival occurred in spring. In the city of Byblos (in modern Lebanon) where he was born and worshipped, the river ran red each year with the spring rains mixed with red earth. This fertility symbol and literal fertility for the fields, remind us of the menstrual cycle in women, bearer of eggs; nature’s cycle is the same as the human cycle.

And yet, according to Rudolph Steiner in his lecture on Easter*, the ‘Festival of Adonis’ was celebrated at the time of the autumn equinox rather than spring.

(*available on You Tube)

Numerous ancient temples (the Great Temple of Abu Simbel, Egypt) and dolmens (New Grange, Ireland), are aligned to allow the solstice rays of sun to penetrate an entrance passage into a womb like chamber and fill it with life giving light.

*Abu Simbel solar solstice – picture La Vanguardia*

Steiner describes the ‘Feast of Adonis’ as being conducted by women in pagan societies. They would sow seeds like cress, on a thin layer of soil in a broken pot shard. After tending them during the spring, the summer drought would kill the plants. After two days of ceremonial mourning, these were ceremonially processed on the third day to the sea or a nearby lake to be immersed as an ‘image’ of Adonis. Adonis is therefore a tragic god who is ‘born to die’ as much later was written into the story of the Christ Jesus. Further evidence is contained in Sir James Fraser’s prodigious work The Golden Bough (an anthropological study of Mediterranean religions) claiming the Jesus is a fertility god in the lineage of Adonis.

*The Entrance Stone to the Garden Tomb – picture Inspiration Cruises and Tours*

The references to dying processes taking three days, is described by Steiner as being a reference to an ancient understanding of the human dying process which also takes three days. The first day completes the death of the physical body, the second the ‘ether’ body and the third the ‘astral’ body. This is an theosophical categorisation similar to the ‘body, soul and spirit’ of the Hermeticists or ‘animal, vegetable and mineral’ of the Idealists. Either way, man and nature take three days for the process of dying or ‘transitioning’.

It is a fact that the dying sun the during winter solstice, stops moving on the horizon for three days, before the days lengthen again. The circular stone rolled over the tomb in which the body of Christ Jesus was moved after a similar number of days, referencing him to be a solar deity; a ‘sun of God’.

The true dates of the life of Christ are not stated in the Bible, although there are a few clues. If we are persuaded to imagine the nativity to take place in the winter, then there are suggestions that state otherwise. The first is that shepherds were out in the fields at night, indicating that they were ‘lambing’ – a season that all farmers know. A ‘census’ of people is unlikely to be held in the dark and cold winter months for practical reasons; the Romans were practical administrators. The ‘star in the east’ is likely to be Venus which is well known by agricultural communities, to rise in the early morning in the East in the spring.

*Nastrium Egg – picture The Ornament Emporium*

Finally, it is curious how men travelling east were following a star appearing in the east. It is probably, in my view, that this information is coded and the direction east indicates a time of year rather than direction of travel; after all, their direction of travel is not important information to progress the story and a good story teller would omit this. It is only included to complete the sub-narrative.

The east road of the city is of course corresponding to spring on the solar calendar and the time of year you would expect a ‘sun god’ to be born. So, whether the ‘Christ Mass’ is held in the winter, spring, summer or autumn is open to interpretation and would not be contradicted by the Bible.

What modern observers would do well to recognise is not the dogma but the symbolism of the Christian churches. The ‘mass’ is confidentially encouraging congregations to drink blood and eat human flesh on the solar day of the week whilst facing the rising sun.

For me, the symbols are only partly transcendent, as we feel in the energy of spring, while carrying more than a hint of the macabre death and the dying sun/son.

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

poem: The Wasteland 1922 – The Burial of the Dead – T.S. Elliot

Seeing is Unbelieving

15/04/202215/04/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Seeing is Unbelieving

There is an intriguing eye test in which the subject looks at a cross and black dot spaced out on a sheet of paper. As the paper is drawn closer, whilst staring at the cross, the black dot disappears.

The explanation we know to be the ‘blind spot’ in the retina where the optic nerve enters and fans out. What is intriguing is that the brain is constantly filling in this ‘blind spot’ with information that we are not aware of.

It is the same with white ceilings. If there is a blemish or a stained patch, the brain will ‘see’ the ceiling as perfectly white. What we see is therefore, in some degree, doubtful.

Perhaps it will help us if we define ‘seeing’ and ‘looking’. Most of the time we ‘look’ without discernment. If however we focus our mind on what we are looking at, more information and understanding will become apparent. Artists learn to ‘see’ in order to render every aspect of the subject they are describing to an extraordinarily high degree.

The visual apparatus of humans can be trained, but we should also realise that what the brain does with the information is highly selective.

When two soccer teams play a match, the supporters identify with their own team. If there is an incident where the referee has to make a decision in favour of one side or the other, both sets of ‘witnesses’ i.e. supporters, will be highly biased towards their own side. They will talk about the incident and the injustice of the referee’s decision for weeks afterwards, based on their own biased view.

Witnesses in criminal cases are notoriously biased and the justice system has to record what they saw as objectively as possible. When two witnesses present differing versions of events, which is the truth?

In one extreme case when people on a bus witnessed an incident in Israel, the police used a hypnotist to access what they saw in extraordinary detail. Our brains retain most of what we see, it is just that we blank most of it out unconsciously. Hypnotism retrieves this information in an unbiased way, so that for instance, car registration plates will be remembered.

Unfortunately, we do not have hypnotists to solve our family arguments about who said what to whom and how long this has been going on. Neither do whole nations have access to truthful descriptions of what is going on in the world and dictators exploit this.

It is possible to create a narrative so extreme that it can even be used to start a war with a neighbour. Witnesses to events in the war, even professional reporters, are today regarded as suspect in their reporting because even the media can either intentionally or unintentionally, select the truth according to their editor’s wishes.

*picture credit; World Press Freedom Index*

Even the photographs and videos are no longer able to be trusted as software is available to alter them.

All of this happens in what we call ‘the physical world’ but of course what we see is not always physical. Take an audience watching a film in a cinema. They are certainly not watching anything ‘real’ in the conventional sense, but they will be completely transfixed by the narrative being played out before them. There may be some self awareness retained as the popcorn in handed around which is similar to the way hypnotised subjects experience what they are viewing, but their focus is mainly in a virtual reality.

Hypnotised subjects reveal much about the complexity of how visual information reaches the mind and how it is interpreted. There is one case referred to in Michael Talbot’s book The Holographic Universe, in which a man is hypnotised and told that his teenage daughter is invisible to him. She stands in front of him and much to the delight of the audience and his giggling daughter, he swears he cannot see her. Then the hypnotists takes out a unique watch and presses it against the back of the young lady. He asks the father details about the watch which he squintsat and reports correctly everything he is asked about the watch.

There is no explanation for this phenomenon, but clearly it shows us that what we see is far more extensive and complicated in it’s mechanics than the diagrams of the eye that we study at school, explain.

In a lifetime a person may experience visual ‘discontinuities’. These generally fall into the concept of ‘extra sensory perception’ such as seeing ghosts, spirits, poltergeist events, psychokinesis. Lorna Burne is a modern mystic who has written books about how she has seen and interacted with angels and archangels since she was a child. Her whole visual world includes angels and spirits which the ‘ordinary’ observer is completely unaware.

Is it right to dismiss those with ‘second sight’ and their experiences or should society be more tolerant and inclusive towards people who in historical times would be regarded as either saints or witches?

Ironically, history has always taught us not to believe our eyes. The whole concept of an invisible God enables us to ‘look inward’ into our hearts and minds. A God who is never revealed is not open to be disproved or proved and yet, humans have sustained the experience of the ‘godhead’ across aeons and continents. The ancient Greeks experienced a world in which minor gods revealed themselves to mortals, and their stories, artefacts and architecture give vivid and consistent accounts of each and their powers to help or obstruct human endeavour.

The Ancient Greeks also believed in the idea that the eye ‘sees’ by projecting energy at the subject in the manner of a torch in a darkened room. Mind was an integral part of the process of seeing to the extent that the observed physical world is capable of being created by the observer.

Quantum physics has rested it’s gaze on exactly this probability; that the observer alters the events that take place right before our eyes. It supports the ‘idealistic’ philosophy in which mind has control of the material Universe. We understand that the Creator or Mind initially created the Universe by thought alone. Now scientists can step down through the different scales in which energy and matter perform their visual effects, and conclude that they personally are part of the experiment.

It is intriguing therefore as ordinary people, to become more sceptical about the ‘reality’ of our world of physicality and factor in our dreams, memories, intentions, ideals, beliefs, expectations, preconceptions in an attempt to grasp the slippery fish we call our world.

Democracy by Numbers

08/04/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

There is a system of ‘painting by numbers’ for novice painters which gives great looking results using very basic skills. A picture created by a professional is divided into sections of say, seven different hues and tones. Each is given a number between one and seven and all the novice painter has to do is fill in each section of the canvas with the appropriate colour or hue.

The majority of the world is now governed by autocratic leaders. In the previous decades of the twentieth century this was not the case but recently the tipping point was passed and autocrats now ‘rule the world’ – or do they?

You see, what I am doing here is making an error of thinking committed by ‘democratic thinkers’, whereby there there are only two possibilities – most or least. What is the ‘most’ or majority, becomes the ‘status quo’ for the oversimplified reason that ‘most people want it’.

It’s a beguiling argument because it simplifies everything into one overgeneralisation, hitting contradictory nuances and unintended consequences right between the eyes with a knock out punch.

At our peril. Because in my view we should always go one layer deeper into what a ‘majority’ is and what effects it will have on the government of a country.

To go back to a basic definition of democracy;

Control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.

So let’s see how self styled Western democracies fit this definition.

The first glaring contradiction is the rise of the super rich, super powerful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and others.

These and their lesser known ilk, now constitute one percent of the population of the world and yet, influence most of it and control at least 25% of it, directly or indirectly. Elon Musk created an electronic car when most American motor manufacturers, except Ford, were going out of business. You could also question; how comfortably does a software engineer sit in the theatre of mass vaccination?

Democracy in this 1% of world leaders, (which is what they are by any definition) does not exist. No one voted for any of them or the technologies that they pushed to the top of the mountain.

So there we have brush No.1. Paint in all the areas with the number one on your painting.

The next significant number is No. 50. This is the magic ‘tipping point’ in any democracy that defines the majority. Once you have this number of voters and ‘a few more’ then you control everything.

Or should they? Well, if we are thinking about ‘free elections’ in western democracies then these never really happen for the simple reason that a large number of people prefer not to vote. In some countries, this problem is countered by making it illegal not to vote…but this makes most liberally minded people uncomfortable… as does the idea of someone under a certain age voting. What right does a sixteen year old have to have an opinion on a country’s energy policy, a policy that is likely to affect them for the rest of their lives unlike an eighty year old who can vote but probably doesn’t have that long left to live.

Then there is the management nuance created by a 51% to 49% result. Imagine you survive a plane crash into the Pacific Ocean. You are bobbing up and down in a life raft with 8 passengers who look to you, the only member of crew to survive. They discount you as their leader as you are just a ‘trolley dolly’. Four of them argue that we should all start paddling. Four say we should stay put, so they all look to you for the casting vote. You know that whichever option you support there is going to be trouble. If everyone starts paddling there will be four who will not be putting their back into the effort. Worse still, they will begin to moan about what a waste of effort it is and how the rescuers will now not find you. The effect on moral is catastrophic. The same will happen if you follow the option to stay put and there is no sign of rescue.

If you think this is an unlikely scenario then just look at ‘Brexit’ and how the 48% to 52% vote (by those who bothered to get out of bed that morning because they thought Brexiteers would never win) has and is, panning out.

The third number on our palette is No.100. This is the colour for the 100% majority in favour. The rule in this version of democracy is that unless everyone agrees, nothing will get done. For this reason autocrats favouring the mere appearance of democracy whilst carry on as a despot, imprison the opposition (or worse) and create voters who are too frightened to vote against another ten years of tyranny.

Anyone who has lived in a family will know how this works and the misery it causes. Dad decides we are all going to the seaside, whilst Mum objects because she has an old friend to meet and Kitty wants to go on a school museum trip and Jazz wants to play in the local soccer team finals. Dad overalls and the family go to the seaside and all have a miserable time. The next day, they all go off in their individual directions and all is well.

Rarely do countries have the same interests and ideals in common which is why it is difficult for the European Union gain consensus in the 27 member countries. The only way is to ‘water down’ the proposal to such an extent that it causes no offence to anyone, but of course such vague proposals then become open to misinterpretation or biased interpretation from then on.

Most blatantly the United Nations Security Council gives the right to ‘veto’ any proposal to all of it’s seven member countries. This means that if one of them is committing war crimes somewhere outside it’s own country, it can veto any criticism and carry on.

So far I have placed three colours on the palette; 1% of unelected powerful people, 51% majority who upset the rest and the 100% who want their own way.

It would be reasonable to ask at this point ‘what does work?’, for democracy is meant to be the foundation stone of modern western civilisation.

Well, the only variation of the rules of democracy that does work in my view, is the requirement for a ‘super majority’. In this system it is recognised that the 51/49 split is unfair and becomes unworkable.

A super majority is therefore anything over a 60/40 or 66/34 split.

It’s subtle to understand at first but comes closer to what might be called ‘common sense’ management. If there are four in the family car heading off to the seaside, at least three are happy to be there and soon the fourth finds that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea after all or at least, it’s a fair deal.

If the super rich entrepreneurs and Oligarchs were compelled to pay 99% taxes, their power to influence would be taken away and their wealth fed into the poorest people in societies, creating the greatest benefit for most. Most of the super rich might well find that living off 1% of their wealth actually made them happier human beings or at least, that it was a fair deal. After all, Robin Hood was far more popular than the Sheriff of Nottingham.

If Russia is committing war crimes then the Security Council of the United Nations should have to power to act to investigate the allegations and call a cease fire or put in UN troops until the heat of battle dies down, and common sense prevails. Five to Two in favour is a reasonable super majority; get over it Russia and (abstaining) China.

To return to the ‘painting by numbers’ analogy, we can see that one coat of one hue paint is simple, but creates no work of art. Once the notion of ‘government by the people’ is broken down to examine the question ‘how’, several hues of interpretation present themselves. We must be bold because in calling everything ‘democratic’ we are committing the sin of over-simplifying.

Yes, they are all democratic but the devil is in the ‘how’ you create your democracy. You will need nuanced thinking to make things work whether on the small family scale or at a national level. The more colours in your painting the more it’s going to be a master piece and less like an amateur filling in spaces.

How to Rule the World

04/03/202204/03/2022 / 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 agent and has spilled the beans on the Soviet strategy to undermine the West.

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.

Picture Credit: iFunny.co
KEEP CALM AND RUN

A Very Mexican Standoff

07/02/202207/02/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

The current ‘red-herring’ sliding around the fish monger’s slab of international politics at the moment, is ‘war in Ukraine’.

Why so? Well, focus is slowly moving away from the ‘pandemic’ and Russia is seizing the moment to fill the vacuum of global politics. Moving troops from here to there and parking them in a notionally strategic position has been a war of nerves since the beginning of time. The fact that the current Russian force is roughly 120,000 troops with air support, tanks, artillery and mechanized infantry including specialised support does not mean the Russians will attack.

Ukraine has a far larger opposing Army some of which will have had recent experience of fighting in the East of the country. It also has the important advantage of being in ‘defence of the homeland’ – a double win strategically.

Russia is probably still be wiping it’s bloody nose after invading Afghanistan between 1979-89 and having to withdraw humiliated; a mistake curiously repeated in the previous twenty years by Western countries and the USA.

Russia will be aware of the domestic problems associated with fighting a war in Ukraine. When body bags start arriving back in the homeland military airfields, people and politicians become disheartened; which leads to social unrest.

President Putin is like the grinning fox in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. He is nobody’s granny and hides his real agenda under a red cloak. So what is the fox up to?

Strategically, he wishes to rebuild the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The vulnerability of the Baltic States and Finland and the current moves by NATO to bolster forces in these countries, evidences a very real perceived vulnerability. In the south of Ukraine, Putin intends to encircle the southern states using the Crimea and it’s ports, and then head for Kiev. He might go around the Chernobyl exclusion zone or straight through it. It will not affect his mobile troops whose vehicles are protected from high dose radiation.

But in my view he does not need to do any of this. The implied threat is enough to rattle the Ukraine politician’s cages and create division amongst it’s allies. At some point he will move in a pro-Russian Ukrainian leader and the country will be in his control without a drop of Russian blood staining the Dnieper River.

No, using the distraction techniques of a deceiver, Putin is hiding his real intentions. In a grand way, Russia whips up fear in it’s citizens concerning the spreading presence of NATO in Eastern Europe. Strategically he is right to do so, for everything that NATO does to creep into countries sharing borders with Russia, arms Russia with this accusation. Even if such a country is pleading to join NATO, this is not a reason for NATO to accede to the request. It is wiser to maintain ‘buffer’ states that are neutral to both sides. ‘No-man’s land’ may not make a country feel particularly safe, but strategically it is less likely to become a place for battle.

If NATO agrees to expand for no better reason than being asked, it plays into the Russian politician’s political argument that it feels threatened.

Bear in mind that a wise general will be ‘pre-emptive’ just as will a street fighter in a back alley. Hit before you are hit, particularly if tactical nuclear weapons are in the mix, is a sound strategy because it gives the element of surprise to the attacker whilst giving the attacker the ability to describe the action as ‘defence’.

We know that ‘attack’ is the best form of defence from watching sports on TV. In the heat of war, who is defending and who is attacking becomes blurred. This means who is ‘at fault for starting it’, will be unclear.

So NATO’s growth towards the East into countries previously part of the Soviet Union or USSR, needs very sensitive consideration. Moscow argues that Russian speaking populations have a right to it s protection. English speaking countries, such as the Falkland Islands, do the same.

NATO is astonishingly powerful, especially with the mighty presence of the USA over it s shoulders. It is probably the most militarily powerful country in the world, even on it’s own. The NATO alliance has created peace through strength since the second world war and needs to keep it that way because not only Russia is rattled.

China is too, not least because of the powerful US naval presence in the South China sea.

Enter the Mexican Standoff. Three notional adversaries; three fingers on triggers. The triggers have become increasingly light to the touch with the appearance of powerful artificial intelligently controlled land, sea and air craft of all descriptions. No more dead soldiers and sailors for the folks to see at home; just heaped up robots.

A three sided standoff is presently occurring between NATO, Russia and China; forget Ukraine and terrorism and whatever other threat, for they are real but lesser evils.

Look down the barrel of the gun you are holding as two equally skilled marksmen look down theirs at you. You pause. If you drop your aim or so much as blink, you will be shot dead from two directions. If you shoot first, that might be the last thing you do. As you shoot one of your adversaries, the bullet from the third has already passed through your heart and embedded itself in the wall behind you.

A Mexican standoff breaks when one side becomes weaker than the other two. Then it is two onto one, although your next fight is with the second strongest, not the weakest.

Skilled fighters need to assess their opponents accurately and win the fight by patience not pride. Two Samurai in ancient Japan might face each other for minutes even hours, before replacing their swords, bowing and walking away. A fight is not worth starting if you are not going to win.

Armies deploy in the same way. At present, Russia and China are glancing at each other and moving, imperceptibly, closer together. That’s the movement that the false Ukraine ‘threat’ is hiding.

But in world politics, something else is happening. The Winter Olympics 2020 is all flags, bunting and lateral flow tests in Beijing. Traditionally a political truce is called for all participating countries. That’s what the five rings intertwined represent.

‘Please leave your armour and swords at the entrance to the stadium, proud warriors from all Greek city states.’

But most Western leaders have refused to attend for reasons that are not hard to find but should they not respect for the International Olympic Committee’s decision, and override your politics? Why was China ever permitted to bid for the Olympics if human rights is an glaring issue for so many?

One world leader had no trouble making the decision to attend; Vladimir Putin. Red carpets (and red flags) were rolled out for him as a line of black limousines slid up to the Birdsnest Stadium VIP entrance. The Olympic opening ceremony was about to begin.

Even before this moment President Putin and President Xi Jinping had already met. In a long statement they expressed their mutual intentions through cooperation as;

“Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas,”

The ‘adjacent regions’ includes Ukraine, no doubt, and interestingly the sovereignty of such regions is vowed to be mutually respected and defended. Even Putin could never honourably, invade Ukraine after such a statement. And if you are thinking that he is quite capable of lying, do not ignore the single, no-bluff. Putin could choose the ‘honourable path’ and ‘moral high ground’ because he has no intention of invading Ukraine and has nothing to lose by not doing so.

As China and Russia creep closer together the stakes in the poker game change and the facial expressions need to remain unreadable. But two guns versus one gun is dangerous for the one gun.

China and Russia versus NATO (and any countries insane enough to join NATO at this time), is one street fight nobody will ever win.

Perhaps this is the only glimmer of sunshine in a world crisis presently being ignored or unseen by Western media. If anyone shoots, all three will die, so they just continue to face each other down. But every moment focused on the ‘Ukraine Crisis’ is, in my opinion, the sight of NATO blinking and Russia and China seizing the advantage. Bang!

As Simple As 1,2,3

06/02/202214/03/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

‘Shake the tree and not the branches‘

Philosophy is the study of tree trunks whereas much of the activity in the modern world is to do with shaking branches. Few attempt to shake the trunk of the tree as advised by the old proverb.

Grasping this concept will make you a philosopher. Breadth of understanding is akin to wisdom because it understands how things operate in their generality. Details fall into place once the correct concept has been initiated. A journey is started by selecting the road.

As a consequence of this ‘universality’ of truthful thought, we should understand what ancient people’s understood about the world – even though they lived millennia ago. Whilst the archaeologist are studying the shards of pots, philosophers are walking in the Palace of the thoughts of those who used them.

For example, the Trinity is a concept as old as the mountains and deserts. Long before the Christians used ‘Father, son and Holy Ghost’, something universal is described by the Trinity. It appears again and again in history as how a complimentary duality creates a mysterious third.

Pythagoras said the numbers are the first thing in nature. The number ‘one’ multiplied by itself, is one, and divided by itself is also, one. It is therefore a very unique expression of the fundamental reality of things. It is the Unity or ‘Godhead’ from which all other numbers are made. It anticipates what in theoretical physics is known as ‘the point of singularity’ or the original source of Creation at or/and, just after the apparent begining of all things.

Next, the One divides itself and creates duality. If the oneness is the perfection of the garden of Eden, then two-ness creates opposite and complimentary systems. The duality of ‘God’ and ‘Adam’ was the splitting of universal perception that God created to know Himself. To understand something it must be viewed from without as well as within.

In geometry, any two points can be connected by a straight line. These two points will always have the potential to be connected by a straight line but only on one spatial plane; meaning, able to move in any direction but not up or down.

We see this expressed in the two dimensional graphical representations of the perceived world in Islamic art and decoration.

The understanding of the triangle as the compilation of the concepts of both one and two, was in my view, one of the greatest achievements in understanding by mankind. Any three points will always make a triangle, a magic formula by any measure.

Both ancient Mayans and Egyptians, understood geometry and it’s value in describing the essence of things. They expressed this most memorably as a three dimensional square pyramid. This shape is so fundamental that it is easy to overlook and become distracted by the infinite and fascinating detail contained in their mathematics and cultural symbolism.

Archimedes famously discovered that the volumes of a cone sphere and drum have volumes in the ratio of one, two and three.

These are no longer puzzles in school exercise books, created for children to repeat without understanding. These are the building blocks of our perception and therefore understanding of the universe, as limited as that may be!

The Freemasons inherited much of their ancient knowledge of how thoughts and things are put together and work. Geometry is most perfectly expressed by buildings. The great medieval cathedrals of Europe continued the expression of geometry and measure contained in these ancient temples and pyramids around the world.

Freemasons represented the power of the three dimensional pyramid as the ‘Eye of God’ or sometimes the capital letter ‘G’. This is found today on the United States dollar bill. A pyramid built in thirteen courses, (twelve plus one – Jesus and his disciples) is topped by an Eye floating in a detached pyramidion. The concept of the ‘fractal’ or ‘all is One’ is expressed so simply that it could not be plainer to see.

The geometric trinity of space, as we experience the physical world, is made infinite and mysterious by a fourth dimension…time. Time is expressed in the physical world as ‘movement’; describe by the polymath Jean Cocteau as ‘the most beautiful thing in nature’. Time is created by man in an attempt to measure movement and like all such attempts may be mere illusion.

Ancient people were intimately connected to the apparent movement of the stars and planets and were able to measure and therefore, predict planetary movements and positions relative to each other and the sun; solstices, equinoxes and other astronomical events. In doing so, they were gaining an experiential knowledge of the Divine or sacred within and without of the physical world. They even joined the ‘dots’ of the stars to make meaningful patterns which today we call constellations. The passing of time was measured as ‘months’ as the twelve constellations of the Zodiac appeared on the horizon for the first time. As different energies were associated with these appearances the ancients knew auspicious moments for human activity which will end well.

The great lines of monoliths, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens are reminders to us today of how magic is contained within this geometry, meter and movement. It is a magic that powers everything, that we know and experience.

If we are to understand ourselves and thrive on this planet, as did millennia of ancient Egyptian dynasties and Mesopotamian dynasties, we must follow truths that our ancient ancestors expressed and left for us to interpret and understand. The answers to life’s questions were written in stone in order to be ‘flood proof’ for they had an ancient universal memory of ‘the Great Flood’ and catastrophies further back in time.

The simplicity of geometry is akin to the simplicity of truth and how the world is merely a mirror between the smallest and grandest of scales. Add to that our tiny planet’s complex spiralling movements through space and time and other dimensions beyond and the simplicity of one, two, three can be lost – but we lose it at our peril for we are simple creatures of ‘little brain’ as followers of Pooh Bear will understand.

Incorrect Politicalness

13/01/202207/02/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

News that the authorities in Quebec plan to tax people who have not been vaccinated for Covid 19 may seem reasonable. The argument is that half of the patients in ICU wards with Covid 19 have not been vaccinated so they have caused expense to the government. Greece is also following the same logic path as is Ikea in not awarding it’s unvaccinated employees full sick pay; just the legal minimum.

You might wonder what the ethical committees who study and promote good practice, make of this change in ethical standards. Presumably, they approve.

Clearly this problem is not going to happen in the USA as government there does not underwrite healthcare demand. If you want health care there, you pay for it with the taxes you haven’t paid into the system for health care. Note to self; don’t get expensively ill.

And if citizens are not being fined for refusing to be vaccinated, more subtle means of coersion are used. Governments are restricting the right to travel or visit public events such as the football in Cameroon at the moment. This is absurd in a country with only 3% of it’s population vaccinated. Africans top the list of vaccine distrusting continents. Is the desire to watch a football match an ethical motive to accept a medical intervention?

The first question has to be why people are refusing to be vaccinated. The Covid vaccines are known to have been produced in far less than the normal times for vaccines. There may be a scientific reason for this but most people cannot be expected to follow this as they are not medically trained. Neither do they understand the RDNA angle. Is that gene editing as in hamburgers? Who really knows?
The pointer we the people might look for, is whether the drug company underwrites their claims to their drug’s safety. In all cases, as far as I am aware, the companies have put in a disclaimer to injury to health or death resulting from vaccination. No doubt this is extended into perpertuity. Why would their lawyers not agree to claims in five, ten or twenty years time?
The vaccinated will have no rights if the vaccines prove over time to be harmful. It’s not that they are known to be harmful but the companies are showing that this is a consideration that they have made regarding the risk. They consider it high enough to need to exonerate themselves from responsibility for their product.
Given these facts, is it still unreasonable for people to be concerned about what the vaccine will do to their health in the short and long term?
The ethical question then is, who will take responsibility for the distribution and encouragement to take the vaccine, if not the progenitors? Is it the governments, the health authorities, the University professors, the doctors and nurses who give the ‘jabs’, the owners of the premises where the vaccinations were allowed to take place, the factory owners who made the vaccine, the distributors, the advertisers?
One thing for certain, it will not be ‘big pharma’ who have made huge profits out of the pandemic. They know that injury to health legal claims can bankrupt drug companies.
In twenty years time, will the vaccinated be the one’s occupying ICU wards and the unvaccinated paying their taxes to cover their medical expenses?
An absurd question you might say, but it’s an angle not considered in the media and that should give concern. What are the unvaccinated saying and should their views be respected or challenged as selfish?
The healthcare system in the United Kingdom promises ‘health care on demand’. No questions are asked whether the injury or disease is self inflicted or caused by poor lifestyle. It’s just, welcome, have a hospital bed and we will fix you.
No blame is brought against the sick and financial penalties inflicted for not preventing it. The moral and ethical stance is ‘you are the state’s responsibility’ whether you are rich or poor.
Those who smoke cigarettes for instance, pay tax on every packet of cigarettes. This tax, certainly in the UK, more or less pays for hospital treatments for disease caused by smoking. It’s an inexact science but ethically the stance is clear. Governments do not like to restrict the free choice of lifestyle of their citizens, certainly not in freedom loving democracies.
So what is happening in Quebec? You have to pay one hundred dollars a week if you wish to have a lifestyle choice that the government does no agree with. Really? Does this go for those practicing extreme sports, astronauts, high risk occupations such as fishing and construction, drug users, alcoholics?
The incorrectness of some governments judging lifestyles is trying to become ‘correct’ in the case of Covid 19 treatment. Will this trend spread to other socially funded healthcare systems and health insurers?
Political correctness usually tries to win by ‘ourtrumping’ common sense and established morality. It points to an extreme situation and says that ‘being safe’ is more important than anything; even freedom to choose one’s lifestyle.
Where before governments have been willing to accept taxes from smokers and drinkers, the political correct argument is that all forms of harmful pleasure or employment, must stop in order to ‘save lives’.
The ‘save lives’ trump card is as if risk does not occurr in anyones life and is no longer the responsibility of the individual.
And when decisions, on whatever issue, are no longer the responsibility of the inividual, citizens are living in an autocracy, a police state.
If the same pattern is followed on future issues, as is emerging for the control of virus transmission, be increasingly on guard for incorrect political-ness.

Don’t Bother Us

01/01/202207/02/2022 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

It happens sometimes, that social norms change. On the balance of probabilities, not all of these changes will be for the better. This leaves the challenging task of pinpointing the changes that are for the worse.

In pursuit of this task, I offer to the reader the common experience of telephoning a company or government department for some purpose or other. When you reach the correct recipient, you are greeted by yet another recorded message. It tells you politely that ‘you are in a queue’ and ‘we apologise for the delay due to an unusual high volume of calls’ and if it can get away with it, ‘call back later’. The caller is expected to think that he or she was in some way, adding to the problem for ringing the company at a busy time. We are expected to blindly accept the company policy of not employing enough call takers to answer the telephone in a timely manner.

You know this because there is never the message, ‘we have failed to employ sufficient people to speak to our customers and not valued you.’

The ebb and flow of demand is in some way is understandable. There is a phenomenon that makes shops sometimes empty and sometimes full. Anyone who has worked in a shop will have experienced this. Companies that operate public transport know that their buses and trains are insufficient to meet the demand in the rush hours and making huge loses the rest of the day. We get that, but it should never be a 24 hour excuse. Customers with any sense are going to use competitors instead, or in the case of government departments, start sending endless emails and create another problem.

My reply is that this attitude or ‘go away’, if accepted, is the ‘thin end of the wedge’. Of course phone calls can often be made again, later, but what happens when the stakes are higher?

One current example is the manner countries are operating their hospitals during the Covid 19 pandemic. Because of the fear of the hospital not being able to deal with a sudden high demand from patients with Covid symptoms, the solution is to empty the hospitals of other patients and any newcomers; refuse to give them beds. The system of ‘triage’ (treatment according to immediacy of need) is dropped. Cancer patients are sent home and those awaiting urgent operations are told to seek private treatment (certainly in the UK at least).

Picture Credit; Wales Online ‘Patients waiting up to 13 hours for a bed’.

Suddenly the health service’s problem of not having enough hospitals, beds and staff for national emergencies such as wars, famines, plagues, epidemics, pandemics…is not the hospital’s or anybody’s fault except the ill for being too many in number.

‘This situation is completely unprecedented,’ explains the UK government minister, in the hope that the public will accept the lie that pandemics have never happened before and are not at the top of the list of known and planned for threats to public health and social order.

Because society has already accepted the ‘don’t bother us’ reply to reasonable requests. The breaking of Hippocratic oaths by doctors and dereliction of duty and possibly criminal law by hospital managers and government ministers apparently goes unnoticed or at worst tolerated.

There may be differences around the world as to the degree of the point I am making but as a generality, the ‘don’t bother us’ excuse for poor planning and execution has become acceptable.

We should all ask ourselves; are governments guilty of watching people die for lack of or negligent plans for such events? If the current pandemic is not sufficient example to chew on, the next is indisputable.

Due to climate change, wars, famine, economic decline, inept and / or corrupt governments in the world today, there are mass migrations of people. Some are seeking a better life, some an easier life, some free hand outs, some legitimate political asylum. The problem of deciding on the motive of these people and whether to accept them as citizens is regularly discussed. In some blocks like the European Union, a policy which is acceptable to all it’s nation states is notably absent.

Historically, countries have prospered when they have had a benign policy to immigration and at times people have been encouraged to migrate and become citizens of say, Australia and the USA. But with more people on the planet than ever before, the sharing of resources is now problematic. Migration has to be controlled in an ethical manner respecting the human right to claim political asylum…but for governments the ever rising numbers of applicants has been put in the ‘difficult’ box.

In situations of life and death like this, the ‘don’t bother us’ reply that many governments would like to and have made, becomes immoral and bordering on fascism.

The United Kingdom has experienced a large rise in illegal immigration since it left the European Union. Before, it was able to co-operate with France, it’s nearest neighbour and controller of ports, roads and railways. But since the Brexit kick in the teeth to France, the French have far less interest in being part of measures to control the dangerous crossing of the English Channel. This a 30 mile stretch of water with dangerous tides, bad weather and one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

People, families, have died attempting this crossing. One solution promoted by the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is to turn migrant boats around mid channel. You might as well erect a sign here or in the straights to Italy or Greece saying, ‘don’t bother us’.

So how is it that the UK can continue this ignorant (meaning to ignore in a base and uninformed manner) attitude and why are there no protest marches demanding taking the problem seriously? After all ‘immigration’ and ‘controlling our borders’ were two problems that swung the vote in favour of leaving the European Union.

Could it be because the citizens of Britain have become used to ‘don’t bother us’ as a reasonable reason for sending people away?

It is internationally enshrined in law, that a person must travel to a country before being able to claim political asylum. You might wish to question why when counting the washed up bodies on the beaches of Kent and Sussex. Why is it not possible to go to the British Embassy in say, the People’s Democratic Republic of Congo and make your case for UK political asylum there? No money will have passed hands to illegal traffickers, no houses will have been sold to pay the traffickers, no political confidences should have been breached creating a need to flee, and documents should be to hand. Certainly staff in any country’s local embassy, will have the best evidence to hand for proving or disproving claims. Even the creation of an ‘humanitarian visa’ for immediate travel would be a step towards respecting the basic human right to life and travel.

Why is it not so? I recently heard on the BBC radio that the reason you cannot claim asylum in this way is because Embassy’s will be unable to cope with the demand.

This is probably true, at least in the short term. People will be rushing to capital cities and setting up camp sites in the grounds of Embassy’s of their choice. But are they wrong to do this? Are they seeking preferential treatment? No, just wishing to make a claim for international help and avoid the perilous journey at the hands of criminals to safety.

Consider how much better the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been if the processing of refugees was not taking place on the tarmac of the airport under the watchful eye of the Taliban, but in a safe and timely manner in an Embassy? There might be a coffee machine instead of a Kalashnikov.

But as things stand, governments reduce the risk of their various Embassy’s being ‘overwhelmed’ by forcing refugees risk their lives and perpetuated criminal trafficking gangs and modern slavers, before their claim will be considered.

The ‘don’t bother us’ principle is used to justify the injustice of the rules of the nineteenth century being applied in the twenty first. It’s as if the universality of the internet had never happened.

The question we should all be asking is, what will be our next vital need to be refused by our government on the grounds that the system cannot cope? Is their answer something we should question or tolerate?

Not Losing Our Heads

23/11/202111/12/2021 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

In my blogs I am often critical not of individuals but destructive thought patterns in common use. Thoughts have a life of their own both literally and metaphorically.

I shall ignore the former for now, and we are left with what Professor Carl G. Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’. This concept distinguishes the aptitude of a group of people to have shared unconscious awareness, similar the collective movements of a flock of birds. Sociologists who have studied the actions of rioters note how humans can act with a common purpose, which is part of the legal definition of ‘riot’. More worrying is that individuals are susceptible to consciously break personal moral codes – such as ‘thou shall not steal.’

*picture by Kim Aldis, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15534195*

I witnessed rioters in the Brixton area of south London in April 1981 running out of shops through broken display windows carrying swathes of clothing and other looted ‘goodies’. They were almost certainly not checking clothing sizes or colours when grabbing stuff…they just wanted to steal.

At the present time the news channels are reporting riots in cities around the world. Large numbers of people have decided not to be vaccinated. This has been respected up until now but governments are getting frustrated by the numbers of Covid cases continuing to rise. Vaccination is seen as the solution to disease control even though vaccinated people still spread the virus by touch and in their breath, and vaccinated people are being admitted to hospitals. The principle benefit of vaccination is that you are less likely to die. This is incentive to the individual and managing beds in ICU’s.

What governments principally want is an end of the pandemic – an objective almost certainly shared by 99% of the population. You might ask the question then, ‘if they agree, why are they fighting?’

The problem lies as always in the detail. Generalisations rarely reveal the truth but rather hide it. Is it not absurd that the government representing the people – fights the people? It is not absurd that some people ( whether the majority or not ) disagree with the methods by which the common objective is achieved.

This is the classic ‘the end justifies the means’ thought pattern.

‘Morally wrong actions are sometimes necessary to achieve moral right outcomes’. Wikictionary

The riots in Brixton were race riots by a young black community who felt they were not being given the same opportunities as other races.

They must have been thoroughly committed to their perceived morally high aim to risk skewering their life chances with a criminal record.

The question will always remain in any circumstance, what is the right thing to do?

In order to prevent ‘loss of life’ police in Holland, in the last few days, have been shooting protesters with lethal firearms. For their political masters, this method of achieving fewer deaths by Covid infection justifies the potentially murderous means to control of the population.

In the Western liberal democracies, individual rights of personal choice and freedom have been enshrined in human rights and other laws for decades, whereas the opposite is true in autocratic regimes like communist China. Should we be surprised that personal freedom symbolised by the ‘vaccine or no vaccine’ debate is held aloft as a morally high aim by Western individuals?

‘Actions can be considered right or wrong only in consideration of the morality of the outcome’. This extract from Wikitionary’s definition brings in another twist to the ends and means conundrum. How extreme can you go doing bad things to reach a good thing?

The answer for some is that humans can choose to go as extreme as they want. Terrorists who the night before are stroking their purring cats, will decapitate a human in pursuit of their ‘noble’ political aim, such as creating an ‘Islamic State’.

The most hideous of deeds appears to be justifiable in the human mind when ‘a good cause’ is the objective.

How can this stupidity be tolerated? Surely a sense of proportion and restraint should always be part of our understanding? A violent act is disproportionate to an action which is not violent.

This introduces the concept of ‘justifiably’. You might question whether the late Nelson Mandela was justified to commit terrorist acts in support of a political aspiration, acts for which he was jailed. Clearly public opinion changed over the decades as his political aims – the ANC to govern – became reality. He and his comrades were lauded as ambassadors of peace and released and accelerated to high political office.

The other day in the USA, a defendant was found not guilty by a jury of murder of two men and wounding a third using a gun. His defense was ‘self defense’.

Few people – even those untrained in law – will argue against a citizen’s right to defend themselves. It must be one of the most basic of human rights to preserve the life of one’s self…a suitably high moral mountain from which to also defend oneself from criticism.

And yet the most important nuance is being ignored which is – was the level of violence used in the act of self defense, proportionate?

I do not know about the case in the USA however I am baffled as to how a young man under 18 (a child in UK law) is able to be trusted with a lethal firearm and carry it in public at a political demonstration. I am also baffled as to how three men could approach this young man in such a way that the defendant thought they were about to kill him. Were they pointing guns at him? But most of all, I am baffled as to how the accused was able to kill two men and wound another without suffering any injuries himself. Were they unarmed?

In the United Kingdom the legal definition of self defense includes the measure of proportionality. So if someone attacks you in the street with a folded umbrella you may use your umbrella, and even your ‘Avengers’ bowler hat as well, to defend yourself. You may not pull out a knife to defend yourself an umbrella attack. This law is extended to private places so that if you should come across a burglar in your house you cannot shoot them.

I once confronted a burglar in my house when I was working as an architect in London. I used extreme verbal force which clearly scared the hell out of him. I was pretty confident in Shotokan Karate at that time and I had the option to floor him as he ran passed me to jump out of the window. But I was concerned he would fall on the radiator, hit his head and die. So instead I picked up the phone and called the police. Being an artist, I also made a pencil sketch of his face which I gave to police when they arrived. This later turned out to be a ‘dead ringer’ for a suspect a few weeks later.

My point is that proportionality is the greater part of the choice to justify an action. The end is like any future event; open to change and rarely achieved first time or in the expected manner.

We live in an increasingly fake and simplistic world. Public debate and political leadership is being reduced to three word slogans.

Thinking rationally is under threat in my view. If we lose this we will lose our freedoms and our democracies and accept whatever extremity is imposed upon us for ‘noble’ political aims.

The word has always be mightier than the sawn-off shotgun. May it always be so.