cosmic citizen

Beauty of Space on Planetary Radio

2011-10-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

Jon Ramer and Don Dixon were both interviewed on the Planetary Society's podcast on October 3rd, to discuss the publication of the International Association of Astronomical Artist's new book the Beauty of Space. Jon and Don both edited this book, and I co-wrote one of the chapters, and provided two of the paintings. The book is packed with beautiful artwork from some of the best space artists in the world, including Don Dixon, David Hardy, Bill Hartmann, former apollo astronaut Alan Bean and many, many more. It would also make a perfect Christmas present, and can be ordered through the Association's webpage, above.

Starmus Brian May "What Are We Doing In Space?" 22 June 2011

2011-09-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Brian May voices exactly the reservations I feel at this point about human activities on the Earth, and the desirability of exporting them into space.

Steven King's Latest Nail-Bitter

2011-09-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

Really been enjoying Steven King's 'Under the Dome.' It's almost like he's gone back to his older, more traditional style of the 1970s--1980s for this one. (Although I do like the King of 'Lisey's Story' and 'Duma Key'). He really is a master storyteller, and understands how easily used car dealers can transform into petty dictators under the right circumstances.... Also, as he says, the 'dome' is an apt metaphor for climate change.

Publication Day!

2011-08-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

Pluralism and the Mind is published today, and available now through UK Amazon (US Amazon page here). There's even a free sample available via Amazon's Look Inside facility. As the back blurb says, 'this book will be of strong interest to those studying consciousness, especially its theoretical and metaphysical underpinnings.' It's also about worldviews, the philosophy of science, and the conclusion is concerned with the impact a consensus on consciousness might have for society. There are also chapters on consciousness and evolution, free will, the subliminal self, and parapsychology.

Enjoy!

Beauty of Space Appeal

2011-08-17T00:42:00.000-07:00

The International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), of which I'm a member, is having a drive to fund the publication of its new book, the Beauty of Space. I highly reccommend this project, especially since I've contibuted a chapter. The book is full of beautiful space art, and would look good on the shelves of any space cadet or science fiction fan. Click here to see what all the fuss it about.

Torchwood: Miracle Day

2011-07-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a favourable sign of good horror: I dreamed of being in Torchwood's world of the non-dying last night. The new series is based around the premise that one day, everyone on Earth (with the exception of the previously immortal Captain Jack) doesn't die. This isn't a Hallmark kind of immortality -- what it means is that even people with horrible injuries like previously fatal burns or decapitations remain alive. Thanksfully, some of the more repulsive manifestations of this -- like the previously dead spontaneous abortions -- are only dicussed and not shown.

As usual, Russell T's main strengths are his characters. The most compelling for me are Lauren Ambrose's amoral PR girl who just says the most disgustingly cynical things, and Bill Pullman's repellant but fascinating child-killer. John Barrowman and Eve Myles remain wonderful as ever -- since the beginning, they've been the heart of the show. Their new American CIA sidekicks are okay, but they're still a clear level down from the stars and so far not as interesting.

But still, this Welsh show has lent itself well to a shift across the Atlantic, a move that doesn't seem too discordant with the previous season. The pace of this season is slower than in Children of Earth -- and last night's episode felt a little padded, especially with Jack's gratuitous sex scene with a barman. Gratuitous not because it was shocking, but because it felt randomly plonked there to fill some airtime. (The other sex scene between Rex and the doctor actually forwarded the plot.) But so far, Miracle Day's sustained the high standards I've come to expect since Children of Earth, and I'm already looking forward to subsequent horrors....

It seemed like a good idea at the time....

2011-06-13T00:08:00.000-07:00

Just watched a very interesting programme that was pretty critical of a number of my one-time sacred cows, namely self-organizing systems, Utopian anarchism and Bucky Fuller. 'All watched over by machines of loving grace' is a three-part series on BBC2 about how computers, and attached ideologies, have changed society in the last half-century. It's also about some of the fall-out of those ideas.

Programme 2, 'The use and abuse of vegetational concepts,' concerned the rise of the science of ecology in twentieth century, and about how the idea of a balanced system, based upon the operation of machines, came to be inappropriately imposed upon nature. The idea of the 'balance of nature,' or nature as a self-regulating machine, also fed back into ideas about organizing society. For example, in his 1968 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Bucky Fuller suggested that politics was obsolete and that the global society could run itself as a self-organized system. This sort of idea inspired a number of hippie communes that were set up in the 1970s, where people lived in non-hierarchical, unstructured communes. This sort of egalitarian, Utopian vision also inspired the founders of the Internet.

The trouble was (1) the vision of nature as a balanced, self-regulating machine was simply wrong, as was confirmed by data coming back from the field. Ecosystems turned out to be chaotic and not balanced at all and (2) the Utopian communities also didn't work, because the unstructured community allowed certain personalities to dominate and/or bully others.

I was less troubled by these revelations than I would once have been. The idea of nature as chaotic and unbalanced is, for me, relatively old news, and in the course of writing my book, I've actually explored several ways in which organisms are not like machines.

What really got me thinking was the critique of the ideology of self-organization and politics. I suspect that some of the ideas expressed in this programme would be unwelcome to my anarchist friends, whose ideologies at least tacitly seem to assume that a non-hierarchical, self-organized society is possible if only we can get rid of capitalism. It's something I've believed -- or wanted to believe -- myself. However, I'm not sure that it can really work because I think it relies upon an unrealistic view of human beings.

Now, I'm not one who insists that 'human nature' is fixed, or immutable, or even definable, but I have noticed that persistent patterns arise in human groups and that quite often Utopian visions depend upon erasing -- or assuming the non-existence of -- certain traits held to be undesirable by the given Utopia. In this case, the idea is that humans can somehow discard any feature of themselves that leads to an imbalance of power, to hierarchical groups, to domination. I do not think that it's possible to do this, and the failure of the hippie communes may constitute empirical evidence of this.

I'm far from saying that such ideals are worthless, that we should simply accept negative human traits, or that changing society for the better is a waste of time. However, what these programmes highlighted for me was how easy it is for ideologies to come to dominate one's thought to the point that one doesn't consider them ideologies at all. For example, in the 1990s, I accepted the ideologies of Bucky Fuller and self-organization without a second thought. Further, I never saw how much they relied upon a basically mechanistic view of human beings.

Of course, it's very easy to be wise in hindsight, or if one isn't in the thrall of a particular ideology. But is one fated to move from one ideology to another, or can one live without ideologies at all? My own thoughts on this are moving in a post-modern direction, where one finds an ideology or ideologies that suits the challenges of one's own life, whilst remaining aware of its limits. But maybe -- somehow -- it's also possible to live without an ideology at all....

Doing something

2011-03-18T01:41:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I reviewed a book whose author sees a coming energy crunch as we pass peak oil and enter a post-oil age where globalization fails, localization becomes the dominant trend and we enter a perpetual economic depression. It's a pretty gloomy scenario, because the author is also highly sceptical about the alternatives to fossil fuels in terms of sustaining the kind of life we have now.

By contrast, two other books I've read recently offer hope that a post oil world might be considerably better than the current energy reality in which we live. In Our Choice, Al Gore offers a summary of many of the things he's learnt at various 'Solutions Summits', held since his movie An Inconvenient Truth came out. In the introduction, he notes that 'despair is simply another form of denial, and it invites inaction. The solutions are available to us! We need to make our choice to act now.' (p. 13).

The book details various solutions, including wind, wave, geothermal and solar power and, most importantly the modernization of the electric grid worldwide into an 'electronet,' where power is generated in hundreds of different ways locally and in distributed form, rather than as it is currently in a system dominated by large, centralized plants. He also looks at nuclear power, and its attendant problems -- which seem significantly more pressing in the light of what's happening in Japan.

The second book is a few years old now, but also offers a roadmap to 'throw off the fossil fuel supply chains, and move to 'solar economy.' In the The Solar Economy, Hermann Scheer explains how the cards are heavily stacked in favour of the fossil fuel system, which is maintained by huge subsidies but is really very inefficient because it relies on very long supply chains between the source and the point of consumption. This situation cannot last forever -- or even very much longer. Scheer notes that even as the technological change supported by oil 'continues to accelerate and permeate ever more aspects of our lives, the modern age is already obsolete....[it] is already fossilized at heart, built on discards and relics. It has no real future. We are living in a fossil economy.' [p.2]

Step by step, he demonstrates how we can rebuild our energy systems in a distributed, localized way that does not depend upon the centralized technocracy that we have now. This means that we do not generate our energy by engineering mega-projects, which have to be centrally managed, but again in myriad local ways according to demand. He points out that, unlike fossil fuels, solar is a 'resource that is universally available across the planet without recourse to extended supply chains.' [p.84] So the logic of power supply would differ in an alternative energy world.

In my view, none of the reasons/rationalizations supplied for continuing the fossil age have ever seemed totally convincing. (For example, in yesterday's Times, Matt Ridley commented that alternative energy was far to expensive, and anyway we needn't worry because the US has found lots of natural gas. This is a nice example of blinkered, short-term thinking.) To me, these sorts of comments have always seemed more like excuses for inaction and are almost always supplied by those with a stake in the current status quo. In any case, the issue of energy becomes increasingly pressing as each year passes, but I for one, will not mourn the passing of the fossil fuel age.

Hari on Oil Addiction

2011-03-12T00:44:00.000-08:00

...And right in line with my previous blog is an article by Johann Hari in the Independent on Oil addiction.

Hari:

"We are going to have to make the transition to fuelling our societies by the mighty power of the sun, the wind and the waves sooner or later. The technology exists today. It can be done without us regressing to caves, or any of the other ludicrous myths pumped out by the oil lobby."

...Which is exactly what Bucky Fuller claimed thirty years ago in Critical Path. We've known this was coming for generations. And it can be done; but I think the question of whether it will be done depends upon timing.

Song of the dinosaur?

2011-03-08T23:34:00.000-08:00

Readers may have noticed a dearth of posts lately -- the main reason being that I've found it increasingly difficult to say anything especially optimistic or hopeful about our current situation and prospects (e.g. recession/depression, climate change, resource depletion, etc.). Funnily enough, it's not the problems that worry me the most -- its the cultural inertia that seems to be preventing us from doing anything significant about them. Those in power seem to be doing diametrically the opposite things they should be doing, and those not in power (i.e. pretty much everyone I know including myself) seem so distracted by economic worries, that they can only stand by and watch.

One book I've read recently echoes this feeling; Confronting Collapse by Michael C. Ruppert. The author was raised in a Republican family and is a former LAPD narcotics investigator. In his book, he links money with energy (e.g. fossil fuels) and suggests that oil shortages and price spikes triggered the economic crash. He suggests that oil production has already peaked, that the era of cheap oil is over, and that the current recession/depression in which we find ourselves is permanent.

He is highly sceptical of the alternatives to oil being able to support a global economy, and sees a return to localization as the only viable option. He suggests that we simply do not have the finances to restructure our energy systems in the time required. He sees the political and economic system of America as completely corrupt, and BOTH left and right as obsolete and irrelevant for dealing with our current problems. He finally suggests a 25 point emergency plan for dealing with this situation.

I'm sympathetic to much of what Ruppert says, although I think the issue of peak oil is far more complex than he suggests. About three years ago, I worked in a company that processed geophysical data and if nothing else, it taught me that there's a lot of uncertainty and unknowns about assessing how much oil there is left. But I think that most geologists would concur that it's a finite amount, and the question of oil production peaks is when, not if. It's also true that the rate of discovery has been in sharp decline for some decades, which is partly why highly destructive practices like shale sand exploitation are being followed. And it's also true that our economic growth is directly linked to the use (i.e. burning) of fossil fuels.

The bottom line is that both our economic and energy systems, which are indeed linked, need to be completely changed. If they are not, then I think it reasonable to suppose that the global civilization will collapse. This may be viewed with relish by some, but unfortunately, even the most radical of us depend upon the current systems, and the fossil fuel economy, to exist. A collapse would undoubtedly mean death, mass displacement and suffering on an immense scale. It would be better to start a transition now; but this will have to be begun by a grass-roots movement, or collection of movements. I'm afraid I can't see our current political systems doing it. The current UK government, for example, seems to be dedicated to reliving the economic policies of a generation ago, that I think are worse than useless today and tangential to the real issues, which are, really, steadfastly ignored.

The biggest problem I have with Ruppert's book is that, whilst he fairly convincing in outlining our current ills, I think that he lacks imagination and is too black and white about the issues. This, of course, could be called realism, but it could also be called the cry of the dinosaur who's unable to imagine a world beyond that which he currently inhabits. Like Ruppert, I think that we are currently experiencing a transition from one sort of world into another. However, I am afraid that if all we can envisage is collapse, then collapse is all we're going to get. Hope is essential for naviagting through dark times.

Revamp and New Blog

2011-03-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

This blog has been fallow for a bit now, mainly because I was in the throes of finishing a draft of my book, 'Pluralism and the Mind' for a deadline. I have decided to start up a new blog on consciousness, which may be accessed via the link at the top of the righthand column of Cosmic Citizen. The first post's already up, and is a reprint of a guest piece I did for Rob Mcluhan's Paranormalia blog.

Splitting the broad topic of consciousness off from Cosmic Citizen means that I can focus this older blog on things like futurology, science fiction, space travel, etc. I'm currently trying to get into the habit of writing (science) fiction, (fantasy and horror) again, so writing this blog should help keep me in the mood (if that makes sense....)

On a futuristic note, I had an article published in the January/February issue of the Futurist on optimism, a sequel to a piece I'd published for them. I'll stick reprints of both here soon.

Make your own Utopia

2010-10-28T01:32:00.001-07:00

Ever since my little rant against the current systems in which we live, I've been mulling over Utopianism, and I've come to conclude that it's a rather dangerous pastime. Hitler, Lenin and Chairman Mao were Utopians in their way; each had a vision of how things should be, and sought to impose it upon other people. Actually, various sorts of societies have been dreamed up by lots and lots of people over the ages, and almost all of them seem to me deficient because they either ignore or, worse, propose solutions for, the people who don't want to live in their particular Utopian visions of the world. Hitler's solution was only the most extreme of these.

SO: If one creates a post-capitalist Utopia, what does one do with the people who wanted and liked living under capitalism? Similarly, if one creates a Free Market or even anarcho-capitalist world, what does one do with those who don't live there? If one posits a society free of Religion, what does one do with theists, etc. etc., etc.? The same basic question crops up for almost any sort of 'perfect society,' and the reason's pretty simple.

Utopia pretty much depends upon one's point of view. What is a perfect society for one person will not be so perfect for others. The danger comes when we forget this and seek to force people to conform to our vision 'for their own good.' There seems to be a little Hitler or Stalin present in most Utopian thinkers, even if their thoughts fall short of the extermination of dissent.

To demonstrate this, I'd like my readers to try a little Utopian exercise of their own. I'd like you to imagine your own perfect society, and practical ways by which it might be accomplished. Then I'd like you to imagine what sort of person or group might feel excluded or might lose out in your society, and think of ways to deal with them (hopefully as benevolently as possible -- let's say that outright extermination is not an option). If anyone completes this exercise, I'd be fascinated to hear some results!

And, if you're bereft of ideas, here's a link to the Wikipedia page on Utopias. I also recommend The Faber Book of Utopias, ed. by John Carey (Faber & Faber, 1999). The latter makes very sobering reading, as many of those who've proposed Utopias and/or tried to enact them seem to have been quite deranged.

And yet, we should remember that the world in which we live has been in part shaped by various different or even clashing Utopian visions. Pay a visit to your local shopping Mall, and tell me that isn't the image of a Consumer Utopia.....

Mark Gatiss is a Genius

2010-10-20T07:49:00.000-07:00

Had a really entertaining time last night with Mark Gatiss' adaptation of HG Wells' First Men in the Moon. Gatiss himself made a great, eccentric Cavor and , given the obviously small budget, the Selenites were really well realised (although they cut out a couple of elements of Wells' novel I always loved, like the Mooncalves and the jungle that grows during the Lunar Day.) Read the original at Project Gutenburg.

Gatiss is also currently hosting a three part history of Horror movies, which is also excellent. He's a truly talented man, and one of the best things about UK tv at the moment. Click here for the first programme.

Video diary 1: Why I came to write my book on conscousness

2010-10-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

Click here to go to my first ever video diary. (It seems to take forever to load it up here, and I can't be bothered to go through the process twice).

Some webpages I mention that you may be interested in consulting;

The Society for Psychical Research;

http://www.spr.ac.uk/

Aaaron Sloman's homepage -- AI and lots of interesting stuff.

Books;

Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness explained. London.
Most cogitive scientists love this book. I'm less impressed than I used to be, although I do like the bits on pereceptual processing.

Penrose, R (1994) Shadows of the Mind. Oxford.
Consciousness as a non-computational phenomenon, perhpas linked to quantum gravity. See also Stuart Hameroff's webpage.

On Mars, on Mars, on Mars

2010-09-23T02:20:00.001-07:00

For almost as long as I can remember, Mars has haunted my imagination. It started with the War of the Worlds, to which I was introduced at the age of ten. We were played Jeff Wayne's musical version in music, and soon after, my father bought me the original novel. (He also owned a record of the infamous Orson Welles radio version). The tripods were terrifying, as were the octopoid Martian's need for human blood. The twist at the end, the martian's destruction by Earthly Bacteria, was just masterful. This novel was more than an example of early science fiction; it was a fable, a myth, with all the resonance that implies.

The next great Martian myth I came to know was Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. Even in the late eighties, 1999 ( the date of commencement) seemed far off and magical, and yet close enough to seem as if we might visit this world. Bradbury's Mars is that of dream, fantasy and the dusty past. The Martians, also slain by terrestrial germs, retire, but the Earthmen, one by one, also fall into the enchantment of the place.

The early 1990s were a sad time for human space travel (the fortunes of which have really never been good since the end of the Cold War). It took Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy to revitalize Mars. His Mars was based upon the Viking data, and felt like a real place. The story -- told over three novels -- was of the colonization and terraforming of a new world. The people who achieve this, especially this first hundred explorers, are perhaps a little wiser than us. In the new world, they rethink economics and their relationship with the environment. Humanity, in short, grows up a little.

Where does the Martian dream stand today? For now, with robots and a renewed hope for the discovery of some form of microbial life. But underneath the present picture are archaeological layers of human hopes and dreams.

Books:

Bradbury, R. (1950) The Martian Chronicles. New York.

Robinson, K.S. (1992) Red Mars. London.

Robinson, K.S. (1993) Green Mars. London.

Robinson, K.S. (1996) Blue Mars. London.

Wells, H.G. (1898) War of the Worlds. London.

Birthday Musings

2010-09-06T01:35:00.000-07:00

37 Today. Birthdays are a good time to consider one's progress (or otherwise) so far and think about future directions. Am I pleased with current things? On the whole, yes. Not ecstatic about encroaching middle age, especially the physical decrepitude thing, but since life extension seems a rather distant prospect, I'm stuck with it.

So, Where am I? Mostly intensively writing a book about consciousness, lifeguarding at a local swimming pool, visiting the local woods as often as I can, worrying too much, working out at the gym, and falling asleep at around nine O'clock every evening. (Using one's brain intensively is very hard work). It has been a year of change, of uncertainty and sometimes fear and paranoia but also of possibility and positive growth. All this is normal, really.

Where do I want to be? I want to continue to develop a sane life; to finish and have the book published, to expand my talents and not to let the grind of everyday existence get to me too much. I'd like to travel abroad again, not having done so since 1999, see and interact with more and interesting people, and to do a little good. I would like to worry less about growing older, to meditate and to paint more than I have lately. I want to expand my horizons. I'd like also to read and write more fiction. I would like to be more accepting of my current reality and company, no matter what.

That's it, really.

Huxley on Huxley

2010-08-05T01:08:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Cosmic Citizen went to a film evening, organized by our friends at the October Gallery as part of the Cosmos and Consciousness talk series. This one was held in the small cinema in Birkbeck College, where Docurama Film's Huxley on Huxley was screened. This film, directed, produced and written by Mary Ann Braubach, was a look at the life of Aldous Huxley, mainly through the eyes of his second wife Laura. In addition, the film featured interviews with Ramm Dass, Michael Murphy, Don Bachardy, Huston Smith, Nick Nolte and David Dunaway.

The film was mostly reminiscences of Aldous life via Laura. Laura (1911--2007) was Aldous' second wife. They met in 1949, while Laura was working as a freelance documentary filmmaker in Los Angeles. She contacted Aldous in the hope that he would provide a screenplay for a movie. The movie was never made, but they remained in touch, and married after Huxley's first wife died in 1955. Huxley himself died in 1963.

Laura had a career of her own as, amongst other things, a psychotherapist. Like Aldous, she was interested in alternative health and spirituality. A more complete bibliography can be found here, which also mentions their role in the psychedelics movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Both experimented with mescalin and LSD when it was legal, and Aldous Huxley's book on mescalin, the Doors of Perception was of course the inspiration behind the name of Jim Morrison's band.

The film was an enjoyable reminiscence and a window into the final years of a lady who'd plainly lived a full life. Especially interesting was the input from Aldous' granddaughter -- who intimated that growing up in such an alternative environment was not always easy. It was also quite touching to see Laura playing with Huxley's great grandson.

The film's maker, Mary Ann Braubach, was present to answer questions afterwards. She discussed how the film had taken a number of years, and also the influence Laura had had on her life.

Some dissatisfaction was expressed to me by a couple of people about the particular content of the film; it was felt that there had been perhaps too much of an emphasis on Laura's home life. I think a different sort of film had been expected, given the themes of earlier lectures in this series. However, it was perfectly satisfying for what it was, a reminiscence. I'm also fond of Hollywood nostalgia, of which this film is an example.

My favorite Aldous Huxley books;

Brave New World -- eerily prescient dystopia. We are living in Huxley's future.
Island -- a psychedelic Utopia, threatened by the outside world.
After many a summer -- Read this if you think immortality's a good idea.
Brave New World Revisited. (Non-fiction)
Science, Liberty and Peace. (Non-fiction)

Both the non-fiction works make explicit Huxley's concerns about science being used as instruments of tyranny. Both even more relevant today than when they were written, because many of his fears have come or are coming to pass. He was also concerned about the environment and overpopulation before they became popular subjects for discussion. Huxley thought that science could be used to serve people -- but only if we lived in a more egalitarian society. On this, I agree.

See here for a complete bibliography of Aldous Huxley.

Laura Huxley's key work is probably You Are Not the Target, a 'recipe for living and loving.'

And the prize for the most crass piece of scientism I've read this week goes to....

2010-07-24T01:06:00.000-07:00

...A statement by archaeologist Peter Watson from the New Scientist, quoted in Beauregard & O'Leary, 2007;

"The social, psychological and cognitive sciences remain stuck with pre-scientific words and concepts. For many of us the word 'soul' is obsolete as 'phlogiston,' but scientists still use such imprecise words as 'consciousness,' personality' and 'ego,' not to mention 'mind.'

Perhaps it is time that, in science at least, 'imagination' and 'introspection' are remodelled out, or preferably, retired. Artists can have fun with them, but the serious business of the world has moved on."

It's hard to know where to begin with a statement like this. Note first the implication that art is not 'serious business,' and that science is. The retirement of 'mentalistic' terminology has also been enthusiastically advocated by those who think it 'obvious' that the mind/consciousness can be unproblematically reduced to the brain; see Pat Churchland's Neurophilosophy for lengthy expositions of this point of view. Her husband, Paul, wants 'folk psychological' words like 'mind' retired in favour of more neurologically correct phrases.

I find this sort of advocacy appalling. One reason is that it is not very clear at all to what extent private experiences, for instance, can be reduced to patterns of neural firing in the brain, even if the correlations are close. Alternative interpretations remain perfectly viable. (ADVERT: See my forthcoming book (2011) for more on this)

But the main issue here is the proposed abolition of language. Neither Watson nor the Churchlands, in making their propositions, seem to have read and/or absorbed George Orwell's 1984. In this novel, the fictional totalitarian government was developing Newspeak, the primary aim of which was to 'rationalize' language. One of the reasons they wanted to do this was to control thought. One of the characters points out that, if they abolish the words for rebellion, then people won't be able to plot or even think rebellion.

Similarly, if we successfully abolish the language of 'mind,' then it is quite possible that alternative, mentalistic ways of looking will also be abolished, because we won't have the language to talk about them. This has been an utterly standard method of cultural imperialism from the year dot. If you want to subjugate a people and destroy a culture, forbid them to speak their language. It's a very efficient method of assimilation. And yet these well-intentioned people seem to be unaware that this is precisely what they are proposing.

This is why I find the proposed abolition of mentalistic terms bloodcurdling. It's proposed for the best of reasons -- these writers honestly believe they're wanting a desirable thing. But the path to hell is paved with good intentions. My great fear is that they may succeed; that we'll eventually become so saturated with 'neuro' speak, we won't be able to think in alternative ways -- even if such a conversion camouflages and makes inaccessible ways of thinking that have significant benefits in people's lives. And so an important way of looking at things will be at one with the dodo, like all the other cultures we've destroyed in the name of progress.

Finally -- we have the subtle but persistent suspicion of the imagination, also evidenced in Richard Dawkins' statements about fantasies like Harry Potter possibly degrading children's abilities to reason. We're not allowed to imagine things that are not so, or couldn't be, right? Conversely, are we only 'allowed' to think in strictly rational-analytical ways?

A strict adherence to rational thought would be a problem even within science. A number of the greatest theories were in some sense dreamt, or day-dreamed into existence; relativity being an example. And it was Einstein who said that imagination was more important than knowledge. Science is not just about step-by-step reasoning. It's important, but not really the heart of creation and invention. And the abolition of the imagination would be a positive crime in a culture in which it is already sorely lacking.

References.
Beauregard, M. & O'Leary, D. (2007) The Spiritual Brain. HarperOne.
Watson, P. (2005). Not Written in Stone. New Scientist, Aug 29.

Fringe

2010-07-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching season one of the US series Fringe (2008) (Yes, I'm slow, but we don't have Sky and I had to borrow the box-set from Blockbusters, Okay?) This show, by Lost producer JJ Abrams, is not about hairdressers but concerns an FBI agent investigating 'fringe' science events. The 'fringe science' events include plane passengers turning into goo, computer viruses that turn people's brain's to goo, giant parasites that wrap themselves around your heart, scientists who turn into or are eaten by monsters, women who get pregnant in the space of a few minutes, lots of vomiting goo.... Well you get the idea. Goo is important in this show.

Actually, I quite enjoyed it. Many people have pointed out how much it owes to the X-Files, and this includes an executive producer by the name of Darin Morgan. Morgan wrote some of the best episodes of the older show, including one of my favorite's, Clyde Bruckman's Final repose, about a man who is able to 'see' everyone's death. Chantilli Lace, indeed.

Fringe isn't very original, (but what on TV is?), but it's great fun. My favorite character (or cypher; they're all horrible stereotypes) is Walter, the scientist who spent seventeen years in a lunatic asylum. Walter is a stereotypical 'mad' scientist, who is an expert in everything and is totally disconnected from 'real life.' It's what I foolishly thought being a scientist would be like before I found out you have to be narrow, authoritarian and totally uninterested in anything beyond your speciality (sorry, the bitterness is coming through.... Maybe I also spent too long in the asylum....) I also like Gene, the lab cow.

Abrams certainly knows how to write addictive TV. I couldn't stop watching Lost when I got into it properly, and the same is true of Fringe. Some interesting science fiction ideas are mixed in with some ludicrous ones, and, as with most series, some episodes work better with others, but on the whole it's fun.

In thematic terms, the show is clearly post-9/11 in a way the X-Files weren't. Anti-terrorism is a major focus of the FBI, and Homeland security is a major player. Even the FBI offices look like something out of Star Trek; we're truly living in the future, folks. The emphasis is on the biomedical rather than the Extraterrestrial.

Fringe's attitude to science is also interesting, and somewhat ambiguous; it's shown as something that can be terribly threatening and is running out of control, yet we also have Walter, who uses science in our defence. However, Walter has many dark secrets from his past, and is shown at several points to have acted without a thought for the consequences for his actions (as is typical for mad scientists since Frankenstein).

If this were a different sort of blog, I'd start ranting about how 'science and 'reason' are our friends, and are going to save us all, and how Fringe is dangerous propaganda. However, this isn't that sort of blog and my opinions of science as an institution are, like Fringe's, rather more ambiguous. The obviously-named Evil Corporation, 'Massive Dynamics,' looms over our heroes, and is shown to have its fingers in weird, repulsive and unethical science at almost every turn. And he who pays the fiddler calls the tune.

This reflects a common anxiety -- which I share, by and large -- that science and technology represent power that is quite often in the hands of the powerful and amoral. The stereotype of the narrowly-focused scientist who ignores or rationalizes away the dangers of his work also has truth; I knew a number of individuals like this when I practised science at Sussex. But then, and this is what's so terrifying -- we increasingly, totally, rely on science and technology in our lives; this blog wouldn't exist without them! This means that we have to place a lot of trust in the hands of engineers, technical and social. Often this trust is justified, but this is by no means invariable, because we never quite know who's side they are on.

Brainwaving

2010-06-21T03:30:00.000-07:00

Just discovered my pal David Luke is co-editing Brainwaving.com, a website devoted to expanding our conscious capabilities. Their mission statement;

"To adapt successfully we must have our wits about us. We must both maximise our access to the most useful and interesting information and optimise our consciousness, loosening the mind in the quest for better solutions."

Looks very interesting, and with a mix of topics that should satisfy readers of this blog!

The Future of the body: beyond the broken car model

2010-06-12T03:23:00.000-07:00

In the classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the narrator describes how he and his fellow inmates are like broken cars. 'The ward is a factory for the combine. It's for fixing up the mistakes...the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society... it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart: something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold.' The author Kesey's intent here is satirical, but he put his finger upon the essential passivity of many conventional models of disease and health.

In so much conventional medicine, the patient is regarded as 'broken,' to be fixed by heavy doses of drugs or surgery. The inner capacities of the person to heal are underemphasised; we all seem to need 'technicians' to sort out our inner workings. This is also and especially true in the mental health field.

There's no doubt that Western medicine has and will continue to accomplish amazing things, but such a mechanistic attitude towards patients is, in my experience, all too common. B. Alan Wallace noted that while modern Western approaches to the mind are ‘remarkably empowering to those who create, market, and distribute…technology and drugs, [they are] profoundly disempowering to the individual.’ (In Varela & Shear, 1999, p. p.186.) I believe that this attitude is profoundly mistaken, and is a major source of a fairly widespread discontent with medicine today.

My main concern is that the potentially tremendous capacities that there are fairly good reasons to think lie within human beings are eroded or lost by an unquestioning belief in the 'broken car' model. As Wallace says, the more we come to rely solely on techno-fixes, the less we rely on these inner capacities. I do not mean to say that we should abandon Western medicine; this is plainly silly. For many ailments, it's plainly second to none. But I think that there needs to be a move towards integrating the best of mainstream and alternative approaches.

This is difficult in the polarized atmosphere of the debates over the efficacy and desirability of alternative treatments. In brief, I find much of the literature advocating alternative medicines too uncritical and much of the 'skeptical' literature very undiscriminating and equally biased. See Toby Murcott's book for an overview of the controversy. (I'm afraid I found Ernzt & Singh's book to be very sweeping and in the places I knew about, poorly and unsympathetically researched, but I include it because it's a recent high-profile work. I find this rather odd, given that Ernst is the only UK professor of alternative medicine).

Because there is actually a considerable amount of evidence that human beings are capable of sometimes profound physical and mental transformations. These can occur, not only in the context of medicine, but in sports, martial arts, somatic disciplines and spiritual practices. I recommend the Murphy book for a wide-ranging survey of this material to 1992. The more I read, the more I get the feeling that the used car model is not just incomplete, but simply and sometimes dangerously wrong.

References
Kesey, K. (1962). One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York.
Murcott, T. (2004) The Whole Story. London.
Murphy, M. (1992) The Future of the Body.New York.
Singh, S. & Ernst, E. (2008) Trick or Treatment. London.
Varela, F & Shear (1999) The View From Within. Exeter.

New BFI Website

2010-06-09T04:44:00.000-07:00

I notice that the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has redesigned their website. Well worth checking out. They've a banner showing, amongst other things, a project for providing fresh water in Africa. There's also an annual challenge to use design science to solve some of the world's more pressing problems.

Fuller wanted to “Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

Amen to that.

2010-06-06T01:25:00.000-07:00

Quite pleased with Space X's success in launching Falcon 9. It seems to me that the future of human space flight in the US is going to be increasingly commercial and private from now on.

I think that the best way to permanently establish a human presence beyond Earth is going to be accretive, rather than by the performance of grand gestures. I suspect that the best way is to gradually and by baby steps consolidate a presence in orbit, gradually moving out into the rest of CISlunar steps and to the Moon. This might well be a slower than space cadets often wish for -- but it could be a lot more robust.

Why do this? Simply, to change human society from one that's bottled up on the Earth -- with all the stressors that implies -- to one that's more open. For long term survival. But this should be done in accordance to the Golden rule of Space Exploration, suggested by Hartman, Miller and Lee. This says that whatever we do in orbit or beyond should not worsen, but ideally improve, conditions on the Earth.

There's an issue, for example, with the pollution of flights to orbit. The fledgling private space venture is in a far better position to develop minimally polluting systems than, say, the entrenched automotive industries. But we should remember that, for the moment, space launches are only a fraction of each nation's carbon footprint. It would be good to keep it that way, even if the industry bugeons.

Mixed Feelings: A comment to the Planetary Society

2010-05-31T04:58:00.000-07:00

I've just posted a comment to the Planetary Society on the Obama Space Policy for NASA. I hope it speaks for itself!

I've been following the reactions to the Obama plans, and have read and listened carefully to passionate arguments for and against. I've come to think that the Obama plans (1) have some positive points and some less-than-positive points and that (2) it's too early to assess their long-term impact.

Positive points: enabling commercial crewed missions; extending the ISS to 2020; enabling the development of advanced concepts.

Less positive: the cancellation of Constellation has left a big gap that has, as far as I can see, only been filled with vague promises about an asteroid mission and a Mars trip long after this administration is over.

I've learned to be very wary of vague promises like this, despite the hype. It would be very easy for all of these long-term plans to be dropped, quickly, if it became politically expedient to do so.

I was thinking of joining the Planetary Society, but the rapid and what seems to me mostly political embracing of this policy seems in some ways questionable when we do not really know the policy's long-term impacts.

Carl Sagan himself noted that political policies often amount to experiments whose outcome we cannot really now until they're played out. I personally would be careful before moving one hundred percent behind the Obama plan. We need to see some of its effects first, and I must say that the mass layoffs at the NASA centres do not inspire confidence. I do hope the Planetary Society's confidence is not misplaced.

See the original comment here.

The Earth is not room enough

2010-05-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

The Earth's never been big enough for me. Oh, I'm stuck here physically, but my mind roves forever onward. One look into the night sky, and I know that we're not just Earthly beings. We exist in a far larger World than that. The Moon was up the other night, and seems so close, even through small binoculars. There's a whole other world on our doorstep, folks; on some nights, you can see the mountains cast shadows on the plains. The Planets, too, count as locals. Venus shines like a lamp in the summer evening, and Jupiter's up later. These points are distant, but visible shores, to which we send automated bottles....

Because the human range has already expanded beyond Earth. Look up any dark night, and you'll see our satellites crisscrossing the sky. And yes, we've spread our junk and crap outwards too. But it's the junk and crap of life. See the Heavens Above site for a rundown of the satellite passes over your patch of Spaceship Earth.

James Vedda, in his recent, excellent book Choice, not Fate (XLibris, 2009), suggests that we stop seeing the Earth as a closed system and consider it instead open to the wider Cosmos. This has consequences; it implies that we might not be bottled up on one planetary surface, forever. Space travel, which today is often dismissed as an extravagance, might one day help preserve an emerging planetary civilization (and already does in small ways).

Most people -- through not fault of their own -- don't see things this way. As Bucky Fuller noted; 'The vast majority are conditioned to think of the sky only as disorderly scenery.' But;'The only realism is cosmic. Cosmic includes all -- macro and micro -- you and I.' (Piece in Brand,1977 p. 55.)

You see, whether or not, in the short or medium term, humans travel in a sustained way beyond Earth orbit (which is in part contingent, I suspect, on getting our house in better order back on Earth), space travel has already radically but subtly altered the Earthly perspective. It's often said that the Environmental movement was given a major boost by the first pictures of the whole Earth from the Moon. Certainly, the movements were contemporaneous with this widened perspective. Gaia theory was also born by contemplating the nearest planets, Mars and Venus.

But another implication is that the Earth really is only a part of the Universe, not the be-all and end all. We're accustomed to talking of The Planet as if it's the only one. But -- unique and beautiful though the Earth is -- it's not the only one. Nature is far wider and deeper than that. So we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves -- we're only children, standing on the brink of eternity.

Consciousness study day review part three

2010-05-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

The third speaker of the day, Serena Roney-Dougal, took an almost polar opposite view to Rita Carter’s (see part two). Where Carter had favoured materialism, Roney-Dougal took the position that there was a whole spectrum of phenomena associated with the mind that indicated that conventional theories were at least incomplete.

She termed these, after William James, ‘White Crows.’ ‘White Crows’ relates to the observation that one just has to find one white crow to negate the theory that all crows must be black. The white crows in this case are those that indicate some kind of top-down control of the mind over the body, sometimes in some very exotic ways. We are dealing with, in a word, paranormal phenomena. In doing so, she highlighted the gaping abyss that exists between those who wish to include paranormal and other ‘rogue phenomena’ in discussions of consciousness and those who see the paranormal as nonsensical.

Roney-Dougal is a parapsychologist, and has recently been conducting experiments testing the psychic abilities of monks in the Sam Ye Ling monastery in Scotland. She has been steeped in Eastern approaches to the mind, which includes the Buddhist and Vedic views. As a result, she had come to the conclusion that we in the West are hardly out of the nursery as far as understanding consciousness is concerned. She also favoured the Vedic distinction between the mind and consciousness. According to these teachings, the mind is the reins, and consciousness is likened to the rider in the chariot. The Vedic teachings are that consciousness is the ultimate ground out of which everything else arises – which is the opposite of the Western belief that ‘matter’ is the ground of everything. Both views are metaphysical.

According to Serena’s reading, neuroscience is concerned not with consciousness itself, but with the mind or ‘reins.’ The self or soul is beyond this and consciousness is not physical. The events in the material universe are maya or illusion. Wisdom comes about when one realises the illusory nature of the perceived world and sees the deeper reality beyond.

Roney-Dougal thought that the data of parapsychology could provide evidence that such views were on the right lines. She warned that some of the evidence presented might be beyond the audience’s ‘boggle threshold,’ a phrase coined by Renee Haynes to denote ones level of open-mindedness (or, some might say, credulity), but most indicate some form of control of the mind over the body.

These phenomena range from the placebo effect to the bizarre effects of stigmatics and even stranger phenomena. Stigmata is where the signs of the cross appear spontaneously on the subject’s hands, forehead and sides. The best cases are pretty well documented, and reasonably plausible in the context of comparable effects like marks induced under hypnosis and psychogenic skin conditions. Roney-Dougal asserted that top-down functioning was needed to explain such phenomena.

Other ‘exotic’ effects of the mind include parapsychological data, which is often heavily disputed by the ‘skeptics.’ One particularly emotive area is the Survival data – or that suggestive that some portion of the human personality survives bodily death. Serena’s example was the 2,500 or so cases of children who reported previous lives. These cases are peculiar, whatever one’s ultimate interpretation of the facts. Young children – typically but not exclusively in cultures who accept reincarnation – report memories of a previous life. There are a number of consistent patterns to these cases, which in my opinion are not without flaws but hard to completely dismiss.

The notion of survival is beyond my ‘boggle threshold,’ but I’m personally unwilling to dismiss data just because it doesn’t conform to my (effervescent and ever-changing) ideas about how the world works. I think that this is one reason why paranormal phenomena are seen as so infuriating by some, and intriguing by others – they threaten the tidiness of world-pictures.

Roney-Dougal concluded by suggesting that we do ourselves a disservice if we ignore white crows. She stated that we really do need to include all these unusual experiences in any account of what composes mind, consciousness, soul, spirit and include them in any explanation we give. But this is precisely what most cognitive scientists will refuse to do; mostly, this material is dismissed out of hand.

This presentation didn’t cut any ice with Carter, as she made clear in the discussion afterwards. Like a number of ‘skeptics,’ she had looked at the literature and come away unimpressed. This illustrates a fundamental dilemma with the inclusion or otherwise of paranormal phenomena in discussions about consciousness. Different people with different a priori assumptions can often look at the same data and walk away with very different opinions. And often the evidence cuts both ways. As Henry Bauer points out, this ambiguity is typical in both frontier science and anomalistics (Bauer, 2001).

It’s only fair for me to state my position. I’m unhappy with either unreflective advocacy or skepticism. I think that if one takes a long and honest look at how science works, especially on the frontier, then the picture is often far messier and more ambiguous than either ‘believer’ or ‘skeptic’ admits. I’ve been interested in paranormal phenomena for a long time – as my publication record will show – and my views have fluctuated. On average, however, I believe in a positive form of agnosticism. I’m an advocate in that I think there is much to be gained from further, systematic investigations of these areas, and I dispute the skeptical claim that the history of parapsychology amounts to one hundred years of negative results. However, I am with the skeptics in that I think that replication rates in lab experiments are still poor and that the underlying theory is pretty much lacking.

I also think that the question of whether or not consciousness underlies everything tends to lie in the direction of metaphysics and may well not be answerable in terms of scientific models. The same is true, as Bertrand Russell noted, of the claim that everything can be reduced to ‘matter’ stuff. It is a fallacy to think that mystical insights can or should be answered by empirical science: that way lies scientism. We need a plurality of views to really appreciate the multifaceted nature of reality.

We also need to accept that our differing world-pictures will often lead us to form different opinions about the world. One thing that I thought was good about the day was the measure of respect shown for sometimes opposing world-views. This needs to be encouraged.

Reference
Bauer, H. (2001) Science or Pseudoscience. Illinois.

Oxford conscousness day revew, part two

2010-05-10T02:14:00.000-07:00

The second speaker of the day, Rita Carter, had what she termed the ‘sticky wicket’ of presenting the standard, physicalist account of consciousness. She asserted that consciousness should properly be understood as part of the material world, and that it shouldn’t follow a different set of rules from material reality. Having said this, she acknowledged that consciousness seems different from the lawful, straightforward universe described by the laws of physics. Subjective experience seen as a superior faculty that makes life meaningful and is the basis of personal identity.

She admitted that we still have no idea what consciousness ‘is.’ Despite this, she had come to a tentative opinion that consciousness is indeed part of the physical world. A better understanding of the phenomenon would, she though, give us better control over it and allow us to learn more about ourselves.

She briefly glanced at [substance] dualism, or the idea that there is a mind ‘stuff’ separate from brain or matter ‘stuff.’ She raised the seasoned (but actually questionable) objection that if the two things are made up of different stuffs, then the couldn’t interact. She also rejected the idea that this mind could emerge from physical processes but then ‘float free’ of the material ‘stuff’ of the brain.

Then she moved to monism or the idea that brain ‘is’ mind. One option here is simply to deny that subjective experiences exist. This is known as eliminativism ,and, however counter-intuitive, has been argued by some eminent philosophers. Anyone still thinking they have subjective experiences is usually credited with suffering from some sort of ‘illusion.’ Other possibilities might be that consciousness ‘is’ dense computation, a function, an emergent property or a sort of field.

Then she introduced the ‘Hard problem,’ a concept named by David Chalmers. The ‘easy problems’ are supposed to be the neurological processes and mechanisms underlying consciousness. The ‘hard’ problem is the subjective component, which, according to Chalmers, just passively ‘watches’ as the actual work is done by the brain. This is a stance known as epiphenomenalism and it is quite popular with neuroscientists, although not universally, because it allows us to admit the existence of subjective experiences without admitting they might actually be able to change things in the material world. This would, according to some, mean a violation of physical laws.

Carter then brought up research on certain aspects of consciousness that might allow us to understand it better. Change blindness experiments build upon William James’ observation that consciousness appears to the beholder ‘all of a piece.’ There appear to be no ‘gaps’ in consciousness; when we perceive a whole scene, we have the impression of completeness. But a number of experiments in change blindness show that quite large changes can happen in or between images and that we will not necessarily be conscious of them. See here for an example.

She then moved onto the experiments of Libet and others, which show a significant time-lag between brain-activation and the feeling of volition. What happens is that a part of the brain starts activating about half a second before the participants report experiencing a subjective will to move their hands. These experiments have been claimed to nullify the concept of free will, for reasons which I’ve always found obscure, but they impressed Carter. She later claimed that there was lots of evidence for epiphenomenalism, so volition turns out to be another ‘illusion.’

Her conclusion, or hunch, was that consciousness would turn out to be something that just ‘is;’ maybe, she thought, it is just the effect of a mass of neural mechanisms working together, just as a Cathedral’s form is the result of putting lots of stones together in a particular way. Carter is satisfied that the evidence from neuroscience points to consciousness being causally ineffective; it is possibly just a quality or side-effect of brain function after all.

Carter’s talk was a very clear exposition of what is pretty much the standard approach to consciousness in neuroscience, where neural mechanisms do all the work and consciousness is just a by-product. Yet it is not necessary to embrace substance dualism to note a number of serious deficiencies in Carter’s account. In my view, for example, there are grave conceptual problems with concluding that consciousness is causally ineffective just because it seems to require brain-activity beforehand. Bennett & Hacker argue that Libet’s experiments are seriously conceptually flawed. They point out that asking a person to note a feeling of ‘volition’ is suspect because our voluntary actions are often not accompanied by a feeling at all. But without this ‘feeling,’ Libet’s experiments make no sense. Wiggle your fingers to see what I mean. Quote: ‘the fact that the neurons…fire 350ms before the feeling is allegedly apprehended doe not show the brain has ‘unconsciously decided’ to move before the agent [whole person] did. It merely shows that the neuronal processes that activate the muscles began before a time at which the agent reported the…feeling of an urge to move’ to have occurred.’ (Bennett & Hacker, 2003, p. 230.)

The sort of epiphenomenalism espoused by Carter and too many in the neuroscience community is based upon the assumption that it is desirable to split off causally active processes from supposedly acausal subjective qualities. What we are asked to accept is that our subjective experiences or ‘qualities’ (qualia?) float off in an acausal bubble whilst most of the real work is done by the ‘brain.’ This seems thoroughly dualistic, which is precisely what writers like Carter insist we reject. But if we really want to see humans as unified entities or agents, then it seems to me that our subjective qualities must be entangled, quite possibly inextricably, with our potential for action.

You cannot just section off ‘consciousness’ into an acausal box like this, just because you are afraid that admitting some form of mental causation might break so-called physical law. And if science needs expanding to accommodate this, tough. Science is – and hopefully always will be -- a work in progress, anyway. Insisting on ‘laws’ that are writ in stone seems closer to dogmatic religion to me.

Carter presented her case very well, and she is a fine science writer. I recommend her book, listed below. But for me, her talk highlighted the problems as well as the advantages of mainstream approach.

Works Cited
Bennett, M.R. & Hacker, P.M.S. (2003). Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford.
Carter, R. (2002). Exploring consciousness. Berkeley & Los Angeles.
Midgley, M. (2001) Science and Poetry. London.

The Earth and the Sky

2010-05-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

In one of my favorite Liz Williams novels, Nine Layers of Sky, Elena, the heroine, is given a choice. This is in the fantastical kingdom of Belovodye, where thoughts create realities, and you can have the society you want by wishing.

In the story, the kingdom is dominated by a group whose visions blot out those of everyone else, including those of the semi-human clan of Rusalkas. The heroine’s choice is about who stays in charge, but there is a complication. The dominant group has ruled through technology which is damaging Belovodye and the clan wishes this power overthrown. At one point, a member of the clan states that; “This human rush towards an imaginary progress—it has to be curbed, Elena. The machines that the humans have brought with them [into Belovodye] and invented, this drive to overcome nature—it must be turned back.” The clan expects Elena to help them do it by dreaming of a different future where the dominant group is not in charge, and technology is banished.

However, at the crucial point, Elena does not quite do what is expected of her. She is a scientist, formerly of the Soviet Union’s impoverished space program, and she cannot help dreaming of the stars. What about, she wonders, the people who want to reach for the stars? But the Rusalkas insist that she drop her dreams of space travel and initiate a return to the Earth. But she cannot:

She looked up, and her vision darkened. It was not longer day and she could see the stars. They burned and blazed, as brightly as they had always done. She thought, They, too, are part of the natural world. Our dreams are not mutually exclusive. The mistakes we make, the price we pay, are part of being human, as long as we learn from them. And I want to dream of the stars, not only of the soil.

The first time I read that, I felt a deep sympathy for Elena, because a lot of the time, I feel very torn. Many of my environmentalist friends have little truck for any kind of advanced technology, let alone space flight (which seems to symbolize everything ‘bad’ – big government, military technology, bureaucracy, the myth of progress through technological advancement, etc.) All this is part of the problem, and we need to return to a balanced life on the soil.

I care deeply about our fellow travellers, and the sheer rapacity of human beings – and of technological civilization – often appalls me. The worst aspect of this, for me, is that our activities result in the tearing apart of whole ecosystems, which results in mass extinctions. Many of our other activities are at least potentially reversible; but wiping another organism from the face of the Earth is not. And technology allows us to rip apart the tapestry of life all too easily; see Douglas Quammen’s Song of the Dodo for an exposition.

For all this, I wish I could be more attracted to mainstream environmentalism than I actually am. I dislike the authoritarian strains of the movement, the knee-jerk assumption that any new technology is necessarily bad, and I also find many of the proffered alternative lifestyles pretty undesirable. I do not want to revert to a subsistence lifestyle in a small community. Small, agricultural communities tend to be parochial, narrow and boring in the extreme. There’s a reason why the more adventurous people run away to the cities.

Fortunately, I’m not alone in feeling this. Two people who care deeply about the environment but who have major issues with mainstream environmentalism: Jim Lovelock and Stewart Brand. Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue is of especial interest here. In the 1970s, his Catalogue hosted a debate between those who supported mass space colonization and those who believed that space colonization represented everything they were fighting. The ins and outs of that debate are fascinating; good points were made on both sides. But we see the same clash of ideologies, between the back-to-the-soilers and the space visionaries.

Well, I wish I could be more enthusiastic about going back to the soil, but the idea holds very little personal appeal. But neither do I want a trashed planet; on the contrary, I believe that ideally we should leave half the land-surface to nature (See E.O.Wilson’s The Future of Life for a workable conservation plan). I certainly do NOT think that space travel is about finding a new home, because we’ve trashed the old one (this notion is indeed a fantasy , for very practical reasons). But then, like Elena, I do not see reaching for the stars as necessarily anti-environment; although I do see why it might clash with some versions of environmentalism.

My vision, then, is of a world with a technological civilization that is ‘decoupled’ as much as possible from the biosphere; one where everything is recycled and our activities are as non-polluting as possible. One where our population has stabilized after a period of decline, and the background extinction rate is not appreciably higher than it would be if we didn’t live on Earth at all. Where human beings have the chance and opportunity to reach our full potential, but not at the expense of our fellow travellers. Where the populations of large animals are actually increasing, the forests regenerating and the oceans are clean. Where we, as a species, have reached a sort of maturity and stability that allows the exploration of space, and we value our unique planet all the more. An impossible dream? Maybe, but it’s what keeps me going.

Do we now our own minds? Lecture day review

2010-03-13T02:39:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, Cosmic Citizen visited Oxford for the Scientific and Medical Network’s day on consciousness, entitled Do We Know our Own Minds? The day’s host and organizer, Paul Devereux, had kindly sent a flier and as I was also up to my eyebrows in a book project on consciousness, I thought that it might help.

Oxford reminded me of Cambridge – a small town, hyertrophied by the University, which breeds portentous dons who sit in the coffee shops and drone on at length about their latest TV show on Italian Architecture whilst being served by invariably non-English waiters. That’s privilege for you.

Anyway, the next day, I made my way to the Friend’s meeting house, where the talks were being held. The Scientific and Medical Network is ‘is an interdisciplinary networking forum and educational charity exploring science, medicine, philosophy and spirituality.’ It was, I was told later, formed as a sort of safe space within which scientists and doctors could talk about things like spirituality without being considered batshit crazy. This is a good thing, because I know from experience how intolerant mainstream academia can be about that sort of thing. Generally speaking, you’re free to think about anything you like – so long as it’s on the approved list. Rupert Sheldrake wasn’t far wrong in calling parasychological literature 'intellectual pornography.'

According to the programme, there were to be three speakers. Paul would introduce the day, then Rita Carter would speak and finally Serena Roney-Dougal. Rita Carter had the unhappy task, given the audience, of representing the mainstream POV. However, this was a wise move on Devereux’s part; too many of these gigs end up excluding or ignoring viewpoints that are not germane to the audience. This is a bad idea. I tend to agree with Bertrand Russell that one needs to engage periodically with viewpoints with which one does not agree; there is a good chance that you might learn something.

Besides, although I think that mainstream accounts of consciousness are seriously incomplete (often admittedly so), I have all sorts of problems with the proffered alternatives. Writing this book has brought this home; I’m a lot less sure of anything than I used to be. I hope that this is a sign of increased intelligence and not terminal confusion.

Paul began the day with a talk entitled ‘the Nature of the Beast: What the debate is about.’ He offered three broad perspectives on consciousness, (two of which are routinely ignored or swiftly discounted in the mainstream);

Physical ‘Embodied’ models: these are reductionist and claim that consciousness arises from complex interactions in the body.
Mind-at-large models: the polar opposite of the physical accounts. Suggest dualistic accounts of consciousness as something beyond or filtered by the brain, rather as a TV set receives but does not generate a signal.
‘Matrix,’ or Idealistic models. Everything we experience ‘is’ mind, a mental illusion or simulation.

The problem with physical models is the explanatory gap. How does objective matter generate subjective consciousness? This is the ‘hard problem.’ No-one, he said, had come up with a satisfactory way to bridge this gap. He also emphasised that we’re only really on chapter one of the vast book on nature.

It was important, the thought, to understand how much one’s world-view shaped one’s consciousness. He had gathered about forty accounts from anthropologists that suggested a different sort of reality from the purely physical.

One example of this was Marianne George’s experiences among the Barok in Papua New Ginuea between 1979—1985. During her first stay she was visited by an elderly ‘big woman’ in her dreams. The next morning, she was visited by two of the big woman’s sons, who came to ask whether she understood what the big woman had been telling her in the dream. This happened on a number of occasions, even after the big woman died. The big woman would visit George in her dreams and give her information, and the sons would always know about it the next day. This form of dreaming was known as griman and was common among the Barok. As Devereux said, “that’s not our reality.”

He gave a couple of other examples from his collection of accounts, including one among the Cashinahua where the drug, ayahusasca, was held to be better than field radio, and another, where a Lacondonmaya healing spell had been tried by an anthropologist and worked. The latter anthropologist commented that none of the things he witnessed – including spirits – could have happened in Germany.

This reminded me of Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson’s idea of a reality tunnel. According to Leary and Wilson, each of us live in a reality constructed by our own nervous system and each different tunnel will have areas which seem to exist to others and areas that do not. Societies have reality tunnels; and ours does not really permit shared dreaming, ESP or spirits.

Devereux went on to give accounts of some personal parapsychological experiences, including one in Michael Persinger’s lab. Persinger has built a couple of helmets that stimulate the brain magnetically, and claims to be able to produce all sorts of abnormal and altered states. Devereux got to wear one of these helmets, and began to get a series of mental impressions during the session, impressions that later tallied with an image that a participant, unknown to Paul, had been scrutinising. When asked to select the correct image from a spread of alternatives, Devereux did so with ease. As far as he was concerned, this sort of data had to be accounted for in any theory of consciousness.

Finally, he looked at the ‘Matrix’ possibility, which states that we are living in a mind or simulation of sorts. This idea comes from the observation that nothing we observe is direct, but filtered through our senses. We do not see a sunset, but somehow electrochemical signals from our eyes are reconstructed in our brains to form that experience.

Bishop Berkeley built on this observation to suggest that nothing we see is real, but is in fact a mental construct. This sort of theory, though, generally needs the all-seeing eye of God to keep the world stable when there is no-one observing it. Modern versions, like the simulation theories, suppose that the world is a simulation created by posthumans in the far future.

Devereux considered this sort of Idealistic world a possibility because of a number of lucid dream experiences. This is when you become fully conscious and alert within a dream. One experience he had was of an alternative world, and seemed just as detailed and stable as the reality in which we currently inhabit. Maybe there are stacks of possible alternative realties that we can visit that are accessible via altered states.

Which brings us to a leitmotif of the day; the issue of the technologies of consciousness, including consciousness-altering drugs. Devereux pointed out that other cultures, whilst technologically ‘primitive,’ actually have far more advanced consciousness technologies than we do. He believes that the only way we’re going to make serious inroads in consciousness research is by using these technologies. However, these technologies are illegal in the UK, and any current research has to be done abroad. Paul named the Beckley Foundation as a group that is trying to change this.

I agree that we need to study dramatically different states of consciousness to understand it better; my own, limited experience in this field suggests that consciousness – which is after all ‘reality’ for us – can be profoundly altered, to the point that one questions what ‘reality’ is. And I think that a far more sane approach is needed. Many of these drugs are not ‘safe’ because they are powerful, but this is a bad reason for their being illegal. There should probably be some sort of control over their use, simply because we live in a culture that is very backward – even infantile – about drug use. Just go out on a Friday night to a government licensed and taxed drugs emporium (sorry, Pub) if you don’t believe me.

Part two soon.

A review of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? By Brian Fies

2010-03-03T01:05:00.000-08:00

At the start of February 2010, President Obama cancelled a human return to the Moon. No-one seems sure whether it’ll lead to a privately-spearheaded renaissance in human space flight, or will be the last nail in the coffin of a programme that has taken about forty years to die.

Whatever the truth, Brian Fies’ Whatever happened to the World of Tomorrow…? seems appropriate reading under the circumstances.

Whatever happened… is the story of a boy and his father, and a shared faith in a bright, technological future amongst the stars. It begins with the World’s Fair in 1939 and ends with the Apollo-Soyuz link up in 1975. (I’m assuming some artistic licence here, because the boy seems about ten from 1939—1959, and has his teens in the sixties.) From the World fair onwards, father and son share a Utopian tomorrow even as life intervenes.

The World’s Fair was opened by President Roosevelt on April 30th, 1939, on the eve of World War Two. Despite this, the world depicted was in many ways prescient. The Futurama exhibit by General Motors depicted a future metropolis, served by fourteen-lane expressways. It would be a centrally planned automotive paradise.

In the course of the book, the comic-strip Adventures of Cap Crater and his young aide Cosmic Kid provides a sort of commentary on the main narrative of the novel. In the first installment, the World’s Fair is threatened by the evil Dr. Xandra, who represents the dark side of the future. Quote: 'technology is the answer! Dehumanizing Industrial Might! What career is more secure than being a cog in my machine?' Xandra reappears numerous times in the following decade, and is occasionally defeated, but never silenced.

World War Two ends, and Americans start to build their future. But we also see Pop and his kid building a nuclear shelter in his basement. The symbolism is apt because despite mass culture, each of us builds our own future with every decision and action we take. Similarly, we can choose to accept or reject a stated goal or vision.

And the visions continue, via Colliers’ magazine where a painter named Chesley Bonestall and an ex-Nazi named Werner Von Braun depicted a human mission to Mars. There’s even a reproduction of a Bonestall painting in the book. Von Braun, the true-life Dr. Strangelove, had brought his dream of the conquest of space over to the ‘States and was quietly seeding the idea in the American Mind, courtesy of Walt Disney.

The ‘Fifties were also a time of paranoia about Communism and death via atomic bomb (see the Duck and Cover movie from 1951 at the end of this blog) . Hollywood showed that scientists could be hubristic, and unleash monsters – often rather tacky ones. Captain Crater and his youthful sidekick get to battle giant radioactive prairie dogs, accidentally created by radiation leaked by Dr. Xandra. The menace is defeated, but as Xandra points out, Captain Crater’s rocket is atomic-powered too. The point, often lost in simplistic disputes between technophiles and Luddities, is that new technologies will inevitably have light and dark sides.

In the early 1960s, the space programme begins, and America dreams of a future in the heavens. I’ve come to think that the debates over the (human) space programme are really about far more than the issue of whether it’s worth sending humans beyond the confines of the Earth. A certain kind of future is symbolized by the act of sending humans beyond, a future invested with all sorts of ambivalence. And this didacticism was present from start of the Space programme because America and Russia launched their satellites and Astronauts on top of ballistic missiles which were the direct descendants of the Nazi V2s that were built with slave labour and which devastated London.

But a rocket launch is glorious. Pop and son go to Florida to watch the launch of Gemini 4, piloted by Major White and Major McDivitt. Ed White space walks and experiences such joy that for a few moments, he refuses to return to the capsule. For a few moments, one of the chisel-jawed all-American supermen reveals his human heart.

The first disappointments are on their way. The space probe Mariner Four arrives at Mars, and sends back pictures, not of canals and lost civilizations, but craters. Mars seems as dead as the Moon. Meanwhile, Cosmic kid is entering puberty, and finding other things in which to be interested besides space. And Xandra is still there, up to his old tricks.

But in the main narrative, life in the suburbs is proving very boring. The son is becoming aware of the contradictions in the vision and observes ‘the inescapable fact…that our space program embodied the very “Military –Industrial complex” that President Eisenhower’s farewell address had warned us to beware of. Was that the path from where I was to where I wanted to be?’ These doubts signal a growing divide between radical youth and reactionary middle-age, which by the late sixties was being felt all over America.

Men land on the Moon, and then, a few missions later, Apollo is cancelled. In 1975, the last Apollo craft is used to hook up with the Russians in what is essentially a Détente publicity stunt; ‘and then it was all over.’ The separation between father and son seems deep, as well, the son notes ‘we could hardly speak without arguing about something….’ And in Captain Crater, Xandra wins, becoming the Ultimate capitalist. Cosmic kid splits from Captain Crater, and the comic folds for lack of readership.

But as the later scenes unfold, it becomes clear that the story is about far more than a simple disillusionment about the future. It is about childhood dreams, and what happens to them as one grows up. As one grows, the dreams which satisfied one as a child often and properly stop satisfying the adult. In many ways, this is as it should be, because the simple – often simplistic – views of childhood no longer fit the conceptual world in which the adult moves. To be truly satisfying, dreams must grow and change, too.

Many people seem to think that disillusionment and cynicism are the logical end-point of this process, but this is a mistake. Cynicism is a phenomenon of adolescence, and should be just as transitory as naivety. Scepticism and cynicism are often the children of disillusion, which is to a degree inevitable because the outside world is often unkind to our visions, which are in some ways more delicate than rice paper (although in others more durable than granite). We must learn to work with what we have.

This seems to be Fies’ solution, too. With micro-miniaturization and clean technology, our dreams of futurity have changed. We have already built a future world, but it’s tiny and everywhere. We need to live more lightly on our planet, and the newer dream of clean energy reflects this.

And the old stories still have value. The last story in the book is of a young girl, accessing Captain Crater and the Cosmic Kid via an electronic repository of world literature. As (grand)father Crater notes; ‘the tales we tell are just as important as the facts and figures we learn. Stories help us try on different possibilities to see how they fit.’ The future is never going to be quite how we imagine – but that should not stop us from trying to imagine it.

Maybe Obama’s decision was appropriate, after all. No right, necessarily, but appropriate. I’m afraid to say that, despite the valiant but not always terribly honest efforts of the skeptics, I think it quite likely that we’re cooking ourselves to death after all. Even if we are not, there are a number of warning lights blinking red on Spaceship Earth to which we urgently need to attend if we’re to have any kind of a future (Habitat and farmland deterioration, overpopulation, the overuse of ground water and resource deletion to name but four).

But as Fies notes, ‘in the long run the Universe will always be there waiting’ for us. For now any future in space belongs to the robots, and conceivably private companies and individuals for whom the Earth is not room enough. Such a future is, I believe, at least potentially compatible with a vision of a better life on Earth, where our population is stable, we treat other species better and we have finally reached some sort of balance with the Good Earth. But we’re running out of time.

Star City, Nottingham

2010-02-19T00:35:00.000-08:00

Last week, I visited the Star City exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery. The central exhibit was a giant sculpture based upon the space suit of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. The exhibition was about the visions of a space-age future in Soviet Russia. From the programme;

"What were the visions that shaped these strange artifacts? What light do they shed on the everyday lives of its inhabitants? And are there any parallels between the ruins of this past future and our own time?"

One of my favorite displays was of Aleksandra Mir's collages, where (mostly Catholic) religious and space imagery were combined. The point: both religion and the space program are sustained by faith. Whereas the former relies in part on the promise of a better life in heaven, the latter also relies in part on the promise of a better life in 'heaven.' Her juxtaposing these two faiths seems utterly appropriate.

I wandered this art gallery, feeling like a participant in a J.G. Ballard short-story; only now, the gantries of the space age seem not just rusting, but on the point of total collapse. We have not gone on to conquer space, as Korolev, Von Braun, and others hoped; perhaps it was always a vain ambition. Yet the imagery of a past future, even a rotting one, is tremendously beautiful.

As the guide suggests, we seem to have lost faith in this sort of future. Obama's cancellation of Constellation is to me symptomatic of a wider loss of faith, economic expediency notwithstanding.

I flicked through the channels of UK TV last night, which showed a grey present drained of imagination or hope, entangled by petty bureaucracy. Is the future to be as free of adventure, excitement, promise as the present sometimes seems? If so, then our civilization is truly a dying one; maybe it does not deserve to survive.

Still, dreams are hard to kill. If we do not wish a future that is purely uniform, concrete, bureaucratic, lobotomized, then it is up to us, each one, to keep the spark of imagination and adventure alive. Maybe that's all we can hope for, right now.

Axing Constellation

2010-02-04T02:41:00.000-08:00

Saddened but totally unsurprised by Obama's decision to axe NASA's plan to return humans to the Moon. Feel pretty much as I did twenty years ago; that a tremendous opportunity has been
frittered away.

However (and as wet as this sounds), I have been trying to focus more on the present and immediate past, and look as what we've achieved. I am glad I've seen robotic and planetary missions like Sojourner and Cassini. We have discovered many extrasolar planets, a tremendous achievement. And some of ESA's future robotic projects look very exciting.

As for human spaceflight -- well, I live in hope. The main problem since the end of the Cold War has been a lack of competition. Maybe if China had had a more advanced program or was closer to going to the Moon, Obama's axe wouldn't have fallen so easily.

Also: things change. One never knows what the future might bring, and, as I keep telling myself, just because a government cancels something, doesn't mean the Universe goes away. The moon, Mars and asteriods are still *there*, waiting for us. And we, space artists, still have the vision within us.

We're a young species, preoccupied with adolescent and mostly trivial problems; maybe we got space travel too soon for our limited simian minds to cope with. But I believe that growth is possible. We need learn to think in terms of decades and centuries. Here's to a greater
maturity and an ability to think in the longer term. We, each of us, can be part of that challenge

The end

2010-01-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

I think I am probably going to finish this blog. I wrote a very negative post this morning and I have realised that writing this has stopped being a pleasure and become a burden. I am worried that if I continue in my current vein, this is just going to be a podium for vents and negativity, which is not good for me and not pleasant reading for my readers.

Many thanks for reading, and I may do another blog at some future time. But not now.

Sorry, folks.

Matt.

All change?

2010-01-07T00:32:00.000-08:00

Gotten a little tired of this blog -- so it's either end time or a regeneration. Expect changes soon.

Speaking of regeneration -- well, I enjoyed David Tennant's swansong The End of Time parts one ant two. Had all the usual Russell Davies faults, though; especially an overindulgent, drawn out ending that in my opinion diluted the regeneration's impact. There's a very thin line between tragic and farcical, and it reminded me of Desdemona continuing to complain about being suffocated by Othello long after the deed has been done.

Matt Smith's got a lot to live up to!

Bodily regeneration has always interested me, as has the possibility of reincarnation. It's a metaphor for many of the transforming and self-renewing forces in life. Shape-changing is also associated with Shamanism. Sabine Baring-Gould noted that 'the individual who changes shape is regarded with superstitious reverence, as a being of a higher order -- of a divine nature (The book of Werewolves, Senate, 1995, p. 156).'

This observation is especially interesting when it's remembered that in the show, Doctor Who scorns magic and ghosts, and that Russell Davies is an atheist. This didacticism's long been present; we have 'aliens' that often behave indistinguishably from demons or spirits, and advanced technology that might as well be magic. (and Tennant's doctor encountered the devil at one point). The difference between science and magic in the whoniverse is often merely nominal; so long as you call something 'science,' not 'magic,' it's acceptable, down to hexing, demon-raising, psychokinesis, telepathy, etc. (See the Jon Pertwee story the Demons for an examination of this, and a rather eccentric witch). All very odd for a show that advocates stauch rationalism!

Bruno and homphobia

2009-12-22T01:42:00.000-08:00

Watched the DVD of Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno with the commentary on last night, and it was fun but a little appalling to listen to Sacha describe the levels of violence directed at the character. Apparently people decided Bruno was okay if a little eccentric until they found out he was gay, at which point they often got violent. And watching the interviews he did -- mostly in Kansas, or some other part of middle America -- really saddened me.

At one point, he crashes a 'God Hates Fags' demonstration. This I really don't get. The Jesus in the Bible, I'm pretty sure, wouldn't have held a placard saying that all gays are going to hell. And so we're confronted by this dilemma, or irony, which is a religion based on loving thy neighbour generating high levels of hatred.

I've never really understood homophobia: even when I was at school, which was single sex and a very anti-gay environment, the levels of fear and disgust seemed totally disproportional to the phenomenon in question. I mean utterly disproportional.

It still seems so to me a today. In a world where 100,000 people a day are starving to death, isn't it even a little decadent to worry who goes to bed with whom? In a belief set that favours faith, hope and charity as the three virtues, don't you think worrying about where a penis goes is a little warped?!

I don't believe the rationalisations. There are lots of injunctions and laws in Leviticus, for example, that are not followed today. If Christians are so worried about men sleeping with men because it violates Hebraic law, then why are they not sacrificing sheep every five minutes? The Bible -- or any other sacred text, for that matter -- can and has been used to justify anything. Those supporting apartheid used it; as the saying goes, even the devil can quote scripture to suit his needs.

I think that a lot of fear boils down to dislike of the unlike. It comes down to insularity, ignorance, a pathological fear of the Other, and a tribal assumption that only one lifestyle -- one's own -- is legitimate. As the movie also demonstrated, it also comes down to having no sense of humor or proportion whatsoever.

It distressed me to have to state one thing that seems so obvious to me; that if we really want the kingdom of Heaven on Earth, it won't come through fire and brimstone, but through the exponential growth of humour, compassion, more parties with Jacuzzis and champagne, and good will to all entities.

So there; my Christmas wish to you all!

The sick soul

2009-12-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

Was reading William James' great book Varieties of Religious Experience as part of my research for the book, and was especially struck by the chapter on sick souls. The book is really about far more than what we might normally tag 'religious' experience; a lot of it is really about contrasting philosophies of life, so it includes an entire spectrum from dyed-in-the-wool Atheist materialism to full blown Sainthood.

Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the book here, and there are several online versions of the full text.

What struck me was how my own philosophies are not really those of 'healthy-mindedness' (although I try and emulate the best aspects of this), but are in fact those of a 'sick-soul' in remission. But the remission -- redemption -- of the sick soul, although partial, is crucial and very possible.

Without wishing to sound too self-aggrandizing/pretentious, I think I've suffered too much and too long to ever be truly 'healthy-minded' in the pure sense. Depression is, I believe, not so much a chemical imbalance as an extreme existential situation, where one is confronted with the blackness and brevity of life in all its horror. As James puts it, once one has tasted of the fruit of the tree, and the happiness of Eden never comes again. But what's encouraging is that James also suggests that such redeemed souls end up with a more rounded view than 'healthy-minded' souls ever do, because they have a wider experience of life. Evil and decay are just as much parts of the human experience as good and hope.

And reason, that God of the Secular West, can only take one so far in this situation. In religious terms, it is the 'Dark night of the Soul' where one feels abandoned by God, but it is a situation that is by no means exclusive to the religious or spiritual. I think that atheists and non-religious or spiritual people are just as (maybe more) prone to it; see here for an example.

The problem, as William James noted, is that rationality can only take you so far on the quest for a solution. It can show you the problems of mortality, disease or decay but cannot suggest a solution. (and the problem with being an 'Atheist,' in the broadest sense of rejecting any kind of spirituality whatsoever, is that one is stuck with the problem and has no real hope of a solution).

A persistent solution, struck upon by Tolstoy, John Bunyan and other sick souls, and unfortunately for those disinclined to such things, is a renewed belief (although awareness might be a better word) in or of the non-material or transcendental. This does not have to be 'God.' It does not have to involve any specific or even articulated belief. It is more of a feeling of immanence in nature, of eternity and changlessness behind the material Universe or underpinning it or existing within it. The Buddhists call this Nirvana; Christians call it God. They may even be (partially) rationalised. In the end, this does not matter. 'God' is just a word for those aspects of the Universe we cannot grasp in any other way; if you are too proud of your reason to use that word, use another.

Now these numinous feelings do not make evil, decay or rot go away, but they do allow one to exist and see oneself as part of something larger. This was Tolstoy's solution, after many years of suffering low and suicidal moods. So, to paraphrase the late great Ken Campbell, I find myself believing in something, even if it's nothing. And if this means that some find me 'irrational,' 'unscientific,' etc., I really don't give a toss. If one has to sacrifice all joy in life to an ideal, then it is the ideal that is 'irrational,' not the thing one sacrifices.

A dissident in exile

2009-12-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

"Prisoners and political exiles write books. Would you write a book if you were alone on a desert island? Would you scratch in the sand?"

--Joanna Russ, We Who are About to...

Sombody or other famous once said that writing a book is like falling in love. Not for me it's not; its more like going insane. One must take a trip into dangerous and unstable territory to return with goods you hope are worthwhile.

If -- when -- my book on consciousness is published, and if it isn't ignored, I'm going to annoy a lot of people. Not deliberately; I don't really enjoy a lot of the ritualized aggression of academe, but because my thoughts have strayed some way from the mainstream. Maybe this is another form of madness; I don't know.

One thing I do know is that I'm not alone; others share my madness. They, too, think that conventional theories of mind are not enough. But perhaps this is folie a deux. Certainly my former colleagues in the mainstream would think so. For we really are 'nothing but' a pack of neurons, lumbering robots, zombies without souls....

Maybe. I do not know. But then, scientific solitude has driven me mad. I continue to scratch in the sand, whilst the great, corporate machine rumbles somewhere over the ocean; a rumour, to me.

But there comes a time when the exile returns; this is what I'm preparing to do. And madness isn't so bad -- it feels, at times, like a kind of healing. Arthur Koestler(another lunatic) thought that. He believed that creativity was a kind of extension of the organism's ability to self-repair, to regenerate. So maybe what feels like madness is a kind of cure.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Two Futurist Books

2009-10-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

The first book is James Martin's The Meaning of the 21st Century. This examines the crises that we are facing, which include food and water famines, environmental degradation, overpopulation and climate change. Martin then outlines his scenario for overcoming these problems, and creating a better civilization. He sees the use of new technologies such as AI, nanotechnology and germ-line human engineering as part of the solution. He emphasises that there are solutions to most of the discussed problems.

While I think he's overly optimistic about the technology in places and slags off space travel as a 'delusion', the basic message is I think, sound: we can get through the various crises that threaten our world. He too, thinks that we can have a civilization that lives lightly on the Earth. See also the film preview here.

Charles Cockell's Space on Earth makes the case that space exploration and environmental management should go hand in hand. For example, one challenge of deep space human exploration is to create an environment where everything is recycled. Such techniques could be applied to terrestrial civilization, too. For this and other arguments, read the book!

Jill Tarter on SETI

2009-10-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

Here's an inspiring speech on SETI by Jill Tarter, an American Astronomer and current director of the centre for SETI research. SETI is short for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Tarter's speech manages to cover pretty much all of what this blog is about: a sense of wider perspective.

One hundred percent renewables?

2009-10-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, one hundred percent. Not a measly 20, 50 or 60% but one hundred percent. I believe the best course for our civilization is to end our dependence on fossil fuels. And it appears I'm not alone. See this report here. Our civilization needs to become as self contained as possible, and not suck the Earth of its life-blood.

I want a cleaner, more laid-back civilization. Yes, I'm still for space exploration, but I also think we need to prioritize making a better civilization here, one that rests more lightly on the Earth. I want a world where the population is more or less stable, where large tracts -- ideally 50% (that's right, 50% -- See Edward O.Wilson's Future of Life, chapter seven) is left for other species -- our fellow Earthians -- that we currently treat so badly.

I want a world where no-one, young or old, starves to death. Where everyone has the chance to meet their maximum potential. Where compassion and kindness outweigh cruelty, self-interest and stupidity. A world where slavery -- actual or wage-slavery -- is extinct.

I want a culture that generates more well-being and happiness than misery, anxiety and empty dreams. One that breeds excellent mental health and happiness, and where no-one is considered diposable. One that fosters personal growth rather than forcing people into limiting boxes. That would be a first. And no, I don't think that any ideology on the left or right has come even close to allowing us to achieve any of this (and maybe picking an ideology and sticking to it no matter what is part of the problem....)

We need to go back to basics, and ask what our civilization is for. What are we currently burning so much fossil fuel to achieve? Ah, yes, the economy. That monster each of us must tap a vein to serve. But what is the economy for, exactly -- to allow a small elite to become monstrously rich, whilst the rest of us are anesthetized by vague dreams of wealth and fame? I'm with Trent Reznor on this one; bow down beneath the one you serve, you're going to get what you deserve....

I do not idolize the past; I do not believe the solution is to retreat backwards into an ideal past that never existed. We need to be more creative than that; and combine the best of the past and present with something utterly without precedent. The future lies this way.

Essential Shifts

2009-10-18T00:35:00.000-07:00

To follow up the previous posts, I've been scouring the web for some positive visions. One interesting trend I've noticed is that a number of the more optimistic thinkers (but not all) seem to be women, whereas many (but not all) of the more pessimistic ones tend to be (high-status) males. I think this might be worth further research.

Here are some interesting quotes;

QUOTE: [Marilyn Schlitz Interview] 'And there is this sense of urgency in the times that I think is disruptive to our ability to actually manifest what we are seeking. We are just racing from one solution to another solution. It’s often a like a band-aid operation, whereas what I think really needs to happen is a pausing long enough to ponder. Are we asking the right questions? Have we made the right assumptions here?'

QUOTE: [Elisabet Sahtouris Interview] 'Capitalism isn't democratic. Its money system funnels money from the many to the few. It's a concentrating, some-get-rich-at-the-expense-of-others kind of economics and that's exactly why it has to be changed. Because if we are ever to have something like democracy politically, then we have to have a win-win economic system, rather than a win-lose one. So that's my view of globalization.'

Sahtouris also has a website, and a whole book online that's worth reading.

Whilst some might be skeptical about some of the content of these talks, I think it's important to put whatever reservations one aside and look for ideas that resonate personally as worthwhile. I'm a great believer in using one's nose to sniff out wisdom.

Barbara Marx Hubbard's ideas are worth looking at for this reason. I find Barbara's story interesting because she was able to transform herself profoundly and do something positive;

QUOTE: HUBBARD: 'Just that -- my daughter Woodley said to me, "Mom, you transformed from a cave-age lady to a space-age lady in six months." Because that's when I wrote the letter to the thousand people. I called up Abraham Maslow, and I took him to lunch. I kept taking people to lunch; that was my way. I found you could really call anybody....One point here for everybody to know is that if you get what I call vocational arousal, if you get turned on to a life purpose, and you start following that compass of joy, it will lead you to certain actions, and even if it seems beyond you, if you take them step by step, like writing letters, or making telephone calls, or going to a conference, or meeting somebody, then it opens up, and the result is you become a self-actualizing person. I must say, for all the challenges that are involved with that, it has been a great life for the last thirty years. '

This is surely a positive example to us all.

Optimism: an annotated Primer

2009-10-11T00:35:00.000-07:00

The following is a list of books about personal change and futurology that have helped me immensely. It’s not supposed to be definitive, and betrays my own biases, but I hope it helps!

Cornish, E. (2004) Futuring: the Exploration of the Future. World Future Society: Bethseda, Maryland. Chapter 15, Improving Our Futures, pp. 203—216.
Terrific chapter challenging fatalism about the future on both a personal and societal level by the editor of the Futurist magazine of the World Future Society.

QUOTE: "We as individuals have little power to shape the future of the world, much less the Universe. BUT we do have extraordinary power to improve our own futures, as countless people have demonstrated. We also have appreciable power to improve certain other people's future (p. 205)"

Covey, S.R. (2004 ed.) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful lessons in personal change. Simon & Schuster: London.
Does what it says on the tin. One of the best self-help books that I have read. Emphasises long term, incremental change over quick fixes. Emphasises that any change starts from within.

Frankl, V. (1992) Man’s Search for Meaning. Rider: London.
How human beings can endure just about anything so long as they have a purpose that truly, deeply motivates them. Also critiques fatalism/determinism.

Fuller, R.B. (1970). Utopia or Oblivion. Allen Lane: London.
Fuller, R.B. (1981). Critical Path. St. Martin’s Press: New York.
One of the best examples of a self-fulfilling positive prophecy. Bucky Fuller, inventor, architect, geometer, poet. At 32, after a string of business failures, decided to live his life as an experiment to see what one man could do to benefit all Earthians. An example to us all.

Heller, S. & Steele, T. (1987). Monsters and Magical Sticks: There’s No such thing as Hypnosis? Falcon Press: Phoenix, Arizona.
Why the incessant negativity of much of our media-saturated culture is dangerous for both individuals and society. In short, everything ‘is’ hypnosis, and what I say three times is true.

Huber, C. (2001). There is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate. Keep it Simple Books.
A good book on self-compassion by a Zen Buddhist monk. Most hatred is really self-hatred, and the battering must stop.

Wilson, R.A. (1980). Ten good reasons to get out of bed in the morning in. The Illuminati Papers. And/Or Press: Berkeley, CA., pp.50—57.
Funny, optimistic, wise and very heretical; one of the great futurists/humourists of the age. An antidote to every kind of negativity. Previewed in google books here.

QUOTE: "Stalin's paranoia as a self-fulfilling prophecy: so was Bucky fuller's optimism (p. 51)."

An optimist by Choice

2009-10-10T01:38:00.001-07:00

One of the things I've noticed repeatedly in my research for my book on consciousness is a persistent thread of pessimism in Western Secular 'scientific thought.' More specifically, it's the idea that adopting an entirely 'scientific' view of the world inevitably leads to a view of the Universe as pointless, alien, sterile, etc.

I came across two of the most blatant examples of this in a book named Will Storr versus the Supernatural. In between some fairly colourful experiences with Ghost hunters, Storr consulted a mainstream philosopher and a psychologist to get the scientific take on the soul. The psychologist informed him that ‘we are zombies leading meaningless lives’ and that ‘emotions and free will are just an illusion we have to stop us blowing our brains out.* ’ The philosopher informed him that ‘a human being is just a momentary flicker, or wisp of organisation in the universe, not part of a pattern. If you look at other human lives, like babies writhing in chemotherapy, you see something that isn’t designed at all. ’ If this really is the proper, 'scientific' way of looking at things, then small wonder people turn their backs on science!

But actually, I do not believe that this sort of view is an inevitable one, even for those who have rejected religion or even spirituality as a source of inspiration for their lives. It's important to realise that a conclusion like 'the Universe is Pointless' is not a scientific fact but an inference drawn from an (often limited and biased) set of observations about the Universe. (It begs a lot of questions as well. Would a Universe with a point be a worthy thing? What is a 'point' anyway? Also, some Universes with 'points' might be worse than Universes without them e.g. if we decided or discovered that God was akin to a sadistic dictator who loved torturing his creations. Actually, some bits of Dante do almost read like a visit to a concentration camp....)

Secondly, the above statements are hardly emotionally neutral, and are actually significantly negative. Do we really need someone or something outside ourselves to give us meaning and purpose? Are we really that lacking in our own confidence or imagination?

Listen, I am hardly a stranger to negative thought. I have suffered from depression for a long time; severe depression that has at times in the past reached suicidal levels. It is for this reason that I realise that such views are actually quite dangerous.

But the psychologist, I believe, is actually wrong about something; I do not believe that free will -- at least in the sense of being able to choose between attitudes and actions -- is an illusion. I believe that we do, in fact, have a choice about how we approach the world. And I also think that if we take the step and refocus our minds, then the Cosmos begins to appear differently. And I think that, in this time of great challenge for humanity, we are more likely to win through on both personal and global levels with a robust, realistic optimism than with such unremitting pessimism.

And I'm actually sick of pessimism. It's vomited from newspapers, the mainstream media and far too many places and people already. Bureaucracy breeds it; a slave-attitude broods it. Our noosphere is polluted with bloody pessimism. There's more than enough pessimism and defeat to go around so screw it; let's choose to be optimistic and see what happens!

So here's my challenge for this week, folks; try to react to the world in a more open, compassionate way. Drop your negativity and defeat and see what happens. Optimists have more fun, anyway. I leave you with a YouTube clip of the late 'guru' and 'crank,' Robert Anton Wilson.

* And I can't help point out the contradiction in this statement. If emotions and free will are just illusions to stop us blowing our brains out, this implies that we have the ability to recognize them as such, not be fooled and blow our brains out. But this implies some kind of choice aka free will. such blatant contradictions are very common amongst those who deny any kind of free will! All I can say is that I'm glad I never visited this psychologist when I was depressed; he might have tipped me over the edge....

The wisdom of Bucky Fuller

2009-10-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

Having a sinus infection, I've been sitting around reading lots, and last night I thought I'd flick through some of Bucky Fuller's works, as I always do when I want a blast of optimism. Fuller was really the last of the nineteenth century thinkers, in that he was eclectic, widely and deeply self-taught and in short led a life like a comic-book inventor/scientist. He was also a poet.

One of the keys to his thinking is the rejection of the idea that there's not enough to go around for everyone. This idea is held by those on the left AND the right, by both conservatives and radicals. Fuller believed that they are both wrong.

"Humanity's cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity and star (99 percent Sun)- distributed cosmic dividends of waterpower, tidal power, wavepower, windpower, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vulcanism and so on. Humanity's present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one percent of the rate of its energy income. (Critical path, 1980, p. xvii.)"

Fuller thought that we could "live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending its cosmic-energy savings account (e.g. fossil fuels) or spending its cosmic capital plant and equipment account (i.e. atomic energy) -- the atoms with which our spaceship Earth and its biosphere are structured and equipped (p. xvii, op. cit)"

How was the move from fossil to the 'cosmic-energy income account' to come about -- political lobbying? Absolutely not. Fuller thought it counter-productive to try and alter human beings.

He resolved "never to attack or oppose undesirable socioeconomic phenomena, but instead [commit] myself to evolving and cultivating tools that would accomplish humanity's necessitous tasks in so much easier, more pleasant, and more effective ways that, without thinking about it, the undesirable ways would be abandoned by society.... (op.cit. p.146)."

I must admit to have gown very bored with the mainstream responses to our energy needs. The proffered options seem to come down with either more of the (potentially catastrophic) burn-and-spend or to become misers shivering around a candle. Both seem to me to be very unintelligent responses to the problems we face. I think that they come down to an inability to imagine and move toward a better world; but then we should remember that many antebellum slave-owners could not conceive how the economy would run without slaves.

And as Fuller said, 'the best way to oppose something is to make it obsolete.'

Wake Up! Wake up!

2009-09-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the extended absence -- life has been rather busy lately. On the writing front, I'm several chapters into my book on consciousness. This is proving to be quite rewarding, if hard work. At the very least, I'm learning a hell of a lot about psychology and neuroscience. If -- when -- it gets published, it will no doubt annoy some people, but c'est la vie....

On the US human space flight front: I'm afraid I have some rather bad vibes about this. Obama has never struck me as being especially pro-space, despite some of his claims in the later stages of the election campaign. No-one seems to agree on anything on NASAwatch, so I guess we'll have to wait for the announcements. Still, just because congress or the President cancel something, doesn't mean that everyone else has to turn their attentions inwards. The stars and planets are still there, waiting for us....

On attaining Buddhahood: Well, not quite, but I've been following a meditation programme outlined by B. Alan Wallace in his book The Attention Revolution. The primary result so far has been to outline how cluttered and wild my mind is. This is apparently progress.... It's also made me more conscious of living in a world/culture of chronic distaction.

BTW, The latter two photographs are from a recent visit to the British museum in London. The Buddha is from Thailand and I think the man with his tongue out is from the Pacific....

The God Warrior, Religion and other Inflamatory topics

2009-09-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

I've written one or two posts in the past that have been critical of the New Atheism championed by the likes of Richard Dawkins, etc, so I think it's more than fair to have a pop at the excesses of religious belief. The above was posted by a friend on mine on Facebook, because he found it funny. By contrast, I found it very scary.

Of course, she's acting up for the camera. But it's salutary to remember that sizable portions of people (portions of sizeable people?) in the US have views that are as extreme as this, even if they're not as strongly stated. Pretty much, Non-Christians = Satanists. No wonder skepticism's comparatively more extreme over there. I just feel sorry for her kids.

The Lost Moon of Venus

2009-08-27T00:29:00.000-07:00

"An observation of the planet Venus, October 23, 1740. --- Directing a reflecting telescope of 16.5 inches towards Venus, I perceived a small star pretty nigh her; upon which I took another telescope of the same focal distance and found her to be 10 degrees 2 minutes zero seconds [Sic.] .... I put on the magnifying power of 240 times, and to my great surprise found this star put on the same phasis with Venus. Its diameter seemed about a third, or somewhat less, of the diameter of Venus...." (Quoted in Webb, TW, Nature 14: 193--195, 1876.)

As any astronomer will tell you, this observation is problematic because Venus doesn't have a satellite. Neith, the hypothetical satellite of Venus, was spotted by the eminent Astronomer Cassini in 1672 and 1686. (Cassini discovered the famous Cassini division in Saturn's rings in 1675). The satellite was also seen by some pretty competent observers in 1645, 1672,1686, 1740,1761 and 1764. The quote above was condensed from the celebrated observation by optician Mr. James Short.

Telescopy, especially in former centuries, was fraught with errors. Under certain circumstances, "ghosts" may form in the eyepiece of the telescope; maybe Short was just seeing a double image of Venus herself. However, as Webb points out, Neith was spotted by some pretty competent observers, who must have been familiar with such problems. Were they all mistaken?

If the sightings of Neith were not telescopic errors, what could the observers have been seeing? As Bill Corliss (1979) points out, temporary moonlets are not permitted; maybe instead they saw a faint star or asteroid. As this distance in time, we'll never know.

Unfortunately, other astronomers were never able to see Neith and not one space probe has ever seen any trace of her. The sightings of Neith must therefore be archived as a peculiar footnote in the history of Astronomy.

Reference
Corliss, W.R. (1979) Mysterious Universe: A handbook of Astronomical Anomalies. Sourcebook Project: Glen Arm. Neith discussed in pp.136--143.

Cosmic Citizen eaten by Tyrannosaurus

2009-08-25T00:42:00.000-07:00

We regret to announce that, on a foray to the Upper Cretaceous, Matt Colborn was eaten by a tyrannosaurus. His camera was recovered, and the last images have been published. Many are joining the euphoric celebrations in Trafalgar square.

Some cynical souls have claimed that his demise is simply a publicity stunt and a cheap ploy to increase readership of his blog. They point out that time travel is impossible, and the photographs look suspiciously like a large model head that's currently on display at his place of work, Peterborough museum. But what do they know?!

Dark Days, Ice falls, Firestorms, Rare Halos, Mirages, Anomalous Rainbows

2009-08-22T01:33:00.000-07:00

One of my life-long ambitions is to build a comprehensive library of scientific anomalies, simply because I find them fascinating. One of my heroes in this field is Bill Corliss, who has been at work for decades, combing scientific journals and cataloging new discoveries and unknowns.

Check out Science Frontiers for an overview of 'the Sourcebook project.' The sheer breadth of the anomalies he's collected is very, very wide. One realises that the 'traditional' mysteries beloved of the tabloids (UFOs, monsters and ghosts/psychic powers) are only a tiny corner of a vast country of the unknown.

For some reason, I find the meteorological oddities among the most interesting. I suppose this is an extension of being English and naturally weather-obsessed. If I had the choice of anomaly to experience, it would be a fall of fishes or frogs. I mean, there's something so wonderfully surreal about being rained on by small animals. Check out the climax of the movie Magnolia to see what I'm on about.

Meantime, the pic above is of a rather pretty double rainbow, shot in Bourne, Lincolnshire yesterday afternoon. Corliss lists the following wierdnesses in conjunction with rainbows;

Unusual Multiple Rainbows

GEB2 Intersecting Rainbows

GEB3 Lunar Rainbows with Offset White Arcs and Bows

GEB4 Red Rainbows

GEB5 Moving Rainbows...

GEB6 Solar Rainbows with Offset White Arcs

GEB7 Lunar Rainbows Transforming to Disks

GEB8 Radial Streaks Crossing Rainbows

GEB9 Rainbows Perturbed by Thunder and Lightning

GEB10 Anomalous Fogbows...

GEB11 Anomalous Dewbows, Cloud bows, Horizontal Rainbows

GEB12 Sandbows

GEB13 Rainbows Parallel to the Horizon

GEB14 Purple Rainbows

GEB15 Supernumerary Rainbows

GEB16 Prismatic Pillars at the Foot of the Rainbow

GEB17 The Dark Space between Primary and Secondary Rainbows

GEB18 Grossly Distorted Rainbows

GEB19 Rainbows Dividing Sky Colors

GEB20 The Odor of the Rainbow

Double White Rainbows

Tertiary Rainbows

Polarization of Rainbow Light

Segments of Greyish Light in the Sky

Unexplained Dark Lines in the Sky

We really do know screw all about the Planet and Cosmos that we inhabit. Let's all put a bit of wonder back into our lives by opening our eyes a little bit more. As Charles Fort said, one can pick up on a reality by its frogs. And if you know what that means, you're a smarter critter than I....

Mars visions

2009-08-09T03:27:00.001-07:00

For the 12th Annual Mars Society Conference, July 30 - August 2, 2009, a Slide Show was prepared of selected images by IAAA members and fellows. Two of my images were included, including the above, MEM arrival (2009), which depicts the arrival of two Mars Excusion Modules on the Red Planet. See also the Mars Society page here.

...and Doctor Who's next destination is also Mars. See the trailer here for this Autumn's special episode!

Fountain of Youth?

2009-08-07T01:16:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest; if someone offered me a means of extending both lifespan and healthspan that was well-tested and relatively free of dangerous side effects, I would take it. I suspect that many of us would. But doubts set in when I think of the wider implications of life-extension.

Firstly, and despite claims that we are 'the last mortal generation,' it's important to note that there is currently no technology, technique or medicine that has been demonstrated to significantly extend the ultimate human lifespan. By this I mean that no technique or technology has supplied us with populations of people in their 120s, 30s, 40s, etc. The oldest recorded woman died on the 4th of August 1997 aged 122 years, 164 days, but she and people like her are very much statistical outliers. I'd really get excited if we regularly started getting pensioners in their 120s.

Second, extended life span does not necessarily mean extended youth. In Greek myth, Eos requested that the mortal Tithonus be granted eternal life, but forgot to ask also for eternal youth. Eventually, old age and senility caught up with him, and Eos tired of her lover. I suspect that when people wish for immortatily, they really wish for eternal youth. But if -- and even if not -- life extension becomes possible, I think we'd be better start mending our attitudes to old age.

Third, and this is something also often missed in such debates, there is a distinction between life extension and immortality (although there's a blurry line between the two). Life extension means, initially at least, extending the period of good health and their ultimate life span, at first by a period of a few years or decades. Immortality means living forever. And this really is a sod of a long time. I suspect that we who measure our lives in years and decades (and often not even that) really have no conception of what it might be like to really live 500, 10,000 or a million years (and this is just the tiniest portion of eternity.)

What do you think? If you were offered life extension pill, would you take it? Just what would you be willing to sacrifice for a longer life? And how long do you think you could bear to live as a human?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

2009-08-01T02:02:00.000-07:00

("Who watches the Watchmen?," Juvenal).

Finally got to see the live-action version of the Watchman comic yesterday. Watchmen (2009), directed by Jack Snyder, concerns the lives of a group of retired and not so retired superheroes in an alternative 1985. It seems the end of the world is coming, via a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, someone is killing off masked vigilantes, starting with a fairly unpleasant character known as the Comedian, who is thrown out of the window of his New York apartment block.

I've been a fan of the comic, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, for a long time. Both Moore and Gibbons are masters of their craft, and together created a world that was complex, layered and three-dimensional. I was going to say realistic -- but I don't think it's quite the right word, for even the Watchmen universe, which attempts to rewrite the superhero universe in a deeper way, is pretty stylized.

This is not a criticism; as Moore points out, one can do things with comics one cannot do with any other media. This was a big reason why he opposed movie versions of his work. And seeing the total hash the movie moguls made of his other comic, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- I couldn't help but agree. The latter film was castrated by Hollywood bigotry, sexism and cliches, and the result really did stink. So I was more than a little cautious about watching Snyder's Watchmen.

On the whole, I was pleasantly surprised. The movie was pretty faithful to the book, and managed to capture the mood of Moore & Gibbon's work. They were very wise to keep the 1985 setting, because the whole history of the Watchmen is bound up with the Second World war, Vietnam and the Cold War, and this would not have made so much sense if updated to today. The vigilantes in Watchmen are as mortal as you or I, with the exception of Dr. Manhattan. So yes, thumbs up, but it's no substitute for reading the original.

The Watchman comic also has an interesting space art connection. Dave Gibbons came across a copy of Ron Miller & Bill Hartmann's The Grand Tour: A traveller's guide to the solar system, and was captivated by the Mars chapter. One extraordinary coincidence was the photograph of the Gallo crater, which resembled a smiley face. A smiley face, splattered with blood, is one of the recurrent symbols in Watchmen.

In Watchmen, the desolation of Mars is used as a contrast with transient human life. Dr. Manhattan, who can see his past and future, and is moving beyond humanity, sees human dealings as tiny and insignificant beside the unlife of Mars; "In my opinion," he says, life is "a highly overrated phenomenon. Mars gets along perfectly without so much as a microorganism ... See: there's the South Pole now... no life, no life at all, but giant steps, ninety feet high, scoured by dust and changing wind into a constantly changing topographical map, and flowing an shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand feet wide." Would it, he asks, be improved by an oil pipeline?

Would it, indeed?

Reference
Morton, O. (2002) Mapping Mars. London.

The Prisoner

2009-07-27T01:31:00.000-07:00

They've finally gone and done it. Here comes a re-imagining of the classic spy thriller The Prisoner(1967). This show completely warped my imagination when I first watched the re-runs at nineteen years old.

A spy resigns, and finds himself a captive in a village where everybody is a number. Cue Number Two, who wants to find out why he resigned. Superficially, the village is 'nice,' with friendly neighbours, a good climate, bright costumes and a beach. Underneath lies the machinery of power, and the Villagers are mostly puppets, manipulated by drugs, high-tech torture and mind-control.

Patrick McGoohan, the star and creator of the show, said that he was fascinated by the theme of imprisonment in a democratic society. In the Village, much of the coercion is 'soft' or hidden. You can do what you want, so long as it's what the rest of us want.... In one episode, the Prisoner remarks; Suppose I don't want flowers? to which the reply, happy and bubbling, is; 'Everybody wants flowers.' And if you don't maybe you need brainwashing or lobotomising until you do....

Like the best TV, the original Prisoner pursued me beyond the screen; England, heavily serveilled and superficially 'nice,' often feels like an 'E' class prison. But questions are a burden to others, answers a prison for oneself. Lets hope this new version lives up to the spirit of the original.

Be seeing you!

Welcome, and Feedback Request

2009-07-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

Wow. I'm on a training course for a few days, my little Blog's visited by upwards of 18,000 people, I've 13 new followers and there's been a significant debate on a post! I obviously need to do this more often!

Since Cosmic Citizen has some new readers, I thought it might be good to outline my rather vague mandate, and to request some feedback.

The topics covered here are wide but often interrelated. They range from science fact and fiction, fantasy, futurology, philosophy, space, space art, exploration and consciousness. Of course, a good way of getting a flavor of these topics is to read past posts.

I also use this blog to signpost my space art, which is viewable on my International Space Art Network page. I will be expanding my portfolio in the coming weeks and months. Feedback on this is welcome, also, especially since I'm still really a beginner in this department.

In the past, I've also discussed controversial science, namely parapsychology, but I'm going to lay off that a little here, and restrict this to guest blogs on other sites. (See my recent guest blog on Paranormalia.) The main reason for this is that this topic tends to inflame tempers, either way, and the debates can get very messy and tend up to go nowhere. Whilst I'm a fan of diverse opinion and healthy debate, debates on the paranormal tend to feel like bashing one's head against a brick wall and I'd rather do that somewhere else. On the other hand, anomalies are such a part of how frontier science is done that it would be silly to ignore these completely. See Bill Corliss' first rate Science Frontiers pages if you don't believe me.

Finally, feedback: it would be really, really good if any readers out there would talk to me. Tell me what you like, what you don't like. Tell me especially about any posts you've particularly enjoyed, and what you'd like to see more of. I really enjoyed reading the debate on Apollo, which showed that I've got some very intelligent and well-informed readers. I'd love to hear more of your wisdom.

Thanks for your readership, and best wishes,

Matt.

Deep Blue Day

2009-07-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

Brian Eno's 'Deep Blue Day,' originally composed for a documentary, For All Mankind, directed by Al Reinert, released in 1989. The track recoded from this movie are on Eno's excellent 1983 album, Apollo: atmospheres and soundtracks. Good Sunday listening.

From the Earth to the Moon

2009-07-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

Image: NASA/ Project Apollo Archive.

On this day in 1969; Apollo 11 was still between the Earth and the Moon, on the 'Trans Lunar coast.' The image, taken from the excellent Apollo Archive, shows the Earth and the Lunar Module.

'From the Earth to the Moon;' what a Romantic concept.The Apollo 11 crew were enacting the flight of Jules Verne's fictional Columbiad from his duology of novels, From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1870). Took pretty much 100 years, but we made it in the end....

There's a fascinating page on Encyclopedia Astronautica comparing the Verne Moon Gun and project Apollo. In reality, the Command module of Apollo 11 was named Columbia, perhaps partly influenced by the name of Verne's vessel.

There are some significant differences between the fictional and actual voyages, but also some eerie similarities. For example, Verne's vessel also takes off from Florida, and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean! See the Astronautica article for more correspondences. The main difference between Apollo and the Verne was that the latter used a big gun to shoot the lunar vessel -- which critics agree, would have squashed the crew flat! Still, what an amazing work of prescience.

Sadly, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite died yesterday. He covered the Lunar landings, and was a household name in America.

One of my favorite...

2009-07-16T00:37:00.001-07:00

...scenes from season four of Doctor Who. David, we'll miss you when you're gone!

Apollo 11, we have Liftoff!

2009-07-15T23:57:00.001-07:00

On this day in 1969, 13:32 UTC (9:32 a.m. local time) forty years ago, Apollo 11 took off for the Moon. Inside were Mission Commander Neil Armstrong, 'Buzz' Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins. The command module was called Eagle, the Lunar Module, Columbia.

Throngs of people watched the launch from Cape Kennedy, millions more on TV, including President Richard Nixon from the White House. The journey to orbit took twelve minutes, and after one and a half orbits, the third stage kicked the spacecraft on the way to the Moon.

Source: Wikpedia, Photo: NASA.

Cosmic Citizen on the Space Show

2009-07-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Citizen got asked to go on the Space Show, a regular podcast hosted by Dr. David Livingstone. This was in part because of a comment I posted on the Space Cynics blog in April, but we ended up talking about space art, science fiction and even James Bond! I'm posting a number of links related to this chat to help listeners find some of the organizations and books referred to in the discussion.

The Space Show Edition;

July 12 , 2009 Space Show.

Organizations;

The Int ernational Association of Astronomical Artists. From their manifesto; "Space art serves the most basic function of fine art, that of inspiration. It directs our focus toward the space frontier, where human destiny inevitably lies." I've been an artist member of this organization since 2007. Highly recommended for aspiring and professional space artists.
The British Interplanetary Society.... "serves both space flight professionals and those with a general interest in space flight and astronautics. The Society has a worldwide membership, and is actively devoted to supporting forward looking policies and visionary thinking towards the advancement of space flight." Founded in 1933, an excellent UK resource for space.

Books;

Edwards, B. & Raitt, D. (2006) Running the Line: stories of the space elevator. Contains my story, 'Scars' and a winning painting by IAAA fellow Richard Bizley. Stories are the top entries to the 2005 Clarke-Bradbury competition.

Hartmann, W., Miller, R. & Lee, P. (1989) Out of the Cradle. Workman. A really good book putting forward some well-reasoned arguments on why we need the space option. Has loads of cracking art from Bill Hartmann, Ron Miller and Pamela Lee.

Clarke, A. C. (1979) The Fountains of Paradise. Victor Gollancz: London. A great space elevator novel by the late Sir Arthur C.Clarke. Won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Fleming, I. (1955) Moonraker. London.The third James Bond novel, about a souped-up V2 with ex-Nazis. Great stuff!

Baxter, S. (1997) Voyage. Victor Gollancz: London. What if.... instead of the shuttle, Nixon chose the Mars option? A brilliant novel of alternative space history.

Bradbury, R. (1950) The Martian Chronicles. Doubleday: New York. Terrific fantasy about the colonization of Mars.

Bova, B. (2005) Powersat. London. An SF thriller about the first solar power satellite. Exciting and action packed.

Anderson, P. (1970) Tau Zero. London. Brakes kaput, an interstellar ramship hurtles closer to the speed of light.... Link above is to edition with the Dominic Harman cover.

New Space:

The Space Cynics comment I made, with responses here.

McGowan, J.F. (May 11, 2009) Cheap access to space: lessons from past breakthroughs. The Space Review Website, accessed on 13 July 2009. Excellent little article on the way forward for New Space, and developing an orbital capability.

Friedman, L. & Blamont, J. (2008) A new paradigm for a New Vision of Space. In an era of severe budgetry constraints, the authors suggests the internationalization of space exploration by creating "a new paradigm of sharing." This would bring the resources and expertise of different nations as well as companies and organizations from around the world to bear on the challenges of space.

Enjoy!

Children of Earth

2009-07-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

Aaah, Torchwood. It's tried so hard to be a dark and 'adult' version of Doctor Who. With the latest, five day epic, 'Children of Earth,' I think that they finally got there, which is rather sad -- because from the way it finished, it's going to be rather hard to resurrect.

'Adult' doesn't mean sex n'violence -- it means depth and sophistication. The first couple of seasons of Torchwood -- which were both good in parts -- often aspired to the latter, and ended up with the former. 'Children of Earth,' running for five hours over five days, managed to be far darker and more horrific because it relied on implication, and on some fairly amoral characters beng led to some bleak unmoral territory. And the result ranks up there with the best of classic SF Television.

Great Horror plants a finger on the nerve of any given era. Bram Stoker did it in Dracula, with a foreign Count who led Victorian ladies into nocturnal cavorting and haemosexuality. Invasion of the Body Snatchers did it by captured the raging paranoia of both the small town and 1950s America. And Russell T. Davies does it by playing on current anxieties about our children.

We're pretty paranoid about young children at the best of times; which is understandable, because humans come with a deep, biological need to protect the next generation. In the UK, however, this protective paranoia has become inflated to almost monstrous proportions. The young, prepubescent children of the affluent must be protected from everything, at all costs; from asthma, child molesters, bacteria, bullying, injury and maybe from themselves. But then, there's the other side of childhood -- the children of the estates, the skivers, the truants, the vandals, the graffiti-artists, who mutate from overprotected angels to social menaces in a very few years. What's to be done about then?

Enter the aliens, known only as 456, who materialize in a sealed glass vat, periodically flailing in rage and squirting suptum on the windows. They demand ten percent of the Children of Earth. And a closed, secret committee of government cold-bloodedly decides to use this situation to deal with the social problems mentioned above. After all, one of the politicians asks, what are the league tables for?

And the use the aliens have for the children.... Again, much is implied, but what little is shown would make any parent scream. And this is what great horror is. It finds that nerve, and it squeezes. If Torchwood has to end, perhaps it's good that it's on such a powerful note.

Whitey's on the Moon

2009-07-10T01:58:00.000-07:00

The BBC has been airing a series of programmes to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Apollo. Last night, I watched the BBC Horizon programme, presented by physicist Brian Cox. Click here to watch the show in full. Cox recounted how he'd grown up with Apollo on TV, via BBC science presenters like Patrick Moore, James Burke and Reg Turnhill, and how this had inspired him into science. As often happens, I found the Apollo story very moving and, like Cox, the clips reminded me of why I'd first become interested in space.

I was born in 1973, shortly after humans had abandoned the Moon. Interest in the space programme had already waned, and Americans had apparently become bored with seeing Astronauts collect rocks on another world. There were other, more pressing priorities on Earth, including a very pricey war in Vietnam, and Senator Mondale had made his speech about not being able to spend more money on space whilst rivers were polluted and children were starving. These sentiments were succinctly expressed by Gill Scott Heron in his song, 'Whitey's on the Moon;'

Was all that money I made las' year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)

These issues have always dogged my interest in space. When I was a kid, I just dismissed them; after all space was exciting, whereas helping poor people seemed very boring. Fortunately (?!) I've somewhat modified my views on this since then, but would point out that we spend orders of magnitude more building weapons to kill each other than we do sending things into space. And I'd rather have missile scientists building rockets than nuclear bombs. (Of course, sadly, in the real world, the same companies and scientists building weapons of mass destruction are also contracted to NASA.... But cut the space programme and they'd still be building the weapons. Maybe nothing in this life can be entirely pure....)

Still, I agree with Brian Cox that doing things like going to the Moon are worthwhile because it pushes us to be better than we are. Doing good on Earth is one thing, and very important, but it's not enough for me, and its not incompatible with space. I want -- I need -- to be part of a humanity that seeks and explores, and breaks boundaries. And this is very far from being a shameful thing.

And finally, for all you Torchwood saddoes out there -- the last episode's tonight. I do hope it's not going to be the last ever, because this series has been the best so far -- albeit truncated. So sad Eva Miles isn't in it from now on. We're Torchwood, here's my shiny teeth....

Buzz Aldrin interview

2009-07-04T02:19:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be good to join the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landings, and I found this in-depth interview with Buzz Aldrin on Youtube. It raises many salient points, including the origin of Michael Jackson's famous 'Moonwalk,' and a reply to those conspiracy theorists who think the Moon was a fake.

Bradbury on the Challenger in 1986

2009-06-27T00:50:00.000-07:00

The Martian Chronicles

2009-06-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

"There was the smell of time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down on hollow box lids, and rain."

--From the Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles (1950) has been one of the most influential books in my life. A long-term project of mine has been to illustrate this book.

Its popularity belies its sheer strangeness. Bradbury mixes many of the pulp cliches of Martian canals, glittering cities, rocket ships and telepathy into a fever-dream of colonization. The first time I read the stories -- at the age of twelve or so -- I didn't really know what to make of them. The world Bradbury described seemed so different from the rationalistic futures of Clarke or Heinlein (which I also loved.)

The opening chapters are maybe the weirdest, especially the story where the astronauts arrive and are greeted by Martians with names like Mrs Ttt and Mr. Uuu who think they're raving lunatics. Then there's the Green Morning, where a 21st Century Johnny Appleseed travels to Mars, scattering seeds which grow into trees overnight. My favorite tale is probably the Off Season, where the veteran of the fourth expedition to Mars sets up a burger stall and ends up inheriting a good portion of the planet. His triumph though, is Phyrric.

In Bradbury's stories, the astronauts sail, not to barren ball of rock, but into their own psyches. In this sense, Bradbury's work is closer to the musings of writers like Stanislaw Lem in Solaris, who use outer space as a mirror for humanity. Bradbury's work, like Lem's, suggests that in exploring outer space, we end up exploring ourselves. And what we find is not always flattering.

"They were passing a little white chess city, and in his frustration, in his rage, he sent six bullets crashing amongst the crystal towers. The city dissolved in a shower of ancient glass and splintered quartz. It fell away like carved soap, shattered. It was no more."

The story is also a critique of the worst aspects of colonization, but ends with cautious optimism. A wise man and his family, having survived the atomic wars that have consumed Earth, takes his children to see the Martians. They end up peering at their own reflection in a canal.

Reference

Edwards, M. & Holdstock. R. (1983). Realms of Fantasy. Dragon's World: London. This book has a great chapter on Mars in fantasy fiction, exploring the work of Bradbury, Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and Leigh Brackett.

Guest blog on Paranormalia

2009-06-20T02:21:00.000-07:00

I've written a guest blog over on Robert McLuhan's Paranormalia blog. For the record, although I'm not a 'skeptic,' I don't self-define as a 'believer' either. Firstly, because I try to make decisions based on evidence, not on belief, and second, because I find categorizing people as EITHER skeptics OR believers simplistic in the extreme. We're all 'skeptics' about some things or 'believers' about others. My advice, as ever, is that people should think for themselves and not be bullied by domineering voices.

http://www.paranormalia.com/

Having said this, I think that there's more than enough evidence for some psi effects to justify further research, and that the skeptical assertion that parapsychology amounts to one hundred years of nothing is simply wrong. The problem is that the case for the prosecution, the 'skeptical' side, seems to be the only one seriously discussed in science magazines. I think that in any controversy, both sides should receive a fair hearing.

[An exercise for my readers: Define 'fair' hearing. For example, would giving creationists equal footing with evolutionary biologists an equal standing and right to reply be fair? And if not, how far should one go to support contrary voices? On the other hand, why should mainstream voices be the only ones given a fair hearing e.g. on issues like climate change? And if we decide to censor, who does the censoring? I do not have easy answers to any of these questions.]

Above the government, beyond the law....

2009-06-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

....I think that's quite enough tosh to be getting on with, don't you...?

'Bright' Greens and Spaceship Earth

2009-06-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

Seems like I'm not the only one with conservationist leanings who has serious problems with the Environmental movement. Check out Ross Robertson's essay on the bright green movement, and "ideology based on the belief that the convergence of technological change and social innovation provides the most successful path to sustainable development (Wikipedia)." This is fairly close to my own views.

In addition, I think that we have to accept that ecosystems that currently coexist and indeed support human beings are, in Robertson's words 'on surveillance and life support.' Broadly speaking, I support the proposals set out by Edward O.Wilson in his book, The Future of Life. These begin with the suggestion that people-first critics and environmentalists first disarm, and then cooperate. He goes on to suggest a program that includes; the salvaging of the world's biological hotspots, keeping intact the five remaining frontier forests, concentrating on the river and lake systems as especially vulnerable, define the marine hotspots, complete the mapping of global biodiversity, making conservation profitable and use biodiversity as part of this, initiate restoration projects to increase the percentage of the land surface alloted to nature, increase the capacity of zoos as havens for endangered species, clone endangered species and support population planning.

A number of these suggestions will no doubt annoy both traditional environmentalists AND people-firsters. Environmentalists may dislike the idea of zoos, using biotech and commercializing biodiversity, and people-firsters will probably dislike the idea of restricting human activities in some parts (half?) of the Earth and paying for it. Both, I think, fail to grasp the essential facts.

Fact: The human race is at the moment restricted to one reasonably small portion of one planetary surface. Seven-tenths of 'Earth' is under water, one continent is a frozen wasteland and a good portion of the rest is mountains and deserts. There really is very little land to waste, and in such a situation the nature which remains must be managed, or it will simply be devoured by the human machine.

(According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the World, projected to 06/14/09 at 07:17 GMT (EST+5) is 6,786,442,361 ...And counting).

Fact: we simply do not know how much damage we can do to this planet before it becomes uninhabitable for human beings. Ask an ecological scientist. Go on! And yet we continue to behave as if the resources of the Earth are infinite in both extent and in regenerative ability. This is in part because we've inherited attitudes from a time of far lower population, when, if we seriously damaged a location, we could move on. But settled civilizations have been paying the price for environmental collapse for a very long time. See Jared Diamond's Collapse.

The tiny size of our planet was brought home to me (ironically enough, given its rather negative green credentials!) by a plane flight from the UK to California. In a matter of hours, we crossed the Atlantic and the whole of the continental USA. One saw ocean, the patchwork farmland of the settled East, the Western mountains, canyons and desert in a matter of hours. For some reason, this particular flight stuck with me, and I grasped emotionally the tiny size of our world.

Think of the Earth as a spaceship in which we all live, which has a very efficient life support system. Imagine that we and the other biota of the Earth passengers in this spacecraft, and that we have no real idea of how the life-support systems work. Then imagine that our fellow passengers decide to start breaking up the life-support system so that they can do a little spare-parts trading. They start to tinker, and things seem okay, so their fellows let them get on with it. But gradually, one becomes aware of a stuffiness in the air, and that one's breath is tight. A couple of our fellow passengers die. And one wonders; which particular part of the life support system is the really crucial one?

technoconservatism, space and radical politics....

2009-06-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

All this space business has got me thinking about the technology-politics of the counterculture, and where my own views fit in. Long-time readers of this blog -- should there be any, ha-ha! might remember that I come out as a left-wing libertarian on the political compass test. Even though I find this not entirely satisfactory (socialism appeals less and less every day one lives under a paternalistic Labour Government), it's a first-order approximation. And although I wouldn't class myself as an anarchist per se, some but not all of their ideas interest me. (For those who think anarchy = chaos, read up a bit on anarchist literature before judging, OK?)

My problem is this; it seems to me that the prevailing tenor of radical thought these days tends to be technoconservative. This means a fairly wholesale rejection of new technologies like GM or nanotechnology. To see what I mean, access Mae Wan Ho's Science in Society magazine, which consists almost entirely of critiques of such emerging technologies.

I do not mean to dismiss these critiques out of hand, just the reverse; they are important counter-arguments to the technophiles who think that new technology will solve all of our problems and contribute to a new nirvana. This seems breathtakingly naive to me. And some of the counter arguments for some of the technologies are for me reasonably persuasive; see, for example, Bill Mckibbin's arguments against designer babies in his Enough book.

However, I'm uncomfortable with much of the ideological thrust underlying much of this opposition to new technology. Mae-Wan Ho, for example, asserts that GM technology is 'bad science,' per se, and should not be pursued. And one just has to go onto the Greenpeace website to find a number of counter-arguments to certain kinds of technology that are basically ideological rather than problem-solving.

My own view is that countercultural thinking risks becoming overly conservative -- or even reactionary -- by rejecting wholesale new technologies like GM or nanotech. [And by this I'm ignoring technologies labelled 'alternative' -- which is an ideological label, anyway; wind turbines were 'alternative' until the 'establishment' started to built them. Go figure....]

The same, by the way, goes for an expansion into space. And I do not think that the mindless or mainly ideological rejection of anything is terribly healthy. My own views, then, are probably closer to Dale Carrico's techno-progressivism; which acknowledges the problems involved with blind technophilia but which does not reject new technology blindly.

Replying to the Space Cynics show

2009-06-10T00:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the edited text of an email I sent to the Space Show, in response to the podcast of 31st May 2009, in which, rather to my surprise, they discussed my comment on the space cynics website. to listen to the show, just go ont the website and click on the link dated 31st May 2009.

Apologies that I have not got back to you sooner, but I’ve been busy and only saw the comments on the Space Cynics site yesterday!

First of all, may I say how flattering it is that so much notice was taken of my comment on Space Cynics? I didn’t anticipate such a positive and comprehensive response, including an edition of the Space Show, which is a podcast to which I listen fairly regularly.

Some personal background: I am a 35-year old UK resident, with an MSc. in cognitive science and a doctorate in experimental psychology. I’m also a budding space artist, an artist member of the International Association for the Astronomical Arts. I have a blog, Cosmic Citizen, which amongst other things deals with space, astronomical and cosmological topics.

I’ve been deeply interested in space, astronomy and the future all of my life, and am an enthusiastic amateur astronomer. My childhood interest in space was deflated somewhat in 1990, with the cancellation of plans for the US to go to Mars and the Moon. This put me off spaceflight for a long time. The situation with the Constellation program seems like history repeating itself!

However, I do appreciate having lived through a very exciting decade of robotic missions to the planets, and witnessing the building of the ISS. The discovery of worlds around other stars is also fantastic, and I hope to live to see the discovery of Extraterrestrial life. The founding of Space X and the winning of the X prize by Burt Rutan have also been encouraging. So I do not see the space scene as entirely negative!

Comments on the Space Cynic website: I acknowledge that the space cynics do offer positive alternatives, but would comment that before my April post, these are somewhat hard to see alongside the various dire (and I must say, largely well argued) predictions about the short-term prospects for human space flight. My only comment about cynicism, per se, is that sometimes it can distort thinking just as much as mindless optimism. In my view, a balance must be sought.

Comments on the Space Show: Was very flattered you felt my comment was important enough to read in toto on air. I certainly wouldn’t have used cuss words if I’d know this to be the case! I’m also, again flattered that people of such calibre took my comments seriously, and I think that the discussion as a whole was very interesting and constructive.

As far as I can see, two big issues arose. The first concerned the offering of pipe-dreams based on little reality. This has been –correctly so in my view – a persistent theme of the space cynics, but I was appalled at some of the examples Dr. Jurist mentioned (i.e. offering wormhole technology as a viable business investment). I hadn’t appreciated the level of fantasy to which some of New Space descends!

Maybe some of the more fanciful of the entrepreneurs should consult books like Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of highly effective people. Covey emphasises that a positive attitude needs to be based on a comprehensive, realistic appreciation of the current situation. Only by doing this can realistic, practical progress be made. My own early space-disillusion bears this out; my policy is to enjoy the dreams of space travel, but, as far as the real world is concerned, only believe what I can see!

The second issue is that of factions not talking, listening or respecting one another. I could hear the frustration in Dr. Livingstone’s voice as he described his attempts to get groups to listen to each other. This is a big problem that’s not just confined to the New Space community. I think it was Alfred North Whitehead who called such situations ‘dialogues of the deaf.’ I have to say that electronic communication often fuels these fires. Agreed strongly with Dr. Jurist’s comment about counter-productive paranoia and secrecy.

This is a difficult situation, and it’s important to draw a line between dialogues or controversies that are constructive and worth having and those that are not. It sounds like the disputants need to go on a course of non-violent communication! Maybe the various disputants need also to meet face-to-face more, as this can help to clear up various misunderstandings. My own fairly limited experience with the space advocacy community bears this out. In 2004, I gave a talk at the Mars Society UK conference on the ethical dimension of going to Mars. There seemed to be a number of receptive and fairly realistic heads there.

Peer review for technical proposals: Yes absolutely. This is basic science. Constructive technical and business criticism is an essential part of building an objective view of a situation. Real peer criticism is a basic, basic need and a lack of it maybe an indication that alt.space is immature as a problem-solving community.

Anyway, thanks again for your considered response, and I look forward to a reply!

Matt.

A space cynical controversy

2009-06-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

I seem to have inadvertently caused something of a ruckus over on the Space Cynics blog, and a Dr. John Jurist has appeared on the Space Show -- a regular podcast, of which I'm a semi-regular listener, to offer a reply! I don't normally expect my comments to have such an impact, but it's nice to see some very positive responses on there. The Space Cynics are a group who are trying to cut through the hyperbole and inflated claims of the New or alt.Space group, who talk of space settlement, but whose dreams all too often run ahead of themselves. The cynics have also made a number of -- I think largely accurate -- predictions about the somewhat dire future of publicly-funded human spaceflight in the US. Given the advent of a review of human spaceflight by the Obama administration, these fears seem at least partially borne out.

However, I was bothered that they didn't seem to offer a terribly coherent plan for positive action. It's one thing to knock down other's ideas, quite another to provide an alternative (Edward de Bono thinks that this is a problem with critical thinking per se). So I wrote the following comment;

"Matt Colborn – April 28, 2009
Hi — I’ve read the ’space cynics’ blogs for a while, and also listened to your arguments on the Space Show. I think that there is much truth in your arguments, and that the new space people need a reality check. You detail well what we should NOT expect from the space program in the near future.
However, once one has accepted this, where do we go from here? The subtext to much of your writing seems to be;
1. To give up on space entirely, especially human space, and do something else.
2. To pour scorn on those poor fools who refuse to do (1).
You’re very good at telling us what is not plausible, but what SHOULD we do? What IS realistic? Is space a lost cause, forever? Is that what you’re saying?
I think that you should write a little more about the *positive* action people should take, even if this means giving up on human space and concentrating on something else. Endless negativity just pisses people off eventually, even those of us (like me) who are sympathetic to your arguments….
Puzzled, Matt "

The very positive responses to my somewhat ratty comments can be accessed via the space cynics website. I'll offer more detailed comments once I've read/listened to them properly!

2009-06-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

I've been spending some time in the environs of Jupiter, for a large painting and for some digital images that I'll preview on this blog when they're ready. The film above is the Voyager 'blue' movie, taken on the 6th January 1979. The movie, so-called because it was built from blue filter images, records the approach of Voyager 1 during a period of over 60 Jupiter days.

Best watched in conjunction with the Orb Album 'Adventures beyond the Ultraworld!'

Shark's fin soup, and the nature of evil

2009-06-01T00:56:00.000-07:00

Last week, I caught one of a series of documentary interviews with Ron and Val Taylor, the husband and wife team who have for many years gone out to film sharks, and other ocean life. On the way, they provided a number of examples of man's inhumanity to just about anything that walks, crawls or swims.

One especially horrific example was that of the Indonesian fishermen who make shark's fin soup. To do this, they capture a shark, chop off its fins and throw the poor creature back in the sea when it is still alive. They showed film of the poor, delimbed animal on the sea bed, and Val Taylor commented that they looked 'terrified.' Anything helpless in the sea is fair game for other predators and scavengers, so these unfortunate, helpless creatures are often eaten alive.

Barry Lopez, who wrote a book on wolves, and their mass murder by human beings, said that the data spoke of something extremely mean-spirited in human beings. A similar book, Eating Apes, depicts the holocaust of the bush-meat trade, where our closest relatives are butchered to become delicacies in posh restaurants.

It's very hard to walk away from these quite routine ecological etrocities and remain wholly optimistic about the human race or its future. We are responsile for the most terrible things, on scales that beggar the every-day imagination. And most of it is not commited with evil intent, even; most of it is in the name of short-term gain.

I had a conversation this weekend with a work colleague who thinks it would be better if the human race were wiped off the face of the Earth; sometimes, I wonder. I'm not advocating self-hatred; but at the same time, it's hard to be faced with these regular, every-day acts of evil and not be affected.

The Selfish Bean

2009-05-29T01:36:00.000-07:00

Further to yesterday's post, I can reveal that the ultimate purpose of the Universe is....
THE BEANIE BABY.

Yes, folks, the whole of the Universe, from the Big Bang, to the evolution of life on Earth, to the rise of human civilization, is for the purpose of reproducing these cuddly little bastards. Biologist Richard Dawkins wrote of selfish genes, and then memes, but he failed to notice a third selfish replicator in our midst. These cuddly, evil beings have hijacked the whole process and are reproducing out of control. don't let the Beanie population crash of the late '90s fool you -- they are on the way back.

Now beanie cosmologists are manipulating the space-time continuum, and retrospectively shaping the early Universe for the production of beanies. We may soon be swamped by a final, entropic tide of beanie. When this occurs, the 'beanie event horizon' will be crossed, and the cosmos will collapse under a gravitational weight of beanies.

I have seen the future, and it is (artificial) fur.

On points, the Universe, and forty-two

2009-05-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

As the late Douglas Adams once wrote, the 'point' of the universe 'is' forty-two. On one of the earlier incarnations of this blog, I had a protracted muse on those who like to proclaim that 'Everything [e.g. the cosmos] is pointless.' These include Jacques Monod, whose book Chance and Necessity has become like a Bible to the gloomier and more Puritanical anti-god squad. (But see Mary Midgley's Science as Salvation for a pointed deconstruction of that tome....)

The reason the assertion 'everything is pointless' needed contesting is not because I thought the universe specifically had a point, but because I found it slightly strange to even make such an assertion. Why should such a whopping great, complex and, lets face it, deeply mysterious thing like the Cosmos have to have a singular purpose (or not)? As some biologist once said, God seems to have an inordinate fondness for beetles, but he/she/it also seems to have a great love of molecular hydrogen, ice, rocks, stars, galaxies and (maybe) dark energy, which is supposed to make up 74 % of the Universe. The 'point' of the Universe may be Coca Cola or Beanie babies for all I know. I think this was Adams' 'point.'

One subtext of these claims seems to be to counter the notion that an elusive being sometimes called 'God' created the entire Universe for our benefit. And to an extent, I have sympathy for this. It's hard for me contemplate the Universe which is really, really huge and really, really old and believe that it was created solely for the purpose of a few anthropoids who really watch too much reality TV and like bombing poor people into submission. Even theologists, I think, need -- and I think have, at points -- tackled this problem.

Another reason for claiming that 'everything is pointless' is that this is believed to be the 'scientific' (i.e. atheistic) way of looking at things. The issue here is teleology. Teleology is a 'doctrine explaining phenomena by their ends or purposes.' In other words, the Universe is here 'because' of us, Beanie babies or Coca Cola. This sort of explanation was specifically excluded from scientific explanations by the Enlightenment philosophers, who thought that one had to find mechanical explanations for everything. By the nineteenth century, it became one of the dogmas of Scientism. The rise of evolutionary theory seemed to clinch this approach; one no longer needed a designer to explain how complex organisms came to be. But the exclusion of teleological explanations remained an assumption rather than something that was tested or even completely testable.

Teleology, though, keeps creeping back. In a recent, fascinating book, Cosmologist Paul Davies outlines six possible ultimate explanations for the Cosmos and life. Beanie babies and forty-two are not even mentioned. His possible 'points' are;

1. The absurd Universe AKA 'everything really is pointless.'
2. The unique Universe. There is an ultimate theory, and everything happens to be perfect (?!)
3. The multiverse -- there are lots of Universes, and ours happens to be perfect for life through a kind of natural selection.
4. Intelligent design -- God, slide rules, etc. Davies doesn't like this one, and neither do I.
5. The Life principle -- there is some principle that teleologically directs life to evolve in the Universe.
6. The self-explaining universe. The Universe explains itself, preferably with diagrams.
7. (Because apparently cosmologists can't count....) The fake Universe: We're living in the Matrix, or one of Phil Dick's worlds....
8. None of the above.

I really haven't a clue whether any, all or none of these is the right 'answer.' I suggest that one should decide for oneself.

Image: The Hubble Deep Field, taken in 1996. Each of those (over 1,500) coloured blobs is a really, really old galaxy.

Golden Rules for space exploration

2009-05-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

In their 1984 book Out of the Cradle, Bill Hartmann, Ron Miller and Pamela Lee Introduced a 'Golden Rule' for Space Exploration;

SPACE EXPLORATION MUST BE CARRIED OUT IN A WAY SO AS TO REDUCE, NOT AGGRAVATE, TENSIONS IN HUMAN SOCIETY.

Today, I'd extend this with a clause on reducing, not aggravating, stress on the Terrestrial Biosphere (Maybe we'll have to extend this still further to Extra-terrestrial biospheres). This might rule out such things as the mass importation of extra-terrestrial materials for Earthly exploitation.

The authors suggested that each decision, each policy should be tested against this 'Golden Rule.' But they recognized that 'business as usual' would kill us, and suggested that it was worthwhile to at least look at what they termed the 'space option.'

Today, as Gaia-co discoverer Jim Lovelock delivers his final warning about climate change, it's hard to escape the feeling that time is running out. Perhaps the point at which we can fund or even think about luxuries like space travel has already past. I personally do not believe this, if only because we are spending far more on bombs, tanks and nuclear tests than we are on space exploration (or nature conservation, for that matter; but if Edward O.Wilson's estimates in The Future of Life are accurate, we could simultaneously mount a comprehensive global conservation program and space program without too much trouble. All ( --all!) it would take is a little more global unity, vision and the political will.)

However, I do believe in priorities, and I think that activities like the exploration of space will occur far more readily on a planet that is significantly more stable than our is at present. At the same time, abandoning Utopian projects completely until Utopia arrives seems like waiting for Godot to me. so we can still make incremental movements in the direction of a space-faring society today, guided, by golden rules like those suggested.

A pathological manfestation of an infantile fantasy?

2009-05-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I've been pondering the question: am I a hypocrite for caring passionately for both our longer term prospect in space and the environment? Are these two instincts incompatible?

Some would say yes, since the space program is part of the military-industrial complex that is helping trash this planet. They would point out, for example, that the prime contractors to NASA are all defence firms who also manufacture weapons of mass destruction. Another long standing argument with some validity is that we should solve all our problems on Earth before shooting off into space.

Someone wanting a look at the whole spectrum of views on space colonization should go to the online CoEvolution Book on space cities. The views run from enthusiastic endorsement to appalled horror that we should even consider spreading a sick and ailing civilization beyond Earth. Lewis Mumford, for example, wrote; "I regard Space Colonies as another pathological manifestation.... Such proposals are only technological disguises for infantile fantasies." Others have pointed out that since colonization already has a bad name on the Earth, it is almost beyond belief that anyone would advocate any more beyond.

My own advocacy of space travel has certainly grown far more cautious in the last twenty years. Many of the above points have some truth in them. Secondly, and unlike a number of space advocates, I do not expect space to solve all of our problems. Many of the proposed solutions (moving our industries into space, using extraterrestrial mineral resources to counter famines on Earth, moving excess populations into space cities, etc.) do seem far closer to fantasy at present than realistic solutions. Thirdly, it's quite possible that, say, moving our industries into space would create many new problems (pollution from moving manufactured material back and forth from orbit, the high costs of maintaining space factories, etc.,etc.) No. Many of our environmental, energy and manufacturing problems will have to be solved on the Earth.

The best reason I can think of for moving out there is based on biological rather than political colonization. I think we should move out for the same reason that life moved out onto the land; to further long-term survival and as part of a very natural extension of a biological range. The biologist Lynn Margulis put it this way;

"Of course Space Colonies are worthy of investigation and investment, in my opinion. Why do some sun-requiring algae actually live inside carbonate rocks? Why do you find small blind arthopods scurrying at the backs of caves? Why do giant luminescent female fish (carrying their tiny males parasitically) inhabit the abyss? Why do red and green microorganisms cover the newly fallen arctic snows and multiply on its surface? Why do certain funny poorly known fungi (examples in the group Laboulgeniomycetes) live only on the left anterior appendage (read left front toe) of its insect host? The answer is the same as the one to the question why do people like O'Neill and his students imagine Space Colonies and advocate the move out.

There are two parts to the answer: (1) the environment exists; and (2) the populations of organisms in question have the capacity to adapt to the environments. No fancy explanations are required. If there is space and if organisms can internally regulate utilizing the sources of energy at hand well enough to insure their replication, organisms will fill the space. This is the evolutionary pattern. It began over 300 million years ago, it still goes on. Steadily more and rougher parts of the earth's surface and near-surface have been colonized. There is no reason to believe the pattern will not continue to go on, at least in the near future." Quoted in CoEvolution book online.

I think that the outward urge -- including my own -- is at least as 'natural' as a love for the environment. The dream itself is not pathological; as with many things, it is the use to which it is put.

More thoughts next time....

Journey to the Planets

2009-05-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

I've recently been seeking out and purchasing some old books of astronomical art to help inspire me to do some more painting.I'm currently at work on a couple of new pieces -- and it's been suggested that I churn out a number for an exhibition. Watch this space....

One of the key motivations is an attempt to get back to the frame of mind in which I first became inspired to do space art. Some of the first pieces that really inspired me were in children's books, which, in those pre-digital days, often contained some superb paintings that really triggered a love of the infinite, and satisfied a need for awe.

One useful repository of very cheap space art books for the financially challenged are the second-hand departments of abebooks and amazon. I've found a number of slim children's books from the 1970s that contain some real space-art treasures.

From 1972, the great space artist Ludek Pesek collaborated on a number of the Puffin Explorer books with writer Peter Ryan. Four of these slim volumes contain some beautiful art by Pesek; Journey to the Planets, UFOs and other worlds, The Ocean World and Planet Earth. Each was purchased for the extortionate price of 1p!

The best book from the point of view of space art purists is probably the first, Journey to the Planets. Highlights include some wonderful Martian landscapes that hold up pretty well today -- except that the Martian sky is depicted as dark blue-black, unlike the dusty pink we know it to be. Other paintings hold up well too -- except for a depiction of the 'frozen atmosphere' of Neptune, which is actually gaseous.

Pesek sadly died in 1999, but there is a website dedicated to his work. Some of my favorites are his 'dream' paintings -- which mix astronomical landscapes with earthly subjects in a Magritte-esque way. He also wrote science fiction -- which I haven't read yet, but am intrigued by....

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts

2009-05-19T02:53:00.001-07:00

Could my urge for interplanetary flight be a half-buried desire for a shamanic flight? From Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections;

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse - the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue.

Maybe we don't need a spaceship to travel into space at all; maybe our minds can do it alone.... Or maybe its all in our heads....

Is there really much of a difference, though, between 'outside' and 'inside?' All my life, I've relied on the spaceships of my mind to go where I couldn't go physically. In a sense, my space art is a record of my journeys. Maybe outer and inner space are two sides of the same coin.

Maybe I should open my own chapter of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, who wish to reclaim outer space from the military. Let's go to the moon, folks, then to Mars. Lets ride a comet, and step on stars.

Rusting Gantries

2009-05-18T01:13:00.000-07:00

The past will disappear and the future will go next

--JG Ballard.

I was deeply saddened to hear of the recent death of the 'New Wave' SF writer J G Ballard. Ballard is probably best known to non-SF fans as the author of 'Empire of the Sun,' about his boyhood internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Ballard's SF is weird and visionary, and often concerns people moving in a landscape of technical decay. In many ways, his writing has proved prescient; he wrote of the space program as an historical curiosity when it was still young and vigorous. Today, the rusting gantries are real, and revivals of interplanetary exploration seem to be more like fevered dreams.

One of the truisms floated around on the futurist/SF scene is that we live in a world of rapid technical change. As I've observed before, this is a moot point. We certainly have many, many more electronic toys than when I was young (er!), but they are still transported to our houses in lorries fuelled by diesel engines, or in aeroplanes that outwardly at least are hardly different to those in use from the seventies on. Radical transport innovations -- suborbital ramjets, wholly electrical cars, maglev trains -- have not materialised.

In England, too, we move in landscapes of suburbia and urban decay, watched over by cameras. Bees are being wiped out, and no-one is sure why. There are certainly far less insects about now than there were in the past. We live in a sterilized, sub-urban D-class prison. The future world in which I live -- or am caged in -- is far more Ballardian or Phil Dickian than Clarkean....

Back to school

2009-05-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Find more videos like this on International Space Art Network

Space artist, David Hardy, has put some tutorials up on the International Space Art Network pages, and it's been a pleasure trying to emulate what he's done. It's a bit like a space version of Rolf Harris (can you see what it is yet?) and very exciting to be reminded about how creative one can be with the amazing software on one's computer....

Find more videos like this on International Space Art Network

National Space Centre

2009-05-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

Visited the National Space Centre and got some nice reference photographs for future space art. It was also to get a little bit inspired; my creative wellsprings have run a little dry of late. I'd say it was worth it; enjoyed the visit, and got to see Darth Vader and a couple of Storm troopers (No, really, they were visiting on Friday....) Also watched one of the spectacular films, 'Stars' in their 'space theatre,' which is a miniature planetarium. The movie was, appropriately enough, narrated by Mark Hamill....

Although I greatly enjoyed the movie, which was crammed with awesome special effects, it did have the effect of slight intimidation. How can a lowly, private space artists with limited means possibly compete with the spectacular CGI effects of suns exploding and whirling galaxies? After all, one intent of space and astronomical art is to stimulate the sense of awe. Maybe kids, especially, will remain unimpressed with boring old paintings if they can experience fully immersive, 'virtual' spectaculars.....

The exhibits I found fascinating. They have a mock-up of the ill fated British Beagle 2 probe that was unfortunately lost in 2003. Still, there is a part of Mars that is forever British....

Another interesting exhibit was a mock up of the Columbus module, which was built by the European Space Agency for the International Space Station. When I last visited the NSC, in 2004, the module was yet to be launched, but it is now in its rightful place on the ISS. The NSC also has a Russian MIR space-suit, and a Soyuz spacecraft.

There's also a number of exhibits on basic astronomy and physics. My favorite was the exhibit on light. There was a prism, splitting white light into its spectrum -- which was a lot blurrier and less distinct than the diagrams in the physics text-books show. Still that's real science for you -- it's about getting your hands dirty and learning that real phenomena are often less 'clean' than the books say. There was also an excellent display where your could see absorption and emission lines in a spectrum -- also a highly significant demonstration, and a good display for GCSE and AS students!

But a slight sense of melancholy accompanied my visit. The 'Space Age,' in many ways, seems part of our past; the glory days of Apollo are now over 35 years distant. To a younger generation, they are often not really of interest. And in the US, the Obama administration has launched the Augustine Commission to look into the future of human space flight. Several commentators suspect this is a prelude to the shelving of the plans to return to the Moon.

In 2004, I gave a talk in the NSC as part of a Mars Society meeting on human missions to the Red Planet. The question I asked was whether, in a world where mass-starvation and environmental disasters are common, it was ethical to send humans to Mars. The question has extra frece in these post-credt crunch days.

Today, I would re-phrase the question. What, exactly, is civilization for? Is it really to just to feed and house people so that they can go to mind-numbing jobs they hate and spend the rest of the time zombified in Virtual escapes? What do we want to do, as a species? Do we really want to spend most of our energies fighting for increasingly scarce fossil fuel resources on a limited planatary surface? Do we really want to destroy and plunder the rest of our planet's ecosystems simply so we can have roll-on deodorant, mobile phones and beany babies?

These questions may seem unrelated, but I think that Space Exploration is important because it forces us to view our every-day problems in perspective. It is said that the environmental movement was born the day the Apollo Astronauts looked back and saw the fragile Earth floating in the Black void. If we retrench, and turn our backs on space, I think that we abandon an important resource. I'm not talking about trillion-dollar asteroids, but of the inner resources and a perspective that may well significantly effect our future survival.

Aaarvaroid lifeform found on the Moon

2009-05-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

An eventful couple of days -- amongst other things, I saw the new Trek film (review coming, capsule review: good in parts) and I visited the National Space Centre to get some reference photographs for my space art.

NASA has recently released the body of one of the strange aardvarkoids they found during the Apollo missions to the moon. The home of these beings was discovered in the vicinity of Hadley Rille near the Mare Imbrium in July 1971.

The little blighters were troublesome, because they replaced the astronaut's rock samples with spaghetti. The astronauts tracked them back to their lair, which were small craters covered with dustbin lids, and waited for one to emerge. When one did so, Lunar Module pilot James Irwin smacked it on the head with a big spanner and Commander David Scott bagged and labelled it for a return to Earth.

When the crew returned, the aarvarkoid life-form was examined by the same team who worked on the Roswell crash in the 1940s, which included the famous archaeologist Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. There was some protest from the British Torchwood, and from Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, whose scientific advisor wanted access to the Apollo 15 catch. The scientists concerned told UNIT to go screw themselves. This was probably because they had tried the lunar spaghetti and got indigestion.

More from the NSC next time....

RESIGNED!

2009-05-07T01:57:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's true -- I resigned [from the academe] but I feel I can never leave.... I'm currently writing a book on consciousness, and realizing that each of the possible positions (monism, dualism, materialism, etc.) are unsatisfactory in some way..... I may end up a mysterian at this rate.... In general, I've found, the more certain the arguer, the more vapid their arguments.... Anyway, I'm about four chapters in, and the book's beginning to take shape. It's going to include (gasp!) parapsychological data, which I think is at least as strong as a lot of the 'evidence' from neuroscience and psychology (which doesn't say much).

The thing is, I'm not really a 'believer.' By this I mean I don't really find the 'solutions' of either Religion or Science very compelling. I think that much religious thought (especially about the 'God' thing) is interesting but unconvincing. And I also think that scientific reasoning begins seriously to falter when you extend it too far into space, or time, or beyond the extremities of life. I also think that it starts to break down when consciousness examines itself -- hence the deadlocks over our own minds. So Positivistic science ends up as another belief system.... And like Charles Fort, I refuse to accept that the contents of minds are the subject-matter of belief. I think sometimes that the advocates of (Western) scientism and religion need their heads banging together.

On a related but distinct note, found an interesting list of Dystopias on Amazon that includes the great Sixties TV series, the Prisoner. The show's star and creator, Patrick McGoohan, sadly died recently. I find that dystopias are a great tonic for my own more positivistic moments when I delude myself into thinking that I can change the world for the better.

Be seeing you!

Titan Beyond the Rings

2009-05-06T05:32:00.001-07:00

This amazing picture is of Saturn's moon, Titan, beyond the rings of its mother planet. The smaller, rocky moon is Epimetheus. It was taken in April 2006 by the Cassini orbiter. Who says we haven't got a working space program?

The limitless ocean of creation

2009-04-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

“It seems to me that even the wisest philosophers of the Renaissance or the most daring minds from the past could not estimate the real size of our planet. Earlier, it seemed immeasurably great, almost infinite. Only after the middle of this century did man, having gone up above the Earth into space, see with surprise and disbelief just how small the earth really is. Some saw it as an island in the limitless ocean of creation. Some compared it to a spaceship with a crew numbering more than six billion.” – Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich.

I’ve been worrying too much about things that are ultimately trivial. I woke up this morning, and began leafing through Kevin Kelly’s home planet – a marvellous collection of large-format photographs of the Earth from space, accompanied by quotes from space-travellers. The book was published for the Association of Space Explorers, a rather exclusive organization only open to those who've been in space!

I wrote in the last post about the down-side of discovery – but I always turn to space-exploration for examples of the up-sides. I think that the discovery of the Cosmos is one of the most incredible stories ever told. We float on a globe in the limitless sea of space, surrounded by an infinity of possibility. Some see this as terrible. I do not.

The effect of infinity, for me, is the wiping out of the transient and trivial things, and the apprehension of true open space, true freedom. The immensity and age of the Cosmos is terrible, in some ways; certainly it is awesome. But it is no reason, I think, for despair, because we are the children of this immensity.

“The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you could imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it could crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God.” – Apollo Astronaut James Irwin.

Quotes taken from The Home planet, ed. By Kevin Kelly, Macdonald & Co., 1988 for the Association of Space Explorers.
Images: NASA.

Obsession

2009-04-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

First, apologies for my irregular post. I've been negotiating what's laughably called 'real life,' and to be honest, haven't been that happy recently. I always find it hard to produce when I'm unhappy.

This little bout has also stalled my drafting a book on consciousness. I reached a crescendo of reading and writing, but realized that my brain was throbbing with the arguments I'd read and wanted to make, and I couldn't stop my thoughts racing even when I wasn't working on the book. It was disturbing my sleep, and cutting me off from doing really important things -- like enjoying life, and finding more paying work!

I have had this sort of response to analytical thought ever since my doctorate; and I suspect I'm not alone. The sheer intensity of thought one had to engage in during this period could be very destructive, and I am sure contributed to a nasty bout of depression at its end. I think that this is one reason I've grown so suspicious of academic/ institutional science; there is a dark underbelly there, a very destructive aspect, that gets totally ignored by the self-appointed heroes of the 'Enlightenment 2.0.' Yes, it does make me angry, because I feel that something that I used to enjoy so much more has been twisted and partially destroyed. Significantly, there is a lot of research on irrational thought and depression, but hardly any on rational thought and its links with depression.

If we want insights into this, we must go to literature and the past. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, understood the destructive nature of obsession very well. The creation of the monster takes a heavy toll on Victor, spiritually as well as physically. I suspect that many doctoral students would sympathize with the sentiment of the following passage;

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.

The pursuit of knowledge can be destructive in itself, no matter what that knowledge may be. I am not suggesting that we abandon our pursuit of knowledge; but I am suggesting that it is prudent to recognize the dangers.

eleutheromaniac

2009-04-08T01:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently, eleutheromania is a strong desire for freedom. I sympathise -- and in fact, I think a leitmotif of this blog has been the issue of freedom -- personal, political, scientific, spiritual. In the West, the populace has been brainwashed into thinking it has freedom -- which is why it doesn't matter when new legislation chips away at these rights. New laws always affect Other people -- terrorists, criminals, work shy-scum -- never ourselves.

But freedom begins at home. A major theme of Buddhism is the freedom from compulsion. If I have learnt anything in this life, it's how often I am a slave to habits. Freedom has often come from becoming aware of these habits, and changing them in some way. Maybe this is what consciousness is -- the ability to perceive robotic reactions, and change them.

But it is far from easy. Human beings -- in our culture at least -- fall into habits rather easily. I'm not just talking about 'bad' habits like drug addiction. I also refer to 'good' (i.e. socially approved) habits like workoholism, self-punishment and compulsive spending.

So the first place one needs to be free is in one's head -- and that is truly the task of a lifetime.

Tanith Lee on Blake's 7

2009-04-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

TARRANT: When you found me on the Liberator, it was quite a blow. And every time you look at me, it hits you harder, doesn't it? I'm faster than you and I'm sharper. As far as it goes, I've made a success of my life. But you? The only big thing you ever tried to do you failed at. The greatest computer swindle of all time ... but you couldn't quite pull it off, could you? If it hadn't been for Blake, you'd be rotting on Cygnus Alpha right now. No, you failed, Avon. But I win. Not just at games, at life.
AVON: You also talk too much.

(From Sarcophagus, by Tanith Lee).

The above dialogue is from one of my favorite episodes of the 1978--81 TV show Blake's 7, and was written by the fantasy author, Tanith Lee. It's an unusual episode where SF and lyrical fantasy are combined, and a glowing ghost haunts the Liberator. It also fits well with the generally melancholy theme of the series, and the aloneness of the characters. It is an episode, so rare on TV, that delves into the character's souls. In the final season, Lee would repeat her performance with an episode named Sand. In this, we glimpse the emptiness hidden inside the chief villainess, Servalan.

These episodes led me to Tanith Lee's written fiction, which is a rich mixture of the Arabian-nights, Gothic romance and dark fantasy. When one enters Lee's worlds, one is swallowed up whole. I believe that her collection, Forests of the Night, represents some of the finest fantasy writing of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Lee writes about the passions, and the foolish things that people do because of them. These flaws are often inherently fatal; but her characters are, like so many of us, puppets, and are helpless to follow their fates.

I left my world to wander in
this endless midnight sky,
for space is just a starry night
where no suns ever rise.

Dayna's Song, by Tanith Lee.

The retreat from liberty

2009-03-27T00:43:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about totalitarianism lately, via Orwell and 1970s SF. I just re-read Orwell's Animal Farm, which is in part an allegory of Stalin's Russia, but is also a tale of how the highest ideals, when twisted, can degenerate into the most appalling tyrannies. Orwell had a great influence on me when I was growing up; I remain fascinated and appalled by the way lies can be used to corrupt and imprison people, and also by the casual way those in power use whatever means they have to retain control.

I am also fascinated (and, again, appalled) by how easily free societies become authoritarian and even totalitarian states, often without the citizenry noticing. Looking over long term trends in the UK, I see a gradual (and on occasion, not-so-gradual) slide into authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. This, for the most part, happens in a subtle way; we are urged to vote to maintain our freedoms, but looking again at long term trends, this seems to make little difference to a decrease in liberty. The party in charge generally acts to decrease personal freedom and increase central control. I see little chance of this trend reversing.

Blake's 7, often derided by 'sophisticated' pundits for its wobbly sets and model spaceships on wires, was also a major influence on me when I was growing up. The show depicts a society where the worst has already happened. The Terran Federation is the Totalist state of 1984 written across the stars. It is the dark shadow of the goody two-shoes Federation of Star Trek. The leaders of this regime are totally corrupt, and maintain power through drugs, surveillance and where necessary, brutal executions.

Anyone wishing to find out more should refer to Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore's excellent guide, which explains what a clever and sub-text laden show it was. They should also, of course, watch the episodes.

Although the show had its flaws, it examined human evil and what it is to rebel against that evil. The rebels, however, are hardly 'goodies' a la Star Wars. They are criminals with often shadowy pasts who act as much for self-interest as for ideals. In the final episodes, the surviving rebels are gunned down, and it is unclear whether the rebellion has had any positive effect at all.

One of the highlights of the show was the spacecraft Liberator. The two images of the Liberator are my own, modelled in Bryce. The latter depiction shows the ship's destruction, from the episode Terminal.

Into the Wildwoods

2009-03-21T05:15:00.001-07:00

Many of us long to visit a forgotten corner of the world, a place that remains enchanted and hidden from the modern age. It scarcely seems credible that there might be such a hidden place right on our doorstep.

The extraordinary nature of Ryhope Wood was discovered by George Huxley and Edward Wynne-Jones in the 1930s. From the outside, it is three square miles of primal wild-wood that has been left undisturbed since the ice age. Ryhope wood is one of the few patches of ancient forest left in Europe, and has no parallel in the British Isles, whose land is intensely managed. Such is the appearance. But the reality is stranger still.

Huxley and Wynne-Jones began experimenting with an electrical device that stimulated part of their brains, anticipating the work of Michael Persinger by some decades.The aim was to invoke what they called Mythagos -- short for myth imagoes -- to the surface. These are long-buried, archetypal mythic forms that bubble up from deep within the collective unconsciousness and take on a physical reality within Ryhope wood.

The wood is referred to by John Clute as an 'abyssal cthonic generator' because it creates and provides a home to these mythagoes. Huxley, and later his sons, Christian and Steven, encountered a number of mythagoes during residence at their home, which was on the borders of the wood. The mythagoes include versions of Robin Hood, King Arthur, Hearne the hunter and others.

But Ryhope has even stranger properties. The 'oak vortices' distort time and space, which protects the deeper portions and mean that the further one penetrates the woodland, the larger the territory becomes. Somewhere at the fiercely-protected heart of the woodlands is Lavondyss, the remote, ice-age heart of the woods.

Source: Mythago Wood: Parallel tracks and Ice-age myths by Robert Hemlock, Mistatonic University Press, 1984.

Hell

2009-03-15T04:58:00.001-07:00

A recent conversation with a taxi-driver has got me thinking about conceptions of hell. He was a Muslim, and seemed to live in what was to me a Medieval reality-tunnel, where people are plagued by 'Satanic whisperings.' Satan or Shaitan as he's known in Islaam was a jinn who fell through the sin of pride. He is indeed known as the "Whisperer" according to Wikipedia, and is thought to be where the urge to sin comes from.

One can take this sort of thinking to extremes, as many Europeans did in the middle ages. I seem to remember reading a source by a monk who even blamed his farts on little demons! I'm rather glad I don't live in a reality-tunnel like this; tackling one's own evil would, I think, be harder if I thought that some other entity, rather than myself, was responsible.

Mary Midgley wrote somewhere that gods die far quicker than demons. Certainly, the majority of depictions of supernatural entities in popular culture are profane rather than sacred. Yet the existence of the devil implies the existence of God.

One of my favorite depictions of the Infernal Regions is Wayne Barlowe's Inferno. Barlowe is a brilliant, imaginative illustrator who has reimagined hell in his own, idiosyncratic way. This project has taken years and has resulted in two art books and an ongoing trilogy of novels. As he says, hell is a place that everyone wants to visit but where no-one wishes to end up....

Dalek Found in Pond

2009-03-06T01:16:00.001-08:00

A dalek has been found in a Hampshire pond. I suspect it was one of the time-travelling pepperpots the Doctor had to deal with when he was working for UNIT in the 1970s (or was it the 1980s?) Either that, or they've started their Invasion of Earth over a century early.

An alternative theory is that it's flotsam from the Time War, where the Time Lords and the Daleks annihilated each other. What? You don't believe me? What about the Christmas Invasion in 2005? Or the Autons in London a year or so earlier? Or the deadly Christmas satellite of 2006? Or the Titanic almost crashing on Buckingham palace?

Still don't believe me? You're probably suffering from Sunnydale Syndrome. What? You don't believe in vampires either?! You'll be telling me I've watched too much TV SF next!!!!

Astralasia

2009-03-02T03:31:00.000-08:00

I was going to write a post about how hard it is to stay optimistic during hard times -- but I'm afraid my 'Samsara Defences' are seriously screwed right now. Last week was a total bastard; my Grandfather died in a fairly nasty way, and it's like we've lost the great patriachal silverback of our particular tribe. So I'm already feeling fairly down, when James Lovelock comes on the radio describing how it's already too late to do anything about global warming. His latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, looks like a retread and update of 2007's The Revenge of Gaia, which was resolutely depressing. And to think I used to read Lovelock for inspiration!

I'm just wondering how many salvoes of doom a cheerful temprement can withstand before turning to jelly.... I suspect most of us are stronger than we take credit for, but I do think it's dangerous to swim too much in a sea of unremitting negativity.

So I've had a temporary strategic withdrawal from reality, and am listening to Astralasia on MySpace.

Shamanic Landscapes

2009-02-27T01:58:00.000-08:00

...And so back to London on the 24th for the second Ecology, Cosmos & Consciousness lecture series, this time given by prolific writer and researcher Paul Devereux. Like the previous, this lecture was hosted at the October Gallery and was partly organized by fellow Blogger and Gaia Hippie David Luke.

Paul's talk focussed on the shamanic landscapes of the Americas, but included an appendix on those in European prehistory. His thesis was that the shamanic landscapes were remnants of an ancient, worldwide world-picture that humans had carried with them out of Africa.

Paul gave details of a large number of relict shamanic landscapes of the New World, many of which he's visited. These share a number of common features, including long, straight 'spirit' roads, animal images that can only be seen from the air and petroglyphs of shamans and mushrooms.

He began with perhaps the most famous Shamanic landscape of them all, the Nazca lines. These are a series of geoglyphs drawn on the high, dry Nazca Plateau in Peru. The animal depictions, such as the monkey shown above, were apparently of a later date than the simpler series of lines that radiate from artificial or natural hillocks. A number of people have speculated on their purpose, most notoriously the dodgy writer Erich Von Daniken, who saw them as runways for ET spacecraft!

It is more likely that they were used in ritual. The party line is that they were constructed so the' gods in the sky could see them.' Other authors have speculated that they would be visible to a shaman during an ecstatic flight, which is a sort of Out of the Body Experience. Paul perhaps wisely tiptoed around the issue of whether such experiences were really what they seemed, or the result of anomalous brain functions.

A range of landscapes across the Americas seem to share common features with Nazca, and Paul has visited many of them. These include the Altiplano lines in Bolivia and the Maya Causeways in the Yucatan. An interesting feature is that only some of these lines seemed literal; many were said to continue into the spirit realm. The Mamma (shamans) of the Kogi Indians were trained to develop a sort of 'double vision,' so these non-material lines were overlaid on the physical landscape. These lines are consistently associated with altered states, mushrooms and the dead.

There are also a large number of shamanic Landscapes in North America. The most well-known are associated with the Anasazi dwellings in New Mexico. In Chaco Canyon there are extensive networks of wide roads, built by people who had neither the wheel or pack animals!

Nearby Pony Hills is a very odd place with rock pools and hundreds of petroglyphs of little 'fairy' sized feet running between them. According to the oldest Shamans from the last century, the 'water body spirits' instructed them to draw these markings.

Paul also showed us several landscapes from further North, most notably Serpent Mound in Ohio and interesting features in Manitoba, Canada. Manitoba is named after the manitou, who according to the Algonquin, lived behind the rocks.

"Now it is the time of night

That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide"

Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.

Devereux has found evidence of a comparable Shamanic Religion in Prehistoric Europe. Cursuses are Neolithic linear monuments, avenues formed by ditches and banks. Many of these are straight, or straight in sections. An example is the Scorton Cursus in Yorkshire, and there is also one associated with Stonehenge.

This ancient belief-system might also be preserved in European folklore. There are examples of Death-roads all over Europe, and Ireland, of course, has fairy roads. These are pathways one generally does not travel, because one will meet ghosts. Paul detailed a number of superstitions that were also suggestive, such as walking a basic maze to confuse spirits. The last example of this belief died in the 1950s.

There was a deep, underlying sadness in Paul's talk, which amounted to the tracing of a belief-system that has been lost under the concrete and macadam of our own, monocultural roadways. As Paul wrote, of ancient America;

"...the authentic physical and spiritual relics are fragile and fragmented, and it is open to question whether the whispers of the spirits of this ancient land of the west will ever be fully heard before they fall silent forever." (Mysterious Ancient America, Vega, 2002, p. 161).

The Plastic mind

2009-02-23T00:57:00.001-08:00

At last, a neuroscience book that doesn't make me want to grind my teeth and jump up and down in rage! In fact, the Plastic Mind, by Sharon Begley has actually made me feel enthusiastic about the brain sciences again. Begley's book is a summary of a meeting between the Dalai Lama and a number of leading western scientists at his home in Dharamsala, India in 2004. It was one of a series of 'Mind and Life' conferences, which have proved extremely fruitful in exploring the common ground -- and the differences -- in Western and Buddhist views of the mind.

The 2004 meeting was on neuroplasiticity -- which is the ability of the brain to change itself over a person's lifetime. The old dogma was that the brain did not change its shape after childhood was over. This dogma is now thoroughly dead, as a number of extraordinary stories show. For a start, chidren's brains are extraordinarily plastic, and there are cases of children having up to half their brain removed, and not having their IQ noticably affected! There are also cases of recovery from strokes and alzheimers that would have been dismissed as impossible a few years ago.

There is also evidence that thinking actually changes the brain. At UCLA, a number of OCD sufferers were given PET scans as they completed a course of mindfulness therapy. They found that this therapy actually altered the metabolism of the brain 'circuit' that seems to trigger the OCD!

There is also emerging evidence that meditative practice can dramatically alter people's emotional responses. Researcher Richard Davidson showed that it is possible for previously untrained volunteers to alter their fear-responses to photographic stimuli. He showed them photographs such as a baby with a horrific tumour growing out of its eye whilst asking them to try and generate feelings that the baby be happy, well and free of suffering.

Using an fMRI scan, he found that; "Simply by mental rehearsal of the aspiration that a person in a photo be free of suffering, people can change the strength of the signal in the amygdala" (the bit of the brain involved with the fear response). The Dalia Lama responded to this by saying;

"What seems to be very clear is that a purely mental process -- for example, deliberately cultivating this aspiration -- can have an effect that is observable in the brain level." (p.290).

In my view, data like this knocks the epiphenomenalist view, that thought is a mere acausal side-effect of brain function, stone dead. (although no doubt writers like Daniel Wegner, who think all conscious will is an illusion, would construct elaborate get-outs to 'prove' this data shows nothing of the kind....)

But for all practical purposes, (which is what, in my view, really matters in these debates), neuroplasticity has a tremendously positive message. It says that through beneficial practices, we can not only change our minds but change the physical processes in our brains! This is a tremendously important message: we are not automata, doomed to run on fixed programs for the rest of our lives. We are fluid beings, with a great capacity for positive change.

Grunch of Giants

2009-02-19T00:44:00.000-08:00

The recent hideous economic disasters seem to confirm a theory that Futurist Bucky Fuller wrote about -- that this planet has crouching on it a coterie of 'giants' who regularly fleece the rest of us -- and the Universe -- for wealth. He called this operation the GRUNCH, or GROSS UNIVERSE CASH HEIST.

"The grunch of giants consists of the corporately interlocked owners of a vast invisible empire, which includes airwaves and satellites; plus a vast visible empire, which includes all the only eighteen-year-old and younger skyscraper cluster cities around the world, as well as the factories and research laboratories remotely ringing the old cities and all the Oriental industrial deployment, such as in Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore." (Grunch of Giants, Chapter one.)

Unlike some, Fuller didn't want to destroy the technological network of this planet; instead, he wanted to use it to instigate humanity's 'Option for Success.' He said that it was possible for every single human being on this planet to enjoy a good, materially satisfied life, and without destroying the ecosphere. And he thought that every advance we've made was despite, and not because of, the giants.

One can -- and if one's a critical thinker, one should -- not take Fuller's account as gospel. In works like GRUNCH and in chapter three of CRITICAL PATH, he offers an alternative story of how political power came to be, and how the powerful have sought, since the beginning of history, to hoard know-how for themselves. He also asserts that government is so intertwined with the powerful that it has long since outlived its purpose. This is one resonance of his statement that "all politics is not only obsolete but lethal." (Although I'd replace that with some but not all politics....) In short, governments do NOT have our best interests at heart. They only have their own, and that of the elite of super-rich who exploit us and our planet for wealth.

If this seems extreme, look at how eager the governments of the world have been to hand the financial sector hundreds of billions of pounds in basically speculative and rushed programmes to 'save the economy.' To my no doubt jaded eyes, this looks like handing the bank robbers the remainder of the loot. In short, there's something deeply wrong, and even anachronistic, about the response.

Solutions?
I haven't any easy solution to the economic mess in which we find ourselves, but I think that there is an argument for doing nothing about the fluctuations of the markets (After all, if free market economics is so good, as its adherents claim, then why won't the market 'right itself' in time. They asked for deregulation, and so they should be happy with the consequences).

I think that the crisis is a time to ask some serious questions about just who these global economic systems serve, especially since they are so damaging to both humans and our planetary life-support systems. I also think that more thought needs to be given to alternative economic systems (and by that I do NOT mean 'communist', 'capitalist,' left wing or right wing answers*) we should look at a spread of differing ways that economies might be run, in the spirit of problem solving and not in terms of political ideology. I personally like Elizabeth Sathouris' ideas about a distributed, self-organizing, non-hierarchical society or 'natural democracy' and also some of the ideas in Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.

Utopian? Absurd? Maybe. But I think it behooves us to think about alternatives to the vast, globe-straddling monster we've all ended up serving, to make a tiny, tiny fraction of humanity monstrously wealthy.

* Like futurist Alvin Toffler, I think that concepts like 'left wing' and 'right wing,' 'communist' and 'capitalist' are anachronisms from the industrial age, and have been obsolete since 1947. Yes, folks, our political systems are based on almost totally obsolete categories.

My own politics may (very) loosely be defined as 'new progressive'; Elizabeth Satourhis;

"In [his book The New Political Compass Paul Ray] reveals a dramatic shift in the US political spectrum of voters to a new category, neither left nor right, that he calls the New Progressives.At 36% to 45% of US adults "this emerging political stance is the largest segment of the polity, and they're basically unrepresented by politicians." Ray defines them as follows: "A new progressive . . . is far out in front on the issues, values planetary rather than nationalistic interests, ecological sustainability rather than sentimental environmentalism, feminism rather than heroic models, personal growth more than personal ambition, and condemns globalizing mega-corporations more than the religious right." From this Sahtouris Lecture.

Everything is changing! All in Flux! Nothing remains the Same!

2009-02-12T23:42:00.001-08:00

The Doctor: It's this planet! It can't help itself! (Marc Platt, script for Doctor Who: Ghostlight).

Thought I'd do a blog on Charles Darwin and Evolution today, it being the 200th anniversary of his birth. I must say the celebrations produce mixed feelings. On the one hand, he's a man I greatly admire (although I equally admire the shadowy co-creator of natural selection theory, Alfred Russell Wallace ), on the other I dislike the way he's been appropriated by hard-line fundamentalists as part of their unending battle against rival belief systems. I'm also suspicious of being 'told' who to worship by the media. I think that such worship distorts who the object of worship really was, and their place in history.

I first read of Darwin's voyage of Discovery in a wonderful illustrated book by Alan Moorehead, entitled Darwin and the Beagle. This reads like an adventure out of Jules Verne, and contains the sad story of Darwin's friendship with Captain Fitzroy, and their eventual estrangement because of the theory of evolution. It's also a travelogue which gives a vivid impression of their travels in South America, the Pacific, Australia and South Africa.

Evolution
We're currently re-watching the BBC's Life on Earth, which tells the story of life on Earth. This show had a very deep impact on me thirty years ago, aged five, and was one of the things that made evolution a fundamental part of my personal mythology. The other significant influence was the movie ofEdgar Rice Burroughs' the Land That Time Forgot, which although tacky, had the fascinating idea of an island where evolution is recapitulated by the inhabitants. So the ape-men evolve through every stage of evolution during their lifetimes, until they become Galu, or Homo sapiens. In its way, this film was just as influential as the more wholesome Life on Earth. I also loved Marc Platt's somewhat zany take on evolution in the 1989 Doctor Who story Ghostlight. Why hasn't this brilliant, original writer been asked to pen a story for the new series yet??

Post-Darwinism
Evolution by natural selection is so nineteenth century! Since that time, several additional mechanisms for evolution have been suggested. From Bill Corliss' Science Frontiers);

Lamarkism, the inheritance of acquired characters, keeps rearing its ugly head.
Endosymbiosis. the absorption of one life form by another; viz. the acquisition of mitochondria by animal cells.
Virus and Plasmid carriers. The inter and intraspecies transfer of genetic material by viruses, plasmids and other biological vectors.
Cell fusion.
Epigenetic evolution.
Spontaneous self-organization (the most speculative bits of complexity theory -- admittedly rather mystical....).

...See also chapter nineteen of Kevin Kelly's seminal Out of Control, online here.

Free Will VI: The hole in the heart of Science

2009-02-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

“All phenomena are preceded by the mind, issue forth from the mind, and consist of the mind.”

(the Buddha, quoted in Wallace, 2008.)

Note: The writings of Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace have been invaluable in clarifying these dilemmas for me, and I can only urge those interested to go and read his works, linked below.

From the time I am born, to the time I die (and who really knows about beyond) everything is experienced in my mind. Every experience, every emotion, every thought, every intellectual conceit, every belief, every no belief, every love, every bit of pain, every pleasure is experienced in one place and one place only; my mind. I can never experience an objective reality free of my mind, no matter how solid and real the world seems.

It follows that every scientific concept and piece of scientific evidence about the way that the cosmos is can also only ever be experienced in the mind. In other words, scientific knowledge about the Universe can only ever be a subset of my total experience.

This has important implications. The first is that scientific knowledge must be considered, first and foremost, as a system or systems of mental events. Every theory, every piece of data, even that gathered by machines, has to be evaluated, assessed and weighed in the human mind. Getting to a consensus in the scientific community is not therefore about gaining objective knowledge, but about gaining an intersubjective consensus (Wallace, forthcoming).

This is absolutely not to leap to the extreme relativist view, which says that all ideas are equal. One would be foolish, for example, to say that the idea the world is flat has equal standing with the idea the world is round. The same is true for preferring evolution over creationism, or that sulphuric acid burns rather than soothes the skin, or even for acknowledging the strong probability that human activities are linked in some way with climate change.

We can acknowledge this and at the same time also say that the only way we can know all this is because of our minds. The mind is the most important, primary tool of scientific exploration, more important than the telescope the microscope, the computer, the MRI and the test tube. One would think that science would deem it important to know as much abut this instrument as possible before using it. But in fact, the opposite is the case.

Swimming in a large river in Egypt
Philosopher Charles Taylor points out a large contradiction in Western Scientific thinking, that started in Descartes time and remains;

"The Scientific doctrine says its all mechanism, including the self, but in order to get that doctrine you have to take a stance as a controlling agency toward the world. So this same agent has a sense of almost angelic or even godlike power over the world. There is a split in consciousness that is deeply illogical be existentially very understandable (in Varela, 1997)."

This contradictory position gives us a major clue to the source of the intellectual corner into which mainstream cognitive scientists have painted themselves (see earlier free will posts). In short, they try to fit the controlling agency back into the universe by insisting that this agency is illusory. To a degree, this is laudable; of course human beings aren't separate from the universe. Of course we don't have Godlike controlling powers. However, instead of healing the rift between mind and Universe, mainstream cognitive science chooses to eject a number of babies with the bathwater and ends us in a serious state of denial. The mind is accounted for by being rewritten out of existence.

An example: in Consciousness Explained (1991) , Dan Dennett first of all rules out considering any dualist theory of the mind because he say this would be "giving up." He then proceeds to do his best to rationalize away subjective sensations like qualia, claiming that once we understand the underlying mechanism for a thought-process, we no longer need to worry about the subjective aspect. This seems an awful lot like giving up to me!

A more recent example is given by the emerging 'grand illusion' school of consciousness, of which Susan Blackmore offers a fairly lucid account here. 'Grand Illusion' theories essentially try to account for consciousness as a kind of mirage or visual illusion. More specifically, Blackmore thinks that consciousness exists only when we bother to look. She suggests that we try the exercise of asking ourselves, periodically through the day 'am I conscious now?' (It's also worth visiting the website to try out the interesting visual illusions she's linked to).

This latter approach is reasonably fruitful because it tells us something about how the content of our experiences are put together and, equally importantly, what tends to get left out. (Although a Buddhist like Wallace might say that the projective content and ultimate nature of the mind are not necessarily the same thing....)

However, the net effect of Blackmore's approach is that mind -- our direct experiences -- still ends up getting denied; in her account, consciousness is a story we tell ourselves, and if you've read her piece on free will, you will see that she thinks it's a causally ineffective one, too.

Although I think these approaches have merit, they suffer because they remain seriously unreflexive. Let's assume for a moment that the 'Grand Illusion' theorists' are correct, and that consciousness is nothing more than a ‘grand illusion,’ generated by the brain and causally ineffective.

As Wallace (2008) points out, even if the ‘grand illusion’ theorists are right, the only way we can know things is still within the human mind, which includes 'Grand Illusion' theories! This 'illusion' remains our prime and only means of access to the phenomenal world.

Implicit in theories like this is the assumption that scientific knowledge can somehow transcend this illusion, and provide us with 'objective' knowledge. In other words, a community of scientists with machines and computers can provide us with knowledge that's somehow free of the subjective taint. Again, there's some merit in this assumption; Edward Hutchins Cognition in the Wild, gives a number of carefully studied examples that show how groups of people plus machines 'solve' problems that an individual cannot. The archetypal example is the navigation of a ship, which can only be managed by a team.

One could apply this to the scientific community, and claim that what's really going on is that individual scientists are acting like the components of a great machine, and churning out objective knowledge that transcends our subjective illusions. But this is problematic too.

More next time....

References
Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained. London.
Varela, F.J. (1997) Sleeping, dreaming and dying. Wisdom: Somerville, MS.
Wallace, B.A. (2008) Embracing mind. Shambala: Boston, MA.
Wallace, B.A. (forthcoming). The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion.” To be published in Science, Religion, and the Human Experience. James Proctor (ed).

Free Will V: ethics, personal responsibility, predestination

2009-02-10T00:56:00.000-08:00

I think the mainstream accounts of the conscious mind as a mere side effect of brain function, and causally ineffective, are simply wrong. I also think that the internal contradictions in this position are highly significant because they demonstrate that underlying assumptions about the nature of reality – namely, about determinism and [certain versions of] materialism are also in serious need of modification.

A sign that a position is untenable comes when its adherents begin to display consistent internal contradictions in their arguments. If you suppose, as do researchers like Daniel Wegner, Chris Frith, Susan Blackmore and others, that conscious control is an illusion, then clearly, there can be no moral responsibility. A criminal, for instance, is not responsible for their crimes because they cannot really consciously stop themselves from doing it. Similarly, we cannot control our impulses to smoke, drink, overeat, etc. and those that do are lucky their brain mechanisms are geared to have them stop at some point. But one can go further. If we take strict determinism as true, then people’s life patterns are pretty much set at birth; a criminal is born to be a criminal, a serf is born to be a serf, a Lord is born to be a Lord, etc. One can see why this philosophy might appeal to the establishment….

The interesting thing is that several of the writers espousing these ideas recognize these problems, the philosopher Dan Dennett being a salient example. In his book Freedom Evolves (2004), he tries to show that freedom is compatible with determinism. In my view his attempt at reconciliation fails because he fails to show how mindless robotic mechanisms, no matter how complex, can possibly be free. Dennett’s book marks a brave attempt to have it both ways, and retain both classical determinism and personal freedom. But he cannot do it without (an albeit disguised) leap of faith.

Dennett’s position highlights a dilemma common to those who espouse the Enlightenment values of personal freedom, reason and science. The story is that, by casting off the shackles of Religion, one can find a new freedom in Science and Reason. But [certain formulations of] science and reason seem to show that personal freedom does not exist! In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Calvin defended the doctrine of Predestination, in which an omnipotent God has already decided who goes to Heaven or Hell, even before they were born. Proponents of strict determinism have managed to reinvent this doctrine in secular terms. So we haven’t really been liberated at all; instead, we’ve swapped one pair of chains for another (or just repainted the same chains -- given that the Eighteenth century Enlightenment was essentially Protestant. Universal Determinism and Predestination are so similar to one another that I suspect that one is a 'scientific,' God-free redressing of the other....)

Another author, Susan Blackmore, recognizes these problems but still falls into contradictory arguments. Blackmore, (2005) attempts to get round this by getting rid of the justifications for free will. She has long assumed that free will is an illusion and that the reason people continue to believe in it is that they’re terrified that they might not be able to make moral decisions without it. “This might lead to them doing terrible things (op. cit.)”

According to Blackmore this fear is not justified because evolutionary psychology provides reasons why we want to be good (!) She concludes that there is ‘no excuse’ for living with the ‘delusion’ of free will.

This view is seriously problematic, because it simultaneously implies that we have no free will and yet are free to chose what to believe! One only needs an excuse for not taking a ‘delusory’ path if one actually has an option to take it. This is not just a linguistic quibble. Either we do have some autonomy to make choices at least sometimes, or we don’t. If we do, then choosing to reject all concepts of personal freedom is obviously wrong. If we don’t, then the moralistic language Blackmore uses is inappropriate because it only applies to beings that can actively make choices, at least sometimes.

I’ve spent a long time on these contradictions, because I think that they demonstrate something important. These very intelligent people have, time and time again, argued themselves into a corner. Their argument goes something like this.

Determinism is true, but I appear to have freedom of choice. Freedom of choice and strict determinism are incompatible. I take it for granted that my version of determinism is correct, so therefore the idea of freedom of choice cannot be correct. Therefore any impression of freedom I have is an illusion. Q.E.D.

Quite often, neuroscience writing gives the impression that new research discoveries have revealed conscious control to be an illusion. This is clearly not so. Researchers have begun with the initial assumption that conscious control is an illusion, and tried to do experiments or find phenomena that confirm their prejudices. Importantly, much of the evidence presented by writers like Wegner can be interpreted in a number of different ways, some of which are compatible with freedom of volition and others of which can’t. I haven’t the space to go into this here, but the interested reader is urged to consult Edward Kelly’s (2003) review of Wegner for a start.

Something is missing
If, as I think I’ve shown, jettisoning mental efficacy leads to unacceptable contradictions, something has to give. One approach, touched on in earlier posts, is to look very hard at determinism. But another is to become significantly more reflexive and fit the observer back into our world-picture. More next time.

References
Blackmore, S.J. (2005) It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will. In What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty. Ed. John Brockman, Free Press, 41-2
Dennett, D.C. (2003) Freedom Evolves. London: Penguin.
Kelly, E.F. (2003) [Review of] Wegner (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Journal of Scientific Exploration. 76, 101—142.
Wegner (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.