Understanding Governments and The Establishment for Dummies

OK, many folks will be totally turned off by the post title here having already been turned off from politics by the shinanigens of politicians and the apparent complexity of politics. Obviously you havent quite reached that point otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. The good news is that politics is far simpler than most folks realize, though you wouldnt naturally pick that up from the white noise that is the mainstream media. The not so good news is that politics is far more sinister than most folks realise, but don't despair, I have some great remedies for that enraging sense of powerlessness. I'm not going to bog you down with confusing political jargon, rather I intend to cut through the crap and give you the big picture by reminding you about things that you probably already know, but have faded in the glare of the information barrage coming from your TV/Internet/newspapers etc.

The first thing to remember is that you live in a class structured society. The structure of modern society has not changed much since the dawn of human civilization and it is teered or stratified, broadly speaking, as lower, middle and upper. There are variations on these terms which maybe more or less familiar too; the establishment, the 1%, the ruling class, the wealth of the nation. These are all variations of the upper class. Management and political class are variations on the middle class. Working class, proletariate and steerage are variations of the lower class.

The distribution of political power amongst the classes is roughly speaking inversly proportional to the numbers of people in each class, during in 'peace time' at least, and is illustrated:

Class population distribution and order

These figures are taken from an article published on the BBC website for Britain called 'What is working class?'. The accuracy of the figures isn't terribly important for the point of this article. The magnitude of distribution is enough to make the relevant points. Power, wealth and attitudes maybe further stratified and compartmentalised within each class, but that is not terribly important for this article either, we just need the class oriented overview.

The first thing we should notice about the above figure is the order i.e. upper, middle and lower. What do these actually mean. Well, the most common way of viewing this order is in terms of wealth and power, with the upper having the most of both and the lower having the least. However, what I want to bring to your attention is the distribution of attitudes, particularly with regard to how these classes view each other. A typically held view by each class is that of 'we are the good guys'. Empathy of the upper towards the lower is low as is the lower towards the upper, the latter being commonly referred to as 'inverted snobbery'. Interestingly the middle class has a higher degree of empathy for the upper and lower classes than those classes have for each other. The middle class broadly speaking aspire to the wealth and style of the upper class but also sympathise to some extent with the lower class's hardships. Of course you will find plenty of exceptions to the these views within each class. I am speaking here in terms of general attitudes. Another aspect of attitude we might want to think about is the sense of superiority. Self superiority is nowhere near as abundant in the lower class, whereas it is dominant in the upper class.

'Order' is a word that you will come across frequently in politics, as in 'law and order' or as spoken in courts and parliament as a command 'Order!'. What does it mean. Well, look at the illustration and it should become obvious. The term means 'deference' or 'defer' i.e. the expectation that one should defer to their 'superiors'. It's not a term I am fond of, as like most I do not think of myself as being inferior to anyone. Of course we maybe inferior on specific skills and so forth e.g. I'm no carpenter, so a professional carpenter is obviously superior to me in wood working skills, but as a person I am much more egalitarian of thought. That is to say that I believe that all people are equal even if different. This is not a view widely held in the upper class I'm sorry to say.

There are many sources, particularly auto-biographies of national leaders, from which we can find candid revelations of supremacist attitudes amongst the upper class. I have picked one, which I have shamelessly lifted from Noam Chomsky in a talk he gave in Belfast 1993 titled 'Creating a New World Order', that should give some sense of attitudes amongst the ruling class:

The actual reality was expressed a bit more accurately by Winston Churchill, with his customary lucidity, when he was describing the new world order of the day, in 1945, and he wrote as follows; "The government of the world must be entrusted to the satisfied nations, who wish nothing more for themselves than what they have. Not to the hungry nations who only cause trouble. The government of the world must be entrusted to rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations. Our power placed us above the rest and it is our right to rule."

These kinds of utterances are generally kept out of the mainstream media, so for the casual observer it is quite hard today to pick up the degree of supremacist thinking amongst the ruling class, in fact many of the real power wielding ruling class do not appear in the mainstream media whatsoever. For example you might want want to browse the website 'Who Owns Britain' and see how many of the major land owners' names you recognise.

So what causes these social groups to become distinguished in their attitudes? We only need look at the evolution of species of plant or animal to find the answer. Geographically isolated groups of the same species will diverge into different species given time. Likewise, intellectually or geographically isolated groups of people will evolve different cultures over time. Just think about the evolution of Islam versus that of Christianity. Once an administrative group is formed to govern a people, and even though that administrative group is of those people, they immediately have a common interest; governing people. Government will always face resistance from some sections of the population on each issue, and so become desensitised to the concerns of such sub-groups believing that their own actions are for the 'greater good'. Given enough time the administrative group will be concerned with governing only and care nothing for the concerns of the people it governs, which is pretty much what we see today. A class of governors has evolved who serve the interests of governors only, relenting in its course only when discontent amongst the governed starts to frighten them. Even then they will use forceful means to try to stay their course, until of course it becomes untenable. The result is that at least 2 classes will evolve who exist in varying states of opposition to each other, the governors making laws to suit their ideals and the governed breaking those laws to suit their ideals. So now we have upper and lower classes.

So where does the middle class come from? Well, the upper class is a minority, and given that it's largely self-serving policies will benefit it most, it is naturally a minority of the privileged. So, based on the ratio of governors to the governed, many of its policies will be concerned with its own security. At the very least it requires a police force between it and the governed. If the police were to share the same views of the governed then the police force would be of no use to the governors, in fact a capable police force would be a threat to the governors. As a result the police force are given preferential treatment over the lower class, in the way of pay at the very least. Today the treatment of police goes much further, including indoctrination of the police against the lower class. The lower class must be treated with suspicion at all times. These are just 2 of the ways in which the police are set apart from the lower class. There are many others. This is quite probably one of the roots of the middle class, though we can go back to the Romans or further to see other middle class groups such as slave traders and so forth. Each middle class group serving the interests of the upper class whilst benefiting from exploitation of the lower class, or even other members of the middle class.

This stratification of the people has been around for a long time. The earliest civilisation I know of that doesn't appear to have had a middle class is that of the people of Caral in Peru. This was very likely a civilisation transitioning from a flat society to a structured society in which no middle class had yet developed.

There are many more aspects to this topic to be discussed, including the extremes that the ruling class regard as norms, which I shall do in future posts, but in short, countries are ruled by the ruling class for the ruling class, not by the people for the people.

Examining Climate Change Data for Yourself

Like a lot of people I have felt like I haven't really seen for myself what the facts are concerning the claim of human made climate change (ACC or anthropogenic climate change), only what others want me to see. Within the context of the corporate controlled media system, those points of view are heavily biased by pro-ACC and anti-ACC business influences. There is a lot of money being spent by oil companies such as Koch Oil Industries and their owners on persuading the public that ACC is a liberal hoax, and likewise 'green' businesses do very nicely out of public fear of ACC. I figure the only way to make in-roads to the truth of the matter is to look at available data for myself.

Now, I'm no scientist, though I am fairly scientifically literate, so sifting through research papers and trying to figure out the reality from studies of bacteria in cloud formations complete with complex calculus was too time consuming for me as a start point, so I thought I would look for the kind of data from which the reality ought to climb out of the screen waving a reality flag at me. Given the central proposition that humanity is causing global temperature rises I thought I would compare global population data with global temperature data, and yes I am aware of the phenomenon of 'heat islands' i.e. the distribution of temperature sensors being biased towards more densely populated areas, though I understand that studies have been done that exclude these 'heat islands' and that the average data is much the same. In fairness to critics, I haven't yet looked at that data for myself, but I thought the exercise I did which is laid out below was valid nonetheless, not withstanding discovering that the 'exclusion' studies are in fact being lied about.

A few years back I discovered an cool online tool called Wolfram-Alpha (free) which is a sort of information systems/science project to make easy use of avail science data. With the tool you can do all sorts of cool English based calcs like 'Norway GDP compared to UK GDP'. The following vid gives you a good idea of what I'm talking about:

 

I called up global temperature data using the terms 'Global Temperatures since 1850' since it covers most of the human population growth through the industrial revolution. The results include the following science datasets: 

Study	Description	Date
HadCRUT3vGL	Instrumental HadCRUT3v data from the Hadley Center and the Climate Research Unit	2006
Mann2003a	Historical records, ice cores, lake sediments, shells, tree rings; global mean surface reconstruction based on multi-proxy data	2003
Mann2008f	Corals, historical records, ice cores, lake sediments, speleothem, tree rings; 2000 year hemispheric and global surface temperature reconstructions	2008
NCDCGL	Instrumental global surface temperature anomalies from the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Climatic Data Center	2006

Whether you regard these datasets as factual is down to you to determine, but I don't know of better sources of data so please write me if you do.

The combined graph looks like this:

As you can see the datasets roughly track each other so I picked the Mann2008f dataset as the temperature reconstruction from natural data implicitly smooths the data since those sources provide average temperatures, that had a smooth curve to simplify matters (though if you zoom in using Wolfram-Alpha you'll see it's not quite as smooth as it looks here). The advantage of the Mann data is that it doesn't suffer from the phenomenon of heat islands :

Interestingly you can see the 11 year solar cycle (I have drawn on the image for you to see) which we will just have to normalise (iron out) in our heads to see the trend without the solar influence.

In addition to this we need the global population data since 1850:

Overlaying the datasets (I had to stretch the population graph because of the different times scales) we get the following:

To me this paints a clear picture. Assuming the data is correct, this is not just correlation, as the correlation is too good. There is an obvious link between the two curves and it tracks the industrialisation of humanity extremely well. 

If you have better data please let me know.

Examining Sam Harris's moral assertions

Sam Harris has often referred us to a specific hypothetical moral dilema which forms what appears to be a cornerstone in his philosophy concerning the practice of religion, and in all likelihood one of the key foundations in what appears to be his tacit, if not explicit, endorsement of certain aggressive aspects of US foreign policy. The dilema proposes a scenario in which a runaway train cart is on course to wipe out a group of workers plying their trade on the track. According to the rules of the dilema only one of 2 possible courses of action may be taken. One is to do nothing whilst the other is to kill an otherwise uninvolved individual, the result of which will be that the cart does not go on to kill the group of rail workers. Sam comes down in favour of killing the innocent bystander on the basis of the lower resultant body count. This Sam does without equivocation, as though it were an obvious a conclusion to reach, just as choosing not to open fire on a crowd of shoppers simply because you have a gun. Sam does not explore the ethics of the other option in our raiload dilema, and that is to take no action, though he gently urges us to except his conclusion on the basis that truths may in fact be less than obvious to us, citing the Double Jeapardy 3 door dilema as another such case. In fairness to Sam he does explore the alternative in a different scenario, in which we consider the possibility of sacrificing a hospital patient suffering say only a minor injury in order to save the lives of several other patients who are in need of critical organs which our patient happens to have. In this scenario Sam comes down on the side of not sacrificing the individual for the sake of the body count. Is Sam suffering from a case of what Orwell called double think? I.e the ability of the human mind to simultaneously accept two mutually incompatible statements or beliefs. In fairness to Sam I should say that I don't know what Sam's reasoning is though he does seem to expect us to find it obvious, and it maybe the case that Sam pictures different conditions to that which he appears to me to present. That said, I would like to go back to the railway scenario and examine the option of taking no action.

The principle view point in the philosophy of ethics, to me at least, is of the actors or catalysts in a given scenario. That is to say that what the rest world is doing is irrelevant, what matters is the action or inaction of the actor. This, on the face of it, might appear to lend favour to Sam's argument in the case of the runaway train cart. However if we start to adjust some of the criteria of the scenario we may unveil a broader picture that is not obvious from simply taking the train cart scenario in isolation. For example let's suppose that the innocent bystander is Sam's own child, assuming Sam has a child for the sake of the argument. Sam doesn't know any of the track workers in peril, but according to Sam's moral reasoning we should assume that he would be at least in favour of killing his child to save the track workers, whomever they may be. I think it would be hard for anyone to believe that Sam would actually support the notion of killing his child and thus hold any respect for statements by Sam to the effect that he would kill his child if presented with the scenario for real. Could you support the notion of killing your own child in this scenario? Your answer to that question is what we would call a moral value. So what has changed? We have substituted his child for an anonymous individual, but the moral dilemma itself has not changed. Now, I don't want to be seen to be putting words into Sam's mouth so I shall just remind you that Sam, as far as I know has not made his position in our altered scenario known, and for all I know he may not have even thought about it. We do however appear to have a conflict of morality here to resolve, as I suspect most people fall strongly in favour of not killing their children, which I believe to be a good thing, and that is also a moral value. So, what is at the heart of the conflict? Well, it would seem to me to be down to the question of action or inaction, physically at least.

On the matter of action versus inaction I believe it to be valuable to explore the ethics of inaction as the complexity of real life may reveal more about the reality of outcomes versus hypothetical scenarios in which other considerations are excluded for the purpose of building an ethical argument. First off, in our railway crisis, we are urged to ignore external actors, be they natural or intelligent. So we are encouraged not to consider that we do not know that everything will turn out as we are led to believe. For example, let's suppose our group of rail workers are in fact Nazi sympathisers trying to dislodge a rail so as to kill the Jewish occupants of a later train. This fact we add to the scenario, but we do not allow the principle actor and would be saviour to know this information. If we sacrifice our innocent bystander, the Nazi plot remains uncovered by virtue of them having been saved from a grisly meeting with a fast moving and very heavy machine. The Nazi conspirators are then free to go on and successfully derail and kill a train load of people. OK, it's a fairly unlikely real world scenario today if we are thinking of the context of Nazis, however it may not be such an unlikely scenario if we change the actors and props to a more contemporary context.

Let's now consider another alternative to the railway scenario. Supposing instead that the rail points between the train and the unaware workers are set to divert the train cart down a different line thus averting disaster. Again our saviour is unaware of this fact or worse still is of the belief that the points are set such that the workers will meet their destiny when in fact they are set such that the workers would be saved. In the latter case, our would-be saviour would be compelled to switch the points based on his belief, but in doing so would seal the fate of our rail workers. In the former case he may have in fact killed his son or an innocent bystander when in fact the workers are in no danger. Now we start to see that with every moral dilemma, in the real world at least, we can't know all of the factors that are critical to the outcomes. It is also reality that all too often intervention i.e. action, in fact turns out to be a moral travesty. The would-be saviour is not in control of everything in the scenario nor are they aware of everything and thus they cannot be held responsible for a situation not of their making, in my opinion. A passive observer has no impact upon a system thus the system remains the product of the histories of the actors in the system and thus if any responsibility maybe apportioned it must be to them. Does this make a case for not acting to intervene ever? I don't believe so. What I have done here is to show that complex situations that for which we cannot be fully aware of we should not simply jump aboard the action wagon but watch peacefully and passively and learn. In war and conflict actors following the action course are almost always the ones doing the killing or at least supporting it. These scenarios are vastly more complex than in our railroad scenarios yet the moral actors are always those with guns that choose not to use them, inaction. It is the same principle in peaceful non-cooperative protest. Protesters pursue their peaceful course of action and in doing so expose the immorality of their opponents who choose the course of physical intervention. Another example is the role of international obervers in conflict zones.

Many people try to persuade us that inaction is a form of complicity. I reject this notion on the grounds that I think it is willful ignorance of the factors of a situation that is tantamount to complicty and in order not to engage in such ignorance we must observe and learn.

It's time to plan for an end to war, WWIII is almost here

The US is threatenning Iran if you hadn't noticed. Here is a sample public discussion, but you can find many on the web:

China and Russia do not appear to be prepared to let the US/UK/Israel unholy triumverate attack Iran without consequence as is implied in the following sample program discussion, though as before it is far from the only example, you can also hear Chinese and Russian military generals implying the same kinds of things:

 
It's almost surreal, as Noam Chomsky would say. We are now in the overtures of WWIII and everyone seems to be going about their business; business as usual.


Regardless of what you think of David Icke, this short collection of clips that include Icke wil give you a flavour of what is going on now:

The time for oppression to end is now. The biggest threat to everyone on the planet is their own government as governments are nothing more than a collection of the most crooked and murderous narcissistic fascists in every country.

The people of the world need to plan to march on their capital cities on the same date and spread the message. 12/12/12? the Mayan calendar date? Guy Fawkes eve, 5th November? The idea being that the news of the planned march will be a significant warning in itself, assuming enough people talk about it. If the threat of war draws nearer, no doubt the collective will revise its plans

If you want to copy and paste this post, be my guest.

You fund it so they do it

People keep whining about their governments, yet you keep funding these war criminals and thugs. If you follow the teachings of Jesus, he said "let him who hath no sins cast the first stone", which means you are supposed to pay attention to your own crimes and deal with them. But you people just keep working for them and funding them with taxes. If you want to change things, if you want to stop terrorism, war, oppression then stop funding it, and stop participating in this corporate fascist nightmare.

U.S. Army prepares to invade U.S. NDAA

"You're wasting precious time"

This is a pretty stark wake up call to the elite!

Sen. Alren Specter (Rep), Pennsylvania, and congress (Senate Terrorism Subcommittee, hear from Normal Olson, a militia commander from Alanson, MI.

Ordinary Americans are stirring

Now here is a guy with some things he really seems to need to get of his chest. He is a small time radio host, but I'm wondering how many more like him there are Many?

The Young Turks are making similar noises though still talking in terms of power structures rather than freedom. That's 2 that I know of. If there are many, that would be a significant network of grass roots support for a revolution in the US.

Soldiers Speak Out

Here is a 4 something minute trailer to what looks to me like an excellent documentary on what rulers send their proletariate to do:

"A powerful first-hand testament to the reality of the military experience, told in the words of Americaan veterans who have been to war and now oppose it. An important counterpoint to the "stay the course" rhetoric of the Bush administration."
http://empowermentproject.org/sso.html

Which Iraqis welcome UK troops?

"William Patey and Stuart Innes, together with General Brims, have started that process have begun to focus Iraqi politicians' minds on what needs to be done. Moreover, our military are back on the ground visiting police stations - a fact welcomed by the majoraity of Iraqi Police Service Officers." [1]

Peter Hayes, Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in London 2005 – 2007 [2]

Apparently Iraqi police were happy with the UK military back in town, but nowhere in this document does he express an interest or detail of what the Iraqi people thought about the matter. It is not surprising since the elite seem only to be able think in terms of control rather than freedom. "what needs to be done" seems also to be what the UK wants done rather than consulting Iraqis.

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[1] 30 September 2005 – South East Iraq Impact of Security Incident in Basra, Document reference IRQ 0406 0122 833 1 B / Req 2 / Doc 

[2] Sri Lankan IT BPO Industry Chamber http://www.slasscom.lk/node/92 where Peter 'serves' as British High Commissioner to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka since March 2008.

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The 'right path' for Iraqis?

General Major J B Dutton CBE on restructuring Iraq:
"...they need our assistance to set themselves on the right path and our continued support to maintain progress along along it." [1]

General Major J B Dutton CBE, Multinational Division (South East), Operation TELIC, British Forces Post Office 641.

Who decides what this right path is? Iraqis? The UK? Is this serving the interests of Iraqis or of the UK ruling elite?

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[1] Hauldown Report, June - December 2005, http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/47504/dutton-hauldown-report.pdf

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Another military dictator for Iraqis?

"Various ideas for replacements have been aired over the years and none so far look convincing. But another Ba'athist or military dictator from the Sunni/Tikriti minority might be found with whom we could do business"[1]

Simon Webb, UK MOD Policy Director 2001-2004 [2]

I wonder how convincing it would have been to Iraqis to have the UK graciously find them another military dictator. Presuming that Simon is not completely stupid then we would have to assume that he knew this would not be what Iraqis wanted and that in fact Simon was merely following longstanding British imperialist doctrine to control other countries by whatever means.

"But there was a more serious and considered answer given by the National Security Council, the highest planning agency. They pointed out that there's a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports status quo regimes which, of course, are brutal and oppressive, and does so in order to secure its own interests in obtaining oil, and then they said, well, it's hard to counter this perception because it's correct." [3]

There is little for me to add as it's all been said before.

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[1] Letter/Memorandum : "Bush and the War on Terrorism"; 12/04/2002, MOD reference : "D/Policy Dir/6/2/2 (171/02); Obtained from URL : "http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/52573/webb-ps-sofs-bush-war-on-terrorism-2002-04-12.pdf"

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8375439.stm

[3] "The Campaign of Hatred Against Us", Noam Chomsky interview by Four Corners, January 26, 2002, http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020126.htm

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Letter to a Human Nation

Dear Humanity,

     I'm writing you out of love and concern for your well being. You are both wondrous and wonderful and I would hate to see you go. You know that you are sick but you are still confused about what the ailment is and what to do about it. I know that you are smart and I think you are figuring it all out. As an honest being you are consuming and assimilating your accumulated knowledge, all points of view, for without it you are blind. Your vision is still very blurred but I believe we can fix that fairly easily, so long as you want to, and I believe you do.

    I don't know what you know and as yet you don't know what I know, but at least I am listening to you and I hope that you continue to listen to me, especially since I am you also. My language is not refined and my humour is often misunderstood, I can be dry and academic, I can be imaginative and poetic, I can be confusing or even crass, I can be brilliant but make the most obvious mistakes, my words have meanings to me that may be slightly different in meaning to you, but still I think it is possible that you might hear me, so I shall continue.

Brains

    I want to talk about brains for a moment. Brains, I believe, will be the agents of your journey to health. Every living being has one. They all function at different rates, assessing different kinds of data. They are made up of trillions of neurons all talking to each other. Each neuron experiencing the world around it and responding in the ways it has learned. A brain can be sick, and it is notable by its overall dysfunction. Internally we find that the brain has ceased to communicate properly, with regions and functions chattering away but other regions and functions unable to receive or interpret the messages properly. Some neurons attack other neurons, functions or even whole regions in the belief that everything else is the problem, oblivious to the fact that the problem is the miscommunication and thus only adding to the problem. If only we could just fix those lines of communication then we might at least ease the suffering if not cure the ailment. Is it possible that a single neuron or perhaps a small group of neurons could hold the key to this puzzle? And if it were possible would that tiny region or function of the brain be able to get through to the rest of the brain? It seems like a tough challenge but I see it beginning to work. One neuron is chattering wildly into the white noise around it, burning up far more energy that in needs, poisoning itself and those around it with some misguided notion that its frantic behaviour is the only way to behave and to communicate. Something changes, perhaps the series of events that has shaped our brain has led inexorably to a change in the neuron, but has not affected others yet. The neuron stops chattering wildly and starts doing what it should be doing. It has stopped attacking its fellow neurons and the attacks from them are tailing off as they always do. Its new found behaviour is much more relaxed, self aware and soothing to those around it. It turns out that this behaviour is communicating the means by which it became content and calm and gave rise to its new-found and considerably more harmonious function. Very soon all of its 'friends' or 'family' are doing what they should do and they continue to do because they like it. One might liken this phenomenon with a virus, but then that is the nature of ideas at every level, both good and bad. Luckily neurons do know what is good even if they have temporarily been distracted by fear, anger, sorrow, guilt or any of those intense emotional experiences that can wash through the population, derailing it from proper course for a while, but it finds its way again. Saner heads prevail. The destructive levels of emotion start slowly to drain away and as the harmonious neurons grow in number their soothing song soon resonates throughout the population thus restoring balance between heart and mind.

    As you can hopefully see with my description of the brain here that I am weaving in and out between observable reality and philosophy or religion as some might prefer to call it, whilst creating a metaphor, analogy or model. The interaction of neurons is very much like the interaction of humans, and in fact of all life. There is a sizzling roar of communication at every conceivable level in what we call life, assuming you are prepared to stretch your conception of the term communication for the purposes of understanding what I am trying to tell you. If you are prepared to do that then it does not take much more of a stretch to see that the Earth has both a body and a brain. It has the means of its own self sustenance for quite some time to come, so there is good reason to be hopeful.

To the Stars

    Is the Earth brain the only planetary brain? Is it merely a neuron trying to reach maturity where it might start to communicate with other neurons. How many other neurons are there? Are any of them already communicating? I don't know, but the Universe seems awfully big and it would seem like a terrible waste of space if there weren't other neurons. Imagine the life forms that may have emerged in different galaxies, their strange but beautiful technologies. Life may have arisen in many places but never having reached maturity, dying out before ever having the enlightening and rapturous experience of reaching out to the stars and communicating with others. We are tantalizingly close to being able to reach out but we are not quite there yet, and our sick brain is squinting in the bright glare of its own activity, on the verge of seeing with clarity but also perilously close to a fatal fall as it blunders forward.

The Tower of Babel

    There is a tale told in the Bible about something called the Tower of Babel. The story goes that men tried to build a tower to reach the place of God, and God brought down the tower and scrambled the languages of men so that they could not collaborate in such a plan again, or so he thought...

    A tower is a structure, constructed from substructures and layers. It is hierarchical in construction, and it is this that we should be looking for if we want to unveil 'T2'. Hierarchy is widespread in human society today though contrary to common belief it is not necessarily a fixed formation in human gatherings and organisations. Many ancient and even remote modern cultures are virtually structureless or flat. In the Western World, we see towers reaching to the sky all around us but most of the time fail to see that they are mostly substructures. What separates us from flat societies is an idea that gained footing before the Romans; that depriving other sentient beings of life and liberty is good practice. The idea has been passed by various means but usually from parent to child.

The McDonald’s lettuce washer reports to the floor manager. The floor manager reports to the site franchise manager. The site franchise manager reports to the regional franchise manager. The regional franchise manager reports to the franchise general manager. The franchise general manager reports to the board of directors. The board of directors reports to the shareholders. The shareholding corporation market subsidiaries manager reports to the conglomerate management. The conglomerate management reports to the conglomerate board of directors. The conglomerate board of directors reports to the conglomerate shareholders. The conglomerate shareholders give 'donations' to the campaigns of politicians who will best represent them, and maybe arrange for the other politicians interested in their line of business to have other things to worry about, like where their children are right now, whether will they be embroiled in a sex scandal in the morning, or perhaps whether they will have an unfortunate 'accident' in their car on the way home.

    Here we have 9 tiers of commercial hierarchy, and a fairly typical arrangement too. Each tier coercing the tier below, usually with the threat of losing their job for more mundane matters..., and ensuring their complicity and compliance in whatever agenda the tier above is operating. This is one way communication. Top down.

    So up there amongst the gods, we have military moguls who do so well out of death by metal and other forms of chemistry, banking moguls who own most of the planet, oil moguls who are doing so well from poisoning us all to death, the Biotech moguls who are doing so well out of experimenting on us and engineering the seeds of life to replace us. It scares us all, but it is what we have done, not 'they'. Every time you have deferred to someone else's orders you have been complicit in the crime or malfunction of the whole. You start to reduce your communication towards your assailant and defer more and more, just as a trigger defers to the finger. The communication becomes more and more unidirectional appearing to lead unavoidably toward a single outcome. Except you are not a trigger and they are not fingers. You can keep trying to communicate and even improve communication. You know you can, you have done it before. So why give up now? Why accept defeat? Why shouldn’t your point of view at least be heard? Well it wont if you don't try. It's really up to you. No one else. You.

    Way up on the belfry of our tower, the wind currents are strong and the passengers on deck still cannot see through the clouds. They can however feel the discontent down below that is causing the tower to wobble. They fear the wobbling at these great heights. They also fear the ground because it has been so long since they were part of the ground dwelling people that they have forgotten that it is no more or less honourable, stimulating or pleasurable to be a ground dweller. They have forgotten that they are no closer to the mind of God or nature than any of us. They don't seem to care that people are being crushed needlessly under the weight and blindness of structures they ride contently. In fear of their own demise they issue more assertive orders to down below, but down below is still in shock from the last stumble and is busy trying to survive it but failing to communicate back effectively, that the tower is not going to hold much longer, and that there is nothing left to do but take it down carefully if everyone is to make it out alive. We don't know for sure if we can all make it out alive but we do know that we won't if we keep the tower up much longer.

Finding the Right Words

Everyone needs and deserves their freedom, no matter what they have done before. We have all participated at some level in the greatest evils of our time but should not forget that at the same time we have all participated in our greatest good. Blaming others is hypocrisy. It is what dysfunctional neurons do in their often short and unhappy lives. We have to stop punishing each other, because we are all responsible. The saviour neuron leads by example not by hypocrisy. Every neuron can be a saviour, it just has to stop shouting and to start listening whilst singing softly in harmonious awe and rapture at all around it. Many of us have found this pleasant and calm state but we call it by different names. 'Finding god' and 'being at one with the universe' will ring cheerful bells to many even if they find the other name strange or believe it to be wrong. But therein may just lie yet another broken line of communication. Every single word we know has a meaning unique to each of us that is a composite of what has gone before from our experiences to our chemistry. We are right about some things and wrong about others. Which is which we can never know, though we may believe. So long as we do not hurt each other or threaten each others only means of survival, so long as we don't nor bully or dominate and so long as we try to communicate instead of giving up, we have a chance to communicate and find blissful union with what we thought we had lost.

Finding the right words to communicate with your neighbour is something that you are already expert in. You can communicate well with your neighbour even if I cannot. If you find accord or inspiration with this letter you may want to write your own. You may rewrite this letter and translate it into the language that you share with your neighbours. I do not own this letter any more or less than you do. It is yours to do with as you see fit. Likewise no one owns this planet any more or any less than you or I do and is ours to do with as we see fit. Seeing fit is what we must do. If you want to dismantle the tower then you will have to speak your every langauge once again.

    I ask of you only this; if you translate this message, that you append your name below. Then we might gather a chain of letters and start to understand the meanings of words to and by those most distant from our own. If you want to send me a copy of your translation I will be very happy to receive it and read it.

Your loving neuron,

Ian Kirwan

No Graven Images

"Pakistan brings in bulldozers to destroy any chance of spot where al-Qa'ida leader died becoming shrine." writes Andrew Buncombe of the Independent in his article "Bin Laden's last refuge is razed in the dead of night".

But of course the likes of Bush, Obama, Blair and Cameron will be given full state honours? The stench of hypocrisy should stain the consciences of everyone in the 'free world'! Everyone who pays tax to fund these terrorists and war criminals, who buys the goods of their corporations and those of their subsidiaries, those who voted lending credibility to this system instead of voting with the sound of tearing paper, everyone who cheered for 'our boys' whilst they were out there murdering Iraqis, Afghanis, Libyans, Pakistanis, and now in all likelihood Syrians under the guise of 'Al Qaeda', whilst we are starving the 74 million Iranian people to death for the heinous crime of being in the way of our rich men's oil.

Until you have hung your head in shame, you will never begin to do what you should have done long ago. 

The Tower of Babel

There is a tale told in the Bible about something called the Tower of Babel. The story goes that men tried to build a tower to reach the place of God, and God brought down the tower and scrambled the languages of men so that they could not collaborate in such a plan again, or so he thought...

A tower is a structure, constructed from substructures and layers. It is hierarchical in construction, and it is this that we should be looking for if we want to unveil 'T2'. Hierachy is everywhere in human society today. Contrary to common belief it is not necessarily a natural formation in human gatherings. Many ancient and even remote modern cultures are virtually structureless. In the Western World, we see towers reaching to the sky all around us but most of the time fail to see that they are merely substructures. What separates us is an idea that gained footing before the Romans; that depriving other sentient beings of life and liberty equals good profit.

The McDonalds lettuce washer reports to the floor manager. The floor mananger reports to the site franchise manager. The site franchise manager reports to the regional franchise manager. The regional franchise manager reports to the franchise general manager. The franchise general manager reports to the board of directors. The board of directors reports to the shareholders. The shareholding corporation market subsidiaries manager reports to the conglomerate management. The conglomerate management reports to the conglomerate board of directors. The conglomerate board of directors reports to the conglomerate shareholders. The conglomerate shareholders give 'donations' to the campaigns of politicians who will best represent them, and maybe arrange for the other politicians interested in their line of business other things to worry about, like where their children are right now, whether will they be embroiled in a sex scandal in the morning, or perhaps whether they will have an unfortunate 'accident' in their car on the way home.

Here we have 9 tiers of commercial hierachy, and a fairly typical one too. Each tier coercing the tier below, usually with the threat of losing their job for more mundane matters..., and ensuring their complicity and compliance in whatever agenda the tier above is operating.

So up there amongst the gods, we have military moguls who do so well out of death by metal and other forms of chemistry, banking moguls who own most of the planet, oil moguls who are doing so well from poisoning us all to death, the Biotech moguls who are doing so well out of experimenting on human beings and engineering the seeds of life to replace us. Shamelessly quoting from the film Contact (though perhaps not a good choice here) "are these the people you want talking to your god for you?".

God, or nature, it seems is poised to reply to these men, and in fact to all of us. Unfortunately the tower, now on the verge of collapse, is going to hurt and kill a lot of people as it crumbles down on top of its populations. The tower has suffered a few minor quakes in recent years, and all indepentent economists are telling us that they were merely preludes to the grand finale.

I'm just wondering though, are you still holding the tower? Are you still passing up more support? Do you really have to keep doing that? Humans did just fine living off the land before they started building towers. Are you living off the land or are you on the tower?

Are you still living in fear?

Have you ever considered what it is that 'the law' does? I know many people have but just in case you haven't here is something to think about: If you steal a loaf of bread because you are hungry, you will likely be assaulted and held prisoner by the professional thugs hired by the wealthy company owners. When the paid thugs of the national company arrive you will again be assaulted then kidnapped whereupon they will attempt to extort you for lots more money than the 'value' of the loaf of bread. So, what was the crime you committed again?

You can't leave your prison unless you have a special permit that allows you to leave the prison on license loan or sale to another prison. In order to get that permit you have to become a slave to someone else who will give you a fraction of your value to them. When you have accumulated enough slave credits and made acquaintance with a medium to high ranking advocate of this system who is willing to sign the photos for your permit, then you may submit your application along with the ransom money for discretionary licensed loan or sale. When you receive your permit you will have to produce more slave credits to use the only modes of transport and transportation routes that your owners will allow. Failure to comply will result in your assault, kidnap and extortion.

Those people with the most slave credits are no longer called slave owners and prison wardens but much nicer names like shareholders and politicians. The slaves themselves are no longer called slaves but much nicer names like workers and work force.

If you want to escape your prison, you have two choices. One is suicide, which most of us manage to avoid, but the other is far more preferable. It's a little harder than suicide because involves thinking for oneself rather than just doing and thinking whatever you are told.

Your prison is your fear of the consequences of doing what your owners don't want you to do. You can't live in fear, meaning that If you are in fear you are not living, but rather functioning as your owners want you to.

By the way the name or euphemism for your prison is 'The Free World'.

Are you still living in fear?

Taking responsibility for yourself

Whether or not we are happy with this government and our local representative Karen Lumley, I believe we should think more seriously about our responsibility for what we do and what we can do with respect to government. What I mean is, tax payers are paying for what this government does and for what Karen Lumley decides on our behalf. Well, Karen is a human being and she will read your letters and emails and politely respond by letter as she has done with me (despite some previous rudeness from me, sorry Karen, my bad). If we don't tell Karen what we think about various issues then she is going to have to go by what she believes to be correct. In the absence of your voice to Karen, Karen is hearing the voices of the businesses and corporations that sustain her PR campaign with funding to her campaign and to the general cash box of the Conservative Party.

So bearing these details in mind, what is the most important issue right now, and what is our philosophy on the matter? We each have to decide for ourselves what is the most important issue and how our own philosophy relates to it. For example, the most important issue for me right now is our policy (yes, yours and mine) of supporting economic sanctions against Iran over allegations that they might have a nuclear weapon. Iran has a population of approximately 74 million people, which by some 'beer matt' math and assuming say 4 people per family, means there are approximately 19 million families being starved to death for refusing to stop developing their nuclear energy program, even though it is in complete accord with their right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful means under the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) which they have signed and agreed to and are living up to their obligations. Interestingly Israel has not signed the NPT though it has many nuclear weapons, they regularly threaten their neighbours and are in the midst of the slow extermination of the Palestinians, yet we are not starving Israel to death. Then there is the fact that we have around 900 nuclear weapons, and as signers of the NPT we are contractually committed to eradicating our nuclear arsenal, but we haven’t. In fact we are planning to overhaul or replace this arsenal.

So, I'm really struggling with the philosophy of our actions and the message that we are sending to the world. We are participating in, what under any reasonable definition of the term is genocide, because we think Iran is scary? Iran hasn't attacked another nation for 200 years unless you count the period under the Shah who we installed as ruler to do our bidding. Iran has no nuclear weapons that we know of (despite what the US controlled IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) says) and we think that they are scary? How scary are we to others? I mean after killing a approximately 1 million people and making homeless a further 2 million in Iraq with our sanctions and invasion because Iraq supposedly had WMDs (actually we know they did at some point even if they were gone when we invaded, because we sold them the technology to do it), how scary must we look to other countries? Are we saying to the world 'if you seem scary to me then I'm going to kill you'? It certainly seems that way to me. But far more worrying is if that is the kind of behaviour we are telling other countries is valid, how should we expect to be treated by them?

Karen Lumley is a proud Christian and sits on a board of governors for a local faith school. The thing is I can't fathom how this fits into her Christian philosophy. I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't say "do unto others if they seem scary". It also seems to me to clash with Christian doctrine of "let he who hath no sins cast the first stone", which in my simplistic interpretation is the same as 'clean up your own yard instead of complaining about your neighbours', and would seem to me to map onto this issue as 'shouldn't we get rid of our own nukes before point our fingers at Iran?'. If what we are doing is meant to be what we would have others do unto us then I want no part of it. I have sent this very question to Karen and politely warned her that she may find herself in a war crimes tribunal at some point in the future if she doesn't publically conscientiously object to this genocidal behaviour.

Karen is currently sitting with our responsibility on her shoulders and if we do not tell her what we think then we cannot blame her for any of these actions. They are our responsibility. I have mailed Karen with my objection and would like to publically state that I do not consent to murdering millions of Iranian families because we think they are scary. Whether you agree with me or not, it is your responsibility to tell Karen (tellkaren.com) whether you consent to this behaviour. It's the only way Karen is going to know what you think.

If you want to take responsibility for yourself then to contact your MP all you need is your post code and this : http://findyourmp.parliament.uk