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