I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
Clark; you have mail .
That’s not personal, Jon. Rejection is a pattern in my life. I must be rubbish. My real mum knew I was a bad’un, put me up for adoption. She had sense.
Let’s focus on the important stuff, all of us care about the individuals progress and happiness, we have different perspectives and understandings but I do not see anyone here with malicious intent.
Clark; Please go to email.
Clark, nonsense. You are conscious enough of your psychology to see how your life journey is affecting your mood characteristics – which is why I say hang in there. This phase is temporary.
I’ll keep saying it as often as is required: your patient, scientific and even-handed approach to discussion and moderation is invaluable here, and we wouldn’t be without you.
godammit
Sunflower, I’ve been chasing this stuff for years. You don’t need that bit, weight loss at death, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t true; you can’t even define an instant of death, the body dies by degrees, and it loses water vapour all the time.
I shalln’t try to explain here. But you don’t need to reject science, either. Science isn’t what you think. It doesn’t conflict with mind or spirit. People just haven’t noticed yet.
OK, Ben. I had a ‘phone call. Someone wants something fixed.
ok
Ben, thanks for the message. I’ll do. I’ll be alright.
OK. I am emailing you my phone number.
Ben, thanks. Billy gets me mad. It is just inconceivable that the entire medical profession are callous money-grubbing murderers. My friend Martyn, who would have been a pharmacist, he died of the bowel cancer. It was too little from the doctors, not too much, that killed him. He saw the doctor for blood in his faeces, but they thought it was haemorrhoids.
Fair enough, for a first diagnosis, but underfunding meant that his next appointment was left too late. By the time they had him in, it was inoperable.
Malcolm was killed by over-medication, but not by a corporate conspiracy. It’s just that when one doctor has prescribed, other doctors are scared to rescind the prescription. See, if the patient dies because you didn’t take action, that’s “natural causes”. But if someone has taken them off medication, well, someone can get sued or struck off for that.
Billy is arrogant, he thinks I don’t know a big secret that he’s discovered. He is assuming I haven’t had a life, and he really thinks he can help. People hanker after “secret knowledge”. Knowledge isn’t generally secret. Usually, the problem isn’t missing or hidden information, it’s that there is too much to sift through in time.
Do me a favor and ignore Billy. He has the sensitivity of an ogre.
Or, a Nazgul.
Sunflower:
There are no “proven facts” in science. All there are are hypotheses that have not yet been disproven. “Scientific facts” are for commercials for cosmetics.
I note that there is no consistency in the figures recorded. 21g, 69.5g, 0.01g; I didn’t read any further. If this was true, it would be well documented. Yes, there’s loads of scientific anomalies. All I do about them is wait. If it’s real, it’ll become well documented in due course.
Maybe you should learn and really study some science. It’s the greatest game ever devised, because you pit yourself against your own fallibility. Or read Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is far, far more probable that any given model (theory etc.) is wrong rather than right, but still we muddle through somehow, and piece by piece, our understanding of the world grows.
Scientists don’t “place themselves in the position of God”, it isn’t about faith in scientists. If there’s any faith at all, it is that the world behaves consistently, and if it doesn’t, you’ve been sloppy in your experiment or your thinking. Science relies upon reproducibility of results. It’s natural law we’re trusting, not individuals. Natural law, God’s law – to me, that’s just a matter of words.
There’s this horrible battle going on between what I call “fundamental atheism” and “New Age (whatever it is)”, and it’s entirely unnecessary. Learn enough of each, and you’ll find them compatible. But on this thread, I’ve really discovered why the rationalists have so little patience left for the New Age Mysticism. There really is quack medicine out there, trying to make money off vulnerable people, and without a scientific approach, it is impossible to tell it from a treatment that really helps.
Sunflower, here’s one you can try at home:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/
The thing that gets me down is I tend to be rejected by both sides. I’ll describe “natural law” as being the same as “God’s law”, and the hardcore rationalists hate that. I’ll say that prayer is effective, and I’m accused of hawking fairy tales. Then I explain how it works, and the religionists say I’m denying the reality of God.
No home to go to, see? Nowhere I can just be me and be accepted. Because I’m neither fish nor fowl, so both sides identify me as red herring.
This is the biggest “divide and rule” of the lot. It can divide a soul/mind against itself. You can see that happening to me, sometimes, because I won’t suppress one side or the other, and nearly everyone does, even if that means they have to believe in some grand conspiracy to keep their books balanced.
Clark, you’re a lot more patient than I am. When someone comes up with a statement like this:
“… since it seems the body does loose [sic] weight at the time of death -which would indicate that something is leaving the body and it has mass.”
My answer is simply, “That’s BS.”
It’s an example of the phenomenon of “I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”. In that silly reference Sunflower provided as a follow-up, we have it absolutely established that the weight of the soul is a consistent 21 grams. Then it changes a bit later to an equally consistent 0.0001 grams. Then it changes again.
Just think where this leaves us – humour the crazies for a moment. An Eternal Soul is a physical thing, it has mass! Bit unfortunate for individuals who get buried by landslips etc., or in such a way that the soul cannot escape, and ends up entombed with the dead body! Does this physical thing survive fire, nuclear explosions, floods, and all manner of noxious substances? Is it waterproof – does it float to the surface, then on up? Where is it supposed to go – is heaven a physical place where it makes its way? Good grief.
The “new age” types do annoy me a lot. Just like the religionists, they’re happy to spout all sorts of nonsense, and will claim to the susceptible that this is all fact, well proven, but scientists/doctors/gov’t (take your pick) want to hide this from us.
But when these “facts” turn out to be dubious in the extreme, it doesn’t shake their determination to convince themselves – and others – that it’s still true nonetheless. Indeed, the absence of real fact, and the genuine opposition to it by sane people, makes it all the more attractive, it would appear.
Right. I’m off out to repair a simple physical device. Reality will be totally uncompromising. It won’t matter how much I think I can fix it with sodium bicarbonate, if that isn’t the right method, it won’t work. (Scouse Billy thinks you can fix everything with bicarb. Mark Golding had to have a go at him about it a week or two ago.)
Reality will be uncompromising, but utterly fair. God won’t change the laws of nature in the middle of the job; of this, I have absolute faith.
The device I will be fixing is several orders of magnitude simpler than a human body. I have great respect for those experts who make it their life’s work to understand and intervene with such incredibly complex organic systems.
The person I’ll be fixing the device for is a typically human control-freak. She will believe that whingeing and whining can make me do something special, to get the job finished quicker, or to achieve something outside the capabilities of myself, my tools or my repair materials.
I will be paid with one take-out meal. Have fun with the Retro Psychokinesis Project. Ben and Jon, thanks for your support. Jon, sorry I had a go at you. Sunflower, enjoy your studies.
Glenn, it’s written on the Internet, it must be true!
(reproducibility, reproducibility)
Glenn; Hear what you are saying but ‘facts’ are what is seen with human eyes. I know it’s all we have, and what else to trust, but even science recognizes the possibility of parallel worlds. Imagine the world of insects, if you can.
@Clark – “Scientists don’t place themselves in the position of God”
….ah but they do Clark, at least some of them do. Unfortunately for us, a lot of them are highly infuential. Not so much placing themselves as Gods, but as authoritarian soothsayers doing the bidding for their masters. The flawed IPCC institution clearly attests to that.
A scientific and technological dictatorship is not a pretty sight, as we are beginning to see
Chris Jones: Who would you rather be in charge of aircraft design and testing, pal? Some religious freak, a “new-ager”, one of your political whack-jobs schilling for the corporate dollar, or scientists & engineers that rigorously follow the scientific method?
And if you manage to answer honestly, could you tell us why that might be?
@Glenn – Its a good question allthough slightly off point. I wouldnt want a new ager hippy tying my shoe laces, never mind designing an aircraft, so the answer to your question is; scientists and engineers that rigorously follow scientific methods. But only with the caveat that they insist that it would be possible for those planes to be manually overridden at any point if neccessarry. New aircraft are nearly all thoroughly regulated and controlled by their computers and ‘computer knows best’ methodology now,with no option for manual override in some areas – a highly idiotic and dangerous system.We can’t let HAL 9000 and his descendents have his wicked way all the time…
‘A Separate Reality’ excerpt (Carlos Castaneda)
You think about yourself too much and that gives you a strange fatigue that makes you shut off the world around you and cling to your arguments.
A light and amenable disposition is needed in order to withstand the impact and the strangeness of the knowledge I am teaching you. Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy, and vain. To be a man of knowledge one needs to be light and fluid.
One has to reduce to a minimum all that is unnecessary in one’s life.
Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That’s the warrior’s way.
A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.
To be a warrior you have to be crystal clear.
My acts are sincere but they are only the acts of an actor because everything I do is controlled folly. Everything I do in regard to myself and my fellow men is folly, because nothing matters.
Certain things in your life matter to you because they’re important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thing is important any longer, neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living though, because I have my will . Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it’s neat and wholesome and now it doesn’t matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life.
Once a man learns to see he finds himself alone in the world with nothing but folly. Your acts, as well as the acts of your fellow men in general, appear to be important to you because you have learned to think they are important.
We learn to think about everything, and then we train our eyes to look as we think about the things we look at. We look at ourselves already thinking that we are important. And therefore we’ve got to feel important! But then when a man learns to see , he realizes that he can no longer think about the things he looks at, and if he cannot think about what he looks at everything becomes unimportant. Everything is equal and therefore unimportant.
We need to look with our eyes to laugh. When our eyes see , everything is so equal that nothing is funny. My laughter, as well as everything I do is real but it also is controlled folly because it is useless; it changes nothing and yet I still do it.
One must always choose the path with heart in order to be at one’s best, perhaps so one can always laugh.
You don’t understand me now because of your habit of thinking as you look and thinking as you think. By “thinking” I mean the constant idea that we have of everything in the world. Seeing dispels that habit and until you learn to see you will not really understand what I mean.
Our lot as men is to learn. I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters. A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees , that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn’t; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn’t, is in no way part of his concern.
You think about your acts, therefore you have to believe your acts are as important as you think they are, when in reality nothing of what one does is important. Nothing! But then if nothing really matters, as you ask me, how can I go on living? It would be simple to die; that’s what you say and believe, because you’re thinking about life, just as you’re thinking now what seeing would be like. You want me to describe it to you so you can begin to think about it, the way you do with everything else. In the case of seeing , however, thinking is not the issue at all, so I cannot tell you what it is like to see . Now you want me to describe the reasons for my controlled folly and I can only tell you that controlled folly is very much like seeing ; it is something you cannot think about.
Our lot as men is to learn and, as I’ve said, one goes to knowledge as one goes to war; with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. Put your trust in yourself. There’s no emptiness in the life of a man of knowledge, everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal. For me there is no victory, or defeat, or emptiness. Everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle is worth my while.
In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees , only to realize then that nothing matters. You’re too concerned with liking people or with being liked yourself. A man of knowledge likes, that’s all. He likes whatever or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled folly to be unconcerned about it.
My controlled folly applies only to myself and to the acts I perform while in the company of my fellow men.
This, Clark;
“A warrior doesn’t know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.
Don Juan Matus- Journey to Ixtlan
I’m havin’ too much fun to quit.
“”The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.” Separate Reality.
“In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”
Clark; We briefly touched on the validity of the Anthropologist.
http://the-wanderling.com/don_juan.html
“Fleshing out’ the cloud Shamans.
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/cloud_shaman.html