And so 2013 Comes to an End

The year is nearly over and also coming to a close is my first year of blogging, which is an activity that in 2014 I will continue, for I have much to say about many things of importance to the sustainability of contemporary civilisation, both in terms of that which makes it unsustainable, and that which needs to be done to make it sustainable.

In 2014 I want to continue with my analysis of aspects of science, engineering and technology that need to change, particularly concerning values and beliefs that lead to processes that are no longer fit for purpose. There are matters too relating to what I have called the Prometheus syndrome that I want to explain from a theoretical perspective. I also intend to start introducing that which is being done to transform scientific, engineering and technology development processes into ones fit for the circumstances that humanity now faces. And when I encounter more nonsense from these worlds, and that also of free market capitalism and religion, then these too will find a place in my commentaries. I will also be dealing with matters, such as the meaning of the risks can be managed, that I mentioned in blogs during 2013.

I repeat here that the process of understanding what sustainability truly means is a journey of discovery, and the more people who begin to see the wider meaning of sustainability, the more those that only have an incremental change agenda will be seen to be out of touch and irrelevant – people to be ignored.

Have a good new year – one that is better by not having to put up with the same old tale of woes that those in power have clearly demonstrated themselves as being unable to resolve. Through the power of the vote, the wallet, and lifestyle changes, make 2014 the year that you send a powerful message to these people, that the time when they could maintain the status quo, is over.

Another Mind that has closed in on Fixed Opinions

Our conversation was going well. We agreed about some quite radical thoughts, until I touched upon sacred ground. Then …

The conversation started with a condemnation of Russell Brand for encouraging young people not to vote as a way of protesting against current political systems. Neither of us accepted that this was the right way forward. We both agreed that we should be using our vote to protest, by giving our votes to (reasonable) parties that are closer to understanding that the current system is broken and needs reinventing.

I also suggested that people need to use their wallets and life style choices to start building a different kind of civilisation because the one we have now has no future. And there was full agreement about this. Modern free market capitalism, controlled as it is by large global corporations who seek domination and are driven by greed, is destroying us and our planet – agreed. We need to build a new system within the structure of the old, because we need something to replace the old – agreed.

Then I mentioned science, and the need for this too to change. Here I found the sacred ground, that subject which the mind does not want to discuss – it seems that everyone has such a topic, sometimes even more than one. And the reaction was just like that which I wrote about in a previous blog, when I encountered, via Twitter, an atheist whose mind had closed in on fixed opinions.

There is apparently nothing wrong with modern science, and given all the problems in the world, science is the last thing we should be questioning. No thoughts here that science may be partly to blame for these problems, that it has become the servant of a destructive global free market system, that it has highly questionable ethics, that scientists have dangerous and damaging delusion. And worse, there was no desire to explore the matter and to consider that science can easily go wrong, for science is but an invention of human mind, from which come all the woes of the world.

I could see now that the shutters were coming down and that the person, just like the atheist I wrote about, no longer wanted to continue with the conversation, so the person with whom I was speaking, made an excuse, and walked away.

This reaction I could have encountered with someone whose sacred ground was free market capitalism, or religion, or something else, for it seems there are countless ideologies and dogmas that clutter peoples’ minds, and lead them to having minds that are closed in on fixed opinions. The only difference would have been the subject matter that would trigger the walk away. And, while we might think that this is harmless, it is only so if the social, economic, and political circumstances are such that the dogma remains within the cage where it needs to be kept. The problem is that globally we are creating the social, economic, and political circumstances where cages are opening, and the wild beasts of dogma are beginning (once more) to bring hatred, misery and suffering into the world. Do not be deluded into thinking that science is not among these.

This we must stop, which is why there should be no sacred ground, why we should begin to address those aspects of our civilisation that are creating the conditions for its destruction. We must not allow people to declare subjects like science as being something not open for critique and questioning and reform. One can also say the same thing about free market capitalism and religion. And what if we cannot reform that which our modern world is founded upon? Would we not then end up discussing and improving nothing? And the metaphorical gates of hell that I refer to at the end of my book Encounter with a Wise Man would indeed be closed and we would be condemned to live in a world where no improvements would be possible.

My focus is on questioning science, engineering and technology, but also free market capitalism and religion. I do this, not because I want to see these things abandoned or because I am opposed to them, but because I want to improve all of them, for all are in need of such. And it we do not address these matters now, future generations will condemn us for not doing so, for they are the people that will have to live with the consequences.

A Tale of Two Deserts

A Tale of Two Deserts, which carries the sub-title, Enigmatic Christmas Fables for the Modern Age, is the fourth of my Christmas books. Here I want to explain how I came to write it and its relevance to contemporary civilisation.

I began this work in December 2012 and I actually wrote first, the second story in this book, the one that is called Another Desert. And at that point in time I had no intention of writing what eventually emerged as A Tale of Two Deserts, being only concerned to write a story that moved beyond my previous Christmas tales, which are all based on Father Christmas. Once more I was experimenting with writing a different type of story, one somewhat strange in character, but which makes a powerful point about contemporary civilisation.

Just before starting this book, I had read Arthur Koestler’s thought provoking book, The Sleepwalkers, which is a history of man’s changing vision of the universe, starting in ancient times and ending with Newton. It is a well researched book that debunks a lot of the myths that have developed around people such as Copernicus and Galileo. And is was with Galileo’s words “yet it moves” in mind – those words that people believe Galileo uttered at his trial, but actually did not – that I set about turning these words around and back on the modern scientist. Thus I began writing what was to become the tale Another Desert. And the phrase I dropped into the story was “Yet they watch”, and what the tale does is demonstrate the ridiculously stupid beliefs of many modern scientists as well as exposing how in fact they operate. You can observe in the story, why simultaneously so smart yet so dumb. If you read my blog entry from a few weeks past (The God Delusion or The Science Delusion?), you will recognise that the story is very much related to matters covered in that blog, although at Christmas 2012, I was not aware that The God Delusion book well illustrates the points I was trying to make in Another Desert.

I can say here also that Another Desert is strongly linked to the theme of another book, Encounter with a Wise Man, building on this by exploring in more detail the damaging attitudes of scientists that are mentioned in Encounter with a Wise Man.

My writing of Another Desert was interrupted just before Christmas 2012, when my elderly mother died, and you can see this sad event reflected in the story. And there it lay for several weeks untouched, but in early February a change took place, for I became fascinated with answering the question that I had posed, about exactly what I was able to do as a writer. A vague idea of writing two stories then started to develop, which suddenly took on a final form while speaking to a friend in Brussels, the same person in fact who I had spoken with in 2011 about The Alchemist, which was an important step towards conceiving the story in Encounter with a Wise Man.

This is the moment when I realised that there would be a book consisting of two tales, both set on Christmas Eve, but separated by 2000 years, with the first taking place in a desert literal, and the second, in a desert figurative. And thus one book, two tales, one story was born, but it did not happen immediately, for I was busy with other matters. I actually wrote the book over Easter 2013, and like Encounter with a Wise Man, it just appeared on the pages, and once more, I could see that it did not need further work, and here too was the answer to the question about what exactly I was able to do as a writer.

Now I turn to the matter of its relevance to contemporary civilisation. Here I am not going to say much. I will point out that the book is highly allegorical and also spiritual in nature. It is also a book full of obfuscation.

I do not want to say too much about the meaning of the tales because the book is an invitation to people to begin to reflect upon their lives, what they believe, and what those beliefs are doing to our world. The book is also an invitation to people to begin to walk a different path, one where their minds have not closed in on fixed opinions, where there is room for mystery, and where there is an acceptance that they have not found the sole source of truth, nor has anybody else, and it is not just destinations that are important, but also the journey – life’s journey, one of discovery and adventure, a journey of the soul and the mind. And this, finally, leads me to make one more comment about the stories in A Tale of Two Deserts: they both deal with what I call the battle between the soul and the mind, and when the mind wins you know what follows.

The book is available open access, which means that you can read it for free, online, via my web site – A Tale of Two Deserts: EnigmaticChristmas Fables for the Modern Age.

Encounter with a Wise Man

Encounter with a Wise Man, which carries the sub-title, A Christmas Tale of Wisdom, is the third of my Christmas books. Here I want to explain how I came to write it and its relevance to contemporary civilisation.

This book is actually a re-publication of a short story which is the third of three tales about Father Christmas which first appeared in my book Father Christmas Adventures. I published Encounter with a Wise Man on its own for it marks a milestone in my journey as a writer and also because it turned out to be the beginning of something that I call my literary project most unusual.

By Christmas 2010, I had completed the first two short stories that were eventually to appear in Father Christmas Adventures. I did not start the third story, but had the intention of dealing with the wise men in the nativity story, so I wrote down the words Wise Man and then did nothing more until Christmas 2011.

During the course of 2011 I had a conversation with a friend and discovered we both had read Paolo Cohelo’s book called The Alchemist, which is a marvellously inspiring tale about what happens when you follow your dreams. I can highly recommend this book. During the same year I was also involved, not for the first time, in some work that involved quantum physicists, and the one word that stuck with me from that encounter was, entanglement.

So when Christmas 2011 arrived and I resumed writing the final tale for Father Christmas Adventures, my thoughts were shaped by two words: entanglement and alchemist. Entanglement immediately suggested to me the idea of entangling the new story with my first published book, A Father Christmas Story. Alchemist was also instrumental in shaping the story for the wise men in the nativity story would probably have been alchemists and astrologers as well.

Once the foundational concepts were in place, what happened next came as a surprise to me for I just wrote the story, and when I looked at it I realised what I had written was a tale that needed no further work for I had done all that I could with the theme, and it was just as I wanted it to be.

Now I come to the matter of its relevance to contemporary civilisation. The tale is in its essence an observation about the increasing lack of wisdom in the world, and, at a time when we should be stepping back to reflect and seeking to walk a different path, we are instead pushing ahead and doing more of the things that are responsible for our present predicament, which is very unwise.

Central to this lack of wisdom is the observation of the increasing tendency in the world towards people being ideological, and the growing number of people who are living their lives according to some dogma, and that there are many dogmas to choose from. In particular, I highlight three: religion, science, and free market capitalism, and how these are now acting together to destroy our world, yet most are blind to this. My blog entry from last week (The God Delusion or the Science Delusion?) well illustrates this point, in particular the dogma and delusions associated with modern science, and the quest of some, to replace religion with science, which kind of demonstrates what I mean by the growing lack of wisdom in the world, and how also, religion and science are bound together, which is another point that I make.

In essence the book is a warning about the consequences that will follow, as people believing that they know the truth, build for us all, a hell on earth from which there will probably be no escape, for there is nothing more difficult to address that the prison cells that people construct in their minds. And there is nothing more dangerous for the wellbeing of humanity than such mental prison cells. History clearly shows what follows when deluded people, knowing the truth, become compelled to deal with those others who do not share this truth, and indulge in barbarism and wickedness, with their dogma providing the necessary justification. All it takes are the right social, economic and environmental conditions, and these we are now creating on a grand scale. We can already see this madness in the form of Islamist extremism, but this is just the first – more such ideologically driven extremists will undoubtedly follow, each seeking to impose their will on the world. A wise civilisation would recognise this and begin to change, to walk a different path, and in doing so create the social, economic and environmental conditions where such extremism cannot develop and cannot find a home.

The good news for you, the reader, is that the book is available open access, which means that you can read it for free, online, via my web site – Encounter with a Wise Man: A Christmas Tale of Wisdom.

The God Delusion or the Science Delusion?

This entry is a book review, but one that is, so to speak, most unusual. The book that I am writing about here, which I read in the early summer of 2013, is called The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It is a book about delusions, for the book is full of them from the very beginning till the very last word on the final page.

On the front cover of the paperback version that I read, there is a quote by Ian McEwan ending “…a magnificent book, lucid, wise, truly magisterial.” It is none of these things. It is an abysmal book, incoherent, foolish, and truly undignified. It is highly damaging to the image of science and scientists, being also a book totally devoid of any merit – scientific, philosophical, literary, religious, or anything else! Yet it is a book with a specific value, which I will comment upon at the end of this review.

Much is made in this book of the violence, killing, hatred and the damage to people that is associated with religion. But, as no attempt is made to place this in context, I will do so here. Look around and look back across history, and what do you see? Killing, violence, hatred, exploitation, slavery, cruelty, and much more, and sometimes on a colossal scale, and often without any link to religion. This, it seems, is the way of men (it would be unfair to blame the world’s woes on women), and finding an ideology on which to ground this barbarism, only helps in the process of self-justification. And there are many such ideologies: atheism, science, socialism, capitalism … The list seems endless, and I have not even mentioned religion, so now I will. Some religious people do some very dreadful things, but this is not a reason to reject religion. Science also does many bad things, but no sensible person would want to reject science.

The point is this: if not religion then something else! And, a matter often overlooked – most times all the bad things come forth from a small minority of highly deluded people seeking to impose their will on the world, and, sadly, many good people are led astray, which should also serve as a warning about the content of this book. I do not underestimate the potential of religion to deliver that which is terrible, but I also do not underestimate the potential of science to do the same. Both also have the potential to deliver that which is good, and both do – the challenge is to make both better, so that there is less of the bad and more of the good!

So what is The God Delusion really about? After reading it I came to the conclusion that it is nothing more than a poorly informed tirade by an angry person who sees evolution at work in everything and, being caught up in the world of science, thinks that he is rational, but is unable to see that the book is highly irrational for the very reason that it is nothing more than a tirade, and one that is masquerading as a piece of rational work. The agenda is clear – religion is no longer needed for now we have science to explain the universe and what it contains, and given what (the author thinks) religion does to people, it is time to wage war on it to rid the world of this remnant of the past.

If this book represents science then we are in trouble! But it does not represent science – it misrepresents it, misuses it, and applies it to that which it is not applicable, seeking, in doing so, to set up science as being the one best of way of engaging with the world, which, self-evidently, it is not.

In many respects what is offered in this book illustrates one of the inherent problems with science – its hubris and its tendency to result in the delusion that the limited aspects of reality that science can handle, is the totality of this reality. Against these things we must respond, for what is offered in the pages of this book is far worse than what it seeks to replace. And I will now endeavour to highlight aspects of the book which should be setting alarms ringing in the minds of thoughtful and reflective readers.

To begin, I note here that towards the end of the book, when discussing the topic of inspiration, the author states “… the method of argument I must employ (in addressing inspiration) is rhetoric rather than logic.” The author, it seems, is implying that throughout the rest of the book he has used logic, rather than rhetoric, but actually the whole book is a discourse based on rhetoric, mostly using pathos (appealing to the emotions – look at these terrible things that religion does) and ethos (I am scientist dealing only with evidence and that which can be proved – so trust me). Logic is also occasionally deployed as part of the rhetoric. There is nothing wrong with using rhetoric of course, but let us be clear that this is what it is, and not science.

Should I here say something about literalism? I think I should for this is often mentioned in the book. Dawkins criticises literalists, who do take what are often allegorical stories, literally: people are free to see the story of David and Goliath in a literal way, but what is important is not whether there was a giant called Goliath and a boy called David, but the interpretation of the story as a metaphor – it is a way of explaining something else (as many know for it is an often used as metaphor in the modern world); people are free to see the story of the Tower of Babel in a literal way, but again, it is not important whether there was ever a Tower of Babel – what is important is the deeper meaning of the story (and this tale in particular is one that Dawkins and other scientists need to learn from, for it seems as though he and others like him have become likes gods, and seek to assail the heavens).

Many of us know that Abrahamic holy texts often only make sense if seen as being allegorical, and that they should not be taken literally, and so one would expect, should Dawkins. Apparently not though, for after criticising literalist, the author then becomes a literalist himself and proceeds to characterise God based on literal interpretations of the Torah (or the Old Testament if you are more familiar with Christian texts). But of course he has no choice but to do this, for when the stories that lead Dawkins to this erroneous conclusion are taken as allegorical, then the foundations of his arguments crumble, and his perspective on religion is exposed for what it is – just another dogma.

That Abrahamic religions have failed to communicate more widely the allegorical nature of these holy texts is true, but looked at in context, this is not surprising given that one is here dealing with the human mind, which struggles with the complexity underlying religion, as the author well demonstrates by writing such a book as The God Delusion. I note here also, that until recent times (early 20th century), the Christian churches were mostly faced with uneducated and illiterate masses, so it is not surprising that messages and interpretations were simplified. Perhaps one problem is that religion has not moved on sufficiently to recognise that today they are dealing with more highly educated people who have a greater inclination not to just accept what they are told?

This now leads me to briefly mention the tone of book, which focuses on belittling and ridiculing religious people. The phrase people who live in glasses houses should not throw stones comes to mind for there is plenty to ridicule in scientists as well, which I do in my fiction writing to illustrate the point that most humans have beliefs that are open to ridicule, and none more so than scientists, engineers, and technologists, but unlike Dawkins I do this in the spirit of opening peoples’ minds to this and to help them find better ways of being scientists, engineers and technologists (www.cheshirehenbury.com), and not to turn people away from science, engineering and technology. I have the same approach to religion and free market economics as well.

The God Delusion well illustrates that it is easy to ridicule, for on pages 195/196 of the book there is something relevant in the form of commentary about the sophisticated knowledge that Australian aboriginal people have that allows them to survive in a very unforgiving environment, but with this goes (it is claimed) stupid beliefs when it comes to matters spiritual. The question (posed by an Australian philosopher of science) is how can we be simultaneously so smart and so dumb? The God Delusion (and some other things found in modern science) demonstrates that the comment is also relevant to scientists and their beliefs. In this case one can also observe, relatively advanced knowledge but stupid beliefs, so how can they be simultaneously so smart yet so dumb?

And this leads me to comment about Dawkins’ coverage of the purpose of religion. He writes about its potential, in a rather derisory tone, to offer comfort to the bereaved (and the dying) and to give meaning to life. Yet there is one matter, central to religion, which Dawkins does not explore in his book, in terms of its meaning, purpose and value, and that is spirituality. I noticed this on reading the paperback version. I thought this a rather strange omission and assumed that I had perhaps missed this discussion, or perhaps misunderstood it, and seen it as a discussion about something else, which is easy to do. So I bought an eBook version and used the search facility to find how many time Dawkins mentions the words spirit, spiritual and spirituality and in what context. First the numbers: spirit is mentioned 19 times, spiritual on 5 occasions, and spirituality is referred to 5 times. But there is no discussion about what spirituality means and how spirituality can be developed, its value, or that this concept can be found outside religion as well.

So I am left wondering about this colossal omission and the possible reasons. Perhaps it did not suit the author to refer to it or to use it to help account for the behaviour of some religious people where it can be observed, religion has clearly gone wrong, or has failed to have the impact that it is supposed to have. But perhaps there is another reason why spirituality is not explained and explored?

On pages 58 and 59 there are insights into a possible explanation. Here you will encounter the rather surprising statement (concerning Buddhism and Confucianism) “there is something to be said for treating these not as religions but as ethical systems and philosophies of life.” I say surprising because that is just what religion offers: ethical systems and philosophies of life. Moreover, say and think what you like, but Buddhism is a religion and one that is worth studying and understanding, for it helps to explain human behaviour, and what we need to do to change that behaviour. Here I will not go into explaining Buddhism, but it is an eastern religion and in many ways alien to the western mind, for it deals with the delusions that stem from the mind and the results. Dawkins is in effect advocating a religion that sees him, and everyone else, as suffering from delusions of the mind!

So I think a picture is starting to emerge of a certain lack of knowledge about religion, which is reinforced by the statement on page 58: “For my purposes the differences (he is referring to Abrahamic religions) matter less than the similarities.” Really? I suppose in one sense he is right, that the complexity of three very different religions does not matter if one is engaged in a negative and incoherent assault against that which one does not understand and does not likes – facts and evidence have little relevance when minds have closed in on fixed opinions.

What I would also like to point out here is the invalidity of the methodology. The author of the book is doing what all scientist do, reducing that which is highly complex, to something quite simple in relation to the unmanageable complexity of that which science seeks to understand – the universe and all that it contains. This is called reductionism, which involves massive simplification and, you may be surprised to learn, ignoring things that do not fit with current paradigms. I am here referring to matters well understood by those who observe science as a process, but which sadly, are often not well understood by scientists themselves. To discover more about this I suggest that you read Thomas S. Kuhn’s seminal work called The Structure of ScientificRevolutions – it is a real eye opener in terms of understanding the true nature of science, and, opening eyes is one of the reasons I write.

Here I will illustrate the point concerning validity. In criminal prosecutions, scientific evidence is used, but the method followed by the court is not a scientific one. Can you imagine how well justice would be served if a complex criminal case was simplified to make it more manageable? Science has its value, but it is not the sole source of the truth.

Briefly I mention that Dawkins states on page 320, when discussing creationism and evolution, that: “… we would abandon it (evolution) overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.” Please note that here I am not implying that evolution is wrong (wrong is actually not the correct word to use, but that is another matter), but would Dawkins or any other scientist so easily change their minds? History suggests not. You may be aware that Einstein was unable to change his mind about quantum mechanics, which he opposed, despite the evidence of its power in dealing with the complexity found at the atomic and sub-atomic levels. If you want understand more about this, and find an answer to this question for yourself, then I suggest you read the aforementioned work of Thomas S. Kuhn.

So now I come to another key point about the validity of The God Delusion – actually its lack of validity. Dawkins in his book sets out to prove the improbability of God’s existence and fails in this task in a most public way – such is the price of hubris! His argument in its essence is this: life evolves from simper to more advanced forms, so there can be no designer. This is not a case against the existence of God as such, but one that undermines the creation myth that Dawkins has encountered because he engages in arguments with creationists, and their views are a particular literal interpretation of the Genesis story. So all Dawkins manages to demonstrate, so to speak, is that, what is literal, is in fact allegorical, which of course it is, but without providing an explanation for this allegorical story, which is a pity because by interpreting the Genesis story one can gain insights that science might benefit from.

What one can say here is that, evolution demonstrates itself to be a more powerful paradigm for understanding how life on earth came about, than the other paradigm of creation. That some people still hold to the older paradigm is of no surprise, for this is also found in science as well, when paradigm shifts occur. Darwin himself referred to the issue, well anticipating that his work would not be accepted by the scientific community of the time. In The Origin of Species, he states: “I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine.” So, scientists will change their minds overnight when presented with evidence that disproves their theories? I do not think so!

But to continue with the point about validity, Dawkins also raises the question of how a designer could come about. Good question, but no answer is provided. The implication is that because life evolves … Actually there is no implication, just a statement that God as perceived as a designer, in the context of what many humans understand as design and designing, does not exist, but not that there is no God, which leads me to make some very important points. What follows now lies at core of what is wrong with Dawkins’ book and the arguments, if they can be called such, that lie within it.

First I point out a fact about the theory of evolution. What I want to question here is the universal validly of a theory of evolution that is earth bound. Yes, it provides an explanation of how life on earth developed (at least life that has so far been discovered), but it is based on observations and research of life as it exists on earth. One can hypothesise about its wider applicability, which actually in this case means speculate, and propose that life also developed in similar ways in other part of the universe, but there is no evidence to suggest that Darwinian evolution, as we understand it here on earth, is fully valid elsewhere, and no realistic possibility of undertaking any research at the far reaches of the universe to investigate if life, if there is any, developed in the same way. In other words, Darwinism is not a universal law of nature, and to claim it as such is a delusion. One might say also that to accept it as such is an act of faith, so Dawkins, here becomes like a priest, and is saying: “I believe”. One might also say that there is something insidious about believing in something (the universality of current evolutionary theory) for which there is no evidence.

Second, interested readers will find in the work of Thomas S. Kuhn, accounts about how scientists over the ages have stepped over the boundary and began to apply their paradigms to that which they are not applicable. And this leads my to my final observation that Dawkins is doing just that, forcing something to fit into the box that is defined by the current scientific paradigm, and finding that it does not fit, concludes that this thing called God does not exist. However, imaginative scientific minds, ones that are not closed in on fixed opinions, would recognise in God, a being that does not fit with the current scientific paradigm. This is what is called an anomaly and ultimately such anomalies eventually lead to scientific progress, because at some point a person with the right mindset and a lot of courage, will develop a new paradigm that takes account of these anomalies, and then past work will have to be reassessed: some of it will be reinterpreted and some of it will be discarded. So this is not a matter of creationism versus evolutionary theory, but of a failure of evolutionary theory to account for all life forms which points at some future time, to the development of a more sophisticated theory.

Please here note that neither proposition is provable: that God fits into the paradigm of evolutionary theory, or that God does not – these are just matters of belief, and the problem with scientists is that they are not prepared to admit such and then engage in  dressing-up belief as something else that fits with their self-image of science and scientists.

What I have described in the preceding paragraphs is part of what I call the Science Delusion.

I would like here to say that I share a concern in common with Dawkins: it is easy for science to be damaged and subverted, which is a point he makes in The God Delusion. And here you have an example of a scientist damaging and subverting science, which, if you care (and many do not want to) to look more closely elsewhere in the world of science, you will find to be quite a common occurrence. I did say that the book was full of delusions, for science, like all aspects of human endeavour, is founded on some delusion. Delusion you see, is part of what it is to be human, and when we forget that, then madness follows, as Dawkins well demonstrates.

I now turn to the matter of the value of the book and to do this I want to ask a question for you: Why, you ask, has not anyone else pointed out these flaws in The God Delusion? Now we are back to the question: why simultaneously so smart and so dumb? Perhaps it is human, for although some people like to think they are rational, the truth is that all people, including scientists, are very irrational, which perhaps is a very good thing. But there may be more insidious reasons why the nonsense that is The God Delusion is not recognised for what it is: a bag of bones and entrails dressed up with a little good meat.

The first of these reasons is collective denial and delusion, or to put it another way, the tale of the emperors’ new clothes, which is part of the explanation why scientists are simultaneously so smart and so dumb. Scientists, and those that lean towards science, are caught-up, just as most people who subscribe to a belief system are, in collective beliefs that blind them to the truth about how they behave and the relevance, usefulness and applicability of their beliefs. Many scientists cannot see that science is just one of many ways that humans engage with life, the world and the universe. Moreover, collective delusion is a very dangerous thing, and in Dawkins’ book one can see collective delusion on a grand scale and also strong hints where this will ultimately lead, for this is no innocent and harmless piece of work, but the first steps towards … These are matter that I explore in fiction.

The second reason is fear – few are now willing to be the little boy telling the deluded that the emperor is wearing no clothes, for to do so is to commit a heresy and to be seen as opposing progress, to be seen as anti-science, and so forth. This is a very familiar story and it always ends badly for humanity when this happens.

I could go on, but this blog entry is already quite long, so I will now make a final point, which is this: Dawkins and The God Delusion represent an old paradigm based on conflict between science and religion. It is time to create a new paradigm that brings the two sides – religion and science – together once again. Let therefore Dawkins continue with his preoccupation in deriding creationists – they probably deserve each other – for his relevance and value only lies in highlighting the need for a new paradigm. And one can be fairly confident that Dawkins will not be part of this new paradigm, and, for the development of this we should be looking for a new breed of scientist. Once more I quote Darwin, who, continuing on from the point already quoted above, wrote: “I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”

In another of Dawkins’ books, The Selfish Gene, he states, “If superior creatures from space ever visit earth the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilisations is: ‘Have they discovered evolution yet?’” A person obsessed with evolution and seeing it at work in just about everything, would of course state such a thing. Myself, I think that these aliens, being more advanced than humanity, would ask a far more sophisticated question: “Have they realised yet that science and religion are one?” This is perhaps a clue that there is truly, as Rabbi Sacks states, a Great Partnership to be forged by bringing science and religion together.

This is a matter which I am also exploring in my fiction writings, but from 2014 onwards I will also be addressing the matter in my non-fiction writing (initially on my web site – see This is the Journey …), but only slowly, for I know the value here of being slow, of allowing time for people to absorb and reflect upon the journey and what is encountered along the way. The mind obscures the truth.

Written in the spirit of love for humanity, the earth, and the universe, and everything contained therein, as well as that which lies beyond it, which so far, is little understood. Perhaps the time for a small increase in this understanding has now arrived?

Father Christmas Adventures

Father Christmas Adventures, which carries the sub-title, Unexpected Tales of Christmas Magic, is the second of my Christmas books. Here I want to explain how I came to write it and its relevance to contemporary civilisation.

Father Christmas Adventures is a piece of experimental writing. Consisting of three short tales, all involving Father Christmas, they all have one thing in common: they are unexpected, and for this reason I will not tell you what happens in each story, lest I spoil the surprises!

The first short story is called William’s First Christmas. It is the story of a little boy whose parents do not believe in Christmas and who never engage in celebrating Christmas. The story is based on what Father Christmas does to help this poor child, and, what he does is, unexpected! The story also involves a surprising twist at the end, which is characteristic of the nicely weird things that appear in my writings. Being experimental, my interest here was exploring the unexpected, and what one might expect from such a theme (a poor boy denied Christmas and Father Christmas coming to his aid) is not what happens!

Of the second tale, which is called Father Christmas and the Wolf, I will say that, what I wanted to do was to write a story based on prose only, without resorting to dialogue. And of the content, this addresses how Father Christmas is concerned about environmental matters and sets about rescuing a wolf, which humans want to kill because it is, in their eyes, a pest. Here in this tale you will also discover that Father Christmas has enemies, and the nicely weird part of the story is when one of those enemies tries to rid the world of this jovial character, but of course, fails. Once more these are quite unexpected elements to find in a Father Christmas story.

Finally, about the third tale, which is titled, Encounter with a Wise Man, this tells of a meeting between Father Christmas and Balthazar, one the three wise men who appear in the nativity story. Here I wanted to write mostly in dialogue, and this is story is based on Balthazar recounting to you, the reader, what was said during that encounter. What you will soon realise is that Balthazar is still alive, two thousand years on from the meeting – see, I did say that I write nicely weird and unexpected things! This story also involves something that I call entanglement, by which I mean that I have entangled this tale with my first Christmas book, A Father Christmas Story, which was another aspect of my experimental writing.

So what of the relevance of the book to contemporary society? The first tale is a commentary on the stupidity of a certain attitude that prevails in the modern world, that the only valid way to understand and engage in life is through the rational. One can say this story is a response to stupid statements made by supposedly intelligent people, which go along the lines “there is something insidious about believing in something for which there is no evidence”. This tale explores the possible outcomes of such madness.

The second tale is actually a critique of the damaging attitude that European-oriented cultures display towards the natural world, and the tacit belief that we, as humans, are not part of nature, and somehow (in ways that no-one can rationally explain – see the rational is not the norm!) we can survive without it. Here you will encounter another belief that needs to change: that we as humans have a right to decide which of our fellow inhabitants of plant earth, will live or die. You see, humans not only like to impose their will on other people, but also upon the natural world. But be careful, for one day the natural world will strike back! This tale hints at how we need to change our attitudes and in what way.

And finally of the third tale, which is an observation about the lack of wisdom in the modern world, and the growing tendency for people to become ideological and live their lives within the framework of a dogma. Specifically the tale mentions three such ideologies: science, religion and capitalism, and how the three, acting together are creating a world more like a prison, and one from which there will be no escape. The point of the story is to highlight this matter and the need to stop and to reflect upon how these ideologies are damaging all we hold dear, and to think about how we could begin to create a different future where people believe but without falling into the ideological trap.

So to summarise, I used this particular Christmas book to experiment with my writing and also as a way of further exploring many issues that are of interest to me, including the development of an author centric business model, and also the themes that increasingly find a place in my writing, which are motivated by the madness to be found in the modern world. And, the good news for you, the reader, is that the book is available open access, which means that you can read it for free, online, via my web site – FatherChristmas Adventures: Unexpected Tales of Christmas Magic.

A Father Christmas Story

A Father Christmas Story, which carries the sub-title, Being a Tale of How Father Christmas Came to be, is the first Christmas book that I wrote and published. Here I want to explain how I came to write it and its relevance to contemporary civilisation.

Perhaps the subtitle is enough to explain the story, for the book is indeed a tale about how, long ago, in the snow covered forests of the north, up near the artic circle, one special Christmas Eve, one person’s life was change, and Father Christmas made his first appearance in the world.

How did I come to write this story? It started to take shape in December 2006 as a way of passing some time over the Christmas holiday period. I decided to use the seasonal ambience as an inspiration for a Christmas story. This is when I wrote the first three chapters, with the fourth following on in early January 2007 after the Christmas decorations had disappeared. During the following months I undertook some further work on the book, until by the summer I came to the conclusion that it was time to abandon it, by which I mean that I had reached a point where I understood that working on the story any further was pointless as I had done all that I could with the theme, and that it was time to move on. Then I published it.

The book started as a way of practicing my writing and passing my time, and initially I was interested in exploring two quite distinct attitudes towards Christmas, these being: the one where people embrace it fully and enjoy it, and the other the one where  people are forever complaining about Christmas, making themselves miserable in doing so. But very quickly it turned into a literary challenge, especially in relation to what exists in this particularly genre – very little in terms of adult books, with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol acting as the benchmark. Being aware of this, and also knowing that Dickens managed to construct a story about Christmas, which deals with the salvation of one individual, without even mentioning that other Christmas story, the nativity, I set about writing a story that was focused on the salvation of humanity and introducing into it, that which Dickens ignored – the nativity myth complete with shepherds and wise men.

I was also motivated by the fact that a massive shift has taken place in our attitudes and approach to Christmas since the time when Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. Today, Christmas has largely become an opportunity for businesses to make money, and for many it is also time for excessive consumption. But back in Dickens’ time, Christmas was almost a forgotten event, which is why in his story the issue of working on Christmas day arises, and some shops are still open! Given such a shift towards viewing Christmas in such a commercial way, I thought it time to provide an amusing book that offered some Christmas cheer but which also reminded people that there is a more serious side to Christmas.

In addition to the above, what also emerged as I wrote the book was the idea of re-engaging with what was starting to become much easier than previously – indie publishing. I had already published a number of books, some for the European Commission, and thus I had available the necessary professional software along with a supply of ISBNs. And it was through publishing this story, both the paper and the eBook versions, that I came to understand modern indie publishing in the age of the internet and the attitude of large book retailers to stocking any book that did not return a large profit for them. I also began to realise that the traditional ways for authors to market their books, also needed to be reinvented, as most of the old ways are controlled by publishers and retailers, and are of questionable efficacy in a world increasing dominated by the internet.

So what of the relevance of the story to contemporary society? All my work is motivated by what I now called the lunacy of the modern world, and my aim to open peoples’ eyes and minds to this – as a first step for people beginning a journey to peacefully bring about positive change in the world, by rejecting this madness and changing their own lives, and in doing so, making the world a better place.

The story centres on a person, Nicholas, who is kind and compassionate, and who has respect for nature and all living things, and is not at all materialistic. On a journey to collect his yule log, this being a tradition dating back to pre Christian times, Nicholas has three mysterious encounters, and you can see here that the story is inspired by the three encounters that also appear in Dickens’ tale.

The first encounter is with a being that I called the Earth Spirit, a name I deliberately chose to ground this character in the material and earthly world, although, as his name suggests, he is a spirit, but one representing a side of humanity that Nicholas is not all connected with. Nicholas can be said to represent the soul, and all that is good about people, and the Earth Spirit all that is bad, and, as you will see when you read the story, the Earth Spirit is full ready to kill people to get his own way; he tries to kill Nicholas, but fails.

Having escaped the clutches of the Earth Spirit, Nicholas than encounters an angel, which is what one might expect on that particular night, for after this second meeting the next one is actually a visit to the mythical nativity stable, complete with all that is associated with this myth. But this is not a Christian story nor one extolling Christianity, but one that uses the elements of this to highlight, what can be found in all major religions, that, one of the purposes of religion is to help people to choose to be better (and not to impose upon them someone else’s will, which, if you read the boo, is what the Earth Spirit wants to do). In this story one can also see the beginnings of my fascination with the battle between the soul and the mind, with Nicholas representing the soul, and the Earth Spirit the mind.

So to summarise, I used the Christmas story as a way of exploring many issues that are of interest to me, including the development of an author centric business model, and also the themes that increasing find a place in my writing. And, the good news for you, the reader, is that the book is available open access, which means that you can read it for free, online, via my web site – A Father Christmas Story: Being a Tale of How FatherChristmas Came to be.

The Mind that has closed in on Fixed Opinions

In my book A Tale of Two Deserts I refer to minds that have closed in on fixed opinions. Recently, through Twitter, I had an encounter with such a mind, belonging to an atheist.

There is something that you need to know about atheism in the modern world: we now live in the era of extreme atheism; people, who, armed with an anti-religious dogma, can be as bad as the religious zealot; both are equally dangerous. The term there is no one more dangerous that he(or she) who knows the truth, comes to mind – it can be found in my book Encounter with a Wise Man, which is about the madness that often stems from those who adhere to an ideology, what ever that may be: scientific, religious, economic … And there are many people who are caught up in an ideology, but being ideological, do not see themselves as such.

One day in October (2013), through the twitter hash-tag Atheism, I encountered the dogma that is modern atheism. Here I found a tweet “…. given what religion has done.” Immediately I recognised a tweet that had derogatory overtones, and I wondered which religion was being referenced here, for there are many and some, like Buddhism, on the whole, have no record of violence (there is a notable exception to this which I will write a blog about in the future), this being totally contrary to what Buddhism aims to achieve and its theology. And of course, religion actually has done nothing, for it is religious people that have done things, both bad and good. Religious people actually do a lot of good work in communities, for such work is seen as a spiritual act that blesses both those that give and those that receive.

Another tweet that I noticed, questioned the morality of a God that allows cancer in babies. Why blame God for such, as it is not a universal religious belief that God created the universe? Indeed, there are many imperfect aspects to what used to be called creation, including humans – we are indeed highly imperfect. I thought also that a more relevant question to ask is why humans have created so many carcinogenic materials and allowed these to become a common feature of our world. The answer of course is because these are result of science and people make a lot of money out of these chemicals and materials, and whatever we do, let us not question that which we can change – the morality of science and free markets.

After looking at a few tweets I realised that I had entered a world of dogma, and of minds that have closed in on fixed opinions, where people are blind to the implications of what is being said. I also noticed a lack of compassion, love, and empathy in the tweets. What also struck me was the anger in these messages. The similarity of all this to that which sometimes spouts forth from religious (and scientific) minds that have also closed in on fixed opinions, is notable. So in response to the blind dogma of atheism, I sent a few calming tweets into their cyber-world:

1. There is God and there is religion: two completely different things;

2. Religion and science are both inventions of the human mind; both are highly imperfect, but God is not;

3. You do not have to be religious to believe in God;

4. The religious extremist, the scientific extremist: the same mind-set with different names;

5. Without doubt religion has a bad name, but so does science: both need to be made better;

6. In atheism and in religion I find a lot of angry people blinded by their dogma – please change;

7. Atheists are like theists – highly imperfect and inclined to do good things and sometimes very bad things;

8 The great mistake, seen across history, is to judge all based on the actions of some or even the many.

Then I received a message from someone who asked why atheists should be angry. To this I replied: It’s human, made worse when people believe that theirs is the sole truth. All religions are true including atheism!

This apparently was not an answer, and the question was repeated, to which I sent another reply: people have a tendency to seek reinforcement of beliefs – regardless of what these beliefs are.

Then all went quiet, but this was not the end of the matter. I decided to follow, on Twitter, the person who had asked the question, but then quickly discovered that a request had been made to Twitter that I should not be allowed to follow this person. Very interesting I thought, so I began to dig deeper, and what I found was a person so blinded by atheist dogma, a mind so closed in on a fixed opinion, that they were not even willing to hear anything that would call in to question their beliefs. And these people I have encountered everywhere in society: in religion, in science, in technology, in politics, in business, and so forth. And very frightening such people can be, being I fear, in some cases, close to the edge of doing bad things, although none would admit to such. This, you see, is the danger inherent to any dogma, for it eventually leads to the imposition of one persons will, on others. And atheists are no different from anyone else, so let us not be deluded into thinking these are harmless people, tolerant of all!

One of the interesting things about this person is that they had adopted a slogan “I think therefore I am armed.” Not so. A more appropriate slogan would be, “I once had a thought, then I stopped thinking because I found the truth and I now have no need to think anymore”. 

There are many minds in the modern world which have closed in on fixed opinions. They can be found inside the heads of atheists, priests, scientists, engineers, technologists, economists, entrepreneurs, investors, … the list is endless. And from this, great madness flows, leading to a future that must not be.

Atheism has failed. Religion has failed. Science has failed. Materialism has failed. Capitalism has failed. Socialism has failed. Technology has failed. The Nation State has failed. Experts and professionals have failed. And so on … But there is an answer to this, but it will not be found if people insist on keeping their minds closed. We need, as a species, to move forward, and to do this we must ourselves move beyond minds that have closed in on fixed opinions: A Tale of Two Deserts.

Social Collective Intelligence

At the beginning of October (2013) I attended a one day conference on the topic of Social Collective Intelligence, which according to the publicity material is:  a term used to denote a class of socio-technical system that combine, in a coordinated way, the strengths of humans and groups in terms of competences, knowledge and problem solving capabilities with the communication, computing and storage capabilities of advanced information and communication technologies. Quite a mouthful of words!

By the above definition I was most intrigued, for back in the 1980s and 1990s I was involved with socio-technical systems and also in something which can be called human-computer symbiosis, which has never been developed because it is completely at odds with the paradigm of science, engineering and technology (which sees humans as machines). Yet here was a topic possibly implying that some form of human-computer symbiosis might be coming out of the stable of the Future and Emerging Technologies part of the European Commission’s Information and Communications Technologies research programme – surely this meant that someone at long last was going to throw away all those long established beliefs and values and address human and computer symbiosis? Deep down I knew that this would not be the case, and I was not to be disappointed.

Overall the event demonstrated very well this thing I call the Prometheus Syndrome – all those researchers bound to the rock of the past by those invisible and unbreakable chains, which come in the form of beliefs, values, behaviour, taken for granted assumptions, self-images, and delusions, etc. which are the elements of paradigms.

As I expected, what I encountered at this meeting was a deeply disturbing techno-centric vision of the world, where humans are seen as being components of a bigger machine. One speaker serves well to illustrate this point: a person who perceives humans as being comparable to ants, and who was proposing to use computers, sensors, etc. to create a super-organism where people living in urban areas would be like ants, behaving in a way determined by this super-organism. This was indeed Orwellian in its nightmare vision of Big Brother control. What is wrong with these technologists? If we lived in a sane world we would be asking such people to seek the help of a psychotherapist, not giving them research funding. This is definitely a type of research that citizens should be questioning and perhaps asking their elected representatives to ensure is not funded with public money (see my blog on the matter of Digital Science and Responsible Research).

The issue though that I want to highlight here is that of the professional or expert paradigm that the approach adopted by the presenters at this conference demonstrated. What one could see in the speakers, were people with solutions looking for problems, not people asking what are the problems, and how can we solve them? If we were to ask the latter question then perhaps the answer would be to use social collective intelligence, by which I mean, us, working together, to change society, so that the problems no longer exists. This by the way is an important point, for the problems that this particular techno-solution is focussed upon, are mostly social problems (or societal challenges in European Commission jargon).

The main point that I wanted to raise is this: when experts have solutions looking for problems, or even when they try to develop solutions to problems, most often they are not experts in the problem itself. This then means that they have to talk to people who do understand the problem, and often in the world of information and communication technologies, these people are called users.

Well this is good you think. This is exactly what they should do, speak to users! In theory yes, but the experts are often looking for confirmation of their already existing perspectives on the problem. They certainly do not want to hear that their solution is not wanted, or that there are complications that render the solution unsuitable or in need of major conceptual changes. This one can say is the problem of the modern world: the expert paradigm, where experts often think that they know best. And of course they do as one can see from the mess that they have created … contemporary civilisation.

Actually it is time for a different approach where users take action and take ownership, and employ experts in a more subservient role, where experts do what the users tell them has to be done, which is far from what exists today. Of course this is not binary, a case of either/or, and there is room for creative inputs from experts, but this is a matter of power – who is in charge. At the present time it is invariably experts who hold the power, but there is a growing movement to change this, and, what one can say about the people presenting at this conference is that there was no evidence to be seen that they were aware of this.

So, Future and Emerging Technologies? I think not, just people caught in paradigm that is no longer relevant. Back to Prometheus once again! And if you wonder why Europe is in decline, look no further than those who were speaking at this conference about social collective intelligence. And what was obliviously missing from this conference were signs of intelligence in whatever form that may come; individual, collective, social. Yet it does not have to be like this.

The Outdated Industrial Era Perspectives of Engineers

Understanding what is wrong with modern engineering is the first step towards reinventing it and making it fit for purpose in the 21^st century. The same can also be said for science and technology. The bottom line here is that it is all about people and what goes on inside their heads and the outdated nature of acquired processes, along with all the associated baggage (collective delusions).

Two items illustrating what I call the outdated industrial era thinking of UK engineers dropped through my letterbox in October (2013). One came from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the other from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).

The IET’s piece of nonsense came in the form of a small pamphlet with the title Annual Political Engagement Review. In this, the IET highlights its determination to take advantage of the attention that the UK government has recently paid to manufacturing and engineering. This interest of course, follows on from the financial crisis, and is based on a policy of rebalancing the UK economy.

What the pamphlet actually deals with is providing an overview of the IET’s lobbying work; a rose is a rose by any other name.

Lobbying takes place all the time, not just by the IET, but by many people, companies and organisations, all with vested interests, trying to influence government policy and decision making in a certain direction, which in the IET’s case is focused on its particular bias towards promoting engineers and engineering. And there are many ways that one can lobby, varying from meetings with government officials and ministers, through to presenting specific cases and pieces of information, often under the guise of an authoritative report produced by experts.

We all know that most people who lobby or who are experts engaged in producing these so called authoritative reports have a particular bias or interest that they wish to promote, and that is why lobbying takes place, and we all know that most involved in this process of political engagement are most definitely not independent and unbiased, and that they only present so called evidence and facts that supports their position, leaving the rest of the picture, unaddressed. You will be pleased to learn, that the IET have acquired the collective delusion that when they undertake lobbying, they are unbiased. How they arrived at this conclusion is of course a mystery, but such is the nature of modern day engineering institutions; much style, little substance, and a lot of delusion.

The IET also state in this pamphlet, rather patronisingly, that few Members of Parliament have a good understanding of science and engineering, but do not present any evidence to support such a claim: this you must understand is the nature of the evidence-based approach that engineers are so keen to promote, this being only to use evidence when it suits. I wonder too if our elected representative realise that the IET has such a condescending attitude towards them?

As I mentioned, the pamphlet refers to the government’s interest in engineering and manufacturing, which I here note are mostly resource intensive activities; so I wonder if the IET, this thought leading organisation, has told them that, turning to these sectors of the economy for economic growth, at a time when for the sake of future generations, we should be investing significantly in developing a different type of economy that is not reliant upon resource intensive industrial type activities, is most definitely not something that they should be doing. Somehow I doubt that that they did, for they, like all in they modern world, will have advised in their own interests, which of course, lies in these industries of the past.

Now I turn to the IMechE’s nonsense which came in the form of its monthly members’ magazine. And the silliness in question was an editorial about a stupid proposal from an engineer who has been involved in high profile projects with political dimensions.

At the time of writing this entry, in the UK, there is much debate about a new high speed rail link, which is called HS2 for short. It is controversial for many reasons, some of which I will discuss in a future blog. Needless to say there are vested interests, including engineers and engineering industry bodies, lobbying for HS2, and many ordinary people campaigning against a proposal, the costs of which are already rocketing far beyond the initial target cost of 17 billion pounds for Phase I, which was, even at the outset, an enormous price tag for what is quite short rail link.

And the suggestion that has been made by this engineer is that politicians should be removed from the process of long term infrastructure planning, so that warring politicians do not, in effect, interfere. An independent commission, it has been stated, should be established that would act outside political influence and all its work would be based on evidence, etc. etc. Did I not say that many engineers are fundamentally at heart, undemocratic? If I did not, then I should have, for they are.

I think we have had enough of people working behind closed doors, being subject to subtle influences, engaging in delusions of being independent and claiming to act in our interests.

One of the reasons why we elect people to parliament is to engage in debate about such matters as HS2 and other infrastructure projects – this is part of the purpose of politics! Moreover, the idea that we, the people, should allow a bunch of engineering type technocratic experts to be in a driving position on such matters demonstrates how out of touch engineers are with the real world. The age of the expert knows best, the professional in charge paradigm, is over. It passed into history long ago, and the future lies with citizen’s taking charge of their world and shaping it in ways that fit with what people want, not what experts and vested interests desire. This is the age of participatory democracy, although few experts have realised this.

What both examples that I have mentioned above illustrate is the world of Prometheus and it is a very dangerous one that condemns us all to a bleak future, for the future should not be the past, with slightly more advanced science and technology, but an entirely different civilisation; one where more steel, concrete and silicon are not seen as the answers to all problems, but are understood to be part of the problem.

Do you have the courage to begin to explore what this civilisation might look like, and to begin the long journey towards its realisation? If so, keep reading!

A Voice of Reason in a Time of Great Madness

“A voice of reason in a time of great madness.” You may have come across this before, for it is a quote from a movie called Field of Dreams. It is taken from the scene when the central female character in the film (Annie Kinsella) stands up to defend the writer whose books the right-minded (that is to say, the mob) want to ban. “Terrance Mann” she says, “was a voice of reason in a time of great madness. He coined the phrase make love not war.” The time of great madness she is referring to is the 1960s.

We live once again in a time of great madness, yet few are prepared to admit this. And this blog and my other writings are about being a voice of reason in a time of great madness. This is why I write, to show people that we are truly living in an age of great madness that will lead eventually to an avoidable human tragedy on an epic scale. And my message is clear – we need to begin a transition to a different way of living on our small and wonderful planet. It is time to walk a different path and ordinary people should now take control through peaceful means, to ensure that we do begin to walk a different path. This is already beginning to happen, and people with vested interests in maintaining the world as it is, are becoming concerned. My great worry is that they will take steps to stop this change. Recall what the British did in India, in response to Ghandi. The British though, are, at heart, a moderate and tolerant people, and they eventually understood that opposing Ghandi was contrary to the ideals that they themselves hold dear.

Politicians in Europe I hope will understand this, and embrace and encourage transition towards a different path. What this path should be of course is a matter for discussion, but the first step is to begin this dialog and to understand why we need to change. This is a matter that you will find explored in my books, in particular, Encounter with a Wise Man and A Tale of Two Deserts. As regards to what should be central to these discussions, the answer is that which is central to our modern civilisation: free market capitalism; religion; and science, engineering and technology, and how all these should be transformed to enable the development of a sustainable civilisation, and to ensure that extremists of all kinds (atheist, religious, scientific, capitalist, political etc.) find no space to prosper in society, in the world. And by engaging is this dialogue we might begin to understand how the madness that inevitably flows from ideology and dogma, can be avoided.

Through the power of words the climate of thought can be changed. This is the journey …

The Importance of Social Innovation in the 21st Century

This is the journey …

Now and then I remind readers of this blog what my writing is all about: a journey of discovery and adventure, providing the opportunity for everyone to begin to open their minds, and to avoid the trap of a mind that has closed in on fixed opinions, from which great madness often flows. And with this reminder firmly planted in your mind, please read on …

Occasionally words of wisdom and great insight find their way into the pages of Institution of Engineering and Technology’s monthly magazine, E&T. This happened twice back in the November 2011 issue – a rare thing indeed! The wise comments I am referring to are the statement by Robin Hanbury-Tenison (in the column For and Against) that “the greed of development leads to the extinction of a culture”, and the comment offered by Heinz Wolf, that “innovation in the 21^st Century is not going to be in science and technology, but in the way that society organises itself.” The two remarks are connected, for if we do not engage in social innovation, and move beyond technology driven thinking, then the extinction of our culture is a real possibility. This is not to say that we do not need technology, but to recognise that human civilisation has, for many reasons, reached a transition point which requires a reinvention of the many taken for granted aspects of the modern world, including science, engineering and technology.

There is here, the opportunity for the engineering community to demonstrate some thought leadership, and perhaps also to address the perennial problem of concerns about the poor status of UK engineers in society. But are these people ready to take the lead? Regrettably the answer would seem to be no. Too often one sees engineers and technologists offering technological fixes to challenges that can only be properly addressed through social, human and organisational innovation, with technology following-on in a supporting role, but also not forgetting that sometimes technology can be used as an enabler for these kinds of soft innovations.

However, talking to engineers about social innovation is a depressing and unrewarding way of passing one’s time, even when such innovation makes clear and unquestionable business sense. I have quite a lot of experience of this. One example that I will mention is the inability of most production engineers in the western world, during the 1980s and early 1990, to grasp the importance of what is now called Lean Production. Engineers and technologist working in manufacturing during that period were obsessed with technology, particularly Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and many visits were undertaken by European engineers and technologists to Japan to view their robots, flexible manufacturing systems, and computer numerical control systems. Yet these visitors were on the whole, completely blind to the organisational and methodological innovations behind this technology, and it was these soft innovations that were the key to Japanese success.

Engineering has not internalised the learning from this period. In an earlier blog I wrote about the either/or mind-sets of engineers, referring to a lecture that I attended which was entitled Is the World Running out of Energy? At the end of the talk I mentioned to the speaker that this was the wrong question to ask. I told the lecturer that a more important question was “do we need all this energy?” There was agreement that we did not, but the speaker added that there is a very real requirement to improve energy efficiency. In reply I said that I did not disagree with this observation, but I pointed out that if we were to change the way society operates, undertake a reorganisation, start doing things more intelligently, etc. (i.e. social innovation to eliminate energy needs), then perhaps we might not need new nuclear power stations and other capital and resource intensive constructions. The response, as I noted previously, was very predictable, but well illustrates the problem, “We cannot put back the clock.”

Social innovation is not about putting the clock back, reverting, so to speak, to an earlier less sophisticated existence, but is concerned with putting the clock forward. This involves leaving behind all these outdated and irrelevant perspectives which are no more that an effort to preserve the past by creating a future that is just the past presented as something new!

I am starting to think that we are living in a lunatic asylum and that all common sense has been abandoned as the world pursues the Holy Grail of economic growth, but which is now looking increasingly like plain corporate greed at our expense, as well as that of the natural world upon which our continued existence depends.  Everywhere one goes people are talking about sustainable economic development, yet just about everyone is proposing to continue doing the things that are so self-evidently responsible for the unsustainability of contemporary civilisation. Few people seem ready to think about how we may need to fundamentally redesign our societies to eliminate consumption that can be avoided, and to engage in de-growth of certain industries that are resource intensive, while at the same time fostering the growth of new less resource intensive sectors. This is indeed bad news for future generations.

What we have here is truly Promethean and most worrying is that the majority are blind to what is happening. We are busy creating an avoidable disaster of epic proportions and yet the message from just about everywhere one looks is – business as usual. And thus the seeds of the next human global catastrophe are sown. We need to take peaceful action now to make sure that this never happens; time to walk a different path!

Digital Science, Responsible Research, Bees and Neonicotinoids

Often in my writings I have referred to the need to reinvent science, engineering and technology. Digital Science is a small step towards achieving this and is part of a European Commission initiative towards Responsible Research and Innovation.

The term Digital Science was proposed by the European Commission’s Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) research programme. Digital Science is one of the research topics that will be addressed in the new Framework Programme for research (Horizon 2020) that begins in 2014.

The European Commission’s concept paper defining the issues of relevance to Digital Science notes that the focus is on using ICT for two key reasons: (i) to improve the efficiency of scientific research; (ii) to transform science. The latter point is crucial and in many respects far more important than the first.

Already ICT is much used in research, be it scientific, technological or engineering research, but while ICT provides modern researchers with many powerful tools, it has not fundamentally changed to nature of science – and science does need to change for it is trapped in the past and needs to move forward. The same can also be said for technology development and engineering as well.

People working in various scientific fields usually publish their results in scientific journals, but the content of these journals are only accessible to those who pay subscriptions to the publisher, yet much of that which is published results from research that is wholly or partly funded from the public purse. So, you, most probably a taxpayer, having indirectly paid for this research, have to pay again if you want gain access to the results. One of the thrusts underlying Digital Science is to change the scientific publication process to open access, so that all can gain access to the results of research, without having to pay!

But there is more, for science also makes use of much data, which is collected through experiments, observations, and so forth. Yet much of this data is not openly available to others. If anyone wants to use the data they have to ask, and the answer could be: “no you can’t have it.” Why? Actually, usually for no good reasons at all, other than someone has decided to restrict access. Many scientists you should understand, are very elitist and also not interested in openness and sharing, except perhaps when there is something to be achieved in return that will advance their own research careers (they are human!). Digital science is therefore also about providing open access to data.

Open access however is not the sum total of what Digital Science is about. There is also the matter of what is called public engagement in science. Here you perhaps think that I am referring to scientists telling the public in simple terms what they have discovered. Better think again!

It is important of course that the results of research are communicated to the public, but scientists are usually not very good at doing this, and also there is a danger that such communication becoming propaganda, hubris, and an exercise in experts explaining to the poor non-expert why they should just accept the science (science after all is self-evidently always good – I think not!).

What public engagement should be about is a process for accountability, modernising the ethical basis of science, ensuring responsibility in research, and democratising research policy development. And this should involve informed members of the public in decisions about what research to fund and what not to fund with public money – an issue of growing importance given the potentially damaging impacts of some types of scientific research, the questionable underlying ethics of modern science, and the hubris associated with science.

So what of bees and neonicotinoids? Here is a case study that demonstrates the importance of what I have just described above, of allowing open access to research results and data, and of enabling public involvement, not just through their elected representatives, but also through a process of participatory democracy. But there is more, for the case of bees and neonicotinoids also demonstrates the need to make public the links that scientists and their employing institutions have with vested interests such as, in this case, agri-chemical companies.

It used to be the case that one could talk about industry scientists in the sense that these were the ones working in industry, but this is no longer the case, for the bulk of scientists in the public sector are also deeply involved with industry, through their employing institutions – and this does very much influence what they say and believe (it creates conflicts of interest which are rarely declared). This I have seen for myself, many times, and it is an aspect to modern science that the public need to be aware of, as do politicians and those who assist them, such as parliamentary research officers. And the nature of science itself also needs to be better understood by the public, for the image of the rational person, free of bias and values, engaging only with facts, evidence and that which can be proven by experiment, is just an idealised self-image that is far from the reality of what science actually is. About this I will say more in future blogs.

For those who have to deal with policy issues surrounding bees and neonicotinoids, and the associated issues such as banning their use, Digital Science would have been a very helpful tool to have available. This is one reason why we need to support the development of Digital Science, ensure that it is not developed by experts for experts, and to develop the concept further so that it truly becomes a transformational tool.

And this latter point is one of the key reasons why we need Digital Science – to change science itself, not just to be rid of its elitist mind-set, but to develop a wider understanding that science is not neutral, and that the bad side does not just come from abuse, but that science and scientists, by their very nature, are potentially very dangerous. And the profound point I wish to make here is that, what we have experienced in the past with science cannot continue, and we need to move science forward by developing a new scientific process – this is a key aspect of building a sustainable civilisation. But this will not be easy, for those unbreakable chains that bind people to the rock of the past will have to be broken (this is that Prometheus Syndrome once again) to allow people to invent a different kind of science.

So it may also be the case that Digital Science might prove to be quite challenging for DG CONNECT, the Directorate General responsible for the ICT research programme, for the bulk of the experts that it relies upon for external expertise are part of the problem – they too are caught up in this outdated scientific paradigm, and what we know about people’s behaviour is that when paradigms are challenged, the first reaction is always to fight to defend that which exists and to preserve the existing order, sometimes quite vocally, but most often in a more insidious way, because their values and beliefs shape the concepts and the technology, and in the end the future just becomes a more technologically sophisticated version of the past – Prometheus chained to the rock of the past.

In my book A Tale of Two Deserts, I mention that modern science is like a bag of bones dressed up with a little good meat (another reference to Prometheus).  Science, you should understand, on the one hand helps us, while at the same time, destroys us; we have not yet acquired the knowledge, the sophistication, the wisdom to achieve the former without the latter. The time we have left to do so grows short!

And so it goes with technology and engineering too!

Front-Door, Back-Door – The Either/Or Mind Sets of Scientist, Engineers and Technologists

Front-door and back-door is a phrase I came across when reading a book about the knowledge era (The Knowledge Society by Marc Luyckx Ghisi). Front-door/back-door is a term that describes a characteristic of the way many scientists, engineers and technologists think. Basically it means that choice is reduced to two options: either we continue forward along the path we have previously followed, making so-called progress (i.e. we go out of the front-door), or we turn back, and resort to some earlier less sophisticated existence (i.e. we go out of the back-door). No thoughts here of walking different paths, just one path to follow, regardless of the consequences. This is social Darwinism at work, and most scientific, engineering and technology types are social Darwinists, and a frightening lot they can be. Truly mad, yet many would dare to say so – something of a modern day heresy to do so. And what one can say about people caught up in dogma, is that for them, heretics are dangerous people, for they sow the seeds of doubt, and raise questions for which the dogma has no convincing answers.

Having worked with scientists, engineers and technologists for most of my professional life, I have encountered this simplistic front-door/back-door belief many, many times, so much so that it has become a recurring theme in my writing (see for example my novel Moments in Time which is due to be published in early 2014).

Back in 2012 I attended a lecture (organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers) entitled “Is the World Running out of Energy?”  Of course, this is not so, we are just using too much energy, and of the wrong kind (e.g. fossil fuels). At the end of the lecture, making my way out of the room, I stopped and told the lecturer that the title of her lecture was the wrong question to ask, and what we should be asking is: “Are we using energy that we do not need to use?” The reply, was of course, that this is true, as we are indeed ridiculously inefficient when it comes to energy use. My reply was that this was not my point. What I wanted to communicate to her, was that the way society is structured, organised, and operates creates demands for consumption that can be avoided and which are also unsustainable, which was the underlying reason for my question. What we need to do is to change structure, organisation and modes of operation.

The speaker’s reply was one that could have been predicted: “We cannot put back the clock,” she said, to which I replied “I was proposing to put the clock forward, and leave behind outdated ideas and ways of thinking.”

So, yet again, no thoughts in this person of walking a different path! In fact, no thoughts at all, because such people on the whole do not do much thinking, and this is a serious problem that is leading the world to the edge of doom. This is something that most know is true, but we prefer instead to maintain the collective delusion that all will be well. This is also something that I write about in my stories. Incidentally Voltaire in his novel Candide provides a good definition of this type of blind optimism: “Optimism is a mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well.”

The problem with not thinking is that your awareness of this circumstance is virtually non-existent. So, the problem gets ignored; which is why I write. Is anyone taking note, or am I Cassandra?

I once told someone what defines most engineers: “An engineer is someone, who, if you ask him (it is usually a “him”) to build a bridge, he will build you a bridge; an engineer is also someone who, if you ask if a bridge is needed, will still build you a bridge.”

We have as a civilisation reached a point where we need to begin to walk a different path, to reinvent some of the foundational aspects of our societies: religion, science, technology, engineering, free market capitalism, and so forth. Yet you will not find consideration of such matters among the bulk of people who, one can say, are the practitioners in these various domains. What you will find however are a lot of collective delusions (like for example the thought leadership claims of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and that other engineering institution, the Institution of Engineering and Technology). This is what happens when people become caught up in ideologies, start to believe their own propaganda, engage in hubris, and live the story of the emperor’s new clothes.

This is why I wrote my books Encounter with a Wise Man, A Tale of Two Deserts, and Moments in Time, which highlight the ideological tendencies, delusions, and madness that are creating a world that no sane person would want to be a part of. It is also why I urge people to stand-up now and take peaceful action to bring this madness to an end. We have the means – your vote, your wallet and your lifestyle choices. And people should act soon, as time left to avoid the inevitable consequences of our present path grows short.

There are choices, and also far better worlds, which, we as individuals have the power to make happen. And if you think this is about socialism then you are indeed a lost soul, caught-up in a world that long ago ceased to be relevant. This, one can also say, is the story of progress; somehow finding a way of handling all those people that for reasons of fear, lack of vision and imagination, ideology, and vested interest, will try to stop an evolution towards this better world. And about how to do this, I have said a few words in my book, A Tale of Two Deserts, and I will say much more in due course in future blogs. Self evidently, one cannot build a better world by resorting to the traditional methods for dealing with opposition used in the world one is trying to replace.