Believing churches don't, it would be a step too hard for their congregations.
Parties can't, because their leaders would lose face in the debate.
Scientists can't, because they would be tarred by the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) of the anti-gaia years.
Hacks would not be invited to write again.
Candidates would be blown away by the howls of disbelief and dismay.
Wall Street has not yet figured how to make money from it.
Intelligence would fight it, as a breeding ground for terrorism.
Militaries would resent planning for protection and clean ups.
Nimby would rule in the planning offices.
Little realising that the death of most of us (Lovelock says planet earth can carry a bare billion) will follow this lack of decision. The cynic suggests some of the great and good will be playing for this. Others that government can only drip-feed us the truth.
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( 3 / 106 )I suspect I will have no problem with his arguments, but will worry about their denoument.
Freedom from bad and even destructive thinking, yes.
But does his altruism need a map?
Fine if you are bright and charismatic enough to carry the tribe with you. Because you then hold the map and can change path on the fly.
What of those who need the church tribe around for comfort and nurture and give back? Just collateral alongside the intellectual bulldozer?
We invent universities and colleges partly to keep the able thinkers from damaging society, and protect them while they think, as much as to give our able and often difficult adolescents somewhere to grow up.
Like his early reviewers on the flyleaf, Dawkins is part of a survival group: mentally and materially equipped, respected even venerated by their congregation, it must be very hard not to slip into allowing a bit of hero-worship help them understand the temptations of a Caesar contemplating godhood.
Who I wonder will we worship as the century unfolds? Women, horses, power and war as usual, I fear. Unless we can see through the celebs and pop psychology fast becoming our household gods.
Perhaps I should now read the book.
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( 2.8 / 107 )Long-settled coasts are littered with the stones of dead cities. The cells, the organs, some binding influence never made them hang together, perhaps they were eaten by a small predator like a virus or by a large predator like an empire or a philosophy. Many more died than lived. The big ones that survive – Rome, Cairo, Istanbul – are a tribute to our and their immune systems, or to our optimism in colonising brownfield sites. As people are to cities, cities are to cultures. Until the internet.
At some point in evolution, consciousness appeared. Thatcher was right, there was then no such thing as consciousness in society. Nor, pace sf, does it seem likely to appear between cities, they don’t have the complexity or the subtle interactions of a brain. The internet is however an early step in the right direction for empathy to lead to altruism.
A factor western science cannot handle is ignorance. Partly through testosterone and the need to be confident among peers, partly through capital’s ability to twist any weakness to party interest. And partly because we don’t like being ignorant about the immediate future of our progeny and their cities.
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( 3 / 109 )Curious combo rattling in the old brain: Colossians Remixed is a look at battling an Evil Empire then and now. New Idea of a University uses Pride and Prejudice as exemplar and shows how the keen student can change both in herself as well as exorcise monsters like Mrs Bennet and Mr Collins. Friends heading to Arusha, Kabue and kwaZulu instead of the Med this summer. Bearing sensible gifts I hope: mobiles with new sim cards in old phones with solar chargers, Austin and even Edubuntu thinking perhaps.
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( 3 / 134 )I wonder if us A-levelled Brits can appreciate the freedom Mathematica offers for us to think beyond the western science paradigms. One way in is the weirder bits of quantum physics, relativity and cosmology. What Hawkins tried in the beautiful pictures of his glossy coffee table book, perhaps the makers of Wolfram demonstrations can do in their animatable models. Hopefully models of the different electron behaviours in Feynmann’s quantum electrodynamics will teach us more about the different things the same electron is doing. Traditionally the younger modellers, those closer to the changes, will be the quicker understanders. Sadly, we are already beyond the centenary of the light quantum that gave young Albert his Nobel, moving through general relativity with its deformation of space by mass, and already over eighty years away from Godel’s theorem on the problems built into many maths systems. Suffice that the writer has little understanding or gut feel for these topics. Certainly I’ve tried, especially when teaching them. Even the 'correct' standard model of the basic particles, discovered since I was undergraduate, leaves me feeling that something is missing. The bits we teach in schools hang together, just, but with bright students I found myself twisting the model and hoping they would stop asking questions before I ran out of answers. This on a dumbed-down syllabus, and I don't think I'm thick. Blind spots, yes, but not thick, I hope.
In cellular automata, we have a model that satisfies my gut feel about all the systems I have read about. I cannot speak for its completeness, but am comfortable that it is more likely to give answers that fit observed behaviour than our conventional wisdoms. I don’t think this is just us Gauls seeking new things. For me it is a chance to mathematise the ‘ologies, an unachievable dream since mid teaching career.
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