Lyrics.

Over the last decade I have written some songs. I was going through my e-mail and found a folder with some old lyrics, and here are some selections.

Murder Ballad

Writing a long lost name
on a misty windowpane
Seeing a forgotten face
In a smoky exhale's trace
Feeling a piece of frightened flesh
In the wrinkled palms I press
Shadows follow me around
Whispering without a sound
All the ones who knew are gone
No-one knows just what I've done
Her frantic face sank into the moat
My twice-cursed hands around her throat

The house groans back at me
Accompanied by the hangman's tree
Which shrieks against the windowpane
That wounds me with its' precious name
Early in the morning fog
I stumble through the clutching bog
That stands beside the castle's stones
And hides my only true love's bones
Forty years of torment passed
Soon I'll have my peace, at last
My placid face sinks into the moat
My twice cursed hands around my throat

Baila De La Vida

The scene is set
a vast empty ballroom
Senora wakes and steps out of the gloom
stricken with sadness at her own recent death
claw like fingers clutch dusty castanets
graceful, with age she begins a slow dance
which begets a face
her father's warm glance
cheered by this sight, years drop from her face

Suddenly others are filling this strange place
first love of all - sharp pleasure, then tears
Behind black lace, a friend of thirty years
High pitched laughter and the sound of little feet
Her own children make everything complete
And so she learns, as all of us might
A life fully lived robs black death of it's bite.


The Jack Daniels Sutra

You know it's early in the morning
or perhaps it's late at night
That religion comes a callin'
tells me something just ain't right.
It says my mother is ashamed
and my father takes the blame.
It says I'm doomed to misery
and I'll be burning in that flame.

But I have got an answer.
For I've truly found the light.
I'm a whiskey drinking buddhist
and there's something I recite.
It's called the Old Jack Daniels Sutra
and the words don't stay the same,
but I know it deep inside me
as well as I recall my name.

I am the bottle I am the glass.
I will reincarnate at last.
Fill me up until the brim,
I believe there is no sin.
This world of misery is samsara,
Why don't you pour me another?
This Old Jack Daniels treats me right,
I reach Nirvana every night.

You know it's early in the morning.
Or perhaps it's late at night,
that the police come a callin'
and tell me something just ain't right.
They say they'll put me in the cooler
until I finally get the point.
As if I'll find some understanding
while I'm rotting in the joint.

I am the bottle.....

All I Really Need to Know I learned In...

The title of this post is usually ended with "kindergarten" and what is said in the link is quite accurate that if everyone just followed the rules a civil society would ensue. The thing is, that those things that we are taught in kindergarten are what people want us to do, but have to be taught to us because it is natural to human beings to act in such ways. If you want to know the natural state of humanity, just go to a school playground with young children on their break. There will be moments of fascination, and caring, and love, but also lots of fighting, stealing, being mean and so on. The great difficulty of childhood is that we try to teach our children to be caring, loving beings in the face of humanity, which is less idyllic, all the while regimenting their lives in an oppressive regime of control, rules and punishment. There is not one of us who would voluntarily return to the environment of childhood.

The human brain is pretty much finished its development by the end of adolescence. When we are teenagers about to go off to college the basic structure of the brain is essentially finished, with perhaps a small fraction of development possible in some of the more intellectual areas. However, essentially your brain is as capable of understanding the world around us at that age as it will be in the future. This is perhaps why teenagers seem so adamant that they know better than adults, and you know what? I think they are right.

When I was a teenager I knew some things. I knew that nobody in the world would ever really understand me, and that was to a large extent because nobody ever really is interested enough to really listen to you. People are too interested in themselves, and too annoyed by the prospects of having to subsequently care, to really pay attention to others. I knew that people generally didn't think, but just did things out of habit, and that if you challenged whether something should happen or not what it really came down to was who had the most power. I knew that people wanted to be ignorant, self-centered, clannish, interested in little more than gossip, ridicule and the latest, shiniest thing. Perhaps this was the result of my upbringing, but I think it rings pretty close to true for many teenagers.

The thing is that all of those things are demonstrably true. What being an adult largely consists of is distracting yourself from all of these unpleasant truths because they are unpleasant. To avoid the unpleasant truth we wrap ourselves up in pettiness, mistaking it for the important things. The thing is that teenagers are mostly right about things and adults are mostly wrong, but we become too cowardly to act upon it.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is a time for family, for light and warmth in the dark and cold, chestnuts and woolly sweaters, eating together and giving and receiving. Christina and I are in Texas, just the two of us, it's seventy degrees outside, so it's a bit weird. Still, this doesn't mean that I am any less sincere in my wishes of Christmas merriment to you and yours, I hope you have a great time.

"What is Christmas?" is a question asked at this time of year. All around me as I drive are bumper stickers pleading to "Keep the Christ in Christmas." People discuss the "War on Christmas" and every year people bemoan the commercialism at this time of year. Well, I don't care what Christmas is supposed to be. I don't care whether it is really the leftovers of a pagan festival at the winter solstice. I don't care if it's supposed to be about a religious figure in which I don't believe in. I don't care if it's commercial or if it's spiritual.

Christmas is a cultural invention. Human beings made it up and human beings change it. Christmas isn't the same now as it was before, and in the future it will be different. Each year we invent Christmas anew. I think it is a wonderful and magical thing that human beings create special times for all of us to share. So, as far as I am concerned, as long as you are enjoying Christmas, being good and kind to those around you, then your Christmas is the absolutely perfect way to have Christmas. Well done you.

In my cultural tradition of irreligious English Christmas there are really only four things that make it Christmas. It isn't Christmas for me without being around at least some family, and my wife is enough of my family to count. I have spent Christmases entirely alone before, and there is nothing more lonely for me. I won't be lonely this Christmas.
The second thing is that it isn't Christmas unless you wish someone a happy or merry Christmas. To me, communicating a sincere desire for the happiness of others is really the essence of what the holiday means.
The third thing is food. It isn't really Christmas unless you have a big meal with lots of cheer. I don't think it matters what the meal is, or even when you eat it (apparently there are millions of people who do all sorts of stuff on Christmas Eve!) but Christmas without stuffing your face is like going to a concert with earplugs in. Christmas Day is the day when Christina cooks, accompanied by delightfully colorful language.
The fourth and last thing is the giving and receiving of presents, and herein lies the difficulty. All of you are rich, rich, rich. Filthy, stinking rich. So am I. You all live thousands of miles away from me and I see any one of you less than a week a year. I don't know what you want or need, it would cost tons of money to get things to you, and if you want stuff you can get it anyway. Lastly, I really do think that it is the thought that counts.

I have already received a present from my mother, and it is the best present I could imagine. My mother bought for me food for an entire family for the year in sub-Saharan Africa. This means that for the next year, whenever I wonder about whether I'm doing well enough, if I'm being all I can be, I can remember that because of the thought of me a family is alive. That means that if I do nothing else this year that I still have served a great and noble purpose, all this a gift from my mother. If it really is the thought that counts then that is a marvelous thought.

So, after all that justification, I am telling you that you aren't going to be getting any packages from me this year. Christina and I, as we have done for a few years now, are going to donate money to charity rather than send presents. We really hope that you take this as a gift to you, for without the inspiration of our dear families, without their examples of goodness and kindness, we would not be doing this. Because we love you and we have faith in you, we believe that the best way we can show our appreciation to you is by trying to do some good in the world on your behalf.

So, which charity? There are lots of great causes out there. Feeding the hungry, freeing the oppressed, teaching the unschooled, preserving the environment, creating opportunities for the poor, and so on. I believe that all of the great works of our time are interlinked, that education leads to new technology which leads to giving voices to the oppressed, the feeding of the poor, which leads to the poor being able to be educated, which leads to a greater appreciation of the environment, which leads to new technology, and so on.

I think we all want people to be free, to have enough money to be out of poverty, to have a beautiful world to live in, to be educated and knowledgeable. I think there is a thing that links all of these things together and that is the education of women in developing nations. Educated women have fewer children, and so those children have a greater chance to receive education themselves. Fewer children mean fewer people, and fewer people require fewer resources, the root cause of environmental problems. Educated women can stand up for their rights, make better decisions, have the chance to work and therefore be free of the dependency on men. Educated women can make better health choices for themselves and their families, leading to longer and happier lives. I think by educating women, in the long run we do the most good that we can for the planet.

As we did last year we will be donating our gifts to Video Volunteers an organization that "trains marginalized communities to produce news, watch it, take action and devise solutions." The great thing about Video Volunteers is it started by asking the poorest of the poor what they wanted, and a voice is what they replied. This voice teaches, encourages, supports and empowers the poorest, mostly women, helping them to improve their lives through knowledge and education. It is doing the most good for the planet in a way that respects those it is trying to help. I can't think of a better gift for you all, and I hope you agree.

Merry Christmas indeed.

Descent Into Madness

First of all I want you to get really worried about that title. It is about me. I feel like I am going mad.

Do you feel a little thrum of panic? A moment of worry? That's good that you got it, thanks for caring, and it was designed to get you to have a little feeling of what it has been for me this week. Repeatedly I have felt like I was going mad this week, and a big part of that is the thrum of panic from considering my oncoming madness.

I think my intellectual faculties are still fine, I'm not going mad from obvious delusion. I am going mad because of feelings. I have too many feelings, and many of them are too strong. It has been difficult to do anything, or more accurately I am protecting myself from myself by not doing anything difficult. On different nights over the last week I have slept four hours or twelve hours, depending on my mood. I have choked down tears while doing dishes and stalked through blustery winds with my mind racing through vast fields of thought, the very image of a madman.

The great concern of course is whether this will stop, will it worsen. Almost everyone at some point uses the words, "I think I'm going crazy" but most people are talking about something else. They are talking about the strain of their mind when faced with difficulty. I have basically no difficulty but I can sit here and watch my mind doing strange things. Why am I sometimes frightened of people in a general sense so that going outside to get the garbage can feels like something illicit, and then whenever I actually talk to people it is easy? The impression of everything is so much harder than the reality of it.

I don't know how much of this shows up. My wife has said that home is a nice place to be, and that I am a good husband, so either she is being fantastically nice during a very hard time, or it's true. It's probably true that for most of us our internal world seems much more frayed and difficult than our outside appearance suggests. In the end this isn't really very much different than being seventeen again, but I already managed to get over the fact that no-one will ever really understand me once in my life, twice seems so unfair (ah, the wail of a teenager again).

Of course, the ironic thing is that by the end of the writing of this post my mood has changed from worry and concern into a desire to giggle at the humor of it all.

A Tough Day

This last weekend Christina and I went to Austin, TX. This is the state capitol and a college town, notoriously left wing for Texas. It's between a two and three hour drive, a long journey in England but a brief jaunt in the USA. The place would be familiar to most of you, 100 year old brick buildings interlaced with skyscrapers, with sidewalks to walk around, restaurants and a surprising wealth of Irish pubs. We had a very good time, relaxed and without pressure, comfortable in our surroundings. We walked around the streets without more of a goal than to eat when hungry and drink when inclined. We had several delightful conversations with local people of a wide range of ages, from college students to a grizzled flutist.

The morning of the last day I woke up with mania, something that I suppose has happened to me all my life but now I am more aware of it, and I think also the symptoms are more severe now than they have ever been. I was more aware of noise, easily startled, unable to keep still, and everything upon which my attention landed felt like the most important thing in the world. Extremely stressful. Still, my wife was wonderful, calm and understanding, we returned to Portland and she went to bed at 8pm exhausted by the weekend and I stayed up until 1pm before lying down for a restless night of turning over and over. As a result I am tired today.

So that's where I am, the context for what has been a tough day. The return from Austin has highlighted certain aspects of my situation, and I am emotionally and physically tired. I sit here realizing that I am largely helpless to change much of my situation. I have no friends to talk to, and Austin showed me that I still can have easy conversations even with absolute strangers in a companionable way. Social interactions in the suburbs of Houston are based on work, children, and religion, three opportunities that I do not have. Today I reached the abject stage of looking on-line for some group that I could be a part of in order to have some social interaction. The results were a humanist lecture in ten days and possibly a soccer league in February. Today I am a little lonely.

One thing that had kept me going were the possibilities of an exit from the area, but these seem to be fading. The most likely scenario is that I will be here for another year, at the minimum. I think with Christmas coming and the idea of it being just the same as any other day I am somewhat disheartened. With the addition of a ridiculously sized bill from the homeowners association, an organization I would probably pay to not be in, and the constant decline that happens to any building (one of the great disadvantages to living in a nice house is that any change to it makes it worse, resulting in constant battle. I much prefer shabby.) that had me thinking about paying for more things didn't help.

So, I am lonely in a place that I don't like very much with essentially no prospects of anything changing in the next year. I have suffered over the last few days with a mental illness that comes and goes in a manner I cannot predict. I'm tired. It's a tough day.

However, I am also someone who has grown and learned through the years. I know that just a couple of days ago I was having a grand old time. I know good things will happen again. I know that this is just something that happens sometimes. I know enough to be grateful that my tough day is happening with a full larder, in a house I own, protected by a bank account that is filled by someone other than myself. I know that I am loved and someone lets me love them. I have always believed that I am a lucky person, that I have a lot, that the circumstances of my life have been excellent. This isn't a tough life, or a tough year, or a tough month. This is simply a tough day, and writing this had made it less so.

Good news

There is a lot of bad news almost everywhere you look. Many people believe that things are getting worse and to such an extent that the world is on the point of collapse. The video is a very watchable examination of what has happened within the world over the last fifty years. I really hope that not only do you watch it, but that you absorb the information and feel warmed and encouraged by the actual facts of what is happening. It is good news.

Good News

I tried and failed to embed the video, but the link is to a safe place, the video is twenty minutes long.

My Favourite Sweater

My favourite piece of clothing is a faux woolly jumper in a colour that has been described as everything from orange to mustard to gold. It was purchased used from a thrift store for less than $10, it's largely man made fibers, it stretches when you hang it up, and it doesn't really fit.

It is actually a replacement for a previous woolly jumper that had a slightly more golden hue. I'm not sure what happened to that sweater, I do remember wearing it in England and Wales while wandering around.

I like it so much because it suits who I am. It's not a beautiful thing, it easily rumpled. It isn't pretentious, but it certainly isn't understated. It is almost unique. It's a tough piece of clothing in that you can throw it in a corner and it doesn't change it one bit. It is ideally suited to grey and drizzle as it keeps you warm and dries easily.

In essence, what this sweater does it tells you about who I am. I think of this sweater as the sort of thing that an English college student would wear. Someone who doesn't own things but thinks about things. A person who is more comfortable in a pub than a church. Someone who hasn't joined in with what has been decided is cool, or looks good, or that the latest thing is better than what there was ten years ago.

I love it.

How to Defeat Radical Fundamentalism

It is a common aim of the US Military, of secular scientists, of the fear-obsessed American patriot, to defeat violent radical, fundamentalist Islam. I think the violent part is important because there are other religions around the world that are just as radical, just as purely entrenched in their positions but nobody really feels like defeating them. The Amish are generally used at this point.

The title of this post does not specifically mention Islam, and that's because I think that Islam is only a special case at this point in time, rather than Islam having some qualities that are particular heinous. On this point I disagree with a number of my tribe. I think if you look back in history it is easy to pick times when Christians were just as awful, when ideologue secularists were just as awful, when Hindus were just as awful, and so on. The reason for radical Islam's danger is not so much because of the religion, it is because of geo-politics.

This doesn't mean that I don't believe that the beliefs held by violent, fundamentalist Muslims aren't dangerous. I also believe that these people truly do believe what they are saying, as is very difficult for many liberal people who live in essentially a secular society. Nor do I think that there is no justification within the Islamic religion for such violent acts. The reason that I think that the problem is geo-political is because human beings can use any belief system to justify atrocity. The Japanese of World War II had managed to combine Buddhism and Shintoism into a belief system within which it was possible to commit unspeakable atrocity. Throughout most of Christian history horrible crimes were easily justified through a cursory glance through The Bible. Stalin was an Atheist supposedly changing the world to become a worker's paradise, a justification for the murder of millions.

So, we have a group of people who really believe in some religious nonsense that enables them to do horrible things. How do we stop this from continuing? One approach people try is to attempt to show them how stupid their ideas are. This is essentially the approach of the New Atheists, and there is some success in changing people's minds from a religious point of view to being more secular, but this only works for those people amenable to such approaches, and those who are amenable are not those who we are worried about. A rationalist, evidentialist approach works for young people who have been exposed to a number of ideas who are not convinced by their faith and are convinced by the efficacy of a secular society. These are people who have not completely identified with their faith. For those who have identified entirely with their faith challenging that faith with rational objections, appeals to reason etc. have been shown by Scott Atran to actually increase that faith. That's right, using reason against those with faith is considered an attack on their faith, which increases it.

Another approach has been to attempt to militarily defeat fundamentalist Islam. While the US military has had enormous success in dismantling the operating apparatus of Al-Qaeda, it simply cannot extinguish an idea through the use of force. Young people turn to radicalized terrorism through the need for a purpose, a cause, something to cling to in a world that is changing. They are more influenced by their peers than by authority or organizations. What motivates them to be radicals is rootlessness and outrages they see through the media.

It seems that direct action against radicalized fundamentalists can at best reduce the efficiency of their operations, but cannot remove the motivation to be a radicalized fundamentalist. So, it seems indirect action is a more sensible method to use. But what indirect method? Well, let us look at an example of where what we would now consider radical fundamentalism has been changed to moderate religion and secular humanism, Europe. It is about three centuries since Europe hung witches, in Britain the death penalty for Blasphemy was ended in 1676 (although you could still get three years imprisonment). The beliefs of the majority in Europe three hundred years ago were equivalent to the beliefs of radical fundamentalists in modern Islam. Clearly Christian nutjobbery has been effectively removed from Europe where the idea that killing someone for having different religious beliefs in repugnant.

How did this happen? It happened through the process whereby more knowledge was attained, spread, and this knowledge led to an improved life. Information and ideas were produced by intelligent people, discussed by those who were informed and intelligent, and then spread downward through society until the new became taken for granted. Improved economic and societal results for most people supported the worth of secular advancements and people wanted those improved conditions. Almost nobody in Europe set out to remove radical, fundamentalist Christianity, but it happened very effectively over just a couple of centuries.

The point, ironically enough, is that the way to remove radical, fundamentalist beliefs is through evolution by natural selection. A civil society based on enlightenment laws, with respect for humanity as designated through human rights outperforms radicalized fundamentalism. People living in such societies are hugely richer, more free, happier and safer. Radical fundamentalism disappeared in Europe not throughout any direct action but simply because young people at the time when they are identifying who and what they are preferred lives of increased freedom, wealth and happiness.

The method for defeating radical fundamentalism is simply to give young people a superior alternative. This superior alternative is not just money, it is freedom, self-direction, knowledge, the chance to do something worthwhile. If you are a young person in the Middle East today you are in the midst of the collapse of a traditional world, caught between the traditions in which you were raised, and the inability to compete in a global marketplace dominated by a militaristic West. What if there was a chance to compete? What if you could go to school and be the equal of anyone else? What if you could be part of the process of revitalizing and reinventing your part of the world as a better, more free society?

The defeat of radical fundamentalism has several components, the most important piece being an attitudinal change. Instead of thinking of a global threat think of radical fundamentalism as a natural problem that arises when countries go from the middle ages to modernity. It should be thought of a social problem, like poverty or disease. Those who become terrorists should, and must be, treated like criminals rather than like soldiers. In fact, they should be treated like mentally ill criminals, people to feel sorry for and rather repulsed by, rather than as an enemy. There is nothing to take the sting out of a jihadi army than for the rest of the world to feel somewhat sorry for these backward people. It is more effective to ignore radical fundamentalism than to fight it.

The second piece is the strengthening and support of moderate Islam. Once again this largely is something that would come about naturally. There are a large amount of Muslims in the world, and the vast majority of them would like a nicer tv, better education, a vote, safe streets and to get along with their neighbors. The largest proportion who think like this are the young, and there is a much larger proportion of young Muslims than young Americans. Before the invasion of Iraq, young Iranians favorite place in the world was the USA. Simply by exposure to the American culture, media, way of life young Iranians were choosing to be more like Americans. Without any interference Iranians were going to make themselves a largely secular democracy within the next two decades. This may soon happen, but interference in the area retards this process. There is no need to actively support a natural process that will give the desired result. if the West want to reduce the dangers of Islam then the best thing they can do is build Western schools, hospitals, media outlets etc. and leave the rest alone.

The final piece is to be better as a society ourselves. The more noticeably honorable, effective, peaceful, and moral the West can be, the more impressive it is as an example. The West has ideals that it has described to itself. To defeat radical fundamentalism we need to be better than it as people and as a society. If you sign a treaty you must abide by it. If you state that you believe in human rights then you must give those human rights to everyone at all times. If you want to be a shining beacon on the hill, you need to act like it. Mohandas Gandhi changed the world. He didn't do it by fighting anyone. He didn't do it by re-education. He did it by the example of his own life. As he said, "My life is my message."

Paradigm Shift(s)

I don't like the phrase "Paradigm shift" because it sounds so geeky, and so grandiose. A Paradigm shift is simply a change in your thinking which widely alters your view. A classic example is the change from belief that the Earth is the center of the Universe to it being a rather ordinary planet around a rather ordinary star around a rather ordinary galaxy. A paradigm shift from the special nature of where we are to the mundane nature of where we are.

I'm going to quote a couple of extremely familiar passages and examine them for the paradigms in which they came to be, and the differences between them.

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us,

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

This is of course the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus is reputed to have taught his followers. Let us look at the paradigm within which this is formed. It starts with praise of The Lord. In the ancient world, and for most of time, societies have been controlled by one person, with complete power, who could arbitrarily ruin your life. It was very important to keep that person happy. It then hopes that the wishes of this powerful entity will be fulfilled before going onto the wishes of those making the entreaty.

The first wish is that the person gets fed. The second is to be forgiven for any mistakes or transgressions that might be made, at least as much as the person is willing to forgive. Essentially begging not to be punished for minor indiscretions. The final part is to not be led astray from what would be the right things to do, and to be free from harm.

In summary the paradigm within the Lord's prayer is of a peasant wishing not to upset the person in power, to not be arbitrarily punished, to be able to eat, and to avoid calamity. This is the paradigm of the ancient world in which power was used arbitrarily, where the views of the common person were irrelevant, and all that you might hope for was to get something to eat and to stay out of trouble.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This is of course a portion of The Declaration of Independence. The paradigm within which this piece came to be written is clearly very different from The Lord's Prayer. For a start it begins with the incredible to the ancient world assertion that it is self-evident that people are created equal and that as a result they have rights. From the paradigm of the ancient world this would be considered ludicrous. Now what are the rights? They are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the ancient world you begged to be free of evil, rather than it being assumed that you have a right to be free of evil.

Furthermore, the text goes on to say that if the government it has does not suit the needs and wishes of the people it governs, it can be removed or altered until it does. In other words, if your government does not let you be free and happy, the government should be changed. This is clearly an enormous paradigm shift in terms of governance.

So I ask, is there anybody who doesn't believe that this shift from totalitarian, authoritarianism to a collective government emphasizing the needs of those being governed has been a great and wonderful thing? I think it is self-evident that such a shift has been a good thing. However, I wish to point out that I don't this shift in governance that has been such a success has spread to other areas quite as well.

Let us take morality. Under the ancient world's system what was moral was what authority said was moral and if you disagreed you were stoned to death. In Jefferson's model morality is a system that enables people to have life, liberty and pursue happiness. Imagine a politician who has cheated on their wife. The vast majority of Americans believe that person has been morally wrong, and this because infidelity is wrong, and that because they have been taught that infidelity is wrong. The Jeffersonian model would ask whether the infidelity has altered the life, liberty or the opportunity to pursue happiness? It hasn't reduced life, or liberty, and while it may reduce the pursuit of happiness for one person it seems to increase it for others. as such, under a modern paradigm, infidelity would not be immoral. Furthermore, it would then be within the rights of people to alter morality accordingly.

Let us take medicine. The present model is that there is something called "health" and something called "illness", and that the role of medicine is to protect us from illness. It is exactly analogous to the ancient world's plea to authority. Health is being without calamity. However, how we feel is much more complicated than whether we have an illness or not. Taking the Jeffersonian model what medicine should be for is to increase life, increase liberty (capability/functionality) and increase the ability to pursue happiness. This means that health isn't merely about not being sick, it's about feeling good and being able to do a lot of things. Under this new paradigm people who are not unhappy should be seeking medical help to become more happy. Those who are not sick should be getting medical health to be fitter, stronger, more skilled with their bodies. Furthermore, if the medical community does not assist with this endeavor then the population should be within their rights to alter the system.

Sam Harris has written a book called The Moral Landscape in which he outlines the position that it is possible to determine morality through scientific study. This comes from the idea that morality is what produces the greatest amount of human flourishing, which essentially comes very close to the greatest amounts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is possible to determine what actions have these results. It seems to me that society as a whole is still trying to make the paradigm shift from the ancient world to a modern world. A modern world would be one in which a clear look at what makes the greatest differences in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be the basis of the great decisions human beings make. Such a clear look would be the basis of politics, morality, medicine, economics, philosophy, art and so on. In such cases where the current situation can be seen to be improved through concrete steps it would be the right of the population of a modern world to require these steps to be taken.

Insurance.

This may well be the most boring blog post I do. The title is an excellent start in boring the pants off people (a phrase which has significant change in meaning depending on what continent you are). However, this has been a peeve of mine for a bit.

There were a couple of things that amazed me in my process of becoming an adult. One of them was that it is essentially illegal to live for free in the western world. I was shocked to find out that there is a tax on property, just for being property. If you own a place to live not only must you pay to acquire the ownership but you must continue to pay for it from then on. The amounts of this tax vary wildly from place to place (my parents place in Wales would be valued at least five times more than my present house but the tax on it is less than half the amount). If you add this tax of owning a place to live with all the laws about loitering, vagrancy, etc. then essentially in order to obey the law you must pay money. The fact that it is illegal to live without income was a shocking to me, something completely non-intuitive.

The other was finding out about insurance companies. The first portion of insurance companies is that their products are to a very large extent mandatory. If anyone has a mortgage on a house that house must be insured, you are not allowed to take that risk. If you have a business you must get liability insurance. Out of our paychecks come various required insurance costs. To drive a car you must have insurance. So the various powers that be require that if you wish to have an income and a place to live (both legal requirements in themselves) you must purchase insurance.

For a start this seems to be not a necessarily intuitive thing. The powers that be have decided that I cannot decide to take risks with regard to my own well-being. This seems to be a pretty large instance of abridging my freedom. On the other hand the insurance is not really for my own benefit, but to stop other people having to pay more money later in sheltering me, or caring for me if I'm disabled, and so on. So, as long as the benefits overall outweigh the costs, I can go along with it. A necessary evil, like the police, or taxes.

However, almost all insurance is run through for-profit agencies. The point of for-profit agencies is to make money. As an insurance company that tries to make money your motivation is to get as much money from those you cover, and then to cover them to the least extent possible. This means that what insurance is for is paying money to get coverage, and what the insurance provider is trying to do is get money without providing coverage. This means that by definition the insurer and the insured are in direct competition with each other. This means that insurance companies will try everything to not pay claims, whether through the largest amount of bureaucracy they can manage, or by legal fine print, or by delaying until people give up, or by lying. On the other hand, if they determine it will be cheaper for themselves they will pay a claim regardless of its worth and simply charge you more money, no hope for appeal.

Since insurance companies are in competition, and how you succeed is by not paying out insurance claims, insurance companies will also do everything they can to shift the blame to another party. This causes vast amounts of legal fees adding to the cost of insurance. For buyers of insurance it is to the advantage that no legal fees be added to the cost, but for companies any aggregate of legal fees less than the cost of paying out claims is a plus. The reason why no-fault state have equal or higher fees is actually because in those states medical insurers bill auto insurers, and are better at it in medical cases. So no-fault states are not actually no-fault states in the US.

The societal use of insurance is to provide protection against hard times. The company use of insurance is to take in regular income and minimize the payout in hard times. This competition makes the whole system far more expensive than necessary, and reduces the efficiency of the point o f the system.

Why is insurance not a non-profit organization? It is a government mandated program to protect society (and individuals) against unpredictable disaster. It's been shown that health care (with a similar job description) is half the cost when government run. Everyone knows that insurance companies are evil entities with no regard for their customers. Surely a single payer insurance system that has no profit motive, whose point is to serve citizens, and cannot waste legal resources on suing other entities would provide better results at a lower cost?

The Curious Nature of a Human.

The last time I talked socially with someone, that is while not conducting some sort of business, who was not my wife was in Portland just over four weeks ago, and a charming time it was. At the moment I am technically physiologically depressed. That is that my energy level is low, my motivation is low, I want lots of sleep and I don't do very much. I am in a sort of Limbo right now, I don't know where I will be living in a year and that decision has very little to do with me at all. I might be trying to get a job, or buying a house, or going to school, surrounded by friends or be this solitary.

In summary I am depressed, alone, in a place I dislike, and without any control over my future. However, I am quite far from being miserable. I am what people consider content. I find this very curious. How is it that in a situation that has these negatives I don't feel negative.

I think the first thing is that there are many positives in my situation. I love my wife, she is good to me, and she also seems surprisingly happy. As I have said before our happiness infects others, being happy is about the best thing you can do to make others happy. It may well be that all there is to a good relationship is two people being happy and caring that the other person is happy, creating a feedback loop. When this goes well there isn't a whole lot more of social interaction that a person needs.

I also don't have much to actively worry about, something quite unusual in this day and age. I think a large part of why I don't have things to worry about is because I have examined what is worth worrying about, and mostly what people worry about is a waste of time and emotional energy.

The final thing that keeps me content in such a situation is the chance to do nothing. Spiritual advisers from the East take note of what animals do when they are sick, which is nothing. Animals rest until they feel better. We humans of the Western World do not rest. With all our labor saving devices and our comforts, our efficiencies and our technology, we still spend more time than humans have every done in that most misery-inducing activity, work.

Work, when it comes down to it, is really getting up when we don't want to, going to a place we don't want to be, with people around us we don't choose, to spend more effort than we do on anything else in the fulfillment of the wishes of other people. Somehow this activity has come to be the most important part of people's lives. Most people spend more time on their work than on any other activity, more than raising children, more than on relationships. Most people prioritize their work above everything else.

Clearly an emphasis on work has some merit as it provides the money necessary to live. But I think it is also important to understand the cost.

On a day like today, where if I was working I would feel sick, hopeless, and exhausted, I am enormously grateful for my circumstances and the sacrifice that my wife makes.

Right and Wrong.

Today I watched a debate, or not really a debate as it is more of a discussion in which some people have some different views, entitled Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong? I would say the main reason I watched this is for social stimulation. This is my tribe doing what my tribe does, try to work out how to make the world better because it is interesting to do so. In the same way that some people get together once a week to play pinochle I like to be around people who think and discuss in this manner. I grew up with this at the dinner table and only through substantial time and experience have I found that this is unusual, and often disturbing and uncomfortable for people.

The people in this discussion, and in the audience, are not a selection of people at random. To a very large extent these people are self-selected to be pre-disposed towards agreement with the statement. The person most antagonistic towards the premise that science can tell us right from wrong is the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge. Such a person is unlikely to state that right and wrong has been eternally the same and given to us by God in a burning bush.

What the conversation really comes down to is what does "right" and "wrong" actually mean? The crux of the matter is whether you believe science can determine what these terms mean. I think the best analogy for morality in this regard is health, and this is brought up by Sam Harris. He says there is not a debate about whether science can determine what is the right or wrong thing to do with regard to health. It is generally accepted that science can determine what is healthy or not. I think this is an excellent point. I think there are some things that everyone can agree are good things morally, for example that the basic physical needs for health are met. I think increased health, decreased fear, decreased pain, increased peace, less stress, more compassion, these are all things that can be generally understood as being right or wrong.

A scientific determination of morality would consist of understanding what people consider good, and then determining what are the most effective ways to achieve goodness. The problem with this is that people are often mistaken about what makes them happier. Science actually does better than the intuition of humans at determining the truth. Intuition says that changes in material situation are largely responsible for happiness, when actually people's happiness is remarkably constant across a lifetime regardless of their material situation. Someone who becomes partially paralyzed is likely to live the rest of their life at a similar level of happiness to before their accident after an adjustment period.

I think what is right and wrong is going to be able to be determined scientifically as a the actions that lead to and away from an underlying biological state. I think that scientists are going to be able to identify a state within the brain that those who experience that state all describe as good. I think that a certain level of various brain chemicals and a certain level of neuron activity in certain places will be considered by those experiencing it as universally good. Further research will be able to determine which actions increase the chances of such a brain state being maintained or approximated for the largest amount of time.

The problem with this situation will probably be that the reported best state in terms of happiness and well being for humanity is not a sustainable state. I think it most likely that a brain state taking on qualities of religious and spiritual insight, the serotonin increase of smoking marijuana, and an increase in opiates in the brain would be universally thought of as a good state to be in by those experiencing it. However, stoned hari krishnas are very bad at maintaining the machinery of society that produces things like science, technology, food and other important attributes of happiness.

So, in terms of the scientific determination of right and wrong I think that it is absolutely capable of determining one version of right and wrong. This is in the same way that science has a method of determining how humans came to exist. I think in the same way that the majority of people in the USA disagree with the scientific explanation of how we came to exist I believe that most people would reject the scientific version of right or wrong. I think in the same way that people don't want to think love is the experience of a certain set of brain chemicals and neurons firing, people don't want to think of the rightness of something being determined by what proportion of chemicals it produces in people's brains.

This sort of science is really in its infancy. It is only very recently that scientists started having the tools, and in many cases the interest, to investigate happiness. I think scientific morality really comes down to how do people become and remain happy. I think science will make enormous strides in this regard over the next few decades. I think in the free market of ideas a scientific method of morality/happiness will out-compete alternative methods of determining morality, but it will take a very long time to do so.

All or Nothing Thinking.

In the recent US election a candidate named Rich Lott ran for a US House seat in northern Ohio. During the course of the campaign photographs will him wearing a Waffen SS uniform appeared. Rich Lott said that he took part in historical reenactments, and it turns out that he had done so repeatedly, and from different eras including wearing a uniform as a US World War I serviceman and a Union soldier in the Civil War. This did nothing to sway the liberal outrage that a nazi was running for office.

During the extended lead up to the passing of the health care bill, in which Obama asked directly for input from all sides, compromised on many portions of the bill, and eventually cobbled together a compromise which provided health insurance through private insurers to tens of millions more American citizens, Obama was regularly labeled from the right as a socialist, and from the left as a coward. Millions of people truly believed that this compromise bill was an attempt for a left-wing conspiracy to gather as much control as possible in order to run every aspect of Americans' lives.

During the Bush administration, after Bush had gone through the legal process to be confirmed as the winner of the 2000 election according to the rules of the election many people thought, and still do, that Bush stole the election. After declaring war with the approval of Congress, I personally knew of people who were seriously worried that Bush was the figurehead of a new world order and would find some excuse to declare martial law in the USA.

While in a debate about health care in the USA, after having mentioned that the French have a health care system that costs less money, is liked by its citizens and results in better health care I was told that if I didn't love it here I should leave.

While discussing the re-introduction of wolves to the Idaho wilderness in which a hunter went out with a group of dogs trained to go out and find bears and tree them, came across a pack of wolves which then killed several of the hunters dogs I was accused of saying that if wolves settled in a rancher's lands he should no longer be able to raise cattle. My point had been that if you take packs of dogs into the wild and have them harass predators there's a chance the predators will fight back.

These are all examples of all or nothing thinking. All or nothing thinking divides the world into groups, and these groups become mutually exclusive. If you have a characteristic, let us say that you are in favor of legal abortions, then all or nothing thinking puts you into the group "liberal" and then decides that you are also in favor of legalizing marijuana, against church-run schools, and for increased taxes. In such circumstances what is a libertarian to do? It can be very difficult and time consuming after having made a point to then go through the long process of disabusing people of all the things that they then think I must believe.

All or nothing thinking has the huge advantage of being simple. Your decisions are made for you. You can go through life confident in the correctness of your positions and the idiocy and evil nature of those in the other group. The alternative is to listen to what people actually say, to take each piece of what they say as independent ideas, to think of people as individuals. The alternative is hard work that requires real thought and leaves you very often with doubt about situations. The benefits of the alternative to all or nothing thinking is that the world becomes populated by people rather than friends and enemies.

Chapter 2.1

Old Nerwhal sat Little Mika upon his knee, much to the chagrin of Little Mika who had been far more interested in the manner by which he might torment his brother and sisters. Holding Little Mika firmly Old Nerwhal asked Little Mika in a voice like the desert wind whether Little Mika would like to hear a story?

"A story?" asked Little Mika with much suspicion, "What story?" and tried to use this as a distraction to escape the wily old bird's clutches.
"Ah, little one, this is the beginning of the most important story of all."
"The most 'portant story? Is it a good one?"
"Well, that must be for you to decide little one, but you won't ever know unless you listen to it."

Little Mika, although young, was bright enough to see the trap but also bright enough to know that if he didn't listen he would never be released to return to his main joy, the torment of his siblings. Without a word he acknowledged his acquiescence by collapsing upon himself with a discontented grunt.

"It is said that He Who From Whom Our Blessings Come was born in the village of Atvwahla just beneath the roof of the sky. From that village, when the sky was clear, it is said you could see so far up into the sky that your sight went all the way round and you could see yourself looking up at the mountain on a higher slope. He was a smiling, chubby baby who thanked his mother with every look and gurgle, and her heart melted with love for him.
But she had no husband, and so nobody in the village knew who the father was, and at that time that was thought to be a very bad thing indeed. The elders of the village came and demanded to know who the father of the child was. When His mother would not say they took the baby and, as was the custom, placed him on a hillside by the forest, for they did not know Him. His mother cried and cried, and beat upon the door to the hut where they kept her, but she could not get out.
As was the custom, on the third day they let her out, and before she took food or rest she ran with all her strength to the hillside. When she got there she saw nothing on the hillside, nothing at all. She wailed and cried, 'Where are you my little baby? Where are you?' and just as she was about to lose all hope she heard a little gurgle from the edge of the forest. She ran as fast as she could to the edge of the forest, all dappled and striped with the grass and the trees and the shadows.
'Where are you little one?' (that's right Little Mika, He was once called little one just like you) she called again and took a step further. Then she stopped, rigid, terrified, (do you know why she was terrified Little Mika? No?) she was terrified because there in the shadows was a tiger, huge and magnificent, and tigers can eat people if they choose to do so. She stopped, frozen in space, unable to move. The tiger yawned enormously, showing giant yellow fangs longer than your fingers. The tiger stretched on the ground, and there, there in the middle was a little brown baby snuggling close against the soft fur of the tigress and suckling from her teats.
Do you know how brave she was Little Mika? No? She was so brave that His mother, who we now honour at the Festival of the Spring, walked forward to take back her baby. The tigress looked at her intently, and if you have ever looked into the eyes of a tiger, Little Mika, you will know that it is not easy to move when a tiger is staring at you. As she reached for the baby the tigress sat up, but He stroked her fur, and peace came upon her, and His mother was able to take him up in her arms and walk back to the village.
As she approached the village she was frightened that the elders would take her baby away again, but as she got closer she saw the villagers run away as if in fear. As she got closer to the center of the village she saw that the men were gathering with spears and bows, and she feared for her life. But then she was startled as the huge head of the tigress, as big as all of you put together Little Mika, came up beside her and gently licked Him from head to toe.
All the men could see that this was a miracle, and so they went down on their knees as the procession of mother, baby, and tiger walked all together through the village to her little mud hut."

"What happened next? What happened next?" Cried Little Mika.

"Ah, I think I hear your mother calling us for dinner. You shall have to hear what happened next tomorrow."

Portland.

It is less than a week since I returned from a long weekend in Portland, Oregon, USA.

In the last fourteen months I have been to:
England, the place of my birth and where my family lives,
suburban Houston, where I live with my wife,
Western Ireland, which is like a spiritual home for my music and dreams,
Portland, OR, where most of my friends live and the city in which I have spent the most time.

I have discussed the concept of home before, and my difficulties with the concept, and possibly that creating a home for myself might be the next stage in my life. Portland was as close to being home as staying in the house of my parents. It was just comfortable, easy, familiar, and nostalgic. I had a wonderful time.

One of the most pleasing things about it was the warmth and affection of the friends with whom we spent time. Several people going out of their way to meet with Christina and I, find out about our lives, and feel pleasure in our company. When you have spent time in a place without friends you start to wonder whether you are someone that people might want to be friends with, whether the problem is yourself. Well, there are warm, loving, smart, fun people who want to be friends with me and that is great.

The most surprising thing about Portland for me was the state of the city. I live in just about the only metropolis in the USA that is economically undamaged by the recession. House prices and employment are about the same here as before the Great Catastrophe. Portland, by all accounts, has been hit harder than most places, with unemployment at over 10%, service shortfalls, and real problems in raising enough taxes to keep things going. I was expecting closed businesses, a general malaise, haunted faces, filthy streets, hard times. What I saw was happy, smiling faces, an astonishingly vibrant atmosphere, clean streets, creativity everywhere and a deep warmth and kindness for other people. Sure people wore older clothes, drove older cars, were riding bikes and buses rather than driving SUV's the size of the Titanic. But the atmosphere was fantastic, far, far more positive than in Spring, TX.

That's the thing about Portland, the atmosphere for creative, intelligent, warm-hearted people is so great that creative, intelligent, warm-hearted people flock to the city even without jobs. As a result Portland is consistently hit harder than other cities in terms of jobs, but consistently people don't care and want to move or stay in Portland. Its very success in creating an atmosphere, its livability, means that the population outstrips the amount of jobs it can provide in times of difficulty. However, the creativity, intelligence and warm-heartedness of its people continue to make the city a better place to live. I moved to Portland in 1997, at the height of the Clinton era boom (bubble?) and the place is a strikingly better place to be now.

As a caveat, the weather while we were there was bright sunshine, crisp mornings and glorious afternoons. Apparently anywhere Christina and I go we are cursed to bring the sunshine and warmth with us. We both know that it would be foolish to return to Portland because it is hard, hard, hard in the Binmore household in February and March.

Thanks again to Kerry and Josh, Blake, Chase, Kenny, Signe, Lori, and Patrick. For those who missed us this time we will be returning in August, you should check us out, we are awesome.

Chapter 1.2

Thick, oily smoke rose into the tainted air lit by the last embers of the dying sun. The village was in flames, the villagers lying in piles of hacked meat. Ugly sounds came from within the huts and the pitiful sobbing of a horse in agony completed the backdrop.

The giant, unwieldy bulk of Ughrit stalked through the mud, slashing absently at nothing with his massive axe. He sat on a pile of corpses, fidgeting and looking around at the scene. His black-bearded face was spattered with dirt and gore. As if at a lack of anything else to do he quickly struck off the head of a corpse, dancing after it in an ungainly manner as it skittered across the ground. Returning to his spot he struck off the top of the skull in the manner of a coconut, laid down his axe, and scooped up some brains for a snack.

With a small dribble of gelatinous goo wandering through his beard Ughrit made little circles in the dust with his monstrous iron clad boot. He sighed, hugely, and slumped back down on the pile of corpses disturbing a collection of evil-looking black birds who squabbled as they flapped into the air. Their squabble was upset by an unholy whine and a lightning flash, resulting in a cloud of feathers and two distinct thumps.

An impossibly tall and thin figure, swathed in an iridescent purple robe, picked his way fastidiously through the mire. Inching his way towards Ughrit he called towards him in a high, sibilant tone, "Greetinggthhhh Ughrit, congwatulathhionthh on your thuccthethful athault!"
"Thanks Akhdar, yeah, I guess it went OK."
"OK? Itth wath marvelouthly done, ath we thpeak the opputinitieth for wapine and piwwaging are evewywhere. I wonder why you are not at it, tho to thpeak?"
"I don't know Akhdar, I just don't really see the point. Just another day, another pile of corpses. It just doesn't really do it for me anymore."
"What? A point? Itth what you are, Ughrit, you were born to thlaughter, wape and thteal. You are the thcourge of continentthth. Nobody doeth it better than you."

Ughrit rose to his feet, strolled in a circle and kicked a corpse in the face.
" I know I'm good at it Akhday, how could I not? Year after year I've led a horde of the nastiest villains you could hope to meet. We've trampled villages, sacked towns, laid waste to entire nations. Somehow that seems to be part of the problem, it's not even a challenge anymore. Sometimes I just feel like packing it all in."
"Whatthththrth!" Spluttered Akhdar, "Packing it all in? And then what would you do? Are you a peathanth to plough the fieldth? "
"I know, I know. I despise those pathetic sheep that wallow in the mud their whole pathetic lives and then beg to keep those pathetic lives at the end. It's just that I'm so bloody bored of this constantly moving from one place to another and smashing it apart."
'But what of the horde Ughrit" " Akhdar's agitation was plainly visible in the miasmic cloud of unnatural poisons that surrounded him, "The ladth need directhion from thomeone or they will jutht go to pietheth. It'th not jutht about you anymore, Ughrit, you have rethponthabilitieth."

Ughrit peered into the deepening gloom as though searching for some inspiration, some hint of meaning. "Just sometimes Akhdar, sometime I think of opening a little pub, nice stone walls and a turf roof. I'd have a few sweet little maidens serving the ale and I'd really be able to talk to people, have a chat about the weather, you know? Just sit in a corner, put my feet up." Ughrit was almost pleading now, an incongruous sight from such a menacing, massive frame.

"A whittle pub?" scoffed Akhdar, "Come now, what would happen the firtht time thomeone iwwitated you?"
"Yeah, I know, I'd kill them and their family and burn the whole village down."
'Thweet maidenth? And them?"
"Yeah, right, raped and murdered."
"Thith ith who you are Ughrit. You lead hordeth of mean bathtardth in a plague upon humanity. Ithth what you do betht. Evewyone thinkth of packing it in onth in a while, but the gwathth is not nethethawily gweener on the other thide of the fenth." Akhdar was gesticulating wildly at this point, occasionally accidentally lobbing fireballs into the night.
"Now Ughrit, come with me. The ladth have found a nithe wittle scwealer that thould cheer you up no end."
"A squealer?" Ughrit's eyes lit up, and he bounced on the balls of his feet, "A squealer, really? Alright then Akhdar, lead on, time for to stop all this moping and get on with the job."

And into the sunset they walked.

Worry.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.^[2]

This is the Litany Against Fear of the Bene Gesserit, a group in the science fiction novel Dune, by Frank Herbert. I think for a start it is interesting to see how powerful such things can be, and how they can be produced from a fiction writer as well as any of the great religions or philosophies.

The part that really rings true to me is the section that reads, "Fear is the mind killer." I think this is a really important insight, far more important than an affirmation not to fear. Fear is a biological reality within humans, a pre-mammalian reaction to possible danger. It is vital to have fear to simply stay alive. Fear of high cliffs, or bears, or car crashes are all things that enable us to survive. However, because fear is such a basic drive in humanity and is built for dangerous situations, it overrides the rest of the mind. Fear kills the rational mind, it prevents thought, understanding, perspective.

The combination of fear and consciousness, produces the mental state of worry. Worry is a reaction to the conscious idea that there will be fear in the future. Worry isn't the adrenaline-pumping, muscle-bunching, instinctive reaction of fear. Worry is the imagination of future bad things, repeated ad nauseum, in an energy sapping, joy destroying habit.

I think worry is an over-reaction to an important natural process, in the same way that addictions are over-reactions to necessary processes like eating, or seeking pleasure. It is, of course, really important for people to think about the future, to imagine the good and the bad that might happen in order to make decisions. I'm not someone who subscribes to Jesus' exhortation to "Care not for the morrow for the morrow will care for itself." I think planning and thinking are necessary and good. However, what worry consists of is this thinking and planning in a closed loop. It results from a situation wherein the future is not ideal and all choices that a person can make will result in some negative situation. This unsatisfactory situation results in the problem being mulled over and over, always coming up with the same unpleasant conclusion, which starts the cycle over again. The problem with this is that then our present existence becomes dominated by future difficulty regardless of our present circumstances.

For me, this situation recently has been about my dog, Larry. Larry has gone through a series of operations on his knees, one successful on one leg, and a series of failed attempts on his other leg. Right now he is at the vets, in a place he hates, while we hope his knee recovers. The chances are that it won't and through no fault of ours or his, his future is likely to be one of consistent arthritic pain and some level of limping, perhaps pretty severe. The alternative is for us to put him down. So, the future almost certainly holds one of two unpleasant alternatives. I will have to make a choice between those two alternatives and this has been preying on my mind continually. The result has been sadness, moping, lack of activity, lack of interest in other things and constantly going through a decision-making process that has already reached the furthest it can go at this time.

Worrying therefore is useless, an outgrowth of a useful process of thinking about the future, but one which damages the present. If I worry about my retirement rather than making my best guesses about how to prepare for retirement and then forget about it, I am damaging all the time between then and now. If I worry about my dog I am not appreciating things like the sunshine, music, a good book, how much I love my wife. To be happy, the most important thing, it is necessary to not worry. To accept the things that I cannot change.

How does one not worry? As with almost everything there are different levels of worry between different people. The tendency to worry is a biological trait, just like depression, or weight. But like depression and weight, human beings can do things to reduce their worry. For a start people can recognize what is worry. Simply the process of identifying useless thoughts about the future can make a great difference. Paying attention to self-talk, and then trying to replace it with other thoughts (such as what around you is beautiful, or fun, or what you are grateful for) can make a big difference. A hugely beneficial technique is meditation, in which one trains the mind to pay attention and not wander in negativity. Of course, the most important thing is to fill your mind with the wonder and splendor that is life if you just notice.

A Miasma of Rambulations

I like the title of this one, even though I think it might not actually make any sense. It suits my present position, not making any sense, having a few ideas, but not taking much very seriously.

My state of mind is an interesting place to be at the moment. In one way it is depressed, in that my motivation is low, my energy level is low, my tendency to plan, think, discuss and act are all depressed. On the other hand I am not miserable. Reading my blog posts from a year ago I can feel some of the dreaminess that I feel at the present, but I don't have any of the rage and despair that is in a couple of them. Dreaminess is really the best way to put it, things happen without a sense of reality, an interlude.

I am finding it quite difficult to write even as much as this blog post. This doesn't mean difficult in the sense that it is a chore, or painful, I just find that my brain is not producing thoughts to be written down. I had thought about discussing the plan that Christina and I have been talking about, but it's just the same as last year's plan, but with some concept of timing. I had thought of talking about how important Christina's happiness is to mine, that in my rather isolated existence this is so much more important, but I've done that before as well.

What do I do? Well, the house is maintained at a level far above the mess that was our house in Portland. I don't think that makes any difference at all to how I feel about the place, but Christina prefers it. I am riding the bicycle, an hundred miles last week, and a frantic hour long ride yesterday (16.5 miles an hour average speed, just over twelve miles an hour slower than the winning speed in the UCI World Time Trial Championships this year) but I'm drinking lots of beer too, so I'm still a fatty. I am playing the mandolin more than I have in a while, and starting to sing a bit more with it as well. This is probably in anticipation of our trip back up to Portland for Oktoberfest. I expect that will be our last ever trip to Portland.

People are being interested in politics again in the USA as the mid-term elections are being held. I expect that the Republicans will get enough advances to create gridlock again, but I don't think they will do as well as they expect. Overall I just don't think it matters much as Obama doesn't have the political capital to get anything significant done for two reasons; presidents in a recession are blamed for the recession, and in a democracy the majority view generally holds (and the majority view isn't ready for pragmatically progressive actions). This sums up my view in general, people are short-term emotional decision makers who can't really look out for themselves. Me doing my part for the environment or politics will have an effect of one in a billion or one in hundreds of million, essentially no effect. How things change is through technological breakthrough, education, or reaction to disaster. Right now I just don't care.

It seems that the team I support is going to change ownership, from terrible owners to quite good ones. This lightened my mood to a quite ridiculous level yesterday. On the other hand The Face of Evil had a set-back in recovery from his latest surgery, and I as I took him to the vet he cried in misery, which dampened my mood the day before. However, with his misery at a distinct distance from me I don't really notice it at all.

The weather has changed, cooler and really quite, quite beautiful. I think I will take a walk in the park today.

My Tribe.

One of the difficulties with being human is that every once in a while the world around you provides you with overwhelming evidence that you too are human, even in the ways that you would prefer you weren't. For me this tends to happen when I realize that my reactions are emotional, irrational, and that I have covered this up by telling myself a nice story that isn't necessarily entirely true.

However, recently I have come to the realization that I am more tribal than I had thought. This is unfortunate since what I consider the most important aspect of civilization is the expansion of the moral circle, or the circle of compassion. This circle is essentially the dividing line between who you consider fully human, and therefore worthy of the same rights, privileges and protections as yourself, and those who aren't fully human and therefore aren't worthy of the same rights, privileges and protections. So, for example, within my circle is my wife and my sister and my mother, but outside of my circle are cows. I think it's absolutely wrong for someone to kill my mother for meat, while I am completely fine with killing and eating cows. On the other hand I think my mother should be allowed to own property, live with maximal freedom and make decisions about the government under which she lives, but I absolutely think we should not give the same rights to cows.

The course of the progress of humanity has been the expansion of this circle, originally from family members (and then probably only some of them) out to a band, then a tribe, then a nation, until there is the view of universal human rights. Many people are serious about expanding this circle beyond the species of homo sapiens sapiens to apes and cetaceans. I think it's a good method of telling how morally modern someone is by seeing where the circle ends. For many people the circle ends with your country, so that it's an enormous crime for Americans to be bombed while at work, but it is OK for residential neighborhoods in the Middle East to be bombed in order to try to prevent further attacks on Americans. Citizenship is actually a legal example of this border between fully human and not.

Some people think that the circle occurs at the edges of your religion, and so that people of other religions are "of the devil" and must be fought and obstructed and stopped. In history it has been very common for an elite of some sort (nobility in medieval aristocracy, philosophically trained in Plato's Republic, racial for much of the history of the USA) to consider themselves as superior to others based on this elite status.

Anyway, I wish that my circle would simply extend to all humans, and I think in an intellectual manner it does. Unfortunately I have found that I have an emotional bond to a group of people to whom I feel that I am a part, that is superior to other groups of people, and to whom I feel an automatic emotional bond that increases my acceptance of them, makes me feel automatically that I want to support them, makes me wish for them to have increased power and influence beyond those of other people. This is my tribe.

My tribe are the scientists. This doesn't just mean those people actually doing science, it also means those who use science, read about science, learn about science, and use rational thinking to make decisions. My tribe thinks that believing something based on faith is something you should be allowed to do because people are human, but it's a really silly method to actually decide the truth about anything, and should be useless at convincing anybody else about a subject. My tribe believes that human beings can do amazing things, and can make the world better. My tribe believes that learning is fun, that creating is fun, that knowing how migratory birds navigate is worthwhile even if it provides nothing useful for humanity.

My tribe contains at least 90% of the Rush fans in the world. My tribe wears a lot of corduroy. My tribe are not hippies, if anything they might tend to fascism because they know they are better and smarter than all the morons in the rest of the world. My tribe has no leader but has icons, like Feynman, Pinker, Dawkins, Einstein, Stewart. My tribe talks a lot. My tribe has a tendency to mock. I believe my tribe has done more good for humanity than all the other tribes combined, and they are the reason why I am hopeful.

Intuition and Decisions.

Over the last couple of years I have talked in this blog about making decisions as my wife and I have been faced with life-changing decisions about where and how to live. During this time I have emphasized rationality and principles in order to make good decisions. I am still fully in the camp of making decisions through the process of rational thought but I want to bring up the other side of the coin, intuition.

To start I must define what I mean by intuition in this case, which is perhaps not quite the dictionary definition. I am defining intuition as thought processes that are not rational. That is that there is not a logical course of thinking that can be followed throughout. Most of our thinking is of this nature, we react emotionally to places, people and things immediately and these reactions come about without a conscious thought process. With everything from looking at art to catching a ball our brains have some method for producing an effect that leads to decisions without us having any idea of how this happens.

To put it more practically, when I think of a cruise there is an immediate emotional reaction in my mind. It is probably different from your reaction, for me I have a feeling of being trapped surrounded by people I don't like. If I think of soccer, or traveling, or chores, emotional results are produced. These are real responses, and in the end they are the most important thing about life. How we feel about our situation is far more important than any other measure of that situation.

So we have the issue here, a tension between a belief in rational decision making and the vital importance of our intuitive emotional responses. This problem is resolved if the intuitive responses are used as a potential measure for outcomes. Our intuition gives us our best internal measure of how we will feel about future situations. If we ask ourselves whether we want to see an action film tonight our immediate emotional response is probably the most valuable tool in determining if that is a good decision.

However, this doesn't mean that intuition is a great tool for making good decisions about complicated subjects. This is because intuition doesn't supply any reference points to you when making a decision. If you just trust your intuition completely on any subject you won't plan for the future, you will avoid hard and unpleasant tasks that might have a good reward, getting up and going to work or school will often be hard. You think about a hut on the beach and it intuitively sounds great, but you don't think about the lack of plumbing in that hut, or whether you will have anyone to talk to, or whether beaches become boring after six months. You think about going for an interview and you think of the awkward questions from strangers, being judged, the strain of new things. You don't think about all the possibilities of meeting a whole set of new people, in a new place, or whether that place will lead to further new places. Intuition just reacts by association.

I think the key is to use intuition, how you feel about something, specifically as information with which to inform a rational decision. This requires one to rationally assess what are the various possibilities in a decision, and even the various components of that decision, and then pay attention to how one feels with regard to each point. Often people either simply just go with their first emotional reaction (I'm not going to go for that job interview because they'll make me feel stupid; I'd love to go abroad to help the poor and be a hero) without considering the alternatives (if I don't go for an interview I'll be stuck here; I'm an accountant and could go help the poor down the street or by sending money) and without getting emotional reactions to all the components of a decision (how would I feel if I got offered the job? do I have to take the job? how much does it matter if they think I'm stupid if my wife thinks I'm smart? or; could I cope without showers? how will I deal with not being fluent in the language? in six months will I feel like a hero or just have a really crappy job?)

I think it rational to understand that the difference between a good decision and a bad decision isn't measured in dollars, or degrees, or in the opinions of others. The difference between a good decision and a bad decision isn't even measured by the final result of the decision. The difference between a good decision and a bad decision is how you felt throughout the path that resulted from the decision in comparison to how you would have felt with a different decision.

I would also say that a good decision can be made that even results in a bad outcome. With decisions you are making predictions about a future that cannot be perfectly known, and when viewing outcomes you are only reviewing your mistakes against other predicted outcomes. In the post I made a little while ago about mistakes I still think that at the time that the decisions were made they were good decisions. All decisions have risks, and sometimes you are betting with the odds in your favor and still lose.

So, my view on making good decisions is that intuition is vital. Angst is not something to be dismissed but something to be studied. It is really important to listen to yourself, to get a really good idea about what it is about a prospective future that makes you nervous, to compare that future with other possible futures. When making these comparisons it is important to imagine both the possible good things in a future but also what might go wrong. In the end what will matter are your intuitions, that is your intuitions rather than the intuitions of others.

In the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the site of the most famous oracle in the ancient world, were inscribed the words, "Know thyself." When you wish to know the future in order to make a decision the best place to start has always been with yourself. Who are you? What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Why do I have these feelings when I think of things? Once you know how you feel about things you can make a rational, sensible decision but you have to know how you feel about all of the possibilities before that can be so.

So, when making a decision listen to yourself but don't stop there. Stop, listen, imagine, think, and don't worry so much.

Chapter 1.1

On the excellent advice of my darling wife I am inserting more chapters in before chapter 2 in order to reduce reader-shock.

It was said by some that Alyami came from the womb singing an ode to childbirth and his mother. Others said that this is ridiculous, no child could know how to sing a song before he had been born. No, they said, Alyami's cries were simply so beautifully toned that the birds wept and flowers bloomed and the sun came out. Whatever the truth of the matter it is certain that from the earliest of ages Alyami was beautiful music.

A dark eyed, olive skinned child, born to doting parents (a miller and his wife) Alyami grew up in the sometime dusty, sometimes lush, sometimes muddy village of Dalheenya at the base of the foothills of the Roof of the World. In the summer the sky would be an infinitely distant, shimmering cyan bowl, blasting the parched land with heat. As a toddler Alyami would wander away from his mother resting in the cool of her hut, across the baked dust of the street into the shade of the huge banyan tree and warble intricate melodies that weaved like the many trunks of the tree. He would run his chubby little hands in the dust and clap them together, delighting in the clouds of dust, his laughter like a thousand chimes in a rustling breeze. When his mother found him each time she would prepare herself to scold him for getting himself so filthy, but he would call, "Mama" with such evident delight that her heart melted and she held him to her heart with utter joy.

When the first rains came, showers and brief storms seemingly out of nothing, the trees and bushes would awake from their torment, reaching towards the offering from the sky. Alyami would cry aloud in triumph and joy for his beloved banyan tree. Each brief pattering of raindrops greeted with its own song. Alyami's mother would carry him at her hip as she went out into the forest for firewood (it was a great sin to cut a living tree down for firewood) or for fruit. The birds and monkeys high up in the trees would call their greetings to Alyami, and he would answer in kind, causing them to scuttle down the branches to see who this fine new fellow might be. Alyami would clap his little chubby hands together and give his tinkling laugh at the sights of the silly creatures, with their heads tilted sideways in curiosity.

When the monsoon came Alyami would sit on the verandah just out of reach of the splashes from the monstrous drops. He would collect a pot, a stool, and perhaps a spoon, and play a percussive symphony to the thrumming, drumming rain, the plink, thwup of the dripping roof, and cascading glory of the thunder. After a while his family just heard everything as music, and the sounds soothed them in their lethargy as they waited the long, lovely, beautifully wasted weeks of the monsoon.

Alyami grew to be a handsome boy, quick witted, with a sly smile and a dreamy air. He was always slightly plump, a rarity in the village and probably because the mothers all couldn't seem to stop themselves from giving him little treats. Oh, but he was a lazy boy, prone to forgetting his chores by staring into the forest, or up into the mountains, his lips moving in silent song, or his hands wandering in the heavy air, pointing out the high points of a melody. Somehow he managed to not get beaten very much for this slackness, for everyone could see that he had been touched by the gods and was not made to toil in the fields.

When he became twelve years old, the time for his childhood to be over and his apprenticeship to begin, the village presented him with a beautifully carved rabab for him to play, and assisted him in the repair of the old hut that stood on the hill just a little above the village that had been used by those who wished to perfect their spirit in meditation towards the end of their days. Here Alyami would rise with the dawn to feel the rush of sunlight and the chorus of the forest, then take a nap. Sometime in the afternoon he would sit on his verandah, plucking the gut strings of his precious rabab and dreaming. Then he would take a nap. As the sun fell into the west he would rise and go into the village to entertain, gossip and flirt.

Alyami would take long, slow walks through the beautiful forest, chattering with his friends in the trees, swimming in the pools, absorbing the intricacies of the droning, humming, buzzing insects. As he became a little older girls of the village would also find themselves on extended walks within the forest, meeting with Alyami as he bathed, but neglecting to mention this to their parents when they returned with blushes and a scant harvest. Mothers started to set off into the forest to catch their mischievous daughters, and also seemed not only to have no success in this at all, but also returned with rosy cheeks and empty hands.

During the next couple of years a round of sweet, dark-eyed babies, with olive skin and musical laughs were born within the village. Some to scandalously unwed maidens who were rapidly married to an available young man of adequate stolidity, but some came surprisingly to the wives of solid, sensible, established farmers. By the age of seventeen the village decided, or at least the council men decided, that it was unfair for their little village to keep this god-given gift of music for just themselves. Alyami was equipped with a fine pair of walking shoes, a solid walking stick, a beautifully embroidered dhoti, and a bag of dried nuts and berries.

With many, many, and again many tearful goodbyes Alyami strapped his beloved rabab to his back, clutched his walking stick and strode up the path up the valley and away from the only place he had ever known.