I finally finished reading Terry Pratchett’s (SIR!) latest novel Nation. I’ll try to not divulge too much of the plot (it’s pretty meaty, and definitely ‘goes deeper’ than Pratchett’s other non-murder mystery books) in telling you what makes this book tick: finally, Pratchett tackles spirituality and human faith. It’s long been known that Pratchett has a somewhat satirical world view: he’s mocked/satirised just about anything and everything in his vast gamut of Discworld novels, but here he finally moves in to disect human belief.

Pratchett is obviously some kind of scientist (or a believer in the science of how and why things work), and his books often revolve around him re-working real world mechanics into some kind of ‘Discworld magic’. I never really thought about it, but he delightfully boils down complex systems like the Internet (the clacks semaphore system) and macro economics (Making Money) into concepts that kids and non-specialists alike can understand. Anyway, I digress… in Nation he tries to put a bit of a scientific spin on the human innate belief in something… greater than ourselves. Everything happens for a reason, but perhaps, as Mau (the main protagonist) finds out, things happen because people make them happen. It’s a classic case of how real stories get slowly twisted into legend, and then the myth of a society. Most seemingly-supernatural acts have some basis in fact, but humans sure like to make stories…

Anyway, Mau finds his true path, as does the cute female adolescent Daphne. They don’t even kiss properly. They hug twice. But somehow, there’s still a lot of intimacy between the two. They are obviously very close friends, but any hint of sexuality is only given by the onlooking adults, or as Daphne talks in third person about what her grandmother would think if she saw her hugging Mau.

Pratchett yet again drives home the idea that science is greater than all. But belief is OK, as long as you don’t REALLY believe… Just hang onto it a bit, if it makes you feel a little warmer and safer at night.

So, moving along from a rather esoteric topic (but damnit, you should ALL read Terry Pratchett, even if you don’t like science/fantasy!), I think the next destination will be… Norway! Perhaps with a warm-up trip to Wales, to test the new lens out (it’s closer, and prettier than Scotland, in more ways than one. I think it’s warmer too…). I have a bunch of WoW goons that live in Trondheim, which happens to be the location of one of the biggest fjords in Norge (I’m getting down with the lingo already). So I could see some friends, stay on a sofa to avoid paying retarded amounts of money (Norway is expensive), see a fjord, perhaps get a brief taste of the local talent… and then I might go up north to Tromso, to see the Northern Lights — that’ll push the price of the trip up a lot though. We’ll see.

Finally, I will start teaching you about a musician that (in my opinion) blows all others out of the water: Ben Folds. This entry is long enough, so I won’t rant, but just click this link and then ‘play’ in the top right: Ben Folds – Trusted. If you like it, you can read more about him later, when I inevitably sing his praises.

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Imagine for a moment a world where clueless people remain silent; where those without working knowledge shut up and listen. A society whose people, instead of making wild, uneducated stabs, feels compelled to investigate, question and probe. Consider a culture that actually cares about the damage caused by ignorance and prejudice, to friends and strangers alike.

* * *

Once upon a time there was authority. I don’t mean in the policing or juridical sense — Rome didn’t have police, you know? — I’m talking of intellectual authority. If you had a question about childbirth you went to see the wizened midwife that delivered both you and your mother into the world. If you were ill, your only hope was if the sawbones had seen a similar case, or had a beaten, weather-worn hand-me-down almanac that described how to use leeches effectively. Slowly though, over thousands of years, authority shifted to the written and printed word; the professionals remained masters, but they could not travel the world as quickly or as effusively as books. Information became available, accessible, free — and both culture and science surged forward as a result.

Society began to revere the written word. For some reason, ink impressed on paper in the shape of words and sentences have immense weight and meaning. What you read about giving birth is suddenly more true than the wizened midwife’s decades of experience. A book says the world is flat and, in your mind, in an instant, the world becomes flat. It’s magical just how much credence the written word is given — people will believe the craziest things if they’re written down.

Whoompf! Religion.

Blam! Newspapers.

Poof! The Internet!

Authority still exists — somewhere — but its voice is muffled, drowned out by a sea of disinformation; information that gets propagated as wisdom because we simply don’t know any better. That’s what old wives’ tales are incidentally: something your great, great grandmother once read, assimilated as truth and then forwarded it along through the generations. Does masturbation really give you hairy palms? Is thirteen actually unlucky? No.

And therein lies the problem: knowledge is power whether it is proven true or not. Fallacy, slander and gossip — it is all, from the (unfortunate) recipient’s point of view, working knowledge. You read some juicy little factoid about a famous celebrity and… it makes you feel good. Chances are it’s not true, or only partially so, but knowing that little nugget of knowledge somehow makes you feel enlightened, powerful. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” Winston Churchill famously said. There is a reason people peddle in lies and half-truths. There is a reason why newspaper editors ‘add one’ to death tallies or run with unnamed sources. And that’s the other, far more tricky problem: lies, if repeated enough by any kind of authority — a priest, a mother, a teacher — become truth. Cold hard truth that, within a generation, becomes wisdom.

We’re all walking around with a lot of data that we think is true. It’s a survival trait: our nurture is like gospel. And that’s bad when it overrides our nature, our experiences. We feel qualified to dispense these false truths to others.

‘You must have something wrong with your head’ we tell our friends and loved ones.

‘You shouldn’t do that, it’s wrong, it’s bad’ we say to our girlfriends and boyfriends.

‘How can you believe in that?’ we say to our friends with a differing faiths.

Anyone that’s mastered a field or subject will know that it feels a lot like peeling back layers of untruth — Oh, so that’s how it works! — that’s all real education is. It fills in gaps and rewrites what we’ve known and worked with for years. But it’s not easy. It’s no simple task to alter your entire vision of the world just because an encyclopaedia or wise man tells you to. How long did people hold onto the fact that the world was flat? That’s why false knowledge and data will continue to propagate through generations. We’re stubborn bastards.

Next time, before you pass along a piece of information, think about whether it’s actually true or not. If you’re not sure, go to the library and find out what the truth really is. At the very least you’ll be doing the next generation and tomorrow’s civilisation a huge favour.

* * *

Please excuse my use of the African American vernacular — dis, to disrespect –  but it was necessary. It’s altogether more punchy than ‘Don’t go insulting what you don’t know nothing about.’

This isn’t finished. Next I want to tie this into religion, prejudice and ignorance.

I’m going to attempt to tackle the tricky and turbulent subject of racism. I’m not going to cover its entire history. I’m not going to pretend that I’m entirely objective — no one is — though I will try my best to be as neutral as possible. If I say something upsetting, apologies; this a sensitive topic, one that most people tend to stay well away from.

As always, we’ll start at the beginning. Not many people know where racism actually begun. The slave trade? No. Eugenics and ultimately the Holocaust? No. Religion? Getting warmer, but still not quite.

Racism begun way back in tribal times. Racism is effectively synonymous with tribalism, which is itself similar to the concept of nationalism. It’s all about selfishness.  Racism can take many forms: religious, cultural, skin-colour and are all equally ‘bad’ — but at one time, they weren’t. They were a matter of self-preservation. It’s you or them. Insular tribes and their inbreeding reaffirmed genetic and physical traits and thus ‘races’ were created — but even the term ‘race’ is, ironically, racist! Race is an American term coined hundreds of years ago to describe the difference between blacks and whites. It sadly gained credibility and traction, and was then exported around the world. It was borrowed from the French razza which means ‘lineage’.

Racism is all about lineage — all about blood, and the purity thereof. Racism is the act of erroneous differentiation of humans into different species. It’s about the justification of maliciousness and unfair, unfounded prejudice to those of different colour, culture, heritage or lineage.

We have the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview to thank for this little gem. For 500 years now we’ve been living in a world governed by the laws of physics. Action and reaction, cause and effect. Mechanics. Gravity. Cold, cool calculation of calculus. The control, utilisation and abuse of energy. The last five centuries have been all about physicality; it’s been all about what we can see and touch and push and stretch. Racism existed before of course, but it wasn’t the kind we see today — it was religious. For 1500 years racism was religious — though back then it wasn’t called racism of course. It would’ve been ‘persecution’ or ‘religious intolerance’.

Did you know that when Columbus first landed on what would become Mexico, the Portuguese and Spanish sailors did not hesitate to mate and marry the Indians, the native Americans? As long as they converted to Christianity via baptism, colour didn’t matter one iota. Only their religious beliefs mattered.

But that’s a topic unto itself and I’m not going to go into it here. The rise of contemporary racism is more interesting.

Let’s go back to skin colour. Other than the Holocaust, almost all modern examples of racism have stemmed from the concept of White supremacy and superiority. How on earth did those of white skin end up at the top of the food chain?

The Declaration of Independence, that’s how. But don’t stop reading yet, my dear American friends! You probably wouldn’t have drafted the Declaration if it wasn’t for the British.

The Declaration of Independence was the pinnacle of The Enlightenment. The single most important period for philosophical and scientific advancement ever also created racism. All it took one was one theory-treated-as-fact: Dr Charles White (what a name…) scientifically reasoned that Blacks were the stop-gap between monkeys and Whites. Voltaire and Kames — both bigwigs of the Enlightenment — proposed the idea of separate human species.  Hume and Kant, Jefferson and Washington — almost every big name of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were White supremacists.

Here were the most influential thinkers, scholars and scientists the world has ever seen. It was their thoughts, mental machinations and ideologies that formed the world we live in today. And they were racists. They thought of Blacks as not-quite-human.

And I dare say… it’s not a very big surprise that they arrived at such a conclusion.

The Enlightenment was about culture; a big damn celebration of art and science and thinking — in essence, it was a riotous exaltation of everything that makes us human and not monkeys.

And Blacks didn’t have that culture. American Indians didn’t have that culture. Or, rather, they didn’t have any that we could see. So we subjugated them. We made them our bitches. We justified our brutal abuse of fellow man by declaring them sub-human — after all, would a fellow white man allow himself to be forced into slavery? God no, his intelligence and tenacity would prevent it.

We’re talking about a group of intellectuals that ranted and raved about the benefits of liberty and equality; freedom from tyranny and the virtues of democracy and representative government. Later, they even drafted a declaration formed from the tenets and axioms of these great thinkers. They formed a new, mighty nation that, at its very core, ratified slavery.

As Thomas Jefferson scrawled out the fundament, lynch-pin and rock-solid bastion of the New World, as he illustrated his idyllic imaginings on the loose paper that would later become the Declaration of Independence… he was writing it for the whites. There was just no way their way of life could continue if non-whites were afforded the same rights and privileges as the whites. Think about it.

But it wasn’t really Jefferson’s fault. Science had told him that blacks were little more than apes devoid of culture and intellect. Or perhaps science merely suggested it and human nature enforced it. I suppose we’ll never know.

But how do we fix it?

Racism is a pathological contagion. It passes from parent to child. That can never be changed.

What we need is a new worldview. We need to shift our perspective through 90 degrees and move towards a new frontier. I hesitate to say that we need to ‘re-find our spirituality’, because there are issues associated with organised religion: intolerance, persecution, zealotry. Oour infatuation with the physical nature of the world needs to change. Never again must we single-out and tunnel-vision a sole strand of science.

What we need is another Enlightenment…

The stagnancy of human culture and later, the formation of civilization, is staggering.

Think about it for a moment; think about just how far we’ve come since the dawn of art and culture 10,000 years ago. Or how far we’ve not come, as the case actually is. Sure, we have technology. Sure, we have philosophy. But are we actually any different? Is it the way we do something that defines us? The way we ‘think’ about something? Or is it deeper than that? Let’s go back to the beginning and have a look.

There is — and was — a split between the east and west. The split goes far beyond skin colour or hair type, but it is the very same environmental differences that caused the West/East genetic and cultural schism.

In the West, we hit things. We hit things so that we may survive a little longer but at the expense of others — other humans, other animals. We spend our entire life killing.

In the East, we cogitate. We cogitate until the tides of cosmos take us from the land of the living. We spend our entire life thinking.

And then occasionally, but on a fairly regular timer, as if it’s running to some kind of universal schedule, religion pops up.

The funny thing is, despite any misgivings you might have, religion is actually the injection of aesthetics. It’s as if killing or thinking can only take you so far down the track of social and cultural development — and ultimately modernity of civilization. Killing puts food on the table; you subside, day after day, year after year until you die — but at least you survive. It’s the same with the Eastern sitting-and-thinking: pondering stuff certainly doesn’t put food on the table, that’s for sure, but perhaps through sifting and thinking and thought permutation you come up with ways for future generations to put food on the table.

The West are in the now and the East are in the future and the past. But neither of them move — not by themselves, anyway. There’s no impetus. No driving force.

Then, after a long period of subsistence, something snaps and faith enters stage right: the Western gods of War and Famine and Wine; the Eastern gods of Creation, Knowledge and Maintenance. The singular, unified, vengeful God didn’t come into existence until much later, after plenty of intermingling and amalgamation of West and East — unsurprisingly, through the body of land we call the Middle East, though it is actually… the middle. Middle West-East doesn’t quite spill from the tongue so easy, eh.

Even with religion, we don’t stop with the killing or thinking though. Religion doesn’t stop us from our age-old rites and customs. It just gives us something to attribute our acts to. This is where the phrase ‘practising’ enters the equation. Are we killing an animal for food, or are we practising our religion and sacrificing an animal for Zeus? Are we raping and pillaging for gold and glory, or are we you cleansing the world of disbelievers for God?

Ultimately, we are still killing. We are still thinking.

We continue to seek solace and recompense and meaning for our actions in religion.

We are not moving. Just grinding our gears.

What we are today is the build-up of thousands of years of repetition, contagion, custom: mother to daughter, father to son. Our cultures might now change, given that the geographical division between West and East has been blown to pieces by technology. But it will take time, an awful lot of time. For now, we in the West are stuck with our incessant need to kill, to win.

A few weeks ago I watched through the 1980 series ‘Cosmos’, written and narrated by the master himself, Carl Sagan. It was re-released on DVD recently, and with western society’s infatuation with ‘popular science’, as made famous by the likes of Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, I figured it was time to give it a watch.

It might be almost 30 years old but it’s awesome. It’s the best grounding in science, philosophy and (astro)physics that you can ever hope for. It’s dated, sure (check out his turtle-neck jumper), and it’s very out-of-this-world in places (Sagan was a dreamer), but it’s so, so awesome in its entirety. It’s the kind of thing I would force my children watch as soon as they can read and write. With matchsticks to prop their eyes open.

Cosmos got me thinking. A dangerous pastime, I know. [Name that musical...]

We all seek solace in wildly different things.

Why?

Solace means, literally, ‘to solidify’. Consolidation, console, solid — they all have the same Latin root. Finding solace is finding solidity in the world. Solace is when you feel stable. Finding solace is searching for that ‘rock’, that bastion of hope, courage, safety — whatever — it’s something that makes you feel safe. Solace is discovering that reserved spot in the world’s cosmic parking lot that no one can take away from you.

No one’s doubting that everyone wants solace. Heck, we might even need it. Most people go through life looking for it and when they finally find it they don’t (can’t?) let go. Scarily, people seem much more fatalistic once they find their real solace. It’s as if our life purpose, as humans, is merely to find a place to live, reside, be. Then once we get there, we can weather an awful lot with our solace-powered resolve.

But what is the driving force behind that resolve?

It seems to vary from person to person, which is odd. You can easily imagine the preacher undergoing extreme duress and displeasure, while seeking solace in his God. But what about the man that derives his strength from science, from the knowledge that we are no more than physical meatbags that are predestined at birth to live, exist and eventually die. Harder to imagine, eh? I think the usual argument here is that we’re ‘programmed’ to seek faith and mysticism… but why are some people are satisfied with no repentance, no God, no afterlife?

The obvious question you then have to ask is: have there always been people that can’t find solace in faith alone? Throughout history have there been agnostic solace-seekers? You can certainly have faith in science, that’s for sure — that’s kind of a prerequisite for scientists — but maybe the various churches throughout history were too strong, their mysticism too alluring?

For the first time in history science is pitched in a fair fight against religion. The mysticism of religion is at an all-time low. Scientific understanding of the cosmos is at an all-time high.

I think the underpinning of solace is belief. There has to be something you really, really believe in. Be it science, god, philosophy, money, love, it doesn’t really matter. The problem for religion is that it’s becoming harder to believe in. There have always been those that found some solace in science, but the church quashed them. Or burnt them. Either way, belief in non-deity was disallowed (were emperors deified for this reason?)

Nowadays religion is a bit easier going: you’re free to believe in God (or whatever else) while it makes sense to, while you see through a rough spot perhaps. It’s very easy to believe in faith and mysticism (we’re programmed to do so, remember?) so it just comes naturally — having problems? head down to the church! But now, without the draconian Churches, without the belief-under-duress, wouldn’t it make sense to seek solace in something else, something tangible, something like… science? A lot of people are doing it. Dare I say there are more atheists and agnostics than ever before. Why don’t religious types cave and listen to the truth of science?

It would make sense to move on, no? No. People don’t like to lose their solace.

I’m sure you’ve heard stories of those people that have ‘lost God’, or the love of their life. They’re broken. Disbelief really shatters you. It seems solace is highly conservative. When was the last time you heard of a devoutly religious person dropping the word of God in favour of Darwin? I mean a happily-engaged-and-solace-fully-sought practitioner, not a neophyte or extremist, incidentally. It would seem you only get one solace — one love-of-your-life — unless you are forcibly sundered.

Once the older generations die out and today’s children, our progeny, are free to seek a solace of their own choosing, the end of religion and the rise and dominion of the machines — er, science — might actually be upon us.

Ah, now this is a meaty one. I’m not going to name any names, and I ask you kindly to do the same. I’m going to speak in general terms and hope I don’t offend too many people. But if you’re a believer of some kind and I make you question your faith… don’t hurt me! It’s a good thing to re-evaluate your environment occasionally. Things change, don’t forget. Something that made sense a while ago might not make sense now. With that said, on with the show.

* * *

Religion is technology. Something — something new, some kind of data — is discovered. It’s then honed and refined. And then it becomes a religion. Religion is simply ‘high-tech’.

Along the way there are fads and cults but ultimately, if it passes through its trial by fire, it becomes a religion.

Big pill to swallow, and I need to provide an example. Let’s take Jesus (sorry Christians), as he’s as close to omnipresence as things get. Look at your surroundings right now: your computer, iPhone, TV, keyboard. Pretty awesome eh? Do you know how any of them work? Maybe. Mostly they just work, you don’t question it. You sure as hell don’t call your computer a ‘box of miracles’ — well you might, but most of you probably don’t.

But that’s what it is. The fact that we can send data from one side of the planet to the other in a fraction of a second is a frackin’ miracle. We have the knowledge and power to surgically replace faulty hearts and perform crazy experiments at a sub-atomic level — that’s a damned miracle.

Only it’s not. It’s just technology.

Do you really think Jesus was a miracle worker? The son of God?

Just because I control the flow of electrons and fly through space at the speed of sound… does that deify me? Do you prostrate yourself before me; am I the Messiah? No — at least I doubt it. I’m merely harnessing technology.

You see, all these fields, spheres of thought and belief are really, really closely entwined. I’m close to a resolution, an epiphany: I can just about put my finger on it but it’s… slippery. Magic is the key to belief — mystery, that is. You don’t believe in something tangible, something real — you don’t believe in your car. You believe in true love, God, UFOs.

But there’s no such thing as magic, beyond impressive use of technology or new inventions. It’s magic until you learn how it’s done… and then it becomes mundane.

Is religion the same thing? Was talking to God, receiving divine prophecy and turning water into wine what passed for ‘high-tech’ 2,000 years ago? Did Jesus have some sterilised bandages or knowledge of Eastern medicine that cured large swathes of sick people? Does that make him a work of wonder, or merely a nice guy with some great tools? Why don’t we drop to our knees and deify Sagan or Einstein, our modern-day masters of the universe?

Our understanding of the universe is so great and our critical analysis now so exacting that magic and mystery are finding it impossible to gain a foothold in today’s society. Fads will form, and cults will climb to power and become religions, but as technology improves and shines a light on their inherent fallacies, they will fall — as soon as the curtain is whisked back and the truth revealed, the mystery will melt away. The magic castle will crumble and the religion, cult or fad will perish.

Without magic, there is no no faith, no prayer, no belief. Without mystery — the single most powerful force in human nature – there is no no religion.

In 50 years our understanding of the universe and humanity will be so great that I’ll be able to zap your body and fix it of all maladies. No side-effects. No caveats. What will existing religions do then?