“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law

In 1968, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick finally finished 2001: A Space Odyssey – the book, and the film. It would change the way the world looked at evolution and ethics; artificial- and extra-terrestrial life. Religion and genesis.

But those are meaty topics that I couldn’t hope to cover in a simple blog entry. Instead, I want to talk about all of them combined, magic. Events that leave you so mystified, so jaw-droppingly nonplussed that you can only call out in disbelief that’s impossible! Perhaps you mumble it incredulously, wiping away an emotional tear, your raw nerves leaving you overwhelmed. It’s the same thing, though, magic: the impossible, in the blink of an eye, becoming possible.

When magic occurs, it’s like the world has been re-written. You have one moment in time, the past, where it seems impossible. Snap. You’re in the future, impossibility split asunder and replaced with a new reality. Magic occurred before your very eyes. The world changed around you. The flat line blips and shows a pulse. The Great Wall of China disappears. Poof.

And that’s all magic is, whether it’s performed by Harry Potter or Gandalf, a heroic doctor or David Copperfield. Now, the fun bit, and the tie-in to religious ‘miracles’ — magic is based on what we, by consensus agreement, deems impossible. We agree that it’s impossible for a man to disappear. We agree that, really, you shouldn’t be able to step through a plate glass window.

Once upon a time we agreed that being chained and helplessly dumped, submerged in a tank of water spelled certain death. And then Harry Houdini did it, and it wasn’t quite so magical any more; it’s only magic once, afterward it simply becomes a talking point, a fantastic improbability. The magician moves us from an impossible past, to a future full of possibilities where his ‘magic’ continues to occur around us, unabated. The cat’s out of the bag. Pandora’s can of worms hasn’t just been opened — it lies broken upon the floor, exposed, the world looking on in wonder — so that’s how it’s done! – our decision of what constitutes reality is rewritten in that moment. Magic becomes mundane.

It’s by this logic, sadly, that you disprove the existence of magic. The last 200 years have more than adequately proven that declaring something ‘impossible’ is stupid and counterintuitive. It’s not impossible, someone just hasn’t done it yet! It’s not a miracle, it’s just utilising mechanics that you didn’t know existed. Perhaps someone close to Jesus invented the sterile bandage and handed one to Our Lord — ‘Here, try this, mate’ — maybe he didn’t actually cure people with the power of God.

That’s what Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law is all about. Technology — a sterile bandage — is magic. Magic changes history, redefining our universal axioms, redeclaring what can and can’t be done. The impossible, as the cliche goes, becomes possible. Stone Henge, the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower — pure impossibilities, paper-only pipe dreams, fabrications only extant in the minds of great thinkers until someone actually devised a way to make them. Technology allows engineers to transport ideas from the realm of fantasy to reality. Imagine bringing a Roman forward through time to modern-day and showing him a computer. Magus he would say. Magic.

It is for this reason that inventors and scientists belong in a higher echelon. Without them, we’d still be in sitting in a cave, lamenting the taste of raw meat.

The search for immortality has plagued humanity since the dawn of time. The only certain thing in life is death: we can run from the Reaper but we can’t hide. Eternal life, or the lack of, remains a problem that scientists and philosophers alike have failed to solve for millennia.

For centuries we have gone to extreme lengths to prolong our life, but so far physical immortality has eluded us. With drugs and surgery — and leeches and the warm blood of animals! — we can maintain the illusion of youth for decades, but evading death itself has proven a little trickier.

Enter religion with its universal theme of immortality of the soul, or in some cases reincarnation — the best get-out-of-jail-free card ever. ‘Hey, we can’t grant this body of yours eternal life, but how about another go if you mess up?’ The single most wished for trait of all time, that which all humans crave — more than wealth, or happiness, or progeny — immortality became available at a low low price of a few Hail Marys or donation to the church of your choosing.

Immortality: the frustratingly-close mirage, finally within reach! Trample each other as you try to get to it first; God doesn’t mind. Anyone can have it, at the price of your dignity and a handful of coins; who cares if you live this life in squalor, while a fat priest sleeps soundly, resplendent in his gold-trimmed vestments — there’s always the next life! A helpful, portly priest once told me that there’s surround-sound TVs in Heaven; The Kingdom of God, Araboth, Nirvana. In the old days there was obviously lots of black slaves, and taverns with lots of beer — and quaffing! — and Valkyries. But today, that doesn’t sell so well…

I wouldn’t be quite so pessimistic if all religions could at least agree on one common theme — immortality of the soul or reincarnation — but as they can’t seem to agree, and kill each other over the minutiae, it’s likely that none of them are right. God himself seems to vary a lot from religion to religion, and if you can’t agree on something as basic and omnipresent as God, what’s the point? Were the gods of ancient history (there were hundreds of them!) fake?

That’s the problem with a divinely-inspired canon – words, from the infallible mandible of God – if you disprove just a single facet of it, one breathlessly intoned phrase of God, the entire thing falls to pieces. So if the tribal shaman got it wrong about their deities, and the Greek priests got it wrong about their polytheistic Parthenon, why should we believe modern-day monotheistic religion? You can read a little more about my views on monotheistic religion, if you like, but that’s enough for this entry.

If you take God and paid-for immortality out of the equation what do you have left? A moral code of conduct and a few archaic rules that (sometimes) made sense in the religion’s hey-day: a moral code then, and not much else.

But wait… there has to be something to it. Unless humanity really has fabricated a belief in the supernatural (and geneticists will argue that this is the case) for the past 10,000 years, there has to be some truth in it all. What if we take God or any ‘higher power’ that we are subservient to out of the equation, and just leave the spiritual side of things? Current science is leaning towards something, a quantum force created by particles either millions of times smaller than atoms, or by something else entirely. We might never know what that force is, but the mere fact that there’s something outside the realm of empirical measurement — the most common argument against the existence of a spirit or soul — will certainly be a tricky one for scientists.

Physical immortality is just around the corner, or at least you’ll soon have new organs grown at a whim. Bust your heart? Buy another one — it might be grown inside a pig, but who are you to complain? You’ve probably seen or heard about the mouse genetically engineered to grow an ear on its back. There are projects working on the important biological aspects of aging (cell aging being the main one), but there are other caveats too. Is it ethical for us to live forever? Do we have the technology and the resources to sustain 40, 50, 60 billion people here on Earth? Perhaps most importantly: would we do anything today if we could always put it off until tomorrow?

It’s at times like this I wish I could remove myself from the equation. I have beliefs which interfere with my objectivity! It’s awfully hard to derive a solution or even an answer when my flesh-and-blood brain has to be consulted first — my brain which has been meddled with by my parents, my friends and the media. It’s comforting to know that everyone else suffers the same fate though; even philosophers had to grow up.  It’s impossible for me to claim there’s a world beyond our own, but if science and technology has shown us anything in the last 50 years: don’t place any bets.

If we could give birth to a fully-grown adult — a test-tube human born into physical and mental maturity, without any of the pain or suffering sustained in childhood — how would they view the world? Without bias and with complete and utter objectivity, some pieces of the universal puzzle might just slip into place.

If immortality yet again slips  between our greedy paws, we still have transhumanism to look forward to: augmented human bodies. Bionic eyes, mithril exoskeletons and steam-powered muscles — well, perhaps not so much the mithril or the steam-power, but it’s coming! I’ll talk about that after Terminator 4: Salvation hits the cinemas.

The reason I hate ignorance is because it’s the opposite of inquisitiveness.

Inquisitiveness is the reason you and I are both here today, reading this blog. Monkeys bashed  rocks against coconuts and early humans rubbed sticks together until they got warm — that’s why we’re here. The world we live in is made of energy, a force that comes in forms too numerous to list but one thing is certain: we haven’t discovered them all yet. If it wasn’t for scientists poking around at the universal fundament we’d still be hefting rocks into the air and giggling like children as they, yet again, fall to the ground.

The difference between ignorance and inquisitiveness is the number of times you fly a kite in an electrical storm. The ignorant man flies it just once and gets scared off by a near-death experience. The inventor, the thinker, flies it twice, thrice,  four times, discovering a new form of energy in the process and thus enlightening the whole of humanity.

There’s a reason the stereotypical image of the inventor is ruddy-faced and static-haired with their goggle-sized glasses askew: their appearance doesn’t matter. Straightening your spectacles can damn well wait until after your appointment with particle physics! When you’re tearing apart reality to find out what makes it tick there are more important concerns than when you last ate. For the scientist, learning the hows and the whys are all that matters; personal safety — mental and physical — is a fleetingly unimportant notion.

The more I think about it, the more my hatred for ignorance grows. Every time I hear about or see yet another ignorant pissant, another monkey-faced bigot, it’s like throwing kindling onto a very virulent, white-hot fire that’s sitting underneath my ass.

I hate ignorance. It’s very, very close to stupidity, another thing I am not so fond of.

Ignorance is in the same vein as refusing to learn because you think you already know everything. It’s the gathering of just one working set of data, a singular, monofaceted education and the righteous, indignant refusal to admit any other viewpoint as valid. They say ignorance is bliss — they, not me, not us — ‘Here’s my view of the world: accept it or get lost.’ God shaped this banana; the world is round; all men are pigs; drugs are bad for you. Ignorance is bliss only for the ignorant.

Rationally, it’s impossible to know everything, so why do people claim otherwise? Why is there a sizable subsection of society that thinks it’s wise or intelligent to stick to their poorly-educated guns? Why are there goons that will deny new research and rational arguments all the way to their shallow, but wide, graves?

I think it must be an innate human coping mechanism: we tend to glorify our traits, even if they’re negative. We exagerate stories until they contain just a grain of reality. We revel in aberration, we justify and pass it off as ‘human nature’: how did it become cool to pass out from alcohol poisoning?

Our most powerful drive though, the one that seals the deal, is the requirement to be right, the necessity to win the argument. There’s a facet of our genetic makeup that forces us to be right, even if it involves altering our, or other people’s, view of reality to make it so. The problem is, it’s the same trick of the mind that grants us the ability to ’stick to our guns’. Only it’s called stubbornness and not ignorance when you put it like that.

And therein lies the problem: stubornness — inflexibility, implacibility, remorselessness, whatever you call it — is a good trait in most circumstances. Did Caesar march into nigh-impossible battles because he was ignorant of the risks? No, of course not: he was simply a genius that hated to lose. And he never did.

I was sitting in front of the TV — not something I do often, I assure you — and for some reason or another my mind wandered towards Germany. I think it was a war film. Anyway, I had a little ponder, a little brainstorm, and I came to the conclusion that I actually know very little about Germany. I also assumed that other people might not know much about pre-War Germany too! Perhaps people study the history of Germany in more detail in other countries, but I can’t imagine it being an important topic outside of Deutchland itself.

There are experts out there, but this entry is not for you — this is just a short piece on the formation of Germany itself: the 2500 years that occurred before the World Wars — believe it or not, a lot has happened there! Our contemporary culture, both European and worldwide, has thick roots that stem from Germany. This little story will wend its way from the Nordic tribal settlers to the early dominance of the Franks; from the long-winded Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation to the downfall of the German Empire at the end of the first World War.

Germany’s recorded history begins in 56BC, though for 500 years tribes had been moving down from northern Scandinavia through to Denmark and then Germany. Famously, Caesar (who was first to record the name Germania) built a wooden bridge that spanned the Rhine in just ten days, but then retreated once he heard that the Seubi (Suevi) tribe had amassed a force to repel him, should he attack. The name ‘Seubi’, incidentally, has its roots in the prefix ‘Swe-’ which literally means ‘one’s own’ — the same prefix that gave Sweden its name. The tribe that repelled Caesar was almost certainly from Sweden originally! I’m sure it’s quite common knowledge, but all Prussian and Russian kings — Kaisers and Czars — derive their title directly from Julius Caesar himself.

It’s worth noting that the Seubians were converted from their pagan rituals to Arianism in the 400s — a ‘heretical’ (after the First Council of Nicaea) sect of Christianity that believed Jesus was extraordinary, but not as powerful as God himself. I mention this only because of the later use of the term ‘Aryan’ by the Nazis to represent the one, true, destined-for-leadership master race is completely unrelated — but it’s an interesting coincidence!

The fall of the Western Roman Empire allowed the expansion of the Frankish Empire to begin. Originally a West Germanic confederation of tribes, the Franks would go on to form an empire that would span France, Germany, Northern Italy and make dependent states of the modern-day Eastern Bloc. With the baptism of some Frankish nobles, and later on the work of missionaries from England, Scotland and Ireland, Germany dropped its old Arianist ways and became fully Roman Catholic by the 800s. The aid of the British Catholic missionaries would turn out to be, 1200 years later, beautifully ironic.

Another thing that people forget is that English — both the language and the name — originates from the Western Germanic people of Angeln, or its modern name of ‘Anglia’. Regions of this name still exist in England and Germany! As an aside, while the Angles were settling in what would become England, Britons were settling in Brittany (France) — and while I’m at it (blame the nationalist streak in me), the Normans that invaded England weren’t French — they were descendents of the Vikings that had occupied what would eventually become France! Anyway, back to Germany…

By the 9th and 10th century the Frankish Empire had been divided and weakened enough for the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Despite its awesome name, it did not actually include Rome for most of its rule — the name derived from each new emperor having to be crowned by the Pope. Not a lot happened until the 15th century when the Renaissance finally blew away the cobwebs of the Middle Ages, leaving Germany with the beginnings of a powerful and industrious empire. The 1400s brought us Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the mechanical printing press, and Albrecht Dürer who is widely considered the finest Northern European artist of all time.

The 17th and 18th centuries would finally see the efforts of the Renaissance period come to full fruition: The philosophers Leibniz and Kant; the musicians Bach and Mozart. Genius polymath and the author of Faust, Goethe, would be be the first writer to emerge from the growing, Bohemian strength of the Germany. The turn of the 19th century would see their intellectual powerhouse continue to grow with the birth of philosophers Marx and Nietzsche, the eminence of the piano virtuoso Ludwig van Beethoven, and the composer that would craft musical masterpieces destined to be played at max volume while conquering Europe, or in fact anyone that stands in your way: Wagner. Two of the most important and influential scientists of all time, Planck and Einstein, were also born in Germany during the 19th century.

Throughout the 1600s the Duchy of Prussia had continued its spread across what is now the top of Poland. When the Holy Roman Empire finally fell after the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, Prussia would continue to gain land across the north of Germany. In 1871, with the help of decisive victories on the Franco and Austro-Hungarian fronts, the German Empire was formed by the president of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck with William (Wilhelm) the First installed as emperor. This is the same Empire that would be the unwitting instigator of first World War. Bismarck himself kept the role of Chancellor, the one-man-cabinet, a position whose power would later be confirmed as autocratic by Adolf Hitler.

The next 50 years would see a huge surge in industrial strength and population — from 40 to 70 million, with over half of those living in cities. Germany became the world’s first social welfare state with sickness and maternity leave, and it had a free press! But such privileges and liberties were not easily come by — Germans worked hard; a work ethic that still exists today.

Back in 1800, Napoleon had been crushed by a mix of Prussian (German) and English forces at Waterloo, but how quickly allegiances are forgotten! Only 80 years later, Emperor Wilhelm formed the Triple Alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary, its purpose to defend itself from potential attacks by Russia, France and Britain — the three countries that then formed a similar, counter-allegiance: the Triple Entente (’Triple Agreement’). It would be Germany’s allegiance to the Austro-Hungarian Empire — and the British Empire’s anger at Germany’s growing navy — that would spur the Triple Entente into joining a war: World War I.

Though it falls outside the scope of this entry, and just because I love bringing religion into these things, I’ll share an ironic little coincidence. When Hitler was made Chancellor he had to pass the Enabling Act of 1933 to actually become the Führer; to effectively demolish the democratic powers of the Reichstag for four years while he ‘tidied things up’ (this sounds a lot like Caesar demanding to be made Dictator back in Rome…) Despite the instigation of concentration camps in the hope of terrorising the populace into voting for Hitler’s party — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or more commonly ‘Nazis’ — they could only muster 44% of the 66% majority required to pass the Enabling Act. Desperately, he turned to the Catholic Central Party for their votes. They demanded continued liberty for the Church and their involvement in education, which he obviously granted — not that it mattered, after the Act had been passed. The kicker: who brought Catholicism to Germany? Missionaries from Britain!

And there you have it, the exciting history of Germany in 1200 words. If you made it this far — hooray! I hope it wasn’t too boring; I hope you learnt as much as I did. Now I actually have to visit Germany…

I don’t intend to make a habit of commenting on current affairs but it just so happens that the current government election fracas in Iran fits into my train of thought on ignorance and irrationality.

The complete lack of human rights in Iran is not a new thing. People, usually those from the fortunate West, forget that the fabled Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a treaty; it’s not something that countries sign at a summit and abide by. It’s a declaration, like the USA’s declaration of independence. It is a statement of the rights that should be granted to every human on this planet. These rights are not privileges to be earnt or bartered from an oppressive institution, league or government; they are to be given unconditionally upon birth.

And for many Westerners, like you and I, they are. In Iran, as with most of the developing world, these rights are merely a mythical concept afforded to only a handful of lucky, aristocratic or autocratic individuals. We don’t know how lucky we are, nor do we appreciate just how recent the concept of human rights actually are. Speaking out of turn 100 years ago would result in being caned as a child, or beaten into a bloody pulp as an adult. Falling pregnant out of wedlock would throw you into social exile. Believing or acting upon religious beliefs outside the norm would get you stoned, drowned or burnt to death.

For the longest time we didn’t even own our bodies: nominally under our control, but only during peacetime, or when not under duress and whipped into chain gangs. Historically, we were under the singular jurisdiction of the local Lord, or owned by whoever employed us. This only changed with the form of trade unions and the downfall of antiquated European feudal systems, but for centuries this was sadly the case across what we now consider ‘the Western world’.

Just one thing has remained entirely ours: our mind and our thoughts. As long as we didn’t vocalise those thoughts, our minds have long been the last remaining stronghold of freedom. Of course, religious dogma and torture are usually employed to wean out any remaining free-thinkers — usually those that made the mistake of opening their mouths. But some people kept on dreaming, kept on fighting. Enough of us fought back against the Dark Age’s oppression so that we might one day experience our Renaissance and Enlightenment. Without either golden age we wouldn’t be living in this world today.  Those brave souls that kept thinking outside the box, even after being brutally tortured or their families were killed — when all seemed truly lost, they kept on sticking it to the man, hoping for change. To those men and women we have a debt of immeasurable gratitude.

I have a theory (and it deserves its own blog entry): the Middle East is simply behind the times — from a Western point of view. To us Europeans and Americans the atrocities and injustices occurring in Iran are backward. We decry and condemn the unfairness of it all. We break down in tears at the thought of free people being brutally beaten and unfairly subdued by an oppressive force. And to us, it is inhumane and immoral: to deny their rights of thought and expression, refusing  their right take part in the government and arbitrarily arresting those that try — these are breaches of important, fundamental human rights that we Westerners take for granted.

But to them it is the norm. This is the bit we don’t agree with, but we must get our heads around: the Middle East is, to us, akin to antiquity — that’s how we used to do things, centuries ago. We used to have slaves, and deny the vote to certain classes and castes. Not so long ago, making a public stand would get you shot. Once upon a time we had as few rights as our persecuted brothers and sisters in Iran. That’s why it hurts so much. That’s why it feels so incredibly unfair, so unjust. We turn on our TVs to see centuries of hard work spent on gaining our human rights pissed on by the government of Iran.

I hope those in the Middle East keep on fighting. Those that oppress you are afraid of losing control, and believe it or not, that’s progress. That’s the beginning of a revolution and history has shown that freedom will be yours. Eventually.

This won’t be a complete backstory, but it will fill in a few big gaps. It includes and expands upon bits from my childhood entries and the ‘about‘ page. This should illuminate my scattered, eclectic writings on this blog. This should spread light on themes that you may’ve noticed and upon which I will now elucidate. This post is actually celebrating a ‘blog milestone’, though in true, chronically-understated British fashion, I shan’t say what that milestone is. Enjoy this revealing expose of inner Sebbiness; I’ll be hiding in the corner over there.

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As I forced the last piece of LEGO into position with a snap I decided then that I would be an engineer; I was only five at the time and didn’t know what the word meant, nor what they did. The only thing I knew was that making things — crafting intricate constructions from simple, constituent parts — was fun. Really damn fun. You start off with a box of bits and amorphous blobs leftover from previous creations, and you can make anything! Well, almost anything, as defined by the rules and mechanics of LEGO blocks.

It was those rules, those axioms, that interested me the most. My parents will tell you that I was never a huge fan of using my hands — I was never the kind of kid to make rickety tree houses or bird tables — they were just a means to an end: to discover rules! Hands were great at pulling apart and unscrewing video machines, toasters and televisions. I had no idea how things actually worked, but God-damn it was fun trying to work it out! I would look at the parts, at the wreckage of my latest interest, and try to somehow divine the magical rules that made them go.

As I grew up my LEGO bricks turned into Technic cogs and Meccano struts, and thus my education continued: I learnt about physics and the inescapable force of gravity; torque and various structural designs to nullify its effects; the fun that could be had with elastic energy! Most importantly, I learnt about the two forces that dominate our current understanding of the world: chemical and electrical energy. Heating mixtures of chemicals and watching in (pained) awe as they exploded into my face taught me the wonders of cause and effect; reactions. Adding electrical motors to my constructions added life. And that was the key: I’d finally found out how to make things happen.

Enter my first computer at the geriatric age of eight (I was spoilt, some might say). This is probably where the tale should take a dark and oppressive turn for the worse but fortunately… it does not! Unless you consider the abject horror and avoidance of all physical exercise, caused by continued computer use, a bad thing. Actually, that’s a lie: I enjoyed tennis and badminton, but only because my arms were so long that I could reach almost everywhere without moving. I won’t bore you with any more from my teenage years, but you can read my childhood entries if you’re really interested.

In short, my teenage years were… OK. Not great, and often introverted. I was bullied for being fat and far too intelligent. Fortunately the bullying didn’t impact my thirst for knowledge, but it did culture my antisocial tendencies. I don’t mean I went around throwing bricks through windows (I did this just once, when I fell in with some bad boys), I mean that I’ve been a hermit ever since. My teenage life wasn’t completely devoid of social interaction. I did have friends. But for example, the only parties I would attend would be those I couldn’t skip, lest I become a social outcast. Being social, for the teenage Seb, was an obligation.

Looking back, it was a sad, lonely way of living. I don’t know if it was caused by the bullying, or just my continued interest in learning. Y’see, I would be great company until I realised that I’d actually rather be somewhere else, learning how to make explosives or program a new computer language. The only friends I did keep were ones that had identical interests to mine, or were intelligent enough that they remained interesting to me. A bit of a pragmatic — some would say selfish — view of friendships. Again, I don’t know what caused it, but my thirst for knowledge compelled me to flit about from person to person and from book to book, devouring anything and everything that I stumbled across in my search for more data.

When you’re a teenager, mixing your friends up a little is a common occurrence — so what if one day you’re best friends with John, and Steve the next? Looking back, I guess that’s why no one noticed what I was up to. And I’m still the same today, though my years at university tempered my hermit-like tendencies and almost turned me into a social butterfly! Still, when it comes to friends — relationships that I nuture and tend to regularly — I still only have two close ones. The first, I talk to once a week if I’m lucky, the second I might see once a year, or less (does that make me a bad friend?) It’s not so easy to ‘bounce between friends’ when you’re an adult; when you’re a grown-up you can’t just chew, digest and unceremoniously dump your friends.

That’s why I travel and I guess… why I don’t have friends.

It feels lame to cite Fight Club of all things, but its popularity will help make my point: I like single servings. The people I meet on trains and planes are tasty enough to tantalise my taste buds without the risk of becoming dull or flavourless. I might only spend six hours with a friend made while climbing over ancient ruins in Turkey, but when you’re thrown into a similar situation together and share the same experiences, you learn a lot about each other, and you learn it quickly. Single, intense servings of personality; more than just a passing acquaintance, but less than a friendship. At the end we can both go our own ways; a single serving with no strings attached.

Finally, we’ve arrived at the contemporary Seb, where I understand enough about myself that I can attempt to define my personal philosophy. ‘Attempt’, because it’s hard to name and qualify thoughts that, without scope or definition, have run around my head for 25 years. So bear with me as I try to put it into some clumsy words: I demand rationality, but not in the conventional sense. As humans, we are exceptionally good at being rational, but only within the confines of a working, true set of data. You can only be as rational as your education allows — if you have been told that the world is flat, it’s rational to assume it is indeed flat. But that’s not rationality; at least not for me. Most ’stupidity’, as viewed from an objective point of view, is (unsurprisingly) caused by a lack of education. The stupid person probably doesn’t know he’s being stupid though — in his head he’s just doing as he’s been taught!

Rationality, for me, is an absolute: not simply a given, limited set of truths taught through nurture, dogma or education.

Rationality, for me, is the neverending search for a body of knowledge so vast, so all-encompassing that, one day, will hopefully allow me to understand the workings of the universe, and those that populate it.

There we have it: one of my most secret and character-definining traits laid bare for all to see. I hope it goes some way to explaining how I look at the world, and ultimately what I write on this blog. I am, in essence, trying to get my head around everything; I’m pulling the world apart, screw by screw, hoping to find the answers. As and when I find them, I’ll be sure to share.

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There are some fun photos to follow tomorrow. They were meant to accompany this entry, but now it seems inappropriate. If you want funny pictures, go and look at the ones of me as a kid…

Would you rather be an artist or engineer?

This is a question I often ask myself on trains and planes or as I lay in the still solitude of my bed. Do I want to create art so beautiful, so inspirational that people actually enjoy life a little bit more? Do I want to develop infrastructure and technology that provides clean drinking water for the billions without?

In this crafted and cultured world, this world without boundaries that we have persisted in creating and destroying over ten long, illustrious millennia, which is more important: art or engineering?

Which was more instrumental: myth and wisdom — or creating fire?

The Bible — or the Roman Empire?

Michaelangelo’s David – or Kodak’s film camera?

Band Aid’s Feed The World — or a network of satellites that enable global communication?

Lennon’s Imagine – or Apple’s iTunes?

Art or engineering?

Do I want to be the person that enables and improves the lives of millions through advancing technology? Should I be the one that converts magic, wished-for technologies into the accessibly mundane?

Or should I be the culmination, the end point, the person that uses contemporary technologies to create art? Art that resonates within and amplifies emotions; art that triggers further explosions of creativity until we have a more beautiful world.

I keep trying to be both an artist and an engineer but I fear that it’s time to choose just one.

Michelangelo or Edison.

Einstein or Plato.

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.

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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.

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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’ve covered the sorry state of knowledge and inherent lack of truth that plagues contemporary society.

But it didn’t start yesterday or even 100 years ago! It’s an eternally recurring theme of dumbing-down and almost-truths dispensed by nasty people posing as intellectual authorities over thousands of years. There is an endemic ‘loss of wisdom’ that has an iteratively degenerative effect, gaining more momentum with each generation.

Historically these lies, these tales, were of a philosophical or mythical nature and virtually harmless. They were stories that became true through retelling: Hercules, Romulus, Arthur. The stories were told first by the travelling bard, then more abstractly through tribalism and shamanism. Polytheism followed with its anthropomorphic (god of wine, god of war) pantheon of valiant heroes and demigods. Finally monotheism trumped them all and wrapped up with its epic, fearsomely vengeful tale of apocalyptic events.

Old wives’ tales (or fables or myths or whatever!) might’ve been lies or half-truths but they didn’t really harm anyone; they might have been ‘not ideal’, but that’s not the point — they were moving towards the ideal — they were retold to children with good intentions! The same could be said for the basic spiritual maxims of most religions: everlasting life; don’t murder; try your best not to sodomise your brother’s wife; treat others how you would like to be treated. All good but… it sadly didn’t last. Something changed. All of a sudden enforcement entered the equation. Arbitrary enforcement: rules, laws and peer pressure with little or no basis in moral/cultural advancement or ethical living. If abstract/intellectual enforcement wasn’t enough, there was a strong physical aspect too: witch-hunts, the Inquisition and the Crusades are but a few obvious examples.

Why did it happen? For thousands of years our focus had been on becoming a more advanced race. But one day, probably after the fall of Rome, we woke up and well… we fell asleep again. Life was no longer about pushing the progress of civilisation. Perhaps it was our growing understanding of human anatomy and psychology that caused the change. Maybe it was due to the formation of metropolises like Rome and the urgent need to control large groups of people quickly and easily. Personally I think the continued development of written and spoken language — and rhetoric — played a big role. Whatever it was, something snapped. No longer was storytelling used to share wisdom or morals to improve our progeny’s standard of living. Gone were the tales that frightened children away from actual dangers like dank caves or poisonous fruits.

A new breed of story started to appear, tales that weaved lies and believable half-truths into their narrative. And we know that words, both written and spoken, have a terrible power. Instead of cresting taller peaks and pushing towards new horizons people started to fear their surroundings. Authorities of knowledge slowly faded away to be replaced by scary chieftains, oppressive teachers, greedy priests and, of course, a vengeful God.

I’ve written about magic before and how it is ultimately synonymous with technology. Television was magic (find an old person that was around when television was invented and talk to them about it!) but sure enough, it very quickly became mundane. What do you think would’ve happened to the inventor of the television if he had been around in the Middle Ages? What do you think ‘witchcraft’ actually was? With such an attitude towards innovation and revolution (or evolution, hah!), is it a surprise that books, education and intellectual enlightenment all but disappeared for 1,000 years?

For a very, very long time the pursuit of knowledge and truth — science! — was frowned upon, persecuted. Scientists were shunned or burnt at the stake. Why?

Because they were dangerous. Knowledge is power.

We humans learnt just enough for the monotheistic surge to take place. We learnt how to exploit the human love of mystery with smart wit and sharp turns of dogmatic phrase. We have become a scared and tentative flock too fearful to break from the pack. In essence we learnt just enough to be dominated and no more.

And now we await — or do we create? –  the next Renaissance where veracity of knowledge is returned to us.

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Still more to come, I think; on prejudice and ignorance. Oh, and if you’re reading this on the blog itself, remember you can double click a word to find out what it means!

For as long as we’ve been human one resource has always been valued above all others: knowledge. The success and progression of civilisation is measured in just one way: the extent of our knowledge.

We pride ourselves on how developed we are. How much more more civil we are compared to our barbaric ancestors. We sure have come a long way from the grunting, cave-dwelling proto-human. Guns. Medicine. Democracy, equality, liberty; these concepts, these inventions are fine examples of our ever-expanding body of knowledge, our scientific research and the evolution of thought.

Civilisation is like a machine, with each and every one of us playing the role of cog or spring in the great, universal machine. It spans the complete evolution of humanity through time and space and, if we avoid extinction, it will be everlasting.

And that’s how we power this machine: knowledge. Knowledge goes in one end: ‘metal conducts electricity’ — and out the other end comes invention: ‘computers’. Grossly simplified but you get the idea. This machine needs to be fed constantly. It doesn’t differentiate between new data or rehashed, time-worn knowledge: that’s what makes it so devastating! It creates and destroys with ambivalence. Cultures, ideologies, religions; all have fallen or been cut down into their constituent parts only to be reabsorbed — reconstituted.

It seems to do OK with regurgitated, reabsorbed data as long as there’s something new being added from time to time. Imagine a big cauldron of soup — wouldn’t it get a little boring if you never added a new ingredient? The soup would probably dry out even. Our greatest gains definitely come from pouring new knowledge in.

And where to find the new knowledge? Exclusively within the domain of exploration. Pushing the boundaries is the greatest thing we can do to perpetuate the machine of civilisation, of humanity.

That’s the crazy thing: all of the knowledge we need to survive is already out there waiting to be discovered. It’s like turning over rocks and finding wriggly worms and millipedes. It’s like turning over a rock and finding data that solves an unknown — ah, so that’s the solution… Eureka! But these rocks might be at the top of the highest peaks or the trough of the lowest marine trenches. These figurative rocks might be in the petri dishes of science labs or on the whiteboards of a particle physicists.

Wherever they are, these rocks need to be turned. It doesn’t matter by who, ultimately, as it all becomes part of our great machine. The magic becomes mundane and the entirety of civilisation surges forward, simply by flipping a stone and reporting your findings.

Problems arise when people stop exploring, when we cease pushing against the boundary. The machine continues to churn — it can’t stop — but with a lack of new data errors begin to appear. Our world-view begins to stagnate. Data is re-analysed and new, erroneous, contrived conclusions are drawn. False progress, bureaucracy, fads and pseudo-science can grip society in a stranglehold.

Before our very eyes exploration has become the black sheep of governmental spending: Research, science, space travel and the like all shunted onto the back burner and the back of our mind. There is knowledge out there just waiting to be discovered and assimilated into our culture, knowledge that will propel our civilisation into the next era. But it’ll have to wait. We have more pressing issues at hand apparently.