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.

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…

What happens when you die?

If you’re not spiritually-inclined, death is just a moment in time. You’re alive and then, a moment later, you’re dead. There is a cessation of all that makes us physically alive: we stop breathing, our blood circulation halts and finally our brain activity flat-lines — we are deceased.

And medically speaking that is true. Your time is up; the grains of sand have emptied and the ticking has ceased.

On the other hand, if you believe in some kind of soul, something beyond the world that we can see and measure scientifically, death is more of a way-point on your travels.  You might believe that heaven awaits, or that your soul takes a little trip before returning back to the physical realm, but it doesn’t really matter: you believe that death isn’t the end of your story.

What we really have to do is define ‘death’, a task that many people would claim is very easy: it’s body death; a flat line on both the ECG (heart) and EEG (brain) machines. Someone whispers into our ear or shines a light into our eyes and there is no response, no reflex — that’s body death. But then why are there billions of people that believe that we’re not actually dead, that our soul has simply left the building in search of other stomping grounds or greener pastures? Death is meant to be the end! And it is for every other animal and plant in the world! Why does it have to be so tricky when it comes to humans, why do we persist in refuting death? Why do we insist that we ‘live on’?

Maybe, just possibly, there’s something to it. Perhaps there is a soul. Perhaps body death isn’t the end! What if we are just poorly-equipped to define ‘death’ scientifically? What if science simply refuses, by definition, to acknowledge something that is impossible to measure and define?

But then why is more than half of Earth’s population so strongly opposed to the finality of death? Why, for thousands of years, have we tried to define life after death? For millennia we have struggled to elucidate what really goes on after death as we traverse the great unknown — and curiously, after 6,000 years of modern civilisation, we still don’t even know how to get there! Attaining spiritual immortality in ancient history and religion reads like a hilarious list of scatter-gun, maybe-this-will-work approaches. First, right at the cusp of recorded history, there were deified statues and bloody rituals. Then with the first great civilisations we had burial rites and coins on our eyelids to ensure our safe passage into the afterlife. The Dark Ages saw a change from polytheism to monotheism and it became more about repentance, seeking forgiveness for our sins and regimented worship. Finally, with the Middle Ages and the glorious, opulent lives of feudal nobility and merchant oligarchies, immortality could be obtained by paying someone that’s close enough to an Almighty Being — i.e. buy some new stained-glass windows and you’re in.

The problem is: they can’t all be right. Is obtaining life after death simply a matter of mentally flagellating or prostrating yourself before the eyes of a suitably-powerful deity? Almost all religions claim that that they are correct and infallible, their scriptures often divined or prophesied from a god. They don’t all claim that other religions are false but most do — my god is more goddy than yours! — which causes a little problem: who’s right? Are they all right? Or, as I’m inclined to believe, are they all wrong? I won’t turn this into a theological discussion, but I do want to work out which religion got it right because the concept of everlasting life must be pretty enthralling if five billion people want to believe in it.

In fact, the concept that we might simply cease to exist, both body and soul (if it exists!), is a relatively new concept. An enlightened concept that we’ve been scared of acknowledging all along, just in case it’s true. We’ve finally arrived back at the stage where challenging or disproving religion doesn’t end up with you being burnt at the stake. We’re finally at the point where we can question our existence in this universe with some semblance of objectivity. Pure and absolute rationality is still a little way off — maybe quantum mechanics has the real answers? — but we can still revisit with a critical eye, unfettered by either dogma or tradition, the concept of allaying or postponing our ultimate death.

Science has gone a long way to explaining many things we’ve historically considered ‘magical’ or ‘miraculous’ but there are still many unknowns. There are a whole slew of phenomena that can be explained by the existence of a ’spiritual universe’ too — in fact, it’s a very good way of explaining away almost anything that remains a mystery to us. Eventually though — and this is guaranteed — someone will get to the bottom of near-death experiences and the continued consciousness that people experience throughout brain death. In a truly ‘eureka!’ moment a scientist will discover exactly what happens, if anything, when we die.

It’ll feel like the unravelling of the greatest of magic tricks: one of the few remaining mysteries of human existence ripped apart and laid bare for all to see. And then, like all exploited magic — or technology — it’ll just become a ubiquitous part of everyday life: if we do have souls, we’ll make glorious plans for the afterlife; if we don’t we’ll be able to finally stop wasting our time trying to earn and validate our ticket to the afterlife.

I hope people won’t be too disappointed when they find out that all those years of prayer and sacrifice and unwavering belief were for nothing. The Norse and Greek had the right idea: perform amazing deeds of strength and bravery, kindness and mercy. Achieve immortality through renown alone. Of course, they also knew that if any gods just happened to be watching they were hitting two birds with one stone.

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.

Yesterday I laid the ground rules for mysteries and why they have played such a huge role in the development of our society.

Note how I say ‘huge’ rather than important or vital.

Are these mysteries a good thing for survival? Better yet: is this incessant hunt for the unknowable a human-only trait? Did we evolve this love of mystery?

The general argument goes like this: we like to see patterns. We attribute cause to every effect. We like to believe that there’s something more to life than just 80 years of humdrum mundanity followed by death and burial and rigor mortis. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know if animals and plants feel the same way, but it’s often stated that only humans ponder the existence of an after-life (though who knows if this is true…) So it’s something in the brain — our brain — that sets us apart from the rest of them. We must’ve evolved that functionality, or been given it by our Creator — whatever, I’m not going to get into a theological discussion here.

The point is, at some point in time, we grew to love mystery. Like, seriously adore. You can look at certain times in history when almost everything in your day-to-day life was ritual. Wake up; pray. Hunt; pray. Eat; pray. Old wives’ tales. Turning three times widdershins before crossing a cursed threshold. Naming of children. Gods! Astrology! It’s all attributing cause to effect.

I sometimes wonder if people realise how feeble it is to be nothing but a pawn of the universe. You are merely the result of billions of random-chance-and-cause-unknown effects. Only, wait a second, the cause isn’t unknown! It’s the god of war! Of the hunt! Wine! The Israelites — God!

But, hang on, we’re not all mystery junkies. There are some people that hate the idea of mystery. They’re called ’scientists’.

And that’s the bit I don’t get. There are people that can only sleep at night knowing that God is looking over them, that Jesus makes their miserable, sinful life bearable — and then there are those that are the complete opposite. There are people that find the idea of spirituality or immortality repulsive: ‘that which can not be proven does not exist, so why give such concepts such credence?’

Are these scientists, these doubters-of-mysterious-coincidence, an evolutionary creation? Are they relatively new — the last few thousand years or so — or have there always been questioning, discerning doubters since the dawn of time? Was fire really stolen from the gods, or did Ug the Caveman create it through trial and error? Throughout history there have always been a few that question their surroundings. Rarely are their voices heard — usually only for a split, blood-curdling second before the guillotine drops or the tinder is lit. In fact, today and for the first time in history, scientists seem to finally have gained more respect and gravitas than theologians. Thank God.

The sad bit is that mystery, or at least those that ‘believe’ in mystery, far outweighs the truth, the cause-seeker, the scientists. The vast majority believe in the omnipresence and omnipotence of God or gods. On top of that there a lot of people that are apathetic to the discovery of knowledge and truth. It seems to me that ‘mystery junky’ is the dominant genetic trait. Maybe we can genetically engineer our DNA to remove such a trait…

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.

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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?

You probably know by now that I’m a bit of a pragmatist. I don’t totally discount the possibility of the paranormal, and pragmatism is a little too strict really, but I’m definitely of the scientific, that-which-can-be-proven mindset. I think there’s more to life than eight decades of faffing about and then decomposing in the ground. I just think it might be a little premature to assume we have a soul, an entity tethered to us in some indescribable, untenable way.

I don’t rule out the possibility of the soul, the spirit or gods, because that would be stupid. How can you claim something without proof? I sometimes wonder about those scientists and cartographers that declared our Earth to be flat. Were they sane? Were they frickin’ scientists? How about the shaman and philosophers that decreed that gods reside in the cosmos — or better yet, that stars are actually gods? Did they just pull that kind of stuff out of their ass, or did it really make sense back then? When did science actually become science, i.e. empirical? [That's another topic for another day I think.]

This is one of those situations where I wish I could be more objective. From my seat (surrounded by three computers and four screens) of power, I can glance back to the dawn of modern civilization, and scry forward to some crazy, potential futures. Were the philosophers of Athens graced with such foresight or hindsight?

How many scientists, philosophers or engineers had ideas beyond their time? Leonardo da Vinci is one example, but I can’t think of many others. Our thoughts are generally held back by the framework that supports the body and mind: society and culture. Is a tribal elder going to contemplate cryogenics? No. Is Aristotle going to think about superconducting super colliders that expose the base units of existence itself? No. If Jesus was born in the 1600s, would Christianity occur? No.  Eminent thinkers are of their time and very rarely anything more.

And then there’s me, and any of my contemporaries that stop to think about the future. We’re in a position now where we can actually think about what the future might bring with some measure of accuracy. We’re about to finally get a glimpse of the universe’s building blocks. Science, at its most basic form, transforms things we don’t know into things we do know. We point a camera into deep space to find out what’s there — we split an atom to find out what’s inside. From the outside, with our weak human eyes, there’s nothing to be had from either, but science proves otherwise. The most basic action in science is measuring, quantifying. Until something is seen, it doesn’t exist: electrons didn’t exist until we measured them and their flow.

What if one day we can point some kind of imaging device at a fellow human and see their soul?

Why is that a totally crazy idea?

Right now, God and the soul can only be experienced through some kind of internalisation — through the mind’s (…) eye. Why do miracles and divine inspiration (or the deification thereof) occur only within our head? Will we one day be able to see those images and feel those experiences with some kind of artificial device? And if we can’t, why not?

Is it because the god, the spirit, your soul doesn’t actually exist?

You have two possible answers:

a) One day, we will be able to see the soul and interact with it, without the brain. We’ll be able to photograph it, stretch it, test it. The inexorable march of science means that eventually everything in the universe will be ours to play with.

And now, as we live in a universe with laws, where science rules supreme, there must be the other option:

b) The soul doesn’t exist. Gods don’t exist. They are both constructs of an incredibly powerful machine — the brain.

I wish the fellows over at CERN would hurry up and smash some protons together in that large collider of theirs. I really want to know the extent of these three dimensions we inhabit.

How better to celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day than with the discussion of WAR?

I’ll let you in on a little secret, something I’m rather ashamed of: my knowledge of history is really lacking. I blame it on my schooling: basically, we studied the Romans, the Tudors, some Jurassic/dinosaur stuff… and that’s it. Seriously, I left school not knowing a thing about World War 1 and 2, or any contemporary political history. Oh, I forgot: we also studied the Normans — so, millions of years ago — then a huge gap — 2000 (the Romans), 1000 (the Normans) and 500 (the Tudors). And that’s it.

Obviously my knowledge of history has improved now, but there’s still some huge gaps from the last 500 years or so — Napoleon? I know that ended in Waterloo… I think. And there was the Crimean, but I don’t know anything about that. World War 1 was started in Serbia or something… but Vietnam? I haven’t a frickin’ clue why there was a war in Vietnam — and Burma too?

There’s a huge block of wars that occurred in colonial times, between 1600 and 1900 — not least of all the War of Independence (which I only found out was America vs. Britain recently!) Britain has been at war with Spain, the Netherlands, France… in fact, I think the only power we haven’t been at war with is the Portuguese. The colonies (i.e. everywhere except Europe) have basically been in a constant state of flux for 500 years, until the relatively-calm period of the last 50 years.

You probably know that New York was originally New Amsterdam — it was handed over to the British Empire, as part of some peace treaty with the Dutch Empire. Did you know that, after the First World War, Iraq was part of the British Empire… for more than a decade! Ah, the Middle East… for more than 2,000 years it has been the most contested part of the world. First for religious reasons, then exploration and trade, and now energy (with a bit of religion).

That’s the bit I get a little bit hung up on. History is full of war. Peace can be described as ‘the time between two wars’. Is there really a difference between terrorism (the instilling of terror within a given populace), and war? ‘Terrorism’ is usually used to describe acts by small groups upon entire nations — paramilitary, guerillas, etc. Is it any better if you declare war beforehand, and then send five guys in a B-29 to kill 100,000 people in Hiroshima?

Then we have ‘the crusades’, a rather fancy term used to connote a religious war. Crusaders are, by definition, religiously sanctioned warriors — you are killing in the name of a god. A crusade, generically, is an attack on some kind of lifestyle or ideology. You can have a crusade against drugs, or drunken behaviour, or Islam. A crusade, in essence, is righteous — its instigators firmly believe that what they are doing is right.

And therein we have a problem, because I’ve just described every war, religious or otherwise. War, from the protagonist’s point of view, is right. You don’t march into another country for fun, you do it because you must. War is a necessity for long-term survival — it is rational in that sense. (Well, OK, war — after diplomatic means have been exhausted — is rational.)

This is quite a hard thought to get your head around, but hang in there. Islamic terrorists declared war on America for ideological reasons — as an American, you probably can’t comprehend their rationale, but the terrorists believe they are right. Seriously, just as the Nazis wanted a world without Jews, they want a world without Americans. Look at it from the opposite point of view: George Bush declared war on Iraq, because he thought it was right. It’s as simple as that. The calculations leading up to that decision might be infinitely more complex, but it ultimately boils down to ‘it’s us or them’ — our way of living, or theirs.

It’s kind of funny, but obviously very sad at the same time: war will always exist. Fortunately, with the world explored and colonialism out of the way, we don’t war over land — but it was never about land anyway; it was about resources (food, slaves, oil, etc.) And guess what… (those of you that know me will know what’s coming) — until we get off this planet of ours, until we reduce the strain on our natural resources, war will always exist. We can build upwards into the stratosphere and down to the Earth’s mantle, we can synthesize materials and use ‘greener’ manufacturing methods, but ultimately we’re going to run out of resources.

Imagine for a moment: we have space travel. We can jet around from star to star, planet to planet. Can you imagine a war occurring back on the home world? No. Try to visualize the extent of the universe and the trillions of planets that can support life. Do you think we would ever need to war again? No — at least not for a very, very long time.

Many years ago, I used to rant. Before this blog, and a few years before my stint on LiveJournal, I used to write rants. In fact, that was all I would write, for some reason. I don’t remember being a particularly angst-ridden teenager; I think it was more about being smart. ‘Ooh, he has such passionate and informed opinions!’ — who cares if I swore a lot and used viscerally-tinged analogy like a foamingly rabid dog, eh?

Somewhere along the line, probably at university, I learnt how to vocalize my thoughts in a more intelligent fashion. I think it’s because I was suddenly surrounded by thousands of people that I’d never argued with. That’s not to say I was particularly challenged at university, but after 16 years of same-old-same-old it was refreshing. The main thing, for me, is differing view points and opinions. Part of me (the scientist) hopes that ‘absolute knowledge’ is attainable; but the realist knows that there is just the world – and myriad interpretations thereof. We all see the world differently, and machines and measuring devices see the world in yet other unfathomable ways.

It has become my job (or purpose) to gather up all of those views and opinions to create a valid representation or model of the world we live in. After all, what good is science if human nature doesn’t agree with it? There might be some joyous, divine apotheosis of science and the amalgamation of views in the future — but that’s the future. For now, I will try to understand humankind’s interpretation of the universe we occupy. It’ll take a while, and it’ll involve a lot of travel, but fortunately I’m a patient man that likes taking photos — that’s three birds with one stone!

But back to the topic at hand. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, I lost my anger. I have buckets of aggression, but no anger. Unbridled passion, but no anger. I haven’t a clue where it’s gone. Most of you have never experienced me when I ‘get going’ in real life — it’s pretty odd, I get louder, I speak faster and with more intent… but I smile as I do it! Get this: I can’t grimace or frown. I’ve tried to frown many times, but it just doesn’t work. I don’t actually have the muscles for it.

I wonder if this is what the Buddhist idea of Nirvana feels like. (I’m not going to flesh that idea out any further… at least not today…)

I don’t know where this is going. It was meant to be something about why I’m so calm, and seemingly rather wise. I think this post stems from the fact that someone recently misconstrued my aggression for anger, which irked me because they’re very different emotions. I’ve never hit anyone, for example; nor have I ever been in a fight. You only need to look at the differing derivations: anger comes from Ancient Greek ‘to choke or squeeze’; aggression comes from Latin ‘to approach, address, attack’. Anger is all about sadness, sorrow and a rage that doesn’t abate. Aggression is about meeting the world head on, sometimes with a resounding clash.

Why strangle someone when you can just address the situation instead?

That makes me sound rather boring and sensible.