Jordan Peterson: clinical psychologist, provocateur, Jungian philosopher and biblical scholar

I wrote something earlier, based on YouTube videos, but never posted it. Instead I read his book, 12 Rules for Life, and decided to use that as my starting point. I want to say up front that, even if you disagree with him, he makes you think, and for that reason alone he’s worth listening to. Logically, I haven’t attempted to cover the entire book, but mostly the theme of religion and its closely related allies, mythology and psychology.

His discussions of the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular, are refreshing in as much as he gives them a cultural context that one can relate to, especially if it was part of your education, which it was for me. In other words, he interprets the mythology of the Bible in a way that, not only makes historical sense, but also cultural sense, given that it’s influenced Western European thought for 2 millennia. I’ve talked before about the religion science divide, which has arguably become more unbridgeable, to extend a badly thought out metaphor.

Peterson blends a mixture of Jungian and Christian philosophies that are purely psychological, yet he includes evolutionary influences where he considers it relevant. In fact, in certain parts of his book (Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping) he talks about the Book of Genesis as if it’s part of our genetic heritage rather than our cultural heritage. I know he knows the difference, but his language and description of the narrative gives the impression that the humans we are today are direct consequences of the events that happened in the Garden of Eden.

Take, for example, this extract from a section titled, The Naked Ape.

Naked means unprotected and unarmed in the jungle of nature and man. This is why Adam and Eve became ashamed, immediately after their eyes were opened… Unlike other mammals, whose delicate abdomens are protected by the amour-like expanse of their backs, they were upright creatures, with the most vulnerable parts of their body presented to the world. And worse was to come. Adam and Eve made themselves loin cloths… Then they promptly skittered off and hid. In their vulnerability, now fully realized, they felt unworthy to stand before God.

You can see how he’s interwoven biological facts with mythology as if our genetic disposition (to be hairless and upright) is an integral part of our relationship with God, but was somehow irrelevant prior to ‘Adam and Eve having their eyes opened’. I’m not opposed to the idea of interpreting creation myths in a psychological context, but, whether intentional or not, he seems to conflate religious narrative heritage with genetic heritage.

In Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today (which is good advice, by the way); Peterson invokes the Old Testament God as a ‘being’ who ensures discipline and obedience through ‘very tough love’ (my term, not his). He’s saying, in effect, that the Old Testament God reflects reality because life is harsh and full of suffering, and requires a certain self-discipline to navigate and even survive. But my interpretation is less generous. I think the Old Testament God reflects the idea of a ruler who is uncompromising and needs to use severe disciplinary measures to get people to do what he considers is best for them. In the modern world, the idea of worshipping a narcissistic tyrant or respecting someone who rules by fear is anachronistic at best and totalitarian at worst. Some people, and I’ve met them, argue that they agree with me when it comes to a mortal leader but the rules are different for God. Well, God, be it Old Testament or otherwise, is a product of the human psyche, so ‘He’ reflects what people believed in their time to be their ideal ruler.

Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient); continues this theme in a lengthy discourse entitled Christianity and its Problems, where, to be fair, he gives a balanced view in a historical context, which, for the sake of brevity, I’ll leave alone. But when he discusses Nietzsche, which he has studied in much more depth than me, he talks about the consequences of the ‘death of God’ which effectively coincided with the turn of the 20th Century and the birth of modern physics (which he doesn’t mention, but I do because it’s relevant). Basically, modern physics has given us all the technological marvels we take for granted and allowed us a lifestyle unheard of in antiquity, so an appeal to God no longer has the psychological power it once had because we now (mostly) believe that cause and effect is not dependent on supernatural or divine forces.

Peterson doesn’t discuss the effects of science, or the products of science, on our collective consciousness at all, but it’s why we are generally much more pragmatic about the reason things go wrong, as opposed to a time (not that long ago) when we were much less dependent on technology for our day to day survival. In fact, we are so dependent that we are unaware of our dependence.

Getting back to Peterson’s discussion, I disagree that nihilism replaced God or that totalitarianism, in the forms of communism and fascism, were the logical consequence of the ‘death’ of the Christian God. I contend that these forms of government arose to replace feudalism, not Christianity, and the loss of feudalism was a consequence of the industrial revolution, which no one foresaw.

To be fair, I agree that the story of Genesis is really about how evil came into the world. It’s a mythological explanation of why every single one of us is susceptible to evil. On that point Peterson and I agree. He gives an account of evil which I hadn’t considered before, where he compares it to the story of Cain and Abel, and I admit that it makes sense. He’s talking about people who become so bitter and inwardly hateful that they seek vengeance against the entire world. One can see how this applies to teenage boys who become mass shooters; a far too frequent occurrence in the US. It reminds me of a commentary in the I Ching that ‘after evil destroys everything else it destroys itself’. And self-destruction is the idea that immediately comes to mind. I went through a period of self-hatred but maybe I was just lucky that it never manifested itself in violence. In fact, I’ve never resorted to violence in any situation. Peterson himself, in one of his videos, talks about his own ‘dark times’.

I wrote a post about evil about 10 years ago, where I looked at the atrocities that people do against others, and conjectured that anyone could be a perpetrator given the right circumstances; that we delude ourselves when we claim we are too morally pure. Again, I think it’s a point where Peterson and I would agree. If you look at historical events where entire groups of people have turned against another group, the person who refuses is the extreme exception; not the norm at all. It takes enormous, unbelievable courage to stand against a violent mob of people who claim to be your brethren. Paradoxically, religion sometimes plays a role.

I rejected the biblical God, so does that make me like Cain? It was Cain’s rejection of God that was his ultimate downfall (according to Peterson). Obviously, I don’t think that at all. I think my rejection of the Old Testament God is simply my rejection of an ideal based on fear and punishment and an afterlife that’s dependent on me pleasing a jealous God. My earliest memories are ones of fear, which I believe I got from my father through some process of osmosis, as he was a psychological wreck as a consequence of his experiences in WW2 and a fearsome presence in anyone’s life. So a fearsome God was someone I could identify with in person and it didn’t endear me to a lifelong belief. I’m not judgemental of my father but I’m definitely judgemental of God.

God is something that exists inside your psyche, not out there. If the God inside you is fearsome, vengeful, jealous, absolutely judgemental; then what sort of person are you going to become? (I notice that I sometimes parrot the author I'm discussing, subconsciously.)

Peterson emphasises the importance of having values, and argues by inference that if you reject God you have to replace it with something else, which may be an ideology. I think we all search for meaning, which I’ve written about elsewhere, but he discusses his own path so to speak:

Suffering is real, and the artful infliction of suffering on another, for its own sake, is wrong. That became the cornerstone of my belief.

The cornerstone of my own belief came to me at the age of 16 when I read Albert Camus’ La Peste (The Plague). I realised that the only God I could believe in was a God who didn’t want me to believe in Them. More recently, I referred to this as a God with no ego, which is such a contradiction, but very Buddhist.

I need to say that everyone has to find their own path, their own belief system, and I’m not saying that mine is superior to Peterson’s.

Peterson makes a point that is almost trivial, yet possibly the most important in the book. He mentions, almost in passing, 3 traits: to be honest, generous and reliable. This struck a chord with me, because, despite all my faults, which Peterson would be quick to point out, these 3 personality attributes are what I’ve spent a lifetime trying to perfect and become known for.

It’s a credit to Peterson that he can make you examine your own psyche simply by discussing his own discoveries taken from his own life and his interaction with others, including his practice.

In his Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding; Peterson is at his most contentious. I have to say that I mostly agree with him when he takes on gender issues; I don’t think an anti-male culture is any more helpful that an anti-female culture, and I’ve always argued that. Gender imbalances can go both ways. He laments the fact that his 14 year old son (at the time) believed that it was a known fact that girls do better than boys at school, which is the reverse of the accepted wisdom when I was at school. I’ve heard Peterson say in an interview that there is virtually no statistical difference between girls and boys in intelligence.

On the other hand, we disagree on the issue of humanity’s impact on the planet, where I side with David Attenborough’s publicly expressed concerns regarding population growth. Peterson loves facts and data, and, by all accounts, we are seeing the highest extinction rate in the history of the planet, which is a direct consequence of humanity’s unprecedented success as a species (I’m not saying it’s a global extinction event; it’s the rate of extinction that is unprecedented). I think it’s disingenuous to compare those who are willing to face and voice this ‘truth’ with the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre, because they are both ‘anti-human’ (his coinage).

It is in this chapter that he rails against post-modern Marxists, which I won’t go into, because I studied Marxism at university and I concluded that it’s flawed in theory as well as practice. In theory (from my reading of Marx and Engel’s Manifesto) it’s an evolutionary stage that follows on from capitalism by way of a ‘revolution’ (as contradictory as that sounds) by the workers. In other words, capitalism is a stepping stone to communism. In practice, all the capitalist enterprises are taken over by the State, and that’s been a catastrophic failure in every country that experimented with it because it becomes totalitarian by default.

I actually agree pretty much with his arguments against social engineering, even though it exists in some form in all democracies. Take, for example, the social attitudinal changes towards tobacco which have happened in my lifetime. But Peterson is specifically talking about social engineering gender equality, and (according to him) it’s premised on a belief that gender is purely a social construct. As he points out, the fact that some individuals crave a sex-change clearly shows that it’s not. A boy trapped in a girl’s body, or vice versa, does not equate with gender being socially determined (his example).

One of his many ‘scenarios’, based on personal experience, depicts a bloke working on a railway gang who doesn’t fit in and is eventually tormented deliberately. Many people would call this bullying but Peterson tells the story so that we axiomatically conclude it was the bloke’s own fault. Now, I know from my own experience that I’m the one person on the gang who would probably try and help the guy fit in rather than ostracise him. So what does that make me? Too ‘agreeable’ according to Peterson.

Agreeableness, along with ‘neuroticism’ are negative ‘left’ leaning traits. ‘Openness’ is the only positive left leaning trait, according to Peterson (more on that below). ‘Conscientiousness’ is the most positive ‘right’ leaning trait, which I admit I lack. I have all the negative traits in spades. I make up for my lack of conscientiousness with a strong sense of responsibility and the aforementioned self-ascribed reliability. I hate to let people down, which sometimes makes me stressful. Peterson claims that ‘agreeable’ people don’t make good leaders. Well, neither do narcissist psychopaths, yet they seem to be over-represented.

One of his videos that had particular resonance for me was about creativity. He makes the valid claim that our personality traits are genetically determined and they influence us in ways we are not aware of, including our political leanings. The trait of ‘openness’, which is explicitly about openness to new ideas is heavily correlated with creativity. I believe creativity is often misconstrued, because there’s a school of thought that any person can become anything they want to be. I’ve always believed that to be untrue – I only have to look at my own family, because one side was distinctly artistic and the other side was good at sports.

He makes the statement (in another video) that “People, who are high in openness, if they’re not doing something creative, are like dead sticks.” This is something I can certainly identify with - I became depressed when I couldn’t express my creative urges.

In the middle of his book, he compares Socrates to Christ in the way that he faced death. (I bring this up for reasons that will become apparent.) He relates information from a friend of Socrates, Hermogenes, whom I had never heard of. From this, Peterson conjectures that Socrates went to his death willingly, having summed up the alternatives and deciding to be honest and combative with his adversaries, knowing full well the consequences. This certainly fits with what I’ve already learned about Socrates, but it’s also remarkably close to how I portrayed a character whom I’d created in fiction, with no awareness of Socrates’ assumed approach nor Peterson’s interpretation of it.

His Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street; is a self-portrait of his unconditional love for his daughter, though he wouldn’t call it that.

There is a particular passage in Peterson’s book, which is worthy of special mention, because, it’s not only true, it’s inspiring (p.62):

You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.

One person’s education is another person’s propaganda

This thought occurred to me after I watched a YouTube interview (below) of Brian Cox in New Zealand. He does a lot of stuff for the BBC (after all he’s British) but he’s also made a few programmes in Australia, including an excellent series on astronomy and an equally excellent one-off special on The Life of A Universe, still available on ABC iview if you live in Australia (highly recommended). He toured here last year, and in the previous year (Aug 2016) he had a famous altercation with former Australian senator, Malcolm Roberts, on a special ‘science’ episode of Q&A.

But getting back to the title and the interview that sparked it, Cox has been quoted as saying: "the greatest danger facing humanity is stupidity", though I would prefer the term ‘ignorance’ because, by definition, it infers the fundamental problem with ignorance is that people are unaware of how ignorant they are. Socrates apparently said that ‘the height of wisdom is to know how ignorant you are’. I came to this conclusion in high school, before I’d even heard of Socrates, whilst studying physics and became aware that real knowledge was paradoxically determinant upon knowing how much you don’t know.

In the aforementioned interview, Cox laments the ignorance and misinformation peddled on hot-button topics like climate change and child vaccinations, where real science is dismissed in favour of so-called populous movements. In other words, popular opinion can override scientific evidence in polls, including election polls.

He argues that ‘education’ is the key and is required to counter the ‘propaganda’ of anti-science proponents. It was at that point that I realised that one person’s education is another person’s propaganda, and, for most people, which is which is determined more by their political leanings than their comprehension of the subject at hand. I know from personal experience that you can’t educate someone about a subject if they don’t want to be educated.

The debate with Malcolm Roberts is very revealing. Even when Cox provided data produced by NASA, Roberts claimed it’s been ‘contaminated’. Roberts, along with virtually all climate-change deniers (in Australia) believes that all the data, produced by climate scientists from all over the world, is the product of a global conspiracy. The point is that, for them, any dissemination of said data is ‘propaganda’ and any dissemination of information that challenges human attributed climate change is ‘education’. The significant point in all this is, that no matter the authority, or the source, or the quality of the data, if it disagrees with their point of view, it’s wrong and can’t be countenanced under any circumstance. Roberts repeatedly ended all his assertions with the phrase: ‘and that’s a fact’.

That you have a populist politician challenging an internationally recognised scientist on a scientific topic on a televised science special is an indication of how puerile and imbecilic this debate has become. Roberts, by the way, was elected on just 70 personal votes, which is an indictment of our federal electoral system.

Roberts repeatedly referenced Richard Feynman, who was arguably the greatest and most popular physicist in the post-Einstein era, as if Feynman would support his contention. Cox never called him out on that but I would have. Roberts knew that he could get away with it only because Feynman is no longer with us. The idea that Feynman would support climate change deniers is laughable at best and perverse at worst.

This so-called debate happened just after Brexit and before Trump’s election, but it’s symptomatic of the current world we live in, where people with ‘alternative facts’ are listened to, given time on national television and treated with the same credibility as people who have spent their lives in the service of science.

Cox makes the point (as I have done) in the NZ interview that we (in the West) live in a world that is a product of the enlightenment and a consequence of the greatest scientific discoveries to date. No one who uses a smart phone or a computer or a TV knows the first thing about quantum mechanics (unless they’re a physicist like Cox) yet none of those ‘devices’ would exist without its discovery a hundred years ago. My point is that people (like Roberts) spruik their ignorance as if they have an authority over science whilst using the devices, technology and infrastructure that science has provided them.

My Heroes

Most people have heroes – usually sporting heroes, sometimes war heroes and sometimes political heroes. Well, I have heroes of science and philosophy.

Probably my earliest hero was Albert Einstein. To give a bit of backstory, in my preteens I had already taken an interest in science, but really it was zoology and animals of any description. People (relatives) used to give me books on animals all the time and I spent a lot of time drawing pictures of them as well as reading about them. But one day, and I can remember it vividly, as in where I was (not at home) and who gave it to me, I was given a book on The Atom. I was somewhere between 10 and 12, so it coincided roughly with when I started high school and it set the direction of my inquiring mind for ever.

So when I was 15 or 16, my mind was ripe when I saw a documentary on Albert Einstein on our black and white TV, probably produced by the BBC. I was smitten not only by the man’s genius but also his eccentricities and his obvious disregard for what people thought of his appearance. For example, he didn't wear socks. I also admired his courage for his pacifist stance, even though he famously wrote a letter to Roosevelt advocating the development of an atomic bomb before Germany did. His life was full of contradictions and paradoxes. He was a Jew yet agnostic, he was a pacifist yet came up with the famous equation that allows nuclear fission to occur, and his theories of relativity are paradoxes incarnate: time and space can shrink if you travel fast enough. I remember thinking all these things from watching that programme. And I can remember for the first time someone explaining that Einstein deduced that gravity wasn’t a force but a curve in spacetime. I found that so outlandish that it took many years (decades) before I properly understood it.

I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, an exposition of his general theory of relativity, which I took mostly from Richard Feynman’s excellent book, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces. Einstein got some things wrong but that does not diminish the man’s stature. Having said that, I think he had a better understanding of quantum mechanics than people give him credit for, and one should remember that he coined the term ‘photon’ to explain the photo-electric effect, which is purely a quantum phenomenon. But I think he was wrong to believe that the world is totally deterministic with no room for free will.

Regarding his famous theories of relativity: the special theory and the general theory; I would argue that you can’t have one without the other. In fact, I’ve long contended (though others may differ) that the paradoxes inherent in the special theory of relativity can only be resolved with the general theory. From my perspective, I found it necessary to come to grips with the general theory before the special theory, even though Einstein published them in the reverse order with a 10 year gap in between.

Of course, heroes have heroes of their own, and Einstein’s heroes were Newton, Maxwell and Faraday; all of whom occupied my mind in my early years learning about physics.

In that golden age of physics, as it’s often called, there were many luminaries: Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Louis de Broglie, Wolfgang Pauli and Max Born. These are the best known involved in the emerging field of quantum mechanics, which also included Einstein. Out of these, I would give special mention to Erwin Schrodinger, not just because of his eponymous equation but because his mind ranged outside his field into biology and the Hindu text, the Vedas (of which I know nothing). In particular, he wrote a short tome called What is Life? which includes a chapter on the mind.

Schrodinger’s equation is all the more remarkable because it was suppositional. As Feynman once said: ‘It can’t be derived from anything we know.’ Yet it's been called 'the most important equation in all of mathematical physics' by John Barrow (amongst others) because it give us the energy levels of electrons in matter, which gives us all of chemistry. The wave function which lies at the heart of Schrodinger's equation and QED (Feynman’s own integral path method of QM) is an enigma in itself. It exists in Hilbert space, an abstract domain of possibly infinite dimensions and it’s disputable whether it has a physical significance or is just a convenient mathematical fiction. It effectively underpins everything we can see and touch, but not gravity apparently. Richard Elwes in his book, Maths 1001, says that ‘The Schrodinger equation is not limited to the wave functions of individual particles, but…  potentially the wave function of the entire universe.’

Alan Turing is a hero of mine, whose life was cut short because he was prosecuted (and persecuted) for being homosexual, yet he was one of the greatest minds, not only of the 20th Century, but in the history of science. He’s most famously known for his pivotal role in deciphering the German enigma code during WW2. The not-so-recent movie (2014), The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was a travesty in my view, which is not a reflection on Cumberbatch but the producers and writers of the film.

Alan Turing was first a logician and he came up with the concept of the modern computer as a thought experiment to solve a mathematical conundrum, called the ‘halting problem’. Basically he proved that a machine (computer) could not solve algorithmically if a particular problem could be solved by the computer or not. To give an example: the Riemann hypothesis, which states that all complex roots (zeros) of the Zeta function are of the form ½ + ib. I’ve explained this in more detail elsewhere, but it is the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics since 1859, when Riemann proposed it as a method for determining the number of prime numbers up to any given Real number.

The point is that these zeros can be calculated on a computer, and have been in to the trillions, but of course they can’t be computed to infinity unless you have an infinite amount of time. What Turing proved generally (not just for Riemann’s hypothesis) is that you can’t determine in advance if the computer will stop or not. Obviously, if the computer stops the hypothesis is false.

So I would select these 3 as my 20th Century heroes. Now this is purely subjective and therefore I feel compelled to give reasons or criteria for my choices. A hero is someone who inspires you and to whom you may feel an affinity or someone you aspire to emulate. All these men had faults, though Turing, ironically, was possibly the least egotistical of them and the most respectful to the opposite sex. He was quite open about his homosexuality at a time when it was considered a psychiatric illness and a criminal activity. All 3 of them were geniuses beyond question, and they all impacted the 20th Century in ways that most of us are unaware of.

Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin are heroes because they challenged orthodoxy and are still under siege, one might say, by certain elements of the Christian church. It’s what’s been discovered in the 150 years since their time that both illuminates their theories and uncovers even greater mysteries, which is the nature of science that not only includes evolutionary biology but cosmology and quantum mechanics. Science is constantly creating new frontiers by overcoming existing ones. The difference with evolution is that it challenges long held religious tenets. Quantum mechanics is far more weird and counter-intuitive than evolution but no one denies it because it doesn’t challenge the premise that ‘man’ was made in God’s image.

Wallace and Darwin were very respectful of each other, but what I liked about Wallace, in particular, was that he was more of an amateur, an outsider, than Darwin was, but drew the same conclusions. Both men travelled to ‘exotic’ locations (including Australia, it has to be said) and discovered fauna and flora that led them to a theory of evolution by natural selection. We know that there is more to it than that, and it’s not totally resolved as many would have you believe, but I still call evolution a ‘fact’, based on the simple expediency that everything that’s been discovered since their time, that has proved them right, could just as readily have proved them wrong.

I would like to include this quote from Alfred Wallace, which I lifted from Tim Flannery’s book, The Weather Makers (about climate change):

It is among those nations that claim to be the most civilised, those that profess to be guided by a knowledge of laws of nature, those that most glory in the advance of science, that we find the greatest apathy, the greatest recklessness, in continually rendering impure this all-important necessity of life… (from Man’s Place in the Universe, 1903).

It makes me want to read his entire treatise.

As far as mathematicians go, I would include Euler as well as Riemann, whom I’ve already mentioned. Euler’s famous ‘identity’, which I’ve written about elsewhere, is arguably the most famous formula in mathematics and Feynman called it ‘the most remarkable formula in math’ when he discovered it for himself just a month before his 15th birthday. Yes, Feynman was a genius in his own right too. The number e, which is the base of the natural logarithm and gives the rate of compound interest if it’s done continuously, and is the most famous transcendental number after π, was named after Euler and is called Euler’s constant. Euler, by the way is pronounced ‘oiler’. Euler is acknowledged as the most prolific mathematician ever, but his eponymous equation which gives us his famous ‘identity’ is key to Schrodinger’s wave equation, so they are linked.

Riemann’s life was relatively short, but not only did he give us the Riemann Hypothesis, which seems to find its way into innumerable branches of mathematics, he also gave us non-Euclidean geometry which lies at the heart of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, so they are linked as well.

Special mentions need to go to Fermat and Gauss, who is called the greatest mathematician ever and was a mentor to Riemann. Fermat is best known for his famous ‘last theorem’ finally resolved by Andrew Wiles 357 years later. But he’s also known for his work on refraction (of light through glass and water) and his ‘least action’ principle which had a profound influence on the aforementioned Feynman. In fact, it’s Feynman’s employment of the least action principle to explain how gravity works that unlocked the secret to Einstein’s general theory of relativity (for me). Feynman also used this principle in his QED (quantum electrodynamics) and it’s called a Lagrangian, mathematically.

I could keep on going but I’m going to stop with the ancient Greeks, specifically Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. These are all connected, because Socrates was a teacher to Plato and Plato was a teacher to Aristotle, whilst Plato’s famous ‘Academy’ was set up using Pythagoras’s quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Aristotle, famously, was teacher to Alexander the Great but also influenced science and philosophy up until the renaissance.

About 3 decades ago I saw a documentary on Pythagoras and Plato which was an epiphany for me and started me on the path to becoming a self-declared mathematical Platonist, which has only strengthened with time. And this leads me in a strange time warp way to Roger Penrose, who is arguably the only living person I might declare a hero, because this is something I believe we share. Penrose is a bit of an iconoclast and I seem to like that in my philosophers. I don’t agree with everything he believes but no one does, or should, when it comes to philosophy. I don’t believe in gurus in any school or forum. Penrose is just as prominent in mathematics as he is in physics and he is a true philosopher. I would put Paul Davies in this category as well, whom I admire and write about often. But Penrose’s 3 worlds philosophy is one that I’ve adopted as my own and I must therefore give him due recognition. And from that perspective, I think Penrose would acknowledge his debt to Pythagoras and Plato.

I wrote a recent post (just prior to Christmas) on Socrates, whom I called ‘the first philosopher’, which I admit is a bit of a stretch depending on many parameters, not least how one defines philosophy. But to put it in perspective, I described philosophy as ‘argument augmented by analysis’, because I like to believe that’s what I do. But if anything, I would aspire to be a modern ‘Socratic’ philosopher in that I would like to make people think outside their usual bounds, because I think that’s what Socrates did and it got him into serious trouble because he got young people, in particular, to challenge the status quo.

We live in a time when we are very divided politically and I think it’s more important than ever to learn about opposing views. As a philosopher, you can’t deconstruct your opponents’ arguments if you haven’t read them or heard them. Every weekend I buy 2 newspapers – one that ostensibly represents the political left and one that ostensibly represents the political right. Strange as it may seem, I find I read more of the right-leaning paper than its counterpart, because I want to know what people who have opposing views to mine are thinking and arguing.

At the head of my blog, right from its inception, I wrote a little aphorism which I believe sums up philosophy as it should be. I never expect to change people’s beliefs to mine but I do expect to make them think. I would like to think that’s what Socrates did.

Science, humanities and politics

I was reading recently in New Scientist (20 Jan., 2018) about the divide between humanities and science, which most of us don’t even think about. In an unrelated article in The Weekend Australian Review (6-7 Jan., 2018) there was a review of a biography by Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci, whose subject is arguably the greatest polymath known to Western civilisation, and who clearly straddled that divide with consummate ease. One suspects that said divide didn’t really exist in Leonardo’s day and one wonders what changed.

Specialisation is one answer, but it’s not sufficient I would suggest. When trying to think of a more modern example, Isaac Asimov came to mind, though being a Sci-Fi writer myself, that’s not surprising. As well as being a very prolific writer (more than 500 books) he was professor of biochemistry at Boston University.

I’m no Asimov in either field, yet to some extent I believe I straddle this so-called divide without excelling in either science or arts. I can remember reading A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson, which was an extraordinary compiled history of the 20th Century that focused on the ideas and the people who produced them rather than the politics or the many conflicts that we tend to associate with that century. The reason I mention this outstanding and well written tome is that I was struck by Watson’s ability to discuss art and science with equal erudition and acumen. Watson, from memory, was more of a journalist than a scholar, but this diverse scholasticism, for want of a better phrase, I thought a most unusual trait in the modern world.

As anyone who reads this blog has probably deduced, my primary ambition as a youth was to become a physicist. As someone who can look back over many decades of life, I’m not especially disappointed that I didn’t realise that ambition. My other youthful ambition was to become a writer of fiction and once again I’m not especially disappointed that I didn’t succeed. I can’t complain as I was able to make a decent living in the engineering and construction industry in a non-technical capacity. It allowed me to work on diverse projects and interact with very clever people on a professional level.

But this post is not about me, even though I’m trying to understand why I don’t perceive this divide (in quite the same way others do) that clearly delineates our society. We have technical people who make all the stuff we take for granted and then we have artistic people who make all the stuff that entertains us, which is so ubiquitous we tend to take that for granted as well. Of course, I haven’t mentioned the legions of sportspeople who become our heroes in whatever country we live in. They don’t fit into the categories of humanities and science yet they dominate our consciousness when they take to the field.

The other point that can’t be ignored is the politicisation of both humanities and science in the modern world. Artists are often, but not always, associated with left wing politics. People are often unaware that there is a genetic disposition to our political inclinations. I’m unusual in my family for leaning to the left, but I’m also unusual in having artistic proclivities that I inherited from my mother’s side. Artists have often in the past been associated with a bohemian lifestyle but also with being more open and tolerant of difference. One should remember that homosexuals have long been accepted in theatre in a way they weren’t in society at large, even when it was criminalised.

This is not to say that all artists are left wing, as they clearly aren’t, but it’s interesting that the left side of politics seems to be more generous towards the arts (at least in Australia) than their oppositional counterparts. But politics doesn’t explain the humanities science divide. Science has become politicised recently with the issue of climate change. According to the political right, climate change is a conspiracy and fraudulent propaganda by scientists to keep themselves in jobs. This came to a head in 2016 in Australia when, under a Turnbull Liberal government (still in office), a prominent, world-wide respected climatologist at CSIRO (John Church) was sacked and his department eviscerated on the excuse that the Paris Accord had found the answer to climate change and no more research was necessary – we needed solutions not more research. It should be pointed out that, subjected to international outrage, the sackings were reduced from over 100 to more like 30, but John Church still lost his job. This, in spite of the fact that “CSIRO has long led the world in modelling Southern Hemisphere climate.” (Peter Boyer, Independent Australia, 20 May 2016).

What I like to point out is that the politicisation of climate change is largely by non-scientists and not scientists. As far as most scientists are concerned science itself is largely politically neutral. Now I know many people will dispute this very viewpoint because science is generally seen as a tool to provide technological solutions which are to the benefit of society at large. And one might qualify that by specifying Western society, though Asia is also adopting technologies at an accelerated rate. In other words, science is politically driven to the extent that politicians decide what technologies would benefit us most. And I agree that, as far as most politicians are concerned, science is simply a tool in the service of economics.

But my point is that, contrary to the polemic of right wing politicians, all climatologists are not left wing political conspirators. Scientists studying climate change could be of any political persuasion. As far as they are concerned nature doesn’t have a political agenda, only humans do.

To take another couple of examples where the politics is on the opposite side yet equally anti-science. Genetically engineered crops are demonised by many people on the political left, who conflate science and technology with corporate greed. Likewise anti-vaccination activists are also associated with the political left. What all these anti-science proponents have in common is their collective ignorance of science. They all see science as a conspiratorial propaganda machine whilst never considering the role science has played in giving them the historically unprecedented lifestyle that they take for granted.

I’ve never talked about my job (what I do for a living) on this blog before, but I’m going to because it’s relevant in an oblique way. I’m a project planner on generally very high tech, complex manufacturing and infrastructure projects. There are 2 parts to my job: planning for the future (in the context of the project); and predicting the future. It should be obvious that you can’t do one without the other. I like to think I’m good at my job because over a period of decades I’ve become better at predicting the future in that particular context; it’s a combination of science and experience. Of course, my predictions are not always well received but I’ve found that integrity is more valuable in the long term than acquiescence.

The relevance of this professional vanity to the subject at hand is that science is very good at predicting natural events and this is the specific nature of the issue of climate change. The process of democracy, which we see as underpinning both our governments and our societies at large, effectively undermines scientific predictions when they are negative. Politicians know that it’s suicide at the polls to say anything negative which is why they only do so when it’s already happened.

To return to the New Scientist article that initiated this meditation, it’s actually a book review (Being Ecological by Timothy Morton) reviewed by Ben Collyer (which I haven’t read). According to Morton, as related by Collyer, it’s the divide between humanities and science that is part of the problem in that people are ignorant of the science that’s telling us the damage we are doing on a global scale. Collyer also reviews Our Oldest Task: Making Sense of Our Place in Nature by Eric T Freyfogle (not read by me either) and Collyer intermingles them in his discussion. Basically, since the emergence of agriculture and the dominant religions we see ourselves as separate from nature. This is a point that Jeremy Lent also makes in The Patterning Instinct (which I have read).

We call this the Anthropocene era and we are increasingly insulating ourselves from the natural world though technology, which I find a paradox. Why a paradox? Because technology is born out of science, and science, by definition and in practice, is the study of the natural world in all its manifestations. We are on an economically driven treadmill that delegates science to technological inventions whose prime purpose is to feed consumerism by promising us lives of unprecedented affluence. This is explored in recent books, Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (which I recently reviewed) and Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman (which I’ve read but not reviewed). I would argue that we are making the wrong types of sacrifices in order to secure our future. A future that ignores the rest of nature or is premised on the unacknowledged belief that we are independent of nature cannot be sustained indefinitely. The collapse of civilisations in the past are testament to this folly.

Socrates – the first philosopher

I’m aware that this is a moot point, as many claim that Thales was the first (Western) philosopher, and some (myself included) have argued that Pythagoras deserves special mention. In fact, both Socrates and Pythagoras were influential to Plato, and Plato has arguably been the most influential philosopher for the rest of us, though many would cite Aristotle, Plato’s most famous pupil.

The point is (as I’ve discussed elsewhere) the long and historically resilient discipline of Western Philosophy started in ancient Greece, and along the way, spawned science, mathematics, logic (think algorithms), epistemology, ethics and ontological ruminations.

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting (not to mention unusually structured) book called Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day by Philip Matyszak. I bought it in a book store in Bowral called The Good Reader (365 Bong Bong St.) – happy to give them a plug. Bowral is best known as the place where Don Bradman grew up (American readers will have no idea what I’m talking about, but all cricket-loving readers will). I also grew up not far from there, though my current home is a good 8hr drive further south (via a dual-carriage freeway).

The subtitle effectively gives the premise for this tome: Where to eat, drink and meet a philosopher – your guide to the cradle of Western culture. In other words, it’s a tour guide of Athens set a ‘generation’ after the Persian war against the Spartans (the famous 300) when Socrates was still alive and Plato was yet to be born. In fact, at one point the author gives a specific historical reference by referring to the ‘urban deme of Kollytos… where in two years’ time, a muscular little baby called Plato will be born.’ In an ‘Author’s Note’ (before the Index) Matyszak explains that he chose a time ‘just before the [Peloponnesian] war began… as it marks both the peak of Athenian splendour and the point just before a certain innocence was lost.’

Not so long ago I reviewed Homer’s Odyssey, and Matyszak cites Homer more than a few times, including specific references, even a quotation, from The Odyssey. Both The Odyssey and Matyszak’s ‘guide’ give a lot of attention to the Gods, and Athena in particular. The point is that the Athenians give a lot of attention to their Gods, with Athena, not surprisingly, having special significance. As Matyszak points out, she is the only Greek Goddess to have a city named after her, which stands to this day. A particular point I conjectured about in that post is confirmed by Matyszak, when he explains that the Athenians take their Gods very seriously, treating them as real entities that can and do interfere in the affairs of mankind. In other words, their beliefs were no less important to them than many people’s religious beliefs are today.

This is not a book I’d necessarily recommend to women readers, as it’s clear that ancient Athens was male chauvinistic in the extreme, which is arguably something else we have inherited from their culture.

Matyszak is very erudite as one would expect from someone who has a doctorate in Roman History from St. John’s College, Oxford, and has also written Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day (obviously a literary trend here). The book is littered with references to words taken from the ancient Greek without our awareness. For example, ‘sycophant’ means ‘fig tell-tale’ and refers to a time when the export of dried figs from Greece was illegal. Another example is ‘symposium’, which could be a philosophical or political discussion attended by someone like Socrates or an orgy of drunken debauchery, or both.

Socrates is referenced no less than 15 times, 3 times more than Plato, but not as often as Athena, who is cited 27 times (not quite double). The point is that I learnt quite a bit about Socrates that I didn’t know beforehand, and Matyszak presents him as someone to be admired: intellectually, morally and courageously.

For a start I didn’t know that Socrates had been a warrior, and even acquitted himself well in battle, fighting a rearguard action ‘like an offended cat’ whilst retreating and, on another occasion, ‘saved the life of the young Alkibiades in a heated battle.’ He was famously henpecked by his wife, Xanthippe, whose attacks extended to the physical, including throwing a chamber pot over his head and ripping off his cloak in the market. According to Matyszak, ‘When asked why he did not return her blows, Socrates replied that Xanthippe was a wife, not a boxing partner.’ One page contains a list of reputed sayings from Socrates, some of which are worth sharing.

An unexamined life is not worth living.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that thing is that I know nothing.

If women were equal to men, they would be superior.

Every man should marry. A good wife will make him happy, a bad wife will make him a philosopher.

I was too honest to be a politician and live.

If everyone’s problems were put in one big pile for everyone to take equal shares, most people would be happy to take their own and run.

But, personally, I think the best saying is the one that seems to epitomise his own credo:

To live with honour in this world, actually be what you try to seem to be.

The Oracle at Delphi (who gets a section to herself) purportedly told a young Socrates to ‘know yourself’ and ‘nothing in excess’, both of which are just as relevant today. She also supposedly said that Socrates was the ‘wisest’ (though not to Socrates) – a claim I’ve heard before.

Socrates, by all accounts, was not charismatic or good-looking and was not materialistic. Yet he was wealthy enough to buy his own armour, which was expected in his day if one was conscripted; and all males between 17 and 59 were apparently. Those that couldn’t afford armour still served.

Matyszak gives a good account of Athen’s democracy, which has resonances with democratic governments of today, even though it’s not as democratic as some people think. Certainly, it would have been a revolutionary concept in its day – roughly 500BC. But the resonances with today is that it was divided between the masses and the aristocrats who mutually distrusted and disliked each other. In today’s world one could replace the aristocrats with corporate leaders and the masses with all the employees that the corporations depend upon.

Back in ancient Athens the masses comprised, not only everyone who produced everything, but also the army, upon which the aristocracy depended. The aristocracy would have overturned the democratic process if they could because they believed that they were meant to rule and the masses were like parasites. This is a point of view that I believe is still held by many people in positions of power today.

To be fair to Matyszak, he describes the process in some detail, so my summary loses some nuance in its brevity. One of the points worth noting is that the assembly was not very tolerant of someone providing expert advice in an area that was not their expertise, even if they were aristocratic. For example, they would expect someone talking about ship-building to be a shipwright.

It’s well known that Socrates fell foul of the assembly. Aristophanes, a celebrated playwright, ‘in a satirical play, The Clouds, [depicted] Socrates (and philosophers in general) as mocking the Gods and teaching dishonest arguments.’ Specifically, ‘Aristophanes has a young man learning how to use sophistic arguments to avoid paying his debts, and is taught by Socrates to disrespect his parents.’

I don’t think anyone knows the full political context of Socrates’ demise, but we can assume that he did not back down from a fight, physically or intellectually. He was, one suspects, someone who was willing to die for his principles.

Does he deserve the epithet, the first philosopher? It needs to be pointed out that the famous Socratic dialogue style was given to us by Plato, though many believe that he learnt this from Socrates himself. Nevertheless, the Socratic dialogues of Plato (the only ones recorded) undoubtedly reflect Plato’s views and not Socrates’, who may or may not have agreed with his student on specific arguments where he is represented.

I’ve always felt that the core feature of philosophy, as we’ve inherited it in the West, is argument, and it seems to me that this particular method of philosophy started with Socrates. Philosophy without argument is prescriptive like the Ten Commandments or the sayings of Confucius. Argument, augmented by analysis, is how I would describe philosophy as it’s practiced today.

Walkaway, a novel

I don’t often review novels on this blog – in fact, I think this may be my third. Actually, the title is exactly as written above, so people know that it is ‘a novel’ (written by Cory Doctorow), as if it could be mistaken for non-fiction – I’m not sure how. To be honest, I’ve never read anything else of his, and I bought it after reading a review, which is something I rarely do. I read a lot more non-fiction than fiction, because it takes a commitment in time that one might rather spend elsewhere.

The review interested me because the novel portrays dystopia and utopia in the same story, both common themes in science fiction. There are many subgenres in sci-fi but there are 2 broad categories: speculative fiction and space opera. I tend to write space opera, though I’d call it science fantasy, because it contains fantasy elements. One of the characters in Walkaway makes the observation that ‘science fiction and fantasy are opposite sides of the same coin’; a deliberate ironic touch by the author: talking about science fiction from within a science fiction novel.

I went straight to my local bookshop after reading the review, because bookshops still exist in my part of the world – in fact, there are 2 about 5 mins from here in opposite directions; both thriving according to their managers. Sometime in the first decade of this century, Borders came to Melbourne with the intention of putting every other bookshop out of business, which is the American business model. Well, Borders are long gone and the locals are still going, so sometimes the American model doesn’t work in Australia, which probably has more to do with our small population base than anything else. I’m not an economist so others may be able to enlighten me.

Back to Walkaway: it’s based on a dichotomy which some may say is reflected in our current political climate, which is why it is worthy of a blog post. But that’s only partly true, even though the book is very political and the author would like to think: visionary. Personally, I‘m not so sure on the last point. One day, I’ll make my own attempt at trying to predict what makes a better world, but I’m the first to admit that most such attempts get it woefully wrong, so I can’t knock the guy for his efforts, and putting it out there for others (like me) to challenge.

Someone (Peter Nicholls) once said that what distinguishes science fiction from fantasy is that it’s all about ‘what-ifs’. This is more true in speculative fiction (a good definition, in fact) than space operas, but it still applies because, almost by definition, sci-fi requires speculative technologies that probably don’t exist. I’ve also remarked elsewhere that science fiction invariably makes some comment about the current social dynamic in which it was written. Not surprisingly, Doctorow’s novel delivers on both of these in spades.

I think I can describe the premise without any spoiler alerts: basically, society has become divided between the ‘zottas’ (corporate lords and their feudal underlings) and ‘walkaways’ (hippies with magic-like technology so they don’t want for anything material). I need to explain a few things, but I should point out up front that I struggled to be engaged for much of its 500 page length. For the first half, it was a series of philosophical discussions interspersed with heavy sex scenes and martial conflict (war-like battles) – yes, I know I’ve done this myself, so I can’t throw stones. Well, actually, I can and I will as you’ll see. What happened halfway through was a fork in the plot which created genuine suspense. It wasn’t till near the end that I got truly emotionally involved and I can’t say how or why without giving things away. Now the fact that it took so long may say more about me than the book: nothing objective is more subjective than art. But enough about me.

At this point in historical time, the world is polarised in a way that I haven’t seen since the 1960s, and to some extent the novel extrapolates that polarisation into the future. The Left and the Right are getting further apart all over the Western world, and Doctorow has taken that to one of its logical conclusions (with significant help from technologies yet to be invented) whereby he’s dressed one up as evil and the other as virtuous. I tend to agree with Sam Harris (I don’t agree with him on much) that the far left is just as dangerous, volatile and violent (perhaps more so) as the far right. But letting that one through to the keeper, Doctorow allows his ‘walkaway’ characters to espouse his particular utopian worldview. Now, as an author, I need to point out that fictional characters don’t always express the views of their creator, and, in fact, an author’s fiction is all the better when he or she keeps his or her opinions out of it. Having said that, Walkaway is unapologetically a polemic, and needs to be assessed as one.

For a start, the novel is full of techno-jargon that the reader has to assimilate and learn as they proceed; basically making assumptions or ignoring it in the hope that it doesn’t get in the way of the plot. The story is set in Canada but it feels distinctly Californian: not just the language and sexual mores, but the whole hippy combined with silicon valley on steroids thing. I’ve visited and worked in California (for about 3 months, 15 years ago) but California as a culture has been broadcast to the English-speaking world, and beyond, since the 1960s, through TV, movies and computer games. Anyway, in a nutshell, Doctorow’s utopia is the counter culture with AI – very advanced AI.

As a plot device, there are very convenient technologies, which allows one to make just about anything, including food, homes, transportation, you name it. The hippy group are called ‘walkaways’ because, not only did they walk away from society, called ‘default’, but they can walk away from anything they’ve built and start all over again. That’s a fundamental premise of this ‘new’ societal order. Another fundamental premise is that theirs is a leaderless society and that there are no ‘snowflakes’ – people who think they are special.

I have philosophical problems with all of this, but then it is a philosophical manifesto dressed up as a good versus evil fiction. Ah, that’s why the author feels compelled to tell us it’s ‘A Novel’ on the front cover.

For a start, I don’t believe in leaderless societies. I’ve never seen a leaderless project of any nature that’s worked. I wrote, way back when I started this blog, a post called Human Nature, where I contended that leadership is a fundamental aspect of humankind, but it only works when those being led are invested in the leadership. In other words, they need to believe that the leader has the requisite skills and expertise to lead in that particular endeavour, whatever it might be: a sporting event, an engineering project, a nation, a theatrical production. I once wrote an essay on leadership, before I had a blog, but, in essence, I argued that a leader is best measured by the successes of those he leads rather than his own successes as an individual. In other words, good leaders bring out the best in people.

I find this whole ‘snowflake’ thing just bullshit, but I admit that’s my own particular perspective based on my own experience. I live and grew up in a society where the greatest ‘sin’ was to have ‘tickets on yourself’. This means that in whatever you do you’re judged on your current endeavours and should not take for granted whatever respect you’ve earned. I think this is very healthy and effectively punishes complacency without throwing away whatever you’ve gained. In walkaway society, the characters tend to conflate ‘snowflakiness’ with leadership.

I mentioned the plot device that allows walkaway characters to magically invent anything they need through ultra-superior technology – I don’t know how else to describe it. I’ve spent a working lifetime in engineering, so I know the true value of infrastructure and our dependency on it. There are so many things we take for granted (like sewerage) that we don’t appreciate what life would be like without them. I mention sewerage, because, of all the utilities, it would have the biggest and earliest impact if they all failed. My point is that, like everything technological that we take for granted, most people have no knowledge of its underpinnings or how they’d cope without it. Doctorow’s plot device attempts to cover this with an internet-like infrastructure called ‘interface’, energy from hydrogen ‘cells’, virtually 3D printable anything, including food if required, and transportation with blimps; all without anything resembling an economy.

I wouldn’t be giving too much away if I mention that one of the technological inventions that the walkaways have is the ability to upload (or download) their consciousness into AI. I think this is called the singularity. I admit that I am sceptical about this particular futuristic prediction, but given that it’s a work of fiction, I look at it as the ‘fantasy’ side of the same coin, that one of the characters conveniently reminded us of. My aversion to this scenario is that, personally, I don’t want immortality, in a machine or any other form. I’ve actually addressed this issue in my own fiction, so it’s there for someone else to take apart if they want to.

To be fair, a lot of people will enjoy this book, and some (if not many) will find my criticisms harsh. Arthur C Clarke once famously said (or wrote) that “any advanced enough technology is indistinguishable from magic” (that may not be verbatim but it’s close enough). All fiction is a blend of fantasy and realism, including mine, and the mix varies depending on the author and the subject. Science fiction novels can explore alternative societies, which is one of the things that attracted me to it when I was young. As I alluded to above, Doctorow’s novel comes across as a philosophical treatise, which I think is flawed, and it’s completely dependent on technology that’s indistinguishable from magic.

What’s really happening in Syria

I wasn’t even sure I could write a post about this, but it’s too important to ignore. Earlier this week I watched an investigative programme into the tens of thousands of people who have ‘disappeared’ under President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It is shocking almost beyond belief, reminiscent of documentaries I’ve seen on the holocaust under Nazi Germany. More than anything else, it made me aware of how our fortunes, or misfortunes, are firstly and foremostly determined by our birth, which is contrary to what we are all led to believe; at least for those of us who were born into a Western society.

What struck me was how intellectuals, in particular, seem to have been targeted. To give one example, a woman who was a doctor and a chess champion has disappeared with her entire family, including small children. Another example, is a dental student who was tortured and killed. In fact, there are over 6,700 photos of young men who have been tortured to death, all documented and tagged by a bureaucracy obsessed with following rules even when the documentation is self-incriminatory.

I could not help but put myself in the shoes of the victims, realising that the only difference between them and me is where I was born. There is enough evidence – 600,000 pages – to indict Assad on crimes against humanity, but the UN is powerless because both Russia and China have veto rights and together have blocked any move to prepare a criminal case against Syria’s governing regime.

It goes to show that in the 21st Century you can get away with the most heinous crimes if you have enough power and enough influence on the global stage.

This is not a lengthy post, because words alone cannot convey the burden of injustice that the world is witnessing in virtual silence.

Watch this short video if you can access it.

When the patients take over the asylum

Oscar-winning filmmaker and left-wing provocateur, Michael Moore, has suggested that Trump’s occupation of the White House has been akin to a coup. It should be pointed out that Moore actually predicted Trump’s win when others were dismissive. Personally, I find it difficult to give Trump credit for any nuanced strategic thinking. I think he’s just a completely inexperienced and incompetent politician with a severe case of power-gone-to-his-head syndrome.

What is indisputable (at a time when facts are disputed every day) is that Trump and his closest advisor, Stephen Bannon, have taken the reigns of the presidency with unprecedented zeal and dare-I-say-it, recklessness. Recklessness, because they are issuing executive orders without consulting the parties that have to enact them and with no apparent regard to the consequences at home and abroad. Stephen Bannon, like Trump, has no experience in political office, but unlike Trump wasn’t elected. He’s been criticised for sexism and racism, even white supremacy, and is best known as the executive chairman of Breitbart news, website for the ‘Alt-Right’. He is currently Trump’s ‘Chief Strategist’, and is widely believed to be the man behind the new executive orders banning Muslims from specific countries.

As an outsider (from Australia) it’s almost beyond belief that a new leader (Prime Minister or President) can come into office and, within days, start drafting new laws with immediate effect. Trump gives the impression that he has little regard for the ‘rule of law’ in his country, which was a key note of Obama’s farewell speech, who had no idea that this very issue would be put to the test by his successor. In fact, it seems that Trump’s key advisor, Bannon, who was not even elected by the people, is the man making laws, literally on the run.

When the acting Attorney General (Sally Yates) with over 27 years experience, defies a Presidential executive order because she believes it’s unconstitutional, then maybe people in high places should take notice. Obviously, I’m no expert on American constitutional law, but I imagine that issuing executive orders that are legally dubious could lead down the road to impeachment. It’s early days, so Trump and Bannon may temper their newfound egotistical powers, but neither give the impression of having that inclination. If they continue to issue executive orders that challenge the constitution or even the intent of the constitution, then eventually Congress is going to say enough is enough. After all, isn’t that the purported role of Congress?

As I say, I’m no expert, but one doesn’t have to be an expert to note that in his first 10 days of Office, Trump has pushed the envelope in abusing his newfound presidential powers like no one before him. Another example of overt abuse of presidential authority is the gagging of government scientists, even on social media; tantamount to declaring war on science.

Trump is like the school bully who has been made school captain – no, he’s actually been made school principal, if one extends the metaphor accurately. He is a man who boasts about groping women, who ridicules and humiliates his opponents and detractors, who is a serial liar and who foments hate towards Muslims, Mexicans and refugees. How did a man with these qualities get elected President when we knew all this before he was elected? I don’t completely blame the American people; after all he lost the ‘popular’ vote by 2.9 million. But I do wonder how many, who stayed away from the polling booth, now regret it.

There have been 2 side-effects to Trump’s presidency, one of which was expected and one less obvious. It was reported that a mosque was burned down in Texas (the congregation of the Victoria Islamic Center), which highlights the obvious side-effect of Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric. But the local Jewish community has offered its synagogue as a place of worship for the Muslims while their mosque can be rebuilt. This is the unexpected second side-effect of Trump’s policies.

I think Americans are generally compassionate, generous and accepting. I lived and worked in America before, during and after 9/11, so I witnessed first hand the inherent optimism of the American people in the face of adversity. I think Obama’s professed optimism in future generations of Americans, that he expressed in his farewell address, is well founded. I think Trump will bring out the best and the worst in the American people, but the best will prevail.

Meanwhile, in the face of this new authoritarian leadership of the so-called free world (isn’t that an oxymoron?) we could do a lot worse than follow the advice of former Dr Who actor, David Tennant.

Addendum: Yes, I've changed the third paragraph.

The smartest man in the room

In my last post I made passing mention of Barry Jones, who is now 84 and has just written a book, Knowledge Courage Leadership. When I was a kid, growing up in the newly discovered and infinite possibilities of ‘television-land’, Barry Jones was a TV quiz champion on Pick-a-Box, sponsored by BP and hosted by Bob Dyer, an ex-pat American. In the days (decades) before the internet and Google, Barry had a truly encyclopaedic mind, and when he entered virtually every Australian’s living room, he was quite literally the smartest man in the room.

Many years later, when he published Dictionary of World Biography (in the late 80s) someone I worked with at the time, who was widely read and a self-imagined scholar, told me that Barry Jones was a 'savant', which he meant in the most derogatory sense. In other words, whilst Barry could summon facts at will, he had no analytical skills and no real intelligence worthy of the name. Looking back, I would put that down to intellectual jealousy, but, even at the time, I thought his observation very wide of the mark.

The point is, having read his latest offering, I think the sobriquet, ‘smartest person in the room’, still stands, especially compared to the current crop of politicians we have attempting to govern our country. At 84, he displays more vision than anyone currently involved in politics in Australia. For a start, he’s pretty scathing about the nature of what he calls ‘retail politics’, where the only criterion for a decision or a policy is if it can be ‘sold’ to the electorate. In the so-called ‘post-truth’ era, most vividly demonstrated by Donald Trump’s recent election campaign, ‘byte-sized’ slogans overrun and out-rate attempts at evidence-based explanations. In fact, he uses the word, ‘evidence’, quite a lot in his own preferred version of political discourse.

He gives a summing up of the political leaders in this country that he has known or met or worked with, giving a subjective yet honest appraisal. In his time in politics, he was told that he didn’t have a ‘killer instinct’, which means he could never engage in character-assassination, which has become increasingly an integral component of the ‘game’ as it is played in Australia. In fact, it’s probably the most important part of the game if you have any aspirations of party leadership.

He then goes on to do the same for a number of world leaders, whom he has personally had some engagement with; some more so than others. At the end of the book, he gives a rather scholarly and informed analysis of the French Revolution, explaining, as he does, why he considers it unique in the history of Western civilization and why it is still relevant to current global politics. It basically illustrates how precariously our civilised existence is when political power and economic subsistence are no longer in balance. I’m probably doing him an injustice in attempting to sum up his treatise with a one-liner; but that was the message I received. It’s happened in a number of revolutions, when paranoia and violence combine to completely destabilise a nation and drive it into civil war. There are examples in evidence right now, not to mention the ones from last century.

But the most important part of the book for me, was a chapter or section, titled: Evidence v. Opinion / Feeling / Interest; the attack on scientific method. It was an address he gave, apparently, at the Australian National University for the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) on 2 July 2014. He starts off with a quote from Don Watson, heavily laden with sarcasm:

The people are sovereign… to hell with the sovereignty of scientific facts, popular opinion will determine if the Earth is warming and what to do about it, just as it determined the answer to polio and the movement of the planets.

As anyone knows, who is a regular reader of this blog, this is a subject close to my heart. But Jones gives it a perspective that I hadn’t considered before. He points out that as the number of university graduates has increased in Australia and the information revolution exploded via the internet, there has been a ‘dumbing down’ in areas concerning legitimate science, evidence-based knowledge and the consequential political decision-making that should be informed by such learning.

To quote: Paradoxically, the Knowledge Revolution has been accompanied by a persistent ‘dumbing down’, with IT reinforcing the personal and immediate, rather than the complex, long-term and remote.

Barry Jones was Science Minister from 1983 to 1990 (the longest serving in Australian politics) and he maintains, in his own words: ‘an intense interest in science/research and its implications for public policy and politics generally.’

He wrote a book in 1982, Sleepers Awake, which I must confess I haven’t read, even though I always took an interest in what he said in the media. According to his own appraisal: ‘Three decades on, my central thesis stands up pretty well.’ And his ‘central thesis’ was ‘trying to predict the social, economic and personal impact of technological change, [but] in 1982 I was on my own.’ Note that I alluded to Barry’s predictions in my last post (Political Irony).

What makes Barry Jones exceptional in the world of politics is his grasp of the enormous gap between political expediency and reality. Yes, reality. I will allow Barry’s own words to illustrate my point:

I can claim to have put six or seven issues on the national agenda, but I started talking about them 10 > 15 > 20 years before audiences, and my political colleagues were ready to listen. In politics, timing is (almost) everything and the best time to raise an issue is about ten minutes before its importance becomes blindingly obvious.

We live in an era when science totally governs our lives, yet it is so subliminal, so ubiquitous, so everyday common, that we fail to appreciate that fundamental fact. Most of the public are science illiterate in the sense that they see absolutely no value in acquiring scientific knowledge. The argument is that you don’t need to know the laws of thermodynamics to drive a car – in fact, you don’t need to know anything technical about the dynamics of a vehicle to operate it.

This is a fair assessment as far as it goes, but when it comes to making decisions about issues like climate change or vaccinations or education of scientifically validated theories like evolution, then a large percentage of populations in well-educated societies, are plain ignorant.

The problem is, as Barry points out, in far more articulate and erudite prose than I can muster, politicians, who are often as ignorant as their electorate, exploit this shortcoming by giving slogan-bearing opinions in lieu of evidence-based facts, knowing that emotion will always win over rationality if the relevant emotional buttons are pushed.

He laments the fact that complex explanations of complex phenomena are considered simply ‘too hard’, and then, to illustrate his point, provides an entire chapter on the explanation of climate change and its history, going back to the 19th Century and even earlier. He gives the example (amongst others) of Tony Abbot (before he became Prime Minister of Australia, when he was Leader of the Opposition) stating: ‘carbon dioxide was invisible, weightless and could not be measured’. In fact, carbon dioxide is not weightless and is easy to measure. We know from chemistry that ‘On burning, each tonne of coal produces 3.67 tonnes of CO₂… (a confirmation of Lavoisier)’. This is a prime example of a science-illiterate politician (a future PM, nonetheless) exploiting a largely science-illiterate voting public.

Jones makes the salient point that ‘Not to choose is to choose’, citing ‘French statesman and diplomat Charles de Talleyrand (1754-1838)… failure to act in a crisis has the same effect as an intervention: in practice there is no neutrality.’

I know, and I imagine Barry Jones knows as well, that the people who are stubbornly opposed to climate change are not persuaded by facts or evidence and often provide their own facts and evidence to make their point. Anyone who has studied science, even to the rudimentary level that I have, knows that science is complex, not easy to understand or communicate and can rarely be broken down into byte-sized chunks for easy digestion. Nevertheless, as I alluded to earlier and in other posts, I’m often struck by the obvious contradiction between our total reliance on science and our ability to ignore or obfuscate its message when it conflicts with our ideological agendas. Science is our best tool for predicting the future and for planning for future generations on this planet, yet very few politicians, not to mention commentators in the media, give science more than lip service in providing this essential role. One of the problems is that its message is often negative and pessimistic, which is when we should take most heed, yet politicians can’t win elections with negative messages. As a consequence, we only hear the negative message when its effects have become so obvious it can no longer be ignored.

Political Irony

There’s a strange phenomenon happening worldwide (in the Western world, at least) whereby centrist politics is not working, or should I say: not winning. Politics naturally divides itself into 2 because the population naturally divides itself into 2: right leaning and left leaning, though there’s a broad spectrum.

There is evidence that our genetic makeup contributes to which way we lean, possibly even more than environmental factors, which would explain why there seems to be roughly an even divide and why almost all societies seem to be split between the two. It comes down to personality traits as I’ve discussed once before, albeit a long time ago. Basically, conservatives are more conscientious, arguably less impulsive and more resistant to change. I know that’s being a bit stereotypical but studies pretty well support that view. Liberal-minded individuals are more open to change and diverse ideas. The thing is that it would seem functional societies need both types: people to challenge the status quo and people to maintain the status quo.

But recent events in Britain, America, parts of Europe, and here in Australia, indicate that politics is becoming more polarised, virtually worldwide, with people on both sides of the political divide becoming disenchanted with the status quo. The status quo has been to go for the centre in order to grab the highest number of people on both sides, but we’ve seen a clear desertion of the centre when it comes to polling and actual elections.

I’m not an economist or a political commentator, but I am a participant in the process and an observer. I should say at the outset, something that I don’t hide, which is my political leanings are definitely towards the left, so that will have a subjective influence on my particular interpretation of events.

I don’t believe that there is a single factor, but a confluence of factors, some of which I’ll try and elaborate on. However, I think that we are going through a socio-economic change not unlike the one that must have been experienced during the industrial revolution, only this time it’s a technological revolution caused by automation. Basically, automation is putting people out of jobs in the Western world, and I would suggest that this is only the beginning. I know this, partly because I work in the industry where it’s taking place: industrial engineering. But I can remember Barry Jones, Australia’s first science minister, foretelling this coming ‘revolution’ some 30 or more years ago. Barry Jones was most unusual in that he was probably more scientist than politician; certainly, he was a scholar of the highest calibre, which made him something of an oddity in politics.

I would argue that our economic paradigms are yet to catch up with what’s happening in the workplace, not that I’m claiming to have any solutions. But if things stay as they are then the divide between those with jobs and those without is going to become greater as technological advances in robotics and data management become more ubiquitous. So what about all the jobs going offshore? Yes, cheap labour is being exploited in countries with lax OHS regulations and where the cost of living is cheap. But, despite what Donald Trump told his voters, manufacturing has increased in America, not decreased (over the last decade) while unemployment has gone up. How do I know this? Chas Licciardello, the nerd on Planet America showed the graphics on one of the shows he co-hosted with John Barron, explaining that this was due to automation and not offshore labour, otherwise the manufacturing graphic would have declined with the employment graphic.

But, as I alluded to earlier in my discourse, there are other factors involved, not least the still lingering effects of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis), which, need I remind anyone, actually started in America with the sub-prime mortgage debacle. So that also had its biggest impact on the least affluent in society, or most economically vulnerable, and they are the ones who are having the biggest say in our collective democracies. We should not be surprised that they feel betrayed by the political system and that they want to turn back the clock to a time when jobs weren’t so scarce and they weren’t at the mercy of the banks.

Someone once said (no idea who it was) that when times get tough, economically, societies have a tendency to turn against their fellows. People look for someone to blame and we have witch-hunts (which actually were the consequence of dire circumstances in medieval times). One only has to look at pre-war Europe when Jews were demonised and blamed for everyone else’s economic plight. John Maynard Keynes warned after the armistice deal at the end of World War 1, that it would bankrupt Germany and start another war, which, of course, we now all know it did.

And now we are in similar, if not exactly the same, circumstances where an election candidate can gain substantial ‘populist’ votes for promising to stop immigrants from taking our jobs and undermining our society with un-Western cultural mores. Protectionism and isolationism is suddenly attractive when globalism has never been more lucrative. And it is the right wing of politics, and often, the far right, in whatever country, that has had the most appeal to those who feel disenfranchised and essentially cheated by the system. No where is this more apparent, than in Donald Trump’s recent win in the American presidential election. He has demonstrated just how divided America currently is and the division is largely between the big cities and the rural areas, just like it is in Australia and also England with the recent Brexit vote. It’s the people in outlying regions that feel most affected by the economic crisis – this is a worldwide phenomenon in the Western world. It’s a wakeup call to all mainstream political parties that they can’t leave these people behind or think they can win elections just by appealing to city voters.

However, as alluded to in the title, there is an irony here – in fact, there are a few ironies. Firstly, all politicians know, including the ones who don’t admit it, that immigration, in the long term, is good for the economy. Countries like Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand are dependent on immigration for their continued economic growth. There is a limit to economic growth by population growth - and whilst that’s another issue which will need to be addressed some time before this century is over - it’s not what the current political climate is about. The other irony, particularly in America, is that Trump will promote deregulation of commerce, which is what created the financial crisis, which is what spawned the disenfranchised and unemployed workers, who voted him into office.

There is a further irony in that many of these populist leaders – certainly in Australia and America – have an almost virulent opposition to science when it doesn’t suit their ideological agenda. This is particularly true when it comes to climate science. Why is this ironic? Because science has created all the affluence, the infrastructure and the extraordinary communication convenience that everyone in the West considers their birthright.

A recent article in New Scientist (3Dec16, pp.29-32) claimed that people on both sides of an ideological divide will use whatever science they believe to bolster their position. This is called confirmation bias, and we are all guilty. But the issue with climate science is that many on the right believe that it’s a conspiracy by scientists to keep themselves in a job. Most people find this ludicrous, but anyone who is a climate-change sceptic (at least in Australia) believes this with absolute conviction. One Australian politician (recently elected into the Senate) claimed: “I know science fiction when I see it”. How could you argue with that? Not with ‘science facts’, obviously.

Somehow, all these issues get tied to the opposition of gay rights and gay marriage, which one can understand in the classic conservative versus liberal political arena. What this has in common is that it’s a desire to turn back the clock to when things were simpler: men were men and women were women; and marriage was between sexes and not with same sexes. So Trump’s slogan: “Let’s make America great again”; is also a call to turn back the clock by bringing in protectionism and stopping immigration from taking jobs and losing jobs offshore. When Americans made American cars for Americans to drive and didn’t import them from Japan or Europe because they were more fuel-efficient. In fact, he’d love to go back to when fossil fuels were easy to access and there was no limit on their supply. Addiction to oil is arguably the hardest addiction for Western nations to overcome, and, until we do, we really will be living in the past.

But the gay marriage issue is like a marker in the political sand, because one day, like abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage, it will become the status quo and it will be valued and defended equally by both sides of politics. We are in a transition: politically, culturally, technologically and economically.

Arrival; a masterclass in storytelling

Four movie reviews in one year; maybe I should change the title of my blog – no, just kidding. Someone (either Jake Wilson or Paul Byrnes from The Age) gave it the ultimate accolade: ‘At last, a science fiction movie with a brain.’ They also gave it 3.5 stars but ended their review with: ‘[the leads: Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner] have the chops to keep us watching even when the narrative starts to wobble.’ So they probably wouldn’t agree with me calling it a masterclass.

It’s certainly not perfect – I’m not sure I’ve seen the perfect movie yet – but it’s clever on more than one level. I’m always drawn to good writing in a movie, which is something most people are not even aware of. It was based on a book, whose author escaped me as a couple in front of me got up to leave just as the name came up on the screen. But I have Google, so I can tell you that the screenplay was written by Eric Heisserer, and Ted Chiang wrote the novella, “Story of Your Life”, upon which it is based. French-Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve has also made Prisoners and Sicario, neither of which I’ve seen, but Sicario is highly acclaimed.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the music and soundscape, which really adds another dimension to this movie. I noticed that beginning and end scores were by Max Richter, whom I admire in the contemporary classical music scene. Though the overall music score is credited to Johann Johannsson. Some of the music reminded of Tibetan music with its almost subterranean tones. Australia also gets a bit of 'coverage', if that's the right word, though not always in a flattering manner. Forest Whitaker's character reminds us how we all but committed genocide against the Aboriginal people.

I haven’t read the book, but I’m willing to give credit to both writers for producing a ‘science fiction story with a brain’. Science fiction has a number of subgenres: the human diaspora into interstellar space; time travel; alien worlds; parallel universes; artificial intelligence; dystopian fiction, utopian fiction and the list goes on, with various combinations. The title alone tells us that this is an Alien encounter on Earth, but the movie keeps us guessing as to whether it’s an invasion or just a curious interloper or something else altogether.

I’ve written elsewhere that narrative tension is one of the essential writing skills and this story has it on many levels. To give one example without giving the plot away, there is a sequence of narrative events where we think we know what’s going to happen, with the suspense ramping up while we wait for what we expect to happen to happen, then something completely unexpected happens, which is totally within the bounds of possibility, therefore believable. In some respects this sums up the whole movie because all through it we are led to believe one thing only to learn we are witnessing something else. It’s called a reversal, which I’m not always a fan of, but this one is more than just a clever twist for the sake of being clever. Maybe that’s what the reviewer meant by ‘…when the narrative starts to wobble’. I don’t know. I have to confess I wasn’t completely sold, yet it was essential to the story and it works within the context of the story, so it’s part of the masterclass.

One of the things that struck me right from the beginning is that we see the movie almost in first person – though, not totally, as at least one cutaway scene requires the absence of the protagonist. I would not be surprised if Ted Chiang wrote his short story in the first person. I don’t know what nationality Ted Chiang is, but I assume he is of Chinese extraction, and the Chinese are major players in this movie.

Communication is at the core of this film, both plot and subplot, and Amy Adams’ character (Louise Banks) makes the pertinent point in a bit of expositional dialogue that was both relevant to the story and relevant to what makes us human: that language, to a large extent, determines how we think because, by the very nature of our brains, we are limited in what we can think by the language that we think in. That’s not what she said but that was the lesson I took from it.

I’ve made the point before, though possibly not on this blog, that science fiction invariably has something to say about the era in which it was written and this movie is no exception. Basically, we see how paranoia can be a dangerous contagion, as if we need reminding. We are also reminded how wars and conflicts bring out the best and worst in humanity with the worst often being the predominant player.

How xenophobia is undermining our democracy

Today, in Australia, we are having a Federal election and there is a very large elephant in the room.  Tony Abbott (former conservative Prime Minister, who was ousted by his own party) made the point, a couple of days out from polling day (today) that there were 2 issues that were never discussed or debated in the election campaign. One was so-called ‘border protection’ and the other was something I’ve since forgotten, so obviously not as important to me as it was to Tony. In a perverse sort of way, he is right: border protection is all about how we treat asylum seekers. It’s a euphemism for offshore detention on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. The reason that it was never raised is because both of the major parties are too ashamed to mention it and, besides, everyone knows that refugees can’t vote. As a consequence, for the first time in my life I refuse to vote for either of the major parties.

It’s a pity we can’t time travel - Dr Who style into the future - so we can see how future generations judge Australia in this page of our history. I’m pretty sure it won’t be flattering.  Pauline Hanson’s political skills are rudimentary at best and her political party has floundered, imploded and all but self-destructed, yet her influence on Australian refugee policy will go down in history as an example of how democracy can bring out the worst characteristics of humanity and conquer compassion, tolerance and charitable instincts. Her ego must be currently inflated beyond the bounds of all reason when she looks to America and sees that one of the contenders for the most powerful position in the free world holds the same contempt for outsiders as she does.

Not that Australia is in any position to admonish Trump when we have the most draconian, morally bankrupt, human rights-defying, democracy-eroding policy towards asylum seekers in the Western world. Why democracy-eroding, you may ask. Journalistic freedom is the measure of any democracy anywhere in the world. When we hide activities, involving human rights, from the media under the guise of national security, democracy is weakened. The Government does not want us to know what’s happening on Manus Island or Nauru and have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the Australian public in the dark. It’s a human rights catastrophe, and if I’m wrong then let the media report on it. Where else in the so-called free world can health professionals be threatened with jail for reporting on human rights abuses by agents of their own government. This is not democracy. What makes this law so perverse is that health professionals have a legal obligation to do the exact opposite when it comes to abuses on mainland Australia.

How have both major parties found themselves stranded in this moral wasteland called offshore detention? Some believe it started with Tampa (see links below) some 15 years ago under Prime Minister John Howard. Tim Costello, a Baptist minister and head of World Vision, made the point on a television panel a few months ago that the last 15 years politicisation of asylum seekers in Australia has been ‘toxic’. Tim’s brother, Peter, of course was Treasurer of that same government. Tim quipped that dinner table conversations could be awkward.

But detention of asylum seekers started under a Labor government before Howard's time, under Prime Minister Hawke (if memory serves me right) with refugees from Cambodia when it was trying to recover from the Khmer Rouge.

Former conservative Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, was so disgusted with Howard’s policies on this matter that he took the unprecedented step of resigning from the party. This is what happens when the masses lead the government instead of the government showing leadership. In my lifetime I’ve seen 3 waves of refugee immigration and it always creates insecurity and lends itself to some degree of intolerance, but in the past, governments appreciated the economic benefit that immigration can bring. We have an immigration policy that goes largely unnoticed, but the demonisation of ‘boat people’ allows the government to practice policies that are unconscionable, unconstitutional and that would be rejected in a heartbeat if they were practiced on anyone we cared for.


A more detailed analysis of this policy, within its historical and political context can be found here and here.