The latest issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 97; July/August 2013) has as its theme ‘The Self’ but there are a couple of articles that touch on ethics and morality, including one that looks at moral relativism (Julien Beillard, pp. 23-4). In a nutshell, Beillard claims that moral relativism is ‘unintelligible’, because, to the moral relativist, all moral stances are equally true and equally false, which is patently ‘absurd’. I know it’s unfair to reduce a 2 page argument to a one-liner, but it’s not the direction I wish to take, albeit I think he has a point.
In another article, Joel Marks (p.52) expounds on 3 books he’s written on the subject of Ethics without Morals (one of the titles) without actually arguing his case, so I can’t comment, let alone analyse his position, without reading at least one of them. The reason I raise it at all is because he briefly discusses the idea of ‘morality [being] independent of religion’. Marks calls himself an ‘amoralist’, but again, this is not the direction I wish to take.
Moral relativism is one of the most abused terms one finds on blogs like mine, especially by religious fundamentalists. It’s a reflex action for many of them when faced with an atheist or a non-theist. (I make the distinction, because non-theists don’t particularly care, whereas atheists tend to take a much harder stance towards religion in general.) The point is that fundamentalists take immediate refuge in the belief that all atheists must be moral relativists, which is just nonsense. To paraphrase Marks (out of context) they believe that ‘secular moralists …are on much less secure ground than traditional theism, because it purports to issue commands… without a commander (God).’ (parentheses in the original.)
The point I’d make, in response to this, is that people project their morality onto their God rather than the other way round. For example, homophobes have a homophobic God, and they will find the relevant text to support this view, disregarding the obvious point that the text was written by a human, just as mortal as themselves. Others of the same faith, but a different disposition towards homosexuality, will find relevant texts to support the exact opposite point of view. This was recently demonstrated on this TV panel discussion, involving opposing theologians from the Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam (some were audience members and one was video-linked from California). And one has to ask the obvious question, given the context of this discussion: is this moral relativism in action?
The point is that most moral attitudes and beliefs are cultural, and that includes all the religious ones as well. And like all cultural phenomena, morality evolves, so what was taboo generations ago, can become the social norm, and gay marriage is a good example of a social norm in transition. It also highlights the point that conservative voices like to keep the status quo (some even want to turn the clock back) while radical voices tend to advocate change, which we all recognise, politically, as being right and left. But over generations the radical becomes the status quo, and eventually conservatives defend what was once considered radical, which is how morality evolves.
I would argue that no one ever practices moral relativism – I’ve never met one and I never expect to. Why? Because everyone has a moral stance on virtually every moral question. In effect, this is exactly the point that Beillard makes, albeit in a more roundabout way. The real question is where do they get that stance? For conservatives, the answer is tradition and often religion. But there are liberal theologians as well, so religion is very flexible, completely dependent on the subjective perspective of its adherents. In a secular pluralist society, like the one I live in, there are many diverse moral views (on topics like gay marriage) as the abovementioned TV discussion demonstrates. Abortion is another example that can be delineated pretty much between conservatives and liberals. Are these examples of moral relativism? No, they are examples of diverse cultural norms and topics of debate, as they should be. Some of these issues are decided, for the society as a whole, in Parliaments, where democratically elected members can discuss and argue, sometimes being allowed a conscience vote. In other words, they don’t have to follow party lines. Gay marriage is an issue that should be allowed a conscience vote, though one conservative party, in our country, still refuses. As Penny Wong, a gay member of parliament and a mother, says in the above debate: the issue will only be resolved when both major parties allow a conscience vote. This is democracy in action.
So moral relativism has to be looked at in the context of an evolving culture where mores of the past, like abolition and women’s right to vote, have become the accepted norm, even for conservatives. The same will eventually occur for gay marriage, as we are seeing the transition occurring all over the world. There really is no such thing as moral relativism, except as a catch-phrase for religious conservatives to attempt to sideline their philosophical opponents. No one is a moral relativist for as long as they hold a philosophical position on a moral issue, and that includes most of us.
Addendum: This is Penny Wong's speech to parliament that effectively demonstrates the evolvement of social norms. It says a lot about Australian politics that she's effectively talking to an empty chamber.
Philosophy, at its best, challenges our long held views, such that we examine them more deeply than we might otherwise consider.
Paul P. Mealing
- Paul P. Mealing
- Check out my book, ELVENE. Available as e-book and as paperback (print on demand, POD). Also this promotional Q&A on-line.
Sunday 18 August 2013
Monday 29 July 2013
Why the economic growth paradigm is past its use-by date
Last week’s New Scientist (20 July 2013, pp.42-5) had an intriguing article on the relationship between demographics and economic health in various countries. It’s not the first time that they’ve featured this little known aspect of political and economic interaction, but this article was better than the previous one, because the interactions they describe are more obviously perceived. Basically, the median age of a country is a determining factor in that country’s economic future.
Economic growth is related to burgeoning population growth, which led to the so-called 'Asian Tigers' in the 1980s and the huge spurt in post-war economic growth in Western countries, as well as Japan. Many of these countries, like Japan and much of Europe, are now economically stagnant due to ageing populations, so you can see the relationship between median age and economic growth. The author, Fred Pearce, claims that even China’s against-the-trend growth will be stymied by their ‘one child’ policy in coming generations.
But stability is also an issue and ageing populations are more politically stable, whereas youthful countries trying to embrace democracy (like Egypt and Afghanistan) are struggling and unlikely to succeed in the near future.
Countries like the US, Canada and Australia depend on immigration to maintain economic growth. In Australia, it is ridiculous that our economic health is always gauged by new home construction, which is obviously dependent on sustained population growth (only yesterday, the flag went up that housing had slumped therefore we were in trouble). It’s ridiculous because ‘sustained population growth’ has limits, and those limits are beginning to be experienced in many Western countries, especially Europe.
The problem, which is readily understood in this context, is that economic growth is married to a youthful burgeoning population without limits, which obviously can’t be sustained indefinitely. Yet all our so-called ‘future’ policies ignore this fact of nature. It’s ironic that conservative politics are determined to keep everything the same, yet it’s these very policies that will create the greatest change the planet has ever seen, and not necessarily for the better.
Economic growth is related to burgeoning population growth, which led to the so-called 'Asian Tigers' in the 1980s and the huge spurt in post-war economic growth in Western countries, as well as Japan. Many of these countries, like Japan and much of Europe, are now economically stagnant due to ageing populations, so you can see the relationship between median age and economic growth. The author, Fred Pearce, claims that even China’s against-the-trend growth will be stymied by their ‘one child’ policy in coming generations.
But stability is also an issue and ageing populations are more politically stable, whereas youthful countries trying to embrace democracy (like Egypt and Afghanistan) are struggling and unlikely to succeed in the near future.
Countries like the US, Canada and Australia depend on immigration to maintain economic growth. In Australia, it is ridiculous that our economic health is always gauged by new home construction, which is obviously dependent on sustained population growth (only yesterday, the flag went up that housing had slumped therefore we were in trouble). It’s ridiculous because ‘sustained population growth’ has limits, and those limits are beginning to be experienced in many Western countries, especially Europe.
The problem, which is readily understood in this context, is that economic growth is married to a youthful burgeoning population without limits, which obviously can’t be sustained indefinitely. Yet all our so-called ‘future’ policies ignore this fact of nature. It’s ironic that conservative politics are determined to keep everything the same, yet it’s these very policies that will create the greatest change the planet has ever seen, and not necessarily for the better.
Friday 19 July 2013
Writing’s 3 Essential Skills
I’ve written on this topic before and even given classes in it, as well as talks, but this is a slightly different approach. Basically, I’m looking at the fundamental skills one has to acquire or develop in order to write fiction, as opposed to non-fiction. In a nutshell, they are the ability to create character, the ability to create emotions and the ability to create narrative tension. None of these are required for ordinary writing but they are all requisite skills for fiction. I’ll address them in reverse order.
Some people may prefer the term ‘narrative drive’ to ‘narrative tension’ but the word tension is more appropriate in my view. Tension is antithetical to resolution and has a comparable role in music which is less obvious. Narrative tension can be manifest in many forms, but it’s essential to fiction because it’s what motivates the reader to turn the page. A novel without narrative tension won’t be read. You can have tension between characters, in many forms: sexual, familial, or between colleagues or between protagonist and antagonist. Tension can be created by jeopardy, which is suspense, or by anticipation or by knowledge semi-revealed. In a word, this is called drama. And, of course, all these forms can be combined to occur in parallel or in series, and have different spans over the duration of the story. Tension requires resolution and the resolution is no less important a skill than the tension itself. Ideally, you want tension in some form on every page.
Emotion is what art is all about, and the greatest exemplar is music. Music is arguably the purest art form because music is the most emotive of art forms. No where is this more apparent than in cinema, where it is employed so successfully that the audience, for the most part, is unaware of its presence, yet it manipulates you emotionally as much as anything on the screen. In novels, the writer doesn’t have access to this medium, yet he or she is equally adept at manipulating emotions. And, once again, this is an essential skill, otherwise the reader will find the story lifeless. Novels can make you laugh, make you cry, make you horny, make you scared and make you excited, sometimes all in the same book.
Normally, I start any discussion on writing with character, because it is the most essential skill of all. I can’t tell you how to create characters – it’s one of those skills that comes with practice – I only know that I do it without thinking about it too much. For me, when I’m writing, the characters take on a life of their own, and if they don’t, I know I’m wasting my time. But there is one thing I’ll say about characters, based on other reading I’ve done, and that is if I’m not sympathetic to the protagonist(s) I find the story an ordeal. If the protagonist is depressed, I get depressed; if the protagonist is an angry young man, I find myself avoiding his company; if the protagonist is a pretentious prat, I find myself wishing they’d have an accident. It’s a very skilled writer who can engage you with uninviting characters, and I’m not one of them.
There is a link between character and emotion, because the character is the channel through which you feel emotion. A story is told through its characters, including description and exposition. If you want to describe something or explain something do it through the characters' senses and introspection.
Finally, why is crime the most popular form of fiction? Because crime often involves a mystery or a puzzle and invariably involves suspense, which is a guaranteed form of narrative tension. The best crime fiction (for example, Scandinavian) involves psychologically authentic characters, and that will always separate good fiction from mediocre. We like complex drawn characters, because they feel like people we know, and their evolvement is one of the reasons we return to the page.
Some people may prefer the term ‘narrative drive’ to ‘narrative tension’ but the word tension is more appropriate in my view. Tension is antithetical to resolution and has a comparable role in music which is less obvious. Narrative tension can be manifest in many forms, but it’s essential to fiction because it’s what motivates the reader to turn the page. A novel without narrative tension won’t be read. You can have tension between characters, in many forms: sexual, familial, or between colleagues or between protagonist and antagonist. Tension can be created by jeopardy, which is suspense, or by anticipation or by knowledge semi-revealed. In a word, this is called drama. And, of course, all these forms can be combined to occur in parallel or in series, and have different spans over the duration of the story. Tension requires resolution and the resolution is no less important a skill than the tension itself. Ideally, you want tension in some form on every page.
Emotion is what art is all about, and the greatest exemplar is music. Music is arguably the purest art form because music is the most emotive of art forms. No where is this more apparent than in cinema, where it is employed so successfully that the audience, for the most part, is unaware of its presence, yet it manipulates you emotionally as much as anything on the screen. In novels, the writer doesn’t have access to this medium, yet he or she is equally adept at manipulating emotions. And, once again, this is an essential skill, otherwise the reader will find the story lifeless. Novels can make you laugh, make you cry, make you horny, make you scared and make you excited, sometimes all in the same book.
Normally, I start any discussion on writing with character, because it is the most essential skill of all. I can’t tell you how to create characters – it’s one of those skills that comes with practice – I only know that I do it without thinking about it too much. For me, when I’m writing, the characters take on a life of their own, and if they don’t, I know I’m wasting my time. But there is one thing I’ll say about characters, based on other reading I’ve done, and that is if I’m not sympathetic to the protagonist(s) I find the story an ordeal. If the protagonist is depressed, I get depressed; if the protagonist is an angry young man, I find myself avoiding his company; if the protagonist is a pretentious prat, I find myself wishing they’d have an accident. It’s a very skilled writer who can engage you with uninviting characters, and I’m not one of them.
There is a link between character and emotion, because the character is the channel through which you feel emotion. A story is told through its characters, including description and exposition. If you want to describe something or explain something do it through the characters' senses and introspection.
Finally, why is crime the most popular form of fiction? Because crime often involves a mystery or a puzzle and invariably involves suspense, which is a guaranteed form of narrative tension. The best crime fiction (for example, Scandinavian) involves psychologically authentic characters, and that will always separate good fiction from mediocre. We like complex drawn characters, because they feel like people we know, and their evolvement is one of the reasons we return to the page.
Saturday 13 July 2013
Malala Day
A 16 year old girl, shot by the Taliban for
going to school, stands defiant and delivers an impassioned and inspirational
speech to the United Nations General Assembly. This girl not only represents the face
of feminism in Islam but represents the future of women all over the world.
Education is the key to humanity's future and, as the Dalai Lama once said,
ignorance is one of the major poisons of the mind. Ignorance is the enemy of
the 21st Century. May this day go down in history as the representation of a young girl's courage and determination to forge her own future in a society where the idea is condemned.
Tuesday 25 June 2013
Fruits of Corporate Greed
A couple of years ago I wrote a post about
global feudalism, but it’s much worse than I thought.
This eye-opening programme is shameful. As
Kerry O’Brien says at the end: out of sight, out of mind. This is the so-called
level playing field in action. Jobs going overseas because the labour is
cheaper. Actually it’s jobs going overseas because it’s virtually slave labour -
I’m talking literally not figuratively.
But more revelatory than anything else is
that there is no code of ethics for these companies unless it is forced upon
them. They really don’t care if the workers, who actually create the products
they sell, die or are injured or are abused. When things go wrong they do their
best to avoid accountability, and, like all criminals, only own up when
incontrovertible evidence is produced.
Algebra - the language of mathematics
I know I’m doing things back-to-front –
arse-about - as we say in Oz (and possibly elsewhere) but, considering all the
esoteric mathematics I produce on this blog, I thought I should try and explain
some basics.
As I mentioned earlier this year in a post on
‘analogy’, mathematics is a cumulative endeavour and you can’t understand
calculus, for example, if you don’t know algebra. I’ve come across more than a
few highly intelligent people, of both sexes, who struggle with maths (or math as
Americans call it) and the sight of an equation stops them in their tracks.
Mathematics is one of those topics where
the gap, between what you are expected to know and what you actually learn, can
grow as you progress through school, mainly because you were stumped by
algebra. You know: the day you were suddenly faced with numbers being replaced
by letters; and things like counting, adding, subtracting, dividing,
multiplying, fractions and even decimals suddenly seemed irrelevant. In other
words, everything you’d learned about mathematics, which was firmly grounded in
numbers – something you’d learned almost as soon as you could talk – suddenly seemed
useless. Even Carl Jung, according to his autobiography, stopped understanding
maths the day he had to deal with ‘x’. In fact, his wife, Emma, had a better
understanding of physics than Jung did.
But for those who jump this hurdle,
seemingly effortlessly, ‘x’ is a liberator in the same way that the imaginary
number i is perceived by those who
appreciate its multi-purposefulness. In both cases, we can do a lot more than
we could before, and that is why algebra is a stepping-stone to higher
mathematics.
Fundamentally, mathematics is not so much
about numbers as the relationship between numbers, and algebra allows us to see
the relationships without the numbers, and that’s the conceptual hurdle one has
to overcome.
I’ll give a very simple example that
everyone should know: Pythagoras’s triangle.
I don’t even have to draw it, I only have
to state it: a2 + b2 = c2; and you should know
what I’m talking about. But a picture is worth innumerable words.
The point is that we can use actual integers, called Pythagorean triples, that obey this relationship; the smallest
being 52 = 42 + 32. Do the math as you
Americans like to say.
But the truth is that this relationship
applies to all Pythagorean triangles, irrespective of their size, length of
sides and units of measurement. The only criteria being that the triangle is
‘flat’, or Euclidean (is not on a curved surface) and contains one right angle
(90o).
By using letters, we have stated a
mathematical truth, a universal law that applies right across the universe.
Pythagoras’s triangle was discovered well before Pythagoras (circa 500BC) by
the Egyptians, Babylonians and the Chinese, and possibly other cultures as
well.
Most of the mathematics, that I do,
involves the manipulation of algebraic equations, including a lot of the stuff
I describe on this blog. If you know how to manipulate equations, you can do a
lot of mathematics, but if you don’t, you can’t do any.
A lot of people are taught BIDMAS, which
gives the priority of working out an equation: Brackets, Indices, Division,
Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction. To be honest, I’ve never come across
a mathematician who uses it.
On the other hand, a lot of maths books
talk about the commutative law, the associative law and the distributive law as
the fundaments of algebra.
There is a commutative law for addition and
a commutative law for multiplication, which are both simple and basic.
A + B = B + A and A x B = B x
A (that’s it)
Obviously there is no commutative law for
subtraction or division.
A – B ≠ B – A and A/B ≠ B/A (pretty obvious)
There are some areas of mathematics where
this rule doesn’t apply, like matrices, but we won’t go there.
The associative law also applies to
addition and multiplication.
So A + (B + C) = (A + B) + C and A x (B x C) = (A x B) x C
It effectively says that it doesn’t matter
what order you perform these operations you’ll get the same result, and,
obviously, you can extend this to any length of numbers, because any addition
or multiplication creates a new number that can then be added or multiplied to
any other number or string of numbers.
But the most important rule to understand
is the distributive law because it combines addition and multiplication and can
be extended to include subtraction and division (if you know what you're doing). The distributive law lies at
the heart of algebra.
A(B + C) = AB + AC and A(B + C) ≠ AB + C (where AB = A x B)
And this is where brackets come in under
BIDMAS. In other words, if you do what’s in the brackets first you’ll be okay.
But you can also eliminate the brackets and get the same answer if you follow
the distributive rule.
But we can extend this: 1/A(B - C) = B/A -
C/A (where B/A = B ÷ A)
And
-A(B – C) = CA – BA because
(-1)2 = 1, so a minus times a minus equals a plus.
If 1/A(B + C) = B/A + C/A then (B + C)/A =
B/A + C/A
And
A/C + B/D = (DA + BC)/DC
To appreciate this do the converse:
(DA + BC)/DC = DA/DC + BC/DC
= A/C + B/D
But the most important technique one can
learn is how to change the subject of an equation. If we go back to
Pythagoras’s equation:
a2 + b2 = c2 what’s b = ?
The very simple rule is that whatever you
do to one side of an equation you must do to the other side. So if you take
something away from one side you must take it away from the other side and if
you multiply or divide one side by something you must do the same on the other
side.
So, given the above example, the first
thing we want to do is isolate b2. Which means we take a2
from the LHS and also the RHS (left hand side and right hand side).
So b2 = c2 – a2
And to get b from b2 we take the
square root of b2, which means we take the square root of the RHS.
So b = √(c2 – a2)
Note b ≠ c – a because √(c2
– a2) ≠ √c2 - √a2
In the same way that (a + b)2 ≠ a2 + b2
In fact (a + b)2 = (a + b)(a +
b)
And applying the distributive law: (a +
b)(a + b) = a(a + b) + b(a + b)
Which expands to a2 + ab + ba +
b2 = a2 + 2ab + b2
But (a + b)(a – b) = a2 – b2 (work it out for yourself)
An equation by definition (and by name)
means that something equals something. To maintain the equality whatever you do on one side must be done on the other
side, and that’s basically the most important rule of all. So if you take the
square root or a logarithm or whatever of a single quantity on one side you
must take the square root or logarithm or whatever of everything on the other
side. Which means you put brackets around everything first and apply the
distributive law if possible, and, if not, leave it in brackets like I did with
the example of Pythagoras’s equation.
Final Example: A/B = C + D What’s B = ?
Invert both sides: B/A = 1/(C + D)
Multiply both sides by A: B = A/(C + D) (Easy)
Note: A/(C + D) ≠ A/C + A/D
Sunday 23 June 2013
Time again to talk about time
Last week’s New Scientist’s cover declared SPACE
versus TIME; one has to go. But which? (15 June 2013). This served as a
rhetorical introduction to physics' most famous conundrum: the irreconcilability
of its 2 most successful theories - quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of
general relativity - both conceived at the dawn of the so-called golden age of
physics in the early 20th Century.
The feature article (pp. 35-7) cites a
number of theoretical physicists including Joe Polchinski (University of
California, Santa Barbara), Sean Carroll (California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena), Nathan Seiberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Abhay
Ashtekar (Pennsylvania University), Juan Malcadena (no institute cited) and
Steve Giddings (also University of California).
Most scientists and science commentators
seem to be banking on String Theory to resolve the problem, though both its
proponents and critics acknowledge there’s no evidence to separate it from
alternative theories like loop quantum gravity (LQG), plus it predicts 10
spatial dimensions and 10500 universes. However, physicists are used
to theories not gelling with common sense and it’s possible that both the extra
dimensions and the multiverse could exist without us knowing about them.
Personally, I was intrigued by Ashtekar’s
collaboration with Lee Smolin (a strong proponent of LQG) and Carlo Rovelli
where ‘Chunks of space [at the Planck scale] appear first in the theory, while
time pops up only later…’ In a much earlier publication of New Scientist on ‘Time’ Rovelli is quoted as claiming that time
disappears mathematically: “For me, the solution to the problem is that at the
fundamental level of nature, there is no time at all.” Which I discussed in a
post on this very subject in Oct. 2011.
In a more recent post (May 2013) I quoted
Paul Davies from The Goldilocks Enigma:
‘[The] vanishing of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in
quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum
description.’ And in the very article I’m discussing now, the author, Anil
Ananthaswamy, explains how the wave function of Schrodinger’s equation, whilst
it evolves in time, ‘…time is itself not part of the Hilbert space where
everything else physical sits, but somehow exists outside of it.’ (Hilbert
space is the ‘abstract’ space that Schrodinger’s wave function inhabits.) ‘When
we measure the evolution of a quantum state, it is to the beat of an external
timepiece of unknown provenance.’
Back in May 2011, I wrote my most popular post ever: an exposition on Schrodinger’s equation, where I deconstructed the
famous time dependent equation with a bit of sleight-of-hand. The
sleight-of-hand was to introduce the quantum expression for momentum (px = -i h d/dx) without explaining where it came from (the truth is
I didn’t know at the time). However, I recently found a YouTube video that
remedies that, because the anonymous author of the video derives Schrodinger’s
equation in 2 stages with the time independent version first (effectively the
RHS of the time dependent equation). The fundamental difference is that he
derives the expression for px = i
h d/dx, which I now demonstrate below.
Basically the wave function, which exploits
Euler’s famous equation, using complex algebra (imaginary numbers) is expressed
thus: Ψ = Ae i(kx−ωt)
If one differentiates this equation wrt x
we get ik(Ae i(kx−ωt)), which is ikΨ. If we differentiate it again we get d2Ψ/dx2
= (ik)2Ψ.
Now k is related to wavelength (λ)
by 2π such that k = 2π/λ.
And from Planck’s equation (E = hf) and the fact that (for
light) c = f λ we can
get a relationship between momentum (p) and λ. If p = mc and E = mc2,
then p = E/c. Therefore p = hf/f λ which
gives p = h/λ effectively the
momentum version of Planck’s equation. Note that p is related to wavelength
(space) and E is related to frequency (time).
This then is the quantum equation for momentum based on h
(Planck’s constant) and λ. And, of course, according to Louis de Broglie,
particles as well as light can have wavelengths.
And if we substitute 2π/k for λ we get p = hk/2π which can be reformulated as
k = p/h where h = h/2Ï€.
And substituting this
in (ik)2 we get –(p/h)2 { i2 = -1}
So Ψ d2/dx2 = -(px/h)2Ψ
Making p the subject of the equation we get px2 = - h2 d2/dx2
(Ψ cancels
out on both sides) and I used this expression in my previous post on this
topic.
And if I take the
square root of px2 I get px = i h d/dx, the quantum term for
momentum.
So the quantum version
of momentum is a consequence of Schrodinger’s equation and not an input as I
previously implied. Note that √-1 can be i or –i so px can be
negative or positive. It makes no difference when it’s used in Schrodinger’s
equation because we use px2.
If you didn’t follow
that, don’t worry, I’m just correcting something I wrote a couple of years ago
that’s always bothered me. It’s probably easier to follow on the video where I found the solution.
But the relevance to
this discussion is that this is probably the way Schrodinger derived it. In
other words, he derived the term for momentum first (RHS), then the time
dependent factor (LHS), which is the version we always see and is the one
inscribed on his grave’s headstone.
This has been a
lengthy and esoteric detour but it highlights the complementary roles of space
and time (implicit in a wave function) that we find in quantum mechanics.
Going back to the New Scientist article, the author also
provides arguments from theorists that support the idea that time is more
fundamental than space and others who believe that neither is more fundamental
than the other.
But reading the
article, I couldn’t help but think that gravity plays a pivotal role regarding
time and we already know that time is affected by gravity. The article keeps
returning to black holes because that’s where the 2 theories (quantum mechanics
and general relativity) collide. From the outside, at the event horizon, time
becomes frozen but from the inside time would become infinite (everything would
happen at once) (refer Addendum below). Few people seem to consider the possibility that going from
quantum mechanics to classical physics is like a phase change in the same way
that we have phase changes from ice to water. And in that phase change time
itself may be altered.
Referring to one of
the quotes I cited earlier, it occurs to me that the ‘external
timepiece of unknown provenance’ could be a direct consequence of gravity, which
determines the rate of time for all objects in free fall.
Addendum: Many accounts of the event horizon, including descriptions in a
recent special issue of Scientific
American; Extreme Physics (Summer 2013), claim that one can cross an event
horizon without even knowing it. However, if time is stopped for 'you'
according to observers outside the event horizon, then their time must surely
appear infinite to ‘you’, to be consistent. Kiwi, Roy Kerr, who solved Einstein's field equations for a rotating black hole (the
most likely scenario), claims that there are 2 event horizons, and after
crossing the first one, time becomes space-like and space becomes time-like.
This infers, to me, that time becomes static and infinite and space becomes
dynamic. Of course, no one really knows, and no one is ever going to cross an
event horizon and come back to tell us.
Monday 17 June 2013
Judi Moylan – a very rare and endangered species of politician
Judi Moylan is that
very rare entity: a politician who puts principles before ego and ambition.
It’s worth listening to the short audio imbedded in this link.
To me, this is very
sad, because Moylan is too empathetic and not ruthless enough to make it to the
front bench – she is one of the last of her kind in her party – yet Federal
politics needs more people like her and less like our leaders and
leaders-in-waiting.
No one in a position
of power or influence in Australian politics has the guts to stand up to the
paranoid element in our society. In fact, they do the exact opposite, knowing
that by pandering to xenophobia and insecurity they can win the next election.
Australian electioneering is governed by the politics of fear, when we have the
most buoyant economy in the Western world. What does that say about us as a
people?
Saturday 8 June 2013
Why there should be more science in politics
This programme aired on
ABC's Catalyst last Thursday illustrates this very well. Not only are
scientists best equipped to see the future on global terms, they are best
equipped to find solutions. I think there is a complacency amongst both
politicians and the public-at-large that science will automatically rescue us
from the problems inherent in our global species' domination. But it seems to
me that our economic policies and our scientific future-seeing are at odds.
Infinite economic growth dependent on infinite population growth is not
sustainable. As the programme intimates, the 21st Century will be a crunch
point, and whilst everyone just assumes that science and technology will see us
through, it's only the scientists who actually acknowledge the problem.
Addendum: One of the interesting points that is raised in this programme is the
fact that we could feed the world now - it's a case of redistribution and waste
management, not production. No clearer example exists where our economic
paradigms are in conflict with our global needs. The wealth gap simply forbids
it.
Monday 3 June 2013
Sequel to ELVENE
People who have read ELVENE invariably ask:
where’s the next one? Considering Elvene was first published in 2006, it’s been
a long time coming. Firstly, I was aware that I couldn’t possibly live up to
expectations – sequels rarely do – and I also knew that I would probably never
write a book as good as Elvene again.
There are many tensions inherent in
storytelling but none are more challenging than the contradictory goals of
realising readers’ expectations and providing surprises. Both are necessary for
a satisfactory rendition of a story and often have to be achieved
simultaneously.
So the sequel to ELVENE both opens and
closes with surprises, yet the journey’s end is rarely in doubt. I was often
tempted to abandon this exercise and let people imagine their own outcome from
the previous novel. That would have been the safe thing to do. But as I
progressed, especially in the second half, I was motivated by the opposite
desire: to write a sequel so that no one else would write it.
For most writers, the feeling is that the
story already exists, like the statue trapped in the marble, and, as the
writer, I’m simply the first person to read it. For much of the exercise I
wrote it as a serial to myself, not knowing what was going to happen next. This
is an approach many writers take – it provides the spontaneity that makes our
art come alive – even if I already knew how it was going to end (actually I didn't).
Footnote: I should point out that you don't need to have read ELVENE to read the sequel - it works as a standalone story. All the backstory you need is incorporated into the opening scenes.
Footnote: I should point out that you don't need to have read ELVENE to read the sequel - it works as a standalone story. All the backstory you need is incorporated into the opening scenes.
Sunday 19 May 2013
Is the universe a computer?
In New
Scientist (9 February 2013, pp.30-31) Ken Wharton presented an abridged
version of his essay, The universe is not
a computer, which won him third prize in the 2012 Foundational Questions
Institute essay contest. Wharton is a quantum physicist at San Jose University,
California. I found it an interesting and well-written article that not only
put this question into an historical perspective, but addressed a fundamental
metaphysical issue that’s relevant to the way we do science and view the
universe itself. It also made me revisit Paul Davies’ The Goldilocks Enigma, because he addresses the same issue and
more.
Firstly, Wharton argues that Newton changed
fundamentally the way we do science when he used his newly discovered
(invented) differential calculus (which he called fluxions) to describe the
orbits of the planets in the solar system, and simultaneously confirmed, via
mathematics, that the gravity that keeps our feet on the ground is the very
same phenomenon that keeps the Earth in orbit around the sun. This of itself
doesn’t mean the universe is a computer, but Wharton argues that Newton’s use
of mathematics to uncover a natural law of the universe created a precedent in
the way we do physics and subliminally the way we perceive the universe.
Wharton refers to a ‘Newtonian schema’ that
tacitly supports the idea that because we predict future natural phenomena via
calculation, perhaps the universe itself behaves in a similar manner. To quote:
‘But even though we’ve moved well beyond
Newtonian physics, we haven’t moved beyond the new Newtonian schema. The
universe, we almost can’t help but imagine, is some cosmic computer that
generates the future from the past via some master “software” (the laws of
physics) and some initial input (the big bang).’
Wharton is quick to point out that this is
not the same thing as believing that the universe is a computer simulation –
they are entirely different issues – Paul Davies and David Deutsch make the
same point in their respective books (I reviewed Deutsch’s book, The Fabric of Reality, in September
2012, and Davies I discuss below). In fact, Deutsch argues that the universe is
a ‘cosmic computer’ and Davies argues that it isn’t, but I’m getting ahead of
myself.
Wharton’s point is that this belief is a
tacit assumption underlying all of physics: ‘…where
our cosmic computer assumption is so deeply ingrained that we don’t even
realise we are making it.’
A significant part of Wharton’s article
entails an exposition on the “Lagragian”, which has dominated physics in the
last century, though it was first formulated by Joseph Louis Lagrange in 1788
and foreseen, in essence, by Pierre de Fermat (in the previous century)
when he proposed the ‘least time’ principle for refracted light. A ray of light
will always take the path of least time when it goes between mediums – like air
and water or air and glass. James Gleick, in his biography of Richard Feynman, GENIUS, gives the example of a lifesaver
having to run at an angle along a beach and then swim through surf to reach a
swimmer in trouble. The point is that there is a path of ‘least time’ for the
lifesaver, amongst an infinite number of paths he could take. The 2 extremes
are that he could run perpendicularly into the surf and swim diagonally to the
swimmer or he could run diagonally to the surf at the point opposite the
swimmer and swim perpendicularly to him or her. Somewhere in between these 2
extremes there is an optimum path that would take least time (Wharton uses the
same analogy in his article). In the case of light, travelling obliquely
through 2 different mediums at different speeds, the light automatically takes
the path of ‘least time’. This was ‘de Fermat’s principle’ even though he
couldn’t prove it at the time he formulated it.
Richard Feynman, in particular, used this
principle of ‘least action’, as it’s called, to formulate his integral path method
of quantum mechanics. In fact, as Brian Cox and Jeff Fershaw point out in The Quantum Universe (reviewed December,
2011) Planck’s constant, h, is expressed
in units of ‘least action’, and Feynman famously derived Schrodinger’s equation
from a paper that Paul Dirac wrote on ‘The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics’. Feynman also described the
significance of the principle, as applied to gravity, in Six-Not-So-Easy Pieces - in effect, it dictates the path of a body
in a gravitational field. In a nutshell, the ‘least action’ is the difference
between the kinetic and potential energy of the body. Nature contrives that it
will always be a minimum, hence the description, ‘principle of least action’.
A bit of a detour, but
it seems to be a universal principle that appears in every area of physics.
It’s relevance to Wharton’s thesis is that ‘…physicists
tend to view it as a mathematical trick rather than an alternative framework
for how the universe might really work.’
However, Wharton
argues that the mathematics of a ‘Lagrangian-friendly formulation of quantum theory
[proposed by him] could be taken literally’. So Wharton is not eschewing
mathematics or natural laws in mathematical guise (which is what a Lagrangian really
is); he’s contending that the Newtonian schema no longer applies to quantum
mechanics because of its inherent uncertainty and the need for a ‘…”collapse”, when all the built-up
uncertainty suddenly emerges into reality.’
David Deutsch, for
those who are familiar with his ideas, overcomes this obstacle by contending
that we live in a quantum multiverse, so there is no ‘collapse’, just a number
of realities, all consequences of the multiverse behaving like a cosmic quantum
computer. I’ve discussed this and my particular contentions with it in another post.
Paul Davies discusses
these same issues in the context of the universe’s evolution and all the
diverse philosophical views that such a discussion encompasses. Davies devotes
many pages of print to this topic and to present it in a few paragraphs is a
travesty, but that’s what I’m going to do. In particular, Davies equates
mathematical Platonism with Wharton’s Newtonian schema, though he doesn’t specifically
reference Newton. He provides a compelling argument that a finite universe
can’t possibly do calculus-type calculations requiring infinite elements of
information. And that’s the real schema (or paradigm) that modern physics seems
to embrace: that everything in the universe from quantum phenomena to
thermodynamics to DNA can be understood in terms of information; in ‘bits’,
which makes the computer analogy not only relevant but impossible to ignore.
Personally, I think the computer analogy is apposite only because we live in
the ‘computer age’. It’s not only the universe that is seen as a computer, but
also the human brain (and other species, no doubt). The question I always ask
is: where is the software? But that’s another topic.
DNA, to all intents
and purposes, is a form of natural software where the code is expressed in
amino acids and the hardware are proteins that are constructed and manipulated
on a daily basis. DNA is a set of instructions to build a functioning
biological organism – it’s as teleological as nature gets. A large part of
Davies’ discussion entails teleology and its effective expulsion from science
after Darwin, but the construction of every living organism on the planet is
teleological even though its evolution is not. Another detour, though not an
irrelevant one.
Davies argues that
he’s not a Platonist, whilst acknowledging that most physicists conduct science
in the Platonist tradition, even if they don’t admit it. Specifically, Davies
challenges the Platonist precept that the laws of nature exist independently of
the universe. Instead, he supports John Wheeler’s philosophy that ‘the laws of
the universe emerged… “higgledy-piggledy”… and gradually congealed over time.’
I disagree with Davies, fundamentally on this point, not because the laws of
the universe couldn’t have evolved over time, but because there is simply more
mathematics than the universe needs to exist.
Davies also discusses
at length the anthropic principle, both the weak and strong versions, and calls
Deutsch’s version the ‘final anthropic principle’. Davies acknowledges that the
strong version is contrary to the scientific precept that the universe is not
teleological, yet, like me, points out the nihilistic conclusion (my term, not
his) of a universe without consciousness. Davies overcomes this by embracing
Wheeler’s philosophical idea that we are part of a cosmological quantum loop –
an intriguing but not physically impossible concept. In fact, Davies’ book is
as much a homage to Wheeler as it is an expression of his own philosophy.
My own view is much closer to RogerPenrose’s that there are 3 worlds: the mental, the Platonic and the physical;
and that they can be understood in a paradoxical cyclic loop. By Platonic, he
means mathematical, which exists independently of humanity and the universe,
yet we only comprehend as a product of the human mind, which is a product of
the physical universe, which arose from a set of mathematical laws – hence the
loop. In my view this doesn’t make the universe a computer. I agree with
Wharton on this point, but I see quantum mechanics as a substrate of the
physical universe that existed before the universe as we know it evolved. This
is consistent with the Hartle-Hawking cosmological view that the universe had
no beginning in time as well as being consistent with Davies’ exposition that the
‘…vanishing of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum
cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum
description.’
I’ve discussed this cosmological viewpoint
before, but if the quantum substrate exists outside of time, then Wheeler’s
and Davies’ version of the anthropic principle suddenly becomes more tenable.
Addendum: I wrote another post on this in 2018, which I feel is a stronger argument, and, in particular, includes the role of chaos.
Addendum: I wrote another post on this in 2018, which I feel is a stronger argument, and, in particular, includes the role of chaos.
Saturday 11 May 2013
Analogy; the unique cognitive mechanism for learning
Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander have recently co-authored a book, Surfaces
and Essences: Analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking (no, I haven’t read
it). Hofstadter famously won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for Godel Escher Bach, which I reviewed in February 2009, and is
professor of cognitive and computer science at Indiana University, Bloomington,
while Sander is professor of psychology at the University of Paris.
They’ve summarised their philosophy and
insights in a 4 page article in last week’s New
Scientist (4 May 2013, pp. 30-33) titled The forgotten fuel of our minds. Basically, they claim that analogy
is the fundamental engine behind our supra-natural cognitive abilities
(relative to other species) and their argument resonates with views I’ve
expressed numerous times myself. But they go further and claim that we use
analogies all the time, without thinking, in our everyday social interactions
and activities.
Personally, I think there are 2 aspects to
this, so I will discuss them separately before bringing them together. To take
the last point first, in psychology one learns about ‘schemas’ and ‘scripts’,
and I think they’re very relevant to this topic. To quote from Vaughan and Hogg
(professor of psychology, University of Auckland and professor of psychology,
University of Queensland, respectively) in their Introduction to Social Psychology, a schema is a ‘Cognitive
structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including
its attributes and the relations among those attributes’ (Fiske and Taylor,
1991) and a script is ‘A schema about an event.’
Effectively, a schema is what we bring to
every new interaction that we experience and, not surprisingly, it is based on
what we’ve experienced before. We even have a schema for the self, which we
continually evaluate and revise dependent on feedback from others and our sense
of purpose, not to mention consequential achievements and failures. A ‘script’
is the schema we have for interactions with others and examples include how we
behave in a restaurant or in a work place or in the home. The relevance to
Hofstadter’s and Sander’s article is that they explain these same psychological
phenomena as analogies, and they also make the point that they are dependent on
past experiences.
I’ve made the point in other posts, that we
only learn new knowledge when we can integrate it into existing knowledge. A
good example is when we look up a word in a dictionary – it will only make
sense to us if it’s explained using words we already know. Mathematics is
another good example because it’s clearly a cumulative epistemological
endeavour. One can’t learn anything about calculus if one doesn’t know algebra.
This is why the gap between what one is expected to know and what one can
acquire gets more impossible in esoteric subjects if one fails to grasp basic
concepts. This fundamental cognitive ability, that we use everyday, is
something that other species don’t seem to possess. To give a more prosaic example,
we all enjoy stories, be it in books or on stage or in movies or TV. A story
requires us to continually integrate new knowledge into existing knowledge and
yet we do it with little conscious effort. We can even drop it and pick it up
later with surprising efficacy.
And this is why analogy is the method of
choice when it comes to explaining something new. We all do it and we all
expect it. When someone is explaining something - not unlike what I’m doing now
- we want examples and analogies, and, when it comes to esoteric topics (like calculus) I do my best to deliver. In other words, analogy allows us to explain
(and understand) something new based on something we already know. And this is
the relationship with schemas and scripts, because we axiomatically use
existing schemas and scripts when we are confronted with a new experience,
modifying them to suit as we proceed and learn.
But there is another aspect to analogy,
which is not discussed explicitly by Hofstadter and Sander in their article, and
that is metaphor (though they use metaphors as examples while still calling
them analogies). Metaphor is undoubtedly a uniquely human cognitive trait. And
metaphor is analogy in compact form. It’s also one of the things that separates
us from AI, thus far. In my own speculative fiction, I’ve played with this idea
by creating an exceptional AI, then tripping ‘him’ up (yes, I gave him a
gender) using metaphor as cliche.
To be fair to Hofstadter and Sander, there
is much more to their discourse than I’ve alluded to above.
Thursday 2 May 2013
Ashamed to be Australian
This is an eye-opening documentary that the Australian government is doing it’s best to keep
out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It’s criminal in anyone’s language: the detention of
refugees off-shore with little or no recourse to legal representation.
The story reveals
hidden-camera footage as well as interviews with people who spent time there
and were distressed at what they observed. As one young Salvation Army
volunteer observes, the government has spent millions of dollars to punish and
hide these people from public view – the detainees know this themselves.
The proclaimed
objective, according to the government, is that the detention is a deterrent
to other people seeking asylum, yet, as the programme reveals, there is no
evidence to support this. The more likely objective is purely political, as the
major parties are in a psychological-power struggle to prove who is the most
ruthless and hard-minded (i.e. immoral) in dealing with asylum seekers. It’s
all about winning the xenophobic vote in the next election.
These detention
centres are mental illness factories, as 2010 Australian of the year, Professor Patrick Mcgorry, so aptly
described them. That was under a Liberal government but the Labor government
has proven that its policies are just as criminal and arguably less humane.
Addendum: Getup have a petition to close Manus Island detention centre. Thanks to Kay Hart for sending it to me.
Addendum: Getup have a petition to close Manus Island detention centre. Thanks to Kay Hart for sending it to me.
Tuesday 23 April 2013
In memory of Chrissy Amphlett: 1959 - 2013
And Chrissey's wicked sense of humour, on the same show (host is the incomparable Julia Zemiro). This may offend some people but I find it hilarious, and yes, it was broadcast on free-to-air TV on a Saturday night.
Monday 22 April 2013
Scientology – a 20th century science fiction religion
I’ve just read 2 books: Beyond Belief; My Secret Life Inside
Scientology and My Harrowing Escape, by the current leader’s niece, Jenna
Miscavige Hill (co-written with Lisa Pulitzer); and Going Clear; Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief by
Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lawrence Wright. I bought both these books after
reading reviews in Rupert Murdoch’s paper, The
Weekend Australian Review (Rupert’s Australian publications are a lot more
left-leaning than his American counterparts I suspect). Previously, I had just
finished reading a Scottish crime thriller, but both of these books were a lot
harder to put down.
I should disclose that I had my own brush
with Scientology a few years before Jenna Miscavige Hill was born, when I was
around 30 (sometime between 1978 and 1983) when I was solicited in a Sydney
street, along with a friend, and invited to take part in a ‘session’, but I’ll
talk about that later.
There are many different ways one can
define religion – to me it’s part of a personal internal journey: very
introspective, self-examining and impossible to share. But the public face of
religion(s) is often something different: judgemental, proselytising and mentally
claustrophobic. I suspect that many followers of Scientology see themselves in
the first category, but the institution itself falls squarely into the second.
Religion, in the context of historical
Western civilization, has been predominantly about mind control, and it was
largely successful up until the Enlightenment, when novels, new scientific
discoveries (in all fields) and Western philosophy all made inroads into the
educated Western psyche. In the 20th Century, mind control appeared
to be the principal political tool of totalitarian regimes like the former USSR
and China. It’s not something one would expect to find in an American
institution, especially one tied to the celebration of celebrity, but that’s
exactly what Scientology is if one believes the accounts revealed in these 2
books.
I defy any normal sane person to read
Micavige Hill’s book without getting angry. I imagine a lot of high-level
people with the Scientology Church would also get angry, but for different
reasons. Of all the events that she recounts from when she signed her ‘billion
year contract’ at the age of 7 (she tried to run away a year later) to when she
finally left under enormous duress as a married adult (after threatening to
jump off a 5 storey ledge), what made me most angry was something that was at
once petty and unbelievably controlling and intrusive. As a teen she received
letters sent by her estranged mother, but she could read them only after they
were already opened and she was never allowed to keep them. At the age of 10
she had to fill out a form so she could visit her parents for her 10th
birthday. Yet this is nothing compared to the alleged abuses by the
organisation that Lawrence Wright documents in his carefully researched and
fully referenced book.
Stalin was infamous for creating a culture
where people reported on their neighbours thus creating fear and mistrust in
everyday interactions. China had a similar policy under Mao and during the
cultural revolution families were split up and sent to opposite sides of the
country. According to Miscavige Hill, both these policies were adopted by
Scientology, as it happened to her own family. According to her, all her
friends were estranged from her, especially in her teens, and the Church even
attempted to separate her from her recently wedded husband (also a ‘Sea Org’
member in the organisation) which culminated in her threatening suicide and
eventually leaving, totally disillusioned with her lifetime religion but with
her marriage intact.
The Catholic Church has the confessional
and Scientology has ‘auditing’ and ‘sec-check’, both using their famous
‘E-Meter’. In the comprehensive glossary at the back of her book, Miscavige
Hill defines ‘Sec Check’ as “A confessional given while on the E-Meter.
Sec-checks can take anywhere from three weeks to a year or longer.” But unlike
the Catholic Church confessions, the Scientology equivalent are not
confidential, according to those who claim to have been blackmailed by them,
but are according to the Church. According to Scientology’s doctrine the
e-meter never lies so people being audited, including Miscavige Hill, quickly
learn to confess what the auditor wants to hear so they can get it over with.
Later, if they try and leave the Church, as she did, these confessions can be
held over them to stop them publicly denouncing the Church. Some of these
confessions are of a highly personal nature, like the intimate details of
sexual relations.
Naturally, the Church denies any of these
allegations, along with the practice of ‘disconnection’ (denying access to family
members) and child labour, which Miscavige Hill experienced first hand from the
age of 7. Allegations of basic human rights abuse are predominant in both
books, yet all legal proceedings against the Church seem to eventually be settled
out of court (according to Wright’s account).
Miscavige Hill also provides insight into
the conditioning of both receiving and giving instructions without question. In
principle, this is one of the biggest philosophical issues I have with a number
of religious educations, including my own, whereby one doesn’t question or one
is discouraged from thinking for oneself. Part of an education I believe,
should be the opposite: to be exposed to a variety of cultural ideas and to be
encouraged to argue and discuss beliefs. Teenagers are at an age where they
tend to do this anyway, as I did. Reading Albert Camus at the age of 16 was
life-changing at an intellectual level, and deepened my doubts about the
religion I had grown up with.
Wright’s book is a good complementary read
to Jenna’s autobiography, as he provides a history lesson of the whole Church,
albeit not one the Church would endorse. The book contains a number of
footnotes that declare the Church’s outright disagreement on a number of issues
as well as numerous disclaimers from Tom Cruise’s attorney, Bertram Fields.
Wright is an acclaimed author, with a number of awards to his name, and is
staff writer for The New Yorker. His
book arose from a feature story he wrote on Paul Haggis (a disillusioned Scientologist)
for that magazine. The book starts and ends with Haggis, but, in between,
attempts to cover every aspect of the religion, including a biography of its founder,
testimony from many of its disaffected members, and its connection to Hollywood
celebrity.
Paul Haggis is a successful screenwriter
and his credits include some of the best films I’ve seen: Million Dollar Baby, The
Valley of Elah (which he also directed) and Casino Royale. His career-changing movie was Crash, which I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen. I remember when it
came out, it was on my must-see list, but it never happened. He also wrote Flags of Our Fathers, which Eastwood
directed following Million Dollar Baby.
In The Valley of Elah is a little known movie starring Charlize Theron
(I believe it’s one of her best roles) and Tommy Lee Jones; part crime
thriller, part commentary on the Iraq war. I saw it around midnight in a
Melbourne arthouse cinema, such was its low profile. He also made The Next 3 Days with Russell Crowe,
which I haven’t seen. We never know screenwriters - they are at the bottom of
the pecking order in Hollywood - unless they are writer-directors (like Woody
Allen or Oliver Stone) so no one would say I’d go and see a Paul Haggis film,
but I would.
Haggis campaigned against Proposition 8 in
California (a bill to ban same-sex marriage) which I’ve written about myself on
this blog. His disillusionment with Scientology was complete when he failed to
get the Church to support him.
Scientology promotes itself as a science,
and, in particular, is strongly opposed to psychiatry. But at best, it’s a
pseudo-science; a combination of Freudian psychoanalysis and Buddhist
philosophy. The e-meter auditing, which supposedly gives it its scientific
credibility has never been accepted by mainstream science or psychology. L Ron
Hubbard, before he started Dianetics, which became Scientology, was a highly
prolific pulp sci-fi writer and best friend of Robert Heinlein (a famous sci-fi
author with right-wing politics). But while Hubbard lived and wrote during the
so-called ‘golden era’ of science fiction, his name is never mentioned in the
same company as those who are lauded today, like Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur
C Clarke or Ursula Le Guin (still alive, so possibly later) and I’ve never seen
or heard his name referenced at any Sci-Fi convention I’ve attended.
When it comes to psychological manipulation,
Scientology excels. In particular, the so-called ‘Bridge to Total Freedom’, aka
‘the Bridge’, which is effectively a sequence of stages of spiritual
enlightenment one achieves as a result of courses and ‘sessions’ one completes.
At the end of this process, usually taking many years and costing thousands of
dollars, one is given access to ‘OT III’ material, the end of the journey and
one’s ultimate spiritual reward. According to Miscavige Hill, people ‘on the
Bridge’ are told that given early access to OT III would cause serious injury,
either mental or physical, such is its power. Now, common sense says that
information alone is unlikely to have such a consequence, nevertheless this was
both the carrot, and indirectly, the stick, for staying with the course. As
revealed, in both of these books, OT III is in fact a fantastical science
fiction story that beggars credulity on any scale. It’s effectively an origins
story that could find a place in Ridley Scott’s movie, Prometheus, which is better rendered, one has to say, in its proper
context of fiction.
In my introduction, I mentioned my own very
brief experience with Scientology in Sydney (either late 1970s or early 1980s)
when I was interviewed and offered an ‘e-meter’ session. Something about the whole
setup made me more than suspicious, even angry, and I rebelled. What I saw were
basically insecure people ‘auditing’ other insecure people and it made me
angry. I had grown up in a church (though my parents were not the least religious) where once we were called to stand up and declare ourselves
to Jesus in writing. I remember refusing as a teenager, mainly because I knew my father
opposed it, but also the sense of being pressured against my will. This feeling returned when I was in the Scientology centre in
Sydney, or whatever it was called. Interestingly, they took me upstairs where I
met some people about my own age who were very laid back and surrounded by a
library of philosophical books. I said I would prefer to explore their ideas at
my own leisure and so I bought a copy of Dianetics and had nothing more to do
with them. I never read Dianetics, though I’ve read the complete works of Jung
and books by Daisetz Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, so I was very open to religious
and philosophical ideas at that age. Likewise, I’ve never read any of Hubbard’s
fiction, though I once tried and gave up.
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