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| Jorgen Faxholm: Samsø coastal landscape, Denmark 1995 Acrylic on board, 50x60cm |
After a sketch and a photo during my holiday in 1995.
Painted 2010
Painted 2010
Sunday, 26 December 2010
Samsø North coast 1995
Monday, 20 December 2010
Humlebæk Stejleplads, Coast of Øresund, Denmark
From a sketch made in 1995.
Island of Hven in the background.
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| Jorgen Faxholm: coast of Øresund, oil on board 2010 |
Island of Hven in the background.
Monday, 6 December 2010
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
The Human Condition VIII
Religion and Science
Let me start with two ‘religious’ events that lead naturally to what I want to say about science.
This morning I had a visit from two Jehova's Witnesses. I opened the door with the usual question: “how old is the Earth and the Universe?” And got the usual and expected brain-numbing answer, causing me to close the door.
Secondly, at the Royal Academy of Art, where master paintings from Budapest were on show in 2010, one painting in particular caught my attention: Pope Gregory the Great celebrating mass, while Jesus rises out of the wine chalice. The commentary explained, that his vision from sometime around 590 AD was central to the debate about the slightly macabre Christian belief that the wine and bread offered in church represent Christ’s flesh and blood.
Such beliefs go completely over my head and I cannot see that there’s much difference between the various cult-worships of antiquity and the supernatural humbug we see around us today.
Having ascertained that as far as religion is concerned, we have not moved an inch ahead since we left the Olduvai Gorge and the African savannah 60,000 years ago, let me now move on to a more recent cognition from the last 100 years: Einstein’s Relativity Theory and some inconsistencies that I find deeply awesome – if not worrying.
I have always had a problem with the Special Relativity theory’s postulate, that light has a constant speed wherever you are, whatever you do – travel with it, travel towards it, all that happens is that you ultimately become constrained by your mass going towards infinity as you close in on the speed of light. This is not because I am mathematical genius; in fact I understand very little of the complexity juggled so eloquently by quantum scientists.
But here are some conundrums that have bothered me for many years:
1. A particle moving at the speed of light, or close to, would according to Einstein have an enormous mass and consequently begin to attract other particles – and ultimately the whole Universe. That must be rubbish, as it doesn't happen.
2. Science would like to have us believe in “Dark Matter”, created at the Big Bang – even that it constitutes 75% of the Universe’s matter. Otherwise they cannot explain the red-shift of light and other strange phenomenon they observe. So in an almost religious way, the quantum gurus have invented “something”, that cannot be seen, i.e. does not emit light and does not absorb or reflect light (hence Dark Matter) – but has a substantial gravitational impact. Even a bright A-level student can see that this is ga-ga. If Dark Matter has a gravitational impact, it would long ago have absorbed some of the loose particles floating about in the Universe and made itself visible through these lumps of ‘stuff’.
3. If there really were a Big Bang 14.5 Bill. years ago – and despite the likelihood that 'something' definitely happened, I am now less than convinced that it was the all defining creative moment it has been made out to be – how come we can see galaxies 14.5 Bill. light years away? Did they arrive at their position instantly? The light they emitted at the start would have reached us very fast. Nevertheless we say that the light we now see was emitted 14.5 Bill. years ago. Consequently they must have been in place at that time – unless we have got our mental knickers in a twist?
I am aware that the official explanation is, that the Universe is expanding, explaining why we can see galaxies that are 30 Bill. lightyears away. That is: double the light-age of the Universe!! This sounds like annother artificial explanation trying to circumvent the unexplainable, as we still haven't understood the Universe very well. We don't even know for sure whether it expands or contracts, i.e. whether it will cease to exist in "the Big Crunch", the opposite to the Big Bang or in just Cold Death when all stars have burnt out. Or perhaps the Thermodynamic law of energy preservation will prevent the latter?
There are too many contradictory explanations and I shall return to some of them in later writings.
The point is, that when we can’t explain something we have a tendency to take on mystical beliefs: Dark Matter, Higgs Boson particles, Space-Time distortions and even apply theories which we know will not work – but they are the best we have.
Is there such a difference between religion and science, then?
Well – there are two of significance:
In many cases scientific observation provides us with either evidence or rejection of a theory, while religion usually is taken uncritically on board, sadly often through fear and group pressure.
But both have the same origin: we’re searching for a beginning, a reason for our existence, a meaning with this vast complexity. We clearly have great difficulty accepting that reason may be utterly absent. Yet, so far science has provided more acceptable answers than any religion I know of.
And why should we and our little planet count as a central depository of reason in a Universe, that probably holds billions and billions of planets with other life forms?
The other difference is, that you may accept or disregard a scientific postulate based on evidence, research or likelihood, while if you grow up in India, you may become a Hindu; in the American Bible Belt a Creationist; in Pakistan a Muslim; and in Peru a good Catholic. The only argument you can use in these cases is “I believe”.
I know where I stand, when it comes to (at worst) 'some evidence' against absolutely none.
Finally, I never believed in the variable mass in Einstein’s E=mc2.
For the reasons mentioned above, it must be the speed of light that varies, not the mass, or perhaps the way we look at the concept of time - and there is now very good evidence that the latter is the case.
Time Dilation is a measurable fact and if the Time is a variable, so will perceived frequency and speed of light be. It doesn't take much mathematics to see that fixing Mass in the field equation and make light speed the variable (on a cosmic or quantum scale) could begin to help us sort out a lot of the misconceptions we have generated because of the flaws in the Relativity Theory.
I have recently fallen over a theory called the “Tempo Field Theory” by Frank Atkinson, who uses time to explain Gravity and other Universal matters (Big Bang, Black Holes, Energy theorems and Dark Matter) but that must wait till another time, when I have studied it in detail. Nevertheless, it does seem to peel yet one more layer off the religious humbug onion.
Not a moment too early, judged by the incredible advance of Creationism!
Let me start with two ‘religious’ events that lead naturally to what I want to say about science.
This morning I had a visit from two Jehova's Witnesses. I opened the door with the usual question: “how old is the Earth and the Universe?” And got the usual and expected brain-numbing answer, causing me to close the door.
Secondly, at the Royal Academy of Art, where master paintings from Budapest were on show in 2010, one painting in particular caught my attention: Pope Gregory the Great celebrating mass, while Jesus rises out of the wine chalice. The commentary explained, that his vision from sometime around 590 AD was central to the debate about the slightly macabre Christian belief that the wine and bread offered in church represent Christ’s flesh and blood.
Such beliefs go completely over my head and I cannot see that there’s much difference between the various cult-worships of antiquity and the supernatural humbug we see around us today.
Having ascertained that as far as religion is concerned, we have not moved an inch ahead since we left the Olduvai Gorge and the African savannah 60,000 years ago, let me now move on to a more recent cognition from the last 100 years: Einstein’s Relativity Theory and some inconsistencies that I find deeply awesome – if not worrying.
I have always had a problem with the Special Relativity theory’s postulate, that light has a constant speed wherever you are, whatever you do – travel with it, travel towards it, all that happens is that you ultimately become constrained by your mass going towards infinity as you close in on the speed of light. This is not because I am mathematical genius; in fact I understand very little of the complexity juggled so eloquently by quantum scientists.
But here are some conundrums that have bothered me for many years:
1. A particle moving at the speed of light, or close to, would according to Einstein have an enormous mass and consequently begin to attract other particles – and ultimately the whole Universe. That must be rubbish, as it doesn't happen.
2. Science would like to have us believe in “Dark Matter”, created at the Big Bang – even that it constitutes 75% of the Universe’s matter. Otherwise they cannot explain the red-shift of light and other strange phenomenon they observe. So in an almost religious way, the quantum gurus have invented “something”, that cannot be seen, i.e. does not emit light and does not absorb or reflect light (hence Dark Matter) – but has a substantial gravitational impact. Even a bright A-level student can see that this is ga-ga. If Dark Matter has a gravitational impact, it would long ago have absorbed some of the loose particles floating about in the Universe and made itself visible through these lumps of ‘stuff’.
3. If there really were a Big Bang 14.5 Bill. years ago – and despite the likelihood that 'something' definitely happened, I am now less than convinced that it was the all defining creative moment it has been made out to be – how come we can see galaxies 14.5 Bill. light years away? Did they arrive at their position instantly? The light they emitted at the start would have reached us very fast. Nevertheless we say that the light we now see was emitted 14.5 Bill. years ago. Consequently they must have been in place at that time – unless we have got our mental knickers in a twist?
I am aware that the official explanation is, that the Universe is expanding, explaining why we can see galaxies that are 30 Bill. lightyears away. That is: double the light-age of the Universe!! This sounds like annother artificial explanation trying to circumvent the unexplainable, as we still haven't understood the Universe very well. We don't even know for sure whether it expands or contracts, i.e. whether it will cease to exist in "the Big Crunch", the opposite to the Big Bang or in just Cold Death when all stars have burnt out. Or perhaps the Thermodynamic law of energy preservation will prevent the latter?
There are too many contradictory explanations and I shall return to some of them in later writings.
The point is, that when we can’t explain something we have a tendency to take on mystical beliefs: Dark Matter, Higgs Boson particles, Space-Time distortions and even apply theories which we know will not work – but they are the best we have.
Is there such a difference between religion and science, then?
Well – there are two of significance:
In many cases scientific observation provides us with either evidence or rejection of a theory, while religion usually is taken uncritically on board, sadly often through fear and group pressure.
But both have the same origin: we’re searching for a beginning, a reason for our existence, a meaning with this vast complexity. We clearly have great difficulty accepting that reason may be utterly absent. Yet, so far science has provided more acceptable answers than any religion I know of.
And why should we and our little planet count as a central depository of reason in a Universe, that probably holds billions and billions of planets with other life forms?
The other difference is, that you may accept or disregard a scientific postulate based on evidence, research or likelihood, while if you grow up in India, you may become a Hindu; in the American Bible Belt a Creationist; in Pakistan a Muslim; and in Peru a good Catholic. The only argument you can use in these cases is “I believe”.
I know where I stand, when it comes to (at worst) 'some evidence' against absolutely none.
Finally, I never believed in the variable mass in Einstein’s E=mc2.
For the reasons mentioned above, it must be the speed of light that varies, not the mass, or perhaps the way we look at the concept of time - and there is now very good evidence that the latter is the case.
Time Dilation is a measurable fact and if the Time is a variable, so will perceived frequency and speed of light be. It doesn't take much mathematics to see that fixing Mass in the field equation and make light speed the variable (on a cosmic or quantum scale) could begin to help us sort out a lot of the misconceptions we have generated because of the flaws in the Relativity Theory.
I have recently fallen over a theory called the “Tempo Field Theory” by Frank Atkinson, who uses time to explain Gravity and other Universal matters (Big Bang, Black Holes, Energy theorems and Dark Matter) but that must wait till another time, when I have studied it in detail. Nevertheless, it does seem to peel yet one more layer off the religious humbug onion.
Not a moment too early, judged by the incredible advance of Creationism!
Friday, 8 October 2010
Human Condition VII - and age.
"Our lives end on the day we become silent about the things that really matter" - in my memory a quote by M Luther King.
Couple that with another quote: "When you become old you find yourself become a Buddhist: Rid of all desires".
Staying young is, therefore, a question of keeping engaged, worrying about the things that have direct impact on your life here and now - and DO SOMETHING to solve even the nagging pebble in your shoe.
In my experience - and I am sure in most people's - if we can find peace, quiet and solutions to the "little things" that disturb our daily existence and that tend to frustrate the heck out of us, then we can begin to find beauty in the universe and find time and motivation to do things that don't matter, but which enrich our lives - whatever takes your fancy.
In Hammersmith they arrange a day for the over 50s with drinks, partying, dancing, food stalls etc.
They call it "The day of your life" for the older citizens.
Eh?
50?
Old?
The day of your life? If so - how poor is your life?
This is cakes for bread.
Why not use all this energy and money ensuring that people twixt 50-70 could have meaningful work, using their experience? In Denmark they call it grey gold - - how apt!
I am personally in the grip of awe about the size of Betelgeuse and take great joy studying Tempo Field Theory and other rather useless passtimes - but bollocks to it, as long as we have a society that has lost its way in materialism, youth worship and old by 50.
Cakes for bread!
.
Couple that with another quote: "When you become old you find yourself become a Buddhist: Rid of all desires".
Staying young is, therefore, a question of keeping engaged, worrying about the things that have direct impact on your life here and now - and DO SOMETHING to solve even the nagging pebble in your shoe.
In my experience - and I am sure in most people's - if we can find peace, quiet and solutions to the "little things" that disturb our daily existence and that tend to frustrate the heck out of us, then we can begin to find beauty in the universe and find time and motivation to do things that don't matter, but which enrich our lives - whatever takes your fancy.
In Hammersmith they arrange a day for the over 50s with drinks, partying, dancing, food stalls etc.
They call it "The day of your life" for the older citizens.
Eh?
50?
Old?
The day of your life? If so - how poor is your life?
This is cakes for bread.
Why not use all this energy and money ensuring that people twixt 50-70 could have meaningful work, using their experience? In Denmark they call it grey gold - - how apt!
I am personally in the grip of awe about the size of Betelgeuse and take great joy studying Tempo Field Theory and other rather useless passtimes - but bollocks to it, as long as we have a society that has lost its way in materialism, youth worship and old by 50.
Cakes for bread!
.
The Human Condition VI
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Comparative sizes of various 'Suns' - click to enlarge |
A friend sent me some awesome pictures illustrating the size of the Universe and concluded that in comparison to the Universe, the little things that happen to us in our small daily lives could be considered insignificant.
Well - I don't agree!
If you ignore the considerable direct impact of our solar system on the life processes on Earth - processes upon which you have absolutely no influence - and perhaps also ignore the gravity impact of our galaxy (another process over which you have no control) - - then there is only one series of processes that matter to us 'ants': what is happening to you here with your feet firmly planted on mother Earth.
Do we care that E=mc2 is actually completely flawed on a cosmic quantum level?
No - for whatever we may need this field equation for, it works for us on Earth - bomb making or rocket construction.
Do we care that the speed of light (and other electromagnetic waves) are anything but constant, exhibiting big variation as time is dilated close to heavy gravitational fields and 'speeded up' in free space?
No - because it works for us as a constant on Earth.
Do we care that time itself can be dilated or contracted under the influence of gravity (can be measured simply with atomic clocks)?
No - because we still have to meet when the boss tells us.
Do we care that gravity is an instantly distributed quantum wave, i.e. with instant propagation across the Universe, that originates as a result of time-dilation/contraction and Universal mass/ energy ?
No - just ask our athletes attempting a 2.10m high jump.
Do we care that the Big Bang theory, the expansion of the Universe as measured by the red-shift Doppler effect and other present (but antique) theories seem flawed? - And if it really happened 13.7 Bill years ago, that the universe's most remote corners must be less than billions of light years away, as expansion is unlikely to have happened at the speed of light?
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| An enlarged image of an area that appeared totally empty in the Hubble telescope. Each spot is an entire galaxy!! |
I am totally in agreement that all these issues can make your head spin and let you drop the jaw in awe. These images truly humble you - but - -
It is the problems on Earth that I care about:
Can I pay my mortgage? Does my tooth ache? What do we eat tonight? Have I been a good boy today (important for my social life)? Can I get a finger up the nose of the banks, the phone companies, the politicians and other Kafka-esque public institutions when they harass us?
Our inability to look at things in perspective is a tribal defect in the human species - and this happens mainly when one of the 80 major religions take over possession of the rational brain.
We should concentrate on living together in harmony and in support of each other, with respect for the nature that produced us from humble bacterial beginnings 3 bill years ago.
.Saturday, 2 October 2010
Wine Serendipity
Out of the blue, a friend called and asked: "Would you like some small black grapes? It's you or the birds".
I am sure he meant 'pigeons' and not the short-skirted locals.
The surprise was in the story.
Apparently the vine producing these grapes was over 70 years old, as it reputedly was planted before the war! WWII, that is.
Who ever gets an offer like this? Old vine grapes, 70 years old, ready for the vinery?
We picked the grapes in a steady drizzle from the autumn rain, but the quality was impeccable and I had to tie Natali's hands on her back, as she started to munch them by the bunch: sweet, concentrated juice - just what you'd expect from an old vine.
There is only one tiny problem: we have no idea what type of grapes they are. They are larger than triomphe d'Alsace, smaller than Brant and could easily be a Pinot-variety.
Pinot is normally too difficult for the English climate, but as we picked them 1 October, i.e. late, and they appeared ripe (minus a lot of un-pollinated grapes in the centre of the bunches), there is a good chance that it could be Pinot Meunier.
I need a specialist to identify the bunches and the leaves.
The result is now bubbling away in the vat, ca 8 litres incl. peels and pips, ready to be decanted into the demijohn in 3-4 days, but an initial taste has revealed an enormous concentration of fruit and sugar (21% according to the refractometer), all natural juices.
However, I did add a little sugar to the pulp, as well as 1g wine-yeast, just to get the process started quickly and to ensure that the relatively small amount of wort would not invite bacteria or thirsty flies to the party.
Pure serendipity - lots of expectation!!!
.
I am sure he meant 'pigeons' and not the short-skirted locals.
The surprise was in the story.
Apparently the vine producing these grapes was over 70 years old, as it reputedly was planted before the war! WWII, that is.
Who ever gets an offer like this? Old vine grapes, 70 years old, ready for the vinery?
 |
| Sweet blue grapes picked 1 Oct. 2010 |
There is only one tiny problem: we have no idea what type of grapes they are. They are larger than triomphe d'Alsace, smaller than Brant and could easily be a Pinot-variety.
Pinot is normally too difficult for the English climate, but as we picked them 1 October, i.e. late, and they appeared ripe (minus a lot of un-pollinated grapes in the centre of the bunches), there is a good chance that it could be Pinot Meunier.
I need a specialist to identify the bunches and the leaves.
The result is now bubbling away in the vat, ca 8 litres incl. peels and pips, ready to be decanted into the demijohn in 3-4 days, but an initial taste has revealed an enormous concentration of fruit and sugar (21% according to the refractometer), all natural juices.
However, I did add a little sugar to the pulp, as well as 1g wine-yeast, just to get the process started quickly and to ensure that the relatively small amount of wort would not invite bacteria or thirsty flies to the party.
Pure serendipity - lots of expectation!!!
.
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Harvesting the Brant-Vine 22 Sept. 2010
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| Ripe and healthy Brant grapes in my patio garden |
According to the Met-office we will have rain and chill from now on.
I believe them, so I set out with buckets, secateurs and a ladder in 24 C.!!
At the top of the road, in the front garden of Nr. 2, I had spotted a wild growing Brant, that for 2 years had spread its tentacles into a tall Magnolia tree. The grape bunches were literally whispering to me every time I passed: "pick us - pick us" - - so I asked if the people actually were interested in their grapes.
As the answer was no, that's where I started.
It was a difficult climb and I had to leave several tempting bunches where they were due to the height, but I managed to pick 2 full buckets.
The grapes were not ripe, many were totally green, but so what? All they contained was grape juice.
Nothing that can't be modified with the aid of a bit of sugar.
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| My own Brant left - "imported" grapes at rear and right |
The average sugar content of these grapes was 14%
And that was a different kettle of fish!
One bucket full and sugar content of 17.5
So there's the difference between a grapevine looked after and a wild growing one.
I have used 'green cropping' (i.e. removing green grapes or bunches) in order to concentrate the fruit in the remaining grapes - although probably a waste on Brant ;-) - - but they do that in the Bordeaux region, so why not in London?
Late afternoon, and all was crushed and poured into the fermentation vat, where I shall leave the must for 4 days.
Why 4?
Well, 3 is too little and 5 too much.
The colour is best described by Rudyard Kipling's marvellous description of "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo river" - You can almost taste the rythm - although I trust the wine will improve considerably on this image.
I remember seeing the same colour many years ago in the Mosel district, when a huge tanker tried to pour its content of newly pressed must into a steel vat for initial fermentation and the hose popped out, spilling a considerable content on the concrete foreyard. The difference between sewage and raw wine must appeared insignificant. Commercial winemaking is surely a little less poetic than what goes on in a couple of patios in West London!
I suspect the colour will change a little, as the red skins from some of the grapes deliver their 'teinture', but the wine is definitely going to be more rose than red.
What a difference from the Triomphe d'Alsace's dark, blood-red colour.
Finally, a little 'chaptalisation' with 700g sugar to the 15 litres in the fermentation vat brought the sugar content up on the desired 21% - enough for a 12.5% alcohol result, if all goes well.
It is important regularly to press the cap of the crushed grapes down at regular intervals lest noxious bacteria develop on the surface. I presume it also helps provide colour and 'fruit', as all skins get in contact with the must.
Initially one has to work hard on the cap, but after a couple of days it becomes easier to press it down.
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| The cap of crushed Brant-grapes on the second day. |
It is interesting to notice that you can feel the heat from the fermentation as you work the cap.
When the pulp has been wringed through a linnen bag and the juice stored away in the two waiting demijohns, there's little more I can do than wait and hope for the best.
There is only one matter I haven't got sorted out: Malolactic fermentation. Once the initial fermentation has finished around Christmas and the wine has been bottled, there is a good chance that a second fermentation may take place. That's the one that makes all the corks pop and leaves you with a major cleaning job in the morning, when you find the fruit of your efforts on the kitchen floor.
I will have to seek advice on this effect next year.
Beyond the 2 gallons of Brant now bubbling away I had a little more than 2 litres of must left over. I poured this straight into 3 bottles and corked them loosely, so any CO2-result of further fermentation could escape.
 |
| Brant "Suser" Sept. 2010 |
This is what the Swiss call "Suser" (Suess-wein/ Sweet Wine), the Germans call "Feder-weisser" ('feather wine' due to the white colour as a result of the suspended yeast particles). The French call it "Bourru" or "Vermache". During my years in Switzerland we tried it several time. It is actually quite refreshing due to the CO2 and the fruitiness.
It may be drunk 'as is', filtered (melita filters work well) or left alone for a couple of days for the sediment to sink to the bottom, after which it can be decanted.
It is a good idea to add a little sugar before drinking this way it becomes the most delightful 'fruit juice'
It is a good idea to add a little sugar before drinking this way it becomes the most delightful 'fruit juice'
Whatever you do, it is your own, it is the result of your efforts and it is organic.
There is no end to the fun you can have with wine!
Monday, 20 September 2010
Jorgen Faxholm : Bargeme Provence 1995
As so many places in Provence (Var), a site with an immense atmosphere: the distressed stones, the clear blue sky - and history oozing out of every corner.
Monday, 13 September 2010
The Human Condition V
In a recent TV-feature about Al Quaeda’s bombing of two American embassies in East Africa, one of the victims, a woman who lost her eye-sight in the Nairobi blast, said: God, if you have to, please take only one eye.
The statement stunned me.
What kind of god would take up that offer?
If he had decided to take both eyes, he would surely take them, as it was unclear what the woman had to offer in return.
And if she had something to offer, what kind of miserable, stingy, vengeful god would consider such a trade-in?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to ask Osama Bin Laden for compensation for this incredibly cowardly act? The chance of a positive response would have been endlessly higher – albeit minimal.
Let me demonstrate through their own account how sick these terrorists are:
The one allocated to the Nairobi plot was supposed to have shot the guard at the embassy entrance, paving the way for the other to drive the explosives through the gate.
However, he forgot his gun at the back seat of his car.
As he couldn’t shoot the guard immediately, after which he’d probably have been killed himself, he figured that he had messed things up – and ran away.
The logic is that in order to obtain a one way ticket to paradise, he had to be killed in the act – and not afterwards, as this would be considered suicide.
And suicide is not allowed.
Chew on that one for a while.
I don’t know who of the two people, the blind lady or the terrorist, I pity the most. Both are lost in an illusion that only religion could bring about.
My conclusion is, that our time on earth is short and final. Therefore it is better to concentrate on friends and family and make the most out of life here and now than to believe in deluded promises of a paradise – or to believe that God (which of them?) has monopoly on being good.
The problem, of course, is that friends and family may not see it that way, but the solution is simple: convert them to at least understand the "here and now" principle - or dump them.
Time is much too short to live with waste and futile hopes.
What a relief this insight has become for me!
The statement stunned me.
What kind of god would take up that offer?
If he had decided to take both eyes, he would surely take them, as it was unclear what the woman had to offer in return.
And if she had something to offer, what kind of miserable, stingy, vengeful god would consider such a trade-in?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to ask Osama Bin Laden for compensation for this incredibly cowardly act? The chance of a positive response would have been endlessly higher – albeit minimal.
Let me demonstrate through their own account how sick these terrorists are:
The one allocated to the Nairobi plot was supposed to have shot the guard at the embassy entrance, paving the way for the other to drive the explosives through the gate.
However, he forgot his gun at the back seat of his car.
As he couldn’t shoot the guard immediately, after which he’d probably have been killed himself, he figured that he had messed things up – and ran away.
The logic is that in order to obtain a one way ticket to paradise, he had to be killed in the act – and not afterwards, as this would be considered suicide.
And suicide is not allowed.
Chew on that one for a while.
I don’t know who of the two people, the blind lady or the terrorist, I pity the most. Both are lost in an illusion that only religion could bring about.
My conclusion is, that our time on earth is short and final. Therefore it is better to concentrate on friends and family and make the most out of life here and now than to believe in deluded promises of a paradise – or to believe that God (which of them?) has monopoly on being good.
The problem, of course, is that friends and family may not see it that way, but the solution is simple: convert them to at least understand the "here and now" principle - or dump them.
Time is much too short to live with waste and futile hopes.
What a relief this insight has become for me!
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Wine Harvest 4 Sept. 2010
The same amount as last year? Unfortunately not!
Grapes were small, 50% didn't pollinate and many dried out.
The result was a little more than a gallon - but what a gallon! 22% sugar according to the refractometer, now bubbling away for the next 3 months!
Volume low - quality high - that's OK!
The proud vigneronne demonstrating - -
- and here bubbling away on 7 Sept. after 3 days in the vat. Last year they spent 5 days before being poured over to the demijohn. In theory the longer in the vat, the more 'fruit' in the wine. But this also increases the chance of noxious bacteria developing - hence the short initial fermentation. Let's see in 3-4 months!
So far left on the vine (8 Sept.)
They do take their time to become ripe and this year the miserable spring and summer didn't do much to promote great growth. But there is enough to fill another demijohn - just about. Let's see in about 2 weeks (i.e. 20 Sept.) - but here's a pre-view on the vine:
I have removed as many leaves as possible to let maximum air and light into the bunches.
Sun, please!!!
And now hear this:
Pour que le vin fasse du bien aux femmes, faut que ce soyent les hommes qui le boivent!!
Perhaps I shouldn't be so impatient? This is the state of the art at Nyetimber's vineyard in Bignor, Sussex.
Not exactly well ripened fruit either. Tough year!!
 |
| Pinot Meunier, 11 Sept. 2010, Nyetinber Vineyard. |
Friday, 27 August 2010
Jorgen Faxholm : Tourtour Provence
Tourtour meadow.
Just outside Tourtour, a medieval village with castles and tourist traps, near Salerne and Villecroze, this wonderful view can be found. It takes in the blessings of Provence: The deep blue sky, the cooling Mistral, lavenders, medieval towers and a breathtaking view towards the Esterel mountains.
It just had to be painted!
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Jorgen Faxholm : Roman bridge
Between Apt and Bonnieux this 2000 year old Roman bridge still carries the main traffic from "Gallia Cisalpina to Gallia Transalpina" - the only remaining bridge of a series of constructions that took trade and legionairies around the old empire.
Don't be fooled by the apparently wafer-thin top of the bridge. It is strong as an ass's back and may stay safe for another 2000 years!
(My painting 2010).
Monday, 28 June 2010
Danish Tax Policy 2010
Danish Tax-policy, explained by Lars Løkke.
with an English translation
English MPs have a lot to learn from the old Vikings.
Or perhaps the Vikings never left?
The compatibility between English and Danish parliamentary processes and similar ways of explaining complex matters are extraordinary. These 10 seconds from a specialist in clear communication, Lars Loekke, flows like a poem:
1. DANISH
Så har man altså valgt at lave et system,
hvor man skal aflevere lidt mindre
end man gjorde før.
Det er så det vi har valgt,
og det fører så selvfølgelig til, at – øhh –
dem, der tjener mere og afleverer meget
og nu afleverer lidt mindre,
ja, de afleverer så meget mindre,
end dem, der tjener lidt mindre
og afleverer mindre,
men altså så afleverer mindre - - mindre.
2. ENGLISH
So we have chosen to set up a system
where one will pay a little less
than we did before.
This is what we have chosen
and of course it leads to – uhmm –
those, who earn more and pay more
and now pay a little less,
yes, they will now pay a lot less
than those, who earn a little less
and pay less
but also pay less - - less.
Fantastic!!!!
with an English translation
English MPs have a lot to learn from the old Vikings.
Or perhaps the Vikings never left?
The compatibility between English and Danish parliamentary processes and similar ways of explaining complex matters are extraordinary. These 10 seconds from a specialist in clear communication, Lars Loekke, flows like a poem:
1. DANISH
Så har man altså valgt at lave et system,
hvor man skal aflevere lidt mindre
end man gjorde før.
Det er så det vi har valgt,
og det fører så selvfølgelig til, at – øhh –
dem, der tjener mere og afleverer meget
og nu afleverer lidt mindre,
ja, de afleverer så meget mindre,
end dem, der tjener lidt mindre
og afleverer mindre,
men altså så afleverer mindre - - mindre.
2. ENGLISH
So we have chosen to set up a system
where one will pay a little less
than we did before.
This is what we have chosen
and of course it leads to – uhmm –
those, who earn more and pay more
and now pay a little less,
yes, they will now pay a lot less
than those, who earn a little less
and pay less
but also pay less - - less.
Fantastic!!!!
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Jorgen Faxholm : Adam's Shop
 |
| Adamou's historic Chiswick shop. Opened 1959, closed March 2011. Acrylic on board, 2008 |
This is the kind of shop our children will have a hard time to find in the future.
Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's are well on the way to take over, making convenience shopping via easy access to a car park more and more common. The result is that they increasingly determine what we can buy and what not and tend to set the price (usually a high one) for our thus forced limited ambitions. Automatic tills and an overpowering competitve position are about to drive both local employment and small shops into oblivion.
Ultimately, we may all stay at home, ordering our food from the HD-LED screen of the computer, and let a service company bring us whatever they have on the shelf without giving us a chance to 'feel' the produce. So what about the shopping experience?
What about choice?
What about the diversity of specialised shops?
What about the personal relationship with innovative greengrocers, who understand the market and who understand what their individual customers want?
And what about the feeling of experiencing a bustling High Street?
Welcome to the 21st Century.
Friday, 18 June 2010
Political poems - sorry - de er paa dansk!
Udfundne af den pegasusianske rytter, hovmodets basker og skjald par excellence: Jorgenius Faxibus udi Maj 2010, i anledningen af det engelske valg - kan uden omskrivninger bruges til danske valg med henvisning til forfatterens intellektuelle korpus!!
1.
1. Der sviges fedt med grå pamfletter,
sandheden i Sibirien bor;
Der kastes tons af blår
og grus og sorte hætter
over folkets øjne, mens i kor
vi tigger, be’r, og håbet får et skår.
2. For pøbelen den sover,
lægger hjernens krøl på is.
Mens potten, som er fuld
af løfter, løber over
lover skov og røden guld,
og så’r den bare fuld a fis.
3. Det knivver lidt med hjerner,
at bruge dem er ikke let.
Til sorte huller visdoms stjerner
gøres daglig uden ret.
Med troens lidelse og mord
Det aldrig før er set:
3 ½. Det usandsynlige er sket,
at Faxibus er tom for ord.
2.
1. Jeg sidder midt i haven
i piberøgens slør
Med fisk og steg i maven
alt mens jeg roligt spør:
Hvor tør de politiker
tante fjas og fjumse,
når de ej engang er sikker
på om deres numse
ej bliver rød og slagen?
2. Snablen ned i krukken
det har de alle stukken.
Men hvor er deres blusel?
Ja, jeg spør’ Dem bare!
Man ej kan skrække dem
med sandheds bitre fusel.
For lige det er syv og fem,
og vi har lov og orden:
Dem rider ingen mare.
3. Men vos som der har viden
vi ser igennem røg’n
og sporer hele tiden
hver lusk og hver en løgn.
Jeg venter på min chance
til at brække deres rygge
og tage fed revanche:
Måske som valgt minister
jeg selv ku finde lykke?
Udfundne af den pegasusianske rytter, hovmodets basker og skjald par excellence: Jorgenius Faxibus udi Maj 2010, i anledningen af det engelske valg - kan uden omskrivninger bruges til danske valg med henvisning til forfatterens intellektuelle korpus!!
1.
1. Der sviges fedt med grå pamfletter,
sandheden i Sibirien bor;
Der kastes tons af blår
og grus og sorte hætter
over folkets øjne, mens i kor
vi tigger, be’r, og håbet får et skår.
2. For pøbelen den sover,
lægger hjernens krøl på is.
Mens potten, som er fuld
af løfter, løber over
lover skov og røden guld,
og så’r den bare fuld a fis.
3. Det knivver lidt med hjerner,
at bruge dem er ikke let.
Til sorte huller visdoms stjerner
gøres daglig uden ret.
Med troens lidelse og mord
Det aldrig før er set:
3 ½. Det usandsynlige er sket,
at Faxibus er tom for ord.
2.
1. Jeg sidder midt i haven
i piberøgens slør
Med fisk og steg i maven
alt mens jeg roligt spør:
Hvor tør de politiker
tante fjas og fjumse,
når de ej engang er sikker
på om deres numse
ej bliver rød og slagen?
2. Snablen ned i krukken
det har de alle stukken.
Men hvor er deres blusel?
Ja, jeg spør’ Dem bare!
Man ej kan skrække dem
med sandheds bitre fusel.
For lige det er syv og fem,
og vi har lov og orden:
Dem rider ingen mare.
3. Men vos som der har viden
vi ser igennem røg’n
og sporer hele tiden
hver lusk og hver en løgn.
Jeg venter på min chance
til at brække deres rygge
og tage fed revanche:
Måske som valgt minister
jeg selv ku finde lykke?
Thursday, 27 May 2010
NuLab (New Labour) review 1997-2010
By now most of us have given up on politicians. At the election on 6 May 2010 only about 62% of voters managed to lift their bum off the couch and do their duty – a disgrace as this was the most advertised election campaign ever in British history. The full brunt of Twitter, Facebook, eMails, mobile phones, smart posters and big budgets were brought to bear, all, apparently, to little effect. In this age of automation 1000s were not allowed to vote, as the polling stations’ capacity was exhausted across the country and people were refused entry.
Is this Britain or Afghanistan?
Politicians and politics have clearly topped lawyers, estate agents and traffic wardens in un-popularity.
What was it that New Labour promised us in 1997, when euphoria broke out as Labour won a land-slide election?
A new and fairer society? (Did I hear that again in 2010?)
New politics? (Did I hear that again in 2010?)
A society based on strong values? (Did I hear that again in 2010?)
How dare politicians pander to public amnesia and think they can keep promising the same broken promises over and over again?
Let us therefore take a look at some of Labour’s 13 years’ record.
Today we have a society that demonstrates an unprecedented gulf between rich and poor. It has become a society of money, materialism and celebrities. When I bought my house in 1994 it cost roughly 3 times my yearly salary. I couldn’t buy it today for 12 times that amount. If you don’t know what rich is, then take the Alfa list of the 50 people with the highest income in the world. 8 are UK based and most are involved in the financial industry. These 8 managed an average of £200mill income each in 2007 and these 50 account for a total income of approx. £20bill. Hedge funds, Derivatives, Sub Prime Mortgage speculations in a free-for-all market with little regulation – all under the nose of a NuLab government that promised the end of Boom-and-Bust - have done more damage to our lives than we will be able to catch up with in the next 20 years.
When you are blessed with a Labour Prime Minister, who didn’t hesitate raiding our pension funds for £100bill and sell our gold-reserves at a dumping price, it is no wonder that those who were still awake kicked him out in the 2010 election.
It is a bigger wonder why so many still voted for him.
There’s public amnesia for you. Or plain stupidity?
In ’97 Blair trumpeted his 3 major priorities for all to remember: Education – education – education. Recently the UK was placed at nr. 24 on a list of maths teaching in Europe, but some of us didn’t forget the speech Blair gave and the applause he received.
The same positive promises were made on the alleviation of child poverty (it’s worse today than then), drink issues and criminality. When recently the lead was ripped off my neighbour’s house and my car was stolen the police bragged: no serious crime was committed in the area last month. Lies, damned lies and statistics seem to be Labour’s method.
One can argue endlessly (and we do) over the objectives and justification of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Personally I believe that the devout catholic Blair knew very well that the arguments were dubious and that he followed Bush’s tail, putting an almost religious spin to the matter. The follow-up to the invasion was dramatically disastrous. In short, NuLab took us to war without putting the country, or rather the military, on a war-footing. Demonstrated lack of military equipment and a public discussion drowning in political waffle have showed NuLab to be callous to an extent bordering on criminal laissez faire. In the end they had to admit that despite a rise in money spent on the military, the rise in real terms was nil. For a country at war?
This is unforgivable, even if there were a shadow of justification left.
It is almost trivial to make an account of the plethora of mismanagement NuLab has been responsible for. To err is human, but to really screw things up obviously took a Labour government. Here are a few examples.
Tonnes of spin were brought to the fore, when Labour tried to wriggle out of the 10p tax scandal as they mistakenly cancelled the lower tax bracket. It was another example of a party, that has ‘Labour’ to its name, protecting the rich more than the poor – something they always accused the Tories of doing.
Historically Labour has always been a big spender, almost a squanderer of state funds. That’s the reason we can now see the bottom of our coffers, finding ourselves trapped in the worst recession in 60 years, with the Pound at an all time low and unemployment at its highest ever despite the ’97-promise of full employment.
Public spending happened as if there was no tomorrow, even during the last days of NuLab in office and the Brown government had planned to continue as if there actually was a tomorrow, had they not been stopped dead in their tracks at the election.
The Millennium Dome cost in excess of £1.3bill against an original budget of £400mill. 70,000 family houses could have been built for this amount, eliminating the problem of Britain’s homeless. And then there is Ed Balls, the Education secretary, who had planned funding for massage rooms and contemplation suites in our schools. Eh? For distressed teachers, who have lost all control over the kids?
Identity cards would have cost £1bill, at least, and everyone except Labour agrees it would have been a complete waste of money. Quangos, e.g the “Potato Council”, spin doctors and ‘Consultants’ had the life of Roman governors under NuLab.
When the house started to come down after Blair’s departure and an un-elected Brown took over, it looks as though the emphasis changed to lining one’s own pockets before the gravy train stopped.
The MP scandal broke under Brown’s watch. The speaker had to be sacked for the first time since the 17th Century, as he refused to clean up the matter. Labour MPs were caught asking for cash (allegedly £3-5000) for lobbying. ‘Cash for honours’ was another juicy undertaking in which donors to the Labour party could obtain a Lordship. Compare this to Blair’s end-of-sleeze promise in 97. Free holidays for senior politicians also became the heading of the day and Blair was one of the frequent recipients. Then there was Blair’s wife, who excelled in snubbing the queen, using convicted criminals to broker the purchase of apartments and generally the Blairs operating a presidential life style that certainly had little relationship with the 97 promise of labour values. This, by the way continues today, where Blair is rewarded £2-400,000 an hour on the speech circuit with 16 publicly paid police officers as protection – and no contribution by him self - costing the taxpayers £5mill/year, while he retains another costly sinecure job as a ‘Middle East Envoy’.
Is that what he called ‘Labour values’ in 1997?
There must have been something sinister going on at an early state in the NuLab government. Why, otherwise, would the herostratically famous Jo Moore otherwise have said “This is a good day to bury bad news” just after the 9/11 disaster?
Peter Mandelsohn, who was twice sacked from the government, first time over lying about a home loan, was later asked to return as a “Business Tsar” by Brown, with whom he had dramatically fallen out. This prompts the question: what kind of dealings and wheelings were going on behind the curtain? What kind of person is Brown actually? After 10 years of constant arguments and rows between him and Blair, accusations of Brown bullying his staff and a public derogatory remark about an old voter as being an ‘old bigot’ – who did this un-elected prime minister think he was? And on that kind of question one can extend the curiosity to the daily comings and goings of the Unite Trade Union bosses’ daily visits to Brown in nr. 10. These are people who underpin the NuLab party budgets and at the same time try to bring down British Airways while twittering during confidential ACAS-talks. Talk about sinister people and events - - - - .
Then there’s the case about foreigners in Britain. NuLab has been completely unable to clarify what is going on, how many foreigners there are in this country and how many come and go.
The general popular attitude is that foreign immigration is a bad idea. But they forget that a lot of British people work abroad – in the EU and elsewhere.
Recently there was a TV-feature about foreign workers, East Europeans in particular, who worked as farm labourers in Norfolk. According to the local English employers there would be no business without these workers – and yet people on the street were complaining that foreigners took away work from the British, maintaining this was the reason for the local 10% unemployment figure. With great (actually enormous) effort the TV-producer managed to get a few of the English jobless out of bed, sending them out in the field together with the East Europeans.
Most of them didn’t last a day, the rest didn’t turn up on time and none of them was able to work effectively.
Why hasn’t NuLab created better conditions for work? Then you could say: You work, you get paid. You don’t want to work, support stops. Hardly rocket science.
In addition no one knows how many illegal immigrants we have. Poor people from all over the world have found that Britain is a soft target for their ambitions of a life away from extreme poverty. The stream of illegals, making the channel crossing hidden in lorries from Calais is endless. How difficult can it be to ‘defend’ an island? And are these people really such a big problem? In order to exist, they need money and they will only get money if the work, i.e. produce. Consequently they contribute to the economy. It all boils down to proper management and political regulation, something NuLab seems totally incapable of instigating.
As far as the EU-workers are concerned, Britain has a political and contractual obligation to accept them and they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t see the benefit. This is perhaps why the flow goes the other way at the moment, as the value of the Pound is falling.
Non-EU people also seem to leave faster than they arrive.
In other words: where is the problem, other than perhaps a social problem with misuse of people, who are in need of support and who live outside the system – and thousands of British job-seekers, who are too lazy to make an effort? The fact is that there are lots of jobs available, but few willing takers. Isn’t that just a management problem? The Tories seem to think so – a welcome change.
Labour’s record on political correctness and support of human rights is also tarnished.
Ostensibly 900 foreign criminals, some of whom are highly dangerous terrorists, have disappeared in the system, i.e. no one knows where they are. The Home Office is in a mess. Letting dangerous criminals loose on the streets of Britain is not a good alternative to sending them back to their home country. But obviously someone thinks it is better to absorb them as a local danger than potentially violating their human rights.
We don’t all agree!
Finally a word on Climate change and energy management.
NuLab lost the plot!
Britain only produces 2% of their energy in a renewable fashion against some other European countries’ record of 20-30%. The ploy today is to ‘pay’ yourself out of a carbon foot-print. This is disgusting, irresponsible and a mismanagement that shows no understanding of the problem nor commitment to the future. And yet Brown, at the charade conference in Copenhagen in 2009, said that “Britain would lead”. From the back seat? When he decided to print money and kept borrowing from abroad in 2009, very little went into green investments. The wind farms and North Sea grids now being planned will all be financed abroad and none of the materials used will be produced in the UK. It will take us at least 30 years to eliminate the Russian and Arab stranglehold on Britain’s energy. In the economic vice that a spendthrift NuLab has created for us, the consequences are difficult to oversee.
What a lost opportunity. We could have rebuilt our industrial base. Instead we missed an obvious chance to change Britain’s economic platform from becoming based on B&Q, Homebase, MacDonalds and Supermarkets. Will we all end as hairdressers? Perhaps the lack of a business vision for Britain is the worst crime NuLab have committed.
Unfortunately the new Conservative/LibDem government keep talking about a commitment to halt climate change. Although they have a sensible objective of building the nuclear power stations we so badly need, they don’t seem to have seen the light either: that we probably have no impact on climate change whatsoever (see elsewhere on my blog: AGW-nonsense), that we have no money to invest in a dramatic turn-around and that the promised investment in small industry leads nowhere, when the big industry suffers and a green energy industry is left for others to build.
One of the Tories just spent a week in Bangladesh to see for himself the effect of climate change. Eh? When cutting Himalaya’s forests are the main cause of flooding in a country that probably never should have occupied the land they have. Why didn’t he go to Germany, Denmark – or the village in Scotland, where people have made themselves 100% independent of a carbon energy supply, except when used in cars? No one seems to understand that realistic adaptation is far more important than preventing something over which we have no control. NuLab killed the cat and the Tories seem to be just as confused and drowned in political correctness.
My fear is that now the ‘toffs’ are in power, they may lean back and relax. Politicians only work for politicians.
Is there hope for the population, then?
Will the banks stop repossessing the homes of people, who must suffer the consequences of the financial mismanagement by the very same financial institutions? These are the banks, who lend the money in the first place and who now continue to pay billions of pounds in bonuses to their employees – the same money the banks received from the taxpayers to stay alive? In this light repossession is deeply immoral.
Thank you NuLab for creating these conditions through lack of vision, lack of honesty, broken promises, false values, a messy relationship between The Bank of England, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority, lack of proper regulation – and a colossal mismanagement across the board.
This was done on the watch of what Labour-voters still call the “best chancellor we ever had”, referring to Brown’s 10 years in nr. 11 Downing Street.
His unelected time in nr. 10 showed in less than 3 who he really was!!
By now most of us have given up on politicians. At the election on 6 May 2010 only about 62% of voters managed to lift their bum off the couch and do their duty – a disgrace as this was the most advertised election campaign ever in British history. The full brunt of Twitter, Facebook, eMails, mobile phones, smart posters and big budgets were brought to bear, all, apparently, to little effect. In this age of automation 1000s were not allowed to vote, as the polling stations’ capacity was exhausted across the country and people were refused entry.
Is this Britain or Afghanistan?
Politicians and politics have clearly topped lawyers, estate agents and traffic wardens in un-popularity.
What was it that New Labour promised us in 1997, when euphoria broke out as Labour won a land-slide election?
A new and fairer society? (Did I hear that again in 2010?)
New politics? (Did I hear that again in 2010?)
A society based on strong values? (Did I hear that again in 2010?)
How dare politicians pander to public amnesia and think they can keep promising the same broken promises over and over again?
Let us therefore take a look at some of Labour’s 13 years’ record.
Today we have a society that demonstrates an unprecedented gulf between rich and poor. It has become a society of money, materialism and celebrities. When I bought my house in 1994 it cost roughly 3 times my yearly salary. I couldn’t buy it today for 12 times that amount. If you don’t know what rich is, then take the Alfa list of the 50 people with the highest income in the world. 8 are UK based and most are involved in the financial industry. These 8 managed an average of £200mill income each in 2007 and these 50 account for a total income of approx. £20bill. Hedge funds, Derivatives, Sub Prime Mortgage speculations in a free-for-all market with little regulation – all under the nose of a NuLab government that promised the end of Boom-and-Bust - have done more damage to our lives than we will be able to catch up with in the next 20 years.
When you are blessed with a Labour Prime Minister, who didn’t hesitate raiding our pension funds for £100bill and sell our gold-reserves at a dumping price, it is no wonder that those who were still awake kicked him out in the 2010 election.
It is a bigger wonder why so many still voted for him.
There’s public amnesia for you. Or plain stupidity?
In ’97 Blair trumpeted his 3 major priorities for all to remember: Education – education – education. Recently the UK was placed at nr. 24 on a list of maths teaching in Europe, but some of us didn’t forget the speech Blair gave and the applause he received.
The same positive promises were made on the alleviation of child poverty (it’s worse today than then), drink issues and criminality. When recently the lead was ripped off my neighbour’s house and my car was stolen the police bragged: no serious crime was committed in the area last month. Lies, damned lies and statistics seem to be Labour’s method.
One can argue endlessly (and we do) over the objectives and justification of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Personally I believe that the devout catholic Blair knew very well that the arguments were dubious and that he followed Bush’s tail, putting an almost religious spin to the matter. The follow-up to the invasion was dramatically disastrous. In short, NuLab took us to war without putting the country, or rather the military, on a war-footing. Demonstrated lack of military equipment and a public discussion drowning in political waffle have showed NuLab to be callous to an extent bordering on criminal laissez faire. In the end they had to admit that despite a rise in money spent on the military, the rise in real terms was nil. For a country at war?
This is unforgivable, even if there were a shadow of justification left.
It is almost trivial to make an account of the plethora of mismanagement NuLab has been responsible for. To err is human, but to really screw things up obviously took a Labour government. Here are a few examples.
Tonnes of spin were brought to the fore, when Labour tried to wriggle out of the 10p tax scandal as they mistakenly cancelled the lower tax bracket. It was another example of a party, that has ‘Labour’ to its name, protecting the rich more than the poor – something they always accused the Tories of doing.
Historically Labour has always been a big spender, almost a squanderer of state funds. That’s the reason we can now see the bottom of our coffers, finding ourselves trapped in the worst recession in 60 years, with the Pound at an all time low and unemployment at its highest ever despite the ’97-promise of full employment.
Public spending happened as if there was no tomorrow, even during the last days of NuLab in office and the Brown government had planned to continue as if there actually was a tomorrow, had they not been stopped dead in their tracks at the election.
The Millennium Dome cost in excess of £1.3bill against an original budget of £400mill. 70,000 family houses could have been built for this amount, eliminating the problem of Britain’s homeless. And then there is Ed Balls, the Education secretary, who had planned funding for massage rooms and contemplation suites in our schools. Eh? For distressed teachers, who have lost all control over the kids?
Identity cards would have cost £1bill, at least, and everyone except Labour agrees it would have been a complete waste of money. Quangos, e.g the “Potato Council”, spin doctors and ‘Consultants’ had the life of Roman governors under NuLab.
When the house started to come down after Blair’s departure and an un-elected Brown took over, it looks as though the emphasis changed to lining one’s own pockets before the gravy train stopped.
The MP scandal broke under Brown’s watch. The speaker had to be sacked for the first time since the 17th Century, as he refused to clean up the matter. Labour MPs were caught asking for cash (allegedly £3-5000) for lobbying. ‘Cash for honours’ was another juicy undertaking in which donors to the Labour party could obtain a Lordship. Compare this to Blair’s end-of-sleeze promise in 97. Free holidays for senior politicians also became the heading of the day and Blair was one of the frequent recipients. Then there was Blair’s wife, who excelled in snubbing the queen, using convicted criminals to broker the purchase of apartments and generally the Blairs operating a presidential life style that certainly had little relationship with the 97 promise of labour values. This, by the way continues today, where Blair is rewarded £2-400,000 an hour on the speech circuit with 16 publicly paid police officers as protection – and no contribution by him self - costing the taxpayers £5mill/year, while he retains another costly sinecure job as a ‘Middle East Envoy’.
Is that what he called ‘Labour values’ in 1997?
There must have been something sinister going on at an early state in the NuLab government. Why, otherwise, would the herostratically famous Jo Moore otherwise have said “This is a good day to bury bad news” just after the 9/11 disaster?
Peter Mandelsohn, who was twice sacked from the government, first time over lying about a home loan, was later asked to return as a “Business Tsar” by Brown, with whom he had dramatically fallen out. This prompts the question: what kind of dealings and wheelings were going on behind the curtain? What kind of person is Brown actually? After 10 years of constant arguments and rows between him and Blair, accusations of Brown bullying his staff and a public derogatory remark about an old voter as being an ‘old bigot’ – who did this un-elected prime minister think he was? And on that kind of question one can extend the curiosity to the daily comings and goings of the Unite Trade Union bosses’ daily visits to Brown in nr. 10. These are people who underpin the NuLab party budgets and at the same time try to bring down British Airways while twittering during confidential ACAS-talks. Talk about sinister people and events - - - - .
Then there’s the case about foreigners in Britain. NuLab has been completely unable to clarify what is going on, how many foreigners there are in this country and how many come and go.
The general popular attitude is that foreign immigration is a bad idea. But they forget that a lot of British people work abroad – in the EU and elsewhere.
Recently there was a TV-feature about foreign workers, East Europeans in particular, who worked as farm labourers in Norfolk. According to the local English employers there would be no business without these workers – and yet people on the street were complaining that foreigners took away work from the British, maintaining this was the reason for the local 10% unemployment figure. With great (actually enormous) effort the TV-producer managed to get a few of the English jobless out of bed, sending them out in the field together with the East Europeans.
Most of them didn’t last a day, the rest didn’t turn up on time and none of them was able to work effectively.
Why hasn’t NuLab created better conditions for work? Then you could say: You work, you get paid. You don’t want to work, support stops. Hardly rocket science.
In addition no one knows how many illegal immigrants we have. Poor people from all over the world have found that Britain is a soft target for their ambitions of a life away from extreme poverty. The stream of illegals, making the channel crossing hidden in lorries from Calais is endless. How difficult can it be to ‘defend’ an island? And are these people really such a big problem? In order to exist, they need money and they will only get money if the work, i.e. produce. Consequently they contribute to the economy. It all boils down to proper management and political regulation, something NuLab seems totally incapable of instigating.
As far as the EU-workers are concerned, Britain has a political and contractual obligation to accept them and they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t see the benefit. This is perhaps why the flow goes the other way at the moment, as the value of the Pound is falling.
Non-EU people also seem to leave faster than they arrive.
In other words: where is the problem, other than perhaps a social problem with misuse of people, who are in need of support and who live outside the system – and thousands of British job-seekers, who are too lazy to make an effort? The fact is that there are lots of jobs available, but few willing takers. Isn’t that just a management problem? The Tories seem to think so – a welcome change.
Labour’s record on political correctness and support of human rights is also tarnished.
Ostensibly 900 foreign criminals, some of whom are highly dangerous terrorists, have disappeared in the system, i.e. no one knows where they are. The Home Office is in a mess. Letting dangerous criminals loose on the streets of Britain is not a good alternative to sending them back to their home country. But obviously someone thinks it is better to absorb them as a local danger than potentially violating their human rights.
We don’t all agree!
Finally a word on Climate change and energy management.
NuLab lost the plot!
Britain only produces 2% of their energy in a renewable fashion against some other European countries’ record of 20-30%. The ploy today is to ‘pay’ yourself out of a carbon foot-print. This is disgusting, irresponsible and a mismanagement that shows no understanding of the problem nor commitment to the future. And yet Brown, at the charade conference in Copenhagen in 2009, said that “Britain would lead”. From the back seat? When he decided to print money and kept borrowing from abroad in 2009, very little went into green investments. The wind farms and North Sea grids now being planned will all be financed abroad and none of the materials used will be produced in the UK. It will take us at least 30 years to eliminate the Russian and Arab stranglehold on Britain’s energy. In the economic vice that a spendthrift NuLab has created for us, the consequences are difficult to oversee.
What a lost opportunity. We could have rebuilt our industrial base. Instead we missed an obvious chance to change Britain’s economic platform from becoming based on B&Q, Homebase, MacDonalds and Supermarkets. Will we all end as hairdressers? Perhaps the lack of a business vision for Britain is the worst crime NuLab have committed.
Unfortunately the new Conservative/LibDem government keep talking about a commitment to halt climate change. Although they have a sensible objective of building the nuclear power stations we so badly need, they don’t seem to have seen the light either: that we probably have no impact on climate change whatsoever (see elsewhere on my blog: AGW-nonsense), that we have no money to invest in a dramatic turn-around and that the promised investment in small industry leads nowhere, when the big industry suffers and a green energy industry is left for others to build.
One of the Tories just spent a week in Bangladesh to see for himself the effect of climate change. Eh? When cutting Himalaya’s forests are the main cause of flooding in a country that probably never should have occupied the land they have. Why didn’t he go to Germany, Denmark – or the village in Scotland, where people have made themselves 100% independent of a carbon energy supply, except when used in cars? No one seems to understand that realistic adaptation is far more important than preventing something over which we have no control. NuLab killed the cat and the Tories seem to be just as confused and drowned in political correctness.
My fear is that now the ‘toffs’ are in power, they may lean back and relax. Politicians only work for politicians.
Is there hope for the population, then?
Will the banks stop repossessing the homes of people, who must suffer the consequences of the financial mismanagement by the very same financial institutions? These are the banks, who lend the money in the first place and who now continue to pay billions of pounds in bonuses to their employees – the same money the banks received from the taxpayers to stay alive? In this light repossession is deeply immoral.
Thank you NuLab for creating these conditions through lack of vision, lack of honesty, broken promises, false values, a messy relationship between The Bank of England, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority, lack of proper regulation – and a colossal mismanagement across the board.
This was done on the watch of what Labour-voters still call the “best chancellor we ever had”, referring to Brown’s 10 years in nr. 11 Downing Street.
His unelected time in nr. 10 showed in less than 3 who he really was!!
Sunday, 11 April 2010
My friend Peter Wessel Zapffe
Peter Wessel Zapffe – and my philosophy.
I am against idolisation. I hate the idea about being a “fan” – but SHOULD I, in a weak moment, ever give in to this kind of unquestionable admiration, Zapffe would be very high on my list of idols. His philosophy suits me to the core; I understand what he says – with every nerve in my body; and I fail to see that his message is as negative as many people claim. In fact I find it a thoroughly positive, life-confirming message and it removes the mythological veil and gobbledygook, with which the human species constantly surrounds itself, leaving a clear and unpolluted message about our existence.
Zapffe was a prolific mountaineer and an author of many humorous short stories about climbing and other adventures in nature, taking a very early interest in environmentalism. He was also an atheist – and so am I. I used to be an agnostic, mainly from an intellectual point of view: you cannot prove or disprove what is improvable, so better leave the door open if one day something proving a god’s existence should turn up. But that is a stance that put me on the side of wet noodles while performing a mental balancing act leading nowhere. All religious people – without exception – can be pushed into saying: “I just know”, while having to admit that theirs is nothing but a firm, unwavering belief. And it remains a belief. Face it: there is no argument whatsoever that proves the existence of a god. Full stop. Luckily it is a prerogative of ours to believe what we want, as long as we leave people with different beliefs in peace. Unfortunately most religions carry an anachronistic luggage that doesn’t allow such tolerance.
Zapffe defined 4 dimensions describing the way we live our lives:
* Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling". We are probably all familiar with the tendency to ignore bad news, as it “disturbs our circles” – and if we can’t do it with a positive mind, there are plenty of drugs available that can help us. But it is hardly a viable way to help us live full lives. Living in isolation must be a short-term solution and as such good enough – just consider holidays, an evening’s binge drinking, an LSD-trip or falling madly and unconditionally in love with no thought for the consequences. The Chinese would probably add ‘gardening’ as a happy escape to a mental paradise!
* Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the maelstrom of targets for our consciousness". The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. It is a hook to a virtual reality that saves us from drowning in unending possibilities. Zapffe applied the anchoring principle to e.g. society, and stated "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future" are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments. You could add ‘Political Manifestos’ to this array; this explains why someone claiming to side with e.g. the Labour party will believe blindly in – and fight for – everything the party gurus claim to be eternal truths and accepted values. Without ‘anchoring’ there would be total chaos within each party as everyone would have their own interpretation of the party-line. As we can see, this doesn’t happen, or at least only to a very small degree. Humans are indeed special!
* Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions". Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself. This is clearly related to the ‘Isolation’-dimension, but it has a more positive ring to it, as it is enforced by a level of activity. Distraction is perhaps more related to escapism in its pure form.
* Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, towards positive ones. The individual distances him / herself and looks at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g. writers, poets, painters.) Zapffe himself pointed out that his work was the product of sublimation. Should I be forced to choose any single dimension for my life, this would be the one. I have often described my mind as being lodged – like a donkey – between a carrot and a stick, but always seen the carrot more clearly than I felt the pain from the stick. I can assure any reader that it is a feeling that more than anything else will bring you rather unscathed through difficult periods in one’s life.
Here is a number of quotes that more than anything else illustrate “Zapffism”:
* "Each new generation asks - What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be - Why do we need a meaning with life?" Who says? Why can’t we just determine a set of sociological, political, humanitarian values and establish our own meaning? Where does this blind belief come from, that someone ‘out there’ should have introduced a higher objective with our being born and passing away? Why not accept that we are a fluke of nature’s many awesome processes?
* "Human beings are a tragic species. Not because of our smallness, but because we are too well endowed. We have longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfil. We have expectations of a just and moral world. We require meaning in a meaningless world". Where is the ‘fair and just’ world for ants when their hill is turned upside down by a passing deer in the forest? During billions of years we happen to have developed the incredible ability of abstract thinking, which has made life so complex for us. It is a curse as well as a blessing. An ant in Australia behaves by and large like an ant in Brazil and an English finch sings the same tune as a Danish one. Only humans develop and behave unpredictably. As a consequence of our possessing an incredible bio-computer we have the ability to create a multitude of behaviours. It helps us invent and use tools that empower our weak construction beyond the imaginable and enables us to create intellectual discontinuity jumps in areas we cannot even fathom ourselves. But when we compare with the rest of the animal – or plant! – world, each species appears to be endowed with an equally amazing performance ability – only far more selective and specialised and highly constrained in freedom. The difference is that humans have no preset level! We are a fluke of nature and it is up to us, whether we decide to use it positively or negatively. It does NOT prove the existence of a god. At best you can say that you BELIEVE, but that is a completely personal matter with no scientific value.
* "The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn't seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer". Why are we so hung up on the idea that there must be an answer to everything? Take the concept of ‘time’, for example. My childhood’s eternal questions were: when did the universe start? What is on the other side of the universe? And what was there before? The answer may be startling simple: time is our invention! It is irrelevant to talk about time, which we have defined as various fractions of the Earth’s movement. We must realise that Earth, in a cosmic sense, is nothing! We can of course use a more universal definition of time: the oscillation period of Caesium atoms. We know that time dilutes the closer we get to the speed of light or close to a strong gravitational field. This we can verify by experiment. But to make Einstein's equation E=mc2 work, he also made mass a variable. That is the reverse of science! New theories (Frank Atkinson) indicate that mass is constant while the speed of light varies. It may always be maxed out at 300,000 Km/sec - but if a second only lasts "half as long" in a different time domain, e.g. close to a galaxy, then - - - - ? Perhaps the Universe always was? perhaps the red-shift of light is NOT an indication of the doppler effect of the Big Bang, which therefore never was? Einstein can easily be debunked (see my 2011 blog entries), using his own relativity arguments and a speeding train. We are left with only serious mathematics in our attempts to explain cosmic theories, while the mind, that tries to perceive the existence of parallel universes or string theories and the concept of endlessness (both in time-terms and distance) has had to be parked in a quiet spot long ago. We are not built to relate to such metaphysics. We must give up believing that WE have invented everything. The only thing we have ever invented is a load of religious nonsense, demonstrating our smallness.
'Nature' is beyond our wildest imagination - from superfast Neutrinos to Galaxies 50bill light years away.
So what remains?
As long as we keep asking questions and are curious, we are alive.
Perhaps THIS is the true meaning of life?
* "We come from an inconceivable nothingness. We stay a while in something which seems equally inconceivable, only to vanish again into the inconceivable nothingness". And is that so bad? We came out of the primordial soup after the big bang - and may disappear in another big bang one day. I wish someone could tell me why this is such a negative notion. What it is all about is “what do we make of it while we are here”. I believe Zapffe had the same idea. When we disappear, someone else will take over and it is our responsibility to make sure that the heritage is worth while. We, ourselves, are left to become dust and time limited memories – and therein lies, hopefully, some value. The Ptolemaic Egyptians kept the richly decorated mummy coffins containing their ancestors piled up against the wall in the triclinium of their dwellings. That way dad, granny and great-great grand dad were kept integrated with daily life for a while. When none of the later generations recognised who they were, the coffins were dumped in the desert sand - and found by Flinders Petrie in the 1860s.
* "The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end". – We must concentrate on the consequence of our immediate decisions for the sake of ourselves, while we are here and able to create a brief flash of meaning, and perhaps to pass one iota of accrued knowledge to our children. Experience shows that they have little interst in receiving "old wisdom", but perhaps we become wiser in a billion years?
* "Death is a terrible provocation. It appears almost everywhere, presenting a stern but effective scale for both values and ethical standards. It is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is ". This is why we must learn to accept death as part of life. Darkness doesn’t exist without light and happiness not without pain. We must learn to accept it as natural for us, as for the ants we tread upon during a forest walk. Our routines and rituals around death ought to focus on the passing of learning, memories and values, which is what each generation has a responsibility to take on board. Sadly, our track record for learning in a historical sense is terrible – there is a lot to learn for future generations in this respect.
* "In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation". I disagree slightly with Zapffe. While there basically is no meaning with life as such, our existence only has value (if any) as a chain. Each generation is a link, but only the chain itself can have a value. Yes, we are terrible at setting our priorities, but ants don’t ask to be born either. They just are – like us! Where I agree with Zapffe is in the notion that if you don’t want to have children, it’s philosophically a totally defensible position. And here we differ from any other species: we may choose not to have children. The rest of nature sees it as its main objective to populate “the cosmic brutality”. At best, you can say it is a sign of our imperfection that we concentrate on the coin and not the question of children. That is our curse.
* "Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will". On this point I disagree completely with Zapffe. Unfortunately I can’t ask him for clarification – for me it’s better to be a Don Quijote fighting for unattainable ideals, than to consider suicide. Why? Because if there is any meaning with life at all, it is imbedded in the here and now. Let it last, for each generation, as long as it can and let’s cut as many windmills down as we can in that time!
* "I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, Peter Wessel Zapffe, did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness". This notion supports my statement that it is the here and now plus the learning we may pass on to the next generation that counts. But should it happen that a black hole comes our way in the Universe and swallows our solar system, then I fully agree: no damage whatsoever will have been done! Not more, at least, than a dead ant under the foot on a warm summer’s day in the forest.
* "If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind"". I couldn’t agree more. I have never felt so much at ease with my own philosophy about life and death, as when I finally took the small step from agnosticism to atheism. Some people find peace in believing that the Easter Bunny can lay chocolate eggs – but isn’t it more relevant, justifiable and easier to believe in what I call ‘dust and worms’ than living your life in imagined guilt and anxiety about what awaits you on the other side? Have your 99 “white raisins” this side of the threshold, rather than losing out through a bomb around you waist!
Jorgen Faxholm, London 9 April 2010.
I am against idolisation. I hate the idea about being a “fan” – but SHOULD I, in a weak moment, ever give in to this kind of unquestionable admiration, Zapffe would be very high on my list of idols. His philosophy suits me to the core; I understand what he says – with every nerve in my body; and I fail to see that his message is as negative as many people claim. In fact I find it a thoroughly positive, life-confirming message and it removes the mythological veil and gobbledygook, with which the human species constantly surrounds itself, leaving a clear and unpolluted message about our existence.
Zapffe was a prolific mountaineer and an author of many humorous short stories about climbing and other adventures in nature, taking a very early interest in environmentalism. He was also an atheist – and so am I. I used to be an agnostic, mainly from an intellectual point of view: you cannot prove or disprove what is improvable, so better leave the door open if one day something proving a god’s existence should turn up. But that is a stance that put me on the side of wet noodles while performing a mental balancing act leading nowhere. All religious people – without exception – can be pushed into saying: “I just know”, while having to admit that theirs is nothing but a firm, unwavering belief. And it remains a belief. Face it: there is no argument whatsoever that proves the existence of a god. Full stop. Luckily it is a prerogative of ours to believe what we want, as long as we leave people with different beliefs in peace. Unfortunately most religions carry an anachronistic luggage that doesn’t allow such tolerance.
Zapffe defined 4 dimensions describing the way we live our lives:
* Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling". We are probably all familiar with the tendency to ignore bad news, as it “disturbs our circles” – and if we can’t do it with a positive mind, there are plenty of drugs available that can help us. But it is hardly a viable way to help us live full lives. Living in isolation must be a short-term solution and as such good enough – just consider holidays, an evening’s binge drinking, an LSD-trip or falling madly and unconditionally in love with no thought for the consequences. The Chinese would probably add ‘gardening’ as a happy escape to a mental paradise!
* Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the maelstrom of targets for our consciousness". The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. It is a hook to a virtual reality that saves us from drowning in unending possibilities. Zapffe applied the anchoring principle to e.g. society, and stated "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future" are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments. You could add ‘Political Manifestos’ to this array; this explains why someone claiming to side with e.g. the Labour party will believe blindly in – and fight for – everything the party gurus claim to be eternal truths and accepted values. Without ‘anchoring’ there would be total chaos within each party as everyone would have their own interpretation of the party-line. As we can see, this doesn’t happen, or at least only to a very small degree. Humans are indeed special!
* Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions". Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself. This is clearly related to the ‘Isolation’-dimension, but it has a more positive ring to it, as it is enforced by a level of activity. Distraction is perhaps more related to escapism in its pure form.
* Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, towards positive ones. The individual distances him / herself and looks at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g. writers, poets, painters.) Zapffe himself pointed out that his work was the product of sublimation. Should I be forced to choose any single dimension for my life, this would be the one. I have often described my mind as being lodged – like a donkey – between a carrot and a stick, but always seen the carrot more clearly than I felt the pain from the stick. I can assure any reader that it is a feeling that more than anything else will bring you rather unscathed through difficult periods in one’s life.
Here is a number of quotes that more than anything else illustrate “Zapffism”:
* "Each new generation asks - What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be - Why do we need a meaning with life?" Who says? Why can’t we just determine a set of sociological, political, humanitarian values and establish our own meaning? Where does this blind belief come from, that someone ‘out there’ should have introduced a higher objective with our being born and passing away? Why not accept that we are a fluke of nature’s many awesome processes?
* "Human beings are a tragic species. Not because of our smallness, but because we are too well endowed. We have longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfil. We have expectations of a just and moral world. We require meaning in a meaningless world". Where is the ‘fair and just’ world for ants when their hill is turned upside down by a passing deer in the forest? During billions of years we happen to have developed the incredible ability of abstract thinking, which has made life so complex for us. It is a curse as well as a blessing. An ant in Australia behaves by and large like an ant in Brazil and an English finch sings the same tune as a Danish one. Only humans develop and behave unpredictably. As a consequence of our possessing an incredible bio-computer we have the ability to create a multitude of behaviours. It helps us invent and use tools that empower our weak construction beyond the imaginable and enables us to create intellectual discontinuity jumps in areas we cannot even fathom ourselves. But when we compare with the rest of the animal – or plant! – world, each species appears to be endowed with an equally amazing performance ability – only far more selective and specialised and highly constrained in freedom. The difference is that humans have no preset level! We are a fluke of nature and it is up to us, whether we decide to use it positively or negatively. It does NOT prove the existence of a god. At best you can say that you BELIEVE, but that is a completely personal matter with no scientific value.
* "The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn't seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer". Why are we so hung up on the idea that there must be an answer to everything? Take the concept of ‘time’, for example. My childhood’s eternal questions were: when did the universe start? What is on the other side of the universe? And what was there before? The answer may be startling simple: time is our invention! It is irrelevant to talk about time, which we have defined as various fractions of the Earth’s movement. We must realise that Earth, in a cosmic sense, is nothing! We can of course use a more universal definition of time: the oscillation period of Caesium atoms. We know that time dilutes the closer we get to the speed of light or close to a strong gravitational field. This we can verify by experiment. But to make Einstein's equation E=mc2 work, he also made mass a variable. That is the reverse of science! New theories (Frank Atkinson) indicate that mass is constant while the speed of light varies. It may always be maxed out at 300,000 Km/sec - but if a second only lasts "half as long" in a different time domain, e.g. close to a galaxy, then - - - - ? Perhaps the Universe always was? perhaps the red-shift of light is NOT an indication of the doppler effect of the Big Bang, which therefore never was? Einstein can easily be debunked (see my 2011 blog entries), using his own relativity arguments and a speeding train. We are left with only serious mathematics in our attempts to explain cosmic theories, while the mind, that tries to perceive the existence of parallel universes or string theories and the concept of endlessness (both in time-terms and distance) has had to be parked in a quiet spot long ago. We are not built to relate to such metaphysics. We must give up believing that WE have invented everything. The only thing we have ever invented is a load of religious nonsense, demonstrating our smallness.
'Nature' is beyond our wildest imagination - from superfast Neutrinos to Galaxies 50bill light years away.
So what remains?
As long as we keep asking questions and are curious, we are alive.
Perhaps THIS is the true meaning of life?
* "We come from an inconceivable nothingness. We stay a while in something which seems equally inconceivable, only to vanish again into the inconceivable nothingness". And is that so bad? We came out of the primordial soup after the big bang - and may disappear in another big bang one day. I wish someone could tell me why this is such a negative notion. What it is all about is “what do we make of it while we are here”. I believe Zapffe had the same idea. When we disappear, someone else will take over and it is our responsibility to make sure that the heritage is worth while. We, ourselves, are left to become dust and time limited memories – and therein lies, hopefully, some value. The Ptolemaic Egyptians kept the richly decorated mummy coffins containing their ancestors piled up against the wall in the triclinium of their dwellings. That way dad, granny and great-great grand dad were kept integrated with daily life for a while. When none of the later generations recognised who they were, the coffins were dumped in the desert sand - and found by Flinders Petrie in the 1860s.
* "The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end". – We must concentrate on the consequence of our immediate decisions for the sake of ourselves, while we are here and able to create a brief flash of meaning, and perhaps to pass one iota of accrued knowledge to our children. Experience shows that they have little interst in receiving "old wisdom", but perhaps we become wiser in a billion years?
* "Death is a terrible provocation. It appears almost everywhere, presenting a stern but effective scale for both values and ethical standards. It is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is ". This is why we must learn to accept death as part of life. Darkness doesn’t exist without light and happiness not without pain. We must learn to accept it as natural for us, as for the ants we tread upon during a forest walk. Our routines and rituals around death ought to focus on the passing of learning, memories and values, which is what each generation has a responsibility to take on board. Sadly, our track record for learning in a historical sense is terrible – there is a lot to learn for future generations in this respect.
* "In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation". I disagree slightly with Zapffe. While there basically is no meaning with life as such, our existence only has value (if any) as a chain. Each generation is a link, but only the chain itself can have a value. Yes, we are terrible at setting our priorities, but ants don’t ask to be born either. They just are – like us! Where I agree with Zapffe is in the notion that if you don’t want to have children, it’s philosophically a totally defensible position. And here we differ from any other species: we may choose not to have children. The rest of nature sees it as its main objective to populate “the cosmic brutality”. At best, you can say it is a sign of our imperfection that we concentrate on the coin and not the question of children. That is our curse.
* "Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will". On this point I disagree completely with Zapffe. Unfortunately I can’t ask him for clarification – for me it’s better to be a Don Quijote fighting for unattainable ideals, than to consider suicide. Why? Because if there is any meaning with life at all, it is imbedded in the here and now. Let it last, for each generation, as long as it can and let’s cut as many windmills down as we can in that time!
* "I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, Peter Wessel Zapffe, did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness". This notion supports my statement that it is the here and now plus the learning we may pass on to the next generation that counts. But should it happen that a black hole comes our way in the Universe and swallows our solar system, then I fully agree: no damage whatsoever will have been done! Not more, at least, than a dead ant under the foot on a warm summer’s day in the forest.
* "If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind"". I couldn’t agree more. I have never felt so much at ease with my own philosophy about life and death, as when I finally took the small step from agnosticism to atheism. Some people find peace in believing that the Easter Bunny can lay chocolate eggs – but isn’t it more relevant, justifiable and easier to believe in what I call ‘dust and worms’ than living your life in imagined guilt and anxiety about what awaits you on the other side? Have your 99 “white raisins” this side of the threshold, rather than losing out through a bomb around you waist!
Jorgen Faxholm, London 9 April 2010.
Monday, 4 January 2010
The Human Condition IV
“When she was freed of the fear of her enemy and her rival in empire was out of the way, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption, not gradually, but in a headlong course. The older discipline was discarded to give place to the new”.
You may have 2 guesses about whom this quote is concerned.
If your first answer was “the Roman Republic after 146 BC”, when Carthage was finally nothing more than a field of ploughed furrows full of salt, you would be absolutely spot on, although there is another answer as well.
Velleius Paterculus, who authored the sentences quoted above at the time of emperor Tiberius as part of his historic account of the death throes of the Roman Republic, was close enough to the Republic’s last 100 years BC. This was a period full of personal greed, infighting, self aggrandizing, proscriptions, state expansion and individual megalomania. After the civil war of 88 BC and the presence of an exceptional number of personalities larger than life (Sulla, Marius, Pompeius, Cicero, Caesar, Antonius and a vile range of provincial governors like Gaius Verres and Catilina, there was no system in place to restrain neither the state nor the incumbents, who tried to make the best out of a time of confusion.
The rather unique Roman characteristic of individual- and state hubris created a range of extraordinary situations, which are well described in e.g. Cicero’s letters: Being a Roman citizen would be a better argument for being right than any legally convincing argument provided by someone from the provinces, colonia or socii.
There were Romans and there was the miserable rest of the petty world.
The humanitarian protagonists were few and far between, although Cicero perhaps could be mentioned, provided we realise that he was a lawyer – and a good one at that. He would, as all super-lawyers, win cases where the accused was guilty beyond doubt. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were probably more genuine humanists in their attempt to create land reforms, but this, typically for the period, cost them their lives.
In short: The Roman Republic and its key players were in it for the money, the power and the ‘auctoritas’, i.e. the authority with which they could express an opinion and have the people follow. This created more power and money. The only object of becoming quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul and senator was to improve wealth and 'auctoritas'. It became a competition with not only other Romans, but with one self. There was only one way ahead: more wanted more.
Velleius could in my opinion easily have been suspected for having had a glimpse into a far distant future.
So, if your other guess was “the USA after 1991”, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed – wouldn’t that be a correct answer as well?
I am not the first person to compare the Roman state of affairs of 2000 years ago with the scenario of ‘deja vu’ of today.
With the Soviet Union well out of the way for some 20 years now, an un-opposed drive to expand the state, using the devices of today, was to be expected: money and one-way political influence, peppered with a good portion of righteous religion.
The economic criminality and the Iraq wars are perfect, but sad illustrations.
The country that produced the Declaration of Independence (i.e. human freedom) in 1776 and who keeps bragging about “we liberated you guys twice from the “Huns” (see my previous blog on the Human Condition) has started a headlong, not gradually, course of corruption while abandoning the path of virtue.
Consider Enron, Ponzi, Madoff, greedy bankers, credit fraud and pyramid schemes.
And then there are the Oil-wars with all their lame excuses of WMD, and the hypocrisy around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Not to speak of ‘justified torture’ such as water-boarding, a self-created terrorism plague and the incredible Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison scandals.
A country that faces no serious external threats or imperial competitors and which possesses a huge surplus of assets and energy will inevitably begin to mortgage its resources and start to compete inwards – just like the Roman Republic. With no need to defend itself and no opponent with the capacity to whip it back to the path of virtue, the ‘capital’ can be used to augment its own interest, in competition only with one self, while continuing to use the arguments from the ‘virtue’ days to build power. It takes some naivety not to see how arrogant this is - but an excess number of blind spots is always the hallmark of such states, whether the Roman Republic or a modern super-power without competition.
Hubris again.
As the world has become global this attitude spills over on the ‘partners’ – the UK being the primary one.
UK MPs soon realised that the world was one big jam pot and started sucking it empty. After the intense scrutiny in 2009 more than 200 have chosen to leave parliament, taking the golden handshake while they can.
Oone of the worst offenders is the Home Office Secretary, who managed to get away with an illegal £100K mortgage. Had unemployed Mr. Smith managed illegally to squeeze 80 Pounds out of Job Centre Plus, the might of the state would have hit him with a ton of bricks.
So, what’s the difference from the Roman Governors looting Corinth, Africa and Sicily and keeping their loot?
Gordon Brown glues himself to the stool with mistake after mistake, leaving a bankrupt country in his wake and the UK’s ex-PM, Tony Blair, who accepted a cream-job as a mid-east envoy in which he has done absolutely nothing for his excessive fee, abandons all decency and goes for the talks-circuit with his gained ‘auctoritas’, lining his pocket with millions of pounds. At the same time the tax-payers have to fund a security operation for him costing £6mill pr. year with Blair contributing nothing.
Is there any hope with the Conservatives, then?
I doubt it - they are as elusive on actual change-plans as everyone else and obviously as fiddling with both promises and funds as every other politician.
The Romans in the time of the Republic had the 3 remaining books of the Sybil, which they could consult in order to find a way out of trouble.
We are left with the mediocrity and continued greed from our politicians - and no clear way out.
They can't even agree to help save the planet through better husbandry of our energy resources, proving the point, that if you are rich, all you want is more.
How Roman.
It is not difficult to conclude that the world may have changed considerably in 2000 years, but the human species has not.
“When she was freed of the fear of her enemy and her rival in empire was out of the way, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption, not gradually, but in a headlong course. The older discipline was discarded to give place to the new”.
You may have 2 guesses about whom this quote is concerned.
If your first answer was “the Roman Republic after 146 BC”, when Carthage was finally nothing more than a field of ploughed furrows full of salt, you would be absolutely spot on, although there is another answer as well.
Velleius Paterculus, who authored the sentences quoted above at the time of emperor Tiberius as part of his historic account of the death throes of the Roman Republic, was close enough to the Republic’s last 100 years BC. This was a period full of personal greed, infighting, self aggrandizing, proscriptions, state expansion and individual megalomania. After the civil war of 88 BC and the presence of an exceptional number of personalities larger than life (Sulla, Marius, Pompeius, Cicero, Caesar, Antonius and a vile range of provincial governors like Gaius Verres and Catilina, there was no system in place to restrain neither the state nor the incumbents, who tried to make the best out of a time of confusion.
The rather unique Roman characteristic of individual- and state hubris created a range of extraordinary situations, which are well described in e.g. Cicero’s letters: Being a Roman citizen would be a better argument for being right than any legally convincing argument provided by someone from the provinces, colonia or socii.
There were Romans and there was the miserable rest of the petty world.
The humanitarian protagonists were few and far between, although Cicero perhaps could be mentioned, provided we realise that he was a lawyer – and a good one at that. He would, as all super-lawyers, win cases where the accused was guilty beyond doubt. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were probably more genuine humanists in their attempt to create land reforms, but this, typically for the period, cost them their lives.
In short: The Roman Republic and its key players were in it for the money, the power and the ‘auctoritas’, i.e. the authority with which they could express an opinion and have the people follow. This created more power and money. The only object of becoming quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul and senator was to improve wealth and 'auctoritas'. It became a competition with not only other Romans, but with one self. There was only one way ahead: more wanted more.
Velleius could in my opinion easily have been suspected for having had a glimpse into a far distant future.
So, if your other guess was “the USA after 1991”, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed – wouldn’t that be a correct answer as well?
I am not the first person to compare the Roman state of affairs of 2000 years ago with the scenario of ‘deja vu’ of today.
With the Soviet Union well out of the way for some 20 years now, an un-opposed drive to expand the state, using the devices of today, was to be expected: money and one-way political influence, peppered with a good portion of righteous religion.
The economic criminality and the Iraq wars are perfect, but sad illustrations.
The country that produced the Declaration of Independence (i.e. human freedom) in 1776 and who keeps bragging about “we liberated you guys twice from the “Huns” (see my previous blog on the Human Condition) has started a headlong, not gradually, course of corruption while abandoning the path of virtue.
Consider Enron, Ponzi, Madoff, greedy bankers, credit fraud and pyramid schemes.
And then there are the Oil-wars with all their lame excuses of WMD, and the hypocrisy around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Not to speak of ‘justified torture’ such as water-boarding, a self-created terrorism plague and the incredible Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison scandals.
A country that faces no serious external threats or imperial competitors and which possesses a huge surplus of assets and energy will inevitably begin to mortgage its resources and start to compete inwards – just like the Roman Republic. With no need to defend itself and no opponent with the capacity to whip it back to the path of virtue, the ‘capital’ can be used to augment its own interest, in competition only with one self, while continuing to use the arguments from the ‘virtue’ days to build power. It takes some naivety not to see how arrogant this is - but an excess number of blind spots is always the hallmark of such states, whether the Roman Republic or a modern super-power without competition.
Hubris again.
As the world has become global this attitude spills over on the ‘partners’ – the UK being the primary one.
UK MPs soon realised that the world was one big jam pot and started sucking it empty. After the intense scrutiny in 2009 more than 200 have chosen to leave parliament, taking the golden handshake while they can.
Oone of the worst offenders is the Home Office Secretary, who managed to get away with an illegal £100K mortgage. Had unemployed Mr. Smith managed illegally to squeeze 80 Pounds out of Job Centre Plus, the might of the state would have hit him with a ton of bricks.
So, what’s the difference from the Roman Governors looting Corinth, Africa and Sicily and keeping their loot?
Gordon Brown glues himself to the stool with mistake after mistake, leaving a bankrupt country in his wake and the UK’s ex-PM, Tony Blair, who accepted a cream-job as a mid-east envoy in which he has done absolutely nothing for his excessive fee, abandons all decency and goes for the talks-circuit with his gained ‘auctoritas’, lining his pocket with millions of pounds. At the same time the tax-payers have to fund a security operation for him costing £6mill pr. year with Blair contributing nothing.
Is there any hope with the Conservatives, then?
I doubt it - they are as elusive on actual change-plans as everyone else and obviously as fiddling with both promises and funds as every other politician.
The Romans in the time of the Republic had the 3 remaining books of the Sybil, which they could consult in order to find a way out of trouble.
We are left with the mediocrity and continued greed from our politicians - and no clear way out.
They can't even agree to help save the planet through better husbandry of our energy resources, proving the point, that if you are rich, all you want is more.
How Roman.
It is not difficult to conclude that the world may have changed considerably in 2000 years, but the human species has not.
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