Freedom of Speech - Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Tolerance of Intolerance: Islamists, Global "Warming", Leftists - WAKE UP

This is a text written by the famous Bill Cosby "I'm 83 and Tired".
I have entered it unchanged, letting the famous man talk - but he speaks my words.

This should be required reading for every man, woman, and child in Jamaica,
the UK, United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and
to all the world...

"I'm 83 and I'm Tired"

I'm 83. Except for brief period in the 50's when I was doing my National
Service, I've worked hard since I was 17. Except for some serious
health challenges, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick in nearly
40 years. I made a reasonable salary; but I didn't inherit my job or my
income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as
though retirement was a bad idea; and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who
don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take
the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy
to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every month I
can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and
daughters for their family "honour"; of Muslims rioting over some slight
offense; of Muslims murdering Christians and Jews because they aren't
"believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning
teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the
genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and
Sharia law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let
Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques
and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia, New Zealand,
UK, America and Canada, while no one from these countries is allowed to
fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or in any other
Arab country, to teach love and tolerance..

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global
warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help
support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ
rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses
or stick a needle in their arm while they tried to fight it off?

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all
parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful
mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting
caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and
actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination
or big-whatever for their problems.

I'm also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and
early 20's be-deck themselves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making
themselves un-employable while they are claiming money from the Government.

Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 83.. Because, mostly, I'm not
going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for
my granddaughter and their children. Thank God I'm on the way out, and not
on the way in.

There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us speaks up - NOW!

This is your chance to make a difference.

Danish Ex Muslim, Yahiya Hassan, facing racist charge

The following is copied from Robert Spencer's site, but it has been widely reported by Danish Newspapers and other internet sites.
The mentioned Danish Penal Code, paragraph 266b, is a controversioal clamp down on the freedom of speech.
Its intention was to protect minority religions or non-ethnic populations against bigotry, but the effect today is, that if you criticise Islam, you are almost certain to get a hefty fine or a prison sentence.
There are several examples of this having been done.
At the moment 2 muslims are accused under par. 266b for criticising - - - Islam!!!

It is simply becoming absurd andcertainly unjust.

Yahya Hassan grew up in a Muslim family and a Muslim environment. And now he is living with death threats.
Do Danish authorities really think he is an "ignorant Islamophobe"?
As Pamela Geller says, truth is the new hate speech.

"Danish Muslim Apostate Faces Hate Speech Charges," by Andrew Harrod for FrontPage Mag, January 2:
“Muslims love to take advantage of” free speech, Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan says, “and as soon as there is someone else saying something critical against them, they want to restrict it.”
In an action previously indicated by this writer, Hassan is now personally facing this double standard in Danish “hate speech” charges for his anti-Islam comments.

Following Danish-Iranian artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan’s conviction under Danish Penal Code Section 266b for condemning Islam as misogynist, a local Muslim Aarhus politician demanded a similar prosecution of Hassan.
His poetry says that "everybody in the ghettos like Vollsmose and Gellerup steal, don’t pay taxes and cheat themselves to pensions,” the Somali-Dane Mohamed Suleban stated after reporting Hassan to the police on November 27.
“Those are highly generalizing statements and they offend me and many other people.”
Authorities are currently considering Section 266b charges for, according to one English translation, any public “communication by which a group of persons are threatened, insulted or denigrated due to their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.”

(There are probably 25+ ghettos in Denmark and they are increasingly running Sharia controlled power points inside the Danish state. In many cases neither police, bus drivers nor firemen dare enter these areas.)

The 18-year-old Hassan’s eponymous debut book contains about 150 poems, “many of which are severely critical of the religious environment he grew up in” according to Wall Street Journal reporters Clemens Bomsdorf and Ellen Emmerentze Jervell.
Written in all capital letters, Hassan’s poems treat “issues like the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, child abuse, and the interplay between violence and religion” with “[p]rofanity and vivid analogies.”
Yahya Hassan has sold 80,000 copies following an October 17 release in the comparatively small Danish market and is expected to exceed 100,000 copies by Christmas.

Hassan’s publisher Gyldendal reports that Danish poetry books are fortunate to sell 500 copies.
A recent book forum honored Hassan as the debut author of the year and an English translation of his poetry is underway.

Hassan first became prominent with an October 5 Danish newspaper interview entitled “I F**king Hate My Parents’ Generation.” In it he blamed poor Muslim parenting for the juvenile delinquency and social maladjustment experienced by many Danish Muslim youth such as Hassan himself. With more than 85,000 social media shares, the interview became the most shared Politiken article of the year.

Days thereafter Hassan recited from his “LANG DIGT” or “LONG POEM” before his book’s release on the Danish news program Deadline.
Extract:
“between the Friday prayers and the Ramadans/
you want to carry a knife in your pocket/
you want to go and ask people if they have a problem/
although the only problem is you.”

Such verses brought Hassan more death threats than any other previous Deadline guest.
Hassan has subsequently reported 27 Facebook threats against him, of which the police investigated six as serious and pressed charges in one case of a 15-year old boy.

A subsequent assault against Hassan occurred on November 18 in Copenhagen Central Station by a 24-year old Palestinian-Danish Muslim who had previously received a seven-year terrorism sentence.

Hassan now wears a bulletproof vest and receives protection from Denmark’s domestic intelligence agency PET at speaking engagements. A November 26 reading by Hassan from his book in a school in the Danish town of Odense, moreover, required an estimated one million kroner in security costs, more than the amount spent on a high-risk soccer game. Several hundred policemen had observed the school for two days before the event occurred with road checkpoints, a bomb sweep, and a five kilometer no-fly zone around the school.

2500 Years East-West conflict. Salamis, Marathon and Thermopylae reviewed

We forget that the East-West conflict is over 2500 years old.
In fact, the three most important battles in history are in my opinion Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, where the Greek armies secured the civilisation of today – and here is why.

The overarching issue in this conflict was not the usual “I want more power, land, gold, trade routes, etc.”
The real and not so obvious issue was the firm belief amongst the Persian kings (Darius and his son Xerxes) that their power and their right to extend it were given to them by their super-god Ahuru Mazda. Therefore they had a divine right to imperial expansion that could not even be brought into dispute.

This assumption was in stark contrast to the Greek stance, that the state with its inherent culture and social structure was the result of an intelligent process, human logic and our ability freely to process information.

Surely, the Greek gods were involved, but merely as observing stakeholders and with their built-in human weaknesses as creators of intrigues and conflicts, but certainly not as designers.

Without the Greek victories the emerging, but still frail and undeveloped idea about democracy, would have been buried with Solon and Themistocles. Socrates, the father of observation, analysis, explanation and logical deduction, would not have had a chance to develop his ideas and the basis for our scientific methodology would never have seen the light of day. The Persian master-culture would unhindered have swallowed the rest of Europe. There would have been no Romans, no renaissance, no Beethoven and no Goethe.

Centuries of spiritual and religious darkness would have swept across Europe as the Greek barrier to slavery under the expanding Persian empire, with its suppression of the individual and total demand of submission to the king and his god, was swept away.

It may of course be argued, that the arrival of a later comparable desert religion, which is as totalitarian as the Persian one, might never have happened. It would already have been there and the need for its creation as an underpinning device for divine expansion and dominance would therefore be redundant.

It is awesome how many of the state- and culture forming processes that took place in the years between 500BC and 480BC can be found mirrored in today’s globalised world.

The political parties in the “West” are still embroiled in strife and contention despite the EU artifice – just as the Greek city states 2500 years ago. Some of the small cities amongst the 700 in Peloponnese and Attica tried their come-uppance much like small West European countries try their influencing manoeuvres against the 4 big countries today, ultimately leaving it to Athens and Sparta to sort everything out – comparable to Germany, France and Britain in the EU. The Greek culture, religion and gods were then, as today, a hodgepodge of beliefs, although some sort of a unified culture and a strong human, or secular, element can be identified in both cases. But today, as then, we are up against the ultimate in totalitarian demands for submission of the individual and abandonment of the secular state as we know it.

Most of the Greek city states either sat on their hands or the fence, or had already made the decision that resistance was in vain; rather give in to the barbarians than be subdued by Athens or Sparta.
Although some sort of unity was achieved at the Hellenion conference in Corinth, it was left to Sparta and Athens to sort things out. For most others a continued existence with the head buried in the sand, a continued parochial life awaiting the inevitable fate, seemed to be the only way forward, as the reflections of the sun in the spear heads of the Persian army began to show. Perhaps a life in the shade of the almighty king Xerxes, who in 480BC ruled over the largest empire the world had ever seen, wasn’t too bad after all?
Treat him well, i.e. with respect, and he would treat you well?

Today we are facing a paradigm shift in both religious and state terms.

Externally, an antiquated, obsolete desert religion requires us to drop our Socratic wisdom and individual taking responsibility for our lives and actions, submitting to yet another Ahuru Mazda with the threat of death if resisting to abandon our humanity and hard won freedoms.

Internally, a European super state has emerged, the EU, marketing eternal happiness and no wars while making us pay dearly for the bag of empty promises, reforms and relief from responsibility, that an unelected elite is pressing down over our heads.
In the economic and cultural turmoil that has arisen as a consequence of our greed and lack of learning from history, political parties are reviving dead donkeys like collectivism, Leninism and oligarch driven societies. University College of London students, for example, have posters all over the place calling for a re-emergence of Marxism 2013.
Are they mad?
Perhaps not - just ignorant in the best case - stupid in the worst.
20% of the Danish population support a party that wants to disband the police force, all military and the parliament, replacing it with "people councils".
Are they mad?
Perhaps not - just ignorant in the best case - stupid in the worst.
Sweden wants to open the borders, raising the population from 8mill to 40mill through non-western immigration before 2040.
Are they mad?
Perhaps not - just ignorant in the best case - stupid in the worst.

And You haven't seen the worst yet!!

Socrates wanted people to learn, to understand, at least to realise when they didn’t know, so they could seek new learning. So he was executed, allegedly depraving the youth.

How far have we really come in the 2500 years since the battle of Salamis and the experience from Marathon - a question we have to ask after the 2013 Boston Marathon?
How many people today actually know what Marathon represents?
One only needs to consider modern school systems that do what they can to eliminate national cultures and history while teaching the kids to play; the blinkered approach of creationism; and too many ultra-orthodox schools that prevent anything outside their own belief sphere to enter the brains of the young.

But worst of all: it is becoming a crime to protest this state of affairs.

We accept this as the blessing of a multi-cultural world, closing our eyes for the fact that it actually represents a misunderstood respect for stupidity and ignorance, while we excuse it by calling it the hall marks of “other people’s culture”.

Where are the Athens and the Sparta of 2013, who can save us?

Freedom of speech and thought

On the relativity of perception and change in society 1930-2012


During the summer of 2004 the Danes celebrated the silly period by having a heated discussion whether Ole Wivel and Knud W. Jensen, both pillars on the art and literary scene, ought to have confessed their Nazi-sympathies in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is clear that perception relativism often is ignored by people who should know better. Historians such as Barbara Tuchman (‘The March of Folly’) and Anne Appelbaum (‘Gulag’) have emphasised, that it takes very little time from the actual events till we either forget what happened or simply change our opinion or perception about them. This is not only because new information has become available or because it is physically impossible to ’think’ using the mind of the past, but it is also driven by a changed political and cultural situation, or in short: fashionable correctness.
One just need to look at how we now evaluate events in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine and how dramatical Western European Societies have changed in the past 20 years.

It is possible that with the passing of time we obtain a better understanding, but simultaneously we distance ourselves from the realities of the day and thereby the conditions that formed the background for the opinions, perceptions and decision processes. Seen in the rear mirror it becomes easier to criticise, even though our understanding has diminished; we blissfully ignore this fact.

What if we actually had found WMDs in Iraq? (Perhaps we did – only, it was people, not bombs!). Or if Chamberlain had been proven right? How about the Ukrainians, who offered their welcome to the invading German troops in 1941 with the traditional bread and salt. Were they traitors? Tolerance, indifference and ignorance are closely related concepts, which, in the different world of the information constrained 1930s, muddied people’s understanding – just as it happens today with perhaps too much information; important decisions are still taken based on 20% knowledge and 80% gut feel – both in politics and in business.

No wonder that the assessment of events, 50 years later, risk bearing no resemblance to what actually happened. This is the historian’s eternal dilemma. The change in perception will always be coloured by the swings in political reality. Our perception will always be formed by our present knowledge and not with the mind of the past. Knowledge doesn’t transmit automatically and once lost, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to recreate later.

In 1932 a large majority of the Germans considered Hitler to be a rather laughable person, who was bound to disappear shortly. Very few had a more clear vision, like Hindenburg, who said: “This man will lead us over the precipice”. The perception changed just 1-2 years later, but to many people the question was still whether Nazism was a little evil with a lot of good, or a blessing with a few drawbacks. The Germans – and surely the Danes – disagreed amongst themselves about which side of the scales weighed most.

If one leaned to the ‘good’ side, society had moved from chaos to order, economic growth after WWI and the 1920 and 1930 recessions, work after unemployment, prosperity, motorways, Volkswagens and a path to regain national pride.

Perhaps the dark side was a little more difficult to define in the beginning, although the Kristall-nacht ought to have been a wake-up call with a fire poker.

The negative picture disappeared in a flood of prosperity and a feeling of national greatness, which was anything but wasted on the Danes of the day. One should not forget that Denmark and Germany were rather closely connected through culture, education and business. A large part of the Danish industrial machine was a traditional supplier to the Germans. It was Danish engineers who built the German submarine base in St Nazaire, strategic bridges in Croatia and many traders became rich selling food supplies and manufactured goods to the Germans well into the war. However, before blaming the Danes this was a picture repeated across Europe.

In 1975, when I worked in Holland, people often asked me what language was spoken in Denmark and even exactly where Denmark was. Is it such a mental high-jump to realise, that people were less well informed in 1935 and had their mind set on different issues? We tend to forget, that the last 60 years of information distribution, political innovation and global development were still to come. Dad worked, Mum was a hausfrau, divorce was immoral, children grew up being beaten into discipline, colour TV and mobile phones were science fiction if even that, the toilet was often in the courtyard and shared by many, and Jews were “ not really it”. These were the social realities in the 1930s in Denmark, where the characteristic ‘where few have too much and fewer too little’ was about to be invented.

The Social Democrats and their programme of worker power and emancipation of women had changed the political, social and cultural scene and more was to come. But there was also a growing feeling amongst many that we had to be careful not to go all the way towards communism. Nevertheless, a new balance had to be found, as communists were growing in numbers as well.

This fact, together with the leaning towards a powerful Germany and the memory of the recent winter war in Finland, where many Scandinavians had volunteered on the Finnish side, were some of the major reasons for a strong anti-communist feeling. It therefore felt natural for many Danes (and other Europeans!) to join the Germans and continue the battle against the Russians (i.e. communists) forming the SS Viking division.

So, how do we judge this today?

We know too much! Socialism was a way forward at the time. Perhaps Communism and Nazism were as well? Who in the 1930s could tell for sure after the wars in the 19th Century and after WWI? At this time Stalin was creating ’Paradise’, building a state based on collectivism, but did we realise how many eggs he was cracking while making the omelette? Did we know that this process made Hitler’s approach look like play in a sandbox?
Both sides had their protagonists, often leading intellectuals and culture celebrities.

What we forget, when judging today, is to eliminate our 21st Century knowledge and think ‘1930’!

When we say ‘Nazism’ today, it evokes images of suppression, persecution, concentration camps and war. That was not the reaction in the 1930s.

But what do we say in 2012 about Stalin’s extermination of more than 20mill. People – in peace time!! – and deportation of whole populations, such as the Kalmyks and Tartars? How about the collectivisation in Ukraine, that in 1933-34 cost over 6mill. people their lives as one of the largest human-created hunger events ever bar Mao’s murderous acts? Or being shot for possessing food in this period? Gulags? Systematic removal – back to Russia – in the 1950s of all industrial production assets from East Germany, Poland, Czekoslovakia and Hungary, maintaining suppressed agrarian nations as a buffer zone towards the West? And how about Hungary 1956, Czekoslovakia 1968, Stasi, Ulbricht, and Honecker?

Hang on a second! Did we know all this in the 1970s, while the cultural elite in Denmark was as red as tomatoes? After all, this was only 35 years after Walter Duranty, New York Times, had reported ‘no problems’ during his Soviet sponsored travels in Ukraine, in the middle of the hunger disaster.
A report for which he got the Pulitzer prize.

Why has no one insisted and told the Danish left: “You owe us an answer?”
Perhaps it is easier to sling such questions at the now deceased Wivel and Jensen?
How many of the extreme left in Denmark have not said “we didn’t know”?

Obviously, people find it difficult to admit errors, and in the political climate after the war neither Wivel nor Jensen found the motivation to express remorse publicly. Who knows, perhaps their feelings hadn’t changed. Self perception, survival instinct and adjusted knowledge and information could be determining factors. No one wants to stand out as a social pariah. It must be remembered that many people, who had been too close to the Nazis, had been executed after the war. So in short: with an adjusted outlook, one has to consider the consequences and the lie becomes an invisible friend.
Clintons ‘I did NOT have sex with this woman’ is a good example.

Despite the realisation that Stalin was nothing less than a monster, probably worse than Hitler, and despite the collapse of both communism and the Soviet Union, it has still not become fashionable to attack the communists for their misbehaviour. Perhaps we still haven’t completely digested the information in the KGB and Stasi archives, where evidence of a planned East German led invasion of Denmark during the cold war came to light. Perhaps there are still too many old extreme leftists in power or opinion creating positions? A minister in the present Danish government (2012) is the ex chairman of the Danish Communist party and under investigation for having received personal funds from KGB.

Then it was much easier and more politic to accuse the asylum seeking Ukrainian Kravchenko for being a CIA spy than to expose Duranty and his nonsense.

In the 1970s I was mentioned in an extreme left anthology as an ‘enemy of the State’ – “Vrag Naroda”, a terminology with a very dark notion from Soviet times – due to the fact that I had worked in the Ministry of Defence. What would have happened, if Denmark suddenly had an extreme left government?

It won’t happen, you say - - - .

Then consider Malmoe in Sweden, where terror against Jews by Muslim immigrants has become a daily event, or Denmark, where the Police and Politicians are afraid of entering the immigrant Ghettos that have sprung up since 1983 (the implementation year of the “free for all immigration laws”?

Nazism? Communism?
Plus ca change!

In open and transparent societies we have a tradition of speaking up and to protest, based on our development during the last 200 years and our cultural roots in a humanistic outlook after the French and American revolutions. We therefore have the right to say to Ole Wivel and Knud Jensen and to many people still alive: “You owe us an answer”, but not to attack them from a position in a glass-house.

However, it is not just in Denmark that our (mis)concept of tolerance has led to a complete imbalance of what we accept and what not in terms of extreme opinions. A good example is represented by the Hizb-ut Tahir group. In England the jihadist and Imam Abu Hamza (finally extradited to the USA in 2012) has publicly encouraged extermination of Jews with a call to continue where Hitler stopped. It took the authorities several years to have him arrested, only made possible when the terror laws changed after 9/11.

The Imam Abu Quatada is another example. In 2004 he travelled up and down the country preaching jihad and repetition of 9/11. England is still trying to get rid of him (2012), prevented by the Strassbourg Court, that extradition to Jordan would hurt his human rights due to possible torture or execution.

On the other hand, the swell of resistance against medieval cultures, in particular hate-preaching religions, tend to be met with silence by the media or even laws prohibiting critique.
This does not make sense any more, as recently stated in public by Rowan Atkinson, (Mr. Bean).

The question is, whether our tolerance, normally a strong pillar in a democracy, will be criticised in the future. Is it possible, that in 30 years from now people will reproach us and say that we didn’t do enough? Or will they say: “You really managed that well”?

Personally I am afraid, that we will be considered a failure, as our democratic states slowly are abandoning the right to free speech. Without criticism, there will be no dialogue and the increasing undermining of our right to speak up will hit us hard in the end.

The right to speak up, think and express one self freely must necessarily be followed by the duty to defend it. It is inevitable that we sometimes exceed this right, but it is a necessary element in the exercise of democracy. The Americans manage this concept through their 1st amendment, but both they and Western Europe are slowly putting a clamp on this important issue. Consider the attempts to muzzle the free Internet; or an English person dragged into court for claiming Scientology to be a "Cult" (the case eventually thrown out of court); or a Danish/Iranian blogger critizising certain factual Islamic behaviours and facing arrest.

It took a little too long, during the WWII, before the Danes began to protest. They made good money on the Germans! Today other dangerous issues seem to find people in the West completely asleep. In particular religious criticism is considered racist or political incorrect. This loss of dialogue stifles our society, inevitably leading to a repeat of the Stalin and Honecker states if no one speaks up.
But perhaps it is understandable as we have not even come to terms with the past, the communist atrocities and Lenin’s omelette statement. 20-30mill. Russian and Ukrainian eggs. Cracked in time of peace.
And Europe still carries a huge guilt luggage over past colonial activities, colouring our behaviour.
In order to understand our thoughts and ideas today we have to go ”back to the future”. This future has been clear for some time concerning Nazism, but it hasn’t arrived yet in respect of our assessment of communism and certainly not in our understanding of the dramatic social upheavals that are going on in Western societies at the moment.

On 20 July 2004 the Germans had arranged a 60 year memorial day for the assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. There were many speeches and a solid attempt to unravel the built-in conflict: were the would be assassins traitors or heroes? The tendency went in the direction of heroes. After all, it was now 60 years later. But Schroeder avoided the use of the word ‘hero’, even though his speech clearly indicated this direction.
This shows how difficult it often is to change our stance and self perception.

In respect of communism, there are many who owe us an answer.
How long must we wait?

One also wonders what went through Kim Philby’s brain, when he sat lonely, isolated and under constant KGB supervision and censorship in his Moscow apartment, devoid of all human dignity. The sausages and sour cucumbers that he served for the last BBC journalist, who visited him before he died, were a far cry from the Steak and Yorkshire Pudding in his local pub back in England.
If his pitiful existence had managed to bring about a level of regret, he didn’t show it.

Our species is a master of self-deception!

How could we ever expect two pillars of society as Ole Wivel and Knud Jensen to show regret?
Perhaps we should wait until our own communist top-dogs are dead. It will be much easier to attack them then.

The many immigrants, who now express anger and hate against our Western societies and who left countries devoid of the concept of freedom, countries they didn’t like either, can now enjoy our benefits, order, security and social support – until they have re-created the societies they disliked so much!
People want freedom, but most have no idea what it means. And it is the first value to be suppressed - just watch the "free" Egyptians after the Arabian uprising in 2011-12 and how they treat the Christian Koptic population.

Long live the freedom of speech - the sharpest and only weapon we have left!
.

The Big Bang - or just a fizzle?

I have mentioned it before in my blog and I shall surely keep coming back, but after BBC4's feature "Lost Horizons" about the Big Bang, Dark Matter and uncritical (i.e. wrong!!) adherence to Einstein's General and Special Relativity Theories, I have to get this off my chest:

I agree with Fred Hoyle:
There never was a Big Bang - at least not in the form that created the Universe.
Sadly, he died in 2001, so he's not here to say: Well done Jorgen - or more correctly: Frank Atkinson, who woke me up.

Two axioms stood out in the TV feature:
1. The scientists claim, that the redshift of light from distant galaxies implies that everything is moving away from everything. This could only have been caused by the Mother of All Explosions, the Big Bang. Otherwise galaxies wouldn't fly hither dither, leaving more and more space between them. But do they? Some scientists claim that our own galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy will collide in the future - somewhere between 2Bill years and 15Bill years from now. Semantics, I'd say - but it indicates that not all galaxies are moving away from all other galaxies. In fact, there are many examples of colliding galaxies.
2. Scientists still cannot find the Dark Matter - however, they stubbornly maintain that it takes up 70% of matter in our ever expanding Universe.

Come on, guys!!!
We now know that 'time' is a parameter that is as connected to energy as the other side of the medal is to the first. Energy cannot exist without time and vice versa. But as the law of energy conservation says that energy cannot disappear or just increase, so we can conclude (roughly) that time has always been - although perhaps in HUGELY dilated form if we assume the Universe once was a super dense ball in a non-extant soup (a bit far fetched, but why not).
Time can become dilated and consequently the speed of light increased (or decreased if time is contracted) in order to maintain the 300,000 Km/sec. Dilation happens close to a large gravitational field or if a body moves at a speed close to the speed of light.
This we can measure as undisputable.

So how about axiom 1?
Some years ago Science would have us believe, that the redshift of light (stretching in wavelength) was due  to the Doppler effect. As we observe this around the globe, the consequence is that we are at the centre of the Universe and that idea, I believe, was droppped hundreds of years ago, except if you are a creationist.
Next, the scientists forced their theories to conform with the idea that space was able to stretch and contract light - - but there's no scientific evidence that this happens.
The fact is, that we are a little lost!!
What if the Universe is infinite and NOT expanding?
The Hubble telescope keeps surprising us with galaxies in areas that were thought empty, assessed to be 40Bill Light years away.
In a 14.7Bill years old universe?
Time to review the space-time curvature and other obsolete ideas.

We know that light is emitted as photons, travels as electromagnetic waves and is observed as photons at the receiving point.
We also know that large gravitational fields dilate time, meaning that as the light passes through the Universe, it is constantly being pulled or pushed through dilated 'time-fields'.
This is bound to cause considerable redshifting - more so, if the light comes from very, very far away, exactly as will be the case in an infinite Universe.
No expansion, no balloon stretching, no strings - just an enormity we cannot grasp.
And sometimes, most of the time in fact, the redshift is so enormous that it disappears out of sight beyond infra red.
And therefore we cannot see it.
It also loses so much energy that virtually nothing is left over, when it reaches us.
Perhaps that explains the 2.7 degree Kelvin, almost absolute 0, that we observe. Perhaps it helps explain the so called background radiation, which science wants us to believe stems from the Big Bang.

Consequently, there is no reason to invent this explosion.
It quite simply never occurred!!

Now axiom 2.
Dark Matter is an extraordinarily crazy invention, that came about, as we couldn't explain how the clumps originated that were responsible for the creation of galaxies.
It is there to fit the scientists' mathematical equations.
But isn't that exactly what science is NOT about - the wrong way around.
Guys - look it in the eyes: the equations are wrong!

Scientists have even descended into deep mines and caves in order to detect the Dark Matter, well out of interference from any background radiation.
And found nothing.
Yet they tell us that it has mass and takes up 70-80% of matter in the Universe - but emits no radiation (hence "dark").
Newton's law about mass attracting mass, although at a power inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies and directly proportional to the bodies' mass, seems to be universal. This leads to another discussion: is gravity distributed in waves, as claimed by science, or is it instantaneous across the Universe? It is commonly agreed that the Universe is homogeneous ('orderly') on a grand scale. I doubt this would be the case with gravity working 'only' at the speed of light. The conclusion is the extraordinary thought, that gravity 'just is' and also that gravity is a consequence rather than just the so-called "weakest power" at all. This is another topic I shall pick up later - with the help of Frank Atkinson.

The 14.7Bill number is a guess, based on the redshift. But as we haven't explained the origin of the redshift and rather used it as an explanation - unscientifically - this is a wet thumb in the air.
Well, some say the world is only 6000 years old, but compared to infinity 14.7Bill years is as good a guess as 6000 years.
More importantly, if the Dark Matter has been there for a very long time and if there is a lot of it, wouldn't it have collected the odd floating visible, proton and slowly dressed itself up - just like the Invisible Man, who could only be seen when he wore coat, hat and scarf?

Dark Matter therefore appears to be a very un-scientific invention, much like the belief in the existence of an "Ether" - a belief Morley and Michelson defused many years ago.

Are we not getting closer to the realisation that
- there never was a BIG Bang
- there is no Dark Matter
?????

If the above can be agreed and if Einstein's General and Special Relativity theories can be defused (they  can! They self-eliminate - see my blog-entries from Oct 2011) there are at least 3 consequences:

- We have to start all over again, as we still haven't found the unifying theory between the very large (the Universe) and the very small (Particle Theory)
- the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is a waste of money - a lot of money.  Well, almost - we have now paid to know that we don't know; If Higgs Boson and recreated Dark Matter remain elusive we should probably close it down. Unfortunately scientists are unwilling to eat humble pie despite the fact, that they could sit down at their desks and drill a big hole in the Special Relativity Theory using just a bit of brain power, pen and paper!
- perhaps 'time', as a lost or underestimated physics parameter, should be taken out of the moth-bag and checked as a stepping stone to a solution, a very elegant one in fact.

There are more consequences, as if the above were not enough - and some of them have deep impact on our beliefs, both religious and more practical.
It can be tough enough to realise that mass is constant and lightspeed variable, depending on the observer's time dilation.

If there is a God (trust me: there isn't!) she has certainly made it difficult for us to get to the core of the creation process. She's teasing us, lifting just a bit of her dress, but not letting us see the whole leg.
Perhaps that's all we will ever see.
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The Multicultural Human Condition IX

To all of you, who think the Dutchman Geert Wilders has got it wrong:

The 94 bus from Picadilly towards Chiswick was almost full at Regent Street in London.
But there was an available seat next to a woman dressed from top to toe in a dark sheet.
Only her eyes peered out through a narrow slit.
I sat down and got an immediate reaction: "You can't sit here! I am a muslim woman".

What happened to the "Ummah"?

In my modest opinion: present day Muslims have lost it.
As much as the Christians have got their mental knickers in a twist.
In fact - there's religion for you!

I leave further thoughts and comments to the reader.
.

Worth a thought?

Some time ago I received this text via eMail.
My immediate thought was to send it to eMail heaven, sharing a space with all the other useless fluff one receives - but then I started reading. It is not rocket science and most people under 35 wouldn' understand a word, probably.
I have addedd a few of my own additional thoughts, but the basic text was spot on - with me!

So here goes:

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60 &70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love ..... I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old - or perhaps: some of them won't and they will never know, that they are missing the only chance they'll ever get.

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you break a relationship, lose a friend or when a child suffers, or when a beloved pet dies? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, or even lose it and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face and into the memories of good friends.

So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong and I have earned the right to express my thoughts and feelings if I wish - and shut up if that's my choice.

I am happy with my value-system. I have lived with it for a long time and it gives me the right to do what I want, as it doesn't include hurting others. I express my opinions freely and expect mature answers - if not, I stop the discussion. I love meeting people; it enriches our lives, but I will not listen to demands about whom I can see and whom not. This is my business only and other people must respect that.

Therefore, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying too much about what will be.
 
I believe that humans essentially are just animals. Our branch of the great ape-species has only been a visitor to Earth for a few million years - less than 1/1000 of the Earth's age.  When my time is up, it's up, and all that remains is "dust and worms". I may worry slightly about the transition from being to not being, but what comes after is as insignificant as a swatted fly, as I won't know. No derogatory use of a group of virgins, no wings and boring harp-play and no roaming in people's closets after midnight! Just nothing - and it suits me to the core.
This belief has given me great peace - and I will enjoy it every second that's left.

Einstein debunked

In a book called "Time, the hidden dimension of the missing physics" Frank Atkinson deals a blow to Einstein's theory of relativity - - and thereby goes a lot of the subsequent theories concerning the Universe - straight to the bin.
This is heavy, but hugely interesting, stuff.

I find it quite incomprehensible that the establishment still hangs on to an artificial device such as Dark Matter and that E=mc2 stays unchallenged, considering the main argument that things ARE relative, according to Einstein, and therefore a train, passing you at the speed of light, should make YOU weigh a million tonnes.

How about mass staying constant and the 'speed' of light being variable?

We know that time goes at a different 'speed', depending on the speed of the device in which time is measured and how close or far from a considerable mass the device is.
Our Caesium clocks prove this fact.

Atkinson argues very well for the relative speed of light and it comes across quite elegantly, when he highlights the consequences.

Time, as a driver, is a truly fascinating idea.
It is the ultimate generator of gravity, one of the least understood concepts in physics and the weakest of the basic forces.
Understanding 'time' will generate understanding on both a quantum and a cosmic scale.

As all mass is energy, i.e. atoms tied together by the strongest universal force, in constant 'oscillation', time is an intrinsic part of the atoms' characteristic. There simply is no 'process' without time and we seem to have understood this concept reasonably well.

It is on a cosmic scale we still fumble around in blindness, having gone down a blind alley without seeing the effect on light, as it passes through the universe. Time-dilation even explains the red-shift and the faulty notion of Dark Matter.

Einstein's train.
Watching the celebrity professor Brian Cox on TV is both interesting and sad, as he comes across as stuck in the theories of the 1930s, only slightly modified by Hawking. Quite disappointing, but understandable - it is probably not a good career move to go against Hawking and Einstein. But it doesn't even take a lot of mathematics to prove Einstein wrong - using his own example of a lightning fast train speeding past an observer on the embankment.

To the observer, the train will be a vertical line - front to back compressed - at infinite mass.
To a person on the train everything would seem normal.

But if you shine a laser light at 45 degrees from the front of a train compartment and one from the back of the same compartment, letting the light hit the middle of the compartment at, say, 2m up on a screen - then the consequence would be, close to the speed of light, that the laser beam would hit the screen simultaneously at two different spots.
Clearly not possible.
Let alone that the train would suck you up, if it passed you at the speed of light, as it according to Albert would have an infinite inertial mass.
Not so, I think - Inertial Mass and Gravitational Mass must be separate entities at speeds close to that of light. The difference is explained by time dilation, but that's another chapter.

Dark Matter, Red Shift and Background Radiation from the Big Bang.
The concept of 'time-dilation' and its impact upon light, as it travels through an endless Universe, delivers a very elegant explanation concerning the redshift of light and the supposed background radiation from the Big Bang.

Dark Matter should be dropped as a theory more akin to a religious belief than a fact. It is an artifice, invented as we couldn't explain our observations about a (possibly) expanding Universe and as our equations didn't seem to work. Well, perhaps the equations are wrong. I shall come back to this later - suffice to say, that the invisible Dark Matter, which possesses mass, but emits no energy radiation, according to conventional Newtonian laws would have attracted 'stuff' for billions of years and hence not be Dark Matter any more - like the invisible man, who could only be seen when dressed.

Why is it that the Establishment has such a hard time letting go of clearly dubious theories? Why invent Dark Matter, ostensibly constituting 70% of matter in the universe, to explain an apparent, but probably misunderstood, accelerating expansion of the Universe. Personally I think it would be more credible to believe it is God blowing up a Universal balloon - - -

Time dilation and Redshift (like the Doppler Effect) of light.
The redshift is normally used to explain the expanding Universe - but how about an infinite Universe, where light passes through an endless number of time dilations as it passes millions of galaxies on the way to an Earth-observer? This would surely explain the red shift very easily.

An infinite Universe would also explain the 'Background Radiation' from the so-called 'Big Bang'.
If light has come to Earth from everywhere, for ever, in an infinite Universe, the sky would be brilliant as the Sun, you might say? Not so, I say, as the pulling to and fro of electromagnetic waves caused by the time dilation in the vicinity of huge galactic masses would suck up the energy to such an extent, that we end up with the mere 2.3 degrees Kelvin we can observe.
Redshifted beyond recognition, i.e. way into the invisible spectrum.

Yes, exactly: "Dark Matter".

And perhaps there is a better explanation of Black Holes: Light redshifted into the invisible spectrum by an infinite number of rather awesome events - collapsing electron stars and possibly "local" Big Bangs?

No Dark Matter, No Big Bang, an Infinite Universe, no Black Holes - - - - the mind boggles.

Errare Humanum Est.
Studying the universe today appears to be more of a mathematical exercise (e.g. string theory, Event Horizons) than a search for cosmologically based evidence. But once a theory has become super-glued, it takes a superhuman power to unglue it and it is nigh on impossible to get rid of Einstein's Time-Space curvature and  the fallacious arguments in both the General and Special Relativity Theory - e.g. the foreshortening of distance in the direction of travel as speed increases.
Understanding 'Time Dilation' provides a simple and much more credible theory.

As a student of electronics engineering a life time ago, I was once assigned the task to unravel a differential equation that modelled a certain behaviour for automatic control. It was claimed that as a 1st-2nd-3rd differential equation it got closer and closer to modelling the curve observed in reality, yet at the 4th differential it 'flipped'. The effect was described in several books of the day as fact - copying the initial calculation error. I proved that all the books were wrong - higher differentials modelled reality better and better.
Since then I have always asked: " why - or why not" - when new ideas came up or old ideas were challenged.

Authority doesn't always mean 'right'.

There are too many convenient explanations that defy even an irrational mind - e.g. galaxies 40Bill lightyears away in a 14Bill year old universe, and yet they are visible to us??

Apparently someone has recently found the magnetic monopole, extant at very low temperatures. While the concept of an electric monopole (plus or minus charged) is easy to understand, this is almost like saying: this coin only has one side. Was it a South or a North? Consequences?

Our understanding of particle characteristics, size, behaviour and appearance also seems to change, although Higg's Boson remains elusive or even non-extant. If that is the case, then CERN's particle accelerator, built for millions of $$, is looking in vain for physic's version of the “squaring of the circle”.

The size of the Universe is still an unresolved matter - except it now seems clear that at least it is not contracting. Status is a belief in an accelerating expansion, but somehow we shy away from considering infinity!

What if it really is infinite?
Does it not mean that an event with even a 10-to-the-minus-100,000th of a chance to happen (or any number of additional 0's you'd like to put on), would have happened?
Perhaps it did!!

Physics, Religion and our place in the Universe - a thought.
Our more objective understanding of who we are, i.e. free of endless magic (often called religion), is slowly being unravelled. Controversy started for real with Darwin 150 years ago.

New knowledge appears as we peel off the onion-layers covering the "truth" whatever that might be - and the more we peel, the more it becomes obvious there is no going back to a time of ignorance. That is – unless you use your brain to grow moss, rather than to think, like the Creationists.

Personally I am convinced, that if we ever arrive at the onion's centre, the final question will be: "But hang on - where is God then?"
And the answer will be: "He/She never was".

Things, time, matter - the Universe - just "is".

The fact that we can't comprehend this concept, in particular the concept of infinity, shows how small we are.
As much as I support the idea that we must keep asking "Why" and "What" - who says we are supposed to comprehend anything at such an unfathomable level?

Perhaps it is our implicit understanding, our subconsciously and finally giving up on questions we can't stop asking, that turns us towards rites and mumbo-jumbo like digging up old popes and frantically looking for miracles they have performed.
Perhaps we feel that this is easier to understand than understanding the Universe?

Jane Goodall's discovery that we share not only 99% of our genes with chimpanzees, but also most of our minds, emotions and tribal behaviours, is also easier to understand - and closer to reality and fact. One only needs to compare the Chimps’ cannibalistic traits and aggressive killer instinct with the human behaviour in Kosovo in the 1990s and Sri Lanka in 2008-10 to understand what I mean.

Perhaps we should concentrate our research energies on chimp studies instead of trying to unravel the Universe. Learning from others, who mirror our own behaviour, tend to have an enlightening effect. The retrieved knowledge could help us live better and more meaningful lives, moving even further away from the apes than caused by the split from the common ancestral tree 5 mill years ago.

Ultimately we should accept that in 3 Bill years we will all burn up as the sun dies - if we haven't self destructed much earlier.
An infinite Universe will have lost nothing.
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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!

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!

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.

The HUMAN CONDITION – 2

Hubris and religion are closely related issues.
Just because there's something we don't understand, we immediately make it the creation of a supernatural power and start genuflecting, or even killing, if other people don't agree with us.
“We are right, you are not, and it is our duty either to save your soul or to make sure your beliefs are not propagated, whilst ours prevail. And by the way: out of the 100s of choices it is OUR definition of the deity that’s the correct one.
Convert or go to the sword.”

This is a pretty serious statement with wide ranging consequences and a strong threat that will determine the destiny of our fellow human beings and sometimes animals. It is an attitude that for millennia has caused war and unrest and still does, from the crusades to Northern Ireland, from Kabul to Washington.

If that is not hubris, then I don’t know what hubris is.

What we don’t understand is continuously wrapped around a set of artificial core truisms belonging to whatever god, we happen to believe in at the time the concept was created. Layer upon layer of mysticism envelope these humanly created dogma. As time passes, they become mystic in their own right. The origin becomes part of the cult, creating yet another impenetrable layer, which, after 1000 or 2000 years of religious Chinese whispers, results in common amnesia and a firm belief that a ‘God created them’.

Smart people were quick to discover that there was power in this onion of commands. It could be used to control others, to become rich. The early popes are as good examples as is the march of the Caliphate in the 7-8th C.
As long as the great, believing masses were kept in ignorance, it was a money- and power-spinning machine (well, that’s the same). An artificial enemy, namely those believing differently, was conveniently held up in front of our own believers to provide a focus for our righteousness, or eliminated, so we could expand our power.
If you think this is a description of a distant past, you have been sleeping most of your life.

But something has been happening quite recently in historic terms.
When Richard Owen, in 1881 in London, created the Natural History Museum, he could not imagine that he was cutting off the branch he sat on. Owen vehemently opposed Darwin’s theories about the evolution being a long string of natural selections, interrupted by cataclysmic events, only to continue with whatever was left. According to Owen, species were planted, feet first, firmly on the ground, finished as a sculpture, by a creator.

But now there was an institution, which with scientific means began to ask too many questions for comfort, at least the comfort of the contemporary religious people. Humility and sensibility had finally entered the brain of a few human beings. When Crick and Watson discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, nothing would ever be the same again and layer upon layer of the belief-onion was peeled off.

It had started before, but progress was slow. Magnetism and lightning once belonged to the onion, actually for thousands of years. But people like H.C. Oersted had removed electromagnetism from the celestial sphere in 1820 and Franklins kite and key made lightning more earthbound - literally.
Knowledge and progress had begun a slow march that would accelerate dramatically in the 20th C. Ignorance was on the way out, although not totally.
Even the National History Museum has now exchanged the statue of Owen, its creator, with one of Darwin at the honour spot on top of the first flight of stairs when you enter the museum hall.

What has happened is a major change in our minds, or at least some of our minds: we are not completely above nature, as we have thought during 2000 years of Christianity. We are just another little speck in the picture that nature is busy painting around us and we have no intrinsic, select value. We are part of nature and just another element in its meaningless evolution and natural selection.

It would be too naïve and beautiful a thought, however, to believe that enlightenment and humility would have a free reign from now on.
Action creates reaction – and so it happens.

With very little left of the religious onion, some other arguments must enter the scene in the camp of those, who for a number of reasons still close their eyes.
It can be extremely difficult to give up a belief, an idea, that has been the well trodden path for the whole of your life. In most cases it would have started when you were a child. The child’s mind is like plasticine, but once we grow older, it hardens and becomes titanium steel. Once a concept is in, it’s next to impossible to get it out.
Try to convince an old communist, or better: a member of Jehova’s Witnesses, or a scientology convict. Try to argue with a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. Such a conversation does not follow the normal rules of debate. Once you have professed your belonging to a dead idea, how easy do you think it is to lose face and abandon it?
Exactly: too hard.
So, what argument is left?
A very powerful one indeed!
It is called: I don’t just believe, I KNOW.

This is where every discussion with a fundamentally convinced person starts or ends and it is very difficult to circumvent. In fact, you can’t.
It becomes even worse if you talk to a creationist or an end-timer, both the result of brainwashing and deliberate dumbing down. The first lot simply ignore facts in all their naïvety and orchestrated stupidity, the second are downright dangerous in their belief that the world is forecast a dramatic and imminent end as stated in the bible. This means that whatever they do, it is bound to happen. Therefore it is better to ensure you fight on the side of the God (in which they believe) and help send the rest of us to a very warm place. George Bush belongs to this dangerous clan, which may go a long way to explain American foreign politics in the past 10 years.

The general danger is buried in fundamentalism, both Christian and Muslim. Neither can be contained behind a personal, private set of walls any more, as some of us with tolerant attitudes have thought for a lifetime. 9/11 and Tony Blair’s conversation with his god before going to war in Iraq are frightening examples on how religion can go astray and the message of ‘love thy neighbour’ be trampled under foot.

You would expect such people, as heads of state, to possess a little brain, but again: once the child’s mind has been boxed in, it is almost impossible to modify its confusion.
Now consider the bible and its 25 gospels. Why were 21 of them eliminated, in particular the one created by a woman, Mary Magdalena? Why were most of the dogma, to which present day Christians adhere, created by the church at the synod of Nicaea in 325 AD? Or the hereditary sin in Cluny, 410 AD? And why, oh why, do we find virtually every statement in the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’ repeated in the Bible, word for word? Did God not do his/her school homework in time, so that he/she had to copy the class’ smart kid before the teacher arrived? That is, if the Bible was written by God and not by a whole army of clerics, as is the accepted knowledge.
The same can be said about the Quran, although there is one major difference between the two: the New testament flows over with good ethical advice, while the Quran is completely devoid of same, concentrating on all the bad things that might happen, if you don’t believe in their version of the almighty.
But in both cases the deity appears to be a vengeful, warmonger – something humans have been fast to copy when it suited them, but slow to accept when it was angry.
All in all: it is very difficult to consolidate the angry god in both religions with the message of love. Consequently human beings have continued to be confused beyond any rational reason. The Norwegian philosopher, Peter Wessel Zapffe, expresses it in this way:

Humans are born with an overdeveloped skill of awareness, understanding and self-knowledge – (what I call "ability to think in abstract ways") which does not fit into nature's design. The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot provide satisfaction for. The tragedy, following this theory, is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.

In our quest to determine, factually, whether there is a ‘god’ or not, we often refer to our ‘god’s inclination for disaster management. Apparently the preacher Billy Grahams’ daughter had a comment about the hurricane Katarina and the destruction of New Orleans. Ben Stein from CNN found it very profound. It goes like this:

'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman he is, I believe he has calmly backed out.

Gentleman?
Phh.
I think this potential 'God' has had the same attitude always, even when everyone in the world was genuflecting ad nauseam.
Pest, volcano disasters, untold tsunamis, landslides, climate change and hunger as for example the 10 years in 536-546 AD, you name it, anything not humanly created, are good examples of ‘God’ walking quietly away. Or never being there.
But of course we didn't all know ‘God’ then.

If the disasters were of human origin, it was easily explained as ‘God's revenge.
Like war, torture, etc, where he commands this species, that he loves so much, to fall upon each other.
Revenge? Punishment? What a miserable kind of love!

In my view we must begin seriously to understand that the universe, of which our world is a microscopic part, is a naturally evolving environment that unavoidably and constantly turns into a killing field. Land is created through tectonic action and volcanic eruptions and animals constantly develop - not because of their strength, but because they adapt (big difference, that Hitler didn't understand), protecting them from being eaten.
This gives rise to new environments and species, a fact we can verify scientifically.
A lot of this we call "Nature's beauty".

A lot of the beauty shown is actually the consequence of erosion and breakdown. When the beauty turns violent it suddenly becomes God's wrath, because we have misbehaved. How convenient: always an explanation.
Try staying a night alone and unarmed in a Kenyan jungle and you’ll know what I mean.

With a bit of technical savvy, we could now put another You-tube video together, preferably accompanied by the very same song, showing
- the cruelty of nature (eat or get eaten) - beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, e.g. an antilope just downed by a lion or one of the early human remains found in Tanzania with a hole in the scull from a leopard's tooth
- the Indian and Samoan tsunamis
- slaughter in Rwanda, Uganda and Indonesia
- clips from "the Mission", a very powerful film showing the true face of religion as a political device
- immense poverty and suffering across the world, even amongst those who believe, from Calcutta to Timbuktou
- pollution (including natures own like the volcano in Cameroon that killed 80.000 people through spewing CO2)
- and many other examples.
Nature’s own forces have a free reign and always had, while constantly - on its own - changing the operational conditions without the tiniest sign of benign, or malign, interference.
I find the pictures beautiful - but the message disgustingly devoid of the message: be responsible for your own actions, with unconditional love and respect for your habitat and fellow beings.
Look at it again and consider how much of these sugar sweet pictures we may not be able to see in 100 years from now.
The song ends with "believe as a child" - of course; children can be impregnated with the desire to kill each other, Americans in particular as it happens in some countries - and feel good about it.
So why not twist their minds with religion from the start?
Now you only have to choose which religion of the 50 major ones on the menu, all claiming to be the only one.
We must begin to understand that we should use our powers, not our non-existing uniqueness, to protect a nature that would have absolutely no problem with 'getting on with it', i.e. evolving and killing, both animals and mountains, if you will, without our presence or interference.
Unfortunately humans have greater power to destroy than to build.
It is very sad that we have learnt so little in our miserable 1 million years of slowly evolving existence.

So the dinosaurs disappeared. According to the Creationists this happened well into the period (or after) where stone age man roamed the earth. Right!!
Well, seriously I believe that humanity will self-destruct one day.
We will take a good chunk of nature with us when it happens. Deserts, apocalyptic flooding, nuclear winters, etc. come to mind.
It could, of course, also be because of a comparable reason to why the dinosaurs disappeared: Hyper volcanoes such as Yosemite, asteroid impacts, etc.
But some sort of 'nature' will emerge again - whether a new and prolific nature such as the one that emerged after the 90% destruction of all life after the Permian period, or a silent, ice-filled quiet as on Europa (one of Jupiter's moons).
It doesn't matter. Mother nature will make up her mind when the time comes.

If you want to believe there is a God behind this, be my guest. I respect people’s freedom to choose, but I do not respect the content of the prevailing religious beliefs. Religion had its time and reason in the ages of ignorance. Not any more.
So far humanity has created 100s of gods if not 1000s.
A lot of them continue to live on in our present ‘God’(s) and their characteristics can be traced a couple of thousand years back.
Even present day Christianity (Catholicism) has over 5000 ‘Gods’.
They call them 'Saints'. People pray to them and they have godly powers.
That's polytheism in my view.

I think it is our conditioned upbringing over 1000s of years that makes us inherently religious. We needed religion when we came down from the trees in the East African jungle a million years ago. There was nothing else to help.
It is a calming thought that when we can't explain nature, then someone must have created it. It couldn’t possibly be by accident.
Well? Why not?
Hubris!

Stone age man finds a Swiss watch, lost by a missionary in the jungle or sees an airplane - and a ‘God’ is born.
The Cargo-Cult in New Guinea is a good example.
‘God’ even gave them presents (cargo).

It is even more calming to believe that when we are in trouble and no one is there to help, we can pray to someone or something.
What else is there? The weak would go under, as they would have nothing else.
And if you firmly BELIEVE it, it is better than a shrink.

The more we can enlarge our scope of wonder and learn to respect nature in all its self-generated enormity, the more we will enrich our lives, without succumbing to our tendency to explain everything through the unexplainable.
Wouldn’t it be nice, if religion were a private matter and not an excuse for righteousness, war, dominance and a need for converting 'the others'??

The Human Condition - 1.

One of my favourite poets, Peter Wessel Zapffe, once wrote that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill: awareness, understanding, self-knowledge - exactly what I for years have called "our ability to think in abstract ways", which does not fit into nature's design.
The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot provide satisfaction for. The tragedy is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.

Religion, whether expressed through the 3m tall wooden Nerthus/Frej statues from Iron-age bog-finds or more contemporary manifestations, unfortunately reflects this condition in abundance.

Frey from Broddenbjerg, DK

Satisfying the Gods in the past was all about passing on items or behaviour that in the society of the time was considered to have high value, i.e. sacrificing our treasures or something we really appreciated ourselves: gold rings or abandoning a rich lifestyle.

Satisfying God in some of our present religions is all about our own reward: 99 virgins (actually a mis-translation from 99 white raisins, a delicacy at the time) or a place in 'Abraham's lap'.

Humans have moved from exo-centric religions (the Romans' 'do ut des'/ I give, so you shall give) to ego-centric: how will I be rewarded.

....

There was an implicit community feeling imbedded in the former.

Do ut des!

Without we would never have had the rich bog-offerings to the deities in Denmark from Hjortspring, Vimose, Illerup, Thorsbjerg, Ejsboel, etc. and La Tene in the Neuchatel lake, to name just a few.

Churches and mosques represent the same feeling: built to the honour of whatever God is in fashion - something that for the individual, by the way, still totally depends on where and when you are born.

Compare that to most religions today: it is me - me - me, wrapped in credit cards and a severe competition about whose God is the right one, and a plethora of rules, created by humans, with little emphasis on the God herself, rather on control of the people.

Hjortspring spear heads

As Seneca said: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful",

or Einstein, whom religious people wrongly take under their wings, saying: even Einstein was religious.

No he was not.

Here's what he said:

"I never imputed to nature any purpose or goal or anything even mildly anthropomorphic."

Have we become wiser in the past 2000 years?