SatNav for the soul®

This precipitated this tweet by Jon Beech.

Later, in the bath, I reflected on the implied criticism of the tweet and found myself in interesting territory. What is wrong with a universal language? If everyone has their national language but their second language is always English, what is so bad about that? You could travel to most places in the world confident that you would find someone who spoke enough English to communicate with.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not precious about the English language (although I am grateful that it is my first language which saves me the trouble of learning it) I could comfortably contemplate Mandarin as being the universal language.

A universal language has been tried before; Esperanto which tried to preserve everyone’s national pride by  bastardising most of them and in so doing pleased no one. Unfortunately it simply wasn’t useful enough in the real world.

In the global economy of today it pays to learn the languages that will give the most return on your investment. If I was to spend the time and effort in learning French I would only be able to use it productively in France (yes, yes, I know that in certain parts of Canada it would be useful). I could speculate that in ten years time Mandarin might become the global language but that predicates on so many precarious economic factors and its inability to adapt itself easily for digital use argues against it.

No, you learn the language of current global usage. If the dominant language is English then so be it, that is what you will learn. I am aware that Spanish speaking peoples outnumber English speaking people but the truth is that the spheres of influence in the world use English as the first language.

But I digress. My point is that a language is not a currency, it is not an ideology foist upon a defenceless people by some superpower. It is a tool, like an axe, which can be used for many purposes, some good, some not so good.

One of the few examples of a universal standard that I can think of is 16mm film, still in use today. This was developed by the Nazi’s to aid their propaganda machine. So successful were they in establishing the medium that at one period during the sixties and seventies, you could take a 16mm film anywhere in the world and you would be able to find a projector to show it.

But 16mm film is just a medium, it is not an ideology. Anti-fascist films can be made on it too. Language is just the same.

Incidentally we have gone backwards in the technological ease of showing moving images. There are so many formats and protocols for digital video that if you take your .MOV file burned on a dvd, chances are it won’t play on someone else’s branded laptop.

In The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins the question is asked ‘Where do gods come from?’ but no answer is given.

Every human society around the world has some belief about a spiritual afterlife. Why should that be the case? If it is universal then presumably it cannot be a human quirk developed by accident and dependent on some special configuration of circumstances. This suggests that we are hard wired to develop a belief system or at the very least evolutionary inclined towards adopting this strategy. Here is my attempt at an explanation.

In his book The End of Forever, Darryl Reanney suggests that a belief in an afterlife was necessary to counter the negative impact of self awareness in consciousness. As consciousness developed in our species we inevitably realised that we as individuals would die one day – using intelligence to plan strategy will inevitably pose the question “what happens to us?” No other species has this knowledge, they all live in the moment. I am confident of this assertion because of the reasoning I will give later. If you are aware of your own mortality then this can produce a profound negative feedback loop in your thinking. If you’re going to die anyway, what is the point of doing anything significant or of planning too far ahead? Evolution ‘encourages’ species to develop and adapt to the environment and to ultimately replicate themselves. If we keep reflecting on what is the purpose of it all then, there is a danger that we will find no purpose and ’shut down’ in our consciousness preventing its further evolution.

As an experiment in evolution, consciousness is a hugely dangerous adaptation. For it to develop fully it needed to have a fail-safe mechanism for avoiding the downsides of self awareness.

In mathematics, the appearance of infinity in any equation is an abomination to the mathematician as it produces unacceptable results. In human consciousness the opposite is true; the finite is unacceptable. The realisation of our own mortality is an abomination for our consciousness, therefore the concept of an afterlife has to be created to avoid this finality.

Our species can now continue with the process of procreation using the powerful advantage of higher consciousness safe in the knowledge that there is a purpose for doing so.

In my opinion, Richard Dawkins‘ exploration of a god concept missed two crucial elements to its development, namely, art and drugs (particularly hallucinogenic drugs). To a lesser degree, language is another key component in the origination of an afterlife.

It is my contention that any species that produces art will have a concept of an afterlife, this is why I am convinced that although a species such as the elephant has self awareness, it does not produce art, therefore it has not made the leap into higher consciousness that allows it to extrapolate its own inevitable demise. The footage of elephants fondling the bones of other, recently dead elephants suggests that they are on the cusp of such an awakening. Incidentally, the ‘art’ that some elephants have produced has been shown to be the result of their handlers subtle signals and not any spontaneous expression from the animal.

So what is art?

Art is the demonstration of creativity. It is the leap of consciousness from merely observing the environment to manipulating it. Art has power. It is no accident that Islam forbids the representation of humans and animals.

The cave paintings from Lascaux tell us a great deal about the significance of art and narcotics.

What is not widely known about the cave paintings is that many of the pictures are difficult to interpret because of the curious marks that accompany them; mostly dots obscuring the image beneath. There are also zigzags and semi circles. It has been suggested that these marks represent the visual effects produced by certain narcotic substances. Whether the paintings were done under the influence of these narcotics or the visions were remembered and then reproduced is unknown. But here is the holy trinity for the origination of religion: art, narcotics and language.

Art is an attempt to make a connection with that being depicted. In the case of the Lascaux painters, the beasts that they observed and hunted. Art is creating something out of ‘nothing’ – the colours come from dirt, minerals, plants, insects. The representation of the animal from these basic, fundamental ingredients is a god-like act. It is not difficult to extrapolate from that realisation to the idea that a much larger artist created the world in just such a way. Art is creation, as is god. This connection can be verified by witnessing the hand silhouettes of the artists from thousands of years ago. I find these images disturbing because the art does what it intended to do – to reach out through time in an immortal salute and to defy death. I shiver at their timeless question; who was this person?

The predominance of human and animal sacrifice in many early belief systems points to an obsession with mortality and an afterlife.

The role of narcotics in helping to develop the idea of an afterlife is equally easy to understand. Anyone who has taken any kind of drug will know of its power to provide an alternative view of reality. For a human being (and indeed many other species) this window to another reality is hugely attractive. Again, nearly all human cultures have been shown to use narcotics in one way or another. Why do humans crave an escape from the one reality that they are familiar with? Perhaps we are back to the unacceptable ‘reality’ of our own mortality. Whatever the reason, the drug experience allows us to extrapolate to the conclusion that there must be other dimensions that are yet to be discovered.

The Lascaux artists were probably viewed as shaman or interlocutors by their fellow tribespeole. Vocalised language allowed these shaman to communicate the content of their visions to others. The story of another world that exists beyond our knowledge must have been so easy to believe and the story was then  corroborated by the language of art.

The paintings themselves at Lascaux are not easily accessible for the casual observer, they are deep within a cave system. This suggests an early development of the concept of sacredness or exclusivity for the ’seeing ones’.

How does this help from an evolutionary point of view? My guess is that those tribes with a strongly developed sense of an afterlife would co-operate more with each other and have a stronger sense of community. Crucially however, it would allow the investment of resources and time for bigger projects such as stone circles, calendars and burial mounds. These would help the future generations to have a better chance of survival. Here could be the very foundation of civilisation itself. A large scale meeting of tribes would increase trade, ideas and knowledge. This would give the group a greater resilience to future hardships when compared to godless humans who operated without this network.

Conceptual artwork

God, as a work of art, is unparalleled in human creativity. The breathtaking audacity of its eternal vision, of its sweep and grandeur over the face of time and space itself and its use of concepts such as hell fire, purgatory, intercession, heaven, make it the apotheosis of sublime awe. In the masterworks gallery of conceptual genius, god sits on the finest plinth in the centre of the vaulted dome that generates the purest light.

Then along comes science and declares god a fake. Science claims that the author of the work — God himself — doesn’t exist and therefore only gifted artisans could have put the piece together. The body that declares the legitimate provenance of the work – the church, maintains its position, confident that science can’t come up with the necessary evidence. The accusation divides the viewing public. Those that believe the work to be genuine, dig in and entrench themselves with the historical ‘evidence’. Those that doubt the authenticity of the work, lose interest and leave the gallery. Very few ignore the inquisition altogether and simply enjoy the spectacle for what it is.

But the conundrum remains, nothing has really changed: the artwork remains exactly the same, it is only the perception of the artwork that is altered. Any painting, looked at rationally, is just marks of coloured shit on canvas or board. It is the belief about the construction of the artwork that fires our imagination.

Whether an artwork is fake or original or machine generated should be irrelevant, the artwork is what it is, either you like the piece or you don’t. Who created the piece is of interest only to those who benefit from that knowledge – collectors, art dealers, auctioneers, and owners…

And here is the crux of the story. Ultimately, it is the market that decides. Those with a vested interest will fight the doubt at all costs. They have empires to defend, property to maintain and income to collect. Even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, the intellectual property owners have to deny the evidence because the consequences are dire — if their authority is brought into question with this one, where does it end? What else is a fake in the gallery? And if you have invested a lifetime of prayer into these works… is that lifetime wasted then?

In the market of ideas, art is a confidence trick. The same trick is played in the currency markets, in the diamond market. The god market is no different.

A large crowd had gathered at the Carriageworks in Millennium Square, Leeds, last night to hear Daniel Ben-Ami and Clive Lord debate the limits of economic growth.

I use the emphasis because it wasn’t really a debate, more, a general airing of well formed opinions, prejudices and delusions by the speakers and audience members alike. I can say this because at no point during the evening was the skill of critical thinking allowed. I will explain why later but it was not for the want of knowledge.  At one point in the evening, I thought it was a competition to see who had read the most books around the subject, such was the lexicon of references.

It was clear that Daniel Ben-Ami was in the minority with his, “Growth is Good” premise and he rolled off the usual litany of technological achievements in medicine and the like. Unfortunately, his defence of the concept was about as robust as a string vest. Such was the confusion between technological innovation, capitalism, competition, human nature, economic wealth and happiness, that no-one could even begin to make a considered argument on such a swamp of shifting sands. This was a missed opportunity which could have been rescued if the focus had been on an example of what happens when untrammelled growth is followed through to its logical conclusion. And we have such an example, it is the, ‘tragedy of the seas.’

Technological innovation has improved the fish finding capabilities and catching methods of trawlers immeasurably. Actually we can measure the improvement, because there is very little fish left in the seas to catch. Also, with only a national sense of ownership and not a global one, the open seas are a paradise for any unbridled capitalist – the richest and most powerful take as much as they want leaving nothing for the less able or for future generations. The very worst predictions of the environmentalists regarding declining fish stocks are coming true. The economic and environmental destruction of the oceans is a disgrace which future generations (if they survive) will refer to in exactly the same way that we now refer to Easter Island as a salutary lesson in human greed and stupidity.

When I put this question of the fish stocks to Daniel Ben-Ami, he conceded it was a difficult one for which he had no ready answers but concluded that it was a just a political problem.

But, Mr Ben-Ami, everything is a political problem; damming the head waters of a river that also irrigates the fields of a country further down the precious artery, is a political problem, the fact that a tiny minority of the human population own the vast majority of the wealth is a political problem…civilisation is all about people therefore it is all a political problem.

I also suspect he had no ready answers because time has run out for the fishing industry and technology has not, miraculously, come to its rescue (fish farms, by the way, produce a net loss in terms of sustainability – they require more feed than they actually produce).

The incredible short sightedness of Daniel Ben-Ami’s vision was also telling. He boasted about the increasing life-span of humans when compared with the Victorian era (come, come, that’s like comparing life expectancy of today with the life expectancy of the population during 1942-1945 in say, Poland, particularly, Auschwitz) It was also symptomatic that he used the concept of longevity as a commodity to add to the growing list of stuff. The question was not raised however as to why the next generation will be showing a reversing of this longevity trend due to diseases of affluence – diabetes, heart disease, cancer et al.

I think it is important that people like Mr Ben-Ami gives everyone the heads up on important issues and I was fully prepared to amend my own views if a strong enough polemic was forthcoming from the discussion. I personally didn’t hear one last night but having said that, it was interesting to hear other peoples points of view and the subject matter was sufficiently emotive to stimulate fierce debate in the pub afterwards.

Job done.