Mythorelics

Truth and War

2012-02-02T22:07:00.000-08:00

Less than a decade after Texas declared independence from Mexico (1836), provocative movements of U.S. troops led to further war. U.S. troops eventually attacked a Mexico City military school (at Chapultepec Castle) defended only by teenage cadets, and the National Palace (the root of the “Halls of Montezuma” line in the Marine Hymn). After the US annexed Texas (1845), Mexico soon severed relations… with no more provocation than that, President Polk sent troops - who rapidly took Baja, Monterrey, Buena Vista, Veracruz and Tampico (Mexico's leading ports) - in fact, most of mainland Mexico. There was no military need to attack the military school, nor to build a fort 150 km. inside the Mexican border; but purely for political (and expansionist) reasons, these insidiously menacing things were done. The war was expensive, though, and unpopular (seen by many as a land grab for the slave states); at the end, for a little over a dollar a square kilometer, the US was able to annex Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona (about half of Mexico’s total territory). During the war, a group of Catholic Irish immigrants in the US Army rebelled, objecting to abusive treatment by Protestant officers (and abusive treatment of the Catholic Mexican population). They joined the Mexican army; eventually 16 were hanged as traitors. They and the cadets remain honored as heroes in Mexico.
By 1898, Spain was losing territories regularly; Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were in revolt. Cuba’s revolution was bad news for the U.S. owners of Cuban sugar, tobacco and iron industry properties (valued at over $50 million – about $1.2 billion in today’s terms). Main stream media, dominated by newspaper magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst (that era’s Rupert Murdoch and Koch brothers), fabricated stories of horrible conditions under Spanish rule. Ships were deployed to strategic locations for war against Spain’s empire, and then, at 9:40 p.m. on Feb. 15, 1898, the quietly at anchor Maine suffered a massive explosion and sank. 255 to 266 crew members died. The U.S. Navy convened a board of inquiry, which, without forensic evidence, declared the sinking to have been due to a mine - a trumped up story that the Hearst press used to accuse the Spanish of causing the explosion by remote-control. The US declared war, and annexed the Philippines, Guam and Cuba. Later investigations revealed that the explosion originated inside the Maine; the cause hasn’t been definitively determined, but may have come from a time bomb inside the battleship. Definitive scientific analysis says the Spaniards could not have sunk it, and Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the US nuclear navy, decided that a coal fire began aboard the Maine caused the explosion. That seems unlikely to me, but at any rate, the Spanish-American War was begun on the strength of an outright lie: that the Spanish had mined a U.S. ship.
On May 7th, 1915, the Lusitania was sent where German military vessels were known to be, despite carrying passengers and the German embassy having put advertisements in the New York Times telling people that if they boarded the Lusitania they did so at their own risk, as, by sailing from America to England through the war zone, the ship would be liable to destruction. As expected, German U-boats torpedoed the ship, exploding stored munitions and killing 1198 people, including 128 Americans. The ship went down in only 18 minutes - improbable if only hit by one U-Boat torpedo. However, a 1982 examination of the sunken Lusitanian concluded that there were, indeed, explosive munitions on board, and those explosives caused the ship to sink. A large section of the keel area, totally away from where the torpedo entry occurred, was missing; the vessel was certainly sunk by a massive internal explosion. 148 tubs of butter, shipped to the British admiralty by Remington Arms and its parent company DuPont Chemicals, was stored at the place where the massive damage was located; apparently what was shipped was gun cotton, a volatile explosive used in mines, and which can be set off by contact with seawater. The ship was also secretly transporting 6 million pounds of artillery shells and rifle ammunition (in December 2008, divers found 4 million US made bullets in the Lusitania’s holds), as well as other explosives (on behalf of Morgan banking corporation), despite it being against US laws to transport war materials and passengers in the same ship. But, as losses at sea were not quite enough to bring isolationist America into a European war, in January 1917, British “intelligence” turned over a telegram they claimed to have intercepted, sent by Germany to Mexico, promising return of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Mexico upon successful “joint conduct of the war.” The telegram was leaked to the American press on March 1; it appeared that Mexico was being encouraged to invade the U.S., and subsequent public outcry helped make possible a U.S. declaration of war on April 2. German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman at first denied, and then admitted, sending the telegram, but claimed it was intended as a warning to Mexico about Germany's intention to wage unrestricted submarine warfare against the U.S., and was certainly not an invitation to join in a war against it. World War I yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits, and is how about 21,000 millionaires and billionaires and got that way.
WWII is a bit more difficult to show as a set-up, but the fact is that the preponderance of citizenry in the USA was decidedly against entering into it. From after WWI until 1941, US foreign policy was dominated by isolationists determined to prevent the United States from being drawn into another European war. With the Neutrality Act of 1935, Congress passed a series of laws designed to minimize American potential involvement with belligerent nations. Shipping arms from the USA to any combatant nation was banned (in 1937, Congress passed an even more stringent act).
As WWII began (with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939), Congress and most of the American public continued to favor neutrality. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed that peace-loving nations quarantine aggressors, but his proposal created such alarm that he quickly backed off from it. Although well aware that the public wanted America to stay out of the war, Roosevelt was determined to do all he could to thwart Hitler. In October, 1938, he held secret talks with French officials on how to bypass the neutrality laws and allow purchase of US aircraft (which the French couldn’t even pay for). Inadvertent disclosure of these talks led to major isolationist uproar against Roosevelt, and a Senate probe. Because of the prevalence of isolationism, Roosevelt made a series of contradictory statements to the American people. In the winter of 1939 he warned that France and Britain were America's “first line of defense”, and required American aid; meanwhile he also claimed that he was following an isolationist foreign policy that would do nothing to involve the US in another war. When the French offered up colonized islands in the Caribbean and Pacific to pay for aircraft, orders were placed; when the aircraft were ready, they were diverted to the British, as France had already been overrun by Germany. FDR continued in secret negotiations to assist Britain and France, against the wishes of the public and laws passed by its other representatives.
After France fell, FDR pursued his policy by aiding the British against Germany, facilitating the placing of British orders for munitions and making various arrangements for the transfer of surplus American war matériel to them. On September 2, 1940, FDR openly defied the Neutrality Acts by passing the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which gave Britain 50 WWI-era US destroyers in exchange for 99-year leases on 8 British naval and air bases in the British Caribbean Islands and Newfoundland. British PM Churchill believed that that exchange set in motion a process towards US entry into the war which no one could stop, and indeed, soon FDR had persuaded Congress to revise the 1935 Neutrality Act. By December, ’40, Britain had placed orders for war materials far in excess of what they could possibly muster the dollar exchange to finance, and in March, ‘41 a Lend-Lease agreement began to direct massive military and economic aid to Britain and the Republic of China. Before long the Soviet Union was included in this. The Lend-Lease Act empowered FDR to transfer defense materials, services, and information to any foreign government whose defense he deemed vital to that of the United States, and left to his discretion what he should ask in return. From the time of the German invasion of the USSR, FDR was clearly determined to aid the Soviet Union, but the American public’s suspicions of that country, and Communism in general, delayed his declaring that country eligible for lend-lease - until November 1941. American deliveries of aircraft, tanks, and other supplies to the USSR began shortly thereafter.
By raising the specter of a German invasion of the Western Hemisphere, FDR convinced Congress to enact the first peacetime military draft, a decisive step in preparing the United States to enter the war. As opinion polls showed the American public heavily favoring a policy of “all aid short of war” to Britain, at least, and isolationist sentiment remained strong, FDR's campaign for US intervention had to remain deceptive. He made an unqualified promise to a Boston audience on October 30, 1940: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” When the Japanese sank an American gunboat on the Yangtze River early in December, ‘41, most Americans feared that the attack would lead to war, and were pleased that FDR accepted Japan’s apologies. Meanwhile he secretly stepped up a program to build long-range submarines that could blockade Japan.
By December 1941, the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan were doing well; Hitler’s troops dominated most of Western Europe, and Japan was gaining control of the islands of the South Pacific. There was enormous pressure on the US to enter the war. On July 26, in pursuance of a new agreement with Vichy France, Japanese forces had begun occupying bases in southern Indochina. FDR froze Japanese assets under US control, imposed an embargo on oil to Japan and restricted exports to Japan of other supplies essential to making war. Dismay at the embargo drove the Japanese naval command, which had hitherto been more moderate than the army, into collusion with the army's extremism. Japan tried to negotiate restoration of trade in curtailed supplies, particularly petroleum products and scrap metals (which Prescott Bush was still supplying to Germany). Negotiations failed, and Japanese leaders planned an attack on the United States - which may have been exactly what Roosevelt wanted. By backing Japan into a corner and forcing it to make war on the US, he’d become able to enter the European war.
He’d pushed Japan into a corner, provoking it into attacking enticing bait at Pearl Harbor. This was done using “8 insults”, including a total blockade of Japanese oil imports, forbidding Japan use of Panama canal (impeding Japanese access to Venezuelan oil), freezing all Japanese assets in the United States; making public loans to Nationalist China, and supplying military aid to the British (in violation of international war rules). Demands that Japan could not concede included renunciation of the Tripartite Pact (which would have left Japan diplomatically isolated) and withdrawal of Japanese troops from China and Southeast Asia (to which it had invested in an overt commitment of four years' standing). The success of the Flying Tigers (a volunteer air group) in downing about 100 Japanese military aircraft, mostly bombers, was seen by the Japanese as part of these insults. The Japanese could see no point in continuing the talks; peace with the US seemed impossible, so Japan set in motion plans for war, which would now be waged not only against the USA, but also against Great Britain (the Far Eastern colonies of which lay within the orbit of the projected Japanese expansion) and the Dutch East Indies (the oil of which was now essential).
FDR and his advisers knew there’d be important Japanese military action on December 6–7. Most historians say that they didn’t know where the attack would come, that intercepted Japanese diplomatic and military messages indicated an attack somewhere, but that information suggested the target would be British, Dutch, or French. The British, Dutch, French and American military forces in the entire Pacific region west of Hawaii amounted to only about 350,000 troops, most lacking combat experience (and including many disparate nationalities). Allied air power in the Pacific was weak, consisting mostly of obsolete planes. If the Japanese, with their large, well-equipped and battle-hardened armies could quickly launch coordinated attacks, they could overwhelm Allied forces and overrun the entire western Pacific Ocean as well as Southeast Asia. Then those areas’ resources could be used to Japan’s military-industrial advantage. The Japanese planned to establish a strongly fortified defensive perimeter extending from Burma to the southern rim of the Dutch East Indies and northern New Guinea and on to the Gilbert and Marshall islands. The Japanese believed that any American and British counteroffensives against this perimeter could be repelled, after which those nations would eventually seek a negotiated peace that would allow Japan to keep her newly won empire. The only truly important impediment to this plan was the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The US had broken Japanese encryption codes in 1940, and knew what was going to happen, when and where: US Naval intelligence intercepted and translated hundreds of transmissions to the Japanese attack fleet while it was en-route to Hawaii, dispatches which left no doubt that Pearl Harbor was to be the target of a Japanese attack. On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese killed 2400 soldiers, triggering US entry into that war. Despite giving the information to the British, FDR didn’t give it to his troops in Hawaii. His administration failed to notify the military of decoded Japanese messages indicating that an attack would take place on December 6–7.
Interestingly, despite the amazing lack of military preparedness at Pearl Harbor, enough of the Pacific Fleet, including 3 aircraft carriers, remained available to successfully enter into war. The Japanese attack failed in a crucial respect, as the aircraft carriers were out of port, at sea at the time of the attack, and so escaped harm. These aircraft carriers became the nucleus of US military action in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor’s shore installations and oil-storage facilities also escaped damage, but the attack unified the American public and swept away most remaining support for American neutrality. On December 8 the U.S. Congress declared war on Japan, with just one dissenting vote. The other Axis powers then declared war on the US.
FDR used deceitful tactics to increase U.S. involvement gradually and to stir up pro-war sentiments in the American public. He clearly believed - with good reason - that he could obtain a public consensus in favor of war only if the country were attacked by a foreign power. Circumstances surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, when interpreted in light of Roosevelt's behavior in preceding years, strongly suggest that he intentionally provoked the Japanese attack. Perhaps it was right of FDR to carefully not commit the USA to greater involvement in fighting than public opinion would support, while doing all he could to contain the Axis powers, but he clearly did not stay within the letter of the law, nor adhere to clear public sentiments.

There’s evidence that South Korean incursions (the Tiger regiment etc.) into North Korea (1949) led to the Korean “police-action” - and that covert activity by leaders of Taiwan and the US military-industrial complex helped organize those hostilities. 2 to 4 million North Koreans and Chinese, and 54,000 US, killed.
In 1964, while Lyndon Johnson was campaigning as a peace candidate, North Vietnamese allegedly fired on two US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson ordered retaliatory action after "renewed attacks" now known not to have occurred. By 1967 Johnson had sent some 550,000 US troops into Southeast Asia. More were sent by allied countries, and about 10% of that number died. Like the Maine and Lusitania disasters, the North Vietnamese PT boats attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin were little more than lies: there had been no unjustified, provocative attacks, only a perceived need to enter into war.
Now we hear of “Islamists”, and that “Truthers” complaining about massive misinformation on WTC 9-11 are as psychologically unstable as the “Birthers” calling their own President an anti-American atheistic Islamic commie Socialist… and nobody seems to know what’s going on in 3 separate wars, wars some see as united in a “War on Terror” – another War to End all War, I suppose…

An organized self-contradiction

2012-01-29T02:39:00.001-08:00

The intent of organized religion being to help the individual achieve something transcendent, its orientation is essentially selfish. As it doesn’t aspire to maintain its base (us, struggling humanity), but rather aspires to something “higher”, its complete success would be its complete demise (and not all that much eventually). Thus self-defeating, its selfish nature is at odds with itself, and involves no rational, pragmatic sense whatsoever (except to assert control). Organized religion involves but pageantry, fantasy and promises – in other words, deceit, but is as addictive as any hedonistic behavior. Sometimes it’s good that so many of us so regularly fail to learn from teachers.

amazing movie

2012-01-20T23:06:00.001-08:00

http://www.truththeory.org/quantum-communication/

The Hip-list:

2012-01-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

The Rockies, Rainforests and desert;
Jim, Jimi and Janis, the Fab Four and Rolling Stones;
Fellini, Clint Eastwood, and “Black Orpheus”;
Certain novels for a while, some TV shows too (Star Trek remains kinda cool);
Balkan Sobranies, Cavendish and James Whitcomb Riley’s “I Smoke My Pipe”;
Mr. Natural, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Captain Marvell;
Organic health food, food co-ops and recycling;
Army Surplus, Goodwill and Salvation Army stores;
Hemp sandals, Vibram soles, Stetson hats;
Panama Red, Acapulco Gold and Black Afghani;
Psilocybin, peyote and Owsley’s refrigerated sugar-cubes;
“A season in Hell”, The Wasteland and “Four Quartets”;
Aboriginal and ethnographic art; pick-up volleyball and softball,
Poppy-seed bagels, solar power, hitch-hiking;
Guinness Stout and Labatt’s Blue Light (until Bud bought it, anyway);
Austin Tejas when it’s not too hot or cold,
SanFrunCisco when it’s not too gay,
And some other places far, far away;
India cotton, denim and Pendleton Mills;
Harrison Ford, Michele Pfeiffer, George Carlin, Steve Martin,
Sex, hair, cars, bikes, campers and ball-point pens;
Ziploc baggies, flash-drive memory sticks, coolers, coats and retro advertising,
Live music, Godzilla and old tokens and funky foreign coins.

Why Opening Myanmar to the West is Bad.

2012-01-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

Why Opening Myanmar to the West is Bad.
In a word – Monsanto. Here in ChiangRai, we still have bees and butterflies, pollinators. We, and everyone everywhere, need them. In China, they’re now often pollinating by hand. Without a large pool of poorly paid and desperate people, that would make the price of fruit (among other things) exorbitant.
The root (and trunk) of the problem is that the “scientists” (engineers) producing genetically modified seed have neglected to consider important interface mechanisms of the natural world. Just as genes function through mechanisms in their genetic sheaths (which have yet to be modified), nothing stands alone or operates alone. It’s like the “domino effect” – change one piece, and a long chain of subsequent activity becomes affected. Much as we digest with the aid of bacteria, plants propagate themselves with the aid of non-plant life-forms (insects, birds, worms). And corporate greed has been blind to these realities.
And corporate greed is the reason the opening of Myanmar may prove even worse than the horrific genocidal activity of the military regime there. Even with human mine detectors, rampant poverty and extensive fighting, the village community has thrived throughout what once was well-known as Burma. People there look out for each other, co-operate in their work and celebrations, and have loving families.
With the coming of “development” there is usually increased social alienation, and curtailing of extended social connectivity. People become in competition with each other: individualized units for production and consumers subject to the manipulations of advertising.
“Western multinational corporations, and American empire, are desperate to continue on a course of expansion, despite that there remains hardly any potential remaining for that. This is also a “domino effect” – which needs to be stopped before all of our dominos have fallen. The less humanity retains connection to its past, the less future it has.

Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One

2012-01-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

The World Is Blue
How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One
SYLVIA A. EARLE
Foreword by BILL MCKIBBEN
National Geographic, $15.95 paper
ISBN 978-1-4262-0639-9

World Without Fish
Text by MARK KURLANSKY
Graphics by FRANK STOCKTON
Workman Publishing, $16.95 cloth
ISBN 978-0-7611-5607-9

Let Them Eat Shrimp
The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea
KENNEDY WARNE
Island Press, $25.95 cloth
ISBN 978-1-59726-683-3

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, . . . the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. —Albert Camus, The Plague

Since long before the Industrial Revolution, we humans have generally assumed the world, our planet, to be a horn of plenty that can never be exhausted, endangered, or despoiled by anything other than natural (or preternatural) forces. This attitude helped formulate what we in Western cultures have believed for centuries, writ large in the Judeo-Christian holy books. While we have seldom acknowledged that our own exploits might be fraught with irreversible error, we came quickly to expect the occasional natural disaster—a hurricane, tornado, a drought the size of the Dust Bowl, a tsunami, an avalanche, a devastating flood, etc.—and perhaps even the purposeful destruction of the world as imagined in biblical terms by an angry god, as the only inevitabilities that lie in the path of our survival. Within the context of this assumption, a dangerous mythos has formed that goes something like this: Because the Creator has placed humankind at the center of worldly importance, and at the top of the food chain, He/She/It has favored us above all other creatures of the earth, and will, if we are “good”, supply us with an inexhaustible plenitude of all that we require to maintain our lives forever and forever until the “end of days.” We bear the responsibility only of being “good” and exercising our mandate to “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28). Though this is a prelapsarian determination of the status of humankind, it persists among Christian, Muslim, and other Judaic cultures especially, though many other creation myths bear the same assumptions about humanity’s exalted status, unto the present day.
Running counter to this mythos are the lessons of science, particularly those that derive from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which not only challenge creationism but also delve deeply into how life on earth actually transpires and set forth sound natural laws, derived through observation, applicable to the interdependent survival of all that we know to be carbon-based life forms—mammals, fish, birds, plants, us, et al. Throughout the two centuries since Darwin’s discoveries, however, we have continued to live our industrious lives as a grand opportunity to more efficiently harvest and utilize in countless ways the material prosperity that is part and parcel of our semi-divine birthright, all the while ignoring and even scorning the dictums of Darwin. We have also procreated and procreated, as our biblical mandate has set forth, so as to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). During much of this process, we have seldom also recognized ourselves as stewards of the earth and its resources; we have largely ignored the possibility that we ourselves—overcome by greed, arrogance, need, and a habituated loss of what the poet John Milton called “right reason”—could put an end to our plenitude, befoul our own nest, and render the bounty of the earth into a toxic wasteland. The books under review here, and many others besides, seek to restore our sensibilities and help us avert such a self-made apocalypse. They focus principally on the current state of the oceans of the world, without whose healthy waters of life we will certainly perish, and bear witness to their rapid deterioration.
The best overview of our present predicament lies within the pages of Sylvia Earle’s The World Is Blue, who views the fabric of planetary life as an interlocking matrix of essential elements and life forms that make life on Earth suitable for human existence. But her focus is on the vitality of the oceans, wherein, as she says, “Water—the blue—is the key to life. With it, anything is possible; without it, life does not exist. Those seeking life elsewhere in the universe focus first on this: Find the water.” [p. 15] Certainly anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the earth sciences—biology, chemistry, physics, genetics, geology, etc.—can easily confirm this dictum, but what Earle wants to ask is, Who’s listening? Who cares? “Knowing is the key to caring,” she avers, “and with caring there is hope that people will be motivated to take positive actions.” [p. 256] And Earle—the recipient of 19 honorary doctorates—is the consummate teacher; her credentials as an oceanic scientist are beyond reproach, and as she makes clear throughout this book, they stem from a profound lifelong love affair and physical interaction with the ocean itself.
Earle makes it crystal clear that what we once regarded as an inexhaustible resource is quickly becoming a dying sea, and that this accelerating deterioration is due largely to human activities, from overfishing to pollution to climate change. The statistics over the last 60 years are staggering:

• Since the middle of the 20th century, hundreds of millions of tons of ocean wildlife have been removed from the sea, while hundreds of millions of tons of wastes have been poured into it.
• Ninety percent of many once common fish have been extracted since the 1950s; 95 percent of some species, including bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, American eel, and certain sharks have been killed. . . .
• Every year industrial fishing wantonly kills thousands of marine mammals, seabirds, and sea turtles and hundreds of millions of fish and invertebrate animals [that are simply discarded as bycatch].
• Half of the shallow coral reefs globally are gone or are in a state of serious decline since the 1950s; in much of the Caribbean, 80 percent are dead. . . .
• The ocean’s pH—the measure of alkalinity or acidity—is changing owing to increased [anthropogenic] CO2, that in turn becomes carbonic acid [a known threat to most all forms of oceanic life]. [p.19]

We could add to this list the fact that over 70 million sharks are killed each year to support the shark fin trade in China (shark fin soup for everyone! says Chairman Hu Jintao), and over 3 million whales were killed during the 20th century by Norway, Japan, the USSR, and the United Kingdom. “The question is,” Earle goes on, “what can we do to take care of the blue world that takes care of us?” [p.20]
Roughly 70 percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere (and in our lungs) is supplied by ocean-dwelling photosythesizers—notably microscopic bacteria and other phytoplankton equipped with chlorophyll that convert the sun’s energy, in combination with carbon dioxide and water, into oxygen, just as terrestrial plants do. Phytoplankton also serve as the basic food source for hatchlings and several small species of fish called copepods (krill) or menhaden (sardines, anchovies, herring), which in turn provide food for ever larger and larger fish all the way up the ocean food chain. Thus phytoplankton, and the small creatures that feed on them, are what biologists call “keystone species,” for without them there would be no ocean-dwelling creatures at all, so far as we know.
Humans, by eating our way down the ocean food chain, are accomplishing the same end, except in reverse. Mark Kurlansky’s World Without Fish is a history of fishing and fisherman; he was once a fisherman himself, and has a deep understanding of the problems engendered by overfishing, coupled with a delightful youth-oriented writing style that captivates without a lot of scientific jargon getting in the way. Graphically interesting font styles, interspersed with one-page segments of a graphic novel that introduce each chapter, lend accessibility to the essential scenario of oceanic collapse.
Relying on Darwin, not dogma, Kurlansky introduces simple scientific concepts to show how the survival of ocean species depend first of all on biodiversity—“The greatest amount of life can be supported by great diversification” (Darwin). [p. xix] As fishermen, especially since the invention in the 1880s of large factory ships that trawl and dredge the ocean bottom with huge nets, began to catch more and more of the larger fish that humans prefer to eat—tuna, cod, halibut, flounder, swordfish, grouper, salmon, etc.—“fishermen were able to hunt down every last fish in a dying population without realizing that it was dying.” [p. 74] For example, cod virtually disappeared from the Grand Banks in 1992, where they had flourished for centuries, and have not recovered to this day, illustrating another Darwinian precept: “Rarity [of any species] . . . is the precursor to extinction” [p. 63]
The sudden appearance of orange roughy in fishermen’s nets in the 1970s, and its equally sudden disappearance in the 1990s, illustrates another of many problems with deepwater fishing. At first, roughy became so fashionable to diners in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (among others) that demand grew and commercial fishermen responded accordingly, without knowing one crucial thing: orange roughy can live approximately 150 years, and don’t reproduce until they are 20 years old. Because they were being caught extravagantly before they could reproduce, this species is no longer available.
Which leads Kurlansky to yet another common misconception that has survived among fisheries scientists for centuries: “that it was impossible to catch too many fish because fish produced so many eggs,” as many as 3 million per fish among cod, for example. [p.53] “Only recently,” writes Kurlansky, “has science come to understand [as Darwin did] that a fish will usually only have between one and six surviving babies, just like a mammal or a bird.” [p. 55] In short, Kurlansky concludes that by overfishing—abetted by warming seas and, with the melting of the polar icecaps, declining salinity and increasing acidity in the world’s oceans—we “have upset nature’s balance [and] it becomes extremely complicated to put it right again.” [p. 148] If these destructive trends are not reversed, and soon, Kurlansky predicts that the world’s oceans’ ecosystems will collapse within 50 years, leaving only species such as reddish-orange algae, jellyfish, and certain bacteria that don’t need oxygen to survive.
Both Earle and Kurlansky imagine that sustainably raised and harvested land-based fisheries, i.e., human-run enterprises in aquaculture, might take enough pressure off our overfished oceans to allow open-water species to recover over the coming decades. Indeed, the idea and practice of aquaculture has caught fire since the 1970s in many nations around the globe, but there are grave problems associated with many of these operations that further threaten the complex integrity of the seas. In Let Them Eat Shrimp, veteran journalist and mangrove ecologist Kennedy Warne takes us on a worldwide journey into the mangrove forests, which he calls the “rainforests of the sea,” that are being widely decimated by aquaculture ventures and land developers. A native New Zealander, Warne developed an early fascination with the relationships between mangroves and the margins of the sea in which they thrive, introducing us along the way to the thousands of local people whose main sources of survival depend on a reverent reliance on mangrove environs.
From Bimini to Florida to Belize to Panama, to Equador and Brazil, and then on to Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Eritrea, and Tanzania, Warne’s picaresque inquiries into the fate of various mangrove populations lead him to almost every exemplary locale. Here’s what he discovered, in a nutshell, and why his arguments against mangrove deforestation make sense, vis-à-vis those for aquaculture and resort development. First and foremost, aquaculture projects most of often involve ocean-side sites that include ancient mangrove forest that must be simply bulldozed up to allow shrimp-farm ponds, for example, access to the tidal waters they occupy. This practice has traditionally gone on for decades without any environmental study into the true value of mangrove forests and the coastal populations they serve, not to mention their value to the ocean waters they have their roots in.
So what exactly is their value, calculated not only in economic terms but also in human and ecological terms? Warne’s extensive research divines the following answers: (1) as plants, “they consume carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and create carbohydrates during photosynthesis,” just as the great rainforests of the world do; (2) “they form soil, store and sequester carbon, and cycle water and nutrients through the ecosystem”; (3) “they act as biofilters, controlling nutrient [and toxic] runoff from the land and maintaining the quality of coastal waters on which other ecosystems such as coral reefs depend”; (4) “they are key suppliers of organic carbon to the oceans, drip-feeding a source of primary productivity to marine food webs”; (5) “they provide nursery habitats and havens for marine organisms” that later migrate into open waters (up to 90 percent of commercial fish species), “and nesting and roosting space for birds”; and (6) “they are a source of pollen and nectar for bees, and a source of fodder for browsing herbivores.” [pp. 149-150]
Thus a 100-hectare (250-acre) shrimp farm constructed by clearing mangroves incurs an annual environmental deficit of $1 million—a cost that, if it were included in the price of the product, would take farmed shrimp off the fast-food menu. . . . Since the Industrial Revolution—the commencement of the era of carbon profligacy—developed nations have racked up a huge debt with one particular ecosystem service: carbon dioxide storage in atmosphere and ocean. Now that bill is being collected. [p.150]

In addition, citing a study in the Gulf of California on only the value of mangrove forests to marine fisheries, we might add another $15,000 per acre per year just for “fish-related services,” putting the annual total value of an acre of mangrove forest at $19,000, which is over “600 times the value that the Mexican government places on mangrove land.” [p. 151] And still we have not yet included the cost of human suffering by the displacement and/or impoverishment of coastal dwellers through the ruination of their ancestral homes.
We are all familiar with the “inconvenient truth” of anthropogenic global warming and the many reasons behind it. Whether we believe it or not is a matter of personal responsibility, and if ignorance is our bliss we will refuse to even consider that it might be true, and this plague will continue until we perish of it. If instead we choose to do what we can to mitigate the effects of carbon dioxide in our air and oceans, we will listen to the science and the advice of scientists and other researchers, we will read all we can about it, we will petition our government about it, we will seek out new sources of energy for our homes and cars, we will eat sustainably raised or caught seafood (I was recently gratified to learn that Whole Foods, for instance, has a highly responsible rating list for its offerings of both farm-raised—no mangrove destruction allowed—and wild-caught seafood), and we will refuse to add any toxic waste to our rivers and public water systems. There are long lists of changes we can and must make, available in the books above, along with equally long lists of what will most certainly happen to our planet if we continue on our present course. The earth’s ecosystems will naturally recover over time, with or without our help. The question is, do homo sapiens want to be here when it happens.
To borrow a quote from Earle’s book, “Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians, has declared”:

For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation, for humans to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands, for humans to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air and its life with poisonous substances, these are sins. [no citation listed]

One hopes that such sentiments from this so-called “Green Pope” will help close the divide between science and religion when it comes to the salvation of our planet from human folly.

REVIEWER: Scott Vickers lives in Denver. He took up scuba diving in 1992; since then he has logged over 700 dives, and over those 20 years has noted some disturbing changes among the reef systems of the Caribbean. He would without hesitation call his intimate relationship with the oceans vital to his own existence.
* * *

Orders from the Top

2011-12-28T21:09:00.000-08:00

With the oligarchy’s fear of those it sees as underlings gaining wisdom and capacity through education, and also mankind’s bazaar fondness for self-delusion, not only have many been manipulated into foolish mistakes, but these mistakes have become used to demonstrate their own inevitability, and thus the necessity of oligarchic interventions, despite the oligarchs’ own many mistakes. The full result is that it’s become the responsibility of us all to protect not only ourselves, but the oligarchs themselves, from their prideful mistakes. Indeed, we have no choice, if we want the generation being born now to survive past early maturity – for those with more access to knowledge and wisdom have certainly not used it well, a situation we have little reason to expect to change.
As some folk clearly have no real capacity to work at re-arranging things, or be much more than followers, it falls to the rest of us to do whatever we can, and it best not be but little!

Language, tribes and sexual activity

2011-12-24T04:33:00.001-08:00

It’s differences, and difficulties, keep things interesting. And healthy.
It’s our egotistic pride, and desire for security which we cannot have, which keeps us from seeing others more clearly, and understanding what needs to be understood.
There is much communication without language and language that communicates nothing. My wife and I were angry at each other, and out son, a month shy of 4, refused to go to school until reassured by signs of forgiveness. He didn’t “say” anything, but communicated a need, indeed, forced a settlement. Alternately, I have read lengthy articles full of fancy words, from which I could glean no substance at all, except for a pretense of intent. Much is done to establish, or keep, position; other things are avoided, as our lives can become too busy and full for essential details to be sufficiently attended to. A grouping of people need not share linguistic fluency to become efficiently bound together, but over generations, will begin to establish one, although the meaning of an expression to one, will not be exactly the same as to another. The purpose of all this may not be within our province or place to perceive.

What Happened

2011-11-16T00:34:00.000-08:00

Agro-fascism and societal law calcifying pyramidal patriarchal social-structuring took perhaps half of history as we know it (history involving at least place-names used contemporaneously) to coalesce, but by the time the founder of intentionally-recorded history, Herodotus, wrote, a vicious culture of forceful, regimented work-addiction was achieving domination over the human condition, forcing us inexorable towards our own destruction. The destruction of other cultures and forms of life, to foster our addiction to economically militant growth, as a way of life, inevitably leads to its own destruction, an event swiftly descending upon us.

The Dao of Aldai

2011-11-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “the wide diffusion of Taoism throughout the vast T’ang empire is reflected by the sizable proportion of Taoist texts discovered in the walled-up caves at Tun-huang (Dunhuang, in Kansu Province, by the Taklamakan Desert). This town in the far west of China was the gateway to Central Asia; and here Taoists came into contact not only with Buddhists of many different doctrinal persuasions but also with Nestorian Christians and Manicheans. Copies of the Lao-tzu were sent to the King of Tibet, and the book was translated into Sanskrit at the request of the ruler of Kashmir. It also reached Japan in the 7th century, as did texts of religious Taoism; reports of Taoism’s dominance on the continent may still be read in the diaries of Japanese Buddhist pilgrims. The geographic extension of the religion at this time was also represented, in the legendary sphere, by the systematic elaboration of its sacred mountains and the traditions attaching to them.” It would be odd if ‘Europeans’ (Tokarians) of Altai never encountered the Tao.
Asians, indigenous peoples and Taoists generally revere sacred mountains, where gods and heroes come from, as places of refuge, symbols of power and strength, eternal landmarks, repositories of nature, and a kind of encyclopedic reference. China’s door to the world of light-eyed, light-haired barbarians is past the end of the Great Wall, the Silk Road where it passes the Taklamakan Desert. Just north are the Altai Mountains, and Mount Altai itself, the sacred burial place of the Sythians. Here history has been brushed aside, as the West tried to brush aside China.

Shambala, Shangri-La, Isles of the Blest, Cibola, Eldorado, Hyperborea, Atlantis, Elysium, Arcadia, the kingdom of Prester John, Garden of Eden, perhaps Camelot – where blameless, beautiful people are never foul or sullied by greed (or need)… These Utopias of Myth represent unremitting realities, persistent concepts which demand reflection, and call insistently for more scrutiny. We must contextualize, put things in relative order; it’s easy to be aware of worse conditions, but we must also conceive of better ones. “Good” and “bad” aren’t as clear as we want to think, and myths arise sometimes just from being the clearest way of expressing the difference.
‘Shambhala,’ a fabulous ‘beyul’ in the Himalayas or possibly in the Gobi Desert, on a mountain isle, long ago when the Gobi was a sea, means a place incredibly difficult to approach. A “Sacred Island” in respects resembling Ultima Thule, or Hyperborea, a Tibetan lama supposedly asserted of it, “Only in some places, in the far North, can you discern the resplendent rays of Shambala… The secrets of Shambala are well guarded.” Lotus-land ‘Pemako’ is a legendary, sacred range near the border of East Tibet and northeast India, perhaps in Assam. Explorers have combed canyons of southern Tibet for such a beyul, ‘hidden land’ of bliss and nectar, where also lies Yangsang, the ultimate hidden place of immortality, reachable only by those with purified hearts and minds (like the Taoist’s Isles of the Blest, out in the great waters…).
Paradise, utopia: where there’s no need for money, gold in plentiful supply, no taxes or law courts, no crime, illness or war. People are beautiful, pleasant, happy and helpful, enchanting even. There is music, tasty wine and good food aplenty. If there is cold it does not kill and the sun warms one just right. There is work, but not too hard, sorrow but not overmuch, imperfections but only passable ones. Games to play, songs to sing, art to enjoy and minds to meet - there is no loneliness but what one chooses. No-one is made to feel left-out, insecure, unwanted or despised. No one dull or dishonorable enough to attempt to escape obligations, all find it pleasant to earn respect, and love is shared, abundantly. Did I mention streets paved with gold?
James Hilton’s Shangri-La used writings by Joseph Lock, a botanist who lived in Naxi near Zhongdian, Tibet for 27 years, until kicked out by victorious Communists in 1949. Zhongdian, 3,000 meters high, has deep blue lakes, hot springs, waterfalls, and monasteries. For Tibetans, the highest peak of Zhongdian's Meilixue Mountains (6,740-meter Kawaboge Peak, its pyramid-shaped peak perhaps never reached by men) is the holiest of 8 holy mountains. Tai Shan, in northeastern province Shantung is most famous; 1st of 5 Chinese holy peaks, it was venerated as the yang source of life in official Han state religion (the name was changed by the Communists to Yuhuang Shan; ‘t’ai means superlative or exalted). Second-most revered is Heng Mountain in Hunan. Chinese sacred mountains are Taoist, Buddhist or both: there’s the HuaShan (Western Great Peak in Shaanxi, where XiWangMu is worshipped), not far from Xian (about 1000 km inland), and Mount Omei (High Eminent Peak, with a 1000 foot precipice and a foot-long, 18 pound ‘tooth of Buddha’), in Szechwan. Wutai Mountain in Shanxi has a five risings, or terraces, with at one time 360 monasteries. Each sacred mountain honors a particular holy being and certain natural aspects. Particularly Taoist ones include SongShan (Central Great, in Henan, 1500 m. high), TaiShan (‘Leading Peaceful’ Eastern Great, with a 7000 step Stairway to Heaven and a million tourists annually), and two HengShans (Bei, North Great in Shanxi, and Nan, South Great in Hunan). Chinese for pilgrimage means “paying respect to a holy pillar of heaven (mountain)”. But now not only pilgrims, but tourists, visit; Zhongdian County was even renamed Shangri-la County (in 1997). Many tour groups take a 45-minute flight from Yunnan Province's capital Kunming to Naxi, then a bus for four hours to Zhongdian. Regularly, some visitors return to tell of great wisdom and understanding, and secret knowledge carefully cherished, hidden carefully from unworthy eyes, long ago… and only sparingly revealed to those deserving (who earned it through their special efforts, including arriving at that special place). Mount Altai, where China, Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan meet, at about the center of the Eurasian landmass, has always been held sacred. It’s full of mystique and spiritual promise, with recent commercial (touristic) success which threatens to disrupt if not destroy its innate value.

About 2500 BCE, Troy (a.k.a Ilium) became populated by sea-faring Thracians with iron weapons and horses. It grew into a major center of ancient civilization, but after over a millennium, was destroyed by Mycenaean Greeks (about 1184 BCE), the basis for Homer’s Illiad. Greek historian Herodotus wrote (in 440 BCE) that Thracians were the second most numerous people in the world, outnumbered only by (East) Indians (he’d never heard of China, or of Caribs); also that the Thracian homeland was huge. Clearly, though, Scythia was bigger; he may have lumped the two together, considering Thracians civilized Scythes. Around the Black Sea, he wrote, are “the most uncivilized nations in the world,” where lived a “ruddy and blue-eyed people” given to “tipsy excess”, who enjoyed warfare and looting, and worshiped Ares, Dionysus and Artemis. Their kings, particularly, worshiped Hermes (messenger god of fertility, pillars, boundaries, commerce, travel and dreams, medic and protector of livestock) as an ancestor.
Possibly related to Thracians were Illyrians, who came to the western part of the Balkan Peninsula before 1000 BCE, around the end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age. Illyrians inhabited much of the Balkans for the next millennium, using iron and bronze swords with winged-shaped handles; they kept horses, and developed bits, harness and equestrian accoutrements, including trousers, which were later adopted by neighboring folk… It’s said 12,000 or them, Trojans, fled north across the Black Sea to the Don River, and established Sicambria, a kingdom with fortified capital Aesgard or Asgaard (about 1150 BCE). It’s also claimed that Odin, chief god of Vikings, was originally the Thracian, or Aesir, leader who ruled that Sicambrian kingdom, at Asgard, in the first century, BCE. Herodotus described the values of Thracians:
To be idle is accounted the most honorable thing,
and to be a tiller of the ground the most dishonorable.
To live by war and plunder is of all things the most glorious.

Civilization, government and social organization might not have been high priorities; but it’s clear Herodotus, our first real historian and still known as one of the greatest, was incompletely informed about Thracians, and Scythians, and Hyperboreans.
Herodotus wrote of Hyperborea (the “land beyond the north wind”): “beyond the Issedones live the one-eyed Arimaspians, and beyond them the griffins which guard the gold, and beyond the griffins the Hyperboreans” Herodotus, 4.15) uses a lost Theban epic poem reputedly depicting folk along the northern edge of Continental Europe (the Black Sea was the northernmost real point cited in ancient Greek geography). Hyperboreans never had land disputes, nor ever migrated between territories, and lived in perpetual bliss. Legends associated them with the cult of Apollo (as are also Trojans, in Homer). Herodotus and other sources have Hyperboreans living on the European mainland, but in a place inaccessible by land (deserts, mountains, ice-storms) or sea (dangerous choppy waters guarded by ferocious monsters).
Herodotus states “it does seem to be true that the countries which lie on the circumference of the inhabited world produce the things we believe to be most rare and beautiful” (3.116). For him, Hyperboreans exemplified the Hellenic race’s potential: originators of everything positive in Greek society, they challenged Greeks to measure up to Hyperborean perfection. Not only Hyperborea, but also Thule, was thought to lie at the unreachable edge of the world, unapproachable but maintaining an essential relationship to Mediterranean culture, somewhat along the lines of Platonic deals (perfection as real, conceivable but not to be witnessed). Possibly, his Hyperborea had some basis in Finland, or Altai.
Another Greek historian, Pytheas, described people in Thule as barbarians (people whose language was just “Bar bar bar” as that of the Germanic/Teutonic tribes was seen to be, by Ancient Greeks) who led an agricultural lifestyle, threshed grains and used barns. These Far Northerners traded with Aesir/Thracians, who began migrating north from the Caucasus around 90 BCE, due to Roman incursions. Julius Caesar described encounters with them, and distinguished Aesir from Celts. Aesir led by Odin, a popular ruler, escaped Roman invasions by Pompeius (and local conflicts, about 70 BCE) by following trade-routes north; thousands who left the Black Sea region went to the Baltic area, then to Scandinavia. Another ‘Thracian’ tribe went along: Vanir (Vaner), perhaps earlier from Lake Van, Turkey, ancestor worshipping neighbors of the Aesir who became Danir, and subsequently, Danes. Or so goes some racialist conjecture.
Roxolani, Cimmerians, Thracians, and Swedes may all be basically the same, separated mostly by time, and as related as early Boston Puritans and 60s Height-Ashbury hippies (who surely shared many common ancestors from the late 15th century...). People move, times and names change. Historian Jordanis, notary of Gothic kings, wrote in 551 CE that the Daner were of the same stock as the Svear, both taller and fairer than any other peoples of the North.
Fierce warriors called Vaeringar, literally “men who offer their service to another master” later became known as Vikings. Navigating with sail and oars in rivers and seas, they even crossed oceans. Arabic diplomat Ibn Fadlan, from visiting along the Elbe River in the summer of 922 CE, described them: “Never before have I seen people of more perfect physique; they were tall like palm trees, blonde, with a few of them red… Every one of them brings with him an ax, a sword and a knife.”
Concepts of ‘racial purity’ for these peoples are absurd, not only because inbreeding weakens, but because during pillage there was rape; during negotiations, arranged marriages, and times of hardship, which certainly often occurred, demanded flexibility. The warriors at Troy weren’t mono-ethnic; there were many “related” peoples. But Northern and Eastern Europe kept distinct from Greco-Roman culture: they were often enemies, and trade competitors, with secrets to guard. That we know little of the ‘barbarians’ isn’t only because of ethnocentrism, although it’s partly that, or from xenophobic fear of the strange, but it’s also from strategic self-protection, and ‘real-politick’. Weaponry accessory like rudimentary stirrups and maritime capacity was best not traded! Greeks and Romans were widely despised by the less ‘civilized’; also, avoidance of exploitation by city-folk was perhaps construed as attempt to maintain ‘purity,’ but Greeks, Romans, Egyptians intermingled, and everybody else too (even Chinese).

Imagine a place of exile, but freedom: a place for those of intensity too powerful for stability and the norms of home to go, for acceptance, for challenge, for liberty, abandon and self-respect. Some of us have aspects too potent even to be jealous or resentful of; their special capacity incurs distrust, even hate. In return dispassion, disinterest occurs - like the disdain and disinterest of Gods. But only from them can one obtain aptitude in pride… and only far from the mundane can one hope to really approach the profound... Perhaps great tribes we remember too little of enclosed another society of unusual temperament, once. Turks, Tatars, Mongols, Siberians, Tibetans, Uigers, Khazars and Celts, or their precursors, surrounded their area of ice-desert, and threw albinos, gays and intellectuals to their mercy. Some mutations occurred… horses were broken then tamed by huge, mean red-heads, and for millennia a society with superior weaving, herbal medicine, animal husbandry, sexual equality and social justice thrived, until the time came when the world’s two greatest war-like religions began to clash. Perhaps. Try to imagine something of the like, please, just try.
The earliest nomads of the steppe north of the Black Sea mentioned by ancient historians were Cimmerians. The Cimbri, a Germanic tribe living on the Jutland peninsula, and Cimmerians, Eastern European Celts, have been mistakenly associated, but may have both been absorbed into Thracian culture. Between 2000 and 800 BCE Cimmerians occupied the lower Danube, Caucasus Mountains and Russian Steppes; the first inhabitants of Ukraine we have a contemporary name for were Cimmerians. Homer tells of people, perhaps Cimmerians, living in perpetual, smoky gloom, “enshrouded in mist and perpetual darkness which the sun never pierces” (Od. X:508; XI:14). Warlike horse nomads mentioned in Assyrian documents of the 8th century BCE may have been Cimmerians. They raided south, ravaged Anatolia and elsewhere, then later, ultimately, were defeated by Scythians.
Herodotus described Scythians as longhaired, bearded barbarians of a violent and emotional nature, who drank the blood of enemies, enjoyed cannabis-laced sweat baths and worshipped Hestia (Tabiti, the Hearth Goddess), Zeus and his wife Earth, and below them Apollo, Aphrodite, Heracles (an ancestor, on whom Hercules was based), and Ares (War, they only one to whom they gave altars and statues). Royal Scythes (Paralatae - something is confused here, ‘King Scythians’ of the Ukraine and Black Sea can’t all have existed as royal... But I haven’t found this discussed) sacrificed to Poseidon, he wrote, and also that Scythians didn’t use silver or bronze, only gold! He described Scythia as extending a 20-day ride from the Danube in the west, across the steppes of today’s Ukraine to the lower Don basin. The Don has served as a major trading route ever since. Scythia was ruled by small, closely-allied elites; many Scythians left to work as mercenaries. Much wealth came from slave trade to Greece, but Scythians also traded grain, livestock and cheese for Greek luxury items. Perhaps most striking about them was the enormous amount of beautifully wrought gold they wore, apparently gold from Altai. Some accumulated wealth, but most were simple nomadic pastoralists. They dominated a larger area than Herodotus thought: archaeological evidence of them is geographically quite dispersed. Scythia may have stretched from the Danube through Bulgaria all the way to the borders of China: excavations near Altai, particularly at Pazyryk, suggest Scythian origins in Siberia, well before 1000 BCE.
Scythians harvested hemp with a hand-reaper, the curved knife we still call a scythe, and flourished from the 8th to the 4th centuries BCE. Racial or linguistic uniformity seems unlikely, though lifestyle and artistic continuities between archaeological sites are clear. Their territory was constantly explored and sometimes colonized by other groups, whose own lands were overpopulated or overgrazed. But as support for even a small band of horsemen requires enormous stretches of steppe, even a slight increase in population could drastically affect social stability… Various other tribes in the steppes of central Asia back then, related in varying degrees to Scythians, had more names than we will discover, but there was cultural continuity over vast distance, and time.
Scythians traveled “for several weeks” to hold funerals. “The burial place of the Scythian kings is in the country of the Gerrhi, near the spot where the Bosthenes (Dneiper) first becomes navigable.” Recent digs in Belsk, Ukraine uncovered a vast city believed to be the Scythian capital Herodotus called Gelonus. The uncovered city's 40 square kilometers exceeds the size Herodotus reported. Its location allowed domination of local north-south trade; craft workshops and Greek pottery abounded. Many slaves were trans-shipped from Gelonus to Greece. Herodotus was right that they traveled far for important burials, just didn’t know how much further they occasionally went!
Scythians and other steppe people relied on the horse and wagon for mobility, living in their wagons or stout felt tents (yurts), and subsisting often on horse's milk and blood. They hunted, fished, and gathered, and became increasingly sedentary over the centuries (towards 300 BCE), tending cattle and making cheese. They kept no fortified towns, and were more an alliance of tribes than a nation. Called nomads, they mainly inhabited the north coast of the Black Sea. Agriculturalists growing grain, onions, lentils and millet inhabited central and northern regions of present Ukraine.
Western Scythian tribes began raising wheat for export, establishing a breadbasket for the Greeks, and themselves as middlemen between Romans and Scandinavian tribes. East Scythians remained pastoral nomads; amongst them the Royal Scythes, who may have ruled over other people who worked grain fields. In spring and summer they ranged the open steppe, pasturing their herds, using saddles of two quilted, stuffed cushions sewn to a cover, with a small gap between them. Each cushion was reinforced to keep the front and rear of the saddle higher than the middle. Straps were attached front and rear (of the cushions); wooden spacers kept the cushions apart, and a middle strap went over the centre of the saddle. A felt pad was sewn underneath, and all was covered with a decorative saddle cover.
Herodotus described the Scythian men’s costume as open tunics with padded and quilted leather trousers tucked into soft boots; later this became the style in Western Europe. In fighting, the Scythes used bows and arrows from horseback, and guerrilla tactics. Herodotus said they rode with just saddlecloths - possibly the cushions with spacers came only later - and that he much admired Scythian philosopher Anacharsis, who visited Athens in the 6th century BCE.
Persians under Darius the Great invaded Scythia, 514 BCE, reportedly with 700,000 troops; in a strategic retreat the Scythians harassed the advancing enemy, avoiding full-out battle. Herodotus, again: “blocking up all the wells and springs” and “stripping the country of all green stuff,” they attacked supply lines, made night raids (their cavalry was superior), and attacked “whenever they found them at a meal.” With no cities to plunder, nor any army they could meet and defeat, Persian interest died; they had to give up the invasion. Scythians continued to rule from the Don River to the Carpathian Mountains of central Europe. Their city at Kiev, situated on lucrative trade routes between the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, and between Vaeringian Norsemen and Greeks, dealt in many things including slaves, iron, wine and herbs, and prospered. Some tribes kept their nomadic ways but by the 4th century BCE most were farmers. They kept their love of horses, which remained a strong part of their culture, but during the 1st century BCE, ceased to play as important a part. Their descendents helped sack Rome at the end of its days of glory, but Mongolian horsemen had become successful rivals.
In 339 BCE, at age 90, King Atheas, the great Scythian unifier, was killed in battle against Phillip of Macedon. The Scythian kingdom remained strong and wealthy after this loss, but successive incursions took territory, until Scythia split into small principalities and its people were absorbed as they had absorbed Cimmerians. They fought off an expedition by Alexander the Great (c.325 BCE), but after 300 BCE were driven from the Balkans by Celts. In southern Russia they were displaced (in the 1st century BCE) by a related tribe, the Sarmatians (supposed descendents of Amazons); part of their empire became Sarmatia (where some tombs contain both Sarmatians and Scythians). They were displaced from Central Asia by the 175-125 BCE migrations of Indo-European Yuezhi horse-centered tribes who came from the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang and Kansu areas), forced out by Xiongnu (Hsiung-Nu) Huns (Mongolian stock, unlike the light-eyed, blond or red-head Scythes). Before long, Goths established their Ostrogothic kingdom on the Black Sea. Although Scythians had allegedly disappeared, Romans continued to use “Scythians” to designate mounted Eurasian nomadic barbarians in general: in 448CE the emissary Priscus was led to Attila’s encampment by two mounted “Scythians”, who were clearly held as distinct from Attila’s Goth and Hun followers.
In the 19th century, Scythians became portrayed as wild and free, hardy and democratic ancestors of the Alani and all blond Indo-Europeans (which was but a kind of historical revisionism). Modern use of “Scythian” is sometimes a meaningless euphemism for “Aryan.” ‘Germanic’ invaders of the crumbling Roman Empire were from many tribes of intense individualists who preferred to fight independently, so as to become recognized heroes, and who thus would have been defeated by Roman Legions, had not Rome been crumbling from within.
Goths didn’t have stirrups, and the stirrup wasn’t in general use in Western Europe before the 9th century, but effective use of heavily armored cavalry without stirrups, in Silk Road areas, had begun long, long before. Horses were harnessed in Ukraine 6,000 years ago, perhaps with hemp rope. The bridle was developed somewhere in Kazakhstan, and horses began to give speed and mobility to people of the steppes. Wooden chariots have been found there, dating to around 2,000 BCE. Ritual horse burials similar to those in ancient Ukraine have been excavated in the Tarim Basin, and remains of wagon wheels found. Wagons were used in Ukraine by 3000 BCE; remains of wagon wheels have also been found in 5,000-year-old burial mounds on the steppes of southern Russia and Kazakhstan.
The stirrup greatly increases a rider’s ability to control a horse, increasing its value for communication, transportation and warfare. First used around 1000 BCE, this breakthrough eventually made mounted horsemen the dominant warriors for two thousand years. Perhaps people living by the Altai Mountains on the Russia/Chinese border added a bit of extra leather to their horses' saddles to ease mounting, probably only a single loop on one side of the horse. Soon, though, someone created a saddle with two, and by the 7th century BCE, mounted archers along the Silk Road were using metal stirrups, enabling them to improve shooting accuracy. Not long after, heavily armored horseman could stay in saddle while wielding massive swords. Before military horse use, tactics were apt to be of the melee sort: one horde confronted another, and after an onrushing charge, the entire conflict dissolved into individual combats. Foot soldiers were much cheaper than horse, and Roman legions’ infantry became quite efficient, with each person subordinating himself to the needs of the group while using effective formations. Because of the high cost of mounted warriors, though, it took a long while for as highly organized cavalry to develop, much as it took a long time for horse-riding to reach the Middle East. For well over 1500 years, ‘Indo-European’ people from the area of Altai were able to make many successful invasive sweeps across the steppes to raid the soft, rich people of southeast and Mediterranean Europe, while never suffering invasions into their own homelands. Around 175 BCE, though, Indo-European (Sacae, or to the Chinese, Sai) tribes of Altai began to be pushed west by Mongolians. Overwhelmed by Mongol-Turkic expansion in the 4th century CE, even today their descendents form an ethnic substratum of contemporary Kazakhs (especially the ‘Saks’ - Sacae/Saka, Sacks, Saxons: same root); Afghani light eyes may not come from Alexander’s armies, but from Sythian/Yuexhi/Tocharians.
Mounted archery began early in the third century; by 317 CE all of China north of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) was overrun by nomadic peoples from the steppes. The Alani, a tall, blonde people, were pushed west from the steppes by Turks (not yet from Turkey), about 600CE. These Alani introduced the stirrup to Europe, while raiding the remains of the collapsing Roman Empire. The mystique of far, unapproachable, ‘northern’ people spread.

From the Urals to Kazakhstan, north of the Caucasus Mountains, about 5000 years ago, an “Indo-European” language was used by worshippers of a Zeus/Odin ‘god of clear skies’ who had twin sons named for horses. Their hunter-pastoralist society had warriors, artisans, farmers and shamans. Ethnic Caucasoids from 3000 BCE or earlier, they eventually spread their language through Western Europe, but not as a conquering minority... as the men grew to 6’6”, and women 6’0”, they were relative giants, to whom others may well have found it wise to defer! Some worked as mercenaries, royal guards and transport security; many certainly played important parts along the Silk Road.
In Shanshan County, to the east of Urumqi (Ürümchi), capital of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) Province, as far as possible in China from any seaport, the Silk Road (starting from Xian) takes its Northern Route. The trade route split, offering alternatives for caravans to pass the arid, terribly dangerous Taklamakan Desert (the name means, “Go in, and don’t come out.”), the world’s second largest desert (673,000 sq. km). To the east is the great Gobi; to the west the arid Tarim Basin, which drains mountains to the north. Since early exploitation by foreign archaeologists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the area of Subeshi (Subeixi), situated to the east of the famous Silk Road town Turpan (Turfan), has revealed amazing details of ancient inhabitants and their ways of life. Extremely dry conditions preserved amazingly artifacts and bodies buried there.
A group of these Indo-European people in central Asia known as Tokarians (or Tocharians) are vividly displayed in ancient wall paintings at Kizil and Kumtura (near the modern Chinese city K’u-ch’e, in the Tien Shan Mountains north of the Tarim Basin); they appear as aristocratic Europeans, with red or blond hair parted neatly in the middle, long noses, blue or green eyes set in narrow faces, and tall bodies. The Yuezhi, depicted in striking painted statues at Khalchayan (west of the Surkhan River in ancient Bactria) from the 1st century BCE, also have long noses, thin faces, blond hair, pink skin, and bright blue eyes.
The over 100 amazingly well preserved European corpses ranging from 2,400 to 4,000 years old found in the Tarim Basin reveal a splendid, advanced culture with colorful robes, trousers, boots, stockings, coats and hats (some like witch hats). One large tomb had corpses of three women and one man; the man, about 55 years old at death, was 6½' tall and had yellowish brown hair going to white. A woman close to six feet tall had yellowish-brown hair in braids. Items with the bodies included fur coats, leather mittens, and an ornamental mirror; the woman held bags with small knives and medicinal herbs. At Cherchen, on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, the mummified corpse of a 3 month old infant was found, wrapped in brown wool, its eyes covered with small, flat stones. By its head was a drinking cup made of bovine horn and an ancient ‘baby bottle’ made from a sheep’s teat cut and sewn to hold milk. On one corpse marks from a surgical operation on his neck showed the incision to have been stitched with horsehair.
Contact between Chinese and Indo-Europeans by 1000 BCE is evidenced by inscriptions on Shang Dynasty (17th to 11th century BCE) turtle shells, which seem to describe Tokarians. Around 1000BCE, Chinese at the upper Yellow River co-existed with the Tokarian, and some Tokarian descendents became Chinese, and even royals of the Han Dynasty. Chinese language has words from Tokarian, including many place names.
Kizil, on the northern silk route, was a city of Tokarians, including Yuezhi (Yueh-chih), who emigrated from northwest China. Their Kuchan Empire lasted from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. Kirzil, Kusha and other kingdoms of eastern Central Asia had independence until Chinese conquest, sometime around 600 CE. At Kizil, a wind goddess painting has her upper torso emerging from clouds, hands holding a scarf flowing behind, her mouth open as if to blow wind. Her hair twists upward, standing on end; her breasts are exposed. Similar images of solar and wind deities were found in Persia (a wind god was important to ancients there too). The Silk Road caves aren’t natural, but dug; the painting style and much iconography in frescos differs markedly from Chinese tradition and bears striking resemblance to similar things in Turkey as well as Persia.
Around 4000BCE wooly sheep were developed in the Near East; large-grained varieties of wheat (emmer and einkorn) had been developed, and people began following the Eurasian steppes from the Black Sea area east to Altai, northern Mongolia and almost to where Beijing is situated (and millet was the main food source). They matted rolled wool into felt while riding, to make yurts, saddle blankets and clothing. Apparently, some Chinese terms for wheels, spokes, axles, chariots and also for magic (healing, divination and drug-induced spiritualism) and holy mountains came from light-eyed Western Tokarians (whose descendents later brought Buddhism east). Clearly, some information traveled the other way too.
Early Chinese historians mention a great variety of races in the area of China’s north-western border deserts, as far back as the Han Dynasty (2000 years ago). The area was an important trade route for many peoples, connecting different cultures. People farmed and traded in the oases, others visited for trade, and occasionally warfare. After Eurasians first tamed wild horses 6000 years ago, at some point they slid bits into horse mouths, and themselves onto their backs. For the first time, humans were able to swiftly travel great distances, an accomplishment so exhilarating and adrenalin-charged that extensive wanderlust was inevitable. Some headed east across the grassy steppes of Asia, toward Europe. Perhaps, four thousand years ago, a few rode into river valleys of the Tarim Basin, and stayed. ‘Cherchen Man’ was buried with a dead horse and a saddle atop his grave and clothing which shows a state of high culture at a time when Greeks and Romans hadn’t yet arrived in Greece and Italy (from somewhere to the northeast). The Chinese hadn’t yet learned to use metal, as Tokarians had, but were weaving fine cloth by using domesticated silkworms, cloth the Tokarians and Turks carried west to trade. Tokarians lived in the Tarim Basin from early in the 1st millennium BCE to the end of the 1st millennium CE (especially in the kingdoms of Kucha and Agni), but until quite recently were largely forgotten.

Another place and people, far away from Altai, seems also to have largely been forgotten: the continental shelf holding Southeast Asia and Indonesia, the Sunda Shelf. It was huge during the last Ice Age; with arctic ice held much more water. Lands now submerged supported many people. Sundaland was a leader in the Neolithic Revolution (the start of agriculture): stones were used for grinding wild grains there as early as 24,000 ago, over ten thousand years earlier than in Egypt, Syria or the Fertile Crescent! In Southeast, and perhaps South, Asia, many plants were domesticated long before. Because of the gradual flooding of their lowland, Sundalanders migrated to China, India, Madagascar and possibly eventually Mesopotamia, spreading their discoveries, including agriculture.
One of the most interesting human adaptations, and perhaps the most recent physical one, resulted from some folk settling where most others had no interesting in going at all. About 8000 years ago, antecedents of the Tokarians, living north of the Baltic Sea, close to the extensive ice cap (at that time quite large and extended southward) changed coloration, achieving much lighter hues. Hair became brown, flaxen and reddish, while eyes not only brown but also blue, gray, hazel or green. The eye-color variation can be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals have but little variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes; clearly, a genetic mutation resulted in an inability to produce brown eyes, a condition with similarities to albinism. The new, rarer colors engaged visual attention more than did more common colors; a slight advantage in seeing in low light conditions would have been an advantage to a hunter whose survival depended on spotting game at a distance on a cloudy winter day; and a blonde woman may seem rather more young and fertile (than dark-haired women), and light eyes make it easier to judge pupil size (pupils dilate with interest).
Around 40,000 years ago, as the grip of the Ice Age loosened and temperatures briefly became warmer, humans moved into Central Asia, and amid the bountiful grassy steppes, multiplied quickly. Africa may have been the cradle of mankind, but Sundaland and Central Asia were its nurseries. 35,000 years ago, groups left Central Asia for Europe, but returning cold temperatures left them isolated. Descendents of survivors became paler. Around 20,000 years ago, some Central Asians moved into Siberia and the Arctic Circle. To minimize exposure to cold, these people developed stout trunks, stubby fingers, and short arms and legs, but not light skin.
Low UV levels in northern latitudes don’t give dark-skinned individuals enough Vitamin D, resulting in children getting rickets, but at northern latitudes, lighter skin is a genetic advantage. Dark-skinned north latitudes people like the Inuit obtain much Vitamin D from fish and sea mammal blubber. The strong sun in southern latitudes sets off a process where skin takes protection from our natural sunscreen, melanin, making skin dark. When people moved to the North, their need for melanin was reduced. Sunlight helps synthesize Vitamin D, needed for strong bones; some people in the Steppes lost pigmentation, facilitating this. Also, there was genetic advantage in that light-sensitive blue eyes allow people to see better when it is dark much of the year, and often gloomy even when light, as is frequently the case in the far north.
In Survival of the Prettiest, psychologist Jerome Kagan shows that children with pale pigment, in particular children with blue eyes, are more likely to be shy and inhibited than dark-eyed children. They are fearful of new situations, hesitant in approaching someone, quiet with a new person, and likely to stay close to their mothers. Brown-eyed children are bolder. Kagan speculates that fear of novelty, melanin production and corticorsteroid levels share some of the same genes. It’s only blue-eyed males who are particularly shy, though; blue-eyed females show no difference.
When people migrated to northern Europe they were faced with the problem of keeping up body temperature. Mutations increased the efficiency of the sympathetic nervous system, upping the level of norepinephrine and raising body temperature. Unfortunately, this produced more reactive nervous systems, and in certain circumstances, more timorous temperaments. Other ‘disorders’ may also be seen as winter-adaptations: promiscuity, sensitivity to touch but not pain, strong primary bonding but aggravated aggression towards outsiders, empathic affinity for dogs and horses, absence of abstract thinking. High levels of norepinephrine inhibit the production of melanin in the iris as well; blond hair, blue eyes and shyness may be a biological package. For bands seldom as large as 100 individuals, with inter-tribal interactions rare, the reproductive cost of being shy around strangers was small. But we can see, encapsulated in this, that in Paradise, too, for all that is good there is also compensatory sacrifice. Usually grey skies make sunlight a great joy; but where it is too hot, sunlight is not. Winters change activity patterns. Angels in Heaven may be bored; perhaps they tell tales of Hell. There’s always a trade-off!
Big, long North European noses moisten and warm air going to the lungs; Asian eyelid-folds protect against dry sandy desert winds and wind-driven snow. Countering this kind of ethnic splitting-apart is melding through inter breeding; along the Silk Road from the -istans to China, one finds a continuum of physical feature change. You can find neither where the European look ends, nor where the Asian look begins. Perhaps, although it hasn’t been suggested before, small communities of people migrated far from Sunda across mountains and deserts to the west side of Altai, to the eastern end of the steppes way north of Tibet, north of the Kunlun, the Taklamakan and the Tian Shan Heavenly Mountains, to places uninhabited by people to fight with, places only the strong could reach and survive in, where wild horses were as plentiful as bison (buffalo) in the American Old West... People developed independent thinking, mutations occurred... Someone thought to try using hemp rope to catch a horse, and eventually to ride one, and a new source of power arose...

Beneath Tarim’s bleak desert plains lie immense oil fields, with an estimated 18 billion tons of crude (more than the known reserves of the United States). Will economics add to the problems politics and academic pettiness have already created, further inhibiting study of this marvelous ancient Isle? Destroying evidence of what I just suggested, here?
In 50 CE, the Later Han (Chinese) government allied itself with some ‘Hsiung Nu’ tribes. Forty years later it sent troops across the Gobi desert to attack the northern Hsiung Nu. This resulted in massive migrations of Hsiung Nu into central Asia and Russia; eventually they reached Europe and Rome, and became known as Huns. Chinese military expansion pushed some Chinese all the way to the Caspian Sea, in their efforts to control inner Asia and the immensely valuable Silk Road, long the richest trade route ever known. Kings of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 CE) adopted language and customs of central China, but, depending on the Silk Road, became a center of cultural exchange and learning. Here, the enduring liturgies of religious Taoism were compiled and systematized (by K’ou Ch’ien-chih). 4th century HsiungNu Huns, pushed west, conquered, then expelled, the Goths, further destroying Scythia. Riding short ponies, often staying in saddle for days, they were excellent warriors, accurately shooting arrows and using lariats to rope enemies while at full gallop. Huns held the territory of Ukraine and Bessarabiya (now mostly in Moldova), until defeated in 451. Then came the Avars, followed by the Magyars, and the Khazars, who remained influential until about the mid-10th century. In the 11th century, Kiev controlled the largest state in Europe, and was a larger city than London or Paris, into the 12th century.
5000 years ago the world already had 100 million people. Of over 10,000 dialect groups, the average had 10,000 speakers; only a few language groups involved above 100,000 speakers. Inter-regional trading systems were beginning, and history. There was an obsidian network from Melos to Lake Van (Turkey), salt trade throughout Central Europe and elsewhere; there were copper and beer routes (of the Bell Beaker folk) and amber routes from the Baltic and North Seas to the Mediterranean. Rampant, pandemic diseases from crowding weakened population centers, and only influx of frontier, nomadic-pastoralist societies, putative enemies, made maintenance of emerging citied civilization possible. Not long ago historians and antiquarians were still attributing the rise of humanity to the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (Tigris and Euphrates) area, and anything else, even China, was neglected. But some cultures may have left little of physical, material culture behind... while still greatly influencing what we are today (especially in language), and perhaps providing hope for a world apparently strangling itself. Early Iberian Peninsula colonies worked copper, which they found good for trade, but were destroyed suddenly about 2000 BCE. At this time beer-trading makers of bell-beakers lived in what is now Holland and Germany. Alcohol played a major role in Western European warrior cultures; mead and beer from barley and wheat were quite popular (Scythes drank wine). In the second century BCE Celtic Druids produced coins (Chinese had done so 500 years earlier), marking the beginning of European money economy. In the first century BCE they began to etch Greek and Etruscan letters on pottery. How law, religion, philosophy, theater, literature, and other social institutions grew, and how society attempted to remedy growing social inequalities and resentment of injustice became increasingly important, as citied civilization grew… In prehistoric times, artwork and literature was produced, too, but people were preoccupied with other activities, things necessary to sustain their lives; art consisted of simple drawings, and literature usually took the form of oral stories passed down between many generations. With increases in civilization, more people began to have time for art and literature; some made them their primary occupation. Literature spread with trade, and fascinating issues absorbed minds with time to investigate them.
But even illiterate nomads weren’t usually stupid, and many must have recognized valid reason to mistrust civilization! Consider:

Advantages:
‘Labor saving’ devices, arts, specialization
Economic & political co-ordination
Cities, protection from much danger
Increased quality of life for some
Organized education
Entertainment and hauteur

Disadvantages:
Class & gender division, marginalization of youth and aged
Oppression of 50+% of population Violations from jealous greed
Soil depletion
Population overload
Pollution, filth, disease
Alienation, submersion of instincts

Finns and Lithuanians may be Tocharians’ closest descendents (at least linguistically); they may have migrated from between the middle Volga and the Urals. Four thousand years ago nomadic hunters and fishers settled and became the North-European branch of the Finno-Ugric people (split from Hungarians in the south - "Ugric" refers to the ancestors of the Hungarians, whose language is also Finno-Ugrian). Finns left traces of settlements along the southern coast of the Baltic about 500 BCE. A rock base beneath Finland, part of the Finno-Scandian shield land mass, is the oldest and most unyielding stone known. Finland means ‘land of fens and swamps’ as in most places there is but swamp and lake, bog and marsh. Finns also call themselves and their country ‘Suomi’ (soo-wah-mee), ‘suo’ meaning bog or marsh. The West Siberian Plain has marsh too: the Vasyugan Swamps, a vast sphagnum bog in the world’s largest plain, mostly about 180 m (600 feet) above sea level. The Volga, the most important Russian river, navigable for almost its entire length, was the focus of early Russian trade routes, with many trading posts, fortresses, and towns developed along it. That there was overland trade is clear, but the harsh climate prevalent in most of Russia, resulting from high latitude and absence of moderating maritime influences, with winters long and generally very cold, and summers short (high mountains along the country’s southern boundary block tropical maritime air-masses from the south, the Arctic Ocean is frozen right up to the coast through winter, also inhibiting ameliorating influence from relatively warm ocean waters; warm influences from the Pacific don’t reach far inland) limited exchange. The gloom pervasive in the area is known as ‘pasmurno,’ dull, overcast, dreary weather with featureless, overcast skies, particularly during winter.
Pasmurno, bogs, inaccessible icy mountains, giants: certainly puts me in mind of Homer’s Cimmerians and Herodotus’s Hyperborea. The eastern end of the Steppes is a land of incredible geographical and climatic diversity (Altai is near two vast deserts, the Taklamakan and Gobi), between vastly divergent, communicatively estranged civilizations, and with a very old traditional culture of great accomplishment, superior and disdainful. Altai people who traversed great distances, had gold, were easy to be envious of… Theories like that of a ‘Movius line’ separating the world of our Western histories from that of China and Sundaland through reference to a new technology (Acheulean as opposed to Oldowan stone tools) which failed to cross that line, may arise from recognition of different attitudes and arrangements among different peoples. Diversity is part of the human condition; we take pride in our individual strengths and specialties! People empowered by co-operative systems and successful adaptations to local nature might neither need nor want ‘cutting edge technology’ from painfully stratified, guild-oriented foreigners (threatening exploitation and expropriation). People carried large rocks to knappers at Olorgsailie in the Great Rift Valley because artisans there had made themselves mighty: they made useless, showy examples of their skill, and did not teach it to just anybody! Unfortunately, secrets are part of power, and lust for power (and its rewards) is like a frenetic virus, regularly undermining human ‘progress’. The Greeks of Herodotus wanted to compare themselves against the Hyperboreans, wanted to advance, wanted slaves… and also taught how such pride anticipates fall.

In the 8th and 9th century CE, various Scandinavian tribes began to expand their trade and colonies across Europe. Vaeringians began to establish trade settlements with the Slavs, along the Neva River and Lake Ladoga, building trading posts with fortifications. According to Russian tradition recorded in the Primary Russian Chronicle, internal dissension and feuds among the Eastern Slavs around Novgorod became so violent that they voluntarily invited a Vaeringian prince, Rurik, to unite them (in 862 CE). Muslim and Christian missionaries came to Rurik’s court to debate the merits of their religions; legend has it that Islam was rejected because of forbidding alcoholic drink!
South Ukraine was then ruled by Khazars, an ethnically uncertain people (or peoples) who took Judaism as their monotheism of choice. In 880 CE., Oleg, successor to Rurik, took Kiev and unified the region, establishing the State of Rus (the name derived perhaps from Viking ‘ruotsi’, meaning oarsmen, or from ruotsi, the Finnish name for Swedes, or from Rukhs-As, the name of an Alanic tribe of southern Russia… some believe it means light or shining, as Vaeringian marauders were called “the shining ones”). Rus Kiev became the center for trade between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire, but began a decline in 1054, when territory was divided among princes. Subsequent princes divided land among sons, and Russia became a group of petty states almost continuously at war with one another. Greater decline resulted from the sack of (Christian) Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204. Citizens of Kiev migrated north, then Poles, Lithuanians and Teutonic Knights encroached into the territory.
In 1237, Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, captured and destroyed every town from Kiev to Moscow. His Tatars ravaged Poland and Hungary, and destroyed many if not most elements of the self-government by representative assembly which had developed in Russian cities. Batu established his capital at Sarai on the lower Volga (near modern Volgograd, in 1242), and founded the virtually independent Khanate known as the Golden Horde. Tatar customs, law, and government dominated. The region of Kiev was depopulated from massacres; surviving locals fled west. In 1240 a Swedish army landed at the Neva River. Prince Alexander Yaroslavevich led a Russian army against them, and so completely defeated the Swedes that he became known as Alexander Nevsky (‘of the Neva’). Two years later Teutonic Knights advanced, and Alexander was able to route them too. Faced with active threats from the west, Alexander chose to submit to the Golden Horde. The other Russian princes also paid tribute, as vassals under Tatar rule. Moscow had exceedingly favorable geographical position in the center of Russia, on principal trade routes; in 1263 Alexander Nevsky gave it to his younger son, Daniel, progenitor of a line of powerful Muscovite dukes who worked closely with the Khans. As Mongol favorites, they were able to annex surrounding territories. In the mid-14th century internal dissensions weakened the power of the Golden Horde, and Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy successfully revolted, in 1380 defeating the Mongols at Kukikovo. Muscovite strength grew, expanding west and southwest to the Dnieper River, north to the Arctic, and east to the Urals; Ivan the Great (Ivan III Vasilyevich, 1462-1505), fully expelled the Golden Horde and made Moscow the dominant power of northern Russia.
Most of the area had relatively poor soil which couldn’t support much population until industrial development in the 19th and 20th centuries. The region’s forests offered some security to agricultural settlements, which were periodically raided by fierce nomadic horsemen from the vast grasslands to the south. For more than 1,000 years before 1600 these horsemen were more formidable than soldiers of the settled agricultural communities. Only with muskets and artillery did Russians turn the tables on the nomads.
Some strong mystic belief holds that enlightenment came from the North, contrary to how the world was populated from the South; there’re even beliefs in some kind of origin in the far North, before a subsequent gradual migration southward. There’re similarities here to the many cultures posited as coming from Tibet, the Altai Mountains, and Mongolia (perhaps seemingly unlikely cradles for population booms, but places perhaps also safer from disease, invasion and maybe even other threats).
Shrouded in myth and legends, the Altai Mountains were peopled by Scythes, Huns, Turkic tribes, Mongolians, then Russian settlers. Writer Voltaire referred to Genghis Khan as a Sythian! “Altai” comes from the Mongolian ‘altan’, which means ‘golden’; they are golden not only because of mineral wealth (gold and other ores, precious stones, gems), but even more for their natural beauty. Two regions of the Altai Mountains, Teletskoe Lake and the Katunsky Mountain Range, are included in the list of World Heritage Sites; they connect to two mountain reserves, the Katunsky and the Altaisky State Nature Reserves. The Altais are one of nature’s most marvelous gems, amazing in diversity and beauty, with broad views of steppes, luxuriant varieties of taiga thickets, laconic tundra, deserts and severe, snowy peaks stretching nearly 2000 km from north-west to south-east, and forming a natural border between the arid steppes of Mongolia and the rich taiga of southern Siberia. Both climatic zones contain striking diversity; a pleasing touch is lots of cedar, no mosquitoes, and cannabis plants common, growing wild. The Scythes used cannabis, which often dries to a gold, and were themselves golden too, often with gold/blond hair.
Artist Nicholas Roerich, famous for expeditions to Central Asia and the Himalayas (1925-1928 and 1934-1936), was fascinated by Altai. His interest partly involved scholarly theories about the origin of Eurasian cultures, partly occult beliefs. Ostensibly artistic and academic in nature, his expeditions were also directed toward creation of a pan-Buddhist state to include southern Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet. Roerich wanted to find the legendary land of White Waters (Belovodie) and build a new country there. Roerich may have been inspired by writings of the Third Panchen Lama (1738-1780), who explained that a physical journey to Shambhala could only take one so far. To fully reach the fabled land, one needed to perform extensive spiritual practices; the journey to Shambhala is primarily an inner quest! This explanation, however, didn’t deter intrepid adventurers such as Roerich from trying to reach Shambhala by trekking. In 1929, though, Roerich was instrumental in promulgating the Roerich Pact, an international treaty for the protection of world cultural monuments like the World Heritage Sites, helping protect much of Altai.
Beluha Mountain, considered a sacred place, has locals who believe the region is that Belovodie, where a new civilization will start, to replace our old. Historical researches suggest many civilizations started from the region: archaeological finds at Ulalite paleolithic site (in the town of Gorno-Altaisk) are (reportedly) over 800 thousand years old! Hominids may have lived at Altai long before Pithecanthrope in Java. Going between caves and burial mounds, one can see much of man's development from Stone to Bronze to Iron Ages. The population today is a mixture of indigenous people and Russian settlers, some of whom lead the life of Old Believers who live by strict rules, very much isolated from the modern. In remote villages one can see wool being spun by hand, and hear traditional Altai throat singing (an strange but interesting vocal technique).
Classical Chinese Taoists revered Wu Yue (or Marchmount) sacred mountains, but now tourism, with karaoke, cable cars and generally unchecked ‘development’ threaten these traditional places of sanctity: at Huashan (Lotus Mountain) in Shaanxi Province, hotels and bars occupy spaces once Taoist temples and grottoes. Local legend tells of long-ago visiting officials renouncing power, even empire, and reminding folk that ultimately ‘only mountains and rivers remain’, but meanwhile desperate farmers turn to grave-robbing, and the sacred is profaned. Today, even mountains and rivers are not only threatened, but sometimes destroyed, and Altai, too, is becoming a popular tourist, and ‘spiritual’, destination.
To reiterate some, and also simplify a bit, it would be good if our society would learn to recognize:
1. Indo-European culture has existed twice as long as our historical records indicate.
2. Early civilized Europeans revered a central (to the land mass they lived on, not to their culture) but fairly inaccessible (for most) mountain there.
3. Advanced ancient Chinese thought discouraged vainglory, taught life-strengthening techniques, and revered sacred mountains.
4. The ‘forgotten’ Eastern Europeans brought Chinese silks to ancient Western Europe (Rome).
5. The ancient Europeans of Altai aren’t much in Chinese records either.
6. Events don’t inevitably move to betterment; our present style of life is neither stable nor sustainable, based as it is on greed, vainglory and the physical.
7. Tocharians may have had good reason to not want fame among outsiders.
8. Tocharian quality of life may have been as good as any – there are healthy, happy, intelligent people who still prefer to live their way (especially in Tibet and Mongolia).
9. Their mountain remains central but generally inaccessible, and can become a symbol of hope.

The Scythians and Tocharians had gold - gold from Altai the Golden. Despotism, religious intolerance, unfathomable or objectionable rules and regulations, falsehoods and boring self-important people may not have been a big part of the picture. Intoxicants were imbibed in and enjoyed, but few grew fat and lazy - all participated in work and none lorded it above others (well, maybe the ‘Royal Scythes’...). That’s the way I want to picture it, anyway, to believe mankind’s lot can actually be sometimes good, uncompromised by evils like exploitation, discrimination, assassination or mandatory service to government. Those who wanted to attend council attended with an eye to the common good and the healthy future of a worthy society. Greed, deceit, lust and one-upsmanship were easily, commonly found unnecessary... And ugly. While beauty was there to prefer.
But even two and a half millennium ago, the great playwright Aristophanes was warning in his “Birds” that, should a Utopia be built, it must fend off undesirables who would want to come reap benefits, and would drag things down. Like Isaac Azimov’s “Foundation” library, to endure, it must be carefully, discreetly hidden.
It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination, though, to posit an ancient town similar to early Kiev or Moscow, inhabited by Thracian Vikings or Tokarians, somewhere far off in the dreary, cold northern bogs though hardly lacking contact with other peoples. Suppose people there are neither enlightened nor ignorant, but fairly normal, freedom loving, home protecting, lovers of barter who hope not only to improve their own, but also their descendants’, condition. They’ve experience
of cultural variety, and revere gods of wisdom, of courage, of healing and of adventure. In their past has been change; in their future they expect, but do not desire, more. Benefiting from the Silk Road, they have goods in abundance, awareness of great thinkers thoughts, and an enviable position they must carefully protect. What would their ethos have been, what principles, ethics and values would they have cherished?
Legend has the Khazars meeting to decide which monotheistic religion to take as their own. Might not an earlier people, perhaps east of the Urals, have similarly met, to discuss what form of social system they would subject themselves to?
Rules of behavior depend on subordination of the individual to:
family/clan (ancestor worship, familial loyalty, the need of youth to respect the wisdom of age)
class (dependency obligations related to wealth, financial obligations, peer pressure)
religion (a charismatic preacher, powerful god or deeply held conviction; desire to be in accord with something both transcendent and good)
community (territorial or occupational affiliations, essential extended networks)

Potential forms of rule are of 7 kinds:
1. Democracy (“We stand divided” bro against bro, brothers against father, nuclear family against extended, family against clan, clan against tribe, trader vs. priest)
2. Communism (socialism, rule by committee and judges, institutional bureaucracy)
3. Property elitism (plutocracy; who controls the most controls the most)
4. Militarism (autocracy, rule by the strong makes strong)
5. Religious (rule by the wise, most learned, scared and superstitious)
6. Anarchistic (rule by convention, threat of ostracism, matriarchy)
7. Royal (aristocracy, rule by bloodline, association with merit from distant past)
Each form has subsidiary alternatives: incorporation of parts of another, or several of the other 6, forms of institutionalized limitations (but who guards the guards?), and fraudulent, obscurant variations (legalism). Each has problems, and always there is longing for clearer answers than we have. But even dreams and fantasy come from experience.
The above presents major points of what is known about a lost society which valued different qualities than our own. Surely, for them respect was earned, not bought. One’s place depended on what one could physically perform rather than inherit or manipulate. One did not “salute the uniform” or even vote - things weren’t about pretense, indulgence and conceit (or at least so I like to think). Was their wisdom unsuccessful in that it became esoteric and arcane? Or are we unsuccessful, in failing to find respect for what might help preserve us, and help earn us the right to love without fear?
Let’s fantasize: people of the ‘posmurno’ bogs to the east of the northern Urals, before much horse-riding: isolated, out on their own. Maybe they were ancestor worshippers but with community values, matriarchal, ruled by convention and some democracy, with non-rigorous cohesion, independence and self-determination. What kind of morality, and social conventions, might they have promoted as norms among themselves? Perhaps, among themselves, and when more under the influence of women then alcohol, their code was something like the following (adapted from www.appleseeds.org/nat-amer ethics.htm):
1) Be tolerant of any lost on their path: ignorance, conceit, anger, jealousy and greed show a lost soul.
2) Try not to seem to others as lowly as they may seem to you.
3) Don’t speak too badly of others, everyone makes mistakes; mistakes can be forgiven, but ugly thoughts lend to illness in mind, body and spirit.
4) Be as truthful as you can. Honesty shows one’s will, intent and comprehension
5) Take nothing unearned, unless clearly gladly given, from any person or group. Similarly, respect nature.
6) Respect privacy and the personal space of others. Touch no intimate property, whether personal or sacred, without at least implied permission.
7) Make a conscious decision about who you want to be, and how you’d prefer to react to likely situations. Be as responsible as readily possible, for all the actions you can be.
8) Don’t let others make your path for you. It’s your road, yours alone. Others may walk with you, but no-one can walk for you. Be true to yourself, remembering, you can’t do for others what you can’t do for yourself.
9) Treat guests considerately and with honor, while not expecting the gratitude you’d prefer shown in return. Earn rapport you can depend on with your neighbors.
10) Honor Influence beyond our understanding, alone or with others, when you can, without any asking.
11) Avoid force; don’t even try forcing beliefs on others. Refuse to allow others to force anything on you.
12) Limit your selfishness; avoid hurting the hearts of others. Pain’s poison easily debases you too.
13) Share good fortune with others, but participate in only small, humble charities.
14) Question authority. Really. Keep asking until there are replies with a bit of useful sense!

If all that seems dangerously compromising, an old Quaker saw might help: ’Neither take advantage of others nor allow yourself to be taken advantage of.” Reserve is considered good manners; it is hardly necessary to pretend to be Lady Bountiful. It’s fun to be generous, but also easy, and wasteful, to be foolish. ‘Easy come Easy go’ means things given freely are also tossed away easily. One’s instinct to protect oneself is hardly wrong.
Was not elusive Cibola (Cebolleta?) most likely the place of some more civilized, ethically competent people, like the Anasazi? Perhaps some tellers of tales were thinking of seven Hopi Pueblos: Awatovi, Walpi, Mishongnovi, Shongopovi, Shipaulovi and Oraibi? Or maybe others, say Wupatki, Taos, Acoma, Laguna, Jimez? It may or may not be fantasy that “Japanese Taoist Buddhists” (whatever that means) traveled to Arizona in search of the center of the earth, ‘where earthquakes were unknown,’ and formed the Zuni tribe… but it is not fantasy that Pueblo peoples chose to live in inhospitable places, where they could follow their beliefs without trouble from less advanced, less respectful, folk.
De-legitimization of paradise myths has been crucial for advancing industrial civilization, which has substituted for ancient beliefs in a lost Golden Age the idea of brutish origins and continual progress. Among traditional peoples, the paradise myth fosters feelings of security and stability; the cultural equivalent of memory of loving parents and happy childhood. The newer evolution-from-barbarism myth instead conveys sense of primal insecurity, well serving the purposes of a civilization that must continually disrupt existing social bonds in order to rebuild society in a way that serves the interests of the spoiled, power-addicted elite.
Even today, some Amazonian people are still able to live out life as if in a fantasy of philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, or the primitive, Parisian painter of jungle scenes, Henri Rousseau, or the Tahiti-loving Paul Gauguin… Tahiti remains a fantasy archetype (a la Marlon Brando), and of course there’s NYC (“if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere…”), Jamaica, Baja California, Oaxaca or Mazatlán, St-Tropez on the French Riviera, Crete, the “Holy Land”… Shambala might be Sikkim, the Hunza beyul or pastoral bliss in inaccessible areas of the Tibetan plateau (Xanadu is now said to have been found by Mt. Abora on the Tibet/Nepal border). Arcadia, after all, is just a name for countrified, old-style (conservative, boring) bliss… Could Eden have been something like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, before the Tower, and fall?
Thule as island lands northwest of Europe, Hyperborea as trading oases between the Taklamakan and Ukraine? Kiev or Tocharia as the paradise of Prester John? Elysia, or Elysium, seems like Walhalla, a bit of Atlantis and Camelot - each an archetype constructed for the exploration of ideas, which, it seems, is what the others, in big ways, became too. How about the Canaries as the Isles of the Blest? Where Guanche people whistled to each other, perhaps so as to never need to come too close together?
Tocharian YuehCheh Saka (Yue zhi Afanasyevo Yamnaya) Kuchans had light coloring; some, clearly, green eyes and red hair. At least some had “witches hats” (Herodotus describes, Bactrian Sacae in BK VII, 66: they wear “tall pointed hats set upright on their heads”). Later, in Medieval Europe, red-heads with green eyes were burned as witches. Why the fear? Why the disconnect between newer cultures of “divine-right” kings with patrimony, and “nomadic”, artistic people who chose leaders based on capacity and had transsexual shamans rather than priests... Records have been obliterated, both in China and the West. Why? Clearly, because of fear. Fear of what? Fear of that greatest loss of all, the loss of that strongest addiction, power. Power that the Taoist Immortals learned was but illusion.
Herodotus wrote of Scythians encountering Amazons who’d escaped from capture by Greeks. These Amazons had stolen Scythian horses, and had to be pursued. After battle, Scythian warriors found their enemy to be women, and made an interesting plan. Young men, about equal in number to the Amazons, were sent to camp near them, follow where they went, and slowly, camp ever closer. The idea was to get babies by them. Though of different languages, “the two camps… united, and the Amazons and Scythians lived together.” “The men could not learn the women’s language, but the women succeeded in picking up the men’s” (Herodotus 4.118). Herodotus wrote that subsequent “Sauromatae” (Sarmatians) settled 3 days north of Lake Maeotis; progeny spoke corrupt Scythian and girls couldn’t marry until after killing an enemy in battle.
I repeat: “Imagine a place of exile, but freedom - a place for those of intensity too powerful for stability and the norms of home, to go, for acceptance, for challenge, for liberty, abandon and self-respect. Some of us have aspects too potent even to be jealous or resentful of; their special capacity incurs distrust, even hate. In return dispassion, disinterest occurs - like the disdain and disinterest of Gods. But only from them can one obtain aptitude in pride… and only far from the mundane can one hope to really approach the profound... Perhaps great tribes we remember too little of enclosed another society of unusual temperament, once.”
This may have been the case with Amazon man-killers, who clearly must have been rejects from society, unable/unwilling to perpetrate their community (at least in the normal way). The story of the Amazons may be archetypal: of a distant land organized oppositely from one’s own… Perhaps Amazons mated with men of another people, kept resultant female children and sent males away, but this hardly seems likely. Herodotus clearly believes that Sarmatians were descended from real Amazons; also that the differences between Scythians and the Sarmatians who succeeded them (4th century BCE), were more understandable because of this information. According to Britannica, “unmarried Sarmatian females, especially in the society's early years, took arms alongside men,” unlike Scythian women. Maybe Herodotus had something... he usually did. But he seems to be speaking of a society of exile expatriate refugees, ‘special’ people unwilling, perhaps unable, to stay in their home society.
For over half a millennia after Herodotus, Sarmatians ruled from the Urals to the Don, Bulgaria and the eastern Balkans. The Hsiung-nu Huns, coming from somewhere around Altai, completely overwhelmed what remained of them, after invasion by Goths from southern Scandinavia. Somehow, their history was ignored as much as that of China, India and Africa, even by their fellow Europeans, and I cannot help but wonder why, and then look for explanation!

Maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that LaoTzu, when leaving China through Hangu Pass after producing the “Tao Te Jing”, looking like Merlin or Gandalf the Grey, he was heading home...

a Mythorelics introduction

2011-11-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

Is it lied to, deceived, led astray or misinformed? Not clear, except insofar as clear that we need to further develop our knowledge and understnding of things, as much of the information we've relied on for decision-making has proven unreliable (at best). Politics and economics may be mostly matters of opinion, with little in the way of proof available, but we like to think of math, physics, history and medicine as involving hard fact; they don't. In much of what follows (most of the posts anyway), I attempt to refute common misunderstandings of things I don't regard as matters of opinion, despite that truth has been seen by many a wise mind as, in the words of Charles Sanders Pearce, "that opinion to which all who investigate sufficiently are fated to arrive." I certainly don't know about that "fated", but do know that attention to real investigation can reveal surprising things, to which those who pay attention find no reason to argue about. Sorry to end a sentence with a preposition, but perhaps we'd best re-think a lot of our "rules" in better light than has gone into many of our social conventions (and expectations).

For more important information on significant ways in which we are continuously, and harmfully, deceived, see "Debt: The first five thousand years" by David Graeber and "The Story of B" by Daniel Quinn.

The "space" inside atoms, and our heads

2011-11-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

Axioms, short statements generally accepted as not needing to be proved, are necessary to posit before the logic of syllogisms (or mathematics) can produce meaningful results. But we sometimes forget that what can to an axiomatic truth in one context might well not be so in another. As in six “days” of creation: “the evening and the morning were the first day” – but only on the fourth day did God “divide the day from the night” and create signs “for seasons, and for days, and years.” Without our spinning Earth and rotating solar system, we grasp at straws for units of measure, and find in those straws something like the old query, “How long is a piece of string?”
Outside of our perceptible universe, including what we can see with magnifiers, are areas where the axioms we’ve usefully posited no longer reasonably apply. The first second after the “Big Bang” has no real meaning, nor does “space” inside an atom. Math has been used to refer to “crunched” dimensions and infinities larger than other infinities, but I hereby suggest that we recognize not only the axiomatic contradictions in those “ideas” and their lack of real utility, but also that we have limitations of scope, conceptuality and potential. We cannot become immortal and still be what we are; we cannot travel in time except in the way that we already do, and we cannot map the universe. Even of something tiny (to us), we cannot make an all-inclusive mapping, though it be way larger. We have limitations, but an unlimited amount of things we still may do (including deceive ourselves).
We can speculate on a ‘before’ to the way things are now, but was there really anything ‘before’ there was any observation? We cannot really say, any more than we can discuss, with any real meaning, what is beyond what we can perceive (directly, or even indirectly). Through mathematics we can refer to 5th, 6th and more dimensions, but despite that, we really know precisely nothing of them. My father had a heart-attack, felt he was traveling thru a tunnel towards a light, then was brought back by an electrical jolt – still knowing nothing of what lies after death. And I experienced a sensation of leaving my body, transcending dimensions and encountering another intelligence (or two), but the utility derived from returning to my normal state after that ‘perception’ has hardly translated well into much of a contribution to the lives of others.
Whether you accept that we “were created” or not, we exist within certain parameters which we can spend energy struggling against (although it is futile). There are, clearly, wiser struggles to choose – as there are things we can accomplish. We can dream of defeating death, or of time travel, or of better defining light, explaining gravity, or just making a better mousetrap, but it is important to wisdom to discern the distinction between what might be possible and what is clearly not. Still, some make a good living pretending involvement in enterprises which the more discerning among us well know can never accomplish anything of material significance. Hope, though, holds real utility, so that kind of behavior will continue to go on, as unmerited as it might seem to many a rationalist. Ours is not always a rational world, or existence.
Still, $US8 billion for a super-collider, while many starve, or die of preventable and curable diseases, and the wonders of nature we’ve inherited rapidly cease to be, thru our own folly? It is hardly judicious utilization of available resource. We should be more discriminating of value, more aware of the relative value of terminology throughout the changes of circumstance humans can, and will, endure, and more careful of the pratfalls our tendency to egotism and egocentricity tend to bring us. Unless, perhaps, we truly enjoy tragedy.
Fantasy is OK, and imagination important, but we needn’t get too carried away with believing in how much greater one voice, one person, might be, relative to all others. We are each part of something larger, never solely responsible for anything, and no one mind really soars above the rest. Some create well, etc., but we like to take the idea of genius, of superiority, far too far.
Perhaps it affords some comfort, but insofar as that comfort undermines us, it is false.

at my high-plains home

2011-10-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

The 40s, aka Alpine Ranchos, in a checkerboard area of Coconino National Forest, square miles of private land alternating with square miles of protected park, is redolant with ancient volcano-core hills, mostly gently sloped with rounded tops. Low scraggly juniper trees abound, with occasional Ponderosa pines and pinon. The snowy-capped SanFrancisxco Peaks grace the not-far-off distance. Pastel pinks, purples and light-yellow weeds adorn the 2-lane road to the Indian Rez, but not the dirt tracks wandering around on either side of it - washboarded and rutted, with just a few light green plants to the sides. Wild-wheat-like fescue grasses predominated long ago, but grazing reduced that - it takes a long time, here, for things to grow back. Short, thorny "goat's head" thistly weeds are now common; clumps of foot-tall or so desert plants also abound, but the red and black volcanic cinder and fine, almost lifeless light-colored dusty soil is sometimes denuded, depleted by grazing now (thankfully) quite limited.
Pipelines and power-lines cross through, but the private property is graced by no connecting utilities. Solar power is popular, as is a water-pumping station; there are also wind-generators. Not many outhouses, though and no storm drains. When it rains, it frequently pours hard; canyons and washes can fill quickly, moving vast amounts of almost sterile soil. The grasses of a century or more ago may return, but almost white tumbleweed bounces around until it gets caught somewhere, creating potential fire-hazards. Some yucca and prickly pear remains, but not a lot.
The methamphetamine epidemic may be losing steam, but there's rumor of something new: croww-dressing. And rubber dolls. Lipstick on lonely wannabe cowboys without horses, and a dearth of actual women. I've seen only a total of three out there in almost two weeks.
It ain't like Snoopy's brother in Peanuts, idly leaning against a saguero (they're rare here, common over 50 niles to the south). There's work, then more work, total intoxication (not for me any longer though), work left undone and driving off to do this, that and the other. Always needing something else, always fixing something, and always in need of a wash. A fine state to be in for crossdressing, but I haven't seen it (yet, anyway), so I'll forbear further comment on that.
I had to return to clean up after a nephew who I knw to be more than a bit off (but failed to recognize how far; roots in Aspergers bi-polar disorder, hayperactivity, attention deficit disorder, ADHD, HADD, ADD, who knows (treated with Ritalin and who knows? prozac, xanax, similar stuff, for 10 years), and what could I do about it anyway? That he claimed to be a "Master Sadist" I just shrugged off - at 11, when I last saw him (10 years ago), he'd clearly been quite harmless. But once here, he augmented several knives he regularly wore (which apparently kept him from entering Canada at least twice) and desperado clothes, with a sword. Avowedly a MC and DJ at clubs, he apparently aspires to be a bad-ass vampire with radio-control over a zombie army of "collared girls". Or something. I've avoided gathering most details. He did e-mail me, a year ago, about his lightning-quick capacity against even guns. Hardly a big guy, he speculated about applying to be abouncer at our local bar (only 10 miles off), an occasional site of biker brawls. I was hoping that hands-on experience with fundamental realities would clue him in better. Who knows - maybe it has some...
At any rate, he'd decided to rebel against me, the only "authority figure" he had left to revenge himself against... despite that all I asked of him was to do some jobs for me, for pay. He preferred to spit into the wind, tie shoelaces from one shoe to the other, and generally shoot himself in both feet and both knees, to make a statement, I guess (aggravated at not recieving all he vehemently feels entitled to). Human shit adorned my floors, my clothes and bedding (among lots of other things) were all gone... there was nothing for the matress but to burn it.
Nevermind. I lost some stuff, some reference to my distant past - it happens. Especially out here. But the house stands - as it were (it's mostly underground). As ever, though, it demands work.
As does every aspect of life here: friends and neighbors are mostly rowdies, rodents abound, water needs hauling, and excrement (not only that of my nephew and his young playmates) dealt with. I had a Saturday-night poker game; two of the guys couldn't stop giggling, the bearded one of long mustachios telling the much younger blond one that he loved him and they should go outside and fight. I'd say it was a quarter to him, pay up or fold, and he'd reply he'd take two cards. Even play was work.
But it's beautivul here, and exshillarating. I pick up Amerind hitch-hikers, spot a huge rabbit so unlike native ones I know it must've descended from Angoras I once kept... the early-morning skies are fascinating, the clean air and over-mile-high altitude the best. And my house is almost naturally temperature-controlled.
Biggest similarity to Thailand: propane use (mostly for cooking, but I use a heater with a small cylinder for about 10 minutes before getting in bed). A big difference: radio. I like the Hopi station best, but not for the pow-wow music, which I find a bit boring. Fun to hear Hopi language sometimes, but not always.

What else of interest? How expensive Flagstaff is, like at the Central/Robinson that just opened in ChiangRai - if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. Often, anyway. Folk at the WellsFargo Bank have been very nice and helpful, students at NAU give directions gladly and well. THere are still bookstores, but only a couple places sell music CDs (in all northern Arizona!). A cop pulled me for speeding (65 mph!) and I found my driver license missing (left at the band). No prob, no ticket, just a warning. And I got a Pendleton blanket for $30. Not as nice as the one my nephew left with, but that one was about $100!
Oh - and the best Thai resturant - Dara Thai. Way better than almost anything in Thailand, certainly than in ChiangRai. Three different dishes so far, all common back home but uncommonly good, indeed excellent, here.
Today it rained, tonight will be cold, maybe below freezing. I sure hope my visa comes through in time, but still don't know that it will. Wrote to the LA Thai consulate, so far no reply... and I don't even remember my new passport's number - it was issued this year, never used til now, and sent to that consulate... ah me.

Damn the dams - a concise, simple explanation of how dams cause flooding (and Thailand's worst, and current, natural disaster)

2011-10-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

Back in the Great Depression, FDR’s answer to a lot of problems was dam building: the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), established 1933, a massive program of building dams, hydroelectric generating stations and flood-control projects. It put a lot of people to work (like the 1935 Work Projects Administration, WPA), and remained held in a largely positive light throughout my youth. The Monarch of Th ailand instituted a similar program, which also seemed to work. What was overlooked is that many reproductive cycles are coordinated with flood cycles, the floods spread nutrients, the sediments which previously nourished the environment now silt up behind the dams (as does debris that previously provided food for a variety of organisms), and local temperatures are changed. Not only trees, fish and birds are affected, but micro-organisms, insect life, and other less popular, and loveable forms of life (which remain, nevertheless, important).
In recent years, floods seem to have been very much more destructive than usual, and in Thailand now, the flooding may come to be seen as the largest natural disaster the country has ever experienced. Containing water-flow within concrete embankments doesn’t reduce the volume of flow, but it just increases the rate of flow – dramatically. Water which cannot spread out, bend in its course, and meander peacefully, builds up angry power. Floodwaters become literally propelled downstream and, inevitably, the damage done to flood plains below is increased. The problem is exacerbated by deforestation and development which come with, or right after, cement utilization projects intended for flood-control.
Root systems acts as a vast sponge, and release water only very slowly, acting as a natural regulator to water channels. This tends to disappear with “development” – the root system of a golf course simply won’t help much (development, and having too many kids, as counterproductive). Human intervention has caused the runoff proportion of rainfall to vastly increase, almost unbelievably, to at least 90% more. Small amounts flowing slowly have now become huge amounts flowing swiftly. And our soil is rapidly losing its structure, becoming very vulnerable to erosion by wind and water. Silt accumulates, raising the height of river beds until they become higher than the surrounding land. China’s Yellow River, in the Yellow plains, now flows five to ten meters above ground level – in non-flood times! And raising the height of embankments only increase the severity of future floods.
As usual, I’m not providing a solution, or even new insights or knowledge. I’m merely trying to clarify our situation, by providing an easily absorbable description and analysis.
Negative effects of large hydroelectric dams include:
1. Death and destruction from flooding
2. Displacement of people and wildlife
3. Large amounts of plant life are submerged and decay anaerobically (in the absence of oxygen) generating greenhouse gasses including methane.
4. Migratory patterns for many animals are disrupted (or worse)
5. Dams hold back sediments which fertilized lands downstream, so now farmers use dangerous chemical fertilizers and pesticides to compensate
6. Salt water now intrudes into deltas
7. The reservoirs are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and otherwise assist in disease spread
8. Dams serve as a heat sink: the water is hotter than normal river water. This warm water, when released, can affect animal life and other things.

More on physics from someone with no training in it.

2011-09-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

Since the time physicists developed our ideas of neutrons, protons and electrons, the basic axioms (posits, tenets) of most academic disciplines have been refined, if not replaced, I wish to submit that those concepts should be, too. If atoms can give off electrons without changing from being of one element to being of another, perhaps we should cease thinking of electrons as units. Waves of influence, with focal points, perhaps, but certainly not things, not even wavicles. Nor should we think of there being “space” inside an atom. In atomic particles, mass isn’t density, but momentum, power, resistance capacity, an affect. Beyond what we can sense, our sensory terminology no longer applies! We need not stay boxed in by thinking from a century ago.

Diamonds in the garbage?

2011-09-12T21:46:00.001-07:00

Fresh Kills Landfill on the shore of Staten Island was opened in 1947 as a temporary landfill, but for half a century was New York City's principal landfill, and became the largest landfill in the world, also, the largest man-made thing in the world. In 2001 the landfill was 25 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty. Rats and feral dog packs roaming the dump became a hazard to employees; attempts to poison them failed. The area was declared a wild bird sanctuary and a number of hawks, falcons, and owls were brought in, reducing rats during daytime, but air pollution consequences of the giant dump remained serious. Now, garbage is disposed of further away, and a new garbage dump has become an even bigger problem. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or Pacific Trash Vortex, covers from 700,000 square km to 15,000,000 square km, and is essentially the largest landfill in the world. At least the size of Texas, it could be twice the size of the continental United States. This vast drifting "soup" – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents, and stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. About 100 million tons of flotsam circulate in the region. Plastic constitutes about 90% of the rubbish floating in the oceans - in all our oceans are about 46,000 pieces of floating plastic for every square mile; in the North Pacific has an estimated six kilos of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton. The plastic are consumed by seabirds and other animals; their stomachs fill with bottle tops, lighters and balloons. A turtle found dead in Hawaii had over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. Over a million sea-birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement in them. The plastics also act as a chemical sponge, concentrating many persistent organic pollutants, and attracting man-made chemicals like hydrocarbons and DDT, which eventually enter our food chain.
Not to raise hopes, offer absurd justifications or in any way indicate that irresponsibility pays (although sometimes it might), but it is interesting that domestication of plants and animals may have occurred through sloppy waste-dumping habits. Not only did scavengers prowl, and thus become more accustomed to proximity of humans, but the interaction of composting with discarded seed dispersed a bit more widely than might otherwise have been the case (but closely enough with other seed for interaction – especially subsequent sexual interaction – to occur) led to both greater accessibility and utility. Domestication may never have been planned out at all, and that it occurred almost as if by accident makes rather much more sense.
While irritation with declamations of various reinventions of Chicken Little or the Boy Who Cried Wolf have become somewhat of a norm, we still have pressing problems. Ozone depletion may not be as dire as it once was, but it’s still a problem, as is global warming, despite vociferous nay-sayers. Genetically-modified organisms may well present greater problems than the current US doctrine of a state of permanent war. Overpopulation, newly rampant diseases, and violent changes to our Earth’s crustal zone (how much influenced by humanity through temperature changes, drilling, pumping and mining, we simply don’t know) aren’t just threats. And the extension of large predators seems, at least to me, to inevitably present us with a variety of new complications. There’s also growing peril from radiations of various sorts, not only due to nuclear power and changes in the atmosphere, but also to wi-fi internet, hand-phones and power-lines. We can and will ignore all that, but I’m afraid the problems we face from waste-disposal may be quite a bit more in-your-face, coming quite soon.
The oceans create roughly 70% of the oxygen in our atmosphere, and their pH - the measure of alkalinity or acidity - is changing. This is primarily due to increased levels of CO2, caused by us humans. It results in a threat to most all forms of oceanic life, carbonic acid. Spent nuclear fuel raising ocean temperatures and disrupting biological processes certainly doesn’t help. Simply put, our self-indulgences could soon result in our death – as a species. We have upset nature’s balance, and it is unlikely that we can put it right again. Within 50 years, our oceans may have living in them only reddish-orange algae, jellyfish, and bacteria that don’t need oxygen to survive. For humans to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air and its life with poisonous substances, to cause species extinction, and to destroy the integrity of our earth by causing changes in its climate, isn’t simply fouling our own nest, but to commit suicide.
A bit more scientifically: when plastics decompose in the ocean they release a range of chemicals not found naturally, including bisphenol A and polystyrene-based (PS) oligomers. Bisphenol A has been implicated in disrupting the hormonal system of animals. Styrofoam releases substantial quantities of a toxic styrene monomer, a known carcinogen, and also styrene dimers and trimer, suspected carcinogens. The trimer also breaks down into the toxic monomer form. Samples of seawater collected from the Pacific Ocean were contaminated with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition. In Japan alone, 150,000 tons of plastic is washed up on its shores each year; perhaps hundreds of millions of tons of plastic rubbish now float in the world’s oceans. Virtuous recycling will do no more than no longer littering to correct this situation. It’s this simple: if humanity cannot begin to work together, humanity will not survive.
We’re far too uneducated, let alone self-centered, to deal with all this. Of course, maybe God in some deus ex machina guise might deign to interfere, as many hope or even expect, but experience suggests this to be a bit less likely than that our current crop of “leaders” will do anything intelligent, or that folk in the USA will replace materialistic lusts with interest in social welfare.

An Associated Press release from late 2011 reports that Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard announced that his huge city will now turn garbage from millions of people into reusable materials and energy. Concrete giant Cemex SAB has agree to buy 3,000 tons daily to turn into energy, and some garbage will be recycled (60% of it!) or composted, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. The city will embark next year on a major project to harness methane gas produced at its old dump, now closed, into energy. It also plans to open a new plant to recycle construction waste into building material. The report concluded, “The city says it is also negotiating with 1,500 pepenadores, or scavengers, informal workers who traditionally have been a key part of Mexico's waste-management system. They living at dumps and scavenge and resell material. Pablo Tellez Falcon, who heads the scavengers guild, said 300 of them worked at the Bordo Poniente landfill and that he will negotiate for a written agreement with the city government so they don't lose their livelihoods. He said the city and the scavengers have only had a spoken agreement until now.”
Not only can garbage produce methane, it can teach us wisdom. From it we can get the best fertilizer, good construction material, land-fill and other valuable resources. Recycling may not be as good as re-using, but learning to act responsibly is one of the things we live to learn – no responsibility equals no satisfaction. No respect for that other than the self and its desires translates into no respect FOR the self and its desires. We can try to be more aware, or live awhile longer with our mistakes, but make no mistake about this: the mistakes we are making WILL eventually kill us, if not adequately addressed.
I meant to add a picture from a mid-70s "Warlock" comic, where Adam Warlock, accompanyied by his sidekick "Little Clown" screams about discovering "Diamonds in the garbage" - but apparently my copy of the comic got recycled by the person it was entrusted to...

"In Block" - to clean house

2011-08-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

1. The legal fiction of corporate "personhood" must end, now.
2. Military expenditures must be reduced, and all National Guard recalled to within national borders.
3. Political campaign finance must be reformed to lessen money's undermining of democracy.
4. Our tax laws must be simplified and made equitable, so that the rich will pay their share and others not depend so much on tax accountants.
5. Marijuana must be decriminalized and taxed, and marijuana prisoners released.
6. The Federal Reserve Bank must be fully nationalized and the government allowed to stop borrowing.
7. A jobs program instituting aspects of the CCC, WPA, VISTA and community radio must be begun.
8. As cleaning the whole water supply would now be impractical, free drinking water in glass bottles must be provided with easy access to all.
9. The educational system must be revitalized and improved to prepare our kids to compete in a world market.
10. The Supreme Court needs to reclaim some integrity - Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas must be removed.
11. The EPA must be truly empowered, and corporations in the 3rd World encouraged to act responsibly.
12. The USA must become a prime defender, not prime violator, of international law.

If we are to survive, our irresponsibility, and the nightmare of our national folly, must end.

left-right dicothomy?

2011-08-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

Right-wing talking points the Left won’t accept:
1. Fluoride is a heavy chemical bad for the brain
2. The Fed is only quasi-governmental, and should be nationalized
3. Scientists are often hardly impartial, and tend to ‘prove’ what they want proven.

Left-wing talking points the Right won’t accept:
1. Money has become but promissory notes – debt
2. Government manufactures enemies to suit the ‘military-industrial complex’
3. Only poor immigrants will do certain jobs which we refuse to pay adequately for.

Neither want to recognize that we now demand too much health care (among other things), that abiotic oil is real, or the dangers resultant from the public having become as poorly informed (and opinionated) as it has come to be. But oddly, both now vociferously demand ‘change’ – which the President promised but won’t provide.

Dinosaur bones were put there to test your faith – in false teachings.

2011-07-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

Not only have oil wells thought pumped dry been found later to mysteriously have lots of oil in them again, but in several places oil has been found at 30,000 feet deep, despite organic matter stopping at 18,000 feet.
Big Oil, of course, likes high oil prices, and the powers-that-be like sustaining a climate of fear. The more widely disseminated theories of oil origin (from “fossils”) are also useful for containing China.
Recognizing which leads to “conspiracy theory” – are we being manipulated, lied to and deceived? Well, jeez, any who’d deny that are naïve. For a long time, myth-making has served political ends, and “education” too.
Many feel uncomfortable accepting that pictures supposedly taken on the moon can be demonstrated as fakes, that Shakespeare and Einstein weren’t quite the geniuses they’re claimed to have been, and that fluoride in the water is way more negative than positive. Too bad. That the generally accepted science of petrochemicals may be dubious (or less) also causes internal conflicts for those who know our material gluttony to be wrong, bad, dangerous and stupid. Nevertheless, it’s wise to face facts.
Oil replenishment may well be too slow to be much of an answer to population and consumption increases, but there are some who claim that replenishment keeps pace with, or even outpaces, withdrawal (do a goggle search). Methane and light oil clearly travel through fault lines in sedimentary rock, and this travel could go both ways (so a lot of biotic oil may have sunk to layers with no other organic matter). Oil surely travels (although perhaps only quite slowly) through pore spaces from areas of high pressure to lower-pressure areas like drill holes; when drawn out, the oil would then take longer to refill the hole a second time; in this scenario, oil is no less of a non-renewable resource, but we do have access to quite a bit more of it than has been claimed. Or, carbon present in the magma beneath Earth’s crust may react (under conditions of sufficient heat and pressure) with hydrogen - to form methane and other mainly alkaline hydrocarbons. Oil, even with gravity or other forces, may not have been able to seep down to the depths where it has several times been found, forcing significant re-evaluation of some science.
Be that as it may, we must also re-evaluate our access to information. It’s not really clear that the internet is helping any more than TV has: we’re still mired in ignorant darkness and the equivalent of superstition. Despite the preponderance of evidence, a majority of US voters still won’t accept conspiracy in the Kennedy assassinations, CIA involvement in drug-running, or even banking conspiracies (currently producing a marked rise in insecurity levels, but never-mind reality, have some faith in either God or your “betters”!). It’s easy to verify that protest groups were infiltrated by US government agents, that the Watergate burglaries and Iran-Contra scandals did indeed occur, that false information has been used to instigate entry into warfare (repeatedly - in fact, every time), and that the public is constantly manipulated. One need not believe in a Princess Di death plot, involvement of British royals in the international trade of illegal drugs, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, shape-shifting space aliens, secret elites or other less-than-suspicious proclamations like that humans have never stood on our moon. But we should accept that there are, and long have been, those interested in creating a “New World Order”, mind-control devices and other ways to manipulate and control the general public.
Perhaps the weirdest part of all this is the conspiracy to diminish the perceived truth-value of conspiracy theories. From disinformation to devaluing information to making valuable information appear ridiculous (as David Icke does), there are a variety of mind-control manipulations going on, in that we are taught to mis-believe, and even to close our minds to what it’s quite logical to accept.
We’ve been sold a bill of goods, and are, of course, the poorer for accepting it.

Our Earth is a very complicated system – not alive, perhaps, but vastly more complex than any mechanism man can hope to design and build, perpetually in well-balanced motion. The sun and moon are essential parts of the system, as are layers of the atmosphere, and, apparently, a cooling system in the thin crust. Some of the system which supports us we may have succeeded in damaging, but it’s possible things are not as bad as they sometimes seem.

An Interesting Question

2011-07-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Could the fighting in Libya be related to US military/industrial (corporate) desire to keep troops in teh MiddleEast? Osama bin Laden demanded US troops exit Saudi Arabia, and got that - they went to Iraq. They're supposed to leave Iraq next year (although it's clear many will stay), and I suppose a new place is needed to park them...

a political suggestion

2011-07-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and thus clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H. L. Mencken
"When politicians have achieved office by scaring the living day lights out of the electorate, they correctly perceive an outbreak of peace as a threat to their interests. Journalists support them partly because
they celebrate power regardless of its complexion and partly because war makes better copy than peace." - George Monbiot

Without claiming this to be an idea entirely clear or coalesced, I wish to present something that has been kicking around in my head for a while. The US Senate, being already an oligarchic entity, could be made more pragmatic, and the Legislative Branch of US government perhaps made more effective by rearrangement of the elective process. Half of the Senate chosen in the traditional way, the other half could be chosen from votes of the total populace, each eligible voter allocated from one to five votes: one vote automatic to citizens over 18; one to completers of 2 years of accredited college or passing a standard test (more demanding than that for a GED), attempts limited to once every 3 years; one for total tax payments of over $3000 (or a certain % of something), another for real property ownership of over $40,000 (or a certain % of something) and one for 2 years of government service or an equivalent of community service. Representatives to the House would be chosen as normal, but allocation to states redistributed so that states of smaller populations aren’t as disproportionately represented.
Not that I expect comment – I’m sure other issues presented here are much more interesting, and they haven’t really gleaned anything…

some quotes, thanks to Toni the Toad

2011-07-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. (Oscar Wilde) I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. (William Blake) I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. (Groucho Marx) Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. (Aristotle) Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. (Immanuel Kant) The philosophers have only interpreted the world ... the point, however, is to change it.(Karl Marx)

The Increasing of Necessity

A poem by Jalaudin Rumi says, “New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.”
Long ago, Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning: at a certain date, all water in the world not been specially hoarded would disappear. It would be renewed, but changed into water which would drive men mad. Only one man believed; he collected water, arranged a secure place to store it, and waited for the waters to change.
On the named date, streams stopped running, wells went dry, and that man went to his retreat and drank his preserved water. When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, he descended again to walk among the other sons of men. He found them talking, and clearly thinking too, in an entirely different way than before, and seeming to have no memory of what had happened, nor of ever having been warned. After trying to talk to several, he realized they thought him mad, and showed either hostility or compassion.
He went back to his concealment, and continued to draw on his supplies. Finally, however, he took a big decision and drank the new water. The kind of water a man dying of thirst drinks doesn’t much matter, but that wasn’t it. It was because he couldn’t bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, became like the rest, and forgot all about his own store of special water. His fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.
Sometime later, a tyrannical ruler of Turkestan, listening to tales of a dervish such as the one just told, asked about Khidr. ‘Khidr’, said the dervish story-spinner, ‘comes in response to need. Seize his coat when he appears, and all-knowledge is yours.’
‘Can this indeed happen to anyone?’ asked the king.
‘Anyone capable,’ answered the dervish.
‘Who more “capable” than I?’ thought the king, and published a proclamation:
‘Whoever presents to me Invisible Khidr, Great Protector of Men, him shall I enrich.’
A very poor old man by the name of Bakhtiar Baba, hearing this cried by heralds, formed an idea. He said to his wife, ‘I have a plan. We shall soon be rich, but a little later I shall have to die. But this does not matter, for our riches will leave you well provided for.’
Then Bakhtiar went before the king and told him that he would find Khidr within forty days, if the king would give him a thousand pieces of gold. ‘If you find Khidr,’ said the king, ‘you shall have ten times this thousand pieces of gold. If you do not, you will die, executed at this very spot as a warning to those who trifle with kings.’
Bakhtiar accepted, returned home, gave the money to his wife (enough to provision her for the rest of her life), and spent forty days in contemplation, preparing for the other life. On the fortieth day he went before the king. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘your greed caused you to think that money would produce Khidr. But Khidr, as is related, does not appear in response to something given from a position of greed.’
The king was furious. ‘Wretch, you have forfeited your life: who are you to trifle with the aspirations of a king?’
Bakhtiar said: ‘Legend has it that any man may meet Khidr, but the meeting will be fruitful only in so far as that man’s intentions are correct. Khidr, they say, visits to the extent and for the period that you are worth his while being visited. This is something over which neither you nor I has any control.’
‘Enough of this wrangling!’ said the king, ‘It won’t prolong your life. It only remains to ask my ministers for advice on the best way to put you to death.’
He turned to his First Wazir and said: ‘How shall this man die?
The First Wazir said: ‘Roast him alive, as a warning.’
The Second Wazir, speaking in order of precedence, said: ‘Dismember him, limb from limb.’
The Third Wazir suggested: ‘Provide him with the necessities of life, instead of forcing him to cheat in order to provide for his family.’
While this discussion was going on, an ancient sage had walked into the assembly hall. After the Third Wazir had spoken, he said: ‘Every man opines in accordance with his permanent hidden prejudices.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the king.
‘I mean your First Wazir was originally a baker, so he speaks in terms of roasting. The Second Wazir used to be a butcher, and talks about dismemberment. Your Third Wazir, having made a study of statecraft, sees the origin of the matter.
‘Note two things. First, that Khidr appears and serves each man in accordance with that man’s ability to profit by his coming. Second, note that this man Bakhtiar, whom I name Baba in token of his sacrifice, was driven by despair to do what he did. He increased his necessity and accordingly made me appear to you.’
As they watched, the ancient sage melted before their eyes. Trying to do what Khidr directed, the king gave a permanent allowance to Bakhtiar. The First Two Wazirs were dismissed, and the thousand pieces of gold were returned to the royal treasury by the grateful Bakhtiar Baba and his wife.

Yunus, a son of Adam, having learned these stories, decided not only to increase his necessity, and cast his life in the balance of fate, but to seek out what he could of the means and reason of the provision of goods for man.
‘I am, he said to himself, ‘a man. As such I get a portion of the world’s goods, every day. This portion comes to me by my own efforts, coupled with the efforts of others. By simplifying this process, I shall find the means whereby sustenance comes to mankind, and learn something about how and why. I therefore adopt the religious way, which exhorts man to rely upon almighty God. Rather than live in the world of confusion, where food and other things come through society, I shall throw myself upon the direct support of the Power which rules over all. Beggars depend upon intermediaries, charitable men and women subject to secondary impulses, who give goods or money because they have been trained to do so. I shall accept no such indirect contributions.’
So saying, he walked into the countryside, throwing himself upon the support of invisible forces with the same resolution with which he’d previously accepted the support of visible ones, as a teacher. He fell asleep, certain that God would take complete care of his interests, just as the birds and beasts were catered for in their realm. At dawn the bird chorus awakened him. He lay still at first, waiting for his sustenance to appear. In spite of his reliance upon the invisible force and his confidence that he would be able to understand it when it started its operations in the field into which he had thrown himself, he began to realize that speculative thinking alone wouldn’t help. Still, he lay by the riverside, spending the day observing nature, peering at the fish in the waters, saying his prayers. From time to time rich and powerful men passed by, accompanied by glitteringly accoutered outriders on the finest horses, harness-bells jingling imperiously to signal their right of way; these merely shouted a salutation at the sight of his venerable turban. Parties of pilgrims passed, chewing hard bread and dried cheese, which served but to sharpen his appetite for even the humblest of food. ‘This is but a test, and all will soon be well,’ thought Yunus, as he said his fifth prayer of the day, and wrapped himself in contemplation after the manner taught by a dervish of great perceptive attainments. Another night passed.
As Yunus sat staring at the sun’s broken lights reflected in the river, five hours after dawn on the second day, something bobbing in the reeds caught his eye. This was a packet, enclosed in leaves and bound around with palm-fiber. Yunus waded into the river and possessed himself of the unfamiliar cargo, which weighed about three-quarters of a pound. As he unwound the fiber a delicious smell came to his nostrils. He was the owner of a quantity of the halva. This halva, composed of almond paste, rosewater, honey, nuts and other precious elements, is prized not only for its taste, but esteemed as a health-giving food. Harem beauties nibble it for its flavor; warriors carry it on campaigns for its sustaining power. It’s been used for treating a hundred ailments.
‘My belief is vindicated!’ exclaimed Yunus. ‘Now, if a similar quantity of halva, or the equivalent, comes to me on the waters, daily or at needed intervals, I shall know the means ordained by providence for my sustenance, and will then only have to use my intelligence to seek the source.’
For the next three days, at exactly the same hour, a packet of halva floated into Yunus’ hands. This, he decided a discovery of the first magnitude. Simplify your circumstances and Nature continues to operate in a roughly similar way. This alone seemed important enough that he almost felt impelled to share it with the world. For has it not been said: ‘When you know, you must teach’? But then he realized that he did not know: he only experienced. The obvious next step was to follow the halva, going upstream until he arrived at the source. He would then understand not only its origin, but the means whereby it was set aside for his explicit use.
For many days Yunus traveled, and each day, with the same regularity but at a time correspondingly a little earlier, the halva appeared. Each day, he ate it. Eventually Yunus saw that the river, instead of narrowing as one might expect at the upper part, had widened considerably. In the middle of the broad expanse of water was a fertile island, and on the island stood a mighty, yet beautiful, castle. It was from here, he determined, that the food of paradise originated. As he was considering his next step, Yunus saw a tall and unkempt dervish, with the matted hair of a hermit and a cloak of multi-colored patches, appear before him.
‘Peace, Baba, Father,’ he said.
‘Ishq, Hoo!’ shouted the hermit. ‘And what is your business here?’
‘I am following a sacred quest,’ explained Yunus, ‘and must in my search reach yonder castle. Have you perhaps an idea how this might be accomplished?’
‘As you seem to know nothing about the castle, in spite of having a special interest in it,’ answered the hermit, ‘I will tell you about it.
‘Firstly, the daughter of a king lives there, imprisoned and in exile, attended by numerous beautiful servitors, it is true, but constrained nevertheless. She is unable to escape the man who captured her and placed her there because she would not marry him, as he has erected formidable and inexplicable barriers, invisible to the ordinary eye. You would have to overcome them to enter the castle and find your goal.’
‘How can you help me?’
‘I am on the point of starting on a special journey of dedication. Here, however, is a word and exercise, the Wazifa, which will, if you are worthy, help to summon the invisible powers of benevolent Jinns, creatures of fire who alone can combat the magical forces which hold the castle locked. Upon you peace.’ And, after repeating strange sounds and moving with a dexterity and agility truly wonderful in a man of his venerable appearance, he wandered on off, away.
Yunus sat for days practicing his Wazifa and watching for the appearance of the halva. Finally, one evening as he looked at the setting sun shining upon a turret of the castle, he saw a wonderous sight. There, shimmering with unearthly beauty, stood a maiden, who must of course be the princess. She stood for an instant looking into the sun, then dropped into the waves which lapped far beneath her - a packet of halva. Here, then, was the immediate source of his bounty.
‘The source of the Food of Paradise!’ cried Yunus. Now he was almost on the very threshold of truth. Sooner or later the Commander of the Jinns, whom through his dervish Wazifa he was calling, must come, and would enable him to reach the castle, the princess, and the truth!
No sooner had these thoughts passed through his mind than he found himself being carried away through the skies! Quickly, he arrived at what seemed to be an ethereal realm, filled with houses of breathtaking beauty. He entered one, and there stood a creature like a man, who was not a man: young in appearance, yet wise and ageless. ‘I’, said this vision, ‘am the Commander of the Jinns, and I have had thee carried here in answer to thy pleading and the use of those Great Names which were supplied to thee by the Great Dervish. What can I do for thee?’
‘0h mighty Commander of all the Jinns,’ trembled Yunus, ‘I am a Seeker of the Truth. The answer to it is only to be found by me in the enchanted castle, near which I was standing when you called me here. Give me, I pray, the power to enter this castle and talk to the imprisoned princess.’
‘So shall it be!’ exclaimed the Commander. ‘But be warned, first of all, that a man gets answer to his questions only in accordance with his fitness to understand, as results from his own preparation.’
‘Truth is truth,’ said Yunus, ‘and I will have it, no matter what it may be. Grant me this boon!’
Soon he was speeding back in a decorporealized form (by the magic of the Jinn) accompanied by a small band of Jinni servitors, charged by their Commander to use their special skills to aid this human being in his quest. In his hand Yunus grasped a special mirror-stone which the Jinn chief had instructed him to turn towards the castle to be able to see the hidden defenses.
Through this device the son of Adam saw that the castle was protected from assault by a row of terrible, invisible giants, who smote anyone who approached. Some Jinns proficient at the task cleared them away. Next Yunus was able to perceive an invisible web, or net, which hung all around the castle. This was destroyed by Jinns with the special cunning needed to break the net. Finally there was an invisible mass as of stone, which, without making an impression, filled the space between the castle and the river bank. This was also overthrown by the skills of the Jinns. They then made their salutations and flew fast as light, back to their abode.
Yunus then saw that a bridge, by its own power, had emerged from the river-bed. He was able to walk dry-shod into the very castle. A soldier at the gate took him immediately to the princess, who now appeared even more beautiful than she had at first.
‘We are grateful to you for your services in destroying the defenses which made this prison secure,’ said the lady. ‘I may now return to my father and want only to reward thee for thy sufferings. Speak, name it, and it shall be given to thee.’
‘Incomparable pearl,’ said Yunus, ‘there is only one thing which I seek, and that is truth. As it is the duty of all who have truth to give it to those who can benefit from it, I adjure you, Highness, to give me the truth which is my need.’
‘Speak, and such truth as it is possible to give will freely be thine.’
‘Very well, your Highness. How, and by what order, is the Food of Paradise, the wonderful halva which you throw down everyday for me, ordained to be deposited thus?’
‘Yunus, son of Adam,’ exclaimed the princess, ‘the halva, as you call it, I throw down each day is in fact just the residue of cosmetic materials I use to rub myself, after my daily bath of asses’ milk!’
‘I have at last learned’, said Yunus, ‘that the understanding of a man is conditional upon his capacity to understand. For you, the remains of your daily toilet. For me, the Food of Paradise.’

When will we ever learn?

2011-06-27T17:27:00.001-07:00

We've only split atoms already radioactive; although the results have been deemed desirable, the true expense has yet to be calculated, and likely high beyond measure. As our scientists don't really know what they've done, how can the theory be seen as adequate? Seems to me rather more madness than brilliance, and that we've been duped. Now other scientists are transfering genetic material without accompanying genetic sheathes, which is likely to produce even more disasterous consequences.

In a hydrogen bomb, no hydrogen atom is split; rather, two atoms of a hydrogen isotope are fused. To fuse them, atoms of plutonium or uranium isotopes are split. As Britannica says, “The radioactive fallout contaminates air, water, and soil and may continue years after the explosion; its distribution is virtually worldwide.” Some helium, with a heavier nucleus than that of hydrogen, is formed, too… An H-bomb requires an A-bomb; nuclear energy gets released (explosively) by both nuclear fusion and nuclear fission. There’s always radioactive waste - which presents much danger and no utility.
Robert Oppenheimer, who developed the A-bomb as head of the Manhattan Project, refused to support development of the H-bomb. Considering the negative consequences which resulted (largely through Sen. Jos. McCarthy), he surely had very good reason to do so. Pity more of our “geniuses” don’t have that kind of vision…

Kids’ Play & Macro-economics (It’s OK not to own much, maybe even best).

2011-06-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

100 years after its occurrence, it was almost impossible for American kids to conceive of anyone not knowing about the Civil War. Not now, but at least many of us are learning not to call ourselves “Americans” or be otherwise so presumptuous. Or, at least I hope so.
In the early 60s John Kennedy instituted the Peace Corps and the President’s Physical Fitness Program. Kids at Fernbank Elementary School in Decatur GA (near the great Stone Mountain commemoration of the Confederacy, rival to Mount Rushmore, but also near Atlanta, liberal heart of the Old South) had to do jumping jacks, and try to do pull-ups, outside in the fresh air. This was good.
Only a year before, my family lived in southern Indiana, not so far from the infamous Mason-Dixon line. There we kids’d play Civil War soldier games. At our new home there was physical evidence of that conflict all around, including a large foxhole dug into an embankment by the house we’d moved into, where we found a piece of a wagon wheel. In 3rd grade now, I was finally learning to read, starting with Curious George books (staring a monkey) and soon moving on to the book that made my life, Trappers and Traders of the Old West (out of print, author forgotten). Into our purely white, “segregated” and well-dressed comfort, the daughter of a rich, prominent Brahmin from India was dropped – a real bomb indeed. She cried every day she was there, so tortured, by almost all of the other kids, was she. One girl, clearly the most intelligent in the class (the only one with glasses), confided concerns about this to me, but we knew there was nothing we could do. This was a school where later I had to disguise ballet tights my mother imposed on me (trading after-school ballet lessons for her sons for harp instruction she gave the ballet teacher’s daughter). Had my tights ever surfaced, my life at school would have become as unendurable as that of the unfortunate elite-class brown girl (who was soon gone and forgotten, at least by others).
Rosalyn, Jocelyn and Trixie took immense pleasure in taunting the “colored” garbage-men who’d arrive while we “exercised”, chanting “2,4,6,8, we don’t want to integrate!” as loud as they could, for as long as they could hope to be heard by the sanitation engineers, then falling over clutching themselves in laughter. People prize their individuality, unique idiosyncrasies and distinctions.
Only one other boy wore jeans - the adopted son of my father’s boss. He’d learned interesting things while in orphanage, and was fascinatingly world-wise. He even taught me how to trap and skin muskrats. Peavine Creek rolled down a long series of low falls, making great loafs and clouds of foam on washing days… there were “poor” folk living along it, who used it to do laundry. Thus, perhaps, the importance of clothes to my fellow school kids – some wore suits, emphasizing class-consciousness. Two close friends, Jimmy and Joe, claimed their new suits matched exactly… Who was associated with who was very, very important.
Sam, my friend with jeans and checkered past, had a maid working at his home, near my own. The maid spoke something called “Gullah” which I later studied about at university. Of course the linguists were misinformed (I was about to start learning much of this academic tendency): supposedly it was spoken only on islands off South Carolina. But no, not only did the maid speak it, but so did an elderly carpenter who lived by the train tracks near an overpass, “Uncle”, whom we gave Bantam chickens to raise. Sam had a wonderful big dog, Micky, who answered to whistles, herded chickens and treed squirrels. We spent lots of time in the woods, collecting mistletoe to sell in Christmas season, doing minor vandalism and occasionally terrorizing other kids. But only the white kids – whom we’d have been glad to be friends with, outside of that environment. For in it was another thing entirely - kids who spoke Gullah and only Gullah, who lived in a one-room shack with one bare light-bulb and a real “outhouse”, kids with whom we could follow streams which would disappear underground, and catch great snapping turtles that broke sticks larger than our fingers in their sharp mouths. We’d bring turtles home, causing Sam’s maid to scream in terror, “Terrapin! Terrapin!” and me to remember that Gullah word for turtle (and wonder if turtles pin down the world which rests on a turtle’s back…). We kids even hopped freight trains for short rides, though this wasn’t something for the young fancy dressers of Fernbank…
But, one day one of those found us in the woods and invited us to a “party” at a nearby suburban house where parents weren’t home. We were 10 and 11 then, and the world of wealth wasn’t yet the place of paranoia it’s locked into now. At the invitation, my heart skipped for joy. I was in! It was to be the party life! I was accepted! But there, sulky, petty Rosalyn, Jocelyn and Trixie, in frilly dresses, expected presents. They had hardly a fun or civil thing to say - no personal problem with us, I knew, as we’d practiced bike riding together when first learning… No, it was just their manner - never content, always demanding. Everything was material, and nothing personal but dissatisfaction. They were pretty - yes - but apparently not so much so inside. I no longer wanted to be their friend.

Those who have too much often also have too little, and not just compassion. Too little sharing, give-and-take, adventure and love of life. They just want, and want much more strongly even than those do who’ve hardly ever had much at all. Because that’s all they know. I learned this without words, and thus much more about “anthropology” than I ever learned from the wonderful, charismatic, imagination-inspiring Margaret Mead, an important and popular writer throughout the 60s who came to lecture at Emery U., where our fathers taught… My mother had been reading to me from her People and Places, and I took it to ask for an autograph (Sam and I were quite familiar with the academic area, from raising white rats for the psychology department, and raiding the Coke machines for prize-winning bottle-caps). She liked us, asked that we attend her Introductory Anthro series, and meet her after class every time to show lists of words we didn’t recognize (she quite liked boys that age). We complied. In class, she said she knew 40 languages, found herself thinking in other languages sometimes; and I believed her. Now I know how long she spent in Samoa, (she gained fame from Coming of Age in Samoa, now regarded as a Utopian fantasy, after spending less than half a year there in the 20s), and also how long it takes to learn anything of another culture. I’ve lived on the opposite side of the globe from where I started in two very different countries (Korea and Thailand), for a total of well over a dozen years now. I speak mainly Thai at home, and publish books on local history and culture, but am just beginning to really know parts of it, and to use the language, in my private mind, more than just rarely, and only in phrases. And Thai is a “simple” language: another girl from India, much later in my life, tried to teach it to me… Her family, she explained quite truthfully, had picked up the language in-country, and still used it in correspondence, finding it much easier than English, or Urdu.
We tend to like thinking highly of ourselves, and to be demanding of other people. Often we claim more than what we have any right to. This indicates immaturity, that we are not yet fully developed. How then “Intelligent Design” but perhaps within Evolutionary context? Let’s hope we are still developing anyway. Margaret Mead meant well, and her ideas certainly influenced mine, and encouraged me to live with, and try to understand other ways of life (like trappers and traders of the Old West had to do!).
In the Aranachel Pradesh wilds of the Upper Bhramaputra, and in the highlands of central Kalimantan (Borneo) live women who consider any man who hasn’t killed another man not worth having sex with. I’ve come to strongly feel that it is not the job of any outsider to attempt to alter this viewpoint, at least not directly.
Many great writers have glorified the incredible cultures of people adapted to extreme circumstances, living where others cannot: Lawrence van der Post’s Lost World of the Kalahari and Farley Mowat’s The Desperate People and People of the Deer stand out in my mind. Siberians, Tarahumara, Yanamamo, Amazonian tribes in Brazil, Incas, Australian Aborigines and Southeast Asian Sea Gypsies have also made for fascinating reading. One marvels with reverence at knowing of such achievement of spirit, of civilization without exploitation and so much successful interaction with nature. To learn of such folk is to learn that there are varieties of desirable, non-technological advancement we should revere, and certainly not even diminish, let alone demolish. Yet these varieties of society are on the endangered list. The greatest threat to them is globalization and the cash-addicted lust to consume which is blinding and crippling the world.
Would we know about valuable medicines like quinine, cat’s claw or even aspirin if transmitted knowledge only came through government schools? Some people need to live “close with nature” (clichéd phrase or no), and if, by “wringing hands” we cannot find a way to provide such people safety from “economic” demands, our close descendents will have lives much less happy than we wish to know.
We use transportation too much, use too much oil, cement, combustion, and general overhead getting what we need. Blinded by potential for ease, ‘modern’ people have become over-worked, over-fed, lacking in community and confused. People used to make jeans themselves, from marijuana fiber - it’s not just urban legend, conspiracy theory, sour grapes, or rabid sentiment. People provided for themselves, perhaps generally better than most do now (at least in important kinds of quality); and it was a good, healthy, wholesome thing. Now we consume things produced far, far away, and allow opinion to prevail that everyone needs to be involved in the exchange networking. What I want to stress is the opposite - without ‘disconnected’ people, economically, we will have more ‘disconnected’ people emotionally, mentally and socially (what is it now? AD/HD? Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder? Aspergers? Bi-polar? Whatever one uses, we’ll have more of it if we don’t right our flopped-over ship)! There’s too much focus on “standard of living” and almost none on “quality of life” (which, when we allow torture to protect our ‘freedom’, we certainly do not have).
Academicians usually favor “intellectual property” but, in my mind, anyone with love of God and this life will not. Too many of us never learned to share, nor to trust. It’s not necessary to determine where everything will come from, only to be capable of meeting new challenges as they arrive. Academicians, like doctors, tend to be ‘control freaks’ asserting authority and unwilling to respect divergent opinion. And here I mean respect, not just tolerate: respect as in admire, honor, and care for. No, we all do as I myself, unfortunately, want to do - assert the self and claim superior knowledge. But it’s not more technology or competitive skill we need, but the self-confidence to know we can make do, find what we really need with or without what we might sometimes want.
Some say, “we need to better educate and train our workers.” But centralized power and pyramidal systemings are killing us. What we need is more reliable individual decision-making. We need to stop trying to be boss! When I sold art and artifacts in Columbus, Ohio, over a decade ago, it was conventional wisdom among local gallery owners that the “self-taught” were the brightest spot on the aesthetic landscape…

In Thailand almost 20 years now, and ChiangRai, part of the “Golden Triangle”, over 12, I’ve also lived and worked with Hopis, Navahos, Koreans and Mexicans. For years I worked in other people’s art galleries, then for three ran my own, specializing in aboriginal and ethnographic art and artifacts. I admire wood-carving and weaving and many of the practitioners of those arts whom I’ve come to know. For me, to live a self-sustaining life without cash is a fond, though futile, dream.
For the woman I’ve lived with eight years now, things look different. She’s lived without cash, and spoken to me of there still being freedom in Burma - freedom to find an unoccupied hill in the jungle and make a farm there. Like trappers and traders of the Old West giving way to settlers and cowboys, her Lahu ‘Hunter’ (Musur or ‘good roast tiger meat’) tribe now does agriculture. But land’s a problem – she’s stateless and without any legal right to own. For the value of my car, perhaps, she might purchase citizenship; we consider this, but the car is important too. I use it to distribute books, and also to carry food and building materials to her family home in the high hills just this side of the border. As I began composing this, she was working for 25 cents an hour, too shy to ask for the 50% raise I’m sure she could have successfully demand (she worked, to support her family, only when my finances were tight; as I continued working on this, she worked for 40 cents an hour, 10 hour days, then began to get more handicraft sales).
I mention these personal details to show that I’m not just a bleeding-heart idealist unhinged by fanciful books or Luddite fantasy. I write about indigenous wisdom when I can, but hardly as an anthropologist. I use local herbs on a daily basis, but am hardly scientific about that either. I’ve sometimes been a teacher, who found need to motivate students, and often a student, confused by a language I speak intimately, daily (and also confused by a culture I’ve been deeply immersed in for over 20 years). What I want, and what I’ve found, money can’t buy. We must all learn to cherish what cannot be traded, and although is free, doesn’t come easily.

“Live simply that others might simply live” needs expanding: Encourage simplicity, diversity and independence, that our children might have lives, too.

We don’t need to be richer,
We need to be more caring.
We don’t need more trade,
We need more community and self-reliance.
We don’t need to teach the rest of the world,
We need to listen to it.
We don’t need a plan, we need many.
We need justice, checks on power, less
Nationalism and more humility.

What’s most wrong with ‘Globalization’ is the diminishment of self-sufficiency, the snowballing of cash-addiction, the empowerment of unfettered, autocratic, often amoral mega-corporate bureaucracy, and accelerated loss of cultural diversity. The unchecked power given to agents whose only goal is satisfaction of greed (yes, little old ladies living off the stock market can be accused of that) is alone enough to make globalization a complete horror; but the loss of self-respect via diminished opportunity for display of integrity in adjusting invention to be appropriate for local conditions and local distinctions, and used without incurrence of obligation (as befits proper moral understanding - I’m talking here of that nonsensical idea “intellectual property”) looms with similarly ghastly duress. Globalization equates not only to homogenization, but to cheapening, trivializing actually, important aspects of life - through the effects of propaganda, the inundation of advertising. The stuff once of fantasy becomes mundane. Does no-one now care about quality of spirit?
From the “Free Trade” of globalized corporations (whose contradictory legal definition as a person who/which can be owned confirms questionable status “above the law”) we get myriad forms of pollution including morally bankrupt politics where superior money always wins, corrupt dynasties of cowardly decision-makers intent on buying happiness or perhaps some kind of grandeur, mega-tons of toxic waste, carcinogens, radiation, chemical spills, ozone depletion, carbon-dioxide inundation, water that needs to be cleaned before use, increased liver disease, bone and other cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, emphysema, asthma, learning disorders and etc… Environmental conservation and protection become but juvenile slogans as our resources go mostly to gluttony and over-indulgence, generating usually but palliatives, absurd status-symbols and snubs to the modest or poor. We get not only a dying Earth, but fear and dying soul, as religion becomes prostituted, torture justified and laughingly indulged, and humility and open-mindedness turned into treason. Accountability disappears, GMO crops replace nature, quality of life becomes a forgotten dream, and the future evaporates for humanity. To put ‘free’ and ‘trade’ together is just to propagandize.
There’s always resistance to recognizing past mistakes - most especially exploitationist attempts at do-gooding, “progress”, about which I can’t help but see two sides. No longer is there much focus on ‘Native’ exposure to Western examples denigrating trans-generational cultural transference (demeaning cultural values): no, but it has become recognized that extra-cultural involvement is usually interference. This is real; so is TV and government, also the evils of almost unavoidable cash-addiction. People who stake enough to really care feel strongly about this, as I do - and from living my beliefs (more than I found myself able to before coming here) I’ve found myself able to think in ways more clearly formatted.
People are better adjusted, healthier, happier and more productive when involved in decision-making regarding their work and home. Sweatshop factories may provide increased purchasing power for many, but certainly not quality of life, actualization of potential, or any kind of social stability. People are never without choice; the big question is how much the wealthy will recognize this, and when (meaning, rather willingly or, eventually, unwillingly). In so many ways, hunger for cash has attained a moral equivalency to hunger for addictive intoxicants, and similar also to the power-mad lust for control besetting modern society.
Laws designed to enhance or increase state power, instead of to protect and insure the rights and welfare of individuals, cannot promote peace, well-being or significant, lasting cultural growth. Corporate, like feudal, hierarchy leads to disease and despair, humiliation, crime, fear, rage, the expense of protective weaponry and guards (who guards – protects us from - the guards?), restriction and excessive taxation. What it gains for those on top is matched by what is simultaneously lost for them, something which apparently only the more enlightened, or perhaps more exposed to reality, ever recognize. Perhaps those aware of or bothered by losses to quality and potential in their ‘powerful’ lives enjoy the superiority implicit in infliction of distress, but this is clearly a false superiority. When the powerful “enrich” themselves at the cost of society, it’s like having the ball, but no game.
It may be widely believed that some unity in belief and understanding is essential to the integrity of a nation, and that much deviance from the norm would lead to common disaster, but it is proven that real strength and stability lies in variety, in diversity. Most might disagree, but I find I must submit, increase in trade under the present system with its dominant multinational mega-corporations, tends towards decreased diversity, and thus increased inherent instability and peril to human success and future generations.

Almost daily there’s important, but glum, news, reminders of immature leadership and the “weakness of the flesh.” One repeatedly needs to seek out avenues of new hope…
Instead of poisons to attack poisons, we can use life to strengthen life. A strong system can resist intrusion, and self-repair. Violence is just violence, and seldom a final solution except in case of death. Disease can often be rectified by producing change, strengthening the system and closing invasive routes.
If body politic can be seen as parallel to physical, blooded body, national boundaries can be seen as a kind of strangulation or poison, and far extents of cultural similarities as potential for life enhancement. It is the cash-poor, we must realize, who harbor the incubation of culture as it revives itself. Artists, scholars, political theorists, commentators and others must endeavor to check the ability of the overly-moneyed to squash that life.
Burmese generals, military-might maddened and punitive, surely feel a strong moral superiority to current meta-materialistic Thai polity. Other regimes in Southeast Asia, in Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Viet Nam, concur, hypocritically seeing Thailand as sold-out. The Thai, naturally sensitive to this, respond in their special Thai way - ‘nevermind’ and if you must talk about that, well, we just won’t be talking together. Thais now are, anyway, doing much better, materially, than many of their neighbors, and having fun with make-up, status symbols, pretensions, and putting cement everywhere. This is “progress” (kwam jalern in Thai, the bringing up and bettering, enriching, of things).
But the unmitigated acquisitive lust of the Thai ruling clique has met a powerful nemesis in the tricky Burmese autocrats. Both are heavily influenced by Chinese multinational societies, networks, though secret and often rival, which are poised to eventually become king-makers in Beijing, as they have been in Taiwan. These societies represent a new form of the Japanese East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Well trained through experience in drug trafficking, they have been taught by, and are well able to contest with, MI5, the KGB and the CIA.
The last-name societies of the Teh Chew, Hainan, Hakka, Wu - these are monetary forces with clout to rival nations of tens of millions. There are quiet representatives for them most places. Their influence in eastern and southern Russia, west Canada, Indonesia, Kashmir, and throughout Southeast Asia, especially in terms of high-seas crime, should not be under-estimated. A few hundred of the top men are billionaires. Some exert major influence over trillions. Theirs is a particularly Chinese agenda, which has involved removing non-Chinese tribals from Yunnan into Shan State. There the ‘lowly’ tribals are controlled by Chinese mobster/warlords not strongly under Beijing control, but very deeply involved in international Chinese trucking and extended transport. Some Japanese goods still successfully compete with things Chinese: vehicles, photographic stuff, pornographic videos. But it’s Chinese speakers who pull the most important strings in Southeast Asia.
Distressing reports have long been narrated by refugees clearly suffering great emotional distress, of Burmese army gang rape, unpaid forced labor, eviction of whole villages, ethnic cleansing, general gangsterism and recently even human sacrifice! Thousands of Lahu tribes-people lost their homes and livestock to Wa people relocated from the Chinese border. Tens of thousands of these Wa came from Yunnan, China, accompanied by, it seems, over 1000 Chinese ‘advisors’. They now live just north of the Thai border.
These displaced populations have brought to the fairly porous northern border area pneumonia, hepatitis, malaria, dengue, typhus, typhoid, cholera, encephalitis, TB and even, reportedly, humans infected with anthrax! Tea pickers and other laborers cross daily and traders and even big businessmen do regular, though often officially unsanctioned, cross-border commerce. Altogether over 150,000 people have recently been relocated in the Chinese and Thai borderlands of Shan State, Myanmar, where the Wa produce amphetamines (used by truck drivers, in sweat-shops, by laborers...). Tribal refugees continue to arrive in Thailand, but are not recognized as such, but called, rather, economic migrants.
Until we work out better micro-economics, we’ll never effectively counter the greed contributing to stress in our lives, in so many ways, today. Small is indeed, and still, beautiful. And peace better than noise.

Whoever is self-sufficient is rich... (Tao Te Jing, Part I, 33)
Grace is shameful, something inferior (Part I, 13)
The Man of Calling does not heap up possessions (Part II, 81)
True Words are not beautiful.

Ethical Ecological Economics

2011-06-21T20:05:00.001-07:00

Ethics, the systems for ruling our conduct and determining our responsibilities, must challenge “value-free” economic theories, especially as they result in a degraded environment and quite limited future for subsequent generations.
The Greek word oikos (house) is the root of both economics (“household laws”) and ecology (“household science”), while the word ethics derives from the Greek ethos (“custom” or “habit”). When ethical judgments proceed from awareness of interrelatedness in the biosphere, we get environmental ethics, with principles including biotic integrity, intergenerational equity and the precautionary principle. As environmental ethics must attempt to constrain use of resources, economics must become ecological economics, based on understanding of society’s dependence on the natural world.
The term ecology, coined in 1866 by German scientist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), was fashioned from the Greek word for household and the suffix logos (“word” or “study”). Haeckel proposed to study “the economy of nature,” i.e. each animal in relation to its inorganic and organic environment, so as to better understand “all those complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for its existence.” John Muir (1838-1914), was urging the federal government to adopt a forest conservation policy in 1876, and spoke out against overgrazing and environmental depletion. But biologist Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring (1962), which revealed that causal effects of human actions were much more complex, and so less predictable, than previously thought, stimulated worldwide awareness of the dangers of pollution, and the environmental protection movement.
But awareness of the importance of unintended consequences has been slow to catch on, especially among economists. That many more consequences to our decisions are unintended than intended should come as a surprise to no-one; we simply cannot take enough into consideration. This hardly helps encourage responsibility. And then there are also the many difficult truths people find themselves more than just inclined to ignore.
Vast amounts of evidence show how our natural environment has been degraded through both old and new technologies, by over-population and over-consumption; many of us now know there’s much we MUST do to reduce our impact on the environment, mostly by using resources more effectively, but pervasive public resistance to innovations that require even slight changes in behavior remains, and politicians are so focused on their support base(s) they’re unwilling to invest in support of long-term solutions to pressing problems.

In 1971, John Rawls (1921-2002) formulated a principle of justice, stating: “Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all.” He claimed that “Each person possess an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.”
Religious ethics may or may not be utilitarian, but “Do not do to another that which is hateful to yourself” and “Judge not lest ye be judged” present goals which can be seen as practical, depending on one’s focus, goals and sense of what actually works. Whether or not monotheistic (and anthro-centric) religions value the environment as an aspect of creation, and allow certain rights to nature and animals, pantheistic animism reveres nature, casting an interesting light on the notion of progress.
The importance of ethics as the foundation of good governance is widely recognized, but awareness of the political significance, and necessity, of ethics, is clearly in decline. Today ethics is taken as a personal matter, or a standard of publicly acceptable behavior, akin to politeness. This overlooks the serious purpose of ethics - nothing less than the achievement of individual well-being and social welfare, to which end it engages in the systematic evaluation of goals, rights and responsibilities.
The term economics, formed from two Greek words - oikos (house) and nomos (law) - early on meant the art of managing the household. Many ancients knew economic practices concerned not only household, or family, duties and benefits, but involved power and prestige, and sometimes, but only sometimes, wealth (an unworthy goal described as “unlimited acquisition”). Economic choices, like other choices, reveal our values and ideals about our rights, our responsibility to others, and our expectations.

Modern economics began with Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). It described a free market steering business owners and laborers, each acting out of self-interest, to manufacture goods providing the greatest national revenue – with no monarch or trade associations required. Smith claimed that a free market brings maximal welfare to society, as though each buyer and seller were “led by an invisible hand… without knowing it, without intending it, [to] advance the interest of the society” and “promote an end which was no part of his intention.” He thus gave rise to a phrase still in common use, “the invisible hand of the market-place.” By equating the supply of goods in the marketplace with the welfare of society, Smith adopted utilitarian values (“the greatest good for the greatest number”), and called laissez-faire capitalism the system of perfect liberty. Competition, being a protective mechanism similar to the conscience or superego, he posited, helps one to better one’s condition – through “a desire that comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us until we go into the grave”.
For nearly a century, economics was consumed with the search for a general theory of equilibrium describing how wages, prices, rent and interest balance in the marketplace. Others refined Smith’s concepts, and much later, Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) explained how an equilibrium price is fixed by that enduring concept, supply and demand, at precisely the point of marginal utility, ensuring optimum efficiency and full employment. But as macroeconomic models became more precise, they became increasingly unreal. Dissenters (notably Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen) accurately observed some disturbing market trends (towards overproduction, monopoly and unemployment), but these criticisms were often ignored, until 1929. Whatever might be said of the merits of classical economics, it should also be admitted that its practitioners not only failed to predict the Great Depression, but were helpless to aid in its recovery.
In 1879, American economist Francis Walker blamed economists’ “bad odor amongst real people” on economists’ inability to understand human behavior. People just don’t act the way economists think they should! They’re not only less selfish and less rational, but resent economists’ egotistic interest in self-interest; as economists give up on trusting others, others give up on trusting them (perhaps to their advantage).

In late 1919 John M. Keynes (1883-1946) made himself unpopular with very important and powerful people, by pointing out that the stringent reparations put upon Germany in the aftermath of WWI made for a corresponding lack of probability that debts thus made would get repaid. He advocated public works to reduce unemployment and create useful jobs, while “respectable” economists expected automatic adjustments by the free-market to solve all problems, and saw public works as useless because increases in government deficits would cause equal declines in private investment – quite contrary to the British experience since the incorporation of the Bank of England in 1694. Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money described how governments could shore up economies during downturns, by borrowing money to create jobs; as he explained it, since wage earners are consumers, borrowed money paid out would continue to circulate until impact of the “multiplier effect” was sufficient to stimulate private investment. Franklin Roosevelt’s government took Keynes’ advice, intervened in the market, and economic conditions improved.
Since then, governments have used Keynesian policies to promote economic growth, manage employment, and control inflation. Unfortunately, these policies discourage savings, depend on perpetually enlarging markets (economic growth), and operate not unlike a Ponzi pyramid scheme, to the benefit mostly of people NOT in need (the political and social elites). Savings, which the Keynesians don’t much like, may slow the rate of spending, or velocity of money, which indeed has real significance, but the flow of money preponderantly into the hands of the already rich also slows money transfers. A non-productive segment of society supported solely by growth-dependent investment profit, and another whose parasitical “work” consists entirely of gambling with derivatives, short-selling, futures speculation and currency trading (unfortunately now virtually insured by the US government), insure that another bubble is too soon to occur, through the very (Keynesian) mechanism used to fix the current (2009) market collapse - the bail-out. The cure is but temporary, a slight-of-hand tactic the ancient sophists were familiar with: using regression in place of explanation or solution (much as ‘foot-note’ textual references seem to, but don’t actually, verify a claim, or as positing the origins of life on Earth as having arrived from outer-space may briefly seem to provide (but not actually provide) an answer to the question of life’s origins).
As prominent Quaker professor of economics Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993) put it, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world, is either a madman or an economist.” Boulding also quite wisely claimed, “There is no such thing as economics, only social science applied to economic problems.” Many an academic discipline means but little, in isolation from understandings available from other academic disciplines.

Keynes’ student John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) described a symbiotic relationship between government and industry, with industry able to increase wages by raising prices, and corporate growth becoming “inseparable from the goal of national economic growth” but also criticized the assumption that continually increased material production is a sign of economic and societal health. His 1954 The great Crash, 1929 describes the infamous Wall Street melt-down, how markets progressively become unhinged from reality in speculative booms, and how people behave when their wealth is threatened. Although considered a Keynesian, he followed Veblin (evolutionary economist, author of 1899’s The Theory of the Leisure Class and coiner of the phrase “conspicuous consumption”), in believing economic activity can’t be distilled into inviolable laws. Arguing that speculative bubbles are inherent in the economic system because of “mass psychology” and the “vested interest in error that accompanies speculative euphoria”, he cautioned: “The world in finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.” Although a key advisor to President Kennedy, Galbraith has been denigrated as a “policy entrepreneur” writing solely for the public, as opposed to writing for other professors, and for making unwarranted diagnoses and over-simplistic answers to complex economic issues. Some academics have written him off as a mere media personality. Regardless of the truth to that, economists can’t present theories without finding the money and prestige that can come to them only through acceptability to the active financial system. One almost never hears an economist challenging the absurdly less-than-questionable corporate status as both (juristic) “person” and property – like slaves of old. Even less does one hear academic economists espousing anything like a sufficiency economy, or “living simply that others may simply live” – so the accusations seem a bit like the pot calling the kettle black!
Jospeh Stiglitz (1943-) won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics for work in asymmetries of information showing that “whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always… the invisible hand works most imperfectly.” While micro-economics has been providing increasing utility (useful specifics), general, macroeconomics involves no ‘unified field theory’ and economists mostly continue to describe and predict market activity that doesn’t really exist outside of theory. Economics has attained a dangerous degree of unreality – unreality unfortunately matched in much politics, in theories of the social sciences, in the “string-theory” of physics, and in many other modern areas of study and endeavor. Problems of bureaucracy, quality and quality control, patent and copyright law, power centralization, the corporate legal entity and its responsibilities, education and training, recycling, cleanliness, maturity and expectations – these just don’t sufficiently enough enter into our markedly delineated and overspecialized current academic disciplines, to gain the analysis and inspection necessary. Generalized, cross-spectrum, studies were what the liberal arts were organized to provide, but academia seems to have lost sight of that.
Economists have cultivated a kind of sophisticated fatalism that portrays negative social and environmental consequences as inevitable results of the marketplace, rather than as the product of their own erroneous policies. Quite unfortunately, an environmental collapse, or further economic collapse, may be needed to reform our economic models.

Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1912-2009, father-in-law of Diana Ross) produced ‘deep ecology’ theory (1990), with tenets including rejecting the artificial distinction between individual and environment, and opposing pollution while supporting democracy, diversity and decentralization. Focus on the inter-connectedness of all things earned ecology the nickname “the subversive science” as its findings, perspectives and principles are often used to challenge political, economic, and ethical perspectives in contemporary society. Ecology might even give rise to an ethic based on holistic values, and eventually successfully conflict with an economic theory based on individual consumption. According to Næss, every being, human, animal or vegetable, has an equal right to live and to blossom – an ethical attitude, but one hardly amenable to big business!
Ecology gained increased attention when, in the 1972 report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, ecologists predicted shortages of oil and other resources unless population growth slows or consumption decreases. A bio-centric principle of interconnectedness, developed by British environmentalist James Lovelock in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979), describes our planet as a complex interacting system, self-regulating and capable of reestablishing ecological equilibrium, with or without human life. Despite emphasis on spirituality, some more extreme forms of deep ecology have been strongly criticized as anti-humanist, on the ground that they entail opposition to famine relief and immigration, and also acceptance of large-scale losses of life caused by AIDS and other pandemics. Lovelock claims evidence to support his view in the co-evolution of earth’s atmosphere with that of plants and animals; the Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the earth form a single organism. Lovelock has argued that, as a result of global warming, “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” - by the end of the 21st century, and that 80% of humans will perish by the end of this century.

Farmer and writer Wendell Berry (1934-), an advocate of sustainability and the interconnectedness of life, characterizes topsoil as “ceaselessly transforming death into life, ceaselessly supplying food and water to all that lives in it and from it.” From the farmer’s perspective, Berry (1987) claims: “Our life and livelihood are the gift of the topsoil and of our willingness and ability to care for it, to grow good wheat, to make good bread; they do not derive from stockpiles of raw materials or accumulations of purchasing power.”
But corporations and the politicians they own don’t listen. Viable electric cars are among the oldest of automobiles, but despite viable Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda and Nissan models, few are on the market (‘though since 2001, India’s had one, and now has a very cheap one). Although problems with electricity production mean electric vehicles are little more ecologically sound than internal-combustion ones, solar, wind and geo-thermal production (among other available processes) can greatly reduce our fouling of our nest.
Atmospheric science repeatedly casts doubt on the earth’s ability to absorb waste products of human activity. Chlorofluorocarbons reduce ozone in the upper atmosphere, reducing filtration of ultraviolet light hazardous to human health. Carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation and increases global temperatures (the “greenhouse effect”); other pollutants and urban areas warm the earth, and the many cows we keep produce lots of dangerous methane. Discovery of these facts has alerted us that consequences of human activity are global in scope, hazardous, and not readily reversed. As Jared Diamond showed in Collapse (2005), many societies have died from failure to deal with ecological impacts they incurred.
All processes of releasing energy from fossil fuels cause pollution. Some claim that mankind is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and the planet’s chemical makeup has changed only naturally, as usual over long periods of time. Ocean covers 80% of the planet and releases carbon dioxide. There’s precious little we can do about climate, and about sun spot activity, we can’t do anything at all.
But, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and better safe than sorry. Whether one believes in a deity or deities or not, there is truth to the proverb, “God helps those who help themselves.” These aren’t just hackneyed slogans, but have much to do with our respect for our collective selves – respect which is a two-way street, and can only be gained by exerting the strength of will to address pressing problems.

Externalities, large-scale effects of production and use which distinguish between private costs and social costs, are called “spillover effects” (effects which spill over onto parties who may suffer or benefit, without participating in an associated transaction). Arthur Pigou (1877-1959), founder of behavioral economics, developed the externalities concept in The Economics of Welfare (1920). He’d studied with Alfred Marshall of King’s College, Cambridge, whose Principles of Economics (1890) introduced the concept of elasticity of demand, emphasizing that price and output are determined by supply and demand, which act like “blades of the scissors” in determining price. Pigou, among the first to recognize the importance of externalities in the marketplace, explained that production and distribution costs or benefits (conferred on others) often aren’t accounted for by those creating these costs or benefits. Pigou argued that negative externalities (costs imposed) should be offset by tax, and positive externalities rewarded by subsidies. His theory was somewhat undercut by ‘public choice’ economists observing that governments can and do fail, sometimes more spectacularly than markets. A more recent idea is that companies could buy vouchers giving legal right to pollute. With vouchers costing enough, businesses would try to find cheaper ways to stay within emissions standards. But business interests in the USA already spend millions on lobbying and think-tanks, to influence legislation… and neither governments nor money can always solve the problems people create!
Despite its problems, the “spillover effects” idea retains important validity. Pigou distinguished between social and private welfare, noting that private value differs from social value when “costs are thrown upon people not directly concerned, through, say, uncompensated damage done to surrounding woods by sparks from railway engines” and that, “All such effects must be included… in reckoning up the social net product.” For example, when erosion from a clear-cut hillside silts up creeks, but the lumber’s sale-price fails to include costs for compensating affected fishermen, this “externalized” environmental cost is passed on to society at large - through fish becoming more rare, fishermen less rewarded for their time and effort, and a diminished economy. Logging companies lack enough incentive to use less destructive methods, so they do ecologically devastating clear-cuts; but also, timber-buyers wanting cheap prices don’t seek substitute materials. Similarly, costs of automotive pollution aren’t included in car prices, and China has used up most locally available raw materials to produce cheap goods, without reckoning on impending consequences to having done that.
While markets (and consumers) may fail to distinguish between sustainably harvested wood, and wood harvested from a clear-cut (which destroyed habitat and future productivity), a tax to offset the value of lost resources might be used to help redress the situation; otherwise, the market promotes annihilation of the ecosystem, enriching a few but diminishing quality of life and likelihood of a viable future. Some will say, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” But Gretchen Daily and Katherine Ellison counter this well, observing (2002), “A woman’s work is never done - nor fairly compensated - and this is nowhere truer than in the case of Mother Nature. Much of Nature’s labor is of enormous and obvious value, which has failed to win respect in the marketplace until recently.”
For survival of the human species, our natural capital (natural resources) must be preserved, enhanced, and fostered into as much revival as practicable; and technology must be directed towards increasing productivity of natural capital, instead of human-made capital. If these things don’t happen, Pigou asserts, we’ve acted “uneconomically, in the most orthodox sense of the word.” Pigou’s suggested system of “bounties and taxes” to influence the price of goods might help markets to recognize the importance of externalities; now ecological economists devote considerable effort to determining the value of environmental externalities, to include in product price. But regulation by price is still regulation, and demands bureaucracy, itself a danger to humanity.
The character of bureaucracy was systematically analyzed first by German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). He failed to note many bureaucratic maladies: over-devotion by too many officials to precedent, inflexibility, reluctance to admit error, indifference to feelings and convenience of citizens, abuse of power, inaccessibility and ineffective organization, remoteness from the rest of the community, excessive self-important arrogance in dealing with the public, procrastination and waste of labor, and obsession with the binding authority of departmental decisions.
In finance as in bureaucracy, functionaries often cease to work for the public benefit, or even any tangible goal, but instead work only to improve their position within the system that dominates their days, indeed, whole lives. Means to ends become perverted into ends themselves. In what one must hope was unconscious parody of this monomania, Lawrence Summers, when president of Harvard, autographed dollar bills bearing an imprint of his signature (from his Treasury secretary days) to present to students – a far cry from a check signed by Picasso!
Max Weber did note that bureaucracy is inefficient when a decision must be adopted to an individual case, and that bureaucratic officials form status groups which mould their personal orientation, with over-specialization making individual officials unaware of larger consequences of their actions, and also other problems, including the discarding of common sense and tendency to mold “Catch 22” road-blocks. Later, Michael Crozier, re-examining Weber in The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (1964), noted that a “bureaucratic organization is an organization that can not correct its behavior by learning from its errors” (countering Weber’s view of bureaucracy as the ultimate expression of rationality and efficiency). In attempt to create rules to cover all possible events, bureaucracies inevitably fail, as has parallels in physics, ethics, economics and many other areas of analytic endeavor. Crozier also showed how, as hierarchic strata need to be isolated from each other for efficiency, individuals operating within zones of uncertainty or un-clarity wield considerable, unaccountable, and dangerous power.
Others soon noted that those who work to preserve the organization as opposed to working towards achieving its goals will eventually gain control of it, and implement policies and regulations contrary to public interest. In 1968, Lawrence Peter introduced the concept that job promotion continues as long as work is performed competently, then stops - when it no longer is. Workers thus reach a “level of incompetence” – where they stay. So, “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties,” with what little real work is accomplished done by “those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence”.
The ultimate dictum, though, is: The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource. This derives from Parkinson’s Law (1955).
Bureaucratic malfunctions were best depicted by C. Northcote Parkinson, British naval historian who, only somewhat facetiously, explained that “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Administrators make work for each other, he said, so as to multiply their number of subordinates and enhance their prestige. His second law, “Expenditure rises to meet income,” is detailed in The Law and the Profits (1960): government functionaries, he posited, are inclined to expand their own ranks as long as sufficient taxes can be raised to pay for them. Bureaucracy, like Keynes’ economy, must always enlarge (and thus defeat its original purpose) – or lose its power.
While to many Peter and Parkinson were but humorists, maybe a bit lighter than Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 but still merely playing on cynicism, an important message they all served to help transmit, that there’s too much human tendency to appreciate hierarchic posturings, remains important, indeed essential, to any realistic effort to address our present quandary (and achieve a viable future).

It’s become clear to all who bother to sufficiently investigate our situation that days of ‘conspicuous consumption’ and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, or expecting each subsequent generation to enjoy more material plenty, are over. A sizable minority of individuals have come to view ecological integrity not just as a preference, but as an essentially ethical matter, quite distinct from money or government, neither of which can do enough to compensate for loses associated with production. Our future must rest on personal decisions. Laws to protect endangered species have little effect when people believe those species can provide them with aphrodisiacs! An extreme example of choice was provided by the U’wa people in Colombia, when they threatened mass suicide rather than to allow Occidental Petroleum to drill for oil on their tribal lands. The only price they were “willing to accept” was infinite (Barnum 1998).
During the last half of the 20th century, both ethics and economics have been challenged to address social and environmental degradation. Issues from deforestation and crashing fish-catch numbers, to global warming and ozone depletion, and to growing income disparity, all demanded response. Ecology presents a paradigm for understanding the world based on the unity and interdependence of nature and human society, but only a fusion of ecological thinking with ethics and economics can bring sufficient rethinking of fundamental principles in line with new understandings, so that human society can proceed with anything like normalcy.
Environmental ethics means more than the application of ethical principles to environmental issues: awareness of the interdependence of all life on earth implies ethical consideration of the rights of future generations, and accepting responsibility for remote, long-term environmental impacts in a way that tests our understanding of consequences to our actions (a concept called the precautionary principle).
In A Sand County Almanac, American forester Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) proposed a ‘land ethic’: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Leopold held that the duty to preserve ‘biotic integrity’ was ethics in its most evolved form. Taking a Darwinian view of ethics, he saw its purpose as the expansion of human awareness to ever-widening circles of community, including the entire biosphere as “member[s] of a biotic team.” Obligations to preserve biotic integrity entail corollary duties, the foremost of which is to acknowledge the rights of other species. Biotic integrity prevents us from pursuing our own economic and political goals at the expense of the global ecosystem.
Principles of deep ecology also state that, “The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves… Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.” (Devall 1985) With this view, we must resist converting rain-forests into cattle ranches and mountains into strip mines. Deep ecology principles require familiarity with one’s neighborhood environment, to ensure that development protects the local ecology, even at high cost. The gap between rich and poor (both people and countries) must be reduced, not only out of a sense of fairness (however much justified), but to prevent the irreversible destruction of essential ecosystems. To meet their financial obligations, ‘developing’ countries from Brazil to Malaysia have routinely depleted their mineral and biological resources, severely, and often under the direction of international agencies. At the same time, ‘first world’ nations, with a quarter of the world’s population, consume 60% of the world’s food, 70% of the world’s energy, 75% of its metals, and 85% of its wood. The ethical necessity of relaxing pressures on poorer nations, and constraining consumption in richer ones, is obvious, the practical challenges not withstanding.
While the principles of biotic integrity can be seen as utilitarian (ensuring the survival of our species), they seek to extend rights to the biosphere, a controversial viewpoint countered by fundamentalists who claim (based on Genesis 1:28) that humans have a prior right to “rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky and all living things.” Others contend that the very idea of granting rights to nature is fundamentally unnatural, as no other species will ever prioritize the needs of others over its own. This is specious, as, for instance, whether bees mean us well or not, we can’t get along without them (as we can’t without bacteria, trees, legumes and grains, among other things). As another for instance, when we deplete numbers of predators, we end up with uncontrollable numbers of scavenger pests (particularly, rodents and insects). In that we have any duty at all, we have duty toward all, as diminishing life diminishes our very selves, and not just metaphorically.
Another moral principle derived from ecology is an ‘expanded scale of responsibility’, both in space and in time. “We all live downstream”, a truism in the water industry, perfectly describes the expanded scope of environmental ethics. Ecology doesn’t respect arbitrary human boundaries, a point demonstrated when Canadian forests are wasted by acid rain from US factories, and when San Diego beaches are fouled by Mexican sewage.
Environmental ethics require us to evaluate remote impacts of our activity, whether or not such studies are legally mandated, and to reduce the harm we’ve been causing. Since ecosystems persist for hundreds, or thousands, of years, environmental ethics means responsibility to future generations, ‘intergenerational equity’ defined by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development as “the use of resources to meet the needs of today’s generation without inhibiting the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
Intergenerational equity is particularly challenging as it raises questions of how much effort we should expend on behalf of our descendents. Biologist E. O. Wilson (1984) observed, “We want health, security, freedom, and pleasure for ourselves and our families. For distant generations we wish the same but not at any great personal cost.” In response to The Limits to Growth calling for strict conservation, some critics complained that the report failed to account for technological advances to come. Others have argued that conservation could deprive future generations of challenges which would stimulate their technical creativity. A more balanced solution proposed by John Rawls involves making intergenerational decisions from behind a “veil of ignorance,” as though we didn’t know which generation we were born into, thus avoiding excessive savings on the one hand and unsustainable consumption on the other (Rawls 1971).
The ecological ‘precautionary principle’ states, “when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” (Raffensperger 1999) This differs from risk analysis in its total aversion to risk, even of low probability or potential cost. We must ask, “What if we’re wrong?” and seek out alternatives with the least destructive consequences, and consider that our assumptions might turn out to be false, even though that will necessitate difficulties. We must better develop and implement non-carbon energy sources (solar, wind power, geo-thermal), since even if climate worries are unfounded, and these technologies unnecessary, global warming fears are real and the potential impact of not putting into place energy alternatives could be devastating. On a local level, the precautionary principle demands proper disposal of dental wastes, fluorescent bulbs and batteries - even while the receiving water’s capacity to absorb mercury and other toxins isn’t fully known. Again, better safe than sorry.
This approach is associated with ‘the soft path,’ as it prefers a diverse portfolio of low-impact projects with multiple benefits over large, capital-intensive solutions dependent upon a single resource (the ‘hard path’, i.e. nuclear energy). Recycling wastewater is better than building new dams and reservoirs, and investing in decentralized facilities, efficient technologies, and human capital is not really a choice. Among ‘soft’ techniques are conservation, reuse and providing water quality and quantity appropriate to the users’ needs instead of tapping new supplies. The soft path involves creating institutional policies to promote equitable access to water, proper application and use of economics, incentives for efficient use, social objectives for water quality and delivery reliability, public participation in decision making, and the education of youth for better understanding of ethical ecological economics.

Environmental ethics, under the precautionary principle, demand protection of the global ecosystem’s complexities, despite the difficulties of determining with precision what will result over extended periods of time. The underlying attitude is one of humility in the face of an interconnected world, one that is at the same time “known and unknown, visible and invisible, comprehensible and mysterious.” (Berry 1987) The approach points to the “ecological” nature of ethics itself, and requires consideration of events in a comprehensive manner, with the taking of responsibility for the consequences of our actions, even when they occur at second or third hand (as for instance, a drug dealer may be held liable for overdoses, or an arms dealer for terrorist deaths). While some have lauded this approach as evidence of our growing maturation as a species, environmental ethics adds a level of complexity to our decision making we’ve yet to come to terms with, as we must now balance ecosystem rights against individual and societal rights, including property rights.
Despite their common etymologies, ecology and economics have followed such divergent paths that they are often thought to oppose one another. WorldWatch founder Lester Brown (2001) noted, “The gap between economists and ecologists in their perception of the world as the new century begins could not be wider.” While economists see the environment as a subset to economy, ecologists see the economy as a subset to environment. Where one sees growth and progress, the other sees decline and depletion. Economists look at the global economy and international trade and investment to find a promising future with more of the same, while ecologists look ahead and see more intense heat waves, more destructive storms, melting glaciers and ice caps, and a rising sea level that will shrink land areas, even as population continues to grow.
The explanation that some environmentally beneficial project is “not economically feasible” merely masks, but does not excuse, the fact that the decision maker, for whatever reason, doesn’t value the environment as highly as some other opportunity available at the same (monetary) cost. Here again we see the appropriateness of the original status of ethics and economics as branches of moral philosophy, for no matter how elegantly we analyze them, economic choices are like other choices, in that through them we reveal our values and our ideals about our rights, as well as out perceived responsibilities.
Cost-benefit analyses and similar tools can be useful, but should augment, rather than replace, group decisions based on shared values. To that end, a number of guidelines have been proposed to help stakeholder groups recognize the value of sustainability. Daly and Cobb (1994) offered three principles for resource use: 1) the rate of harvest should not exceed the rate of regeneration (sustainable yield); 2) the rate of waste generation should not exceed the environment’s assimilative capacity; and 3) the depletion of non-renewable resources (where permitted) should correspond to equivalent development of renewable resources. The Natural Step (Hawken 1995) has four tests:
1.Does the project decrease dependence on non-renewable metals, fuels or minerals?
2.Does it avoid the production of new and persistent substances?
3.Does it increase biodiversity?
4.Does it use relatively fewer natural resources to create human value?
A “no” answer means environmental costs will be passed on to future generations. Like the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path and other ethical templates, these guidelines aren’t intended to expedite decisions, but rather to focus attention on our essential duties.

When Rachel Carson woke the world’s conscience and gave birth to a movement, she faced a severe challenge. As she expressed it, we are living in an era “in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.” If only the market is powerful enough to protect the environment, we may find that only the force of ethical argument is powerful enough to turn the market in the direction of sustainability.
In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith warned against businessmen having too much influence over public policy, explaining that those who live by profit “have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public”, while cautioning, “any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order… ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined… with the most suspicious attention.” 200 years later, we find shrinking glaciers and ice-caps, spreading deserts and a hole in the ozone the size of North America. We’ve gambled with the rent. We might possibly have the technical skills to live in equilibrium with our environment, but, do we have the ethical courage to overcome the obdurate fiscal and political obstacles?

Greek poet Hesiod told how Prometheus (‘Forethinker’), the supreme trickster and god of fire, gave fire to mortal man, ‘though Zeus preferred it hidden from him. As the price of fire, and as punishment for mankind in general, Zeus created the first woman, Pandora (‘All-giving’), and sent her down to Epimetheus (‘Hindsight’), who, though warned by Prometheus, married her. Zeus commissioned Hephaestus (another god of fire, and patron of craftsmen) to fashion a jar or box into which he put all evils (particularly, hard work and disease). Pandora was warned not to open it, but curiosity got the better of her and she lifted its lid - out flew the evils to pester mankind. But Pandora shut the lid before Hope could escape, so Hope (an evil?) remains within, carried as woman’s, or household, burden.
Our degraded natural world results from a history of defective thought, a misplaced sense of the relation of human beings to Being (Life) itself, to other humans, and to what sustains us. We somehow decided life is a competition – that winners survive (and maybe some of their cells do, but we all, of course, die). Somehow the ancient gods of the hearth and hospitality lost out to other gods – jealous, even petty deities supportive of war and conquest. The followers of these new religions readily admit to having relinquished position as curator/caretakers of a wondrous Garden, and their history has been one of hypocritical imposition and assertion in the face of obvious contraries to all asserted. Supremacy has been its emblem.
Instead of being jovial part-time predators, many have found fulfillment as challenged participants in extermination. As the Crown of Creation or not, we can accept that we are limited, that we cannot “win” and that we cannot just dismiss others as wrong, or aspects of our world as completely undesirable. We can be less demanding, less-self-centered, self-serving and critical, less mean-spirited and needy, and learn to laugh at slights real or imagined, which so many now too frequently find cutting to the quick. We can be of bigger hearts than we have been, for millennia, and thereby reap great benefits. All we need do is but change our perception of challenge.
Crisis can be opportunity, and by renewing foundations of self-respect in allowing people to not only feel, but actually be, needed and useful, to gain prestige and feel important, we can reduce dependence on money, bureaucracy, production and theory. To accomplish this, we must come to see personal success as inextricably intertwined with the common good, and re-imagine not only other people as more important than possessions, but life in general as so.

unstable atoms

2011-06-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

Holographic string theory and Dance Speed

In issue 2691 of New Scientist magazine, 15 January 2009, Marcus Chown claimed that Stephen Hawking’s black hole information paradox shows that “black holes are in fact not entirely ‘black’ but instead slowly emit radiation, which causes them to evaporate and eventually disappear. This poses a puzzle, because Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole. When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that information cannot be destroyed.”
Interesting: information cannot be destroyed. Maybe “information” here has some special meaning. Newspapers here in Thailand have used interesting catch phrases (among them, “organic laws” and “form a national government” - as if laws can be alive, and there has been no national government), and educators use fancy language like “brain-based education”… Maybe this is little more than that. For, otherwise, why do we not know who built the Sphinx and when, how the stones of Machu Picchu were so nicely fit together, where the missing “Tribes of Israel” went, why Lee Harvey Oswald and two Kennedy brothers had to be shot, and where “labor leader” (and crime boss?) Jimmy Hoffa’s body ended up?
Seems, though, that modern physicists don’t have to make sense anymore. They can talk “authoritatively” about large numbers of dimensions, “orders of infinity” (my ton of lead weighs more than your ton of feathers, or something), and many, many “singularities”! Now, our universe is speculated to have an “event horizon” like black holes - a 2D (but circular, global) shell. Chown writes of “deep physical insight: the 3D information about a precursor star can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram.” On this surface, tiny pixels contain all the information of our universe (a bit of info per pixel) - and our world may be but a great big hologram. Now, it’s true that our world may be amazingly like a hologram, with everything penetrating everything, and the whole picture kept somehow within every little piece of it, but - and call me weird if you will - I somehow just can’t see us having sex in two dimensions.
String theory and gravity waves indeed.

Twin brothers clock their baseball pitches at an equal rate of 90 miles an hour. One stands atop a train going 90 mph; at point A he passes his brother standing on the ground, and both, simultaneously, throw a pitch at a signaling device over the tracks 120 feet distant. The ball thrown from the train will hit in half the time as the other (about a second beforehand). If instead they point flashlights, and turn them on simultaneously as the train passes point A, the light arrives simultaneously. The speed of the train affects the speed of a ball thrown from it, but not the speed of light which starts from a similarly moving place atop of it.
Thus we can see that speed of light and other speeds are not really commensurate. And nothing we know of, except perhaps for sub-atomic particles (if they are that, and not forces or something else), travels at even a significant percentage of light’s rate. To speculate about how speed affects time may be meaningless. A thrown ball flying above a planet spinning while orbiting a star in a galaxy also in motion is really going how fast? Light may bend, but certainly doesn’t move in several ways at once, like that, and the full extent of other motions than that of light may be unknowable.
Speed relates only to relative positions of objects, and something spinning in a very tiny orbit, very quickly, has no speed relative to another object which remains nearby. This is contrary to common-sense. The speeding object is moving, just not in relation to the other object.
When Einstein speculated that time slows down as speed approaches that of light, he must have been thinking of absolutes: straight lines, a constant speed for light, and about definitively measurable standards. But apparently we can’t have anything quite exact like that. There are no straight lines outside of geometry; light curves and there is no absolute vacuum through which it might move at standard speed. Indeed, there is no fulcrum for our intellectual lever – nothing at rest, from which to judge the absolute speed, or real movement, of anything else.
I’m not interested in disparaging Einstein here - it’s easier to believe that he figured this out, than that he didn’t! And he did - unlike so many - admit to limitations, of both his theories and of mathematics. The rest of us would do well to learn to do likewise.
Not only does everything in Nature curve, but there are reflections, and looking into the extremes of space might have parallels to looking into a mirror with another mirror directly behind. And, with light traveling in curves, there are other ways we might see something many times simultaneously.
Not only are we inherently, innately limited by birth and death, and by the vast and the infinitesimal, we’re limited in our capacity to perceive and understand our very selves. Digestion and appetite may well forever remain mysteries to us, as surely will the workings of mind. Artificial, electronic “intelligence” can never be the same as the internal systems which inform (or perhaps compose) us – with chemical as well as electronic messaging, and an elaborate series of connectivities extending, perhaps, even extra-dimensionally. As Kurt Gödel’s famous proof shows, systems have involvement beyond what we can explain! How is it that we have strong hunches, and often look around so rapidly, when someone is inspecting us from behind? We don’t even notice most of what our nose does, though scientists have shown that it functions much more than is readily apparent.
Our limitations don’t stop with failure to know ourselves or our universe - we adhere to protocols of etiquette and propriety that also enforce significant constraints. There is always taboo, bad form, the possibility of provoking anger and socially debilitating embarrassment; and these curtail ability to communicate and explore.
I certainly don’t mean to suggest anything like “too much learning is dangerous” or “there’s no real evidence or fact, merely only opinion” (though I do like Charles Sanders Pearce’s formulation, “Truth is that opinion to which all men who investigate sufficiently are fated to arrive” - except for the ‘fated’ part, that is…)… No, indeed. I’m just saying we need, as 2-year-olds do, to realize and accept limitations and constraints, so as to better proceed with doing what we can, and must.
It needn’t shame us to have inadequate explanations for sleep, beauty, arousal, hate or our many irrationalities. We need to understand ourselves, and our world, as best we can, but even more, we need to learn to live successfully with each other and our environment. In this is meaning, purpose, direction and perhaps, fulfillment. The answer, even, to the question of the meaning of life - it is a process of multiplicity organizing itself into shared, mutually beneficial patterns. I’m not really clear that we need more.

That sounds a bit overblown and preachy, but I can elucidate with a meaningful example: Not so long ago, the members of most communities participated in dancing, if not also singing and/or playing musical instruments of one sort or another. Waltz or square-dance, with call and response or story lyrics, or even just rhythmic line-dancing, this was (and sometimes still is) a backbone of cooperative spirit. It helps align and integrate, synchronizing personal rhythms, facilitating working together, group functionality and mutual aid. People who actively experience themselves as part of something, in this way, or other ways, usually have much less to prove - about their ego and sense of worth, integrity and self. Those lucky folk are aware of fitting in, being accepted.
It’s a great loss to have so thoroughly abandoned that. Jumping up and down to the electronic beat of a techno-DJ is hardly a sufficient replacement. Similarly, our enhanced ability to communicate – hand-phones, e-mail, radio – has led to content-vacuous, often semi-illiterate, text-messages, with limited variety of “smileys”… and some think, increasing hate-spewing. Words now refer to things, possessions - instead of the processes and patterns referred to in ancient sung languages (or so I like to suppose). Processes, cycles, and locations within them… relationship and place in pattern… another kind of valuing…
The search for technological, material comfort proves often counterproductive, with loss of sense of focus, direction and purpose. The great promise of cars, and of TV, have been belied by traffic jams, mindless programming and outrageous expense. For whatever has been gained, much has also been lost.
Surely society can be better organized and arranged, more stable and more conducive to intellectual and artistic creativity and contribution from almost every individual. Is it hard, or bad, to believe that more sharing, and more real satisfaction, is not only possible, but necessary, even essential? We must cease to be deceived by greed and material lust; and also, naturally, more able to do things in group. While also, I hope, maintaining at least some of the freedom inherent in individuality.
Communities of place, occupation, religion, academic interest, age, activity preference, sexual orientation, language, race, background, skill, handicap, involvement and/or obligation can forestall sense of alienation, and similarly of growth of desire for oblivion. And also forestall boredom, depression, anger, anguish, angst and especially despair, providing sense of place and belonging, involvement and acceptance, integrated fun as some moderns still have with ball games and other team activities. But dance, nicely, has no losers.

“Electromagnetic” radiations and the speed of light

Looking up “light” I find it’s considered a kind of radiation; James Clerk Maxwell published on this in 1873. The speed of light was first determined experimentally in 1675; in one of those imaginary vacuums nature so abhors, it travels at ‘exactly’ 299,792,458 meters per second (approximately 186,282 miles per second); and there’s no generally accepted support for the notion that this value has ever changed over time (although, if Big Bang theories are at all correct, very early on it must have). The speed of light, or, better said, perhaps, of electromagnetic radiation, in a vacuum, has somehow come to define the meter (a meter’s now defined in terms of the speed of light – anyone out there see a problem with that? Hint: think pragmatic, functional viability). Light travels slower in water, but somehow also at a constant speed, between the particles of any substance through which it is shining. Its photons excite adjoining particles which in turn transfer on energy, which may appear to slow the beam down, or something like that…; one web entry has it, “time lost between entry and exit results from displacement of energy through the substance between each particle that is excited.” Light doesn’t slow down, energy just gets displaced, like.
Light, an oscillating form of energy, moves from side to side between two limits (motion doubtless not taken into account in measuring light speed). It can convey information from one place to another; our eyes provide us with but a minute fraction of the information imprinted on light entering them. Light travels in waves which sometimes behave as particles (photons).
All recognized forms of EM radiation, in a spectrum ranging from very low frequencies (radio and television waves, microwaves, infrared) to visible light and on to ultraviolet light, X rays and gamma rays, have the same speed in vacuo, and show wavelike nature (with interference, diffraction, and polarization). Light, radio waves, X-rays and gamma rays are all the same type of thing: streams of photons. The only difference among them is the amount of energy in the photons. In the waves, electric and magnetic fields change their magnitude and direction each second, a rate of change (frequency) measured in hertz cycles. The electric and magnetic fields are always perpendicular to one another and at right angles to the direction of propagation. There’s as much energy carried by the electric component of the wave as by the magnetic component.
Matter can’t reach the speed of light - to do so would result in the matter acquiring an infinite amount of mass! Photons have no mass, but do have energy (again, anyone see a problem? e=mc²? If m=0, e=what? not much, but photons are very little? Well, there’s no nothing, except maybe far off perpendicular to our perceptible galaxies…).
Radiant-heat energy is emitted only in finite quanta (photons). Einstein asserted that the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency; everything has both a particle nature and a wave nature, and various experiments can be done to bring out one or the other. The particle nature is more easily discerned if an object has significant mass.
Electromagnetic (EM) radiation is somehow said to have no mass and travel in waves. The photon, something like a tiny packet of energy, always in motion, is the base particle for all forms of EM radiation. The amount of energy a photon carries makes it sometimes behave like a wave and sometimes like a particle; low-energy photons (like radio) behave like waves, while high-energy photons (X-rays) behave more like particles. EM radiation can travel through otherwise empty space, which differentiates it from other types of waves, like sound waves, which need a medium to move through.

Problems with speed of light are many - not the least of which is the problem of time itself, by which speed is measured. If, at close to the speed of light, matter becomes denser, and chronometers work slower, has time slowed? When your watch is slow, you don’t assume time’s changed speed!
Except when influenced by intense gravity, light travels in a straight line, it’s claimed. But what’s straight? Straight is a mathematical formulation, like number, or parallels. Fine in Euclid’s Geometry, but maybe not in the experiential world, where all curves, if only just slightly. For a while it was assumed gravity had no effect on the path of light, but then it was shown that it does. It bends around planets, and can’t escape “Black Holes”!

Light travels at the same speed regardless of the speed of its point of origin - well, at least as far as we can determine. So much depends on context; we don’t know what speed we’re “really” traveling at, because there’s no absolute point of reference! And what is speed, anyway? Is something going quickly in a small orbit going fast? Maybe so, but what about something spinning? If you spin in a tiny orbit, really, really quickly, will you age slower? I suspect not!
Sound travels in waves but not quantum bursts or particles (quantum theory has electromagnetic radiation flowing through space in photons, also called light quanta, and thought of as packets of energy). Better experiments have been done with sound than can be with light, and people have exceeded its speed. But any measurement of velocity requires a definition of the measure of length and of time, and though great advances in measurement are claimed, all remains relative.
Scientists now say clocks run slower in strong gravitational fields, as well as at great speeds (Earth goes around the sun at 20 miles per second, but the sun, and the galaxy move too… so total speed is more than that, relative to what, we don’t know, except that, maybe, we’re going at only about 1/9000th the speed of light…). Atomic clocks, used since 1972, are pretty good, but we simply haven’t adequate data on atomic (cesium) emissions (or better, oscillations) under (greatly) varying conditions… for instance, in a much stronger gravitational field. Theory holds that if a cesium atom is totally unperturbed - not affected by any magnetic fields, no light shining on it - then its resonant frequency is stable; in reality, the resonant frequency changes all the time, and we’ve no absolute clock (much as we’ve no absolute measure of anything). It’s not really whether cesium activity is regular, but that rates of change can vary, and that ‘scientific’ data, and with all statistics, can be, and often are, manipulated for political (as well as economic) ends. Too much science is underpinned by questionable assumptions, and will surely again be re-writ (given human survival).

Why, I keep wondering, would energy and mass be functions of the speed of light? What kind of relation is that? And, since speed of light isn’t as precise as many like to pretend, or assume, squaring it could lead to a not very spot-on answer. Mass, too, is not as precise a quantity as we might like to imagine: for one thing, separate the parts of a molecule, and somehow you end up with more mass. Gold involves a lot of stored energy – but, I suspect, in a very different manner than radioactive uranium or plutonium.
An even bigger problem is that mass (inertia) and speed are incommensurates; multiplying them seems to me like multiplying height by an interest rate. Mass – according to what unit of measure (International Prototype Kilogram, avoirdupois pound, or the one used by engineers, nicely named the slug)? Speed – in miles or kilometers? And per second, at what rate of relative speed, someone else (but certainly not me) might even wonder.
If you multiply the horsepower of a car by its weight, you get a figure which could help compare its efficiency to other cars – although matters like accelerative capacity, oil use, exhaust production and expectancy for replacement part necessity aren’t included. A lump of granite can do “work” as a doorstop or weight, and copper (gold and silver too) as an electrical conductor, but I’m not sure that’s quite the same concept.
So, what is this “energy” quantity? Certainly not just the potential explosive power which could be produced. Energy is defined as the capacity for doing work. We burn wood or coal for energy (heat) produced, but certainly not gold, nor granite. Nor do we make nuclear energy from granite. Maybe it could be done from gold, but I won’t be expecting that. We use things already emitting energy, radioactive energy.
Is it all just baffling us with “science” or something like the neo-con republican think-tank verbal cons? I hardly know.
What I do know is that our conceptual framework isn’t all we like to believe it to be, and humanity seems to be losing capacity to interact cooperatively, working toward a shared goal. Hunters had to, and rice growers still do, but sense of common goal seems to be dissipating, diminishing or at least in decline.

Here’s a fascinating one: João Magueijo, a native of Portugal and professor at Imperial College, London, has put forth the idea that in the very early days of the universe light traveled faster. His varying speed of light (VSL) theory of cosmology - an alternative to the more mainstream theory of cosmic inflation - proposes that the speed of light in the early universe was of 60 orders of magnitude faster than its present value.
But if light were faster, distances were smaller (expanding universe and all)… time for some ‘duration’ immediately after a Big Bang had no meaning (no way to be measured - no clocks, cesium-133 or anything like that)… and for all we can expect, even gravity acted differently.
Conjecture on string theory, and about a Big Bang too, can not even be called wrong, but only meaningless. There is nothing referential about everything coming from nothing, the “first second” or, despite mystical experiences (which even I have had), some larger, meta-universe. All that is no better than talk of orders of infinity, the square root of negative numbers, or angels dancing on the head, or tip, of a pin. If anything at all can be said of those matters, anything at all can be said of them. An important idea here, usually lost sight of, is that there can be no 1:1 mapping, no complete description of anything, no explanation that takes into account everything. Like it or not, we are limited.
As for e=mc², why not mc³(cubed)? How can it be effectively claimed that the energy within an atom has really been fully quantified? What modern physics has presented us with has largely been but elaborate mathematics - little better than theology. It has not only presumed, but ignored, too much… and been used, perhaps, mostly, as propaganda to prop up political and economic power.
But scientists seem to ignore these matters, perhaps clarifying how some of them can believe in the ‘literal truth’ of the Bible. Can’t tolerate any pesky, enduring mysteries, at least outside of our canons of faith, can we?

More on Einstein, baffling the public and light speed

The more I think about Einstein, and especially about the equation e=mc², the more absurd it all seems. OK, maybe, just maybe, gold involves a lot of stored energy – but, I suspect, in a very different manner than radioactive uranium or plutonium. But why, I wonder, are energy and mass functions of the speed of light? What kind of relation is that? And, since speed of light isn’t as precise as many like to pretend, or assume, squaring it could lead to a not very spot-on answer. Mass, too, is not as precise a quantity as we might like to imagine: for one thing, separate the parts of a molecule, and somehow you end up with more mass. An even bigger problem is that mass (inertia) and speed are incommensurates; multiplying them seems to me like multiplying height by an interest rate. Mass - according to what unit of measure (International Prototype Kilogram, avoirdupois pound, or the one used by engineers, nicely named the slug)? Speed - in miles or kilometers? And per second, at what rate of relative speed, someone else (but certainly not me) might even wonder.
If you multiply the horsepower of a car by its weight, you get a figure which could help compare its efficiency to other cars – although matters like accelerative capacity, oil use, exhaust production and expectancy for replacement part necessity aren’t included.
A lump of granite can do “work” as a doorstop or weight, and copper (gold and silver too) as an electrical conductor, but I’m not sure that’s quite the same concept.
So, what is this “energy” quantity? Certainly not just the potential explosive power which could be produced. Energy is defined as the capacity for doing work. We burn wood or coal for energy (heat) produced, but certainly not gold, nor granite. Nor do we make nuclear energy from granite. Maybe it could be done from gold, but I won’t be expecting that. We use things already emitting energy, radioactive energy.
Is it all just baffling us with “science” or something like the neo-con republican think-tank verbal cons? I hardly know.
What I do know is that our conceptual framework isn’t all we like to believe it to be, and humanity seems to be losing capacity to interact cooperatively, working toward a shared goal. Hunters had to, and rice growers still do, but sense of common goal seems to be dissipating, diminishing or at least in decline.

Some things pointed out many other places on the web:

Nikola Tesla, one of our greatest inventors, deserves credit for much modern technology. Critical of Einstein's relativity work, he said, “General Relativity is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king..., its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists...” (New York Times, 11 July, 1935).
Tesla also said, “I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.” (New York Herald Tribune, 11 Sept., 1932). He claimed that much of Einstein’s relativity theory had been proposed by Ruder Boskovic: “...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, notwithstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum ...” (from a 1936 unpublished interview, quoted in Anderson, L, ed. Nikola Tesla: Lecture Before the New York Academy of Sciences. 6 April 1897 : The Streams of Lenard and Roentgen and Novel Apparatus for Their Production, reconstructed 1994). Boscovich claimed that the observer can never observe the world as it is; he can only describe the interface (or “difference”) between himself and the world. A logical deduction from this is that a state of motion of the whole world relative to a stationary observer is equivalent to a state of external motion of the observer relative to the world.
Tesla, in 1936, said that he’d figured out how the universe and gravity worked, and wrote a book titled The Dynamic Theory of Gravity. But the book was never published and upon his death in 1943, the FBI raided his home and confiscated all of his research and notes. Tesla’s papers and other property were reportedly impounded by the United States’ Alien Property Custodian office.
A PBS special on Einstein’s wife stated that he did a lot of his early work with her; then, after their break up, his work wasn’t as good. Others credited with developing SR include, apart from Fitzgerald, Lorentz, Minkowski and Poincare. Although most historians of science don’t credit him with the discovery, some say Poincaré invented at least 90% of special relativity (light synchronization, the relativity principle, philosophical relativity of time, etc.) before Einstein.
Einstein tried to mechanistically explain the universe, and failed. Many of his ideas may have come from patents that he had access to through his Swiss Patent Office job… Tesla may have understood the universe better than Einstein, or perhaps not - his ideas just came to him, he claimed. Tesla’s good friend Mark Twain summed things up nicely: “Nothing exists except empty space and you - and you are but a thought.”

Unstable atomic nuclei

While I’m hardly a chemist, I can think, which lots of chemists can’t, at least not very well or much. Physicists are even worse: see the Schrödinger’s cat babble (either the cat is breathing or not, it’s not about the human observer). Our social structure is arranged so that we tend to believe that we have betters who can do things we ourselves cannot, which is hardly the case, but useful for social control. We’re given fables to live by, to insure some degree of social stability (instead of the egalitarianism of anarchy), and most of us simply accept them. Which causes lots of problems.
Matter, in a manner of speaking, is not discreet. It emits stuff – radiations, and particles that can be smelled, some from decomposition, some not. It doesn’t cling tightly together in discreet units, but is interactive, its boundaries really rather vague.
As is also the matter/energy relationship. Matter reacts; and energy is the advent of reactions of attraction &/or repulsion. Sometimes more is exhibited, sometimes less, but it is NOT an inherent quantity, any more than matter is truly solid. All is interactive, all a temporary state, leading, as it were, to its opposite. Matter and energy come and go.

Radiation is energy in motion, either at light-speed or less (but appreciably greater than thermal velocities, the velocities of molecules forming air). It results from unstable atoms, with an excess of energy or mass (or both).
One type, electromagnetic radiation, includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared rays, visible light, ultraviolet rays, X rays, gamma rays, and the neutrino. These have zero mass when at rest (theoretically). Another includes electrons, protons, and neutrons, particles which have mass in a (theoretical) state of rest. They’re constituents of atoms. When such forms of particulate matter travel at high velocities, they are regarded as radiation. Radiation includes heat, sound, ultraviolet frequencies, the visible color spectrum and EM radiation. Radioactive materials naturally degrade into lighter “daughter” elements, which in turn degrade, culminating in stable elements (a process called fission). When bombarded by neutrons, atoms of a rare type of uranium (uranium-235) release neutrons that split other uranium atoms in a chain reaction.
Unstable atomic nuclei spontaneously decompose to form nuclei with a higher stability. This decomposition is called radioactivity, and energy and particles released during the decomposition process, radiation. Radiation comes from unstable atomic nuclei, travels through space and can penetrate matter. Atoms with unstable nuclei are said to be radioactive.
Put alternately, radiation is a process where energy emitted by one body travels (in a ‘straight’ line through a medium or through space), and sometimes becomes absorbed into another body. In order to stabilize, unstable atoms give off, or emit, excess energy or mass, called radiation. Kinds of radiation are electromagnetic (like light) and particulate (i.e., mass given off with the energy of motion). EM gamma radiation originates in the atomic nucleus while EM x-rays come from electrons, the electronic part of the atom.
A brief digression: my parents were respected and successful educators: my father a scientist (behavioral psychology) and my mother a musician (harp). When I was having trouble with high-school chemistry, my mother suggested thinking of it as like cooking (not recognizing that I was still unclear about how to heat a hot dog). But my father said, no, that’s not right, it’s not the same. I suppose they were both partly right, and that the analogy I’ll use now is similarly only half-way appropriate. Radiation is like smoke, something given off from heat, internal activity, an undergoing of change.
Radiation is classified as either ionizing or non-ionizing. Non-ionizing radiation (visible light, infrared, microwaves, radio waves and long-wave, low-frequency radiation) is lower energy radiation that comes from the lower part of the EM spectrum; it doesn’t have enough energy to completely remove an electron. Energy released from radioactive atoms, ‘ionising radiation’, involves a non-radioactive atom hit by radiation, giving up an electron, and thus ‘ionised’. Ionising radiation is released by nuclear fission. It involves enough energy to detach electrons from atoms or molecules (the process of ionization), and comes from both subatomic particles and the shorter wavelength portion of the EM spectrum (ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays and subatomic particles including alpha particles, beta particles and neutrons). Subatomic particles are usually emitted as an atom decays and loses protons, neutrons, electrons or their anti-particles. Ionizing radiation, from unstable atoms, produces charged particles (ions). The three types of ionising radiation are alpha, beta and gamma; ionizing particles include alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons and cosmic rays.
About 1900, it was determined that some radiation is 100 times more penetrating than the rest; the less penetrating emanations became known as alpha rays, while the more powerful ones beta rays, after the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. Beta and alpha radiation are particulate radiation; alpha radiation consists of a stream of positively charged alpha particles, equivalent to a helium nucleus. Beta radiation is a stream of electrons, called beta particles. When a beta particle is ejected, a neutron in the nucleus is converted to a proton, so the mass number of the nucleus is unchanged (here I get lost, as the atomic number increases by one unit). Gamma Radiation, or Gamma rays, are high-energy photons of very short wavelength (on the short-wavelength end of the EM spectrum). The emission of gamma radiation results from an energy change within the atomic nucleus. Gamma emission changes neither atomic number nor atomic mass, but the high frequencies of gamma rays are even more penetrating than X rays. Alpha and beta emissions are often accompanied by gamma emissions, as an excited nucleus drops to a lower and more stable energy state.
Encyclopedia Britannica says, “Until the 20th century, physicists had studied such subjects as mechanics, heat, and electromagnetism that they could understand by applying common sense or by extrapolating from everyday experiences. The discovery of the electron and radioactivity, however, showed that classical Newtonian mechanics could not explain phenomena at atomic and subatomic levels. As the primacy of classical mechanics crumbled during the early 20th century, quantum mechanics was developed to replace it. Since then, experiments and theories have led physicists into a world that is often extremely abstract and seemingly contradictory.” Theories of wave/particle duality and indeterminacy arose, and the public became conveniently baffled. This hasn’t kept North Koreans (among others) from making quite dangerous bombs, though, although it has kept the Swiss from noting the full extent of the real dangers of particle colliders (which may or may not be even more dangerous, but do emit radiation).

Uranium, a silvery-white metallic chemical prevalent in the environment, slightly softer than steel, is unstable and weakly radioactive, and reacts with almost all nonmetallic elements. Normal functioning of the brain, kidneys, liver, heart and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure.
Radiation varies in strength; while casual exposure to gamma rays emitted by some radionuclides can cause severe harm, alpha rays emitted by uranium outside the body poses little threat to human health. But when inhaled or ingested, uranium’s emissions alter the cellular reproductive process, creating great risk of lung and bone cancer. Radioactive substances harm living organisms by emitting alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma radiation, all of which ionize molecules they strike by knocking off a negatively charged electron. Even small amounts of radiation have potential to harm humans – especially ionizing radiation (light is hardly as dangerous). An antidote to uranium exposure is bicarbonate, used because uranium forms complexes with carbonate, becoming much less dangerous. We’re always exposed to radiations, and instabilities, but we can make choices, and it is part of our programming (a part fairly well circumvented in many ways) to try to protect ourselves. I’m afraid we could do a much better job of that, but have abdicated responsibility, allowing ourselves to become dependent on “our betters”. But “our betters” aren’t always thinking things through. Often they’re paid to think this or that, and not something else. Some of them even pay others to do their thinking for them (equally, in a certain way, and not in certain other ways). I was taught that Einstein’s work made atom bombs possible; by now I’m not at all sure there was much of a real connection at all.

And it was pretty weird to see a Yahoo!News headline saying a star had been observed coming out of a Black Hole… maybe that star is carrying info about the Sphinx, Machu Picchu, and some infamous dead folk?

A Story With Legs

2011-06-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

The old woman, chewing some khat (qāt), took her time to get started, but when she did, her words quickly gained steam. This is what she told:

Long ago, a story goes, 3 boys saw, in each other, much more than they saw in others. And so they excited each others’ ambition, and promised mutual assistance, to help those ambitions along. Then, later, they naturally fought.
The story has been retold, changed, and made to serve a variety of differing purposes, pruposes, though, mostly not about transmitting understanding of the human condition. No-one really thinks it wrong that the great no longer are as they were when young, and no longer see things as they did then. And a story is just a way to tell other things, things that come with the story itself.
The three became kings, or heroes, or villains – it doesn’t matter which. They became important, and thus, rivals. Instead of doing each other good, they sometimes did each other harm, much as we sometimes do to ourselves. For though we like to be part of something big, we like even more to be big. And that makes us small.
Over a thousand years, this story travelled 10,000 miles, and then did that again, all the while becoming more and more a part of us, until what had been wrong and tragic had become no more than normal. This happens with stories. So, that three united would unceasingly fight became not a marvel, but expected. And that one might leave honor behind, for another kind of success, became normal too. And bad became good, and good bad, in the swirling eddies of our minds… and what once was laughed off as a Million, a whopper, a Really Big One, became somehow like truth itself, repeated so often and changed so very well that arrogance became idolized, and who was admired despised. It’s an old story indeed, and in many an ancient story you can find its seed.
Consider: those who went out to do good, but did more bad, return to brag on what they learned, telling others of things they’ve been told, and misunderstood.
Consider the story of Nizam, Omar and Hasan, and that of the Peach Tree Vow.

Abu Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi Nizam al-Mulk (or Qiwamu ad-Deen, Abu Ali al-Hasan bin Ali ibn Ishaaq at-Tusi, or Abu Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi Nizam al-Mulk, best known now as Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk al-Tusi) was a Persian scholar, and became (albeit briefly) sole ruler of the Seljuk Empire. Born about 1018, in Tus (now the Iranian city of Imam al-Ghazali), he was educated for administration. When still young he chose to enter into the service of the foreign Seljuks, and in the mid 1040s became an adviser to a commander in Balkh (now part of Afghanistan). It was the custom for the Seljuk princes to rule a portion of the empire in order to gain experience for running the entire empire, and Nizam al-Mulk was able to quickly demonstrate his genius by advising the Turkic prince and heir to the Seljuk throne who became Sultan Alp (or Alab) Arslan. After serving brilliantly as Alp Arslan’s secretary, he became the vazir (like a prime minister) of the new sultan, around 1054. Later, he was also vazir to that sultan’s son, Malik Shah (ruled 1072 to ’92).
By 1059 he was chief administrator of Khorasan province. Despite early poverty, by diligence, perseverance and the strength of a strong persona, he gained great success. Vizier for 30 years, from 1063 to ’92, under two sultans, he abolished taxes, made a new military system, built libraries and paid salaries for both teachers and students. One of the most illustrious ministers of the East, known for redressing the wrongs that occurred under his government and with great ability in organizational matters, he encouraged study of Islamic sciences and arts, and spent much money on the seekers of knowledge, yet, still, he seemed to many aloof and autocratic, and was the subject of much satire. And he irritated Shi’ites, by showing preference for fellow Sunnis.
The Seljuks, a tribe of the Central Asian Kazakh Steppes, driven west by other tribes, entered Anatolia soon after 1000CE, and captured Baghdad in 1055. They soon completely overpowered the Abbāsids but left to the Abbasid caliph his position as religious leader, leaving the caliphate some authority. They built a powerful empire centered on Persia, and came to be seen as the restorers of Muslim unity under the Sunnite caliphate. Soon after 1060, their empire included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and almost all of what’s now Iran; somehow they considered themselves as rightful heirs to all conquered for Islam in Prophet Mohammed’s time. Like the Mongols who came after, they were great horsemen. They were also Sunni Moslems, but with little of Islamic tradition, let alone literary heritage. They adopted much of Abbasid Persian culture. The first invade all of Anatolia, with them Turkey became Islamic.
Malik’s empire controlled much of Arabia, Mesopotamia, and other areas near the Persian Gulf, with a policy of utilizing diplomacy rather than military conquest. Nizam al-Mulk earned the title al-Wazir al-Kabir, meaning “The Great Minister;” Nizam al-Mulk means “the order of state”. A brilliant leader, modest and devoutly religious, brilliant at mathematics and eloquent in his writing, his work did much to smooth over the political gap between the Abbasids (who had the 2nd great Muslim empire, after the Umayyad caliphate) and the Seljuks, and also against their various rivals. He wrote a voluminous treatise on kingship, the Siyasatnameh (Book of Government, King’s Policies or Rules for Kings), a treatise on kingship and governance. A devout Sunni, Nizam founded a number of theological schools, the famous Nizamiyyah schools, which were named for him. He built the famous madrasa (university) in Baghdad named for him, the An-Nizamia, and several other schools (one in his hometown, another in Basra, others in cities you may not have heard of, Nisapur, Marw, Harat, Balkh and Isbahan). He also built and funded hospitals. But his schools were Sunni oriented, the Shia group Ismaelia accused him of being a tyrant, and rebelled against him. After administering affairs of state for 30 years, Nizam-Al-Mulk was overthrown. The principal sultana has been accused of instigating this, and utilizing the aid of the Chamberlain, an enemy to Nizam. Perhaps he was impeached for having rashly declaring that his cap and ink-horn badges of office were connected by divine decree with the throne and diadem of the Sultan. That’s claimed too. At any rate, at age 93, Nizam-Al-Mulk was dismissed from office, and at almost the same time, murdered. The assassination may have been about a rivalry between two groups of religious jurists (Shafi’ites and Hanafites), also, it mioght have been ordered by Hassan i-Sabah, who’d become a personal enemy of Nizam-Al-Mulk, and at odds with the state for at least 15 years. This also involved religious differences. You can decide which seems most likely, as proof, one way or another, is unlikely now to be discovered.

Legend tells that Hasan al Sabah, Omar Khayyam and Nizam al Mulk became tight friends while studying together. They decided to cement their bond, and in a pact just a bit too reminiscent of the Peach Garden Pact at the start of the famous ancient Chinese classic “The Three Kingdoms”, those three swore that, since at least one of them was bound to attain wealth and power, “to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and preserve no pre-eminence for himself.” The three personalities, though, or however, were hardly compatible. The story of the three school-fellows is also unlikely to have much truth as Nizam ul-Mulk was at least 12 years older than Hasan, maybe almost 40. Omar Khayyám may have been younger than Nizam, but was also at least a decade older than Hasan. While it’s true that Hasan started his studies at an early age, and friends can have age differences, the age difference is simply too great. But maybe they knew each other: it’s said that while Khayyam was reforming the calendar, Hassan Sabah became mace-bearer to Sultan Alp-Arselan, and that enmity between Hasan and Nizam occurred only after that.
Their agreement, that if one should gain prominence, he’d help the other two to do likewise, meant that when Nizam became vizier, and so the most powerful of the three, he offered both friends positions of rank in the court. It’s significant that he’s now the least (by far) remembered – although it was perhaps he who had the most lasting impact. Omar’s calendar should have been more important – it’s better than the one commonly used now. Omar asked only to be given the means to continue his studies indefinitely; he didn’t want responsibilities at court. So Nizam built him an observatory. Hassan rose to become the court’s Intelligence Chief, but the vizier, whether once a friend or not, became vexed at his ambition, and deviously undermined Hassan’s growing power by pushing Hassan into agreeing to furnish records for the entire kingdom, after just 40 days preparation. Going to make his presentation, Hasan found the records tampered with; the report was ruined, and Hasan shamed before the court. The king, furious, sentenced him to death. Omar Khayyám, pleading for clemency, got the sentence reduced to banishment. Or so one story goes. Some say he was forced to flee after plotting to dispose Nizam as vizier.
Nizam was assassinated much later, in 1092. Some have said he was stabbed by the dagger of a member of the Assassins (Hashshashin), disguised as a dervish. Others tell of a Sufi who pretended to hand Nizam al-Mulk a gift while he was being carried on his litter. As Nizam al-Mulk reached out to take the gift from him, the esoteric stabbed him with a knife in his chest. Nizam al-Mulk died from the wound, and his soldiers later killed the assassin. Another report says he was killed in secret by Malik Shah in an internal power struggle, and his murder avenged by the vizier’s loyal academics. It’s also been insinuated that Nizam al-Mulk was murdered from within the government at the orders of a governor. This governor did not live for more than a few months after Nizam al-Mulk’s assassination. The last words Nizam al-Mulk uttered purportedly were, “Please do not kill my assassin because I have forgiven him. There is no god but Allah.”
Perhaps the top of the whoppers is that he was assassinated with Malik, after a he prepared a debate between Sunni and Shi'a scholars on Malik’s orders, a debate which resulted in both him and the king converting to Shi’a ideology. This story was told by Nizam al-Mulk’s son-in-law Muqatil bin Atiyyah, who attended the debate.
Revolts soon ended Malik Shah’s reign. The empire dissolved. The glorious years for the Seljuqs were over; with Malik’s death came sudden decline. A practice of dividing provinces among a deceased ruler’s sons led to numerous independent and unstable principalities, and internecine war. The last Iranian Seljuqs died in battle in 1194; by 1200 Seljuk power was at an end everywhere except in Anatolia. For a short time a few emirs maintained small principalities in mountainous districts, but soon Mongols were galloping all over the region.
Crusaders and other Europeans, enchanted by highly exaggerated stories of daring-do by Nizari fida’is (self-sacrificing devotees), longed to hear more. Tales were told of people who’d selectively target, then eliminate, prominent enemies of their community – tales of underdogs revenging themselves on overlords.
As Nizari Ismailis became famous as Assassin followers of a mysterious “Old Man of the Mountain,” truths and fictions about them got harder and harder to separate. Marco Polo and his “Million” tall tales, which tens of thousands read in the early 1300s, increased the confusion. One reason for the legend of the longevity of the “Old Man” is that it’s based on two people, one of whom died 70 years after the other. The first was Hasan i-Sabbah, the 2nd, Rashad Sinan. Sinan’s said to be the real “Old Man”, but his castle, Masyaf, stands on a platform only about 60 feet above its surrounding plane. Nearby are the An-Nusayriyah Mountains, of which he’s said to have been a “shaykh al-jabal” (Arabic for “mountain chief”), but the likelihood of mistranslation playing a part in the legend’s development can’t be discounted. Which is much the point here. Sinan’s story was confused with, then grafted onto, that of Hasan-e Sabah. Even now, narration about all this is difficult, as not just names, but other significant terminology relevant, indeed crucial, to explication of what might, or likely did not, occur, does not have standardized spelling. Of course, interpretations of much terminology vary too!
Omar Khayyam may never have written poetry - in a peculiar inversion of “intellectual property,” verses used mostly as quotations were attributed to him, perhaps because of his scholarly reputation. Contemporaries never commented on his verse, and not until two centuries after his death did a few quatrains appear under his name.
By the 1200s, Western writers were telling of Turchia instead of Anatolia. First came the Seljuqs, then other Turkic (Tatar or Tartar) tribes, including the tribe of Osman Gozi, son of Ertugral. He and his Ghazi warriors soon became the Ottomans, with a new empire which stretched from Yemen and the Crimea to Morocco. The rise of the quick-witted, flexible Ottomans in the early 1300s was as swift as that of the Muslim Arabs had been, and by the end of that century, they had a regular, standing army, the 1st professional paid army in Europe (they controlled Bulgaria) since the Romans.
The Mongols had come and gone, and the Ottomans had fought their way to power… To the Ottomans, these stories of a vizier and friends weren’t important. This isn’t history written by the victor. So, who gained? Maybe just the story-tellers, and listeners. Maybe the stories got varied to suit the occasion for telling, Books were still quite rare, and story-telling greatly valued as quality entertainment. And perhaps, really, that’s all these stories are, still…

Here, the teller nodded off.

A Little Knowledge

2011-05-25T18:17:00.002-07:00

“When I think of all the crap I learned in high school,
It’s a wonder I can think at all!”

- Paul Simon

My first book, a poetic essay in reissue dedicated to the ignorant people within whom all wisdom lives, once began:
One low, lilting glow reveals
light lead-grey listless phantoms drifting,
refracted patterns floating in gentle plains behind;
many soft shades smoothly merge
and a mild sweet scent soothes, shrives.
Lifting labile melodies,
Sparkling bright beverages,
and romantic rambling dreams Serenade.

Yes, the smoke weaves in the air,
a grand design to see,
As listless and unfettered
As ambition within me.
And yes, I may be listless,
with schemes come all afrought
But freedom now surrounds me:
I may question what I'm taught.

This last book (I expect) of mine gives results of that questioning.

Ancient wisdom to rival modern physics

2011-05-25T18:17:00.001-07:00

Heraclitus, who in the 5th century BCE professed need for men to live together in social harmony, wasn’t particularly popular, and complained that most people fail to use or even understand reason. Wisdom, he taught, is “to know the intelligence by which all things are steered through all things.” In his view, a harmony of opposites, in their tension with each other, makes strife the dominant creative force. The fundamental uniform fact in nature is constant change; sensible things are in constant flux and nothing truly is in this world because everything is in a state of becoming something else. A thing simultaneously both is and isn’t; harmony and unity consist in diversity and multiplicity. All is united as a universal principle connects all natural events (all is interrelated). An underlying connection between opposites (good and evil, hot and cold, huge and tiny, even smart and stupid) he expressed as, “The road up is the road down.” Similarly, a single substance may be perceived in varied ways: seawater can be both harmful (drowned in or drunk by men) and beneficial (for carrying commercial shipping, and for fish); “Sea water is at once very pure and very foul: it is drinkable and healthful for fishes, but undrinkable and deadly for men.” Also, change (as in direction) is always balanced by a corresponding opposite change, although this might not be immediately perceptible. “The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water.” (or, “Fire lives in the death of earth, air in the death of fire, water in the death of air, and earth in the death of water.”). “Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool; what is wet dries, the parched becomes moist.”
Understanding of the relation of opposites can help one to deal with the chaotic and divergent nature of the world, he asserted; between all things there are hidden connections, and things apparently “tending apart” are actually “being brought together.” Time flow is the essence of reality, and fire (energy, “the most complete embodiment of the process of Becoming”), the uniter of all - its resultant light is a nexus between things. The world order is an “ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.” All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like wares for gold and gold for wares.” Manifestations of fire include fuel, flame, smoke and upper atmospheric ether (pure fire), which “turns to” ocean, as rain, much as part of the ocean turns into earth (in equal amounts or aspects). Thus a dynamic equilibrium maintains an orderly balance. Unity despite change he illustrated by analogy: “Upon those who step into the same river, other, ever different, waters flow.”
Going where modern physics never has, Heraclitus asserted, “It is pleasure to souls to become moist” (meaning, it is supposed, sexually indulged, intoxicated and pampered… while for the body, to be dry is much safer) and “It is hard to fight with one’s heart’s desire, for it will pay with soul for what it craves” (“It is hard to fight against impulsive desire; whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul.”)
The fragment of his writings numbered 123, of only 139 known, astutely asserts, “Nature [physics] loves to hide.” Fragment 112 asserts, “Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth, giving heed to the nature of things.” And 110, “It is no good for men to get all they wish to get.”

Tao and Chi

2011-05-25T18:16:00.001-07:00

Taoism, the doctrine of The Way, emphasizes passive influence (like that of a catalyst), while stressing change and indeterminacy over order. It rejects rigid hierarchy, or even interest in assertive dominance. It reveres the extraordinary, for instance in appealing natural forms (mountains, trees, rocks, fossils). Taoism offers no anthropomorphic creator, law-giver or ‘intelligent design’, nor trickster nor devil, but plenty of room for light-heartedness, compassion and experimentation. It’s about power, and even governance, but more in recognition of what is real than in manipulation. For the Taoist, ego is as ephemeral, illusory and meaningless as in Zen Buddhism. To Confucian bureaucrats, Taoism was appallingly subversive and dangerous.
The Tao, both the Way and the Wayfarer, is the eternal path along which all beings travel. It’s everything while also nothing; no being made it; it itself is being. From the Tao spring all things. All things conform to it, and to it all things return. It can be compared to a vast net, which, though its meshes are as wide as the sea, lets nothing through. It’s nowhere, but without looking for it, you may see it. It offers sanctuary where all things can find refuge.
Desire not to desire, the Tao teaches, and leave all things to take their course. For he that humbles himself shall be preserved, much as the reed that bends shall be again made straight. Mighty is he who conquers himself. Failure is the foundation of success and success is the lurking-place of failure. Gentleness will bring victory to him who attacks and safety to him who defends. Whoever will strive to achieve enduring compassion and tenderness can become even as wise as a small child.
These ideas date back to prehistory, and the emergence of the Chinese as a great race with the defeat of tribal peoples (Miao) of Southern China, antecedents of the T’ai, Yao (Eu-Mien) and Hmong, among others. It was how some wise men of this early great civilization tried to explain things. We may pride ourselves on material accomplishments (things, which may be hastening our demise), but in fundamentally important ways we’ve learned little which might place us intellectually above these (and certain other) early thinkers. Their contributions stand as philosophic rivals to anything else ever presented, though some of their followers, as followers will, have gone a bit, and often more than a bit, off track.
Shen Yen Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, is a patron saint of Taoism. Reputed to have been born about 2700 BCE, he began rule as a child. He’s seen as the patron of technology: classic works on many arcane arts, including alchemy, medicine, sexual techniques, cooking, and dietetics, were all placed under his aegis. He’s credited with introducing wooden houses, carts, boats, the bow and arrow, coinage, writing and defeating Miao (Meo or Maeo) “barbarians” in a great battle, somewhere in what is now Shansi Province. That victory won him leadership of all tribes in the Huang Ho (Yellow River) basin. Huang Di may have led a tribal confederation of central plains Yangshao Neolithic tribes; legend has him ruling an area from the Pacific to today’s Gansu province, south to the Changjiang (Yangtze) River and north into Shanxi and Hebei Provinces.
He’s called the Yellow Emperor for his imperial color: that of Chinese yellow earth. Extravagant tales grew up about him, including that he lived in a magnificent palace in the Kunlun Mountains, with a heavenly door keeper who had the face of a man, the body of a tiger and nine tails. Huang Di’s said to have had a pet bird that helped take care of his clothes and personal effects. His Court introduced writing, coins, bricks, the cart, the boat, the compass, pottery wheel, sericulture, flute, 5 & 12 tone scales, mathematics, medicine and even the house. He developed military discipline, standard measurements, laws of astronomy, and the first calendar used by Chinese people. He gave a name to each family in China. One tale says he invented tea after a leaf fell into his mug of hot water; another that Lei Zu, his wife, taught the people to raise silkworms and weave beautiful silk fabrics. He’s venerated as one of the founders of religious Taoism (Tao Jiao) and the author of the Nei-jing, China’s first medical treatise. Upon death he became an immortal, carried off to Heaven by a dragon, when he was 110 years old. He’s still venerated by many Chinese; ceremonies are still performed in his honor at a pavilion that marks his grave, on cypress-covered Mount Qiaoshan in Huangling County, Shananxi Province, on the road going north from Xi’an.
When the Huang Di had subjected most local leaders, the sole exception remaining was Chiyou of the Miao tribe. The Yellow Emperor met him in battle at Zhuolu, but found Chiyou could create fog, and even cover a five mile area with it! Huang Di couldn’t defeat him, until he designed a compass chariot (a cart with a deity effigy raised above it, which always points south) to keep his army oriented. With it, China was pacified.

Lao-tzu, author of the Tao te Jing, is believed to have been a sage whose instructions elucidate the arts of life, perfection and of government. Huang-ti, the Yellow Emperor, with whose reign Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s universal history opens, was depicted as a ruler of the Golden Age who, unlike Lao-tzu, was always the disciple, and achieved success because he applied Lao-tzu’s precepts. An unremitting seeker of knowledge, he was thus an ideal ruler.
Shih Huang-di, born 259 BCE, in Ch’in (northwestern China), was another ‘first’ emperor. The only significant member of the Ch’in ‘dynasty’ (221–210/209 BCE), he created the first unified Chinese empire (which collapsed four years after his death), and established a fully centralized administration by abolishing territorial feudal power in the empire. He issued orders for standardization of weights, measures, axle lengths of carts, written language and laws, and built not only a network of roads and canals, but the strong links between fortresses for defense against invasion from the north well-known as the Great Wall. Shih Huang-ti was interested in magic and alchemy and searched for masters in these arts who could provide him with an elixir of immortality. After the failure of such an expedition to islands of the Eastern Sea in 219, the emperor repeatedly summoned magicians to his court.

He ordered some Taoist monks, who ran experimental medical laboratories, to brew a batch of immortality elixir, under pain of death. They took those pains. It was believed that immortal people lived on three Pacific islands, where they drank a concoction that proofed their bodies against time, so the emperor sent a fleet of ships to find the islands and fetch the philter. Many months later, the expedition’s captain returned. As he knew he faced death for failing, he told the emperor he’d actually met an immortal. But the immortal wouldn’t release the philter without the gift of many young people and craftsmen. The emperor complied, and away sailed the same canny captain with 3000 skilled and comely young people. They never returned. Legend claims they colonized Japan.
Confucian scholars strongly condemned the Emperor’s charlatanry; 460 were executed for their opposition. A continuous controversy between the emperor and Confucian scholars who advocated a return to the old feudal order culminated in a great book burning, in 213 BCE. All books not about agriculture, medicine, or prognostication, except historical records of Ch’in and books in the imperial library, were burned. Shih Huang-ti was buried in a gigantic 20-square-mile (52-square-kilometre) tomb hewn out of a mountain. Excavation of it started in 1974; over 10,000 life-sized terra-cotta soldiers and horses have been dug up: an army for the dead emperor. Most information about Shih Huang-ti’s life derives from the successor Han dynasty, which prized Confucian scholarship (and thus had interest in disparaging him and the Ch’in era). Histories showed him as a villain par excellence: inhuman, uncultivated, and superstitious. Modern historians, though, often prefer to stress the endurance of the bureaucratic and administrative structures he institutionalized, which provided the basis of all subsequent administrations in China.
So, two guys named Huang-di: one, a Taoist, established Chinese dominance over neighboring peoples. The later, a legalist (authoritarian: ‘Punishment produces force, force produces strength, strength produces awe, awe produces virtue.’), made China defensible, well, usually defensible, against outsiders. Their historical significance is unrivaled.

Taoist “masters” now perform exorcisms, faith-healings and occult rituals, having drifted as far from Lao Tzu as the Pope from the Sermon on the Mount. Groups known as Celestial Master Black Hats and Red Turbans perform ceremonies not dissimilar to those of other organized religions. These, though ancient, may not be as profound as its adherents like to believe – the root of the problem being desire for immortality.
Ko Hung (283 – 343 CE) wrote the Baopuzi (‘He Who Holds to Simplicity’), detailing methods to attain immortality… Lao Tzu cautioned against offering advice (“Give up learnedness”), clearly not heeding his own – life and Tao are full of contradictions, opposites, yin & yang dichotomy contradictions… Like no map can depict all, no guide can be sufficiently clear; one must forge for oneself! Advice easy to give when one hasn’t children…
For Taoist priests, paintings imbued with a kind of spiritual life are important, although essential only for certain functions, during which men-folk try to gain some experience of heavenly realms. A Shaman is different – someone through whom supernatural spirits can interact with people. He assists in curing ceremonies by calling ancestral spirits, and has his mentor spirit go to the spirit world to ask the cause of illness. Smoke, candles and offerings are used… a shaman creates charms and performs magic to drive away demons of ill health. Often in curing ceremonies a shaman will go into trance and become possessed by supernatural beings, as part of the healing process.

Lao Tzu wrote:

Whosoever knows how to practice restraint
Does not get into danger
And thus can last forever.
Also
Whosoever cherishes Life
Does not know about Life.
And:
The softest thing on earth
Overtakes the hardest thing on earth.
The non-existent overtakes even that…

An interesting observable, transmittable, verifiable truth is a good thing. No deception, sugar-coating, clinging egotism or inflation/exaggeration, only go-with-the-flow acceptance and the most subtle of influencings. No unseemly, undignified and counter-productive affectations; no greed, embellishments, obfuscation or pretense. What’s not necessary is superfluous, and less often better than more. Violence is seldom, if ever, necessary, nor imposition. Patience, ability to wait and no fear of going without sometimes are necessary emotional accoutrements to the wise. All this, indeed, is hardly taught but by some single school of thought, but is rather the creed of the spiritualist, wherever and whenever.
Taoists teach: One should take care of things that are in need of doing, and then move on to the next thing that needs to be done, without any attachment to the accomplishment. One should not bother doing things other than what needs to be done: one should not spend time bothering with wealth, power, or praise. To deviate from this is only to find obstacles and heartache.
Creating, yet not possessing. Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore, it lasts forever. Achieve results, but never glory in them. Achieve results, but never boast, never desire pride. Achieve results, because this is the natural way. There is no greater sin than desire, no curse greater than discontent, no misfortune worse than wanting what one doesn’t have. He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough; meaningful eminence is achieved only in little things.

The Way resembles an empty vessel -
We turn clay to make a vessel,
But it’s the space where there is nothing
On which the vessel’s usefulness depends.
This is called the Mysterious Power.

The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware.
Diminish the self and curb the desires!
One who boasts of his own ability has no merit.
To see the small is to have insight.

The world is ruled by letting things take their course;
it cannot be ruled by interfering.
Nothing is more soft and yielding than water,
yet for attacking the solid and the strong, nothing is better.

Knowing ignorance is strength; ignoring knowledge is sickness.

The Taoist sage has no ambitions, therefore he can never fail.
He who never fails always succeeds.
And he who always succeeds is all-powerful.

The Tao grew from ideas held by shamans of the Shang Dynasty (1700 - 1100 BCE); perhaps several teachers collaborated on its primary text, a short, dense book of only 5,250 words - probably the most influential 5,250 words ever written. Although earlier ascetics and hermits such as Shen Tao (who advocated that one ‘abandon knowledge and discard self’) first wrote of ‘Tao,’ only with the 6th century BCE philosopher Lao Tzu (or ‘Elder Sage’ - maybe born Li Erh) did the philosophy of Taoism gain its master teacher. Some scholars believe Li Erh/Lao Tzu was a slightly older contemporary of Confucius (Kung-Fu Tzu, born Chiu Chung-Ni). Others see the Tao Te Ching as a compilation of paradoxical poems written by several Taoists using a pen-name (‘Elder Sage’). This Tao Te Ting, Taoism’s oldest (surviving) scripture, appeared during the Warring States period when China was a chaos of rival kingdoms, between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. It’s sometimes attributed to Lao Tan, a mythic figure said to have lived 160 or 200 years... Classical Chinese historian Ssuma Chien attributed it to Li Erh, a custodian of imperial archives from the state of Ch’u in southern China, in the present Honan Province. Legend grew that Lao Tzu was keeper of archives at the Imperial Court. At the time, Honan was a fertile, well-watered state; “Its people make little exertion, delight in life, and neglect to store anything.” But war was a prevalent condition, and Li Erh/Lao Tan became disillusioned, saddened that men couldn’t follow the path of natural goodness.
If there was a real Taoist writer named Li Erh, it seems clear he wasn’t interested in fame. “The chief aim of his studies was how to keep himself concealed and remain unknown,” wrote Ssuma Chien. Li Erh presented his ideas in writing only because, as he was heading into retirement, the royal gatekeeper, Yixi (Yin Xi or Yin Hsi), pleaded with him to record them before he disappeared into oblivion. The book may have been written under a pseudonym, but it’s most likely that the Tao Te Ting simply recorded ancient wisdom long passed from masters to disciples. The ideas presented, which propose a way to stop warfare, a realistic path for humanity to follow which could end most conflict, became popular in the 2nd century BCE, during the Han dynasty. A series of commentaries, and commentaries on the commentaries, followed, becoming hybridized with Confucianism, Buddhism, and other Eastern religions. After a while, books of Tao began demarcating about everything: appropriate systems for greetings, even the proper way to clean one’s house.
The first Taoist authors, living at a time of social disorder and great religious skepticism, developed a notion of the Tao as the origin of all creation, and the force - unknowable in its essence but observable in its manifestations - that lies behind the functionings and changes of the natural world. They saw in Tao, and nature, the basis of a spiritual approach to living. This, they believed, was the answer to the burning issue: What is the basis of a stable, unified, enduring social order?
Much of the essence of Tao is in the art of Wu Wei, action through inaction. This means a practice of minimal, particularly non-violent, action, though the Taoist is not precisely a pacifist. He’ll take military action when he hasn’t seen ahead far enough to prevent need for violence in the first place. When violence seems necessary, the Taoist leader fights until he’s achieved his goal, then stops, saddened by the need for bloodshed. To use Wu Wei is to have a kind of Taoist patience - it is to allow things to unfold in their own way, in their own time. This doesn’t imply complete lack of energy expenditure - just recognition of the flow and cycles permeating the world we travel through.
The cardinal concept is that the Tao, the ineffable, eternal, underlying creative reality, is the source, end and connector of all things. ‘Te’ is the manifestation of the Tao within all things: virtue power. To possess the fullness of Te means to be in perfect harmony with one’s original nature. According to Taoism’s next great writer, Chuang-tzu (369 - 286 BCE), an individual in harmony with the Tao blends with the course of Nature’s constant change and embraces the rhythm of life and death. As is accomplished at death, so in life must the individual return to the original purity and simplicity of Tao.

Lao Tzu (or Laozi) simply means “Old Master-teacher” but indicates the most famous of Taoists and Tao Deities. According to legend, he was an older contemporary of Confucius born as an old man of about 82 years, to a minor aristocratic family (conceived by a shooting star). After developing his system of mysticism and philosophy, he rejected society. Riding off to the “uncivilized” west, he was stopped and persuaded to write down his thoughts, thus producing the Tao Te Jing. His success in personal development led to becoming one of Taoism’s most
powerful Deities. Some say he left China through the Hangu Pass in the Zhou period (6th century BCE), went to India and taught Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, and that, therefore, the Buddha was a disciple of Laozi.
As Lao Tan or Li Erh, LaoTzu is said to have met Confucius. After they visited, disciples asked Confucius how he might admonish and correct Lao Tzu. “In him I have seen the dragon that rides on the cloudy air,” Confucius replied. After another visit he said, “In the knowledge of the Tao am I any better than a tiny creature in vinegar? A less apocryphal Confucius would have seen Li Erh as a dangerous threat, as his followers saw LaoTzu. Taoism’s stress on spontaneity and harmony with nature too strongly oppose Confucian obsession with duty, form, established custom and filial piety. When Laozi was 80 (two years younger than when he was born?), dispirited and disillusioned, he set out for Tibet, to meditate close to the clouds in his final days. But at the Hank Pass border post, a guard demanded he record his teachings before leaving… It’s been said Lao Tsu believed the language of wisdom to be silence, and that, after writing his book, he never spoke another word.

Zhuangzi is considered the most important Taoist philosopher after Laozi, and the Zhuangzi one of the great classics of world literature. The Zhuangzi, a 3rd century BCE Taoist classic, is a celebration of human creativity - the language lucid, its images darkly brilliant. The ideas are seriously playful. Without question, it’s one of the most challenging achievements of literature. Thematically, the Zhuangzi offers diverse insights into how to develop an appropriate and productive attitude to life. Resourced over the centuries by Chinese artists and intellectuals alike, it’s provoked great commentarial tradition.

Early Taoist sages were often artisans, butchers or woodcarvers. These skilled workers understood the secret of talent and the art of living. To be successful with their skill, they needed inner spiritual concentration, and to be able to put aside concern with externals such as monetary rewards, fame, and praise. Artistry, like life, follows the creative path of nature, not the values of organized society.
Taoist ideas and images inspired an intense affirmation of life: physical life - health, well being, vitality, and longevity. Ancient nature-worship and esoteric arts crept into the tradition, presented as ways of enhancing and prolonging life. Some Taoists began searching for “Isles of the Immortals,” for herbs or chemical compounds that could forestall death, and perhaps even secure immortality. More and more Taoists interested in health and vitality experimented with herbal medicine and pharmacology, advancing such arts; they developed principles of macrobiotic cooking and healthy diet, as well as gymnastics and massage to keep the body youthful and strong.
As the Taoist pantheon developed, it transformed from belief that spirits pervaded nature, both the natural world and the internal world within the human body - all these spirits being, though, but manifestations of the one Tao, and came to mirror the Chinese Imperial bureaucracy in its depictions of Heaven and Hell. The head of the heavenly bureaucracy was the Jade Emperor, who governed spirits, assigned workings of the natural world and administered moral justice. The gods in heaven acted like, and were treated like, officials in the world of men; worshipping the gods was a kind of rehearsal of attitudes toward secular authorities. On the other hand, the demons and ghosts of hell acted like, and were treated like, the bullies, outlaws, and threatening strangers in the real world: they were bribed by the people, and ritually arrested by martial forces of the spirit officials. The common populace, who after all had little influence with their earthly rulers, sought by worshipping spirits to keep troubles at bay, and by supplication and bribery to ensure attainment of the blessings of health, progeny, wealth, happiness and longevity.
Taoist priests saw many gods as manifestations of one Tao. They were ritually trained to know the names, ranks, and powers of important spirits, and to direct them, through meditation, visualization and ritual, to mutual goals. In meditation, Taoists harmonized, helping reunite gods, aspects of Tao, in the unity of One Tao. But only a few educated lay believers knew much of this complex theological system.

In contrast to the Confucian program of social reform through moral principle, ritual, and governmental regulation, the way of restoration, what Taoists consider the “true way,” consists in the banishment of learned sageliness, of discarding most received wisdom. “Manifest the simple,” urged Lao-tzu, “embrace the primitive; reduce selfishness, have few desires.”
The Tao operates impartially in the universe. Likewise, mankind should disavow assertive, acquisitive action. Taoist life is a life of non-purposive action (wu-wei), but also a life expressing the essence of spontaneity (tzu-jan, “self-so”). Taoist philosophy can be summed up well with a quote from Chuang Tzu: “To regard the fundamental as the essence, to regard things as coarse, to regard accumulation as deficiency, and to dwell quietly alone with the spiritual and the intelligent - herein lie the techniques of Tao of the ancients.”

Chi or Qi (pronounced “chee” and meaning Dragon’s Breath) is Chinese for “the natural energy of the Universe” (though supernatural might be a better word). Tao has been said to be Chi, the smallest (and original) particle of the universe. It has special capacities, and its own rules of movement. It exists everywhere and forms everything - there are no barriers to Tao, in either space or time; it is the inner force which maintains the balance and functioning of everything. ‘Te,’ moral virtue, is the method of proper application of Tao, the expressing process of the character of Tao, and the regulation of all matters in motion. All things in the universe have their orbit, their influence; movement and all activity regulated, everything has a basic norm, which isn’t gravity, but rather, instead, ‘original virtue’: cosmic harmony &/or the power of love.

Luo Chinfeng wrote, “Throughout heaven and earth, from ancient times to the present, everything is a single chi. The chi is originally one, but now moving, now still; now opening, now closing; now ascending, now descending; circulating ceaselessly, accumulation of subtlety becomes manifest; this is the four seasons of warm, cool, cold and hot; this is the generation, growth, gathering and storing of 10,000 things.”

The original Chi, Endlessly repeated
Infinitely diverse, Ceaselessly varies
While remaining the original Chi.

Like any amoeba, or cell even. Thus Chi becomes the a priori prime mover, love, while also its inverse and contra positive – and on into reverence, pride, admiration, yearning, lust, acquisitiveness, contentment, hunger, ecstasy, satisfaction, sacrifice, competitive testing, narcissism… it seems varieties spin on into new forms; love, a force or quality reaching and solidifying, rearranged into differentiating hues, dynamics and other interactive attributes, growing, evolving, stretching, and finding Twin, reflection, yin & yang, change, differentiation, multiplicity of twins...
Chapter 15 of the Tao begins: “Tao gave birth to One, One generates the Two; Two gave birth to Three. The Three generates all the myriad things. All the myriad things carry the Yin on their backs and hold the Yang in their embrace, deriving their vital harmony from the proper blending of the two vital Breaths – the flowing power gives them harmony.”
Yin/Yang: everything contains within its opposite. “Difficult and easy compliment each other… Back and front follow each other.” “The corporeal is born of the Incorporeal.” “Know the glorious; Keep to the lowly.” “Restless movement overcomes cold, but calm generates heat. Peace and stillness are the Norm of the World.”
Some say Taoism views time as cyclical, not linear, and that the Taoist’s ideal society is deeply connected with matriarchy and femininity. The Tao certainly says: Nature should not be exploited by abuse. Nature should be befriended, not conquered. The idea of the “Perfect Man”, that is, one who understands the cyclical and ever changing nature of the Universe, and who acts in accordance with Natural law, is common in Chinese philosophy. The Perfect Man is the quintessential Taoist. This Ideal Person, through the naturalness of his existence, male or female, is self-sufficient, never dependent either on wealth or society.
Simplicity, oneness, and tranquility are said to be Taoism’s 3 jewels, and also known as compassion, moderation (even of moderation!) and humility.

Vasana

2011-05-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Vasana (wassana in Thai) refers to habitual tendencies or dispositions; subconscious inclinations; a term found in Pali and early Sanskrit writings (from vas: ‘living, remaining’). In yoga practice (Yogācāra or yogachara), it denotes latent energy resulting from action, or better, actions. It’s believed a pattern becomes ‘imprinted’ in the actor's consciousness, or storehouse of understandings; accumulation of these habitual tendencies predisposes one to particular patterns of behavior (samskaras).
In short, they’re all the things that go into building individual sense of self or ego. “Vasana” can be translated as mental conditioning, minute tendencies, inclinations, habit proclivities &/or driving forces which color and motivate one's attitudes and actions. Vasanas are a conglomerate result of subconscious impressions (samskaras) formed by background experience (extending even before birth, to time in the womb, conception and even beyond). Samskaras, experiential impressions, combine in the subconscious to form vasanas, which contribute to mental fluctuations (vritti whirlpools of consciousness, waves of mental activities, thought and perception).
One might have a fearful experience, and the vasana of fear can remain for a long time (as in post-traumatic stress). Vasana influences our actions and behavior patterns (samskaras). Negative vasanas create negative samskaras and vice versa. But you can replace a negative samskara, or behavior, with a positive behavior, which will cause an internal change and ultimately an external change. For example: if you have low self-esteem (a negative vasana), a positive samskara can change your perception of yourself, so that you start behaving in even more positive ways. But you can’t permanently remove a vasana or a samskara - you only replace one with another, and the old samskaras and vasanas can come back.
Vasanas: subliminal inclinations and habit patterns which, as driving forces, color and motivate one's attitudes and future actions; tendencies and impulses; longing. Awareness of previous observations, recollections, trauma's, other states of mind, etc. The conglomerate results of subconscious impressions created through experience. Deep-seated traits or tendencies that shape one’s attitudes and motivations; impressions about action and experience that remain in the mind; latent subtle desires, innate tendencies. These experiential impressions combine in the subconscious, and thereafter contribute to mental fluctuations and subconscious tendencies which color all levels of personality: our perceptions, emotions, thoughts and deeds.
Vasana: a pattern of inclinations and subtle desires; a tendency created in a person by the doing of an action, or by enjoyment; it induces a person to repeat the action, or to seek a repetition of the enjoyment. As a subtle impression in the mind capable of developing itself into action; it’s the cause of the nature of impressions of action which remain unconsciously in the mind, producing self-imposed limitations, or forms of attachments, for instance:
• Personal strengths and weaknesses
• Predispositions
• Likes and dislikes
• Habits
• Habitual outlook
• Opinions
Vasana refers to subtle desires which, like seeds, fructify or manifest, accordingly with favorable circumstances, at appropriate times. Karmic energy created in the current lifetime, or past lifetimes, through repeated patterns of behavior can be called habit energies, or vasanas. These are like old, familiar stories: our emotions, self-images, beliefs and reactive patterns that keep us within limited contexts, experiences and configurations. Many, if not most, of us need to breakup and dissolve our old, too often dysfunctional, patterns, imprints, and habits - boundaries of the ego formed by fear, intellect, memory, and will, rather than reinforce them. As everything passes away, even your mind (a structure composed of various impressions and thoughts), it may be best to experience all you can, while you can, and break out of what limitations you can.
Some say the word vasana means impregnation, learning, processing; and that because the consciousness is plastic, it can be conditioned. If we have habit energies and patterns of behavior, that’s because of vasana. We develop those patterns during the first six years of life, and continue to enact them.

People are born with proclivities; other tendencies are reinforced. In both cases, there’s tendency to repetition, and perhaps to insufficiency of exploration. To know that people (and things) act and interact in patterns is to be better able to plan, to properly respond, and to be prepared. Our personalities (personality: the whole nature or character of a particular person, with traits, qualities and individuality) aren’t necessarily locked-in and predictable patterns of attitude and behavior; much as one can quit drinking or smoking, one can change patterns (at least somewhat) – learn a new song, as it were, use another language, live in a different way, even find oneself acting inexplicably when circumstances, or the people around, have changed. But the old melody, or ways, will creep back in – to dreams, conversation, opinions, moods. A vibration will continue to exist long after it is directly perceptible to humans!
Usually vasana is mentioned in context where meditation is espoused and recommended, but maybe internal quiet, centered harmony, is enough. That the vasana patterns start before individuality, before emergence of any “self” – as recent scientific research has shown. A protein sheath around the double helix DNA strands responds to input (emotional, mental, environmental) and determines much of DNA function, acting like a switch to turn on and off genetic cues, or expression. Epigenetics, the study of gene expression and the regulation of genetic activity, particularly methyl groups and histones attached to our chromosomes, the epigenome suite of biochemical signals that determine which genes in an individual’s DNA can be turned on or off, shows that genomes respond to environmental signals, that the epigenome is sensitive to environmental impact (including nutrients, exposure to toxins, and loving mothering). DNA is fixed, and represents only possibilities; while epigenetic changes are potentially reversible, may not be simply on or off, and involve the new concept of the meme.
The term “epigenetics”was coined in 1942 to describe the idea that an organism's experience may alter the effect of (the prefix epi means ‘on’ or ‘over’). Now, it’s defined as ‘the study of heritable changes in genome function that occur without a change in DNA sequence,’ and scientists tend to accept that epigenetic inheritance affects the action of genes in offspring, despite arising from the life experience of parents. These epigenetic changes extend, at least for a small minority of genes, beyond immediate offspring to further generations, but effects seem not to last indefinitely. Epigenetic instructions aren’t found in the DNA itself, but in an array of chemical markers and switches, known as the epigenome, which lie along the length of the double helix. These epigenetic switches and markers help switch on or off the expression of particular genes.
Nutrition and stress can affect the epigenome, but, unlike genetic mutations, epigenetic changes are reversible. Research shows that diet, behavior, and environmental surroundings can have a great impact on the health of descendants. Twins with different environmental experiences display more divergent genetic expressions than do those with similar environment and experience. A common environment results in the genes of a variety of individuals to increasingly act like each other. These epigenetic changes can be inherited. Acquired traits can be passed down the generations, despite what is taught about cutting off rat’s tails (!).

Of course, it’s not just nature versus nurture, programmed clockwork-like progression or adaptive opportunism, manipulation by, manipulation of, interconnectivity, or faithful but mostly inactive observers carried along in an unpredictable flow - we’re heavily affected by group dynamics from even before our parents were conceived, and so full of influences that we certainly react more than we decide, and are largely just part of an ongoing process. Environment, nutrition and experience of germs, viruses, etc., and also emotions. A luckier child who gets more strokes will pass on some dissimilar traits to what an identical twin not so favored will. It’s not just the sins of one’s fathers, but the fortunes of one’s antecedents, which determine much of one’s character – and even, I suspect, the emotions present at the point of conception, the time of birth, and also around the house… babies pick up on signals very hard to quantify or even describe! But, eventually, they learn some control, to make and keep to some decisions, and exert some influence.
Lawrence Harper, psychologist at the University of California at Davis, has claimed that a wide array of personality traits, including temperament and intelligence, can be affected by epigenetic inheritance, saying, “If you have a generation of poor people who suffer from bad nutrition, it may take two or three generations for that population to recover from that hardship and reach its full potential. Because of epigenetic inheritance, it may take several generations to turn around the impact of poverty or war or dislocation on a population.” Marcus Pembrey, professor of Clinical Genetics at London’s Institute of Child Health, in collaboration with Swedish researcher Lars Olov Bygren, also found strong evidence that famine in the lives of the grandparents can affect the life expectancy of the grandchildren.
Michael Meaney, biologist at McGill University, showed that some epigenetic changes can be induced after birth. With graduate student Ian Weaver, Meaney compared mother rats that licked their offspring after birth and those that neglected their newborns. The licked newborns grew up relatively calm and brave, while neglected ones nervously skittered into the darkest corner when placed in new environments. Analysis of brain tissue from both licked and non-licked rats showed distinct differences in patterns of DNA methylation (methylation: the process by which methyl, or -CH3, amino acid groups are added to compounds) in hippocampus cells of each group. The mother's licking activity apparently had the effect of removing dimmer switches on a gene that shapes stress receptors in a growing brain. The well-licked rats had better-developed hippocampi, and released less cortisol, a stress hormone; neglected ones released more cortisol, had less-developed hippocampi, and, in marked contrast to the others, reacted nervously when startled or in new surroundings. Maternal behavior had shaped the brains of offspring.
The phenomenon has also been detected in chickens, in response to stress caused by abnormal levels of light. Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden reared a group of chickens under normal day and night conditions; others were exposed to randomly varying light. The offspring of the latter group showed impaired spatial learning abilities, were more aggressive, and grew faster. These characteristics were linked to changes in the activity of genes in the hypothalamus or pituitary gland areas.

Elsewhere in the animal, activity of these genes was largely normal, but was changed in areas of the brain responsible for behavioral traits, including spatial learning. This exemplifies a fundamental characteristic of epigenetic inheritance: that even genes handed down quite normally may change in what they express, with resultant change in some behavioral trait or function.
A great implication of heritable epigenetic features is that diet and stress can influence genes of children and grandchildren. In the early 1990s the British ‘Avon Longitudinal Study’ surveyed children born to 14,000 mothers and found that, of 5,000 fathers who took part, 166 had started smoking very early, in the so-called ‘slow growth’ period before puberty (between 9 and 12). Sons of these fathers tended to be significantly overweight by the age of nine, ‘though there was no noticeable difference for daughters. This shows a significant link between fathers who smoked early, and above average weight in their sons. Although little’s yet known of how environment shapes gene silencing, there’s evidence that disturbing DNA methylation during development can bring on health problems from cancer to schizophrenia.
Histone, around which DNA winds, is important role in gene regulation. Changes in histones relate to changes in the physical state and function of chromatin (chromatin fibers form chromosomes) in cell division, and thus to transcription of genetic messages (by neutralizing charges of DNA). Genes and environment don't influence development independently. Instead, environmental influences initiate changes in gene expression. Human behavior can influence inheritance, genetically and educationally. Even very high heritability in a behavioral trait doesn’t imply inevitability. One can’t just blame genes, and abdicate all responsibility.
Epigenetic inheritance may be involved in passing down of cultural, personality and even psychiatric traits, which can be regarded as inclinations. For instance, historical events have led to “embedding” of attitudes within affected communities, attitudes which persist for generations. This phenomenon is explained in Richard Dawkins's theory of memes, according to which cultural or intellectual traits are passed down via non-genetic mechanisms. The possibility raised by epigenetics is that cultural transmission may have a genetic component. Traumas like the experience of imprisonment, slavery, forced relocation or war, can leave genetic marks on descendants of those victimized by them, and thus influence - but not force - behavior.

A meme (a clumsy new term pronounced miem) is any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation (including thoughts, ideas, beliefs, theories, rituals, gestures, practices, fads, fashions, habits, tunes, songs, and dances). Memes, cultural entities that an observer might consider a replicator propagate themselves, can move through a populace in a way similarly as do viruses. Dawkins, a biological theorist widely known for espousing atheism, coined the word “meme” in The Selfish Gene (1976), where he described how one might extend evolutionary principles to explain the spread of ideas and other cultural phenomena. Dawkins based the word on the Greek “mimeme” (something imitated), making it sound similar to “gene.” The concept of a unit of social evolution called a mneme (from Greek mneme, meaning “memory”) was used in 1904 by German evolutionary
biologist Richard Semon; the French adjective même has similarities in meaning to the Greek mīmos, from which the adjective mimesis comes. As Roman satirical poet Horace put it, “things which are repeated are pleasing” - but some of us are more inclined to like some sequencing than others!
According to Dawkins, genes aren’t the only replicators which change in an evolutionary manner. Memes replicate, spreading from consciousness to consciousness; many of the same evolutionary principles that apply to genes apply to memes as well. Genes and memes may at times co-evolve (“gene-culture co-evolution”).
One can’t view memes through a microscope in the way one can detect genes, but a meme is a recognizable pattern, one that serves as a template for its own replication. Language provides the first and most important memetic infection. Memeticians generally regard language as a memetically-evolved phenomenon. For example, even at the level of animals, many species have evolved particular sounds to convey various meanings (“danger”, “hungry”, “aroused”, “go away” or “come here”). Experiments have verified the memetic nature of these noises, showing that they don’t arise when humans raise the animals concerned: they’re not generated by instinct, but learned from other animals.
Some people understood many of these things long ago, much as many farmers hardly needed to be told of Pavlov’s dog salivation response to learned association of a bell sound to feeding. Interesting, isn’t it, how purportedly new, modern ideas can so match ancient understandings?

We have hard wiring, some software-like programming, and also some feedback-loop like self-awareness mechanisms. We must eat and sleep, and are inclined to indulge in some pleasures, but don’t have to be as stupid as we can be. Much of wisdom lies in knowing what we can change, or at least influence, and what not. What’s really important about epigenetcs is that, by showing the nexus and interactivity between genes and genetic sheath, it shows the lack of true viability to the “science” producing GMOs (genetically modified organisms). To replace gene strands with other gene strands makes an imperfectly formatted system – poorly responsive and inflexible, unable to adjust. Without gaining experience from interactivity with environs, genes cannot operate with real efficiency; GMOs cannot but gum up the whole works. Even if they were but food, and not part of our whole ecosystem, if we are what we eat, do we really want to eat dysfunctional food?

Self as Illusion

Like other things, we’re but temporary phenomena. Numbers may not be, but they aren’t tangible. There may be other concepts as durable, but I think not many. But the idea of some essence of a person lasting past death is popular.
What would that essence be? For me, it’s hard to imagine it caring about a name once used – and as I study history and the world, I learn that for many individual lifetimes of people, there was no lasting name attachment. One was called one thing as a baby, another as an adolescent, and something entirely different when established in regular occupation with skills others might wish to call on.
A ‘self’ has been suggested to merely comprise a collection of memetic stories, or memes… and it may even be that there is no memory until memes – for instance words – are received.

Science and the Knowledge of Good and Evil

2011-05-25T18:14:00.002-07:00

One of the heresies (at least related to, if not the same as, a Gnostic one, in which the ‘God’ of the Old Testament was not the true God, and one must ‘escape’ the material world in order to achieve salvation), or teachings, which the Catholic Church tried to eradicate, purported that we’d been deceived into getting things backward or upside-down. Jehova kept us blind; the snake/devil/seducer who suggested Eve eat the apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was freeing us. Supportive of this, in the King James Bible, is Genesis 2.16-17: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” But, as the story continues, we find that Adam did not die when he ate thereof, as he surely might have, had he eaten of some other trees – leaping easily to mind are hemlock (Conium maculatum, the poison of which is concentrated in its seeds) and deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna, with cherry-sized, highly poisonous black berries). Maybe these trees existed only outside the Garden of Eden, but still…
And, do we really know ought of good and evil? We experience, sense, them – but the variety of opinions and responses varies so greatly, one must really wonder. To “eradicate” a heresy – was that good or evil?
And science – has it made us more “pure of heart”?
Where now the carrier pigeon and ivory-billed woodpecker, and what’s happening to the frog, salamander, bee, lightening bug and lady bug? Most certainly, we are not as healthy, any of us, anywhere, as the American ‘Indian’ was purported to be, upon ‘discovery’!
Socrates is said to have taught, “Know thyself” – but this is hardly taken in the Biblical sense (Fuck thyself), but to suggest instead a parallel: to understand activity beyond the self and its body, one must first look inside to find… what? Conflicting impulses, perhaps? Endurance within change? The original Tao?
In Buddhism, it is but suffering is bad, and to be escaped. But what about evil intent? Arrogance? Stupidity?
What are we to make of the Swiss effort to ‘re-create’ a ‘big-bang’ ‘singularity’ for $8 billion, ‘science’ at work for what, while more and more corn goes to make ethanol and for half the human population, at least, life remains as Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan: with “continual fear, and danger of violent death”, “poor, nasty, brutish, and short”?
And, especially, what are we to make of the USA, the whining of pampered fools who can’t take criticism and “success” rapidly ruining everything for everyone? Knowledge must be seen as good, or we risk eating poisons. But has technology made us better as people? I must greatly doubt it.
Seems to me that science, like religion, has mostly been useful, and used, to maintain, or perhaps re-establish, pecking orders, for keeping people “in their place” and useful to their privileged “betters” – perhaps the most evil of us all. Or at least with hearts as black as the belladonna cherry! Surely teaching can have been, or become, used to produce better results than I so far have been able to discern.

Dream memory

2011-05-25T18:14:00.001-07:00

Most likely it happens to others as it does to me: sometimes in a dream, there’s a kind of memory of, or flashback to, a previous dream, and other times, while awake, I find myself experiencing the sensations of a dream from long ago – maybe a dream remembered in another dream, maybe a more singular dream. Sometimes I cannot readily discern if the feelings called up are from a dream or from real life, at least for a couple minutes (or so it seems – the actual time may be shorter).
This may seem insignificant to many, but to me is indicative of something quite important: our involvement in matters un-measurable. It’s a sign of involvement in more than can be directly perceived, in matters, things or processes science cannot touch, cannot even pretend to investigate. For memory should be of matters of the tangible, or at least of ordered events (and most dreams we can’t even remember at all), but clearly there is more to it that only that. Which may be all we need to know to achieve the caution amoral sociopaths fail to observe.
OK – maybe dreams are just another electro-chemical process or reaction, but memory of dream as an event seems transcendent – not like Alfred North Whitehead’s nexus of nexus (verbal slight-of-hand misdirection trickery, of which there’s always quite a lot: denial of denial, negation of negation, belief in belief… a special advisor for speechwriting to President Richard M. Nixon once told me, “I can’t say that I don’t think what you’re doing is not wrong.”), but like a jump between contexts, verifying that there indeed are other contexts, as less materialistic people have always believed. We know our perceptions and words to be inadequate for dealing with matters before birth (or conception?) and after death, smaller than atoms or larger than galaxies, and that time and gravity present us with conundrums neither verbal gymnasts nor mystics are likely to settle; why don’t we accept that there is more involved in our living reality than what we can call material? We certainly should…

Archaeological preconceptions

2011-05-25T18:13:00.002-07:00

Amazon Books sends e-mail ads to about all it can, and I recently got one listing a book about Cahokia and Amerind mound builders. I noted mention of a community of 20,000, then deleted the ad. Later, I got to thinking about this supposed large community settlement, an anomaly among millions of Amerinds across over ten million square miles of territory. Yes, there were Pueblo peoples – from a very different climatic zone, far away, and a very large permanent assemblage of Aztecs where Mexico City is today. There likely were large communities of Caribs (and others living by the Caribbean and gulf of Mexico), of whom there may have been tens of millions alive for over half a millennium, surely with some awareness of, if not contact with, Mississippian Culture and others of that great river. 20,000 doesn’t amaze me, and I suspect that at times there were assemblages of considerably more.
Of the “Macro-Algonquian linguistic phylum that inhabited the east side of the lower Mississippi River”, who may have had villages with structures three stories tall, Britannica says, “The Natchez, allied in general culture to other Muskogean tribes, were a primarily agricultural people. They made clothes by weaving a fabric from the inner bark of the mulberry, excelled in potteryขmaking, and built large temples—similar to those of the Creeks—of wattles and mud set upon eight-foot mounds. Their dwellings—built in precise rows around a plaza or common ground—were four-sided and constructed of sun-baked mud and straw with arched cane roofs.”
Fine, as far as it goes, I suppose. But I can’t help thinking of the Steppe People, from Hungary to the Altai Mountains, including Scythians and Khazars, who built cities, sometimes, but didn’t stay in them during summers – and much preferred to wander. Very much as Amerinds preferred to wander. It was a good idea too, for health, for preservation of the natural environment, and for psychological outlook (particularly in regards to social structuring).
It’s easy to understand that other “white” people, given their ever-popular blinders, are quite unlikely to have realized the many preconceptions involved in their speculations about life in the Americas before Columbus. Tribes were long taken as fairly permanent fixtures with “chiefs”, defined “hunting grounds” and codified standards for conduct. But it occurs to me that things may well have been much more fluid than that, with lots more travel and exchange of ideas than has generally been recognized. And what may look like a city to us, might indeed have been something of a very different nature, with different utility and even rapidly changing – or perhaps better said, alternating - occupants.
In some “Pueblos” there may have been fixed abodes, and in others not, I don’t know, but in general, it stands to reason to see North American natives as having moved about a good deal, and ‘cities’ to have usually been but temporary abodes. I wonder if Amazon will ever have a book about that.