Me - or thoughts you are not likely to agree with

 

My belief - perhaps it has become or will become one day my firm conclusion: it will certainly disappoint some of my readers now - is that there is no Truth. What we have is some intuition, some mental tic, that there must be Truth because the Idea won't go away.

We can’t blame Plato; we’ve all got this Idea. My response was to accept it for years without thinking, to become baffled by experience, then gradually to put it away. I see the point of everything, I find ideas and the search for them always engage me, but I do not believe any of it much beyond feeling that we’re here and have to do what we can. That's an idea that works, but hardly an Idea. If Truth were real, I should have bumped into it by now.

The best explanation I have for this in philosophical terms is that I am an "empiricist". (I use inverted commas here in case I'm accused of having a Philosophy.) I know everything that’s wrong with empiricism, but I am still an "empiricist". Empiricism “works” for me; metaphysics does not. I am naturally structured to take the world as I find it and quite put out when doing so is given some label: skepticism, or worse, cynicism, or worst of all, not understanding.

Though I don't go for theories and think Truth is the Emerald City, I follow the Yellow Brick Road with the best of them. And report on the journey from time to time like an historian.

History teaches Hitler invaded Russia, not that it was wrong, still less that it was ordained. History gives many reasons for it, not one simple answer. History tells me we have moved on from Ancient Egypt and Rome, left behind medieval and twentieth century Europe, socially, politically, intellectually and yes, morally. There it is.

My daughter called me a “good listener” when she was over last year. I liked that, but I knew anyway. I am what I am.

 

Can humans live as long as God?

Come what may, God is with you.

Even as the Universe evolves (see About genes, science, the Universe, evolution, God and all that stuff) no one - no caliph, bishop, mystic, naturalist and, let’s be clear, no scientist - is able to say for sure how the process started or why. Chances are none ever will.

If the Big Bang started it, next up is what started the Big Bang? If the Big Bang started itself, how did it have the necessary explosive? If it wasn’t an ‘explosion’ in that sense, just quantum fluctuation and an instant expansion of space*, where did the quanta come from and why the fluctuation?

Any way you think about it, you're into an infinite regression. In one Creation story the world stands on the back of a giant turtle, the reply to any query about that being it's turtles all the way down. There’s no way out of infinity. Only the possibility that there is no infinity and no mystery “out there” at all. 

Our brain did not evolve to deal with the infinite; it evolved dealing with our bounded “environment” here on Earth. When elementary single-celled life emerged in some boiling pool somewhere eons ago, its entire concern was surviving in the pool, not on planet Earth or Mars. It's at it there to this day. We humans tackle surviving on planets.

To go a little deeper into that, we're also able to grasp with no sense of a fathomless mystery the long past and formation of Earth and Mars, and before that, can conceive of a distant time when neither of them was around.

And it doesn't stop there. We know Earth in not going to last forever yet can imagine an infinite future for the Universe with humans a living part of it. Only a Beginning, try as we might, is beyond reach.

But what if there was no Beginning, if there is no answer, no question, no mystery, never will be - only ever God? What on earth would explain that?

Us.

*Most scientists seem to agree the Universe is expanding, but not on how fast.

 

 

 

About genes, science, the Universe, evolution, God and everything

We've all heard about our genes. Genetics is the science of genes, their structure, function and the not quite perfect way they transmit copies of themselves - without which there would be no variety and people would not show it in profusion among us, as they do.

As if that weren’t enough, environments also change, and the life varieties that survive over time are those naturally adapted to sustain their existence - their 'life' - in changed conditions. Charles Darwin, who of course introduced this mechanism to us all, called it ‘natural selection’ to distinguish it from the artificial selection that people had already been doing for ages. From tigers, pussy cats.

There is no known or apparent reason why the process of natural selection is not at work in the Universe itself, or across the Multiverse if that’s what the situation is. 

Our Universe has certainly evolved or we wouldn’t be here. And we’ve all heard as well of a primordial ‘soup’ that was around very early on. If our Universe, in all its stunning complexity - galaxies, stars, planets, tigers, cats and us - did not emerge out of that soup, we must explain what it did emerge from, and how.

On that, more recent scientific theorising (itself constantly ‘evolving’) considers that the Universe is not necessarily running down like some gigantic machine, as is generally supposed to be the case. That scenario, faintly depressing however far off, is the result of entropy,* which means everything runs from order to disorder and finally arrives at a featureless state of equilibrium. Like the coffee in our picture, or the hot water left to become tepid then cold in your bath.

The alternative proposal is that, provided a system is not ‘closed’ - that is, it continues to receive inputs of energy - the increase in disorder spontaneously gives rise to new forms. And those that succeed are the most stable, the forms naturally adapted to the environment. 

Now the Universe that began with the Big Bang clearly did not start out like it is today. In which case, entropy may not be death but re-birth, midwife not undertaker, and this may be the way things are eternally.

That’s where, if S/He ever left, God comes back in.

Even as the Universe evolves no one - no caliph, bishop, mystic, naturalist and let’s be clear, no scientist - is able to say for sure how the process started or why. Chances are none ever will.

If the Big Bang started it, next up is what started the Big Bang? If the Big Bang started itself, how did it have the necessary explosive? If it wasn’t an ‘explosion’ in that sense, just quantum fluctuation and an instant expansion of space,** where did the quanta come from and why the fluctuation?

Any way you think about it, you're into an infinite regression. In one Creation story the world stands on the back of a giant turtle, the reply to any query about that being it's turtles all the way down. There’s no way out of infinity. Only the possibility that there is no infinity and no mystery “out there” at all. 

Our brain did not evolve to deal with the infinite; it evolved dealing with our bounded environment here on Earth. Likewise, when single-celled brainless life emerged in some boiling pool somewhere eons ago, its entire concern was surviving in the pool, not on planet Earth or Mars. It's at it there to this day. We humans tackle surviving on planets.

To go a little deeper into that, we're also able to grasp with no sense of a fathomless mystery the long past and formation of Earth and Mars, and before that, can conceive of a distant time when neither of them was around.

And it doesn't stop there. We know Earth in not going to last forever yet can imagine an infinite future for the Universe with humans a living part of it. Only a Beginning, try as we might, is beyond reach.

But what if there was no Beginning, if there is no answer, no question, no mystery, never will be - only ever God? What on earth would explain that?

Us.

*Entropy is promulgated by the intimidating Second Law of Thermodynamics. Could it have been repealed?

**Most scientists seem to agree the Universe is expanding, but not on how fast.

 

 

 

 

 

Can a journalist ever get a politician to tell the truth?

Journalists, even when partisan in the name of freedom of speech, still like to say they are after the truth.

That may well be honest in terms of how they see truth and in the eyes of their prime listeners and readers. But is it how their work comes across to an audience requiring unbiased information on current events? If it isn’t, is it a job done honestly? - assuming some superior ‘objective approach’ is open to them.

Interview after interview shows most politicians, legally and professionally counselled beforehand, are able to evade journalists' questions and stifle useful discussion by robotically repeating the party line. Digress and deny, concede nothing.

In the same way, mixed panels on popular political ‘shows’, got up to present a ‘balance’ of opinion, all too often end in a futile shouting match between panelists whose one shared aim is to prevent opposition views being heard.

We appreciate this is election year in key western democracies and that no one said democracy, or life, is fair. If we want democracy, we must accept all its ways and means, not just the ones we agree with.

But if there is such a thing as 'the truth', can politicians somehow be held to it? Let us speculate.

What if journalists were always to interview politicians constructively, giving them time to put their position while pointing as now to any gaps and contradictions along the way. Then suppose they ask the same simple question politely every time - it could even become this method's catch-phrase:

“Do you really believe what you’re saying?”

Even politicians could not talk round that question. And wouldn’t their answer 'tell' all listeners, those agreeing and not agreeing with what they just heard, everything they want or need to know about the truth: namely, whether the speaker is telling it?

Alas, we live in the real world. The truth, like politicians, is elusive and the media is doing what they can in the circumstances. Indeed, they would no doubt quickly run out of willing interviewees if they did anything more. 

We have the pageant politician-journalist jousting we have and had better think for ourselves.

 

How to vote in the UK general election

You may know how you're going to vote already of course. Though most of us are not prepared to admit it to pollsters, most of us know and have always known already, from the distant days when the vote started to be extended to what is called 'the common man'. 

Roughly speaking, common men voted against the toffs and the toffs voted for the Tories. In other words, your class decided your vote. 

After WWII, and particularly after Tony Blair, psephologists - big word, simple meaning: psephology is the study of elections - psephologists began to notice that not all Labour voters wore a cloth cap and not everyone who voted Tory wore a top hat. 

A new and perplexing explanation for our voting conduct began to emerge: people voted according to their "values", the two apparently most significant values being economic values and social values.

Now economic values are tough enough to find a way through. Most of us think there's something to be said for soaking the rich (except most of the rich of course), and every political party promises to cut taxes while raising public services to heights never before dreamed of. Divisive ideas from way back.

But these divides are nothing beside the open war caused by social values, the countless issues that bring out our moral differences. 

Must the state care more, or will need and want be left to charity again? Flout women's rights and stop abortion? Will harsher punishments fix crime, or greater compassion? Should we let 'them' in or send 'them' all back to where they came from? Are freeports a good thing for the economy and strikes wrecking it? Who are the bad guys, Russia or America? Should we 'rejoin'? - the Customs Union? the Single Market? the EU? Time for 'the people' to come together and stop wars.

No wonder so many of us say we don't know how to vote, even if we'll end by giving up and voting as usual, or not voting at all. 

Only 1 in 20 voters switched their vote from one of the major parties to the other one in the 2017 UK election. A minority of 1 in 10 are classified as "Apathetic" in political terms and don't vote. And why is not voting an answer? Not voting plainly makes no social or economic difference and leaves the individual as frustrated as ever after a gesture no one knows about.

You think things are bad. You're disillusioned with politics because all politicians are the same and nothing will change whoever wins.

What makes you certain of that? If things didn't change, we wouldn't have arrived at this low point now. And if this is the low point it seems to be, why is the only possible direction of travel down?

What is certain is change, and change is the only thing certain. That's why our two imperfect adversaries Mr Sunak and Mr Starmer both promise it. They know change happens even when they work to stop it. And it's why you haven't got the impossible decision you thought.

Stop giving yourself a bad time over the crisis and the way politicians can't be trusted to do something about it. If you're right on that, and if you haven't decided already, the only decision you have to make on how to vote is who you trust least.

The International Court of Justice, South Africa and Israel

 

This article is not a review of the ICJ judgment in the case of 'South Africa v Israel', full coverage of which is available across the media. It outlines the legal and political framework to that judgment.

States, in theory anyway, are "sovereign", an idea descended, obviously, from kings: no one can tell them what to do.

Accordingly, the ICJ only delivers judgment in a dispute between states that have agreed to the Court having jurisdiction in the dispute. This sounds strange because it is entirely different from a domestic criminal court, which hears and delivers verdicts on cases about law-breaking - that is, about crimes that have been committed. 

The ICJ is not a criminal court. It is not involved in investigating war crimes and in finding parties guilty or innocent. War crimes are brought against individuals in a different court altogether, the International Criminal Court.

At the start of its work to determine if and how the Israeli state has committed genocide, as South Africa proposes, the ICJ also did not “call for” a ceasefire, as many seem to have hoped it would and see as a failure in the present judgment. The reason is simple. The ICJ cannot enforce such a call, or its judgments, because it is not backed by a police force or army. 

Unlike in domestic society where courts are backed by those means of coercion, international society has to manage its affairs and disputes through diplomacy and, ultimately, war. There is no alternative, no executive authority to maintain legal order in international society.

In those circumstances, states can ignore judgments and carry on as if they had never been arrived at and handed down. From its immediate reaction, Israel may be ready to do that in respect of this judgment.

Many people think this makes international law powerless and the whole business an elaborate waste of time, an interminable process ending in empty words.

That is mistaken. Words uttered, opposing positions set out, a formal judgment from the ICJ, do not disappear. Legal arguments are rehearsed, precedents are created and stand forever. The law can be clarified and advanced. In that respect at least, international law works like domestic law.

The ICJ judgment has a moral force that Israel like any other state can ignore and even ridicule.

But at its peril, now and in the future.

 

 

Is US and UK democracy really in danger today?

Can you call the system of government in the UK and America - to name but two - "democracy"?

Yes, of course.

And be sure that democracy in those countries is quite different from what, say, Russia and China also call "democracy"?

Of course. The US and UK are liberal democracies.

Many are starting to doubt that. Would you say democracy in the US and UK is under threat, if not actually in danger?

Of course. Democracy isn't guaranteed. Parliaments and other assemblies can be managed, the courts intimidated, trades unions and human rights suspended, wars started, censorship brought in.

Is that happening in the UK and US?

Of course - slowly, here and there, bit by bit. You see it in the treatment of immigrants, limiting public protests, parties rubbishing each other, populist politicians spreading lies. And partisan media churning out endless government propaganda. People talk openly about coming dictatorships. Something different is happening politically today.

But wait a minute. Isn't "democracy' about much more than institutions like parliaments and a free press? Isn't it also about ideas and about values - liberal ideas and values? Votes for all. Freedom of expression and religion. Equality before the law. Human rights, including free healthcare. A commitment to peaceful change.

Of course. Those values are all part of it.

They can just vanish too? Democratic ideas and values - just disappear?

Of course not ...