WE ARE THE PROOF WE'RE NOT ALONE

It has become fashionable for us to talk of consciousness, of what consciousness is, of existence and whether there is other life.

There's a general agreement consciousness is the mysterious sense of self, of what it is like to be me. It remains unexplained.

But consciousness is not that feeling alone. It is, at the same time, the undeniable sense of being here.

We are stardust in a Universe replete with stars, living proof of the infinite possibilities forever beyond us.

 

A piece of my mind on consciousness

Our cat started me thinking on this as it came into our kitchen one day. It jumped at the sudden noise when a saucepan was dropped, then walked sensibly round a chair that was in its way. Is our cat just reacting. or conscious, or intelligent, or what?

In our eyes, intelligence and consciousness are different because homo sapiens ponder things and felines don't. But that doesn't mean the cat has no standing. Descartes was wrong to say, 'I think, therefore I am'. We don't exist because we think. We exist anyway.

Consciousness is a principle of life - that is, a mutual arrangement with the environment that evolved to sustain everything living on Earth. In us, it has adapted over time into the uniquely complex interrelationship we call intelligence. 

  

Words can mislead. Consciousness and intelligence are the same thing, one an elaboration of the other, distinguished only because our evolved minds can think and speak of them the way we do.

                                                                                              ***** 

Some readers may prefer this paraphrase:

We tend to think of consciousness and intelligence as different.  Yet everything alive can experience the world without knowing its problems.

Other forms of life are conscious like this - able to comprehend without needing to theorise about it.

In humans, this basic consciousness has evolved into what we call intelligence. The two things appear to be different because we've evolved to think they are.

Did Hamlet get the big question wrong?

An actor interviewed on TV pointed out that 'To be or not to be - that is the question' is not the question. He playfully twisted the famous line, re-punctuating the words as: 'To be or not? To be - that is the question.' He touched on a point. What is existence? What are we doing here?

We're no longer separate from the Universe observing it from outside. That's an old religious idea. It hasn't weathered well since science came along to show humans aren't something created apart.

But like the child is not just the same as its parents, neither do we seem to be made just the same as the evolved Universe of galaxies and stars, rocks and rivers and trees. Science has the atoms that say we are, but circumstances and personal experience beg to differ. 

It's a dilemma. Are we the product of biology or physics, and how does that work? We get lost in exotic queries about consciousness when the question that needs answering first is what is life?

Theories of space and time, that the Universe is infinite or a Multiverse, that we're all living in a computer simulation, can sound a lot like the words, words, words Hamlet reads because he doesn't know himself.

How are we to understand Donald Trump?

In the years following WWII, Adolf Hitler was explained - and explained away, pegged and dismissed - simply as 'mad'. A parody of him as the 'Mad Dictator' even became a standing joke.

That was a travesty, but also clearly now a serious error of judgment.

Something much the same happens today with Donald Trump, who is explained and explained away simply as a 'narcissist'. That too misses the dangerous nature of the man, as 'mad' did for Adolf Hitler.

Worse, it misses what part everything else plays in making Donald Trump what he is.

Read more about it.

Will the people turn against Donald Trump in the mid-terms?

 

It's become the Question of the Day because Trump may be considered, and is certainly called, a neo-fascist - that is, a fascist for our times, not one out of the past. 

One feature supporting that is Trump knows instinctively his whole appeal is to what are called 'the people', a formless grouping that may or may not exist in reality, but which appears undeniable in the face of the enormous anonymous numbers out there. 

However that may be, Trump wins support by using every modern means of communication to promise that 'they', the faceless, undifferentiated masses, can only get what they want from him. That was fascism's project from the start and is what distinguishes fascism from democracy, which accepts variety and works on compromise. Fascism isn't a mendacious corruption of democracy, but a legacy from monarchy, when everyone was an obedient subject of the king.

The internet is a key instrument, but not the only one, to achieve Trump's ambitions; he has above all the prestige of being POTUS with the automatic universal attention that commands. In the role, he sees himself as Leader, akin to a dictator rather than to a king: self-made and answerable to none, fearless, infallible, even touched with Divinity. But still one of us.

What could upset this claim to power is the world has moved on from one hundred years ago. Democracy has taken root and can avail itself of the weapons Trump depends on. He has potent ways to persuade, but oppositions have their own means as long as they use them.

The question now isn't so much whether fascism's manipulable masses exist (and for that matter Marxism's intractable classes): it is whether the mass of voters have changed since Hitler and Stalin were able to force their infamous politics on the world. 

Are We the people still ready to back politicians who thrive on bragging that the solution is no problem provided they alone deal with it? Or has the lesson got home that when a politician makes that easy promise, both the problem and the solution are suddenly the people's?

"THE TRUTH WILL OUT"

There's little doubt President Donald Trump won his first essential objective, that being to destroy what is called 'the truth'.

But though it's no consolation at the time, that always turns out to be a temporary victory, as Trump's turbulent second term is confirming. His word is no longer trusted.

In the end, a programme of lies cannot replace 'truth' because what we call 'the truth' is plural, comprising many views. Lies simply take their place among all the differing opinions on a topic.

And what emerges from that plurality, that diverse, quarrelsome mix, is people's rough-and-ready consensus on something else entirely: on what they see as right and wrong.

It can take an age to show, many may always deny it and not comply, but everyone's stuck with morality. 

That's what we mean when we say the truth will out. 

Girl, young woman, in a red coat

 

i woke up at 4.30 last night. I wasn't particularly tired, but for once I thought I won't start the day this time or I'll be tired today. So I re-arranged my pillow, snuggled down and eventually fell asleep, I suppose.

We were walking across a large square. We'd just left something, somewhere. It might hVe been an opera, but I can't remember that now. I'm not sure what it was. She was a young woman, walking not together with me, but going the same way, a little distance off. There weren't other people anywhere. She had a bright red coat on, and was very friendly, just chatting away. I heard her voice and what she was saying very clearly and even replied in my own voice. Though it was all very clear, I can't remember anything we said now, writing this. She was so friendly, open, easy and nice and I began to think, how can I ask if we could just meet again? Could I do that without making her think I was creepy or just ridiculous after just this little talk as we walked.

Now I'd moved on from the big open square we were walking across talking and was in a smaller but still open space. There was a young bloke standing facing me across there. The girl had gone, so I naturally knew I had to speak to him. Again, I could hear my voice very clearly as I spoke. I asked him if I could see the girl again. I said I didn't mean anything by it. I was anxious to assure him. it was just that she'd talked so nicely and had been so friendly to me. In any case, at my age, how could I mean anything else? I said. He began to take it in, bbut never got round to making a reply.

At that exact point I woke up. It was 6.46. Every word of this is true and as accurate as I can report it now, not made up or elaborated in any way. I've written it down as I waited to open the gate for Velli at 7.30 in the 'study' bedroom, because I think it must be the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. I had been walking, say, just three or four minutes in that world, I would estimate, walking along with some girl in a red coat I'd never seen before and couldn't make out exactly, somewhere else.

 

As you see, I wrote this piece less than a year before. https://paulwhelanwriting.blogspot.com/2025/10/dreaming-consciousness-and-our-brain.html

(I've posted this two hours later, after adding the link, just as I wrote it, unedited, typing mistakes and all.) 

THE COMMON MISTAKE WITH FASCISM

We must avoid the error of defining fascism by reference to historical figures labelled fascist. If we don't, it's not difficult to show differences between them and the contemporary model. The result is the confusion and uncertainty that fascism thrives on.

It has learned, first of all, that to repeat the past, you must change it. Extremism wears no uniform and insignia now and makes a salute at its peril. Such gestures can only recall what followed last time. 

Instead, a down-to-earth, approachable leader flatters by sharing fears. There is a personal engagement with people's ordinariness, their everyday sympathies and prejudices that are all part of their common sense, decency and feelings for fair play. Familiar, honest things. The idea is normality rules here, not a brood of fanatics.

This is more than 'populism', as it's usually called: populism is only its method. It is an enveloping style of politics that finds a home in hard times, embodying only their discontents. Its trade is grievances, by which it appears to have no respectable opposition, only devious and corrupt enemies. It works by seizing opportunities thrown up by the issues of the day, welcoming the controversy that keeps it in the news. It is at all times tactical, very strong on what's wrong but elusive on what's right. 

If there's a defence against it, it requires equal calculation, a search of the values behind the plausible rhetoric. We can listen to the words but must also hear any words unspoken: war but not peace, for instance. We must hear words that scorn democratic norms and institutions, show contempt for tolerance, and slyly imply that violence is justice. We must particularly hear words that reserve or deny sympathy for a majority and a minority.

In these times of people power and social media, of the evasions and outright lies of self-serving politicians, we must be all ears. There are striking similarities between "Hitler" and many others who could turn out to be one; they're just dressed up differently for today.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH REALITY?

If there are waves and fields, if there is the electromagnetic spectrum, as Einstein reminded colleagues there is, and nuclear forces and gravity, then waves and fields, the spectrum, nuclear forces and gravity are real. 

That produces a problem, and a problem produces knowledge of the problem that leads to many theories and speculations.

It also leads to work on the problem.

We may get closer to an understanding, even an explanation, one day. That idea is real too - part of the problem.

Meanwhile, some will go on tackling the problem and others will go on theorising and speculating about it. Both and both together.

You've got to accept and allow for the fact there's the problem and there's us, intertwined, indissoluble.

That's the reality.

Is the 'hard question' - our consciousness - really so hard?

There are a great many things to say about human nature, but one feature stands out at all times: we enjoy nothing more than a mystery: if there isn't one, we'll make one. We're wide open to the latest conspiracy theory and the paradox, some contradiction in terms.

It's plainest to see on social media these days. People who insist the Moon landings were faked believe aliens land on Earth in flying saucers. They'll say it's impossible the Universe created itself from nothing, but that a Supreme Being did it is no problem. This Supreme Being is allowed to be eternal, though the Universe must be sensible.  The Universe must have a Beginning and End, like everything else.

It's a mystery we manage to think all this at the same time. But then are we really here, leading a life among trees, mountains, other people and cities, or do we only imagine we are? We say we're conscious of everything and, the biggest mystery of all, of our self. What is a self? What do we mean by being 'conscious'? What is this thing, consciousness?

Well, let's consider. First, it's not a 'thing'. It's a physical process by which not only we, but anything alive, interacts with its environment, modelling and adapting to it and therefore persisting.

We must assume many forms of life do this without being self-aware; we cannot know for sure if a sunflower is figuring it out as it turns with the sun, or if a dolphin has a sense of destiny. What we know is homo sapiens is always trying to find what being self-aware is and advancing many different theories and speculations about it. Often this leads to complicating rather than clarifying matters.

One current idea, for instance, is that consciousness dissolves any distinction between the observer and what's observed, and that goes to show that our consciousness is not a separate 'thing' in us but a sharing of some ultimate pervasive metaphysical essence.

Yet that's just what a physical process would produce in an individual organism or in a group as a body. An adaptive, persisting life form on Earth, or anywhere else it may exist, will be a natural, acting occupant in and of the surrounding Universe, not some puzzle apart.

How democracy works. And may yet disappoint Nigel Farage.

How can people best show their disapproval of their government? Get something done? Get change?

No secret. Under democracy, it's by voting. By their vote. Not the guy's next door. Not someone else. Everyone. Individually.

It doesn't help not to vote. A non-vote says nothing and can affect nothing unless it's a vote withheld from what you usually vote or voted last time. And even then that's not decisive. It can be explained away by 'low turnout'.

So the answer is to vote for someone who will frighten the life out of government, drive or force them into action.

And who else would that be in the UK right now but Reform?

Mr Farage may - stress, may - be counting chickens before they're hatched. And getting rid of Mr Starmer for someone else may turn out to be another (and big) mistake.

If Starmer's so bad, Mr Farage should logically want him to keep going.

Take nothing for granted under democracy. That's why it's the best form of government.

All things considered.

 

Mr Starmer v Mr Robbins

 

Isn't "the truth" - if "truth" has any meaning whatever in political life - that Mr Starmer (and No 10) wanted Mr Mandelson in place asap for political reasons, and that Mr Robbins, new in the post, flinched from delivering the bad news about the security situation, having technical authority not to disclose any news that prejudices or runs counter to the will and decision of the executive branch?

No wonder sophistry is having a field day. No power on earth or in heaven could cut this legal and moral Gordian Knot.

THE MADNESS OF KING DONALD

 

Trump's ambition is perfectly clear by now: to cajole and coerce into the hard right not just the US but the world, to put an end to the decadent times of "bleeding heart liberalism", as the neo-fascists see the years before and after 1989 when the enviable USSR fell apart.

That's what Kings do: exercise power as they see fit. To Trump, a deeply reactionary Monarch, that means making America great again, as in his mind it was once upon a time. It means turning the clock back.

A hopeless project, others will judge, except it seems possible in the gilded world of wealthy courtiers and impressionable subjects, backed with a powerful means to achieve it these days, the worldwide internet. Tweet your royal fantasies into reality for millions of people at a click. It works. Really. Proselytise, propagandise, pull the wool over eyes. Lie as required, to order.

After all, if Mars is to be under the American flag in 15 years or so, as Mr Musk predicts, why not the same on Earth? The biggest ships, the most advanced warplanes, the impregnable Golden Dome show Trump is unstoppable. "No other king and country in the world could do it". 

It's been coming for some time, though. The slow realisation, a growing unease, that it's too much to ask of the whole Stars and Stripes. 

It's not possible - not doable. It's not affordable. It's not ..."right".

Ordinary people always get in the way.

TRUMP'S LOSING SECOND TERM

The outline (I note the new buzzword is "contour(s)") of Trump's strategy in his second term is perfectly clear by now: to convert not just the US but the world to the hard right, to put an end to the decadent times of "bleeding heart liberalism", as the neo-fascists see the years to have been since WWII.

That's what Kings do: exercise power as they see fit. To Trump, a deeply reactionary King, that means making America great again - as it appears to him it was in the past. Amassing money. Needing no outsiders and keeping intruders out. In general, turning the clock back.

A hopeless project, many can see, except it seems possible in the royal world of wealthy courtiers and zealous subjects, backed with a means to bring it off, the worldwide internet. Tweet your fantasies into reality for millions of people at a click. It works. Really. Proselytise, propagandise, pull the wool over eyes. Lie as required, to order.

After all, if Mars is to be under the American flag in 15 years or so, as Mr Musk says, why not the same on Earth? The biggest ships, the most advanced warplanes, the impregnable Golden Dome show Trump is unstoppable. "No other country in the world could do it". 

It's been coming for some time, though. The slow realisation, a growing unease, that it's too much to ask even of the mighty Stars and Stripes. Trump has turned out just another false prophet.

It's not possible - not doable. It's not affordable. Worse than that, it's beginning to seem "wrong"...

Other people always get in the way.

What's wrong with Flat Earthers?

My internet comment: 'Flat Earthing' is about what most of us do a great deal of the time about a great many things - trust gossip, "common sense", hearsay and false reasoning, rather than keep an open mind, question what we're told and think for ourselves.

Rob's internet reply: That's what they say about us...

My reply to Rob: Absolutely. And the immediate cause of that is that our "Reason" - reasoning - can be employed to support things that are incorrect, whereas we all take it for granted that "reasoning" leads only to the correct conclusion. It simply does not. That, I believe, is obvious. 

The more interesting question then becomes why different people reach different conclusions in their "reasoning".

What is the nature of that difference and its causes? It can be cultural - who we "mix" with - but it appears to be also something genetic.

Rob's internet reply: Personally I think it's a mix of lack of education (for obvious seasons) and an anti-establishment attitude. When you are kind of 'angry' or jealous of people who in your opinion 'made it', you just attack their standpoints. Who cares about knowledge or truth?

Another thing is social acceptance for loners. I saw a documentary where shy people without social skills and friends gained respect in a group of flat-earthers (not online, they arranged large meetings) and even ended up on stage, addressing the public. And the same here: no-one really cared if earth was flat or diamond-shaped, they just enjoyed being together.