Layer 525 . . . Great Artists, Enlightenment, Zen, Dawkins and Obscurity

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In the previous blog I wrote about some of America's greatest living artists, and it seems to me I need to say a little more on this subject. The job of an artist is ultimately to raise awareness, to express, celebrate and comment on the human condition, and to bring a little (or a lot) more enlightenment into the world.

There should be no doubt that artists such as Dylan, Cohen, Springsteen and Young fulfill all of these criteria. Anyone who doubts Dylan's credentials as an artist and a poet should read Christopher Ricks' wonderful "Dylan's Visions of Sin" and Michael Gray's "Song and Dance Man - the Art of Bob Dylan", and also pay careful attention to Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Anyone who questions Leonard Cohen's right to be called a great artist also ought to pay attention to his words, his poetry and his music, and then allow themselves to go "a thousand kisses deep", or simply take a walk down "boogie street".

Bruce Springsteen's art, on the other hand, is based on a very different sort of poetics, and a determination to speak to his audiences clearly and directly, without obscurity, but without being in any way patronising or underestimating their intelligence. Of course there will still be idiots like Reagan who completely fail to understand the irony in a song like "Born In The USA", but Bruce has learnt to live with this as a fact of life.

Neil Young also comments on his country and his fellow humans through songs like Ohio, Let's Impeach The President and Restless Consumer.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/11/layer-84-music-politics-neil-young-and.html

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html

Neil's all-time masterpiece may well be the Sleeps With Angels album, and in particular the track "Change Your Mind", which not only has brilliant lyrics but also features scintillating, extended guitar solos which tear at the senses and wrench emotions from stony souls. Try listening to this track on decent headphones with the volume turned up in a darkened room, with or without the video on the screen -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZWPgScALU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWXy-8vNxrs&feature=fvsr

You'll need to be in it for the long run though - all 14 minutes and 55 seconds.

http://www.neilyoung.com/   -  Horse Back -  This is even longer!

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Enlightenment and Obscurity

You have to hand it to Richard Dawkins - he draws attention to some pretty important stuff and gets people talking:

What is the proper place for religion in Britain's public life?

Britain became engulfed in a culture war last week as secularists and believers clashed over the role of religion in public life. Even the Queen intervened to defend the Church of England's role. Richard Dawkins, whose survey about Christianity in the UK ignited the row, defends his position on secularism, faith and tolerance in conversation with Will Hutton of the Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/religion-secularism-atheism-hutton-dawkins

Once again Will Hutton ventures into territory he's not really qualified to have strong opinions about. It's not clear from this article that he really understands secularism.

On the other hand, Oxzen has issues with Dawkins' disbelief in what some of us are calling spiritual intelligence. He's not the only one who fails or refuses to understand this crucial intelligence. Most people do.

Here's what Oxzen said in Layer 12:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-12-spiritual-intelligence.html

Key concepts for developing spiritual intelligence can be found in schemes of work with a sharp focus on human values. These are values that are subscribed to by humanists and by people of no particular religion, as well as by members of the many different faith communities throughout the world – values that give meaning to life and help to direct our most positive beliefs and actions. They are values that help to make our families, our communities and our societies better places to live in for all of us. Without such values we descend into strife, conflict, selfishness and aggression.


The following list is a summary of the key words and concepts we need to understand as part of a curriculum for human values and spiritual intelligence.


TRUTH
Curiosity, Equality, Honesty, Integrity, Intuition, Optimism, Truthfulness, Self-knowledge,
Reasoning


LOVE
caring, compassion, friendship, forgiveness, generosity, helpfulness, joy, kindness, tolerance, sharing, sympathy, patience


PEACE
calmness, contentment, dignity, discipline, happiness, honesty, humility, understanding, patience, reflection, self-confidence, self-control, self-discipline, self-respect, optimism


RIGHT CONDUCT
Contentment, Courage, Dependability, Duty, Ethics, Gratitude, Good behaviour, Healthy living, Helpfulness, Leadership, Initiative, Unity, Respect, Responsibility, Sacrifice, Self-confidence, Self-sufficiency, Simplicity, Perseverance 


NON-VIOLENCE
appreciation of others, brotherhood / sisterhood, citizenship, compassion, concern for all life, consideration, cooperation, unwillingness to hurt, equality, forgiveness, global awareness, good manners, loyalty, social justice, service to others, respect for people and property, unity, universal love, collaboration

My feeling is - without having read his book on science, religion and atheism - that Dawkins and his ilk set up a false dichotemy with God on the one side and total disbelief in any sort of spiritual intelligence on the other . . . . . .  whereas most people neither have any definite belief in God nor any disbelief in the 'spiritual'. This would appear to be a perfect example of the wisdom of crowds - that the majority of people believe there is something within most of us that directs us towards the values and virtues listed above - in the broad categories of truth, love, peace, right conduct and non-violence. The question is not whether spiritual intelligence exists, but where do we sit on a continuum that goes from high spiritual intelligence to low spiritual intelligence?

The two most spiritual words I know are lovingkindness & enlightenment. Professor Dawkins has a problem if he can't understand or reckon with these key Buddhist concepts. I commend him in a spirit of lovingkindness for his stance in favour of atheism, but I'd recommend him to pay greater attention to Buddhist philosophy and metaphysics.

Enlightenment? Don't know what it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensho

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Layer 519 . . . Secularism versus Religion, Intolerance, Warsi, Liberal Elites, Dumb Politicians and Spiritual Intelligence

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It's a strange business, this secularism versus religion - the godless versus the God-fearing and God-worshipping. Take this article in G2 today:

Is religion really under threat?

People with faith say secularism has become an aggressive and intolerant force in Britain. What has gone wrong? It should bring society together

by Julian Baggini

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/is-religion-really-under-threat

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/julianbaggini

Mr Baggini's 3 pages in the paper today were inspired by the incredible Baroness Warsi and her ludicrous comments about secularism in the past few days:

Baroness Warsi attacks 'liberal elite'

(The Telegraph's headline actually calls it a 'lilberal elite', but we'll gloss over that.)

Baroness Warsi, the Conservative chairman, has launched an attack on the “liberal elite” who are attempting to downgrade the importance of religion in public.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9083287/Baroness-Warsi-attacks-lilberal-elite.html

In a speech to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which trains Papal diplomats, last night, Baroness Warsi warned of the growing danger of “militant secularists” to British life.

She attacked the “well-intentioned liberal elite” for undermining the role of faith.

She said: [They] conversely, are trying to create equality by marginalising faith in society and think that the route to religious pluralism is by creating a path of faith-neutrality.”

She claimed that this led to them attempting to “downgrade religion to a mere subcategory in public life.”

The peer continued: “But look at their supposed level playing field. Its terrain is all but impassable to anyone of belief.

“One of the arguments of the liberal elite is that faith and reason are incompatible. But they don’t realise, as the Holy Father has argued for many years, that faith and reason go hand in hand.”

“Just as reason should not be excluded from debates about faith...so too spirituality should not be excluded when we look at worldly matters.”

So here we go again - another God-worshipping individual believing that only people who believe in a God possess any "spirituality", and that atheists (and presumably Buddhists) can't consider the spiritual dimension of "worldly affairs". Which, of course, is patent nonsense.

Buddhists don't have "faith" in a supreme being. However, unlike a lot of religious 'believers' they possess enough spiritual intelligence to apply a doctrine of non-violence when it comes to "worldly affairs" - very unlike the God-bothering Blair and Bush, for example.

Readers may have noticed that Oxzen has very high regard for principled religious people of high spiritual intelligence such as the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Rev Giles Fraser, late of St Paul's. I doubt very much whether any of these people feel threatened by secularists, atheists or Buddhists.

Interestingly Channel 4 News last night showed interviews with a rabbi and an imam - neither of whom felt threatened by “militant secularists” or felt that such people are a growing danger to 'British life' - unlike the idiotic Warsi. The female cleric who leads the daily prayers in the House of Commons, on the other hand, agreed with Warsi completely.

The rabbi and the imam both said that Britain is a brilliant country for Jews and Muslims and other religious people who wish to practise their faith.

What is it with dumb politicians and rent-a-gob careerists like Warsi? It's obvious that so many of these people would like 'godless liberals' and atheist intellectuals, who also tend to be on the left of the political spectrum, to become marginalised and disregarded in their critiques of society.

The other thing that Warsi has presumably realised is that the Establishment in this country stays powerful by sticking together - the monarchy, the political elite, the religious elite, and the financial elite. All of them consider themselves to be 'at the heart of public life'.

Give me an intelligent and truly spiritual Archbishop anyday, instead of an idiot atheist like Nick Clegg, for example. But please, someone, spare us the likes of Warsi and her diatribes - the only practising Muslim who thinks that Christianity should be at the heart of British public life, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of people in this country never set foot in a church, never pray to a god, and have no strong religious beliefs.
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Layer 515 . . . Spiritual Thoughts, The Future of Conservatism, Dumbogeddon, Right-Wing Stupidity, Left-Wing Timidity, and Schoolification

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Recent thoughts of the Dalai Lama

When we are angry we are blind to reality. Anger may bring us a temporary burst of energy, but that energy is blind and it blocks the part of our brain that distinguishes right from wrong. To deal with our problems, we need to be practical and realistic. If we are to be realistic, we need to use our human intelligence properly, which means we need a calm mind.

The very purpose of spirituality is self-discipline. Rather than criticizing others, we should evaluate and criticize ourselves. Ask yourself, what am I doing about my anger, my attachment, my pride, my jealousy? These are the things we should check in our day to day lives.

It is important that when pursing our own self-interest we should be “wise selfish” and not “foolish selfish”. Being foolish selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow, shortsighted way. Being wise selfish means taking a broader view and recognizing that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone. Being wise selfish means being compassionate.

There is a saying in Tibetan that “at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar.” The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come from wealth, but from setting limits to one’s desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness. When one desires to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being, then generosity - in action, word, and thought - is this desire put into practice. It is important to recognize the "generosity" here refers not just to giving in a material sense, but to generosity of the heart.

The creation of a more peaceful and happier society has to begin from the level of the individual, and from there it can expand to one's family, to one's neighborhood, to one's community and so on.

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The Future of Conservatism was yesterday's subject on Start The Week (Radio 4).

Hmmmm.

Peter Hitchens has never been a writer I'd bother to read, but at least he represents 'traditional' or 'one nation' conservatism - the party of Harold MacMillan or even Edward Heath, the kind of 'caring' conservatism that existed before Thatcher came along with her neo-conservative revolution, and made the Tory brand nasty and toxic: a party for the City, pro-greed, pro-selfish individual advancement, pro-privatisation, no such thing as society, etc.

Hitchens pointed out that traditional Conservatism was supposed to be a party guided by Christian values. Today's conservatism is "completely uninterested in matters of morals and culture", and neither is it interested in "preserving the particularlity of Britain", hence it allowed industry to collapse, and allowed what's left of it to be sold off to the highest bidder - i.e. asset-stripper. He made it clear that in his view Thatcher and Reagan were walking disaster areas. Which is telling it like it is.

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George Monbiot also tells it like it is:

The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left

Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/right-stupidity-spreads-enabled-polite-left

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

The new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo".

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.

But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".

Lofgren complains that "the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".

But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness". They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It's turkeys all the way down.

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Dumbogeddon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/05/daily-mail-calls-rightwingers-stupid

by Charlie Brooker

The Mail's report went on to detail the results of a study carried out by a group of Canadian academics, which appears to show some correlation between low childhood intelligence and rightwing politics. It also claimed that stupid people hold rightwing views in order to feel "safe". Other items they hold in order to feel safe include clubs, rocks and dustbin lids. But those are easy to let go of. Political beliefs get stuck to your hands. And the only way to remove them is to hold your brain under the hot tap and scrub vigorously for several decades.

As you might expect, many Mail Online readers didn't take kindly to a report that strived to paint them as simplistic, terrified dimwits. Many leapt from the tyres they were swinging in to furrow their brows and howl in anger. Others, tragically, began tapping rudimentary responses into the comments box. Which is where the tragi-fun really began.

"Sounds like a BBC study, type of thing they would waste the Licence fee on, load of Cods wallop," claimed Terry from Leicester, thereby managing to ignore the findings while simultaneously attacking public service broadcasting for something it hadn't done. For his next trick, Terry will learn to whistle and shit at the same time.

Not all the respondents were stupid. Some were merely deluded. Someone calling themselves "Hillside" from Sydney claimed: "I have an IQ over 200, have six degrees and diplomas and am 'right-wing', as are others I know at this higher level of intelligence." His IQ score is particularly impressive considering the maximum possible score on Mensa's preferred IQ test is 161.

On and on the comments went, turning a rather stark write-up of a daft-sounding study into a sublime piece of live online performance art. A chimps' tea party of the damned. The Mail has long been a master at trolling lefties; now it's mischievously turned on its own readers, and the results could only be funnier if the website came with free plastic lawn furniture for them to lob at the screen. You couldn't make it up.

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Education & Zeitgeist Corner


Sue Palmer (Toxic Childhood) spoke well on the Today programme this morning on "schoolification" - "The mechanical target-driven model of education."

For more thoughts on education versus schooling, click this blog:

And take a look at this editorial:

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Good article in Guardian Education today by Michael Rosen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/michael-rosen-gove-curriculum-schools

Dear Mr Gove: Michael Rosen's letter from a curious parent

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Layer 514 . . . Atheist Temples, Religions, de Botton, Spiritual Intelligence, Question Time, BBC Balance, Bankers' Bonuses, Muddling Along, Mitt Romney and Radical Alternatives

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Here's an interesting headline:

Alain de Botton's atheist temple is a nice idea, but a defunct one


De Botton's atheist temple call does not need to be realised – our existing places of worship can be appreciated by all

And there we have a depressing strapline that sits beneath it. John Gray just doesn't get it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/02/alain-de-botton-atheist-temple-defunct

Establishing atheist places of worship isn't exactly a new idea. As de Botton himself notes, an ambitious programme of atheist church-building was part of the Religion of Humanity, invented by the 19th-century French thinker Auguste Comte.

When he proposes building a temple for unbelievers, de Botton is reinventing a wheel that never really turned. The fad for atheist temples lasted for perhaps 60 years, while places of worship dedicated to something bigger than humanity have been around for many millennia. There is a nice irony here. For all his loony notions, Comte was more intelligent than most of the atheists who came after him. He saw clearly that religion is an enduring human need that cannot be denied. 

Even if Comte's church was ephemeral, he was right in predicting that religion would not die out. The world is awash with formless religiosity, much of it flowing through non-traditional channels. 

Comte wanted his new religion to be based on science, so the temples of humanity pointed only as far as science could reach. That is why his new church failed. The very idea of a science-based religion is an absurdity. The value of religion is that it points beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science, showing us that a mystery would remain even if everything could be finally explained. The heart of religion isn't belief, but something more like what Keats described as negative capability: "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason".

Rather than trying to invent another religion surrogate, open-minded atheists should appreciate the genuine religions that exist already. London is full of sites – churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship – that are evocative of something beyond the human world. Better spend the money that is being raised for the new temple on religious buildings that are in disrepair than waste it on a monument to a defunct version of unbelief.

What a load of cobblers. Where to begin with this?

" Religion is an enduring human need that cannot be denied."

I, for one, have no need of religion - so that deals with that stupid idea. So do billions of others have no need for religion. There are massively more people who have no need for religion than those that do. Many of those who apparently need a religion are simply following their family or community traditions rather than experiencing genuine need. Many of those that do are needy individuals who are simply praying for some sort of mystical help and 'divine intervention' to deal with their problems. Many of those that do somehow believe that God is an actual divine being with whom they can have conversations. This may be some kind of need, but it's not a healthy or realistic way of dealing with problems. People like Tony Blair and George W believe they have conversations with God, but that doesn't prove God exists. These people have been known to be wrong on other serious matters.

Whilst it's true that many strong and healthy people engage with religion in order to engage with something positive and to experience awe and wonder, this does NOT mean that there's 'an enduring human need for religion'. Many people cease to attend 'places of worship' out of a sense of disgust with the way that religious establishments have colonised and perverted the original enlightened words of the founders of those religions.

"The value of religion is that it points beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science."

Religion does indeed 'point beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science', but that doesn't mean that religion itself has any true value. Comfort eating and cigarette smoking have some sort of value for those that seem to benefit from these activities, but that doesn't mean they have true value. Arguably down the centuries various religions have been equally destructive for those who have engaged with them, both in terms of physical harm but also in terms of replacing or blocking more enlightened approaches to engagement with the metaphysical and the spiritual.

"Rather than trying to invent another religion surrogate, open-minded atheists should appreciate the genuine religions that exist already."

De Botton is clearly NOT ' trying to invent another religion surrogate'. A temple for atheists would be a place where people could gather to reflect on the divine and the sublime without any of the religious trappings - no priests, no icons, no 'faith', no 'worship', no rituals, no doctrine, no imagery, no God.

Now it's true that we don't need special buildings in order to commune with the spiritual and the sublime, and to experience awe and wonder. We have nature, which is perhaps the best place to be if we want to switch off rational thought, as such, and let our metaphysical intelligence engage with the incredible mysteries of life, and to give silent appreciation for life.

However, in cold climates and in cities it's sometimes difficult to find special places that facilitate meditation and inner wordless reflection. Whilst it's true that atheists might choose to go inside buildings which belong to various religions in order to meditate and reflect, many of us choose not to. Even in Japan I'd prefer to seek spiritual experience in a garden than inside a mainstream Buddhist temple. (Though I'm very 'at home' inside a Zen temple, whose minimalism shows no signs of religiosity whatsoever.)

So de Botton is right and Gray is wrong. We do need atheist temples that provide beautiful, harmonious, comfortable indoor spaces that are akin to halls of meditation - where people can experience awe and wonder as they take a break from everyday life, switch off their intellects, and allow their metaphysical intelligence to operate in a place of silence that's dedicated to the expression of gratitude for the wonders of life itself.

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Question Time

I'm really giving up on Question Time. This week was worse than ever. A bunch of right wing gimps, including a careerist New Labour toss-pot of the worst order. This programme is now largely pointless.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/default.stm

Even Phil Redmond, ostensibly a liberal, seems unable to offer a radical perspective on current affairs. The man's a millionaire, but in theory that shouldn't prevent him offering a radical critique. Somehow, though, it does. (He also managed to choose a bunch of rubbish for his desert island discs!) A waste of space.

And I don't even want to talk about the Taxpayers' Alliance. Idiots United.

Does the BBC really call these panels 'balanced' in these times of worldwide clamour for change?
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Ed Miliband to call Commons vote on bonuses

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/02/ed-miliband-commons-vote-bonuses

Ed Miliband will broaden his attack on the coalition's divided Britain by calling a Commons vote next week to urge an end to the bonus culture.
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Mitt Romney wins backing of Donald Trump ahead of Nevada caucuses

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/02/mitt-romney-wins-donald-trump-backing

Oh joy.

America had 45 million people living in poverty, but Romney makes it clear that he's not interested in them. He'll take good care of the middle classes, he says. According to Romney anyone, like Obama, who talks about 'fairness' is just talking 'the politics of envy'.

Is America really going to elect this man as their president?
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The mood in Britain is to muddle along

This may be an era of economic turmoil, but people have little appetite for a radical alternative

by Martin Kettle

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/mood-in-britain-muddle-along

Martin Kettle's another shifty right-wing New Labour type. And I speak as someone who does indeed have a considerable appetite 'a radical alternative'. He's a rubbish writer who always defends the status quo. Annoying bastard.

The reason most people appear not to have an appetite for a radical alternative is because they're not being offered one. None of our mainstream politicians have the charisma, the coherence or the vision to put in front of people that will persuade them that a radical alternative is both possible and desirable. Very few of our mainstream media organisations would offer a platform for their views even if such people existed.

In these situations, throughout history, we find crazy, reactionary, repressive and repellent individuals coming to the fore to offer fascistic 'solutions' to national political problems - Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, etc. George W Bush and Tony Blair are fringe members of this group - as witnessed by their crazy support for unregulated capitalism and financial systems, 'trickle down' economics, 'globalisation', repression of civil liberties, overt and covert support for kidnapping and detention without trial, ditto for the use of torture of suspects, assassinations, illegal wars and invasions, worldwide coercion of foreign governments, and so forth. All of this is on the record. Naomi Klein has provided the world with an excellent summary - 'The Shock Doctrine'.

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This Week on BBC1 is another waste of space. Andrew Neil is a twat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/9692460.stm

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Layer 511 . . . Taxing Wealth, Fear of Taxes, US Elections, Global Apocalypse, Carl Jung and Data Pool 3

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The thing is, politics is far too important to be left to politicians. That's why we need public intellectuals, capable analysts, and great writers & journalists. And we need the Guardian to give them a creative platform. Here's a selection of what was in the paper yesterday.

[It might seem like dull, dutiful, hard work sometimes to keep up with what's happening in the world, but in times of crisis and change we all have a public duty to pay attention, and to work hard if necessary at knowing what's going on. Otherwise we lose the right to complain when we don't like what's done to us.]

Mysteries of Data Pool 3 give Rupert Murdoch a whole new headache

The arrest of four Sun journalists threatens to open a fresh phase of the scandal surrounding News International

by Nick Davies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/29/data-pool-3-sun-arrests-murdoch

On Saturday morning, the police arrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a while, it looked as though these were yet more arrests of people related to the News of the World but then it became clear that this was something much more significant.

This may be the moment when the scandal that closed the NoW finally started to pose a potential threat to at least one of Murdoch's three other UK newspaper titles: the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.

The four men arrested on Saturday are not linked to the NoW. They come from the Sun, from the top of the tree – the current head of news and his crime editor, the former managing editor and deputy editor.

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Taxing wealth? The public mood still escapes the Tories

Ed Miliband's task is to point out where the blame really lies for unfairness in the system

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/30/tax-on-wealth-public-anger

by Polly Toynbee

The Hester bonus retreat marks a seismic political moment, a point of no return. How long it has taken, how slow Westminster has been to respond to public outrage since the crash – but Labour has seized the moment.

Labour's call for a tax on bank bonuses gains real traction as boardroom kleptocracy finally breaks through the political sound barrier. Despite poll after poll showing disgust at top pay, the issue has been ignored at Westminster and was invisible at the last election. Hester's failure to respond in time to public outrage has lit the blue touch-paper. Uncharacteristically, David Cameron missed the public mood, so he looks both weak and in hock to a City that bankrolls his party. Each new bonus announcement will skewer him again and again – one RBS trader gets £4m and on Friday, Barclays' Bob Diamond will swipe £10m: no Cameron nudging is likely to shift his sod-you-all attitude.

Hester has handed Labour the tin-opener to the whole can of worms over boardroom pay. Research from Professor Karel Williams at Manchester University's Cresc shows how far soaring executive pay is unrelated to performance, but how closely related it is to the tiny pool of people sitting on boards, similar earners rubber-stamping one another's ever-rising pay. There is, Williams says, "a very weak link between pay and performance". Most employees know that performance-related pay is largely a chimera: gamed by managers, resented by staff, it corrodes into custom and practice. Let this end the bonus and incentives fallacy in every sphere.

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Why are deficit-cutters so afraid to talk about tax?

Reducing public spending is not the only way of balancing the budget, but taxation seems to be taboo for politicians

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/deficit-cutters-tax

By Mehdi Hasan

 'I like paying taxes," the US supreme court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked, "with them I buy civilisation." As hundreds of thousands of self-assessment taxpayers frantically file their returns to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, ahead of 31 January's looming deadline, the late judge's words are worth bearing in mind.

We need to talk about tax. I won't pretend I like paying taxes. I don't. But I agree with the argument that it is taxation that helps civilise our society. Tax revenues fund high-quality public services, the welfare state, our national defence and much-needed infrastructure projects. Progressive taxation of income keeps inequality in check, by redistributing from the rich to the rest.

But taxation also goes to the heart of the current debate over the deficit. In his new and aptly titled Compass pamphlet, White Flag Labour, economist Howard Reed points out that "there are two ways to close a fiscal deficit when the economy is operating at full potential – one is to cut spending, the other is to raise taxes" yet deficit hawks assume that "cutting spending is always and everywhere the preferred route to fiscal balance, rather than raising more revenue via the tax system".

Fiscal policy has been reduced to a sterile debate over public spending in recent years. Our political elites act almost as if taxation doesn't exist. Defending Labour's recent tilt towards cuts, Ed Miliband proclaimed in a speech on 10 January that "the next prime minister will still have a deficit to reduce, and will not have money to spend". Really? Why can't said deficit be reduced through additional tax revenues?

The phrase "deficit reduction" has become a convenient euphemism for cutting public expenditure. It shouldn't surprise us. The biggest myth in British politics is that government borrowing spiralled out of control because of overspending; our record budget deficit, say the Tories and their Lib Dem mini-mes, is the inevitable consequence of Labour profligacy.

It cannot be said often enough: the deficit was caused not by rises in public spending but by a collapse in tax revenues. For example, by 2009-10, the Treasury had received around £112bn less in tax revenues than it had expected to. As Channel 4's FactCheck website decisively concluded earlier this month, "the drop in tax receipts triggered by the economic crisis is what's behind the bulk of the £149bn deficit".

Poll after poll shows overwhelming public support for a tax on bankers' bonuses; a mansion tax on multimillion-pound properties; a windfall levy on the oil and utility companies; a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions; and a one-off wealth tax of 20% on the richest 10% of households (which would raise a whopping £800bn and, according to YouGov, is backed by three out of four voters).

Increasing taxes on the rich to help reduce the deficit isn't "class warfare", as President Obama belatedly argued in his state of the union address last week: it is "common sense". If our leaders want us to believe that they are serious about the deficit, then they have to lift their self-imposed taboo on discussing tax.

The time has come to say the politically unsayable: it is wrong to pretend that cutting spending is the only, best or main method of eliminating the deficit. It isn't. In the long run, once the economy is off its knees and growing again, we need to make much greater use of taxation to balance the budget. Perhaps we can update Justice Holmes's mantra for our age of austerity: I like paying taxes, with them I pay down the deficit.

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US elections: no matter who you vote for, money always wins
Dollars play a decisive role in US politics. And more so since the supreme court allowed unlimited campaign contributions

by Gary Younge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/29/us-politics-vote-money-wins

Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. 

Given the general state of the Republican party . . . truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/27/obama-no-credible-republican-challenger

 It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."

The good news is, with the exception of Perry's demise, the debates have not been pivotal. The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.

The issue here is not class envy, hating rich people because they are rich, but class interests – cementing the advantages of the privileged over the rest. The problem is not personal, it's systemic. In the current climate, it means a group of wealthy people in business will decide which wealthy people in Congress they would like to tell poor people what they can't have because times are hard. And unless the ruling is overturned there is precious little that can be done about it.

Downplaying money's central role at this point merely buys into the illusion of participatory democracy, where ideas, character and strategy are paramount, while others are actually buying the candidates and access to power. The result is a charade. Fig leaf, G-string – name the scanty underwear of your choice. The emperor is butt naked. Whoever you vote for, the money gets in.

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SweetBirdOfTruth

"Truth and facts are but two options amonst many."

Great line, and one which is borne out every day here on Cif by the more mendacious right-wingers.

It's difficult to believe that, four years after a financial crisis created by widespread corruption and fraud by banks, not a single person has been jailed either in the US or the UK for perpetuating this fraud.

It's even more difficult to believe that this crisis has been exploited by right-wingers and free market zealots to make the case for a shrinking of the state and greater deregulation in the interests of those who clearly cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

The neoliberal zealots, for whom truth and facts are simply options, shout down those who call for regulation and controls on irresponsible markets as socialists who will usher us all into the Gulag.

They will have missed the Newsweek report this week which found that there are 6 million people in the US either incarcerated or under some form of criminal supervision.

Newsweek helpfully pointed out that the figure of 6 million, in the Land of the Free, exceeded the total number of people imprisoned or under state supervision in the Soviet Union in the worst years of Stalinist repression.

Meanwhile, there are $18trillion sitting in offshore tax havens, a figure which exceeds the combined debt of the OECD economies.

The truth and the facts show that there is no justification for austerity.

Austerity is simply a policy choice for neoliberals who care more for their own selfish interests than they do for truth and facts.

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Davos policymakers are playing Global Apocalypse – and running out of lives
If the world economy was a video game, the central bankers and politicians have been struggling to master the controls – and remain stuck on the first level

By Larry Elliott

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/jan/29/global-economic-crisis-policymakers-apocalypse

Policymakers have put the question of global rebalancing into a box labelled "too hard to deal with", and have been dilatory in sorting out the problems of their financial sectors. Instead, whether through a misguided belief in financial orthodoxy or a fear of the bond markets, they have concentrated on heavy-handed and blanket austerity, something that should have come at the very end of the game.

The result has been sluggish growth in the west because every element of growth – public expenditure, consumer spending and investment – has been choked off simultaneously. If government is to retrench without causing recession, private demand has to rise, but the squeeze on real incomes and a reluctance to invest means this is not happening. The result is an unbalanced global economy, drifting towards a double-dip recession (in the west at least), a dysfunctional financial system and – a new ingredient in the toxic mix – a deeply disaffected public.

Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund's managing director, spent last week rattling the tin in the hope of getting contributions for a $2 trillion (£1.3tn) war chest. European policymakers were trying to put the finishing touches to a Greek debt deal. Draghi made it clear that providing liquidity to Europe's banks would not be enough on its own to bring an end to the crisis.

What does it mean? It means that blanket austerity is not working, and. It means that what was originally a global response to a global crisis has become a series of national responses to national crises. It means that Europe is treating a three-dimensional problem (growth, banks, public finances) with a one-dimensional fix of deficit reduction. It means that the global economy is still struggling to get beyond level one of Global Apocalypse. And if policymakers don't start showing a bit more skill, it will soon be Game Over and time to play Global Apocalypse 2.

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This could be Carl Jung's century

The psychoanalyst saw himself as a sort of therapist for western culture, and his diagnosis of its ills resonates today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jan/25/carl-jung-century

by Andrew Samuels

If the last century has been called "the Freudian century", there are reasons for thinking that this one could be Jung's. His time does seem to have come.

He had a much more positive view of the human psyche and unconscious than Freud. For Jung, the unconscious is not only full of wild and destructive drives; it is also the source of creativity, spirituality and the capacity for relationships.

What Jung saw in western culture is very familiar to what its contemporary critics perceive. He despaired of the over-rational one-sidedness of western culture, the way it has got cut off from nature (Jung is the pioneer of what is now called ecopsychology). He hit out at the materialism and loss of individuality in our world, focused on the mind-body split, on mechanical approaches to sex, and the west's loss of a sense of existential and spiritual purpose and meaning. 

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Layer 508 . . . Happiness, Desert Island Discs, Kirsty Young, Contentment, Intelligences, Philosophy, de Botton and Zen

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It's Desert Island Discs Weekend. Hurrah!

Castaway: 70 Years of Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young tells the story of the long-running programme as it celebrates its 70th anniversary and investigates what has made it such an enduring part of the radio schedule.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b8wrw

Why Desert Island Discs is still in the groove

Who are the classic radio show's most colourful castaways of the past 70 years?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9044972/Why-Desert-Island-Discs-is-still-in-the-groove.html

As part of the 70th birthday celebrations, we are all asked to choose our own favourite eight discs – results will be broadcast on BBC national and local radio tomorrow after the 70th anniversary Desert Island Discs at 11.15am on Radio 4. Will national tastes have altered yet again? Will Ralph Vaughan Williams have been demoted? We will soon find out.

Is Kirsty Young the most intelligent and attractive woman in the UK? If not, then who is? And we're not just talking intellect here. Sense of humour and sense of the ridiculous are also key.

I don't want my children to be happy just to be content and have self worth, says Kirsty Young

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9033222/I-dont-want-my-children-to-be-happy-just-to-be-content-and-have-self-worth-says-Kirsty-Young.html

The presenter of Desert Island Discs said that "life is complicated" and that her children will be "bloody lucky" if they even glimpse true happiness.

The 43-year-old, who has two daughters and two stepchildren, was speaking as the BBC radio programme, the world's longest running, celebrated its 70th year.

So what does Kirsty Young mean by 'being content'?

The presenter of Desert Island Discs has caused a stir by saying she doesn’t want her children to be happy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9035926/So-what-does-Kirsty-Young-mean-by-being-content.html

Young knows the value of not having it too easy. Her Scottish childhood was tough; her parents divorced, there wasn’t a great deal of money, and she has in the past paid tribute to her mother for instilling in her the ambition to do better for herself.

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, political biographer and co-founder of the campaigning group Action on Happiness, was horrified by her comments. “She is totally and profoundly wrong,” he says. “I feel sorry for her children. Every parent should want their child to be happy more than anything else in life, to achieve that sense of deep fulfilment, that they are experiencing life to the full.”

Why is Seldon so obtuse? He's talking here about being fulfilled, and experiencing life to the full. Is that all there is to happiness? Is it possible to feel fulfilled and to 'experience life to the full' ALL of the time? Is there no place in life for sadness and melancholy? Can you experience happiness whilst NOT 'experiencing life to the full'.

Seldon is in the vanguard of those credited with promoting a “happiness agenda” in government circles. His school was the first in the country to offer pupils lessons in happiness. “It is all about psychological health,” he explains, “about connectedness and engagement, about relationships, doing good, appreciating nature and art. Happiness underpins them all. At a time when we are experiencing so much mental illness, teaching youngsters about happiness enables them to see what they can be and to strive for it.” In other words, his take on happiness may mean exactly the same as what Kirsty Young labels contentment.

Doh! Lessons in happiness indeed! He's talking about enabling young people to develop all of their intelligences - personal, social, emotional, spiritual, etc. Happiness is then a by-product of all-round development and reaching one's full potential as a human being. Happiness cannot UNDERPIN this process. How the hell do you acquire happiness in the first place - especially if you're living in dire circumstances? Like in certain public schools.

Happiness doesn't cause you or enable you to develop good relationships, do good to others, appreciate nature and art, etc. Happiness is a by-product of these things.

Seldon's already been told these things - so why doesn't he listen? Especially when he agreed with those of us who were telling him that you can't actually teach young people to be happy!

This article goes on to say,

The emphasis on happiness also worries writer and mother of four Sarah Johnson. “It all sounds so easy,” says the author of The Christian Parents’ Toolkit and Parents on Parenting. “Happiness is very much a state I associated with childhood, all that living in the moment, immediacy and enjoyment. But I cannot say that, as they have grown up towards adulthood, what I have wanted most for my children is for them to be happy, over and above everything else, because that carries with it for me the implication that their lives should be about gratifying their immediate desires. As a goal in life that way only unhappiness lies.”

Seldon is keen, though, to draw a distinction between happiness and pleasure. “Pleasure is when you only think about yourself. It is always about having material satisfaction – good food, another body next to you, a smart car, and it is time-specific. It doesn’t last. But in the 10 routes to happiness that Action for Happiness has identified, serving others and volunteering is among the highest. Happiness has a spiritual value,” he stresses, “with a small s.”

The same message is promoted by Alain de Botton in his new book, Religion for Atheists. The great faiths, he suggests, have always managed to make their followers happy, so why shouldn’t atheists do the same by establishing their own “temples of tenderness”?

But de Botton is misrepresenting religion, says Mark Vernon, the author of Wellbeing and a former Anglican priest. “Religions aren’t keen on the word happiness. It is there in what Christianity means when it uses terms like 'blessed’, but it also understands how complicated it can be. In modern terms, happiness tends to describe only if you are up or down, and my instinct would be to forget it as thin and shallow if you want to talk about spirituality.”

Which brings us back to the attraction of contentment felt by Kirsty Young and others.

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Zen

Alain de Botton is annoying. He talked this morning on Radio 4 about Zen Buddhism and about religion as though they're one and the same thing. They're NOT. There is no God and no worship in Zen Buddhism, which is a philosophy and a method of developing higher levels of spiritual intelligence. De Botton is a clever man and a philosopher, and he ought to know better.

Saturday Live - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgj4

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Layer 502 . . . Banking Reform, City Whingeing, Britain's Interests, Tax Havens, Tax Avoidance, Neuroscience, Punishment, Values, Virtues and Education

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An interesting column by Vince Cable in the Guardian this week:

Put aside the City's whingeing


The threats posed by banking reform are exaggerated. The country's interests must come first

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/20/phoney-emotions-generated-eu-transaction-tax

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Simon Jenkins' column this week is, as usual, well worth checking out:

The government is so draconian, yet so casual towards dodgy private cash

At times like this we need an equality of misery. Yet public spending is slashed while Revenue & Customs caves in to the wealthy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/20/government-draconian-casual-dodgy-private-cash

In good times such stories merely water the envious eye. In bad times they induce blind rage. Why the hell should people be expected to lose their jobs, their houses, their lifestyles, when the government is a soft touch for the rich and powerful? This is not a matter of left or right, socialist or capitalist. Britons are now embarking on a journey into a dark night of economic gloom. Nothing will make them less inclined to co-operate than the sight of a lucky few rowing to safety in gold-plated lifeboats.

Fairness cuts both ways. Today's report on the tax leniency shown by the Revenue towards big corporations indicates that toughness towards the poor is not replicated by toughness towards the rich. The estimate was of some £25bn in taxes gone missing, the bulk of it concealed by an insistence on "commercial confidentiality", otherwise known as incompetent secrecy.

Goldman Sachs appeared to have paid £20m less than it should on bonuses alone, and was excused with a £10m payment ex gratia and a "handshake" with the boss of the Revenue. Vodaphone paid just £1.25bn towards a tax bill that should have been some £6bn. The reasonable assumption is that these cases were tips of an iceberg. Meanwhile the relevant inspectors were being wined, dined and offered jobs by the grandees of the accountancy firms overseeing the scams.

It may be a corny adage, but it remains glaring that almost no holder of high office in Britain at present has ever met a payroll, run a business or cut a corporate budget. They are children playing with sweets.

Osborne is the scourge of public sector unions and condemns tax avoidance, yet he refuses to end the scandal of crown tax havens, from Jersey to the Caymans, that enjoy the benefits of British citizenship while enabling individuals and corporations to evade British tax. Last week the European Union lectured Britain on financial regulation, while harbouring on its borders such fiscal black holes as Monaco, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The thesis, accepted by governments of all parties, that the rich should be allowed to escape tax for their "wealth-creating potential" has surely been exploded by the credit crunch. It is not the kind of wealth Britain can afford.

Just because lobbyists say bonuses and tax havens are "essential to Britain's recovery" does not mean they are. The government's tolerance of both is more than stupid. It induces cynicism in the public realm and recruits fair-minded people to the cause of St Paul's protesters and public sector strikers. Nothing is more crucial to national wellbeing at a time like this than a sense of equality of misery. 

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There's an interesting piece in the Guardian by Vicki Helyar-Cardwell on the age of criminal responsibility, and sentencing policy:

Sentencing of young adults should take their maturity into account

Our criminal justice system should heed the latest research on neuroscience and the law

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/20/sentencing-young-adults-maturity

"The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, impulse control and cognitive control, is among the slowest parts of the brain to mature and is not fully developed until around the age of 20".

Eh?

A University of Birmingham report, commissioned by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, has shown that "Development of those areas of the brain concerned with higher order cognitive processes and executive functions, including control of impulses and regulation and interpretation of emotions, continues into early adulthood; the human brain is not 'mature' until the early to mid-twenties."

While your [Guardian] article focuses largely on the implications of neuroscience for the age of criminal responsibility – undoubtedly far too low at 10 – the findings have equal importance for policy towards young adults, who are by and large treated as fully fledged adults from the moment they wake up on their 18th birthday. This was certainly the case in the sentencing following last summer's riots.

The public support these measures: a recent poll found that 69% think emotional and psychological maturity should be taken into account for those accused of breaking the law.

In Germany this is common practice: courts can choose to try young adults up to the age of 21 under juvenile law if the offender is immature or the circumstances of the offence are more typical of youth crime.

Our organisation [the Criminal Justice Alliance] has long argued that maturity, not just chronological age, should be recognised in the sentencing process. This latest report strengthens that argument.

The problem with all this is that it's crap. This isn't an issue about the "maturity" of the physical brain. It's an issue about intelligence - the personal, social, emotional and spiritual intelligences, to be precise. It's an issue about the failure to develop spiritual and personal intelligence through proper education that allows children to consider and to PRACTICE positive human values and human virtues.

Very young children are usually aware of when something is "right" and when something is "wrong". The issue is whether they grow up in environments and circumstances that allow and encourage them to make positive choices rather than negative choices; places that discourage them from behaving selfishly and egocentrically. They need to develop the language of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. In good schools and homes this can happen at a very early age.

Just waiting for the physical brain to "mature" is NOT the answer.

What needs to be taken into account when we sentence people for criminal behaviour is whether those people have been given opportunities to develop all of their intelligences - despite their physical brain not being "fully developed" or "mature". Sadly, in far too many cases, such education and such learning has NOT taken place, and young people are simply repressed rather than educated in the theory AND practice of living life virtuously, according to positive human values.

The really hard cases with high academic attainment sometimes go out into the world and get rich on tax evasion and avoidance, and financial scams. They then complain like crazy that young criminals are treated too leniently and aren't punished sufficiently.
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Layer 497 . . . Multiple Intelligences and the Life of Pi

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Multiple Intelligences and a Novel - 'The Life of Pi', by Yann Martel

I have friends who own Kindle devices who no longer consider buying proper books from bookshops unless they're unavailable for the Kindle. Personally I love having proper books around me, and I continue to find so many good books at bargain prices. I've been meaning to buy and read this prize-winning novel, The Life of Pi, for the past decade, and recently came across it in the books section of my local MIND charity shop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_Martel

In his author's note, Yann Martel says this:

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

This sentence has several key words - citizens, artists, sacrifice, reality, belief, worth, dreams and imagination.

These are all important words. As far as 'imagination' is concerned, Albert Einstein once made the observation that imagination is more important than knowledge.

Whilst an artist apprehends life through direct observation, analysis, reflection, deduction, inference, intuition and empathy, it requires an effort of the imagination by writers and artists to translate and shape ideas into a form that gives them the power to communicate with others.

The Life of Pi is a book created by a true artist. The only real complaint that one could have with it is the claim it's a story which will make its readers believe in God. Maybe it works with those who would quite like to believe in God, but it didn't do that for me. What it does do is provide, within the context of a gripping narrative, some very interesting thoughts on nature, consciousness, and different kinds of intelligence.

Quotes from the book:

"Father was a natural. [?] He made up for a lack of formal training [education] with an intuitive gift and a keen eye. He had a knack of looking at an animal and guessing what was on its mind. "

[Leaving aside the fact that animals don't have reflective minds, we can understand this means 'guessing' the animal's concerns and intentions. However, we might want to query the author's use of the word 'intuitive', and we might wish to substitute 'empathetic', which is a very different kind of intelligence. Even so, Pi's father could also have had quick flashes of intuition.]

"I have no conscious memory of my first go-around in a temple, but some smell of incense, some play of light and shadow, some flame, some burst of colour, something of the sultriness and mystery of the place must have stayed with me. A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left to germinate. It has never stopped growing to this day."

[The rest of the description of the sights and sounds and smells of a temple is brilliant, and well worth reading, on page 47. However, we might have to query the use of the term religious exaltation. Why religious? Why not 'spiritual'? After all, the temple could as well have been Buddhist. Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion. It has no use for a God, or gods. Its essence is spiritual intelligence, which is a quality we can all possess, to a greater or lesser extent. The highest form of spiritual intelligence is the ability to experience exaltation, awe and wonder. Buddhists, atheists, agnostics and humanists can all, through their spiritual intelligence, experience transcendental exaltation, awe and wonder.]

On page 63 is a description of someone experiencing exaltation in a Christian context:

"I saw the Virgin Mary . . . When I say I saw her, I don't quite mean it literally, though she did have body and colour. I felt I saw her, a vision beyond vision. I stopped and squinted. She looked beautiful and supremely regal. She was smiling at me with loving kindness . . . My heart beat with fear and joy."

[Of course, lovingkindness is a key concept in Zen and Buddhism.]

Page 193

"Nature draws the grandest of pictures, and I felt the feelings of wonder and smallness that we all feel, and I got a clear sense of direction from the spectacle, most definitely, but I mean that in a spiritual sense, not in a geographic one." 

P 195, on instinctual intelligence:

"With time and experience I became a better hunter. I grew bolder and more agile. I developed an instinct, a feel, for what to do."

[Don't we all. Or maybe we're born with it, and often lose it along the Way.]

Page 232

""Look . . . a bolt of lightning!" I saw how he felt about it. He was flat on the floor . . . limbs splayed and visibly trembling. The effect on me was completely the opposite. It was something to pull me out of my limited mortal ways and thrust me into a state of exalted wonder."

[Many of us have times when we're keen to transcend our 'limited mortal ways' and reach for more spiritual dimensions of consciousness - states of exalted wonder.]

Page 233

""Stop your trembling! This is a miracle. This is . . . this is . . . " I could not find what it was, this thing so vast and fantastic. I was breathless and wordless . . . But I was smiling . . . one of the few times during my ordeal when I felt genuine happiness." 

"At moments of wonder it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far."

[This raises questions about how often in our schools, colleges, universities and workplaces we transcend 'small thinking', and entertain thoughts that span the universe, both the near and the far, the interior and the exterior.

Do we not owe it to our young people, at least, to enable them in various ways, through various means, to recognise, understand and appreciate the spiritual and the transcendental? Why would we not want them to see the difference between the spiritual and the merely religious? Why would we want them to leave their spiritual intelligence completely unrecognised, untapped and undeveloped?]

Page 297

"Don't bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"

"We're just being reasonable."

"So am I! I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater."

Page 311

"He was  such an evil man. Worse still, he met evil in me - selfishness, anger, ruthlessness. I must live with that."

[Spiritual intelligence requires a spirit of lovingkindness - the opposite of 'evil' - which can be a word to describe the destructive unleashing of destructive emotions. Even decent people, and certainly young people who have yet to acquire the skills required to exercise emotional intelligence and to combat destructive tendencies, sometimes display behaviour they are not proud of and must afterwards live with. Emotional intelligence is the harmonious working together of the six intelligences in three dimensions to combat destructive emotions and their potential consequences.]

As for valuing and supporting our artists - shouldn't we should be even more concerned about how we produce artists, and creative people generally? Shouldn't all of us have a right to an education that develops intelligent artistic perception, expression and skills - in all of us and not just potential professional artists?

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Layer 493 . . . Ed Miliband, Ken Costa, Tipping Points, Responsible Capitalism, the Spiritual Dimension, St Paul's Protests, Making Connections and the Dumbest Idea in the World.

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It's been an interesting few days in the media for thinking about business, finance, capitalism and politics.
This morning, listening to the Today programme, I heard that Philip Gould has died. Ed Miliband has of course done the decent thing and lavished praise on him, as one of the 'co-founders' and drivers of New Labour, also dearly departed.

Interestingly the Today programme re-played an interview they did a while ago with Gould, after the onset of his cancer, in which he was asked whether he thought that the 'nastiness and aggression of politics' had been a factor in getting cancer. He said, "That's true."
@7.20am http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9633000/9633054.stm

Ed Miliband: business, finance and politics are out of touch with people
St Paul's protests have highlighted the biggest issue now: the gap between ordinary people's values and the City's

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/05/ed-miliband-business-finance-politics

by Ed Miliband


This is a frightening time for Britain: unemployment at record levels, inflation going up, living standards squeezed; a European crisis, lurching from Athens to Brussels to Cannes, adding to the sense that the economy is on the brink; a government sitting on the sidelines, unwilling or unable to help.


That is the backdrop for the protests at St Paul's and hundreds of similar demonstrations in cities across the world. 


They  present a challenge: to the church and to business – and also to politics. The challenge is that they reflect a crisis of concern for millions of people about the biggest issue of our time: the gap between their values and the way our country is run.


The role of politicians is not to protest, but to find answers. I am determined that mainstream politics, and the Labour party in particular, speaks to that crisis and rises to the challenge.


Many of those who earn the most, exercise great power, enjoy enormous privilege – in the City and elsewhere – do so with values that are out of kilter with almost everyone else. The warning lights on the dashboard are flashing. And only the most reckless will ignore or, still worse, dismiss the danger signals.


The problem – as I said in my Labour conference speech at the end of September – is a system of irresponsible, predatory capitalism based on the short term, rather than productive, responsible behaviour which benefits business and most people in the long term.


Just think about the last couple of weeks: the energy companies making record profits per customer, and the top directors getting a 50% pay rise while everyone else feels their living standards squeezed. Banks not heeding the lessons of the financial crisis: still dishing out big bonuses and still not lending to the entrepreneurs our economy needs.


You do not have to be in a tent to feel angry. People feel let down by aspects of business, finance and politics which seem in touch with the richest 1% – but badly out of touch with the reality facing the other 99%. They wonder if things can be different — and whether politics can make a difference.


There is much about what David Cameron and George Osborne are doing with which I disagree. But our problems go deeper than any one government. "Take what you can." "In it for yourself." "The fast buck." Most people never embraced these values but we were told they would help us, and Britain, to succeed. But too many thought they could do whatever they wanted, and pay themselves whatever they wanted. And some became so powerful or so big, they believed no one would dare challenge them.


When people at the top show such irresponsibility, it should be not be a surprise to find it elsewhere in society too. We must make big changes in the way our country works. And that is why the choices we make now to address people's immediate worries should also pave the way to a better economy, society and country in the long term.


Any family would find it impossible to pay off a mortgage or a credit card bill if no one in that household is earning an income. That is the immediate problem in our economy. With unemployment at a 17-year high, there are not enough people in work to help pay down the deficit. Nowhere is this more true than for young people.


Business as usual is not an option. In every generation, there comes a moment when the existing way of doing things is challenged. It happened in 1945. It happened in 1979 and again in 1997. This is another of those moments because the deeper issues raised by the current crisis are too important to be left shivering on the steps of St Paul's. We cannot leave it to the protesters to lead this debate.


But we can only win this debate with a movement which stretches beyond politics. That is why in the months and years ahead Labour is determined to construct and to lead a coalition which includes business and civil society to make the case for a responsible economy, fairer society and a more just world.

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Incidentally, this is what Oxzen said about Ed Miliband in September 2010 -

He spoke well. His delivery was good. His voice is not unpleasant. Infinitely better than Blair or Brown. A decent effort. And he will probably get better.


He deserves support at least for what he said about inequality, the gap between rich and poor, re-regulating the City and financial services, values, work-life balance, civil liberties, Palestine, Iraq, support for the Alternative Vote, creating new businesses and industries, and above all redistributing prosperity, tackling low pay, and introducing a living wage.


This is indeed a new beginning. Bye bye New Labour. Well done Ed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/28/ed-miliband-labour-conference-optimists

How time flies.
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Brother Ed talks a lot about  "a more responsible capitalism in future".

Clearly capitalism is now well and truly under the microscope. It doesn't seem all that long ago that New Labour was terrified of even using the word 'capitalism'. Can anyone remember Blair or Brown or Mandelson ever using this word?

Nowadays we have Michael Portillo - once seen as the most right-wing of Tories - making 2 hours of Radio 4 documentary on the crisis in capitalism, and saying it has to change.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0150p5l

Nowadays there are smart people like Portillo questioning the role of the State, the failure of its supervision, and the need for much greater regulation of the City and financial institutions..

Nowadays we hear the likes of Nigel Lawson, Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer for several years,  talking about the need to separate High Street banking from Casino banking, and the need to break up "huge, unmanageable banking conglomerates" - because "regulation alone can't beat greed".

Maybe a tipping point really has been reached when the decent people on the right wing in politics begin to talk publicly about the need for finance to not only 'oil the wheels of wealth creation' but ALSO to 'make a better world'.
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On the Today programme this morning there was an excellent interview with Ken Costa, The former Chairman of Lazard International, who's the man asked by the Bishop of London to "start a dialogue" on how ethical capitalism might work.

@7.33am http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9633000/9633054.stm

Here's a few examples of what he had to say -

"We split up the human person and forget there's an ethical and a spiritual dimension."

"Ethics is both caught and taught."

"Bankers CAN behave morally and ethically."

"There are many people who are concerned about where we are going with the market economy."

"We cannot just consider maximising profits for shareholders."

"How to change it? BY CHANGING THE CULTURE, BY EXAMPLE WITHIN COMPANIES, AND BY UNDERSTANDING THAT EVERY COMPANY OPERATES WITHIN A COMMUNITY"

"We need to change the way we do business . . . "

"There needs to be fairness, and clearly we've got got to a tipping point where we need to encourage employees to do good things and to do the right thing."

Oxzen's view is that we can't expect the world of business and finance to change its ways overnight, and we can't leave it to that world to teach its workforce about the moral, the ethical and the spiritual. Clearly we need to educate young people whilst they're still at school - to the extent that they don't just learn about values and ethics and virtuous behaviour and social justice until AFTER they've left school and have gone to work in the City, or wherever.

Ken Costa: The City must rediscover its morality

One of the UK’s most senior investment bankers and the man charged by the Church of England with reconnecting “the financial with the ethical” has demanded that the City rediscover its moral compass and engage in one of the most fundamental reforms of the market system to regain public trust.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8872354/Ken-Costa-The-City-must-rediscover-its-morality.html


Ken Costa, the former chairman of Lazards International, says that one of the foundation stones of the capitalist system – maximising shareholder returns – should no longer be the “sole criteria” for judging how a company is run.


Last week Mr Costa was asked by the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, to head a team of leading figures in the financial and religious world to “start a dialogue” on how a form of ethical capitalism could work.


Mr Costa says that markets have lost sight of their moral duty and gives details of how the Church initiative will work.


“It will be an interactive dialogue that will aim to bridge the differences between protesters and the City,” Mr Costa writes.


“It will look at how the market has managed to slip its moral moorings and explore pragmatic ways of uniting the financial and the ethical. And it will be an opportunity for making connections between people and ideas that have come to forget or dismiss one another. It will ask some penetrating questions about shareholders. Is it still the case that the promotion of shareholder value is the object of all companies?”

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St Paul's initiative: 'It's time for radical change'

There is worldwide a new awakening of civic consciousness. It recognises that we cannot go on as before.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8871997/St-Pauls-initiative-Its-time-for-radical-change.html


by Ken Costa


There is now an urgent need to reconnect the financial with the ethical. This is the key challenge facing capitalism today. And it could yet prove to be one of the most exciting and productive movements of modern times.


The events of the last week have reminded us, as if we needed reminding, that there is, as Rowan Williams put it in the Financial Times, “widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment”.


For some time and particularly during the exuberant irrationality of the last few decades, the market economy has shifted from its moral foundations with disastrous consequences. I cannot recall when public feeling worldwide has run so high, and even if only a minority takes its anger on to the streets, no-one should imagine that the majority is indifferent to their cause.


We are mistaken if we believe legislation will solve our problems. You cannot regulate into existence a culture of honesty, integrity, truthfulness and responsibility and, at the end of the day, it is precisely these values that we need.


Bob Diamond, the chief executive of Barclays bank, rightly observed in the inaugural BBC Today Programme Business Lecture last week that banks can and must learn to behave as “good citizens”. It is an instructive illustration because we all know that it is not the law that makes a good citizen. Rather, it is a commitment to honesty, fairness, trust, integrity, and so forth. In short, citizenship is a moral attribute.


[We need to]re-embed the financial spirit, our drive to do well, with the moral spirit, our desire to do good. 


Above all it is to reconnect the various different silos of our humanity – economic, moral and spiritual – so that we live as whole people all the time and not simply as money-makers on weekdays and morally concerned citizens at the weekend.


The present duty put on all boards to maximise shareholder value as the sole criterion for satisfying the return to shareholders cannot continue. I am aware that this is a big change that will need detailed discussion but we need to start with big ideas.


As we have those discussions we could do well to remember what Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, said on the issue. Shareholder value, he said in 2009, is “the dumbest idea in the world”.


St Paul, I believe, would have been quite at home in the protesters’ camp this week. He is, however, a man more (mis)quoted than understood, as epitomised by that best known of biblical aphorisms: money is the root of all evil. Paul, of course, thought the love of money, rather than money itself, was the problem. It was when money became separated from the moral and spiritual foundations that gave it its meaning and purpose that serious problems arose.


The financial world today faces just such problems and the only way we can hope to address them is if we overcome our tendency to divide the world into them and us. Now is the time to work together to reconnect the financial system that we all need with the moral framework that we cannot do without.

.