Author: admin

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

I have had on my bookshelf a thinnish book by Martin Heidegger (in translation), which I have periodically taken to reading, without much pleasure or enlightenment. Inevitably I get lost in the jargon around terms such as ‘the self’ and ‘being’, which were encroaching into the academic world of metaphysics in the pre-existentialist era; a period when metaphysics took a great leap forward from Cartesian reason, into the treacherous void of ‘nihilism’, at least in ‘western’ thought.

The title of the volume is ‘The End of Philosophy’; an idea that has always intrigued me, if not appealed to my exasperation in finding ‘metaphysics’ a curiously unrewarding field of human endeavour, that seems like an irrelevant notion to our contemporary societies. Each time I return to it I do so with the expectation that this time I will learn whatever it was that I missed previously. I confess that what ever it is that I am searching for, remained ambiguously undisclosed but the thirst that requires satisfaction remains and tenuously dangles like a polarising filter, between my eyes and the world in front of me.

It is not that I want to justify squandering the hundreds, if not thousands of hours of my own life, reading multitudinous additions to the library of metaphysical speculations, it is due to a conviction that this neglected human form of cognition, in its ambiguous forms, is more necessary than ever in the history of humanity, than it has ever been. The cell phone and the internet have produced a conduit to knowledge; at our finger tips, so to speak. However it is a source of information without validation ( originates from a trusted source )or authentication ( contains substantiated material ). In this environment ‘reality’ can be a determination of someone else. Upon what can we make our own reality; decide what we believe, and what we want to be a part of?

All media is agenda driven and the net is worst because there are so many ( agenda’s ) and they are difficult to identify. Can philosophy offer a methodology for assessing information?

Perhaps! I suspect it is actually partly innate to believe that disciplined reasoning must have some value, but is only accessible as a methodology if it is consciously applied. The inconsistency of this idea is that it is like every ‘mimetic entity’, It is dependant on ‘belief’.

To put it more simply, it is one thing to have knowledge or practical skills that one has ‘learnt’; it is another to understand the assumptions upon which this knowledge is constructed. If we do not comprehend the role these assumptions play in our personal belief strategy, we are prone to coercion by those who would pedal ideas that we ‘prima facie’ are complicit with, but may not fully agree with the agenda’s behind them.

In a Youtube video of Richard Dawkins talking to a class of young public school students, I noted that he proposed that these ‘assumptions’ even played a role in the process of evolution. For a person so dedicated to the principles of science, this detour into epistemology struck me as peculiar but intriguing. In a contemporary world where the internet exposes the whole population to ‘ideas’ that are essentially unsubstantiated, at least at the level which they exist in the public forum of the uncontrolled web; it is essential that an individual has a means of deciding what they choose to accept as either plausible or possible truths. Virtually all that is real and unreal is mimetic in character; it is an ‘idea’ as Aristotle would define it, and as clinicians like Jung would observe as a personality trait, in relation to human psychoanalysis. [ epistemology ]

As Jung [ Jung & Freud ] has been quoted, but may not have actually said, “People do not have ideas, ideas have people”. This is a very plausible situation, and when we choose which ideas we want to be had by, we need the discretion to select what we want to be possessed by, because there are many ideas that are based on subtle, sub defuse motives. Evidence of the dissemination of the ‘idea’, as a ‘product’, is in the popularity of meme’s on the net. Net usage of the term ‘meme’ is a flippant perversion of what ‘mimesis’ represents, so it can distract from the ‘meme’s’ that actually do mould our collective consciousness. Net ‘graffiti’ meme’s may not be an invention of the new technology, but the net has created a new medium for their creation and significantly for their distribution, allowing them to become entertainment. The original danger of ‘meme’s’ being their coercive influence, can still lurk within the glitz of the new medium and its immediacy; being even more subversive in their clandestine guise of humour.

Dostoevsky who mainly used the vehicle of the novel and Nietzsche who read these, amongst others, started a public dissertation on this subject that become influential but eventually was corrupted and manipulated by forces hostile to the message. Both of these individuals foresaw the rise of totalitarianism as the public response to the inevitable appearance of nihilism arising out of philosophy searching for a rational logic based on the ‘scientific method’, which was struggling to become defined by formal as well as pseudo science. [Wittgenstein & Russell ]

Nietzsche explained it best by showing how the schema of Christian based church dogma, gave those with a apatite for reason, a proforma for their understanding; it was based on the notion of ‘the truth’; where traditional religious beliefs answered the ‘unexplained’, by declaring an ‘a priori’ definition of ‘truth’, based on a written document. By this process the methodology functioned. When this same proforma was used to question the inconsistencies between the emerging knowledge of science with its attendant handmaiden of technology, religion failed to supply modern thought with plausible answers. At best the document defining the truth had no content that was directly relevant and only unsatisfactory and unconvincing, offered ambiguous interpretations contrived by contemporary theologians, leading logically to a loss of faith.

Nietzsche warned that when confronted with a loss of faith, humans don’t believe in ‘nothing’, they believe in everything. Everything is possible, there are no intellectual limits, no moral boundaries. Despite many enthusiastic and popular advocates, science has not offered an unquestioned replacement with a substitute path to access ‘the truth’, using the scientific method, which is only applicable to the objective world. There has been sceptical opinions on the omnipotence’ of scientific rationalism, as in a warning expressed by Schrodinger, noting that scientific knowledge was essentially only statistical. However the ontological world view as predicted by Nietzsche has transpired along with its characteristic of ‘nihilism’. [What is Life?]

Nihilism is not a comforting or satisfactory solution to the metaphysical component of our collective consciousness and neither is the alternative trust in the infallibility of science.

The priests of ‘science as pseudo religion’ (nothing to do with Scientology) have, as Nietzsche showed in the process of discarding the traditional religions, kept to the schema of the traditional dogma; namely requiring ‘the truth’ as a test of authenticity. In science it is only by experiment or observation of natural phenomena, where ‘truth’ is manifest. And as will be shown in later contributions, ‘scientific proofs’ are limited to a small range of ‘possible truths’.

The definition of what constitutes ‘truth’ in the form of experimental verification, was debated as long ago as the claims about the discovery of the electron. [Anti-realist vs Realist ], but the desire for a ‘belief’ substitute has clouded that genuine basis for ‘rational agnosticism’. However the characteristics of ‘believing’ that are even older than the religions we know, created a methodology that ‘scientific faith’ tried, but did not completely, fit into. Such a test of the ‘scientific method’ was always going to be less than satisfactory, in the form started by Newton.

In many ways ‘science’ has sculpted itself into the old religious format. Theoretical physics has a creation story which is called the ‘big bang’, all of science has adopted the notion of the ‘truth’, but require it to be testable by experimental evidence. It even has a godhead; not in the image of a human specimen, as was the Christian god, but in an abstract form that is called mathematics. Devotees like to quote: “mathematics is the language in which the laws of the universe are written” implying unequivocally its omnipotence.

Science by it very definition is not compatible with the human psyche. It not only lacks moral rectitude and guidance, it positively negates such notions in its total dependence on objectivity. What is human is essentially, if not exclusively subjective, and therefore prohibited by ‘science’. This absurdity was not missed by creative’s that worked through the middle of the 20^th century, but has left a void yet to be filled; or dangerously, a void that has been infiltrated by the animistic forces of the ‘human species’ in the ‘survival of the fittest’ mode.

In those plays by Samuel Beckett, that made sense to me, if any play of that writer could be taken as making sense, I think I can see that the ‘absurd’ is a very obvious expression of the clash between the rational ideology and the human psyche, a psyche now unsupported by belief. This denial of faith is as predicted, what would produce the nihilistic world we have created, in the west. It is very significant that even our creative’s are submerged in the deluge of materialism and have reduced their creative output to a commercial commodity, as farming and manufacturing are commodity driven. When ‘art’ becomes an object and not a quality, then anything is art, and nothing represents the quality of ‘art’. In this world art has no ‘meaning’ it just describes a category of product, on equal footing with other consumer products. This leaves the only commentary pertinent to art is “what colours does it come in, and is it safe for the kiddies?”

What future exists for the sense of moral rectitude that I have so diligently nurtured as the inheritance of my parents. Should I just resign my insignificant protest against my part in this fate; make a bonfire of my drawings, paintings and occasional sculptures; or leave them for my disillusioned wife to dispose of. With apologies to my spouse, I will probably do the later because I have deduced a glimmer of hope in the last expedition into the remote landscape of Martin Heidegger’s diminutive tome. Could it be plausible that in the human mind, we have an in-exercised quality of ‘caring’. In the basically absurd condition of not ‘knowing’ anything with certainty, except the instinctive sensation that something does matter; it is impossible to abandon all hope.

What this imprecise element of ‘caring’ means or consists of I can’t yet determine, except it is associated with ‘being’; and as imprecise as that meaning has for my feeble intellect it is not so depressing as nihilism. ‘Caring’ may be absurd, as Beckett describes or is it the will to survive as a species that we should ‘care’ about? Should the collective consciousness ‘c are’ if life on this planet ends by an act of god ( whom ever she is ), or by the hand of humanity; the latter being the endgame of nihilism.

There is an ambiguous ‘idea’ that has pestered my sleepless response to over hot summer nights, when my only relief is to sit in the breeze such as it is, and sketch; creating images, shapes and forms for possible later use; thinking at the same time, what could ‘caring’ mean? Is it that ‘it is not relevant what we believe, but it is necessary that we believe’.

I think I understand the biological explanation for this last sentence. There is ‘science’ to support it and clinical evidence to justify it.

Further still, it struck me that this is the only mechanism that the brain can do. It is a ‘Believing Engine’. All we know, can know, is an algorithm of beliefs; of recognised forms. The brain can only believe what it experiences, including abstract experiences; or how it interprets repeated experiences, or shared abstract ideas. Memory must be the biological structure of these patterns which emerge amongst neural networks by repetitive enforcement.

A lifetime of experiences results in a distinctly unique collection of these neurological structures, which represent forms that are biological equivalents to beliefs. These are obviously not rational by any external formulation but they define what we believe we are. Can this possibly be what we ‘care’ to protect. Why, even at personal cost, foregoing comfortable ignorance, is it human instinct to reject complete capitulation to nihilism, and even willingly embrace suffering to be able to life with ourselves. It is not a personality trait obvious in ego’s of our leaders or those thriving on the decadence of a society without the limits of a moral compass. Between our delusional political leaders and the other extreme, the amoral criminality of those victims of society who’s behaviour is indistinguishable from the animistic ‘laws of the jungle’, is the rest of us.

I do not subscribe to the opinion that none of this has any impact on the daily life of any human being. Rather I have now a renewed conviction that it is an urgent imperative for societies, to avoid the ‘totalitarian state’ which is the de facto condition to western liberalism that has degenerated into a malaise of nihilistic self destruction. Democracy, as it is practised, has gone almost past the point of no return, in previously first world governments; but the possibility that we will ‘care’, enough or propitiously’, has not completely disappeared. The emerging nations may save the species.

The ideas (meme’s) of global warming and some plausible faith in ‘caring’ for the fate of our species should be highly rated in the ideas ( meme’s ) that western cultures could be considering. Perhaps the Muslim nations rejection of western nihilism, is a justified strategy for self preservation (although the barbarity of its military activism is deplorable and contradictory to the ‘caring’ notion ). Are the Russian and Chinese models of government, a necessary experiment in options to a nihilistic democracy or is there another ‘governing meme’, yet to be proposed?

There remains so many answers to which I just cannot attach questions. I am as anxious as a blind person who needs to cross a busy highway, the risk is existential but as equally compelling is the need to attempt it.

Like Dostoevsky’s character in ‘Notes from Underground’ or Beckett’s character in ‘Waiting for Godot’, “I’ll go on, I will go on.” Unnoticed as necessary, but undeterred as well.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

It is enlightening nobody to state that ‘Life’ is a terminal disease that effects every biological entity we recognise; not more or less relevant to the human species than to any other denizen of our planet, from the simplest microbe to the complexity of the super species.

What is problematic is the ambiguity that the term engenders. In its most elemental form the notion that it begins when we are born and ends when we die, is the utilitarian interpretation, suitable for gaining a passport and paying taxes. From Buddhist practitioners to ‘right to life’ campaigners the obvious period of gestation of the foetus, extends this period.

For obvious reasons it has taken the development of sophisticated medical instruments for us to learn the actual process involved.

It doesn’t need closer examination to appreciate that even impregnation of the egg by the sperm does not begin life; both the egg and the sperm separately are alive, they just are not the individual that is produced when joined. They are both, also sustained by the carrier in which they exist. They gain the conditions for living from the host. If the host ceases to secure the germ cells gift of life it is a short time before death ensues for all components.

The story I once believed, based on well regarded advise, was that a woman was born with all the eggs she would use in her lifetime. Some doubt about how absolute this idea is exists, but does not change the realisation that ‘life’ is manifest at birth, might cease to be in evidence for any one particular individual case, hopefully at a period of many years. However its beginning is shrouded in ambiguity.

I believe it is plausible to say that existence begins for any specific human being, you or me, at the point of conception, from two ‘alive’ components. Therefore I believe it is reasonable to postulate that it is not ‘life’ that begins at this point but an ultimate manifestation of ‘life’, in the form of a single instance of ‘life’, personified in an individual.

Cogito, ergo sum, is a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes, it usually translates into English as “I think, therefore I am”. He could have also correctly stated, “I was conceived, therefore I am.” But could he correctly say “through conception I become alive”? Obviously Rene’ was conceived of two ‘alive’ entities, and when conceived, he was merely condemned to death. In an action of indulgence he became an instance of ‘life’ and secured the assurance, that ‘instance’ would have a finite ‘period of living’ expectancy. Rene’, and I have not checked, could have contributed to the continuous production of such instances or not, but as long as some do, mammalian life in the form of the human species, continues as a single unique biological phenomena. There are others, but not many types of ‘life’; but that is not within the scope of this short essay.

Mammalian life, which we share with many other species has some peculiar characteristics, one of which is sex. I promised my mother I would not talk publicly or gratuitously on the subject of sex, however it is necessary here, to explain a very philosophical point about ‘life’. Each unique definition of ‘life’, as expressed in the ‘species’, begins once at least but certainly not a multitude of events. It then continues to replicate itself, by transferring the basic structure that defines it; in its genetic code which is transmitted between generations via the germ cells that carry the code. The individual instances it produces have variability but always retain their ability to replicate with any other instance of the same species. When the variations make a conception event problematic, a new species has emerged; a new form of ‘life’ has evolved. Either or both of the derived species may replicate independently; equally they may disappear.

Does what modern medical knowledge has learnt support this idea?

As proposed above, in relation to a single conceptual instance, as in one link in a potentially, infinitely long chain, a pivotal moment is when an egg meets its compliment, the sperm.

In the blastocyst of the mammalian embryo, primordial germ cells arise from proximal epiblasts under the influence of extra-embryonic signals. These germ cells then travel to the genital ridge and eventually into the undifferentiated gonads of the foetus. During the 4th or 5th week of development, the gonads begin to differentiate. In the absence of the Y chromosome, the gonads will differentiate into ovaries. As the ovaries differentiate, ingrowths called cortical cords develop. This is where the primordial germ cells collect.

It is commonly believed that, for the mother, in the early stages of forming the foetus ( oocytogenesis ) this process is completed, no additional primary eggs ( oocytes ) are created, in contrast to the male process ( spermatogenesis ), where sperm are continuously created when ever the male reaches sexual maturity ( unfortunately not necessarily intellectual maturity ). In humans they start to develop between weeks 4 and 8 and are present in the foetus between weeks 5 and 30. In other words, primordial germ cells reach their maximum development at about twenty weeks of gestational age, when approximately seven million have been created; however, at birth, this number has already been reduced to approximately 1 to 2 million. These are the eggs a women will use when she conceives. The individual eggs are identical due the biological process, of mitosis where cell division gives rise to genetically identical cells in which the number of chromosomes is maintained.

Spermatozoa are the mature male gametes in many sexually reproducing organisms. Thus, spermatogenesis is the male version of ( gametogensis ), of which the female equivalent is ( oogenesis ). In mammals it occurs in the seminiferous tubules of the male testes. Spermatogenesis is essential for sexual reproduction. It starts at puberty and continues uninterrupted until death, with ageing effects. This process originates with the mitotic division of the stem cells located close to the basement membrane of the tubules.

Because the number of chromosomes is halved during meiosis, gametes can fuse (i.e. fertilisation) to form a diploid zygote that contains two copies of each chromosome, one from each parent. Thus, alternating cycles of meiosis and fertilisation enable sexual reproduction, with successive generations maintaining the same number of chromosomes. For example, diploid human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes including 1 pair of sex chromosomes (46 total), half of maternal origin and half of paternal origin.

All of the medical jargon above is included just to give some authentic justification that ‘life’ is not ‘produced’ in the manifest form we see, the individual, by conception; but is merely passed into the phase necessary for it to continue. Sex is required because each individual has a responsibility to carry forward the reseeding of the biological mechanism. This is the mission of the human specimen, what we ‘care’ about. Is it any wonder it that it is such an obsession, for many; for some the sum total of their waking existance.

My progeny commonly instruct me to ‘get a life’, and I have to patiently tell them that my role is to get a death and pass that pleasure on to them. That I ‘care’ to do this or do it due to some primordial drive, is open to speculation. The real revelation is that this system only works if I do ‘care’ to do so. What the motivation is, that ensures so many of my human companions feel likewise is a matter to which I have dedicated much of my time, not occupied by physically surviving long enough to complete this mission. I doubt that I am alone or even in a minority, in this respect.

 

I have casually and dismissively mentioned the creation of new life from pre-existing forms, and evaded the more speculative question of how it began at all. Although this subject is interesting, it is not significant to understanding if ‘life’ as it currently is manifest, has any direct moral implications. [Schrodinger ]

Because I am speculating that it does, I will resist the temptation to go into the expansive science of what ‘life’ is made of, and the conditions that may have made it possible. I will leave that until another place, to appropriately treat it.

‘Life’ for me is how I know it, in my own experience. That I am a tiny, perhaps insignificant part of the much bigger picture, does not change the need I have to ‘care’ about what a human being does or does not ‘feel’ as an obligation to this ‘species’. Is there an obligation that is specific to the ‘species’ which is distinctly different to an obligation an individual ‘feels’ to their ‘tribe’? I ponder on this continuously, as incidences, good, bad or indifferent, happen around myself and my loved ones. The reaction each engenders asks for judgement; they demand to be referenced to an ‘idea’ of right or wrong.

We get moral ideas from many sources, they are rarely unambiguous or equivocal, so it requires experiencing ‘life’, as it is invested in my own ‘self’. Obviously this can not be done alone, and I do not mean the obvious reality that ‘it takes two to tango’ ( It might be timely, at this point, for me to send a cheerio to my wife ).

The many millions of individual instances of ‘life’ that exist at any one time on the planet are the insurance that this complex system will persevere. A statistician would say that along with the complexity of the mammalian genome, which requires large numbers to sustain it, we have sufficient to do the task satisfactorily.

The reality is that we have many more than we actually need and are encroaching on the need to deliberately restrict the natural, unregulated velocity of this expansion.

 

In the past the human species has developed a mechanism for this re-balancing. It is called war, and despite the hellish violence war has inflicted, it has only a small impact on the inevitable expansion. Nature itself has a much more effective mechanism, it causes equally hellish consequences to war but the result is substantially more effective. Natures strategy is disease.

 

Human societies have some potential to control the expansion, in the form of birth control. Most are medical interventions and some are statuary controls on how many off-spring a couple can have. No large enough effect, except the one child policy in China, has been achieved but it will be the necessary social control tactic in the future, because the other options are both inefficient and inhuman.

 

Which one of the above, or combination of the above will be utilised across the globe will be determined by many factors, most of which will be initiated on the illogical and opportunistic laws of tribal loyalty. I speak of ‘tribal’ equally applying the term to ideological groups within a nation or to religious identity, or any other form of identity that an individual instinctively chooses to belong to.

What is this instinct, and does it have discernible sources? Could it be the same ‘caring’ that Heidegger referred to. [ preface ]

If so, ‘caring’ is not a universal empathy for humanity generally; it is tempered with a large degree of self interest. What is slightly more acceptable is a practical judgement that it is necessary for ‘self preservation’ which ‘life’ demands. If ‘life’ is the origin of the ‘caring’, and it implies a commitment to achieve individual survival, and protection of the progeny, as the inevitable expression of that responsibility, then it amounts to no more than what other species express; a behaviour we routinely describe as ‘natural’ behaviour. This animistic morality is neither efficient or always productive.

 

If our only achievement with the instinct of ‘caring’ available to us, is ‘natural’ behaviour, it is an obvious disregard for the human trait, which is to work as a collective force to surmount obstacles. Evidence that we can do such things is manifest in the large interactive living structures we call cities, societies and civilisation.

Contemporary human beings are preconditioned to being complicit. We find it acceptable to exchange, for the privilege of being able to drive a car, the need to submit to the arbitrary condition of driving on a specific side of the road. This forfeit of free will, has an obvious safety advantage and adds to the utility of the road system.

Why is it that the functional facility breaks down when the concessions apply to ideological issues, such as who can marry who, and under what conditions. We have the facility to find the mutually convenient concessions, but we choose to protect our ideology even when it puts our personal survival at risk; why is this so?

 

A possible explanation is the ‘mimetic’ concept of ‘ideas’ that we are prone to assume. Despite our presumption of rationality, we are possessed by ideas that are not totally original. In fact we rarely can know where the ‘ideas’ were derived from, but like other ‘culture derived’ values such as driving on the correct side of the road, we just accept the utility value of complying with the details packaged into the idea. In relation to the rules of the road these consequential rules become complex and personally challenging, but we comply.

The ‘ideas’ ( meme’s ) that cause us to depart from logical conclusions are often much discussed across a society. They assume an authority that is essentially manipulated by the media that supports it and the agendas that the media represents. Although we experience these meme’s on a personal level they are not ours. In every society there is ‘the establishment’. Even in the new medium of the internet there is an establishment, and we are naive if we refuse to see it. The shifting power of technological influence is subtly moving this ‘establishment’, from west to east but it is no less of an ‘establishment’ just because of the relocation. The meme’s generated on the net are in every way the identical replication of the mechanism that gave newspaper tycoons the influence they enjoyed in the 20^th century. In war a meme, is referred to as propaganda. The difference between a meme, and ‘fake news’ is that the later is purely misinformation; a meme is an ‘idea’ which the brain is attracted to. A meme is not necessarily malignant but it can be. The character of a public meme is that it often leads to misinterpretation, which is distinctly different to misinformation. Our ‘intelligence might only be meme’s but popular meme’s are not our own, and taking ownership of any ‘idea’ can be unconscious and may even be somewhere we would otherwise choose not to go.

 

If there is a quality in human intelligence that could be described as equivalent to what Heidegger termed ‘caring’ then it is compromised if we allow it to be subverted by the culturally popular meme’s. To be a human being, making manifest ‘the gift of life’ we are obliged to play out the role, as an individual, rather than as a entity manipulated by an influential ‘establishment’. The contradiction, if not the absurdity of this predicament, is that ‘society’ mostly functions by compliance; ‘caring’ is what demands that we temper that compliance by de-constructing the meme’s that ‘compliance’ is constructed with, to ensure we are not being possessed by ideas that we are not responsible for, and would not otherwise defend.

 

‘Life’ is a gift that we, as an ‘instance’ of the phenomena, are privileged to participate in. That participation comes with an implied commitment to pass the gift forward, in the form of creating more ‘instances’, in the form of our progeny. It also includes an obvious but easily neglected condition, which is to ensure we do this in a manner that ensures that the world we are also effecting remains conducive to ‘Life’.

In this context the meaning of ‘life’, is a nonsensical oxymoron. We exist as a temporary ‘instance’ of it but a vital focus of the mechanism of the mammalian version of life. We are compelled to ‘care’ although we will die and ‘life’ will go on. I advise any reader not to see any pseudo Christian theology into this simple statement of fact. Human beings, in common with all species that parent their offspring, instinctively devote their every effort to protecting their progeny. This is one aspect of ‘caring’ but it is not the only expression of the implied responsibility.

 

The most relevant implication of the ‘caring’ impulse is the role we as present ‘instances’, need to recognise, which is the environment, both practically and intellectually that we are creating. In this context it is not acceptable to ‘live’ our short contribution in a manner dictated by external agenda’s. We will want to function in collaboration with others, with the guidance of our own set of de-constructed meme’s. If we don’t achieve this we will likely become simply a part of the palaeontology of the future.

It is easy to fulfil the need to procreate, body chemistry and psychology will ensure this transpires but the second condition is problematic. Too many ‘instances’ choose the carnal option and then retire their responsibility, passing the remaining time being entertained until death. This is negligent but not as dangerous as allowing themselves to be seconded into a cocktail of meme’s that are serving agenda’s of antisocial ideologies. There is no period in our ‘instance’ that does not require at least the effort to be constructive and defy manipulation. [Dostoevsky]

 

 

 

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

The hieroglyphics in caves in Europe and under rock shelves in the centre of the Australian continent, have more than just ‘age’ in common; they are the first records of a species with ‘culture’. The groups that made these tangible statements were a collection of individuals with a sense of identity, and in as much as we can recognise objects within this symbolic and representational language, we can only imagine what it meant to them. What is inescapable is that they expressed something, exactly what, we can never know, nor should we insist on speculating. The undeniable impression we get is that these individuals thought it appropriate to make these marks, some of which involved significant effort, even planning. What then could have motivated these primitive humans to go to such efforts, not just in one place or time, but in many places where humans congregated, over ranges that defy the chance that they were in communication, or shared an original point of inspiration. What we can only assume, not having access to the thoughts of these people, except from what they have left on the stone, is that they felt a need to share their present existence, at that moment, with an abstract notion of the future; talking to another time or even another group of their own species.

As far as recorded history is concerned, these were the first meme’s; so far removed from our time that the ideas or messages are lost, but that they ever existed is preemptive evidence of a ‘belief’ in something worth the effort of recording. Something fundamentally human produced the impulse and the determination to mark their presence and say something about what they were.

I think it is justifiable to speculate that the ‘something’ involved in this phenomena is not substantially changed by time. The human species has made many variations on the need to ‘believe’. All equally legitimate and relevant to the societies that are identified by their practice.

It is awkward to reconcile that many pivot on the abstract notion of a godhead that is ‘omnipotent’; and therefore excluding the existence of other notions. Much pain and inhumanity has been perpetuated over this apparently irreconcilable conflict, which is evidence that the need to ‘believe’ something transcends the individuals need to survive. Survival of the ‘individual’, is not so influential as survival of the ‘belief’.

Into this dangerous and challenging conundrum, every human mind is either channelled or is led by their own self inquiry. The safest pathway is to be led by culture and personal history. For a few this is insufficient, and although most are tempted only a small number go there, to confront the wall barring the way; the impenetrable temple of ‘omnipotence’ that each creed claims. This barrier not only defies its challengers it denies their claims; so the irreconcilable dispute is set up. It takes questionable sanity to contemplate resolving this dispute. The path of individual discovery is so treacherous that it is irrational to undertake and can even destroy the same mind that drives it. Thus spake Zarathustra. [ Nietsche ]

For the brave or the foolish, and the choice is yours. The following is an attempt to reconcile ‘Omnipotence’ and that biological engine, in our skull.

Courtesy of mesmerising and tantalising revelations from the biomedical, non intrusive, real time instruments now available, it is possible to a certain extent to see our brain function. We have learnt a lot, but have much more to learn. There are however already some enlightening lessons that do not make answers, in the form of ‘evidence’ as objective science demands, but are strong guides to what we should believe about the need to ‘believe’.

When we are conscious and awake as opposed to alive but in a comatose state, our sensors feed a continuous flow of information (sense data) into the nervous system which has at its apex, our brain; who’s organisational structure we are beginning to understand. For those of us with an engineering background, the analogy with the television camera and video display, comes to our expectation, but this would be very wrong. The eye is not an imaging devise that scans a scene, consequently sending to the image forming process, a data based representation of the frame of reference. In a very small area, at the centre of our point of focus, a dense cluster of light sensitive cells do react to a focused beam of light which by movement of muscles around the eye is directed to what semi consciously, has caught our attention.

We all have walked down a beach and seen out of the corner of our eye an attractive figure and for reasons that need little elaboration, it attracts our attention. We turn our head, adjust our focus and begin to process the incoming sense data, which involves some degree of scanning and some other individual bias’s that are more to do with psychology.

The sense data is a two way communication between muscles in the neck, the face, and the eyes; they happen simultaneously and arrive at the brain after some per-processing in the optic nerve, as a collection of essentially abstract signals that are defined by the pattern they represent. The brain identifies any information that pattern contains by matching it with a pattern it has previously learnt by the training the brain has received, into the process of seeing. This matching process is actually the brain ‘believing’ it is something because it matches something it has seen before.

In the beach scene scenario, this can be deconstructed as follows:

If this ‘belief’ is actually not a person but merely a deceptive play of light in the shadows the brain will not identify it as not a body, worth examining, until further evidence confirms or contradicts the original pattern match. It will be denied or proved if the continued consideration reveals an anomaly in the pattern recognition, resulting from continued observation. In this sense it is not true that seeing is believing but rather, believing is seeing.

This pattern recognition is unconscious but can be so powerful that we experience pattern matching when we know it is not possible that it is actually a physical reality. For example we see familiar forms within unrelated material objects such as cloud formations that suggest something else.

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

Polonius: By the mass, and ‘t is like a camel, indeed.

This is our brain, giving us a direct clue into how it works and reveals another element in the process, which is essential to imagination which is the association of ‘forms’ as unique entities; a subject deserving its own discussion, but in another place. [ Forms as ideas ]

Forms are only another way of saying ‘ideas’ or ‘meme’s. [ What is life ]

The association of ‘forms’ is a powerful subconscious activity that has a profound impact on our ability to interpret information. It is essentially what gives ‘meme’s ( the classic not the graffiti variety ) their impact and danger. The insertion of associated concepts of forms can come from culturally based, preemptive modelling. They are also implanted in abstract ideas which the individual has not personally ‘formed’ ( learned ) but has been coerced into accepting. Which leads inexorably to the enigmatic consequences of the believing machine in our skull.

The process involved in coercion has practical applications; it is what we accept when we learn by instruction. If we did not use this facility proficiently we would be limited to the level of civilisation before language, before the education gained by the emergence of social groups.

The utility of coercion is so undeniable that we could never sacrifice it without becoming the animistic creatures we think we are not. This is the ambiguity of ‘believing’. It is the absurdity of striving to be something we can not define; can barely recognise but know it is somewhere just beyond the probing tentacles of our imagination. Every ‘brain’ in a human being, who ‘cares’ about their species is constantly in pursuit of the illusive goal. As a donkey walks after a carrot suspended just out of reach, we can never get to it but can equally not resist the impulse to pursue it.

Is it a futile search? Yes either definitely is, or it probably is, but unless we find it by accident, an improbable scenario, we will need to keep searching because ‘nihilism’ is a fatal substitute to ‘believing’.

An example of our par-less state to impose self denial on rational control over ourselves, we human beings flock to see performers of illusions. We know it is not magic that we are observing but we are fascinated by the how our brain is willingly deceived. There are explanations for the physiology that is happening but it is not this revelation that attracts people; the desire to be misled is a compulsive desire. I don’t know if I understand why or if those who seek it know why but it is a universal desire of human minds.

Likewise many are attracted by ‘horror’ as a genre in art and entertainment. [ The Gothic spell ]

The thirst for experiencing fear or danger but in a clearly non threatening format is attractive to those who are stimulated by the experience. Both the fans of magic shows and the devotees of the Gothic are expressing a need to experience ‘belief’ but not the reality of fear and pain.

Even in more benign forms of entertainment we willingly are able to suspend cynicism in favour of ‘belief’ to temporarily imagine our selves in the position of actors in a drama. We go out of our way to ‘believe’ so as to be involved in situations that are only fabricated illusions of reality, on stages and screens.

If we deal so casually with ‘belief’ when we desire the personal effects, why in our cultural context, do we find the absolute effect of an ‘omnipotent’ godhead, so confronting that we are willing to sacrifice our life in its cause. Why do we betray our ‘caring’ and abandon our responsibility to our species, by dying for a ‘belief’.

Possible answers to this are clothed in many ages of cultural meme’s that all are designed to ensure the loyalty of the members of that culture, to the preservation of that culture. In a reality that involves a world where cultural differences are synonymous with aggression between cultures, this is a natural consequence. To empower the leaders of the cultures and ensure servitude even sacrifice from the participating individuals, the meme of ‘omnipotence’ is the defining character of any ‘godhead’. It is a single and exclusive definition of that ‘omnipotent entity’, and is presumed mandatory to ensure compliance.

The ‘omnipotent’ meme is only necessary when violence or some other sacrifice, is required to defend or to attack a competing culture. If it was plausible for a culture to exist in every respect without the treat to the devotional practice of the individuals involved, the ‘omnipotent’ meme can be dismissed as purely a pretext to substantiate aggregation.

An alternative definition to the ‘omnipotent’ meme, is to propose that the ‘godhead’ however it is described, is an expression of culturally defined ‘omnipotence’. It deserves to be equally observed and respected in its specific role by all cultured people; others who may have their own ‘godhead’.

This simultaneous ‘omnipotence’, in no way alters the significance of a ‘godhead’ or alters in any dimension the laws that originate from it. An ontological argument can be made to describe this situation and in many ways simplifies it to a ‘believable’ logic; that Godhead, being defined as most great or perfect, must exist, since a Godhead who exists is greater than a Godhead who does not.

Is there any other pretext for such a relationship?

In the ‘ontological’ world of money, the seething tensions of competition, and apparent success at all levels from national and religious to individually personal, a practical and constructive system works well.

In the world of trade between nations, for practical reasons we have devised a satisfactory system of recognising each others currency. There is variability, even conflicting interests but the ‘meme’ of currency recognition has mechanisms to resolve these issues.

The ability of the ‘super species’ to find a resolution of apparently conflicting interests is available if the motivation is strong enough.

Could all cultured people ‘believe’ in the meme that commits them to equally respect the omnipotence of all ‘godhead’ definitions, equally accepting the justifiable expression of that faith, genuinely practices in any individual who claims it as their chosen creed.

Could it be possible for the human species to be united in this ‘belief’?

Could it be accepted by all citizens of the modern world that the most fundamental form of human freedom is to ‘believe’ what we choose to ‘believe’, accepting the equal right of others to that same freedom?

Could it be a component of that revised ‘omnipotent’ meme, that claiming the knowledge of good and evil is prohibited except in the personal understanding of it. These values can be culturally defined and individually observed but are forbidden from assuming the authority of ‘law’, that ‘law’ that is administered by the state.

Is it rational to prohibit the concept of ‘omnipotence’ in a science based culture such as some western democracies claim to attain to ( probably only by their own specifications )? It may not only be logical but it may be concluded that the matter has been resolved, albeit in the context of scientific discovery.

The later 19th century and early 20th century was a very productive but also competitive time in the academic circles. Maxwell’s formalisation of Faradays research results had precipitated frantic investigation of all electromagnetic associated effects know to that time. Pieter Zeeman significantly identified the ‘Zeeman Effect’. It directly led to the concept of the ‘electron’, however at the same time, J.J.Thomson of Cavendish Laboratories was working on cathode rays and the resulting argument of who, if either of these pioneers could be attributed with discovering the ‘electron’ has much in common with my problem with ‘omnipotence’. Not that the similarity is self evident, but it is worth exploring.

To talk about an unobservable entity, like the electron it is prescribed by the scientific method, that it must be proven to exist.

Antirealist philosophers demanded that no such proof could exist, therefore logically we have to be agnostic about the existence of unobservable entities. Realist philosophers, those that observed the effects of this phenomena were prepared to believe it must exist. To be consistent they would be required to establish what constitutes a believable demonstration of their existence.

We now accept that electrons exist but have we achieved this proof. The inviolate, methodological rigour of proof that science rests its credibility on. This is plausible and even probably because what we know of the effects it displays, is that the phenomena shows characteristics that have no analogy with anything else we know with the requisite methodological proof.

We still have never seen an electron and so it remains possible that when we do it may turn out to be something completely different to what we accept now.

We have many convincing observations of the effect of electrons and have used the large number of these observational measurements to imagine what the illusive entity could be. In effect the phenomena we refer to as the ‘electron’ does not match any form that we can have experience of; as a default we imagine it a very small round lump of matter. How it achieves its electric charge we can only speculate; how it plays a part in current flow of electricity in a conductor we can only surmise, how it reacts as a semi conductor material in electronic devices we have learn to predict and partially control but still can only hypothesise. Can we consequently say that there has been no epistemological criteria, formulated whose satisfaction would amount to an existence-proof of this unseen entity.

Yet there is no disputing the wonderful word of electricity and electronics it has facilitated. To achieve this scientists have to accept that this miraculous unobserved phenomena has made modern civilisation possible but we really do not know what it is; or even if it is a ‘thing’ a group of ‘things’ or even more unimaginable if it is not a ‘thing’ at all, but merely some capsule of energy, that we have no conceptual form to image it with.

The real depth of the problem is that when we use observational data to define a entity, we can not directly observe, it is obvious that testing for this data proves only that the phenomena exists but limits the entity to what we can image it to be, and that evidence suggests it is something more than we can imagine.

Is this situation akin to our difficulty with ‘omnipotence’? Even if philosophy allowed analogies, it is not the same problem, but it is the same circumstance, in that we are dealing with a phenomena that has tangible effects that can be both measured and manipulated not by direct evidence but in its effects. It is also a phenomena that has proposed forms; conflicting and competing forms that have a tangible impact on our cultural definitions. The argument that any Godhead exists, or we would need to invent it; was put by Voltaire a philosopher, businessman and political activist. He apparently foresaw the dilemma we are dealing with today.

Can we consequently say that there is no epistemological criteria formulated, whose satisfaction would amount to an existence-proof of this unseen entity ‘omnipotence’.

If it is as I suspect, the state we find our selves stranded with, do we go ‘nihilistic and say there is no faith; there is no god.

Or as we are condemned to believe, is it plausible to accept the compromise the technologists and physicists need to take in their science and exercise the ‘Realist’ philosophers attitude, and believe that ‘omnipotence’ is something we need but cannot imagine from our experience. How can various ‘godhead’s be at once ‘omnipotent’ and not exclusive. We will not find an experienced form that will conform to this form, but we need to make it an act of ‘faith’ because our brain is a believing engine. And that is the only logic it can process.

People of faith, all faiths, great and small, will be potentially united to confront the ‘nihilism’ which is the alternative because as individuals of the ‘life’ we know as humanity, we do care. If ‘nihilism’ wins the human species will erase itself from the planet, plausibly within a few generations. The alternative is not eternal bliss, but is much more compliant with the notion of ‘caring’ about sustaining our ‘life’ entity amongst the rest.

If we are ever going to come to grips with the ‘omnipotent’, it will take longer that the ‘nihilistic’ rush to self extinction can ever achieve; which means if we ‘care’ we should try.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

Coming from an engineering background, I am well aware of the significant difference between ‘technology’ and ‘science’, as a discipline and as methodology. This cannot be neglected when we are interested in the role they play in ‘social’ engineering and in ‘ideas’. Technology ( for our purposes also interchangeable with the term ‘engineering’ ) is a practical discipline and being based on experience more than experiment, it applies the statistical laws of proven effective applications which include phenomena that is subjective as well as its practical interpretation of the objective definitions of science. In an obvious sense technologists are ‘reality philosophers’, they accept the existence of phenomena that is solely defined by its effect. [ Believe it or not ]

However they are readily adaptive when new effects appear; a characteristic of ‘anti-realist’ agnosticism.

Significantly both of these influential disciplines in a modern society, treat ‘mathematics’ completely differently. For science ‘mathematics’ is an omnipotent law of reality. To engineering ( or technology ), mathematics is a mere tool.

In the scientific community ‘mathematics’ is the only way to understand a phenomena, it must be free of inequalities and needs to be ultimately computable to an accuracy that eliminates the possibility of error. It is necessarily based on demonstrations of its laws that are repeatable and measurable. That rigid definition has come under scrutiny when quantum effects began to wreck havoc amongst the classic scientific establishment. But a breed of realist philosophers found a convenient truce and simultaneously weakened the foundation of science as an infallible doctrine of logical rationalism, but they still cling to the ‘scientific’ ideal, as ‘a definition of reality’; and the ‘godhead’ of that belief is mathematics.

In technology ‘mathematics’ is a way of utilising learned effects. It is a method of describing and applying quantitative relationships. A ‘technology’ idea, is a definition of an effective application.

For example, ‘virtual reality’ is a technology idea, it is an application that in a limited context may mimic reality. Its use is defined by practical situations where an abstract experience, is preferred to reality. It is good for training pupils in high risk situations or for allowing unsuitable persons to experience otherwise prohibited experiences.

Why you may legitimately ask, go to the length of making this distinction in the application of mathematics. Because it matters if, as science does, the usage involves a challenge or a substitute to a conscious way of ‘believing’. In engineering a complete agnostic can use maths to build bridges, space rockets and cell phones, ect. For some, as does Richard Dawkins, pontificate that science defies religion as a credible belief. Then the science used to support that idea must prove that mathematics is indeed the ‘infallible’ language of the universe. Some go further and say not only is maths the only language of reality, it is reality.

Is mathematics capable of the ‘omnipotent’ role? Einstein suspected it was, because it was so good at explaining the connections he saw in the physics he was developing. However this could just be a grand delusion. Some of the icons of mathematics such as Pi and the Fibonacci numbers, either do not relate to nature or are readily explained in their natural context.

Pi relates to the relationship of a circle to its radius, but no perfect circles exist naturally and no coordinates, actually exist, and definitely not straight lines. Pi is frequently a common factor in equations that attempt to describe natural observations; but is this indicative of the mystical qualities of Pi or is it the mystical instincts of the human imagination which conceives all cycles as circles; an evenly round line about a constant fixed centre. This abstract notion of a cycle is conducive to mathematical manipulation but is not observed in nature. Fibonacci numbers, so common in natural specimens, arise from a simple rule of cell division which shows that in cell division, the mother cell replicates with each iteration, but the daughter (second product of division ) only becomes a mother cell after the next iteration, and then it divides as its mother did.

A more interesting phenomena is ‘how we sense the harmonic relationships of sound. The ratios of an octave is 2:1, a fifth is 3:2, and a forth is 4:3. Is this learned or instinctive in humans or is its significance pure invention, the result of musical training over centuries and familiarity our ears ( brain ) have learnt to perceive. No other species that use their vocalisations, more often and more purposefully, use any such set of notes or even the concept of a preset nomenclature. Birdsong is definitely musical in style but is an instinctive vocalisation dictated by the physiology that produces it and is definitely not replicable using musical notes. Bird song and whale song contain highly repeatable patterns but are not made up of notes, but are manipulations of frequencies that are continuously variable, apparently conveying meaning by the length and pitch of the rising or falling pattern.

What is plausible about the utility of a number system is not that mathematics reveals the reality of the world, it reveals the way our mind is conditioned to understand reality. Mathematics is a meme that is complex and a very old and deeply entrenched meme which is primarily useful if it is treated as a universal law. So that when some think about how mathematics reflects this universality it is actually an obvious consequence of its origins. There is nothing natural in mathematics; it is pure abstraction. It is a very useful invention but not mystical nor ‘infallible’. Elevating it to the status of ‘ the single definition of reality’, is the expression of ‘nihilism’ that is trending through social systems of the 21^st century.

Some scientists who cannot completely dismiss mathematics as a pure abstract meme, have resorted to saying it was invented originally, then we discovered the universality of it in so many observations. Evidence for this is actually the key behind its different application in science and engineering; but can science be treated as infallible, because mathematics is ‘omnipotent’? If science is based on observation, quantum mechanics throws this into doubt. “In the uncertainty principle, the alleged lack of strict causal connection in nature, may represent a step away from it, a partial abandonment ( Schroedinger )”.

It is more plausible than not, that there is no irrevocable way to maintain ‘science’ is ‘omnipotent’; it is possible to postulate that it could merely be ‘universal’ because it is of maximum utility for it to be treated that way. And as for the ‘godhead’ of maths, it could be claimed that the ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ of mathematics, is the plaintive cry of the scientific romantics, because in biology, physiology and psychology it is conspicuously ineffective. It becomes in these fields of human inquiry, a useful model for constructive investigations but cannot be more than a statistical methodology.

None of the above dismisses ‘Science’ from it being the defining influence of the 20^th century onward. Its role however needed to be understood, with the flexibility of the ‘realist’s’. Humanity has learnt to ‘believe’ in science, but must refrain from giving it a metaphysical quality, the endgame of which is nihilism; the potential destroyer of social continuity.

Science is a very significant ‘idea’; it evokes the ‘omnipotent’ meme, which is a fundamental ‘form’ upon which ‘learned’ memes depend, and more importantly what our brain needs to ‘believe’; without this belief we cannot learn. For purely pragmatic reasons, our mind which is the abstract manifestation of our brain physiology, has accommodated science. The mind is not defined by science; mind defines science.

This is an example we should not overlook because we have intractable problems sharing the planet with other species ( ecology and speciesism ) and much more challengingly, with ourselves ( other human cultures, racism ).

We as a species have not been able to develop a concept of the ‘soul’ that is free of inequalities because we have encased the ‘soul’ meme in cultural parameters, but simultaneously demand it to be omnipotent. As it is clear that any prescribed set of cultural parameters cannot be ‘universal’, they cannot be an ‘omnipotent’ meme.

Unless we can become ‘realist philosophers’ in our treatment of ‘omnipotence’ then any religious creed or any other ‘belief’, including science, will fail to be logically ‘universal’. However as ‘science’ is evidence, the mind can accommodate this contradiction ( inequity ) if the incentive is significant enough. It can deny the nihilism of an unknowable reality; achieving ‘pseudo universality’ which would make it useful in facilitating the governance of the planet in a manner conducive to its continuing habitability.

There is no doubt that science dominates our age, and justly so; what is not so obvious is the messages it carries. Nietzshe who had already described the failure of religions that relied on the idea of ‘the truth’, which proved a failed meme; equally understood that human beings needed something to believe in. He accepted that logically, objectivity only deconstructed into ‘nihilism’.

In the less convincing closing pages of his work ‘Thus spake Zarathustra’, he put into the voice of his character, “For fear – that is man’s original and fundamental feeling; through fear everything is explained – original sin and original virtue. Through fear there grew also my virtue: that is to say , science. For fear of wild animals -that hath been longest fostered in man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in himself: Zarathustra called it ‘the beast inside’. Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual – at present, methinketh, it is called science.”

The biblical style language probably betrays the encroachment of a mysticism into Nietzsche’s otherwise emphatic style. It is unlikely, this evocation of spirituality, would be convincing today, however it is based on the recognition that in our human condition we cannot understand what we cannot believe; and invoking the animistic element he is stressing its subconscious motivation, what Heidegger may be alluding to by his term, ‘caring’. [ Believe it or not ]

Modern science is a lot more sophisticated than that which Neitzshe knew. It is both more complex and more influential, even assuming some mysticism in its ideas of theoretical physics; of the subatomic and the astronomic. But is cannot avoid the conundrum of ‘the truth’ meme which it has adopted from the format of western religious theology.

Schrodinger, Nobel prize winning physicist, is among the scientist’s who are more philosophical about the ‘hypothesis of the real world’ version of science. In the Tarner Lectures delivered at Trinity College 1956, he suggests that ”to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature….we exclude the subject of Cognizance….We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world”. He makes the point that this produces “most blatant antinomies due to our unawareness of the fact that a moderately satisfying picture of the world has only been reached at the high price of taking ourselves out of the picture, stepping back into the role of a non-concerned observer”. He goes on to quote Spinoza and Jung who in their way, complained about the exclusion of the mind and neglect of the soul, in our world picture (the then current version of scientific rationalism ).

Is this where we need to go, to find a believable set of memes, that are inclusive, conditionally ‘omnipotent’ and able to be clearly translatable into cultural forms.

A human being in a modern society experiences their ‘life’ equally through the agency of a technological device, and the immediate interaction with others around them. [ What is life? ]

This heavy volume of technological information is a significant component to the everyday experience of life in a contemporary society. Most of the information is machine code required to make the device produce the effects it is designed to do. Embedded in this information is the other code which is the same information we get and process from others around us, using our six senses ( the usual five plus the ‘common’ variety ) that defines the ideas embedded in the code.

However the manner, that these ideas are delivered in, makes them different.

The ideas we get directly from others in our own physical proximity come with many qualifying conditions. Firstly and importunately the person obviously exists; is not a bot or sham entity. Secondly the credibility of the individual comes with a complex, in depth understanding of the personality with whom we are communicating. These constitute a radical difference between the ideas that arrive from a remote personality who appears in a shallow electronically transmitted profile; an easily faked presentation but who may more often than not, be somebody with the potential to be equivalent with the one we experience from an actual person. We may grow the necessary trust and appreciable knowledge of that remote personality with time, but it is not fully guaranteed if it is only a technological contact.

If there is any meaning in the term ‘human consciousness’ as opposed to ‘animistic consciousness’, the necessity to be able to discriminate between ideas from various sources is the primary challenge. It will only be plausible if a wide spread movement were to occur in all cultures, to defy the nihilistic terms of a isolated definition for omnipotence.

It is common today to hear individuals repeat the idea that nothing is ‘truth’. By this they are however saying that truth is an opinion rather than a ‘fact’. But ‘truth’ can be an ‘idea’ ( a meme ) and can be acknowledged to be preconditioned by a recognisable ‘cultural omnipotence’. If some philosophy academics refuse to accept this, it is not fatal to the world community who finds it acceptable. If the world community can work in concert on the problematic challenges before our species, we may last a few millennia more than what nihilism has in store for us.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

There is a secret code that is older than civilization; much older than the western version and may even be what defines human society. It is so clandestine that even its users are only partially inducted into its ‘modus operandi’. Yet the influence it has had, is having and is poised to increasingly have, is shaping the future, culturally and politically. To recognise this ghostly force it is necessary to lift our head out of the pages of history books and look. This code is revealed in images; the illusive but omnipotent power of visual perception.

It has come to prominence courtesy of the revolution precipitated by explosive expansion of the internet. The technology that has enabled social networking and portals for individual expression, to function as a completely uncontrolled media platform; in theory if not actually in practice. However the devil in the detail is that the culture and psychology of the society is written in a very different codex to the machine code of the technology. That clandestine human code is multi generations old, and is embedded into the minds of humans as they learn, within the confines of their society, what it is to be ‘alive’. Much is culturally implanted, but significantly a very influential component is the product of the sensory data that surrounds the emerging adult. Although what and where we see are circumstantial, how we perceive it is determined by the bio-mechanics of our visual senses and is therefore the closest we can ever get to knowing ‘reality’.
It is the ‘Visual Codex’ that implants the earliest ‘beliefs’, associates perceptions into ideas and presets the minds fundamental reality; identifying ‘forms’ that are neural network based elements of the individuals notion of reality. Memesis has been theorized by thinkers as far back as Plato to current times, and is essentially the inspiration for meme’s that are popular graffiti on the net. But do not be fooled, there is nothing new in what the net is exploiting, it just seems that way because we have not used our visual codex perceptions to the extent we now do; the experience is unfamiliar and supporting mimetic believes are unsupported by the established memesis paradigms.
That is the contemporary challenge to the individual. How to function in a memetically redundant system? A plausible model that is however readily accessible, is the subconscious memetic tools that were created in the mind that learns the belief structure of visual perception.

I suffered this ubiquitous phenomena in early primary school, to my determinant at the time, but on reflection it was an inevitable revelation that was as much a curse as a life centring experience. I had the uncanny experience of having Miss Jenkins in both grade 3 and 4; a solid woman in physique as well as attitude. Her mission was to bestow the gift of reading, writing and arithmetic onto her charges. Ball point pens were allowed for ruling lines only; pencils were acceptable but writing was to be done in ink; from the inkwell or fountain pen for the fortunate few. In these tasks I was no better or worse than the others but the underutilised pen which needed no ink management and never went blunt, drew my hand to it whenever the distractions of third grade life moved to boredom. The resulting doodles attracted the ire of Miss Jenkins but they unconsciously proliferated and grew in scale and scope, driven by some automatic compulsion; a fascination in the effects that evolved. Why this provoked such a negative response from the teacher is still unanswered, and why it proved so disruptive in my early education is now no longer worth contemplating.

What did start from this, is an obsession with ‘the hard line of delineation’ that a ball point made, and how by hatching and outline, it could be made to represent images of ‘things’. At first these things were objects but they could also represent ideas, a lesson that took much longer to realise and endlessly longer to master to any degree of accomplishment. It is insignificant whether practice produced a level of competence or there was some innate disposition; what it produced is a compulsion to explore the possibilities that so far I have not exhausted, or even done more than scratch the outer casing of, in this disguised treasure chest.
Either despite or because of Miss Jenkins, I eventually realised that at least for me, many objects that I could imagine, were describable by reproducing a shape on a flat surface with some suitable drawing instrument.
The images were never exactly the same but even in the opinion of others they were a recognisable object. These others had not been tutored by Miss Jenkins or were not themselves able to draw shapes that were recognisable but they did recognise the shapes when they saw them. How or why, I am still trying to answer but I am convinced it is a common faculty of every mind that is innately learned, and more human than philologists recognise in spoken or written language.

I hardly ever touch a ball point pen today, and I write on a computer, draw with pencils and brushes; but the relationship between images and ideas has exponentially grown in my attention with the advent of the information highway and the mobile microprocessor personified in the ‘cell phone’. Images are omnipresent, in net products. They are readily produced, reproduced, and manipulated. Their overwhelming saturation is witnesses to their potential influence. Even as ‘wallpaper’ they have an effect. We either learn to understand and use them, or we will be used and abused by them.

The modern world of technology based forms of communication and the displacement of written communication with audio visual devices has seen the rise to prominence of the influence memetic elements have on communication. They are not solely visual images, but many are or use the visual codex to supplement their message or just to categorise it. In traditional media the owners agenda was known but with unknown ownership of a net memetic element, the full implications are unknowable and are usually unconscious; consequently most users are unprepared for the potential they hold to mould the ideas, opinions and actions an individual may concede to adopt.
As innocuous as this seems, social structures are threatened. Establishments are challenged and values are being deconstructed under the intense glare of a new freedom of expression enabled by the instrument in the hands of all fortunate citizens of fortunate countries with fortunate governance in place.

Despite the uncertainty, the individual has never had freedom of expression so close to their grasp.
The take up by commercial interests may have fuelled the boom but the opportunity to participate is the greatest an individual citizen has known.
This is potentially nothing less than reinventing democracy. But will it be the net redefining the message, or net being redefined by the expression of a nihilistic anarchy amongst the netizens. Is it a celebration of freedoms once dreamed to be only available in a hypothetical, idealistic world?
Off course this is too good to be true. The circumstance is greater than the individuals capacity to handle it. Such freedom is appalled by the majority, excepting the most reckless and extreme risk takers. For the brave it is an opportunity not to be missed. For the rest it is a latent tool in democracy terms and essentially an entertainment vehicle for most.

The net is not a new world, but is a radical new interpretation of what is could be. History has not gone away but it has been unshackled from the bonds of the elite. The risk that we will not learn from history and consequently repeat it, has been replaced by the danger that we may not be aware of history when it is buried under the mountain of arcane information overload. Instead of history being written by the victors, as it was in the past; who will be responsible to write it? Who will protect the permanence of the record, shield it from attack and abuse? Who will have the last say? Will a future philologist find the material we are now creating ‘readable’ and be positioned to understand accurately what it represents.
It is probable that the future will be written in the visual Codex. All who desire to be a part of this development should begin to practice immediately. Will this be the ultimate ‘book burning’ exercise (metaphorically speaking ); and the human race be better positioned if it comes to pass?

Not all that has been said has been written. What was ever spoken is as transient as the breeze. What was written and not lost or destroyed, accounts for recorded history; a mere façade, which is effectively an agenda driven filter that has selectively culled reality to suit the interpretation of whom ever was the custodian of the books. Consequently words have been cheapened, even those with apparent provenance; and with the advent of the word processor the written story is as free of factorial authenticity as the birds are unbound by gravity to the ground.
The most effective messages now, are not confined to an imprecise literature or a single language but are revealed in the common code that only ones personal faith and specific cultural roots can manipulate, if the subversive content is able to be separated from the dross.
The often quoted adage, “seeing is believing”, even if it is not as reliable or immutable as it first appears, is what the mind readily records. This information is the source data for our notion of reality, of the ‘truth’ ( if we indeed know what truth approximately means ), and of the tangible, tactile existence of everything that is external to our psychological presence. The image is not immune to distortion but it is at least resistant to, if not impervious to, the editing which the establishment of any, even all, societies are subject to.
It takes a lot of counter evidence to persuasion even the most disciplined, skeptical and cynical mind, once an idea has been visually perceived. Perhaps this is why some orthodox religions prohibit images, it certainly is how others use images to shape the thoughts of the faithful.

I do not subscribe to the Dawkins association of meme’s with the physiology of evolution although it may contribute to the psychology of evolution; if there is such a concept. However it may be that ‘History’ is recorded in the storage of the actual mimetic ideas that evolve. Will they be in the cloud or on a chip? Will they be encoded or raw? Will they represent what you want to be represented by?
If this were to transpire we should care what ideas are preserved or stored. We should care what ideas we want to record and we should care that they are as comprehensible as possible to interpretation in the future. It consequently behooves us to understand the visual language that will encapsulate the greater portion of that record.

It would be delinquent of me to forget to mention the manner of my preoccupation with the visual codex. I found a niche in engineering that introduced me to the technology of the silicon chip, as early as it was taking shape. From the privilege of accidentally being in this position, the development of current day electronics was played out over that intervening period. I witnessed the earliest attempts to harness the visual codex and the techniques of simulating the source data management. The only comment it leads me to make is that despite appearances, technology has barely mimicked the eye and gone no way to simulating the ‘eye – optic nerve – brain’ mechanism. In my humble opinion it is partly because machines can’t master the function of believing; and partly because learning is subjective, which is anathema to machine code. Attempts by engineering, to breakdown this nexus only mask the contradiction. [ Artificial Intelligence ]

With the potential for animated images it would appear that a single image, just one frame of a video sequence, is readily surpassed by the ability of the latest media to tell a story, or make a statement. Therefore the potential for moving pictures to make an aesthetic statement appears unarguable. But the motion picture, despite it’s immediate influence on the observer, has not actually achieved the visual impact of the traditional picture that both freezes and distills, in form and composition, an iconic form; a statement that burns into the mind as a brand sears its imprint onto a hide. The single image that captures a sentiment or expresses an idea that is shared or that touches the soul of many people, is the paramount achievement of great art. Critical analysis claims that such pictures have an dynamism and energy, capture the emotional and occasionally political sub plot, behind the images; it is this that separates them from the ruck of images that seek but do not achieve the same impact. Titian ( Tiziano Vecelli ) was the most conspicuous early practitioners of this craft although not the first, but the power of the image grew from the directions which were explored. The effect was movement, frozen in a moment but implying action.
A possible explanation for this enigmatic phenomena is that a moving picture inherits a time line. And just as a time line has a beginning it also has an ending, so that as impressive as the animated statement may be, in the process of experiencing it, this is transitory. This brief candle burns brightly for the moment but the image fades from the mind as quickly as it fades from the retina; it is too complex to be deconstructed into a single mimetic element.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

The visual codex is the language that most closely describes what we believe, because its basic elements were formed when the mind was learning to believe. The sensory data that contributed to this original process is uniquely singular, being derived from a specific bio metric mechanism; the eye-optic nerve-brain of one example of a human life. Its power is that all further understanding is constructed on the ‘forms’ established in this inchoate stage. Largely immune from social, cultural and environmental influences they create a reality built on forms which are unreplacable because they are what the individual believes. All subsequent beliefs and learned forms use this basic set of forms to learn, imagine and think.
If our ambition is to understand, to form ideas which are our own, it is imperative to accept the beliefs these will be conditioned by. More importantly we need to know that ideas can be imposed by others using common denominator ‘forms’; which are common because the eye-optic nerve-brain mechanism is shared biology. Therefore others who have learnt some of the visual codex, can utilise it, to communicate, a positive usage, as well it can subjugate, the negative, dangerous and destructive force.

Forms can be complex or simple. Testing has established that the colour red can bias toward winning, and blue losing; in sporting competition. Nothing can be a simpler element to include in a visual situation and although not inviolate, it is real. There are many equally basic ‘forms’ available to visual expression and their universality is what represents their potency.
‘Forms’ can and generally are nested in a limitless construction to achieve very complex ideas. They become less universal with each iteration but the influence of cultural and environment influences can also allow them to defy the diffusion effect and allow them to hold onto that universality.

Forms are a collection of neurons ( an unspecified number ) connected randomly. The only specificity is that they represent a remote sensor element which can be followed through the eye-optic nerve-brain to the neuron field where it can have ( invariably does have ) multiple parallel connections. The neurons themselves do not store any record but are in a dynamic state that encourages them to reinforce links that are repeatedly used. This eventually accounts for memory.
Frequently used forms may find improved paths to the goal which might be just a hypothetical node in the forms structure. The extremely large number of available neurons and the plasticity of the connections, depending on usage, makes the potential for parallel processing the sensory data effective enough to make and break memory bonds.

Critical to this process is the other phenomena that sets up the act of ‘believing’; it is the establishing of a credible existence-proof which may be established by incorporating the sensory data from other sources, perhaps tactile verification.

As a form ‘takes on a character’ it becomes more permanent because it develops efficient links and evolves into a semi permanent memory ( there is no such thing as permanent memory ). At this stage is can assume the status of a belief although a ‘belief’ is more likely to be based on a construction of several or many ‘forms’. It can become a component in many higher order ‘forms’ that are closer to what we actually recognise as ‘knowledge’.

‘Forms’ are the ‘memes’ referred to in other chapters of this series. They are the basic elements that some commentators suggest result from the study of ‘memetics’, which is an essentially metaphysical topic. With this model of the biological process it is possible to speculate what a form means to the concept of perceiving reality.
As interesting and tempting as it is to be distracted by the intricacies of A.I., this series is about the internet, and how to propitiously use it. In this sense we have come far along the A.I. discussion to see clearly why the internet is a problem for ordinary believing. As mentioned above the natural way of making an existance-proof decision is to use a complimentary source of sense data. The net can not oblige in this regard so we have identified in a deductive sense a very fundamental flaw in digital communication.
We have however the need to adopt the ‘Realist philosophers’ position in respect to digital data, if we want to go the next step and explore how forms may be moulded into beliefs, ideas and learning.

‘Form’ is the ‘abstract’ interpretation of the total ‘sense data’, which contributes to the visual experience. Every image, even the most detailed photograph, is converted to an abstract representation in the brain; invariably a complex construction of ‘forms’ that our mind accepts as reality because these memes have passed the authenticity of being a belief. But it is only a specific instance of reality.
So far we have described ‘forms’ in a very elemental format. At this stage they are not so much abstract as plastic. However the more of these plastic elements coalesce into a form, the more abstract they become.

So what is abstract. I recall a picture, I can not remember where, of a child,s drawing of God, driving Adam and Eve out of the paradise garden. The car was a box with wheels, symbolic enough to be understood, God was a stick figure, at one end with a steering wheel, also an identifiable representation. In the back seat were two small stick figures. On first viewing it was charmingly naive but subconsciously it contained a ‘form’ that was implicit in the story line. The scale of the people in the back showed the child understood what the lesson was about them. No doubt the instructor must have enforced this point, a fact that the child recognised; and was representing with small scale stick figures, not Adam and Eve, which would have been two full sized adults. This effect was the result of a ‘form’ supplied to the child by the instructor and made evident in the graphic representation.

This example is a succinct example of the difference between a ‘shape’ and a ‘form’
Any of the stick figures is a ‘shape’ an abstract shape but what they represent is clear. The car ‘shape’ is clear and the steering wheel a reasonable detail. So is this graphic image an ‘abstract’ drawing?
It certainly involves several abstract ‘shapes’.
Try to forget the story line I told you about! Do these shapes tell you the story. The stick figure of God does not have a halo but the location of the figure in the front, the orientation of the figures and specially the addition of a steering wheel for the front figure begin to create a story. So it could be just another Uber job. The shapes give all the content you need but the meaning does not emerge because ‘shapes’ do not reveal the ‘form’, more information is needed. ( If the child was more sophisticated it could have given God a medieval halo, to aid interpretation.)
If you were allowed to know it was about Adam and Eve, ( by way of a title, attached to the image )it would take some working out, but you could equate the stylistic and the symbolic evidence to a child,s impression of the immaculate eviction.
So now you have got the ‘idea’. You have seen the ‘form’; the ‘meaning’ conveyed by the image, and it took some serious effort.
But did you see what the child was actually saying about the lesson. Yes Adam and Eve did a sin, and God was displeased. But did you also understand that the child was telling you that the instructor was implicating them. The instructor was imposing an adult ‘form’ on the story, which the child cleverly but obviously unconsciously, expressed in the visual codex ( in the scale of the stick figures in the back seat ).
I don’t know if you agree but I think introducing children to original sin, does not feel necessary to me. But that is of course another story.

My personal take on the ‘original sin’ scandal, is to feel sorry for Adam and for Eve. They are damned for eternity for romping around in the nude, in paradise, with no job to distract them, or television to watch. You would have to admit, what happened was inevitable. To also pass this responsibility onto children could be unsuitable or even grounds for some kind of indictment.

The role of ‘forms’ in the process of perception is much more than identifying shapes; which is an objective task, the category that machines could eventually perfect. What the ‘shape’ means in the context of the time and place it appeared, is done by a ‘form’ selected from a library of alternatives to account for subliminal sense data.

The internet has brought this phenomena conspicuously into our lives and it has tangible challenges attached to it. The public conversations are openly addressing Fake news, Alternative Facts and simple fraudulent dealings, even going to manipulation of public opinion by malicious misinformation. It was not the internet that invented these effects but its ability to access ordinary people has made the negative effects obvious.
But humanity has known the basics of how it works since cave people left their mark on the walls of their meeting places; and big names in philosophical history have had a go at describing what is going on.

At risk is the most freedom ordinary citizens have enjoyed at any time in history; something too good to forfeit. To preserve it all Netizens need to develop the skills to handle the mischievous use of this tool.
The only defence a Nitizen can make is to be aware and proactive in participating on a web that rejects the abuse; which implies learning how to think independently and knowing that only the opinions that encourage the same, are legitimate options to get involved with. Pivotal to achieving this is to know what ‘forms’ do, how to identify subversive ‘forms’.

‘Form’ has the enigmatic property of ‘existing’ internally ( within the mind, it belongs to ). It is what the mind believes it is perceiving; one individuals perception of it is ‘immaterial’, having only the ‘potential to exist’. However if there is a ‘real’ world ( something not everybody concedes ), which is the origin of the sense data, then this would represent the ‘material’ or corporeal expression of the phenomenon.
Understanding this duality is where classic philosophy has founded.

Plato used the term in its broadest context. He postulated the ‘Theory of forms’ as “distinct and immaterial substances of …. the objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world,” [and therefore] “are nothing more than mere shadows.” The above quote is in translation and so might be contested as accurate in every respect; but it seems that Plato was giving ‘forms’ a definition in which they were not material as well as non mental.
Obviously for Plato and even Aristotle, ‘form’ was more than just the minds reception of visual stimuli; ‘Form’s’ were ‘ideal universals’, by which we are able to understand the world.
This is as true today as it was in 400 B.C..

We would do well to take note of the term ‘ideal universals’, it is something the ‘realist’ philosophers of science could have invented.

It would be easy to dismiss such antique views as being out of touch with the contemporary reality, but they were superseded by a concept that was even less supported by the facts. Descartes, the so called ‘father of modern philosophy and scientific logic’, and who created ‘Cartesian Dualism’, claimed that the immaterial mind and the material body, are distinct ontological, but casually interacting entities. Descartes even produced images, diagrams to show this process, despite the reality that knowledge of how the visual apparatus worked was essentially speculative ( and wrong ). This was ‘pseudo science’ but it met the philosophical demands and lasted, in its many reincarnations, until the 20th century. Never the less up to this time, in each variant, it was agreed by most that perception, the exercise of the human senses, at least contributed largely to knowledge; and not only largely but also fundamentally.
This also is as true today it has been since the gift of ‘sight’, was available to our human precursors.
It is why we need to make ourselves aware of its impact on what we believe.

As medical technology began to give us insights into the physiological process of sight the distinction between the mind and body took on a different dimension. The brain as a material object became the obvious replacement for the mind making the ‘immaterial’ now a very tangible object.
Mental processes could be seen to be ‘conditioned reflexes’ of a malleable organ that was responding to ‘learned’ patterns embedded in a ‘plastic’ web of biological interconnections; what has come to be known in electronic engineering as well as in medicine, by the term, ‘neural pathways’.

The new ‘clear’ revelation was that the brain which exists, and is not immaterial, is the organ that constructs ‘form’ from the incoming senses ( sense data ); in a method that we can almost observe on an ‘objective’ level.
With this realisation, mind and body are apparently united in a singularity of existence.
However this is not so simple because the brain has ‘plasticity’. It is not an organ that blindly does a basic function like the heart or the kidneys, or even the pineal gland which Descartes would be disappointed to know only produces Melatonin.

The new biological evidence, that the brain is not only able to change, it is constantly in a state of ‘plastic’ mobility, is problematic. This ‘plasticity’ either destroys the ‘singularity’, that mind and body coexist as material objects, or it stretches our understanding/concept of ‘reality’. Can we restate Descartes ‘duality’ with a more rational version of ‘ideal universal’.

The nihilistic version of ‘ideal universal’ is that such concepts are inaccessible to an individual, even if they were an accurate approximation of reality. Therefore if we can not know it, it does not exist.

It is plausible to accept that every ‘individual’ develops a personal set of ‘forms’, where the quality of universality is limited to that individuals experience, and is independent of external reinforcement. This is a ‘personal ideal universal’ or ‘form’, existing in the neural network of the brain of the person that experienced it.

It is equally logical to assume that many ‘ideal universals’ come out of the common experience of many individuals. Because other individuals agree, or believe they agree, this common experience gives rise to a set of ‘ideal universals’ which innately have the imprimatur of ‘true ideal universals’. Obviously this depends on the assumption that general consensus is indicative of the ‘truth’; a highly contestable proposition, but a practical compromise. The ‘realist philosophers’ would condone this connection.
Individuals become aware of these ‘true ideal universalities’ by communicating comparative ‘forms’ with other individuals, using some type of contrived system to describe the phenomena.
Societies in their various formats have invented disciplines such as mathematics, the science’s and religion or just culturally inspired customs, to systematise the ‘process of agreement’ between individuals.
The visual codex is a natural and available conduit to this end. For creative’s, working in the ‘visual language’ this system is the pictorial format, the ‘visual language’.
Now the internet has made all users of it, visual language consumers. The memetic content is delivered in bulk, daily and copiously.
Netizens are presented with many ideal universals and if aware will be able to identify a consensus opinion which, from a statistical position, could be assumed closest to being representative of reality.

However we must acknowledge that ‘true ideal universals’ do not actually ‘exist’, they possess only ‘potentiality’ until an observer recognises their authenticity. This enigmatic state does not imply that the ‘true ideal universal’ is any more ‘real’ than its progenitor, it is just acknowledging that it does not exist in any material neural network other than that of its source.

Where this leads philosophers and other communicators, in other mediums, is not within the scope of this note, despite the temptation to indulge in such speculation. You may well ask, how can something be ‘real’ if it begins as an existing entity, becomes non-existent and in another location and in more locations it becomes an existing entity again? The answer is that creatives do it everyday, ask one how they do it.
They probably have to confess they do not know. But they know it when they see it, as do many others who are observers only.
Creatives can search for methods but generally end with experiments, that do or do not have positive results.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

I wish to preface these paragraphs by paying respects to the victims of the Christchurch massacre of march 2019. They died at the hand guided by a paranoia fuelled to extremism by deliberate racial profiling, created for political advantage. I trust ordinary citizens will not cow to such imaginative fears.

There is no such thing as free speech; and sometimes the cost is our right to be heard.
To protect the entitlement to have a personal opinion, there are certain compromises an individual must concede to the other individuals they are either destined to live amongst or choose to live amongst.
A human being is a pack animal; it hunts as a pack, it gathers in interdependent clusters of shared resources, for defence and mutual benefit. Individuals cluster in cities, the cities identify as a nation, and even nations define themselves in blocks of mutual interest. This only functions under a regime of law and order, but animistic instincts loiter in the bark hearts of some individuals.

A citizen acquires certain freedoms in return for specific responsibilities and obligations. It is one thing to debate these values or conditions but there is no entitlement for any individual to claim exemption from the cultural standard, without expecting retribution. Within any specific cultural sense it is a realistic freedom to expect to debate any or all values but no right exists to actively deny them.
In reality ‘revolutions’ happen because social structures can polarise and the law of the jungle takes over. However dissenting opinions can strengthen a society as well as destroy it. ‘Freedom of speech’ is what is essential if the former is preferred to the later. But speech is not free if it either directly or obliquely references any subset of citizens in a social or cultural context.

Despite often ( approximately ) re quoting Voltaire, ‘I will protest what you are saying, but fight for your right to say it’, we must admit that some opinions are just prejudice, based on envy, jealousy, malice and greed; manifest as racial or sexual hatred. The cost to any society is that where such ‘hate speech’ or ‘pseudo hate speech’ thrives, the right to live without fear is denied for some targeted by race, sexual definition or religious expression. In a contemporary society the right to live without fear is an ‘a priori’ social condition, free speech is an entitlement that carries some socially preset conditions.

The ugly reality for those romantics who imagine the ‘enlightened society’ is a practical ideal, is that human nature is a mixture of animistic instincts and learned social values. Every society includes persons who have varying amounts of these qualities. We experience the dominance of aggression in the animal that is provoked into ‘road rage’. We, to our chagrin , witness acts of terrorism against innocent citizens and deplore violent assaults on children or others every day in our major cities. These individuals live with us and are unexceptional until they do these destructive things. We cannot pass a law to make it illegal to be like this because we do not know an individual is so inclined until they have offended.
What we must acknowledge is that these vulnerable persons need to be protected from being used by manipulating speech, designed to trigger ‘asocial’ activities targeting a subset of the society. The fear and uncertainty it creates for this subset, is shared by all citizens who can be cowed into servitude by such fear. Even when that fear is irrational or unjustified.

The debate is not how to censure such ‘asocial’ contributions but who should. Could it be the Law; there is already many such limitations such as defamation, incite to lawlessness and false advertising, all of which are essentially ineffective? Could it be left to the individual receiving such messages to identify the memetic content?
The problem of defining the boarder of where legitimate freedom of speech is not merely a genuine opinion; but has either, inadvertently or maliciously, the intention to ferment disorder, is modern democracies conspicuous flaw. The motive to instigate fear or uncertainty is too much used by politically inspired advocates and is the most common source of this problem.
The tragedy for politically balanced representative governments, is the influence within the parties which can threaten fine margins, so giving undue influence to those members away from the centre. But far more destructive is the effect of vested interests who support marginal members with the express intention of having the same result as above. Political parties too readily succumb to retail tactics such as promoting a climate of mistrust that inevitably lingers in the hearts of some citizens who reject cultural diversity. As for the main stream media some brands, some specific presenters have made it their signature identity to peddle this propaganda.
Add to this instability the incentive for politicians to subliminally indulge in campaigns based on fear or scare tactic,s, when their credibility is weakened; it is too obvious to require stating, but evidently not too obvious to contravene the legal responsibility a mere citizen is subject to.

We are experiencing a phase in our political development where the law is castrated by vested interests who ingenuously blame the internet and social media for the corrosion of equity at the forefront of political ideology. Not ignoring that the net is a conduit for the most undisguised hate speech, it is the main stream media that are giving fresh air to the clandestine, subliminal, ‘hate messages’ that are the trigger that provokes mentally limited and radically disposed persons to act out their fantasy’s.

The law only has any chance of contributing, if we are brave enough to go so far as to prohibit any publicly accessible form of communication ( including all traditional media ), from including any material that identifies a subset of the society, in their programming.
This at first impression seams too radical to be practical. What about the good news that is subset specific? The reply is that racial or religious profiling can be used for good or bad; the good is ‘nice’ but the bad is deplorable and socially destructive. If we must sacrifice both I believe it represents a net gain.

I never understood why politicians can say in Parliament, what they like, immune to sanction. This speech is broadcast, reported and on the record, so how can it be any different to defamation or incite to lawlessness in any other format.
Our politicians more than most should be obliged to be truthful and accountable if found wanting. Equivocation needs to be revealed as an assault on the law ( truth ) and legally given the status of a crime; as an attempt to undermine the law which requires not just the truth but the whole truth. In the place where the law is made, the highest compliance with the letter and spirit of our legal process must be fulfilled by those we have employed to do it.
As clearly displayed in Christchurch, this is not romantic dreaming it is of the highest security risk.

This series of posts is primarily about the dangers of mismanaging the net and its role in our lives; but I have been persuaded by the discussion above that it is all media and all who partake. From the loudest and most belligerent to the most respectfully circumspect, all who would have their opinion known in personal blogs, face-book posts, tweets and even prime time media, should be legally obliged to obey the extensive laws that exist in our courts of law. The court of public opinion decides our democratic way of life. It is the information which we use to vote; the ultimate ‘right’ we have as a citizen. Why it should not demand the same level of honesty as a court of law is unarguable.

The internet has produced a potential platform for voices outside of the establishment to be exposed to the scrutiny of many, potentially across boarders although this is more a delusion than actuality.
Freedom of speech in history has been exercised by the establishment and withheld from the proletariat. It was easily achieved when the written word was printed and spoken word was broadcast. The need for substantial investment to be involved and government licences needed to participate further harnessed control to the establishment. The internet in a significant way allows for some redress of that franchise, supplying the ability for everybody to be heard.
However the right to express an opinion is not the same as the right to have an opinion. And the right to have an opinion does not guarantee the right to have that point of view enacted.

Freedom to do something within any cultural situation is the most difficult to offer every citizen and although all call for freedom, few approach it without fear. If the law of the land was in effect allowing everybody to do what they wanted, there would virtually be no law. The object of the legal limits of freedom, dictate what a citizen may not do, and in some instances what they must do.

In demanding freedoms we ignore how much we are free to do, but choose placid conformity, more often than not. What we could do, should we choose, we decline to do because wait to be led. We are not just consumers of material products, we compliantly absorb the half truths of influence pedlars; under their influence and often preferring the anonymity of social compliance, we without a hint of ingenuousness, protest at what we are prohibited from doing, for not better reason than it was suggested that we should.

If there is a meaningful definition of freedom, it is the right to be free from fear.
Every human being on this planet is or was once an immigrant. Many who are current immigrants are escaping violence but some are just seeking a peaceful existence.
Most citizens of long or short standing are individuals who do not want to be ‘great again’, or even for the first time; they seek the security of an inclusive society. They want to be free to walk the streets in safety, to be treated as all other citizens and to believe what they choose to believe without victimisation.

That very small number of asocial individuals who choose to deny others the right to do this are enemies of the state, those who incite them are traitors and even of a lower order than those they exploit to do the acts they lack the fortitude to do themselves.

On the internet it is easy for an opinionated individual to inadvertently or negligently participate in the same class of activity as the terrorism described above. In many respects even more so because a sense of anonymity makes ordinary people careless about who or what they associate with.

So much of human endeavour is exhausted under the title of freedom but as the romantics declare everywhere people are in chains. Perhaps that is because many of these chains are self inflicted by souls escaping the fear of freedom. For as long as individuals seek to be led, there will be malign forces to oblige. To be really free, is to free of the fear of freedom; which is an onerous weight to carry for those who bare it. To be really free, is to be free of the subversive forces that seek to enlist the indolent and simple.
Being free is not an idealistic paradise, but a commitment to eternal vigilance and inevitable compromise. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice by actively engaging the adversarial forces within a society; many more have been innocently sacrificed because, ignorance incited by bigotry, is the tool of traitors who spruik racial or religious profiling.

Christchurch has triggered our awareness of a new dimension which exclusively belongs to the internet. It is the very enticing feature of online streaming; enticing to those who crave recognition and even more so if they can be convinced of the merit of what they may do. The horrible reality is that we are a voyeuristic society. If some salacious, erotic or grotesque act is available to be viewed in the privacy of a streamed content, it will be too attractive to many people. Not all but some will be encouraged to copy the event. That the social media businesses can be used for this purpose is something that can not be allowed to continue. What ever ‘freedoms’ are sacrificed to prevent unregulated material from being transmitted, they are necessary encumbrances to prevent a deluge of copy cat events. The urgency is that this is an existential threat to social order, it is an immediate threat to any person of any faith who can be unwittingly targeted for a steamed, entertainment to be consumed by the voyeurs of the world. We have been subject to beheading’s, to acts of personal high risk foolish acts and now a new category of ‘realtime’ terrorism.
In this version of the world, every citizen will life in fear. In this world the innocent at targeted because they are innocent.

The internet which once promised freedom of expression, has now given us the freedom to live in fear. No longer is it safe to just be inconspicuous; this is now the most dangerous position. Will it be money or humanity that will be the beneficiary, of the required response? If this trend is not immediately arrested it is a short step for humanity ( men and women ), but a giant leap into anarchy.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

The Christian, Son of God, is reported to have declared, “the meek shall inherit the earth”. Well that does not appear likely any time soon, at least not in the way one would expect.
The mood of western popular mythology is for fantastical personalities existing in a hyper-real world of a digital delusion. Contemplative sects that once attracted a certain number of the young, have lost their charisma. The mood of western popular politics is for isolationism, and militarily ensured insularity. The mood of eastern popular mythology is Confucianism, based on the ascendant authority of a powerful state. The mood of eastern politics is expansion of regional influence.
The alliance of central traditional states in Europe are under substantial pressure from vulnerable ex-colonial states who are experiencing an internal crisis of economic collapse and social polarisation causing a momentous flux of humanity attempting to relocate. To either escape violence, famine or to seek a happier life for their children.
To this chaos is added the impact, on modern economic development models, of uncontrollable climatic change. Depriving some of a home, some an income and some just of hope.
Where the dominant western economies embraced ‘free trade’ and ‘multi national’ businesses, as the balance moved from their advantage, trade of all resources, from human to natural, has been weaponized for strategic benefit.
The largest degree of flux is however peripheral to these influences, it is the enabling power and instability that micro electronic devices have put in the hands of nearly all peoples. The connectivity between the disenfranchised and their establishment has been internationalised and adopted by those who’s agenda is economic destabilisation, regime change and superpower influence.
Where once globalised manufacturing was a ‘cohesive force, supporting the internationalism of affluence, it is reverting to colonialism or more accurately to perceived colonisation of national identity and indigenous resources.

Just like the changing environmental patterns the distribution of socioeconomic power is defusing and moving east. The internet has presented the contemporary individual with a window into the world wide homogenisation of what they can aspire to, although it has yet supplied the means to achieve that result. Sea levels may be rising but it is the tide of humanity that is eroding boarders. The economic compass is drifting as the money version of the ‘precession of the equinoxes’, destabilises the previous status quo. Those with stocks in this apparatus are stampeding to refocus, but finding “that every where they are in bondage”.

So frankly, who cares!
Not many apparently, and those that do are acting out of nostalgic notions of “lost greatness” and fading significance. Like an ageing boxer, looking for a last fight, he is doomed to loose, but obliged to act out the self image.
But do not despair! Most of the effects described above are reversible, with the exemption of climate, probably. And the motivation to initiate that reconstruction, rests with that ignored majority of the ‘meek’.

What of the meek?
Is it they are merely weak, unable or unwilling to act of their own volition?
I agree with the pre-existentialists that life is not a sojourn through paradise; but is a passport to pain. Just what challenges confront an individual is a lottery, one in which we have unwittingly acquired a ticket.
Being an involuntary gambler we are all in the game where there will be winners, which consequently means there are also losers. It is a statistical exercise, where there are only a small number are conspicuous winners and equally the losers are a minority ( a bigger minority because it takes many losers to support one winner ).
Although the popular media are almost totally absorbed with the winners and losers, it is an illusion to think they are the only group worthy of attention.
Neither the winners or losers are ‘meek’. They move to the extremes by the result of their own choices and efforts. Both are proactive functionaries of the game. The losers are just aspirant winners, and collateral damage in that unholy combat. It is a foundation ideology of the conservative politician, that civilisation is totally indebted to this group.
On this subject alone many volumes have, and will continue to be, written. I do not intend to be distracted in this place by the temptation to comment, except to note that this proactive group are totally dependant on the ‘majority’. It is a system that can function, but even when undisturbed by external influences, such a weather, or war, it invariably fluctuates between boom and bust.
The best explanation of why this ‘leadership of the proactive’ is inevitably a negative has been made by Erich Fromm, in the tome ‘The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness’.
Commonly the silent majority ride out these uncomfortable variables but occasionally they are provoked to respond, usually against their wishes, but in response to dramatic change to the security and stability of their world. It is in these circumstances ‘meek power’ eclipses even the might of the best equipped military, by its shear numerical superiority.

The ‘meek’ majority are distributed largely to the centre of the population curve, but spread across this middle ground. This is what statisticians term the ‘Bell graph’. It effectively shows that in all probability, the greater number of individuals will live a life of unnoticeable ordinariness; what is presumably the ‘meek’ referred to in the rhetoric above.
They cannot inherit the earth because they already dominate it, and their effect is inconspicuous not because it is a ‘weak force’ but because it is ubiquitous and subtle. An analogy might be the phenomena astrophysicists refer to as ‘dark energy’; that unobserved quantity that is demanded in the theorists model of everything.

The ‘meek’ seek to live a life of egalitarian security which explains their apparent fear of freedom; it might be more accurate to explain it as an aversion to the instability of too much latitude in personal responsibilities their fellow citizens may indulge in. In this sense can we demean the predominant group of us, who prefer the low risk strategy of compliance. The weakness of meekness is that it can be problematic because it encourages mediocrity; an indistinguishable affliction, from the destructiveness of negative proactivity; both can consume a society. However that synchronicity is not mandatory. The later is counted in a society that is ‘meek’ aware.
As I sailed over the event horizon of my flat earth, I developed a compulsion to explore what it is to be ‘meek’, and speculate if it is the better form of governance, even of self awareness, to be ‘meek’ aware.

Nietzsche tried to define a character who is in opposition to the aggression of the winners and losers, the establishment; that individual occupies the middle ground; it required the proposal that this was a ‘superman’ ( meaning super person ). Not the comic book version but a different character, which we do occasionally see but is obviously rare. This individual is personified by a super strength of character because that is what is needed to overpower the aggression and obstacles of an establishment.
I will leave it to Nietzsche to explain for those interested, how this may be achieved but as a dedicated ‘meek’ person I believe I have a responsibility to contribute to a world, guided by values that promote the likelihood of such individuals being recognised and encouraged.

I do not mean to imply, as I think Nietzsche might, that a ‘superman’ can be deliberately contrived. Such qualities just happen, they can not be synthesised because it needs the right person, in the correct position when the appropriate opportunity presents itself. It would be more likely to happen if more candidates were available and that is what is so challenging for the ‘meek’ majority to achieve.
These values are not readily defined like statutory laws, in reality they cannot be defined at all. However they do exist, they are even latent in every mind, even minds who have taken a detour, from what is commonly referred to as ‘sanity’; a disturbing matter for ‘meeks’ to be wary of.

Generally those that emerge, to a more or lesser degree, with the ‘super’ power, do not know that they have this asset; do not know how to use it, but are swept up by circumstance and an impulsive determination to act as they instinctively believe is the natural way to behave. Unfortunately often this naivety does not survive their rise to prominence, but by then their work is most often, already done, before human frailty compromises the effort. If they cannot sustain the image, which is usual, they fade out but their achievement moves humanity a little further ‘forward’. To what goal? I do not know but I only know it is ‘forward’. It needs some observer, more romantic than I, to speculate on what ‘forward’ means. History is written by the winners and losers, mostly the former; but it is moved ‘forward’ by the ‘meek’.

Is it the ‘super meek’ who do care?
Or is it all the ‘meek’ who collectively ‘care’, because only by the force of this instinct to ‘care’ do we preserve the safety and security of the conformative centre.
The activity of the winners and losers, erodes the stability of the conformative centre because they consume resources and opportunities, for themselves and not for the whole society. The more aggressive the winners and losers the more corrosive it is to the centre which means even to avoid a reduction to the common assets, the centre must continuously move ‘forward’ sufficiently to compensate. If this continuous ‘forward’ momentum can realistically be implemented in a centre group defined by their inaction, is at least difficult to imagine if not impossible. It plausibly needs to be a process of discreet iterations, but the necessary frequency is unexplored territory.
Although the consideration of quantifying this balance is appropriate in another place, it needs to be pointed out that the ‘meek’ who already dominate the earth, can loose that resource if the erosion excessively exceeds the rate of ‘forward’ momentum achieved by the ‘meek majority’ following in some cases the lead of a ‘super meek’, who they need to find, preserve and foster.

If the reader is justifiably suspicious of the abstract ideas that the words above, unconvincing define, it may be made more meaningful to try and find an example of such a ‘meek’ majority and such a potentially ‘super meek’ character.

In South Africa a minority white leadership presided over a nation where the black ( indigenous ) majority, were treated more as a resource for the winners, than a partner in nation building. The ‘meek’ began to agitate for change, then organise which was met with overt resistance from the white community. In many places this or something like it has occurred without the same result of what happened in South Africa. The ‘meek’ organisations were fortunate to have amongst their number a ‘super meek’ individual. This person had the status of education, normally exclusively retained to whites only, which put them in a unique position to contribute. Instinctively that person was motivated to sacrifice a potential comfortable existence in the limbo between the white establishment and their black kindred.
The rest of the story we all know. It is more than just an optimistic episode in the movement ‘forward’, of civilisation. It is an example that the ‘meek’ can move ‘forward’ if the pressure from the ‘meek’ is sufficiently broadly based to find their ‘super meek’ actor. However it is not a matter of calling for volunteers. ‘Super meeks’ do not come with a label attached, and the few that ‘aspire’ find that the burden of the ambition, is self destructive.

The pivotal dimension of this definition of the ‘meek’, is that they are the ‘dark energy’ that the social fabric is shaped out of. The magnitude of the challenges before a society are sometimes as blatant as the overthrow of an oppressor, but they also exist ( always exist ) to some extent because the war between the winners and losers is a constant degrading factor in society. A society that allows the undercurrent, no matter how small to go uncompensated will finally deconstruct into nihilistic anarchy. Obviously the group with the most to lose because they are the most numerical is the ‘meek’. The meek may not inherit the earth but they can lose it.

Although I have allowed my focus to be diverted by the ‘meek’ definition, the same forces are endogenous to the net; perhaps more so.
The winners and losers are so much more aggressive and malicious in the digital media, that gives them some degree of anonymity and consequently guilt free regime to exploit and to destroy the hapless victims. In the none digital world the degree of risk can be measured to some extent. On the net the risk is existential to every participant.
What is yet to be achieved is how the ‘meek can exert an influence. At present they have little redress, no way to find and foster a ‘super net meek’ and so no way to oppose the degradation of the medium, for them. Just what a ‘super net meek’ may look like, I have no idea. Will it be a robot, a drone or an editing protocol? The only thing that is certain is that both the net winners and net losers, will not welcome it. Both of these malignant forces have much to lose. The winners will lose their profits, the losers their anonymity.

The most significant characteristic of the ‘meek’ online, is that they hold their personal security at the highest level of their priorities. This is often exploited by the aggression on either side. The winners use fear of anything they can exploit as a tool of subjection and exploitation; from immigration fears by dog whispering racial discrimination, to the subjective fear of toilet aromas to sell deodorisers.
The ‘meek’ do tend to reference their own opinions on that of fellow ‘meeks’, who they obviously share mutual benefits, as well as restrictions with. This willing compliance is what attracts the manipulation of the aggressive, but is also a strength to a disciplined ‘meek’ energy that is rarely, but should often be used.
The internet without intentionally discovering this last characteristic, has been the agent of a new phenomena that exists, for better or worse, in social networking. People have a larger group of contacts who they unwittingly observe and who observe them. Therefore there is a growing area where individuals can share opinions without undue barriers. This ‘opinion generalising’, can be augmented by outsiders but the task is massive and will never completely defuse the power of ‘meek opinion’, which is locally generated and is prone to be more independent than that of the establishment opinion that is generated for the purposes of winning something.
The emergence of a more profound ‘meek opinion’, let us call it ‘compound meek opinion’, results when there is a perceived conflict of opinions in the general society ( the mass media ). A certain awareness by the ‘meek’ individuals, of the implications of their opinions, grows out of convergence of these ‘compound meek opinions’. If the ‘meek’ groups concerned has been fortunate to find a figure head, that person could take this consensuses and exploit it. In that case they would potentially be what I was defining above as a ‘super meek’.

It is in the mass media that the ‘compound meek opinion’ is attacked but because it’s exposure is due to conflict with the establishment, one side or the other will eventually attempt to take over the ‘compound meek opinion’. If this can be successful, is plausible because it happens in the conventional media. The internet is however diversified enough to make this ‘hijacking’ problematic for the establishment.
The power of the internet for ‘ground roots’ evolution is its speed. The establishment no matter how vigilant cannot effectively suppress such a rapidly evolving opinion.

The vulnerability of the ‘compound meek opinion’ is that it is as equally difficult to organise as it is to destroy; and this is its intrinsic strength. I believe that is actually the quality that needs to be preserved because the natural authenticity of a ‘compound meek opinion’ is that it is not an ‘organised’ product.

To drive a ‘compound meek opinion’ a reasonably large number of independent contributes need to congregate at some site, physical or digital, for discussion, review and to marry the variety of raw ideas into a solid widely supported nucleus.

By this process or something similar to it, we may be able to identify a community of those who ‘care’. They will be respectfully ‘meek’ even if they present their opinion with firebrand rhetoric.
Significantly it is not weak to be ‘meek’ ( I perhaps could find some more appropriate word ).
It is not only revolutions that shape change; in reality revolutions never succeed except to break an authoritarian grip on power. The longer lasting change comes from the middle; when the ‘meek opinion’ creates fundamental change. This is based on the realisation that ‘meeks’ do ‘care’. They ‘care’ because it is the ‘meek’ responsibility to secure a future for the species, which only they can secure.

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

The rule of law is what defines a society, as distinct from a tribe of related individuals. No other species has devised a technique for coexisting as a large group; colonies of insects that number in many thousands, are essentially related. It is the crowning glory of the human species to have devised the principles of cooperation, which has given it the ability to master environments that would have been impossible for smaller bands of independent tribes.
A natural consequence of this development is that the successful strategy enabled the exponential growth, that in turn created significant numbers of individuals, who benefited from an economic and security position of a numerically large group. In the empirical world of guns and dollars, size matters.

In the aftermath of half a century of armed conflict, the twentieth century settled into a balance of power, which shaped an economic model based on superpower domination. On one side the economic control was kept within government supervision, on the other, private entrepreneurship was encouraged. The principle of scale again exerted the strongest influence and individual enterprises began to out grow their national markets and with the blessing of governments in dominant power environments this ‘off shoreing’ was encouraged.

In human matters, the only thing that stays the same, is the natural law, that ‘nothing stays the same’. The multinationals effectively exported jobs, lack of governance of the economic forces led to fiscal chaos and recession, the ‘hallmark’ of open market methodologies. In all economies but perhaps more so in the western version, the link between the economy and the power is symbiotic.
It encouraged one leader to state, ‘the business of government is ‘business’; a view that if not explicitly shared by most western governments it is what preoccupies all of them.

Is it proper that it should be this way? Is it the natural evolution of the original strategy of grouping together to enhance our chances of surviving in a sometimes hostile environment?
Indeed the questions most in need of resolving should be addressed not in the order required for an inquiry into a failure, because that assumes the original methodology was appropriate. It may be suitable for an air crash investigate, to decide first ‘how’ ( by use of retrospective engineering ) it happened and then ‘why’ ( human resource management ).
If however we wanted to know ‘how’ ( by use of proactive engineering ) to do a task of implementing a successful democracy, the absolute starting point is ‘why’ we are wanting or needing it to be done. We can learn from our mistakes and I will address some of these lessons later; but to reinvent democracy we must free our imagination from the confines of the model that has governance from left to right and in the centre.

Responsible governance is hardly the concern of those forces driven by ambition or lust for power. Government is only a means and not a goal, for this character of individual or leadership. To find the alternative route to governance, democracy demands a very different attitude.
The time is overdue to replace retrospective engineering, that repeatedly provides us with solutions that come with an inbuilt certainty that they will inevitably fail. Democracy is not one inviolate formula, and some versions deliver less freedoms than others. To improve a poor performing model it is necessary, ( even if it is just as a hypothetical ‘intellectual’ exercise ), to proactively engineer an alternative. attempting to patch an inherently flawed system is inevitably pointless.

Why do we need the rule of law?
Stock market crashes happen with regular monotony and we expend large expense and effort asking ‘how’, which invariably is answered, but only until it occurs again. We need to recognise that questioning ‘how’ the cycle invariably comes up with an unpredictable algorithm for failure, is embedded in our failure to see ‘why’ it occurs. For stock markets ‘why’ could be tied up with its endemic essence of being high stakes gambling, for financial speculators. There is no space here to discuss how ‘limited liability’ makes for irresponsible companies; it just adds to the inevitability of multiple failures. If we need or desired to avoid stock market crashes, we need to ask ‘why’ we need them, to be able to run the nation. [ chapter 11 ]

Is democracy also a game of chance?
Do we make it so and if so, should we make it something else?
Democracy demands the rule of law, and competent governance, that is appropriate for the task. In Quality assessment technology the rule for rating ‘quality’ is its suitable for purpose. What quality of governance do we reasonably expect to have from our establishment; from the machinery of state that presumably is what we rely on to deliver this facility? Is the governance we have, ‘suitable for purpose’? If the proof is in its historical performance then on the balance of probability the answer would appear to be an indefatigable, no.

‘Why’ should ‘responsible governance’ make ‘business’ its business?
A constant theme by a conservative politician is that the community focus of the ‘socialist’ and therefore the priority of their spending of government money, is on ‘services’ that they perceive are the duty of government to provide; but this is bad economic management. Conservatives in contrast claim they are ‘the money managers’. In a business sense this is a reasonable argument. In popular political parlance that theme is embellished into ‘every socialist spending policy is just another tax’, which by the profit and loss mentality of the ‘double entry’ method of accountability is probably an accurate conclusion. Conservative politicians are good at ‘double entry’ and triple entry, and if they can get away with it, on quadruple entry.
This conservative political agenda however begs the question, ‘is a government a business or a service’? Conservatives would claim somewhat duplicitously, their business is ‘service’; which is a nice piece of equivocation.

A simple but basic definition of a business is that it produces a product that customers choose to purchase or not. The basic tenement of Capitalist based economies is that competition is the ultimate proof of the efficiency of a provider; this is judged by its success in a competitive market place. This is not the case when the business is in a monopoly position, when there is no competitive product to choose from, customers cannot exert their judgement; so that provider is effectively merely a service provider, and can not claim the status of a competitively proven business.
Obviously any government is by definition a monopoly, so that the claim to be a business, whatever its claimed hypothetical ‘business’ is, simply can only be bogus. Also a government does not sell its product, even if we concede what they do is ‘a product’, which is itself a debatable play on words. Governments collect compulsory tax from its citizens and business; no agent expect a monopoly can be compared to this model. Therefore it is a transparently frivolous claim to equate the proper function of government with any model of a real business. The claim that governments are ‘money managers’ is however a proposition that is both justifiable and appropriate; as well as making them an unmistakably ‘service’ organisation, and definitely not a business which produces a product.
Obviously we all know politics is a cesspool of agendas for all levels of greed and lust for power, but it can and should be only an ideal service provider following its mandate to manage the public purse ( taxes ) in a way the tax payers prefer. The selection process is enabled by elections in most democratic countries and various alternative money management strategies should be the options put to the electorate.
In this sense a government who proposes one economic scenario and puts it too the public, is legally guilty of fraud if it does not do as it proposed. The laws of contractual liability are sensible avenues of redress if citizens who are of the opinion they have been defrauded. For this reason the rule of law in a democratic society should be above the political chaos. Laws can and need to change but they do not work well if they are constantly changed for political advantage. The legal fraternity can operate above government and within constitutional law guidelines but only if law changes need to be democratically approved. Governments who are the money managers of the public purse, are answerable to the public under the existing rule of law, and should be accountable. I am obviously deluding myself if I imagine that anytime soon governments will be held accountable for not delivering on their election campaign promises. I would enjoy listening to how effective their prevarication and equivocation is under the requirements of a court.

The above I readily concede are an ideal interpretation of a democratic process that has never been implemented in such uncontaminated form. The reality of western democracies is that they inherited the monarchical recipe for government. What was once the role of patronage from wealthy land owners and powerful families, was not erased by republican (democratic ) revolutions, it was maintained for practical reasons; by reinterpretation the revolutionary ( democratic ) government not only collected taxes directly from ordinary citizens but depended on the additional income from unelected sources, which was in fact those wealthy families that in time became business’s. Thus inculcated, this tax basis became so entrenched that the influence business developed, virtually displaced the ‘will of the electorate’ because of its significance to a governments resources, and so in the one opportunity in an election cycle ‘the people’ have an option, only the choice is, of which group of business’s they wish to select.

Recalling the words of that leader about the business of government, being ‘business’, it is not inaccurate. Whether this is what democracy must mean is a tangled plot of many sided agendas; I however see a move away from the amount of financial dependence government can expect to enjoy. Corporations have engineered financial instruments to immunise them selves from this liability, and governments with business friendly representatives are lowering the taxes on business. The cost of paying for your services, health, education and welfare are falling more and more on what P.A.Y.E. tax payers contribute. In western capitalist economies it is considered fair and reasonable for business’s to seek ‘fair or foul’ means to minimise their tax liability and they are a very influential lobby group within government to reduce what little tax obligation they do consent to declare. If this trend will ever be allowed to reach so low that governments will loose the incentive to coattail to the interests of business is a question to be answered somewhere in the future.

If it was possible to unwind the democracy we have it would be natural for any business to operate in a free market, to pay no tax, and collect no tax on behalf of the employee’s they have used.
As shocking as that may seem there is the other side of the coin. To be in business in a society is a privilege, and the people employed are equally privileged to have a job. A business can operate at the costs that apply to every consuming entity in a society and pay their employees a wage to which they are entitled. If a business can operate in that environment it qualifies itself as a legitimate business, but only if the reasonable requirements of reporting and legislative compliance apply. In such an economy the profits with be distributed to share holders who will pay the required tax as per the tax index. All money leaving the country no matter what it is claimed to be for ( all off shore costs are not to be considered as legitimate tax deductible costs ), and any payment made between individual businesses, will be taxed at the tax rate appropriate for the sum involved ( equal to the maximum personal tax rate ), as well as being subject to customs regulations. Money transferred into the country will only qualify as an ‘expense’, for the purposes of calculating tax liability at the discounted amount equivalent to the highest personal tax rate and only in the year of that calculation. Where a company is owned in full or in part by a financial institution ( such as a provident fund ) the fund must pay the same sum as applies to money going off shore. If when the financial institution passes its profits onto its shareholders the recipient share holder may claim a refund if that brings their total income to less than the personal rate they should pay.
There will be no other tax rebates or concessional tax rates. And every business will use their employee’s tax file number to report each week on that individuals entitlement. The tax office will receive this notification and return a figure that takes the correct amount of tax, superannuation and government levies if such exist, out of the advised total. The business will promptly pay each employee that sum, and supply a copy of the receipt supplied by the tax office. Suitable penalties and conditions will apply to ensure compliance.
A business will not pay payroll tax but costs will be imposed where compliance issues arise, and the employee will be able to access their own details under password protected access to the tax office site.

The above ‘hypothetical’, will never happen while governance continues in the present mode; but it is one of many alternative propositions that in theory could make a democracy effective. It is after all, ingenuous to criticise a system unless the argument can at least be sustained by a plausible alternative methodology. I also include the above Utopian concept because I honestly believe revolutions can be non violent even when they are achieved by turning a flawed system into an operational alternative by apparently revolutionary changes. Dramatic and far reaching changing changes can be made without ‘blood on the wattle’.

The above utopia is still only half the story because I have yet to describe how the obligations of ‘responsible governance’ supply the citizenry with the services they require. But this place is as good as any to repeat my pessimistic prediction that democracy which devolved from the monarchical model, came with the seeds of decay sewn into its fabric.
Democracy is totally if not singularly dependant on the concept of the rule of law which implies that every person is subject to the law, including people who are lawmakers, law enforcement officials, and judges. In this sense ‘the law’ means ‘constitutional law’, the directions that enshrine freedoms and aspirations within a system. These laws can only be changed by the unequivocal will of an overwhelming majority of the citizens.
The laws that politicians are entitled to make in their role of money managers, are really only bylaws. These ‘bylaws’ can not be unconstitutional, but they are effectively ‘anti constitutional’ because they do not mandate the rights of the individual so much as delineate it, for a specific moment in time. Constitutional laws are ‘in principle’ directions for bylaw makers. For example the constitutional right to freedom of speech, needs to be defined in practical terms, which must necessarily be tempered by other ‘constitutional laws’ that mandate, freedom of religious expression and practice. ‘Bylaws’ are the proper business of government because as a service provider of ‘responsible governance’, the ultimate priority is to deliver the ‘constitutional rights’ of every citizen without fear or favour; but in a sensible and sustainable strategy, appropriate to a good money manager.
Specifically how the bylaws are described will need to be adaptive because they can not be guaranteed to cover all contingencies as societies change. At anytime one or more individuals may challenge, if they are getting their rights under the constitution and a court established for the purpose can direct that non compliant bylaws be negated and promptly removed.

A democratic system does not propose constitutional rights to a business and a business is not recognisable by a high court for that reason. The privilege of creating a business is something a society may choose to do or may seek some other form of organisation, or even a combination of both, which is perhaps ultimately going to be most common. A society may, and must for practical purposes impose many bylaws on those individuals who conduct a business. Equally a business is an activity engaged in by individual citizens, either singularly or in some collective defined by the bylaws. Any effect that business has on other citizens, must ensure the constitutional rights of the later. A business because it is an activity conducted by or on behalf of individuals, is merely an extension of that individual, or those individuals and they are personally and collectively responsible to comply with the bylaws which are mandated to protect the relevant constitutional rights.

The realistic situation is that nowhere is a practical government capable of such pure unconditional applications because they carry an immense weight of contradictory and implied agendas. Because of neglect or ignorance of the separate priority between ‘constitutional law’ and bylaws, the rule of law is more apt to decay if a government has insufficient corrective mechanisms for restoring it.

The business of government is not business but delivery of services such as they may be required by the electorate. It is individuals who run businesses and no public money can justifiably be supplied. Governments supply services, business’s do business; and the bylaws need only intervene to ensure the democratic rights of all individuals are protected.

In my Utopian image of an effective democracy, it is a service organisation, delivering the management controls that balance the revenue with the services. How much a citizen should pay for what they get will forever be argued but the election box will choose the efficiency and selection of those seeking government. It is debatable if governments should contract out ‘service responsibilities’, but assuming the government can make out a convincing case, the government must supply quality assurance on behalf of the public purse which must be non political ( audited by an independent authority, under constitutional legislation. No government should contract out services that can not find enough competitive entities to ensure genuine options ( at least 4 or 5 ).

Alas all of the above are targets the next civilisation may choose to implement. In the terminal phase of our present iteration, democracy has been swept aside by forces of belligerent ideologues.
Blatant lobbying for personal gain are now legitimate aspirations for politicians. Equivocation is the substitute for debate and fake news, created and disseminated to mislead, is more the fact than the exception.
The media which was once a buffer, to some degree, is now the most conspicuous offender. In their thirst for a story they are liable to overlook due diligence and often serve only to propagate fake news.
I am not haunted so much by the inevitable collapse of the ideal of democracy, as the agent of a productive society, as I am of the fact that the full consequences of its death, have not dawned upon a civilisation as yet unaware of the incipient calamity surrounding it.

Being a merely ‘meek’ person by disposition and fate, why not capitulate and be quiet? Some inexplicable, illogical influence will not permit it. I ‘care’; but I do not know why or how, or even when it was evident to myself that this fruitless obligation would pursue me into the later years of my life.
But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors ( the harmonious discord of things (Horace) ) and of this whole marvellous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence, without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning…that is what I feel to be contemptible. [ Nietzsche- The Gay ( happy ) Science 1, 2 ]

NB 1. the contents of the chapters posted here, constitute a pro forma for a project to be published under the ISBN 978-0-6483289-9-5. The finished project which has no deadlines or committed time line, is intended as an expansion of the chapters posted on this site. Unless otherwise advised please consider this text as subject to copyright.
NB 2. some content on this page is graphical and is automatically ignored in the format of a ‘post’; it will appear as empty brackets.

‘Civilisation’ if there is any such thing, and I am agnostic on that account, is the paramount example of the cyclical nature of all things. The rise and fall, we observe as an historic phenomena, and we are apparently unconscious that we are also within such a cycle.
If I may be so bleak and pessimistic, I think there are children now born who will see the rise of another version of the world; as we the inheritors of the present rush into the anarchy of nihilistic, self destruction, in a blind attempt to deny a rebellious natural environment. The too obvious emblem of this terminal self denial is environmental exhaustion. The hobby horse of the environmentally conscious is ‘climate change’ but this is a mere side show. Yes climatic anomalies will plague humanity and even accelerate our decline, but they are neither the cause or the primary challenge.
It would be virtually flippant to say the environment warming is a warning to us, because it has been doing that for over a hundred years; and we first ignored it, then denied it, and now eventually concede that we need to react. The problem is we have no realistic level of consensuses as a civilisation to use, even if there was a prospect of an effective response.

I am not being so presumptuous as to predict a precise time line for this collapse, or a definite sequence of events. That is because I just can not, but I also claim neither can anybody else. The one point I hold out as a purely personal opinion, is that it will have a close association with the disintegration of global governance. The fear many hold of a nuclear holocaust, or a earth wide plague, are popular nightmare scenarios but they may or may not figure in the final implosion. The real culprit is an almost inconspicuous flaw in the our ability to govern for survival. I briefly referred in [ What is life ] to a contradictory instinct. “Why is it that the functional facility breaks down when the concessions apply to ideological issues, …. . We have the facility to find the mutually convenient concessions, but we choose to protect our ideology even when it puts our personal survival at risk; why is this so?”

Humanity already has too many individuals in each nation to sustain separate closed economies. This would be a possible retreat position if we were fewer, but that escape has been removed. In these closing decades there will be wars and plagues but these cripple the survivors as well as reduce the total figures, so offer a false relief. The possibility of a sustainable number of individuals would barely be possible if the brakes were immediately applied to growth. There is no mechanism for that, so it is only a short time before that passes into the realm of a lost opportunity.
Despite the reality that humanity can not be sustainable in multiple closed economies, it is the choice of the latest iteration of western leaders, which further damns the nations as we see them now.
If we look to ‘nature’ for an example of ‘survival of the fittest’, the animistic solutions are unthinkable. One horrible example of the natural order, is those species who have overcome the problem of overcrowding by being cannibalistic. That resolves the supply and demand formula in one action. As black as I may be in the prognostication above, I imagine that will not be the solution that saves the nations as they are today.

Our inadequate ability to govern for survival is the flaw in the character of the leading nations; the ones with the wealth and influence are unproductive consumers who have compensated by exploitatively developing under developed nations until either can no longer benefit. While there were many candidate poor countries that was always going to work, but that bank of exploitable economies has been used up. Undeveloped countries without exploitable resources cannot participate and are destined to be always undeveloped unless they can develop themselves. The larger economies of the world have skimmed energy and food off the rest of the world and expended their energy on entertaining themselves to death. That recipe has turned sour and the impulse to turn inward is prevented because the large economies are resource poor, they had become dependant on ‘Technology’ and ‘entertainment’ sales to buy in, specifically the basics of food and energy. These non essential export assets are increasing becoming unwanted or unaffordable to other poor nations or nations made poor by exploitation.

The foremost example of the large economies ‘non essential’ by very lucrative exports is ‘social media’. They have been the killer app on the internet. In an instant of ‘civilisation time’, a new disrupter has emerged that replaces the previous laws of governance with an agent of hostile intent and an unbridled capacity for destruction. National security has been undermined and long established traditions of democratic processes have been undermined. Forces out side of a countries boarders have an entree into the hearts and minds of a citizenry once held under the sway of the nations establishment. The problem is compounded in the larger economies by a nation who have gained an addiction to the drug of complacency. They have created an industry out of idolising themselves. Those not taking illicit substances, are getting high on the habit of those that do and in the middle the ‘meek’ vacillate with moral ambivalence while indulging on a diet of ‘reality TV’ and ‘celebrity worship’.
The lack of resistance to this phenomena was due to timing. When facebook began to emerge the ‘conservative’ centrist western economies were advocating free trade and the efficiencies of scale that come from including nations into financial blocks of mutual interest. This was a strategy that may have been good for the species but once dominant national economies began to suffer from lack of opportunities resulting from growth in the competitive market place the duel became offensive and eventually free market was abandoned as ‘trade wars’ erupted. Who knows what the extents of this new environment might devolve into. Certainly the mutual good for the species is an instantaneous victim.
The ‘trade wars’ have set up the incentive for espionage, as all wars do. Unquestionably the most obvious medium for this is ‘social media’.

The enigma presented by the implication of social media as the vehicle for spying, influence peddling and fake information, is that the culprit is also a big source of revenue; an economy that is dependant on the technology of entertainment and social media will be reluctant to just ‘turn off the tap’. Removing the treat posed by alien agents with access to the populace, is economic suicide so the cost is the ability to govern. A short term retreat into ‘non legislative’ government is the reaction but it is no substitute for the more obvious and safer alternative of military rule. Either do not sit comfortably where once there was some degree of the democratic rule of law.

In all of the consequential chaos the net is so ubiquitous in business that it is a conspicuous target. The net has replaced older technologies which have been dismantled.
The financial dominance of the net is its value to businesses that thrive on access to consumers in a world of indulgent self gratification; the archetypal consumer . This has been engineered by the thirst for the participation in an enchanting idea of social media. The casual indifference that citizens have toward exchanging participation, for personal identity, and the eager acceptance of unvetted information into their daily lives has opened the nation to manipulation. For commercial advantage retailers welcome this exposure, and the consumer economy prospers; for national security it is an act of treason that turns many of their citizens into unconscious fellow travellers of a foreign power.
Under this scenario ‘democratic rights’ become the weapons of self destruction as citizens covert their freedom to be manipulated.
The only resistance a traditional democratic society has is adherence to the strict laws of appropriate governance. It is disruption to this process, where foreign influence has been most effective. The pessimistic reality is that economic interests are in direct opposition to national identity, national security and personal freedoms.
Countries with large military capability have no targets as the trade war on the nations ‘standard of living’ is being corroded by the same mechanism that it is dependant on. At some time, this inevitable conflict will be addressed, by popular uprising or by imposition of some rigid, ideologically driven form of governance. If history tells us anything this process is unpleasant, and the degree of violence and decline into animistic destruction is a measure of the pent up tensions that preceded it.
Who will be the winners and who the losers is not something any sensible person can predict except to trust they are on the winning side. That however depends on what ‘winning’ means in the long run.

One ‘certainty’ does stare out at us, and it provides a cause for optimism. Social media as it now exists is going to be the first causality. It is already being blamed for the conundrum that has brought us to the brink of collapsing governance. The challenge to all societies is what price to pay for whatever emerges from a rethink of the net, its utility value and its security risk.
There can be a form that preserves some of the good aspects of the net but it will be at the cost of its value to commercial interests as well as counter intelligence, which is more active than the foriegn subversive brands.
As it will have limited access to peoples personal data, business will not be willing to pay what they have and the social media platforms will lose much of their revenue.

So what may a neutered net look like.
The technology of the net is a fast moving scene and innovations like ‘the cloud’ and inventions like ‘blockchain’ data storage are changing how much and what data passes through any specific hub. Along with encryption what it means for ‘hacking’ and ‘policing’ on the web is complex and beyond a common users knowledge; and my ability to comment.
Some obvious problems do not need technical expertise to appreciate.
The obvious facility that makes any degree of policing ineffectual is ‘live streaming’; it is also a feature that makes face to face communications the wonderful tool for families separated by distance. How can such good uses be preserved without inducing the totally unacceptable uses the world has been subjected to from madmen and violent terrorists and agents of foreign influence?

Answers that suggest themselves need the software supplier to reconfigure their product. It is conceivable they could be coerced to do so without government interference, but very unlikely. certainly the required actions will seriously temper their income stream. However it will not be catastrophic or terminal and if they procrastinate or resist, the legal liability’s they could be confronted with, surely would kill them in the market place.

The first and unequivocal requirement is that life streaming of any act of barbarism or debauchery, must be prevented, not by laws alone but by material changes to the software to make it impossible.
There is a reality that must be faced even if the countries who profit from the use of the net, are reluctant to concede it. The fact that is conspicuously being avoided, is that the programs that present any content in a public space, and there can not any more of a public space than the net; they are publishers. All civilised countries have media laws and these should be immediately applied. The argument that the businesses who supply the means to access the public space can not be responsible for what material, uses of their facility, present there, only seems rational because of this false notion the net has managed to advertise; that it is ‘free speech’. If that was realistic why not allow the news papers to print photographs of violent homicides, dismembered bodies at plane crash sites or the library of child molesters images.?
The default excuse, ‘that we can not give the public the facilities that they want if we block streaming’, is a ruse. They want governments to accept this because they made a ‘packet’ out of such sensationalism. The truth is that it could be done, but they loose the revenue source, of the public’s voyeuristic instincts.

‘Live streaming’ to the open net is a potential threat. If the companies who see a market in this material they need to set up an editorial mechanism to ensure the responsibilities of a publisher are met. The use of a ‘loop’ is already a long used facility for ‘live’ broadcasting. The potential number of live streams means the ‘loop’ technique would would require much longer delays but delays in cyberspace are not even noticed. Due to the necessary scale of this process the loop must be ‘endless’ and only closed by the deliberate action of editorial staff. Program designers will decide if their service justifies the cost of supplying it. If it is so good and so appealing it will be a good job generator for those involved. If it needs legislation to support it, so be it.

It is within the capability of the social media’s massive software labour force, to make live streaming for the purpose of interactive family communication, available for a ‘registered group’.
These groups may need to be request registration and so be subject to scrutiny; and this would be a one time requirement that takes time to process. A family group once registered can use facilities such a skype just as they always did. Importantly the provider of the interconnection program will encode their transmissions with code that prevents the material from being fed to storage devices. Therefore the ‘registered group’ technique can not be used to feed material across other groups or other formats. Obviously hackers and malcontents will seek to undermine any programming protections but Bitcoin traders are happy to be protected by ‘chainblock’ passwords so why not small group ‘streamers’.

If you think this is all over the top, reactionary stuff consider this scenario.
A foreign power sets up an elaborate network of agents embedded in an alien country. I think I can imply this has already happened once. In this hypothetical example it is not just election rigging that they are targeting.
In a coordinated well orchestrated plot they ‘live stream’ fake, pre-made videos of several major capital cities being under attack from external forces. In true Hollywood style, scenes of carnage and death all around. At the same time agents also report being involved claiming massive damage and the threat of gas or other malignant danger spreading, adding more fake video of wholesale destruction and mass killing.
A simple radio show in the mid nineteen nineties, managed to panic many even without meaning to. In my scenario, other agents ‘on cue’ inundate news media with reports of expanding mayhem using pre-prepared video they claim as mobile phone reporting of actual witnessed scenes. Agents already prepared, provide staged ‘live streaming’ of collateral damage, to the public on the net as well at to regular media.
Who knows what difficulty may ensue but it would at least kill the net and may be ‘real people’ in the confusion that could be generated. Could it trigger a response from those reality TV prepers that are supposedly waiting for.

The above may be unjustified paranoia but I would prefer we protected our sovereignty and our net because they are both in peril. To refrain from answering any of the widening pool of questions about what good and bad uses the net is producing it is overdue that we disarm this rogue force of uncontrolled ‘social media’, which has seriously wounded democracy and in my typical hysterical tone, put democracy on the endangered species list.