It’s a serious question, obviously, but let’s face it, war criminals and war crimes almost by definition refuse clarity. For example, the Geneva Convention’s warnings against aggression (ie invading a sovereign state, so-called, etc) have been left in tatters in recent years…

See Philippe Sands’ A Lawless World.

At some point of reflection or inspection, human nature becomes utter mystery. As Chomsky once said:

There’s no doubt that there’s a rich, complex human nature. We’re not rocks. Anybody sane knows that an awful lot about us is genetically determined, including aspects of our behavior, our attitudes. That’s not even a question among sane people.

When you go beyond that and ask what it is, you’re entering into general ignorance. We know there’s something about human nature that forces us to grow arms, not wings, and undergo puberty at roughly a certain age. And by now we know that acquisition of language, growth of the visual system and so on, are part of human nature in fundamental respects.

When you get to cultural patterns, belief systems and the like, the guess of the next guy you meet at the bus stop is about as good as that of the best scientist. Nobody knows anything. People can rant about it if they like, but they basically know almost nothing.

To see the full article, press here.

War so often exemplifies the mystery of human nature in the negative sense (deep, brave, courageous love, perhaps, in the opposite sense, maybe).

So much irony, hypocrisy, and the ongoing potential scourge of power. The biggest arms producers in the world are (were) the five countries in the UN Security Council – the US, China, Russia, France and Great Britain. I recently read that Israel is number four now, ahead of Britain. I’m not sure if that is statistically correct.

And yet, as Joseph Campbell has pointed out in the Power of Myth, an individual going to war, sacrificing him or herself for something ‘bigger’, is also heroic no matter what side he/she’s on.

I remember when I read that how challenging that idea was to process.

So often the winners, so-called, decide who was right and wrong – but the courage of sacrificing oneself, in the traditional sense, is heroic; of laying down your life for something more than yourself, which is so much of the Christian ethos.

And with such perversions of spirit taking place, with so much war and poverty, and expolitation, there is the worldwide probelm of children as soliders…

I saw Ishmael Beah speak (author of the bestselling memoir Long Way Gone), and his publisher in Canada is the same as mine for Understanding Ken and Shelby. Beah was a child solider in Sierra Leone – handsome, charming and erudite – who experienced things that nobody should have to, victims all round, heinous violence committed.

The human brain freezes in trying to comprehend such misery and brutality, and then more so from a judicial point of view – thus, I suppose, all one can do is move from logic to our hearts and try to love more, always, with discernment, humility. Thought-provoking article here, Can Childrren Be War Criminals in the Tyee.

Here’s an essay (I Dream Uganda: Thoughts on Hell, Hope and Humanity, press here) I wrote when I was putting together, with Jesse, Uganda Rising, and trying to find some understanding…

Lots of love to you and yours. I think it’s a great day to hug more, too – anybody – okay, almost anybody. I’m going to see family this weekend – I’m so incredibly fortunate…
Pete xoxo

A few weeks ago, with a friend of mine, I went to a talk by Hillel Frisch, an Israeli professor, that was put on, I believe, by the Canadian-Israeli Committee, Pacific Region.

The talk was actually a pre-talk for a bigger talk Professor Frisch was giving the next night, and I thought it was to be about the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

Frisch, who was friendly and forthcoming, instead talked almost exclusively about the Israeli-Iranian problem.

Now let me say right here that this is how I remember the talk, from my notes. I would be happily corrected by anyone else that was there, if my retelling of the event was inaccurate.

This is how the talk progressed.

THE GOOD NEWS

Frisch began by saying there was both good news and bad news in Israel.

The good news was multi-faceted. For starters, he said, within 2 or 3 years, the majority of Jews in the world would be living in Israel – a profound success given the percentage of refugees from all countries who ever return home is satistically very low.

Since 1945, he said, some 90% of Jews had returned to their land – another remarkable fact of a people (my words) somehow trying to recover and rebuild after the Nazi Holocaust, a collective madness so heinous, so systematic, one can hardly grasp the depth of the residual psychic damage, what to speak of the physical hell itself.

Hillel talked about how other countries, like Ireland, had never been able to resurrect their language – Gaelic, in Ireland’s case, being spoken by maybe ten percent of the population.

This struggle to hold onto language is echoed among first Nations in North America and, I am sure, South America. The Israeli people and the Israeli State, in contrast, have utterly resurrected Hebrew, and almost all Israelis speak it. When I was in Israel a few years back, this too amazed me.

I was mesmerised by the country – its history, past and present, the confluence of faiths, the people I met, the process of living in heightened tension.

Admittedly I had only anecdotal experience with the Occupied Territories – but I managed to interview many different people, Israeli Jews, Arab Israelis, Christian Arabs, Bedouins and others – and one wonderful fellow who had fought in the ‘67 and ‘73 wars, who literally gave me a three hour interview on the history of the Jews from the time of Abraham.

It was an informative, enriching time.

HILLEL FRISCH

Another good news headline from Frisch was how well the Israeli economy is doing – booming (I think over 5% growth – see Naomi Klein, below) – despite the fact that since 1948 Israel has experienced only three years without terrorism (1961-63, I believe he said), and despite being virtually surrounded by enemies; the West Bank, Gaza, the Syrian State across the Golan Heights (under Assad, whom Frisch prefers to the arch-conservative Muslim Brotherhood alternative), and Hezbollah from the North.

That was the good news.

THE BAD NEWS

The bad news – or at least the worst news – was for Frisch the rising and unavoidable threat from potentially-nuclear Iran.

For Hillel, and he was up front about it, there are only two ways to deal with the Iranian problem, as he called it:

Either Israel or the United States would have to bomb Iran.

Period.

Frisch called this “Negotiations by bombing”, reminiscent, perhaps, of the current technique of “Democracy by bombing.” Not only that, Hillel seemed certain that this bombing will happen.

He added it would be better if the United States did the bombing.

If Israel did the bombing, it would bring Syria into the war against them. Israel has the power to deal with Syria, he said – and of course it does – but it would be simpler if the United States did the bombing.

He added that attacks should be focused on nuclear installments.

There is no other way.

THE LETTER

Professor Frisch talked about the letter Iranian political leader and holocaust denier (or at least questioner) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent to German leader Merkel, telling Germany, in short, that it was their responsibility to deal with the “Jewish Problem,” not Iran’s.

Hillel suggested that this historically significant (and repugnant – my words) idea of the “Jewish problem” needs to be controlled because it literally could, if not stopped, expand once again into the West.

That’s quite a statement.

Frisch’s views were so cut and dry, so clear to Hillel himself – and being in a room that seemed largely in agreement – I felt both clearly reminded of mentalities and desires of a significant portion of Israeli intellectuals and leaders (not to mention American intellectuals, leaders and pundits, for example, perhaps, the place from which Alan Dershowitz stands) and the similar counter arguments from the enemy (whomever they may be) – and thus felt a touch depressed.

BETWEEN THE (ENEMY) LINES

There was literally not a single mention of what the everyday Palestinian experiences living in Israel and the Occupied Territories – the giant barricade/wall, repeated road checks, having to carry ID cards, employment discrimination et cetera – nor the virtually assured downside of “negotiations by bombing” with Iran – a technique used by militants since time immemorial.

This, to me, is always unfortunate – and betrays the widest side of being human and the potential for courageous integrity.

I am always profoundly appreciative of one who through nuance, detail and courage gives insights I don’t have; of getting news from a position I hadn’t heard before, in ways that expand my thinking and heart – hopefully towards compassion, self-reflection and a deeper awareness that we are, somehow, all sisters and brothers; that most Iranians, for example, like Israelis, are so much more than their leadership and other forces.

This was not the case in this talk.

What I heard instead was Frisch’s unadulterated certainty that peace was not in the cards (in fact it wasn’t really even mentioned) – nor would it ever be – just containment and control.

TRIBES

It showed, I think, how obsessive committment to one’s “tribe” (which is so much of the world – and I use the word tribe advisedly) by definition can stunt internal-oriented yet world-centric visions of a future less violent.

In fact, the future isn’t even considered, just as it’s not with power going after resources.

The objective of tribe-oriented views risk becoming, perhaps – and sometimes necessarily, to be sure – focused in terms of immediate response (say, pre-emptive strike, if you have the power, non-State terrorism if not) and framed largely – and even intellectually – in survival, us against them.

And of course, Power does what it wants, because it can. Iran doesn’t tell the US it can’t have nuclear weapons – nor bomb them for Texas oil. Women in Iran don’t tell the men there that they too shall have equal religious power.

Remembering this must not become a purely depressing notion, but help remind us why not only peace but the potential of deeper understanding between certain groups/ideologies is so elusive, even when political leaders and media gather for what are misleadingly called negotiations (the build up to Iraq, for example) or for peace talks (the Middle East for decades).

One sees, of course, similar rhetoric so pronounced with the extremist pathologies of Osama Bin Laden and Hezbollah and so on throughout our incredible history – and heck, even in our own relationships.

COVENANTS OLD AND NEW

I am reminded of one of the Ten Commandments, Thou Shalt Not Kill, and then all the genocidal events in the Old Testament, at Yaweh’s command. Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, rephrased it this way: Thou Shalt Not Kill (Inside Your Own Tribe).

And while you’re at it, Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Wife (but take the enemy’s wife as “booty”), as the Bible so often exhorts.

The truth is, I have for whatever reasons (genetic, cultural, perhaps a lack of a tribe or because of my privileged life), a love of diversity but an aversion to sentiments of “tribal” divisiveness and projection, be they from fear, paranoia or a sense of righteousness; be they Judaic, Islamic fundamentalists attacking the infidel and seeking Shariah Law, those who will be saved only by believing in Christ, the so-called Hindutva forgetting the overall Indian spirit and history of diversity and tolerance, more ‘traditional’ tribal battles and so on – or even Scientific dogma, that sometimes simply discards mentions of mystery and consciousness into the New Age lost and found bin.

I try to seek the road of trusting people more, hopefully with strength and discernement. This is not naive. I do believe for large parts of the world, perhaps particularly in the West, cross cultural love and respect for different beliefs is the norm – fundamentalist ignorance being the headline grabber.

When someone at the talk mentioned Palestinians as, I think, “terrorists, so-called,” a woman in maybe her 60s said, quote, “They are terrorists.”

I said, “Not all of them!” – in as sweet a way as I could, and my brain went to the news reports from last year where former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was joyously celebrating the weekend 60th anniversary remembrance of Israeli terrorist group Irgun bombing the King David Hotel in 1946.

The bombing sped up British departure from the subjugated country – which is one of the obvious reasons these types of attacks happen – killing some 92 people, most of them civilians, 41 Arabs, 28 British and 17 Jews, too (and, doing the math, I assume a few others).

The leader of that underground group was Menachem Begin, who would later become Prime Minister and was voted in 2005 the political man Israelis missed most.

Of course, ongoing suicide attacks are insane and a symptom of life losing all sacred value (interestingly, I heard elsewhere suicide bombing has been significantly lessened, obviously, since the building of the wall in Israel), but I’m still surprised when I hear uninsightful blanket statements (they are terrorists!) about a people – and disgusted should they come from me.

HUMAN NATURE

I found Frisch friendly if unexpansive. Nonetheless, I was reminded of what Doris Lessing had once said in her wonderful book Prisons We Choose To Live Inside. She said, paraphrasing her, “Never forget some people actually like war.”

Now I’m not at all saying Frisch “likes war”, but I am saying he and countless others, on all sides – and perhaps sometimes for justifiable reasons, not to mention the collective, heinous madness of the Holocaust in the background – literally see no (or nearly no) potential for increased peace or lessened tension through dialogue as a viable option, now or tomorrow.

QUESTION PERIOD

In the Question period, I said that, as I had understood what he had said, paraphrasing with a slight uncertainty to start off, “Either Israel or the US must bomb Iran – “negotiation by bombing” – preferably the US, because this would keep Syria out of the war.”

That was correct.

I added that I didn’t get any sense of hope for future from what he’d said [and very little history, I might add]; that all I felt from what he said was the unstoppability of war.

I said that there was a large Iranian Middle class that I was sure were people not unlike myself – there always are, unheard – and did he have any thoughts or plans of how all this bombing and killing could one day come to end, and what this could look like ten or twenty years down the line? Or did he really just feel that the only thing to do for the Israelis was to keep the enemy at bay by any means necessary until, say, the Messiah comes – thought to be a miltary messiah – and leads the Jewish people in battle and to their liberation?

I was not being sarcastic. I hadn’t heard a sense of strategy or hope for peace, and my question reflected what I thought I had heard, and wanted clarified.

My assessment, it turned out, even with the mention of the Messiah, was accurate. For Jews (himself and other Jews, anyway), Frisch said, any peace was thought to be “ephemeral” at best, and that, “Yes, as a religious Jew, I do expect the Messiah to come.”

This was very honest, but remarkable to me.

I wondered immediately about the power of self-fulfilling war prophecies with these three great religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – who believe so much in, indeed aspire to, redemption literally via the world coming to a brutal end.

This despite (or perhaps because of) all three having Abraham as their original patriarch, and a belief in the same God (not to mention their collective humanity, if there is such a thing).

Either way, I knew there was a reason I feel such a soft spot for the cyclic cosmology of the Eastern traditions.

At some point with regard to my question, Hillel did say that the only hope for countries like Iran was to become part of the global economy and choose democracy.

Without getting into the global aspects of things – many hands were up for questions – I quickly pointed out that Iran had been a democracy in the early 50s under Mossadegh, but he was overthrown in a coup by the monarchical Shah, with the complete support of British and American intelligence bent on the continued control of, of course, Middle Eastern oil.

Our news media may have lost its memory – commonly known as dementia – but people remember.

I can’t recall how the answer moved on, but the theme was clear.

IRAN

I tried to think from an Iranian point of view – the people specifically. I have heard on more than one occasion that the people generally dislike the leader but want to keep the oil, leaving them damned either internally or externally.

Imagine seeing what has happened in Iraq – the complete take over and destruction of the country, from brutal dictatorship into brutal civil war and ongoing misery – and also being threatened for the nuclear build up, a nuclear build up that was supported in the 70s by much of the leadership still around today (including Kissinger).

This from an article in the Washington post:

Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran’s nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, “They’re already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy.”

Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago…

That history is absent from major Bush administration speeches, public statements and news conferences on Iran.

In an opinion piece on Iran in The Post on March 9, Kissinger wrote that “for a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources.” White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited the article during a news briefing, saying that it reflected the administration’s current thinking on Iran.

In 1975, as secretary of state, Kissinger signed and circulated National Security Decision Memorandum 292, titled “U.S.-Iran Nuclear Cooperation,” which laid out the administration’s negotiating strategy for the sale of nuclear energy equipment projected to bring U.S. corporations more than $6 billion in revenue. At the time, Iran was pumping as much as 6 million barrels of oil a day, compared with an average of about 4 million barrels daily today.

The [Western supported] shah [of Iran], who referred to oil as “noble fuel,” said it was too valuable to waste on daily energy needs. The Ford strategy paper said the “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.”

Documents show that U.S. companies, led by Westinghouse, stood to gain $6.4 billion from the sale of six to eight nuclear reactors and parts. Iran was also willing to pay an additional $1 billion for a 20 percent stake in a private uranium enrichment facility in the United States that would supply much of the uranium to fuel the reactors…

“It is absolutely incredible that the very same players who made those statements then are making completely the opposite ones now,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Do they remember that they said this? Because the Iranians sure remember that they said it,” said Cirincione, who just returned from a nuclear conference in Tehran…

For the full article, press here.

In case anybody didn’t think so, ’sovereign nation’ is a relative term, verging on pointless (like Democrat and Republican), determined, within variables both internal and external, by the ’sovereign nation’ with, among other things, the greatest economic and/or military power.

NAOMI KLEIN

And then yesterday, not even Hillel’s good news about the Israeli economy could hold its lustre. In a revealing article called Laboratory For A Fortressed World from Naomi Klein, she counters Hillel’s (and it turns out Thomas Friedman’s) idea that “Israel is booming despite” its problems with enemies, but, in a sense, because of them. Such is the sad perversion of 21st century (and much of the 20th century) neo-liberal economics (for lack of another term).

An excerpt:

Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel “nurtures and rewards individual imagination,” and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups – no matter what messes their politicians are making.

After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel “had discovered oil.” This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel’s “young innovators and venture capitalists,” who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.

Here’s another theory: Israel’s economy isn’t booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines but because of it.

This phase of development dates back to the mid-’90s, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution – the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel’s economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953.

Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners…

Discussions of Israel’s military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country–US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel’s huge and expanding export business.

Israel now sends $1.2 billion in “defense” products to the United States – up dramatically from $270 million in 1999.

In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products – well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

To read the whole article, press here.

For something a little more uplifting, take a look here at Paul Hawken’s compiling of the extraordinary number of mass movements across ideological boundaries throughout the world seeking environmental care and social justice for all. Although I think it is unwise and even spiritually immature to consider any movement “our salvation” – as Hawken does – the vibes are at least a lot broader and expansive.

Stay strong. And don’t get depressed. Keep seeking ways to believe things can be more peaceful – even in your own life, in every glance, every thought, every hello. Love more – everyone you see, if you can, in your heart, anyway. My guess is they have a lot of similar emotions, a lot of different ones, and there is much common ground for harvesting solidarity and love, joy, laughter – who knows?

Love more!

Pete

To hear Ever-blessed, press here.

The Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group in northern Uganda have admitted guilt in committing war crimes against the people of Northern Uganda.

Knowing the evidence of war crimes to be absolutely overwhelming – undeniable – my guess is this concession is a means of trying to shift judicious authority from the International Criminal Court to Uganda.

LRA rebels have accepted responsibility for atrocities committed against the people of northern Uganda during more than 20 years of bloody insurgency.

In papers presented to the mediator and the Government delegation at the talks in Juba on Thursday, the rebels said they were waiting for the Government’s response to determine their next move.

The Government plans to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to drop the charges against the rebel commanders for war crimes and crimes against humanity once a peace agreement is signed and an alternative justice system agreed.

The talks, which have been on and off since last year, have been debating how both sides should account for their role in the conflict and how to reconcile. Senior Sudanese and Ugandan clergy praying in Juba last week, called on Ugandans to forgive the rebels as a means to lasting peace.

As Lloyd Axworthy said in Uganda Rising, paraphrasing, for peace to happen it takes a combination of justice and forgiveness, otherwise there will just be too much pain, too much desire for retribution, “but nobody has an exact formula for that.”

But the confession of guilt, one can only hope, is a further step towards ongoing peace for the people of northern Uganda, living in the wake of more than two decades of misery, and a brutal time before that.

To see the full article, press here.

Love more – the days are fleeting,

Pete xox

A few days ago, I wrote this thought about my experience with making a point or arguing…

CONFESSION

This is my truth – or at least a truth: I am forty-two, and although I do sometimes raise my voice and I can be a total verbal knob, I have never been in an argument where raising my voice (and/or being that knob), attacking from the intellect but not with the heart, has ever been the right thing to do.

Not once.

I’m serious. Not once has raising my voice or uttering names or being dismissive or not listening more deeply been effective or the right thing to do. It’s only my right to be that way if my right includes (and it does) the right to be intellectually bullying yet deeply lacking in wisdom – which is by its nature, deeply lacking in humility.

Even if I logically decimated the “opponent� with a startling array of facts, it was stupid and wrong.

Trying to understand where another person is coming from – realising they, no matter how unfortunate their view might be, are under the same difficult and limiting human condition as I – and responding from that place of understanding, is sometimes difficult but always – or almost always – right.

I always feel it’s grace when it happens – like I’ve been guided by a higher, ultimately brighter sense (brighter in both senses of the word).

Realising this was a startling revelation.

And then I added this line, because it’s how I feel in a more expansive way…

And having said all that, the world is still as it is – and perhaps, or definitely, simply has to be as it is.

In other words, one can try to change oneself, observe oneself, know thyself, but that is different, I think, than changing the world (although, indeed, any change changes the world).

And then today I was reading a book by British philosopher John Gray called Straw Dogs, which is full of depressing insight into the utterly gloomy, rapacious ‘reality’ of human nature.

Just a few chapters in, much of it makes sense to me, because, one, I am able to find resonance with an aspect of the through-thought, and two, because, frankly, I cuddle everything he says inside my belief through experience that this all is an incomprehensible miracle, inexplicable – yes sometimes brutal, and so much so for some sisters and brothers as to be overwhelming even from a distance – temporary in an eternal way, and full of utter beauty, potential, if not for the future, if not for everybody, somehow in every moment, and somehow in the moment we see it, we remember who we may truly be, which is not purely, in my fragile heart, this temporary rapacious aspect of human nature….

This, I think, is exactly what John Gray does not believe, or think is worth believing, or would like me to believe, or would think one could believe and still enjoy his book (I think).

In an interview Gray has said:

I don’t believe in belief. If one aims simply to see, then beliefs – especially spiritual beliefs – are just an encumbrance. Best to have none, if you can manage it.

This, of course, is a belief. So much so, he wrote a book about it. It reminds me of the spiritual view that says this world is all an illusion, and write books about it that we’re supposed to think aren’t part of the illusion, evidently.

Nonetheless, I feel kindred affection for him, just as I do for Jean Paul Sartre, who believed the love he longed for didn’t exist – and I wrote this song about it – and wish them both joy and great love, seeing as the latter is dead and Gray may be a little blue due to his description of human nature, which by definition includes his own.

It’s so fortunate for all around us when, in a moment, we seek in our hearts that unbridled joy we once felt at the site of a loved one – and expand from there. Philosophers – like virtually everyone – are so often afraid of or unconvinced by the uncool big emotions of wide open, wet, joyful, embracing, non-partisan love.

Bliss/joy, it may be recalled, as ananda, is one of the qualities (with eternal (sat) and consciousness (chit)) of the atma, or soul – supposedly our truest nature.

I’ll just give an excerpt or two from Gray’s book, which one may find exasperating, invigorating, both or neither.

In the Forward To The Paperback Edition , it begins…

Today liberal humanism has the pervasive power that was once possessed by revealed religion. Humanists like to think they have a rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions….

Outside of science, progress is simply a myth….

The prevailing secular worldview is a pastiche of current scientific orthodoxy and pious hopes. Darwin has shown that we are animals

[in case any of us didn't know that, in a moment of rage, or watching the news - and I mean that not as an insult to animals, but just our inability to sometimes control through understanding our outbursts of rudenesss, cruelty and destruction - or, for that matter, avoid somebody else's];

but – as humanists never tire of preaching – how we live is ‘up to us’.

Unlike any other animal, we are told, we are free to live as we choose. Yet the idea of free will does not come from science. Its origins are in religion – not just any religion, but the Christian faith against which humanists rail so obsessively…

Humanism is not science, but religion – the post-Christian faith that humans can make a world better than any in which they have so far lived. In pre-Christian Europe it was taken for granted that the future would be like the past. Knowledge and invention might advance, but ethics would remain much the same. History was a series of cycles, with no overall meaning.

Gray’s view, of course, is exaggerated and stereotyped (that is, not nuanced) to make a point, but thought-provoking.

Against this pagan view, Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of the Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of human emancipation. The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence. That is why amongst the ancient pagans it was unknown.

Belief in progress has another source…Science increases human power – and magnifies the flaws in human nature. It enables us to live longer and have higher living standards than in the past. At the same time it allows us to wreak destruction – on each other and the Earth – on a larger scale than ever before.

The idea of progress rests on the belief that the growth of knowledge and the advance of the species go together – if not now, then in the long run…

If the hope of progress is an illusion, how – it will be asked – are we to live? The question assumes that humans can live well only if they believe they have the power to remake the world. Yet most humans who have ever lived have not believed this – and a great many have had happy lives.

The question assumes the aim of life is action; but this is a modern heresy. For Plato contemplation was the highest form of human activity. A similar view existed in Ancient India.

The aim of life was not to change the world. It was to see it rightly.

Interesting – and the yearn to try and understand who we might be, ultimately, at a deeper and deeper level – asking what is personhood at its core, what is relationship at its core – has almost nothing to do with material or technological progress or, ironically, science.

Science speaks, perhaps half-tongue-in-cheek but utterly seriously also, about the search for a Unified Theory of Everything – the implication being they believe it to be so – as if finding the formula will finally make it so.

The ancients have said it is so, this Unification, and the only way to experience it is to experience it - meditate upon it, see it in everything and everyone, taste it, surrender to it, believe it – contemplate the grace of its beauty, its individuality, for both diversity and unity are its expression.

Scientists in general, for all their brilliance, do not believe the experience is possible, or even approachable, without prods and formulas and tables and microscopes and telescopes.

Not only that, contemplation is a disaster for the GNP, and how else to measure progress?

But in the late 60s, the world saw those wondrous photos of Earth from the moon for the first time. It was stunning. Some thought seeing the world this way would change the way we see the world. Alas…

I surmise mystics, yogis, sages, contemplatives at their most surrended, their most inward, most overcome with the bliss of this unity (and even occasionally, in a glimpse, you and I), have and had seen that view since time immemorial, with their eyes closed and open.

A line from Christian scripture comes to mind.

The Kingdom of Heaven is amongst us/within us, yet we see it not.

Those yogis also saw that life is as it is, and human nature is as it is – which it clearly is, whatever your take on it may be.

And a wonderful yogic line, paraphrased:

Wanting to change the world is ego, wanting to change yourself is spiritual growth.

That’s all. Just a few excerpts for thought. Interestingly, I can feel for myself the dis-ease of the pull for perpetual action – and it’s not like we won’t be doing something even if we try not to. For me, one of the great cures is sitting, contemplating, meditating, breathing into the temporary nature of all things, glimpsing (and sometimes trying to glimpse) the sweet kiss of the eternal somewhere in there. It’s not necessarily good for the career, but I feel like I, in the subtlest of ways, ‘progress’ in other mysterious areas – not just to get somewhere, but to get here, and not just to get here, but to remember.

Remember what? Ah, well that really is up to the individual, I think, and grace, to be sure, and our genes are always busy, god knows – and, of course, my dear friends, I don’t really know.

And if you find it difficult to progess in the internal sense of the world, don’t feel too badly – or even if you feel guilty about contemplating and watching your breath, instead of making money or digging wells. In the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 3:5 it states:

All beings are forced to act helplessly according to the nature they have required as a result of actions performed in previous lives [if the reincarnation bit bothers you, switch it with the genes you've acquired in this life], therefore no one can refrain from doing something, not even for a moment.

And 5:34:

There are things to be done and not to be done, regarding the senses and their objects. Understanding this prevents coming under the control of material attachment or aversion, which are stumbling blocks on the path of self-realization.

And finally, from Chapter 2:57:

In this material world, one who is unaffected by whatever happy or unhappy results are obtained, neither praising nor despising their destiny, is firmly fixed in perfect spiritual knowledge.

In other words, one of the aims in life “…was not to change the world. It was to see it rightly.”

I’ve felt for so long the world cannot be cured, but the key is how we stand (or sit) in it, and changes are personal. Ghandi, of course, said, “Be the change in the world you wish to see.”

But we will all follow our own path, our own way of responding to the world, either consciously or unconsciously, or a mix of the two.

Caitanya, a sage from 15th century India had this line:

We are inconceivably, simultaneously one and different.

He also said:

Be as patient as a tree and as tolerant as a blade of grass.

But what about progress!

Love more, way more! Yay!

Pete xoxo

And it seemed like a pretty good idea, getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living – getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little lookin’ out for the other fella, too.
– Jefferson Smith, Mr Smith Goes To Washington

Love is patient, love is kind
– Corinthians

I just got an email from my dear friend Sue telling me about Coldtype, a monthly Canadian magazine I didn’t know about, but one that seems worth the look.

There is an interview with Coldtype Publisher Tony Sutton by Jason Miller of Thomas Paine’s Corner.

(Incidentally, Tom Paine and I were born in the same hometown, Thetford, Norfolk, England. Paine graduated just before I did, though (about 170 years), so we never met. Plus he was too busy writing pamphlets inciting the American Revolution).

Here’s an excerpt from the interview, where Canadian Coldtype is compared to the American daily Counterpunch:

Your publication has been characterized as the “Counterpunch of Canada,� yet many US Americans are unfamiliar with it. How would you describe ColdType?

“I’m flattered by the comparison; I’ve been a fan of Counterpunch for years. But it’s a bit like comparing a newspaper with a magazine. As a monthly service, ColdType can never provide the quantity of information put out by the daily Counterpunch, nor do we want to. The acid test for ColdType content is: Will it still be relevant in six months’ or two years’ time? We’re interested in journalism that has legs as well as style.

“On a philosophical level, however, there is a similarity: both CP and CT are as interested in the quality of the writing as the subject being discussed, and both want to help foster a fairer, more equitable, society.�

To read the entire interview, press here.

This is interesting and ironic given the latest Global Warming bitter arguments between Counterpunch’s Alexander Cockburn and George Monbiot.

HEARTACHE

I am always a little broken-hearted when intelligent people fight meanly more than love courageously – yes, even in philosophical or ideological discourse. But love or wider wisdom is so seldom our natural default when in an argument.

We need it to be, in my opinion – and I have thoughts as to why we don’t, and I will write about it soon, when I have the chance. But the vitriol between people is so unfortunate, and we see it so often.

Just glance at the brilliant George Monbiot talking about so-called 9/11 Truth Seekers or Conspiratists, or the way the erudite Christopher Hitchens speaks of so many people lately (both are so well informed, information-wise), or, say, lawyer-of-the-stars and non-stars Alan Dershowitz, who is trained in the ugly art of doing anything to win, ie law school, and applies the technique relentlessly, and the equally robust retorts from, say, tenure-denied Norman Finkelstein.

Where it gets the individual spitting the vitriol is clear: It gets them print and often equally vitriolic supporters.

But who gets converted? Where does this get all of us? What do we learn when two intelligent people can find no common ground? What do they (or I, in my crap moments) really believe will be won?

And the cool, rational, condescending stance (say, William F Buckley in days of yore) – even without raising volume or ad hominen verbal attacks – is also not consciously seeking common ground.

But what, between overall decent people, sisters and brothers, could be more important?

What does being the change you wish to see in the world actually look and sound like?

A form of tribalism, it seems, can exist even for those defending seemingly progressive and humanitarian causes like the Global Warming argument, or the protection of human rights (say, Israelis on one side and Palestinians on the other)? But what could actually be more useful than seeking some solidarity?

What a deeply humbling irony it is that winning or cruelly defending a progressive argument can override what may be the most sustainable – even humane – goal: understanding.

And maybe even beauty.

In such an obviously fractured world, if we’re not stretching ourselves to love each other – strangers even – more and more, before anything else, why aren’t we? And without that intention, what are we therefore accomplishing?

And none of this is to say there isn’t a time to stand and fight. But, as so many of us hoped for with, to cite one of endless examples, the Bush regime and Iraq, how do we push towards making war/violence/fighting/denouncing a truly last resort? Not just a set up of plausible denial negotiations.

CONFESSION

This is my truth – or at least a truth: I am forty-two, and although I do sometimes raise my voice and I can be a total verbal knob, I have never been in an argument where raising my voice (and/or being that knob), attacking from the intellect but not with the heart, has ever been the right thing to do.

Not once.

I’m serious. Not once has raising my voice or uttering names or being dismissive or not listening more deeply been effective or the right thing to do. It’s only my right to be that way if my right includes (and it does) the right to be intellectually bullying yet deeply lacking in wisdom – which is by its nature, deeply lacking in humility.

Even if I logically decimated the “opponent” with a startling array of facts, it was stupid and wrong.

Trying to understand where another person is coming from – realising they, no matter how unfortunate their view might be, are under the same difficult and limiting human condition as I – and responding from that place of understanding, is sometimes difficult but always – or almost always – right.

I always feel it’s grace when it happens – like I’ve been guided by a higher, ultimately brighter sense (brighter in both senses of the word).

Realising this was a startling revelation.

And having said all that, the world is still as it is – and perhaps, or definitely, simply has to be as it is.

THE PRICE OF TENACITY

It’s a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys…
- Jefferson Smith, Mr Smith Goes To Wahington

It should be understood or remembered by intelligent people that for almost any person to write and investigate anything with great intensity is to be deeply focused and passionate.

In that process, to have sticking points or an inability to pull back, reflect, apologise, is almost an automatic fall out of having such a hard-working nature.

This is why I cherish the philosophy of yoga, that (softly) demands through daily practice that I find that space, a buffer, between feeling threatened and the responsive lashing out – and that I am responsible for my response.

I am called to find that space, because almost everything else is, for me, a childish, angry, unloved little boy projection about having to be right and listened to (he said, writing his very own blog).

BREAKING POINTS

So many of us humans, it seems, are so overwhelmed – and even unconsciously frustrated – by both information overload and the limits to what any one of us, in varying degrees, can do to change the way things are.

And let’s face it, everyone of us must feel that pressure. To not collapse under it is to be hyper-vigilant.

Very few people have access to the megaphone.

But why such vitriol? It’s worth remembering that not one person alive right now (and in an argument) will be alive in, say, at the very most, a hundred and twenty years. Not one. We’ll all be dead and gone. Absolute turnover.

Reflecting on this fact, next time, can possibly help a person witness the pointlessness of acting upon or even feeling the desire to lash out, attack, be more cutting than cuddling, when it arises.

Then again, depending on one’s belief system, maybe knowing it’s all temporary could make a person more aggressive.

THE CONDITION

It’s tough being human. It’s tough to agree on everything.

But being intellectual does not by default create wisdom. If it did, the great thinkers would, in my opinion, always try seeking a higher road, to get together when they disagree, and do so with beauty, trying to listen more, straining to find compassion and understanding, and to understand where the other is coming from (even if the other in a given situation is being deeply annoying or idiotic).

That idiocy implies a certain suffering.

WISDOM AND INTELLECTUALITY ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS

Otherwise, despite all the “progressive” talk, we end up shrieking with intellectuality, which is not wise, and we end up in that unenlightened bandwidth of divisive ferocity and reality television that is incessantly exported by media, newspapers, radio, television.

Awareness of the space, the buffer zone, of love, is my dream, anyway. Granted, if you love more than spit, you may just lose your chance to have the megaphone for awhile.

WE LOVE AN ACCIDENT

Richard Dawkins, for example, the often brilliant evolutionary biologist, seems to be rather lovely in a radio interview, but is decidedly more divisive in his books like The God Delusion.

Maybe this is what allows him to get the radio interview. It is a difficult game, balancing life – let alone, I would imagine, being a pundit for some or many causes.

Here’s the discourse on ZNet, in its entirety, between Monbiot and Cockburn, on the Global Climate Changing debate. Press here.

Love way, way more, all the time. We are, after all, as fragile (and durable) as the climate. Love is profoundly more important, I think, than winning arguments, or even a timely, cutting bon mot,

Love Pete xox

PS By the way, I’m undeniably absolutely correct in what I’m saying here, and if you don’t agree, you’re clearly not a complex human being, but an inhumane, unforgivable, total idiot – regardless of how many great things you’ve done before now or whatever stress you might be under in this insane world. The only common ground is complete submission to and agreement with my ideas – or not – and either way, a lifetime of snarled ridicule from anybody who feels like it.

I repeat – and we’ve got the building surrounded – the only common ground is complete submission to my ideas.

PPS Love more!

Isn’t this Sir Salman Rushdie outrage, at least as it is expressed in the news, utterly predictable yet depressing – and for one not in the line of fire, boring and infantile? Unfortunately, it is also dangerous, for fundamentalists love an opportunity to project hatred masked as defending the faith.

I’ve barely heard such diatribes since director Ken Loach was compared to Hitler’s filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, for his film about the British-Irish wars of 1922, The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

I have actually never read Salman Rushdie (successful fiction yells at me to write), but I find him in interview to be witty, insightful and profoundly worldcentric for a man who had a fatwa on his head (if that is where a fatwa is put).

RUSHDIE TO JUDGEMENT

Try as I might, I can’t quite crack understanding the mosaic of beliefs and pressures that make certain religious fundamentalists – this time in nuclear-armed Pakistan – so unapproachably intense in hatred, so brainwashed to kill, and so lacking in humour, love and, most of all, compassion – for shouldn’t one who has found the true God feel more sorry than anything else for those who haven’t?

Alas, this is not the case in the extreme fringe of religions of the sword, with their fanatical end-of-world propositions, and their stunning lack of an inward journey.

Surely if Mohammed is Allah’s final and greatest Prophet, all blessings upon him, he is safe and protected for eternity, regardless of cartoons or Rushdie’s pen.

END-OF-THE-WORLD RELIGIONS

So it goes for much of politicized Christian history, but how can anybody, moderate Muslims included, honestly believe Islam, fundamentally, to be a religion founded or spread in peace?

Like Britain, except with even greater speed, it expanded as an Empire largely through colonization, destruction and brutality – respites of tolerance and kindnesses notwithstanding.

From my (and many others) limited yet passionate study of history, both are indisputable facts.

I wonder if many Middle Eastern Muslims today realize that so many of their ancestors were colonized first by Islamic invaders (just as India was, but was able to hold onto their decimated culture as best as possible) and then the by the British, who eventually retreated from both places (and the Americans stepped in, up to today).

It just so happens that with the mostly British (and French) invasions (and America today) of certain Middle Eastern countries, Islam and the Arab leaders have remained, it seems, largely stuck and crushed in unprogressive backwaters while Europeans at least tried to lift themselves towards equal rights for men and woman, at least domestically – and overall did a pretty damn good job.

That said, the British, America and French distaste for Arab nationalism cannot be ignored. Iran, for the record – and this should be common knowlege – was a democracy in the early 1950s under Dr Mossadegh, only to be overthrown by the Shah monarchy with the pronounced help of British and American intelligence – for reasons of oil, alas.

GOOD KNIGHT

At the same time, and call me unsentimental, but I can not understand how the archaic process of knighthood continues, based on such historically degrading principles founded in a feudal and ultimately colonizing Empire.

But maybe I’m in the backwaters, for I (and my beloved girlfriend and sister, it seems) are three of the very few who found, for example, the film The Queen to be on the level of a made-for-TV movie (Helen Mirren and even Michael Sheen notwithstanding) – largely because of (perceived by me) cliched and unbelievable writing, that left, for the three of us anyway, the Royal Family stereotyped and implausibly shallow.

I should know, I’ve accidentally written what I perceived-to-be-that-way myself – although their scroll of awards find us parting company.

Others in the know have told me since that that is how the repressed and regressed Philip and Charles actually act.

If so, all the more reason to sweetly, kindly, but as soon as possible abolish the monarchy and all it truly symbolizes to, say, Africa, India and the Middle East; a monarchy that exists in a Britain that has been, according to a recent damning report in MacLean’s magazine – Why England is Rotting - collapsing into a North Sea of declining education, high rates of venereal disease and rapidly expanding obesity.

Then again, welcome to the West (from an obesity point of view).

CATCH ME IF YOU KHAN

It should also be noted that the United States was allegedly aware of Pakistani hero AQ Khan stealing nuclear secrets from Holland in the 70s and 80s – in fact America told Dutch authorities to do nothing about it.

Khan went on to sell secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea too – with CIA Intelligence aware at least in part of these moves, but ignored (see CIA agent Richard Barlow), and notice the ongoing presence of Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kissinger et al., (with the Iran nuclear disaster as well, alas).

When will it end?

Surely at least some of Khan’s freedom-to-spy-and-steal was allowed by America because of their need for using Pakistani intelligence, land and men to help build up an extremist Islamic freedom-fighting machine (to paraphrase Ronald Reagan) to fight the Russians in their heinous Invasion of Afghanistan.

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

And here we are: the Pakistani government, with both Nuclear Weapons and a government official (claiming to be misunderstood) actually calling for Salman Rushdie’s life – again.

Indeed, these are curious times.

Love more, for all things must pass,

Pete xoxo

Press here to hear Be Brave Tonight.

Banff is not only the home of the awe-inspiring Rockie Mountains, which must be seen to be gasped at, but also the Banff World Television Festival.

…the world’s most important television content creation event. Now in its 28th year, this annual forum is dedicated to the development of business and creative opportunities for those in television programming and new media industry. In addition to honouring excellence in international television, the Festival provides a global platform for networking, discussion and debate, and explores current issues and challenges within the industry.

Big it is, and big deals are certainly made. Nonetheless, a dear friend of mine just came back from the Banff Festival and decried one of the bottom lines: even the biggest stations going admitted that 95% of their programming is crap.

Whether they used the word crap, I don’t know, but my friend used it.

And whether this has to be the way (consciously producing crap), I don’t know. But one must never forget that TV is an advertising driven medium, and thus the most lucrative shows by definition should maximize the viewers desire to feel their life and the universe they live in is meaningless (to quote Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg, jokingly), unless they consume more – or at least pick the next winner on American Idol.

Or, for that matter, TV must make them believe that their life is great, and consume more anyway, because honey, that’s freedom!

Either way, true or not – I have no idea, being TV-less in my home (coincidence? I think not) – I just read a passage from the late and wonderful Carl Sagan, from his 1996 (and last) book The Demon Haunted World (pg 369):

I hope no one will consider me unduly cynical if I assert that a good first-order model of how commercial and public television programming work is simply this:

Money is everything.

In prime time, a single rating point difference is worth millions of dollars in advertising. Especially since the early 1980s, television has become almost entirely profit-motivated.

You can see this, say, in the decline of network news and news specials, or in the pathetic evasions that the major netorks offered to circumvent a Federal Communications Commission mandate that they improve the level of children’s programming.

As an antidote, read mind-expanding books to your children; books about science, about nature, about ways of looking at the world; about seeing all people as sisters and brothers (except creepy strangers, of course).

Anyway, none of this should be a surprise. Sagan later quotes TV actor Ronald Reagan from a 1980 campaign speech:

Why should we subsidize intellectual curiousity?

Some 190 years earlier, George Washington (who never watched TV) said this in an address to Congress, in startling and embarrassing contrast:

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

Sagan, god rest his soul, never got to experience the latest regime.

But as always, it comes down to that wonderful thing called choice: if we don’t like TV, turn it off.

Go inwards instead of West, young person! But in an outwards way!

BREATHE

I’ve been lately noticing how in times of a certain anxiety, I feel compelled to do something. I have similarly noticed that at these same times of certain anxiety, I actually don’t want to do anything – and the feeling I should do something is part of the anxiety.

So sometimes, when grace reminds me, I just sit and remember what a miracle it is to be alive, and feel the circulation of life through this temporary body I call home – thankful I even have the privilege to take that time.

Love more, and watch less TV. And if you make TV, try to make it more beautiful, more expansive, less divisive, until we all come to expect that, both at home and abroad – and on the tube.

Pete

I always think it’s strikingly absurd when scientists or whomever say we’ll have the whole universe figured out soon.

A Theory of Everything?

We can’t even dig into the earth more than twelve miles without giving up in exasperation (according to Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything!) and it’s almost four thousand miles to the centre.

So we know not what is going on inside, to any sure degree – and that’s right below our dancing feet, pulling us to stand upright, while revolving and orbiting, on the curved face of a giant ball.

Perhaps the two things aren’t related (but perhaps they are). Ironically, I think this lack of “inward journey” earth-wise is wonderfully metaphoric for the human journey too.

Everything we do, percentage-wise, sometimes for extraordinarily good reasons, is largely outward projecting and displayed, from, say, tribal, social, ethnic demarcations to higher technology to the miseries of war.

If we venture more than 12 miles into the 4000 miles of ourselves, it seems someone schooled in brain science and reality will be trying to prescribe antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills way too much for the condition (muddying the journey below the surface).

Just a thought – and of course not to decry the use of antidepressants, just the way they are overprescribed.

According to my brother – a doctor of pharmacy – approximately one out of every two drugs prescribed are not needed whatsoever.

That’s a lot of profit.

As for science, is not the idea of a scientific Theory of Everything - “solved”, as the wonderfully intense Richard Dawkins literally puts it – about as scientific as, say, the Second Coming, which has been coming for nearly two millenia now, as the Jewish people wait for their First Coming, their military messiah, and the Muslims wait – like their religious brethren, the Christians and the Jews – for the glorious day of Judgement when, hopefully, the non-believers all burn for eternity in a fiery hell?

How nice. It makes concentration camps sound like a passing fad created by non-Godly wimps, unable to keep Hell fiery for eternity.

There is an old bad play on words: Denial isn’t just a river in Africa. There’s another. Armageddon isn’t just a city in Israel. Or is it?

Perhaps I’m wrong, too – which happens endlessly – and the End Of The World is coming.

I’m not kidding when I say that.

How can I know? And thus why would I kill over what I can’t know? Then again, why would I kill and hate over what I do know?

But perhaps the Universal Theory of Everything and the Second Coming (and First Coming) and Judgement Day are somehow related, and all the answers will come at once, on that day – which, unfortunately, probably won’t allow much time for all the things that make life meaningful, like love – and loving more.

Me, personally? I tend to lean instinctively and emotionally more towards a playfully-called Dancing Shiva sort of eternal soul, cyclic universe, multi-verse in the infinite kind of eternally inward and outward journey way, with a grand affection and desire for Love as a guiding mysterious principle (even more attracting than mysterious gravity); that inside and out relationships can be found, infinitely, that that we are all sisters and brothers, no Chosen People (just temporarily more powerful people), though I dream all people are chosen, no Hell (but a helluva lot of confusion and cruelty – that surely must feel like hell for my sisters and brothers beneath it); that only a tiny part of reality is found in what we see, and no end of the world (but possibly an end to humanity – no! – and almost certainly and end to me, Pete) – and yet personhood and relationship are far beyond – eternally beyond, even right here now – what our “fallible human minds can grasp” – to misquote Einstein.

But like I said, obviously, I not only could be wrong, I know that I am – for obvious reasons!

Anyway, I wrote all that because, well, because I tend to ramble on.

I actually wrote this little blog because of this response I liked to A Theory of Everything, from a Nova show called The Elegant Universe, from the wonderful (and wonderfully-vegan) Brian Greene’s terrific book of the same name.

This interiview is with Sheldon Glashow.

NOVA: People often talk about a “theory of everything.” What do you think of that term? What would it mean to have such a thing?

[Sheldon] Glashow:

I think the concept is foolish. I don’t have the hubris to imagine a theory of everything. I think that we scientists are seeking an understanding of the natural world. We come in various types—chemists and physicists and biologists and such—and we all have the same goal. We are making progress. The theories we have today of life and chemistry and physics are much better than they were ten years ago. And ten years from now they will be better still.

I don’t know what it means to understand the process of nature perfectly. I don’t know what a theory of everything could be. Is it a series of formulas? How could that be? It doesn’t make any sense. So I would have to say that I simply can’t imagine why any sane person would imagine, discuss, or mention, except insultingly, the concept of a theory of everything. It’s a stupidity. And I believe that my string theorist friends would be among the least likely people to describe their work as a search for a theory of everything.

What we all want is a better theory of the universe, to understand our physical world in greater depth than we presently do. That’s why, although I occasionally pick on the work string theorists do, I describe them as physicists. They are interested in the same problems that I am. They’re approaching those problems in different ways, ways that they regard as somewhat more productive than I do. But they’re not searching for a theory of everything. They’re just trying to create better theories.

That’s it. I’m sure I’ve said too much. But love more, dream more, wonder more, oh yeah, say hello to everyone more, stand up for those who profoundly need it and…yeah, love more,

Pete xo

Ask five economists and you’ll get five different answers – six if one went to Harvard.
– Edgar R Fielder

Economists rarely, at least not to my liking, discuss the disastrous aspects of the monetary system itself (whatever they are believed to be), or the banking system, or the endless inflationary aspect of usary, or interest, compound interest, DEBT, and the blood-sucking effect it has on people and nations.

Again, only in my opinion.

If you have to forecast, forecast often.
– Edgar R Fielder

Nonetheless, here’s a couple of reminders from economist William Coleman of what might need to be also considered to full grasp the potential pointlessness the next time a government (spending pathologically and printing money pathologically) says they are “cutting taxes.”

Ricardian Equivalence: Barring default or surprise inflations, government borrowing must eventually be repaid by means of taxation. Thus a government deficit is no more than a delayed tax. And a deficit financed tax cut is no tax cut at all.

The notion of “Ricardian Equivalence” exposes the illusion of “tax cuts” under the Bush presidency. The truth is taxes have been substantially increased under Bush, because government spending has been substantially increased. Benchmarking by the last Clinton budget, US government expenditure has been increased by $955 billion thus far. That means $955 billion of increased taxes, now or later…

The inflation tax: Printing money is equivalent to taxing currency balances. Both confiscate part of the real value of currency. So a monetary policy that has raised prices 10 percent higher is equivalent to 10 percent tax on currency. Put briefly, inflation is a tax. It is as much a tax as the VAT; just the base is different.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
– Edgar R Fielder

So all you can do in the end, and the beginning, to really be sure of your integrity, is love more.

Interestingly – at least to me – I was reminded in a conversation the other day where that phrase (love more) for me comes from. In my meditation practice, whenever a thought about a problem with another person or situation would come up, I would ask – not even sure to whom sometimes - “What do you want me to do?”

“Love more” was always the answer. Not clearly. Not on a neon sign. No melody. Just that immediate thought – sometimes exasperatingly so.

And no variation either. Not “Love a little more.” Or “Love more and then throw the first punch.” “Not love more and then take everything you can.” “Not even love more – a lot more!”

I think the “a lot more” was implied.

“Anything else?” I might ask, “like a strategy tip?” Nothing else came, or comes. Turns out “love more” is the strategy tip (clearly not my Higher Economist speaking).

So then, I began to conclude, my faculties, my mind, brain, body would do what they had to do anyway, and was best buffered, supported, tempered and strengthened by the idea of loving more – given the temporary nature of all things – taxes and inflation excepted.

I doubt love more will ever be an economic theorem, but one can still dream, and keep asking the question.

Love even more,

Pete xox

Maybe a couple of songs here, oldies. You’ll see the connections. Say,
Lord, Would It Be Enough? (addiction with an Appalachian twang)
The Little Guy (you can hear my nephews at the end of this one, when they were little)
What’s Goin’ Down? (my dear old no longer with us Nana to begin, a little Kennedy stuff at the end)
Wide Open (just to remember)

I’ve been lately researching for a book I’m writing, and speaking of the Cosmic Fire, the eternal yet temorary nature of all things, and the idea of transformation, get this slimy little tidbit from Bill Bryson’s wonderfully friendly and informative A Short History of Nearly Everything (he’s writing here about some of the difficulties of categorising nature (307-308):

Even less comfortably susceptible to categorization [hey, nobody likes to be labeled] was the peculiar group of organisms formally called myxomycetes but more commonly known as slime molds….

When times are good, they exist as one-celled individuals [who doesn't?], much like amoebas. But when conditions grow tough, they crawl to a central gathering place and become, almost miraculously, a slug [I grow sluggish under pressure, but that's ridiculous].

The slug is not a thing of beauty [unless you ask Mrs Slug] and it doesn’t go terribly far…but for millions of years this may well have been the niftiest trick in the universe.

You think I’m done, don’t you? Oh no.

And it doesn’t stop there. Having hauled itself up to a more favorable locale, the slime mold transforms itself yet again, taking on the form of a plant.

By some curious orderly process the cells reconfigure, like the members of a tiny marching band, to make a stalk atop of which forms a bulb known as a fruiting body [that's what they call it, anyway - schoolyard slime bullies were less forgiving].

Inside the fruiting body are millions of spores that, at the appropriate moment, are released to the the wid to blow away and become single celled organisms that can start the process again.

Don’t try this at home, unless of course you are a slime mold, then do whatever you want.

If one phase of that cycle included an appearance of someone from the Illuminati – including the English Royals or George Dubya – then the indefatigable David Icke would finally have tangible proof of shapeshifting. Alas, not so fast…

Pete xo