Sometimes, the problem with concepts, is you really are fighting ingrained ways of looking at things. Sometimes, an ingrained way of looking at something is hard to fight. A comment on a previous post by a commenter who is highly intelligent in many ways made me realise this. That in explaining the obvious regarding the huge flaws in Capitalist Economics, is hard. Because sometimes, making a conceptual leap is hard.
And I admit, it took a while for me to grasp the Marxist argument, simple as that argument is, once you see the point.
I suppose it relates to how easily the human mind gets stuck in ruts.
I remember at scout camp once the topic came up of how many states there are in the US. It kind of become a running joke. That I could be wound up on the subject. Because I had had the argument before, with the female cub scout leader. She was a primary school teacher and maintained there were fifty two. As many states in the US, as there are weeks in the year, that's what she taught her class.
Many people believe it. That there were fifty, but then Alaska and Hawaii joined, making it fifty two. I know it may sound trivial, but it really is a commonly held piece of ignorance. And I got very wound up about it. I even listed them all. But it turned out I'd left Texas out, someone noticed. God know what state I said twice.
Anyway, when we went into Swansea, our troop leader went to a bookshop. And grudgingly admitted I was right. The US has fifty states, no more, no less.
The point is, if an opinion is widely regarded to be correct, it's hard to shift it.
But also, it's sometimes hard for people to grasp something that YOU think is obvious. For example, space. Trying to explain to someone that the universe is FINITE, but LIMITLESS. In other words, there isn't an end to it. But it doesn't go on for ever.
There isn't an edge, where you can go out beyond into nothingness. Every direction leads back to it's starting point. Of course, you couldn't actually DO that, because the universe is expanding faster than you could travel, but ultimately, in our universe, any straight line goes back to its starting point.
And the point about why it is the Capitalist Economy can't actually work any longer, isn't that human technology can't advance- of course it can. The point is that the Capitalist economy can no longer achieve that, can no longer power it. Because the Capitalist economy has turned to eat itself.
It's not that our capacity to progress has halted. It's how that progress was funded. And it was funded by having a sufficient portion of the new wealth brought into the economy every year, being sucked up in interest payments.
In other words, the Capitalist economy can only survive by adding more money to it every year. And in the nineteenth century this was done by literally expanding the economy every year. Adding more consumers. And in the twentieth century it was done by having a good number of people living off handouts so they consume but don't produce, and by continually printing more money every year. Having permanent inflation. Capitalists hide that.
That once you really have turned everyone into a consumer in the same economy, the only way the total amount of money in circulation grows- is by adding more money. Except it's not real wealth. You're not actually adding materials. You're simply devaluing the money. This means the interest can be paid, because by the time you pay it, the interest, like everything else, will be worth less in real terms.
But even that stopped being enough. So we had to invent money that didn't exist. Credit.
And eventually, more money will be owed out than actually exists.
And that's pretty much where we are now.
So the problem isn't to do with our ability to invent new technology.
The problem is, the system we have of working out the relative values of things, and the relative value of human energy contributions, no longer makes sense and is no longer efficient.
The flaws in it, lead to us making daft decisions.
If you catch fish in the North Sea, and the fishfingers made from those fish, are to be eaten in the UK, then if your 'Economy' really is telling you that the most efficient place to bread those fish fingers is the Czech Republic, than the flaw clearly lies in the accounting system being used.
Our Economy is making something INEFFICIENT, efficient. And it's increasingly going to deliver silly answers like that. Because it is now so skewed, it cannot help but warp our own systems of production and distribution.
Quite clearly, being OBJECTIVE, breading the fish fingers in the Czech Republic, is NOT, in terms of use of human systems of production and distribution, remotely sensible. It is NOT cheaper, in terms of energy costs, labour put in, or any other tangible factor. But it turns out to be cheaper in terms of these little exchange tokens that exist primarily on computer screens.
Now if these tokens weren't called money, and we weren't so wedded to treating them as sacrosanct, if it was a computer told us something as STUPID as 'Catch the fish in the North Sea, bread the fish in the Czech Republic and then bring the finished product back to the UK' we'd get a software engineer to rewrite such an obviously flawed program.
But Bird's Eye are doing just that. Closing down UK operations. Because MONEY has told them too.
And no one seems to have twigged... The money is now giving us WRONG answers.
Money itself is screwing up the Economy.
Money is telling us to go for solutions that in REAL terms, in terms of USE OF TIME AND RESOURCES are less efficient.
Because Czech money is cheap compared to the Pound in international markets. So converting your money to Czech money to pay Czech workers means you can pay a lot more Czech workers than you can British workers out of the same money.
So the problem is simple. Money doesn't do what it's supposed to do any more.
Accurately reflect the relative value of things.
And that's what is screwing up the world.
That we use a system for determining the value of things that- doesn't in fact do that. And all economists ACTUALLY do, is explain to us why their flawed system gives us the flawed answers it does.
And this blinds us to the fact that the answers are obviously flawed.
That half us working fifty hour weeks and having new kitchens every two years, whilst others are paid by us to do nothing is a flawed answer. That having a quarter of the world living a continent run by warlords where rape and pillage are an everyday feature of life, is a flawed answer.
That using up most of our communal technology to point expensive missiles at eachother, when we can't afford to make sure we can maintain radio contact with a probe we send to Mars, is a flawed answer.
That having a system of human relations based on finding as many ways to waste human energy as possible, is a flawed answer.
That we have in place a system of determining the values of things and how we should best use human energy and resources. And we trust in it blindly. And it's called money.
And yet the answers it gives are clearly wrong. Because it isn't delivering the answers that are in fact the best use of human energy and resources.
The answers it gives just cannot, logically, be the right answers.
So the only conclusion any rational human being can draw, is that the money system doesn't work. Not any more.
It has often been observed- correctly- that one of the key groups to whom collective forms of living appeal are- people who quite clearly don't fancy actually getting their hands dirty. Moggs, of course, in her inimitable way, is quite correct in her assumptions of why, in a personal sense, collective and communal forms of living sound more appealing to people like me on a personal level.
At the end of the day, most of us are selfish. Most of us are attracted to socio-political models which we believe would deliver better for us, as individuals.
So yes, one of the key attractions for me of a scheme of collective living is... It would work better for people like me. Naturally, I happen to believe it would also be better for the vast majority of us.
Put in selfish terms, I believe that the type of system which would ultimately deliver me a more fulfilling lifestyle as an individual, would partly for that very reason, be better for everyone.
And it goes back to the social contract itself, that system of deals we all make with eachother to find a framework within which to live.
And yes, it goes back to the type of deal I think it would make more sense for myself and people like myself to be able to make. A deal of far greater benefit to all sides of the equation.
One of the problems with the modern drive towards universal equality and the destruction of hereditary caste systems, is we missed something very important. Yes, all men should certainly be treated equally, with no one being BORN special. No one should acquire advantages simply for being in the right place at the right time. And that's not just so that THEY get an unfair advantage. It's the rest of us get the best deal. In other words, the problem isn't NECESSARILY in having elites. Since people aren't in fact clones, since in fact, people do indeed have very varied strengths and weaknesses, any sensible arrangement must take that into account and therefore- the perfect arrangement implicitly allows for an element of elitism.
This of course, is one of the reasons Nietzsche sometimes makes people uncomfortable.
Because the problem with aristocracy isn't the principle, it's the mode of selection. Having positions in an elite being determined by inheritance, is a bad way to select an elite and thus the elite in question soon degenerates.
And the aristocracy as it was never fulfilled any kind of useful function anyway. It was an aristocracy that generally, wasn't worth the social effort to maintain. The people keeping this elite, weren't getting value for it. They were not, by and large, worth their exalted status.
And in a sense, perhaps an elite shouldn't have exalted status at all. So- how then are they an elite, if they don't have exalted status?
And it goes back to root of human systems. There is something badly missing from our world today. A failing in our systems. And yes, it actually is rooted deep in the Protestant work ethic which lies at the heart of modern Capitalist thought. A curious casting away of centuries of advance, the creating of a new type of human being that could ONLY exist because of the increasing complexity of the human society existing. In short, the creation of an intellectual elite. An intellectual elite whose cost was taken on.
And yes, that's a shockingly elitist thing to say. But yes, having an intellectual elite, is a cost. And not one that modern society seems to want to take on. Which is why we don't have one. Seemingly, we'd rather pay for an UNDERCLASS, have that as our cost, than pay to support an intellectual elite.
Moggs often refers to my dislike of Protestantism. THAT is at the heart of my dislike of it as a thought system. That it deliberately set out to destroy that important human development. The setting up of collective operations to free increasing numbers of people from having to fend for themselves. To allow the creation of a supported intellectual elite, a development which got stopped in its tracks. And for which humanity as a whole is now suffering.
Because whatever criticism is levelled at Catholicism, it's strength as a thought system, was in a very important development. Monastaries. And whilst I don't think it was- long term- the best solution, it was still a very good solution. It only had one flaw. Monks didn't have children. Had the Church understood that far from being celibate, the very people that tended to become monks and priests, were the very people who SHOULD be breeding as much as possible, then the system would have been nearly perfect.
Because the Church were half right. They were right that for the intellectual elite of the western world to be freed from having to worry about domestic life, specifically, child rearing, was better for society as a whole. But, they were wrong to think that they shouldn't reproduce.
It goes back to understanding how human society advances in the first place. Sedentary life made new deals possible. Not everyone any longer needs to do the routine tasks that people once did out on the savannah. Not everybody needs to go hunting.
So now a use can be found for people who were totally useless out on the savannah. They don't need to starve. In fact, it's better NOT to let them starve. Because they pay their way in other ways, ways that served no purpose on the savannah. Yes, they weren't the fittest in that way of living. When they had to fend for themselves, they died. No use for the frail aesthete out there. But now they could live. And if others did for them the tasks that they would have died once because they were useless at- like hunting, farming, building homes, etc, these once useless people now gave back. Gave society something it COULDN'T have had, if it hadn't made that deal with those who once would have been useless.
Society now had art, poetry, science.
THAT was the real payback of sedentary life. The agreement by society to divide labour. To create castes; Farmers, hunters, warriors and- a new caste which seemingly lived off the labours of others. The intellectual caste.
Now it has always been an important factor in any human culture, just how this social group is seen, how it is recruited and formed and what arrangements are made for its existence. And trying to find ways of doing that fairly, has been a recurring human problem.
Because this caste doesn't and never has formed the 'aristocracy', who basically descend from the old hunter and warrior castes. The decision making castes, in the earlier systems. The intellectual caste has always, in practice, depended on other castes totally for its existence. Its existence has always been fragile.
And the solution adopted right from the very start of human society, was to create an apparent use for such a caste. To create a reason why everyone else should provide for a caste that doesn't appear to do anything, but whose existence becomes increasingly essential. The solution was, to create religion. As long as you have an organised religion, and looking after Gods is a function of human society, you can justify supporting an intellectual elite. The intellectual elite can be justified on the grounds that they are doing something. What they ACTUALLY contribute is very different, of course, to what they appear to be doing.
But at various times in human history, the material wealth and state of technological development has been such that humanity has almost been able to temporarily break free of that. When it has created aristocracies with enough material wealth to take on the burden themselves of maintaining intellectual elites. Patronage. Aristocrats so rich that they demonstrated their social benevolence by paying the intellectual elite. The Romans did it of course. And so did Rennaisance Italy. The Medici, the Sforza, the Estensi, the Della Scala, they were mostly pretty horrible people, but they did mankind a favour. The Pope was quite prepared to put up with the odd rumour that Da Vinci was cutting up corpses in the Vatican, nor frankly did he much care what Da Vinci's theological opinions were. The man was a genius. Therefore, the Church would pay for him. Pay for him to live, however he wanted to live. The Church accepted that was a price worth paying. This wasn't one of those things that could be costed.
My main opposition to Protestant thought was that Protestant ethics killed the Renaissance in its tracks. One of their main arguments against Catholicism, was in fact, hitting at the REAL point of Catholicism. The whole point of medieval Catholicism, was that it had built up a system for freeing an intellectual class from the obligation of providing for themselves. Never before had such a high proportion of human beings been freed of worrying about how to feed and house themselves. Protestantism regarded that as idleness inspired by the devil, and its response was cultural barbarism.
What has been amazing, is that human society has still progressed in spite of mutilating itself this way. In spite of having taken on some of the more ludicrous assumptions of Protestant thought.
And one of those flawed assumptions is this. That society should NOT have any groups of people who are, on the face of it, a cost, in social terms. And yet ironically, of course we DO have a whole class of such. Only it's the wrong group. Therefore, we lose out.
One of my main observations about the current set up is, no it really doesn't suit me, a more collective system of living WOULD suit me better, but would also mean society as a whole would get more out of it.
As it is, the bit I actually get paid for, is actually a cost. As things stand, I genuinely am a cost.
What I do is pretty pointless really. It's a result of following archaic organisitional systems. If the infrastructure, or bits of it, weren't owned separately, paying people to market things from one bit of it to another, would be totally superfluous to requirements. My energy is actually pretty much wasted, and the cost of my wasted energy is paid for by others. So the fact is, society is actually already paying me to do nothing- from a social point of view. Me and millions like me. We earn our money out of flaws in the system- the flaw being that when equipment wears out, we don't have a simple system of simply replacing the machinery, we go through this rigmarole of buying and selling. And because we do, I get paid.
What's the real point I'm trying to make here? Well, the real point is, there aren't actually a whole range of tasks you can find for someone like me which actually have a constructive, tangible and immediate payback.
But, nevertheless, I still have to waste forty hours plus a week, on things that really are no good to man nor beast. All society has actually achieved in my case, is finding a way to waste my time and energy. Because it won't actually pay me to do nothing. Bizarrely, in my case, society would ACTUALLY benefit more by paying me exactly what it pays me now- to do nothing.
Note I say SOCIETY, not my employers.
Why it would benefit, is having that time free, I'd be able to do far more constructive things. Things a Capitalist economy just doesn't pay people to do.
If a society existed which was able to say 'We can see you're intelligent and you enjoy studying things for their own sake. And re-interpreting and evaluating things. And communicating your thoughts on this. Ultimately, we can see that this could have a possible payback. Maybe not immediately, or in tangible terms, but it's probable that the more time you spend doing your favorite activity- thinking- the more likely it is that you'll think of something important. We understand that offering you a life where you simply travel, observe, study, without any clearly defined objective, is kind of a cost. But in social terms, it's probably worth it in the long run. You'll probably produce a high volume of writing, and a lot of it would be of far better quality with a higher grade of thought involved than it would otherwise be', then such a society would suit me best.
I have said before that the main problem the Capitalist system has is in finding ways to waste human energy for forty hours a week. That really, human technology means that most of this energy, is simply wasting energy. It's caused by being wedded to the Protestant work ethic; if it can't be made to LOOK useful, it's not work, and you won't be paid for it. If you're not doing forty hours of useful looking work, you won't have a roof over your head. But most of it is quite useless.
Company A exists to sell photocopiers. It sells them largely to companies manufacturing and selling phone systems, fax machines, other equipment which companies use to- buy and sell. So all most of us actually do is create work for eachother. Work that actually doesn't need to be done at ALL. Only we need to create the work, because we think we need to work to get paid. It's a fairly stupid premise, when you look at it.
Most of the work, most of us do, we do to create work for other people.
And the stupidest bit is this. We nod our heads wisely when we hear someone say 'It's good because it creates jobs'.
Can't you say how stupid a statement that is? It's good because it makes work?
People just keep missing the point. The problem is in the fixed value system for human labour. We're creating work for the simple reason OUR SYSTEMS CAN GET BY WITHOUT SO MUCH WORK BEING DONE. Simplify the system, divide the workload out more equitably and actually ask yourself just how much we need to do, we're getting somewhere.
Workerless factories are actually technologically possible. We think they're a bad thing. Doesn't that show you the problem? We're actually frightened of a world in which- less work needs to be done by people.
We actually can afford to have a world in which everybody has a high standard of living, and everybody works a compulsory sixteen hour week to pay their way- then gets paid on a points system for any surplus they do.
Because such a system is doable.
And from my own point of view, I personally feel that if my task for sixteen hours a week was say, writing Wikipedia articles or something similar, that would be a far more valuable social contribution than anything the existing system will pay me to do. And of course, then I'd earn points to exchange for material goods and luxuries for any surplus I did. And I'll be honest, I'd mainly exchange them for- Cocaine, I'm sure. In a society that allowed me to freely do that. But since I'd be making a social contribution in exchange for that, that would be fair. Not only that, it would kind of be re-investment. Because thinking and writing is what I enjoy. I have a tendency to be a workaholic, when it's something I enjoy, so it's highly likely I'd end up writing, one way or another about sixty to seventy hours a week, I'd be using the Cocaine mainly as fuel.
Proof of the pudding. This blog already has probably over five million words on it already. In my free time, I've already written the equivalent of several volumes, in under two years.
Moggs says part of the benefits of the collective system I propose is that it would allow people like me, essentially to have servants. Well yes, of course. But not just me- everyone. Everyone would have servants, in that sense. Except we'd all kind of be servants too.
I'm suggesting that every person does sixteen hours compulsory work a week, in part of a co-operative system. Some would spend their sixteen hours doing the laundry for their commune. Some would spend their sixteen hours cooking for the commune. Some would spend their sixteen hours raising the children. Some would spend their sixteen hours operating the factories. Some would spend their sixteen hours growing crops. Some would spend their sixteen hours policing the streets. some would spend their sixteen hours nursing the sick. Some would spend their sixteen hours exploring space (though quite obviously they wouldn't be able to work it like that, they'd have to do some months on, some months off, clearly SOME careers would HAVE to be like that) And some would spend their sixteen hours collating and editing human knowledge, it being seen that the propagation and interpreting of human knowledge, is a valuable function. So yes, I don't see why having a class of people whose task it is to constantly update Wikipedia, which could now be seen as a global resource, shouldn't be something society as a whole wouldn't see as a cost it was prepared to carry.
I must admit, I'd love to do that. Love to be able to earn my way, my sixteen hours, by writing Wikipedia articles, knowing that I was adding to the central database of human knowledge.
And of course I'd do significantly extra. Not just for the points, but because I enjoyed my work.
And the other point so many have you have raised, is of course so very crucial too. I want to have children, but I don't want the responsibility of bringing them up.
But...that's actually what society wants.
If society is going to limit itself to the only people reproducing being those who can bring up children, then society will suffer. There are many other talents to be passed on than ability to make a good parent. Now, I'm going to be honest, I don't think my strengths are likely to lie in child rearing. But is that really the question society should be asking, in deciding who should and should not reproduce?
So I guess my honest answer is; Do I think I should reproduce? Well, yes. Do I think I'm the best person to be employed by society to rear members of the next generation? No, clearly not. Which is why I think that child rearing should be a job like any other, that responsibility for rearing the next generation should be in the hands of people trained by society as a whole to do just that.
Yes, a crucial part of why I believe collective living works best, is because I think we need to get rid of families. Bringing up children should be another function that we hand over to the collective, to be overseen by society as a whole. And obviously, I partly think that for selfish reasons.
But the point is, as it stands, I'm put in a position that most people say is selfish. I actually do believe it is better for me to reproduce and other people to bring up those children, than for me not to have children. So quite obviously I favour a system where child rearing becomes merely another function of society as a whole and the family unit is essentially abolished.
Yes, possibly the most central part of my beliefs is the necessity to abolish the family and create a system for communal rearing of children. It is an advance in human systematic development. When all children are reared by specially trained nannies, and they see their parents more the way we now see older siblings.
I think we CAN free humankind from individual responsibility for rearing children, and we should. Because once we do that, we can live freer lives. All of us.
And love freely
So yes, I believe that the system of communal living I suggest would work out better for everyone and make better uses of most peoples lives. And mine would certainly be one of them.
Well the world situation allows me to put it in black and white terms. Allows me to state WHY it is, the situation I describe there, is the situation I prefer.
If any woman was stuck in any kind of relationship with me now, her life would be hell.
Tonight, I'm off out to party. Off out to enjoy myself. Off out to forget the cobwebs, forget the stress, forget the whole damn lot. But I won't be paying.
Because my card won't let me draw money till Monday. When I get paid. And I don't have a credit card, because I had one once, and people like me shouldn't have credit cards.
Because me, I'm in in Shit Street, finance wise. This credit crunch his come along and buggered me good and proper. The policy of Lloyds TSB, whereby they charge you an unauthorised overdraft fee every month ON THE 1ST (I get paid on the 6th) means that every month I pay that fee, then pay the same fee every month plus some. That monthly fee is now in excess of two hundred pounds. I pay an ever increasing fee to Lloyds TSB every month for an increasing absence of money four days before I get paid.
At a time when my commission has radically dropped.
There is absolutely no way I can realistically ensure that on the first of the month, those funds exist in my bank account, and I stop the cycle. It is NOT possible. Nor can I realistically extend my existing credit. I have three loan repayments as it is, and more than one outstanding utility bill. Plus arrears in Council tax.
Stressed?
Do you think my mind ever truly leaves this topic?
I think I can get through it, yes. I have enough faith in myself to believe I can get through it.
BUT. I wouldn't be able to do that if I WASN'T alone.
Because I've talked to the Baker tonight, I know he's there. And I know others will be too. People will give me the support needed, I have that, and with that support, I should pull through this. Millions aren't that lucky. I have no excuse to go under.
But how glad am I, I don't have a wife and kids to support.
Because this is the point. If I had them, right now, they'd have no idea.
They'd know nothing.
I wouldn't tell her that the whole thing had gone tits up. That it might well be months before a good life could be there again on the best case scenario, worst case scenario, if I truly buggered it all up, we'd all be homeless.
Because that's the reality.
I could never stand in front of a woman, the woman I was supposed to protect, and tell her that. All I could do, would be to stroke her cheek and lie. Tell her 'Don't you worry, it's all Ok, just had a bad day. Nothing to worry about'. And only when I knew she believed me, would I leave. Down the pub to get drunk and discuss with my mates the problems I was keeping from her.
Because right now, I'm glad I sleep alone.
Because my best mate came round at half five and I told him, it's all down to computers now. On Monday. Fuck all I can do. Nothing more I can do now. They'll take the payment before the money goes in, or the money will go in before the payment goes out. That, really, is it. I'll either get through it, or I won't. This really is, as close as it gets. And it's either the turning of the corner, or I literally am destitute.
And that's why I'm glad that when I go out tonight with the Baker, I don't have to come home to anyone.
To not have to have them try reach out to you as you lie in bed facing away from them. To not have to face them saying 'Are you sure you're all right?' And me lie and say 'It's ok. Trust me. I know what I'm doing'.
Because I don't. Right now, I don't. Right now, I'm living on a wing and a prayer.
Because I'm too proud a man to allow myself to show my weaknesses in front of a woman. Right now, I rest my entire hopes in other men. That other men will carry me through.
How could a woman respond to this if she lived with me? She'd know something was wrong in her heart of hearts, but I wouldn't tell her. She'd want me to trust her, but she'd have become the person in the world it was most important for me to keep secrets from.
And I wouldn't let her back in till the day I could walk back in knowing everything was on an even keel again.
Today I just thank my lucky stars, that only the Baker knows that my bank account really is empty till Monday. I can party tonight, gratis, as if it is full to the cows come home. And no one will be any the wiser.
I thank my stars that I don't have to tell a woman I love, 'Don't bother putting your card in the joint bank account- it's empty'. I'd never be able to look her in the eye again.
One of the biggest lies of history, concerns human progress.
The development of human theories, basically. And one of the biggest slurs of all time, concerns two of the biggest theories of all time.
The history of human discovery, is largely the history of spotting patterns.
Copernicus suggested in 1540 that it would be far easier to explain the movements of the planets, by assuming everything went round the Sun. The theory then in the ascendant, said everything went round the Earth. The problem with the latter theory, is that the movements of every other planet, excepting the Sun and the Moon, suggested that that theory was too simple. Their apparent movements, just didn't fit in. Long before Copernicus, it had been pointed out that a Universe in which the Sun moved round the Earth would be a far simpler explanation.
Except that...
It couldn't be true. Why?
Simple. The Stars don't move. If the Earth really does move, then the positions of the stars should change. They don't.
Ah, but that's because they are so far away!
Do you realise how far away they'd have to be? To be that far away they'd have to be many, many times greater than the Sun! All of them! No, that theory doesn't fit.
Until Kepler tried an experiment. Holding up pieces of thread against the stars to see just how thin a thread would obscure their light. It turned out the stars were much smaller than they appeared to be. The light we saw, wasn't a true reflection of their size. We didn't actually see the stars, just the light from them. If they didn't shine, they were actually too small to see. Not even the pinpricks we thought we saw. They really COULD be that far away.
The same with evolution. It's often said the main opposition was religious. It wasn't. It was scientific.
I love the history of how Evolution was discovered. A wonderful history of how a theory progressed.
Contrary to popular belief, Darwin didn't invent the concept of Evolution. Systematists had come up with the idea long before, as they catalogued animals.
The Whale was a Mammal, not a Fish. But more interestingly, it actually had features suggested that maybe it was descended from a design plan common to all mammals. Why else the tiny leg bones, of no use to itself, lurking under that apparently fishy flesh?
Jean Baptiste Lamarck was the first to suggest a theory. He suggested that all animals DID share a common ancestor. But that their environments changed them. The example put forward was the Giraffe. During its life, it stretched it's neck and therefore passed on longer necks to it's children. This theory, was the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics. The idea was that creatures contained an inner virtue, a kind of malleable gene, which the life the creature led could change.
So creatures strove to advance themselves, creatures really could change themselves.
What was controversial about Darwin's theory, was that it removed even this supernatural vestige. In Darwin's theory, even the animal didn't determine it's future progress. Nature did. It was all down to basic Economic laws.
What makes this a great theory, is that it was formulated twice, in almost identical ways. And that really, it is so simple. There the biologists were, pondering Lamarck's theory saying 'Yes, evolution happens' or 'No, all species are created separately', and the real answer wasn't in biology at all.
Darwin got bored on the Beagle. It's that simple. And he had been pondering whether Species really had evolved or not, when he picked up his bedtime reading.
Thomas Malthus' 'Essay on Population'.
A fairly gloomy tract. It basically said that population would always expand at a greater rate than capacity to feed it. Because people liked sex, basically. So populations would expand until the natural economy came in and people died from War, Famine or Poverty. Cheerful stuff.
Only, Darwin thought; if that's what happens to MAN, surely all animals are affected the same way? And so then... Only those survive who are best suited to fit the circumstances...
The environment drives evolution...
All you need therefore, is enough time. Time for random changes, random population movements, geological events, etc...
Now why this theory is so good, is Darwin wasn't a risk taker. He sat on his theory. Didn't tell a soul.
Till, sixteen years later, a naturalist called Alfred Wallace, retired to his hammock in New Guinea, pondering whether evolution could have happened. He picked up his bedtime reading. Thomas Malthus.
And five minutes later, he had it. He started writing his letter. To Charles Darwin, as luck would have it.
Thomas Huxley, as soon as he heard said 'Of course! How stupid no one thought of that before!'
The majority of biologists felt the same way.
The opposition wasn't from religious leaders either. That's a myth.
The opposition was from the physicists.
'Not possible' said Lord Kelvin.
Work it out, he said. You're implying a fairly random sequence of events. Well, we physicists can now TELL YOU how old the Earth is. We worked it out. Because now, we understand Thermodynamics. The Sun, we now know is a big ball of Hydrogen, burning away. And the temperature of the Earth's rocks tells us physicists, it is sixty million years old.
It can't have been around for anything over sixty million years. So that should show you, evolution has happened far faster than would have been possible, were it left to purely natural selection. There MUST have been some other agency involved.
Evolution had happened, yes, everyone agreed on that. But evolution by natural selection alone? There hadn't been enough time.
Only- there was something nobody knew.
Nobody knew, till Rutherford split the atom. Nobody knew till Einstein proved that E=MC squared.
And now it was seen that the sun isn't just a burning ball of gas. That the sort of reaction it was could last BILLIONS not MILLIONS of years. And that the Earth's temperature could have been kept warmer, far, far longer than anyone realised, due to radioactive decay. The Earth was old enough for Darwin to be right.
And that really was all Darwin needed to be right. Time. Enough time to have happened.
Because really, that is all his theory says. It really is the simplest theory ever. It just says 'The Earth was around long enough to account for this diversity'.
And it's true. If the Earth had been around as long as it has and life DIDN'T show the variety it did, then that would be very strange indeed.
To me, this theory HAS to be the most central theory in the history of humanity, period. We understood NOTHING until we grasped this theory, we grasped EVERYTHING thereafter.
It really is the dividing line between ignorance and understanding, between a positive understanding of what we are, and a negative backward outlook. It is the most important paradigm shift in human concepts ever.
It is the faith that humanity has searched for in the wrong places, since it first learned how to make fires.
But human advance doesn't stop there.
Max Planck was told when he was a boy 'Don't bother going into physics- it's pretty much solved'.
How wrong they were that told him that!
There are many things we probably think are solved, that aren't. Many strange new discoveries that will open up to us things we never thought of.
I'm sure the coming century will show us that photons, quarks, neutrinos, Higg's Bosons, etc, are all really the SAME particle, just doing different things. But those different things it's doing...
A whole new world of multi-dimensional space. Certainly not three, maybe way more than the eleven we now dimly conceptualise. And I think it's a panorama we only dimly grasp now. There will be many things that physicists now battle their minds against, thinking 'How?' The answer will seem beyond conception. Till one day a physicist looks up from his papers and something on 'The Simpsons' makes him think 'Of Course! Just like Moe's Tavern! That's the answer!'
And he'll put forward his theory and everyone will say 'Great'. Till a mathematician says 'No. The maths doesn't add up'.
And years later, another mathematician will show that no one EVER could have known of this strange unknown fact about the fundamental ways dimensions themselves are composed which means...
That the Moe's Tavern theory can actually now be made to fit with the mathematics.
Science is actually the greatest of all faiths. Because it is the faith that people can be wrong.
But that ultimately PEOPLE will get to the right answer.
The ancients feared their Gods. Their Gods did not love them, their Gods could be cruel.
It's often said that the Gods of the ancients were not really so very divine. They had very human sentiments. They were flawed, they had no concepts of Good and Evil as such, they could be benign, they could be malevolent. They were just men and women with supernatural powers.
And yet- the truth is darker yet, if you look. The ancients seemed to have understood something else about their Gods. If their Gods really DID have the same sentiments as human beings, then- that was indeed a terrible thought. For having the powers they did from the moment of their birth, how could the Gods ever have needed to learn to adapt to those around them? Having never had to suffer as humans had, never had to fear death, never had to fear poverty, starvation, never had to fear being rejected by any other than a fellow deity, or if they were rejected, able to visit terrible consequences on those that rejected, how could the Gods be anything other than fickle and capricious beings, spoilt brats, children who knew how everything in the entire universe worked, bar one thing.
How human beings felt.
The Gods might look down on humanity, might watch their lives and smile. But they watched them as a child might watch a guinea pig in its hutch. What the Gods would never be able to do, would be watch the guinea pig as an adult would.
They were born with knowledge of everything, and that never changed. Gods could not learn, there was nothing for them to learn. And so experience changed nothing for them.
Whether the ancients had sat and contemplated this, I do not know. Maybe it was merely a piece of insight into what such beings must be. But the mythologies of the ancients make it clear, the Gods rule, but certainly not responsibly.
Take Jupiter. The highest power in the Universe. Yet has a habit of plucking human beings (of both sexes) up to Olympus to frolic with, then leave about the place as ornaments. Human wars are not about right and wrong for the Gods either. Gods take sides depending on personal preference. Frigga once asked Odin whether the Vandals or the Lombards would win a certain battle, and his reply was 'Whoever I see first when I wake up'. This kind of lackadaisical frivolous approach to human affairs was expected by the ancients in the powers that ruled their universe.
The ancients didn't look up to their Gods for moral advice. How could they? The Gods knew very little about the daily grind of human existence. They really were driven entirely by their passions. And human beings really just had to make do. Pacify them, placate them.
They weren't even worthy of respect by the standards of the people who worshipped them. I'll be honest, I find the exploits of Freya and Aphrodite often quite refreshing tales to hear of Goddesses, but is curious to think of the Vikings, who undoubtedly punished adultery amongst their women in utterly barbarous ways, worshipping a goddess who sold her body to four dwarves in exchange for a necklace. Or the stolid Romans of the stoical Republic worshipping a goddess who frolicked with Ares and Adonis whilst her husband trawled away in his furnace.
Perhaps the beginning of the end for these sorts of religions really was when Rome reached its height. When men came along who made the whole world sing their praises. The Emperors, rising to giddy heights no human being had yet dreamed of. Because men like these didn't merely retire to the Elysian fields, surely?
No, like Hercules, they were so great that on their death, they joined the Gods. In life they were men, in death they were Gods...
Dangerous thoughts. For once you establish the principle that an Emperor is a God in death, does that not in life make him a God in the making? And what if he starts to act like one?
When the whole point of being a God, is utter contempt for human beings...
The Romans shivered in horror at Caligula and Nero, but what could they expect? These men were merely behaving exactly as the Gods did. Living Gods. If Jupiter could get away with it, so could they. Because unlike other men, they'd dine with Jupiter one day.
It is easy to glorify these ancient religions and emphasise their apparent virtues. That they never burnt people at the stake, that they never forced people to convert, and they didn't. But ultimately, they outlived their usefulness once human culture reached a certain point. They could only offer a series of tales, fireside stories to unite a people and create a common culture, they offered no moral compass to drive that people forward.
Perhaps the real selling point to the intelligentsia of the classical world that Christianity offered, that it alone could offer, was that it offered a grown up God. A God who knew that the only way to understand humanity, to view them as a grown up adult views the guinea pig, was to live as one of them.
Maybe the early converts thought 'Yes, if there really is a God and he really does love us, he'd HAVE to do that. That is the mark of a loving God, that he'd be born among us, live among us, die for us, then return to Heaven knowing us. That God, we can believe in. That is a truly mighty God and he must be able to defeat these Gods of ours, who if they exist, lack the wisdom this new God surely possesses'.
That, I think, was always the true triumph of Christianity. That it had a God who had come to learn from humans how to be a better God.
Myself and the Baker were sitting in the pub a week before my niece was due. He was relating how stressed he was by the whole situation, indeed he was already negotiating with D for the two of us to have a weekend away a couple of months after the birth to give him a break.
And then it came out 'Sometimes, Crushed, it's all just too much. The amount of time you have to devote to all this. Sometimes I just wish I had more time to spend with you, the way it used to be, when you I and could just take the Monday off every month or so and have a good session. Now I feel I don't have a life. It's all work- and relationship. No time for the good things'.
I smiled. 'That's kind of why I avoid committed relationships. Though I think, to be fair, it's kind of the wrong time for you to be thinking like this'.
He winced. 'I know'.
I carried on watching the football and slurping my pint. And it had me a little perplexed. If this is how the Baker was feeling, what hope was there for anyone?
I've generally put down the fact that most of my relationships have been hell to the fact that I was with the wrong people. I suppose I always thought that in THEORY it might conceivably possible, even for me, to actually be able to live with someone, if I loved them enough, in a committed relationship- without me being miserable. I know now, that almost certainly isn't true.
It's interesting to watch the Baker and D finding ways to make this work. And they are. And how they do make it work, is interesting. D, of course, is the model girlfriend in so many ways. The Baker is lucky. A man couldn't ask for more.
My parents, when they ask about how they're getting on, find the whole set up bizarre. The Baker lives in North Wales, where his factory is. She lives a few streets away from me. The Baker can work from home two days a week, so he comes down here every fortnight. He'll spend Saturdays and the Monday evening with me, Sundays with D and the baby, and work from my PC in my flat Mondays and Tuesday daytimes.
My parents don't see this as the way it's 'supposed' to be.
To them, the two should marry and live together in the same place. I point out to them, why that it isn't the best solution, and that things as they are really are the best way, for so many, many reasons.
Firstly, with the career the Baker has, he's working fifteen hour days many days. It's not necessarily a bad thing that whilst actually at the factory, he doesn't have a 'family' to worry about. What he now has, is a little holiday every two weeks, where he stops off at Shrewsbury on the way down to see his Mum and brother, then drives on down here. So it all adds up really. It fits in. And he gets to spend time with me as well, plus the Chimney Sweep lives not far away, so in terms of organising social events, etc, keeping the Midlands as a base for his life, with his factory being the place he works at, works well. When he's at work, he's like a soldier off at the trenches in that respect. And D doesn't want to move up there. Her Mum lives a few streets away, she sees her Mum every day. Plus, I can go visit my niece whenever I want, so I don't want her to move either.
The Baker could move down here, my parents say. No, I say, because the group don't have any factories down here. He'd have to seek an identical position down here, and that might involve a pay cut. The fact is, looking at the bigger picture, things being the way they are, is best.
But deeper than that, I really don't think that people of my parents generation see just how differently we view things in our generation. My Dad always points out he was married at my age and I was already born. My parents still believe- as I think most parents do, that our generation are kind of late developers, flawed in some way, that really we're just fighting against what is NORMAL; settling down and marrying to raise children.
I have said before we are no longer divided into nations, but generations. It really is true that the dynamics affecting our generation are so very, very different.
Our parents grew up having family values instilled in them by people who believed in them. We didn't. Not really. My parents were married, yes, but you were still aware that they had kind of sold out on ideals they'd once had, when they wondered round the Isle of Wight starkers singing about Peace And Love. Your parents told you that all this stuff sounded great, but they'd tried it, it didn't work, settling down into monogamous relationships was the thing to do. As they played John Lennon and Joe Cocker in the background.
I think most of our generation growing up in the Thatcher years asked the same questions. The message society gave us was; principles are crap. The sixties proved that. The Hippies became Yuppies. That's what the eighties was all about. It was when society shamelessly said 'No, we don't really have any underlying principles, we sold our principles to get five bedroomed homes with en suite bathrooms'.
And we rebelled. Our rebellion was the rave scene.
And the male of my generation has grown up seeing things very differently to our parents. Because we actually did try, in a way they didn't, communal living. We were students for three years, and in that time, you do pretty much practice communal living. We actually did run our house at Uni pretty much as a commune. And it did work.
And like many people in my generation, I look back on those years as the best years of my life. And like many of my friends, keeping as much of the way we lived then alive, has been important for me.
And as you go through your twenties, you find yourself confronted with all the pressures of life. To conform, to fit in, with social expectations. The way it's always been done. But you're far less inclined to fit in with the norms than your parents were. Because you are the children of Hippies. And you actually believe you CAN make it work without compromising your freedom.
I've tried living in monogamous committed relationships. Hated it. I actually found it just too much stress. Because I guess I'm finding like so many do, that having experienced through University days that a great quality of life can be achieved without it, having experienced through life in my twenties, that in many ways you ARE happier being single, there's far less reason to 'settle down'.
Now this wasn't true in my parents days. Being single at thirty, had little to offer.For one, you are going home alone to an empty house, devoid of company apart from the TV, with only three channels. You probably won't get much sex- some, but to get regular sex and affection, you needed a committed relationship.
Well- it's not like that now.
It's perfectly possible for me to get everything I need, emotionally and physically, without ever committing. Ever.
So- why would I want to?
The problem is this. You meet a girl, you get to like her, you want to carry on seeing her, you enjoy her company. It's great at first, the wining and dining, the talking. Problem is when you get to talking about the future. And this, I think, is where me, like so many men get caught out. Because I guess we do sometimes convey we want something different to what they want. Ultimately, I think there are things we do want in common with what they want. But we're not honest about it.
Or I'm not. Or not always that I'm dishonest- just I allow them to draw the wrong conclusions. And things go pear shaped.
You see, I DO want someone to be the mother to my children one day. I do. Not just little cuckoos that I seed about the place and then abandon, not having a clue what their names turned out to be or even what sex they are. Children who I have regular contact with. Children who bear names I gave them. Children who grow up to be Birmingham City fans, children who are baptised in the Catholic faith.
And I want the mother to be a regular feature of my life, someone I'd count as one of my closest friends, someone who was always there for me, someone who would always be a part of my life. Part being the operative word.
I think I really do just want to find a woman I can actually be honest and have that with. Where we never marry, never even move in together, always retain separate living space, but spend perhaps two or three nights a week together, and maybe alternate weekends. Without any commitment of exclusivity. And we keep our lives totally separate. I keep my finances, she keeps hers. It would only be the finances of any children we had, that we'd manage together.
An I'd still have my friends, she'd have hers, we'd have separate social lives, but sometimes I might bring her along to social functions, other times I wouldn't. And the same for her. We'd be the lasting, stable features in eachother's lives, but we'd each be able to have short term flings for both emotional and physical reasons with the latest fancies of the moment. Or longer term. And we'd actually be able to talk to eachother comfortably about these things. And I'd still be able to keep all my relationships with mates, with blogging friends etc, totally unaltered. I'd still probably spend more time with my mates overall, than I did with her. She'd understand that whilst she was important to me and PART of my life, so were these other things and other people.
And if I said to her 'I'm not going to be able to come round for a few weeks' that would be Ok. No big deal.
That's actually what I want. And it really would be great to find someone you could be that honest with and say 'Yes. I want to spend my life with you. Kind of. For you to be ultimate love and affection in my life, the eyes I look into on my death bed. But please, do you mind if we do it a different way to the way it's expected? Can it not be an all or nothing deal? I want you to be the mother of my children and I commit to putting an equal share towards raising those children, but can we do that as people living separate lives? Without either of us being beholden to the other? Can we love eachother and still both stay single?'
I have frequently suggested that our so-called democracy is often manipulated deliberately by the press. I have suggested that events by the Falklands War were deliberately used to ensure that an unknown party did not win a UK election.
What I think is pretty shocking is the way in more recent history, the outcome of elections has been scandalously manipulated by the Media. And people are so used to it, they're blind to it. It really is like the bit in 1984 where the speaker is denouncing Eurasia and during his speech gets a message, then immediately starts denouncing Eastasia.
And what we have seen over the last few years- last two decades actually, is a pretty unpleasant phenomenon.
Now, the fact is, I never really took this seriously at one time. But I first became aware of the way the Media operates some years ago. Before the 1997 election, when I was quite political active, in fact I was a fairly Thatcherite Vice-Chairman of the Aberystwyth Conservative Students, I happened to be sitting next to a journalist at a dinner. No one major, he worked for a paper based in York. I said I expected the Tories to lose, but was hoping that Michael Portillo would be the new leader after Major had departed. He smiled and told me it wouldn't happen. Because the press knew things about Portillo. In other words, there was some story the press had. And were saving. They'd only publish it right in the middle of a leadership contest, basically. Because the press wouldn't want Portillo to become Conservative party leader.
At the time I pondered what the story could be. Of course, we all found out. Because Portillo- fair play to him- beat the press. When he returned to politics after losing his Southgate constituency, when he went to seek election for the most stodgy constituency in the UK, Kensington and Chelsea, he came out with it. He had experimented with gay sex in his youth.
And it changed a lot of things. Because everyone said 'So? No big deal.' And it changed the Tory party. People forget, up till then, being gay and being a Tory MP didn't happen. Or it did, but very, very quietly.
Portillo has always been one of those politicians who has never lost my respect. I have a sneaking suspicion he and I could have sensible discussions on most topics. All the time I was a Conservative party member (up until 2003), I considered myself a 'Portillista'.
He beat the press. As far as anyone can. But he had the stature to.
Nevertheless, it's only the tip of the iceberg of something very worrying.
One of the main things that brought down the Major government was the 'Back to Basics' saga. In a sense, the government was hoisted by it's own petard, but in fact, that is less true than first meets the eye. The Media portrayed the slogan as referring to returning to some kind of wholesome, Victorian, family values morality- which I suppose was part of it- but I think in practice Major was referring to returning to older British values generally. It was a load of crap of course, but that doesn't mean it wasn't deliberately misrepresented by a Media who had decided Major must go.
I don't think for one moment that the incidence of Tory MPs cheating on their wives with researchers, going to gay clubs, being caught with oranges in their mouths wearing tights went up dramatically during this period. Or that they were statistically more likely to be up to these things than members of any other political party. But with 'Back to Basics' as the backdrop, any story about sex and Tory Ministers/MPs made good news. It made a laughing stock of the Tories.
And the message was 'Do you trust these idiots to run you? They're buggering up the country and all they come up with is, life will be better if we stop shagging so much, and they can't keep to it themselves!'
I notice many Tory bloggers accuse the Media of being biased towards Labour now. Er-no.
They WERE, yes.
But a usual sure sign of who the Media want to win, is whose scandals do they publicise. Don't tell me that NO ONE in ANY party was up to anything lurid in Blair's first term. And don't tell me that Labour ministers only started sleeping around after the war in Iraq. And that now, for some reason, all Tory MPs are choirboys. It ain't so.
But a startling proof of the Media intervening to ensure the outcome of the next election, happened in 2006.
In 2006, the political landscape was interesting. It looked like something very unusual was going to happen at the next election. The Tories now had a leader adopting a more centrist position.
It already then seemed certain that Labour couldn't win next time.
But the Liberal Democrats under Kennedy seemed to be going from strength to strength.
The most likely outcome of the next election really did seem to be a hung parliament. With either Labour OR the Tories able to form a government, depending on going into coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
Uncharted territory. Especially bearing in mind what was happening in the Liberal Democrats. A lot of people don't get what happened in 2006. Quite why Charles Kennedy was pushed as Liberal Democrat leader.
The reason was, the Liberal Democrats were changing. Market Liberals were in the ascendant. Old school, Adam Smith, Free Trade liberals. The type of Liberal Churchill used to be, in his Liberal days. And they could see the chance to hold offices of State. And they knew that the answer wasn't by going into coalition with a government that has just lost it's majority. They knew that the party needed to be led by somebody who fought the next election, being prepared to bring the Liberal Democrats into a coalition with the Tories afterwards. And Kennedy had ruled against ever working with the Tories.
Kennedy's drinking habits were a mere excuse; it was a coup by market liberals to get a leader who would do business with the Tories. A leader who would work with the Tories against the common enemy and bring about a coalition government containing the first ever Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers.
And those observers who could see what was happening thought as soon as Mark Oaten stepped forward 'It'll be Oaten. The man is going to be Foreign secretary in 2010. In a Cameron-Oaten government'. The other one to come forward was Simon Hughes, representing the social liberals. However, Hughes has never been an idiot. More of a pragmatist than Kennedy, it was quite possible to see him accepting office in a coalition with Cameron.
The result of the next election looked guaranteed.
Until.
Within a week, two stories had come out. One involved Mark Oaten and a rent boy.
The other involved Hughes and a gay lover back in the eighties. That wasn't so bad, except it was in the context of the fact he won his seat in the first place because his opponent was the gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell. And now it was alleged his supporters had smeared Tatchell to win Hughes the seat by making sexuality the issue, when in fact Hughes himself had a gay lover all along! What a hypocrite!
Both candidates pulled out.
And the Lib Dems ended up with the useless Sir Menzies Campbell. Who ruled out ever working with the Tories. Who presided over the decline of his party to be just the third party of British politics. A minor irrelevance that only interests people when they really can't find ANYTHING good about EITHER of the other two.
Cameron will win the next election, and have a solid majority. I'm sure of that. But I'd have preferred a coalition, that's for sure. I actually think a Tory/Liberal Democrat government would have been quite liberal in it's agenda, perhaps the most GENUINELY liberal government we'd have seen in recent years. Precisely BECAUSE it was composed of two parties who had to compromise with eachother.
But clearly the people that control the Media- and ultimately therefore decides who govern us- weren't keen on the idea. The Media decided that they wanted one or other of the two traditional parties running the show, and since the red lot were hated now, it had to be the blue lot. The yellow lot were a bit unpredictable. If they don't have to be brought into the picture, no need to bring them in.
Myself, I found the whole thing pretty shocking. It simply confirmed for me that the Media really do sit on these stories for years, bringing them out only when it suits them. They only show us our politicians are human beings at the exact moment that it hurts them most to be human. I'm sure Tony Blair wasn't a Messiah in 1994 and only became a dickhead after declaring war on Iraq.
It could be that right now a journalist is showing his editor close up photos of David Cameron in bed with Sol Campbell. And his editor is locking those pictures away. Till the day it is decided in a smoke filled room somewhere that Cameron's government has to go- time to make that nice David Milliband the man of tomorrow.
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