When we Take Over the Weather

I suppose this time of year often sets me thinking down one of my favorite trains of thought.

And it concerns our environment.
We worry a lot about our environment, and with good reason. Though I'm not sure we're perhaps as logical about environmental issues as maybe we should be.

In a sense, our survival and our thriving are linked, of course, to our environment. The survival of any species is linked to its ability to adapt to environments. We, however, have added to that; the potential ability to adapt environments to suit ourselves.

I think sometimes, when I expound my vision of the future the one aspect of it people don't always care for, is that yes, it is a tamed world I look forward to. A world entirely under the control of man. A world where at a fundamental level, everything is under our control.
A world where the weather itself is controlled so that no extremes of climate exist, every portion of the globe is perpetually temperate. There are no real wildernesses, just large areas of artificial wildernesses which exist as parks, where nature can be allowed to exist, tamed, under our control. The numbers of all species will be under our control. No species can become a problem, but no species can go extinct either.

And some look at this concept with horror.

A world where the entire atmosphere and weather are controlled by satellites, almost like a kind of air conditioning system. That one day the UN will actually have responsibility for controlling and maintaining the artificial environment of Earth as one of its functions.

The thing is, of course, the logic that one day this should be so, is overwhelming.

The first point is that organic life has always changed the chemical composition of the environment since time began. The soil our world is built on was created by millions of years or organic life, all of the Oxygen we breathe represents the Oxygen surplus created by the burying under the ground of the Carbon extracted by plants over millions of years in the form of fossil fuels. Animals evolved to survive on a waste product of plants not present before life existed. We live in a world sculpted by life.
And yet, of course, our very existence changes that.

And our overwhelming success as a species, also affects every other life form on the planet. We are only starting to come to terms with what our existence means for every other species, but let's look at the fact.

Large mammals. If you're a member of the Orders Carnivora, Perrisodactyla, or Cetartiodactyla, you're either one of the most successful species ever, or you verge on extinction. And what has been the determining factor in deciding that?

Utility to man.

Pigs, Cows, Sheep, Dogs, Cats, are successful species. Horses, verging on extinction just ten thousand years ago, markedly so.

Tapirs, Tigers, Pandas, in trouble.



Life generally, has taken a new turn. The determining factor in the survival of species now is whether they are useful to man, or at least, don't get in his way.

One can debate the ethics of this forever, but ultimately, it will still remain true that whatever approach we adopt, the facts will be the same. It will depend on our choice.

And one could argue that in fact, the best approach of all, is to maintain an environment most suitable for preserving the conditions in which we ourselves evolved and allows us to fully adopt the role of guardians of life on Earth.

In other words, we cannot help BUT alter the world. What we can do, is use our technology to control that. In other words, rather than asking the question what can we do NOT to affect things, we should ask whether it is possible to counteract those effects. Can we control the Earth's atmosphere. And the answer to that, undoubtedly, is yes. We could regulate the whole thing by satellites. And of course, if we did, there would be the temptation to improve it. To turn the whole world into a temperate zone. No more Sahara, no more Kalahari.
Why would we do that?

Well, pressure. People would start to demand that we did, once they had got used to the idea that the weather was controlled by Man. And besides, once we'd started terraforming our neighbours, people would wonder we held back in doing on Earth, what we did to far fuller effects elsewhere. People would wonder why it was only Earth that had areas that now were uninhabitable for humans.

But there is another, deeper reason why one day we will opt to have the environment of our planet artificially controlled.

Because it could very well happen tomorrow, that the environment we have now- goes.

The last ten thousand years, have been a blip.

We sit here worrying about how our activities are causing global warming, when in fact that's not really what we should be worrying about. In fact, we should be thinking very hard about trying to keep this planet warmer than it would be if left to nature.

We talk about the last Ice Age, as if it was a far off period, a temporary cooling in which Mammoths and Woolly Rhinos roamed and we think of it as another time. And there were other Ice Ages before that, most people dimly know. Periods of extreme cold, between the warm periods.

Not quite.

Since the start of the Pliocene, five million years ago, the world has essentially been in one long Ice Age. The reason for this is unclear. But the NORMAL condition of Earth for the last five million years, has been what most people see, as Ice Age conditions. It's just that every fifty thousand to a hundred thousand years, there's been a little warm spell, lasting on average, five thousand years.

We're in such a warm spell.

And it lasted long enough for agriculture to get off the ground. Indeed we were lucky, it lasted much longer than the average warm spell, we're still in it, and we've built an amazing global civilisation.

But six billion of us exist and we have got used to a world in which large parts of the continental landmasses aren't icesheets or tundra.

What happens when Mother Earth calls time on our Indian Summer and Earth returns to being Planet Narnia?

Because it's long overdue.

Because this won't be manmade change. This will be the world returning to it's NORMAL weather system. And the NORMAL weather system of Earth, is not the one that has existed in recorded human history.



To keep the world the way mankind has got used to it being, will mean defying nature and artificially keeping the Earth warm.
Because it will actually be true, that even on Earth, mankind's civilisation cannot exist in natural conditions.

I must admit, I do look forward to the effect that will have on human culture. Because obviously, we'll opt to go against nature. To preserve ourselves. But from that point on, it will have come to pass that all human environments, are artificial ones. And that will change how we see ourselves.

The day planning the weather for next year, becomes like the annual budget.

In Homage to Black Women

Well, most of you thought it was wrong we executed Saddam.
By 26 to 12.

Now to this week's issue.

And no, it's not political.
Only it is.

And it concerns what I believe to be a curious example of where I think people TRY to be politically correct when it suits them, ignoring their fallacious logic.

And it concerns a matter of aesthetics. Sexual attraction, in this case.

Generally speaking, I find black women more sexually attractive than white women. That's not to say I don't find white women sexually attractive. It's just that I find myself sexually attracted to a far higher proportion of black women than white women. And if you ask me to conjure up in my head my ideal woman, aesthetically, she's petite, slender and VERY black.

Now I've been told on some occasions, that there is something racist about this.

I can't help feeling that the logic here is inherently flawed.



Does the fact I prefer women to men, from a sexual point of view, make me a homophobe? Or sexist?
Clearly not.
So why should the fact that I am generally more sexually attracted to black women than white women make me racist?

The response is kneejerk and unthinking. Because, actually, this is one area where it is perfectly LEGITIMATE for me to have a preference in skin colour.

No one bats an eyelid when a man says he prefers blondes to brunettes. If someone was stupid enough to make hair colour the basis on which he chose to employ someone, it would be wrong. But being attracted to blondes rather than brunettes? Is that discrimination?



It's ok to say 'I prefer redheads'.

And it's ok to say 'I prefer the larger lady'.

And it's ok for a woman to judge a man by physique and say openly that she only goes for muscular men.

Now in terms of making a judgement on someone's intelligence or capacity to do a job, judging by skin colour is wrong. But there is one area in which the there is an obvious difference between black people and white people. They LOOK different. So in judging by looks, one is entitled surely, to have a preference. I can't see exactly HOW racism comes into being a white male whose sexual preference is for black women.

It simply happens to be my overall experience that I find a higher proportion of black women sexually attractive.



In fact, personally, I see it as being more natural, in as much as anything is natural. I'm not saying there is anything WRONG in prefering your own skin colour, any more than there is anything wrong in prefering your own sex. But I think there is a powerful biological urge in being attracted to different skin colours to your own. And I think more people are than care to admit to it.



I suppose I have to be honest and admit that generally, I just don't find white women sexually attractive in the same way I find black women attractive. Is this because black PEOPLE are more sexually attractive?
I think, to me, yes. I think it is true that colour plays a powerful role in my idea of what I find aesthetically attractive. I find the black form aesthetically and sexually more attractive. I don't know whether it is in fact so, or whether it is merely because I'm white I think that.



But certainly, I do seem to prefer the idea of mixed race couples. Something in my aesthetic sentiment seems to think that white guys should go with black girls, and black guys with white girls.
And we should all be making coffee coloured babies.

I certainly find that I don't find the idea of people of the same race having sex particularly turns me on. About as much as people of the same sex, if I'm honest.

And whilst I clearly DO go with white women, I do sometimes think it's often because I live in a country where there just happen to be significantly more white women. They're THERE. But I don't think I've ever turned down an opportunity to go with a black girl.
And ideally, if I settle down one day, I want to be rearing coffee coloured babies.

My ideal woman is black.
Slender, dark limbs.



Is this wrong?

Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to people of one colour than another?

Poll's in the sidebar

Have your say!

Don't Co-operate an Inch More Than You Have To

They will try convince you to sell out.

They will tell you that one day you have to stop rebelling.
To 'grow up'.

Be 'responsible'.

Thing is, by doing that, you're not actually being responsible.

Because you're trying to make their framework work.

FUCK EM.

Fuck em and their law.

Let me just state that clearly. If you co-operate an inch more than you have to, you're being irresponsible.
What you need to be doing, is sabotaging their system every moment you can.



It's very simple. This scene, here in The Matrix Reloaded, is fairly crucial. It sums up what we need to do. And we learnt that in the Rave Scene. Stick two fingers up to them, with both hands. Party. Show you're alive. Dance and drink and screw. Because the values of the culture you live in are worth jack shit.

Show contempt for their system and its appalling system of values every moment you can.

All you need to do is remember this; 'Render unto Caesar'.

That's what you do. You go to work, you do your job, you pay your taxes. And you follow their laws to a degree where they have nothing on you.
But you spit on their values every chance you get.

You owe them nothing. They do not offer us a fair social contract. They do not govern us by our consent. So make it clear, we offer them the obedience of slaves, and no more. They do not ask us what we want. They never ask us what we want. They merely ask us to tick boxes every few years.

So make it clear; you have us in flesh, but not in spirit.

We give you your pound of flesh, we give you our five day week, we pay our taxes. But don't expect any more than that.
We want to bring you lot DOWN.
We want to bring your values system DOWN.



Don't play ball.

Let me just state that clearly. If you settle down the way they want you to, marry and raise kids, if you find yourself playing ball, doing 'the right thing', you're helping the system work. If you find yourself spending your money on home improvements, on going to Garden Centres, on conservatories, you've sold out.

Don't try make that sort of lifestyle work. You're giving validity to a world which depends on people trying to make it work. DON'T MAKE IT WORK.

Why should you play ball? Why should you accept the social contract as it stands?

Don't do it. They don't play fair, why should you?

You're supporting a world in which we point nukes at eachother, in which we tolerate an entire continent of misery existing, in which an underclass in the west is written off to heroin, a system which tacitly supports racism, sexism and homophobia. A Fascist Police State system which wants you sitting in your box watching a box.

Render unto Caesar.
No more.

Then do what you damn well please.
And if it undermines society as it is, keep doing it.

You have no obligations to anyone. The only obligation you have is to humanity. And you do that best by doing your damnedest to FUCK THIS SYSTEM UP as much as you can. Staying within the rules of their game.

Dance and drink and screw.

As much as you possibly can.

Fuck em.

Twelfth Crushed Sunday Memusetica

Courtesy of Judd Corizan.

1. Looking back on 2008, what might your theme song have been? 'It's my life', Dr Alban.



2. If 2008 was a movie, who would play you? Edward Norton, I reckon.

3. What was your greatest gift of 2008? Haydee. An amazing blessing.



4. What is your New Year Resolution, or, what are you committing to this year? The further development of this blog.

5. If January could be represented by one song, what would it be? 'Start Again', Depeche Mode.



6. What do you wish for your body in 2009? To stay slim and not age too much.



7. Name one new thing you would love to try in the New Year. I've never been to bed with either; a First Nations American girl; an Aboriginal Australian girl; an Inuit girl. I need to change that.



8. What do you long for 2009 to bring? The revolution.

9. If that happened, how would you feel? Complete and utter Nirvana.



10. Where would you love to vacation in 2009 if money were no object? India.

11. What would you like the theme of 2009 to be? Global revolution.



12. If 2009 was a book, and the title was 5 words or less, what might the title be? The battle for truth.

The Irish Question

I suppose those post is more for the benefit of overseas readers- the bulk of my readership- but it is also for the vast majority of UK readers who have never really troubled to understand the troubles. And why there is no easy answer.

Someone once said 'You can't solve the Irish question- they'll only ask another'.
Since the Irish Question then was a different Irish Question, he was right. There has been an Irish Question for a very long time. Just that each new answer, brought in a new question.

To understand how it began, geography is the only necessity. It starts with the Anglo-Norman monarchy. A fairly unique state in it's day. The most centralised of European monarchies and one whose people had something unique at the time, a sense of nationhood. The administrative efficiency of the state was such that it could largely be left to run itself whilst its Kings tried to conquer France. England itself became pretty immune to threat of foreign invasion during the middle ages. And with a burgeoning population, it was logical that the peripheral Celtic peoples of the British isles would end up as its subject states. It is hard to see any alternate history where this wouldn't have happened. To make itself a force to be reckoned with, England needed to shut it's back doors. Plus, of course, the best way to keep ambitious nobility busy, is to give them somewhere to be busy. Wales provided somewhere to be busy for a while, but they soon ran out of Wales to conquer. Scotland was a unified monarchy and attempts to conquer it proved more difficult. Ireland, with it's feuding provincial monarchies was superficially easy. It fell to the conquerors like France fell to the Nazi war machine.

Only it didn't. Not really. The English may have never militarily defeated the Scots, but Scotland became anglicised over time. And when it united with England finally, it was almost a marriage. Not always a happy marriage, but one in which both parties gained something. The Scots didn't come in with a grudge.

Whereas Ireland was always at the edge. And attempt after attempt was made to destroy it's culture by sending fresh colonists. But after a hundred years or so, the last wave of colonists would have gone native. Indistinguishable from the natives in so many ways.

And the reformation in England caused a good reason for Ireland to have hope. Catholicism is often seen as an expression of Irish Nationalism, and at a deep level it is. The Irish, unlike the English, felt no reason to change their religion because their King told them too. Maybe if they didn't, there was a chance they might get help from elsewhere in getting their own King again. Not one sitting in London.

And it was under James I that one colonisation attempt was made, in which the settlers didn't go native the same way. The colonisation of Ulster, up till then the most rebellious of the Irish provinces, the one which held out most tenaciously against the English. The colonists sent, were die-hard Protestants.

After the glorious revolution of 1689, Ireland effectively became a country ruled by a foreign elite, almost an Apartheid state. It was a British colony, exactly like Virginia, having it's own parliament, but that parliament still subject to the Westminster one, where Ireland wasn't represented. As in England, Catholics could not vote or be MPs. But unlike in England, Catholics were the majority.

Thus Ireland- All Ireland- was run by the Protestant minority. The ascendancy. It is the establishment of this period that is celebrated by the Orangeman during Orange Day marches, the victory at the Boyne brought this into being, the siege of Derry was a key event in it.
The century when Ireland was ruled by a Protestant minority.

The first Irish Question, appeared at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1782, the Irish parliament was freed from subordination to Westminster. The British government was somewhat subdued by the effects of the American revolution. And the next eighteen years saw Ireland infected by ideas about liberty and the rights of man, just like anywhere else.
And it seemed that the ascendancy was in danger. There was pressure to give the vote to Ireland's Catholic majority.

And the ruling Protestant minority was apprehensive. They resisted.
Pitt, the British Prime Minister, came up with a solution.

It was actually more popular with Catholics. Protestants hated it, because they felt they'd had their ascendancy taken away from them. But Catholics saw it as a step towards equality of treatment.
Ireland united with Britain to become the United Kingdom. The Irish parliament was abolished and from now on, 100 Irish MPs sat at Westminster. And Pitt allowed Catholics in Ireland to VOTE, but not sit as MPs.
This actually turned out to be a blessing for English Catholics, as the pressure from Catholic voters in Ireland meant that in 1829, the UK allowed ALL Catholics to vote and not only vote, but be elected to the House of Commons.
And this had positive effects for Catholics across the UK, as anti-Catholic legislation was slowly repealed throughout the century.



But opinion regarding the Union changed.
Most Irishmen now began to see the Union as holding Ireland back. Because Irish voters were outvoted by the English, and removing the remaining stranglehold of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy on the country, could not happen whilst the House of Lords could veto legislation. the famine proved to many Irishmen, that England did not care for the Irish people, it cared for English interests in Ireland.

The hardline Protestants began to realise that the Union preserved to them what remained of their superior position. They had it, because Britain was a Protestant country.
They feared that without Britain, they would not be able to defend themselves from 'Papist' rule.

And it is in this attitude amongst the Northern Protestant Community that so much of the problem comes from.

The history of the Home Rule movement and how it's failure led to the Easter rising, the troubles and ultimately that partition of Ireland is a long and sorry tale.

And one can say that the partition was a mistake.

And yet one looks at the civil war of 1922, one looks at the troubled history of Ireland up until the second world war and it's hard to see how a united Ireland could have made it. It was hard enough without a quarter of the population being hostile Protestants.

But the twenty six made it. The twenty six counties have had a successful history during the twentieth century, against the odds. The history of free Ireland, is a story any Irishman can take pride in.

The six counties is a different story.

And the problem was that that the northern majority, the Protestant population saw their six counties as now having become a country. In which they had a hostile minority who sought to be annexed by a neighbour.
The minority saw it differently. They saw themselves as being forced to live under the subjagation of a group of people who despised them on account of their religion, and would rather be ultimately governed by foreigners than fellow countrymen of a different religion.

The problem was- and is- neither side realistically accepts the other side has a leg to stand on.

The Protestant view is that Northern Ireland is a country. In that country, the majority of people vote to be part of the United Kingdom.

To the rest- who happen to be Catholic, but that is only relevant really in the sense that being Catholic they don't accept the Protestant view- the six county state is an arbitrarily chosen group of counties which has arbitrarily been given a position they shouldn't have had to begin with.
It is rather like the voters of the the four South Western English counties were allowed to say: The UK will never have a Liberal Democrat government. But we want one. Therefore, we should be allowed to secede and form our own state. Solely on the basis that in this part of the country, we don't like being governed by the people the rest of the country want to be governed by.

To a North of Ireland Catholic, the arguments of Protestants that they are a democratic majority, is spurious. Because the validity of the unit in question to have self determination is spurious.

And of course, in reality, they're right. The six counties have no democratic legitimacy. The problem is, they DO exist and it would be very hard, now the six coubnties HAVE been separate so long, to deny what has become an accepted fact. It's a bit like a public footpath; what wasn't originally legitimate has become so.

And both sides in the six counties have to face another uncomfortable fact.
No one actually wants them.

If the British government could get rid of the six counties, it would. And not just Labour governments. A Tory one would as well, though it wouldn't admit it. Most British people too, would be glad to see the back of this festering sore. Because it erupts every now and then, and it will again. There's only so far any peace process there can go before the hardliners on both sides realise they're talking at cross purposes and always will be. Because one side think they're British, and the other think they're Irish. So bombs on the mainland will be back one day.

And then there's the cost. Not just in money, but in lives of British soldiers. And in how the UK is perceived across the globe, because whilst the UK has that millstone round it's neck, it gets the blame. It's a negative legacy of colonialism, a reminder of the blackest parts of our Imperial past and of recent times too.

But would any Irish government REALLY want a united Ireland?

If the UK cannot deal with a situation where it has a million people on side, and whose terrorists largely REACT to the IRA, and only half a million people hostile to the UK, how can an Irish Republic of three million people hope to take it on? Because then the loyalists would become the more aggressive of the paramilitary groupings. The violence in the six would be greater than it has ever been. And little Ireland to take that on?



Most people in the south want a united Ireland, or so they think, but it is a united Ireland in which Ian Paisley's voice isn't heard. Or the voices which have grown up cheering him.
And that's still a pipedream.

A united Ireland could be a very unstable Ireland.
And things have got along fine south of the border without the six.

I must admit myself, to having come up with what I think would be the ONLY viable long term solution. Except I can still see it has problems.

If a Stormont style parliament was restored, under normal democratic rules, thereby guaranteeing permanent majority rule in the six.
But a transition period agreed to hand over actual sovereignty.

So the six counties would exist as an autonomous unit within a united Ireland. Like Scotland does within the UK as a whole.
It's whether the Loyalists would accept it.
Maybe it's even worse than things as they are now.

It really does seem to be one of the questions, there can never be an answer to.

And if one day, it IS solved...

They'll only ask another.

The Nature of Evil

Good and Evil are issues I think we fail, in our current thought paradigms, of truly understanding.
We battle to get our heads around what they are.

I guess we're still wrestling with the question; if there is no devil, then what really, is evil?

And yet I would argue that both good and evil are real, they are tangible and in a sense, measurable. It IS possible to define them.
But unfortunately, they are not absolutes.
They truly ARE relative concepts.
Just because they are relative, doesn't make them false, of course. Distance is relative, but it isn't false.

Myself and a friend were driving along the motorway listening to a radio discussion about the Rachel Nickell killer and he asked me if I believed in evil as a real concept. I said I did. I defined good as being the impulse towards harmony, towards improvement, towards human happiness. Evil I defined as being a strike against that. Working against the universal harmony.
He agreed and used a term I nodded at 'Base animal instincts which no longer suit the world we live in'.

And this would seem to be a major part of it, yes. He argued that as time progresses, we get LESS evil, in a sense. I suggested that our knowledge changes, that our systems change, and evil is the flaws. You will never eradicate evil, because there will always be people who behave in a manner contrary to the greater good. But what that behaviour is, alters.

Now in a case like the Rachel Nickell killer, it's hard to imagine a culture where what he did not be considered evil. But, we forget something. A humanity once existed with no concept of good and evil. Where his fellows would once have simply carved him up if they found him odious. But maybe in such a culture his instincts would not have led him to make himself odious to his fellows. Yes, he is a throwback. Unable to control dark instincts which have had no place in human culture for millenia. He is unable to stop himself raping and killing people. But a human culture once existed where his ilk could have their fill of those activities WITHIN the framework of human culture and where therefore, he could have fitted in.
And in a sense, that's a bit disturbing.
But it certainly makes you pause for thought. Why DON'T the rest of us rape and kill people?

I've come to the conclusion that there is a very good reason why most of us actually find the concept of a rapist more repulsive than that of a murderer. I think it's because most men, if they're honest know they couldn't rape. But aren't so sure about the killing bit.
I was pondering this myself. Why IS it that I know I couldn't rape, but sometimes when I hear about routine murders- by which I mean ones that weren't planned, or carried out by serial killers, but ordinary bog standard five minutes of being pushed beyond the brink murders- I find myself shivering and thinking 'There but for the grace of God...'

I think it's largely to do with conditioning. And of course, we're all socially conditioned. We're toilet trained for a start. But even when you look at something like licking a knife. It's funny how I can't bring myself to lick sauce of a table knife. Because you're taught it's wrong. So even on your own, you won't do it. I think most of us feel that way about rape. It's ingrained within us. There are are only two ways you could commit rape. One would be if your passions got the better of you. The other is cold blooded malice.
But of course, for most balanced human beings in today's society, your passions aren't going to get the better of you to the degree you fail to understand consent. Just as your need to go the toilet never leads you to actually go in your pants. It's much the same thing. Rapists are people who have failed a basic part of cultural conditioning, the sexual equivalent of toilet training.

But killing, is different. Because there remain reasons why we as a society might permit that. Furthermore, like it or not, we do have an instinct in there to kill. And worryingly, not necessarily in self defence, either. Throughout history we seem to have found ways to deal with this, hunting being a common one. But we don't even need to do hat any more. Computer games allow us to have a fairly harmless way of getting to kill things. Images on screens. For most of us, this is clearly enough to keep Inner Homo Erectus satisfied.
Whilst none of us can think of any circumstances where there could ever be a GOOD reason to rape, we can think of several I'm sure, in which we would feel killing wasn't wrong. Or at least, it was the lesser of evils.
Because murder is UNLAWFUL killing. But we are aware there are lawful ways of doing it.
I admit myself, I oppose the death penalty and I think war is really a horrid thing, in reality. But COULD I go out there and gun people down? Well, I know how I feel when I go paintballing. And it's a strange sensation. And at the time, quite exhilerating.
I suppose at this level, there isn't a problem. I guess the majority of males are like this. We don't want to kill people and we have so little wish to kill people that we're not going to do it. But had we a reason, we would.

It's a hard one, the way we treat killing. Because ideally, we'd live in a violence free world. And I think we have to ingrain within ourselves that all human life is sacred. Problem is, killing is more instinctive to us than we sometimes care to admit.

I'm actually of the belief that the old pre-fifties term for a psychopath, moral imbecile, is a better one. It describes it better. Incapable of being educated to understand the moral nuances of the culture they live in. Of knowing which of their instincts are acceptable and which ones aren't.

The idea that a psychopath is devoid of emotions, clearly isn't true. They have emotions for sure, just not ones they are capable of controlling. Far from being cold and calculating, they are the reverse in fact. If they were able to be logical, they would be capable of being ruled by the societal norms of the culture they live in. In fact, myself, I actually see that as they KEY definition of a psychopath. Unable to control their emotions.

Why do I see that as the key? Well, because morals are cultural. When you talk of a conscience, it is for the most part a cultural construct. Most of us learn to tap our emotions into a collective whole, to EMPATHISE with society around us and build collective morals. We're not born with them. We actually learn as we develop to condition our own emotions. And yes, to suppress some of them. And encourage others. The psychopath doesn't do that. They just react how THEY feel.

Conscience is actually an important part of self awareness. What we have seemingly done is created this version of ourselves in our head which in our imagination, can be seen by the keeper of society's rules. And can judge us. That's essentially what a conscience is. It's our understanding of the NUANCES of moral codes. It's the voice that explained to us as we developed why these things were wrong.

More important, it regulates instincts. Your nasty instincts.



And it's not something we born with. It is acquired. The proof of that is easy. Feminists sometimes say 'All men are rapists'. And this offends. It clearly isn't true, at one level.
But at another, it is. All men if brought up in a society which didn't condition men against it, would be potential rapists, just as all men brought up not toilet trained, would defecate in bushes.
Only a few hundred years ago, armies abroad would burn villages and rape all the women. Ordinary men. Men who were loving husbands and fathers at home. Because human culture then believed it to be PART of war. Soldiers at war in foreign countries had license to rape. And therefore, ordinary men didn't feel what they did was wrong any more than a soldier now feels that machine gunning someone down is wrong.

And if we go back far enough, we find that our ancestors, every one of them that lived and bred, was evil by our standards. They were. It is impossible to dispute this. We find it hard to accept, but they were. They probably treated their young just as parents do today. They caressed their loved ones and showed many of the things we see as HUMAN.

But.

Two things we can be sure of. They killed and ate EACHOTHER. And they raped as a matter of course.

We know the first from disturbing remains we have found. And it shouldn't really surprise us. Early man was the most vicious predator ever. And I would imagine each tribe 'beat the bounds' of their territory regularly. The daily hunt was probably quite ritualised. A territorial act, in some ways. And if they encountered another tribe, they'd fight to the death. And the winning tribe would have a load of carcasses on it's hands. They were carnivorous predators by nature looking at a lot of dead bodies.
So yes, coming home with people flesh, was a double triumph.

The second we can be sure of, from a disturbing point about human evolution. Only two primate species are unable to tell when their females are fertile. Us, and Orang Utans.
Oran Utans are pretty nasty when it comes to sex. Unlike Chimps or Gorillas, Orangs live alone. And when a male sees a female, he simply jumps her. He doesn't much care if she's fertile or not. Hence, he has lost the ability to tell.
As, seemingly, have humans.

With humans, it was probably different. We probably lost it for warlike reasons. Once we'd annihilated the males of a rival tribe, we'd go in search of their females. And sometimes perhaps, we'd attack tribes simply to rape their females.

These are our ancestors. Nasty creatures, in many ways.

And yet can we judge them as evil? Yes, in the same way we judge slavery to be evil. Evil is the retrograde, by judging something evil, we are saying that it is something we recognise as something that we want to keep out of our way of life today.

But was it evil for our ancestors? Well, the question is largely meaningless. They did it, for a very long time, probably a lot longer than we've NOT been doing it. At the time, it clearly was a norm of their culture and it's pointless to speculate whether they could have got by not behaving like that.

By the same token, other things that once were judged evil, we can now get by doing and they no longer cause damage. Homosexuality, for instance.

So how do we set a standard for good and evil? How do we ascertain when something moves from the good to the evil category, or vice versa?

Well, we had that question to answer in the twentieth century. What made Nazism evil? Because the Nazis themselves believed themselves to be good.
The answer is objectivity. The Nazis weren't up to date with their moral relativism. They didn't use the most objective frame of reference. The knowledge we now have enables us to state that Nazi ideas caused more misery than happiness. And we can also say that it contained within it ideas that within earlier thought systems, indeed society at earlier states of development, would have been good. But not today, not in the state of human technology and development today.

The sexual revolution is a classic case in point. Of how changes in society meant that a system of values once designed to uphold harmony and prevent damage to society, was actually causing more unhappiness than it prevented. And there was a paradigm shift.
And now I think it can be said that good and evil, on that front, have been in many ways reversed. Now, those who push the old archaic values, are actually the ones who tend towards evil. Because they aim to make people more miserable.

War. At one time, I don't think pushing deliberately militaristic policies was in itself, evil. Today, it undoubtedly is.
The death penalty. Not evil in 1600, because it was needed. Today, evil.

And I can see other areas, things which could BECOME evil. But aren't yet.

One of those relates to our relatives. Our nearest ones.

It has been pointed out that over time we've widened our definition of humanity. At one time, it was thought we only needed to be human to those who had our skin colour. Now Racism is dead, but some argue, could that go further?
Could we one day demand fully equal treatment for other species?

I think that the species sets a limit, in some ways. The fact is, altruism has a selfish component. There is sense in the boundary being the species boundary, because every human being alive could be the ancestor of those your own descendants reproduce with. It has genetic logic. Our own survival is linked to it. Being nice to other species is, in a sense, an affordable luxury.

But the point is, we may be able to afford it. And yes, it will come to a point when we may feel we give species rights according to the affinity we feel with them. Because we will recognise which ones come close to us empathetically. And thus, we will feel towards them 'There but for the grace of God'.

Even now there is a campaign afoot to extend basic human rights to all Hominids. The Great apes, basically, this means that Human rights, would become Ape rights.
I can see this coming to pass. We have little to lose by doing this, and much to gain. We have no need to use Apes in the way we have uses for other animals. Perhaps giving them equal rights with us, would change how we saw ourselves and our cousins. Apes would no longer be animals. We'd simply be the success story of the Ape family. And maybe we would feel more inclined to see how far we could TEACH Apes. After all, emotionally they do not differ from us much.

I can see, in time a sort of basic rights being given to other mammals. I think it is true that in the animal kingdom- or in life generally- there is a them and us. I would say that a good deal of our emotions exist in rudimentary form in all mammals. Emotions have evolved, and I would hazard a guess all mammalian mothers experience some emotions of some similarity. As I often say, this seems to be an area of investigation not much pursued yet, comparative animal psychology, but I think when it has been done, we will recognise a basic mammal psychology, whereas the psychology of Reptiles will always seem alien. At the end of the day, they lay eggs. It's a huge difference, a root difference in the social systems and individual psychologies developed to cope with that.

I think the vegetarian argument is complicated. Our attitude to our fellow mammals isn't something we seem to have quite sorted out. We seem to agree that eating dogs is distasteful. And personally, I think that carrying out tests on dogs is appalling. But I admit that my own morality on animal treatment is patchy. I find the actual gory details of what actually happens in what we now call 'Meat Packing Plants' to be absolutely horrific to even contemplate, but nevertheless I love a good fry up. And I love a good burger.
I see dogs as being almost like furry people and feel a genuine emotional closeness to a dog that I don't to a chicken, or a lobster and certainly don't towards a carrot.
But I'm also aware that a dog is no closer a relative to me than a pig, and a rat is actually a closer relative.
The problem is, that realistically, we are carnivores by nature. Meat, and indeed red meat, is actually a fairly necessary part of our diet. Attempts to find moral ways round the fact we need to eat our fellow mammals have not as yet been successful.

But a day will probably come when we are actually able to grow red meat. Pork, Beef, etc, not actually on live animals, but in processing plants, in vast vats where the flesh can be produced without the need for it to be part of a living animal. And where indeed, we don't need to slaughter any mammals for any reason, because we don't need to produce substitutes for their parts that we slaughtered them for, we can artificially produce the real thing.
And then we will have reached a point when keeping mammals to slaughter them, will have become evil. Because there will be no necessity to do so. It will be willfully allowing lives to exist that aren't so very different to ours, lives we can emote with, just so we can slaughter them or torture them.
So what wasn't evil once, what still isn't evil yet, WILL be evil.

And we can't even begin to understand the things we do now that we can never see could ever be evil, but will be.

Just our ancestors could have no conception that killing and eating their fellows was evil.

It is not just about what is in our hearts, it is about what is in our heads.

Good is about taking what is in your heart and using what is in your head to understand the hearts of others and try create a world which brings joy to as many hearts as possible, including your own.

And Evil is when the mechanisms for achieving that are flawed.

And that is the only way I think Good and Evil can truly be judged.

Learning to Play God

Since mankind first learnt to rub sticks together to produce fire it has constantly found itself confronted again and again by the same question.

The form the question has taken has varied, but ultimately, one could call it one of the most important of checks/balances on human development that exists.

Indeed, one could argue that we HAD to invent a personalised God merely for that purpose.

We have always been aware that great and terrible forces exist in the universe. Forces upon which we depend for our very survival.
And we have always been faced with the dangers of acquiring knowledge. Because every time we have acquired new knowledge, the possibilities of what we could do with that knowledge has arisen. But of course, we knew that we didn't know everything. We always knew we could be wrong.

And what if we were?

Could we take the risk?

What were the risks of taking that leap into the unknown? Could we cross a line which would disrupt the very fabric of the universe and- end it?

Fear of that answer has so often held us back.

And humanity has always been kept in check by a marvellously simple equation.

What we don't understand, is what God does.
Therefore, you don't meddle with the unknown. It is forbidden. By God.

The effect this has had has actually meant that only when we have truly understood something, does the real question come before us; We think we understand this enough now to DO this. There is a risk, yes, we could be wrong. But here is the evidence we've built up over the years. If we're wrong, yes, the results could be fatal. But we think we know enough now to make sure that doesn't happen. If we're right, the benefits to us all of taking this step will immeasurably outweight the risks.

And that has always been it. Knowledge.
And throughout history that has been the story of human advance. What we haven't understood, we've ascribed to a deity. And as history has progressed, over and over again mankind has had to ask the same question 'This is something we only allowed to God. Do we take over responsibility for it? Can we? Will life be better for us if we do? Do we know enough to take that risk? Has this now become something that we can say with certainty that we know enough about to be able to take it on?'

And of course, it has all been about systematic advances. Advances in knowledge.

Let me first just say simply, that 'Playing God' actually means Mankind deliberately planning and utilising basic laws of the universe. It means mankind judging that it knows how laws of the universe work and using that knowledge to attempt to gain benefits for itself that it does not believe that the universe will give it if mankind does not consciously take those steps.

Now this is not a new phenomenon. There are many things we take for granted today that at one time were deemed blasphemous and ungodly. The Amish take this to extremes, but we shouldn't forget that when Photography came out, it was deemed by many to be a blasphemy, a devilish art.
The idea of Man flying was once seen as such. If God had meant Man to fly, he'd have given him wings.

But there have been other, deeper advances which were so unnerving that people feared doing them. Yes, they could see the possible benefits. But what if they were wrong? Could the whole world literally fall apart?

One such was the idea of not having Kings. Most religions emphasised the idea that God appointed Kings, that God had chosen Monarchy as the way countries should be governed. And the idea was, that was because other forms of government didn't work. Up until the late eighteenth century the wisdom was that you couldn't run a country much larger than a city without a King. Republics only worked in city states, as the Romans had learned. Rome had outgrown Republican government and needed an Emperor. The English too had learned that. They'd cut off the head of their King, but found Republics didn't work. Because England was too big to be a Republic. So Kings, despite their faults, were the only way you COULD govern large countries. And large countries were powerful and wealthy countries. Most people wanted their countries to be powerful.

So, the ideas of Rousseau and others might sound good- but the fact was, Kings worked. If you got rid of Kings, you'd have anarchy. Civilisation would fall apart.

Well, the Americans decided to take the risk. And then so did the French. And whilst the French experiment of being Kingless went full circle and ended up with Napoleon, the fact was by 1814, one only needed to look across the Atlantic to see two whole continents of kingless countries.
And whilst the story of these kingless countries didn't immediately suggest that having no King was much of an improvement, still, they proved the theory that large countries need a king to not be true. And over the course of the century, kingless countries learned to make Republicanism work and proved, on the whole (personal opinion) that in the long run, Republics are intrinsically far healthier, freer and naturally more democratic societies.

It was one rule that supposedly God had made- people must obey a King- that it now seemed he hadn't made, or if he had, had only meant it to be till we grew out of the need for them. Which we clearly had then, and certainly have now.



But the nineteenth century brought a far more significant revolution. The knowledge revolution.

At the start of the century, so much was still unknown. Certain things were still the province of God. As in, the fabric of the universe itself; matter, the forces that operated it, the mysterious nature of life itself. These were firmly the province of God. And understanding these things was always going to be a huge step.
Because understanding these things potentially gave us huge power for good or ill. But what if we used that power and were wrong? By definition, couldn't we accidentally unravel the universe?

We had to be sure we knew what we were doing.

Often we don't appreciate the largely imaginary risks people took. They turned out to be right to take those risks. But, for example, the first train to go over fifty miles per hour was- according to physicians of the day- risking asphyxiating it's passengers.

And by the time you get to physicists being able to state confidently that they know how atoms are composed- not only that, it is possible to dismantle them and create new elements- when you have biologists isolating the different chemical components of cells and saying which one does what, when life no longer holds any mystery but is understood in terms of chemical reactions and electromagnetic impulses, then the question changes.

Because the question now shifts. Because these things are no longer in the province of 'mysterious workings of God'.

What we do know, is that these things compose the fabric of the universe we live in at a root level.
And we know that using that knowledge always poses the same question.

If we get it right, it's a leap forward.
If we're wrong, we unravel the universe that we're living in.
Is it worth the risk?

It has only been in the twentieth century that questions like this have reached the magnitude they have. And they will increase in magnitude. Because we are going deeper into the structure of existence itself.

I think myself, we embarked on a whole new road when Little Boy landed on Hiroshima. It was a dark event, certainly. And it's all too easy to focus on the negatives of what has to be considered a war crime. It was.
But by the same token, would we have actually seized the chance to really unleash atomic power had we not been engaged in that life or death struggle?
It forced one side of humanity in that barbaric intra-special conflict to play God. To actually do it. To actually take the risk and unleash the enormous power we theoretically knew was at our disposal, but no one dared unleash for fear of the consequences.

It has changed the world. We're still reeling from the shock of it. Because now the atom bomb exists, we're all pointing missiles at eachother. But we're still sitting there behind them knowing the obvious. That we can't actually go to war. Not really, Superpowers can indulge in play wars against dictators they don't like, but Superpowers can't really go to war. It would last ten minutes and that would be it.

So in a sense, the atom bomb has meant one thing. Wars of the old type will never happen again. London will never suffer another Blitz. Millions of young men will never again sit in trenches, rushing over the top to face machine guns. There will never again be conscription. War is over. We'll either grow out of it, or blow ourselves up.
That's what the Atom bomb means.

It's forcing us to grow up or die.

And in terms of what Atomic power actually means, it offers us a future we could never have thought of once. It's still developing technology, but we've learned how NOT to do it. I get annoyed sometimes at the Luddites in the green lobby who refuse to see that Nuclear power, when manage properly, is the cleanest and most efficient form of power that exists. And the more we encourage it, the sooner we'll get to cleaner and more efficient- and safer forms yet. As in, Fusion as opposed to Fission reactors.

So that's one example of a power of 'God' we have bitten the bullet with and taken unto ourselves. Power to dismantle the fabric of matter.

Today though, we still have several questions on the table. Things it is technically feasible for us to do. And we know that, like with splitting the Atom, once done the genie can't be put back in the bottle. But the problem is, the question doesn't start when the genie is released. It starts when someone produces a bottle with a genie in it. And right now, Mankind has several genie pushing at the corks of their bottles.

The most obvious one, is genetic engineering and cloning. Most people step back in horror at hearing those terms.
Playing God.
But people aren't objective about this. The only way to be objective about these things is risk assessment.
We know a lot more about these things than we once did. We also have ample evidence to study the negative effects of a flawed Eugenics policy in the only society to introduce an entire Eugenics policy based on the flawed concept of racial superiority, rather than looking at specific genes.

We have knowledge and data of a different kind and are able to use it for far different purposes. We forget that evolution is a blind watchmaker. Evolution didn't happen to suit us. The world isn't actually stacked with animals and plants designed for our benefit, as we once thought it was. But- it could be. And whilst it is true that when we create plants and even animals to suit our needs these creations most certainly aren't natural in the traditional sense, the moral considerations that should be troubling us are the risk factors. Are we in control of what we're doing?

The big fear is that genetically modified plants and animals could supplant and extinct the natural ones. I would argue that that is always preventable, the ultimate safeguard being that really, we should be keeping genetic samples of all known species in laboratories somewhere, just in case their extinction is threatened, but otherwise I cannot quite why we would hold there as being any moral difference between any artificially created strain and one occurring in nature. The only difference is that we don't accord our own handiwork the same respect as that of nature. Yet by the same token, we allow for the possibility that our own handiwork might supplant nature's handiwork by nature's own laws. Illogical morality, really.

We should feel free to create species, but also commit to preserving all species, even if that is only as preserved specimens. We never know when we might need them.

As to tinkering with human genes, even cloning, my view on this, is that we're not looking at an if. But a when. It doesn't matter how much we protest against it, or fear it.
It is something we will do.

No stopping it. Because the bottle with the genie in exists. And no, we probably still don't know enough about it to risk it yet. But the day will come.
The day will come when the knowledge of human genetics is so great that a huge number of possible advances in our quality of life will be there for the taking and the perceived risk will get smaller as knowledge progresses.

Like it or not, the day will come when steps are taken to prevent transmission of crippling hereditary conditions, such as haemophilia. And once we start doing that, other things will become the norm too.

The question isn't any longer about stepping on God's toes- we know how people are made. It's just do we trust that people know enough about how people are made and the consequences of allowing people themselves to mess with the ingredients list to actually improve on what nature has done.

And whilst we've learned the dangers of tackling this with harebrained theories and no real knowledge (Hitler), and whilst the answer to that question is still 'No', one day the answer will be 'Yes'.
We DO know enough to take on this responsibility.

The other one of course that troubles us, is our environment.
Like it or not, our existence is having a radical effect on it. Nothing new there of course. The earth didn't start the way it is. Four billion years of life gave it this Oxygen rich atmosphere. But we're clearly having effects on it that maybe we don't want to be having if we want to carry on living here.

So what do we do?
Do we stop having those effects?
Or do we do something about it?

And again, implicit in that, is a wider question. The technology we are looking at, that is within our power, is again taking over a power once ascribed to God. The thing is, we know the theory of it. Already now, scientists can explain theoretically how human technology and satellites could 'terraform' both Mars and Venus. As in turn them into Earthlike environments.
And of course, people miss the obvious point is that if we do develop that technology, we can simply apply it to Earth too.

Terraforming could be used not just on Mars and Venus, but on Earth. Not just to keep earth the way we want it to be, but to make all of it the way we always want it to be. We could, ultimately control the weather and the temperature everywhere by satellites. We could plan an entire weather system that kept the entire globe pretty much temperate without extremes. And we wouldn't need to worry about the composition of the atmosphere because it would be perpetually controlled by satellites maintaining the atmosphere we desired.

Again, I have no doubt that this WILL happen. It's just WHEN. It's when we feel comfortable we understand enough to know that taking such a step won't result in us sitting on an atmosphere free rock exposed to cosmic radiation. But one day we'll feel that taking such a step is not much of a risk- that we really do know what we're doing. And the possibility of a perpetually verdant Earth with clean air, that can be achieved without sacrificing the perpetual advance of living standards will be worth what will now be a minimal risk. We'll know it COULD go wrong, but we'll be confident enough that our systems, our checks and balances that we have in place can protect us if it does.



We read Dystopian fiction, such as Brave New World and others and we often miss the point. These novels are warnings of the powers we are taking on. That one day, we will take on. But all Dystopias, are mirror images of Utopias. Because Dystopias are examples of what happens if we are wrong.
But we shouldn't read these novels and assume that the concepts of the advance are wrong. It is the SYSTEMS used to tackle these advances that are wrong, and THAT is the point Dystopian visions of the future highlight.
They warn us of the issues we will face when we get there.

I have only highlighted a few of the moral questions we will have to tackle. But of one thing you can be sure; every time the possibility of Mankind taking upon itself a power once reserved to God, eventually we will take it on. The question will simply be when we know enough to be sure we can, when we know our systems work.

I don't generally believe in adopting too anthropocentric a view of the universe. But I do believe that something very significant is at work in humanity. Something that underpins our entire society.
We don't admit it, but the entire history of human society has been about gaining knowledge to better our systems of living, of advancing our quality of life, about producing more of us, leading happier lives, living in more places.

And as these systems have advanced, yes, we have most certainly been taking power away from God and giving it to Man.
To Atheists I would say, well if there is no God, there is no issue here.
To believers I would point out that actually, I do believe in a deity myself, of sorts, though you might call my concept of a deity one of Impersonal Pantheism. And I would argue that if God didn't want us to learn to play God, he wouldn't have set up a Universe which it inevitable that one day we could.

We have been learning to play God since we started rubbing sticks together to make fire.
And our hearts tell us that role should be played by Man.
Because whenever we write the script for God, it is Man we cast in the part.