Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

“Ozymandias”

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“Ozymandias” is a poem written in 1817 by the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, husband of the even more famous Mary Shelley (née Godwin, daughter of Marry Wollstonecraft and author of Frankenstein). The name is the Greek version of Ramses II (1304-1214 BCE), the most powerful of all ancient Egyptian kings whose armies ranged far and wide over much of the Middle East. Its theme? The way even the greatest power crumbles into dust.

Here goes:

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
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Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Not Quite as Good

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Atwood, The Testaments (Kindle ed., 2019)

More than once, I have pointed to Ms. Atwood’s other volume, The Handmaid’s Tale, as a master (mistress?) piece. There are two reasons why I consider it so. First, the imaginary world which Ms. Atwood has created and to which the book introduces us is largely self-consistent and free of contradictions. Not, as I know from my own experience while trying to design a hell in which Hitler could write his memoirs, something that is easy to achieve. Second, it is plausible. Not in the sense that one expects every detail to become true; but in that it makes one think that something of the kind is possible and might indeed come about. For both of these qualities, hats of.

The plot of The Testaments is as follows. We are re-introduced to Lydia, a top-ranking Aunt known from The Handmaids’ Tale. With headquarters at Ardua Hall, she is in charge of all other Aunts and, through them, of Giladean—meaning, future American—womanhood in general. Top woman, so to speak, to the point where the regime has even erected a statue in her honor. We learn about the methods the ruling Sons of Jacob use to put women into their proper place; including mass arrests, torture, and forcing some women to execute others in public. All this, to prepare the way for a regime that prohibits women from working, owning bank accounts, and, in a great many cases, learning to read and write. Or indeed, since each of them is assigned a male guardian, from doing anything on their own at all.
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Lydia, though, is not what she seems. Outwardly she does what her male superiors (“Commanders.” as they are collectively known) expect her to. In secret, though, she is enlisting her young female subordinates to resist. The two most important ones are Agnes and Daisy. Agnes, a Bostonian, has lost first her real mother and then her first stepmother to the regime’s orders. When her second stepmother wants to marry her off to a Commander much older than herself, she revolts. Daisy’s real name is Nicole. Her mother, a handmaid, refused to give her up to the Commander by whom, much against her will, she had been impregnated; instead she smuggled her into Canada when she was still a baby. The Giladean government demands that Canada return “Baby Nicole,” turning her into a cause célèbre. Meanwhile Daisy herself, unaware of who she really is, lives in Toronto with a sympathetic Canadian couple, Neil and Melanie. They are members of Mayday, an organization dedicated to opposing the Giladean regime much as the Underground Railway once did the slave-holding American South. Neil and Melanie are assassinated by Giladean agents, whereupon she learns her true identity and flees south. After which she too joins Lydia and Mayday.

In the end Lydia, Agnes, Daisy and various secondary characters succeed in igniting a revolution that overthrows the Sons of Jacob—how could it be otherwise? In my view, there are two things wrong with this story. First, much of it reads like any thriller: the good guys, the bad guys, the guns, the escapes, the pursuits, the last-moment rescues, etc. A bit banal, I would say, given the ubiquity of similar tales from the book of Exodus down. Second, there is nothing particularly feminine about it. True, Ms. Atwood does see women’s nature as special. While not as strong as men, physically, she says they are better than men at sensing each other’s emotions, forming groups, and talking openly to each other. All the while maintaining solidarity and secrecy in the face of those big, brutish, and insensitive creatures, men. What is left unexplained is just how a woman-organized plot differs from one that is run by men. Or else, what is the point?

To sum up: Ms. Atwood knows how to spin a tale, how to keep suspense, and simply how to write. The outcome is a good book. But, as so often happens, not quite as good and, above all, not quite as original as the one to which it forms the sequel.

The Reign of Uncertainty

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One of the principal clichés of our age, endlessly repeated, is that our ability to look into the future and control our fate has been growing. So much so that, in the words of Yuval Harari, we are about to transform ourselves from Homo Sapiens, originally a small, weak and vulnerable creature constantly buffeted by his surroundings, into a quasi-omnipotent Homo Deus. The main engine behind this process, we are told, is represented by fast-accumulating developments in science and technology. Those developments in turn, are both cause and consequence the kind of education that helped us cast off superstitions of every kind and, in the words of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), “dare to know.” Some would go further still and argue that, if such were not the case, there might be little point in pursuing any kind of learning in the first place.

For a long time, this line of thought was closely related to belief in progress. Today it is shared both by those who are optimistic in regard to the future and by those who, like Harari, keep warning against the disastrous consequences that our very successes may bring down upon our heads. As by changing the climate, destroying the environment, running out of drinking water, covering the planet with plastic, breeding antibiotic-resistant superbugs—vide the corona virus outbreak—and being enslaved, perhaps even exterminated, by some self-seeking supercomputer out on a roll. But is it really true that we are better in looking into the future, and consequently more able to control it, than our ancestors were? And that, as a result, the human condition has fundamentally changed? For some kind of answer, consider the following.

  1. The Demise of Determinacy

In Virgil’s words, “Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas” (happy, he who can discern the causes of things). For millennia on end, though, so deficient was our understanding of the future that almost the only way to get a handle on it was by enlisting some kind of supernatural aid. As by invoking the spirits, consulting with the gods (or God), tracing the movements of the stars, watching omens and portents of every kind, and, in quite some places, visiting or raising the dead and talking to them.

Come the seventeenth century, many of these methods were finally discarded. If not completely so, at any rate to some extent among the West’s intellectual elite. Their place was taken by the kind of mechanistic science advocated by Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and others. Nor was this the end of the matter Many nineteenth century scientists in particular believed not just that the world is deterministic but that, such being the case, they would one day be able to predict whatever was about to take place in it. One of the best-known statements to that effect came from the polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). It went as follows:

An intellect [not a demon, which was substituted later for effect] which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

In such a world not only God but chance, randomness, probability and the unexpected would be eliminated, leaving only sheer causality to rule supreme. Other scientists, such as William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, took matters further still, claiming that science had advanced to the point where there only remained a few minor gaps to be closed. No less than Stephen Hawking in his last work, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, admitted to having done just that. However, the very scientific progress that gave rise to this kind of optimism also ensured that it would not last for long. Just as, regardless of what number you multiply zero by, in the end zero is still what you get.

Starting with the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, it has become increasingly evident that some of nature’s most basic processes, specifically the decay of atoms and the emission of particles, are not deterministic but random. For each radioactive material, we know what percentage of atoms will decay within a given amount of time. But not whether atom A is going to break up before (or after) atom B and why. Subsequent discoveries such as quantum mechanics (Max Planck), relativity (Albert Einstein, the uncertainty principle (Werner Heisenberg, the incompleteness theorem (Kurt Gödel), and chaos theory (Richard Feynman), all helped extend the idea of incalculatability into additional fields.

To specify, quantum mechanics started life as a theoretical construct that could only be applied to the world of subatomic particles, hence could be more or less ignored by everyone but a very small number of nuclear scientists. However, since then it has been climbing out of the basement, so to speak. As it did so it acquired a growing practical significance in the form of such devices as ultra-accurate clocks, superfast computers, quantum radio (a device that enables scientists to listen to the weakest signal allowed by quantum mechanics), lasers, unbreakable codes, and tremendously improved microscopes.

At the heart of relativity lies the belief that, in the entire physical universe, the only absolute is the speed of light apart. Taken separately, both quantum mechanics and relativity are marvels of human wisdom and ingenuity. The problem is that, since they directly contradict one another, in some ways they leave us less certain of the way the world works than we were before they were first put on paper. The uncertainty principle means that, even as we do our best to observe nature as closely as we can, we inevitably cause some of the observed things to change. And even that time and space are themselves illusions, mental constructs we have created in an effort to impose order on our surroundings but having no reality outside our own minds. The incompleteness theorem put an end to the age-old dream—it goes back at least as far as Pythagoras in the sixth century BCE—of one day building an unassailable mathematical foundation on which to base our understanding of reality. Finally, chaos theory explains why, even if we assume the universe to be deterministic, predicting its future development may not be possible in a great many cases. Including, to cite but one well-known example, whether a butterfly flapping wings in Beijing will or will not cause a hurricane in Texas.

  1. Tripping Over One’s Own Robe

So far, the tendency of post-1900 science to become, not more deterministic but less so. As a result, no longer do we ask the responsible person(s) to tell us what the future will bring and whether to go ahead and follow this or that course. Instead, all they can do is calculate the probability of X taking place and, by turning the equation around, the risk we take in doing (or not doing) so. However, knowledge also presents additional problems of its own. Like a robe that is too long for us, the more of it we have the greater the likelihood that it will trip us up.

First, no knowledge can be better than the instruments used to measure the parameters of which it consists. Be they size, mass, temperature, rigidity, speed, duration, or whatever. And no instrument that physicists use is, or can be, perfectly precise and perfectly accurate. Even the most recent, strontium-based, clocks are expected to be off by one second every 138 million years, a fact which, chaos theory says, can make a critical difference to our calculations. The more accurate our instruments, moreover, the more likely they are to interfere with each other. The situation in the social sciences is much worse still, given that both the numbers on which most researchers base their conclusions and the methods they use to select and manipulate those numbers are often extremely inaccurate and extremely slanted. So much so as to render any meeting between them and “the truth” more or less accidental in many cases.

Second, there is far too much knowledge for any individual to master. Modern authors, seeking to impress their readers with the speed at which knowledge expands, often leave the impression that this problem is new. In fact, however, it is as old as history. In China, the Sui-era imperial library was supposed to contain 300,000 volumes. That of the Ptolemies in Alexandria held as many as half a million. And this is to assume that knowledge was concentrated inside libraries—whereas in fact the vast majority of it was diffused in the heads of countless people, most of them illiterate, who left no record of any kind. Since then the problem has only been getting worse. Today, anyone seriously claiming to have written a book containing “all that is most wonderful in history and philosophy and the marvels of science, the wonders of animal life revealed by the glass of the optician, or the labors of the chemist” (The World of Wonders, London, 1869) would be quickly dismissed as either a featherweight or a charlatan.
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Third, not only is there too much knowledge for anyone to master but in many cases it keeps developing so fast as to suggest that much of it is mere froth. Whether this development is linear and cumulative, as most people believe, or proceeds in cycles, as was suggested by Thomas Kuhn, is, in this context, immaterial. One of the latest examples I have seen is the possibility, raised by some Hungarian scientists just a few days before these words were written in November 2019, that the world is governed not by the long-established four forces—gravity, the electromagnetic, the strong and the weak—but by five (and perhaps more). Should the existence of the so-called photophobic, or light-fearing, force be confirmed, then it has the potential to blow all existing theories of the world’s behavior at the sub-atomic, hence probably not only at the sub-atomic, level to smithereens.

Fourth, we may often have a reasonably accurate idea of what the consequences of event A, or B, or C, may be. However, working out all of those consequences is much more difficult. The more so because they may (and are likely to) have consequences; and so on in an expanding cascade that, in theory and sometimes in practice as well, does not have a clear end. Some of the consequences may be intended (in which case, if everything goes right, they are foreseeable), others not. Some may be beneficial, others harmful. Some may bend backwards so to speak, turning around and impacting on C, or B, or A, which in turn has consequences, and so on until the cascade turns into an entire series of interrelated cascades. That is particularly true in the social sciences where the very concepts of cause and consequence may be out of place; and reality, either reciprocal or circular.

Some consequences may even be perverse, meaning that they lead to the opposite of what was intended. For example, when the scientists employed on the Manhattan Project worked on a weapon to be used in war—there hardly ever was any doubt that it would be—they could not know that, to the contrary, it would render the kind of war on which their country was then engaged impossible. Both the Chernobyl and the Fukushima reactors were provided with elaborate, highly redundant, safety systems; but when the time came those systems, rather than preventing the accidents, only made them worse.

In brief, a simple, elegant “theory of everything” of the kind that, starting with Laplace, scientists have been chasing for two centuries remains out of sight. What we got instead is what we have always had: namely, a seething cauldron of hypotheses, many of them conflicting. Even when we limit ourselves to the natural sciences, where some kind of progress is undeniable, and ignore the social ones, where it is anything but, each question answered and problem resolved only seems to lead to ten additional ones. Having discovered the existence of X, inevitably we want to know where it comes from, what it is made of, how it behaves in respect to A and B and C. Not to mention what, if any, uses it can be put to.

The philosopher Karl Raimund Popper went further still. Scientific knowledge, he argued, is absolutely dependent on observations and experiments. However, since one can always add 1 to n, no number of observations and experiments can definitely confirm that a scientific theory is correct. Conversely, a single contradictory observation or experiment can provide sufficient proof that it is wrong. Science proceeds, not by adding knowledge but by first doubting that which already exists (or is thought to exist) and then falsifying it. Knowledge that cannot, at any rate in principle, shown to be false is not scientific. From this it is a small step towards arguing that the true objective of science, indeed all it can really do, is not so much to provide definite answers to old questions as to raise new ones. It is as if we are chasing a mirage; considering our experience so far, probably we are.

  1. The Drunk at the Party

If all this were not enough, the problem of free will persists. In the words of the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, it is the drunken guest who, uninvited, breaks up the party, upsetting tables and spreading confusion. Much as scientists may claim that it is simply a delusion—even to the point of showing that our bodies order us to raise our hands as much as ten seconds before we make a conscious decision to do so—our entire social life, specifically including such domains as education and justice, continues to rest on the assumption that we do in fact have a choice. As between action and inaction; the serious and the playful; the good and the evil; the permissible and the prohibited; that for which a person deserves to be praised, and that for which he deserves to be punished. Long before King Hammurabi had the first known code of law carved in stone almost four millennia ago, a society that did not draw such distinctions could not even be conceived of.

So far, neither physicists nor computer experts nor brain scientists, working from the bottom up, have been able to close the gap between matter and spirit in such a way as to endow the former with a consciousness and a will. Economists, sociologists and psychologists, working their way from the top down, have not been able to anchor the emotions and ideas they observe (or assume) people to have in underlying physical reality. Whichever route we take, the complete understanding of everything that would be necessary for prediction to be possible is as remote as it has always been. In no field is the crisis worse than in psychology; precisely the science (if one it is) that, one day, will hopefully explain the behavior of each and every one of us at all times and under all circumstances. Its claim to scientific validity notwithstanding, only 25-50 percent of its experimental results can be replicated.

Given the inability of science to provide us with objective and reliable visions of the future, those we have, as well as the courses of action we derive from them, depend as much on us—our ever-fluid, often capricious, mindset, our ira and our studio—as they have ever done. Elation, depression, love, euphoria, envy, rage, fear, optimism, pessimism, wishful thinking, disappointment, and a host of other mental states form a true witches’ brew. Not only does that brew differ from one person to another, but its various ingredients keep interacting with each other, leading to a different mixture each time. Each and every one of them helps shape our vision today as much as they did, say, in the Rome of the Emperor Caligula; the more so because many of them are not even conscious, at any rate not continuously so. In the process they keep driving us in directions that may or may not have anything to do with whatever reality the physicists’ instruments are designed to discover and measure.

  1. The Persistence of Ignorance

To conclude, in proposing that knowledge is power Francis Bacon was undoubtedly right. It is, however, equally true that, our scientific and technological prowess notwithstanding, we today, in our tiny but incredibly complex corner of the universe, are as far from gaining complete knowledge of everything, hence from being able to look into the future and control it, as we have ever been.

Furthermore, surely no one in his right mind, looking around, would suggest that the number of glitches we all experience in everyday life has been declining. Nor is this simply a minor matter, e.g. a punctured tire that causes us to arrive late at a meeting. Some glitches, known as black swans, are so huge that they can have a catastrophic effect not just on individuals but on entire societies: as, for example, happened in 2008, when the world was struck by the worst economic crisis in eighty years, and as coronavirus is causing right now. All this reminds me of the time when, as a university professor, my young students repeatedly asked me how they could ever hope to match my knowledge of the fields we were studying. In response, I used to point to the blackboard, quite a large one, and say: “imagine this is the sum of all available knowledge. In that case, your knowledge could be represented by this tiny little square I’ve drawn here in the corner. And mine, by this slightly—but only slightly—larger one right next to it.” “My job,” I would add, “is to help you first to assimilate my square and then to transcend it.” They got the message.

There thus is every reason to believe that the role ignorance concerning the future, both individual and collective, plays in shaping human life is as great today as it has ever been. It is probably a major reason why, even in a country such as France where logic and lucidity are considered national virtues and three out of four people claim they are not superstitious, almost half touch wood, and about one third say they believe in astrology. Nor are the believers necessarily illiterate old peasants. Most young people (55 percent) say they believe in the paranormal. So do many graduates in the liberal arts and 69 percent of ecologists. As if to add insult to injury, France now has twice as many professional astrologers and fortune tellers as it does priests. Both Black masses and Satan-worship have been on the rise. The situation in the U.S is hardly any different.

How did old Mark Twain (supposedly) put the matter? Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.

The Evening of Life

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For those of you who do not know, which means practically everybody, Herr Professor Doktor Joachim (“Jochem”) Rook has been our landlord over a period of twenty years. Year in/year out my wife and I used to stay with him in the second floor of his house in Potsdam, Germany. Potsdam, also for those who do not know, is the seat of the Militaergeschichtliche Forschugnsamt, the military history branch of the German Bundeswehr. That Branch, again, has Europe’s largest collection of military history works. For those who, like me, need an even broader basis to do research, there is always the railway that will take you to Berlin in about thirty minutes.

At first we thought that three weeks would be enough both for work and for having a little fun. Gradually, though, the period we spent in Potsdam became longer and longer until, over the last few years, the three weeks turned into two months. Always in the same place, and never with the smallest difference arising between us, our wonderful landlord, and his equally wonderful wife Ursula (“Uschi”), a former announcer on East German TV and, in her prime, a very good looking woman indeed.

Being retired, and no longer feeling like writing—he is the author and co-author of quite some books, both academic and popular, on economics and on shipping—Herr Rook spent much of his time doing light housework. As by putting things in order, cleaning, laundering, cultivating the garden, erecting a new shed for his tools, etc. It keeps people young, or so they say.

I too am retired. And with every passing day I feel the growing attraction of living as he, now in his mid-eighties, has done for so long. Getting up at whatever hour suits, generally about 0800. Enjoying a nice siesta. Working a few hours a day to keep the house clean and in good repair and the garden, trim. Time to mow the (rather small) lawn. Time to trim the lemon tree (each spring) which, after years and years in which it bore hardly any fruit, has suddenly started doing so abundantly. Time to clean the balcony so we can have a meal or a cup of tea on it when the weather allows.
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With every passing day, one or more small tasks are discharged. With every passing day, new ideas for “improvements” crop up on their own, so to speak. What if we moved some of the potted plants from the front of the house to the rear, or the other way around? What if we finally changed the curtain in the guest room, the one that Dvora herself made thirty years ago? And what if?

From time to time, a meeting with our children and grandchildren. A lively lot, especially the little ones; each of them can easily keep two adults busy. Or else with friends. Or else going to the pool for exercise class (Dvora). Or taking a walk (me, sometimes with Dvora coming along, in the Judean hills). Or making a mosaic (again, me; presumably I’ll go on making them as long as there is a demand for them on the part of family members and friends). From time to time, a museum, a show or a movie, or else an excursion to some archaeological site (of which Israel has plenty). Everything at a slow, leisurely pace. And everything, “chores” specifically included, done with lots of love and respect.

Thank you, Jochem and Uschi, for showing us how to do it.

Strange

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Belarus Beer Lovers’ Party

One of the good things about a real democracy is that it allows even fringe groups of every kind to have a voice and set up a party. Here in Israel, it being election time, there is no shortage of such groups. Including a “Bible Party” that wants to prepare for the day when millions of Jews suddenly decide to leave their homes and immigrate to Israel; a “Listen” (as in “Listen, o Israel”) Party dedicated to fighting homosexuality, pornography, and adultery; a “Compassionate Jewish Heart” Party that has as its objective stopping Israel from selling weapons to almost anyone, no questions asked; and a “Justice” Party aimed at reforming Israel’s justice system and give Rabin’s murderer, Yigal Amir, a second opportunity in court.

Some of the ideas of the fringe parties (and by no means only those of the fringe parties) are ridiculous; indeed their very purpose may be to act as a caricature. Others merit much more serious consideration than they actually get. However, Israel is a small place and Israeli politics are like a tempest in a teapot. So I thought that, rather than proceeding with the list, I’d collect some other fringe parties from other places in the world. For my own amusement and, hopefully, yours too.

Belarus: Beer Lovers’ Party of Belarus (now defunct). One of several similar parties in several European countries. According to its statute, “the major goal of the BLP is the struggle for the cleanness and quality of the national beer, state independence and the neutrality of Belarus, freedom of economic relations, personal inviolability and the inviolability of private property.”

Britain: The Brits have always had penchant for the bizarre as well as a sneaky sense of sense of humor. That probably explains why, judging by Wikipedia, it has more fringe parties than any other country. Including a Witchery Tour Party; The Church of the Militant Elvis Party; The Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality; The Eccentric Party of Great Party; and the Fancy Dress Party (defunct) and the Official Monster Raving Party. Several of these parties have participated in elections and put their representatives in parliament; generally, though, their success has been modest to almost nonexistent.

Canada: An Animal Protection Party. As its website explains, “we are North America’s first federal political party dedicated solely to the protection of all animals and the environment.” Among other things, it aims at banning the use of horses for drawing carriages and well as dolphin shows and the like.

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Germany: German Apple Front. This is one of a number of political organizations opposing the “extreme” Right, especially in and about the city of Leipzig. One of its principal ways of doing so is to use caricature—a method which, in the past, has sometimes caused it to be confused with its opponents.

Hungary: Two-Tailed Dog Party. To the extent that it has an ideology, this group identifies itself as “anti-anti-immigration.” As the name indicates, though, it is also addicted to caricaturing the mainstream parties as well as the government in general. This explains why, among the establishment, it is not exactly popular—and also why it has been quite successful in raising funds.

New Zealand: The Imperial Party of New Zealand. Its policies include restricting immigration, forced repatriation, chemical castration for sex offenders, the re-introduction of slavery, and supporting the creation of a Commonwealth Parliament. Thankfully it has been revealed as a comedy hoax against a British group that bears the same name and advocates similar policies—this time, seriously.

Serbia: SPN (“You haven’t tasted the cabbage”). Founded by a group of comedians as a humorous parody, this party promised to make a lot of false promises and raise false hopes. Notwithstanding this unpromising background it is one of the more successful organizations of its kind and actually has representatives in the Belgrade parliament.

Crazy? To the extent that is serious, yes. But certainly not across the board.

Back to the Beginning

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Robert Lanza, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys in Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, Kindle ed., 2010.

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Starting at the time when those words were written down perhaps 2500-3000 years ago, human thought concerning the origins of the universe in which we live has essentially moved along two parallel tracks. One, which was associated with some versions of ancient Greek philosophical thought as well as with Hinduism right down to the present day, claimed that it has always existed and would always exist. The other, which is exemplified by the sentences from Genesis just quoted, was to assign its origin to some kind of conscious God (or gods) who, once He had made up His mind, created it just as a constructor designs a building and then does on to erect it.

Looking back over the three and half centuries since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the outcome has been a kind of compromise. On one hand, few non-Hindus have accepted the idea that the world has always existed and will always go on existing in the same form. On the other, God has been banished from the discussion, at any rate as conducted among scientists as the most important purveyors of modern knowledge concerning questions of this kind. For example, Isaac Newton around 1700 still devoted as much attention to his theological works as he did to the laws of motion, gravitation, and optics. But when Napoleon in 1802 asked the famous physicist Pierre Laplace whether the existence of the observed universe did not prove that there was indeed a God he was told, “Sir, that is a hypothesis I do not require.”

Since then attempts to understand how the universe could have come into being without invoking the “hypothesis” in question have gone on and on. Laplace’s own answer, as set out in his writings, was that it had started out as a rotating nebula, or interstellar gas cloud. From there the planets and sun coalesced in accordance with the ordinary laws of gravity on one hand and mechanics on the other. Newton’s latest successor, Stephen Hawking, who incidentally is buried right next to him at Westminster Cathedral, argued that it was formed 13.8 billion years ago as a result of an imaginably enormous explosion popularly known as the big bang. However, there are many things this theory cannot explain. Asked what had exploded (impossible to say), why it had done so (for no known reason), what had existed before (a meaningless term) the explosion, and what the young universe, triggered by the explosion (of nothing), expanded into (also nothing), all Hawking could do was to shrug and declare that these questions and others like them were unanswerable. So precise, supported by so many equations. Yet so lacking, so unsatisfactory; it is enough to make one want to tear out one’s hair.

In other words, the scientists’ continuing efforts to do without Him, while admirable, have never been able to carry complete conviction. However often it was derided and dismissed, the idea that there must have been a creator of some kind could not be gotten rid of any more than the devil having been driven out through the door, could be prevented from returning by way of the window. He was, however, not God—a taboo term, since His existence could not be verified by any kind of observation or experiment—but consciousness.

These pills empower the development of the penile muscles. http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/08/28/he-wrote-two-steps-from-the-blues/ female viagra pills In rare cases, soft cialis has also led to the same conclusion. Any man can become dupe of this best price vardenafil awkward condition at any specified point of time. The inability uk viagra prices of males to have an orgasm. One of the most recent advocates of this view is Dr. Robert Lanza. Born not far from Boston in 1956, as a teenager he carried out some basement experiments with the genes of chicken. This, as well as an unusual amount of Chutzpah, brought him to the attention of some world-famous biologists and behavioral scientists at Harvard University. Later, having taken out a degree as a medical doctor, he specialized in award-winning stem cell research, cloning, and various new methods for treating heart attacks and blindness. As he did so he became increasingly dissatisfied with the prevailing view of the origin and nature of consciousness, the life that gave rise to it, and the universe in which both that life and that consciousness exist. He first presented his conclusions in a 2007 paper; assisted by Bob Berman, later he developed it into the book under review.

Starting at least as far back as Laplace—much earlier, if one cares to go back all the way to Epicurus—scientists have been arguing that consciousness grew out of the matter that preceded it. Not so, says Dr. Lanza: no natural process known to us could have performed that feat. Instead, he says, it was consciousness which gave rise to the world—so much so that, without the former, the latter could not even have existed.

To understand what he meant, take the popular riddle concerning a tree that has fallen in a forest with no one there to witness the fact. did it make a sound? Of course it did, say ninety-nine percent of those asked. Not so, say Dr. Lanza and a few others. The splintering of the trunk and its crash on the ground certainly gave rise to vibrations in the surrounding air. However, in the absence of anyone to receive those vibrations in his or her ears, transmit them by way of the acoustic nerves, and process them with the help of the brain, they would not have amounted to what we know as sound.

What applies to hearing applies equally well to our remaining senses. What the specialized neurons in the back of our brains register is not the world’s existing, objective, sound, light, and impact. On the contrary, light, impact, and sound are created by those neurons. To adduce another example, a single rainbow that can be seen by everyone who looks in the right direction at the right time does not exist. What does exist are trillions of raindrops. Each one carrying a potential rainbow; and all “waiting” to be discovered by animal sense organs and brains to be brought to bear on them. Instead of the internal and external world being separate and independent of one another, as Descartes would have it, they are merely two sides of the same coin. That, incidentally, is also the best available explanation for the riddle of quantum mechanics where, as far as we can make out, the speed and position of elementary particles seem to be determined by the fact that they are or are not observed.

This premise serves Dr. Lanza as the foundation on which to build everything else in the book, leading up to the conclusion that “the universe burst into existence from life [which is the seat of consciousness], not the other way around.” What I personally found most interesting in it is the following. We present-day humans are immensely proud of our scientific prowess. And rightly so, given that it has enabled us to study, and often gain some understanding of, anything from the bizarre submicroscopic world of elementary particles that exists right under our noses to gigantic galaxies more than thirty billion light years away. Dr. Lanza’s contribution is to point out that, without taking account of consciousness and the life with which it is inextricably tied, we shall never be able to understand reality as a whole. Some people might find this prospect disturbing. In so far as it means that there will never be a shortage of questions to explore and ponder, I personally find it comforting.

But isn’t consciousness, pure and unadulterated by a physical body, simply another word for God?

 

1917

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A really good movie, like a really good work of literary fiction, will almost certainly contain at least some measure of moral ambiguity. As to which characters are good, which ones are bad, the factors that make them so, and the thousand different ways in which good and evil manifest themselves and interact. Think, for example, of the Iliad as perhaps the best work on war ever written. In the entire poem, much the most sympathetic character is the Trojan hero Hector. And why? Not because the cause he is serving is just—as he himself is well aware, it is not. And not because he is some kind of superman—at least three other characters, including above all Achilles at whose hands he is destined to die, are better warriors than he is. And not because those whom he fights are bad people. In the end, even the proud, touchy, and overall terrible Achilles is shown as capable of love and sorrow (for Patroclus) and compassion (for King Priam). But because he is, at bottom, a modest and even likeable man; god-fearing and not inclined to boast or commit deeds of superfluous cruelty as so many other heroes do. Above all there are his ability to love, which comes through even in the midst of “fearsome war,” and his perfect loyalty both to his own family and to the city of his birth; doomed to destruction though they both are.
By that, admittedly very high, standard 1917 is definitely not a very good movie. The plot is simple, not to say simplistic. This is April and one of the battalions of a British infantry regiment is manning a sector of the front in the rich earth of Flanders. Finding the enemy in retreat, its commander wants to attack and pursue. However, higher headquarters learns that the retreat is really a trap. Thereupon two soldiers are sent out on a perilous journey to warn the commander. One, Lance Corporal Tom Blake, volunteers for the mission because he hopes to save a brother who is serving in the battalion in question. The other, Lance Corporal William Schofield, is selected by Blake himself because of his immense obstinacy and determination to carry out orders at all costs.
Carrying a message, the two of them set out into what soon reveals itself as a nightmarish landscape of abandoned guns, wrecked buildings, bare, mutilated trees, and above all, vast seas of mud. Not to mention the rotting corpses of dead men and animals half buried or lying around in bizarre postures. Pursued might and main, shot at from every available weapon, following many adventures in one of which Blake is killed, Schofield finally arrives at his destination. True, the attack is already under way and Blake’s brother has already been killed. But at least he is able to save the bulk of the regiment from certain destruction.
I am not expert on movies and will not comment on the film’s direction, musical score, and sound effects, for all of which (and more) it has been called “a work of cinematic wizardry.” I do, however, want to say something about two other aspects. The first is its supposed realism for which it has earned much praise. I do not want to go into detail on this point. Just trust me when I say that real war is much, much worse. So much so that putting all its horrors on the screen is probably impossible. And so much so that, had someone succeeded in doing so, much of the public, instead of praising the product, would have refused to watch and turned its back on it.
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As a result, I found watching 1917 was a bit like watching a caricature in black and white. In favor of the movie I must say that it did make me think about what a really good war movie, or a really good war novel, should be like; the way drinking a simple vin de table makes one appreciate, and long for, a grand cru.
That too, is something.

Guest Article: The View From Olympus – His Majesty’s Birthday

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By

William S. Lind*

As the whole world knows, His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was born on January 27, 1859.  It is both my duty and my pleasure to telephone him every year and congratulate him on his birthday.  He is, after all, my reporting senior as well as Germany’s last legitimate governor.

I tried to reach him first at the Neues Palais in Potsdam, followed by the old palace in Berlin, then Charlottenburg, and then the Adlon Hotel.  The latter proved the right guess. When he picked up the instrument, it was clear he was out of breath.

“Happy birthday, Your Majesty,” I opened.  “It sounds as if something has you running around.”

“As usual, it’s not something but someone, namely Bismarck,” His Majesty replied.  “He has me running all over town keeping every crowned head in Europe happy while he manipulates them all at his latest conference.  As my grandfather said, sometimes it is a hard thing, being Kaiser under Bismarck.”

“That sounds like Bismarck all right,” I ventured.  “But his goal is usually to keep the peace, and he was rather good at it.  If only he’d been there in 1914, the Christian West might not have committed suicide.”

“If only, indeed,” His Majesty said.  “As you know, I neither wanted war nor expected war that fateful summer, and once I realized all Europe was heading down that road, I did my utmost to stop it.  I ordered the pack of fools in my foreign office to telegraph Vienna and tell them to take Belgrade and then stop. But the telegram was never sent. The German foreign office without Bismarck has done the Fatherland more damage than the French and British put together.”

“Very true, Your Majesty,” I replied.  “May I ask the subject of Bismarck’s latest Congress of Berlin?”

“It’s the North American problem,” the Kaiser said.  “It’s the year 2120 here now, and the Powers have decided we have to intervene.  The question is who gets what. It’s not a reward, I promise you. It’s a damned bloody mess that will cost us all plenty to fix.”

“I regret to say that does not surprise me,” I responded. “I assume the United States is gone, and what remains is essentially what Columbus found: tribes and tribal warfare.”

“Exactly,” His Majesty said.  “We have to civilize the place all over again.”  But it’s even worse than you expected.”

“I am hesitant to ask how,” I said with trepidation.

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“Oh God, not another Holocaust,” I replied, shocked.

“No, fortunately, not that bad, but it was bad enough.  The one thing consistent among all the tribes is that blacks and Jews were given a choice: exile or sterilization.  Most chose the former. The blacks went to Africa, where they have actually done a great deal of good, for themselves and for the Dark Continent.  By African standards, American blacks were competent and efficient. They have brought order and economic development, including in German East Africa, where they were very welcome.  As you know, my army had black soldiers there, and they were among my very best. The Allies never beat them. And here in Imperial Germany, the Jews were also welcome, as they were in my time.  I had a number of close Jewish friends, such as Herr Ballin, head of the HAPAG shipping line, the largest in the world. I stayed at his home in Hamburg five or six times every year. He was so loyal to the monarchy that when it fell in November of 1918, he killed himself.”

“But Your Majesty, I cannot imagine such a thing happening in North America,” I said.  “Why, how–I don’t understand.”

“It was in some ways similar to what happened in Germany after your moronic President Wilson demanded an end to the German monarchy.  I would never have permitted a government policy of anti-Semitism. But the Weimar Republic was weak, and you know what happened after that.  Why and how did it happen? In five years, from 1914 to 1919, the German people underwent a terrible shock. In Germany in 1914, everything was going well and the future looked bright.  By 1919, there was no future, just death, poverty, and humiliation. The same thing happened in the United States early in the 21st century when world-wide debt crisis hit. There was no future any longer, just misery and dissolution.  Someone had to be blamed, and in your case it was the Jews and blacks.”

“But why them?” I asked.  “Why not the politicians who spent us into bankruptcy and the cultural Marxists who wrecked our society?”

“Well, the blacks were blamed because everyone saw them as ‘takers’, people who relied on welfare and who were always committing crimes.  In truth, the black crime rate in early 21st century America was twelve times the white race. Most of the victims were also black, and most blacks just wanted to lead normal lives.  But their ‘leaders’ needed to keep them ‘victims’ to maintain their own power. With the Jews, as in Germany, most American Jews were assimilated, patriotic citizens who paid their taxes and fought for their country.  But it was also true that the hard Left was disproportionately Jewish in both places. When a country falls apart in a short time, people are too angry to be fair or just. They want someone to blame, and they want to kill.  It was only because some courageous people on the Right fought it that North America did not see a twin Holocaust. At least the Jews and blacks could get out.”

“Your Majesty, is there any way for us to avoid this grim fate?” I asked, still in something of a state of shock.

“Yes, if people will get serious,” the Kaiser said.  “Donald Trump showed that someone from outside the Establishment could be elected President.  He was not himself the man to bring about fiscal sanity and cultural renewal. If you can find someone like him but more serious, more grounded intellectually and morally, I think your country might still have a chance.”

“But now I must go.  I’ve just been told that good King George III has agreed to take New England back, and martyred King Louis XVI said France will take the South.  His Most Catholic Majesty King Philip II has accepted the burden of the American West for Spain. The Inquisition will have fun in Las Vegas. Yes, yes, Otto I’m coming. . .”

And so Bismarck saved the day again.  What a pity he had to do so.

 

* William S. (”Bill”) Lind is the author of the Maneuver War Handbook (1985) and the 4thGeneration Warfare Handbook (2011) as several other volumes that deal with war. This article was originally published on traditionalRight on 31.1.2020.

The Defeat

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Why the President Trump’s plan for Palestine represents a resounding defeat for the Palestinians hardly requires an explanation. If—and a great if it is—the plan is ever implemented, they will not obtain the right to a fully sovereign, contiguous, territorial state. They will not obtain East Jerusalem as part of their territory, let alone as their capital; instead, the idea is to take a miserable township not far away and rename it, Al Quds.

And this is just the beginning of the list. The Palestinians will not gain control over the Holy Places, including, above all, the Temple Mount. They will not be allowed to build armed forces of their own. They will not rid themselves of the dozens of settlements Israel has scattered throughout their territory over the last half century. They will not gain free access to their Arab brethren in the Middle East but will remain dependent on Israel for border control. They will not obtain sovereign rights over the water under their land. They will not obtain sovereignty over the air- and electronic space above their land. They will not be able to exercise the “right of return.” They will not and they will not and they will not. The entire thing looks suspiciously like the Bantustans, meaning semi-autonomous black enclaves, which the late unlamented Apartheid government of South Africa was trying to establish back in the 1970s. No wonder the Palestinians, with Abu Mazen at their head, refuse even to talk about the so-called plan. If I, a Zionist and a patriotic Israeli who has lived in his country from the age of four (I am now almost seventy-four years old) were in their place, I would do exactly the same. As, no doubt, would the vast majority of Israelis.

However, the plan represents a defeat for Israel too. Forget about the details—the impossibly complicated complex of convoluted roads, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, crossing points, what have you, needed to make it work. Forget, too, about a number of other points that will probably meet with more domestic opposition than can be managed, such as handing over some sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians. The real reason why it is a defeat is because it puts an end to the dream of setting up single, unified, contiguous, Jewish state with the vast majority of its inhabitants consisting of Jews. In other words, to the Zionist dream.

These are serious problems. Still arguably the greatest defeat of all is neither that of the Palestinians nor that of Israel. It is, rather, that of international law. I am referring to the 1945 UN Chapter which rules that there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. Since then it has been confirmed several times by several U.N resolutions.
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Like every other kind of law since the world was first created, international law is full of holes. Probably more than every other kind of law since the world was first created, absent a firm suzerain hand to make it work it has often been violated. Nevertheless the principle has worked well on the whole. If not in the sense that invasions and annexations came to an end, at any rate in that obtaining international legal recognition for them has become almost impossible. For example, just two countries—Britain and Pakistan—have ever recognized Jordan’s 1948 annexation of the West Bank. No country has ever recognized Morocco’s annexation of the Spanish Sahara. Out of some 190 U.N members only fourteen have recognized Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. So effective has been the non-annexation regime that most invaders did not even try to obtain international consent for their conquests. For some the solution was to open negotiations aimed at restoring the status quo ante, as happened e.g between India and Pakistan back in 1966 and 1971. Others pretended that their continued presence was a temporary matter to be settled by eventual negotiations; whereas others still set up “independent” republics as the Russians did following their conflicts with Georgia and the Ukraine.

Now this regime, imperfect as it may be, is in danger. Not because some half-assed dictatorship has violated it; but because the most powerful country on earth seems determined to put it aside. Two early signs of this were President Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights back in 2017 and 2019. Now he is going further still, announcing his intention to recognize its sovereignty over large parts of the West Bank as well. Whatever this means for Israel and the Palestinians—and I strongly suspect that, “on the ground,” as Israelis say, a long, long time will have to pass ere it comes to mean anything—from the point of view of international law it is a defeat.

A defeat of everything legal. Of everything decent. Of everything good. And also, I am afraid, of much that is Israeli as well.

Holocaust

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As a Jew and the scion of Holocaust survivors, I have spent much of my life in the shadow of the Holocaust. With age and, hopefully, a little wisdom, I find that the burden has been growing, not lightening. The killing fields are not receding into the historical background. Instead, they seem to be coming closer and closer.

That is why as International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches, I want to present you with a long quote on the topic. Dosage cialis generico uk Take these pills an hour before making love. You must not try all the online stores and you can easily get it but remember never intake Sildenafil Citrate without a proper prescription and knowledge you might end up ordering for a wrong drug and buy generic levitra greyandgrey.com hence can cause damages to your body. The cheap soft viagra acai berry has the highest antioxidant capacities of any food ever found on the planet. Remember the words of caution: When you use it remember that you are doing it with clean hands. buy tadalafil without prescription A sort of catharsis, if you will. It was written by the Jewish-Soviet author Vassily Grossman (1905-64) and refers to the autumn of 1943. About two and a half years into the Russo-German war, at a time when the author was attached to the Red Army as it re-occupied the Ukraine. I came across it by accident not long ago, and it has been haunting me ever since.

“Killed were the old artisans and experienced craftsmen: tailors, haters, cobblers, tin-smiths, jewelers, painters, furriers, and bookbinders; killed were the workers, porters, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, stonemasons, and plumbers; killed were the wagoners, tractor operators, truck drivers, and cabinet-makers; killed were the water carriers, millers, bakers, and cooks; killed were the doctors; physicians, dentists, surgeons, and gynecologists; killed were the scientists: bacteriologists, biochemists, and directors of university clinics, killed were the history, algebra, and trigonometry teachers; killed were the lecturers, assistant professors, asters and PhD’s, killed were the civil engineers, architects, and engine designers; killed were the accountants, bookkeepers, salesmen, supply gents, secretaries, and night guards; killed were the grade school teachers and seamstresses; killed were the grandmothers who knew how to knit socks, bake tasty cookies, cook chicken soup, and make apple strudels with nuts, as well as the grandmothers who could not do any of those things but could only love their children and their children’s children; killed were the women who were faithful to their husbands and the loose women too; killed were the beautiful girls, serious students, and giggly schoolgirls; killed were the plain and the foolish; killed were the hunchbacks, killed were the singers, killed were the blind, killed were the deaf, killed were the violinists and pianists, killed were the two- and three year-olds; killed were the eighty-year old men with their eyes clouded by cataracts, their old transparent fingers and soft voices like rustling paper; and killed were the crying babies sucking at their mothers’ breasts to the very last moment.”