Weakness of modernity

My theory, that I have held for a long time, is that Civilisation makes us weak. In particular, modern civilisation and being civilised. This in part comes back to this post but is also a separate issue. It was once said of humanity that the difference between humans and animals was that animals adapt themselves to their environment and humans adapt the environment to us. The weakness in this is that once we adapt things to us, we then adapt to only working within that framework - if most people today were to go for a 'camping' trip, they would take a caravan with power, would not go anywhere a great distance from the shops so they can buy food when they need it, and would still only be out for a weekend. If the same people were to go camping and had to carry their tent, food, clothing and everything else for a week, they would likely die (except that they wouldn't try it without someone who knows what's happening dragging them along and showing them what to do).

The mark of any civilised society is half measures. Things like life sentences; exactly the same as the death sentence, but it takes a lot longer and costs a lot more.
Lets even look at the death sentence; In places that are regarded as civilised that have the death sentence, it is done by lethal injection, a cocktail of toxins that anaesthetise the body and then paralyse the heart and lungs, supposedly ensuring a painless death. Now this person has been deemed too harmful to remain alive anywhere and for the sake of a few pain-free milliseconds incredible research and expense has gone into a nice easy death.

One of my pet hates is political correctness. Now before you say, 'Alphonse, you censor nigh on everything you say, that's being politically correct', no that isn't being politically correct, that's not being a bastard and toning down your more extreme outlooks. How does this fit in? The next mark of civilisation is tolerance; we have to let everyone have equal time and opportunity on everything that they want and we can't say anything negative about it, which frankly to me is sheer stupidity. It means that you can't say anything that may insult someone even out of context of by mistake, you can't be seen to favour someone that you can't offer a reason for and you have to allow equal correctness for everything. The part that I find most annoying besides the stupidness of it all is the people claiming that Christians need to be tolerant of other religious viewpoints, and then being intolerant of Christianity itself.
Political correctness is another half measure. With it, you are allowed to think things like 'All people who take up a career in politics are half-witted morons incapable of a single cogent or logical thought', but you will never be allowed to voice this opinion for fear that someone who either has or would like to take up a career in politics feels that your information is not only incorrect but insulting. We pride ourselves on our freedom of speech (which was only implied in a 1950 odd supreme court decision limiting government censorship of news media) and yet we disallow it for ourselves - that is stupidness.

Our inability to cope with death comes in as well. Recently the Australian Military has suffered massive losses in the war in Afghanistan, more people have died in the past few weeks then for most of the rest of the decade. So lets bring everyone back and leave the job unfinished. This would be a logical response if there were a large amount of deaths. 5 people and a dog do not constitute a large amount of deaths in a war. And yet due to our civilised society we forget that the Army is a place where you expect to get in life threatening situations; you don't join if you think that getting shot is the biggest worry you personally will have. But people can't cope with the idea that anyone would be willing to be injured or killed for something greater than what they conceive themselves to be. And then the biggest folly of this is that we hold up those who have made a great sacrifice in a time of war - look at the VC, something like 90% of the people who have received the greatest military honour have done so post mortem.

And the final weakness is Darwinian. No I don't accept evolution. Natural selection is completely different. And natural selection is what is being limited by civilisation. Now we know that genetic diseases get passed on and in some cases we can cure them. However in most cases all we can do is treat the symptoms and prolong life. The prolonging of life means that the genetic disease can be passed on to another person who again has the symptoms treated. The right to healthcare is something that has never come out of a non-civilised society and it has made us weak. We expect to be able to not die. When we hear that it's terminal, we either give up there and then, or we flail wildly about and expect that someone will be able to cure it. It firstly makes humanity weak and then makes us expect that our weakness will be rewarded with strength.

That's the modern condition.

Whispered Words - Part 5 - Neither Of These Can Be Trusted

Part the Last. In which Alphonse tries to tell you everything he has said is wrong. Read Parts 1,2,3 and 4 if you previously have not.

That isn't quite true. What I am going to try to do is to explain why not all of what I've said is gospel truth (beyond the fact that I am an imperfect demimortal).

We already know that Fear is not to be trusted on all occasions. Now we need to know that Truth can't always be trusted. Remember assumption 4, "Both Truth and Fear are impartial." If this holds then they can be trusted equally. If we can't trust Fear at all times them we also can't trust Truth at all times. Right?

True, but we also need to show it in a different way. In part 3 I explained the filters that fear lacks. What I didn't say is that Truth does have filters. Truth is filtered in the same way as you. If we wanted to put this another way we would say that Truth is the rational part of you and Fear is the Irrational part of you.
And we can't always trust rationality.
Because it lies.

Yes that's right. I just said that Truth can lie. Irrationality lacks this ability, but rationality can always lie. I would almost argue that the test of a rational being is the ability to either lie or to withhold the truth.

But back to the filters. If you miss something, it means that Truth won't see it unless you pick it up subconsciously. If you don't, then it won't come to light. Which means that truth can't tell you anything that you can't tell yourself - an unfortunate side effect of sharing your filters. And can you always trust yourself? Then can you trust Truth? Do you know when to trust either party?
If you answered no to any of these, then you have a problem. It you can't rationally trust your rationality then there's not much you can trust.

Just a bit of mind screw to finish the week.

Whispered Words - Part 4 - Truth and Fears Overlap

Instalment the D-th. Read the previous posts first if you haven't already. In this post we look at something that may seem to contradict what has come before. Yesterday we looked at Fear not being Truth - Today, I'd like to tell you that Truth can be Fear.

This again is one of my assumptions; in this case number 2.5 which states that "[Truth and Fear] will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing." and again as part of corollary b "Truth will at times agree with Fear"

In practicality, this means that some if not all of the first generation of your fears are real. However the rest of corollary b says that "[when] there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity." It is only the first generation that is trustworthy after that we get back to Fear and Truth being different.

Remember how Fear is irrational and therefore lacks certain filters. What Fear doesn't lack is the ability to sometimes speak the truth. This will do three things. First of all, at some times fear will seem to be speaking even louder. When this happens, it means that Truth is saying the same thing - so Very loud fears can't be ignored. However don't mistake very loud for very irrational - they are very different.

The second thing it will do is add plausibility to everything else that Fear says. The justification for this is that if you can trust something of what someone says, the rest is more likely to be true. The Third thing that it does is take plausibility from Truth. The reason for this is that if a truth is echoed by an implausible witness, then the veracity of the statement is put into jeopardy.

In the short term, these will make very little difference, but over time it will either become a lot easier to trust Fear, or it will be a lot easier to doubt Truth. So the trouble that comes up is that either you can grow complacent or gullible, or you can grow to be untrusting of anything you hear.

Stay tuned for the season finale tomorrow.

Whispered Words - Part 3 - Your Fears Aren't Truth

This is the Third part in my discussion of the consequences of the some song lyrics that I found interesting. Click here to recap on the introduction and Click here for Yesterday's discussion. Today we move on to a second seemingly obvious consequence of these words - Your Fears Are Not A Definite Truth.

Like Yesterday, this comes fairly easily from the song. In fact, it was so clearly, I mentioned it in the first part. Assumption 2 states "[Truth and Fear] will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required." Fair enough, but what is the consequence of this assumption. There are a couple.

Firstly, DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR FEARS. They may well not be truth. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are in this case lies, merely misdirections, possibly unrealised.
The side assumption that we made for corollary b was that Fear is irrational (yes this will still be discussed later, maybe in about a week). Do you trust everything that is told to you be anyone in hysterics? Do you trust anything that is told to you by a lunatic? Before you answer, remember that a person in hysterics will do two things; 1, they will lower their inhibitions - that's almost what the definition of hysterics is - and so they are more likely to be saying everything that they think, truth or not. Secondly, because of this, they are more likely to tell the truth, or what they perceive the truth to be. Now how do you answer. Perceptions can be right, but they can also be wrong and so you have to take it with a grain of salt.
What about loonies? Before you answer this one, remember that lunatics (even though I dislike the word I'm going to keep using it) have less filters on the way that they see. This gives them a less polarised view on what they see compared to you. Yes that's right, walnuts are saner than you and even almonds, the nuttiest of nuts, can make a fairly good play. And remember that the filters that they lack may be the ones that cancel paranoia so they may be extra paranoid, or it may be the complete opposite.
With this side assumption we can say that Fear will just say what ever pops into his head, whether he is right or wrong and he will either lack the intelligence to decide which is which or the willpower to shut up when he knows he is wrong.

Secondly, if Fear has the loudest voice (corollary a) then he will be the one who is easier to listen to. Again obvious (he is 3dB louder) but this means that what I just said is harder. It isn't impossible, it's just more difficult. We know this, in a loud room it's harder to hear a quiet voice, even if it's right in front of you and it's easier to just sit and catch snatches of all of the conversation that's happening.

Thirdly, we have a problem. We can't use a polygraph test to test Fear, because he thinks he is telling the truth.
Yes this is a real problem, because even though your fears aren't truth they are at some level plausible. Which makes your job harder again (in case it wasn't hard enough yet)

Once again I don't have any hard and fast rules for this, and in this case I don't even have any real guide lines that you can apply. Really all I can say is to feel out the situation before you believe what's happening.

Watch this space again tomorrow.

Whispered Words - Part 2 - These Are Just For You

Yesterday, we started looking at a couple of lines from a song in terms of what consequences of the lyrics can be drawn. Today we start looking at one in particular - These voices, Truth and Fear, are just for you.

Now this part comes fairly clearly. The song states "They whisper words into my ears", not 'ears in general', not 'ears not mine', not even just 'they sit next to me and chat about things'. This is a private conversation that does not get overheard by anyone bar you (and presumably Fear and Truth). So why did this get mentioned if it's right there in front of us. It wasn't for the lazy trip into very basic logic, instead it was for the consequences of this. The consequence is fairly simple - It's you that has to follow up on what is told to you. You and no one else can make whatever decision follows.

Assumption 5 (and corollary c) state that Fear and Truth are available for any and every circumstance. If these hold then we can also say that in any and every circumstance there is something that can be told to you from either your fears or the impartial neutrality of Truth. If we then add that the information comes only to you, then It is up to you to make every decision that comes to you based on the foreseeable options and outcomes.

From this comes something else as well. A smart man will tell people what he knows, but an intelligent man will never reveal what he knows. You have a couple of things that have been revealed to you that may not have been revealed to others. It may be that all that you have extra is a fear, but that is something that no one else has and will give you an extra insight. If it happens that you do want assistance in the decision making process, then you have to decide how much of this added insight you may or may not have and how much you are willing to give out. There will be some times when you can gain an advantage from not revealing information. But there are other times when you will be disadvantaged by holding things back. Unfortunately I can't give you any rules that apply in all situations. The best that I can give you is to learn through observation, feel out the situation. Often, unless the person you ask looks at things in a very different way, asking them will provide you with no advantage anyway.

Back to the main point though. No one will get the exact same things given to them. Listening to the same voices in different ways will give you enough of a noticeable difference. I think it's also fair to say that everyone will get these voices in a similar capacity to you and the writer of the song. This means that everyone will be getting their own set of 'instructions' to do with as they will. But it's up to you which of your revelations will be revealed to any other parties.
And remember, if everyone else is getting similar styles of things, how many people are telling you about them.

Back again Tomorrow

Whispered Words - Part 1 - Introduction and Assumptions

They whisper words
into my ears,
One speaks of truth
and one speaks of my fears.
- VAST from the song Three Doors

Which leads to some interesting discussion points which will take a while to fully explore. Thus, I have decided in my less than infinite wisdom to take a week and touch on all of them.

Firstly: There's some assumptions that need to be made.
Secondly: These Are Just For You
Thirdly: Your Fears Aren't Truth
Fourthly: Truth And Fears Overlap
and Finally: Neither Of These Can Be Trusted


So to Begin, Lets make some assumptions. These must all stand on their own or not at all.

1) There are Two Points of View. For Simplicities sake picture the cartoon angel and demon sitting on your shoulder, only make them both voices and don't imbue them with either a sense of divine goodness or infernal evil. Name one Truth and the other one Fear. Now, at this stage, you don't know which is which.

2) These will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required. This seems logical, but we need to put it down so that it can be disputed or agreed to.

2.5) These will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing.

3) These can at times be blocked out. They're only whispering, you can ignore that.

3.5) You will still know that they are there and you can't always ignore them. It's happening in your ear - that can get very annoying and you will notice it.

4) Both Truth and Fear are impartial. Logically Truth is impartial, but why does Fear get this status? This is a necessity. If Fear wasn't impartial, he wouldn't be speaking of MY fears, he would be simply speaking of fears. This is a subtle but important distinction.

5) This is the last assumption. They may not always speak, but they will always be ready to speak. At all times there will be at least one foreseeable 'pessim' (a word of my own creation. n, a single pessimistic view) or a potential downside to any action that you do or don't make. And at all times there will be truths that are clear. Therefore there is no occasion when neither of them can vocalise their viewpoint.


There follow some corollaries that also can be made from these.

a) Fear will seem to have the louder voice. I'm going to move into audio nerd speak here because it's the way I understand things, but it can be applied anywhere. Fear is speaking of my fears and nothing else (point 4) therefore what he is saying will come into line with what I am thinking. This doubles an identical signal which raises the output noticeably (by 3dB, but that's irrelevant).

b) Truth will at times agree with Fear, but Fear will not agree with Truth. (to make this point, we have to make an assumption about the nature of Fear outside of this discussion. Fear is Irrational. I'll discuss this some other time maybe.) Truth is completely impartial and so at times when Fear comes into line with Truth, Truth will echo this (point 2.5). At this point though, because there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity.

c) They are always there. If they are always ready to speak (point 5) then they will have to have been there to gather the available data. This requires their presence at all times.

d) You have some measure of power over them. You can chose not to listen to them (point 3) and if they are impartial (point 4) then they can't provide their views. All they can do is make more noise until you decide to listen.

Come back Tomorrow for the first consequence.

Idealism

Last time, I said that despite most teenagers having little more on their list of 'things I want' than a good looking counterpart who's willing to spend large amounts of time naked, they are also more likely to be idealists than others. Why? Lets start by looking at a timeline of human ages.

Child -> Strong sense of Justice based on equality (as long as I am more equal than others). However, a child seldom sees more than what is in the backyard at home
Teenager -> Strong sense of Justice based on equality. Now however, they can see more, they have been exposed to things beyond their immediate location.
Adult -> Strong sense of Justice based on how much you've done to deserve it. At this stage the person has decided that they have to attempt to get what they can. This may be in order to set a better life for their offspring (so you don't think that I'm saying that all adults are bastards) but it's still a protection of their own self as it were rather than a sense of giving to others. You may give to charities or sponsor a child in order to 'do the right thing'.
Elderly -> You have realised that it's too late to do anything now. You may give to charities in order to leave at least a bit of a legacy.

Yes I have over simplified it. No I don't think it's particularly wrong.

Teenagers are simply at the stage when they want things to be equal but can't make a huge difference on their own. As they develop the ability to do things on their own, they become caught up in thinking that 'I can't do anything big enough'. This means two things. One, that they recognise that the problems are big. Two that they underestimate the power of little people doing little things.

Micah Sifry put it this way, "Nobody feels your pain, Nobody wants to give peace a chance, Nobody will stand up for what is right, Nobody will tell the truth. Nobody, but you, that is Never forget a small group of people an change the world. Nobody else ever has."

Teenagers can see that the world is screwed up, usually by looking first at themselves, and then looking at other people and seeing massive inequalities. However the perception of teenagers is that they are small people incapable of tidying their room, let alone doing anything properly good or major. And this perception is carried on by teenagers. And so they can't do anything.


P.S: over the next week I'll be doing something a bit different. 5 posts on a subject. Stay tuned