Eugine Onegin
By Douglas Hofstadter
Hofstadter’s preface is an intriguing love story by a master of symbols and patterns who falls prey to compulsiveness and pounces on random coincidences. He gives in to love-for the poem, if only for the love of his wife, Carol. The question that anyone familiar with Hofstadter is; is this book Carol’s symbol, his deceased wife living beyond her mortality? Ironically, the story line by the original author Sergeevich Pushkin, the godfather of Russian literature, is a love story as well. Hence you’ll find two parallel themes in my review. First is the answer to the Hofstadter question. The second is a question to all of you. Pushkin’s love story told in poetry is one of familiar refrain. I suspect love manifests itself in many ways and thrives on many different levels..
In Hofstadter’s book I Am a Strange Loop, discussed in my review found here on Cigar Room of Books, he tells a touching true-life story of his wife’s passing. In that story he eventually climbs out of the funk he found himself in. This translation project was his bridge. He provides a rationale of how the entwined life between himself and Carol became an entwined thought pattern. Thought being capable of transcending modalities, allows is wife Carol to live on through the people she was close to, and then through generations. In piecing together the story in Strange Loop and his preface in this book, I have come to conclude that the hidden power of love drove Hofstadter, to this project so that he could release his grief and find a higher plane to express his love for Carol. The most remarkable feat I find is this book is Hofstadter's soul, already fluent in a few languages which are mere symbols of thought, flowing from the patterns of DNA, he translates a poem written in Russian, a language he is not fluent in, by the most renowned Russian author ever, and receives high accolades from Russians who say he captured the pure essence of Pushkin’s heart and mind.
You find evidence in chapter 7 verse 23: to my summation. This stanza is Tatyana’s soul reacting to the same books her long departed Onegin had read. The story places Tatyana in the same study that Onegin had spent time in. Pushkin infers that time and space becomes only somewhat relevant as she is experiencing the thoughts and feelings of her denied true love through the common denominator of the word symbols. In that room she becomes one with her lover. All of the entwined expressions of life between Douglas and Carol continue through their children and through their work.
There could be found on many pages,
The clench marks of his fingernails.
The girl, her gaze alert, engages
Two eager eyes upon these trails
Tatyana notes, with trepidation
The types of thought and observation
That struck Onegin forcefully
Things he agreed with silently.
The margins brought to her attention
Tracks from his pencil, trapped in coal.
Thus everywhere Onegins soul
Transduced itself, without intention
Through jotted words, through checks and hooks,
Through interrogatory crooks.
The story line is pretty simple and one that should find common experience amongst most readers. What makes this book worth reading is the story is told in verse. I am told many a Russian has it committed to memory which is a testament to the passion I have experienced in my Russian experiences. Eugene is your classic Russian youth full of vim and vigor and a penchant to be a man of the world. Tatyana is a unique young woman with a penchant to marry the person she loves rather than the person presented to her by society’s fate. As the story unfolds Tatyana submits her soul to Onegin in classic Russian form through a love letter invitation. Onegin, who inwardly discovers her inward beauty as well as his love for her rebukes Tatyana as being too vulnerable to withstand the realities his antics. As tradition forces herself, Tatyana is destined to be matched up with someone in the person of Eugene’s rival friend. The rivalry ends in a duel where Eugene while victor, he is deeply remorseful and becomes reclusive. As there lives take separate courses Eugene eventually finds in his approach to Tatyana the “shoe on the other foot” and an already married Tatyana, still with a deep love for Eugene must now reproach him.
To comment on the story and its translation I provide the following view. In my youth the popular song was Love The One You’re With and we all did. But until a man seasons a few years he is lacking in the skills and judgment to respond appropriately. There is much more to love than the outward directed world reveals. My guess is that the reason Russians can remember the poem, is it sings a familiar refrain in the lives of many. In reading this book if you find the same fate, close your eyes and be there now. In this world where you come in to it and leave it alone, and some times in the middle you feel the same; this poem committed to memory, may be your one friend to help you feel not so alone. I wonder if Hofstadter found this same experience?
From a scientific or Darwinian view and a take away on Hofstadter: If DNA is a pattern that evolves through experiences within each host, it is the pattern or symbol of your soul that lives on. Hence life that looks to flourish and continue on in this world requires a host willing to conceive, bare and nourish the symbol of her being, a child. That requires a mate. In natural mate selection to the host searches for a mate with the mutual respect for life, found in love for one another. A love for one another that are vested in the ability to recognize the interconnectedness found in oneness of mankind beginning with one’s self. This couple then forms a life together contributing to a home, village, and state world. This is where the continuation of their DNA (symbols of their souls) continues on.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Collapse
Collapse
by Jared Diamond
Diamond takes a very academic approach to this book, providing a case to inspire one to GO GREEN. His introduction examines societies collapses with a theory on ecocide. There is he claims a simple list for causes ecocide. In a history narrative covering a few collapsed societies Diamond covers deforestation, soil problems, water management, over hunting & fishing, the introduction of new species into areas that could not adapt, and human population growth. As he transitions the reader to current times where collapse has yet to occur he introduces the human caused climate change of today, a build up of toxic chemicals, energy shortage, and full human utilization of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. What is not so simple is why man does what he does, nor is the remedy.
In all the events he covers, he associates things man has done or not done as his part to ecocide. Man seems to have historically demonstrated a knack no not recognize subsequent environmental damage caused by man. For example the Deforestation of Easter Island began around 900 and was completed in 1722 when Roggeveen arrived and observed the tallest trees to be 10 ft. The Easter Island people did not recognize that due to the climate of Easter Island the soil could only nourish a slow growth rate of big trees until it was too late. While this simple factor went un-noticed it caused a domino effect through the whole eco system. The intra island competition to build the biggest idols left chiefs focused on besting each other may have been their distraction. In the end with no large trees, the Islanders could not make ocean-going canoes big enough to export. And the became dependent on imports with uncooperative trading partners, for they ran out of things to trade for. Sound like an ominous parallel?
On the subject of social dysfunctions and short sighted leadership that begins with Easter Island, Diamond provides many other examples. The two poignant ones I took note of were first Maya kings who sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples. Where Diamonds message becomes poignant is where he says this is reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. What makes it especially poignant to me is he overlooks the vocal high paid actors from Hollywood. Next you have the differences between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The former is Spanish while the latter is French. Because Dominican Republic was of Spanish origin, received more rain, fed by more rivers; started with less colonization on a more ecologically sustainable land made them less vulnerable to collapse. The causes for the ignorance to these challenges to avert collapse in Haiti where they were not so blessed were social differences and were somewhat self-inflicted. As a legacy of their country’s slave history and slave revolt most Haitians owned their land, used it to feed themselves and received no help from their government in developing cash crops for trade. France did not lose gracefully. Contrarily while Spain did the opposite with their partner Dominican Republic. It seems the French always seem to extol their superior society however in this example they get caught with their pants down, where no one is brave enough to tell the king, even to this day.
The book provides several examples where social decisions were attempted and managed for a while but then over run by short sightedness, caused by limitations in environmental knowledge at the place and time. As one example; the Anasazi Indians existed in the Chaco Canyon of our American Southwest from 600 AD to 1200. They lived in peace until 1110 when resources became scarce. Diamond explains the government system that was administered to manage the random flood plains. Unique to this was the centralization of the government in Chaco Canyon. The Chaco Canyon collapse was founded in the people’s failed effort to plant crops in many locations and redistribute some of the harvest to the people still living at sites that didn’t get enough rainfall that year. It involved the risk that redistribution required a complex political system to integrate activities between different sites. Of course the risk as we know today is in centralization of control. Anaszi groups supplied food, timber, pottery, stone, supporting each other in an interdependent complex society, by coordinating the changes of materials, and re motivating people in outlying areas by political and religious centers. Probably the outlying settlements that formerly supplied the Chaco political and religious center with food lost faith in the Chacoan priests who’s prayers for rain remained unanswered. The missing ingredient was not unanswered prayer but rather knowledge of long term drought patterns that would have been transferred if the written word was at their hand.
It becomes clear that in every case where trees or natural pasture is cultivated for mans use, whether for farming or mining, soil problems are sure to be the first domino before water to lead to societal collapse. In the past and it seems still today society does not respond properly. In the past it may have been out of ignorance. Diamond implies that today it may be also out of systematic greed. An example was discussed in Australia. Because the continent does not have the benefit of volcanic ash fall out, it has a very thin layer of fertile soil to begin with. You find these modern era people guilty of the introduction of new species on a vulnerable eco system. In Australia rabbits and sheep were introduced and they rutted the soil and ate the local vegetation thus accelerating soil erosion. Before colonists realized this is was too late. Ghosts of this problem still exist around the globe. Soil problems lead to water management problems where Stalinization of land is the result of letting once naturally vegetated land go fallow and rain water to leach minerals out of the sublevel rock. I now appreciate their fanatic inspection I receive when I land in Melbourne. Its why the Fertile Crescent is not fertile and Australia’s number one problem in it’s very delicate eco system is water, both fresh and ocean water. All these stories inspired me to go out and purchase trees. I planted ten on my acre of property and many more around my neighborhood. While we get the impression Australia is proactive on the environment, Diamond says otherwise. Like in the Middle East Australia inadvertent societal damage on the environment –vs.- their ability to repair it is out of balance. More on that to come.
Human population growth while out of control in poor countries is of concern even maintaining the present population base does not get us out of the woods when looking at countries achieving first tier living standards. First Diamond introduces the Malthusin concept that human population growth would out grow food production as a cause for collapse. Then he applies this to Rwanda where we find detailed cause and effect of the Malthusin concept as not a battle between Tutsi and Hutu but the ''Haves'' and the '' Have Nots'' in a battle for food in the densest population in Africa. The average Rwandan woman has her first of 5 children at the age of 15. Imagine the societal upheaval when you cannot as a family father support your five kids on your three quarters of an acre and no more land to obtain through civil or uncivil means and your parents move back in because their land was taken. So far genocide seems to have to prevailed over vertical farming or family planning. Amidst the discussion of population we gather that Professor Diamond unabashedly and ironically includes this in his book that he fathered twins at age 58. So we have ignorance, systematic greed and clumsy protocol.
The human impact of China becoming a first word country left unabated and assuming the United States leads the way to a friendlier earth will still leave our planet in pearl due to China’s flagrant disregard to our environment. Forget about industry’s disregard; simply look at the human impact of becoming a first tier country. Diamond provides the following simple statistical arguments. First at zero population growth the already large number of China’s households has increased 3.5% per year over the past 15 years. The occupant size decreased from 4.5 to 3.5 and is projected to decrease further to 2.7as there are less multi generation households. There are more divorces where a father can sire more than one child and rear them in separate homes. And finally the per-capita floor space has increased nearly three fold. Having been to China I asked my counter part what happened to the bicycles. He told me the government views bicycles as bad for their image and has placed an exorbitant license fee and thus making polluting mo pads and autos the preferred choice. China’s failure to recognize their guilt is the number one rationale for no country to have signed the Kyoto Treaty in 2000. The right statement is we are on board for green, but we must all be genuinely being on board. China so far has demonstrated everything to the contrary.
Not to stand holier than thou, this transitions my review nicely to Diamonds recommendations to go green. They come with examples in both bottom up and then top down approaches. First lets look at top down from two perspectives. In Japan the spread of silviculture probably promulgated by diffusion of knowledge of the technique from its first two sites of invention, plus perhaps some later inventions in other areas. But the country’s shift was led from the top by successive shoguns who invoked Confucian principals to promulgate official ideology that encouraged limiting consumption and accumulating reserve supplies in order to prevent disaster. Living in a stable society without input from foreign ideas, Japans elite and peasants alike expected the future to be like the present, and future problems to have to be solved with present resources. In the Dominican Republic while Trujillo was a brutal dictator, he advanced a stronger economy through conservation than Dovalier, his 20th century counterpart in Haiti. He did this though for self-serving reasons and the unstable situation and lack of cooperative productive trade partners today therefore renders the odds for sustainable environmentalism in question. The contrast demonstrates that no one person is smart enough to get the job done.
A good example of Bottom up is provided in Papua New Guinea where a local Chevron employee explained, “We recognized that in Papua no natural resource project could be successful in the long run without support of the local land owners. They would disrupt the project and shut it down”. Conditions allowing such a statement were a decentralized government with a lot of authority at local level. This is an oil project run by the people because the executives saw good reason in terms of risk abatement which led to being first in line for exploration contracts in other countries. In the end the bottom up approach has a positive global impact beyond political boarders.
Each tier, whether political or industrial commerce must reach out to each other in a cooperative spirit. Top Down-v-Bottom Up is discussed where in 1993 eroded land in Australia was purchased by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Chicago Zoological Society. The managers applied top-down control and gave orders to local community volunteers who became increasingly frustrated, until control was turned over to the private Australian Landscape Trust mobilizing 400 local volunteers for bottom up management. The trust funded in large degree by Australia largest private philanthropic organization, the Potter Foundation which is expressly concerned with reversing the degradation of Australia’s farmland. One must remember that in order for Potter Foundation to exist they needed to earn capital to become of such elite status to help out. It is always a word to the wise to the masses to not bite the hand that feeds you and an equal word to the elite to appreciate who is washing your hand. More on that to come.
It is clear Diamond is a little left of center and a tad antiestablishment. While he maintains for the most part in my opinion a fair degree of objectivity in fact he occasionally digresses in opinion. What I think could be the focused intended outcome in reading this book is to learn from mistakes and then to take both a top down and a then a bottom up approach towards righting a sinking ship. The ship may be sinking due to forces beyond our control as Diamond admits, but then his book would be considerably shorter and provide nothing but hope. In taking a more involved look, Diamond provokes the reader to be much more conscious of his individual environmental impact, much more informed of societal impact on our environment, and much more keen with a invigorated spirit to “pitch in”.
Australia has a well-educated populace, a high standard of living. and a relative honest political and economic institutions by world standards. Australians are asking a central question: which of our traditional core values can we retain, and which ones instead no longer serve us well in today's world. This is something that should catch on globally. In the bottom up cause where the reader cannot help but find inspiration towards his contribution we find yet another story in McDonalds. In this case McDonalds is subservient to the government hence “bottom-up. McDonalds in the interest of protecting their marketplace (the people) applied public pressure for industries to conform to inspections. They, through their consumers have the world’s largest shopping cart. Diamond uses the mad cow-testing mandate by McDonalds to illustrate the power of the people and big business but seems to overlook the fact that the solution at hand was separate from government involvement. Diamond in my opinion rightly appeals to consumers to press a moral obligation to conform to environmentalism and wrongly proposes the government as the conduit. He falls on to the government, because of its authority through force, as opposed to, schools, television, radio, newspapers, the church, synagogue, or mosque where the conscience of One Man and the Unity of us all is conveyed and thus producing voluntary acceptance and adaptation. What do you think caused people in the United States to “buckle up” your car seat belts more; the “buckle up” “media campaigns or the ticket you get if you don’t buckle up? Equating moral consciousness to government dependency is an indictment on the classic educated elite liberal who has forgotten how to sell ideas. It is an unfortunate undertone in Diamonds message that I fear as one of the many examples impeding on the collective conscience to GO GREEN.
Diamond proposes the root cause of Collapse is group decision making. He outlines causes at group level. First is anticipation of a problem. Second is perception of a problem. And third is problem solving. Greenland climate changes cannot support long-term farming. They did not have the knowledge that when they discovered Greenland it was during a global warming period and that a mini Ice Age would return. This very course in the book had me suspicious of our current “global warming fears”. In Greenland the Norse Vikings could not draw on prior experience and made mistakes through reasoning by false analogy. Separately, I particularly enjoyed Diamonds assumption as to why Norse Greenlander didn’t eat fish. But preferred to eat beef on a land that could not sustain cows. Fish were deemed taboo as Eric the Red got food poisoning in his founding year of Greenland. This only represents an example where ignorant leaders actions can lead a society into collapse. More on that later. Problem solving was preempted by instance of a life style dictated by leaders from distant Norway.
In a more current example of irrational problem solving Diamond presents the reader with the story of competing interest and distant managers in the way we find a practical and commercial argument in Australia. When a farmer buys land and takes out a mortgage, the need to pay the interest on that high mortgage resulting from the land (based in British valuation) results overcapitalization pressures on the farmer to try to extract more from prime land than it could sustain-ably yield. That practice, termed flogging the land, has meant stocking to many sheep per acre. At a world group level the farmer should concede and choose to starve if not for the group to somehow subsidize the farmers transition to a new vocation. Our credit crisis ushered in by Clinton policy and perpetuated by Bush’s' unwillingness to repeal it, but rather perpetuate it, parallels the Australian mistake with sheep. In our case the bank plays the role of farmer and we the people the role of sheep, while the bank is guilty of the flogging. I add this only to illustrate all the obstacles in the way of a society’s ability to perceive and solve a problem collectively, it is not simply the technology of the written word, and it is the word itself and its response.
Here is what the author means in detect-ability relevant to the written word, a frequent dilemma for historians is trying to apply the comparative method to problems of human history: Apparently there are too many potential independent variables, and far too few separate outcomes to establish those variables' importance statically. In my Six Sigma view, Diamond is flawed in his opinion. I do not believe he has explored a statistical approach to adequate depths rendering potential statistical facts to a mere opinion. Where there is dispute over the numbers there is certain disagreement. With the right statistician this could be solved. In the Papua example statistics were not required. Folks could readily see environmental impact and therefore made appropriate decisions.
Laws of supply & demand directly challenge attempts to overcome agendas for individual survival as the mining industry deals with their ability to stockpile their core product. Diamond provides sound historical economic argument as to why mining companies are recalcitrant to properly funding mine cleanup. But in merely rightly or wrongly ridiculing he mining companies he falls short of a complete solution, which would be pointing a finger at consumers as well to be held accountable for the higher end-product pressure aimed at environmentalism. Putting the right measured information in front of consumer leveraging environmental purchasing pressure on the distant managers in mining industry has proven ineffective so far due to the consumers ignorance to the core ingredients blinded by the end product of their demand on the core product. Putting the written word in front of the consumers would go a long way to applying the right forces. What if right next to the words that said this product is environmentally safe, there were a before and after price? This is my solution aimed by environmentalist at industry but a paradigm shifting solution that includes the whole food chain…consumers.
In rethinking our approach consider the following. Once established overseas in Christian lands, pagan Vikings were quite prepared to inter marry and adapt to local customs and that included embracing Christianity. Conversions of Vikings overseas contributed to the emergence of Christianity at home. As chiefs and kings recognized the political advantages that Christianity would bring them they were adopted and made official. Norwegian kings then force Christianity on to all its conquered lands and trading partners, whether it made sense or not. The things deemed important in Bergen, ended up costing Greenlanders their lives. If only the true ideologies of Christianity were embraced as opposed the power found in “the secret” bestowed upon religious leaders. Some of our global problems are distant problems and hence we as distant and detached managers are apt for power over another rather than love for one another, and pawn the problem off. Are we as leaders and individuals across the globe truly prepared meet the Australian question to forego power a cousin to ignorant greed and reprioritize? Owning the concern one by one, and then recognizing the inter connectedness of our part in the concern is what this book conveys. If indeed it is our will to live then let it be that we work together. If it is Gods will then let us …work together anyway.
The prosperity that the First World enjoys at present is based on spending down its environmental capital. It makes no sense to be content with our present comfort when it is clear that we are currently on a non-sustainable course. I weaved Diamond’s 500-page thesis message to a short review to hopefully with minor flaws aside compel you to overcome any intentional or most likely unintentional opposition to environmentalism in any form and read this book. For me I was immediately inspired to plant trees. I would enjoy hearing from you how you pitched in as a result of reading this book.
by Jared Diamond
Diamond takes a very academic approach to this book, providing a case to inspire one to GO GREEN. His introduction examines societies collapses with a theory on ecocide. There is he claims a simple list for causes ecocide. In a history narrative covering a few collapsed societies Diamond covers deforestation, soil problems, water management, over hunting & fishing, the introduction of new species into areas that could not adapt, and human population growth. As he transitions the reader to current times where collapse has yet to occur he introduces the human caused climate change of today, a build up of toxic chemicals, energy shortage, and full human utilization of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. What is not so simple is why man does what he does, nor is the remedy.
In all the events he covers, he associates things man has done or not done as his part to ecocide. Man seems to have historically demonstrated a knack no not recognize subsequent environmental damage caused by man. For example the Deforestation of Easter Island began around 900 and was completed in 1722 when Roggeveen arrived and observed the tallest trees to be 10 ft. The Easter Island people did not recognize that due to the climate of Easter Island the soil could only nourish a slow growth rate of big trees until it was too late. While this simple factor went un-noticed it caused a domino effect through the whole eco system. The intra island competition to build the biggest idols left chiefs focused on besting each other may have been their distraction. In the end with no large trees, the Islanders could not make ocean-going canoes big enough to export. And the became dependent on imports with uncooperative trading partners, for they ran out of things to trade for. Sound like an ominous parallel?
On the subject of social dysfunctions and short sighted leadership that begins with Easter Island, Diamond provides many other examples. The two poignant ones I took note of were first Maya kings who sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples. Where Diamonds message becomes poignant is where he says this is reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. What makes it especially poignant to me is he overlooks the vocal high paid actors from Hollywood. Next you have the differences between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The former is Spanish while the latter is French. Because Dominican Republic was of Spanish origin, received more rain, fed by more rivers; started with less colonization on a more ecologically sustainable land made them less vulnerable to collapse. The causes for the ignorance to these challenges to avert collapse in Haiti where they were not so blessed were social differences and were somewhat self-inflicted. As a legacy of their country’s slave history and slave revolt most Haitians owned their land, used it to feed themselves and received no help from their government in developing cash crops for trade. France did not lose gracefully. Contrarily while Spain did the opposite with their partner Dominican Republic. It seems the French always seem to extol their superior society however in this example they get caught with their pants down, where no one is brave enough to tell the king, even to this day.
The book provides several examples where social decisions were attempted and managed for a while but then over run by short sightedness, caused by limitations in environmental knowledge at the place and time. As one example; the Anasazi Indians existed in the Chaco Canyon of our American Southwest from 600 AD to 1200. They lived in peace until 1110 when resources became scarce. Diamond explains the government system that was administered to manage the random flood plains. Unique to this was the centralization of the government in Chaco Canyon. The Chaco Canyon collapse was founded in the people’s failed effort to plant crops in many locations and redistribute some of the harvest to the people still living at sites that didn’t get enough rainfall that year. It involved the risk that redistribution required a complex political system to integrate activities between different sites. Of course the risk as we know today is in centralization of control. Anaszi groups supplied food, timber, pottery, stone, supporting each other in an interdependent complex society, by coordinating the changes of materials, and re motivating people in outlying areas by political and religious centers. Probably the outlying settlements that formerly supplied the Chaco political and religious center with food lost faith in the Chacoan priests who’s prayers for rain remained unanswered. The missing ingredient was not unanswered prayer but rather knowledge of long term drought patterns that would have been transferred if the written word was at their hand.
It becomes clear that in every case where trees or natural pasture is cultivated for mans use, whether for farming or mining, soil problems are sure to be the first domino before water to lead to societal collapse. In the past and it seems still today society does not respond properly. In the past it may have been out of ignorance. Diamond implies that today it may be also out of systematic greed. An example was discussed in Australia. Because the continent does not have the benefit of volcanic ash fall out, it has a very thin layer of fertile soil to begin with. You find these modern era people guilty of the introduction of new species on a vulnerable eco system. In Australia rabbits and sheep were introduced and they rutted the soil and ate the local vegetation thus accelerating soil erosion. Before colonists realized this is was too late. Ghosts of this problem still exist around the globe. Soil problems lead to water management problems where Stalinization of land is the result of letting once naturally vegetated land go fallow and rain water to leach minerals out of the sublevel rock. I now appreciate their fanatic inspection I receive when I land in Melbourne. Its why the Fertile Crescent is not fertile and Australia’s number one problem in it’s very delicate eco system is water, both fresh and ocean water. All these stories inspired me to go out and purchase trees. I planted ten on my acre of property and many more around my neighborhood. While we get the impression Australia is proactive on the environment, Diamond says otherwise. Like in the Middle East Australia inadvertent societal damage on the environment –vs.- their ability to repair it is out of balance. More on that to come.
Human population growth while out of control in poor countries is of concern even maintaining the present population base does not get us out of the woods when looking at countries achieving first tier living standards. First Diamond introduces the Malthusin concept that human population growth would out grow food production as a cause for collapse. Then he applies this to Rwanda where we find detailed cause and effect of the Malthusin concept as not a battle between Tutsi and Hutu but the ''Haves'' and the '' Have Nots'' in a battle for food in the densest population in Africa. The average Rwandan woman has her first of 5 children at the age of 15. Imagine the societal upheaval when you cannot as a family father support your five kids on your three quarters of an acre and no more land to obtain through civil or uncivil means and your parents move back in because their land was taken. So far genocide seems to have to prevailed over vertical farming or family planning. Amidst the discussion of population we gather that Professor Diamond unabashedly and ironically includes this in his book that he fathered twins at age 58. So we have ignorance, systematic greed and clumsy protocol.
The human impact of China becoming a first word country left unabated and assuming the United States leads the way to a friendlier earth will still leave our planet in pearl due to China’s flagrant disregard to our environment. Forget about industry’s disregard; simply look at the human impact of becoming a first tier country. Diamond provides the following simple statistical arguments. First at zero population growth the already large number of China’s households has increased 3.5% per year over the past 15 years. The occupant size decreased from 4.5 to 3.5 and is projected to decrease further to 2.7as there are less multi generation households. There are more divorces where a father can sire more than one child and rear them in separate homes. And finally the per-capita floor space has increased nearly three fold. Having been to China I asked my counter part what happened to the bicycles. He told me the government views bicycles as bad for their image and has placed an exorbitant license fee and thus making polluting mo pads and autos the preferred choice. China’s failure to recognize their guilt is the number one rationale for no country to have signed the Kyoto Treaty in 2000. The right statement is we are on board for green, but we must all be genuinely being on board. China so far has demonstrated everything to the contrary.
Not to stand holier than thou, this transitions my review nicely to Diamonds recommendations to go green. They come with examples in both bottom up and then top down approaches. First lets look at top down from two perspectives. In Japan the spread of silviculture probably promulgated by diffusion of knowledge of the technique from its first two sites of invention, plus perhaps some later inventions in other areas. But the country’s shift was led from the top by successive shoguns who invoked Confucian principals to promulgate official ideology that encouraged limiting consumption and accumulating reserve supplies in order to prevent disaster. Living in a stable society without input from foreign ideas, Japans elite and peasants alike expected the future to be like the present, and future problems to have to be solved with present resources. In the Dominican Republic while Trujillo was a brutal dictator, he advanced a stronger economy through conservation than Dovalier, his 20th century counterpart in Haiti. He did this though for self-serving reasons and the unstable situation and lack of cooperative productive trade partners today therefore renders the odds for sustainable environmentalism in question. The contrast demonstrates that no one person is smart enough to get the job done.
A good example of Bottom up is provided in Papua New Guinea where a local Chevron employee explained, “We recognized that in Papua no natural resource project could be successful in the long run without support of the local land owners. They would disrupt the project and shut it down”. Conditions allowing such a statement were a decentralized government with a lot of authority at local level. This is an oil project run by the people because the executives saw good reason in terms of risk abatement which led to being first in line for exploration contracts in other countries. In the end the bottom up approach has a positive global impact beyond political boarders.
Each tier, whether political or industrial commerce must reach out to each other in a cooperative spirit. Top Down-v-Bottom Up is discussed where in 1993 eroded land in Australia was purchased by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Chicago Zoological Society. The managers applied top-down control and gave orders to local community volunteers who became increasingly frustrated, until control was turned over to the private Australian Landscape Trust mobilizing 400 local volunteers for bottom up management. The trust funded in large degree by Australia largest private philanthropic organization, the Potter Foundation which is expressly concerned with reversing the degradation of Australia’s farmland. One must remember that in order for Potter Foundation to exist they needed to earn capital to become of such elite status to help out. It is always a word to the wise to the masses to not bite the hand that feeds you and an equal word to the elite to appreciate who is washing your hand. More on that to come.
It is clear Diamond is a little left of center and a tad antiestablishment. While he maintains for the most part in my opinion a fair degree of objectivity in fact he occasionally digresses in opinion. What I think could be the focused intended outcome in reading this book is to learn from mistakes and then to take both a top down and a then a bottom up approach towards righting a sinking ship. The ship may be sinking due to forces beyond our control as Diamond admits, but then his book would be considerably shorter and provide nothing but hope. In taking a more involved look, Diamond provokes the reader to be much more conscious of his individual environmental impact, much more informed of societal impact on our environment, and much more keen with a invigorated spirit to “pitch in”.
Australia has a well-educated populace, a high standard of living. and a relative honest political and economic institutions by world standards. Australians are asking a central question: which of our traditional core values can we retain, and which ones instead no longer serve us well in today's world. This is something that should catch on globally. In the bottom up cause where the reader cannot help but find inspiration towards his contribution we find yet another story in McDonalds. In this case McDonalds is subservient to the government hence “bottom-up. McDonalds in the interest of protecting their marketplace (the people) applied public pressure for industries to conform to inspections. They, through their consumers have the world’s largest shopping cart. Diamond uses the mad cow-testing mandate by McDonalds to illustrate the power of the people and big business but seems to overlook the fact that the solution at hand was separate from government involvement. Diamond in my opinion rightly appeals to consumers to press a moral obligation to conform to environmentalism and wrongly proposes the government as the conduit. He falls on to the government, because of its authority through force, as opposed to, schools, television, radio, newspapers, the church, synagogue, or mosque where the conscience of One Man and the Unity of us all is conveyed and thus producing voluntary acceptance and adaptation. What do you think caused people in the United States to “buckle up” your car seat belts more; the “buckle up” “media campaigns or the ticket you get if you don’t buckle up? Equating moral consciousness to government dependency is an indictment on the classic educated elite liberal who has forgotten how to sell ideas. It is an unfortunate undertone in Diamonds message that I fear as one of the many examples impeding on the collective conscience to GO GREEN.
Diamond proposes the root cause of Collapse is group decision making. He outlines causes at group level. First is anticipation of a problem. Second is perception of a problem. And third is problem solving. Greenland climate changes cannot support long-term farming. They did not have the knowledge that when they discovered Greenland it was during a global warming period and that a mini Ice Age would return. This very course in the book had me suspicious of our current “global warming fears”. In Greenland the Norse Vikings could not draw on prior experience and made mistakes through reasoning by false analogy. Separately, I particularly enjoyed Diamonds assumption as to why Norse Greenlander didn’t eat fish. But preferred to eat beef on a land that could not sustain cows. Fish were deemed taboo as Eric the Red got food poisoning in his founding year of Greenland. This only represents an example where ignorant leaders actions can lead a society into collapse. More on that later. Problem solving was preempted by instance of a life style dictated by leaders from distant Norway.
In a more current example of irrational problem solving Diamond presents the reader with the story of competing interest and distant managers in the way we find a practical and commercial argument in Australia. When a farmer buys land and takes out a mortgage, the need to pay the interest on that high mortgage resulting from the land (based in British valuation) results overcapitalization pressures on the farmer to try to extract more from prime land than it could sustain-ably yield. That practice, termed flogging the land, has meant stocking to many sheep per acre. At a world group level the farmer should concede and choose to starve if not for the group to somehow subsidize the farmers transition to a new vocation. Our credit crisis ushered in by Clinton policy and perpetuated by Bush’s' unwillingness to repeal it, but rather perpetuate it, parallels the Australian mistake with sheep. In our case the bank plays the role of farmer and we the people the role of sheep, while the bank is guilty of the flogging. I add this only to illustrate all the obstacles in the way of a society’s ability to perceive and solve a problem collectively, it is not simply the technology of the written word, and it is the word itself and its response.
Here is what the author means in detect-ability relevant to the written word, a frequent dilemma for historians is trying to apply the comparative method to problems of human history: Apparently there are too many potential independent variables, and far too few separate outcomes to establish those variables' importance statically. In my Six Sigma view, Diamond is flawed in his opinion. I do not believe he has explored a statistical approach to adequate depths rendering potential statistical facts to a mere opinion. Where there is dispute over the numbers there is certain disagreement. With the right statistician this could be solved. In the Papua example statistics were not required. Folks could readily see environmental impact and therefore made appropriate decisions.
Laws of supply & demand directly challenge attempts to overcome agendas for individual survival as the mining industry deals with their ability to stockpile their core product. Diamond provides sound historical economic argument as to why mining companies are recalcitrant to properly funding mine cleanup. But in merely rightly or wrongly ridiculing he mining companies he falls short of a complete solution, which would be pointing a finger at consumers as well to be held accountable for the higher end-product pressure aimed at environmentalism. Putting the right measured information in front of consumer leveraging environmental purchasing pressure on the distant managers in mining industry has proven ineffective so far due to the consumers ignorance to the core ingredients blinded by the end product of their demand on the core product. Putting the written word in front of the consumers would go a long way to applying the right forces. What if right next to the words that said this product is environmentally safe, there were a before and after price? This is my solution aimed by environmentalist at industry but a paradigm shifting solution that includes the whole food chain…consumers.
In rethinking our approach consider the following. Once established overseas in Christian lands, pagan Vikings were quite prepared to inter marry and adapt to local customs and that included embracing Christianity. Conversions of Vikings overseas contributed to the emergence of Christianity at home. As chiefs and kings recognized the political advantages that Christianity would bring them they were adopted and made official. Norwegian kings then force Christianity on to all its conquered lands and trading partners, whether it made sense or not. The things deemed important in Bergen, ended up costing Greenlanders their lives. If only the true ideologies of Christianity were embraced as opposed the power found in “the secret” bestowed upon religious leaders. Some of our global problems are distant problems and hence we as distant and detached managers are apt for power over another rather than love for one another, and pawn the problem off. Are we as leaders and individuals across the globe truly prepared meet the Australian question to forego power a cousin to ignorant greed and reprioritize? Owning the concern one by one, and then recognizing the inter connectedness of our part in the concern is what this book conveys. If indeed it is our will to live then let it be that we work together. If it is Gods will then let us …work together anyway.
The prosperity that the First World enjoys at present is based on spending down its environmental capital. It makes no sense to be content with our present comfort when it is clear that we are currently on a non-sustainable course. I weaved Diamond’s 500-page thesis message to a short review to hopefully with minor flaws aside compel you to overcome any intentional or most likely unintentional opposition to environmentalism in any form and read this book. For me I was immediately inspired to plant trees. I would enjoy hearing from you how you pitched in as a result of reading this book.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Fleeced
Fleeced
by Dick Morris
Are you a little pissed off? Do you feel this country is going in the wrong direction? This book falls into the category of pundit books that may change your mind about the source of your discontentment as the once political advisor to Bill Clinton takes aim at Democrats He may bore you with a plethora of facts. Some of which you may challenge because you believe contrary pundit input. Some of which you may challenge because you do not find the fact to be directly or even remotely relevant to his case in point. But if there is one rule Morris holds to it is the one where he does not engage in any rivalry diatribe with other pundits, which really has him in a unique political analyst stature of which you may find enjoyable for a change. What I find puzzling is Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s political advisor and you would assume he leans left. But oh-contraire! What never comes out in his book, unlike most other political pundit or political figureheads in exile is any personal agenda. What I find intriguing is Morris’s targeting seems to fall largely with the Democratic Party of which he enjoyed a high degree of success and notoriety.
Morris covers many different subjects spanning big government, big business, and unions where he demonstrates how Americans as individuals are being fleeced by an organized entity with its own sense of self. I only provide a commentary to a few of Morris’s subjects, simply because I have a sense of priority that one may rather call a sense of urgency.
Morris begins the book with a chapter on Barack Obama. The statistician he is, Morris provides a twelve-point list of reasons not to send Barack Obama to the White House. While there are numerous books on the doom that would fall on the United States during an Obama presidency, this book sums it up in one chapter. Below is the list of talking points of which I highly recommend that you go to the bookstore and read the narrative to fully digest and articulate to others the consequence of poor judgment before November 4, 2008.
1. Double capital gains taxes on stock and real estate sales
2. Increase FICA taxes by 14 points on all income over $100,000
3. Double taxes on dividends
4. Expand the inheritance
5. Weaken the PATRIOT ACT
6. Curb anti terror wiretapping
7. Extend health care insurance benefits to illegal immigrants
8. Give children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition at state universities
9. Expand the number of immigrants who can enter the United States
10. Weaken education standards, by making it illegal to base a teachers pay on the test results of their students
11. Expand health insurance so drastically that it forces us to ration medical care, particularly to the elderly
12. Expand the welfare state, dividing America between tax-payers and tax consumers.
Morris makes his case for wire tapping in an argument for terrorist surveillance. His argument is much like video surveillance and laws enacted in Britain. Quoting authorities he states “there is a difference between surveillance aimed at prosecution and that which seeks to “learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities”. For Information gathering alone, warrants are utterly beside the point. Quoting judge Richard Posner as saying once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance comers on city streets. Connecting the dots with the Obama chapter, to find the Democratic left media, and the Democratic Party, and specifically Barack Obama would make it a priority to remove an essential tool to our national security.
Morris discusses the Fairness Doctrine in draft form that is being pushed by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama where not only does the government control the content of what is broadcast on the airwaves it dictates who works there at each station based on there political orientation. Does that sound like socialism, or communism. or Nazism? It certainly does not sound like a free press. But one thing for sure is under a Obama presidency us Americans will never see it coming!
What’s coming you ask? McCain and Obama tried to push a bill through Congress to police for foreign lobbyists. Hillary Clinton led the effort to kill it. One can only conclude that this was due to her husbands special lobby interest in Dubai under the guise of a not for profit fund. Why a US Senator who is running for president has a husband so closely tied to Dubai is not drawn into question by the media is a good question that can be answered in the preceding paragraph. . Many foreign lobbyists lined up behind the Clintons with Hillary campaign run. In other material we are now learning since the Democratic Convention that Obama may have lately received as mush as $65M from foreign entities. This is all illegal under our current campaign finance law. If you wonder where it ends or why folks go to Washington to “serve their country” Clinton’s post administration advisors are on the take and earning a pretty dollar, you don’t have to look far when you read that Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist was on the lobbyist take for Central American trade bill. Penn is now a post Clinton lobbyist millionaire
Freddie and Fannie have found the personal integrity and agenda of prominent Democrats as in Christopher Dodd, and Charles Schumer to be in question. While he points this out here is what Morris missed. Forget about Obama’s association with radical leaders walking through life with spinning moral compasses. Lets look at his connection with Tony Rezko. While running as a reformer, Obama has had a 17-year relationship with an convicted Chicago con man now in prison for fraud, extortion, and money laundering. Rezko benefited from Obama’s role in the Illinois Senate by receiving millions in state funded housing.
Was the favor returned and is big business involved well consider this: A former Illinois bank official, now claiming whistleblower status, says bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama. In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document. Only in Chicago’s Hyde Park!!!! The questions are why is Barack Obama not brought up on charges for fraud? There is a thin veil… a very thin veil. But then why has the Senate ethics committee not even included this on their agenda? Look at the names mentioned in the preceding paragraph. One thing for sure, this goes to the very heart of our current credit crisis.
This book includes many chapters that show government and big business working in concert to fleece American citizens. We clearly understand that in 1999 the Democrats put America on that slippery slope ( I am now calling it the Rezko Slope)to easy money in the hands of those who can’t make responsible decisions. There is an old saying that once government gives away an entitlement, no subsequent administration can take it a away. I will also add that once government gets in bed with big business, it is the citizens that get screwed. In the six years of Republican rule, they made the problem worse. Why Morris’s indictment appears in this book to tilt against the left may lay with an overwhelming preponderance of fact. Morris is a fact and stat man. While Morris leads with a chapter that takes aim against Obama, many of the remaining chapters find Obama’s hand behind the scenes. This book could have been stronger in its indictment on the Democrats, and I give Morris credit for keeping the facts down the middle and his opinion to himself. Had I written it using the same facts with a little pointed narrative, you would see a cover that reads Obama’s Conspiracy by Paul Murphy. Reading this book and talking about it to as many people as you can before November 4, 2008, is paramount to arm Americans with the right intellect to avert Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi efforts in bamboozling America.
by Dick Morris
Are you a little pissed off? Do you feel this country is going in the wrong direction? This book falls into the category of pundit books that may change your mind about the source of your discontentment as the once political advisor to Bill Clinton takes aim at Democrats He may bore you with a plethora of facts. Some of which you may challenge because you believe contrary pundit input. Some of which you may challenge because you do not find the fact to be directly or even remotely relevant to his case in point. But if there is one rule Morris holds to it is the one where he does not engage in any rivalry diatribe with other pundits, which really has him in a unique political analyst stature of which you may find enjoyable for a change. What I find puzzling is Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s political advisor and you would assume he leans left. But oh-contraire! What never comes out in his book, unlike most other political pundit or political figureheads in exile is any personal agenda. What I find intriguing is Morris’s targeting seems to fall largely with the Democratic Party of which he enjoyed a high degree of success and notoriety.
Morris covers many different subjects spanning big government, big business, and unions where he demonstrates how Americans as individuals are being fleeced by an organized entity with its own sense of self. I only provide a commentary to a few of Morris’s subjects, simply because I have a sense of priority that one may rather call a sense of urgency.
Morris begins the book with a chapter on Barack Obama. The statistician he is, Morris provides a twelve-point list of reasons not to send Barack Obama to the White House. While there are numerous books on the doom that would fall on the United States during an Obama presidency, this book sums it up in one chapter. Below is the list of talking points of which I highly recommend that you go to the bookstore and read the narrative to fully digest and articulate to others the consequence of poor judgment before November 4, 2008.
1. Double capital gains taxes on stock and real estate sales
2. Increase FICA taxes by 14 points on all income over $100,000
3. Double taxes on dividends
4. Expand the inheritance
5. Weaken the PATRIOT ACT
6. Curb anti terror wiretapping
7. Extend health care insurance benefits to illegal immigrants
8. Give children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition at state universities
9. Expand the number of immigrants who can enter the United States
10. Weaken education standards, by making it illegal to base a teachers pay on the test results of their students
11. Expand health insurance so drastically that it forces us to ration medical care, particularly to the elderly
12. Expand the welfare state, dividing America between tax-payers and tax consumers.
Morris makes his case for wire tapping in an argument for terrorist surveillance. His argument is much like video surveillance and laws enacted in Britain. Quoting authorities he states “there is a difference between surveillance aimed at prosecution and that which seeks to “learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities”. For Information gathering alone, warrants are utterly beside the point. Quoting judge Richard Posner as saying once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance comers on city streets. Connecting the dots with the Obama chapter, to find the Democratic left media, and the Democratic Party, and specifically Barack Obama would make it a priority to remove an essential tool to our national security.
Morris discusses the Fairness Doctrine in draft form that is being pushed by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama where not only does the government control the content of what is broadcast on the airwaves it dictates who works there at each station based on there political orientation. Does that sound like socialism, or communism. or Nazism? It certainly does not sound like a free press. But one thing for sure is under a Obama presidency us Americans will never see it coming!
What’s coming you ask? McCain and Obama tried to push a bill through Congress to police for foreign lobbyists. Hillary Clinton led the effort to kill it. One can only conclude that this was due to her husbands special lobby interest in Dubai under the guise of a not for profit fund. Why a US Senator who is running for president has a husband so closely tied to Dubai is not drawn into question by the media is a good question that can be answered in the preceding paragraph. . Many foreign lobbyists lined up behind the Clintons with Hillary campaign run. In other material we are now learning since the Democratic Convention that Obama may have lately received as mush as $65M from foreign entities. This is all illegal under our current campaign finance law. If you wonder where it ends or why folks go to Washington to “serve their country” Clinton’s post administration advisors are on the take and earning a pretty dollar, you don’t have to look far when you read that Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist was on the lobbyist take for Central American trade bill. Penn is now a post Clinton lobbyist millionaire
Freddie and Fannie have found the personal integrity and agenda of prominent Democrats as in Christopher Dodd, and Charles Schumer to be in question. While he points this out here is what Morris missed. Forget about Obama’s association with radical leaders walking through life with spinning moral compasses. Lets look at his connection with Tony Rezko. While running as a reformer, Obama has had a 17-year relationship with an convicted Chicago con man now in prison for fraud, extortion, and money laundering. Rezko benefited from Obama’s role in the Illinois Senate by receiving millions in state funded housing.
Was the favor returned and is big business involved well consider this: A former Illinois bank official, now claiming whistleblower status, says bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama. In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document. Only in Chicago’s Hyde Park!!!! The questions are why is Barack Obama not brought up on charges for fraud? There is a thin veil… a very thin veil. But then why has the Senate ethics committee not even included this on their agenda? Look at the names mentioned in the preceding paragraph. One thing for sure, this goes to the very heart of our current credit crisis.
This book includes many chapters that show government and big business working in concert to fleece American citizens. We clearly understand that in 1999 the Democrats put America on that slippery slope ( I am now calling it the Rezko Slope)to easy money in the hands of those who can’t make responsible decisions. There is an old saying that once government gives away an entitlement, no subsequent administration can take it a away. I will also add that once government gets in bed with big business, it is the citizens that get screwed. In the six years of Republican rule, they made the problem worse. Why Morris’s indictment appears in this book to tilt against the left may lay with an overwhelming preponderance of fact. Morris is a fact and stat man. While Morris leads with a chapter that takes aim against Obama, many of the remaining chapters find Obama’s hand behind the scenes. This book could have been stronger in its indictment on the Democrats, and I give Morris credit for keeping the facts down the middle and his opinion to himself. Had I written it using the same facts with a little pointed narrative, you would see a cover that reads Obama’s Conspiracy by Paul Murphy. Reading this book and talking about it to as many people as you can before November 4, 2008, is paramount to arm Americans with the right intellect to avert Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi efforts in bamboozling America.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Churchill's Folly
Churchill’s Folly
by Christopher Catherwood
This book is a history book spanning a short three-year period of time in the Middle East following WWI. The title suggests there is an agenda to foil the reputation of Sir Winston Churchill. It suggests that history should blame Winston Churchill for the boarders and subsequent 80 years of turmoil culminating to our situation in Iraq today. As Catherwood lets the pedals of his story unfold, the bloom of his story finds the British Prime minister pulling the strings rendering our poor Churchill a puppet of shortsighted policy. This is not to let Churchill entirely off the hook; as his prime agenda was British centric with sole aim to reduce British financial Mesopotamian exposure. This stands out as his Achilles Heel and there is a corollary lesson to be learned in today’s Iraq. It is a lesson that Senator Barak Obama is blind to and Senator McCain, gives his full appreciation. But let me ask you, which title would sell more books’ Lloyd George’s Folly, or Churchill’s Folly.
Catherwood creates a backdrop to the “folly” first by describing a snap shot of history of the Middle East beginning with the family Ur. I get no further than the 2nd page and I learn the word anachronism and the family Ur, the beginning lineage of Abraham began in Iraq, is in opposition to Michener’s book “The Source” where Ur began in Israel. You also learn that the Fertile Crescent is limited to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel has nothing to do with Fertile Land. By page 38 the reader is briefed on the history of the Middle East, which I found pretty concise. Added to the backdrop is a brief dossier on Churchill where the reader is then is introduced to Churchill’s fallibility. The son of a politician, he began as a liberal, and switched parties a few times in the early part of his career. Causes were more important to him than party. He is known to have had key failures leading to political exile. The first prominent one was Galapoli, which draws in Lloyd-George and haunts him throughout the book. I found it interesting to read in this book that in 1919 Britain was the largest Muslim power in the world. Finally Catherwood addresses what I call counter history where he disputes other historians including Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Churchill was basically sent to the Middle East to settle on boarders for the area of land designated to Britain in 1919 as their sphere of influence (see my review on 1919). His mandate was to withdraw from the region with limited exposure. His challenges were first the Sykes-Picot Agreement when exposed appeared colonialist to the Arabs. Second was imperialism, as much with Feisal’s imperialism as British/French. Feisal was in import dictator. A case is made for the British to divert the alleged betrayal of the Arabs by the West on to Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliph rule in the new Turkey. While not the main focus of the book the Greek-Turkey and the Palestine situations were also included as distractions to Churchill’s decisions in Iraq.
The appointment of Feisal as ruler of Iraq set in motion a minority rule of Sunni over Shia. The irony in today’s problems as portrayed in this book is there were ''democratically '' appointed Sunni Caliphs and Shia were not. Catherwood suggests installing a democracy goes against the majority within the boarders yet to be settled on. Outside the book however we find Iran is also ruled from a democratic foundation, albeit heavily influenced by Shia Umma. The reader learns that local leaders Naqib and Sayyid had aspirations to rule Iraq and this would have been in the interest of Iraqi’s. However this would have gone against the promises made to the Arabs that spawned from the British – France Sykes-Picot Agreement and perpetuated through the agenda Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Pressure on Churchill for withdrawal came from five directions. First was Churchill’s penchant for an appointment to be the Exchequer of Britain, hence his overbearing conservative fiscal focus. Second a case is made for Churchill to appease the people of Mesopotamia as Britain was stretched too thin after the war. This plus the social discord and fighting in Britain was much the same as today. Britain walked away from an unsolved problem that they perpetuated. In 70 years what has changed both internally in any World Power country and internationally amongst the World Powers? Will we ever learn?
The third force in Churchill’s folly was Lloyd George second-guessing the decision to fight Turkey in 1914-1915 in Iraq. Had we left Kurdistan to Turkey, imagine its oil wealth Turkey, a democratically ruled and Western leaning country would hold today. Imagine that oil wealth in a democratic nation striving as hard as they do to be a part of the E U. That is indeed what is hoped for today in Iraq. Forth, in 1914-15 the prevailing world strategy was centered around colonialism, hence the Suez Cannel, hence Egypt. Fifth it was Sir Allenby and Sir Lawrence that pushed Hashemite rule in 1915 and on through this book. These five cards happened to be the only hand Churchill could play. He came to realize he was playing a losing hand while he was playing it. Hence the title of the book, Folly, which is as unfair as conceded in the letter Lloyd-George wrote to Churchill after he dealt the cards.
With Churchill’s dealt hand he formed a commission referred to by historians including Catherwood as Forty Thieves. Catherwood portrays Churchill’s task of bringing a consensus in Cairo in what was cast as a fate accompli as dictated by 10 Downing Street. It was a fate accompli giving Iraqi rule to the Hashimites’, Abdullah and clan. Israel was brought into the mix as well as Kurdistan only to represent distraction to Churchill in this book. At that time there were ''the people'' and a cause, and a rationale in both regions; but their was no leader to take immediate control and provide economic relief to the money thrown at the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
Churchill’s consistent refrain in Cairo was money driven. He had aspirations to head up the Exchequer in London so he sought all ideas that got Britain out of Iraq ASAP. Other factors contributing to the folly of decisions made in Cairo were France’s need for Aslace-Lorainne, a strong consideration for inclusion of Kurds into Iraq was to accelerate a reduction of British forces in lieu of Kurds to fend off Turkey. I have to make a note in the irony of the Kurds being commissioned by Turkey to exterminate Armenia only to be later met with Britain using the Kurds against Turkey and finally the Kurds being left with no sovereignty. I guess crime and violence that comes with being a “hired gun” doesn’t pay.
It was also interesting to read when the Allies liberated Arabs from Turkish rule; they also entitled them to a new rule over Kurds and Mesopotamians. They complied with Wilson’s 14 Points and violated them at the same time. Churchill’s did contemplate but did not execute on withdrawal plans to Basra that would have put in to affect the same partitions in Iraq as what Joe Biden proposes today, excluding a sovereign Kurdistan. Is there a final justice to be found in this equation? Imagine a Western leaning Turkey with expanded boarders to include Iraq’s northern providence, southern Kurdistan. Turkey would have oil wealth, but would they welcome in the large voice of the Kurds? Would the international voice accept this? All of a sudden Biden’s idea, while worth a closer examination, has question marks.
What Catherwood suggests in conclusion is that the job done right would have Churchill looking for a legitimate leader in the eyes of the people with a keen sense for a national identity coalesced around a.) A united international cause, b.) A shared enemy, c.) Separation of church and state, d.) Democratic process, or e.) Revert back to Ottoman style of local government, which is essentially to teach western city government, f.) Teach world humanities, g.) Focus/unite on economy, h.) Re focus on people assets. From 1921 to 1958 the government changed hands 58 times. Today in 2008 we need to be complete and on purpose this time or we may just be that common enemy.
by Christopher Catherwood
This book is a history book spanning a short three-year period of time in the Middle East following WWI. The title suggests there is an agenda to foil the reputation of Sir Winston Churchill. It suggests that history should blame Winston Churchill for the boarders and subsequent 80 years of turmoil culminating to our situation in Iraq today. As Catherwood lets the pedals of his story unfold, the bloom of his story finds the British Prime minister pulling the strings rendering our poor Churchill a puppet of shortsighted policy. This is not to let Churchill entirely off the hook; as his prime agenda was British centric with sole aim to reduce British financial Mesopotamian exposure. This stands out as his Achilles Heel and there is a corollary lesson to be learned in today’s Iraq. It is a lesson that Senator Barak Obama is blind to and Senator McCain, gives his full appreciation. But let me ask you, which title would sell more books’ Lloyd George’s Folly, or Churchill’s Folly.
Catherwood creates a backdrop to the “folly” first by describing a snap shot of history of the Middle East beginning with the family Ur. I get no further than the 2nd page and I learn the word anachronism and the family Ur, the beginning lineage of Abraham began in Iraq, is in opposition to Michener’s book “The Source” where Ur began in Israel. You also learn that the Fertile Crescent is limited to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel has nothing to do with Fertile Land. By page 38 the reader is briefed on the history of the Middle East, which I found pretty concise. Added to the backdrop is a brief dossier on Churchill where the reader is then is introduced to Churchill’s fallibility. The son of a politician, he began as a liberal, and switched parties a few times in the early part of his career. Causes were more important to him than party. He is known to have had key failures leading to political exile. The first prominent one was Galapoli, which draws in Lloyd-George and haunts him throughout the book. I found it interesting to read in this book that in 1919 Britain was the largest Muslim power in the world. Finally Catherwood addresses what I call counter history where he disputes other historians including Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Churchill was basically sent to the Middle East to settle on boarders for the area of land designated to Britain in 1919 as their sphere of influence (see my review on 1919). His mandate was to withdraw from the region with limited exposure. His challenges were first the Sykes-Picot Agreement when exposed appeared colonialist to the Arabs. Second was imperialism, as much with Feisal’s imperialism as British/French. Feisal was in import dictator. A case is made for the British to divert the alleged betrayal of the Arabs by the West on to Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliph rule in the new Turkey. While not the main focus of the book the Greek-Turkey and the Palestine situations were also included as distractions to Churchill’s decisions in Iraq.
The appointment of Feisal as ruler of Iraq set in motion a minority rule of Sunni over Shia. The irony in today’s problems as portrayed in this book is there were ''democratically '' appointed Sunni Caliphs and Shia were not. Catherwood suggests installing a democracy goes against the majority within the boarders yet to be settled on. Outside the book however we find Iran is also ruled from a democratic foundation, albeit heavily influenced by Shia Umma. The reader learns that local leaders Naqib and Sayyid had aspirations to rule Iraq and this would have been in the interest of Iraqi’s. However this would have gone against the promises made to the Arabs that spawned from the British – France Sykes-Picot Agreement and perpetuated through the agenda Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Pressure on Churchill for withdrawal came from five directions. First was Churchill’s penchant for an appointment to be the Exchequer of Britain, hence his overbearing conservative fiscal focus. Second a case is made for Churchill to appease the people of Mesopotamia as Britain was stretched too thin after the war. This plus the social discord and fighting in Britain was much the same as today. Britain walked away from an unsolved problem that they perpetuated. In 70 years what has changed both internally in any World Power country and internationally amongst the World Powers? Will we ever learn?
The third force in Churchill’s folly was Lloyd George second-guessing the decision to fight Turkey in 1914-1915 in Iraq. Had we left Kurdistan to Turkey, imagine its oil wealth Turkey, a democratically ruled and Western leaning country would hold today. Imagine that oil wealth in a democratic nation striving as hard as they do to be a part of the E U. That is indeed what is hoped for today in Iraq. Forth, in 1914-15 the prevailing world strategy was centered around colonialism, hence the Suez Cannel, hence Egypt. Fifth it was Sir Allenby and Sir Lawrence that pushed Hashemite rule in 1915 and on through this book. These five cards happened to be the only hand Churchill could play. He came to realize he was playing a losing hand while he was playing it. Hence the title of the book, Folly, which is as unfair as conceded in the letter Lloyd-George wrote to Churchill after he dealt the cards.
With Churchill’s dealt hand he formed a commission referred to by historians including Catherwood as Forty Thieves. Catherwood portrays Churchill’s task of bringing a consensus in Cairo in what was cast as a fate accompli as dictated by 10 Downing Street. It was a fate accompli giving Iraqi rule to the Hashimites’, Abdullah and clan. Israel was brought into the mix as well as Kurdistan only to represent distraction to Churchill in this book. At that time there were ''the people'' and a cause, and a rationale in both regions; but their was no leader to take immediate control and provide economic relief to the money thrown at the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
Churchill’s consistent refrain in Cairo was money driven. He had aspirations to head up the Exchequer in London so he sought all ideas that got Britain out of Iraq ASAP. Other factors contributing to the folly of decisions made in Cairo were France’s need for Aslace-Lorainne, a strong consideration for inclusion of Kurds into Iraq was to accelerate a reduction of British forces in lieu of Kurds to fend off Turkey. I have to make a note in the irony of the Kurds being commissioned by Turkey to exterminate Armenia only to be later met with Britain using the Kurds against Turkey and finally the Kurds being left with no sovereignty. I guess crime and violence that comes with being a “hired gun” doesn’t pay.
It was also interesting to read when the Allies liberated Arabs from Turkish rule; they also entitled them to a new rule over Kurds and Mesopotamians. They complied with Wilson’s 14 Points and violated them at the same time. Churchill’s did contemplate but did not execute on withdrawal plans to Basra that would have put in to affect the same partitions in Iraq as what Joe Biden proposes today, excluding a sovereign Kurdistan. Is there a final justice to be found in this equation? Imagine a Western leaning Turkey with expanded boarders to include Iraq’s northern providence, southern Kurdistan. Turkey would have oil wealth, but would they welcome in the large voice of the Kurds? Would the international voice accept this? All of a sudden Biden’s idea, while worth a closer examination, has question marks.
What Catherwood suggests in conclusion is that the job done right would have Churchill looking for a legitimate leader in the eyes of the people with a keen sense for a national identity coalesced around a.) A united international cause, b.) A shared enemy, c.) Separation of church and state, d.) Democratic process, or e.) Revert back to Ottoman style of local government, which is essentially to teach western city government, f.) Teach world humanities, g.) Focus/unite on economy, h.) Re focus on people assets. From 1921 to 1958 the government changed hands 58 times. Today in 2008 we need to be complete and on purpose this time or we may just be that common enemy.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The Source
The Source
By James Michener
The architecture of the 900 page story is comprised with a current day story at the Tell, an archeological dig in Israel, where artifacts and maps are introduced with a brief interpretation that are then woven into a story in humanity that may have taken place at that period of time. He begins with the family of Ur living in a cave and a story on how a wife urges her husband to farm as it brings about a more stable life style with a higher degree of predictability in feeding their own. In their trial and error attempts at farming, using primitive scientific method, she draws errant conclusion that lead to rituals. As the chapters progress, moving time forward in quantum leaps chapter by chapter, Michener maintains the lineage of the family Ur and their desire to simply figure out the laws of the universe or in other words reality. The rituals turn in to religions and the mystery of faith, which eventually gains a name Yahweh, or God. With that name, man humanized god, which caused them to drift away from God or in other words reality, and render themselves dependent on interpreters of the mysteries of faith, or in other words not yet explained phenomena of our universe, God.
Before the Jews got the ultimate Roman boot from what was finally called Palestine, many laws were written to interpret Moses’ original Torah. Jewish priests congregated and spent days ad nausium codifying day to day life with every attempt to build a fence around their faith in God. Circumcisions, cleanliness, health, marriage, and diet were some of the areas discussed in this book. Many of the laws would not pass the test of today’s American justice system. What you learned was that the Jews take a degree of pleasure making life hard on themselves. They did this because of their feeling that strict obedience would be required to maintain a connection with God as opposed to the land, This inspired inappropriate rituals at times. Michener leaves the impression that Jews prompted their own exodus and built laws in anticipation of creating the mortar to hold them together as a people as they were cast to the wind.
In the course of the discovery of how things work Michener draws a parallel theme of the conquests of what we now know as Israel by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, and the English. Yes believe it or not, the Jews fought against the Arabs and their English allies in 1948. I learn once again where our current Middle East problems lay at the hands of the colonists of the 19th century. So in the end Israel is established through war. What is interesting in looking once again at the moral justification of Israel, Michener enlightens the reader on the deterioration of the landscape of the Fertile Crescent as the result of a thousand years of war, and the nomadic way of life of the Arabs in conjunction of failed suzerainty of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Where the Michener lets argument break down in the case for Israel is first that the people that cultivated the fertile crescent, were not at any time in history a 100 % Jewish population. Secondly the Laws that held Jews together in Diaspora are the exact laws that would slow progress in a State of Israel.
My reaction speaks to mis represented knowledge: This book is a historic novel based on a fictitious archeological dig in Israel where each level of the dig is the portal to a story of the people of the times on that land. Michener takes a novelist licenses to write what he wants, bending history such that he who is reading for pure entertainment wouldn’t notice. The author’s message clearly has a bias towards Judaism, which I suspect is derived from the current State of Israel in 1964 at the time he penned the book. The history novel begins with the question posed by early man on “how the universe works” That question is answered by characters in the story using logical discovery in cause and effect, with misguided conclusions. These misguided conclusions were largely contrived my unsubstantiated leaps of faith, which is the scientific way of saying the experiment was flawed. In not challenging the flaws of experiment, rituals in support of misguided interpretations of reality were adopted by the people. The rituals became codified laws, which gave birth to religions. This sounds like critique on all brands of religion taken by Michener for being the insightful ones with the knowledge to connect to God. Separate from the book but somewhat analogous to the book I would also include scientific academia for often times manipulating the levers of the power of knowledge to establish their own place of authority to their own selfish material gains and at the expense of truth. It seems where truth meets reality (god) is in practical application of knowledge. Institutional knowledge, on either side of the mystic fence, should always be put to the test of practicality.
In an attempt to leverage a collection of historic evidence thorough interpretation, there is a consistent deviation from this portal of Makor, Israel where the author leaps to other parts of the world to elaborate on the plight of the Jews in their time of Diaspora. Michener barely scratches the surface of the Christianity and Islam in Makor, which leaves the reader disappointed as he yearns for the whole truth, both from a theological and philosophical standpoint. He also does a tremendous job tarnishing the Western World’s Crusades, where the Crusaders slashed and slaughtered even their own people. They did this in their bloodthirsty ignorance in understanding of not only the Middle East but also all the people they met on their journeys to the Promised Land. Michener also spends a couple of chapters raising the ghosts of the Spanish Inquisition and the continued persecution of Jews through Lutheran regions as well. While this is history and a novel rendition, I find no use for the diversion other than to feel a little more sorry for the Jews as he builds his moral justification argument. He briefly covers the Mamalukes and then Ottoman dominion over people for centuries who let the land deteriorate to ruins and further make the case for the superior Jewish husbandry of the land as their moral right.
While one cannot argue with history, Michener attempts to craft a story to make a case for the moral argument for the State of Israel as the only people who put the land to good use. Yet within the moral argument there are contradictions. The basic assumption is that Judaism is a religion of laws making the assumption that the masses cannot find God on their own and more so is God not found in the land. Hence to dictate the conscience of a people on simple day-to-day moral decisions like who to marry, the decisions in Israel are delegated to the rabbis where husbandry to the land is left array at times in pursuit of their God. The amoral justification for the existence of Israel is much like that of almost every other nation on earth, which is military conquest. While Michener does go into detail on many sieges waged against the Jews and then the Jews’ 1948 reclaim of their land, there is no argument made in the book that military conquest should stand on that merit alone. The irony in this unfortunate equation is found in the last paragraph of the book, which is found in a single word within fourteen line sentence describing the last word with is rationale for the use of that word, hence the fourteen lines of the book ends with the word uttered by a rabbi in his final moment of his own execution is “one”.
In the final chapter the main character recognizes the irony and has to grapple with a solution. He recognizes that for Israel to succeed it must be an amalgamation of Muslim, Christians, and Jews, living in harmony. The book written in 1964, does not have the benefit of a 46-year time span, post publication to learn that apparently there is too much polarization for this notion of One to happen. There is as well too much unrest in the Muslim world as they war with each other on Israel’s boarders for them to feel their boarders are safe. So domestically and internationally the test for Israel continues. In epilogue; to a Jew “the test” is what their faith is all about. There is not the benefit in the examination as to the test question; if separation of church and state could unit all the people. Nor does Michener discuss the penchant for Muslims to push Jews into the sea. What we do have now unfortunately is a group of world leaders as equally inept in this regard as those of 1919, acquiescing to a boarder between Palestinians and Jews and a wall, much like we Americans advocate on our southwest boarder. This is an indictment of Israel, but also a question mark on mankind as a whole as we have failed to focus on that one word. We are all One sharing the same universe, call it God if you want.
Bibliography
P 79 Men had not yet discovered that the forces of the world could be propitiated by conscious acts of subservience; many times in the two hundred thousand years the cave had been deserted when food supplies in the region diminished
P 113 Once men took the cultivation of their fields seriously the worship of such goddess was in evitable. In principle it was a gentile religion, paralleling man’s most profound experience, regeneration through the mystery of sex.
P 260 She saw that Makor was merely a frontier settlement concerned with thing that could be felt and touched, such as walls, olive presses, the dye vats, and it was only logical that the town should insist upon holding on to its practical gods like Baal; but she had faith that in Jerusalem ideas were more important than things- the relationship of god to man, justice, the nature of worship-and she was convinced that in Jerusalem there must many who thought as she did.
P 273 But in the Autumn of 1964, in the month of Bul- when the rain clouds make their first tentative appearance over the Carmel and farmers gather wood for their fires – a descendant of the great family Ur stumbled upon the long forgotten tunnel, and shortly it was excavated with photographs of notable work becoming common throughout the world. Engineers hailed it as a masterpiece of construction, “one of the first great surveying feats”, and in a n age that appreciated science many words were written on th timeless message which the unknown engineer of Makor had sent the world; a French philosopher claimed that this “mute genius of the Makor water system speaks to modern man more cogently than those who wrote the Psalms, for he exemplified in work that portion of the divine spirit which has always prized acts as much as words. His tunnel is a psalm in fact, the son of those who accomplish God’s work.”
P298 Jewish priest to Gomer “ In chains and yokes shall you march to Babylon. It is the destiny of Israel to perish from the land that is has known, that it may find its god once more.
P 331 But since any deity must be referred to in some manner the custom had grown up of calling YHWH by the arbitrary Hebrew word Adonai, which would later be translated into other languages as Lord.
P341 “The Greeks and the English”, Eliav reflected “They are the ones who took games seriously. Gave us an ideal of sportsmanship. And not only in games. Your fight an Englishman in war or politics, fight him fairly, and when the war’s over you shake hands, I wish we Jews and Arabs learned that kind of discipline.”
P 347 It seemed to him the Melissa was speaking of the trivial manipulation of society – if the Jews behaved, a boy like Benjamin might one day be governor – while Jehubel was being drivin to consider the ultimate relationship of the chosen people with YHWH…..Two hundred years from this night, not far from this very spot, Hellenism still searching would discover a more pliable religion arising in Galilee, and that union of philosophical Greek and Christian Jew would provide the spark which would ignite the world
P 354 It is ironic that I should be imprisoned in this temple, but if it is true that each man in his life builds his own prison, and inhabits it in the way crawling fish inhabit shells along the beach at Caesarea, then I have built for myself an exquisite jail, exactly suited to the kind of man I have always wanted to be.
P 367 Throughout Jerusalem the deout began to cheer, and I think there might have been a riot except that Herod’s African and German mercenaries descended upon the mob and arrested the two priests ….The two priests and three boys who chopped down the eagle were burned alive before the temple gates. … Herod informed Augusts, so that Rome need not fear. Herod would kill a million Jews, if it were necessary, to keep Caesar Augustus placated.
P 427 But Yigal mastered his excitement. He could not be attracted permanently to any religion that had abandoned Judaism, heading for new directions which he could not foresee, so he left the meeting with Ptolemais and returned to Makor. For some few days the words of Paul disturbed him, and for a while he thought of discussing them with Rab Nssman, but he did not do so; and as we have seen eight years later in 67 C.E he was caught up in th struggles against Rome and was himself crucified not far from Nazareth – at about the time Paul was being beheaded for somewhat similar reasons.
P 433 the legalist Akiba – and thes two self made men conspired to save Judaism; for they assembled the law whereby Jews could live now that the external forces of their religion, the Temple of Jerusalem was no more. Fore once all Jews had lived either in Galilee or the south, but now only a small percentage dod so, for the Romans had driven the majority to Spain, Egypt, to Babylonia, to Arabia and to countries not yet named. How scattered they were, powerless, yet always bound to Israel by the work of Rab Naamanand and Akiba .
P 436 “Swastika.” And in this manner the notable design, common throughout Asia, became virtually the symbol of the Galilean synagogue, for all visiting rabbis who saw the effective frieze wanted swastikas for their buildings too..
P 460 “It was therefore each student’s responsibility to ascertain God’s intentions, and so to help them in the task Rabbi Asher proposed certain drills” “If our desire is to uncover God’s wishes, we must develop minds that can penetrate shadows, for the mists produced by living obscure the truth and you cannot discern it unless you sharpen your wits.”
P 483 “ But the old law that kept this sin permanently upon your soul is abrogated.” He saw the young man did not understand this word, but he was inspired and hurried on. “The harsh old law is no more and in its place has come the new law of love and redemption. If this night you tell me that you are willing to join Christ, your sin will vanish forever.”
P 490 Jews, heartened by news of rebellions in Kefar, Nahum and Tverya…there was fighting and a Byzantine soldier was killed; but Father Eusebius, still hoping to avoid war, maintained control over his troops.
P 494 …since he was now firmly bound to the basilica as he had been to th synagogue, for when a man builds a place of worship he walls himself inside.
P 495 The difference between Christian law and Jewish would be this: to enforce their law Jews, who would never be in supreme control, would be limited to public opinion including such punishments as ostracism, but the Christians, to enforce theirs would be free, since the would enjoy supreme power, to use strangulation, burning and the expatripation of entire provinces.
P 512 but in making this attempt he had insisted upon the orthodox opinion that Christ had two separate natures, human and completely divine; but this doctrine was not acceptable to the ordinary people of Makor.
P 513Mark, and the debate was no more trivial than how it had been then: it was an effort to build a base from which Christianity could conquer the world. If one considered Jesus to be all man, His divinity was rendered meaningless, while the Miracle Mary as the Mother of God vanished; on the other hand, if one argued that he was all God, the signifance of human redemption was diminished and the crucifixion could be interpreted merely as a device adopted by God to prove a point.
P 530 “Those of you who worship Muhammad must know that he is dead like any man, but those of you who worship God know that He lives forever” And it was this community of God that had given Arabs like Abd Umar the power to go forward.
P535 Cold Abd Umar announced “ At the moment this man said, ‘I accept Islam’ he became one of us, and is it is forbidden for any of your to speak to him against the faith he has chosen. Who else accepts the Prophet?”
P 548 So at the instigation of the Christians a curious agreement had been worked out” the Christians would rule the world but the Jews would finance it.
P 564 Gunter raise his thin face and looked with a certain calm content into Volkmar’s eyes and said “ What we needed in addition to our faith in God was armed soldiers and knights like you to lead them.
P 566 They were hurt when I had to tell tem Saladin wasn’t even one tenth per cent Arab.
P 594 As the pilgrims headed toward Nazereth the count explained to his son, “ The secret of wealth is to have many people working, but in the old days we did not understand this, so we slaughtered all who lived on the land because they were a different religion.
P 617 The Jew moved closer, wiped his hands and said “ You believe that God is three, that in the body of Jesus He took Human form, and that in such form God can be worshiped. We don’t.”…and it seemed strange to him that the Christians could share a church with Muslims, whom they were fighting to the death, but could not possibly do so with Jews, from whom Christianity had sprung.
P 653 but with the ascendancy of Thomas de Troquemade as Inquisitor-General of Spain and his elevation of the Inquisition to a position independent of the Pope and emperor, the policing powers of the body had degenerated into a kind of panic and terror.
P 677 His tormentors that day had little thought for the law of Moses, nor for anything else except the hearty hose-play of the Middle Ages, preserved in Germany long after it vanished elsewhere; for after a perfunctory sermon which reminded the Jews of the merciful quality of the Church, they were herded to the northern side of the cathedral, where a most robust statue more famous than either that of the Church or the Synagogue at the entrance had been set into the stone wall. It was the notorious Sow of Gretz.
P 685 “possibly, because Judaism was a hard, tough old religion that didn’t give an individual enough free play. It could never have appealed to the world at large. The bright, quixotic religion of Christianity was ideally suited for such a proselytizing need”…” I would have thought, Cullinane suggested, “that religious problem is always “How can man come to know God”?”
P 711 Yet even as he had compiled this part of the letter, he had confessed to himself tha any scholar who analyzed his precedents would become aware that step by step, from Spain to Turkey, a chain of distinguished rabbis had been moving slowly and perhaps unconsciously away from a strict interpretation of the Torah and Talmud. Encouraged by the liberalist like Maimonides a group of liberal rabbis began to evolve a tradition of their own.
P 712 With this courtly letter the battle was joined. It never became a personal brawl between Eliezer and Abulafia; the other rabbis and the good sense of the two participants prevented that. But it did become a fundamental confrontation between the two dynamic forces of Judaism in that age: Ashkenazi legality versus Shepardi mysticism; or put another way conservative versus liberal
P 718 “The myustic perceives with his heart what his mind knows to be true…but cannot prove,” Abulafia began. “And we know that’s prior to creation God must have been immanent in all things. Without God there could be nothing. But if a merciful God is all things and is responsible for all things, how can we experience events like the burning of Jews at Podi?”
P 731 There Tabari had been the lone Arab in classes dominated by Greeks, Bulgars, and Persians, and had learned with what contempt the Turkish rulers held all Arabs, those least and lowliest of the empire.
P 741 Cullinane had learned not to expect Catholic Ireland and Catholic Spain to share common views, and he doubted that Muslim Turkey and Muslim Syria ever would, either. For religion was not a solid basis upon which to construct either a nation or congeries of nations, and he would see the distant time when Pan-Arabism, not religion would unite. … he caught himself wondering whether the new state of Israel had been wise to commit herself so completely to one faith, no matter how deeply rooted in the local that faith might be.
P 758 “AT Peqiin I discovered how to handle the Bedouins. First you offer to but their friendship. And if you fail, you take a gun and fight them.
P 763 For Cullinane the problem of the Jews moral right to Israel was simple. It was a question of custodianship. When Herod was king, the Galilee held a population of more than a half a million; in Byzantine times more than a million. But at the end of Arab, Crusader, and Turkish rule the same land supported less than sixty thousand.
P 765 Where ever the Bedouin took his camels and his goats he destroyed good land to create his own desert.
P 809 “ Its on all our heads” Bar-El replied simple. “Your mother’s and my uncle’s. You English have done everything possible to destroy Palestine. When you leave… in a few minutes…you’ll turn all the installations over to the Arabs wont you? Arms, food, everything.”
P 815 If you want a monument to English venality in Israel, look to the 261 steps in Safad.
P 820 “That coast.” She interrupted with disgust. “ That didn’t come from Israel and we don’t want it here. That fur hat. That blackness. That gloom. All from the ghetto…. But Ilana, having done the thing refused to move. “where is such a custom in Talmud? “ she cried. “In medevil Poland they used to shave the heads of brides so that the Gentile noblemen wouldn’t demand to sleep with them on the wedding night. To make them ugly”
P 879 And Vered, speaking softly as one whos has just discoveredher portion of truth, however Meager, said “ Dio I remember? Eliav, it seems to me we Jews spend our lives remembering, and I’ve suddenly discovered that I’m sick and tired of living in a land of remembrance.
P 885 American: “ Now Vered and I must leave…for the best home the Jews of the world have ever had.”
By James Michener
The architecture of the 900 page story is comprised with a current day story at the Tell, an archeological dig in Israel, where artifacts and maps are introduced with a brief interpretation that are then woven into a story in humanity that may have taken place at that period of time. He begins with the family of Ur living in a cave and a story on how a wife urges her husband to farm as it brings about a more stable life style with a higher degree of predictability in feeding their own. In their trial and error attempts at farming, using primitive scientific method, she draws errant conclusion that lead to rituals. As the chapters progress, moving time forward in quantum leaps chapter by chapter, Michener maintains the lineage of the family Ur and their desire to simply figure out the laws of the universe or in other words reality. The rituals turn in to religions and the mystery of faith, which eventually gains a name Yahweh, or God. With that name, man humanized god, which caused them to drift away from God or in other words reality, and render themselves dependent on interpreters of the mysteries of faith, or in other words not yet explained phenomena of our universe, God.
Before the Jews got the ultimate Roman boot from what was finally called Palestine, many laws were written to interpret Moses’ original Torah. Jewish priests congregated and spent days ad nausium codifying day to day life with every attempt to build a fence around their faith in God. Circumcisions, cleanliness, health, marriage, and diet were some of the areas discussed in this book. Many of the laws would not pass the test of today’s American justice system. What you learned was that the Jews take a degree of pleasure making life hard on themselves. They did this because of their feeling that strict obedience would be required to maintain a connection with God as opposed to the land, This inspired inappropriate rituals at times. Michener leaves the impression that Jews prompted their own exodus and built laws in anticipation of creating the mortar to hold them together as a people as they were cast to the wind.
In the course of the discovery of how things work Michener draws a parallel theme of the conquests of what we now know as Israel by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, and the English. Yes believe it or not, the Jews fought against the Arabs and their English allies in 1948. I learn once again where our current Middle East problems lay at the hands of the colonists of the 19th century. So in the end Israel is established through war. What is interesting in looking once again at the moral justification of Israel, Michener enlightens the reader on the deterioration of the landscape of the Fertile Crescent as the result of a thousand years of war, and the nomadic way of life of the Arabs in conjunction of failed suzerainty of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Where the Michener lets argument break down in the case for Israel is first that the people that cultivated the fertile crescent, were not at any time in history a 100 % Jewish population. Secondly the Laws that held Jews together in Diaspora are the exact laws that would slow progress in a State of Israel.
My reaction speaks to mis represented knowledge: This book is a historic novel based on a fictitious archeological dig in Israel where each level of the dig is the portal to a story of the people of the times on that land. Michener takes a novelist licenses to write what he wants, bending history such that he who is reading for pure entertainment wouldn’t notice. The author’s message clearly has a bias towards Judaism, which I suspect is derived from the current State of Israel in 1964 at the time he penned the book. The history novel begins with the question posed by early man on “how the universe works” That question is answered by characters in the story using logical discovery in cause and effect, with misguided conclusions. These misguided conclusions were largely contrived my unsubstantiated leaps of faith, which is the scientific way of saying the experiment was flawed. In not challenging the flaws of experiment, rituals in support of misguided interpretations of reality were adopted by the people. The rituals became codified laws, which gave birth to religions. This sounds like critique on all brands of religion taken by Michener for being the insightful ones with the knowledge to connect to God. Separate from the book but somewhat analogous to the book I would also include scientific academia for often times manipulating the levers of the power of knowledge to establish their own place of authority to their own selfish material gains and at the expense of truth. It seems where truth meets reality (god) is in practical application of knowledge. Institutional knowledge, on either side of the mystic fence, should always be put to the test of practicality.
In an attempt to leverage a collection of historic evidence thorough interpretation, there is a consistent deviation from this portal of Makor, Israel where the author leaps to other parts of the world to elaborate on the plight of the Jews in their time of Diaspora. Michener barely scratches the surface of the Christianity and Islam in Makor, which leaves the reader disappointed as he yearns for the whole truth, both from a theological and philosophical standpoint. He also does a tremendous job tarnishing the Western World’s Crusades, where the Crusaders slashed and slaughtered even their own people. They did this in their bloodthirsty ignorance in understanding of not only the Middle East but also all the people they met on their journeys to the Promised Land. Michener also spends a couple of chapters raising the ghosts of the Spanish Inquisition and the continued persecution of Jews through Lutheran regions as well. While this is history and a novel rendition, I find no use for the diversion other than to feel a little more sorry for the Jews as he builds his moral justification argument. He briefly covers the Mamalukes and then Ottoman dominion over people for centuries who let the land deteriorate to ruins and further make the case for the superior Jewish husbandry of the land as their moral right.
While one cannot argue with history, Michener attempts to craft a story to make a case for the moral argument for the State of Israel as the only people who put the land to good use. Yet within the moral argument there are contradictions. The basic assumption is that Judaism is a religion of laws making the assumption that the masses cannot find God on their own and more so is God not found in the land. Hence to dictate the conscience of a people on simple day-to-day moral decisions like who to marry, the decisions in Israel are delegated to the rabbis where husbandry to the land is left array at times in pursuit of their God. The amoral justification for the existence of Israel is much like that of almost every other nation on earth, which is military conquest. While Michener does go into detail on many sieges waged against the Jews and then the Jews’ 1948 reclaim of their land, there is no argument made in the book that military conquest should stand on that merit alone. The irony in this unfortunate equation is found in the last paragraph of the book, which is found in a single word within fourteen line sentence describing the last word with is rationale for the use of that word, hence the fourteen lines of the book ends with the word uttered by a rabbi in his final moment of his own execution is “one”.
In the final chapter the main character recognizes the irony and has to grapple with a solution. He recognizes that for Israel to succeed it must be an amalgamation of Muslim, Christians, and Jews, living in harmony. The book written in 1964, does not have the benefit of a 46-year time span, post publication to learn that apparently there is too much polarization for this notion of One to happen. There is as well too much unrest in the Muslim world as they war with each other on Israel’s boarders for them to feel their boarders are safe. So domestically and internationally the test for Israel continues. In epilogue; to a Jew “the test” is what their faith is all about. There is not the benefit in the examination as to the test question; if separation of church and state could unit all the people. Nor does Michener discuss the penchant for Muslims to push Jews into the sea. What we do have now unfortunately is a group of world leaders as equally inept in this regard as those of 1919, acquiescing to a boarder between Palestinians and Jews and a wall, much like we Americans advocate on our southwest boarder. This is an indictment of Israel, but also a question mark on mankind as a whole as we have failed to focus on that one word. We are all One sharing the same universe, call it God if you want.
Bibliography
P 79 Men had not yet discovered that the forces of the world could be propitiated by conscious acts of subservience; many times in the two hundred thousand years the cave had been deserted when food supplies in the region diminished
P 113 Once men took the cultivation of their fields seriously the worship of such goddess was in evitable. In principle it was a gentile religion, paralleling man’s most profound experience, regeneration through the mystery of sex.
P 260 She saw that Makor was merely a frontier settlement concerned with thing that could be felt and touched, such as walls, olive presses, the dye vats, and it was only logical that the town should insist upon holding on to its practical gods like Baal; but she had faith that in Jerusalem ideas were more important than things- the relationship of god to man, justice, the nature of worship-and she was convinced that in Jerusalem there must many who thought as she did.
P 273 But in the Autumn of 1964, in the month of Bul- when the rain clouds make their first tentative appearance over the Carmel and farmers gather wood for their fires – a descendant of the great family Ur stumbled upon the long forgotten tunnel, and shortly it was excavated with photographs of notable work becoming common throughout the world. Engineers hailed it as a masterpiece of construction, “one of the first great surveying feats”, and in a n age that appreciated science many words were written on th timeless message which the unknown engineer of Makor had sent the world; a French philosopher claimed that this “mute genius of the Makor water system speaks to modern man more cogently than those who wrote the Psalms, for he exemplified in work that portion of the divine spirit which has always prized acts as much as words. His tunnel is a psalm in fact, the son of those who accomplish God’s work.”
P298 Jewish priest to Gomer “ In chains and yokes shall you march to Babylon. It is the destiny of Israel to perish from the land that is has known, that it may find its god once more.
P 331 But since any deity must be referred to in some manner the custom had grown up of calling YHWH by the arbitrary Hebrew word Adonai, which would later be translated into other languages as Lord.
P341 “The Greeks and the English”, Eliav reflected “They are the ones who took games seriously. Gave us an ideal of sportsmanship. And not only in games. Your fight an Englishman in war or politics, fight him fairly, and when the war’s over you shake hands, I wish we Jews and Arabs learned that kind of discipline.”
P 347 It seemed to him the Melissa was speaking of the trivial manipulation of society – if the Jews behaved, a boy like Benjamin might one day be governor – while Jehubel was being drivin to consider the ultimate relationship of the chosen people with YHWH…..Two hundred years from this night, not far from this very spot, Hellenism still searching would discover a more pliable religion arising in Galilee, and that union of philosophical Greek and Christian Jew would provide the spark which would ignite the world
P 354 It is ironic that I should be imprisoned in this temple, but if it is true that each man in his life builds his own prison, and inhabits it in the way crawling fish inhabit shells along the beach at Caesarea, then I have built for myself an exquisite jail, exactly suited to the kind of man I have always wanted to be.
P 367 Throughout Jerusalem the deout began to cheer, and I think there might have been a riot except that Herod’s African and German mercenaries descended upon the mob and arrested the two priests ….The two priests and three boys who chopped down the eagle were burned alive before the temple gates. … Herod informed Augusts, so that Rome need not fear. Herod would kill a million Jews, if it were necessary, to keep Caesar Augustus placated.
P 427 But Yigal mastered his excitement. He could not be attracted permanently to any religion that had abandoned Judaism, heading for new directions which he could not foresee, so he left the meeting with Ptolemais and returned to Makor. For some few days the words of Paul disturbed him, and for a while he thought of discussing them with Rab Nssman, but he did not do so; and as we have seen eight years later in 67 C.E he was caught up in th struggles against Rome and was himself crucified not far from Nazareth – at about the time Paul was being beheaded for somewhat similar reasons.
P 433 the legalist Akiba – and thes two self made men conspired to save Judaism; for they assembled the law whereby Jews could live now that the external forces of their religion, the Temple of Jerusalem was no more. Fore once all Jews had lived either in Galilee or the south, but now only a small percentage dod so, for the Romans had driven the majority to Spain, Egypt, to Babylonia, to Arabia and to countries not yet named. How scattered they were, powerless, yet always bound to Israel by the work of Rab Naamanand and Akiba .
P 436 “Swastika.” And in this manner the notable design, common throughout Asia, became virtually the symbol of the Galilean synagogue, for all visiting rabbis who saw the effective frieze wanted swastikas for their buildings too..
P 460 “It was therefore each student’s responsibility to ascertain God’s intentions, and so to help them in the task Rabbi Asher proposed certain drills” “If our desire is to uncover God’s wishes, we must develop minds that can penetrate shadows, for the mists produced by living obscure the truth and you cannot discern it unless you sharpen your wits.”
P 483 “ But the old law that kept this sin permanently upon your soul is abrogated.” He saw the young man did not understand this word, but he was inspired and hurried on. “The harsh old law is no more and in its place has come the new law of love and redemption. If this night you tell me that you are willing to join Christ, your sin will vanish forever.”
P 490 Jews, heartened by news of rebellions in Kefar, Nahum and Tverya…there was fighting and a Byzantine soldier was killed; but Father Eusebius, still hoping to avoid war, maintained control over his troops.
P 494 …since he was now firmly bound to the basilica as he had been to th synagogue, for when a man builds a place of worship he walls himself inside.
P 495 The difference between Christian law and Jewish would be this: to enforce their law Jews, who would never be in supreme control, would be limited to public opinion including such punishments as ostracism, but the Christians, to enforce theirs would be free, since the would enjoy supreme power, to use strangulation, burning and the expatripation of entire provinces.
P 512 but in making this attempt he had insisted upon the orthodox opinion that Christ had two separate natures, human and completely divine; but this doctrine was not acceptable to the ordinary people of Makor.
P 513Mark, and the debate was no more trivial than how it had been then: it was an effort to build a base from which Christianity could conquer the world. If one considered Jesus to be all man, His divinity was rendered meaningless, while the Miracle Mary as the Mother of God vanished; on the other hand, if one argued that he was all God, the signifance of human redemption was diminished and the crucifixion could be interpreted merely as a device adopted by God to prove a point.
P 530 “Those of you who worship Muhammad must know that he is dead like any man, but those of you who worship God know that He lives forever” And it was this community of God that had given Arabs like Abd Umar the power to go forward.
P535 Cold Abd Umar announced “ At the moment this man said, ‘I accept Islam’ he became one of us, and is it is forbidden for any of your to speak to him against the faith he has chosen. Who else accepts the Prophet?”
P 548 So at the instigation of the Christians a curious agreement had been worked out” the Christians would rule the world but the Jews would finance it.
P 564 Gunter raise his thin face and looked with a certain calm content into Volkmar’s eyes and said “ What we needed in addition to our faith in God was armed soldiers and knights like you to lead them.
P 566 They were hurt when I had to tell tem Saladin wasn’t even one tenth per cent Arab.
P 594 As the pilgrims headed toward Nazereth the count explained to his son, “ The secret of wealth is to have many people working, but in the old days we did not understand this, so we slaughtered all who lived on the land because they were a different religion.
P 617 The Jew moved closer, wiped his hands and said “ You believe that God is three, that in the body of Jesus He took Human form, and that in such form God can be worshiped. We don’t.”…and it seemed strange to him that the Christians could share a church with Muslims, whom they were fighting to the death, but could not possibly do so with Jews, from whom Christianity had sprung.
P 653 but with the ascendancy of Thomas de Troquemade as Inquisitor-General of Spain and his elevation of the Inquisition to a position independent of the Pope and emperor, the policing powers of the body had degenerated into a kind of panic and terror.
P 677 His tormentors that day had little thought for the law of Moses, nor for anything else except the hearty hose-play of the Middle Ages, preserved in Germany long after it vanished elsewhere; for after a perfunctory sermon which reminded the Jews of the merciful quality of the Church, they were herded to the northern side of the cathedral, where a most robust statue more famous than either that of the Church or the Synagogue at the entrance had been set into the stone wall. It was the notorious Sow of Gretz.
P 685 “possibly, because Judaism was a hard, tough old religion that didn’t give an individual enough free play. It could never have appealed to the world at large. The bright, quixotic religion of Christianity was ideally suited for such a proselytizing need”…” I would have thought, Cullinane suggested, “that religious problem is always “How can man come to know God”?”
P 711 Yet even as he had compiled this part of the letter, he had confessed to himself tha any scholar who analyzed his precedents would become aware that step by step, from Spain to Turkey, a chain of distinguished rabbis had been moving slowly and perhaps unconsciously away from a strict interpretation of the Torah and Talmud. Encouraged by the liberalist like Maimonides a group of liberal rabbis began to evolve a tradition of their own.
P 712 With this courtly letter the battle was joined. It never became a personal brawl between Eliezer and Abulafia; the other rabbis and the good sense of the two participants prevented that. But it did become a fundamental confrontation between the two dynamic forces of Judaism in that age: Ashkenazi legality versus Shepardi mysticism; or put another way conservative versus liberal
P 718 “The myustic perceives with his heart what his mind knows to be true…but cannot prove,” Abulafia began. “And we know that’s prior to creation God must have been immanent in all things. Without God there could be nothing. But if a merciful God is all things and is responsible for all things, how can we experience events like the burning of Jews at Podi?”
P 731 There Tabari had been the lone Arab in classes dominated by Greeks, Bulgars, and Persians, and had learned with what contempt the Turkish rulers held all Arabs, those least and lowliest of the empire.
P 741 Cullinane had learned not to expect Catholic Ireland and Catholic Spain to share common views, and he doubted that Muslim Turkey and Muslim Syria ever would, either. For religion was not a solid basis upon which to construct either a nation or congeries of nations, and he would see the distant time when Pan-Arabism, not religion would unite. … he caught himself wondering whether the new state of Israel had been wise to commit herself so completely to one faith, no matter how deeply rooted in the local that faith might be.
P 758 “AT Peqiin I discovered how to handle the Bedouins. First you offer to but their friendship. And if you fail, you take a gun and fight them.
P 763 For Cullinane the problem of the Jews moral right to Israel was simple. It was a question of custodianship. When Herod was king, the Galilee held a population of more than a half a million; in Byzantine times more than a million. But at the end of Arab, Crusader, and Turkish rule the same land supported less than sixty thousand.
P 765 Where ever the Bedouin took his camels and his goats he destroyed good land to create his own desert.
P 809 “ Its on all our heads” Bar-El replied simple. “Your mother’s and my uncle’s. You English have done everything possible to destroy Palestine. When you leave… in a few minutes…you’ll turn all the installations over to the Arabs wont you? Arms, food, everything.”
P 815 If you want a monument to English venality in Israel, look to the 261 steps in Safad.
P 820 “That coast.” She interrupted with disgust. “ That didn’t come from Israel and we don’t want it here. That fur hat. That blackness. That gloom. All from the ghetto…. But Ilana, having done the thing refused to move. “where is such a custom in Talmud? “ she cried. “In medevil Poland they used to shave the heads of brides so that the Gentile noblemen wouldn’t demand to sleep with them on the wedding night. To make them ugly”
P 879 And Vered, speaking softly as one whos has just discoveredher portion of truth, however Meager, said “ Dio I remember? Eliav, it seems to me we Jews spend our lives remembering, and I’ve suddenly discovered that I’m sick and tired of living in a land of remembrance.
P 885 American: “ Now Vered and I must leave…for the best home the Jews of the world have ever had.”
Monday, June 9, 2008
I Am A Strange Loop
I Am A Strange Loop
By Michael Hofstadter
How real is X to you...the moment you start taking X for granted, then it would seem you would consider X's reality highly dubious.
This, a book of analogies and metaphors, presents a plethora of academic notions in a down to earth way, spinning science subjects such as physics, mathematics at the logical level, chemistry, psychology, humanities, and a touch of theology, to describe the human experience, which Hofstadter calls a Strange loop. He brings in a lot of his humble personality and subtle sense of humor to help the reader feel like his best friend is telling you about a crazy dream he had the night before. In keeping with the spirit of the book I recognize that every reaction or review would carry the bias of the reviewer’s life experience, whether that be one of science, business, art, sports, spiritual, or just a plain ordinary person…most of us. I am going with the human experience henceforth. With regard to the human experience Hofstadter suggests that in order to perceive our universe, you must have a soul, described in the book as that with the capability to interpret the symbols of the universe.
From small to large, while there is a DNA make up that begins things, Hofstadter puts forward the notion, backed with enough thought to be the foundation of a thesis, but not enough to make a boring academic read, that DNA must be capable eventually through development in chemical communication of powering enough energy to a.) Interpret symbols, b.) Share these symbols with other beings, and c.) Care about the other being. Please understand not I did not state the possibility of a soul to be strictly the domain human beings. Hofstadter, in no way suggests the human being as the center of thought but in many ways implies that souls are not dependent on the human form. This is clearly in sync with Emerson, and Jesus to name a couple souls, but is scientifically based in the 21st century.
What you come to more fully appreciate as a result of reading this book is not ABC as I described in the above paragraph, but CBA in that a soul cares about others, if for no other reason than because what symbols you project, are the symbols you receive. In other words the definition of You resides within the essence of You; a strange loop when looked at it from almost every scientific vantage point. These ideas, while they come into my life from a totally different direction, coincide with to the teaching in Unity’s Course In Miracles, where coincidences are noteworthy, or maybe a strange loop.
In my first reaction to the book I draw a question. Is the quest for power merely the expression to be immortal, to live on through the expressed patterns of your mind, the liaison and ambassador of your soul, by touching the souls of the multitudes? Is this the treasure beyond the deepest chest of gold? Hofstadter begins his answer to this by describing famous people who have left legacies behind. For example he uses Johan Sebastian Bach’s music; not just his music that was heard in the present but in his sheet music notes, patterns of his soul, composed to live in the lives/souls of many others for centuries to come. The notes are experienced again and again, not just buy the performers but the listeners producing moods and reactions that then manifest themselves with a life of their own to be transmitted through other souls. He recognizes that with each “knowledge transfer” there is a degree of separation, but the life pattern of Bach lives on in the mind of man well beyond the expiration of his body.
Using physics metaphor Hofstadter makes up a cranium to illustrate the expansion and more importantly the reduction of thought as a person interprets reality. In the Craniem box there are large balls and there are real small beads sized balls all moving and vibrating in the box. The beads size balls represents reality at microscopic DNA/molecule/atomic level. That is how things are!! Given that the human brain cannot interpret this with any level of survivable efficiency, it begins the process of categorization or distilling small sims (the beads) into larger simballs reducing a multitude of input into a symbolic (large ball) interpretation of reality. We at human level live life at the symbolic "large ball" level, which in society one must clearly appreciate that misunderstood symbols can be very apt at twisting the story in the way things really are. Hofstadter calls this Epiphenomenon, which can be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.
After Hofstadter busts your brain with a short foray in Principia Mathamatecia and logical equations only to prove that it is purely logical to define yourself using variables within your self, (Goedel), he spends the last half of the book bringing physics and logic to simple human. He begins this by applying his personal experience in the loss of his wife. His bereavement was not for his loss but for what his deceased wife is missing. He describes the entwinement of souls as the experience he had with his wife as the reason he can contemplate that she (her patterns/symbols) in fact do live on at least through him. The term he discusses is Entwinement where dualism in consciousness is at work. Where Hofstadter settles on right/left brain at a scientific level, I would prefer brain/soul and wonder why Hofstadter cannot do so in the book.
Hofstadter accepts the notion of soul mates as though very plausible but more occult in nature as opposed to science, so he cannot support it. He suggests, “If souls are patterns then “I” can exist outside (separate from) a body. I think Hofstadter’s only hang-up is his sole experience in life is through academia. When Hofstadter writes: There are shallower aspects of a person and their dependant aspects, and the deeper aspects are what imbue the shallower ones with genuine meaning. If our souls have a deep resemblance, then our beliefs will be the same, and we will intuitively resonate with each other.” I am convinced academia is his only hang up with regard to this subject.
On the heels of this personal subject Hofstadter explores the “I” or the “I’ness” experience. He springs into it with a quote from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. '' Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in case of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved and commit suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rises that must be fulfilled after death? Because it is as though the one who is left stays for a time on stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is leave, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?'' In his discussion on this excerpt he says not only do we find us individually an “I” (one person-one soul or caged bird) but as social beings a dependency to live on in each brain contains multiple strange loops of one another. We are all One. I think Jesus was quoted as saying that and John Lennon wrote a song on and in the same spirit.
To make his ideas really stick Hofstadter speaks on Love. To summarize: “in death of a body, though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word love cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”, the mere deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you; the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind in humanity.” In this, one should find sufficient meaning to make the next choice and every succeeding choice one with an elevated conscience. I was recently challenged with the question; why would I care if my spirit lives on, I want to be here now. After writing this review my answer to this person is; if you could find comfort in a way to live beyond death or outside your body, you would first transcend the fear of death and then fear itself. With this transcendence you would live your "here and now" in a much more satisfying way.
I Am In A Strange Loop
By Paul Murphy
THE DANCE OF SYMBOLS IN YOUR BRAIN...to spot the gist
The dance of I and we flow with the grist
To symbol’s tune on the grand universe's ballroom floor
Time made in eons of mankind locked behind a door
Or seconds of fleeting thought the footsteps in unison
Exchanged at a glance in love of which there is no comparison
Whispering breaths of intimacy in a spirit of feelium
Waltzing souls of universal One
We, under halo of midnight's son
By Michael Hofstadter
How real is X to you...the moment you start taking X for granted, then it would seem you would consider X's reality highly dubious.
This, a book of analogies and metaphors, presents a plethora of academic notions in a down to earth way, spinning science subjects such as physics, mathematics at the logical level, chemistry, psychology, humanities, and a touch of theology, to describe the human experience, which Hofstadter calls a Strange loop. He brings in a lot of his humble personality and subtle sense of humor to help the reader feel like his best friend is telling you about a crazy dream he had the night before. In keeping with the spirit of the book I recognize that every reaction or review would carry the bias of the reviewer’s life experience, whether that be one of science, business, art, sports, spiritual, or just a plain ordinary person…most of us. I am going with the human experience henceforth. With regard to the human experience Hofstadter suggests that in order to perceive our universe, you must have a soul, described in the book as that with the capability to interpret the symbols of the universe.
From small to large, while there is a DNA make up that begins things, Hofstadter puts forward the notion, backed with enough thought to be the foundation of a thesis, but not enough to make a boring academic read, that DNA must be capable eventually through development in chemical communication of powering enough energy to a.) Interpret symbols, b.) Share these symbols with other beings, and c.) Care about the other being. Please understand not I did not state the possibility of a soul to be strictly the domain human beings. Hofstadter, in no way suggests the human being as the center of thought but in many ways implies that souls are not dependent on the human form. This is clearly in sync with Emerson, and Jesus to name a couple souls, but is scientifically based in the 21st century.
What you come to more fully appreciate as a result of reading this book is not ABC as I described in the above paragraph, but CBA in that a soul cares about others, if for no other reason than because what symbols you project, are the symbols you receive. In other words the definition of You resides within the essence of You; a strange loop when looked at it from almost every scientific vantage point. These ideas, while they come into my life from a totally different direction, coincide with to the teaching in Unity’s Course In Miracles, where coincidences are noteworthy, or maybe a strange loop.
In my first reaction to the book I draw a question. Is the quest for power merely the expression to be immortal, to live on through the expressed patterns of your mind, the liaison and ambassador of your soul, by touching the souls of the multitudes? Is this the treasure beyond the deepest chest of gold? Hofstadter begins his answer to this by describing famous people who have left legacies behind. For example he uses Johan Sebastian Bach’s music; not just his music that was heard in the present but in his sheet music notes, patterns of his soul, composed to live in the lives/souls of many others for centuries to come. The notes are experienced again and again, not just buy the performers but the listeners producing moods and reactions that then manifest themselves with a life of their own to be transmitted through other souls. He recognizes that with each “knowledge transfer” there is a degree of separation, but the life pattern of Bach lives on in the mind of man well beyond the expiration of his body.
Using physics metaphor Hofstadter makes up a cranium to illustrate the expansion and more importantly the reduction of thought as a person interprets reality. In the Craniem box there are large balls and there are real small beads sized balls all moving and vibrating in the box. The beads size balls represents reality at microscopic DNA/molecule/atomic level. That is how things are!! Given that the human brain cannot interpret this with any level of survivable efficiency, it begins the process of categorization or distilling small sims (the beads) into larger simballs reducing a multitude of input into a symbolic (large ball) interpretation of reality. We at human level live life at the symbolic "large ball" level, which in society one must clearly appreciate that misunderstood symbols can be very apt at twisting the story in the way things really are. Hofstadter calls this Epiphenomenon, which can be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.
After Hofstadter busts your brain with a short foray in Principia Mathamatecia and logical equations only to prove that it is purely logical to define yourself using variables within your self, (Goedel), he spends the last half of the book bringing physics and logic to simple human. He begins this by applying his personal experience in the loss of his wife. His bereavement was not for his loss but for what his deceased wife is missing. He describes the entwinement of souls as the experience he had with his wife as the reason he can contemplate that she (her patterns/symbols) in fact do live on at least through him. The term he discusses is Entwinement where dualism in consciousness is at work. Where Hofstadter settles on right/left brain at a scientific level, I would prefer brain/soul and wonder why Hofstadter cannot do so in the book.
Hofstadter accepts the notion of soul mates as though very plausible but more occult in nature as opposed to science, so he cannot support it. He suggests, “If souls are patterns then “I” can exist outside (separate from) a body. I think Hofstadter’s only hang-up is his sole experience in life is through academia. When Hofstadter writes: There are shallower aspects of a person and their dependant aspects, and the deeper aspects are what imbue the shallower ones with genuine meaning. If our souls have a deep resemblance, then our beliefs will be the same, and we will intuitively resonate with each other.” I am convinced academia is his only hang up with regard to this subject.
On the heels of this personal subject Hofstadter explores the “I” or the “I’ness” experience. He springs into it with a quote from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. '' Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in case of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved and commit suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rises that must be fulfilled after death? Because it is as though the one who is left stays for a time on stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is leave, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?'' In his discussion on this excerpt he says not only do we find us individually an “I” (one person-one soul or caged bird) but as social beings a dependency to live on in each brain contains multiple strange loops of one another. We are all One. I think Jesus was quoted as saying that and John Lennon wrote a song on and in the same spirit.
To make his ideas really stick Hofstadter speaks on Love. To summarize: “in death of a body, though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word love cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”, the mere deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you; the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind in humanity.” In this, one should find sufficient meaning to make the next choice and every succeeding choice one with an elevated conscience. I was recently challenged with the question; why would I care if my spirit lives on, I want to be here now. After writing this review my answer to this person is; if you could find comfort in a way to live beyond death or outside your body, you would first transcend the fear of death and then fear itself. With this transcendence you would live your "here and now" in a much more satisfying way.
I Am In A Strange Loop
By Paul Murphy
THE DANCE OF SYMBOLS IN YOUR BRAIN...to spot the gist
The dance of I and we flow with the grist
To symbol’s tune on the grand universe's ballroom floor
Time made in eons of mankind locked behind a door
Or seconds of fleeting thought the footsteps in unison
Exchanged at a glance in love of which there is no comparison
Whispering breaths of intimacy in a spirit of feelium
Waltzing souls of universal One
We, under halo of midnight's son
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Crimea
Crimea
by Trevor Royle
The prime players are Russia, Turkey, Britain, France. The issue is world power, or at least a strategic piece of the world's power puzzle. At issue in disguise were the holy prizes, masked in Russia's need to save '' the Christians '' in a Muslim ruled Turkey. It was a land within the Ottoman Empire in decline. ( a sick old man was the phrase of the time). With the battlefield looking like it should be Turkey, the Russian Crimean peninsula and actually the city of Sevastopol becomes the scene of the siege. There was an air of arrogance and possibly hubris amongst the European powers specifically amongst the people at large. Hubris spilled over into the leadership of each country as they were actually giving considerable thought to their strategic interest. England had concerns over an encroachment of influence immediately on their Indian colony. Russia was in search of a warm water port in the Mediterranean. France…well its not quite clear what she wanted outside of an influence in the Middle East as other than the Christian prizes there were no outside strategic interests. The one possible rationale for the French may have been the mood of the French where a convincing victory would remove the 1815 international shackles.
The Affair at Sinope is history’s lesson in poetic justice. Russia took advantage of their naval supremacy over Turkey. In proactive reaction to ward off the deployment of additional Turkish troops in Maldivian front, Russian ships sank the Turkish ships while still in harbor. They annihilated the fleet with a first in the use of solid shells. The burning fleet caught the harbor on fire. Turkey’s loss of 2000 soldiers and as many sailors. It gave the impression of a massacre to the rest of the world. Up to this point the world leaders were not anxious to war with Russia. That all changed as England and France took notice.
So one can look at the power strategic of military victory versus the power of the free press and ask which is most effective in terms of winning the long lasting minds of men. In particular the London Times worked the English people into lather over the ordeal that otherwise giving the speed and quality of information in 1855, could have gone unnoticed. The book does not delve into the reasons why. The reason I select hubris over arrogance is the aristocracy of the English would actually take knoll top picnics giving them clear vista over battlefields where thousands would die in a day.
You could also look at the leadership, but only from a perspective of the shortsightedness of their strategic vision. While arrogance may have played a minor part the book makes it painfully clear how ignorant the leaders were to how unprepared England and Russia were for the war. Only France, who by coincidence of recently having been involved in wars in North Africa had an army with a working practice on the battlefield. England had not seen war in almost 50 years so they let their armies, not yet institutions, go fallow. Russia did not have access to the same technological advancements as those of Western Europe. All belligerents involved had not yet learned the lesson of coordinating the military with the leaders. When you put poor vision in conjunction with a lathered up people, you have license to exercise a military power that may not have legitimate moral standing. Given the news still coming out of the Balkins and the Ottoman Empire, all this chemistry of a European and World society of man has yet to find stability.
The news turned from that of spawning war to that of severe criticism of the British government’s execution of the war. The armies went into the war theater unprepared where even in victory, there were heavy losses attributed to non-combat scenarios. At the first sounding of difficulty the English people became un-nerved at wars prospect. Poor, inaccurate, and untimely communication led to many interpretations of an event where not just knowledge, but timing of that knowledge was essential for a clear picture. And only an unmerciful God knew. With regard to the imminent attack on Sevastopol, while the British were on reconnaissance the Russians already new British intensions, they were reading the Times. I am most intrigued at most with the people’s views before, during, and after this battle. Arrogance -to- Blame. Arrogance in We - to - Blame in You. (any one but me )
The Crimean war gave significant ground to test the rapid advancements in technology coming from the western born industrial revolution. The naval attack on Odessa marked the last time a British war ship, the Arethusa would fight a sea battle fully under sail. The Russian introduced to mankind a new military weapon of under water mines in the harbor of Kronstdat in the Gulf of Finland. Other technologies include telegraph, balloons, tunneling; steam powered train, sulfurous fumes, missiles, periscope, and the Minie Rifle.
Behind the lines medical advancements along with an elevated awareness to the loss of life and limb gave room for the introduction of battlefield rescue and behind the line hospitals in war. Ladies with Lamps brings Florence Nightingale to a sorely exposed medical service. The press, for the first time in British history, brought home the horror of war. The controversy was politicized at a social class level. While the French were supreme in medical service, all the Christian contingencies in the war appealed to the new awareness of war enough to advance medical technology, while the Turks did absolutely nothing.
With regard to diplomacy there were channels between the leaders and press, between the leaders themselves, between the leaders and the Admirals and Generals, and finally between the participants. On the Battlefield the European combatants distained the Turks in many way, most notable for me was to read: “In fighting along side Turks, the French distained the Turkish ritual of beheading their fallen foe, so much that they did not want to fight along side them.” Missed Opportunities, during and immediately after the battle of Alma the first battle on the Crimean peninsula, first poor field reconnaissance resulting in disagreements by field command. Second was conflicting direction from Allied leaders lead to a battle victory but not a victory of what was to become the Crimean War.
The logistics leading up to the siege and actual of Battle of Sevastopol, found the French always waiting on the English and impatience drew a rivalry in who’s in charge. At Balaklava the Cavalryman’s Battle represents more of poor planning in a war that was hastily rushed in to. The Russians were mostly organized, however with a character of complacency. The allies found battle strategy undermined by poor communication across battalions within armies and generals of each army. On the French/British side Egos' were the prime protagonist. On page 272 you read: “That was the interpretation of the order but, from his position above the cavalry, Raglan wished them to move forward to take any of attacking the enemy. Instead he was treated to the sight of the Light Brigade dismounted and taking their ease in the morning sun. His inpatients were exacerbated by the tardy arrival of the infantry.” Myself I have to struggle to imagine, knowing I am going into combat, and taking a preverbal '' coffee break ''
Diplomacy, as we know it in the 20th century post 1917, amongst the leaders found to be lacking in every case in Crimea. It was only too evident that Napoleon III thumbed his nose at peace talks that were ripe for all when he had not convincingly beat the Russians. The English and the French had changed their tunes. Just prior to the battle of Sevastopol, it became apparent that even with an allied victory, a war could not be won. Even the United States came close to joining in the war. Nathaniel Hawthorne, had been instrumental in stopping an illegal shipment through a merchant called Field.....(This was quite a concession. Hawthorne had already admitted his preferences:’ I hate England; though I love some Englishmen, and like them generally, in fact'') this was in the course of diplomacy against England. It is clear, had we engaged, it would have been on the side of Russia. In the end Austria’s Ferdinand played the part of broker in a war of exhausted belligerents that did not see their way to a clear treaty. It is discussed that in 1877, twelve years later, the events and causes of the Crimean War were being repeated already. This time. Disraeli chose diplomacy over war. With Bismarck as broker, a peace treaty was drawn that laid down all manner of problems, which would re-emerge 36 years later in WWI. While not discussed in this book, I know from reading Bismarck that the protagonist of WWI was not Bismarck work, but rather the deviation from his work by the Kaiser. In 1914 Disraeli and Bismarck were gone but the same issues of Turkish {Islamic ) oppression of Christians and Russian expansion were catalyst where a reckless Germany lit the fuse. In all three wars the issues, the sides taken by the belligerents, and the peace treaties did not square up. The impending factor was the arrogant mood of hubris of the people, including the leaders, in conjunction with a fear of losing control of world power; a power that translated to psyche and life style of its people.
With regard to the moral cause for war, any war, it always seems to get lost in the shuffle. In the case of the Crimean War, one which I now call World War One, The Great Elche, Lord Stratford to the Sultan lays into a formal letter a call to an end of Islamic oppression and corruption. In doing so there would be no cause for international involvement, war. Ironically, the forth treaty point-of peace was Joint European guarantees of Rights for Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In Turkey, they said, How could Stratford in behalf of the Allies declared war on Russia because this Power was encroaching upon the independence of the Sultan by demanding to interfere in spiritual affairs of the Orthodoxies and how can he now demand a concession which they declared themselves, more than once, both verbally and in writing, to be inconsistent with the Sultans sovereign rights and independence? General Stratford: noted not only did the then leader Mahomet Ali lead an obnoxious personal life.... notorious for corruption and branded with criminality...he had been found guilty of murdering his Christian mistress and, at Stratford’s insistence, sacked from public life-but official Turkish appointment of him in the first place showed a contempt for British attempts to introduce reforms in court. What was the point of bolstering the Ottoman Empire by taking its side against Russia asked Stratford, if its rulers were in default to British demands that changes be made in its style of government? Ali’s successor Abd-el-Mejit agreed to a wide range of measures to protect Christian rights and all non-Muslims in his Empire, including the abolition of the death penalty for apostasy. This commitment was included in the peace settlement. I must make a note having traveled to Saudi Arabia, that when the aircraft crosses over into Saudi territory the captain comes on the public address and reads to the passengers key Islamic laws. Included in this is the abolition of Christianity, which he reads is punishable by death. When I heard that I rose from my business class seat to use the restroom. When I looked back all the women who were previously wearing some very skin bearing outfits were all in black ropes. It was alarming at least.
You could then ask, what was won. Russia's aim was a warm water port through a Russian solution to the Eastern Question. Nicholas succeeded, somewhat in 1855. The 1914 tzar/Chairman continued the success somewhat. I find it ironic that a man more evil than Hitler conned three of the Great Leaders of the free world to grant Nicholas' wish in signing a treaty in Yalta, on the tip of the Crimean Peninsula; went un-noticed!!! This gave Moscow 45 more years of warm water access. Only now as I write this review, sitting next to a woman from Crimea on an aircraft traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit, do I fully appreciate that the Crimea is now Ukraine and not Russia. What was lost or never really won; apparently free will amongst all man. Included with this reality is a fear that we are apt to do it all again.
So I ask in this time of immediate gratification and living in the here and now, what defines now? Is it this moment or could the study of history expand our worldview of now in a way that allows us at a larger social level, to learn from our lessons in history, an expanded now, and not touch the hot stove. Not to let the newspapers draw us to a level of consciousness that allows leaders to go unchecked, or worse yet be protagonist in their waging of a war. That airplane ride as much as this book makes clear to me that world peace may require a military that does not fire a shot. Is this a bit naive? Possibly…likely. When you consider it took the complete destruction of Germany and Japan to change their ways in defense of a free world, in a snap shot of a broader now; is that what it takes to bring the Eastern Question, a world that is not free to an answer?
Perhaps another solution is the appreciation that freedom is infolded in the world of free enterprise and democracy, the American experiment, is the government of choice to ensure a check on our leaders, and a free expression of its people. Perhaps the expansion in information technologies will help get a broader message to the people of the world. The Internet is a new twist in that articles not subject to editors biased messaging but rather bloggers where all information is openly and aggressively challenged. Keep in mind however North Korea struggles with electricity let alone infrastructure for the information rich web. Iran and China are demonstrably very capable of using that same web to monitor and control what is being viewed and said. Throwing that reality into the equation helps a person of the Western World appreciate an informational peace is not around the corner and is dependant on a certain “freedom of the press” Until then the poison of fear will poison us all.
I could have taken an intriguing view on the personal stories described in this book. They are equally valuable in understanding the travesty in war. I welcome all readers to have a good look at this book and fill in on items I may have missed.
by Trevor Royle
The prime players are Russia, Turkey, Britain, France. The issue is world power, or at least a strategic piece of the world's power puzzle. At issue in disguise were the holy prizes, masked in Russia's need to save '' the Christians '' in a Muslim ruled Turkey. It was a land within the Ottoman Empire in decline. ( a sick old man was the phrase of the time). With the battlefield looking like it should be Turkey, the Russian Crimean peninsula and actually the city of Sevastopol becomes the scene of the siege. There was an air of arrogance and possibly hubris amongst the European powers specifically amongst the people at large. Hubris spilled over into the leadership of each country as they were actually giving considerable thought to their strategic interest. England had concerns over an encroachment of influence immediately on their Indian colony. Russia was in search of a warm water port in the Mediterranean. France…well its not quite clear what she wanted outside of an influence in the Middle East as other than the Christian prizes there were no outside strategic interests. The one possible rationale for the French may have been the mood of the French where a convincing victory would remove the 1815 international shackles.
The Affair at Sinope is history’s lesson in poetic justice. Russia took advantage of their naval supremacy over Turkey. In proactive reaction to ward off the deployment of additional Turkish troops in Maldivian front, Russian ships sank the Turkish ships while still in harbor. They annihilated the fleet with a first in the use of solid shells. The burning fleet caught the harbor on fire. Turkey’s loss of 2000 soldiers and as many sailors. It gave the impression of a massacre to the rest of the world. Up to this point the world leaders were not anxious to war with Russia. That all changed as England and France took notice.
So one can look at the power strategic of military victory versus the power of the free press and ask which is most effective in terms of winning the long lasting minds of men. In particular the London Times worked the English people into lather over the ordeal that otherwise giving the speed and quality of information in 1855, could have gone unnoticed. The book does not delve into the reasons why. The reason I select hubris over arrogance is the aristocracy of the English would actually take knoll top picnics giving them clear vista over battlefields where thousands would die in a day.
You could also look at the leadership, but only from a perspective of the shortsightedness of their strategic vision. While arrogance may have played a minor part the book makes it painfully clear how ignorant the leaders were to how unprepared England and Russia were for the war. Only France, who by coincidence of recently having been involved in wars in North Africa had an army with a working practice on the battlefield. England had not seen war in almost 50 years so they let their armies, not yet institutions, go fallow. Russia did not have access to the same technological advancements as those of Western Europe. All belligerents involved had not yet learned the lesson of coordinating the military with the leaders. When you put poor vision in conjunction with a lathered up people, you have license to exercise a military power that may not have legitimate moral standing. Given the news still coming out of the Balkins and the Ottoman Empire, all this chemistry of a European and World society of man has yet to find stability.
The news turned from that of spawning war to that of severe criticism of the British government’s execution of the war. The armies went into the war theater unprepared where even in victory, there were heavy losses attributed to non-combat scenarios. At the first sounding of difficulty the English people became un-nerved at wars prospect. Poor, inaccurate, and untimely communication led to many interpretations of an event where not just knowledge, but timing of that knowledge was essential for a clear picture. And only an unmerciful God knew. With regard to the imminent attack on Sevastopol, while the British were on reconnaissance the Russians already new British intensions, they were reading the Times. I am most intrigued at most with the people’s views before, during, and after this battle. Arrogance -to- Blame. Arrogance in We - to - Blame in You. (any one but me )
The Crimean war gave significant ground to test the rapid advancements in technology coming from the western born industrial revolution. The naval attack on Odessa marked the last time a British war ship, the Arethusa would fight a sea battle fully under sail. The Russian introduced to mankind a new military weapon of under water mines in the harbor of Kronstdat in the Gulf of Finland. Other technologies include telegraph, balloons, tunneling; steam powered train, sulfurous fumes, missiles, periscope, and the Minie Rifle.
Behind the lines medical advancements along with an elevated awareness to the loss of life and limb gave room for the introduction of battlefield rescue and behind the line hospitals in war. Ladies with Lamps brings Florence Nightingale to a sorely exposed medical service. The press, for the first time in British history, brought home the horror of war. The controversy was politicized at a social class level. While the French were supreme in medical service, all the Christian contingencies in the war appealed to the new awareness of war enough to advance medical technology, while the Turks did absolutely nothing.
With regard to diplomacy there were channels between the leaders and press, between the leaders themselves, between the leaders and the Admirals and Generals, and finally between the participants. On the Battlefield the European combatants distained the Turks in many way, most notable for me was to read: “In fighting along side Turks, the French distained the Turkish ritual of beheading their fallen foe, so much that they did not want to fight along side them.” Missed Opportunities, during and immediately after the battle of Alma the first battle on the Crimean peninsula, first poor field reconnaissance resulting in disagreements by field command. Second was conflicting direction from Allied leaders lead to a battle victory but not a victory of what was to become the Crimean War.
The logistics leading up to the siege and actual of Battle of Sevastopol, found the French always waiting on the English and impatience drew a rivalry in who’s in charge. At Balaklava the Cavalryman’s Battle represents more of poor planning in a war that was hastily rushed in to. The Russians were mostly organized, however with a character of complacency. The allies found battle strategy undermined by poor communication across battalions within armies and generals of each army. On the French/British side Egos' were the prime protagonist. On page 272 you read: “That was the interpretation of the order but, from his position above the cavalry, Raglan wished them to move forward to take any of attacking the enemy. Instead he was treated to the sight of the Light Brigade dismounted and taking their ease in the morning sun. His inpatients were exacerbated by the tardy arrival of the infantry.” Myself I have to struggle to imagine, knowing I am going into combat, and taking a preverbal '' coffee break ''
Diplomacy, as we know it in the 20th century post 1917, amongst the leaders found to be lacking in every case in Crimea. It was only too evident that Napoleon III thumbed his nose at peace talks that were ripe for all when he had not convincingly beat the Russians. The English and the French had changed their tunes. Just prior to the battle of Sevastopol, it became apparent that even with an allied victory, a war could not be won. Even the United States came close to joining in the war. Nathaniel Hawthorne, had been instrumental in stopping an illegal shipment through a merchant called Field.....(This was quite a concession. Hawthorne had already admitted his preferences:’ I hate England; though I love some Englishmen, and like them generally, in fact'') this was in the course of diplomacy against England. It is clear, had we engaged, it would have been on the side of Russia. In the end Austria’s Ferdinand played the part of broker in a war of exhausted belligerents that did not see their way to a clear treaty. It is discussed that in 1877, twelve years later, the events and causes of the Crimean War were being repeated already. This time. Disraeli chose diplomacy over war. With Bismarck as broker, a peace treaty was drawn that laid down all manner of problems, which would re-emerge 36 years later in WWI. While not discussed in this book, I know from reading Bismarck that the protagonist of WWI was not Bismarck work, but rather the deviation from his work by the Kaiser. In 1914 Disraeli and Bismarck were gone but the same issues of Turkish {Islamic ) oppression of Christians and Russian expansion were catalyst where a reckless Germany lit the fuse. In all three wars the issues, the sides taken by the belligerents, and the peace treaties did not square up. The impending factor was the arrogant mood of hubris of the people, including the leaders, in conjunction with a fear of losing control of world power; a power that translated to psyche and life style of its people.
With regard to the moral cause for war, any war, it always seems to get lost in the shuffle. In the case of the Crimean War, one which I now call World War One, The Great Elche, Lord Stratford to the Sultan lays into a formal letter a call to an end of Islamic oppression and corruption. In doing so there would be no cause for international involvement, war. Ironically, the forth treaty point-of peace was Joint European guarantees of Rights for Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In Turkey, they said, How could Stratford in behalf of the Allies declared war on Russia because this Power was encroaching upon the independence of the Sultan by demanding to interfere in spiritual affairs of the Orthodoxies and how can he now demand a concession which they declared themselves, more than once, both verbally and in writing, to be inconsistent with the Sultans sovereign rights and independence? General Stratford: noted not only did the then leader Mahomet Ali lead an obnoxious personal life.... notorious for corruption and branded with criminality...he had been found guilty of murdering his Christian mistress and, at Stratford’s insistence, sacked from public life-but official Turkish appointment of him in the first place showed a contempt for British attempts to introduce reforms in court. What was the point of bolstering the Ottoman Empire by taking its side against Russia asked Stratford, if its rulers were in default to British demands that changes be made in its style of government? Ali’s successor Abd-el-Mejit agreed to a wide range of measures to protect Christian rights and all non-Muslims in his Empire, including the abolition of the death penalty for apostasy. This commitment was included in the peace settlement. I must make a note having traveled to Saudi Arabia, that when the aircraft crosses over into Saudi territory the captain comes on the public address and reads to the passengers key Islamic laws. Included in this is the abolition of Christianity, which he reads is punishable by death. When I heard that I rose from my business class seat to use the restroom. When I looked back all the women who were previously wearing some very skin bearing outfits were all in black ropes. It was alarming at least.
You could then ask, what was won. Russia's aim was a warm water port through a Russian solution to the Eastern Question. Nicholas succeeded, somewhat in 1855. The 1914 tzar/Chairman continued the success somewhat. I find it ironic that a man more evil than Hitler conned three of the Great Leaders of the free world to grant Nicholas' wish in signing a treaty in Yalta, on the tip of the Crimean Peninsula; went un-noticed!!! This gave Moscow 45 more years of warm water access. Only now as I write this review, sitting next to a woman from Crimea on an aircraft traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit, do I fully appreciate that the Crimea is now Ukraine and not Russia. What was lost or never really won; apparently free will amongst all man. Included with this reality is a fear that we are apt to do it all again.
So I ask in this time of immediate gratification and living in the here and now, what defines now? Is it this moment or could the study of history expand our worldview of now in a way that allows us at a larger social level, to learn from our lessons in history, an expanded now, and not touch the hot stove. Not to let the newspapers draw us to a level of consciousness that allows leaders to go unchecked, or worse yet be protagonist in their waging of a war. That airplane ride as much as this book makes clear to me that world peace may require a military that does not fire a shot. Is this a bit naive? Possibly…likely. When you consider it took the complete destruction of Germany and Japan to change their ways in defense of a free world, in a snap shot of a broader now; is that what it takes to bring the Eastern Question, a world that is not free to an answer?
Perhaps another solution is the appreciation that freedom is infolded in the world of free enterprise and democracy, the American experiment, is the government of choice to ensure a check on our leaders, and a free expression of its people. Perhaps the expansion in information technologies will help get a broader message to the people of the world. The Internet is a new twist in that articles not subject to editors biased messaging but rather bloggers where all information is openly and aggressively challenged. Keep in mind however North Korea struggles with electricity let alone infrastructure for the information rich web. Iran and China are demonstrably very capable of using that same web to monitor and control what is being viewed and said. Throwing that reality into the equation helps a person of the Western World appreciate an informational peace is not around the corner and is dependant on a certain “freedom of the press” Until then the poison of fear will poison us all.
I could have taken an intriguing view on the personal stories described in this book. They are equally valuable in understanding the travesty in war. I welcome all readers to have a good look at this book and fill in on items I may have missed.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Kite Runner
Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini
Innocence…a child’s life, each day a chance to improvise
Storybooks read to the illiterate with pieces revised
Hills to climb trees to climb, dads car to go to the bizarre in
Pomegranates aroma, a true friend to find yourself in
A pledge to eat dirt or not to define who you are or not
Hazara and Suni unaware of their world as children they sing
In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things
A larger Afghan world of traditions bent on stature
One up over one down One man determined to rupture
A divergence of advantages mixed upon the disadvantaged
Bound together by a family in secret genetic heritage
Brute upon hero as in David and Goliath
Innocence faces brutality in a Kite Runners undoing
In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things
A secret to bear, a load to carry
Denial begets deceit, a truth destined to burry
Betrayal of oneself then portrayed upon ones brother
Courage defined by an act of cowardice and lies to cover
Loyalty defied by fear of ones reality
Divided by fate bestowed by a cruel traditional rue
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth
Half a world’s journey a weight carried on sunshine’s beam
Casting shadow in the sunshine of an American dream
Refuges in a haven as they discover freedom to express
They bring tradition to bend against free will they trespass
Aided by American tax contributions they wait for their return
To outward life they know if here or there their inner soul is to move
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth
Then a call to duty to face fiddlers music, but all men? truth or myth?
Secrets revieled by elder as tradition’s veil is removed in eminent death
Forgiveness and god are called to duty, a cry in vein
Passed on from father to son the sins remain the same
Separate from truth are the conditional pleas at salvations alter
The drama of life meets with a surrender to death but denied it
But surrender to silence remains until the spark of Fathers’ spirit.
This book was a profile in courage of a boy that meets the traumatic experiences of a violent world at a young age. Outwardly his actions in conjunction with the fact that he allowed it to manifest through deceitful ploys against his best friend, display an act of cowardice. Over time these same actions are revealed as a true badge of courage by a forgiving elder. The book also displays the complex dynamic of the deep-rooted division between Suni and Shia. It exposes the roots of Suni’s oppression upon Shia that we have also seen through leaders such as Hussein and Nasser. There are numerous levels of divisional strife the Muslim world and is masked over with its lying rants on the West. The reader witnesses not the simple fact that oppression exists, but how it feels from both sides. It also provides a secondary portal into thought on a government that allows free will to prosper. And questions those that shrink from its challenges.
In the Afghanistan era of the pre Russian invasion there existed centuries of traditional dominance of one man over another for the simple reason of the family he was born in to. To this I question, in the same way the prime character questions himself, any Western voice that would have the lack of courage to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed and make an active call for free will for all men as we are all One in God, whether Muslim, Christian, or atheist. Keep in mind I only question because in the context of this book it is the oppressed who suffer the outward affects of oppression, but for some Godly reason realize the highest degree of inner peace.
Not to let inner peace be the loophole to escape the responsibility of the active oppressors or the casual passive observers of oppression, the author tells a wonderful story aimed at the remedy. That solution is not a call to God to pray on a rug on the condition that lives may be saved. It is a prescription of forgiveness, beginning with ones self, the enabler to forgive one another. So that rather souls may be saved. It is the enabler to see the God given spirit of One man with his strengths and weaknesses as an equal call for free will. The author carries the plot to a head with a lopsided battle of two torn individuals where each find themselves surrendering to this reality.
Are there lessons to the author is conveying? “ Let me list them here.
¨ “In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”
¨ “I didn’t want to sacrifice to Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself
¨ “There is only one sin. And that is theft…When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth.”
¨ “A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
¨ “I know in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But most important, forgive yourself.”
¨ I wonder if that is was how forgiveness budded, not with fan fare of epiphany, but with plain gathering of things, packing up and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night”
My interpretation of his lessons: Reality exists. Accepting this with unconditional love for life is a mere choice of surrendering to it. Doing that with passion for life will bring a new dawn. Hassan did it from the very beginning, Amir fought it but found a way do it. In the end Sohrab discovered the act of letting go.
By Khaled Hosseini
Innocence…a child’s life, each day a chance to improvise
Storybooks read to the illiterate with pieces revised
Hills to climb trees to climb, dads car to go to the bizarre in
Pomegranates aroma, a true friend to find yourself in
A pledge to eat dirt or not to define who you are or not
Hazara and Suni unaware of their world as children they sing
In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things
A larger Afghan world of traditions bent on stature
One up over one down One man determined to rupture
A divergence of advantages mixed upon the disadvantaged
Bound together by a family in secret genetic heritage
Brute upon hero as in David and Goliath
Innocence faces brutality in a Kite Runners undoing
In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things
A secret to bear, a load to carry
Denial begets deceit, a truth destined to burry
Betrayal of oneself then portrayed upon ones brother
Courage defined by an act of cowardice and lies to cover
Loyalty defied by fear of ones reality
Divided by fate bestowed by a cruel traditional rue
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth
Half a world’s journey a weight carried on sunshine’s beam
Casting shadow in the sunshine of an American dream
Refuges in a haven as they discover freedom to express
They bring tradition to bend against free will they trespass
Aided by American tax contributions they wait for their return
To outward life they know if here or there their inner soul is to move
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth
Then a call to duty to face fiddlers music, but all men? truth or myth?
Secrets revieled by elder as tradition’s veil is removed in eminent death
Forgiveness and god are called to duty, a cry in vein
Passed on from father to son the sins remain the same
Separate from truth are the conditional pleas at salvations alter
The drama of life meets with a surrender to death but denied it
But surrender to silence remains until the spark of Fathers’ spirit.
This book was a profile in courage of a boy that meets the traumatic experiences of a violent world at a young age. Outwardly his actions in conjunction with the fact that he allowed it to manifest through deceitful ploys against his best friend, display an act of cowardice. Over time these same actions are revealed as a true badge of courage by a forgiving elder. The book also displays the complex dynamic of the deep-rooted division between Suni and Shia. It exposes the roots of Suni’s oppression upon Shia that we have also seen through leaders such as Hussein and Nasser. There are numerous levels of divisional strife the Muslim world and is masked over with its lying rants on the West. The reader witnesses not the simple fact that oppression exists, but how it feels from both sides. It also provides a secondary portal into thought on a government that allows free will to prosper. And questions those that shrink from its challenges.
In the Afghanistan era of the pre Russian invasion there existed centuries of traditional dominance of one man over another for the simple reason of the family he was born in to. To this I question, in the same way the prime character questions himself, any Western voice that would have the lack of courage to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed and make an active call for free will for all men as we are all One in God, whether Muslim, Christian, or atheist. Keep in mind I only question because in the context of this book it is the oppressed who suffer the outward affects of oppression, but for some Godly reason realize the highest degree of inner peace.
Not to let inner peace be the loophole to escape the responsibility of the active oppressors or the casual passive observers of oppression, the author tells a wonderful story aimed at the remedy. That solution is not a call to God to pray on a rug on the condition that lives may be saved. It is a prescription of forgiveness, beginning with ones self, the enabler to forgive one another. So that rather souls may be saved. It is the enabler to see the God given spirit of One man with his strengths and weaknesses as an equal call for free will. The author carries the plot to a head with a lopsided battle of two torn individuals where each find themselves surrendering to this reality.
Are there lessons to the author is conveying? “ Let me list them here.
¨ “In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”
¨ “I didn’t want to sacrifice to Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself
¨ “There is only one sin. And that is theft…When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth.”
¨ “A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
¨ “I know in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But most important, forgive yourself.”
¨ I wonder if that is was how forgiveness budded, not with fan fare of epiphany, but with plain gathering of things, packing up and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night”
My interpretation of his lessons: Reality exists. Accepting this with unconditional love for life is a mere choice of surrendering to it. Doing that with passion for life will bring a new dawn. Hassan did it from the very beginning, Amir fought it but found a way do it. In the end Sohrab discovered the act of letting go.
Friday, February 22, 2008
A Course In Miracles
A seed from nature
In the mind of man
Under the ray of light
Sprouts a bush in thought
With bud of one rose
Unfolding natures purpose
Her soft pedals undaunted
As her contemporaries trespass
Reflecting the light of God’s sun
Through her beauty in scent
And splendid tenderness in sight
Nothing to learn she already knows
Given to one in return for one
Balanced to be as it was intended
A course in miracles
As illusions go, this book is not a book. It is an experience; rich in philosophy yet simple in message. The best way to read this book is one “thought” per day. Each two to three pages may require 30 minutes as you read each paragraph twice to add to the fullness of its meaning. You discover your creator in nature, and as well as your place in mankind. Closing each reading with a time for purposeful thought allows for a gradual transformation in how one sees the world. You will remember the passage where the miracle occurred for you in just an instant. You will be forever transformed. Your reward a year later is a profound sense of peace; in knowing it is what it is and nothing more or less.
You will first lose all sense of fear, especially the death of your body. You will find complete confidence in who you are and what your purpose is. You will welcome that who you are is found not in the mirror but in the face of your brother. As you cast the light of your newfound peace, you will find a reflecting spark of light in your brother’s eye, making our journey with mankind a journey of One. All this is found by simply making up your mind to do so.
In the mind of man
Under the ray of light
Sprouts a bush in thought
With bud of one rose
Unfolding natures purpose
Her soft pedals undaunted
As her contemporaries trespass
Reflecting the light of God’s sun
Through her beauty in scent
And splendid tenderness in sight
Nothing to learn she already knows
Given to one in return for one
Balanced to be as it was intended
A course in miracles
As illusions go, this book is not a book. It is an experience; rich in philosophy yet simple in message. The best way to read this book is one “thought” per day. Each two to three pages may require 30 minutes as you read each paragraph twice to add to the fullness of its meaning. You discover your creator in nature, and as well as your place in mankind. Closing each reading with a time for purposeful thought allows for a gradual transformation in how one sees the world. You will remember the passage where the miracle occurred for you in just an instant. You will be forever transformed. Your reward a year later is a profound sense of peace; in knowing it is what it is and nothing more or less.
You will first lose all sense of fear, especially the death of your body. You will find complete confidence in who you are and what your purpose is. You will welcome that who you are is found not in the mirror but in the face of your brother. As you cast the light of your newfound peace, you will find a reflecting spark of light in your brother’s eye, making our journey with mankind a journey of One. All this is found by simply making up your mind to do so.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Contract with the Earth
Contract with the Earth
By Newt Gingrich
This was a refreshing and insightful book from a political figure with a bipartisan message for us all to appreciate. I got on to this book when listening to an interview of Gingrich on NPR. I am curious if it were not for the timing in fall of 2007, with rise to a high visibility political season, would the interview had taken place. In that interview Gingrich was asked if he is running for President. He said he was not, for the same reason Al Gore is not running. He feels he can accomplish more for the world with regard to the environment as a citizen than he could as President, being encumbered with politics.
What is Gingrich’s message? First is unity in the cause. Not just across national party lines but across international lines as well. Second is recognition that we do not have all the facts, in terms of the full balance of the ecosystems of our planet earth. Third is the facts should not be proprietary but rather universally shared. Fourth, is government at all levels and business need to come together with effective participation and policy, in a cooperative posture. Fifth is education of our youth and remedial education of our elders on the individual contributions through consumerism, philanthropy, voting, and life style changes that can lead to a cleaner environment. All this says a collective conscience with one unified goal is essential. The key yet silent word through out the book is balance.
I was somewhat intrigued at a couple byproducts brought about with a collective conscience on the environment. First was recognition that democratic societies, where the free will of the people is prevalent, are more apt to participate as each individual can identify with their earth experience. Second is that our national security hangs in the balance of our recognition of the fossil fuel problem. Would focus on the environment reduce our focus on a major cause of our threat to our national security provided largely by volatile, non-democratic countries; or would it increase it? In my mind it depends on how you apply your focus. Reduce demand in fossil fuel by improving our technology and then sharing it refocuses everyone on being a good neighbor.
I find is interesting that while the still standing in Feb. 08 and probable presidential candidates they all have agreeable environmental platforms, I find Obama’s record and platform a bit more impressive. His voting record is superior to the other two and his platform calls for stronger international leadership where I have not heard the others reach beyond our boundaries. Interesting, it seems a popular cry today from our “Bush bashing talking heads” is that we should dampen our critique of other nations on their values and policy as though we are an arrogant nation. This would be to ignore specifically speaking to their environmental record as the reason for not endorsing the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile Gingrich is extolling the export of our technology commercially, and a call for international policy. There is a reason for my intrigue where leadership requires a genuine personal appreciation of a cause that translates to courage to advocate policy and practice towards that cause.
I did a search on the Internet and most easily found Obama willing to step up to the plate with right message. As a traditional Republican, I make the first move in reaching across lines with a call for good voting conscience as opposed to the “you go girl” mentality in choosing your candidate. We need to be for something, not against something. Its time we look for more than someone who is a divisive “I am not George W. Bush” as we hear from Clinton, but someone who actually has substance with leadership qualities as in Obama or McCain. On the environment we need unity and we need leadership, and if we saw a Presidential run off between McCain and Obama, for once either side would be voting for someone, whereby on the environment issues Obama stands tallest.
I am including notes in my review once again for those who do not make the time to read books. Shame on you who defer your information funnel solely to talking heads with agendas. It is my hope that the snippets will inspire you to read the book and get beyond the headlines or the five-minute take on TV or radio. If you are an Internet surfer, the back of the book provides a list of sites to surf. The more you know the issues and more specifically THE FACTS in depth the better you will appreciate what you as an individual can play as your part in this symphony we call Earth.
End Notes
p. 40 We don’t have a perfect understanding of Earth’s systems and processes; it may be unachievable in the face of such complexity. However, we continue to develop imperfect but useful mathematical models, and we have been able to isolate physical variables in the laboratory. We should celebrate our capacity to learn quickly about such things; and we need to continue funding the search for this vital information. We need to commit to the International Environmental Year project similar to the International Geophysical Year in the late 1950’s
p. 74 Conservation International has identified thirty-four hotspots in its most recent analysis. The degree of lost habitat can be expressed by comparing the 15.7 percent of original habitat with the remaining 2.3 percent of Earths surface now occupied by 34 hotspots, a precipitous loss of 86 percent. Amount them they contain 150,000 plant species as endemics, 50 percent of the worlds total…Hotspots are profoundly rich locales for the world’s wildlife, and the amount of biodiversity in hotspot is extremely high, so these remarkable hotspots represents an urgent priority for conservation. By protecting wildlife, especially undiscovered species, we also protect our opportunity to discover valuable new organic material.
p. 94 Non governmental organizations are driving those conservations because of the NGO’s inherent flexibility and speed…and their willingness to cooperate rather than criticize.
p. 119 Fred Kavli who is funding basic research for fairly open-ended projects in nanotechnology, neuroscience, and astronomy. He has launched fourteen research centers based at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Cal Tech.
P 122 One model for the new philanthropy is the Clinton Global Initiative that aims to accelerate active philanthropy, especially when it is confronted with global emergencies….
P132 with regard to the decrease in air pollution in Loa Angeles, This is a significant decline, and new technology can take most of the credit for this change. For example, it is estimated that it would take twenty of today’s new cars to generate equivalent air pollution by just one mid 1960’2 car. This goal was accomplished through recognition and regulation. Gingrich adds (paraphrased)Los Angeles is seeking greater federal policies on emissions of locomotives, cargo ships, and airplanes that come in to the Los Angeles basin from outside jurisdictions
P 140 Our national security and our nation’s economy depends on supply and demand shifts that are orderly, predictable, and carefully managed. Chaos is the enemy of national security.
By reducing expectations, it is easier to enable fossil fuel to retain its grip on the American consumer, an it becomes more difficult for competitive industry to gain a foothold, even if the industry is spawned by Big Oil…..our nation will need tax incentives to continue research on alternative fuels…a continued heavy handed policy will only limit the progress in research.
P156 With regard to leadership in environmentalism….In his best selling book, Good to Great, Jim Collins observed that effective leaders channel their self interest into the larger goal of building a great company. Their ambition is mostly for the good of the institution rather than themselves…Clearly , a sustainable environmental culture will require staying power. Today’s leaders must be tenacious advocates for the natural world, driven by results and guided by evidence. Where will we find such leaders? According to Collins…look for a well run company.
P157 A recent study published in the Journal of Peace Research demonstrated that democracies exhibit stronger international environmental commitments the non democratic nations.
P 159 In the book Green to Gold the authors identified many ways leading edge companies go beyond mere compliance to adapt environmental perspectives into all aspects of their company operations. These companies mindful of the increasing transparency provided by Internet access to the business world offer proactive pathways to an environmental business culture. Examples are provided
P 167 Because adventure capitalists tend to fund ideas that are nearly ready for the marketplace, the type of arduous research that produces real breakthroughs can only be funded by astute governments. America needs to be that kind of government, but our commitments have wavered in recent years so government incentives for energy research will be issues in future political campaigns.
P168 Mobilizing other countries to join us will not be as easy as it may appear. Many nations that signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol are lagging behind on their commitments. Canada’s commissioner Johanne Gelinas, said in 2006 that her country has “done too little and acted too slowly” in addressing climate change.
P177 On wild-life preserves, Crane-Medows ( a government preserve) does not live in a vacuum. It owes much of its success to Omaha-born entrepreneur Peter Kiewit, a generous philanthropist who died in 1979, but who left much of his fortune to his foundation….(paraphrased) contributing to the improvement of preserves.
P 188 A return to the subdued style and scholarly depth of the storied Lincoln-Douglas nineteenth-century political debates is a reform badly needed in our time. Media corporations should be working to achieve an unbiased, in-depth presentation of the original ideas, platforms, and philosophies of all political candidates so the American people can select their leaders based on trusted, reliable information sources.
P 189 We recognize that global climate change is supported by a wealth of scientific data derived from a diversity of measurement techniques….However we still cannot be certain about the variance introduced by distinctly human activities. Should human behavior be a cause, to any extent, it wouldn’t be surprising, given the role human beings have played in other environmental event….However, the debate about the origins and sources of climate change should not be left to scientists alone
P190 In three recent reports from the National Academy of Sciences, climate scientists decry the lack od adequate systems for collecting, sharing, and modeling climate data. We must heed these calls and provide the scientific community with the resources to improve future climate projections. A key first step is the development of a sophisticated data-gathering system with appropriate investment in gathering and analyzing data….The data should be available to everyone. Scientific debate and descent should be encouraged in pursuit of a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the complexities of our environmental systems
By Newt Gingrich
This was a refreshing and insightful book from a political figure with a bipartisan message for us all to appreciate. I got on to this book when listening to an interview of Gingrich on NPR. I am curious if it were not for the timing in fall of 2007, with rise to a high visibility political season, would the interview had taken place. In that interview Gingrich was asked if he is running for President. He said he was not, for the same reason Al Gore is not running. He feels he can accomplish more for the world with regard to the environment as a citizen than he could as President, being encumbered with politics.
What is Gingrich’s message? First is unity in the cause. Not just across national party lines but across international lines as well. Second is recognition that we do not have all the facts, in terms of the full balance of the ecosystems of our planet earth. Third is the facts should not be proprietary but rather universally shared. Fourth, is government at all levels and business need to come together with effective participation and policy, in a cooperative posture. Fifth is education of our youth and remedial education of our elders on the individual contributions through consumerism, philanthropy, voting, and life style changes that can lead to a cleaner environment. All this says a collective conscience with one unified goal is essential. The key yet silent word through out the book is balance.
I was somewhat intrigued at a couple byproducts brought about with a collective conscience on the environment. First was recognition that democratic societies, where the free will of the people is prevalent, are more apt to participate as each individual can identify with their earth experience. Second is that our national security hangs in the balance of our recognition of the fossil fuel problem. Would focus on the environment reduce our focus on a major cause of our threat to our national security provided largely by volatile, non-democratic countries; or would it increase it? In my mind it depends on how you apply your focus. Reduce demand in fossil fuel by improving our technology and then sharing it refocuses everyone on being a good neighbor.
I find is interesting that while the still standing in Feb. 08 and probable presidential candidates they all have agreeable environmental platforms, I find Obama’s record and platform a bit more impressive. His voting record is superior to the other two and his platform calls for stronger international leadership where I have not heard the others reach beyond our boundaries. Interesting, it seems a popular cry today from our “Bush bashing talking heads” is that we should dampen our critique of other nations on their values and policy as though we are an arrogant nation. This would be to ignore specifically speaking to their environmental record as the reason for not endorsing the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile Gingrich is extolling the export of our technology commercially, and a call for international policy. There is a reason for my intrigue where leadership requires a genuine personal appreciation of a cause that translates to courage to advocate policy and practice towards that cause.
I did a search on the Internet and most easily found Obama willing to step up to the plate with right message. As a traditional Republican, I make the first move in reaching across lines with a call for good voting conscience as opposed to the “you go girl” mentality in choosing your candidate. We need to be for something, not against something. Its time we look for more than someone who is a divisive “I am not George W. Bush” as we hear from Clinton, but someone who actually has substance with leadership qualities as in Obama or McCain. On the environment we need unity and we need leadership, and if we saw a Presidential run off between McCain and Obama, for once either side would be voting for someone, whereby on the environment issues Obama stands tallest.
I am including notes in my review once again for those who do not make the time to read books. Shame on you who defer your information funnel solely to talking heads with agendas. It is my hope that the snippets will inspire you to read the book and get beyond the headlines or the five-minute take on TV or radio. If you are an Internet surfer, the back of the book provides a list of sites to surf. The more you know the issues and more specifically THE FACTS in depth the better you will appreciate what you as an individual can play as your part in this symphony we call Earth.
End Notes
p. 40 We don’t have a perfect understanding of Earth’s systems and processes; it may be unachievable in the face of such complexity. However, we continue to develop imperfect but useful mathematical models, and we have been able to isolate physical variables in the laboratory. We should celebrate our capacity to learn quickly about such things; and we need to continue funding the search for this vital information. We need to commit to the International Environmental Year project similar to the International Geophysical Year in the late 1950’s
p. 74 Conservation International has identified thirty-four hotspots in its most recent analysis. The degree of lost habitat can be expressed by comparing the 15.7 percent of original habitat with the remaining 2.3 percent of Earths surface now occupied by 34 hotspots, a precipitous loss of 86 percent. Amount them they contain 150,000 plant species as endemics, 50 percent of the worlds total…Hotspots are profoundly rich locales for the world’s wildlife, and the amount of biodiversity in hotspot is extremely high, so these remarkable hotspots represents an urgent priority for conservation. By protecting wildlife, especially undiscovered species, we also protect our opportunity to discover valuable new organic material.
p. 94 Non governmental organizations are driving those conservations because of the NGO’s inherent flexibility and speed…and their willingness to cooperate rather than criticize.
p. 119 Fred Kavli who is funding basic research for fairly open-ended projects in nanotechnology, neuroscience, and astronomy. He has launched fourteen research centers based at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Cal Tech.
P 122 One model for the new philanthropy is the Clinton Global Initiative that aims to accelerate active philanthropy, especially when it is confronted with global emergencies….
P132 with regard to the decrease in air pollution in Loa Angeles, This is a significant decline, and new technology can take most of the credit for this change. For example, it is estimated that it would take twenty of today’s new cars to generate equivalent air pollution by just one mid 1960’2 car. This goal was accomplished through recognition and regulation. Gingrich adds (paraphrased)Los Angeles is seeking greater federal policies on emissions of locomotives, cargo ships, and airplanes that come in to the Los Angeles basin from outside jurisdictions
P 140 Our national security and our nation’s economy depends on supply and demand shifts that are orderly, predictable, and carefully managed. Chaos is the enemy of national security.
By reducing expectations, it is easier to enable fossil fuel to retain its grip on the American consumer, an it becomes more difficult for competitive industry to gain a foothold, even if the industry is spawned by Big Oil…..our nation will need tax incentives to continue research on alternative fuels…a continued heavy handed policy will only limit the progress in research.
P156 With regard to leadership in environmentalism….In his best selling book, Good to Great, Jim Collins observed that effective leaders channel their self interest into the larger goal of building a great company. Their ambition is mostly for the good of the institution rather than themselves…Clearly , a sustainable environmental culture will require staying power. Today’s leaders must be tenacious advocates for the natural world, driven by results and guided by evidence. Where will we find such leaders? According to Collins…look for a well run company.
P157 A recent study published in the Journal of Peace Research demonstrated that democracies exhibit stronger international environmental commitments the non democratic nations.
P 159 In the book Green to Gold the authors identified many ways leading edge companies go beyond mere compliance to adapt environmental perspectives into all aspects of their company operations. These companies mindful of the increasing transparency provided by Internet access to the business world offer proactive pathways to an environmental business culture. Examples are provided
P 167 Because adventure capitalists tend to fund ideas that are nearly ready for the marketplace, the type of arduous research that produces real breakthroughs can only be funded by astute governments. America needs to be that kind of government, but our commitments have wavered in recent years so government incentives for energy research will be issues in future political campaigns.
P168 Mobilizing other countries to join us will not be as easy as it may appear. Many nations that signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol are lagging behind on their commitments. Canada’s commissioner Johanne Gelinas, said in 2006 that her country has “done too little and acted too slowly” in addressing climate change.
P177 On wild-life preserves, Crane-Medows ( a government preserve) does not live in a vacuum. It owes much of its success to Omaha-born entrepreneur Peter Kiewit, a generous philanthropist who died in 1979, but who left much of his fortune to his foundation….(paraphrased) contributing to the improvement of preserves.
P 188 A return to the subdued style and scholarly depth of the storied Lincoln-Douglas nineteenth-century political debates is a reform badly needed in our time. Media corporations should be working to achieve an unbiased, in-depth presentation of the original ideas, platforms, and philosophies of all political candidates so the American people can select their leaders based on trusted, reliable information sources.
P 189 We recognize that global climate change is supported by a wealth of scientific data derived from a diversity of measurement techniques….However we still cannot be certain about the variance introduced by distinctly human activities. Should human behavior be a cause, to any extent, it wouldn’t be surprising, given the role human beings have played in other environmental event….However, the debate about the origins and sources of climate change should not be left to scientists alone
P190 In three recent reports from the National Academy of Sciences, climate scientists decry the lack od adequate systems for collecting, sharing, and modeling climate data. We must heed these calls and provide the scientific community with the resources to improve future climate projections. A key first step is the development of a sophisticated data-gathering system with appropriate investment in gathering and analyzing data….The data should be available to everyone. Scientific debate and descent should be encouraged in pursuit of a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the complexities of our environmental systems
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