Roz Savage's Blog, page 6

What would it be like if we applauded politicians for changing their mind, rather than criticising them for U-turns? What if we appreciated “learning” rather than “expertise”? How about admiring a growth mindset, rather than a fixed one?

A correspondence following on from last week’s blog post on a post-truth world inspired these thoughts.

The human brain really, REALLY likes consistency, in ourselves and in others – even if that leads us to be consistently wrong.

 

Inner Consistency

According to Robert Cialdini, we are driven to maintain a positive and consistent self image. In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he cites research that found:

“When residents in Palo Alto were asked to put up a large billboard in their lawn for the ‘Drive Safely’ campaign, only 18% agreed. Nearby, almost all residents initially agreed to put up a 3 inch sticker with the same message and then when these residents were asked to put up the large billboard, 76% of them agreed.”

Why? They had already identified as someone who cared enough about safe driving that they were willing to put up a small sticker. That thin end of the psychological wedge was enough to make them subsequently persuadable to put up a large and unsightly billboard with the same message.

Once we’ve decided who we are and what we stand for, we like to stick to it.

I’ve noticed this in myself. In the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum, I wasn’t passionate about one side or the other. To be fair, we were getting very mixed messages from those at the top, so a certain amount of confusion was a reasonable response. I narrowly came down on the side of Remain. As subsequent events (and books like Chums) revealed what a half-cocked campaign Brexit was, I noticed myself becoming rather proud of my Remainer status, conveniently forgetting that I had been rather wishy-washy on the issue until the last minute.

And if we identify with one perspective when we’re right, it seems we might be even more prone to defend a viewpoint if we suspect we might be wrong. We double down on our belief, and all in the name of consistency.

In Liminal Thinking, Dave Gray writes about the two-step test that our brains impose on new information:

Is this new data consistent with what I already “know” about the world?If this data does happen to be true, does the world make more sense?

We tend not to get to Step 2 if the incoming data doesn’t get through Step 1.

Consistency is valued over truth. The brain seems to have an innate reluctance to tolerate two seemingly contradictory beliefs at the same time, holding them in ambiguous juxtaposition pending further information.

 

Outer Consistency

When Margaret Thatcher declared, “The lady’s not for turning” on her deregulation of the financial markets, it cemented her reputation as the Iron Lady and her speech received a five-minute standing ovation (admittedly at the Tory Party Conference, and audiences don’t come much more obsequious than that).

We continue to expect consistency in our politicians, and any changes of mind or policy receive crowing accusations of incompetence from political pundits.

The result is that politicians are motivated to do more of the same, rather than more of what’s good.  

And maybe politicians often know that they don’t know, and as above, people will most doggedly and dogmatically defend what they’re not quite sure about, especially once they’ve said it in public.

Of course, it’s understandable that we want our politicians to be consistent, especially if we have acted on their advice and bought a diesel car, or sacrificed contact with loved ones in the interest of public health, while our esteemed leaders were partying on down at Number Ten. Policy changes can send shock waves across an entire society and have very real financial and medical implications.

And yet, no government can be right 100% of the time – especially in a system where ministers are given a new department and expected to be an expert in 3 seconds flat. Especially in a fast-changing world where new information and evidence are emerging in real time. Especially in a complex system where policies can and usually will have unintended consequences.

 

Consistency or Change?

So which do we choose? Consistency, even when consistency will be consistently bad, or changeability, which can leave everybody confused and ungrounded?

Personally, I would give more credit to politicians and scientists who are willing to say “I used to believe this but now I believe that because of new evidence x, y and z” – especially if they were willing to be transparent about their data from the outset.

I would like to see us applaud “learning” rather than “expertise”. In my forthcoming book I write about how many civilisations fail because they try to apply old solutions to new challenges, so knowledge should always be evolving because situations are always evolving. We need experts to have the humility to admit when they were mistaken, without howling for their resignation.

And that starts with the individual. Am I willing to admit I was mistaken? Are you?

 

Other Stuff:

Following on from the theme of story, I recommend this article on the BBC website about three alternative stories: subject, consumer, or citizen. How we think of ourselves and our role in society has profound implications for our individual and collective wellbeing. It seems to me that there is a widespread shift happening, from me to we. Early days yet, but it seems to me that this shift is crucial if we are to create a sustainable future.

In fact, I’ve just written a book about it… The Ocean in a Drop: Navigating from Crisis to Consciousness, due out on 25th November.

 

Featured Photo by Tormius on Unsplash

Do you believe the Earth is flat? Do you believe the world is run by a powerful and malevolent cabal? Do you believe the creation as described in the Bible is literally true?

I know people who believe these things. I don’t agree with them, and we can enjoy some lively debates about their truth versus my truth, but I always treat them with respect – that is, I treat the people with respect, even if not their beliefs.

Because how do I know? How do I really know that what I believe is true? And how do I know for sure that what they believe is wrong?

And how do I expect to be treated if somebody thinks that my beliefs are bonkers?

These thoughts follows on from last week’s post about how humans use story to navigate the world, to organise ourselves, even to define who we believe ourselves to be, individually and collectively.

Last weekend I was volunteering at a Buddhist retreat centre, and some really interesting topics came up in conversation. It made me marvel, once again, at how different people can have access to the same facts and come up with such different interpretations.

Of course I think that my perspective is the sane, rational, science-based one. But I can also see why other people believe their view is correct – even the British Journal of Medicine has admitted that science (medicine in particular) is not as objective as it purports to be. Scientists are as susceptible to confirmation bias, availability heuristics, status quo bias – and the availability of funding – as anybody else.

When I’ve waded into any specific area of science – at various times I’ve had cause to investigate sports nutrition, climate science, rising sea levels, and so on – the deeper I dive, the more complex, ambiguous, and open to interpretation the situation becomes. When politicians stated confidently during the pandemic that they were going to “follow the science”, we have to ask: whose science?

With pandemics, as with climate change, we don’t need to wait for 100% consensus before taking action, but it’s important to also remember that reality gets complicated, with multiple variables acting and interacting within a complex system, so it’s important not to take the matter as settled when it’s not. Science is, and always should be, evolving.

While at the Buddhist centre, I happened to carelessly mention that I was going to see Russell Brand do a live gig this week, thinking he might be sufficiently counter-cultural for their tastes, only to be told that he is part of the paid opposition, that the powers-that-be control not just the proponents of the mainstream narrative, but also the proponents of the counter-narrative, in order to maintain their absolutely dominance of public discourse.

At that point I had to metaphorically throw my hands in the air. We need at least some anchor points in reality if we’re not to become completely untethered. It made me think about what happens when people lose trust in authority, so that almost anything that they read or hear in the mainstream media becomes open to question, the object of suspicion. Many organisations are not trustworthy, and we absolutely should bring our critical thinking faculties to bear, but questioning absolutely everything becomes quite exhausting.

So how do we navigate this post-truth era?

My personal guidelines are still emergent, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

Exercise critical thinking on a regular basis, especially where a profit motive is in play. Follow the money.Use discernment (taking information from heart and gut as well as head) to figure out what seems true, but be open to reconsidering as and when further information emerges.Consider the consequences of this belief versus that belief – who and what will be impacted, and in what ways?Remember that being right never won an argument. Questions are more persuasive than dogma.Opposing views will probably both be partly wrong, and partly right – the truth usually lies somewhere in between, and is more complicated than we would like.

As Kimberly Carter Gamble said on my podcast last year, we humans have to learn how to disagree well. I can’t imagine a time when all humans will agree on everything. We need contrast in order to learn and grow. And it would be a very boring life if everybody vehemently agreed with each other all the time.

But we often take it so personally when somebody disagrees with our beliefs. If the disagreement is going to have serious adverse consequences for the wellbeing of people or planet, then sure, we need to pursue a resolution that doesn’t endanger our collective future.

But we waste a lot of time and energy disagreeing about things that don’t ultimately matter all that much, simply because our ego is affronted that someone else is seeing the world differently than we do, and it feels the need to assert that we are right and they are wrong. There are more than enough really consequential conflicts in the world without picking unnecessary fights.

It’s often not disagreement that does the harm, but what people do to try and force others to agree with their own view. Sometimes, we need to simply agree to disagree.

 

Featured Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Earlier this week I was writing an endorsement for Martin Grunburg’s upcoming book, Everything is a F*ing Story, and it had me reflecting, once again, on the importance of the stories we tell ourselves – how they create our lives, our societies, our relationships, and our conflicts. It has never seemed more important to remind ourselves that it’s all a story.

There’s nothing wrong with it being a story. As Martin points out and as Yuval Noah Harari before him has also pointed out, stories are how humans navigate the world. Our sense-making process consists of constantly telling ourselves stories about who we are and about how the world works. Stories are not exclusive of science – the scientific method is itself a story about how to pursue truth.

The problem comes when we forget that it’s all a story, when we mistake our stories for reality, and therefore any stories that run counter to our stories must be wrong, and the people who believe them must be idiots and/or evil. Different groups of people look at the same situation and, influenced by their cultural upbringing and the social waters they swim in, arrive at different conclusions.

Apparently opposing stories underlie every hot button issue in the world, always have done, and pending a radical shift in consciousness, always will. For example:

Abortion: some believe that a conscious human being exists from the moment of conception, others believe consciousness arrives later. Some believe the rights of the unborn child should take precedence, others believe the rights of the mother should.

Same-sex marriage: often connected with a much bigger story about a divine being, and what he/she deems to be acceptable in the way of sexual relationships.

Covid vaccine: vaccines save lives, or vaccines make little difference to infection rates and/or cause adverse effects. Each side chooses the data that supports its story. As with same-sex marriage, this dispute is connected to questions of authority – in this case, the question of whether pharmaceutical companies can be trusted.

Climate change: CO2 causes climate change, or CO2 is a consequence of climate change? Or climate change isn’t happening at all?

War in Ukraine: Putin caused it, or NATO caused it? The US is or isn’t involved? It’s about power, profits, or resources? (Incidentally, NATO is a story, Ukraine is a story, the West has a story about Putin, and Putin has stories about himself.)

And Brexit, populism, critical race theory, etc etc etc. You get the gist.

 

The Tall-Tale Trilogy

The problem is threefold, as I see it.

Much is unknown or even unknowable, and/or some people don’t trust the authority presenting the dominant narrative.In the absence of certainty, we fall back on interpretation, and then believe our interpretation to be true, and any other interpretation to be false.We fail to accept that other people have rational reasons for believing their interpretation.

The brain loves certainty, and dislikes ambiguity. It doesn’t like to say, “I don’t know”.

The ego-mind likes to be right, and to make others wrong. It doesn’t like to say, “I could be mistaken”, or even “we could both be right”, or more likely, “we could both be wrong”.

Reality is complicated. The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems that we never have access to the full truth. Subjective opinion always enters into the equation at some point.

Look at the myriads of ways that humans have been wrong in the past – about cosmology, medicine, and political ideologies, to name just a few. What makes us think that we are any smarter now? We may have more information, but more data generally increases ambiguity rather than diminishing it.

 

What If?

How about if we just accepted that Truth is elusive, and saw disagreements as a shared quest to get closer to it, rather than getting our knickers in a twist when people disagree with us?

What if, instead of shouting them down or deplatforming them, we invited our opponents to come join us to talk so both sides understand each other better?

What might happen if we let go of the story that they are deplorables or idiots, and instead respected them as rational human beings with a different viewpoint?

What if we accepted our own fallibility, and embraced curiosity and collaboration, rather than condemnation and judgement?

 

Featured Photo by Hassan Pasha on Unsplash

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the human body, and suggested that we get over being embarrassed about our wobbly bits and instead appreciate it for the miracle of bio-engineering that it is.

This week I’m diving into what I think is rather misleadingly labelled sacred geometry. Personally, I’m perfectly comfortable with the word “sacred”, and I think it would benefit us greatly to perceive everything and everybody as sacred beings, but the word might also scare a lot of people away from the beautiful and semi-magical world of numerical and geometrical patterns that defiantly thumb their nose at those who try to dismiss them as coincidences.

Here are a few examples to whet your appetite. Much of this may sound like gobbledegook, and believe me, it makes steam come out of my ears as I try to wrap my head around this, but if you haven’t explored this kind of esoteric geometry yet I’m just trying to convey its flavour in the hopes of eliciting at least a “wow”, if not a full-on “woweeeeeee”. Don’t worry too much about the details.

 

Eclipses

Ever wondered about solar eclipses, and the fact that the Moon slots into place precisely over the Sun? The reason is that, although the Moon is 400x smaller than the Sun, it just so happens to be 400x closer to us. To put numbers to it, the diameter of the Moon is 2,160 miles, and it is about 238,000 miles from us. The diameter of the Sun is 864,000 miles, and it is about 93 million miles from us. Work it out, and you’ll see that the ratio is approximately 400:1.

So, thanks to perspective, from the Earth the Moon appears to be just about exactly the same size as the Sun.

If you google it, you’ll see that most websites describe this as a coincidence or good luck. Maybe so, but let’s add a few more examples, and ask how many “coincidences” it takes before we wonder if there’s something else going on.

 

5,040

Let’s take the number 5,040. It happens to be the sum of the radius of the Earth (3,960 miles) + the radius of the Moon (1,080 miles). This combined radius is called the radius of the sublunary circle.

As a brief aside, some interesting things to notice about these numbers:

5+0+4+0 = 9

3+9+6+0 = 18, and 1+8 = 9

1+0+8+0 = 9

From How the World is Made, by John Michell

Now back to the main story. If you multiply this combined radius, 5,040, by pi to get the circumference of the sublunary circle, you get 31,680 miles which, coincidentally (or is it?) is the same as the perimeter of a square whose four sides are equivalent to the diameter of the Earth (4 x 7,920).

Let’s continue with that sublunary circle (where the radius = radius of the Earth + radius of the Moon). If we take its circumference, 31,680 miles, and divide it by 4 to get the distance of the quadrant, aka the curved-line distance from the Equator to a Pole, we get 7,920. And these numbers are quite special:

Radius = 5,040, which is equal to 1x2x3x4x5x6x7

Quadrant = 7,920, which is equal to 8x9x10x11 (and btw, 7+9+2+0 = 18, and 1+8 = 9)

So it follows that if we multiply Radius x Quadrant we get 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x9x10x11, or 11 factorial, written as 11! (that exclamation mark means factorial – it’s not just me getting hyperbolic). 11! turns out to also be the area in square miles of that sublunary circle.

I hope I haven’t lost you yet. If you want to check all this out, I highly recommend How the World is Made: The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry, by John Michell. It’s taking me a veeerrrrryy long time work my way through it, because I’m no mathematician, but it’s fascinating.

 

The Great Pyramid of Giza

But before I let you go, I want to throw another little tidbit into the mix. According to Randall Carlson, the Great Pyramid of Giza is a scale model of the Earth. If you took the Great Pyramid and (in your imagination, obvs) inverted it, and buried it underneath the existing pyramid, you’d get a regular octahedron, i.e. an 8-sided, 3D object with 8 faces in the shape of equilateral triangles. This octahedron would be a 1:43,200 scale model of the Earth, even incorporating the 26-mile difference between the polar circumference and the equatorial circumference (because the Earth is slightly squashed in shape).

A conservative estimate of the age of the Great Pyramid is 4,500 years, and we didn’t think humans knew these measurements until much more recently. Another lucky coincidence?

Similarly significant numbers and proportions occur in numerous other ancient edifices around the world, such as the Parthenon in Greece, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon in Teotihuacan in Mexico, Chinese pyramids, and elsewhere.

43,200 also happens to be the number of years in two “months” of the Great Year that corresponds to a complete cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes (this is the way the Earth wobbles on its axis and is what gives us the Age of Pisces, Age of Aquarius etc).

Take that number and multiply it by 10, and 432,000 is the number of years in the Kali Yuga, which according to Hinduism is the fourth and worst of the world ages, bringing strife and discord. We’re in it now. But we’ve barely started –  we still have another 427,000 years to go – sorry!

And 4+3+2 = 9. Ta da!

 

So What?

A sceptic might say that there are countless examples of utterly insignificant numbers in the world, and I’ve just cherry-picked the ones that were interesting. And to some extent this would be true.

But the more I look into this, the more fascinating it gets – not just the patterns in the geometry of the natural world, but the increasingly compelling evidence that our forebears knew about this stuff long before they had any right to, according to our contemporary understanding of the technologies they had at their disposal.

Maybe it really is just a random and prosaic universe, and any appearances to the contrary are just flukes of nature. But personally, I prefer a view in which there is some kind of pattern and harmony, magic and mystery, and phenomena that we can as yet barely dream of.

 

Further Reading

I have barely scratched the surface here. If you’re interested in finding out more, check out the work of Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, and Robert Edward Grant. It’s full of fascinating rabbit holes to dive down, such as the Fibonacci Sequence and phi (aka the Golden Ratio), the Platonic Solids, and the Flower of Life.

 

Featured Photo by A R on Unsplash

Elon Musk, Shanna Swan and Jordan Peterson have been talking about population, saying not just that humans can continue to grow in numbers, but that we have to. Musk says that plummeting birth rates are “the single greatest threat to civilisation”, and that we could have twice as many humans and the environment would still be fine. Shanna Swan’s main argument seems to be that we need a high birth rate to keep driving the economy. Jordan Peterson believes that suggesting there are already more than enough humans is akin to genocide.

Watching the video linked above, and with this year marking the 50th anniversary of Limits to Growth, plus the destruction and removal of the Georgia Guidestones last week, along with the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade, have got me thinking about whether we are too many, or too few, or just too consumerist. What are we optimising for?

Discussions around population always get thorny. Even by writing this blog post, I’m wondering what storm of argument and counter-argument I’m going to provoke – but I’m going to write it anyway. Those who argue for a larger population are sometimes seen as hubristic technocrats who believe in the supremacy of the human species. Those who argue for a smaller population are sometimes accused of being eco-fascists and eugenicists.

When we stop hurling names at those who hold a different view, I’m interested in finding out where we agree, and whether there is a way to reconcile apparently opposing points of view in service of shared goals.

I would guess that what we all want is a good life that can be achieved without destroying the planet. We just have differing ideas about how to get there.

 

Arguments in favour of less population growth

The Club of Rome’s 1972 publication, Limits to Growth, provoked controversy as soon as it came out, and not much has changed. The LTG team made some assumptions, ran some simulations, and concluded:

If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.

50 years later, we’re still arguing about whether there are indeed limits to growth, or whether we can always technologise our way out of trouble. I’ve written often before about the IPAT equation: Impact (environmental) = Population x Affluence x Technology (see here and here and here).

Doughnut Economics is based on calculations that we are in overshoot on several critical planetary boundaries. A lower population would help bring us back within sustainable levels.

Where this gets tricky is how we get to lower population levels. Opponents of population reduction sometimes talk as if there is going to be some evil scheme to target particular demographics, i.e. eugenics. I haven’t personally heard anybody advocating for this. Population growth is plateauing anyway, largely through the education of girls, the availability of contraception, and the rise in living standards. This, on the whole, would seem to me to be a good thing. No evil murderous schemes required.

 

Arguments in favour of more population growth

The argument of Musk et al seems to be primarily based on economics, and the concerns that if we don’t have enough people of working age then we won’t have enough money to support the elderly.

I’m not one of these environmentalists who thinks that people are a plague upon the Earth. I believe that we have a purpose, there’s a reason that we are here, and for some reason the world needs us at this stage of its evolution. However, I do think there are more than enough of us, and if the demographics are shifting, then surely we can summon up the intelligence to adapt to a new reality.

If the current economic model doesn’t work under conditions of declining fertility, then wouldn’t it make more sense to redesign the economy, rather than produce more children purely to prop up a system that is failing anyway?

It is slippery slope to say that we need to have more young people than old people for economic reasons. If you can’t persuade young people to have more children (and with the world as it is it’s understandable why many young people are hesitant about having babies), then do you start looking for ways to get rid of old people? That seems like exceedingly dangerous territory.

If Musk and Peterson’s main reason for wanting more humans is that they want economic growth to continue indefinitely, then maybe infinite economic growth is the assumption we should be questioning, rather than focusing on an ageing population as being the problem. In my view, If the assumptions underlying our economic model don’t hold true anymore, and we have to re-design the economic model, not redesign the world to fit obsolete assumptions.

Rather than focusing on the number of children, shouldn’t we be focusing on the kind of world we are creating for them to live in? The quantity of human lives is less important than the quality. And doesn’t that quality also depend on the thriving of our Earth?

But these are just my thoughts. What do you think? Can we really have it all, forever? (How) is the current economic model serving us? Are there assumptions about what constitutes a good life that are due for a rethink?

 

Featured Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a film I’d seen, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack. In this press conference at the Berlin Film Festival, Emma Thompson talks about being ashamed of her body, which is an almost universal female trait, and increasingly a male one too, as people of all genders are exposed to unachievable images of airbrushed perfection.

It doesn’t help that there is an entire industry – advertising – that depends on making us feel inadequate in comparison with impossible standards of perfection, and then offering us the perfect product to make our bodies slimmer or more muscular, our teeth whiter, our hair glossier, our skin clearer. It’s very liberating to wise up to this game, and become relatively immune to its toxic messaging.

When we move past superficial aesthetics, it becomes obvious that the human body (along with all other animal bodies) is a miraculous thing. Even the most otherwise unremarkable body contains 10 billion (yes, billion!) miles of DNA, can reproduce itself, heal itself, be aware of itself, alchemise food into bone, blood, and skin, move at will, and produce a myriad of strange secretions.

And yet how we abuse our bodies – not just with junk food or eating disorders, addictions and self-harming – but by comparing ourselves unfavourably with Insta-influencers and seeing all our flaws instead of paying attention to the remarkable phenomenon that is us as embodied beings.

I am writing this blog post to myself most of all. Like most other women, and many other humans, I have spent a lifetime finding fault rather than appreciating all that is good. It may not be the perfect height or the perfect shape (perfect according to what standards, I have to ask myself), but I have a body that is strong and healthy and 99.999% of the time simply shows up and does what I need it to do. This body has rowed solo across three oceans, for heaven’s sake! Other people’s bodies have played games, made useful and beautiful things, gestated and birthed babies, laid soothing hands on the suffering, prepared delicious meals, and all manner of actions that when you stop to think about it, are quite close to miraculous in terms of strength, capacity, and creativity.

When I dishonour my body by criticising it, what message am I sending into the collective consciousness?

This might sound like a leap of logic, but when I look at humanity’s cumulative trajectory, fouling our planetary nest, killing each other in wars, exploiting and abusing our fellow humans, I can’t help but wonder if this is a manifestation of some collective shame – starting with body shame, but maybe extending to many other forms of shame that we lapse into when we stop appreciating, and start comparing and criticising.

Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes. If we were all really healthy and whole, would we be acting this way? Before we can heal the planet, we have to heal ourselves, else we will just keep projecting our own shame and inadequacy onto everything we come into contact with.

So I’m resolving to take responsibility for my role in the hurt and shame, and correspondingly taking responsibility for my potential role in the healing – starting with stopping the bad habit of comparing, and instead appreciating and honouring the physical body I live in for the miracle that it is.

 

Featured Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

While women (and many men) across the world are reacting to the US Supreme Court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion, I’m confused as to what is going on here, and why. Is this decision political? Ideological? Eugenic? Technocratic?

I share some thoughts and further questions here, and if anybody can help me understand the bigger agenda, I’m all ears.

[Note: This is a highly contentious and emotional issue. I’m mostly asking questions here, because for sure I don’t have the answers. But even if given that, if I say something that triggers you, please keep it respectful. We’re all here to learn from each other, and like most people I learn better from calm communication than from being yelled at. Thank you.]

 

Personal Disclaimer

First to say, I have never knowingly been pregnant, and I was born to married, religious parents, so there was never a question that abortion might take my life or the life of my hypothetical child.

However, I do know women who have had an abortion, and they do not fit the portrayal of feckless, unthinking individuals who use abortion as a form of contraception. From what I have seen, the decision to have an abortion takes a great deal of soul-searching, and comes at considerable risk to the woman’s psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical health. It is not a decision that is taken lightly, and only the individual concerned can assess whether the trauma of abortion will be lesser or greater than the trauma of bringing an unwanted child into the world.

 

A Conflict of Two Inalienable Rights

At the risk of stating the obvious, the reason this is such a challenging issue is that, as the World Population Review succinctly puts it:

“Abortion involves both the potential mother’s right to bodily autonomy (and health) and the unborn child’s right to life—two inalienable rights that abortion sets against one another.”

It’s hard to see how these two rights can ever be reconciled, and each side will always have its advocates. According to the BBC:

“While this legal ruling will change the law, it will not settle the arguments over abortion. It will inflame them. Jubilant anti-abortion campaigners have achieved something that seemed practically impossible only a few years ago. They believe thousands of babies’ lives will now be saved. Pro-choice advocates are left utterly dismayed as they think women’s rights have just been set back 50 years. Back to a time when women died as a result of illegal back-street abortions.”

For sure, abortions will still happen. Like prostitution and drugs, where there is demand there will be supply. Quoting the World Population Review again, on the real-world impact of making abortion illegal:

“According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the legality of abortion across the world actually has little to no effect on abortion rates throughout the world. Legal or not, abortions can, will, and do take place. The legality of abortion, however, does affect how safe those abortions are. Women who do not have access to a legal abortion frequently turn to illegal or “homemade” abortion options, which are typically much riskier, more dangerous, and less effective than legal options conducted by professional doctors in a clinical setting would be.”

Impact on the Poor

As usual, those who suffer the most will be those who always suffer the most – the poor. It will be the ones who can’t afford to travel to another state, or take the time off from work. At the risk of falling into stereotypes, I’m guessing these will be the women who can least afford to raise another child, and/or are most at risk of being impregnated by an abusive, absent, or otherwise unsupportive or inappropriate partner.

When Governor of Mississippi Tate Reeves says: “This decision will directly result in more hearts beating, more strollers pushed, more report cards given, more little league games played, and more lives well lived. It is a joyous day!”, I would guess that he experiences a very different reality from that faced by the 37 million (and rising) Americans who live in poverty (source: US census, 2020 figures). His idyllic, white-picket-fence version of the future for these unborn children is disingenuous. Of course, poor parents CAN create supportive and loving home environments for their children, but it’s a lot easier for them to do so when those children are wanted.

I haven’t yet heard any mention of the states who are outlawing abortion also increasing child support for the alleviation of childhood poverty. Maybe that would have been helpful. Or maybe they were worried that it would lead to women getting pregnant purely for the social security payments, and did they think that would lead to what they see as the “wrong” kind of babies? Is this a race issue? Just what is going on here?

 

The Thin End of the Wedge?

According to the BBC, “Justice Clarence Thomas, in his opinion, wrote: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” – referencing three landmark decisions of the past on the right to contraception, the repeal of anti-sodomy laws, and the legalisation of same-sex marriage respectively.”

The Supreme Court split along predictable party lines (although according to Reuters, views on abortion used to be much less politically polarised), Republican-nominated justices voting in favour of overturning Roe v Wade, Democrats against. I’m wondering if this decision is part of a MAGA-related agenda to turn the clock back to an age when America was indeed great – but maybe despite, rather than because of, its social intolerance. Does it really increase the greatness of a country to criminalise or at least disadvantage those who are gay and/or have a uterus?

Or are the Republican justices just getting their ultra-conservative ducks in a row to rally their voter base in readiness for the next presidential election? If so, how did a supposed court of justice become a wing of a political party? How can this be right?

 

Is Big Brother Watching You?

American women are deleting their period-tracking apps because of fears they could be used as evidence against them in abortion-related criminal prosecutions. Big Brother is here, although he may be living in Silicon Valley more than he lives in the West Wing.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson are talking about the perils of (human) population collapse. Their main concern seems to be economic – if we don’t have enough workers paying enough taxes, then how do we support an aging population? (And, the cynical might suggest – if we have a shrinking population, then how do we keep growing profits?) They particularly point the finger at environmentalists who they see as shaming women into not having children.

Alarming as it is to find myself agreeing with Musk and Peterson, I also don’t especially like the “humans are a virus” rhetoric. We are here for a reason, and self-shaming is to disrespect our divine nature (well-hidden as that may be). According to Braiding Sweetgrass, at least some natural ecosystems benefit from respectful relationship with humans when conducted in time-honoured, indigenous ways.

But ultimately it is every woman’s, or every couple’s, choice. Nobody should shame people into not having children. They also shouldn’t shame (or force) them into having them. Humans and our livestock already account for 96% of all mammalian biomass on the planet. My view is that’s probably enough for now – but that is just my view.

As to supporting the elderly, if our economy struggles to do so, then redesign the economy, rather than redesigning demographics. The economy is just numbers. Demographics is people’s lives.

 

Every Sperm is Sacred – or is it?

(That’s a Monty Python reference, in case you didn’t know.)

Nature is prolific in her creation, and she is also brutal in her destruction. You’ve probably seen the sweet videos of turtle hatchlings wriggle up out of the sand and head for the waves, only to be picked off by birds, crabs, raccoons, and fish, with only 1 in a thousand making it to adulthood. And then there’s animal cannibalism – here is a list of 10 animals that eat their own young, including cats, rats, lions, rabbits, and our close relatives, chimpanzees. Nature giveth (a lot) and she taketh away (a lot).

Is this a form of human exceptionalism that we get so hung up on keeping alive every potential homo sapiens offspring? Is this part of an agenda for humans to dominate the Earth more than we already do? Is this related to transhumanism, the desire for everlasting life, the quest for a “cure” to aging and death? For transhumanists, the solution to the resulting overpopulation is to colonise other planets, but we are a very long way from being able to do that – so what to do in the meantime with the Earth already in overshoot?

 

Conclusion

I don’t actually have a conclusion, but I am concluding this piece, so this is a conclusion in that sense. I have far more questions than answers, including:

What can we learn from indigenous cultures about avoiding unwanted pregnancies and maintaining a sustainable population?

Where seemingly irreconcilable rights arise, how do we find a middle ground that honours both positions?

(How) do we honour life?

How do we balance human life with non-human life on this finite planet?

Is the quantity of human lives more important than the quality of human lives?

While we’re all distracted with a never-ending and never-endable debate on abortion, what are we not paying attention to?

How will the US ever escape this seemingly inexorable spiral of increasing political and social polarisation?

 

What do you think?

 

Featured Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

Switching gears this week – rather than an in-depth review and musings around a book I’ve read recently, I’m going to let you know which books I’m currently reading so you can read along too, if you so wish. And I’m also throwing in a few other recommendations for podcasts, courses and a movie.

As usual, I have several books on the go:

The Psychology of Totalitarianism, by Mattias Desmet (audiobook)

This just came out last week, and I bought it after hearing Mattias on Aubrey Marcus’s podcast (see below). Using the Covid pandemic as his starting point, he identifies and analyses the phenomenon of “mass formation hypnosis” – in other words, how societies fall into a shared narrative based on our fears and weaknesses, rather than on observation and critical thinking. It’s a very fitting follow-on to 1984, which I reviewed recently.

If you passionately believe that global lockdowns were the right thing, and that Covid really was an existential risk to humanity, you may find it challenging reading – but that is all the more reason to read it. Or start with the AMP podcast interview: Why People Willingly Give Up Their Freedoms.

Deer and Thunder: Indigenous Ways of Restoring the World, by Arkan Lushwala (paperback)

According to the blurb, “Deer & Thunder shows us the way to remember what it is to be a real human being. It shows us the way to return to our true home, our true nature, the place where we are one with the Earth and capable of nourishing all that lives. According to Arkan, technological changes toward cleaner forms of energy production are important, but not enough. Humanity must undergo a shift in consciousness. In order to continue living on this beautiful planet, our modern cultures need to cultivate a mind and a heart that make the protection of life an incontestable priority.”

Arkan Lushwala is indigenous to the Peruvian Andes and writes in a style that is clear, simple, and deeply powerful. And I couldn’t agree more that a shift in consciousness is what is needed. (See my forthcoming book, Ocean in a Drop, due out in November this year.)

The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry, by Rupert Sheldrake (e-book)

“The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers.”

What I most appreciate about Rupert Sheldrake – apart from his quite excellent initials – is that he dares to step way outside the scientific box to ask really, really good questions about the nature of reality, in contrast to the narrow frame of reference of many scientists.

“I have spent all my adult life as a scientist, and I strongly believe in the importance of the scientific approach. Yet I have become increasingly convinced that the sciences have lost much of their vigour, vitality and curiosity. Dogmatic ideology, fear-based conformity and institutional inertia are inhibiting scientific creativity.”

He sets out to challenge ten central tenets of conventional science:

1. Everything is essentially mechanical.

2. All matter is unconscious.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same for ever.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains.

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

So… big questions, and he comes up with some convincing answers. I love his idea that the universe is not governed by fixed laws, but rather by evolving habits. And even more I love his searing question to materialists who claim that we are not intentional beings exercising free will, but merely beings driven blindly by our biology:

“Is your own belief in materialism determined by unconscious processes in your brain, rather than reason, evidence and choice?”

Podcasts:

Aubrey Marcus has an interesting mix of guests, exploring spirituality, consciousness, philosophy, science, and psychedelics.

Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts has a strong environmental bent, endearingly mixed with laddish banter and lots of swearing to prevent it getting too earnest.

Accidental Gods, with Manda Scott, describes itself as “Exploring the liminal space between science and spirituality, philosophy and politics, art, creativity – working towards the conscious evolution of humanity” – and I can’t improve on that as a recommendation.

Film:

I started writing a blog post on Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, and may post it next week. You may have heard of it as the film where Emma Thompson goes full frontal nude, which is indeed a part of it, but very far from all of it. In this press conference in Berlin, Emma T does a great job of describing the issues it raises, around shame, bodies, and women’s desires. The film is beautifully intimate – most of it just a man and a woman in a hotel room over the course of 4 meetings in which all is bared – literally. It was filmed in 19 days and probably didn’t cost very much, but its simplicity only enhances its emotional power.

Courses:

Automatic Writing: There’s one more day to sign up for Mike Dooley’s 21-day course on automatic writing. And no, I’m not on commission. I’ll admit, I find Michael Sandler’s way of speaking a little irritating, but that’s just me – and the content makes it worth bearing with. It’s my way of coaxing my reluctant early-morning self into meditation and journaling. Choose your price, starting at $27.

The Gene Keys: This powerful modality and tool for contemplation, by Richard Rudd, is a cross between astrology, Human Design, the I-Ching, the Kabbalah, with a bit of Jungian psychology and genetics thrown in. You can get a free profile that tells you about your life purpose, relationships, and path to prosperity, but to really get the benefits you need to dive in deeper by taking courses and buying the books – although there are also tons of free resources including videos and meditations on his beautifully-designed website. I’m studying the Gene Keys with a group of wonderful friends, which is really helping to integrate the learning.

So that’s what’s keeping me out of mischief at the moment. I hope you found at least one thing in this smorgasbord of delights to tempt you!

 

Featured Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Apparently the UK has a “social mobility tsar”, and she seems to think that people at the bottom of the ladder should lower their expectations. This seems rather defeatist to me.

It’s true that disappointment lies in the gap between reality and expectation, but my feeling is that a tsar, if they are to live up to such a grandiose job title, should have higher expectations of themselves, and work at addressing the systemic biases that make it difficult for segments of society to succeed.

I’m reminded of Margaret Thatcher quoting the Serenity Prayer as she became Prime Minister: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Surely a government tsar should have the power and courage to change rather more than the height of people’s ambitions?

This blog post follows on from my posts on The Tyranny of Merit and the Eton/Oxford chumocracy, and I share a few thoughts on how people can be supported in their flourishing – or at the very least, not actively disadvantaged by the systems that are supposed to help them.

There is much that tsar Katharine Birbalsingh says (according to this article) that makes sense – idealising dramatic rags-to-riches stories can create dissatisfaction (and the gossip mags already have that covered anyway), creating more jobs in the regions so young people don’t feel compelled to move to London, making sure that those of more limited capacities aren’t left behind, and suggesting that university (with the associated student debt) doesn’t make sense for everybody. And it’s also possible that she might have said something truly inspiring that wasn’t included in the article.

But as reported, her vision is disappointingly anti-aspirational.

Paid work takes up most of the average adult’s waking hours, and much of their headspace. As well as paying the bills, it can be their primary path to personal growth and evolution. It can give them a sense of self-worth and confidence – who knows, maybe even joy. To do meaningful work and be properly paid for it is a worthwhile and appropriate desire. In a supposedly civilised society, it could even be said to be a human right.

Ms Birbalsingh has presumably thought about this a great deal more than I have – she presumably gets paid to do this, while I’m just jotting down a few thoughts for a blog post on a Thursday morning – and far be it from me to tell her how to do her job, but here’s what I would have liked to have seen included in her vision:

An education system that nurtures a wider range of forms of intelligence: the current system prioritises numeracy and language, and according to Howard Gardner there are at least 6 other kinds of intelligence, all of which are valuable to society but are under-valued in schools, denting students’ confidence early in lifeBetter funding for schools, including paying teachers a salary that does justice to the importance of the work they do and attracts high-calibre individualsFree education for all up to the end of an undergraduate degree, while also acknowledging that university isn’t a good use of time for everybody, so also…… Expansion of apprenticeship schemes, especially for practical trades and the creative artsLess inequality between the highest paid and the lowest paid, through raising the minimum wage, increasing taxation on high incomes, and curbing bonusesSupport, both financial and advisory, for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, so more people can create jobs and businesses they love

Plus ways to improve health, social connection, and the standard of living through better support/subsidies for things like community gardens and agriculture schemes, and sports facilities and playing fields.

These are just my ideas. I’d love to hear your ideas. There are countless ways that our social systems could be improved, and I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface. Please let me know what you think!

 

Other Stuff:

I note that Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor has quit. I can’t help wondering if the wrong man resigned. And why do politicians need an ethics advisor anyway? Don’t we have our own inner Jiminy Cricket to let us know when we’re not in integrity? But maybe I’m being disingenuous – I can imagine that the intersection between “politics” and “ethics” can become mighty complicated, which maybe tells us something about the nature of the political beast…

I had a fabulous time at the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz, Austria, last week. We had a wonderful panel discussion about the Circular Economy, and then I did a solo talk about chaos as a catalyst for positive change, drawing on material from my upcoming book, The Ocean in a Drop. I’d like to give a special thank you to Aurel Hosennen for doing a fantastic job of moderating the panel, Bernd and Barbara for reminding me that my story is part of the Look Inside Yourself trainings created by former Google “jolly good fellow” Chade-Meng Tan. Also thanks to Sandy, John, Lisa, Allen, Nino and Ellen for the fun, food and friendship.

[Photos by Ellen Leanse]

Speaking solo

 

With Erinch, Alpaslan, Shikha and Aurel on the panel

 

Featured Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Even though Stephen Fry reads every audiobook like it’s a bedtime story, even his mellifluous tones can’t conceal what an utterly depressing book George Orwell’s 1984 is. I last read it in, well, 1984. Listening to it on Audible last week, I was struck by how pertinent it is in this strange post-truth age.

There are so many aspects of the book I could go into, but for now I’ll keep it to three, based on the slogan of Big Brother’s Party:

War is Peace.

Freedom is Slavery.

Ignorance is Strength.

[This post got rather long, so I’m going to split it over two weeks – also because I’m away in Austria next week, speaking at the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz.]

 

War is Peace

In 1984, war is constant, but mostly invisible to the populace. Apart from the occasional aerial bomb – which a few suspect of coming from their own government – citizens only know about the war through the news as mediated by the Ministry of Truth. The world consists of three superpowers, and once in a while the enemy will become the ally, and the ally will become the enemy. All news archives are then be amended to make it appear that this has always been so, and anybody who says otherwise is treated like a lunatic.

So what is the point of this perpetual state of war? There seem to be two main reasons – economics, and preserving the status quo of power:

“It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs.”

In other words, war is not driven by ideology, human rights or justice. The enemy is arbitrary. There just has to be a state of conflict to restrict the flow of consumer goods so that the Proles can remain oppressed.

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

So the masses must be kept just sufficiently downtrodden so that they are more preoccupied with meeting basic needs than with challenging the dominant power structures:

“It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

So how does this compare with our real world?

Could the “war on terror” be seen as a way to hold an increasingly fragmented Western society together? It’s obvious we would all want to see an end to terror – that goes without saying – and yet terror will always exist somewhere in the world, depending, of course, on how you define “terror”, and correspondingly who you designate as “terrorists”. Bombing the living daylights out of a foreign country may seem like a strange way to reduce terror, but if everybody back home agrees that this is a good thing to do, then you make the destruction of a foreign country the price you pay for peace at home.

Following hard on the heels of reading The Shock Doctrine, in which Naomi Klein argues convincingly that various US wars, especially Iraq, weren’t what they purported to be. She argues that war was a fig leaf for a much more cynical agenda, not entirely unrelated to the profit motive.

Also reminiscent of The Shock Doctrine is the electric shock therapy that O’Brien inflicts on Winston Smith to reprogram him from resistance into compliance. Naomi Klein goes into a lot of detail on historical attempts to use electric shocks to create a tabula rasa so that a new, more conformant personality could be installed.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

I’ll leave it to you to fill in your own blanks if you see any contemporary examples of the public psyche being disrupted and reassembled in modified forms. See, for example, some of the examples in Stolen Focus. This may be an inadvertent side-effect rather than a deliberate strategy, but it’s definitely happening. Do we create culture, or does culture create us?

What do you think? Am I being too gloomy? Is life actually the best it’s ever been, with increasing peace and prosperity for all? Are social media platforms increasing transparency, or creating confusion and diminishing the quality of public debate?

Next week I’ll return to 1984 with Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. Meanwhile, I’m going to recommend that you DON’T read it. I found it terribly grim, and I haven’t quite recovered yet.

 

Other Stuff:

Thanks to all who came to the event at Hulse Hall in Breamore in the New Forest last week. Great to see you there! My thanks to the event organisers for a wonderful evening.

And congratulations to Her Majesty on her Platinum Jubilee. Regardless of your view on the monarchy, 70 years of public service is a phenomenal accomplishment. That’s quite a life she’s had, and quite honestly, you couldn’t pay me enough to live in that gilded cage. Theoretically, she can do what she wants. Realistically, she can do very little. Freedom is slavery?

 

Photo by Антон Дмитриев on Unsplash