Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

While at university, I took a compulsory course called ‘Statistical Methods’. The course included some of my best afternoon naps. It was during lectures in this course that I discovered my ability to sleep with the back of my head supported by the front of the tiered desk behind me, while simultaneously resting the very tip of my chin on the desk in front of me, with my eyes wide open. Not physically possible? Well, try a mono-toned delivery of the definition of the 5^th percentile in a full 200-seater lecture hall at 2:30 in the afternoon in 30 degrees Celsius heat. Not only is it possible but, fittingly, the probability of observing such a phenomenon among more than the 5^th percentile of attendees almost always approached unity during Statistical Methods lectures. In other words, it was a statistical certainty that at least 10 people in a class of 200 were going to do the sleep of the living dead.

I passed Statistical Methods the first time. There was no way I was going to put myself through that twice. Strangely, today I could write all that I know about Probability Theory on the back of a postal stamp. But statistics, as dry a field of mathematical theory as it was made out to be by my lecturers, does seem to have an odd, somewhat obscure appeal. If it is safe to take statistics from the Internet (which it isn’t since 93% of all facts quoted on the Internet are unqualified), then there is a probability of 576,000 to 1 that you will be struck by lightning. But don’t worry; there is only a one in 2,320,000 chance that you will be killed by lightning. So presumably, while the 3x10⁷ amps make their way down your spinal column at 23,1x10¹² volts, you can be comforted by the knowledge that you have a slightly better chance than 3 in 4 that you will only be permanently maimed and smell like ash for the next six months. Those are better odds than winning at Blackjack.

Stats also help you to say, well, anything with great authority. For instance:

·         Diet has been tied to criminal activity later in life. 93% of all death-row inmates ate bread regularly as children. 

·         African ethnicity increases the chances of survival in the polar regions. Records show that 550,000 times as many native Eskimos have died north of the Artic Circle as ethnic Africans. 

·          Fish oils are highly effective as mosquito repellent. There is no recorded incidence of a mosquito biting a fish.

However, I have to admit that statistics also offer the chance to describe some pretty radical concepts. I recently came across a website article which I particularly enjoyed, written by Dr Don Batten. It described the statistical probability of a functional ‘simple’ cell forming as proposed by Darwinist evolutionary theory. Given all the necessary ingredients, the probability is worse than 1 in 10^57,800 that it will form by accident or random chance.

‘To try to put this in perspective,’ says Dr Batten, ’there are about 10⁸⁰ (a number with 80 zeros) electrons in the universe. Even if every electron in our universe were another universe the same size as ours that would ‘only’ amount to 10¹⁶⁰ electrons.’

  

That’s a bunch. It almost goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that one single ‘simple’ cell swimming in primodial soap is a long way from a fully inhabited planet with complex environmental systems made up of even more complex organisms with highly developed and finely tuned DNA coding… You get the picture.

So, according to Probability Theory, it is 10^57,800 times more likely that life was created by Intelligent Design than by Random Chance. A million billion trillion gajillion blingtillion vermilion (no, wait, that’s a colour) times more likely. Literally, there is more chance that an explosion in a paint factory will result in exact replicas of all the works of Vincent van Gogh than that a single cell will form by accident. There is more chance, even, of South Africa winning a cricket series against India on home soil. (Gasp! No!!)  

So, if the odds are so heavily stacked against a little amoeba (which we shall call ‘Little Billy’) just magically appearing in a puddle of mud one day, and NOT getting instantly burnt to a crisp by dangerous UV rays which provide the necessary mechanism Darwinists rely on to generate beneficial mutations (from simple to more complex organisms), and NOT starving to death from a lack of food (which suddenly appeared out of who knows where), and NOT instantly freezing to death because, silly little single-celled plonker, he decided to develop into himself too close to the artic pole… if the odds are so great that Little Billy just would not have made it on his own, why does all the intellectual world believe that he did? And that he then decided to split and become two Little Billies? And, actually that Little Billy wasn’t the only one that magically appeared. No, actually that there were hundreds, thousands, no, millions and trillions of lucky Little Billies, all of them having astronomical lucky streaks again and again until, viola, here we all are; able to order Chicken McNuggets anywhere on the globe, update our FaceBook status from our cell phones and get pregnant with another couple's baby.

Consider this: two brief cases, one brown and one black. There is one million dollars in one of them and 5kg of newspaper in the other. You are told that the chances of the million dollars being in the brown briefcase are a thousand times greater than the chance of the million being in the black briefcase. Which one would you pick?

If you were told that the chance of life being the result of Intelligent Design (referred to in evolutionary theorist circles as 'ID', and referred to by the rest of us as God) is a million times greater than the chance that life appeared as simply by some random fluke, which one would you pick? How about a trillion times greater? How about 10^57,800 times?  

It’s about time we had some intellectual integrity from the academics whose theories provide a ‘rational’ foundation to the philosophies of our day. It’s about time we, the people, demanded sincerity from those who feed our scholarly generation a curriculum laced with the idea that we are not accountable for ourselves to any Higher Power, since we just happened to come into existence one day as if out of smoke.

Now, please excuse me. Little Billy and I are off to buy a Lotto ticket.

Thinkers and Stinkers

Thomas Crapper, the 19^th century London plumber to Kings Edward VII and George V, did not invent the toilet but he did promote it’s popularity. Actually, a bloke by the name of John Harrington invented the flushing toilet in 1596. But it was Thomas Crapper who’s advances lifted the humble water closet to a place of comfort and repose. So it is fitting that, to this day, sewer manhole covers bearing the name ‘Thomas Crapper & Co.’ adorn Westminster Abbey. Rest in peace, Thomas Crapper.

A survey of typical lifestyles carried out not long ago (by those who carry out these kinds of surveys) found that through the course of a normal day, the modern man (and, indeed, woman) has his (or, indeed, her) deepest thoughts whilst ... um ... patronizing the commode. And it stands to reason really. Most of us don’t take the time to simply sit down and ... contemplate ... stuff. You are not answering the phone, or working on your Rubik’s Cube, or updating your Facebook status. It’s just you and your ... primal self... contemplating the Great Mysteries of the Universe... and considering the State of Humanity... and weighing up the Moral Dilemmas of our Age... and whether or not it really was a good idea to go for that second helping of crab curry.

But since we don’t see university lecture halls lined with wc’s, and since Sony’s R&D department is not made up of cubicles of THAT kind, it is safe to assume that though we do our deepest thinking whilst relaxing the sphincter, it is not necessarily the best way to exercise the grey matter. Rather, it indicates that we don’t deliberately take time in our daily routines to sit and think. Oh, we think; we just don’t think through.

The subject of this blog is a response to some of the attitude I first encountered during high school, and now recently again. It is the argument that because a worldview can be arrived at based purely on logic and reasoning, it is superior to any other and that it correct as a matter of course. During my high school days, many of my friends who held to an atheistic worldview asserted this argument. Now, let me hasten to add here that, while I don’t hold to an atheistic worldview, I have the greatest respect for many who do. Stephen Hawking (though more agnostic than atheistic) is a case in point.

Stephen Hawking, who until his retirement in 2009, held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (also held by such as Sir Isaac Newton – 1669, and Charles Babbage, hailed as the father of the computer – 1828), is no academic light-weight. Despite outliving his predicted life-span, neuro-muscular dystrophy has limited him to a motorised wheelchair and a voice synthesizer. His life’s work includes enormous contributions to the realm of theoretical physics, which he helped popularise with books such as the best-seller ‘A Brief History of Time’.     

More recently, he co-authored a book with Leonard Mlodinow called ‘The Grand Design’ in which they argued that science can explain the universe without the need for a Creator. In Stephen Hawking’s words, “The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary”. Reportedly, Hawking drew a comparison between religion and science as follows:

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority [imposed dogma, faith], [as opposed to] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”

Charles Darwin, struggling to reconcile the suffering he observed as apparently necessary to the order of Creation, drifted to a position that perhaps nature had been left to run its own course. In short, his evolutionary theories did for biological science what Stephen Hawking did for cosmology; remove the need for an intelligent Creator. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, probably close to the time that Thomas Crapper was fitting manhole covers there. Interesting.

But what is also interesting is the contrast between these two thrusts of scientific thought, cosmology and biology. On the one hand, biology enshrines macro-evolution as the basis for the majority of it’s scientific paradigm, and on the other hand, cosmology builds on the now-popularised theoretical physics to explain, and explore beyond, what can be directly observed.

To explain the contrast, I need to delve into a little quantum physics and refer to the concept of entropy. Entropy, to lab-coated, bespectacled academics, is the measure of energy a body or system has which is not available for useful work. Now let me put it in layman’s terms.

Supposing you have a kiddies party. Before the party, the food table is laid out with all sorts of sugary delights. Sugars are a form of fuel for the human body. Therefore, the food table is practically bulging with potential energy.     

Now introduce thirty little four year olds. (Mothers, you may want to turn away about now.) Within fifteen minutes, the potential energy locked up in the sugars has been turned to kinetic energy as all thirty kiddies bounce happy off the walls. Noticeably, sound energy, another form of kinetic energy, increases within this closed system. Give this system another hour and a half, and the colloquial expression of Sir Isaac Newton’s third law (‘what goes up must come down’) may be thought to be observed as kiddies come crashing down off the buzz. And as parents know, this occurs with whining, crying, etc. which further increases the kinetic energy tally. However, this is not Newton’s Third Law in action; rather, it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

This law states that entropy (or ‘chaotic energy’) within a closed system can only increase or stay the same. Put another way, there is energy in order. However, we observe throughout the universe that order breaks down. In other words, the universe is observed as moving from a state of order to a state of disorder, or from a state of having useful energy to a state of having useless energy. Relating this back to our kiddies party, the potential energy locked up in the food is converted to sound (kinetic energy in sound waves moving through the air) which becomes a sort of useless residual heat in the atmosphere. Useful energy to useless energy.

Actually, my example breaks down IF energy conscious parents were to set up a sort of turbine treadmill at our kiddies party, to harness the energy of the sugar buzz. Sure, it wouldn’t be as much fun for the kids but may just generate enough electricity to drive the dishwasher to wash the party crockery. (Just a thought. Earth first.)

Back to biology. Evolution, roughly stated, is ‘time + matter + chance = order’. Not your classical explanation, I know, but this blog is getting long.

But do you see the contrast? Darwin, who in biology popularised the notion that science obviates the need for an Intelligent Designer, used the exact opposite argument to that of physicists who also argue that science obviates the need for an Intelligent Designer. The former argues that order, left to it’s own devices, increases, while the latter argue that order, under it’s own steam, decreases. Pitting the two arguments against each other is a little like applying an irresistible force to an immovable object; nonsense.

So what’s my point? Simply this: even our best minds concede that there is a point at which the highly scientific conclusion of “Uh ... I dunno” is reached. Logic and reason, on their own, do not actually provide us with answers to all our questions. Neither are they supposed to. Reason and logic point us to the gaps and flaws in our own thinking. (Schrödinger’s cat, a famous thought experiment, is testimony to that.) At best, they help us to refine our questions. They invite us into Wonder; that childlike quality which we do well to preserve. I would go so far as to say that Stephen Hawking got it exactly wrong. The scientific account is incomplete. Theology is necessary.

I end with one more observation. In 1977, Voyager 1, a space probe designed to explore the Solar System was launched. On Valentine’s Day in 1990, at the end of it’s mission, the probe was commanded by NASA to turn and photograph the planets in the Solar System. From 6,1 billion kilometres away, Voyager 1 photographed Earth. The image is famously known as ‘The Pale Blue Dot’.

Carl Sagan, reflecting on this image, wrote:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Personally, when I consider the Pale Blue Dot, conscious that it hosts the most baffling concentration of order unlike anything else in the known universe, Reason and Logic lead me in the opposite direction. They lead me to no conclusions, just more questions, more wonder, more amazement. They remind me that it is my God-given responsibility to think, to take ownership of the conceptual tides which influence my worldview and ultimately shape how I see myself, others and the universe around me.

In contrast to René Descartes’s famous quote, I am therefore I think.



Death (and Taxes)

I met with my accountant today to discuss tax returns. Actually, he called for the meeting (which is a generally not a good sign). But it all turned out okay, I guess. Apart from the obvious rancour that comes with being told how much of your hard-earned cash you’re going to have to part with and watch sink slowly into a bureaucratic bog. (Okay, let me also say that I do support giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s; I just wish it felt more like Caesar was spending it wisely. But that’s another story...)

Benjamin Franklin wrote “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". Cheerful chap, Ol’ Ben F. This was possibly a revelation that came to him after his experiment in which he sought to show that lightning was an electrical phenomenon. According to the story, he decided to tie a key to a kite and fly it in a thunderstorm in the hopes of it getting struck by lightning thereby magnetising the key. Of course, if he actually did do this, he would have come within an inch of his life to have survived at all. (This may also account for the lack of hair on his cranium as depicted on the $100 bill.) But back to taxes.

Somehow Mr Franklin’s quote always comes to mind when submitting tax returns. And by implication then, the Receiver of Revenue carries out yet another useful public service: an annual reminder of Death.

Death is an uncomfortable subject for most people. In fact, people for whom death is NOT an uncomfortable subject are generally those who make the rest of us feel uncomfortable anyway (which pretty much amounts to the same thing). Even so-called ‘sophisticated’ western society gets edgy about uttering the word ‘death’, as though to do so would invite the Grim Reaper ahead of time. And so we turn to a colourful part of language to do the dirty work for us; euphemism. (No, not mercy-killing. That would be ‘euthanasia’.)

Euphemism; saying something without actually saying it. Beating around the bush. Such as the use of a phrase relating to the purchase of agricultural real estate to convey that uncomfortable news that so-and-so has ... well ... died. (It’s even uncomfortable typing it. It seems so cold, so factual, so ... final.)

But we do get colourful with it. We could say Benjamin Franklin is dead, or we could say he is pushing up daisies. Luciano Pavarotti has joined the choir invisible. The captain of the Titanic is sleeping with the fishes. (Or he is fish flakes.) Elvis has left the building. (I mean he has REALLY left the building!) Joseph Stalin is lying in state. Queen Victoria has popped off. Jules Verne bought a one-way ticket. King Henry VIII snuffed it. Marie Antoinette got wacked. Gandhi bought the tango uniform. Michelangelo went into the fertilizer business. Lawrence Olivier took the final bow/curtain/act. Adolf Hitler committed harikiri. Edmund Hillary climbed the mountain (okay, plus he actually climbed the mountain). Fred Astaire danced the last dance. Aristotle paid Charon’s fare. Plato crossed the River Styx. Julius Caesar is wandering the Elysian Fields. Abraham Lincoln kicked the bucket. Winston Churchill is bereft of life. Marilyn Monroe is six feet under. Greta Garbo is in repose. Kurt Cobain bought it. Mama Cass choked ... and croaked. Saddam Hussein has met his Maker. Paul the octopus has ceased to be. The flame of Mao Tse-tung’s mortal life is smothered in ... you know...  Ronald Reagan has shuffled off this mortal coil. Bob Marley is cadaverous. King Nebuchadnezzar is living-challenged. Martin Luther King is at room temperature. Vladimir Lenin is taking a dirt nap.

And as of Tuesday 2 November 2010, Andy Irons, three times surfing world champion, is dead.

He leaves behind a wife and their first child, as yet unborn. He was two years younger than me.

Personally, I think the reason why we use euphemisms and humour to somehow ‘handle’ death is to keep it at a safe and sanitary distance. For many people, death is not even an inconvenient fact of life; it’s a fantasy, stuck away in a mental cupboard somewhere, surfacing only now and again by accident when we lose someone close. Many people seem to only think about death in distant theoretical terms, like it’s some interesting conundrum, a conceptual Rubik’s Cube to pick up and fiddle with when we’re feeling ... wistful and ... in touch with some deep place ... or had too much to drink and decided to do some mental spring cleaning.

But consider this; today I am 34 years old. Assuming I live to the ripe old age of 85, say, I have 51 years left. More than enough? Perhaps. If all goes well. But nothing is certain. If I were Andy Irons, I would have been dead for two years already. Whatever happens after death would have been happening to me for two years.

For those who hold to the view that when we die, that’s it, that there is nothing, that we just stop being, I want to ask you to consider something. Please do it seriously. Consider the implications if you are wrong. If there is more than just nothing when a person dies, what you would have been experiencing for the past two years if you had died two years ago?

Now tell me: how sure are you of what you believe?

Blogger's Block

There are three kinds of people who read this blog; those who can count and those who can’t.

Also (in the world of blogging) there are bloggers and there are readers of blogs. Okay, and bloggers who are also readers of other blogs. Okay, and also readers who blog. I’ll stop there because you should get the picture by now.

The point is that there are other bloggers out there. Lots. And among all of those people, there must be a fairly high percentage who experience what no other generation before has experienced. Blogger’s Block. This is something like Writer’s Block, only potentially pandemic because, with the advent of blogging, far more people must have taken up the pen (or keyboard, in this case) than ever before.

A writer was once seen as the only category of person who would dare venture into the wilds of publishing and such, and was therefore an intellectual and not to be messed with at informal social gatherings. Others, we shall call them columnists, have chosen the route of high exposure in newspapers and other periodicals over the heady world of book shops. Both of these sub-species, however, see literary enterprise as a vocation and could casually cast the comment at a cocktail party, “What do I do? (condescending chuckle) Well, I guess you could say I’m ... a writer,” and subtly avoid mentioning that they hadn’t eaten in three days but that would be remedied by the kilogram and a half of cocktail sausages they had just concealed about their person on their last trip past the hors d oeuvres table.

But all this has changed. No longer does the professional scribe hold the intellectual high-ground. Oh no, my friend. Blogging has brought an end to all that. Now, every moron with a modem and too much time on his hands (Thinks: am I giving too much away? Oh well...) can claim a place in the sun. Whether anyone is actually reading their offerings or not is another matter, of course. I heard once that, according to probability theory, if one thousand monkeys were each given a typewriter and punched at letters randomly, given enough time they would eventually end up with a sequence of letters identical to the complete works of William Shakespeare. The observation continued that, with the arrival of the internet, this theory has been disproved.

Well, maybe. But back to Blogger’s Block. To every person who has sat in the ethereal glow of a computer monitor and discovered, despite all your best intentions and despite all the right feelings, that you’ve got ... nothing, just ... nothing, well I salute you! You gave it a go. You started your engine and reversed out of your driveway. Okay, so you sat there in the metaphorical road for five minutes gripping the steering wheel in a blank stare and then drove back inside the garage but, hey, no-one can say you didn’t try. This blog is dedicated to you.

So, I’d like to lay down a few tips and (hopefully) helpful comments to get you back on the road if you’ve found that the thought of getting in front of your blog page again is just more than you can handle.

A good blog is one, I guess, that complete strangers as well as a few friends and family could enjoy equally. That is, the broader the appeal, the better. I am of course excluding those ‘specialist’ blogs, such as those dedicated to politician-bashing or ‘Updates from the Mothership’, or blogs in which over-achieving (and under-tanned) academics notify the world of the impact of the latest seismic activity in Guam on silkworm birth rates, or other blogs in which over-tanned (and under-achieving) varsity students tally their beer can tonnages for the week.

Grammar, too, is important. Punctuation exists. Use it. (!!!??!!!!) Just don’t overdo it. (!!!??!!!!)

Flow and cohesion are important factors to keep the reader with you. Take the reader from the start, past a few vistas if you like, to a point that is obvious but not too predictable. By the end of the blog, your reader must be able to re-trace his steps and see how he got to where you took him. To take such a radical tangent halfway through your blog that your reader feels like it’s in a parallel universe far, far away may mean that you go there without him (or her). 

Humour is important but not essential. Think of humour as passing a stool. Trying too hard is just painful.

Avoid getting too philosophical, especially if it’s borrowed philosophy. This applies to everything from Karl Marx to Helen Steiner Rice. Someone else’s musing and life-enhancing self-help gems, unless already a part of your own mental circuitry, can sound hollow and smack of wanting to be heard rather than having anything to say. Somehow, even via modems, ISP’s and blog sites, what gets put out into cyberspace still smells like either the real M^cCoy or a dead fish. Keep it real. And remember; I’m watching you.

But basically it boils down to this one thing: you must have something to say. Eloquence and pointlessness are not good bedfellows. Humour and pointlessness have an only slightly longer shelf-life. A platform from which to address the world demands that that address adds value, moves humankind forward. From those to whom much is given, much is demanded. A blog is an opportunity to change the world, and all from the comfort of your own home!

Of course, this is the crux of the matter. What to say! External inspiration can work well, if employed only from time to time to grease the grey matter and get things moving. So, as a public service to all the world, here follows some possible topics to help those experiencing ‘The Block’ to get back in the saddle again. 

• Camel Racing: The Secrets of Success
• How to get the most out of Lithuania
• Adventures baking with caustic soda
• Mexican Diva’s of the 70’s
• The South African Revenue Service: The Third Force
• DIY Mutation for the Weekend Genetic Engineer
• The Idiots Guide to Toilet Paper

All important stuff, you’ll agree. So much for external inspiration. But, really, the internal ‘voice’ is what you want to tap into. Not internal ‘voices’(plural); there’s treatment for that. No, I’m referring to that personal central focus. Now don’t go Zen on me – hear me out. I’m talking about a personal internal well, the spring of your life, the soil from which the roots of your daily living are drawing. Most of the time we’re not really aware of it, but it is connected to our unconscious mission or identity or purpose. (Or something. Heck, this is deep.)

I’m no psychologist so don’t hold me to this but there seems to be a ‘voice’ inside each of us which, when we listen to it, tells us whether we’re in a positive place or a negative place. When the voice is negative, we run away from it and drown it out with busyness and recreation, but when it’s positive it has the potential to carry us through almost any circumstances. The problem is that most people find that voice to be negative. Introspection, when used as an attempt to get to hear that inner voice, generally produces depression. I’ve never hear of anyone who went introspective and came out saying, ”Wow! I’m so much better than I thought. I think I’ll do that again!” No, generally those who delve into the depths of introspection for too long stop reflecting light. (And then they become writers.)

Your inner spring will issue whatever it’s catchment collects. Someone once said, “From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Wise words, indeed. (No, it wasn't Yoda.) Whatever comes out of us is only what collects within us. We must have something desirable, something nourishing to drawn on, not simply for the sake of good blogging but for living in general.

Can you hear your inner voice? Is it important to you to know what it is saying? We can start to hear it when we ask questions like:

• What gets me up every morning?
• What makes me the happiest, the most satisfied?
• What gives me purpose?
• When I die, what will have counted the most in my life, and is that worthy of my life?
• If my life achieved just one thing, what would I want that to be?

Getting the picture? Big questions, I know, but do you really want to go through the rest of your life and not have answers to these?

I think that most people tend to blog like they live; either centred on an inner voice, or wafting and drifting from one point to the next while they stand in line to shuffle off this mortal coil. That, my friend, is a much more pitiful condition than Blogger’s Block.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

I heard recently about an Inuit tribe of 200 odd people that American explorer Robert Peary came across during the last decade of the 19^th century on one of his many expeditions. Before they met him, they thought they were the only people on Earth. Understandably, meeting him was something of a shock. He further shocked them by kidnapping five of them. And then really sent them over the edge by stealing their only source of iron, a few meteorites, which he subsequently sold for $50,000.00. All in all, a nice guy.

Can you imagine realising that you don’t know everyone on the planet on a first name basis? No? Me neither. But think about it; no such thing as ‘stranger danger’. ‘Ice-breakers’ are not group activities for getting to know one another. Variety evenings never include the line, “So who’s from out of town?”.

But this brings me to the topic of this blog: paradigms.

Paradigms. Fun to say and fun to spell.

A paradigm is loosely speaking simply a model of thought or a concept. That’s a broad and rough definition because the meaning behind ‘paradigm’ differs according to the context. In a strictly academic setting, it refers to how a concept may be explored, or how a law or theory may be verified. However, among the general ‘lay’ population, it has come to refer to the framework within which we arrange our thoughts and views for them to make sense. It’s our view of how the world is or how it works, or even how it should be or work. Or, perhaps not just the world, but the whole universe. Or even all of reality; material, conceptual, even spiritual.

Now, let’s face it; for every person to come up with a coherent and systematic understanding of the WHOLE UNIVERSE … well, there are bound to be a few blind spots. For instance, the once widespread view that the Moon was made of cheese… need I say more? It’s like something out of a Monty Python skit: “Well, it looks like cheese … I mean … it is round!”. Or the western medieval view that the world is flat. Can you imagine Magellan trying to convince his sailors that, if they came with him, they wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world? “No, guys, we’ll be fine … promise … who’s up for a bit of fun, then, hey?”

So, history has shown us that once hard-and-fast ideas of ‘How Things Are’ do, in fact, change and when they do, they can take the whole world with them. Some examples in modern history: that annoying little German monk in a backwater in Saxony, Martin Luther, who turned global politics on its head and simultaneously introduced an earth-shattering idea that God had cut out the middle-man when re-uniting the human race with Himself.

There was Karl Marx and his idea that eventually an anarchical society would arise to replace all other forms of government and control, and then … well, no-one really seemed to listen to the rest; they were too busy sharpening their pitch forks and practising their Molotov Cocktail hurling skills. But things were never the same.

How about Charles Darwin, now ironically entombed in Westminster Abbey, who suggested that maybe ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ should have been called ‘All Things Vicious and Mutable’ and gave the Human Race just the argument it was looking for to excuse God from the room?

Albert Eistein, that famous academic and hair-style terrorist. Seriously, this guy would have changed the world sooner if people had just understood what the heck he was on about.

In contrast, Mother Theresa, who didn’t really argue her case but quietly demonstrated that every person has worth, even if they are one of a crowd of identical millions … and the whole world was held to account by her life.

All of these people had a global impact; they caused the world to begin to see itself in a different light. They caused a global Paradigm Shift.

But in each case, it started with a personal paradigm shift. They had to make the jump themselves before they could take anyone with them. This is no small feat. To question the very fabric of reality as you perceive it is … well, uncomfortable, to say the least.

But I would like to ask you to take a leap with me. For some reading this, no doubt this would be entering the realm of the HIGHLY hypothetical. For others, less so, depending on the paradigm you have.

Consider with me the known (and assumed) physical universe, all 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion tonnes of it as estimated from the ‘Big Bang’ afterglow. Now, in all of that, where did reason and logic come from? They surely exist objectively and must be absolute or the entire state of human consciousness is an illusion. “Ah, yes,” some will argue, “since we cannot be sure that it is NOT an illusion, we can’t be certain that logic is absolute”. But since this argument RELIES on logic to be meaningful … it kind of flops over on it’s side and twitches like a dying fish. Sorry, nice try.

My point is that there must be some form of reality that exists that is not physical. Mathematics is not a physical entity, but it is real. Logic, likewise. I can accept that my euphoric response to a beautiful sunset may be the product of a combination of social conditioning and photons simulating a bio-electrical response in my optical nerves which send signals to my central nervous system to release more of some and less of other chemicals into my bloodstream to relax me and make me feel good, and that none of this would occur if my nervous system was not working, i.e. if I were dead. Therefore, my appreciation for the beauty of a sunset is a subjective thing. But whether I am alive or the light of my mortal flame was smothered in … well, you get the picture … the laws of, for instance, Mathematics continue to hold. These things are not subject to my humanity. They exist on their own.

If they exist, and yet they cannot be physically measured or contained (or even tangibly experienced), is it any less possible that there exists a spiritual reality? Is it intellectually honest for scientists who rely on the foundation of logic and reasoning (though reason and logic cannot be empirically proven to even exist) to debunk the existence of a spiritual reality on the basis that it is empirically unverifiable? (Whoa! I gotta take a break. Brain-strain.)

(Are you ready? Okay. Let’s go.) Furthermore, if there are non-physical laws of logic, could there be non-physical spiritual laws? You will notice that I assume the existence of a spiritual reality without proving it. I do this simply on the basis that the weight of the collective human experience (human history) leans towards assuming it to be axiomatic; that is, that it is self-evident and needs no proof. All through history, ALL human cultures have consistently assumed that a spiritual world exists and have attempted to relate to it one way or another.

There is a Great Divide in the world today in terms of a spiritual paradigm. You have ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’. Western thinking battles to grasp the possibility of a spiritual world; that is, battles to grasp it without getting all weird and ‘Shirley MacLaine’ on the rest of us. But we are the minority. ‘The Rest’ of the world really has no such difficulty. Sure, there are atheistic societies outside of the West, but in the main they are the exception to the rule.

But speaking of rules, I’d like to go back to my point about the possibility of there being non-physical spiritual laws. Consider gravity; it’s a law whether you want to keep it or not. And it’s generally a good idea to work with it rather than try to oppose it. Many a hernia has come about this way.

I’d like to suggest that the spiritual universe has laws that can be complied with or broken. It is unreasonable to wander wishfully around in any kind of spiritual experience and expect to be able to get away with making the rules up as you go. At the very least, that would risk a spiritual hernia.

However, for me, slow on the uptake as I am, actually relating to a spiritual world or universe or reality is still a very unnatural exercise. I am so steeped in analytical, 3-dimensional thinking that I honestly experience a wilful resistance within myself whenever I encounter a spiritual ‘moment’. But I am learning to let go of the edge and swim a little by myself, knowing that I am so utterly vulnerable in myself and utterly reliant on the one person who bridged both the physical universe and the spiritual universe on his own terms. I have for a number of years claimed to experience a spiritual reality of Jesus Christ, but I have now come to realise that those claims were empty. Not that I was lying, rather I was inaccurate. I had no (or very little) actual experience of him as a reality. Instead of him being a reality to me, I was a reality to him. Instead of experiencing him, he was experiencing me. He had connected himself to me but my experience of him was severely limited by my paradigm.

Of late, this has started to change. It has required a total overhaul of the framework I have built up for viewing the world and the universe. Notably, I am now having to accommodate a large empty space in my understanding; it’s there to make room for what is not yet there. And I am eternally grateful.

Sleep Deprivation and My Loose Grip on Reality

Over the past six months, I have come to appreciate as never before the Joy of Sleep, mainly because I haven’t had any. Actually, that’s not entirely true. If I’d not had ANY sleep, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. Apparently, you need a minimum of three hours sleep per day or your body starts to die. Some say four. Okay, don’t quote me on this information. Obviously, those statements require some sort of qualification but, frankly, I’m too tired to care.

Here are some other interesting ‘facts’ about sleep (all with their own varying degrees of accuracy):

• The average person swallows 2,33 spiders a week during their sleep (probably little ones...).
• If you laid all the sleep shorts worn on the earth at any one time in a straight line, you would have a lot of semi-naked people sleeping.
• Fish sleep with their eyes open.
• People who sleep with their eyes open are ten times more likely to freak their spouses out.

More seriously, though:

• The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.
• Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.
• British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hours. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo. (Unfortunately, they were supposed to be bombing elsewhere...)

And, strangely:

• Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock. (Scientists have also not been able to establish who thinks up these obscure tests...)

Well, you needn’t be the victim of the twisted curiosity of a white-coated, bespectacled, laboratory-lurker to realise that sleep deprivation can lead to a warped sense of reality. Just have a 10 month old baby with a sinus infection. And as any new parent will confess (as long as anonymity is guaranteed), a warped sense of reality eventually leads to ... Unacceptable Behaviour.

Now, Unacceptable Behaviour really is a subjective term. So let me define it, for the sake of this discussion, as that which YOU would not do had you not been deprived of sleep. That should translate well into any context. Sure, you wouldn’t expect to see someone down a pint of their own urine if you were at, say, the V&A Waterfront. Maybe if you were in the Himalayas ... among a throng of orange-robed devotees ... but not at the V&A. However, if you were a Clifton Beach parent who had not slept longer than 30 minutes in a single stretch for the last two weeks, a tall, frothy, body-temperature draft of urea may seem perfectly sensible, if not appealing.

Now, my aforementioned example does imply that this Unacceptable Behaviour is what one may categorise as ‘socially unacceptable’, and this is certainly true although it is too narrow a category. Much more importantly, sufferers of sleep deprivation approach a class of behaviour which, under normal circumstances, would be unacceptable to their own internal code of conduct. Blow what everyone else thinks; I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink shirt, Bru! And yet ... here comes, Frikkie, our young first time dad in a lovely cerise golf shirt, carefully laced with baby puke, with matching bags under his eyes. What a stunning combination!

Yes. It’s our own inner person which comes under pressure.

Consider another scenario: You walk into a crowded elevator on the third floor, and one second after the doors close and you start to descend, the guy next to you screams, ”Aargh!! We’re plummeting to our doom!! We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!” while clawing at the side of the lift. At the ground floor, the elevator doors open and the occupants make a hasty exit leaving the pitiful, sobbing mass moaning in the corner. Sure, it’s unsettling for everyone else but more importantly, the bearer of the distorted view of reality has just gone through four storeys of terror. Clearly, this is not a healthy individual.

Let’s analyse this for a second. If the lift was falling uncontrollably, the initial sensation of descent would probably have felt not dissimilar to the initial sensation of controlled descent. It’s a matter of interpretation, then, that makes the difference between a total freak-out and the zen-like calm that occupants of a crowded lift normally assume when their personal space has been seriously invaded. So it would seem that, under normal circumstances, people have a kind of internal gyroscope which keeps them orientated on a reasoned view of reality when their senses would want to suggest otherwise. It’s a sort of self-correction when our view of reality gets distorted, and it helps us to continue to relate to reality when what we experience wants to drag us off to a padded cell somewhere and introduce us to an invisible man called Murray.

Now, sleep deprivation is not the only catalyst for the freak-out ... or shall we call it ‘Meeting Murray’. Many things can cause us to lose touch with reality; isolation, prolonged stress, noise, queues, traffic jams, Steven Seagal movies... And worst of all, losing touch with reality doesn’t always culminate in a single freak-out/break-down/’Oh my gosh! Did he just email all his contacts a scanned picture of his butt?!’ incident. No sir. For many, the breakdown is incremental, almost indiscernible, but reality-altering for the individual experiencing it. Sure, he notices the stress, he’s conscious of the traffic jam he is in every day, but less obvious is the departure he is making towards Unacceptable Behaviour.

Somehow, we all need the ability to hold on to a view of reality in the face of things we experience that tell us that things are not so. Somehow, we need to be able to fix ourselves onto reality when we lose the ability to relate to what we know is real. Some would call this Faith.

Faith is an entirely reasonable view of reality, though our experience in any given moment may not suggest consistency with that view. That is to say, at any given time, what you feel is not necessarily real. (Remember the screaming lift occupant?) Or vice versa: at any given time, reality doesn’t feel ... well, real.

The trick is to distinguish in the course of normal living between reality and your own translation of what your senses and emotions are telling you.

This presupposes that you start out with a pretty concrete grasp of reality. And let’s face it, that’s asking a lot. But maybe that’s easier to find then one might think. Faith in a God you can’t see or feel is no less reasonable than getting into a lift whose winch and cabling you haven’t inspected and can’t see. ‘Okay, but presumably someone else has inspected it.’ Granted, and presumably a God whom you haven’t seen and can’t feel has made Himself real to someone else, too. And their reality has become grounded so that yours and mine can be also. At least, until our experience becomes consistent with that reality.

Anyway, that’s how Murray explained it to me.

Ryan for President

I met a guy a couple of days back. He mentioned in passing that he has tattooed his wife’s name on his finger in place of wearing a wedding ring. Someone’s comment to him was, “So, what happens if it doesn’t work out?” In other words, “Bru, don’t you realize that it’s easier these days to simply get rid of a spouse than to get rid of a tattoo?”

What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? Well, plenty, thanks for asking. I put to you that it is the symptom of the greatest ailment of the human race. (Well, one of the top three greatest ailments of the human race.) (Okay, it is among the top ailments of the human race…)

“And what is that ailment?”, you may ask. “Isn’t the Top Ailment … stinky feet?” Nope. “How about … halitosis?” Nay, I say. “Okay. Then it must be … that kind of uncoordinated, orangutan-like swaying thing that white guys do in clubs when their girlfriends convince them to dance with ‘the group’.” Heck, we all know that’s a crime but no. I’m talking about Selfishness.


Okay, let me call it something else. How about ‘whatever-makes-me-feel-good-at-the-expense-of-anyone-else’. Or ‘Selfishness’ for short.

Now, this tattooed individual’s response to the question posed to him was to say that things had better work out or they would have to remove his finger. Good on yer! I like a man with conviction. The reality, however, is that there are other options when dealing with tattoos. I understand that they vary in degrees of scarring and temporary pain. It’s far easier to simply sign on the dotted line, pay the attorney’s fees and render the ‘missus’ a ‘miss’ again.
 And when the fabric of society is held together only by whatever makes me feel good, then it seems perfectly legitimate to expect to be able to get out of a lifelong commitment faster than saying, “Skin graft, please!” But if a lifelong commitment requires the death of one or both parties (as in ‘til death us do part’) then … well, let’s just say a little laser treatment pales in comparison.

Having said all that, let me now say something in defense of those for whom divorce is a stark reality as it is for many of my friends and some of my own family. The pain I have witnessed in the lives of those I love who have gone through a divorce I can only describe as a living death. It is horrible. Please don’t think for a moment that I am taking a self-righteous high ground and spitting on the ‘lowly scum’ who have walked through this Valley of the Shadow of Death. My heart goes out to you. It is in tribute to your pain that I make these statements, to tear down the façade our society has painted over this heartache. At the risk of getting too serious, I acknowledge the weight of the devastation you have experienced. Divorce, like marriage, is ‘not to be entered into lightly’.

But divorce is not my topic. Neither is marriage. Selfishness is.

Selfishness is enshrined in our constitution. Not obviously, but it is there. I mean, when we base our laws on the statement of ‘my rights’, is that not an orientation on self? Is that not self-ish-ness?

So, what’s the alternative? Well, if I were elected to the public office … yeah, right (can you see the election posters? A thing of beauty… ), it would be my wish to govern the nation from the basis which I will now reveal to the world:

The Bill of Human Rights Responsibilities

1. I have the responsibility to treat every person with dignity, whether they deserve it or not.


2. I have the responsibility to protect human life, whether or not it has been born yet.


3. I have the responsibility to ensure the freedom and security of every person in a manner consistent with my other responsibilities to every other person.


4. I have the responsibility to respect the privacy of every person in a manner consistent with my other responsibilities to every other person.


5. I have the responsibility to respect the beliefs, religions and opinions of every person, and to afford them the opportunity to express these beliefs, religions and opinions in a manner consistent with my other responsibilities to every other person.


6. I have the responsibility to afford every person the freedom to assemble, demonstrate, picket and petition in a manner consistent with my other responsibilities to every other person.


7. I have the responsibility to afford every person the freedom to associate with any other person.


8. I have the responsibility to afford every person the freedom to make political choices and to participate meaningfully in the political affairs of the nation, in a manner consistent with my other responsibilities to every other person.


9. I have the responsibility to conduct myself in the interests of the common good in relation to labour practices.


10. I have the responsibility to conduct myself in the interests of the common good in relation to the environment.


11. I have the responsibility to promote the enhancement of relationships between diverse social, political, cultural, ethnic and generational groups.


12. I have the responsibility to promote justice, fairness, goodwill and peace for every person in a manner consistent with my other responsibilities to every other person.


So, look out for me on the next ballot paper. And read my lips; NO NEW TAXES!!