Blog
Geoff Ward MA Lit, BA (Hons)
Occasional musings
What I'm reading at the moment:
Demystifying Shamans and Their World: An Interdisciplinary Study
by Adam J Rock and Stanley Krippner
by Adam J Rock and Stanley Krippner
December 24, 2011
Once upon a time in remotest Siberia, a shaman among the nomadic reindeer-herding Koryak people took a bite out of a red-and-white spotted mushroom – and went on a trip to another world. Such was the effect of this fantastic fungus that it came to be revered among the tribes and used in their religious ceremonies, particularly at midwinter.
The mushrooms were dried in the sun or over a fire, soaked in water or reindeer milk, and the mixture drunk. Visions followed in which the shaman would communicate with spirits.
As part of the midwinter ritual, around this time of year, the shaman, carrying his store of mushrooms in a sack, would enter the domed winter dwellings, or yurts, of his tribespeople through the smokehole in the roof, which was supported by a birch pole. After his rituals, he would ascend the pole and depart.
Does this sound at all familiar? It should, because it’s probably where our Christmas tradition of Santa Claus came from. His red and white costume copied the colouring of the mushroom – the hallucinogenic “amanita muscaria”, more popularly known as the fly agaric, and still depicted on Christmas cards today
Santa flies because the hallucinations can create the illusion of flight. He uses reindeer to pull his sleigh because they like to eat the mushroom – herders who eat the meat of reindeer which have eaten the mushroom get high that way, too.
And Santa’s sack of toys harks back to the sack of prepared ceremonial mushrooms carried by the shaman. Better not tell the kids!
May 27, 2011
I am honoured to be among the contributors to a major publishing event by O Books - a special tribute marking Colin Wilson's 80th birthday in June 2011: Around the Outsider: Essays Presented to Colin Wilson on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday is now available.
I am honoured to be among the contributors to a major publishing event by O Books - a special tribute marking Colin Wilson's 80th birthday in June 2011: Around the Outsider: Essays Presented to Colin Wilson on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday is now available. This landmark book of 345 pages, which collects 20 essays by academics, authors and other key commentators internationally, is edited by freelance writer Colin Stanley, Wilson's bibliographer and the managing editor of Paupers' Press who edits the series Colin Wilson Studies featuring extended essays on Wilson's work by scholars worldwide. Colin Stanley also provides the preface and two essays for Around the Outsider.
Contributors from the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand have written on their favourite Wilson book, or one which has special significance for them. My essay is about Super Consciousness: the Quest for the Peak Experience (2009) - the gateway to 'super-consciousness' being the 'epiphany' or 'moment of vision', the elusive mechanisms of which Wilson has sought to identify in a lifelong endeavour to confirm humankind’s evolutionary potential; in Super Consciousness, key elements of this project are drawn together from his works over five decades.
November 14, 2010 Around the Outsider is a diverse and indispensable assessment of Wilson’s writings on philosophy, psychology, literature, criminology, the occult and autobiography, with critical appraisals of four of his most thought-provoking novels. Five of the contributors are musicians as well as writers.
The line-up includes three professors, Thomas Bertonneau (literature), Stephen Clark (philosophy) and Stanley Krippner (psychology), the author and critic Nicholas Tredell, the author and former editor of the literary magazine Abraxas, Paul Newman, the author Gary Lachman, a founding member of the rock group Blondie who was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, and the author Steve Taylor, a lecturer and researcher in transpersonal psychology.
Other contributing authors include Simon Brighton, Antoni Diller, Chris Nelson and David Power. The novelist Laura Del Rivo, a contemporary of Wilson, contributes an appendix, as does writer and poet Vaughan Robertson, and author Terry Welbourn with a personal appreciation of Wilson and T C Lethbridge, the archaeologist and psychic investigator. Murray Ewing, of the David Lindsay website at violetapple.org.uk, Philip Coulthard of colinwilsononline.com, and George Poulos complete the list.
Wilson will surely be delighted by the tribute. He is currently working on two new novels, one science fiction and the other crime. Recently, he has completed a sequel to his 1976 sci-fi novel, The Space Vampires, and a book about Shakespeare.
Orders for Around the Outsider can be placed at Amazon.co.uk (£11.99) and at Amazon.com ($17.79).
►Terry Welbourn's biography of T C Lethbridge, The Man Who Saw The Future, which has a foreword by Colin Wilson, is also now available. It can be viewed and ordered at O-Books (link on Resources page).
Orders for Around the Outsider can be placed at Amazon.co.uk (£11.99) and at Amazon.com ($17.79).
►Terry Welbourn's biography of T C Lethbridge, The Man Who Saw The Future, which has a foreword by Colin Wilson, is also now available. It can be viewed and ordered at O-Books (link on Resources page).
I see that TV New Zealand has screened the first of a world mysteries series after my own heart - Leigh Hart's Mysterious Planet, would you believe?
Here's part of the blurb from its website: 'Explorer, adventurer and self-proclaimed expert Leigh Hart is on a quest to seek the truth behind the world's greatest mysteries. Armed only with his internet-based knowledge, his Kiwi back-up team, and a credit card, he attempts to solve once and for all, the world's top six greatest mysteries, in as many weeks.'
More muscle to his mission! Perhaps Leigh took a cue from my website, the name of which was inspired by the best-selling 1980 book Mysterious World by Arthur C Clarke - yes, I know there was a 1982 movie called Mysterious Planet, that there's a US comic strip of the same name, and there was a Dr Who TV serial called The Mysterious Planet. Nothing like a good mystery!
November 7, 2010
Come along to my talk and discussion on 'The Wisdom of Oneness' at the Mystic & Earth Spirit Fayre at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms on Saturday, November 27. I'll be asking if there is a hidden order or intelligence in the universe that weaves everything together and, if so, how we can perceive it - through science or shamanism, or both? Altered states of consciousness, such as the 'peak experience' or 'moment of being', when we catch a glimpse of an ineffable higher reality, may hold the key - these are our experiments into future consciousness.
October 26, 2010
The author Stan Gooch, once described by Colin Wilson as 'one of the most underrated writers of our time' and whose work represented 'one of the most impressive and exciting intellectual structures of the second half of the twentieth century', died in mid-September, 2010, at the age of 78. Gooch (pictured), born at Lewisham, London, in 1932, died in hospital at Swansea, without next of kin, after living for years as a recluse on a caravan park in the city. Although he never wrote a best-seller, he still had a wide readership, and was probably best known for his 'hybrid-origin theory' of human evolution.
Writer Terry Welbourn, who visited Gooch in 2004, accompanied by fellow author Simon Brighton, told me: 'He was a fascinating man who completely dropped out. When we visited him, his caravan was in a terrible state - I could not believe how such an intelligent man could live in such conditions.' Gooch admitted to being pretty much a ‘down and out’. But Terry found an amiable, intelligent man who seemed pleased to discuss his situation and ideas.
'I don't think anyone knew about his death - a very sad end,' said Terry. 'I only found out because I wrote him a letter earlier in the week and received a reply from the patient welfare officer at the Swansea hospital who had been to Stan's caravan to collect his belongings and found my unopened letter.'
Among Gooch's baker's dozen of non-fiction titles - he also wrote a novel and short stories - were Total Man, The Neanderthal Question, Creatures From Inner Space, The Paranormal, Cities of Dreams, The Secret Life of Humans, Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom, Personality and Evolution and The Double Helix of the Mind.
Before embarking on a career as a writer of ‘alternative’ books, Gooch was a successful child psychologist who chose to give up a potentially lucrative career to pursue his own goals, although this did not bring him the success he believed he deserved. His first book, co-authored, was a textbook on child psychology, published in 1970.
Eventually, Gooch became disillusioned with the world of publishing, and gave up writing for many years, despite even being been offered, by supporters, the use of a cottage in the South of France, if it would motivate him.
In Total Man (1972), Gooch suggested that man is a dual being, consisting of a rational ego and a darker more instinctive being, the Self. Inhabiting the 'old brain', he saw the Self as the source of legends about vampires, troglodytes, demons and other creatures from of the occult.
Gooch's experience of mediumship, among other things, probably made him aware of the unconscious as a realm of dark forces, and he argued that the unconscious was located in that part of the brain called the cerebellum. He went on to criticise the hemisphere model of the brain in The Double Helix of the Mind (1980).
In The Neanderthal Question (1977), Gooch claimed that Neanderthal man was not exterminated by Cro-Magnon 40,000 years ago, but was 'bred out' by interbreeding with Cro-Magnon, producing us, in whom Cro-Magnon characteristics were uppermost.
Writing in 1995, Colin Wilson said Gooch's work had never been more relevant, with new studies of ancient civilizations now appearing by best-selling researchers such as Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval.
'If there were civilisations that pre-dated Sumer and Egypt by more than ten thousand years, then Gooch's argument that Neanderthal man was a far more sophisticated creature than anyone has recognised also becomes far more plausible,' said Colin. 'In fact, the whole field has opened up, to an extent that even Stan Gooch could not have guessed in the mid 1980s.'
Colin said he was even more excited by Gooch's next book The Paranormal (1978) 'in which he begins by describing in detail his experiences as a medium and he goes on to produce a classic study of the whole realm of paranormal experience'.
In Cities of Dreams (1989) and The Neanderthal Legacy (2008), Gooch returned to the theme of Neanderthal man, setting out to show that the Neanderthals had as rich and complex a culture as Cro-Magnon.
In Cities of Dreams (1989) and The Neanderthal Legacy (2008), Gooch returned to the theme of Neanderthal man, setting out to show that the Neanderthals had as rich and complex a culture as Cro-Magnon.
With Cities of Dreams, Colin added, Gooch once more encountered the problem of his work being too original and wide-ranging for academics, and too closely argued and serious for the general public: 'Yet that struck me as outrageously unfair since the book was so obviously a culmination of his work since Total Man.'
December 21, 2009
What’s the connection between the wrecked climate change summit in Copenhagen and the UK Christmas No. 1 hit record by Rage Against the Machine?
Both indicate that there’s still some benign force out there working steadily, if sporadically, against the battalions of duplicity and mediocrity.
The failure of the climate change talks gives more valuable time for the truth to break through (see the item below), for the real science to be upheld, for the invidious phrase “global warming” to be abandoned once and for all, and for the wealthy would-be carbon overlords to be denounced.
And the beauty of Rage Against the Machine at No. 1 is that it strikes a blow against the cynical and manipulative puppetry of television – “let not shallow foppery enter my sober house”! Rock and pop music should always come from the streets, as it did originally, not from some smirking multi-millionaire’s TV studio.
I think it was Plato who said that things are far better taken care of in the universe than we can imagine. Let’s hope so.
December 15, 2009
At the very time our craven politicians are plotting at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen to change our Western way of life beyond all recognition, scientific evidence claimed to be behind “global warming” theory is being challenged ever more strongly.
Despite what we’re told by most politicians and most of the media, the scientific world is significantly split over the climate change issue. “Global warming” is a myth generated by a few climate scientists with vested interests, and politicians have fallen for the propaganda. Too many lucrative appointments and cosy jobs in science and politics are now dependent on this myth and, admittedly, it will be difficult to destroy it.
But this is the truth in a nutshell: the planet is cooling now, not warming, and the billions to be spent on reducing carbon emissions - and making a lot of people supporting this strategy rich, or richer, in the process - should be spent instead on making the world resilient to climate change which is actually being caused by natural solar and ocean cycles. Tackling carbon emissions will make no difference at all to these cycles.
You cannot ignore the following: a total of 31,486 American scientists, including 9,029 with PhDs,have now signed a petition, organised by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, urging the US government to reject the global warming agreement written in Kyoto in December 1997.
The signatories state: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
A year ago, more than 700 climate experts signed a protest petition to the US Congress, and were put on the US Senate Minority Repot of dissenting scientists.
The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change of 2008 – a petition to the UN by more than 100 scientists, researchers and policy experts – states that there is “no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change”. And it says that all taxes, regulations and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 should be abandoned forthwith.
The Leipzig Declaration of 1995, updated in 2005, from more than a hundred scientists and meteorologists, opposes the global warming hypothesis and the Kyoto Protocol and refutes the idea of a general scientific consensus on climate change.
Peter Taylor, author of Chill: a Reassessment of Global Warming Theory, has pointed out that there are now thousands of scientists around the world who disagree with the view of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, among them key members of the IPCC itself, working groups, expert reviewers of IPCC material, climatologists and meteorologists.
It’s interesting how, in recent weeks, BBC interviewers and presenters – hitherto uncritical supporters of “global warming” theory - have started to add notes of scepticism to discussions of the topic, particularly following the leaked emails scandal affecting the University of East Anglia where it appears scientists manipulated data to support the idea of man-made climate change. The message may at last be getting through to this bastion of establishment thinking.
Meanwhile, full marks to Christopher Booker, the Sunday Telegraph writer, who, in his new book, The Real Global Warming Disaster: is the obsession with “climate change” turning out to be the most costly scientific blunder in history?, reveals how in the 1980s a coterie of scientists assumed that mankind faced catastrophe from runaway global warming, and how this has persuaded gullible politicians to land us with what looks like being the biggest unnecessary bill ever.
November 21, 2009
Today, Angie and I met Tom and Sue Brooks for lunch in the quintessentially English village setting of The Dining Room at Wedmore, Somerset, in the midst of apple orchard country.
Just as we returned to the car, a flock of swans, parents and five cygnets, came gliding along the rhyne to greet us - indeed, an auspicious event. The swan is a prominent symbol in ancient lore and myth, signifying, among other things, transformation and transport to the Otherworld, and balance and harmony between earth, air and water. In Hinduism, the swan
is likened to saintly individuals whose main characteristic is to be in the world without getting attached to it, as a swan's feather does not become waterlogged.
The weather was awful, with lashing rain and winds, but after our excellent repast we set out intrepidly for Highbridge, about ten miles away near the Somerset coast, to seek out a prehistoric site that Tom had not visited since childhood.
After zigzagging and backtracking through various side streets and housing estates, we spotted a muddy track which seemed to be heading in the right direction, according to Tom’s Ordnance Survey map. The track ended at a farm gate by a rhyne, and there in a field in the middle distance was Mill Mound, overgrown with scrub and thicket, by a curve in the stream. We scrambled out in the storm for a closer look.
Mill Mound is a small, insignificant-looking tumulus to which no-one would give a second glance, even if they happened to know of its antiquity.
But, within the network of prehistoric geometry that Tom has discovered across England and Wales, Mill Mound is a jewel - albeit now a faded one - for, amazingly, it is the apex of an isosceles triangle where Stonehenge and Silbury Hill stand at the other two corners, and thus is exactly the same distance from each of these famous monuments.
The mound is also the node of many other alignments, within the geometry that Tom has found, stretching across Wales and the south and south-west of England, and exemplifies, in a tiny point in the landscape, the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors so sadly lost today to the general population and a blinkered academia.
Tom’s remarkable work is proof that all ancient sites such as Mill Mound, which have been left languishing in neglect and obscurity through ignorance over the centuries, should be given the highest protective status by the authorities, for here lies the evidence that a highly sophisticated and technically advanced culture existed in our islands 5,000 and more years ago.
Just as we returned to the car, a flock of swans, parents and five cygnets, came gliding along the rhyne to greet us - indeed, an auspicious event. The swan is a prominent symbol in ancient lore and myth, signifying, among other things, transformation and transport to the Otherworld, and balance and harmony between earth, air and water. In Hinduism, the swanOctober 14, 2009
Could you help with sponsorship for a mail-out to readers of New Scientist magazine to help turn the tide and spread the vital message on global cooling carried in Peter Taylor’s must-read book, Chill: A Reassessmernt of Global Warming Theory? My story about the book remains on the Mysterious Planet home page.
Peter says that many are aware of his efforts to engage the science community in a debate or discussion of the climate computer models upon which projections of global warming are based, and of the huge effort over the past three years that went into the book.
“My motivation for this work has been the scale of damage the supposed 'remedies' for global warming will have on the very environment it is supposed to be threatening,” he told me today. “Thus far, however, the scientific press have largely ignored the book, though it is getting out there slowly in other circles, mostly behind the scenes.
“I have not been able to get it reviewed, for example, in New Scientist. They have turned down or not responded to requests for an article or an opinion piece. This is the only journal that is widely and publicly available. Over the past week, however, New Scientist has been forced to carry a story on new research suggesting cooling ahead, and the BBC has an online article by Paul Hudson to that effect. The tide is beginning to turn.”
There has been a problem getting out the news that the book exists to a wider audience - even to those who would criticise it, although for Peter that would be useful feedback. He says he and his publishers, Clairview, can design a good flier/insert for New Scientist - and subvert their editorial controls. What a good idea!
Clairview have limited resources to publicise the book, but have agreed a mail-out to their first choice, Spectator (subscriber list 37,000) whose readership has proven more open to debate, at a cost of about £2,500. They want to extend this to New Scientist (list 30,000) but cannot cover the fees, £1,620.
“I am thus seeking sponsorship to mail the New Scientist readership with an insert in the subscriber edition,” said Peter. “The costs are too high for the publisher, on top of the Spectator, where they feel they will get a better response, and I have exhausted all of my own personal resources.
“So I am asking people I know, and even those I don't know well or at all, but I know are concerned about the degree of repression and exclusion on this massively important policy issue, whether they have any contacts with people who might have a) the same concern and b) the resources to help.”
Action is needed quickly, in the next two weeks. If you have any leads or people Peter could talk to, email him at peter.taylor@ethos-uk.com or call him on 44 (0)1458 840306 44 (0)1458 840306 or 44 (0)7730 388492 44 (0)7730 388492 (mobile).
September 21, 2009Are you a gnostic? The German political philosopher Eric Voeglin (1901-1985) theorised that there were six characteristics that identified modern movements and individuals as having “the gnostic attitude”. These were:
* dissatisfaction with the world.
* confidence that the wrongs in the world arise from the way it is organised.
* certainty that amelioration is possible.
* the assumption that improvement must “evolve historically”.
* the belief that human beings can change the world.
* the conviction that knowledge - gnosis - is the key to change.
If you agree with these six points, then you have the gnostic outlook. Of course, Voeglin was using the term “gnosticism” in a severe critique of modernity. But as the decades go by, one can see that humankind is undergoing change.
By contrast, Jung used the term in a positive manner, seeing the early gnostics as formative Jungians. In their quest for something more from life, and their ecstatic discovery of a self from which they had been cut adrift, their thinking resembled what was to come from Jung. The secret spark which they sought was really the unconscious. Nowadays, the search for the Self is paramount.
September 12, 2009
I was interested in the news item about the idea that atheism may be a case of fighting against nature, in that humans have been "hardwired" by evolution to believe in God.
It comes from studies by Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, of the way children’s brains develop and the workings of the brain during religious experiences.
“Our research shows children have a natural, intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs about how the world works,” he was quoted as saying. “As they grow up they overlay these beliefs with more rational approaches but the tendency to illogical supernatural beliefs remains as religion.”
Prof Hood, who presented his findings at the British Science Association’s annual meeting last week, sees organised religion as just part of a spectrum of supernatural beliefs.
It's nothing new, of course, to suggest that, during evolution, groups of humans with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs, perhaps because they tended to bond together better, so providing the will to go on and a greater chance of survival, and were able to come to terms with their mortality.
Suggestions from scientists that people are programmed to get a feeling of spirituality from what may be nothing more than electrical activity in particular regions of the brain go back decades. A “God spot”, activated during meditation or prayer, has long been posited. But while the science explains the mechanism, it cannot explain the feeling - and that's what is important.
The mechanistic view of religious experience has been pursued in separate research by Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Ontario, who has used powerful magnetic fields to induce visions and spiritual experiences in volunteers. If these experiences can be induced artificially what about the effects of electromagnetic radiation coming in from outer space, possibly peaking in 2012, as some experts believe will be the case?
Today, the traditional religious experience has been replaced for many by New Age spiritualities, absorption in world mysteries, such as UFOs and crop circles, all manner of prophecy and divination, and the lost wisdom of the ancients. These are substitutes for religion - perhaps new religions in themselves - rising alongside the old.
Doesn't it follow that this is where the "hard-wiring" for supernatural belief is taking us in the 21st century? If so, then it could be signalling a change of consciousness, a new trajectory of development in our evolution. To me, this is of great psychological and philosophical interest, and one of the main reasons why I launched the Mysterious Planet website.
Despite all the claims of scientific rationalism, it's true to say that no discovery or invention has been made by cold reasoning or calculation alone, but by intuition. The sense of mystery, of the supernatural, is fundamental to human nature.
September 8, 2009
How the once-humble dot - see the end of this sentence - has undergone a revolution in 15 years of the internet. It used to signify the end of the matter, but now, the opposite is the case.
Rather like the mere point, or singularity, from which scientists say the universe erupted in the Big Bang billions of years ago, it has opened up a whole universe of information and ideas. And like the universe, the worldwide web is still expanding.
Suddenly, the tiny visual point, which was previously enveloped in silence (except in pre-electronic age dictation by bosses to secretaries and reporters to copytakers), gained aural ascendancy with the ubiquitous www-dot in internet website addresses. Such addresses are now dotted over all manner of communications, from advertising hoardings to letterheads.
For the internet pioneers, the dot, of course, was a natural. They were there on the dot. Such alternatives as dash-com, colon-com or comma-con just wouldn't have had the same pungency or urgency. Similarly, the letter "e", already the most-used letter in the English language, acquired a new significance in such neologisms as e-mail, e-commerce, e-books, even e-loyalty.
Imagine the ancient monks in their vaulted chambers who, from the year dot (if you'll pardon the expression), toiled painstakingly over their illuminated manuscripts in the centuries before the Gutenberg galaxy exploded print culture into the world.
They could not have imagined what pivotal importance their docile dots would acquire by the time the second millennium came around.
Nor, long before the advent of typewriters and word processors, could the classic poets, novelists and philosophers in their garrets, who doubtless placed full points with a flourish and a sigh of achievement at the conclusion of their purple passages and grandiose propositions.
How they would gasp with astonishment to see how, at the simple touch of a key, www-dot has made their works available throughout the global village - a phrase which was invented in the Sixties, one recalls, by media guru Marshall McLuhan who so accurately foresaw the worldwide implications of the electronic revolution.
Yes, we are now living in a dotty world where we can communicate directly with anyone anywhere via our computer screens - but where, at the same time, we are also being made subject to a burdensome information overload of which we have to try to make some sense.
For better or worse, we've been made the offer and we've signed up on the dotted line - online, of course.
August 24, 2009
I was pleased to be contacted by Dennis Price, author of The Missing Years of Jesus (see Books page), the foreword of which describes him as "an archaeologist, a writer, a mystic and an acute observer of life" - a rare but extremely promising combination of attributes, I would say.
Dennis had some kind words to say about my Mysterious Planet website: "You must be aware that it's leagues ahead of many others. I get to see a lot of sites dealing with ancient mysteries and the like, but yours is detailed and classy." Take a look at Dennis's Eternal Idol website (link on Resources page) which was set up a few years ago to disseminate information about Stonehenge but has since expanded into many other fascinating areas.
Dennis had some kind words to say about my Mysterious Planet website: "You must be aware that it's leagues ahead of many others. I get to see a lot of sites dealing with ancient mysteries and the like, but yours is detailed and classy." Take a look at Dennis's Eternal Idol website (link on Resources page) which was set up a few years ago to disseminate information about Stonehenge but has since expanded into many other fascinating areas.
August 11, 2009
I heard from Dave Truman, of the Beyond Knowledge conference being held in Liverpool next month, who had these welcome words to say about Mysterious Planet: "It's a brave man these days who posts anything that challenges the dogma of man-made global warming! Excellent - they're trying to hoodwink us in order to con more taxes out of us, divert our attention from real environmental problems and foist nuclear power on us. Incidentally, have you ever heard the media ever talk about the carbon footprint that the average war in the Middle East makes? I wonder why not?" Why not, indeed.
I heard from Dave Truman, of the Beyond Knowledge conference being held in Liverpool next month, who had these welcome words to say about Mysterious Planet: "It's a brave man these days who posts anything that challenges the dogma of man-made global warming! Excellent - they're trying to hoodwink us in order to con more taxes out of us, divert our attention from real environmental problems and foist nuclear power on us. Incidentally, have you ever heard the media ever talk about the carbon footprint that the average war in the Middle East makes? I wonder why not?" Why not, indeed.
July 28, 2009
Are the wheels starting to come off the global warming bandwagon at last? I was delighted to read Christopher Booker's article in the Sunday Telegraph of July 26 about how Al Gore's predictions of runaway global warming have proved wildly wrong and how temperature records proffered by Gore's closest ally and scientific adviser, James Hansen, have become ever more eccentric.
Are the wheels starting to come off the global warming bandwagon at last? I was delighted to read Christopher Booker's article in the Sunday Telegraph of July 26 about how Al Gore's predictions of runaway global warming have proved wildly wrong and how temperature records proffered by Gore's closest ally and scientific adviser, James Hansen, have become ever more eccentric.
It was Hansen, of course, whose original assumption - and assumption only - on climate change set the bandwagon rolling in the late 1980s. But now, Hansen's data is often greatly at odds with other recognised sources, all of which show a substantial drop in temperatures in 2007, leading to cooler summers and colder winters, and completely undermining the predictions of the (flawed) computer models relied on by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Our own Met Office, despite its £33 million computer model, has been getting it wrong, too, forecasting a "barbecue summer" for 2009. When is that supposed to happen? Wake up, guys, we're not warming, we're cooling! Full marks to Booker who says "the propaganda machine has had to work overtime to maintain what is threatening to become the most expensive fiction in history".
Our own Met Office, despite its £33 million computer model, has been getting it wrong, too, forecasting a "barbecue summer" for 2009. When is that supposed to happen? Wake up, guys, we're not warming, we're cooling! Full marks to Booker who says "the propaganda machine has had to work overtime to maintain what is threatening to become the most expensive fiction in history".
I wonder - could he have been reading Peter Taylor's indispensable new book, Chill: A reassessment of global warming theory, featured on my home page, and which reveals the whole sorry story of how we've been hoodwinked over climate change? I believe the issues that the book raises are of such importance that I'm letting the item head my home page for the time being.
July 21, 2009
I was appalled to read a plea for pessimism spread over no fewer than six pages in the Sunday Times magazine on Sunday last.
"Confirmed pessimist" and depression sufferer Ariel Leve reckoned it was cool to be gloomy, and asked why there shouldn't be a pessimists' movement in parallel to, say, the civil rights and feminist movements.
Dr Julie Norem, a professor of psychology at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, who has written a book entitled The Positive Power of Negative Thinking, was quoted as saying that pessimists are being taken more seriously nowadays. And columnist Brian Appleyard, wrong-headed as usual, chipped in with the classic "pessimism is wisdom". Well, it isn't.
Heaven help us! Pessimists have already been taken too seriously for hundreds of years, tainting our art and philosophy. That's been our trouble. As the optimistic philosopher Colin Wilson has pointed out on many occasions, pessimism, defeatism, the "fallacy of insignificance", has been lying across Western culture like a huge fallen tree trunk, blocking the route to a higher consciousness, throughout much of modern times - and we have to shift it, or hold back human evolution.
Heaven help us! Pessimists have already been taken too seriously for hundreds of years, tainting our art and philosophy. That's been our trouble. As the optimistic philosopher Colin Wilson has pointed out on many occasions, pessimism, defeatism, the "fallacy of insignificance", has been lying across Western culture like a huge fallen tree trunk, blocking the route to a higher consciousness, throughout much of modern times - and we have to shift it, or hold back human evolution.
The main objection, says Wilson, to the pessimistic view and the theory of man's contingency, which pervaded the twentieth century and was partly due to pessimistic existentialists such as Camus, Sartre and Heidegger - the fallout from whom keeps pessimism fashionable - is that it filters the world through thought, thereby robbing it of much of its natural meaning.
A hundred years ago, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl recognised that all consciousness is essentially intentional in nature, is directional, like an arrow shot at a target, and Wilson believes intentionality can be amplified by the will, or "pulling back the bowstring further", raising consciousness to the point where it can create visible effects.
As an example, he cites Jung's theory of synchronicity: when Wilson focuses on the idea of synchronicity, he finds that odd synchronicities begin to happen. He regards synchronicity as not the intervention of the mind in natural processes, but rather, a natural product of their harmony.
Wilson's understanding of the self is as an intentional, willing consciousness that seizes experience, interacts with it, interprets it and further develops the self in an act of absolute becoming.
Here lies the meaning of Wilson's critical argument that freedom is a quality of consciousness. The more one grasps experience through the application of intentionality, the more one becomes free from contingency and free to enter higher planes of existence, to activate the 'secret life' within, and Wilson believes people should accept responsibility for expanding their consciousness by grasping a more comprehensive sense of meaning - the very opposite of pessimism.
July 8, 2009
So, it didn't materialise - the much-vaunted solar flare of July 7, much less a coronal mass ejection, which, it was claimed, was predicted by the patterns of various Wiltshire crop circles of recent weeks.
I was sceptical of these claims, put forward on the Crop Circle Connector website, not least because those who made them were hotly challenged there over the accuracy of their analyses.
A three-day forecast from the Space Weather Prediction Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the USA, for July 6-9, said "solar activity is expected to remain very low with a slight chance for an isolated C-class flare". There were no solar radiation storms on July 7. July 8, 2009
So, it didn't materialise - the much-vaunted solar flare of July 7, much less a coronal mass ejection, which, it was claimed, was predicted by the patterns of various Wiltshire crop circles of recent weeks. I was sceptical of these claims, put forward on the Crop Circle Connector website, not least because those who made them were hotly challenged there over the accuracy of their analyses.
Spaceweather.com reported on July 7: "Many readers are writing to ask if this sunspot (1024) is going to produce a major solar storm today, July 7. Such a storm was 'predicted' by a set of crop circles in England, and the solar blogosphere has been abuzz with speculation. The answer is 'no'. A major storm is not in the offing. Sunspot 1024 is relatively large, but it does not have the kind of complex magnetic field that poses a threat for major eruptions. Crop circles, it turns out, are not a useful tool for forecasting solar activity."
Next day, Spaceweather.com said: "Yesterday, sunspot 1024 took the day off; the fast-growing active region stopped growing and even decayed a little." Well, you can't have everything!
Meanwhile, an international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA now predicts that the next solar cycle, Solar Cycle 24, will peak in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots -potentially removing the likelihood of a sunspot maximum in 2012 to tie in with various other apocalyptic and "doomsday" prophecies.
Panel chairman Doug Biesecker, of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, is quoted as saying Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78.
The latest forecast revises a prediction made in 2007 when it was believed there would be a strong maximum in 2011 or a weak maximum in 2012.
However, as a statement from the NOAA points out, describing a cycle as "weak" or "mild" could give the wrong impression. Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather. The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for example, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size predicted for 2013. That electrified transmission cables, caused fires in telegraph offices and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by the glow.
Another year to get ready, then! Thirteen could be unlucky for some.
June 30, 2009
Political correctness is a nonsensical pomposity which needs to be deflated at every possible turn. Now, while many, like me, feel intuitively that the notion of the politically correct is patently absurd, few pause to look for actual proof that it is fundamentally flawed in its conception.
Political correctness is a nonsensical pomposity which needs to be deflated at every possible turn. Now, while many, like me, feel intuitively that the notion of the politically correct is patently absurd, few pause to look for actual proof that it is fundamentally flawed in its conception.
The reason why the idea of political correctness is philosophically unsound may be found, ironically, in the very elements it seeks mainly to oppose - namely, certain ways of using language.You can look at language as a way of clothing naked reality but, inevitably, reality will relentlessly burst through, ripping and tearing the material - the words - that we are using, and playing havoc with their meanings.
This is because, when you get down to it, words are merely arbitrary signs which we use to describe aspects of reality. A horse, for example, is not a "horse". We have no objective way of knowing what it is - we simply apply the word to a particular object which has familiar spatial dimensions and identifiable characteristics.
Linguistic political correctness, which is essentially a system of euphemisms, serves only to place the sign (the signifier) at an even greater distance from the object (the signified) to which it relates, and in doing so renders the "clothing" of reality that much thinner and easier to shred.
This is why political correctness becomes simply laughable - and the more so when it is taken to extremes. It joins those types of jokes which rely on double meanings or innuendoes for their punch-lines.
A politically correct term is thus a kind of pun, always and necessarily referring back to the original term or image it is trying to overlay, or disguise (but which by definition is closer to "reality") and always undoing itself by undermining what it sets out to achieve in the first place.
It really is about time everyone recognised political correctness for the chimera it undoubtedly is, and got back to more meaningful and honest ways of using language.
June 18, 2009
Giving up television must be a bit like giving up smoking - not only is there euphoria after breaking the habit, but people's reactions are surprisingly similar. First, there's admiration, then resignation as they confess they are unable to kick the habit themselves, as much as they say they would like to.
No, there isn't much on, is there? they agree, referring to the one-eyed god, but continue to goggle anyway. Yes, it's a filthy habit, they agree, referring to the dreaded weed, but continue to puff away regardless.
My family gave up the box and joined the dissenting one per cent as long ago as 1993 when it became clear that the dumbing down process in the media was well under way. We never regretted the decision, never came to miss the box in the corner, and filled our time with more constructive activities. It was clear there was no information or entertainment on television that one could not obtain from other sources and, with the rise of the internet, that was even more the case.
Equally, one can do without the endless round of shallow soaps, moronic quizzes, juvenile comedy shows, appalling "reality" TV and loutish or airhead presenters - a parade of con men and women who otherwise you would never dream of allowing into your living room. It is evident that the more channels there are available, the lower the quality of programming will be, because of reduced selectivity.
Then there is the question of the anachronistic BBC licence fee which is far more than I'm prepared to pay for the (very) occasional programme that might be worth watching - not to mention the obscene and unjustifiable payments, to which I have no wish to contribute, made to the likes of Ross and Wogan. And Britain, with its TV licence police cruising the streets, antennae twitching for illegal viewers, is a laughing stock. It's great that the Government is now at last tackling BBC arrogance by proposing to "top-slice" license-fee revenue to support other providers.
Nevertheless, my opinion is that television tends to close down perception, rather than open it up, and creates a "blinkering" effect which narrows the range of consciousness. This happens not merely because of the triviality of programmes but also because of the nature of the medium which, by promoting passivity, tends to act as a cultural anaesthetic. It does your thinking for you.
A scientific study revealed that TV viewers display the same symptoms as alcoholics or drug addicts - they have a real affliction that works in the same way as habit-forming drugs and leaves sufferers craving more viewing, and experiencing anxiety, or withdrawal symptoms, after switching off. Watching TV is like gambling or sex in the way people become addicted to it.
Elvis Presley once raked his Graceland TV set with gunfire in anger at the medium. In 1990, Bob Dylan, in his TV Talking Blues, said: "Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out!" This seemed like pretty good advice, and we took it.
Giving up television must be a bit like giving up smoking - not only is there euphoria after breaking the habit, but people's reactions are surprisingly similar. First, there's admiration, then resignation as they confess they are unable to kick the habit themselves, as much as they say they would like to.
No, there isn't much on, is there? they agree, referring to the one-eyed god, but continue to goggle anyway. Yes, it's a filthy habit, they agree, referring to the dreaded weed, but continue to puff away regardless.
My family gave up the box and joined the dissenting one per cent as long ago as 1993 when it became clear that the dumbing down process in the media was well under way. We never regretted the decision, never came to miss the box in the corner, and filled our time with more constructive activities. It was clear there was no information or entertainment on television that one could not obtain from other sources and, with the rise of the internet, that was even more the case.
Equally, one can do without the endless round of shallow soaps, moronic quizzes, juvenile comedy shows, appalling "reality" TV and loutish or airhead presenters - a parade of con men and women who otherwise you would never dream of allowing into your living room. It is evident that the more channels there are available, the lower the quality of programming will be, because of reduced selectivity.
Then there is the question of the anachronistic BBC licence fee which is far more than I'm prepared to pay for the (very) occasional programme that might be worth watching - not to mention the obscene and unjustifiable payments, to which I have no wish to contribute, made to the likes of Ross and Wogan. And Britain, with its TV licence police cruising the streets, antennae twitching for illegal viewers, is a laughing stock. It's great that the Government is now at last tackling BBC arrogance by proposing to "top-slice" license-fee revenue to support other providers.
Nevertheless, my opinion is that television tends to close down perception, rather than open it up, and creates a "blinkering" effect which narrows the range of consciousness. This happens not merely because of the triviality of programmes but also because of the nature of the medium which, by promoting passivity, tends to act as a cultural anaesthetic. It does your thinking for you.
A scientific study revealed that TV viewers display the same symptoms as alcoholics or drug addicts - they have a real affliction that works in the same way as habit-forming drugs and leaves sufferers craving more viewing, and experiencing anxiety, or withdrawal symptoms, after switching off. Watching TV is like gambling or sex in the way people become addicted to it.
Elvis Presley once raked his Graceland TV set with gunfire in anger at the medium. In 1990, Bob Dylan, in his TV Talking Blues, said: "Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out!" This seemed like pretty good advice, and we took it.
June 10, 2009
Beware, the end is nigh - the sandwich-board man's best-known warning has long been a parody of itself, but is gaining new currency from the 2012 prophecy.
I was intrigued when a new "ism" entered the language. "Endism" was a trendy name for a wide range of positions and ideas whose common element was that they announced "the end" of something or other: history, ideology, rock music, philosophy, journalism, Marxism, the author, man and the world have been among the favourite candidates of recent times.
Endism was not an entirely new phenomenon, however - many have forecast the end of the world in the past, often several times over after the initial prediction has failed. It's the new millennium that gives endism the latest twist, and it dovetails with the cultural movement which has coloured the last 50 years or so, known as post-modernism. This urges us to reject the traditional authority of "modern" times and the influence that the past exerts on our thought and behaviour, and seems (unfortunately) to be more to do with surface features than deep significance.
Somehow, such new ways of looking at the world permeate down through society and affect us all, to a lesser or greater degree. Just as the dreaded political correctness was dreamed up by a few eccentric Harvard professors - traceable back to the thinking of Marxists in the 1920s - and still attempts to condition so much of our thought, so the post-modern outlook is largely due to a few eccentric theorists just across the Channel in France.
But it goes a long way towards explaining attitudes in contemporary society, such as why our sons and daughters always say "no" before they say "yes", which obviously indicates an unwillingness to deal with matters in depth, the preoccupation with trivia and ephemera, the radical onslaught on values, and the general "dumbing down" of culture: no highbrow or lowbrow any more, just a cynically marketed " no-brow".
Yet endism cannot be an end in itself. For a start, the action/reaction pattern has always been a feature of history, and a convincing counter-view is that all creation is cyclic, with every end containing the seed of new beginning.
I recall what the eminent Swiss psychologist Carl Jung had to say about "isms". He described such collective identities, at worst, as "crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible" . But at the same time they represented a haven for the individual threatened by anonymity.
Endism, like all other "isms", really asks: what are we actually DOING with our lives?
June 3, 2009
I was intrigued when a new "ism" entered the language. "Endism" was a trendy name for a wide range of positions and ideas whose common element was that they announced "the end" of something or other: history, ideology, rock music, philosophy, journalism, Marxism, the author, man and the world have been among the favourite candidates of recent times.
Endism was not an entirely new phenomenon, however - many have forecast the end of the world in the past, often several times over after the initial prediction has failed. It's the new millennium that gives endism the latest twist, and it dovetails with the cultural movement which has coloured the last 50 years or so, known as post-modernism. This urges us to reject the traditional authority of "modern" times and the influence that the past exerts on our thought and behaviour, and seems (unfortunately) to be more to do with surface features than deep significance.
Somehow, such new ways of looking at the world permeate down through society and affect us all, to a lesser or greater degree. Just as the dreaded political correctness was dreamed up by a few eccentric Harvard professors - traceable back to the thinking of Marxists in the 1920s - and still attempts to condition so much of our thought, so the post-modern outlook is largely due to a few eccentric theorists just across the Channel in France.
But it goes a long way towards explaining attitudes in contemporary society, such as why our sons and daughters always say "no" before they say "yes", which obviously indicates an unwillingness to deal with matters in depth, the preoccupation with trivia and ephemera, the radical onslaught on values, and the general "dumbing down" of culture: no highbrow or lowbrow any more, just a cynically marketed " no-brow".
Yet endism cannot be an end in itself. For a start, the action/reaction pattern has always been a feature of history, and a convincing counter-view is that all creation is cyclic, with every end containing the seed of new beginning.
I recall what the eminent Swiss psychologist Carl Jung had to say about "isms". He described such collective identities, at worst, as "crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible" . But at the same time they represented a haven for the individual threatened by anonymity.
Endism, like all other "isms", really asks: what are we actually DOING with our lives?
June 3, 2009
In my book, Spirals: the Pattern of Existence, I link the names of Rupert Sheldrake, the biologist, and David Bohm, the late quantum physicist, in positing a relationship between morphic resonance and the implicate order, the two ground-breaking ideas which the two eminent thinkers, respectively, have put forward.
And, lo and behold, in the new edition of Sheldrake's A New Science of Life, published this spring, I found Appendix B, Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order: a Dialogue with David Bohm, a record of a conversation between the two scientists in 1982, and which I knew nothing about when I wrot
And, lo and behold, in the new edition of Sheldrake's A New Science of Life, published this spring, I found Appendix B, Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order: a Dialogue with David Bohm, a record of a conversation between the two scientists in 1982, and which I knew nothing about when I wrot